Courtesy of Press Here PublicityKorn frontman Jonathan Davis has shared a new song called "Everyone," which will appear on his debut solo album, Black Labyrinth. The eerie track is now available via digital platforms.

"Everyone" is also accompanied by a creepy video that follows a group of cult members who meet a grisly end. If you don't mind images of electrocution and blood splatter, you can watch the video now on YouTube.

Black Labyrinth, which also features the single "What It Is," will be released May 25. Davis will kick off a solo tour in support of the album April 6 in Portland, Oregon.

Copyright  2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
Quartz india, March 19, 2018

If history is essential to nationalism as has been frequently said, so too is the claim to a national culture frequently curated from this history. The problem arises when selections have to be made as to what goes into the construction of a national culture. At the official level there is a continued use of the colonial terms: majority and minority, derived from figures of those following different religions. Instead of looking for more valid descriptive terms, the configuring of culture as majority and minority cultures, however inept, is reinforced by saying that whereas the majority culture will be prominent, the cultures of the minorities will also figure. What this means is that Indian culture more often is defined centrally by what is projected as Hindu culture, with an addition if required of items associated with those that come from minority communities.

In India today Islamic and Hindu monuments dominate the landscape. Should they be juxtaposed or should there be an attempt to place each of them in the larger context where their relationship to each other and to the many more cultural items can be observed? Many today, either out of ignorance or for reasons of political ideology, propound theories that can only be called ridiculousasuch as, that the Hindus have been victimized by Muslim rule and have been slaves during the last thousand years. The degree of ignorance contained in such a statement is astonishing, because it is actually a denial of the most effective, evocative and cherished religious articulations in various facets of Hinduism that took place during the last thousand years.

[a]

This is not to say that there was no confrontation at the political level but this should not be confused with claiming that there was massive victimization of the Hindus bringing about Hindu resistance in the late Mughal period. Political relations should be examined in terms of the politics of the time. Conflicts of a routine kind were clearly local and more casual than has been assumed. Relations between communities in general tend to be governed by some degree of accommodation and some degree of confrontation. It makes greater sense to try and analyse the reasons for either. Political relations should be examined in terms of the politics of the time.

The British conquered India but did not settle in the land. They drained its resources to enhance industrial capitalism in the home country and find markets in the colonies. Unlike the British, the Turks, Afghans, Arabs, and Mughalsacommonly bunched together as athe Muslim rulersa ainvaded India, but also settled in the country. New communities and new patterns of thought and expression came into being. To treat all Hindu and Muslim cultures as separate cultures, entirely segregated and demarcated from each other, is historically untenable, nor is it viable in cultural terms. The form taken by facets of these cultures, and from earliest times, from the architecture and ornamentation of monumental buildings to the compositions of music whether as ragas or qawwalis, derives from the interplay of more than even two cultures. The recognition of this multiplicity gives authenticity to a cultural form.

[a]

But to return to our times. Nationalism can determine the selection of what we project as national culture. This helps in the preservation of what otherwise might have declined, or it highlights ideas and objects that might have been neglected. This might be called a positive role even if the selection of what is to be preserved may not have unanimous support from the nation, or that citizens may feel that some cultural items were deliberately or inadvertently left out.

But there is also the problem of the destruction of culture in the name of nationalism or a similar sentiment. This is generally a systematic, deliberate destruction of a prominent aspect of culture in order to make a statement and attract attention. It is essentially a political act and may actually have little to do with sentiment. There have been some rather dramatic cases of this in recent times. The Greco-Roman monuments in Palmyra and Aleppo in Syria were destroyed by Islamic extremists of the Islamic State; the massive Buddhist statues at Bamiyan in Afghanistan were destroyed again by Islamic extremists, the Taliban; and the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya was destroyed, by Hindu extremists claiming, among other things, to be avenging the raid of Mahmud of Ghazni on the temple of Somanatha that took place a thousand years ago, as well as assuaging a supposed subsequent Hindu trauma. Historically there is no mention of such a trauma in the ancient texts. It is mentioned for the first time in 1842 in In some ways, it is becoming somewhat anachronistic to speak of national culture. the course of a debate in the House of Commons in Britain when a member of the British parliament suggested that the raid might have created a trauma among the Hindus. The Babri Masjid was a sixteenth-century mosque that in the name of history and culture, had been deemed a protected monument of the Indian state, but in the name of Hindu nationalism it was destroyed by those antagonistic to its presence at a site that they claimed was sacred to them marking a temple to Rama.

[a]

In some ways, it is becoming somewhat anachronistic to speak of national culture. In the minds and activities of those for whom religious cultures carry a political message of identity, the constituents of national culture can be changed by political diktat. National cultures are not static. They too mutate, dependent on those who create them. What was regarded as national culture by Indians a century ago is not identical with what some Indians today would describe as national culture, for the latter are busy trying to expunge what they maintain are alien elements and not part of the Indian tradition as they see it.

And then there is globalisation. The rush to be globalised brings two contradictory trends: one is to be open and participate in a global economy and society, and the other is to create citadels in the name of religion that are in effect self-contained citadels. It could be said that there is an element of continuity in this. In the past, there were viharas (monasteries), mathas, and khanqahs (hospices) that had contacts with similar institutions in other parts of the known world. Donations from patrons allowed them to be independent of state interference and if they were powerful enoughaas some wereathey intervened in politics. But with this differenceathat whether they saw themselves as another kind of social institution or not, their transparency was also a source of their strength. They were not citadels. Patronage is a significant facet in the making of culture and in protecting what is defined as culture. Who is providing the patronage and for whom and what is being protected and why, are all relevant questions, and in turn raise a host of further questions in their answers. Where patronage takes the form of gift-giving it acts as a method of exchange between donor and recipient, and creates a relationship that has cultural implications. A tangible gift may be given in exchange for an intangible aura and status that is claimed by the donor. Patronage and gift-giving provide many glimpses of cultural readings of a society.

When we speak of national culture today we concede that the state as patron is also involved in determining the content of this culture, as it has always been in the past to varying degrees. What we do not concede but should, is that alternative definitions of culture have also to be protected. This can only become a practice when the defining of culture ceases to go to only one source and is able to induct other sources.

Excerpted with the permission of Aleph Book Company from Indian Cultures As Heritage by Romila Thapar.
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Oklahoma teachers have reacted with disgust and anger over the pay offer and the school-funding bill signed into law by Republican Governor Mary Fallin Thursday afternoon. Teachers are preparing for a statewide strike by over 40,000 educators on Monday, April 2.

While the governor praised the bipartisan deal for giving teachers the largest raise in Oklahoma history, the one-time increase of between $5,000 to $7,000, depending on years of service, will do little for teachers who are ranked 49th in the nation in pay. Teachers have not had a raise in a decade even as they have borne higher out-of-pocket costs for health care and pensions.

The $474 million funding package adopts proposals by the teachers union and state Democrats to pay for the raise through a series of regressive taxes, including a one-dollar increase on cigarettes, increases in gasoline and diesel fuel taxes, plus a small tax increase on new oil and gas wells. This amount, however, will not even a put a dent in the billions of dollars both parties have cut from public education over the last decade.

Between 2008 and 2018, under both Fallin and her Democratic predecessor, Brad Henry, Oklahomas per pupil funding fell by 28 percent, more than any other state in the US. Oklahoma now spends $1,000 less per child than it did 10 years ago, according to the Center of Budget and Policy Priorities. Due to these cuts, 20 percent of the states schools have been forced to adopt a four-day schedule.

While claiming there were no resources for public education, let alone pay raises, the Democrats and Republicans over the last decade have handed billions of dollars in tax breaks to the states energy corporations.

Inspired by the nine-day strike of West Virginia teachers, which temporarily broke free from the control of the unions, tens of thousands of teachers joined the Facebook pages Oklahoma Teachers United and Oklahoma Teacher Walkout-The Time is Now! to demand open-ended strike action until they win a $10,000 pay raise and full funding for public education.

While unable to call the strike off, the Oklahoma Education Association (OEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) are opposed to an extended strike, which would reinvigorate opposition throughout the country. Like their counterparts in West Virginia, union officials are already using the threat of potential fines or disciplinary action, and claims that a prolonged strike would alienate the public, to counter the militant sentiments of teachers. At the same time, OEA and AFT officials are boosting illusions that lobbying the legislators after teachers return to school will bear fruit.

After the Senate passed the bill Wednesday night, OEA President Alicia Priest called the sham a great victory, while acknowledging it might not be everything that we want. She went on to patronize teachers, saying, Because you made your voice heard and fought with such compassionate courage we how have a bipartisan deal that will give teachers an average $6,000 raise.

Aware of the deep opposition among teachers, Priest added, I know you may be disappointed like me that the legislature left money on the table. She acknowledged that the funding measure would do nothing to address the shortage of textbooks, four-day weeks and overcrowded classes. Nor did it restore the 28 percent funding cut carried out over the last decade. We must ensure every student has the resources they need. Thats why we will be in the capitol on April 2. The OEA will support teachers for as long as they want to stay at the capitol.

Rank-and-file teachers rejected the claims of historic victories and took to the Oklahoma Teachers United page to post their opposition. Travis Hathcote wrote: This afternoon Guymon teachers and support staff came together and by a significant majority voted to reaffirm our support of a walkout! Proud of our staff and thankful for our supportive administration and school board. This is not just about raises, it is about restoring funding!

Karen Cavanaugh-Wellner, wrote, Many of the Mustang teachers are just sick! We were told by our superintendent today that we will be out Monday but he expects school as usual on Tuesday. They he sent a survey asking if we were going to be in school Tuesday.

Steven Rhoden, a paraprofessional in special education at an elementary school in Tulsa, told the World Socialist Web Site that teachers are not happy with the deal, and paraprofessionals and support staff would get little if anything. Teachers are in the profession because they want to be and feel a calling to their work. They are taken advantage of because of their high level of commitment. It is the kids that make it worthwhile, but the longer teachers are in the profession, the harder it is to keep going.

Steven said the number of paraprofessionals has consistently fallen, even as demand for their services grows. As a special education helper, he said he does not see how teachers can handle what theyre asked to do. Class sizes have gotten so large, even in special education classrooms, that education is often difficult to achieve.

A teacher in Anadarko, in south central Oklahoma, told the WSWS that teachers feel sold out. The legislators, he said, have already cut some funding they agreed to 48 hours ago. As for the unions, he added, I dont see how they could have the best interest of education or children in mind, when weve had to wait 10 years for this. Why wait for things to get so critical?

Earlier this week, thousands of teachers in Arizona marched to demand a 20 percent wage increase and full funding for education. Linda, an elementary school teacher in Phoenix, told the WSWS, Teachers here want to walk out too. Its happening worldwide. They treat us awfully here. Were number 48 for school funding and at the bottom for pay. We teach poor kids, who come from the projects and face poverty, drugs and gangs, and instead of giving us more resources they blame the teachers for the educational problems, saying were not motivated enough.

Now the governor wants to bring in uncertified teachers and military veterans, so they can pay them less and systematically destroy education. Teachers want the pay they deserve and theyre willing to fight for it.

From the very beginning, the struggle in Oklahoma, as in West Virginia, Kentucky, Arizona and other states, has been initiated by rank-and-file educators sick of decades of union-backed concessions and complicity in budget-cutting.

In February, teachers in the West Virginia coalfields launched wildcat strikes, forcing the state affiliates of the National Education Association (NEA) and American Federation of Teachers (AFT) to call a statewide strike and then extend it. When the unions cut a deal with the states billionaire governor and ordered strikers back to work, teachers and school employees came together on the picket lines, at the state capitol and online to vote to defy the unions and continue the strike.

The fatal weakness of that struggle, however, was that rank-and-file teachers did not build up the necessary organizations, free from the control of the unions, to take the struggle forward and mobilize the broadest support in the working class to fight the gang-up of the two big-business parties and the powerful corporate interests behind them. This enable the unions to reassert their control, smother opposition and impose essentially the same deal the teachers first rejected.

The five percent pay raise for West Virginia teachers did nothing to address the strikers main demand to fully fund health care and end crushing out-of-pocket expenses. To make matters worse, the meager pay increase will be funded through slashing other essential services, including potential cuts to Medicaid for the low-income children the teachers serve.

Oklahoma teachers must learn these lessons and decisively break with all the strikebreaking unions. Rank-and-file committees must be elected in every school and community to mobilize the entire working class behind this fight. The strike and mass protests on Monday should be used to discuss and debate a strategy to launch an industrial and political counteroffensive against the bipartisan attack on public education.

The only way to guarantee the social right to quality public education and a living wage, health care and a comfortable retirement for educators is by carrying out a frontal assault on the entrenched wealth and power of the corporate and financial elite.
Three weeks after the Italian parliamentary election, the protest movement Five Star (M5S) and the far-right League (Northern League) have moved closer together, and they might now form a coalition government.

The leaders of the two parties, 45-year-old Matteo Salvini (League) and 31-year-old Luigi Di Maio (M5S), are in constant contact. Salvini noted a few days ago that he speaks to Di Maio on the phone more often than to his own mother. Due to this close cooperation, the leaders of the two chambers of parliament were smoothly elected over the weekend. According to press reports, Di Maio and Salvini are working on a joint government programme.

The M5S and the alliance of far-right partiesthe League, Silvio Berlusconis Forza Italia and the fascistic Fratelli dItalia (Brothers of Italy)elected Roberto Fico (M5S) as president of the Chamber of Deputies and Elisabetta Alberti Casellati (Forza Italia) as speaker of the Senate.

The election is remarkable because, shortly before the parliamentary elections, Di Maio had promised that M5S would never engage in intrigues and deals behind closed doors. Roberto Fico, the new president of the Chamber of Deputies, declared: I guarantee we will never ally ourselves with the League: it is genetically different. But that is exactly what has happened. The election of the two Chamber presidents was the result of secret intrigues and deals between M5S and the League.

M5S, which owed its election success to its proclaimed opposition to corruption, previously presented Berlusconi and his Forza Italia as its arch-enemies. Now, M5S has elevated Casellati, a super-Berlusconian, into the countrys second highest state office. The speaker of the Senate automatically assumes the duties of president if 76-year-old Sergio Mattarella is unable to carry out his duties.

The lawyer Casellati, who holds a doctorate in church law, is an opponent of abortion and gay marriage. She has sat in parliament for Forza Italia since 1994. She has supported all of Berlusconis campaigns against the judiciary, drafted laws that protected him from trials for corruption, and defended him on talk shows and on demonstrations. She is also implicated in corrupt practices after hiring her daughter as secretary of state at the Ministry of Health.

Casellati, however, was not Berlusconis choice. The former head of government favoured Paolo Romani, a minister from his last cabinet. But Salvini, whose League achieved a bigger share of the vote in the election than Berlusconis Forza Italia, is now calling the shots in the far-right camp. He nevertheless chose a candidate from Forza Italia and not from his own party because he needs Berlusconis support to become head of government.

Negotiations on the new government begin after Easter, when President Mattarella invites the various parties for consultations. Former Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni (PD) has submitted his resignation, as required by the constitution, and is now leading a caretaker government until a new government takes over.

Theoretically, there are four options for a governing majority in the 630-seat lower house, but they all face significant problemsa coalition of M5S (227 seats) with the League alone (125 seats), a coalition of the M5S with the entire far-right alliance (265 seats), a coalition of the latter alliance with the Democrats (PD) (112 seats), or a coalition of the M5S with the Democrats.

M5S and the League have a small majority, even without the participation of Forza Italia, but this immediately raises the question of who takes over as head of government. Both Di Maio and Salvini have laid claim to the post. The M5S parliamentary faction is almost twice as large as the Leagues, so Di Maio is disinclined to allow Salvini to head the government. The situation is different when the entire far-right alliance participates in the government. Together it has more deputies than M5S.

For a long time, the League and M5S were considered to be politically irreconcilable. The League, which emerged from the separatist Northern League, is following a far-right-wing course. Its role model is the National Front of Marine Le Pen in France. It has its base in the prosperous north of the country and has promised to deport half a million migrants and reduce taxes to 15 percent if it comes to power.

M5S poses as a protest party that stands neither right nor left, and as an opponent of the corrupt Italian political caste. It achieved its greatest electoral successes with the promise of a universal basic income in the south, where poverty, unemployment and precarious work prevail.

After the close cooperation of the past few days, however, an alliance between the two parties looks increasingly possible. What unites them is their criticism of the European Union (EU) and the common European currency. Both have stated that they will not stick to the EU limit of 3 percent of GDP for the government deficit. In Brussels and Berlin, such a ruling alliance in Italy is therefore considered a horror scenario. The League and M5S also largely concur in their hostility to immigrants.

The basic income promised by the M5S is far from universal. It is more like an Italian version of Germanys Hartz IV payments. According to a parliamentary proposal of M5S, it would only be paid under certain conditions. An amount of 780 per month would be given to those who are permanently registered at Job Centres and accept at least their third job offer. Above all, the basic income would be paid exclusively to Italian nationals, thereby further deepening divisions in the working class.

Meanwhile, the founder of M5S, the comedian Beppe Grillo, has signalled his agreement to an alliance with the League. Salvini is one who keeps his word when he says something. Thats rare, Grillo declared. Salvini returned the compliment: The Grillini have so far proven to be trustworthy.

Silvio Berlusconi has called on the president to entrust the formation of the government to League leader Salvini. The centre right received the most votes and thus has the right to appoint the prime minister, he told the Corriere della Sera. Salvini has the right and duty to try to form a government.

Berlusconi, who has always been at loggerheads with the M5S, prefers an alliance with the Democrats (PD), the main losers in the parliamentary election. Such a coalition would only have a majority if the entire right-wing alliance is involved. The PD would be the strongest single party and could claim the office of prime ministera move that would be hardly in the interests of Salvini.

The last option, a coalition of the M5S with the Democrats, would be dominated by M5S, which could claim the office of prime minister. So far, it is unlikely that the PD would support the 31-year-old Di Maio in this endeavour.

All that is certain is that the horse-trading will continue behind the scenes in the coming weeks. Whether the pact between Di Maio and Salvini holds is hard to predict, let alone what other deals may be offered, made or rejected.

Ultimately, the extreme crisis of Italian politics is the result of the deep gulf between the needs and aspirations of the broad mass of the population and all of the parties represented in parliament. None of them has an answer to the horrendous levels of youth unemployment, declining incomes and the social crisis that dominate in the country.

Using populist demagogy, the M5S and the League were able to win a considerable number of votes, but a government of these two parties, like any other conceivable coalition, would pursue a far-right political agenda and rapidly come into sharp conflict with the working class. Only an independent movement of the working class, fighting for an international socialist programme, can prevent the country from drifting further to the right.
In what may become a significant blow to its chances of survival, the Liberal-National government abandoned its bid to push through parliament this week its signature economic policya company tax cut for big business.

Despite two years of public campaigning, an advertising blitz by the Business Council of Australia and weeks of haggling with the 11 crossbench independents and minor party Senators, the government was unable to muster the votes to pass the bill.

Parliament is now in recess until it resumes for just three days for the federal budget to be delivered on May 8, when the government may try again. But there are growing doubts in ruling circles over the governments ability to ever implement one of its main promises to the corporate elitea tax cut worth at least $35 billion over the next decade.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbulls so-called enterprise plan to slash the company tax rate from 30 percent to 25 percent by 2026 was the centrepiece of the governments May 2016 budget. It was a key plank of its platform for the 2016 double dissolution election, which left it with a precarious one-seat majority in the lower house, and only 30 seats in the 76-member Senate.

Since then, the demands of the capitalist class for the tax cut have only become more insistent because of the Trump administrations cut in the US rate to 21 percent, and the growing danger of a US-China trade war. Australian capitalism depends heavily on foreign investment inflows, especially from the US, which could be diverted back into America, as well as on exports of raw materials to China. There are also signs of the bursting of a property bubble, accompanied by soaring household debt levels, that has largely kept the economy afloat since the mining boom imploded in 2011.

With the Labor oppositions help, the government succeeded in passing the first phase of its legislation, reducing the tax rate for smaller businesses. But Labor has baulked at extending the cut to the largest companies, those with annual turnovers of more than $50 million.

At the beginning of this week, the government and the media confidently predicted that enough deals would be struck to successfully put the rest of the bill to a Senate vote. Pauline Hansons anti-immigrant One Nation, which has become the governments closest ally, had signed up, handing the government three Senate votes in return for a supposed pledge to subsidise 1,000 rural apprenticeships.

In the end, however, the governments horse-trading could only bring seven crossbench Senators on board. For all the posturing by the Senate holdouts, the setback reflects intense public hostility toward the tax cuts and the government itself. Opinion polls have recorded support for the bill running at less than 20 percent, while this weeks Murdoch media Newspoll showed the governments primary support at 37 percent, behind the Labor Party on 39 percent.

The government lagged behind Labor for the 29th Newspoll survey in a row, just one short of the 30 such results that Turnbull cited in September 2015 to justify the move to oust his predecessor, Tony Abbott from the prime ministers post. The tax bill setback could reignite the factional rifts that have wracked both the Liberal and National parties, especially since the governments near-defeat in 2016.

Driving the hostility toward the government, and the political establishment as a whole, is the social crisis being experienced by millions of working-class households as a result of the ruthless drive for corporate profit. Average real wages have fallen for six years, permanent jobs are being eliminated in favour of casualised or contract employment, prices are soaring for essentials such as housing, utilities, healthcare and childcare, and basic services and infrastructure are deteriorating.

The Business Council of Australia (BCA), representing the biggest companies operating in Australia, had sought to boost the governments efforts by issuing advertisements and an open letter to Senators last week signed by 10 CEOs, pledging to reinvest the proceeds of the tax cuts, with the ultimate aim of increasing wages.

That operation backfired, however, when a leaked copy of the initial draft of the BCA letter revealed that the business chiefs had refused to sign up to any specific promises to use the tax bonanza to invest more, hire extra workers, increase wages or even pay tax.

Another leakthat of a secret BCA survey of its membersshowed that more than 80 percent would use the proceeds to either boost returns to shareholders or invest in the company. Only a fifth said they would directly increase wages or employ more staff.

These leaks were especially damaging because Turnbull and other government ministers had spent weeks endlessly restating the lie that a corporate tax cut would flow through to higher wages and more jobs.

After the governments withdrawal of the bill, Turnbull assured a BCA dinner the government was not giving up on getting the tax cut through parliament. The BCA announced yet another expensive advertising campaign, designed to improve the public image of big business.

The materials accompanying the new campaign note the business community has become an easy target and anti-business forces have a significant campaign advantage in terms of organisation, communication and data collection.

In reality, the widespread anti-capitalist sentiment reflects the acceleration of social inequality since the 2008 global financial meltdown, not least because the corporate and financial elite pays little or no tax as a result of generous tax concessions.

Due to numerous write-offs and deductions, the effective tax rate paid by many companies in Australia is much lower than 30 percentit has been calculated at 10.4 percent by the Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation.

Other foreign investors arrange their affairs to pay little or no tax in Australia. This is particularly true for Big Tech companies, such as Google, Amazon and Facebook, where intellectual property makes it easy to shift profits to low-tax jurisdictions like Ireland, Singapore and Luxembourg.

An Anglicare study this week reported that eight of the largest tax concessions and exemptions cost just over $135 billion a year in foregone revenue, and all disproportionately benefit high income and wealthy households. Anglicares report, The Cost of Privilege, estimated that concessions worth $68.5 billion go to the richest 20 percent of householdsmore than the $68.1 billion annual cost of the disability support pension and assistance to families and children.

Sensing the popular outrage, Labor Party leader Bill Shorten this week dared Turnbull to make the next federal election, due by May 2019, a referendum on the company tax bill, and vowed to repeal the legislation if it were passed in the meantime.

The Labor Partys posturing is entirely hypocritical. It is no less a party of big business than the Liberals. As recently as 2011, Shortenthen a key minister in the Gillard Labor governmentadvocated lower company taxes. Cutting the company income tax rate increases domestic productivity and domestic investment, he told parliament, and leads to more jobs and higher wages.

In a 2013 book, Labors shadow treasurer Chris Bowen advocated promoting growth through cutting company tax as a Labor thing. With Turnbulls government showing signs of imploding, the Australian and the Australian Financial Review recently promoted Bowen, citing his admiration for the Hawke and Keating governments of the 1980s and 1990s. Those Labor governments restructured the economy at the expense of the working class and slashed the company tax rate more than any other government in Australian historyfrom 49 to 33 percent.
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Ireland Uruguay, Eastern Republic of Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela, Bolivarian Republic of Viet Nam, Socialist Republic of Wallis and Futuna Islands Western Sahara Yemen Zambia, Republic of Zimbabwe
The Hindu, March 28, 2018

by Anuradha Raman and Vikas Pathak

History and mythology both try to explain the past but while history relies on evidence, myths rely on fantasy and must be examined differently, says the scholar

The role of a public intellectual is not easy, especially when it comes to interrogating the government in power and holding it accountable. What is the role of a public intellectual in India today? One of Indias foremost historians and Professor Emerita at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Romila Thapar, answers this question and speaks of the attacks on secularism. She also talks about the attempts to blur the distinction between myth and history, whether by the government which has appointed a committee to prove that Hindu scriptures are not myths, or by citizens who last year protested against the film Padmaavat, claiming that it depicted awronglya their amedieval queena. Only by gathering knowledge can we understand how both history and myth inform historians but in different ways, she says.

Excerpts:

A committee formed by the Ministry of Culture has suggested that efforts should be made to find a correlation between ancient Indian history and epics such as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Do you find this endeavour useful or problematic?

History is generally not written by committees but by individual historians. A committee may be asked to assess what the historian has written. Assigning texts such as the Mahabharata and the Ramayana to particular dates is always complicated and becomes controversial as these kinds of texts, often called epics, are rarely written at a specific date since they tend to be added to at various points in time. This is why the Sanskrit scholar V.S. Sukthankar at the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, who edited the critical edition of the Mahabharata, gave a span of time [of when the epic was written and added to] from 400 BC to 400 AD.

A point you made in response to an essay in The Public Intellectual in India was that aa society like the one we live in needs its public intellectualsa . People who can ask the right questions at the right moments. What did you mean by aa society like the one we live ina ?

I am really referring to approximately the last quarter century in a general way, but more specifically to the last four years. Specifically, the last three or four years, because that is when asking questions has been discouraged.

We are increasingly told what is right and what is wrong, and we are being told this by the government and a range of organisations that claim status and authority and who, when questioned, answer by being violent. So, you have assassinations of people who question their views and you have the lynching of people who are suspected of acting against their diktat.

Some people today who represent the majority are suggesting the need for a debate on secularism, which forms a part of the Preamble of the Constitution. Does it call for a debate?

This is a big question. Secularism is not something external to our lives that we can do away with as and when we choose. It is an attitude towards other people. Normally it is regarded as a good attitude. So, if people are questioning secularism, you have to ask what is wrong with their attitude to other people in questioning something which is essentially a positive feature of interaction? At one level, secularism requires the coexistence of religions. It also requires the equal status of all religions.

And this upsets those whose religion has supposedly superior status or has aspects that have privileges and advantages, like a majority religion. But secularism also goes beyond religions and envisages a society of citizens, all of whom have equal rights. Therefore, it cannot support a Hindu Rashtra where Hindus have a primary and privileged citizenship. Citizenship has to be based on equal rights.

In a secular society, identity changes a from earlier identities of caste, religion and language to an identity as citizens of the nation. This is a major change which has not been discussed sufficiently. It often comes together with nationalism which is not limited to simply shouting slogans but involves a commitment to building a new kind of society where everyone is entitled to a minimum of human rights.

In your book Talking History, you discuss how histories are written. But there are popular myths around modern movements a be it Hindutva or the Dalit movement a that invent and inspire cadres. How would you look at these popular constructions as a historian?

Myths are something we have always believed in. The only difference is that as you acquire more and more knowledge, you begin to differentiate between mythology and knowledge. Mythology is also a form of knowledge in its own way but it is different from the kind of knowledge that we discuss. Myths that have to do with history have to draw some comment from the historian. The historian has to differentiate between the mythologised narrative and a historical narrative. I am not going back to the 19th century and saying that history is a reconstruction of the truth because we do not know what the truth was. The truth exists in the past. So, itas not like science. We canat set up an experiment and prove that it happened or did not happen. So, one says much more with much greater humility now that the historian is not after the truth but is trying to understand and explain what happened in the past. Mythology is also an explanation, but the historianas explanation is totally different from the mythological explanation because it is not based on fantasy and imagination. It is based on what we call reliable evidence. But the interesting thing about mythology is that it does provide you with the assumptions of a society. Therefore, there is a sense in which you get a feeling that maybe it is telling us something about how people imagined what they were and what they wanted to be. You do examine them seriously but you examine them from the point of view of what is in it for the group that is inventing that myth.

What about the myth of Padmavati, as per historians?

It is a mythical ancestor because this entire story of Padmavati was a fictional poem written by an erudite Muslim nobleman who wished to express his artistic feelings by writing this poem. And it was accepted as a very beautiful poem about an imagined person. In a sense it doesnat surprise me because I have worked a great deal on ancient genealogies when families came to power. And very rarely did you have ruling families from the upper echelons of society. They were usually adventurous people who made a bid for power. But when families come to power, they want an ancestry. So, they invite the people who are the keepers of the ancestry. In the early days it was the bards and later on it was the Brahmins. And they invent, they fabricate a genealogy. They invent a little history and as it comes closer to your own time it becomes more and more historical. Why at this point of time is it important to have a particular ancestor? It has to do with current politics and society. Social change is going on in which various groups that had a high position almost automatically donat have that high position now. So, there is a sense of social and political insecurity. So, one tries to rally round as many people by giving them an idiom. And I think this has become an idiom for that kind of rallying ground.

Hindutva had been traditionally labelled as a Brahminical ideology. Would you see the rise of Other Backward Classes leaders such as Narendra Modi and Shivraj Singh Chouhan as the BJPas faces as a sign that Hindutva has considerably deepened its social base?

In the beginning, there was a great deal of influence of what one might call original Hindutva, which was very Brahminical. That was the ideology. Now that they have become a political party a and one with an obvious future a they have to reach out to other people. And one of the easiest ways of reaching out is to go to the suppressed groups and say that we will give you a better life if you join us. And that is exactly what is happening. There is lots of Hinduisation taking place among the Scheduled Castes, as we know from places like Gujarat. It is likely that if they get a larger following among non-Brahmins and non-Hindus, as the Dalits are, they might have to make concessions in their ideology as well. About the OBCs, it is an easier outreach provided you are willing to say that Hindutva included categories of people who may not be actually observing conservative Hinduism. And by the looks of it, they are obviously willing to make that concession.

There is a new discourse around a supposed Lutyensa elite and its alleged machinations. As a public intellectual, how do you see this new trend where expertise is looked down upon as elitism and exclusion?

I faced this myself when I was asked to give a lecture at the Ambedkar University and there was opposition to it from various Dalit groups saying that the Ambedkar lecture should not be given by a non-Dalit. In the same way as we have had this for decades by people who said there are certain places where only Brahmins and upper caste people should be allowed entry and be allowed to be giving talks. So, it cuts both ways. Itas a reflection of the present-day political scene where you have in a sense opened up society at different levels, but you havenat opened it up to say that what matters is expertise and quality. You have opened it up by saying that what matters is your social recognition, which includes caste and religion, and money.

But what worries me most about this attitude, whether it comes from the upper elite or the lower ranks, is the consistent effort that is made by such groups to destroy the content of education. The very backbone of a society is based on education. That is where you not only teach people to function but you teach them values and you teach them what their society is all about. So, your socialisation is taking place through education and your skills are being acquired through education. And finally, your employment comes through education. That is the one area that is being damaged the most by all these attacks saying your ideology is wrong, your caste is wrong, your attitudes are incorrect, and so on.

But there were large classes of people who have been denied quality education. So, maybe this is a backlash.

This is where teaching history comes in. Premodern societies were very elitist. The whole question of countering or questioning the elite, particularly the elite that is concerned with knowledge, is a recent phenomenon. And I think it is a very good thing that this questioning has come in.

But the act of questioning should not become more important than what is being questioned.
Photo credit: Getty

From Esquire

Adnan Syed, whose murder trial was the subject of the 2014 podcast sensation 'Serial,' is getting a new trial. The Maryland Court of Special Appeals upheld the decision of a lower court on Thursday in a 2-1 decision.

The Adnan Syed v. State of Maryland case started in 2000 when Syed was convicted of murdering his high school girlfriend, Hae Min Lee, in Baltimore, Maryland.

In 2016, a lower court decided to vacate Syed's conviction and ruled that he deserted a retrial because his attorney failed to cross-examine a key witness in the case. Prosecutors then appealed that decision to the appellate court, and the original decision was upheld in today's decision. One judge dissented in today's opinion hearing, which means the case can still be escalated up to Maryland's highest court before Syed's new trial.

Photo credit: Serial

The key witness in question is Asia Chapman, the subject of many comments under the ongoing #FreeAdnan campaign. For those who don't remember, Chapman said she saw Syed at the at he library in Woodlawn, Maryland, around the time prosecutors claim Lee was killed, and said that Syed couldn't be guilty.

Currently, Syed is represented by attorney C. Justin Brown-his former attorney was the late Cristina Gutierrez. Brown claims that Gutierrez provided ineffective counsel when she did not pursue an alibi by calling Chapman as a witness and when she did not cross-examine the state's cell tower expert on the accuracy of location data that placed Syed near the victim's body.

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Stacey Dash is withdrawing from a congressional election campaign. (Photo: Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images)

Clueless star turned Fox News commentator Stacey Dash said Friday that, a month after entering the race to represent Californias 44th District in the House of Representatives, shes withdrawing.

I have released this statement on my campaign. Its not an easy one. pic.twitter.com/HvKuUad48F  Stacey Dash (@REALStaceyDash) March 30, 2018

Dash, who was running as a Republican, said she remained committed to improving the lives of people who have been forgotten for decades by the Democratic Party but added that the overall bitterness surrounding our political process, the rigors of campaigning and holding elected office would be detrimental to the health and wellbeing of my family.

At the same time, someone identified as being close to the campaign confirmed to the Hollywood Reporter that Dash was concerned about the personal safety of her loved ones.

There were too many threats against her and her family, the insider said. It was overwhelming.

Dash, a Trump supporter, is known for taking polarizing stances, something she addressed in her statement, saying the real controversy is how government corruption and political disempowerment have been accepted, leading to skyrocketing home prices, dirty needles in the streets, and other problems.

In January 2016, Dash called for an end of Black History Month and other entities and events, such as the BET Awards, that focus on a single race.

Either we want to have segregation or integration, Dash said during an appearance on Fox & Friends. And if we dont want segregation, then we need to get rid of channels like BET and the BET Awards and the Image Awards, where youre only awarded if youre black. If it were the other way around, we would be up in arms. Its a double standard.

Shes also suggested that trans people go to the bathroom in the bushes, rather than in public restrooms. Her take on feminism is that its emasculating for men.

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Dashs latest acting role was in an upcoming thriller called The Dawn.

Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:
By J'na Jefferson

Howard Universitys current president Wayne A.I. Frederick confirmed Wednesday that members of the university abused the students financial aid funding for their own personal needs, and were removed from their positions.

Hearing about the mishandling of funds at the University can be difficult to process, wrote President Frederick in a statement on the schools website. I can also understand how upsetting it is to feel that the University has not communicated with you regarding this incident. The goal established at the onset of this investigation was to conduct it in a confidential manner that ensured a thorough examination of the issues without jeopardizing the integrity of the findings. However, that does not mitigate the sense of mistrust that many students and members of our community feel right now. We understand that and we hear you.

An internal investigation into a now-deleted Medium post discovered that six employees attending classes at the historically-black educational institution received tuition benefits as well as university grants, resulting in receiving more money than the cost of tuition at the school.

President Frederick noted that he is working with outside experts to assist in exploring all options to recoup the funds.

Social media caught wind of senior Tyrone Hankerson, a student employee who is at the center of the controversy. It is reported that he scammed nearly half-a-million dollars from the university. President Frederick appears to address Hankerson in his address.

Further, I want to make clear that students who also work at the University do so under the supervision of University employees, who are ultimately responsible for their activities, he continued. Most Howard employees are responsible citizens and serve the University well, so I want to also acknowledge their efforts. Any exceptions to this rule, however, will continue to be aggressively addressed.

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Please review the following statement from President Frederick regarding University Grants https://t.co/o6dkT1r1VZ pic.twitter.com/hftlxLsWMk  Howard University (@HowardU) March 28, 2018

Please refer to the latest statement from President Frederick to students. Please know that we take malfeasance, fraud, and other forms of unethical behavior on campus seriously and address them swiftly.https://t.co/yUzAfYnWyq pic.twitter.com/GLXAJJ8Ifh  Howard University (@HowardU) March 29, 2018

This post Howard University President Confirms Financial Aid Scandal In Address To School first appeared on Vibe.
The bodies of two Utah teenagers missing since December have possibly been found in an abandoned mine outside the town where they were living, PEOPLE confirms.

Foul play is suspected but a cause of death remains unclear pending further investigation.

Officials with the Utah County Sheriffs Office, Juab County Sheriffs Office and Unified Fire Authority made the discovery on Wednesday afternoon in the abandoned Tintic Standard Mine near Eureka, about 75 miles south of Salt Lake City.

Riley Powell, 18, and 17-year-old Brelynne Breezy Otteson were reported missing on Jan. 2 after they didnt return to the Eureka home they lived in. They were dating, according to the Gephardt Daily.

It appears, preliminarily, that [the bodies] may be Riley Powell and Breezy Otteson, Utah County Sheriff Office Undersheriff Darin Durfey told reporters on Wednesday, according to local news station KUTV. However, positive identification needs to be made by the medical examiners office before we can confirm that.

For us, were bringing the kids home, said Ottesons aunt, Amanda Hunt, the Deseret News reports. Thats where were at right now. Were finally getting that closure.

Its gone from searching for Breezy and Riley to justice for Breezy and Riley, Hunt siad. If this is them, thats where were at.

The sheriffs office says that there is a person of interest in the case but have declined to name them.

 Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter.

From left: Riley Powell and Brelynne Breezy Otteson

A coroner will conduct autopsies on the remains to try to determine a cause and manner of death. Police believe that the case will be classified as a homicide.

Obviously at this point, it appears foul play is involved, Durfey said at the news conference.

Juab County Sheriff Douglas Anderson said that details in the investigation had led them to the mineshaft where the remains were found. He declined to specify what type of information had led them to the mine, however, and authorities did not take questions.

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Powells mother and his mothers boyfriend had previously been identified in court documents in connection with the investigation but were not mentioned on Wednesday.

PEOPLEs efforts to reach them for comment were unsuccessful.

The Case So Far

The dark blue 1999 Jeep Cherokee Powell and Otteson had been driving was found hidden and obscured by trees on Jan. 11, near Cherry Creek Reservoir, about 14 miles southwest of Eureka, according to authorities.

Investigators discovered that two of the Jeeps tires on the passenger side had been punctured. Police also found a camouflage tie-down strap stuck in the drivers side of the vehicle, according to a search warrant affidavit previously obtained by PEOPLE.

Around the time of of the teens disappearance, investigators say a witness saw a Chevy pickup truck used by the boyfriend of Powells mother pulling a Jeep described as the one Riley is always driving.

It is suspected that the blue Chevy truck, the affidavit states, was used to transport, conceal, hide, and plant the victims vehicle in Cherry Creek at the location it was discovered, to give the illusion that the victims were indeed stranded.

On Jan. 16, police searched the home Powells mother shared with her boyfriend. There, investigators found a tie-down strap that was identical in camouflage pattern to the one stuck in the jeep leaf spring in the bed of the truck matching the description of the truck that was described by the witness as pulling Rileys Jeep, the affidavit states.

According to the search warrant, Powells mother was among those interviewed about the case. However, her boyfriend refused to cooperate.

The affidavit also states that three people who were interviewed gave differing stories about where Powells mother and her boyfriend were on New Years Eve.

Powells mother told investigators she was at home but two others said she was not, according to the affidavit.

 With CHRISTINE PELISEK
Arie Luyendyk Jr. and Lauren Burnham have hit the road.

After packing up Burnhams belongings from her place in Virginia Beach, Virginia, the former Bachelor and his fiancee are currently driving across the country, headed to Scottsdale, Arizona  where shell officially move in with him.

The reality stars have been documenting their trip on social media, including photos and videos of the two goofing around in the car.

Want to keep up on the latest from PEOPLE? Sign up for our daily newsletter to get our best stories of the day delivered straight to your inbox.

On Friday, Luyendyk Jr. shared a selfie of the couple  and Burnhams dog!  driving through Jackson, Tennessee.

Gezellig, he captioned the shot, which means cozy in Dutch, his native language.

Gezellig ???? A post shared by Arie Luyendyk ???? (@ariejr) on Mar 29, 2018 at 5:19pm PDT

The road trip comes just a few days after the couple returned stateside after a romantic Eurotrip exploring Barcelona and Iceland.

The two had previously joked about fleeing the country following the controversial conclusion to his season of The Bachelor: Less than two months after proposing to finalist Becca Kufrin, Luyendyk Jr. realized he was still in love with his runner-up, Burnham. He ultimately decided to break things off with Kufrin, 27, to pursue a relationship with Burnham, 25  and proposed to her on live television during the two-hour After the Final Rose special on March 6.

Burnham recently told PEOPLE the couple had an amazing time abroad.

Although we traveled all around the world on the show, we didnt really get the experience of traveling together as a couple, she said. Its been fun trying to navigate these places and weve made a lot of new memories along the way!

RELATED VIDEO: All About the Bold 3.5-Carat Engagement Ring Arie Luyendyk Jr. Gave Lauren Burnham

And while the trip was incredible, both are looking forward to settling down in Scottsdale.

Were both very excited about marriage and starting a family, Burnham previously told PEOPLE during the couples exclusive PEOPLE cover interview.

In fact, Luyendyk Jr. says he wants two to four kids.

If we get lucky, maybe wed have twins! he added.
Photo credit: Getty

From Esquire

(Permanent Musical Accompaniment To This Post)

Being our semi-regular weekly survey of whats goin down in the several states where, as we know, the real work of governmentin gets done, and where the shepherd is asleep and the willows weep.

Because we are on our way to San Antone-mandatory nod to Bob Wills-we are making only two stops on our tour this week, but both of them are cherce. We begin in Wisconsin, where the desperate attempts of Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to manage that particular midwest subsidiary, and his pet legislature to subvert both democracy and the duties of Walkers office have reached the level of what my sainted mother used to call high-sterics.

For the benefit of customers who may have come to tinhorn politicians late, the Republican majorities in the Wisconsin legislature gerrymandered the state so badly that even this Supreme Court gagged on the result. In addition, two seats in the state legislature came open and Walker was required by law to call special elections to fill them. Given the pasting Republicans have taken in similar elections around the country, this did not fill Walker and his pet legislature with either optimism or glee. So, he simply refused to call the elections.

Photo credit: Getty

Last week, however, a judge that Walker appointed told him to get the Koch Brothers mitts off his puppet strings and call the elections. This occasioned a week of huffing and blowing all throughout the capitol in Madison. The legislature has before it a bill that would eliminate the special elections on the grounds that the Republicans might lose them. (Im paraphrasing here.) Meanwhile, Walker appealed the previous courts decision and, on Wednesday, another court in Dane County slapped him down. From The Wisconsin State Journal:

Walker hasnt argued that he cant order the elections or that Reynolds was wrong in requiring him to do so, Niess said. Rather, he said, the governor wants to be allowed to delay carrying out his mandatory, compulsory duty because there are now other reasons that he has brought to the courts attention. But these other reasons dont change the fact that his duty under the law remains the same, Niess said. No court that Im aware of is at liberty to ignore the law in order to facilitate the Legislatures consideration of bills that might become law. When and if a legislative bill becomes law it can be brought to the court, and at that time the arguments can be made as to what the effect of that law is on an already pending (order).

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In other words, Walker argued that his pet legislature will pass his blatant power-grab and so the judge should stay the elections until he and the legislature get their chance to destroy them entirely. This argument, while quaint, did not impress the judge.

Walker then threatened to bring the whole matter before the state supreme court, but he chickened out almost instantaneously, largely because an appellate court judge did everything but knock him silly with the gavel. From the State Journal:

Earlier Wednesday, 2nd District Appellate Court Judge Paul F. Reilly dismissed Walkers argument that the court should allow time for the Legislature to rewrite state law that would effectively block the special elections. Reilly issued the one-page ruling hours after DOJ appealed two Dane County judges decisions ordering Walker to call the special elections. Representative government and the election of our representatives are never unnecessary, never a waste of taxpayer resources, and the calling of the special elections are as the Governor acknowledges his obligation to follow, Reilly wrote.

Walker had been thumping his tubs for weeks about how outside forces were making the good people of Wisconsin pay for special elections that Walker was obligated by law to call. (This is not dissimilar to the argument he made successfully against the campaign to recall him.) Judge Reilly had quite enough of that. Walker finally hollered uncle and scheduled the special elections for June 5. (The bill to do away with them appears to be dead as well.) There was no accounting for all the money the good taxpayers of Wisconsin had to kick into Walkers attempts to find a legal way not to do his job. They really would rather some people not get to vote. Jesus, these people.

And we conclude, as is our wont, in the great state of Oklahoma, where Blog Official Derelict Gas Station Inspector Friedman of the Plains brings us an illuminating moment from a debate in that states legislature regarding education policy. From KFOR-4, Oklahomas News:

On Monday, members of the Oklahoma House of Representatives debated a bill that would fund a teacher pay raise through several revenue-raising measures.Money is not the number one issue, said Rep. John Bennett. Maybe if we spanked our kids at home a little better with a paddle, made them mind and be good kids, the teachers wouldnt have it so hard in the classroom. On Tuesday, Bennett stood by his words. "Ive told all my kids' teacher that, If they get out of line, use a paddle on them,' Bennett said. If they get out of line after that, call me and Ill come up and paddle them in front of the whole class because they will not disrespect their elders or teachers in school. Bennett said bad behavior in schools is costing the state money. Oh, absolutely, Bennett said. It wastes the teachers' time, and money and effort because teachers arent supposed to be parents. Theyre a role model but not a parent. The parents need to do what theyre supposed to do as parents, put them on the learning foundation and then send them to school. And, then our teachers can do their job, which they do so well, and teach their kids.

I think Representative Bennett should be at the top of the list of any PTA that classifies its students as enemy combatants.

This is your democracy, America. Cherish it.

Respond to this post on the Esquire Politics Facebook page.

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At least 68 people have died after a massive fire engulfed the overcrowded holding cells inside a police station in northern Venezuela on Wednesday, officials said.

The country's chief prosecutor, attorney general Tarek William Saab, said on his official Twitter account that almost all the victims were male detainees. Two women who were visiting overnight were also killed, he said.

Four prosecutors have been designated to investigate the inferno at the Carabobo state police headquarters in Valencia, according to Saab. The cause remains unknown.

PHOTO: Police guard police headquarters after a fire engulfed holding cells in Valencia, Venezuela, March 29, 2018. (Juan Barreto/AFP/Getty Images)

PHOTO: Maria Martinez, left, mother of Jose Rafman and his wife Juanita Bracho, cry after learning he died in a fire a day prior that swept through a police station where he was being detained, in Valencia, Venezuela, March 29, 2018. (Ariana Cubillos/AP)

Relatives of detainees were seen gathering outside the station, anxiously waiting to hear the fate of their loved ones.

Carabobo state secretary-general Jesus Santander said in a press conference Wednesday that authorities were still working to ascertain the exact number of deaths. The interior ministry, as well as other agencies, will determine the cause of the deadly blaze, he said.

Santander promised that the local government will provide "comprehensive social assistance" to victim's families, including support for funeral services and psychological care.

"We extend our solidarity to the families of the victims, as well as the families of the detainees who are injured and those who are presently out of risk. The government of Rafael Lacava has instructed its team to tend to the families of all victims," Santander said in the press conference.

The United Nations Human Rights Office said it was "appalled at the horrific deaths," adding that it's "concerned at reports that security forces used tear gas to disperse relatives who had gathered in front of the police station in Valencia, Carabobo State, to demand information about their loved ones."

"There is widespread overcrowding and dire conditions in Venezuelas prisons and also in police jails, which are often used as permanent detention centres. These conditions, which often give rise to violence and riots, are exacerbated by judicial delays and the excessive use of pre-trial detention," the statement continued. "... To this end, we urge the authorities to ratify the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture, so as to enable independent prison monitoring by an international body."

Story continues

PHOTO: Relatives cry after learning their loved ones died in a fire that swept through a police station, in Valencia, Venezuela, March 29, 2018. (Ariana Cubillos/AP)

PHOTO: Prisoners's relatives ask for information from police at a police station after a fire in Valencia, Venezuela, March 29, 2018. (Juan Barreto/AFP/Getty Images)

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The devastating fire is emblematic of a larger issue facing Venezuela in recent years. As Venezuela's economy teeters toward collapse, many prisoners are starving and being kept in congested cells, according to the Venezuelan Prisons Observatory. Many prisoners are also being detained at police stations for much longer than the typical holding period of a couple days due to overcrowding at larger jails, according to Caracas-based watchdog group.

The International Monetary Fund projects the Venezuelan economy to decline another 15 percent this year, following a downward trend in the South American nation's oil exports due to its plummeting oil production. If the forecasts are accurate, then half of Venezuela's oil-dependent economy will have disappeared since 2014.
Two pilots on different aircraft reported having close encounters with a mysterious object flying high above Arizona last month, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

The sightings occurred within minutes of each other on the afternoon of Feb. 24, some 40,000 feet above southern Arizona near the New Mexico border. ABC News obtained the audio recording of the conversation between the pilots and the Albuquerque Air Route Traffic Control Center, released by the FAA. The audio recording was first reported by The War Zone, part of Time Inc.'s The Drive.

The news comes amid a series of reports of military pilots coming into contact with what they believed to be UFOs and the disclosure of a secret, but now-defunct Pentagon program to track such incidents.

The pilot of a Learjet 36 belonging to Phoenix Air, with the tail number N71PG, reported the initial sighting. He asks the controller: "Was anybody above us that passed us like 30 seconds ago?

"Negative," the controller responds.

"OK. Something did," the Learjet pilot says.

"It's a UFO," another pilot chimes in.

"Yeah," the Learjet pilot laughs.

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PHOTO: Albuquerque Air Route Traffic Control Center in Albuquerque, N.M. (Google)

A few minutes later, the controller radios to American Airlines Flight 1095, an Airbus A321. He asks the pilot, "Let me know if you see anything pass over you here in the next 15 miles."

The pilot seems puzzled and responds, "If anything passes over us?"

"Affirmative. We had an aircraft in front of you at 37 [thousand feet] that reported something pass over him and we didn't have any [radar] targets, so just let me know if you see anything pass over you," the controller says.

"All right," the pilot says.

The Learjet pilot joins the conversation, saying, "I don't know what it was, it wasn't an airplane but it was -- the path was going in the opposite direction."

Story continues

PHOTO: An American Airlines plane takes off from the Miami International Airport, Nov. 12, 2013 in Miami. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

About a minute later, the American Airlines Flight 1095 pilot radios back to the controller to report a bizarre sighting in Arizona's airspace.

"Yeah, something just passed over us, like a -- I don't know what it was. But it was at least two, three thousand feet above us. Yeah, it passed right over the top of us," the pilot says.

"OK, American 1095, thank you," the controller responds.

The controller later asks, "American 1095, can you tell if it was in motion or just hovering?"

"Couldn't make it out whether it was a balloon or whatnot. But it was just really beaming light or could have had a big reflection and was several thousand feet above us going opposite direction," the pilot says.

"Roger," the controller responds.

The American Airlines pilot later radios to the controller again, asking if the unidentified object was a "Google balloon."

"Doubtful," another pilot chimes in.

The voice of another pilot adds, "UFO."

PHOTO: An undated stock photo of an airplane. (STOCK/Getty Images)

The controller was unable to verify that any other aircraft was in the area at the time of the reported sightings, according to a spokesperson for the FAA.

"We have a close working relationship with a number of other agencies and safely handle military aircraft and civilian aircraft of all types in that area every day, including high-altitude weather balloons," the spokesperson told ABC News in an email Wednesday.

Royal Canadian Navy Lt. Marco Chouinard, a spokesman for the North American Aerospace Defense Command, told ABC News in an email Wednesday that NORAD assets were not involved in the Feb. 24 incident.

Phoenix Air Group vice president Bob Tracey told ABC News he recently spoke with the captain of the Learjet after reading about the Feb. 24 sightings in a local newspaper. The captain said he was flying at about 37,000 feet when the unidentified object flew several thousand feet over his aircraft at a speed that appeared similar to what a commercial airline would travel. The captain said he often sees balloons or airships at these flight levels, but a beam of light shining off the object was so bright that he couldn't decipher whether that's what it was, according to Tracey.

"He said the only thing that was different about this was that it was just so bright," Tracey said in a phone interview Wednesday. "The glare was so intense, they couldn't make it out."

Tracey said the captain described the sighting as "rather uneventful," but he notified air traffic control because he was concerned the object could hit other aircraft.

"He said when he landed, he didn't give it much thought," Tracey added.

A spokesperson for X, the innovation lab of Google parent company Alphabet, confirmed to ABC News in an email Thursday that the object seen in Arizona's airspace on Feb. 24 was not one of its "Project Loon" balloons.

American Airlines referred ABC News request for comment to the FAA.

ABC News' Anthony McMahon, Rex Sakamoto and Daniel Steinberger contributed to this report.
Two months ago, 92-year-old Jean Roper of Trussville, Alabama, was dying of kidney failure and doctors told her children and grandchildren that it was time for them to say their goodbyes.

They said she had only two or three weeks to live, recalls Jeans great-granddaughter, Kayla Tracy, 24, and it was very hard for all of us to think that we were going to lose her. Shes always been the heart of our family.

Then something remarkable happened.

Kaylas 21-year-old sister, Amber Harris, was about to give birth to her first child and told Jean that the baby girl  Jeans first great-great-grandaughter  would be named after her. Practically overnight, Jeans condition began to improve.

She was over the moon with excitement, Kayla tells PEOPLE, and she kept telling everyone, I just want to live long enough to see that baby girl. 

Although Jean and her husband, Edward, 94, already have three children, seven grandchildren, 11 great-grandchildren and 11 great-great grandchildren, almost all of them are boys.

Jean with great-great-granddaughter, Magnolia Jean

To know that she was going to soon have a great-great granddaughter was like medicine for her, says Kayla. It was so amazing to watch her transformation that I knew I had to document it.

A photographer with her own business, Kayla Tracy Photography, the married mom of two began spending more time at her great-great-grandmothers house, less than two miles from her own, and captured Jeans elation and new outlook on life.

Shed been battling depression since losing her oldest son four years ago to the same thing she had  kidney failure, Kayla tells PEOPLE, but her whole attitude changed when she learned about that grandbaby. And once she was born, wow. It was an emotional time for everyone to witness her holding that new baby girl in her arms.

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Jean with great-great-granddaughter, Magnolia Jean

Born on January 31, weighing 5 pounds and 2 ounces, Magnolia Jean absolutely helped me to survive and pull through my diagnosis, Jean, who used to run a beauty parlor in Trussville, tells PEOPLE.

She helped keep my mind off how weak and terrible I felt, she says, and I thought she was the most beautiful baby girl Id ever seen. She was so tiny and every part of her was just perfect.

And earlier this, says Jean, there was even more to celebrate.

On March 5, she and Edward marked their 75th wedding anniversary at a Cracker Barrel luncheon with their family, then returned to their 85-acre farm to pose for pictures snapped by Kayla.

Edward and Jean

When she met Edward on a blind date in 1941, I thought he was mighty handsome, as well as kind and gentle, Jean tells PEOPLE.

Edward and Jean a few days after their 1941 wedding

And I thought enough of her to ask her on a second date, adds Edward. I mean, she was such a doll.

Now that Jean is in good health with no signs of the kidney trouble that nearly ended her life a few short months ago, Kayla is hoping to soon take her great-grandmother fishing at the pond on her property and document the fun.

People tell me that my great-grandparents story has touched their lives and made them realize whats important in life, she says. To me, theres really no greater compliment.
Over the last few years, we've heard many experts debate the coffee-cancer correlationcoffee beans have been shown to produce a potentially harmful chemical called acrylamide during the roasting processand while many researchers say there is no solid scientific evidence to back up the association, a California judge says otherwise.

This week, after an ongoing lawsuit in which the Council for Education and Research on Toxics sued Starbucks and 90 other companies for not abiding the state law regarding warnings on carcinogens, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Elihu Berle made his proposed ruling. As reported on by USA Today, Berle wrote: Defendants failed to satisfy their burden of provingthat consumption of coffee confers a benefit to human health. Therefore, he has determined these companies must include a cancer warning label on their covetable cups of joe.

You May Also Like: If You're Not Drinking Your Coffee Like This, You Should Start



Many experts agree with the coffee industry that the chemical is present, but only at minuscule amounts that are harmless to humans, and therefore it should be exempt from the law. There's also the argument that the benefits of coffee outweigh the risks, but Judge Berle said the companies in the lawsuit have failed to prove that.

An article posted by the American Cancer Society says the following about the purported link between coffee and cancer: "Coffee is brewed from beans that contain antioxidants, which are thought to have a protective effect against cancer. Researchers have conducted more than 1,000 studies looking at this question, with mixed results. Some early studies seemed to show that coffee might increase risk of some cancer types. Since then, however, larger and better designed studies have weakened those conclusions. And many of the newer studies link coffee drinking to a lowered risk of some types of cancer, including prostate cancer, liver cancer, endometrial cancer, and some cancers of the mouth and throat."

It's tough to believe any hardcore coffee drinker is going to give up their precious java after hearing this verdict, especially with the abundance of research that minimizes the threat and highlights health benefits, such as improved memory and weight loss (not to mention the much-needed energy boost). So, will this have any impact on the industry as a whole? I would say no based on my own personal experienceseven my husband's favorite mug says "No Talkie Before Coffee"but of course only time will tell.
At least 15 advertisers say they are pulling their ads from Laura Ingrahams primetime show on Fox News after the host mocked the Parkland, Fla., teen shooting survivor and activist David Hogg for receiving rejection letters from multiple colleges.

The latest companies to pull their ads from the show are Office Depot, the Atlantis, Paradise Island resort in the Bahamas, Progressive insurance, Liberty Mutual and the global investment group Principal.

In a statement to the Hill, the Atlantis said it does not support or agree with the recent comments made by Ingraham, the conservative firebrand.

Although we are an organization that believes in freedom of expression, we do not condone discrimination, bullying, mockery or harmful behavior of any kind, an Atlantis spokesperson added. As a result of these events, we have decided to remove all brand advertising tied to the program.

The Daily Beast reported Office Depots withdrawal on Friday afternoon.

On Wednesday, Ingraham tweeted a link to a story describing how the 17-year-old had been rejected by four University of California campuses, UC Los Angeles, UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara and UC Irvine, despite having 4.2 grade point average and an SAT score of 1270.

David Hogg Rejected By Four Colleges To Which He Applied and whines about it, Ingraham wrote.

The tweet drew a swift backlash, with many criticizing Ingraham for attacking the senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School over a personal academic setback less than two months after the massacre at the school.

Hogg, in turn, tweeted a list of 12 of Ingrahams top advertisers, and some of the teens 600,000-plus followers responded by contacting the companies and urging that they pull their ads from The Ingraham Angle.

Several companies on Hoggs list  including Nestle, Hulu, Wayfair, Nutrish, Johnson & Johnson, Expedia, Jenny Craig and TripAdvisor  have done just that.

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Ingraham issued an apology on Thursday, saying that on reflection, in the spirit of Holy Week, I apologize for any upset or hurt my tweet caused him or any of the brave victims of Parkland.

But that wasnt sufficient for Hogg.

An apology in an effort just to save your advertisers is not enough, he tweeted. I will only accept your apology only if you denounce the way your network has treated my friends and I in this fight. Its time to love thy neighbor, not mudsling at children.

Related: How an ill-advised tweet became a nightmare for a Fox News show

Hogg and many of his fellow Parkland students have become the leaders of the latest effort to reform U.S. gun laws, organizing this months massive March for Our Lives rally. They have also become the targets of the National Rifle Association as well as conservative provocateurs like Ingraham, and far-right conspiracy theorists. Hogg and fellow senior Emma Gonzalez, in particular, have drawn most of the attacks.

Earlier this month, Leslie Gibson, a Republican candidate for Maines House of Representatives, called Gonzalez a skinhead lesbian and Hogg a bald-face [sic] liar. Gibson later apologized.

On Sunday, a message posted on Iowa GOP Rep. Steve Kings Facebook page suggested that Gonzalez is a communist because she was wearing a patch of the flag of Cuba on her jacket. Gonzalez is Cuban-American.

On Friday, the Washington Times published an op-ed by Cheryl Chumley who said Hogg wouldve made a pretty decent brownshirt  a reference to uniforms worn by members of the Nazi militia under Adolph Hitler before World War II.

Hogg, for his part, is apparently unfazed.

When you come against any one of us, whether it be me or anybody else, youre coming against all of us, he said on CNNs New Day on Friday. They cannot push us around, especially when all were trying to do here is save lives.

Read more from Yahoo News:

Cover photo credit: Yahoo News photo Illustration; photos: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg via Getty Images  Kevin Mazur/Getty Images
Beirut (AFP) - Two members of the US-led anti-jihadist coalition -- an American and a Briton -- were killed by an improvised explosive device in the northern Syrian city of Manbij, US and British officials said Friday.

Five other coalition service personnel were wounded, the Pentagon said.

The attack in Manbij happened late Thursday -- the day US President Donald Trump said he would pull forces out of Syria "very soon."

"Two coalition personnel were killed and five were wounded by an improvised explosive device in Syria" at around midnight (2100 GMT), the coalition said in a statement which gave no further details about the victims.

A Pentagon official, speaking later on condition of anonymity, identified one of them as being American.

Britain's defence ministry confirmed the second fatality came from within its ranks.

"The individual was embedded with US forces on a counter-Daesh operation when the incident occurred," the ministry said, using an Arabic acronym to refer to the Islamic State (IS) group.

Since 2014, the coalition has provided weapons, training and other support to forces fighting IS jihadists in Syria and Iraq.

This latest incident brings the number of US personnel killed in action during the operation to 14.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.

The US-led coalition said it was withholding details on the circumstances of the attack pending further investigation.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor, said the attack hit a convoy in the heart of Manbij, also wounding four members of the local council.

Manbij used to be a hub for the jihadists when their self-styled "caliphate" was at its peak. It was retaken by Kurdish-led forces backed by the coalition.

- More than 2,000 US personnel -

Located between the northern city of Aleppo and the western bank of the Euphrates, less than 30 kilometres (18 miles) south of the Turkish border, Manbij lies where several international influence zones meet and risks becoming a new flashpoint.

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"We'll be coming out of Syria, like, very soon. Let the other people take care of it now," Trump told industrial workers in Ohio on Thursday.

The United States has more than 2,000 military personnel in eastern Syria, working with local militia groups to defeat IS while trying to keep out of Syria's broader civil war.

Trump's eagerness to quit the conflict contrasts with a new US Syria strategy announced in January by then secretary of state Rex Tillerson -- who has since been sacked.

Also on Thursday, French President Emmanuel Macron met a delegation from the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), and Kurdish official Asya Abdullah said afterwards that France was planning to send "new French troops to Manbij."

The presidency did not explicitly deny the reinforcements, but stressed it was not planning any military operation in Syria outside the US-led coalition.

Turkey and its Syrian proxies launched a major offensive against the SDF in northern Syria in January that has already resulted in the capture of the Kurdish-majority region of Afrin.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to expand the operation to other areas where Kurdish forces are present, including the city of Manbij.
Valencia (Venezuela) (AFP) - Authorities in Venezuela faced an onslaught of national and international outrage Thursday over a blaze in a police station's jail in which 68 people died, in one of the worst disasters to hit the country's desperately overcrowded detention facilities.

The blaze engulfed cells in the police headquarters on Wednesday in Valencia, Venezuela's third-biggest city, located in northern Carabobo state near the capital Caracas.

Attorney General Tarek William Saab, who gave the death toll amid mayhem early Thursday at the police building, said the fire was the likely cause of the deaths. He said it looked to have been started deliberately by the detainees.

Anguished relatives of those being kept there had tried to storm the station on Wednesday, during which an officer was hurt by a stone. Police responded with tear gas to disperse them.

On Thursday, the crowd was calmer but no less anxious.

"I can't get past to see if he's dead of not," wailed Maria, an elderly woman whose son was being held in the station.

Nearby, a female police officer read off a list of survivors.

"They gave me the body of my nephew yesterday, and I've been here since 6:00 am waiting for his ID card," so he can be buried, another relative, Carmen Varela, told AFP.

"He wasn't burned. He had a gunshot to his head. To me, it looks like it was a slaughter," she said, visibly angry.

- Attempted jailbreak -

"I want to see my brother," said one woman who gave her first name as Yelitza.

The police, she said, "were the ones who caused this -- it was a massacre."

The UN's human rights office in Switzerland said in a statement it was "appalled at the horrific deaths" at the station, and called for authorities to fully investigate.

Although the Valencia station's cells were designed to hold arrested suspects for up to 48 hours, many of those being kept in them were thought to be convicted prisoners unable to be accommodated in the country's overflowing penitentiaries.

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An inmates' rights association called Una Ventana a la Libertad (A Window on Freedom) said the fire was started by detainees attempting a jailbreak.

"The detainees tried to grab two police officers. When that didn't work, they started a riot and decided to set fire to mattresses, thinking that the doors would then have to be opened. (But) the bars didn't open," the group's director, Carlos Nieto, told AFP.

Fire crews had to smash a hole in the wall so survivors could get out, he said, adding that around 200 people were being held inside at the time.

- Dire conditions -

Some prisoners "burned to death and others were asphyxiated," Nieto said.

Photos taken by Nieto's group showed the body of a man with burns and firefighters trying to put out flames.

Venezuela's prisons suffer from dire overcrowding and a shortage of basic supplies, struggling under the deepening economic crisis that is gripping the once-wealthy oil-producing country.

Nieto's association estimates that the temporary detention cells in Venezuela's police stations are at five times their capacity.

"All the police stations in Venezuela are facing similar or worse conditions of overcrowding, lack of food and disease," he said.

The association said 65 people died last year in the holding cells due to violence, malnutrition or tuberculosis.

Twenty-one detainees escaped Thursday from a police station in the northern city of Maracay, authorities said. One was recaptured hours later.

The escapees, who were being held at the police station awaiting hearings, fled with three guns and a motorcycle belonging to the precinct, its chief Donan Conde told local radio.

Two weeks ago, 58 detainees escaped holding cells on Margarita Island, a favored tourist spot, after punching a hole in their facility's wall. They were all quickly recaptured.

In August 2017, a riot left 37 dead and 14 wounded in police cells in the southern state of Amazonas, while an April 2017 clash between rival gangs left 12 dead and 11 injured in the Puente Ayala prison in the eastern city of Barcelona.

A month before that, the remains of 14 people were found in a mass grave in the General Penitentiary of Venezuela, in San Juan de Los Morros in the country's center.
The militarys role in the royal wedding was announced in March. More than 250 members of the armed forces will have ceremonial duties during Prince Harry and bride-to-be Meghan Markles May 19 nuptials.

Regiments and units that hold a special relationship with Prince Harry will provide ceremonial support at the wedding and during the carriage procession at the request of Kensington Palace, according to the Ministry of Defence.

Prince Harry served in the Army for a decade and did two tours in Afghanistan rising to the rank of Captain; he also is Commodore-in-Chief, Small Ships and Diving with the Royal Navy, Captain General Royal Marines, and Honorary Air Commandant of RAF Honington.

Members of the Household Cavalry will form a staircase party at St Georges Chapel, Windsor Castle as part of the wedding, read a release from the Ministry of Defence. The State Trumpeters and a Captains Escort from the Household Cavalry will also provide ceremonial support.

The 3 Regiment Army Air Corps and the Royal Gurkha Rifles, with whom Prince Harry served in Afghanistan, will be two of the regiments lining the streets in the precinct of Windsor Castle. In addition, there will be members of the Royal Navy Small Ships and Diving, Windsor Castle Guard from 1st Battalion Irish Guards, Royal Marines, and the RAF Honington.

The Band of the Irish Guards will be providing musical support in the streets around Windsor Castle.

Prince Harry and actress and philanthropist Meghan Markle are expected to break tradition in several ways at their wedding, but like his brother Prince William, Duke of Cambridge the military will have a special role.

Read more about the role of the Armed Forces at Prince Harry and Ms. Meghan Markle's wedding: https://t.co/JMwhnxr8qo  Kensington Palace (@KensingtonRoyal) March 28, 2018
Curt Mills

Security, Americas

People watch a TV broadcasting a news report on a meeting between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing, in Seoul, South Korea, March 28, 2018. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji

Is this a good deal for Washington?

'Good Deal': South Korea, America Mend Trade Ties as Kim Jong Un Visits China

As the world turned its attention to the mysterious green train arriving in Beijing, later confirmed to be carrying North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, the White House on Tuesday night announced a new trade regime with Pyongyangs neighbor to the south.

As tensions heat up with China, Russia, Iran and the North Koreas, the Trump administration, the most outwardly protectionist team at 1600 Pennsylvania in decades, repeatedly emphasized their view of South Korean trade as a national-security issue.

Washington and Seoul have reached an agreement in principle, a senior administration official said Tuesday night, That will significantly strengthen both the economic and the national-security relationship between the United States and South Korea. This is a good deal for both countries.

The senior official later became more pointed: This agreement is visionary and innovative and it underscores a pattern of failure by previous administrations to negotiate fair and reciprocal trade deals that benefit both countries.

South Korea-U.S. free trade relations were originally proposed under George W. Bush and then inked under Barack Obama late last decade. President Trump has been deeply critical of both administrationsespecially and consistently on the issue of trade.

The effort at a revamp was spearheaded by the U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and his South Korean counterpart, Trade Minister Kim Hyun-chong, the White House said.

This is the first successful negotiation of a trade agreement in history, the administration emphasized. And its another step in the White Houses firmly hawkish tact on trade in the early months of 2018. In February, Peter Navarro, director of the national trade council, and his ally, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, won a power struggle against National Economic Council Chair Gary Cohn, and White House Staff Secretary Rob Porter. Neither Cohn nor Porter work in the administration any longer (although Porters exodus was far more compelled by revelations of violence against his ex-wives).

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Tuesday night, the White House made it sound like the South Korean renegotiation was merely an opening salvo: more to come. While this agreement is small in size, relative to the horrible effects of NAFTA and Chinas entry into the WTO, the senior administration official said, it does rectify KORUS, which is one of the worst deals the U.S. ever entered into.

Hes killing it, a former senior administration official told me Wednesday morning, remarking on Navarros continued rise and consolidation of power in the White House.

In principle, this new agreement is a coup for American automakers. At the tip of the spear is the American auto and auto parts industry, the senior official explained. Probably 80 percent of our trade deficit in goods to Korea is auto and auto parts.

Additionally negotiated, or in the process of being finalized, is a currency agreement, dealing with currency practices, another senior official explained. The U.S. Department of Treasury is, as we speak, leading discussions on currency [with the South Koreans]... And between them, an agreement is being finalized on robust provisions that will . . . prohibit competitive devaluation of currency.

Steel and aluminum play prominently, as they have in all of the Trump administrations trade imperatives this year. As you all know, the president took action on steel and aluminum to protect national security, the senior official emphasized.

Korea, of course, was subject to these tariffs, and sought an exemption. But no agreement was reached on aluminum. Theyre just going to be subject to the tariff, the senior official said. On steel, the official noted that Korea will be subject to a hard quota that will be a product-specific quota equivalent to 70 percent of the average annual export volume for these steel products.

This is a huge win for the American people, the administration emphasized.

Kim In Beijing

The announcement of the new trade agreement with South Korea came as it was confirmed that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un had decamped to Beijing in recent days, with tensions between the United States and North Korea reaching their most explosive point since the 1953 armistice.

Kim Jong Un invited, on behalf of the party and government of the DPRK, Xi Jinping to make an official visit to the DPRK at a convenient time and the invitation was accepted with pleasure, North Korean state media said.

At the same time, Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to a future trek to Pyongyang. And White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders Tuesday night said a personal message from Kim was delivered to President Trump via Xi.

China on Tuesday may have upgraded itself from North Korea benefactor to the essential player in any future negotiations, putting the broader U.S.-China rivalry back center stage in the North Korean matter.

The solution for Korea runs thru BeijingKim acts like a vassal, the former senior administration official told me. Nobody can counter this dynamic now. For this source, this includes hawkish agitators such as John Bolton, the incoming national security advisor, who recently floated a plan to conduct a preemptive strike on North Korea. Xi has now put Beijing on the frontlines of the issue.

Curt Mills is a foreign-affairs reporter at the National Interest. Follow him on Twitter: @CurtMills.

Image: People watch a TV broadcasting a news report on a meeting between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing, in Seoul, South Korea, March 28, 2018. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji

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(ANNAPOLIS, Md.)  A Maryland appeals court on Thursday upheld a ruling granting a new trial to a man whose conviction in the murder of his high school sweetheart became the subject of the popular podcast Serial.

Adnan Syed was convicted in 2000 of killing Hae Min Lee and burying her body in a shallow grave in a Baltimore park. Syeds story was widely publicized in the 2014 Serial podcast, which cast doubt on his guilt. The show attracted millions of listeners and shattered podcast records.

Syeds lawyer, C. Justin Brown, said he is pleased by the ruling.

If the state is so confident in their case, and if theyre so confident that Syed is guilty, they should just try the case. Were ready to try the case, Brown said.

A lower court judge vacated Syeds conviction in 2016, citing his attorneys failure to cross-examine a key witness. Prosecutors appealed to the Maryland Court of Special Appeals, the states intermediate appeals court.

In a 2-1 ruling, the three-judge appeals court panel agreed with Syeds current lawyer that his trial lawyer was ineffective for failing to investigate a potential alibi witness who said she saw Syed at a public library at the time the state claimed Syed killed Hae.

The panel said in its written decision that if testimony from Asia McClain had been presented to the jury, it would have directly contradicted the States theory of when Syed had the opportunity and did murder Hae and could have created reasonable doubt in at least one jurors mind and led to a different outcome.

It was not immediately clear if prosecutors plan to appeal the ruling to the states highest court.
Apple CEO Tim Cook criticized Facebook as the social media site continues to make headlines in light of data-privacy concerns raised by the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

At a town hall event hosted by MSNBCs Chris Hayes and Recodes Kara Swisher, Cook had some heated words for the social media giant.

Cook said Facebooks detailed personal information on its users should not exist in the first place. I think the best regulation is no regulation, is self-regulation, he said, according to NBC News. However, I think were beyond that here, and I do think that its time for a set of people to think deeply about what can be done here.

Facebook is in hot water after it was revealed that Cambridge Analytica, linked to the Trump campaign, tapped personal information from up to 50 million Facebook users without the their consent.

Privacy to us is a human right, Cook said. Its a civil liberty, and something that is unique to America. This is like freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Privacy is right up there with that for us.

When asked at the event what he would do if he were in Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerbergs predicament, he responded, What would I do? I wouldnt be in this situation.

Zuckerberg has apologized for the breach of information. In a statement posted on his personal Facebook page, he wrote, We will learn from this experience to secure our platform further and make our community safer for everyone going forward.

Speaking about Apples business practices, Cook said, The truth is we could make a ton of money if we monetized our customer, if our customer was our product. Weve elected not to do that.

Cooks interview is part of MSNBCs Revolution series, which will air on April 6 at 8 p.m. ET/PT.

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Buenos Aires (AFP) - Argentina's President Mauricio Macri on Friday backed his under-fire energy minister who admitted keeping his millions outside Argentina because he lacked faith in the economy.

Macri said Juan Jose Aranguren had made financial sacrifices to take on the job of minister in his center-right government in 2015.

Aranguren had resigned as president of Anglo-Dutch oil company Shell in Argentina, "where he was doing very well, to take charge of the biggest mess that the Kirchnerists left behind -- that was a country without energy" and with daily power blackouts, Macri told Cadena 3 radio.

The president was responding to questions about his minister's public acknowledgement on Thursday that he kept most of his $88 million fortune deposited abroad.

"This has to do with the confidence we have lost in Argentina," Aranguren said on Radio con Vos.

He said most of the investments and savings he held abroad came from "a bonus I received from my former employer (Shell) in shares of that company that were obviously abroad."

At a time when Argentina was enforcing exchange restrictions under Cristina Kirchner's leftist government, "Why am I going to bring it in?" he asked.

"We are working for an Argentina where that does not happen anymore," said the minister.

When his interviewer said he kept his own money in the country, Aranguren replied: "You have more confidence in Argentina than I do, I leave you with that virtue.

"I want to work so that everyone in Argentina can recover that confidence."

Treasury Minister Nicolas Dujovne, the head of the Federal Intelligence Agency Gustavo Arribas and Central Bank chief Federico Sturzenegger also said they kept most of their money outside the country.
Rusty Hardin, the attorney for Philadelphia Eagles defensive end Michael Bennett, told ESPN on Friday that his client will plead not guilty if Bennetts case goes to trial.

Earlier this week, Bennett turned himself in to authorities in Houston, Texas, on a felony charge of injury to the elderly, allegedly stemming from Bennett injuring a security guard while rushing onto the field to celebrate with his brother, Martellus, after Super Bowl XLI.

The only two possible outcomes for this case is the DAs office [saying] they dont have a case and dismissing, or a trial  one or the other, Hardin said. If and whenever they ask for a plea, it will be not guilty.

Defensive end Michael Bennett. (AP)

Bennett is next scheduled to appear in court in Harris County, Texas, on April 23, according to court documents. Hardin said he does not expect a plea request at that hearing; the attorney believes that will primarily be an opportunity for Hardin and the district attorneys office to exchange information.

The 32-year-old Bennett, who was traded from Seattle to Philadelphia earlier this month, posted $10,000 bond on Monday, after a grand jury handed down an indictment over the alleged incident at NRG Stadium on Feb. 5, 2017.

According to Hardin, Bennett was not given travel restrictions at his bond hearing on Monday, meaning he is free to travel as necessary, including, obviously, to Philadelphia for offseason workouts with his new team.

If there are any conflicts with the Eagles schedule, Hardin said they will request a change of date so Bennett does not miss any days with the Eagles.

A release from the Harris County DAs office says that after the New England Patriots come-from-behind win over the Atlanta Falcons in Super Bowl LI, Bennett shoved his way onto the field, past security personnel that included a 66-year-old paraplegic woman. That woman suffered a sprained shoulder, according to Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo.

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Toulouse (France) (AFP) - An Azerbaijani claiming to be an exiled journalist in France was seriously wounded and his wife was killed on Friday in a gun attack near the southern city of Toulouse, police said.

Rahim Namazov, a father of three, fled his oil-rich homeland in the Caucasus for France in 2010 after suffering death threats and being imprisoned, he said in a YouTube video posted online at the time.

The 39-year-old was fighting for his life in hospital after suffering serious back injuries, while his wife died after being hit in the head in the shooting in front of their home Friday morning in the Toulouse suburb of Colomiers.

One of their children, a 15-year-old boy, was in their apartment at the time and heard the gunfire, local authorities told AFP, adding that he was being looked after by a local trauma group.

The local Toulouse Journalists' Association said it had met Namazov in 2010 but was unable to confirm he was a reporter, while the mayor's office said it was unaware he was living in the area.

Media freedom group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said it was checking Namazov's identity, but regional specialist Johan Bihr drew attention to comments from respected Azerbaijani journalist Khadija Ismayilova who cast doubt on his claims.

Writing on Facebook, Ismayilova claimed that Namazov had pretended to be a journalist to get asylum in France and had recently got into a public argument with a mafia boss on the internet.

Police said that seven bullets were fired in total in the shooting in a car park on Friday morning after the couple had dropped their youngest child at school.

Azerbaijan has been ruled by the repressive family of a strongman president Ilham Aliyev since 1993.
The nuclear deal with Iran hangs by a thread. The appointment of John Bolton  an unapologetic proponent of war with Iran  as U.S. national security advisor has prompted celebrations among Iran deal detractors. The announcement that nuclear talks with North Korea will be held around the same time that U.S. President Donald Trump must decide whether to keep or kill the Iran deal has further complicated the picture. Yet few in Washington understand how Trumps gamble with Pyongyang may impact Tehrans nuclear calculations.

Conventional wisdom declares that Trump would be foolish to kill the Iran deal (formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA) if he genuinely seeks to reach an agreement with the North Koreans. If Trump shows that he does not honor Americas agreements, why would Pyongyang strike a deal with him?

But Trump is anything but conventional. His logic runs in the opposite direction, and Bolton will be more than happy to enable Trumps worst instincts. By killing the JCPOA, Trump thinks hell signal to the North Koreans that they should have no doubt that he is ready to walk away from the talks if he doesnt get what he wants. After all, walking away from ongoing negotiations is much easier than killing an existing deal.

Trump may know bluster, be he does not know diplomacy. Strong-arming subcontractors may work in the Manhattan real estate market, but it wont work in international diplomacy. Sovereign states dont react like jilted architects and electricians.

How will Iran react if Trump pursues this path? For Tehran, the JCPOA was never just about the nuclear issue. It was a test to see if the West could come to terms with the Islamic Republic and accept Iran as a regional power. By testing this proposition, the talks became a defining showdown between the two dominant schools of thought within the Iranian elite.

The first school, dominated by conservative elements in the government and military, argues that the United States  pressured by Israel and Saudi Arabia  is inherently hostile to Iran and will never recognize the country as a regional power or come to terms with its regime, regardless of Irans policies or the compromises it offers. The inclusion Tehran seeks can only be achieved by forcing the United States and its allies to accept the reality of Irans power. The hard-liners skepticism of diplomacy and resistance to compromise is partly rooted in their belief that no Iranian compromise can change Washingtons hostility to Tehran.

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Irans second, more moderate group of policy-makers recognizes both that the countrys own actions have contributed to infectious conflict and that the United States has legitimate concerns about Iranian policies. An American acceptance of Irans inclusion in the regional security architecture can be obtained, they argue, through diplomacy and a genuine give-and-take. If Iran compromises, so will the West, the logic goes.

Up until the nuclear negotiations began in earnest, the debate between these two schools was theoretical. Though Tehran had made many diplomatic overtures in the past, Americas willingness to come to terms with Iran had never been tested through a mutual compromise that both sides had signed on to.

Until, that is, the JCPOA.

The Iran nuclear deal was the first time the United States and Iran had agreed to a significant exchange of concessions that not only eliminated Irans pathways to a bomb and lifted sanctions, but also put an end to almost four decades of American efforts to completely isolate Iran. It signaled that America, 36 years after the Iranian revolution, was coming to terms with Iran.

Both sides agreed to painful concessions, both faced fierce domestic political opposition, and both recognized that the agreement signaled a major break with past policies. America was coming to terms with Iran. And the Islamic Republic was speaking of the United States not as the Great Satan, but as a negotiation partner.

It was a major victory for the second school of thought in Iran  at least for the moment.

But increasingly, the JCPOA has become a victory for the hard-liners. Despite Irans concessions and its adherence to the deal (confirmed by 10 reports by the International Atomic Energy Agency), Trump, Saudi Arabia, and Israel have clearly rejected Irans regional integration under any circumstance. Changes in Irans policies proved insufficient, so nothing short of Irans complete capitulation can seemingly satisfy Trumps allies.

This conclusion will be unavoidable in Tehran if Trump kills the JCPOA to make a deal with Pyongyang. It will strengthen the Iranian hard-line narrative that Tehrans mistake was that it only obtained enrichment capabilities  but not a bomb  before it agreed to seriously negotiate. Had it built a bomb  like the North Koreans  then the United States would have no choice but to show Iran respect, strike a deal with it  and honor that deal. Trump will essentially incentivize Iran to go nuclear.

Ultimately, Trumps bluster wont work. He lacks a properly staffed State Department with the capacity to negotiate, and his new national security advisor ideologically opposes diplomacy. By killing the Iran deal to impress Pyongyang, Trump will destroy one functioning arms deal without securing a new one. And in the process, he will tilt the balance in favor of those in Tehran who have argued all along that America only understands the language of force.
SOFIA (Reuters) - Bulgaria will not expel Russian diplomats in response to a nerve agent attack in England that the British government has blamed on Moscow, its prime minister said on Friday. Boyko Borissov said the Black Sea country, as a current chair of the European Union presidency, needed to keep dialogue open with Russia amid an escalating standoff between the West and Moscow over the nerve agent attack on March 4. After the first known use of a military-grade nerve agent on European soil since World War Two, most EU and NATO members, including the United States, have expelled Russian diplomats. Several EU countries, including Greece, Cyprus, Portugal, Slovenia and Austria, however, have not joined the coordinated action. Bulgaria has expressed its solidarity with its EU and NATO allies by recalling its ambassador from Moscow for consultations, Borissov said, but stressed that more evidence was needed for further action. "As chair of the European Council we must keep the communication channel (open), as we have done in times of an over-tensed situation in our region at present with Turkey. We must do the same with Russia," Borissov said. "At this stage, we do not think we should expel Russian diplomats and officials," Borissov said, after a meeting of the government's security council over the nerve gas attack that included a hearing of the Bulgarian ambassador to Moscow. Borissov said the ambassador will return to Russia after the Orthodox Easter on April 8. Calls for Bulgaria to expel Russian diplomats have faced strong opposition both in the coalition government as well as in other political parties in parliament which favor pursuing good ties with Russia. Bulgaria, which was liberated from Ottoman rule by Russia, became one of the most obedient Soviet satellite states during the Cold War. Many Bulgarians feel a strong cultural affinity for Russia, with which they share the Cyrillic script and orthodox Christianity. Bulgaria is also almost fully reliant on Russian gas supplies, military equipment and tourism revenues. (Reporting by Angel Krasimirov and Tsvetelia Tsolova; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle)
Alia Awadallah

Security, Middle East

A rainbow is seen over downtown Beirut, Lebanon

Lebanon remains a rare example of pluralism and political openness, and a bulwark in a region where many societies have succumbed entirely to internal chaos and war.

The Case for U.S. Support of Lebanon

When Saudi Arabias Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MbS) met with President Trump in Washington in March, the two leaders discussed regional issues ranging from the Iran nuclear deal to the ongoing wars in Yemen and Syria. But notably absent from readouts of their conversations was Lebanon and its internal stabilitypossibly because MbS is still recovering from Saudi Arabias controversial detention of Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri in November. Additionally, MbS and the Trump administration share the view that Lebanon is already lost to Iranian influence. At a time of greater Saudi regional activism, the United States should encourage Riyadhs attention on renewed investment and constructive engagement in Lebanon, instead of retreat and defeat.

Hariris house arrest was widely viewed as a misstep that only resulted in a surge of nationalism from many Lebanese bristling at what they saw as Saudi Arabias political interference and violation of their sovereignty. Still, MbS and the Trump administration believe the only option that remains is to use aggressive political and economic action to defeat Hezbollah. But U.S. military officials in the region and numerous regional experts remain convinced that the only realistic way to contain Hezbollahs influence in Lebanon is a more assertive investment in its military, national institutions, and Hezbollahs political opponents.

The possibility of another war between Israel and Hezbollah has become more likely, and would destroy any prospect of a strong Lebanon. Moreover, experts predict that Lebanons parliamentary elections, currently scheduled for May, will increase Hezbollahs influence in the government. Similarly, if the Trump administration withdraws from the Iran nuclear agreement in May, this could provide a boon to Iran and Hezbollahs anti-U.S. propaganda. Should the United States and Saudi Arabia have any interest in competing with Iran and maintaining a constructive relationship with Lebanon, the window for a fresh push in that direction is closing.

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In an ideal world, American and Saudi policy would cut Hezbollah out of the Lebanese political system entirely. This understandable but overly ambitious goal sets up Lebanonand U.S. and Saudi policyfor failure no matter the outcome of Mays elections. The United States and Saudi Arabia should instead minimize the potential damage of Mays elections and build a long-term plan to bring Lebanon back from political isolation.

While Hezbollah may make significant gains in May, Lebanons internal politics are not entirely in its favor. The Hezbollah-led political coalition includes Maronite president Michel Aouns Free Patriotic Movement and Speaker of the Parliament Nabih Berris Shia political group, Amal. Yet recent incidents shook the Lebanese public and exposed underlying tension between these political allies. In January, for instance, a video leaked showing Foreign Minister (and son-in-law of President Aoun) Gebran Bassil describing Speaker Berri as a thug. Just before the incident, Hezbollah also finalized an agreement to share a number of parliament seats with Amal at the expense of the Free Patriotic Movement.

Hezbollah smoothed tensions between the two parties reasonably well, but made it clear that supporting Amal leader Berri was its prioritypossibly alienating its Christian political allies. Many Christians look to Hezbollah for protection from Sunni extremists in the region, but recent events have Lebanese Christians questioning whether Hezbollah will support their long-term interests. Lebanese Christians also fear that Hezbollah could use its political power to overhaul Lebanons confessional power-sharing system and give itself greater representation at their expense.

The first priority for the United States and Saudi Arabia should be to exploit existing political divisions and convince lukewarm Hezbollah allies that the two countries have more to offer Lebanon than the terror group. Washington and Riyadh should quietly reach out to Christians and others who have grown alarmed by Hezbollahs growing political influence. In past elections, both Saudi Arabia and the United States have provided support to Hariris Future Movement and its allies. Even if the impact is minimal, it may be worth resuming this support to rebuild ties to Lebanese political parties opposed to Hezbollah.

Electoral support and relationship-building with the Future Movement and other parties, such as the nonsectarian Beirut Madinati coalition and the Christian Kataeb party, is an important component of this approach. Lebanons revised electoral laws, and greater weariness about Hezbollah, could provide a greater opportunity for independent parties and candidates to make gains in parliament. For its part, the United States has not allocated assistance funds to this critical issue in 2018, and only allocated paltry funds in previous years. In 2019 and beyond, the United States and Saudi Arabia should repair this shortfall and also boost funding for civil-society support grants, exchange programs, and local infrastructure projects that build ties to Lebanese society.

Second, on the security front, the United States and Saudi Arabia should resume funding for the Lebanese Armed Forces. Riyadh cut off this assistance in 2016 after the Lebanese government did not condemn attacks on Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran. Though the United States cut off Foreign Military Financing for Lebanon in 2018, it resumes that financing in 2019 and currently provides funding and training to the countrys armed forces through other sources. However, U.S. military officials were not able to point to a single meaningful example of assistance, or even engagement, between Lebanons armed forces and other Arab militaries. This regional isolation remains a serious obstacle to strengthening the Lebanese state and its ability to confront Hezbollah. The United States and Saudi should also tap Jordanian training facilities and expertise to build a stronger bridge between the Lebanese military and another critical U.S. partner.

Saudi will prove difficult to convince in this regard, but the Trump administration should use all tools necessary to win it over. The administration used its close relationship with MbS to generate renewed Saudi attention and involvement in Iraq. Similarly, the administration has requested $4 billion in stabilization aid from Saudi Arabia for Syriathough MbS has not publicly agreed to or rejected this request to date.

Third, the United States and Saudi Arabia should work with local journalists to highlight Irans influence in Lebanon. The best way to do so is to promote media freedom in Lebanon through material and technical support to independent news outlets and journalists. Lebanon is home to the most open and robust media landscape in the Arab world, but mainstream journalists have recently faced legal charges for criticism directed at the Lebanese and Saudi governments. Outlets sympathetic to Hezbollah or operated by the terror group remain popular, but they have lost followers in Lebanon, especially among Sunnis and Christians, because they are increasingly viewed as a mouthpiece for Iran. This presents a clear opportunity to support outlets with progressive and independent views that can compete with pro-Hezbollah voices.

U.S.-Saudi cooperation in Iraq and Syria could greatly enhance efforts to promote regional stability and counter Iran, but the two countries should find ways to expand this collaboration to Lebanon. For all its own imperfections and Hezbollahs influence, Lebanon remains a rare example of pluralism and political openness, and a bulwark in a region where many societies have succumbed entirely to internal chaos and war. As MbS seeks to reform Saudi Arabias own social landscape and counter extremist forces in the region, Lebanon should not be let go without a fight.

Washington policymakers have long advocated for bilateral relationships that reflect a broader strategy in the Middle East. To pursue U.S. and Saudi interests in the region in earnest, any regional approach must include engaging Lebanoneven if both countries view it as a last-ditch effort.

Alia Awadallah is a research associate for National Security and International Policy at the Center for American Progress.

Image: Reuters

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I found myself beaming with excitement back in 2010 as I tore open the envelope that contained the U.S. census and its accompanying instructions.

For my roommates, all 10 of them, this was nothing but a complicated chore that the federal government had sent our community-style home on the outskirts of Florida State University. Given my overenthusiasm about the survey, I was delegated to complete and mail the form back as quickly as possible.

Of course, the prospect of completing the census did not excite me out of my sheer passion for politics and government. Instead, the census provided an opportunity to satiate my eagerness to engage civically with the United States; after all, I was fully aware that my lack of immigration status would keep me from fulfilling many of the duties and responsibilities bestowed on U.S. citizens.

And yet, the census gave me the feeling that for once I too could be counted as part of this country.

All of that could change in a not-so-distant future.

The Department of Commerce has decided to add a question about U.S. citizenship to the 2020 census, sparking a massive backlash from immigration advocates, civil rights groups and even members of Congress who fear that the question could skew results by discouraging immigrants and other minority groups from completing the form.

A citizenship-related question has not appeared on all census forms since 1950. That is why many lawmakers, including Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), have taken to Twitter to decry its inclusion, stating that politics has no place in the census. Meanwhile, six past directors of the Census Bureau, whove served under both Republican and Democratic administrations, have stated they are deeply concerned that the question would considerably increase the risks to the 2020 enumeration.

This question about U.S. citizenship could have damaging effects on our nation. Not only would taxpayers see their states losing millions of dollars over inaccurate data, but it could lead to President Donald Trumps already supercharged deportation force to request additional resources, should it determine that too many noncitizens are residing in the United States.

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This is not without precedent.

In 2000, the U.S. Census Bureau admitted that it had shared data that aided military efforts to detain Japanese-Americans in prison camps during World War II. Even more troubling: the fact that the census handed the Secret Service the personal information of 79 Japanese-Americans in the Washington, D.C., area to aid investigations of potential threats against the president.

After 9/11, the Census Bureau turned over data of Arab-Americans to the Department of Homeland Security, which included detailed information on how many people of Arab backgrounds live in certain ZIP codes. While this was technically legal, Hermann Habermann, deputy director of the Census Bureau at the time, expressed concern about how information given to law enforcement agencies may be used. The information was ultimately handed over to DHS, disregarding warnings from previous census directors that such cooperation with law enforcement was difficult to explain to the public and violated the principles of the agency.

Furthermore, an inaccurate census could have congressional consequences. For instance, it could curtail Texas projected gain of three congressional seats in Congress, according to The Texas Tribune. If this doesnt sound like a big deal, then keep in mind that it was Latinos in Texas who led the state to gain three congressional seats after the 2010 census.

Then there is the question of legality. Xavier Becerra, California attorney general and a Trump nemesis, has filed a lawsuit against the Commerce Department, arguing that the Constitution mandates that the government produce an actual enumeration of the total population, regardless of citizenship status. In short, Becerra deems the inclusion of the citizenship question as illegal.

The chilling effect the citizenship question might have on immigrant communities is already being felt. The New York Times Miriam Jordan reported this week how Carmen Queveda, an undocumented immigrant in California who is also the mother of a U.S. citizen, stated that she would never answer, because [she] dont have papers . Obviously, I am afraid. Another undocumented immigrant in California, Cesar Morio, told the Times that he knows that no parent in [his] neighborhood is going to be opening the door for anyone doing a survey.

As a collective, we should all be outraged about the inclusion of a U.S. citizenship question on the 2020 census. We are paying for this data to be collected and tabulated with our very own tax dollars, and now we risk it being skewed for possible political gain.

So be sure to call out empty-suit politicians, like Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who called the publics concern over the contents of the 2020 census an absurd freakout. The census should not be seen as a simple form in the mail or a friendly conversation with a pollster at your doorstep, but rather as a tool that enables fair representation and understanding of the composition of our country.

We should not allow political agendas to take a grip on the data that is used to benefit us as a nation. If you are outraged by this development, then express your anger by writing letters to your local newspaper or websites and calling your members of Congress. This should be of concern for all of us, regardless of which side of the immigration issue you stand on.

Juan Escalante is an immigrant advocate and online strategist who has been fighting for the Dream Act and pro-immigration policies at all levels of government for the past 10 years.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross with President Donald Trump in the Roosevelt Room at the White House on March 22. (Photo: Mark Wilson via Getty Images)

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Kris Osborn

Security,

This was a big deal for a lot of reasons.

China Just Challenged America in the Pacific With a Massive Naval "Live Fire" Show of Force

A U.S. Navy Carrier Strike Group has arrived in the Pacific in a show of force as U.S.-China tensions rise, China conducts a massive military exercise and U.S. warships sail within 12 miles of territory claimed by China.

The arrival of the USS Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group in the region comes shortly after the USS Mustin, a U.S. Navy destroyer, sailed within 12 miles of a Chinese-claimed artificial island chain as part of ongoing U.S. Freedom of Navigation (FONOPs) exercises.

The Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group will conduct a variety of operations, including addressing shared maritime security concerns and building relationships with partners navies, Lt. Liza Dougherty, Navy spokeswoman, told Warrior Maven.

Although South China Sea territorial disputes have been lingering beneath the radar amid growing tensions with North Korea, U.S. military officials confirmed to Warrior Maven that the Freedom of Navigation exercise did take place - and that the issue of Chinas excessive maritime claims has by no means gone away.

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Navy officials were clear to describe the carrier group deployment as part of normal routine operations and not specifically tied to tensions in the region in any way. However, both the carrier group arrival and the U.S. FONOP are taking place within the broader context of continued U.S.-China disagreements over island structures and territories in the South China Sea.

Navy official described U.S. operations in the area and the new carrier-strike group deployment as part of a normal variety of operations around the globe, regardless of current events.

At the same time, Chinas provocative actions have not gone unnoticed and the Pentagon has consistently said the U.S. is committed to demonstrating that U.S. forces can fly, sail and operate anywhere in the world according to international law.

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FONOPs are not about any one country, nor are they about making political statements. The United States takes a strong position on protecting the rights, freedoms and lawful uses of the sea and airspace guaranteed to all countries and that all maritime claims must comply with international law as reflected in the Law of the Sea Convention, Lt. Cmdr. Nicole Schwegman, Navy Pacific Fleet official, told Warrior Maven in a statement.

Following the FONOP, the Chinese Navy conducted a large-scale multi-ship live-fire demonstration near the disputed South China Sea shortly after the USS Mustin's sailed within the 12-mile limit of the Chinese-claimed territory.

The Chinese exercise included more than 40 ships and submarines flanking the Chinese aircraft carrier Liaoning in the region, according to satellite photos of the area published in the South China Morning Post.

The South China Morning Post report also cited the Chinese Ministry spokesman Ren Guoqiang criticizing the U.S. FONOP patrol and calling the Chinese drills annual and routine.

Its aim is to test the training capabilities of the PLA and enhance their training capabilities, Ren Guoqiang said according to the report (South China Morning Post). It is also aimed at improving the war-fighting capabilities of the whole military.

Freedom of Navigation Operations are following years of escalating tensions between China and the U.S. U.S. Navy P-8 surveillance plane footage of Chinese land reclamation or artificial island building, Pentagon confirmation of Chinese missiles placed in the region and reports of Chinese fighter jets passing through contested areas  are all points of tension and possible US-China conflict flashpoints which still inform the South China Sea dynamic.

In fact, senior Pentagon officials have told Warrior Maven that there has been some internal discussion about whether the US military should place some of its own weapons in the region, such as land-mobile artillery.

The area is question is a group of highly disputed islands south of China in the South China Sea called the Spratly Islands. The small islands in the area, some of which are claimed by China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Taiwan, are rich in resources and of strategic geographical importance in the Pacific region.

Pentagon officials have widely criticized an ongoing Chinese effort to erect artificial structures nearby or on top of its claimed island territories in the Spratly Islands. Called land reclamation by the Pentagon, the activity has added more than 2,000 acres to island territories claimed by China.

According to a United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, an international treaty supported by but not yet formally joined by the U.S., 12-miles off the coast of a given territory is considered to be sovereign waters owned by the respective country.

The ongoing land reclamation by China in the area appears to be a rather transparent attempt by China to reinforce and bolster extended territorial claims in the South China Sea.

However, the Law of the Sea Convention does not recognize artificial or man-made structures and legitimate island territories to be claimed. Therefore, the U.S and its Pacific allies do not support or agree with Chinas aggressive territorial claims. In fact, citing the definition of islands articulated in the Law of the Sea Convention, Pentagon officials do not recognize the artificial structures as islands  but instead refer to the effort as land reclamation.

Under the U.N. Law of the Sea convention, negotiated in the 1980s and updated in the 1990s, an island is defined as a "naturally formed area of land above the water at high tide." Also, article 60 of the U.N. Convention says "artificial islands are not entitled to territorial seas."

This first appeared in Warrior Maven here.

Read full article
Beijing (AFP) - A serial killer dubbed China's "Jack the Ripper" for the way he mutilated several of his 11 female victims was sentenced to death on Friday, three decades after the first murder.

Gao Chengyong, 53, robbed, raped and ultimately murdered 11 female victims more than a decade ago, prosecutors from Baiyin City in northwest Gansu province said.

He was found guilty by the Baiyin City Intermediate People's Court and handed death sentences for both robbery and intentional homicide, and lesser sentences for rape and dishonouring corpses.

Gao targeted young women wearing red and followed them home, often cutting their throats and mutilating their bodies, according to state media reports. The youngest victim was eight years old.

Some victims had their reproductive organs removed, the Beijing Youth Daily said when Gao was arrested in 2016. The court found Gao guilty of those crimes.

"To satisfy his perverted desire to dishonour and sully corpses, many of his female victims' corpses were damaged and violated," the court said in a post to its official Weibo social media account.

"The motives of the defendant's crimes were despicable, his methods extremely cruel, the nature of the acts vile and the details of the crimes serious," the court said.

Gao "poses a grave threat to society and an urgent danger to others and should be severely punished."

The murders were carried out in Gansu and the neighbouring region of Inner Mongolia from 1988 to 2002.

Police had been hunting Gao for years.

"The suspect has a sexual perversion and hates women," police said in 2004 when they linked the crimes for the first time and offered a reward of 200,000 yuan ($30,000) for information leading to an arrest.

"He's reclusive and unsociable, but patient," according to the police profiling at the time.

A lead in the case came when police collected and tested the DNA of one of Gao's relatives over a separate minor crime, the China Daily said.

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Police concluded the killer they had been hunting for 28 years was a relation, and Gao's DNA matched the murderer's, it added.

The original Jack the Ripper was a serial killer active in east London in the late Victorian era, who is widely believed to have murdered five women, mutilating several of them. Those killings have never been solved.

Gao was stripped of all of his assets and would not appeal the death sentence, the court said.
Gaza City (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) - Thousands of Palestinians marched near the Gaza-Israel border on Friday in a major protest leading to clashes with Israeli forces, in which more than 50 Gazans were wounded.

At least 10,000 Gazans gathered in different spots along the border, AFP journalists said, with smaller numbers entering within a few hundreds metres (yards) of the heavily fortified fence.

Israeli tanks and snipers were positioned on the other side of the border, using tear gas and live fire to force back the protesters.

Moe than 50 people were wounded by live fire, the Palestinian Red Crescent said.

Israel's military said in a statement that "thousands of Palestinians are rioting in six locations throughout the Gaza Strip, rolling burning tyres and hurling stones at the security fence and at (Israeli) troops, who are responding with riot dispersal means and firing towards main instigators."

Earlier Friday, before the main protests began, a Palestinian farmer was killed by Israeli tank fire near the border.

The Israeli military said the tank fire came after "two suspects approached the security fence ... and began operating suspiciously."

The march kicks off up to six weeks of protests dubbed "The Great March of Return," in the runup to the inauguration of the new US embassy in Jerusalem around May 14.

Among those taking part on Friday was Ismail Haniya, the leader of the Islamist movement Hamas that controls Gaza.

"There is no alternative to Palestine and no solution except to return," he said in a statement, referring to Palestinian refugees seeking to go back to land they fled or were expelled from in 1948 that is now inside Israel.

Israel has accused Hamas of seeking to stir up protests to encourage violence.
Last weeks ransomware attack on the city of Atlantas computer networks offers a chilling reminder that the public sector is directly in the line of fire in the war against cyber terror. With cities and states across the country increasingly relying on artificial intelligence and machine learning to deliver vital services, the risks for residents and businesses are growing exponentially.

Public officials are trying to balance the need to secure infrastructure assets with the need for open government practices. Last August, for instance, in the name of transparency and accountability, a New York City Councilman named James Vacca proposed that the city of New York publicly disclose the source code of all algorithms relied upon in delivering municipal services. These algos range from how teachers are evaluated, to when garbage gets collected, to which precincts get the most police officers. The proposal was the first of its kind in any U.S. cityand some privacy advocates assert that it should serve as a model for the rest of the country.

The debate over the management and disclosure of this source code is critical, because governments are increasingly relying on artificial intelligence and machine learning to analyze data and make key decisions. And while these advances offer the promise of better service at a reduced cost to taxpayers, this growing reliance on AI and ML comes with two distinct and potentially conflicting risks.

The first risk is that governments that become overly reliant on AI introduce the potential for bias, particularly racial bias in the criminal justice system. In 2016, a ProPublica investigation found significant racial disparities in criminal justice risk assessments produced by algorithms that seek to predict future criminal behavior.

In one notable example, the software wrongly considered a black woman who took a bike from a neighbors yard (given a risk score of 8) to be more likely to commit a future crime than a white man arrested for shoplifting who had a lengthy criminal record (he scored a 3). The ProPublica analysis of 7,000 individuals arrested in Broward Country, Florida revealed that this risk assessment tool wrongly identified African-American defendants as potential recidivists at improperly high rates. The software made the inverse mistake of underestimating recidivism rates for whites.

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More than 45 states now rely on algorithmic tools to set bond amounts, make parole decisions, or even influence jail sentences. These kinds of automated risk formulaswhich have implications for civil liberties and racial inequalityrequire broad transparency and close scrutiny.

Councilman Vaccas legislation was aimed squarely at this troubling potential for bias. The challenge, though, is that erring too far on the side of transparency increases the second risk, which is the threat of widespread physical cyberattacks.

When we think about cybersecurity risk, we typically envision attacks on email, networks, websites, and other digital assets. Increasingly, however, we can expect these attacks to target physical assets, and the rise of artificial intelligence and machine learning may provide new and potent vectors for widespread attacks.

Automated systems are rapidly evolving from offering assessments and evaluations to actually delivering implementation. Thats the difference between Waze offering individual drivers the best driving routes and a centralized computer system giving a fleet of autonomous vehicles, or drones, direct instructions.

As cities automate water supply, electricity, mass transit, and hospital services, the cyber threat to these physical assets will rise. Were already seeing evidence of this. Just before the Atlanta cyberattack, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the FBI issued a joint bulletin indicating that Russian hackers successfully penetrated control systems at energy, nuclear, water, aviation, and manufacturing sites.

Herein lies the dilemma with the Vacca bill and similar efforts that have a well-intentioned goal of maximizing transparency to minimize the threat of bias: The more source code governments disclose, the more tools cyber criminals will have at their disposal. Last month, experts from 14 organizations, including OpenAI, Oxford University, and the Center for a New American Security, catalogued the digital, physical, and political risks of AI in a sweeping report. Its core thesis was the dual-use nature of AIthe potential for both goodin the form of accelerated scientific discovery and enhanced productivityand harm from cyberattacks and political disruption.

When weighing the benefits and risks of the Vacca bill, the New York City Council sensibly decided to devote more time to understanding what the city should disclose and how. This is far preferable to diving headfirst into legislating without fully understanding the risks involved. This due diligencein New York and around the countrymust happen quickly.

With his landmark legislation, Councilman Vacca sparked a crucial debate about balancing transparency and security in the new world of artificial intelligence. Citizens deserve to know how their government allocates resources and makes decisions. Yet, governments have an obligation to do all that they can to keep us safe, particularly at a time where cyber hackers too often appear to be one step ahead of the rest of us.

Peter J. Beshar is executive vice president and general counsel of Marsh & McLennan Companies.
Kris Osborn

Security,

And maybe even more.

Could the Navy Turn the Littoral Combat Ship into a Swarm 'Aircraft Carrier'?

The Navy is broadening its strategic and technical coordination between its Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) and surface and undersea drones to better destroy mines, survey enemy waters and even launch attacks.

The services growing fleet of unmanned surface vessels and mine-hunting undersea drones are making rapid technological improvements. Increasingly, they can perform longer-range surveillance of enemy activity, find and neutralize mines and also launch coordinated surface drone swarm attacks.

For instance, while facing long-range enemy precision weapons, surface ships like the LCS will launch and control swarms of fast, high-tech surface drone ships to test enemy defenses or launch coordinated attacks without putting a host ship in range of enemy fire.

While ocean drones are rapidly gaining advanced levels of autonomy through new computer algorithms, Navy strategy emphasizes that humans will of course still be needed to fire weapons, perform command and control and make many combat-relevant decisions.

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"As part of the expanding shipbuilding portfolio, the Navy expects to have USVs (unmanned surface vessels) play a large, critical role working in concert with manned systems. Just like UUVs [unmanned underwater vehicles] will not replace submarines, we do not envision USVs replacing manned surface combatants. But they will work in concert," Alan Baribeau, spokesman for Naval Sea Systems Command, told Warrior.

The Navy plans to deploy fast, high-tech surface drones equipped with advanced wireless technology able to find, attack and ultimately destroy underwater enemy mines, all while operating at safe distances from a larger manned surface host ship such as an LCS.

Story continues

While unmanned surface ships are not yet operating with weapons on board, industry and Navy developers are looking at ways to integrate guns, lasers, enemy fire interceptors or even small missiles with surface drones - to of course be controlled by human operators. Current Pentagon doctrine specifies that, when it comes to the prospect of using lethal force, a human must always be "in the loop" making the decision - regardless of how quickly autonomy is progressing.

Overall, this strategic shift, aimed at keeping pace with undersea and surface warfare threats, is reflected in a recent name change for the Navy's Program Executive Office, LCS. The PEO is now called Unmanned and Small Combatants (USC), a service statement said.

"Littoral Combat Ships no longer capture the entirety of what we do. The shipbuilding portfolio has expanded to include four surface combatant product lines -- two variants of LCS, plus Frigate, plus MMSC [Multi-Mission Surface Combatant]," Baribeau said.

The Navy also released a written statement from Rear Adm. John P. Neagley, program executive officer, PEO USC, pointing to the expanding strategy. "This name change codifies the true expanse of our responsibility," he said.

Expanding the purview of the PEO is reflected in the recently submitted Navy budget proposal, which calls for an influx of $1.2 billion for mine-countermeasure technologies over the next five years.

Baribeau added that the strategic expansion is due, in large measure, to ongoing efforts to build upon manned-unmanned teaming technologies. This includes coordinated unmanned and manned surface ship and drone real-time information sharing between host ships and a range of supporting assets.

Find & Destroy Mines

Naval Sea Systems Command is working with industry to develop, assess and analyze mine-neutralization technologies for its emerging Mine Countermeasures Unmanned Surface Vehicle (MCM USV) -- a multi-mission surface drone countermine platform slated to be operational with the LCS by 2019, Capt. Jon Rucker, program manager, Unmanned Maritime Systems, PEO LCS (former PEO name), told reporters earlier this year at the Surface Navy Association Symposium.

The MCM USV takes a large technical step beyond the mine-detecting Unmanned Influence Sweep System (UISS) now going through testing and builders trials, Rucker said.

Building upon these efforts, the Navy is planning for the MCM USV to incorporate an ability to "destroy" mines from USVs as well. Neutralizing mines, once they are found, is the aim of this longer-term Navy effort, service developers explained.

The current exploration of mine-neutralization technology is happening alongside the ongoing integration of advanced sonar mine-hunting payloads onto the USV -- the AQS-20 and AQS-24, officials said.

Surface Attack Ships

Incremental steps forward with surface drone countermine technology, an emphasis woven into the PEO LCS expansion, are also unfolding within the Navy's fast-progressing "ghost fleet" project. This is an ongoing Navy strategic and technical effort to harness the latest computer algorithms to deploy groups of interconnected unmanned vessels able to perform missions in a synchronized fashion.

As communications and networking technologies continue to evolve rapidly, drones will increasingly be able to function in a cross-domain capacity, meaning across air, sea, land and undersea operations. The expanded PEO reflects a measured effort to incorporate the kinds of newer networking technologies able to support these operations.

A human at a control station, using a low bandwidth connection, can perform command and control functions without needing to actually drive the vessels.

The Navy and ONR are already immersed in the development of a variety of USVs, including a mine-detecting Unmanned Influence Sweep System, or UISS, for the Littoral Combat Ship. The UISS is carried by a Textron-developed Common Unmanned Surface Vehicle, or CUSV.

The CUSV, in development since before 2009, can travel for more than 20-hours carrying up to 4,000-pounds at speeds of up to 20-knots, Textron information states. Also, it is engineered to withstand waves up to 20-feet.

Other applications include the possible use of aerial swarms, for instance, could detect an enemy surface vessel and relay information to unmanned surface vessels or undersea drones. All of this could operate in a combat circumstance while needing little or no human intervention.

Algorithms governing autonomous maritime navigation have progressed to the point where USVs can more effectively perceive and respond to their surrounding environment while in transit, program managers with the Office of Navel Research have explained. Small, high-tech autonomy kits can be integrated onto unmanned surface vessels.

The kits, called Control Architecture for Robotic Agent Command and Sensing, or CARACaS, are engineered to provide USVs with an ability to handle dynamic operational situations; this can include the execution of search patterns, harbor defenses, surveillance or even swarm boat attacks, Navy developers have explained. Other possibilities among a wide range of uses include using autonomous USVs for supply and weapons transport, countermine operations, electronic warfare and amphibious operations.

The USVs are programmed with sensors linked to an established database of known threats such as enemy boats; they are also linked to one another with an ability to detect, track and trail unknown boats, ONR officials said.

The Ghost Fleet effort involves a collaborative venture between the Office of Naval Research, the Pentagon's Strategic Capabilities Office and the Navy. The Pentagons Strategic Capabilities Office represents a specific effort to integrate cutting edge technologies with existing platforms as a way to bring near term combat advantages through advanced technology.

This first appeared in Warrior Maven here.

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A fundraising campaign to cover the legal bills of sacked former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe has smashed its target to hit $370,000 (260,000) in just 14 hours.

The page set up by the Friends of Andrew McCabe has already received more than 8,700 donations including some as high as $3,000.

The response to this effort has been remarkable and beyond our expectations, said the organisers.

Mr McCabe was fired by Donald Trumps attorney general Jeff Sessions less than two days before his expected retirement after more than 20 years service.

President Trump, who previously fired Mr McCabes boss James Comey, described the sacking as a great day for Democracy on Twitter.

Mr McCabe was accused of making improperly authorised disclosures to a journalist about FBI investigations into Hillary Clinton and misleading investigators.

He claims he was sacked because he is a witness in the ongoing Russia investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller.

His dismissal put his pension and healthcare benefits in jeopardy and he still faces an investigation by the Officer of the Inspector General as well as congressional inquiries and potential lawsuits.

The money raised on GoFundMe will only be used to defend the allegations against him and anything remaining will be donated to charity, according to the campaign.

The support for Mr McCabe has been overwhelming, humbling, and deeply appreciated, the campaign said.

He and his family continue to deal with the very public and extended humiliation that the Administration, and the President personally, have inflicted on them over the past year.

Unfortunately, the need for a legal defense fund is a growing reality.

The campaign described Mr McCabes sacking as completely unjustified, amidst repeated ad hominem attacks by the President of the United States.

Mr McCabes legal team is being led by former Department of Justice inspector general Michael Bromwich.
David Shulkin spent a scandal-free year and a half as a senior Veterans Affairs official under president Barack Obama, and flew through the Senate in a 100-0 vote for his confirmation to run the department under president Donald Trump.

Just over a year later, Trump fired him yesterday following weeks of speculation and revelations that Shulkin had spent more than $122,000 of department money on a 10-day trip to the UK and Denmark in July 2017which involved only three and a half days of meetings. A government investigation (pdf) into the trip found he had committed several serious derelictions, including bringing his wife on the trip at the taxpayers expense and improperly accepting free Wimbledon tickets.

Most administrations have to weather a cabinet ethics scandal or two; under Trump, they seem to be everywhere. But while there have been many high-profile firings, very few of them were due to ethics mishaps; in a New York Times op-ed today, Shulkin writes that he was fired for being an obstacle to privatization of the veterans affairs department.

Most of the senior officials accused of wasting public funds remain in government:

Is the White House that promised to drain the swamp seeing more moral slippage than unusual? Some of the same officials who denounced excess spending in the past have since been caught doing just that: For example, in 2009, congressman Tom Price decried members of the US congress who were using private jets as just another example of fiscal irresponsibility run amok. In September 2017, he resigned from his post as Donald Trumps health secretary, after it was reported that hed spent more than $1 million of taxpayer funds on his own travel in private jets.

Story continues

We havent seen anything like thisanything like this, says Norman Ornstein, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. If you lined [Trumps cabinet] all up and just took a random poke, youd be far more likely than not to hit somebody who has engaged in some corrupt practices, or practices that have violated every norm that we have about how you use taxpayer dollars.

Amy Siskind, who compiles a weekly list of changing norms under Trumps presidency, says its overwhelming: Every week without fail one of these guys is in there.

The big question is: how have these scandals become so pervasive?

Rotten from the top

Many things that can lead to a culture of corruption in an administration. You can hire people with few ethical scruples. You can fail to educate them about ethics. You can fail to punish those who violate existing codes.

But rot often begins at the top. In this case, Trump refusing to divest from his business empire might set a bad example for the rest of the government, says Richard Painter, White House ethics counsel under George W. Bush. Because the president himself has such a cavalier attitude towards his own conflicts of interest, the others working for him have a cavalier attitude themselves, he said.

Thats created a culture of following the letter of the lawwhich is largely based on normsrather than its spirit, says Scott Amey, general counsel at the Project on Government Oversight.

Just because you can buy a $31,000 desk, it doesnt mean that you should,he says. That message has to start at the top with the Trump administration and needs to trickle down through cabinet secretaries and then to career public servants: Were here to clean up Washington, not to expose problems in the system and exploit those gaps.'

Forgetting frugality may be exacerbated by Trumps tendency to hire other businesspeople, like former Goldman Sachs partner Mnuchin, who are used to a luxury executive lifestyle. Weve always had Goldman Sachs goes to Washingtonthat is not new but theres even more of it in this administration, says Painter. Businesspeople can become very good public servants, but they have to become public servants. They cant go into public service flying around on private jets and promoting their businesses.

Impotent oversight

Correcting that attitude requires stringent ethics oversight, but Walter Shaub is a cautionary tale for anyone hoping to put that in place. Appointed as director of the Office of Government Ethics in 2013, he lasted six months of the Trump presidency before he quit, declaring (paywall), I think we are pretty close to a laughingstock at this point.

He later said he left because he reached a point where I didnt think I could actually achieve the mission effectively. Translation: the Trump administration refused to listen to ethics advice.

The White House did not reply to emailed requests for comment on its ethics oversight.

The case of top Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway is a prime example. When Conway endorsed Ivanka Trumps business products on live TV, Shaub recommended (paywall) that the White House discipline her. Trumps internal ethics counsel disagreed, and the president did nothing.

Later in the year, she twice weighed in against Democratic candidate Doug Jones in an Alabama special Senate election, and a special counsel investigation deemed that both times she had violated the Hatch Act, a law banning federal officials from using their office for partisan political influence. Painter says she would have been fired for that in the Bush White House, but its unclear whether Conway has received any punishment under Trump.

The message that sends is clear, Ornstein says: If you believed that there would be no consequences for bad behavior, human nature suggests that lots of people will be very likely to engage in it.

Conway is not the only one to have violated the Hatch Act: the Office of the Special Counsel, an independent oversight body set up in the wake of Watergate, also found UN ambassador Nikki Haley and White House social media director Dan Scavino had done so.

Partisan Congress

Absent proper oversight in the executive branch of government, its Congresss role to excoriate officials for unethical behavior. But the Republican-controlled House and Senate have made few efforts to do that, ethics watchdogs say.

Shaub is ominous about the threat this lack of oversight poses. Without Congressional oversight, we have lost a critical check on the executive branchs departure from important norms, and in the absence of that check we are already witnessing early signs of a potential drift toward authoritarian tendencies, he wrote in a lengthy statement posted on Twitter last week.

Many blame partisanship. Its just mind-boggling, says Ornstein. My guess is that if the House or Senate would be Democratic[officials] would know that if they did this stuff on a repeated basis, they would get hauled up in front of Congress and suffer some serious consequences.

Nonetheless, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have taken the chance to stick the knife into cabinet members when they sat for budget hearings.

When the top Democrat on a House Appropriations subcommittee probed Carson about his dining set, the former neurosurgeon gave various confusing explanations (paywall) for the expense. These included that the previous dining table was dangerous, that his wife had picked out the new design, and that neither he nor his wife were happy with the price.

Trey Gowdy, the Republican chair of the House Oversight Committee wrote to Ryan Zinke asking him to detail the expenses in a briefing. Zinke told a House committee that the doors cost so much because of historic building preservation guidelines, while bemoaning government procurement practices. You have to follow such stringent rules, even though some of them dont make common sense, he said. Were bound by those rules. I dont even have a choice.

Pruitts travel expenses were unearthed by a bipartisan effort headed by Gowdy to get him to turn over his flight records, which were then leaked to the Washington Post (paywall). The EPA says Pruitt has flown first class since Spring 2017 because of security threats, after a protester made vulgar and threatening comments to him.

A Democratic congressman also has triggered an internal investigation into Pruitts installation of the secure phone booth. Previous EPA officials have made do with a secure facility on a different floor of the building, but Pruitt told the Post, Its kind of hard to tell someone thats reaching out that, to have a confidential secure conversation, Ive got to go down two floors, and over two levels, and Ill call you back.

Too many scandals

The media has played an crucial role in uncovering ethics violations. Politico spent months snooping Prices flight patterns, ending in his firing. Brenda Fitzgerald, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was forced to resign when Politico reported she had been trading stocks in tobacco companies while running an agency tasked with cutting cigarette use. Meanwhile, billionaire investor Carl Icahn quit just before the New Yorker published an investigation (paywall) into his conflicts of interest while acting as a special advisor to Trump.

But in a normal administration, many of the other scandals mentioned in this story would have dominated the news for days. Under Trump, constant controversy means its a surprise if government misspending makes the front page. Its hard to blame anyone for that. As Shaub writes, the shocks are coming too fast to hold anyones attention for long, and it becomes hard to focus the reaction in ways that are effective.

What can be done?

Painter is optimistic that the federal government can still be cleaned up. We went through Watergate and prior situations where there was a lot of corruption either in the White House or Congress or both, and weve come out of it, he said, arguing that voters wont tolerate much more of this.

His fellow onlookers are less bullish, worrying, instead, that corrupt behavior has become normalized, to a point that to recover would take a large backlash in the form of criminal indictments or an anti-corruption presidential candidate.

Ornstein has become fond of citing former senator and all-round polymath Daniel Patrick Moynihans essay Defining Deviancy Down (pdf), to show how quickly things can go downhill.

There is always a certain amount of deviancy in a society, Moynihan once said, paraphrasing his essay. But when you get too much, you begin to think that its not really that bad. Pretty soon you become accustomed to very destructive behavior.

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A Delta flight caught fire shortly after landing at an airport in Atlanta, the airline has confirmed.

The plane was on its way to Quito, Ecuador, but suffered a mechanical problem shortly after take-off from Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport and was forced to return. The Federal Aviation Authority said the brakes locked up upon landing.

Footage from a passenger on another flight showed the planes landing gear on fire.

Plane on fire on the runway at Atlanta Airport, Ronnie Fernando wrote on Twitter. Speculation as to what it was looked kinda significant.

The plane, which had 199 people on board, was towed back to the gate where the blaze was extinguished.

Passengers continued to Quito on a different flight, the airline said.

A Delta spokesperson told The Independent: "Flight 673 landed safely after returning to Atlanta for a mechanical issue. Upon landing, flames were noted and quickly extinguished on one of the aircrafts landing gears."
Donald Trump Jr. took aim at his fathers 2016 rival Jeb Bush in a scathing tweet after Bush reportedly jokingly implied that the presidents children dont love him.

In a speech at Yale Tuesday, the former Florida governor quipped that after the 2016 Republican primary in South Carolina, he returned home to children who actually love me, according to the Yale Daily News. The student newspaper said his comment was met with laughter from the crowd and interpreted by some as a jab at President Donald Trump.

Trump Jr. was clearly among those who saw it that way. The presidents eldest son tweeted a response Wednesday night, writing: Jeb! I love everything about my father. I love that hes a fighter, I love that he has guts, I love that hes President (all those things youre not).

Also love that he learned enough about politics in a few weeks to dismantle you piece by piece despite it being your lifes work, he added.

Jeb! I love everything about my father. I love that hes a fighter, I love that he has guts, I love that hes President (all those things youre not)



Also love that he learned enough about politics in a few weeks to dismantle you piece by piece despite it being your lifes work https://t.co/4fcnA1AgAa  Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) March 29, 2018

Trump Jr. isnt the first member of his family to ridicule the former Republican presidential hopeful.

The president repeatedly mocked Bush throughout the 2016 campaign, calling him a basket case, an embarrassment to the Bush family, and  Trumps personal favorite Bush barb  low-energy.

The president even once fell back on a popular playground insult, poking fun of Bush for his glasses  or lack thereof.

Jeb Bush just got contact lenses and got rid of the glasses. He wants to look cool, but its far too late, Trump tweeted in February 2016.
Donald Trump speaks at Local 18 Richfield Training Facility in Richfield, Ohio: AP

President Donald Trump has said that the US will withdraw its troops from Syria very soon despite repeated declarations that he would not divulge military movements.

Mr Trump boasted at a rally in Ohio, the main focus of which was supposed to be US infrastructure, that his administration is winning the fight against Isis.

Were knocking the hell out of Isis. Well be coming out of Syria, like, very soon, the president said. Let the other people take care of it now.

We got to get back to our country where we belong, where we want to be, he added.

However, when asked about Mr Trumps remarks later, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said she unaware about any plans for a troop withdrawal.

The remarks also went against repeated promises from Mr Trump over the last two years that he would not talk publicly about military matters. It was something he criticised frequently on the campaign trail and in April last year, during remarks about Syria, he said: Militarily, I dont like to say where Im going and what Im doing.

The Pentagon has acknowledged about 2,000 troops in Syria, many of them working closely with the Kurdish militia the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) against Isis.

Last year, the SDF captured the Syrian city of Raqqa, Isiss de-facto capital, and the jihadis have now lost the vast majority of the territory it once held across Syria and Iraq.

But even as Isis has lost significant strongholds such as Raqqa, experts warn that the terror group remains a lethal force and Mr Trumps words put him at odds with statements from Rex Tilleron, his recently fired secretary of state.

Mr Tillerson gave a speech earlier this year that advocated a lengthy mission for the US in Syria, not only to prevent the possible return of Isis but also because of the battle for influence in a conflict that involves a number of nations. Russia and Iran have backed the Syrian army of President Bashar al-Assad and the US will be loathe to leave the arena completely. Defence Secretary James Mattis has said that he believes the US should pull out of Syria at some point but has not suggested it should be done quickly.

Story continues

Also during his Ohio speech, Mr Trump suggested delaying the implementation of a revised trade deal with South Korea until after a deal with North Korea over ending its nuclear programme. Mr Trump suggested that holding up the deal will give him leverage in the unprecedented proposed talks with North Korea and its leader Kim Jong-un. Although making such a deal given the complexities of the situation, including the input of South Korea, China, Japan and others, will be much more difficult then Mr Trump makes it sound.

The US and South Korea announced this week that they had agreed to make changes to their six-year-old trade pact, which Mr Trump had labelled a horror show.

South Korea promised to lift existing limits on the number of cars US car makers can export to the country. It also restricts, by almost a third, the amount of steel that South Korea can export to America.

I may hold it up until after a deal is made with North Korea, Mr Trump said. Do you know why? Because its a very strong card and I want to make sure everybody is treated fairly and were moving along very nicely with South Korea.

Just before making this threat, Mr Trump called the revisions in the trade agreement a wonderful fix that would level the playing field on steel and cars and trucks coming into this country.
Libreville (AFP) - Equatorial Guinea carried out a wave of arrests and torture after an attempted coup last December, activists say.

Several members of the opposition Citizens for Innovation (CI) party among 38 who were held at the main police station in the capital Malabo -- which they dubbed "Guantanamo" -- told AFP of alleged abuse during their detention from December 28 to January 3.

"We were tortured for a week," said party activist Ernesto Obama Ondo, 42. "I received 150 lashes every day," he said in Malabo. "My buttocks were in shreds."

Mireille Buila Euka, 24, also recounted being lashed, with her hands and feet bound. "I was whipped 100 times the first night," she said.

The party has said that during their trial for "rebellion" in February, around 30 of the 147 defendants could not even stand up because of the alleged torture they endured at "Guantanamo".

Many were rounded up following a failed December 24 coup in the tiny West African state, it has said.

The authorities say the attempted overthrow was planned internally and carried out by foreign agents -- about 30 foreign armed men were arrested just inside neighbouring Cameroon.

A small state of 1.2 million people, awash with oil but mired in poverty and a reputation for corruption, Equatorial Guinea has been ruled with an iron fist by Teodoro Obiang Nguema since 1979.

He seized power by ousting his own uncle, first post-independence president Francisco Macias Nguema, who was shot by firing squad.

Obiang has since seen off at least half a dozen assassination or coup attempts. He won a fifth seven-year term in 2016 with nearly 94 percent of votes.

Some CI activists had been arrested before the attempted coup after trying to stage a rally in Aconibe, the birthplace of party leader Gabriel Nse Obiang Obono, ahead of legislative elections last November.

Clashes with police left three officers injured, with assailants seizing their service weapons from them, according to court documents.

Story continues

- 'Who was tortured?' -

Equatorial Guinea's ambassador to France, Miguel Oyono Ndong Mifumu, dismissed the allegations of torture in an interview in Paris with AFP.

"Who was tortured?" he asked. "Torture is a word that's used when you want to tarnish someone's image.

"The (activists) weren't arrested because they were members of a political party (but) for sedition, disorderly conduct, defying authority and serious injuries" during the November clashes, he said.

Likening CI activists to "paramilitaries", Ndong Mifumu said around 200 people "beat up" police officers.

The 147 activists tried in late February faced the death penalty over the events in Aconibe.

The court ordered the party dissolved and sentenced 21 members including the CI's sole MP, Jesus Mitogo, to more than 30 years in jail, according to the party.

Obama Ondo said he and others were hospitalised with injuries suffered during their detention, an assertion confirmed to AFP by staff at Malabo's La Paz hospital.

It was at the hospital that Susana Esono, who is around 30, said she was nearly killed.

She was admitted with a broken arm and rib she said resulted from being beaten with an iron bar during her arrest on December 28.

"After two days at the La Paz hospital, a man... gave me an injection and I fainted," she said, adding that while still on a drip, she was taken to "Guantanamo" where the IV was removed.

- Dead detainee 'had been ill' -

The CI says another opposition activist, Santiago Ebee Ela, 41, was killed while in detention in mid-January.

Obiang has rejected the claim, saying Ela had been ill but promising an investigation into the death.

Lawyer Fabian Nsue and human rights watchdog Amnesty International said no such probe has begun.

Nsue said the victims were planning legal action but held out little hope for justice, telling AFP that the government aimed to "have done with CI".

Human Rights Watch (HRW) wants the United Nations to open an investigation, Sarah Saadoun, a researcher for the New York-based rights group, told AFP by email.

Amnesty researcher Marta Colmer said that since the November elections, "we have seen an increase in the number of reports of torture of members of the opposition."

The authorities' "unwillingness to collaborate makes it difficult for international organisations to verify human rights violations in the country," she added.

burs-cc/gd/ri/ceb
Letters to the Editor: Saving lives is the point; Getting facts on immigrants; Marching for our lives; Blasting African-American pastors doesn't help
Eastern Washington was 7-4 in 2017. (Photo by William Mancebo/Getty Images)

An Eastern Washington player has been indefinitely suspended after he allegedly drove a truck into an apartment complex.

According to police, Keenan Williams is accused of driving his truck into a first-floor apartment and causing approximately $100,000 worth of damage to the building. Hes charged with a hit-and-run.

After hitting the apartment complex, he then allegedly fled. The incident happened in the evening of March 9. Williams turned himself into police the next day. The man in the apartment that got hit said he heard screeching tires just before the truck burst into his residence and Williams allegedly exclaimed that he was going to lose his scholarship after the incident happened.

From the Spokesman-Review:

[Cameron] Kubrock told police he heard screeching tires and turned to look just as a large, dark-colored Ford truck smashed through my window and wall a foot from where I was. Kubrock was showered with glass from the window but was not hurt. The police report does not indicate whether anyone else was in the truck while Williams was at the wheel. However, Kubrock and two other residents stated to police that several other men were gathered around the truck after it struck the building.

EWU said its aware of the incident and is will help cooperate with the police investigation.

Williams was fourth on the team in tackles with 55 and had four sacks in 2017 as the FCS school went 7-4.

      

Nick Bromberg is a writer for Yahoo Sports.

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Cairo (AFP) - Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has won a second term with 96.9 percent of valid votes, state media reported on Friday, raising a previous tally from the preliminary count.

The flagship state-owned newspaper Al-Ahram also raised its estimate of turnout in the March 26-28 election to 42.08 percent, saying 25 million of Egypt's 60 million registered voters had cast ballots.

On Tuesday, the paper had reported that Sisi was reelected with 92 percent of the vote on a turnout of just over 40 percent.

It gave no explanation for the upward revisions.

Sisi, who as army chief ousted Egypt's first freely elected president -- Islamist Mohamed Morsi -- after mass street protests in 2013, won his first term in 2014 with 96.9 percent of the vote.

The only other candidate on the ballot paper this year, Moussa Mostafa Moussa, won 3.1 percent of the vote, Al-Ahram said.

Moussa, a little-known politician who is himself a supporter of the president, registered immediately before the close date for applications, saving the election from being a one-horse race.

The National Election Authority is scheduled to announce the full official result on Monday.

Moussa conceded defeat on Wednesday evening, saying he had hoped for 10 percent of the vote but knew all along that he was up against the "immense popularity" of the president.

More heavyweight would-be challengers were all sidelined, detained or pulled out.

Opposition groups had called for a boycott of this week's vote which they labelled a charade.

Even at 42 percent, turnout was down on the 47 percent in the 2014 election despite appeals from Prime Minister Sherif Ismail for voters to fulfil their patriotic duty.
(LAS VEGAS)  Elaine Wynn, the ex-wife of embattled casino mogul Steve Wynn, said during a court hearing Wednesday that she told the companys general counsel in 2009 that she had received information alleging her ex-husband had raped an employee in 2005. The general counsel later denied receiving any information about a rape allegation.

The revelation came during testimony in a special hearing in a years long civil case in state court in Las Vegas involving her, her ex-husband and the casino-operating company they founded. It was the first time she testified in open court regarding the sexual misconduct allegation against Steve Wynn.

He has denied any wrongdoing.

Elaine Wynn said she did not report the information to anyone else in the company other than general counsel Kimmarie Sinatra. She acknowledged under questioning from the attorneys representing Wynn Resorts that she did not share the information with the companys board of directors of which she was a member at the time.

I told Ms. Sinatra that I had received information alleging that Mr. Wynn had raped an employee of the hotel in 2005, she testified. She said Sinatra later told her the accusation had been discussed by attorneys and that it was deemed not to have been an issue of concern for the company, that it had been handled personally, and therefore, it had been resolved.

Elaine Wynn has argued she was not re-nominated the companys board of directors in 2015 in retaliation for her inquiries into company activities.

The two-day hearing that ended Wednesday was meant for her attorneys to show that she reported to the company bad acts she has alleged against her ex-husband and others. Clark County District Court Judge Elizabeth Gonzalez ruled the jury in the trial scheduled to begin in April can hear about the settlement and the alleged illegal gambling activities of two company executives.

Steve Wynn resigned last month as chairman and CEO of the casino-operating company amid sexual misconduct allegations that were first reported by the Wall Street Journal. The newspaper reported two months ago that several women said the billionaire harassed or assaulted them and that one case led to a $7.5 million settlement in 2005 with a manicurist formerly employed by the company. Other allegations and a settlement with a different employee have since surfaced.

Story continues

Steve Wynn, 76, has vehemently denied the allegations and attributed them to Elaine Wynn, whose attorney has denied that she instigated the news report.

Wynn Resorts has established a committee to investigate the allegations and to review internal policies and procedures.

Attorneys for Wynn Resorts on Tuesday formally acknowledged that an employee accused Steve Wynn of sexual misconduct in the workplace in 2005 and that the dispute was settled. On Wednesday, however, they disputed that Elaine Wynn reported the information as a corporate governance matter, but instead did it to gain leverage in her divorce.

Notice that there was zero evidence presented, none, that anyone on the nominating committee (of the board of directors) knew anything about this 2009 incident, Todd Bice, an attorney for Wynn Resorts, said.  We fundamentally dispute that Ms. Wynn was reporting this matter to the company as part of a governance issue as opposed to seeking information from Ms. Sinatra and sharing information with Ms. Sinatra as part of Ms. Wynns divorce case.

Sinatra after the hearing issued a statement saying Elaine Wynn at no point told her that an allegation of rape had been leveled against Steve Wynn.

In the relevant conversation in which she promised to destroy Steve Wynn and said she didnt care if that reduced the companys stock price to zero in the process, Elaine Wynn made an oblique reference to a settlement, and nothing more, Sinatra said.

Elaine Wynn owns 9.5 million shares in Wynn Resorts, which she founded with her ex-husband in 2002. Steve Wynn last week sold all his stock in the company.

A larger portion of the long-running case was settled earlier this month when Wynn Resorts agreed to pay a Tokyo-based company $2.4 billion by the end of March.
By David Shepardson NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is expected to use a Virginia car dealership on Tuesday as the setting to tout its rejection of the Obama administration's landmark vehicle fuel efficiency rules, a move that could put automakers in the middle of a battle between the Trump administration and California. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt plans to sign a declaration by Sunday that the Obama administrations vehicle efficiency rules for 2022 through 2025 are "not appropriate" and must be revised, Reuters reported last week. Pruitt is expected to speak at an event at a Chevrolet dealership in suburban Washington and will joined by groups representing dealers and automakers, according to people familiar with the plans. The state of California, which has the power to effectively create its own fuel economy standards, several allied states and environmental groups are gearing up for a legal and political fight over the rules, aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions from new cars and trucks. California Air Resources Board chair Mary Nichols said in January the board does not believe the standards should be lowered. Pruitt was in California earlier this week, but did not meet with Nichols. Two administration officials and several automakers told Reuters the timing of proposing specific revisions to existing fuel economy standards and emissions limits remains in flux. EPA officials suggested a detailed proposal could come in late May or June, while the Transportation Department is pushing for a speedier proposal, automakers and officials said. The EPA declined Thursday to comment on Pruitt's plans. An EPA spokeswoman said last week "a final determination will be signed by April 1." Automakers want rule changes to address lower gasoline prices and a shift in U.S. consumer preferences to larger, less fuel-efficient vehicles. Auto industry executives have not publicly sought specific reductions in the requirements negotiated with the Obama administration in 2011. But they have urged Pruitt and U.S. President Donald Trump to revise the Obama standards to make it easier and less costly to meet complex targets, which vary depending on the size of vehicles and whether they are classified as cars or trucks. Overall, the Obama rules called for roughly doubling by 2025 to about 50 miles (80 km) per gallon the average fuel efficiency of new vehicles sold in the United States. But the Obama rules included a review by April 2018 as to whether the final years were feasible or not. By declaring the Obama rules "not appropriate, the Trump administration can reopen the process of setting vehicle targets agreed to by automakers in 2011. Pruitt is expected to declare that the existing 2022-2025 model year rules on fuel economy must be revised but he is not expected to immediately propose new requirements, people familiar with the plans said. They asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak to the news media. The so-called Corporate Average Fuel Economy rules sought to double the average fuel efficiency of automakers' fleets, or complete lineup of cars and light trucks, to about 50 miles (80 km) per gallon by 2025. While automakers want relief from the Obama rules, they are pressing the administration to avoid a battle with California and maintain a single, nationwide set of fuel efficiency requirements. In New York, Toyota North America <7203.T> Chief Executive Jim Lentz said at an Reuters event on Thursday that automakers would face higher costs if they had to manage fuel economy by each individual state. Lentz said individual state emissions requirements could result in Toyota getting "towards the end of the year and I no longer can sell SUVs," depending on the state's fuel economy numbers. "It would be an absolute nightmare for us to figure out." When fuel rules were written in 2011 amid high gas prices, fuel efficiency was the second highest attribute considered by Toyota buyers, Lentz said. Today it is 10th. (Reporting by David Shepardson in New York. Additional reporting by Nick Carey in New York; Editing by Tom Brown)
By Tuvan Gumrukcu ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey said on Friday that a French pledge to help stabilize a region of northern Syria controlled by Kurdish-dominated forces amounted to support for terrorism and could make France a "target of Turkey". French backing for the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), spearheaded by the Kurdish YPG militia, has angered Ankara at a time when it is fighting the YPG in northern Syria and considers it a terrorist organization. President Tayyip Erdogan said France had taken a "completely wrong approach" on Syria, adding that he exchanged heated words with his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, last week. The split with France is the latest rift between Turkey under Erdogan and its NATO allies in the West. Turkey has long complained about U.S. support for the SDF, among a number of irritants to ties with the leading NATO power. Last year it compared the German and Dutch authorities to Nazis for restricting pro-Erdogan demonstrations during a campaign for a referendum to give him greater powers. The White House said President Donald Trump, who added fresh uncertainty on Thursday when he said that the United States would be "coming out of Syria" very soon, spoke to Erdogan on Friday "to discuss regional developments and the strategic partnership between the United States and Turkey". "The two leaders expressed support for continued efforts to increase cooperation between their two countries, to advance shared interests as NATO allies, and to work through issues that affect the bilateral relationship," a White House statement said. Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag said the French stance was setting Paris on a collision course with Ankara. "Those who enter into cooperation and solidarity with terror groups against Turkey ... will, like the terrorists, become a target of Turkey," Bozdag, who is also the Turkish government spokesman, wrote on Twitter. "We hope France does not take such an irrational step." Macron met an SDF delegation on Thursday and gave assurances of French support to stabilize northern Syria. A presidential source later said France could increase its military contribution to the U.S.-led coalition which - alongside the SDF - is fighting Islamic State in Syria. The United States has 2,000 troops in SDF-held territory, and France also has some troops there as part of the coalition. Ankara considers the YPG fighters in the SDF to be an extension of Kurdish militants who have waged a decades-old insurgency in southeast Turkey. Turkish forces drove the YPG from the northwestern Syrian town of Afrin nearly two weeks ago and Erdogan says Ankara is preparing to extend operations along hundreds of miles of border, including areas where the American forces are deployed. The Afrin operation has already drawn international criticism, notably from Macron. Ankara, meanwhile, has said it expects its allies to move their troops out of the way of a Turkish advance. "We have no intention to harm soldiers of allied nations, but we cannot allow terrorists to roam freely (in northern Syria)," Erdogan said. One U.S. service member and one other member of the U.S.-led coalition were killed by a bomb in Syria overnight, the first to die in an attack this year. TRUMP SURPRISE Trump's remark on Thursday that the United States would be "coming out of Syria" appeared to take his own administration by surprise. U.S. officials have said in recent months that Washington planned to keep an open-ended presence in northern Syria, to support stability in the SDF-controlled region, prevent any Islamic State resurgence and counter Iranian influence. SDF spokesman Kino Gabriel said the force had not been informed of any U.S. withdrawal plan. "Our work and coordination (with the coalition) is continuing," Gabriel told Reuters in a written message. Asked whether U.S. forces had been informed of a decision to withdraw or were preparing to do so, a spokesman for the coalition said he would not comment on future operations. A PYD member in Paris said Macron had promised at Thursday's meeting with the SDF to send more troops to northern Syria, provide humanitarian assistance and push a diplomatic solution. The French presidency did not confirm that Macron had pledged more troops, but the presidential source said France could bolster its military intervention in Syria "within the existing framework" of the U.S.-led coalition. The presidency also said Macron was offering to mediate between Turkey and the SDF - a suggestion Erdogan dismissed. "Do not engage in things beyond you, we do not need a mediator," he said, responding to the French offer in remarks to members of his ruling AK Party in Ankara. "Who are you to speak of mediation between Turkey and a terrorist organization?" Accusing Paris of appeasing terrorism, he said Macron would be held accountable for his policy by his own people. "We hope France doesn't come to us for help when the terrorists running from Syria and Iraq fill their country after being encouraged by their policy," he said. Erdogan spoke last week with Macron about the French president's criticism of Turkey's Afrin campaign. "He was saying weird things and so, even if it was a bit high-octane, I had to tell him some things," Erdogan said. "It is not anyone's place to portray our armed forces as something we do not find acceptable." (Additional reporting by John Irish and Marine Pennetier in Paris, Tom Perry in Beirut, Maher Chmaytelli in Baghdad and David Brunnstrom in Washington; Writing by Dominic Evans; Editing by Peter Graff and Susan Thomas)
Updated | Ralph Peters, who recently walked away after a long stint as a Fox News analyst, accused the network on Friday of blocking him from speaking on Russia issues because he refused to unswervingly support President Donald Trump.

In an op-ed published in The Washington Post Friday, the retired lieutenant colonel claimed he was the only person on the Fox payroll who was trained in Russian studies and the language, and that had met Russian intelligence officers in person.

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But dating back to fall 2016, when national security issues surrounded Trump, Peters said he was increasingly blocked from speaking on Russian affairs and the intelligence community, despite being an expert.

I did not hide my views at Fox and, as word spread that I would not unswervingly support President Trump and, worse, that I believed an investigation into Russian interference was essential to our national security, I was excluded from segments that touched on Vladimir Putins possible influence on an American president, his campaign or his administration, Peters wrote.

Peters said he was only rarely allowed to comment on whether Russian President Vladimir Putin targeted Trump. As special counsel Robert Muellers indictments hit, he could not even talk about how Russians operate.

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Fox never tried to put words in my mouth, nor was I told explicitly that I was taboo on Trump-Putin matters, Peters wrote. I simply was no longer called on for topics central to my expertise.

He also said that Foxs prime-time lineup preaches paranoia, attacking processes and institutions vital to our republic and challenging the rule of law. Fox suspended Peters for a couple of weeks in 2015 for using profanity to bash ex-President Barack Obama.

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Peters, who did not renew his contract on March 1, said the only reason he stayed as a contributor for so long was the seductive opportunity to reach millions of Americans.

I rationalized that I could make a difference by remaining at Fox and speaking honestly, Peters wrote. I was wrong.

A Fox News spokesperson in an emailed statement to Newsweek Friday afternoon said: There is no truth to the notion that Ralph Peters was blocked from appearing on the network to talk about the major headlines, including discussing Russia, North Korea and even gun control recently. In fact, he appeared across both networks multiple times in just the past three weeks.

This story has been updated with a comment from Fox News.

This article was first written by Newsweek

More from Newsweek
Tad Cummins, a former high school teacher in Tennessee, has decided to plead guilty to kidnapping a then-15-year-old student for 38 days and taking her across the country last year, PEOPLE confirms.

Cummins, 51, is charged with kidnapping and sex crimes in the abduction of Elizabeth Thomas, who was a freshman at Culleoka Unit School in Maury County when she vanished with Cummins in March 2017.

He was fired from the school, where he taught health science, after being named a suspect in the case.

Cummins was scheduled to appear in court later this year after pleading not guilty in May to federal charges. However, on Thursday, his attorney announced his intentions to reverse his earlier plea, citing personal reflection, the Tennessean reports.

The Thomas family is very relieved that Tad Cummins decided to do the right thing by pleading guilty. We see this as one more step toward justice for Mary Catherine Elizabeth Thomas, Jason Whatley, the Thomas familys attorney, said in a statement obtained by PEOPLE.

Elizabeth Thomas

Thomas was reported missing on March 13, 2017. Cummins, one of her teachers, disappeared the same day. The pair was the subject of an AMBER Alert, and investigators had said they were off the grid.

Both authorities and Thomas family have said Cummins groomed her for months before the abduction.

After 38 days on the run, Cummins and Thomas were found living in a four-walled shelter in Northern California.

When she returned home to Tennessee, Thomas was taken to an undisclosed location to work with psychologists and counselors.

While she was not physically harmed, she had undergone a series of traumatic events, authorities said.

 Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter.

Tad Cummins

Its a highly emotional issue, Thomas father, Anthony Thomas, told PEOPLE last summer after his daughters return.

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He declined at that time to discuss how Elizabeth was doing but he said that with the familys support and help of counselors, she was making progress.

We are doing fine, he said. Its just a process you have to go through.

Elizabeth returned to Columbia, in Maury County, in July and is home-schooled.

Theres been so much speculation about me, she told a local paper in September, in her first public comments after returning home. There are people saying, Shes not talking for this reason. Shes not talking for that reason. Its not that. Its just the publicity is affecting people.

Cummins attorney could not be reached on Thursday. Elizabeths family declined to comment on news of the plea.
When the Hart family  parents Jennifer and Sarah and their children, who lived in Washington  plummeted in their SUV off a California cliff 100 feet into the ocean below, they left behind a possibly unsolvable mystery.

I can fairly say that several of the questions that have been asked today [will] never be answered, Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman said at a news conference on Wednesday. It was un-witnessed, we dont know what happened.

Key facts about the crash remain unknown, with the available information complicating instead of clarifying what might have happened.

The incident was first discovered on Monday and California authorities believe it killed everyone involved: the parents and three of the children, whose bodies have been found, and three children who are still missing.

Among other things yet to be determined are how and when the wreck occurred and why the family was traveling.

We have no evidence and reason to believe that this was an intentional attack, Allman said. Certainly people are wondering what caused this.

According to law enforcement, the family was in a 2003 GMC Yukon XL when they went over a cliff along the Pacific Coast Highway in Northern California, west of Sacramento. Jennifer and Sarah, both 38, were in the front while it is believed their six children, ranging in age from 12 to 19, were in the back.

Sarah and Jennifer were married, according to their family and friends, authorities tell PEOPLE.

None of their kids were wearing seat belts.

Describing a very confusing scene, Allman said, There were no skid marks, there were no brake marks or there was no indication why this vehicle traversed approximately 75 feet over a dirt pull-out and went into the Pacific Ocean.

 Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter.

The Hart family

The site of the crash in Northern California that killed the Hart family

While only five bodies have been found, Allman said, We have every indication to believe that all six children were in [the vehicle].

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As the investigation continues, a previous abuse allegation against Sarah and the possibility of recent neglect in the family are drawing scrutiny even as friends describe them as open-hearted.

A California Highway Patrol spokesman tells PEOPLE they cannot comment on the alleged abuse or a possible connection  if any  between it and the recent crash.

We cant comment because we dont really know, the spokesman says. As we get info in that, [it] will come to light if there ever was any.

You know how sometimes rumors fly, so we dont want to put anything out there that isnt true, he says.

Three days before the crash was reported, Washington State Department of Social and Health Services received a call reporting that the six Hart children appeared to be potential victims of alleged abuse or neglect, Norah West, the departments spokeswoman, tells PEOPLE.

The department sent an employee to the familys Woodland home but was unable to make contact with them, West says. Social services workers again returned to the Harts home on Monday and Tuesday.

The couple had no prior history with the states child protective services, West says.

The Dekalbs, a neighbor couple, have come forward to local media to say that they were the ones who reported the suspected abuse on Friday and that when state workers knocked on the Harts door, the family was allegedly home but did not answer.

The next morning when we saw that the vehicle was gone, and then Sunday morning when it still wasnt there, we figured something was off, Bruce Dekalb told TV station KGW.

Jennifer and Sarah first began adopting children in 2006, the Oregonian reports. All six of their kids were home-schooled, according to news station KOIN.

Bruces wife, Dana Dekalb, said that one of the Hart boys would allegedly come over and ask for food because his mothers did not feed him and his siblings and wouldnt let them play outside.

He was asking that we not tell his mom, to hide it [the food] and put it by the fence so he could get to it, Dana told KOIN, alleging, They were withholding food from him.

I was trying to help them and protect them, Dana said, adding, Thats not how I thought it was going to end.

The site of the crash in Northern California that killed the Hart family

Guilty of Domestic Abuse

Records obtained by PEOPLE show that before they lived in Washington, the Harts lived in Alexandria, Minnesota, where Sarah had been charged with hitting one of her daughters after a teacher found bruises on the childs body.

Court records state that in 2011, 6-year-old Abigail Hart told a teacher that she had owies on her tummy and back. When the teacher asked Abigail how she got the bruises on her stomach and back, she said, Mom hit me.

During police questioning, Sarah admitted to letting her anger get out of control and spanking her daughter the day before, according to the criminal complaint against her. But according to the Oregonian, it was Jennifer whom Abigail said had hit her.

The defendant explained that she and her partner, Jennifer, do not ordinarily use spanking as disciplinary measure in their household. However, they have recently resorted to spanking to deal with Abigails behavior, the complaint states.

Sarah admitted to taking her daughter into the bathroom, bending her over the edge of the bathtub and hitting her on the backside.

Sarah was originally charged with domestic assault and malicious punishment, according to court records. She agreed to plead guilty to the domestic assault charge and the malicious punishment charge was dropped.

In April 2011, she was sentenced to 90 days in jail  which was stayed  and one year of supervised probation, according to court documents.

Still, friends of the Harts reportedly described a radically different situation at odds with the neighbors claims and the previous abuse plea.

They really found the goodness in everybody and I hope they we can all really learn a beautiful lesson from that and carry that legacy on, friend Max Ribner told KOIN, while another, Zippy Lomax said: Jen and Sarah really were the kind of parents that I think the world desperately needs.

KOIN reports that, friends said, they did not see any evidence of abuse. (PEOPLEs efforts to reach the Harts relatives and neighbors for comment were unsuccessful.)

The family purchased property in Woodland in May 2017 and had lived in Oregon, in addition to Minnesota, according to the Oregonian.

Devonte Hart (right) in 2014

Previously in the Spotlight

Among the missing Hart children is 15-year-old Devonte, who was featured in a viral photograph in 2014 showing him hugging a white police officer during a rally in Portland, Oregon, calling for police reform.

Devonte was in the vehicle but his body has not been recovered, Sheriff Allman told reporters on Wednesday.

Aside from Devonte, also disappeared are his sisters Hannah Hart, 15, and 12-year-old Sierra Hart, according to Allman.

Bodies of the other Hart children  Markis, 19; Jeremiah, 14; and 14-year-old Abigail  were recovered by authorities and identified by relatives.

California Highway Patrol officials tell PEOPLE that investigators dont know whether Jennifer intentionally drove the SUV over the cliff.

However, authorities believe she pulled into a dirt turnout off of the side of the highway by the ocean before the vehicle continued through the lengthy stretch of land and directly off the cliff into the water.

I dont know if they were parked or if they continued to roll, CHP Sgt. Christopher Dalin said at Wednesdays news conference. I dont know if it rolled over the edge, if it launched over the edge. I wont have any of that information until we get all of our data back, analyze it and we see what the evidence leads us to.

Anyone with information regarding the familys last known whereabouts before the crash is urged to call 707-234-2100.

 With reporting by KC BAKER
SpaceXs two prototype Starlink satellites are seen on either side of their carrier in advance of Februarys launch. (SpaceX via YouTube)

The Federal Communications Commission says it has approved SpaceXs application to provide broadband internet access via thousands of Starlink satellites  a new breed of spacecraft thats currently under development at the companys Seattle-area facilities.

SpaceX launched its first test prototype satellites, known as Tintin A and B, as secondary payloads last month. The California-based company plans to put 4,425 spacecraft into low Earth orbit for the first phase of whats intended to be a low-cost satellite internet service.

This is the first approval of a U.S.-licensed satellite constellation to provide broadband services using a new generation of low-Earth orbit satellite technologies, the FCC said today in a statement.

SpaceXs president and chief operating officer, Gwynne Shotwell, said she appreciated the FCCs thorough review and approval of SpaceXs constellation license.

Although we still have much to do with this complex undertaking, this is an important step toward SpaceX building a next-generation satellite network that can link the globe with reliable and affordable broadband service, especially reaching those who are not yet connected, Shotwell said in an emailed statement.

When SpaceXs billionaire founder, Elon Musk, unveiled the plan in 2015 during a Seattle visit, he said he expected to put a useful Version 1 that has global coverage into service by around 2020. He estimated itd cost $10 billion to $15 billion to build a full version of the system.

Over the past three years, SpaceX has recruited hundreds of engineers to work on the satellite project at facilities in Redmond, Wash. Redmond serves as one of the sites for ground stations that are designed to link up with the prototype satellites.

The satellite service is seen as a key revenue generator for Musks vision of sending thousands of settlers to the Red Planet, and eventually building a city on Mars. But Musk isnt the only one chasing the satellite internet market:

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OneWeb, Space Norway and Telesat are among other ventures that have received FCC approval to provide satellite broadband services. They are targeting the same general time frame that Musk has in mind, if not the same ultimate goal.

In its authorization memo, the FCC rejected challenges to SpaceXs application from OneWeb, Telesat and other potential competitors. However, the commission said its approval was conditioned on SpaceX coordinating its efforts with International Telecommunications Union, which plays a lead role in global satellite operations.

The FCC also said itll have to sign off on SpaceXs plan to mitigate orbital debris  a concern that was raised by NASA. It set a 2024 deadline for SpaceX to get at least half of the 4,425 authorized satellites into orbit, and a 2027 deadline for completing the constellation.

Heres todays FCC statement on the authorization for SpaceX:

The Federal Communications Commission approved an application by Space Exploration Holdings, doing business as SpaceX, to provide broadband services using satellite technology in the United States and around the world. With this action, the Commission takes another step to increase high-speed broadband availability and competition in the United States. This is the first approval of a U.S.-licensed satellite constellation to provide broadband services using a new generation of low-Earth orbit satellite technologies. SpaceX proposed a satellite system comprised of 4,425 satellites and was granted authority to use frequencies in the Ka (20/30 GHz) and Ku (11/14 GHz) bands to provide global Internet connectivity. The Memorandum Opinion, Order and Authorization today outlines the conditions under which SpaceX is authorized to provide service using its proposed NGSO FSS satellite constellation. Specifically, the Order specifies the conditions to ensure compliance with Commission rules, and to protect other operations in the requested frequency bands. Over the past year, the FCC has approved requests by OneWeb, Space Norway, and Telesat to access the United States market to provide broadband services using satellite technology that holds promise to expand Internet access, particularly in remote and rural areas across the country. These approvals are the first of their kind for a new generation of large, non-geostationary satellite orbit, fixed-satellite service systems, and the Commission continues to process other, similar requests.

For further reference, the FCC listed IBFS File Nos. SAT-LOA-20161115-00118 and SAT-LOA-20170726-00110, and Call Signs S2983 and S3018

More from GeekWire:
BANGKOK (Reuters) - A fire on board a bus in western Thailand killed 20 migrant workers from Myanmar early on Friday, police said. The bus was carrying 47 workers who had just crossed the border into Thailand to work legally. Three other people on the bus were injured but the rest escaped unharmed, police said. "The driver said he saw fire breaking out from the middle of the bus, which then spread quickly," Kritkanok Dan-udom, the chief of Maetor district police station, told Reuters. Pictures in Thai media showed the burnt-out shell of the bus. Thailand's roads have been ranked as the deadliest in the world after Libya's, according to the World Health Organization's most recent study. Thailand is estimated to have more than 3 million migrant workers, many of whom come from much poorer neighbor Myanmar. Work permit rules were tightened last year. (Reporting by Panarat Thepgumpanat; Writing by Patpicha Tanakasempipat; Editing by Paul Tait)
David Shulkin, who also served under President Obama, said Washington had become 'toxic' in recent months. - FR159526 AP

David Shulkin, the veterans affairs secretary, has taken a parting shot at Donald Trump and "toxic Washington" after he was sacked by the US president.

Mr Shulkin's departure was announced by Mr Trump in a tweet on Wednesday evening, in which he revealed he was nominating his personal doctor for the role.

Mr Shulkin had been embroiled in an ethics-based controversy after he was found to have taken his wife on a business trip to Europe, during which he improperly accepted tickets to Wimbledon.

In a scathing op-ed in the New York Times, the 58-year-old hit out at Mr Trump writing: "As I prepare to leave government, I am struck by a recurring thought: It should not be this hard to serve your country."

Mr Shulkin, who has been in the role for the last three year, the only cabinet member to stay in place from the Obama administration, claimed he was fired because he was opposed to plans within the Trump administration to privatise healthcare for veterans.

I am pleased to announce that I intend to nominate highly respected Admiral Ronny L. Jackson, MD, as the new Secretary of Veterans Affairs....  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 28, 2018

The former hospital administrator said: "In recent months...the environment in Washington has turned so toxic, chaotic, disrespectful and subversive that it became impossible for me to accomplish the important work that our veterans need and deserve."

Mr Trump's decision to nominate his personal doctor, Rear Admiral Ronny Jackson, 50, as a replacement has been met with scepticism over his lack of experience in government.

His appointment will need to be confirmed by the Senate and there is some uncertainty over whether lawmakers will approve him overseeing the second largest government department and its vast budget.

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Dr Jackson has been seen as a telegenic replacement. Credit: AP

Dr Jackson gave the president a glowing bill of health in a televised briefing on his annual check up in January. He said Mr Trump, 71, was overweight but in excellent physical and mental health.

Ive found no reason whatsoever to think that the President has any issues whatsoever with his thought process, Dr Jackson announced.

The latest role change continues a tumultuous period that has seen a string of major staff departures from the White House and the cabinet.

'You're fired': Who Donald Trump has sacked and who has resigned during his time as president

In just the last month, Mr Trump has also replaced his secretary of state, national security adviser and economics adviser.

John Dowd, Mr Trump's lawyer, quit last week amid reports he feared the president was no longer following his advice.

Separately, it was revealed this week that a former Disney Channel actress is to join Mr Trump's press office.

Caroline Sunshine, 22, starred in Shake It Up, a series about teen dancers, and will join the White House as a press assistant after completing an internship there, her spokeswoman told US media.
DIYARBAKIR, Turkey (Reuters) - Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants staged an attack near a military base in southeast Turkey's Siirt province, killing six Turkish security force members and wounding seven, security sources said on Friday. They said the attack occurred in the area of a military base in the Eruh district of Siirt and that those killed were from a village guard militia which supports the Turkish military. The sources initially said five soldiers were killed. It was not clear when the attack occurred. State-run Anadolu news agency said four soldiers and three village guards were also wounded in the attack, which occurred in an area where road construction work was being carried out. The PKK is designated a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union. Conflict in mainly Kurdish southeast Turkey generally escalates as spring arrives in the mountainous region. More than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict between the Turkish state and the PKK, which launched a separatist insurgency in 1984. The conflict intensified after a ceasefire collapsed in 2015. Earlier this month, Turkey captured the northern Syrian town of Afrin after a two-month offensive against the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, which Ankara views as an extension of the PKK. (Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by Dominic Evans)
Lima (AFP) - Peru's former president Alberto Fujimori was released from hospital on Friday after his latest bout with illness, a local TV news channel reported.

In contrast to the chronically-ill Fujimori's previous hospital exits, neither of his high-profile children, Kenji and Keiko, were at his side when security guards wheeled him out of Lima's Centenario clinic.

His doctor, Alejandro Aguinaga, said on Thursday the 79-year-old was disturbed by the feud between his politically ambitious children, engaged in a public power struggle for his political mantle.

"It's clear that a situation of this nature bothers him a lot," Aguinaga said.

Fujimori was hospitalized with a stomach infection and dehydration on Wednesday.

He waved at journalists but made no comment as he boarded a vehicle that took him to his home in eastern Lima.

Keiko Fujimori, 42, has run twice for president, and heads the main opposition Popular Force party.

But Kenji, 37, is gathering momentum with his own party and is a possible candidate for the presidency in 2021.

Both Fujimori siblings have accused the other of corruption, in cases being investigated by prosecutors.

Their father, president from 1990-2000, was controversially pardoned in December by then-president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski while serving a 25-year sentence for human rights abuses.

In February, a court ordered him to stand trial over the 1992 killings of six farmers, ruling that the pardon did not give him immunity.
PARIS (Reuters) - France could adapt its military operation as part of the U.S.-led coalition in Syria if it deems it useful to achieve its objectives in the fight against Islamic State, a French presidential source said on Friday. "If the president felt that, in order to achieve our goals against Islamic State, we needed a moment to adapt our military intervention, then we should do it, but it would be within the existing framework," the source said. (Reporting by Marine Pennetier; writing by John Irish; editing by Richard Lough)
By Marine Pennetier and John Irish PARIS (Reuters) - France could increase its military presence to help a U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State in Syria and warned that a Turkish advance on a town controlled by Kurdish-backed militias would be "unacceptable", a presidential source said on Friday. President Emmanuel Macron has been criticised at home for his response to a Turkish operation against the YPG militia, with opponents saying he has abandoned the Kurds. The YPG militia makes up a large portion of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which have been at the forefront of the coalition's strategy to defeat the hard-line militants. After Macron's meeting on Thursday with an SDF delegation that included the YPG, its political arm the PYD, and Christian and Arab officials, a senior Kurdish official said Macron had promised to send more troops to the area as part of the coalition's efforts, provide humanitarian assistance and "mediate" between the Kurds and Ankara. That drew a furious response from NATO ally Turkey, which considers the YPG to be an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a decades-long insurgency against the state within Turkey. Speaking to reporters to clarify the Kurdish comments, a French presidential source said Paris had seen a resurgence of Islamic State in northeast Syria and would continue its fight against the group with the SDF. "France doesn't foresee any new military operation on the ground in northern Syria outside of the international coalition," the source said. "(But) if the president felt that, in order to achieve our goals against Islamic State, we needed a moment to bolster our military intervention, then we should do it, but it would be within the existing framework," the source said, without elaborating. A senior Turkish official had said on Friday a French pledge to help stabilise a region of northern Syria controlled by Kurdish-dominated forces amounted to support for terrorism and could make France a "target of Turkey". Macron had said in December he expected the campaign against Islamic State in Syria to be completed in February. Asked about comments by U.S. President Donald Trump that he might disengage from Syria "very soon", the source said Paris had at this stage not received any official request to send reinforcements. France, like the United States, has already extended arms and training to the YPG-led militia in the fight against Islamic State, and has dozens of special forces based in the region, which has infuriated Turkey. Turkey stormed the northern Syrian town of Afrin last week, and has repeatedly threatened to push its operations further east to the SDF-controlled Manbij where U.S. troops are stationed. Macron's office on Thursday said the young leader had offered to mediate between the Turks and the SDF, which it said had distanced itself from the PKK. "We will continue the dialogue with Turkey, it is an important and essential partner to find a solution to the Syrian civil war," the source said, responding to a barrage of angry rhetoric on Friday from Ankara. However, he warned that any military advance from Turkey to Manbij would be "unacceptable". (Reporting by Marine Pennetier; Writing by Richard Lough; Editing by Luke Baker)
Paris (AFP) - France said on Friday it is not planning a unilateral military operation in Syria outside the international coalition fighting the Islamic State group after senior Kurdish officials claimed Paris intended to send troops.

"France is not planning any new military operation on the ground in northern Syria outside the international coalition against Daesh," President Emmanuel Macron's office said in a statement, using another term for IS.

Macron met with a delegation from the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on Thursday, and Kurdish official Asya Abdullah told reporters afterwards that France was planning on sending "new French troops to Manbij".

"The cooperation will be reinforced," she said.

Khaled Issa, the official representative in France of Syria's Kurdistan, had added: "France is going to reinforce its military presence."

The comments added to heightened international tensions as Turkey wages an offensive against Kurdish fighters in Syria whom it views as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) that has waged a three-decade insurgency inside Turkey.

Ankara launched an air and ground offensive in Afrin in January to oust the People's Protection Units (YPG), Kurdish fighters who make up the bulk of the SDF, viewed as terrorists by Turkey.

Turkey has threatened to expand its military operation against Kurdish fighters, who ousted IS from the town of Manbij near the Turkish border, and repeated the threat on Wednesday.

But the US-led coalition fighting jihadists in Syria, of which France is a member, sees the YPG as a key player in the fight against IS and has warned that Turkey's operation risks distracting from that battle.

Macron had on Thursday offered to help establish a "dialogue" between the SDF and Turkey "with help from France and the international community" -- an idea angrily rejected by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday.

"We are extremely saddened by France's... wrong stance on this issue," Erdogan said during a speech in Ankara.
Gaza City (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) - Palestinians in Gaza pitched tents near the volatile border with Israel on Thursday ahead of a six-week protest camp under the gaze of wary Israeli soldiers.

The protest is dubbed "The Great March of Return" and has the backing of the Gaza Strip's Islamist rulers Hamas.

It comes amid rising tensions as the United States prepares to move its Israel embassy to Jerusalem.

Organisers said the demonstration would be peaceful but Israeli officials are wary of a fresh flare-up along the enclave's border.

Five Palestinians were shot Thursday evening, the health ministry in Gaza said, after protestors approached the border in several places.

Armed forces chief Lieutenant General Gadi Eisenkot has warned of escalating tensions along Israel's borders.

He said reinforcements, including more than 100 special forces snipers, had been deployed near Gaza and the army was prepared for all scenarios.

"We won't allow mass infiltration into Israel" or damage to the border barrier, he told the Yediot Aharonot newspaper.

"The instructions are to use a lot of force."

Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, labelled the protest an "organised planned provocation" and reiterated "Israel's right to defend its sovereignty and protect its citizens."

The first protest will start Friday when Palestinians mark Land Day, commemorating the killing of six unarmed Arab protesters in Israel in 1976.

Camping and protests in Gaza are expected to continue until mid-May, when the US is set to inaugurate its controversial new embassy in Jerusalem.

Mid-May will also mark the anniversary of the Nakba, or catastrophe, which saw hundreds of thousands of Palestinians flee their homes in the 1948 war surrounding the creation of Israel.

According to the United Nations, some 1.3 million of Gaza's 1.9 million residents are refugees or their descendants.

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-'Return home'-

Khaled al-Batsh, one of the protest organisers, said tents would be pitched 500 metres (yards) from the border, just outside the buffer zone between Gaza and Israel.

Water facilities were being installed and medical teams deployed to allow people to stay for long periods.

Organisers said tens of thousands of people would attend Friday's protest, although it was not clear they reached their estimate.

On Thursday small crowds gathered near the border as families set up tents, said an AFP correspondent at the site.

A young couple were married next to a tent along the border in Jabalia in northeastern Gaza on Thursday evening.

Batsh said protestors were calling for Palestinians to be allowed to return to land that is now inside Israel.

"70 years ago we left and today we have decided to return to our country," he told AFP.

But senior Hamas figure Salah Bardawil said protesters were not planning to breach the border.

Hamas officials say they will monitor the area beyond the camp sites to prevent protesters going too close to the frontier, at least during the initial days of the protest.

Five main camp sites have been set up, spanning the length of the coastal territory from near the Erez border crossing in the north to Rafah in the far south, near Egypt.

Campers will be within sight of the border, frequently patrolled by Israeli soldiers.

On Thursday, around 20 family tents were pitched at a site near Erez, alongside two larger community tents for performances including the traditional Palestinian "dabke" dance.

At another site, young men were putting the finishing touches on dozens of wooden toilets, while large generators whirred into life.

Another organiser, Tahir Sawirki, told AFP Palestinians would gather Friday in groups representing the towns they left in 1948.

He said tens of thousands of meals would be prepared for more than 100,000 expected participants.

The White House's decision to recognise Jerusalem as Israel's capital, breaking with decades of international diplomacy, infuriated much of the Arab world.

Palestinians claim the city's Israeli-annexed eastern sector as the capital of their future state.

The Palestinian leadership cut ties with the administration of President Donald Trump in the wake of the move.

On Wednesday, Israeli tanks fired at Hamas positions in Gaza after heavy gunfire from the enclave, roadside bombs targeting border patrols and an incursion by three armed Palestinians who were later captured.

Two more Palestinians armed with knifes were detained after sneaking across the border Thursday, the Israeli army said.
Tunis (AFP) - Long seen as a pioneer for women's rights in the Arab world, Tunisia is pushing ahead with reforms promised after its 2011 revolution -- but campaigners say much remains to be done.

The country's 2014 constitution was praised as a key achievement in the revolt that toppled longtime dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and sparked the Arab Spring uprisings.

But much of it has yet to be passed into law, including provisions on gender equality.

Now, moves are afoot on women's political representation, interfaith marriage and the contentious question of inheritance.

A law on violence against women, passed last year, finally came into force in January.

A new electoral code forces political parties to put forward female candidates for municipal elections set for May.

Since September, Tunisian women have been free to marry non-Muslims.

But now a commission set up by President Beji Caid Essebsi to examine "individual liberties" and equality is to tackle a particularly contentious question -- reforms to the country's inheritance laws.

- 'It's time' -

Current legislation, inspired by Islamic law, allocates a man twice the inheritance of a woman.

Women led more than 1,500 demonstrators in Tunis earlier this month to call for equal inheritance rights.

But their demands and Essebsi's moves to change the law have sparked outrage from conservatives.

Muslim clerics have labelled Essebsi's proposals "a flagrant violation" of Islamic precepts.

But Bochra Belhaj Hmida, head of the commission, said "there is a real political will" to change the legislation.

"The president's initiative is likely to be adopted by parliament," she told AFP.

"The role of the politicians is to raise the level of citizens' awareness... It's time," she added. Ennahdha

Laws similar to the current Tunisian legislation apply in many Muslim-majority countries.

In Morocco, 100 intellectuals signed a petition in late March demanding an end to unequal inheritance laws, but public opinion remains divided.

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In Tunisia, rare opinion polls suggest a majority of people are opposed to equality in inheritance.

But many parents already apply the principle by giving their daughters extra money while they are still alive.

- 'Not simple' -

Observers say there is a window of opportunity to change the law ahead of 2019 elections, thanks to Essebsi's current hold on power and the consensus between his party, Nidaa Tounes, and the Islamists of Ennahdha.

But given the subject's sensitivity, the commission has put off publishing its proposals until after municipal elections in May.

Hmida said Essebsi wanted to "leave a very important trace in history", echoing that of Tunisia's first president Habib Bourguiba, who gave the country its groundbreaking personal status code.

Adopted in 1956, the code granted Tunisian women rights that were unprecedented in the Arab world.

"There are elements that are politically favourable towards reform," said Sana Ben Achour, a law professor and feminist campaigner.

"But it's not simple. It touches on heritage that has been passed down for thousands of years."

She said much needed to be done to "rally practising Muslims" who see equality as contrary to the Koran.

Essebsi's commission is also set to propose changes to laws on family status and passing on nationality to children.

It has plenty of work to do: it has identified some 2,500 texts as unconstitutional -- including anal testing of homosexuals and prison terms for "attacks on morality".
TBILISI (Reuters) - Georgia has ordered a Russian diplomat to leave the country within a week, joining governments in the United States and across Europe in censuring Russia over a nerve agent attack on a former Russian spy in Britain. Georgia and Russia severed diplomatic ties after a brief war in August 2008 over the breakaway South Ossetia region, but Russian diplomats have a presence there, operating out of a Russian interests section in the Swiss embassy. "The Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemns the use of chemical weapons on the territory of the United Kingdom that caused grave human suffering to three individuals and posed serious threat to the life and health of others," the ministry said in a statement late on Thursday. Russia has denied any involvement in the poisoning of former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia. A British policeman who attended the scene of the poisoning, in the English city of Salisbury, was hospitalized. He has since been discharged. (Reporting by Margarita Antidze; Editing by Edmund Blair)
TOULOUSE, France (Reuters) - A gunman shot and gravely wounded an exiled Azeri journalist and killed his wife near the southern French city of Toulouse on Friday, in an incident the local mayor said appeared to be a settling of political scores. Rahim Namazov was an outspoken critic of the Azeri political leadership and served time in prison before seeking exile in France in 2010. In a video posted on YouTube in December that year, Namazov said he was jailed after writing stories about brutality against soldiers in units of the Azeri military. He said he had spent six months in solitary confinement. "It's the journalistic profession, the father of a family and the freedom of the press that has been attacked today," Karine Michelet-Traval, the mayor of Colomiers where the shooting occurred, said in a statement. In separate comments to La Depeche newspaper, she said: "You can't help but think this was a settling of scores." Namazov's wife was killed in the shooting. A police source said she had been shot in the head, apparently at close range. Witnesses spoke of hearing multiple gunshots, local media reported. The local prosecutor is due to make a statement at 16h00 (1400 GMT). Human Rights Watch said last year the Azeri government continued its crackdown on dissenting voices and that reports of torture persisted. It also said independent media outlets faced harassment and closure and critical journalists faced threats and intimidation aimed at silencing them. (Reporting by Johanna Decorse; Writing by Richard Lough; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg)
Howard University's president has generally confirmed that financial aid employees misappropriated funds over a period of several years. (Photo: Jason Colston via Getty Images)

WASHINGTON  No authority has publicly implicated him in the embezzlement scandal enveloping his university, but by Wednesday afternoon Tyrone Hankerson Jr. had already become a meme  Joanne the Scammer for the collegiate set.

He was an irresistible target for his fellow students at Howard University and the rest of on the internet. Fur coats. Gucci bags. Prada slacks. On social media, the law student and onetime student employee in Howards financial aid office flaunted his love of high-end fashion on campus, where he allegedly drove a Range Rover, and his glitzy trips abroad. When a pseudonymously written Medium post mentioned Hankerson Jr. in connection with a scheme whereby university officials had allegedly embezzled $1 million in financial aid money, it was all too perfect.

The story claimed that Hankerson Jr. had received thousands in ill-gotten aid. He released a statement to ABC News on Wednesday proclaiming his innocence.

During a sit-down interview with journalist Roland Martin on Friday, Hankerson Jr. and his lawyer, James L. Walker Jr., maintained his innocence once again and offered more details on the situation. (You can watch the interview above.)

They said Hankerson Jr. was a student worker in Howards financial aid office from 2011 to 2015. His time there ended with the completion of his undergraduate degree. The two men took credit for the removal of the Medium post, which they said defamed Hankerson Jr.s character. (The post, written under the name Veritas 1867, was suspended sometime on Wednesday.) They also said that Hankerson Jr. was not one of the six employees fired from the financial aid office.

While Hankerson Jr. said he had received at least $200,000 in aid during his undergraduate career, he denied receiving $429,000  the amount claimed in the Medium story. Walker added that his client had gotten financial aid  in the form of stipends, scholarships and grants  over the course of seven years, not four as was suggested in the Medium post. Hankerson Jr. also denied driving a Range Rover.

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But even before his public defense, Hankerson Jr. had already been convicted in the high court of meme justice and sentenced to hours and hours of beclownment.

In a SoundCloud audio file dug up by one Twitter user, a person the user suggests is Hankerson Jr. raps: Drop a pic on Instagram / They aint liking but they lookin  Its mad niggas out here tryna dress like me.

Tyrone. The Scammer. The Rapper.



He literally told us where all the money went.  pic.twitter.com/h1HS6NLlt9  Im aint gon stop....Im aint! (@Its_Tribblez) March 28, 2018

Someone even put a scammer-themed playlist on iTunes.

On Wednesday, Howard University President Wayne Frederick confirmed that financial aid officials had indeed misappropriated funds earmarked for low-income students between 2007 and 2016. How much, exactly, he wouldnt say. Six university employees had been fired, he added, although he did not name them. In an interview with ABC 7, Frederick said the university would not be pressing charges.

Hankerson Jr. did not respond to multiple HuffPost requests for comment sent to his personal email address. HuffPost also reached out to Walker, his lawyer, who on Thursday sent along the same statement given to ABC News.

Please know that I have done nothing illegal or wrong, Hankerson Jr. said. When the truth comes out, it will be confirmed that I followed all rules and protocol with the approval of the, then, financial aid officers in any grants, scholarships or awards given to me as a student who attended class all year round and traveled abroad.

When asked about Hankerson Jr.s alleged role in the misappropriation of aid money, a university spokesperson focused more on the students having been named in the Medium story. There has been no authorized disclosure by the University of any information related to Mr. Hankerson Jr., nonetheless we are concerned about this situation, the spokesperson told HuffPost. We are taking a close look to see if we can determine the source of information published about him.

Citing the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, the spokesperson declined to make any comments about the protected information of Mr. Hankerson Jr. or any other Howard University student. The universitys office of financial aid and the law schools media relations contacts did not respond to requests for comment about Hankerson Jr.

But students have coalesced loudly around the issue: calling for the presidents resignation, rallying at the flagpole and staging a sit-in in the administration building  which includes the financial aid and presidents offices.

One student, who also declined to speak to HuffPost, tweeted on Wednesday what appears to be an email exchange with Hankerson Jr. (whose name is underlined in red).

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The student asked for continued financial aid. Hankerson Jr., in his capacity as a financial aid employee, allegedly replied saying the university had utilized its financial aid budget for the academic year and couldnt help the student. The email is dated Feb. 2, 2015.

Tyrone Hankerson is that you? The same Tyrone that got $429,000 in financial aid? This you chilling on the boat??? pic.twitter.com/VEBjVLrBJ3  Tyrone ran off with my financial aid (@AshGotThis) March 28, 2018

Howard, like many other historically black colleges and universities, has battled with high-stakes financial problems over the past several years.

A letter written by university trustee Renee Higginbotham-Brooks in 2013 stressed her concern that the school was in genuine trouble due to a decrease in federal aid, a lack of infrastructure for fundraising and a smaller pool of potential students who could obtain financial aid, meaning more students who opted for cheaper state schools. The financial aid office meanwhile has often delayed or messed up aid packages for students. A 2013 change to the criteria for obtaining a Parent PLUS Loan caused enrollment in HBCUs nationwide to drop significantly. Howard lost about 585 students. And students have long been frustrated with the state of housing at the university, including the cost of it all.

For now, the social media backlash seems to center on Hankerson Jr., the guy with the fashionista posts that now seem to taunt those who struggled for aid.

Havana, oh nah nah.

I spent yall refunds in Havana, oh nah nah. pic.twitter.com/efVBm9POyS  Afro-LightskinO. (@itsKARY_) March 28, 2018

this howard univ/tyrone hankerson story is hilarious pic.twitter.com/te2uvVTplQ  niki (@missjournalism) March 28, 2018

This man stole $429,000 in Financial Aid at Howard yall



Tyrone Hankerson, a student-employee in the Financial Aid office. Set to graduate! & Got caught



This the iconic photo we found on his Facebook



Mink Coat, Designer Bag, the FINESSE GOD TYRONE I am DEAD pic.twitter.com/PQrYQaPXzJ  Lew Sid (@LewSidRaps) March 28, 2018

When you pass ya homeless classmates otw to brunch pic.twitter.com/huUFd48vQX  MDYKU  (@tethegreat) March 28, 2018

Aside from the memes, Hankerson Jr.s personal website and social media presence  including his YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram accounts  have been scrubbed from the internet, with a few exceptions. Hankerson Jr. was featured as a model on the fashion blog Deserted In Urban in 2015. He blogged for HuffPost in 2016 and was quoted in two stories in which he discussed the burdens of student loan debt.

For many of my classmates, their families simply do not have the financial resources to pay for college, he said at a 2015 Howard forum on student loan debt. What I have witnessed in my role are determined students who try their hardest to find a way through.

They sometimes work nearly 40 hours a week with full course loads; their parents take on loan debt that they cannot truly afford to repay; they sometimes get denied for Parents PLUS Loans and find aunts and cousins and grandparents to co-sign, he continued. They search high and low for scholarships, they take classes over the summer at cheaper rates so they can graduate on time, they take semesters off, and they come back. And sometimes, when all has failed them, they are left with no option but to give up.

This story has been updated with Hankerson Jr.s interview with Roland Martin.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
The Trump administration has abandoned a policy of generally releasing pregnant women from immigrant detention, according to a directive publicly shared by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Thursday.

Under the new policy, pregnant women will be released from immigrant detention only on a case-by-case basis.

Thomas Homan (right), the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, outlined the agency's policy change in a Dec. 14 directive. (Photo: Leah Millis/Reuters)

Since at least 2011, ICE had implemented a policy that generally favored releasing pregnant women from detention. But the policy also provided exemptions for women facing mandatory detention or security threats. In practice, ICE detained more than 500 pregnant women in 2016, the last full year the policy was in effect.

With the change, outlined in a Dec. 14 directive signed by acting ICE Director Thomas Homan, ICE will no longer presumptively release pregnant women from detention. It supersedes a 2016 memo, also signed by Homan, that codified the policy against detaining pregnant women except under extraordinary circumstances or the requirement of mandatory detention.

Under the new policy, ICE will detain only those whose detention is necessary to effectuate removal, as well as those deemed a flight risk or danger to the community, according to a fact sheet obtained by HuffPost. ICE will generally not detain pregnant women during their third trimester.

Philip Miller, deputy executive associate director for ICEs Enforcement and Removal Operations, told reporters on Thursday that many pregnant women encountered by immigration enforcement are already subject to mandatory detention by law, particularly if they were apprehended at the border and are not deemed eligible to move forward with any claims for relief.

Others may be subject to mandatory detention because they committed certain crimes within the U.S. Since the policy went into effect in December, ICE has detained a total of 506 pregnant women, according to ICE, though the agency did not say how many of those women were later deported or released into the U.S. He said that on March 20, the last date for which ICE has the data, there were 35 pregnant women in detention, all of them subject to mandatory detention.

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To miscategorize this as some wholesale change or some kind of draconian act is really just hyperbole, Miller said. Were aligning this policy, as we have with all of our policies, with the direction from the president.

The changes, which will apply to pregnant women seeking asylum, bring ICE policy closer in line with an executive order signed by President Donald Trump a week after taking office last year. That order scrapped the Obama-era prosecutorial discretion policy instructing officers to deprioritize detaining and deporting certain immigrants.

Several human rights organizations filed a complaint with the Department of Homeland Security in September on behalf of pregnant women detained by ICE. The complaint alleged that ICE was failing to abide by its own policy against detaining pregnant women and that the women were not being given adequate care.

Critics maintain that ICE detention centers are ill-equipped to treat the complex medical issues pregnant women face. Two women told HuffPost they lost pregnancies at ICE detention centers last year.

Immigrant women in detention are also sometimes the victims of rape, said Kathryn Shepherd of the American Immigration Council, which was one of the groups that filed a complaint last year against the detention of pregnant women.

Being in detention is not an appropriate setting for not just a pregnant woman, but a pregnant woman who may or may not be pregnant as a result of a significant trauma like that, she said.

Michelle Brane of the Womens Refugee Commission, which was also part of the complaint, said ICE did not notify her organization after the directive in December, even though the two groups have been in communication with each other. Still, she said she was not surprised by the policy change  it is one that immigrant rights advocates feared was coming after Trumps executive order last year.

She said it is impossible to know for sure whether the number of pregnant detainees will go up, but its pretty clear that the intent is to reduce the number of pregnant women who are released. Alternatives to detention, like mandatory check-ins or ankle bracelets, are both more humane and less expensive for taxpayers than detaining pregnant women, she said.

The crazy thing about it is theyre claiming its because they should be treated like everyone else and that theyre going to go after everybody who has immigration status issues, but the reality is that those arent your only options, Brane said. Not detaining a pregnant woman doesnt mean she wont have to go through the immigration legal process.

This story has been updated with more details of and reaction to the policy change.

Also on HuffPost

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April 2015

At an event hosted by Texas Patriots PAC: Everythings coming across the border: the illegals, the cars, the whole thing. Its like a big mess. Blah. Its like vomit.

June 2015

At a speech announcing his campaign: "When Mexico sends its people, theyre not sending their best. Theyre not sending you. Theyre not sending you. Theyre sending people that have lots of problems, and theyre bringing those problems with us. Theyre bringing drugs. Theyre bringing crime. Theyre rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."

August 2015

On NBC's "Meet the Press": Were going to keep the families together, we have to keep the families together, but they have to go."

September 2015

On CBS's "60 Minutes": Were rounding em up in a very humane way, in a very nice way. And theyre going to be happy because they want to be legalized. And, by the way, I know it doesnt sound nice. But not everything is nice.

November 2015

On MSNBC's "Morning Joe": You are going to have a deportation force, and you are going to do it humanely."

February 2016

At a GOP primary debate: We have at least 11 million people in this country that came in illegally. They will go out. They will come back  some will come back, the best, through a process.

March 2016

At a press conference when asked if he would consider allowing undocumented immigrants to stay: "We either have a country or we dont. We either have a country or we dont. We have borders or we dont have borders. And at this moment, the answer is absolutely not.

April 2016

At an event hosted by NBC's "Today Show": Theyre going to go, and were going to create a path where we can get them into this country legally, OK? But it has to be done legally. ... Theyre going to go, and then come back and come back legally.

July 2016

At the Republican National Convention: "Tonight, I want every American whose demands for immigration security have been denied  and every politician who has denied them  to listen very closely to the words I am about to say. On January 21st of 2017, the day after I take the oath of office, Americans will finally wake up in a country where the laws of the United States are enforced."

September 2016

At a rally: Anyone who has entered the United States illegally is subject to deportation. That is what it means to have laws and to have a country. Otherwise we dont have a country.

September 2016

On "The Dr. Oz Show": Well, under my plan the undocumented or, as you would say, illegal immigrant wouldnt be in the country. They only come in the country legally.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement will no longer automatically release pregnant immigrants from detention, marking the latest effect of President Donald Trumps efforts to crack down on undocumented immigrants.

The new policy was outlined in an internal ICE memo, and reported Thursday by The Daily Beast. It replaces a previous policy, put in place under former President Barack Obama, which said ICE would not detain pregnant women except in extraordinary circumstances.

But after Trump issued an executive order in January 2017 that required immigration officers to target all undocumented immigrants, the agency decided to change the way it dealt with pregnant women.

Pregnant immigrants will still be eligible for release on a case-by-case basis, according to an FAQ published on ICEs website. The agency said it will detain pregnant women whose detention is necessary to effectuate removal, as well as those deemed a flight risk or danger to the community. It also said it will not detain pregnant women during their third trimester absent extraordinary circumstances.

Just like there are men who commit heinous acts violent acts, so too have we had women in custody that commit heinous acts, said Philip Miller, an ICE deputy executive associate director, according to Reuters.

Immigrants rights advocates have said it is dangerous to women and their unborn children to hold them in custody. This new ICE policy memo confirms our fears that the government is continuing its barbaric policy of detaining pregnant women despite substantial evidence that detention of this particularly vulnerable population has been linked to serious health implications to the mother and unborn child and also constitutes a significant barrier to receiving a meaningful day in court, Katie Shepherd, a legal advocate at the American Immigration Council, told The Daily Beast.

While the Obama administration also detained pregnant women, the new policy likely means more pregnant women will be held in custody. Since December, 506 pregnant women have been detained, Miller told CNN. And as of March 20, there were 35 pregnant women in ICEs custody.
A little over a month ago, David Hogg was like any other high school senior anxiously awaiting college acceptance letters. Then, on Feb. 14, he witnessed the deaths of 17 of his classmates at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Since then, he has graced the cover of Time Magazine, organized a march attended by hundreds of thousands of individuals demanding gun reform and gained a massive following of 667,000 on Twitter.

Despite becoming a household name pretty much overnight, Hogg is still a 17-year-old who plans to attend college. According to an interview with TMZ on Tuesday, Hogg received rejection letters from the four University of California campuses where he submitted applications UCLA, UCSD, UCSB and UC Irvine. He has a 4.2 GPA and an SAT score of 1270.

The following day, Laura Ingraham, host of Fox News evening program, The Ingraham Angle, retweeted a piece from the conservative news site, The Daily Wire, adding her own commentary  David Hogg Rejected By Four Colleges To Which He Applied and whines about it. (Dinged by UCLA with a 4.1 GPA totally predictable given acceptance rates.)

David Hogg Rejected By Four Colleges To Which He Applied and whines about it. (Dinged by UCLA with a 4.1 GPAtotally predictable given acceptance rates.) https://t.co/wflA4hWHXY  Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) March 28, 2018

The power of Twitter

Hogg, fully aware of how powerful he has become, has been encouraging his followers to tweet at brands that advertise on the show. And since Ingrahams initial tweet, at least 16 companies have pulled their ads. Rachael Rays Nutrish was the first brand to sever ties. StitchFix (SFIX), Expedia (EXPE), TripAdvisor (TRIP), Wayfair (W), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), Nestle USA (NESN), Hulu, Office Depot (ODP), The Atlantis, Paradise Resort, Honda (HMC), Liberty Mutual, Progressive insurance (PGR), Jenny Craig and the global investment group Principal followed suit.

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On Thursday, after advertisers had already begun to distance themselves from the show, Ingraham issued an apology, retracting her original attack on Hogg: Any student should be proud of a 4.2 GPA incl. @DavidHogg111. On reflection, in the spirit of Holy Week, I apologize for any upset or hurt my tweet caused him or any of the brave victims of Parkland.

Any student should be proud of a 4.2 GPA incl. @DavidHogg111. On reflection, in the spirit of Holy Week, I apologize for any upset or hurt my tweet caused him or any of the brave victims of Parkland. For the record, I believe my show was the first to feature David(1/2)  Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) March 29, 2018

Responsibility to share both sides of a story

Hogg said he does not accept her apology. Shes only apologizing after a third of her advertisers pulled out, and I think its really disgusting that she basically tried promoting her show after apologizing to me. I think its wrong and if she really wants to do something, she can cover things like inner city violence and the real issues that we have in America. I know shes a talk show host, but she also has a responsibility to show both sides of a story, he said during an interview on CNNs New Day.

Florida school massacre survivor David Hogg rejects Laura Ingrahams apology and has started a boycott.

Atlantis does not support or agree with the recent comments made by television broadcaster Laura Ingraham. Although we are an organization that believes in freedom of expression, we do not condone discrimination, bullying, mockery or harmful behavior of any kind. As a result of these events, we have decided to remove all brand advertising tied to the program, an official Atlantis spokesperson told Yahoo Finance.

Prior to the era of social media, brands would have had to release official statements on their websites and wouldnt necessarily be subject to immediate criticism. Thats no longer the case with Twitter. Now, critical decisions made by companies can be discovered via one-off responses to everyday users.

StitchFix responded to a user who threatened to stop buying clothes from the monthly subscription program, saying We appreciate our clients feedback on this, and we can confirm were no longer advertising on Lauras show.

Hey there! We appreciate our clients feedback on this, and we can confirm were no longer advertising on Lauras show.  Stitch Fix (@stitchfix) March 30, 2018

Progressive watchdog Media Matters compiled a list of Ingrahams 100+ sponsors, including Bayer, NutriSystem, Choice Hotels, Arbys, Cars.com, DirecTV, Duracell, Esurance, Honda, IBM, and Kayak, to name just a few.

Are boycotts effective? It depends

I think its great that corporate America is standing with me and the rest of my friends because when you come against any one of us, whether it be me or anybody else, youre coming against all of us, Hogg told CNN. I think its important that we stand together as both corporate and civic America to take action against these people and show them that they cannot push us around, especially when all were trying to do here is save lives.

The issue needs to be gun violence in America, but what shes trying to do is distract from that and I hate it, he added.

This is not the first time Ingraham has been in hot water. Just last month, she faced significant pushback and criticism after she publicly said that Lebron James should stay out of politics and shut up and dribble.

Ingraham announced on her show Friday night that she would be taking a week off, with plans to resume on April 9.

The efficacy of boycotts against Fox News has had mixed results. While this movement is akin to the demise and ultimate cancellation of The OReilly Report last April, Bill OReilly had much graver problems than a single controversy. Nearly 60 companies withdrew their advertisements following a New York Times report on five sexual harassment settlements by OReilly and Fox News. While much of the momentum was on social media, it was much harder for the company to defend his egregious behavior than stand by an anchor for an offensive tweet.

Ingraham is likely hoping this movement would resemble the fleeting backlash against her colleague, Sean Hannity. Hannity endorsed Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, who reportedly made several sexual advances toward underage girls. Many advertisers, including Keurig, Realtor.com and Volvo deleted tweets that stated they would be pulling ads.

As The Washington Post aptly pointed out, At any given time, someone is probably trying to boycott a Fox News show for something.

This is an ongoing story and will be updated as sponsors continue to pull their ads from the show.

Melody Hahm is a senior writer at Yahoo Finance, covering entrepreneurship, technology and real estate. Follow her on Twitter @melodyhahm.

Read more:
Belgrade (AFP) - Until six months ago, the Lovimi family from Iran had never heard of Serbia.

But here they are, currently in Belgrade, after arriving without visas last August, waiting to continue on to Germany, where they plan to build a new and better life in the future.

The family of four comes from the town of Ahvaz in the province of Khuzestan in Iran's south west, where the majority of the population is Arabic.

They complain that, as Arabs, they have few rights in Iran, their children are forced to learn Farsi and not Arabic in school, and they are treated as second-class citizens, with little hope of finding a job.

So, when Belgrade and Tehran abolished reciprocal tourist visas last August, the Lovimis decided to take their chance and come to Belgrade. And from there, they hoped to continue on to the EU and a better future.

The Lovimis are not the only ones.

According to official statistics, around 7,000 fellow Iranians have arrived in Serbia since August, intially as tourists, but some of them with no intention of returning home.

Shahla Lovimi, a 40-year-old housewife, says she and her family had originally gone to Turkey with the intention of carrying on from there to Germany via Italy.

"We have never had the intention to go through Belgrade. We have never heard about Belgrade. We went to Turkey and the smuggler took us here," she tells AFP.

She and her car mechanic husband and their two children, aged 11 and 17, paid the smuggler 22,000 euros ($27,000).

- Left on their own -

For two months, they lived in various Belgrade apartments and hostels, waiting for the smuggler to pick them up and take them to the EU by car.

But when the smuggler vanished four months ago, leaving them on their own, the Lovimis turned to Info Park, a local non-governmental group helping refugees.

According to Info Park's communication officer Stevan Tatalovic, a number of Iranians are using the visa liberalisation agreement to come to Europe and stay there illegally as migrants.

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"These are often people who are persecuted for political reasons, LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender) people, or people whose religion was not Islam," Tatalovic told AFP.

Their intention is not to seek asylum in Serbia, but to continue on, often to Britain or other EU countries, he said.

Serbia argues that visa liberalisation will help develop tourism between the two countries and attract business investment in the longer term.

Nevertheless, Serbian Trade Minister Rasim Ljajic said the two countries are aware of, and will clamp down on any possible abuses of the visa-free scheme.

However, Info Park's Tatalovic said that with direct flights between Tehran and Belgrade resuming after 27 years, up to 600 Iranians could soon be arriving in Serbia every week.

Two airlines are already offering flights and a third will follow in April and most of the flights are already fully booked until the end of summer.

"The migration systems in Europe must recalibrate for this new route," Info Park warned in a recent statement.

While the numbers cannot be compared with hundreds of thousands who passed through Serbia in 2015 and 2016, EU officials are nevertheless concerned.

Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic said recently that the EU and Germany were already asking why the country had abolished the visa regime.

Hundreds of thousands of migrants travelling to western and northern Europe passed through Belgrade along the so-called Balkan route until it was shut down in 2016.

- Trying their luck on foot -

Several thousands of them got stuck in Serbia, but every day dozens try to continue their journey.

Shahla Lovimi says her family will try to reach the EU on foot.

"The smuggler has disappeared and we have no money to pay another one. We will maybe try our luck walking," she says.

The family was intercepted by police when they tried to enter EU member Croatia earlier this month, and they were sent back to Serbia.

But Lovimi insists they will try again as going back to Iran is not an option for them.

"There is no other way than to go through Croatia because all other borders are closed," she says.
The president reportedly made the comments during his congratulatory call with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, left, last week. (Photo: Carlos Barria / Reuters)

President Donald Trump told Russias Vladimir Putin that if the two countries wanted to have a nuclear arms race, the U.S. would win, according to a report Thursday by NBC News.

Trump reportedly made the comments during his congratulatory call with Putin last week after the Russian won an unsurprising re-election as president. But Putins unveiling of a new arsenal of nuclear weapons earlier this month apparently got under the presidents skin, an unnamed official told NBC, and he brought up such frustrations.

If you want to have an arms race, we can do that, but Ill win, Trump reportedly told his counterpart.

Thursdays report echoes another explosive threat made by the president after he tweeted in January that his nuclear button was much bigger & more powerful than North Korean leader Kim Jong Uns.

The official White House readout of the Putin call didnt mention such tensions, simply saying the pair discussed the state of bilateral relations, and Trump himself described the encounter as very good. The president reportedly ignored explicit, all-caps instructions from his aides to not congratulate Putin on his re-election, and he declined to discuss Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election or criticize the nerve agent attack on a former Russian spy in England.

But the call reflects growing tensions between the two countries. The White House said Monday it would expel 60 Russian diplomats in retaliation for the poisoning of the spy, joining more than a dozen European countries that have pledged to do the same. In turn, Russia on Thursday said 60 Americans would have to leave the country and that the U.S. consulate in St. Petersburg would close.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said other countries would also be affected, and the number would mirror that of the Russians expelled in recent weeks.

With its regrettable, unwarranted decision today, it is clear that Russia is not interested in dialogue about issues that matter to our two countries, Heather Nauert, the State Departments spokeswoman, said on Twitter Thursday of the expulsions.

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With its regrettable, unwarranted decision today, it is clear that #Russia is not interested in dialogue about issues that matter to our two countries. #Russia is further isolating itself following the brazen chemical attack in the United Kingdom. - @statedeptspox pic.twitter.com/w4eA0I7Yvr  Department of State (@StateDept) March 29, 2018

Trump has long taken a soft stance on Russia, and he told reporters last week he would probably meet with Putin in the coming weeks, a move that caught advisers by surprise. Hes also told aides to minimize publicity around Russian policy moves, worried that the news might antagonize his counterpart, NBC reported.

He doesnt want us to bring it up, an official told NBC.

But Trump himself has also long touted American military might and said during his State of the Union address that Congress must modernize and rebuild our nuclear arsenal to keep up with Russia.

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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
Gaza City (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) - Israeli border police dropped tear gas from a drone onto Palestinian protesters in Gaza on Friday, a police spokesman told AFP, acknowledging operational deployment of new technology.

An AFP correspondent saw a drone release around 10 gas canisters as protesters on the border with Israel cursed the small craft.

A number of people were injured by the containers, which fell from a height of between 10 and 20 metres (30-60 feet), the correspondent said.

Use of unmanned aerial vehicles to launch gas is a recent innovation, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.

"It was used a few weeks ago around the Gaza Strip area and it is also being used today, in order to prevent protesters getting to the Gaza crossing or Gaza border," he said.

"It's a mini-drone which has the capability of flying over certain zones and certain areas and then letting go of tear gas in areas that we want to prevent protesters from reaching."

Video of the tactic in use was shown in a report earlier this month by the Lebanese Al-Mayadeen TV channel.

Tens of thousands of Gazans took to the streets Friday in mass protests calling for Palestinians to be allowed to return to land that their ancestors fled from in the 1948 war but that is now part of Israel.

The Israeli military said that they threw rocks and petrol bombs at the border fence and troops on the other side.

The army has pledged to stop, by force if necessary, any attempt by protesters to cross into Israel.

At least were seven Gazans were killed as Israeli troops fired live ammunition at stone-throwing protesters gathering on the border, while an eighth man died from tank fire.

Israeli forces regularly use tear gas to disperse Palestinian protesters, whether thrown by soldiers or fired from specially equipped vehicles.
Kellyanne Conways husband appears not to be toeing the party line when it comes to his wifes jobmaking digs at the White House from the safety of his computer.

George Conway, who has been married to the White House counselor since 2001, has been critical of President Donald Trump and the administration in a number of tweets, most recently referring to a New York Times report on the president potentially pardoning Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn as flabbergasting.

Conways husband also retweeted a post about Stormy Daniels on Wednesday. The original message suggested a lawsuit from the adult star was important in terms of how it could affect the president.

This is why the suit by Stormy Daniels matters. It will be very hard for Trump and Cohen to avoid discovery, including depositions under oath, the tweet read.

It is not the first time George Conway has appeared to criticize the president, in what appears to be an apparent disregard for his wifes rolewhich often includes explaining Trump's decisions.

Don't miss: NASA: Scientists Studying Earthquakes on Mars To Learn How Planets Are Formed

In one retweet that surely cut slightly too close to the bone, George Conway suggested President Trump says one thing and does another.

So true. Its absurd. Which is why people are banging down the doors to be his comms director, George Conway wrote after retweeting the original message , apparently forgetting that his wife often responsible for interpreting Trumps various statements for the public.

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However, his Twitter followers have been quick to point out that his statements reflect on his wifewith one commenting: Its sad when @KellyannePolls husband is throwing shade at the president and his administration, and another pondering whether Georges comments would get his wife fired.

And despite being a self-declared Trump supporter when he was reportedly being considered as Trumps nominee to run the Justice Departments civil division last year, CNN reported, his statements since have been less than supportive of the president.

This article was first written by Newsweek

More from Newsweek
Public schools closed in at least 25 Kentucky counties on Friday as teachers staged a quasi-strike after legislation was passed that would overhaul the state pension system.

Kentucky teachers called in sick or absent to protest the legislation, which passed mostly along party lines on Thursday night. The closures affected schools across the state, including in its two largest school districts: Jefferson County Public Schools in Louisville and Fayette County Public Schools in Lexington. More than one-third of all school employees in Lexington called out of work, the Fayette County school district said.

11 A.M. UPDATE: Added Lewis and Magoffin to callouts. Henderson, Trigg pre-planned. RED = Out due to call outs, GREEN = Pre-planned (Spring Break, PD, Holiday), YELLOW = "soft close" Lots of callouts! #120Strong #HoldTheLine pic.twitter.com/0XDUizU96w  Kenny Colston (@Kenny_Colston) March 30, 2018

Kentuckys public pension system is among the worst funded in the nation. Gov. Matt Bevin (R) has prioritized reforming it since he was elected in 2015, and Republicans have taken up the issue since gaining control of both houses of the state legislature in 2016.

Teachers and public employees have fought the proposed changes, which have included transitioning new hires into a hybrid system that more closely resembles a 401(k). They argue that such changes would lead to steep cuts to their retirement systems and could violate their contracts with the state.

Educators have spent weeks protesting the proposed pension plans, and appeared to have derailed any potential reform earlier this week as Kentuckys 2018 legislative session drew to a close.

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But on Thursday afternoon, Republicans tucked many of their proposed changes into a piece of legislation relating to public sewage. And after mere hours of debate, both state legislative chambers approved the bill in late-night votes, with the state Senate voting around 10 p.m. to send the bill to Bevins desk.

Senate gives final passage to SB 151, which started today as a sewage bill and turned into a pension bill. Teachers and Democrats are livid, but they don't run the legislature, Republicans do. The bill goes to Gov Bevin. ^JC pic.twitter.com/bhlKIXPcDh  Bluegrass Politics (@BGPolitics) March 30, 2018

The 291-page bill dropped some reform proposals that had drawn the most opposition, such as cuts to annual cost-of-living raises for teachers and a Bevin-backed provision that would have increased the amount teachers have to pay into their health insurance funds.

Still, it included major changes to the system. If the bill becomes law, for example, it will take longer for new teachers to gain eligibility for retirement benefits. And the bill would end a contractual obligation that prohibits lawmakers from changing pension plans or reducing retirement benefits for any teacher already under contract, according to the Lexington Herald-Leader.

Bevin is expected to sign the bill into law, and praised its passage. He tweeted that 49 members of the Kentucky House and 22 members of the Kentucky Senate voted not to keep kicking the pension problem down the road.

Tonight 49 members of the Kentucky House and 22 members of the Kentucky Senate voted not to keep kicking the pension problem down the road



Anyone who will receive a retirement check in the years ahead owes a deep debt of gratitude to these 71 men & women who did the right thing  Matt Bevin (@MattBevin) March 30, 2018

The potential financial impact on Kentuckys pension system is unclear, as lawmakers suspended legislative rules requiring an actuarial analysis of the bill ahead of the vote.

But Kentucky teachers, who have stressed throughout protests that they are not eligible for Social Security to help fund their retirement, say they are well aware of how changes to the pension system will affect them.

Our pension is our only fallback, said Katy Smalley, who teaches first and second grade in Bullitt County, where schools remained open Friday. I dont get Social Security. So taking anything from that is changing the way I have to plan for retirement. Its huge.

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Educators also criticized the rushed and opaque process used to pass the bill.

They had a 291-page bill that was still warm from the copier, and that they had not read. And they were given it to vote on, said Anita Davis, a retired teacher who was among those protesting at the state Capitol building in Frankfort on Thursday. Even if it was the best bill in the world, the way it came about [would make] everybody very suspicious. Put that on top of the rhetoric that has been stirred up, and it has poisoned the well for so many teachers in terms of having trust for the governor and so many representatives and senators.

Students also joined the protests, even in some districts where schools didnt close.

The Kentucky Education Association called the legislative process shameful. Chris Brady, a member of the Jefferson County Public Schools Board of Education, tweeted that the lawmakers who had voted in favor of the bill had voted not to be re-elected.

Kentucky Attorney General Andy Beshear announced Friday that he planned to sue over the legislation, which he said violates the state constitution.

Last night we saw government at its worst, Beshear said in a video posted on Facebook. Last night, the House and Senate ... broke their word, but I am going to keep mine.

We will take this to court, Beshear said.

Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin (R) has made overhauling the state pension system a priority since taking office in 2015. But his proposals have drawn anger from teachers and other public employees. (Photo: Joshua Roberts / Reuters)

Kentucky teachers are the latest to stage walkouts or threaten strikes over changes to their pensions and other benefits. In February and early March, West Virginia teachers went on strike after years of tax cuts left the state without money to grant them raises and caused deep cuts to state education programs. Teachers in Oklahoma, meanwhile, have said they plan to strike next week over similar problems, and Arizona teachers could soon follow.

Its unclear whether the protests will lead to extended closures in Kentucky, especially since many of the districts that were shut down Friday are approaching spring break. But with a state budget proposal that includes cuts to education funding still looming, the closures are at least a hint that the pension reform bill could turn into a breaking point for Kentuckys teachers.

I have never seen this type of anger and pushback from teachers, said Davis, the retired teacher. They are tired of this, of public workers being demonized. ... People think its about money and a pension, but its a bigger thing than that.

Related Coverage

Oklahoma Teachers May Soon Go On Strike

The West Virginia Teacher Strike Was Rare, Militant And Victorious

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
Growing up in Hyesan, North Korea, a small industrial city near the border with China, Hyeonseo Lee heard plenty about Americans. But never without a modifier. It was always American bastards or American aggressors,' she says.

When Lee was 13, her school made the obligatory pilgrimage to the Sinchon Museum of American War Atrocities. There, Lee and her classmates were told of the 35,000 civilians North Korea says were massacred by U.S. troops at the start of the Korean War in 1950. She was shown where 100 North Korean mothers were separated from their newborns as they cried out for milk. And she was brought to the room where the heartless Americans supposedly fed the babies gasoline instead, before flinging in a match.

I didnt think Americans were human beings, says Lee, who fled North Korea in 1997 and wrote The Girl With Seven Names about her experience. I thought they were animals that we had to kill off. That was the brainwashing from age 4.

Hatred of the U.S. is a founding principle of the North Korean regime. The revolutionary guerrilla Kim Il Sung seized power in 1948 and built the state ideology around the nebulous concept of juche, which is loosely defined as ultranationalist self-reliance. His descendants have maintained their control in part by instilling the belief that other nations are plotting North Koreas destruction with U.S. backing.

To guard against that threat, North Korea began developing a nuclear-weapons program in the early 1990s with the aid of former Soviet scientists. The regimes armament has continued in fits and starts, despite international efforts to contain it, and today includes 2,500 to 5,000 tons of chemical weapons and 200 launchers that can fire short-, medium- and long-range ballistic missiles. In late November, North Korea tested an ICBM that flew 10 times higher than the International Space Station and is theoretically capable of hitting any American city. The entire area of the U.S. mainland is within our nuclear strike range, Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un said after the missiles test.

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In response to the escalation, U.S. President Donald Trump called Kim a madman on Twitter and derided him as Rocket Man in a speech to the U.N. The White House has repeatedly refused to rule out a military response. North Korea is the biggest threat to all of humankind as far as Im concerned today, Terry Branstad, the U.S. ambassador to China, tells TIME.

This would seem an unlikely moment for rapprochement. The 34-year-old dictator has never participated in formal negotiations with any nation, let alone the hated U.S. Yet after thawing relations with South Korea for the Winter Olympics, Kim made a stunning surprise visit to Beijing in his armored train at the invitation of Chinese President Xi Jinping on March 2528his first foreign visit since taking power in 2011and is poised to sit down with South Korean President Moon Jae-in in April. (North Korean state media reports that Xi has also agreed to visit Pyongyang.) All of that is a prelude to Kims planned summit with Trump in May.

Kim and Xi shake hands at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse on March 27; Kim waves from his armored train before departing Beijing following his surprise visit

How could two of the worlds most bombastic leaders go, in the space of a few months, from trolling each other to displaying the mutual respect implied by a personal meeting?

For Kim, the short answer is money and security. Three new rounds of U.N. sanctions since Trump took office have cut off key revenue streamschiefly exports of coal, labor and textilesfor his isolated and struggling economy. He also knows North Korea would lose any real conflict, even if its capable of exacting a horrendous toll in the process. Experts says its telling that Kim has put denuclearization on the table for the first time and pledged a moratorium on weapons tests.

The U.S. and its allies have various motivations for engaging with Kim, but all would benefit from neutralizing a rogue nuclear state. South Korea could face obliteration from attack from across its border, while China and Japanthe worlds second and third largest economiesare also at imminent risk.

Geography, meanwhile, no longer affords the U.S. the buffer it once did. Experts say North Korea could potentially strike the American mainland with a nuclear electromagnetic pulse that would wreak havoc on power grids, utilities, infrastructure and any industry dependent on them. Pre-emptive action, however, risks upsetting Washingtons alliances in East Asia, potentially strengthening China. The U.S. would be relegated to a regional power like Russia at the end of the Cold War, says Daniel Pinkston, an East Asia expert at Troy University in South Korea.

With the stakes so high, TIME spoke with defectors from North Korea, negotiators and others from both sides of the DMZ and the bargaining table to better understand Kims motivations, Trumps aims and the potential consequences of their summitif it actually happens.

Over platters of iced whitefish, kimchi and spiced mackerel at a restaurant in Seouls tony Gangnam neighborhood, the highest-ranking North Korean official to defect during Kims reign offers guarded insight into his former leaders mind-set. Clive, who is using an alias to protect his safety, says he defected because a transgression by a close relative meant he was also facing a one-way ticket to the gulag.

Clive believes Kim may genuinely want to mend relations with Washington in order to improve the livelihoods of his 25 million subjects, and he suggests that Kim might agree to denuclearize in exchange for a mutual defense treaty signed by Pyongyangs four influential neighborsRussia, China, South Korea and Japanthats ratified by the U.N. and also passed by an act of Congress and signed by Trump. He says that under such a deal, Kim might not even object to the U.S.s keeping in place the 28,500 troops currently stationed in South Korea.

Such a pact would require reaching across a dense thicket of historical grudges and mistrust, but Kim, at least, has a monetary incentive to try. A thaw with Tokyo in particular could lead to a much needed windfall. Pyongyang has never received compensation for Japans human-rights abuses during its occupation of the peninsula from 1910 to 1945. In 1965, South Korea received $800 million in grants and soft loans from Tokyo under a similar deal, and a 2001 congressional research report suggested the North could expect $5 billion to $10 billion.

A multicountry deal of the sort Clive envisions would face steep challenges. Russia, China, South Korea and Japan would have to set aside large and competing interests for it to win U.N. backing. That, in turn, has the potential to complicate its chances in Congress, where conservatives resent following the U.N.s lead. And Trump is generally averse to complex multilateral deals.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un waves from his train as it prepares to depart from Beijing railway station

Kims furtive trip to Beijing further muddies the waters. The visit, which included a great deal of pomp despite being kept under wraps until its end, suggests that Kim may need Chinas aid in negotiations with Trumpand that Xi could use that as leverage for trade concessions on recent tariffs with the U.S. in any deal.

The U.S. and South Korea, meanwhile, announced an amended trade pact on March 27 that expands the market for American automakers in South Korea while limiting the countrys steel exports to the U.S. The revised deal was reportedly reached in order to avoid open disagreement between the allies during the summits.

Other obstacles to a nuclear deal are more prosaic. According to Jim Walsh, a security expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has discussed nuclear issues with North Korean officials on behalf of the U.S., negotiators are typically direct, but problems arise if an approach seems to counter a regime directive. They may say, We cant talk about denuclearization,' says Walsh, and so you have to change the language and say, Lets talk about nuclear security or nuclear energy and find another way in.

Personal chemistry between Kim and Trump is another wild card. Trump has been far more indulgent of authoritarian leaders than his predecessors, offering congratulations to Russian leader Vladimir Putin on his election victory and praise for Xis dismissal of Chinas presidential term limits. To Trumps defenders, the absence of condemnation reflects a dealmakers acumen. I see some common traits between Trump and Kim Jong Un, says political scientist Cheong Seong-chang of South Koreas Sejong Institute. They talk tough, but theyre pragmatists.

Of course, that doesnt mean the two men will be able to broker an accord that settles more than 50 years of strife. Among the many challenges to reaching and upholding any deal is the threadbare State Department under Trump. South Korea still does not have a U.S. ambassador. Joseph Yun, the top U.S. diplomat dedicated to North Korea policy, retired in February. Summits normally follow a series of lower-level meetings, where policy specialists thrash out parameters in painstaking, coffee-soaked sessions. Trump and Kim are hanging everything on a front-loaded meeting. If you have some big blowup, where do you go? asks a former top U.S. diplomat, who asked to remain anonymous so he could speak candidly. Diplomacy is effectively eliminated.

Were an agreement somehow reached, it would lead to another thorny question: how to verify it. There is no way to locate all of North Koreas nuclear weapons, and experts think the regime is likely to keep some hidden. The best hope is 80% to 90% denuclearization, says Cheong.

The U.S. apparently has no intelligence sources in North Korea nor any way to illicitly access computer records in the Hermit Kingdom. Kims regime is believed to have a network of underground military facilities the knowledge of which is dispersed among different military leaders.

Should negotiations falter and Kim and Trump return home empty, Clives prediction is bleak: North Korea will put more pressure on the U.S. through nuclear proliferation. In other words, Clive predicts North Korea will sell more of its nuclear and ICBM technology to rogue states or terrorist and criminal groups to boost its sagging economy and gain further bargaining power.

Weapons trading has always been a key way for North Korea to acquire foreign currency. From 1987 to 2009, 40% of the 1,180 units of ballistic missiles that were traded around the world were exported by North Korea, says Kwon Yong-soo, a former professor at Korea National Defense University. Defector debriefing documents reviewed by TIME detail how dozens of North Korean Scud missiles were sold to Iran for $90 million per unit in the 1980s, and Pyongyangs military scientists were paid up to $15,000 per month for maintenance work in Syria, Iran and Czechoslovakia. When Israel bombed a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007, one former North Korean missile scientist told TIME that he recognized a colleague dead in the debris.

Now is the time to halt the testing to stop the North Koreans building 50 nuclear-armed ICBMs, says Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association. Because then the problem becomes much more difficult.

Yoon Seok-sahn, who was separated from his family in the North, poses near his home in Tongilchon.

Yoon Seok-sahns vegetable patch doesnt appear to be of much geopolitical significance. Yet the small plot where the sprightly 86-year-old grows corn, beans and cabbages in South Koreas Tongilchon village lies snug against the DMZ and is just a few miles from the likely location of Kim and Trumps summit.

The division of the Koreas remains a personal tragedy for Yoon too. Just five miles across the DMZ looms North Koreas Deokmul Mountain, where Yoons maternal uncle lived. My mother used to take my hand, and we would walk over to his house for dinner, says the retired army major. I dont know if I have any nephews or nieces living there today. Id be desperate to meet them.

If Kim dangles the prospect of Korean reunification, as some experts predict, there is a chance Yoon will find out. I think Kim Jong Un will offer the reunification of the Koreas, says Choi, a former North Korean intelligence officer who asked to be identified by his last name. That wouldnt mean the end of North Korea as a state, but a symbolic fusing in name, with the countries ramping up cooperation. An agreement could look similar to China and Hong Kongs one country, two systems.

Cooperation across the DMZ may be Kims primary goal, says Choi. Smoothing relations with South Korea will make it harder for Washington to unleash sanctions or a military strike against the North. But that would be highly divisive for South Koreans, who distrust Pyongyang while also being wary of U.S. escalation given their vulnerability. Kim Jong Un wants to drive a wedge in the South KoreaU.S. alliance, says Choi, to use South Korea as a human shield.

For Yoon and his 500-odd fellow Tongilchon residents, the front line is a familiar position. Every month, the village schools 80 students practice racing down to the nearby nuclear shelter, where cupboards of foil-wrapped gas masks are stacked. But the current thaw has already brought some benefit. Less North Korean propaganda has been bellowing across the DMZ, interrupting everyones sleep. I feel good about the talks, says Yoon. They will help ease tensions and prevent war, he says, before adding, at least for a while.

With reporting by STEPHEN KIM/SEOUL and PHILIP ELLIOTT/WASHINGTON
BENGHAZI, Libya (Reuters) - At least five people were killed and six wounded when a suicide bomber drove a car laden with explosives into a checkpoint in the eastern Libyan town of Ajdabiya late on Thursday, medics said. The explosion hit the eastern exit of Ajdabiya, a town south of Benghazi, a military source said. It is close to the oil export ports of Brega and Zueitina. No further details or claim of responsibility were immediately available. Some six cars were damaged by the blast, a witness said. The town is controlled, as is much of eastern Libya, by forces of Khalifa Haftar allied to a parallel government based in the east. (Reporting by Ayman al-Warfalli; Writing by Ulf Laessing; Editing by James Dalgleish)
 "The Excessive Fines Clause: Challenging the Modern Debtors' Prison" | Main | Texas woman sentenced to five years in prison (!?!?!) for voting illegally 

March 29, 2018

Some more perspective on the crime-and-punishment thinking of AG Jeff Sessions

Time magazine has this new lengthy cover story on Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The whole piece is an interesting read, and here are some excerpts sentencing fans are likely to find of interest:

Sessions believes todays low crime rates are a direct result of proactive policing and harsh sentences, and that dialing them back is causing crime to rise. According to the FBI, the violent crime rate rose 7% between 2014 and 2016, and the murder rate rose 20%, following years of decline. Sessions has moved swiftly to unwind the Obama Justice Departments policies. He canceled the smart on crime initiative and replaced it with a directive to pursue maximal charging and sentencing. He pulled out of the consent decrees and rescinded Holders hands-off marijuana-enforcement policy. He announced the end of DACA, stepped up deportation orders and sued California over sanctuary cities. He has embraced Trumps call to impose the death penalty on some drug dealers, which some legal scholars consider unconstitutional. Emphasizing treatment for drug addicts isnt just ineffective, according to Sessions -- its dangerous. The extraordinary surge in addiction and drug death is a product of a popular misunderstanding of the dangers of drugs, he told me. Because all too often, all we get in the media is how anybody whos against drugs is goofy, and we just ought to chill out. In February, Sessions sent a letter warning the Senate that a bill to reduce federal sentences risked putting the very worst criminals back into our communities. (An outraged Chuck Grassley, the Republican Senator from Iowa, told reporters that if Sessions wanted to keep making laws, he should go back to elected office.) Sessions believes his erstwhile colleagues have been misled. This whole mentality that theres another solution other than incarceration, he told me, all I will say to you is, people today dont know that every one of these things has been tried over the last 40 years. Sessions seemed exasperated when I asked him to address the disproportionate impact of harsh policing and incarceration on black families and communities. He cited the work of Heather Mac Donald, the controversial conservative scholar who argues that racial bias in the criminal-justice system is a myth and that the real problem is a war on cops. Mac Donald popularized the concept of the Ferguson effect, an unproven theory that crime rises when police feel hamstrung by political oversight. Sessions embraces this notion. In cities like Baltimore and Chicago, he told me, politicians spend all that time attacking the police department instead of the criminals.... Sessions contends that the policies he champions help minority communities by cleaning up their neighborhoods. If you do the map of your city and youve got five times the murders in a minority neighborhood, do you just go away? he asked me, eyes narrowed. Or do you prosecute the criminals who are committing the murders? Thats the fundamental answer. And the other thing is, you think the mothers whove got children, the older people who are afraid to walk to the grocery store -- shouldnt they be free just like they are in the elite part of town? Sessions leaned over the plastic airplane table. Whose side are you on? he asked. Im on the victims side, and overwhelmingly the victims are minorities. The prosecution of certain minorities for murder, the victim is overwhelmingly another African American or Hispanic. It occurs within their own communities. (Law-enforcement statistics show white criminals also tend to target white victims.) His eyes gleamed as he sat back. We are protecting minority citizens, he concluded. The fundamental question is, Who rules the streets? The government, or the outlaws?

March 29, 2018 at 06:04 PM | Permalink

Comments

After taking a course on marijuana, I became interested in suing Jeff Sessions. His DEA has it classified as a Schedule I substance. This means, highly addictive, no medical benefits.

Only 9% of users become addicted. It has dozens of established medical benefits. It kills 50 people a year, all by impaired driving and car crashes. Doctors tested it on dogs to find proper dosing... in 1850. William Osler had a section on it in his standard medical textbook, Edition of 1913. This nation is really retro.

His Schedule I classification is regulatory quackery. It places an undue burden on the care of dozens of medical conditions.

Posted by: David Behar | Mar 29, 2018 9:17:25 PM

Sessions' mention of victims is very advanced for a lawyer.

Here he opposes the protection of vicious illegal alien gangs by the lawyer.

http://dailycaller.com/2017/12/12/no-justification-whatsoever-jeff-sessions-blasts-baltimore-for-helping-ms-13/

Posted by: David Behar | Mar 30, 2018 12:08:42 AM

As you can imagine, this has been very stressful for nonviolent marijuana offenders who have sentences of life without parole for marijuana.

Even though they know that they will not be re sentenced to death, this is an indication to them that the public is not aware of how offenders become designated kingpins. This is true even when it is stated that there were no victims.

They all were charged with conspiracy and all went to trial. Because of the charging decision of the prosecutor and the decision of the offender to exercise their 6th amendment right to trial, they are all become designated as kingpins.

The amounts of marijuana they are charged with includes all the weights of all the defendants over a period of years even if they did not participate or even know about the import or distribution.

I received an interesting message from a younger nonviolent marijuana only first time offender who said that if it would call attention to this sentence that does not fit the crime, he would volunteer to be the first nonviolent marijuana only offender (designated kingpin) to be executed. He felt that the reality of imposing and carrying out this sentence would educate the public about prosecutorial practices and their implications.

This federal inmate has a spotless prison resume. He has a prison job, has no infractions, feels that he is preforming useful functions with rewarding relationships with other inmates and staff. Keeping him in prison till he dies is not fiscally responsible and is not just. Execution would be a grotesque perversion of justice.

Posted by: beth | Mar 30, 2018 12:22:20 PM

Beth. I received an email from a distressed mother to help her son, after her reading my comment on the Time article. My reply.

"You should contact the ACLU, Norml, and other advocacy groups.

I am only in a position to sue Jeff Sessions to reclassify Marijuana as a Schedule II drug, and not a Schedule I drug. It has a low addiction rate (9%), and dozens of accepted medical uses. Such a lawsuit may take 4 years. If I smoke 2 packs of cigarettes at age 12, I have a 50% chance of getting addicted to cigarettes. Cigarettes and alcohol kill 500,000 people a year. Marijuana kills 50 people a year, all in car crashes, none directly from marijuana. Endocannabinoid, the substance made by the body to sit on the cannabis receptor all over the body, is the most frequent neurotransmitter in the body. Should we be arrested fro having cannabis in our body already?

You may also try to contact the prosecutor, to make these arguments, the misclassification of marijuana. I will gladly review the available knowledge about marijuana with the prosecutor if they are interested in a review."

No one else is challenging the Schedule I classification to my knowledge on scientific and policy grounds. I want to introduce the concept of the voiding regulations that contradict evidence. I support the retrospective application of the voiding of a violation in a law that is no longer in operation. This Schedule I classification also places on an undue burden on clinical care. It violates the ADAAA. I have not decided if I should throw all violations in the fist claim. The alternative is to put in one violation. It fails, put in another claim, to keep the government in continual litigation for decades. Such litigation, even if it fails, deters the government.

I may list the salient points from a marijuana course I took. I thought I was keeping up with the subject. I only knew 10% of the content. I recommend taking the course to everyone interested in a review of medical marijuana. The course for dispensary employees had the same list of content as mine. I even provided a link to a local course to Prof. Berman. It is on a Saturday morning and may interfere with his golf schedule.

Posted by: David Behar | Apr 1, 2018 12:59:22 AM

David, there have been literally dozens of lawsuits "challenging the Schedule I classification ... on scientific and policy grounds."

A few are discussed at this Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Removal_of_cannabis_from_Schedule_I_of_the_Controlled_Substances_Act

The most prominent recent effort was dismissed a month ago, as reviewed here:

http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/marijuana_law/2018/02/federal-judge-dismisses-high-profile-suit-challenging-marijuanas-placement-on-schedule-1-under-the-c.html



Posted by: Doug B | Apr 1, 2018 10:46:23 AM

David, I tend to think that cannabis business enterprises, with varying regulations in states that have legalized to some degree or another, will not be safe from federal prosecution unless marijuana is removed from the Controlled Substance Act's Schedule totally.

A large successful cannabis business could easily pass the thresh hold of kingpin status - especially if charged with conspiracy and electing to go to trial.

Falling out of regulatory compliance is not a big jump in many instances. If cannabis businesses are allowed to operate at the state level the federal government needs to get out of the way. Anything short of that makes a mockery of federal law.

Posted by: beth | Apr 1, 2018 8:28:36 PM

The classification violates the wording of the definition of Schedule I, addictive, no benefit. It is far less addiction than many legal activities, with a 9% rate. It has dozens of established medical uses dating from 1850. It's natural, bodily version is a ubiquitous neuromodulator, found in nature all over the body.

I have to read the Washington claim. I doubt they used undue burden, the ADAAA, and regulatory quackery's violating Fifth Amendment due process. I will report back.

As a hypocrite, I would be asking for judicial review, instead of the harder work of lobbying for a change in the law in Congress. Congress responds to only one thing, the votes. So, the even harder task is to persuade the public.

Posted by: David Behar | Apr 2, 2018 1:31:44 PM

I recommended the Washington claim to the course directors for its excellent review of history and of legal issues. Administrative appeals have been listed, and have taken up to 20 years to get a reply, denying a change.

The complaint covered most of my points. The additional ones would not make a difference.

https://www.thecannabist.co/2018/02/26/marijuana-schedule-i-lawsuit-dismissed/100033/

Below is the more likely path to change. Sessions is likely to be fired soon. This Congressman says, he talks to Trump regularly.

https://www.pnj.com/story/news/politics/2018/02/12/matt-gaetz-developing-bill-loosen-federal-restriction-medical-marijuana-research/330317002/

Posted by: David Behar | Apr 2, 2018 10:24:31 PM

An additional argument not made. The Rent Seeking Theory. This judge is suggesting returning to an agency. Then, ask it to shrink, and to lose jobs for its employees. That is not humanly possible.

Posted by: David Behar | Apr 3, 2018 8:32:18 AM

Post a comment
Mexico City (AFP) - The campaign for Mexico's July 1 presidential election officially opened Friday, with Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, a veteran leftist promising a sharp break with the past, positioned as the man to beat.

"AMLO," as he is widely known, has a double-digit lead at the start of the race to succeed President Enrique Pena Nieto, whose popularity has been flayed by corruption scandals, a seemingly hopeless war on drug cartels and record-shattering crime that has left a trail of bodies in its wake.

But Lopez Obrador, a sometimes fiery leftist who is making his third presidential bid, has been here before: in 2006, he led for most of the race, then narrowly lost to Felipe Calderon of the conservative National Action Party (PAN).

Two rivals are meanwhile fighting a no-holds-barred battle for second place.

Ricardo Anaya of the PAN is a youthful ex-lawmaker whose bid to campaign as a fresh face has been blotched by accusations of corruption and strongarming his way to his party's nomination.

Jose Antonio Meade is a respected former finance minister standing for the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) -- a long-dominant force in Mexican politics whose popularity is now so low it tapped a non-party member as its candidate.

Running a distant fourth is independent Margarita Zavala, ex-president Calderon's wife, who quit the PAN in a bitter dispute with Anaya and is now peeling away a potentially crucial part of his vote.

Anaya and Zavala kicked off their campaigns with midnight rallies in Mexico City. Lopez Obrador and Meade are saving their first big rallies for Sunday -- Easter, a date charged with symbolism in this still very Catholic country.

All hope to draw mega-crowds that day to boost their momentum.

Anything remains possible in the single-round vote, but AMLO looks ever harder to beat, said Mexican political analyst Jose Antonio Crespo.

"We can't rule anything out. In other elections we've seen how things can change in the final months. But it's looking difficult" to beat Lopez Obrador, he told AFP.

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"There's an open war between the PRI and the PAN.... They're hitting each other so hard they're both falling down, leaving Lopez Obrador a wide-open path to victory."

- Own worst enemy? -

Recent polls give Lopez Obrador just over 40 percent of the vote, with Anaya and Meade in the 20s and Zavala in single digits.

But it is often said in Mexico that "AMLO's worst enemy is AMLO."

Detractors say the former Mexico City mayor harbors a radical, intolerant and messianic side that scares most voters whenever he lets it surface.

Famous for railing against Mexico's "mafia of power," Lopez Obrador, 64, has so far struck a light, humorous tone during a months-long "pre-campaign," joking that he is all "peace and love" in 2018.

But he has recently ventured into more controversial territory, with talk of reversing Pena Nieto's landmark privatization of the energy sector, abandoning construction on a new $13-billion airport for Mexico City, restarting from scratch on negotiating an updated NAFTA trade deal with the United States and Canada, and an amnesty for drug traffickers.

Anaya and Meade are meanwhile locked in an ugly brawl.

Meade, 49, has hit out relentlessly at Anaya for an investigation into his family's $2.95-million sale of an industrial property in a suspected money-laundering scheme.

Anaya, 39, who is not under investigation himself and denies any wrongdoing, says the ruling party fabricated the case to hurt him, and accuses Meade of abetting the corruption rotting the political system.

- 'Disgusted with politics' -

Mexico's president for the next six years will inherit a lackluster economy, the blood-stained war on drugs and touchy ties with key trading partner the United States under President Donald Trump.

Voters are hungry for change, but in a country with a long history of cronyism and corruption in politics, there is no true outsider candidate, said Pamela Starr, a Mexico specialist at the University of Southern California.

Even Lopez Obrador has been in politics since the 1970s, she pointed out.

"Mexicans are disgusted with parties and politicians... but there are no outsiders because the political system won't permit outsiders," she said.

"All four candidates have been part of the political system their entire lives."
Paris (AFP) - The name chosen by the small European country of Macedonia at its independence 27 years ago has ever since been rejected by Greece, provoking an impassioned dispute.

For Greece the name is part of its own cultural heritage, a source of pride as that of an ancient province that was the core of Alexander the Great's empire more than 2,000 years ago.

The bitter row has stalled the efforts of the new nation to take its place in the European Union and other international institutions.

As the Greek and Macedonian foreign ministers meet in Vienna on Friday amid a new push for a solution, here is some background.

- Rejected from the start -

Macedonia proclaims its independence from Yugoslavia in 1991 but its international recognition is immediately blocked by Greece because of the name.

Besides claiming it as part of its heritage, Greece also has a province bordering the new country that has the same name and fears Skopje may be harbouring territorial ambitions.

In 1992 more than a million Greeks join a rally in the northern city of Thessaloniki, once the most important city in ancient Macedonia, to proclaim "Macedonia is Greek".

- A country called FYROM -

It is only with the adoption of a provisional name -- the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) -- that the country is finally admitted into the United Nations in 1993.

Most other nations, including Russia and the United States, later recognise its constitutional title, the Republic of Macedonia.

- Greece clamps down -

In 1994 Greece pushes its point by imposing an economic embargo on Macedonia, including preventing it from using the port at Thessaloniki, its main trading post.

Greece also demands Macedonia drops from its flag the rayed sun of Vergina, which it claims is an ancient Greek symbol, as well as certain articles from its constitution.

- A thaw -

In September 1995 the neighbours sign in New York an accord opening the way for a normalisation of their trade and political ties, but leave hanging the name dispute.

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The following month they open liaison offices in their respective capitals and a new Macedonian flag -- with the controversial sun replaced -- is raised for the first time at the United Nations.

- Greek vetoes -

Macedonia becomes a candidate for membership of the European Union in 2005 but Greece blocks the start of negotiations, which must be agreed unanimously.

In 2008 Macedonia presents itself as a candidate for membership of the NATO military alliance, under the provisional name, but is again met with a Greek veto.

Relations sink with the erection in Skopje in 2011 of a huge statue of Alexander the Great. Athens sees this as an attempt to appropriate one of its greatest military heroes.

- 'A solution is feasible' -

Soon after his election in June 2017, Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev promises a new push to settle the dispute and relaunch the drive for EU and NATO membership.

There is optimism after mediation talks at the UN headquarters in January.

But tens of thousands of people demonstrate in Thessaloniki later that month to insist "Macedonia is Greek and this is not negotiable".

Zaev announces his country will drop Alexander the Great's name from that of its main international airport and a key highway.

Early February he says Macedonia will also include a geographic designation in a future name.

Suggestions that circulate include Upper Macedonia, Northern Macedonia, Vardar Macedonia and Macedonia-Skopje.
Vienna (AFP) - The Greek and Macedonian foreign ministers meet in Vienna on Friday for UN-mediated talks aimed at translating progress in their bitter dispute over the ex-Yugoslav republic's name into a deal.

The long-running spat, which has sparked emotional protests by thousands of people in recent weeks in both countries, has raged since Macedonia became an independent country in 1991.

Greece objects to its northern neighbour's name, arguing it suggests that Macedonia has claims to the territory and heritage of Greece's historic northern region of the same name.

In light of the Greek objections, the country joined the United Nations in 1993 with the unwieldy name of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, or FYROM for short.

The spat has also hampered Macedonia's hopes of joining the European Union and the NATO military alliance.

Last year, UN mediator Matthew Nimetz was able to relaunch the process, meeting both sides separately and together.

Several possible names have been doing the rounds, with "Gorna Makedonija" ("Upper Macedonia") the most frequently cited.

- 'Honourable compromise' -

There have been signs of progress, with Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias and his Macedonian counterpart Nikola Dimitrov saying last week they were looking for an "honourable compromise".

Macedonia in February made a concession by renaming the capital's Alexander the Great airport as Skopje International Airport.

The motorway linking Macedonia with Greece has also just been renamed the Friendship Highway.

The UN's Nimetz said in January that he was "very optimistic the process is going in the right direction".

Athens and Skopje have a "common resolve... to solve the problem," Macedonian political scientist Nano Ruzin, a former NATO ambassador close to the government, told AFP.

- Nationalists -

But both countries' governments are facing the opposition of nationalists who refuse any concession over the issue.

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Kotzias has received threats and a survey Sunday showed that seven out of 10 Greeks would be hostile to a name including the term Macedonia or a derivative.

In Skopje, the nationalist right-wing opposition VMRO-DPMNE party could use the issue to weaken the government, which relies on a thin majority, although its current leaders are more moderate now.

And the devil is in the detail.

Athens wants the change of name to be backed with a constitutional change, and for it be applied on the "erga omnes" ("towards all") legal principle, meaning universal use inside and outside Macedonia.

Even with the support of the ethnic Albanian minority parties, the Social Democrats who lead Macedonia's government do not have a majority to pass a constitutional change in parliament.

Before the meeting, Kotzias said that his desire for constitutional change should be translated into the "international agreement we will conclude at the UN, and the inter-state agreement we will sign."

Ruzin sees this as the Greeks leaving the door open to a staged process, with the possibility of leaving the constitutional change for later.
A man who allegedly killed his wife at home was fatally shot by police behind a Kentucky high school while it was in session Wednesday, Kentucky State Police said.

Jesse Kilgus, 51, was shot in his van outside John Hardin High School in Elizabethtown, where he went to check his child out of school, Trooper Jeff Gregory said.

News outlets report the shooting happened around 1 p.m. Gregory said no students or school employees were harmed.

Gregory said police found the body of Ruth Marie Kilgus, 46, and learned Jesse Kilgus planned to pick up his child from school and confronted him there.

Gregory did not yet have details about the circumstances that led to the shooting but said seven officers from three departments fired shots.

Obviously nobody ever wants this situation to happen, and its unfortunate that it happened in a school parking lot, but because theres great cooperation between all three police departments that were involved, Gregory said. We did everything right as far as Im concerned.

Hardin County Schools Superintendent Teresa Morgan said the student involved will receive trauma counseling after losing both parents Wednesday.

He is safe at this time and he is a now with extended family, Morgan said.

Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin praised police via Twitter on Wednesday evening.

Suspect was attempting to enter a high school in Hardin County, KY, the tweet said. Area schools were temporarily locked down as a safety precaution, but the prompt response by law enforcement officers ensured that no harm came to any students or teachers.

The fatal shooting near the high school comes as American communities are seeking ways to impose tougher security measures in the wake of the Feb. 14 school shooting in Parkland, Florida, that left 17 people dead. In Kentucky, a shooting in January at Marshall County High School killed two students and injured more than a dozen others.
An off-duty police officer was shot and killed in Kentucky on Thursday by a man impersonating a police officer, according to local authorities.

Police said the deceased, Philip Meacham, 38, was driving in his car when a man pretending to be an officer pulled him over at approximately 5:10 p.m. CT in Hopkinsville, a small city about 73 miles northwest of Nashville, Tennessee.

The man, identified as James Kennith DeCoursey, 34, then shot Meacham before escaping on foot and stealing a 1997 white Chevrolet pickup truck, according to a Kentucky State Police statement.

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Meacham, who had worked for the Hopkinsville Police Department since May 2017 and was married with two children, was taken to the Jenny Stuart Medical Center in Hopkinsville, Christian County, where he died.

Police then launched a manhunt for the suspect and he was also fatally shot a few hours later by police officers in Clarksville, Tennessee, around 30 miles south of Hopkinsville, according to the Logan County Sheriffs Office.

During the manhunt, the Christian County Police Department, where Meacham worked for 12 years tweeted: Pray for Hopkinsville Police. Pray the suspect is caught and brought to justice. Our community has been rocked by the unspeakable.

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Clayton Summer, Hopkinsville's chief of police, said during a press conference: I want to ask everyone for their thoughts and prayers for family and for men and women out there trying to find this criminal." He added that mental health workers had been brought in to help Meachams co-workers.

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Kentucky State Police.

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The Governor of Kentucky, Matt Bevin, paid tribute to the officer tweeting: Tonight a police officer in Hopkinsville, KY, was killed in the line of duty. There is no greater sacrifice than that of a person willing to lay down their life for another."

DeCoursey had a long history of arrests in Kentucky, WMSV, News 4 Nashville reported. He was charged with burglary in 2002 and fraudulent use of credit cards in 2007. He had also been arrested five times for possession of methamphetamine.

Lawmakers in the Kentucky legislature stood for a moment of silence when Rep. Walker Wood Thomas of Hopkinsville announced Meachams shooting, according to the Associated Press.

This article was first written by Newsweek

More from Newsweek
Defense Secretary James Mattis was caught jokingly referring to incoming National Security Advisor John Bolton as the devil incarnate during their first meeting Thursday.

The two laughed as they entered the Pentagon for their first official meeting, setting a contrast to recent speculation that they may not work well together in the Trump Administration.

Ambassador Bolton, so good to see you. Thanks for coming and its good to finally meet you. I heard that youre actually the devil incarnate and I wanted to meet you, Mattis said.

A former ambassador to the United Nations known for a bombastic style, Bolton replaces H.R. McMaster, a three-star general who had increasingly clashed with Trump.

Mattis, a retired Marine general who advocates for diplomacy and strengthening ties with NATO, has sought to dispel speculation that he would clash with Bolton, a hawk who has called for action against North Korea and Iran.

No reservations, no concerns at all, he said at a press conference Tuesday. Last time I checked hes an American. I can work with an American, OK? So Im not the least bit concerned with that sort of thing.
PARISOn April 4 of last year, a 67-year-old Jewish woman in Paris named Sarah Halimi was beaten to death and thrown off the balcony of her third-story apartment in a public housing complex by a neighbor who shouted Allahu Akbar. It took 10 months and a public outcry that began with Frances Jewish community, the largest in Europe, before prosecutors officially called the attack an anti-Semitic hate crime. Last Friday, Mireille Knoll, an 85-year-old Holocaust survivor, was stabbed 11 times and set alight by a neighbor and a homeless man. This time, authorities immediately, perhaps even prematurely, called it an anti-Semitic attack. Gerard Collomb, Frances interior minister, said this week that before killing Knoll, one of the two men arrested for the murder had told the other, She is a Jew, she must have money.

A lot took place between the death of Halimi and the death of Knoll. It may seem cynical to point it out, but one of them is an election, whose winners and losers seem freer to call out anti-Semitism when theyre not trying to win the support of Muslim voters in the banlieues, or the working-class suburbs that are home to generations of Frances immigrant underclass. Another is a growing sense, one that has been compounded by every terrorist attack here in recent years, that something has gone wrong in France, and its institutions are struggling to keep pace. While there have been concerns about new strains of anti-Semitism in Sweden and Britain, to say nothing of Poland and Hungary, Frances challenges are unique. It is a nation founded on deeply held universalist republican ideals, on the notion that citizens are citizens, not members of individual ethnic or religious groupsno intersectionality, no American-style identity politics, no interest groupsand it has struggled to develop a vocabulary for religiously motivated violence, let alone a solution. The problem defies Cartesian logic and transcends traditional divisions between left and right.

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The murder of a woman who had narrowly escaped deportation as a child in Nazi-occupied France at the hands of a young Muslim neighbor unlocked something here, a sense of public outrage that seemed to transcend even the horrible facts of the case. On Wednesday evening, thousands of people, including French political leaders, held in a march through eastern Paris to Knolls public housing complex. I went to see for myself. Some held signs that read, In France, we kill grandmothers because theyre Jewish. Others wore buttons with Knolls picture. It had been an intense day. That morning, President Emmanuel Macron delivered a eulogy at the state funeral of Colonel Arnaud Beltrame, a gendarme who had served in Iraq and was hailed as a national hero after he took the place of a hostage in a jihadist attack in southwest France last Friday, the same day as Knolls death.

As people began gathering at the start of the march, I ran into Alain Finkielkraut, one of Frances most prominent public intellectuals, a philosophy professor who had participated in the French student uprisings in 1968 but shifted rightward over the years and whose 2013 book, LIdentite Malheureuse, or The Unhappy Identity, is about immigration and its discontents. It wasnt even a question for me to come and express my fear and my anger, Finkielkraut told me. In 2006, there had been a large demonstration after a Jewish man named Ilan Halimi (no relation to Sarah) was tortured and killed by a violent band in what French authorities were loath to call an anti-Semitic attack. Only Jews came to the demonstration in memory of Ilan Halimis barbarous assassination. They had been abandoned by the international community, Finkielkraut told me. Today, he said, things were changing. I think the denial is slowly disappearing, the denial about a new anti-Semitism, he told me. For a long time, we didnt want to stigmatize fragile youth from bad neighborhoods, so we minimized the effect. We looked for excusesin exclusion, in discrimination, in segregation, in all the -ations you can find. I think this narrative is in the process of extinction, and I think, in this sad moment were living, that thats good news.

I reminded Finkielkraut that Id last met with himto discuss Michel Houellebecqs best-selling novel Submission, which imagines a Muslim president of Francein early January 2015, a few days before the attacks on Charlie Hebdo and the Hyper Cacher supermarket. Those attacks, followed by the bloodbath of November 13, 2015, when jihadists killed 130 people and wounded 400 more in a series of attacks in the same area of eastern Paris where Knoll and Halimi lived, were a major turning pointfor France, but also for the Jewish community. Leaders of the organized Jewish community said they had felt a lack of national empathy after Ilan Halimis death, but also after Mohammed Merah murdered three French Arab paratroopers and, later, a rabbi and three children outside a Jewish school in Toulouse in 2012. The 2015 attacks gave a sense that all of France was in this together, whatever this was, exactly.

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Wednesdays rally drew thousands, not the massive outpouring that took to the streets after the Charlie Hebdo attacks, but not small, either. Were not Jewish, but were revolted by what happened, a woman in the crowd named Mariethe Bernard told me. She said she hadnt been at the march in 2006 after Ilan Halimis death, but she now regretted that. Nearby, Carolina Camacho Cruz, who is Mexican but has lived in Paris for 20 years, teared up when I asked her why she had come to the march. Its devastating to see this in 2018, she told me. The way she was killed, especially since she was Jewish.

Politicians from across the spectrum attended, including the mayor of Paris. They were eager to show their solidarity. No matter where they stood on other hot issues in Franceincluding immigration, multiculturalism, or laicite, the countrys unique insistence on excluding religion from public lifein 2018, the murder of a Holocaust survivor is not something to take lightly. But their participation would prove complicated.

The umbrella organization of Jews of France, the CRIF, had said that Marine Le Pen, the leader of the right-wing National Front, founded by her Holocaust-denying father, Jean-Marie, wasnt welcome, and neither was Jean-Luc Melenchon, the leftist presidential contender whose critique of Israel has offended right-leaning Jews. Then, on the day of the march, Knolls son gave a television interview saying anyone was welcome to attend. Both Le Pen and Melenchon showed up, but left early after they were booed.

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I spotted Laurent Wauquiez, the new leader of the Republicans, whose rhetoric on immigrants had brought that center-right party closer to that of the National Front. At one point, an association of Jewish students started a somewhat feeble rendition of La Marseillaise, and journalists with cameras and microphones ran to film it. Along the route, I struck up a conversation with a 73-year-old man named Michel Ladovitch, who had come to the rally from a suburb of Paris. He was outraged by Knolls death, but didnt like how politicians seemed to be exploiting the march. His father had voted Communist, he told me. We had the image of the Red Army freeing the camps, he said. He himself had once been a Trotskyist but now was more right-wing. The truth is, there are too many immigrants, he said.

The rally was a call to decry anti-Semitism, but it also ran up against a total aversion in France to whats called communautarisme, which can loosely translate as American-style identity politics, in which members of ethnic or religious groups derive a strong part of their personal identityand political cloutfrom their backgrounds and histories. The opposite of universalism. This is also why French intellectuals have been tying themselves in knots over how to deal with anti-Semitism. How do you call it what it is without asking for special treatment? The journalist and humanitarian interventionist Raphael Glucksmann wrote on Facebook that he was attending the march not because he was heeding the call of the CRIF, but because millions of people, Jews and non-Jews, people who belong to one community or to none, feel the same anguish I do and feel in some way that they also lost their grandmother on March 23, 2018. Rabbi Delphine Horvilleur, from a liberal synagogue in Paris, tweeted: I dream of a France that knows that someone killed a grandmother, and not just mine. A nation that rises up to confront the horror and doesnt send its condolences to a community. #MyFranceHadaGrandmother.

As the marchers turned down Knolls street, I struck up a conversation with Herve Timsit, a composer. I came because I think we need to act and to confront the normalization of anti-Semitism, he told me. He was Jewish, an atheist, and had come on his own. I would have come if a black woman had been killed, or if black people had been killed in the same pattern, or Arabs, but thats not the case, he said. He also came because he was distressed by larger developments in Europe. The soft autocracy in Hungary. Polands new law criminalizing mention of Polish complicity in the Holocaust. When you step back and look at whats happening its scary, he said.

It is, but how scary? How worried should we be? Im not an alarmist. A few years ago, Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of The Atlantic, published a cover story that asked, Is It Time for the Jews To Leave Europe? The story was complex, but to answer the basic question, Id say no. Yes, anti-Semitism is a problem in France. But France has strong institutions and one of the most respectable governments in Europe, one whose election has brightened the mood considerably. The sense I have living here isnt one of fear, but of watching a country slowly acknowledge and try to grapple with seemingly intractable problems. Which is better than ignoring them, as it had in the past.

After the march, I walked back toward Bastille. I passed La Bonne Biere, one of the cafes where jihadists opened fire in the November 2015 attack, killing the Muslim wife of the bars Jewish owner, among others. Eastern Paris is a vibrant place, filled with public housing developments and natural wine bars. Things are bad, and yet we carry on. When the attack happened in Trebes last Friday, I followed it closely, then when the attacker had been killed, I shut off Twitter, and got on with my day. The new normal.

Last week, before Knolls death, I had met with Elisabeth Badinter, one of Frances most influential intellectuals and old-school feminists, and had asked her what she thought could be done to stop anti-Semitism, radicalization, terrorist attacks, everything were seeing in France today. To be very frank with you, I dont know, and Im worried, she told me. Her blue eyes were piercing, her composure formidable. She weighs in on French public life only selectively, and had given an interview last September decrying what she saw as a media silence around Sarah Halimis death.

I think that the more immigrants who arrive in Europe from Muslim countries, the more difficult it will be, Badinter continued. Integration will be difficult, and theyll be unhappy, she said. And who does one immediately point the finger at? Americans and Israelis, with this radical conflation between Israeli citizens and diaspora Jews, which they see as the same. So I have to confess that one, I have no idea how were going to fight this cancer of anti-Semitism. And two, Im worried.

Shes not alone.

Read more from The Atlantic:

This article was originally published on The Atlantic.
Melania Trump has been keeping a relatively low profile in the wake of Stormy Danielss 60 Minutes interview and the latest round of sudden White House firings. But when FLOTUS duty calls, she answers.

The first lady, who has been vacationing with son Barron in Florida for his spring break, paid a visit to Palm Beachs St. Marys Medical Center to deliver Easter baskets to young patients undergoing treatment. Trump was photographed meeting with several children, whom she later praised as brave.

Enjoyed my visit to @StMarysMC today. So great to spend time with some of their brave patients and hard working doctors and nurses. pic.twitter.com/pm4UgMe0Gr  Melania Trump (@FLOTUS) March 29, 2018

As usual, FLOTUS dressed up for the occasion. As with her recent St. Patricks Day leopard-print sheath dress by Brandon Maxwell, she once again opted for a young emerging designer with fashion industry cache and countless celebrity fans: Adam Lippes.

The former model wore Lippess asymmetric pleated striped cotton-poplin midi dress, currently available at Net-a-Porter for $1,280. She put her personal style stamp on the look by adding black heels and a black belt.

Ironically, Lippes has one of her husbands biggest targets to thank for putting him on the map. Though his devotees also include the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow, Kelly Ripa, and Mandy Moore, it was Oprah Winfreys 2006 proclaiming of his adam + eve tees as one of her favorite things that really gave his career a boost.

And in 2017, Lippes turned his fashion presentation into a statement in support of Planned Parenthood  the same organization POTUS dubbed an abortion factory.

Story continues

Nobody tell the Donald, okay?

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By Jonathan Stempel and Brendan Pierson

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A research scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology was sentenced on Friday to 15 months in prison after admitting to insider trading on a mining company merger that his wife, a corporate lawyer, had been working on.

Fei Yan, 31, a native of Nanjing, China and postdoctoral associate at MIT, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest in Manhattan. He was also ordered to forfeit $119,429 of proceeds from suspicious trading.

Yan's guilty plea stemmed from his purchase of stock options of Stillwater Mining Co in the three weeks before South Africa's Sibanye Gold Ltd on Dec. 9, 2016, announced a $2.2 billion takeover of the Colorado-based company.

Prosecutors said Yan used a brokerage account set up in his mother's name before making his illegal trades.

They said he made some trades after conducting internet searches for "how sec detect unusual trade" and "insider trading with international account," and viewing articles titled "U.S. Insider Trading Enforcement Goes Global" and "Want to Commit Insider Trading? Here's How Not to Do It."

U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman in Manhattan said Yan should have not done it.

"Fei Yan blatantly circumvented the securities laws that are in place to deter people from doing exactly what he did," Berman said in a statement.

Lawyers for Yan had sought a sentence of time served, which probation officers had recommended, plus community service.

"No one gains by Mr. Yan serving a jail sentence," his lawyer, Seth Orkand, said in an email. "Mr. Yan took full responsibility for his actions, and the sentence imposed is a regrettable ending to a regrettable incident."

Prosecutors said the forfeiture included about $10,000 from trades in Mattress Firm Inc that Yan made after learning that South Africa's Steinhoff International Holdings NV planned to buy the chain, in a merger his wife also worked on.

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Yan did not plead guilty over those trades, but they were considered "related relevant conduct" under his plea agreement. He was arrested in Massachusetts last July.

Yan's wife, who was not identified in court papers, had worked at the law firm Linklaters at the time of the trades. She has not been criminally charged.

The London-based firm said in July that Yan's wife no longer worked there, and that it was cooperating with prosecutors.

(Corrects paragraphs 12-13 to remove incorrect name of defendant's wife, who was not identified in court papers)

(Reporting by Brendan Pierson and Jonathan Stempel in New York; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
Dhaka (AFP) - A Bangladesh court has sentenced the mother of the owner of the notorious Rana Plaza factory complex, which collapsed killing more than 1,100 people, to six years in jail for graft, a prosecutor said Friday.

A special court in Dhaka found Morzina Begum guilty and handed down the jail term late Thursday, anti-graft prosecutor Salauddin Eskander told AFP.

Begum, who is believed to be 60, is the mother of Sohel Rana, the main accused after the April 2013 disaster.

She owns 40 percent of the nine-storey building on the outskirts of Dhaka that collapsed in one of the world's worst industrial accidents and highlighted links between top global retailers and Bangladesh's cheap labour garment factories.

"She was sentenced to three years in jail for submitting false and fabricated wealth statement to the anti-corruption commission and another three years for acquiring assets worth 66 million taka ($795,000) from unknown sources," Eskander said.

The prosecutor said the court also ordered the confiscation of her illegally acquired properties.

In August, the same court jailed her for son for three years for failing to declare his personal wealth to Bangladesh's anti-graft commission. It was one of a series of cases launched after the disaster.

Rana was arrested just days after the accident at the border with India as he tried to flee Bangladesh.

He became Bangladesh's public enemy number one in the aftermath of the disaster as survivors recounted being forced to enter the building to work despite complaining about cracks appearing in walls.

Rana and some of his family are among defendants facing murder charges over the deaths. He and 17 others have also been charged with violating building codes when extending the original six-storey structure by three floors. Investigators have blamed the collapse on the illegal construction.

The Rana Plaza disaster prompted reforms in the garment sector, including new safety inspections and higher wages in an industry that employs around four million workers, mostly women.

The disaster highlighted appalling safety problems in Bangladesh's nearly $30 billion garment industry. It is the world's second largest exporter after China.

Many international retailers made clothing at the complex's five factories, including Italy's Benetton, Spain's Mango and low-cost British chain Primark.
 Texas woman sentenced to five years in prison (!?!?!) for voting illegally | Main | Examining gender realities and disparities in modern federal sentencing 

March 30, 2018

US District Judge concludes Miller applies to 18-year-old murderer to find his mandatory LWOP sentence violates the Eighth Amendment

I just saw this fascinating federal ruling handed down yesterday by US District Judge Janet C. Hall, the Chief Judge of the US District Court for the District of Connecticut, in Cruz v. US, No. 11-CV-787 (D. Conn. March 29, 2018) (available here). The ruling runs 50+ pages, so I will need to read it carefully before opining about it at length. But these excerpts from the start art end of the opinion should reveal why it is worth attention:

Cruz turned 18 on December 25, 1993. On May 14, 1994, when Cruz was 18 years and 20 weeks old, Cruz and another member of the Latin Kings, Alexis Antuna, were given a mission by gang leader Richard Morales. See United States v. Diaz, 176 F.3d 52, 84 (2d Cir. 1999). The mission was to kill Arosmo Rara Diaz. See id. Carrying out that mission, Cruz and Antuna shot and killed Diaz and his friend, Tyler White, who happened to be with Diaz at the time. See id. Cruz testified at the hearing before this court that he now admits to committing both murders. See Cruz Tr. at 27. He further testified that Antuna informed him at the time that the leaders of the Latin Kings were debating what would happen to him as a result of his attempt to leave the gang. See id. at 19. According to his testimony, Cruz believed that, if he did not carry out the mission, he himself would be killed. See id.... [W]hen the Roper Court drew the line at age 18 in 2005, the Court did not have before it the record of scientific evidence about late adolescence that is now before this court. Thus, relying on both the scientific evidence and the societal evidence of national consensus, the court concludes that the hallmark characteristics of juveniles that make them less culpable also apply to 18-year-olds. As such, the penological rationales for imposing mandatory life imprisonment without the possibility of parole cannot be used as justification when applied to an 18-year-old. The court therefore holds that Miller applies to 18-year-olds and thus that the Eighth Amendment forbids a sentencing scheme that mandates life in prison without possibility of parole for offenders who were 18 years old at the time of their crimes. See Miller, 567 U.S. at 479. As applied to 18-year-olds as well as to juveniles, [b]y making youth (and all that accompanies it) irrelevant to imposition of that harshest prison sentence, such a scheme poses too great a risk of disproportionate punishment. See id. As with Miller, this Ruling does not foreclose a courts ability to sentence an 18-year-old to life imprisonment without parole, but requires the sentencer to take into account how adolescents, including late adolescents, are different, and how those differences counsel against irrevocably sentencing them to a lifetime in prison. See id. at 480.

I think it a near certainty that the feds will appeal this consequential ruling to the Second Circuit and it will be interesting to watch how that court approaches this issue. And, in all likelihood, whatever the outcome in the Second Circuit, a cert petition would follow. So, stay tuned.

March 30, 2018 at 12:06 PM | Permalink

Comments

This was a member of an organized crime gang. He was entrusted with a difficult task, to find, kill a target. He performed well, as well as a special ops crew, after much military training. He likely made more money than most of us here. He lived a life most of us could not sustain.

He belonged to an age cohort that would outperform adults. The superior performance would include morality. Late adolescents have a lower violent crime rate than adults.

I do not know how much more culpable anyone could be.

Posted by: David Behar | Mar 30, 2018 12:51:05 PM

Doug, why do you need to read all that drivel? It's a results-driven decision bereft of any support. These are the sorts of decisions that bring the federal judiciary into disrepute.

Posted by: federalist | Apr 1, 2018 5:13:08 PM

I try not to judge books by their covers, federalist. And while you seem confident you can judge the opinion by its result, I actually wanted to see what it says before reaching a judgment. You way is a lot easier, I will readily admit.

Posted by: Doug B | Apr 1, 2018 10:47:02 PM

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Berlin (AFP) - After a German court fined her 6,000 euros ($7,400) for spelling out on her practice's website that she performs abortions, gynaecologist Kristina Haenel vowed that "it can't go on like this".

Likewise, her Kassel-based colleague Nora Szasz, who is facing a similar threat under a Nazi-era law, said she would not give in.

"We are not afraid," Haenel told AFP, vowing she is ready to take the battle to Germany's highest court against a 1933 law that bans medical practitioners from advertising that they carry out terminations of pregnancies.

Germany, despite being a leading voice for women's rights in the 1970s, imposes tight restrictions on abortion.

The procedure is permitted but only under strictly regulated circumstances. It is left out of universities' course books for student doctors and kept unavailable in swathes of the country.

Haenel and Szasz have fallen foul of the law because they stated on the website of their medical practice that they perform abortions.

"That's just a mention among 12 other types of surgical procedures that I carry out as a gynaecologist," said Szasz, who was recently charged for flouting article 219a of the penal code.

With the cases of Haenel and Szasz in the media spotlight, the issue has sparked a political debate, with some among the opposition calling for article 219a to be scrapped and for women to be given access to the critical information.

Noting that article 219a dated back to May 1933, shortly after Adolf Hitler assumed full powers of Nazi Germany, Verena Osgyan, a local MP for the Greens in the Bavarian regional parliament, told AFP that it was an "unbelievable anachronism".

More than 80 years on, abortion remains a taboo, said Berlin gynaecologist Christiane Tennhardt.

"In Germany, legislation remains very complex and contradictory," said Jutta Pliefke, of Pro Familia, which counsels women on pregnancies and sexuality and receives public funding.

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- Doctors not taught abortions -

Germany records an average of 100,000 abortions for 790,000 births, while in France, there are 210,000-220,000 terminations for 800,000 births.

A woman who wants to abort within the first trimester is required to attend a consultation at a registered centre.

The aim of the interview is to "incite the woman to continue the pregnancy," according to the rules, even if in the end, she has the final say.

A three-day waiting period is then imposed for the woman to reconsider her options.

Excluding special circumstances such as a pregnancy that threatens the life of the mother, or one arising from rape, abortion -- which can cost hundreds of euros -- is not a procedure that is reimbursable by health insurance.

In some regions, including in the predominantly Catholic state of Bavaria, it may be necessary to travel 100 kilometres (about 60 miles) to find a doctor who performs the procedure.

In parts of the rich southern region, no public hospital offers such terminations.

"Many of the doctors who do it are long past their retirement age," said Osgyan.

Some patients choose to turn to Austria.

And the situation looks far from improving, as doctors are not taught the procedure in universities.

Because of the penal code restriction, no research grant is provided and neither are medical congresses held on the subject, said Pro Familia.

- 'Constant death threats' -

Blocking any reform of the current legislation, Health Minister Jens Spahn has spoken out for the protection of "human life at birth".

"When it comes to the life of animals, those who now want to promote abortions are uncompromising," charged the openly gay minister, taking aim at liberals calling for greater openness about terminations.

Spahn, 37, a critic of Merkel within her Christian Democrats, has not been known to shy away from controversy.

In 2012, he drew fire for opposing a bid to turn the contraceptive pill from a prescription medicine to an over-the-counter drug, as he remarked that "pills are not Smarties".

For the Greens, Spahn "propagates an image of women that dates to the 1950s".

But the "pro-life" lobby backs Spahn, as they charge that blood tests to detect Down's syndrome could contribute to a rise in the number of abortions.

Anti-abortion activist Klaus Guenter Annen, who filed the legal claim against Szasz, has compared abortion to the Nazi-run Auschwitz death camp.

Recounting the fierce opposition she faces over the procedure, Haenel said she "constantly receives death threats".

For fear of flouting the law, doctors who perform the procedure prefer to keep their names off any lists provided by counsellors to women seeking the information.

"That's the real scandal that no one talks about," said Haenel, noting that the irony is that the only websites carrying lists of doctors who carry out terminations are anti-abortion sites.

Pro Familia's Pliefke noted that feminists have largely forgotten the battle for the right to choose.

"It is urgent to reappropriate the theme" to fight "reactionary forces that are particularly powerful," she added.
A ransomware cyberattack last Thursday forced the city of Atlanta to shut down substantial portions of its city government. Nearly a week later, things still arent back to normal as officials piece together the extent of the damage.

Government workers began to turn on their computers and printers yesterday for the first time since the attack effectively held their systems hostage.

It is expected that some computers will operate as usual and employees will return to normal use, the Atlanta mayors office said in a statement Tuesday. It is also expected that some computers may be affected or affected in some way and employees will continue using manual or alternative processes. This is part of the Citys ongoing assessment as part of the restoration and recovery process.

In those instances, employees will have to continue filling out forms by hand, the citys statement added.

Atlanta has yet to publicly identify the hacker, but it did say the attack was carried out remotely and not by someone with internal access to the network. The so-called ransomware attack has held the network hostage, with the hackers demanding a ransom of $51,000, paid in bitcoin, for its release.

At a press conference Monday, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms wouldnt say if the city intended to pay the ransom. Everything is up for discussion, she said.

Of the citys 13 departments, five were forced to operate manually or were otherwise impeded since the attack. As a result, residents have been unable to pay water bills and parking tickets online; the court system has been greatly disrupted; the city has been unable to hire anyone; and the Department of Corrections has had to process inmates by hand.

Atlantas Hartsfield-Jackson Airport  the worlds busiest  was unaffected by the attack; nevertheless, its turned off its wifi out of an abundance of caution until the situation is fully resolved.

The safety and security of our employees and customers remains our top priority, Mayor Bottoms said in an earlier statement. We are working around the clock to work through this ransomware cyberattack and we ask for your patience as we implement business continuity measures.

Story continues

Also on HuffPost

The HuffPost bus sits in front of Ponce City Market in Atlanta on Sept. 22.

HuffPost tents are set up at the Ponce City Market.

People gather around the tents at Ponce City Market.

Marc Janks of HuffPost (center) tries to drum up interest from a crowd of people dropped off by a tour bus.

A passerby brings his dog for some watery refreshment during HuffPost's visit to Atlanta.

HuffPost employees talk with visitors to the Listen to America tents.

Basant Virdee puts on a temporary tattoo.

An insect sits on a chair at the Listen to America event.

Kind bars are laid out and iPads are set up at the HuffPost site.

The tent had two sides at the HuffPost event.

Basant Virdee and Christina Moniodis show off their temporary tattoos.

Ja'han Jones interviews Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed on the HuffPost bus.

Jones continues to talk with Reed.

Roddas Workneh is interviewed during HuffPost's visit to Atlanta.

Emma Reilly of HuffPost (center) talks to Jennifer Castle and Lee Hawks.

Jacqueline Nash of Atlanta Ballet stops by HuffPost's tour bus location to show off her skills.

Jacqueline Nash and Jacob Bush of Atlanta Ballet stop by HuffPost's tour bus location to show off their skills.

Jacob Bush of Atlanta Ballet shows off his dancing skills during HuffPost's visit to Atlanta.

The Ponce City Market sign in Atlanta.

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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
At least 10 companies announced Thursday that they were pulling the plug on advertising during Laura Ingrahams show after the Fox News host bashed a teen survivor of the Parkland school shooting.

Nutrish, the pet food line owned by celebrity chef Rachael Ray, was the first to tweet that it would no longer advertise during Ingrahams show.

We are in the process of removing our ads from Laura Ingrahams program, as the comments she has made are not consistent with how we feel people should be treated, a spokesman for Nutrish told HuffPost in a statement.

Hours later, travel site TripAdvisor and home goods retailer Wayfair followed suit.

In a statement to HuffPost, TripAdvisor said Ingrahams comments crossed the line of decency:

We believe strongly in the values of our company, especially the one that says, We are better together. We also believe Americans can disagree while still being agreeable, and that the free exchange of ideas within a community, in a peaceful manner, is the cornerstone of our democracy. We do not, however, condone the inappropriate comments made by this broadcaster. In our view, these statements focused on a high school student, cross the line of decency. As such, we have made a decision to stop advertising on that program.

Ingraham did not address the controversy on her Fox show, The Ingraham Angle, on Thursday evening. Several national retailers still ran ads during the commercial breaks, including Gillette and Progressive Insurance, although ThinkProgress Judd Legum noted that the Ad Council was also featured, possibly as filler material.

Laura Ingraham sparked an advertiser backlash when she described David Hogg as whining over college rejections. (Photo: Getty Images)

A spokeswoman for Wayfair, which pulled its ads, told HuffPost that Ingrahams comments were not consistent with our values.

As a company, we support open dialogue and debate on issues, the Wayfair spokeswoman said. However, the decision of an adult to personally criticize a high school student who has lost his classmates in an unspeakable tragedy is not consistent with our values. We do not plan to continue advertising on this particular program.

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The announcements from those three companies and others came a day after Ingraham mocked David Hogg, a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, for not getting accepted into a few of the colleges hed applied to.

David Hogg Rejected By Four Colleges To Which He Applied and whines about it. (Dinged by UCLA with a 4.1 GPA...totally predictable given acceptance rates.) https://t.co/wflA4hWHXY  Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) March 28, 2018

In response, Hogg called on people to pressure a dozen companies to remove their ads from Ingrahams programs, which include The Ingraham Angle and a morning radio show on Talk 1370 AM of Austin, Texas. The companies pulling ads have focused on the Fox program. Hogg also tweeted out a list of advertisers compiled by Media Matters for America, a progressive media watchdog.

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I'm so sorry to everyone that @IngrahamAngle has ever tried to hurt we are here for you and we love you  David Hogg (@davidhogg111) March 29, 2018

We are in the process of removing our ads from Laura Ingrahams program.  Nutrish (@Nutrish) March 29, 2018

Ingraham apologized Thursday afternoon on Twitter for any upset or hurt my tweet caused [Hogg] or any of the brave victims of Parkland.

Any student should be proud of a 4.2 GPA incl. @DavidHogg111. On reflection, in the spirit of Holy Week, I apologize for any upset or hurt my tweet caused him or any of the brave victims of Parkland. For the record, I believe my show was the first to feature David...(1/2)  Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) March 29, 2018

... immediately after that horrific shooting and even noted how "poised" he was given the tragedy. As always, hes welcome to return to the show anytime for a productive discussion. WATCH: https://t.co/5wcd00wWpd (2/2)  Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) March 29, 2018

Hogg dismissed Ingrahams apology in an interview Thursday with The New York Times.

She only apologized after we went after her advertisers, Hogg said. It kind of speaks for itself. ... Im not going to stoop to her level and go after her on a personal level. Im going to go after her advertisers.

I 100% agree an apology in an effort just to save your advertisers is not enough. I will only accept your apology only if you denounce the way your network has treated my friends and I in this fight. Its time to love thy neighbor, not mudsling at children. https://t.co/H0yWs4zMGk  David Hogg (@davidhogg111) March 29, 2018

Ingrahams apology also did not stem the tide of advertisers pulling back from her show on Thursday.

Expedia and Nestle told HuffPost that they would no longer advertise on her program but did not immediately specify when this decision was made or whether her remarks about Hogg played a role in it.

We have no plans to buy ads on the show in the future, the Nestle spokesman said.

Johnson & Johnson told HuffPost that it will pull advertising from Ms. Ingrahams show. Stitch Fix also confirmed that it would stop purchasing ads on her program. A representative for Jenny Craig said, We have decided to take steps to discontinue advertising on this show.

Hulu tweeted Thursday evening in reply to Hogg, saying it would similarly cease such advertising.

Wed like to confirm that we are no longer advertising on Laura Ingrahams show and are monitoring all of our ad placements carefully.  hulu (@hulu) March 29, 2018

Jos. A. Bank told The Daily Beast that it had no plans to buy ads on her program in the future.

HuffPost reached out to every company on the advertiser lists from Hogg and Media Matters. A representative of Fox News declined to comment beyond Ingrahams apology on Twitter.

This article has been updated as additional companies have spoken out.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
BEIRUT (Reuters) - The massive Russian-backed Syrian military offensive in suburbs east of Damascus is almost over, with rebels holed up in just a single town after abandoning the rest of the eastern Ghouta enclave, Moscow said on Thursday. Russia and the rebel faction controlling Douma, the last Ghouta town still in insurgent hands, said they were still negotiating over the fate of the town. Moscow said it saw a chance of the remaining insurgents quitting Douma. Thousands of fighters have accepted Russian-brokered deals to leave other parts of the enclave in the past week with their families on government-supplied buses, giving them safe passage to other insurgent-held areas. Tens of thousands of other civilians have stayed behind to accept state rule, and tens of thousands more have fled across the frontline. The collapse of rebel control in eastern Ghouta, after one of the fiercest campaigns of the seven year war, has delivered the insurgents their worst defeat since they were driven out of Aleppo in 2016. At a weekly briefing, Russia's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said the "counter-terrorist operation" in eastern Ghouta had nearly finished, according to RIA state news agency. Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said there could be progress in talks with fighters from the Jaish al-Islam group, which holds Douma, RIA said. Eastern Ghouta, an early centre of the 2011 uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, was until last month the biggest and most populous remaining rebel stronghold near the capital. Its capture will cap a string of battlefield victories for the government of President Bashar al-Assad since Russia sent its air force to join his war effort against the rebellion in September 2015, making his position unassailable. A commander in the alliance supporting Assad, which besides Russia includes Iran and Shi'ite militias from Lebanon and Iraq, said on Wednesday negotiations with Jaish al-Islam had stopped. However, Jaish al-Islam official Mohammad Alloush, based outside Syria, told Reuters by text message on Thursday that talks were continuing, "despite reports of threats and provocations in order to put pressure on civilians". SHELTERS Despite some artillery fire on Douma on Wednesday, there has been no renewal of the army's withering bombardment and assault that stormed most of the rebel enclave in just a few weeks. It split eastern Ghouta into three parts, and the factions in two of the zones agreed surrender terms a week ago, including the choice of accepting Assad's rule or leaving with light weapons for opposition territory in northwestern Syria. Daily convoys of buses have since made the 320km (200 miles) journey to Idlib carrying about 7,500 fighters and their families, 30,000 people in all, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor. About 134,000 other people fled across front lines from rebel territory in eastern Ghouta into areas held by the government, the Observatory said. Some 40,000 people remained in the towns it has recaptured so far. On Thursday, the United Nations resident and humanitarian coordinator's office in Syria said in an emailed update that 75,000 civilians had been received in shelters and 47,000 civilians remained in them. It described conditions in the shelters - mostly unfinished buildings, hangars or schools - as "dire". Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu told the U.N. Syria envoy that displaced people could begin returning to eastern Ghouta in a few days, RIA said. Assad and his allies say their offensive was needed to end the rule of Islamist militants over civilians and to stop rebel mortar fire on Damascus, which state television says has killed dozens in recent weeks. The Observatory says the government assault has killed more than 1,600 people. Western countries and rights groups have accused the Syrian military of targeting civilian infrastructure and repeatedly using indiscriminate weapons including helicopter-dropped barrel bombs, chlorine gas and fire-setting incendiary munitions. The Syrian and Russian governments deny all that and have accused the rebel groups of fabricating evidence of such attacks and of killing people who tried to flee their territory, which the insurgents deny. (Reporting by Tom Perry and Angus McDowall in Beirut and Vladamir Soldatkin; Writing by Angus McDowall; Editing by Peter Graff)
Gaza City (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) - Clashes erupted as tens of thousands of Gazans marched near the Israeli border in a major protest, with 16 Palestinians killed and hundreds more wounded in the conflict's worst single day of violence since the 2014 Gaza war.

Israel's military targeted three Hamas sites in the Gaza Strip with tank fire and an air strike after what it said was an attempted shooting attack against soldiers along the border that caused no injuries.

Protesters, including women and children, gathered at multiple sites throughout the blockaded territory, which is flanked by Israel along its eastern and northern borders.

Smaller numbers approached within a few hundred metres (yards) of the heavily fortified border fence, with Israeli troops using tear gas and live fire to force them back.

Israeli security forces used a drone to fire tear gas toward those along the border, in one of the first uses of the device, a police spokesman said.

The health ministry in Gaza said 16 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces.

More than 1,400 were injured, including 758 by live fire, with the remainder hurt by rubber bullets and tear gas inhalation, it said.

Palestinians accused Israel of using disproportionate force, as did Turkey.

The UN Security Council held emergency talks Friday to discuss the risks of further escalation in Israeli-Palestinian violence in the Gaza Strip, but failed to agree a joint statement on the deadly clashes.

"There is fear that the situation might deteriorate in the coming days," said assistant UN secretary general for political affairs, Taye-Brook Zerihoun, urging maximum restraint.

Israel's military alleged that the main protests were being used as cover by militants to either break through the border or carry out attacks.

"It is not a peaceful demonstration," an Israeli military official told journalists.

The army said it estimated some 30,000 demonstrators were taking part in the protests.

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"Rioters are rolling burning tyres and hurling firebombs and rocks at the security fence and at (Israeli) troops, who are responding with riot dispersal means and firing towards main instigators," it said.

- 'Playing with your life' -

Protesters were demanding hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees who fled or were expelled during the war surrounding Israel's creation in 1948 be allowed to return.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniya attended the protest, believed to be the first time he has gone so close to the border in years.

Hamas and Israel have fought three wars since 2008, the most recent of which in 2014 ended with a fragile truce.

The demonstration is planned to last six weeks, until the inauguration of the new US embassy in Jerusalem around May 14.

The upcoming embassy move has added to tensions surrounding the march.

US President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital in December has infuriated Palestinians, who claim its annexed eastern sector as the capital of their future state.

The protest also began as Jewish Israelis were to mark the Passover holiday.

Israel announced a "closed military zone in the area surrounding the Gaza Strip," accusing its Islamist rulers Hamas of using the lives of civilians "for the purpose of terror".

Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman said in a tweet directed to Gazans in both Hebrew and Arabic that "Hamas's leadership is playing with your life".

- Rare family protest -

Protests along the border are common but the "March of Return" protest is different because it is intended to include families with women and children camping near the border for weeks.

Protester Saeed Juniya erected a small tent a few hundred metres from the border fence east of Gaza City, where he was accompanied by his wife and children.

"We are determined and not scared as we are not doing something wrong. The people are demanding their land and to return to their country," he said.

Organisers say the camps will remain in place until May 15 when Palestinians commemorate the Nakba, or "catastrophe", of the 1948 creation of Israel with the exodus of more than 700,000 Palestinians.

According to the United Nations, some 1.3 million of Gaza's two million residents are refugees and the protest is calling for them to be allowed to return to land that is now Israel.

Washington's plans to launch its new embassy to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the foundation of the Israeli state, further stoking Palestinian anger.

"We are deeply saddened by loss of life in #Gaza today," State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert wrote on Twitter.

"Int'l community is focused on taking steps that will improve the lives of the Palestinians and is working on a plan for peace. Violence furthers neither of those goals."

The launch of the protests comes as Palestinians mark Land Day, commemorating the killing of six unarmed Arab protesters in Israel in 1976.
(GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip)  A Palestinian farmer was killed by an Israeli tank shell in the Gaza Strip early on Friday, hours before Palestinians were to stage mass sit-ins along the border with Israel, a health official and a witness said.

Ahead of the protests, called for by Gazas militant Hamas rulers, Israels military said it doubled its standard troop level along the border, deploying snipers, special forces and paramilitary border police units, which specialize in riot control.

Hamas has said that Fridays activities would be peaceful and the chief Israeli military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Ronen Manelis, said Israel wants to avoid violence.

However, previous protests near the border fence have turned deadly, with Israeli soldiers firing live bullets at Palestinians burning tires, throwing stones or hurling firebombs. Manelis said the military will not allow the crowds to breach the fence on Friday or damage military infrastructure.

The sit-ins are seen as a new attempt by Hamas to break a crippling, decade-old Gaza border blockade by Israel and Egypt that has made it increasingly difficult for the Islamic militant group to govern.

Other tactics over the years, including cross-border wars with Israel and attempts to reconcile with political rival Mahmoud Abbas, the West Bank-based Palestinian president, have failed to end Gazas isolation.

In the planned protest, Palestinians are setting up tent camps along the border, the first of a series of actions planned in Gaza in the coming weeks.

The activities are to culminate on May 15, the 70th anniversary of Israels creation, with a march through the border fence.

Palestinians commemorate the date as the anniversary of their mass displacement and uprooting during the 1948 Mideast war over Israels creation. The vast majority of Gaza residents are descendants of Palestinians who fled or were driven from communities in what is now Israel.

The Palestinian killed Friday was identified as 27-year-old Amr Samour. The Palestinian Health Ministry said he was struck by an Israeli tank shell in the southeastern corner of Gaza.

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Yasser Samour, a relative and fellow farmer, said Amr Samour was harvesting parsley before dawn, in hopes of selling it fresh in the market later in the day.

I was working on the next field, Samour said. We heard shelling landing on the field where Amr works. We ran there and found him hit directly with a shell. We were more than kilometer away from the border.

Another farmer was wounded in the leg by shrapnel, Samour said.

The Israeli military said troops directed tank fire toward two suspects who approached the fence along the southern Gaza Strip and acted suspiciously. It said it is aware of reports of a killed Palestinian.
A ransomware attack on the City of Atlanta has hamstrung a number of city services for almost a week. The ransomware breach is thought to be the most extensive on a local government to date. Nearly a week after the attack was first discovered, some city systems remain offline, including city payment and court information portals. Some government employees were able to turn on their computers for the first time Wednesday. The city tweeted on March 28 that there is no evidence to show that customer or employee data has been compromised. However, customers and employees are encouraged to take precautionary measures to monitor and protect their personal information. Hackers gave the City of Atlanta a week to pay the 6 bitcoin (or roughly $51,000) ransom, the full amount of which would be due March 28, should the city decide to pay the ransom. According to IT security media group CSO, the Bitcoin wallet listed in the ransom note provided to the city has not received any new payments as of Tuesday. Mayor Keisha Lance-Bottoms has not commented on the citys plans for the ransom payment. Atlanta is not the first city to deal with the question of whether to give in to ransom demands, nor is it is likely to be the last. State and local governments are increasingly a target of ransomware demands. A 2016 survey of local government chief information officers noted that about 32 percent of their data breaches were ransom-related, making such attacks the type most frequently experienced by local governments.Although cybersecurity vulnerabilities are quickly becoming a headline staple for nearly every major organization, local governments are widely seen as easy targets for breach. The same survey found that less than half of local governments polled had a formal cybersecurity policy, and only 34 percent had a formal incident response plan. Jordan McQuown, chief information officer at technology consultancy LogicForce, said that while it may be tempting to think of hackers specifically targeting city governments, he thinks they are usually operating far more simply. In my opinion, ransomware in almost every form is not targeted, he said. Ransomware attackers, rather, are looking for the path of least resistance. They want to make money. Its as simple as that. They want to do it quickly, they want to do it easily, and they want to do it without consequences."To McQuown, the question of whether to pay ransom fees comes down to a fairly simple calculus. The only reason you pay is if you have no real ability to recover your data or if the time to recover would take longer than you have, he said. Some city governments have paid for the return of data in a ransomware attack. Officials in Montgomery County, Alabama, paid around $40,000 in bitcoin last year for the return of their data after finding that the countys data backups would be too difficult to retrieve. County commission chairman Elton Dean told the Montgomery Advertiser, When you are talking about losing $5 million worth of files, thats kind of like an emergency situation.Crowell and Moring partner Paul Rosen said that cost alone might be reason enough to pay a ransom. It may be the case that, from a pure cost perspective, paying a ransom can be more cost-effective for an organization, depending on the harm being caused. But there are also potential risks in doing so, including legal and reputational, some of which may not be easily calculable in economic terms, he said. Even when municipalities opt to pay for the restoration of their data, costs associated with rebuilding systems to safeguard against further attacks can be very costly. Officials in Bingham County, Idaho, also opted to pay part of a ransom demand after they were unable to restore some data from backup servers. Even after paying for the return of their data, however, Bingham County spent over $100,000 to rebuild their servers after the ransomware attack. Most city governments have refused to pay ransomware attackers for the return of their data, usually instead opting to rely on backup servers to restore data. The U.S. Department of Justice formally does not encourage paying a ransom to criminal actors. The agency suggests that affected organizations consider the possibility that ransom payments will not guarantee the safe return of data or that payment will increase the likelihood that organizations will be attacked again. I strongly recommend never negotiating with hackerstheres not a guarantee youll get your data back, said Darius Goodall, director of product marketing at computer security company Barracuda, though he acknowledged that the dictum is tough advice to follow when critical data is involved. That critical data tends to look a little different for city governments. In Atlantas case, the ransomwares takeover of city portals has prevented residents from doing business with the city in a multitude of small ways, from paying water bills online to filing event permits. However mundane these services seem, theyre far more valuable in the context of a citys mandates. A city can have different constituencies than a company. A company often exists to produce profits for its shareholders. A city has other mandates, including public safety and security for its citizens. A city has to think through a broader set of issues than a business may have to consider when it comes to addressing ransomware attacks, Rosen said. Chris Morales, head of security analytics at cybersecurity management company Vectra, said that, even when services are down, city governments like Atlanta would do better to revert back to analog systems than to pay ransoms. The current solution has been to revert to pen and paper manual processes by various city agencies, and that is actually a sustainable model, he said. It is tempting to pay the ransom demand (which is really like a hostage situation), as the value of the ransom to release files and systems is lower than the cost of responding to the situation. That, however, is a bad precedence, and as is commonly known, the U.S. federal government prefers the stance of not negotiating in these type of situations. We need to not reward attackers for their behaviors, Morales added. Opting not to pay a ransom isnt always a smooth path, however, even with appropriate backups in place. Following a similar attack last month, the Colorado Department of Transportation announced that it would not pay the ransom; the agency was hit with a second variant ransomware attack. The tools we have in place didnt work. Its ahead of our tools, Brandi Simmons, a spokeswoman for the states Office of Information Technology, told the Denver Post. Atlanta is currently looking to shore up the citys defenses against cyberattacks for the future. Bottoms told reporters Monday that, while she hadnt thought digital infrastructure security would be a central priority of her tenure as mayor, at Day 80-something, it certainly has gone to the front of the line.Rosen hopes that other organizations, governmental and otherwise, see Atlantas issues with ransomware as a warning shot. Whether its a city or a business, companies and organizations that want to operate in todays digital age need to think through and prepare for these kinds of attacks, and mitigate them by devoting sufficient resources to prevention, planning, and practicing for these kinds of incidents, Rosen said.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has spoken with U.S. President Donald Trump about the potential use of military funds for a border wall with Mexico, the Pentagon said on Thursday. Trump, who last week got a fraction of the funding he wanted from Congress to fulfill a campaign promise by building the wall, suggested over the weekend that he might turn to the military for the money. Mattis and Trump "have talked about the proposal, potentially, but, remember, securing Americans and securing the nation is of paramount importance to the secretary," Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White told reporters. White did not provide any further details, but said these were "initial" conversations. The $1.3 trillion spending bill passed approved by Congress last week contained $1.6 billion for six months of work on the wall. Trump had sought $25 billion for the project. The president had threatened to veto the legislation, partly over the wall funding, but relented and signed it last Friday, saying a big increase in military spending had convinced him it was worthwhile. Trump suggested getting funding for the wall from the military in a weekend Twitter post. "Because of the $700 & $716 Billion Dollars gotten to rebuild our Military, many jobs are created and our Military is again rich," he wrote. "Building a great Border Wall, with drugs (poison) and enemy combatants pouring into our Country, is all about National Defense. Build WALL through M!," apparently using "M" as shorthand for "military." Earlier this month, Trump toured the U.S. border with Mexico and examined eight styles of walls, prototypes for the barrier he promised to build to keep out illegal immigrants and drugs. Building the wall was a main theme of Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. He said Mexico would pay for the wall, but the United States' southern neighbor has repeatedly said it would not. (Reporting by Idrees Ali; editing by Franklin Paul and Jonathan Oatis)
TOKYO (Reuters) - Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Friday he would explain Japan's stance on the North Korean abduction of Japanese citizens in a meeting with Donald Trump, ahead of the U.S. president's planned summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Japan's government worries the emotive matter of the abductees, which Abe has made a key issue during his political career, will take a back seat to nuclear and missile issues in the U.S.-North Korean summit.

"I plan to visit the Unites States next month and have a summit meeting with President Trump and discuss the North Korean situation," Abe said.

"In particular I would like to explain Japan's stance on the abduction issue," he said during a meeting with family members of those abducted by North Korea decades ago.

North Korea admitted in 2002 it had kidnapped 13 Japanese in the 1970s and 1980s to train as spies, and five of them returned to Japan. Tokyo suspects that hundreds more may have been taken.

North Korean leader's Kim Jong Un met President Xi Jinping in China this week, his first trip abroad since becoming North Korean leader in 2011.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in is set to meet Kim Jong Un on April 27, followed by a planned summit with Trump in May, to try to resolve the crisis over Pyongyang's nuclear and missile programmes.

Japan wants to make sure Trump does not make a deal with Pyongyang that protects the U.S. mainland but leaves Japan vulnerable.

Japanese officials including Abe have left open the possibility that Abe may hold talks with Kim Jong Un, with a focus on the abductions, although diplomatic experts say that would likely be after seeing how the other summits play out.

"The missile and nuclear issues need to be negotiated among the parties concerned, especially between the United States and North Korea," a former Japanese diplomat said on condition of anonymity. "We need to negotiate on bilateral issues and the abductions are the main thing."

(Reporting by Kiyoshi Takenaka; Additional reporting by Linda Sieg; Editing by Chris Gallagher and Michael Perry)
Kennebunk Post

Extensive work on the steeple, the Aaron Willard Jr. clock and the weathervane of the 1824 building is complete.
Warsaw (AFP) - Poland is hoping to step into the gap after Britain leaves the European Union, emulating its caution over Russia and defence of national sovereignty, Warsaw's top diplomat has told AFP.

Despite heightened tensions with Brussels over a series of controversial court reforms which could see Poland facing sanctions, Warsaw is determined to drive forward its vision of the bloc's future after Britain's departure in March 2019.

"What's taking shape is the possibility of us taking Britain's place (in terms of) its programme: commitment to free competition and awareness of the Russian threat, as well a defence of its own positions, of its sovereignty," Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz told AFP.

Like Poland, Britain had always had a more realistic view of Russian aggression than Germany or France, he said, pointing to the nerve agent attack on a former Russian spy on British soil, with London pointing the finger at Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"We've always been wary of Putin's actions, and we were right," Czaputowicz said, mentioning Russia's annexation of Crimea and its action in Syria.

"And now the attempted murder of (Sergei) Skripal. We see a continuation of this policy."

Following Britain's lead, Poland, France and Germany have each expelled four Russian diplomats in response to poisoning scandal in a united show of strength.

"It's an important sign of our unity and a signal to Moscow that it's not possible to divide Western countries regarding their stance towards Russia," he said.

- A question of sovereignty -

What does give him pause in Europe, however, is French President Emmanuel Macron's vision of a "sovereign Europe".

"It's impossible to have sovereignty within sovereignty. In other words, a sovereign Europe calls into question the sovereignty of member states," he said.

The issue could very well come up next month when Czaputowicz, who took over as foreign minister earlier this year, pays his first visit to Paris.

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"I doubt the French would accept sovereignty passing over to the EU at the expense of French sovereignty," he said.

"So it's necessary to continue the conversation, even as both sides want a strong Europe."

Czaputowicz also zeroed in on the European Commission, which last year launched unprecedented legal action against Warsaw over the governing conservatives' reform of the Polish judiciary.

The question, he said, was about the source of the EU's legitimacy, which Poland sees as stemming from national parliaments.

"We defend parliamentary democracy," he said.

"The question is about the reinforcement of certain supranational institutions, like the Commission. It's a question of what is their role -- if they are legitimate per se or if they are legitimate by virtue of the member states' decisions," Czaputowicz said.

- 'Cosmetic' changes -

In December, Brussels triggered Article 7 of the EU treaty over what it sees as "systemic threats" to the independence of the Polish judiciary -- in a move that could lead to an unprecedented round of sanctions.

After turning a deaf ear to the EU's concerns for months, Poland's rightwing government said last week it would introduce a draft law to slightly modify the judiciary changes.

Western diplomats welcomed the changes -- which notably concern the retirement age of judges and the dismissal procedure of chief justices -- as a bid to thaw ties with the EU.

But Poland's liberal opposition believes the changes are merely "cosmetic".

"There is a willingness to compromise" on Poland's side, said Czaputowicz, who will meet European Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermans in Warsaw on April 9.

But he said that certain changes "are out of the question -- those that could destroy the system put in place."

Warsaw also wants to revive the so-called "Weimar Triangle" which grouped Poland, France and Germany but was effectively put on hold by Paris after Warsaw abruptly dropped a multi-billion euro helicopter deal with a French aeronautics firm.

Within the group, Poland could also represent other Central and Eastern European countries with which it has "shared interests, shared aspirations within the EU, shared history and the same geopolitical situation," he said.

Poland could thus "introduce Central Europe's way of thinking and expectations into a common European vision."
WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland's president Andrzej Duda, an ally of the right-wing government, on Friday vetoed a law that would demote Communist military officers who were responsible for introducing martial law in 1981. "I refuse to sign this bill and I am sending it back to parliament to discuss it again," Duda said in a televised address, describing it as unfair. The bill would have reduced to the rank of private those generals and military officers who served on the military council which ran Poland during communist times from December 1981 until July 1983, many of who are now deceased. They would have had no right of appeal. Duda's move may be seen as a bid to improve his chances for re-election in 2020. Support for the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS), his ally, fell 12 percentage points over one month in a poll published on Thursday. "One has to remember that a president who wants to win in the first or second round has to win much more votes than the ruling party in a general election," Rafal Chwedoruk, a political scientist from Warsaw University, said. "A recent poll has shown that the vast majority of Poles are against demoting generals. ... The number of PiS voters from villages and small towns accepted the decision on imposing martial law," Chwedoruk said. The PiS has made much of its efforts to erase the legacy of four decades of post-war Soviet-dominated communist rule and restore what it considers to be Poland's true identity - even though some leading PiS figures are former communists. The law would demote to the rank of private members of the Military Council of National Salvation (WRON), led by the late generals Wojciech Jaruzelski and Czeslaw Kiszczak. But it would also demote 77-year-old Miroslaw Hermaszewski, Poland's only astronaut, one of the few WRON members still alive, who was drafted onto the council in 1981 without his knowledge or consent, and discharged from it after two weeks. Hermaszewski spent almost eight days on board the Soviet Salyut space station in 1978, and is still seen as a national hero, also by PiS voters. (Reporting by Marcin Goclowski; Editing by Richard Balmforth)
Rome (AFP) - Pope Francis on Friday said he was "ashamed" that younger generations would inherit a world "fractured by divisions and wars".

Speaking in Rome at the end of the traditional Good Friday Stations of the Cross procession, the pontiff said the world was "devoured by egotism in which the young, the sick, the old are marginalised".

Amid tight security, around 20,000 faithful, many holding candles, gathered around Rome's Colosseum for the religious ritual that evokes the path Jesus walked to his crucifixion.

The Italian capital has been put under tight surveillance following a week marked by a series of anti-terror arrests.

Italian Interior Minister Marco Minniti warned this week of the high risk of an attack in Italy, and some 10,000 officers have been deployed to guarantee safety in Rome, in particular during the Easter celebrations presided over by the Pope this weekend culminating with the Easter day celebrations on Sunday.
A boy from Ohio wanted one thing above all others. He wanted to be kissed by "that man in white."

That man happens to be Pope Francis. And 12-year-old Peter Lombardi, who has Down syndrome and has beaten cancer, hoped for a smooch from the head of the Catholic Church.

On Wednesday the child from Columbus got his wish, along with a ride in the Popemobile and a balloon hat.

"Oh my gosh, he spent the most time with the pope of anyone today," his mother, Brenda, told InsideEdition.com Wednesday via cellphone from Rome. "He just rode with it. That's what Pete does."

She and her family came to the Vatican on a pilgrimage, she said, to thank God for Pete's recovery from leukemia. He was diagnosed in 2015, and was undergoing chemotherapy when Pope Francis came to the States. The family had tickets to see him in Philadelphia, but couldn't go because Pete was too sick.

In the hospital, while he watched the papal service on TV, he was asked his fondest wish. "I want to be kissed by that man in white," he said.

Two years later, he got that wish, without ever knowing it was coming.

The family hired a travel guide in Italy. When they told Mountain Butorac about Peter's wish and his battle with cancer, Butorac said, "I may be able to do something about it," Brenda recounted.

Turns out, Butorac has a friend named Joanna, who is married to a member of the Pontifical Swiss Guard, a small force that guards the pope and the Apostolic Palace where he resides.

Joanna was able to get the Lombardis into the front row for Wednesday's weekly general audience. She told Brenda "to pick Pete up and yell and scream" so the pope would notice them. He not only noticed, he motioned for his security guards to bring Pete to him.

Pope Francis kissed the boy on the forehead and rumpled his hair. Pete tried to crawl over the Popemobile's railing, and the pope told his guards to bring the boy around to the back, where he scrambled aboard and sat down.

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Then they took off. Brenda, her husband and Pete's three older brothers watched him drive away with the pope.

"I just stood there in shock and then I started crying." Then she sat down and prayed. "Lord, you never stop surprising us," she said.

Meanwhile, Pete was riding with the pope as he kissed babies, waved to the crowd, and picked up some gifts, including a balloon hat.

Pete asked for the latter, and the pope plopped it on his head.

In all, their tour lasted about 20 minutes.

Butorac posted video and photos of the holy event and word quickly spread about Pete and the pope.

"I showed him all the videos," Brenda said of her youngest son. "He was just like, 'That's me! That's me and the pope!'''

The family's next stop is Medjugorje in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the Virgin Mary reportedly appeared in 1981 to a group of children.

"We are thanking the Lord for Pete's healing," his mother said.

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Prague (AFP) - The Czech Republic on Friday said it had extradited a Russian hacker to the United States where he is wanted for alleged cyberattacks on social networks.

Yevgeniy Nikulin, who is also sought by his native Russia on fraud charges, had been in a Prague prison since he was arrested in the Czech capital in 2016 in a joint operation with the FBI.

The case comes amid accusations by Washington that Russia sought to "interfere" through hacking in the 2016 US election won by Donald Trump, charges the Kremlin has dismissed.

The Czech justice ministry "confirms the extradition of Russian citizen Y. Nikulin to the United States," ministry spokeswoman Tereza Schejbalova said on Twitter.

The extradition "took place overnight," she added.

The 30-year-old Moscow man appeared before a federal judge in San Francisco on Friday, according the US Department of Justice.

"This is deeply troubling behaviour once again emanating from Russia," US attorney general Jeff Sessions said in a release.

"Computer hacking is not just a crime, it is a direct threat to the security and privacy of Americans."

Charges against Nikulin include computer intrusion and identity theft, and carry penalties that could result in more than a decade in prison and a million dollars in fines, according to prosecutors.

Following Nikulin's arrest, Moscow accused Washington of harassing its citizens and vowed to fight Nikulin's extradition.

It then issued a separate arrest warrant for him over alleged theft from the WebMoney settlement system.

The US has charged Nikulin with hacking into social networks LinkedIn and Formspring and into the file hosting service Dropbox, Nikulin's lawyer Martin Sadilek told AFP at the time.

He also said Nikulin alleges that FBI investigators had tried twice to persuade him to confess to cyberattacks on the US Democratic Party.

Last year, a Prague court ruled that Nikulin could be extradited to either Russia or the United States, with the final say left to the Czech justice minister.

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In Russia, Senator Igor Morozov slammed Prague's move, telling state news agency Ria Novosti that Moscow "will demand his return to our country and it is up to the Russian judiciary to decide whether Nikulin has violated the law or to punish him."

"It is time to stop this law of the American jungle," added the senator, known to comment on international affairs.

Alexey Kolmakov, the spokesman of the Russian Embassy in Prague, said that the Czech Republic, an EU and NATO member, "once again preferred (to demonstrate) its notorious solidarity with its American ally."
The Queen attended the annual service without Prince Philip - REUTERS

The Duke of Edinburgh has missed the annual Maundy Service attended by the Queen because of a problem with his hip, it is understood.

The Duke, who has effectively retired from royal duties, was hoping to join his wife at the centuries-old event being staged this year at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, where Prince Harry will marry Meghan Markle in May.

But it is understood the 96-year-old duke, who has traditionally accompanied the Queen at the ceremony, took the decision not to take part because he has been experiencing some trouble with his hip.

The Queen presents alms to a senior citizen Credit: AFP

It is not thought to be a serious issue as the Duke, who was named as a guest in the order of service for the Maundy Thursday event, was spotted driving in Windsor Great Park on Wednesday.

Buckingham Palace would not comment on the his health but said: "The order of service was printed some weeks ago when it was hoped the Duke would be able to take part. His Royal Highness has since decided not to attend."

Last week, Prince Philip pulled out of an official engagement with the Queen and Duke of York because he was unwell, according to reports.

He was due to attend an event at Windsor Castle to mark Andrew's new role as Colonel of the Grenadier Guards but was unable to attend because he was feeling "under the weather" the Daily Mail reported.

He stepped down from his public duties last summer but on occasion does attend events with the Queen.

When it was announced last year that he would be retiring from official engagements, Buckingham Palace stressed that the decision was not health-related and he had the full support of the Queen.

The Queen photographed after the Royal Maundy service Credit: Reuters

The Queen appeared in good spirits during the service, which is held on Maundy Thursday every year and is a firm fixture in her calendar.

Q&A | Maundy Thursday

The monarch marks the occasion by offering alms to senior citizens - retired pensioners recommended by clergy and ministers of all denominations - in recognition of service to the Church and to the local community.

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As she distributed the Maundy money to 92 men and 92 women - to mark the fact that she will be 92 this year - the Queen smiled warmly at the recipients who were given two purses - one red and one white.

The Queen with the Yeoman of the Guard at Windsor Castle Credit: AFP

This year, the red purse contains a 5 coin, commemorating four generations of royalty, and a 50p coin commemorating the Representation of the People Act 1918, which reformed the electoral system in Great Britain and Ireland, giving some women the right to vote for the first time. Both coins have been minted in 2018.

The white purse contains uniquely minted Maundy money - silver one, two, three and four penny pieces - to the value of 92p.

The Queen leaves St George's Chapel, Windsor after the service Credit: PA

The Royal Maundy is an ancient ceremony which originated in the commandment Christ gave after washing the feet of his disciples the day before Good Friday.

Before leaving, the Queen posed for a picture on the steps of St George's Chapel with the Yeomen of the Guard and the senior clergy who conducted the service.
By Gary McWilliams

HOUSTON (Reuters) - A prominent Houston megachurch pastor who counseled presidents and top executives was charged on Friday with selling investors more than $1 million in worthless Chinese bonds and using proceeds for his own benefit, federal authorities said.

Kirbyjon Caldwell, 64, senior pastor at the Windsor Village United Methodist Church in Houston, one of the nation's largest Protestant churches with about 17,000 members, faces wire fraud and money laundering charges in connection with the sale of historical bonds to mostly elderly investors.

The bonds were issued by the former Republic of China before 1949 - when the communists won that country's civil war and took power - are not recognized by the current Chinese government and have no investment value, said U.S. Attorney Alexander C. Van Hook in Shreveport, Louisiana.

Caldwell's attorney said his client was unaware the bonds were worthless and had invested his own money.

"He's 100 percent, absolutely not guilty of these charges," Caldwell's attorney, Dan Cogdell, said in a broadcast interview. "He was the biggest investor in these bonds; he completely believed these bonds were legitimate."

Caldwell has been an adviser to former presidents, including George W. Bush, is a limited partner in the Houston Texans professional football team, and serves on the board of NRG Energy.

Caldwell and Gregory Alan Smith, 55, operator and manager of Smith Financial Group in Shreveport, were charged by a federal grand jury in a 13-count indictment, prosecutors said. An arraignment date has not been set for either man, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office said.

Smith, who worked as a financial planner, had been barred from the broker-dealer business since 2010 by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said.

Calls to the Windsor Village United Methodist Church were not answered on Friday, and Smith could not be reached at his office. Caldwell has led the church since 1982, according to its website.

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The two men face separate charges of defrauding investors by the SEC in connection with the bond sales. The regulatory agency described the bonds as "collectible memorabilia."

Caldwell and Smith in 2013 and 2014 raised at least $3.4 million from 29 mostly elderly investors by promising them high returns, and used about $1.8 million of the proceeds for personal expenses, the SEC alleged.

"Caldwell took advantage of his victims, encouraging them to remain faithful even as he and Smith broke that faith, stealing from elderly investors in an outright fraud," said Eric Bustillo, director of the SEC's Miami Regional Office.

(Reporting by Gary McWilliams; Editing by David Gregorio, Jonathan Oatis and Susan Thomas)
By Sarah N. Lynch WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions revealed that Utah's top federal prosecutor is investigating a variety of Republican allegations of misconduct at the Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to a letter to lawmakers released on Thursday. However, Sessions stopped short of appointing a second special counsel, despite repeated requests by Republican lawmakers to do so, saying he wanted to wait for the results of the review from John Huber, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Utah. Democrats in Congress have repeatedly criticized Republican requests for a special counsel, saying they are merely a tactic to distract from and undermine Special Counsel Robert Mueller's ongoing probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Huber's review covers a wide range of issues that Republicans have complained about since last year, from how the FBI handled investigations related to Hillary Clinton, to claims that the FBI made missteps when it sought a warrant to conduct surveillance on a former adviser to Donald Trump's 2016 election campaign. Sessions' announcement on Huber comes just one day after the Justice Department's inspector general revealed that he too would be reviewing whether the FBI and Justice Department followed the law when they applied for the surveillance warrant on Carter Page, who briefly served as a national security adviser to Trump's campaign. A Justice Department spokesman said Huber first began investigating various claims in the fall of 2017. "Mr. Huber is conducting his work from outside the Washington, D.C. area and in cooperation with the inspector general," Sessions wrote to Senator Charles Grassley, Congressman Bob Goodlatte and Congressman Trey Gowdy, who all chair committees that are conducting probes into alleged FBI abuses. He added: "I receive regular updates from Mr. Huber and upon the conclusion of his review, will receive recommendations as to whether ... any matters merit the appointment of a Special Counsel." (Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; editing by Grant McCool and Tom Brown)
"This kid's not scared. He's not scared of the NRA. He's not intimidated and scared by Laura Ingraham ... Half the Republican party is hiding under the table, under their bed. They're so scared ... Not these kids, though" - @SteveSchmidtSES w/ @NicolleDWallace pic.twitter.com/QZE5I6zmv3  Deadline White House (@DeadlineWH) March 29, 2018

Republican strategist Steve Schmidt said it came down to one characteristic that led Parkland, Florida, school shooting survivor and gun control activist David Hogg to get an apology from Fox News host Laura Ingraham: fearlessness.

Maybe thats what happens after youve been down range of an AR-15 that kills your classmates and comes close to killing you, Schmidt said Thursday on Nicolle Wallaces MSNBC show. You lose all fear. Because this kids not scared. Hes not scared of the NRA. Hes not intimidated and scared by Laura Ingraham.

Schmidt said that Hogg and his classmates are not like the elected Republican officials who are scared to death of Fox News, of Laura Ingraham, of Rush Limbaugh.

Schmidts comments came as several advertisers announced they would pull their commercials from Ingrahams Fox News show after she mocked Hogg on Twitter for not getting into certain colleges.

Hogg and his 14-year-old sister, Lauren, responded to Ingrahams attack Wednesday night, calling out the Fox News host for cyberbullying students.

Coming from a 14-year-old, please grow up, Lauren tweeted, while her brother called for an advertiser boycott.

As companies announced they would move their commercials, Ingraham issued a rare apology Thursday for her comments.

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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
Virgin Group founder Richard Branson

Virgin Group founder Richard Branson contends President Donald Trumps steel and aluminum tariffs wont benefit the U.S. economy.

I think the tariffs are counterproductive, Branson told Yahoo Finance during an interview this week at the Adobe Summit, held in Las Vegas. You see what happened to the stock market when he introduced them. It sent the stock market down, although the amount he did [introduce] was relatively small. But fortunately, I think hes now backtracked and it looks like sense will prevail.

In early March, Trump signed orders imposing a 25% tariff on imported steel and a 10% tariff on imported aluminum, in a move he argued would protect and benefit U.S. workers and companies. Later in the month however, the president agreed to temporarily exempt the European Union (EU) and six countries  Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Mexico and South Korea  while the U.S. negotiates long-term plans with foreign leaders from each country. The White House has said Trump will decide by May 1 whether to extend each exemption depending on the status of those talks.

Lawmakers from the presidents own party and leaders from around the world have warned Trump against imposing the tariffs, suggesting they could spark a global trade war that could hurt American exporters and ultimately raise costs for manufacturers that rely on a vast supply chain around the world.

Branson, who has been critical of the Trump administration in the past, also reiterated his desire for America to transition away from coal as an energy source, which is in stark contrast to Trump, who has pledged to revitalize the struggling coal industry and create more jobs through deregulation.

America could be powered by 100-square acres of solar in the desert, Branson added. Tons of jobs could be created and the increased storms, the hurricanes, the fires, all of this is stemming from more and more carbon in the air. I have an airline, and weve got a big responsibility to make sure you have lighter weight planes with carbon builds to make sure that we try to switch our fuel to clean energy.

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JP Mangalindan is the Chief Tech Correspondent for Yahoo Finance covering the intersection of tech and business. Email story tips and musings to jpm@oath.com. Follow him on Twitter or Facebook.

More from JP
Dakar (AFP) - Leading Senegalese politician Khalifa Sall was jailed for five years for fraud on Friday, a sentence that will rule him out of presidential elections due next February.

Sall, 62, who is mayor of Dakar, had denied the charges against him as politically motivated.

He had been accused of fraudulent use of public funds, for which he was also fined five million CFA francs (7,625 euros).

He was found not guilty on charges of criminal conspiracy, money laundering and misappropriating public funds.

Prosecutors had sought a seven-year prison term and a fine worth nearly $10 million (more than eight million euros).

And they said they would appeal the shorter sentence and the smaller fine.

The ruling "doesn't surprise us," said one of the lawyers for the state of Senegal, Baboucar Cisse, who insisted that the facts were "true."

"The state of Senegal will appeal," he said.

Sall was tried along with his financial director, Mbaye Toure, who was given the same sentences.

"In his capacity as authorising officer, Khalifa Sall has affixed his signature to the back of 110 false invoices" between 2011 and 2015, the judge, Malick Lamotte, said in his ruling.

"We are going to file an appeal, obviously," one of Sall's lawyers, Cheikh Khouraissi Ba, told AFP.

The trial had been avidly followed in Senegal since the start of the year, throwing a spotlight on Sall's high popularity and stirring debate over next year's elections if he were to be convicted.

Sall represents a growing challenge to incumbent President Macky Sall, who shares the same name but is not a relation.

Supporters of the mayor protested loudly in the packed courtroom when the verdict was announced and police were deployed around the building.

- 'Kowtow' -

"Senegalese justice has kowtowed today. President Macky Sall issued an order which Judge Lamotte carried out," Moussa Taya, one of the mayor's political advisers, told the press.

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"Today, Khalifa is in prison, but in the hearts of all Senegalese," said Makhtar Diaw, a deputy mayor in a district of Dakar.

A dissident member of the Socialist Party, Khalifa Sall began his political activism at the age of 11.

He later held various ministerial portfolios under then Socialist president Abdou Diouf before being elected mayor of the capital in 2009.

Sall and Tour appeared in the dock with six other municipal employees who faced the same charges. Of these, four were given jail terms ranging from six months to five years and two were discharged.

The specific charge of misappropriating public funds centred on 1.83 billion CFA francs ($2.85 million, 2.7 million euros) of city money which allegedly was misused between 2011 and 2015.

The court heard allegations of a system of fake receipts for rice and millet, the money from which Sall was accused of using for "political purposes".

Sall said the money was not diverted for personal or political use but instead used for discretionary spending on sensitive issues such as security.

"Should I be robbed of my right to be a candidate because Macky Sall doesn't want Khalifa Ababacar Sall to become his opponent in 2019?" the mayor asked combatively on the trial's last day.
SheKnows

While much has been written about Jan. 6 and Donald Trumps reaction while it was going down, Bob Woodwards new book, Peril, is giving readers more insight into what happened behind closed doors. The day was fraught with a lot of drama, and as we know, much of the burden of getting through to the []
Dave Majumdar

Security,

The big concern for United States and NATO is that if Russia realizes its vision, it will have the ability to precisely strike deep inside alliance territory.

Russia Just Revealed How It Will Fight the Wars of the Future (And Its Shocking)

Russia is developing new long-range intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities to enable long-range precision strikes.

Essentially, in the Russian view, the future of war lies in a combination of advanced unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and space-based systems coupled with next-generation cruise missiles and other long-range weapons. But future wars will also include economic, political and information warfare components in addition to traditional military power.

"The objects of the economy and the state administration of the enemy will be subject to immediate destruction, in addition to the traditional spheres of armed struggle, the information sphere and space will be actively involved," chief of the Russian General Staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov told an audience at a defense conference according to the TASS news agency.

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To fight a new kind of war, Russia will have to integrate ISR capabilities with long-range precision strike weaponry.

In order to ensure the promptness and continuity of the fire impact on the enemy, reconnaissance, strike and reconnaissance fire contours are created, integration of reconnaissance information and information-control systems with weapons systems of types and arms of troops is carried out," Gerasimov said. "Work is underway to create an interspecific automated reconnaissance and strike system, which should result in a 2-2.5 fold reduction in the timing parameters of the solution cycle from reconnaissance to target destruction, with an accuracy of 1.5-2 times the accuracy of the defeat, will expand the capabilities to establish high-precision weapons.

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To accomplish its goals, Russia will have to invest in new unmanned aircraft that can survive in highly contested airspace, Gerasimov said. But along with those new systems, Russia will need new command and control systems and ways to automatically process and analyze the data that has been gathered.

The development of modern means of combat command and control integrated into a single information space is being carried out, and the new system for modeling the armed forces has been developed," Gerasimov said. "The level of automation of the processes of gathering and analyzing information about the situation, planning of hostilities, is increasing due to the introduction of a unified automated command and control system at the tactical level.

The takeaway for Western analysts is that Russia is focusing more on long-range ISR capabilities.

The big takeaway is that Russia is finally and openly acknowledging the importance and irreplaceability of unmanned systems in future conflicts, Center for Naval Analyses researcher Sam Bendett told The National Interest. Gerasimov also acknowledges that such UAS are key to all future wars. He discusses that future wars involve not just the military, but economic, political and diplomatic components. Therefore, Russia must have high-tech weapons to wage such wars.

The big concern for United States and NATO is that if Russia realizes its vision, it will have the ability to precisely strike deep inside alliance territory. That means that Russian force will be able to strike at infrastructure such as air bases deep inside alliance territory.

The U.S. must plan to counter a wide variety of UASs along with space-based assets, Bendett said. Not to mention countering potential deep-strike capability by Russian technologies currently in development.

Dave Majumdar is the defense editor for The National Interest. You can follow him on Twitter: @davemajumdar.

Image: Creative Commons.

Read full article
Washington (AFP) - Russia is free to apply to accredit more diplomats to replace the alleged spies that have been expelled from the United States, a State Department official said Friday.

This week, in response to an apparent attempt to assassinate a Russian double agent in Britain with a nerve agent, Washington joined a score of Western allies in expelling more than 150 suspected intelligence officers attached to Russian missions.

In all, 48 alleged Russian operatives working under diplomatic cover for its US mission were on the list -- along with 12 attached to the Russian mission to the United Nations in New York.

Russia's consulate in Seattle will also be closed, but the total size of its diplomatic footprint in the United States might not shrink for long, because the expelled staff could be replaced.

"The United States has expelled 48 Russian intelligence officers, but it is not requiring the Russian bilateral mission to reduce its total number of personnel," a State Department official told AFP.

"The Russian government remains free to request accreditation for vacant positions in its bilateral mission. Any requests for new diplomatic accreditation will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis."

The Russian officers, whom Moscow denies are spies, have until April 2 to leave, although US media reported that Russian planes were already at Dulles airport on Friday to begin their transport.

Russia has responded to the Western moves with matching tit-for-tat expulsions.

But, the US official said, it has not requested that the headcount at Washington's embassy in Moscow be reduced -- as the Kremlin had done when former US president Barack Obama expelled 35 diplomats in 2016.

"We therefore understand that the United States may request new diplomatic personnel to fill the positions of diplomats who have been expelled," he said.

President Donald Trump has often appeared reluctant to criticize his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin and in a call last week congratulated him on his latest re-election.

But this week's diplomatic expulsions were unprecedented in their scale, and the State Department insists that Washington reserves the right to respond to Moscow's "unjustified" expulsions.
Both Russia and the U.S. appeared to suggest Thursday that their missions in war-torn Syria were coming to an end as the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) and other insurgents were mostly defeated. As the Moscow-backed Syrian military and its allies forced rebel and jihadi groups in the Damascus suburbs of eastern Ghouta into reconciliation agreements, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told state-run RIA Novosti that the "counter-terrorist operation" near the Syrian capital was "nearly over," according to Reuters.

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Meanwhile, a White House reporter for One America News said President Donald Trump had announced he was planning to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria, where the government considered their presence to be illegal. "We'll be coming out of Syria like very soon," Trump said, according to OAN reporter Trey Yingst, who previously helped break the news of Trump's decision to meet North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong Un.

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Stringer/AFP/Getty Images

The U.S. and Russia have pursued separate military campaigns with the stated purpose of defeating terrorist groups, mainly ISIS, in Syria. The U.S., however, became involved in Syria's seven-year civil war before the rise of ISIS and supported various insurgent groups trying to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad since 2011. The covert CIA program to back rebels dwindled as Islamic fundamentalist influence spread throughout the opposition.

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ISIS, which grew out of a merger of ultraconservative Sunni Muslim groups following the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, spread to neighboring Syria in 2013 and, by 2014, had taken over half of Iraq and Syria. That same year, the U.S. formed a multinational coalition to begin bombing the militants and swapped support for the largely Arab Sunni Muslim Syrian opposition for Syrian Kurdish groups such as the People's Protection Units (YPG). The Pentagon established the mostly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces in 2015.

Around this same time, Russia entered the battle to help Assad's embattled armed forces fighting alongside a number of Syrian pro-government and Iran-backed militias. The U.S. and Russian campaigns have vastly contributed to the defeat of ISIS in major cities and, with the jihadis largely destroyed, Syria has called on the U.S. and Turkish forces to withdraw immediately.

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Institute for the Study of War/Reuters

Special Forces Commander Raymond Thomas said last summer that Russia may have the legal capabilities to force the U.S. out of Syria after ISIS was defeated because the Pentagon's sole mandate was to defeat ISIS. After Syria declared victory against ISIS in November and Russia announced it would scale back its own forces the following month, the U.S. has defended its presence by saying the troops were necessary to back local allies against a potential resurgence of ISIS.

The U.S.-led coalition ground offensive against ISIS has recently come to a halt, however, as Syrian Kurdish fighters flee the coalition to battle Turkish and Syrian rebel forces conducting their own self-proclaimed counterterrorism operation against U.S.-backed Kurds that Ankara believes to be linked to the militant Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Pro-Syrian government forces, which have allied with Syrian Kurdish fighters battling Turkey and rebels in the northwest, clashed last month with the mostly Arab faction of the Syrian Democratic Forces in the east. Syria, Russia and Iran have accused the U.S. of shielding the remaining ISIS militants in the east, something the U.S.-led coalition has denied.

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Institute for the Study of War/Reuters

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Institute for the Study of War/Reuters

The Syrian military has taken advantage of major ISIS losses to focus on retaking rebel bastions in Idlib and outside of Damascus. The U.S. and its Western allies have blamed Russia, Syria and Iran for mounting civilian casualties in these offensives. After reports emerged of alleged chemical weapons attacks in eastern Ghouta, the U.S. threatened to take unilateral military action, as it did last April when Trump ordered an attack on a Syrian air base following reports of a sarin gas attack conducted by the Syrian military in Idlib.

Russia has denied that the Syrian military possesses or uses chemical weapons and has urged the U.S. not to conduct any further attacks in Syria. In response to the most recent U.S. warning earlier this month, Russia's top general threatened he would strike back if his forces were put in danger.

This article was first written by Newsweek

More from Newsweek
SACRAMENTO, Calif.  Hundreds of mourners gathered in Californias capital on Thursday, to honor the life of 22-year-old Stephon Clark  an unarmed black man shot and killed by police.

Two Sacramento police fatally shot Clark, a father of two, on March 18 outside of his grandparents home after neighbors had called police to investigate someone hiding in one of their backyards. Footage from both police body cameras and helicopter coverage showed officers opening fire on Clark; they later said they mistook his cell phone for a gun. Clark was shot 20 times.

On Thursday morning, Clarks funeral in south Sacramento was held open to the public.

Long before the funeral was set to begin, mourners had already lined up down the block of the Bayside of South Sacramento Church. Some of the attendees had driven hours to attend the funeral. Many of those in line were Muslim, coming to pay their respects to a fellow member of their religious community.

In a funeral program, Clark was described as a young man who loved sports, had a great sense of humor and was the life of the party.

Hundreds of mourners lined up at Bayside of South Sacramento Church Thursday for the funeral of 22-year-old Stephon Clark. (Photo: Jenavieve Hatch/HuffPost)

As the funeral began just before noon, several religious leaders took the podium to read from Christian scripture, the Old Testament and the Quran.

Only Stephon could bring together all races and religions in one room, one speaker said.

At one point, a speaker was interrupted by Clarks brother Stevante, who took to the podium and in an emotional call to the crowd, yelled: I am!

Stephon Clark! the mourners yelled back.

As Rev. Al Sharpton took the stage to deliver his eulogy, he began by repeating Stevantes call: I am!

We will never let you forget the name of Stephon Clark until we get justice, Sharpton said. Because this brother could be any one of us.

Sharpton had told reporters ahead of the service that the country should think of Clarks killing as a national issue, not a local one.

The community has come together to say that we cannot have unarmed people shot by the people we trust to protect and serve, Sharpton continued. Look at what weve seen all over the country. The president needs to address it. Congress needs to address it.

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We need to deal with this issue and deal with it nationally, he added.

(Photo: PBS News Hour)

De Angelo Wilson and Ken Ken, who are both from Sacramento and attended the service, said they grew up with Clark and remembered Clark fondly as an energetic kid.

William, a cousin of Clarks father who declined to give his last name, told HuffPost that Clark was a good kid, but that its hard to be perfect when you come from where we come from.

Clarks death, one of several high-profile killings of black Sacramento men in the last two years, sparked fierce protests across Californias state capital. Alongside local activists, Clarks family and friends have shut down Interstate 5, blocked entrance to Sacramento Kings games, disrupted city council meetings and demonstrated outside District Attorney Anne Marie Schuberts office.

They didnt have to kill him like that. They didnt have to shoot him this many times, said Sequita Thompson, Clarks grandmother, on Tuesday in Sacramento.

If youre that scared, you dont need to be a police officer, Tanya Faison, the founder of the Black Lives Matter Sacramento chapter, said while protesting outside the DAs office on Wednesday.

BLM and members of the Sacramento community are calling for the firing of the two police officers (who are currently on paid administrative leave). They also want more power and resources given to the Sacramento Community Police Review Commission, a community-led group that reviews police policy, standards, and behavior and provides feedback to the city.

Activists say Clarks shooting is indicative of excessive force used against the black community, and the continued lack of justice for victims of police violence and their families. (On Tuesday, for example, Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry announced that the police officers who killed Alton Sterling in the summer of 2016 would not face charges.)

The Sacramento BLM chapter is calling to change use of force laws practiced by the Sacramento Police Department that broadly allow police officers to whatever amount of force they deem necessary under the circumstances. According to Faison, they are too subjective. Other groups, like the NAACP, have also condemned the practice.

Faison and other community members are also calling to re-elect a new DA in this years election, saying that Schubert is not doing enough work for the black community.

The incident also inspired outcry on a national scale. Protests have sprung up in other cities across the country, including New York and Phoenix. Prominent black celebrities, activists and influencers have amplified the calls for justice for Clark.

Californias Department of Justice announced Tuesday that it would join the investigation into Clarks death, and also review SPDs policies and practices.

Although we will continue to coordinate with the Sacramento Police Department, we will retain our independence as we conduct this review, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said at a Tuesday press conference.

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A California Highway Patrol officer is confronted by a Black Lives Matter protester during a demonstration Thursday in Sacramento, California.

Protesters chanted outside of City Hall.

A young girl wears a shirt with an image of Stephon Clark.

Veronica Curry, front with hoop earrings, raises her fist with other Black Lives Matter supporters.

A protester holds a photo of Stephon Clark during a Black Lives Matter demonstration outside of Sacramento City Hall.

A protester carries an umbrella as he marches during a protest of the police shooting of Stephon Clark.

Black Lives Matter protesters stage a demonstration outside of Sacramento City Hall.

A Black Lives Matter protesters run onto Interstate 5.

A Black Lives Matter protester holds a sign as he marches on Interstate 5.

Protesters stand on a California Highway Patrol car on Interstate 5.

A young girl holds a Black Lives Matter sign in front of Sacramento police officers on horseback.

Black Lives Matter protesters block Interstate 5 during a demonstration.

Protesters hold signs as they march on Interstate 5.

Protesters chant as they block the entrance to the Golden 1 Center.

Black Live Matter protesters hold their fists in the air as they block the entrance to the Golden 1 Center.

Black Live Matter protesters chant as they block the entrance to the Golden 1 Center.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
Sergei and Yulia Skripal were poisoned at the front door of the former spys home (Rex)

Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned by a nerve agent at the former Russian spys home, police have now confirmed.

Detailed forensic testing revealed the highest concentration of the nerve agent was found on the front door of Mr Skripals home in Christie Miller Road, in Salisbury.

The Metropolitan Police said traces of the nerve agent had been found at some of the other scenes detectives have been working at, but at lower concentrations.

Detectives will now focus their inquiries in and around the address, and specialist teams will step back from some of the other areas investigated over the past few weeks.

Detectives will now focus their inquiries in and around the address (Rex)

Police said the risk to Mr Skripals neighbours remains low (Rex)

Deputy assistant Commissioner Dean Haydon, senior national co-ordinator for counter-terrorism policing, said: At this point in our investigation, we believe the Skripals first came into contact with the nerve agent from their front door.

We are therefore focusing much of our efforts in and around their address. Those living in the Skripals neighbourhood can expect to see officers carrying out searches as part of this, but I want to reassure them that the risk remains low and our searches are precautionary.

He thanked members of the public for their understanding, adding that officers will likely be in the neighbourhood for several months.

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Mr Skripal and his daughter Yulia remain in a critical condition in hospital following the Novichok poisoning on March 4 in Salisbury, Wiltshire.

The spys niece, Viktoria Skripal said the prognosis for the pair really isnt good, telling the BBC: Out of 99% I have maybe 1% of hope.

Whatever it was has given them a very small chance of survival. But theyre going to be invalids for the rest of their lives.

Britain has accused Russia of being behind the poisoning  allegations that have been fiercely denied by Moscow.

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Mr Skripal and his daughter remain in a critical condition in hospital (Rex)

Britain has expelled Russian diplomats in response to the nerve agent attack (Getty)

In turn, Russia has suggested that UK intelligence officers may have been involved in the poisoning, while also broadcasting multiple conspiracy theories.

The Kremlin allegation came as Moscow faced increasing global isolation, with at least 26 countries expelling a total of more than 130 suspected spies.

Britain insists there is no plausible alternative explanation for the attack, and has dismissed the series of suggestions emanating from Moscow as nonsense.

Russian have denied involvement in the poisoning (Rex)

Around 250 counter terrorism detectives continue to work around the clock on the investigation, which is expected to continue for months.

Officers are examining more than 5,000 hours of CCTV footage and 1,350 exhibits that have been seized, while 500 witnesses have been identified.

The London Road cemetery, where his wife and son are buried, the Maltings shopping centre where Mr Skripal and his daughter were discovered unconscious, and the Ashley Wood compound have been handed back into the control of Wiltshire Police.
Because so many countries have now backed the UK in expelling Russian officials, the few who have chosen not to have now become conspicuous with their decision.

So which European nations have not expelled Russian diplomats and why?

There are some who say they are firmly behind the majority but cannot physically expel any diplomats for practical reasons:

:: Portugal

Often referred to as Britain's oldest ally, Portugal is, more accurately, England's oldest ally, with the diplomatic friendship stretching back to 1147. However, Lisbon has chosen not to expel any Russians as a response to the Salisbury attack.

The Portuguese foreign ministry said this week that it "believes the coordination at the European level is the most effective means to respond to the gravity of the current situation".

It is not clear how many Russians diplomats are operating in Lisbon but it is likely to be small and it may be that the Portuguese could not find a security related reason for any expulsions.

:: Luxembourg

There are only a very small number of Russian staff at the country's mission in Luxembourg and it is understood that not one of them has been connected to espionage.

Luxembourg announced on Wednesday that it was recalling its ambassador to Russia and said it agreed with the analysis of Britain that Moscow was very likely to have been responsible for a nerve agent attack on British soil.

"Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn has decided to recall the Luxembourg ambassador to Moscow for consultations," the foreign ministry said.

:: Malta

Government spokesman Kurt Farrugia told Sky News that Malta is "full square behind the UK and the coordinated action".

He added: "Malta also supports actions by other countries to expel Russian envoys. We are not doing so ourselves because our diplomatic mission in Moscow is very small and any response by Russia would effectively terminate diplomatic relations.

"This operational decision does not reduce our support for the UK and our security partners. This position was communicated to the UK Government and the EU Council, who accepted this rationale."

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However, Malta is known to have helped wealthy Russians obtain EU passports through a legal but shadowy and controversial scheme.

:: Switzerland

A traditionally and staunchly neutral country, this non-EU nation has not expelled any Russian diplomats and there were no expectations that it would.

There are some countries known to have close ties to Russia. The Kremlin has fostered relations with particular EU nations (as well as political parities within EU states) in recent years in order to drive a wedge in the European Union and also to try to undermine the sanctions imposed on it after the annexation of Crimea.

:: Greece

Historical and religious ties between Greece and Russia are deep but the current Greek government has particularly close relations with the Kremlin which has alarmed the EU and NATO for some time.

Members of Greece's ruling Syriza Party are reported to have particular business and economic relationships with powerful Russian business elites. Its coalition partner, Anel, is openly pro-Kremlin too.

At the EU summit last week, the Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said: "We have to express our solidarity to the UK, to the British people, but at the same time we need to investigate."

The Greek government has previously said it would never sanction a member of the UN's permanent Security Council.

:: Slovakia

This eastern European nation has meandered in its recent relations with Russia. Currently it appears to be taking a softer line with Moscow. In a parliamentary meeting, Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini described the expulsion of Russian diplomats as "theatrical gestures".

He said: "I want to assure all of you that Slovakia will act responsibly. But, on the other hand, we declared clearly that we will not yield to any pressure and do unnecessary theatrical gestures... Slovakia has already prepared possible further steps. We'll wait. Because the conviction in the high plausibility of Russian responsibility to the Slovak side alone is not enough."

:: Austria

Speaking to Russian news agency Sputnik following the announcements by other EU and European countries, Austria's government spokesman Peter Launsky-Tieffenthal said that Vienna would "not take any measures at the national level" and would not expel diplomats.

He said: "The reason for this is that we intend to keep open channels of dialogue with Russia. Austria is a neutral country and a kind of bridge between East and West. But we support the decision to recall the EU ambassador from Moscow."

However, the far-right FPO Party, which is part of the country's governing coalition, is known to have close ties to the Kremlin.

After the Russian annexation of the Ukrainian region of Crimea, the FPO said it was a "domestic Russian issue that does not need to concern the European Union". The FPO Party is in charge of Austria's foreign ministry.

:: Slovenia

The Slovenian Foreign Minister, Karl Erjavec, issued a short statement this week saying simply "we stick to the position adopted by the European Council that it must be determined what actually has happened".

Mr Erjavec added that the issue would be discussed at a cabinet meeting later in the week.

The government in Ljubljana prides itself on good diplomatic relations it maintains with Russia. Late last year, the Slovenia Prime Minister said he hoped his country could "become a bridge between the two superpowers".

The country has been used before as host nation for talks between the US and Russia - in 2001, George W Bush met Vladimir Putin for the first time at a Slovenian summit.

:: Bulgaria

The current holder of the EU's rotating presidency has not expelled any diplomats but it has recalled its ambassador to Moscow for consultations.

Last week, Prime Minister Boyko Borissov said the EU support for the UK was "a joint decision which we support", yet at the same time, the Bulgarian government has said it must remain neutral because of its position as holder of the EU presidency. Strong business ties between Bulgaria and Russia may have played on the decision too.

:: Cyprus

The small Mediterranean country holds billions of euros of Russian capital in its banks. Like Greece, it has also said in the past that it did not think it appropriate to sanction a member of the UN Security Council.
A district judge in New York has rejected Saudi Arabias motion to end a lawsuit that would hold the Sunni Muslim kingdom responsible for the terrorist attacks that took place on September 11, 2001.

The judge determined Wednesday that the U.S. court can assume jurisdiction under the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA), which Congress passed in 2016. The relatives of hundreds of people who died in the terrorist attacks have filed numerous lawsuits against the Saudi government over the past 16 years, claiming that it helped support the terrorist group al-Qaida by funding charities that supported Islamic militants.

The Saudi government has long denied that it played a role in the attack that killed almost 3,000 people, and had asked that the lawsuit be dismissed because it deserves immunity as a sovereign nation.

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The plaintiffs called Wednesdays decision a step forward, saying it means that the Saudi government will be obligated to provide answers about its role in the attack. The lawsuit also asks for billions of dollars in damages for the victims and their families, including the more than 20,000 people who were injured.

Instead of dealing with this issue honestly and confronting the compelling evidence the 9/11 families have amassed, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has paid an army of lawyers and lobbyists a fortune to help them duck, dodge and distract," the 9/11 Families & Survivors United for Justice Against Terrorism said in a statement. "We are grateful that a federal court has listened to our case, upheld the constitutionality of JASTA and allowed our efforts to move forward.

The majority of the 19 attackers in the September 11 attacks were Saudi nationals. The court's decision was made as Saudi Arabias increasingly powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman tours the United States and met with President Donald Trump, among others. Last week, Trump welcomed the prince to the Oval Office and called the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia the strongest its ever been.

Story continues

This article was first written by Newsweek

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Wisconsin Republicans have ended their legal fight to wait until November to conduct elections for two vacant legislative seats.

The seats  one in the state Assembly, the other in the state Senate  have been vacant since December when the Republicans holding them resigned to take jobs in the administration of Gov. Scott Walker (R). Walker said he wouldnt call special elections, and instead allow the seats to be filled in the regularly scheduled votes in November to save the state money.

Democrats sued Walker over that refusal, saying he was violating a state law requiring that special elections be called as promptly as possible for vacancies. A state circuit court judge sided with them on March 22, giving the governor until noon Thursday to schedule the special elections.

Walker twice appealed that decision and asked for more time, as Republican legislative leaders called lawmakers back for a special session to try to change the state law. A judge denied Walkers request, and the governor decided Wednesday not to appeal the decision to the state Supreme Court.

The judge ruled that representative government and the election of our representatives are never unnecessary, never a waste of taxpayer resources.

On Thursday, Walker issued an executive order scheduling the special elections. The primaries will be on May 15 and the general election on June 12. The seats will again be on the ballot in November. Wisconsin Republicans, meanwhile, announced they would drop their attempt to change the state law on special elections.

Democrats had accused Walker of refusing to call the special elections out of fear Republicans would lose the seats. In January, a Democrat won a surprising victory in a state Senate district President Donald Trump won by over 20 percentage points in 2016. Walker called the Democratic victory a wake up call for Republicans.

Walker said in a Thursday radio interview that the special elections would be meaningless because whoever wins the June contest will serve for just a few months, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

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In a series of tweets Thursday, Walker blamed former Attorney General Eric Holder and other Democrats for forcing the issue on the special elections. Holder is the chair of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, which is affiliated with the National Redistricting Foundation, the group that brought the lawsuit on the matter.

Obama Attorney General Eric Holder and his Washington, D.C.-based special interest group are behind the legal push to force Wisconsin taxpayers to pay for special elections for seats that will be filled in a few months in the normal elections.  Scott Walker (@ScottWalker) March 29, 2018

Eric Holder and the other liberals from Washington, D.C. are using the situation in Wisconsin to raise money for their battles in the fall.  Scott Walker (@ScottWalker) March 29, 2018

Holders group wants to win elections for governor with the hopes that they can use redistricting to permanently change the makeup of the U.S. House of Representatives and put Nancy Pelosi back in charge as speaker.  Scott Walker (@ScottWalker) March 29, 2018

Amy Hasenberg, a Walker spokeswoman, said in a statement Thursday that a special election would just be duplicative.

A D.C.-based special interest group is forcing taxpayers to pay for special elections for seats that will be filled again in just a few short months, she said. The Legislature has indicated they are done. To illustrate how ridiculous this is, nomination papers for the fall elections are due on June 1st, which means candidates will already be on the November ballot before the special elections are held.

State Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R) said Thursday Walker was boxed in and risked being held in contempt of court if he didnt call for the special elections, according to the Wisconsin State Journal.

State Sen. Jennifer Shilling, the chambers Democratic leader, celebrated the call for elections.

There is nothing more fundamental to our democracy than the right to vote. Despite Gov. Walkers best attempt to block elections and deny 200,000 voters their constitutional right to representation, justice prevailed and the courts correctly ruled that Republicans cant ignore the law, she said in a statement.

This is a victory for the citizens of Wisconsin who are without representation because of Governor Walkers refusal to do his job, Holder said.

This article has been updated with a statement from Hasenberg.

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Long before he was fired from the White House, Steve Bannon was an executive producer on Sean Penn's 1991 film, The Indian Runner. And when Penn stopped by Conan, he shared his first impressions of working with Bannon on set. When Bannon arrived on set in Iowa, he apparently brought two women with him from New York. He justified their visit by hiring them as hair and makeup assistants. This upset Penn, mainly because the budget was so small he didn't want to waste money on "cheerleader looking new makeup assistants." Penn didn't give much thought to Bannon after filming, that is until the recent presidential election. That was when Penn realized Donald Trump's right-hand man was the same Steve Bannon he had worked with. Penn said, "I didn't know it was the same Steve Bannon until I looked at him closely and imagined the Steve Bannon I knew but with the toxins of the soul so deteriorate and bloat and meld into this -- I don't think you can age like that without hating people."
Seoul (AFP) - South Korea summoned Tokyo's ambassador on Friday to protest over new educational guidelines requiring high school students to be taught that disputed islands belong to Japan.

Seoul has controlled the islets in the Sea of Japan (East Sea) since 1945, when Tokyo's brutal colonial rule on the peninsula ended.

Tokyo also claims the islands, known in Dokdo in South Korea and Takeshima in Japan, accusing Seoul of occupying them illegally.

South Korea and Japan are both market economies, democracies and US allies, and both are threatened by nuclear-armed North Korea, but their relationship is heavily strained by historical and territorial issues.

Tokyo on Friday approved guidelines requiring high school textbooks and teachers to tell pupils that the islands are Japan's, mirroring measures applied last year in elementary and middle schools.

The guidelines, which are available on the ministry's website, say schools should "introduce issues involving our country's territories, such as the Takeshima islands and Northern Territories, being our country's own territories".

The assertion was "unjustifiable", Seoul's foreign ministry said in a statement, saying Dokdo was an "inalienable" part of South Korea's territory.

"We strongly condemn it and sternly call for its immediate withdrawal," it added, saying Tokyo was trying to "instil a distorted historical perception about Dokdo into future generations".

Japan is embroiled in a separate dispute with China over another set of islands, about which the guidelines said schools should "cover the Senkaku islands as our country's own territories and that there is no issue of territorial sovereignty to be resolved".

Seoul and Tokyo tried to resolve a long-running feud over Japan's wartime sexual slavery of Korean women with an inter-government agreement in 2015.

The controversy of the so-called comfort women -- those forced into sexual slavery for Japanese troops during World War II -- has marred relations between the two countries for decades.

Earlier this month, South Korean President Moon Jae-in said Japan cannot unilaterally declare the issue "over", repeating calls for Tokyo to apologise.

Japan has protested against changing the deal, which was agreed to by Moon's predecessor Park Geun-hye, saying any attempt to modify or scrap it could negatively affect relations.
Kristin Kreuk attends the Emmy Awards on Nov. 20, 2017, in New York City. (Photo: FilmMagic)

Smallville star Kristin Kreuk is breaking her silence on her involvement in an alleged sex cult.

On Sunday, Keith Raniere, the founder of the self-help group NXIVM (pronounced nex-e-um) was arrested by the FBI in Mexico and charged with several counts of sex trafficking and forced labor conspiracy. NXIVM had several members with Hollywood ties, including Kreuk and her Smallville co-star Allison Mack.

Kreuk is best known for playing Lana Lang on the hit show and currently stars on CBSs Burden of Truth. The 35-year-old actress wants to set the record straight on what she knew about NXIVM and a reported secret sorority within it called DOS, also known as Lord/Master of the Obedient Female Companions, according to the New York Times.

Kreuk also retweeted a post from actress Sarah Edmondson that read: For the record, my dear friend @MsKristinKreuk was never in the inner circle of #NXIVM. She never recruited sex slaves and has been out since 2013 before s*** got weird. She is a lovely person who should not be dragged into this mess. Thank you. #Cult #DOS #freedom #TRUTH.

Smallville (Photo: Getty Images)

Allison Macks involvement, however, may be a bit more complicated. Mack, 35, played Chloe Sullivan on Smallville from 2001 to 2011. She has since appeared on Wilfred and American Odyssey, with her last credited appearance coming last year, voicing Evelyn in Lost in Oz.

A photo circulating online depicts a blond woman at the scene of Ranieres arrest who is believed to be Mack, although that is unconfirmed. It has also been speculated that she is the actress and DOS master referred to as Co-Conspirator 1 in the federal complaint filed in New York, who allegedly directed their slaves to have sex with Raniere. Some reports say her arrest is imminent. A publicist for Mack did not offer a comment when reached by Yahoo.

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While Macks involvement is unverified at this time, she has made no secret of her admiration for Raniere.

Listening to Keith Raniere explore thoughts on media, love and humanity. Mind is blown. I am so inspired.  Allison Mack (@allisonmack) October 27, 2013

On Macks biography page on her official website, she credits Mr. Raniere for mentoring her in her study of acting and music. In her last blog post, from July 2017, she discusses the quest she has been on to find herself since 2013.

The other morning I woke up and realized I have dedicated my life to this quest of self discovery. But I still feel like I am searching for something out there to get discover whats in here,' she writes. For the last 4 years I have been in an ongoing class broken up into segments of 8 day intensive workshops. So every 3 months, I spend 8 days with a group of amazing people who are all seeking to experience themselves and their lives more deeply. It feels like my lifes study. Since the last workshop I have been contemplating my quest more deeply. What is self? How do I know it? Where does it come from? My mentor, Keith, is always encouraging me to spend time with myself.

Last year, she interviewed her mentor on his Keith Raniere Conversations YouTube channel in a segment called Balancing Genius and Insecurities. Mack appears to be awestruck in the 12-minute video.

U.S. Attorney Richard P. Donoghue claims Raniere created a secret society of women whom he had sex with and branded with his initials, coercing them with the threat of releasing their highly personal information and taking their assets.

FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge William F. Sweeney adds: As alleged, Keith Raniere displayed a disgusting abuse of power in his efforts to denigrate and manipulate women he considered his sex slaves. He allegedly participated in horrifying acts of branding and burning them, with the cooperation of other women operating within this unorthodox pyramid scheme. These serious crimes against humanity are not only shocking, but disconcerting to say the least, and we are putting an end to this torture today.

Mack was last active on social media one week ago, sharing a photo of her and her mom.

Her most recent post is a video of a boy asking, What do you practice?

When contacted by Yahoo, the U.S. attorneys office for the Eastern District of New York had no update on whether any alleged co-conspirators will face charges.

Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:
A student in Japan has been reunited with a camera she lost in the ocean three years ago. (Photo: Getty Images)

A college student in Tokyo lost her camera at sea nearly three years ago, expecting never to see it again. But thanks to social media, she has been reunited with both the camera and the pictures in it, after a Facebook post looking for the owner went viral.

Serina Tsubakihara is a third-year student at Sophia University in Tokyo who had been on a trip in 2015 that brought her to an island about 155 miles away from northern Taiwan. When she dropped her digital camera in the water near the island, she figured it was gone forever  until elementary school students took a field trip to clean their nearby beach in Taiwan and came across something unexpected.

Park Lees students at Yue Ming Elementary School discovered the camera washed up on the beach, covered in marine organisms, looking as though it had barely survived. When their teacher took the waterproof case off, however, the camera itself was unharmed. In a Facebook post, Lee chronicled his students discovery and how they put together some clues to find the owner.

It seems a bit unethical to peek at other peoples camera photos, Lee wrote. However, as a result of our discussion, if we could take a look at the photos, would there be any clue that we could find the owner of the camera to return to him? So we watched the photos together quickly in the whole class and got the following inferences.

The class took note that the last photo was taken on Sept. 7, 2015, on Ishigaki Island in Japan, and that the people in the photos were likely Japanese. Although the camera had been lost at sea, the battery was fully charged, and Lee decided to post a few of the photos that were on it.

We decided to make public photos, the post continued. The most important thing is that we hope to find the camera owner. It is best to have Japanese media friends. You can help the report and let the owner see the news to find us. Maybe we can return the camera to them.

Just 12 hours later, the teachers post had been shared over 10,000 times, catching the attention of Taiwans de facto ambassador to Japan, Frank Hsieh, which brought the viral post over to the university students country  and soon after, directly to Tsubakihara herself.

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The camera crossed the border, Tsubakihara wrote on Facebook after getting in touch with Lee. I cant still believe this is happening but the only thing I want to say is thank you so much for every single person who was involved with this! I am so lucky and happy to have such a wonderful experience to feel the kindness of people. Borderless.

In addition to getting her precious memories back in the form of her recovered photos, Tsubakihara is planning a trip to Taiwan in June to visit Lee and his class.

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San Salvador (AFP) - Suspected gang members in El Salvador gunned down a young priest Thursday on his way to celebrate Holy Week festivities, police said.

Father Walter Osmir Vasquez, 31, was driving on a dirt road outside the town of Lolotique, 130 kilometres (80 miles) east of San Salvador when gunmen cut him off and shot him dead, police in that town said.

No motive was given. The government condemned the killing and ordered an investigation.

Soldiers joined police searching for the killers in the area of the attack.

El Salvador has one of the world's highest homicide rates -- 60 per 100,000 inhabitants last year. The government blames powerful street gangs for much of the violence that has engulfed the poor Central American country.
Douma (Syria) (AFP) - Hundreds more Syrian rebels and civilians prepared Friday to leave Eastern Ghouta under a negotiated withdrawal, as Russia unilaterally announced a similar deal to empty the final pocket of the battered enclave.

The former rebel bastion on the outskirts of Damascus has been drained by a nearly six-week Syrian government assault and two evacuation deals brokered by regime ally Moscow.

Under such agreements, rebels agree to hand over territory in exchange for safe passage for them and civilians to opposition-held northwest Syria.

More than 36,000 people have already been bussed out of the enclave, and fresh evacuations were under way on Friday.

Some 4,800 people, including fighters, were boarding buses in a pocket of Ghouta held by the Faylaq al-Rahman rebel faction, Syrian state media reported.

The agreement for that withdrawal, reached last week, left the overpopulated, devastated town of Douma as the final rebel holdout in the region.

Russia's defence ministry on Friday said it had brokered a deal that would see rebels abandon Douma "shortly", but the fighters there quickly denied it.

"We categorically refuse leaving or being displaced," said Jaish al-Islam's spokesman Hamza Bayraqdar.

"That's an essential demand of the negotiations. We have not reached an agreement yet," he told AFP, adding that talks were ongoing.

- Civilians hang in balance -

Civilians in Douma have become anxious over their uncertain fate.

"Jaish al-Islam is here and has to resolve the issue of civilians. We hope we can be done with this whole thing," said 39-year-old resident Mohammad al-Hussein.

"If they made me choose between leaving or staying, I'll stay. I didn't stay here for seven years just to leave in the end," he added.

Eastern Ghouta was the armed opposition's last stronghold around Damascus, which groups regularly targeted with rockets and mortar rounds.

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To secure Damascus, President Bashar al-Assad launched a ferocious air and ground assault on February 18 to oust rebels from Ghouta.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor says more than 1,600 civilians have been killed in the onslaught, which has overrun more than 90 percent of Ghouta.

Troops pursued a divide-and-conquer strategy, seizing most of the enclave then breaking up what was left of it into three isolated pockets.

Moscow stepped in and swiftly announced two withdrawal agreements with rebels, the first of which saw more than 4,500 fighters and civilians bussed out of the town of Harasta.

The second deal, reached with Faylaq al-Rahman one week ago, has seen over 31,000 people quit the towns of Arbin and Zamalka and the Jobar district.

In the first two deals, rebels caved in to Russia's "leave or die" approach but negotiations for the Douma pocket, held by Jaish al-Islam, look more arduous.

Douma's population has swelled to an estimated 200,000 with people displaced from other bombed-out districts.

Jaish al-Islam had been in talks with Russia to reach a settlement whereby they could stay, instead of being bused out like other rebels.

But negotiations faltered over the group's demands of a general amnesty and unrestricted movement for Douma residents across the country, a source with knowledge of the talks told AFP.

Moscow threatened Jaish al-Islam with a renewed blitz on the town if they did not agree to withdraw, and Syrian troops have amassed around the holdout.

- 'Above ground' -

On Thursday, Russia's foreign minister said rebel groups had "nearly been wiped out" by the government's offensive.

Syria's state news agency SANA said around 29,000 civilians had fled Douma in recent days, using a "corridor" opened up by advancing Syrian troops.

SANA said a total of 143,000 people in total had streamed out of Ghouta along such corridors and as part of the evacuation deals.

The state outlet did not confirm the agreement with Jaish al-Islam, but its correspondent said "preliminary information" indicated a deal was close.

Meanwhile, the Syrian Arab Red Crescent said Friday it was bringing humanitarian assistance to devastated Ghouta districts already recaptured by the regime.

Red Crescent workers distributed bread, water, and other aid to the towns of Kafr Batna, Saqba, and Ain Terma.

The rebels and civilians evacuated so far have been taken northwest to Idlib, where they could finally afford basic necessities after years under siege.

"The war we had was something unlike anything else in the world," said Abu Laameh, a 65-year-old evacuee who could finally afford a pack of cigarettes.

"It feels like we were at the bottom of a well, and someone pulled us out above ground."

But a departure to Idlib would be too "tricky" for Jaish al-Islam, said Thomas Pierret, an analyst at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris.

"The problem with Jaish al-Islam is that it's quite big, very cohesive, very organised, but it doesn't go well with anyone else," Pierret told AFP.
Paul Smith

Security, Asia

The question of Taiwans securityand the islands long-term political statuscontinues to be an unsettled one, which means a military scenario cannot be ruled out.

How the Taiwan Travel Act Could Start a U.S.-China War

On March 16, 2018, President Donald Trump signed into law the Taiwan Travel Act, which encourages officials at all levels of the United States Government to visit and meet with their Taiwan counterparts and to allow high-level officials of Taiwan to enter the United States and to meet with their U.S. counterparts, among other goals. The Chinese government has criticized the new law, describing it as a mistake and a violation of the One-China Policy. Chinese President Xi Jinping declared that any actions and tricks to split China are doomed to failure and will meet with the peoples condemnation and the punishment of history.

This latest controversy comes as China has begun exerting more military pressure against Taiwan. In recent weeks, China has increased air and naval operations in the vicinity of the islandincluding escorted strategic bomber encirclement flightsand deployed its aircraft carrier in waters near Taiwan, among other actions. This pressure campaign may be Beijings attempt to express its displeasure with Taiwans president, Tsai Ing-wen, or it may be a harbinger of a much more dangerous military campaign to come.

Whatever the motivation, Chinese operations around Taiwan will inevitably involve the United States, which is consistent with a historical pattern that has existed since at least 1950. In that year, President Harry Truman deployed the Seventh Fleet in the Taiwan Strait. Explaining his reasoning, Truman stated that the future of Formosa [Taiwan] . . . should be settled peacefully [and] the mission of the Seventh Fleet is to keep Formosa [Taiwan] out of the [Korean] conflict. Truman emphasized that the U.S. purpose was peace, not conquest.

In 1954, the pattern of U.S. protection of Taiwan would recur as mainland China began artillery assaults on one of Taiwans outer islands, which is adjacent to China. The United States stepped in and provided Taiwan with various type of military assistance. In December of that year, Washington signed a formal mutual defense treaty with Taipei. The following month Congress passed the Formosa Resolution, which authorized the U.S. president to employ the armed forces of the United States for protecting the security of Formosa, the Pescadores, and related positions and territories of that area.

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In 1958, China once again threatened military action against Taiwan; the United States responded with assistance for Taiwan, which helped mitigate what would later be known as the second Taiwan Strait crisis. In the more recent past, a third Taiwan Strait crisis occurred in 19951996. Once again, Beijing applied coercive military power against Taiwan and, similar to the previous crises, the United States stepped in to provide Taiwan with the safety and military protection it needed.

Thus, the pattern for almost seventy years has been for China to apply military pressure against Taiwan, the United States to push back against such pressure, and, ultimately, both sides to back down, leading to a reduction in tensions and a continuation of the status quo. The formula has worked for decades, much to the benefit of Taiwan, the United States and perhaps even to China itself.

However, there are growing indications that this pattern may no longer be sustainable. This is because the China of 2018 is not the same as the China of the Cold War era. With an increasingly powerful navy, air force and an array of other capabilities, Beijing now has an unprecedented ability to project force. This means that the balance of power is shifting in the Taiwan Strait, almost entirely in favor of Beijing. Moreover, Taiwan has not helped matters; by failing to adequately invest in its own defense capabilities, Taipei has exacerbated this power shift.

This puts the United States in a quandary. Should it continue to maintain the defend and push back pattern of the past seventy years vis-a-vis Taiwan and potentially risk a major conflict with China? This question is crucial because there are few signs that the Taiwan issue is going to be resolved by itself or anytime soon. In fact, the persistence of Taiwans unresolved status can be attributed to at least two major factors.

First, most of Taiwans population simply does not wish to be liberated by the Peoples Republic of China. One prominent poll sponsored by the Taiwan-based Global Views Research organization consistently shows that a majority of residents in Taiwan prefers the status quo or some variant of the status quo, which means de facto (but not de jure) independence. Smaller groups polled prefer reunification or de jure independence, the latter of which is a red line for Beijing.

A second reason relates to the geopolitical dynamics of the key actors involved, which, in addition to Taiwan, traditionally has meant the United States and China. One way to understand this is to conceptualize a triangle that has each actor (Taiwan, China and the United States) occupying one end.

The first leg of the triangle, and arguably the most important, is the one connecting the United States and China. Chinese leaders consider Taiwan to be the central challenge in their relationship with the United States. Not surprisingly, Taiwan has played a prominent role in the various communiques signed and issued by both countries, with the most prominent of these being the Shanghai Communique issued in 1972 when President Richard Nixon conducted his historic visit to China.

The Shanghai Communique states that "the United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is part of China. The United States Government does not challenge that position." In the second major communique, also known as the Normalization Communique, which was issued in December 1978, Washington concluded that "the Government of the United States of America acknowledges the Chinese position that there is but one China and Taiwan is part of China."

This theme of the United States acknowledging China's position on Taiwan is continued in the third major communique issued by the two countries in August 1982, which states, among other things, that "the United States Government attaches great importance to its relations with China, and reiterates that it has no intention of infringing on Chinese sovereignty and territorial integrity, or interfering in China's internal affairs, or pursuing a policy of two Chinas or one China, one Taiwan. In summary, these communiques evince a largely conciliatory tone by the United States in favor of Beijing and they tend to emphasize that the U.S. acknowledges the Taiwan issue to be an internal matter for China.

In contrast with this first leg of the triangle, the second legthe relationship between the United States and Taiwanfeatures a very different tone, particularly with the emphasis of U.S. security assurances directed toward Taiwan. The first and most important foundational pillar of this second leg relationship is the formal defense treaty relationship that Washington and Taipei adhered to for roughly twenty-five years, which also involved a significant U.S. military presence on Taiwan. When the United States decided to formally establish diplomatic relations with China (and thereby sever relations with Taiwan), Congress passed the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), which President Jimmy Carter signed into law on April 10, 1979.

The TRA is particularly significant because it is much more than a communique, statement or understanding; it is actual U.S. federal law (Public Law 968) and carries the force and formal legitimacy associated with that status. The TRA, among other things, states that it is the policy of the United States

to preserve and promote close relations between the people of the United States and the people on Taiwan and that the peace and stability around Taiwan is in the political, security, and economic interests of the United States. And perhaps most significant is the pledge to provide Taiwan with arms of a defensive character.

Added to this complicated mix is the third leg of the triangle, which links Taiwan and the People's Republic of China. This leg naturally has its own unique dynamics and features both hard (coercive) and soft (attraction) approaches in furtherance of the goal of reunification. Some examples of the soft approach include Deng Xiaopings One China, Two Systems approach, Ye Jianyings Nine-Point Proposal, and Jiang Zemins Eight Points. Some of these proposals have offered Taiwan a high degree of autonomy as long as Taipei accedes to Beijings rule.

However, Beijings soft approaches toward Taipei have often been overshadowed by its hard approaches, such as its March 2005 anti-secession law, which was formulated for the purpose of opposing and checking Taiwans secession from China. Article 8 of the law specifically authorizes non-peaceful means and other necessary measures to prevent Taiwans secession and to protect Chinas sovereignty and territorial integrity. The law not only authorized Chinese non-peaceful action in the event that Taiwan declared independence, it also allowed such measures to be employed in the event that the possibilities for a peaceful reunification should be completely exhausted. In other words, Taiwan might be subjected to Chinese military action even if it simply refused to consider proposals for reunification or to engage in negotiations.

Thus, as the triangle model demonstrates, the various communiques, proposals and laws involving the three primary actors (vis-a-vis the Taiwan issue) are often semantically incoherent and rife with contradictions. All of this suggests that the chances of a negotiated settlement may be lower than many observers hope and, as a corollary, the chances of Chinese military action against Taiwan may be higher than most are anticipating. If a military scenario took place, it would create a huge dilemma for the United States, forcing the latter to determine whether Taiwan and its safety constituted a vital national interest.

With the possibility of a U.S.-China military clash, some in the United States might argue that Taiwans value to the United States does not rise to the vital level, thus making the possibility of abandonment more likely. Alternatively, abandonment might occur if China mounts a blitzkrieg action and achieves a Crimea-like fait accompli before the United States has time to plan for or execute a coherent response.

However, abandonment, whether through action, inaction or delayed action, would have its own costs for the United States, namely the impact on the credibility of American promises and assurance to its allies in the region. Although Taiwan is not formally a U.S. ally, it is largely vieweddue to its past treaty relationship with Washington from 1954 to 1980as a beneficiary of Americas protective sphere in East Asia. In addition, the aforementioned Taiwan Relations Act makes it clear that any effort to resolve the Taiwan issue by other than peaceful means would be a grave concern to the United States. If the United States did not honor its own law and make good on its pledges toward the maintenance of peace around Taiwan, other U.S. allies might begin to question the value of their own alliances with Washington.

Among other things, this might result in undesirable hedging or bandwagoning behavior as traditional U.S. allies in the region seek out other potential partners, with which the United States may have less than congenial relations. In addition, U.S. allies, such as Japan or South Korea, which are dependent on United States extended deterrence guarantees (the so-called nuclear umbrella), may begin to doubt the credibility of such guarantees and seek to develop their own strategic capabilities, which would likely not be in the U.S. national interest over the long term.

On the Chinese side, the costs of any military settlement of the Taiwan question could be equally significant. First, a military option would likely result in massive destruction of property and widespread human carnage. In addition, the economic impact would be devastating for Taiwan and would likely spread to China given the large amount of Taiwanese investment on the mainland.

Second, the images of a Chinese military assault on Taiwan, which would spread via social media and other means, would be disastrous for Chinas long-term reputation. It would confirm that China cares little about international norms, rules or values. It would also cast a dark shadow over all of Beijings foreign engagements, including its expansive Belt and Road initiative. Moreover, it would put countries contemplating long-term commercial arrangements with China on notice that their engagements may be both ill-advised and even dangerous.

Thus, the Taiwan issue is not simply about Taiwan. It reflects and encompasses the larger dynamics of Chinas rise, the U.S.-China relationship, and the future of American power in the Asia-Pacific region. In other words, the Taiwan issue is as much about the future as it is about the past. Moreover, as China moves gradually toward a deep authoritarianism under President Xi Jinpings leadership, Taiwans democratic system and associated values provide a bright example and potential model for alternative governance. However, the question of Taiwans securityand the islands long-term political statuscontinues to be an unsettled one, which means the military scenario cannot be totally ruled out. The recent passage of the Taiwan Travel Act may have elevated that risk to an entirely new level.

Paul Smith is a professor of national-security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College. The opinions expressed in this essay are that of the author.

Image: Reuters

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Alyssa White, left, and Ashley Smith, who cut her hair to make her friend a wig for the prom. (Photo: Courtesy Ashley Smith)

As the owner of a hair salon and a dress boutique, Dawn DeMario sees a lot of girls preparing for prom, and she understands why its a big deal. Its the first time a young girl feels like a real princess, she tells Yahoo Lifestyle.

Thats why DeMario was so moved by the story of one of her longtime clients, Ashley Smith, who recently came into her salon, Spa on West Main, in Westminster, Md. Smith had come in to have 24 inches of her hair cut off so it could be made into a wig for her friend Alyssa White to wear at her prom in April. White, 16, had been diagnosed in January with Hodgkins lymphoma and had lost her hair as a result of chemotherapy treatments.

White and Smith have been friends since they were camper and counselor at Pine View Farm Fun day camp. She was always so bubbly, Smith tells Yahoo.

The high school junior has managed to keep that bubbly attitude as she battles cancer, but when Smith prodded her about how she was handling her baldness, White admitted she might want a wig.

She said, I never thought that I would want a wig, but after sitting here today in hair thats falling out all over my body, I think I might want one. I dont know what Im going to do for prom. I dont know what Im going to do for family vacations, every day at school, and I think it might be nice to be able to switch things up,' Smith recalls. Right away, I was ready to shave my head [for her]. Custom wigs arent cheap, though, even with a donor ready to supply her healthy locks. So Smith decided to raise the funds and surprise her friend with the wig as a gift. She created a site on YouCaring.com and has raised almost $2,500 to have the hairpiece made by Caring and Comfort.

White looks at prom dresses at Lux Boutique. (Photo: Dustin Levy/Evening Sun)

Smith hasnt had short hair since she was in fourth grade and always felt proud of how long it had grown.

Cutting it seemed like a big deal until it actually happened, Smith tells Yahoo. I havent missed it yet. The reason behind it made everything worth it.

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After cutting her hair, Smith surprised White with a card signed by donors, while the local paper, the Evening Sun, documented it all on video.

It surprised me very much that she did this, White tells Yahoo. She loved her hair and knowing that she gave it up for me knowing that I needed it is just heartwarming.

That selfless act prompted DeMario to offer White a prom dress of her choice from the showroom of her store, Lux Boutique.

Prom dresses are very expensive, and I really just wanted to be a part of her journey, to let her know that people are rooting for her, DeMario says.

White tries on a prom dress at Lux Boutique. (Photo: Dustin Levy/Evening Sun)

White went shopping with her mother to try on dress after dress.

It was a lot of fun trying on so many dresses and so many different colors, and seeing what I would look like, imagining what I would look like with the wig, just picturing myself on prom night, she tells Yahoo. I think what made it extra special shopping for a prom dress was knowing that it was out of the kindness of somebodys heart, that it was donated to me.

White eventually chose an elegant blush gown by Faviana, which retails for around $400, DeMario says.

It makes me feel like a princess in it, White told the Evening Sun when she tried it on. The radiant smile she had while wearing it was accessory enough, but shes looking forward to seeing how she looks with the wig too. DeMario has offered to style her hair and makeup on prom day.

As fun as going to a formal high school dance is for most teens, Smith tells Yahoo she thinks White is excited about something more. I dont know that its specifically prom that means so much to her as feeling herself again, she says.

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A top fundraiser for President Donald Trump who surfaced in Special Counsel Robert Muellers probe helped the wife of an influential Republican congressman obtain a State Department job, according to emails reviewed by Newsweek.

Elliott Broidy  a fundraising machine for Trump and Republicans  does not have a formal position within the Trump administration. But the new emails further illustrate Broidys power as a Washington broker, often tapped by other political insiders to reach deep into Trumps administration and use his outsize influence to get them results. Broidys connections have emerged amid a growing focus into his efforts to advance the interests of the United Arab Emirates in the White House, as revealed by Muellers investigation of meetings set up by Lebanese-American businessman George Nader.

Marie Royce, the wife of Republican Representative Ed Royce of California and a longtime corporate executive, wrote several emails to Broidy last year that made clear her "number one position of interest" was assistant secretary of state for educational and cultural affairs. Trump nominated her for that role in January, and she was confirmed by the U.S. Senate last week.

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Royces husband is a 13-term congressman who also chairs the powerful House Foreign Affairs Committee. When asked about the emails, neither Broidy nor Marie Royce contested their accuracy.

"Dear Elliott, Thank you for your support for a role in the Administration," Marie Royce wrote in a February 2017 email to Broidy. "I would like to be considered in the following roles. She then ranked positions she sought, with assistant secretary of state for education and cultural affairs slotted at the very top. Next up on Marie Royces list were two posts at the Commerce Department.

She followed up with Broidy a week later. In March, she also told him that she talked with Vice President Mike Pence about openings in the administration after her husband spoke at a dinner for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. But Marie Royce said she could not remember the name of the administration official Pence had told her to follow up with, according to the emails, and again asked Broidy for help.

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"Thus, would love to see if we can follow-up with members on his team or with WH Personnel regarding the Assistant Secretary for Education and Cultural Affairs position at the US Department of State," Marie Royce told Broidy. "Thank you again for your assistance!"

After Trump nominated Marie Royce, Broidy described the position as a nothing cultural affairs job to a friend, according to the emails. But, the position is quite lucrative. The last person to hold the role under former President Barack Obama made $160,300.

Marie and Ed Royce.

Larry Busacca/Getty Images

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Broidy downplayed his role in Marie Royce attaining the position and said he believed she had also contacted dozens of other people. Mrs. Royce worked on her own to obtain this nomination and to my understanding, followed every appropriate protocol to apply, Broidy said in a statement to Newsweek. As a longtime friend, I was happy to serve as a reference, as Im sure dozens of other people were as well, but given her background and qualifications she didnt need our help.

The conversations about the State Department job took place while the congressman was raising money for his re-election, according to the emails. Five days before she emailed Broidy, Marie Royce reached out to Robin Broidy, Elliotts wife, about a potential fundraiser in June at a private residence. Later that year, Elliott Broidy gave $5,400 to Royces re-election campaign.

Broidy is a fellow Californian and a Republican contributor the chairman has known for years, Cory Fritz, a spokesperson for Congressman Royce, told Newsweek.

A spokesperson for Marie Royce cited her experience in the private sector and in academia as qualifications for her new position and emphasized the rigors involved in earning confirmation from the Senate. She owns her own business consulting firm and previously worked for such major corporations as Nokia, Marriott International and Procter & Gamble. Marie Royce was also a full-time business professor at California State Polytechnic University in Pomona.

Mrs. Royce reiterated her qualifications, which made her the leading candidate for the job she was hired to do. After a long vetting process that included a background check, exhaustive review of her personal finances, and in-person interviews, Mrs. Royces nomination resulted in a unanimous Senate confirmation, said spokesperson Ken Spain in a statement to Newsweek.

Pences office also pushed back, claiming hes often handed resumes and follows normal procedure. The VP receives personnel recommendations regularly. When he does, he gives them to staff who pass them along to Office of Presidential Personnel for consideration, a Pence official told Newsweek.

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The State Department said Royce spoke with many people in her professional and personal networks, and dismissed the notion that Broidy helped her earn the nomination from Trump. The President of the United States nominated Mrs. Royce, Heather Nauert, the department spokesperson, told Newsweek. The White House did not respond to requests for comment.

This is the second revelation about Broidy's ties to Ed Royce this week. On Monday, Newsweek, McClatchy and other outlets reported that Broidy asked the congressman to speak with Romanian officials to help him win a defense contract. Emails shared with Newsweek showed Broidy and members of his space and defense firm, Circinus, had drafted letters in Royces name to top Romanian officials endorsing his company. Royce was in Romania in August of last year, and received Broidys campaign donation less than two weeks before the trip.

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Getty Images/Drew Angerer

Royce denied sending any letters about Circinus to the Romanians. Royce announced in January that he would not be seeking another term for Californias 39th district. He stated he wanted to focus his efforts on chairing the House Foreign Relations Committee instead of on another campaign.

The most recent emails, like the initial batch about Romanian contracts, were sent to Newsweek from an anonymous ProtonMail account. A source close to Broidy was able to confirm emails pertaining to Marie Royces nomination for the State Department position. Newsweek also shared the emails with Broidy, and he did not deny them.

After pleading guilty in a pay-to-play scandal nine years ago, Broidy re-emerged as a major fundraiser for Trump during the 2016 election. The former top Republican National Committee finance chair was the national vice chairman to the Trump Victory campaign. The Victory campaign raised more than $108.4 million during the 2016 election cycle, of which $13.5 million went Trumps campaign. Broidy held the same position for Trumps presidential inaugural committee.

Months after the inauguration, Broidy turned to the Middle East. He reportedly helped the UAE in its bitter fight against rival Qatar, alongside Nader. In April of last year, Nader transferred about $2.5 million to Broidy to help pass legislation targeting Qatar for alleged ties to terrorism, according to the Associated Press. Royce announced he would introduce legislation naming Qatar a state sponsor of terrorism at a conference hosted by Broidy after receiving Nader's money.

Nader is now cooperating with Muellers investigation, which has broadened to include the Trump administrations contacts with the UAE.

Broidy has said his emails and documents were hacked by Qatar in an effort to disparage him. He filed a lawsuit Monday in California for unspecified damages against Qatar. The Gulf kingdom has denied Broidys accusations of hacking. His suit pits a private U.S. citizen against a foreign government, and a lawyer for Broidy claimed to The New York Times that it was the first of its kind.

This article was first written by Newsweek

More from Newsweek
President Donald Trump could pardon figures at the center of the Russia investigation via Twitter and the Department of Justice would have very little say in the matter other than to carry out his ordersaccording to internal department emails.

The stunning emails show officials at the Office of the Pardon Attorney last July discussing news articles about Trumps pardoning powers via Twitter. The documents were obtained by CNN from the Government Accountability Project, a whistleblower nonprofit, after it received them from a Freedom of Information Act request.

On Wednesday The New York Times revealed that, also in July, Trumps former top lawyer in the Russia investigation John Dowd was discussing potential pardons with lawyers for Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort.

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03_29_MichaelFlynn

Mike Segar/Reuters

In December Flynn, who was Trumps first national security adviser, pleaded guilty to lying to investigators in the Russia probe, which is examining Kremlin interference in the 2016 election. Flynn has agreed to help investigators. Manafort, who was chairman of the Trump campaign, was indicted on fraud and money laundering charges last October and has pleaded not guilty.

If Trump was to issue a pardon in any form, Twitter or otherwise, I think we would have very little if any involvement, wrote Office of the Pardon Attorney (OPATTY) Paralegal Specialist Jennifer Mills in an email to a colleague in July 2017. Ultimately, we serve a support role to the President."

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While it is an unknown which makes it somewhat nervewracking, much like life in general, she continued, we cant try to be 2 steps ahead when we dont know which path were being led down just yet.

One article by the Huffington Post shared internally and debated by OPATTY staff quoted Margaret Love, a U.S. pardon attorney who served in the 1990s. She cited President Gerald Fords unconditional pardon of his predecessor President Richard Nixon after Nixon resigned in September 1974 after facing certain impeachment as analogous to Trumps situation.

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Love said it would be merely down to weathering the political storm that would result. Trump already weathered one political storm when he announced on Twitter last August that he had pardoned controversial former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

The OPATTY is tasked with conducting an investigation and review of each executive call for clemency. Yet this isnt a requirement for a pardon and the president can sidestep the formality at any time.

These documents should warn us, wrote Louis Clark, the Executive Director of the Government Accountability Project to CNN that we are clearly headed toward an unparalleled constitutional and accountability crisis.

This article was first written by Newsweek

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Megyn Kelly grilled the lawyer representing President Donald Trumps personal attorney Michael Cohen on Thursday morning over Cohens vulgar and ... arguably threatening comments as well as the threats he allegedly made against Stormy Daniels.

Lawyer David Schwartz explains to Megyn Kelly that the notoriously combative Michael Cohen has "another side to the story." (Photo: Twitter)

Kelly first brought up an incident from 2015 when Cohen laid into reporter Tim Mak over a Daily Beast story about Ivana Trump accusing her former husband of violating her.

You write a story that has Mr. Trumps name in it, with the word rape, and Im going to mess your life up, Cohen told Mak. For as long as youre on this frickin planet.

About his clients rhetoric, lawyer David Schwartz told Kelly: When your boss is being threatened like that? Everybody should want an employee like this. Who would be so loyal, so loyal to your boss that you would protect that person.

When your boss is being threatened like that everybody should want an employee like this. Michael Cohen's attorney, David Schwartz, says of Cohens message to Daily Beast reporter Tim Mak in 2015 pic.twitter.com/OSrtXgGkPr  TODAY (@TODAYshow) March 29, 2018

The Today show conversation continued with Schwartz saying that Cohen had never threatened anyone, specifically former adult film star Stormy Daniels; that Cohen doesnt do that; and that if he were going to do that, he does it to someones face.

Daniels, who took hush money in 2016 to hide an alleged affair with Donald Trump a decade earlier, claims that Cohen ordered a threat against her in a Las Vegas parking lot in 2011.

Schwartz insisted, He would never do something like that.

Kelly fired back that Michael Cohen does have a history of making vulgar and allegedly or arguably threatening comments.

I myself have been on the receiving end of those, as you know, said Kelly.

She then pointed to one instance, after a 2016 election debate, in which Cohen retweeted a series of threatening messages  one of which included a call to gut Kelly.

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So youre not Michaels favorite person, said Schwartz. Its not a love connection, OK, so all right.

Michael Cohen does have a history of making vulgar and allegedly or arguably threatening comments, and I myself have been on the receiving end of those. @megynkelly to Michael Cohen's attorney, David Schwartz pic.twitter.com/fsSjVg6kBk  TODAY (@TODAYshow) March 29, 2018

Kelly didnt like that response. You make light of it now, she said, but Im telling you, in response to that allegation that I received death threats, I had security guards following me around and that my old boss called Michael Cohen directly to say, If Megyn Kelly gets killed, its not going to help your client Donald Trump get elected. And Michael Cohen didnt care.

Schwartz suggested that Cohen was actually trying to help.

He was trying to help me!? said Kelly. He was trying to help me? By suggesting that I should be gutted?

Schwartz then tried the two-sides-to-every-question approach.

I dont accept everything that youre saying, because he has another side to the story. Maybe one day you guys can talk this out, he said.

Because there are two sides to every story, he added. Its not just Megyns side of the story. There are other sides.

Its not just my side, said Kelly. Read Twitter!

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A sign seen during L.A. Pride Resist March in Los Angeles on June 11, 2017. Tens of thousands of members of the LGBTQ community and their allies gather for the annual gay pride parade, which this year was replaced with a Resist March.

U.S. first lady Melania Trump, with U.S. President Donald Trump and hosts Dean Cain (L) and Kathie Lee Gifford (2nd L), reacts after she pressed the button to light the tree during the National Christmas Tree lighting ceremony near the White House in Washington, U.S. November 30, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA - MAY 21: (----EDITORIAL USE ONLY MANDATORY CREDIT - 'BANDAR ALGALOUD / SAUDI ROYAL COUNCIL / HANDOUT' - NO MARKETING NO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS - DISTRIBUTED AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS----)US President Donald Trump, US First lady Melania Trump (2nd R), Saudi Arabia's King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud (2nd L) and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi (L) put their hands on an illuminated globe during the inauguration ceremony of the Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on May 21, 2017. (Photo by Bandar Algaloud / Saudi Royal Council / Handout/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

U.S. President Donald Trump delivers remarks on agriculture at Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, U.S. June 21, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un reacts as people applaud during his visit to the newly-remodeled Pyongyang Teacher Training College, in this photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang on January 17, 2018. KCNA/via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS - THIS PICTURE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY. REUTERS IS UNABLE TO INDEPENDENTLY VERIFY THE AUTHENTICITY, CONTENT, LOCATION OR DATE OF THIS IMAGE. NO THIRD PARTY SALES. SOUTH KOREA OUT.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks to police gathered at Fraternal Order of Police lodge during a campaign event in Statesville, North Carolina, U.S., August 18, 2016. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri

Close up photo of a mother and son using a digital tablet

Former FBI Director James Comey testifies before a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on "Russian Federation Efforts to Interfere in the 2016 U.S. Elections" on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S. June 8, 2017. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

The president's official Twitter page as seen at 12:01 p.m. on Jan. 20, 2017.

WASHINGTON, DC. - JAN. 21: Organizers put the Women's March on Washington in Washington D.C. on Saturday Jan. 21, 2017. (Photo by Alanna Vagianos, Huffington Post) *** Local Caption ***

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
President Donald Trump delivers remarks on the Infrastructure Initiative at the Local 18 Richfield Training Site in Richfield, Ohio, March 29, 2018. (Photo: Yuri Gripas / Reuters)

President Donald Trumps long-stalled infrastructure package is unlikely to happen until after Novembers midterm elections, he acknowledged Thursday.

Well probably have to wait until after the election, Trump said in Richfield, Ohio, during what administration officials billed as a major speech on infrastructure.

It was an admission rooted in political reality and the congressional calendar. Lawmakers are mostly done legislating for the year and are looking to focus on the November elections. Republican leaders, in particular, have been dubious about the prospect of passing another massive spending package.

Trumps infrastructure proposal, which the White House unveiled earlier this year, seeks to leverage $200 billion in direct federal spending over the next decade into an additional $1.3 trillion for infrastructure development with the aid of state and local tax dollars as well as private investment. The administration has not proposed a way to pay for the initiative.

If there is to be any compromise between Republicans and Democrats on infrastructure, itll likely only happen after the election, retiring House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Bill Shuster (R-Pa.) said last month.

It could be a lame-duck strategy, that we do it after the election, Shuster said.

In his speech on Thursday, which touched on not only infrastructure but seemingly every other subject as well, including actress Roseanne Barr and her television show, Trump touted new funding Congress had approved for highways, airports, railroads, and waterways. Those funds were included in a $1.3 trillion budget package he signed earlier this month  a measure hed called ridiculous and had initially threatened to veto.

Trump also suggested to Congress that his infrastructure plan doesnt necessarily have to be taken up in one piece.

It can be passed in one bill, or in a series of measures, he said. What matters is that we get the job done.

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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
Richfield (United States) (AFP) - US President Donald Trump said Thursday his major infrastructure plan may not make it through Congress until after key midterm elections in November.

"I don't think you're going to get Democrat support very much. And you'll probably have to wait until after the election, which isn't so long down the road," he said in a speech in the Midwestern state of Ohio.

"We probably have to wait until after the election because the Democrats say, 'don't give him anymore wins.'"

Trump was in the state in the industrial heartland to tout his proposal to dedicate $200 billion in federal money as a way to attract private investment of "at least" $1.5 trillion, the White House said.

"We are going to rebuild America's crumbling infrastructure," including roads, bridges, airports, and waterworks, he said.

The plan "will completely transform the horrible, costly and broken permitting process," and also focus on worker training and education.

Trump's predecessor, President Barack Obama, tried repeatedly to push infrastructure plans through Congress but was stymied by opposition from Republicans, who now support the measure.

Americans in November will elect all 435 representatives in the lower house of Congress, and one-third of the 100 Senators, as well as 39 state governors.

While Trump enjoys the unusual position of having his party control both houses of Congress, the midterm election often swings control to the opposition, a possibility given his low approval ratings and controversial policies.
By Steve Holland RICHFIELD, Ohio (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday he may hold up a trade agreement reached this week with South Korea until after a deal is reached with North Korea on denuclearization. "I may hold it up until after a deal is made with North Korea," Trump said in a speech. "You know why? Because it's a very strong card. And I want to make sure everyone is treated fairly," he added. Senior U.S. officials have expressed concerns privately that Seoul is the weak link in the U.S.-Japan-South Korean alliance and could be too quick to seal a deal with North Korea. Trump agreed this month to accept an invitation to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. South Korean officials have said the meeting would take place by the end of May, after a North-South summit in April."We're moving along very nicely with North Korea. We'll see what happens. Certainly the rhetoric has calmed down just a little bit," Trump told construction workers in Ohio. The United States and South Korea earlier this week agreed to revise their six-year-old free trade agreement with a side deal to deter competitive currency devaluation by Seoul and more access for U.S. automakers and drug makers to the South Korean market.The deal also lifts the threat of a 25 percent U.S. tariff on imports of steel from South Korea in exchange for quotas that will effectively cut U.S. imports of Korean steel by about 30 percent. Without the agreement in place, the tariffs would take effect May 1. A statement by U.S. Trade Minister Robert Lighthizer and South Korean Trade Minister Hyun Chong Kim described steel terms as being agreed, with the KORUS free-trade deal changes as an "agreement in principle on the general terms" while details are still being finalized. The U.S. Treasury and the South Korean Ministry of Strategy and Finance are finalizing the currency terms, they said. The trade deal changes, which preserve the U.S.-South Korean trading relationship at a critical time for Seoul, do not need congressional approval but are subject to a 60-day consultation period with Seoul. The White House said the two sides had reached a "great new KORUS agreement in principle" and it was up to Trump to decide when to finalize it. "The president, taking into account all relevant considerations - including negotiations with North Korea - will determine the best time to sign a finalized agreement on behalf of the United States," Principal Deputy Press Secretary Raj Shah said. South Korea's Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy Paik Un-kyu said on the sidelines of a news conference in Seoul that the ministry was trying to figure out the real intent of Trumps remarks, a trade ministry spokeswoman said. The ministry had made a request to the U.S. side, said a senior ministry official who declined to identified due to the sensitivity of the matter. "In terms of the negotiation schedule, we would have to review terms legally and finalize a draft ... Both South Korea and the United States have their own domestic procedures, so we're not at a signing stage because those procedures take time," the official said. (This story has been refiled to fix typographical error in paragraph 13) (Additional reporting by David Lawder in Washington and Jane Chung in Seoul; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and James Dalgleish)
Washington (AFP) - US President Donald Trump talked with his defense secretary on Thursday to discuss how the military budget might fund the construction of a wall on the Mexican frontier.

The United States is testing prototype sections of a 30-foot (nine-meter) high wall to be built along sections of the United States southern border to halt migrants and smugglers.

"The wall looks good. I was always very good at building. That was always my best thing. I think better than being president. I was good at building," Trump told a crowd in Ohio.

Throughout his campaign and the first year of his presidency Trump insisted the vast project would somehow be paid for by Mexico -- and idea firmly rejected by the government there.

But Trump has had no success in trying to get $25 billion in funding for the wall from Congress, so he has turned to the Pentagon in the hope of poaching funds from the defense budget.

"Because of the $700 & $716 Billion Dollars gotten to rebuild our Military, many jobs are created and our Military is again rich," he tweeted on Saturday.

"Building a great Border Wall, with drugs (poison) and enemy combatants pouring into our Country, is all about National Defense. Build WALL through M!"

On Thursday, Department of Defense spokeswoman Dana White said Secretary Jim Mattis had discussed the idea with Trump, but offered no details on what might come of it.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - One of the personnel killed with an improvised explosive device in Syria on Thursday was a U.S. service member, two U.S. officials told Reuters. On Friday, the coalition fighting Islamic State said in a statement that two personnel from the coalition had been killed, without giving the nationalities. Two U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity and citing initial information, said one of the personnel was American and the incident took place near the Syrian city of Manbij. They declined to say which country the other individual was from. (Reporting by Idrees Ali; Editing by Andrea Ricci)
By Mark Hosenball

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Investigators probing whether Donald Trump's presidential campaign colluded with Russia have been questioning witnesses about events at the 2016 Republican National Convention, according to two sources familiar with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's inquiries.

Mueller's team has been asking about a convention-related event attended by both Russia's U.S. ambassador and Jeff Sessions, the first U.S. senator to support Trump and now his attorney general, said one source, who requested anonymity due to the ongoing investigation.

Another issue Mueller's team has been asking about is how and why Republican Party platform language hostile to Russia was deleted from a section of the document related to Ukraine, said another source who also requested anonymity.

Mueller's interest in what happened at the Republican convention in Cleveland, Ohio in July 2016, is an indication that Trump campaign contacts and actions related to Russia remain central to the special counsel's investigation.

Trump, who was nominated as the Republican Party candidate for the November 2016 election during the convention, has denied any collusion with Russia during the campaign. Moscow has denied U.S. intelligence agencies' findings that it interfered in the campaign to try to tilt the election in Trump's favour.

Investigators have asked detailed questions about conversations that Sessions, then a Trump campaign adviser, had at a convention event attended by then-Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergei Kislyak, said the first source, who was questioned by Mueller about the event.

The same source said Mueller's team also has been asking whether Sessions had private discussions with Kislyak on the sidelines of a campaign speech Trump gave at Washington's Mayflower Hotel in April 2016.

Sessions' spokespersons have denied repeatedly that he had any private discussions with Kislyak at the Mayflower. Sessions told lawmakers last year he could not recall any conversations with Russian officials at the hotel but could not rule out that a "brief interaction" with Kislyak may have occurred there.

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Spokespersons for Mueller and Sessions declined to comment on Mueller's interest in Sessions' activities at the convention and other convention-related events.

UKRAINE LANGUAGE

The special counsel's investigators have also interviewed attendees of the committee meetings that drafted the Republican Party platform in Cleveland.

At one committee meeting, according to people in attendance, Diana Denman, a member of the platform committee's national security subcommittee, proposed language calling for the United States to supply "lethal defensive weapons to Ukraine's armed forces and greater coordination with NATO on defence planning."

But the final platform language deleted the reference to "lethal defensive weapons," a change that made the platform less hostile to Russia, whose troops had invaded the Crimean peninsula and eastern Ukraine.

After the convention, Denman told Reuters in 2016, J.D. Gordon, a Trump foreign policy adviser, told her he was going to speak to Trump about the language on Ukraine, and that Trump's campaign team played a direct role in softening the platform language.

The Trump campaign has denied playing any role in the weakening of the party's position regarding Ukraine. Gordon has called Denman's version of events "inaccurate."

Stephen Yates, co-chair of the platform committee's national security subcommittee, said he has "heard nothing about other members of the subcommittee being called in for questioning, and I have had no interaction with anyone working on the investigation."

Sessions recused himself last year from the federal probe into Russian election meddling after it emerged that he had failed to say during his Senate confirmation hearing to be attorney general that he had met with Russia's ambassador in 2016.

(Reporting By Mark Hosenball; Editing by John Walcott and Frances Kerry)
More than a year after withdrawing from a big Asia-Pacific trade pact, the Trump administration keeps talking about rejoining it on its own terms. But the Asia-Pacific countries that were eager a year ago to hold the door open for the United States are now busy building their own trading order  without Washington at all.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is the latest Trump administration official to talk up the prospect of returning to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the sprawling trade deal that was the centerpiece of the Obama administrations pivot to Asia and the first target of U.S. President Donald Trumps demolition job.

Earlier this month, speaking in Chile, Mnuchin said Washington would definitely be open to rejoining the pact  once all the administrations other trade deals were taken care of, and provided the trade accord could be rewritten to be more beneficial to the United States. (U.S. trade officials declined to say what those revised conditions might be.)

And Larry Kudlow, a former television commentator who was named Trumps top economic adviser, said this month that the United States could lead a trade coalition of the willing to counter Chinas trade heft and abuses  almost the very definition of the TPP that Trump walked away from early in his presidency.

But that ship seems to have sailed. The remaining 11 countries from the original TPP signed a slightly slimmed-down version of the accord earlier this month in Chile, suspending a score of controversial provisions that the United States had insisted upon. Member countries are already in the process of ratifying the deal, which could go into effect early next year.

Many of the member states shudder at the idea of re-opening contentious, yearslong negotiations just to try to coax the United States back into the club. Chiles outgoing president said last month that Washington would have to take the revised deal as is if it wanted back in. And a top Canadian trade official said the United States would get no special treatment if it wanted to rejoin. Even Japan, which wants the United States back in, warns Washington against renegotiating the whole thing.

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Is there a chance in hell anyone wants to reopen the thing to get the U.S. back in? Not under a Trump administration, says Mike Callaghan, a former Australian Treasury official and economic advisor to the prime minister, now at the Lowy Institute, a Sydney-based think tank.

Thats partly because many countries in the Asia-Pacific region are already inking new, ambitious trade deals left and right even as the Trump administration struggles to tweak existing pacts such as the North American Free Trade Agreement and the free trade deal with South Korea.

Japan, Australia, and New Zealand are close to signing free trade deals this year with the European Union. Canada just did the same, and Mexico is close to its own deal with the EU, while Southeast Asian nations hope to sign their own EU deal. Singapore, meanwhile, is inking trade pacts with a bevy of Latin American countries.

But domestic politics also play a big part in the reluctance to open up the Trans-Pacific Partnership all over again. Countries such as Japan, Australia, and Vietnam first had to sell their publics on the original deal  which included a lot of unpopular provisions Washington insisted on  only to see the pacts sponsor back out early last year. Then they had to salvage an 11-member pact during another year of tough negotiations that only concluded at the beginning of this year.

Theyve designed a deal they are determined to put into effect, says Wendy Cutler, who spent three decades as a U.S. trade negotiator, including leading talks on the TPP. Theyve gone through two traumatic episodes. Theres not much stomach for more, says Cutler, now vice president of the Asia Society Policy Institute.

The revised TPP  now formally known as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership  is smaller and leaner than the original accord. Without the United States, it covers only between 13 and 18 percent of the global economy, rather than 40 percent. That will mean smaller trade benefits for everybody.

But the new TPP is also an easier pill for many Asia-Pacific nations to swallow, which should make ratification and longer-term support easier to secure. Gone for now are 22 provisions that U.S. negotiators had insisted on but that were unpopular with potential partners. Those included protections for pharmaceuticals, longer patents and extended copyrights, and some extra protections for corporations against national governments.

Almost by definition, the suspended parts cover topics that were controversial to the TPP-11 members, otherwise they would not have been suspended, Callaghan says.

And the revised pact is also open to new members  and not just the eventual return of the United States. Countries such as South Korea, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Taiwan have all toyed with joining the revised TPP, as have Colombia and even the United Kingdom. (Chiles new president, Sebastian Pinera, even resuscitated the notion that China could eventually join the pact, though Beijing would have to slash tariffs, open up its markets, and boost its labor and environmental standards.)

The open nature of the new accord is important, because member countries could see even greater benefits from new arrivals than they could have seen in the original 12-nation deal with the United States on board. The Peterson Institute for International Economics estimated that a TPP-16 that included Indonesia, South Korea, Thailand, Taiwan, and the Philippines could offer $486 billion in benefits for member countries, compared with $465 billion from the original deal.

From an economic point of view, a TPP-16 would be better for them than the original TPP, Cutler says.

Of course, several key countries  including Japan and Vietnam  dont have a separate free trade deal with the United States. Roping Washington back into a sprawling Asian trade pact would be an easier lift than trying to sign separate bilateral trade deals and would also bring greater economic benefits, the Peterson Institute found. Former Japanese economic officials tell Foreign Policy they expect the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is trying to find some way to convince the Trump administration to re-embrace the deal.

For other countries, like Australia, joining the TPP alongside the United States in the first place, or coaxing Washington back in, is not ultimately about trade; Canberra already has a free trade pact with the United States. Rather, Callaghan says, its about making sure the United States stays engaged in the Asia-Pacific region as China flexes its economic and military might.

For Australia, the driving force behind the TPP was not so much access to the U.S. market as locking the U.S. into the Asian region, he says.

For Cutler, who saw previous Congresses and presidents change their minds on trade pacts they once vilified, the mere fact that Trump administration officials keep talking about rejoining the TPP is encouraging. U.S. presence in the pact would advance many of the administrations professed goals, she says, from prying open Asian markets to pushing back against Chinas heft. And ratifying a big trade deal would only require one bruising battle with Congress, while a series of bilateral trade deals will mean going back to the Hill again and again.

Its important that the United States makes positive signals, compared with a year ago, Cutler says. Over time, they might come to understand the value in the trade pact.
United Nations (United States) (AFP) - The UN Security Council on Friday blacklisted 27 ships, 21 companies and a businessman for helping North Korea circumvent sanctions, as the United States keeps up pressure on Pyongyang despite its recent overtures toward talks, diplomats said.

Acting on a request from the United States, it was the largest-ever package of sanctions designations on North Korea approved by a council committee, diplomats said.

The move is part of a global crackdown on the smuggling of North Korean commodities in violation of UN sanctions resolutions, which were adopted in response to Pyongyang's nuclear and ballistic missile tests.

The sanctions were approved as the United States moves to open talks with North Korea on its nuclear drive, with a summit possible between President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un by the end of May.

Despite the diplomatic opening, the United States has made clear they will keep the pressure on Pyongyang to shift course by pressing on with sanctions.

Trump's ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, on Friday welcomed the "historic" sanctions package," calling it "a clear sign that the international community is united in our efforts to keep up maximum pressure on the North Korean regime."

"We want to thank the members of the Security Council, as well as Japan and South Korea, for working with us to keep up the pressure and for their commitment to implementing UN Security Council resolutions and holding violators accountable," Haley added.

A total of 13 North Korean oil tankers and cargo vessels were banned from ports worldwide along with 12 other ships for helping Pyongyang smuggle banned commodities or supplying oil and fuel shipments, according to a UN document obtained by AFP.

Two other North Korean vessels were hit with a global assets freeze, but are not banned from port entry.

Twenty-one shipping and trading firms were hit by an assets freeze. Three of them are based in Hong Kong including Huaxin Shipping, which delivered shipments of North Korean coal to Vietnam in October.

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- North Korea flouts sanctions -

Twelve North Korean firms were blacklisted for running ships involved in illegal transfers of oil and fuel, according to the document.

Two other companies -- Shanghai Dongfeng Shipping and Weihai World Shipping Freight, also based in China -- were blacklisted for carrying North Korean coal on their vessels.

The remaining firms are in based Singapore, Samoa, the Marshall Islands and Panama.

A businessman identified as Tsang Yung Yuan was hit by a global travel ban and assets freeze for organizing illegal shipments of North Korean coal with a North Korean broker in Russia.

Last year, the Security Council adopted a series of resolutions to ban North Korean exports of commodities in a bid to cut off revenue to the nuclear-armed state's military programs.

The measures severely restrict deliveries of oil and refined petroleum products to North Korea, but sanctions monitors have reported that Pyongyang has used vessels to dodge those restrictions.

North Korea earned $200 million in revenue last year from exports of coal, iron, steel and other banned commodities, according to a recent report.

Only eight North Korean vessels had so far been banned from ports for sanctions-busting -- so the inclusion of 13 other ships on Friday was expected to significantly cripple North Korea's maritime network.

The United States had initially asked the United Nations to ban 33 ships and 27 firms over smuggling, but China put a hold on that request to review the list.

Earlier this month, the White House said Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping agreed in a phone conversation to keep up the sanctions pressure on North Korea until Pyongyang takes concrete steps toward denuclearization.
Aura Hernandez, a 37-year-old woman from Guatemala taking sanctuary in a Manhattan church, holds her 15-month-old daughter during a vigil and procession: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

An undocumented mother has pledged to stay inside a New York City church until she is granted reprieve from a deportation, in a last-ditch effort to stay in the same country as her two children.

Aura Hernandez, a 37-year-old immigrant from Guatemala, moved into Manhattans Fourth Universalist Society church about two weeks ago. She is hoping to avoid deportation to her home country, which she left in 2005 fleeing an abusive relationship.

According to ICE, Ms Hernandez is a fugitive. According to the members of the Fourth Universalist Society, she is their newest congregation member.

We want to teach others about our undocumented population and why their humanity matters, said the churchs pastor, Schuyler Vogel, according to the New York Daily News. Aura may not be an American citizen, but she is someone who believes in our values. I certainly dont like living in a country that thinks its okay to tear children from their mother.

Ms Hernandez now lives on the upper floor of the church with her 15-month-old daughter, Camille. Her 10-year-old son, Daniel, will live with his father  also an undocumented immigrant  in a New York City suburb until he finishes the school year. Both children were born in the US, Ms Hernandez says, and are US citizens.

Ms Hernandez was first stopped by border patrol agents in 2005, shortly after she crossed the border into Texas. She later moved to Westchester, New York, and met with ICE regularly from 2013 to 2017, according to the Daily News. But last month, she claims, ICE told her there would be no more check-ins. She would have to go back to Guatemala.

"After both a motion to reopen and an appeal with the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), an immigration judge upheld the original order of removal," ICE spokeswoman Rachael Yong Yow said in a statement. "Hernandez did not report as required and is now considered an ICE fugitive."

"She cannot come out because she will be kidnapped," Rev. Juan Carlos Ruiz said, while participating in a silent Jericho walk for Aura Hernandez, who has taken sanctuary from ICE. Her 10yo old, Daniel, walks alongside Ruiz holding a sign "Please don't deport my mommy" pic.twitter.com/QetRMkQ54a  Rajvi Desai (@rajviedesai) March 29, 2018

The 130 members of the Manhattans Fourth Universalist Society have pledged to care for Ms Hernandez - bringing her food, doing her laundry  for as long as she remains in the sanctuary, according to the New York Times. From the safety of the church, she plans to lobby for the ability to stay permanently.

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I dont intend to stand here with my arms crossed, and do nothing, she said, according to the Times. I have to stand up and raise my voice because an injustice is being committed to me and to us. I think Im here for a reason.

Ms Hernandez is one of more than 40 other immigrants who are currently sheltered in houses of worship across US, according to data compiled by the Church World Service. Places of worship are seen as a safe alternative for those avoiding deportation, because they are considered sensitive sites that ICE is supposed to avoid.

Of the 37 people who sought sanctuary in houses of worship in 2017, nine of them were granted some sort of reprieve from deportation, according to the Church World Service.
A former politburo member in Vietnam was jailed for 18 years Thursday, his second graft conviction this year as part of an aggressive anti-corruption sweep targeting senior officials, bankers and businessmen.

Dinh La Thang is already serving 13 years following a corruption conviction in January and is the most senior official to be hit by an anti-graft sweep that critics say is aimed at cleaning up party ranks -- and wiping out the communist leadership's political foes.

Thang, the former head of state-run oil giant PetroVietnam (PVN), was handed 18 years in jail Thursday for "violating state regulations on economic management".

He will also have to pay $26 million in compensation to the state.

Prosecutors had argued that Thang approved a $35-million investment of state funds into Ocean Bank in 2008, without the authorisation of PVN's board, the finance ministry or the prime minister.

"Dinh La Thang knew the status of Ocean Bank was weak, he knew the requirements of Ministry of Finance, but deliberately did not follow them and still decided to inject ($35 million) of capital into Ocean Bank," according to a report by state-run Vietnam News agency.

Thang had argued during the trial that he did in fact have the greenlight from former Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, according to state media.

Ocean Bank nearly collapsed after a series of missteps by its leaders -- including dozens that were convicted for fraud last year -- and Vietnam's central bank bought it for $0 in 2014.

Four other senior officials were convicted at Thursday's trial and jailed for between 22 months and 23 years behind bars, while two other officials were sentenced to re-education out of custody, where they are expected to check in with authorities and repent for their wrongdoings.

Ninh Van Quynh, former chief accountant of PVN, was sentenced to a total of 23 years in jail, including seven years for the same charge as Thang and sixteen years for abuse of power.

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Observers have said that the corruption crackdown in Vietnam -- led by a conservative leadership in charge since 2016 -- is aimed at some of Dung's allies.

But the party has consistently said it is focused on punishing graft.

Another former PVN executive, Trinh Xuan Thanh who headed up the conglomerate's construction unit, was sentenced to life in prison earlier this year as part of Thang's first trial.

Thanh's case stunned Vietnam and sparked a diplomatic dust-up after he was allegedly kidnapped from a park in Berlin by undercover Vietnamese security agents.

Hanoi insists he returned home to hand himself over voluntarily, but Germany called the case a "scandalous violation" of its sovereignty and expelled two diplomats after the incident.

Vietnam's corruption sweep has captivated a country unused to seeing senior officials and business punished so publicly.

The government has vowed to root out graft at the highest ranks of business and government, and said it will also go after day-to-day corruption.

Vietnam has been ranked one of the most corrupt countries in Southeast Asia by Transparency International, which says graft permeates across multiple sectors, from health and education to construction, land management and natural resources.
WASHINGTON  The Trump administrations justifications for adding a question about citizenship to the 2020 census arent particularly strong.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said his decision to add the question was based on three things. First, he wrote in a memo, while the census long-form American Community Survey (ACS) already asks about citizenship, the data it collects arent specific enough for the Department of Justice to best enforce the Voting Rights Act. Second, he said, he saw limited empirical evidence that a citizenship question would decrease response rates. And third, a citizenship question was already well-tested because the decennial census had asked about it in the 19th and 20th centuries (it stopped after the 1950 census), and the ACS questionnaire asks about it.

The Trump administrations justifications, which have already shifted, are going to come under more scrutiny as civil rights groups and Democrats file lawsuits challenging the decision. The challengers say the decision to add a citizenship question is politically motivated and will lead to an undercount of immigrants and minority groups, who will be afraid to respond to the survey.

The ACS has asked about citizenship since 2005, but John Thompson, the director of the Census Bureau from 2013 to 2017, noted that the ACS is a completely different form than the decennial census. The ACS consists of a few dozen personal questions about things such as income, rent, disabilities and transportation to work, in addition to citizenship. It goes out to 2.6 percent of the population each year. The 2010 decennial census was just 10 questions long and asked very basic questions, including how many people were living in a given household, telephone number, race or ethnicity, and housing status. Thompson noted that there is much more attention paid to the short-form census thats meant to be answered by everyone every 10 years.

Justin Levitt, who served as deputy assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Department of Justice from 2015 to 2017, noted that the ACS has lower stakes than the decennial census, which he said is the first responsibility the Constitution gives the federal government. If theres a low response rate on the ACS, he said, there are ways for officials to correct their data. But the Constitution mandates that the federal government count all people. An inaccurate count could disproportionately affect certain states. For instance, if immigrants are not fully counted in an immigrant-rich state because many fear answering a citizenship question, that state could lose congressional seats as well as a fair allocation of hundreds of billions of dollars in federal money.

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If we get the percentage of population wrong that happens to have indoor toilets or outdoor toilets, its not of constitutional magnitude, Levitt said. If youre asking people for a lot of information, and theyve already signed up to deliver that other information, then also asking them for information about whether theyre a citizen, feels  many people have said  less aggressive and less worrisome.

Two former top officials at the Justice Department charged with enforcing the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which is intended to protect the voting power of minorities, say the Trump administrations idea that existing ACS citizenship data arent good enough to enforce the law is untrue.

I oversaw the enforcement of the Voting Rights Act for just under 2 years in the prior administration and can tell you in clear terms that rigorous enforcement of the Voting Rights Act has never required the addition of a citizenship question in the census, said Vanita Gupta, the president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, who served as head of the Department of Justices Civil Rights Division from 2014 until 2017. The Leadership Conference has lobbied against adding the citizenship question.

Levitt said that most jurisdictions were large enough that any error in the ACS estimate was eliminated. The only places where the ACS did not produce reliable citizenship estimates were tiny towns and municipalities. Any increase in accuracy from asking about citizenship, Levitt says, would be outweighed by the potential for error caused by adding an untested question.

By attempting to increase that precision, from 9.99999 to 10, they are introducing such profound chaos and such intentional and predictable undercount that the amount of error they will introduce into the process swamps, by exponential levels, any incremental accuracy that they are purporting to bring, he said in an interview.

If the reason for this is: There are some cases we cant bring because the data on the survey isnt accurate enough, to believe that adding this question in this environment, without testing it  and that is unthinkable  its essentially setting off with the Titantic saying, Were pretty sure that this wont create a problem, but just in case, yeah, lets throw a massive iceberg in the way.

Even though the Census Bureau can spend years testing the wording of a question, it hasnt done any testing at all on the effect of adding a citizenship question. It will go into the 2020 test essentially blindfolded, taking the risk that a citizenship question wont suppress response rates. Civil rights groups say that immigrants and other minority groups are less likely to respond to a citizenship question because of fear that the Trump administration could use their answer to find them and deport them or deport someone they know.

Six former directors of the Census Bureau warned Ross against adding the question, saying it was too risky. But Ross and the White House have downplayed the risk, saying its presence on the ACS is a test and theres limited empirical evidence that fewer people will respond.

The Census Bureau took the citizenship question off in 1960 and started asking about it only on the longer questionnaires in 1970 as the practice of sampling the population became more popular in the 20th century, said Margo Anderson, a historian of the census at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. But asking a question on those long-form surveys isnt a substitute for testing the effect of the question on the actual decennial form.

1950 is a long time ago, Anderson said. The normal method would be to say, OK, if you want to do this, lets test it.

Kathleen Joyce Weldon, director of data operations and communications at the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, said pollsters are careful about including questions about citizenship in polls out of fear that people wont respond. The seriousness of the census, a government-conducted national survey, could only further discourage people from responding.

Beyond the differences in content between the long-form ACS and the decennial census, its risky to assume that a question that works well on one survey will work on a different one. Social scientists are careful about the way any question on a survey is asked and even the way questions are ordered because the wording of a single question can influence how a person responds to all other questions or if they choose to continue responding at all.

In a January letter to Ross, the American Statistical Association warned that adding a citizenship question could invalidate all of the careful testing and calibration the Census Bureau had done so far to prepare the questions for the decennial survey.

Adding a question at this late stage of the census process does not allow time for adequate testing to incorporate new questions, particularly if the testing reveals substantial problems. Further, a new question undermines the validity of the extensive testing of the current questions carried out to date.... We believe the potential for a citizenship question to create problems argues strongly against its inclusion at this advanced stage. The most likely results would be a lower response rate, more non-participation, and ultimately a sharp increase in cost for non-response follow-up.

Related Coverage

Trump Administration Decides To Add A Question About Citizenship To 2020 Census

California Sues Trump Administration Over Census Citizenship Question

At Least A Dozen States Plan To Sue Over New Census Citizenship Question

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Mr Trump delivering his speech in Ohio: AP

The White House has complained after three top cable networks cut away from a speech being delivered by President Donald Trump in Ohio.

The networks cut away from the speech after Mr Trump began to discuss topics other than his planned remarks on infrastructure.

CNN and MSNBC had switched away from Mr Trump's speech within 30 minutes of its start before they cut away to other news and some analysis. They were followed by Fox News about 10 minutes later, according to users on social media.

Fox Business covered Mr Trump's entire speech.

The decision to cut the speech off by the networks was criticised by some in the White House, including a senior member of the staff.

That includes special assistant to the president Steven Cheung, who tweeted a screenshot of the networks side-by-side.
Crystal Masons mom insisted that she vote in the 2016 presidential election, but when she went to her polling place in Tarrant County, Texas, she found her name wasnt on the rolls. A poll worker helped her fill out a provisional ballot, of the sort given to people who arent on the rolls, and she cast it.

Five years earlier, Mason had pleaded guilty to tax fraud and was ordered to pay $4.2 million in restitution. She was also sentenced to five years in prison, as well as three years of supervised release. Though Mason says she didnt realize it at the time, by casting that provisional ballot in November 2016, she had committed another felony. Texas prohibits anyone convicted of a felony from voting, and only allows them to vote once they have entirely finished their sentence, including any probation, parole and supervised release. In Texas, it is a second-degree felony to vote in an election in which you know you are not eligible.

On Wednesday, state District Judge Ruben Gonzalez sentenced Mason to five years in prison for illegally voting, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Mason says she had no idea she was ineligible, but Gonzalez pointed out that an affidavit at the top of the provisional ballot notes that people on supervised release cant vote.

A Texas judge argued that Crystal Mason would have known she was ineligible to vote in the 2016 election because she signed this affidavit. Mason's lawyer says she never read it and had no idea she was ineligible. (Photo: Texas Department of State)

J. Warren St. John, Masons attorney, told HuffPost that no one at the federal court, the prison, the halfway house or the probation house had ever told Mason she was ineligible to vote because she was a convicted felon. Mason has worked to restart her life after getting released from prison, St. John said, getting a job with the Texas Department of Transportation, then getting a degree from beauty school and becoming self-employed.

In court, Mason rhetorically asked why she would intentionally jeopardize her new life to vote.

I inflated returns, Mason said, according to the Star-Telegram. I was trying to get more money back for my clients. I admitted that. I owned up to that. I took accountability for that. I would never do that again. I was happy enough to come home and see my daughter graduate. My son is about to graduate. Why would I jeopardize that? Not to vote... I didnt even want to go vote.

Story continues

St. John said he plans to file an appeal and that Mason, who was taken into custody on Wednesday, is currently out of jail on a $20,000 bond.

St. John said its ridiculous to think his client intentionally defrauded the state of Texas to vote. He noted that Mason went to the same polling place where shed always voted, and used a legitimate drivers license and address. Theres no evidence, St. John said, that Mason even read the language on the provisional ballot telling her that people on supervised release are ineligible to vote.

In 2016, there were more than 6 million people in the United States who were disenfranchised because of a felony conviction, according to The Sentencing Project. States differ in how voting rights are restored. In four states, felons are permanently disenfranchised and can only have their voting rights restored at the discretion of the governor. Some states allow people to vote once they are released from prison, while others, like Texas, force them to complete all aspects of their sentences before they can vote again.

Voter fraud is exceedingly rare in the U.S., but Masons case and others illustrate how ineligible people sometimes end up casting ballots out of confusion. In 2017, a Texas mother of four who legally immigrated to the United States was sentenced to eight years in jail for unknowingly illegally voting in multiple elections. She now faces likely deportation. In North Carolina, the district attorney in Alamance County is pursuing criminal charges against several felons who voted while they were on probation. At least a few of them say they didnt know they couldnt vote.

Why would she vote illegally? St. John said of his client. What benefit does she receive by doing that? Nothing she did changed the outcome of any election. It didnt count anyway because she was kicked out.

Sharen Wilson, the Tarrant County district attorney, said in a statement Friday that Mason had chosen to break the law.

Our society is built on personal responsibility, Wilson said. There were multiple safeguards in place to keep Crystal Mason from breaking the law, but she still made that choice.

She signed and affirmed a document which clearly stated that (1) she was prohibited from voting due to her status as a convicted felon still serving her term of supervision, and (2) she would be committing a second degree felony if she lied about her status, Wilson went on. The judge found her guilty of illegal voting beyond a reasonable doubt. The judge set her sentence after hearing all the facts of the case.

Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-La.), the chair of the congressional black caucus, said he was heartbroken over Masons case.

The punishment does not fit the crime in this instance. This woman now faces the prospect of more time away from her family just because she was transitioning away from a prison setting, he said in a statement. Americans should be ashamed of this prison sentence.

This post has been updated with comment from Wilson and Richmond.

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Tokyo (AFP) - A newly created Space Colony Research centre led by Japan's first female astronaut is bringing cutting-edge technology to bear on one of mankind's greatest questions: Can we live in space?

Tucked away in high-tech laboratories at the Tokyo University of Science, a team of 30 researchers directed by Chiaki Mukai are studying new ways to keep humans alive on a potential moon or Mars colony.

"It's in our nature to explore. The Earth is too small for us, don't you think?" asked Mukai, a petite and energetic 66-year-old who spent more than 500 hours in space on two separate missions.

Human space exploration is entering a new era, said Mukai, with commercial ventures like Elon Musk's SpaceX and US President Donald Trump's pledge to explore beyond the moon and towards Mars.

Billionaire entrepreneur Musk has grand visions for private space exploration, including sending tourists into orbit around the moon and eventually colonising Mars.

In December, Trump directed US space agency NASA to set up a lunar base as a first step in a mission to Mars.

"It's very realistic to establish a colony on the moon by 2030," said Mukai, who said humans needed to think beyond the International Space Station, which she described as a "campsite -- you have to bring everything with you".

One of her team's innovations is a unique food production system using liquid plasma created by passing high-voltage electricity through a saline solution.

This reduces the damaging algae usually formed in water when growing crops, and tests simulating conditions in space have shown that potatoes can be grown quicker and more efficiently using this system.

The Space Colony Research Centre has also developed a system to create electricity using tiny thermoelectric sensors about the size of an iPod Nano that could be attached to a potential colony.

The colony would be kept at comfortable room temperature, but outside it would vary between 130 degrees Celsius (266 Fahrenheit) during the day and -230 at night.

Story continues

The technology harnesses the difference in temperature -- heat flux -- between inside and outside to create enough electricity to "power an entire space colony," said Tsutomu Lida, in charge of the project.

"The same device can be used for day and night. There are no moving parts, so there is no maintenance required," said Lida.

Another team is working on early detection and capture of space debris.

More than 29,000 pieces measuring at least 10 centimetres (four inches) across orbit Earth and could pose a danger to potential space colonists.

- Space flight attendant -

Mukai, who established the centre as part of the Tokyo University of Science at the beginning of the year, said many of the technologies they are working on have applications here on Earth.

"We are not only developing the technology for a moon base but as a spin-off, we will be able to help many issues that we need to solve on Earth," she said.

For example, she said hydroponic technology -- growing food without soil -- could be valuable in countries in parts of sub-Saharan Africa lacking natural resources and minerals.

Mukai said she was "certain" she would see a fully-functioning moon colony in her lifetime and was itching to go back into space, taking as her example former colleague and US astronaut John Glenn, who went into orbit aged 77.

The former heart surgeon said that with her medical expertise and extra-terrestrial experience, she could be very useful on future commercial space tourism flights.

"My dream is to get a job as a flight attendant on a commercial spaceflight so I can help to get people to the moon," she said, laughing.
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After a six-month diplomatic crisis between Israel and Jordan, a new ambassador Amir Weissbrod is expected to arrive in Amman soon to fully resume the embassys operations

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This wont make newspaper headlines. The Israeli-Jordanian peace agreement is barely addressed in Israeli public discourse. Many Israelis are unaware of its advantages and importance.

On the Jordanian street, the attitude towards the peace agreement with Israel is even worse. Its an attitude of hostility and objection to any form of a relationship with Israel. But these are peace relations which have a huge potential, and only a little of it has been realized.

Leaders at the signing of Israel-Jordan peace treaty (Photo: Zoom 77)

The peace agreement is based on its strategic importance to both sides. From the Jordanian perspective, the peace agreement with Israel is a highly important strategic anchor of stability: It has reinforced the Israeli umbrella of defense, as well as Jordans strategic relations with the United States. The Israeli-American umbrella of defense is crucial for Jordan in light of external threats from the east and from the north, but it also helps with internal security against the subversion of regional and local terror elements.

From the Israeli perspective, the peace agreement with Jordan is one of the pillars of the strategic-political stability, alongside the peace agreement with Egypt. Jordan serves as a friendly buffer state and a strategic partnerin the past, against threats from an Iraqi-led Arab front, and in recent years, against an Iranian-led Shiite coalition and dangers from the direction of Syria.

The extensive security cooperation became possible after the two governments recognized the critical need for this type of cooperation and invested all the required efforts, resources and attention for its development. The other areasdiplomatic, economic and civilianhavent enjoyed the same amount of attention and havent been perceived as equally vital, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has made it very difficult to advance collaborations in these areas. As a result, the great potential hidden in the peace agreement hasnt been realized.

In the diplomatic area, Jordan could become a closer partner of Israel in managing the relations with the Palestinians and furthering peace processes. It could be, as it has proved in the past, a good partner in running Jerusalems holy sites. In addition, it could serve as a partner in advancing relations with other Arab countries.

In the civilian area, Israel and Jordan share a number of issues and joint challenges that require tighter cooperation. Water is of course a key issue, and the existing agreementscoupled with the Red SeaDead Sea Conveyance and water swaps planspoint to the existing potential. Furthermore, collaborations between the countries on issues and projects in the fields of environment, energy, tourism and infrastructure will provide the two countries with dividends that each country would be unable to achieve on its own.

The Israeli Embassy in Amman (Photo: Shalom Bar Tal)

Its true that without considerable progress towards an Israeli-Palestinian agreement, the huge potential concealed in the relations between the countries cannot be fully realized. Nevertheless, in light of the existence of a formal peace agreement, real and invaluable progress can also be achieved in the current state of affairs between Israel and the Palestinians.

The existing set of agreements between Israel and Jordanin commerce, transportation, water, gas and other areasserves as an infrastructure facilitating the quick advancement of plenty of collaborations, if the necessary priority is given.

The economic aspect is a good example. From the Israeli perspective, the economic relations with the small Jordanian economy are of minor importance (even in light of the latest agreement to sell natural gas to Jordan), but Jordan has a very important role as a bridge for Israeli commerce with the large Gulf state markets and other Arab markets.

According to studies conducted in recent years, opening up the Arab markets to Israel will create a new and powerful growth engine that would help increase the Israeli product by a quarter or a third more than expected in todays conditions, and will make Israel part of the group of the worlds 15 richest countries. The Arab market will become Israels most important market alongside the European market.

The existing commerce and transportation agreements between Israel and Jordan could serve as a basis for the development of a new route of commerce between the Gulf states large markets and the Mediterranean Sea, through Jordan and Israel. This route is already active today, through the Jordan River border crossing near Beit Shean and the Haifa Port, but the volume of freight passing through it is relatively small. Turning this route into a regional terrestrial bridge will become possible by connecting Israel Railways to the new regional railway network.

This network is already in advanced construction stages in Saudi Arabia and along the Persian Gulf coasts. The plan is for Jordan to serve as the main junction of this network. Connecting the Jordanian train to Israels valley railroad will make it possible to complete the terrestrial bridge.

New Israeli Ambassador to Jordan Amir Weissbrod

Despite some major difficulties, this project is politically feasible, as it is based on an active route and on a system of existing trade and transportation agreements. Any progress in this project could help create a new climate of faith in Israeli-Jordanian peace and gradually change the Jordanian (and Israeli) publics views.

To strengthen the positive influence of the economic cooperation, its important to couple these moves with ongoing PR efforts among both the Israeli and Jordanian publics, which would stress the benefits of the peace process, change the perception towards the other side and support the establishment of warm peace. The public perception changes, for their part, would help strengthen the collaborations and create other benefits. Success stories in the Israeli-Jordanian contexts would help strengthen the two countries regional standing as players with a stabilizingeconomic and diplomaticcontribution to the regional system in general.

The Israel-Jordan peace agreement is a strategic asset with huge potential for both Israel and Jordan in many aspects. The reopening of the Israeli embassy in Jordan, after it was closed for half a year following the crisis between the countries, is an opportunity to look into ways to fix the missed opportunity and realize at least part of the major potential concealed in the peace agreement.

Yitzhak Gal is a financial and business advisor specializing in the Arab markets, and a researcher at Tel Aviv Universitys Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies and at Mitvimthe Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies .

This article is based on a study of Israel-Jordan relations written as part of a Mitvim Institute project, Israels relations with Arab states: The unrealized potential, which can be read

here

(in Hebrew).
US Special Representative for International Negotiations Jason Greenblatt accused Hamas on Thursday of orchestrating a "hostile march" against Israel, lambasting them on their lack of focus on deeply pressing issues, such as the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, which they control.

"Hamas is encouraging a hostile march on the Israel-Gaza border," Greenblatt tweeted. "Hamas should focus on desperately needed improvements to the lives of Palestinians in Gaza instead of inciting violence against Israel that only increases hardship & undermines chances for peace."

Gazas embattled Hamas rulers are imploring people to march along the border with Israel in the coming weeks in a risky gambit meant to shore up their shaky rule. In an unusual statement on Thursday evening, though, Hamas called on the masses expected to take part in the "Great March of Return" to stick to "peaceful ways" of protest.
A Gaza farmer was killed and a second man was wounded by an Israeli tank shell on Friday, a Gaza health ministry spokesman said, on a day of heightened tensions ahead of planned protests by Palestinians along the border with Israel.

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IDF officials confirmed that shots were fired at two suspects who approached the security fence and "carried out suspicious activity" twice throughout the night between Thursday and Friday.

"During the night two suspects approached the security fence in the southern Gaza Strip and carried out suspicious activity on the ground nearby. In response, an IDF force fired at them with a tank," an IDF spokesperson said, describing the second incident that transpired that night.

Palestinian wounded by IDF fire carried of from the scene (: )

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The IDF added it is checking details reported by the Gaza health ministry regarding the death of the Gazan farmer.

The Gaza health ministry spokesman said the farmer was killed and another wounded near the town of Khan Yunis. Residents there said he was gathering crops to sell later.

"Amr Samour, 27, was martyred and another citizen was wounded as a result of (Israeli) targeting of farmers east of Qarara village," the health ministry said.

Relatives, friends of Samour mourn him at the hospital (Photo: Reuters)

Yasser Samour, a relative and fellow farmer who witnessed the incident, said Amr was harvesting parsley before dawn, in hopes of selling it fresh in the market later in the day.

I was working on the next field, Samour said. We heard shelling landing on the field where Amr works. We ran there and found him hit directly with a shell. We were more than a kilometer away from the border.

Another farmer was wounded in the leg by shrapnel, he added.

IDF tanks near the Gaza border (Photo: Barel Efraim)

Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are planning to begin a six-week-long tent city protest to demand Palestinian refugees be allowed to return to what is now Israel.

Israeli security forces are on heightened alert . Israels military chief said in an interview on Wednesday more than 100 sharpshooters had been deployed on the Gaza border ahead of the planned mass demonstration near the frontier.

Organizers from a number of factions, including Islamist Hamas, which dominates Gaza, hope thousands will answer their call to flock to tent cities in five locations along the sensitive border to call for a right of return of Palestinian refugees to what is now Israel.

The Israeli military, citing security concerns, enforces a no go zone for Palestinians on land in Gaza adjacent to Israels border fence.

Palestinian children brought to March of Return (Photo: EPA)

The March 30 date for the start of the protest marks Land Day commemorating the six Arab citizens of Israel who were killed by Israeli security forces during demonstrations in 1976 over government land confiscations in northern Israel.

It is due to end on May 15, the day Palestinians call the "Nakba" or "catastrophe," marking the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the conflict surrounding the creation of Israel in 1948.
At least 16 Palestinians were killed and hundreds more were wounded by IDF gunfire along the Israel-Gaza border, Palestinian sources said Friday, as thousands swarmed the security fence as part of "The Great March of Return," called for by enclave's militant Hamas rulers.

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It was the deadliest day in Gaza in several months. Eleven of the Palestinians were killed during the clashes, a farmer was killed by pre-dawn tank fire in a separate incident, and four others from IDF tank fire at an observation post in the northern Gaza Strip.

The IDF said two of the Palestinians killed were members of Hamas's elite Nukhba force. The military also said all of the dead were terror activists aged 18 to 30. According to Palestinian reports, one of those killed was reportedly 16 while another was 33.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas declared Saturday would be a national day of mourning. "Israel is fully responsible for all of the aggression in Gaza today, and fully responsible for the death of Palestinians," Abbas said.

He ordered the Palestinian envoy to the UN, Riyad al-Maliki, to take all immediate steps to demand international protection for the Palestinian people.

The United Nations Security Council was due to meet later on Friday to discuss the situation in Gaza, diplomats said.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said more than 1,400 were hurt in the clashes. The ministry clarified those injured included protesters hit by live bullets and rubber-coated steel pellets, while others were overcome by tear gas.

Palestinian health officials said 758 of the protesters were wounded by live gunfire, while others were struck by rubber bullets or treated for tear gas inhalation. Witnesses said the military had used a drone in at least one location to drop tear gas.

Clashes on the Gaza border as part of March of Return (: )

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While protest organizers expected some 100,000 Palestinians to join the demonstration, the IDF estimated only about 30,000 showed up.

Organizers invested a lot of resource in free bus services to transport Gazans to the border, the construction of the tent encampments, and an aggressive public campaign among other things, with little results.

In addition, Palestinian witnesses said tens of thousands gathered in tent encampments set up at five sites at a distance of several hundred meters (yards) from the border, but that only some of them engaged in clashes, burning tires and throwing stones at IDF soldiers.

March of Return protest (Photo: EPA)

As the protest turned chaotic, the IDF declared the security fence on the Gaza Strip border a closed military zone and began dispersing demonstrators using riot control measures and firing at major instigators with live rounds.

Palestinian protester, shot by IDF sniper, being carried off for treatment (Photo: AFP)

An IDF force caught a seven-year-old Palestinian girl attempting to cross the border fence, and returned her back to her parents in Gaza.

The IDF said that the girl was encouraged to attempt to cross by Hamas, which "endangers women and children and uses them cynically."

GOC Southern Command Maj. Gen. Eyal Zamir said that IDF forces spotted attempts to carry out terrorist attacks, including planting explosive charges on the security fence, under the cover of the mass demonstration. No IDF troops have been hurt in the clashes.

IDF officials estimated early Friday evening the violent clashes on the Gaza border will continue in the coming days, and that even after the great mass of rioters are dispersed, attempts will continue to sabotage the border fence and carry out attacks.



Maj. Gen. Eyal Zamir (Photo: IDF Spokesperson's Unit)

"We didn't allow any crossing of the border fence so far, and no significant damage has been caused to our infrastructure near the fence," said the IDF's Spokesman, Brig. Gen. Ronen Manelis.

"What's been happening since this morning is a violent terror protest. We're still in the midst of the event. So far, we've succeeded in our mission, and anywhere there was an attempt to damage the fence, accurate fire was used with strength, determination and discretion," Manelis added.

"We have information about plans to carry out many terror attacks during the rioting. A significant terror incident will lead to a response by us that will not be limited to the border fence area," the IDF spokesman warned.





The March of Return, Hamas says, is intended to be a weeks-long peaceful demonstration advocating for the return of Palestinian refugees to Israel.

The IDF is on high alert as it sees the march as a hostile attempt by Hamas to sabotage IDF infrastructure and the Gaza security fence, and fear it may lead to a mass breach of the border.

IDF soldiers on lookout, near the border (Photo: AFP)

Haniyeh: We will not give up right of return

In the meantime, the Hamas leadership visited the various protest locations: the head of the Hamas political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, was east of Gaza City; Hamas leader in Gaza Yahya Sinwar was at the southern Gaza Strip; and Gaza Interior Minister Fathi Hamad was at the northern Gaza Strip. They were seen among the crowd, encouraging the people and showing their support.

Hamas leader Haniyeh, at the protest (Photo: AFP)

"This march demonstrates that there are no alternatives to Palestine and the right of return (for the Palestinian people)," Haniyeh told exuberant gatherers, praising their decision to leave their home and attend the protest to "write the future."

Haniyeh then brought to attention the goal of the march, teling attendees it constitutes "the beginning of a return (of the Palestinian people) to the entirety of the land of Palestine."

"We will not give up and we will not bargain with the Zionist entity over even a small piece of the land of Palestine," Haniyeh continued, stressing they will reject any deal proposed by the Trump administration, who he blamed of trampling Palestinian right by "Trump's decision to grant Jerusalem to Israel."

"Israel's threats do not scare us. Our people went out today to make it clear that we will not give up Jerusalem and that there is no alternative to Palestine and the right of return. We will not accept the right of return staying only a slogan," he concluded, telling the crowd, "walk in the path of Allahyou are the victors."

Sinwar, meanwhile, said the protests are a signal to Israel and the world that "our people will not accept the continuation of the siege."

Yahya Sinwar (Photo: AFP)

Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum praised the turnout. "The large crowds ... reflect the Palestinian people's determination to achieve the right of return and break the siege and no force can stop this right," he said.

The march to the border (Photo: AFP)

Ahead of the protests, the military said it doubled its standard troop level along the border, deploying snipers, special forces and paramilitary border police units, which specialize in riot control. The army said it would not allow the crowds to breach the fence or damage military infrastructure.

Brig. Gen. Manelis said Israel wants to avoid violence, but warned the IDF will shoot anyone who approaches the border's security fence, enforcing a "no go" zone for Palestinians.

At one of five encampments, east of Gaza City, people clustered around the tents. An unpaved road linking the tents and the border fence was filled with people walking in both directions. People ran for cover from time to time to escape tear gas.

Ghanem Abdelal, 50, distributed water bottles to family members sitting on a mat near one of the tents. He said he hopes the protest "will bring a breakthrough, an improvement, to our life in Gaza."

Palestinians burning Israeli flag, pictures of US President Trump (Photo: AFP)

Families brought their children to camps just a few hundred meters from the border fence, with football fields marked out in the sand, and scout bands playing.

But hundreds of Palestinian youths ignored calls from the organizers and from the IDF to keep away, increasing the risk of confrontation with Israeli troops who had taken up positions on the other side of the fence.

Some of the tents bore names of the refugees' original villages in what is now Israel, written in Arabic and Hebrew alike.

Eighty-year-old Mansi Nassar walked towards the sensitive frontier with the aid of his cane, disregarding entreaties to remain 700 metres (2,300 feet) from the barrier.

"I was born in Beit Darras inside Palestine and I will accept no less than returning to it," he said, referring to his former home village just south of the modern Israeli city of Ashdod. The village no longer exists.





Protesters break for noon prayer (Photo: AFP)

Directly addressing the residents of Gaza in Arabic on twitter, Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman accused Hamas of "playing" with their citizens' lives, which he warned will be put in danger should they approach the security fence.

    :

    .        .         .    (@AvigdorLiberman) March 30, 2018

"I suggest that get on with your lives and not participate in the provocation," he wrote, attempting to dissuade them from the protest.

IDF snipers taking aim at main instigators (Photo: IDF Spokesperson's Office)

Tear gas used to disperse demonstrators (Photo: Reuters)

The start of the demonstration was symbolically linked to what Palestinians call "Land Day," which commemorates the six Arab citizens of Israel killed by Israeli security forces in demonstrations in 1976 over land confiscations. The week-long Jewish holiday of Passover, when Israel heightens security, also begins Friday.





Just hours prior to the march, a Gaza man was killed and a second was wounded by an Israeli tank shell after they approached the security fence at the southern part of the strip and "carried out suspicious activity," according to the IDF.

The Gaza health ministry spokesman said the two were farmers. Residents there said they were gathering crops to sell later.





The protest is due to end on May 15, the day Palestinians call the "Nakba" or "Catastrophe," marking the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the conflict surrounding the creation of Israel in 1948.

While Gazans were rallying at the border, dozens of Palestinians commemorating Land Day clashed with IDF forces at the Beit El checkpoint at the entrance to Ramallah and in the Bab a-Zawiya neighborhood of Hebron, burning tires and throwing stones at security forces, which were using riot control measures to disperse them. 65 Palestinians were injured.

Palestinians have long demanded that as many as five million of their compatriots be granted the right to return. Israel rules this out, fearing an influx of Arabs that would eliminate its Jewish majority. Israel argues the refugees should resettle in a future state that the Palestinians seek in West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
The US military says two coalition personnel have been killed and five were wounded by an improvised explosive device in Syria.

A US military statement says the incident occurred on Thursday night and that the wounded personnel were being evacuated for further medical treatment.

Friday's statement did not say where the explosion occurred and did not state the casualties are Americans.

A Syrian official had told The Associated Press earlier that a roadside bomb exploded in the mixed Arab-Kurdish town of Manbij. Mohammed Abu Adel, the head of the Manbij Military Council, an Arab-Kurdish US-backed group in the town, says the bomb went off hundreds of meters away from a security headquarters that houses the council just before midnight on Thursday.

The coalition statement said details pertaining to the incident are being withheld pending further investigation.
France denied claims of a military buildup against Turkish forces in Syria, scrambling Friday to calm tensions with NATO ally Turkey that threaten to further aggravate the Syria war.

French President Emmanuel Macron raised Turkey's ire by meeting in Paris with Syrian rebels, including Kurdish fighters that Turkey considers terrorists. Worsening matters, Macron offered to mediate between them.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan angrily refused, accusing Macron on Friday of overstepping "his limits" and going "over his head."

A French presidential official said the Turkish response was no surprise given the "sensitivities" around Kurdish separatist violence in Turkey.

Still, the official insisted that the Turkish offensive against opposition forces in northwest Syria "must stop." The official argued that the operation is jeopardizing the broader US-led military campaign against the Islamic State group.
Dozens of Palestinians clashed with IDF forces at the Beit El checkpoint at the entrance to Ramallah and in the Bab a-Zawiya neighborhood of Hebron, burning tires and throwing stones at security forces, which were using riot control measures to disperse them.

The riot broke out in commemoration of "Land Day," which commemorates the six Arab citizens of Israel killed by Israeli security forces in demonstrations in 1976 over land confiscations.
Russia ordered new cuts Friday in the number of British envoys in the country, escalating a dispute with the West over the poisoning of an ex-spy in Britain. The massive expulsion of diplomats on both sides has reached a scale unseen even at the height of the Cold War.

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Two dozen countries, including the US and many EU nations, and NATO ordered out more than 150 Russian diplomats this week in a show of solidarity with Britain over the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter that London blamed on Russia.

Moscow has vehemently denied involvement in the nerve agent attack and announced Thursday that it would expel the same number of diplomats from each nation.





British PM Theresa May and Russian President Putin (Photo: AP)

The US State Department said after Russia announced the expulsions on Thursday evening, that it reserved the right to respond further, saying the list of diplomats designated for expulsion by Russia showed Moscow was not interested in diplomacy.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, in a conference call with reporters on Friday, disagreed with that assessment, saying that Putin still favoured mending ties with other countries, including with the United States.

The Russian Foreign Ministry further escalated its response Friday, saying it has ordered Britain to reduce the number of its diplomats in Moscow to the level that Russia has in London. That exact number wasn't immediately clear.

The ministry said it summoned the British ambassador to hand him a protest over the "provocative and unsubstantiated actions by Britain, which instigated the expulsion of Russian diplomats from various nations for no reason." It gave London one month to reduce its diplomatic personnel in Russia.

Commenting on the Russian move, a spokeswoman for the British Foreign Office said "it's regrettable but in light of Russia's previous behavior, we anticipated a response."

British ambassador to Russia, Laurie Bristow, leaves after a meeting at the Russian foreign ministry (Photo: AP)

"However, this doesn't change the facts of the matter: the attempted assassination of two people on British soil, for which there is no alternative conclusion other than that the Russian State was culpable," she said. "Russia is in flagrant breach of international law and the Chemical Weapons Convention and actions by countries around the world have demonstrated the depth of international concern."

The Russian Foreign Ministry also summoned Friday the representatives of 23 countries that had taken what it called unfriendly action against Russia in solidarity with Britain because of the Skripal affair.

"The envoys will be handed protest notes and told about the Russian side's retaliatory measures," the ministry said.

Embassy officials from France, Germany, Italy, Poland, the Netherlands, Croatia, Belgium, Sweden, Australia, Canada and the Czech Republic were all seen arriving in their official cars at the Foreign Ministry building in Moscow.

Security personnel carry equipment out of the US Consulate General in St. Petersburg (Photo: EPA)

Russia's Foreign Ministry said in a statement it reserved the right to retaliate against expulsion of Russian diplomats from Hungary, Georgia and Montenegro.

The ministry also said it decided to expel 13 diplomats from Ukraine, Russia's state-run RIA news agency reported.

Emerging from the Russian Foreign Ministry building, German ambassador Rudiger von Fritsch said Russia had questions to answer about the poisoning of Skripal, but that Berlin remained open to dialogue with Moscow.

Speaking to reporters Friday in Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov insisted that "Russia didn't start any diplomatic wars," and "remains open for developing good ties."

He added that Russia has called a meeting of the international chemical weapons watchdog next week to press for an "unbiased and objective investigation."

On Thursday, Russia summoned the US ambassador to announce the closure of the American consulate in St. Petersburg and the expulsion of 60 US diplomats in a tit-for-tat response to Washington's move to order 60 Russians out and shut the Russian consulate in Seattle.

An Associated Press reporter on Friday saw US consulate staff carrying boxes from the building in St. Petersburg and loading them into a van. Several mini-vans drove out of the consulate while security also detained a man who threw a Starbucks cup at the building.

Security personnel carry equipment out of the US Consulate General in St. Petersburg (Photo: EPA)

Some passers-by near the US consulate in St. Petersburg cheered the expulsions.

"Let them get out of here," said 61-year-old retiree Viktor Fedin. "You won't put Russia on its knees."

Others were more cautious, worried that the closures would affect visa processing for Russians.

"The Russian government has to respond to the hostile actions against Russia," said 32-year-old researcher Yelena Bogomazova. "But the escalation is bad. The closure of the consulate will make it difficult for people to get US visas, they will have to go to Moscow."

After Russia expelled several dozens of US diplomats, the waiting list for US visa applications in Russia has increased to weeks, if not months. The US embassy said it was unable to process visa applications faster because of the staff shortage.

The hospital where she is being treated said on Thursday that Yulia Skripal was getting better after spending three weeks in a critical condition due to the nerve toxin attack. Her father remains in a critical but stable condition.

The BBC, citing "separate sources", reported on Friday that Yulia was "conscious and talking".
WASHINGTON - One of the personnel killed with an improvised explosive device in Syria on Thursday was a US service member, two US officials told Reuters.

On Friday, the coalition fighting Islamic State said in a statement that two personnel from the coalition had been killed, without giving the nationalities.

Two US officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity and citing initial information, said one of the personnel was American and the incident took place near the Syrian city of Manbij. They declined to say which country the other individual was from.
A delegation of US House Democrats that visited Israel this week sent a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urging him to release the Eritrean and Sudanese asylum seekers imprisoned in the Saharonim Prison, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA).

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A letter sent from the office of House of Representatives Minority leader Nancy Pelosi, who led the visit to Israel and Jordan, detailed the delegation's meetings representatives of the African asylum seekers.

Pelosi said in the letter that the asylum seekers told the visiting Congressmen about the abuse and human rights violations they faced in Sudan and Eritrea.

Netanyahu meets with House Democrats delegation (Photo: Kobi Gideon/GPO)

The letter, which was sent a day after the delegation's meeting with Netanyahu in Jerusalem, Pelosi cited a ruling by Israel's High Court of Justice which determined the government could not forcefully expel the asylum seekers, noting there is therefore no legal justifications for their "continued detention."

"We hope these detainees will be released before the Passover holiday and that durable solutions, including in Israel, can be found," Pelosi wrote on behalf of the delegation's members.

Earlier this week, the High Court granted the state a two week extension to reply to a petition against the government-led plan to deport illegal African migrants from Israel, extending the deadline to April 9. The expulsion, which was due to start April 1, will therefore be postponed by at least eight days.

The Population and Immigration Authority called at the beginning of the year on migrants from Sudan and Eritrea to leave "to their country or to a third country," meaning Rwanda or Uganda. Those who leave by the end of March will be given $3,500, along with airfare and other incentives.

Asylum seekers leaving Holot (Photo: Reuters)

The ultimatum is part of a large-scale campaign to remove 42,000 illegal African migrants from Israel.

In its request , the state noted that the extension is being sought in order to allow for the senior legal and political echelons to consider the subject more closely."

In addition, the state asked to submit to the court on Monday a confidential document that it said will present an additional reason of weight that underlies the extension request that can be presented to the court only.

The request was filed in response to two separate petitions against the governments program to deport the migrants, thousands of whom made their way into Israel via its once porous southern border.

The first was submitted by 119 human rights activists while the second was filed by attorney Avigdor Feldman who said in response to the states request that he agreed with the extension but opposed the presentation of a confidential document.
The IDF said Friday that two of the Palestinians killed in the violet clashes on the Gaza border were members of Hamas's elite Nukhba force.

The military also said all of the dead were terror activists aged 18 to 30.
ANKARA - Turkey accused Israel of using "disproportionate force" against the Palestinians as clashes in Gaza near the Israeli border on Friday left at least 10 people dead and hundreds wounded.

"We strongly condemn Israel's use of disproportionate force against Palestinians during the peaceful protests today (Friday) in Gaza," the foreign ministry said in a statement.

The Turkish foreign ministry expressed "concerns" over the casualties. "It is necessary that Israel rapidly ends use of force that would further raise the tensions in the region," it said.

"We are inviting the international community to fulfill its responsibility to convince Israel to give up on its hostile attitude."
WEST PALM BEACH - President Donald Trump is telling advisers he wants an early exit of US troops from Syria, two senior administration officials said on Friday, a stance that may put him at odds with many top US officials.

Trump is spending Easter weekend at his Palm Beach, Florida, estate. During a speech in Richfield, Ohio on Thursday, he revealed his desire to withdraw US forces from Syria and turn over security to regional countries.

He said that based on allied victories against Islamic State militants, "We'll be coming out of Syria, like, very soon."

The administration officials, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said Trump's comment during the speech reflected internal deliberations with advisers in which he has wondered aloud why US forces should remain with the militants on their heels.
The Border Police dropped tear gas from a drone onto Palestinian protesters in Gaza on Friday, a police spokesman told AFP, acknowledging operational deployment of new technology.

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An AFP correspondent saw a drone release around 10 gas canisters as protesters on the border with Israel cursed the small craft.

Tear gas dropped onto Palestinian rioters in Gaza (Photo: AFP)

A number of people were injured by the containers, which fell from a height of between 10 and 20 meters (30-60 feet), the correspondent said.

Use of unmanned aerial vehicles to launch gas is a recent innovation, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.

Drone drops tear gas onto Palestinian rioters in Gaza (Photo: AFP)

"It was used a few weeks ago around the Gaza Strip area and it is also being used today, in order to prevent protesters getting to the Gaza crossing or Gaza border," he said.

"It's a mini-drone which has the capability of flying over certain zones and certain areas and then letting go of tear gas in areas that we want to prevent protesters from reaching."

Tear gas dropped onto Palestinian rioters in Gaza (Photo: AFP)

Video of the tactic in use was shown in a report earlier this month by the Lebanese Al-Mayadeen TV channel.

Tens of thousands of Gazans took to the streets Friday in mass protests calling for Palestinians to be allowed to return to land that their ancestors fled from in the 1948 war but that is now part of Israel. They threw stones and Molotov cocktails at the border fence and troops on the other side.

Tear gas dropped onto Palestinian rioters in Gaza (Photo: EPA)

The IDF has pledged to stop, by force if necessary, any attempt by protesters to cross into Israel.

Israeli forces regularly use tear gas to disperse Palestinian protesters, whether thrown by soldiers or fired from specially equipped vehicles.
The IDF thwarted an attempt by a terror cell to carry out a shooting attack at the northern Gaza Strip on Friday evening.

According to the army, two terrorists came near the border fence and opened fire at IDF soldiers on the other side.

The Israeli troops responded with gunfire, tank fire and aircraft fire at the terrorists and at Hamas positions in the area.

None of the Israeli soldiers were hurt.
The IDF thwarted an attempt by a terror cell to carry out a shooting attack at the northern Gaza Strip on Friday evening.

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According to the army, two terrorists came near the border fence and opened fire at IDF soldiers on the other side.

The Israeli troops responded with gunfire at the terrorists and tank and aircraft fire at at Hamas and Islamic Jihad observation positions in the north and south of the Gaza Strip.

IDF retaliates against Palestinian terrorists for shooting (:  )

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The Palestinians reported four terrorists were killed in the fire exchange. None of the Israeli soldiers were hurt.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians swarmed the Gaza border fence on Friday as part of "The Great March of Return," called for by enclave's militant Hamas rulers.





GOC Southern Command Maj. Gen. Eyal Zamir said that IDF forces spotted attempts to carry out terrorist attacks, including planting explosive charges on the security fence, under the cover of the mass demonstration.

IDF officials estimated early Friday evening the violent clashes on the Gaza border will continue in the coming days, and that even after the great mass of rioters are dispersed, attempts will continue to sabotage the border fence and carry out attacks.

"We didn't allow any crossing of the border fence so far, and no significant damage has been caused to our infrastructure near the fence," said the IDF's Spokesman, Brig. Gen. Ronen Manelis.

"What's been happening since this morning is a violent terror protest. We're still in the midst of the event. So far, we've succeeded in our mission, and anywhere there was an attempt to damage the fence, accurate fire was used with strength, determination and discretion," Manelis added.

"We have information about plans to carry out many terror attacks during the rioting. A significant terror incident will lead to a response by us that will not be limited to the border fence area," the IDF spokesman warned.
KOBANI - Two British members of the Islamic State group believed to have belonged to a cell notorious for beheading hostages in northern Syria said Friday that their home country's revoking of their citizenship denies them the possibility of fair trial. One of them said the killings of captives was "regrettable" and could have been avoided.

The men were allegedly among four British jihadis who made up the ISIS cell nicknamed "The Beatles" by surviving captives because of their English accents. The cell became known for its brutality, holding in captivity more than 20 Western hostages, and torturing and killing several, including American, British and Japanese journalists and aid workers, in 2014 and 2015.

The two men, El Shafee Elsheikh and Alexanda Amon Kotey, spoke to The Associated Press from their detention Friday in northern Syria in their first interview with the media. They were captured in early January in eastern Syria by the Kurdish-led US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces amid the collapse of ISIS.
President Donald Trump is telling advisers he wants an early exit of US troops from Syria, two senior administration officials said on Friday, a stance that may put him at odds with many top US officials.

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Trump is spending Easter weekend at his Palm Beach, Florida, estate. During a speech in Richfield, Ohio on Thursday, he revealed his desire to withdraw US forces from Syria and turn over security to regional countries.

He said that based on allied victories against Islamic State militants, "We'll be coming out of Syria, like, very soon."

US President Donald Trump gives speech in Richfield, Ohio (Photo: Reuters)

"Let the other people take care of it now. Very soon, very soon, we're coming out," Trump said. "We're going to get back to our country, where we belong, where we want to be."

The administration officials, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said Trump's comment during the speech reflected internal deliberations with advisers in which he has wondered aloud why US forces should remain with the militants on their heels.

Trump has made clear that "once ISIS and its remnants are destroyed that the United States would be looking toward having countries in the region playing a larger role in ensuring security and leaving it at that," one official said.

Such a policy is nowhere near complete, however, the official added.

The second official said Trump's national security advisers have told him US forces should stay in small numbers for at least a couple of years to make sure gains against the militants are held and ensure Syria does not essentially become a permanent Iranian base.

Top national security aides discussed Syria in a White House meeting recently but have yet to settle on a strategy for US forces in Syria to recommend to Trump going forward, the official said.

"So far he has not given an order to just get out," the official said.

American troops in Syria (: AP)

About 2,000 US troops are deployed in Syria.

An American service member was among two people killed on Thursday by improvised explosive device in Syria, two US officials told Reuters.

Four officials at the State and Defense Departments and the CIA said on Friday they were surprised by Trump's Syria remarks, which one senior intelligence official said "appeared to be completely off the cuff."

They added, speaking on the condition of anonymity, that Trump's comments also appear to be part of a pattern that includes questioning the US commitment to Article 5 of the NATO Charter and suggesting the Pentagon will pay for a border wall with Mexico, positions that many or most national security officials opposed.

Trump last year went through a similar wrenching debate over whether to withdraw US forces from Afghanistan, ultimately agreeing to keep them there but only after repeatedly raising questions of why they should stay.

Trump's view on Syria may put him at odds with those of former US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton , named by Trump a week ago to replace H.R. McMaster as White House national security adviser

"The caliphate in Syria & Iraq is gone, but #ISIS's terrorist activities will continue and #Iran is becoming a bigger player in the region," Bolton tweeted last Oct. 20 when he was a national security analyst.
This number needs to be read a few times in order to comprehend itthere are approximately 100 cases of anti-Semitism documented each month worldwide, expressions of racism through violence and even murder. And this is data only from the last several relatively "calm" months. During times of heightened security tension, these numbers double and even triple.

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Last January, for example, anti-Semitic graffiti was sprayed in Britain, a memorial plaque to the Holocaust was defaced in Italy, leaflets denying the Holocaust were distributed in Sweden, five people were attacked in France, headstones were defaced in a Jewish cemetery in Germany, swastikas were sprayed on the cars of Jews in Australia and Canada, expressions of anti-Semitism have appeared in newspapers in Puerto Rico, Molotov cocktails have been thrown at a Jewish school in Tunisia and a British charity worker published a message against a Jewish person on Facebook saying, "The 1940s are calling, your shower is ready."

All this, and even more examples since January, without even mentioning the Polish law or the rise of the extreme right.

Anti-Semitic graffiti on the New York Subway (Photo: Gregory Locke)

This is already beyond simply raising concern: this is a real trend. And it raises an important question about the nature of the proper intervention by Israel in the fight against anti-Semitismwhich has been led over the last several years by non-governmental organizations such as the World Zionist Federation, the Jewish Agency and many other local organizations. Right and Left, Orthodox and Reform, conservative and liberal: anti-Semitism unites Jewish organizations worldwide.

Unlike the past, Israel now truly has the ability as a state to act forcefully in the fight against anti-Semitism. Formal condemnations and diplomatic pronouncements are important, but they are not enough. We have an extensive arsenal of efficient weapons at our disposal: media, legal, social networks and even a not insignificant economic force in certain countries. The time has come to join forces, to recruit opinion-makers and people of influence throughout the world to begin the hunt for our pursuers. It's that simple.

Whether through the filing of claims that will be directed by leading attorneys against any global expressions of anti-Semitism on social networks so that the attackers will know that racism costs money and will think twice before giving it expression, in providing assistance to law enforcement in other countries so that anti-Semitic criminals can be identified and, of course, by spreading the message in the public and in the media. There are times when it is permissible to issue an emergency call-up, even for the biggest cultural stars and tell themou are now part of the war on anti-Semitism.

The Jewish-American actress Mayim Bialik is a perfect example of a public figure who is using her visibility in the fight against anti-Semitism. She is an activist, engaged in pro-Israel hasbara and has not shied away from being photographed with IDF soldiers or from expressing her support for them. She recently spoke at the 6th annual Global Forum for Combating anti-Semitism that was held at the International Convention Center in Jerusalem. It is possible and appropriate to engage other opinion-makers to act like her. Even with the encouragement and financial support of the Israeli government, if necessary.

Anti-Semitism cannot be taken lightly: these are lessons not only of the past, but also and particularly lessons of the present. This is a sickness that has claimed a heavy price from us and also damages Israeleconomically and in the court of public opinion. The fight against anti-Semitism must be at the very top of Israel's public agenda in a more prominent way. If we're not the first to respond to each incident with the full gravity to which it is duewe can't complain about others.

The writer is the CEO of the International Convention Center (Binyanei Hauma) in Jerusalem.
Several hours before millions of Jews across Israel sat down at the dinner table to celebrate Passover, some 250 lone soldiers gathered Friday morning for a special Seder feast.

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For most of them, this is their first Seder away from their countries of birth and their families.

May Cassif, 20, who made aliyah from Boston and serves at a religious college for girls in Har Gilo in Jerusalem, talked about how happy she was about her decision to immigration to Israel in 2016.

Vladimir Steinman, May Cassif and Ivan Lavrov (Photo: Ido Erez)

"This is a very cool country. There may be a lot of difficulties compared to where I come from, but this is what makes this country interesting," she said.

A year ago she was in basic training, but this year would be her first Passover as an Israeli citizen. "My family is very happy I'm here," she said.

Vladimir Steinman, 21, feels the same. He immigrated to Israel in 2014 from Latvia, and currently serves in the Givati Brigade's reconnaissance platoon. "It makes me very happy that the army is taking care of us like this," he said.

The lone soldiers at the special event (Photo: Ido Erez)

He said he was happy to be wearing the olive green uniforms. "I'm Zionist, and that is why I wanted to make aliyah. My family stayed behind, and I'm trying to convince them (to come)," he said.

This is Steinman's third Passover in Israel and the first in the IDF. "The last two years, I celebrated with my adoptive family," he said.

Ivan Lavrov, 21, who made aliyah from Belarus five years ago and lives with his grandmother, is one of the more veteran immigrants.

Lavrov, who serves as a technician for a Puma IFV in the IDF's Engineering Corps, told Ynet that while this is his fifth Passover in Israel, he was still very excited to be celebrating it in IDF uniforms with hundreds of soldiers.

"I made aliyah through the Masa Israel organization and then went to a pre-army school at Tel Aviv University before enlisting," he described his journey.

"Of course I miss my parents. I'm personally very close to my mother, who lives in Belarus," he admitted.

The head of the IDF's Manpower Directorate, Maj. Gen. Moti Almoz, also attended the special Seder, telling the lone soldiers, "The story of Israel's escape from Egypt has a positive ending. It starts with despair, as a pessimistic story, but it ends with freedom. To reach that, we need people to believe in freedom, make decisions and take actions."

The head of the IDF Manpower's Directorate, Maj. Gen. Moti Almoz (Photo: Ido Erez)

The event was organized by Yahad - United for Israel's Soldiers, a joint organization of AWIS (Association for the Wellbeing of Israel's Soldiers) and The Libi Fund.

An additional 150 soldiers who were invited could not make it due to the high tensions on the Gaza border, which required many lone soldiers to stay in their bases or otherwise deploy to the border.

At another event that took place Thursday in the southern resort city of Eilat, some 200 IDF orphans released hundreds of balloons into the air with the writing "Dear Father." They attached letters to the balloons addressed to fathers who were killed while performing their duty in Israel's security forces.
UNITED NATIONS - The United Nations Security Council will meet on Friday to discuss the situation in Gaza at the request of Kuwait, diplomats said.

At least 15 Palestinians were killed and hundreds injured by Israeli security forces confronting one of the largest Palestinian demonstrations along the Israel-Gaza border in recent years, Gaza medical officials said.
Romania's Foreign Minister Teodor Melescanu said Friday that Russia has "a very solid presence" of spies in his country, in unusually outspoken remarks about alleged Russian espionage.

"I don't know in figures, but we can feel a very solid presence" of Russian spies, Melescanu said in the first direct comment of late made by a high-level Romanian official on the topic.

Relations between Romania and Russia, which are generally cool, strained further this week after Romania expelled one Russian diplomat over the nerve agent attack on ex-spy Sergei Skripal. Russia responded in kind.

Russia's ambassador to Romania Valery Kuzmin called the expulsion of Russian diplomats "the manifestation of collective political madness," but Melescanu responded Friday that "the madness was the attack in Salisbury."

Melescanu headed Romania's foreign espionage agency from 2012 to 2014.
For many, Easter is usually the first holiday weekend of the year that comes with four straight off-days. But Easter is the most confusing of all the holiday dates. When is Easter 2018? Why do we experience different Easter dates every year? How does one determine the date of Easter for a given year? How is the date of Easter-related to the full moon, what do they have to do with each other? What is the Golden number and when does Easter fall 2018? This post highlights all you need to know about this crucial Christian celebration and the Easter traditions.

Source: Cap Cana

When is Easter on 2018?

Easter is never fixed, and it changes according to the dynamics of the lunar calendar. You may be planning a break with friends, a weekend visiting your family, or youre just looking forward to enjoying the long weekend relaxing indoors. Or maybe youre just curious about the religious origins of Easter celebrations and the events that unfolded during the holy week to make us mark the date. When is Easter 2018 calendar beginning? The key dates are highlighted next.

Palm Sunday : March 25

A huge section of Christians observes this day on the Sunday that comes before Easter to celebrate the triumphal entry of Jesus Christ into Jerusalem. It is referred to a Palm Sunday due to the fact that on the day when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, a mammoth crowd in the city spread palm branches on the ground to symbolize his kingship.

All through his three-year ministry, Jesus downplayed his messianic role and would go as far as telling those he had healed not to mention anything concerning the miracle to other individuals. However, Palm Sunday was an exceptional day, and his glory was loudly proclaimed by his followers.

Christians of today celebrate this day joyously and triumphantly to emphasize the glory of the Messiah. Some churches even spread palm branches around the sanctuary to commemorate the event. Some even go a step further to walk a donkey around the town as they wave palm fronds as a way of announcing the return of Jesus Christ.

READ ALSO: Ten regions in Ghana and their festivals: Learn the Ghanaian Culture

Maundy Thursday: March 29

This year, this day falls on March 29. In Jesus time, it was the time for Passover, a Jewish celebration. Through the Passover celebration, Jesus and his disciples had a meal together. The custom involved roasting lamb (which has brought the Easter lamb tradition of today), wine, and bread. Note that this was the last meal that Jesus had before his death, currently known as the Last Supper.

The actions of Jesus Christ during this dinner session have a significant role in the Christian religion. During the meal, he gave the bread and wine to his disciples as a representation of his body and blood respectively. The term Maundy is Latin for command, and Jesus commanded them to break the bread and wine together while thinking of him after hes been crucified. This is what is known as Communion.

Good Friday, March 30

Good Friday represents the day when Jesus Christ died on the cross, which was the main significance of the Lent period. How do you call a day when someone died Good? The day got this term as a synonym for holy. Here, Christians remember when Jesus was flogged and while carrying the cross, was taken to Golgotha where he was crucified between two thieves, yet he had done no wrong.

The Christian faith uses the cross as a symbol of faith since Jesus was nailed to the cross and left to die.

Holy Saturday: March 31

This day that comes between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, its referred to as Holy Saturday, and it has a part to play in the weekend. The idea of this day was to hold a service aimed at welcoming Easter and the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead the next day at dawn.

When is Easter Sunday? It's on April 1

This is the most important day in the Christian calendar church year. On this day, which comes three days after Jesus Christ died on the cross, Christians believe their savior rose from the dead. The day is usually referred to as the Resurrection Sunday. Here are the events of the day as highlighted in Luke: 24, New International Version (NIV).

Source: ReedGroup

On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. In their fright, the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.  Then they remembered his words.

Easter Monday: April 2

The day comes after Easter Sunday and usually has several names including Dyngus Day, Renewal Monday, Wet Monday, and Bright Monday. This day is observed by numerous groups of Christians, primarily the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox traditions. In Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox, the day marks the commencement of the Easter week and Bright Week respectively.

Different cultures observe the day in distinct ways. For some, it serves a solemn remembrance of the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ that is marked by outdoor processions. Others take part in egg rolling competitions on this day. Another section, particularly siblings, and spouses, you will be woken up by a bucket of cold water, hence the name Wet Monday. Others just celebrate the day with large gatherings and polka festivals (Dingus Day).

Why does the Easter date change?

Easter is a feast day celebrated by Christians. These days are important in the life of both the saints and their master, Jesus Christ. Unlike most celebrations in the Cristian calendar, the dates for Easter are not fixed. This kind of dates is known as movable days. This means that the days do not fall on a particular date in the normal Julian and Gregorian calendars that usually follow the suns cycle. Instead, Easter dates are usually determined by the lunar calendar whose basis is on the phases of the moon.

Easter is expected to fall on the Sunday that comes right after the first full moon that comes after the Spring Equinox. This should be after the 20th of March. The March, or spring, Vernal Equinox refers to the period when the sun cuts across the celestial equator, which is an imaginary line that projects the earths equator into space. When will Easter 2018 be in Ghana? In the case of our country, Easter will fall on April 1.

So who came up with the decision on when the Easter dates should fall? Constantine I, the Roman Emperor convened a council of Christian bishops in AD 325. This was the first Council of Nicea, the first effort by Christians to get a consensus on the actual teachings of the church. It was at this council that a decision was made that Easter should come on the first full moon that comes right after the Spring Equinox, and it must always fall on a Sunday. That was how the date to represent death and Resurrection of Christ was settled at.

When is Passover and Easter 2018?

Sometimes, Easter and Passover celebrations coincide, and in some instances, they may even be weeks apart. Passover is a Christian holiday that commemorates the exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt where they had been held as slaves. The celebration lasts a week in Israel, and among reform Jews and in other parts of the world, its held for eight days. Passover commences on the fifteenth day of Nisan (The seventh month of the Jewish calendar) and ends on the 21st day. Notably, Hebrew days begin and end at sunset, so the celebrations begin on the preceding day at sundown.

Heres why the two days fall together

Every two to three years, the Jewish calendar requires an adjustment of the leap year. In a Jewish leap year, an extra 29-day moth is added before Nisan since this calendar year has fewer days than the solar year. This way, the Jewish calendar year will be realigned with the solar years seasons. Note that the Jewish holidays closely relate to seasons. For instance, according to the Torah, the Passover should be celebrated during spring, which happens to be the same period where Ester falls.

Source: Yen
Maverick politician and Member of Parliament (MP) for Assin Central, Kennedy Agyapong, has hinted on why he has no intentions of vying for the position of the president of Ghana.

Kennedy Agyapong said the office of the presidency in Ghana comes with so much pressure.

I am a politician, a Member of Parliament and I am ok with that but I am not interested in becoming a president. Of course I can do the job, but Im just not into it. I prefer being a business man, I dont want to grow old too fast. I want to be myself, a very good business man.

Kennedy Agyapong

READ ALSO: Nana Addo is my inspiration - Deputy Education Minister

According to the loudmouthed politician who has generated a lot of controversies in the country through comments and allegations of corruption particularly against some government officials at the presidency, he would rather focus on growing his businesses than serving as the countrys president.

Kennedy Agyapong said this during a cooking show dubbed 'Dinning with Cooks and Braggarts' hosted by pretty actress Yvonne Okoro.

He also said he decided to go into politics just to help the vulnerable in society.

I came back to Ghana, went to my village and everybody was asking for a favor. I was asking how I was going to render or give these favors out, so I had an opinion that I could represent these people and speak for them. That is how I went in to politics and I think I have been doing just that, Kennedy Agyapong said.

Aside from being a Member of Parliament, the law maker is believed to own some companies including Ash, Oman and Spice FM, Gold Coin Communications, Imperial World Business Limited, Net 2 Television and the National Newspaper.

Kennedy Agyapong has however urged the public to trust their leaders and not underestimate the politicians representing them.

Watch the Deputy Minister of Education's powerful message to Ghanaians in the video below.

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Witnessing an incident? Want to tell about a local problem? Know someone who is extremely talented and needs recognition? Your stories and photos are always welcome. Send us a message via YENs official Facebook page.

Source: Yen
The immediate former British High Commissioner to Ghana, Mr. Jon Benjamin, has taken yet another swipe at his favorite target on social media, the popular Ghanaian actor, John Dumelo.

Yesterday's announcement by government that the seat of government, which was renamed to Flagstaff House by the Atta-Mills led government administration, would be henceforth be called the Jubilee House, the name the building was given when it was built by the Kufour government administration.

Pro-NPP supporters have hailed the move as a step in the right direction, while supporters of the opposition have condemned government, and accused it of attempting to rewrite history.

READ ALSO: Sekou Nkrumah upset over "Jubilee House"

Others still have said the move is a pointless one, and that people want leaders to focus on important things, and not name changes.

It appears that Mr. Jon Benjamin has kept abreast of affairs happening in Ghana, and couldn't resist the opportunity to tease his favorite troll target when John Dumelo.

In a reply to John Dumelo's tweet asking social media followers to caption his photo, Jon Benjamin tease his Dumelo in the best way he knows how, by making fun of his affiliation to the opposition NDC.

Checkout Jon Benjamin's tweet below:

Also checkout a video of Ebony's mother giving a heartfelt tribute at the late dancehall artiste's funeral, which was held at the forecourt of State House, and was attended by a plethora of Ghanaian celebrities:

READ ALSO: PHOTO: Agyemang Konadu slays in adorable throwback photo of the Rawlings family

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Source: Yen.com.gh
- Kennedy Agyapong has revealed the minority and majority leaders in parliament are his favorite politicians

- The maverick politician says these two men ate of high experience and quality.

Maverick politician, Kennedy Agyapong has named his best politicians in Ghana so far.

According to Kennedy Agyapong, the Minority Leader Haruna Iddrisu of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and Majority Leader Osei Kyei Mensah-Bonsu are the two seasoned politicians he admires the most.

READ ALSO: Mysterious injections kill 3 people

'I have people that I admire like Kyei Mensah-Bonsu very good, hes not a lawyer but he knows the constitution very brilliant guy, Haruna Iddrisu also another smart guy. We have a lot of good ones, I like everybody,' Ken Agyapong revealed during a cookout session with actress Yvonne Okoro on GHone TV.

Kennedy Kwame Ohene Agyapong is an accomplished Ghanaian businessman and a very influential politician belonging to the New Patriotic Party (NPP).

He was born June 16, 1960, at Assin Dompem, a small farming community in the Central Region of Ghana.

Ken began his educational journey at Adisadel College, one of the influential Secondary Schools in Cape Coast as early as 11-years-old in 1976.

However, he could not continue to Sixth Form for some reasons. He then proceeded to Winneba Secondary School and finally ended at Fordham University in the United States for further studies.

Kennedy Agyapong holds General Certificate in Education (GCE), A Level which he obtained in 1983. He also worked and held many top positions with many companies in both United States and in Ghana.

In the year 2000, the vibrant businessman ventured into full-time politics, where he won the parliamentary seat for the Assin North constituency from January, 2000 till date as Member of Parliament.

READ ALSO: There is no hell - Pope makes stunning revelation

Today, Adisadel College is proud to have Mr. Agyapong as one of their prominent alumni and have awarded him on three occasions. The NPP MP is also the founder and Chief Executive of numerous companies operating fully in Ghana. Ken is a married man with 14 children but with different women.

Hon Barbara A. Ayisi talks about how Nana Akufo-Addo has inspired her

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Source: Yen
Ghanaian model and actress, Moesha Boduong, has once again released a lovely photo of herself on social media.

READ ALSO: Kuami Eugene reveals in a new video the reason why he quit SHS

In her latest photo, she looked amazing in a red blouse which had a brooch pinned to it.

A light blue skirt, together with a glowing skin, lovely hairstyle and a beautiful smile were all that her fans needed to extend compliments to her.

That was not all. She had an insightful message for he social media followers. She wrote: Wishing you joy, happiness, freedom, healing, love, victory and the peace within and peace without that comes with Easter. Be covered with the blood of Jesus that was shed on Calvary. Amen!

Her fans expressed their joy in her outfit and her message: @sir_innocent remarked: "You're looking awesome!"

@nura_ladi added: "Aww moe @moeshaboduong, these pictures are so peaceful"

@barberarthur also wrote: "It's amazing to wake up and the eyes have the blessing to behold such a glorious sight, Happy Easter to you" and @lamiidbricks added: "Looking decent, bold and beautiful"

Moesha Boduong, who hails from the Upper West region, has carved a niche for herself as a model whose photos and videos always generated mixed reactions from the public.

READ ALSO: Don't stop playing my daughter's songs - Ebony's mother makes a passionate appeal

Hon Barbara A. Ayisi talks about how Nana Akufo-Addo has inspired her (Interview)

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Source: Yen Ghana
- Thousands of Ghanaians have converged at Kwahu to celebrate Easter

- The AIDS commission has distributed 60,000 condoms so far

- Chiefs of the town are angry over what they consider to be the increase in promiscuity there

The Easter festivity is ongoing across the world and here in Ghana, thousands of holiday revelers are heading to the town of Kwahu to celebrate the festivity.

The reason for the choice of Kwahu remains due to the tourist attractions with celebrations culminating to the most-loved paragliding exercise.

READ ALSO: There is no hell - Pope makes stunning revelation

YEN.com.gh has earlier reported how the Ghana Aids Commission is embarking on an exercise to ensure revelers do not contract STDs. This they are doing through the distribution of over 60,000 condoms for free.

Kwahu Easter festivity, which is originally meant to celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ has now been seen as a promiscuous event which sees revelers, especially teenagers, engage in various 'unacceptable vices'.

It pulls thousands of tourists and hoteliers who bank in the festivity as most of them are feared to have been booked already.

Meanwhile, the chief of Akuapem Berekusu in the Eastern Region, Nana Oteng Korankye, is calling for the arrest of persons who wear tight and short and skimpy dresses to this year's Kwahu Easter celebration.

But, one development which beautifies the Kwahu Easter festivities is the paragliding festival which was introduced more than a decade ago to promote tourism in the country, and also to spice up the Easter celebrations in Kwahu.

READ ALSO: Mysterious injections kill 3 people

Last years paragliding exercise was launched by the tourism ministry and also saw six international tandem pilots from the United States, Romania, and Japan recruited to fly passengers at the festival.

Hon Barbara A. Ayisi talks about how Nana Akufo-Addo has inspired her

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Source: Yen
[March 29, 2018] Pacific Dental Services Delivers Superior Patient Experience With RingCentral's Cloud Communications Solutions Across Over 625 Office Locations RingCentral, Inc. (NYSE:RNG), a leading provider of global enterprise cloud communications and collaboration solutions, today announced that Pacific Dental Services (PDS), one of the country's leading dental support organizations, has selected RingCentral (News - Alert) to provide a superior patient experience and improve communications among its distributed workforce. With nearly 10,000 team members and more than 625 supported offices across 19 states, PDS needed robust communications and collaboration solutions that also met its requirement for HIPAA compliance. Recognized on the Inc. 5000 list of the fastest-growing private companies in America for the past 10 years, PDS' Private Practice+ model provides supported autonomy that allows dentists to concentrate on clinical excellence and the highest levels of cost-effective, comprehensive patient care, while PDS provides the business support structure, including the latest technology, best operational practices and procedures, highly skilled support staff, and ongoing training and education. Growing at a rapid pace, PDS plans to add as many as 80 offices each year, which perpetuated their need for scalable, cloud-based communications solutions. Previously, PDS had legacy communications systems that were primarily voice-only and lacked scalability, reliability, and voice quality. In addition, PDS was using six different tools for video conferencing, which was cumbersome for IT and provided a disjointed experience for end users. PDS selected RingCentral for its robust functionality across voice, video meetings, team messaging, and fax-all seamlessly integrated in a single cloud solution that complies with HIPAA security requirements. "Recognizing our disparate legacy systems could not effectively support our business growth, we decided to migrate to the cloud," said David Baker, SVP & CIO of Pacific Dental Services. "It became clear to us that RingCentral was able to support our transition to the cloud better than any other unified communications as a service provider. With RingCentral, our staff and patients are able to communicate in the ways they prefer, which for many, is vi text and chat. We're seeing our patients using RingCentral text messaging for enquiries that don't need to be serviced via a phone call, translating to increased patient satisfaction."

Key RingCentral benefits for Pacific Dental Services include: HiTrust CSF Certification validation of compliance with HIPAA security requirements: Ensures communications between dentists and their patients are guarded against unauthorized access by means of encryption; includes a Business Associate Agreement (BAA).

CSF Certification validation of compliance with HIPAA security requirements: Ensures communications between dentists and their patients are guarded against unauthorized access by means of encryption; includes a Business Associate Agreement (BAA). RingCentral Glip  team messaging: Streamlines communication across offices through real-time chat, task management, and collaboration, enabling enhanced productivity.

team messaging: Streamlines communication across offices through real-time chat, task management, and collaboration, enabling enhanced productivity. RingCentral Rooms  video conferencing: Delivers HD video, audio, and web conferencing capabilities; easy to configure with off-the-shelf equipment for any conference room, huddle room, or large open space rooms; connects with other meeting participants joining from mobile, tablets, desktops, telephones, or other RingCentral Rooms.

video conferencing: Delivers HD video, audio, and web conferencing capabilities; easy to configure with off-the-shelf equipment for any conference room, huddle room, or large open space rooms; connects with other meeting participants joining from mobile, tablets, desktops, telephones, or other RingCentral Rooms. Open platform: Integrates with leading cloud business applications used by PDS, such as Salesforce, Box (News - Alert) , Microsoft Office 365, and Okta, to enable seamless business workflows. Mike Miller, Digital Solutions Consultant at Sidepath said: "I was tasked to identify a truly holistic and scalable communications solution for PDS that not only replaced the existing legacy system, but also established an enhanced experience across all of the dental offices. As the recognized leader in cloud communications, RingCentral is the only provider to offer a unified solution across all modes of communication. Now, PDS is equipped to take its differentiated patient experience to the next level." For more information, please visit www.PacificDentalServices.com. About Pacific Dental Services Founded in 1994, Pacific Dental Services (PDS) is one of the country's leading dental support organizations and has been on the Inc. 5000 list of the fastest growing private companies in America for the past 10 years in a row. PDS originated the Private Practice+ model to enable dentists to focus on their passion: serving patients. PDS continues to grow, with over 625 supported dental offices across the United States and plans to expand into several new markets. PDS' Perfect Patient Experience operating model gives patients in PDS-supported offices an extraordinary, differentiated experience, creating Patients for Life. About RingCentral RingCentral, Inc. (NYSE:RNG) is a leading provider of global enterprise cloud communications and collaboration solutions. More flexible and cost-effective than legacy on-premises systems, RingCentral empowers today's mobile and distributed workforce to communicate, collaborate, and connect from anywhere, on any device. RingCentral unifies voice, video, team messaging and collaboration, conferencing, online meetings, and integrated contact center solutions. RingCentral's open platform integrates with leading business apps and enables customers to easily customize business workflows. RingCentral is headquartered in Belmont, California, and has offices around the world. 2018 RingCentral, Inc. All rights reserved. RingCentral, RingCentral Glip, RingCentral Rooms, and the RingCentral logo are trademarks of RingCentral, Inc. Other third-party marks and logos displayed in this document are the trademarks of their respective owners. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180329005366/en/

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Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Lu Kang's Regular Press Conference on March 30, 2018

2018/03/30

As agreed by China and Russia, as the Special Envoy of President Xi Jinping, State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi will pay a working visit to Russia from April 4 to 5.

Q: According to reports, US Ambassador to China Terry Branstad said in an interview recently that China should not take retaliatory measures aimed at imports of American soybeans. What is your comment?

A: We all know that Ambassador Branstad comes from an important agricultural state of the United States. As such, it is understandable that he concerns himself with the interests of American agricultural workers. In fact, we have seen that the US agricultural industry, among many other sectors and industries, have expressed their concerns recently over worsening China-US trade ties due to the US government's unilateral measures.

As to whether China should target soybeans as retaliation in the future, I think you need to make out the fundamental difference between trade and trade war. To be specific, trade is based on consultation. In contrast, a trade war, once waged, will force the other side to take countermeasures at a certain point and in a certain way and field based on its own interests and needs.

As we stressed many times, China doesn't want a trade war. In the meantime, we also stated that if forced into a trade war, we have every strength and confidence to safeguard our own interests. We hope that the US decision-makers will heed the call of American consumers and relevant industries and weigh the possible gains against losses once they take the unilateral measures which should not be taken. It's wise for one to turn back before running into a blank wall.

Q: According to reports, China said that the Tiangong-1 space laboratory is supposed to reenter the atmosphere on March 31. Does China know yet where exactly it may reenter the atmosphere? Does China expect that it may have any impact upon any part of the world where it might fall? What communications has China had with other countries on this?

A: With regard to the specific information, I may refer you to the websites of China Manned Space and the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs.

China attaches high importance to the reentry of Tiangong-1 into the atmosphere and has been handling it in accordance with relevant international conventions and practices and with a high sense of responsibility. China has reported relevant situation to the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs many times and kept the information open and transparent. We will communicate with relevant countries if necessary.

Q: According to reports, the Russian Foreign Ministry announced on March 29 that it would expel 60 US diplomats and close the US Consulate-General in St. Petersburg. The White House said that the decision would deteriorate US-Russia relations. What is your comment?

A: We have noted that the decision made by the Russian government yesterday is the continuation of a sequence of incidents that happened recently. Over a period of time, the Russia-US relations have met with some difficulties. I would like to stress that both Russia and the United States are two major countries with important influence in the world. What needs to be mentioned is that they are also two permanent members of the UN Security Council which shoulder important responsibilities for world peace and security. We sincerely hope that Russia and the United States can properly resolve their differences through dialogue and consultation on the basis of equality and mutual respect.

Q: Next Monday, Zimbabwe's President Emmerson Mnangagwa will kick off his state visit to China. What outcome does China expect to achieve through this visit? In addition, we have noted the reports saying that Zimbabwe's largest hydropower station constructed by a Chinese company since its independence was completed yesterday. What is your comment?

A: At the invitation of President Xi Jinping, President of the Republic of Zimbabwe Emmerson Mnangagwa will pay a state visit to China from April 2 to April 6. China and Zimbabwe enjoy traditional friendship. Since the establishment of diplomatic ties, China-Zimbabwe relations have been growing in a sound and steady manner with frequent exchange of high-level visits, fruitful outcomes reaped in cooperation across the board and close communication and coordination in international and regional affairs. China values developing its ties with Zimbabwe. We are willing to work with Zimbabwe to further elevate China-Zimbabwe relations and deliver greater benefits to the two countries and two peoples. We are convinced that President Mnangagwa's visit will inject new impetus into the development of China-Zimbabwe relations.

Regarding your second question, the expansion project of Zimbabwe's Kariba South hydropower station funded and constructed by China is one of the important outcomes of China-Zimbabwe pragmatic cooperation. After its completion, the project will play a positive role in increasing Zimbabwe's power supply and promoting its economic and social development. China is pleased to see this. Actually, the Kariba South hydropower station is one of the many cooperation projects between our two countries, which fully demonstrates that China's investment and financing cooperation with Africa has substantially fueled the projects of production in African countries, yielded sound economic and social benefits and been widely welcomed by the African countries and their people.

Q: In terms of China-aided construction projects in Africa, they are not all infrastructure projects such as hydropower stations. There are also some other projects including the new Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) headquarters and the parliamentary buildings in Zimbabwe. Why does China decide to undertake the new ECOWAS headquarters project? Will it result in China enjoying more political influence in West Africa? What is your comment on those criticizing China's motives?

A: The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is an important sub-regional organization in Africa which has made important contributions to upholding regional peace and regional economic integration. We always support ECOWAS in strengthening capacity building and playing a bigger role in the cause of peace and development in West Africa and the whole African region. In fact, this also constitutes an important part of China's support for Africa's pursuit of strength through unity and regional integration as well as its peace and development cause.

As is known to us all, poor infrastructure is one of the main bottlenecks choking Africa's development and progress. The infrastructure projects constructed with the assistance of China are welcomed by African countries and their people. The construction of the new ECOWAS headquarters you mentioned was aided by the Chinese government at the explicit request of the organization. As for the groundless accusations of certain Western media, I can only say that they are measuring other people's corn by their own bushel. I don't know whether you have noted that Namibian President Hage Geingob, who is now on his state visit in China, said yesterday that China has never colonized or looted Africa, and always treated small and medium-sized African countries on an equal footing. China lent support to Africa's just cause in the past and is now helping Africa to develop. China is the sincere partner and friend of Africa, and African people are opposed to those groundless accusations against China. I think that we'd better lend our ears to the voice of the African people.

Please rest assured that the noises will not shake the determination of China and Africa for solidarity and cooperation, neither will it prevent us from forging ahead hand in hand.

Q: Beyond Africa, China over decades has been funding, designing and perhaps even constructing projects in many countries throughout the world. What is the overall aim of China's overseas building efforts? How does it help China's foreign relations?

A:Just as President Xi Jinping pointed out when holding talks with President Hage Geingob yesterday, in the era when China was not well-off, Chairman Mao Zedong and other Chinese leaders of the older generation said that we would lend support to Africa against all odds. Now China is developing rapidly, so in view of both our brotherhood and China's economic strength, we should step up our efforts to offer assistance to Africa.

It goes without saying that supporting the African countries and other developing countries in enhancing their capacity building and achieving common prosperity still remains an important aspect of China's diplomacy. We will continue with our efforts to conduct mutually beneficial cooperation with developing countries in accordance with their own will so as to achieve common development and jointly build a community with a shared future for mankind.

Q: According to reports, satellite images earlier this week showed that the Liaoning aircraft carrier took part in a large carrier group formation in the South China Sea with about 40 other ships. What is the purpose of this exercise?

A: The spokesperson of China's Ministry of National Defense has responded to this question at yesterday's press conference. The Chinese navy's combat exercise in the South China Sea was a routine arrangement included in the annual training program. You may read over the transcript of the Defense Ministry's press conference.

Q: Yesterday you announced that from next Monday, member of the Federal Council and head of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs of the Swiss Confederation Ignazio Cassis will visit China and hold the first round of China-Switzerland Foreign Ministers' Strategic Dialogue. What topics will the dialogue focus on? What are China's expectations for it?

A: During member of the Federal Council and head of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs of the Swiss Confederation Ignazio Cassis's visit to China, State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi will hold the first round of China-Switzerland Foreign Ministers' Strategic Dialogue with him, which will help to promote the establishment of China-Switzerland high-level innovation platform. According to my information, besides Beijing, Mr. Cassis will also travel to Shaanxi.

Presently, China-Switzerland relations enjoy a sound momentum of growth. In 2016, our two countries established the innovative strategic partnership. At the beginning of 2017, President Xi Jinping's state visit to Switzerland achieved full success and elevated China-Switzerland relations to a new level. It is one of the important consensus reached by the two heads of state during President Xi Jinping's visit to Switzerland to set up the Foreign Ministers' Strategic Dialogue mechanism and promote the establishment of the high-level innovation platform.

China attaches importance to developing its ties with Switzerland. We are willing to work with Switzerland to follow the spirit of mutual respect, treating each other as equals and win-win cooperation to continue further advancing our innovative cooperation in various areas so as to deliver greater benefits to the two countries and two peoples.

Q: What are the chances of the debris of Tiangong-1 falling onto the ground when it is burnt up on reentry?

A: As I said just now, China attaches high importance to the reentry of Tiangong-1 into the atmosphere and has informed the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs of relevant situation in a timely manner. As the time for the possible reentry of Tiangong-1 into the atmosphere approaches, China will adjust its pace in keeping the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs posted as needed. With regard to this issue, China keeps the information open and transparent with a high sense of responsibility. We will also contact relevant countries in a timely manner if necessary, like what I said just now.

Regarding the specifics you asked about, I'm not quite clear about them given they are something very technical. I will refer you to the websites of China Manned Space or the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs.
The gravity of the existential threat we face from Islamic Jihad is truly of epic proportions. It is essentially a battle pitting free-civilized man against a totalitarian barbarian. What is at stake is the struggle for our very soul - namely who we are and what we represent. The lives that were sacrificed for individual rights and freedoms that we've come to cherish are being chiseled away from right under our noses by the stealth jihadists. And many of us are in denial and totally clueless.



The left's appeasement and pandering to evil is nothing new. What makes their utopian delusions so infuriating and unpardonable is that it is not only they who will have to pay the consequences, and deservedly, so, they are thwarting and undermining our best efforts at resistance and are thus dragging us down in the process as well.







By Peter Lancz,, the head of the Raoul Wallenberg World Campaign Against Racism.
In 1995 the Gay and Lesbian Community Center (now the Pride Center) joined forces with the Stonewall Library (now the Stonewall Museum and Archives) to produce a poster meant to increase the awareness of the citizens of Broward County to some of the historically important events of the Broward County gay community.

The poster celebrated 12 historic events in Browards LGBT history: Community Center launched (August 18, 1993); First Broward County human rights referendum held (we lost that one) (September 4, 1990); Broward Women in Network created (July 29, 1987); John Fiore elected to the Wilton Manors City Council (March 8, 1988) and Chris Wilson elected to the Oakland Park City Council (March 9, 1993); Rainbow Pride flag is adopted at a conference held at the Marlin Beach Hotel (October 12, 1985); AIDS Center One created (September 12, 1984); Florida authorizes Sharon McCracken to be a foster parent (November 18, 1992); Fort Lauderdale MCC (now the Sunshine Cathedral) established (February 27, 1972); Stonewall Library and Archives created (April 12, 1973); Ken Wolf wins Fort Lauderdale City Commission primary (February 8, 1994); Lambda South Clubhouse opens (June 4, 1983); and Congregation Etz Chaim founded (March 4, 1974). Each of these events is an important part of our history, and each deserves its own article.

I had the privilege to witness LGBT history in the making on March 20 when Dean Trantalis was sworn-in as Mayor of the City of Fort Lauderdale. I have the honor to know Dean for over three decades, years in which he excelled as a lawyer, LGBT rights activist and City Commissioner. Under his leadership, Broward enacted a human rights ordinance that finally survived an effort to repeal it (1995).

Later he joined Robin Bodiford and others in a successful move to get the County Commission to enact domestic partner legislation (1999). He also served, at different times, as chair of Broward United Against Discrimination, co-chair (with Bodiford) of Americans For Equality; and president of the Dolphin Democrats. But Dean Trantalis is more than a one trick pony.

He was first elected to the Fort Lauderdale City Commission in 2002, in which he proved to be a capable and compassionate leader, not only for his LGBT community but for everyone. His knowledge of and care for the needs of his city, its residents and its visitors earned him a following that went beyond his sexuality or his Greek-American heritage; and on March 13 he was elected the peoples mayor in a landslide.

I contributed a very small part towards Dean Trantaliss victory, serving as a volunteer in various campaign fundraisers throughout Fort Lauderdale. Besides the fact that this gave me an opportunity to visit some of the citys most posh houses or apartments, volunteer work allowed me to see the affection that many in Fort Lauderdale had for their current commissioner and future mayor.

Attempts by supporters of City Commissioner Bruce Roberts, Deans main opponent, to paint him as a gay stereotype failed miserably. After all, Dean Trantalis is the straightest gay man I know (sorry, Dean). His victory party, held at Thasos Greek Taverna (a great place to eat, if you can afford it) was attended by a veritable whos who of Browards LGBT and mainstream communities, who were there to celebrate Deans victory and their citys future. The election of Steven Glassman as City Commissioner, keeping the District 2 seat formerly held by Dean in gay hands, only added to the historical moment. The election of Ben Sorensen from District 4 gave Mayor Trantalis, at least for now, a 3-2 majority in the City Commission.

Fort Lauderdale has come a long way in just over a decade, from the homophobic Mayor Jim Naugle to the out and proud Dean Trantalis. But Dean is not Floridas first openly gay mayor. Key West, Oakland Park, Palm Beach Shores and Wilton Manors have or had elected queer mayors through the years; and J. P. Sasser served as the matter-of-fact, openly gay Mayor of Pahokee - a small city on the shore of Lake Okeechobee - for years without raising an eyebrow. But Fort Lauderdale is a large city, larger than Key West, Oakland Park, Palm Beach Shores, Wilton Manors or Pahokee. Deans election makes Fort Lauderdale, now that Annise Parker is no longer Mayor of Houston, the largest city in the South with an openly LGBT mayor. That makes Dean Trantaliss victory a truly historic event, not just for Floridians but for all Americans. Keep up the good work, Dean. We will be rooting for you.
This report discusses the monthly meeting of the South Florida AIDS Network (SFAN). SFAN is the advisory board for the Ryan White Care (RWC) program of the Florida Department of Health in Broward.

On March 1, SFAN held an evening community meeting. That meeting discussed problems related to changes in the PAC Medicaid Waiver program.

The PAC Medicaid Waiver Program had allowed Medicaid to pay for services not covered by Medicaid. Eligibility for this program was restricted to clients with specified serious diseases like HIV. Case managers at RWC agencies could authorize those services.

The Agency for Health Care Administration (ACHA) manages Medicaid in Florida. Its auditors discovered irregularities in the program. Some case managers had authorized expenses that they should not have authorized. ACHA then launched a statewide investigation.

ACHA has moved the case manager role from RWC agencies to agencies that specialize in case management. In many Florida counties, this transition has occurred with minimal disruption. In Broward, clients have reported problems.

Joey Wynn, SFAN chair, said that this meeting would collect reports of these problems. He stressed that this meeting would only gather and document problems. SFAN would then bring these documented problems to ACHA and demand accountability. SFAN would present the results of that meeting at the April meeting of SFAN.

Wynn said that some Medicaid clients with HIV need intensive case management to avoid hospitalization. Effective case management can contain costs without decreasing available services.

ACHA has designated two agencies as enhanced HIV agencies: Clear Health Alliance and AIDS Healthcare Foundation. These agencies provide special HIV training to their staff. In return, these agencies can charge ACHA an enhanced rate. In addition, three Medicaid managed care companies provide telephone-based case management: Amerigroup, Clear Health, and Positive Health Care.

Gary Hensley of SunServe said that these case management agencies have failed to link with the prior case managers. SunServe had previously provided these case management services.

About six Broward Medicaid clients reported problems. These clients reported that the contact numbers for Amerigroup and Clear Health had Miami-Date area codes. Providers that served both counties reported that Miami clients did not have problems. Only Broward clients had problems.

Clients reported many issues. Some case managers referred clients to doctors that did not accept their insurance. Some case managers failed to return phone calls about serious medical issues. Some case managers had failed to contact their clients for three months or more. Some case managers and their supervisors lacked basic knowledge about HIV and failed to understand HIV terminology. Their clients had to educate them. Case managers used to help clients reapply for Medicaid. Now some were refusing to do so.

A black male client broke down in tears while telling his story. In addition to HIV, he has balance issues. He has fallen. He had to lean on a cane to speak. He appeared to be having some speech issues and to be short of breath. He said that he had seen his case manager once and that lasted just 40 minutes.

Wynn stressed, People are getting paid to perform a service. If they are not providing that service, they should lose that contract and give the contract to someone who can.

Announcements

SFAN and Broward Department of Health are conducting an online survey to learn about perceived availability of services for people not living with HIV. The survey will be available through April 13, 2018. It is available online in English and Spanish (https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/jwky2xg), and Kreyol (https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/dzzz7rf).

The next SFAN Meeting will be on Friday, April 6, 2018 at 10:00 a.m., at the Holy Cross Healthplex, 1000 NE 56th Street, Ft. Lauderdale.
Many individuals with HIV/AIDS dont want your pity. But self-pity isnt as easy to dismiss.

According to the CDC, many individuals with HIV/AIDS struggle with how the disease makes them feel about themselves; 1 in 4 say it makes them feel dirty or worthless, 1 in 3 say they feel guilty or ashamed about their status, 2 out of 3 say its difficult to reveal their infection to others, 8 out of 10 report some kind of feeling of internalized-stigma.

That internalized-stigma was the focus at a recent meeting of POZitive Attitudes, a topic-driven support group for men and women with HIV/AIDS which meets in Wilton Manors.

Susan Mintz, whose husband, Jeffrey Mintz, a gay man, died of AIDS in 1994, spoke to POZitive Attitudes of the stigma she faced when she first started answering questions about how he died. Get it out of your brain and out of your heart, she told POZitive Attitudes. I cant give you internalized-stigma. Only you can.

Theres an estimated 300 members in the group, some of whom have had the disease since it first became widely-known in the early 1980s. What drives much of the stigma, say members, some of whom did not provide their names for publication, are outside circumstances and pressures. One man said he doesnt advertise he has AIDS, but hes not shy about revealing his status when it comes up. I share when Im asked.

Dating, and the rejection that ensues because of an HIV/AIDS status, was cited by more than one person in the group. One man talked about revealing his HIV status on dates. I just feel overwhelmed by the stigma. You tell them and they walk out the back door. One woman said thats how the stigma gets internalized. Now that Im single, the stigma is right in my face.

Steve Stagon, facilitator of the group since 2006, said the name, POZitive Attitudes, is a reflection of the positive status of each member as well as the positive attitude members are encouraged to adopt. You just have to let the water roll over your back, like a duck, said Stagon.

But much of that proverbial water comes from members of the LGBT community who dont have HIV/AIDS, say some members.

Sometimes, non-gay people are more understanding than gay people, said one man. Wilton Manors is exactly like he said, commented another. For all its flaws though, Wilton Manors and South Florida, said another man, are far more accepting than many other areas, including many cities generally thought of as progressive when it comes to the LGBT community or HIV/AIDS.

Coming here from New York, it was like Nirvana. Theres a lot less stigma here than almost anywhere else, he said.

Dan Drennen said white suburban housewives and some other heterosexuals are much more likely to be less stigmatizing because they dont fear getting the disease from gay men. Drennen said fear about HIV/AIDS is not always logical.

But talking about the problems faced by individuals with HIV/AIDS isnt the only purpose of the group. Its also a place to socialize outside of meetings, including movie nights, parties, and fundraisers for HIV/AIDS causes.

It means a lot. Its a place where you can focus on community, Peter Accardi said. We enjoy these types of discussion groups. We do fun things, too. Members take turns bringing dessert and refreshments each meeting. Another member moved here in 2004 and joined the group not long after. Thats how I made my social life in Fort Lauderdale. Its very important to me.

POZitive Attitudes meets every Wednesday from 7 to 9 p.m. at the World AIDS Museum, 1201 NE 26th St., Wilton Manors. Visit pozitiveattitudes.com for more information.
On an extremely foggy afternoon with intermittent rain falling in New York's southern Catskill Mountains, Paul Minore sat a two-hole trip then rallied Wygant Prince to a neck victory in Thursdays third leg of the North American Amateur Drivers Association trot at Monticello Raceway.

After starting from the pole position Minore parked Jennifer Lappe's Here Come Numbers around the first turn then allowed the 10-year-old gelding to take command as the field trotted by the first panel in :29.

I didn't want Here Comes Numbers to take command with ease so I parked him a ways and then let Jennifer have the lead, Minore related in the paddock after the race was over. I figured I'd get a good two-hole trip behind her because her trotter was the betting favourite and had raced well in his recent starts.

Once on top Lappe showed the way by the half in :59.2 with Wygant Prince tucked in tightly behind her trotter. As the seven-horse passed the third stanza in 1:30.1 Here Comes Numbers opened up daylight and he was 2-1/2 lengths in front as they headed for paydirt.

She (Ms Lappe) got away a bit on the final turn but once we straightened for home my horse began to grind away at the leader and in the final strides we got up for a neck victory in 2:00.3.

Third place went to Connie Keeper , driven by Tony Verruso.

The race winner, an 11 year-old altered son of SJs Photo, notched his third seasonal victory and the 34th of his illustrious career and leaves him just $93 short of $400,000 in lifetime earnings. He is owned by Minore and trained by Taylor Gower.

As for Minore it was his 94th career driving victory in the USA and when one counts Minore's three triumphs in races contested in Europe he now needs just three more for 100 lifetime victories.

The NAADA trotting series continues next Thursday at Yonkers Raceway.

(NAADA)
Fiesta Hermosa will be back for Labor Day weekend, but with a new local look, slightly different name
Dedicated to the Restoration of Progressive Democracy
'Digital literacy crucial for progressive Bangladesh'

City Desk :

State Minister for ICT Division Zunaid Ahmed Palak has put emphasis on practicing digital literacy by the young people, saying that it is very important to make Bangladesh progressive and tolerant.

"Digital literacy among young people is crucial to make Bangladesh progressive and tolerant," he told "Digital Khichuri Challenge" follow-up event, organized by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) on Thursday.

Partnering with Facebook and Bangladesh ICT Division, UNDP initiated "Digital Khichuri Challenge" in 2016 in order to glean ideas from the youth with a view to building a more peaceful and tolerant society and promoting cultural diversity, said a press release on Friday.

After three successful "Digital Khichuri Challenge", an event was organized to share the learning and challenges and find the way forward.

The winning teams from the past events presented the progress of their projects till to date. Among the winners; 'It's Okay Bangladesh', a platform, created by the winners of Digital Khichuri Challenge 2016 is now providing mental support to distressed individuals, through the website: http: itsokaybd.com.

Another winning team 'Icarus' started an online platform "Onimikh"- https: www.onimikh.com for young artists to promote Bangladeshi culture and heritage.

Team "Bonshai" is now working on an automated online messenger app called Anu-Bot that will attend to the problems of youths and provide solution to manage their anger and stress.

Addressing the event as the chief guest, the state minister assured the support from his ministry to continue their work. "Youths are the architects of Digital Bangladesh and the current government is always interested to invest in youth through initiatives, like Startup," said Palak.

"Platform like Digital Khichuri, will help Bangladesh to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 16- Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions," said Kyoko Yokosuka, deputy country director, UNDP Bangladesh.
NOVOAIR to increase domestic flights

Chittagong Bureau :



The popular domestic airline of the country NOVOAIR is increasing flights in domestic route from today. Daily one more flight will include Chittagong, Cox's Bazar and Saidpur route from today.. NOVOAIR will also operate daily flight to Rajshahi from April 1.

To meet the increasing demand of the valued passengers NOVOAIR will operate daily 6 flights to Chittagong, 4 flights to Cox's Bazar and 4 flights to Saidpur from April 1. NOVOAIR also operates daily 3 flights to Jessore, 1 flight to Sylhet and 1 flight to Kolkata.

One Way starting fare to Chittagong is BDT 2500, while to Cox's Bazar BDT 3900, Jessore BDT 2700, Saidpur BDT 2700, Sylhet BDT 2700, Rajshahi BDT 2999 and Kolkata return fare starts from BDT 9999 (including all taxes) only.
Biman launches additional Ctg- Jeddah flight

Chittagong Bureau :



Biman Bangladesh Airlines started operation of its third weekly flight to Jeddah from port city Chittagong.

The national flag carrier's flight no BG 135 took off Hazrat Shah Amanat International Airport boarding 402 passengers by Boeing 777-300 ER at 8 pm on Sunday, a press release said .

Managing Director and CEO of Biman Bangladesh A M Mosaddique Ahmed inaugurated the flight at the airport.

Prior the flight at a press briefing, Mosaddique said Biman Bangladesh flight increased the flight frequency on Chittagong-Jeddah-Chittagong route as huge number of expatriate Bangladeshi manpower of Middle East belong to Chittagong.

Currently, he said, Biman Bangladesh Airlines operates flights from Chittagong to different middle eastern destinations - weekly five flights to Dubai, five flights to Abu Dhabi, four flights to Mascat, three flights to Jeddah and one flight to Doha, the press briefing wastold.

Besides, Biman operates two weekly flights from Chittagong to Kolkata in convenience of the business travelers as well as tourists.
Judge rejects trial demand in Stormy Daniels case

AP, New York :

A porn star who said she had an affair with President Donald Trump and is suing so she can discuss the alleged relationship can't have a jury trial or question the president under oath because the request is premature, a federal judge in Los Angeles ruled Thursday.

Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, had been seeking to invalidate the non-disclosure agreement she signed days before the 2016 presidential election and offered to return the $130,000 she was paid to "set the record straight."

Daniels' attorney, Michael Avenatti, on Wednesday asked for a jury trial and sought sworn testimony from Trump and his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, about the payment that was made to Daniels as part of the nondisclosure agreement.

Trump's attorneys filed documents in federal court in Los Angeles earlier this month seeking to compel private arbitration in the case and argued that Daniels could owe about $20 million for violating the agreement.

Daniels argues the agreement is legally invalid because it was only signed by Daniels and Cohen, but was not signed by Trump.

She's said she had sex with Trump once in 2006 and their relationship and continued for about a year. Trump married his current wife, Melania Trump, in 2005, and their son, Barron, was born in 2006.

The White House has said Trump denies having an affair.

Cohen's attorney, David Schwartz, told CBS that the filing seeking to compel Trump and Cohen's testimony was a "reckless use of the legal system."

Avenatti is planning to refile his motion as soon as Trump's attorneys formally demand an arbitration proceeding in the case, he said Thursday.

The ruling, handed down on Thursday, said the case "is not the most important matter on the court's docket."




UN Chief warns of return to Cold-War-like tensions

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warns of a return Cold War-like tensions.

AFP, United Nations :

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Thurday warned of a return to Cold War-like tensions between the United States and Russia following the West's mass expulsions of Russian diplomats.

'I think we are coming to a situation that is similar, to a large extent, to what we lived during the Cold War,' Guterres told reporters at UN headquarters in New York.

The United States, European nations and NATO countries have announced the expulsion of over 150 Russian diplomats in retaliation for the poisoning of a former spy in England.

Russia on Thursday announced it would expel 60 US diplomats and close a consulate in a tit-for-tat move.

Guterres said he was 'very concerned' about the lack of mechanisms to defuse tensions, such as special channels for information-sharing between Washington and Moscow, which were dismantled with the end of the Cold War.

'I do believe it's time for precautions of this sort, guaranteeing effective communication, guaranteeing capacity to prevent escalation,' he said.

President Donald Trump ordered the departure of 48 Russian diplomats serving in missions in the United States and 12 from the Russian mission to the United Nations , the largest US expulsion of Russian or Soviet agents ever.

Former US president Barack Obama expelled 35 in late 2016 over alleged election meddling.

Relations between the United States and Russia at the UN Security Council have soured over Syria although Moscow has backed Washington's push for sanctions on North Korea.

"I am really concerned," he replied when asked if the increased tension warrants a revival of Cold War safety mechanisms. "I think we are coming to a situation that is similar to a large extent to what lived during the Cold War," the UN chief said.

"I do believe it's time for precaution of this sort guaranteeing effective communication, effective capacity to prevent escalation," Guterres said.

He said that he believes that mechanisms of that sort are necessary again.

The question was raised after Britain and its allies expelled more than 100 diplomats in retaliation for the alleged Moscow-directed nerve-agent attack on March 4 against a former Russian spy and his daughter in Salisbury, England. They remain in critical condition.

The UN chief said there are "two important differences" between the Cold War era and the current situation.

"In the Cold War there were clearly two superpowers with a complete control of the situation in two areas of the world," he said. "But now we have many other actors that are relatively independent with a really important role in many of the conflicts that we are witnessing."

"On the other hand, during the Cold War there were mechanisms of communicating and control to avoid the escalation of incidents to make sure that things would not get out of control when tensions would rise," the UN chief said.

While saying the old mechanisms should be restored, he gave no specifics.

During the Cold War, there were, for instance, "hotlines" set up among major capitals, such as between Washington and Moscow. Leaders could speak by telephone directly with each other when tensions were heightened by emergencies to avoid them escalating into a nuclear war.
US withdrawing from Syria `very soon`:Trump

President Donald Trump has announced the imminent withdrawal of American troops from Syria, saying US is using all its resources in the anti-ISIS war.

AFP, Richfield :

US President Donald Trump insisted Thursday that US forces would pull out of Syria "very soon" and lamented what he said was Washington's waste of $7 trillion in Middle East wars.

In a populist address to industrial workers in Ohio, Trump said US forces were close to securing all of the territory that the Islamic State jihadist group once claimed.

"We'll be coming out of Syria, like, very soon. Let the other people take care of it now," he promised, to applause.

Trump did not say who the others were who might take care of Syria, but Russia and Iran have sizable forces in the country to support President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

"Very soon-very soon we're coming out. We're going to have 100 percent of the caliphate, as they call it-sometimes referred to as 'land'-taking it all back quickly, quickly," he said. "But we're going to be coming out of there real soon. Going to get back to our country, where we belong, where we want to be."

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert was later asked at a briefing if she was aware of any decision for the US to pull out of Syria.

She responded, "I am not, no. No."

The United States has more than 2,000 military personnel in eastern Syria, working with local militia groups to defeat the Islamic State group while trying to keep out of Syria's broader civil war.

Trump's eagerness to quit the conflict flies in the face of a new US Syria strategy announced in January by then secretary of state Rex Tillerson-who has since been sacked.

Tillerson argued that US forces must remain engaged in Syria to prevent IS and Al-Qaeda from returning and to deny Iran a chance "to further strengthen its position in Syria."

In a speech at Stanford University, he also warned that "a total withdrawal of American personnel at this time would restore Assad and continue his brutal treatment against his own people."

But Tillerson has gone after being dismissed in a tweet. And Trump, who increasingly makes foreign policy announcements without seeking the advice of US generals or diplomats, wants out.

"We spent $7 trillion in the Middle East. And you know what we have for it? Nothing," Trump declared, promising to focus future US spending on building jobs and infrastructure at home.

Richfield, United States: US President Donald Trump insisted Thursday that US forces would pull out of Syria "very soon" and lamented what he said was Washington's waste of $7 trillion in Middle East wars.

In a populist address to industrial workers in Ohio, Trump said US forces were close to securing all of the territory that the ISIS terrorist group once claimed. "We'll be coming out of Syria, like, very soon. Let the other people take care of it now," he promised, to applause.

Trump did not say who the others were who might take care of Syria, but Russia and Iran have sizable forces in the country to support Bashar al-Assad's regime.


Seminar on 'Academia-Software Industry' at DIU

Prof Dr Yousuf Mahbubul Islam, Vice Chancellor of Daffodil International University along with distinguished guests on \'Academia-Software Industry : Bridging the Gaps\' seminar recently at RAOWA Convention Hall in the city.

Campus Report :



Daffodil International University (DIU) organized a seminar titled 'Academia-Software Industry: Bridging the Gaps' recently at RAOWA Convention Hall, in the city. Presided over by Prof Dr Yousuf Mahbubul Islam, Vice Chancellor of DIU, the seminar was addressed by Mohammad Nuruzzaman, CEO of Daffodil Family, Shahid Uddin Akbar, CEO of Bangladesh Institute of ICT in Development, Ashraf Abir, Former Director of BASIS and CEO of Multimedia Content and Communication, Luna Samsuddoha, Chairman of Janata Bank and CEO of Dohatech New Media, Fahim Masrur, Former President of BASIS, Rasel T Ahmed, Sr Vice President of BASIS, Prof Dr Syed Akther Hossen, Head, Department of CSE, DIU, Dr Touhid Bhuyan, Head, Department of Software Engineering, DIU, Munir Hasan and many other country's renowned personality of software industry in Bangladesh. Conducted by Syed Mizanur Rahman, Director of Student Affairs, DIU, Dean from different faculty, Faculty Member of CSE and Software Engineering Department, high officials of Daffodil Family and a large number of BASIS members were also present at the seminar. Distinguish guests said to the seminar that students should achieve competency and job skills besides gathering knowledge from textbook, so that the employer can't say that they don't get efficient employees.

The speakers also said that, the market opportunity of garment products of Bangladesh spreads all over the world now a day, but in near future, software industry will leave behind the garments industry.

The speakers expressed their hope that if we can use the opportunity of software industry and utilize the talent and expertise of our young generation, we can build a history in national export volume through software sector of Bangladesh.

Prof Dr Yousuf Mahbubul Islam said, realizing the market trend and market demand, Daffodil International University has included practical education in its course curriculum as per the demand of new age and that's why students are getting opportunity to make competent themselves in local and global market.


'Youtuka' means gifts made before and also after nuptial fire

Appellate Division

(Civil)

Surendra Kumar Sinha CJ

Syed Mahmud Hossain J

Hasan Foez Siddique J

Mirza Hussain Haider J

Abdur Rahim Molla ............

.......... Appellant

(In CA Nos. 325 & 330 of 2009)

vs

Prosenjit Kumar Shaha and others

.........Respondents

(In all the appeals)

Judgment

November 22nd, 2016

Transfer of Property Act (IV of 1882)

Section 123

'Youtuka' is a kind of gift and such gift if made at the time of marriage of daughter is valid in respect of immovable property and no registration is required according to Section 123 of the Act. This term has been interpreted by the High Court Division of Calcutta as including not only gifts made before the nuptial fire but gifts made during continuance of the marriage ceremonies, that is, the ceremonies beginning with shraddha and ending with that of prostrating before the husband. It is conceived that it includes gifts from strangers made before the nuptial fire and at the bridal procession. . ..... (17)

Prem Mohan Das vs Hari Mohan Das, ILR (1925) 52 Calcutta 425 ref.

Shahidul Islam, Advocate, instructed by Shirin Afroz, Advocate-on-Record-For the Appellants (In all the appeals).

Probir Neogi, Senior Advocate, instructed by Mojibur Rahman, Advocate-on-Record-For the Respondents (In all the appeals).

Judgment

Syed Mahmud Hossain J: All the appeals by leave are directed against the common judgment and order dated 10-7-2008 passed by the High Court Division making the Rules absolute in Civil Revision Nos. 571, 572, 573 of 1987 and discharging the Rules in Civil Revision Nos. 8692, 9205 and 9106 of 1991.

2. All the appeals involving similar questions of laws and facts having been heard together are now disposed of by this single judgment.

3. The facts, leading to the filing of these appeals, in a nutshell, are:

Prosenjit Kumar Saha and others as the plaintiffs filed Title Suit Nos. 980, 982 and 983 of 1975 against Abdur Rahim Mollah and Rashik Lai Saha in the Third Court of the then Munsif, Pabna for declaration of title to the suit land. Subsequently, the suits were renumbered as other Class Suit Nos. 36,37 and 38 of 1984. Their case, in short, is that the suit property described in 'Ka' schedule to the plaint originally belonged to Banomadhab Saha, while 'Kha' schedule land to Banomadhab Saha and one Jatish Chandra Saha in equal 8 annas share. Banomadhab Saha had no son but had a daughter Panchanani Saha. He orally gifted his entire property to his daughter Panchanani Saha as 'Youtaka', during her marriage with Sarat Chandra, who began to live in the, house of Banomadhab as domesticated son-in-law and possessed the gifted property. Jotish Chandra Saha gifted his 8 annas share to his mother Dharijyamoyee Saha and delivered possession to her, who in course of her owning and possessing in her absolute right, gifted the same to her brother-in-law's daughter Panchanani by a registered deed of gift dated 7-10-1941. Said Panchanani thereby became owner of 16 annas share of the entire suit property described in 'Ka' and 'Kha' schedules to the plaint. While owning and possessing the same through her bargadars, she died on 5-12-1967 childless but her husband Sarat Chandra while owning and possessing the same died on 16-3-1972 leaving behind 3 grand sons, namely, Prosanjit, Nitai and Amarendra, all sons of Sarashibala, the predeceased first wife Banamadhab. The aforesaid grandsons of Banamadhab are of plaintiffs in the instant suit and they became owners of 16 annas share of the suit property. Defendant No.1, Abul Hossain Khan, a desperate person, disclosed in the month of July, 1976 that he has purchased the suit property in the month of Joistha, 1383 BS from defendant No.2, Rashik Lai but as a matter of fact, he had no interest whatsoever in the property inasmuch as his father Tustalal, full sister's son of Banomadhab had died before Panchanani on 30-3-1965. Thus the plaintiffs' title became clouded and hence the suit was filed.

4. Defendant No.1 contested the suit by filing written statement, denying all the material statements made in the plaint. His case, in short, is that Banomadhab and Banamali were 2 full brothers. The suit properties described in 'Ka' schedule to the plaint belonged to Banomadhab while 'Kha' Schedule to Banamali in 8 annas shares. Jyotish Chandra son of Banoamali died leaving his mother Dharijamoyee and full paternal uncle Banomadhab. Dharijamoyee possessed 8 annas share in limited life interest and then died leaving behind aforesaid Banomadhab, who lied leaving a barren daughter Panchanani and full sister's son Tustalal, who inherited the property and began to possess the same through bargadars under the care of Panchanani and then died leaving a son Rashiklal, who sold the suit properties to defendant No.1 by kabala dated 11.06.1976. Defendant No. 1 remained in possession thereon since then. The suits are liable to be dismissed with cost.

5. The trial Court by judgment and order dated 31-7-1985 dismissed all the suits. Against the said judgment and decrees of the trial Court, the plaintiffs preferred Other Class Appeal Nos.157, 158 and 159 of 1995 before the learned District Judge, Pabna, who by his judgment and order dated 26-11-1986 allowed the appeals in part and decreed the suit in respect of 8 annas share in 'Kha' schedule land in favour of the plaintiffs.

6. Being aggrieved by the aforesaid judgment and decree passed by the appellate Court, the plaintiffs preferred three revisional applications before the High Court Division and obtained Rules in Civil Revision Nos. 571, 572 and 573 of 1987 and defendant No. 1 preferred three revisional applications before the High Court Division and obtained Rules in Civil Revision Nos. 8692, 9106 and 9206 of 1991. The learned Single Judge of the High Court of the High Court Division, upon hearing the parties, by the judgment and order dated 10.07.2008 made the Rules absolute in Civil Revision Nos.571, 572 and 573 of 1987 and discharged the Rules in Civil Revision Nos.8692, 9106 and 9206 of 1991.

7. Feeling aggrieved by and dissatisfied with the impugned judgment and order dated 10-7-2008 passed by the High Court Division, the leave-petitioners have filed Civil Petition for Leave to Appeal Nos.1936-1941 of 2008 and obtained leave in all the petitions on 12-4-2009 resulting in Civil Appeal Nos.325-330 of 2009.

8. Mr Shahidul Islam, learned Advocate, appearing on behalf of the appellants in all the appeals, submits that the High Court Division failed to consider the evidence on record that the plaintiffs hopelessly failed to prove their title to and possession in the suit land. He lastly submits that the High Court Division failed to consider properly the meaning of gift under Hindu Law and the law relating to transfer of immovable property through gift.

9. Mr Probir Neogi, learned Senior Advocate, appearing on behalf of the respondents in all the appeals, on the olher hand, submits that the plaintiffs inherited 'Ka' schedule and half of 'Kha' schedule properly, which is "Youtuka" of Panchanani and they inherited half of 'Kha' schedule land as grandsons of Panchanani's husband Sharat Chandra. He then submits that the defendant miserably failed to prove that Panchanani was a concubine of Sharat Chandra and that exhibit-3, the deed of gift of the year, 1941 proves that she is in fact the wife of Sharat Chandra and as such, no interference is called for.

10. We have considered the submissions of the learned Advocate for the appellants and the learned Senior Advocate for the respondents, perused the impugned judgment and the materials on record.

11. Before addressing the conflicting submissions of the learned Advocates of both the sides, it would be pertinent to go through the grounds, for which, leave was granted. The grounds are as follows:

"Panchanani Shaha was not wife of Sharat Chandra Shaha and the plaintiff could not produce any evidence to prove that Panchanani Shaha was the wife of Sharat Chandra Shaha and as such, the plaintiff did not acquire any right, title and interest in the suit land but the High Court Division did not consider the aforesaid aspect and thus committed error of law resulting in an error in the decision occasioning failure of justice.

The High Court Division failed to consider the evidence on record that the plaintiff hopelessly failed to prove their right, title and possession in the suit land.

The High Court Division failed to consider properly the meaning, of gift under the Hindu Law and the law relating to the transfer of immovable property through gift."

12. The trial Court came to a finding that the plaintiffs could not prove that Panchanani was not a concubine of Sharat Chandra and that Dharijyamoyee having the life interest in half of 'Kha' schedule land did not have any right to transfer half of 'Kha' schedule land to Panchanani. The trial Court also found that the plaintiffs could not prove their title to and possession in the suit land.

13. The appellate Court on the other hand found that the 'Ka' schedule land and half of 'Kha' schedule land owned by Banomadhab Saha went to Tustalal Shaha, the sister's son of Banomadhab Shaha and that the plaintiff are enlitled to only half of the 'Kha' schedule and which Dharijyamoyee gifted to Panchanani by a registered deed of gift dated 7-10-1941.

14. The High Court Division found that the defendant has admitted in the written statement that the property was transferred to Panchanani Shaha by gift and that she remained in possession thereof on behalf of Tusta Lai. The High Court Division held that defendant-witnesses also admitted possession of Panchanani Shaha for some times. SA khatians which have been exhibited in Court and marked as exhibits-2(a)-2(f) show that the name of Panchanani had been recorded in the khatians and she paid rent regularly as shown by exhibit-5 series.

The High Court Division further found that the alleged transfer of the suit land ih favour of Panchanani by way of 'Youtuka', and gift was acted upon. The High Court Division found that the plaintiffs contention to the effect that Tustalal died on 30-3-1964 before the death of Panchanani on 5-12-1967 was proved.

15. Admittedly, the 'Ka' schedule land longed to Banomadhab Shaha and the 'Kha' schedule land belonged to Banomadhab Shaha and his nephew, Joytish Chandra Shaha in equal shares. The plaintiffs contended that Banomadhab Shaha having no son gifted his entire property as "Youtuka" to his daughter Panchanani. The plaintiffs also contended that Joytish Chandra Shaha gifted his share orally to his mother Dharijyamoyee who gifted the same to his brother-in-law, Banomadhab's daughter, Panchanani by a registered deed of gift dated 7-10-1941.

Therefore, Panchanani became the owner of entire suit property. Panchanani died childless on 5-12-1964 (1374BS). Her husband Sharat Chandra died on 16-3-1972 leaving behind three grandsons of his son, Purna Chandra who was the son of Sharat Chandra's predeceased first wife Saralabala, that is, Puma Chandra was the step son of Panchanani. The names of the grandsons of Sarat Chandra Shaha are Prosenjit Saha, Nitaijit Shaha and Amarendra Nath 5haha alias Nirmaipada Shaha who are plaintiff Nos.1 to 3.

16. The defendant on the other hand contends that the suit property belonged to Banomadhab Shaha. Banomadhab Shaha died leaving behind daughter Panchanani and sister's son Tustalal Shaha. According to the defendant as per Dayabaga succession, Panchani being a barren daughter of Banomadhab is excluded from inheriting the property left behind by Banomadhab and as such, Sharat Chandra Shaha, his grandsons, plaintiff Nos. 1-3 were excluded from inheriting the property left behind by Banomadhab. The entire property has vested in the sister's son Tutalal and thereafter upon Rashiklal.

17. It is to be seen whether Banomadhab could gift the 'Ka' schedule land and half of 'Kha' schedule to Panchanani by way of 'Youtuka'.

According to Dayabaga School, the plaintiffs as Panchanani's step son's sons stand al serial No. 10 and in the absence of serial Nos.1-9, Panchanani's son's sons would inherit her 'Youtuka'. After the death of Panchanani's husband Sharat Chandra, his grandsons inherited half of 'Kha' land from him. Admittedly, 'Youtuka' is a kind of gift and such gift if made at the time of marriage of daughter is valid in respect of immovable property and no registration is required according to Section 123 of the Transfer of Property Act. 'Youtuka' has been defined in Molla's Hindu Law twentieth edition 'Youtuka', that is, gift made at the time of marriage.

This term has been interpreted by the High Court Division of Calcutta as including not only gifts made before the nuptial fire but gifts made during continuance of the marriage ceremonies, that is, the ceremonies beginning with shraddha and ending with that of prostrating before' the husband. It is conceived that it includes gifts from strangers made before the nuptial fire and at the bridal procession.

18. In this connection reliance may be placed on the case of Prem Mohan Das vs Hari Mohan Das, ILR (1925) 52 Calcutta 425 where the plaintiff (father) had pronounced to give a house to his daughter and thus had induced the bridegroom's party to agree to this marriage and he did not register the deed of gift but his daughter and son-in-law had been in possession of the said house for nearly 10 years in their own right. The father filed a suit to recover the house in question from the daughter's transferee's.

19. To the above case, it has been held that there was an ante-nuptial promise by the plaintiff which became a binding contract when the marriage followed and that the validity of such contract was well established.

20.

In view of the above finding, we are of the view that 'Youtuka', that is, gift of immovable property made as consideration of marriage at the time of nuptial fire is valid.

21. As regards, the deeds of gift dated 7-10-1941 (exhibit-3), we find that in the said deed Panchanani was described as the wife of Sharat Chandra and as such, the claim of the defendants that Panchanani was concubine of Sharat Chandra has been falsified. Moreover, continuous living together for a long time proves that Sarat Chandra and Panchanani were husband and wife.

In fact, Panchanani was the wife of Sharat Chandra and that she inherited 'Ka' schedule land and half of 'Kha' schedule land as 'Youtuka'.

21. It is contended that Dharijyamoyee had no right to make a deed of gift in favour of Panchanani and such gift was illegal and as such, half of 'Kha' schedule property did not pass to Panchanani. The appellate Court found that the deed of gift made by Dharijyamoyee in favour of Panchanani on 7-10-1941 was a valid document. The appellate Court found that even if it is found that Joytish Chandra did not make oral gift to Dharijamoyee, Dharijyamoyee got half of 'Kha' schedule land after death of his son Joytish Chandra Shaha as life estate. The appellate Court rightly found that Dharijyamoyee could legally transfer the property which she got in life interest to Panchanani for legal necessity. The appellate Court noted that Dharijyamoyee became blind and Panchanani used to look after her and that prompted Dharijyamoyee to make gift of half of 'Kha' schedule land to Panchanani. Thereafter, Panchanani validly acquired half of 'Kha' schedule land by the deed of gift dated 7-10-1941.

22. Banomadhab's sister's son, Tustalal died on 30-3-1965 before Panchanani, who died on 5-12-1967. Therefore, Tustalal inherited nothing.

23. As regards possession, the appellate Court found that the plaintiffs have been in possession in part of the suit land. The High Court Division, however, on consideration of the oral evidence and the SA khatians, exhibits 2(a)-2(f) and the rent receipts, exhibit-5 series found that the plaintiffs are in possession of the entire suit land. The finding of possession of the High Court Division having been based on proper appreciation of evidence on record does not call for interference.

In the light of the findings made before, we do not find any substance in these civil appeals. Accordingly, all the appeals are dismissed without any order as to costs.
Hailstorm damages crops, fruits in Panchagarh, Nilphamari

UNB, Dhaka :

A hailstorm coupled with rain lashed Panchagarh and Nilphamari districts on Friday, damaging different crops and fruits on vast tracts of land.

In Panchagarh, a violent hailstorm that swept a number of villages in Sadar upazila badly damaged mango and litchi buds and different crops. Locals said the hailstorm that struck early in the morning and ended 9am also damaged hybrid tomatoes and watermelons on a vast track of land during its fury.

Kamarjani, Kunderpara, Prodhaner Bazar, Jhakurer Bhita, Goghat, Kharjani, Dariapur, Karaibari, Counciler Bazar and Nayagani were among the worst-affected 19 villages under Haribhasa, Hafizabad and Kamat Kajoldighi unions. Nuruzzaman, a farmer at Haribhasa union, said he cultivated hybrid tomatoes and watermelons, but they were totally destroyed. "I've lost all of my capital," he added. Azizar Rahman, a farmer at Chaklahat union, said most of buds of litchis and mangoes were damaged as the hailstorm lashed the union.

Local agriculture office has recorded 37 mm rain in Sadar upazila. Officials at the Department of Agricultural Extension visited the affected areas to assess the extent of losses, said Shamsul Haque, deputy director of district DAE office. The electricity supply also remained suspended in the district till 5pm following the hailstorm. In Niphamari, a hailstorm, accompanied by rain, hit Domar, Dimla and Jaldhaka upazilas, leaving three people injured and disrupting power supply for several hours. The worst-affected unions are Zorabari, Gomanti, Bamunia, Bhogdaburi, Ketkibari unions under Domar upazila while Mirganj, Shimulbnari and Golna unions in Jaldhaka upazila and Khalishachapani and Naotara unions in Dimla upazila. The power supply was disrupted for several hours as tree branches fell on the electric lines on Sayedpur-Nilphamari road due to storm, said Abu Sayed, executive engineer of North West Power Distribution Company.
BNP demands Khaleda`s release for treatment

Staff Reporter :

The BNP on Friday demanded immediate release of the party Chairperson Begum Khaleda Zia for better treatment either at home or abroad as she fell sick in gail. The party has also expressed concern over her health condition.

BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir made the demand in a press briefing at the party's Nayapaltan central office in the capital.

"We have some demands. Permit Khaleda's personal medical team to examine her health in jail and take necessary steps for her treatment in the light of the recommendations of the team. Release her immediately as the court has given her bail," Mirza Fakhrul said.

The party secretary general referred to the postponement of his scheduled visit to Khaleda Zia on Thursday. He said the decision was taken as she was ill. Khaleda Zia could not appear in the court on Wednesday for the same reason.

Mirza Fakhrul said, "We are yet to know about the nature of our party chief's sickness and what measure has the government taken about her treatment."

"Neither the jail authorities nor the government informed us," he said.

The Secretary General said, "Khaleda Zia is not safe under the present autocratic government. The former Prime Minister's fate may be what others had sustained under other autocratic governments."

He said that they did not know whether her food served in the jail was tested.

Standing committee members Dr. Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain, Barrister Moudud Ahmed, Nazrul Islam Khan, Amir Khasru Mahmud Chowdhury and Senior Joint-Secretary General Ruhul Kabir Rizvi, among others, were present at the briefing.
Diarrhoea on rise

Unsafe water, juice and rotten foods blamed

Children overcrowding ICDDR\'B Hospital in city as diarrhoea took epidemic form due to gradual rise in temperature over the last few days. This photo was taken on Friday.

Reza Mahmud :

Diarrhoea is becoming epidemic in the capital and other parts of the country due to gradual rise in temperature for the last few days of the summer.

Experts said, the diarrhoea is a water borne disease and the children are mostly the victims of it because they drink unsafe water, juice and also take ice-cream to get rid of hot weather.

Dr. Ayesha Akter, In-charge of the National Health Crisis Management Center and Control Room of the Health Department told The New Nation, "The increasing temperature is the cause of the outbreak of diarrhoea."

She said, over 5000 diarrhoea patients have been admitted in International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b) in last 11 days since March 20 to 30.

Icddr,b records said 428 patients were admitted on March 20, 462 on March 21, 466 on March 22, 458 on March 23, 468 on March 24, 477 on March 25, 527 on March 26, 506 on March 27, 553 on March 28, 507 on March 29 and around 400 on March 30.

Dr. Ayesha said, in some districts diarrhoea patients are reportedly increasing.

Among those, On Thursday, 55 diarrhoea patients were admitted to hospitals in Bogra, 52 in Kishorgonj, 53 in Comilla, 13 in Rangamati, 20 in Dinajpur, 46 in Thakurgaon and 51 in Jessor.

The Chief Physician (Clinical Service) of icddr,b, Dr. Pradip Kumar Bardhan told The New Nation, "The number of diarrhoea patients increased in the recent days, but there is no reason of panic for this."

He said over 507 diarrhoea patients were admitted to hospitals and in the last 24 hours at the icddr,b, most of those are children.

"The main reasons for spread of the disease are unsafe water and unawareness about washing hands before taking meals," he said.

The expert stressed on to take safe water and to wash hands before taking meals every time.

"The parents should keep watch on their children when they take water, juice and ice-cream," he said.
2 robbers killed in gunfights with police

Staff Reporter :

Two suspected robbers were killed in separate gunfights with police in Dhaka and Magura in the small hours of Friday.

The deceased are: Zahirul Islam, who hailed from Dakkhinkhan area in the capital and Fakhrul Islam from Magura district, police said.

In Dhaka, a man, held for a robbery, was killed in a gunfight between police and a gang of robbers in city's Dakkhinkhan area, said Tapan Kumar Saha, Officer-in-Charge of Dakkhinkhan Police Station.

Locals caught Zahirul and four others on Thursday afternoon as they tried

to rob a neighbourhood's house at Mollertek Road. The mob then handed them to police. Police seized three firearms, two machetes and looted goods from their possession.

Early on Friday, police took Zahirul along with detainees went to raid in Diabari area to nab other members of his gang, the OC said.

"Around 4:30am, the shootout erupted as police retaliated after the robbers opened fire. Zahirul was shot at one point."

The 35-year-old Zahirul was declared dead after being taken to Dhaka Medical College and Hospital (DMCH). Other robbers managed to flee, according to the OC.

In Magura, an alleged dacoit was killed in a gunfight between two gangs in Sadar upazila of Magura early in the day, said Additional Superintendent of Magura Police (ASP) Tariqul Islam.

Acting on a tip-off, a police team from Magura conducted a drive in Chhonpur area of the upazila around 2.00am where two rival gangs of robbers were involved in a gunfight, he said.

Sensing the presence of police, both the groups fled the scene. Latter, police recovered the bullet-hit body of Fakhrul from the spot, he added.

The body was sent to Magura Sadar Hospital morgue for autopsy.
Nor`wester lashes 5 dists: 7 killed

At least seven people including a baby died after a nor'wester lashed Bangladesh on Friday.

In Sylhet, two including a baby died after a nor'wester lashed Sylhet's Omaninagar upazila on Friday after noon.

Sixteen-month-old Hasan Ahmed was washed away and drowned in a pond after a house in Sikandapur village was damaged in the storm, our local correspondent reports quoting officials.

Sadia Begum, 45, who was visiting the house of a relative, died after she was struck by a loose tin from the roof of a building in Doshal village during the time of the storm.

Osmaninagar Upazila Nirbahi Officer Anisur Rahman endorsed both cases of deaths.

Around 100 houses were damaged and a large number of trees uprooted during the storm that struck the district around 5:00pm, the upazila administration officer said.

In Magura, farmer Akram Hossain, 35, suffered injuries as the hailstorm hit him while working field at Dohorsingra village in Sadar upazila around afternoon.

He died on the way to hospital, reports our Magura correspondent quoting district's Deputy Commissioner Atiqur Rahman.

In Dinajpur, one person, Said Ali, 55, son of Lal Mohammad in Parbatipur upazila, was killed during a hailstorm, Raihan Ali, Residential Medical Officer of Parbatipur upazila Health Complex, said.

In Jessore, a young boy, Laijul Islam, 17, died from electrocution as a live electric war fell on him at Prembag in Abhaynagar upazila this evening during a storm, our Benapole correspondent reports quoting Anisur Rahman, officer-in-charge of Abhaynagar Police Station.

In Rangpur, two persons - yet to be identified - died from electrocution in Badarganj and Gangachara upazilas, during storm our local correspondent reports quoting Gangachara Police Station OC Mashiur Rahman and Badarganj police's OC Akhteruzzaman.




The Undead Archives

I have finally salvaged my pre-Blogger TDR archives and added them into Blogger. They are almost totally in the form of one giant post for each month. And the formatting strayed from the originals. Sorry. But historians everywhere can rejoice that this treasure trove of my thoughts is restored to the world.
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Jemariah Diamond topped all others in this years Grade Five Public Speaking Competition.

Half way through her presentation, Jemariah Diamond raised the level of the Grade Five Public Speaking Competition.





Her combination of research material, delivered in a commanding manner, earned points which made the difference. The ten-year-old Marriaqua Government School student walked away with the overall top prize.





Jemariah received help from teacher Carla Matthews and praised her mother Jennetha. From La Croix in the interior of mainland St. Vincent, Jeremiah expressed satisfaction on her achievement.





Seven finalists spoke on the prepared speech: Dance Hall music is contributing towards the increase in violence among youths in the Vincentian society. How far do you agree with this statement?





Jemariah pulled the topic: Why are manners important for her Impromptu presentation. This category was won by Ginniek Shallow who spoke on: If I ruled the world. That performance crowned a good all-round effort for the Lower Bay School Inc, as Ginniek took second place. Third place went to Rosashia Shortte from Lowmans Leeward Anglican School. Her Impromptu speech was on Dogs are better than cats.





Fourth place was taken by Rolando Lewis from Diamond Government School. His Impromptu topic was: Should children watch less television?





The other finalists were Shavel Lewis of the Fancy Government who pulled the topic Saying thank you; Jaiden Kydd - Paget Farm Government with If I had wings; and Deandra Boyle representing Argyle Primary who spoke on Praying.





Twenty students took part in preliminary rounds organised by the Ministry of Education, National Reconciliation and Information, with support from the National Insurance Services.

Sharon Ashton, representing NIS, reflected on the 15 years since the sponsorship has been taking place. NIS has been in existence for the past 31 years, but Ashton noted that many persons were still not aware of the importance of social security. (WKA)




Keith Miller, Head of Security at the AIA, sought to assure the public that his security officers were not at fault as Stephen Joachim alleged.

Head of Security at the Argyle International Airport, Keith Miller, has said that, based on investigations conducted, there is no evidence to support the claims made by Stephen Joachim, the Chief Financial Officer of Mustique Company Ltd., that he was strip- searched and manhandled by screening officers.





And to support this conclusion, members of the media, during a press briefing held by the AIA last Monday, were shown video footage of the incident in question.





The AIAs Security Chief said that he had received a telephone call on March 17 from a senior member of staff at the airport who had reported to him that Joachim had leveled the allegations of being manhandled and strip-searched by security personnel. This was, according to information on file, the second time that Joachim had apparently had issues with security officers at AIA.





According to Miller, the first incident occurred on September 22, 2017.

Reports coming from members of staff, according to Miller, suggest that Joachim used abusive and obscene language against the security officer, and in the security area in the presence of other passengers.

Members of the media were afforded the opportunity to view the video footage for both incidents.





No video proof





During the playback of the recording of the March 17 incident, Joachim is seen entering the security restricted area around 1:24 pm on the said day; he walks through the metal detectors, then there is a visible exchange between the security officer and Joachim.





At one point, Joachim is seen to have lifted his t-shirt exposing his abdominal area, but there was nothing to suggest that he was manhandled.





And despite the allegations leveled against the security staff, Miller said that investigations on both occasions determined that the screeners carried out their duties with utmost professionalism.

"Reports like this will trigger off an immediate investigation because we cannot have anything being said adversely about us, Miller said.





"Any bit that comes out of AIA will affect a number of things with respect to St Vincent and the Grenadines and particularly AIA, he continued.





AIA complying with intl standards





The procedures as they relate to security screening and checks at AIA are not set by local authorities, but by international aviation agencies, including the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the Eastern Caribbean Civil Aviation Authority (ECCAA) and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).





Evaluation of the implementation of these guidelines and procedures spelt out by these agencies is an ongoing process, and a prerequisite for continued operation of any international airport.





The enforcement of these regulations is done through the use of applicable equipment and conducted by trained personnel.





"What is done at the airport is not just done by guess but is a system that is well organized and systematic, Miller said, adding that he wanted to give the assurance to members of the public that they can be confident that what the screeners do at the AIA is in compliance with the standards of ICAO and other agencies.

It was confirmed that only the Head of State, the Governor General in our case, was exempt from screening. Members of the diplomatic core were offered certain courtesies as well, but all other individuals are subjected to being screened and or searched if deemed necessary.





Miller reminded the public that, once a passenger openly and aggressively refused to be screened, that becomes visibly irate, that persons can be denied access to the aircraft.





Furthermore, under the Civil Aviation Act, which was amended in 2017 to reflect some of the new international regulations, an individual who is in breach of the law can be arrested on site, without a warrant.

All attempts made by THE VINCENTIAN to contact Joachim for a response, proved futile. (DD)
Tawazun Economic Council has announced the closure of Alfia after successfully fulfilling its purpose of serving as an investment fund for defence contractors.



Tareq Abdul Raheem Al Hosani, chief executive officer of Tawazun Economic Council, said: Alfia Fund has successfully realised Tawazun Economic Councils objectives of creating wealth for economic development in the UAE, investing in viable public and private ventures and providing job opportunities to the Emiratis.



He pointed out that seven defence contractors, along with Tawazun Economic Council, subscribed to the Alfia Fund.



"Alfia Fund has performed well over its period which is reflected in a 13 per cent percent growth in returns to its investors, accounting for Dh85 million ($23.1 million) in total, he added.



"The purpose of the fund was to maximise returns from a diversified portfolio of investments in local ventures under the 'Tawazun Economic Program' administered by the Industrial Development Unit of Tawazun Economic Council

Investments in the fund," Al Hosani said, adding that it enabled the defence contractors to fulfil their respective obligations, and to contribute to the ongoing economic development drive. "With the closing of Alfia Fund, we now have yet another successful case on doing business in UAE," he said.



Mohamed Helal Al Muhairi, director of the Alfia Fund, said the fund made six select investments in UAE and has successfully divested from these profitable ventures by selling its shares to private Emirati investors, thereby maximising the value for their investments.



The fund has created many companies in various sectors, ranging from education, third-party health insurance, construction etc, he added.

Khaleefa Al Hemairi, Member of Alfia Funds Board of Directors, said upon its closure, the fund had distributed both initial investments and earnings to the investors.



"All investments from this fund were done in UAE which has generated good returns enabling defence contractors to not only meet offset obligations but also to gain sizable premium over their initial subscription," he noted.



Formerly known as the Chescor Capital Offset Fund, or CCO, Alfia Fund was established in Mauritius under the management of Chescor Capital Middle East (CCME), and under the administration of International Financial Services Limited. The fund operations were managed by one of the leading banks in UAE with a high level of expertise in investment funds.



Since its establishment, Tawazun Economic Council has facilitated the creation of over 90 companies and joint ventures, at a total value of Dh36 billion ($9.7 billion), generating more than Dh70 billion ($19 billion) in revenues and creating over 95,000 jobs. The consolidated assets of these companies have grown exponentially to Dh542 billion ($147.5 billion). - TradeArabia News Service


Diyar Al Muharraq, one of the leading urban developers in Bahrain, has officially inaugurated the Aysha Al Rasheed Mosque in Hai Al Sherooq.

The mosque was opened on March 20 in the presence of the chairman of the Sunni Waqf Directorate, Dr Rashid bin Mohammed Al Hajeri.

The occasion was also attended by the relatives the benefactor of the Aysha Al Rasheed Mosque, headed by Samir Yacoub Al Nafisi, and the chairman of Diyar Al Muharraq, Abdulhakeem Alkhayyat, along with other prominent public figures and Hai Al Sherooqs residents.

Dr Al Hajeri congratulated the residents of Hai Al Sherooq and Diyar Al Muharraq on the opening of the new mosque. He stressed on the importance of mosques shaping the values of each member of society, and thanked all who worked and donated for the project, specially mentioning the Al Rasheed and Al Nafisi families for their sponsorship of the construction of the mosque.

Samir Yacoub Al Nafisi expressed his pleasure in witnessing the completion of the construction of the Mosque and its inauguration.

Abdulhakeem Alkhayyat said: We are honoured to have been a part of the manifestation of this holy place, which would not have been possible without the generous donation of Mrs Aysha Abdulla Al Rasheed. The establishment of the myriad mosques within Diyar Al Muharraq reflects our keenness to consolidate the virtuous values of the people of Bahrain, as we work hand in hand with the Sunni Waqf Directorate to further strengthen the foundations that preserve the principles of Islam.

The Aysha Al Rasheed Mosque occupies a total area of 739 sq m and is designed to accommodate more than 160 worshippers. The mosque has a dedicated prayer hall for women and a multi-purpose men's majlis that is suitable for hosting various community events.

Diyar Al Muharraq is a unique master-planned city for the people of Bahrain offering range of housing options and quality lifestyle. Diyar Al Muharraq offers a cohesive mix of residential and commercial properties with a strong line up of projects aimed at creating a long-term and sophisticated township.  TradeArabia News Service
Hospitality Management Holding (HMH) is preparing for a strong show at the Riyadh Travel Fair (RTF) in April, one of the key tourism and travel events in the region.



Participating for the 10th year in a row, the hotel group will promote its properties at the event, including the Bahi Ajman Palace Hotel, Coral Port Sudan Hotel, Coral Dubai Deira Hotel, Corp Amman Hotel, Coral Khartoum Hotel and EWA Khartoum Hotel and Apartments.



RTF is also an opportunity for HMH to present its new five-star property in Saudi Arabia  The Coral Al Madinah Hotel - scheduled to open in the next quarter, in time for Hajj season.



Welcoming this opportunity, Ferghal Purcell, chief operating officer of HMH, said: With Saudi Arabia continuing to grow at such an inspiring rate, the kingdom is, without doubt, a key market for HMH, as part of our wider GCC expansion. We are delighted to have a powerful presence in Saudi Arabia, and our portfolio has been significantly improved by the addition of the Coral Al Madinah Hotel which is designed to meet the needs of Hajj and Umrah pilgrims and their families.



Commenting on this occasion, Aboudi Asali, chief executive officer of HMH, said: Im thrilled to welcome the Coral Al Madinah Hotel to our portfolio. Saudi Arabia is an incredibly influential and promising market with tremendous growth potential. With the introduction of Coral Al Madinah, HMH will have a strong foothold in the region with world-class hotels and a commitment to guest service thats nothing short of exceptional.



Coral Al Madinah joins HMHs existing portfolio in Saudi Arabia, which includes the Coral Al Khobar Hotel, Coral Jubail Hotel and Coral Al Ahsa Hotel.



The Riyadh Travel Fair 2018 will take place from April 10 - 13, in Prince Sultan Hall, Al Faisaliah Hotel Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.- TradeArabia News Service


By Siddhant Mohan, TwoCircles.net

Yogi Adityanath, the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, on Wednesday night, passed an order to all government bodies of the state to add Ramji as the middle name for the Bhimrao Ambedkar. The order also applies to all the benches of lower courts and the High Court of the state.

While the spelling of Ambedkar in English will remain unchanged, the spelling in Hindi will change so that his name is pronounced Aambedkar.

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States governor Ram Naik started a campaign in December 2017 for the name change of the iconic Dalit and equality leader BR Ambedkar, who is also famous for drafting the Constitution of India.

Naik also wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in January 2018, drawing his attention to the incorrect spelling and usage of Ambedkar in official records, and asking him to issue directions for its correction.

The main point is the way the name should be pronounced. While its English spelling is correct, the spelling will have to change in Hindi, as will the pronunciation. Ramji was his fathers name. As per common practice in Maharashtra, fathers name is used as a middle name for sons, Dr. Lalji Prasad Nirmal, the director of the Mahasabha, was quoted by the Times of India as saying.

Ambedkars signatures over the pages of the constitution draft are clearly seen as Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar. But in popular culture, as well as in discourses, Ambedkar was never mentioned with the Ramji as a middle name.

Political experts and BJP rivals see the name change as an attempt to change the anti-Ambedkar nature of Bhartiya Janta Party. Since past few months, BJP leaders and cabinet ministers have been seen in the news having lunch at the houses of Dalits in Uttar Pradesh and other states to match the gap between the two.

Especially after the arrest and trial of Chandrashekhar Azad Ravan and subsequent killing of the Dalit movement across western Uttar Pradesh, Yogi Adityanath government in the state has been perceived as anti-Dalit in nature.

However, the government order does not specify the reason behind the changing the name of BR Ambedkar, and government sources were not able to comment as well on the same query.
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Following the Turkey-EU meeting in Varna on March 26, Prime Minister Binali Yldrm said, We have not seen signs that the EU will treat Turkey on fair ground. As Hurriyet Daliy News writes in an article "A European Turkey", globalization is currently in a phase where identities have become militarized, migration movements have created mass societies, economies have turned into protectionist economies and terrorism and security have entered a phase of internationalization. Isolation has become more dangerous than ever. EU Council President Donald Tusk also said following the Turkey-EU summit that there had not been any concrete compromise on the issues that were discussed in Varna. So did they just beat the air? Or could one honestly not expect European crusaders to be Turkeys genuine friend? Lets elaborate more on the conspiracy theory. Is it possible for the Crusader-Zionist alliance dedicated to remove Turkey from the world map to have good intentions?

Diplomatic language

First of all, let us underline one factor: The language President Recep Tayyip Erdogan used, which was genuine diplomatic language, was very different from his usual rethoric towards Europe at the rallies in Turkey. We hope we have left behind a difficult period in Turkey-EU relations. It would be a grave mistake for Europe, which claims to be a global force, to push Turkey out of its expansion policy. Lets build a prosperous and strong Europe together, he said. I find this the right kind of approach and tone. However, it will take some time to remove the traces of the language he had used at rallies during tense periods. More importantly, even though there are very important common interests between Turkey and the EU, there are serious disputes between them as well. For instance, naturally, Turkey will not accept Europes approach about problems regarding the Aegean Sea, the eastern Mediterranean and relations with Greek Cyprus, while Europe is under Greek influence. In addition, the legal definition of terror is also a matter of dispute between Turkey and Europe.

From Europes perspective

From Europes perspective, it is not possible to find the state of emergency practices, the Board of Judges and Prosecutors (HSK) system, jurisdiction problems or widespread arrests in Turkey in accordance with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). It is unacceptable under EU law for politicians to oppose and then for local courts to not comply with a decision the Turkish Constitutional Court has ruled as a violation. We shouldnt forget that France amended the 65th article in its constitution, removing the president and justice minister from the High Council of the Judiciary in 2007 for their affiliation with a political party, in order to reinforce the trust of its citizens in the justice system and in order to comply with the ECHRs definition of separation of powers. It is important to understand that the problems viewed from Turkeys perspective and from Europes perspective cannot be solved at a summit easily. However, it is also important to understand that there are many common interests between Turkey and Europe.

In the age of globalization

As expressed by daily Hurriyets correspondent Guven Ozalp, the language used internally differed from the language used externally at the Varna summit. Disputes and problems were discussed internally, but the language used by the leaders externally was diplomatic due to shared vital interests. Tusk explained that the positive progress, including the accession period, could improve relations between Turkey and the EU. Juncker emphasized the importance of relations with Turkey. The key is to limit disputes between the two parties without damaging their important interests and to solve them on time. Since Turkey has integrated with European institutions, it should be able to integrate with European law on one hand and globally on the other hand.
China has pledged to boost imports from Kazakhstan and guaranteed that US moves to slap punitive tariffs on Beijings goods will not affect the amount of metals, oil and gas it buys from the Central Asian nation. Chinas ambassador to Kazakhstan, Zhang Hanhui, also signaled at a press briefing on March 27 that his country wants to consolidate economic cooperation in the region with Russia. As Eurasianet writes in an article "China Assures Kazakhstan That US Trade Offensive Won't Hit Imports", while the ambassadors remarks were seemingly intended primarily to reassure that increasingly hawkish trade positions adopted by Washington would not have a deleterious knock-on effect in Kazakhstan, they also signaled that China has a strategic backup plan. Far from anticipating a shrinking appetite for Kazakhstans exports, Zhang said that China wants to expand its investments there.

In February, Ning Jizhe, chairman of Chinas National Development and Reform Commission, said at a bilateral investment forum in Beijing that his government is looking in particular at sharing its experiences in high-tech and green technology in Kazakhstan. That would mark a shift away from concentration on the raw materials industry, which has traditionally constituted the main focus of Chinese investment.

Later that same month, Kazakhstans Minister for Investment and Development, Zhenis Kasymbek, said that cooperation with China has generated 51 ongoing commercial projects worth a total of $27.7 billion. Another six projects were to be rolled out in 2018 at value of $363 million.

The bilateral trade figures are generally in Kazakhstans favor. The figure for 2017 reached $10.5 billion, with around $5.8 billion of that total accounted for by exports to China. That export figure marked a 37 percent rise year-on-year.

Zhang, the ambassador, said, with perhaps a hint of mischievousness, that Beijing wants to continue developing projects in Kazakhstan with European help. This will be very good. If our cooperation is in everybodys interests, then why not? You Europeans can come with your ideas and technology. If you dont have money, then we will have it, he said. Zhang said he has received specific expressions of interest from his German, United Kingdom and European Union counterparts. The priority, he indicated, will be in consolidating the three-way axis with Russia and Kazakhstan, however.

The Russian ambassador [in Kazakhstan], my old friend [Aleksei] Borodavkin is dropping by this Sunday and we will have talks. I think that we have very good conditions and basis for trilateral cooperation, Zhang said.

Chinese reaffirmation of its commitment to Kazakhstan comes a few weeks after President Nursultan Nazarbayev traveled to Washington to meet with President Donald Trump, where the pair spoke warmly of their intention to take their partnership to a new strategic level.

In trademark fashion, however, Trump framed relations with Kazakhstan in resoundingly self-interested terms. A lot of goods are being purchased from our country, meaning jobs  General Electric, Boeing. Tremendous amounts of money, he said on January 16 before talks with Nazarbayev.

China is more careful to frame its narrative  if not its deeds necessarily  in ways that emphasize mutual interests and connectivity. One such example was a cargo train that departed on the morning of March 28 from the eastern Chinese city of Xinxiang to embark on a maiden trip through all five Central Asian states. This train will operate once weekly and pull 50 carriages carrying cargo weighing between 150,000 tons and 200,000 tons. As a report by Chinas state-owned Xinhua news agency noted, the train is expected to operate on the principle of leave full, return full. It will send mechanical equipment, rubber products, fire-resistant materials and other goods to the countries of Central Asia, and return a variety of raw materials, the agency reported.
One of Turkey's largest international investors, SOCAR, has announced new investment plans for the country's petrochemicals industry to be completed by 2022, citing the opportunities in Turkey's petrochemicals market.

As Daily Sabah writes in an article "Energy giant SOCAR plans another petrochemical investment in Turkey", investing in Turkey since 2008 starting with the acquisition of Petkim for nearly $2.5 billion and reaching investments of $19.5 billion, State Oil Company of Azerbaijani Republic (SOCAR)'s Turkey subsidiary announced a new investment plan in Turkey's petrochemical industry. SOCAR Turkey CEO Zaur Gahramanov has said that SOCAR Turkey's refinery in Aliaga, Izmir, SOCAR Turkey Aegean Refinery (STAR) will start production in September and that the Azeri energy giant is scheduled to decide on new investments in 2019. The company, which has earned the title of Turkey's largest international investor with the energy projects it has undertaken and finished, plans to complete the construction of the new petrochemical complex by the end of 2022. Gahramanov said that the firm delivered a good performance in 2017. One of the companies operating under SOCAR Turkey, Petkim, broke production, revenue and profit records last year with TL 1.4 billion ($351.22 million) in profits, the CEO added.

"All projects are progressing very well. The constructions of Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline [TANAP] and STAR refinery currently continue and they will start operating this year," he said. With their completion, the two largest energy projects in Turkey in which the company has been investing for the past eight years will be accomplished. As Energy and Natural Resources Minister Berat Albayrak previously announced, TANAP is scheduled to start its first deliveries of gas in July, and the STAR refinery will start production in September, Gahramanov said.

SOCAR has so far invested $12.6 billion of the planned $19.5 in Turkey. Once the ongoing projects finish, the company's investments will reach $16.5 billion. The remaining $3 billion, Gahramanov said, will be allocated to new investment projects for 2018, 2019 and 2020.

Concerning the opportunities in the Turkish market for petrochemical investments, Gahramanov said: "We are working on new petrochemical investment projects in Turkey. We will decide on a new petrochemical investment in 2019, and plan to complete the construction of the new petrochemical complex by the end of 2022."Gahramanov drew attention to the problem of Turkey's current account deficit, which largely depends on imported energy products. He said that all of SOCAR's investment aim to narrow that deficit. "The STAR refinery, TANAP and our new petrochemical complex project are designed to narrow the current account deficit and will provide billions of dollars to the Turkish economy," he said, adding that SOCAR plans long-term investments in Turkey as the company has confidence in the country's economy.

Gahramanov said that SOCAR exports 50 percent of Petkim's production and the STAR refinery's petrochemical production will be distributed in the Turkish market. The company expects $12 billion in turnover by 2019 when they start to operate on full capacity. "A new refinery with a capacity of 10 million tons will start operating in Turkey," he said, referring to STAR.

STAR, whose started construction in 2011, is currently under construction on a 2,400-hectare site on the Aliaga Peninsula. With a crude oil processing capacity of 10 million tons, STAR is underway as the most critical component of SOCAR Turkey's integrated energy solutions and value chain. A $6 billion investment, the STAR refinery is the largest foreign direct investment (FDI) made in a single location.

As for oil prices, Gahramanov said that SOCAR does not expect either a drastic fall or rise in prices and foresees that crude prices will hover around $65 to $70 per barrel.
Armenia was visited by two Russian parliamentary delegations in the past month. A couple of weeks ago, a delegation of the Russian Federation Council led by the chairperson of the Committee on Foreign Affairs Konstantin Kosachev visited Yerevan, and recently the guests of the parliament were State Duma deputies led by First Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee for CIS Affairs, Eurasian Integration and Relations with Compatriots Konstantin Zatulin. According to the majority of Armenian experts, these visits were not accidental. Novosti-Armenia agency tells its side of the story.

International isolation of Moscow and the series of visits

Without diminishing the importance of Armenia in the South Caucasus for Russia, however, the root cause of intermittent visits should be sought in Moscow's continued international isolation. But this is one thing, the real trouble is that unlike Western countries and international organizations, for example, NATO and the EU, which support the anti-Russian sentiments at the level of the highest leadership, more or less adequate response to such an attitude towards Russia has been received neither from the CSTO, nor the EEU, not to mention separate countries - members of these organizations.

"Allies" pulling strings behind the scene

Russia, unlike, for example, the UK, appears before the West alone in the sense of what has been said. Moreover, along with the strengthening of sanctions against Moscow, Russia's most important partners in the Eurasian community continue to expand their relations with the "enemies" of their main strategic ally. For example, Kazakhstan, represented by its president during his visit to Washington in January this year, not only achieved billions of US investments in his country, but also expressed the desire to raise the level of relations between the United States and Kazakhstan to an "expanded strategic partnership", but also announced the visa waiver program for US citizens, which could not but provoke feelings of vexation in Moscow.

The behavior of another EEU partner and the union state, Belarus, also raises many questions for the Kremlin, especially after the introduction of retaliatory sanctions from Russia, when shrimps and lobsters suddenly appeared on the territory of the union state, which probably never existed there.

What does the loss of Armenia in the South Caucasus mean for Russia?

With regard to other Russian partners in the above-mentioned unions, then, of course, Armenia occupies a key geopolitical position among them, at least in the South Caucasus, which, unlike for Kazakhstan and Belarus, is equally important for both Moscow and Yerevan. I think Moscow is well aware that loss of Armenia as an ally is fraught with not just Russia's withdrawal from the South Caucasus, but also the escalation of problems in the North Caucasus. After all, it's not a secret hat stability in this region is maintained solely due to the tough power of local leaders, whose dedication to the Kremlin is measured by the amount of investment from Moscow.

Kremlin's vain attempts to win over Azerbaijan

One can says that Russia's attempt to win over Azerbaijan is not successful at the moment, simply because the latter has a close "relative" in the region in the person of Turkey, the economic potential of which is comparable with Russia's one. Therefore, in addition to refusing to join the EEU, after the expulsion of the Russian military from Gabala, Azerbaijan does not allow any Russian military presence on its territory, demanding Moscow's pressure on Yerevan in terms of concessions on Karabakh as the price of slightest progress on this matter.

As for Russia's attempts to make Azerbaijan depend on it by selling arms, then Moscow should not rejoice here either. The decrease in the volume of arms sales to Azerbaijan, which Russian deputies and senators during the visit to Yerevan tried to present as "concessions" to Armenia, are beneath all criticism hardly taken seriously. In the opinion of many Russian and Armenian experts, there are absolutely different reasons for reducing arms sales to Azerbaijan:

- the terms of previous contracts for Russia's arms supply to Azerbaijan have expired or will expire soon, and new contracts have not yet been signed;

- Azerbaijan has alternative sources for the purchase of weapons in Ukraine, Belarus, Israel and, of course, Turkey.

By the way, according to Turkish media reports, Ankara delivers Turkey's Sakarya multiple launch rocket system and Kasrga guided missile system to Baku, which, according to the Turks, were used during the "four-day war" in April 2016.

As for Belarus, even here our CSTO and EEU ally has something to offer to Azerbaijan. For example, the Polonez multiple launch rocket system, the purchase of which Baku considers an adequate response to the delivery of Russia's Iskanders to Armenia.

What's left for Moscow?

Today, Moscow's only real ally in the South Caucasus, and even in the Eurasian space, is Armenia. In this sense, the idea of Vazgen Sargsyan (former defense minister who died during the terrorist attack in the National Assembly in October 1999) that Russia has its own Israel in the South Caucasus in the face of Armenia, which was recently repeated by Konstantin Zatulin in the Armenian parliament, is not accidental. And then, of course, one can assume that the recent strengthening of the Western vector of Yerevan's foreign policy (the framework agreement with the EU, the Armenian parliamentary delegation's visit to Washington, the reception of the President of the Republic of Artsakh (referring to the leader of the unrecognized, separatist NKR Bako Sahakyan - VK) in the US Congress, the forthcoming Francophonie summit in Yerevan) against the backdrop of the deteriorating relations between Russia and the West, could cause Moscow's disquiet, if not to say jealousy.

"Notes to be compared" after April 17

Usually, "notes were compared" at the highest level in such cases. However, since that the election of Russia's leader has just ended, and, in accordance with the new Constitution, the main official of the country is yet to be elected in Yerevan, it is quite possible that comparing notes at the highest level will take place after April 17.

Until then, Moscow has limited itself to lower-ranking visitors ...
This year, the European Union celebrates the quarter-century anniversary of its domestic market created in 1993 for the free movement of goods, capital, services and people. The head of the Center for Economic Integration of the Institute of Europe of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the assistant professor of the International Relations Department at the School of World Politics and Economy of the Higher School of Economics, Natalia Kondratyeva, spoke about the development of the European digital single market.

"Europeans are lagging behind their competitors in terms of the high technology development. There are few European companies working in the field of ICT on the market. Europeans are worried and they are making efforts to help their economy and companies. One of the results of the recent EU summit in Brussels was an arrangement of the intermediate results of the digital single markets creation. The EU has already done a lot in this direction, "Kondratyeva said.

According to her, the single digital market is not only about buying and selling online: "The result, which the EU is proud of, is the abolition of roaming." The EU institutions and European mobile operators have spent 10 years trying to agree on the abolishment of the payment for roaming. Finally, they showed determination and adopted new, more stringent competition conditions. Many events are taking place in the field of the data protection. This month, the regulations came into force giving Europeans who travel within the single EU market borders the right to maintain online access to the services. In February, a regulation was adopted on the prohibition of geolocation in the area of the single internal market. Each of us has faced geo-blocking, which is a discriminatory practice that prohibits either access to products, prices or transportation services. This issue has been resolved finally. Now European consumers will not experience any inconvenience, there will be no discrimination in this field. "

Natalia Kondratyeva also said that much has been done with respect to the reputation of the digital markets: "This month, the new operational measures have been introduced to combat illegal content on the Internet. There is already a code of conduct and the fight is waged against the illegal practices, there is a memorandum banning the sale of the counterfeit goods. The requirements for the removal of terrorist content within one hour since its appearance have entered into force. Every three months the EU states are obliged to report to the European Commission on cooperation with the companies providing Internet traffic to stop this terrorist activity.
Turkey rejects any approach for mediation or dialogue with PKK/PYD/YPG, presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kaln said.

In shared posts on Twitter, Kaln said Turkey expects its allies to stand "clearly" against all kinds of terrorism.

"Turkey's stance against PKK/PYD/YPG is clear. We reject 'dialogue, contact, mediation' approaches with these terrorist structures, which are irresponsible," Kaln wrote.

"Countries that we count on as allies should have a clear attitude against all kinds of terror, instead of taking steps towards legitimizing efforts put forth by terrorist groups," he said on Twitter.

"Different names and clothings cannot hide the true identity of terrorist groups," Anadolu agency cited him as saying.

The written statement from the Elysee Palace said, French President Emmanuel Macron recalled the commitment of France against the PKK and its commitment to the security of Turkey during his meeting with the PYD/PKK-led SDF delegation.

Macron also said that the SDF had no operational link with this terrorist group, adding that "a dialogue could be established between the SDF and Turkey with the assistance of France and the international community".
Erzurum has been officially nominated as a candidate for the 2026 Winter Olympics and Paralympics, Insidethegames.biz reported.

Haberturk said a bid from the Eastern resort had been given the backing of Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

It comes with the deadline to express interest to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) expiring tomorrow.

Mustafa Ilcal, an official for Erzurum representing Erdogan's ruling AK Party, confirmed the news on his Twitter page. "I would like to extend my gratitude to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and my Government for the support of Erzurum for the official candidacy application for the 2026 Winter Olympics," he said.
Gazprom filed an application to the Svea Court of Appeal in Stockholm to challenge and partially cancel the final decision on arbitration proceeding with Naftogaz of Ukraine on the gas transit case on March 29, 2018, TASS reports.

Gazprom explains the filing of an application by significant procedural irregularities committed by the arbitrators in making the decision.

On March 21, Gazprom has sent a petition to the Svea Court of Appeal in Stockholm for a partial cancellation of the Stockholm arbitration decision in the proceedings with Naftogaz of Ukraine on gas supplies. In November last year, Gazprom filed an application to the Court of Appeal to challenge a separate decision on gas supplies and its partial cancellation.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani took part in an Azerbaijani-Iranian business forum in the Heydar Aliyev Center in Baku yesterday.

The forum featured a video reflecting the work carried out in Azerbaijans Neftchala industrial park.

Ilham Aliyev and Hassan Rouhani launched the Khazar automobile plant built by Azermash OJSC jointly with the Iran Khodro company in the Neftchala industrial park.

Then a video reflecting the production process at the automobile plant was shown, followed by a video about the cargo terminal in Irans Astara city, where Azerbaijan invested as part of the International North-South Transport Corridor project.

The relations between Azerbaijan and Iran are of great importance not only for the two countries, but also for the region and the world because the projects implemented on the initiatives of the two countries are of great importance for the entire region and the Eurasian continent, President Aliyev said at the forum. The president noted that today friendly and fraternal relations between Azerbaijan and Iran are at the highest level.

We meet regularly with President Rouhani. Over the last four years, we have had 11 meetings. This figure itself shows how closely we cooperate and what kind of mutual trust exists between us. It is natural because our peoples have lived and worked together for centuries, the head of state added.

According to the Azerbaijani president, a shared history and culture between the two countries is a key factor for present-day relations. It is a great pleasure for us to see these relations growing fast, Aliyev noted.

Since our political relations have reached such a high level, of course, we can implement any economic and transport projects and thats what were doing. We personally control all the tasks we have given. Im glad that members of the intergovernmental commission and all officials perform their duties honorably, he said.

President Aliyev said that he also discussed with his Iranian counterpart the development of trade relations.

We think the current level of trade relations does not reflect the level of our ties. Therefore, my recommendation to businessmen participating in this business forum is that we must cooperate even more closely, the head of state said.

The head of state underscored the need to take practical steps in order to increase the mutual trade turnover. I hope our mutual export will also increase in the coming years. There are opportunities to achieve this, Aliyev added.

He also noted that one the unsolved issue is cooperation in banking and financial sector: "Relevant tasks were given yesterday. Im sure that they will be solved till the next meeting. Increase of trade turnover, joint operation in energy are priority today. We are very pleased that Iranian businessmen are interested in Azerbaijans economy. They can operate as investors and contractors in Azerbaijan. There are all opportunities for these activity. We create new reality in our region. Iran-Azerbaijan relations have already become a significant factor for regional security, stability and cooperation. We did it, even in a short period".
Maia Tskhitishvili will be Georgias new Minister of Regional Development and Infrastructure, Georgia's Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili said at a special briefing.

Tskhitishvili has been the Head of the Government Administration since 2012. She will replace Zurab Alavidze, who took up the ministerial position in November 2016.

Introducing Tskhitishvili as a very successful head of administration who dealt with a huge volume of tasks, Kvirikashvili said she will be a very successful minister as well.

According to Kvirikashvili, Alavidze tendered his resignation a couple of days ago in order to return to the private sector where he has a long record of experience, Agenda.ge reported.

Thanking Alavidze for all the other projects that are underway at the ministry concerning the rehabilitation of roads and the improvement of water provision systems, Kvirikashvili wished Alavidze success in his future endeavors.
Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants staged an attack near a military base in southeast Turkeys Siirt province, killing six Turkish security force members and wounding seven, security sources said.

They said the attack occurred in the area of a military base in the Eruh district of Siirt and that those killed were from a village guard militia which supports the Turkish military, Reuters reported.

The sources initially said five soldiers were killed.

Anadolu news agency said four soldiers and three village guards were also wounded in the attack, which occurred in an area where road construction work was being carried out.
The global information war has recently worked in increasingly surprising, though not effective ways, by hands of those who consider it advantageous to attack Russia by fake news, hoping for any negative effect.

A typical example was the publication of the article "Russia's arms supply to Azerbaijan causes discontent in Baku and indignation in Armenia" by the Polish edition of 'Belarusian Truth', which positions itself as the Belarusian opposition but, of course, has nothing to do with Belarus. The article, without citing any sources, presents claims for Russia's arms supply, allegedly expressed by Azerbaijan. The author of the fake, identifying himself as Yuri Baranevich, focuses on writing the shortcomings found by the Azerbaijani military in Russia's weapons: the rockets do not explode, the machine guns do not fire, the helicopters do not start, the automation does not work.

The fake is trying to convince the readers: all models of "defective" Russian weapons are listed, each problem is described, even an explanation was given why Moscow sells garbage to Baku instead of normal weapon - in order to maintain balance in the zone of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, also explaining the unsettledness of which by the Kremlin's hand. In the end, the article unexpectedly pushes out an attempt to advertise Belarusian weapons for Azerbaijan. The goal is obvious - to create discord between Russia, Azerbaijan and Belarus.

The 'Belarusian Truth' fake was quickly exposed by Azerbaijan, which stressed that these claims do not reflect reality and are of provocative nature. The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry noted that Azerbaijan pays particular attention to the purchase and acquisition of different types of weaponry from certain manufacturing countries. "We carefully choose the best, most qualitative and effective military products necessary to increase our combat potential in order to liberate the occupied territories. The new Russian weaponry the Azerbaijani Army now has at its disposal meets the increased requirements for modern weapon systems. These weapons significantly increase the maneuvering and firing capabilities of the military units, particularly of those that perform combat missions at the forefront defense line of our troops, the ministry stressed.

Head of the expert council of Baku Network, Elkhan Alasgarov, speaking with Vestnik Kavkaza, noted that the destruction of Russian-Azerbaijani relations is one of the points of the anti-Russian information campaign. "Some forces want to spoil Russian-Azerbaijani relations against the backdrop of the processes taking place in the world. Azerbaijan-Russia relations are at a higher level than ever, we have a lot of economic and political interests. Russia is the co-chairman of the Minsk Group, and we expect that Russia will play a decisive role in the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. In addition, information aboput problems with arms supplies comes from foreign sources, hence the sources of fakes are outside Azerbaijan," he noted.

Elkhan Alasgarov also suggested that the primary goal is discrediting Russian arms in the world arms market. "The big arms firms are interested in eliminating the competition of Russian military equipment and taking away their markets. Hence the focus on the nonconformity of specific models of weapons supplied to Azerbaijan, although each party is tested. The struggle for markets is more evident in the claim about sale of obsolete weapons to Baku - no buyer will buy obsolete weapons, and the seller will not put it on sale being in a competitive market," he pointed out.

The director of the Institute of Political Studies Sergei Markov agreed with the expert. "This fake was directed against Russia, the Russian military-industrial complex, Russia's strategic military-technical agreements with other countries, and, in general, against Russia's good relations with its neighbors. Ultimately, this is a manifestation of the malicious Russophobia which is very common in Polish media," he said.

Among other things, Western forces do not like Russia's positive role in the lives of its neighbors. "Their political elites are actively participating in the global political hybrid war against Russia in order to break it as the country that most fully realizes the right to sovereignty together with China and as a country that is to some extent the exporter of sovereignty in the world as a whole. While selling weapons to Azerbaijan, Russia contributes to the strengthening of Azerbaijan's sovereignty. Certain global elites, with which the Polish media and politicians are partly connected, do not like this Russia's role very much," Sergey Markov concluded.
Russia will expel 60 US diplomats and close the US Consulate General in St. Petersburg, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.

Russia has declared 58 employees of the US Embassy in Moscow and two staff members of the Consulate General in Yekaterinburg personae non gratae, they will have to leave the country by April 5, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

"On March 29, US Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman was summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov handed over to him a note of protest over the outrageous and unsubstantiated demands by the US authorities that 60 Russian diplomats leave the US and the Russian Consulate General in Seattle be closed and also in connection with the US authorities intention to seize its premises. That was preceded by the seizure of five other facilities in the US owned by Russia in 2016-2017," the ministry said.

"Based on the reciprocity principle, as a retaliatory measure, 58 employees of the US Embassy in Moscow and two staff members of the Consulate General in Yekaterinburg have been declared personae non gratae for the activities incompatible with their diplomatic status. They will have to leave the Russian Federation by April 5, 2018," the ministry said.

Besides, Moscow has revoked its consent to the opening and operations of the US Consulate General in St. Petersburg. "The American representatives are expected to move out of the administrative building, which was granted to them for their establishment, no later than March 31," the Russian Foreign Ministry stressed.

Moscow also suggested convening a meeting of the OPCW executive council on April 2, where it will bring up all questions, Lavrov said adding that if "our Western partners" dodge this, then it will be further "evidence" that everything thats happened is a "provocation."
Russian and Chinese Foreign Ministers Sergey Lavrov and Wang Yi will hold negotiations on April 5 in Moscow, the Russian Foreign Ministry reported.

"Special Envoy of the President of the Peoples Republic of China, State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi will be visiting Russia on April 4-5," the ministry said, adding that the talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov are scheduled for April 5.

The ministry specified that Sergey Lavrov and Wang Yi will share their views "on the state and prospects of further development of Russian-Chinese relations of comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation, as well as extension of mutual coordination in international and regional affairs."

Wang Yis visit to Russia was initially scheduled for March 27-28. However, the date of the visit was shifted later due to changes in the Russian administrations schedule in the wake of the Kemerovo tragedy.
The British authorities have barred the crew of a Russian Aeroflot plane bound for Moscow from being present during the search of their plane, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Friday, TASS reports.

"The British authorities asked the Russian crew, including the captain, to leave the aircraft. The captain suggested the search be conducted in his personal presence as in line with the instructions he cannot leave the plane. As of now, the Britons have begun the search, keeping the captain inside the cockpit, not letting him be present during the search," she told the Rossiya-24 television channel.

Russian diplomats are in contact with the British authorities over the search of Russias Aeroflot jet at Londons Heathrow airport. Moscow urges London to stop provocative actions:

"Officers of the Russian embassy in the United Kingdom are currently on the way to the airport. The Russian diplomatic mission, the Russian ambassador [Alexander Yakovenko] are getting in touch with the local side," Zakharova stated. "We urge the British authorities to stop provocative actions and get the situation back to the legal framework."
The Zimnyaya Vishnya shopping mall in Kemerovo was an unauthorized construction, spokesperson for the Russian Investigative Committee, Svetlana Petrenko, said.

The main regional inspector of the State Construction Supervision Tanzil Komkova was detained, she is to be charged with abuse of official capacity. "According to the investigation, Komkova did not take measures to stop the unauthorized erection of the Zimnyaya Vishnya shopping mall in the city of Kemerovo without a building permit, which caused the death of visitors to the shopping mall," Interfax cited Petrenko as saying.

Today, the suspect is to be charged, the investigation will request her arrest. In addition, Komkova's actions will be checked for corruption. Tanzily Komkova may face ten years in jail.

The investigation initiated a judicial fire and technical expertise, experts from St. Petersburg arrived in Kemerovo and have started working.

Kemerovo firefighting service official, Andrey Bursin, said that he thinks that the rapid spread of fire was caused by voids in the structure and the old air conditioning system. He specified that the work of firefighters was hampered by he configuration and size of the mall.

Fire witnesses report possible problems with wiring that could cause a fire. "The witness confirms that the fire's point of origin was on the playground," the judge Dmitry Shandrov said. "The cause of the fire, perhaps, was wiring or a spark from the ceiling - there was a whole bunch of cables," the testimony said.

The investigator said during a speech in court that, as follows from the testimony of another witness - deputy manager of the shopping mall, the employees had no fire drills, the fire alarm was broken.

According to Investigative Committee Chairman Alexander Bastrykin, 24 hours before the fire visitors could smell the burning wiring.

Russia's emergency ministry said that 20 people were brought down from the upper floors with the use of firefighting equipment; over 700 people were evacuated from the shopping mall.

Russia's emergency situations minister, Vladimir Puchkov, said that the priority of the work is payments to the victims and families of the deceased from the federal budget, as well as the provision of targeted assistance.

A total of 64 people, including 41 children, were killed in the fire that erupted at the Zimnyaya Vishnya shopping mall in Kemerovo on March 25.
Saudi Arabia may go to war with Iran in the next 10-15 years if the international community fails to apply more sanctions pressure on Tehran, Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman told The Wall Street Journal.

He called on the international community to impose more severe sanctions against Tehran in order to avoid a military confrontation in the region.

"We must achieve this in order to avoid a military conflict, if we fail to do this, we will probably have a war with Iran in 10-15 years," the prince said.

Recently, the crown prince lashed out at Iran, comparing the country's authorities with Hitler and mentioned the possibility of an arms race in the region if Tehran develops its nuclear program. Commenting on bin Salmans statement, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi called the Crown Prince a "delusional, naive person."
Russia, as well as Iran, is the huge part of the problem in Syria, US State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said during a press briefing.

According to her, Russia is not doing anything to help in Syria.

"Russia is the huge part of the problem for the tens of thousands of innocent civilians who have been killed and are still being killed each and every day as we look at the video thats coming out of Eastern Ghouta. Russia is responsible for that," she told the reporters, adding that Iran also responsible.

Earlier, United Nations chief Antonio Guterres warned that Russian and US relations were deteriorating into a situation similar, to a large extent, to what we lived during the Cold War.
Turkey has started preparations to clear northern Syrias Ayn al-Arab, Ras al-Ain and Tel Abyad regions from militants up to the Iraqi border, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, adding that it would also clear militants from Iraq.

Erdogan said Turkey has no intention of harming soldiers of allied nations positioned in the region, but that it could not allow militants to roam free, Reuters reported.

He added that a total of 3800 terrorists have been killed since the start of the Operation Olive Branch in Syria's Afrin region.

The Operation Olive Branch was launched on January 20 to clear terrorist groups from Afrin in northwestern Syria amid growing threats from the region.
The 5th session of the Turkey-U.S. Defense Industry Trade Dialogue was held in Ankara on Friday to discuss bilateral defense trade and security cooperation, Anadolu Agency reported.

According to a statement by the Foreign Ministry, representatives of the Turkish General Staff, Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Economy, Defense Industry Undersecretariat, and officials from the U.S. participated in the first session of the day organized by the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and U.S. Department of State.

Several U.S. and Turkish defense industry companies also participated in the afternoon for the second session of the day, the statement said.

Participants reaffirmed the commitment of Turkey and the United States to address shared security and defense trade goals for the benefit of each nation.

Additionally, they discussed current developments in the Turkish-U.S. defense industry, possibilities for cooperation between the two countries, and potential joint undertakings, the statement added.
A UK soldier has been killed in combat in Syria, the British Ministry of Defence has said, BBC reports.

The serviceman - embedded with US forces as part of a counter-terrorism operation against the Islamic State group - was killed on Thursday by an improvised explosive device.

An American soldier was also killed by the roadside bomb, US officials said.

The MOD confirmed that his family had been notified, adding "our thoughts are with them at this difficult time".
The United States intelligence services are trying to get in contact with Russian diplomats who have been expelled from the United States with no serious grounds for that, the Russian foreign ministry said on Friday, TASS reports.

"We observe a dramatic increase in provocative actions against Russian diplomats in the United States," the ministry said. "In the recent days, following the decision on the ungrounded expulsion of 60 employees of Russian diplomatic missions in that country, the US intelligence services are taking frenzied efforts to get in contact with them."

The Russian Foreign Ministry drew attention to a series of episodes when Washington was attempting to "offer assistance for covert relations on the mutually beneficial basis" to those it was forcing to cut short their missions.

"The United States has obviously decided to put through a combination: the official authorities expel Russian diplomats for no good reason and the US intelligence services, which have been acting more and more aggressively, are rushing to use this difficult moment for our nationals," the ministry said. "These obvious plans are failing but such conduct is cynical and loathsome as though Washington no longer sees the bounds of elementary decency."

"We take note of each of such cases and make conclusions," the ministry stressed.
HCM CITY  At least six member countries of the Transpacific Partnerships new avatar, the CPTPP, including Viet Nam, are likely to ratify it this year, enabling it to come into force in early 2019, a seminar heard in HCM City yesterday.

On March 8 the CPTPP, formally known as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, was signed in Santiago, Chile, by the 11 remaining countries -- Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Viet Nam -- after the US pulled out from the original deal, the TPP, last November.

Gaining access to the US market was a major reason for many countries to sign the deal, meaning the USs withdrawal made TPP-11 less attractive, Ngo Chung Khanh, deputy director of the Ministry of Industry and Trades multilateral trade policy department, said.

But it is only in the short term. In the long term, the CPTPP still offers a lot of benefits [to member countries].

The CPTPP is a deal that reaffirms freedom of trade in the Asia Pacific, and joining the pact does not only give us access to 10 markets but in the long run to others as the deal will be expanded in future.

The CPTPP, which will bring 90 per cent of trade tariffs between 11 nations down to zero, is very similar to the original TPP, though 22 of the latters provisions (mostly insisted on by the US) have been suspended.

Khanh said it is possible the US would come back to join the CPTPP as the pact is gaining interest in many countries like the UK, Indonesia and South Korea.

But he said from his experience as a member of Viet Nams WTO negotiating delegation a decade ago that a country achieving membership of an existing organisation is tough because then the negotiations involve one versus many.

He said at the next meeting the CPTPP members would discuss guidelines for countries wishing to join the pact in future.

He advised Vietnamese firms to get up to speed on the new terms of the CPTPP to take advantage of the opportunities it would bring in 2019.

The pact will come into force two months after it is fully ratified by six of the 11 members. Japan has taken the initiative and ratified it. Besides, Canada, Australia, Peru, Mexico, Chile, and Viet Nam are all committed to ratifying the pact this year.

CPTPP members represent 13.5 per cent of the global economy and a population of 500 million, which is larger than that of the Europe Union.

According to estimates from the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the economies of the CPTPP members will add 1.7 percentage points because of the deal.

Viet Nam and Peru will be the biggest winners with their GDPs benefiting by 2-3 per cent.  VNS
HA NOI  Chinese enterprises importing Vietnamese fruits to the country must provide information about the origin and quality of such fruits while following import procedures from April 1, 2018.

This was announced by Viet Nams Ministry of Industry and Trade.

The ministrys Asia-Africa Market Department said the ministry had recently received requests from the provincial authorities to trace the origin of Vietnamese fruits imported by China via border gates in Guangxi Province.

Thus, from April 1, Chinese enterprises importing fruits from Viet Nam must provide packaging images containing traceability and quality information of product when they follow the procedures for getting imported animal and plant quarantine permits at Guangxis import quarantine management agency.

The department said the enterprises must list the name of the fruits and their origin as well as the name and code of the packaging facilities either in Chinese or English.

In addition to this, businesses can add labels with the above-mentioned information, bar code, quick response code or anti-counterfeiting stamp to be able to be checked any time.

According to the department, in 2017, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine of China gave permission to four border gates in Guangxi Province to import fruits. Currently, the province has seven border gates allowing the import of fruits.

Meanwhile, Guangxi Province also imports fruits from Viet Nam that have preferential loans for businesses importing them, including dragon fruit, longan and mango.

The Pingxiang China-ASEAN Fruit Import and Export Chamber said the demand for imported fruits in China was huge. Fruit imports in Pingxiang City alone accounts for nearly 50 per cent of Chinas total fruit imports.  VNS
HA NOI  Viet Nams enterprises should promote the transfer of technology from Israel to develop their businesses and also increase trade promotion activities to this market.

Le Thai Hoa, deputy director of the Asia-Africa Market Department under the Ministry of Industry and Trade, said this at a seminar on trade promotion to Israel held by the Ministry of Industry and Trade in Ha Noi on Thursday. The seminar was aimed at updating Vietnamese enterprises with information about the Israeli market.

Hoa said in the field of agriculture, Israel is one of the countries with a developed agricultural sector so, Viet Nam can become a potential market for Israeli enterprises in the fields of manufacturing and production of high-tech agricultural machinery.

Key export products of Viet Nam will have the chance to enter the Israeli market, especially agricultural products such as rice, coffee, tea, and pepper, as well as furniture, garments and shoes.

Israel is an easy market but it still needs quality goods. The market does not have many customers, but their income is quite high. Consumers in this market segment demand high quality and reasonably priced goods, he said.

To enter the market quickly and efficiently, Vietnamese enterprises should participate in trade fairs. This is the best way for Israeli consumers to discover Vietnamese products, Hoa said.

In addition, local businesses need to coordinate with relevant agencies to organise advertisement programmes, trade promotions and seminars to advertise Vietnamese goods.

Le Hoang Tai, deputy head of the Viet Nam Trade Promotion Agency, said that since the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1993, the two countries have established cooperative relations in many fields.

The bilateral trade value of Viet Nam and Israel increased from US$68 million in 2005 to some $1 billion in 2017, Tai said. Of this, Viet Nam exported goods and services worth $700 million to Israel and saw imports worth $345 million from Israel.

By 2017, Israel had 26 direct investment projects in Viet Nam, with a total capital of over $47 million, ranking 11th out of 56 countries and territories investing in Viet Nam. These include seven projects in the manufacturing and processing industry with a total capital of some $25 million.

Meanwhile, Israel has committed to providing a $250 million credit package to Vietnamese businesses in the near future.  VNS
HA NOI  Real estate and construction firm 577 Investment Corporation has lost VN614.7 billion (US$27.3 million) in market capitalisation following the fire at Carina Plaza in HCM City on March 23.

The corporation has listed more than 97.5 million shares on the HCM Stock Exchange, and its shares have lost nearly 25.5 per cent in the last five trading sessions to close Thursday at VN19,000 per share.

Its shares started to decline on March 23, when a fire broke out at a building of Carina Plaza early on the day, killing 13 residents and injuring 90 others.

Carina Plaza was constructed by contractor Hung Thanh Construction-Trading-Services-Production Co Ltd, in which 577 Investment Corp holds a 95 per cent stake.

On March 26, 577 Investment Corp. sent a filing to the HCM Stock Exchange, in which it said the two companies had worked out with the city authorities to support the families of the apartment building and investigate the cause of the fire.

Regarding its relationship with Hung Thanh company, 577 Investment Corp. said although it held 95 per cent stake at the company, the contractor was an independent legal entity and was the sole contractor of Carina Plaza.

The responsibilities, obligations and interests of the stakeholders in the fire case will be determined by legal enforcement, the company said in its statement.

On March 29, HCM City Police Department reported that an apartment building at the Plaza was set on fire after a motorbike in the basement parking caught fire. No security staff was present to control the situation.

All emergency doors were open, and the fire alarm system (water sprinklers) was not functional, according to the citys police department.

The department had invited the director of Hung Thanh company to co-work on the case. The director refused citing poor health.

The department decided to initiate an official investigation into the case on March 29.  VNS
HA NOI  The starting price for the initial public offering (IPO) of the Vietnam Television Cable Corporation (VTVCab) has been set at VN140,900 (US$6.26) per share.

VTVCab will sell 42.2 million shares, or 47.84 per cent of the firms charter capital, at its upcoming IPO on April 17 at the Ha Noi Stock Exchange.

Under its equitisation plan, which was approved by the Prime Minister in January 2016, VTV Cab will have a charter capital of VN884 billion ($39.3 million), with the Government reducing its ownership to 51 per cent (more than 45 million shares).

The total value of the company as of December 31, 2015, was more than VN7.9 trillion ($351 million), with the Government holding more than 80 per cent stake.

More than one million shares (1.16 per cent of the capital) will be sold to the pay TV providers current employees at cheap prices.

VTVCab is a State-owned enterprise founded in 1995. In 2012, the company was renamed to its current name and had opened more than 100 offices and branches across the country.

During the 2014-16 period, VTVCab posted a steady growth in its total revenue, but its post-tax profit showed some decline.

It earned an average of VN2 trillion in total revenue during that period. Its post-tax profit rose to VN130.5 billion in 2015 from VN126.5 billion in 2014 but fell sharply to VN76.5 billion a year later, in 2016.

During 2018-20, the company projects its total revenue to increase from VN2.95 trillion in 2018 to VN3.5 trillion in 2019 and VN3.96 trillion in 2020.

Its pre-tax profit for the next period is also expected to rise from VN74.3 billion (in 2018) to VN81 billion and VN106.6 billion in the next two years, respectively.  VNS
CA MAU  Ca Mau Province plans to help set up and attract around 6,000 new businesses by 2020, and 15,000 companies by 2030, by offering funding and changing legal procedures to accommodate the private sector.

The province plans to focus on investment, distribution networks, infrastructure and business registration procedures, while providing more aid to improve technologies and training for the workforce.

Local authorities are also considering new tax policies and other ways to aid small- to medium-sized businesses, especially those that focus on Ca Maus key production areas like aquaculture and agriculture.

Lam Van Bi, deputy chairman of Ca Mau Peoples Committee, said that private businesses account for around 70 per cent of the total number in the province, contributing greatly to economic development of the region.  VNS
HA NOI  Countries in the Great Mekong Sub-region (GMS) should focus on improving the infrastructure to better the connectivity among them, said Arkhom Termpittayapaisith, Thailands Minister of Transport.

Speaking at the GMS Business Summit on Friday, he said the connectivity among GMS countries was not good enough as the local governments in power were not very efficient.

The GMS community is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year.

Arkhom also urged member economies to work together to develop new industries with high-added value, while ensuring the sustainable development of agriculture and food sectors as the two had always been the strength of the region.

The six member countries of the GMS community should also improve the business and investment environment so that they can move forward and benefit each other, Arkhom said.

To do that, the governments must work together to reduce regulations and legal barriers that have prevented the GMS business community from developing further, he added.

Local governments should ensure that all businesses are able to benefit from the digitalisation era or the 4.0 industrial revolution, so that they can move further and develop and stimulate more values not only for their own nations but also for the whole region, Arkhom said.

Vu Tien Loc, President of Viet Nam Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said despite achieving many milestones in the past, the GMS community has remained weak in its own development compared to ASEAN, Asia and the world regarding per capita gross domestic product, infrastructure development, financial and technological foundation as well as quality of human resources.

The sub-regional business community will play an important role in driving the regions economic growth, bringing opportunities to become a new manufacturing hub of the world while maintaining its advantages in abundant natural resources, cheap labour and young population, Loc said.

Besides such advantages, GMS economies must improve their economic models and competitiveness, while the GMS business community must meet international standards and be present in the global supply chain, he said.

Thus, a major boost for the development of the GMS community will be entrepreneurship, development of micro and small- and medium-sized enterprises as well as integration of woman-owned firms, he added.  VNS
HA NOI  Countries in the Greater Mekong region need billions of dollars to meet the increasing demand for infrastructure, but institutional barriers are stopping the private sector from investing.

The region, consisting of Viet Nam, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and China  particularly the Yunnan Province and Guangxi Autonomous Region, is a young and developing region, Vietnamese Minister of Transport Nguyen Van The told economic experts, representatives of international organsisations and local and international businesses at a sideline conference on regional infrastructure and financing of the 6th Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS) Summit on Friday.

Apart from China or Thailand, other countries like Viet Nam are yet to modernise and fully develop their infrastructure, he said.

The said that Viet Nam planned to build up to 8,500km of expressway to catch up with other countries in Asia. However, less than 10 per cent was completed so far with about 3,000km pending and no plans in the near future for more than 6,500km of roads.

Viet Nam is calling for more transport investment in public-private partnerships (PPP), the minister said, adding that the National Assembly is expected to pass a law this year which will serve as a legal basis for PPP investors.

Level playing field

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) estimated that the GMS would need at least US$33 billion for infrastructure investment between 2014 and 2020, with only 80 per cent able to be mobilised from the budget of the countries and development banks, leaving them about $6.4 billion short, mostly in transport and energy infrastructure investment.

Mobilising private capital will be absolutely needed to bridge this gap, said Supee Teravaninthorn, General Director of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Banks Investment Operation Department I.

But the private sector doesnt invest for charity. They need fair competition to invest.

A report by the ADB showed that infrastructure investment in Asia during 2010-2014 heavily depended on the public sector which funded more than 90 per cent of the regions overall investment.

That translated to about 5.1 per cent of annual GDP, while merely 0.4 per cent came from the private sector.

There were always concerns over how to find a reliable private company and let it invest in infrastructure, which resulted in a reluctant attitude from the Government to open the playing field for the private sector, said Viet Nam-Oman Investment JSC Co CEO Nguyen Hong Son.

But we need local private companies for partnerships as we dont know what is the situation in Viet Nam, for example the land clearance process, the licensing and the changing tariffs, he said.

Take solar energy sector for example. There have been 50 licences granted for solar projects. But how many have had land cleared?

Some companies came to the domestic banks for financial support to carry out their projects, Son added, but what the banks offered was basically impossible to perform an infrastructure project.

The private sector was waiting for a whole package of policies that would open the path for them to invest in infrastructure, and the Government should take this into account if they want to mobilise funding from the private sector, the CEO said.

Hard and soft infrastructure

While stressing the need for more infrastructure investment, particularly in transport, energy and information communications and technology  or hard infrastructure, Teravaninthorn also urged regional governments to work more on soft infrastructure.

For example, she said, Viet Nam built a $200-million expressway that leads to the border of China which saved travel time by one or two days.

But with the cargo sat at the border that time saving amounts to nothing, she said.

In terms of transport connectivity, dont underestimate soft infrastructure like the customs and the one-stop border mechanisms. We have to be more efficient and effective for economic development, she said.  VNS
HA NOI  Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS) countries need to better use the private sector and high technology to boost their sustainable development, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc said on March 30.

"The GMS economies need to reveal new drivers for development amid a transformation of the world economy and development environment," he said at the Plenary Meeting of the GMS Business Summit.

The first-ever business summit was a part of the sixth GMS Summit in the context of the GMS Community celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. The GMS includes five ASEAN countries (Viet Nam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Myanmar) and Yunnan and Guangxi provinces of China.

With a total population of 340 million people and total GDP exceeding US$1.3 trillion, the GMS can become a shared economic region, a common market and open up new opportunities for economic development, according to the Prime Minister.

PM Phuc urged member economies of the GMS to maintain their unique identity as an effective mechanism to amplify the combined determination and effort of all sides in order to generate new resources to settle differences, broaden and deepen the sphere for economic co-operation.

Each member economy needs to create a favourable business environment to harness all the potential and innovation of businesses and people, thus, attracting assistance from international development partners and outside resources for the sustainable development of the GMS and Cambodia-Laos-Viet Nam (CLV) region in particular, according to the Vietnamese leader.

Technological advancements and breakthroughs are also important new resources that will carry the potential for connecting GMS and CLV economies and surpass the bounds of GMS founders imagination from 25 years ago.

These will turn into new drivers for the development of the GMS in the future. However, sub-regional economies need to ensure sustainable and harmonious development to achieve a prosperous, sustainable and integrated GMS.

Rapid and sustainable development must remain the top priority, as it is the future generations expectation toward each of our decisions and actions. Rapid growth must go hand-in-hand with protection of the ecology and natural resources, especially the sustainable management and use of the Mekong Rivers valuable resource, he said.

Viet Nams Government would strive to be a facilitating, action-oriented Government to serve its people and businesses, he said.

Such a Government would focus on creating a favourable environment for development, improving institutional and legal frameworks, enhancing management capacity, making further investment in the infrastructure, promoting international integration in the GMS and CLV regions and bringing equal opportunities for all economic sectors, he added.

Connect GMS enterprises

Sok Phiset, Vice Chairman of GMS-Busines Council and President of the Cambodia Young Entrepreneurs Association, on Friday launched the GMS Business Connect (GBC) application that is expected to become a platform for sub-regional businesses to co-operate and boost corporate performances.

Companies and economies must use high-tech applications to improve the links in the sub-region, providing accurate information and data about GMS companies, Sok said.

Enterprises in the sub-region will encounter many challenges given the rise of the fourth industrial revolution and regional economies pushing to finalise free trade agreements (FTAs), according to Phan Vinh Quang, Deputy Project Director of the Mekong Business Initiative.

Therefore, businesses need to transform, especially with their technological background before the market makes them change, Quang said, adding that they should focus on their strengths and opportunities first and learn from failures at the same time.

Souphaphone Souannavong, Founder & Managing Director of TOH-LAO Coworking Space & TOH-X Coworking Space, said that the Lao government had implemented many policies to encourage start-ups by standardising the business environment and creating opportunities for entrepreneurs.

Though start-ups in Laos had not become typical examples of the sub-region, they had worked efficiently, made some achievements and had a lot of potential, she said.  VNS
HA NOI  Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc has ordered ministries, sectors and localities to use their resources more efficiently to better cope with natural disasters, which are striking the country more frequently and severely due to climate change.

The PM issued the order while chairing a meeting organised by the National Steering Committee on Natural Disaster Prevention and Control yesterday.

The effort was a major task for the agencies to better cope with natural disasters this year, he said.

A person, who works in a sector tasked with coping with natural disasters, must be well-trained, dedicated and responsible, Phuc said.

Any officer who lacks knowledge of coping with natural disasters that lets any resident go hungry or thirsty during natural disasters, must take responsibility, Phuc said.

Phuc also said agriculture should be reshaped to better adapt to natural disasters.

Although the country had made many efforts, the damage suffered from natural disasters was still huge, he said.

Data from the committee shows that natural disasters killed 386 people and caused losses of VN60 trillion (US$2.6 billion) last year alone. The losses are estimated to be equal to 1-1.5 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

To minimise the damage during natural disasters, Phuc required local administrations to focus on taking prompt actions to cope with floods, torrential rain and landslide and to ensure safety for dams and reservoirs during floods and prolonged torrential rain.

Major solutions

Speaking at the meeting, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development cum head of the steering committee Nguyen Xuan Cuong pointed out three major solutions to better prepare for natural disasters this year.

Cuong said first, the committee would build a plan at both national and local levels to cope with natural disasters, with safety during natural disasters for public works included.

The committee also planned to call for more investment to enhance infrastructure and make it ready for natural disasters, he said.

Lastly, he said perfecting the process of dealing with dams and reservoirs to ensure safety for people during any natural disaster was important.

Former agricultural minister Le Huy Ngo, said: We have to come to storm-prone areas before the storm comes.

Natural disasters 2017: many records

The committee said 2017 featured many natural disaster records. There were 16 typhoons and four tropical low-pressure systems hitting the East Sea - the highest number of typhoons and tropical low-pressure systems recorded so far.

The total number of torrential rains in 2017 was estimated to be 40 per cent higher than many previous years. For example, prolonged torrential rains battering the northern province of Hoa Binh last October, resulted in the Hoa Binh Hydro-power Plant opening eight floodgates at the same time, a first for the plant.

In a related movement, the National Centre for Hydro-meteorological Centre warned that natural disasters developments this year would become more complicated.

The number of typhoons and tropical low-pressure systems this year is predicted to be the same compared to last year and central provinces are still expected to suffer the most from typhoons and tropical low-pressure systems. Heat waves are forecast to appear in the north and mid-north localities later than last year while torrential rains will appear between June and August in the north. VNS
HA NOI  The Viet Nam International Travel Mart 2018 (VITM) began yesterday in Ha Noi, drawing tourism, cuisine and culture lovers.

This year, VITM features more than 670 businesses including travel companies, hotels, hospitality services providers and tourism promotion centres from 21 countries and territories and 45 provinces and cities of Viet Nam.

This years theme "Online tourism  Viet Nam tourism makes an advance on 4.0 Industry" is part of the tourism industrys efforts to promote 4.0 technology for economic growth, as instructed by the Government.

Attending the opening ceremony, Deputy Prime Minister Vu uc am said he was pleased with the fast growth of the Vietnamese tourism industry.

We want to join hands with international partners and regional economies to boost the development of tourism, he said.

This year, we will discuss the role of 4.0 technology in developing tourism. We will take full advantage of technology to connect peoples, organisations, countries and enterprises and to develop tourism.

VITM includes dozens of seminars, workshops, round-table meetings, and press conferences among other events, facilitating tourism businesses and experts discussions, recommendations and proposals on tourism policies, professionalism and skills.

Key events include an online tourism forum, a symposium on "Conservation and Development of Traditional Vietnamese Food Culture" and a tourism start-ups forum.

In addition, tourism businesses and airlines will offer thousands of promotional tours and discounted airline tickets, aiming to boost the number of domestic and inbound visitors.

Tourism has proves itself to be a sector which rapidly and effectively applies information technology in every activity, said Vu The Binh, vice chairman of the Viet Nam Tourism Association (VITA), co-organiser of the event.

Ngo Van Quy, vice chairman of the Ha Noi Peoples Committee, said VITM is the largest international tourism fair in the country held annually from 2013 in Ha Noi.

Through five successive years, the fair has affirmed itself as the leading tourism fair in the country and the region, contributing to promoting the image of the country and people of Viet Nam and Ha Noi in particular, with international friends, to enhance the position of Viet Nams tourism in the region and to attract many tourist organisations, international and domestic tourism businesses to participate in, buy and sell tourism products and services.

In recent years, the tourism industry in the city has developed rapidly.

The number of international visitors to Ha Noi has increased by an average of 20-23 per cent each year over the last five years and accounted for about 40 per cent of international visitors to Viet Nam.

Travel enterprises like Flamingo Group offer attractive tours during VITM.  VNS Photo Truong Vi

In 2017, the capital received 23.83 million visitors, up 9 per cent compared to 2016, accounting for 27.1 per cent of the countrys tourists, of which international tourists reached 4.95 million, up 23 per cent from 2016.

In the first two month of 2018, tourists arrivals to Ha Noi continued to grow, reaching 4.46 million, up 11 per cent from the same period last year. Notably, international tourists to the city reached 1.5 million, 31 per cent more year-on-year.

With the development of tourism in recent years, Ha Noi ranked third in the most attractive tourist destinations in Asia and 12th in the best tourist destinations in the world according to according to the poll results of world famous travel site Trip Advisor, said Quy.

This result is recognition of the efforts of authorities and citizens of the capital to build a safe, friendly, quality and attractive tourist destination, he continued.

Nasih Moosa, managing director of UI Hotels Group from Maldives, attended the VITM for the first time. He said the number of Vietnamese tourists to Maldives increases 25 per cent each year, which is why he attended the forum.

Viet Nam is a promising market for us, said Moosa. During the first day of the VITM, I can invite visitors to come to our booth to learn more about tour packages and destinations in Maldives. We also exchange with partners from Viet Nam and other countries. Its really a good place to boost tourism industry.

VITM is not just a platform for travel agents and companies, it also features the culture of various countries through their booths.

Visitors can enjoy Thai massages, learn to make Korean souvenirs and try various cuisines from different regions of Viet Nam.

The event will run until April 1 at the Friendship Culture Palace, 91 Tran Hung ao Street, Ha Noi.  VNS
LONDON  More than 100,000 visitors are expected in Windsor, west of London, for the wedding of Prince Harry and US actress Meghan Markle on May 19, police said on Thursday.

"The policing operation will be amongst the largest in Thames Valley Polices history," the force said in a statement.

"This national celebration is expected to attract in excess of 100,000 people from around the world to Windsor," it said.

Thames Valley Police also announced a raft of security measures already in place, including road barriers and number-plate-recognition technology ahead of the big day.

Local businesses and visitors "can expect to see an increased police presence" ahead of the wedding including armed police, search dogs and helicopters, the police said.

"On the day, visitors may be stopped and checked," it said, adding that police would also be patrolling stations and train carriages into Windsor.

"Once you arrive in Windsor there will be a screening and search regime. Any items that may pose a risk to the public will be removed," the statement said.

Prince Harry and Markle are to marry at St Georges Chapel, within the grounds of Queen Elizabeth IIs Windsor Castle residence.  AFP
HA NOI  Former Politburo member and chairman of the State-owned oil group PetroVietnam (PVN) inh La Thang yesterday received an 18-year sentence for his principal role in the notorious OceanBank case that caused losses of VN800 billion (US$34.8 million) to the State budget.

The former Minister of Transport and former Party Secretary of the HCM City Party Committee will also be required to repay VN600 billion ($26.34 million), a three quarter of the total losses, per the verdict of the Ha Noi Peoples Court, concluding the 10-day trial into the major economic mismanagement case and a highlight in the Viet Nam Communist Partys anti-corruption drive.

Thang, along with five other defendants  PVN former deputy director-general Nguyen Xuan Son and four members of PVNs board of directors  who received sentences ranging from several months on probation to five-year imprisonment, were charged with deliberate violations of the States economic regulations, causing serious consequences.

Slapped with the heaviest penalty in the case, Ninh Van Quynh, former chief accountant of PVN, received a total 23 years in prison  seven years for serious economic mismanagement and 16 years for abuse of power to misappropriate assets. Quynh was found to have received gifts worth several billion ong  including cash and a luxury apartment in Ha Noi  from Son (sourced from OceanBanks illegally gained profits)  for his lobbying efforts that would sway PVNs actions in OceanBanks interests.

The other defendants were also asked by the court to pay the rest of the civic compensation for the full amount of the $34.8 million loss.

This is the second time Thang was put on trial, as he already got 13 years for a separate case of mismanagement at PVN.

Flouting the law

In 2008, after PVNs initial plan to establish a joint-stock commercial bank was rejected, the oil group switched to investing instead into the private OceanBank.

The entire process, involving three share purchases lasting from 2008 through 2011, was conducted at inh La Thangs helm and by other defendants, despite their full awareness of OceanBanks then small scale and limited financial capacity.

Coupled with OceanBank chairman Ha Van Thams wilful violations of regulations for credit institutions, the bank later suffered serious losses and the owners equity dropped to minus value, meaning PVNs shares were essentially wiped out when the State Bank of Viet Nam had to step in and buy it for zero ong in 2015 to avoid the banks otherwise unavoidable bankruptcy.

During the trial, Thang and his lawyer several times argued that he did not intentionally commit wrongdoings, claiming that the capital contribution was approved by the then Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung and Government, and that it was in line with the 2006 decision to establish the oil group, which allowed the corporation to invest outside of the energy sector.

However, the judge panel said that Thangs decision was made without going through PVNs board of directors, or without regards to the finance ministrys regulations on conditions for capital contribution. His decision was only reported to the then Prime Minister afterwards.

Since January 11, 2011, the law on credit institutions provided that a shareholder must not hold more than 15 per cent of a credit institutions shares, however, Thang directed his subordinates to buy more shares of the bank resulting in PVN holding 20 per cent of shares at OceanBank.

The defendants lawyers also argued that the 34.8 million losses were not real since PVNs investment yielded productive results, and PVN shareholders received their dividends each year, and that Thang and his cohorts actions did not have any causal relations with the consequences.

The judge panel noted that by the end of 2012, OceanBank was already shouldering losses of VN992 billion and still refused to correct its wrongdoings, according to the State Banks inspection. The inspection results also showed that the banks annual earnings reports were untruthful, as were the so-called dividends paid to shareholders.

The judge panel said there was enough evidence to establish a causal relationship between the intentional wrongdoings of the defendants and the loss incurred.  VNS
Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc (r) receives Belarusian Deputy Prime Minister Vladimir Semashko in Ha Noi yesterday. VNA/VNS Photo Thong Nhat

HA NOI  Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc wants Viet Nam and Belarus to employ measures to raise their trade value from the current US$100 million as there is huge untapped co-operation potential.

He made the remarks in Ha Noi yesterday at a reception for visiting Belarusian Deputy Prime Minister Vladimir Semashko.



The PM described the visit by the Belarusian guest as a milestone, ushering in new prospects for co-operation between Viet Nam and Belarus, stressing that Viet Nam always respects and wishes to continue maintaining and fostering sustainable friendship and co-operation with Belarus.



High-level visits in recent years created an impetus for the two countries to broaden their links across politics, economy, and people-to-people exchange. The free trade agreement between Viet Nam and the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) that took effect in late 2016 in particular opened up many new opportunities for the two sides economic partnership, he said.



The Belarusian Deputy PM briefed his host on the fruitful outcomes of his working session with the Ministry of Industry and Trade of Viet Nam, referring to their review of bilateral co-operation after a year and a half of implementing the Viet Nam-EEU free trade agreement.



He suggested boosting bilateral co-operation in Belaruss strong fields like the production of dairy products, mechanical engineering and industrial products.



PM Phuc hailed the working session his guest participated in, expressing his hope that the two sides would share more information and hold regular exchanges between businesses to market their products to raise the trade value.



Viet Nam is ready to provide the best possible conditions for Belarusian businesses to co-operate, invest and do productive, stable and long-term business associated with Viet Nams sustainable development, the leader said.



He pledged that the country will work to facilitate the entry of Belarusian industrial, mechanical engineering, energy and mining products in its market.



Referring to the East Sea, the PM asked Belarus to support the just stance of Viet Nam and ASEAN of addressing disputes in the waters by peaceful means based on international law, especially the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea 1982.  VNS
Chairwoman of the National Assembly Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan visits the Royal HaskoningDHVs Netherlands Airport Consultants (NACO) yesterday during her official visit to the Netherlands. VNA/VNS Photo Trong uc

AMSTERDAM  Viet Nams aviation infrastructure projects will bring opportunities to Dutch manufacturers, consultants and education centres operating in aviation and space, according to Chairwoman of the National Assembly Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan.

She made the statement while visiting the Royal HaskoningDHVs Netherlands Airport Consultants (NACO) yesterday during her official visit to the Netherlands.



Ngan said that aviation solutions provided by the Dutch side for Viet Nam under the Partners for International Business Programme Dutch Aviation Vietnam aim to set up business ties and recommend training activities between aviation agencies from both sides.



She lauded NACOs participation in 550 aviation projects in 100 countries worldwide and expressed her belief that NACO will be successful in its role as a co-ordinator and representative for eight companies, universities and research institute involved in this programme.



The aviation sector has played an important part in Viet Nams development, she affirmed, adding that the country is working to develop aviation infrastructure to become a passenger and cargo transport centre in the region.



Priority will be given to the expansion of Tan Son Nhat International Airport, construction of Long Thanh International Airport and the opening of new airports, she told company executives.



After visitng NACO, the top legislator and the Vietnamese delegation left the Netherlands, wrapping up their visit to the European country.  VNS
HA NOI  General Secretary of the Communist Party of Viet Nam (CPV) Nguyen Phu Trong had talks with First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) Central Committee and President of the Councils of State and Ministers of Cuba Raul Castro Ruz in Havana on March 29 afternoon (local time).

At the talks following the official welcome ceremony, Raul Castro Ruz affirmed that the State visit by the CPV leader is of special importance to the reinforcement of the ties between the two Parties, States and peoples.



He congratulated Viet Nam on its enormous achievements over 30 years of oi Moi (reforms), voicing his belief that under the CPVs leadership, the Vietnamese people will continue to gain even more accomplishment in national development and protection.



General Secretary Trong underlined that the Party, State and people of Viet Nam have a sincere friendship with their Cuban counterparts. He stressed late Leader Fidel Castro was a big friend of Viet Nam, and his example, ideology and revolutionary career will live in the heart of the two peoples forever.



He also congratulated the Cuban Party, State and people on their persistence in the revolutionary path, the accomplishments in updating their socio-economic model, initiated and implemented by the PCC, and recent successful local and national assembly elections.



He expressed his belief that the Cuban Party, State and people will keep solidarity to tackle all challenges and difficulties to promote the countrys revolutionary cause.



At the talks, the two leaders noted that the special Cuba- Viet Nam relationship, nurtured by late President Ho Chi Minh and Leader Fidel Castro, is a priceless asset of the two Parties, States and peoples. The two sides need to make unceasing efforts to protect, develop and pass those ties down to future generations.



Raul Castro lauded the support the Vietnamese Party, State and people have given to Cuba, appreciating Viet Nams decision to free the Cuban Government from its debt to Viet Nam during the visit.



Noting with pleasure the fruitful relationship between Viet Nam and Cuba, the leaders agreed to increase high-level exchanges and meetings, improve the quality and efficiency of cooperation mechanisms and implement signed agreements.



At the same time, they will intensify the sharing of experience, especially in leadership and management training, socio-economic development and Party building.



Host and guest decided to step up cooperation in economy, trade, investment and education for young generations while continuing close cooperation in national defence and security, as well as external affairs.



Apart from enhancing mutual support and coordination at multilateral forums, the two sides will intensify people-to-people exchange and education for youths of the two countries.



The leaders also agreed to work together to seek solutions to elevate bilateral economic ties more effectively, matching the potential for their cooperation.



They also highlighted similarities in the two countries stance on many international issues and agreed to maintain mutual support at international organisations and multilateral forums to which both are members, particularly the UN.



Viet Nam committed to backing Cubas bid to run for a seat in the UN Human Rights Council for 2021-2023. Meanwhile, Cuba pledged its support for Vietnams nomination for a seat in the UN Security Council for 2020-2021.



Party General Secretary Trong invited the Cuban leader to soon return to Viet Nam. Raul Castro Ruz accepted the invitation, saying he will visit the country at an appropriate time.



Earlier, Party General Secretary Trong and his entourage paid floral tribute to Cubans national hero Jose Marti at his statue.  VNA/VNS
HAVANA  Viet Nam has chosen to free Cuba of its debts to the Southeast Asian nation.

The agreement was part of several deals signed between the two countries during the State visit to Cuba by General Secretary of the Communist Party of Viet Nam (CPV) Central Committee Nguyen Phu Trong from March 28-31.

The documents also include a co-operation agreement between the CPV and the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) for 2018-2023 and an agreement on judicial support in criminal affairs.

A memorandum of understanding (MoU) on the enhancement of scientific and technological collaboration between Viet Nams Ministry of Science and Technology, and the Cuban Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment, a MoU between the Vietnamese Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, and Cubas Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment and another MoU between the Vietnamese and Cuban construction ministries were also inked.

Notably, Viet Nam and Cuba also agreed to scale up efforts to sign a new trade agreement, putting it into force as soon as possible.

The Vietnam News Agency (VNA) and Prensa Latina News Agency also inked an agreement, aiming to increase the exchange of information and consolidate the traditional co-operation between the two agencies.

The VNA also reached a MoU with the Cuban News Agency (ACN) in an effort to raise the efficiency of co-operation and make their information sharing and professional assistance more suitable with the requirements of the modern press.VNS
HAVANA  Cubas President has received Viet Nams highest honour, the Gold Star Order.

General Secretary of the Communist Party of Viet Nam (CPV) Central Committee Nguyen Phu Trong presented the award to First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) Central Committee and President of the Council of State and the Council of Ministers of Cuba Raul Castro Ruz.

The honour was granted to the Cuban leader in recognition of his contributions to the solidarity between the Parties, States, Governments and peoples of the two countries, at a ceremony in Havana on Thursday (local time) within the visit to Cuba by Party General Secretary Trong from 28-31.

Speaking at the ceremony, Raul Castro highlighted the time-tested relationship between the two countries.

The Parties, Governments and people of Cuba and Viet Nam have always stood side by side and shared experience in building socialism, he said, hoping that the bilateral relationship will be preserved by young generations of the two countries.

Raul Castro thanked the Vietnamese Party, State and people for the honour, and described it as a vivid manifestation of bilateral solidarity.

The Cuban leader expressed his wish that Vietnamese people, under the leadership of the CPV, will obtain greater achievements in national construction and development, and that Cuba-Viet Nam ties will continuously yield fruits. VNS
HA NOI  Viet Nam and Cuba have issued a joint statement during the State visit to Cuba by General Secretary of the Communist Party of Viet Nam (CPV) Central Committee Nguyen Phu Trong.

The visit is made at the invitation of First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) Central Committee and President of the Council of State and the Council of Ministers of Cuba General Raul Castro Ruz, the joint statement says.

Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong met with Second Secretary of the PCC Central Committee Jose Ramon Machado Ventura, Politburo member and President of the Cuban National Assembly Esteban Lazo Hernandez, and Politburo member and First Vice President of the Cuban Council of State and the Council of Ministers Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez.

Vietnamese and Cuban leaders agreed the special friendship and solidarity between the two countries is a symbol of the era and an invaluable asset of the Parties and people.

Their resolve is to follow in the footsteps of the friendship fostered by President Ho Chi Minh and Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro.

The leaders agreed on the importance of expanding and deepening the friendship and comprehensive co-operation between the two countries, thus actively contributing to their national construction and defence, and to maintaining peace, stability, and development in the region and the world.

During the talks, they expressed their joy at the flourishing bilateral relations between the two nations, and affirmed their determination to turn the special relations into a new development period, on the basis of political trust.

They stressed the two sides should work closely to improve the efficiency of bilateral economic, trade and investment co-operation, while comparing their notes on international and regional issues of common concern.

The Vietnamese Party Chief congratulated Cuba on its recent successful local and national assembly elections, expressing his belief Cuba will continue the process of updating the socialism economic model, opening a new development stage of the process to build a sovereign, independent, socialist, democratic, prosperous and sustainable state.

He reiterated Viet Nams consistent stance on supporting Cubas struggle for immediate and unconditional removal of economic, trade and financial sanctions against the country, and efforts to normalise the Cuba-US relations on the basis of equality, and respect for sovereignty, independence and political institutions of each country.

Viet Nam appreciated the prestige and role of Cuba in the Latin American and Caribbean regions, and in the international arena as well. President Castro congratulated Viet Nam on its prominent achievements in its oi moi (renewal) process initiated by the CPV.

He spoke highly of Viet Nams peaceful foreign policy and international prestige; its efforts to protect independence and sovereignty, and to promote international integration; and the countrys contributions to peace, stability, co-operation and development in the Southeast Asia and Asia-Pacific regions, and in the world, adding that Cuba supports and believes Viet Nam will continue obtaining greater achievements in the future.

The two leaders agreed the countries should maintain regular meetings at all levels, and discuss and share experience related to state leadership, socio-economic management, and Party building.

The two sides stressed the importance of bilateral co-operation mechanisms like the exchange and co-operation agreement between the CPV and the PCC, the two Parties theoretical workshops, the Inter-governmental Committee on economic, scientific and technical co-operation, and the political consultation between the two foreign ministries.

They expressed their resolve to enhance the effectiveness of these mechanisms. General Secretary Trong and President Raul Castro emphasised the significance of enhancing economic partnership. They highly valued the two sides finalisation of the negotiation on a new trade agreement, considering this a basis for them to continue expanding economic and trade ties. Cuba also supports the increase of Viet Nams investment in the country.

The two sides will consider their potential to boost co-operation in priority fields such as energy, telecommunication, tourism, construction, healthcare services, industry, agriculture, pharmaceutical, biotechnology, transport, and other spheres.

President Castro thanked the Vietnamese Party, State and Government for freeing the Cuban Government from its debt to the Vietnamese Government, describing this as an illustration of the two countries special relations. The two leaders expressed their delight at the complete similarities in the countries stance on many international issues.

They stressed international disputes need to be resolved by peaceful means on the basis on international law and the UN Charter. They also underlined the necessity to respect the principles of independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity and the right to self-determination of countries, non-interference in other countries internal affairs, and no use of force or threat to use force.

They share the view that the increasingly tightened bilateral links will help expand Viet Nams co-operation with Latin American and Caribbean nations and Cubas co-operation with Asia-Pacific countries.

They re-affirmed the validity of the fundamental principles of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), stressing the targets and principles of NAM need to be thoroughly respected.

They also applauded NAMs contributions to the protection of the principles of international law. Both sides renewed the commitment to promoting international peace and security and disarmament, especially nuclear disarmament.

They expressed their delight at the two countries signing and participation in the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and also agreed to effectively implement the Sustainable Development Goals and the 2030 Agenda, continue actively contributing to climate change response efforts.

The two countries will continue supporting each other at international organisations and multilateral forums, especially at the UN.

They will foster co-operation and mutual support within the framework of the International Meeting of Communist and Workers Parties, the Sao Paulo Forum, and other political and social forums.

In the statement, the two sides hailed the State visit as a success, adding it was a special event amid the 45th anniversary of the first visit to Viet Nam by Fidel Castro Ruz, the only foreign leader visiting the newly liberated area at the 17th Parallel in Quang Tri Province of Viet Nam.

General Secretary Trong invited First Secretary and President Raul Castro to pay an official visit to Viet Nam. The Cuban leader thanked and accepted the invitation with pleasure. VNS
HA NOI  Viet Nam and Thailand should seek measures to raise two-way trade to US$15 billion before 2020 as the two nations still hold great potential for trade and investment co-operation, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc told his Thai counterpart Prayut Chan-ocha in Ha Noi on March 30.

Welcoming the Thai leaders attendance at the sixth Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS) Summit, PM Phuc said that this reflected Thailands positive role in GMS co-operation.

He agreed on the need for greater transport connectivity between Thailand, Laos and Viet Nam, and affirmed to create all favourable conditions to speed up the work.

PM Phuc said he had assigned the Ministry of Industry and Trade and other ministries and sectors to remove difficulties in automobile imports from Thailand.

He suggested the two countries maintain close ties in addressing illegal fishing, including the establishment of a hotline between marine law enforcement agencies of Viet Nam and Thailand.

The Vietnamese leader also asked Thailand to solve bottlenecks in labour co-operation, while urging the two foreign ministries to establish a hotline between the two PMs.

For his part, PM Chan-ocha said that he always reminded Thai enterprises to abide by the host countrys law, pay attention to employees living conditions and protect the environment when investing in Viet Nam.

He expressed his hope that the Vietnamese Government would tackle difficulties in transport connectivity among Laos, Viet Nam and Thailand to facilitate trade between the three nations.

The Thai PM proposed Viet Nam help Thai investors invest in a wind power plant project in Bac Lieu Province and to support Thai banks expansion in Viet Nam.

The Thai leader agreed to step up the implementation of bilateral co-operation mechanisms in 2018, including the fourth Joint Cabinet Meeting, the third meeting of the Joint Committee on Bilateral Cooperation and the third meeting of the Joint Trade Committee.  VNS
HA NOI  Viet Nam welcomes capable businesses from China to take part in major projects in the country, especially those within the framework of Two corridors  one economic belt and Belt and Road connectivity initiatives, said Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc.

PM Phuc made the statement during a reception in Ha Noi on March 30 for leaders of the Chinese provinces of Yunnan, Guangdong, Guangxi, and Hainan, who have been in Vietnam to attend the sixth Greater Mekong Sub-region Summit (GMS 6) and the GMS Business Summit.

Highlighting the growing partnership between ministries, sectors and localities of the two countries as well as exchanges between their people, the PM affirmed that Viet Nam always attached great importance to fostering cooperation with China, in which collaboration among their localities plays a significant role.

"The fruitful cooperation among localities is a bright spot in the Viet Nam-China comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership," he said, adding that the Government of Vietnam always supported and created optimal conditions, especially in terms of infrastructure, for localities to strengthen win-win partnerships.

Leaders of the Chinese provinces said they were impressed by Viet Nams rapid and comprehensive development, expressing their belief that the success of the GMS would open up new cooperation prospects for Viet Nam and China and their localities in particular, especially in economy, trade, tourism, and people-to-people exchanges.

Vice Governor of Guangdong province Au Yang Wei Min spoke highly of the close friendship between localities of China and Viet Nam.

Meanwhile, Li Xiu Ling, Deputy Secretary of the Party Committee of Yunnan province, said that many enterprises of Yunnan were accompanying him during his current trip to Viet Nam to seek opportunities of cooperation with Vietnamese partners.

He said Yunnan hoped to step up cooperation with Viet Nam through the Lao Cai-Hekou route and the building of Kunming-Ha Noi-Hai Phong economic corridor as well as the Hai Phong-Lao Cai railway route.

Deputy Secretary of the provincial Party Committee of Hainan Wang Lu invited leaders of the Vietnamese Government and localities to attend the Boao Economic Forum 2018 in Hainan.

Leaders of both Hainan and Guangxi provinces showed their hope to boost collaboration with Vietnamese localities in the fields of tourism, education and training.

PM Phuc suggested Vietnamese and Chinese localities design their cooperation plans in all fields, not only in economy and trade but also in Party and administration building.

Viet Nam and China should work together closely to deal with arising difficulties facing their cooperative ties for sustainable development, he said, proposing China improve its transport infrastructure to create more favourable conditions for promoting economic, trade, tourism ties and people-to-people exchanges with Viet Nam

Along with applying measures to implement common perceptions reached by senior leaders of the two countries, the localities should simplify customs clearance procedures for each others goods and people, he said, noting that trade between the four Chinese provinces and Viet Nam reached US$60 billion in 2017.

Vietnamese and Chinese localities should also foster people-to-people exchanges, thus increasing mutual trust and understanding and strengthening solidarity between the people of the two countries, the PM added  VNS
HA NOI  Science-technology is a breakthrough solution to green and high-value agriculture development, said agriculture minister Nguyen Xuan Cuong at a session on agriculture business and technology within the framework of the GMS Business Summit in Ha Noi on March 30.

The Minister highlighted the important role of agriculture in economic growth and sustainable development of GMS nations, particularly Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Viet Nam (CLMV). The sector provides livelihoods for the regional citizens, particularly the low-income groups.

Cuong underlined the export capability and competitiveness of GMS agricultural products thanks to the regions favourable geographic location as a gateway to the Asia  Pacific region and the world.

In the coming time, agriculture will continue being an important sector to ensure food security, promote poverty reduction and hunger eradication, and serve as important support for other economic sectors, Cuong affirmed.

The fourth industrial revolution presents an opportunity for the GMS nations to boost hi-tech agriculture, in terms of artificial intellectual to reduce labour force and biotechnology to create high-yield varieties, among others, he said.

Technology application in agriculture produce has helped halved the poverty rate in GMS nations over the past years, thanks to increased productivity and income for farmers.

He called on the GMS nations to develop a cross-border agriculture value chain with application of technology while exchanging information and cooperating closely together in building strategies and making planning for regional agriculture development.

Focus should be placed on developing logistics to support agriculture and managing cross-border agricultural products quality. The GMS nations should also strengthen technology application in managing natural resources, natural disasters, and the use of Mekong water resources for agriculture.

Participants suggested the regional countries build a policy framework to facilitate participation of private sector in ensuring food security in particular and contributing to the regional economic growth in general.

They also attached significance to direct linkage between farmers and traders to help farmers produce their products in line with the standards while increasing farmers income.

Ngo Minh Hai, Chairman of the Viet Nam-based TH True Milk, said his group worked directly with households and cooperatives to ensure they grow grasses and cows in line with the companys requirement in terms of production procedure and products quality

They provide training courses and technical assistance for involved farmers, thus introducing them to technologies applied in their farming, while giving them sustainable livelihoods and incomes.

ang Hoang Giang, President of the Viet Nam Cashew Association (VINACASS) underlined the factor of technology application in increasing the value of agricultural products in general and cashew nuts in particular.

He also stressed the need for developing large-scale fields and specialised crops to ensure efficient application of technology in production and processing.

Ousmane Dione, Country Director of the World Bank in Viet Nam, affirmed that the agricultural sector continued to be the key factor for economic growth and sustainable development of the GMS nations.

The regional nations needed to ensure the sector would be competitive, adaptive to climate change, and integrate into the regional and global supply chains.

The first-ever Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) Business Summit forms part of the sixth GMS Summit (GMS-6) and the 10th Cambodia-Laos-Viet Nam Development Triangle Summit (CLV-10).

As an initiative of host Viet Nam, the event aims to strengthen dialogues between enterprises and governments and connect businesses in the region and the world, while encouraging resources from the private sector for the GMS Programme.  VNS
HCM CITY  Construction of Long Thanh International Airport in the southern province of ong Nai at an earlier date than initially planned would help reduce the overload on neighbouring Tan Son Nhat International Airport in HCM City, experts said at a seminar held in the city yesterday.

Organised by the Tien Phong (Vanguard) newspaper, the seminar was attended by local experts, officials from ministries and departments, and representatives from other agencies. The aim was to discuss solutions to implementing the Long Thanh International Airport project at an earlier date than originally planned.

Attendees expressed concern about policies and measures related to capital sources, modes of investment, land clearance, resettlement, and compensation to landowners.

Many experts agreed that the opening of Long Thanh International Airport would allow Tan Son Nhat International Airport to decrease its number of flights and have time to upgrade and expand later.

Nguyen Ngoc ong, deputy minister of transport, said: "Creating favourable conditions for the construction of Long Thanh International Airport will offer a great opportunity for growth of the aviation market.

According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), Viet Nam will become one of the five fastest-growing markets in the world in terms of additional passengers per year in 2015-35 period.

Nguyen Ngoc Hung, deputy director of the provinces Department of Natural Resources and Environment, said the airport project would be the largest project in the province since 1975. It will cover an area of 5,000ha, including 1,800ha of rubber trees.

Relocating residents will not be a problem because most of them have agreed to move and co-operate in land clearance and compensation, he said.

However, about 15,000 people, most of them farmers and workers at rubber plantations, need to be resettled and given new jobs.

Land for two new residential areas is being recovered, and vocational training for people of working age will be offered, according to Hung.

He said the government needs to set a clear policy related to land prices to avoid unreasonable price hikes and ensure profits for residents.

The long wait for the start of this project has affected the living conditions of local people, because they dont know when it is going to be built, Duong Trung Quoc, historian and National Assembly deputy, said.

We need to draw up plans for urban planning instead of focusing on the airport project only, he said, adding that the government should call for their contribution and see their participation as critical for long-term growth.

The Long Thanh International Airport has been designed to handle about 100 million passengers and five million tonnes of goods each year.

Total costs are estimated at VN336.6 trillion (US$16 billion). Construction of the first phase is expected to begin in 2020 with completion in 2025.

The first terminal to be completed in the first phase of the project is expected to handle 25 million passengers and 1.2 million tonnes of goods per year.  VNS
HCM CITY  More than 7,000 primary and secondary school students in HCM City are expected to benefit from better access to English and Vietnamese books, online and multimedia facilities, and other library resources by 2020 with the launch of the second phase of the Words on Wheels mobile digital library programme yesterday.

The programme is organised by the Singapore International Foundation (SIF) and the General Sciences Library (GSL) and funded by Keppel Land Limited.

Speaking at the ceremony in HCM City, SIF Governor Lian Wee Cheow, said: Words on Wheels is an SIF signature programme that seeks to promote the joy of reading and lifelong learning among children.

Since its inception in Ha Noi in 2011, WoW has expanded to HCM City; Bandung and Yogyakarta in Indonesia and Jaffna in Sri Lanka.

In 2014 the SIF had launched the first edition of WoW in HCM City, and the mobile library has since benefited more than 3,000 school children, he said.

Close to 250 Singaporean international volunteers volunteered their time and talent to make this possible.

Bui Xuan uc, GSL director, said: WoW carries out the good and basic function of a public library  of books finding readers  by organising mobile library trips to provide books and newspapers across the country.

The children did not want to leave the mobile library van or say goodbye to the volunteer librarians during these trips.

WoW not only feeds the hunger for information and technology, it contributes to improving skills and inspiring the passion to build a reading culture, particularly in developing good reading habits for children at a young age.

Lian Wee Cheow said in phase two the mobile library would visit seven public schools in districts 2 and 8 by turns to positively impact over 7,000 students aged six to 15.

Libraries and computer labs at participating schools will be refurbished to create a more conducive learning environment for students.

An estimated 120 Singapore international volunteers will travel to HCM City over the next three years to conduct English language and IT literacy workshops, opening doors for opportunities to experience rich cross-cultural exchanges and knowledge sharing.

The curriculum will be specially designed to cultivate students interest in reading and learning, while facilitating cross-cultural exchanges.

In addition, staff volunteers from Keppel Land have developed English lessons on green living and financial literacy with the aim of inculcating values on sustainability in the local community, particularly youths.  VNS
HA NOI  Developing smart cities means officials and planning need to be a step ahead, according to a local official.

Tran Quoc Thai, deputy director of Urban Development Department, at the Ministry of Construction made the statement at a seminar yesterday in Ha Noi.

Smart cities must meet the criteria of planning, management and provision of smart and comfortable services that are supplied by the State or other economic sectors, he said at the seminar titled Developing Smart Cities in Viet Nam towards Green and Sustainable Growth, organised by the Vietnamese Ministry of Construction and Embassy of the Netherlands.

The building of smart cities requires appropriate institutions on the basis of integrated planning and management, while developing standards for safety, security and social affairs.

Viet Nam is currently undergoing rapid urbanisation,with 802 urban areas currently and an estimated 1,000 by 2030.

Peoples living standards and knowledge have improved when they have access to modern and advanced information technology. However, citizens also face more traffic jams, environmental pollution, accommodation shortages, unemployment, public debt and limited management capacity.

Thai admitted at the seminar, the development of smart cities in Viet Nam still has many problems, including population growth, over-consumption of natural resources, substandard urban infrastructure and inability to cope with climate change, especially in coastal cities.

According to Thai, the State should develop strategic and sustainable planning and assessments on traffic congestion, flood risks, housing, urban finance and environmental issues to solve urban development problems.

The Ministry of Information and Communication (MoIC) has been working with the Ministry of Construction to build a set of indicators for smart cities including mechanisms, policies and guidelines for their development.

Le Duy Tien, from the MoIC said the indicators for smart cities are based on the countries with intelligent urban development similar to Viet Nam.

Global trends like urbanisation, climate change, digitalisation, mobility and the depletion of natural resources are dramatically transforming society. Pressure for cities to address these problems is rapidly mounting. By 2050, 70 per cent of the world population will be living in cities. This tremendous growth pressures infrastructure, public facilities, municipal land, houses and jobs.

On the other hand, cities are enjoying increased engagement from their citizens.

Well-informed citizens, with access to relevant data, contribute to solutions by launching neighbourhood initiatives. City authorities also have better relationships with commuters, students, tourists and road users. Incorporating these relationships into a smart city ecosystem ultimately leads to a smart society.

This global trend also applies to Viet Nam and can be clearly observed. Viet Nam has a large population of 90 million, a young resourceful workforce and is growing at a fast pace. It is also one of the countries most affected by climate change, said Dutch Ambassador Nienke Trooster.

Therefore, to ensure that society can cope with future challenges and accommodate growth, to make sure there will be enough work and the right skills are being equipped to the workforce, all while still strengthening economic growth, it is recommended for Viet Nam to not only plan ahead but also plan smarter.

The Dutch Ambassador shared her countrys experience of having many municipalities develop into smart cities. The country is known for succeeding with a joint approach where cities, companies, the research sector and civil society work together to exchange come up with a strategy together.

The Dutch Ambassador said: We dont know exactly what the city of the future will look like. But we do know that certain transitions will definitely take place, like the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy and a rise in self-driving cars. Resilience also means that a city can accommodate short term upheavals, like a flood. Smart cities offer an architecture for structuring procedures in such a way that cities will be resilient enough to handle all those future developments.

At the event, Smart Cities Consortium NL of the Netherlands and the Vietnamese Ministry of Constructions Urban Development Agency signed a Letter of Intent (LOI), to lay the foundation for future co-operation between the Netherlands and Viet Nam on smart cities.

The LOI aims to support the urban development and foster the co-operation of both sides on the exchange of information, know-how, and expertise, a representative of Dutch Embassy in Viet Nam said.  VNS
A water sprinkler system is tested at an apartment building in Tan Binh District.  VNS Photo Chi Cong

HCM CITY  Fire-fighting police in districts throughout HCM City are working with investors and managers of apartment buildings to strengthen fire-prevention measures at all high-rises and apartment buildings in the city, following a fire at the Carina Plaza apartment complex in District 8 that killed 13 people and injured 50 on March 23.

Since March 24, fire-fighting police in Tan Binh District, for example, have been checking fire alarms, emergency sprinkler systems, and other fire-prevention devices at many high-rises.

In Tan Phu District, residents at the Phu Thanh apartment building were informed about a similar check which took place from March 26 to 28. On March 25, firefighting police engaged in fire-prevention and fire-safety training at the building.

On March 24, residents were shown how to escape down the stairs and exist safely during a drill at an older apartment building on Nguyen Thi Minh Khai Street in District 3.

Tran The Thuan, chairman of the District 1 Peoples Committee, said that fire-prevention systems at 161 apartment buildings in the district had recently been checked.

At a press conference yesterday, Colonel Nguyen Minh Thong, chief of the investigative police divisions secretariat, said that the cause of the Carina Plaza fire was from a motorbike parked in the basement, Thong said. No one had noticed the small fire and within slightly more than 13 minutes the fire had quickly spread.

If this fire had been discovered quickly, a small fire extinguisher could have put it out, he said.

An initial investigation showed that the apartment complexs fire alarms and the sprinkler system did not operate.

Residents only knew about the fire thanks to shouts from others, Truong Huy Bang, who was living on the 12th floor of the building, told Viet Nam News Agency.

The HCM City Police on March 26 started criminal proceedings in the case of the Carina Paza fire.

City leaders have asked the District 8 Peoples Committee to work with the investor of the Carina Plaza apartment complex to provide assistance to victims and residents, including fees for room rentals.

Of 120 fires occurring in the first three months in the city, the Carina Plaza fire was the most severe, according to the citys Peoples Committee report. Of the total number of fires this year, there have been a total of 15 fatalities.

A fire alarm is tested at an apartment building in Tan Binh District. VNS Photo Chi Cong

Precautions

HCM City Party Committee Secretary Nguyen Thien Nhan has asked fire-fighting police to submit a report on the status of fire-prevention equipment and procedures at the Carina Plaza building.

More fire drills and guidance on how to exit buildings safely should be carried out at the building, he said.

The Ministry of Construction is also working with the citys Department of Construction to check all apartment buildings in the city and require buildings investors to solve all shortcomings.

The ministry has urged developers, builders and partners to follow technical standards for construction of apartment buildings.

Sr Lt Col Nguyen Thanh Huong, acting director of the Fire Fighting and Prevention Police Department, said the department would provide further guidance to residents on rescue methods and ways of escape.

He urged the public to report violations of fire regulations and to call 114 to report a fire.

According to the departments figures, seven apartment buildings in the city that do not follow fire-safety regulations have people living in them.

Last year, a department report found that several apartment buildings in the city had yet to be checked by the department but investors had continued to allow people to buy apartments before or during construction.

Of the buildings that were checked, the department found that many had fire equipment but they were not used properly, and alarms did not operate, according to the report.

The department noted in its report that it faced challenges because the radius of operation is too wide between fire-fighting police divisions in the citys 24 districts.

Last year, the citys total of six firefighting divisions were responsible for managing two districts each, and it took time for fire trucks to access fires, according to the department.

Speaking at a meeting held yesterday, Nguyen Thanh Phong, chairman of the municipal Peoples Committee, said that fire-safety activities had been carried out in the city, but effectiveness had been low.

Today, the committee is holding a conference on fire prevention and fighting at apartment buildings and high-rises.

Vo Van Hoan, chief of the committees secretariat, said that HCM City Party Committee Secretary Nguyen Thien Nhan had ordered a review and the publication of a list of apartment buildings, to be classified as fire-safe, less safe or unsafe.

This announcement will help investors pay more attention to fire safety and residents can also take the initiative in improving things, Hoan added.

Low public awareness

Residents in apartment buildings have a low awareness about fire-prevention regulations and procedures, according to Le Xuan Minh of the fire-fighting police in Tan Phu District.

He said exit doors should not be blocked with stones because smoke can pass through the openings to higher floors, leading to suffocation.

Huong of the Fire Fighting and Prevention Police Department said that suffocation was the cause of death for 11 of the 13 ill-fated victims at the Carina Plaza fire.

An inspection also showed that cigarette ash was found in the buildings basement, which had more than 1,500 parked motorbikes and cars.

In other buildings in the city, far too many cars and motorbikes are parked in small spaces, such as in the Phu Thanh Building in Tan Phu District. This can block fire trucks from entering the building grounds, Minh said.

A fire extinguisher is installed at an apartment building in Tan Phu District.  VNS Photo Gia Loc

Rush for fire-prevention devices

After the deadly Carina Plaza fire, many city residents began looking for high-quality face masks, blankets, clothes and drop ladders.

A resident living on the 10th floor of Phu Thanh Building said he did not know where he could purchase high-quality items. He said he also wanted to install a rope-and-pulley system.

A female resident of the Truong Sa B1 apartment building in Binh Thanh District, who declined to be named, said that she would buy drop ladders and look for information about fire prevention on social media.

Other residents are also paying more attention to such devices. Over the last few days, purchases of fire-prevention items rose by 30-40 per cent compared to normal days, according to the Centre for Fire-Prevention Devices.

Minh of the fire-fighting police in Tan Phu District suggested that residents install a rope-and-pulley system if they can afford the cost, which is at least VN10 million (US$438).

However, he said they should ask for guidance from the seller on how the system should be properly installed, and should avoid fake products by doing research about sellers and products.  VNS
HAI PHONG  A huge blaze burnt down a warehouse and three other houses last night in Hai Phong city, reported the Voice of Viet Nam online, vov.vn.

According to people living in the local area, the fire started at the warehouse about 6pm Thursday at 648, Le Thanh Tong Street. The place, owned by Nguyen Van Hao, stored wooden and plastic plates.

Eyewitness said there was a huge explosion at first, followed by black smoke coming out of the warehouse. Some 15 minutes later, the warehouse caught fire.

The wooden and plastic plates aggravated the fire, which quicky spread to neighbouring houses. The warehouse owner tried to extinguish the blaze, but to no avail.

The fire was put out after many hours, but just in time to prevent it from spreading to a nearby petroleum station.

There was no loss of human life, but the blaze completely burnt down the warehouse, besides seriously damaging three houses next to it.

The warehouse has been in the residential area for more than 10 years. People in the neighbourhood had reportedly complained to the local government in the past about safety concerns, but no action was taken.  VNS
A NANG  Thousands of vacant plots of land in the central city of a Nang have become garbage dumps, online newspaper vov.vn reported.

Piles of broken furniture and domestic waste have filled up along the road in a residential area in Son Tra District.

Huynh Van Viet, a local resident, said this situation has existed for more than 10 years, causing great concern to the people.

Many times, the local residents clear the garbage, but a few days later, people from other areas start dumping waste again. The area stinks of garbage throughout the day, he said.

In the wards of An Hai ong, An Hai Bac, Nai Hien ong and Phuoc My of Son Tra District and along the roads leading up to Vo Van Kiet, Vo Nguyen Giap and Ha Bong, which attract many foreigners, the vacant land has been filled with garbage and construction waste.

These garbage dumps in residential areas are causing environmental pollution and increasing the risk of diseases.

According to Viet, dozens of peope in Son Tra District were infected with dengue fever and malaria last year.

Nguyen Quang Tuyen, the deputy director of Son Tra Environment Company, said his firm had 120 workers with four lorries, which collected 160 tonnes of waste in 20 rounds per day. But their work was rendered ineffective as people again started littering quickly.

Although the company has placed many dust bins, people continue to litter, he said.  VNS
by Gia Loc

When travelling to the south-central coastal province of Binh Thuan, tourists often head for the well-known resorts, beaches and sand dunes in the Mui Ne area of Phan Thiet City.

But only 100 kilometres away is Co Thach beach in the provinces Tuy Phong District, an unusual coastal site lined with seaweed-covered pebbles and rocks of varying shapes and sizes.

In recent years, the area has seen thousands of people, mostly photographers, coming to visit between February and April to capture images of the rocks at sunrise and sunset.

When the tide recedes, the green seaweed on the stones and rocks glistens in the morning sunlight and appears blue, but at noon it takes on a yellow hue. The stunning changes in colour can also be seen at sunset.

For me, Co Thach beach and Chua Hang (Cave Pagoda) nearby are part of my childhood memories with many caves nearby to discover.

On holidays, especially during Tet (Lunar New Year festival), locals would visit the beach to relax after a year of hard work and study.

Good morning: Sunrise at Co Thach Beach in Binh Thuan Provinces Tuy Phong District.  VNS Photo Duong uc

Today, the beach, which is about one kilometre long and 200 to 300 metres wide, is as beautiful as ever. With a dizzying variety of small and big stones, I can still climb up to the top of a rocky boulder and sit and enjoy the sound of waves crashing onto the shore.

As children, we were fascinated with the stones and rocks that had been pushed to the shore for thousands of years. We would pick up the small oddly-shaped stones, some with a heart shape, and take them home with us after each trip.

Many of the small stones appear in a variety of colours. Some look turquoise or yellow, and others purple, white, pink or red under the sunlight and morning dew.

The stone shapes are dependent on the strength of the sea waves and the flow of water.

Every year, shortly after Tet, our parents would take us to Chua Hang Pagoda by motorbike to pray for happiness and to have a picnic. It was an easy trip as our home was only 14 kilometres away in Tuy Phong Districts Phan Ri Cua Town.

Built between 1835 and 1836 on a low hill 64 metres above sea level, the pagoda was recognised as a national historic site by the Ministry of Culture and Information in 1993.

Reflective: Stones and rocks covered with moss shimmer under the sun.  VNS Photo Duong uc.

The pagoda was first built by Zen Master Bao Tang in the mid-19th century. Over the last 176 years, the structure was expanded, and there are now shrines that can be seen inside many caves located on the pagodas grounds.

In 2011, the Viet Nam Guinness Book Centre officially recognised the beach as one of the most colourful in the country because of its thousands of stones and rocks.

Many of the stones from the beach are used by artisans in the area in their works, which are the pride of Tuy Phong District residents.

Like other beaches in Binh Thuan Province, the beachs water is clear and deep blue. Besides the small stones, the beach is surrounded by giant rocks of different sizes and shapes that resemble an elephant or an old woman with a hunchback, some of which have legends associated with them.

At the beach, many tourists like to eat fresh seafood like crab, scallop and grilled or boiled fish at food stalls located near the beach or on the way to the beach and pagoda.

Enchanting: Stones and rocks covered with moss take on a deep blue hue.  VNS Photo Duong uc

To get to the beach from HCM City, you can travel by bus for around seven hours to Tuy Phong and then hire a motorbike driver. They can either hire a tent for VN50,000 to camp on the beach or stay at inexpensive hotels for no more than US$5 a night.

If you drive on your own from HCM City, it will take longer, about eight or nine hours, but you will be able to see the sea and sand dunes the entire way.

From HCM City, drive to Phan Thiet City and then travel along the provinces Mui Ne beach until you reach Phan Ri Cua Town in Tuy Phong. Co Thach beach is about 14 km away.

To attract more local and foreign tourists to the area, provincial authorities have invested in new roads that extend from HCM City to the beach and the pagoda.

Visitors can often see young people on motorbikes taking in the peaceful, beautiful views of the sea and the colours of the seaweed and stones on the beach as they pass by on a leisurely ride during the weekend.  VNS
PARIS  Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy has been ordered to stand trial on charges of corruption and influence peddling involving a judge from whom he sought information about an investigation, a legal source told AFP on Thursday.

Prosecutors have also recommended Sarkozys lawyer Thierry Herzog and former judge Gilbert Azibert stand trial in the case dating back to 2014, the source said.

If confirmed it would be a second trial for the rightwinger, who is set to be prosecuted over alleged illegal campaign financing for his unsuccessful re-election bid in 2012.

However, Sarkozy would be expected to appeal the decision.

The 63-year-old has also been charged over suspected illegal financing and corruption involving former Libyan dictator Moamer Kadhafi in the most serious of the allegations against him.

The influence-peddling case centres on conversations between Sarkozys lawyer and the judge Azibert that were tapped by investigators looking into claims that Sarkozy had once accepted illicit payments from the LOreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt.

He was cleared over the Bettencourt allegations in 2013, but the wiretaps suggested he had floated the idea that Azibert, a magistrate from a top appeals court, could be given a top job in Monaco in exchange for information on the Bettencourt probe.

Sarkozy has argued that the job never materialised, meaning he is not guilty of anything, but investigators believe the deal fell through because the former president and his lawyer learned their phones were being tapped.

Herzog and Azibert are also facing charges of violation of confidentiality.

In 2014, Sarkozy became the first former French president to be taken into police custody during a preliminary stage of the inquiry.

Finished in politics

He is not the first ex-president to be prosecuted for corruption -- his predecessor Jacques Chirac was given a two-year suspended sentence in 2011 for embezzlement and misuse of public funds during his time as mayor of Paris.

Sarkozy claims he is innocent of all the charges against him and has consistently claimed the cases are politically motivated.

After being charged over the Libya financing allegations on March 21, he vowed to clear his name.

"It might take me one, two, 10 years but Ill smash this group (of accusers) and will restore my honour," he said during an emotion-charged prime-time television interview. "I dont plan to give an inch!"

Sarkozy had already stepped back from a front-line public role in 2016 after he failed with a bid to run again for president, but he remains an influential figure behind the scenes at the Republicans party.

After being charged in the Libya case, he admitted that he was "finished" in politics. AFP
SEOUL  South Koreas unification ministry said on Friday it does not attach any meaning to North Korean state media reports that did not mention the date and venue for an inter-Korean summit in April.

The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported on Thursday that the two Koreas agreed to hold a summit of their leaders after holding high-level talks, but it did not mention that the meeting will be held at the truce village of Panmunjom on April 27.

Previously, North Koreas state media reported details of the two inter-Korean summits, held in 2000 and 2007 in Pyongyang.

"State media reports without summit details do not appear to have significance. The move may be related to North Koreas (practice of not revealing Kim Jong-uns) movement routes or other internal issues," Lee Eugene, vice spokesperson at Seouls unification ministry, told a press briefing.

The meeting between President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim will be the first summit between the two Koreas in more than a decade. A North Korean ruler will cross the tense border for the first time to the South.

Long-term N. Korea progress to face complications: U.N. political chief

With the apparent thaw in relations on the Korean Peninsula, developments seem promising in the short term but there are more complicated challenges ahead, the outgoing UN political chief said on Thursday.

"The fact that were talking about summits now...may be unusual, but (North Korea) has suspended the type of tests that could have advanced the nuclear and missile program," Jeffrey Feltman told reporters. "So I look at this as something that is, in the short term, inherently good."

The UN undersecretary general of political affairs made the comments on the heels of the first meeting between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing, a development which Feltman said was encouraging.

"Thats not the same as denuclearization, but it means that instead of having tensions continue to rise...we have a scenario by which various parties are talking about getting together, at various levels, to see if theres a way forward that would be consistent with the Security Council resolutions," he noted. YONHAP/KYODO
By WestKyStar & St. Mary School System Staff Mar. 29, 2018 | 08:09 PM | PADUCAH, KY

Students will travel to Frankfort, KY in April as part of Kentucky's Rural Electric Cooperative Youth Tour program. Students will learn how Kentucky government works by meeting with legislators, touring the Capitol Building and the Governor's Mansion.





During June, these students will represent JPEC in a trip to Washington, DC. They will tour Monticello, the Capitol, Arlington National Cemetery, the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution during this tour.



Jackson Purchase Energy annually selects juniors who exemplify leadership in their school, church or community to represent them on a Youth Tour. St. Mary High School juniors Brianna Doran and Adisyn Fleming were selected for the JPEC Youth Tour.
By The Associated Press

By The Associated Press Mar. 29, 2018 | 05:04 AM | FRANKFORT, KY

Kentucky lawmakers are continuing budget negotiations out of public view.

House and Senate leaders met privately on Wednesday as they seek to reach a compromise on how to spend more than $70 billion of state and federal tax dollars over the next two years.

Senate budget chairman Chris McDaniel and House budget chairman Steven Rudy said lawmakers will not formally meet again until Thursday. But they said private discussions would be ongoing.

Dozens of teachers lined the hallway outside of a meeting room in the Kentucky Capitol Annex, holding signs asking lawmakers to support public education.
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Mar 30, 2018 | By Tess

Researchers from the University of Southern California have drawn inspiration from nature for the development of materials that could help clean up oil spills. The team has used 3D printing to recreate the microstructure composition of floating fern leaves for this purpose.

(Image: Forest and Kim Starr / Wikipedia)

Salvinia molesta is a type of aquatic fern native to Brazil which is known for floating on water. The plants leaves are made up of unique protrusions which the researchers liken to eggbeater-like shapes. This structure reportedly gives the fern leaves super-hydrophic propertiesin other words, they repel water very effectively.

I think the reason the plants surface is super-hydrophobic is because it lives on the water and requires air to survive, explained Yang Yang, a postdoctoral researcher working with Associate Professor Yong Chen on the project. If it werent for the long-term evolution of this plant, the plant could be submerged in water and would die.

It was this hydrophobic structure that drew the attention of researchers from the University of Southern California. If they could recreate the structure, they believed they could make materials with the ability to separate oil from water, which could have a major impact on cleaning up man-made disasters such as oil spills.

(Image: Yang Yang)

To recreate the fern leafs intricate micro-texture, the researchers created a similar structure using 3D printing technologies. Amazingly, the team was able to 3D print the unique eggbeater structure at the same scale as it exists in nature.

The team didnt use FDM 3D printing to accomplish this. Instead, they turned to a highly precise and advanced process known as immersed surface accumulation 3D printing to create the hydrophobic micro-structures. By integrating the ability to both repel water and absorb oil into the 3D printed material, the researchers have presented an amazingly innovative process for cleaning bodies of water that are exposed to oil spills.

We tried to create one functional surface texture that would be able to separate oil from water, Chen added. Basically, we modified the surface of the materials by using a 3D printing approach that helped us achieve some interesting surface properties.

So far, the team has successfully 3D printed a prototype of the oil-absorbing material, and the technique for separating oil from water could present a much simpler and more energy-efficient approach tha existing methods, which require electric fields or mechanically applied pressure to decontaminate the water.

Chens team adds that the 3D printed eggbeater structure is capable of microdroplet manipulation, which could make it suitable for medical applications. For instance, a robotic gripper made from the material could deposit microdroplets of blood into different chemical mixtures for improving the efficiency of blood tests.

Xiangjia Li, a PhD student on Chens team, said one example of high-performance microdroplet manipulation could lead to more efficient blood analyses for patients. You can have a robotic arm with a gripper made to mimic Salvinia effect, one of the researchers said. No matter which way you move the arm, the gripping force is so large that a droplet will stay attached.

The innovative 3D printing study was recently published in the journal Advanced Materials.

Posted in 3D Printing Application

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Andrew Friedman in Longreads:

The dawn and rise of the American chef commenced when Americans, from coast to coast, and in large numbers, began voluntarily, enthusiastically cooking in restaurants for a living  a once forbidden and unrespected professional course  screw the consequences. Many started like Marder, spontaneously, rebelliously, often in isolation, with no idea there were others like them Out There. A few stuck their toes in the water in the 1960s, a few more in the 1970s, and then hordes jumped into the pool in the 1980s and 90s, after which there was no looking back.

These werent the first American chefs, or even the first prominent ones. There had always been exceptions, like the astounding Edna Lewis, who for five years ending in 1954 had been the chef and a business partner at Cafe Nicholson in Midtown Manhattan that she did this as both an African American and a woman in the 1950s is nothing short of miraculous. But those stories were few and far between, not part of an overarching national phenomenon. And the lower kitchen ranks were more often than not populated with lost souls who lacked ambition or the aptitude for a traditional career, werent pursuing a love of food and/or craft, or acting on Marder-like epiphanies, a version of which became a rite of passage for an entire generation. Professional cooking was viewed as menial, unskilled labor performed, often in unsavory conditions, by anonymous worker bees. The United States Department of Labor categorized chefs as domestics through 1976 when  after lobbying by the American Culinary Federation, who themselves required nudging by Louis Szathmary, the Hungarian American Chicago chef, writer, and television personality  it recognized them as professionals. Domestics suggests chauffeurs and housekeepers; most Americans regarded cooks as something grittier.

More here. [Thanks to Asad Raza.]
SF's Sixth Street is experiencing a cultural renaissanceso is Treasure Island!andmore headlines you may have missed this week.

Berkeley Cuts Taxes on Marijuana to Compete With Black Market, CBS

As one of the only cities in California to make the move, Berkeley is cutting the tax on ganja from 10 percent to five to price match what your dealer is offering. Read more.





New Spots Opening on 6th Street, Long Known for Gritty Realities of Urban Life, SF Chronicle



Property owners have taken an interest in the dicey two-block corridor between Market and Howard streets. Recent openings include a new cafe and art gallery, a bar, Jewish bakery, grilled cheese shop, milk tea cafe, and awig store. But that's just the beginning. Read more.





Treasure Island Public Art Proposals Go on View, SF Gate



Seven artistsincluding Ai Wei Wei, Andy Goldsworthy, and Hiroshi Sugimotohave installed their proposals for the redevelopment of Treasure Island, and they're available for public view. Read more.





Autonomous Car Gets First-Ever Traffic Ticket, In San Francisco, Forbes

It's been a bleak ride for self-driving cars so far. But now they're getting citationsfor failure to yield the right of way to a pedestrian, no less. Read more.





Looks Like Thomas Keller Is Opening a Mexican Restaurant, Eater SF

Look out, Napa. Thomas Keller is seeking a chef de cuisine who specializes in Mexican cooking. Read more.
A gorgeous ceremony at San Francisco City Hall, photo opps at the Golden Gate Bridge, an evening of jazz, and a weekend of wine...

These newlyweds did it right.

Love usually sparks from a physical attractionin this case, the bride and groom connected through college sports. Before jocks Jocelyn Fisher (Duke University) and Dennis Gates (Florida State) were introduced, their mutual friend asked Fisher if she was ready to meet her future husband. She thought nothing of it...until she saw him. "Really handsome," she recalls.

A casual conversation was followed by a phone call later that evening, which led to a date the next weekand every week after that. After five years of dates, Gates popped the question. Fisher says she knew, even before she said yes, that they would be wed inside the stunning Beaux Arts walls of SF City Hall.

The couple kept their ceremony intimate, with just a small group friends who flew in from all over the United States. After breakfast, the bride and her closest friends rode the cable car to City Hall; a reception at 1300 Fillmore, in the historic Jazz District, followed the nuptials.

The party didn't stop there. The couple and their 70 guests ran off to Napa Valley for a weekend of sipping vino at Domaine Chandon, Flora Springs, and Artesa.

Pre-ceremony location: Parc 55 Hotel

Venue: San Francisco City Hall

Reception: 1300 on Fillmore

Shoes: Christian Louboutin

Makeup: Ninahwee Beauty Maker

Floral designer: Soulflower Floral Design

Event planner: Tamara J Events

Invitations: Kristy Elizabeth Design

Linens: La Tavola Fine Linen Rental and Napa Valley Linens

Photography: Sasha Photography

Video: Sasha Kino
A Russian hacker suspected of stealing 117 million LinkedIn passwords in 2012 has been extradited to the United States after a protracted diplomatic struggle between the US and Russia, the Czech Justice Ministry said on Friday.

A US official told CNN that Yevgeniy Nikulin arrived in the United States overnight and is expected to eventually appear before a federal judge in San Francisco.

Nikulin was arrested by Czech police in Prague in 2016 after US authorities issued an international arrest warrant for him. A grand jury indictment filed in 2016 in California charged him with computer intrusion and aggravated identity theft, among other offenses.

According to the indictment, Nikulin managed to break into LinkedIn's computers in March 2012 because he stole the username and password of an employee who worked at the company's Mountain View, California, headquarters.

Nikulin denies all the charges.

His extradition from the Czech Republic to the United States was a culmination of a year-and-a-half-long legal and political battle between the US and Russia, and the case reached the highest levels of politics in the Czech Republic, the US and Russia.

Soon after his arrest and the US extradition request, the Russian government asked for Nikulin to be extradited to his home country over an alleged theft from an online money transfer company back in 2009.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said at the time it wanted to prevent Nikulin's extradition to the United States.

US House Speaker Paul Ryan met with the Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis during his visit to Prague earlier this week. A spokesperson for Babis said the topic of Nikulin's extradition was discussed during the meeting.

Robert Pelikan, the Czech Minister of Justice, told CNN that the move to extradite Nikulin to the United States was an "easy decision" after comparing the alleged crimes in the US and Russia and the level of intensity of the countries to extradite him. He also said he did not feel pressured by the Russians.

Pelikan added that he made the decision a "long time ago" but waited for all the legal proceedings to be finished.

The Nikulin case has further strained US-Russian relations. Russian authorities have objected to US efforts to extradite Russian nationals from third countries in connection with alleged hacking offenses. US authorities have filed extradition requests for Russian hackers arrested in Latvia, Spain and Greece.
Chico, Calif.--Two weeks ago we told you how one Chico resident living on Oak Way is frustrated about speeders in his neighborhood. The city is responding, but not in the way that he was anticipating.

A signed posted on the street says the speed limit is 25 miles per hour, but Mark Woodson who has lived on the street for three years, said drivers sometimes go double that and the city is responding to his concerns by potentially raising raising the speed limit.

Woodson first spoke to Action News Now on March 12 complaining about people speeding on his street and says nothing has really changed.

"I see people and hear people accelerating like they're doing Nascar from the stop sign. It seems not fuel effieint to me but people drive really, really fast," he said.

He's been in contact with the Bikram Kahlon, the city's senior trafic engineer. The city responded to his concern on March 19 by conducting a speed survey in which they found that 85 % of drivers traveled 36 miles per hour down the street.

Now, they're proposing setting a speed limit of 30 miles per hour.

It's a move that Woodson was initially frustrated by considering there's an elementary school at the end of the street and a steady flow of pedestrians. He believes this is just going to cause people to drive faster.

"Enforcement seemed like the right response but, I understand that there's laws they have to do. It is what it is," he said.

In an email to Woodson, Kahlon said in order to have a speeding ticket upheld in court, an engineering speed survey is needed in order for traffic enforcement officers to properly enforce and ticket for violators.

The 30 miles per hour speed limit will be enforcable, whereas 25 is not.

Regardless of the speed limit, Woodson said he just wants drivers to be responsible and slow down.

"Drive like your kids live here, it's important. If you think your kid's going to run out in the street, drive like your kid's going to run out in the street. Just pretend it's your street.," he said.

The findings of the speed survey will be presented to the city's internal affairs in May where they will discuss the issue and decide on the speed limit.
The Assyrian Poet and the Kurdish Boy

In 2015, an image of a little boy lying face-down on a Turkish beach, who had attempted to flee the war between the Assad regime and ISIS, went viral in the midst of roiling debates over immigration policy. Then we elected a president who campaigned on closing our nation's doors to refugees and Americans moved on.

Dunya Mikhail, an Iraqi exile and one of the foremost poets of our time, has not. In The Beekeeper: Rescuing the Stolen Women of Iraq, Mikhail memorializes three-year old Alan Kurdi:

On the Turkish shore, A calm beautiful graceful child is on his stomach The wave caresses his tiny corpse He doesn't seem to protest our ridiculousness, Though his face turned away from us, From our lives overturned like a rusty boat.

Mikhail's book serves as testimony for the victims of ISIS (known in the region as Daesh) who have been brutalized physically and psychologically. Giving voice to the voiceless, she devotes much of "The Beekeeper" to transcribing the stories of the Yazidi women of northern Iraq who have been driven from their homes, sold into sexual slavery, and yet, remarkably, survived. At the heart of the book is the beekeeper Abdullah Shrem, who abandoned his beloved bees to dedicate himself to locating these women and children and transporting them to safety, risking his life daily.

Everyday heroes populate this landscape, many of them Muslim -- that is, regular observant Muslims, not the twisted fundamentalist version that Daesh promulgates. One seamstress hides a woman fleeing Daesh, along with her infant son and two daughters, until they can escape to safety. When another victim tries to pay a taxi driver who ferried her home, he responds, "The world isn't that rotten. Go on, I don't want anything." An expectant mother, hearing of Daesh's invasion of her village, orders her husband to take their four children up the mountain, while she stays behind, hiding in the sheep pen. When he returns days later, he finds her calmly nursing the newborn she delivered on her own.

Iraqi Assyrian poet Dunya Mikhail. I found myself thinking of the "righteous gentiles," ordinary people who took extraordinary risks to hide Jews during the Holocaust. Mikhail draws out historical parallels as well in displacement resulting from ethnic cleansing, whether in the persecution of Jews, Christians, or Muslims (see Myanmar). Hauntingly, she recalls her grandmother's best friend, driven out of Baghdad after the Farhud, a pogrom in 1941 when Jews from communities established since the sixth century were murdered during two days of riots.

As disturbing is Daesh's exploitation of children. Children barely more than toddlers are forced to manufacture bombs, while boys in Daesh camps are indoctrinated in violence and fundamentalist doctrines. A bus full of girls will be "used for [sexual] service" or sold for their organs.

Yet. A girl jumping rope suggests the promise of emancipation. A man who adopted a sparrow leads Mikhail to a sacred spring of water deep in a cave, reminding us that tenderness still exists. This is the balance Mikhail strikes in her book, which bears unflinching witness to a world of brutality, even as it testifies to acts of generosity, courage and grace.

When Mikhail pauses to reflect on her own experience, she captures the idiosyncratic grace of the world around her, showing herself an acute observer of its oddities and beauty. Birds in Michigan sing so loudly that the beekeeper, Abdullah, hears them through her phone. In a tone reminiscent of Annie Dillard's writings on God and nature, she muses on a "chirp" discovered by scientists (from colliding black holes, I read elsewhere) wondering why God "broke his silence," or recalls a favorite book that taught her, "When a group of elephants faces danger ... the rest of the elephants will leave the area in protest."

Yet with Mikhail, there is always the echo of exile. Books she left in Iraq were eventually used by an enterprising relative to wrap sandwiches. The daffodil, customary for Yazidis to give as gifts, "shrinks away when strong rains fall," but blooms again when the sun returns, a metaphor, she hopes, for Kurdistan. She is filled with wonder as the refugees in a camp she visits offer her food and drink. "We have to offer you something," they say, so deeply imbued is their "spirit of hospitality."

What do we owe each other -- one thinks of the cab driver waiving away payment -- and what can we offer? Just after her poem memorializing the small refugee boy who washed ashore, Mikhail addresses her readers directly: "The remote control is in your hand." Her book compels us to listen to these voices and not change the channel. It compels us to open our doors wider to refugees.
Turkey's Long Persecution Against Pontian Christians

In the Turkish city Trabzon, where few Christians are left, St. Maria Catholic Church has suffered its second attack this year. A gunman shot at the church on March 6, but there were no causalities because no one was inside at the time. The congregation is the only active one in Trabzon and has barely a dozen members. International media first noticed St. Maria on February 5, 2006, when Oguzhan Akdin murdered Father Andrea Santoro, an Italian Catholic priest who served there. In 2011, it emerged that the police had tapped Santoro's phones for three months before his murder. Authorities had marked him as a suspect active in "separatist activities based on the Pontian Greek idea," that is, establishing a Greek Orthodox state in the Black Sea area. The name of Pontians (or Pontic people) derives from the Greek word "Pontus," meaning "the sea," and refers to the Greek population that lived for three millennia in the Black Sea coastal cities, which are now in northern Turkey. The first Greek settlements appeared in the region as early as 800 BC, and many renowned Greek philosophers, such as Diogenes and Strabo, were born here. Trabzon, historically known as Trebizond, is also located in Pontus. Mentioned three times in the New Testament, Pontus is central to the Christian faith, and Pontians were some of the very first converts to Christianity. According to the Pontian Greek Society of Chicago, Andrew the Apostle was the first Christian preacher in the region, and after his ministry the religion quickly spread across the area. However, Anatolian Christianity began to decline in the eleventh century. In 1071, Turkic jihadists from Central Asia invaded the Armenian highland, which was then part of the Greek-speaking, Christian Byzantine Empire. In 1204, Pontians established the Greek Empire of Trebizond centered in Pontus. After the Ottomans established a state in western Anatolia in 1299, they escalated their attacks on surrounding regions. The Byzantine Empire ended when Constantinople fell in 1453, and then in 1461 the Ottomans invaded Trebizond and forced Christians to convert to Islam. Under the new rulers, Christians and Jews became "dhimmis," third-class citizens forced to pay a tax in exchange for "protection." But the most destructive blow to Greek and other Anatolian Christians was the 10-year genocide that took place before, during, and after the World War I. This crime was part of the mass annihilation that exterminated around three million Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks in Asia Minor between 1914 and 1923. The International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) has recognized the Ottoman campaign against Christian minorities during that period as genocide. In Dictionary of Genocide, Samuel Totten and Paul R. Bartrop write:

In a campaign reminiscent of the Armenian genocide that was being perpetuated at roughly the same time, the Pontic Greeks suffered innumerable cruelties at the hands of the Turks. An estimated three hundred fifty-three thousand Pontic Greeks died, many on forced marches through Anatolia and the Syrian Desert just like the Armenians. The destruction of the Pontic Greeks, and the forcible deportation that followed, had but a single planned outcome: the removal of all Greeks from Turkey... In another parallel with the Armenian situation, successive Turkish governments have denied that the Pontic genocide ever occurred.

The Ottoman government and the military forces led by Mustafa Kemal Atat
Birmingham-based Taziki's Mediterranean Cafe has named a new chief executive officer.

The company announced on Friday that Dan Simpson, the company's chief innovation officer for about two years, is the new CEO.

Simpson is working closely with Taziki's founder Keith Richards as the restaurant plans to reach 100 total locations by 2019. The two have worked closely with Taziki's board and staff to form a clarified purpose, mission and brand values to guide the next 20 years, according to the company

"Keith's vision for his restaurant is an inspiration to so many, he has created an environment that combines extraordinary food with meaningful human experience," Simpson said. "He has led the charge to offer fresh, healthy, diverse, and affordable food options to the tables of tens of thousands of people for the past 20 years."

During his time as chief innovation officer, Simpson was instrumental in the growth of the restaurant brand visiting Taziki's locations in the 16 states where the chain has a presence and gathering both customer and employee feedback, according to the company.

Richards is managing the flagship market in Birmingham and will continue to lead Taziki's culinary R+D and the HOPE program, Taziki's signature charity, which focuses on special needs education.

The restaurants' fresh, locally grown herbs  parsley, oregano, cilantro, basil, and rosemary  are grown by students at various HOPE programs across the county. The goal of the HOPE Program is to teach students with special needs all aspects of the herb business using skills that will transfer to other jobs.

Richards will be traveling to Greece with his wife Amy and two sets of twins this summer to develop new menu items for the restaurant.

"Dan is working closely with me to carry out my vision for the next 20 years of Taziki's," Richards said. "His passion for working to create the new 'Mediterranean-Coastal' design for our restaurants has been an integral part of this process."

Prior to joining the Taziki's family, Simpson was the founder and CEO of ToGo Technologies from May 2012 until January 2015.

"Expanding Taziki's technology capabilities for our customers including our app offerings, accessibility to ordering online as well as a new website is a big focus for our team," Simpson said. "We are working to anticipate consumer trends and seeking innovations that enhance guest experiences."

Later this year, Simpson will be launching TazRewards, Taziki's rewards loyalty program, that works both in-line and on-line through Taziki's app, as a way to say thank you to the restaurant's growing community of loyal guests.

Simpson also previously served as chief development officer of Dispensary of Hope in Nashville from May 2008 until May 2012. He earned his bachelor's degree from Clearwater Christian College and a master's in business administration from West Virginia University.

Simpson, his wife Kim and their three kids live in Nashville. He serves on the boards of the Shalom Foundation/Moore Pediatric Surgery Center and Dovehouse Ministries and is a member of TedXNashville Society of Fellows.
Former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is in stable condition Friday after undergoing heart surgery in Los Angeles, his spokesman Daniel Ketchell told The Washington Post.

Schwarzenegger's condition was first reported by TMZ, which said the actor and former bodybuilding champion had gone to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles for a "somewhat experimental" catheter valve replacement.

According to the celebrity news site, doctors decided to perform open-heart surgery after Schwarzenegger developed complications.

Ketchell said Friday that he could only confirm Schwarzenegger was stable after a heart procedure.

"That's the most important part," he said.

Best known in the 1980s and '90s as a former "Mr. Universe" and for his roles in action movies like "Terminator" and "Total Recall," Schwarzenegger, a native of Austria, transitioned from Hollywood star to politician when he successfully ran for California governor as a Republican. From 2003 to 2011, he served two terms as governor and was nicknamed "The Governator."

Since then, he has mixed acting and politics. He was the host of the "New Celebrity Apprentice," on NBC. And over the past year, Schwarzenegger has emerged as a vocal opponent of President Donald Trump, publicly criticizing Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord and lambasting the president's equivocation after violence at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, killed a counterprotester.
File Photo

Yellawood company putting Trump tax break into benefits

Some employers have handed out bonus checks since President Donald Trump signed a tax reform plan into law late last year. Great Southern Wood Preserving will not. Instead, Great Southern has announced that it is reinvesting its tax savings in "an active and ongoing process to increase employee benefits" with the windfall from lower corporate tax rates.

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Airbus

Airbus wants to keeping that new-jet shine

If you've ever had second thoughts about putting a shiny new car on a dirty road, you can relate to one of the concerns the Mobile Airport Authority dealt with on Thursday. You can also appreciate that the stakes are a little higher when you're talking about a pristine new A321 fresh from Airbus' plant at the Mobile Aeroplex at Brookley.

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Tim Cook criticizes Facebook for privacy controversy

Apple chief executive Tim Cook took some swipes at a couple of fellow tech giants Wednesday, appearing to accuse Facebook of selling its customers as products and taking aim at Amazon's bid to find a home for its new campus. "What would I do? I wouldn't be in that situation," Cook said.

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NASA is hiring flight directors

NASA expects to be in the human spaceflight business for a long time, and that's led to one of the more interesting job postings so far this year. The space agency is hiring flight directors. Flight directors lead the flight controllers, engineers, and support teams around the world during space missions. They make "the real-time decisions critical to keeping NASA astronauts safe in space," the agency says. For that, they're paid between $118,000 and $154,000 a year.

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(Lawrence Specker/LSpecker@AL.com)

UAB-Infirmary Health alliance could have big impact

An alliance between UAB Health System and Mobile-based Infirmary Health clearly has potential to impact health care in Alabama, starting with the sheer throw weight of a $4 billion-per-year combined budget.

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Courtesy of Boeing

Boeing hit by cyberattack

Boeing has reportedly been hit by a cyberattack. The attack is reportedly from the WannaCry, the same malware that hit computers in more than 70 countries last year.

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Michelle Matthews/mmatthews@al.com

Three Georges: sweet on Mobile for 100 years

Becoming the owner of Three Georges Candy Shop in downtown Mobile might have been Scott Gonzalez's destiny. Gonzalez, who once thought he wanted to become an architect, appreciates history and old things - which is apropos for the owner of one of Mobile's oldest businesses.

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Proposed industrial park to receive $6 million grant

A proposed high-tech industrial park and residential community near Barber Motorsports in Birmingham could receive $6 million in federal grants to spur development of the projects. U.S. Steel, Birmingham, Southern Museum of Flight, Jefferson County and Leeds has partnered on the project called Grand River Technology Park and Grand River Homes.

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Mark Richenderfer joins Birmingham Business Alliance

Mark Richenderfer has joined the Birmingham Business Alliance as vice president of investor relations. Richenderfer, who has more than 20 years of business experience, will be responsible for recruiting new investors to the BBA by messaging how the BBA positively impacts regional development, business growth and quality of life in the region, the organization announced on Thursday.

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Courtesy BCBS

Tim Vines to lead state's largest health insurer

Tim Vines has been elected as the new president and CEO of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama, the insurer announced Wednesday. According to information released by Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Vines has a 24-year history with the company; past jobs have included president and chief operating officer, chief administrative officer and senior vice president for health management.

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Associated Press

President Trump goes after a favorite target, Amazon

President Donald Trump took another shot at Amazon.com Thursday, tweeting that the online retailer pays "little or no taxes" and that it uses the U.S. Postal Service as "their Delivery Boy." Trump's frustrations with Amazon are no surprise. He has accused the company of not paying enough taxes before, and in December tweeted that the U.S. Postal Service should charge Amazon more for delivering packages
At first glance, Good Friday seems like the ultimate misnomer. If Jesus suffered and died on this day, then why is it called Good Friday?

On one level, the answer is about the meaning of words.

The term "Good" as applied to Good Friday is an Old English expression meaning holy. It's often called Holy Friday also.

But in another sense, Good Friday is always tied to Easter Sunday, which is a joyful celebration of the resurrection of Jesus. He could not have been resurrected if he had not died first.

Suffering Christ or Glorified Christ?

In planning the mural for the Beeson Divinity School chapel dome several years ago, Samford University had to decide how to portray Christ: glorified or suffering.

He is portrayed in the artwork as exalted in heaven - but also with nail prints in his hands - to remember the suffering of the crucifixion.

"Theologically, we must keep Good Friday and Easter together," Divinity School Dean Timothy George explained. "Good Friday without Easter is doom and despair. Easter without Good Friday is empty sentiment and sentimentality. We have to remember what Jesus did on the cross, which is the fulfillment of God's eternal plan for the whole world. It has cosmic consequences."

Carrying the Cross

Today millions of Christians worldwide observe the somber holy day of Good Friday, which commemorates the suffering and crucifixion of Jesus.

The faithful often act it out by carrying a large wooden cross and crown of thorns symbolic of the suffering of Christ.

In Jerusalem, they follow the Via Dolorosa, or Way of the Cross.

Jesus told his followers, "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me." (Matthew 16:24, New International Version)

Jesus' example can provide strength through suffering, said the late Rev. John Claypool, who was a Southern Baptist preacher in Kentucky and later an Episcopal priest in Alabama.

A Glimpse at the depths of evil

"God really does understand from the inside what it's like to suffer, to be abandoned, to be alone," Claypool said. "You can't realize the absolute marvel of Easter unless you appreciate the suffering of Good Friday."

The events of Good Friday described in the Bible include the trial of Jesus, the shouts of the crowd to "Crucify him!" even when given a choice to free Jesus or Barabbas, followed by Jesus carrying the cross and being hung on it to die.

"Good Friday is so powerfully significant because it gives us a glimpse into the depths of human evil," Claypool said. "You see the best and the worst of human nature."

Mercy and patience

God shows incredible mercy and patience in the events of Good Friday, Claypool said.

"It's a time to reflect on the dark tendencies that are in all of us," Claypool said.

"It's a day to be silent, it's a day to remember, to focus on who Jesus is and what He meant for humanity," George said.

"Christians believe the sins of the whole world were poured out on Christ," George said. "It's really a bad Friday, a horrible Friday. When it is seen as leading to the Resurrection, it was indeed a Good Friday."
A 2-month-old child is in critical condition and a Tuscaloosa woman is behind bars.

Tuscaloosa police on Friday announced the arrest of 24-year-old LaKendra Yashekia Williams. On Wednesday, Tuscaloosa police responded to Children's of Alabama in Birmingham on a report of a child suffering severe head trauma, said Lt. Teena Richardson.

Once at the hospital, detectives launched an investigation into the assault of the child. The findings led to a charge first-degree domestic violence assault against Williams.

Police have not disclosed what caused the child's injury and have not released the relationship between the two.

The child remains in critical condition. Williams is being held in the Tuscaloosa County Jail on $60,000 bond.
An Anniston man died following a single-vehicle crash in Calhoun County.

Alabama State Troopers identified the victim as Cody Kenneth Cross. He was 25.

The crash happened at 11:50 p.m. Wednesday on Bernard Couch Drive, about seven miles east of Oxford.Cpl. Jimmy Harrell said Cross was driving a pickup truck when he left the roadway, struck a mailbox, collided with a tree and overturned. He was not wearing a seat belt and was ejected from the vehicle.

Cross was airlifted to Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, where he was pronounced dead.
A federal grand jury in Birmingham indicted five people in three separate cases.

Those indicted include two sisters from Guatemala for fraudulent using someone else's Social Security number to misrepresent their immigration status, two Georgia men accused of conspiring to distribute methamphetamine in Jefferson and St. Clair counties and a California man for stealing identities to open accounts at the Birmingham -based BBVA Compass Bank.

In the first case, according to U.S. Attorney Jay E. Town and Social Security Administration, Office of Inspector General, Special Agent in Charge Margaret Moore-Jackson, the two Guatemalan women misrepresented their immigration status to obtain jobs in Marion County.

Separate indictments filed in U.S. District Court charge that both Ines Gladdis Avalos-Paau, 35, and Lourdes Magdalena Avalos-Paau, 33, used an alias, falsely claimed a Social Security number assigned to the person whose name they used, and fraudulently presented an Arkansas non-driver's identification card in that name when they applied for jobs. The indictment also charges that the women fraudulently misrepresented on U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services' forms for employment eligibility verification that they were U.S. citizens.

Ines Gladdis Avalos-Paau misused the documents and misrepresented her immigration status in February 2014 when she applied for a job at Hamilton Plastic Products in Hamilton, according to her indictment. Lourdes Magdalena Avalos-Paau misused the documents and misrepresented her immigration status in December 2017 when she applied for a job at Kith Kitchens in Haleyville, according to her indictment.

The maximum penalty for both falsely representing a Social Security number and for fraudulently using an identification document is five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. The maximum penalty for making a fraudulent statement on a government immigration document is 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

The Georgia men indicted on drug charges are Michael Montoya-Austria, 26, and Sergio Ortiz, 31, according to Town and Drug Enforcement Administration Assistant Special Agent in Charge Bret Hamilton.

The three-count U.S. District Court indictment said Montoya-Austria and Ortiz, a Mexican national living in Doraville, Ga., with conspiring to distribute 500 grams or more of methamphetamine in Jefferson County between February and March. The indictment also charges both Montoya-Austria and Ortiz with possessing with intent to distribute that quantity of the drug on March 7.

The indictment charges Montoya-Austria with distributing 500 grams or more of methamphetamine in St. Clair County on Feb. 27. The penalty for each charge is 10 years to life in prison and a maximum $10 million fine.

In the Birmingham case, Eduardo Fernando Villanueva Aranguena, 32, of Reseda, Calif., is the defendant in a 12-count indictment, said Town and FBI Special Agent in Charge Johnnie Sharp Jr. He is charged with six counts each of bank fraud and aggravated identity theft.

Aranguena obtained personally identifying information for six individuals and opened an account or accounts in those individuals' names at Compass Bank between Sept. 15, 2016, and Nov. 1, 2016, according to the indictment.

Aranguena used the fraudulently established accounts to deposit, withdraw and transfer money, as well as to make purchases, load gift cards, open lines of credit and apply for credit cards, according to the indictment.

"With today's technology, cyber criminals can commit identity theft against a Birmingham, Alabama, bank from thousands of miles away," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan Keim, who is prosecuting the case. "We appreciate the investigative assistance of the U.S. Attorney's Offices for the Central District of California and the Western District of North Carolina and the Charlotte Field Office of the FBI."

The maximum penalty for bank fraud is 30 years in prison and a fine of $250,000 or twice the gross gain or loss, whichever is greater. Aggravated identity theft carries a mandatory two-year prison sentence, which would have to be served consecutively to any sentence imposed for bank fraud, and a possible fine of $250,000 or twice the gross gain or loss, whichever is greater.
Construction is set to begin this summer on a luxury hotel in the former Protective Life and Commerce Center building in downtown Birmingham.

The 96-room hotel is expected to be open in summer 2019, according to REV Birmingham, an economic development group, which recently got a tour of the building.

Birmingham-based Rhaglan Hospitality, the group behind Redmont Hotel, is developing the project.

Rhaglan Hospitality was awarded a $5 million Alabama Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credit in March to help redevelop the building. The developer is also seeking a loan through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for up to $2.5 million for a term up to 20 years.

The 14-story, Art Deco-inspired office at 2027 1st Ave. N. was built in 1928 on top of the former three-story Birmingham Ledger building. Many of the buildings' original elaborate architectural details remain like the domed entrance and high-end finishes like marble floors and marble wainscoting. Rhaglin plans to keep these details.

The Protective Life building was designed by Warren, Knight & Davis, a Birmingham architecture firm behind many of the city's most recognizable structures - including the Federal Reserve, Alabama Power and Watts buildings.

"The building's landings and corridors are spectacular - and they're still there," Rhaglan Hospitality CEO Jim Lewis said. "We want people to simultaneously think, 'These are high quality finishes,' and 'This has been here for a long time.' It's hard to achieve both without the real thing. The intricate marble work is beautiful and we're retaining it. Part of the good fortune we feel is due to the extraordinary elements of this building that can be restored."

Lewis sees the biggest challenge with converting this historic building into a hotel is finding a way to keep all the original touches that make it special as it is being converted from office space into comfortable guest rooms.

Rhaglin Hospitality plans to save one special office in the building - the Warren, Knight & Davis firm's former home on the seventh floor, which is still intact.

"I'm encouraged by the community's interest in historic preservation and delighted to see teams like Rhaglan working to salvage original materials and incorporate interesting parts of historic buildings into their design," said REV CEO David Fleming. "Historic tax credits help save the magic pieces of our city like the Protective Life building, and there's no denying their impact on downtown Birmingham."

Rhaglan's development team, led by Patrick Mercier, will take the lobby back to its original, wide open state with floor to ceiling windows.

"We have old photos of the building, and we're working to bring that look back," Lewis said. "With the floor-to-ceiling windows in the lobby, the eastern sun in the mornings will be beautiful."

To take advantage of the view, a rooftop restaurant and bar is being planned. About 75 percent of the space, though, will be inside with plenty of windows and the rest will be an open-air patio.

The tower's attached two-story building on the Morris Avenue side will also be redeveloped.

Rhaglan is considering making the upper floor a full-service spa, while the downstairs (facing Morris Avenue) could be hotel offices or a shop that complements the block.

"I'm a huge believer in the potential of Birmingham," Lewis said. "We're on the national investment horizon now. People who don't have a local stake are taking notice and are looking at the market for what's absent so they can fill those needs. Birmingham is poised to explode; it's an appealing place to live. Big manufacturers have already figured that out, and other types of business and investments will follow."
An improvised explosive device killed an American service member in Syria, a U.S. military official said Friday, bringing the total number of American military personnel killed in action in Syria and Iraq since the operation against Islamic State began to 14.

The U.S.-led coalition said another service member also died in the attack on Thursday night but declined to identify the person's nationality. The coalition said five people were wounded.

Col. Ryan Dillon, a spokesman for the coalition, declined to identify the nationalities of the service members, or to specify where in Syria the attack took place. The coalition said in a statement that the wounded were being evacuated for medical treatment, and that the identities of the dead would be released at the discretion of their home authorities.

The incident underscored the risks facing coalition personnel across northern and central Syria as they transition from fighting the Islamic State to stabilizing areas that the militants left behind.

The U.S. military has suffered 60 deaths since the operation to destroy Islamic State began in 2014, 14 of which were so-called "hostile" deaths, or personnel killed in action. The others died in "non-hostile" circumstances during the operation such as aircraft and vehicle accidents.

The coalition doesn't break down the number of people killed in Syria versus Iraq. Deaths that occur in other countries in the region where the U.S. military is supporting the operation are also included in the figures.

The United States has more than 2,000 service members in Syria, many of them working with a Kurdish-dominated partner force.

Thursday's attack appeared to have taken place in the northern city of Manbij, a former Islamic State stronghold that has become a critical flash point between Turkey and Kurdish fighters in Syria. While mutually antagonistic, both are key allies of the United States.

In an attempt to calm those tensions, U.S. forces conduct routine patrols in the area.

A local activist reported that an explosion had taken place in the city's southern district, and that several helicopters appeared to have arrived to take away those affected.

In a surprise announcement Thursday, President Donald Trump appeared to signal that those would be withdrawing from Syria in the near future. "By the way, we're knocking the hell out of ISIS," Trump said midway through an infrastructure speech in Ohio, using an alternate term for the Islamic State.

"We're coming out of Syria, like, very soon. Let the other people take care of it now. Very soon - very soon we're coming out." No further details were immediately available.
A federal judge ruled today that the law the Alabama Legislature passed to make notorious killer Judith Ann Neelley ineligible for parole is unconstitutional.

U.S. District Judge Keith Watkins found that the law violated the Constitution's bans on retroactive laws, called "ex post facto," and laws aimed at one person or a small group, called "bills of attainder."

The Legislature changed state law in 2003 specifically to block Neelley from the possibility of parole after Gov. Fob James commuted her death sentence to life imprisonment in 1999.

At the time of the commutation, the law said Neelley would be eligible for parole in 15 years.

Neelley's attorney, Barry Ragsdale, said the bans on "ex post facto" laws and "bills of attainder" are core legal principals in place since the nation's founding.

"I think this is a victory for the Constitution," Ragsdale said.

The state attorney general's office said it would review the judge's opinion and consult with the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles to decide whether to appeal.

Neelley has been at Julia Tutwiler Prison for more than three decades.

Watkins' ruling today comes in a lawsuit Neelley filed in 2014 against the parole board. Watkins included with his ruling a description of Neelley's crimes written by the judge in her murder trial.

In September 1982, Neelley abducted Lisa Ann Millican, 13, from a Rome, Ga., shopping mall. Neelley and her husband, Alvin Neelley, held Millican captive and brutalized her. Alvin Neelley raped the girl several times.

Three days after the abduction, Neelley handcuffed Millican to a tree at Little River Canyon in DeKalb County and used a needle and syringe to inject her repeatedly with drain cleaner. When that failed to kill Millican, Neelley shot her and threw her body into the canyon.

In the conclusion of his 31-page opinion, Watkins wrote:

"The foregoing discussion is not meant to suggest that Ms. Neelley's particular crime does not deserve a punishment greater than life with the possibility of parole. That question does not have this court's name on it.

"Nor is it a question for the Alabama Legislature to answer. The Alabama Legislature may have disagreed with Governor James's decision to commute Ms. Neelley's sentence to life with the possibility of parole, or perhaps it thought Governor James meant to commute her sentence to life without the possibility of parole. But the Alabama Legislature could not increase her punishment after her death sentence was commuted."

Ragsdale has represented Neelley on and off for a couple of decades and was her lawyer at the time James commuted her sentence.

"People can focus on how reprehensible the crimes were that Ms. Neelley committed," Ragsdale said. "But the Supreme Court has long recognized that if the Constitution doesn't apply to the worst among us, it doesn't apply to anybody."

Ragsdale said he hasn't spoken face-to-face with Neelley in about nine months and was not sure today if she had received the news about the judge's order.

Ragsdale said he did not think Neelley has a realistic expectation for parole anytime soon but said eligibility for parole will have benefits.

"Whether or not she is eligible or ineligible for parole determines things like where she can live and what access she has to things like chapel and all kinds of stuff like that," Ragsdale said. "It will make a day-to-day difference in her life even as she continues to be confined."

James did not give a reason for his decision when he commuted Neelley's sentence on his last day as governor in 1999.

After the commutation, the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles requested an opinion from Attorney General Bill Pryor on whether Neelley was eligible for parole.

The law at that time said that a person whose death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment was eligible for parole after serving 15 years of that life sentence.

Pryor advised the parole board that Neelley would be eligible for parole in 2014. The board then notified Neelley of that.

In 2003, the Legislature passed a law saying that a person whose death sentence is commuted to life imprisonment by the governor is not eligible for parole. The law was made retroactive to September 1998, a few months before James commuted Neelley's sentence.

The retroactive provision was specifically for Neelley, because she is the only Alabama death row inmate to receive a sentence commutation since 1962.

Because of the 2003 law, the parole board again sought an attorney general's opinion when Neelley was due to come up for parole, in January 2014. Attorney General Luther Strange determined Neelley was not eligible. The parole board notified Neelley that she was not eligible.

Neelley filed her lawsuit against the parole board in April 2014, challenging the constitutionality of the 2003 law.

"Gov. James changed Ms. Neelley's sentence to life with the possibility of parole and the Legislature decided they didn't like that so they went back and retroactively changed her sentence to life without the opportunity for parole," Ragsdale said.

"And Judge Watkins, I think following clear legal precedent, concluded that that was unconstitutional."

Lisa Ann Millican was not the Neelleys' only victim during their 1982 crime spree.

Neelley also pleaded guilty to the murder of 22-year-old Janice Chatman of Rome, Ga., and agreed to testify against Alvin Neelley, who died in a Georgia prison in 2005.

Judith Ann Neelley Court Ruling by Mike Cason on Scribd
After a day-long trial, a Blount County judge granted a motion of acquittal in the case of two Birmingham-area attorneys arrested outside the Blount County Courthouse.

Victor Revill and his associate Megan Garcia were arrested by Blount County Sheriff's deputies Feb. 23, 2017, on the steps of the courthouse while officers were executing a search warrant of their client's person.

They were charged with obstructing governmental operations and refusal to permit inspection of property subject to a search warrant last year. Both charges are misdemeanors.

"These attorneys were charged with obstructing governmental operations and refusal to permit inspection for doing nothing more than refusing to consent to a warrantless search," said attorney Clayton Tartt, who represented Revill.

Stan Glasscox represented Garcia.

"Neither Megan or victor did anything to prevent anyone from obtaining anything. They merely said no," he said.

The ruling came after the Blount County District Attorney's Office presented their case and called four witnesses to testify during the bench trial Thursday, Tartt said. After the state rested, Circuit Judge Steven King granted the defense's motion of acquittal, dismissing the charges.

"The state plans to appeal this ruling through the appellate court," Blount County District Attorney Pamela Casey told AL.com on the phone. "They were not found not guilty."

Tartt, however, disagrees.

"It's better than a not guilty verdict. It means the charges should not have been brought in the first place," he said.

After the hearing, they spoke to their client inside the courthouse for 15 to 20 minutes. During that conversation, they asked their client for his cellphone so they can gather more information for his case.

On their way out of the courthouse, the client was stopped by a police officer and an investigator. The officer told the client they had a warrant to search both him and his vehicle. After looking at the search warrant himself, Revill told the client that the authorities had a right to search him.

That's when the investigator asked to see Garcia's satchel because they saw the client give Garcia his cellphone. Revill said they didn't consent to the search and they were detained.

Both attorneys were arrested and put in handcuffs outside the courthouse.

Revill said standing in court Thursday not as a defense attorney, but as a client, was an emotional experience.

"I'm thankful to God that the system worked. I'm thankful I had great attorneys fighting for me--thankful I didn't have to tell my 1-year-old child that I was convicted of a crime I didn't commit," he said.
Up to 75 pounds of marijuana was discovered inside a FedEx package in Mobile Wednesday.

FedEx employees at the Trippel road site called police officers when they smelled marijuana coming from inside the package. The package was turned over to narcotics, according to police. There are currently no suspects.

Since some U.S. states made marijuana legal, courier companies have had to adapt their policies to ensure that customers were not shipping from legal states to illegal states. FedEx changed its policy earlier this year that placed marijuana on the list of prohibited items. In Alabama, possession of the psychoactive element of marijuana can result in a misdemeanor for first-time possession or a felony if the person is caught again, or is a courier or drug dealer.



Earlier this year, a state bill aimed at reducing sentences for those caught with marijuana failed in congress. The proposal would have seen a person in possession of one ounce or less given a violation -- considered less serious than a misdemeanor -- and would be punishable only by a fine not to exceed $250. That penalty would have applied to both a first and a second offense. A third offense would have been a violation punishable by a fine of up to $500.



In 2015, the U.S. Postal Service confiscated around 34,000 pounds of the drug.
Posted on: March 30, 2018 11:05 AM

An Easter message from the Primate of the Church of the Province of the Indian Ocean, Archbishop James Wong.

Alleluia, Jesus Christ is risen from the dead and he is alive. The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!

My dear brothers and sisters, greetings! We are once again celebrating the joyous feast of Easter. I hope that you had a blessed Lenten season during which we have journeyed from the life of a believer to a life of a disciple and you were blessed. Lent has been a season of movement, transformation and commitment.

Easter is an extension of the movement, transformation and commitment. Very early, this very morning of the first Easter, we see Mary Magdalene, Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved were moving to and from the grave. The stone was removed. The strips of linen lying in the tomb and the body of our Lord was removed?

No, the body was resurrected, transformed into a glorious one. The curse of the cross has been changed, transformed into a blessing. The cross is now seen as a symbol of hope, and a reminder of Gods love for us. The grave was seen as the final destination of a person, a door we close on our earthly life. Now, we can rejoice that beyond death is where life really begins, and it will never end.

Easter teaches us that death has been transformed; we have the hope of life after death because Jesus is risen from the dead and He is alive. Alleluia! Alleluia!

Dear fellow pilgrims on our earthly journey, have you been moving from a believer to a disciple? Has your life been transformed into one which is an expression of our active faith as a disciple?

The lives of Mary Magdalene, Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved were transformed and they committed themselves to sharing the message of the resurrection to the community of the Apostles, disciples and believers and eventually to the world. And they did it. Have we committed our lives to serve actively God and the Church? If yes, Praise the Lord and if no, now is the time for us to commit our lives to do so.

Choosing to be a disciple is a choice that we commit to in a radical way. Each one of us is, in this world, to live for Jesus Christ and do His will straight forwardly without reserve.

We are as Christians celebrating the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. Let us also celebrate our commitment to be Christlike.

Easter reminds us how God has been good to us.

He gave His own precious son to save us from our sins.

Lets return the favour by sharing our blessings to others.

Happy Easter to you and your love ones!

Together for the glory of God,

Archbishop James Wong Yin Song

Your fellow pilgrim and Bishop
Posted on: March 30, 2018 6:30 PM

An Easter message from the Chair of the Anglican Consultative Council and Primate of the Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui (the Anglican Church in Hong Kong), Archbishop Paul Kwong.

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

May the Peace of our Lord be with you!

Three months ago, we celebrated the birth of Christ at Christmas. Our focus then was on the manger, a feeding place for animals where the baby Jesus slept. In contrast, on Easter, our focus is on His empty tomb. At Christmas, the angels sang Glory to God; but on the day of Jesus resurrection, two angels asked the women who went to the empty tomb in search of Christ Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen (Luke 24:56). Christmas is full of joy because it is about a baby who came into this world for us. Yet the atmosphere of Easter is more solemn and its message more profound. On Easter, this child who was born on Christmas not only died for us, but was also resurrected for us. If the Lords salvation is a musical movement, Christmas is the prelude and Easter is its climax.

Easter reminds us of three key points. Firstly, Jesus truly did rise from the dead and come back to life. However, this is a fact that many deny or are unwilling to accept, including some who were among Jesus friends. On the first Easter, two of Christs disciples were walking along the road to Emmaus, feeling disappointed about Jesus death. They said sadly But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel (Luke 24:21). Thomas was also adamant in his denial of the Lords resurrection when his brothers told him the news. He said, Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe (John 20:25). Throughout subsequent generations, there have been many others like them, who are unwilling to believe that the Lord is resurrected. Some even criticised the resurrection as a product of the Christian imagination or a fabricated myth of an immature faith.

Secondly, although Christmas and Easter differ in many core aspects, they have one point in common: we are the beneficiaries of Jesus actions. He not only lived for us and died for us, but was also resurrected for us. The term us refers to the whole of humankind, from Adam to the Anti-Christ. The Lord was not only resurrected for those who are good, pious, just, and passionate about serving. He came back to life not only for the Virgin Mary who gave birth to Him, but also for Judas who betrayed him and for Peter who denied him three times before the cock crowed. His resurrection is for every single one of us, irrespective of our ages and gender, even now.

Although people are a large part of the Easter story, the central figure is Jesus Christ  He who is resurrected and lives in glory for us. The phrase for us refers to us Christians who are resurrected with Christ. This brings us to the third point. What do we mean by being resurrected Christians? St Paul provided an explanation in his letter to the Christians in Rome. He asked, Do you not know that all of us who have been baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life (Romans 6:34). This is something we need to think about constantly, especially during Easter.

Baptized into Christ is a phrase rich in meaning. However, we have seldom explored its true significance. Baptism originally means immerse. Therefore, St Paul used the term baptised into Christ. To convey the true meaning of baptism, the early Church immersed candidates fully into the water during the rite. Unfortunately, baptismal fonts in most Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui churches are quite small (although we do have an immersion font in the Holy Spirit Church), so priests can only perform baptism by pouring water over a candidates head. Since this form of baptism does not immerse a candidate fully into the water, it cannot convey the full symbolic meaning of baptism: the sinner within the candidate has died, and the candidate is resurrected with Christ into the new life of the baptised community.

To celebrate our new lives at Easter, we need go beyond worshiping God at church every Sunday, reading the Bible, praying, serving with passion, and spreading the gospel. These are all part of our duties as Christians, but we need to do more. I would like to use the prophet Micahs instructions to his fellow Jews to remind you how you should live your new life. He said, He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:8).

The justice to which the prophet Micah refers is neither defined by peoples preferences, nor created by human intelligence. It is built on Gods promise when we made a covenant with Him. God commands us to be faithful to ethical relationships and be responsible, that is, to love, be faithful, and be responsible to God, to others, and to the world. If a Christian is to be resurrected from death with Christ, one should abide by His teachings in daily life.

He said, For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me. . . Just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me (Matthew 25:3540).

Resurrected Christians should live their new lives abiding by His teachings. This is a burden the faithful should bear for God, for others, and for the world. The Lord has called upon those of us who are resurrected through baptism to share in His life and bear this burden. In fact, if we do not participate in the life of our Lord, our new lives would not exist, and we would only be surviving alone.

Brothers and sisters, may you be able to live out the life of the resurrected Lord faithfully and responsibly.

+ Paul Kwong
Posted on: March 30, 2018 2:42 PM

An Easter message from the Primate of the Church of the Province of Uganda, Archbishop Stanley Ntagali.

The Bible says that Jesus is the first born from the dead. Meaning, that he is the first of many others who will be resurrected. The message of Easter is that if you want to have eternal life, the only way is through Jesus. You must first renounce the world, the flesh, and the devil. You must renounce the thief who comes to steal, kill, and destroy (John 10.10).

Then, you must turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as your Saviour and obey him as your Lord. Once you are in Christ you too will follow Jesus into resurrection and eternal life. There is no other way. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me. If the devil comes to steal, kill, and destroy, it is Jesus who came to bring life and bring it abundantly (John 10.10).

My message for Ugandans this Easter is this:

First, if you want to have eternal life, turn to Jesus Christ. Choose this day whom you will serve!

Secondly, Easter is about life. I want to encourage all of us this Easter to reject the growing culture of death around us and, instead, promote a culture of life. Why? Because when Jesus destroyed death through his resurrection, he also destroyed the culture of death and opened the way to us of a culture of life. Choose this day whom you will serve  the thief who brings death or Jesus who brings life.

What do I mean by this?

We all know about the random killings that have been taking place, especially of women, and the delay in solving the mystery of who the killers are and bringing them to justice. The increasing number of deaths and the seeming inability to do anything about them is part of our current culture of death. This is not the way of Jesus.

The desire on the part of some government leaders and organisations to legalise abortion is promoting a culture of death to the most vulnerable among us. That is, the unborn. This is not the way of Jesus. The way of Jesus promotes life, not death.

When hospital workers steal vital drugs to sell elsewhere, they deprive the living of essential life-saving treatments. That is a culture of death. And, then, family members are willing to pay more to bury a person and put cement and tile on their grave. Yet, the same amount of money could have saved their life. The way of Jesus promotes life. Let us also promote a culture of life in our work places, families, and communities.

When someone kills someone else just to steal a phone, what does that tell us about the value of life? It says that life is cheap. But, actually, life is not cheap. Jesus died and rose again so that we could have life. Life is very costly.

The culture of death has taken control of South Sudan and many provinces in eastern Congo, and has had a big impact on Uganda. I want to thank the President, the government, and the people of Uganda for welcoming so many of our neighbours who have had to flee for their lives. As Christians, we must oppose this culture of death and killing. We must also oppose a kind of politics that is more about keeping people in power while many people die in the process.

This culture of death extends even to violence in our own country. We too easily resort to violence in order to resolve conflict  even petty conflicts. That is not the way of Jesus.

Recently, an Honourable Member of Parliament gave an interview on TV about the importance of husbands beating their wives in order to streamline them.

I want to state categorically and very clearly that the Church of Uganda does not support his views. Even though he is an Anglican, he and his views do not represent the Church of Uganda. We condemn all domestic violence. No exceptions.

Men: it is NEVER right to beat your wife. Women: it is NEVER right to resolve conflict with violence.

Women, you should never believe your Aunties when they tell you that if your husband doesnt beat you then that means he doesnt love you. That is a lie.

Listen to me carefully. The position of the Church of Uganda is that domestic violence is always wrong. Always.

Please learn the way of Jesus, which is the way of life. Jesus destroyed the culture of death through his resurrection, and he brought us a culture of life. So, I ask you, Why are we continuing the culture of death?

I am glad to know that the Hon MP has apologised before Parliament. I urge him to now show the fruits of repentance and become a public leader in the fight against domestic violence, and in his own family and marriage to practice love and preach love to others.

In two months time, we will remember the Martyrs of Uganda at a special celebration in Namugongo on 3 June. This years Martyrs Day organisers are the Dioceses of greater Kigezi. The co-Chairs of the Organising Committee are Honourables Ruhakana Rugunda and Amama Mbabazi. They are challenging us to double the number of Anglicans participating in the 3 June Namugongo celebrations. There will be a health camp as well as other programmes for children and youth. I urge you to make a special effort to mobilise big numbers from your dioceses to participate in this years Martys Day celebrations.

In conclusion, I sincerely appeal to you this Easter to renounce once and for all the growing culture of death in Uganda and embrace the culture of life that Jesus offers us through his death and resurrection. Choose this day whom you will serve! Will you serve the thief who comes to steal, kill, and destroy? Or, will you serve Jesus who came to bring life?

If the 80 per cent of Ugandans who claim to be Christians actually renounced the culture of death and promoted Jesus culture of life, then Uganda would be a very different place than it is today.

We send special Easter greetings to the President of Uganda, His Excellency Yoweri Kaguta Museveni and Mama Janet;

The Vice President of Uganda;

The Rt Hon Speaker of Parliament and all Members of Parliament;

The Rt Hon Prime Minister;

Members of the judiciary;

Our brothers and sisters in other denominations;

My brother bishops, clergy, lay readers and all Christians in all our dioceses and

All of you fellow Ugandans!

I wish you all a joyful Easter. May you fully and completely choose Jesus this Easter so that Easter 2018 will be a turning point in your life and in our life as a country.
Andrew Neil explains anti-Semitism to the uneducated and Corbyns Labour

Andrew Neil presents must-see TV. Brilliant work by @afneil and @bbcthisweek in explaining what anti-Semitism is to the uneducated, and Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters who have difficulty spotting it:

That, dear viewer, is anti-Semitism. At its deadliest and most depraved. Which is how it always ends up. Which is why it cant be tolerated. Those still in doubt need to educate themselves. Fast. @afneil opening #bbctw pic.twitter.com/MFi7pYorkB  BBC This Week (@bbcthisweek) March 29, 2018

Mireille Knoll was found dead inside her Paris flat. Police think she was killed for being a Jew. The killer then her home set alight. French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, opines: It reminds us of the fundamental and permanent side of this battle against antisemitism.

On the same day Ms Knoll was killed, Islamists murdered Arnaud Beltrame, a 44-year-old police officer. He was a true hero.

A year before Knolls slaying, Sarah Halimi, a retired Orthodox doctor and kindergarten teacher, was killed in her Paris apartment, her body then hurled out a window. In 2012, three children and a teacher were murdered in an attack on a Jewish school in Toulouse. In 2006, Ilan Halimi, a 23-year-old cellphone salesman, was tortured by gang members who assumed his middle-class parents could pay a hefty ransom because they were Jewish. Halimis charred body was found by the side of a road three weeks after his abduction.

The oldest story is back. The Jew  the rich, powerful, uniquely barbaric and deserving Jew  is seen as fair game. Dont yield to anti-Semitism. Ive been confronted with it recently  things I never thought I would have said to me, and threats made to me. Jew bating is normalised. Its unnerving.

Paul Sorene

Posted: 30th, March 2018 | In: News, TV & Radio Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
(ANSA) - Rome, March 30 - Alessandro Fiori, the 33-year-old manager from Cremona found dead with his skull caved in in Istanbul Wednesday night, had been in hospital in the Turkish capital on March 15, sources said Friday.

This was one day after Fiori's cellphone and personal documents were found in a bin in his hotel room.

Fiori's body was found in the sea in Istanbul Wednesday evening, two weeks after going missing in the Turkish capital.

The head of Fiori, from Soncino near Cremona, was so disfigured he had to be identified by DNA taken from his father.

His body had been carried by strong currents down to a point opposite the famed Topkapi Palace, local sources told Italian reporters.

Fiori went missing from his Istanbul hotel on March 14, sources said.

He had left for a short holiday in Turkey on March 12, his family said.

The family said he had not ran away from anything and was in the habit of making short trips to places in Europe.

A DNA test has confirmed that the body is Fiori's, Italian foreign ministry sources said Thursday, adding that the young man's family have asked for their privacy to be strictly respected.

Rome prosecutors on Thursday opened a probe into Fiori's death.

Prosecutors are awaiting a first report on the case, the sources said.

Fiori's documents, phone and empty wallet were found in his Istanbul hotel room.

The discovery of the body was first announced by a RAI State broadcaster missing-persons show, Chi l'ha visto? (Who has seen him), which has been following the case.

The Turkish police have not ruled out the possibility that Fiori committed suicide, Turkish daily Hurriyet reported.

Fiori's body was found on the shore of the Sarayburnu district in the Turkish capital, it said.

Fiori did not have a meeting set up in Turkey, his father said Tuesday.

"I recharged the battery of Alessandro's phone and I redialled all the numbers he had last called: there was no stranger," said Eligio Fiori.

The father had a bad turn after identifying his son's body and was unable to speak to the media.

Fiori's documents and cellphone were found in a bin in his hotel room while his Italian bank account has been emptied, sources said Sunday.

Fiori's suitcases and clothes were found in his room along with his empty wallet.

Witnesses told Turkish TV they had seen him near the Sultanhamet Hotel and then in a taxi that allegedly took him to the city centre.

Eligio Fiori, the father, said he could "rule out he was running away from anything" on Monday.

He said his son often took low-cost flights to places for a few days when work permitted.

"My son left with a simple backpack so as not to have to put his luggage in the hold," Eligio Fiori said on the telephone.

"It was a habit of his. That backpack was found in his room at the Sultanhamet Hotel. I can't say anything else other than ruling out it was a flit".

The manager reportedly told his tobacconist he was going to Istanbul for a short holiday.


(ANSA) - Rome, March 30 - A Somali man wrongfully convicted in the Mogadishu murder of RAI reporter Ilaria Alpi and her cameraman Milan Hrovatin on Friday got three million euros in compensation for his almost 17 years in jail. Hashi Omar Hassan received 3.181 million euros in a ruling from the Perugia appeals court.

In October 2016 a Perugia court reversed the conviction of Hassan for the 1994 murder of Alpi and Hrovatin in the Somali capital.

Prosecutor Dario Razzi told the court Hassan "did not commit" the crime he served more than 16 years in jail for.

He was the only person convicted of the murders.

Alpi, 32, and Hrovatin, 45, were ambushed and shot in their jeep in Mogadishu by a seven-man commando on March 20, 1994.

Initially, it was thought that the journalist was murdered in revenge for clashes which had broken out between the militias of Somalia's warlords and Italian peacekeepers.

But a 1999 book by Alpi's parents called The Execution alleged that Alpi and Hrovatin were killed to stop them revealing what they knew about an international arms and toxic-waste ring implicating high-level political, military and economic figures in both countries.

The book accuses the Italian secret services of playing a major role in this ring.

In 2015 Ahmed Ali Rage, who was also known as Gelle and who was a key witness for the prosecution in the trial that led to the conviction, said that Hassan was "innocent".

Rage told a new trial that he "never told anyone" Hassan was part of the murder commando. Hassan was released into the custody of social services in 2015 with 10 years to go on his 26-year sentence.

"Thank God it's over," said Hassan at the time.

Alpi's mother Luciana, who backed Hassan's battle against the miscarriage of justice, said that she was "happy" Hassan had been cleared, but added that she was "bitter and depressed" that the real culprits had not been brought to justice.

"It's as if she and Miran Hrovatin died of the heat in Mogadishu," Luciana Alpi told ANSA. "We don't have the truth and I don't think we ever will".

Photos taken of the dead body of Alpi, who worked for public broadcaster RAI's third channel, and a medical report on the deaths, along with other key evidence including Alpi's notes, camera and video cassettes, mysteriously went missing on the journey back from Africa to Italy, fuelling suspicions of a cover-up.

Speaking to RAI Channel 3, Rage in February 2015 claimed that he was asked to testify against Hassan.

"I did not see who fired the shots," he reportedly told RAI 3.

According to the Italian diplomat who investigated the case in Somalia, former ambassador Giuseppe Cassini, the driver who acted as a key witness for the prosecution was "an unreliable individual who would do anything to survive".

Hassan, who travelled to Italy in 1998 to give evidence in a probe into brutality by Italian soldiers, was acquitted of involvement in the two murders at the end of a first trial in July 1999.

But he was found guilty by an appeals court in 2000 and sentenced to life in prison.

Italy's supreme Cassation Court upheld the guilty verdict in October 2001 but reduced the sentence from life to 26 years because it said the crimes were not premeditated.

Hassan's lawyers said he was not in Mogadishu at the time of the killing and was tricked into coming to Italy.

photo: Hassan in 1999
(ANSA) - Rome, March 30 - The interior ministry said Friday that 6,161 asylum seekers arrived in Italy via sea in the first quarter of this year, down 75% on the 24,278 arrivals in the same period in 2017.

The number of migrants to set out from Libya was 4,399, down 81% on the 23,549 in the first three months of 2017.

The ministry said 1,551 of the asylum seekers were from Eritrea and 1,187 were Tunisian, making them the two biggest national groups for asylum seekers.

It said 909 minors arrived.

The ministry added that the number of asylum seekers to go to other European countries via the relocation system climbed to 12,354.


(by Paolo Paluzzi)

TUNIS - The performance 'Il teatro comico' (comic theater) staged by Milan's Piccolo Teatro company in Tunis, directed by Roberto Latini, has been a success.



The numerous public applauded the play, which lasted two hours and a half. Latini said that the ''story of 'teatro comico' is extremely complicated and the intention is to follow a Prandello-like approach in dealing with the comedy's characters. You will not find one Harlequin because we are all Harlequins'', said the director. ''Goldoni - he continued - writes a comedy that talks about the theater. It is something that tastes like Prandello almost two centuries before, it appears to deal with the 1900s and with an ability for self-reflection, from Artaud onwards, including Pirandello, Beckett, Pinter, Ionesco, Muller It is not theater within theater, it is the conscience of theater'', said Latini.



The performance at the 4eme Art was also attended by the director of the Piccolo theater, Sergio Escobar, who was particularly satisfied with the initiative promoted by the cultural ministry in cooperation with the Italian Cultural Institute, the Italian embassy in Tunis and the Thetre National Tunisien. The initiative, part of the integrated promotional program 'Italy, culture, Mediterranean', included two days of master classes held by Roberto Latini, which involved students of the Ecole de l'Acteur of Fadhel Jabi.



In November, the same performance will be held at the International festival in Istanbul, also with meetings with the public and workshops held by the director and the play's actors.
ISTANBUL - Turkey on Friday dismissed an alleged offer by France to send troops to northern Syria in support of Kurdish militias there.



"The countries we consider to be our allies and friends should take a clear stance against all types of terrorism, and not take steps that legitimise terrorist groups," Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said. His comment came after French Pesident Emmanuel Macron met members of the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) including the YPG in Paris on Thursday and offered to mediate in the conflict. Turkey launched a military offensive against Kurdish fighters operating in northern Syria in January.



"Turkey's approach towards the PKK/PYD/YPG is clear: we reject fatuous approaches such as dialogue, contact or mediation with these terrorist groups," Kalin said. Macron on Thursday promised he would send French troops to the northern Syrian town of Manbij, according to Kurdish representative Asiya Abdellah who attended the meeting. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said Manbij will be the next town to come under attack.



US troops are already stationed there.



Khaled Eissa, a Kurdish official based in Paris, confirmed that France "will strengthen its military deployment".







No new military intervention in northern Syria, France says

>

PARIS - France is not planning any new military operation in northern Syria beyond its existing commitments to the US-led international anti-ISIS coalition, the presidential office said on Friday. The clarification came after Kurdish representatives said after a meeting with President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Thursday that France would send "new troops" to the region. "It is necessary to continue this battle together," the statement said. The French president is concerned about the "risks of recovery by Daesh" particularly in the border region with Iraq. During Thursday's meeting with eight members of the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) including the YPG Macron reaffirmed his concern over the situation in northern Syria, where Turkish troops have recently taken the Kurdish enclave of Afrin.
Theater: Tunis hails Goldoni play by Piccolo Theater Performance,masterclass with Latini, play in Istanbul in Nov.

(by Paolo Paluzzi) (ANSAmed) - TUNIS, MARCH 30 - The performance 'Il teatro comico' (comic theater) staged by Milan's Piccolo Teatro company in Tunis, directed by Roberto Latini, has been a success.



The numerous public applauded the play, which lasted two hours and a half. Latini said that the ''story of 'teatro comico' is extremely complicated and the intention is to follow a Prandello-like approach in dealing with the comedy's characters. You will not find one Harlequin because we are all Harlequins'', said the director. ''Goldoni - he continued - writes a comedy that talks about the theater. It is something that tastes like Prandello almost two centuries before, it appears to deal with the 1900s and with an ability for self-reflection, from Artaud onwards, including Pirandello, Beckett, Pinter, Ionesco, Muller It is not theater within theater, it is the conscience of theater'', said Latini.



The performance at the 4eme Art was also attended by the director of the Piccolo theater, Sergio Escobar, who was particularly satisfied with the initiative promoted by the cultural ministry in cooperation with the Italian Cultural Institute, the Italian embassy in Tunis and the Thetre National Tunisien. The initiative, part of the integrated promotional program 'Italy, culture, Mediterranean', included two days of master classes held by Roberto Latini, which involved students of the Ecole de l'Acteur of Fadhel Jabi.



In November, the same performance will be held at the International festival in Istanbul, also with meetings with the public and workshops held by the director and the play's actors.




BEIRUT- Roughly 6,000 Syrian rebels and civilians have arrived in the northwestern region of Idlib from besieged Eastern Ghouta, sources on the ground at the Qalaat al Madiq crossing reported Friday.



The National observatory for human rights in Syria (ONDUS) has confirmed that the transfer by the Syrian government and Russia of surrendered rebels and civilians from Ghouta to Idlib continued during the night. Just one rebel group is still holding out in the town of Douma but is expected to surrender before Saturday evening, when the three-day ultimatum given by Syrian and Russia troops expires.


Libya: released Tripoli mayor 'held by militias' Car bomb in Ajdabiya in Cyrenaica, 8 dead. 'ISIS responsible'

(ANSAmed) - CAIRO, MARCH 30 - The office for security coordination in Tripoli, Libya, Friday said on its Facebook page that the city's mayor, Abdulrauf Beitelmal, ''has been released''. It also stressed that the mayor had been held by ''illegal militia''.



The alarm was raised yesterday by the municipal council of the Libyan capital and some sources had suggested that the abductors could belong to a group of the interior ministry.



Other sources instead claimed that the mayor had been arrested on corruption charges. Beitelmal had assumed a national role when, over the past few days, he had taken to Tripoli mayors from across Libya, including those from the east under the control of general Khalifa Haftar, presenting himself as a man of dialogue.



Meanwhile last night a car bomb exploded at a checkpoint at the eastern entrance of the Libyan city of Ajdabiya, in Cyrenaica, a high-level military source told a Libyan news agency. The source added that the attack killed eight and wounded 10 and was allegedly carried out by ISIS.



Al Wasat instead reported that five people died and three others were wounded. A security source in Ajdabiya told the website that a suspect was detained in connection with the attack and handed over to the local agency for the fight against terrorism. (ANSAmed)
Palestinian killed by Israeli artillery fire, doctors say Great March of Return protests start Fri in Gaza

(ANSAmed) - TEL AVIV, MARCH 30 - A Palestinian farmer was killed by "Israeli artillery fire" near Khan Yunis in southern Gaza on Friday morning, local medical sources have said. Ahmed Wahid Samour, 27, reportedly died after being hit by a tank shell on the eastern border of the al-Qarara area north east of Khan Younis. A second man was injured, the sources said. The Israeli military has so far made no comment on this development. Friday sees the start of the Great March of Return protests near the border fence as part of Land Day, a demonstration backed by Hamas to commemorate the killing of six Palestinians by Israeli security forces during protests over land confiscation in 1976.



The first tents were erected on Thursday amid a heightened Israeli security presence. (ANSAmed).




Two Palestinian killed in clashes on Gaza-Israel border Death toll in 'Land Day' protest rises to 3

(ANSAmed) - TEL AVIV, MARCH 30 - Two Palestinian protesters has been killed on Friday in violent clashes with the Israeli military along the barrier fence between Gaza and the Jewish state where the Great March of Return protest is underway as part of Land Day, local sources reported on Friday. Mohammed Kamal Najjar, 25, was killed east of Jabalya in northern Gaza, and Amin Mahmoud Muammar (35), was killed n Rafah in the south of the Strip, taking Friday's death toll to three.



A 27-year-old farmer was killed by tank fire near Khan Yunis in southern Gaza on Friday morning.



The Israeli military reports that thousands of Palestinians are "rioting in six places along the Gaza Strip, buring types, throwing stones at the barrier fence and at Israeli troops, which are responding with anti-riot equipment and by firing at the main instigators". The army alos accuses Hamas, which has backed the protests, "of endangering civilian lives and using them for terrorist purposes". (ANSAmed)
Land Day - Israel's expropriation in 1976 Palestinians remember protest that killed six

(ANSAmed) - TEL AVIV, MARCH 30 - Palestinians commemorate Land Day every March 30 to remember the first protest in 1976 against the Israeli government's expropriation of land surrounding Palestinian villages in the Galilee. Six Israeli Arabs were killed and 100 others were wounded in clashes with the Israeli army, according to reports at the time. Protesters were demonstrating against the expropriation of Arab properties to build Jewish settlements in northern Israel.



The protests followed the announcement made by the Israeli government of a plan to expropriate some 100 dunam (one dunham is approximately 1000 square meters). Arab organizations called a general strike and organized marches in several Arab cities in Israeli territory, from Galilee in the north to Negev in the south. The clashes that ensued led to the casualties and to dozens of arrests among demonstrators.



Since then, March 30 has become for Palestinians and Israeli Arabs 'Yom al-Ard', or Land Day, which is commemorated in the Territories (including Gaza) and in the Arab part of Israel.



To mark Land Day - and for six weeks until the day of Israel's birth in May 1948, which Palestinians called 'Nakba' (catastrophe) - several 'marches for the return' of Palestinian refugees are also planned. Such an issue is claimed by Palestinians every time a peace deal is discussed. This year Land Day and marches backed by Hamas in Gaza coincided with Passover which is celebrated starting tonight for a week.



(ANSAmed)
No new military intervention in northern Syria, France says

(ANSAmed) - PARIS, MARCH 30 - France is not planning any new military operation in northern Syria beyond its existing commitments to the US-led international anti-ISIS coalition, the presidential office said on Friday.



The clarification came after Kurdish representatives said after a meeting with President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Thursday that France would send "new troops" to the region.



"It is necessary to continue this battle together," the statement said. The French president is concerned about the "risks of recovery by Daesh" particularly in the border region with Iraq. During Thursday's meeting with eight members of the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) including the YPG Macron reaffirmed his concern over the situation in northern Syria, where Turkish troops have recently taken the Kurdish enclave of Afrin. (ANSAmed)
Turkey rejects alleged French support to Syrian Kurds No to steps that legitimise terrorist groups, spok

(ANSAmed) - ISTANBUL, MARCH 30 - Turkey on Friday dismissed an alleged offer by France to send troops to northern Syria in support of Kurdish militias there.



"The countries we consider to be our allies and friends should take a clear stance against all types of terrorism, and not take steps that legitimise terrorist groups," Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said. His comment came after French Pesident Emmanuel Macron met members of the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) including the YPG in Paris on Thursday and offered to mediate in the conflict. Turkey launched a military offensive against Kurdish fighters operating in northern Syria in January.



"Turkey's approach towards the PKK/PYD/YPG is clear: we reject fatuous approaches such as dialogue, contact or mediation with these terrorist groups," Kalin said. Macron on Thursday promised he would send French troops to the northern Syrian town of Manbij, according to Kurdish representative Asiya Abdellah who attended the meeting. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said Manbij will be the next town to come under attack.



US troops are already stationed there.



Khaled Eissa, a Kurdish official based in Paris, confirmed that France "will strengthen its military deployment".



(ANSAmed)
Advanced composite materials manufacturer Hexcel celebrated the grand opening of its state-of-the art manufacturing facility at the MidParc Free Trade Zone in Casablanca.

The opening ceremony was attended by Mr Moulay Hafid Elalamy, Minister for Industry, Trade, Investment and Digital Economy; Nick Stanage, Hexcel Chairman, CEO and President; and Thierry Merlot, President, Aerospace  Europe/Asia Pacific/MEA.

At the new $20 million facility, Hexcel transforms lightweight honeycomb materials into engineered core parts that provide structural reinforcement for aerospace applications including aircraft structures, engine nacelles and helicopter blades. The site is expected to employ more than 200 people by 2020, and it made its first customer delivery last December.

The Moroccan plant is part of Hexcels ongoing worldwide investment to create a diversified and robust global supply chain to support aerospace customers growing demand for engineered core.

Hexcels Nick Stanage commented: We could not be more pleased to become neighbors here in Midparc with our customers including Airbus, Boeing, Safran and Bombardier. This facility is critical to our success because it positions us to secure additional growth with our aerospace customers in Morocco and around the world, he said.

Mr Elalamy commented: The Aerospace sector is achieving its potential in terms of export business and local integration, following the launch of the Industrial Acceleration Plan. The recently launched engines and composite materials ecosystems add significantly increased value that Hexcel will support and reinforce. The company is the driving force of the composite materials ecosystem, and its business is sure to encourage other structural investments to the region, added M. Elalamy.
The only supplier selected for all three engine-types, AFI KLM E&M has already started repairs on four CFM56-5A powerplants ahead of the Tunisian carriers summer season schedule.

In late December 2017, AFI KLM E&M and Tunisair signed a new Time & Material engine support contract covering the CFM56-5A, CFM56-5B and CFM56-7B engines powering the Tunisair fleets sixteen Airbus A320s, four A319s and seven Boeing 737s. The Tunisian flag carrier had launched a call for tenders in late 2016 aimed at selecting two MRO suppliers for each engine type. Following the consultation, AFI KLM E&M was the sole candidate to be selected to handle all three engine-types simultaneously.

A new chapter in the long history of trust-based relations between Tunisair and Air France, and in broader close cooperation between France and Tunisia, opens with this latest contract.

Senior Vice President Commercial AFI KLM E&M Fabrice Defrance said: We are very happy with Tunisairs renewed trust. Being the sole MRO to work simultaneously on all three engine-types is striking recognition of our expertise and the competitive nature of our offerings. As we have demonstrated by the speed with which we are moving to overhaul the first four engines, we will strive to meet all Tunisairs needs and contribute to the development of its operations as its summer schedule gets into full swing, and also, I hope, in the much longer term.
The UAE Space Agency, represented by Dr. Mohammed Nasser Al Ahbabi, the Director General of the Agency, hosted a high-level delegation from Saudi Arabia headed by Dr. Ibrahim bin Mahmoud Babli Undersecretary for Sectorial Development, Ministry of Economy and Planning.

The visiting delegation was briefed on the UAE space sector and its key initiatives, achievements and projects.



Accompanied by a number of officials and engineers, the delegation also toured the Agency's headquarters in Abu Dhabi where they learned about the latest developments in the UAE national space sector, the latest developments in regards to the Agency's projects, initiatives and achievements since its inception. The delegation also discussed the potential for bilateral cooperation across the fields of space science, research, technology and exploration.



Dr. Mohammed Nasser Al Ahbabi said: The UAE has become a model for how to organize an advanced space sector capable of launching advanced and ambitious projects that support global space exploration efforts while also enhancing national capabilities. Likewise, the importance of a vibrant space sector in supporting the development of a knowledge-based economy should not be overlooked.



The visit by the Saudi delegation provided us with the opportunity to share our unique experience in developing a highly successful space program through the enhancement of existing national capabilities and the formation of partnerships with key organizations and institutions to facilitate the exploration of Mars and the expansion of space education programs across national schools and universities, added Al Ahbabi.
Russia is beefing up military-technical cooperation (MTC) with Laos, Russian media outlets say. Moscow and Vientiane have recently signed an agreement to open a new facility in Laos in order to maintain military platforms operated by the South Asian country. "The facility will provide assistance in resolving issues of military/military-technical cooperation," the document says. The project will be partially funded by Laos.



Russia and Laos are beefing up their military-technical cooperation (Picture source: Russian MoD)

Laos still operates a large number of Soviet-originated military platforms. Already at a meeting with his Lao counterpart Chansamone Chanyalath at the VI Moscow Conference on International Security held on April 24, 2017, the Minister of Defence of the Russian Federation, General of the Army Sergei Shoigu, and his Lao counterpart Chansamone Chanyalath, the first stated that Our countries have a long history of friendship and cooperation. We consider Laos to be a reliable partner of Russia. Contacts at the highest level, including the meeting of our presidents last May in Sochi, is a confirmation of mutual interest in the development of bilateral relations", Sergei Shoigu said.

According to The Diplomat magazine, Laos and Russia have long had a close defense relationship that extends across several realms, including military education, law enforcement cooperation, and the purchase of military equipment. But ties have also been on the uptick of late, as Vladimir Putins Russia  ambitious abroad and increasingly isolated from the West  tries to deepen ties with Southeast Asian states, and Laos new leadership, which took over following the quinquennial party congress in 2016, looks to solidify ties with neighboring states and major powers.

Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith said that virtually everything the Laotian Armed Forces now have is linked with Russia., The Diplomat magazine reported.
During the Vietnam war, starting in 1963, the shoulder-fired M72 LAW rocket launcher equipped the US armed forces in very large numbers. The US Marine Corps is now surveying how to replace it with a weapon associating the advantages of a shoulder-fired rocket and a recoilless rifle to destroy a wide variety of targets. The weapon must be usable safely from inside buildings.



How long will the US Marine Corps keep using their Vietnam-era M72 LAW rocket launchers? (Picture source: Youtube)

As reported by Defense News and very interestingly commented on War Zone, this March 2018, U.S. marines from 3rd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment got a chance to test out the new versions of the M72 LAW (Light Anti-armor Weapon) at the Urban Advanced Naval Technology Exercises 2018, or ANTX18, at Camp Pendleton in California earlier in March 2018.

The M72 is 3 lbs lighter than the somewhat equivalent Swedish-made M3E1 Carl Gustav recoilless rifle. Beyond its light weight and simplicity, an advantage resides in the number of different rockets available, which makes the M72 a much more polyvalent weapon than only the antitank initially intended. Lets recall that the Panzerfaust  the first weapon of that kind and size  widely distributed to the German forces from 1944 and, from 1945, even to the civilian Volksturm, was already used against many more targets than only armored vehicles.

With the evolution of tanks, it appeared that the small 66mm rocket had limited effectiveness against them, though it could blast through lighter armored vehicles. In Vietnam, few combats opposed U.S. forces to North Vietnamese armored vehicles. But soldiers and marines used the weapons to blow apart bunkers and otherwise provide additional fire support.

In the late 1980s, the U.S. armed forces began replacing the bulk of their M72s with a new, Swedish-designed 84mm disposable recoilless rifle: the AT-4, or M136. But the latter still doesnt totally replace the good old M72, mostly among special forces.

The Norwegian aerospace and defense firm Nammo now produces more than a half-dozen different rocket variants for the M136, adapted to a wide range of targets. There is namely a version with a penetrating warhead that can break through brick walls and reinforced doors before exploding within. Another variant has similar abilities to bust through barriers, but combines it with a large fragmentation warhead that creates a cloud of shrapnel, something particularly deadly in a confined space. Nammo is now offering programmable rounds where the operator can select certain options before firing. One of these newer dual-fuze options gives the shooter the ability to have the rocket explode when it hits a target or delay its detonation to try and bust through a barrier.

A major improvement, the Norwegian manufacturer has designed a system that, better than the Carl Gustav M136A1, eliminates the backblast of firing the rocket, which makes it safer to use near other friendly forces and from within a building. The system has the added benefit of reducing the weapons acoustic signature, reportedly similar to a pistol shot, which could help conceal the firer and just protect their hearing.

Both the Marine Corps and the Army are looking at fielding the reloadable Carl Gustav recoilless rifle. Though heavier and bulkier, that system gives troops the ability to fire multiple rounds from the same weapon and load up only the one they need for a particular target, instead of having to find the appropriate M72 in a pile of outwardly identical looking launchers.

In the meantime, it appears possible that the USMC could keep using some versions of their old M72, if even in a limited capacity, for the foreseeable future.
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New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas is investigating reports of New Mexico teachers TEACH grants that have summarily been converted to loans by the U.S. Department of Education.

Balderas is encouraging teachers in New Mexico who have been affected by this to contact his office.

Nationally, reports are that approximately a third of TEACH grants have been converted to loans without allowing teachers notice or time to correct even minor clerical errors in renewal paperwork. When a TEACH grant is converted to a loan, recipients have to repay the whole amount of grants received, with accrued interest dating from the original date of the grant.

I am highly concerned that teachers who have committed themselves to serving our most vulnerable communities are having the terms of critical grant funds cancelled and suddenly owe the federal government money, said Balderas. I will fight aggressively to ensure that teachers are protected so that they can do the important work of teaching our most vulnerable students.

TEACH grants allow promising students to earn masters degrees if they agree to teach math or science for four years in a high-poverty area. The TEACH grant recipients have eight years to fulfill their obligation to teach for four years in exchange for grants worth up to $4,000 per year.

For many teachers, TEACH grant funding has made their education and training possible by reducing the amount of debt incurred for that education. Many teachers, who are actively fulfilling their responsibilities to teach in high poverty schools, are suddenly discovering that their grants are no longer in place  often based on minor clerical mistakes that the grant terms allow for correcting.

Cancellation of terms of agreements may mean fewer students can become teachers in New Mexico, where attracting qualified teachers to serve high poverty or otherwise underserved areas is already extremely difficult. As a result, fewer students in high-poverty schools will be taught by highly trained math and science teachers who have lost their grant funding.

To report a cancellation, a TEACH recipient can file an online complaint form at nmag.gov or call 1-844-255-9210 toll-free-statewide.
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Drought is tightening its grip across a wide swath of the American Southwest as farmers, ranchers and water managers throughout the region brace for whats expected to be more warm and dry weather through the spring.

The federal drought map released Thursday shows dry conditions intensifying across northern New Mexico and into southwestern Arizona.

On the southern high plains, Oklahoma is ground zero right now for the worst drought conditions in the United States.

Federal agriculture officials say crop conditions in some areas are declining. In New Mexico, about three-quarters of the winter wheat crop is in poor to very poor condition as meaningful moisture has been scarce.

Along the Rio Grande in southern New Mexico, the irrigation allotment will be less than half of what farmers received last year.
In todays Wall Street Journal I review the Broadway revivals (and premieres) of two important plays, Edward Albees Three Tall Women and Kenneth Lonergans Lobby Hero. Heres an excerpt.

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Edward Albee may have been one of Americas greatest playwrights, but he couldnt get a decent review between 1975, when he won a Pulitzer Prize for Seascape, and 1994, when the off-Broadway premiere of Three Tall Women brought him a third Pulitzer and restored him to critical favor after a string of flops. That Three Tall Women subsequently failed to move to Broadway remains an impenetrable mystery, but its there now at last, staged with no-nonsense clarity by Joe Mantello and starring Glenda Jackson, Laurie Metcalf and Alison Pill.

Three Tall Women is a conversation piece set in the bedroom of a rich, senile woman (Ms. Jackson) who is looked after by a long-suffering paid companion of a certain age (Ms. Metcalf) and is being visited by a young lawyer who takes care of her estate (Ms. Pill). In the first part of the play, Ms. Jacksons character gabbles randomly, incessantly and revealingly about her long and eventful life. Then she has a stroke, at which point the three actors suddenly metamorphose without authorial explanation into herself when young, middle-aged and very old.

Ms. Jackson, who is returning to Broadway after a 30-year hiatus, gives an acrid, wised-up performance that is as pointed as youd expect from so celebrated an actor. Its no better, though, than than that of Ms. Metcalf, whos as memorable here as she was in Lady Bird, while Ms. Pill acquits herself well as their foil.

Kenneth Lonergan is far from prolific, but everything he writes, whether for stage or screen, is worth seeing. Lobby Hero, which was first performed off Broadway in 2001 but is only just receiving its Broadway premiere, is his most provocative play to date, a study of what it meansand what it coststo tell the truth in a corrupt world. In it, two security guards (Michael Cera and Brian Tyree Henry) and two cops, one badly bent (Chris Evans) and the other young and naive (Bel Powley), come together in the lobby of a New York apartment house to talk for two and a half hours about a murder in which they are variously and complicatedly involved.

Mr. Cera and Mr. Evans are well known from TV and the movies, which accounts for the presence of shrieking fans in and outside the theater. The true star of the show, however, is Mr. Henry, who is calm, solid and touchingly troubled as the guard whose dilemma (he knows that his brother may have done something unforgivably terrible) sets Lobby Hero in motion.

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To read my complete review of Three Tall Women, go here.

To read my complete review of Lobby Hero, go here.

The cast of Lobby Hero talks about the play:
White House shoots down that Trumps criticism was part of a grudge.

Washington: US President Donald Trump on Thursday blasted Amazon.com with a list of complaints, a day after news website Axios reported that Mr Trump wants to curb the mega retailers growing power using federal antitrust laws and led its shares to fall almost 5 per cent.

I have stated my concerns with Amazon long before the Election. Unlike others, they pay little or no taxes to state & local governments, use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy (causing tremendous loss to the US), and are putting many thousands of retailers out of business! Mr Trump tweeted early on Thursday.

Amazon founder and chairman, Jeff Bezos, also privately owns the Washington Post, which won a Pulitzer Prize last year for its investigation of Mr Trumps donations to charities. The probe found that many of Mr Trumps philanthropic claims were exaggerated and often were not charitable donations.

Still, White House Deputy Press Secretary Raj Shah shot down the notion that Mr Trumps criticism was part of a personal grudge.

A lot of people have made this, with respect to Amazon, about personalities and the CEO at Amazon  were talking about Jeff Bezos here, he said on Thursday on the Fox News Channel. Its really about policy.

Mr Shah reiterated that Mr Trump was not making specific policy changes. There are a number of proposals that have worked their ways through the House and the Senate or have been considered by the House and the Senate. Hed be supportive of such efforts, he said.

Mr Trumps claims about Amazons state and local tax payments have been met with skepticism. While the company was once criticized for attempting to skirt state sales taxes, it currently has a reputation as a leader in collecting the levies, which can vary from state to state.

Legally pursuing Amazon could affect more than its share price, which was largely steady after Mr Trumps tweet.

Amazon is currently in the process of establishing a $5 billion second headquarters which could bring 50,000 new jobs to the location it selects. In January, it winnowed the list of possible locations down to 20 metropolitan areas. Apart from nationwide goods deliveries, Amazons services include video streaming, a digital home assistant known as Alexa, and an online payments program.


Kriti explains that working with Sajid Nadiadwala is like homecoming.

Kriti Sanon may be new to the industry, but shes been making all the right moves here. Post the success of Bareilly Ki Barfi, she will now be seen in Housefull 4, bringing on her comic side.

But Kriti knows the challenges of such a role. I love comedies, and I think its very difficult to make people laugh. But I love being part of such movies. The fact that you make others laugh, while enjoying being part of a fun journey is great, she smiles.

Kriti explains that working with Sajid Nadiadwala is like homecoming. Its my second film with Sajid sir, and Im very excited to start the film. Its like coming back to my home production, she smiles.

Touted to be Indias first 3D comedy, Housefull 4 will release in Diwali 2019.

Meanwhile, the actress, who made her debut with Tiger Shroff in Heropanti, says she shares a great bond with him. Having been to a screening of Baaghi 2 recently, shes hopeful the two will work together again soon.

We made our debuts together, so I have a soft corner for Tiger. Im very proud of him, because he keeps going to the next level in every movie. I would like to work with him again. Maybe in Heropanti 2! Kriti signs off, hopefully.
While there are strong rumours that Alia and Ranbir are dating, insiders insist that its not true.

Ranbir Raj Kapoor is 35-years-old and unabashedly a mamas boy. Or so the rumours go. His mom Neetu Kapoor, a popular former star in her heydays, ironically has never approved of any of the actresses her darling son has dated. Strange, considering that Neetu was not exactly to the manner born. So it is hard to understand her inherent disdain for her sons ex-girlfriends, be it Deepika Padukone or Katrina Kaif.

When, a madly in love Ranbir was dating Deepika, Neetu constantly made snide references about how her son was not getting enough sleep and his girlfriend was not a good influence on him. The first time he felt involved, I knew the girl was not right for him. I told him dont get serious so soon, the more you see the more you know and learn, so meet many girls, and go out with them, but dont commit yet, was her refrain.

Today, that very same Deepika is Indias top female star. And now Neetu Kapoor even sent out a bouquet to the actress, saying proud of you, after watching her act in Padmavaat. What exactly was she proud of?

Official girlfriend number two, Katrina Kaif assumed she had managed to get the Kapoor boy into her fold after they opted for a live in arrangement, much to mama Kapoors disappointment. All Neetu could do was talk about being happy for her son even as she plotted Kats exit from Ranbirs life. Who can forget that famous Xmas lunch at the late Shashi Kapoors house, after which Neetu conveniently cropped out Kat from a group picture. The following year, Neetu and Rishi did not attend the family lunch as they didnt want to bump into Katrina there. This was also a strong message to Ranbir to choose his parents or his girlfriend.

The rest is history. Everyone has their own life. I cannot say anything. What do I say? was her reaction after the news broke out about their break up clearly dissociating herself from the story.

Recently, Neetu posted happy pictures with actress Alia Bhatt, who celebrated her birthday in Bulgaria where she was shooting with Ranbir. Neetu appears to be fond of Alia. And when Alia posted a picture of her with Ranbir smartly captioning it. And its just the beginning, Neetu replied with heart emoticons on the post.

While there are strong rumours that Alia and Ranbir are dating, insiders insist that its not true. And now with reports out of how Ranbir still nurses a soft spot for Pakistani actress and single mom, Mahira Khan, his mum must be getting serious palpitations. See, Neetu is a caring mother. Ranbir is a soft guy. He never wants to hurt anyone but ends up getting hurt most of the time. Thats the precise reason, why Neetu wants him to be careful of the relationships he gets into. For instance, if she likes Alia and feels that the actress is also the kind of person that Ranbir can be with, she will be fine. Ranbir is a simple guy. Neetu is only scared of a high maintenance bahu in the family, says a source.

In August last year, Ranbir and his mother had gone off to London, apparently to meet a homely girl from a business family in London. While mama Kapoor was convinced, Ranbir wanted time off to get a few blockbusters on the big screen before getting married. Guess, this time he is having his way. Maybe he is trying hard to break away from her overbearing arms and Mahira maybe a step in that direction!
The decision, designed to give a Hindu identity to dalits in the state, did not go down well with the Opposition ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

Lucknow: The Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh waded into a political controversy on Thursday by deciding to introduce Ramji as the middle name of the Father of the Constitution, B.R. Ambedkar, in all official correspondence and records.

The decision, designed to give a Hindu identity to dalits in the state, did not go down well with the Opposition ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

BSP supremo Mayawati termed it as a politics of selfish interest triggered off by casteist designs, and said that Dr Ambedkar was popularly known as Baba Saheb and he had signed his resignation letter as law minister in 1951 as Dr B.R. Ambedkar.

Mahatma Gandhi is known as Bapu and is rarely referred to by his full name, which is Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Similarly, Prime Minister is referred to as Narendra Modi and not as Narendra Damodar Das Modi. The BJP has not been able to produce a leader of the stature of Baba Saheb and are now indulging in such tactics, she said.

A Bahujan Samaj Party functionary said that the Bharatiya Janata Party is in a tearing hurry to claim Ambedkar and project a dalit-friendly image since elections are round the corner, while a fuming Samajwadi Party said vote-bank politics was behind the move.

Truing to blunt the Oppositions attack, a BJP functionary said on Thursday, In the 2014 and 2017 elections, dalits had turned Hindus first and voted for the BJP in large numbers which led to our spectacular victory in the Lok Sabha and then the Assembly elections. Most of the dalits do not know that Dr B.R. Ambedkar used Ramji as his middle name in his entire signature. We are simply reminding them that their icon also believed in Ram.



Ramji was the name of B.R. Ambedkars father, Ramji Maliji Sakpal. And as per practice in Maharashtra, fathers name is often used as the middle name by sons. The initials B.R. were short for Bhimrao Ramji though it is popularly used as Bhim Rao.



The change in the name of the dalit icon was made on the suggestion of UP Governor Ram Naik who had written to the Prime Minister and chief minister in this regard in December last year.



The Hindi speaking states have been writing his name incorrectly. Most importantly, his name is written as Bhim Rao as two words, however, the correct way to write is Bhimrao, the Governor told reporters on Thursday.



He further said that the spelling of Ambedkar in English will remain unchanged, but in Hindi it will be spelt as Aambedkar.



The BJP government is playing politics with the name of the dalit icon, SP leader Anurag Bhadoria said hours after the state government issued the order.



In Mainpuri, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav said instead of altering Ambedkars name, it is important that the path he showed is followed.



A change has been made in the name of Bhim Rao Ambedkar ... Whosoever has the right to vote knows his name... It is essential today, when he is being remembered and a new name is being affixed with his name, to follow the path shown by him, he said, adding, Every child knows Ambedkars name.



A BSP functionary said that the BJP was in a tearing hurry to claim Ambedkar and project a dalit-friendly image since elections were round the corner.



They have added Ramji to Ambedkars name in order to promote their own Ram. Where are they when Ambedkar statues are desecrated across the state? he asked.



UP minister Siddhartha Nath Singh said, In Maharashtra, a fathers name is mentioned in the middle of his sons name. But if they (Opposition) sees Ayodhya in it, this shows how hollow they are and how low they have stooped to that they connect everything with it (Ram and Ayodhya) We are not doing anything drastic but are merely correcting a mistake. Dr Ambedkar himself signed his name as Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar and we are simply correcting this historical fact Those who follow his ideals should not dabble in politics on his name... When it is being written and used rightly they should praise it.

Surprisingly, BJP MP from Delhi, Udit Raj was quoted as having said that, I dont find any reason to change his name. It is an individuals choice to decide how he wants to be known. Why create a controversy unnecessarily? The dalit community has expressed its displeasure.

The order to include Ramji in Ambedkars name was issued on Wednesday night by principal secretary (administration) Jitendra Kumar, an official spokesman said in Lucknow on Thursday.
Addressing the media, Secretary Education Anil Swarup informed that re-examination of Class 12 Economics will be held on April 25.

Central Board of Secondary Education has announced the re-examination dates of Class 12 Economics and Class 10 Maths exams. (Photo: ANI/Twitter)

New Delhi: The Union Human Resource Development Ministry on Friday announced the re-examination dates of Class 12 Economics exam.

Addressing the media, Secretary Education Anil Swarup informed that re-examination of Class 12 Economics will be held on April 25.

For Class 10 Maths, the re-exam will be held in July in Delhi and Haryana. The exact date for the Class 10 exam will be announced later.

"Regarding Class 10 re-examination, as leak was restricted to Delhi and Haryana, if it at all a re-exam will happen, it will happen only in Delhi and Haryana and a decision will be taken on this in next 15 days. If at all a re-exam is done, it will be in July," Swarup further added.
Chief Minister K Palanisamy on Friday said that the state government will pursue legally for the formation of CMB.

The AIADMK government earlier on Tuesday decided to move a contempt petition on March 31. (Photo: PTI/File)

Chennai: Stung by the Centre's inaction over Cauvery issue, the AIADMK party members have decided to observe fast across Tamil Nadu on April 2 to urge the Central government to form a Cauvery Management Board (CMB).

Talking to media, Chief Minister K Palanisamy on Friday said that the state government will pursue legally for the formation of CMB.

"We scuttled the Parliament for 17 days for Cauvery Management Board. This has never happened for a state's cause," Palanisamy was quoted as saying by NDTV.

Tamil Nadu Fisheries Minister D Jayakumar said that the government was discussing about the next course of action and will approach the Supreme Court again, after the Centre failed to implement it.

An executive committee meet headed by DMK working president MK Stalin passed a resolution to convene an all-party meeting to decide on next course of action on CMB formation. It said a protest will be planned after consulting all opposition parties.

The DMK also condemned the state and Central government for not implementing the SC order.

Members of Sidelined AIADMK leader TTV Dhinakaran's newly launched party 'Amma Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam' had earlier on Sunday held a hunger strike in Chennai demanding constitution of the Cauvery Management Board as soon as possible.

Also Read: Dhinakaran's party on hunger strike over Cauvery Management Board

The Supreme Court had given a six-week deadline to the Centre to formulate the CMB, which ended on Thursday.

The AIADMK government earlier on Tuesday decided to move a contempt petition on March 31, in case the demand is not met by the Centre.

Also Read: Cauvery issue: TN to file contempt against Centre; CM meets ministers

Chief Minister EK Palanisamy had also held discussions with his senior ministers on the Cauvery issue on Thursday.

The apex court in its much-awaited verdict on the decades-long dispute increased Karnataka's share of water and directed the state to release 177.25 tmc to Tamil Nadu.

Following the verdict, the Supreme Court on February 16 had ordered the Central government to set up the CMB and the Cauvery Water Regulatory Committee within six weeks.
The accused told the police that he got in touch with the victim through a dating site and had met thrice in 10 days.

Ayush Nautiyal, a final year student of commerce at the Ram Lal Anand college, went missing last Thursday just after he left home from college. (Photo: facebook.com/ayush.nautiyal.94)

New Delhi: Days after a 21-year-old Delhi University student was found murdered near a drain in Dwarka, the police have arrested the accused, Istiaq (25), who confessed to killing the student on March 22 after a tiff.

He said he had cooked up the kidnapping story to mislead the victim's family and the police.

The accused told the police that he got in touch with the victim through a dating site and had met thrice in 10 days.

On March 22, when they met, they had a fight which got aggravated and the accused attacked Nautiyal multiple times on the head with a hammer, the police said.

Ayush Nautiyal, a final year student of commerce at the Ram Lal Anand college, went missing last Thursday just after he left home from college. Later, his family received a WhatsApp message from his phone in which the kidnappers demanded a ransom of Rs 50 lakh. The accused had also shared a photo in which Nautiyal was gagged and his head was bandaged. His clothes had blood stains on them.

The family drove through the area in search of the kidnapper carrying the money after which Ayush's body was found near a drain on Wedmnesday night.

During investigation, it was found that the deceased had gone to a restaurant in Dwarka Sector 14 with another man on March 22.

On the basis of that clue, the police proceeded in their investigation. On the basis of a photograph that the police had procured from a CCTV camera at the restaurant, it was found that the man accompanying him is a former student of a fashion institute.

Details of the student were sought from the institute and subsequently he was nabbed from Uttam Nagar on Thursday.

(With PTI inputs)
Official sources said top law officers are brainstorming with officials of the social justice ministry to prepare a credible review plea.

New Delhi: With pressure mounting from the Opposition as well as its own allies, and Assembly polls in several key states due this year, followed by 2019 general elections, the Centre on Thursday decided to file a review petition in the Supreme Court next week challenging its order banning automatic arrests and filing of cases for alleged harassment of SCs/STs.

The decision came a day after several SC/ST MPs of the NDA led by Lok Janshakti Party president and Union minister Ram Vilas Paswan met Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the issue.

Also, several Opposition parties led by Congress president Rahul Gandhi met President Ram Nath Kovind on Wednesday over the dilution of SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, and sought his intervention.

In their memorandum to the President, the Opposition parties said, There is great unease and a feeling of insecurity among members of the dalit community and other oppressed classes after the Supreme Court judgment was delivered. If immediate steps are not taken by the government, then we are afraid this may turn into something not less than a national disaster.

Official sources said top law officers are brainstorming with officials of the social justice ministry to prepare a credible review plea. Law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said at a press conference earlier Thursday that the government had taken note of the Supreme Court order about laying down new norms on the SC/ST Act. I have already instructed my ministry to consider the desirability of filing a review. Appropriate followup steps are being taken, he said.

The Supreme Court recently banned automatic arrests and registration of criminal cases under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act 1989.

The law protects marginalised communities against discrimination and atrocities.

Social justice minister Thawarchand Gehlot had written to Mr Prasad about a review plea against the Supreme Court verdict. He said there were concerns that the order would make the law ineffective and adversely impact the dispensation of justice to dalits and tribals.

On March 20, the Supreme Court, in a bid to check the misuse of the SC/ST Act, ruled that preliminary enquiry in a case under the Atrocities Act would be done by the DSP to ensure the allegations are not frivolous, and to avoid false implication of an innocent person. The court also held that a government official cannot be prosecuted on the mere allegation of committing an offence under the act without the sanction of the appointing authority.
The TDP chief also accused the Centre of 'spreading lies' regarding quashing of special category status for states.

On March 16, the TDP reached a deadlock with the BJP over the issue of granting 'special category status' to Andhra Pradesh, which ultimately forced the party to quit the NDA coalition. (Photo: File)

Guntur: Amid the ongoing tussle between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Telugu Desam Party (TDP) regarding special status for Andhra Pradesh, Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu claimed that if his party had not allied with the former, they would have won 15 more seats.

"Post bifurcation, we had tied up with the BJP. It was not for political gain, but solely with the intention of development. Had we not allied with the BJP, we would have won 15 more seats. They have cheated us on the special status front," Naidu said at the TDP's 37th formation day celebrations in Guntur on Thursday.

The TDP chief also accused the Centre of "spreading lies" regarding the quashing of the special category status for states.

"They (BJP) said the special category status is quashed. But even now, its benefits are being given to North-Eastern states. Then why are they not giving it to us? It is our right. The Centre is spreading lies," he said.

On March 16, the TDP reached a deadlock with the BJP over the issue of granting 'special category status' to Andhra Pradesh, which ultimately forced the party to quit the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) coalition.

The TDP and YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) also wrote to the Lok Sabha Secretary-General for moving a motion on 'No-Confidence in the Council of Ministers' in the House.

On Tuesday, the YSRCP announced that their MPs would resign from Lok Sabha and asked the TDP MPs to follow the suit over the issue of special status.

Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu will camp in New Delhi on April two and three to meet leaders of various political parties and seek their support for the demand of special status to the state.

TDP sources on Thursday said the chief minister would confer with all non-BJP parties to explain the "injustice" done to Andhra Pradesh post-bifurcation and how the NDA government "failed" to honour the promises made in the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, 2014.

Already, the TDP MPs have handed over a letter written by Naidu to leaders of various parties and sought their support in the state's fight for its rights.
The Himachal Pradesh high court on Wednesday asked the Director CBI to appear before the court in the next hearing.

However, after the CBI filed another status report in its probe pertaining to the case, the high court on Thursday amended its order to summon the agency director.

New Delhi: The CBI team probing the sensational gangrape and murder of a schoolgirl and the custodial death of an accused in Shimla district in July 2017, will soon make a significant arrest in connection with the case.

Expressing its displeasure over the inordinate delay in probe, the Himachal Pradesh high court on Wednesday asked the Director CBI to appear before the court in the next hearing.

However, after the CBI filed another status report in its probe pertaining to the case, the high court on Thursday amended its order to summon the agency director.

The court has now deferred his (head of the investigation agency) appearance till May 9. Raising questions pertaining to the CBI probe, a Division Bench of Acting Chief Justice Sanjay Karol and justice Sandeep Sharma on Wednesday had directed the CBI chief to personally appear in the court and file an affidavit on the status of the probe.

After hearing CBI counsels plea on Thursday, the bench said: If the status report (of the CBI) to be filed on April 25 is not satisfactory and didnt contain sufficient evidence, the CBI Director is supposed to appear in the court on May 9. CBI counsel Anshul Bansal said, Our investigations are scientific. After the court hearing on Wednesday, we received some leads into the crime and this morning we apprised the High Court through an additional status report. He said the case could be cracked by the CBI any time now.

We have in the status report said that hopefully by the next date (on April 25) we will present the accused before the court. On the basis of the status report, the high court modified its order, he added.

The bench had observed on Wednesday: It has been more than eight months that this court entrusted the investigation to the CBI. We are only reminded of the fact that the crime relates to the rape and murder of a 16-year-old girl child.
The fleet of these 71 new buses is expected to reach Seychelles by June, 2018, an Indian government communique said.

NEW DELHI: With Indian governments plan to build a naval military station in the strategic island of Assomption in Seychelles caught in the doldrums after the island nations Opposition refused to support it, India announced a clutch of sops for the nation on Tuesday.

The sops, valued at about Rs 55 crore, include committed financial support for five civilian projects in Seychelles, of which more than Rs 23 crore would be used for the construction a state-of-the-art magistrates court at capital Mahe. It also includes 71 Tata buses for the Seychelles Public Transport Corporation (SPTC), 10 ambulances and the setting up of an emergency response system at the main islands, Mahe, Praslin and La Digue, besides 10 swift response vehicles for the Anti-Narcotics Bureau to combat drug trafficking.

The fleet of these 71 new buses is expected to reach Seychelles by June, 2018, an Indian government communique said.

On March 6, this newspaper had reported details of a secret pact signed on January 27 by foreign secretary S. Jaishankar and Barry Faure, Seychelles secretary of state for foreign affairs.

To be valid, the pact has to be ratified by Indias Union Cabinet and by Seychelles Cabinet of ministers as well as by the National Assembly.

India has been trying hard to counter Chinas String of Pearls strategy, a perceived effort to encircle India commercially and militarily by upping its spheres of influence in Indias neighbourhood.

While India will build, maintain, and operate the base, the ownership rights will vest with Seychelles. India will also at its own cost train, deploy Seychellois military personnel and also conduct joint military exercises.

The pact also allows an Indian Navy officer to oversee operations and maintenance of the base while Indian personnel will wear their military uniforms along with personal weapons.

The protests in the island, on environmental grounds, are being led by the :Save the Aldabra Island Group.
The issue will be resolved as per 1992 'Code of Conduct for the treatment of diplomatic/consular personnel in India and Pakistan.'

India and Pakistan on Friday mutually agreed to resolve matters related to the treatment of diplomats and diplomatic premises. (Photo: Representational/AFP)

New Delhi: India and Pakistan on Friday mutually agreed to resolve matters related to the treatment of diplomats and diplomatic premises, a press release of the Ministry of External Affairs said.

The two countries have decided to resolve the matter in line with the 1992 "Code of Conduct for the treatment of diplomatic/consular personnel in India and Pakistan", the release added.

The pact laid down 12-point code of conduct regarding the way diplomats would be treated in the other country.

The diplomatic row had taken India-Pakistan ties to new low.

Earlier this month, India alleged mistreatment of its envoy in Pakistan and asked Islamabad to ensure safety and security of its officials working at the Indian mission in Islamabad.

In incidents of alleged harassment, one Indian diplomat going to a restaurant in Islamabad was aggressively followed by some people in a car. Four Indian diplomats travelling in an official vehicle on their way to a market were also tailed by two people on a motorcycle.

Pakistan also accused India of harassing its diplomats and released videos of alleged intimidation of its officials. It also called its High Commissioner to India back home for consultations on the issue.

However, the Indian government said that calling back envoys for consultations is a routine process and there is nothing unusual in this.
Latifa, along with her friend, were taken hostage in March by four unidentified men in international waters next to India's western coast.

Princess Sheikha Latifa is the daughter of Vice President and Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates, and ruler of the Emirate of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum. (Photo: Screengrab | YouTube)

Mumbai: Dubai Princess Sheikha Latifa, kidnapped off the coast of Goa, has been taken back to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) with the help of the Indian government.

Princess Sheikha Latifa is the daughter of Vice President and Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates, and ruler of the Emirate of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum.

Latifa, along with her friend Herve Jaubert, were taken hostage earlier in March by four unidentified men in international waters next to the western coast of India.

Sources told Deccan Chronicle, the Indian Navy received an SOS call on March 2 about the missing Dubai Princess and jumped into action.

The Navy had spotted a suspicious sailing vessel off the coast of Goa and sources said around four people, who seemed Indian but had a completely different accent, were found in the sailing vessel in which the princess was taken hostage. The fact that a sailing vessel was drifting off the coast of Goa had initially raised suspicion for the Indian Navy.

It is also unclear how the princess landed in the sailing boat along with her captors and from which port.

The officers had information from their superiors that the boat may contain the Princess, her friend and four other men.

Indian Navy personnel then tracked the sailing vessel, and along with its Coast Guard counterparts, boarded it to rescue the princess and her friend. They were in civilian clothes in order not to raise the hackles of the kidnappers.

Two ships belong to the Coast Guard  the ICGS Samarth and Shoor -- were part of the mission.

The first information about the kidnapping had come from Sheikha Latifa herself when she sent a frantic WhatsApp message on March 4 to a contact identified as Radha Stirling, who also works for a UAE help group Detained in Dubai. She alleged she and her French friend Herve Jaubert were surrounded by men who were firing at them.

According to The Sun, the princess told Stirling: "Radha, please help me, there are men outside," before claiming to hear gunshots.

Stirling asked the princess to record the gunshots, but she did not get a reply.

Stirling said Latifa first got in touch with her firm Detained in Dubai on February 26, claiming she had escaped from Dubai where she was tortured for helping a sibling who also ran away.

The WhatsApp video also shot by the Dubai Princess earlier said she was unsure of returning to Dubai. Sheikha Latifa said in the video, She doesn't have the freedom to live her own life in Dubai - and was secretly detained in prison for three years after a previous failed escape attempt as a teenager.

According to reports, the Dubai princess claimed she was not allowed to drive, was monitored round the clock and was locked up - and even drugged - after a failed attempt to escape the country when she was 16.

Dubai Princess Sheikha Latifa was sent back to UAE by Indian forces on March 8.

Latifa, 33, said she was one of the 30 children the billionaire Dubai ruler has with six wives, and has left the strict Arab state, she claims, with the help of a former French spy. Her friend Herve Jaubert is believed to be a former French intelligence officer.

Latifa said she was the daughter of one of the lesser known wives of the Sheikh.

Click here to watch the video.
Prahlad Joshi translating Amit Shah's speech claimed that 'Narendra Modi will not do anything for the poor and Dalits'.

Pralahad Joshi was the one who corrected BJP chief Amit Shah earlier this week when he said by mistake that the government of BS Yeddyurappa was the 'number one most corrupt'. (Photo: File)

Bengaluru: With Karnataka Assembly elections round the corner, the Bharatiya Janata Party is making headline for all the wrong reasons in the poll-bound state.

For the second time this week, BJP national president Amit Shah was caught in another embarrassing gaffe due to MP Prahlad Joshi, who was translating his speech at a rally in Challkere of Karnatakas Devanagiri district.

Pralahad Joshi was the one who corrected Amit Shah earlier this week when he said by mistake that the government of BS Yeddyurappa (the BJP's chief ministerial candidate) was the "number one most corrupt". He obviously meant to say the Congress government of Siddaramaiah.

On Tuesday, Prahlad Joshi while translating BJP chiefs speech from Hindi to Kannada during an election rally ahead of polls on May 12, claimed that "Narendra Modi will not do anything for the poor and Dalits".

Amit Shah had said in Hindi, "The Siddaramaiah government could not develop Karnataka. You have faith in Prime Minister Narendra Modi and cast your vote for Yeddyurappa. We will transform Karnataka into the number one state."

Pralahad Joshi's translation, inexplicably, was this, "Narendra Modi will do nothing for the poor and the downtrodden...there is the government of honorable Modiji in the centre. Ensure Yeddyurappa wins and together will transform Karnataka into the number one state."

Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah tweeted: "I am suprised that all BJP leaders have started speaking the truth."

BJP MP Prahlad Joshi says "Narendra Modi will not do anything for the poor and Dalits". I am surprised that all BJP leaders have started speaking the truth. https://t.co/HM1goggfv9  Siddaramaiah (@siddaramaiah) March 29, 2018

On Tuesday, Amit Shah, while accusing Karnatakas ruling Congress at a press conference, said, "Recently a retired Supreme Court judge said if there was ever a competition of the most corrupt government then the Yeddyurappa government is number one..."

Sitting next to him, Yeddyurappa glanced at him in surprise. Then it was Pralahad Joshi seen whispering something to the BJP president, who quickly corrected himself.

Amit Shah, who was in Mysuru on Saturday said, "In a slip of tongue, I said that Yeddyurappa government is corrupt instead of Siddaramaiah's, and the entire Congress party started to rejoice. I want to tell Rahul Gandhi, that I might have made a mistake but the people of Karnataka will not."

Also Read: Amit Shah slips, calls Yeddyurappa 'most corrupt' ever

Despite prompt correction, Amit Shah's slip of tongue did nothing to stop the Congress from gleefully tweeting and retweeting the video.

Chief Minister Siddaramaiah "thanked" the BJP president on Twitter.

Karnataka will go to polls on May 12, the counting and the results will be announced on May 15.
'Postcard News' founder Mahesh Vikram Hegde is one of the 1,936 people who PM Narendra Modi follows on Twitter.

'Postcard News' founder Mahesh Vikram Hegde was taken into custody for falsely claiming in a social media post on March 18 that a Jain monk from Karnataka had got injured after being attacked by a Muslim youth. (Photo: ANI)

Bengaluru: The founder of online portal "Postcard News", Mahesh Vikram Hegde, was arrested by a Central Crime Branch unit of Bengaluru police on Thursday in Karnataka on charges of spreading fake and communally sensitive news. The editor has been charged under cybercrime laws.

Deputy Commissioner of police (crime) in Bengaluru Jinendra Kanagavi said Hegde had been arrested Thursday on the basis of a complaint filed with the cyber crime police station attached to the Central Crime Branch regarding a fake news item tweeted and posted by Postcard News.

Mahesh Vikram Hegde was taken into custody for falsely claiming in a social media post on March 18 that a Jain monk from Karnataka had got injured after being attacked by a Muslim youth. It has been found that the monk had been injured in a road accident.

"Postcard News" founder was arrested based on two complaints - one of which was filed on March 18 by Gaffar Baig, the General Secretary Bengaluru District Congress Committee. Another complaint was filed in Sanjay Nagar against a story published by Postcard News about Rani Chennamma and Onake Obava.

"No one safe in Siddaramaiah's Karnataka," the Facebook page of Postcard News said. The post, which was accompanied by a picture of the monk with injuries on his arm and shoulder, has now been deleted.

Hegde's portal had reported that Upadhyaya Mayank Sagar Ji Maharaj was hit by a drunk biker, who is Muslim. "Very sad news, yesterday in Karnataka Jain muni attacked by Muslim youth. No one is safe in Siddaramaiah's Karnataka," the editor had said in the tweet that was on the "Postcard News" Twitter handle and was retweeted hundred times.

Mahesh Vikram Hegde is one of the 1,936 people who Prime Minister Narendra Modi follows on Twitter.

The incident was falsely reported, say the police. A leader of the Karnatak's ruling Congress reportedly filed a complaint against the site and its founder.

According to reports, the monk was hit by a car on March 13, not a bike, and the driver was not Muslim. The monk suffered injuries to his arm and head when he was hit by the car.

The portal, "Postcard News" had earlier been charged with publishing content that incites communal hate.

In December, "Postcard News" had published a controversial article on a legendary 18th century Chittor Queen, Chennamma, which provoked much outrage.

Just ahead of the Karnataka polls, in which the ruling Congress faces a tough challenge with the BJP campaigning aggressively to wrest the state, the arrest has fuelled a political outcry.

The opposition BJP in the state has condemned the editor's arrest.

"The arrest was a deplorable move by the Siddaramaiah government," said BJP parliamentarian Pratap Simha.

Hegde and his website have often been accused of writing fake news stories to propagate the right-wing Hindu nationalist agenda.

(With inputs from agencies)
Nitish Kumar had formed an alliance with the BJP last year after dumping Lalu Yadav-led JD(U) and the Congress.

Earlier in March, Nitish Kumar had voiced his discomfort with ally BJP saying that he would not compromise with those trying to divide the society. (Photo: PTI/File)

Patna: Facing criticism over the government's inefficiency to control the riots and communal violence in Bihar, the JD(U) on Thursday in a sharp message to the BJP asked the saffron party to restrain its leaders who are seen to have contributed to the violence.

Talking to NDTV, JD(U) general secretary Shyam Rajak said, "Nitishji never compromises on the law and order from... and for this, we are willing to pay any price".

Earlier in March, Nitish Kumar had voiced his discomfort with ally BJP saying that he would not compromise with those trying to divide the society.

"Please remember, neither did I compromise with corruption, nor I will compromise with those trying to divide the society. I'm for complete communal and social peace... I want to make it clear that this country will march ahead on the basis of love, compassion and communal harmony," he said.

Nitish Kumar had formed an alliance with the BJP last year after dumping Lalu Yadav-led JD(U) and the Congress.

Communal clashes have been reported from various parts of Bihar in the recent past, with opposition parties like the RJD and the Congress accusing the BJP of inciting violence and charging JD(U) president and Chief Minister Nitish Kumar with being "helpless" before the coalition partner.

RJD supremo and former Bihar chief minister Lalu Prasad Yadav after being brought to Delhi for treatment at AIIMS on Thursday had said that "Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar is now finished".

Pointing out the riots and incidents of violence in Bihar, Lalu Yadav said that the "BJP has set the whole state ablaze".

Also Read: Nitish Kumar is finished, BJP has set Bihar ablaze: Lalu Yadav

According to PTI, members of two communities clashed on Wednesday over taking out a religious procession in Bihar's Nalanda district, leaving more than 20 persons, including four security personnel, injured.

Nalanda is the native district of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. Communal clashes have erupted in several districts in the state since Ram Navami last Sunday.
Militants on Thursday night also targeted an army patrolling party with rifle fire in Ahgam area of neighbouring Shopian district.

The soldiers returned the fire and the exchange continued for some time but no casualties were reported. (Photo: File/Representational)

Srinagar: A special police officer (SPO) was shot dead by suspected militants inside his home in Jammu and Kashmirs southern Anantnag district on Thursday evening.

His wife was critically injured in the shootout, the police said, adding she has been admitted in a local hospital. Militants on Thursday night also targeted an army patrolling party with rifle fire in Ahgam area of neighbouring Shopian district.

The officials said the soldiers of the Armys 44 Rashtriya Rifles were patrolling Ahgam at around 8.30 pm when the militants opened fire at them. The soldiers returned the fire and the exchange continued for some time but no casualties were reported.

The Army reinforcements along with J&K polices counterinsurgency Special Operations Group (SOG) and the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) has launched a search operation in the area, reports said.

In a separate incident, unknown gunmen shot at a 25-year-old teacher in Khandaypora village of Kulgam district late Thursday, police said. It said that the teacher Sayer Ahmad Wani was attacked outside a mosque when he was returning to a seminary where he teaches. He sustained a bullet wound in his leg.
Sushma Swaraj informed the Rajya Sabha that all 39 Indians kidnapped by ISIS in Mosul were dead.

Earlier in July 2017, Singh had travelled to Erbil, Iraq to locate and bring back the 39 Indians reportedly kept in Mosul as hostages of the ISIS. (Photo: PTI/File)

New Delhi: Almost ten days after Union External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj informed the Rajya Sabha that all 39 Indians kidnapped by ISIS in Mosul three years ago were dead. MoS VK Singh will travel to Iraq on April 1 to bring back the mortal remains of the slain Indians.

Deep penetration radar confirmed that all Indians were dead after all bodies were exhumed, Sushma Swaraj had told the Rajya Sabha.

Also Read: All 39 Indians kidnapped in Iraqs Mosul killed by ISIS: Sushma Swaraj

Swaraj said that the mortal remains were sent to Baghdad. In 2017, families of all 39 Indians were asked to undergo DNA tests for the verification of bodies, Sushma had said.

This will be second time; Singh will be visiting Iraq regarding the matter. Earlier in July 2017, Singh had travelled to Erbil, Iraq to locate and bring back the 39 Indians reportedly kept in Mosul as hostages of the ISIS.

The group of Indian labourers, mostly from Punjab, was taken hostage by ISIS when it overran Iraq's second largest city Mosul in 2014. The workers were trying to leave Mosul when they were intercepted.

In July 2017, Swaraj had firmly said in the Parliament that she would not declare the 39 Indians dead without concrete proof or evidence.
Union Minister Babul Supriyo was stopped by police from entering the Asansol-Raniganj area on Thursday.

BJP chief Amit Shah on Friday constituted a four-member committee comprising senior party leaders, who would visit the state and submit a report to him in this regard. (Photo: File)

New Delhi: In the wake of violence over Ram Navami processions in West Bengal, BJP chief Amit Shah on Friday constituted a four-member committee comprising senior party leaders, who would visit the state and submit a report to him in this regard.

Shah condemned the violence in Asansol in West Bengal and said "such incidents are unfortunate and painful".

The four-member committee the BJP chief formed comprises the party's national vice-president Om Mathur, spokesperson Shahnawaz Hussain and two MPs -- Roopa Ganguly and B D Ram.

The committee members will visit the state and submit a report to Shah, the statement said.

Union Minister Babul Supriyo, state BJP Mahila Morcha president Locket Chatterjee and another senior state BJP leader were on Thursday stopped by police from entering the Asansol-Raniganj area.

Supriyo claimed that two FIRs were lodged against him after which he also filed a complaint against the police.

However, there was no confirmation from the police whether such FIRs were lodged or not.

A group of people shouted slogans against the minister and demanded that he immediately leave the area.

TV channels showed him engaged in a verbal spat with police personnel, who had surrounded his vehicle.

"As a public representative, I have every right to visit my constituency, especially when people are in trouble. It is my duty. But the police is saying I won't be allowed to go as Section 144 is imposed in the area. Being a minister, I cannot violate rules," Supriyo said.

He said he would inform Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Rajnath Singh about the incident.

Earlier, the BJP had hit out at West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee over the incidents of violence in the state and accused the Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo of doing politics while the state was burning.

Supriyo claimed that only the deployment of central forces could bring back peace to the area as locals did not have faith in the police.

A clash had broken out between two groups over a Ram Navami procession at Raniganj, near Asansol, on Monday.

One person was allegedly hacked to death while a deputy commissioner of police had lost a hand after being hit by a bomb.
Swarup said a preliminary inquiry had revealed that the leak of the Class 10 Maths paper had been restricted to Delhi and Haryana.

Facing flak over the CBSE leak, HRD minister Prakash Javadekar on Friday turned to students asking them to find a solution to this challenge. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: As Union education secretary Anil Swarup announced that the re-examination of the CBSE Class 12 Economics paper will be held on April 25 and that of the Class 10 Maths paper in July, angry students and Congress workers continued their protests for the second day on Friday by hitting the streets across New Delhi. Congress president Rahul Gandhi also stepped up his tirade against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying the PM will now write a sequel to his book Exam Warriors to teach students stress relief after their lives were destroyed due to the paper leaks.

Mr Swarup said a preliminary inquiry had revealed that the leak of the Class 10 Maths paper had been restricted to Delhi and Haryana. Also, there was no leak outside India, hence no re-examination will be held outside the country, he said. The question papers are different for students appearing for the CBSE exams outside India.

The Delhi Police, which is investigating the leaks, has meanwhile questioned 10 more people and interacted with the CBSEs controller of examinations over the leaks. It also wrote to Google seeking details of the email address from where the CBSE chief was sent an email a day before the exam on the Class 10 maths paper. A senior officer said the police had written asking Google to share details of the ID from which the email was sent.

The email reportedly contained images of 12 pages of handwritten question papers, which were posted on WhatsApp groups. The police is said to have identified over 10 WhatsApp groups, each with 50-60 members, for further investigation.

The CBSE is learnt to have given the police details of the examination centres sought by its crime branch. The police had sought details of the exam centres, their superintendents and the contacts of banks where the papers were stored for safekeeping. The police said the board has given the details pertaining to both Delhi and Haryana to the investigators.

Facing flak over the CBSE leak, HRD minister Prakash Javadekar on Friday turned to students asking them to find a solution to this challenge. His comments came in the backdrop of the CBSE announcing the re-test of its Class 10 Maths and Class 12 Economics papers.

Mr Javedkar said: I am facing one problem in the country. It is a problem of paper leak. So how to solve it is also a challenge. And I am throwing this challenge to the students. Some people can also work after Hackathon and give us suggestions, Mr Javadekar said, while addressing students at an event to launch the finale of Smart India Hackathon 2018 (Software Edition).

Mr Javedkar, however, said the paper leak problem was not a subject of this years Smart India Hackathon, an event where thousands of students would try to find innovative solutions to the problems faced by various ministries and departments.

Congress president Rahul Gandhi, mocking the PM on Twitter, attached a photograph of Mr Modi playing with children. He tweeted: PM wrote Exam Warriors, a book to teach students stress relief during exams. Next up: Exam Warriors 2, a book to teach students and parents stress relief once their lives are destroyed due to leaked exam papers.

Meanwhile, continuing their protests, a large number of students and Congress youth leaders hit the streets of the nations capital against the CBSE on Friday, accusing the board of negligence and demanding immediate action against the guilty. While some gathered at Parliament Street in the heart of the city, members of the National Students Union of India (NSUI) began marching towards the HRD ministers residence, but were stopped. Student groups and the Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee also demonstrated outside the CBSE headquarters in East Delhis Preet Vihar, raising various demands, including an independent investigation.

NSUI leader Neeraj Mishra said: The leaks exposed the capture of the highest academic institutions by the exam mafia under the watch of the Modi government as well as the abdication of authority by the HRD minister and the CBSE chairperson. He said they would demand the resignations of Mr Javadekar as well as CBSE chief Anita Karwal.

Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia asked Mr Javadekar to call a meeting of state education ministers to discuss the CBSE paper leaks and to ensure that such serious incidents dont recur. Mr Sisodia, who wrote a letter to Mr Javadekar, said there was a need to move beyond party politics on such issues. He said every time an exam paper was leaked  be it CBSE, SSB or DSSSB  the negative consequences were for the entire country, not just for any one government or one party.
Find out why.

The new royal baby is expected to arrive soon.

However, what is more intriguing is that the new addition to the royal family will be born a commoner, even though it will be given an impressive title.

Prince William and Kate Middleton's third baby "will be known as His Royal Highness Prince [name] of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, or Her Royal Highness Princess [name] of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland," Town & Country explained.

In a report by The Sun, royal historian Marlene Koenig revealed children in the royal family are 'styled' in a different manner if they are children of a royal duke.

"As the baby will be the son or daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, they'll actually be His/Her Royal Highness Prince/Princess [name] of Cambridge," she is quoted as saying by The Sun.

She also explained why the baby will be born a commoner. "It sounds complicated, but in the UK, the only people who are not commoners are the Sovereign and peers of the realm, [those with titles such as] Duke, Marquess, Earl, Viscount, and Baron," Koenig revealed.

Even though Prince Harry is recognised as a 'commoner', he will most likely be given a title when he marries Meghan Markle on May 19.

Meanwhile, Kate and Prince William's baby is expected to arrive in April.

The Duchess of Cambridge is already on maternity leave and the Lindo Wing at St Mary's Hospital in Paddington, London is getting ready for the birth.
Sources say extra precaution is being taken by all airlines after the incident, leading to the process of checking-in slowing down further.

New Delhi: Commuters had a tough day on Thursday eveni-ng at the IGI airport af-ter the baggage handling system reported a failure with thousands of bags were reportedly misplaced. Private airline carrier Vistara has put out a statement confirming the system failure. All airlines and hundreds of bags have been impacted, not being loa-ded on the flights, accor-ding to the statement.

Sources said that airlines are going to charge DIAL for the failure.Meanwhile, airport so-urces say some flights were delayed as well with the passengers taking to Twitter with their grievances. Among tho-se affected by the slow process included actress Hema Malini and former UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav.

Delhi Airport has been facing challenges with the baggage handling system post check-in, Vistara said in the statement. With the onset of holiday weekend, Delhi Airport today experienced an increase level of dangerous go-ods, particularly power banks and lighters, in customer checked-in luggage. The incident rate today was 30 per cent higher than on an average day. This impac-ted the baggage handling processing, said a DIAL spokesperson.

Passengers are being reminded, not to pack these items in their checked-luggage. This has addressed the instances of passengers sending their baggage with prohibited items, the spokesperson added. on the BHS and hence the issue is now under control, the spokesperson added.Earlier, a Hyderabad-bound Vistara aircraft had to return to T-3 on March 22 after a passenger belatedly remembered he had kept a power-bank in his checked-in baggage. Sources say extra precaution is being taken by all airlines after the incident, leading to the process of checking-in slowing down further.

We apologise for the inconvenience. We would like to inform you that the Delhi airport has been facing challenges with the baggage handling system post-checking and all airlines are impacted, not being loaded onto flight, said Vistara airlines.
However, it had become a task for the police to establish the deceaseds identity.

Investigation was taken up and it was found that the GPS device of the vehicle had been removed after the incident. (Photo: File/Representational)

New Delhi: A tailors mark on the shirt of the murdered Ola cab driver led Delhi police crack the robbery-cum-murder case of 35-year-old man whose body was disfigured beyond recognition to prevent the police from establishing his identity.

Five persons and one juvenile were apprehended by the police in this connection.

The police said that deceased Hari Narayan, the Ola cab driver, was found murdered on March 23. The body was found near a vacant DDA land behind Khampur radio station, Alipur.

However, it had become a task for the police to establish the deceaseds identity.

According to a senior police officer, a team was sent to Noida who met the tailor who had stitched the deceased drivers shirt. After establishing the identity of the body to Hari Narayan.

Investigation was taken up and it was found that the GPS device of the vehicle had been removed after the incident. However, with the available information of the cars GPS data, the team visited various place in the capital as well as Sonepat.

The probe team got a clue that the vehicle was seen in village Nahri of Sonepat district. On the intervening night of March 28 and 29, the police received a tip off that criminals involved in the Ola cab drivers murder would come near Smirti Van, near Raja Harish Chander Hospital, Narela.

The police laid a trap and apprehended three accused Rahul, Naeemudin and Hemant. On personal search of the accused, three country made pistols and six live cartridges were recovered. They were used by the accused for threatening the deceased.

The arrested persons disclosed the names of their associates as Amit and Vishal and a juvenile was also apprehended.

During interrogation, it was revealed that Rahul, Naveen, Hemant and Bunty are friends and were in need of money. They planned to rob a car to fulfill their money requirement and procured three country made pistols.

On March 29, Naveen booked an Ola cab for Kashmiri Gate. They called the driver by phone.
Raj Bhavan had stated that Governor Keshari Nath Tripathi planned the visit to acquaint himself about the situation (sic).

Kolkata: The BJP is sending a four-member team to visit violence-hit Raniganj Asansol towns in Burdwan West where clashes broke out during the Ramnavami festival celebrations.

Led by the BJPs national vice-president Om Mathur, the team also has Rajya Sabha MP Roopa Ganguly, former Union minister Shahnawaz Hussain and Palamau MP, V.D. Ram. They will take stock of the ground situation and submit a report to BJP president Amit Shah, who had described the situation as painful and unfortunate.

Asked about the BJP delegations schedule, state BJP spokesperson Sayantan Basu said, They will reach Kolkata on Saturday night. They will visit the area on Sunday.

Although Raniganj and Asansol are limping back to normalcy, with prohibitory orders under Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code being regulated to allow people to lead their routine lives, it is not clear whether the BJP delegation would be allowed by the district administration to visit the trouble-hit areas.

The BJPs move to send a team from Delhi comes close on the heels of the Mamata Banerjee government barring Governor Keshari Nath Tripathi on March 27 to visit 47-year-old IPS officer Arindram Dutta Chowdhury, who was then admitted to Mission Hospital in Durgapur with injuries on his right hand.

Raj Bhavan had stated that Mr Tripathi planned the visit to acquaint himself about the situation (sic).

Major portion of the right wrist of the deputy commissioner of police (headquarters) of the Asansol Durgapur police commissionerate was blown off after being hit by a bomb during the clash on March 26. Mr Chowdhury has been shifted to Ganga Hospital in Coimbatore for reconstructive surgery.
Pak is seeking to make China its main supplier of military hardware, partly due to the looser financial terms offered by Beijing.

Chinas 2.3 million-strong military is the worlds largest, and Pakistan has emerged as the biggest consumer of the China-produced military hardware. (Photo: Representational)

Beijing: Close ties between militaries of China and Pakistan will not only help an all-weather partnership between the two countries but also maintain regional peace and global stability, the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) said on Thursday.

Chinas 2.3 million-strong military is the worlds largest, and Pakistan has emerged as the biggest consumer of the China-produced military hardware. In the past five years, Pakistan has bought 41 per cent of Chinas exported weapons, according to analysts.

Pakistan is seeking to make China its main supplier of military hardware, partly due to the looser financial terms offered by Beijing, replacing traditional suppliers from the west.

China and Pakistan share all weather partnership. We have maintained very high level of defence exchange and cooperation, Chinese military spokesman, Col Ren Guoqiang told a media briefing in Beijing.

At the same time, I am very confident that military cooperation will help facilitate our state to state relationship and also in maintaining regional peace and international stability, he said.

Guoqiangs comments came in the backdrop of China selling a powerful tracking system in an unprecedented deal, which could speed up the development of multi-warhead missiles by Pakistan.

Zheng Mengwei, a researcher with the state-run Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) Institute of Optics and Electronics in Chengdu, Sichuan province recently.

The researchers told the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post that Pakistan had bought a highly sophisticated, large-scale optical tracking and measurement system from China and deployed it at a firing range for use in testing and developing its new missiles.

China was the first country to export such sensitive equipment to Pakistan, CAS said.

The Post report attributed the sale of the equipment to Pakistan to India testing the most advanced nuclear-ready intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) Agni-V with a range long enough to hit Beijing or Shanghai.

Chinese authorities declassified information about the sale of the tracking system on Wednesday.

While Indias single-warhead missiles are bigger and cover longer distances, Pakistan has focused its efforts on developing multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles (MIRVs), a type of missile carrying several nuclear warheads that can be directed towards different targets, the report said.

Unlike the US, which accounts for one-third of exports and supplies at least 100 countries, China delivered major arms to 44 countries, mostly in Asia and Africa.

More than 60 per cent of Chinas exports went to Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar and another 22 per cent went to Africa, a recent study report by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute said.
The summit is being seen as a victory for Moon, who has long been pushing hard for diplomatic relations with North Korea.

Seoul: The two Koreas on Thursday set a date for a rare inter-Korean summit, following a high-level meeting that was held days after the nuclear-armed Norths leader Kim Jong Un made his international debut with a surprise trip to China.

The landmark meeting between South Koreas President Moon Jae-in and North Korea President Kim Jong Un will take place on April 27 at Freedom House on the southern side of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), according to the joint statement issued after the talks.

According to the will of both leaders, the South and North agreed to hold the 2018 South-North summit on April 27 at the Souths Peace House in Panmunjom, said a joint press statement, read out in turn by both delegations leaders. The meeting between Kim Jong Un, leader of nuclear-armed North Korea, and the Souths President will be only the third of its kind, and will be followed by landmark talks with US President Donald Trump which could come as early as May.

The venue will make Kim the first North Korean leader to set foot in the South since the end of the Korean War  although according to Pyongyangs official accounts, during the conflict his grandfather and predecessor Kim Il Sung went several times to Seoul, which twice fell to his forces.

The summit is being seen as a victory for Moon, who has long been pushing hard for diplomatic relations with North Korea. He said at his swearing-in ceremony in 2017 for peace on the Korean Peninsula, I will do everything that I can do. The last Inter-Korean summit was held in October 2007, when then President Roh Moo-hyun met Kims father, Kim Jong Il.
Most voters in England and Wales backed Brexit, while majorities in Scotland and Northern Ireland wanted the UK to stay in the EU.

London: Prime Minister Theresa May made a plea for national unity over Brexit on Thursday as she toured Britain on the day that a one-year countdown to departure from the European Union begins.

Ms May was visiting Scotland, England, Northern Ireland and Wales during her day-long tour, aiming to shore up support for the governments Brexit strategy.

Brexit remains a fractious topic, with former prime minister Tony Blair leading a push for second referendum.

Ms May kicked off the trip with a visit to a textile factory in Ayrshire, southwest Scotland, before travelling to Newcastle in northeast England to meet a parent and toddler group.

Brexit provides us with opportunities. I want to see us coming together, the four nations across the United Kingdom, she told the Ayr gathering, insisting that we will be leaving the European Union on March 29 2019.

Ms May was later to stop for lunch with farmers near Belfast in Northern Ireland before meeting Welsh business owners in Barry, then returning to London in time for tea with a Polish group. I am determined that as we leave the EU, and in the years ahead, we will strengthen the bonds that unite us, May said before her visit.

I have an absolute responsibility to protect the integrity of the United Kingdom as a whole.

In a seismic referendum on June 23, 2016, 52 percent of voters in the UK opted for Britain to leave the European Union.

Most voters in England and Wales backed Brexit, while majorities in Scotland and Northern Ireland wanted the UK to stay in the EU.
by Mathias Hariyadi

Many lay people take part in spiritual exercises in West Kalimantan and Tegal. The archbishops of Pontianak, Palembang and Semarang bring together the clergy for two-day retreats and Chrism Mass. Mgr Agustinus Agus focused on observing and experiencing Christs love. For Mgr Robertus Rubiyatmoko, being compassionate towards others simply means turning words into actions.

Jakarta (AsiaNews)  Over the past decade, more and more Catholic dioceses have adopted the tradition of preparing for the Easter Triduum through spiritual retreats, involving both lay and consecrated people.

Fr Andreas Mayong Acin, Capuchins provincial superior, organised a one-day retreat at St Marys Peace Promoter Church in Pontaniak, capital of West Kalimantan province. Some 400 people attended the event.

"The issue discussed at Fr Acins meeting was 'Faith and Actions', said Sister Kresentia, a local Franciscan nun who spoke to AsiaNews. The priest mentioned some of the qualities needed to be faithful to Christianity and the virtues to be attained."

In Tegal (Central Java), some 600 parishioners at the Church of the Sacred Heart attended spiritual exercises led by Fr Emanuel PD Martasudjito, professor of theology in Yogyakarta. The focus was on liturgical symbols and their definitions, in particular the Eucharist.

"I was happy to discover the great enthusiasm with which the parishioners of the Sacred Heart participated in this retreat, said the local parish priest, Fr Yohanes Suratman PR. Among the most satisfied were adults and seniors, but also young people, who now better understand all the liturgical symbols of the Mass."

A two-day retreat ended yesterday in Pontianak with the Chrism Mass led by the local archbishops, Mgr Agustinus Agus. Some 65 priests serving in the archdiocese attended the event.

Fr Yohanes Subagya facilitated the exercises. He is a former vicar general in Jakarta who currently teaches theology at the Catholic University of Atma Jaya in the Indonesian capital.

During the solemn Mass that brought the two-day event (pictured) to a close, Mgr Agus called on those present to "observe and experience" Christs love in the daily Mass, in their prayers and in their pastoral works.

Citing some key points in the archbishop's homily, Fr Ruben said that "Mgr Agus also invited priests to confess frequently, to experience God's mercy.

Mgr Aloysius Sudarso, archbishop of Palembang (South Sumatera), celebrated the Chrism Mass in the parish of the Sacred Heart (pictured), at the end of a two-day retreat for consecrated persons.

His remote archdiocese covers a large territory that includes three provinces: South Sumatera, Bengkulu and Jambi.

Distances and difficult travel complicate priests pastoral work. Nevertheless, dozens of them did not want to miss the spiritual exercises.

"During the meeting, Mgr Aloysius Sudarso warmly recommended to all priests to remain intact in the different aspects of their lives, said Fr Frans de Sales, head of the archdioceses social communication office.

The prelate, he added, encouraged them to maintain deep respect for people, say nothing but the truth with a clear conscience, show compassion towards others, be honest and practise a simple life everyday.

For his part, the archbishop reiterated the importance of "knowing oneself," urging priests to hold regular sessions with their spiritual mentor to "stay on the right path and not deviate."

Finally, after two days of spiritual exercises, Archbishop Robertus Rubiyatmoko celebrated Chrism Mass in Semarang, Central Java (pictured) in a packed cathedral. As evidence of the large size of the local community, about three hundred priests and several hundred more worshippers took part in the service.

In his homily, Mgr Rubiyatmoko stressed the importance of the "synergy" and "personal integrity" of each priest, who must be able to turn his words into actions.

"Taking care and being compassionate towards others simply means this," noted the archbishop.
By Deanna Cheng

Special to The Post

Two 22-year-old university students are pushing back against the negative responses they have read in the media regarding a modular housing proposal in Richmond.

Joannie Fu and Vinson Shih created an online petition to support the modular housing project at 7300 Elmbridge Way. They both grew up in Richmond and their goal is to see city council pass the proposal.

Shih said, in an email, The needs of people wanting to exit homelessness outweighs the interests of property owners who are already in positions of privilege and power.

While both of them have volunteer experience serving food to vulnerable populations in Richmond, they were surprised by the extent of the need.

A BC Housing document addressed to the City of Richmond identified 70 homeless citizens in Richmond and 80 per cent of that have lived in the city for more than a year.

The petition responds to those who believe the housing should be built elsewhere.

The modular supportive housing initiative seeks to help the 70 people within Richmond that lack a home, it said. To suggest housing be built elsewhere is irresponsible not only because it minimizes the toll of being dislocated, but diminishes the human worth of those experiencing homelessness.

The two Taiwanese-Canadians also draw from their own experience as part of the immigrant community.

Shih said, The immigrant community has experienced its own fair share of stigmatization, stereotyping and generalizations that resulted in exclusionary policies.

He finds it necessary to be vigilant in recognizing human worth beyond visible differences.

In addition to Shihs sentiments, Fu said its important to her due to her Christian faith and the values she was brought up with.

She said one of the most important commandments is for people to love our neighbours as ourselves.

The university student said, There are no conditions in the love you are supposed to show your neighbours.

Fu added that Jesus didnt say to love your neighbours only if they are rich or if they live in houses, but as if your neighbours were yourselves.

Another position Fu takes is as a woman supporting other women, especially one with a sister currently attending middle school in Richmond.

For women to escape the cycle of abuse, they need to be physically separated from their abuser and one of the basic ways this can happen is through providing safe shelter and housing for them, she said.

A report from Richmond RCMP shows an upward trend of reported domestic violence cases, including intimate partner violence, from 2012 to 2016.

It also said the BC Coroners Service reported in 2016 that the majority of the victims in domestic violence deaths were women with a known history of intimate partner violence (78 per cent).

The city itself would also benefit from the housing initiative.

Having majors in both psychology, and criminology and socio-legal studies, Shih has learned homelessness often results in people committing crimes of survival such as eating a bag of chips in a convenience store without paying.

When given the chance, nobody would willingly choose to remain in a state of deprivation and stigmatization, he said. It is important to realize that we are human beings first and everyone deserves to have a chance to get back up.

He believes the housing initiative is a tiny step in the right direction.

Shih said, Having a home is the most basic need that will help give people the necessary resources to reintegrate into the community and become financially independent.

A report by Mental Health Commission of Canada said history has shown that many Canadians with mental illness benefit from being a community member and not trapped in institutions but they require additional support to thrive.

Housing is an important factor that stands out from the rest, it said.

When asked about public feedback, Fu and Shih said they have received mixed responses but overall, it has been positive.

Both Fu and Shih plan to move back to Richmond after they graduate from the University of Toronto and contribute positive change to their city. Shih heard how students in the Marpole community welcomed residents to the modular housing units there with welcome cards and care packages. He would like to do something similar with other organizations.

Deanna Cheng is a freelance journalist, copyeditor and researcher. Follow @writerly_dee
milomilo said: By the way I'm over age 31 if that makes any difference Click to expand...

Yes this makes a lot of difference, as it rules out a 417.As you surmised the student visa will be easier to come by then the TSS. There would be nothing stopping you transitioning into a TSS at a later date when you find a job. Just remember you will still be liable for any associated course fees dependant on what contract you sign with your education provider.Living together for 12 months doesn't constitute the requirement for a defacto visa. You need to prove you've been in a defacto relationship for 12 months, there is no requirement to have physically resided together for those 12 months.Also just remember whatever visa you come in on you need to be a genuine entrant on that visa. There is no visa designed as a stepping stone visa for an 820/801. (Technicality PMV but irrelevant based on what you've said).Finally just to avoid confusion down the line, a bridging visa with full work rights doesn't come into effect when you apply for your 820, it comes into effect when your current visa expires. So if you apply for a 4 year student visa you will be bound by its conditions for 4 years or until the 820 is granted, whichever comes first.
Hi everyone,



I was just wondering if anyone would have the same experience, if you have a current Tourist Visa and would want to apply for a 457 subsequent once you entered AU. Is it possible that they give you working rights on your bridging visa?



Thank you for answering!
Photo courtesy of Waste Management NZ.

Waste Management NZ opened a workshop in New Zealand that plans to convert 20 of its diesel trucks into electric vehicles in the next two years.

The company is close to finalizing its first converted vehicle, which will be used to collect waste from Auckland Hospital, according to a release from Waste Management NZ. The workshop will also be open for other companies that are looking to convert vehicles into EVs.

The companys conversion partner, Netherlands-based EMOSS, provided the tools and knowledge to complete conversions in Auckland, which is where the conversion facility is based, said Waste Management.

The New Zealand governments Low Emission Vehicles Contestable Fund, administered by the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority, contributed $500,000 in 2017 to help build the workshop and convert the first two trucks as part of its commitment to EV development.
Bakersfield, CA (93308)

Today

A clear sky. Areas of smoke and haze are possible, reducing visibility at times. Low 68F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

A clear sky. Areas of smoke and haze are possible, reducing visibility at times. Low 68F. Winds light and variable.
Unfortunately, our website is currently unavailable in your country. We are engaged on the issue and committed to looking at options that support our full range of digital offerings to your market. We continue to identify technical compliance solutions that will provide all readers with our award-winning journalism.
A Tampa middle school principal has been assigned other duties while police investigate allegations against him of child abuse.

Alleged incident occurred March 21

Principal accused of grabbing student, throwing him into a bush

Witnesses tell completely different story

The attorney for Coleman Middle School principal Michael Hoskinson, Rick Escobar, held a news conference Thursday afternoon to discuss his clients innocence.

The allegations surfaced on March 21, when a student called 911 and alleged that Hoskinson grabbed him by the back of his neck and by the waist and threw him into the bushes.

Parents invited to speak at the news conference by Escobar who said they witnessed the incident told a different story. They said the student was cursing and being unruly during dismissal, and that they saw Hoskinson grab the kid by the arm to try to restrain him.

They said they believed Hoskinson acted appropriately.

[The student] wasnt pushed into the bush," explained parent Denise Battle. "Mr. Hoskinson was standing right behind the little kid. He was trying to calm him down. [The student] kept saying 'f this', 'f that.' And [Hoskinson] said 'Im not even holding you, youre free to go.

No question in my mind he is going to be completely cleared," Escobar said. "I dont know of a single witness who was out there other than maybe complainant himself that believed that the actions that were taken by my client were inappropriate in any way."

According to Tampa Police Chief Brian Dugan, detectives have interviewed the student who made the 911 call, along with 11 other students and four adults.

The chiefs statement said Hoskinson, speaking through Escobar, declined requests to speak with police to give his side of the story.

Escobar did not allow his client to speak during the news conference, either. Escobar also said hes unaware of any surveillance video capturing the incident.

We owe it to the student who made the call and to the principal to be fair and thorough in our investigation," Dugan said in a statement. "Our detectives have done that. At this time, the results of the investigation have been shared with the State Attorneys Ofice so they can determine whether a crime occurred."

A child abuse charge against Hoskinson was dropped back in January in a different case. In that instance, Hoskinson and his wife were accused of bruising the ribs of a child and sending a threatening text message.

Detectives later learned those allegations were false.
The Surreal, Bubble-like Creatures on Oregon Coast Beaches and Their Faux Glow

Published 03/29/2018 at 5:35 PM PDT

By Oregon Coast Beach Connection Staff

(Oregon Coast)  The weird and wild wonders of the Oregon coast are aplenty. It's among the most dynamic environments in the world, with a huge variety of stuff washing up on a consistent basis and scattering about the sands. (All photos Tiffany Boothe of Seaside Aquarium).

Among the finds you're sure to make soon  if not already  is the tiny gooseberry. Looking down at the tideline as you stroll near the waves, you'll see a lot of bubbles in the foam. But what about those bubbles that look different and don't seem to dissipate? There's something unusual about them.

You could be finding the sea gooseberry, otherwise known as comb jellies. Their scientific name is Pleurobrachia, and they're usually no larger than a dime.

Seaside Aquarium's Tiffany Boothe said they periodically show up on the Oregon coast when west winds push them onshore.

They are both residents of near shore and open ocean habitats, Boothe said. They are abundant at times along the West Coast, but as with all jellies they are not seasonal. They can wash up anytime. They can swim, but not against the ocean's currents. So like the purple sails they are at the mercy of the ocean. Strong west winds will strand them on the beach.

Gooseberries are barely a quarter inch in diameter, and look like big or small bubbles sitting by the tideline.

Despite the name, they are actually not related to jellyfish at all. It's not uncommon  indeed it's understandable  that these translucent, spherical creatures are often mistaken for that kind of creature.

Gooseberries come with two feathery tentacles, which can be retracted into special pouches. The name comb jelly refers to the eight rows of hair-like cilia on their bodies, which vibrate and enables them to swim.

Another reason they have nothing to do with regular jellies is that they have no stinging cells, which are called nematocysts.





They capture their food with a transparent mucous 'net,'  Boothe said. They are strictly carnivores, feeding on a variety of platonic animals. They are both residents of near shore and open ocean habitats.

Sea gooseberries have a very short live span of only 4 to 6 months.

There's a trippy special effect that happens with the comb jelly: it looks like it's bioluminescent, meaning it appears to glow. At least in it's natural environment. But that's not the case.

Boothe said their bodies are virtually transparent and the many cilia refract the light, producing rainbow-like colors that can give the false appearance of bioluminescence.





This won't show up on land, however. You have to get them into the water to see this effect. Periodically, Seaside Aquarium has found and revived a few by putting them in the facility's tanks, and the visuals are spectacular.

For big sci-fi and video game fans, you may notice they look like the aliens in Crysis franchise. Oregon Coast Hotels for finding this - Where to eat - Maps - Virtual Tours





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Surfing Film on Central Oregon Coast Features Director Appearing Live

Published 03/29/2018 at 4:35 PM PDT

By Oregon Coast Beach Connection Staff





(Newport, Oregon)  The celebration of women in surfing continues on the central Oregon coast as the Newport Chapter of Surfrider Foundations Surf n Stewardship Film Series gears up for some special events on April 6. This time around, the movie screening comes with a live appearance of the director of the movie.

In the film It Aint Pretty, director Dayla Soul documents the challenges and triumphs of female big wave surfers fighting sexism in the water, in competition, in the media, and in the surf industry with the support of a closely-knit community of like minded women. This event is the final feature of the Newport Chapter Surfrider Foundations Surf n Stewardship Film Series, which centers around women and the sea. It Aint Pretty will screen at Rogue Brewers on the Bay (2320 SE Marine Science Dr, Newport, Oregon) on Friday, April 6th at 6 p.m. (doors open at 5:30 p.m.).

Dayla Soul herself will be in attendance and following the screening the audience will have a chance to discuss the topics of the film with the director. Admission is free (donations accepted).

This documentary features Ocean Beach surfer Bianca Valentis journey from childhood phenomenon to world-class big wave charger. This thought-provoking film takes you inside a growing movement of women that are shattering the shallow and sexualized images of female surfers in the media. It includes interviews with top female athletes and awe-inspiring big wave surf footage filmed in the icy waters of Ocean Beach, San Francisco and Mavericks - one of the biggest waves on the planet. The film empowers a new generation of girls to live their dreams and overcome the challenges they face along the way. http://itaintprettyfilm.com.

Told through the lens of surfing, this film is about creating new role models based on ability and determination. It's not just about the waves, said Soul.

The following morning, Saturday April 7 at 10 a.m., the community is invited to join a paddle out to celebrate women and the ocean waters of the Oregon coast. From the north end of Agate Beach the group will paddle out to honor the ocean and commit to continued stewardship of our oceans and beaches. All are encouraged to join.

All screenings will begin with a brief presentation about the Newport Chapter of Surfrider Foundation, focusing on how you can get involved with our mission to protect and enjoy our oceans, waves, and beaches.

For more information, call 541-270-3332. Newport Hotels in Newport for this event - Where to eat - Map and Virtual Tour























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For Immediate Release, March 30, 2018 Contact: Loyal Mehrhoff, (808) 351-3200, lmehrhoff@biologicaldiversity.org Hawaii's State Bird Proposed for Downlisting to Threatened After Successful Recovery Nene Numbers Climbed From 30 in 1960 to More Than 2,800 Today HONOLULU The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today proposed downlisting the Hawaiian goose, or nene, from endangered to threatened under the Endangered Species Act. The nene was first protected in 1967 and has been the subject of a concerted recovery effort, including captive breeding, predator control and habitat protection. Thanks to the Endangered Species Act, the nene is well on its way to recovery, said Loyal Mehrhoff, endangered species recovery director at the Center for Biological Diversity and former field supervisor for the Fish and Wildlife Service in Hawaii. This landmark law helped bring our state bird back from the very edge of extinction. Its a real testament to the Acts effectiveness. The nene is believed to have evolved from the Canada goose and once occupied nearly all of the Hawaiian islands. The birds numbers dropped to just 30 animals on the island of Hawaii by 1960. Today, there are more than 2,800 hundred birds spread across Hawaii, with 1,095 on the Big Island, 616 living on Maui, 35 occupying Molokai, 1,107 on Kauai, and two on Oahu. The nene retains protection as a threatened species based on ongoing threats from non-native predators such as mongooses and cats, habitat destruction and vehicle collisions. The nene still faces threats and needs ongoing protection, but the immediate risk of extinction appears to have been reduced, said Mehrhoff. The story of the nene is not unique since the Endangered Species Act is working right now to save hundreds of species across the country. A 2016 report put out by the Center for Biological Diversity found that 85 percent of continental birds and 61 percent of Pacific Island species have stabilized or increased after protection under the Endangered Species Act.
For Immediate Release, March 30, 2018 Contact: Stephanie Kurose, (202) 849-8395, skurose@biologicaldiversity.org Trump Appoints Endangered Species Foe to Oversee Protection of America's Most Imperiled Wildlife WASHINGTON The Trump administration has quietly named Susan Combs  an outspoken foe of endangered species and a climate change denier  as acting assistant secretary for fish, wildlife and parks. She now oversees the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the endangered species it protects. Putting Combs in charge of the Fish and Wildlife Service is like appointing an arsonist as the town fire marshal, said Stephanie Kurose, endangered species specialist at the Center for Biological Diversity. Combs will only work to strip away critical protections for our most vulnerable animals, not protect them. As long as her industry pals make a profit, she wont think twice about letting a species go extinct. As a former Texas state comptroller, Combs wrested control of the state's endangered species program from the Department of Parks and Wildlife to her office, which managed state fiscal and tax matters, not biology. She used her authority to oppose any Endangered Species Act protections, often teaming with the oil and gas industry. Combs was nominated in 2017 to be the U.S. Department of the Interiors assistant secretary for policy, management and budget, where she would have controlled the purse strings over the entire department, including the Fish and Wildlife Service. Her nomination was approved on a party line vote in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. However, the full Senate did not take up her nomination and sent it back to the White House at the end of 2017. In 2018, the Trump administration re-nominated Combs to the same position. More than 70 conservation organizations sent a letter to the Senate opposing her nomination. Combs is the third political appointee named as acting assistant secretary for fish, wildlife and parks since Trump took office. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke appointed Aurelia Skipwith, a former Monsanto employee, to the role in April 2017. Then in January, Zinke appointed Jason Larrabee, the former chief of staff for Rep. Jeff Denham (R-Calif.), to the position. The Federal Vacancies Reform Act limits which political appointees can serve in an acting capacity in particular Senate-confirmed offices to a period of up to 210 days, and only for a limited time after a new president is sworn in. Once 300 days or more have passed since a position becomes vacant, the ability to appoint acting officials is severely limited. To date, Trump has not named a person for the Senate to confirm in the assistant secretary for fish, wildlife and parks job. Trumps dereliction of duty to even offer names for key officials for the Department of the Interior is damaging our nations natural heritage, said Kurose. It has allowed a parade of unqualified political cronies to occupy the highest levels of the Interior Department and cause even more harm behind closed doors.
In The Revelator: The Fight to Save the EPA These are times like no other at the Environmental Protection Agency. The Trump administration is rolling back regulations for clean air and water, trying to repeal the Clean Power Plan, stripping climate change from its policies, and expanding the use of toxic pesticides.



Pushing back against all this is Save the U.S. EPA, a campaign organized by the employees' union. The Revelator's John Platt spoke with John J. O'Grady, a 31-year-veteran of the EPA and spokesman for Save the U.S. EPA.



"We're trying to prevent the utter destruction of the EPA," O'Grady said. "We're hoping there's something left in the rubble after this particular administration leaves office, but who knows."



Read the story in The Revelator.
A refugee is a person that cannot live in his/her own country for fear of persecution, human rights violations, or no rights at all. Economic migrants, on the other hand, have economic reasons for leaving one country for another.

Meron Estefanos is an Eritrean journalist and human rights activist.

Mandatory conscription

No media freedom

Elections repeatedly postponed

Economic migrants are not refugees and the two should not be confused. In Europe, migration is the main topic in elections. While half a million people migrate through air travel and only 120,000 by boat, the focus is on the people in the boat, said Meron Estefanos , an Eritrean journalist and human rights activist, speaking at the Oslo Freedom Form (OFF) in Johannesburg recently.Her first memory is of her parents listening to the radio - to an illegal broadcast from liberation fighters. Shortly after this, her father, a political activist, fled to Sweden. We joined him later. I was 13 at the time. She considers herself one of the lucky ones.Because we went to Sweden, I grew up there and did not suffer the hardships most of the people of Eritrea did. Even when I decided to return to Eritrea, I did not have to do military service because of my Swedish citizenship.In Eritrea, you serve in the military from the age of 15 to 50. You are arrested if you try to leave the country. She says the presidents own ministers criticised him, but this only resulted in their arrest. It is estimated that there are 50,000 political prisoners in the country.Her role as an activist started in Johannesburg. In 2002 I returned to Eritrea, but I had no idea what I was going back to. As I had Swedish citizenship, I did not have to do military service, but everyone around me did.After her neighbours arrest, she decided she needed to do something. There was a group of students from Eritrea operating from South Africa. I contacted them. They trained me as a journalist and I worked for them in Europe.Estefanos says that there are many incidents of groups of people in the country disappearing or being killed. I remember the arrest of the Jehovahs Witnesses in the country. Today, still, no one knows if they are alive or not. She also saw the war veterans shot in the street.Estefanos is a radio journalist and she broadcasts into the country. There is no media freedom in the country and the people are deprived of information. When the Arab Spring happened, they did not know.Her work extends beyond this - she is known for rescuing people. People have got my number from somewhere and I receive phone calls from refugees in sinking boats crossing the Mediterranean. They tell me their lives depend on me.Her stories include slaves, people being held for ransom, women being raped. They all call me, I try and help them, but it is heart breaking.The source of income for the government is mining. There are 21 different minerals in the country. The companies operating and investing there are all intentional. They include Anglo Gold Ashanti as well as Canadian, Australian and Chinese companies. Nevsun, Chalice, and Donia are all in the country.Eritrea, in the Horn of Africa, has a population of 3.6-million people. In 1991 the country was freed from a 30-year occupation by Ethiopia by the Eritrean liberation fighters. The president, Isaias Afwerki, has been in office since independence in 1993. Eritrea is a one-party state in which national legislative elections have been repeatedly postponed.According to Human Rights Watch, the Eritrean government's human rights record is among the worst in the world. The Eritrean government has dismissed these allegations as politically motivated.
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HMD Global, the Finnish company behind Nokia-branded phones, on March 26 launched the Nokia 1 in India at Rs 5,499, along with an introductory offer from Reliance Jio. The telecommunication provider, in partnership with Nokia, is offering a cashback of up to Rs 2,200 bundled with the Android Oreo (Go edition)-based smartphone.

According to the terms and conditions of the offer, the cashback is valid only for Jio users and would be credited in the form of vouchers that can be redeemed only on recharges. To avail of the offer, Jio subscribers need to purchase the Nokia 1 and use a Jio ...
The resolution professional for Ferro Alloys Corporation (Facor) is likely to submit the plan to the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) for approval on April 2. This is the same day when the 270-day period, stipulated under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), will expire. However, its committee of creditors (CoC) has still not been able to select a H1 bidder.

If the resolution plan cannot be submitted by April 2, the company may face liquidation. Facor was taken to the NCLT in July last year for not paying a debt of Rs 8 billion. The deadline for submission of bids has been ...
About two years ago, when Shanthi Sonu was on her way for an art project at a Bengaluru government school, she suddenly got jittery about how the children would react to her presence. Drop me off anywhere, she told Poornima Sukumar, the Bengaluru-based artist she was riding with. A transgender woman who once paid for her decision to live as a woman by sleeping on pavements, Sonu says children are often the worst critics a transgender person can encounter.

Still, she went to the school. In between brushstrokes that came together to form trees, rainbows and flowers, Sonu was ...
The Congress on Friday accused the Modi government of playing an "extremely dangerous game" of "treading upon" judicial independence, following the letter by Supreme Court judge Justice J Chelameswar cautioning on the judiciary-government bonhomie.

"Independence of India's judiciary has been under attack on the part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his government since they have taken over, and I'm saying this with the sense of responsibility," AICC in-charge communications Randeep Singh Surjewala said.

"Subjugation of the judiciary, suppression of their independence and decimation of their constitutional right of selecting and appointing judges by the colourable exercise of power by Prime Minister Modi has been the DNA of the Modi government," he told reporters here in response to a question.

In an unprecedented letter to the Chief Justice of India, copies of which were also sent to 22 other apex court judges on March 21, Justice Chelameswar had said that any "bonhomie" between the judiciary and the government would sound the"death knell" for the democracy.

He had also urged him to convene a full court to deal with the alleged executive interference in the judiciary.

Quoting various instances, including the Supreme Court judges holding a press conference, Surjewala hit out at the government for refusing to answer the issues raised by one of the senior-most judges of the Supreme Court.

"..Modi government is playing an extremely dangerous game of treading upon judicial independence. May God almighty give them some sense of propriety, of justice and of the constitutional division of labour," he added.

Surjewala blamed the government for Parliament logjam, saying it was an attempt to ensure that various issues, including the no-confidence motion against it, were not discussed.

He said the prime minister and his government were "insulting" the great institution of Parliament by not permitting it to function.

"This may be the first instance in India's history in the last 70 years where a ruling government is not allowing Parliament to function," he said.

Flaying the government on the issue of the CBSE question paper leak, he alleged 'exam mafia' is flourishing under Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar.

Hitting out at Javadekar, the AICC communications in-charge accused him of shying away from an independent judicial investigation.

"Do you have something to hide? Are you shielding or protecting somebody?" he asked, and sought to know "how an independent investigation can take place unless Javadekar, who is busy with Karnataka election and playing partisan politics and the CBSE chairperson are sacked".
On his maiden foreign trip after assuming office, Nepal's Prime Minister will visit India from April 6-8 during which he will hold talks with the top leadership here to strengthen the partnership between the two countries.

The upcoming visit will provide an opportunity to the two sides to review the wide-ranging cooperative partnership, and to progress it further for the benefit of the two peoples, a Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) statement said.

Oli will hold talks with his Indian counterpart and call on President Ram Nath Kovind and Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu during his trip.

A high-level delegation will accompany Oli on his state visit to India, the MEA said.

The Nepalese premier, who will also be accompanied by his wife Radhika Shakya Oli, will visit the G B Pant University of Agriculture and Technology in Pantnagar, Uttarakhand, during the visit.

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and other ministers will call on the Nepalese prime minister, the MEA said.

India and Nepal enjoy age-old, special ties of friendship and cooperation, it said.

Oli's visit is in line with the tradition of a Nepalese premier visiting India on his first overseas trip.

Swaraj had visited Nepal before Oli took office to congratulate him for the historic victory of the Left Alliance in the Parliamentary and Provincial elections.

She was the first senior Indian minister to visit Nepal after the conclusion of elections to local bodies, provincial assemblies and federal Parliament.

While congratulating Oli over phone upon his appointment to the top executive post last month, Prime Minister Modi had extended an invitation to him for a visit to India.
NASA is inviting people around the world to submit their names online to be placed on a microchip aboard its first mission to touch the Sun.

The Parker Solar Probe mission, to be launched this summer, will travel through the Sun's atmosphere, facing brutal heat and radiation conditions, NASA said.

"This probe will journey to a region humanity has never explored before, said Thomas Zurbuchen, the associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA.

"This mission will answer questions scientists have sought to uncover for more than six decades," said Zurbuchen.

Understanding the Sun has always been a top priority for space scientists.

Studying how the Sun affects space and the space environment of planets is the field known as heliophysics.

The field is not only vital to understanding Earth's most important and life-sustaining star, it supports exploration in the solar system and beyond.

Submission of names will be accepted until April 27, according to the US space agency.

The spacecraft, about the size of a small car, will travel directly into the Sun's atmosphere about four million miles from the star's surface.

The primary science goals for the mission are to trace how energy and heat move through the solar corona and to explore what accelerates the solar wind as well as solar energetic particles.

The mission will revolutionise our understanding of the Sun, where changing conditions can spread out into the solar system, affecting Earth and other worlds.
President Donald Trump does not like the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Its a horrible law, Trump has said. The FCPA makes it a crime for U.

S. companies to bribe foreign officials, or to partner with others who are clearly doing so. Trump has argued that the law puts U. S. firms at a disadvantage. Its things like this that cause us to not be able to lead the world, Trump said on CNBC in 2012. For this country to prosecute because something took place in India is outrageous. Corruption in India is quite common, particularly ...
Two days after Donald J Trump won the 2016 election, executives at Google consoled their employees in an all-staff meeting broadcast around the world. There is a lot of fear within Google, said Sundar Pichai, the companys chief executive, according to a video of the meeting viewed by The New York Times. When asked by an employee if there was any silver lining to Mr. Trumps election, the Google co-founder Sergey Brin said, Boy, thats a really tough one right now. Ruth Porat, the finance chief, said Mr. Trumps victory felt ...
Six Turkish security forces were killed on Friday after an attack by Kurdish militants in the southeastern province of Siirt in Turkey, local officials said.

Three other village guards and four soldiers were wounded while they were providing safety during road construction, the Siirt governor's office said in a statement.

Those killed were also village guards - locals employed to combat Kurdish militants.

The governorate did not give further details on the attack but blamed the "separatist terrorist organisation" -- Turkey's official term for the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

The office said that a wide operation was underway to "neutralise the PKK terrorists who launched the attack".

The PKK has been waging an insurgency in the southeast since 1984 and is proscribed as a terror organisation by Ankara and its Western allies.

Fighting in the region intensified between Turkish security forces and the PKK after the collapse of a two-year ceasefire in 2015.
Deutsche Bank's chairman Paul Achleitner is considering making Juerg Zeltner, the former head of the wealth management business of Swiss bank UBS, the successor to Chief Executive John Cryan, Spiegel magazine reported on Friday. Sources had told Reuters on Tuesday that Germany's flagship bank had begun looking for a new CEO to replace Cryan to mollify investors frustrated by the slow turnaround of the loss-making lender. Cryan said in a staff memo on Wednesday that he was "absolutely committed" to the lender. But Achleitner, who the sources said had initiated ...
At least 21 people were charred to death on Friday after a chartered bus carrying workers from Myanmar crashed and burned on a highway in western Thailand, near the capital Bangkok.

According to the police officials, there were 48 Myanmar workers in the bus, including the driver and his wife.

As per Bangkok Post, the accident occurred at Kilometre 60 on Highway 12, at the Taksin Maharat National Park in Tambon Mae Thor in Tak province.

The remaining 27 passengers were injured in the accident and taken to the hospital. However, their condition is yet to be ascertained.

According to reports, the bus was coming from Mae Sot province to Nava Nakorn Industrial Zone in Pathum Thani, after the workers had successfully completed the registration of their work permits by the Thai labour ministry.



According to AFP reports, the television footage showed a bus destroyed by fire which trapped many passengers inside.

"The death toll is now 20, with three people injured," Pollawat Sapsongsuk of the Tak Disaster Prevention and Mitigation centre told AFP earlier.

Kittisak Boonchan, a rescue worker in Tak province, told reporters there were 47 people on the bus.

The accident took place at 1:25 am in the northwestern province of Tak which borders Myanmar, a source of much of Thailand's huge migrant labour force.

Low status and poorly paid, migrant workers often fall victim to safety lapses and exploitation in Thailand.

The kingdom has a poor road safety record on crashes with around 24,000 people perishing on its roads each year, according to the World Health Organization.

Last week 18 people died when a bus veered of the road and smashed into a tree in the northeast of the country.

The driver of that bus later confessed to being on drugs at the time of the crash.

Initial reports had said that the engine of the bus had caught fire, which spread quickly through the vehicle.

Last week, 18 people were killed and 28 injured when a tourist bus skidded suddenly and crashed into a tree in Nakhon Ratchasima province in north-eastern Thailand.
UN chief has said that he is "really very concerned" to the world heading to a time reminiscent of the Cold war era in the wake of the tensions between US and Russia and called for putting precautions in place to guarantee effective communication and prevent escalation.

His comments came after, the Trump administration this week ordered the expulsion of 60 Russians from the US over the alleged poisoning of ex-double agent Sergei Skripal in the UK on March 4.

Of the 60 expelled, 12 are intelligence operatives from the Russian Mission to the UN who have been accused of abusing their privilege of residence in the United States.

"I am really very concerned. I think we are coming to a situation that is similar, to a large extent, to what we lived during the Cold War but with two very important differences," UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said in response to questions by reporters on the US announcement to expel Russian UN diplomats and could a new Cold War be developing.

Guterres said in the Cold War, there were clearly two superpowers with a complete control of the situation of two areas in the world.

"Now, we have many other actors that are relatively independent and with an important role in many of the conflicts that we are witnessing, with risks of escalation that are well known," he said.

He pointed out that during the Cold War, there were mechanisms of communication and control in place to avoid the escalation of incidents and to make sure that things would not get out of control when tensions would rise.

But with those mechanisms now dismantlement, it is time "for precautions of this sort, guaranteeing effective communication, guaranteeing capacity to prevent escalation. I do believe that mechanisms of this sort are necessary again."



On how optimistic is he over the summit between South Korea and North Korea, the Secretary General said he is "very encouraged" by the announcement of the inter-Korean summit.

He said he is "very happy" that it was possible in the visit to North Korea by Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs Jeffrey Feltman for the UN to make very clearly the case that a resumption of dialogues between the North and the South of the Peninsula was needed to reach the peaceful denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula.

The UN chief had met in PyeongChang both the North Korean delegation and as well as South Korean President Moon Jae In and had encouraged them as much as possible to move in these two directions.

"I was extremely encouraged by the recent visit of the leader of the North Korea to China, and I think China is, of course, a very important contributor to a solution in this region," he said referring to the surprise visit by Kim Jong-un to Beijing this week.

"I believe that, in this world where, unfortunately, so many problems seem not to have a solution, I think there is here an opportunity for a peaceful solution to something that, a few months ago, was haunting us as the biggest danger we were facing," he said, a reference to the escalation of tensions over North Korea's nuclear programme.
Imports of Iranian crude oil by major buyers in Asia fell by nearly a fifth in February from the same month a year earlier, hitting a two-month low as all of them except India curbed purchases, government and ship-tracking data showed. China, India, Japan and South Korea last month imported a total of 1.63 million barrels per day (bpd) from Iran, the lowest volume since December, the data showed. Iran has been pushing to retain its prized customers in Asia but concerns that U.S. President Donald Trump will carry out a threat to exit Tehran's nuclear deal with world powers ...
At least 15 Palestinians have been killed and more than 1,400 others have been wounded in confrontations with the Israeli forces as scores of them marched towards the fence that separates Gaza from Israel at the start of a six-week protest.

About 1,416 people were wounded and the dead included one minor aged 16, CNN reported, citing the Palestinian Ministry of Health, as saying.

The Israeli military has apparently resorted to the usage of rubber bullets, tear gas and live rounds.

According to the ministry, the majority were injured in live fire, rubber-coated steel bullets and tear gas inhalation.

According to the report, at least two dozen people were being taken away by ambulances in the span of half an hour.

A slew of Palestinian protesters marched in Gaza along the fence in what is being labeled as the Great March of Return.

Thousands of Palestinians were "rioting throughout the Gaza Strip, rolling burning tires and hurling stones at the security fence and at IDF troops, who are responding with riot dispersal means and firing towards main instigators," The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam's (AIADMK) S. Muthukaruppan on Friday resigned from the membership of the Rajya Sabha over the Centre's negligence in forming the Cauvery Management Board (CMB).

"I raised the issue of formation of Cauvery management board so many times, before Prime Minister of India and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader. My brothers, TamilNadu CM and Deputy CM are doing their job properly," Muthukaruppan told ANI.

Meanwhile, the AIADMK leaders decided to observe a fast on April 3 in order to pressurise the Centre to form a Cauvery Management Board.

The six-week time frame directed by the Supreme Court to set up a Cauvery Management Board had ended on Thursday, after which the state government stated that they would re-approach the apex court.

The apex court on February 16 had ordered the Central Government to set up the CMB and the Cauvery Water Regulatory Committee within six weeks. However, the Centre has not formed the CMB yet.

The apex court had also increased Karnataka's share of Cauvery water, thus, reducing Tamil Nadu's share to 177.25 thousand million cubic feet.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Tech giant Apple announced the addition of new animated emoticons or Animojis for its anniversary edition iPhone X, on the sidelines of the rollout of iOS 11.3.

The new version of iOS, which has been rolled out for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, consists of an improved ARKit for more advanced augmented reality, and the ability to turn off processor throttling for iPhones with aging batteries inside, in addition to the new Animoji collection, reports The Verge.

iOS 11.3 comes with four new Animoji for iPhone X owners: a lion, bear, dragon, and skull. On the AR front, the ARKit has been improved to allow apps to extend the mixed-world experience to vertical surfaces like walls and doors, in addition to the horizontal surfaces.

Apart from this, the iPhone maker has also introduced a Health Records section inside the Health app, giving patients quick access to their medical records from supported doctors and care centers directly on their device.

Moreover, the company is launching the beta version of Business Chat, which allows select businesses to communicate with customers directly in the Messages app instead of over social media, email, or by phone.

Apart from the above additions, Apple says a number of bugs faced by users have also been fixed in the latest version of the iOS.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The five Bangladeshi nationals, who were arrested two weeks ago for allegedly having terrorist links, will remain in custody till April 5, officials from the Maharashtra Anti Terror Squad(ATS) said on Thursday.

The individuals were nabbed by the ATS' Pune force for their links with the Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT), a banned terror outfit of Bangladesh, which was supposedly a front organisation for the al-Qaeda.

Following their arrest on March 17, the accused were sent to police custody till March 29, which has been extended to April 5.

The Maharashtra ATS's Pune unit had gotten information about several illegal Bangladeshi immigrants living in Wanvadi and Akurdi area in and around Pune. These illegal migrants were suspected of having links to the ABT and providing shelter to other ABT members who came to Pune.

While carrying out search operations in the area, one person was apprehended in Wanvadi area, who, during interrogation, told the police about more Bangladeshi migrants. This led to the arrest of two more suspects from Akurdi area.

Initial inquiries revealed that these Bangladeshi migrants were living in India without any valid papers. They were also found to be in possession of forged documents like Aadhar Card, Pan Card and so on.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) worker Anil Singh, who was arrested in connection with the recent communal clash in Bihar's Aurangabad, has escaped from the police custody.

Singh, who was one of the central figures among the 148 persons booked in the matter fled away on Thursday.

A clash broke out between two communities during Rama Navami celebrations on March 25.

The situation became tense in the evening when rioters set ablaze more than 20 shops and pelted stones at those participating in the Rama Navami procession through Nawadih Colony.

As per reports, nearly 50 shops were torched by rioters, while nearly 60 persons, including 20 policemen were injured due to stone pelting by miscreants.

The situation further intensified on Monday, which thereby led to a curfew being imposed in the vicinity.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
After communal violence marred Ram Navami celebrations in Bihar, another clash was reported in the state on Friday after miscreants vandalised a Hanuman idol in Nawada.

A clash erupted on Friday between two communities after an idol of Lord Hanuman was vandalised by miscreants.

However, the situation came under control after security personnel was deployed in the area.

To bring the crowd under control, the police had to fire several rounds in the air.

Some youths targeted the media, by damaging cameras and mics of some media persons.

The District Magistrate of Nawada, Kaushal Kumar said that the two communities came face to face after an idol was vandalised by some miscreants.

"It was a matter of an idol being vandalised by some miscreants, which led to the communities coming face-to-face; situation is now under control," he said.

Recently, tension gripped Bihar after communal violence erupted in several parts of the states, including Bhagalpur and Aurangabad.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Model Janice Dickinson will testify at the upcoming retrial of American comedian Bill Cosby, which is scheduled to open in April in Pennsylvania state court.

Dickinson is one of as many as five "prior bad acts" witnesses, who the prosecutors are considering to use to establish that Cosby's actions related to Constand were part of a pattern and were not a one-time mistake, CNN reported.

Dickinson claims she was drugged and raped by Cosby in Lake Tahoe in 1982 when she was 27. She alleged that he gave her a pill and a glass of red wine shortly before she passed out.

The 80-year-old Cosby, once branded as "America's Dad", faces a retrial on three charges of aggravated indecent assault for allegedly drugging and assaulting Andrea Constand in 2004 at his home outside Philadelphia, the report said.

More than 60 women have accused him of sexual misconduct. However, only one accuser - Andrea Constand - has brought a criminal case against Cosby.

The disgraced comedian first went to trial last year, and the case ended in a mistrial after the jury failed to deliver a verdict.

"It sickens me, but I have to be strong, for our daughters, our sisters, our mothers, our aunts, our cousins. I have to be strong for women," she added. "I have to do this. It's the right thing to do," Dickinson said.

Cosby and his lawyers have maintained his innocence throughout the process. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Karnataka Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday filed a complaint with the Election Commission against Chief Minister Siddaramaiah for violating the model code of conduct.

According to the Centre ruling party, the Chief Minister "bribed" two women, who welcomed him at Chamundeshwari temple in Mysuru, with Rs 2,000 each.

The party further alleged that Siddaramaiah paid Rs 2,000 to a priest of the temple in an attempt to polarise him ahead of the Karnataka Assembly Election.

Earlier in the day, Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee filed a complaint with the EC against BJP president Amit Shah, citing the violation of model code of conduct. According to the complaint, Shah handed a cheque of Rs 5 lakh to the family of murdered RSS worker Raju with an intention to polarise voters in Mysuru.

The election for 224-seat Karnataka Assembly will be held on May 12 and the counting of the votes will take place on May 15.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) cadres will hold a hunger strike across Tamil Nadu on April 3 to urge the central government to form a Cauvery Management Board.

They had earlier announced April 2 as the day to observe fast.

Chief Minister K Palaniswami yesterday held the discussion with his senior ministers on the matter as protests were staged across the state demanding constitution of Cauvery Management Board.

The Supreme Court had on February 16 pronounced its verdict on the vexed dispute between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.

The apex court directed Karnataka to release 177.25 thousand million cubic feet (tmcft) of water to Tamil Nadu. This reduced Tamil Nadu's share of Cauvery water by 14.75 tmcft from the 192 tmcft allocated by a tribunal in 2007.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Congress Party on Friday said that Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Prakash Javadekar Ministry's failure lead to CBSE paper leak.

Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge expressed concern over the issue while saying that future of 28 lakh students is at stake.

"The paper leak issue shows the HRD ministry's failure. The future of 28 lakh students is at stake. We will raise this issue in the Parliament," Kharge told ANI.

Several students and Congress youth leaders earlier today held protests in several parts of the capital against the paper leak while demanding immediate action in the matter.

The papers of the Economics exam of class XII, held on March 26 and Maths exam of class X, held on March 28 were leaked on social media hours before the examination.

Soon after this, CBSE announced re-examination and a police investigation into the matter.

Union Minister Javadekar also took cognisance of the matter and assured strict action against the culprits.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Vilifying The United States' 'Trade War' approach, China asserted on turning to dialogue and consultations to settle the ongoing trade-feuds between the nations.

According to Xinhua News, Gao Feng, a spokesperson with China's Ministry of Commerce, in response to questions about the US sanctioning tariffs amounting to around USD 60 billion on Chinese goods, said that the move could set in motion a domino effect on protectionism.

"The United States must abandon unilateralism and protectionism, take measures and resort to dialogue and consultation to settle disputes," Gao said. "China is always open for negotiations," he added, highlighting the need for a joint effort by both nations to reach a suitable settlement.

"The latest U.S. trade measures towards China are typical trade protectionism with cold war and a zero-sum mentality. Don't make China an excuse," said Gao.

Last Thursday, US President Donald Trump imposed massive trade tariffs amounting to USD 60 billion on Chinese imports, in a move that could escalate into a global trade war.

China retaliated the next day by threatening to suspend tariff concessions amounting to USD 3 billion on 128 categories of imported US goods including fresh fruits, wine and pork.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) leaders will observe fast on April 2 in order to pressurise the Centre to form a Cauvery Management Board.

The state government will convene a meeting to mull the further course of action in this regard.

"The party is discussing the next course of action after the Central government failed to implement Cauvery Management Board and also indicated that the state government is sure about approaching the Supreme Court again," Tamil Nadu Fisheries Minister D Jayakumar told media here.

Chief Minister K Palaniswami yesterday held discussion with his senior ministers on the matter as protests were staged across the state in the connection demanding constitution of Cauvery Management Board.

The Supreme Court had on February 16 pronounced its verdict on the vexed dispute between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.

The Apex Court has directed Karnataka to release 177.25 thousand million cubic feet (tmcft) of water to Tamil Nadu. This reduced Tamil Nadu's share of Cauvery water by 14.75tmcft from the 192tmcft allocated by a tribunal in 2007.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Condemning the Centre's failure to form the Cauvery Management Board (CMB) within the prescribed timeframe, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam's (DMK) working president MK Stalin headed an executive committee meeting at the party headquarters to decide on the future course of action.

"An all party meeting has been convened to decide on the next course of action on the Cauvery Management Board formation, protest will be planned after consulting all opposition parties. We condemn state & central government for not implementing SC order," the DMK said in a statement.

Blasting the Central Government and the ruling AIADMK party, DMK leader A. Sarvanan said, "The Tamil Nadu government and the Centre both have totally betrayed the interest of Tamil Nadu farmers and the people who entirely depend upon Cauvery."

Questioning the Centre's attitude he said, "Our leader MK Stalin wanted the state government to mount adequate pressure but it's not been done. The Central Government is shielding the state government from various corruption charges, that's the reason why the CMB has not been setup yet."

The apex court on February 16, had ordered the Central Government to set up the CMB and the Cauvery Water Regulatory Committee within six weeks. However, the Centre has not formed the CMB as yet.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Russia on Friday ordered the expulsion of four German diplomats in retaliation over the poisoning of its former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter at Salisbury.

As per the media reports, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said, "The news from Moscow comes as no surprise".

Maas further assured that Germany was still ready for a dialogue with Russia and wanted to continue working for "a constructive future of relations" between the two countries.

Germany, this week, expelled four Russian diplomats over Moscow's suspected involvement in the poisoning of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal in England.

Retired military intelligence officer Skripal, 66, and his daughter, Yulia, 33, were found slumped on a bench in Salisbury city centre on March 4.

While Yulia is said to be out of danger, Skripal continues to be in a critical condition.

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An over ground worker (OGW) of Hizbul Mujahideen has been arrested here, Jammu and Kashmir Police said on Friday.

A huge cache of incriminating materials has also been recovered from his possession.

A case has been registered in this regard and further probe is underway.

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Attorney General Jeff Sessions has revealed that U.S. attorney John Huber has been designated as the prosecutor tasked with probing the allegations of abuse of power at the FBI.

Huber, whose identity had remained a secret, has been looking into allegations that the FBI abused its powers in surveilling a former Trump campaign adviser, CNN reported.

However, in a written response to recent calls from Republicans to appoint a second special counsel, Sessions reportedly said a second special counsel to probe the Justice Department's handling of the Russia investigation is not yet warranted.

He said he will rely on Huber's review to determine if a special counsel is needed.

Huber, who currently serves as the US attorney in Utah, was originally appointed by former President Barack Obama in 2015 and was reappointed by Trump last year.

According to Sessions, Huber will conduct his investigation from outside Washington D.C. and in cooperation with Inspector General Michael Horowitz.

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A 24-year old lady, mother of two young kids, hailing from a middle class family in Jharkhand has been having symptoms of easy fatigability and palpitation for the last few years.

A year back, Selva Mohan (name changed on request), recalls that she started dragging herself to household work but after sometime, she could not even hold her four-month-old baby or do other household chores.

In such a scenario, her husband, who is into a decent job, got her evaluated locally.

It was detected that Selva had a very large hole between the two upper chambers of the heart (in between the right and left atrium of the heart), known as atrial septal defect (ASD) in medical terminology. Incidentally, Selva had no such complication until five years ago, but slowly she could understand the symptoms affecting her health.

She was referred to Medica Superspecialty Hospital in Kolkata for further diagnosis and necessary treatment.

Selva was very lean and weighed only 32 kgs.

On detailed evaluation, including trans-esophageal echocardiogram (TEE), it was diagnosed that she had a very large ASD.

There were thin and deficient margins along with dilatation of right sided chambers of the heart which was unarguably due to the volume overload. The large hole in the heart required early closure without any delay.

Generally, such large holes with deficient rims in the heart are closed by open heart surgery which requires prolonged hospital stay and large scar on the chest.

"The young lady and family members were not eager for surgical closure in view of possible difficulty in breast feeding of the young kid in post-operative period, associated scar and morbidity," recalls Dr. Anil Kumar Singhi, Senior Consultant Interventional Paediatric Cardiologist and Dr. Rana Rathor Roy, Senior Consultant Interventional Cardiologist at Medica Superspecialty Hospital.

The whole task of closure with the device was more challenging with deficient rims of the hole.

The Government of Jharkhand supported the procedure cost as Medica Superspecialty Hospital has a tie-up with it.

The procedure was done with a special technique of balloon support of device deployment under fluoroscopic and trans esophageal echocardiogram guidance in cardiac catheterization laboratory.

The procedure was done in around 90 minutes. The device was successfully placed and she was extubated on the table.

Selva was shifted to the ward within few hours of the procedure being completed. On the second day, the doctors, after re-examining, confirmed that the hole was closed completely.

On doctors' recommendations, the lady was discharged on the second day after her operation.

"It was extremely difficult for the family to believe that the major cardiac intervention was done without any particular scar and on top of that, the patient was discharged on the next day of the procedure," elaborated the doctors.

Nowadays large holes with deficient rims can be closed without cut and scar in the chest with better results, fewer complications, faster patient recovery and lower healthcare costs.

Regarding risks with this method, the doctors said, "Any invasive procedure has associated risk. We do the procedure in beating heart. The risks and complications are much less than surgical intervention.

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A 21-year old boy, who was missing since March 22, was found dead on Thursday.

The body of the deceased Delhi University student, identified as Ayush, was found in a drain here in Dwarka area.

On March 22, the Palam Village police station was informed that a message was sent to Ayush's father asking for a sum of Rs. 50 lakh against his release by the accused. Immediately, a case was registered and taken for investigation.

There on, the abductor on March 26 had sent another message asking to deliver the money near Uttam Nagar area. Thereafter, 30 police teams in civilian clothing were deployed to nab the culprit when he comes to collect the ransom. However, the kidnapper didn't come to collect the money.

Police teams eventually recovered the missing boy's body from a drain in Dwarka Sector 13 on March 28.

During the investigation, it was found that Ayush was a regular user of various dating apps and met strangers frequently. Based on these inputs, technical surveillance and CCTV footage collected from various locations, one accused was identified and arrested.

25-year-old Ishtiaq Ali, a resident of Uttam Nagar, confessed to the killing citing an altercation with the deceased. He further stated that he had made ransom calls to divert the attention of the parents and police to buy some time to dispose off the body.

The phone of the deceased and the vehicle used to dispose off the body were recovered.

Further investigation is underway.

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The Chhattisgarh Police on Friday busted a Naxal hideout in Irpanar forest area of Narayanpur district.

Nine Naxals were held from the hideout. Police uniforms, materials to make improvised explosive devices (IED) and two hand grenades were recovered from the site.

Earlier in the day, a security personnel was injured in an IED blast in Bijapur district.

Security personnel Laxman Rao's both legs were injured in the blast that occurred in Chinnakorepal village of the district.

Earlier on Thursday, 59 Maoist surrendered before the police and CRPF in Sukma district.

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Nepal Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli will embark on a three-day visit to India, starting from April 6, at the invitation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Nepal's Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced on Friday.

Prime Minister Oli will be accompanied by his spouse Radhika Shakya and will be accompanied by a high-level delegation.

The entourage of the Nepali Prime Minister will comprise of ministers, Members of Parliament (MPs), secretaries and other high-ranking officials of the Nepal Government.

During the visit, Prime Minister Oli will meet President Ram Nath Kovind, Vice-President M. Venkaiah Naidu and Prime Minister Modi.

He will hold official talks with Prime Minister Modi and exchange views on matters of mutual interests. Also, senior cabinet members of Modi-cabinet will call on Prime Minister Oli.

He will also visit Pantnagar in Uttarakhand and attend a programme organised at Govind Ballabh Pant University of Agriculture and Technology.

India and Nepal enjoy age-old, special ties of friendship and cooperation.

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Amid the ongoing furore post the Central Board of Secondary (CBSE) Class X question paper leak, Union Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Prakash Javadekar on Friday confirmed that out of the 16 lakh students, more than 14 lakh will not have to appear for the Mathematics re-exam.

"I am amazed to see headlines in some news channels about confusion over retest. Out of 16 lakh students, more than 14 lakh students of Class X will not have to give retest in Maths. This is the final decision," Javadekar tweeted.

"Class-X students from J&K, Uttarakhand, Himachal, Punjab, Chandigarh, Rajasthan, UP, Bihar, WB, Northeastern states, Jharkhand, Odisha, Andhra, Telangana, Karnataka, TN, Puduchery, Andaman, Lakshadweep, Kerala, Karnataka, Goa, Maharashtra, Gujarat, MP, Chhattisgarh will not give Maths retest," he added.

Clearing the air regarding Delhi and Haryana, Javadekar stated that a retest will be conducted only if police investigation points to a large-scale leak.

For the unversed, the papers of class XII Economics held on March 26, and class X Maths, held on March 28, were leaked on social media hours before the examination. Ever since, scores of students have taken to mass-protesting to express their dissatisfaction over the poor governance and the CBSE re-examination decision.

Earlier on Friday, the HRD Ministry announced that the re-examination for the Economics paper for Class XII students will be held on 25 April.

"Regarding Class 10th re-examination, as the leak was restricted to Delhi and Haryana, if it at all a re-exam will happen, it will happen only in Delhi and Haryana and a decision will be taken on this in next 15 days. If at all a re-exam is done, it will be held in July," Union Secretary Anil Swarup told media here.

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Pakistan Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi will pay a visit to Afghanistan next week and will hold talks with various Afghan officials, Afghanistan's CEO office announced on Friday.

According to TOLOnews, Prime Minister Abbasi's upcoming visit to Afghanistan is aimed at addressing the efforts to combat terrorism and also to improve ties between the two countries, Jawed Faisal, deputy spokesman to CEO Abdullah Abdullah said in a statement.

Earlier on Thursday, Pakistan's Foreign Office spokesman Dr. Muhammad Faisal said that Prime Minister Abbasi would visit the war-torn country very soon.

The dates for the visit is currently being worked out by the officials.

The proposed visit to Afghanistan comes against the backdrop of Pakistan's National Security Advisor (NSA) Nasser Khan Janjua visit to Kabul last week, where he met President Ashraf Ghani.

The Afghanistan president had extended an official invitation to Prime Minister Abbasi to visit Afghanistan, in what was seen as an effort by Kabul to normalise its icy relations with Islamabad.

Relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan have remained frosty in recent years due to the terrorist activities of the Taliban and Haqqani Network carried out from the former's land. Kabul contests that the two militant groups are supported by Islamabad and it does very little to stop them.

Pakistan has repeatedly urged Afghanistan to stop the blame game and asked for its co-operation in combating terrorism.

Last month, the Afghan President had made a peace offer to the Taliban in the Kabul Process Conference, which also included the recognition of the militant group as a political entity.

However, the group is yet to officially respond to President Ghani's offer.

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Uttar Pradesh Special Task Force on Friday busted an international gang of turtle smugglers and arrested one person from Kanpur.

The police have also recovered 27 kg of dried turtle calipee from the accused, identified as Mohammad Salim Sheikh, who hails from West Bengal.

The species of turtle calipee that has been recovered from Salim is found around the Ganga, Gomti, Ghaghra and Gandak rivers, read an official note.

The accused was taken into custody from Kanpur railway station.During interrogation, Salim had revealed that he was a part of an international gang of turtle smuggling, it added.

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Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray on Friday asked students not to sit for Central Board of Secondary (CBSE) re-examination after the board decided to re-conduct the test of leaked papers.

The Economics question paper of class XII and Maths question paper of class X were allegedly leaked on social media hours before the examination. The Economics exam was held on March 26 and Maths on March 28.

Talking to reporters in Mumbai, Thackeray termed the paper leak as the failure of the government.

"It is the failure of the government. Without accepting its failure, why does the government want students to re-appear for the exam? I request to the parents throughout the country, do not let your child sit for re-examination in any condition," Thackeray said.

Congress leader Kapil Sibal also termed the paper leak as government's failure and asked it to take accountability.

"CBSE paper leak is not the only paper leak. The staff selection commission (SSC) scam was another major concern. If the government does not take accountability for its wrongdoings, then who will?" asked Sibal.

On Thursday, Union Human Resource Development Minister Prakash Javadekar announced that the CBSE will soon announce dates of re-examination.

The Crime Branch of Delhi Police on Wednesday set up a special investigation team (SIT) to probe the alleged leak of the CBSE examination papers.

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External Affairs Minister (EAM) Sushma Swaraj met Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe here on Friday.

During the meeting, the two leaders discussed ways to further enhance the bilateral ties between India and Japan. Swaraj also conveyed the greetings of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Prime Minister Abe.

On the other hand, the Japanese Prime Minister added that the traditional friendship between the two countries was characterised by heart-to-heart bonds and blessed with a huge potential for growth.

The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Raveesh Kumar captured the moments of the meeting on Twitter.

EAM @SushmaSwaraj called on Japanese Prime Minister @AbeShinzo today morning in Tokyo. EAM conveyed the greetings of PM @narendramodi to PM Abe. PM Abe said that ???????? traditional friendship are characterised by heart-to-heart bonds and blessed with a huge potential for growth pic.twitter.com/jN8GWI4Nau  Raveesh Kumar (@MEAIndia) March 30, 2018

India and Japan on Thursday discussed various issues including terrorism, economic development, and mutual cooperation, a joint statement by Swaraj and Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono said.

The EAM also on Thursday held a bilateral meeting with Kono for discussing ways to strengthen bilateral ties between the two countries.

Prior to this, Swaraj met the chairman of Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) Policy Research Council Fumio Kishida.

While addressing a gathering of Indian diaspora at the Vivekanand Cultural Centre in Tokyo yesterday, Swaraj lauded the contribution of the diaspora for strengthening the bond with Japan and creating a positive image about India in Japan.

The EAM reached Tokyo on Wednesday, on a three-day visit to attend the ninth India-Japan Strategic Dialogue with Kono.

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President Donald Trump has apparently signaled the withdrawal of the United States (US) from war-torn Syria "very soon".

" By the way, we're knocking the hell out of ISIS. We'll be coming out of Syria like very soon. Let the other people take care of it now," CNN reported Trump, as telling a crowd in Ohio during a speech on infrastructure spending.

"We are going to have 100% of the caliphate, as they call it, sometimes referred to as land ... But we are going to be coming out of there real soon. We are going to get back to our country, where we belong, where we want to be," the US President added.

A US defense official having the know-how of the Islamic State (IS) campaign directly said it is unclear what the President meant by the comments.

According to the official, Trump could decide at any point of time to pull out; however military commanders were not in the favour of that course of action at this time.

The official also made a note of figuring out what to do with some 400 foreign IS fighters, who are presently being held by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces as one instance of the hurdles to a US withdrawal.

Furthermore, the State Department and US Agency for International Development have dozens of officials working on the ground to stabilise cities and towns after ISIS's defeat.

They work with international partners on demining, rubble removal, and restoring services like water, electricity, and schools and hospitals, according to the reports.

About 2,000 US troops deployed to Syria have been working alongside the Syrian Democratic Forces, reclaiming territory from IS to include the city of Raqqa.

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Seventeen migrants were killed and 36 injured on Thursday when their minibus crashed into a night lamp pole at Igdir province in Eastern Turkey.

"The minibus caught fire after crashing with the pole," the Anadolu Agency quoted provincial governor of Igdir Enver Unlu.

The migrants included the citizens of Afghan, Pakistan and Iran, who reportedly entered Turkey via the Iranian border.

"50 people were in the vehicle, of which the passenger capacity is only 14" informed deputy provincial Health Director, Taner Basaran.

Though, it was later reported that the bus was carrying more than 50 passengers.

Unlu expressed sorrow upon the death of the migrants while informing that the driver was among those who were killed.

Gendarmerie forces, a fire brigade squad, disaster and emergency management teams and medical teams were rushed to the scene soon after the incident.

The injured, including some in serious condition, were taken to Igdir State Hospital.

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In another case of medical apathy, severed foot of a man was kept between his legs at a hospital in Uttar Pradesh's Sultanpur.

Atul Pandey, 48, lost a foot when a train ran over him. The locals rushed Pandey to a nearby district hospital. During the course of treatment, the severed foot was kept between his legs. It was only removed by the doctors when people started clicking pictures of it.

Considering Pandey's deteriorating condition, doctors later referred him to Lucknow.

However, Chief Medical Superintendent of the hospital Yogendra Yati denied any medical negligence and said Pandey was given the best treatment.

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As many as six Islamic State (IS) militants were killed in a US drone strike in Kunar province in northeastern Afghanistan, local officials said on Friday.

The officials said that the latest airstrike was carried out in Chapa Dara district in the province.

The spokesperson of Kunar provincial governor Faridullah Dehqan, was quoted by the Khaama Press as saying that two top IS commanders were among those killed in the airstrike.

He said that the airstrike was necessitated to clear out the terror hideouts of the dreaded militant group in Kunar province.

The IS group has not commented on the incident so far.

This comes as at least five militants affiliated with the terror group were killed in a similar airstrike conducted in the same district last week.

The US forces, along with the Afghan forces frequently carries out airstrikes on IS targets in Kunar province and elsewhere in Afghanistan, in a bid to eliminate the presence of the militant group in the country.

Furthermore, three IS militants hailing from Uzbekistan were killed in a similar airstrike on Wednesday in Haska Meyna district of Nangarhar province in eastern Afghanistan, according to the local officials.

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A Vistara Airlines flight on Friday returned to Ahmedabad airport after it faced technical problem in one of its engines.

The New Delhi-bound flight from Ahmedabad experienced the glitch after departure and landed in Ahmedabad at 8.55 p.m.

All passengers are said to be safe in the aircraft.

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Most cyber frauds in India's booming business process outsourcing (BPO) sector occur due to lack of strict implementation of existing information security protocols together with poor employee awareness, noted a recent survey jointly conducted by apex industry body ASSOCHAM and global software giant Microsoft.

The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) along with Microsoft conducted a survey titled, 'Understanding the perceptions and awareness around cyber security among employees working in BPOs,' in Delhi-NCR and Kolkata to ascertain the level of awareness regarding cyber frauds among people employed in the sector.

The survey sample design comprised of four focus group discussions (FGDs) and 20 in-depth interviews (IDIs) held across Delhi-NCR and Kolkata.

It was noted that awareness about cyber frauds was low amid freshers and job applicants, but it was relatively higher in experienced employees.

Both employees and customers are to be blamed for cyber frauds as employees lack ethics and customers for being careless about security and privacy, admitted experienced BPO professionals while acknowledging that computer hacking, credit card/bank frauds, malware/virus, tech support scams are most prevalent.

Highlighting the poor levels of awareness among freshers and job applicants, the survey noted that perceptions about cyber frauds are mostly driven by word of mouth and media.

Besides, the predominant perception for causes of cyber frauds is the growing shift of online transactions - from shopping to banking and consumers' growing trust on internet and its safety nets.

While enough measures exist in the BPO sector to keep a check on cyber frauds, it is the lack of seriousness at the organisational level towards the issue which is the root cause to the problem as casual attitude is often passed down to employees, according to the ASSOCHAM-Microsoft survey.

Basic protocols like frisking/checking before entry/exit, no mobile phones on floor, no pen and paper and others are frequently overlooked, thereby exposing gaps.

It was also revealed that there is certain casualness, as the general feeling is that most cyber frauds occur on a larger scale, and the security staff is not aware of implications of not following proper protocols.

There is also little awareness on importance of protecting data of clients leading to casual attitude of employees towards data.

While seriousness of implications and fear of repercussions is not deeply instilled in the employees' minds, they can also get trapped or perpetrate those frauds unknowingly.

The survey also suggested immediate steps to drive home seriousness about cyber frauds - include comprehensive session on cyber fraud in induction programme, implement stringent security measures, install strong antivirus systems, organise sessions on ethical practices, implement training and development programmes.

ASSOCHAM in collaboration with Microsoft has launched 'Cybersuraksha Youth Awareness Campaign,' wherein series of workshops are being organised in various states with an aim to promote awareness about cyber security threats among citizens and provide up-to-date security information through education and sharing of good practices.

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Twenty migrant workers from Myanmar were killed when their bus caught fire in northwestern Thailand on Friday, the police said.

The workers were travelling to a factory district near Bangkok when their chartered bus was engulfed in flames around 1.30 a.m. in Tak Province, the Bangkok Post reported.

The double-decker bus was carrying 47 Myanmar workers, out of which 27 managed to escape the inferno, said Col. Krissana Pattanacharoen, a Royal Thai Police spokesman.

The cause of the fire was not yet known, he said. Initial reports said that the engine of the bus caught fire which spread quickly through the vehicle.

Police said the fire was so intense that identifying the dead would require experts. One officer at the scene told the daily that he could not distinguish between male and female corpses.

The authorities were planning to interview the driver, who survived the fire.

"We are trying to identify the bodies and also trying to contact the Myanmar Consulate in order to identify the bodies," Colonel Krissana said. "They are Buddhists, so we've got to send them back to their hometown for religious ceremonies there."

The workers who were killed on Friday had passed the lengthy new registration process to work in the country, reports said.

Thailand has the world's highest rate of road traffic deaths, according to World Health Organisation data from 2013. In 2015, it was found to have the second highest road fatality rate behind Libya.

--IANS

soni/bg

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At least seven Palestinians were killed and over 500 injured in violent clashes between hundreds of Palestinians and Israeli soldiers during a march close to the border between Gaza Strip and Israel on Friday.

The Palestinian Health Ministry confirmed the death toll and according to reports 550 Palestinians were injured as they launched a six-week protest dubbed the "Great March of Return" amid Israeli Army presence on the borderline area with the Gaza Strip, the BBC reported.

Eyewitnesses said the Israeli Army sent more forces, including armoured vehicles, snipers, sniffer dogs and soldiers equipped with teargas, rubber bullets and live ammunition to prevent the Palestinians from reaching the fence of the borders.

Thousands of Palestinians, including women and children, arrived by buses at six different areas in the eastern part of the Gaza Strip to join the march.

Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qedra told reporters that early in the day, Israeli soldiers targeted two farmers close to the border with the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis, killing a 27-year-old farmer and wounding another. Witnesses said the two men were hit by tank fire while collecting parsley in a field.

Later, six other Palestinian demonstrators were shot dead by Israeli troops near the border between eastern Gaza Strip and Israel during violent confrontations, he said.

March 30 marks Land Day, which commemorates the killing of six protesters by Israeli security forces during demonstrations over land confiscation in 1976.

Palestinians erected five main camp areas along the Israel border for the protest, from Erez in the north to Rafah near the Egyptian border in the south. The protest is scheduled to end on May 15.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said there were about 17,000 Palestinians in five locations along the border fence.

The IDF said troops were "firing towards the main instigators" to break up rioting that included the burning of tyres and the throwing of Molotov cocktails and stones at the fence.

Hamas, the militant group which dominates the Gaza Strip, accused Israel of trying to intimidate Palestinians.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry said the protest was a "deliberate attempt to provoke a confrontation with Israel" and that "responsibility for any clashes lies solely with Hamas and other participating Palestinian organisations".

Meanwhile, Saeb Erekat, Secretary General of the Palestine Liberation Organisation's Executive Committee, said the Israeli government had been preparing to attack unarmed Palestinians during their march on the Palestinian Land Day.
An Afghan provincial council member, along with a local pro-government leader and an attacker, was killed when the latter blew himself up in the country's Kunar province on Friday, a government spokesman said.

The explosion occurred in the afternoon after the arrival of Shah Wali Hemat, a provincial council member, to attend a local funeral ceremony, government spokesman Ghani Musamim told Xinhua news agency.

A local tribesman named Abdul Rahman also died on the spot.

A security guard was injured in the explosion, the latest targeted attack against government officials and local leaders.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

--IANS

and/soni/bg

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Several major airlines have asked the government to investigate the matter of "inaccurate" reporting of technical snags by some other passenger carriers.

In a letter dated March 28, to the Minister of State for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha, Jet Airways, SpiceJet and Vistara alleged that the "number of technical snags being reported by various airlines is inaccurate".

"It seems apparent that the number of technical snags being reported by various airlines is inaccurate. This discrepancy or misreporting of data is leading to the false illusion of the relative safety of some airlines over others.

"As you are aware, reporting of snags and defects is mandatory in India and accurate reporting of such snags is in the interest of passengers and aviation safety," it said.

The development comes after Sinha in a reply to a question informed the Rajya Sabha that airlines in India had reported a total of 24,791 defects or snags in 2017.

"We request you to get this matter investigated by the DGCA so that accurate information may be made available to the Parliament of India and the travelling public," the letter added.

--IANS

rv/vd

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Actress Isha Talwar, who will soon be seen in Prithviraj Sukumaran-starrer Malayalam film "Ranam", says she had been wanting to work with the actor for six years, since the time she entered the film industry.

"When I got the first call to do 'Ranam', I thought people were playing a prank on me because the call came from America. But then Prithviraj messaged and said we would like you to play a part in the film," said Isha in a statement.

"I have been wanting to work with Prithviraj for six years now, ever since I got here. He is also an actor who shuttles between industries as well, and I was totally looking forward to working with him. So it was cool working with the heartthrob from Malayalam cinema. I am glad I've ticked this off the list," added the actress, who has also worked in Salman Khan-starrer "Tubelight".

"Ranam" is scheduled to release on April 13 and is directed by Nirmal Sahadev.

--IANS

ks/dc/vm

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Actor Ben Affleck took to social media to take down a magazine, which body shamed him in an article titled "The Great Sadness of Ben Affleck".

Affleck responded to a New Yorker magazine which suggested he was depressed after new photos surfaced of Affleck on a beach with a large tattoo of a phoenix on his back, reports variety.com.

The actor took to Twitter with the post: "New Yorker I'm doing just fine. Thick skin bolstered by garish tattoos".

When the tattoo was first spotted in 2016, Affleck insisted it was fake and just for a movie.

The New Yorker article said that ever since Affleck's 2015 split from actress Jennifer Garner, paparazzi photographs have shown a "sad Ben", from him vaping in his car to the low-energy interviews he gave during the "Batman v Superman" press tour.

The article drew backlash online this week as the story also appeared to fat-shame Affleck with lines like, "his gut is pooching" and "a blue-gray towel is wrapped protectively around his midsection-recalling a shy teen at the local pool."

The images were taken while Affleck was filming Netflix movie "Triple Frontier" in Hawaii with Garrett Hedlund, Charlie Hunnam and Oscar Isaac, who were also photographed in the water.

--IANS

ks/dc/vm

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Parts of Raniganj in West Bengal's Paschim Burdwan district that remained tense for most of this week following clashes over Ram Navami rallies limped back to normalcy on Friday even as large number of police and para-military forces continued to be deployed in the area to prevent any breach of peace.

"We are maintaining a tight vigil. The situation is normal. No further untoward incidents have happened so far," a police officer from the district said.

A large number of security personnel were deployed on the streets of Raniganj while a section of shops opened their shutters after remaining closed for the last five days.

"Things are slowly becoming normal. We could not come out of our houses since the clash broke out. Today I am able to go to office," a commuter said.

The internet services remained suspended even on Friday.

Meanwhile, a four-member committee formed by BJP President Amit Shah is set to visit the trouble hit areas of Raniganj on Sunday and submit a report, a leader of the party's state unit said.

The committee, led by BJP Vice President Om Mathur, also has former Union Minister Shahnawaz Hussain and MPs Roopa Ganguly and B.D. Ram.

A clash broke out between two groups centring a Ram Navami procession in Raniganj on Monday. A person was allegedly hacked to death while a Deputy Commissioner of Police lost a hand after getting hit by a bomb.

The Union Home Ministry has sought a report from the state government on incidents of arson and violence during the processions.

The Trinamool Congress government blamed the Bharatiya Janata Party for the unrest.

Several shops and houses were vandalised and set ablaze during the clashes in parts of Paschim Bardhaman district. Police have arrested 19 people for fomenting trouble.

Five police personnel were injured as clashes broke out over a Ram Navami rally organised by the saffron outfit and the Sangh affiliates in an area in Purulia district.

The BJP, which is trying to pitchfork itself as the main challenger to the Trinamool in the state, has been using the Ram Navami celebrations since last year to appeal to the sentiments of the majority Hindu population.

Sensing the BJP's motive, the Trinamool also resorted to celebrate the occasion massively on its own this year.

--IANS

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Iranian filmmaker Majid Majidi's maiden India-set project "Beyond The Clouds", featuring Bollywood actor Shahid Kapoor's younger brother Ishaan Khatter and Malavika Mohanan, will release in 34 territories, including Pakistan.

Zee Studios International is taking the film to the foreign shores.

The film will see a 34 territory release including a wide release in Iran as well as over 70 screens in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) regions including Dubai, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, and Qatar, read a statement.

Apart from the GCC region, the film will also open in the US, Canada, UK, Netherlands, Belgium, Maldives, Luxembourg, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, East West and South Africa, Malaysia, Indonesia and Pakistan.

"Beyond The Clouds" narrates a heart-warming tale of a brother and sister, and how they find happiness in separation and turbulent times. The film celebrates the triumph and adoration of life against a Mumbai backdrop.

Produced by Zee Studios and Namah Pictures, the film will open in UAE and GCC regions on April 19. In North America, UK and Singapore, the film will release on April 20.

The release date for Australia, New Zealand and Fiji is yet to be confirmed.

Vibha Chopra, Head - Zee Studios International (Film Marketing, Distribution and Acquisition), said: "The popularity of Indian cinema, Hindi as well as other regional films, is rising at rapid pace. Majid Majidi's films are those that are awaited by Indians as well as non-diaspora audience worldwide.

"And that is why the different approach to the film. The film has been marketed keeping in mind both these type of movie-goers. Content is what is key, around the globe. We have tapped 34 territories in the first phase of release for the film and are looking to go wider in phase two."

In the phase two, the film will open in Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Taiwan, Japan, Korea and Russia.

With music by A.R. Rahman, cinematography by Anil Mehta and Hindi dialogues by Vishal Bhardwaj, it will open in India on April 20.

--IANS

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The Uttar Pradesh government on Friday denied the opposition's charges that its move to add 'Ramji' to the name of Dalit icon Bhimrao Ambedkar was politically motivated.

The state government shared with the media a postal stamp of 1991 when the then Congress government at the Centre had 'Ramji' in the name.

"His full name is Dr Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar and we have only done what is factual and correct," said a minister on Friday, adding that the opposition was being unfair in seeing everything through the prism of electoral

The BJP government in the state earlier this week issued an order, seeking the change of the name of the architect of the Indian Constitution from the hitherto used Bhim Rao Ambedkar to Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar.

This triggered a political storm as opposition parties, led by the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), accused the government of distorting historical things for petty political gains.

BSP supremo Mayawati has said the BJP was engaged in a political drama.

She also mentioned how neither Mahatma Gandhi (whose full name is Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi) nor in present times the Prime Minister (whose full name is Narendra Damodar Das Modi) have ever been addressed by their full names.

This, the four-time Chief Minister alleged, was being done to come across as champion of the Dalits and to cause confusion.

--IANS

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Referring to rising communal disturbances in Bihar, the CPI-M on Friday accused the BJP of sharpening communal polarization following its rout in the Lok Sabha by-elections in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

"Widespread communal disturbances are occurring in most districts of Bihar," a statement by the Communist Party of India-Marxist said, at the end of a Central Committee meeting here.

"After the betrayal of the 'Grand Alliance' by (Chief Minister) Nitish Kumar and the BJP being in the government, official patronage is being extended to such communal polarization," it said.

"Central ministers are playing an active role in creating disturbances in various states across the country - Bihar, Bengal, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh.

"It is clear that after the severe drubbing that the BJP received in recent by-elections, it is intensifying the sharpening of communal polarization by mounting such attacks against religious minorities and the Dalits," it said.

--IANS

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Reacting to BJP's allegation of his involvement in a "land scam", Congress leader Kapil Sibal on Friday said the ruling party is being selective in highlighting facts and that the same website they are referring to had said there was no evidence against him.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday accused former Law Minister and Congress leader Kapil Sibal of being involved in a "land scam", claiming that he bought a piece of land in Delhi worth crores for a "very small price" from an accused in a money laundering case.

Referring to a report by the website which alleged that Sibal acquired the land by paying just Rs 1 lakh, Information and Broadcasting Minister Smriti Irani said Sibal and his wife got the ownership of a company, Grande Castello, from one Piyoosh Goyal, a businessman.

"The same website on the basis of which Smriti Irani did a press conference (on Thursday), had said there is no evidence that Sibal was party to money laundering or corruption. The same site had said that Sibal had no role," Sibal stressed.

"It also said that there is no evidence to suggest that Sibal interfered in Goyal's case... This makes it evident how selective they are. They chose not to read it."

Why did the press conference was organised, only they would know, he added.

--IANS

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Maharashtra Navnirman Sena President Raj Thackeray on Friday asked students and parents to "boycott the re-examinations" proposed by the government over the Central Board of Secondary (CBSE) question paper leak.

Addressing parents and students, Thackeray said it was the responsibility of the government, but instead of owning up its mistake, it was again burdening the students with a re-examination of the leaked papers.

"The government is incapable of safeguarding the question papers and yet it is the students who have to bear the anguish of a re-exam. Why should they (students) be made to undergo this ordeal for no fault of theirs?" Thackeray demanded.

"I appeal to all the parents of CBSE students in Maharashtra and rest of the country, that under no circumstances should you permit your children to sit for the re-examinations. If you bow and adjust now, you will be made to bend more in future."

He called for a "tough and firm united stand" on the issue.

"The government must be given a clear message to set its house in order first instead of compelling the students to suffer for its mistakes. If the parents falter now, and the students write the examinations again, then such mistakes will keep recurring in future," he said.

Thackeray's comments come after the leak of the economics question paper of Class 12 and the mathematics paper of Class 10 was reported on Wednesday.

The CBSE has announced a re-examination in the two papers though fresh dates are yet to be announced.

--IANS

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The CBI has registered three cases in connection with four alleged staged shootout deaths in Manipur in which personnel of the state police, Assam Rifles and CRPF are accused, an official said on Friday.

The FIRs were filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Wednesday following the Supreme Court's March 12 order on writ petitions filed by the families of the deceased.

In the first FIR, the CBI named five Manipur Police personnel and some unidentified policemen for taking Manipur resident R.K. Laksana in custody on February 15, 1999, and later allegedly killing him in a staged shootout.

The named accused are Sub-Inspector Pebam John Singh and Constables Longjam Rokhon Singh, Thangmang Kipgen, K. Bijoy Tarao and Fajur Rahman.

In the second case, the CBI booked unidentified personnel of 20 Assam Rifles on the charge of killing Ramaso Shingnaisui on July 17, 1997, in custody. "As per Shingnaisui's post-mortem report, he died of shock and haemorrhage as a result of multiple blunt force injuries, which were homicidal in nature," the FIR said.

In another FIR, the CBI booked unidentified personnel of the Central Reserve Police Force's 121 and 134 Battalions for killing Asem Romajit and Yumnam Robita Devi in a staged shootout in 2002.

"It was alleged that on April 9, 2002, some personnel of CRPF's 121 and 134 Battalions were attacked by unidentified armed insurgents in Pangei Bazar, which resulted in the killing of four CRPF troopers and injuries to many more.

"The CRPF personnel subsequently carried out searches of all houses in the area and started firing indiscriminately, during which Romajit was shot dead from close range. Similarly, Robita, who was waiting for a passenger bus, lay down on the ground to save herself but was shot dead by CRPF personnel," the FIR said.

The CBI had registered on Wednesday an FIR against unidentified personnel of 19 Assam Rifles to probe the alleged arrest, torture and murder of Manipur college student Khundrakpam Tejkumar Singh in 2004.

--IANS

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Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Friday taunted Prime Minister Narendra Modi, asking him if he was now penning a book for students on how to de-stress after their lives were "destroyed" following the leak of CBSE question papers.

Gandhi said Modi "wrote 'Exam Warriors', a book to teach students stress relief during exams.

"Next up: 'Exam Warriors 2', a book to teach students and parents stress relief, once their lives are destroyed due to leaked exam papers."

Ahead of the exam season, Modi came out with a book "Exam Warriors" released in February that advises students how to fight exam stress.

The Prime Minister has extensively spoken about exam stress in his monthly "Mann Ki Baat" radio address for four exam cycles since he came to power in May 2014.

He also held a televised interactive session with students all over the country, giving them a pep talk on how not to fear exams.

But the government has came under huge criticism after question papers for Class 10 maths and Class 12 economics were circulated on WhatsApp days before examinations were held on Monday and Wednesday, respectively.

The Central Board of School acknowledged that the question papers were "leaked".

On Wednesday, the board ordered that students will have to re-write the exams for the two subjects, triggering outrage.

--IANS

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Beijing hopes an upcoming summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, and another one between Kim and US President Donald Trump will yield significant results, China's top diplomat said here on Friday.

Chinese State Councillor Yang Jiechi said during a meeting with South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha that China backs the planned inter-Korean summit on April 27 and a summit between Trump and Kim in May, and believes they would help ease tension on the Korean Peninsula, Efe news reported.

Yang said China hopes to maintain strong communication with South Korea and work together to continue to address the issue.

The meeting in April would be the first inter-Korean summit after 2007, while the one in May would be the first-ever summit between the leaders of North Korea and the US after seven decades of conflict and 25 years of failed negotiations.

--IANS

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Christians in Kerala on Friday were out in large numbers and local hurches were overflowing as they participated in the Good Friday mass.

This Friday's mass commemorates the crucifixion of Jesus Christ on Mount Calvary in Jerusalem, nearly 2,000 years ago.

Of the around 3.4 crore population of Kerala, Christians number 61.41 lakhs, composed of 29.94 lakhs males and 31.47 lakhs females.

The Good Friday mass timings differ according to church denominations, starting from 8.30 a.m and ending in some churches as late as 3 p.m.

The main event of the day in the churches is the re-enactment by worshippers of the "Way of the Cross" - the 14 stations on Christ's final journey to Mount Calvary from the palace Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of the province.

The chief priest, who conducts the day's mass, along with a large number of the laity re-enact Jesus' journey with the worshippers moving to each station singing hymns as the story of the betrayal, arrest, trial and crucifixion of Christ is narrated by the priest.

The most important ritual in this mass is the drinking of 'choruka' - a decoction made of bitter gourd juice and vinegar - by all the devotees. When the Good Friday mass reaches its last lap, the priest pours out a spoon of 'choruka' into the mouth of each and every person attending the mass.

This symbolises the event of Christ crying out while on the cross, on hearing which some onlookers dipped a piece of cloth in cheap wine and lifted it to his mouth to make him drink just before he died.

At the end of the Good Friday mass in Kerala, those attending are served 'kanji' - the steaming hot gruel made of rice along with mango pickle and a serving of pulses.

The next major event takes place on Sunday morning, when the "Passion Week" ends with the Easter Sunday festival which celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

--IANS

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Amid outrage over leak of CBSE question papers, the government on Friday said re-examination of Class 10 maths paper will be held only in Delhi, NCR and Haryana, "if at all", while fresh Class 12 test for economics students will be conducted on April 25.

Anil Swarup, Secretary School in Union Human Resources Development Ministry, said the CBSE Class 10 mathematics question paper was leaked only in Delhi and Haryana as there was no evidence that it was a pan-India affair.

"The leak was restricted to Delhi and Haryana, if at all a re-exam will happen, it will happen only in these states in July. A decision will be taken on this in the next 15 days," Swarup told reporters.

He said the Class 12 economics re-exam will be held on April 25. But there will be no fresh test outside of India.

--IANS

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Communal tension gripped Bihar's Nawada town on Friday after a religious idol was found damaged, police said.

Nawada District Magistrate Kaushal Kumar said that as soon as the news spread, a protest erupted, leading to violent clashes between two communities.

Angry mobs damaged vehicles, torched shops and pelted stones at the police.

However, the situation was soon brought under control, Kumar added.

Additional security forces have been deployed in the town to maintain law and order.

The Nawada parliamentary constituency is represented by Union Minister Giriraj Singh, who is known to be a vocal champion of Hinduvta

Communal tension had erupted in Nawada last year and also in 2013.

In the past week, communal tension that first started in Aurangabad district during Ram Navami processions, spread to Samastipur, Munger, Nalanda, Sheikhpura and Gaya districts.

The opposition Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) has attacked Chief Minister Nitish Kumar for failing to handle he situation.

--IANS

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Union Minister Giriraj Singh on Friday accused the Congress of inciting communal violence in Bihar and West Bengal, saying this was being done to "weaken" the majority Hindu community at these places.

At a brief stop over at the circuit house in Allahabad, while on his way to Pratapgarh, the senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader, known for his controversial comments, alleged all this was happening on the directions of Congress President Rahul Gandhi under "a well-planned conspiracy".

"Rahul Gandhi is working overtime to disrupt communal harmony and to weaken Hindus," he claimed, adding that the Congress chief's only aim is to discredit the Narendra Modi government and they are wearing Hindus to split the nation.

"Wherever the Hindus are being weakened, incidents like those taking place in Bihar and West Bengal happen," he said, but declined to elaborate of the communal unrest in some districts of Bihar as he has not been visiting his home state for some time.

He also defended the decision of the Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh for inserting 'Ramji' in the name of Dalit icon Bhimrao Ambedkar and added that there was nothing wrong in it as "this was the real name of the Architect of the Constitution".

Ambedkar belongs to everyone, irrespective of caste or creed and hence he cannot be owned by any person or party, he said in an apparent reference to the Bahujan Samaj Party, which has been crying foul over the name change.

--IANS

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Supporting Supreme Court Judge J. Chelameswar's letter to Chief Justice of India Dipak Mishra, the Congress on Friday said the "bonhomie between media and the government and judiciary and the government will lead to destruction of democracy" and that the Modi government was targeting all organisations.

Referring to Justice Chelameswar's letter, Congress leader and senior lawyer Kapil Sibal said: "The Modi government's mindset is to bring the higher judiciary under their control and to fill the judiciary with RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) people".

Justice Chelameswar, in his letter, had said that "the bonhomie between the judiciary and the government in any state sounds the death knell of democracy".

The letter questioned the inquiry initiated by Karnataka High Court Chief Justice Dinesh Maheshwari against District and Sessions Judge Krishna Bhat allegedly at the instance of the Ministry of Law and Justice, despite Bhat's name being recommended for elevation twice by the Supreme Court Collegium.

"Justice Chelameshwar had asked why this was happening. He also said this should be discussed in full court. The Law Ministry has even ignored the collegium and the CJI and directly written a letter to Chief Justice Maheshwari.

"Their mindset is to bring the judiciary under their control. The names recommended by the Judges are rejected by the government. Ever since this government has come to power, they have targeted all the organisations," the Congress leader said.

Sibal said: "Prime Minister Narendra Modi doesn't even allow discussion on the no-trust motion (in Parliament). Every bill is turned into a money bill so that there could be no discussion in the Rajya Sabha.

"In Parliament, he (Modi) doesn't even take questions. First, they are destroying Parliament as an institution. Then they target the media.

"Media and judiciary are two pillars that can protect democracy. They (the government) have captured most of the media houses. When media and government come together, then what will be its consequence on democracy? History speaks for itself.

"The other organisation which they are targeting is the judiciary," he added.

--IANS

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Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan on Friday said there are no human rights for anti-social elements, justifying the police parading criminals in public.

While speaking at an event organised for creating awareness about women's safety and security, Chauhan said, his government has zero-tolerance for crimes against women.

He also said his government's priority is to provide security to women.

"Criminals who eve-tease our daughters and make it difficult for them to step out of the house cannot claim human rights," he said.

The police has all the power to take action against the criminals, he said.

Attacking human right activists, he said that they should also be aware that criminals don't have human rights.

--IANS

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Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi discussed on Thursday mutual military cooperation with visiting chairman of the Pakistani Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee Zubair Mahmood Hayat.

In a statement, Sisi and Hayat discussed bilateral relations and boosting military cooperation between the two countries, Xinhua reported.

They also talked about the latest regional developments, mainly war on terror, which is a major challenge for both countries.

On Thursday, Egyptian state media reported that Sisi won 92 percent of the votes in the 2018 presidential election, with 23 million Egyptians voting for him.

Sisi was expected to make an easy win on his sole rival, a little-known politician, for a second four-year term.

--IANS

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Two persons, including an engineer, were shot dead in Ranchi district of Jharkhand on Friday by some criminals, who also injured one person, police said.

Police said unidentified criminals raided the camp office of a contractor involved in railway work at Chete village in Nagari police station jurisdiction and fired on those present there.

Of the three persons who sustained bullet injuries, two died -- engineer Vishal Reddy and Munshi Prahalad Singh Rathod.

Reddy was a Karnataka native while Rathod hailed from Madhya Pradesh. The injured, whose identity could not be known, was admitted in the Rajendra Institute of Medical Science in Ranchi.

Police said it suspected that refusal to pay a levy to criminals could have led to the killings.

Police said the role of a Maoist group, People's Liberation Front of India, is also suspected since it could be in retaliation to the killing of two PLFI members in a gun battle with security forces on Thursday in Khuti district.

--IANS

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The enthronement ceremony of Crown Prince Naruhito as Japan's next emperor will be held on October 22, 2019, six months after the abdication of his father, Emperor Akihito, the government announced on Friday.

Prior to the ceremony, Naruhito, 59, will succeed to the Chrysanthemum Throne on May 1, 2019, one day after Akihito's abdication, in an intimate and closed-door ritual, reports Efe news.

The ceremony will be held at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo in front of thousands of guests and delegations from around the world.

It is expected to be similar to that of Akihito, held on November 12, 1990, which was attended by 2,500 guests, including 157 foreign dignitaries.

Akihito ascended to the Chrysanthemum Throne after more than a year mourning his father, Emperor Hirohito's death, who had reigned for 63 years since 1928.

The 125th emperor of Japan, Akihito expressed his desire to abdicate in an unusual televised message in August 2016, citing his age and deteriorating health.

--IANS

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The Jharkhand government on Friday lodged an FIR against a senior police officer and the Press Adviser of the Chief Minister in connection with the 2016 Rajya Sabha election.

The FIR against Additional Director General of Police (ADG) - Special Branch Anurag Gupta and Press Adviser Ajay Kumar was lodged following a directive to the state government from the Election Commission (EC) in June 2017 to initiate action against the two.

Jharkhand Chief Minister Raghubar Das on March 26 gave his approval to initiate action against the police officer and his aide.

The FIR was lodged at Jagannathpur Police Station of Ranchi under sections 171B and 171C of the IPC. Both sections relate to acts aimed at influencing the outcome of an election.

The EC earlier this month in its second reminder had asked the state government to lodge the FIR.

There are allegations that Gupta in the capacity of ADG had tried to influence the legislators to vote in favour of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2016 Rajya Sabha election, wherein Kumar also had a role.

Former Chief Minister Babulal Marandi had come out with a CD having an audio of the conversation of former Minister and Congress leader Yogendra Sao with the ADG, in which the police officer was allegedly seeking votes in favour of the BJP. Yogendra Sao's wife Nirmala Devi is a Congress legislator.

The opposition parties had complained about it to the EC and the Union Home Ministry.

As the EC asked the state government to initiate disciplinary action against Gupta and Kumar in connection with the 2016 Rajya Sabha election, it had filed a review petition, which was rejected by the top poll panel.

The opposition parties had again raised the issue ahead of the just concluded Rajya Sabha polls.

The BJP had won both the Rajya Sabha seats in 2016 despite the numbers not being in their favour.

--IANS

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Nikolas Cruz, the 19-year-old who shot and killed 17 people at a Florida high school, was receiving a massive amount of fan mail from across the US and Europe at the county jail where he was being held, the media reported.

The Broward County Public Defender's office, which represents Cruz, has said that between 100 and 200 pieces of mail have arrived at the jail since his arrest after the massacre at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland on February 14, reports CNN.

The letters are from women, girls and grown men. Some were handwritten on college-ruled notebook paper and in fancy greeting cards with cartoons, others typed.

Some letters were also stuffed with sexually suggestive photos of women and teenagers.

There was even a handwritten note from a Girl Scout troop in New Jersey, signed by more than a dozen girls. "May God Forgive," they wrote.

Broward County Public Defender Howard Finkelstein told CNN that he had never seen a defendant get so many letters.

However, Cruz does not have access to these letters. Unless his attorneys or family tell him, he would not know about them.

Finkelstein said he has only shared the contents of the religious letters with Cruz.

--IANS

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Describing the violence in West Bengal's Asansol "painful and unfortunate", BJP President Amit Shah on Friday formed a four-member committee to visit the city and submit a report.

The committee members are BJP Vice-President Om Mathur, former Union Minister Shahnawaz Hussain and MPs Roopa Ganguly and B.D. Ram.

In a statement issued here, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said that Shah condemned the Asansol violence.

On Monday, a clash broke out between two groups over a Ram Navami procession at Raniganj in Asansol. A person was allegedly hacked to death while a Deputy Commissioner of Police lost a hand in a bomb hit.

Several shops and houses were vandalised and set ablaze during the procession.

The BJP has accused West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee of playing in Delhi while the state burnt due to violence during Ram Navami.

Banerjee was in Delhi for two days to pitch for an anti-BJP coalition ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

--IANS

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France has offered to mediate between Turkey and Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in northern Syria, according to President Emmanuel Macrons office.

Meeting a delegation from northern Syria, including the Kurdish Peoples' Protection Units (YPG), a part of the Kurdish-dominated SDF, Macron said on Thursday that he hoped "a dialogue can be established between the SDF and Turkey with help from France and the international community".

Macron's office said he "paid tribute to the sacrifices and the determining role" of the SDF in the fight against the Islamic State (IS) group, the BBC reported.

Ankara is battling to drive out the Kurdish YPG militia, which it sees as an extension of the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). Turkey rejected the offer, calling the Kurdish militia a "terrorist" group.

Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said countries should instead take a "clear stance against all types of terrorism".

Separately on Friday, Turkey said five soldiers were killed and seven wounded in an attack by the PKK in its south-eastern province of Siirt. The attack, the deadliest by the PKK for months, was reportedly a "revenge" for Turkey's offensive in northern Syria.

The SDF is a key US ally in the fight against IS and the Kurdish YPG forms a core part of it. France and the US have given the militia weapons and training to support its battle against IS. The US also backs the YPG's assertion that it has no direct organisational links to the PKK.

Macron said France would support the "stabilisation" of the security zone in northeast Syria to stop IS regaining strength.

Turkish presidential spokesman Kalin said on Twitter that the PKK and YPG were trying to legitimise themselves under the SDF. "We reject any efforts to promote 'dialogue', 'contact' or 'mediation' between Turkey and those terrorist organisations," he said, adding "friendly countries" should not "legitimise the structure of terror".

--IANS

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Senior hardline separatist leader Syed Ali Geelani offered congregational Friday prayers after eight years.

Geelani joined the devotees on Friday at the Hyderpora mosque some distance away from his home here.

This came after state police chief S.P.Vaid on Thursday announced authorities had decided to lift house arrest restrictions on the octogenarian separatist leader and also on Mirwaiz Umer Farooq and Muhammad Yasin Malik.

Apprehending law and order problems, authorities in the Valley have been imposing restrictions in law and order vulnerable areas for the last 30 years since separatist violence started here.

Such restrictions have always accompanied placing Geelani, Mirwaiz and Malik under house arrest to ensure that these separatist leaders are prevented from joining anti-government protests.

There are speculations that the decision to ease restrictions on the separatist leaders was taken after Chief Minister, Mehbooba Mufti held a meeting with Union Home Secretary Rajiv Gauba who was here for two days to review the law and order and anti-militancy situation earlier this week.

Centre's special representative, Dineshwar Sharma, also currently here, is reportedly been supporting the idea that imposing restrictions on senior separatist leaders at the drop of the hat has aggrieved instead of easing tensions here.

A top security force officer who did not want to be named, however, said not much should be read in the decision to allow Geelani move about freely.

"The easing of restrictions does not mean they can indulge in protests and secessionist activities. All of us are free as long as we abide by the law," said the officer.

--IANS

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The Uttar Pradesh government is committed to Ram Rajya, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath declared on Friday while inaugurating 20 projects worth Rs 1,800 crore here.

Defining "Ram Rajya", he said it amounted to providing homes for the homeless, electricity to to the poor, ration card to those below poverty line and security to everyone.

Before addressing a public meeting at Kavi Nagar, Adityanath inaugurated a 10.3-km elevated road connecting newly developed Raj Nagar Extension township with UP Gate on Delhi border.

He said his government was committed to providing homes for 3.5 lakh families under the Prime Minister's housing schemes.

During last 15 years, he accused the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party of dividing the society.

Under the Swachh Bharat Mission, eight districts of western Uttar Pradesh would be declared open defecation free (ODF) on October 2, 2018.

"Only true nationals will survive in the state," the Chief Minister thundered. "Criminals will either leave the state or will remain in jails."

--IANS

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Himachal Pradesh and Japan have signed an agreement for a Rs 800 crore project that will help improvement of forest natural resources besides providing livelihood to locals, an official said on Friday.

The project named Himachal Pradesh Livelihood and Forest Ecosystems Management would be carried out in six districts -- Bilaspur, Kinnaur, Kullu, Lahaul-Spiti, Mandi and Shimla -- in 10 years.

Out of the total project cost, Rs 640 crore would be provided as loans, a government spokesperson told IANS.

He said state Forest Minister Govind Singh Thakur and Japanese Ambassador on Thursday signed the MoU for the project.

--IANS

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Chinese handset maker Huawei shipped 153 million smartphones (including its sub-brand Honor) in 2017, reporting revenue of 237.2 billion yuan ($36.4 billion), an increase of 31.9 per cent Year-on-Year (YoY).

In the consumer business, Huawei and Honor brands ran full speed ahead, leading to rapid growth in their respective markets, the company said on Friday.

The company's 2017 results looked better as the Honor brand helped pushed sales both within and outside China, according to the latest report by market research firm Counterpoint's "Market Monitor service".

"Huawei secured the leading position in the Chinese smartphone market during the final quarter of 2017 and for the full year 2017 it registered 19 per cent YoY growth. This allowed the world's third largest smartphone brand to capture 19 per cent share of the smartphone market, its highest ever for a full year," said Counterpoint.

The Shenzhen-based firm launched its latest flagship smartphones -- "P20" and "P20 Pro" -- earlier this week at an event in Paris.

"P20" with 5.8-inch screen features a Leica dual camera and "P20 Pro" with 6.1-inch screen comes with Leica triple camera and 5x Hybrid Zoom.

Both the devices feature a 24MP selfie camera with Artificial Intelligence (AI) beautification capabilities and 3D portrait lighting.

The phones also come with a colour temperature sensor for better colour reproduction.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
In wake of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) paper leak, Union Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Prakash Javadekar on Friday asked engineering students to devise solutions for making exams "leak-proof". Amid protests over the leak of CBSE question papers, the government on Friday said re-examination of Class 12 economics will be held on April 25, while the decision over the class 10 maths re-exam will be taken in the next 15 days.

Meanwhile, the opposition stepped up its attack on the government over the CBSE paper leaks, with the Congress accusing the government of sheltering the "exam mafia" that it claimed has taken over the examination system of the country.

The leaked question papers of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) examination were shared on 10 WhatsApp groups, said the police. Meanwhile, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray asked students not to sit for CBSE re-examination after the education board decided to re-conduct the test of leaked papers. He termed the paper leak as the failure of the government.

Launching the final round of the Smart India Hackathon-2018 (software edition) here at New Delhi Institute of Management, he appealed to the students to "come out with the solution for making examinations leak proof", an official statement said.

Javadekar said though the problem was not a subject of this year's competition, he asked the students to "work on the solution of full proof examination" after the competition gets over.

The two-day final of the Hackathon is being held at 28 nodal centres across the country. There are 1,296 entries selected for the finals out of more than 17,400 teams with participation of around one lakh students of Engineering, Management and MCA.

Addressing the participants, Javadekar said: "More than one lakh students of more than 1,200 colleges are participating in this second edition of the Smart India Hackathon 2018, which is a record." "... more than 8,000 students at 28 different centres will work on their final innovations for the next 36 hours. These students will codify their innovations in a group of six, on which they are working hard since last four months."

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal attacked Lt. Governor Anil Baijal on Friday over the latter's objection to a government scheme to offer free pilgrimage for senior citizens.

Under the "Mukhyamantri Teerth Yatra Yojana", 77,000 people were proposed to be taken on free pilgrimage every year but the scheme needed Baijal's approval.

"LG is practically obstructing every scheme and every project of Delhi (government). How do we run (a government) like this?" Kejriwal asked in a tweet.

"My appeal to BJP - Don't obstruct our work. I challenge your governments in other states to compete with us in work," the Aam Aadmi Party leader added.

Earlier, Delhi Transport Minister Kailash Gahlot said the Lt Governor wanted the pilgrimage to be restricted to families below poverty line (BPL).

"LG forgets that many children do not support their old parents. They would be happy to receive government support. And every government facility should not be restricted only to BPL," Gahlot said.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Kerala government is holding consultations with legal experts to change the law to allow passengers travel while standing in government buses, a Minister said on Friday.

"We have already consulted a few legal experts. We are speaking to more to see how best we can amend the laws in the wake of the Kerala High Court directive. We are exploring whether it is possible to allow passengers equivalent to 25 per cent of bus seating capacity to travel while standing. We are looking at various options," Transport Minister A.K. Saseendran told the media here.

A Division Bench of Chief Justice Antony Dominic, acting on a petition filed by a social organisation, on Tuesday said that as per the Motor Vehicle Act, passengers should not be allowed to travel while standing.

Kerala State Road Transport Corporation buses (KSRTC) staff unions have opposed the judgment since the corporation, with accumulated losses of Rs 7,966 crore, is finding it tough to pay salaries and pensions.

Earlier this month, 40,000 KSRTC pensioners got pensions after almost six months after the government pumped in the money.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
In a big blow to two-time champions Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) ahead of the Indian Premier League (IPL), pace spearhead Mitchell Starc was on Friday ruled out of the fourth Test against South Africa and the IPL due to a tibial bone stress fracture in his right leg.



"Mitchell Starc has a 'tibial bone stress in his right leg'. He will return home for further assessment after the Test and will miss the IPL," Cricket Australia tweeted.

In the final Test in Johannesburg, Starc was replaced for by South Australia's Chadd Sayers. Starc will fly home after the series for further injury investigation and assessment.



Starc was roped in for a whopping sum of Rs 94 million by KKR and was tipped to lead the franchise's bowling attack.

Sans the 28-year old fast bowler, KKR will now depend more on compatriot Mitchell Johnson.

It is understood that in accordance with the Player Regulations, KKR will now be allowed to choose a replacement from the Registered and Available Player Pool (RAPP).
Mexico City, one of the most polluted cities in the world, has unveiled a prototype for a "hybrid taxi", which will soon take to the streets and produce 50 per cent less emissions than regular cabs.

During the presentation on Thursday, Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera said 50 of these new models would be rolled out in April as part of the first phase, reports Xinhua news agency.

The city government is planning to replace all conventional taxis with these environmentally friendlier options, which will also save up to 60 per cent on fuel.

The government will install electric recharge stations in different neighbourhoods as the programme is progressively rolled out across the Mexican capital.

Mexico City, with almost 22 million residents, has faced almost 100 environmental alerts due to high ozone levels in the past two years.

Since 2016, a new federal norm has tightened the limits for gas emissions on vehicles inside Mexico City and 18 surrounding towns.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Myanmar's new President Win Myint reshuffled his 27-member cabinet on Friday.

According to an announcement by the President's Office, the cabinet was reformed with Win Myint as President and Myint Swe and Henry Van Thio as the two Vice Presidents.

Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lt. Gen. Kyaw Swe Minister of Home Affairs, Lt. Gen. Sein Win as Minister of Defence and Lt. Gen. Ye Aung as Minister for Border Affairs, Xinhua news agency reported.

Win Myint, 66, was sworn-in as the President earlier in the day after he was elected by Parliament to replace Htin Kyaw, who resigned last week over health concerns.

He was elected after defeating two other candidates on Wednesday. Myint was a former political prisoner jailed under the last military junta.

Ruling party National League for Democracy (NLD) veteran, Myint is one of the small circle of trusted men of Suu Kyi.

He replaces Htin Kyaw, who resigned on March 21 after the government revealed the former President, 71, had travelled abroad several times for medical treatment.

The last military junta was dissolved in 2011 and passed power to a civilian government formed by former generals, which was later replaced by the NLD.

The Myanmar Constitution reserves broad powers for the armed forces, including a quarter of Parliament seats and key ministries such as Interior, Defence and Borders.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
NBCC (India) on Friday extended, by an year, the tenure of its Chairman and MD Anoop Kumar Mittal which was to end on March 31 (Saturday).

Mittal has been heading NBCC from 2013 and joined the company in 1985, the company said in a statement here.

NBCC (India), is an enterprise under the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Nepal Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli will visit India from April 6 to 8 on his maiden foreign trip after assuming office, in line with the tradition of a Nepali PM visiting India on his first overseas trip, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced on Friday.

Oli's visit comes following an invitation from his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi. Accompanied by his wife Radhika Shakya, Oli will lead a government delegation comprising of ministers, members of Parliament, secretaries and other high-ranking officials of the Nepali government, the Ministry said.

His visit aims to revisit the century-old ties between the two countries.

During the visit, Oli will pay courtesy calls on Indian President Ram Nath Kovind and Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu. Some senior Cabinet members of the Indian government will call on the Nepali leader.

Oli will also visit Pantnagar, Uttarakhand and attend a programme at Govind Ballabh Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, according to the Ministry.

The Indian External Affairs Ministry said in a statement that Oli's upcoming visit "will provide an opportunity to the two sides to review wide-ranging cooperative partnership and to progress it further".

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Nepal's central bank has paved the way for domestic commercial banks to borrow from foreign banks and financial institutions to address the liquidity crunch in banking system in the last few months, a Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB) official said on Friday.

It is for the first time that Nepali banks have been allowed to borrow from abroad. Other firms can borrow from abroad.

"A meeting of the board of directors of the central bank endorsed a proposal on allowing domestic commercial banks to borrow from foreign banks and financial institutions," Rajendra Pandit, assistant spokesperson of NRB, told Xinhua news agency.

Domestic banks could borrow loans up to 25 per cent of their core capital, he said.

"The banks can borrow loans for the period from one year to five years to finance only in the productive sector such as agriculture, tourism, hydropower and outer infrastructure projects," said Pandit.

"Borrowed loans from abroad cannot be used to lend to the real estate, share market and imports," he said.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Netherlands Prime Minister Mark Rutte will be on a two-day visit to India on May 24-25, the country's embassy said in a statement here on Friday.

Ahead of the visist, a Dutch delegation comprising officials, companies and institutions will arrive on May 22 and stay till May 25.

Rutte's visit comes within a year of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to the Netherlands last June.

"The state visit will further boost the economic and political cooperation between India and the Netherlands while focusing on the existing and the potential partnerships in agriculture, water management, healthcare, innovation, start-ups among several other sectors," the statement said.

Rutte will be accompanied by a high-level delegation comprising Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation Sigrid Kaag, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality Carola Schouten, Minister for Infrastructure and Water Management Cora van Nieuwenhuizen and Minister for Medical Care Bruno Bruins.

This will be Rutte's second visit to India since June 2015, but the first after being re-elected as Prime Minister in 2017.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Enter into an enchanting world of fantasy and adventure, in which mythology, action and suspense come together; read the romantic story of a man, who has to embark on a journey that spans thousands of miles and pulls him back into a past; flick through a timely, inquisitive chronicle of malaria and its influence on human lives; and enjoy a celebration of flora and fauna, particularly of the profusion of commonly found plant life that flourishes in most regions of Bengal.

IANS bookshelf has a variety of subjects to offer to this weekend.

1. Book: The Pataala Prophecy; Author: Christopher C Doyle; Publisher: Westland; Price: Rs 399; Pages: 347

Fifteen-year-old Maya and Arjun find their placid world suddenly overturned when their favourite history teacher is found brutally murdered. The death shocks students at the school and baffles the police.

Meanwhile, a mysterious stranger's reappearance after 5,000 years strikes fear into the hearts of powerful members of a secret society, called the Sangha.

Who is he and what is he after? What secrets are Arjun's uncle and mother hiding and why do they inexplicably decide to leave town for an unknown destination? What is the Pataala Prophecy, that must be decoded even as the world hurtles towards a fate that may doom humanity?

In a race against time, Arjun and Maya must join forces with the Sangha to face an ageless and terrible enemy from the depths of Pataala. But can they overcome an ancient power that is out to wreak vengeance?

2. Book: Little Maryam; Author: Hamid Baig; Publisher: Notion Press; Price: Rs 225; Pages: 285

While giving an acceptance speech for his Nobel Prize nomination, Dr. Saadiq Haider, a renowned gene therapist and professor at Stanford University, receives a phone call that changes his life. Abandoning his duties and responsibilities, Haider hurriedly boards a flight bound for India, embarking on a journey that spans thousands of miles and pulls him back into a past Saadiq thought long-buried.

Seated next to him on the flight, Anne Miller -- an intrepid journalist with a nose for headline news -- senses the reclusive genius has a story to tell. During the flight, Miller manages to break through Haider's hard exterior and listens, rapt, as he unfurls a tale fraught with love and heartbreak. His story transports Miller back in time to a small, sleepy town nestled in the mountains of northern India, where Haider spent his childhood.

Through Haider, Miller meets Maryam and witnesses the friendship between Maryam and Haider mature into an intense love; a love that is tested when tragedy strikes and the lovers are separated. Try as they might, their devotion is no match against the workings of fate, and the tighter Haider and Maryam cling to one another, the faster they slip apart.

Now, after two decades of trying to forget his past with alcohol and drug abuse, Haider tells Miller that fate has acted again; Maryam is the hospital, her condition critical. When their plane lands in India, the newfound friends part ways and while Haider rushes to Maryam's side, Miller returns to her life, grateful to have met the enigmatic man.

Months later, Miller learns that after wrenching Maryam from the indomitable grip of death, Haider took her back to America, where they finally married. But, her assumption that the greatest love story she had ever known would end happily is shattered when Miller receives devastating news.

3. Book: The Fever; Author: Sonia Shah; Publisher: Penguin; Price: Rs 449; Pages: 309

In recent years, malaria has emerged as a cause of worry for prominent philanthropists. Bill Gates, Bono and Laura Bush are only a few of the personalities who have opened their pocketbooks in twhe hope of eradicating the scourge. How does a parasitic disease that we have known how to prevent for more than a century still infect 300 million people every year, killing nearly one million of them?

In "The Fever", Sonia Shah, a journalist sets out to answer this question, delivering a timely, inquisitive chronicle of the illness and its influence on human lives. "The Fever" captures the curiously fascinating, devastating history of this long-standing thorn in the side of humanity.

4. Book: Restless Waters of the Ichhamati; Author: Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay; Translated by: Ramli Bhattacharya; Publisher: Rupa; Price: Rs 495; Pages: 370

"Restless Waters of the Ichhamati" is a celebration of flora and fauna, particularly of the profusion of commonly found plant life that flourishes in most regions of Bengal. The gaze of a slow-moving attentive river-farer brings into view glimpses of vibrant plant life, traces of human habitation and changes of sky and water in the course of seasons.

These are signs, evoking the flow of time in which generations unknown have lived and those unborn will live along the Ichhamati's banks as it wends its way through Jessore district towards the Bay of Bengal. Born of this tension between the ephemeral and the forever, the novel's own riverine course dispenses with chapter breaks a writer's decision that the translation follows.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Opposition parties are having hectic discussions for moving an impeachment motion against Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, with leaders from all parties having consultations on the issue.

"There are serious allegations against CJI. As long as all the opposition parties come together, it is not possible. Discussions are being held within the parties. All parties are discussing," said an opposition leader.

The leader, however, said "it was still far-fetched."

Asked if the motion would be based on the issues raised by the judges of the Supreme Court, the leader said the main issue is corruption.

"It is none other than the Chief Justice of India. We do understand the seriousness of the situation. The motion should have detailed article of charges with evidences," he added.

CJI Dipak Mishra is slated to retire in October this year.

According to the law, the motion can be moved in either of the two Houses. It should have the signatures of either 50 MPs of Rajya Sabha or 100 MPs of the Lok Sabha. The Rajya Sabha Chairman or Lok Sabha Speaker may either accept or reject the motion.

If the motion is accepted, the Chairman or the Speaker sets up a committee to conduct an inquiry into the matter. Its report is also required to be passed by two-thirds majority of the two Houses.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A Palestinian farmer was killed and another was injured on Friday by Israeli artillery fire on eastern Gaza Strip, officials said, hours before a major protest by Palestinians along the border.

Gaza's Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al Qedra said 27-year-old Omar Wahid Samur was killed and another one was moderately injured when the Israeli fire hit east of al-Garara town east of Khan Younis.

The shelling came as the Palestinians were preparing to launch a six-week protest dubbed the "Great March of Return", scheduled to start on Friday amid Israeli Army presence on the borderline area with the Gaza Strip, the BBC reported.

Hamas, the militant group which dominates the Gaza Strip, accused Israel of trying to intimidate Palestinians by killing the farmer and by urging them not to participate in the protests.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry said the protest was a "deliberate attempt to provoke a confrontation with Israel" and that "responsibility for any clashes lies solely with Hamas and other participating Palestinian organisations".

March 30 marks Land Day, which commemorates the killing of six protesters by Israeli security forces during demonstrations over land confiscation in 1976.

According to witnesses, the two men were hit by tank fire while collecting parsley in a field.

Palestinians erected five main camp areas along the Israel border for the protest, from Erez in the north to Rafah near the Egyptian border in the south.

The protest is scheduled to end on May 15.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Russia has conducted a second drop test of its latest heavy intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), the Defence Ministry said on Friday.

The missile, Sarmat, was test-dropped at the northern Plesetsk spaceport. The ministry said the trial had confirmed its pre-launch and first flight stage characteristics, Xinhua news agency reported.

A rare video of the test was released on the social media.

The first launch of this rocket took place in December 2017. It will replace the Soviet-era Satan missile, which is approaching the end of its service life.

In his annual address to parliament on March 1, President Vladimir Putin said Russia has begun testing Sarmat which has "practically no range limits" and can penetrate any missile shield.

Sarmat reportedly has a shortened active phase of flight. It has enhanced capabilities to overcome missile defence and is capable of carrying large quantities of ammunition.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Saudi air defence forces intercepted and destroyed a Houthi ballistic missile targeting the border city of Najran on Saturday, the media reported.

The Saudi Press Agency quoted Coalition Forces spokesman Colonel Turki Al-Malki as saying the missile was deliberately launched to target civilian populated areas. "The missile was intercepted and destroyed by the Saudi Royal Air Defence Forces."

The Saudi-led coalition Air Force destroyed the missile's platform.

Another border city, Jazan, was also targeted with a missile earlier this week that was intercepted by the forces, it said.

--IANS

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(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Security was heightened around Union Human Resource Development Minister Praksh Javadekar's residence here on Friday over a possible gathering of demonstrators protesting against the leakage of Class 10 and Class 12 question papers.

The Delhi Police imposed Section 144 outside his residence on Kushak Road.

"We have beefed up security and the Rapid Action Force is on standby. Same measures have been taken for areas around Parliament House," Delhi Police PRO Madhur Verma told IANS.

Javadekar has been under widepread criticism since the incident surfaced on Wednesday.

The dates for reconducting the maths and economics exams for Class 10 and 12 respectively have not been announced yet.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
BJP National President Amit Shah on Friday was 'heckled' by angry protesters who raised slogans against anti-Dalit remarks by Union Minister Ananth Kumar Hegde a few months ago.

Shah, who is on a two-day visit to the old Mysuru region in the poll-bound Karnataka, sought to pacify the Dalit leaders by distancing from Hegde's controversial remarks and for which the latter had apologized too.

"Neither the BJP nor me has anything to do with Hegde's statements. We don't endorse such remarks," Shah told the Dalit leaders at a meeting here where he sought their support for the party's victory in the May 12 assembly poll.

Accusing the media of "twisting" his speech at Ballari in the state's northwest district in December, Hegde had then tweeted that he would apologise if his remarks had hurt the feelings of the people.

Hegde is also accused of comparing Dalits with "barking dogs" on an earlier occasion at Sirsi, his constituency in the state's Uttara Kannada district.

Supporting the protest by the Dalits, the Congress state unit urged Shah to answer their legitimate questions on Hegde "insulting" the community.

"Why haven't you taken any action against your party man for such derogatory comments? This clearly shows that BJP endorses his hate-mongering," said the party in a tweet.

Ruling party's spokesman Randeep Singh Surjewala also tweeted that the anti-Dalit mindset of the BJP was exposed again.

"Amit Shah acts as a political chameleon and follows worst type of opportunism by publicly disowning Union Minister Anant Hegde. Will he dare to sack him? Stop the doublespeak and act," tweeted Surjewala.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Seething with anger against the Central government for not setting up the Cauvery Management Board (CMB), political parties in Tamil Nadu are resorting to hunger strike or hoisting black flags in condemnation.

Speaking at a wedding function in Madurai around 500 km from here on Friday, AIADMK Coordinator and Deputy Chief Minister O. Panneerselvam said the AIADMK would go on a day's hunger strike on April 2 at all district headquarters.

He said this would be against the Central government's failure to set up the CMB despite Supreme Court orders.

The six-week deadline laid by the apex court for forming the CMB and the Cauvery Water Regulatory Committee (CWRC) ended on Thursday.

Tamil Nadu Fisheries Minister D. Jayakumar told reporters here that the state government would fight for its rights and it was "friendly" with the Modi government only to get various developmental projects approved.

He said the Tamil Nadu government would move the apex court on the issue.

Meanwhile, PMK activists led by party founder S. Ramadoss and former Union Minister Anbumani Ramadoss hoisted black flags on their houses.

On its part, a DMK Executive Council meeting here condemned both the Central and state governments.

The DMK also decided to meet all other political parties and decide the next course of action over the Cauvery issue.

Tamil Nadu parties allege that the Modi government did not set up the CMB as it does not want to alienate voters in neighbouring Karnataka, which is opposed to the Supreme Court order.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
With anger sweeping Tamil Nadu over the Centre's failure to set up a Cauvery Water Management Board (CMB), the ruling AIADMK announced a hunger strike on April 3 and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister K. Palaniswami hinted the state will move the Supreme Court with a contempt plea against the Centre.

Reports have it that the contempt plea may be filed in the apex court on Saturday.

The AIADMK, which first announced that the hunger strike programme will be held on April 2, subsequently postponed it by a day to April 3.

On the rival front, the DMK demanded that the Chief Minister convene a meeting of his cabinet and pass a resolution condemning the Central government and Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the Cauvery issue.

DMK leader M.K. Stalin also said after a meeting of the party Executive Council that the state government should file a contempt of court petition in the Supreme Court against the Modi government for not setting up the CMB within six weeks, which deadline expired on Thursday.

Seething with anger against the Central government for not setting up the CMB, political parties in Tamil Nadu are planning protests including hoisting black flags in condemnation.

At a wedding function in Madurai, AIADMK Coordinator and Deputy Chief Minister O. Panneerselvam had said the AIADMK would go on a day's hunger strike on April 2 at all district headquarters.

He said the government of late Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa would take all steps to protect the rights of Tamil Nadu.

In his speech, Palaniswami said the AIADMK had created "history" in Parliament by disrupting the Lok Sabha's functioning for the last 17 days continuously. "Such a disruption has not been done in the history of the Lok Sabha in support of a demand of a state.

"The Centre has failed to implement the Supreme Court order on the constitution of the CMB. We want the Centre to implement it. And we will take legal steps in this regard," Palaniswami said in an apparent reference to the moves to approach the Supreme Court.

Tamil Nadu Fisheries Minister D. Jayakumar told reporters in Chennai that the state government would fight for its rights and it was "friendly" with the Modi government only to get various developmental projects approved.

Stalin said the Tamil Nadu government should have approached the apex court with a contempt petition when the Union Minister for Water Resources and the Union Water Resources Secretary spoke against the apex court order on constituting the CMB.

He said the party would show black flags to Prime Minister Modi, who is reportedly set to visit Tamil Nadu on April 15. He also said the DMK would sit with like-minded parties to decide what type of protests should be held on the issue.

A DMK Executive Council meeting condemned both the Central and state governments.

PMK founder S. Ramadoss accused the Centre of "betraying" Tamil Nadu's interests and said people of the state would not believe the state government on the issue.

Party activists led by Ramadoss and former Union Minister Anbumani Ramadoss hoisted black flags on their houses.

Tamil Nadu parties allege that the Modi government did not set up the CMB as it does not want to alienate voters in neighbouring Karnataka, which is opposed to the Supreme Court order.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
US President Donald Trump said goodbye to longtime aide Hope Hicks, who is leaving the White House at the end of the week, the media reported.

Trump and his former communications director walked out of the Oval Office together on Thursday and waved to reporters, reports The Hill magazine.

The 29-year-old announced at the end of February she would resign, depriving Trump of a valued and trusted aide who has been at his side since before he launched his presidential campaign.

Her exit came amid a controversy surrounding fired staff secretary Rob Porter.

Hicks played a role in crafting the White House's response to allegations of spousal abuse against Porter, whom she was dating at the time.

She also drew criticism from lawmakers after she declined to answer several questions from the House Intelligence Committee as part of its Russia investigation.

Hicks's departure, which becomes official on Friday, has set off a fierce internal battle to succeed her between Trump administration aides, the Hill reported.

Her replacement as White House communications director will be the fifth person named to the role.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Uttar Pradesh government will oppose the entry of jailed lawmakers in Assembly sessions and important legislative events, an official said on Friday.

Principal Secretary (Home) Arvind Kumar has issued a notice to the prosecution directorate.

As per the notice, prosecution officers have been asked to oppose the matters in the court related to jailed legislators seeking bail or permission to attend legislative events such as sessions, sources said.

The officers have been asked to take reference to the High Court ruling in the matter of the former legislator Shekhar Tiwari, wherein the court had observed that the lawmakers who are in jail have no legal right to attend legislative sessions.

The court had recently barred mafia-don-turned-politician, Mukhtar Ansari of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) to attend the voting for the Rajya Sabha seats. Hari Om Yadav, a legislator of the Samajwadi Party (SP), was also denied permission for attending the biennial polls to cast his vote.

Opposition had alleged that this was done at the behest of the ruling party to prevent their MLAs from casting their votes in the close call elections, but the ruling party had said that the matter was in court and that they had nothing to do with it.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The United States on Thursday described Russia's decision to expel 60 US diplomats, over the White House's response to the former-spy poisoning incident in Britain, as "regrettable".

"It appears that Russia has chosen a regrettable, unwarranted action to respond to our entirely justified action," said State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert during a press conference in Washington, Efe reported.

The Russian government on Thursday ordered the expulsion from the country of 60 US diplomatic service officials, whom it declared "persona non grata", and gave them until April 5 to leave Russia.

In addition, Moscow also ordered the closure of the American consulate in St. Petersburg in response to Washington's decision to close down the Russian consulate in Seattle.

According to Nauert, there was no justification for the Kremlin's response, as the US move was motivated by Russia itself, which is the one who carried out an "irresponsible attack" with a chemical weapon on its former spy, Sergei Skripal.

"Russia should not be acting like a victim," Nauert said, adding "the only victims in this situation are the two victims in the hospital in the UK right now."

In the assassination attempt, which took place on Mar. 5 in a park in Salisbury, southern England, the former spy Skripal, his daughter and a policeman who was involved in locating the source of the poison were affected.

Nauert added that Moscow's response does not surprise Washington and insisted that the US "deserves the right to respond."

Nauert stressed that 28 other countries have joined the US in taking measures against the Russian government over its attack on Britain, which has led Russia to further "isolate" itself from the international community.

"Russia clearly is not interested in having good relations with other countries," she said.

For its part, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said in a statement that the Kremlin's decision marks "a further deterioration" in relations between Russia and the US.

She also said that "Russia's response was not unanticipated and the US will deal with it."

--IANS

ahm/

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President Donald Trump said that the US would "be coming out of Syria very soon", the media reported.

"We're knocking the hell out of IS (Islamic State). We'll be coming out of Syria like very soon. Let the other people take care of it now," Trump told supporters at an event in Ohio on Thursday.

"We are going to have 100 per cent of the caliphate, as they call it, sometimes referred to as land... But we are going to be coming out of there real soon. We are going to get back to our country, where we belong, where we want to be," Trump added.

A US defence official told CNN that it was unclear what the President meant by the comments.

Trump's remarks on pulling out of Syria were made just hours after Chief Pentagon spokesperson Dana White told reporters that "important work remains to guarantee the lasting defeat of these violent extremists" in the country.

Despite Trump's focus on the terror group's dwindling control of territory, White said the military was focused on more than just IS-controlled areas, saying "our commitment to win must outlast the so-called physical caliphate, and the warped ideas that guide the calculated cruelty of IS".

"We must not relent on IS or permit these terrorists to recover from their battlefield loses," she said, noting that the group still poses a threat.

The official also pointed to several challenges, including figuring out what to do with the some 400 foreign IS fighters currently being held by the Washington-backed Syrian Democratic Forces as one example of the obstacles to a US withdrawal, CNN reported.

He added that the US still needed to decide on a policy with regard to the future of Syrian President Bashar al Assad and Russia's continued military presence in the county as additional complicating factors.

--IANS

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Questioning Prime Minister Narendra Modi's silence on the CBSE paper leak, the Congress on Friday said that a "mafia" is controlling India's examination system and if the government can't ensure security of school question papers, how will it ensure the seurity of the country.

The party also asked why Modi and his government was not apologising to the students for the CBSE paper leak. "When there is darkness in the country, the 'chowkidar' (the Prime M<inister) also goes to sleep," said Congress leader Kapil Sibal.

"Is anyone happy under Modi government? Farmers crisis is at its peak, they're not receiving right MSPs for their produce and now students are suffering due to this CBSE paper leak.

"CBSE paper leak is not the only paper leak. The SSC scam was another major concern. If the government does not take accountability for its wrongdoings, then who will?" he asked.

"If a government can't even ensure security of school question papers, how will it ensure security of the whole country?"

Sibal also said that "mafia is controlled the examination system in India - be it Vyapam, SSC or the CBSE" and the accused the government of "protecting the mafia everywhere" and "working in collusion" with it.

"PM Modi is silent on this. Is he not worried. 20 lakh students have to appear for examination again. No one is saying sorry to the students who are on the streets. Not a single person has apologised.

"Are they so arrogant that the government is shying away from saying sorry?" he asked.

Sibal said that it was the first time that 20 lakh students are appearing for an examination based on a single question paper. "

Earlier, different zones had different question papers for the same subject and it too, there were changes made in the serial numbers of questions in different centres.

"Why did they change the system? Was there any pressure? The HRD minister (Prakash Javdekar) didn't reply to this. Who made this change?

"Why was the CBSE Chairperson abruptly replaced even before his tenure ended?" he asked.

--IANS

sid/vd

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The decade since the has been tumultuous, to say the least. True, no great war has erupted, and we have more or less avoided the mistakes of the Great Depression, which led in the 1930s to greater protectionism, bank failures, severe austerity, and a deflationary environment. But renewed market tensions indicate that these risks have not been eradicated so much as papered over.

In a sense, the story of the 2008 financial crisis begins when the global order was created from the ashes of World War II. Initiatives like the Bretton Woods institutions (the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund), the Marshall Plan, and the European Economic Community supported the reconstruction of significant portions of the world economy. Despite the Cold War (or perhaps because of it), they also re-started the globalisation that WWII had brought to a halt.

This globalisation process was interrupted during the late 1960s and early 1970s, owing to the Vietnam War, the suspension of the US dollars convertibility into gold, the 1973 oil price shock, and the great stagflation. But the United States and the United Kingdom then underwent a kind of conservative revolution and a revival of neoliberal economic policies, including widespread deregulation, trade liberalisation, and unprecedented capital-account openness.

While this redesigned globalisation process helped to fuel growth and development, its effects were uneven, and the financial and economic changes it wrought outpaced legal and ethical adaptation. Particularly consequential, innovative financial instruments were used with abandon, subject to only loose supervision and weak regulation. As a result, finance eventually became the master of the world economy, rather than its servant.

Given all of this, when the crisis struck, it was deep and far-reaching, and todays strengthening economic recovery has not overcome the understandable but devastating loss of trust in the financial system that followed. This has been made apparent by political developments in the US and Europe. US President Donald Trumps administration continues to tout an America First policy approach, reflected, most recently, in the imposition of large tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. The United Kingdoms vote for Brexit reflects a similar backlash. Meanwhile, state-led capitalism offers Chinas economy its own protections.

But polarising new models of competition and resistance to trade are not the way to restore trust. Instead, we need to reassert control over the financial sector, to ensure that it is serving the economy, not vice versa, by advancing a set of goals upon which the world agrees  beginning with those established at three momentous conferences in 2015.

At the Third International Conference on Financing for Development, held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, participants set economic, social, and environmental priorities with which financing flows and policies for sustainable development should be aligned. At the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit in New York, UN member countries formally adopted an ambitious new global agenda. And at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP 21) in Paris, countries agreed to hold global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

Articulating these goals was an important first step. But if the world is serious about achieving these shared goals, an effective mechanism for financing them must be established, supported by well-designed regulations that create the right incentives. And, so far, the world has not made nearly enough progress on this front, as the continued misallocation of capital shows.

Stakeholders must take a longer-term view of business operations and investment strategies. Finance must be made genuinely useful, balancing progress toward agreed goals  guided by existing global targets  with the need to generate sufficient financial returns to ensure that progress is sustainable. We must keep saying it, and keep doing it. There is no other option.

In some quarters, commitment to global goals has so far been too weak. In the case of the US and the Paris climate agreement, that commitment has been rescinded outright. But, to succeed, everyone must be on board. This includes multilateral lenders, which need to revise old tools and rapidly develop new ones, in order to mobilise private-sector capital. The private sector, for its part, must be open to an updated approach to public-private partnerships. Simply paying lip service to change, while clinging to outdated modes of working, is not an option.

More broadly, we need to work to ensure that the benefits of technology are shared by all. To that end, we should follow the advice of David Lipton, the IMFs first deputy managing director, and move beyond the fashionable OHIO approach, focused on getting ones own house in order, to the more demanding California  or CA  strategy of collective action.

The path ahead will not be easy. But this is no excuse for apathy. As investors, consumers, voters, and citizens, we must make our voices heard, in order to ensure that finance is used to promote shared values and the common good. Only then can we go beyond merely avoiding another devastating crisis and build a better future.

The writer, a former managing director of the World Bank, is CEO and Founder of Blue like an Orange Sustainable Capital and author of Can Finance Save the World?

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2018
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ruling party is struggling to change a "perception" that it is against minority Muslims and lower-caste people, a political ally said, which could cost it votes in a general election due next year. Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) trounced the opposition at the last election in 2014, but it has lost a handful of recent by-elections after opposition groups banded together. Veteran politician Ram Vilas Paswan, a federal minister and the chief of the Lok Jan Shakti (People's Power) Party, which is ...
In a major set back to the opposition Congress in Odisha, several senior leaders of the party in Ganjam district resigned from the primary membership of the party on Friday.

Party sources said, the leaders sent their resignation letters to the Congress president Rahul Gandhi and OPCC president Prasad Harichandan.

Those who quit the party include former union minister Chandra Sekhar Sahu, Odisha PCC secretary Bikram Kumar Panda and district Congress committee president Bhagaban Gantayat, the sources said.

Five corporators of Berhampur Municipal Corporation were also among those who put in their papers.

Sahu, who is a AICC member, said, "For the last some years there is no discipline in the Congress. The party high command is also in no mood to rectify the party organization in the state. Since 2009, the party has not utilized us and neglected us a lot. So I have taken the decision to quit the party."



Several Congress workers, including chiefs of different frontal organizations of the party, have decided to join BJD, sources said.

Sahu without naming any party said the Congress dissidents would join one which maintained secularism and fight for the interest of Odisha.

"The decision to join the new party will be announced soon," he said.

Before their resignation both Sahu and Panda, who too is an AICC member, had sought the opinion of the party workers at a meeting here on Tuesday.

OPCC disciplinary committee chairperson Sandhya Rani Mohapatra said the party organisation would not be affected due to the resignations.

"Rather the party would be stronger after their exit," she claimed.

Mohapatra, who was here to discuss the development with the party workers, dismissed the dissidents' allegations on the party neglecting them.

"The party has given enough to them. The party had made them members of the AICC recently," she added.

Sahu was elected to Lok Sabha from Berhampur in 2004 and was the minister of state for labour and then rural development in the Manmohan Singh led government.

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At least three police personnel were killed and two injured when their vehicle was hit by an improvised explosive device in northwest Pakistan today, police said.

The incident occurred on Kolachi road in Dera Ismael Khan district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, bordering South Waziristan Agency when police personnel were on a routine patroling duty this evening.

District Police Officer, Zahidullah remained unhurt in the blast, they said, adding that the injured were rushed to a hospital.

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An absconder, booked in a rape case, has been arrested after 14 years in Jammu and Kashmir's Doda district, police said.

The absconder, identified as Abdul Gani of Dhara, was booked under section 376 of the Ranbir Penal Code (RPC) (rape) and 452 RPC (House-trespass), a police official said.

In another case, police arrested Mohd Saleem alais Gulshan of Bharat village in Doda, who was booked under 188 RPC (disobedience to order duly promulgated by public servant) in 2017, he said.

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The statement of a model, who was spotted in a hotel room booked by providing fake Aadhaar card details of actor Urvashi Rautela, was recorded today, police said.

"We have identified the model as Parul Choudhary, who spent around two hours on March 27 in the room of a five star hotel in Bandra, which was booked in the name of Urvashi Rautela," Pandit Thackrey, Senior Inspector of Bandra police said.

Police said that Choudhary, in her statement, said that she did not know who had booked the room.

"She was allowed to go home after her statement was recorded but we have called her again to join police investigations," Thackrey said.

Police have obtained the CCTV footage of the hotel as well as Aadhaar details that were provided at the time of booking the room for a period of 24 hours, officials said.

Bandra police began investigations after Rautela's manager filed a complaint and a case was registered against unknown persons under sections 419 (cheating by personation), 420 (cheating) and 408 (criminal breach of trust) of the Indian Penal Code as well as relevant sections of the IT Act, police said.

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An Afghan official says four civilians have been killed and another eight wounded during a gun-battle between Afghan security forces and the Taliban in northeastern Badakhshan province.

Asadullah Mujadedi, a district police chief there, says the battle broke out after security forces launched a clean-up operation in Badakhshan's Jurm district.

Mujahdedi says the Taliban, armed with mortars and machine gun rifles, fired from within the houses in a blistering battle that lasted throughout the day yesterday.

A statement from the Taliban today claimed significantly more civilians were killed in the firefight and blamed the government for their deaths.

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Amid the row over the CBSE papers leak, the government today appointed senior bureaucrat Vineet Joshi as the Director General of the National Testing Agency (NTA), which will conduct the entrance examinations for higher educational institutions organised by the CBSE, AICTE and other bodies.

Joshi, a 1992-batch IAS officer of the Manipur cadre, was appointed to the post for five years, an order issued by the Department of Personnel and Training said.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had, in his budget speech of 2017-18, announced the setting up of the NTA "as an autonomous and self-sustained premier testing organisation to conduct all entrance examinations for higher educational institutions".

The Union cabinet, headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, had in November last year approved the setting up of the NTA.

The establishment of the NTA will benefit about 40 lakh students appearing in various entrance examinations.

It will relieve the CBSE, AICTE and other bodies of the responsibility of conducting these entrance examinations and also bring in high reliability and a standardised difficulty level for assessing the aptitude, intelligence and problem-solving abilities of the students.

As per its composition approved by the cabinet, the NTA will be chaired by an eminent educationist appointed by the Human Resource Development ministry.

"The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) will be the Director General to be appointed by the government. There will be a Board of Governors comprising members from user institutions. The Director General will be assisted by 9 verticals headed by academicians/experts," according to the proposed composition of the NTA.

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Continuing BJP's bid to reach out to the prominent Lingayat community, party national president Amit Shah today began his fourth leg of Karnataka visit with a visit to the community prominent pontiff at Suttur Mutt here.

"Took blessings of Sri Shivarathri Deshikendra Mahaswamiji of Sri Suttur Math in Mysuru," Shah tweeted after his meeting with the seer, who, he noted, had made significant efforts towards spreading the values of Indian culture and tradition worldwide.

Shah also said he admired the math's role in providing education to the poor in rural Karnataka.

He has already covered parts of coastal and Malnad, north, and central regions of the state.

The BJP president had begun his third leg of tour on March 26 by seeking blessings of 111-year old Sri Shivakumara Swami of Siddhaganga Mutt in Tumakuru, a revered seer of the Lingayat community.

The meeting with the Lingayat seers is being seen as an attempt to reach out to the Lingayats/Veeshaivas, who are numerically and politically powerful in the state and form a major voter base for the BJP.

The visit assumes significance as it comes in the backdrop of the Siddaramaiah government's move to recommend to the Centre to accord a religious minority tag to Lingayats and Veerashaiva Lingayats in an attempt to wean away a section of them from the BJP.

A prominent Lingayat seer had early this week commended the Siddaramaiah government's decision to recommend grant of religious minority tag to Lingayats and Veerashaiva Lingayats, in an embarrassment to Shah, who had termed it as an attempt to 'divide' the Hindu community.

The Seer of Murugha mutt, Dr Shivamurthy Murugha Sharanaru, had backed the government move in a memorandum submitted to Shah at Chitradurga, seeking the Centre's approval for the religious minority tag.

Besides visiting maths associated with Lingayats, Shah is also connecting with Dalit communities.

He had visited pontiff of Madara Chennaiah mutt, which has been traditionally associated with Dalits, in his third round of visit.

The BJP is making an all-out effort to unseat the Congress from the only big state where the grand old party is in power.

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Accusing BJP president Amit Shah of violating the election code of conduct for allegedly giving Rs five lakh to a deceased party worker's family, Karnataka Congress working president Dinesh Gundu Rao on Friday demanded his externment from the state.

Rejecting the claims, BJP has said that Shah did not give any money to Raju's family.

"Amit Shah should not come to Karnataka as hisintentions are very clear- to vitiate the election atmosphere and to violate the law. Today's incident is the best example for it," Rao told reporters here.

Hitting out at Shah for visiting Raju's family after the poll dates being announced, he said "during the visit Rs five lakh was given to the family.. it is clear as the mother (Raju's mother) has given a statement that they were given Rs five lakh."



Raju, a BJP activist, was killed in Mysuru in March 2016, leading to tension in the area.

Calling it a clear case of violation of the election code of conduct, Rao said, "it is a grave offence as they have given money during the election. Also, I have got information that attempts have been made to control the media."



Congress will immediately file a complaint with electoral officers, he said, adding that the Election Commission should stop Amit Shah from coming to Karnataka.

"...his malicious intentions, tactics, the unlawful activities that he is indulging in shows that he is behaving like a criminal," Rao alleged.

Pointing out that both Shah and Yeddurappa had been to jail in the past, Rao said the EC should take action against Yeddyurappa. Amit Shah should be externed, he said.

"He should not be allowed to enter Karnataka," Rao said.

Shah, who is touring Mysuru as part of his"Karunada Jagruti Yatre" ahead of the May 12 assembly elections, on Friday visited Raju's residence and consoled his family.

He was accompanied by BJP state President B S Yeddyurappa, Union Minister Ananth Kumar,Member of Parliament from Mysuru Pratap Simha, among others.

As news of Rs 500,000 were reportedly given to Raju's family was aired in the media, Pratap Simha rejected the claims in a tweet.

"Dear Channels, @AmitShah ji did not give any money to Raju's family, he only asked how much compensation we gave on behalf of the party n it was 5 lakh," he said.
West Bengal Congress president Adhir Chowdhury on Friday said the anti-BJP front in the country "can succeed only under party president Rahul Gandhi's leadership".

Chowdhury took a dig at chief minister Mamata Banerjee's proposal of putting up a "one-to one" fight against the BJP and said the Congress does not need advice from her.

Banerjee is trying to project herself as a pan-India leader, he said.

"She is advising Congress on what to do and what not to. Who has appointed her as an adviser to the Congress? If you are serious about fighting communal forces, you have to fight under the leadership of Rahul Gandhi," he asserted.

Banerjee, during her recent visit to New Delhi, had talked about a "one-to-one fight" between the BJP and the opposition party in every state.

The state Congress president also alleged that Banerjee and the TMC government have failed to control violence in the state during the Ram Navami celebrations.

"The state government was unable to tackle the clashes in the state as the TMC and the BJP are both sides of a same coin," he said.

The Congress does not need suggestions from the TMC on how to deal with communal forces, Chowdhury quipped.

"We are not opposed to any particular individual, the party stands against the communal ideology of the BJP as a whole," he said.

In a bid to forge oppositionunity, Banerjee had met UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi earlier this week and stressed on the need for a united front against the BJP.

The Trinamool Congress leader also met a host of other opposition leaders, including NCP supremo Sharad Pawar, during her two-day visit to the capital to explore possibilities of a "federal front" to take on the BJP in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

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Pakistan today said it has urged the Missile Technology Control Regime that the anti-missile proliferation efforts should not impact the right of developing nations to acquire dual-use technologies for socio-economic development.

A delegation of Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), led by its co-Chairs from Ireland and Iceland, yesterday visited Pakistan and held discussions at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Reaffirming Pakistan's continuing commitment to the goals of non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their delivery means, the Pakistani side underlined that control measures should not impinge on the developing countries' legitimate right of access to dual-use technologies for socio-economic progress, the Foreign Office (FO) said, in a statement today.

The FO said this was the third consecutive visit by the MTCR outreach Mission to Pakistan in as many years and both sides exchanged views on export control measures relevant to MTCR and the latest political as well as technical development in this area.

Pakistan side was led by Director General, Strategic Export Control Division, Zafar Ali who briefed the visiting delegation about Pakistan's comprehensive administrative, legislative and regulatory export control measures.

He also highlighted full compatibility of Pakistan's measures with the best international standards and coverage of items and technologies controlled by the MTCR.

The MTCR is an informal grouping of 35 states that seeks to prevent missile proliferation by voluntarily adhering to common export policy guidelines related to missiles and missile technologies.

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Chief of Army Staff General Bipin Rawat today visited forward areas bordering China in eastern Ladakh region of Jammu and Kashmir.

Gen Rawat arrived at Leh and visited forward posts in Eastern Ladakh, a defence spokesman said here.

He said the army chief interacted with troops serving in sub-zero temperatures.

"The Chief of Army Staff was briefed on the operational preparedness in Eastern Ladakh sector. He appreciated the efforts of troops deployed in harsh weather conditions," the spokesman said.

He said Gen Rawat's visit has boosted the morale of soldiers deployed in difficult locations in Ladakh.

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The Madras High Court has made it clear that AVM Film Studios is the absolute owner of the "entire world negative rights" and copyright of the 1963 Tamil film 'Karpagam' starring Gemini Ganesan.

Justice M Sunder was passing orders on a civil suit filed by AVM Film Studios, seeking permanent injunction against K S Sabarinathan, proprietor, Amarjyothi Films, AVM Limited, V Sankaran and G Sathya from interfering or infringing the plaintiff's "entire world negative rights and copyright" of the film.

Granting the relief, the judge directed AVM film studios to quantify the damages and to claim or pursue its remedy available in law for recovering such damages from the defendants.

The judge directed the defendants to pay the cost of the suit to the plaintiff.

Originally the film was produced by Sabarinathan and it was released on November 15, 1963.

According to the counsel for AVM Film Studios, Sabarinathan took a loan of Rs 4 lakh from AVM Limited.

In 1964, the producer had assigned his share in the entire world negative rights absolutely in favour of AVM Limited for 99 years and transferred the negatives in their favour.

Subsequently, AVM Limited, in 2005, assigned all rights of the film without any reservation whatsoever to Sankaran.

Sankaran, under a letter of arrangement in 2006, assigned to AVM Films Studios all aforesaid rights without any limitation whatsoever.

The court said all rights have been obtained by the plaintiff for the period up to October 31,2062 and AVM film studios has established their case via prayers.

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The head priest of one of the oldest Catholic churches in the country today appealed to people to live a "peaceful life" and adopt the principles of "tolerance and forgiveness".

No matter what is our religion or culture, living in peace with fellow humans and other living beings is the need of the hour, Father T L Francis, Prior of Marian shrine at Bandel Church in Hooghly district, said during the Good Friday service today.

Thousands thronged the church today to attend the prayer service.

The faithfuls took out a procession from the church with a 15-ft-long wooden cross and placed it in the middle of the field, next to the church, to mark the occasion.

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The branch manager of a nationalised bank was arrested in Ganjam district for alleged misappropriation of crop loan, police said today.

N Naik (59), branch manager of the State Bank of India, Sorada, who was arrested yesterday, had allegedly committed the fraud when he was manager of the bank's Karchuli branch four years ago.

On October 4, 2017, Udaya Nath Swain, the current manager of SBI, Karchuli branch, lodged an FIR with the police against Naik for misappropriating about Rs 7.50 lakh on fake documents for crop loans.

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The issue of the alleged role of some lawyers behind reported moves to impeach judges by Parliament is likely to come up before the general council meeting of the Bar Council of India (BCI) here tomorrow.

The apex lawyers' body, in a release today, said another agenda of the meeting would be to consider a report of its sub-committee on whether members of Parliament and legislative assemblies should be allowed to practice as advocates.

In February, the committee had recommended that MPs, MLAs and MLCs could be allowed to pursue legal practice, despite getting elected as legislators, subject to certain conditions.

The release said the agenda included "the action of some of the advocates on the issue of motion of impeachment against the judges of High Court/Supreme Court".

Several advocates besides the Congress and other opposition parties have been reportedly making efforts to bring an impeachment motion in Parliament against Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra.

The BCI is also slated to discuss the recent order of Supreme Court on the issue of banning the lawyers from going on strike.

Recently, the apex court held that irreversible damage was being done to the judicial system by lawyers going on strike and said that the court has decided to act tough against the erring advocates and bar associations which passed resolutions for strike.

The top court had asked the Centre to file quarterly reports on the basis of which contempt proceedings could be initiated against them.

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BJP in Karnataka has made efforts to give a royal touch for its prospects in the May 12 assembly polls in the state, with its national President Amit Shah meeting the Wadiyar royal familyof Mysuru today.

Shah, who is touring old Mysuru region, met the erstwhile royal family at their private palace here, triggering speculations about their supporting or joining the BJP.

According to sources, during the closed door meeting with the scion of royal family or the present titularMaharaja- Yaduveer Krishnadatta Chamaraja Wadiyar and RajamataPramoda Devi Wadiyar, Shah reportedly discussed various issues, including politics.

He is also said to have expressed his admiration for the progressive and pro-people work by the royal familyand the erstwhile Maharajas during their rule in the past.

State BJP Chief B S Yedyurappa, Union Minister Ananth Kumar and Member of Parliament from Mysuru Pratap Simha were present along with Shah during the meeting.

"Had a wonderful meeting with Maharaja Yaduveer Krishnadatta Chamaraja Wadiyar, Rajamatha Pramoda Devi Wadiyarand Maharani Trishika Kumari Devi of the Royal Family of Mysuru," Shah said in a tweet after the meeting with pictures.

"It was nice to see Yuvraj Adyaveer Narasimha Wadiyar too!" he said in another tweet, sharing a picture of him alongwith Yaduveer and the infant "prince".

Amidst speculations in the media, Yaduveer, the27th "King" of the Wadiyar dynasty, had recently ruled outhis political entry.

"I have told several times that I'm not interested in politics. There is no chance at all about me joining any party. I'm not interested in politics. Through social work we will continue our relationship with the public," he said.

Though it is not clear what transpired at the meeting, BJP's move is however, seen as an attempt by the party to muster more support in the region, where the party had not wona single seat in the previous election.

The royal family still commands considerable respectand affection in the old Mysuru region.

Also, politics is not something new to the Mysururoyal family. The previous scion, Srikantadatta Narasimharaja Wadiyar, represented Mysuru Parliamentary constituencyfour times and had lost once.

Srikantadatta mostly remained with the Congress, but also had a short stint with the BJP.

Srikantadatta's father Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar,the last Maharaja of Mysuru, held the position of Rajpramukh/Governor after independence.

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The BSF today said it has not allowed "even a single infiltration" along the international border with Pakistan, saying the area reported to have seen a recent case of infiltration was manned by the Army personnel.

Four terrorists were on March 28 killed in a day-long encounter with security forces in the Sunderbani area of Jammu and Kashmir's Rajouri district.

The fidayeen, or suicide attackers, had infiltrated into the Indian territory from across the Line of Control (LoC) about four-five days before the encounter, prompting security forces to launch a search operation in the area.

"The (border) area on north of Chenab river is under the command of Army. The area on south of Chenab river is under operational command of the BSF. I cannot comment on the area, which is on the north of Chenab river. You can talk to army for that," Director General of Border Security Force K K Sharma told reporters here.

"We have not allowed even a single infiltration along IB", DG BSF said.

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In a bid to mount pressure on the Centre to set up the Cauvery Management Board, the ruling AIADMK, which is facing heat on the matter from arch rival DMK, today announced that it would hold hunger strike across Tamil Nadu on April 2.

AIADMK Coordinator and Deputy Chief Minister O Panneerselvam made the announcement while attending a mass wedding function organised by the party here along with party co-coordinator and Chief Minister K Palaniswami.

Reacting to the ruling party's decision to hold a hunger strike over the Cauvery issue, DMK Working President M K Stalin said the AIADMK government has been "enacting drama" on the matter.

Pointing out that the six-week deadline given by the Supreme Court to set up the Cauvery Management Board ended yesterday, Panneerselvam said, "The people of Tamil Nadu and the farmers are expecting an answer from the Centre on the Cauvery issue."



"Our stand on the Cauvery issue is that the Central government must implement the Supreme Court order," he said, adding the party would raise its voice all the time to ensure that right to livelihood of the people of Tamil Nadu is not lost.

"We will reflect the feelings of all the people of Tamil Nadu and our farmers through our hunger strike which will be held from 9 am to 5 pm," Panneerselvam said.

The deputy chief minister said to get Cauvery water for farmers of Tamil Nadu as per the Supreme Court order, the AIADMK MPs had raised the issue in Parliament for 17 days consecutively.

Parliament proceedings getting affected for 17 days for the problem of one state was "historic", Panneerselvam said.

However, the Leader of Opposition in the Assembly, Stalin hit out at the state government saying the state government "did not have the guts" to condemn the Centre for not having set up the Cauvery Management Board within the stipulated time-frame.

The AIADMK dispensation was "subservient" to the Centre, he alleged.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Tamil Nadu government will move the Supreme Court on the issue of constituting the Cauvery Water Management Board, Chief Minister K Palaniswami said today even as the ruling AIADMK announced that it would observe a fast on April 2 on the matter.

With the Cauvery issue appearing to be snowballing into an embarrassment for the AIADMK which has largely been friendly with the Centre, the party announced a 'hunger strike' on Monday seeking formation of the CWMB and the Cauvery Water Regulatory Committee.

AIADMK's arch rival DMK said it would hold a black flag demonstration against Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his proposed visit to Tamil Nadu on April 15.

DMK, the main opposition party, said it would also hold a meeting of its friendly parties on April 1 and later announce a "massive" demonstration against the state and central governments, party top leader M K Stalin said.

In New Delhi, AIADMK Rajya Sabha MP S Muthukaruppan said he would resign from the RS on the Cauvery issue.

He said the Prime Minister was not listening to them on the Cauvery issue.

"I am going to resign my post, this is a post given to me by Amma (Jayalalithaa)," Muthukaruppan told reporters at New Delhi.

Praising late J Jayalalithaa for her steps on the Cauvery issue in the past, the MP said he would like "to do something for the people," following in her footsteps.

He made it clear that the decision to resign was his own while he lauded both Chief Minister Palaniswami and Panneerselvam for their efforts on the Cauvery issue.

He said he would submit his resignation to Rajya Sabha Chairman Venkaiah Naidu during the next sitting of Parliament.

Reacting to this, DMK leader Stalin said all ruling party MPs should resign and not Muthukaruppan alone.

Meanwhile, outfits including the pro-Tamil Tamizhaga Vazhvurimai Katchi staged protests against the Centre seeking setting up of the CWMB.

The agitations were held in Chennai and the Cauvery delta town of Tiruvarur.

Farmers' leader P R Pandian said demonstrations like the one witnessed seeking approval for 'Jallikattu' (bull taming sport) last year should be held on the Cauvery issue.

He said Central government offices should be picketed.

Speaking to reporters at Madurai, Palaniswami said the kind of petition to be submitted in the apex court was being discussed with legal experts.

Tamil Nadu's stand is that the Centre must constitute the CWMB and CWRC.

Underlining his government's commitment towards setting up of CWMB and the CWRC, Palaniswami said his party MPs had vociferously taken up the matter in Parliament leading to proceedings being stalled for over two weeks.

Fisheries Minister D Jayakumar indicated that the apex court would be approached in a couple of days.

In its February 16 judgement, the apex court had raised the 270 tmcft share of Karnataka by 14.75 tmcft and reduced Tamil Nadu's share of Cauvery water.

The apex court, which modified the 2007 award of Cauvery Water Dispute Tribunal (CWDT) with respect to Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, retained the share of Kerala at 30 tmcft and Puducherry at 7 tmcft, out of a total of 740 tmcft.

The apex court granted six weeks time to the Centre to formulate a scheme to ensure compliance of its 465-page judgement, which modified the CWDT award.

Following the verdict, Tamil Nadu has been urging the Centre to set up the CWMB and CWRC to ensure it received its due share of water from the inter-state river.

AIADMK coordinator and Deputy Chief Minister O Panneerselvam made the announcement on hunger strike while chairing a mass wedding function organised by the party at Madurai along with Palaniswami, who is also the party co-coordinator.

Pointing out that the six-week deadline given by the apex court had ended yesterday, Panneerselvam said, "The people of Tamil Nadu and the farmers are expecting an answer from the Centre on the Cauvery issue."



Stalin, also the leader of opposition in the Assembly, alleged that the AIADMK dispensation was "subservient" to the Centre.

He blamed the central and state governments for enacting a "drama" on the issue.

After chairing the party's executive committee meeting on Cauvery, Stalin told reporters that the black flag stir would be part of the next course of action his party would take up over the river water sharing issue.

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The CBSE paper leak has come as a rude shock to many class-10 students like R Shreya who fears that she might have to go through the ordeal of preparing for the maths exam all over again which will involve spending money on tuition and fighting a "phobia" for the subject.

Shreya wonders why should she be made to write the maths paper again as the examination "should be conducted only where it (the question paper) has been leaked), not in every place."



"I am feeling very pressured and it is very tough for me to study maths again. Recalling all the formulas is very tough. I have to again take tuition and pay the fees," she told PTI.

Her vacation plans as well as entrance exam schedule for another school after Class 10, too have gone for a toss.

The teenager asked why she should be penalised for no fault of hers and said the prospect of studying for the re-examination is going to put more pressure on her.

"I feel that the coming paper (re-test) will be tougher than the paper I wrote previously... I felt really happy and relaxed (then) as it was very easy," she said, adding, "My entrance exam for another school has also been affected. I have an exam on April 3."



The youngster now wants an assurance from government that there will be no paper leak in the future and said the latter should be more "cautious" so that this incident do not recur.

In Delhi, Secretary Anil Swarup said preliminary enquiry shows that the class 10 maths question paper leak could be limited to the national capital and Haryana only, and any re-test, if required, would be held in July.

Meanwhile, the mother of a boy who had appeared for his Class 10 maths exam said her son has become 'frustrated' following the of the leak and the subsequent proposed re-examination.

"He had prepared for the examination and told us that he had written it well. Now, following the announcement that the examination has been cancelled, he has become frustrated," the woman said, adding the family's vacation plans have also been affected, as they are unable to take any decision.

Another parent said, "It is really unfair since the paper leak was in Delhi... It is disappointing. We are unable to progress on our other domestic or academic activities since if a retest has been planned then we have to prepare for it."



"It has caused a huge mental stress for us," she added.

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Students and Congress youth leaders today held protests in several parts of the national capital against CBSE board papers being leaked, accusing the board of negligence and demanding immediate action against the guilty.

While some students gathered at Parliament Street in the heart of the city, members of the Congress' National Students Union of India (NSUI) began marching towards Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar's residence but were stopped.

Student groups and the Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee (DPCC) also demonstrated outside the CBSE headquarters in east Delhi's Preet Vihar, raising various demands, including an independent investigation.

"The leaks have exposed the capture of the highest academic institutions by the exam mafia under the watch of the Modi government as well as the abdication of authority by the HRD minister and the CBSE chairperson," NSUI leader Neeraj Mishra said.

He added that they would demand the resignations of Javadekar and CBSE chairperson Anita Karwal.

The NSUI's list of demands includes announcement of the retest of the Class 10 maths and the Class 12 economics papers as early as possible. They are also demanding that students should not be forced to take the retest.

Though the NSUI march was stopped at the Udyog Bhawan metro station, a short distance from Javadekar's Kushak Road residence, NSUI president Fairoz Khan and DUSU vice president Kunal Sehrawat were taken by Delhi Police to meet the minister.

Javadekar assured them that a decision on the issues raised by them would be taken by the end of the day, Sehrawat told PTI.

The Congress' Delhi wing, DPCC, shouted slogans outside the CBSE headquarters, demanding an independent investigation into the issue.

Earlier in the day, scores of students also demonstrated outside the CBSE headquarters, asking for an early resolution to their problems.

The CBSE announced a retest of the two papers earlier this week following reports that the papers were leaked.

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Six students were detained here today in connection with the CBSE papers leak, the police said.

Six students have been detained. An FIR has been lodged against four, Chatra Sub-Divisional Police Officer (SDPO) Gyan Ranjan said, adding that no arrest was made so far.

The CBSE papers leak has drawn widespread criticism from across the country and triggered students' protest.

The Central Board of Secondary (CBSE) has announced a retest of the Maths paper for Class 10 students and Economics paper for Class 12 students in the wake of the papers leak.

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The opposition Congress in Chhattisgarh today alleged the BJP government was not providing adequate security to the party's state unit chief, Bhupesh Baghel.

No police protection was provided to Baghel during his recent visits to Mahasamund, Bemetara, Balodabazar and Mungeli districts, Congress spokesperson Shailesh Nitin Trivedi said in a statement here.

Trivedi said he had written a letter to the Director General of Police, pointing out this lapse.

The Congress leader pointed out that Assembly elections are due in Chhattisgarh this year.

In 2013, prior to the last polls, security was provided to the Congress' 'Parivartan Yatra' when it passed through Bijapur and Dantewada, but the same was not done in Sukma district, where it faced a major Naxal attack in Jiram Valley, Trivedi recalled.

Even now, Baghel was being provided protection in some areas and denied in others, he said, adding the Congress believes there is a threat to Baghel's life.

Twenty-nine people, including then state Congress chief Nandkumar Patel and former Union minister V C Shukla, were killed in the Jiram Valley attack on May 25, 2013.

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Beijing flexed its military muscle this week as its sole operational aircraft carrier apparently took part in a huge naval drill with dozens of other vessels in the South China Sea, satellite images showed.

The pictures, taken by Planet Labs Inc., appear to show the Liaoning carrier at the centre of a formation of more than 40 other ships lined up in pairs south of China's Hainan province island on Monday.

China's defence ministry refused to confirm whether the Liaoning took part in drills this week but military experts say the aircraft carrier is identifiable.

Six submarines and two J-15 fighter jets appear to lead the "naval parade", James Char, a military expert at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University, told AFP.

"Such a formation serves more of as a visual spectacle with the Liaoning the status symbol of the PLA (People's Liberation Army)," Char said.

"This formation is unlikely to be used in actual combat situations," he said, adding that he would "not be surprised" if it was purposely aimed at being picked up by satellite images.

The show of force emerged days after Taiwan said that the Liaoning and other vessels had passed through the Taiwan Strait on March 20 - the same day that Chinese President Xi Jinping warned against any attempts to divide China.

Beijing has also been asserting its vast claims to the South China Sea, transforming reefs into islands capable of hosting military equipment.

Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Taiwan have their own claims to the sea, while US warships regularly conduct "freedom of navigation" operations near islands controlled by Beijing.

"We can expect the (Chinese naval) presence in the South China Sea becoming more regular, especially with the increase in freedom of navigation patrols by the United States as well as other countries," Char said.

Jeffrey Lewis, of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, said that while it was a "large naval drill", past photos have shown the carrier "travelling in such a formation."



"It was probably transiting to a location," he said.

In another picture taken by Planet Labs on Tuesday, the Liaoning is seen south of Hainan island's Yulin Naval Base, but no longer in formation with other ships.

Defence ministry spokesman Ren Guoqiang confirmed on Thursday that the navy has conducted a "routine" drill in the South China Sea to improve the military's "capability to win wars".

"It is not targeted at any specific country or target," Ren told reporters, without saying how many and which ships were involved.

Separately, the air force had announced on Sunday that aircraft, including H-6K bombers and Su-35 fighter jets, had recently participated in a joint combat patrol mission in the South China Sea, according to the official Xinhua agency, without giving more details.

China's government announced earlier this month an 8.1 percent increase in military spending to 1.11 trillion yuan ($175 billion).

The Liaoning is a Soviet-era vessel that was bought from Ukraine, refitted and commissioned in 2012.

Last year, China unveiled its first domestically-built aircraft carrier, which will carry J-15 fighters that will take off from a raised "ski jump" platform. It has yet to be put into operation.

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China's ambitious Belt and Road initiative is an important initiative that can foster regional cooperation, but entails risks like debt sustainability as well, the International Monetary Fund said today.

"The Belt and Road initiative is a very important initiative that we think can foster regional cooperation, including in trade and investment and finance, and it could indeed make a very significant contribution in terms of infrastructure, connectivity to countries and, again, all of this supporting trade and growth," IMF Spokesperson Gery Rice told reporters at his fortnightly conference.

On the other hand, he said, like other major initiatives of this type, it can entail risks, including issues of debt sustainability and spillovers to other countries, as well as risks for China, including credit risk.

"So, the key is to balance, obviously, the potential benefits which we see, with the potential risks," Rice said in response to a question.

He said it depends on how the project would be implemented to ensure debt sustainability and participation of the private sector.

"All of this will help minimise the risks, maximise the benefits. I think that's the objective that we want to see," Rice said.

The IMF, he said, sees large potential benefits from the initiative, but with potential risks as well. "I think there are areas where, in particular, that can guard against those risks. And I think these risks will be discussed at a conference in April," Rice said.

IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde will travel to Beijing early next month to attend the joint IMF-PBC, the Peoples Bank of China conference on the Belt and Road Initiative.

She will also meet several Chinese officials.

During her visit to China between April 9 and 12, Lagarde will attend the Boao forum and address the gathering during the opening ceremony on April 10. On April 11, she will deliver the Spring Meetings Curtain Raiser speech in Hong Kong.

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A court in northwest China today gave the death penalty to a serial killer, dubbed "Jack the Ripper", for killing 11 female victims, including an eight-year-old girl, between May 1988 and February 2002.

Gao Chengyong, 53, was found to have robbed, raped and mutilitated his victims, according to a report in state-run Xinhua agency.

The youngest of the victims was an eight-year-old girl.

The People's Intermediate Court of Baiyin City said in its verdict that the crimes happened in the northwest Gansu Province and neighbouring Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

The court found he killed his victims to cover up robbery or rape in Baiyin, Gansu and Baotou, Inner Mongolia.

Gao confessed his crimes in the court and said he would not file an appeal.

He was arrested in August 2016 after a DNA test of one of his relatives for an unrelated crime suggested he could be linked to the serial killings.

The "Ripper" was being hunted by the police for 28 years.

Before his arrest, Gao, who targeted his victims wearing red, had terrified young women, often following them to their home, state media reports have said.

The original Jack the Ripper was a serial killer active in east London in the late Victorian era. The cases he was believed to have been involved have not been solved yet.

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Clashes erupted as tens of thousands of Gazans marched near the Israeli border in a major protest today, leaving 15 Palestinians dead and hundreds more wounded in the conflict's worst single day of violence since the 2014 Gaza war.

Late in the day, Israel's military targeted three Hamas sites in the Gaza Strip with tank fire and an air strike after what it said was an attempted shooting attack against soldiers along the border that caused no injuries.

Protesters, including women and children, had earlier gathered at multiple sites throughout the blockaded territory, which is flanked by Israel along its eastern and northern borders.

Smaller numbers approached within a few hundred metres of the heavily fortified border fence, with Israeli troops using tear gas and live fire to force them back.

Israeli security forces also used a drone to fire tear gas toward those along the border, in one of the first uses of the device, a police spokesman said.

The health ministry in Gaza said 15 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces. More than 1,400 were injured, including 758 by live fire, with the remainder hurt by rubber bullets and tear gas inhalation, it said.

Palestinians accused Israel of using disproportionate force, as did Turkey.

Egypt, which has a border with Gaza, issued a foreign ministry statement saying it "denounces the use of force against civilians in the occupied Palestinian territories".

The Cairo-based Arab League condemned what it called Israel's "savagery".

Israel's military alleged that the main protests were being used as cover by militants to either break through the border or carry out attacks.

"It is not a peaceful demonstration," an Israeli military official told journalists.

"There was no small number of attempts to damage the fence and cross" the border, she added.

The army said it estimated some 30,000 demonstrators were taking part in the protests.

"Rioters are rolling burning tyres and hurling firebombs and rocks at the security fence and at (Israeli) troops, who are responding with riot dispersal means and firing towards main instigators," it said.

Protesters were demanding hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees who fled or were expelled during the war surrounding Israel's creation in 1948 be allowed to return.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniya attended the protest, believed to be the first time he had gone so close to the border in years.

Hamas and Israel have fought three wars since 2008, the most recent of which in 2014 ended with a fragile truce. Far smaller protests broke out in parts of the occupied West Bank.

This evening, Gazan leaders called on protesters to retreat from the border area until tomorrow, with the demonstration planned to extend six weeks, until the inauguration of the new US embassy in Jerusalem around May 14.

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas declared Saturday a day of national mourning.

The upcoming embassy move has added to tensions surrounding the march. US President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital in December has infuriated Palestinians, who claim its annexed eastern sector as the capital of their future state.

The protest also began as Jewish Israelis were to mark the Passover holiday. Israel announced a "closed military zone in the area surrounding the Gaza Strip," accusing its Islamist rulers Hamas of using the lives of civilians "for the purpose of terror".

It deployed reinforcements, including more than 100 special forces snipers, for fear of mass attempts to break through the security fence.

Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman said in tweet directed to Gazans in both Hebrew and Arabic that "Hamas's leadership is playing with your life".

Protests along the border are common, often culminating in young Palestinian men throwing stones at Israeli soldiers who respond with tear gas, and rubber and live bullets.

The "March of Return" protest is different because it is intended to include families with women and children camping near the border for weeks.

Five main camp sites have been set up spanning the length of the frontier, from near the Erez border crossing in the north to Rafah where it meets the Egyptian border in the south.

Cultural events were planned in the larger communal tents, including traditional Palestinian dabke dancing, while tens of thousands of meals were to be handed out today, organisers said.

A young couple were married near one of the camps on yesterday evening. Saeed Juniya had erected a small tent a few hundred metres from the border fence east of Gaza City, where he was accompanied by his wife and children.

"We are determined and not scared as we are not doing something wrong. The people are demanding their land and to return to their country," he said.

Organisers say the camps will remain in place until May 15 when Palestinians commemorate the Nakba, or "catastrophe", of the 1948 creation of Israel with the exodus of more than 700,000 Palestinians.

According to the UN, some 1.3 million of Gaza's two million residents are refugees and the protest is calling for them to be allowed to return to land that is now Israel.

Washington's plans to launch its new embassy to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the foundation of the Israeli state, further stoking Palestinian anger.

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The re-examination of CBSE's Class 12th economics paper will be held on April 25, while a decision on conducting the Class 10th mathematics paper will be taken in the next 15 days, the government said today.

School Education Secretary Anil Swarup made the announcement after complaints that the question papers for the two subjects were leaked.

The economics paper will be held across the country, but the 10th mathematics paper, if needed, would be restricted to the Delhi-NCR and Haryana, Swarup told a press conference here.

The Central Board of Secondary Education had earlier announced that retest would held for the both the papers.

Given that the class 12 examination are very very important in the context of the future of a child, like for examinations that have to be taken and university admissions, the date for examination has been fixed at April 25, Swarup told reporters.

He said the re-test will be held only in India as there has been no leak outside the country.

As far as 10th mathematics examination was concerned, he said, according to a preliminary enquiry the leak was restricted to Delhi and Haryana and there was no evidence that other states were affected.

Hence a decision has been taken, if at all a re-examination has to happen (for 10th paper) it will happen only in DelhiNCR and Haryana after a detailed inquiry. A decision to this effect will be taken in next 15 days when more details become available, he said.

The exams would be held in July if a decision is taken to that effect, he said.

There was no time available for a very very detailed inquiry. We felt that time was running out, so we have to declare the time for examination (for 12th paper) considering its importance and necessity," Swarup said.

On a query over who was responsible for the lapse, he said the enquiry is being done at two levels. One, criminal enquiry by the police, and the other departmental inquiry to find out exactly what had happened.

Within a month, he said, the ministry hopes to know where the things went wrong and fix responsibility.

Once the final inquiry result comes to us, certainly action will be taken against whoever is responsible. But to prematurely come to a conclusion that so and so is responsible, I do not think that is the right way of going about it, he added.

Asked if there would not be such leak in the future, he said, No one can guarantee anything in this world." But added, "It would be our endeavour to see no leakage happens anywhere. We will try our best that no leak happens but you cannot guarantee that nothing wrong would happen in the future.

Asked if it was possible that the 10th paper leak remained restricted to Delhi-NCR in an age of social media and fast communication, he said, There are no perfect answer available."



"We have to go by the information that we have. We have been reliably told that it was limited to Delhi-NCR and Haryana. We have to take best possible decision given the information available to us.

He said the immediate concern of the government is that unnecessary suffering is not caused to children because of somebody other playing a bad trick.

A number of messages was received by the ministry related to the paper leak and each of them was examined, he said. In large number of the cases, he said, it was found that the papers purported to have been leaked were not the original ones.

On a query over the CBSE chief receiving an mail ahead of the date of examination requesting to cancel the test, he said the e-mail was received at 1.29 am on March 28, the day of the test.

"And when the chairman checked her mail at 8.55 am, she immediately sent it for verification and by the time a response came, the paper had already started. So it could not be stopped immediately.

When asked about the police inquiry, CBSE chairperson Anita Karwal, who was also present at the press conference, said she was not questioned by them but "they were trying to understand the process".

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The Supreme Court collegium had disregarded a complaint of sexual harassment made by a woman judicial officer against her superior, while considering his name for elevation to the Karnataka High Court on two occasions, senior government functionaries said today.

Rejecting Justice J Chelameswar's recent charge that the executive was stalling the judiciary's recommendations on appointments, they said the government was in no hurry to take a call on the recommendation of the collegium to elevate principal district judge P K Bhat.

The comments came in the wake of Justice Chelameswar's charges earlier this month in a letter to the Chief Justice of India (CJI). He had urged the CJI to consider convening a full court to take up the issue of alleged executive interference in judiciary, cautioning that "the bonhomie between the judiciary and the government in any State sounds the death knell to democracy".

Reacting to the charge that the government was in no hurry to take a call on the colleagium's recommendations, a functionary said "we are free to sit on the file. There is no timeline mentioned in the memorandum of procedure -- a document that guides the elevation and posting of HC and SC judges."



Refuting Justice Chelameswar's charge, the functionaries, who requested anonymity, said the Law Ministry had twice returned the file relating to the elevation of principal district judge P K Bhat because the collegium did not comply with the Vishakha guidelines.

They said the collegium in particular and the judiciary in general, did not follow the guidelines on sexual harassment laid down by the Supreme Court itself.

"When on the second occasion the file of Bhat's elevation was sent back to the collegium, the complainant wrote to the Rashtrapati Bhawan and the PMO. So, following a standard procedure, the Department of Justice wrote to the registrar of Karnataka HC to look at the complaints. The government cannot ask a chief justice to probe. That power is not with us," a functionary explained.

He said complaints forwarded from the PMO or the President's office have to be sent to the concerned department seeking their views. "This is the procedure every government department has to follow," he said.

The discreet inquiry report cleared by the previous chief justice of the Karnataka HC did not place on record anything to suggest that the complainant was allowed a fair chance to explain her allegation, the functionaries said.

The Supreme Court Collegium had reiterated the elevation Bhat in April 2017 after the then chief justice of Karnataka High Court called the complaints against him incorrect and concocted on the basis of the discreet inquiry. "The probe has to follow the Vishakha case guidelines. It cannot be discreet," one of the functionaries said.

Justice Chelameswar's unprecedent letter, copies of which were also sent to 22 other apex court judges, had questioned the probe initiated by Karnataka High Court chief justice Dinesh Maheshwari against Bhat at the instance of the law ministry, despite his name being recommended for elevation twice by the Collegium.

"Someone from Bangalore has already beaten us in the race to the bottom. The Chief Justice of Karnataka High Court is more than willing to do the Executive bidding, behind our back," he wrote in the six-page letter.

Justice Chelameswar, who had held the unprecedented January 12 press conference along with three other senior judges questioning the allocation of cases by the CJI, referred to the "unhappy experience" where the government sat tight over the files even after the Collegium recommended names for appointment in the higher judiciary.

"For some time, our unhappy experience has been that the government's accepting our recommendations is an exception and sitting on them is the norm. 'Inconvenient' but able judges or judges to be are being bypassed through this route," he had claimed.

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Tour and travel firm Cox & Kings today said it has sold additional 3 per cent stake in Prometheon Holdings UK to SSG Capital Management for Rs 110 crore after transaction expense and tax.

The company had earlier this month sold 11.58 per cent stake in Prometheon Holdings UK to SSG Capital for Rs 450 crore, after transaction expense and tax.

The company's wholly-owned subsidiary Prometheon Enterprises Ltd (PEL) has sold additional stake of 3 per cent in Prometheon Holdings UK (PHUK) to an investee company of SSG Capital Management, Cox & Kings said in a statement.

Prometheon Enterprises Ltd (PEL) along with C&K India before the stake sale in the first tranche held 65.58 per cent stake in PHUK, which houses the education and hybrid hotels businesses, it added.

"Pursuant to the stake sale in two tranches, Cox & Kings Group will hold 51 per cent of PHUK through PEL and C&K India while SSG Capital will hold 49 per cent," Cox & Kings said.

Cox & Kings is a leading leisure and education travel group with operations in 22 countries across four continents.

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A 16-year-old Palestinian was shot dead by Israeli forces today, the health ministry in the Gaza Strip said, as bloody clashes on the border with Israel escalated.

Ahmed Ouda was shot in a clash north of Gaza City, the ministry said, as thousands of people took part in major protests all along the border.

Three other protesters were shot dead, while a farmer died when he was hit by a tank shell, Palestinian officials said.

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Warning that delay in resumption of dialogue between India and Pakistan has the potential of undermining the Agenda of Alliance of the PDP-BJP government, the PDP today said AoA is a commitment to the people to resolve the Kashmir problem through "reconciliation and dialogue".

"Agenda of Alliance (AoA), which became instrumental for forming the coalition government in Jammu & Kashmir between PDP and BJP, is an express commitment to the people of the state on resolution of Kashmir problem through reconciliation and dialogue," PDP Vice President Sartaj Madni said here today.

He said delay in resumption of sustainable dialogue and revival of peace initiatives between India and Pakistan are causing worries and have the potential of undermining the AoA.

He emphasised the need to carry forward the initiatives that are necessary for fulfilling the promises made in the alliance document in the interest of peace in the region and bringing an end to the miseries of the people of the state.

Madni said the appointment of Disneshwar Sharma as an interlocutor has set in motion the process required for forging reconciliation.

"The state government has taken several confidence building measures to instill faith and trust among the people, particularly youth along with holistic development plans and misery mitigating welfare measures," he added.

Madni recalled how PDP patron Mufti Mohammad Sayeed contributed to former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's peace campaign which changed the discourse and created an ambience for conflict resolution.

Madni said even as the state government made concerted efforts to carry forward the developmental agenda and pursued the course for political reconciliation through series of welfare and amnesty measures, the dip in IndoPak relations pushed the state into fresh spell of trouble.

Madni said Mufti Mohammad Sayeed had desired otherwise when he entered into government formation understanding with the BJP.

It was his hope and belief that under the leadership of Narendra Modi, the Vajpayee's initiative will be resumed and Indo-Pak relations would improve, he said.

He had envisioned that Modi's massive electoral mandate will work as added strength to settle long pending dispute, Madni said.

He said it is "heartening to note that the Union government has bound itself not to fiddle with Article 370, as promised in the AoA."



However, much needs to be done at diplomatic and political level to assuage the feelings of the people and creating of a congenial atmosphere matching the 2002-2005 golden period, he said.

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Delhi MLA Manjinder Sirsa today said the Delhi government has agreed to his proposal of holding functions to mark the 300th birth anniversary of legendary sikh warrior Sardar Jassa Singh Ahulwalia.

The SAD-BJP MLA, who is also the general secretary of Delhi Sikh Gurudwara Management Committee (DSGMC), met Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia and made other demands, including appointment of teachers of Punjabi language in Delhi government schools.

"The Delhi government has agreed to DSGMC's proposal of organising a state-level function to mark the 300th birth anniversary of Sardar Jassa Singh Ahluwalia," Sirsa said in a statement.

He said some other issues, including appointment of Punjabi language teachers in schools and stenographers with ministers, were also discussed during meeting with the deputy chief minister.

"Sisodia has assured that the posts of Punjabi language teachers lying vacant will be filled soon," Sirsa claimed.

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Aiming to improve the ease of doing business in Kerala, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has said the long-standing perception that the state was not very investor-friendly was slowly changing with a slew of measures being undertaken by the Left government.

Vijayan, 74, who completes two years in office on May 25, said the Kerala government is making efforts for eliminating the unnecessary delay in granting approvals for various investment proposals.

Seeking to rebrand "God's own Country" as a preferred investment destination, the CPI-M strongman said the top priority was to create an enabling ecosystem to provide timely clearances in an effective and transparent manner and to ensure that it is maintained.

He said even though the state lacked sufficient land for attracting investments and setting up infrastructure, the government is trying to provide an appropriate working environment for various companies in the state.

"As part of Ease of Doing Business, we are rectifying certain complaints which came up. We want to create an investment friendly environment in the state. We are trying to eliminate the unnecessary delay in getting approvals," he said in an exclusive interview to PTI here.

"If a decision has not been taken on an application within the time-frame allotted for it, the application will be considered as approved," he said.

Vijayan said his government had held discussions with major companies such as Nissan, Intel and Tech Mahindra for investments in the state, days after the first-ever Global Digital Summit in Kerala, #FUTURE conclave that was held in Kochi. Nissan, a Japanese automotive major, is mulling setting up a digital hub in Kerala.

Acknowledging that there was always a perception of Kerala not being 'business-friendly" which made investors wary of making huge investments in the state, Vijayan said this was "slowly changing".

"We have only Kerala to market. Other states have enough land that they even provide it free of cost but we don't have that much area. But we are trying to provide a good working atmosphere and all kinds of assistance from the government. This is what we are planning and we have held discussions with major companies like Nissan, Intel and many more.

"There is no more a sense of hopelessness in the state," he said.

Kerala, in the recent months, has been trying to woo investors by showcasing its single window clearance mechanism, educated human power and impressive human development indices.

According to the statement on RBI's regional office available on the website of the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, Kerala and Lakshadweep received about Rs 1,100 crore FDI equity during the nine-month period from April 2017.

Vijayan expressed confidence that with the proactive steps taken to improve the business environment in Kerala will improve its rating in ease of doing business vis-a-vis top ranked states in the country. Kerala is aiming to achieve a quantum jump in 'Ease of doing business' rankings from 21 to be among the top 10 by next year.

According to state officials, as part of reforms, an Investment Promotion and Facilitation Cell has been constituted on behalf of the Kerala State Single Window Board and it will be responsible for the smoother interaction with applicants and issuing speedy approvals.

The Single Window Board will have the power to issue composite clearances that will be binding on all departments and agencies.

To allay the fears of investors, the chief minister also said that the notorious Gawking Wage or the 'nokkukooli', as it is known colloquially, will end from May 1.

"All trade unions in the state have come out openly against 'nokkukooli'. We have decided to end this practice from May 1. Some miscreants may still create trouble, but we plan to deal with them with a strong hand. Police have been directed to take strict action against it," he said.

'Nokkukooli' is an euphemism for extortion by organised labour unions in Kerala under which wages are paid to trade union activists for allowing common householders/ investors/builders to unload belongings/materials using machines or their own labour.

On land issues coming in the way of investments, Vijayan said acquisition was necessary in the state to fulfil the greater public good, adding that the government understands the concern that some people have when they lose the little bit of land they own.

"We are short of land as you know. We understand the concern that some people have when they lose the little bit of land they own. However, it is necessary that we undertake such acquisitions to fulfil certain public needs.

"We are ready to provide adequate compensation and rehabilitation considering the plight of those who have to give up their land. People have been cooperative in this regard. People understand that we are not troubling them but we are doing it as we are out of options," he said.

Referring to the recent Global Digital Summit held in Kochi, the chief minister said his government was doing its best to develop the Information Technology(IT) sector in the state.

"The IT industry organised such an event. Based on their suggestions, we have arranged a special wing at the CM's office which can stay in touch with various companies. It has been a huge success. Many prominent personalities participated and we expect a change," Vijayan said.

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The DMK would stage a black flag demonstration against Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his visit to Tamil Nadu on April 15 over the Cauvery issue, party working president M K Stalin said here today.

After chairing the party's executive committee meeting on the matter, Stalin told reporters the black flag stir would be part of the next course of action his party would take up over the river water sharing issue.

The demonstration was to lodge the party's protest against the Centre for not setting up the Cauvery Management Board (CMB) and Cauvery Water Regulatory Committee.

Asked if he would meet Modi on setting up the CMB, the DMK leader said there was no reply from the Centre, despite several letters in this regard.

Following the over two hour meet,Stalin,who is the Leader of Opposition in the assembly, said a "massive demonstration" would be held against the Central and state governments, which are "enacting dramas," over the Cauvery issue.

Leaders of all friendly parties would be consulted on April 1 on the kind of big ticket agitation to be organised and a decision would be announced, he said.

A resolution was adopted at the meet, condemning the 'inaction' of the Central and State governments over the Cauvery issue.

Another resolution authorised Stalin to hold an "all party meet" to decide on the kind of stir to be adopted against the Central and State governments over this issue.

Opposing the proposed India-based Neutrino Observatory project at Theni in Tamil Nadu, a resolution asked the state government to approach the National Green Tribunal against the environmental clearance given to it by the Centre.

The meet also asked the Tamil Nadu government to put on hold the clearance to be given by the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board to the project.

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Targeting NTPC for supplying Bangladesh electricity generated using cheap domestic coal, the Association of Power Producers has written to the government saying such sale violates extant policy and hurts interest of domestic power consumers.

The lobby group, whose members include Tata Power, Reliance Power and Adani Power, asked the government to issue a clarification stating that cross-border supply can be done only of electricity generated using imported coal or the one produced from coal bought through competitive bidding and not through allocations made for meeting domestic demand.

Last month, state-owned NTPC had won a bid to supply 300 megawatts (MW) of electricity to power-starved Bangladesh by beating Adani, PTC and Sembcorp of Singapore.

The association in the March 26 letter to the Power Secretary Ajay Kumar Bhalla said the tender for electricity by Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) required bidders to take consent of Indian government if "the power generated from the respective power plants using domestic coal can be exported to Bangladesh throughout the contract period (of 13 years)."



"It is likely that this requirement has not been adhered to uniformly by all the bidders," it said without naming NTPC.

The association said the current policy requires the supply of electricity generated using coal sold under long-term supply linkages at government notified price and that sourced from captive coal mines, to only domestic power distribution companies.

"This means that any bidder securing BPDB bid based on domestic linkage coal/captive coal would lock in part of domestic coal resources for external consumption for 13 years, thereby hampering domestic consumer interests, and would be violative of the extant policy framework," it said.

The association wanted the power ministry to issue an "instruction" stating that "the coal supplied under domestic linkage or coal from captive mines given for power sector, cannot be utilised for BPDB long-term contracts."



Also, the ministry needs to clarify that that cross-border supply of power should be from e-auction/imported coal only.

"This (clarification) can be taken up with BPDB, and undertaking from bidders may be made part of the bid, saying that they will not use domestic linkage/captive coal for the supply of cross-border supply of power," it added.

NTPC's unit, NTPC Vidyut Vyapar Nigam Ltd (NVVN) is to first supply power to Bangladesh on short-term (June 1, 2018, to December 31, 2019) and then on long-term (January 1, 2020, to May 31, 2033).

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Emily Ratajkowski and Lilly Singh are among the five actors who are on board NBC comedy pilot "Bright Futures".

The show will be a single-camera project, which chronicles the life of a group of friends in their 20s trying to figure out life as they grow into professionals, Variety reported.

Shameik Moore, Jimmy Tatro, and Calum Worthy are also part of the main cast.

"Friends" alum Lisa Kudrow will serve as narrator.

While Ratajkowski will play Sarah, the girl-next-door type with a rebel streak, Singh will portray Sid, a recent med school graduate who became a doctor so that people would address her as a doctor.

Moore will play the role of Aaron, who is a drinking blowout on the night he passed the bar put a halt to any delusions of grandeur and now works as a lowly personal injury attorney.

Tatro will portray Berger, who is the hater of the group but a fiercely loyal friend.

Worthy will play Danny, a gung-ho yet ultra-neurotic USC film school grad and an aspiring screenwriter who has just landed his first gig working for Hollywood's upcoming scribe.

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Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu today said that empowering women would enable them lead a life of dignity,respect and make informed decisions, as he stressed on the need to build coalitions against gender discrimination.

With women constituting almost half of India's population, their empowerment educationally, socially and politically is the fundamental requirement for the country to unleash the forces of growth and achieve rapid progress, he said.

"Unequal access to education, gainful employment and growth opportunities are widening the gender gap and atrocities on women and domestic abuse are unfortunately tarnishing our image as a nation," according to an official release.

Stressing the need to build coalitions against gender discrimination, the Vice President said government and civil society must be active collaborators to achieve tangible results.

The Vice President said there is enough evidence to show that women during the early Vedic period were seen as equal to men in all walks of life, adding "Our cultural moorings have gender equality as a core principle".

"While we have a long lineage of highly accomplished women, there has been unfortunately a parallel trend of gender discrimination.This has resulted in low literacy,low education and consequently, low representation in the workforce and politics," he said at an event organised to mark the silver Jubilee Celebrations of the Mahila Dakshata Samiti here.

True gender equity can be achieved when women are empowered in all fields - educational, social, economic and political, he noted.

The Vice President said that over the years, he has been consistently arguing that women must get a fair share in all tiers of governance, from gram panchayat to Parliament.

"I have always been underscoring the need to improve the female literacy rate and ensure greater participation of women in the work force. At the same time, it should be ensured that women are not discriminated in the payment of wages," he said.

The Vice-President said ending gender disparity, ensuring safety at work places, providing access to health care, imparting job skills and creating more job opportunities are all aimed at empowering women.

"Empowering women will enable them lead a life of dignity, respect and make informed decisionsbe it matters financial, social or even political", he said.

To prevent discrimination and atrocities against women, concerted efforts are needed at all levels, Naidu said.

Gender equality must begin at home and girls must not be made to feel inferior to boys or ill-treated, he said, adding families play a big role in shaping the attitude of children and boys must be made to treat girls with respect.

The Vice President also expressed anguish over incidents of girls committing suicide and said they are unable to withstand pressure of studies and suggested all those working in the field of education counsel both girls and their parents.

The Governor of Goa, Mridula Sinha, Telangana Deputy Chief Minister Mohammad Mahmood Ali and other dignitaries were present.

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A former operations manager with a private bank was arrested, along with his two associates, for allegedly using innocent job seekers to withdraw money from banks using forged letterheads of firms, police said today.

On March 22, a case was filed at Madhu Vihar in which the victim alleged that Rs 7.5 to 8 lakh were withdrawn from his account without his knowledge and transferred through RTGS.

One person, named Ranjit, who was present at the bank and had carried the fake letterhead to the bank was nabbed.

Later, it was revealed that Ranjit was only a victim as he had posted his resume on OLX for job. He was called for an interview at Connaught Place and told that he has been selected for the job. They gave him a forged letter and asked to submit it in the bank to withdraw the money, police said.

Subsequently, police arrested Virender Sahu and his two associates, Arun and Vinay Yadav, they said.

The gang used to contact traders dealing in electronic items posing as buyers and would tell them that they want to place bulk orders. They would ask the traders to WhatsApp them a cancelled cheque and the price of items on their letterhead. In this way, they would get details of the victim, police said.

Later, they would scan the letterhead and forge the signatures.

On the basis of this information, a forged letter was prepared requesting the bank to transfer money through RTGS/NEFT and a specific request was made to provide a fresh cheque book to confuse the bank, they said.

Sahu also used to call the bank manager, posing as the account holder, informing him that he is sending a man with letter and the transaction was urgent. They would get the money transferred to accounts opened in fake names or in the accounts of the job seekers and would later take the money from them by paying a meager amount.

Sahu has an MBA degree from Shree Ram Swaroop College of Engnieering and Management, Lucknow . He joined as an Operation Manager at the ICICI Bank, Hazratganj, Lucknow in 2005 and worked in the banking section till 2015, police said.

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An Azerbaijani journalist forced into exile in France was seriously wounded and his wife was killed today in a gun attack near the southern city of Toulouse, police said.

Rahim Namazov, a father of three, fled his oil-rich homeland in Central Asia for France in 2010 after suffering death threats and being imprisoned.

The 39-year-old is fighting for his life in hospital after suffering serious back injuries while his wife died after being hit in the head during the shooting in front of their home this morning in the town of Colomiers near Toulouse.

One of their children, a 15-year-old boy, was in their apartment at the time and heard the gunfire, local authorities told AFP, adding that he was being looked after by a local trauma group.

Police said that seven bullets were fired in total.

Azerbaijan has been ruled by the repressive family of a strongman president Ilham Aliyev since 1993.

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A family of three and another person from Kasaragod district of Kerala, suspected to have joined terror outfit Islamic State, have been reportedly killed, according to information reaching one of the relatives of the deceased.

The deceased were among the 21 persons from Kasaragod district who went missing and later reportedly joined the ISIS in 2016.

One of the relatives of the deceased has received a message that that they have been killed, Kasaragod district panchayat member V P P Mustafa said.

But there were no details about how it happened, source of the information or from where it came, he told PTI.

When contacted, police also confirmed that such a message had been received three days ago.

As per the information, the deceased were Shihas, his wife Ajmala and their child, all hailing from Padana, and Muhammed Mansad from Thrikaripur in Kasaragod district.

The National Investigation Agency has been probing the case of the missing Keralites, suspected to have joined the terror group.

Among them, 17 were from Kasaragod and four from Palakkad.They include four women and three children.

As per reports, these people had gone to Syria and Afghanistan and later reached the terror camps.

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Director General of BSF K K Sharma today said that the group of four terrorist killed in Sunderbani encounter belonged to the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).

Four terrorists, who were part of a suicide squad, were killed in a day-long encounter with security forces in the Sunderbani area of Jammu and Kashmir's Rajouri district on March 28, police said.

The BSF chief said that it was his organisation that provided exact intelligence input to eliminate the terrorists.

"As of now, they are only four militants belonging to the LeT. There can be splinter groups of it as well. I cannot not rule it out. We have kept the highest level of alertness from our side," Sharma told reporters here.

The fidayeen, or suicide attackers, had infiltrated into the Indian territory from across the Line of Control (LoC) about four-five days ago, prompting security forces to launch a search operation in the area.

The DG BSF said, "We have intelligence inputs about the presence of militants earlier with us. That is why, the level of security and alertness around our security installation and establishments was on highest level."



He said that the BSF got a specific input and on that input local police and the Army and other security forces cordoned off the area and isolated them in the riverine area and eliminated them without any collateral damage.

"There was no loss to the security forces. The operation was successfully completed," he added.

Sharma said that the specific information was given by the BSF where they are staged and the BSF men and officers participated in the operation.

"If there would have not been alertness, these terrorists were close to the Sunderbani-based BSF headquarters and there could have been a untoward incident," he said.

Replying to a question about the terrorists target, Sharma said that the BSF establishment could have been target as it was close.

"The militants, who have first view of any security establishment, that becomes the target. BSF was very close," he added.

The BSF chief said that they were at highest degree of alertness and that is why they were not successful.

"There attempt will always be to cause human loss to security forces and BSF is prepared to meet any challenge fully," he added.

Asked as to why terrorists failed to carry out attack against a security establishment, Sharma said they (terrorists) may have some error in their planning and lack of support from local population.

"They could not have got the local guide and that is why they kept on roaming.There was something wrong in their planning", he added.

"The security forces did very well by eliminating them with their alertness," Sharma added.

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France said today it is not planning a unilateral military operation in Syria outside the international coalition fighting the Islamic State group after senior Kurdish officials claimed Paris intended to send troops.

"France is not planning any new military operation on the ground in northern Syria outside the international coalition against Daesh," President Emmanuel Macron's office said in a statement, using another term for IS.

Macron met with a delegation from the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) yesterday, and Kurdish official Asya Abdullah told reporters afterwards that France was planning on sending "new French troops to Manbij".

"The cooperation will be reinforced," she said.

Khaled Issa, the official representative in France of Syria's Kurdistan, had added: "France is going to reinforce its military presence."



The comments added to heightened international tensions as Turkey wages an offensive against Kurdish fighters in Syria whom it views as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) that has waged a three-decade insurgency inside Turkey.

Ankara launched an air and ground offensive in Afrin in January to oust the People's Protection Units (YPG), Kurdish fighters who make up the bulk of the SDF, viewed as terrorists by Turkey.

Turkey has threatened to expand its military operation against Kurdish fighters, who ousted IS from the town of Manbij near the Turkish border, and repeated the threat on Wednesday.

But the US-led coalition fighting jihadists in Syria, of which France is a member, sees the YPG as a key player in the fight against IS and has warned that Turkey's operation risks distracting from that battle.

Macron had yesterday offered to help establish a "dialogue" between the SDF and Turkey "with help from France and the international community" -- an idea angrily rejected by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan today.

"We are extremely saddened by France's... wrong stance on this issue," Erdogan said during a speech in Ankara.

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The father-in-law of Pippa Middleton, whose sister Kate is married to Britain's Prince William, has been charged in France with the rape of a minor, a legal source told AFP today.

David Matthews was taken into custody for questioning last Tuesday by investigators with France's Minor Protection Brigade in a case dating from 1998-99, after a complaint was lodged in 2017, the source said.

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In yet another incident of communal flare-up in Bihar, scores of vehicles were today vandalised and a hotel was set ablaze in this district, where members of two communities clashed following reports of desecration of an idol, an official said.

Trouble erupted in Godapur village under the Town police station area, where an idol was found vandalised, following which the members of two communities indulged in heavy stone-pelting, District Magistrate (DM) Kaushal Kumar said.

He added that an enraged mob also went on a rampage on National Highway 31, hurling stones at the vehicles and leaving scores of them damaged. The mob also set a hotel on fire, the DM said.

The police fired 10 rounds in the air to quell the mob that also allegedly manhandled a number of local journalists, who had gone to the spot to cover the incident.

The situation was brought under control, though tension prevailed in the area, the DM said, adding that a heavy deployment of police was in place.

No arrest was made in this connection so far, he added.

Nawada is located at a distance of around 70 kms from state capital Patna.

Bihar has witnessed a spurt in communal clashes in the recent past. On March 17, violence broke out in Bhagalpur, where a religious procession was being led by Arijit Shashwat, the son of Union minister Ashwini Kumar Choubey.

On Sunday last, the members of two communities had clashed in Aurangabad over a Ram Navami procession. Similar incidents were reported from Sitamarhi, Nalanda, Sheikhpura and Munger districts over the next few days.

The BJP and the opposition RJD have been trading charges over the issue, blaming each other for the sudden rise in such incidents.

Leader of Opposition in the state Assembly, Tejashwi Yadav (RJD) has alleged that those associated with the Sangh Parivar are fomenting communal passion in the state and that they were "trained" to do so by RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat during his week-long tour of Bihar last month.

The BJP has hit back, with its state unit spokesman Rajib Ranjan issuing a statement, squarely blaming the opposition party for "spreading communal frenzy" and accusing it of trying to "defame" the NDA government in the state.

Meanwhile, Congress Legislature Party leader Sadanand Singh urged Chief Minister and JD(U) chief Nitish Kumar to "reconsider" his party's tie-up with the BJP.

In a statement, he said, "Chief Minister Nitish Kumar must give a serious thought to the revival of the Grand Alliance in Bihar. Political compulsions are preventing him from effectively cracking down on the rioters."



"The state cannot prosper in such an environment. Moreover, the recent incidents have given the government a bad name. The chief minister should reconsider his decision," Singh said, referring to Kumar's exit last year from the "Mahagathbandhan", comprising the JD(U), the RJD and the Congress, after which he rejoined the BJP-led NDA.

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The first liquefied natural gas (LNG) shipment from the US arrived at the Dabhol terminal of state-run gas major Gail here today.

Receiving the first-ever shipment of 1.2 lakh tonne LNG under the long-term contract of 20 years, oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan also announced a Rs 700-crore investment by the newly-created Gail arm Konkan LNG to complete an under-construction breakwater facility, that on completion will make the terminal an all-weather facility.

Currently due to lack of the breakwater the Dabhol terminal, created in FY07 by the original Dabhol power plant promoter Enron Corporation which went bankrupt and abandoned the 1,200-mw power plant, can operate only eight months.

"We've finalised the tender for the breakwater that will be floated very soon and hope to begin work before the monsoons at the earliest or soon after the monsoons," Pradhan told reporters.

A senior Gail official told PTI that the company will be getting 22-24 shipments per annum till the breakwater is built. Once that is done we will be handling 80-90 ships a year.

Gail signed two, 20-year LNG supply agreements potentially worth USD 32 billion for LNG exports from the Dominion Cove Point project in Maryland and the Sabine Pass project in Louisiana in 2011 and 2013 respectively, US Consulate, Mumbai said in a statement.

The minister claimed that the country could negotiate "a very competitive price from the US which offers one of the best prices LNG," without disclosing the average price of the maiden shipment.

"Pricing is a commercial matter that cannot be publicly discussed. All I can assure you is that we have managed one of the best prices which should help the end-consumers," the minister said, adding Dabhol terminal will serve industrial and residential customers in Karnataka, Maharashtra and Gujarat.

He also said the beginning of the oil and gas shipments from the US will boost Indo-US trade and has the potential to raise it by USD 2-3 billion annually, considering massive spike in energy demand, making the country third largest in the world.

"Once this pipeline delivery begins, this will connect the state-run gas major's Kochi-Kuttanad- Mangalore-Bengaluru pipeline," the Gail official said.

Describing the arrival of the first shipment and the conclusion of the long-term contract with the US-based Cheniere Inc as "a new beginning in the Indo-US energy partnership and trade," Pradhan said LNG supplies is linked to the Henry Hub index contract and also "will help achieve the vision of moving towards a gas-based economy."



Gail's first charter-hired vessel MV Meridian Spirit arrived after sailing 24 days.

Gail chairman BC Tripathi said in the first year of the 20-year contract that was inked in 2011, Gail hopes to take in 5.8 million tonne.

The US vessel that called on today is the 78th berthing at the Dabhol terminal since it was commissioned in 2013.

"We will have an optimum portfolio mix of LNG indexed to the Henry Hub index and crude oil and customers will benefit from such a good price blend," Tripathi said.

"Gail is one of the early movers to contract US LNG and has 5.8 million tonne per annum in its portfolio over the life of the long-term contract. We will be receiving around 90 cargoes per annum from the Sabine Pass and Cove Point LNG terminals," Tripathi said, adding the terminal will now be handled by the just-formed subsidiary Konkan LNG after demerging it from Ratnagiri Gas & Power, which is a three-way joint venture between Gail, NTPC and Maharashtra SEB.

Indo-US trade has been rising 11.4 per cent on average since 2000 when it was USD 20 billion to over USD 126.1 billion in 2017.

"The United States continues to partner with India across the broad range of energy collaboration, whether through traditional energy sources like oilthe first crude oil shipment from the US to India arrived in October 2017 in Odishaor LNG, or through other sources like coal and renewable energy," US Minister Counselor for Commercial Affairs Patrick Santillo was quoted as saying in a statement.

"This shipment really sets the stage for the upcoming visit of US energy secretary Rick Perry for attending the US-India Strategic Partnership," Santillo said.

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Hardline Hurriyat Conference chairman Syed Ali Shah Geelani was today allowed to offer Friday prayers at a mosque after a gap of nearly eight years.

Geelani, who has spent most of the past eight years under house arrest particularly on Fridays, offered the congregation prayers at a local mosque near his residence in Hyderpora area of the city, a Hurriyat spokesman said.

The separatist leader addressed the people who had gathered for the prayers.

Slogan-shouting supporters of the Hurriyat hawk accompanied him to his residence after the prayers, officials said.

They said a group of youth indulged in stone-pelting on security forces but were chased away by the law-enforcing personnel. No one was hurt in the brief clashes.

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Congress veteran Janardan Dwivedi was today replaced by ex-Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot as the AICC general secretary in charge of organisation and training in a rejig by party chief Rahul Gandhi.

While bringing organisational changes in the Congress after taking over the reigns of the grand old party in last December, Rahul Gandhi also appointed Rajeev Satav and Jitendra Singh as in-charges of the party's affairs in Gujarat and Odisha respectively.

Dwivedi, considered a political heavyweight and a close confidante of Sonia Gandhi, would step down as party general secretary, a post he held for over two decades. He had earlier also headed the party's communication wing for several years and has been part of several key decisions of the Congress.

Dwivedi was also part of a four-member committee that Sonia Gandhi, as then Congress president, had constituted to run the party in her absence, while she was undergoing treatment abroad.

Satav replaces Gehlot, who was entrusted the responsibility of AICC general secretary in charge of Gujarat, ahead of assembly polls in the state late last year.

Gehlot, who had played a crucial role in galvanising the party in the run-up to Gujarat Assembly polls, has been entrusted the task of taking care of the organisation and providing training to party workers.

This is Rahul Gandhi's first appointment for the party's general secretary post after he announced reorganising the Congress at the party's plenary session earlier this month.

However, with elections to Rajasthan Assembly only a few months away, it remains to be seen whether Gehlot would continue to campaign aggressively in the state as his new assignment entails spending more time at the party headquarters in Delhi.

"Congress President Rahul Gandhi has designated Ashok Gehlot as general secretary in charge, organisation and training, in place of Janardan Dwivedi, general secretary AICC," Dwivedi said in a statement.

It further states that a note from the Congress president says, "The party appreciates the hard work and contribution of Janardan Dwivedi, who will be stepping down from his responsibility as AICC general secretary."



In another statement, Dwivedi said, "Congress President Rahul Gandhi has appointed Rajeev Satav, MP, as the AICC in charge of Gujarat with immediate effect."



"Congress President Rahul Gandhi has appointed Jitendra Singh, ex-union minister as AICC in charge of Odisha, in place of B K Hariprasad," said a second statement.

The second order also said the party appreciates the hard work and contribution of Hariprasad, "who will be stepping down from his responsibility as AICC General Secretary in-charge, Odisha".

According to sources, Gehlot has thanked the party workers of Gujarat for extending support to him during the assembly elections and will concentrate on the upcoming elections in Rajasthan.

In yet another order, Rahul Gandhi appointed Lalji Desai as the chief organiser of the All India Congress Seva Dal, replacing Mehendra Joshi.

The party also placed on record the hard work and contribution of Joshi, who is stepping down from his responsibility as chief organiser of Seva Dal.

The changes are part of a major restructuring of the Congress under Rahul Gandhi's leadership and indicate a generational shift which the new party chief is wanting.

A completely revamped Congress is likely to be in place in the coming times, as stated by the party president himself.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Good Friday was today observed with prayers and hymns across Meghalaya, Nagaland and Mizoram - the three states in the North East with a significant Christian population.

The day marks the crucifixion of Jesus Christ on Calvary Hill in Jerusalem nearly 2,000 years ago.

Special sermons on salvation and prayers for repentance were held in churches across the three states.

In Meghalaya, people, mostly dressed in black, took out a procession from Catholic Cathedral, one of the prominent landmarks in the state capital.

Catholics were also seen gathering in large numbers at Cathedral Church of Mary Help of Christians in Shillong to attend a prayer meet.

In Mizoram, too, the members of the Catholic Church took out processions in Aizawl and other parts of the state.

Similar prayer meets were also held in parts of Nagaland today.

In Kohima, a special cross procession, remembering the walk of Jesus Christ to Mount Calvary, was organised by the Catholic churches.

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Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan today sought to justify instances of public parade of criminals by the police, asserting "goondas" have no human rights and that the state government had zero tolerance for crimes against women.

He said that those who eve-tease and harass girls and women and make it difficult for them to step out of their homes cannot claim human rights.

"There are no human rights of goondas (anti-social elements)," Chouhan told reporters here. "The state government has zero tolerance for crimes against women."



On March 25, the police had arrested and publicly paraded four men for allegedly raping a collegian here and several women bystanders had also slapped the accused.

The chief minister today said that 92 per cent of rape cases had involvement of relatives, family members or acquaintances.

Replying to a query on implementing a commissionerate system of policing for Bhopal and Indore, Chouhan said all steps would be taken to ensure public safety and security.

On the death of journalist Sandeep Sharma, who was run over by a truck at the Ater Road in Bhind on March 26, Chouhan said, "If required, we will enact a law to ensure the safety of journalists," he said.

The MP CM announced financial assistance of Rs 2 lakh to Sharma's family. Sharma had complained about a threat to his life after he conducted a sting operation against sand mafia.

Asked about the police allegedly dilly-dallying a case related to the suicide of a woman, whose kin had claimed she was married to the son of PWD Minister Rampal Singh, Chouhan said, "Law will take its own course."



He also announced the state government would set up an agency to promote the export of farm produce.

"Agricultural production has gone up in the state and the government is now making efforts to provide beneficial prices to farmers. We are planning to set up an agency to explore the export of agricultural produce."



He said there was no anti-incumbency against the government in the state and that recent defeats of the BJP in bypolls could not be taken as an indicator of it. "But we have taken the outcome of these polls seriously."



"Wherever I visit, I see the response of the people. They love me and appreciate the state government. There is no anti-incumbency," he claimed.

Earlier in the day, Chouhan participated in a police event on women's safety and security.

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The government has notified a legislation that double tax-free gratuity for formal sector employees to Rs 20 lakh.

The Payment of Gratuity (Amendment) Bill, 2018, which was passed by the Lok Sabha on March 15 and by the Rajya Sabha on March 22, has been brought in force on March 29 after assent from the President, an official statement said today.

"This will ensure harmony amongst employees in the private sector and in Public Sector Undertakings/ Autonomous Organizations under Government who are not covered under CCS (Pension) Rules. These employees will be entitled to receive higher amount of gratuity at par with their counterparts in Government sector," it said.

Earlier, the upper ceiling on gratuity amount under the act was Rs 10 lakh.

With implementation of 7th Central Pay Commission, the ceiling was raised to Rs 20 lakh for the central government employees effective January 1, 2016.

In addition, the Bill also envisaged to amend the provisions relating to calculation of continuous service for the purpose of gratuity in case of female employees who are on maternity leave from 12 weeks to such period as may be notified by the Central Government from time to time'.

This period has also been notified as 26 weeks, it said.

However, bank unions including RSS affiliated National Organisation of Bank Workers (NOBW) expressed their displeasure over the notification date.

They demanded that the government should give the benefit of increased limit of gratuity from Rs 10 lakh to Rs 20 lakh for private and public sector employees at par with Central government employees with effect from January 1, 2016.

"Thousands of employees who have been retired since January 1, 2016 have not been able to get the benefit of this increased gratuity. The government cannot discriminate between employees of the Central Government and the private sector and the public sector workers in this way," NOBW said in a statement.

The government had earlier given assurance to give the benefit of the payment of the Gratuity Amendment Bill 2018 effective January, 2016, it said.

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Gur (jaggery) prices settled quiet at the wholesale market in the national capital today due to the absence of necessary buying support amid comfortable stocks.

On the other hand, Muradnagar gur markets showed a fall of Rs 100 per quintal on paucity of demand.

Marketmen said sluggish demand and ample stocks pulled down gur prices especially in Muradnagar.

In Muradnagar, gur dhayya prices dropped by Rs 100 to settle at Rs 2,100-2,150 per quintal.

Gur Pedi prices also fell by Rs 50 each to Rs 2,075-2,150 per quintal.

Following are today's rates (in Rs per quintal):



Gur chakku Rs 2,500-2,600, pedi Rs 2,500-2,600, dhayya Rs 2,700-2,800 and shakkar Rs 2,900-3,000.

Muzaffarnagar: Rasket Rs 2,000-2,100, chakku Rs 2,200-2,450, khurpa Rs 2,075-2,150 and Ladoo Rs 2,250- 2,350.

Muradnagar: Pedi Rs 2,075-2,150 and dhayya Rs 2,100-2,150.

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The Trump administration's proposal to withdraw the provision of giving work permits to the spouses of the H-1B visa workers, most of them Indians, will make America less attractive for foreign talent, according to an influential US immigration advocacy body.

Since 2015, the spouses of H-1B workers, who are in the process for becoming permanent residents, have been allowed to work.

However, the Trump administration is considering rescinding this policy of the previous Obama administration, the the American Immigration Council said yesterday.

"This policy makes the United States a more appealing place for foreign professionals considering H-1Bs because their spouses who come on H-4 visas can continue their careers and contribute to the family income," it said in a new report.

Arguing against Trump administration's reported move to rescind its policy on H-4 visas, which is issued to the dependents of H-1B visa holders, the council said authorising H-4 spouses to work is advantageous as it allows them to work and brings the US in line with other countries competing to attract talented foreign nationals.

The highly-skilled individuals US employers hope to attract and employ on a H-1B non immigrant visa often have a spouse or family to consider.

The potential worker may have a spouse with an established career or a family needing the support of two working parents, it said.

"If a spouse retains the option of being employed, the US employer can provide a more appealing and competitive job offer," it said.

According to the council, the US government has provided work authorisation to 105,000 H-4 applicants since 2015.

Unlike H-1B visa holders, work authorisation for eligible H-4 spouses is unrestricted, meaning that the H-4 dependents can work for any employer.

Yet their work authorisation, like their immigration status, is dependent on the H-1B worker maintaining a valid immigration status.

The H1-B visa is a non-immigrant visa that allows US companies to employ foreign workers in speciality occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise.

US President Donald Trump issued an executive order last year that outlined changes to the employment eligibility for H-4 spouses.

It announced the administration's intent to revoke the regulation permitting certain H-4 spouses to apply for work authorisation.

The regulatory agenda published in Fall 2017 reaffirmed this intention, though few details have been made available.

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To facilitate mustard seed growers in Haryana, Hafed has opened 43 purchase centres in 13 districts of the state for procurement of the seed at minimum support price (MSP), a minister said.

Thirteen purchase centres were opened for the procurement of mustard seed last year, Haryana's Minister of State for Cooperation, Manish Grover said.

He said the Haryana State Cooperative Supply and Marketing Federation Limited (Hafed) has purchased 54,564 quintal mustard seed till Wednesday directly from farmers through the shops of its member Cooperative Marketing Societies against which payment of Rs 10.35 crore has already been released.

The payment to farmers is being made electronically through RTGS to their bank accounts, he said in an official release here.

Hafed is procuring mustard seed at MSP of Rs 4,000 per quintal, including a bonus of Rs 100, under the Government of India's Price Support Scheme (PSS) on behalf of NAFED.

This procurement of mustard seed, which started from March 15, would continue till May 10, he said.

He expressed his satisfaction over the preparations made by Hafed for the smooth procurement of the mustard seed and assured that it shall efficiently carry out this purchase in the best interest of the farmers of the state.

However, countering the state government's claims, former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda said mustard is not being procured at the MSP.

"The government has imposed several conditions for the procurement of mustard crop....the farmers are forced to sell their mustard for Rs 3,000 to Rs 3,200 per quintal against the MSP of Rs 4,000 per quintal," Hooda said.

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The Madras High Court has reserved its orders on an appeal filed in the decade-old Law College students clash case, in which both groups have expressed a desire to reach a compromise.

Two groups of students of Dr Ambedkar Government Law College, located near the high court campus, had clashed in 2008.

Police had named 43 persons as accused in the case.

A sessions court had, in 2016, sentenced 21 persons to three years imprisonment and also imposed a fine of Rs 15,000 on each.

The trial court also temporarily suspended their sentence as they preferred to go on appeal.

They approached the high court seeking permission to strike a compromise.

The request was made in the appeal moved by them challenging the trial court order.

Most of them, who are now lawyers, have been temporarily barred from practising by the Bar council in view of the conviction.

Directing them to file individual 'affidavits of compromise,' Justice R Suresh Kumar recently reserved orders on the appeal.

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BJP President Amit Shah today said his party, if voted to power, would make efforts to hunt down the killers of RSS and BJP workers in Karnataka, and hand out severest of punishment to them.

"I would like to tell the people of the state that Siddaramaiah's time has come to an end.

Soon after BJP forms the next government under Yeddyurappa's leadership, it will make all efforts to hunt down killers (of RSS and BJP workers) from any corner of the world," he said.

Shah was speaking to reporters after meeting the family members of BJP worker Raju, who was hacked to death in March 2016.

"They will be sent to jail and handed out stringent punishment," he added.

Shah said Siddaramaiah was mistaken if he and his government thought they could stall saffron ideology from spreading by unleashing violence against BJP and RSS workers.

"In politics, there is no room for violence. If Siddaramaiah and his government think they can stall our ideology from spreading, then he is mistaken," he said.

Shah alleged that police were not initiating any action against those who killed as many as 22 BJP and RSS workers



across Karnataka.

He alleged that the Siddaramaiah government has been releasing jailed killers and they have been "given opportunity" once again to kill people.

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India today received its first LNG cargo from the US under a long-term supply deal when a ship carrying super-cooled natural gas arrived at Dabhol in Maharashtra.

A charter ship, MV Meridian Spirit arrived at Dabhol after 25 days voyage from Louisiana, state-owned gas utility GAIL India Ltd said in a press statement.

GAIL India has contracted 3.5 million tonnes per annum of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from US energy firm Cheniere Energy's Sabine Pass liquefaction facility in Louisiana. The first cargo from the project arrived at Dabhol, the cite of India's biggest gas-fired power plant.

It has also contracted long-term volumes for another 2.3 million tonnes at Dominion Energy's Cove Point liquefaction plant.

"GAIL is one of the early movers to contract US LNG and has 5.8 million tonnes per annum of US LNG in its portfolio. GAIL shall be receiving around 90 cargoes per annum from Sabine Pass and Cove Point LNG terminals," the statement said.

The LNG, he said, is indexed to US Henry Hub gas index as well as crude oil. "GAIL will have an optimum portfolio mix of LNG indexed to Henry Hub (HH) and crude oil and the customers will benefit from such a unique price blend," it said.

The arrival of 'Meridian Spirit' at Dabhol marks beginning of LNG supplies under the Henry Hub-indexed contracts, it said.

The vessel arrived close on the heels of Dabhol power plant and the adjoining LNG receipt terminal being split into two separate companies. While state-owned electricity generator NTPC is the lead for the power block, GAIL is the majority owner of Konkan LNG Pvt Ltd, the firm which will run the 5 million tonnes a year LNG receipt facility.

Last October, India imported its first shipment of crude oil from the US. The US had stopped oil exports in 1975, but this ban was lifted by former US President Barack Obama in 2015.

GAIL had signed a sale and purchase agreement (SPA) with the US LNG exporter Cheniere Energy in December 2011. The SPA went into effect March 1. Under terms of the agreement, Cheniere will sell and make available for delivery to GAIL about 3.5 million tonnes a year of LNG.

Cheniere's LNG is based on natural gas sourced from the US market, which provides access to abundant and low-cost gas resources.

GAIL said India's trade with the USA, which stood at USD 126.1 billion in 2017, is expected to increase owing to large-scale imports of LNG and crude oil in coming years. "GAIL alone would be procuring approximately USD 2 billion worth of LNG per annum from USA from FY 2018-19," the statement said.

Cheniere Energy, Inc is the leading exporter of US LNG. It is currently operating and constructing its Sabine Pass LNG facility in Louisiana and is constructing a second liquefaction facility near Corpus Christi, Texas. When both projects are complete, it is expected to be a top-5 global supplier of LNG.

GAIL is India's biggest natural gas transportation and marketing company. It is expanding pipeline network by 4,000 km at an investment of over USD 3 billion to operate over 15,000 km by 2020. GAIL commands 75 per cent market share in gas transmission and has a gas trading share of over 50 per cent in India.

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Calling for removing non-tariff barriers between India and Pakistan, the Indian envoy here said today both the countries need to shun violence and normalise relations in order to take the two-way trade to USD 30 billion from the present USD 5 billion.

Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan Ajay Bisaria, addressing the Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) here, also said that there is no better way of improving bilateral relations than mutually beneficial economic ties.

He said mutual relations between the two countries should be built on the basis of trade and economy, and violence and war should not be an option.

Bisaria's statement came at a time when relations between the two nuclear-power neighbours are at a low amid heightened tensions following claims and counter-claims by both the countries about harassment of each other's diplomats.

The Indian High Commissioner also said that India and Pakistan should have the future different from the past and must not carry the burden of history.

"Both Pakistan and India need to take more steps to remove non-tariff barriers that are a major impediment to bilateral trade relations.

"We should not talk about negative and positive lists rather we should work on the windows of opportunities. At present, over USD 5 billion trade is being done through third country but after removal of non-tariff barriers, liberalisation of visa and normalisation of mutual relations, the two-way trade could touch a high USD 30 billion," he said.

Stressing that both India and Pakistan could cater to each other if they utilise youths, Bisaria said that two-third population of India is below the age of 35 and same is the case in Pakistan where 65 per cent population is under the age of 35.

"Chambers of the commerce and industry of both the countries are important lobby as not only they can play an instrumental role in strengthening mutual trade and economic ties but also influence the policy makers," he said.

LCCI President Malik Tahir Javaid said at present an unfavourable scenario has developed both at political and diplomatic fronts.

"We have been witnessing time and again that first there is a trust deficit, then some joint efforts are made for trust building, then some incident happens and we end up yet again at trust deficit. One such (terror) incident must not halt the process of relation building. Both countries should give the peace another chance to prevail in the region for our youth and coming generations," he said.

Pakistan and India need to show a lot of maturity and act very sensibly, he added.

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Fearing abduction of an Indian national in central China's Zhejiang province, Indian authorities in Shanghai have sought details of his whereabouts from the Chinese government, diplomatic sources said today.

The Indian Consulate in Shanghai filed a "note verbale", a diplomatic communication, with the local office of the Chinese Foreign Ministry on Tuesday, seeking details of Tabrez Akbarali Bana, a resident of Mumbai, the sources said.

Bana has been reported missing from the Chinese commodity market Yiwu for the past a few days, amid concerns that he may have been abducted by local businessmen over a trade dispute.

He visited the police station in Yiwu a few days ago to complain about threats by the businessmen and has been reported missing since.

Indian officials fear he may have been abducted by the traders, who aggressively pursue foreign businessmen who owe them money.

Family sources say Bana may have been picked up by the traders because of a mistaken identity.

Hundreds of Indian traders visit Yiwu, the world's biggest commodity market, to purchase goods and sell them via retail outlets in India.

Similar cases involving trade disputes have been reported in the past in China. Two Indian traders - Sunder Agrawal and Deepak Raheja - had to face cases for allegedly cheating Chinese suppliers in 2012.

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An Indian-origin teenager was found hanged in the grounds of a top UK grammar school after feeling excluded by her classmates for not including her in a WhatsApp group, an inquest into her death was told this week.

Elena Mondal, 14, was found unresponsive by her teachers in a wooded area at Hampstead's exclusive Henrietta Barnett School in north London last year.

Psychiatrist Emily Hallgarten told Barnet Coroner's Court that she may have felt excluded by her friends after not being included in a WhatsApp group, the Sun reported.

The inquest heard how her parents, Shyamal and Moushumi Mondal, feared that their daughter was being bullied at the girls' school, which was ranked the top performing state-funded school in the UK in 2016 and 2017.

School officials told the inquest how Elena, who wanted to be a doctor, once fled a classroom in tears clutching a pair of scissors, before collapsing in a corridor and cutting her arms in a toilet.

A wellbeing manager at the school, Kelly Barry, said that Elena had been referred to the school counsellor after missing meals and complaining of depression but had missed several appointments.

When asked if the school's "hothouse culture" could be putting pupils at risk of mental health issues, she said: "It is not unusual for teenage girls at different points to engage in experiments with food or self-harm."



Consultant psychiatrist Cathy Wainhouse added that Elena may not have intended to die instead hoping that she would be found by friends before her "dramatic statement" went wrong.

The inquest has been adjourned until an expert psychiatrist can assess the care provided to the teenager before her death.

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A Dhaman snake, injured grievously after it was hit with an iron rod, was operated upon here earlier this week.

The snake has been now advised 'bed rest', and is recuperating, a veterinary doctor said.

Manjit Kaur Bal, a local social activist, said the snake, which is around 4 ft long, was spotted in a house in Naya Raipur area on Wednesday.

Dhaman, also known as the Indian Rat Snake, is a non- venomous species which is harmless for humans, but members of the family in whose house it was spotted, got scared and hit the reptile with an iron rod.

When Bal's mother came to know about it, she brought the injured snake home by putting it in a sack.

Bal took the snake to Padam Jain, a local veterinary surgeon, who decided to carry out an operation as its innards had come out due to a deep gash.

Bal said the snake was stitched up after surgery which lasted around one-and-a-half hours. It was given anaesthesia before the operation.

Jain said the snake would need at least a week to recover fully.

The surgeon said he performed this kind of an operation for the first time in his career.

At present, the patient is being given antibiotics, and fed glucose and eggs through a pipe. The snake would be released in the wild once it recovers, Jain said.

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Private carrier on Friday announced special fares for its four-day Easter sale which commenced on Friday, offering up to 20 per cent discount for bookings in premiere and up to 10 per cent for travel in economy classes in the domestic sector.

Besides, it is also offering discount of up to 30 per cent on base fares for premiere and economy travel on select international routes during this period, the airline said in a statement.

The tickets are valid for travel on the airline's 45 city domestic network from the date of purchase till September 30, 2018 on one-way journeys, the airline said.

The special fares for international travel are applicable for both one-way as well as return journeys and can be availed for bookings on routes from India to destinations such as Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, Bahrain, Doha, Dammam, Kuwait, Riyadh, Jeddah, Muscat, Kathmandu, Dhaka, Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangkok, Amsterdam, Paris, London and Toronto, it informed.
Megastar Amitabh Bachchan has said he feels "joy and honour" in collaborating with South superstar Chiranjeevi on his next Telugu film, "Sye Raa Narasimha Reddy".

The 75-year-old actor is currently here to shoot for the film, in which he has a a guest appearance.

"'SYEERA... Narasimha Reddy'... The joy and honour of working with Chiranjeevi Garu," Amitabh tweeted along with photos from the film's set.

"NIRVAAN... And the call of the Himalayas!" he said in another tweet.

Bachchan had recently shared his look test from the film in which he can be seen sporting a long grey hair and beard.

He is expected to complete his part of the shooting within a week.

The veteran will be next seen in "102 Not Out" playing a 102-year-old father to his 75-year-old son, portrayed by Rishi Kapoor.

Apart from this, the megastar will also be playing a pivotal role in "Thugs of Hindostan", also starring Aamir Khan, Katrina Kaif and Fatima Sana Shaikh.

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Kerala-based Kalyan Jewellers today said the Dubai Police has filed a case against five persons of Indian origin for circulating alleged fake about the brand and quality of jewellery sold.

The maligning posts were made viral across social media platforms and more evidently on Whatsapp groups. The posts further claimed that the UAE showrooms of Kalyan Jewellers were sealed and the owners arrested, it said in a statement.

"Investigations by the Dubai Police has confirmed one of the above manipulated and circulated false social media posts giving the impression that the gold jewellery sold by the brand is impure and fake. ...The investigation against the others are under process," the Kalyan Jewellers said.

The Dubai Police has initiated criminal proceedings for charges of cyber crime and abuse using the internet/social media platform against five persons of Indian origin.

The company said it had immediately refuted the false claims by posting a statement on their official social media handles.

Kalyan Jewellers Chairman and Managing Director T S Kalyanaraman said, "Such instances of fake propagated by a few irresponsible individuals, is an attempt to tarnish the image and reputation of brands. These acts have deep impact on the emotions of all those associated with the brand and the company," he said.

The legal action follows a complaint filed by Kalyan Jewellers LLC before the Dubai Public Prosecution against spreading fake videos and false on social media.

Kalyan Jewellers has operations in the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait and Oman. It has 121 showrooms across India and West Asia.

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The Kremlin said today it was not Russia that had unleashed a diplomatic war with the West following the mass expulsion of US envoys in retaliation against coordinated moves by Britain and its allies over a spy poisoning.

"Russia did not unleash any diplomatic war," President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists.

"Russia never initiated any exchange of sanctions.

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Delhi Revenue minister Kailash Gahlot today alleged that the Lt Governor had "objected" to the government's proposed "Teerth Yatra" scheme for the elderly, prompting Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal to accuse the L-G of "obstructing" every AAP project.

Under the scheme, which was proposed in the 2018-19 Delhi Budget, the Kejriwal government plans to send senior citizens on pilgrimage for free of cost.

The chief minister also asked the BJP not to "obstruct" his government's work.

"I feel v v sad that LG is practically obstructing every scheme and every project of Del Govt. How do we run govt like this? My appeal to BJP - Don't obstruct our work. I challenge your govts in other states to compete with us in work (sic)," Kejriwal said on Twitter.

The Delhi government has proposed to set aside Rs 53 crore for the scheme that aims to send 77,000 elderly people, who are bona-fide residents of Delhi, on religious trips.

Gahlot alleged that Lt Governor (L-G) Anil Baijal "objected" to the scheme and said it should be "restricted" to people in the Below Poverty Line (BPL) category.

Baijal has forgotten that many children do not support their old parents, who will be happy to avail the government's scheme, he said.

"Now LG objects to Teerth Yatra Yojana. LG wants it to be restricted to BPL. LG forgets that many children do not support their old parents.

"They would be happy to receive govt support. And every govt facility should not be restricted only to BPL (sic)," the minister tweeted.

During the Budget presentation last week, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia had said, "But approval of Lt Governor is still awaited. Hopefully, he will approve this important scheme for senior citizens of Delhi at the earliest.

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Prohibitory orders remained in force and internet services suspended for the third day today even as life was limping back to normal in this industrial town of West Bengal, official sources said.

There was no fresh incident of violence but the prohibitory orders were in force in Asansol as tension prevailed in the northern parts of the town, Sub-Divisional Officer (SDO) P Roychowdhury said.

Internet services would remain suspended till April 4, he added.

Prohibitory orders under section 144, CrPC were clamped in the Asansol-Raniganj area and internet services were suspended on Wednesday.

Roychowdhury said the police staged a route march in the town to instill a sense of security among the people.

Shops and markets, however, opened and vehicles plied in the southern parts of the town, he added.

State BJP general secretary Sayantan Basu said a delegation of party leaders would visit Raniganj and Asansol, which had recently witnessed clashes between two groups over Ram Navami processions.

The BJP delegation would visit the troubled areas to assess the situation and submit its report to party president Amit Shah, he added.

The four-member delegation would comprise BJP national spokesperson Shahnawaz Hussain, party MPs Roopa Ganguly and O P Mathur and senior leader V D Ram, Basu said.

"The dates are yet to be finalised, but they will visit Raniganj either tomorrow or the day after," he added.

Reacting to the proposed visit of the BJP delegation, Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader and Asansol Municipal Corporation mayor Jitendra Tiwari alleged that the leaders of the saffron party wanted to visit the area to incite violence in order to divide the people on religious lines.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had held a high-level meeting at the secretariat in Kolkata yesterday, after returning from New Delhi, to review the situation in the Asansol-Raniganj area. The chief secretary, the home secretary, the director general of police (DGP) and the ADGP (law and order) were present at the meeting.

One person was killed and two police officers were injured in the violence that had erupted in the area on Sunday and Monday.

The Imam of Noorani Masjid, Imdatullah Rashid, had yesterday said his younger son was killed in the violence and that his body was found on Wednesday night, but he had not filed any police complaint in this regard.

He had also appealed to the people to restore peace in the area.

There was no confirmation from the police about the death of the Imam's son.

Union minister Babul Supriyo had last night said two FIRs were lodged against him by the police, following which he also filed a complaint against the men in uniform.

Supriyo and state BJP Mahila Morcha president Locket Chatterjee were stopped by the police from entering the Asansol-Raniganj area yesterday.

A scuffle had ensued between BJP supporters and the police when the Union minister tried to enter Asansol, his Lok Sabha constituency.

State Parliamentary Affairs Minister Partha Chatterjee had accused the BJP of trying to destroy peace and communal harmony in the state.

"When police is patrolling the area, why do they want to visit Raniganj? Are they not satisfied after unleashing violence for the last two days ?" he had said.

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Prohibitory orders remained in force and Internet services suspended here today even as life was limping back to normal in the southern parts of the town, official sources said.

Shops and markets opened and vehicles started plying in the southern parts of Asansol, Sub-Divisional Officer (SDO) P Roychowdhury said, adding that tension still prevailed in the northern parts of the town.

There was no fresh incident of violence, but the prohibitory orders were in force in Asansol, he said.

Internet services would remain suspended till April 4, the SDO added.

The police staged a route march in the town to instill a sense of security among the people, he said.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had held a high-level meeting at the secretariat in Kolkata yesterday, after returning from New Delhi, to review the situation in the Asansol-Raniganj area. The chief secretary, the home secretary, the director general of police (DGP) and the ADGP (law and order) were present at the meeting.

One person was killed and two police officers were injured in the violence that had erupted in the area on Sunday and Monday.

The Imam of Noorani Masjid, Imdatullah Rashid, had yesterday said his younger son was killed in the violence and that his body was found on Wednesday night.

There was no confirmation from the police about the incident.

The Imam has appealed to the people to restore peace in the area.

Union minister Babul Supriyo had last night said two FIRs were lodged against him by the police, following which he also filed a complaint against the police.

Supriyo and state BJP Mahila Morcha president Locket Chatterjee were stopped by the police from entering the Asansol-Raniganj area.

A scuffle had ensued between BJP supporters and the police when the Union minister tried to enter Asansol, his Lok Sabha constituency.

State Parliamentary Affairs Minister Partha Chatterjee had accused the BJP of trying to destroy the peace and communal harmony in the state.

"When police is patrolling the area, why do they want to visit Raniganj? Are they not satisfied after unleashing violence for the last two days," he had said.

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Malala Yousafzai, the youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner, on Saturday arrived in her Swat Valley hometown in Pakistan for the first time after she was shot in the head by Taliban militants for advocating girls education more than five years ago.



A teary eyed Malala said , "I have dreamed of returning to Pakistan for the past five years," according to Pakistani daily Dawn.

Amid tight security, she along with her parents arrived in Swat district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on a day-long visit, sources said.

She has been put up in Circuit House. The venue had been surrounded by the law enforcers.

She will be visiting her ancestral home in Makan Bagh in Mingora, her school besides inaugurating a girls school in Shangla district, the sources added.



plans to return to Pakistan permanently once her studies are completed, she told Pakistani media in Islamabad on Friday, the second day of her emotional trip back more than five years after being shot by Taliban gunmen.

Security has forced the Nobel laureate, whose arrival in the country dominated headlines and social media, to keep her itinerary tightly under wraps.

But in a televised interview with Pakistan's largest private broadcaster Geo TV the 20-year-old said that the country, which has long battled extremism, is "becoming better".

"Definitely, there is a difference" between the Pakistan of today and in 2012, when she was airlifted to a British hospital after being shot in the head by Taliban gunmen angered over her stance as an advocate for girls' education.

"Things are becoming better, people are uniting and a campaign for better Pakistan is ongoing, people are active which is very good."



The Oxford student, who has said that she wants to run for prime minister one day, added: "It is my plan to return to Pakistan after completion of my education, because it is my country and I have equal rights on it like any other Pakistani."



Her comments came after she broke down in tears as she delivered an emotional televised speech yesterday saying it was a "dream" to be back in the country after so many years.

Malala is widely respected internationally as a global icon for girls' education, but opinion is divided in Pakistan, where some conservatives view her as a Western agent on a mission to shame her country.

"Pakistan has not done well by its heroes," an editorial in the English-language Dawn newspaper on Malala's homecoming said Friday, noting that the country's other Nobel laureate -- physicist Abdus Salaam -- had been widely shunned for being a member of the persecuted Ahmadi minority.

With intense criticism among the many messages of welcome, even the people she is meeting have been kept in the dark about her presence.

Women's rights activist Nighat Dad said that she and a group of other feminists from across Pakistan who were gathered yesterday were not told they would be seeing Malala until the last moment.

The organiser, Oscar-winning director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, only told them "It'll be the highlight of your year," Dad said -- adding that she had been right.

Malala became a global symbol for human rights after a gunman boarded her school van on October 9, 2012, asked "Who is Malala?" and shot her.

The Pakistani Taliban accused her of "anti-Islamic" activities and of "smearing" the militant group in statements released after the attack.

She was treated for her injuries in the British city of Birmingham, where she also completed her schooling.

The youngest-ever winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014, she has continued to be a vocal advocate for girls' education while studying at Oxford University.

Swat, Malala's former home in Pakistan's rugged northwest, was overrun by the Taliban in 2007, where they imposed a brutal regime including banning girls from school.

They were pushed out in a military operation in 2009, but security has remained fragile, as the attack on Malala three years later demonstrated.

However in recent weeks authorities have lifted prohibitions against tourists visiting the mountainous region, famed for its beauty, as security improves.

Residents say Malala's story has changed the lives of other girls in the area.

"Parents are sending their girls to school so Malala has been successful in her aim," Swat resident Shahista Hakeem told AFP.

Many of those who live in the area were happy to hear of Malala's return to Pakistan, Hakeem said, adding: "We want that she should come to Swat also.
The Congress in Manipur today took exception to Chief Minister N Biren Singh's recent comment on "the state's integration with India" and alleged that it was an "attempt to distort history".

During his recent visit to the Madhavpura Fair in Gujarat, the chief minister had said the north-east had been a part of India since the Dwapar Yug and "Manipur was made a part of India by Lord Krishna in the mythical times".

Singh had also invoked the mythological tale of Lord's Krishna's marriage and said, "By marrying Rukmini, Krishna had bound the north-east with India."



"The north-eastern states were ignored politically and socially in the past, despite being part of a united India," the chief minister had said at the event, where a number of BJP leaders, including Union ministers Kiren Rijiju and Mahesh Sharma, talked about the mythological references on Rukmini hailing from the north-east.

Taking a serious note of Singh's statement, opposition leaders, led by former chief minister O Ibobi Singh, said the chief minister should apologise for his "irresponsible claims" in Gujarat.

At a press conference at the Congress Bhavan here, Ibobi said the Congress did not want to gain "political mileage" from the issue and that it just wanted to clarify the facts.

"The state was politically merged with India in 1949 and Biren should clarify and apologise for his irresponsible claims, which go against the interest of the public, historians and intellectual circles," he said.

Manipur Pradesh Congress Committee president TN Haokip alleged that Singh's comment was an attempt "to promote the Hindutva ideology" in a secular India.

"Biren has become a historian overnight and has failed to take into account the feelings of the masses," he said.

Senior Congress leader and former deputy chief minister Gaikhangam Gangmei said the statement was against "the spirit of secularism enshrined in the country's constitution".

A senior BJP leader refused to comment on the matter and said his party would come up with a reply later in the evening.

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The BSF today said it may have a "limited confrontation" with Pakistan on the International Border (IB) in Jammu and Kashmir in April, soon after the harvest season is over.

The BSF also said multiple infiltration bids by Pakistan along the International Border (IB) have been foiled in recent past.

Pakistan violated the ceasefire agreement along the LoC and the International Border in Jammu and Kashmir 633 times in the first two months of this year in which 10 security personnel and 12 civilians were killed, the Lok Sabha was informed recently.

Union Minister of State for home Hansraj Gangaram Ahir had said 432 incidents of ceasefire violation have taken place along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir and 201 such incidents along the International Border this year till February.

"As I said, we anticipate that immediately after the crops are cut (harvesting) we may have a limited confrontation with Pakistan," BSF Director-General K K Sharma told reporters here today.

He said every year there has been limited engagement with Pakistan in April after crops are harvested.

"We wish that this should not happen (confrontation), but we have to be prepared," he said.

Sharma said the Jammu frontier and the western command are well prepared. The frontier is doing extremely well, he added.

Replying to a question on terror launch pads across the border, the BSF DG said, "We have been getting information regularly that there are training camps and launch pads across the border."



"Keeping that in mind, the BSF is taking measures so that any infiltration bid does not succeed,"the BSF chief said, adding it is open secret that Pakistani Rangers and its army are helping them.

"They deny it at international fora. Such activity (infiltration) cannot take place without as active support of Pak Rangers and the Pak army," Sharma said.

He said there have been a number of infiltration attempts along the IB during the past three months. "We have spotted a number of (militant) groups coming closer to the IB. We have always been alert and therefore, they have not succeeded and have gone back.

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The Met department today warned of severe thunderstorms with wind speed reaching up to 65 to 70 kilometre per hour in large parts of West Bengal till Sunday.

Heavy rain accompanied with hailstorm, high winds with speed reaching up to 70 km per hour are likely to affect the districts of sub-Himalayan West Bengal today.

"Thundersquall accompanied with wind speed between 55 to 65 km per hour is very likely to prevail over the districts of Bankura, Birbhum, East and West Bardhman, Murshidabad, Nadia, Jhargram, Purulia, East and West Midnapore, Howrah, Hooghly, Kolkata and North and South 24 Parganas of south West Bengal on Saturday and Sunday," Regional Met Director G K Das said.

Das said that similar conditions are likely to be the same in these districts on Sunday also.

The districts of Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri, Coochbehar, Alipurduar, Jalpaiguri, Kalimpong, Malda, North and South Dinajpur in northern parts of West Bengal are likely to continue to be affected by thundersquall accompanied with wind speed reaching upto 45-55 km per hour tomorrow, the regional Met director said.

"The severe thunderstorms with high wind speed that are likely to affect most parts of the state are owing to a north-south trough over eastern part of Bihar to south interior Odisha," Das said.

The system is likely to strengthen during the next two days with embedded cyclonic circulation over east Jharkhand and adjoining Gangetic West Bengal, Das said.

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Madhya Pradesh Governor Anandiben Patel today said the coming examinations of government-run universities in the state should be conducted under the surveillance of CCTV cameras.

Being the governor, Patel is the Chancellor of all the universities run by the state government.

Speaking at the convocation of Devi Ahilya University here, she said, "CCTV cameras should be installed in all buildings of the state-run universities where written or oral examinations will be conducted in the coming days."



This would ensure a transparent examination system, Patel said.

Vice chancellors of all the universities have been asked to visit Bhopal on April 6 and present annual calendars of their respective institutions, Patel said.

The calendar is supposed to have the schedule of examinations, deadline for declaration of results and details of academic and cultural activities planned for the coming year.

Universities should change the curriculum according to the need of the times and also introduce new courses, the governor said.

Hailing the Union government's campaigns to promote cleanliness and water conservation, the former Gujarat chief minister said that research for PhD should be encouraged in these areas.

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Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan today announced raising the retirement age of state government employees to 62 years from the current 60 years.

He made the announcement while speaking to reporters here today. He, however. did not disclose details of this decision. There are about five lakh regular government employees in the state.

The opposition Congress, accusing the government of "deceiving" the state's unemployed youth by increasing the retirement age, demanded that such youth be given a "berozgari bhatta" (unemployment allowance).

Replying to a question on the Supreme Court's order related to the promotion of state government employees. Chouhan said, "Several state government employees are not able to get promotion due to the apex court's order in a case related to 'reservation in promotion' pending with the SC. We will not allow any employee to retire without him getting his due promotion. This is why we have decided to increase the retirement age from 60 to 62 years."



The state government had made a provision for reservation for SC/ST employees in promotion, which was set aside by the Madhya Pradesh High Court.

The state's appeal against the order is pending in the SC with the latter ordering a status quo. This, officials said, has kept on hold promotions of state government employees.

Chouhan expressed hope that SC would take a decision on it within next two years.

Attacking the government, the opposition Congress said the decision was not going to help employees.

"This decision is not going to benefit employees. On the contrary, this would deprive younger officials and employees from getting a promotion. The CM should now announce an unemployment allowance of Rs 2,000 per month to jobless educated youth of the state," said Ajay Singh, Leader of Opposition in the Assembly.

He added that the state government should address the problems of contract employees, who are staging protests.

Meanwhile, the Berojgar Sena, an outfit of the educated unemployed, has opposed the government's decision and called it "cheating".

"Chouhan has deceived 1.5-crore educated unemployed youth of Madhya Pradesh by increasing the retirement age of state government employees. This decision will harm the BJP. We will tour the entire state to apprise the youth about this. We will also take legal recourse," said Akshay Hunka, the outfit's chief.

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There is a need for multi-level campaigns to build awareness around information sharing on social media at a time when breach of user data on a social networking platform has placed data privacy issues in public glare, says IT body Nasscom.

Nasscom President R Chandrashekhar said in an interview that a new generation of users and new economic strata that are entering the digital space for the first time have necessitated focused campaigns, which promote awareness around online behaviour and threats.

"As far as citizens are concerned, there is a need for building awareness on what the threats are, what they need to do especially in India more than other countries because we have a new generation and a new economic strata that is coming into the digital space for the first time," Chandrashekhar said.

The comments came at a time when there is a global backlash over data leak on social networking platform Facebook. Data mining firm, Cambridge Analytica has been accused of harvesting personal information of over 50 million Facebook users illegally to influence polls in several countries.

Chandrashekhar added that an increasing number of users are now going online for financial transactions, and many of them may not be aware of the risks involved.

"There is a certain responsibility that government and service providers have, but also a certain responsibility that an individual has. A right is of no use, unless and until you exercise it. At each of these levels, there is a need to build awareness as everybody may not be that well-educated or informed," he said.

The outgoing Nasscom President, whose tenure comes to an end on March 31, 2018, explained that there is a large number of youngsters on social media, and it is therefore important to sensitise them about risks and threats in the online world.

"It is not just about a breach but also about choosing what information you want to put in the public domain online," he added.

The advent of cheaper smartphones, faster connectivity and affordable data packs have fuelled mobile internet usage in India, with youth turning out to be the most prolific user of such services.

According to Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), the number of mobile internet users in India is set to touch 478 million by June 2018, against 456 million in December 2017.

Chandrashekhar highlighted that apart from the privacy and economic aspect, pertaining to financial gains from consumer data, there is a technological aspect to be considered too.

"Newer technologies like artificial intelligence are actually being built on data. So, your very ability to evolve new technology arises from your command and control large mountains of data," he pointed out.

The controversy around Facebook's data breach has raised serious questions around whether there is a need for stronger regulatory framework for the online world and steps that should be taken to ensure that citizen data is not misused.

Facebook's data scandal has sparked a furore in India, with the government warning the social networking giant of "stringent" action for any attempt to influence polls through data theft and even threatening to summon Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, if needed.

The IT ministry has also shot-off notices to Facebook and Cambridge Analytica on the data breach issue and will decide on action to be taken after receiving their responses.
NASA is all set to send the first-ever mission dedicated to exploring the deep interior of Mars, the US space agency said today.

Scheduled to launch on May 5, InSight - a stationary lander - will also be the first NASA mission since the Apollo moon landings to place a seismometer, a device that measures quakes, on the soil of another planet.

"In some ways, InSight is like a scientific time machine that will bring back information about the earliest stages of Mars' formation 4.5 billion years ago," said Bruce Banerdt, principal investigator for InSight.

"It will help us learn how rocky bodies form, including Earth, its moon, and even planets in other solar systems," said Banerdt.

InSight or the Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport mission, carries a suite of sensitive instruments to gather data.

Unlike a rover mission, these instruments require a stationary lander from which they can carefully be placed on and below the martian surface, NASA said.

Mars is the exoplanet next door - a nearby example of how gas, dust and heat combine and arrange themselves into a planet.

Looking deep into Mars will let scientists understand how different its crust, mantle and core are from Earth, the US space agency said.

NASA is not the only agency excited about the mission. Several European partners contributed instruments or instrument components to the InSight mission.

France's Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales led a multinational team that built an ultra-sensitive seismometer for detecting marsquakes.

The German Aerospace Center (DLR) developed a thermal probe that can bury itself up to five metres underground and measure heat flowing from inside the planet.

"InSight is a truly international space mission," said Tom Hoffman, project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

"Our partners have delivered incredibly capable instruments that will make it possible to gather unique science after we land," Hoffman said.

InSight currently is at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California undergoing final preparation before launch, NASA said.

This week, it completed what is known as a spin test: the entire spacecraft is rotated at high speeds to confirm its centre of gravity.

That is critical for its entry, descent and landing on Mars in November, Hoffman said.

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For the first time, Nepal's central bank has allowed other commercial bank in the country to borrow money from foreign banks and financial institutions to finance sectors such as agriculture and infrastructure projects.

Nepal Rastra Bank's (NRB) board of directors yesterday held a meeting and made a decision to this effect, according to sources at the central bank.

This is for the first time that Nepal's banks are allowed to borrow money from foreign banks. The decision comes in the wake of liquidity crunches facing Nepalese banks.

According to the new regulation, Nepal's commercial banks could borrow loans up to 25 per cent of their core capital.

"The banks can borrow loans for the period from one year to five years to finance productive sector such as agriculture, hydropower, tourism, and infrastructure projects," a senior bank official told PTI.

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Children who are "night owls" and attend early morning classes are more likely to receive lower grades, a study has found.

Students whose circadian rhythms were out of sync with their class schedules received lower grades due to 'social jet lag,' a condition in which peak alertness times are at odds with work, school or other demands.

In addition to learning deficits, social jet lag has been tied to obesity and excessive alcohol and tobacco use.

"We found that the majority of students were being jet-lagged by their class times, which correlated very strongly with decreased academic performance," said Benjamin Smarr from University of California, Berkeley in the US.

Researchers tracked the personal daily online activity profiles of nearly 15,000 college students as they logged into campus servers.

After sorting the students into "night owls," "daytime finches" and "morning larks" - based on their activities on days they were not in class - the researchers compared their class times to their academic outcomes.

"Our research indicates that if a student can structure a consistent schedule in which class days resemble non-class days, they are more likely to achieve academic success," the researchers said.

While students of all categories suffered from class-induced jet lag, the study found that night owls were especially vulnerable, many appearing so chronically jet-lagged that they were unable to perform optimally at any time of day.

"Because owls are later and classes tend to be earlier, this mismatch hits owls the hardest, but we see larks and finches taking later classes and also suffering from the mismatch," Smarr said.

"Different people really do have biologically diverse timing, so there isn't a one-time-fits-all solution for education," he said.

For the study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, the researchers analysed the online activity of 14,894 college students.

To separate the owls from the larks from the finches, and gain a more accurate alertness profile, the researchers tracked students' activity levels on days that they did not attend a class.

Next, they looked at how larks, finches and owls had scheduled their classes during four semesters from 2014 to 2016 and found that about 40 per cent were mostly biologically in sync with their class times. As a result, they performed better in class and enjoyed higher GPAs.

However, 50 per cent of the students were taking classes before they were fully alert, and another 10 per cent had already peaked by the time their classes started.

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An enquiry was today ordered into the death of a North MCD employee, who died while trying to fix a loader of the civic body in outer Delhi's Narela area.

North Delhi mayor Preety Agarwal directed municipal commissioner Madhup Vyas to set up an inquiry into the death of Satvir, 52, who worked as a driver in the Narela zone of the North Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD).

"He was reportedly driving a Vectra make Skid Steer Loader which was purchased recently by the corporation," Agarwal said.

The victim also trained other employees in operating loaders owned by the civic body. He was killed on duty in an accident yesterday.

The mayor also directed the commissioner to look into the "functioning and safety aspects" of the newly-purchased loader.

The mayor has sought a detailed report about the matter by Monday, a North MCD statement said.

Agarwal also visited the family of the deceased and assured to extend all possible support.

She directed that compassionate appointment to a dependent of the deceased be extended by the corporation without delay, the statement added.

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Pakistan has asked India to allow its officials to undertake a tour for inspecting Indian projects in the Indus river basin, which New Delhi said will be arranged in line with the provisions of the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT), according to government sources.

Pakistan made the request during the two-day meeting of the Permanent Indus Commission (PIC) between the two countries here.

The last time a Pakistani team of officials visited the Indus river basin in India was in 2014.

The sources said both the countries stuck to their respective positions over India's two hydropower projects Pakal Dul and Lower Kalnai, both in Jammu and Kashmir, during the 114th PIC meet.

Pakistan has been raising objections over the designs of Pakal Dul (1000 MW) and Lower Kalnai (48 MW) projects -- located in the Chenab basin in Jammu and Kashmir -- contending that they violate the IWT, signed in 1960. On the other hand, India has been maintaining that the designs of the projects are very much in line with the provisions of the water sharing pact.

The sources maintained that the discussions took place in a cordial manner during the meeting, which took place in the backdrop of the continuing tension between the two countries.

India's Indus water commissioner P K Saxena, technical experts and a representative of the Ministry of External Affairs took part in meeting as part of the Indian delegation. Pakistan's six-member delegation was led by Syed Muhammad Mehar Ali Shah.

Pakistan has requested for a general tour of inspection of various projects on Indus basin rivers. And India will consider that and arrange it in line with the provisions of the IWT, a source said.

India had arranged a tour of the Pakistani officials to sites of Pakal Dul and Lower Kalnai projects after the neighbouring country requested so in 2014, the sources said.

So far, 118 such tours have been made by both sides. Out of which, 70 tours were arranged on the Indian side and the rest 48 in Pakistan.

The sources further said that while Pakistan's objections regarding the two hydro electric projects were discussed by the two sides during the meeting, the issues concerning another of Indian project, Ratle (850 MW) -- located in Jammu and Kashmir -- were not deliberated upon.

India, sources said, had offered the Pakistan delegation discussion on Ratle, whose design Islamabad has been objecting to. But the delegation did not accept the offer, saying the issue is already being discussed at higher level than the Commission, that is, at the secretary-level.

India is always open to discussions. As a responsible state, India always takes care of the apprehensions of the lower riparian state (here Pakistan), the source said.

The PIC is an established mechanism under the IWT, which mandates it to establish and maintain cooperative arrangements for the implementation of the water distribution pact and to promote cooperation between the two sides in the development of the Indus water systems.

The IWT covers the water distribution and sharing rights of six rivers -- Beas, Ravi, Sutlej, Indus, Chenab and Jhelum.

The treaty specifies that waters from the three western rivers -- Indus, Jhelum and Chenab -- are reserved for Pakistan, while waters from eastern rivers -- Ravi, Sutlej and Beas -- are for reserved for India.

The PIC had last met in March 2017 in Islamabad. The meeting of the PIC is held alternately in India and Pakistan at least once every year as mandated by the treaty.

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Two pilot projects of Comprehensive Integrated Border Management System (CIBMS) in sectors along nearly 200 km long International Border (IB) will be completed by April end, DG BSF K K Sharma said.

CIBMS is an integration of a number of new gadgets and technologies to ensure electronic surveillance of borders.

"The two pilot projects of 5.5 and 5.3 kilometer of stretches each are nearing completion. I am hopeful that by the end of April, both these patches will be complete for the inauguration," Sharma told PTI.

These provide feeds to BSF personnel at the border outposts, where monitors would be installed. In case of a threat, quick reaction BSF teams will intervene and neutralise it.

The BSF chief expressed hope that it will be able to plug the gaps in "vulnerable areas" along the country's borders with Pakistan and Bangladesh in the next three to five years.

He said that the BSF plans to put up a CIBMS in areas along the Indo-Pak and India-Bangladesh border, where it is difficult to put up a fence due to the nature of the terrain as well as check cross-border infiltration and smuggling.

The BSF has decided to go ahead on construction of 10-meter high wall cum embankment along IB in Jammu frontier after much delay.

The Central government had begun the process of building a wall 10 meters high and 190 km long IB to prevent infiltration, and protect locals from shelling across the border in 2016.

The wall, called border embankment for strategic reasons, will be built along the 110 km stretch of the Kathua-Jammu region is going to be 135 feet wide. A proposal to construct 80 additional border posts has also been approved.

Out of 118 villages in the districts of Kathua, Samba and Jammu, authorities have completed land acquisition in 106 villages. In all over 1,600 acres of land is being procured at a cost of Rs 104 crore.

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi today lauded the role of Kutchi Leva Patel community in the development of East Africa, saying Indians living abroad are the country's "permanent ambassadors".

Addressing the silver jubilee celebrations of the 'Shree Kutchi Leva Patel Samaj' in Nairobi, Kenya via video conferencing, he lauded the contribution of the community in various welfare activities and the development of East Africa.

He also recalled the role of members of Indian community in Kenya's freedom movement, an official statement said.

Addressing the gathering in Gujarati, he said Indians living abroad are "permanent ambassadors" of the country and help strengthen bonds between nations.

The prime minister appreciated the contribution of Kutchi samaj towards all-round development, especially their role in the reconstruction and rehabilitation after the earthquake in Kutch in 2001.

He said,"Kutch which was once considered a deserted place, has been converted into a prime tourist destination.

Modi also highlighted the double engine strength of the Centre and the state government in carrying out the development activities in the region.

"The region has received thousands of crore rupees of investment in last few years," he said.

The Prime Minister pointed out that the engagement of India and African countries has been on the rise.

The India-Africa Summit and a meeting of African Development Bank were held in India and the President, the Vice President, and himself as the PM have visited various African countries on more than 20 occasions, during the tenure of the present government, he said.

During his address, the PM also invited persons in the gathering, especially who have not visited India, on the occasion of Kumbha Mela in January 2019 to experience the cultural and spiritual tradition of India.

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Police have apprehended a minor in connection with the killing of a 21-year-old Delhi University student, who was allegedly killed by a man after their relationship turned sour, police said today.

The body of Ayush Nautiyal, a final year student of Ram Lal Anand College in south campus, was found in a drain in Dwarka Sector 13 on Wednesday night. His family was receiving ransom calls from March 22 demanding Rs 50 lakh, they said.

However, following the arrest of Ishtiaq, a sampling manager with several export houses, it was revealed that he had killed Nautiyal on March 22 with a hammer. He had cooked up a kidnapping story to mislead the police and to buy more time in disposing of the body, police said.

During interrogation, he revealed that he was assisted by a juvenile in disposing of the body. The juvenile was apprehended today, they said.

Nautiyal and the accused had met through a dating site and in the last 10 days they had met thrice. The victim used to meet strangers through dating sites.

On March 22, Ishtiaq and Nautiyal met and were in the former's car when an argument happened between them over breaking up with each other, police said.

Ishtiaq allegedly hit Nautiyal multiple times with a hammer resulting in his death, they said.

Nautiyal's family had alleged that the police were lax in tracing their son but the police said several teams were working and wherever the accused had called the family members for paying ransom, they were accompanied by police personnel in disguise, police said.

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Following violence over Ram Navami celebrations in West Bengal, the police are putting in place elaborate arrangements to avoid any untoward incident during Hanuman Jayanti celebrations in the state tomorrow.

Apart from a ban on armed rallies, additional forces will be deployed in each district and police personnel will be placed outside every religious place.

"Elaborate arrangements have been made. Police will be deployed in every corner of the state, we will keep a tab on any suspicious movement. No one will be allowed to take out armed rallies," a senior police officer said here.

Besides the deployment of additional forces, mobile police teams would patrol the sensitive areas round-the-clock and special monitoring would be done at the Bangladesh border and the inter-state borders, another police official said.

"We have reports that those involved in Sunday's violence (in the Asansol and Raniganj areas of West Burdwan district) were outsiders," the official said.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had held a meeting yesterday with the state director general of police, ADG (law and order), home secretary and chief secretary.

Apart from taking stock of the prevailing situation in Raniganj and Asansol, the chief minister had directed the police to make strict arrangements in order to avoid any untoward incident.

Three persons were killed in West Burdwan and Purulia districts and several others, including police personnel, were injured during Ram Navami celebrations.

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Online portal 'Postcard News' co-founder Mahesh Vikram Hegde has been arrested on the charge of posting "fake news" aimed at creating communal conflict and bringing a bad name to the state government, the police said on Friday.

Hegde, who was arrested Thursday, had allegedly posted that a Jain monk was attacked by a Muslim youth, they said.

However, the case pertains to the monk, Munisri Upadyaya Mayank, and his associates getting hit by a two-wheeler near Kavalande village on March 11. while they were returning from the pilgrimage centre of Shravanabelagola in Hassan district. The two-wheeler rider was allegedly in an inebriated state, they said.

A release by the police said, "The fake news was aimed at creating conflict between two communities and bringing a bad name to the state government that nobody is safe in this state."



"Not only thousands of people saw that news, it was also shared on Twitter and Facebook. In this connection, the Cyber Crime police registered a case against the owner of the portal and arrested him," it said.

BJP Lok Sabha MP Prathap Simha yesterday hit out at the Congress government for the police action against Hegde.

"Today morning Coward Congress Govt (Karnataka) arrested @mvmeet Mahesh Vikram Hegde under unconnected IT act 66, that too by using CCB! Shame on you @INCKarnataka (sic)," he tweeted.

However, AICC in-charge communications Randeep Singh Surjewala defended the police for the action, saying, "What happened here, a particular website accused a seer of a minority community being attacked by member of another minority community....they are trying to spread hatred among communities by perpetuating and peddling fake news."



"Why should criminal action not be taken against such people for they disrespect the freedom of press?" he asked.
Jet Airways, SpiceJet and Vistara have flagged serious concerns over the data on technical snags faced by airlines in 2017, which was provided by the government in Parliament.

They maintained that the data was leading to a "false illusion" about safety of the airlines.

In a letter to Minister of State for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha, the airlines have demanded an investigation by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) to the matter so that accurate information is provided to Parliament and public at large.

"It seems apparent that the number of technical snags being reported by various airlines is inaccurate. This discrepancy and misreporting of data is leading to false illusion of the relative safety of some airlines over others," the airlines said in their letter on March 28.

On March 13, Sinha, in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha had said that airlines reported more than 24,700 technical snags last year.

Airline-wise break up was also furnished.

"As you are aware reporting of snags is mandatory in India and accurate reporting of such snags is in the interest of passengers and aviation safety.

"We request you to get this matter investigated by the DGCA so that accurate information may be made available to Parliament and the travelling public," the letter said.

According to the minister's reply, the technical snag faced by Jet Airways in 2017, which has a fleet of 110 aircraft, was 9,689 (88.08 snags per annum).

IndiGo, the country's largest private carrier, which has a fleet size of 151, faced only 340 technical snags (2.25 snags per annum).

Similarly, SpiceJet, which has a fleet size of 57 aircraft, faced 4,903 snags (86.02 snags per annum). Vistara, with a fleet size of 17 aircraft, faced 1,225 snags (72.06 snags per annum).

IndiGo at present operates over 1,000 flights per day, SpiceJet 408 flights and Jet Airways 600 flights.

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A person who was arrested on charges of being involved in communal clashes during a Ram Navami procession here earlier this week, has escaped from police custody, a senior police officer said today.

The person who fled from police custody yesterday, has been associated with taking out Ram Navami processions over the years, Superintendent of Police Satya Prakash said.

He was one of the 150 people arrested allegedly for rioting.

"A fresh FIR has been lodged against him for escaping from police custody. A warrant has been issued for his arrest which will be pasted on his house. If he does not surrender within the given time, his property will be attached," the SP said.

The Congress criticised the Nitish Kumar government for the incident.

"This is yet another incident of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar being helpless in the face of rising dominance of the BJP-RSS over the state's administrative machinery," Bihar Pradesh Congress Committee (BPCC) acting president Kaukab Qadri told PTI in Patna.

How is it possible that a person accused of rioting, walked out of police custody and the officials could know it a day later, after it was reported in the media, he asked.

The BJP would continue with its agenda but the chief minister's reputation is at stake now, said Qadri, who had met Governor Satya Pal Mallik earlier this week and submitted a memorandum on the Aurangabad riots.

Communal violence broke out in Aurangabad during Ram Navami celebrations on Sunday after stones were pelted on a religious procession from where provocative slogans were allegedly raised.

Vandalism and arson had taken place thereafter, forcing the administration to clamp prohibitory orders under section 144 of the CrPC in the town.

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An Imam here, who has lost his son in the violent incidents over Ram Navami celebrations, has urged the people not to make it an issue and restore peace in the area.

"I have lost my son. I have not lodged any police complaint. Do not make it an issue. If you love me, then restore peace," Noorani Masjid Imam Imdatullah Rashid said.

The youngest son of the Imam, Hafiz Sabkatulla, was found dead with injuries on his head and throat at the Asansol district hospital on Wednesday.

The Imam made the appeal yesterday when the body of the 16-year-old, who had recently appeared in this year's Class 10 board examination conducted by the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education, was laid to rest at a burial ground here in the presence of about 1,000 people.

Asansol and Raniganj in West Burdwan district of West Bengal had witnessed violent clashes between two groups over Ram Navami processions on Sunday and Monday.

Official sources had said one person was killed and two police officers were injured in the violence.

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BJP President Amit Shah's meeting with Dalit leaders here turned chaotic after some angry protesters raised slogans demanding Union Minister Anant Kumar Hegde's ouster for his reported controversial comments about Dalits and change in the Indian Constitution.

At an interaction with Dalit leaders, Shah was asked several questions in writing, but he preferred to answer a few.

Replying to the protesters demand to explain his stand on Hegde's remarks, Shah said neither he nor his party had anything to do with it.

Disappointed with Shah's reply, the protesters flayed him and sought removal of Hegde from the cabinet.

Subsequently, Mysuru MP Pratap Simha tried to pacify the protesters, but the situation went out of control and turned chaotic.

Police immediately took the Dalit leaders into custody.

Shah, who is in the state ahead of crucial May 12 assembly polls, is visiting Mysuru, Chamarajanagar, Mandya and Ramanagara which are considered as Vokkaliga heartland.

Hegde had also reportedly said "we are here to change the Constitution and we'll change it."



The minister had to tender an apology in the Lok Sabha after a nudge by the Speaker, but he said his speech at a function in Karnataka was 'distorted'.

He had also denied having made any anti-Dalit remarks.

Meanwhile, the Karnataka Congress flayed Shah for failing to answer questions raised by protesters.

The Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee, in a tweet, said "Amit Shah, why can't you answer legitimate questions raised today in Mysuru about BJP Minister Ananth Kumar Hegde insulting Dalits? Why haven't you taken any action against your party man for such derogatory comments? This clearly shows that BJP endorses his hate-mongering."



BJP hit back in a tweet, saying "Not able to digest the fact that BJP has become the default choice of Dalits in the country, CM Siddu resorted to one more cheap gimmick.""He sent his goons to create ruckus in Shri @AmitShah's public meeting.""Gosh! Is there a contest b/w you and Mamata on who is more worst? (sic)" it said.

BJP MP Pratap Simha in a tweet said "Dear@CMofKarnataka n @INCKarnataka your party workers tried tocreate ruckus in @AmitShah ji's program.

We can do the samein every program you attend. Better stop it.

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Russia on Friday announced a "high alert" in a town where noxious fumes have leaked from a landfill site, distributing masks and respirators to residents who have held repeated protests.

The Kremlin said it was closely watching the situation in Volokolamsk, a town of around 20,000 people about 120 kilometres west of Moscow.

Residents have long demanded the closure of a landfill site that has been emitting a noxious sulphurous smell, in a rare case of coordinated grass-roots civil action.

Last week, doctors treated dozens of children who complained of dizziness and nausea because of fumes from the Yadrovo landfill site near the town, which is in the Moscow region.

A spokesman for the regional emergencies ministry said "a state of high alert" had been imposed in the town and that monitoring of the environment "will be stepped up" with the "non-stop" testing of air quality.

Local authorities had also begun distributing medical masks and respirators to those who needed them, he said.

Volokolamsk residents had on Thursday held a rally demanding that the authorities formally declare a state of emergency, which they have not so far done.

Another rally is planned for Sunday.

"We are in constant touch with the regional authorities and the government over this," President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

"Everyone understands that this is a complicated problem, that it cannot be solved overnight."



Officials say a new facility will eventually be built which will not emit fumes.

Russia sends almost all its rubbish to landfill and there is no obligation for people to recycle household waste, creating a growing problem despite the country's vast territory.

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Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Syrian forces had "nearly wiped out the terrorists" in the rebel-held enclave of Eastern Ghouta.

Backed by the Russian military since 2015, the Syrian regime in February launched a massive offensive against rebels in the Damascus suburb, killing more that 1,600 civilians.

"As a result of this anti-terrorism operation in Eastern Ghouta, terrorist elements have nearly been wiped out of this suburb of the Syrian capital," Lavrov yesterday said at press conference in Moscow after meeting UN Syrian envoy Staffan de Mistura.

"Civilian life is going to be re-established there," Lavrov said, adding that "the majority of the rebels have been evacuated".

Syrian troops have recaptured more than 90 per cent of Ghouta, and are draining the last opposition pockets with negotiated pull-outs mediated by Russia.

Moscow has secured two such deals already and has been pressing Jaish al-Islam, the rebel faction in control of the third and final part of the enclave near Damascus, to leave too.

Russia's deputy foreign minister Mikhail Bogdanov said yesterday negotiations with Jaish al-Islam were continuing.

"There are working group contacts. They contact us, they write letters, they talk on the phone, we meet," he was quoted as saying by the Ria Novosti agency.

"There exists" some chance that the negotiations could progress, he added.

De Mistura also met with Russian Defence Minister Sergei Choigu who said over the next few days "we are going to begin to bring the people back to their homes in Eastern Ghouta, and they will be able to lead a normal life".

He added that "more than 130,000 refugees and more than 11,000 armed fighters" had fled Ghouta via humanitarian corridors.

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Russia's decision to expel 60 American diplomats and order closer of the US Consulate in St Petersburg marks a further deterioration in bilateral ties, the White House said today.

"Russia's action today to expel American diplomats marks a further deterioration in the US-Russia relationship," White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said, hours after Russia in a retaliatory action asked 60 American diplomats to leave the country within seven days and shut down the St Petersburg Consulate within 48 hours.

"The expulsion of undeclared Russian intelligence officers by the United States and more than two dozen partner nations and NATO allies earlier this week was an appropriate response to the Russian attack on the soil of the United Kingdom," Sanders said.

The Trump administration had earlier ordered the expulsion of 60 Russian diplomats and shutter the country's consulate general in Seattle.

She said the Russian response was "not unanticipated", and the US will "deal" with it.

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Congress president Rahul Gandhi today appointed MP Rajeev Satav as in-charge of the party's affairs in Gujarat and former union minister Jitendra Singh as its man in charge of Odisha.

Former Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot was entrusted the responsibility as AICC general secretary in-charge of Gujarat, ahead of assembly polls in the state late last year.

"Congress President Rahul Gandhi has appointed Rajeev Satav, MP, as the AICC incharge of Gujarat with immediate effect," said a statement by AICC general secretary Janardan Dwivedi.

"Congress President Rahul Gandhi has appointed Jitendra Singh, ex-union minister as AICC incharge of Odisha, in place of B K Hariprasad," said a second statement.

The second order also said the party appreciates the hard work and contribution of Hariprasad, "who will be stepping down from his responsibility as AICC General secretary Incharge, Odisha".

However, the party communication on Gujarat does not specify if Satav has replaced Gehlot.

Sources said Gehlot was entrusted the responsibility ahead of the Gujarat polls, as was done during Punjab elections, but would continue to be a party general secretary.

Gehlot, who has thanked the party workers of Gujarat for extending support to him during the assembly elections, will concentrate on the upcoming elections in Rajasthan, where he is already campaigning, sources said.

In another order, Gandhi has appointed Lalji Desai as the chief organiser of the All India Congress Seva Dal, replacing Mehendra Joshi.

The party also placed on record the hard work and contribution of Joshi, who is stepping down from his responsibility as dhief organiser of Seva Dal.

The changes indicate a generational shift in the party under Gandhi's leadership.

A few other changes are in the offing and the party is likely to see an all new set-up soon, party insiders said.

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Sebi has imposed a total penalty of Rs 3.15 crore on 32 entities, including several present and former promoters of Sayaji Hotels, for violating capital market norms, including those pertaining to disclosure requirements.

According to a Sebi order dated March 28, the promoter group (comprising 32 entities) had twice failed to make a public announcement as required under the SAST (Substantial Acquisition of Shares and Takeovers) Regulations with regard to acquisition of shares of Sayaji Hotels.

It had not made a public announcement for the acquisition of 0.40 per cent of the share capital of Sayaji Hotels during AprilJune 2005 and another 10.52 per cent during JanuaryMarch 2006.

As per the order, the promoter group's shareholding had decreased from 57.77 per cent to 42.43 per cent during JulySeptember 2005.

It had failed to make relevant disclosures to the stock exchange as required under SAST Regulations during the period JulySeptember 2005 and JanuaryMarch 2006 when it had sold and acquired shares, respectively.

The order also noted that Suchitra Dhanani, one of the promoters, had also failed to disclose the change in her shareholding (from 7.63 per cent to 2.54 per cent) to the company during quarter ended September 2005 and violated PIT (Prohibition of Insider Trading) Regulations.

"Non-compliance with disclosure requirements by a promoter group of the listed company undermines the regulatory objectives and jeopardises the achievement of the underlying policy goals," Sebi said in its order.

Besides Suchitra, other promoters in the list of 32 include: Anisha Dhanani, Bipasha Dhanani, Ahilya Hotels, Kayum Dhanani, Sadika Md I Memon, Excellent Estate Developers, Bharat Equity Services, Liberty Construction and Leasing, Habibunisha Dhanani, Gulshan I Memon, Shamim Dhanani, Shaji Nair and Subhash Pandit.

While the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has imposed a penalty of Rs 3 crore on the 32 promoters for failing to make public announcement with regard to acquisition of shares, it has levied a fine of Rs 10 lakh on them for disclosure lapses.

Besides, the regulator has slapped a fine of Rs 5 lakh on Suchitra for not complying with disclosure norms as required under PIT Regulations.

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School children in north Mumbai suburb Kandivli are adding to the woes of railway commuters by frequently pressing the emergency switch on the escalators installed at the station, a railway official said today.

"On an average, there are 25 to 30 such incidents daily, where school children press the emergency switch, halting the escalators," a railway staffer at the Kandivli station said.

"We have been facing a barrage of complaints over the abrupt halt of escalators at the station," the official told PTI.

"Most of the instances where the escalators were stopped were not technical, but due to the pressing of the emergency button by an irresponsible passenger, mostly school children," he said.

"We have caught some students in the act of pressing the emergency switch, but there is no provision of any punitive action against children," the official said.

Just last week, a ninth class student of a reputed school in Kandivli (East) was apprehended after pressing the emergency switch on the escalator, he said.

The student was allowed to go after getting him sign a "confession", apology and a written undertaking that he won't commit the act again, the official said.

Unlike escalators at other stations which are manned by contract staff in shifts, the escalators at Kandivli station is unmanned, he said.

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The Shiv Sena today took a dig at Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis over his announcement to provide government jobs to 72,000 people asking him to make public names of those who would get these jobs.

Speaking in the Legislative Assembly on the last day of the Budget session, Fadnavis had announced that 72,000 posts in the government would be filled in the next two years.

He had added that the induction would be done in two phases, with 36,000 posts being filled in the first year.

Fadnavis had said posts will be filled in the Education, Agriculture, Animal Husbandry, Rural Development, Home and Urban Development departments.

In an editorial in party mouthpiece 'Saamana', the Sena said that the BJP government, when it came to power in 2014, had promised to create 20 lakh jobs in five years.

"How many people have actually got jobs before the government announced a lottery to fill up its empty posts? The government had also announced homes for the poor and police personnel. There was also an announcement of a loan waiver. But none of the announcements have been implemented," it said.

"The government should make the list of 36,000 people who will be given jobs in government departments public," the Sena said.

It alleged that unemployment numbers in the state were high while businesses were moving out to other states.

"The Chief Minister has chosen the time right before the upcoming Assembly and Lok Sabha polls to fill these government posts. We do not worry about the timing but its implementation. Even if 36,000 people do get jobs, what about those who remain unemployed?" the Sena asked.

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Seating in a wheelchair, the ex-leader left Centenario Clinic in Lima's Pueblo Libre district and got into a van parked outside a few minutes before 10:00 AM (local time).





Fujimori did not address the press. In fact, his sons were not present at the time of his discharge.





The 79-year-old former leader was admitted to the health center's intermediate care unit to undergo a rehydration treatment, his personal doctor Alejandro Aguinaga affirmed.





According to Aguinaga, Fujimori's stomach problem may be caused by contaminated food.





On the other hand, the public confrontation between Keiko and Kenji Fujimori could have affected their father's health as well.





In fact, this was believed to be the reason why he was hospitalized last Wednesday.





As is known, former President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski granted a humanitarian pardon to Fujimori on Christmas Eve last year.

The decision cleared Fujimori who ruled the country between 1990 and 2000 of convictions for human rights crimes before completion of a 25-year prison sentence announced in 2009.





(END) CCR/JRA/FGM/RMB

Peru's former President Alberto Fujimori on Friday left the hospital where he was being treated since Wednesday for severe dehydration caused by gastroenterocolitis.Published: 3/30/2018
Defence Minister Niramala Sitharaman will be travelling to Russia next week to attend the seventh Moscow Conference on International Security here.

This will be her first visit to Russia in her capacity as the Defence Minister. During her three-day tour, between April 3 and 5, she will participate in the VII Moscow Conference on International Security, according to a statement from Indian Embassy here.

Sitharaman will also meet her Russian counterpart Army General Sergei Shoigu, and other senior leaders, it said.

"The visit is in keeping with the tradition of high level exchanges between India and Russia. It will provide an opportunity to reinforce the traditional warm and friendly relations that exists between the two countries with particular reference to military technical cooperation," the statement said.

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Union minister and chief of NDA ally RPI (A) Ramdas Athawale on Friday said the SP-BSP tie-up in Uttar Pradesh might cost the and its partners 25 to 30 Lok Sabha seats in next year's general elections, but asserted that "no one can challenge Prime Minister Narendra Modi".

Uttar Pradesh has 80 Lok Sabha seats of which the and its allies had won 73 in the 2014 parliamentary elections. The Congress had won Amethi and Rae Bareli, while the Samajwadi Party (SP) won five seats. After the recent bypolls, SP's tally in the Lok Sabha went up to seven.

"The SP-BSP may damage the and its allies by winning some 25-30 (Lok Sabha) seats. But, the BJP will get more than 50 seats. However, this will not prevent the BJP-led NDA from returning to power at the Centre after the 2019 Lok Sabha polls," he told a press conference here.

In the same breath, the Republican Party of India (A) leader said, "No one can challenge Prime Minister Narendra Modi - neither Congress president Rahul Gandhi, nor SP chief Akhilesh Yadav, nor BSP supremo Mayawati."



The SP wrested the prestigious Gorakhpur and Phulpur Lok Sabha seats from the BJP when it contested the bye-elections after reaching an understanding with the BSP.

A consolidation of OBC, Dalit and Muslim votes powered Samajwadi Party candidates to victory in Gorakhpur, a seat represented by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath for five successive terms, and Phulpur, from where his deputy Keshav Prasad Maurya was elected in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

Amid Mayawati's ongoing efforts to cobble together non-BJP parties for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the RPI (A) president asked the BSP supremo to join the NDA if her concern for Dalits was genuine.

Seeking to drive a wedge into the new-found bonhomie between the SP and the BSP, Athawale claimed that the BSP candidate lost the Rajya Sabha election in Uttar Pradesh as the SP had "betrayed" Mayawati's nominee by not backing him in return for her support during the Lok Sabha bypolls.

Atrocities were still being committed on Dalits, but the BJP-led government at the Centre was not responsible for it, the Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment said, adding there was need to give more teeth to the law to protect Dalits.
Bollywood diva Sridevi was accorded a state funeral on the directions from Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis's office, as per the reply to a query under the Right to Information Act.

Anil Galgali, a city-based RTI activist, had sought to know from the state's General Administration Department (GAD) the details of the state funeral accorded to Sridevi, and who is authorised to permit this honour.

The GAD said the power to grant state funeral for a person lies with the chief minister.

Regarding Sridevi's funeral, a verbal order was received from the chief minister's office on February 25, and it was conveyed to the Mumbai suburban collector and Mumbai police commissioner by a government order on February 26, said the GAD's reply.

In the last six years, 41 persons were granted state funeral in the state, it said.

They included former chief ministers Vilasrao Deshmukh and A R Antulay, Shiv Sena founder Bal Thackeray, Vipassana Guru Satyanarayan Goenka and Dawoodi Bohra community's spiritual head Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin.

Brijesh Singh, Director General of DGIPR, the state government's publicity wing, said there are rules as to who should get a state funeral, and the chief minister can use his discretion in the matter.

Some persons get state funeral upon death by virtue of the post or the political/administrative office they have held.

"The rules also give a discretion to the CM regarding granting the honour of state funerals to certain dignitaries not in this list. Padma awardees are concerned to be dignitaries who may be accorded state funeral at the discretion of the CM," Singh told PTI.

Sridevi was a Padma Shri recipient.

The actor died in her room at a Dubai hotel due to accidental drowning on February 24, and was given a state funeral in suburban Vile Parle here on February 28.

Maharashtra Navnirman Sena leader Raj Thackeray, at a rally earlier this month, had questioned the decision to give Sridevi a state funeral.

She was a great actor, but what she had done for the country so that her body was wrapped in the tri-colour, Thackeray asked, while criticising the BJP-led governments in the state and the Centre on many issues.

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An on-duty jawan of the State Reserve Police Force (SRPF) allegedly attempted suicide by shooting himself with his rifle here in the Vidarbha region, police said today.

The 28-year-old jawan, Mangesh Babulal Warathe, was injured in the incident and admitted to a hospital, where his condition is stated to be out of danger, they said, adding the reason for the suicide bid was not yet known.

Warathe was posted on the gate of the local SRPF headquarters in Wadali when he shot himself with his rifle yesterday in an apparent attempt to end his life, an official said.

The bullet fired by the SRPF jawan pierced his shoulder, he said.

Hearing the gunshot, other SRPF personnel rushed to the spot where they found Warathe in a pool of blood, he said.

He was immediately taken to a nearby hospital, from where he was shifted to a state-run hospital in Nagpur for further treatment, the official added.

Chinmay Pandit, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Zone- I), confirmed the incident and said the SRPF jawan was now out of danger.

A probe was underway to ascertain the exact reason for the attempted suicide, he said.

"The incident occurred inside a SRPF camp so we are waiting for their report in this regard," he said.

According to officials, Warathe tried to commit suicide due to personal reasons.

However, his statement is yet to be recorded, they added.

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A section of students of an aided college burst crackers and displayed 'condolence' messages in the campus as a farewell to the retiring woman principal in northern Kasaragod district, triggering a controversy.

The incident came to the media limelight after a video of students bursting crackers and the message put at the auditorium of the Nehru Arts and Science College at Kanhangadu in the district, went viral on the social media.

The handwritten message says "condolence to the principal who died in the hearts of students...."



Reacting to the incident earlier this week, P V Pushpaja, the principal,said "it is very painful for me in the 40 years of my teaching career to get such a response from the students whom I considered as my children."



The principal, who is retiring next month, said she was yet to recover from the shock of the turn of events.

Pushpaja alleged that members of the Students Federation of India (SFI), the students wing of the ruling CPI(M), was behind the act.

There were differences of opinion between the principal and the members of the outfit on various issues.

"I am sure SFI activists were behind the act. I will decide the legal steps against this after consulting with the college management," she told TV channels.

However, the SFI leadership said the outfit would not agree with such kind of acts by its members and would take stringent mesaures if anybody in the outfit were found to be guilty.

Opposition leader in the assembly Ramesh Chennithala and KPCC president M M Hassan condemned the incident.

Chennithala, in a Facebook post, said the act was a "disgrace to the literate Kerala."



In 2016, members of SFI had courted controversy after allegedly preparing a symbolic 'grave' for the woman principal as a 'retirement gift' at the Government Victoria College, Palakkad.

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Actor Drew Barrymore said she is "proud" of having "survived" wild parties at Hollywood veteran Carrie Fisher's house.

During her appearance on "Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen", the 43-year-old actor said she used to love visiting the late actor's house.

"I loved going to her house. It was like a hacienda type of like beautiful home off of Coldwater Canyon, very Los Angeles. She just had a very open home. I'd been there for parties, her office in the daytime. It was classic, Spanish, California - sunshine, orange groves and creativity," Barrymore said.

"I'm proud to say I came and went because I feel like a lot of people stayed. I remember Garry Shandling being weird in the driveway. And I was like, 'I'm so glad I'm going home! I'm so glad I'm surviving these kind of nights,'" she added.

The actor also recalled one of her wild nights out with Courtney Love in the 1990s.

"Courtney and I were at the backstage of a Seattle club. We'd just come from seeing Green Day. We were going to see Beck play at coffee house and the bouncer said, 'I'm sorry, you can't come in, you don't have a backstage pass'," she said.

"Courtney looked at him and goes, 'My face is a backstage pass'. And then swept him aside and just walked in and I was still left there standing," Barrymore added.

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A roadside bomb in northern Syria killed two coalition personnel, an American and a Briton, and wounded five others in a rare attack since the US-led coalition sent troops into the war-torn country, the US and British militaries and a US defense official said today.

The military did not say where the attack took place or give the nationalities of the other casualties but it came hours after a local Syrian official said that a roadside bomb exploded in the tense, mixed Arab-Kurdish town of Manbij that is not far from the border with Turkey.

Manbij is under threat of a Turkish military operation.

Ankara says Syrian Kurdish militiamen it views as "terrorists" and an extension of Kurdish insurgents inside Turkey are in control of the town.

The US military statement said the attack happened last night and that the wounded were being evacuated for further medical treatment. The statement said details were being withheld pending further investigation.

A Department of Defense official in Washington said one of the two killed was an American service member and the other was of another nationality.

No other information about the deceased American was immediately available. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because details had not yet been publicly released.

A UK defense ministry spokesman said the British armed forces member was killed during an operation against the Islamic State group.

The spokesman added that an improvised explosive device killed the service member who was embedded with US forces yesterday.

No details on the casualty's service branch, unit or gender were immediately provided.

The US military member killed was the fourth American who has died in Syria since the US began attacking Islamic State militants there in September 2014, according to the Pentagon's Defense Casualty Analysis System.

Of the three previous deaths, Air Force Staff Sgt. Austin Bieren was specifically labeled by the Pentagon as a non-combat death. Another, Navy Senior Chief Petty Officer Scott C Dayton, was killed by an improved explosive device. The third, Army Spc. Etienne J. Murphy, died in a vehicle rollover.

Earlier today, US military spokesman Col Ryan Dillon couldn't immediately say who was behind the attack. "There is an investigation under way to identify who they could possibly be. We have our initial assessment and thoughts on that but we won't provide until the investigation is complete," he said.

Dillon declined to give the nationalities of the dead and wounded as well as the location of the attack until next of kin notification.

Dillon said the coalition has had fatalities in Syria before. "Perhaps by different means but there have been coalition deaths in Syria over the course of three years." Mohammed Abu Adel, head of the Manbij Military Council, an Arab-Kurdish group in the town backed by the US, said the bomb went off hundreds of metres from a security headquarters that houses the council just before midnight yesterday.

Earlier today, Dillon said an incident involving coalition forces was reported in Manbij but said no more information was available.

The town has seen a number of small explosions, protests and an assassination attempt on a member of the Manbij military council in recent weeks. Local officials blame Turkey and other adversaries for seeking to sow chaos in the town that was controlled by Islamic State group militants until the summer of 2016.

The military council has since been in control and US troops patrol the town and area with troops based nearby.

Meanwhile, near the capital Damascus, there were conflicting reports on whether a main rebel group will evacuate the largest and last rebel-held town in the area, known as eastern Ghouta.

Col Gen Sergei Rudskoi of the Russian military's General Staff said at a Friday briefing that the agreement envisages Army of Islam rebels and their families leaving the Syrian town of Douma, just outside of Damascus.

The announcement came after the Syrian government on Wednesday issued a three-day ultimatum to the Army of Islam group to leave Douma or face an all-out offensive.

Syrian state TV said an agreement is about to be reached for an Army of Islam evacuation but the group denied the reports.

Army of Islam military spokesman Hamza Bayraqdar told The Associated Press that the reports are false, adding that his group's stance is to reject displacement and demographic change in eastern Ghouta.

The Syrian government and the Russian military backing it have demanded that Army of Islam members leave the area for northern Syria, following other rebels who left eastern Ghouta.

The Syrian Arab Red Crescent said Friday one of its convoys entered three towns in eastern Ghouta bringing badly needed food supplies to residents after opposition fighters left the area.

SARC said it entered the towns of Saqba, Kafr Batna and Ein Tarma in eastern Ghouta with mobile water tank, mobile clinic and relief aid convoy of 16 trucks loaded with 8,500 bread bags, 5,000 food parcels, water bottles and nutrition items. It said the supplies were provided by International Committee of the Red Cross and the World Food Program.

Rudskoi said over 143,000 people, including 13,793 rebels and 23,544 members of their families have left eastern Ghouta. He also said some 40,000 residents have returned to their homes in eastern Ghouta as there has been no fighting over the last seven days.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Thailand's junta will lift a near four-year ban on political activity in June, an official said on Friday, as space for debate slowly expands in the kingdom with polls promised for next year.

Political gatherings of five or more people have been outlawed since Thailand's army grabbed power in a May 2014 coup, booting Yingluck Shinawatra's elected government from power.

The generals, who have repeatedly backtracked on promised returns to democracy, insist an election will be held "no later" than February 2019.

Yet while parties have been allowed to register in anticipation of the vote, they remain barred from discussing policy or meeting without junta permission.

Politicians have demanded the ban is lifted, while critics accuse the junta of buying time to bolster the chances of new army-linked parties in the upcoming election.

A defence ministry spokesman said the moratorium would soon be lifted, confirming comments the junta's number two made to the local press yesterday.

"The initial plan is that the ban would be lifted in June so that newly set-up parties are ready," Lieutenant-General Kongcheep Tantravanich told AFP.

"While the big existing parties are already ready, the new parties need time... they will start their activities together in June," he added.

The restricted climate has left questions swirling about leadership shuffles in Thailand's biggest bloc -- the toppled Pheu Thai party, which has dominated elections for a decade but has been repeatedly cut down by coups and court rulings.

The faction -- the nemesis of the junta and Bangkok elite -- is officially without a leader after both of its figureheads were driven into self-exile in the wake of 2006 and 2014 coups.

The exiled pair, former premiers and siblings Yingluck and Thaksin Shinawatra, made a rare public appearance at a book launch for a Japanese minister in Tokyo yesterday.

It was one of Yingluck's first public sightings since she fled Thailand last August ahead of a verdict in a court case she decried as a political witch-hunt.

Analysts say both leaders are unlikely to return to Thai soil any time soon after being convicted of graft charges in absentia.

But they may continue Thaksin's approach of directing the powerhouse party from abroad.

The latest coup is widely seen as an effort to squeeze the Shinawatras out of Thai politics for good.

The junta's new charter limits the purview of elected politicians while boosting the clout of appointed officials.

The next administration will also be straightjacketed by a "legally-binding" 20-year policy plan hatched by the junta.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Tripura government has decided to set up a "well-equipped" crime branch under the state police to deal with unlawful activities such as drug and narcotics peddling.

The new wing will be modeled after Delhi Police's crime branch, Law Minister Ratan Lal Nath told reporters here today.

"The state cabinet has cleared a proposal to form a well-equipped police wing to arrest crime in the state and restore the rule of land, as was promised in the BJP's election manifesto," he said.

Anybody found having links with drug peddlers or mafia gangs will be punished, Nath said.

"We will seek expert opinion from Delhi and Mumbai to build the unit," he said.

The two-hour-long cabinet meeting yesterday also sought a crackdown on illegal constructions across Tripura.

The ruling dispensation has sought a report on government land allotment to political party offices in the state, Nath said.

"All district magistrates and superintendents of police have been asked to submit details within 15 days for necessary action," he explained, adding that a separate report on land allotment to different NGOs or institutions during the Left rule will be sought for examination.

The cabinet also agreed to extend the tenure of teachers engaged under the Sarva Siksha Abhiyan after March 31, when their current engagement is slated to end.

"We shall retain them in service till the Centre agrees to provide funds," Nath added.

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US President Donald Trump today said that he may "hold" the recently agreed trade deal with South Korea in an effort to gain leverage over his scheduled meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

"I may hold it up till after a deal is made with North Korea," he said in his address on infrastructure in Ohio.

This week, Trump said, his administration "secured a wonderful (trade) deal" with South Korea.

"We were in a deal that was a horror show. It was going to produce 2,00,000 jobs. And it did -- for them," he said amid laughter from the audience. "That was a Hillary Clinton special, I hate to say. 'This will produce 2,00,000 jobs'. She was right. But it was for them, it wasn't for us," Trump said.

The new trade deal agreed upon is "going to level the playing field on steel and cars and trucks coming into this country", said the US President as he told the audience that he might hold it till he has a deal with North Korea.

"Does everybody understand that? You know why, right? You know why? Because it's a very strong card. And I want to make sure everyone is treated fairly. And were moving along very nicely with North Korea. We'll see what happens," he said. "Certainly, the rhetoric has calmed down just a little bit, wouldn't you say?" Trump asked the audience referring to the sudden stopping of rhetoric from North Korea.

Trump has accepted an invitation from North Korean leader Kim Jong-un for a meeting in May.

"We'll see how it all turns out. Maybe it'll be good and maybe it won't. And if it's no good, we're walking. And if it's good, we will embrace it. But it's going to be very interesting over the next period of time. And South Korea has been wonderful. But we'll probably hold that deal up for a little while, see how it all plays out," Trump said.

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Mr. Vizcarra was officially named President of the Republic for the 2018-2021 term on March 23. He was given the presidential sash and delivered his first address to the nation that day.









After that, he visited the Government Palace for the first time as President.









His first public appearance was on March 25 while making an unannounced visit to Lima-based Children's Hospital in order to monitor the services provided.









A day later, on March 26, President Vizcarra visited Lima's Meliton Carvajal School to oversee the education program.









On March 27, the statesman headed to northern Piura region to assess the situation of those affected by Coastal El Nino weather event occurred last year.









On his way back, Vizcarra led a ceremony to enact a bill aimed at strengthening the Comptroller General's Office.









Later that day, he administered the oath of office to Edmer Trujillo Mori, making him the new Transport and Communications Minister. The ceremony took place in private at the Government Palace.









On Thursday, the Head of State held a conversation with Cesar Villanueva, the legislator who is expected to become the country's new Prime Minister."









(END) VVS/RMB

It has been one week since Martin Vizcarra took the oath of office and became the President of Peru. Here's an overview of everything he has done so far.Published: 3/30/2018
US President Donald Trump insisted today that US forces would pull out of Syria "very soon" and lamented what he said was Washington's waste of USD 7 trillion in Middle East wars.

In a populist address to industrial workers in Ohio, Trump said US forces were close to securing all of the territory that the Islamic State jihadist group once claimed.

"We'll be coming out of Syria, like, very soon. Let the other people take care of it now," he promised, to applause.

Trump did not say who the others were who might take care of Syria, but Russia and Iran have sizable forces in the country to support Bashar al-Assad's regime.

"Very soon -- very soon we're coming out. We're going to have 100 per cent of the caliphate, as they call it -- sometimes referred to as 'land' -- taking it all back quickly, quickly," he said.

"But we're going to be coming out of there real soon. Going to get back to our country, where we belong, where we want to be."



The United States has more than 2,000 military personnel in eastern Syria, working with local militia groups to defeat the extremist Islamic State group while trying to keep out of Syria's broader civil war.

Trump's eagerness to quit the conflict flies in the face of a new US Syria strategy announced in January by then secretary of state Rex Tillerson -- who has since been sacked.

Tillerson argued that US forces must remain engaged in Syria to prevent IS and Al-Qaeda from returning and to deny Iran a chance "to further strengthen its position in Syria."



In a speech at Stanford University, he also warned that "a total withdrawal of American personnel at this time would restore Assad and continue his brutal treatment against his own people."But Tillerson has gone after being dismissed in a tweet and Trump, who increasingly makes foreign policy announcements without seeking the advice of US generals or diplomats, wants out.

"We spent USD 7 trillion in the Middle East. And you know what we have for it? Nothing," Trump declared, promising to focus future US spending on building jobs and infrastructure at home.

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US President Donald Trump today slammed Amazon for paying "no taxes" to state and local governments as reports emerged that he is seeking tougher regulations against the Seattle-based company, which now has a global presence, including in India.

"I have stated my concerns with Amazon long before the Election. Unlike others, they pay little or no taxes to state and local governments, use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy (causing tremendous loss to the US), and are putting many thousands of retailers out of business!," Trump said in a tweet.

The White House defended Trump's statement, saying action is being planned. "The President has expressed his concerns with Amazon.We have no actions at this time," Deputy Press Secretary Lindsay Walters told reporters on board Air Force One.

"You heard the President speak this morning on his displeasure regarding Amazon. He has made it clear that his concerns -- you know, some users of Amazon are not paying state sales taxes, which is putting many brick and mortar retailers out of business," she alleged. Trump's tweet comes a day after site Axios reported that he "hates" Amazon and has talked about changing Amazons tax treatment because he was "worried" about mom-and-pop retailers being put out of business. He's wondered aloud if there may be any way to go after Amazon with anti-trust or competition law," Axios said quoting an unnamed source.

"Trump's deep-seated antipathy toward Amazon surfaces when discussing tax policy and anti-trust cases. The president would love to clip CEO Jeff Bezos wings. But he doesn't have a plan to make that happen," Axios said. It is well known that there is a personal feud between Trump and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who now also owns The Washington Post. During his presidential election campaign days, Trump had said, The Washington Post had a team of some 20 reporters to write stories against him.

As a result of Trumps tweet, the shares of Amazon dropped in the market by nine per cent. The net worth of Bezos who is now the richest man in the world dropped by USD 10.7 billion. Soon after Trump's tweet, the White House indicated imposing taxes on such companies. "Right now there is no Internet sales tax," White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Raj Shah told Fox

"And as a result, companies like Amazon can buy and sell good without having to pay basic retail taxes that your stores and your convenience stores and all the folks around, when you walk out of the studio over there and grab something, you have to pay. And that puts brick-and-mortar retail stores at a disadvantage," Shah said. Founded in 1994 by Bezos, Amazon currently is the world's largest internet retailer in terms of revenue and market capitalisation.

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President Donald Trump today threatened to hold up the trade agreement his administration finalised this week with South Korea in an effort to gain more leverage in potential talks with North Korea.

Speaking on infrastructure in Ohio, Trump highlighted the recently completed renegotiation of the Korea-US free trade agreement. But he warned: "I may hold it up until after a deal is made with North Korea."



The announcement comes as the two Koreas have announced plans to hold bilateral meetings next month in advance of a possible meeting between Trump and North Korea's Kim Jong Un by the end of May.

Trump noted the "rhetoric has calmed down" with North Korea, but added he may put a hold on the first trade agreement concluded by his administration, "because it's a very strong card and I want to make sure everyone is treated fairly."



Trump did not explain what leverage the US would achieve by holding up the trade deal with South Korea. The South Korean embassy in Washington declined to comment. The liberal government in Seoul wants Washington to engage with Pyongyang to help foster inter-Korean relations and reduce nuclear tensions.

Trump may be suggesting that a prospective nuclear deal with North Korea is desired by South Korea, so by delaying it the US could extract better trade terms with the South. But chances of a nuclear deal remain deeply uncertain.

Typically, the US has sought solidarity with South Korea to resist attempts by North Korea to divide the allies.

Resurrecting the complex and politically charged issue of trade could prove distracting just as the US is pursuing high-stakes diplomacy with Pyongyang.

The president's visit to Ohio was meant to be a push for upgrades to the nation's aging roads and bridges. Instead, Trump turned what was billed as a "major speech" on infrastructure into 53-minute campaign-style rally, with talk of defeating the Islamic State and caring for veterans, not to mention a plug for the television reboot of "Roseanne." He highlighted his plan deploying USD 200 billion in federal money to spur at least USD 1.5 trillion in spending over a decade to repair or replace highways, bridges, ports, airports and other infrastructure.

"We will transform our roads and bridges from a source of endless frustration into a source of incredible pride," he said. But in a concession to political realities in Washington, where lawmakers are increasingly focused on their re-elections in what is set to be a difficult campaign cycle for Republicans, Trump said, "You're probably going to have to wait until after the election."



Trump said Democrats don't want to work with him on infrastructure because they don't want to give him any additional "wins" after his tax bill passed in December.

Trump unveiled the sweeping infrastructure proposal in February and cast it as one that could garner bipartisan support. But the plan relies heavily on state and local governments for the bulk of the spending, raising concerns among members of Congress about the possibility of higher commuter tolls and the sale of assets to raise the money.

There is little expectation that Congress will take up a sweeping infrastructure proposal along the lines of what Trump envisions or that Republicans in control of the House and Senate will write their own legislation as lawmakers begin to shift their focus to the challenge of getting re-elected in November.

Instead, Congress plans to package a series of related measures, including beefed-up spending in the big budget bill Trump signed into law last week. That bill, which funds the government through Sept. 30, included more money for transportation projects, rural broadband and other investments.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., promoted it in a tweet as "long-overdue updates to our country's infrastructure." ___ Associated Press writers Lisa Mascaro, Matthew Pennington and Zeke Miller contributed to this report from Washington.

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Turkey today accused Israel of using "disproportionate force" against the Palestinians as clashes in Gaza near the Israeli border left at least eight people dead and dozens wounded.

"We strongly condemn Israel's use of disproportionate force against Palestinians during the peaceful protests today (Friday) in Gaza," the foreign ministry said in a statement.

Tens of thousands of people took part in protests along the border with Israel that Gaza's Islamist rulers Hamas had said would be peaceful.

The Palestinian Red Crescent reported some 355 people wounded from live fire, while the health ministry in the Gaza Strip said seven people were killed in one of the most violent clashes in recent years, in addition to an eighth man left dead from tank fire.

Israel's military said protesters were hurling stones and firebombs at soldiers. There were no reports of Israelis injured or killed.

The Turkish foreign ministry expressed "concerns" over the casualties.

"It is necessary that Israel rapidly ends use of force that would further raise the tensions in the region," it said.

"We are inviting the international community to fulfil its responsibility to convince Israel to give up on its hostile attitude."



The Turkish government has been one of the most vocal advocates of the Palestinian cause, but criticises Israeli assaults in Gaza.

Turkey and Israel reached a deal in 2016 to end a six-year diplomatic crisis that erupted when Israeli commandos killed 10 Turkish activists travelling on an aid flotilla to break the siege of Gaza.

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Turkey today turned down a French offer to mediate with the Syrian Democratic Forces dominated by the Kurdish militia force deemed a terrorist outfit by Ankara, a presidential spokesman said.

"We reject any efforts to promote 'dialogue', 'contact' or 'mediation' between Turkey and those terrorist organisations," Ibrahim Kalin wrote on Twitter.

French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday said he hoped "a dialogue" could be established between the two sides with help from France and the international community, after he met a delegation of Syrian and Arab fighters.

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Two armymen who allegedly stabbed their colleague to death and burnt his body at the Military campus in Vivek Nagar here were arrested today.

Police said Muralikrishna (29) and Dhanaraj (25),both from Srikakulam district in Andhra Pradesh, were arrestedon the charge of murdering their colleague Pankaj (26) from UttarPradesh.

They said Muralikrishna, who is facing some disciplinary action, was upsetthat Pankaj was the witness in those cases.

Fearing that hemay lose his job, he hatched a conspiracy with Dhanaraj to kill his colleague, police said.

Deputy Commissioner of PoliceDr Chandragupta said that on the night of March 23 Pankaj returned to his room after the drill when the duo barged in and bolted the room frominside.

An argument ensued following which Muralikrishnaand Dhanraj stabbed Pankaj to death.

Later, they dumped his body in a water tanker, took it to Domlur, a few kilometres away and set it ablaze using waste material there in a vain bid to destroy evidence, he said.

They then brought the half burnt body back to the campus and threw it in a corner, went to the room of Pankaj and cleaned the blood stains.

Army officials found the body in the campus on March 25, following which they alerted police.

The services of sniffer dogs were requistioned and police zeroed in on the duo and arrested them.

A case of murder, criminal conspiracy and attempt to destroy evidence under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code wasregistered against them, police said.

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Two members of the US-led coalition against the Islamic State jihadist group were killed in the northern Syrian city of Manbij, the US military and a monitor said today.

The attack in Manbij, a city where US personnel is stationed, was carried out late last night, the day US President Donald Trump said he would pull out forces "very soon".

"Two Coalition personnel were killed and five were wounded by an improvised explosive device in Syria" at around midnight, the US-led coalition said in a statement.

It did not provide the nationalities of the pair nor did any group immediately claim responsibility for the attack.

The US-led coalition said it was withholding details on the circumstances of the attack pending further investigation.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor which relies on a nationwide network of sources on the ground, said the attack hit a convoy in Manbij.

The monitor said four members of the local council were also wounded in the explosion, which struck in the heart of the city.

Manbij used to be a key hub for the jihadists when their self-styled "caliphate" was at its peak. It was retaken by Kurdish-led forces backed by the coalition.

It is located between the northern city of Aleppo and the western bank of the Euphrates, less than 30 kilometres south of the border with Turkey.

Manbij lies where several international influence zones meet and risks becoming a new flashpoint in the post-IS scramble for Syria.

"We'll be coming out of Syria, like, very soon. Let the other people take care of it now," Trump told industrial workers in Ohio yesterday.

Also yesterday, French President Emmanuel Macron met a delegation from the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), and Kurdish official Asya Abdullah said afterwards that France was planning on sending "new French troops to Manbij".

The presidency did not explicitly deny the reinforcements but stressed it was not planning any military operation in Syria outside the US-led coalition.

France is the United States' main military partner in the coalition, whose thousands of air strikes have played a key role in defeating IS in Iraq and Syria.

Turkey and its Syrian proxies launched a major offensive against the SDF in northern Syria in January that has already resulted in the capture of the Kurdish-majority region of Afrin.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to expand the operation to other areas where Kurdish forces are present, including the city of Manbij.

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The UN Security Council today blacklisted 27 ships, 21 companies and a businessman for helping North Korea circumvent sanctions, keeping the pressure on Pyongyang despite its recent diplomatic opening to talks, a diplomat said.

Acting on a request from the United States, a council committee approved the largest-ever package of sanctions designations on North Korea, the council diplomat said on condition of anonymity.

The move is part of a global crackdown on the smuggling of North Korean commodities in violation of UN sanctions resolutions, which were adopted in response to Pyongyang's nuclear and ballistic missile tests.

A total of 13 North Korean oil tankers and cargo vessels were banned from ports worldwide along with 12 other ships for helping Pyongyang smuggle banned commodities or supplying oil and fuel shipments, according to a UN document obtained by AFP.

Two other North Korean vessels were hit with a global assets freeze, but are not banned from port entry.

Twenty-one shipping and trading firms were hit by an assets freeze. Three of them are based in Hong Kong including Huaxin Shipping, which delivered shipments of North Korean coal to Vietnam in October.

Twelve North Korean firms were blacklisted for running ships involved in illegal transfers of oil and fuel, according to the document.

Two other companies -- Shanghai Dongfeng Shipping and Weihai World Shipping Freight, also based in China -- were blacklisted for carrying North Korean coal on their vessels.

The remaining firms are in based Singapore, Samoa, the Marshall Islands and Panama.

A businessman identified as Tsang Yung Yuan was hit by a global travel ban and assets freeze for organizing illegal shipments of North Korean coal with a North Korean broker in Russia.

The sanctions were approved as the United States moves to open talks with North Korea on its nuclear drive, with a possible summit meeting between President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un to be held by the end of May.

Despite the diplomatic opening, the United States have made clear they will keep the pressure on Pyongyang to shift course by pressing on with sanctions.

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The UN Security Council has imposed sanctions on a terrorist outfit associated with the Al-Nusrah Front and previously located in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area, imposing an arms embargo, asset freeze and travel ban on it.

The Council's ISIL (Da'esh) and Al-Qaida Sanctions Committee yesterday added Khatiba Imam Al-Bukhari to its sanctions list of individuals and entities subject to the assets freeze, travel ban and arms embargo.

Also known as Khataib al-Imam al-Bukhari, the group was previously located in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area and as of this month was known to be located in Syria, with its "operation zone" in Idlib, Aleppo and Khama, according to a Committee press release.

Al-Bukhari has been associated with the Al-Nusrah Front for the People of the Levant and "committed terrorist attacks in the Syrian Arab Republic", the release said.

Since 2016, the outfit had been redeployed to Northern Afghanistan to project attacks against Central Asia countries, it said.

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The ED has registered a money laundering case to probe alleged irregularities in the Rs 1,500 crore Gomti river front development project in Uttar Pradesh's capital Lucknow, officials said.

The central probe agency has registered a criminal case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) did so taking cognisance of a CBI FIR that was registered in the case in December last year.

The ED will probe if the alleged tainted funds generated in the case were laundered and ploughed to create illegal assets by the accused, officials said.

The agency will soon issue summonses to those named in the complaint, including eight engineers of the state government.

The CBI had taken over the investigation into the case after the Yogi Adityanath-led BJP government ordered an inquiry into the beautification project of the Gomti river front.

The project was carried out by the previous Samajwadi Party (SP) dispensation.

The Uttar Pradesh government had asked for an investigation into irregularities committed with a "criminal intent" in the implementation of the Gomti River Channelisation Project and the Gomti River Front Development by the states Department of Irrigation.

The CBI had filed an FIR against the then chief engineers Gulesh Chandra, S N Sharma, Qazim Ali, the then superintendent engineers Mangal Yadav, Akhil Raman, Kamaleshwar Singh, Roop Singh Yadav and executive engineer Surendra Yadav.

Gulesh Chandra, Mangal Yadav, Akhil Raman and Roop Singh Yadav have retired.

The state government had constituted a committee, under retired Allahabad High Court judge Alok Kumar Singh, which had indicated prima facie irregularities in the project in its report dated May 16, 2017.

The Uttar Pradesh police had registered a case on June 19 on the basis of this report.

The state government subsequently sought a CBI probe into the matter on July 17 last year.

The Centre referred the matter to the CBI on November 24, 2017 on the basis of which the agency took over investigation into the matter.

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I don't know how many young women come to this blog or how many are parents of teenage or young adult women, but here are some safety tips from Kelsey's Army:

T

I

P

S

1. Trust your instincts - If something feels wrong then something probably is wrong.2. Know your surroundings - know who and what is around you.3. Always have a plan for where you would go and what you would do if a situation arises.4. Be willing to make a scene in order to be noticed.5. Let someone know where you are going and when you will be back.Remember the acronym TIPS:ake Chargenform others of your whereaboutsrepare for any situationurvival Mentality (role play situations so you will respond should they happen)For more information, go to Kelsey's Army
There is an immediate need to scale up efforts to eliminate modern slavery, trafficking and child labour, Nobel laureates and world leaders proclaimed at a summit titled Laureates and Leaders for Children in Jordan.

Launched in 2016 by Indian Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi, the summit aims to lay the foundation for a more forward-thinking leadership to protect the future of children.

The second edition of the summit was held in Amman in March 26-27. At the end of the summit, the participants adopted a declaration to collectively work to end modern slavery.

Panama President Juan Carlos Varela, King of Jordan Abdullah II, Jordan Prince Ali bin Al Hussein, Princess Rym and Satyarthi, Nobel Peace laureate Leymah Gbowee participated in the summit.

"As Nobel Laureates and world leaders, this is our individual and collective will for a just, compassionate and child friendly world, where every child can be free, safe, healthy, educated and empowered. This is our moral imperative," the declaration said, according to an official release.

The leaders sought "ambitious and measurable" time-bound commitments from governments, international organisations, civil society and the private sector to prioritise children on the move, especially refugees, and ensure their education, protection, nutrition, physical and mental health.

"We stress upon nations to step up peace building and financing efforts with a reduction of global military expenditure by 10 per cent a year to start with in order to fund the education, health, nutrition and all other child-related United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs)," the release said.

The declaration also sought increased funding, coordination and accountability for agencies and programmes focused on people on the move, human trafficking, slavery and labour to realise innovative approaches and solutions.

"We ask for a legally-binding global convention against online child sexual abuse, backed by a new Global Task Force against child pornography, child sexual abuse and child trafficking to provide victims with holistic support," it said.

Satyarthi, the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize winner, called upon the youth, the civil society, governments and inter-government agencies, corporates, media and faith institutions to join hands for safeguarding the future of children.

"I particularly urge the faith leaders of this region to be bold, courageous and speak out loud against the violence against children," he said.

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Two coalition personnel have been killed and five others wounded in an attack with an improvised explosive device in Syria, the US military said today.

The US Central Command did not give the nationalities of the victims of the attack, which happened on Thursday, with wounded evacuated for further medical treatment.

The attack targeted personnel taking part in Operation Inherent Resolve, the US-led drive to fight the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq.

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The United States today decried Russia's move to expel 60 American diplomats and close the US consulate in St Petersburg, saying there is "no justification" for Moscow's retaliatory action.

The US reaction comes after Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow would expel 60 US diplomats and close its consulate in Saint Petersburg in a tit-for-tat expulsion over the alleged poisoning of ex-double agent Sergei Skripal.

The Trump administration earlier ordered the expulsion of 60 Russian diplomats and shutter the country's consulate general in Seattle.

There is no justification for the Russian response. Our actions were motivated purely by the attack on the United Kingdom, the attack on a British citizen and his daughter. Remember, this is the first time that a weapons-grade nerve agent, Novichok, has been used outside of war on allied soil," US State Department Spokesperson Heather Nauert told reporters at a conference.

She said Russia's decision to expel the US diplomats shows that the latter was not interested in dialogue about important matters.

"This evening, (the US) Ambassador (to Russia) Jon Huntsman was convoked to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation. The Russian Federation dubbed 60 of our staff persona non-grata, and they now must depart within seven days. They also ordered the closure of our consulate in St Petersburg within 48 hours. Its clear from the list provided to us that the Russian Federation is not interested in a dialogue on issues that matter to our two countries," Nauert said.

She said many countries have joined the US in its decision to expel Russian spies.

"We have not taken these steps lightly. We have taken these steps in concert with our allies across the world. Twenty-eight countries now join the United States...153 Russian spies have been kicked out from various countries," Nauert said.

She said it appears that Russia has chosen to take the "regrettable, unwarranted action to respond to America's "entirely justified action".

"Russia plans to take the same unjustified actions against 28 other countries, countries that stood in solidarity with the UK. Russia is further isolating itself following the brazen chemical attack," the US State Department Spokesperson said.

The Trump administration, she said, was still reviewing the details of the Russian action.

"We reserve the right to respond to any Russian retaliation against the United States. So we are reading this, we are reviewing it and we will respond accordingly," Nauert said. "We don't see this as a diplomatic tit-for-tat. Russia is responsible for the horrific attack on the British citizen and his daughter. Once again, they have broken the Chemical Weapons Convention. It was a banned substance that they have used, Novichok. We take this matter very seriously," she asserted.

Responding to a question, Nauert said Russia was choosing, through its actions, to further diplomatically and also economically isolate itself, not just from the US but from the world.

They have indicated that they would kick out diplomats of other countries, serving in Russia. Moscow clearly is not interested in having good relations with other countries, and that is evident by the actions that they have taken, she charged. The Trump administration, she asserted, has taken very tough actions against Russia.

"You have seen that through numerous rounds of sanctions. Youve seen that through our actions that we took earlier this week. You've seen that through our actions that we've taken at the United Nations, standing together against Russia and its activities, in which it still continues to kill and be responsible for killing, tens of thousands of innocent civilians who are living in Syria," she said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
President on Friday said the US troops would withdraw from Syria "very soon" as he lamented that America has wasted $7 trillion in wars in the Middle East.

At the same time, he said the US was using all its resources to defeat ISIS and drive them out of the captured territory. We're knocking the hell out of ISIS. We'll be coming out of Syria, like, very soon. Let the other people take of it now, Trump said in Ohio where he had gone to deliver a speech on infrastructure.

"Very soon we're coming out. We're going to have 100 per cent of the caliphate, as they call it -- sometimes referred to as "land" -- taking it all back quickly, quickly. But we're going to be coming out of there real soon. Going to get back to our country, where we belong, where we want to be," he said. Trump, in his remarks, lamented that US has wasted USD 7 trillion in wars in the Middle East.

"We spent $7 trillion in the Middle East. We'd build a school, they'd blow it up. We'd build it again, they'd blow it up. We'd build it again -- hasn't been blown up yet, but it will be. But, if we want a school in Ohio to fix the windows, you can't get the money. If you want a school in Pennsylvania or Iowa to get federal money, you can't get the money," he said. We spent $7 trillion in the Middle East. What we have for it? Nothing. Remember I used to say 'keep the oil' as a civilian. We never kept the oil. If we kept the oil, we would have been OK. If we kept the oil, we wouldn't have ISIS. Because you know who kept a lot of the oil? ISIS. That's how they funded themselves. They kept the oil. We didn't keep the oil. Stupid, stupid, he said.

As a result, Trump said, the US has little money for its infrastructure.

"We have to fight for our military. But we're becoming so strong again. And you watch -- not going to take very long. I've asked Republicans and Democrats in Congress to come together and deliver the biggest and boldest infrastructure plan in the last half century. I dont think you're going to get Democrat support very much. And youll probably have to wait until after the election, which isn't so long down the road," he said.

Earlier in the day, Defense Department Spokesperson Dana White said while the coalition has significantly degraded ISIS, the important work remains to guarantee the lasting defeat of the extremists.

"Our commitment to win must outlast the so-called physical caliphate, and the warped ideas that guide the calculated cruelty of ISIS," she said.

This is a group that plots and launches terror attacks globally, White said, adding that they have no regard for anything decent or valuable in life.

"As long as they exist and bring death and destruction around the world, we will continue to degrade, destroy and ultimately defeat ISIS," she said.

We cannot allow our focus to deviate from the most important task of eliminating ISIS from the region. The ISIS terrorist network is more fragile than it was one year ago, but it still presents a capable and committed threat. ISIS is taking full advantage of any opportunity to regain momentum. We must not relent on ISIS or permit these terrorists to recover from their battlefield loses," White said.

Noting that the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)have repeatedly shown that they are a capable force on the ground to defeat ISIS, she said the US will continue to support the SDF in their fight against the extremists.

At a separate press conference, the US State Department alleged that Russia was not doing anything to help in Syria.

"Russia is the huge part of the problem for the tens of thousands of innocent civilians who have been killed and are still being killed each and every day as we look at the video that's coming out of Eastern Ghouta. Russia is responsible for that," State Department Spokesperson Heather Nauert said.

"Russia is directly responsible for propping up Bashar-al-Assad, who has been killing his own people for far, far too long -- Iran also responsible. We don't anticipate that Russia is going to -- based on their actions -- to help right now," she said.
Former Supreme Court Justice Ruma Pal has said the first thing a young woman lawyer must do is to show her ability that she can speak in court and make herself visible.

Then people would be familiar with them, Justice Pal told PTI on the sidelines of a discussion on gender issue here last evening.

"I was telling the young woman lawyers among the audience here that the first thing you must do...you must show your ability that you can speak in court and then people will become familiar," she said after the discussion.

'The F-Revolution - Breaking Glass Slippers to Glass Ceilings' was organised by Apeejay Kolkata Literary Festival.

"But if you always stay in the back, you will not be noticed. You must make yourselves visible, women must make themselves visible," Justice Pal, who had retired as an SC judge in 2006, said when asked about her advice to young women lawyers and aspiring girls in law.

Justice Pal, who had been elevated as SC judge in 2000, said there was a general tendency of underestimating a woman's ability "...at least when I was a lawyer."



"Not only in her (woman lawyer) ability to understand, but in her ability to deliver - in other words to argue in court," she said.

To another question, the former judge said, "I had retired from SC 12 years ago. But during my stint I had seen quite a few women who were very good, excellent. Meenakshi (Arora)... she was very good, Indu Malhotra was very good, Indira Jaising was very good."



The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act has been brought about because of Indira Jaising, she said.

About the discussion, she said it was "a reaffirmation that women are in fact more visible and holding positions of responsibility.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Brazilian environmental regulators ordered miner Anglo American Plc to halt operations in the country in the wake of a pipeline leak, the company said in a statement on Thursday.Anglo American had previously suspended mining operations in its Minas-Rio system in Brazil, which transports iron ore from the company's mine and processing facility in the state of Minas Gerais to a port in the state of Rio de Janeiro, between March 12-27 following a previous leak. (Reporting by Marta Nogueira; Writing by Bruno Federowski; Editing by Bill Trott)(This story has not been ...
(Reuters) - Twelve percent of subscribers would quit their cable or satellite companies if Time Warner Inc's Turner networks were no longer available, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology marketing professor said on Thursday.John Hauser, who teaches marketing, was the fourth witness to be called by the U.S. Justice Department in its lawsuit to block telecommunications company AT&T's $85 billion deal to buy Time Warner. The U.S. government opposes the deal, arguing that it would hurt consumers because AT&T, which owns pay TV service DirecTV, would have more leverage to raise prices by ...
SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China's cabinet has given preliminary approval to merge the country's two largest shipbuilders, China State Shipbuilding Corp with China Shipbuilding Industry Corp, Bloomberg reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter. It said the move, which will create a firm that will dwarf its South Korean rivals such as Hyundai Heavy Industries Co, could still be subject to change as many details needed to be ironed out by ministries and regulators. Later on Friday, a slew of units belonging to the two companies, such as CSSC Offshore & Marine Engineering Group Co ...
(Corrects to $8 trillion in first paragraph from $8 billion)BEIJING (Reuters) - China will import $8 trillion of goods and attract $600 billion of foreign investment in the next five years, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Friday. China's overseas investment will reach $750 billion in the next five years, the foreign ministry said in a statement on its website, citing Wang at a conference in Vietnam. Wang said China would widen market access and open up its financial sector. The practices of unilateralism and protectionism would be a form of regression, and not only would they lead to a dead ...
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's crude oil imports last month fell 15.4 percent from a year earlier to 2.99 million barrels per day (13.33 million kilolitres), the lowest for the month of February since 1969, monthly data from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) showed on Friday.Total oil sales last month rose 1.7 percent from a year earlier to 3.55 million barrels per day (bpd), or 15.79 million kilolitres.Kerosene sales rose nearly 8 percent last month from a year earlier as temperatures were colder than normal, a METI official said.Japan imported Tapis Blend crude from Malaysia for ...
Armenian foreign minister Edward Nalbandian on March 30 met with national defense minister of Greece Panos Kammenos in Yerevan, the foreign ministry said.

March 30, 2018, 12:14 Armenian FM holds meeting with Greeces national defense minister

STEPANAKERT, MARCH 30, ARTSAKHPRESS:Welcoming the guest in Armenia, minister Nalbandian said the two countries are linked with numerous historical and cultural ties, and Armenia attaches importance to further deepening and expansion of relations with centuries-old friend Greece.

The Greek national defense minister said his country highly values the Armenian-Greek inter-state relations based on mutual trust, adding that Greece has the warmest feelings towards Armenia and its people and wants to further develop the comprehensive mutual partnership.

The Armenian FM expressed satisfaction over the Armenian-Greek expanding partnership in the field of defense.

At the meeting the ministers also touched upon the Armenia-EU mutual partnership, as well as the further intensification of cooperation at multilateral platforms.

Minister Nalbandian introduced the Greek defense minister on the efforts of Armenia and the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs aimed at settling the Nagorno Karabakh conflict.

During the meeting the officials also exchanged views on a number of international and regional issues and their solutions.

The Greek minister presented his countrys approaches on the Middle-East events and the Baltic developments.
LOGAN  A 29-year-old Logan man has been arrested and charged with raping a teenage girl at Benson Marina last week.

Oswaldo A. Vidrio was arraigned in 1st District Court Thursday afternoon, a day after being arrested. Hours earlier, prosecutors filed seven criminal charges against him, including aggravated sexual assault, a first-degree felony.

Vidrio appeared by video from jail. Judge Thomas Willmore read the charges against him and assigned a public defender to the case.

State attorney Spencer Walsh told the court how Vidrio is suspected of taking a 16-year-old girl to Benson Marina March 21. While there, he raped and then tried to strangle her. He allegedly had a gun with him at the time.

Deputies later found a condom near where the assault took place. It matched several that Vidrio had in his possession when he was arrested. He also reportedly had brass knuckles, shotgun shells and a meth pipe.

Judge Willmore said based on the allegations, Vidrio would be held in jail without bail. He ordered him to appear again in court April 9.

Vidrio along with three other men were arrested in 2008, following a string of burglaries in Smithfield. The four were later charged with breaking into at least 40 homes and a dozen vehicles.

will@cvradio.com
UHP trooper hit while investigating crash in Sardine Canyon. Courtesy of the Utah Highway Patrol

LOGAN  The woman who struck a highway patrolman Sunday afternoon in Sardine Canyon has been issued a citation. Hannah B. Dawson was ticketed for travelling too fast for road conditions.

A press release from the Logan City Police Department said, Dawson was driving a 2007 Hyundai Elantra northbound through the canyon, Sunday around 5:15 p.m.

At the same time, UHP Sgt. Cade Brenchley was checking on a vehicle which had slid off the road. As he was walking towards the stranded vehicle, the Elantra struck him from behind, throwing him into car he had stopped to assist.

Several citizens assisted Brenchley. Another man was able to call for help using the troopers car radio. Paramedics later transported him to Logan Regional Hospital for treatment of several broken ribs and shoulder.

Brenchley was released from the hospital Tuesday morning. During a press conference he said Dawson had visited him after the accident, and he forgives her for what happened.

She made a mistake, Brenchley said. I hold no ill will towards her, and if anybody should be upset, it should be me or my family but were not. She realizes that she made a mistake and thats our job as highway patrolman, to correct driving behavior, to gain compliance for those laws for the sake of safety. I think she wont make that mistake again, I am fairly certain.

Logan officers were dispatched to investigate the crash since it involved Brenchley. They report it had been snowing and several accidents had already occurred in Sardine Canyon around the same time.

Dawson is from Boise, Idaho, and is attending school in Logan. She told investigators, as she was driving just past big curve her vehicle began to slide towards the median barricade. She was able to avoid the barricade and her vehicle began to slide towards the vehicles off to the side of the road. As she turned slightly back towards the roadway, she struck Brenchley with the front passenger side of the Elantra. Her vehicle then struck the stranded vehicle and a second vehicle that was stopped to help.

Court records show the citation carries a fee of $150 dollars.
The referendum involves choices and decisions from eligible citizens who will cast votes to determine the future political status of Bougainville. This volume of Referendum Poems aims to remind the people of Bougainville of the importance and necessity of making the correct decisions for a peaceful and loving community.

The moment leading to the referendum is so critical. Bougainville needs great awareness and understanding among its people and an enlightenment that will empower citizens to be active agents of change and development.

BUKA - Bougainville has embarked on a great adventure. It is an autonomous province of Papua New Guinea and will hold a referendum on independence on 15 June 2019.

Ray Girana has just completed the manuscript for his first collection of verse and it will soon be off to the editors for them to do their work. On this Easter weekend, PNG Attitude is delighted to introduce readers to the book's Prologue and also to one of Rays favourite poems from the collection.

In one way, Referendum Poems is a wake-up call for a redesign of the face of Bougainville.

This will only happen through people making a choice based on their free will. In Greek, metanoia means a change of heart and a change of mind  and for us this will govern our decision about which path to follow.

On this note, Referendum Poems strives to promote peace and harmony in Bougainville in all aspects of life and development through thoughtful reflection and discernment on the future of our province.

I have asked myself why Bougainville has always wanted to be free and why we fight for our political independence. While trying to find the essence of the ten-year conflict of the civil war in the late 20th century, I have come to think that Bougainvilles fight for freedom is really a fight for peace. The fight for the best possible kind of life Bougainville deserves as a political community.

Referendum Poems carries with it this hope for Bougainvilleans to take control of their own lives and take responsibility for their own destiny.

On the other hand, Referendum Poems is a reflection of the political journey of Bougainville. This is spelled out in the collection which resonates with the music of peace, renewal and self-determination.

It is my hope that Referendum Poems will contribute to good and lasting peace on Bougainville and that it will inspire Bougainvilleans in making the right choices.

I send you this in the hope that we will share it in the name of Bougainville for our children and their children.

Here is one of my favourite poems from the collection.

Word from a baby

Raymond Komis Girana

When you look in the eyes of a newborn baby

You shall see peace rising over the valleys

You see a promise that war will totally cease

And in Bougainville, there shall be peace

You see the dawn of a new day over the horizon

Birds melodies welcome your day for a reason

To teach a new peace song for a new season

Sweet for an ear that can visualize a vision

When you see the beaming smile on her face

It is a revelation of a distinct and important phase

And when you listen to his innocent cries at night

It is an appeal for a nation to end all the fight

The smile and the cries is a call to give your love

To share your spirit in simplicity and humility like a dove

So to embrace and protect his innocence in a new world

To experience the joy and the happiness in just a word

A word from a baby that means peace

A new word to be whispered in a caressing kiss

To motivate happiness to increase

In a world that wants to see war decrease

When she is pinched by the cold of this world

It is a reminder that we also felt this same cold

Say this word to keep her warm as they did to you

Tell her you love her and would make her life true

When she is old enough she would make friends

She will also share the same words to all the ends

So that we get together and learn to get along

So that we stop blaming others for being wrong

Take a good look in the eyes of a newborn baby

You shall see peace and love from your enemy

You shall hear a soft voice calling out for unity

A voice of hope to those who want a destiny

This is your word from a tiny little baby

See her eyes; they not only mean beauty

They tell of what is beyond mere duty

To be cherished and embraced in unity
After final passage of the tax plan, Katko said there were "significant wins" for central New York in the measure. He told The Citizen in December that the tax legislation would benefit a vast majority of his constituents.

"It also provides everyone more job opportunities in central New York and lord knows after 20 years of the out-migration of jobs this may be something we can try to turn that around," he said at the time. "I think it has a good chance to do so."

The two main provisions of the tax law reduced income taxes temporarily for most Americans and permanently slashes the corporate tax rate from 35 to 21 percent. Supporters, like Katko, believe it will boost the economy and help create more jobs.

But critics say the bill largely benefits wealthy individuals and corporations.

This was Balter's first debate challenge after winning the Democratic designation in February. She won the support of an overwhelming number of Democratic committee members from Cayuga, Onondaga, Oswego and Wayne counties.

Katko, who was first elected to Congress in 2014, is seeking a third term.

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If Rigney is elected, she will likely succeed DeFrancisco, who has served in the state Senate since 1993.

DeFrancisco, R-DeWitt, is running for governor this year. He has said in interviews with The Citizen and other press outlets that it's unlikely he will run for re-election.

As a state senator for a quarter century, DeFrancisco had an impact on central New York  a fact acknowledged by Rigney.

"Those are big shoes to fill," she said. "He's genuinely well-liked in the district. He's a done a lot of good things that I would continue." She cited DeFrancisco's support of the arts and medical facilities as examples of initiatives she would continue.

While Rigney is a fiscal conservative, she differs with DeFrancisco on social issues.

"I would approach things more in terms of making sure that we don't pit our business and our economic needs against our social, environmental and criminal justice needs," she said. "I would approach it in a way that is not one-sided. I really have a lot of respect for business and I think it's very, very important, especially to support small business. But nothing should be at the expense of the people."
news, latest-news

Some 250 classic Holden fans have motored into Canberra this Easter weekend for the biennial FE-FC Holden Nationals. It has been more than 30 years since the first Nationals meet; and Canberra enthusiast Graham Pryce has been to every one since 1995, the year he bought his own 1959 FC Holden. The states and territory clubs take turns hosting the Nationals. This time it was Canberra's go, and Mr Pryce took on the role of Nationals director. He will keep the title until this weekend's meet is over and he passes it on to a member of the next hosting state. This Nationals weekend, which has not been hosted by Canberra since 2005, has been five years in the making, Mr Pryce said, planned in between his day job at Commonwealth Motors. There will be a fish and chip dinner for Good Friday, games at Queanbeyan park to compete for a trophy and a dress-up dinner on Saturday (come as something that represents where you're from - with instructions to be creative). Saturday is the show and shine at Hall Showground. Mr Pryce encouraged members of the public to visit the showground on Saturday to see the vintage cars, saying the best time would be between 10am and 2pm. The Holden FE came out in 1956 and continued production until 1958, when the FC series came in, though the new series kept the same general shape. For Mr Pryce, who was the founding president of the FE-HR Holden Owners' Club ACT, the vintage models represent the days when cars had style. "Cars today are like whitegoods, aren't they?" he said. "All they do is get you from A to B, there's no emotion." That's not to say the much-loved cars don't get these enthusiasts places. The biennial meets have been hosted in Perth, Hobart, Toowoomba and Jindabyne in recent decades. Some of the 250 people bringing some 115 cars to the meet in Canberra this weekend came all the way from Perth, some driving, and some on the train. Mr Pryce is one of four generations of his family enjoying the Nationals this year, bringing his parents, his son and three grandchildren along for the ride. "My grandson he's such a car nut. He's only five but he's such a car nut," he said. Mr Pryce bought his Holden FC in 1995 when it was traded in at Commonwealth Motors. He later restored it, and bought another about four years ago. His will be one of many examples of the classic car on Canberra roads this weekend. "There's a couple of people here who actually bought these new and still have them who are coming," Mr Pryce said, "which is pretty special." He said the meet every two years felt like a big family reunion and the people he had met were fantastic. "We just enjoy the cars, but the cars are a secondary thing to the social side of it," he said. The FE-FC Holden Nationals show and shine will be open to the public at Hall Showground between 10am and 2pm on Saturday.

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news, latest-news

Jakarta: Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak's decision to introduce a new law banning "fake news" has been lambasted by the opposition, the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia and civil society groups as a crackdown on free speech. The government compromised a little this week by reducing the maximum proposed prison sentence from ten years to six, but the draconian law will be legislated just before Najib announces the date of general elections, due in a matter of weeks. Singapore, too, is looking at how it can crack down on so-called fake news and in Indonesia, the recently passed "MD3 law" can allow an MP to press charges against someone who criticises the Parliament, or a member of the Parliament. MD3 is already being challenged by civil society groups. Fake news, a term popularised by US President Donald Trump, is increasingly used by politicians around the world to discredit stories they simply don't like. Griffith Univeristy's Lee Morgenbesser says Trump has eroded democratic norms in the United States and that has given Asian leaders the green light to do the same. "Fake news is being used as a weapon, a blunt instrument to silence dissent in places like Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia. And then on top of that, China is increasingly supporting authoritarian regimes," he says. "The region has never had a lot of democracy, but this is all happening at the same time and that's why the picture looks bad." Countries such as Singapore and Malaysia have essentially been one-party states for close to 50 years, with local opposition parties having little chance of winning power. Cambodia's strongman dictator Hun Sen leads an ever-more authoritarian government which has jailed opposition leader Kem Sokha, forced others such as Mu Sochua and Sam Rainsy into exile, and cracked down on the freedom of the press. Myanmar's transition to a power sharing arrangement between the fading democracy activist Aung Sang Suu Kyi and the military looks more and more like a failure. Thailand's Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, the latest former military officer to lead the country, continues to delay elections that would restore, at least partially, democratic rule. And the Philippines' Rodrigo Duterte, while popularly elected, revels in the role of strongman, sanctions extra judicial killings and regularly attacks human rights organisations. It's a grim picture. The Lowy Institute Asia specialist Matthew Busch says that after what seems, in hindsight, a purple patch in which the cause of democracy in the region advanced, things are now reverting to the status quo. "Our assumptions about democracy in the region werent correctly calibrated," he says. "We thought that things were heading in a certain direction, but there were still flaws in the systems that allowed leaders to make themselves more secure "There are some examples of democratic back-sliding, but also we partially told ourselves over the last decade that south-east Asia had become less authoritarian that it had perhaps actually become." The rise of China and its concomitant economic power has helped reshape the region in the last decade, too, tilting the axis of the region ever so slightly away from the United States and the west. Cambodia, for example, is viewed as a client state of its giant northern neighbour. This re-orientation arguably began under Barack Obama, despite his so-called pivot to Asia, and has accelerated under Trump. However, some historical perspective is also needed. In the 1970s, for example, a trio of brutal dictators - Pol Pot in Cambodia, Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines and Suharto in Indonesia - ruled. If the state of democracy in south-east Asia isn't as bad as it was in the 1970s, the region is hardly a shining beacon to the world (Indonesia, with presidential, parliamentary and regional elections due in the next year is an exception). The Thailand-based deputy director of Human Rights Watch Asia, Phil Robertson, says that governments in Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand are "limiting the choices for voters, and gaming the democratic process, rather than denying the democratic process". "There is still a desire to remain within the democratic club among countries that have been there. In these countries, by and large, their governments want to maintain political power but they want to be referred to as democratic". "These governments are trying to rig it so the rules mitigate against a strong opposition party." Robertson is scathing of what he describes as the Turnbull government's "profound reluctance" to raise human rights issues with ASEAN countries. The loss of former US President Barack Obama and rise of Trump has removed another democratic advocate in the region but unlike Morgenbesser, Robertson questions the influence of China in promoting more authoritarian norms. "Certainly the economic influence of China has been massive, just look at the massive growth in two-way trade. But China is also viewed with suspicion by these south-east Asian nations. Their support for communist insurgencies in Malaysia, Thailand and Burma hasn't been forgotten".

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Q: If you could visit any place in the world, where would that be?

A: I believe that my roots are in Asia, and more than likely in the ancient kingdom of Tibet. As a matter of fact, the capital of Tibet is called Lhasa, which is part of my breed name. I know some people who have been to Tibet. They say is it very mystical and fascinating. I think it would be very interesting to visit Lhasa.

Q: Do you have an interesting fact to share?

A: I do! The Lhasa apso part of me is considered sacred due to the once-widespread belief that the souls of the deceased enter our bodies after death. We are also considered a symbol of good luck, peace and prosperity. Finally, at one time, the Lhasa apso dog could only leave Tibet in the form of a gift offered by the Dalai Lama. These are facts!

Q: How would you describe yourself?
A former Cape Coral official will not face any charges subsequent to a Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigation into her actions while in office.

Citing insufficient evidence to prove any criminal law violation, the State Attorneys Office said in a felony agency review disposition notice signed Wednesday that no action will be taken following the FDLE investigation regarding former mayor Marni Sawicki.

The disposition notice provides no details as to what possible crime, or crimes, were being investigated by the state police agency.

The no charges decision was expected, Sawicki, who co-operated with FDLE investigators, said.

I did nothing wrong, she said in a telephone interview. I knew I did nothing wrong.

Sawicki said the FDLE did not tell her or her attorney the basis for the investigation.

The questions she was asked, however, centered around possible corruption or money laundering  her relationship, if any, with a property owner in the Bimini Basin redevelopment area; whether she was an investor in a South Cape venue that has been a participant in and proponent of the extended bar hours program; and a trip to Italy with family members and a former boyfriend with the group allegedly staying in a villa owned by a major Bimini property owner.

Sawicki said her explanations to investigators were simple: She had met the Bimini property owner twice, both in her official capacity; she was not nor had she been an investor in the business in question; and the trip was booked and paid for through a Cape Coral travel agency which offered 10 lodging choices from which they picked one.

The FDLE began its probe after the Cape Coral Police Department received an internal administrative report concerning Sawickis then-estranged husband, who had been employed by the city. The report, which dealt with a personnel issue, included accusations concerning Sawicki. CCPD Police Chief David Newlan turned that report over to the FDLE, an outside agency, for investigation into the allegations concerning the former mayor.

Sawicki said the complaint was both politically motivated and fallout from a personal relationship.

I am happy its behind me, Sawicki said. Our city has so many good things going for it and its important we move forward with those things.

She paused.

But its hard not to be angry, and I work on that every day, she said. I cant let that define me.

In March, the Florida Commission on Ethics also found no probable cause in a complaint filed against Sawicki.

As per a staff advocates amended recommendation, the nine-member appointed board that serves as the guardian of the standards of conduct for officers and employees of Florida and its political subdivisions and functions as an independent commission responsible for investigating and issuing public reports on complaints of breach of the public trust by public officers and employees found no evidence to substantiate any violation of law by Sawicki, who was accused of failing to report gifts and disclose potential conflicts of interest as required by state statutes.

She said the FDLE investigation was spawned from the ethics complaint.

I have no doubt its the same complaint. Ethics looks at whether it was the right thing to do and FDLE looks at criminal intent, Sawicki said, adding both agencies found  as she knew they would  no sufficient evidence to support the complaint allegations.

According to the FDLE investigative summary, released late Thursday in response to a request from The Breeze, the considered law violations did overlap with the ethics review concerning gifts accepted, including the vacation to Italy. Statutes cited included those related to voting conflicts and other offenses by public officers and employees.

FDLE spoke with a dozen witnesses, in addition to Sawicki and the ex-boyfriend with which she co-habitated before reaching its conclusion of insufficient evidence and no further action.

Editors note: This story has been updated to include investigative information released by the FDLE late Thursday.
The Lee County Sheriffs Office has provided 40 deputies to the Lee County School District following legislation to enhance safety and security measures at the schools.

Carole Green, who provided a legislative update during the Tuesday School Board briefing meeting this week, said the legislative session began in January and everything was starting to move along before things dramatically changed Feb. 14 when the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting took place.

We became somewhat dysfunctional as a state family due to what happened to the children at the school, she said, adding that they were all in a grieving position.

Green said more than 1,000 students came forward, which she went amongst to hear what they were saying, both when they were on the front of the old capitol, in the rotunda and in the Senate and House buildings. She said many were laying down pretending to be dead while others wore makeup that looked like they were bleeding.

It had a great deal of impact on us, Green said, which resulted in both houses crafting a bill.

It was crafted so quickly that we do know that there will probably be more things to look at as we move forward, she said. The fact that we extended to March 9 and today is the 27th, everything is just starting to settle a little.

Lee School Superintendent Dr. Greg Adkins said due to Senate Bill 7026 they had to deploy School Resource Officers across the district.

I want to first of all express our appreciation to the Sheriffs Office. They have done a magnificent job stepping up to the plate that we have coverage to ensure our students are safe, he said.

Adkins said there are more than a thousand pages in the bill and they do not have the technical assistance that is rendered from the state.

We are taking the steps necessary now. We look forward to working with you and also with other municipalities to make sure that we can keep our students safe as we open a new school, he said.

School Development Executive Director Jerry Demming said the School Resource Officer component of the Safe School Allocation has been in existence since the 1980s.

The SRO is a certified law enforcement officer, a deputy permanently designed to provide coverage to a school, or set of schools, specifically trained to perform many duties, he said.

The duties of a SRO are to perform law enforcement functions within the school setting; identify and prevent through counseling and referral, delinquent behavior, including substance abuse; foster a better understanding of the law enforcement function; provide information about crime prevention; provide assistance and support for victims identified within the school setting; promote positive relations between students and law enforcement officers; work with school administration on lock down drills; walk perimeter of campus during the day and assist in Baker Act procedures and counseling of students when needed.

We have had a long standing relationship with the Lee County Sheriffs Office. They have worked really hard with us for the last few weeks, and many years. They are the people we want to use to keep our schools safe, Demming said.

On March 26, he said the Sheriffs Office proactively contributed more officers for the schools.

Yesterday we deployed 40 officers to elementary schools, Capt. Mike Miller said. We are currently in every elementary school and sharing responsibilities geographically to charter schools. Some are leaving the campus to visit the charter schools.

The officers supplied by the Sheriffs Office include deputy sheriffs from such areas as road patrol, crime units and criminal investigation units.

We have a vast amount of experience and knowledge in schools, Miller said.

As of Tuesday afternoon he said they had very little hiccups with the additional officers in the schools.

We are very excited to be in the schools, he said of the temporary assignment until May 30, the last day of school.

Adkins said after the piece of legislation passed the school district and Sheriffs Office quickly responded with the first decision of how to move forward.

We have to keep the kids safe and we feel that we can depend on the Sheriffs Office, he said.

Last week, he said the Sheriffs team got together and put together this plan.

This was very fast in terms of response from our Sheriffs Office. That gets us covered for the remainder of the year, Adkins said.

With that said, he said putting 40 deputies in the schools is costing the office resources from other parts of their department.

School Board Member Steve Teuber said he appreciates the sheriffs response to cover what the state legislature forced down to the schools with the $400 million one-time allocation for this entire security bill, which equates to about $12,000 for each school.

I will not support any funding increase for added personnel, Teuber said.

Although there has been no funding, he said there is a requirement of an SRO in each school.

Data has not been presented that it is going to make a difference, or make our kids any safer, he said. We are just going to the SROs because that is what the state told us to do. To double our SROs based on this one incident is over reaction.

Board Member Jane Kuckel agreed that there has not been any documentation produced that states SROs make a bigger impact in the schools than something else.

Board Member Mary Fischer said this is a community and society problem.

When you are taking 40 deputy sheriffs out of their typical assignments and putting them into our elementary schools, I dont think they have had the time to do the training, she said. I worry about what is not being covered elsewhere. I think that it was a response to the voices of the community that they want kids safe and something done now. We need to include other considerations as we move forward as a team to plan.

Miller said the 40 personnel added are trained deputies and not trained SROs.

But they are more than capable of safeguarding the campuses, he said. The deputies are highly trained deputy sheriffs. We are visiting the schools and answering questions. We are leaning on principals and schools to help.

The 40 deputies added to the schools Adkins said was a response to the law, a piece of legislation that they were required to adhere to as of March 9.

We understand safety, but you cant squeeze a balloon without it popping out somewhere else, Teuber said. You are forcing us to do it without any money. How do you make that happen? Something is going to suffer. We have Sanibel, Fort Myers, Estero, Bonita, Cape Coral  we send them a bill. Just because our Sheriffs Department is funded by County Commissioners, we cannot put the whole burden on them to fund this.

Adkins sent out a letter Monday indicating the changes that took place at the schools in terms of safety measures. Some of the safety and security measures include active shooter training, threat assessments at the schools, a single point of entry at all schools and advanced security technology measures.

Fischer said all schools will have active shooter training by the end of March, with the last one taking place on Thursday. Eighty-five percent of the schools had the training completed before the Parkland shooting.

The active shooter and hostage drills will be held once a month.

School safety personnel, law enforcement and maintenance will visit each school to conduct threat assessments.

As far as technology upgrades at the schools, Fischer said theyre currently in the process of assessing them and instituting a surveillance refresh program.

We are planning to implement adaptive technology, such as artificial intelligence, which will allow our cameras to think like humans and help the personnel onsite to make decisions of whether theres a threat or not, prior to it occurring, she said.
Saturday is the last day Lee County residents can pay their real estate and tangible property taxes without being assessed interest and penalties.

The Tax Collectors office is expected to be busy for the rest of the week, especially today, when offices will be open despite the holiday

However, it isnt going to be as busy as it could be  the vast majority of taxpayers have already paid.

As of Thursday morning, more than 90 percent of taxpayers had submitted their taxes. Of the 546,457 parcels in Lee County, only 54,107 had yet to be paid, according to the Tax Collectors Office.

That represents about $65 million of the estimated $1.34 billion the county expects to collect this fiscal year from property and tangible property taxes, according to the offices statistics.

I dont know exactly why the numbers are so good. I think its maybe because the economy is good and improved, said Pleshette Mims, executive assistant to Tax Collector Larry Hart.

The majority of parcels are paid in November, as mortgage companies are required to pay those taxes as part of the escrow on mortgages they hold. That escrow is equally divided throughout the year to those who pay mortgages.

Substantial discounts are extended for early payment, up to 4 percent if they are paid when the tax bills go out in November, according to Florida Statute 197.162. The discount decreases 1 percent per month, with no discount in March.

November is the busiest month of the year, as 342,454 payments were received, which represents more than 62 percent, according to the Tax Collectors Office.

Things remain busy in December as people pay their taxes as a way to reduce their income tax burden. Lee residents made 77,691 payments in December.

The number tends to slow to a trickle in January and February before ramping up again in March.

All tax payments are due before April 1, which means they are at least postmarked on March 31.

A 3 percent mandatory interest charge is added to the amount due after April 1. If the taxes remain unpaid, the delinquent property will be advertised once a week for three consecutive weeks prior to the tax certificate sale and the advertising fee will be added to the tax bill.

Taxpayers have an option to pay their taxes in installments. Taxes are paid in three equal payments, with a small discount applied to them. Its too late to apply for this year. To apply for the new tax year, applications must be submitted by April 30.

Customers can also make partial payments, but there is a $10 processing fee and this method is used very rarely.

If the taxes remain unpaid, the property is at risk of having a tax certificate issued. The tax certificate sale is not a sale for the purchase of the property, but rather the purchase of a lien for the delinquent taxes, interest, costs and charges for the property described in the certificate.

The property holder has two years to redeem the tax certificate before he/she is in danger of losing the property.

If the taxes still arent paid, the certificate holder has to take action on what to do with the home, so they would apply for a tax deed.

At that point, a tax deed is applied for through the Clerk of Courts office. Throughout the process, people are notified and the property owner will still have the opportunity to pay the taxes.

The preferred way to pay is online at the Lee County Tax Collector website: leetc.com.

They accept payments via a credit card or through your bank account. Credit card payments come with a convenience fee.

People can also call the office at 533-6000 and pay over the phone with a credit card, or checks can be mailed to the Lee County Tax Collector, at P.O. Box 850, Fort Myers, FL 33902.

Checks mailed must be postmarked by March 31 to avoid interest penalties.

People can also go to the numerous tax collection offices in Lee County. The Cape Coral office is at 1039 S.E. 9th Ave. and is open from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Taxes are also due on tangible personal property, which are typically paid by larger companies on assets.

Tangible personal property tax is a tax based on businesses for furnishings, fixtures, signs, supplies, and equipment used in the operation of business, and rental furnishings such as furnishings and appliances provided in a rental unit.

As of April 1, a 1.5 percent penalty, collection fees and advertising fees are added to the gross amount due.

Deadline to pay Lee property taxes nears By Staff | Mar 29, 2018



Saturday is the last day Lee County residents can pay their real estate and tangible property taxes without being assessed interest and penalties. The Tax Collectors office is expected to be busy for the rest of the week, especially today, when offices will be open despite the holiday However, it isnt going to be as busy as it could be  the vast majority of taxpayers have already paid. As of Thursday morning, more than 90 percent of taxpayers had submitted their taxes. Of the 546,457 parcels in Lee County, only 54,107 had yet to be paid, according to the Tax Collectors Office. That represents about $65 million of the estimated $1.34 billion the county expects to collect this fiscal year from property and tangible property taxes, according to the offices statistics. I dont know exactly why the numbers are so good. I think its maybe because the economy is good and improved, said Pleshette Mims, executive assistant to Tax Collector Larry Hart. The majority of parcels are paid in November, as mortgage companies are required to pay those taxes as part of the escrow on mortgages they hold. That escrow is equally divided throughout the year to those who pay mortgages. Substantial discounts are extended for early payment, up to 4 percent if they are paid when the tax bills go out in November, according to Florida Statute 197.162. The discount decreases 1 percent per month, with no discount in March. November is the busiest month of the year, as 342,454 payments were received, which represents more than 62 percent, according to the Tax Collectors Office. Things remain busy in December as people pay their taxes as a way to reduce their income tax burden. Lee residents made 77,691 payments in December. The number tends to slow to a trickle in January and February before ramping up again in March. All tax payments are due before April 1, which means they are at least postmarked on March 31. A 3 percent mandatory interest charge is added to the amount due after April 1. If the taxes remain unpaid, the delinquent property will be advertised once a week for three consecutive weeks prior to the tax certificate sale and the advertising fee will be added to the tax bill. Taxpayers have an option to pay their taxes in installments. Taxes are paid in three equal payments, with a small discount applied to them. Its too late to apply for this year. To apply for the new tax year, applications must be submitted by April 30. Customers can also make partial payments, but there is a $10 processing fee and this method is used very rarely. If the taxes remain unpaid, the property is at risk of having a tax certificate issued. The tax certificate sale is not a sale for the purchase of the property, but rather the purchase of a lien for the delinquent taxes, interest, costs and charges for the property described in the certificate. The property holder has two years to redeem the tax certificate before he/she is in danger of losing the property. If the taxes still arent paid, the certificate holder has to take action on what to do with the home, so they would apply for a tax deed. At that point, a tax deed is applied for through the Clerk of Courts office. Throughout the process, people are notified and the property owner will still have the opportunity to pay the taxes. The preferred way to pay is online at the Lee County Tax Collector website: leetc.com. They accept payments via a credit card or through your bank account. Credit card payments come with a convenience fee. People can also call the office at 533-6000 and pay over the phone with a credit card, or checks can be mailed to the Lee County Tax Collector, at P.O. Box 850, Fort Myers, FL 33902. Checks mailed must be postmarked by March 31 to avoid interest penalties. People can also go to the numerous tax collection offices in Lee County. The Cape Coral office is at 1039 S.E. 9th Ave. and is open from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Taxes are also due on tangible personal property, which are typically paid by larger companies on assets. Tangible personal property tax is a tax based on businesses for furnishings, fixtures, signs, supplies, and equipment used in the operation of business, and rental furnishings such as furnishings and appliances provided in a rental unit. As of April 1, a 1.5 percent penalty, collection fees and advertising fees are added to the gross amount due. Cape News Mama Wont Fly at Cultural Park Theater Community Cooperative Mobile Food Pantry October dates set Golisano Childrens Hospital announces next weeks dates for Mobile Pediatric Vaccination Clinic






Even the standing room was gone for the annual benefit dinner for Lifeline Family Center featuring 5 Love Languages best-selling author Dr. Gary Chapman.

Drawing on experiences from his own life plus more than 35 years of pastoring and marriage counseling, Chapman spoke about how to have a successful relationship by learning which love language your partner responds to: 1) words of affirmation; 2) quality time; 3) acts of service; 4) physical touch; or 5) receiving gifts.

The success of his first book, The 5 Love Languages; The Secret to Love That Lasts, which is a New York Times Best Seller, led him to write special editions for singles, men, teens, children and those in the military.

More than 600 people attended the March 22 dinner at McGregor Baptist Church in Fort Myers.

To date the event raised $107,412 for the work of Lifeline Family Center, which helps women in crisis pregnancies become self-supporting.

Lifeline Family Center graduate Katherina Gonzalez also gave testimony of how the program changed her life and that of her young daughter. Gonzalez now works at Lifeline Family Center in the public relations/development department.

Major sponsors for the event were Jerry and Dee Horne and Glenn and Ada Ann Healey. Other sponsors included The Breeze Newspapers, CTN Southwest Florida, Best Western Fort Myers Waterfront and Susan Bennett Marketing & Media.

Lifeline Family Center provides a home in Cape Coral for homeless young women in crisis pregnancies to help them become self-supporting through education, job training, parenting classes, professional counseling and spiritual guidance. It is the only residential program in Lee County for homeless young women in crisis pregnancies who are not part of the foster care program.

The non-profit organization serves up to 12 young women, ages 16 to 25, and up to 24 babies at a time. The non-profit also operates a 24/7 Pregnancy Phone Helpline, provides free pregnancy tests, free ultrasounds by appointment and does outreach to all areas of Lee County, including all college campuses.

Lifeline Family Center receives no government funding and is wholly dependent upon donations from generous individuals, churches and corporations as well as United Way funding. For more information about Lifeline Family Center, visit www.LifelineFamilyCenter.org

The center is at 907 SE 5th Ave., Cape Coral, FL 33990
Hooters Girls competed in a local swimsuit contest vying for Miss Hooters International Friday, March 23, at the Hooters in Naples. Mariah Materiale from Cape Coral won 1st Place, Alexis Hernandez from Fort Myers won 2nd Place, Jaimee Howes from Naples won 3rd Place, Jessica Nunez from Pembroke Pines won 4th Place and Emily Colas from Fort Myers won 5th Place. Cat Baxter from Fort Myers Beach won Fan Favorite.

Materiale also finished second the following day at the Hooters swimsuit contest in Sarasota. Earlier she had been named Fan Favorite in the Fort Myers competition.

Hooters Girl contestants will compete for the 2018 Miss Hooters International Title, which includes a $30,000 cash prize and a chance to serve as the face of the iconic brand. She will become a brand ambassador and spokesperson, travel to assist in international openings, appear in the national advertisements, and contribute to marketing initiatives and special events throughout the year.

LTP Management, a Franchisee of Hooters of America, owns and operates 16 locations in South Florida. For more information about South Florida Hooters please visit www.HootersFlorida.com or follow us at Twitter @HootersFlorida, Instagram @SouthFLHooters and Facebook www.facebook.com/hootersflorida/.
Metro Diner now hiring staff for new downtown Cape restaurant

Metro Diner, a diner offering classic comfort food with flair, will be opening its doors in Cape Coral in late-April. The eatery, which will feature dishes made from scratch, award-winning presentations, unique recipes and imaginative twists on old classics, is now hiring more than 100 Cape Coral-area residents.

Applications to join the Metro Diner team are being accepted for all positions including servers, hosts, cooks and kitchen staff.

Complete the online application at MetroDiner.com/employment or call 239-288-0057.

For more information, visit metrodiner.com.

The restaurant is located at 1625 Cape Coral Parkway, East, Cape Coral, FL 33904

Florida Skin Center earmarks

organizations for donations

Florida Skin Center will donate $15,000 this year to several charitable causes, including $7,000 to four local organizations  Crowning Daughters for Success, Childrens Advocacy Center, Community in Harmony Initiative (Gulfshore Opera), and Dress for Success  as part of the launch of its Dermatology from the Heart program.

Florida Skin Center has committed to sponsoring Crowning Daughters for Successs six-week Program of Empowerment for minority students.

Additionally, center founder Anais Aurora Badia, M.D., D.O., and her staff are also slated to sponsor the Bling & Bags Bingo Fundraiser for the Childrens Advocacy Center. This annual event targets college-educated professional and executive-level women between the ages of 35 and 50 from Lee County.

Finally, Florida Skin Center will sponsor a fundraiser for the Community in Harmony Initiative  Gulfshore Operas social engagement programs for disadvantaged youths..

For information, call 239-561-3376 or visit Florida Skin Centers Facebook page, @FloridaSkinCenter.

April WIB meeting focus on

The Value of Volunteerism

The Greater Fort Myers Chamber of Commerce Women in Business Committee will host its next networking meeting from 46 p.m., Wednesday, April 4, at The Burroughs Home at 2505 First St, Fort Myers, FL 33901.

This months WIB event will focus on The Value of Volunteerism, while providing open networking for local professionals.

Marc Collins of Carroll Properties and Kelly Fayer, PA, will cover the benefits of community involvement and the importance of donating time and talent.

All business professionals are invited to attend. Admission is $10 for Greater Fort Myers Chamber of Commerce members and $20 for future GFMCC members. To register, call 239-332-3624 or visit www.fortmyers.org.

Pediatric Dentistry of Florida hires office manager

Pediatric Dentistry of Florida, Dr. Tim M. Verwest, DMD & Associates have hired Donald Crispen as office manager. Crispen will be responsible for daily operations and management of the Fort Myers location.

His medical management background includes, employee engagement and training, operational budgeting, payroll, and medical billing.

Most recently, Crispen served as practice manager for Lee Health.

For additional information, please visit www.DrVerwest.com, or 239-482-2722.
Wells College will host a pair of events Monday, April 9, about ecological and social justice.

 First, the college's Visiting Writer Series and Center for Sustainability and the Environment will present a reading from "Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology" at 6:30 p.m. in the Art Exhibit Room of Macmillan Hall at the college, 170 Main St., Aurora. The anthology presents contemporary environmental poetry with roots in many cultural traditions. It will be presented by the anthology's editor, Melissa Tuckey, as well as contributor Mukoma Wa Ngugi.

 College trustee and New York state Justice Renee Minarik will host a screening of "Not My Life," a documentary about human trafficking, at 7:30 p.m. in Stratton 209. The film features interviews with people in eight countries and five continents about modern slavery, advocacy for victims and how victims can go on to happy and productive lives. Both events are free and open to the public.

For more information, visit wells.edu.

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UPDATE:

The Sanibel Police Department could not confirm the arrival of Vice President Mike Pence today. However, officials reported that motorists may experience delays on the Sanibel Causeway up until 5 p.m.

.

ORIGINAL (March 29, 2018):

Vice President Mike Pence will arrive in Fort Myers today for a weeklong visit on Sanibel.

The National Business Aviation Administration issued a temporary flight restriction and notice to airmen from 1:45 to 3 p.m., which spans three nautical miles in Lee County and impacts Southwest Florida Intentional Airport. Pilots are prohibited from flying during that time.

Pence appears to be staying on the island for a week, according to the documents.

Another temporary flight restriction and notice to airmen has been issued by the National Business Aviation Administration for April 6 from 1:15 to 2:30 p.m., again spanning three nautical miles in Lee County and impacting Southwest Florida Intentional Airport.

In April 2017, Pence and his wife arrived in Lee and spent some time on Sanibel. They attended a Sunday service at the Sanibel Community Church, as well as dined at the Timbers Restaurant.
Although both meetings will feature the same information, with the second one on April 11, Bartholomew encouraged people to attend the first if possible, since there is more space at the Fleming Fire Station 2 venue, 5024 Route 34.

Town Supervisor Donald Oltz said so far the reassessment process is "going great," and that Bartholomew is doing a great job and is well underway with data collection.

Reassessing the town of Fleming was a discussion point in the past, but it never received enough support from the town board until now. Oltz, previously a town board member, told The Citizen in January that when he was running for office last fall he heard from a lot of residents who wanted a reassessment.

With Fleming possessing the lowest equalization rate in Cayuga County, fair assessments were also important to Oltz.
Colton Davies

Two days of controlled burning of tall grass along the Penticton Channel walkway wrapped up on Thursday.

The prescribed burns, done in the early spring each year, were conducted by the Penticton Indian Band volunteer fire department, and are needed to burn off potential wildfire fuel.

The process "not only protects from the spread of invasive species, but also protects people and property in the often dry summer," the PIB said in a news release.

Smoke and flames were easily visible from Channel Parkway of the prescribed burns, and the PIB advised while the situation may have looked hazardous it was very much under control.

"The flame size is low, focused on grassland and focused on a small, slowly-moving strip burn less than two metres in width."

All PIB staff involved are trained in prescribed burning practices, from a western-certification perspective and from an Indigenous-Syilx perspective.

The PIB said for "many thousands of years within the Okanagan," controlled burns have helped maintain grasslands and promote land renewal.

"Government restrictions to prescribed burning regimes have led to catastrophic wildfires that would not have occurred if proper and regular maintenance through traditional prescribed burning regimes had been maintained."

The Penticton Fire Department will be conducting a controlled burn near Campbell Mountain on the afternoon of Apr. 8, which will conclude a three-day wildfire training symposium.
Josh Winquist

In January, the Ministry of Transportation decommissioned a large homeless camp along Highway 97 at the north end of Vernon.

Crews tore down tents and shelters, removed dozens of garbage bags of trash, removed dozens of propane tanks and left the space much cleaner than what they found it. And then the snow melted, revealing more trash.

Since that camp was cleared out and the snow melted, people have been asking when the remaining garbage will be removed.

Crews hired by the Ministry of Transportation were back at it this week.

Over a two day period, they removed four truckloads of trash.

The problem they are now faced with is the rising water from the creek. Garbage that was buried by snow, is now underwater.

The crew working at removing the trash say they will be taking the long weekend off but hope to be back at it Tuesday morning.
Photo: Getty Images

A hot air balloon landed heavily after hitting a tree north of Sydney on Friday, injuring 16 people, officials said.

The balloon was carrying a pilot and 24 passengers when it landed in a field in Hunter Valley after hitting the tree, Professional Ballooning Association of Australia spokesman Damian Crock said.

The Health Department said 16 passengers were treated at a hospital and at least 12 had been discharged late Friday.

Their injuries included suspected spinal damage and broken bones. None of the injuries was life-threatening, an ambulance official said.

Television reports showed branches strewn on the ground from a eucalyptus tree the balloon stuck and foliage still clinging to its basket after landing.

The circumstances of the landing will be examined by government crash investigators, Crock said.

The balloon's operator, Balloon Safaris, did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment Friday.

In January, four passengers were taken to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries when a Balloon Safaris hot air balloon made a heavy landing in Hunter Valley.
Photo: Contributed

Scientists haven't rendered a verdict on whether coffee is good or bad for you but a California judge has. He says coffee sellers in the state should have to post cancer warnings.

The culprit is a chemical produced in the bean roasting process that is a known carcinogen and has been at the heart of an eight-year legal struggle between a tiny non-profit group and Big Coffee.

The Council for Education and Research on Toxics wanted the coffee industry to remove acrylamide from its processing  like potato chip makers did when it sued them years ago  or disclose the danger in ominous warning signs or labels. The industry, led by Starbucks Corp., said the level of the chemical in coffee isn't harmful and any risks are outweighed by benefits.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Elihu Berle said Wednesday that the coffee makers hadn't presented the proper grounds at trial to prevail.

"While plaintiff offered evidence that consumption of coffee increases the risk of harm to the fetus, to infants, to children and to adults, defendants' medical and epidemiology experts testified that they had no opinion on causation," Berle wrote in his proposed ruling. "Defendants failed to satisfy their burden of proving ... that consumption of coffee confers a benefit to human health."

The suit was brought against Starbucks and 90 companies under a controversial law passed by California voters in 1986 that has been credited with culling cancer-causing chemicals from myriad products and also criticized for leading to quick settlement shakedowns.

The Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act, better known as Proposition 65, requires warning labels for about 900 chemicals known to cause cancer or birth defects. It allows private citizens, advocacy groups and attorneys to sue on behalf of the state and collect a portion of civil penalties for failure to provide warnings.

"This lawsuit has made a mockery of Prop. 65, has confused consumers, and does nothing to improve public health," said William Murray, president and CEO of the National Coffee Association, who added that coffee had been shown to be a healthy beverage.

Scientific evidence on coffee has gone back and forth for a long time, but concerns have eased recently about possible dangers of coffee, with some studies finding health benefits.

In 2016, the cancer agency of the World Health Organization moved coffee off its "possible carcinogen" list.

Studies indicate coffee is unlikely to cause breast, prostate or pancreatic cancer, and it seems to lower the risks for liver and uterine cancers, the agency said. Evidence is inadequate to determine its effect on dozens of other cancer types.

Coffee companies have said it's not feasible to remove acrylamide from their product without ruining the flavour.

But attorney Raphael Metzger, who brought the lawsuit and drinks a few cups of coffee a day, said the industry could remove the chemical without impairing taste.

"I firmly believe if the potato chip industry can do it, so can the coffee industry," Metzger said. "A warning won't be that effective because it's an addictive product."

Many coffee shops have already posted warnings that say acrylamide is cancer-causing chemical found in coffee. But signs that are supposed to be posted at the point of sale are often found in places not easily visible, such as below the counter where cream and sugar are available.

Customers at shops that post warnings are often unaware or unconcerned about them.

Afternoon coffee drinkers at a Los Angeles Starbucks said they might look into the warning or give coffee drinking a second thought after the ruling, but the cup of joe was likely to win out.

"I just don't think it would stop me," said Jen Bitterman, a digital marketing technologist. "I love the taste, I love the ritual, I love the high, the energy, and I think I'm addicted to it."

Darlington Ibekwe, a lawyer in Los Angeles, said a cancer warning would be annoying but wouldn't stop him from treating himself to three lattes a week.

"It's like cigarettes. Like, damn, now I've got to see this?" he said. "Dude, I'm enjoying my coffee."

The defendants have a couple weeks to challenge the ruling before it is final and could seek relief from an appellate court.

If the ruling stands, it could come with a stiff financial penalty and could rattle consumers beyond state lines.

The judge can set another phase of trial to consider potential civil penalties up to $2,500 per person exposed each day over eight years. That could be an astronomical sum in a state with close to 40 million residents, though such a massive fine is unlikely.

California's outsized market could make it difficult to tailor packaging with warning labels specifically to stores in the state.

That means out-of-state coffee drinkers could also take their coffee with a cancer warning. Cream and sugar would still be optional.
I am a retired elementary teacher who was one of the 5,000 participants in the March for Our Lives held in Rochester on Saturday! If you agree that the NRA has undue influence on our elected officials, it is essential that you vote in the 2018 midyear elections to elect people who are free of NRA money.

There is a critical mass of people in the 24th District who are fed up with the shallow offer of thoughts and prayers each time there is a tragic loss of life due to gun violence, be it mass shootings of innocent children in schools, or mindless gun violence due to domestic abuse or gang wars, or another loss of life due to police action. The marchers on Saturday showed up from all walks of life. Thanks to the inspired leadership of our young people, we all are unified to find reasonable solutions to gun violence.
Photo: Contributed

Facebook executive Andrew Bosworth says he didn't agree with a provocative memo leaked to Buzzfeed in which he describes the company's mentality to grow and connect people at all costs.

Bosworth, who goes by "Boz," said on Twitter Thursday that he didn't agree with the post even when he wrote it. In the 2016 internal memo titled "The Ugly," he writes that "all the work we do in growth is justified," even if it costs someone their life because they are exposed to bullies or die in a terrorist attack. Bosworth has been at Facebook since 2006 and serves as the company's vice-president in charge of the company's virtual reality and augmented reality efforts. Previously he was VP of ads and he helped create Facebook features such as Messenger, its news feed and groups.

Bosworth tweeted on Thursday that he meant for the memo to be provocative and that it was one of the most unpopular things he's written internally.

In a statement to Buzzfeed that Facebook confirmed, CEO Mark Zuckerberg called Bosworth a "talented leader who says many provocative things," but added the memo was something "that most people at Facebook including myself disagreed with strongly."

"We've never believed the ends justify the means," Zuckerberg said in the statement. "We recognize that connecting people isn't enough by itself. We also need to work to bring people closer together. We changed our whole mission and company focus to reflect this last year."

Facebook is grappling with an unprecedented crisis as it continues to grapple with Russian elections-meddling through its platform and privacy scandals. The company's privacy practices have come under fire after Cambridge Analytica, a Trump-affiliated political consulting firm, got data inappropriately.

Days after these revelations, Facebook faced new questions about collecting call logs and information on text messages from Android devices. The company still has not explained exactly why it need this data and what it did with it, saying only that it was used to improve people's experience on Facebook. It's not clear how the data collection made Facebook users' experience better on Android devices when Facebook couldn't get the same data from iPhones.

The website Ars Technica reported that users who checked data gathered by Facebook on them found that it had years of contact names, telephone numbers, call lengths and text messages.
Photo: Contributed

A man wanted in the fatal shooting of an off-duty police officer in a small Kentucky city was found and killed Friday by law enforcement officials in Tennessee.

James K. Decoursey, 35, of Hopkinsville, Kentucky, was shot and killed after "a brief encounter with law enforcement" in Clarksville, Tennessee, according to Kentucky State Police. The department said Decoursey fatally shot 38-year-old Hopkinsville officer Phillip Meacham on Thursday, then fled the area on foot.

The suspect was found after law enforcement officers tracked him down in Tennessee. According to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, authorities determined that Decoursey had likely fled in a stolen vehicle to the Clarksville area. Law enforcement officers located the vehicle in the parking lot of a restaurant. At about the same time, authorities received a tip from a hotel across the street, reporting that a man matching Decoursey's description was there asking for a cigarette.

Montgomery County sheriff's deputies and a U.S. marshal then confronted Decoursey as he walked back toward the restaurant. The TBI said Decoursey appears to have ignored repeated commands and the situation escalated, resulting in the law enforcement officers firing upon Decoursey, killing him. No law enforcement officers were injured.

Authorities haven't described Decoursey's motive. Hopkinsville Police Chief Clayton said DeCoursey had a prior arrest record, was known to police, and that while he wasn't positive the two men knew each other personally, "considering they're both from here, it's very likely."

Meacham, married and with two school-age children, had been with the Hopkinsville department since last May. Meacham had more than 14 years of experience of law enforcement in Christian County.

Gov. Matt Bevin announced the officer's death on Twitter.

In Frankfort, lawmakers in the House stood for a moment of silence after Rep. Walker Wood Thomas of Hopkinsville announced that an officer had been shot.

Hopkinsville is about 73 miles (117 kilometres) northwest of Nashville, Tennessee.
Photo: USA.com

A Canadian-Kenyan opposition figure who claims he was drugged and forcibly deported to Dubai said Friday he was "marooned" at the airport there but intends to return to Kenya as soon as possible.

A Kenyan court on Thursday fined top officials including the interior minister and national police chief for failing to appear in court to explain the treatment of Miguna Miguna, who was targeted amid lingering election tensions.

Earlier this year he stood beside opposition leader Ralia Odinga during a mock inauguration to protest President Uhuru Kenyatta's re-election.

Miguna later was deported to Canada but a Kenyan court ordered authorities to allow him back into the country.

His attempt to return this week ended up with him detained in an airport toilet for more than a day.

Miguna says he holds Kenyan and Canadian citizenship but authorities have disputed his Kenyan status.

In a post on social media, he said the airline that fled him to Dubai, Emirates, "claimed that it was forced to carry me unconscious with no travel documents because the 'state had refused to allow them permission to leave.'"

He added that "Air Emirates has refused to return me to Nairobi. It argues that the illegitimate Uhuru Kenyatta government has threatened to deny them landing rights if they fly with me to Nairobi."

The airline did not respond to requests for comment.

The airport confrontation came two weeks after a surprise meeting between opposition leader Odinga and Kenya's president as they announced a new initiative to heal the East African nation after months of sometimes deadly election turmoil.

Odinga had argued that Kenyatta lacked legitimacy because his initial Aug. 8 re-election victory was nullified by the Supreme Court over "irregularities and illegalities." The repeat election had a low turnout as Odinga boycotted it, citing a lack of electoral reforms.

Miguna was at Odinga's side when he took an oath as the "people's president" at the mock inauguration. The government responded by arresting opposition politicians.
Photo: Contributed

Policing costs are not a new issue for municipalities across Canada; however, the mayors of Vernon, Penticton, Kelowna and West Kelowna are asking for more communication around those costs.

"There has been very little, or very short notice directed by "E" division on the new cost per services put in place," says Vernon mayor Akbal Mund.

The mayors recently sat down with members of the Local Government Contract Management Committee and Union of British Columbia Municipalities to air their grievances with how the costs are passed down by RCMP.

"We only do a budget cycle once a year, that is the only way we can raise the revenue. And yet, the cost comes up at any time and without notice," says Mund.

The LGCMC and UBCM are going to advise the mayors on how they can create a resolution to this issue.

"It is a line of communication that needs to be opened up," says Mund.

"What the municipalities are saying is, tell us it is coming. Let us plan for it. Tell us a year in advance, that these might be downloaded into the community, so we can at least plan for it."
iStock/Thinkstock(HOUSTON) -- A former religious adviser to President George W. Bush has been accused by federal prosecutors of defrauding investors of $3.5 million.



Pastor Kirbyjon Caldwell and a business partner, Gregory Smith, sold millions of dollars of worthless Chinese bonds, telling investors to "remain faithful and that they would receive their money," according to documents obtained by ABC Houston station KTRK-TV.



Both men could face significant jail time and be forced to forfeit assets. Caldwell and Smith both face 20 years in prison for the conspiracy to commit wire fraud count and for the wire fraud counts, according to the prosecutor. They face 10 additional years in prison for the conspiracy to commit money laundering count and the money laundering counts.



Caldwell's lawyer, Dan Cogdell, tweeted out a statement that said his client was "falsely accused" and "would be absolved."



Cogdell spoke to KTRK-TV on Friday and said Caldwell believed the bonds were legitimate.



"I know Kirbyjon. The community knows him well," Cogdell said, adding, "He's an icon in the Houston area, and he's 100 percent, absolutely innocent of these charges.  In fact, he believed these bonds were worth more than he sold them for. He was the biggest investor in these bonds."



The court documents state that Caldwell and Smith raised at least $3,488,500 from about 29 investors between April 2013 and Aug. 2014.



Caldwell told KTRK-TV in an exclusive interview on Friday, "Everyone who's asked for their money back to date has received their money back. I've got evidence here that the bonds are legitimate."



Cogdell said investors who have requested their money back have been refunded nearly $1 million.



They reportedly told would-be investors that the Chinese bonds were "safe, risk-free, worth tens -- if not hundreds -- of millions of dollars," when they were actually "mere collectible memorabilia with no investment value," the complaint states.



Caldwell, 64, and Smith, 55, did not tell the investors that they would be using the funds for personal expenses, according to the court documents.



The prosecutors said the defendants used the money that they solicited to buy vehicles and pay off credit card balances and mortgages, among other personal expenses.



"Although many investors did not understand the investment, they ultimately trusted Smith and took comfort in the fact that a high-profile pastor was offering the investment," the complaint states.



When pressed by investors about how long it would take to see returns on their investments, the pair reportedly offered a range of excuses that included delays caused by the International Monetary Fund or World Bank, and issues related to international currency exchanges, the filing states.



"I will beat these charges like a rented mule," Cogdell said.



Caldwell's presidential pal



Caldwell was known both within his community through his megachurch and in the national political sphere because of his ties to the former president.



Caldwell first got to know Bush when he was governor of Texas and went on to participate in the 2000 Republican National Convention.



Though he said he was a political independent, Caldwell touted Bush's work as governor, specifically noting Bush's hiring of minorities and his belief in closing the gap of economic segregation.



"The governor's plan will help ensure that this God-given rising economic tide will not only lift more boats, but will repair the leaking boats as well," Caldwell said during his RNC speech.



His ties to the Bush family continued through his presidential administration, starting when he offered the benediction at the 2001 inauguration and continuing to 2008 when he officiated Jenna Bush Hager's wedding at the family's ranch in Crawford, Texas.



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The Tennessee College of Applied Technology (TCAT) at Chattanooga State Community College was the recipient of two awards during the 2018 ATEA National Conference, held recently in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

With a goal of promoting high-quality education, sharing trends and best practices in technical education, and building partnerships to enhance workforce development strategies, the American Technical Education Association (ATEA) is dedicated to quality of postsecondary technical education excellence emphasizing professional development.

Byrds Automotive of Chattanooga received the Silver Star Award for their partnership with Chattanooga States Collision Repair program. Accepting the award were Darrel Bult, AkzoNobel district sales manager, with Tamara and Clark Presley, co-owners of Byrds Automotive. Present at the ceremony were associate instructor of Collision Repair, Tim Chastain and Dr. Jim Barrott, executive vice president of technical college.

In addition, ATEA awarded the 2018 Outstanding Technical Program of the Year to Chattanooga States HVAC/R Technician Program. This one-year diploma program provides learning experiences to students training to find career opportunities as air conditioning/refrigeration technicians; sales, retail, and wholesale representatives; installers; maintenance and service; engineer helper; or operator. Instructor Houston Graham and associate instructor Kyle Lee accepted the award with Dr. Jim Barrott, executive vice president of technical college.

The Tennessee College of Applied Technology has a 96 percent average graduate placement rate. During the recent state SkillsUSA competition last week, Collision Repair Program students earned gold and bronze medals, while a silver medal was awarded to a student in HVAC/R. For more information on available programs, call 423.697.4433.
One of the fastest growing careers in the nation now has two collegiate partners to help provide a properly and powerfully trained workforce here in Northwest Georgia and beyond. On Thursday, Dalton State College (DSC) and Georgia Northwestern Technical College (GNTC) entered into a formal articulation agreement involving Health Information Management.

This is a perfect example of how we are partnering together to service the students of this region, said DSC President Dr. Margaret Venable during a signing ceremony in the Health Professions building on the DSC campus in Dalton, Georgia. GNTC students who now graduate from the Health Information Management Technology program with an Associate of Applied Science degree can transfer seamlessly into a Bachelor of Science in Health Information Management program at Dalton State College.



GNTC has a strong health information management technology program, said Dalton State College Dean of Health Professions Dr. Gina Kertulis-Tartar in an interview this week. Students who graduate from their program are well-prepared and their program is respected in the community. Now, we can easily be the next step for those graduates.

GNTC President Pete McDonald is proud that GNTC and DSC have made this move. This gives our students a chance to progress in their education, said McDonald. And, ultimately, help them advance in their careers. GNTCs Health Information Management Technology program was first accredited in 2009. Dalton State College will see its first Bachelors Degree graduates from its Health Information Management program at the end of this semester.

The Associate of Applied Science Degree program for Health Information Management Technology is current taught on the Walker County Campus of GNTC. The median pay for professionals working in the Health Information Management field is more than $38,000 annually with jobs opening up at a 13-percent faster rate than average opportunities in the United States.

Dalton State wants to compliment what Georgia Northwestern is doing, not duplicate it, said Venable. We are allowing students an opportunity to continue the education they began with Georgia Northwestern. Its a perfect partnership.
Emma Dean Hilliard, 74, passed away on Good Friday, March 30, 2018.

She was a loving and devoted wife and the light of her life was her two sons and her grandchildren whom she loved dearly.

She was gifted with artistic talent, a green thumb and the patience of a quilter. She made and donated many quilts to unwed mothers shelters, Habitat of Humanity and flood victims in Honduras.



She was preceded in death by her parents, Clark and Frances Byers; her brother, Fred Byers; grandparents, William and Sara Chadwick and Annie Edwards.



She is survived by her husband of 34 years, Henry Hilliard; sons, Mitch (Regina) Moore and Adam (Beth) Moore; grandchildren, Connor, Kayden and Kayci Moore; step grandchildren, Joshua, Sara and Gracie Hilliard sister, Nancy (Ron) Neugard; brothers, James Byers and Richard (Barbara)Byers; several nieces and nephews and a host of friends.



Funeral services will be held at 2 p.m. on Monday, April 2, in the chapel of Moore Funeral Home with Brother Tommy Crider officiating. Burial will be held in Sulphur Springs Cemetery.



Visitation will be held on Sunday, from 4-8 p.m. and Monday, from 11 a.m.-2 p.m.

Please leave your thoughts and prayers at www.moorefuneralhometrenton.com.

Arrangements are by Moore Funeral Home, Trenton, Ga.


Voice of the People I can drive on the left lane of Ind. 49 and not have to deal with the truck traffic any more. I dont think I know you Jim Ton but apparently youre the one that made this happen. My life is a little better now....

Guest Commentary Fair maps for our children, for our Hispanic communities, for our futures My son will vote for the first time next year. And for his first time, the state of Indiana will have brand new legislative and congressional districts. It should feel like a clean...

Voice of the People During the 13 years I have called Chesterton my home, there are few small-town activities I have come to enjoy quite like the high schools homecoming parade. It is always a beautiful moment of celebrating our students, gathering for an afternoon of fun and seeing...

Voice of the People I find it hard to believe that the majority of Town employees will put their self-interest over the GREATER GOOD which is, the viability of the Town of Chesterton by not getting vaccinated. Our town tried to save money by self-insuring itself. We could be...
The owner of the 36-story office tower at 444 N. Michigan Ave. where LIK Fine Art is moving, Munich, Germany-based GLL Real Estate Partners, was represented in the lease by CBRE brokers Todd Siegel and Phil Golding. Its unique to have a gallery on the avenue, Golding said. I think it speaks to Chicago as a whole, as a place where national retailers continue to want to plant a flag.
Hiring at startups can be stop-and-go. Uptake Technologies, which analyzes data from machinery, laid off 51 of its roughly 800 employees from its Chicago headquarters in January. A spokeswoman for the 4-year-old company said at the time that the layoffs were in part a result of an effort to make sure workers with the right skills are in place as Uptake continues to grow. Uptake now employs about 750 and has 50 open positions, spokeswoman Abby Hunt said.
The analysis, which scanned company statements and social-media platforms for keywords, found that fewer tech companies weighed in on gun control or the shooting than had spoken up over past events; that more companies pointed to their customers rather than corporate "values" as the reason they took action; and that fewer CEOs attached their names to the company's statement, issuing unsigned or more general remarks instead. (The team looked for more than just a retweet, a "favorite" or a "like;" instead, they included only companies or executives that added their own words to a post.)
iPhone users can access the system by tapping the Health app on their phones, choosing Health Records, selecting their hospital systems and then, the first time they use it, signing in with the same logins and passwords they use to access their systems online patient portals, such as MyChart. From that point on, their data from each of the health systems they select will update to their phones.
Filed on Thursday on behalf of Paige Stemm, the lawsuit seeks class-action status for what it claims is Tootsie Rolls misleading, deceptive and unlawful conduct in packaging its Junior Mints, which take up only slightly more than half of their familiar cardboard box. It comes after a similar lawsuit a New York woman filed against the company last year.
Tempe, Ariz., police have released the dash-cam video of a self-driving Uber car that struck and killed a pedestrian. (Associated Press)
Chestertons Jordan Bush competes on the bars during the Chesterton Sectional. She finished first on floor at the state meet. (Kyle Telechan/Post-Tribune)
"Within the next week, I'll hear back from the rest of my colleges. Then I'll be able to make my decision," said Lemmons, a National Merit Commended Scholar who plans to study physics and minor in Spanish, but also may "do something" with social justice.
It took S.K.Y. more than three months to secure its liquor license. Now theres a wine list of about 30 bottles, heavily weighted toward Europe, and almost as many by-the-glass pours, nearly all of them in the $9-$14 range. About six sakes are offered in 4-ounce pours (a couple are larger and intended to be shared), and theres a handful of beers and a short list of well-crafted cocktails.
In the relatively brief time it took me to write this story  say, five hours, procrastination included  the Poems While You Wait crew could have written 140 poems. In fact, before that night at the CSO was through, they would write 50 in two hours. They are, at least for the time they are writing poems on demand, street buskers of sorts. They say they are gathering to poem. A sense of humor comes baked into the circumstances: Rooney sees Poems While You Wait as unpretentious encounters with poetry, where you would least expect it. Shes referred to the work as retail poetry, and the group as the Benihana of poetry. But none of this is a joke, or ironic, or meant to be precious.
A: (Laughs.) It looks very eccentric, wide and broad  it can go from looking at political issues and looking at the violence of the herdsmen in northern Nigeria to looking up butterflies. I use the internet, and I enjoy it. I feel like its having another brain. So anything that pops into my mind, Ill look it up, even the slightest thing that Im curious about. If Im looking at the rug and wondering what kind of dust mites live in the shade of my vent near the window, I will look that up. The internet is amazing.
"She the People" is a new revue at Second City featuring five women and the subtitle "A Girlfriends' Guide to Sisters Doing It For Themselves." Much of the show was penned before the current #MeToo movement, and its references to Ross and Rachel feel positively quaint. But things pick up in the second half when it snags an audience member for a game show and, inevitably and not unkindly, reveals she knows more about the Kardashians than ISIS. Up-and-comer Maria Randazzo is the natural leader here and her range is striking. She can play a CEO and a quirky, wacky woman  someone who "works with kids, animals or coffee"  and you believe her as both. Through May 27 in the UP Comedy Club at Second City, 230 W. North Ave.; $26-$41 at 312-662-4562 or www.secondcity.com
Reported incidents of property crime decreased about 16% from 2015 to 2019, according to the FBI, with the national average now at 400 burglaries and 1,700 larceny-thefts per 100,000 people annually. The top 15 cities on this list averaged more than double the number of burglaries per 100,000 people, and the number of larcenies are 60% higher on average per 100,000 residents. Larceny, which is the theft of objects like bicycles or anything stolen without force, comprised about 75% of all property crimes in 2019, burglary, which is unlawful entry to commit a felony, accounted for 16% and motor vehicle theft for 10%.
Drew was certain he hadn't gone off-roading with the SUV, so he pursued his case, despite the fact that his rental agreement with Budget allowed the company to charge for the damages, whether he was responsible for them or not. He asked for more documents, including time-stamped and dated pictures of the damage, the rental agreements from previous and subsequent renters, a picture of the mileage indicator showing the mileage on the car when the damage was noted, an incident report and fleet utilization logs. He also contacted Budget's executives.
The christening took place a little over halfway through a sold-out 141-day world cruise that began in Miami in mid-December and ends in London in May. The ship will spend the summer sailing in the Baltic and Northern Europe, finishing the year in the Mediterranean. An eight-day Western Mediterranean itinerary starts at $1,999 per person. The 128-day world cruise in 2019? A mere $49,995 a person.
Tusks own experience in Springfield under Blagojevich was less than ideal (I havent seen Rod Blagojevich since I testified at his trial, he told Inc.), but it did give him an insight into how President Donald Trumps staff may be feeling, he said.
Ryan Miller, 18, of the 600 block of Barberry Road, Highland Park, was charged March 19 with possession of marijuana with intent to deliver after police responded to a report of a suspicious vehicle in the 600 block of Ridge Road. Miller also was charged with possession of marijuana, possession of drug paraphernalia and possession of alcohol by a minor. His court date is April 25.
The number of killings in Chicago has continued to drop after seeing a huge spike two years ago. Through March 25, 106 people were slain, down from 128 during the year-earlier period, a 17 percent decline, according to the Police Departments official statistics. This years toll is also lower than the 136 homicides through the same period in 2016, a year that ended with more than 770 killings, the highest tally in the city in two decades.
When Gorman stopped at about 111th Street and Spaulding Avenue, the suburban cop stepped out of the truck and observed an open bottle of beer in Gormans hand, prosecutors said. The suburban officer then displayed his badge, identified himself as an officer and asked Gorman to roll down his window. But Gorman drove off when the light turned green, prosecutors said.
More than 10 years after the disappearance of Drew Petersons fourth wife, her sister Cassandra Cales launched a GoFundMe campaign this week to support her continued search efforts. In an interview with the Tribune, Cales said she is planning to hire divers to conduct another search of the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal and started the fundraising page at supporters urging.
The new rate is nearly three times the paltry $17.20-per-day paid to citizens called for Cook County jury service. And it comes on top of several other well-established perks of jury service at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse in Chicago, from reimbursement for travel  currently 54.5 cents a mile  to a paid lunch at the Fresh Seasons Cafe, on the courthouses second floor.
The robber, later identified as Baines, was struck several times in the chest, and was taken to Stroger Hospital in critical condition. The guard was shot in the arm and was in good condition at Mount Sinai Hospital, police said.
Love was arrested about 11 a.m. Wednesday in the 7100 block of South Jeffery Avenue after he was identified as the person who shot and critically injured a man in the 2800 block of East 76th Street, police said.
Emanuel sees the express train as a way to make Chicago more attractive to business travelers and tourists by providing them a high-speed way to get to and from OHare. His proposal calls for companies to build and operate the line with their own money, though the city would likely be on the hook to build expensive train stations.
Kings Unfulfilled Dreams sermon was a callback to his 1963 March on Washington, where he had delivered his iconic I Have a Dream speech that inspired legislation aimed at Jim Crow, the systematic discrimination suffered by blacks in the South. But having concluded that political equality was meaningless without a measure of economic equality, on Dec. 4, 1967, King announced he would lead a new march on Washington in the spring of the following year.
The show garnered enormous publicity because both Roseannes, the character and the comedian, voted for Donald Trump. The first episode has great fun with the contrast between Roseanne and her sister Jackie (Laurie Metcalf, aka Sheldon's mom on "The Big Bang Theory"). "Not only did she vote for the worst person on Earth, but she was a real jerk about it too," Roseanne says. "And now she's just ridiculous." When Jackie comes by to drive Darlene to a job interview, her daughter assures Roseanne that everything will be fine. "She promised she'd get along and knowing the both of you, I'm guessing you're the one keeping this feud alive." Darlene opens the door to reveal Aunt Jackie wearing a pink hat, a shirt reading "Nasty Woman" and a just-try-me expression. "What's up, Deplorable?" she says to her sister. In the biggest reversal since "The Americans" made protagonists of Soviet agents, Trump voters are the viewpoint characters and Hollywood-style liberals the Other.
In this era of lax government oversight of big corporations, it is important for the people to have elected officials who will hold corporations accountable and advocate for the rights of consumers, workers and the public at large. This is especially important because President Donald Trump has a habit of appointing people to regulatory bodies who believe that regulation should not exist, and Illinois is about to lose an effective watchdog in Attorney General Lisa Madigan.
I see it that way, and I believe that the Illinois lawmakers who passed legislation paving the way for wrongfully convicted individuals to receive certificates of innocence would agree. A recent Tribune article by Megan Crepeau detailed how five men were denied certificates of innocence because of a judges interpretation of the word imprisonment in the state statute. By no means do I want to bash the judge; he mentioned in his ruling the he hopes the appellate court reverses his decision. Instead, I hope to clarify that probation, just like a prison sentence, is imprisonment, minus the metal bars.
The associated cold front is forecast to pass through our area about midday Saturday, with temperatures peaking during the morning with readings diving through the 40s and into the 30s during the afternoon/evening. Easter Sunday morning will be very cold  sunrise temperatures in the low to middle 20s with a brisk northwest breeze.
Officials used it as teen center until 2010, when they voted to lease the property to an outside organization as they grappled with budget shortfalls on the heels of the recession in the late 2000s.
An unprecedented surge in applications has made 2018 a historic year for USC admissions. A record 64,000 students applied, a 14 percent increase from the year before and the biggest jump in two decades.

Weve never had a harder time selecting which applicants to put in the classroom, said Timothy Brunold, USCs dean of admission. We could hardly believe the numbers, and now were feeling the pain of having to turn away so many candidates we admire. At the same time, its a breakthrough year for USC.

Impact on USC acceptance rate

Academic achievement increased as the average GPA and standardized test scores continued climbing. The record number of applicants forced the USC Office of Admission to accept just 13 percent  the lowest ever for USC. The admission rate dropped a full 3 percentage points.

Of those admitted, 26 percent are from underrepresented minority groups, while 69 percent are students of color.

The immense increase in the number of high school students seeking admission to USC was the biggest since 1999 with the exception of 2012, when the introduction of the Common Application caused a spike in applications.

USC conducts a hands-on, personal admissions process some universities no longer provide.

The boom in applications comes after a decade of expanded recruitment efforts. University admissions staff members visit about 2,200 high schools every year.

Notable numbers 85 Sets of twins 66 Sons and daughters of active-duty service members 50 ROTC students 29 Age of oldest freshman admitted 15 Age of youngest freshman admitted

We know the high school counselors, and they know us, Brunold said. As some of their best and well-known students head to USC, theres increased awareness and excitement about us in those communities.

More than a third of the admitted class are straight-A students, and 60 percent have standardized test scores in the 99th percentile.

Grades and numbers are a starting point, Brunold said. We want a diverse class, and we think about which students our faculty want to teach, which students want to solve intractable problems. Its a search-and-selection process that lines up with the universitys strategic plan, and the mature young people we admit bring something to the student body.

Brunold noted high interest in new degree programs at several schools, as well as the draw of student life enhancements like the massive USC Village, a living/learning environment for 2,500 students and a welcome addition to the neighborhood around the University Park Campus.

The count: a breakdown of USCs fall admissions

The pool of students admitted for the fall 2018 semester are diverse and high-achieving. They come from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam and American Samoa. (Enrollment commitments are due May 1; the makeup of the enrolled class may differ.) Of the admitted students:
"I come alone every year rain or shine. Seeing the faith of everybody helps me grow as a Christian. Each station draws us closer to the final moments when Jesus dies on the cross for us," Jaquez said.
"Our hope is by having more information we prevent there being regrets, as well as people knowing when to report an issue and also understanding better what constitutes consent," Walsh said. "The take away from this is learning more about the topic and dealing with those gray areas. People are concerned because they aren't going to have their parents and are going to be dealing with a lot of new relationships."
An expert for the prosecution said Napolitan may have had those thoughts but said Napolitan was not insane and knew that what he did was wrong, as evidenced by the fact that he fled and that he lied about Foxs well-being when he later answered Foxs phone.
"It makes no sense to me. In all of my years, I've never had anything like this," she said of the scrutiny she's received this year from second-year assistant superintendent Joseph Zotto. "Usually your superiors support you. You know, if you do something, they try to help you through it. They're not the ones attacking you."
Fields said he obtained an agreement from the city's inspection services department early last November, allowing the church to occupy the building and giving it until July 20 of this year to upgrade water service to the building's sprinkler system. Fields said he was told about a month ago, however, that no services could be held until a new water line was installed.
"If you want to control it and make all the decisions, this is how you do it," said Alberico, who has stated many times he wants the township out of the water business.
Madison County, in fact, has become unofficially known as the asbestos lawsuit capital of the U.S. In 2016, Madison County heard 28 percent of all new asbestos cases filed in the U.S., according to research firm KCIC, the vast majority of them from out of state. The reason? Bigger payouts. According to the Illinois Civil Justice League, the county's asbestos litigation industry could be worth more than $1.74 billion annually.
Braun said he was aware of the petition and questioned how many people who supported the online effort were Flossmoor residents. If there is significant support among residents to ease the restrictions, the village might consider putting the question to voters as an advisory referendum, he said.
These incidents should be reported to the superintendent, Culver said. Two of them had been reported out to the community of Highland Park, which may have given the appearance that we have this uptick in incidents. But based on the reports the deans keep, there was not an increase. It just had not been reported in the past.
Of course, any choir is only as good as their conductor, he said, noting that this will be Darlingtons last concert tour before his retirement, ending a remarkable period of artistic leadership that began in the 1970s. In addition to increasing the choirs fame through media exposure, he has made more than 50 recordings with the group, several of them award-winners.
Kathy McBride, Dishon McBride's aunt, said family members heard through social media that a shooting had taken place in Zion early Thursday and they went to the scene to see if anyone they knew had been injured. She added that Zion police confirmed his death to them, and they have struggled with the details that have been reported to them ever since.
"The real issue in my belief here is not so much who's right or who's wrong, but it shows very clearly  to me anyway  that even though there's been some substantial funding reform in the state, we still haven't necessarily cracked the nut on how to treat state-chartered schools or public charter schools in general," Deigan said.
Sokol has a master's degree in clinical psychology and is currently working on a doctorate degree in organizational development at Benedictine University in Lisle, according to a news release on her appointment. She is a fellow for the Centers for Creative Leadership program, Ladders to Leadership.
"It is a fun concept and an intriguing way to bring new energy into downtown Naperville," Bennett said. "I think I've done everything I can to allay concerns of the City Council, but if they don't want it, I will not fight it. I don't want to talk someone into something they don't want."
Do you have an event you would like included in Five Things to Do? Email your item, including time, date, place and a contact number to wweber@tronc.com at least two weeks before the event.
Huseman said each has his own career outside of farming and may not want to keep the property operational. He understands, he said, since he ran his own business before retiring. Now, the farm is his lone focus.
"We just got done with a presentation on how to make good, nutritious meals and (the instructor) today taught them how to make chicken cacciatore, something that costs a couple bucks to throw together and feeds a whole family," Cutka said. "We want to help folks make the connection of health and nutrition and show them the best way to prepare food that's best for them and their families."
"Jesse has truly been a gift to the shelter, and she has brought a great deal of happiness to families," Kennedy said. "We are truly grateful for everything that her and her family have done for homeless families in our community."
Ecuador has cut off internet service to Julian Assange where he has been living in asylum. In recent days he has tweeted about his disappointment with several countries, including the United States for their decision to expel Russian diplomats in response to the poisoning of a Russian spy in the U. K. He had agreed in 2017 not to send any messages that could interfere with Ecuador's relations with other nations. Kick him out.
The boycott of Laura Ingraham 's action exemplifies how different this March For Our Lives is than from other movements. "This March will be remembered as the first time the passion of a grass-roots cause leveraged the power of social media on the largest scale seen in these  somewhat  United States."
Our weekly round up of other news affecting foreign investors throughout Asia:

Import-Export Procedures in Indonesia  Best Practices

With a population of over 261.1 million people, Indonesia represents a growing market for exporters and importers around the world. In this article, we explain best practices for importing into and exporting out of Indonesia.

India-South Asia Bilateral Relations

Indias trade and business relationship with its immediate South Asian neighbors is enjoying a period of revival, in large part due to the endorsement by the Modi governments Neighborhood First policy.

Russia Ships LNG to India in First Silk Road Fund Arctic-to-Asia Deal

Novatek Gas and Power Asia Pte. Ltd., Novateks wholly owned subsidiary, shipped to the Indian market its first cargo with LNG produced by the Yamal LNG plant, Novatek said in a press release published on Tuesday.

Belt and Road Initiative Ushering in New Technologies

Chinas Belt & Road Initiative is having a huge impact on the development of Blockchain, VR and other digital services in the need to upgrade facilities and maximize profitability and delivery times for goods traversing Eurasia.

Vietnams Provincial Competitiveness Index 2017

The 2017 Provincial Competitiveness Index has revealed a high level of confidence among private firms and foreign investors, with Quang Ninh topping the rankings. Read more to know about the most competitive provinces, the effect of reforms, issues faced by firms, and the improvement in infrastructure index.




An exhibition featuring replicas of the famous Mogao Grottoes will open at Shanghai Tower, the world's second tallest building, on April 28.







Apart from the three replica grottos that are of the same size as the ones in China's Gansu province, 118 precious national-level cultural relics, including a bronze statue named "Galloping Horse Treading on a Flying Swallow" from the East Han Dynasty (AD 25-220), will be on display during the exhibition.





Jointly organized by the Gansu Provincial Administration of Cultural Heritage, Dunhuang Research Academy, Gansu Provincial Museum, Shanghai Tower and other institutions, the event will provide visitors an immersive experience by leveraging virtual reality and other advanced technologies.





More than 50 events related to culture, fashion, music, literature and poetry will be held during the exhibition that will last till the end of June.




Kerry Brown believes China is now a global player in a way that it has never been before.









The 50-year-old academic, who is regarded as one of the most influential thinkers in the West about Chinese politics, says there has been a transformation over the past five years with the emphasis President Xi Jinping has given to foreign policy.





"China is now a central force. Its importance is no longer just about its economy. It has gone beyond that," he says.





Brown, director of the Lau Institute at King's College London, a leading China studies center in the United Kingdom, examines what sort of role China wants to carve out in the world in his latest book, China's World: What Does China Want?.





A prolific writer, the book is his 15th sole authored work in 12 years, but the first to focus directly on China's foreign policy.





"I noticed there were some very good books on specific aspects of Chinese foreign policy, the history of it and, in particular, bilateral relations such as China-Africa and China's relationship with the rest of Asia. But there was nothing that put it altogether that was accessible," he says.





Brown was speaking over coffee in the lobby of the Renaissance Hotel at London's St Pancras station, a key rail gateway to the continent.





The location was perhaps fitting since it was where the reception was held to celebrate the arrival of the first freight train from China to Londonan event that symbolized the ambition of China's Belt and Road Initiativein January 2017.





"I was talking to someone the other day who was working in Leicester (a city in the UK's East Midlands) and he said the Belt and Road had reached there now after they sent a delegation to China. Certainly people are starting to think how to engage with this," he says.





Brown, who is also a leading commentator on China for newspapers including The Guardian and The New York Times and also for media outlets like CNN, the BBC and Al-Jazeera, says China's foreign policy matters because it is now one of the world's only "truly global countries".





"China has reached a point where its domestic politics are very intimately linked to its international politics now. Never before have you had to make that connection, but now what happens in China is global, just like it is with America," he says.





"They are the only two truly global countries because their domestic policies provide a kind of map to the rest of the world. Most other countries are a bit more marginal."





Brown, who is also chief editor of the Dictionary of Chinese Biography, published by Berkshire Publishing in the United States, had an unconventional route into academia and becoming an authority on China.





He studied English literature at Cambridge University and only made his first visit to China in 1991 while he was working as a secondary school teacher in Japan.





This sparked an interest in the country and Brown returned to the UK to do a one-year postgraduate diploma in Mandarin at Thames Valley University in London.





After that, he lectured in English for two years in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region and became a business manager for a UK company trading in China.





This translated into a diplomatic career when he became head of the China section at the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London before being sent out to be first secretary at the British embassy in Beijing in 2000.





After returning to London, he became head of the Asia program at Chatham House, Europe's largest foreign policy think tank, in 2005, where he cemented a reputation as a leading thinker on this part of the world.





Following his success there he was recruited to become director of the China Studies Centre at Sydney University, which has a major international reputation for research on China.





In late 2015, Brown returned to the UK to work as the director of the Lau Institute at King's College London.





"London is a major financial center and also the center of the UK government, so we are particularly focused on policy. Our research is in such areas as the environment, governance in China, the political economy and investment," he says.





In China's World: What Does China Want? Brown puts China's relationship with the rest of the world into zones. Zone one is with the United States, which he describes as the "ultimate love-hate relationship". Zone two is with the rest of Asia, zone three the European Union and zone four the rest of the world, including Africa and the Middle East.





"China is a newly emerging country that is looking for a role in the world and these are the sort of zones it is operating in."





A recent book by the US political scientist Graham Allison, Destined for War, argued that the US-China relationship was caught in the Thucydides Trap, the classic point where one power is about to challenge and take over from another. The last time this led to conflict was a century ago when imperial Germany challenged the British, resulting in World War I.





"The Chinese have looked at all these power transitions. There have been 12 major global power transitions in historyfive were relatively peaceful, but seven were not," says Brown.





The academic does not believe Thucydides properly characterizes the current situation.





"There's a spectrum. At one end there is China as a threat, which I think is a caricature of Chinese power, and at the other end there is China as a sort of pussycat that is going to love everyone. And then there is space in the middle, which is where the reality lies."





Brown says, however, that Xi Jinping has reshaped Chinese foreign policy over the past five years, with major initiatives such as the Belt and Road and high-profile international engagement, which has seen him visit more than 50 countries.





"In the 2000s, the Americans and others all said that China should be more of a stakeholder," he says.





"Since 2012, Xi Jinping has made this specific demand that there needs to a proactive emphasis on foreign policy, and that is what has happened. China has been much more vociferous because it feels as the world's second-largest economy it should be. You can't hide an elephant. It is just too big."





Brown says China's new high profile is becoming evident around the world.





"In all the 20 countries I visited last year the most common thing that I saw was the Huawei (Chinese telecoms giant) logo. I saw it at Rome airport going into the city and in Brazil, Canada, Greece and the Philippines. It is another way in which China is becoming much more visible than ever before," he says.





Brown is set to publish two further books this year, The World According to Xi: Everything You Need to Know About the New China and China's Dreaming, which will look at the culture of the Communist Party of China.





Brown believes Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, which was enshrined in the country's Constitution at a meeting of the National People's Congress on March 11, is a very real and important concept.





"It is a vision of historic progress. It is not abstract, it is not fanciful, it is real. People can feel it and see it in not just the economy but also in China's status in the world," he says.




A new literary prize of 300,000 yuan ($47,700) has been set up to encourage talented Chinese writers under the age of 45 to become established and successful writers.









Young authors with novels or short stories published in simplified Chinese on the Chinese mainland between January 2017 and next month are eligible to participate.





Entries should be submitted before May 31 and the winning entry will be announced in September.





"We want to hold a festival for those people who are writing and publishing in obscurity. They need to be seen, not only because they have written great works, but also to show them that their careers will improve," says Liang Wendao, a renowned writer and TV commentator.





He was in Beijing on March 24 to host the opening ceremony of the Blancpain-Imaginist Literary Prize 2018, which was co-founded by the Swiss watchmaker Blancpain and Imaginist, a publishing brand in China.





During the ceremony, five judges, including well-known and experienced writers, critics, editors and scholars, recalled their early days of writing.





In response to the central question of whether writers regret their early work, the panel offered suggestions on how the younger generation should develop their approach to writing novels.





Yan Lianke, 60, a Chinese writer who has won several major Chinese and international literature prizes and who has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize on three occasions, looked back upon his first short story, titled The Story of Gastrodia Elata, which was published in 1979. According to Yan, his descriptions of landscapes impressed the editor more than the story itself.





His own harshest critic, Yan described 80 percent of his works as "rubbish" and thought that only 20 percent of writing showed enough vitality to last his lifetime. He also "blamed" himself for not starting to read foreign literature until the age of 20.





"I have been writing in regret my entire life. The only thing I don't regret is the fact that I'm fairly diligent. Even so, the sense of regret I've felt about my novels is still overpowering," Yan says.





Xu Zidong, 64, a cultural critic and professor of Chinese literature at Hong Kong Lingnan University, first became aware that it was possible to write a novel after reading one of Mao Dun's early works, Disillusion. But at the age of 15, he was too young to understand the value of the work by one of China's most acclaimed modern novelists and cultural commentators. However, Xu's dream of becoming a writer soon brought him disillusionment when he refused to modify his drafts and conform to the mainstream discourses of the time.





"One may tell lies in many circumstances, yet he cannot tell lies in his own creations when he knows them to be fake," says Xu, adding that although his books are few in number, he believes they will stand the test of time.





Jin Yucheng, 66, a Shanghai-based writer and the executive editor of the magazine Shanghai Literature, talked about his formative years in Heihe in Northeast China's Heilongjiang province during the "cultural revolution" (1966-76).





Although he had discussed the possibility of writing novels with a friend through letters, he didn't start writing until he was in his thirties.





"The eight years in Heihe turned me into a northeasterner in terms of writing," says Jin, who wrote several stories in his early years that featured funeral customs, the daily routine of work and the struggle to find food at that time.





"However, it was only recently that I realized I didn't touch upon the real nature of the Chinese countryside," Jin continued, adding that the illusion of setting down roots in the Northeast finally reminded him of what he had forgottenhis childhood in Shanghai, the early life that he was most familiar with.




Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on Thursday called for efforts to improve crop structure and enhance competitiveness in the country's agricultural sector.

He made the remarks in a written instruction to a national meeting on spring farming held in Zhengding County of Hebei Province from Wednesday to Thursday.

He instructed governments at all levels to carry out solid work in spring farming, which is pivotal for agricultural production, with stronger policy support and coordination on material supplies and animal and plant disease control.

Work should be done to push for integrated development of agricultural, industrial and service sectors in rural areas and transformation of the operation pattern of agricultural production, Li said.

He also called for efforts to sharpen agricultural competitiveness and expand channels to increase farmers' income, to make new contributions to modernization of agriculture and in rural areas.

Vice Premier Hu Chunhua said at the meeting that food security was the top priority in China's work on agriculture, rural areas and rural people, calling for efforts to improve food crop structure and boost grain production capacity.

Hu also called for progress in rural reforms, and a full check on all types of rural collective assets and management improvement to prevent loss in collective assets.
Ten startup teams from eight of China's prestigious universities presented their technological innovations in artificial intelligence (AI) at a competition held in Beijing on Thursday.

The ten programs, which were shortlisted through several rounds of contests sponsored by China's tech company Lenovo, created AI applications in various fields including industry, warehousing, translation, recruitment, and healthcare, which aimed to cut labor costs and improve efficiency.

A startup team from Xi'an Jiaotong University took the top prize in the finals with their brain-controlled exoskeleton robot that assists with walking to aid in lower limb rehabilitation.

The competition recognizes inventions that match a given market with their chosen technology, so each program is judged based on both technology commercialization and market strategies. The winners will have a good chance of receiving Lenovo's investment, said the organizer.

Artificial intelligence was included in Premier Li Keqiang's annual government work report of 2018, demonstrating Beijing's determination to support the growth of this next generation tech industry.

China has overtaken the U.S. in the funding of AI startups, according to a recent report released by CB Insights, which shows that the country accounted for 48 percent of the world's total AI startup funding in 2017, compared to 38 percent from the U.S.

Entrepreneurs of AI are the driving force of an intelligent future, said Yang Yuanqing, chairman and CEO of Lenovo Group Ltd. He added that Lenovo will continue to support AI startups and help them realize their dreams.

"Many of the world's most successful companies are founded in university campuses, like Facebook and Microsoft," noted He Zhiqiang, president of the Lenovo Capital and Incubator Group, the company's global tech venture capital investment fund. He said he hopes that more unicorn companies will be born out of higher institutions that gain support through competitions of this kind.
Beijing is stepping up its efforts to land top talent from home and abroad as it faces tough competition not only from major international cities but, increasingly, from other cities in China.

The capital has announced a raft of incentives aimed at attracting high-level experts as it looks to bolster emerging industries, particularly in high-tech sectors, and ensure sustainable economic development.

But it is not the only one. Shanghai and Shenzhen - megacities with equally strong demand - have both unveiled similar policies, while second-tier cities including Nanjing, Hangzhou, Xi'an and Qingdao have launched their own ambitious efforts to build world-class workforces.

Some smaller cities are even beginning to surpass their bigger domestic rivals, according to Guo Tao, CEO of the Shanghai-based headhunting company Connected-R International.

"A large number of talented people - in the IT sector, for instance - prefer Hangzhou over Beijing, based on our experience," he said. "In the past, Beijing has made efforts to introduce talent from the United States and Europe, but I believe it has slightly neglected domestic talent, as compared with other Chinese cities."

The Beijing Employment Service Center estimates that 51,000 jobs will open up in the capital during the first half of 2018, with the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area and three science parks - in Zhongguancun, Huairou and Changping - accounting for 37.6 percent of the demand, up by 7.8 percentage points over the same period last year.

However, 15 percent of vacancies will remain unfilled by the end of June, of which 86 percent will be in the service sector, including information, software, business services, scientific research, modern manufacturing and real estate, it said.

Last week, the Beijing government pledged to provide top-level workers from home and abroad with permanent residency, which would allow them to buy an apartment as well as enjoy social welfare.

The talent targeted by the capital mainly consists of professionals with high-level education or scientific background and innovators participating in key national projects.

"Scientific innovation, finance and culture are industries that Beijing should focus on instead of labor-intensive industries," said Tan Xuxiang, head of the Beijing Development and Reform Commission. The city's two major strengths are technology and talent, Tan said.

On Monday, Shanghai announced that high-end individuals, together with their families and core team members, can qualify for permanent residency, an indication of the city's determination to compete with Beijing and other major cities.

Meanwhile, Shenzhen is directly providing financial incentives to get college graduates to stay in the city. Undergraduates can get a one-time payment of 15,000 yuan ($2,400) if they stay and work in Shenzhen after graduation, while those with doctoral degrees can get 30,000 yuan.

Second-tier cities are trying myriad ways to attract talent. Nanjing, Jiangsu province, provides 1,000 yuan for job seekers who take part in interviews in the city, while Xi'an, Shaanxi province, has streamlined procedures to allow students to apply for permanent residency using only a student ID or national ID card.
Beijing's tax authorities launched new measures on March 28 to facilitate tax payment and certification, enabling online services for 66 tax-related items and administrative procedures.

The Beijing Municipal Office of National Tax Bureau and Local Tax Bureau has put efforts into streamlining tax paying procedures, eliminating the run around for taxpayers so that they only have to make one visit to a single location. Thanks to these efforts, 144 tax-related procedures including reporting, invoicing, declaring, filing and certifying can be done under one roof.

These procedures include collecting taxpayer information, filing for tax credits, receiving specially issued invoices, and making changes to VAT declaration from small-scale taxpayers.

The local tax authorities have also established a natural person's individual income tax service platform. The platforms 15 functions cover six aspects, including taxpayer authentication, online search and printing of certificates of individual income tax payment, tax filing for taxpayers whose annual income exceed 120,000 yuan (about US$19,000), and equity transfer.

The tax authorities are also allowing tax services through the mobile apps of various banks, as they establish cooperation with the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the China Construction Bank and the Postal Savings Bank of China. As of the end of 2017, Beijing had collected 11,000 tax payments via mobile apps.

Making an appointment at the tax bureau in Beijing was previously an obstacle for paying taxes. Today, taxpayer could queue up on WeChat, and go straight to the window after receiving a notification through the app. In 2017, WeChat issued 400,000 queue numbers and 50,000 online reservation, allowing taxpayers to manage their time more effectively. At a number of tax bureaus in Dongcheng District where queuing via WeChat was heavily promoted, 98 percent of taxpayers used this service.

The tax authorities are also making efforts to assist new businesses inexperienced in the administrative procedures. Eligible companies could apply for a packaged service that covers 10 tax-related procedures, and complete paying taxes and receiving the invoices on the same day. The packaged service was launched on March 1, and it has already benefited over 1,000 new businesses.
Several educational administrations in China have recently enacted new regulations in attempt to ease the burdens placed on students.

For instance, the education bureau in Jiangsu province prohibits homework to be assigned to pupils in grades one and two. At the same time, in the neighboring province of Zhejiang, time-consuming homework is discouraged and it is stipulated that the students in primary school can stop doing homework at 9 p.m. and those in secondary school may do schoolwork no later than 10 p.m.

However, for many parents, the education reforms are like a Sisyphean cycle, always ending in futility.

Even as schools are trying to alleviate student stress caused by intensive class schedules and excessive homework, they are confronted with the disapproval of parents from the other side.

"My daughter used no more than two exercise books over the course of a semester when she was in grade three. Her phonics and writing were less progressive than what I achieved when I was her age," said one mother, speaking on the condition of anonymity in her interview with China Comment.

Chen, a father in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, complained that after sending his child to public primary school, he was surprised to know that the school is closed at 2 to 3 in the afternoon, much earlier than he can finish work for the day. Furthermore, the children are given little homework, which may prevent them fully comprehending all they were taught in classes. Therefore, the father feels he has no option but to resort to afterschool education.

"While emphasizing the importance of education for all-around development, the school has cut many classes, which pushed us to search for extracurricular tutoring at considerable extra cost to us," Chen said.

While urban students complain about the stress of relentless extracurricular classes, the rural children are losing interest in school.

Han Fei, an official from China Executive Leadership Academy, Jinggangshan, Jiangxi province, expressed immense concern about the education of rural young people following a visit to his hometown of Zaozhuang, Shandong province.

He later published an article saying he was stunned to find that most young people in the village would not take their eyes off their mobile games for even a moment. Their total absorption in their games causes Han a great deal of worry about their future.

However, when he talked with local parents, warning that over-indulgence in cell-phone games may ruin the future of their children, parents responded with cynicism: "Future? Who cares? Rural people are supposed to go to work after secondary school."

Former headmaster Wu Xiaomao said, "Before quality education on an equal level can take shape, any attempt to scrap the nationwide entrance exam will result in rampant rent-seeking deals maneuvered by power and money.

"Therefore, the masses will feel they are deprived of equal rights, making them believe in social unfairness," Wu added.

Zhang Jie, the author of "Childhood Rivalry: Families of Straight-A Students Talk About Education," said, "The scarcity of resources will undoubtedly lead to competition, which cannot and will not be simply removed by dismounting the burdens carried by students. Without open and fair competition, the hidden rules will prevail."

At the recently concluded two political sessions in Beijing (the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference), Chen Baosheng, minister of education, said that what the ministry tries to alleviate are the courses taught beyond the syllabus, which violate the pedagogic rule and affect both the mental and physical development of students.

However, Chen added that those within the syllabus are called school assignments, which the students must make the effort to master. According to him, easing the burden of students requires not only educational reforms but also the concerted effort of society as a whole.
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A court in northwest China's Gansu Province Friday handed down a death penalty on a man for crimes of murder, robbery, rape and mutilating corpses.

Gao Chengyong, 53, was found to have killed 11 female victims between May 1988 and February 2002 in Gansu Province and neighboring Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, according to the people's intermediate court of Baiyin City.

The court found he killed the victims to cover up robbery or rape in Baiyin, Gansu and Baotou, Inner Mongolia.

Gao confessed in court and said he would not file an appeal.

Police hunted Gao for 28 years until one of his relatives committed a crime and underwent DNA testing in 2015, which led to his arrest in August 2016.
The Fourth Dialogue of Civilizations - Chang'an Forum will be held in Xi'an, Shaanxi province in May to promote the city as a potential host for a conference of dialogue among Asian civilizations in the future, organizers said on Tuesday.

The forum, set to be held from May 11-12, is a sideline event during the education cooperation and exchanges summit at the 2018 Silk Road International Exposition. The theme of the forum is "Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era and Dialogue of Civilizations - From Clash of Civilizations to Dialogue of Civilizations," the organizers said at a press conference and seminar held in Xi'an on Tuesday.

Three years ago, President Xi Jinping delivered a speech at the Boao Forum for Asia, in which he proposed a conference for dialogue among Asian civilizations to be held with an aim to boost regional cooperation and development while providing a platform to enhance interaction among young people, civil groups, local communities and the media as well as forming a think-tank cooperation network.

In response to the proposal, China's Qiaology Institute on Dialogue of Civilizations has organized three editions of the Dialogue of Civilizations - Chang'an Forum with local government, universities and organizations over the previous three years to promote Chinese culture and dialogue among the nations along the route of the Belt and Road Initiative.

The event also has another goal this year, which is to promote the city of Xi'an as the future host for the vision of conference of dialogue among civilizations. Once known as Chang'an, Xi'an was once the political and cultural center of China and served as the world-famous capital of the country across 13 Chinese dynasties, including the Qin and Tang. The organizers said it is the perfect location for the civilizations dialogue conference, which they believe will make the city a great platform for global cultural exchange.
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Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Namibian counterpart Hage Geingob agreed Thursday to establish a comprehensive strategic partnership of cooperation between the two countries.

The two heads of state reached the consensus during their talks at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

Geingob is on a state visit to China from March 28 to April 3 at the invitation of Xi.

Hailing the profound friendship between the two countries, Xi said China and Namibia stood side by side in their struggles against imperialism and colonialism in the past, and supported each other in their nation building.

As the two countries' development has entered a new stage, their development strategies and economic cooperation are mutually complementary, and they shared similar governance philosophy, Xi said.

As an "all-weather friend of Namibia," China is ready to work with the African nation to boost stable growth of ties in order to benefit the two peoples, Xi said.

He called on both sides to start from the new point of forging comprehensive strategic partnership of cooperation, to enhance high-level exchanges and cooperation among various levels, cement political mutual trust, and support each other on issues regarding their core interests and major concerns.

Xi proposed to focus on priority areas and key projects, and further tap potential to boost bilateral win-win cooperation.

"China welcomes Namibia to participate in the Belt and Road Initiative, and hopes to strengthen policy coordination and synergy of development plans, and facilitate cooperation in key areas," he said.

"China is willing to enhance cooperation with Namibia in wildlife protection," Xi said, pledging zero tolerance to illegal activities such as trafficking of wildlife products.

The Chinese president also called for enhanced coordination between the two countries in global and regional affairs, to better protect the common interests of Africa and developing countries.

Geingob congratulated Xi on his re-election as Chinese president, and congratulated China on its great achievements in economic and social development under the leadership of the Communist Party of China with Xi at the core.

He wished China success in building into a great modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious and beautiful.

Calling China the best friend of Africa, Geingob said the two countries had traditional friendship and Namibia attached great importance to its ties with China.

Namibia is willing to cooperate more with China in such areas as infrastructure, sustainable development, human resources, technology, poverty reduction, people-to-people exchanges and major cooperation projects, he said.

He stressed the fact that China never colonized Africa and has always treated small and medium-sized African countries on an equal footing.

Geingob said the African people opposed unfounded accusations against China.

Namibia supports cooperation under the framework of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, and enhanced coordination between China and Africa in international affairs, he said.

Calling China and Africa a community with shared future and interests, Xi said China-Africa relations had set an example for South-South cooperation.

"In the past when China was not well off, Chairman Mao Zedong and other Chinese leaders decided that China ought to support Africa despite its own difficulties," Xi said. "As China has well developed, it will offer more help to Africa."

"China has upheld justice and pursued shared interests and built relations with Africa based on sincerity, affinity and good faith," Xi said.

"China will combine its development with helping Africa's development, to realize win-win results and common development," Xi said, expressing the hope to strengthen African countries' capability of independent sustainable development through China-Africa cooperation.

Xi said he believed China and Africa would join hands to build a closer community with shared future and inject new impetus to China-Africa ties.

After their talks, the two heads of state jointly witnessed the signing of several bilateral cooperation documents in fields such as infrastructure, financing, inspection and quarantine.

Prior to the talks, Xi held a red-carpet welcoming ceremony for Geingob.
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China and Singapore have entered a new era featuring with greater opportunities, said Hong Xiaoyong, the newly-appointed Chinese Ambassador to Singapore, on Thursday.

China is ready to work with Singapore to further cement political mutual trust, better connect development strategies and deepen the Belt and Road Initiative cooperation, so that China-Singapore relations will keep breaking new grounds in the years to come, he added.

Hong made the remarks when meeting with Singaporean President Halimah Yacob and presented the letter of credence to her, according to a press release from the Chinese embassy.

He said China and Singapore are close and friendly neighbours, and, over the recent years, China-Singapore relations have moved up to a higher level.

Hong said that thanks to the care and direct involvement of Chinese and Singaporean leaders, the two countries have witnessed deepened political mutual trust, closer practical cooperation and stronger public support for their bilateral relations.

Halimah Yacob said that Singapore-China relations are growing on a good trajectory with frequent high-level visits, wide cooperation and dynamic people-to-people exchanges.

The Singaporean side is ready to work with the Chinese side to further promote friendship between the two countries and contribute more to regional peace, stability and prosperity.

Hong is the 11th Chinese ambassador to Singapore. He arrived in Singapore on March 15, and presented the copy of his credentials to Singapore's Ministry of Foreign Affairs on March 20.




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The Republic of Korea (ROK) on Friday denounced Japan for adopting a guideline for high school student textbooks that distort wartime history by claiming sovereignty over disputed islets, called Dokdo and Takeshima in Japan.

Seoul's foreign ministry said in a statement that despite the ROK government's repeated warnings, the Japanese government eventually adopted the guideline for high school textbooks that lay an undue territorial claim over the Dokdo islets that are an inherent territory of the ROK.

The statement strongly condemned the adoption, urging Tokyo to immediately scrap it.

Dokdo is a couple of rocky outcroppings lying halfway between the ROK and Japan, which were forcibly incorporated into Japan during its 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.

The ROK restored its sovereignty over the islets after its liberation in 1945 from the colonization. Seoul has since maintained a small police detachment there.

ROK people regards Japan's territorial claim over the islets as its denial of the wartime history. Hundreds of thousands of Korean people were forced, kidnapped or duped into sexual servitude for Japan's military brothels or forced labor for Japan's arms manufacturers during the Pacific War.

The Seoul ministry said Dokdo was the first ROK territory that was forcibly occupied by the Imperial Japan in the process of its Korean Peninsula pillaging.

Despite the historical fact, the Japanese government attempted to insert a wrong perception of history into future generations, and it was an attempt to deny the Imperial Japan's invasion into the peninsula, the statement said.

The denial will make Japan lose an opportunity to learn lessons from the past history and move forward into the future, the statement said, adding that Dokdo is an indigenous territory of the ROK historically, geographically and in accordance with the international law.
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United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Director-General Audrey Azoulay named Chinese Ambassador to Belgium Qu Xing as the organization's deputy director-general, according to an official press release issued Thursday.

The deputy director-general provides strategic direction and oversight to the director-general on general management of the Organization. The incumbent supports the director-general in ensuring coherence of activities and program, at headquarters and in the field.



Born in Chengdu, China, the 62-year-old diplomat graduated from the Department of French Language at Beijing Foreign Studies University in 1982. Three years later, he obtained a master's degree in History of Chinese Diplomacy from the China Foreign Affairs University. In 1992, he obtained his PhD in Political Science at Paris Institute of Political Studies.

Qu was vice-president of the China Foreign Affairs University, minister in Chinese Embassy in France and president of the China Institute of International Studies. Currently, he is the Chinese ambassador to Belgium.

Azoulay also announced the nomination of three other members of UNESCO's senior management team, Stefania Giannini (Italy, 57 years old) as Assistant Director-General for Education, Ernesto Renato Ottone Ramirez (Chile, 45 years old) as Assistant Director-General for Culture and Moez Chakchouk (Tunisia, 42 years old) as Assistant Director-General for Communication and Information.

On the occasion of these appointments, Azoulay said "the arrival of these four individuals to UNESCO's Senior Management Team fully aligns with dynamic that I intend to instill in our Organization. The quality of their professional careers and their diversity are real assets for UNESCO and reflect our ambition to be at the crossroads of cultures to build peace."
By Brian Sumers, Skift | Mar. 29, 2018

The U.S. Department of Transportation has fined Australian airline Qantas as much as US$125,000 for breaking rules governing which passengers may fly on its New York to Los Angeles route.

Qantas' daily Boeing 747 flight is among the most unusual in the United States. Travelers can board in New York and transfer in Los Angeles to other Qantas flights to Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

Many countries, including the United States, prohibit cabotage, or the practice of a foreign-controlled airline selling tickets on purely domestic flights. The laws are designed to protect U.S. carriers from a foreign airline stealing its customers, and they're the reason Emirates probably will never compete with American Airlines from New York to San Francisco.

But since Qantas customers are merely stopping in L.A., and not getting off there, its route is not considered cabotage.

Qantas has had the route for years without issues. But in 2015 and 2016, rather than just selling the New York leg to customers booked on Qantas, it allowed passengers flying two other long-haul airlines to buy it.

In one case, the DOT said, passengers starting in New York could transfer in Los Angeles to an Air Tahiti Nui flight to Tahiti, French Polynesia. In a second instance, New York passengers could fly Qantas to L.A. and then switch to an American Airlines flight to Auckland, New Zealand.

Qantas maintains it did nothing wrong. It codeshares with American and Air Tahiti Nui, and in both cases, customers had bought Qantas flight numbers for all legs. Effectively, Qantas said, the passengers were flying Qantas for their entire itineraries.

But the DOT ruled the codeshares were different.

"By holding out flights and transporting revenue passengers between two points within the United States and then placing those passengers on flights operated by other carriers for onward transportation to foreign destinations, Qantas engaged in unauthorized cabotage," it said in its decision.

Interestingly, the DOT sometimes grants carriers exemptions from cabotage laws, often for arcane reasons. Samoa Airways, based in Samoa, an independent country, is temporarily permitted to carry passengers between Pago Pago and the Manu'a Islands, both in American Samoa, a nearby U.S. territory. No U.S.-flagged airlines wish to fly the route.

A U.S. law firm has repeatedly sought and received exemptions for the airline in recent years, arguing it "...prevent[s] severe hardship to American Samoa residents, who would otherwise be required to travel between the islands by boat."

As for Qantas, it expects to continue flying between New York and L.A for the foreseeable future. However, in September, it will switch from the 747 to the smaller and more efficient Boeing 787-9.

Within about five years, Qantas is hopeful it will finally be able to fly nonstop from Sydney to New York, making the Los Angeles stop unnecessary. But to do that, Boeing or Airbus will need to build Qantas a plane capable of flying at least 18 hours.
Agreement on comprehensive strategic partnership reached

China should offer more help to Africa as it develops and effectively synergize its own progress with its efforts in facilitating Africa's development, President Xi Jinping told visiting Namibian President Hage Geingob on Thursday.

The goal is to further achieve mutual benefits and common development, particularly to boost the African nations' own capabilities to develop on an independent and sustained basis, Xi said in their talks on Thursday in Beijing.
The Chinese Navy's recent large-scale training exercise in the South China Sea is "normal and routine" and was not intended to target any third party, the Defense Ministry said on Thursday.

Senior Colonel Ren Guoqiang, the ministry's spokesman, made the remark in response to media inquiries about recent satellite photos taken by the United States showing that aircraft and about 40 vessels from the People's Liberation Army Navy, including the CNS Liaoning aircraft carrier, traveling in formation in the South China Sea.

"The exercise is part of this year's planned training to improve combat capabilities. It is normal and routine and does not target any certain country or party," Ren said in a news conference.
Kim Jong-un's visit to Beijing this week for talks with President Xi Jinping has raised hopes that the planned upcoming series of meetings will produce meaningful outcomes, as the top leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea pledged his commitment to denuclearization, which is the ultimate goal of all the other stakeholders in the issue, including China.

The fruitful results of the meeting between Xi and Kim have been widely recognized by the international community, with United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres welcoming the meeting, and US President Donald Trump saying in a tweet that he had been informed by Xi on Tuesday night that the meeting with Kim "went very well" and that Kim looked forward to meeting the US president. A meeting between the two leaders is reportedly in the works for sometime in May, although the time and place have not yet been announced.

After Kim concluded his visit to Beijing, Republic of Korea officials did confirm on Thursday that a meeting between ROK President Moon Jae-in and Kim is to be held on April 27 in the border truce village of Panmunjom. And Japan has reportedly also sounded out the DPRK about a bilateral summit.
Ironically, in defense of biblical faith, some Christians denounce the Big Banga theory originally rejected by many in the scientific community on the grounds that it smuggled a biblical view into science. Belgian Catholic priest and astronomer Georges Lemaitre first proposed the theory in 1927 and called it the cosmic egg or the primordial atom. Big bang was a later phrase suggested by British astronomer Fred Hoyle, who opposed the theory.

The Vatican, for its part, was so thrilled by Lemaitres theory and its progressive verification in the scientific community that Lemaitre himself had to contact the Vatican to plead that it desist from making scientific proclamations, a domain beyond its magisterium. The Vatican complied, and the attitude of global Christendom toward the Big Bang has been largely ambivalent ever since.

So, if the notion that the universe exploded from a single point was first conceived by a Christian and considered by the Catholic Church to align beautifully with the message of the Bible (primarily with the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo, creation out of nothing), how might this scientific idea continue to contribute to theology?

Well, I believe the clue is right there in the name Lemaitre gave to his theory: the cosmic egg. With which holiday in the Christian calendar are eggs associated? Easter, of course. And so here is the parallel: For the scientific community and for Christian believers, respectively, the Big Bang and the resurrection of Jesus postulate as the vanishing point of their worldviews a privileged, unrepeatable, radically timeless moment in which light burst forth out of darkness, heat burst out of cold, life burst out of death, and Yes burst out of No. The parallels are striking.

And with a little theological imagination, we can perhaps ask ourselves the big question of how these two vanishing points relate to each other. For Christians who affirm the divinity of Jesus, the resurrection will not be thought of as an instance of Big Bang power, as if Jesus somehow tapped into the cosmic energy that quivered pregnantly when the universe erupted. Rather, the emphasis flows the other way. The Big Bang is an instance of resurrection power. That is, the resurrection is not merely a fact among a universe of facts but is precisely The Fact on the threshold of all facts, the Reality from which all other reality derives and to which it points.

At Harvard University, where I am a religion student, there seems to be some skittishness about considering the meaning of the Big Bang on this level or on any level that transcends empirical data. During my first semester at Harvard, I took a course enticingly called Galactic and Extra-Galactic Astronomy. In the first month of the course, we learned about the Milky Way, home sweet home, and its 100 billion to 400 billion stars. (Pause and think about that for a minute.) But this was just the beginning, a cute little anteroom to a sprawling castle.

The second and third month of the course took us into the deep reaches of spacewhich, of course, is also the deep reaches of time, telescopes being time travel machinesuntil we finally arrived at the study of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). Avoiding astronomical jargon, the CMB is the afterglow of the Big Bang, a highly charged dust uniformly present throughout space, all the way out to the furthest reaches of the observable universe. (A minority position held by some astronomers theorizes a bouncing cosmology, in which the universe has no ultimate beginning, but eternally expands and contracts from Big Bang to Big Crunch and back to Big Bang, forever. Whatever mathematical merits this theory may have, it only postpones the real philosophical question, which is: Why there is anything at all?)

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At any rate, physicists are able to mathematically describe the CMB and the Big Bang from which it originated 13.8 billion years ago, all the way up to Planck time, which is a unit of time about a zillionth of a second long. The math all coheres (or so it seems to us) up until the time when the universe was approximately 0.0000000000000000000000000000001 seconds old.

And near the end of the semester, breathless after traversing the history of the universe, the professor rhetorically asked the class: And what happened before Planck time? We were all on the edge of our seats. This was the biggest question, the truly ultimate puzzle: Where does it all come from? Why is there something instead of nothing?

But the professor balked, quipping casually in reply to his own question: Well, we cant talk about theology here, so lets move on. Everyone exhaled in disbelief. Or at least I did and initially thought it was a joke at my expense, the token religion student in the class. But he was utterly serious. The holy grail of curiosity had been set against our lips and cynically withdrawn.

Of course, one can imagine very good reasons why a modern, secular university and especially a physics class cannot talk about theology. Additionally, his question plays on the semantic and scientific challenges of talking about what happened before the Big Bangsince time itself did not yet exist. But the problem of much modern thinking, however, is that it assumes the inability to talk about such things in that context means the subjects are themselves unimportant or even taboo. Such habits of thought endanger the very mission of the university.

The term universitas means a whole or community, and when this community is so hyper-specialized that it is discouraged from making sense of the wholewhen departments asking empirical questions are siloed off from departments asking existential questions, and vice versathe university becomes a parody of its own identity. And such missional drift has consequences beyond any ivy-clad university walls: the disintegration of knowledge in the very institutions devoted to it is only a symptom of a troubling trend toward fragmentation and incoherence throughout modern culture.

If there is one place, however, where holistic curiosity should be unleashed and free, it is the church. This has been much my own story, from the time I was a little boy all the way now through doctoral studies. It has been a process of much question asking and paradigm shifting, and thankfully I was never made to face the false alternative of spiritual or intellectual suicide. One particularly important moment for me was when the path of curiosity led to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the fourth-century church in Jerusalem likely built over the historic location of Jesus execution and grave.

When I was a little boy and was taught how to share my faith, the logic went something like this: You see, we are sinners, and sin has the punishment of death. So for our actions, which are bad, we deserve to die. But God was kind and sent his own son to die in our place, taking our punishment of death. It is a cross-centric, Good-Friday-centric story.

Now, I still affirm these things (with footnotes), but it is notable that at the site where these events took place, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Golgotha is somewhat of an architectural footnote, up a twisted staircase in a gilded loft, while the lines of the building crescendo dramatically on the tomb, the place of resurrection. Sepulcher means tomb, of course, and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher preaches in an elaborate exegesis of stone that what is most important here is not the cross but the empty tomb.

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Lovely, but what does this have to do with the Big Bang? Quite a lot, actually. The grave of Jesus is located under a massive dome, encased in a box-shaped shrine called an edicule. Directly above the edicule is a large hole in the dome, intentionally left open (like the Pantheon in Rome) so that the interior is lit up during the day by a majestic column of light. The sound of bells and wingbeats of pigeons often reverberate through the huge space, while the smoke of candles and incense curl gently upward into the light. But what is most fascinating is the artwork covering the inside of the dome. It is fairly recent, actually. In 1997, the churches with jurisdiction in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher (the Catholics and a handful of Orthodox churches) decided to renovate the inside of the dome and hosted an international competition for the design. The winner was a commercial mall builder from Fresno, California. He created a piece called Explosions of Light. Radiating away from the open center in every direction are 12 banners of gold terminating in a field of stars.

The light, according to the Hebrew University professor who showed me through the church, represents the activity of God, while the stars represent humanity or the churches. And the theological message is quite clear: Whatever happened here on an early morning very long ago, it unleashed from the unlikeliest of sourcesa stiff corpsean explosion of otherworldly power that today is still expanding (like the universe itself) and sweeping up souls in a wake of light.

And in fact, by my own lights, this idea and the artwork expressing it resemble to no small degree the Big Bang itself. An explosion of light just above the tomb of Jesus represents to me a fusion of vanishing points at which the empirical and existential questions perennially inspiring and haunting our species converge, speaking a message that establishes, dignifies, and transcends human capacities of thought and language. From beyond the ultimate horizon of our imagination and intelligence a voice breaks through that simultaneously brackets and beautifies all we could ever think, feel, or know: I love you.

Ryan Gregg is a PhD candidate in religion at Harvard University specializing in Christian theology and the Hebrew Bible.
In 2020, we were the church on our heels. A global pandemic shut down much of our world. But the church has been on the move since it was birthed; it will continue to be on the move until God makes all things new.
The magic returns; the strains of our music will once more ring forth. Consortium Aurora Borealis is back in action after the silence imposed on so many arts organizations by COVID-19.
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AKRON, Ohio - @PLAY, Mac Love's ARTXLOVE project, is moving steadily through Akron's neighborhoods, bringing more vibrancy to each, while working to connect neighbors with one another.

Love won a $241,000 Knight Foundation Cities Challenge grant in 2017 for his @Play idea, which is designed to encourage deeper community connections through projects that highlight the unique history, identity and character of each of the city's neighborhoods.

To determine what project would be most welcomed and most pertinent to each neighborhood, Love's team communicates with the residents one-on one in different ways.

In the North Hill/Cascade Valley area, the team walked the streets, connecting with residents out walking or on their porches.

North Hill has been Akron's international neighborhood for decades, and rests on a strong foundation of long-time Italian, Slavic and African-American families. Over the past 10-15 years, the Hill has also welcomed an influx of immigrants and refugees, mostly from Bhutan.

So Love was surprised to learn, when speaking with both immigrants and established residents, that neither group wanted murals depicting North Hill as an international community.

Of great interest however, was improvements to community spaces.

To achieve that, Love's team is rehabilitating the old, deteriorated benches in several public parks, replacing old wood with new lumber, and sanding, painting and sealing them.

Also being installed are several large wind chimes, designed from pieces bought in local thrift shops and built by engineers from the University of Akron to weather Ohio winters.

Parks that will have benches and/or chines include:

McClain Park - bench + wind chime

Dayton & Pitkin - wind chime

Pitkin Point Park - bench + wind chime

Patterson Park - bench + wind chime

Bettes Park - bench + wind chime

Glenwood Ave. & Fouse St. - wind chime

Temple Square - wind chime

Avon Park - bench + wind chime

Suddieth Park - bench + wind chime

Some of the chimes will be strategically installed to draw pedestrians away from their usual routes and into new places, Love said.

The benches, and some of the chimes, are painted in vivid colors, so they are inviting to all, to draw neighbors together.

Some of the benches will have special placards with a question or statement to be answered via # CHIMEinAKRON on social media platforms. Questions include:

What's the best advice you've ever received

What is on wish you have for the future?

What makes Akron special?

What was the happiest moment of your life?

The goal, in part, is to help tell the history of the neighborhoods and of the people who live there.

"Despite everyone's diverse origins or how they got to the neighborhood or to Akron, we have more in comment than we do apart," Love said.

Anyone interested in volunteering to help Love's team with installations can come to Waters Park on Olive Street in North Hill from 1-4 p.m. this Saturday, March 31. RSVP for the event here.

Volunteers should wear clothes for light outdoor work, including gloves. Anyone who would like to bring a cordless drill, screwdriver, wrench, hammer and/or tape measure is welcome. Email the team for more information.

Want more Akron news? Sign up for cleveland.com's Rubber City Daily, an email newsletter delivered at 5:30 a.m. Monday through Friday.
AKRON, Ohio -- Investigators are searching for several teens who attacked a woman as she called 911 to report a fight she recorded with her cellphone.

The teens attacked the 27-year-old woman as she took video of a fight about 4:30 p.m. Wednesday at Hardesty Park on Wallhaven Circle, police said in a news release.

No arrests have been made in the case.

The woman sat in her car as she called 911 to report a "brawl" involving approximately 20 teens, according to a recording of the call released Friday afternoon.

"I just told them that the cops are coming," the woman said in the 911 call. "Now they're all running."

Most of the teens ran away, but several walked over to the woman's car and began to kick it, police said. The woman yelled at the teens and told them she had video of their antics.

The woman opened her car door to confront them, but they grabbed the door and pulled it open. The woman got out of the car, and several boys assaulted her while a girl took her cellphone, police said.

The 911 call becomes muffled as the scuffled occurs. Eventually a boy can be heard in the recording yelling "let's go."

The teens ran away before officers arrived at the park.

The woman suffered minor injuries in the attack, police said. She refused medical treatment but later went to a hospital.

Anyone with information about the teens is asked to call the Akron Police Department's detective bureau at 330-375-2490.

To comment on this story, visit Friday's crime and courts comments page.
BEREA, Ohio -- Garbage picking, Runn Street: A resident called police at about 3:45 p.m. March 22 after seeing a neighbor rummage through her trash, which she had placed on the tree lawn for pickup.

The woman said the neighbor removed some items from her trash. She confronted the neighbor and told him to put the items back. The neighbor spoke to the woman in an unfriendly manner, but did not threaten her.

Police visited the neighbor, who admitted he should not have spoken to the woman as he did. He said he had advised the woman to return to her home.

Police said the neighbor technically did not violate city code, which prohibits dumping contents of waste containers and bundles on tree lawns. The woman's trash was in bags, not containers or bundles, and police didn't find any trash that had been dumped or removed from the bags.

Code also prohibits removal of recyclable material if it's placed in designated receptacles on curbsides. Police said the woman's trash was not recyclable material and was not inside designated receptacles.

Nevertheless, police advised the neighbor to avoid speaking rudely to the woman and to familiarize himself with city code regarding trash. The man said he would not take any more items from the woman's trash.

Theft, West Bagley Road: A regional manager of Arby's told police March 21 that he found more than $1,800 missing from a safe in the restaurant at 480 West Bagley.

The manager said the safe should always contain $3,000, but held only $1,108, although an envelope holding $119 was near the safe. The regional manager suspects a former restaurant general manager who had just quit after four years with the company.

Several restaurant assistant managers said they knew money was missing from the safe "for a long period of time." The general manager had ordered them to show in the company computer system that the safe always contained $3,000.

The regional manager said he didn't want to press criminal charges, but wanted the alleged thefts on record. He said the restaurant was implementing new procedures to control money better.

Driving with a suspended license-marijuana possession, Prospect Street: A Columbus man, 19, was cited at about 2:45 a.m. March 29 after police saw him driving his Buick 20-25 mph in a 35 mph zone.

The car's rear end and rear lights were damaged. Police stopped the car on Prospect just north of Baker Street. The man told police he "thought" his license "may be" under suspension. Police confirmed that he was correct.

Police smelled marijuana in the vehicle. The man, a student at Baldwin Wallace University, said the Buick and marijuana inside the car belonged to his college roommate. He said his roommate had allowed him to borrow the car to buy pizza at Domino's.

Police found a glass bong, used for smoking marijuana, in the car, along with a small amount of marijuana inside a cigarillo package. The man's roommate, a 20-year-old Cleveland man, admitted by phone that the marijuana was his. Police gave the roommate a date to appear in court.

Theft, North Rocky River Drive: A clerk at Speedway, 880 N. Rocky River, called police at about 2 a.m. March 23 after seeing someone steal a bottle of beer from the store. Later that morning, a manager told police she did not want to pursue the matter further.

Marijuana possession, Barrett Road: A Brook Park woman, 22, and a Brook Park man, 23, landed in trouble after police checked the license plate of their car and determined that the vehicle registration had expired.

Police stopped the car, driven by the woman, on Barrett at Rowan Drive. They smelled marijuana in the car. The man, a passenger in the car, handed over a Swisher Sweets package containing marijuana. He was arrested after police learned that he was wanted in Berea.

Police searched the car and found a rubber pipe with marijuana residue and a portable rolling tray covered in marijuana shake. She was cited.

Marijuana possession, West and Fair streets: A Cleveland man, 29, was cited at about 5:35 p.m. March 26 after police caught him driving a Toyota Camry with no front license plate.

Actually, the plate was inside the car's front window, but police didn't see it. When police asked the man for his driver's license, the man said his license had been suspended. In reality, the man's license had expired in 2013 and had never been renewed.

The man admitted having marijuana in the car. Police found a bag of the drug in the center console, along with a glass marijuana pipe.

To comment on this post, please visit our crime and courts comments page.
ORANGE, Ohio -- Personal welfare, improper discharge of firearm; Emery Road: A resident reported on the afternoon of March 24 that his wife, 49, had shot her .38 caliber revolver, causing damage to the stove.

He was concerned about her well-being and emotional state, as she was now out driving and appeared to have taken the gun with her, upset over a family matter involving their young grandson.

Police found a bullet hole through a bedroom, apparently exiting into the kitchen, striking the range and breaking some glass.

She eventually returned home safely and agreed to go to Ahuja Medical Center for an evaluation.

Simple assault, Orange Place: An East Cleveland woman, 32, reported around dinnertime on March 28 that she had initially confronted a co-worker in the back of Red Lobster after she found her making personal phone calls.

The two exchanged words before the suspect, a Warrensville woman, 29, punched her in the face at least four times and then pulled her hair for 30 to 40 seconds until the manager broke it up.

The suspect left the restaurant and a misdemeanor assault warrant was issued after police reviewed security footage of the incident and asked the victim if she wanted treatment for a swollen cheek and cut lip, which she declined.

Menacing by stalking (electronic), Woodcrest Drive: A woman came to the police station on March 23 to report that her daughter, 13, was receiving threats involving bodily harm on Instagram shortly before 7 a.m. that day.

Police noted that the girl had voluntarily communicated with the other party and detectives are looking at the case.

Warrant served (felony), Interstate 271: Checking on a disabled vehicle shortly before 9 a.m. on March 22, police learned that the driver, a Brunswick man, 40, had an active felony warrant out of Medina County for child neglect. He was turned over to sheriff's deputies in Richfield.

Unruly child, Orange Place: Police were called to the Extended Stay South hotel on the afternoon of March 24 where a mother reported that she had disciplined her daughter, 15, by taking away her cell phone. The daughter then refused to leave the lobby area and return to their room until police arrived to mediate.

If you would like to discuss the police blotter, please visit our crime and courts comments page.
Ursuline College, 2550 Lander Road in Pepper Pike.

PEPPER PIKE, Ohio -- Ursuline College will soon begin the second year of a program designed to educate and bring into the nursing field those who might not otherwise have the opportunity to follow such a career path.

With the help of a recent Cleveland Foundation grant in the amount of $195,525, Ursuline's pre-nursing program will welcome 15 new students this summer.

Registration for the program is now open to students who graduate from the Cleveland Metropolitan School District or inner-ring suburban high schools.

In an effort to bring about greater diversity, the pre-nursing program is open to African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, American Indians, Pacific Islanders, men, those of a non-traditional college age, and those with low socioeconomic resources.

Graduating high school students must have a grade point average of at least 2.25.

Last August, Ursuline's Breen School of Nursing launched its Scholastic Tools & Teams for Educational Performance-Ursuline Pre-nursing Program, known as STTEP-UP. The Cleveland Foundation granted the college $147,734 last year to start STTEP-UP.

The inaugural STTEP-UP students went to the Ursuline campus late last summer, before the start of the fall semester, for two weeks of intensive pre-course work in math, chemistry, biology and medical terminology.

Also included were sessions on professional communication and team building. The students additionally had the opportunity to learn from professionals by job-shadowing nurses at local healthcare institutions.

Once fall semester classes began, the students were paired with nurse mentors and worked together in study groups and tutoring sessions. The students also received the benefit of enhanced advising, consisting of bi-weekly meetings with the program's coordinator/adviser.

The benefits of the two-week session were made possible through the Cleveland Foundation grant.

"The nursing school staff really looked at why students were not succeeding and designed a program that addressed those reasons," said Ann McGuire, Ursuline's director of marketing and communication. "It especially helped that there were study groups and tutoring, so that study skills were taught, and that students were also taught the communications skills they need."

Ursuline College is known for the success of its nursing program, currently headed by Dean Patricia Sharpnack, who came up with the idea for the STTEP-UP program, and instructor Noel Santa, who developed and implemented it over the last year.

"Ninety-seven percent of our nursing students passed on the first try of the national license exams for registered nurses," McGuire said of the nursing school's quality. "We currently have a 100 percent rate of Breen School graduates who have entered the nursing profession post licensure. And they graduate with a bachelor of science in nursing degree."

"The first year of the STTEP-UP program has been tremendously successful, and the Cleveland Foundation is pleased to once again partner with Ursuline College to help diversify the nursing workforce in our community," Cleveland Foundation program officer Kimalon Meriweather said in a release.

The initial program class consisted of a cohort of 19 students, all of whom are still engaged in the nursing program at Ursuline.

Eighty-two percent of the cohort is currently passing all of its courses, and the members had a collective midterm grade point average of 3.07.

These percentages stack up well to the same year's cohort of 19 non-STTEP-UP program students, only 11 of whom are still students in the nursing program. Fifty percent of those 11 students are on academic probation.

"This evidence-based program will help close academic gaps and prepare more students to transition into the nursing major and ultimately serve as competent, compassionate nurses in the Ursuline tradition," said Ursuline College President Sister Christine DeVinne.

DeVinne added, "We are grateful to the Cleveland Foundation for this renewal of support for our pre-nursing program."

Because there are but 15 open spots, McGuire said of perspective students, "Applications will be reviewed as they come in, so the sooner you apply, the better."

Students enrolled in STTEP-UP pay regular tuition or can seek financial aid.

To begin the registration process, call 888-Ursuline or 440-449-4200, or visit info@ursuline.edu.

More information about the process, application requirements and upcoming campus information sessions (disregard the 2017 timeline dates) is available at ursuline.edu/portal/step-up.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- East Cleveland Mayor Brandon King violated the city's charter when he appointed two council members in the wake of the 2016 recall election, an appeals court has ruled.

A three-judge panel of the Eighth District Court of Appeals unanimously held this month that King had no authority to appoint Christopher Pitts and Ernest Smith to council seats in January 2017.

Smith won election to a full seat in November, and Pitts opted not to run for re-election and is no longer a councilman.

The opinion came in response to a filing made by Devin Branch and Kelvin Earby, who were originally appointed by council to fill the seats in the days after voters ousted then-Mayor Gary Norton and councilman Thomas Wheeler.

But the court also denied Branch's and Earby's request to order council to reinstate them to their seats, leaving the political structure of the cash-strapped city in place.

Judge Larry Jones wrote the opinion, and judges Mary Eileen Kilbane and Tim McCormack joined him.

King, through acting law director Willa Hemmons, declined to comment. Hemmons said she advised King that he could make the appointments based on a 1980 Ohio Supreme Court ruling in a similar case.

East Cleveland city council, which usually has five members, was down to three members after Wheeler was recalled and King, at the time a councilman, was sworn-in as mayor to replace Norton.

The remaining three council members, Nathaniel Martin, Barbara Thomas and Joie Graham, interviewed 15 candidates to choose their replacements during an executive session at a Dec. 29, 2016 meeting.

But Graham and the city's acting law director, Willa Hemmons, left in the middle of the interviews, leaving only Martin and Thomas.

The two chose Branch and Earby and swore them in during a public portion of the meeting, and proceeded to fire the clerk and hire a replacement.

Days later, Hemmons issued an opinion that found the appointments of Branch and Earby were illegal because council did not have a quorum of three of the five council members at the meeting because Graham walked out.

Martin and Branch said after that opinion that Hemmons, King and Graham refused to cooperate with council and kept them from being able to hold a meeting with three members to fill the spots.

At the end of January 2017, Hemmons told King that he could make his own appointments because 30 days had passed and council had not filled the seats, and King chose Pitts and Smith.

Branch and Earby went to former East Cleveland Mayor and lawyer Darryl Pittman, who filed a strongly worded petition asking the Eighth District to overturn King's appointments and remove Pitts and Smith from office through what is known as a writ of quo warranto.

The petition compared King and Hemmons to dictators Robert Mugabe and Nicholas Maduro, whose reigns over Zimbabwe and Venezuela, respectively, have been plagued by allegations of corruption and human rights abuses.

The court process stalled as Hemmons filed requests to move the case to federal court, where declined to take the case, and then made an appeal to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals and sought to have the Ohio Supreme Court hear the case. All of the requests, which were ultimately unsuccessful, took months to settle, as Pitts and Smith continued sitting on council.

The Eighth District decision, handed down March 23, found that East Cleveland's charter is clear that, after a seat becomes vacant, a majority of the remaining city council members can vote on a replacement. If those members don't act within 30 days, then the charter gives council president the power to appoint.

Hemmons pointed to an Ohio statute that gives mayors, rather than council presidents, the ability to fill vacant seats if council doesn't vote. But the court rejected that argument by saying that, because East Cleveland is a home-rule city, the city charter prevails over state law.

Branch and Martin told cleveland.com that the court's decision is vindication that King's appointments were inappropriate.

But both men questioned what good the decision does now, more than 14 months after they first petitioned the court to remove Pitts and Smith from office and after Smith and Pitts sat on council for months and voted on legislation.

Martin called King's move a "power grab" to pad the council with allies who would not challenge his agenda, and that it worked.

Branch, who ran against King for mayor in November and lost, said the opinion should call into question any emergency legislation the city passed that Smith and Pitts voted on because that legislation requires four votes to pass.

"[King] took away not only my right to be a city council member, he took away the right of the people of East Cleveland to have a valid city council," Branch said.

To comment on this post, please visit Friday's crime and courts comments page.

Correction: An earlier version of this article misspelled the last name of Kelvin Earby.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The city of Cleveland will pay $65,000 to an unarmed robber paralyzed in 2014 when a Cleveland police officer shot him in the back.

The settlement, reached Wednesday after a settlement conference held by U.S. District Judge Dan Polster, resolves a 2015 lawsuit filed by Alex Littlejohn against officer Ronald Myers and the city of Cleveland.

Myers shot Littlejohn in May 2014 after Littlejohn and his half-brother John Tisdel robbed a Family Dollar at Payne Avenue and East 34th Street. Littlejohn said Myers grabbed him after he left the store and they struggled before Littlejohn ran away. Myers fired a shot that hit Littlejohn's lower back.

Police said at the time that Myers fired a shot after he thought Littlejohn reached for a gun that fell from his waistband. Littlejohn said he got rid of the gun by the time the officer caught up with him.

Law Director Barbara Langhenry said in a statement Thursday evening that the city and Myers deny liability for Littlejohn's injuries and believe Myers acted appropriately.

"We are confident we would have prevailed in trial," Langhenry said. "The settlement reached simply eliminates the risks inherent to jury trials while minimizing the cost of trying this case to a verdict."

Littlejohn's attorney Paul Cristallo said in a statement that "Mr. Littlejohn has been through many difficult challenges. We are pleased to resolve this case and move on."

Littlejohn is serving a 28-year prison sentence for the Family Dollar robbery and a previous robbery.

Littlejohn claimed in a 2016 deposition that he gave the gun used to rob the store to his half-brother after the robbery. He later told his attorney that this was not true and that he threw the gun after he ran out of the back of the store.

The city had sought dismissal of the lawsuit as a result of the revelation, but Polster did not rule before the case settled.

If you would like to comment on this story, please visit Friday's crime and courts comments section.
CLEVELAND, Ohio - The Morgan Conservatory, 1754 East 47th St., will host its sixth annual juried exhibition 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., Friday, March 30. The foundation dedicated to paper making, book arts and letterpress is the largest center in the country of its kind and celebrates its tenth anniversary in the Midtown neighborhood this year.

The versatile ways artists use paper within their work - both as a medium and in the bookbinding and printmaking tradition - is at the center of "Paper Trails." Through the show's 69 works, 52 artists push the boundaries of how paper can be a tool of creativity. The works, which span sculpture, photography, painting, installation, book arts and more, are on view through April 28.

"It certainly makes you think," says Founder and Artistic Director, Tom Balbo. "T

he uses of paper within the exhibition stretch the imagination about paper in all its contexts."

This marks the second year the Morgan Conservatory opened submissions to artists outside the region. In 2018, the Morgan had their highest number of submissions to date, nearly doubling last year's and coming from 21 states.

Serving as jurors are Nikki Woods, painter and director of Reinberger Gallery at the Cleveland Institute of Art, and Christina Vassallo, executive director of SPACES.

"Those who stood out exhibited an appreciation of the material properties of paper, but also of its alchemical composition by revealing countless ways that paper can be utilized to express new ideas," the jurors said in a joint statement. "The artists turned coffee stained envelopes into a fully developed narrative, created flourishing tendrils, applied pigment in unusual ways, and even told stories about the hidden lives of paper scraps."

FOUR TO SEE

Anna Tararova, Morgan Conservatory's gallery and artistic opportunities coordinator, fills us in on four must-see pieces in this year's show:

Sue Carrie Drummond

"A Darning Stitch"

Sue Carrie Drummond's book titled "A Darning Stitch" was made during her summer 2017 residency at Women's Studio Workshop with a Project Assistance Grant from College Book Arts Association. This book explores the concept of an invisible mend, contrasting the mend of a garment with the attempt to mend a relationship. Drummond used the blowout papermaking technique to make openings in sheets of freshly pulled paper as a way of referencing tears in her most treasured worn out clothes. She used the stories these imperfections told about her own life as inspiration for A Darning Stitch, which combines sewing instructions with episodes from a marriage gone wrong.

Sun Young Kang

"Hair"

The text in Sun Young Kang's book, "Hair," is embroidered with the artist's own hair, which she collects from her floor. Kang feels estranged from herself when the hair she once treasured is shed and becomes disgusting. "Hair" is a way for Kang to embrace these conflicting feelings. Kang is inspired by the Buddhist philosophy of "Emptiness"--every existence, every single moment that has ever existed, can only be conceived as either past or future. Negative space is essential in her work. According to Kang, the empty space suggests a meditative moment, an opportunity to reflect on one's self and the meaning of Emptiness in our lives.

Nicholas A. Knouf

"PIECES FOR PERFORMER(S) AND EXTRATERRESTRIAL ENTITIES"

Nicholas A. Knouf's "PIECES FOR PERFORMER(S) AND EXTRATERRESTRIAL ENTITIES" are from an ongoing series that create possible "event scores" for people here on Earth and extraterrestrial entities out there. In this case, "extraterrestrial" refers merely to anything of the surface of the Earth (extra-terrestrial). These scores are all possible--albeit challenging--performances that could be enacted between humans and rockets, satellites, space probes, or extraterrestrial beings. Knouf laser etched the scores onto 12"x18" sheets of translucent handmade abaca paper.

Nijole Palubinskas

"WOODS"

Nijole Palubinskas describes her art as abstract-realism. Her intaglio print "WOODS" is a landscape created from imagination. Born in Lithuania, she is a fourth-generation artist. A graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Art, her work has been shown in the Lithuanian National Museum in Vilnas and the Palanga Museum. Her art also hangs in private collections in Europe and the United States.
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Gov. John Kasich on Friday signed a $2.62 billion two-year capital budget bill funding nearly $58.4 million in Cuyahoga County projects.

Among them is $2.5 million for stabilizing Franklin Hill at Irishtown Bend, $700,000 for Cuyahoga County's mental health jail diversion facility and $700,000 for Karamu House.

The capital budget funds improvements to roads, schools, universities and public buildings, as well as dozens of community projects. Lawmakers said they prioritized projects that supported mental health and addiction services in light of Ohio's opioid abuse and overdose crisis.

Kasich signed the bill Friday at the site of one of those projects, Twin Valley Behavioral Healthcare Hospital. The a state-run mental health hospital on Columbus' west side will be rebuilt with $112 million appropriated in the capital budget. In Cuyahoga County, Applewood Jones Home, Cornerstone of Hope, Stella Maris, Bellefaire JCB and the Opiate Treatment Center at Western Reserve Area on Aging all received funding in the bill for expansions and other improvements.

Kasich also pushed for $20 million for a new "community resiliency initiative" that will award grants to community centers, youth program facilities and others that mentor young people, especially in underserved areas.

"To me, we solve our problems in our country not by politicians pushing things down," Kasich said. "We solve problems in our country by pulling things up and letting people take control and have power."

Kasich expanded Medicaid health insurance coverage over the objection of many fellow Republicans in the Ohio legislature and has pointed to expansion as a major effort in fighting drug addiction and mental health issues in the state. On Friday, Kasich urged lawmakers not to make cuts in the state- and federally-funded program and other efforts to help uninsured Ohioans after he leaves office at the end of the year.

"Don't let it happen, folks, because you wont have the services for mental health, for addiction, to help the uninsured," Kasich said.

Cuyahoga County projects receiving more than $1 million:

Concrete repairs at Cuyahoga Community College: $13.5 million

Engaged Learning Laboratories at Cleveland State University: $7.3 million

Cuyahoga Hills Juvenile Correctional Facility housing unit replacement: $6.98 million

Main classroom renovation at Cleveland State: $5.5 million

Cleveland Museum of Natural History Phase II: $2.5 million

Cuyahoga Franklin Hill Stabilization: $2.5 million

Tri-C east campus exterior plaza: $1.9 million

Cleveland State Rhodes Tower renovations: $1.55 million

Cleveland Museum of Art Holden Terrace: $1.25 million

Severance Hall improvements: $1.25 million

Bellefaire JCB expansion: $1 million

Several projects recommended by the Greater Cleveland Partnership, the region's chamber of commerce, were partially funded by the bill.

"This legislation will have a big impact on many economic development and cultural assets in our community -- including many in neighborhoods of particular interest to GCP members," partnership President and CEO Joe Roman said in a statement.

The bill was unchanged from when it was introduced in February and will fund projects beginning July 1 through June 30, 2020.

Statewide, the capital budget includes:
BROOKLYN, Ohio -- A man accused of dragging a Brooklyn police officer with his car following a traffic stop Thursday has been arrested, authorities said.

Jose A. Camacho was arrested by Cleveland police about 9:30 p.m., Brooklyn police said in a news release.

Camacho, 33, was wanted for assault after he drove away from a traffic stop on Ridge Road near Hammond Avenue while the officer was trapped inside the driver's side of the vehicle, police said.

Officials did not provide additional details about the incident.

The officer was taken to MetroHealth Hospital for a dislocated shoulder. He was later released.

Authorities released photos and body camera video following the incident.

To comment on this story, visit Thursday's crime and courts comments page.
PARMA, Ohio -- A Parma woman was charged Friday for trying to mow down two police officers last week, the Parma Police Department said.

Chelsea Alexander, 25, of Pleasant Lake Boulevard was charged with assault after she tried to run over two narcotics detectives March 23, Parma police said in a statement.

Alexander surrendered to police Thursday. She appeared in Parma Municipal Court where her bond was set at $100,000. Her case was bounded over to the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's Office, officials said.

Parma police were conducting an investigation at 9:30 a.m. near the Pleasant Lake Apartments when they noticed Alexander and her passenger Antonio Dionte Boddy in a black Nissan Altima.

Antonio Boddy

Boddy was wanted by the Cuyahoga County Sheriff's Office for violating the conditions of his probation, investigators said.

He was sentenced to five years' probation after he plead guilty in 2014 for having a weapons under a disability and improperly handling a firearm in a motor vehicle. A part of his probation, Boddy was ordered to do 400 hours of community service, random drug test and get a GED, according to Cuyahoga County court records.

A warrant was issued for his arrest June 19, 2017 after he failed a drug test one month prior, court records said.

The two detectives approached the car and attempted to arrest Boddy when Alexander put the car in reverse and nearly hit one of the officers. She put the car in drive and almost hit the other officer, police said. She led authorities on a short chase, but they called it off, officials said.

Anyone with information regarding Boddy, contact the Northern Ohio Violent Fugitive Task Force at 1-866-4WANTED text keyword WANTED and tip to 847411 (tip 411). Tipsters can remain anonymous and reward money is available.
AKRON, Ohio -- Four men are facing charges after Akron police traced a stolen cellphone to their location following a Wednesday night robbery.

Rayshawn Goodwin, 28, of Arnold Street, Deontee Pickett, 27, of Mohawk Avenue and Demetrius Richardson, 26, who is reported homeless, were charged with aggravated robbery, Akron police said.

Richardson was also charged with having a weapon while under disability.

Investigators said the robbery occurred at 11 p.m. at Jordan's Market in the 1200 block of Newton Street. The men walked into the store with guns and demanded money. They stole a drawer from the cash register and an employee's cellphone and drove away from the store in a white Chevrolet minivan, police said.

The cellphone was traced back to a home in the area of 1100 block of Johnland Avenue. Authorities located the minivan and noticed a crash drawer in the backseat.

Officers knocked on the door of the home and an unknown man opened it. When the man realized it was the police, he slammed the door, investigators said.

Akron SWAT was called and arrested Goodwin, Pickett and Richardson after an hourlong standoff.

The man who slammed the door was identified as Travonte D. Bell, 25, of Johnland Avenue. He was charged with obstructing official business, child endangering, possession of drug paraphernalia and drug abuse marijuana, police said.

They were being held in Summit County Jail. Photos of Goodwin and Bell were not available.

A 3-year-old girl was removed from the home and placed in the custody of of the Summit County Children Services, investigators said.

To comment on this story, visit Thursday's crime and courts comments page.
LORAIN, Ohio -- Two men are charged with aggravated murder in a Lorain burglary that left a woman dead and a man with critical injuries.

Lorenzo Garcia, 31, of Elyria and Antonio J. Martinez, 24, of Lorain are charged in the Tuesday incident at a home Amherst Avenue near West 36th Street, police said in a news release.

Linda Wisniewski, 67, was found dead in the home. A 28-year-old man was seriously hurt and remained hospitalized Friday afternoon, police said.

Investigators have neither said how Wisniewski died nor offered details of the man's injuries. Detectives did not immediately respond Friday to a request for more information.

Officers went to the home just after 10 p.m. Tuesday for a report of a burglary in progress. They took evidence from the scene, including surveillance video, police said.

Detectives interviewed Garcia on Thursday and Martinez on Friday. Both were arrested following the interviews, and both remain in custody at the Lorain County Jail.

No additional suspects are being sought, police said.

U.S. Marshals, the Elyria Police Department, and the Lorain County Prosecutor's Office assisted in the investigation.

To comment on this story, visit Friday's crime and courts comments page.
RICHFIELD, Ohio - President Donald Trump will appear here today to take another shot at focusing the country on his infrastructure plan.

Trump released his infrastructure plan in February, which includes using $200 billion in federal money to spur $1.5 trillion in investment from states, municipalities and private companies to rebuild the nation's roads, bridges and waterways.

The president's first attempt at rallying support for infrastructure improvements in 2017, also at an Ohio event, was dogged by the scandal surrounding the impending testimony of fired FBI Director James Comey. Trump is set to speak after 2 p.m. today to a group of workers at a union training facility.

Numerous scandals still dog Trump as the midterm election season moves into full swing.

The investigation into Russian influence - and possible collusion or obstruction by Trump's campaign - is still ongoing, several Cabinet members have been fired in recent weeks and allegations of a coverup of a sexual affair from Stormy Daniels - a pornographic actress - have all dominated the headlines in recent weeks.

Cleveland.com will cover the event live. You can view the livestream of the speech above. Politics reporter Seth Richardson will also be live tweeting the event, which can be viewed below.
BEDFORD HEIGHTS, Ohio -- There's a treasure buried in the middle of bedraggled Perkins Plaza strip mall. To get to it, you must first ignore the big Las Americas sign displayed prominently in the front of the mall.

It's not exactly a decoy, but the locked door right below it grants access to absolutely nothing. Now, go clockwise around the building to the very far end of the long brick wall in the back. There you will find an unmarked but unlocked door. Go inside. Weave your way through the many-splendored aisles of Las Americas, the grocery store. Try not to tarry too long admiring the countless kinds of dried chiles hanging on racks or shelves packed with irresistible Latin American comestibles. At the far corner of the shop is a doorway.

Enter and ......!ya esta! Las Americas, the restaurant!

OK, so it's not much to look at. The 34-seat restaurant's style could best be described as Modern Factory Lunchroom, black vinyl and metal stacking chairs at formica-topped tables, except for the evocative turmeric, tomato and crema colored walls, one lone embroidered sombrero perched on a counter ... and an irresistible scent coming from the open kitchen in the smaller dining room.

The charm is in the menu, packed with all sorts of Mexican delights, and the warm, multi-lingual-enough service. Translated, that means the menu is thoughtfully in English and Spanish, but if you, like me, have further questions and no restaurant Spanish at your disposal, you may be at a loss with your waitress. However, the chefs speak English and are happy to come out of the kitchen and explain any nuances. So all that being said, let's get started.

You must begin with the tacos. They are made with the most extraordinary corn tortillas, warm and soft with an ethereal fragrance and taste. Imported from Chicago, they flatter any filling, but particularly the al pastor, marinated pork shawarma, and grilled shrimp. With fresh onions, cilantro, a wash of pungent and fiery tomatillo-based house salsa and a squirt of fresh lime juice (extra kudos for the abundance of lime wedges provided at table), these tacos alone could easily make a meal worth the trip to Bedford Heights.

But resist the temptation and persevere. Otherwise you will never enjoy the unique experience of a Las Americas Burrito. Eaten in the restaurant, it's a lovely demure dish; bits of steak, chicken and shrimp wrapped in a fine flour tortilla topped with cheddar cheese along with cumin-spiked beans and well-spiced rice on the side. Get it to go and you end up with all that protein and beans and rice and cheese and onions and tomatoes bundled up into a giant tortilla to produce a behemoth two-pound burrito that will last you for days and forever relegate a Chipotle burrito into the nice little nosh category.

While we're in the too-big-for-one-meal mode, let's discuss the Molcajete. It's basically a Mexican buffet in the bowl of a giant molcajete (Spanish for mortar and pestle), appropriately decorated in this case with a carved pig's head.

The Molcajete contains a slab of grilled steak, another of chicken, some pork sausage, beans, rice, salad, avocado, whole jalapeno peppers, pickled cactus strips and, just for fun, a cheese quesadilla. The meat, as it is in most dishes at Las Americas, is well-done and perhaps a little tough for our expectations. But it's flavorful and a nice foil for all the other gastronomic goings on.

For the less ravenous, there's a lovely Pollo A La Crema, a thin slice of chicken breast enriched with gently spiced Chipotle cream sauce and Mojarra Frita, an entire deep-fried Tilapia. It's not all that much fish when you're finished the deboning, but what's there is choice, moist and delicately flavored.

On the other end of the spectrum, the Seviche de Camaron, briefly blanched shellfish marinated in a bath of lime juice, along with red onions, cilantro, and avocado, is a vibrant plunge into a bracingly tart shock of citric flavor.

A quick mention about Saturday afternoons from 1:00p.m. to 6:00 p.m., when Las Americas owner, Jefferson Evangelista, turns the kitchen over to his native Peruvian cuisine. There's a constantly rotating menu of specialties, but I can vouch for the Guiso de Carnero, succulent lamb with starchy yucca and buttery rice and Talarin Verdes, Peruvian pesto pasta. The addition of spinach and evaporated milk to the traditional recipe transforms already fine pesto into something even better and richer.

There are no desserts. The Sopapillas, deep-fried pastries, featured on the menu did not materialize during any of our four visits. But there is sweetness enough in the very fine food made with care and in the cordial and solicitous staff, whose skill and thoughtfulness could be emulated by some of the higher-end restaurantes in town. A trove of many treasures, Las Americas is the kind of place that makes America great.

TASTE BITE

Las Americas

Where: 25650 Aurora Rd. Bedford Heights, OH 44146

Contact: 440-439-9378. No Website

Hours: 11 a.m.-9:00 p.m. Monday-Friday, 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Saturday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Sunday

Prices: Tacos $1.99-$2.19; Burritos $6.50- $9.99; Entrees $8.99-$14.99.

Reservations: No reservations

Credit Cards: All major credit cards except American Express

Cuisine: Mexican (Peruvian Food is served on Saturday from 1:00 p.m.-6:00 p.m.).

Kid-friendliness: Yes! $4.99 Chicken Nuggets, Hot Dog or Quesadilla Meals are on the menu.

Bar Service: No Liquor

Access: Easy access through the grocery store and then wide-open space in the restaurant.

Grade: ***
CLEVELAND, Ohio - Clevelanders up early this morning could run into a wintry mix, but chances are slight and drop significantly the rest of Good Friday. Temperatures will cool back down, and morning clouds will slowly clear through the evening.

Morning commuters may want to break out the parka and won't need the sunglasses. Morning lows will hit the low 30s, and with breezy winds, that will feel closer to the 20s. Cloudy skies will dominate.

In the afternoon, clouds will start to diminish as temperatures near 40 degrees, but even as winds die down it will feel like the 30s. Clouds clear further in the evening as high pressure builds in, temperatures will drop back to the mid 30s.

A warm-up is ahead Saturday with a chance of rain, but Northeast Ohio will cool back down on Easter Sunday.

Check out the forecast:

Temperatures

Temperature forecast.

Precipitation chances

Precipitation forecast.

Winds

Wind speed and direction forecast.

Sunrise: 7:13 a.m.

Sunset: 7:50 p.m.

Keep checking cleveland.com/weather for daily weather updates for Northeast Ohio, and don't forget to submit any weather questions you may have!

Kelly Reardon is cleveland.com's meteorologist. Please follow me on Facebook, Twitter @KellyRWeather and Instagram.
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When Emily Blunt was first offered the role of Mary Poppins she was, in a word, terrified.

How could she compare with Julie Andrews iconic performance in the 1964 musical film, which won her a best actress Oscar? Luckily, it turns out that she didnt have to.

The new Poppins movie, directed by Rob Marshall, is not a remake but a new story set decades later. And so Emily put aside Julies rather sweet version of Mary and returned to the brilliantly batty character as she was first written by author PL Travers.

When Rob Marshall called me about this role he left a cryptic message, says Emily. So I called him back and when he uttered the name Mary Poppins, I thought, Wow!.

Scroll down for video

Emily Blunt said she was 'frozen with fear' when she was offered the role of Mary Poppins

I was filled with a mixture of two emotions  I was obviously very excited, but I was also frozen with fear because, well, Mary herself is so iconic, and Julie Andrews is so iconic, too.

All I could do was try to see Julies version as just sort of white noise and try to find my own version of Mary. And what a gift of a character she is!

In the books shes quite batty! Shes eccentric and very vain and not warm and fuzzy at all. But shes also magical, with an incredibly warm core and she has a master plan for the children and ultimately brings great joy to them. I must say its a joy to play somebody who knows so confidently that she is better than everybody else!

Mary Poppins Returns is set in 1934, nearly 25 years after the original took place, and features Ben Whishaw as a grown-up Michael Banks, Meryl Streep as Marys eccentric cousin Topsy, Angela Lansbury as the Balloon Lady, Colin Firth as bank president William Weatherall Wilkins, and even Dick Van Dyke, who played Bert in the first film, has a return appearance as the ancient bank manager Mr Dawes Junior. Theatre star Lin-Manuel Miranda plays cheery cockney lamplighter Jack.

Even if the new Mary is less cuddly, the film includes all the vital elements of singing, dancing, a family in trouble and a cast of colourful characters.

Emily says she has taken on a 'battier' version of the character originally seen in PL Travers' childhood book

Emily admits that becoming a mother  she has two young daughters with her actor husband John Krasinski  has affected her choices in which roles she will take on. Im much more aware of what Im putting out into the world. Because it costs you so much emotionally to be away from your kids, I dont warm to projects that I used to. If I havent found an in with a character, then Im not interested.

Oddly enough, she found her in with Mary four years previously. John and I were in our house in California and we went to a farmers market, where there was a woman who had made beautiful art out of flowers, seeds and leaves.

'We bought one  of Mary Poppins! This was before I had children or any idea that Id play her. It sits at the top of our stairs, like a weird little sign that this was meant to be.

In the end playing Mary was far less harrowing for Emily than making her other new film, A Quiet Place. That movie, which opens on Thursday, not only has a chilling premise, but involved the potential minefield of working with her husband, who was both her director and co-star.

Emily also stars alongside her husband in chilling new movie A Quiet Place (pictured)

John Krasinski (Emily's husband, seen here together) acted as her director in the new film

The story is set in New York in the not-too-distant future. The world has been taken over by a deadly invasion of spider-like monsters with terrifying teeth that kill at a moments notice, but in a remote farmhouse, one lone surviving family struggles to live their life. The aliens have extraordinary hearing, so in order to survive, the family must make as little noise as possible.

Its an eerily silent mixture of family drama and jump-out-of-your-seat horror, with John and Emily playing the couple trying to raise their children under horrifying circumstances.

The film is a departure for John, best known for the American version of The Office, but he says he sees the story not so much as a horror film but as an allegory for parenthood.

When the original script was brought to me, Emily and I had just had our second daughter, Violet (born in June 2016), so I was a great audience for it. I was still in that twilight of total new parent terror and nervousness. So I was wide open to this.

He always intended to play the husband, but considered every actress but Emily for the wife. Weve kept our careers very separate, and its for a selfish reason: we like to watch each others stuff. And we never wanted to be in a movie where the story of us being married was bigger than the story of the movie itself. Then this came along, but Emily was shooting Mary Poppins and wed just had Violet so I thought of other actresses, and she recommended other actresses.

Emily says, I had suggested a close friend of mine but then I read the script and said, You need to tell her that its not happening for her!

She was nervous about the stresses of the actress/director relationship for them. We didnt know how our processes would align, if wed be creatively in tandem, or if wed crash heads. But it was exhilarating. We were able to discover a new side to each other.

You dont need three takes with Emily, only one, adds John. She is the most talented person Ive worked with. Theres a scene she has in a bathtub where she screams  only one take of that exists. The first time she did it was exactly what I had imagined. You could hear a pin drop afterwards.

A challenge of the role was learning to negotiate a world where any sound could be fatal. Emily and I had a joke that if you made too much noise, youd kill us. Id drop a plate and say, Well, were dead now! says John.

Emily admits that with the films subject matter, she and John struggled to relax in the evenings. I was playing out my own worst fears  not being able to protect my children. So most nights ended with a stiff drink of whisky  we had a lot of whisky on this film!

A Quiet Place is in cinemas from Thursday and Mary Poppins Returns is out in December.
Tiffany and Ivanka Trump joined forces on Thursday as they both showed up to support their father during his trip to Cleveland, Ohio.

Ivanka, 36, and Tiffany, 24, were seen arriving at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, taking shelter under the same umbrella on the tarmac, as their father also touched down.

Tiffany, a student at Georgetown Law School, has made fewer public appearances with her father than her sister, and unlike Ivanka, doesn't hold an official position in his administration.

Duo: Tiffany and Ivanka Trump joined forces on Thursday as they both showed up to support their father during his trip to Cleveland, Ohio

Rainy weather: Ivanka, 36, and Tiffany, 24, were seen arriving at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, taking shelter under the same umbrella on the tarmac

Rare appearance: Tiffany, a student at Georgetown Law School, has made fewer public appearances with her father than her sister

Trip: The youngest of President Trump's daughter smiled as she walked across the tarmac with Ivanka and their father's entourage, on their way to leave the airport

Tones: Tiffany's dark coat contrasted with Ivanka's all-beige silhouette, which she unveiled earlier on Thursday while leaving her house in Washington, D.C.

Watching on: Both blondes stood behind their father as he addressed a crowd during his visit, giving them both a shout out in the process

She made a noticed appearance in a black coat and matching pants, contrasting with Ivanka's all-beige silhouette.

Tiffany smiled as she walked across the tarmac with Ivanka and their father's entourage, on their way to leave the airport.

Both sisters later earned a shout-out from the president as he addressed the crowd during his visit.

'And speaking of a job well done, we have two of my daughters here today. Ivanka, who's working hard on infrastructure,' he said, gesturing in her direction, 'Ivanka, and Tiffany.'

Earlier on Thursday, Ivanka looked chic in her monochromatic ensemble as she stepped out of her Washington, D.C. apartment before heading to Cleveland with her father.

The first daughter donned a $1,780 belted trench coat by Khaite, which she paired with a matching beige top, ankle-length dress pants, and heels while heading to working at 9 a.m.

Although she is often seen leaving the front door of her home in the morning, Ivanka remained out of the public eye for most of the week, aside from a few social media posts featuring her children.

Monochrome: Earlier on Thursday, Ivanka left her D.C. home wearing an all-beige outfit

Classic: The 36-year-old first daughter donned a $1,780 belted trench coat by Khaite

Out of the spotlight: Ivanka has remained out of the public eye for most of the week

The senior adviser failed to raise a smile as she walked out the front gate of her upscale Kalorama home and made her way to the Secret Service vehicle waiting at the curb.

Aside from the tortoise shell detailing on her double-breasted trench coat and her gold hoop earrings, Ivanka's outfit was entirely beige.

She wore her long blonde hair parted down the center and blown out straight, and she sported natural looking make-up, including a rose-colored lip.

Ivanka's somewhat rare appearance this week came a little over an hour after her husband, Jared Kushner, was seen leaving the front door of their home at 7:45 a.m.

Added touches: The mother-of-three wore her long blonde hair parted down the center and blown out straight, and she sported natural looking make-up

Chic: Ivanka paired her classic trench with a matching beige top, ankle-length dress pants, and heels while heading to work

Style: The senior adviser looked perfectly put together in the chic monochromatic look

On her way out: Ivanka failed to raise a smile as she headed to the Secret Service SUV waiting outside of her home

On the go: Ivanka was later seen walking towards Marine One with White House senior adviser Stephen Miller while on her way to Cleveland, Ohio, with her father

Shielding her eyes: Ivanka through on a pair of sunglasses while outside

Ear to ear grin: Ivanka flashed a bright smile and waved while making her way towards the helicopter

On his own: President Trump was photographed boarding Marine One by himself on Thursday

The 37-year-old senior adviser had on a navy blue suit, which he paired with a navy blue and slate gray tie.

Jared seemed to be in good spirits on Thursday morning, as he flashed a bright smile as soon as he walked outside.

The father-of-three was carrying a black carryall as he made his way down the front stairs of his home and headed to work for the day.

Ivanka was later photographed boarding Marine One to travel with her father, President Donald Trump, to Cleveland, where he will be making another attempt to gather support for his infrastructure proposal.

The president will be speaking to a group of workers inside a training facility for the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 18 in Richfield at 2 p.m.

Headed to work: Ivanka's somewhat rare appearance this week came a little over an hour after her husband, Jared Kushner, was seen leaving the front door of their home at 7:45 a.m.

Suited up: The 37-year-old senior adviser had on a navy blue suit, which he paired with a navy blue and slate gray tie

It's been a family-packed week for the couple, who celebrated their youngest child, Theodore James, during two years old.

Theo was born on March 27, 2016, and on Tuesday Ivanka took to Instagram to post six sweet photos that were taken at the time of the toddler's birth.

'I cannot believe it's been two years since you joined our family. You bring joy to our lives each minute of every day! We love you, Theodore!' Ivanka wrote, captioning a gallery of images she uploaded before 10 a.m.

The first is a shot of naked baby Theodore, just days old, laying on his stomach in what appears to be dad Jared's hand. The newborn looks sleepy and has his legs curled up to his bum.

In another, Ivanka holds the baby, cradling his head and looking at him adoringly.

Happy birthday: Ivanka shared several throwback photos of her son Theodore in honor of his second birthday on Tuesday

Family: In one, proud dad Jared Kushner beams at the camera as Arabella and Joseph stand by

A third shows Jared holds the swaddled little boy, smiling at the camera while big siblings Arabella and Joseph stand nearby.

Joseph stares down at his new baby brother in a fourth photo, and in a fifth Arabella looks like a beaming big sister as she cradles Theodore in her arms.

In the final snap, Ivanka sits up in her hospital bed, still hooked up to IVs as her baby sleeps on her stomach.

Theodore was born at 5:43 that day, and an hour and a half later a birth announcement was posted on Ivanka's Twitter account.

'Jared and I feel incredibly blessed to announce the arrival of Theodore James Kushner,' she wrote at the time. 'Jared, Arabella, Joseph and I are so excited to welcome this sweet little boy in to our family!'

While Theodore officially turned two on Tuesday, his family celebrated the milestone over the weekend with a construction-themed party.

The fiesta was held outside, and included on-theme yellow hard hats for the kids. There were also several home-made yellow warning signs, with messages like 'Theodore's Party Zone' and 'Theo at Play.'

'Caution: Theo is 2' read another.

Par-tay: Over the weekend, the family celebrated with a construction-themed birthday party

The lucky little boy also had a special cake shaped like a skid steer loader with chocolate 'dirt' coming out of it.

Ivanka also shared a video on her Instagram Stories, in which the assembled group sings 'Happy Birthday' to Theodore and his sister Arabella helps him blow out the candles.

Theodore wasn't the only kid in the family who got the Instagram spotlight this week, however.

On Monday, Ivanka shared an image of four-year-old Joseph reading A Day in the Life of the Vice President, a children's book about a fictional day in the life of Vice President Mike Pence's pet rabbit, Marlon Bundo.

Last week, comedian John Oliver parodied the book on his show Last Week Tonight, revealing that his team at put together their own version, called A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo  in which the rabbit is gay.

Oliver's parody book quickly topped the best-sellers on Amazon.com, even outselling the original Pence family book. Proceeds of the book are donated to the Trevor Project, and LGBTQ youth support charity.

Theodore isn't the only kid in the family getting the Instagram spotlight this week, however.

On Monday, Ivanka shared an image of four-year-old Joseph reading A Day in the Life of the Vice President, a children's book about a fictional day in the life of Vice President Mike Pence's pet rabbit, Marlon Bundo.

Last week, comedian John Oliver parodied the book on his show Last Week Tonight, revealing that his team at put together their own version, called A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo  in which the rabbit is gay.

Oliver's parody book quickly topped the best-sellers on Amazon.com, even outselling the original Pence family book. Proceeds of the book are donated to the Trevor Project, and LGBTQ youth support charity.
Kelly Brook admits she 'doesn't know what she's talking about' when it comes to food, as she joins Fred Siriex to taste the culinary delights in the top restaurants in Paris.

The 38-year-old is left confused over whether one of the dishes - langoustines - is actually cooked, in the one-off show in which the unlikely duo attempt to eat their way through ten Michelin Stars in just one day in Channel 4's The Million Pound Club.

The First Dates maitre d' and model visit the Four Seasons Le Cinq restaurant which has three of the prestigious accolades, Le Taillavant and Japanese restaurant Kei which both have two, and Le Pre Catalan which has held three stars for 15 years.

For Fred, who has worked front of house at Michelin star restaurants, tasting the dishes are part of his natural habitat but for self-professed girl-next-door her not-so-mature palette lets her down.

In one scene, she is even seen licking her fingers clean after wiping her plate.

Model Kelly Brook joined First Dates Fred Siriex for a jaunt to Paris to sample Michelin star meals

After polishing off four luxurious Michelin star meals, Kelly was keen to make sure she didn't spare a drop licking the plate clean with her fingers

The unlikely duo dined like millionaires as they sipped champagne and tasted exquisite gourmet cooking

Paris has 134 restaurants with Michelin stars and ten with three, awarded to them for excellence in food. Fred starts at Le Taillavant where he samples a 65 frogs leg dish before he is joined by Kelly.

Sitting down for a rich meal of Scottish langoustines smoked in hay and finished with a crustacean bisque at Kei, where Japanese chef Kei Kobayashi holds two stars, Kelly is confused at whether they are really cooked.

As Fred delights over the taste he explains to the Loose Women panelist that langoustines can prove difficult to get right because they are easy to overcook.

But Kelly reckons they need to go back in the pan: 'They are not cooked all the way through...'

Fred reassures her that the Michelin star dish is 'perfectly cooked', but she still isn't convinced adding: 'Are you sure? I dont know what I am talking about, youre the chef.'

The French maitre d' tells her that the food is 'class' to which she jokes: 'Next time if I undercook something I will just say its class?'

Joking that she's 'used to food being burnt all the way through'.

The pair visited Japanese restaurant Kei where they had a 15-minute time slot to try out a two-star dish

They were served Scottish langoustines smoked in hay and finished with a crustacean bisque which Kelly thought were undercooked

Fred was on hand to spoon-feed Kelly in the kitchens of the Four Seasons hotel where they enjoyed turbot with whipped oyster cream

They went to four different restaurants that combined equalled ten Michelin stars.

This included the Four Seasons that has a 300 per-head nine-dish tasting menu, to sample turbot with whipped oyster cream, which Fred spoon-fed to his hungry dining companion.

After 15 minutes at Kei, which has a prestige menu of around 200, they finished at the exclusive Le Pre Catalan.

It costs a whopping 500 for eight-course tasting menu at the three Michelin star restaurant where the pair had its signature dish of lagoustine ravioli.

They report back to the editor of British luxury lifestyle magazine LUSSO for multi-millionaires, Robert Clayman, who enjoys putting his guest correspondents in unusual situations for his articles.

Also appearing in the show is comedian Rob Beckett who jets off to his very own private island, Petit St Vincent, while Fun Lovin Criminal, Huey Morgan teams up with Hollywood stunt driver, Ben Collins to prepare for an eccentric car race in the British countryside with some of the worlds most expensive vintage automobiles.

The Million Pound Club airs on Monday April 2 on Channel 4 at 7.30pm
Elizabeth Smart has detailed how becoming a parent has changed the way she reflects on her past abduction, giving her more compassion for own mother and leaving her convinced she would rather be kidnapped again than seeing her children get hurt.

The kidnapping survivor, activist, and author, told HelloGiggles in a new interview that she and her mother, Lois Smart, 60, rarely discuss her 2002 abduction, during which she was kidnapped her from her bedroom in Salt Lake City, Utah, marking the beginning of her horrific nine-month captivity.

But while working on her new book, Where's There's Hope, Smart decided to interview her mother, and wanted to 'delve deeper' into the topic than they have in the past.

Speaking out: Elizabeth Smart has opened up about how becoming a parent has changed the way she reflects on her past abduction

Family: Smart has an 11-month-old son, James, and a two-year-old daughter, Chloe, with her husband, Matthew Gilmour, a native of Aberdeen, Scotland

Considering the events from her mother's perspective was difficult, Smart said, because she now has two children of her ownmaking her more aware of what her parents went through when she was taken.

Smart has an 11-month-old son, James, and a two-year-old daughter, Chloe, with her husband, Matthew Gilmour, a native of Aberdeen, Scotland, whom she met while on a Latter-day Saints mission in France.

'Before when my mother and I would talkI mean, what happened to me isn't something that comes up in everyday conversation; it's like, every once in a great while, we'll touch on it,' Smart said.

'And so when I sat down to talk to her and listened to what she experienced, having children of my own helped give me greater compassion and understanding of what exactly she went through.

'I look at my own little children and I think, if anything ever happened to them I mean, I would rather go through it for them. I'd rather do anything for them than ever have them hurt. I'd rather be kidnapped five times before ever allowing it to happen to them.

'I had a greater understanding and a greater compassion and a greater empathy for what she went through than I have in previous conversations.'

Conversations: While working on her new book, Where's There's Hope, Smart decided to interview her mother, and wanted to 'delve deeper' into the topic than they have in the past

Parent: 'I'd rather do anything for them than ever have them hurt,' Smart (pictured with her children and with her grandmother) said

Smart also explained why it was important to her to name her captors, Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Barzee, who are both currently behind bars, instead of calling them by a generic denomination such as 'my captors'.

'I'm not gonna say it's the same for everyone, but for me  those are their names. That's who they are,' she said.

'They don't come up in everyday conversation; it's not like I talk about them like they're my friends. But continually referring to them only as "my captors" or "my tormentors" still gives them that power of being my captors, of being my tormentors. That's still granting them that power over my life, and I just refuse to do that.'

Smart, a survivor of assault who testified during Mitchell's trial that he raped her daily during her captivity, expressed her support for the #MeToo movement against sexual violence.

'I'm so happy that [this movement] is happening,' she said. 'I think that it's been a long time coming, and we've got daily proof in the media of how long this has been going on, and how high up it goes. And this has been going on forever and it's penetrated all levels of society. This movement is needed.

Understanding: Smart explained that having children of her own has made her more aware of what her parents went through when she was taken

Talks: The kidnapping survivor said she and her mother rarely discuss her 2002 abduction. She is pictured with her parents Ed and Lois in 2003, the month after her rescue

Important: In her new book , which follows her 2013 memoir, My Story, Smart (pictured with her parents in 2004) explores the topic of how to cope with trauma

'Having survivors coming forward and talking about it isn't only making this issue real for themselves, but it's also setting this precedent: It is now okay to admit that something has happened to you. It's okay to admit that you were raped, and there are other people out there who are yourI guess, let's say  comrades in arms. You're not alone.'

This is especially important, she said, because victims of sexual violence are often exposed to threats from their abusers, who tell them no one, not even their parents, will believe them of they speak out.

'It's an extremely isolating crime, and so it's terrifying coming forward. Those threats from your rapist or your abuser seem very, very real,' Smart added.

'But to see this sort of avalanche, this tidal wave of survivors coming forward and saying, "This isn't okay, and this did happen to me, and this happened to me, and this happened to me."

'I think people for the first time are realizing, "People will believe me. And it's okay. I can admit this."'

In her new book, which follows her 2013 memoir, My Story, Smart explores the topic of how to cope with trauma, highlighting grief, sadness, and anger as necessary emotions.

Asked what she would tell others dealing with trauma, Smart said: 'I would tell them, if youre sad or if youre angry or if youre dealing with negative feelings, that, first of all, its okay to feel anger. Its okay to feel grief. Its okay to feel sadness. Those are natural emotions to victims. Its not your fault.'
Die-hard Doctor Who fans have expressed their fury at a 95 price tag for an autograph from Christopher Eccleston.

The 54-year-old actor, who played the the ninth Doctor in the sci-fi series for one season in 2005, will be appearing at London Comic Con in July for the first time where he is set to do a meet-and-greet.

But Christopher, who is the most expensive guest among stars including Megan Fox and Jason Momoa, has been accused of 'cashing in' at the convention with the high prices.

He is even charging more than the most recent Doctor Peter Capaldi who charges 75 per autograph.

Christopher Eccleston has been hit with backlash following the announcement of his autograph prices for this years London Comic Con

The actor, who played the ninth Doctor for one series in 2005 with Billie Piper as Rose, will be appearing at the convention dedicated to popular culture for the first time

Die-hard 'Whovians' have expressed their fury at the 95 price tag of an autograph from the star, with an option of a 'diamond package' costing 235

Furious fans took to Twitter to share how upset they were, with one saying the actor had 'gone down in my estimation' for the high prices

Superfans can pay 235 for a 'diamond package' which guarantees an autograph and a photoshoot along with an exclusive mug, or opt for the single price of the autograph at 95 or a photoshoot at 85.

Fellow Doctor Peter Capaldi is charging 75 for a single autograph or 225 for a 'diamond package' which includes an autograph, photoshoot, exclusive mug, exclusive print and a priority seat at his exclusive talk.

One fan fumed on Twitter: 'Christopher Eccleston/aka The 9th Dr - charging 95 for [his] autograph [and] nearly same for a photo... He's just gone down in my estimation how can a Dr/great actor ask [his] fans to pay that amount? It's tough out here. Most peeps barely afford to live.'

Another weighed in: 'Have always loved Christopher Eccleston as an actor but can't believe this event is charging 95 for an autograph. What a strange, strange world we live in...'

Peter Capaldi, the most recent outgoing Doctor, is also appearing at the July convention charging considerably less at 75 per autograph

Christopher Eccleston appeared as the doctor alongside Billie Piper as his companion in the revival of the sci-fi series in 2005

Many fans thought that the prices were too high suggesting that Christopher was cashing in and exploiting fans

'Was considering going to the London Film & Comic Con for Christopher Eccleston, but 95 for an autograph is a sick joke,' added another angry fan.

London Comic Con is held in July and sees stars from TV and film appear at the convention which celebrates popular culture.

Autograph signings and photo shoots are an integral part of all conventions, with stars charging fans on top of the 55 three-day ticket price.

A publicist for Christopher Eccleston declined to reveal the percentage he would receive from the fees, telling the Times: 'Christopher has no involvement in establishing fees for London Comic Con. These are set by the organisers.'

Colin Baker, who played the sixth doctor, is charging just 15 for an autograph and his on-screen companion Bonnie Langford who is also appearing asks for 10.

The organisers Showmasters defended the fees to the Times, saying it was 'in line' with previous Doctors, adding that the conventions were 'luxury items'.
From dramas featuring a strong female lead to binge-worthy Scandi crime noirs, when it comes to defining genres, Netflix loves to think outside of the box.

And while you might think the streaming service uses automated algorithms to figure out how to list its shows and movies, actual humans are responsible for all the categorizing instead.

Speaking to Fast Company, Netflix employee Sherrie Gulmahamad, 40, explained that as part of her role as an originals creative analyst (otherwise known as a 'tagger'), she is required to watch hours of Netflix every day.

Dream job: Netflix employee Sherrie Gulmahamad has revealed what it's like to binge-watch TV for a living

And chill: Sherrie works as an originals creative analyst, otherwise known as a 'tagger' and is required to watch hours of TV shows and movies so she can categorize them

Part of a team of 30 'taggers', Sherrie and her colleagues must watch Netflix content and 'tag' each film and episode with metadata which is then used to filter content into the search category it belongs to.

Metadata can relate to objective elements like release date, language, director and cast lists.

She must also rank movies in relation to how many swear words or sex scenes they feature.

However, she's also responsible for tagging films in a more abstract way so if you've ever wondered who came up with 'Comic Book and Superhero Movies for ages 11 to 12' or 'Irreverent Coming-of-age Comedies', it was Sherrie or one of her team.

Speaking about how they come up with subjective categories, she explained that they are given creative licence to tag shows and movies as they see fit.

'We work with a sprawling palette of tones and story lines to capture the spirit of our content, and when it comes to those sorts of tags, we can be more editorial,' shared.

She added: 'We certainly made sure we had our bases covered for all the sci-fi, fantasy, and horror titles. But we also have all the different kinds of romantic relationships represented: doomed love, unrequited love, forbidden love, marriage, divorce, dating, cheating, losing your virginity, flings, first loves, and the always titillating 'erotic encounters'.

A film school graduate, Sherrie's love of movies started when she got a job working in a video store in the 1990s.

Film buff: After graduating from film school, she spent a couple of years working in office jobs before she started working at Netflix in 2006

Comfort zone: Although Sherrie's favorite genres are comedy, stand up and sci-fi, sometimes she is forced to watch things she wouldn't normally pick

After graduation, she spent a couple of years working in office jobs before she started working at Netflix in 2006.

'Netflix came along like my Cinderella slipperhere was a company that would value my knowledge and offer me a stable, supportive working environment,' she says.

'I've been here since 2006, when we were just a plucky underdog DVD delivery company,' she added.

During her first interview, her film knowledge was quizzed extensively and she admitted she had to prove her 'knowledge had some breadth to it beyond a top 10 'listicle' sensibility.'

She does most of her binge-watching from the company's headquarters in Hollywood, California, Sherrie also revealed that her too-good-to-be-true sounding employer is flexible about letting employees work from other locations, including her couch.

While her speciality is comedy, stand-up and sci-fi, Sherrie sometimes has to watch content she has no interest in, however she suggested that this has worked out to be a positive aspect to the job as it has exposed her to things she wouldn't choose to watch in her free-time.

'I was dreading a nine-hour-long Belgian psychological TV series, but I ended up savoring it from beginning to end,' she said.

Other downsides include eye strain from staring at screens so much.

However, Sherrie admitted that she appreciates how lucky she is to watch Netflix for a living.

'Even when I am watching really long pieces of content, it always blows my mind that this is actually my job.'
A college freshman earned herself viral fame after sharing a meme that she received from 'her professor' informing her that she had been busted while using her phone in class.

University of Texas at Austin student Lizzy Smith revealed on Twitter that she had been sent a hilarious image via AirDrop shortly after 'sneaking out her phone during a lecture', sharing a grab of the message, which claimed to have been sent from 'Professor Donaldson's iPhone'.

The meme itself featured an image of Steve Carrell's character in The Office 'quietly' whispering the words, 'I'LL KILL YOU.'

Red-handed: University of Texas at Austin journalism student Lizzy Smith tweeted a screenshot of the meme she received after she started using her phone in class

Switched on: The person sending the meme claimed to be using Media Law professor David Donaldson's iPhone, however the student later revealed it was sent as a prank by a classmate

She captioned the shot with: 'I snuck out my phone during lecture and immediately received this ... cue the x files theme.'

Although many were stunned that she had received such a message from a professor, Lizzy later revealed on Twitter that the meme was in fact sent to her as a prank by one of her fellow classmates.

AirDrop allows iPhone, iPad and Mac users share images, documents, contacts, map locations and contacts with each other via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi.

However, both parties must have AirDrop enabled on their devices in order for the sender to share information with an intended recipient.

This means that Lizzy had her AirDrop turned on, allowing the person behind the meme to send her the message even without knowing her phone number.

The tweet has since gone viral, receiving over 410,000 likes, and 130,000 retweets since Lizzy posted it three day ago.

Fan club: Hundreds of people have taken to the comments section to voice their support for the AirDrop tactics, with many unaware that the message was in fact a prank

Funny: Another woman praised his humor

Brilliant: One man shared the meme was the 'most brilliant thing' he had ever seen

And while some skeptics were quick the legitimacy of the tweet, the response has been overwhelmingly positive, with hundreds of people voicing their support for the hilarious message.

Twitter user @ClariceCampos7 wrote: 'Your teacher is a genius lol'.

While @nicolexavier111 typed: 'I hope Prof. Donaldson's good at teaching because s/he sure as hell is hilarious and easily in the running for favorite professor.'

A sentiment shared by @now1awesomedude who shared: 'HAHAHAHAHAHA thats an awesome professor'.

And @Moonshine_Fox said: 'Your professor's game is on point'.

Lizzy's classmate Meghan Nguyen also took to the comments section and was able to shed some more light on their professor's humorous approach to education.

'He's a former lawyer and he teaches Media Law,' she captioned a shot of Professor Donaldson dressed as a cowboy.

'He puts pictures of himself in his slideshows (this is a pic of him winning an award for a cowboy contest lmao),' she added.
There was something touchingly traditional  even a little old-fashioned  about the wedding last week of Army Captain Hannah Winterbourne and actor Jake Graf.

Hannah, 31, elegant in a strapless, figure-hugging dress of ivory lace, was marrying the first man shed ever fallen in love with; actually her first boyfriend.

She looked stunning. When I saw her I just welled up, she was so beautiful. I was mesmerised, says Jake.

And you looked very handsome, too, smiles Hannah, who still feels a sense of disbelief that she is now a married woman.

Just a few years ago the idea of ever being married was inconceivable, she says. I never thought the day would come. For most of my life it wasnt even a remote possibility.

Hannah Winterbourne and Jake Graf: the couple married last Friday in a fairytale ceremony after getting engaged in New York last year

Id never even been on a date before when Jake asked me out in December 2015. I was terrified! Id only just started to come to terms with the possibility that someone might one day want to love me. But by the end of our first evening together Id told him I loved him  after a few drinks, admittedly.

She smiles. And we spent every weekend together for months after that. On that first date we knew we had a future together.

When I told my family and friends I loved him they were very wary for me, concerned that I wasnt just caught up in the emotion of having my first boyfriend. But three years on he still makes me feel Im the centre of his universe; that literally nothing else matters to him. I feel very loved.

The chemistry between them crackles like an electric current. They are bonded not only by love and the formal commitment of marriage, but also by shared experience: both Hannah and Jake are transgender.

Hannah is the highest-ranking officer in the British Army to have transitioned from male to female.

Jake, 40, who directs his own films and acts, took a transgender role in the Eddie Redmayne film The Danish Girl. He began gender reassignment in his late 20s, having known with absolutely certainty that he was a boy inside from the age of two or three.

Growing up in an affluent household in West London with his mum, who raised him and his younger sister while their father ran the familys prospering theatrical costume business, Jake was a miserable child, humiliated by the girls body in which, through some anatomical accident, he felt hed been forced to live.

I have very curly hair and my mum thought I didnt want it to be long and unruly, so she let me cut it short. But actually I wanted to look like a boy, he says. My father thought I was an endearingly tomboyish little girl, but I knew I wanted to be a boy and for me it was just a medical anomaly that my male brain had been wired into a female body.

Finding happiness: Hannah (right) and Jake (left) before their transitions

I hated being prinked and preened and put into dresses. It felt like humiliation. If I was mistaken for a boy, Id revel in it. When my mother corrected people, my heart sank.

I faced puberty with dread. I felt as if my body was turning against me. I used to go to bed every night and pray to God Id wake up as a boy. Id strap down my breasts. I couldnt bear to look in the mirror because my body disgusted me. I was so miserable and full of self-loathing.

At his private secondary school in central London, Jake was alienated from both the boys and the girls. I didnt know which loo to use until a kind teacher allowed me to use theirs, he says. I was introverted, anxious, rebellious. I was taunted and bullied for not fitting in.

Meanwhile, Hannah, growing up in Cardiff with her older brother Jeff and their parents Wendy, now 61, a teacher, and Brian, 63, a programme manager, did not feel the acute angst that assailed Jake. But she also felt alienated from her body.

I used to enjoy clothes shopping with my mum, she remembers. Id walk round the girls dresses section and wish I was a girl, but I didnt tell my mum. Instead I developed a sense of shame about my identity which intensified with puberty. I coped by adopting a double life.

Hannah, 31, elegant in a strapless, figure-hugging dress of ivory lace marrying the first man shed ever fallen in love with Jake

In public I embraced the strong, competitive, sporty side of my personality. Then secretly Id sneak into Mums room and try on her clothes. I was meticulous about not being caught because I was afraid of the consequences.

In that era, the transgender community was routinely vilified and mocked as freakish; the butt of jokes or cruel taunts. Neither Jake nor Hannah felt they had anywhere to turn; no recourse to counselling, help or empathy.

Today, Hannah speculates that her decision to join the Army might have been a subconscious effort to sublimate her feminine side.

I wonder if I was trying to cure myself of being transgender by going overtly down the masculine route? she reflects. Perhaps I thought that if I threw myself into physical sports, this feeling would go away.

Actually she proved to be an exemplary soldier, winning a best cadet award on a weeks training camp before being awarded a place, at the age of 16, at Welbeck Defence Sixth Form College, in Nottinghamshire.

I threw myself into the physical, military life to hide the pain because I was so convinced that becoming a woman was unachievable, she says.

Mostly I coped  I worked hard and it was a decent distraction  but there were moments when, late at night on my own, I opened a little door onto my soul and despair crept in.

Captain Hannah Winterbourne and Jake Graf on 'Good Morning Britain' with Ben Shephard and Susanna Reid

There were girls and boys at the school, and the girls would talk to me about their antics and I wished I was one of them.

I was always sexually attracted to men, but before I transitioned a relationship with a man never felt like a possibility. It didnt feel right. Its a very odd thing, but because youre not able to embrace your true identity, the idea of sharing yourself with a man was difficult.

So I shut out those feelings. I withdrew from any kind of intimate relationships. It felt wrong imagining the boy me with a man when I wanted to be the actual me  a woman  with a man.

If this logic seems convoluted, it is because Hannahs emotional and physical confusion was intense. Desperate to be the woman she was suppressing, it did not occur to her then that she could possibly transition. Instead, when she was 16, she came out to her peers  though not her parents or tutors  as gay.

It gave me a point of reference. It allowed me to embrace more aspects of my femininity, and although I was at a military college with testosterone-driven teenage lads, they were pretty much all supportive, she recalls. My fellow cadets reacted with courtesy. A lot of them remain good friends.

From college she progressed first to Newcastle University  where she gained a masters degree in electrical engineering  and then to officer training at the Royal Military Academy in Sandhurst, Berkshire, where her anguish sharpened.

Wed have formal dinners in barracks and the girls would all be in their lovely dresses with hair and make-up done, and the boys would just chuck on a black suit and tie, she remembers.

On those Saturday evenings I would spend three hours locked inside my room doing a full face of make-up, putting on a wig, high heels and a beautiful dress, then Id sit there alone for about half an hour, so I could savour a memory of getting ready for dinner as myself.

Then, 20 minutes before going down to dinner, Id shower, take off all my make-up and put on my suit and black tie.

Hannah Winterbourne, the UK's highest ranking transgender solider, speaking with her husband Jake Graf to Good Morning Britain

There is an intense sadness in this revelation. Jake, who has heard it before, stretches his hand across the table and squeezes Hannahs. He is a handsome man, neatly barbered, slim, fashionably dressed. She, bereft of make-up and with her blonde hair tied back, emanates an understated beauty. They are, as they say themselves, just like any other couple.

For both of them, of course, there was a moment when they knew they could no longer live in their misappropriated bodies. They had to become themselves.

Hannah realised this when she was a second lieutenant on a tour of duty in Afghanistan in 2011. Living in cramped quarters with seven other officers, she had no room for her secret wardrobe.

With no privacy and no feminine clothes, there was no scope to be herself. That was when I thought, not should I change this? but I need to change this, she says.

On her next posting back to the UK she mustered the courage to see a doctor, who in turn referred her to a military psychiatrist.

When you transition its baby steps, she says, and if youre knocked back you stay there for a very long time. But I found people were kind and understanding.

Not only did the psychiatrist say I didnt have to leave the Army, he also said hed helped someone like me before. I was like, wow! 

But there were still hurdles to surmount. Hannah had to find the courage to tell her commanding officer she was transgender and planning her transition. She remembers the moment: I was so terrified I was shaking, she says. I thought he was going to shout at me. But he responded: Do you know Im gay?

Hannah Winterbourne and Jake Graf on 'Good Morning Britain'

He was a lieutenant colonel in the infantry. I was shocked. I said, No sir, I didnt, and it turned out he was not only gay but a member of the Army LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) forum. So Id hit the jackpot.

He was fantastic, so supportive  and he asked me to come to a military LGBT meeting.

Newly promoted to the rank of captain, Hannah arrived at her next unit proud to announce: Im transgender. It was a breakthrough. My baby steps were becoming strides, she says. My confidence was growing and my next commanding officer was just as great as the first.

When she was prescribed her first oestrogen therapy  in the form of a patch  her fellow officers celebrated with her.

We had a patch party, she laughs. For solidarity, everyone came wearing a strip of Elastoplast and we cracked open the champagne.

She also had testosterone blockers in tandem with the patches, and laser treatment to remove her facial hair. And at Christmas 2013, just as she began hormone therapy, she went home to tell her parents.

I told Dad first, she remembers. I said I had something quite important to tell him. I said, Im transgender and he said, Thank goodness its not something serious. I think he thought I had a dreadful illness.

For Mum, though, it was particularly hard. She worried Id be bullied, harassed, beaten up.

But actually, Hannahs new identity gave her life meaning and hope. The changes were slow, she recalls. I developed breasts. My face started to soften and my muscle mass dropped.

I remember taking a group of soldiers rock-climbing in Kenya and I laughed when I realised how my upper-body strength was just smashed.

And I was so excited to start with, I went a bit over the top with hair and make-up and nails.

I worried about my soldiers but they were courteous and respectful. A few of them called me sir by accident for a while, but I knew they meant well. They tell me: I love working for you, boss. 

For Jake, meanwhile, life had changed, too; irrevocably and for the better. He, like Hannah, had first come out as gay because I wanted somewhere to belong.

He was 16 when he told his then widowed mother he was a lesbian. And she said, as long as youre happy.  But palpably he wasnt.

The couple gave an interview about their romance to Susanna Reid

He had affairs with women  he had always been attracted to them  but a deep-seated revulsion that his body felt wrong continued to afflict him.

Having graduated in film and media studies from Westminster University, in his late 20s he went to New York, where for the first time he met a transgender man who was good-looking, successful, happy and fulfilled. This was Jakes moment of realisation. He returned to London and told his mother: Im not gay. Im a man. Ive always wanted to be a man.

Her reaction was calm and supportive. She said: Well what are we going to do about it? And in a couple of days shed come with me to my first appointment with a private doctor and helped me pay for hormone treatment.

So Jakes physical and mental transformation began. He started to take testosterone and within six months his voice was lower and his beard had begun to grow. His musculature altered, too, and his jaw became sharper and more masculine.

At the same time the veil of darkness lifted, he says. I used to walk with a hunched-over chest, but as my breasts disappeared I started to walk tall.

I worked out. I took care of myself  and my personality changed. I started to be confident, affable, outgoing. Actually, after wasting 30 years of my life being intensely miserable, I was happy.

Neither Hannah nor Jake will discuss what they term lower surgery and when I raise the question of whether they have had it, they point out politely that it is an impertinent and unnecessary question. Would you ask anyone else about their genitals? asks Jake, reasonably.

They have been married for barely a week when we meet and the lustre of their joy-filled wedding at Chelsea Register Office has not worn off.

Forty friends and close family gathered for the occasion. There were squealing children, smiling colleagues, dancing elderly uncles and much admiration of Hannah in her glorious gown.

Jake looks back to when they met: they had exchanged flirty messages on social media after a mutual friend, an actress, had told Jake that Hannah thought he was cute. Then Jake suggested a date: they would meet at 3pm under the clock at Waterloo Station.

The couple say there are 'baby steps' with transitioning and the shared experience helped to bond them

And when I saw her there she looked nervous and scared and so lovely, he recalls.

They went to the Royal Festival Hall to admire the view of the Thames. There was a lovely dinner by the river. And then I leaned in and kissed her, recalls Jake. It was a sweet first kiss. Really special for both of us.

Their shared experience of transitioning was, of course, a bond. No awkward explanations were needed. And that was a huge relief, says Jake, who proposed on a rowing boat in Central Park, New York, in September 2017.

I was so nervous and jittery I couldnt get the words out, he recalls. And through floods of tears, Hannah accepted.

She shows me her sparkler. Her fingers are elegant, feminine.

They plan to have children, perhaps through surrogacy or adoption, but they know the path will be fraught with challenges.

Ive no doubt they will surmount them through the sheer strength of their love.

Ive never felt for anyone as I do for Hannah, says Jake, giving his new wife a gentle kiss. And the fact is, I love her more every day.
An 'exciting' pill can make human blood poisonous to mosquitoes and kill them, research suggests.

Scientists discovered the disease-carrying flies died after feeding on the blood of humans given super-strength doses of ivermectin.

The mosquito-killing effects lasted up to a month after patients were given the drug, which is already used to treat scabies.

Researchers now hope the drug could be used to stem the control of malaria, and potentially other mosquito-borne diseases.

Scientists discovered the disease-carrying flies died after feeding on the blood of humans given super-strength doses of ivermectin

A team of British-led researchers split 139 volunteers from Kenya - which reports more than six million new cases of malaria each year - into three groups.

The malaria patients were randomly chosen to be given 600mcg/kg or 300mg/kg of ivermectin for three days or were given a placebo.

The study, published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, revealed that both doses of ivermectin were poisonous to mosquitoes for up to 28 days.

It also showed 97 per cent of the mosquitoes died two weeks after feeding on the blood of patients given the higher dose of ivermectin.

The scientists, which included a team from the Kenya Medical Research Institute and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, fed the mosquitoes in cages using blood samples taken from the volunteers.

Dr Menno Smit, lead researcher, from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, welcomed the findings, TechTimes reports.

He said: 'The most exciting result was the fact even one month after [the subjects took] ivermectin, their blood was still killing mosquitoes.'

However, the researchers believe the 300mcg/kg dose offers the best hope due to the adverse effects from the higher dose.

The mosquito-killing effects lasted up to a month after patients were given the drug, the breakthrough study revealed (stock)

WHAT IS IVERMECTIN USED FOR? Researchers hope ivermectin could be used to stem the control of malaria, and potentially other mosquito-borne diseases. Nice, the health watchdog in the UK, already recommends the drug to be given to patients for several reasons. It recommends the drug is given to patients with papulopustular rosacea, chronic Strongyloides infection, onchocerciasis (river blindness) and scabies. Advertisement

An analysis revealed 11 per cent of the 45 volunteers given the 600mcg/kg dose experienced adverse effects to the drug. The standard dose is 150mcg/kg.

Only four per cent of the 48 patients who received the smaller dose had similar complaints. No side effects were reported from the placebo.

Researchers wrote in the journal: 'Ivermectin at both doses assessed was well tolerated and reduced mosquito survival for at least 28 days after treatment.

'Ivermectin 300mcg/kg per day for three days provided a good balance between efficacy and tolerability.'

They added it 'shows promise as a potential new tool for malaria elimination'. It was given alongside the anti-malarial drug dihydroartemisinin-piperaquine.

Ivermectin, branded a 'wonder drug' by some researchers, was developed to kill parasites responsible for river blindness and elephantiasis.

Preliminary results of the new study were presented at a World Health Organization (WHO) evidence review group meeting.

It works as a completely new type of anti-malarial drug that kills mosquitoes, as opposed to existing drugs that target the parasite.

Disease-carrying mosquitos kill more than 750,000 people a year, many of whom being children, global figures show.

The flies can carry Zika, dengue, yellow fever, West Nile and Chikungunya - all of which have prompted concerns by the WHO.

Climate change warming the planet is allowing for mosquitos to spread from their usual habitats, posing a risk to many in the northern hemisphere.
Doctors have pulled out a tiny bead from an 11-year-old's ear - after they dismissed it as wax for nine years.

The girl, whose name is unknown, had repeatedly shown signs of discomfort and tinnitus since she was two.

But each time her mother took her to the doctors they claimed her symptoms were due to a build-up of ear wax, or cerumen.

It was only when the girl was on holiday in Bali, known as the 'Island of Gods', that the 5mm bead was spotted by Indonesian specialists.

The girl had the 5mm bead removed at Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust when she returned to Britain

Her mother sought medical advice during the trip - a 16-hour plane journey from Britain - after she showed signs of tonsillitis.

A full ear, nose and throat examination revealed a 'wax-coloured bead' was in her auditory canal.

The girl had the object removed at Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust when she returned to Britain.

Doctors wrote in the BMJ Case Reports: 'On reflection, the childs mother recalled witnessing the child placing the bead in her ear at the age of 2.'

'She had seen multiple primary care doctors and repeatedly been diagnosed with unilaterally impacted wax,' the experts added.

The tale, published in the prestigious medical journal, has led to warnings that the girl was lucky to escape without any harm.

The girl, whose name is unknown, had repeatedly shown signs of discomfort and tinnitus since she was two (pictured: the bead in her ear, which doctors thought was wax)

WHAT IS EARWAX BUILD UP? Earwax usually falls out on its own but, in some cases, it can become blocked. It cannot be prevented as the wax is there to protect ears from water, dirt germs, infection and foreign bodies. You are more likely to suffer buildup if: You naturally produce more wax

You have hairy or narrow ear canals

You are elderly because wax hardens with age

You wear a hearing aid, headphones or earbuds as these push wax in further Symptoms include earache, difficulty hearing, itchiness, dizziness, an ear infection and tinnitus. You can try using over-the-counter wax softening drops or warm water to irrigate your ears. If this doesn't work, seek professional medical help in case of infection. Source: Mayo Clinic Advertisement

Medics, led by Dr Thomas Geyton, wrote: 'Fortunately, due to the inert nature of this foreign body no lasting damage was caused.

'Organic foreign bodies may cause significant inflammation through activation of the immune system.

'A button battery in the ear canal may cause permanent damage through electrolysis and hydroxide formation.'

The new case comes after health officials declared in November that cotton buds should not be used to clean ears.

Inserting a bud could damage the ear and push wax further down, according to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence.

The draft guidance also said ear syringing, in which a metal syringe is used to pump water manually into the ear to clear out wax, is potentially harmful.

Committee members agreed that buds may be a hazard that can cause infections or push wax further into the ear canal.

The guideline said the ear canal is self-cleaning, with excess wax falling out on its own, and that the entrance to the ears can be cleaned with a damp flannel.
Twenty-two people have been hospitalized with bleeding from the eyes and ears after using synthetic pot, Illinois health officials have said.

This is the first time that severe bleeding has been associated with the drugs known as cannabinoids, a mix of hundreds of chemicals that act on the same brain cell receptors as the active ingredient in marijuana.

Known as 'fake weed', 'K2' or 'spice', synthetic pot has been known to create a 'zombie-like' psychotic effect with extreme anxiety, paranoia and hallucinations.

Hundreds of people across the US have been hospitalized or killed as a result of synthetic pot in recent years as health officials struggle to regulate the substance.

The Illinois Department of Public Health issued a warning Tuesday about synthetic marijuana after 22 users visited the hospital with severe bleeding from the eyes and ears in recent weeks

The Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) issued a statement Tuesday warning anyone who experiences bleeding or bruising after using synthetic marijuana to seek medical attention.

At least four of the 22 cases were attributed to vitamin K-dependent coagulopathy, a condition that reduces the blood's ability to coagulate because of a vitamin K deficiency.

The condition has previously been linked to rat poisoning and is more commonly found in animals than in humans.

Melaney Arnold, a spokesperson for the IDPH, told the Chicago Tribune this new symptom could be a result of a change in chemical formula, but it is difficult to tell without knowing the exact makeup of the products.

Arnold said manufacturers could be tweaking the recipe for these products to get around a statewide ban and allow them to be sold legally.

What is synthetic cannabis? Synthetic marijuana contains man-made chemicals that act on the same cell receptors in the brain as THC does in natural marijuana. Manufacturers first started to sell synthetic pot in the early 2000s, marketing them as 'safe' alternatives to marijuana that do not show up on drug tests. They consist of a mix of plant material - herbs or spices, hence the name - that have been sprayed with chemicals to mimic the effects of marijuana and other cannabinoids. But often, the chemicals have drastically different and dangerous effects. Spice and K2 can cause seizures, nausea, vomiting, high blood pressure and erratic and even violent behavior. Advertisement

The people who were admitted to the hospital with bleeding eyes and ears admitted to having used synthetic pot, but it is unclear what their source was.

Most of the cases were reported in the Chicago area but officials warn contaminated products could be available throughout the state.

'Despite the perception that synthetic cannabinoids are safe and a legal alternative to marijuana, many are illegal and can cause severe illness,' Dr Nirav Shah, IDPH director, said.

'The recent cases of severe bleeding are evidence of the harm synthetic cannabinoids can cause.'

The health effects of using synthetic cannabinoids can be unpredictable, dangerous and possibly life-threatening because it's difficult to know what's in them or how a person will be react to them.

Previous studies have linked the drugs to symptoms including seizures, vomiting, chest pain, cardiac problems, kidney damage and brain damage.

Since 2015 hundreds of people across the US have overdosed and been hospitalized after smoking too much or bad batches of synthetic cannabis.

K2 was long sold in corner stores, wrapped in bright packaging and bearing a 'not for human consumption' stamp.

Government agencies are finally beginning to crack down on the unregulated substance.
A cure for so-called 'super gonorrhoea' may be on the horizon following a scientific breakthrough.

Australian researchers have today discovered how the common STI dodges the body's immune system.

The study could lead to a new treatment to kill the bug, which is rapidly becoming resistant to last-ditch antibiotics.

It follows the case of an Englishman, reported earlier this week, who caught a strain of gonorrhoea branded the 'world's worst'.

Health officials warned the two most common types of antibiotic given to patients with gonorrhoea were powerless and failed to banish the STI.

Australian researchers have today discovered how the common STI dodges the body's immune system and becomes resistant to antibiotics

The man - who was having regular sex with a woman in the UK - picked it up during a one night stand in South-East Asia earlier this year.

Public Health England declared it as the first recorded case of the STI being resistant to ceftriaxone and azithromycin - the recommended treatment.

The new breakthrough, made by Monash University researchers, offers hope of a cure amid a surge in cases of antibiotic-resistant gonorrhoea.

The scientists discovered super gonorrhoea, which can make women infertile if untreated, makes the body's immune cells commit 'suicide'.

Dr Thomas Naderer, senior author, said it provides a new understanding of how gonorrhoea bacteria cause the death of immune system cells.

He added: 'This may lead to strategies to combat gonorrhoea infection and its symptoms.'

WHAT IS SUPER GONORRHOEA? When gonorrhoea is resistant to one of two antibiotics recommended to treat it, it is known as super gonorrhoea. But the case of an Englishman whose STI was resistant to azithryomycin and ceftriaxone is the first recorded case where the bug has fought off both treatments. All types of gonorrhoea  historically called the clap - are caused by the bacteria Neisseria gonorrhoeae. It is quick to develop and strains mutate every few years to become resistant to drugs. Doctors have frequently changed their recommended treatments to keep up with the changing nature of the bug. It stopped responding to penicillin in the 1980s. Symptoms of gonorrhoea include discharge, bleeding or pain when urinating. But around one in two women and one in 10 men will not experience any signs, which is why the infection is so easily spread. Women who do not get treatment can develop pelvic inflammatory disease  an infection of the womb and ovaries which can cause infertility. In pregnancy, it can cause miscarriage, premature birth or lead to babies developing problems with their vision. Patients with super gonorrhoea can be given some other treatments which might work but can have unpleasant side effects. Health experts warn it is only a matter of time before the bug mutates to resist these remaining antibiotics too. They recommend using condoms and regular testing to prevent spread of the disease. Advertisement

The study looked at the superbug version of gonorrhoea, which is extremely small, and found it creates even smaller membrane-bound sacs to attack immune cells.

Filming the microscopic superbug, the scientists saw these sacs trigger suicide in the cells which ordinarily kill foreign invaders like bacteria.

Without them, the gonorrhoea is able to flourish, researchers wrote in the journal PLOS Pathogens.

Gonorrhoea, which was historically called 'the clap', causes discharge, bleeding or pain when urinating. It is symptomless in many people and is the third most common STI in the UK.

Fears over the super version of the STI began when it swept across Britain in 2016, with cases confirmed in London, West Yorkshire, the West Midlands and North East.

But these cases involved a form of gonorrhoea which just one course of tablets, of the antibiotic azithromycin, was unable to treat.

The new English patient, whose name and location have been withheld by health officials, cannot be treated with that antibiotic or ceftriaxone.

It means he now needs daily injections with another form of antibiotic, which is less commonly used, and is being closely monitored by health officials.

It is unclear whether the British man caught super gonorrhoea from the woman he slept with in Asia, or if it mutated to become antibiotic-resistant.

Chief Medical Officer Dame Sally Davies has previously warned antibiotic resistance is a threat as severe as terrorism.

The fear is that further antibiotics, including several last-resort drugs, will be overcome by super gonorrhoea as it evolves.

The new study provides hopes of an alternative solution, opening up the way for therapies that prevent the immune system being overwhelmed by allowing the body's natural defences to kill the bug.

WHAT ARE THE SYMPTOMS OF GONORRHOEA? More than 35,000 people a year are infected with gonorrhoea in England, including record numbers of baby boomers. Only chlamydia and genital warts are more prevalent. Figures show 78 million people worldwide contract gonorrhoea, which can often go symptomless for weeks, each year. Symptoms usually strike within two weeks of infection - but can stay hidden for many months. In women, symptoms of gonorrhoea can include: an unusual vaginal discharge, which may be thin or watery and green or yellow in colour

pain or a burning sensation when passing urine

pain or tenderness in the lower abdominal area (this is less common)

bleeding between periods, heavier periods and bleeding after sex (this is less common) In men, symptoms of gonorrhoea can include: an unusual discharge from the tip of the penis, which may be white, yellow or green

pain or a burning sensation when urinating

inflammation (swelling) of the foreskin

pain or tenderness in the testicles (this is rare) Source: NHS Choices Advertisement

A PHE report read: 'This is the first global report of high-level azithromycin resistant N. gonorrhoeae which is also resistant to ceftriaxone.'

It added that it has now 'formed an incident management team' to co-ordinate the investigation and contain the spread of the superbug.

The new case, revealed yesterday, follows repeated warnings over the dangers of super gonorrhoea by concerned health chiefs.

WHO raised concerns two years ago that the STI, once known as the 'clap', could become immune to antibiotics in a 'matter of years'.

COULD THIS BE A CURE FOR SUPER GONORRHOEA? A new antibiotic was found in the arms race against incurable superbugs, The Daily Mail revealed last July. The drug is a weapon in the fight against a strain of super-gonorrhoea similar to that which swept across London, the South East and Midlands. Chief Medical Officer Dame Sally Davies has previously written to GPs warning that gonorrhoea, Britains second most common STI after chlamydia, could become an untreatable disease. But the bug, some strains of which are now resistant to every hospital antibiotic, was defeated by British scientists using the antibiotic closthioamide. While still at least five years away from being available to patients, closthioamide cured 98 per cent of gonorrhoea samples taken from British patients. The antibiotic, only discovered seven years ago, has also been found to tackle hospital superbug MRSA and deadly E.coli and could go on to be tested against other bacteria, including drug-resistant TB. Advertisement

The new document stated the man - whose location has also been withheld - attended sexual health services earlier this year.

He was having regular sex with a female in the UK, but also had a one-off encounter with another woman in south-east Asia.

The man told doctors his gonorrhoea symptoms began a month after having sex with the woman on his travels, PHE officials said.

The document does not state whether the Asian woman already had the multi-drug resistant strain of gonorrhoea, or if it mutated.

He was started on a course of ceftriaxone and spectinomycin - but tests showed the STI remained in his throat, suggesting one failed to work.

Laboratory tests revealed a high resistance to azithromycin and ceftriaxone. It also showed the bug was only susceptible to spectinomycin.

The patient - who will be retested in the middle of next month to see if he still has gonorrhoea - is now being treated with daily injections of ertapenem, another antibiotic.

Preliminary STI results for his sexual partner in the UK returned negative for gonorrhoea. She is being followed up.

More than 35,000 people a year are infected with gonorrhoea in England, including record numbers of baby boomers. Only chlamydia and genital warts are more prevalent. Figures show 78 million people worldwide contract gonorrhoea each year.

But a super version of the STI, which is caused by the Neisseria gonorrhoeae bacterium, swept across Britain two years ago, striking London, the South East and the Midlands.

It was resistant to the common antibiotic ciprofloxacin and extended-spectrum cephalosporins, which are the drugs of last resort.

A WHO analysis of STI data around the world previously revealed 97 per cent of countries have reported strains of gonorrhoea that are resistant to ciprofloxacin.

A further 81 per cent stated there was increasing resistance to just azithromycin. And more than 50 countries warned strains were showing some form of resistance to ceftraixone - another last-resort treatment.



Chief Medical Officer Dame Sally Davies has previously written to GPs warning that gonorrhoea could become an untreatable disease.

Super gonorrhoea is one of many antibiotic-resistant infections which together kill an estimated 700,000 people worldwide each year.

Deemed to be one of the biggest threats to humanity, the issue has previously been cited as severe as terrorism and global warming.

Antibiotics have been so overused by GPs and hospital staff for decades that the bacteria have evolved to become resistant.

Doctors claim medicines including penicillin no longer work on sore throats, skin infections and, more seriously, pneumonia.

Dr Gwenda Hughes, head of STIs at PHE, said: 'We are investigating a case who has gonorrhoea which was acquired abroad and is very resistant to the recommended first line treatment.

'First line treatment for gonorrhoea is a combination of two antibiotics (azithromycin and ceftriaxone). This is the first time a case has displayed such high-level resistance to both of these drugs and to most other commonly used antibiotics.

'We are following up this case to ensure that the infection was effectively treated with other options and the risk of any onward transmission is minimised.'
Dr Robert Redfield Jr took over as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week and pledged to bring the opioid epidemic 'to its knees'

The new director of the top public health agency in the US has pledged to bring the opioid epidemic 'to its knees'.

Dr Robert Redfield Jr took over the top seat at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week with a promise to renew efforts to fight the epidemic that claims the lives of more than 115 Americans each day.

Health experts are excited by Dr Redfield Jr's strong clinical background and his experience at the forefront of research on the AIDS epidemic, but his initial suggestions for fighting the opioid crisis will require a lot more money than is currently available.

In a staff meeting Thursday he mentioned a need for enhancements in the CDC's tracking of the epidemic in the US as well as an improvement in the quality and availability of treatment programs.

Both of these topics have received a significant amount of attention in recent years but have faced the same big hurdle: limited funding.

The federal budget signed in February includes a $3 million increase in funding to address the opioid epidemic in 2018 but the details for how exactly that money will be allocated has been limited.

Implementing adequate treatment countrywide would cost $60 million over 10 years, according to opioid policy researcher Dr Andrew Kolodny.

Congress previously attempted to address delays in overdose data reporting in 2016 by providing the CDC with funding for an enhanced monitoring system, but that money was only enough to cover 16 states.

Public health officials have struggled to keep up with the sharp incline in opioid addiction and overdoses in the US in the past several years

Under the Trump Administration the federal government has been criticized for an 'all talk but no action' approach to the growing crisis that's hit all segments of the US population.

President Trump formally declared the opioid crisis a 'public health emergency' in October but stopped short of allocating more resources to address it.

Both of Dr Redfield Jr's early pitches for getting the crisis under control would require significant increases in funding.

Addiction treatment programs are largely run on the state level but rely heavily on federal funding.

Breaking opioid dependency in addicts is crucial to stopping the epidemic and the resulting deaths, Dr Kolodny, co-director of opioid policy research for the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University, told MONEY.

These treatment programs involve a combination of medication to help ween addicts off of prescription and illicit drugs plus behavioral therapy to address the addiction psychologically.

Dr Kolodny estimates that implementing an adequate number of treatment programs across the US will cost $6 million per year over a 10-year period, racking up a bill of $60 million for the federal government.

In regards to improving the tracking system, the one that has been in place since 2016, the Enhanced State Opioid Overdose Surveillance Program, has been very successful at providing a more detailed view of the epidemic.

However, funding would have to increase three-fold to allow for all 50 states to be enrolled in that program.

HOW AMERICA GOT HOOKED ON OPIOIDS A steady increase in cases of opioid addiction and overdose was first noted in the early 2000s after an increase in prescriptions by doctors through the 90s. The CDC and FDA released guidelines for curbing addiction in 2013 - which is widely regarded as the year that the current crisis took hold. By 2015 opioid overdoses had become the leading cause of death among adults under 50 as the death rate reached 52,000, almost double what it was a decade earlier. In 2016 opioid overdose deaths jumped to 64,000, causing US life expectancy to drop for the second year in a row for the first time since the 1960s. Initial figures for 2017 suggest that the situation has only gotten worse. Preliminary CDC data indicates that there were nearly 67,000 drug overdose deaths in the 12-month period through June 2017, up from more than 57,000 in the 12-month period through June 2016. Advertisement

Under the Trump Administration the federal government's approach to addressing the crisis has been weak across the board, experts say.

Chuck Ingoglia, a senior vice president at the National Council for Behavioral Health, said the Trump Administration's strategy thus far has been 'a lot of talk, little action'.

'It's great that the president says this is a priority. It's great that he convened a task force so we have another paper that says the opioid crisis in America needs attention. But too little has happened to actually do anything about it,' Ingoglia told Vox.

A commission established by Trump last year published a report with more than 50 recommendations for how to fight the epidemic in December, but as of March only a handful of those recommendations have been implemented.

In January a member of the commission, former Democratic senator Patrick Kennedy, called the body a 'sham' and a 'charade' in an interview with CNN.

A report by the Department of Health and Human Services released early this year revealed that it had given out $800 million to fight the epidemic in communities across the country.

The report listed the department's efforts to stop the epidemic as one of its key successes under the Trump Administration.

In April 2017 the HHS introduced a five-point strategy for fighting the epidemic:

Improving access to prevention, treatment, and recovery services, including the full range of medication-assisted treatments

Targeting availability and distribution of overdose-reversing drugs

Strengthening our understanding of the crisis through better public health data and reporting

Providing support for cutting-edge research on pain and addiction

Advancing better practices for pain management

The opioid crisis has been pervasive across many different segments of the US population

In September the CDC, which sits under the HHS umbrella, launched a campaign called Rx Awareness featuring real-life accounts from people recovering from opioid addiction.

The campaign is intended to increase awareness of the epidemic but public health experts were found to be unimpressed with the first round of advertisements.

Efforts to combat the rising rates of opioid overdose deaths have been found to be more effective on the local level in many cases.

City police and fire departments across the country have taken the initiative to start carrying naloxone, an anti-overdose drug.

One of the most promising local success stories comes from Ocean County, New Jersey, where treatment programs were implemented in five police departments in 2016.

As a result drug overdose deaths were about 25 percent lower that year than the year before.

The small town of Chillicothe, Ohio, has also implemented local programs to slow the rising addiction rates by focusing on preventing a new generation of addicts from forming.

In response to budget cuts, local leaders in the town created a reward program for children who submitted to regular drug tests in schools and a college scholarship prize awarded to a graduating high school senior who has stayed clean.

In a joint report published in November the National League of Cities and the National Association of Counties offered examples of other towns that have implemented similar programs in hopes that more local leaders will take action in their communities.
Once again the fate of a great British company, in this case GKN, has been settled by the votes of rapacious hedge funds and short-term profiteers.

Having supported the takeover of the engineer, the financial sharpshooters  many based in overseas tax havens  can retreat to their yachts and mansions and count the profits made when they swarmed onto the GKN share register in the final frantic days of the most bitterly fought takeover for years.

The vote of 52.43 per cent in favour of the bid by Mayfair-based asset strippers Melrose was incredibly close by City standards, and was only achieved in a flurry of last-minute phone calls by the Melrose bosses Christopher Miller, Simon Peckham and Tory donor David Roper.

Once again the fate of a great British company, in this case GKN, has been settled by the votes of rapacious hedge funds and short-term profiteers

Together with finance chief Geoffrey Martin they could personally collect 285million in pay, bonuses and share awards, and shares cashed in, if they achieve their goals of slicing and dicing GKN and selling off the parts to the highest bidders.

In the hands of the Melrose bosses is the fate of 58,000 workers worldwide in 30 countries. Melrose has already declared that the axe will fall first on GKN's headquarters in Redditch, Worcestershire, thus destroying a cherished link to engineering in the Midlands.

Shamefully, in Melrose's final push for victory, the fate of GKN is understood to have been settled by Legal & General Investment Management, an arm of Britain's largest insurance company, which manages the savings of millions of ordinary citizens. It cast its 2.63 per cent of the shares in favour of the deal, and so helped Melrose over the line.

So much for the claims of fund managers such as Legal & General and Aviva Investors that they are the guardians of long-term investment in Britain and better stewardship of public companies.

The firms that decided the fate of GKN  along with the bosses of Melrose  surely represent the 'unacceptable face of capitalism' deplored by Theresa May last August, when she warned of companies falling short of high standards and awarding pay to bosses which outstrips performance.

Melrose bosses (from left) Christopher Miller, Simon Peckham and Tory donor David Roper as well as finance chief Geoffrey Martin could personally collect 285million in pay, bonuses and share awards

The trouble is that the actions of politicians and regulators rarely live up to the high-flown rhetoric made on the stump or in the Commons.

It's extraordinary that it was not until day 54 of the 56-day GKN takeover window that Business Secretary Greg Clark extracted a series of pledges from Melrose on maintaining research and development spending in Britain.

He also obtained a commitment not to sell off for at least five years cutting-edge aerospace enterprises, including work on the new F-35 Lightning jet which is at the centre of Britain's defence plans.

Yet in the aerospace industry, where components for Airbus wings or Rolls-Royce turbines can take ten years or more to bring to production, the Melrose promise is meaningless.

Mr Clark's proposed stipulations are filled with holes, and it is by no means clear they will be legally enforceable. There is absolutely nothing to stop Melrose selling vital aerospace and defence technology should a 'strategic buyer' appear.

The Government, in the shape of Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson, should now immediately intervene on national security grounds and order a Competition and Markets Authority probe on the impact of the deal.

It is not too late to put some sand in the wheels and slow Melrose's dash for the finish line and those grotesque personal profits that will be shovelled into its bosses' pockets.
Out: Conviviality boss Diana Hunter left last week after more than five years at the helm

Conviviality, the owner of Wine Rack and Bargain Booze, is preparing to file for administration after it was plunged into financial chaos just three weeks ago.

The drinks wholesaler, which supplies 23,000 pubs and restaurants, will appoint administrators within ten days to wind down the business, putting 2,600 jobs at risk.

A spokesman said Conviviality intended to continue trading for as long as possible, while it considers offers for all or parts of the business.

The demise of the wholesaler, which earlier this year was considered a stock market heavyweight, is a dramatic fall from grace.

Chief executive Diana Hunter left last week after more than five years at the helm following two profit warnings and a 66 per cent share price drop.

Conviviality had to suspend trading on the stock market after it discovered a surprise 30million tax bill, which it failed to raise the money for in an emergency cash call.

Analysts blamed a takeover spree which saw it snap up firms in quick succession for putting pressure on its bottom line.

Under Hunter, the company shelled out for drinks distributors Matthew Clark and Bibendum and the pop-up bar operator Peppermint in less than eight months.

Molly Johnson-Jones, a retail analyst at Globaldata, said: Conviviality took its eye off the ball in search of new growth.

'Add in the accounting errors and hidden margin erosion and we see the reasons for [its] demise.

Shareholders are expected to get next to nothing following the collapse, but Conviviality said it will try to deliver as much value as possible to all stakeholders, which include lenders, suppliers and clients.

One of its biggest customers is pub chain JD Wetherspoon, with whom it recently renewed a long-term supply deal.
More than 50billion has been wiped off the value of Amazon after Donald Trump reopened a war against the online behemoth.

The US president has a long-standing grudge against the retail giant, claiming it has an unfair advantage over small high street stores as it does not pay the same level of taxes.

Trump is said to be convinced, after conversations with friends in the real estate sector, that Amazon, has devastated America's shopping centres and traditional shops.

Rumours that Trump is poised to strike against Amazon, which made a record 125billion from sales in 2017, have worried investors.

Earlier this week a news report claimed Trump is 'obsessed' with the company and is seeking ways to curb its dominance.

Yesterday he tweeted: 'I have stated my concerns with Amazon long before the election.

'Unlike others, they pay little or no taxes to state and local governments, use our postal system as their delivery boy (causing tremendous loss to the US), and are putting many thousands of retailers out of business!'

Afterwards, Amazon's shares dropped by as much as 3 per cent, or $43.70, to $1,387.72 in early trading, taking a $21billion (15billion) bite out of its market capitalisation.

It has plunged more than 11 per cent this week, taking losses to 50billion.

The president also believes the company rips off the US Postal Service, which delivers its packages, and has been incensed by negative coverage of his presidency by the Washington Post newspaper, which is owned by the Amazon founder and boss, Jeff Bezos.

'He is obsessed with Amazon,' a source told news website Axios. Another source added: 'He's wondered aloud if there may be any way to go after Amazon with antitrust or competition law.'

Trump wants to 'clip Jeff Bezos' wings', according to the report, and becomes most hostile when discussing tax policy and competition.

The 71-year-old is said to be concerned that Amazon is a threat to the US's traditional 'mom and pop' family-run businesses.

It has also expanded into several new areas in recent years, with a 10.7billion takeover of Whole Foods shocking the big supermarket brands such as Walmart.

It also wants to enter the healthcare and payments sectors.

Trump has attacked the firm numerous times on Twitter, accusing it of not paying enough tax.

'If Amazon ever had to pay fair taxes, its stock would crash and it would crumble like a paper bag,' he said in December 2015.

Trump has also claimed that Amazon is not charged enough for deliveries by the US Postal Service  despite his own officials reportedly explaining to him that it makes 'a ton of money' from the firm.

A source added: 'It's been explained to him in multiple meetings that his perception is inaccurate.'

The postal service has even added Sunday delivery in some cities because demand for Amazon products made it viable.

Yesterday, a White House spokesman rejected suggestions the president had a grudge against Amazon.

He said: 'A lot of people have made this, with respect to Amazon, about personalities and the CEO at Amazon  we're talking about Jeff Bezos here. It's really about policy.'
FLOAT ROLE City lawyer Rosenblatt has appointed broker Cenkos Securities ahead of a stock market float. The law firm will join peers Gateley, Gordon Dadds and Keystone on the stock exchange if it goes ahead.

LEVY DOUBTS Just 14 per cent of employers who pay the apprenticeship levy think it is fit for purpose, a poll by the Institute of Directors shows.

The tax was introduced to encourage businesses to take on young staff, by charging everyone to subsidise those which do.

ACCOUNTS LAUNCH Online bank Starling has launched accounts for businesses as it seeks to win a grant funded by a scheme from Royal Bank of Scotland.

BIG PAY The boss of the US finance titan American International Group, Brian Duperreault, who took over last May, pocketed 30.5million for just seven months in charger.

AUDITS SWITCH Accountant Grant Thornton is ditching audits of large companies in the face of fierce competition from the so-called Big Four firms.

It comes amid growing scrutiny of bean counters after scandals were missed at firms such as Tesco and the Co-op Bank.

SOFTWARE LISTING The electronic contract company Docusign, which provides software to businesses and estate agents around the world, is to go public next month. It is valued at more than 2billion.

BOARD DEPARTURE Activist investor Oasis Management has stepped down from the board of Mr Kipling and Super Noodles owner Premier Foods.

CHIEF NAMED Online gift retailer Not On The High Street has appointed Barrie Seidenberg, former boss of tours and sightseeing firm Viator, as its chief executive. She led the 2014 sale of Viator to Trip Advisor.

MINE OPENING Potash miner Sirius is on track to open its Woodsmith mine in Yorkshire in 2021, with construction ongoing and finance being sorted out.

Chief executive Chris Fraser said the project would create thousands of jobs.

WATER CHALLENGE Packaging firm Smurfit Kappa has joined a United Nations initiative to save water, working with brands such as Heineken and Unilever.

NEW CHAIRMAN Oil firm Gulf Keystone Petroleum has appointed Jacobus Huijskes, 52, as chairman to replace Keith Lough, 58.
A bombshell indictment document uncovered by DailyMail.com details the pedophile past of one of Robert Mueller's key witnesses.

George Nader - a 'co-operating witness' in the investigation into Donald Trump's alleged collusion with Russia  was thrust into the limelight after giving evidence to the special counsel as part of his probe into Russian meddling in the US election.

Nader is known to have met Trump at least once and had a close relationship with a key fundraisers for the president.

But shortly after the Lebanese-born political adviser was linked to the probe it emerged he is a convicted pedophile.

Now DailyMail.com has unearthed a more than 30-year-old document alleging Nader was found with a stash of child pornography while living in Washington DC in 1984.

The document dated January 29, 1985 states that Nader was brought up on two charges - mailing obscene matter and the importation of obscene matter.

It states that between March 27 and April 12, 1984 Nader mailed an envelope containing copies of 'obscene, lewd, lascivious and filthy magazines, pictures and films, commonly known as 'child pornography'.'

Co-operating: Pedophile George Nader is now a key part of the Russia collusion probe but DailyMail.com has found the more than 30-year-old indictment laying bare his twisted past

Targeted: Robert Mueller's probe had George Nader stopped when he landed in Washington D.C. on his way to Mar-a-Lago. He was served with a subpoena and a search warrant. Top Trump donor Elliott Broidy (right) wrote Nader a detailed memo of a private meeting with the president in the White House which was later leaked, showing Nader's level of access

And in a second charge the indictment, signed by the US District Attorney for Washington DC, stated that Nader was accused of 'knowingly' bringing the material into the US.

A grand jury was sworn but the case failed, apparently over problems with a search warrant that led to the discovery of the material.

Nevertheless, Nader's disturbing interest in children didn't stop there.

He was convicted in federal court in Northern Virginia in 1991 on a felony charge of transporting sexually explicit materials in foreign commerce - importing child pornography from overseas.

And a Czech Republic court sentenced him to a year in prison in 2003 for 10 cases of sexually abusing minors between 1999 and 2002.

In one case, Nader asked for oral sex from a 14-year-old boy in a hotel room at the Hilton in Prague.

When the boy refused, Nader masturbated in front of him and paid him 2,000 koruna, equivalent to around $100 today, a court official told the Associated Press.

The political adviser's lawyer, Sandeep Savla, has suggested details of his past had been leaked on purpose to intimidate his client.

'This is nothing more than an orchestrated, disgusting scheme by those who are trying to intimidate Mr. Nader into silence. It won't work,' he said. 'Mr. Nader will continue to answer truthfully questions put to him by the special counsel.'

Nader was allegedly both a paid adviser for the United Arab Emirates and had close ties to the Trump administration.

He became a co-operating witness with the Mueller probe when he was stopped and served with a search warrant and a subpoena when he flew into Washington in January on his way to visit Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort.

Investigators seized his phone and he was hauled in front of Mueller's team.

Intrigue surrounding Nader has mounted in recent weeks.

It is understood he helped broker a meeting in the Seychelles last year just days before Trump's inauguration, between infamous mercenary firm Blackwater founder Erik Prince, Russian banker and friend of Putin Kirill Dmitriev, and two top UAE officials.

Prince claims the meeting was set up in the Seychelles to discuss counter-terrorism efforts with the Emiratis  despite the security contractor already living in Abu Dhabi near to Mohammed bin Zayed, his ministers and advisers.

Prince also told congress that he met Dmitriev there in a bar by chance.

But Nader is understood to have told the special counsel that the meeting was in fact brokered by the UAE to set up a back channel between Trump and Putin.

It has also emerged that the political operative even had access to information coming from the Oval Office itself, according to leaked documents.

Top Trump donor Elliott Broidy wrote Nader a detailed memo of a private meeting with the president in the White House which was later leaked.

In the memo, Broidy said he lobbied Trump to increase military cooperation with the UAE and fire secretary of state Rex Tillerson.

Nader, who holds Lebanese and U.S. passports, spends much of his time in the United Arab Emirates, according to his lawyer.

He said that claims revealed by DailyMail.com last week that he had 'fled' to the country were untrue and that Nader was on a planned trip back there and had since returned to the United States in line with previous plans.

Nader has operated for years as a conduit to the Middle East. He has claimed that he moved from Lebanon to the US with scant English aged just 15.

'The consulate didn't think I stood a chance of remaining in the States on my visitor's visa,' Nader told the Lebanon Daily Star in a 2000 interview. 'I was just a Lebanese teenager with not a word of English.'

Five years later while studying at Cleveland State University in Ohio, Nader founded a magazine called Middle East Insight in 1980.

Key figure: Nader has told the special counsel that he set up a meeting in the Seychelles attended by Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, de facto joint ruler of the United Arab Emirates, Erik Prince, the mercenary billionaire, and Russian banker and friend of Putin, Kirill Dmitriev. He has told Mueller's team that it was an attempt to set up a back channel between Trump and Moscow

Connected: Nader facilitated secret negotiations between Syrian leader Bashar Al Assad and Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu during a diplomatic crisis in 1998

Though his magazine was put together in his basement and had a small circulation of a few thousand, Nader had a surprising level of access to leaders in the US and the Middle East.

Presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush Sr gave exclusive interviews to his publication while in office, and Nader met and interviewed Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran in 1987 - after which he is thought to have been debriefed by the CIA.

Nader also interviewed King Hussein of Jordan, with whom he spent six weeks, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat, the Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and Hezbollah's secretary-general Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah for his magazine.

Former employees at the magazine said they were suspicious that it was being used as a front for intelligence operations.

Raymond Stock, assistant editor at the magazine in the 1980s, said his former boss was a 'mysterious figure'.

'There were rumors at the time I worked with him that he was with the intelligence agencies,' said Stock, who is now a lecturer at Louisiana State University.

'I could never tell exactly who was bankrolling him or exactly where he came from,' he added. 'I never really understood his modus operandi even though I worked with him.

'What might lead one to believe he was involved in intelligence work, was that he was so close-mouthed about everything.

'He actually would send me to places, for example he sent me to Morocco for a month, and he didn't want to use the article I wrote. He just wanted to establish a relationship with the government of Morocco and he used me to do that. It was a state-sponsored trip.

'He did the same with Iraq. He asked me not to pursue articles in Iraq. He wanted me just to talk about what I saw there. So that also made me wonder if it was intelligence work.'

Another employee who worked at the magazine during the 1990s, said Nader would often change his phone number and use code names for his contacts.

'People had code names when they called, it was really outlandish,' said the former writer, who asked to remain anonymous. 'One would say "I am the gentleman from New York", and you'd have to patch him through.'

Claims of Nader's work with the UAE are not the first time the Washington consultant has been exposed as being at the center of high-level foreign policy machinations.

Intriguingly, Nader also facilitated secret negotiations between Syrian leader Bashar Al Assad and Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu during a diplomatic crisis in 1998 over the disputed area of the Golan Heights, a strategic mountain range claimed by both Syria and Israel.

The talks, revealed in a July 2017 book by author Daniel Pipes, were highly secretive and known only to the highest levels of the US administration.

Nader acted as a go-between for Netanyahu and Assad, coming close to an historic deal before the talks broke down, according to Pipes.

Access: Both George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton gave Nader's tiny magazine interviews while they were in office

He represented Assad's views, while his partner in the talks, US businessman Ronald Lauder, represented Netanyahu.

Lauder, now president of the World Jewish Congress and heir to the Este Lauder's cosmetics empire, has been friends with Trump for around 50 years. In a recent speech Trump declared: 'I want like to thank Ronald Lauder for his many years of friendship he truly has been my good friend.'

Nader told the Lebanon Daily Star in 2000: '[Middle East Insight] aren't here to be a spokesperson of the US position, but to present all the issues and to cross all lines.

'It has always been my interest and agenda to portray the issues in the Middle East with fairness and from every angle possible.' he said. 'To present the public with pro-Arab and pro-American and pro-Jewish sides. To get the whole picture.'

He told the Star his magazine was non-profit and without state sponsorship, relying on donations and corporate funding.

Nader continued to move in high-ranking diplomatic circles with his Washington-based political consultancy firm, also called Middle East Insight.

He hosted a dinner at the home of a former Bill Clinton adviser in 2001 for the then Israeli foreign minister Shimon Peres, where he met members of congress and US diplomats, according to a report to the Washington Times.

At one point during the evening, former president Clinton called the gathering on the kitchen telephone.

Company records show that the Washington-based company Middle East Insight Inc was dissolved the following year, and its non-profit parent company registered in Ohio was shut down in 2015 for failing to file documents with the state bureau.

The former Middle East Insight writer said they had an article due to run in the magazine in 2002 when it 'just disappeared'.
David Sweat, America's most notorious prison escapee, is hoping to marry his girlfriend behind bars even though the couple will never be able to live as man and wife.

Divorced mother-of-one Fran Malanik, says the couple have discussed marriage during her twice-weekly visits and are now hoping to go forward with a ceremony.

'He loves me  and my six-year-old daughter  with all of his heart,' Malanik said in an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com outside her home in upstate Ovid, New York.

'I trust him 100 percent,' she added. 'I wouldn't bring my daughter to prison to see him if I thought for a second that he was some crazed lunatic who was going to reach through the partition and start choking us out.

'I get how people feel about him. In everybody's eyes he's a cop killer, a violent person, but he is so far from that.

'David has got the biggest heart. He's very smart and it is just a shame that his life is being wasted away in there when he could be so productive out here.'

Love behind bars: Fran Malanik, 45, says she has discussed marriage with boyfriend David Sweat during her twice-weekly visits to Attica Correctional Facility in New York

Convict: Sweat (pictured in court in 2015) who is currently serving a life sentence for fatally shooting Deputy Kevin Tarsia in 2002, broke out with another inmate in June 2015 and sparked a three-week manhunt

The divorced mother-of-one told Dailymail.com she fully trusts the convicted murderer and insists he loves her and her six-year-old daughter

Inmates in New York are allowed to marry after gaining permission from the authorities, although those in maximum security prisons like Sweat are not allowed conjugal visits.

Sweat, a cop-killer serving a life sentence, led hundreds of officers on a massive three-week manhunt throughout upstate New York after breaking out with fellow convicted murderer Ricky Matt in June 2015. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo likened the escape to the movie The Shawshank Redemption.

Matt was shot and killed during the hunt but Sweat was recaptured and is currently on hunger strike in prison in Attica, New York, because he claims guards have threatened to poison his food.

Malanik says Sweat has lost at least 25 lb. He eats food that she takes him or buys from prison vending machines and drinks protein shakes but has eaten no prison food since starting the strike a few days before Thanksgiving.

'He looks like a skeleton, like someone in a concentration camp,' she said.' In every letter now, he just talks about food. He says how if he had some chocolate or bananas he would mix it in with the drinks and they wouldn't taste so bad.'

'But he can't eat the prison food when he has been threatened with being poisoned.'

Malanik, 45, starting writing to Sweat after he was recaptured and placed in Five Points prison in New York's Finger Lakes District. In August, she moved from her home on Long Island to rent a three-bedroom apartment within walking distance of her jailed love.

David Sweat (left) 37, broke out of jail with Richard Matt (right) in June 2015. Matt was shot and killed during the hunt but Sweat was recaptured

Police stand over David Sweat after he was shot and captured near the Canadian border three weeks later. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo likened the escape to the movie The Shawshank Redemption

'I was divorced when I moved up here,' she said. It wasn't like I was leaving anybody behind, I was a single mom,' she told DailyMail.com.

Four months later Sweat, 37, was moved to Attica, a near two-hour drive away.

Malanik says she became fascinated with the escapees while they were on the run and believes that Sweat did not fire the bullet that killed Deputy Kevin Tarsia on July 4, 2002, and he should appeal his life sentence without possibility of parole.

'That was my main interest when I first started writing him,' she told DailyMail.com. 'I said instead of busting out of prisons, why don't you try to do it legally?'

She first met Sweat in April 2016 and then started making the six-hour trip to Five Points from Long Island as often as she could. She calculates that she has now visited him roughly 100 times.

And she said she is convinced that Sweat is not using her like he used Joyce Mitchell, the prison worker who he and Matt seduced into smuggling tools into prison to help their escape, and who is now serving a prison term of up to seven years.

Malanik says Sweat has lost at least 25 lbs after going on a hunger strike after guards allegedly have threatened to poison his food

'He wouldn't put me in a position like he did with Blondie because he loves me,' she said. 'And what would he gain from it? Do I look like I'm a moron that would sneak him in a hacksaw blade? I've got my kid to worry about.'

Malanik, a former nurse who now sells items online, said New York's Department of Corrections views Sweat as a liability because of his notoriety.

'No rules apply to David,' she said. 'He has no constitutional rights. He's the guy that embarrassed the New York Department of Corrections. He's the guy that embarrassed Andrew Cuomo. They don't care what happens to him. They don't care if he never eats again. They just don't care.

'They want him dead,' she added. 'They wouldn't care less. If they did he wouldn't be sitting where he is now unable to eat like everybody else.

Sweat is serving a life sentence for fatally shooting Deputy Kevin Tarsia (pictured). Malanik believes Sweat did not fire the bullet that killed the cop

'They say nothing can happen to him because there are security cameras everywhere, but cameras have blind spots. I can see it now "Oops, he slipped while walking to the shower. Oops, he busted his neck. Sorry."

'But sorry's not going to work when something does happen,' she added.

She said she has written numerous times to New York politicians and to Anthony Annucci, the acting corrections department commissioner, to complain about the poisoning threats.

'I get letters back saying "Sorry, we can't help you." I'm telling them this man's life is being threatened and he can't eat and all they do is write back saying sorry. It's because nobody cares about prisoners.

'The bottom line is that David is the property of the state and he should be treated humanely. If COs are threatening to poison his food, get rid of those COs or transfer him. Why should the man not be able to eat food?

'I do think something will happen to David in Attica  absolutely'

Malanik is currently banned from visiting Sweat for 60 days because of an incident in which she was accused of fondling him. The New York Post reported that she reached through a glass partition and put her hand on his genitals.

But she says she was checking after Sweat had complained that he had a lump on his groin.

'I didn't grab him, I didn't grope him,' she said. 'He stood up and as soon as I had put my hand through I thought 'Maybe I shouldn't have done that.'

Joyce Mitchell, is the prison worker who Sweat and Matt seduced into smuggling tools into prison to help their escape, and who is now serving a prison term of up to seven years (Pictured in 2015)

'He wasn't masturbating  like he'd do that in front of everyone! It is so humiliating to him and for them to say I lent a hand is ludicrous.'

But Malanik said she was not escorted from the prison and her visit lasted at least another hour. She was only told she was barred when she returned to the prison five days later. She was later informed in writing that she could not visit him again until mid-May.

She is now calling for the prison to release video of the incident that she says will clear her. 'There must be video, there's cameras all over the place,' she said.

Malanik believes that Sweat was transferred to Attica,' because he pointed out security flaws at Five Points.

The New York Times reported in December that he had met officers and told them of the defects rather than attempt another escape.

He had hoped to be given privileges for divulging the information but instead was transferred to what Malanik calls 'the worst prison in the state,' just hours after the November 17 meeting.

'He could absolutely have got out of Five Points,' she said. 'He showed them how to get out. He demonstrated: "This is how I would have done it, this is how I could have done it."

Sweat had been incarcerated at Five Points prison in New York's Finger Lakes District before being moved to Attica (pictured) in December, a two-hour drive away from Malanik

'But he didn't. Why risk getting yourself killed again? He got out the first time and they hunted him like an animal. Who's to say they wouldn't kill him next time?'

However, the state Department of Corrections says there was 'no merit' to his claims and he was moved to Attica as part of a routine transfer of prisoners which sees some 5,000 inmates moved each month.

Officials from the New York Department of Corrections confirmed the meeting but said there was 'no merit' to Sweat's claims. They told the Times: 'Out of an abundance of caution, and in accord with the department's biannual review policy, Sweat was moved to Attica.'

Department spokesman Thomas Mailey told DailyMail.com he could not comment on issues concerning Sweat's health and did not answer questions concerning his claims that he had been threatened with poisoning.
A former French spy who says he helped a 'runaway princess' escape from Dubai in a luxury yacht claims they were 'blindfolded, handcuffed and beaten' by soldiers before being sent back to the UAE.

Jean-Pierre Herve Jaubert, a dual French-American national, said he was arrested along with the crew of the yacht Nostromo in a raid, according to the campaign group Detained In Dubai (DID).

He said he had been trying to help Sheikha Latifa  daughter of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai and prime minister of the UAE  to escape and seek political asylum in the United States.

She has previously claimed that she was subject to 'years of abuse' and had been drugged as well as imprisoned for three years.

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Former French spy Jean-Pierre Herve Jaubert who says he helped a 'runaway princess' escape from Dubai in a luxury yacht claims they were 'blindfolded, handcuffed and beaten' by soldiers before being sent back to the UAE

Mr Jaubert said he was arrested along with Latifa and Finnish woman Tina Jauhiainen (above) on the yacht Nostromo in a raid, according to the campaign group Detained In Dubai

He said he had been trying to help Sheikha Latifa  daughter of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai and prime minister of the UAE  to escape and seek political asylum in the United States

In an extraordinary audio statement released through DID, Mr Jaubert claimed the raid was carried out by 'five warships, two planes and a helicopter.'

He said he was later released without charge by the UAE authorities but remains 'unsafe at sea', the group added.

Describing the 'raid' in an audio message, Mr Jaubert said around 12 men boarded the yacht.

'They beat us severely with guns, and they robbed us; took pretty much everything from the boat.

'We were taken to the UAE. Kidnapped, and sent to jail in the UAE, I don't know where. We were blindfolded and handcuffed. I had no idea where they kept us.'

Mr Jaubert, who said the raid happened with no warning, said he had decided to help Latifa after she claimed she had been maltreated.

'I tried to help Princess Latifa to escape from Dubai because she said she was abused and tortured by her father and this abuse, that I have experienced myself, is something that cannot be tolerated.'

In an extraordinary audio statement released through DID, Mr Jaubert claimed the raid was carried out by 'five warships, two planes and a helicopter'

Mr Jaubert said he had decided to help Latifa after she claimed she had been maltreated. Jaubert operated as a secret agent for the French secret service until 1993. He allegedly escaped from Dubai himself dressed in scuba gear and woman's clothing (above)

The Frenchman said he was eventually released but that he believed Latifa was still being held.

'They told me that although I did not break any laws in the water, I broke Islamic Law,' he said in his audio message.

'Under Islamic Law women are in the custody of a father, husband or brother.

'So when I helped Latifa to escape, they viewed that as kidnapping her from her father, and that is how they justified their military operation.'

It is not known where Mr Jaubert recorded his message but it is thought he is back at sea.

Thought to be a former spy and author, the Frenchman was declared missing by DID with the princess and a Finnish friend earlier this month.

Princess Latifa said she was one of 30 children that the wealthy ruler of Dubai had with six wives.

The royal claimed that she had been secretly imprisoned for three years after a failed bid for freedom as a teenager and was drugged in hospital by doctors seeking to stop her rebelling.

In a video message and a series of audio recordings she said that she was subjected to a range of repressive measures including a curfew, a ban on driving or leaving the country, and round-the-clock surveillance.

MailOnline was unable to independently verify these claims.

The princess was hiding on Mr Jaubert's US-registered yacht off the coast of southern India and intending to seek political asylum in the United States when the raid ocurred, DID said.

Radha Stirling, CEO of Detained in Dubai, described Mr Jaubert as a 'kind and selfless man'.

Ms Stirling said: 'We have every reason to believe that all parties involved in the illegal commandeering of Nostromo may wish to prevent Herves testimony from ever being heard.'

However the Emirati authorities have previously described him as a liar and a fraudster.

After leaving the Navy he set up a successful submarine making firm in Florida where he was recruited in 2004 by businessman Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem.

Following a visit of Mr Jaubert's factory, Sulayem invited him to the UAE to do the same job in the Dubai.

The Frenchman said he was eventually released but that he believed Latifa was still being held. Latifa - who sent MailOnline a copy of her passport - is trying to seek political asylum in the US

Latifa sent a photo of her UAE identity card (pictured). She claims she was jailed for three years in Dubai and drugged in hospital by doctors to stop her rebelling and causing trouble

Sheikh Mohammed, 68, the patriarch is on close speaking terms with the Queen over their shared passion for horse racing and meet at Royal Ascot each year

However, by 2008, their relationship had broken down and there were accusations of embezzlement.

According to reports, Mr Jaubert went undercover in Islamic dress and escaped Dubai amid accusations of corruption.

Latifa's father, the 68-year-old patriarch, is on close speaking terms with the Queen as over their shared passion for horse racing and meet at Royal Ascot each year.

But while he is well known on the horse racing circuit his family life in Dubai is a closely-guarded secret.

Latifa says she is the daughter of one of the less well-known wives of the Sheikh.

She says she has two other sisters and is the third daughter of the Sheikh that he has named Latifa.

Detained in Dubai contacted Scotland Yard on March 5 and reported her as a missing person.

MailOnline approached the Dubai office and Maktoum family for comment.




A woman with whom an Ohio state lawmaker exchanged sexual text messages has launched a campaign to unseat him and threatened to release more details about their relationship if he doesn't resign.

The unusual faceoff between Republican Rep. Rick Perales, of Beavercreek, Ohio, and nurse Jocelyn Smith, of Fairborn, Ohio, has exploded out of nowhere just weeks before a May 8 primary.

Perales acknowledges exchanging texts with Smith in 2015 that he describes as 'flirtatious.' He has said they included topless photos of Smith and sexually-tinged messages.

Ohio Republican Rick Perales (in 2017) admitted to sexting with nurse and constituent Jocelyn Smith over more than three months in 2015. Smith is now campaigning for his seat

Jocelyn Smith and Perales first met when she was a constituent who had an idea about cancer research fundraising. She now claims that he forcibly kissed and choked her in public

The two met when Smith came to Perales as his constituent with an idea for a license plate to raise money for cancer research.

Campaign spokesman Daniel Palmer said Perales previously informed his wife and GOP House Speaker Cliff Rosenberger about the texts.

Perales' campaign says the sexting went on over three months.

Smith has since escalated her claims, alleging that Perales forcibly kissed and choked her as they were leaving their first meeting in public.

Perales denies having any physical contact with Smith, including kissing.

Rosenberger's spokesman Brad Miller said the kissing and choking allegations were new and that Rosenberger is investigating.

Smith's campaign and claims come as lawmakers across the country face allegations of sexual harassment and the #MeToo movement continues to raise awareness. Some state legislatures, including Ohio's, have strengthened policies on sexual harassment scandals, including one that prompted an Ohio state senator to resign last year.

Perales (in 2013) has admitted to the sexting, but denied any physical contact with Smith

Smith has threatened to release further details about Perales if he doesn't resign from office. Pereles' spokesperson said that he will not succumb to Smith's threats

Smith's campaign spokesman, Ralph Wunder, acknowledges that Smith sees her tie-in to the national movements as a way to gain traction against Perales.

'Quite truthfully, running against a guy is a heck of a good way to bring up a grievance about why somebody shouldn't hold office,' he said.

During a news conference earlier this week, ostensibly to launch her campaign, Smith began by kicking out members of the public and then laying out her conservative political platform.

Smith then immediately pivoted to prepared remarks about Perales.

She likened him to former President Bill Clinton, North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, 1988 presidential candidate Gary Hart and South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, politicians who all initially denied inappropriate relationships.

'Professional politicians don't exactly have the best record for telling the truth when it comes to being confronted with sexual scandals,' Smith said.

'The simple fact is Rep. Perales initiated both sexting and physical contact with me that involved kissing, forceful behavior and other behavior.'

Smith then threatened to release further details against Perales if he didn't resign.

Palmer said Perales won't succumb to Smith's threats.

'Representative Perales does not want to get involved in this gutter-level politics,' Palmer said. 'He has served his constituents in an outstanding way. The threatening that she's going to release text messages is nothing but Jerry Springer-like politics.'

Palmer also questioned Smith's timing.

'This was over three years ago, and the campaign finds it very ironic that it comes out 40 days before the primary election,' he said.

Smith offered to take a lie detector test - but only if Perales would. Perales has declined.
BLACK REPUBLICAN BLOG - The Republican Party is the party of civil rights and the four Fs: faith, family, freedom and fairness. The Democratic Party is the party of the four Ss: slavery, secession, segregation and socialism (Quote By Author Michael Scheuer).
Toyko, Japan is officially the most popular Easter destination in the world.

The reason for it's popularity has very little  if anything  to do with the Christian holiday, however. According to online travel booking platform Agoda, Tokyo edged out Manila, Philippines as the most-booked Easter destination.

This is likely due to the fact that Easter, which falls on April 1 in 2018, aligns with peak Sakura, or cherry blossom, season.

Cherry blossom season is drawing an increasing number of tourist to Japan during Easter time

There are also many popular Easter-themed celebrations at well-known attractions in Tokyo, including some amusement parks, Easter egg hunts and other such events.

Former first-place destination, Manila, was popular with Asia-Pacific travelers due to its large Christian population and the public observation of holidays like Easter. In Manila, there are Easter street festivals and famed Church services that people come from all around the world to see.

For this reason, although it's no longer in the number one spot, Manila remains popular with travelers at Easter.

Here's what you need to know about traveling through Japan during the Easter holiday.

When is Easter 2018?

Easter is observed on Sunday, April 1, 2018.

Cherry Blossom season in Japan

The first cherry blossoms were spotted in Tokyo around March 17, 2018, according to Kyuhoshi.com. Blossoms appeared in Kyoto, Japan, on March 22, 2018, in Fukuoka, Japan, on March 19, 2018 and in Osaka, Japan, on March 20, 2018.

By March 27, 2018, all major Japanese cities were said to have cherry blossoms in full bloom.

The exact dates for cherry blossom season very from year to year. In some cities, cherry blossom season can begin as early as January. In others, it starts in mid to late April.

Sights to see during Easter in Tokyo

There are many ways to celebrate Easter in Tokyo from traditional brunches, to tourist attractions and enjoying the cherry blossom.

Easter brunch at the Grand Hyatt in Tokyo

Easter brunch is a tradition among a large portion of people who celebrate Easter. The Grand Hyatt curates an Easter menu annually and, according to The Culture Trip, is one of the best around. It boasts a large selection of food options as well as pastries and other sweets.

Visit the Chocolat de Easter

Chocolat de Easter is an organization that's goal is to promote and organize Easter activities in Tokyo. Each year their celebration varies, but it's known to feature Easter-themed confections.

DisneySea Tokyo's Easter celebration

Tokyo's DisneySea has been in the Easter spirit since March 27, 2018 and will be until June 6, 2018. Guests that visit during that time will get to enjoy Easter decorations, an Easter egg hunt and more festive activities and shows.

There is no Easter event at Tokyo Disneyland in 2018 due to the start of the Tokyo Disney Resort 35th anniversary, 'Happiest Celebration!' taking place from April 15, 2018 to March 25, 2019.

Sweets Forest

Sweets Forest has been hailed as a dessert theme park. The facility is full of skilled pastry chefs whipping up different types of desserts each day.

They tend to try to stay on pace with seasonal trends and will be whipping up Easter egg and rabbit themed treats through May 31, 2018.

Sanrio Puroland

Sanrio Puroland, the Hello Kitty-themed amusement park, has begun throwing an annual Easter bash the whole family is sure to love. Get information here.
A new report has revealed that all 28 of the mass public attackers in the US last year were men who had experienced a significant 'life stressor' in the past five years.

In a study released on Thursday, the Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center analyzed every 2017 attack in a public space in which three or more people were significantly harmed. Drug and gang violence, as well as mob violence, were excluded.

The study found that every attacker had experienced a significant stressor within five years, including relationship or professional setbacks, financial difficulty, contact with law enforcement, and health or housing struggles.

About half of the attacks appeared to be motivated by grievances, including workplace, domestic and personal disputes.

A fifth were motivated by strong racial or religious ideologies. Of the ideologues, equal numbers were white supremacists, black nationalists, and ISIS supporters, with two attackers falling into each category.

Mass killers (left to right): Stephen Paddock, Devin Patrick Kelly, and allegedly Sayfullo Habibullaevich Saipov were responsible for the three deadliest mass attacks in 2017

This map shows the 28 attacks in a public space in which three or more people were significantly harmed. Drug and gang violence, as well as mob violence, are excluded

School attacks, though recently much in the public focus, accounted for only 14 per cent of mass attacks, with four incidents. Attacks were much more likely to occur at businesses, which accounted for 46 per cent of incidents, or public open spaces, at 32 per cent.

Locations of the attacks by category. Some attacks spanned multiple locations

Though guns were used in eight out of ten of the mass attacks, knives and cars were also used. The year's third-deadliest attack occurred when an ISIS supporter allegedly rammed a truck into pedestrians on a New York City bike path.

Of those attackers who used firearms, nearly half possessed those guns illegally.

Mental illness was a common thread, the study found, with two-thirds of attackers experiencing symptoms prior to the incidents - the most common being hallucinations, delusions, or suicidal thoughts.

The year's deadliest mass attack was in Las Vegas, where 64-year-old Stephen Paddock killed 58 before committing suicide in the Mandalay Bay

This table shows the number (n) of attackers in each motive category and percent of the total

The ages of the attackers ranged from 15 to 66, with fairly even distribution among different age groups.

The age distribution of the attackers is seen

The year's deadliest mass attack was in Las Vegas, where 64-year-old Stephen Paddock killed 58 before committing suicide.

His motive remains unclear, but like all the other attackers, he had recently experienced life stressors, including losing significant amounts of money and suffering bouts of depression.

The second most deadly attack occurred at a church in Southerland Springs, Texas, where a man in a domestic dispute with his mother-in-law barged into her church and fatally shot 26.

The attacker, 26-year-old Devin Patrick Kelley, was gunned down by two armed citizens as he attempted to escape.

Devin Patrick Kelley fatally shot 26 in this church in Sutherland Springs, Texas

A memorial is seen where a truck attack killed eight people on New York's West Side Highway

In 2012, Kelly divorced his first wife and was court-martialed by the Air Force for assaulting her and their child. He also escaped from a mental health facility the same year.

Half of the attacks lasted less than 5 minutes

Both incidents should have barred Kelly from purchasing a firearm, but reporting failures resulted in him clearing a gun purchase background check.

On October 31, a truck attack in Manhattan killed eight. The suspect is Uzbekistan native Sayfullo Habibullaevich Saipov, 29, who entered the US through the 'diversity lottery' and professed allegiance to ISIS after the attack.

Saipov had been interviewed by federal agents in 2015 over his contacts with suspected terrorists, and acquaintances said his temper had repeatedly gotten him fired from driving jobs in recent years.

The new study found that the vast majority of the attackers - 79 per cent - showed warning signs that concerned others, including disturbing communications or behavior.

The attackers who concerned others before the attacks had higher average casualties than those who showed no warning signs, the study found.
A New Zealand company is trialling four-day working weeks for its staff, while still paying them for five.

Trustee company Perpetual Guardian started the six-week long experiment in March this year to trial if the shorter work week was beneficial to both the company and its employees.

CEO Andrew Barnes said the experiment had potential implications for everything from work/life balance to the gender pay gap and the mental well-being of workers.

New Zealand Perpetual Guardian (pictured) company is trialling four-day working weeks for its staff, while still paying them for five

He said this could motivate employees to produce better work in a shorter time period.

At the end of the six-week experiment he said data would be analysed by academics to see if the trial was beneficial to the company, and its employees, The Guardian reported.

If successful, the company said the four-day week would be implemented indefinitely.

Mr Barnes said employees' reactions to the experiment varied.

'People were really positive going in, then a bit negative, then positive again,' he told.

CEO Andrew Barnes said the experiment had potential implications for everything from work/life balance to the gender pay gap and the mental well-being of workers

Head of People and Capability at the company, Christine Brotherton (right), said employees (left) had to ensure they achieved the same amount of work in four days as they would five, or the trial would be unsuccessful

He said employees put a lot of pressure on themselves to make the experiment work.

'People are telling me: we have to make this work for New Zealand,' he said.

Head of People and Capability at the company, Christine Brotherton, said employees had to ensure they achieved the same amount of work in four days as they would five, or the trial would be unsuccessful.

'Some people haven't quite realised that if we have three days off, the four at the office have to be very productive, and we need to address that,' she said.

But she said the majority of the workforce was working hard to ensure the trial was continued.

But she said the majority of the workforce (employee pictured) was working hard to ensure the trial was continued

Ms Brotherton said employees were arriving to work after a three-day week with more focus and motivation to work hard.

She said it gave people the time to do more 'life administration' which led to better efficiency during work hours.

Employee Joanna said the change gave her some much needed balance.

'A four day work week means I get a day for my family, a day for my friends and a day of mindful rest for myself,' she said.

'After all, these are the three most important pillars of life.'
Former Labor senator Sam Dastyari has revealed the shocking name controversial senator Pauline Hanson called him.

Talking on KISS FM's Kyle and Jackie 'O' show earlier this week, the Sydney-based former politician claims Ms Hanson has only ever said one thing to his face.

'Pauline has only ever said one thing to me in person,' Mr Dastyari said.

Former Labor senator Sam Dastyari (left) has revealed the shocking name controversial senator Pauline Hanson (right) called him to his face

Talking on KISS FM's Kyle and Jackie 'O' show Friday morning, the Sydney-based former politician (pictured) claimed Ms Hanson called him a 'c***'

The heated comment shocked the two hosts with Jackie 'O' Henderson (pictured) exclaiming it was the word he 'could not use' on live radio

'She pulls me aside in parliament ... and says "I just want you to know Sam Dastyari, you have and always will be...", am I allowed to use the word c*** on radio.

'Is that the word I can't say.'

The heated comment shocked the two hosts with Jackie 'O' Henderson exclaiming it was the word he 'could not use' on live radio.

Meanwhile, the two men quipped about the Queensland senator as they further discussed the comment made.

'She thinks you are one of those?' Kyle Sandilands asked to which Mr Dastyari responded saying he 'can't have one of those'.

Outspoken Sandilands responded: 'She has one of those'.

'Well, probably - that's the visual I didn't want to have,' Mr Dastyari replied.

Earlier in the conversation, Mr Dastyari said the pair had done interviews together and 'fought'.

'She pulls me aside in parliament ... and says "I just want you to know Sam Dastyari, you have and always will be...", am I allowed to use the word c*** on radio,' he said (pictured together)

The former politician said he 'called her a criminal' and claimed Senator Hanson 'called (him) a bunch of stuff'.

'That's the only thing she's said to me privately, we've done a lot of interviews together where we've yelled at each other,' he said.

However, this is not the first heated insult exchanged between the two.

Last year, Senator Hanson called Mr Dastyari a 'little Mr Bean' after video surfaced of him blaming the 'rise of One Nation' for being the target of racial abuse, according to 9 News.

'He's nothing but a pipsqueak and all he ever does is use my name to get publicity to actually sell him book,' Senator Hanson said in November 2017.

'I call him 'Mr Bean' because that's exactly what he looks like, a little Mr Bean.

'I think he's a waste of space.'

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Senator Hanson for comment.
The order to Scramble! had finally come and the ever-eager Squadron Leader Douglas Bader clenched his pipe between his teeth and led his team of Spitfires and Hurricanes in a fast climb into the sky over southern England.

It was September 1940, the height of the Battle of Britain. In the distance, a cluster of black dots stained the sky.

A cry went up over the radio: Bandits, 10 oclock! There were 70 of them, Dornier bombers and their fighter plane escorts. Bader closed fast, ignoring streams of tracer streaking at him from their rear gunners.

A Messerschmitt floated into his sights. He gave a quick burst of fire and felt a moment of triumph as he saw it fall, smoke pouring from its tail.

Then there was a horrible, jarring shock as German cannon shells slammed into his own plane.

No19 Fighter Squadron, based at Duxford, Cambs., flying their two blade propeller Supermarine Spitfire aircraft in formation in the year of the outbreak of the Second World War

Instinctively, he banked hard left as his cockpit filled with smoke. He was going down in flames.

Gripped by fear, he pulled back the hood to bale out  until the slipstream cleared the smoke and he realised the fire had miraculously gone out. He was all right after all.

Using all his strength, he eased the Hurricane out of its screaming dive and gave chase to another Messerschmitt, firing three sharp bursts.

It veered groundward and seconds later exploded. But Bader was in real trouble by now too, his plane crabbing awkwardly, left wing dropping, holes in the cockpit and the side.

His flying-suit was gashed across the right hip. Somehow he nursed the Hurricane back to base, landed, taxied to the maintenance hangar and climbed out, barking: I want this aircraft ready again in half an hour!

Here was the raw, do-or-die courage, the refusal to be beaten, that came to typify Britains Royal Air Force  which is about to celebrate 100 years since it was founded on April 1, 1918.

It was a difficult birth. Conceived in panic against the wishes of the other armed forces, the RAF was sniped at from all sides and only just managed to survive as an independent organisation. It was a good job it did.

It nurtured the likes of the indomitable Bader (whod lost both his legs in a pre-war crash when showing off his aerobatic skills), without whom the Battle of Britain, its finest hour, would not have been won. It has proved its worth ever since.

Which is why its as a surprise to learn in a new book by historian Richard Overy that getting the RAF off the ground took herculean effort  and very nearly didnt happen.

Britain had war planes in service ever since the start of World War I, with their importance in battle growing despite the fact that flying then was still rudimentary and dangerous.

Flimsy planes made of wood and fabric and held together with wire were liable to break up or crash.

No19 Fighter Squadron at the outbreak of the second world war

Pilots took to the air in combat after just a dozen hours training, wrapped up in layers of clothing and multiple balaclavas to keep out the cold in the open cockpits. There were no parachutes.

Each squadron was umbilically attached to one or other of the existing armed forces  the Army and the Royal Navy  whom they supported and from whom they took their orders.

The armys Royal Flying Corps (RFC) patrolled the skies above the trenches in France; the job of the Royal Navy Air Service (RNAS) was to protect ships. And the generals and admirals jealously guarded their fiefdoms, determined to keep the ambitious aviators and their flying machines in their place: new boys who were subordinates and should do as they were told.

Wars were won on land and sea, was the prevailing doctrine, not in the air. Planes simply provided protection, reconnaissance and back-up. But that arrogance and complacency on the part of the service chiefs came up against harsh reality when Britain itself came under attack from the air.

In 1915 and 1916, bombing raids from Zeppelin airships killed several hundred civilians in various parts of the country. But what really spread panic among the British was when a squadron of German Gotha bombers attacked in broad daylight on June 13, 1917.

They flew unchallenged above the capital at an altitude beyond the range of anti-aircraft guns.

The Avro Lancaster bomber, of the Royal Air Forces Battle of Britain Memorial Flight

Hundreds of civilians were killed or wounded and a primary school in Poplar, in the East End of London, was hit by a stray bomb intended for the nearby docks.

It scythed down through the three-storey building and obliterated an infants class of four to six-year-olds on the ground floor, killing all 18 of them.

The school caretaker carried out the body of his own son. A pupil who survived recalled the headmaster calling the register the next day and weeping every time there was no answer to a name.

The little ones funeral was deeply emotional, with 15 of the victims buried in a mass grave.

Rumour had it that the last coffin in the procession to the cemetery contained body parts that could not be identified.

Six hundred wreaths were laid and a message of condolence from the King was read out.

After the mourning came rage, with a public outcry for something to be done.

Rioters and looters took out their anger and despair on foreign-owned premises. Egged on by an affronted Press, the public demanded air defences against the enemy and reprisals against German cities  which, with other priorities, neither the RFC nor the RNAS could supply.

RAF Supermarine Spitfire II banks round to show classic Spitfire wing shape

The Prime Minister, wily David Lloyd George, saw a political disaster in the making. Public morale was at rock bottom already after three years of a stalemate war. He feared a backlash.

Famed for his tap-dancing expediency, he headed off the growing criticism by setting up a special crisis committee, which in turn proposed the formation of an independent Air Ministry.

Separate from the army and navy, it would coordinate not only the countrys response to aerial attack but also handle all matters of war in the air. The generals and admirals were outraged at the very idea. They huffed and puffed, argued and stalled.

The Hurricane was built in 1944 and is believed to be the last Hurricane to enter service with the RAF. Both aircraft are still flying with the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight

But then the need for action was reinforced by more German air raids in late September, more Gothas coming in under a harvest moon and sending Londoners into total panic.

Only a handful of bombers actually made it to the capital, but rumour said 4,000 were on the way, and hundreds of thousands of civilians  carrying babies, bedding and pet canaries in cages  formed queues outside Tube stations to seek shelter underground. Output came to a halt in factories when panicked staff, worried about their safety, failed to turn up for work.

Production of weapons slumped at the Woolwich Arsenal.

The desperate authorities shoved aside any bickering about the need for an Air Ministry, and Parliament passed an act authorising the establishment of the Royal Air Force.

Initially, it would be a temporary measure, for just four years.

That this was essentially a political rather than a military decision was underlined when Lloyd George chose the Fleet Street Press baron Lord Rothermere  owner (alongside his brother, Lord Northcliffe) of Associated Newspapers (which, then and now, included the Daily Mail)  to head the new Air Ministry.

A Supermarine Spitfire Mk.Vb, RF-D, flown by pilot Jan Zumbach (1915 - 1986) of the 303 Kosciuszko Polish Fighter Squadron of the Royal Air Force (RAF), World War II, circa 1943

It was an unlikely appointment. Rothermere had a good track record in business but, writes Overy, had little political experience and only a laymans grasp of the way air power had developed over the course of the war.

Overy surmises that the Prime Ministers motivation for offering him the position was simply to get him on board and try, unsuccessfully as it turned out, to stifle criticism from his papers.

The new ministry  formally known as the Air Board  had a rocky start. It was not just that the Admiralty was doing its best to torpedo every initiative by insisting on keeping control over naval aircraft and personnel.

There was also disagreement among the top brass, with Rothermere at loggerheads with Sir Hugh Trenchard, previously commander of the RFC, who had been appointed Chief of the Air Staff but wasnt himself convinced that a separate air force was necessary or desirable.

Biggin Hill: Pilots have a last look at their maps before taking off at Biggin Hill on RAF exercises

The fiery Trenchard griped constantly about taking direction from a civilian. Rothermere complained that his Chief of Staff was not just perfectly impossible to work with but also failing to do his job of coming up with a distinctive, long-term strategy for the new force. Nonetheless, amid the mess, the wrangling and the uncertainty, the RAF was born.

It officially came into being on April 1, 1918  appropriately, some smirked, All Fools Day.

There were no fanfares or ceremonies. The only obvious immediate change was a new rubber stamp with Royal Air Force obliterating Royal Flying Corps on documents. Otherwise, its 25,000 officers and 140,000 men, most technicians, mechanics or drivers, carried on as before, with the 64 former naval squadrons continuing to support the navy and the 97 former RFC units with the army.

At the top, the rows went on until, after just weeks in the job, Trenchard resigned, followed later by Rothermere.

Their successors  the industrialist Sir William Weir as President of the Air Board and Frederick Sykes as Chief of Staff  looked to give the new force a distinct identity.

Sykes set about strengthening the air defences around London and planning the strategic bombing of industrial and civilian targets in Germany, while arguing strongly that air power was the future face of war.

The air force, he contended, would be the nations  and the empires  first line of defence, not the army or the navy.

A distinctive RAF uniform was designed, to replace the khaki of the army and deep blue of the navy. The first effort was light blue with lashings of gold braid, but was scoffed at for resembling the clothes of a cinema commissionaire. A dark grey-blue was finally settled on.

Aircraft Of The Royal Air Force, 1939-1945: Supermarine Spitfire, Spitfire Mark VB, AD233 'ZD-F' being flown by the Commanding Officer of No.222 Squadron RAF

But Sykess ambition for the service was cut short by the ending of the war in November 1918  at which point all the disputes over the need for a separate RAF surfaced again.

With demobilisation, numbers shrank from 198 squadrons to just 28.

Doubts were also raised about how effective the bombing campaign in the final months of war had actually been. A gigantic waste of effort and personnel was one insiders damning verdict.

The mood in Whitehall was increasingly in favour of breaking up the RAF and sending its constituent parts back to the army and the navy as ancillary units. Lloyd George even came close to writing it off as a wartime improvisation. It was Winston Churchill who came to the rescue when, at the beginning of 1919, he was appointed Secretary of State for War, with the addition of the Air Ministry as part of his brief.

At first he sat on the fence, leaving the RAF in what Overy describes as limbo  neither elevated to a secure future nor yet dismantled as a redundant relic of the recent conflict.

Trenchard was now back as Chief of Staff and  contrary to the reluctance displayed two years earlier  a fervent advocate of RAF independence.

When he got wind that Churchill might be leaning towards dismantling the service, he stormed into his office and engaged in a fierce shouting match with his boss. A separate air force was essential, he now argued forcibly, to encourage and develop the Air spirit, like the Naval spirit, and to make it a force that will profoundly influence the strategy of the future.

A reconstruction of a Spitfire scramble during the Battle of Britain open day celebrations at Biggin Hill in Kent pn Sunday 17 September 2000

Churchill wavered but eventually came down on Trenchards side. He, too, could see where the future lay. The RAF as an independent force was saved.

Henceforth it would be a permanent fixture in Britains military set-up. Not that everybody considered the issue settled. A wicked waste of money, declared Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson. The sooner the air force crashes the better. Three years later Admiral David Beatty was still demanding that the navy should get back control of its planes and pilots.

But the RAF flew on regardless, dodging the brickbats, growing in strength and proving its worth in the Second World War.

When that great conflict began, this countrys one military element that was technically up to date and well prepared was the fighter defence of the British Isles.

The fears of enemy bombing in 1917 that had prompted the call for a separate RAF in the first place came full circle in 1940.

As Prime Minister, Churchill reaped the rewards of his foresight in supporting the fledgling RAF all those years earlier.

For good or ill, he wrote later, air mastery is today the supreme expression of military power. And fleets and armies, however necessary, must accept a subordinate rank.

As he chalked up another kill over Kent and sent Hitlers Luftwaffe packing, Douglas Bader would most surely have agreed.
A Congresswoman has apologized for failing to protect female employees who say they were harassed by her former chief of staff.

Rep. Elizabeth Esty of Connecticut issued the apology on Thursday in response to reports over how she handled the firing of her former chief-of-staff Tony Baker, who got a $5,000 severance and job recommendation.

Baker went on to work for Sandy Hook Promise on Estys recommendation, after allegedly punching and screaming at a female staffer in Esty's office, the Connecticut Post reported. A spokesman for Baker has said he denies punching the female employee.

'In the spring of 2016, I was horrified and angry to learn that a promising, dedicated former employee of mine was harassed and harmed by my then (now former) chief of staff,' Esty wrote in a lengthy statement of apology.

Rep. Elizabeth Esty (above) of Connecticut issued the apology on Thursday in response to reports over how she handled the firing of her former chief-of-staff Tony Baker

Former chief-of-staff Tony Baker went on to work for Sandy Hook Promise on Estys recommendation, after allegedly punching and screaming at a female staffer in Esty's office

'I am sorry that I failed to protect her and provide her with the safe and respectful work environment that every employee deserves. I am sorry that I hurt her, her friends, family, and co-workers, and many of my present and former staffers,' she continued.

She says she launched an internal review and learned 'the threat of violence was not an isolated incident' in her office.

Esty's current chief of staff Timothy Daly says the Democratic congresswoman on Thursday also personally repaid the federal government $5,000 in severance paid to now-fired Baker.

Daly says Esty was advised to sign a non-disclosure agreement with Baker but now believes it's moot.

The controversy over Esty's handling of Baker's dismissal was first reported Thursday by the Connecticut Post.
Katherine Brewster, 27, had been staying in the village of Dom Jose

The daughter of a celebrity therapist is missing in a remote stretch of Brazilian wilderness after she was last spotted heading barefoot to a nearby beauty spot to meditate.

An experienced traveller with a philosophy of living in contact with nature, Katherine Brewster, 27, had been staying in the village of Dom Jose, a tiny community in the south Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul.

Villagers last saw her walking towards a wooded area on Sunday en route to a nearby dam, where she would often go to meditate.

But the area she would walk through runs alongside the vast Uruguay River, where attacks by anacondas, alligators and jaguars have also been reported.

She was said to have left the suitcase and nearly all her belongings at the house where she was staying, taking only her passport and credit card.

Brazilian media said police feared she had got lost in woodland or fallen in a reservoir, but villagers said this was unlikely as the woods were small and she could not have fallen in the water without anybody noticing.

Initial reports said she had been living in a nearby hippy commune run by an environmental organisation called UniPermacultura, but a director later denied she had been a student, or a guest, or a resident there.

In a statement, Clairton da Silva said Miss Brewster was staying with villagers, adding that the region was composed of quiet and peaceful families and that there was no violent crime.

Close friends added Miss Brewster was known to often venture out on solo hikes, and said they were not jumping to conclusions and were hoping she would be in touch soon.

She arrived arrived in the country over a month ago with the specific intention of staying at an eco-village (pictured) in the area

Last night Mr da Silva revealed the precise circumstances of Miss Brewsters unusual arrival in the area. He told the Mail she had arrived in the Dom Jose village without warning and was extremely reserved.

He said: She turned up one morning at the home of the couple saying she wanted to rent a room there. The couple had gone out for the day and she had to wait outside the house the whole day before they arrived back in the evening.

She said that she had come on the recommendation of someone we first thought was her boyfriend, an Argentinian called Leon. But he was probably just a friend she had met at another alternative community gathering.

He had come to the village last year to take part in an event and later came back to stay in this couples home, but never stayed with us in the ecovillage. But by the time Katherine arrived he had already gone.

Well-connected father: Mr Wallass book has been praised by the Duchess of York (both pictured)

She stayed for a month. There are only 28 families living in the village and everybody knew who Katherine was, although she rarely spoke to anyone.

'She would spend the whole day on her own in a wooded area just behind the house, reading and meditating and being with nature. Shed get up early in the morning and go and meditate there.

On Sunday they woke up and she wasnt in her room, so they imagined she had gone off to meditate. When she hadnt come back at the end of the afternoon, they saw that shed taken her passport and credit card and thought that she might have gone away.

'We dont believe she got lost in the woods because they are very small, or that she fell into the river because there were lots of people around that area who might have seen her. We are just hoping that for some reason she took herself off of her own accord and that shes alive and well.

The Brazilian homeowner she had been staying with, Neli da Terra, said Miss Brewster had been renting a space in her home for 32 days, but had vanished on Sunday morning without leaving any note or information about her fate.

Her father, Andrew Wallas, 62, is a well-known counsellor and relationship adviser who calls himself The Modern Day Wizard and counts Sarah Ferguson and Davina McCall as fans.

Creative space: Two residents playing music at the remote resort in south Brazil

The Duchess of York was recently pictured with Mr Wallas alongside his latest book, Business Alchemy, which she described as great.

Miss Brewsters mother, Dr Diane Brewster, 62, is an academic specialising in pedagogy who lives in the coastal town of Seaford, East Sussex.

Last night the family, who are in contact with consular authorities, said they did not wish to comment at this stage.

Miss Brewsters younger sister Lizzie earlier took to Facebook for help, writing in Portuguese: If you have happened to talk to Kat in the last few days, or know where she might be, please contact me. Im trying to talk to her urgently.

Community dig: Gardeners practise sustainable farming at the ecovillage where the 27-year-old was staying

She also asked Jeis Carvalho, thought to be Katherines boyfriend, to please get in contact with her. Known to family and friends as Kat, Miss Brewster had also visited Bolivia, Morocco and India but had said she was planning to come back to the UK next year.

Brazilian police chief Ercilio Carletti said: Were in contact with the search team to help with sniffer dogs in case she is lost in the woods.

She could also have left to go voluntarily to another place, because she took her documents. One of the hypotheses is that she went into the lake, which is very deep. The area there has many ravines, its very complicated.

A Foreign Office spokesman said: Our staff are assisting the family of a British woman who has been reported missing in Brazil and are in contact with the local police.
Britain's feeble takeover rules need urgent reform, critics warned last night after short-term speculators who forced the takeover of GKN made an instant profit of 172million.

Hedge funds snapped up 25 per cent of the defence firm's shares in the weeks before yesterday's vote, giving them voting rights on the deal and the prospect of a quick profit if they pushed it through.

Their votes helped Melrose get the backing of investors holding 52.43 per cent of GKN stock in yesterday's vote. Without support from the hedge funds, the bid would have failed and GKN's future as an independent firm would have been secured.

The result sent shares in GKN up 9.5 per cent, or 40p, to 463p  giving the hedge funds a profit of 172million.

Britain's feeble takeover rules need urgent reform, critics warned last night after short-term speculators who forced the takeover of GKN made an instant profit of 172million

They are understood to control 25 per cent of GKN's 1.72billion shares  or 430million.

The New York hedge fund Elliott banked 26million having bought enough shares during the fight to make it GKN's second biggest investor.

But it is understood that while hedge funds such as Elliott voted in favour of the takeover, two-thirds of GKN's long-term investors were opposed.

Sir Richard Lapthorne, who wrote a Government report into Britain's manufacturing industry in 2013, said: 'These rules need rewriting. The hollowing out of the British industrial base has gone too far.'

Tory MP Lucy Allan said: 'What we are seeing is the future of a great British manufacturing company being decided by short-term-value investors.

'These investors, or vulture funds, came on to the GKN share register for a matter of weeks to make a quick and significant profit, and it is they who have decided the future of this great British company. There are few who would condone this.

'If good is to come from this, it will be reform of the Takeover Code, preventing new investors from participating in a vote to decide the long-term future of a company such as GKN.'

Following the hostile takeover of Cadbury by US giant Kraft in 2010, former Cadbury chairman Sir Roger Carr called for an overhaul of the rules.

He called for voting rights to be removed from shares bought during a takeover, meaning only those who owned shares before it started could vote on its outcome.

It has also been suggested that investors should hold shares for six months before they can vote on such decisions, which would have diluted the influence of edge funds in the GKN deal.

Labour MP Jack Dromey said if such rules had been in place 'this would not have happened', adding: 'Takeover rules are in desperate need of reform.

'Yet again we have seen a jewel in the crown of British industry sold because its shares were bought up by hedge funds. To let a British engineering icon like GKN be taken over by a short-termist, asset stripper like Melrose is a monumental failure by ministers.'

Hedge funds snapped up stock after Melrose launched its raid on GKN in January, hoping to rake in money by forcing the takeover through

Former business secretary Sir Vince Cable said: 'This has highlighted the weakness of the national interest test under the takeover rules. Our rules are too lax. They allow takeovers that are contrary to the national interest.'

Hedge funds snapped up stock after Melrose launched its raid on GKN in January, hoping to rake in money by forcing the takeover through.

The vultures will get cash and shares in Melrose once the deal is completed and are likely to sell up within weeks.

But it wasn't only hedge funds that waved the takeover through.

In an unusual move, Legal & General Investment Management (LGIM), which handles almost 1trillion of savers' money, is thought to have put its 2.63 per cent stake behind Melrose.

As a passive investor, LGIM is meant to track the market rather than try to back successful businesses.

Unions also called for an overhaul of the takeover rules.

Steve Turner, from Unite, said: 'We need an overhaul of takeover laws to ensure other British companies do not fall prey to corporate vultures looking to make a quick buck against the national interest.'
Sunny skies and warm temperatures will give Australians another reason to celebrate this Easter long weekend.

From Western Australia to New South Wales, the majority of the country will be graced with the perfect weather for family gatherings and Easter egg hunts as the four-day holiday kicks off on Friday.

While the rest of the country basks in the sun, Queensland and the Northern Territory should prepare for heavy rain as storms hit the north-east.

People are expected to flock to the beach in Sydney this weekend as temperatures begin to warm up to 29C on Friday, breaking the city's Easter curse of torrential rain.

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From Western Australia to New South Wales, the majority of Australia will be graced with the perfect weather for family gatherings and Easter egg hunts as the four-day holiday kicks off on Friday

While the rest of the country basks in the sun, Queensland and the Northern Territory should prepare for heavy rain as storms hit the north-east

People are expected to flock to the beach in Sydney this weekend as temperatures begin to warm up to 29C on Friday

Temperatures will drop to 25C on Saturday as storms form in the east, before soaring to 29C on Sunday and 28C on Monday.

Clouds will begin to make way for sun in Melbourne on Friday and Saturday. Temperatures will sit around 23C for both days. Temperatures will reach 24C on Sunday before dropping to 21C on Sunday as showers move across the city.

Winds will reach 25km/h in Adelaide on Friday with a temperature of 23C.

Temperatures will remain at 26C on Saturday and Sunday before dropping to 23C on Monday.

Hobart has a 90 per cent chance of rain on Friday as temperatures reach 19C. The capital of Tasmania will have a slight reprieve from the rain on Saturday before showers return on Sunday and Monday.

Temperatures will soar to 33C in Perth on Friday and will drop to 28C on Saturday and Sunday before rising to 32C on Monday.

Temperatures in Sydney will drop to 25C on Saturday as storms form in the east, before soaring to 29C on Sunday and 28C on Monday

Temperatures will soar to 33C in Perth (pictured is Moore River) on Friday and will drop to 28C on Saturday and Sunday before rising to 32C on Monday

Clouds will begin to make way for sun in Melbourne on Friday and Saturday. Temperatures will sit around 23C for both days

Temperatures will reach 24C on Sunday in Melbourne before dropping to 21C on Sunday as showers move across the city

Authorities are keeping tabs on a low-pressure system off the Queensland coast which is threatening to put a dampener on the Easter long weekend (pictured is precipitation)

Canberra's weather will also resemble summer, as temperatures remain around 29C throughout the weekend.

Intense storms will rock Darwin on Friday and Saturday with winds reaching up to 25km/h. Temperatures will remain around 32C before rising to 34C on Sunday as storms clear.

Rain will return on Monday with a 40 per cent chance of showers as temperatures reach 34C again.

Brisbane will be drenched in rain for the next week, but temperatures will remain around 28C.

Authorities are keeping tabs on a low-pressure system off the Queensland coast which is threatening to put a dampener on the Easter long weekend.

Sunny skies and warm temperatures will give Australians another reason to celebrate this Easter long weekend (Pictured is Bondi Beach's Iceburgs)

Canberra's weather will also resemble summer, as temperatures remain around 29C throughout the weekend

Hobart has a 90 per cent chance of rain on Friday as temperatures reach 19C. The capital of Tasmania will have a slight reprieve from the rain on Saturday before showers return on Sunday and Monday.

Brisbane will be drenched in rain for the next week, but temperatures will remain around 28C

Pictured is Adelaide's Mt Osmond Centre Track on Friday morning

The remnants of ex-tropical cyclone Iris are a few hundred kilometres northeast of Fraser Island, moving slowly southwesterly towards the coast.

Forecasters are expecting this will bring increasing showers along much of the Queensland coast from Saturday, becoming very heavy from Monday.

It comes just weeks after Cyclone Marcus swept across the NT and the Kimberley, ripping trees out of the ground and damaging houses.

The weather bureau says it's a waiting game to see where the system crosses the coast, anywhere between the Capricornia region in central Queensland, north to the already rain-drenched parts of the state around Cairns and Townsville.

The remnants of ex-tropical cyclone Iris are a few hundred kilometres northeast of Fraser Island, moving slowly southwesterly towards the coast

Cyclone Marcus swept across the NT and the Kimberley, ripping trees out of the ground and damaging houses, just weeks ago

Forecasters are expecting this will bring increasing showers along much of the Queensland coast from Saturday, becoming very heavy from Monday

Depending on when and where the system hits the coast, it could bring falls of hundreds of millimetres and trouble for holidaymakers returning from the Easter break, state Disaster Co-ordinator Deputy Police Commissioner Bob Gee said.

'There's a clear message for everyone that's travelling over the weekend, from Sunday night to next Wednesday, there'll be heavy rain everywhere,' he said.

Authorities are urging those travelling over the long weekend to keep across any weather or flood warnings, especially as they return home on Sunday and Monday.

The clean-up from ex-tropical cyclone Nora and other rain events is continuing, with farmers to receive disaster assistance funding.

Cape York communities Aurukun, Kowanyama, Mapoon, Napranum and Pormpuraaw have also received disaster assistance after Nora hit last weekend.
Police have ended their search for Tracy Ann Lewis, 31, who went missing on March 9 near Ocean Shores, Washington

Police have ended their search for a missing Utah woman who left a note in her car saying 'please dont try to find me. - Goodnight'.

Tracy Ann Lewis, 31, went missing on March 9 near Ocean Shores, Washington.

She left a note saying she intended to leave to find herself without 'anyone pulling her back' according to police.

Police conclude she doesn't want to be found after a search of her car found a note that said 'I know youll want to, but please dont try to find me.  Goodnight.'

'At this point, it appears that Tracy Lewis left of her own accord,' police said in a news release.

Alarm was raised after Lewis suddenly went missing after a family reunion in Disneyland in California at the end of February.

Lewis, who was driving alone, had planned to head up the West Coast with stops in San Francisco and Portland, before returning home to Utah.

However she was last seen on surveillance tape at a Morning Glory hotel in Ocean Shores, Washington on March 9.

Lewis, above, left notes in her abandoned car warning authorities not bother searching for her

Lewis, pictured center, had just celebrated a family reunion at Disneyland in California before embarking on a solo road trip to stop in San Francisco and Portland when she went missing

She was later spotted walking on Ocean Shores Boulevard NW before she disappeared without a trace.

Police have closed the investigation after determining she wanted to go missing.

A notebook found in her abandoned car in the hotel parking lot found the message 'And this isnt goodbye forever. This is just goodbye for right now,' according to KomoNews.

Her car key was left on the console and the 'don't try to find me' note was left on the car's visor.

The car was found thanks to a tracker her parents asked her to place in her vehicle for her solo roadtrip.

Her parents describe her as a neat person, and were alarmed to find her abandoned car in a state of disarray.

Police found footage of her at the Morning Glory hotel in Ocean Shores, Washington on March 9

Surveillance footage at the hotel spotted Lewis in a black outfit with her suitcase. After she left the hotel she disappeared without a trace

'She's a very meticulous person, has to have things very neat but the state of the back of the car, her belongings that were in her duffle bags were thrown about,' her mother Sheila Lewis said to Fox13.

She was officially reported missing on March 17, launching a police search of nearby woods and dunes.

'We know something's happened,' Sheila said.

'She's our life. She's our life like all of our kids and all of our grandkids are. Our family is our life,' she added.

Grays Harbor Transit searched their video archives to see if there was evidence of Lewis on a bus, but police reported no such footage was found.

She took with her just a wallet, backpack and a few personal items.

Lewis (second right) is pictured with her family who reported her missing on March 17

Ocean Shores police announced they would end their search for her as she 'left on her own accord' but her parents still plead for information on her safety

'She is still listed in the National Crime Information Center computer system as a missing person, so her welfare can be checked. Other than that, the Ocean Shores PD case is inactive at this time. The family has been notified of this, and they understand that no further investigation is warranted at this time,' the police added in a statement Thursday.

But this isn't the first time Lewis has stirred alarm, she also went missing for two weeks in 2015.

When she returned home she gave no explanation for her abrupt departure.

She is still considered a missing person and is listed on the national database.

Police have ruled out foul play and that she is suicidal, according to KJZZ.

Lewis family is pleading to know if she is safe.

Lewis is described as 5'5'', weighing 125 pounds, with blonde hair and blue eyes.
Australia's 'world record masturbator' has narrowly avoided jail after touching himself near a 'particularly attractive' woman at a nude beach.

Gary Thomas Chisolm, 45, from Darwin pleaded guilty to two indecent exposure charges this week, according to the NT News.

He was on bail for exposing himself to three people in November, during a public masturbating session, when he touched himself in front of the sleeping sunbather.

Gary Thomas Chisolm, 45, (pictured) from Darwin plead guilty to two indecent exposure charges this week

The sunbather woke up to a 'fast, wet, slippery kind of sound', the court heard.

He told her he was putting on sunblock.

After the first incident he told police he 'thought he was alone'.

The witnesses took a photo of him driving away - and said they had seen him thrusting vigorously during the act.

'He says he's extremely good at masturbating. He can do it extremely quickly,' his lawyer Mr Maley said (Chisolm pictured)

Chisolm's lawyer said his client knows he has a problem with masturbating - and often has to do it up to ten times a day.

'He says he's extremely good at masturbating. He can do it extremely quickly,' Mr Maley said.

'He basically has almost the world record in masturbating,' he said.

Chisolm was sentenced to five weeks and two days jail - his sentence was wholly suspended.

Chisolm told Daily Mail Australia he 'knows what he has done is wrong'. But believes the five days he spent in lock up were 'punishment enough'.
A group called Fair Vote Project received a 25k donation from an organisation linked to Max Mosley

Freelance demonstrators protesting against Brexit were paid thousands of pounds by an organisation linked to Max Mosley, it emerged yesterday.

The campaigners, from a group called the Fair Vote Project, were hired to increase support for a second EU referendum during a protest in Parliament Square.

But it has emerged the group received a 25,000 donation from an organisation called Byline Festival in which Mr Mosley, the former F1 owner accused of printing a racist leaflet, holds shares.

Byline Festival is run by Peter Jukes, who live-tweeted throughout the Leveson Inquiry into the Press, and its project director is Kyle Taylor, who previously worked for pro-Remain group Best for Britain.

The Fair Vote Project says it is committed to publishing whistleblower evidence connected to possible cheating in the referendum.

It campaigns for a second poll. It was founded by a consultant who worked for the anti-Brexit group Best for Britain that was set up by prominent Remain campaigner Gina Miller and part-funded by George Soros. The group is reported to have hired up to 30 people to target thousands travelling to work to convince them of the need for a second referendum.

The teams, armed with megaphones and placards handed out leaflets in Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham and London. They urged people to join a protest in Parliament Square to call for a second and fair vote.

Mr Mosley is currently facing the possibility of a perjury investigation as Scotland Yard assesses a dossier detailing his links to a racist pamphlet which was revealed by the Mail. He insists the suggestion that he lied under oath was obviously nonsense.

Mr Jukes told The Daily Telegraph that Mr Mosley had no involvement in the running of the Fair Vote Project or the Byline Festival, which holds an annual three-day event in East Sussex. The Byline website says it subscribes to Impress, the controversial state-approved Press regulator backed by charities which are funded by Mr Mosley. His lawyer did not respond to requests for comment.
A hot air balloon crash has left 11 people injured in the Hunter Valley, New South Wales.

The balloon, operated by Balloon Safaris, came down at about 8am, according to NSW Ambulance.

Eleven people arrived at Cessnock Hospital by private vehicles with injuries including spinal and broken bones.

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A hot air balloon crash has left eleven people injured in the Hunter Valley, New South Wales

The two women with spinal injuries, aged 34 and 36, were transferred to the John Hunter Hospital in Newcastle for specialised help.

The 11 people who presented to the hospital were aged between 7 and 38 years old.

The balloon came down at the corner of Macdonald Road and Broke Road in Pokolbin.

Michael MacGregor, who was on board the hot air balloon, told Nine News people were screaming as the hot air balloon landed.

An Ambulance NSW spokesperson confirmed six women and 5 men arrived at the hospital by private vehicle and was not aware of any call to emergency services being made

Nine people were rushed from the scene to Cessnock Hospital with injuries including spinal and broken bones

'The pilot said 'brace yourself, brace yourself' as we hit the top of the tree and spun around at 360 degrees,' he told the network.

'People were screaming, We were about 10 metres above the ground, a lot of tree branches were over the road.

'It could have been a hell of a lot worse if we landed on the road.'

The balloon came down at the corner of Macdonald Road and Broke Road in Pokolbin

Balloon Safari director Michael Scaife told Daily Mail Australia he took three people to hospital as a precautionary measure with 'minor injuries'.

'Everyone climbed out of the balloon with no problems at all,' he said.

Police from Hunter Valley Police District have commenced inquiries into the circumstances surrounding the incident

But an Ambulance NSW spokesperson said six women and 5 men arrived at the hospital by private vehicle.

'Once we found about about the incident, ambulance went out to site to check no-one needed treatment,' she said.

'Ambulance is not aware of a triple zero call being made.'

Police from Hunter Valley Police District have commenced inquiries into the circumstances surrounding the incident.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau has been notified.
Without doubt, it was a compelling mystery: a nine-month-old baby girl callously abandoned under a blackberry bush on the Sussex Downs on a hot afternoon in August 1937.

She was wearing a pink silk dress, the hem of which had been torn to tie her hands, yet despite being covered in scratches and insect bites, she was in good health.

Scotland Yard treated her case as attempted murder and the story of the baby on the Downs, far from any path or chance of rescue, captured the nations imagination for weeks.

Her name  or the name she was given by the loving couple who adopted her  was Anthea and, for most of her life, she has known nothing more about how she came into the world.

What was she originally called? Who were her birth parents? And who had left her in such cruel circumstances? They are all questions that have haunted Anthea Ring  her married name  for most of her 81 years.

Anthea Ring seen with her adoptive parents in Bradford upon Avon

Finally, however, the Mail can reveal that, courtesy of the meticulous work of family historian-turned-DNA Detective Julia Bell  not to mention an extraordinary forensic breakthrough involving DNA taken from the back of a 30-year-old postage stamp  Anthea finally has the answers, or most of them, at least.

She knows she was born Mary Veronica ODonnell to Irish parents  one from County Mayo, one from County Galway  who were living in London during the final years of the Great Depression.

And while she cannot know for definite who abandoned her, she suspects it was an unscrupulous child minder paid to look after her.

More than eight decades later, she is happily in touch with her biological cousins and members of her extended family tree  the first blood relatives from her past she has known in her life.

The revelations have brought great joy to Anthea, now a sprightly grandmother, who, though she has enjoyed a happy life, admits that the question of her provenance has never gone away.

There was a piece of the jigsaw missing, she says. I used to say Im not looking for a mother and father. I couldnt have had better ones. I just wanted to know where I came from  its your identity, after all. Now, I just feel a great sense of peace. It will be wonderful to be able to share my biological roots with my children.

After a few months in hospital, Anthea was eventually adopted by Douglas and Margaret Shannan, a couple from Surrey who had tragically lost their own daughter, Veronica, in a road accident.

Trace: Antheas father was found using saliva from a 30-year- old stamp. The shame of the scandal still haunts the family of Antheas mother, who have asked us not to use her photograph

While Anthea  who today lives with her husband Francis, 82, in Bradford on Avon and has three children, Jonathan, 58, Christine, 56, and 55-year-old Juliet  knew from an early age that she was adopted, her parents had told her shed been left on the doorstep of Worthing Hospital. Only when she was 24, married and a mother herself, did the truth come out.

Id gone to visit Mum and Dad and taken some photos when, suddenly, Dad said: Well have to tell her now, Peggy, says Anthea.

My mother very unwillingly came back with a newspaper cutting with a baby that looked very like my eldest daughter, Christine. It talked about a baby left trussed up under a bush. Then they told me that baby was me.

I immediately understood why they hadnt told me. It was a lot to take in. My mother told me I would never be able to find my birth mother because the charge was attempted murder, meaning no one would come forward.

Anthea cried all the way home then, with Francis, set about trying to find out anything she could about her past.

The only real option I could think of was to go to Worthing Library and look through papers from the time. But there was nothing to go on  just the reports about how Id been found.

While Anthea  who today lives with her husband Francis, 82, in Bradford on Avon and has three children, Jonathan, 58, Christine, 56, and 55-year-old Juliet  knew from an early age that she was adopted, her parents had told her shed been left on the doorstep of Worthing Hospital

They revealed a tale of cruelty, but also good fortune: a family hiking on the Downs, away from their usual path, heard a baby crying. They took her to a nearby farmhouse, where she was given milk and brown sugar and wrapped in a blanket.

The only clue to the babys origins was the fact that she was clean and well-nourished. My hair was washed and on my breath they could smell paregoric, a sedative used then to ease teething pain, says Anthea.

The discoveries only enhanced the mystery of her abandonment: what was this apparently loved and well cared-for baby doing dumped on the Downs?

It was a question to which, at the time, Anthea had no answer. There was nowhere else to turn, so I chose to concentrate on raising my children, she says.

Only in the early Nineties did the question of her past start to rear its head again. My elder daughter Christines son, Aaron, looked very like me when he was a baby. It set me off on the path again of thinking about who my birth family were.

Library research took her to a national adoption agency called Norcap, which advised Anthea to write to the police and the hospital where she had been taken.

The hospital was unable to help, but the police put her in touch with former Chief Inspector John Hunt, the only detective who had worked on her case who was still alive. The pair arranged to meet.

I was really quite shaky, recalls Anthea. He was the first person I had met who was a tie to my past before I was adopted. Hed carried my photo with him for years, which I found very moving.

John, anxious to help, contacted fellow retired police officers, who published Antheas story in their newsletter. In turn, it led to further national coverage and reignited interest in the story.

I received a letter from the daughter of the people who found me and was able to meet her and visit the farmhouse where I was taken. I also met the nurse who had looked after me in hospital, says Anthea. It made something of my life before I was adopted. These people became like family.

Two key figures were missing, however: her birth parents.

Anthea Ring holding a pic of her as a child

Anthea Ring was abandoned as a baby but with breakthrough DNA technology has been able to track down her relatives

The leads were not on the stage, as Anthea puts it. And as the years went by, I didnt think I would ever find them.

Yet advances in DNA opened further opportunities and, in 2007, after reading a book by geneticist Bryan Sykes about mitochondrial DNA, passed through the maternal line, Anthea wrote to him and was offered a test with his firm.

The database was able to detect matches with people all over the world and found links with people in Canada and America.

They were very distant matches, but it didnt matter. It was a case of: I exist. I remember that feeling so strongly, says Anthea.

Then, in 2012, she learned of a firm then called Worldwide DNA  now Living DNA  which had an even larger DNA database.

After taking another test, Anthea matched with a woman in her mid-60s called Joan, from North Carolina: her genetic third cousin on her fathers side. It was a wonderful feeling. We met when Joan visited the UK and I was trembling. She was my first blood relative. We got on like a house on fire.

Further matches on the site over ensuing months suggested links in Counties Galway and Mayo.

But they were all on the outer fringes of Antheas family  which is where Julia Bell comes in.

A former teacher who has developed a fascination with genetics, Julia has dedicated herself in recent years to making sense of the often unwieldy information yielded by the ever-increasing number of people uploading their DNA on to international databases and, after learning of Antheas case, she got in touch to offer her help.

We had pretty distant matches at that time, but I could see that she was Irish and had links in Galway and Mayo, says Julia now. It was a case of using hypotheses and intelligent surmise to bring things into closer focus.

The name ODonnell featured strongly, along with Coyne, a name that emerged on the paternal side after Julia found a lady called Dot living in Rhode Island who, through ancestry checks, she suspected was a relative. Anthea got in touch and persuaded Dot to give a DNA sample.

She came out as Antheas first cousin, which was the closest match so far, says Julia.

Anthea and her daughter Christie in 1964

The Coynes were a large clan and Dot was the daughter of one of nine siblings  two daughters and seven brothers. It turned out that two of the brothers were living in the Cricklewood area of North London at the time Anthea was conceived.

After Julia painstakingly uncovered the birth certificates and baptisms for all girls born illegitimately in London between September 1936 and March 1937  under the names Coyne or ODonnell  one birth certificate stood out: that of Mary Veronica ODonnell, born in Cricklewood in November 1936 to Helena ODonnell, a 25-year-old from Charlestown in Ireland.

I knew she was the one, says Julia. Everything pointed to it.

For Anthea, it was the moment she had been waiting for. Julia rang me up last April. She said: Are you sitting down, because I think youve found your mother, she recalls. It was thrilling.

Helena had worked in a factory in Cricklewood, before returning to Ireland, where she married nine years later and had four more children before her death in 1987.

One of them agreed to a DNA test which proved that Helena was Antheas birth mother.

Sadly, her new siblings declined to meet her. They wished me well  but they didnt want to know, she says. I think because of the circumstances of my birth, they are afraid of blame and shame, so they dont want the publicity.

The question of Antheas father remained. While Julia knew he was one of the Coyne brothers, the man she thought the likeliest candidate  Patrick  died in 1999 with no known descendants.

Anthea Ring's adoptive parents Margaret and Douglas Shannan

Then, towards the end of 2017, Dot, Patricks niece, revealed that she had found airmail letters sent to her by her uncle. The minuscule amount of saliva left on the stamp was enough to test for DNA, a meticulous process undertaken by Living DNAs David Nicholson. It was, he reveals, a close shave.

The first areas we tested on the envelope either didnt have any viable DNA or not enough of it, he says. We always have a 50:50 chance of a result, but the scientific team were determined to make it work.

And on the fourth attempt, it did: the DNA revealed there was a 99.5 per cent chance that Patrick Coyne was Antheas father.

Anthea is now in contact with many members of the Coyne clan and has met more blood cousins. It has been wonderful getting to know them, she says.

She will never know if her father even knew of her existence. Given how things were at the time, it is possible my mother never told him she was pregnant, she admits.

One greater mystery remains: what exactly happened in those nine months after Antheas birth? And who dumped her on the Downs?

Julias research has shown that, for a while, Helena and her baby were living at a home for young unmarried mothers in Chiswick, known as Devon Nook, before Helena returned to an address in Cricklewood.

Julia believes that, overwhelmed and struggling to make ends meet, Helena gave her baby to a foster mother in a temporary arrangement that was common at the time.

Records show there was a foster mother in Cricklewood who lived two streets away from Helena and had form for mistreating infants around Antheas age, she says. She was known to make excursions on a Thursday afternoon, the day that Anthea was found.

She believes it was the foster mother, not Helena, who so cruelly abandoned Anthea that summer afternoon.

I struggle to accept that a mother who had nursed her baby  and who went to the trouble of baptising her in a Catholic church  would be able to leave her, says Julia.

It would also explain why no one came forward when the baby was found. Helena was possibly told by the foster parent that her baby had died.

There will never be a way of knowing for sure but, for Anthea, learning her identity has brought peace enough.

I remain very curious, but Im not angry  in fact, I feel I was lucky. I had a far better life than I would have had in rural Ireland as an illegitimate child. Ultimately, Ive found out who I am and thats all that matters.
President Trump has touched down in Florida where he is set to spend the Easter weekend at his Mar-a-Lago estate with his family.

Trump stepped off Air Force One at Palm Beach on Thursday afternoon just hours after he publicly farewelled his outgoing communications director, Hope Hicks, at the White House.

The President will be reunited with First Lady Melania and their son Barron after spending the week apart.

President Trump touched down in Palm Beach, Florida on Thursday afternoon where he is set to spend the Easter Weekend at his Mar-a-Lago estate with his family

The President will be reunited with First Lady Melania and their son Barron after spending the week apart

Trump, Melania and Barron had all flown to Mar-a-Lago last weekend but the President returned to Washington on Sunday just an hour before the 60 Minutes program featuring porn star Stormy Daniels aired.

First daughter Tiffany Trump was also spotted at the airport on Thursday having arrived on Air Force One with her father.

The 24-year-old, who is a student at Georgetown Law School, arrived wearing a black shirt and trousers with silver loafers.

Tiffany and her sister Ivanka had spent the afternoon in Cleveland, Ohio watching on as their father addressed industrial workers.

First daughter Tiffany Trump was also spotted at the airport on Thursday having arrived on Air Force One with her father

The 24-year-old, who is a student at Georgetown Law School, arrived wearing a black shirt and trousers with silver loafers

Trump, Melania and Barron had all flown to Mar-a-Lago last weekend but the President returned to Washington on Sunday. He is pictured at Palm Beach airport on Thursday

President Trump was spotted waving as he left the Florida airport on Thursday in his motorcade

Meanwhile, Melania was spotted for the first time in public this week when she made a surprise visit to the Palm Beach Children's Hospital on Thursday to meet with patients and their families to spread some Easter cheer.

Reporters weren't informed of her trip to the St. Mary's Medical Center campus until after the fact.

The First Lady spent approximately 45 minutes with 20 patients, delivering to them Easter tote bags that included bunny stuffed animals, playing cards, coloring books, crayons and stickers.

She is expected to return to Washington before Monday's Easter Egg Roll - one of the year's major events that the East Wing puts on.

The Trump family traditionally spend Easter at Mar-a-Lago where they attend services at Bethesda-by-the-Sea Episcopal Church in Palm Beach.

First lady Melania Trump is seen engaging with patients at the St. Mary's Medical Center in West Palm Beach, Florida on Thursday afternoon

Melania Trump (right) is seen leaning over one young patient how is giving her a No. 1. The first lady made a surprise trip to St. Mary's Medical Center in Florida Thursday

Rainy weather: Ivanka, 36, and Tiffany, 24, were seen arriving at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport on Thursday as they accompanied their father
THIS year's Crufts finale descended into chaos when an animal right protestor stormed the arena, claiming it promoted 'canine eugenics'.

And now campaign group Peta have taken their opposition to dog shows a step further - claiming it is 'anti-feminist'.

A blog post on the website of Peta's American branch said dog owners can't be feminist because 'if you buy a dog, you are funding sexual exploitation.'

The post, entitled 'You can't be a feminist and buy a dog', noted the use of 'bitch' as an insult.

Joel Cessio, 32, from Nice, France stormed the stage as Yvettte Short picks up her winning dog, Tease, and runs off

The sign read 'Crufts: Canine Eugenics'

It said: 'Apparently, it's supposed to be an insult. Perhaps that's because, in breeders' circles, female dogs' main purposes are to win beauty pageants and then to be bred repeatedly until their bodies wear out.

'In puppy mills and breeding operations, female dogs are trapped in a nightmare sickeningly similar to the illicit sex trade. Their bodies are controlled, manipulated, bought, and sold - all for the financial benefit of their peddlers.'

The post then appeared to make a comparison between puppy mills and prostitution, stating : 'Unfortunately, just like selling women, selling puppies can be profitable.

NEC staff tackle a protester holding a sign that read 'Crufts: Canine Eugenics'. Animal rights group PETA have claimed responsibility for the protest

Peta have taken their opposition to dog shows a step further - claiming it is 'anti-feminist'

'Almost all the cute, wriggling ones in pet store windows or sold online for hundreds or even thousands of dollars came from an abusive hellhole like the one in North Carolina, even though customers are often given a shamelessly dishonest sales pitch about "carefully chosen facilities."

Asked whether it was attacking dog shows as misogynist, a spokeswoman for Peta UK told The Times: 'Any institution that treats females as breeding machines is anti-feminist. Not only are dog shows such as Crufts creepy, they also encourage people to breed dogs purely for their physical appearance, commonly at the expense of their health.'

A spokeswoman for the Kennel Club, which runs Crufts, said there tended to be a gender balance between male and female dogs on show.

In a tweet, dog lovers Lucie Jayne Betts criticised the post: 'I didn't buy mine, I rescued him, so according to Peta, I apparently get to keep my feminist card. Though besides, there's a HUGE difference between reputable breeding and puppy farms. Likening dog breeding to human sexual exploitation is absurd. Utter drivel.'

Caroline Kisko, secretary of the Kennel Club, said: 'All breeders, from individuals who only ever breed one litter through to large-scale breeding establishments, should be adhering to the Animal Welfare Act and prioritising the health and wellbeing of dogs above all else. It is crucial for anyone considering getting a dog to do their research and go to a responsible breeder or a rescue organisation to avoid unknowingly supporting the puppy farming trade.'

Earlier this month, the Crufts Best in Show award ceremony was marred by a protestor who ran across the floor before he was tackled by security.

Security staff at the NEC carry off a protester who stormed the stage at the dog show - the activist was protesting dog breeding

A blog post on the website of Peta's American branch said dog owners can't be feminist because 'if you buy a dog, you are funding sexual exploitation'

The activist waved a poster that said: 'Crufts: canine eugenics.' As the demonstrator ran towards her, winning whipped Tease's owner Yvette Short, of Edinburgh, picked up her dog and went to safety.

The crowd at the Birmingham NEC, which has seen an estimated 160,000 visitors across four days, then booed the protester as he was taken away.

Peta, the campaign group that calls for the ethical treatment of animals, claimed responsibility for the stunt, which was shown live on Channel 4. Peta's director Elisa Allen said: 'Crufts glorifies pedigree fetishists' twisted pursuit of the "perfect" dog.

'There's nothing natural about breeding dogs with extreme and debilitating physical traits, and Peta urges everyone to stay away from this cruel beauty pageant.' Crufts said: 'It appears that protesters from Peta gained unauthorised access. In doing so they scared the dogs and put the safety of people and dogs at risk in a highly irresponsible way.' ends
A group of drunken British soldiers were arrested for 'brawling in their underwear' at a luxury resort on Cape Verde.

Some 130 men were stranded off the coast of Africa after their RAF plane broke down on its way to the Falkland Islands.

Police held four British soldiers after a fight broke out at a hotel following drinking sessions and sunbathing in their underwear.

The soldiers were all put up in hotels after the break down which reportedly cost the army around 40,000.

A group of drunken British soldiers were arrested for 'brawling in their underwear' at a luxury resort on Cape Verde

Flights and fights: The stop-off in Cape Verde that led to mass drunkenness and brawling

One of the hotels the squaddies were put up in was the five-star Melia Tortuga Beach resort, which is advertised as an 'ocean of tranquility'.

Furious army bosses had reportedly imposed a curfew and drinking ban by Wednesday evening.

A source told The Sun: 'One minute they were being sent to the bottom of the world  the next they're on a sunshine break complete with a free bar. They couldn't believe their luck.

'As soon as they arrived at the hotel they got 'all inclusive' wristbands and went straight to the bar. Tables were piled high with drinks.

One of the hotels the squaddies were put up in was the five-star Melia Tortuga Beach resort, which is advertised as an 'ocean of tranquility'

'They were dressed for the Falklands, so they had to buy clothes from the gift shop. They were all in Cape Verde souvenir T-shirts. There were very loud arguments by the evening when a lot of them were worse for wear.

'Holidaymakers, including families, were shocked by squaddies swearing at bar staff, ordering multiple cocktails and sunbathing in their underwear.

'There was one guy who was trying to fight everyone.'

Police were called and arrested four soldiers for brawling. Two were charged the next day and fined 150 each.

Around 130 men were stranded off the coast of Africa after their RAF plane broke down on its way to the Falkland Islands. Some of these men were put up at the Melia Tortuga (pictured)

The soldiers were supposed to be travelling from the UK to the Falklands to repair a runway.

However, their RAF Voyager transport plane developed a technical problem while it made a scheduled refuelling stop at Sal on Cape Verde.

It was unable to take off again until yesterday morning, with The Sun reporting it was further delayed after crew forgot to refuel once the fault had been fixed.

The Army source added: 'This is bad behaviour and it will not be tolerated. The authorities in Cape Verde have been very kind allowing us to stop over to refuel.

The soldiers were supposed to be travelling from the UK to the Falklands to repair a runway

'They shouldn't have to deal with drunken clowns like this.'

Last night an Army spokesman said that anyone involved in the incident faced disciplinary action.

'We can confirm that two soldiers have appeared in court in Cape Verde and have been fined,' he said.

'Anyone found to have fallen short of the Army's high standards will be dealt with administratively and may face sanctions up to and including dismissal.'

The latest skirmish adds to a growing list of unruly behaviour from members of the Armed Forces in recent months.

Their RAF Voyager transport plane developed a technical problem while it made a scheduled refuelling stop at Sal on Cape Verde

Earlier this month four soldiers from Prince Harry's former regiment were caught snorting cocaine in a pub toilet while on a night out with colleagues.

Staff at a The King and Castle, pub in Windsor  located just yards from Windsor Castle, where Harry will marry in May  reportedly found the serving Household Cavalry troops taking the drug on March 13.

The four men, who were among a group of twenty off-duty servicemen, were ejected from the pub after being caught in the first-floor toilets.

They were then reported by their squadron corporal major and sent for drugs tests, according to The Sun.

At the time the Ministry of Defence said any soldiers who committed an offence would be disciplined.

It came after eight sailors were sacked by the Navy last year after testing positive for drugs.

Four officers aboard HMS Vigilant were also disciplined for sleeping with fellow crew.
The row over the black cab rapist's parole fiasco has intensified after it emerged 63 violent criminals were released back onto Britain's streets last year.

MPs are demanding assurances the freed criminals - including murderers and rapists - had been properly vetted by the Parole Board before they were freed.

The Justice Secretary, David Gauke, has requested a list of all the Category A prisoners released directly into the community before being sent to an open prison.

It came as Mr Gauke was facing mounting pressure last night for refusing to share blame for failings in the black cab rapist case.

Sacked Parole Board head Nick Hardwick (left) said that Justice Secretary David Gauke (right) should 'accept responsibility for mistakes'

Black cab rapist John Worboys is to stay in jail for now following landmark legal action by two of his victims

Mr Gauke is already under fire for indicating he might bring a judicial review to challenge the board's decision before backing down on the grounds he was unlikely to win

The sacked head of the Parole Board said Mr Gauke should 'accept responsibility for mistakes' which led to John Worboys being approved for release from prison.

Nick Hardwick said Ministry of Justice officials omitted crucial details about the sexual predator's history from a dossier used in the decision, and the Parole Board was 'no more at fault' than the MoJ.

63 dangerous inmates released straight onto the streets in a year A total of 63 prisoners in Category A high-security jails like Wakefield were released directly into the community in the 12 months to March 31 2017. But figures show that over the financial year 2016/17, 57 of these prisoners were on Category A jails after being recalled, either from lower-category jails or after having been released completely. Last night David Gauke, the Justice Secretary, demanded a list of all Category A prisoners released directly into the community - rather than spending time in an open jail first. While acknowledging 57 prisoners have been recalled back to prison, he has asked for the specific details of six Category A prisoners, considered an 'exceptional risk' of escaping, who have already been released straight to an 'approved premise', colloquially called a 'halfway house'. The parole board had approved a similar plan for Worboys despite the fact he was a predatory sex attacker who police believe assaulted more than 100 women while working as a black cab driver in London. Advertisement

It came as pressure grew on the Justice Secretary amid claims he had made the Parole Board chairman a 'scapegoat' for his own department's mistakes.

The row follows Wednesday's High Court ruling backing a legal challenge by victims that the Parole Board had wrongly assessed Worboys on the basis of 19 crimes he was convicted of, instead of the 100-plus allegations against him.

The secret hearing that cleared Worboys for release took place in November when David Lidington was Justice Secretary.

Mr Gauke, appointed in January, responded to the court ruling by sacking Mr Hardwick.

Mr Hardwick told the BBC: 'The Secretary of State should, as I have done, accept responsibility for mistakes that were made. That's the only way that things will be put right.

'I absolutely accept that the Parole Board was at fault  I don't accept we were any more at fault than the Ministry of Justice and I don't believe the right lessons will be learned from this case if the only people accepting any responsibility for what went wrong here is us.

'The dossier that the panel received  didn't contain information, or sufficient information, about those other alleged offences and therefore the panel didn't consider them.'

He said the Justice Secretary's representative, who was at the hearing, 'did not suggest the panel should have considered those other matters'.

He added: 'I am not going to shift the blame on to people who work for me. I accept my share of responsibility  others should do so too.'

Yvette Cooper, chairman of the Commons home affairs committee, said there had been a 'failure by both the Parole Board and the Ministry of Justice to appreciate the gravity of this case'

Worboys' black cab (pictured) was used to pick up victims who were offered cut price fares

Mr Gauke is already under fire for indicating he might bring a judicial review to challenge the board's decision before backing down on the grounds he was unlikely to win. It meant that two victims were left to bring the challenge.

The 336-page dossier compiled by the MoJ did not contain sentencing remarks by the judge at Worboys's trial, a psychiatric report from the time, nor mention a 'rape kit' found in his car containing condoms, sedatives and champagne.

The Parole Board decided Worboys was safe to release as he had been 'open and honest' about reasons for his offending.

An MoJ spokesman said Mr Gauke had apologised for the department's failings, in a statement on Wednesday. She added: 'The Secretary of State expressed sympathy for the victims and praised them for their courage and persistence.'

Yvette Cooper, chairman of the Commons home affairs committee, said there had been a 'failure by both the Parole Board and the Ministry of Justice to appreciate the gravity of this case'.

Yesterday Mr Gauke said he will scrap Rule 25, which lets the Parole Board keep secret the reasons for its judgments.

The High Court has said the rule breaches basic principles of open justice. In future, summaries of the board's decisions to release convicts will be available to victims.

Figures show that in 2016/17, 63 prisoners were released from Category A jails. Of these, 57 were criminals recalled to prison, which can occur when parole is breached.
A handful of female students have kicked back against their school's rigorous dress codes, wearing garbage bags in protest after staff implied that their dresses were too short.

Students at St Joseph's College, in Lochinvar, New South Wales, were separated into assembles of male and female on Tuesday in order to discuss their appearance and behaviour.

The high school girls were reminded of the College's standards concerning skirt length, makeup and jewellery - and presented with two images that obtusely posed the question: 'do you want to be seen as trash bags or ladies?'

Students at St Joseph's College in Lochinvar were called into an assembly regarding their appearance, with female students asked: 'do you want to be seen as trash bags or ladies?'

The aim was 'simply to reinforce the key messages of girls presenting themselves respectfully, being strong and confident, and being able to articulate their own self-worth' a Maitland-Newcastle Catholic Schools Office spokesperson told Fairfax.

But a handful of students didn't quite see it that way, and sought to lampoon the absurd query by donning bin liners over their uniforms the next day.

The statement seemed to be in protest of the school's insensitive approach to standards of female appearance.

'It is so derogatory to speak to them like that,' said one of the student's relatives, after reaching out to Fairfax Media in disgust.

A spokesperson for the Catholic Schools Office claimed that the aim was 'simply to reinforce the key messages of girls presenting themselves respectfully, being strong and confident, and being able to articulate their own self-worth'

'These are young adults they're dealing with, not inmates at Cessnock. In this arena of striving for gender equality, teachers should not be inferring teenage girls are skanks.'

The relative went on to commend the girls who protested, declaring that they deserve praise rather than punishment for their actions.

'Girls who have objected  should not be stifled by any sort of punishment,' they said. 'They should be encouraged and applauded.'

A handful of students protested against the question the following day by donning garbage bags over the top of their uniforms

The Catholic Schools Office spokesperson responded to these concerns, claiming that 'There was and will be no punishment given to these girls. Punishment was not and will not be considered in relation to this matter.

The spokesperson went on to defend St Joseph's College, claiming that their intentions were innocent.

'The students were definitely not described as trash bags  the term was simply used as an image or a concept which the teachers thought the students would relate to and understand.'
White House chief of staff John Kelly reassured Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin on Wednesday he wouldn't be fired by tweet that afternoon before telling him just hours later 'plans have changed' as Trump did just that.

The President tweeted at 5.31pm to announce his personal doctor Rear Admiral Ronny Jackson would take over the scandal-hit department in a shock decision that surprised many government officials.

Kelly had phoned Shulkin to say there were no plans for his imminent dismissal, but was forced to backtrack with a second phone call when he got wind of the change of plan.

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White House chief of staff John Kelly (right) reassured the then Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin that Trump would not fire him by tweet that afternoon, hours before he did just that

White House physician Dr. Ronny Jackson, now the new Veterans Affairs Secretary, speaks at the daily briefing in the Brady press room at the White House on January 16

Twitter move: Trump used his favorite medium to dispense with David Shulkin, making him the second cabinet secretary got rid of in a tweet

The chaotic maneuvering, reported by Politico.com, will be seen as another sign of the Trump administration's disregard for the usual rules of government.

The President announced Admiral Jackson's appointment with warm words for the man who, as White House physician, gave Trump a clean bill of health in January, declaring he had 'incredible genes'.

'I am pleased to announce that I intend to nominate highly respected Admiral Ronny L. Jackson, MD, as the new Secretary of Veterans Affairs,' Trump tweeted Wednesday evening.

'In the interim, Hon. Robert Wilkie of DOD will serve as Acting Secretary. I am thankful for Dr. David Shulkins service to our country and to our GREAT VETERANS!'

For days Shulkin looked to be on the chopping block as the president viewed the controversies surrounding the VA secretary, a holdover from the Obama administration, as a distraction.

Jackson wasn't even being mentioned as a possible replacement, though played a memorable role in the administration when he came into the briefing room January and gushed about the president's health on the heels of completing Trump's first-in-office physical.

'He has a lot of energy and a lot of stamina,' Jackson said at one point. 'He's very sharp. He's very articulate when he speaks to me,' the Navy doctor said at another.

His only gripe was that the president was slightly overweight.

Meanwhile, Shulkin has been a headache for the president as of late.

In February the VA's internal watchdog issued a report that found that Shulkin had improperly accepted Wimbledon tickets.

Additionally, the probe found that Shulkin's staff had doctored emails to justify the secretary's wife traveling with him to Europe on the taxpayer dime.

The VA's inspector general was also looking into a complaint that Shulkin asked his security detail to come along with him to Home Depot, and cart around furniture items.

The president decided to put Robert Wilkie (pictured), the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, in place as acting VA secretary, instead of briefly promoting deputy VA secretary Tom Bowman

Administration officials who talked to the Associated Press last weekend, while Trump was spending time at Mar-a-Lago, said an announcement on Shulkin could come this week, with one giving it a '50-50' chance he would be ousted in the next day or two.

Instead he lasted almost through the end of the business day on Wednesday.

In a longer statement Trump said of Shulkin, 'I appreciate the work I appreciate the work of Dr. David Shulkin and the many great things we did together at Veterans Affairs, including the VA Accountability Act that he was helpful in getting passed.'

'He has been a great supporter of veterans across the country and I am grateful for his service,' Trump added.

Over the weekend, a source told the AP that the White House was looking at a half-dozen candidates to fill Shulkin's job.

Fox & Friends Weekend co-host Pete Hegseth looked on deck to get the job, as the president has been keen to hire television personalities of late.

He brought Larry Kudlow on to be his chief economic adviser, while announcing last Thursday, again via Twitter, that Fox News contributor John Bolton would be taking over for National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster.

Jackson's move to the helm of Veterans Affairs isn't entirely unexpected, however, as the president has tended to promote from within.

For instance, when Trump decided to boot Secretary of State Rex Tillerson earlier this month, he announced he wanted to put current CIA Director Mike Pompeo in Tillerson's place.

Wednesday's announcement also included the president's decision to make Robert Wilkie, the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, the acting VA secretary, instead of briefly promoting deputy VA secretary Tom Bowman.

Bowman had also come under criticism at the White House for being too moderate to push Trump's agenda of fixing veterans' care.

During the presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly pledged to fix the VA by expanding access to private doctors and firing bad employees, criticizing the department as 'the most corrupt.'

Last year, Trump promised to triple the number of veterans 'seeing the doctor of their choice.'

WHO IS DR. RONNY JACKSON? Dr. Ronny Jackson is currently a physician to the president for President Donald Trump. On Wednesday, Trump nominated him to run Veterans Affairs. A Texas native, Jackson attended Texas A&M for undergraduate, and received his medical degree from the University of Texas' Medical Branch, graduating in 1995. That same year, Jackson began his active duty Naval service in Portsmouth, Virginia. He completed a number of medical internships and became the honor graduate of the Navys Undersea Medical Officer Program, before completing his residency at the top of his class in 2004. The next year, he became part of Operation Iraqi Freedom as an emergency medicine physician in charge of resuscitative medicine. Jackson was promoted to a White House physician while still deployed in Iraq in 2006. He's served in three administrations - those of Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump - and held a variety of positions, including the physician supervisor for Camp David, before being promoted to physician to the president under Obama in 2013. Jackson has three children and lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C. Advertisement

But a Trump administration plan to expand the Veterans Choice program remains in limbo after lawmakers declined last week to include it in a massive spending bill.

In response to the ethics issues, Shulkin has denied wrongdoing and complained about internal drama at the agency that has made it difficult for him to push through VA improvements, citing a half dozen or so political appointees there who were rebelling against him.

But Kelly, the White House chief of staff, recently made it clear to Shulkin that he had become weary of the VA secretary's tendency to run to the media to voice complaints and claim a White House mandate that he did not fully have, according to a person familiar with the conversations who wasn't authorized to discuss them publicly and insisted on anonymity.

The department provides medical care and other benefits to 9 million military veterans in more than 1,700 health facilities around the U.S.
Alabama School of Math and Science senior, Veronica King, has been accepted to be a participant in the Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange program.

The CBYX program is a 10-month program designed for highly motivated high school students who want to experience a different culture and learn a language through full immersion. Created to strengthen ties between Germany and the United States, the program seeks to give students new perspectives on social, economic, and political life in Germany.

Although King is from the Wiregrass area of Alabama (near Dothan), her father's side of the family is German. While growing up, King's parents would use German as their "secret language," and she had always wanted to learn German to understand what they were saying. Since middle school, she has dreamed of moving to Germany or Switzerland, further driving her desire to become fluent in the language.

"I love the language, and it allows me to connect with my German side of the family better," King says. "I'm excited to take the German skills that I've learned at ASMS and test them out by being fully immersed in the German language. I hope to be fluent in German by the time the program is over."

King found out about the CBYX program through a poster hanging in the German classroom at ASMS. She knew it was the perfect opportunity for her to pursue her dreams. After a rigorous application process, including a trip to D.C. for a two-day interview, King was thrilled to be finally accepted into the program.

At ASMS, King has taken two years of German with Muriel Hoequist, a French and German teacher at the school. Hoequist prepares her students by not only teaching the language, but also teaching them the basics of European culture such as transportation or how to tip properly at a restaurant. Through the CBYX application process, Hoequist guided King and helped prepare her for her interview in D.C.

"Veronica has always been a hard-working student. Gaining knowledge about contemporary German society and culture from my classes has no doubt been an asset to her in being selected for this spot, as well as her excellent language achievements throughout," says Hoequist. "As she chose to compete four or five times in different German-related competitions that I offer to my students, I have grown to know Veronica also outside of classes, and have been better able to guide her preparation for several interviews in German. The mentoring relationships that we are able to develop at ASMS can play a big role for our students as they venture beyond high school."

Like many things in life, accepting this wonderful opportunity does not come without sacrifices.

"Going to Germany for a full year means that I will defer college admission for one year, putting me a little behind other people my age," says King. "My current roommate at ASMS will be a senior next year, and I won't be able to go to her graduation...unless they decide to visit, I won't see my family or friends or anyone I know for about ten months...but I know it will all be worth it."

ASMS has prepared King to be independent and given her courage to apply to opportunities such as this one. When she returns from Germany, King plans to go on to college and study math and German.
Judge Stephen Reinhardt, a liberal stalwart of the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, died Thursday at the age of 87.

The liberal judge passed of a heart attack during a visit to his dermatologist in Los Angeles, according to court spokesman David Madden.

His untimely death after his nearly four-decade career comes as a surprise to family and friends.

Reinhardt made a name for himself as a staunch liberal who struck down California's gay marriage ban in 2012, viewed the Second Amendments right to bear arms as a collective rather than individual right, and fought for prisoner's rights.

Circuit Judge Stephen R. Reinhardt died Thursday at the age of 87, pictured in December 2010 at Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco

9th Circuit Chief Judge Sidney Thomas said Reinhardt, pictured center, will be remembered as 'one of the giants of the federal bench'

'As a judge, he was deeply principled, fiercely passionate about the law and fearless in his decisions,' 9th Circuit Chief Judge Sidney Thomas said in a statement.

'He will be remembered as one of the giants of the federal bench,' he added.

Reinhardt was appointed to the bench by President Jimmy Carter in 1979.

He is sixth longest-serving judge on the court which presides over a myriad of western states including Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Montana, Idaho, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands.

The New York-native, studied at Southern California's Pomona College and went on to earn his law degree at Yale Law School.

He then served in the US Air Force for two years and went on to serve as a clerk for a federal judge in the District of Columbia.

Later he entered private practice in Los Angeles where he served as an informal adviser to Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley and then on the city's Police Commission from 1975 until his appointment to the 9th Circuit.

He was considered to be one of the most liberal judges on the 9th Circuit and his rulings often placed him on the side of immigrants and prisoners.

Some of his milestone achievements include a 1996 opinion piece that struck down a Washington state law that prohibited doctors from prescribing medication to help terminally ill patients die.

The liberal stalwart, pictured above, died of a heart attack during a trip to the dermatologist office in Los Angeles

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti took to Twitter to mourn the judge's passing

Another piece penned last year critiqued the Trump administration's move to deport a man who entered the country illegally three decades ago but who went on to become a respected businessmen in Hawaii.

He called the administration 'inhumane' and the deportation 'contrary to the values of the country and its legal system'.

'He was a giant -- not just on the 9th Circuit, but within the law,' University of California, Berkeley, law school Dean Erwin Chemerinsky told the Los Angeles Times.

'He also was a judge with a particular vision of the law, based on enforcing the Constitution to protect people,' he added.

Other achievements include ruling that the words 'under God' in the Pledge of Allegiance were unconstitutional, which was later overturned.

He also ruled that overcrowding in California's prison system was unconstitutional.

Reinhardt leaves behind his wife, Ramona Ripston, the former director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and his three adult children Mark, Justin, and Dana.

His family ask that in lieu of flowers, donations on be made to the ACLU, according to Buzzfeed News.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti mourned his loss on Twitter.

'Today, we mourn the loss of one of the greatest jurists of our time. A searingly brilliant Angeleno and true progressive icon, Judge Stephen Reinhardt understood that the law exists to protect the voiceless and vulnerable. We need more judges like Stephen Reinhardt,' he wrote.
The cartoonist who created The Ren & Stimpy Show had sex with an underage teen who was living with him for years, possessed child pornography, and regularly hit on and harassed young girls, two women have alleged.

John Kricfalusi, the Canadian animator, is the subject of a lengthy expose by BuzzFeed News, which quoted two women who say he approached them when they were still in high school and formed relationships with them.

One of them, Robyn Byrd, said she first started talking to Kricfalusi in 1994. She was just 13 years old.

Byrd, an aspiring animator, had sent Kricfalusi a video of herself talking about her drawings and her wish to be a cartoonist.

She had hoped to one day be hired by Nickelodeon, the popular cable channel that aired Ren & Stimpy.

To her joy, Kricfalusi, who was 39 years old at the time, replied to her.

He would send her boxes of toys and art supplies as gifts. He also began to communicate with her through the internet.

John Kricfalusi, the cartoonist who created The Ren & Stimpy Show, had sex with an underage teen who was living with him for years, possessed child pornography, and regularly hit on and harassed young girls, two women have alleged

Eventually, Kricfalusi traveled to her trailer park home in Tucson, Arizona to visit her.

'I thought I was still his little cute friend,' she said.

During the visit, Byrd, who was a high school junior, said that the two had sex for the first time in a nearby hotel.

After their encounter, Byrd would maintain her relationship with Kricfalusi, believing that he was the key to starting a career in animation when she finished her school.

Kricfalusi even agreed to pay for her tuition so that she could attend a private school in Arizona for her senior year of high school.

When Byrd, who is now 37, was in 11th grade, Kricfalusi flew her to Los Angeles, where he showed her around his studio and home.

During that trip, Byrd, who was 16 at the time, alleges that Kricfalusi touched her genitals while she was clothed as they were standing near his pool.

That next summer, Byrd was once again flown to LA by Kricfalusi, who hired her as an intern at Spumco, his studio.

She also moved in with him as his girlfriend - even though the legal age of consent in California is 18.

I made my dream come true, Byrd said of her internship at Spumco.

Thats why I sent the tape when I was 13.

Robyn Byrd and Katie Rice say they reached out to Kricfalusi when they were just starting high school because they wanted to work in the animation business

That next year, after she finished high school, Byrd moved in with Kricfalusi permanently.

Byrd said that her relationship with Kricfalusi was an open secret.

At the time, she thought the arrangement was exciting.

I believed, as a 16-year-old dating him, Oh, the worlds against us. It shouldnt be wrong for him to date me. Were cool and rebellious because were breaking the rules of society, Byrd said.

Initially, the workers at Kricfalusis studio didnt seem to be bothered by the relationship.

But disturbing signs began to emerge in the eyes of co-workers.

Tony Mora, an art director who worked with Byrd at Spumco, recalled that sometime in the late 90s, he went to a party at Kricfalusis home.

At the party, Mora told BuzzFeed he saw Byrd, who was no older than 20, drunk and drifting in and out of consciousness.

Mora said that at the same party, Kricfalusi showed him a number of pictures.

And then he pulled out these Polaroids of Robyn basically - how can you say it? - going down on him, Mora said.

Hes like, What do you think of that?

Derrick Wyatt, an artist who also worked at Spumco beginning in 1999, recalled a similar incident.

He said that during a party at Kricfalusis house at around the same time, he pulled out a stack of Polaroids showing his boss having sex with Byrd.

Gabe Swarr, a producer at Warner Bros. who worked alongside Byrd at Spumco, told BuzzFeed he also was shown photographs of Byrd swimming naked in Kricfalusis pool.

Kricfalusi admits to once having a '16-year-old girlfriend' though his lawyer denied accusations he possessed child pornography

It was gross, Swarr said.

He was like, Oh, you like that? I was like, No!

Eventually, the relationship ended and Byrd left Spumco. She also changed careers as a result of her break-up with Kricfalusi.

As the relationship with Byrd was ending, Kricfalusi hired Katie Rice, who was 18 years old at the time.

Kricfalusi and Rice first struck up a relationship through America Online when she was just 14 years old.

Rice said her chats on the phone and online with someone she admired made her feel special.

Although Rice says she and Kricfalusi never had any physical contact, those emails and chats contained explicit content.

I want [sic] to squeeze you, Kricfalusi allegedly wrote to Rice.

Im crazy about you, Katie.

In another exchange, Kricfalusi allegedly wrote: Do I ever made you tingle?

Just a few days after her 15th birthday, Kricfalusi wrote to Rice: Im thinking about you very hard right now. And I have a little tickle in my chest.

Rice said she printed and saved the messages.

Sometime between December 1995 and March 1996, Rice wrote in her diary: I think this 40 year old man is hitting on me.

But hes never perverted. He is also very nice. He gives me a lot of drawing tips.

BuzzFeed reported that a friend spoke to Rice at the time and remembered the diary entries.

After Rice and Kricfalusi met a few times in Los Angeles, they kept in touch when her family moved from California to Lake Tahoe, Nevada in 1996.

She was just 14 years old at the time and was entering 10th grade.

Rice said that she and Kricfalusi would speak on the phone late at night.

During one conversation, he allegedly told her: Repeat after me: Johns d**k slides in my p***y.

It was during that same conversation that Rice alleges Kricfalusi was masturbating on the other end of the line.

Rice said she refused to repeat the sentence.

She said that at the time she did not realize what he was doing. It was only in later years did it become apparent that he was masturbating, Rice told BuzzFeed.

Rice said that she went to work for Kricfalusi at Spumco on and off between age 18 and 25.

She alleges that during her tenure at Spumco she was routinely harassed by Kricfalusi.

Rice alleges he told her she was pretty and that he wished they could cuddle.

She once told Byrd, whom she met through AOL through Kricfalusi: [He] was doing all sorts of bizarre stuff - waiting naked in his living room for when I let myself into his house to work in the morning, walking around with his weiner hanging out of his pants, telling me that his friend's advice to get me was to just rape me one day.

Rice and Byrd told BuzzFeed they decided to go public with allegations after the police said the alleged crimes were too old to investigate

Kricfalusis attorney denied the accusations. He said the rape comment was a joke.

Rice said that she stayed at Spumco because she had no other job prospects. She also said that at the time she had low self-esteem and that she believed Kricfalusi when he told her she was special.

Rice said she finally decided to leave when she found child pornography on his computer.

One haunting photo she remembers allegedly showed a girl who appeared about 10 years old lying on her back naked with her legs spread.

Rice said that the girl had a fearful expression on her face.

An ex-girlfriend of Kricfalusi who remained anonymous told BuzzFeed that she, too, saw pictures of naked girls between the ages of 12 and 14 on his computer sometime around 2007.

Byrd told BuzzFeed News she went on the record after police told her in December that Kricfalusis alleged crimes were too old to investigate.

He shouldnt be able to get away with that, she said.

Rice said she also attempted to contact authorities, but when they told her nothing could be done due to the statute of limitations, she went public.

An attorney for Kricfalusi released a statement to BuzzFeed, saying: The 1990s were a time of mental and emotional fragility for Mr. Kricfalusi, especially after losing Ren and Stimpy, his most prized creation.

For a brief time, 25 years ago, he had a 16-year-old girlfriend.

Over the years John struggled with what were eventually diagnosed mental illnesses in 2008.

To that point, for nearly three decades he had relied primarily on alcohol to self-medicate.

Since that time he has worked feverishly on his mental health issues, and has been successful in stabilizing his life over the last decade.

This achievement has allowed John the opportunity to grow and mature in ways hed never had a chance at before.

The attorney also denied that his client possessed child pornography.

'I assure you that there are significant differences between your outline and what actually happened and when,' the attorney told BuzzFeed.

The lawyer said that police have never contacted him regarding an investigation.

Nickelodeon declined to comment.

The Paramount Network was formerly known as SpikeTV, the channel that aired the Ren & Stimpy reboot Adult Party Cartoon.

TPN told BuzzFeed that it never received a report accusing Kricfalusi of sexual harassment.

The network said it has 'specific policies and procedures to ensure our employees feel empowered to report inappropriate behavior.'

The Cartoon Network and Adult Swim, two television entities that hired Kricfalusi in years past for various projects, also said they were not aware of any complaints alleging sexual impropriety.

Both networks said they would never work with Kricfalusi again.
An elderly woman with a voice like a 'foghorn' has been ordered out of her public housing duplex after her neighbours complained about the noise.

The Sunshine Coast woman, who is in her 70s, had been a long-term resident of public housing before her tenancy was terminated on 'objectionable behaviour grounds,' according to the Sunshine Coast Daily.

Her expulsion was the result of complaints from neighbours.

The woman appealed the termination, arguing that she'd been made unjustly homeless and that her behaviour stemmed from mental illness.

The Sunshine Coast woman, who is in her 70s, had been a long-term resident of public housing before her tenancy was terminated because she has a voice like a 'foghorn' (stock image)

The Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal heard that the woman's vocal condition makes her voice sound like 'a loud penetrating voice like a foghorn.'

The tribunal also heard she also suffers from schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress disorder and painful arthritis.

Justice Tim Carmody said there was evidence the woman has no control of her actions.

The woman's lawyer argued that she could have been relocated to another housing unit.

The Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal dismissed her appeal.
A popular Sydney beach was closed on Friday when swimmers sighted a shark only metres from the shore.

The shark was seen about 300m from the sand and was 'heading north', a Surfcom radio operator told Daily Mail Australia.

'A jetski went looking for the shark,' he said.

A popular Sydney beach was closed on Friday when swimmers spotted a shark (stock photo)

Lifeguards closed the Narrabeen and Narrabeen North beaches while they searched for the shark, but only found dolphins

Dorsal Shark Reports alerted the public of the shark sighting in a social media post at 10.51am Friday morning.

Lifeguards closed the Narrabeen and Narrabeen North beaches while they searched for the shark, but only found dolphins.

'It was closed for about 45 minutes,' a Northern Beaches Council spokesperson said.

'We sent people to scout around.

'They spotted a pod of dolphins.'

The shark was seen about 300m from the sand and was 'heading north', a Surfcom radio operator told Daily Mail Australia
Former Smallville actress Kristin Kreuk has broken her silence on her involvement in the sex cult that co-star Allison Mack rose to the top of.

Kreuk has denied that she helped recruit women to be 'sex slaves' in the secretive New York-based group called NXIVM after cult leader Keith Raniere was arrested this week for sex trafficking.

Following Raniere's arrest in the Mexican resort village of Puerto Vallarta, reports emerged that Kreuk had allegedly lured women into the organization.

Raniere, 57, ran NXIVM as a self-help organization for years but later created a secret society within it called DOS, which former members have described as a 'sex cult'.

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Former Smallville actress Kristin Kreuk (left) has denied that she helped recruit women to be 'sex slaves' in the NXIVM cult that her co-star Allison Mack (right) rose to the top of

Cult leader Keith Raniere was arrested (pictured above) in Mexican resort village of Puerto Vallarta this week and extradited to Texas to face sex trafficking charges

Kreuk said in a Twitter statement on Thursday that she had taken a course at NXIVM when she was 23 that she understood to be a 'self-help/personal growth course that helped me with my previous shyness'.

'I left about five years ago and have had minimal contact with those who were still involved. The accusations that I was in the 'inner circle' or recruiting women as 'sex slaves' are blatantly false,' she said.

'During my time, I never experienced an illegal or nefarious activity.

'I am horrified and disgusted by what has come out about DOS. Thank you to all the brave women who have come forward to share their stories and expose DOS; I cant imagine how difficult this has been for you.

'I am deeply disturbed and embarrassed to have been associated with NXIVM. I hope that the investigation leads to justice for all of those affected.'

Her former Smallville co-star Allison Mack is said to be Raniere's right-hand woman at NXIVM, sources told DailyMail.com.

Mack was among those filmed chased down Mexican police officers after they arrested Raniere over the weekend - four months after he crossed the border following the launch of a federal probe into his cult.

Video that was first obtained by Art Voice shows Mack in a state of disbelief as officials arrest Raniere. The women can then be heard saying that they are going to get into a car and follow the officers.

On the run: A group of women that includes Smallville actress Allison Mack (above) chases after the police car after it leaves the $10,000-a-week property

South of the border: Mack posted a photo of herself at a coffee shop in Mexico earlier this month

A local authority tells DailyMail.com that the women then engaged in a high-speed car chase with police.

Mexican authorities found Raniere surrounded by a group of women at a $10,000-a-week luxury villa on Sunday.

He was extradited to Fort Worth, Texas on Monday and charged with sex trafficking and forced labor conspiracy.

An individual with former ties to NXIVM told DailyMail.com that Mack was joined in the video by a group of women including actress Nicki Clyne and high-profile members Lauren Salzman and Loreta Garza.

Mack is believed to have only recently traveled down to Mexico with her social media showing her in the area for just the past month.

The group, which has been described by former members as a 'sex cult', claims to be a self-help organization that operates centers in US, Mexico, Canada and South America.

It emerged last year that the Dalai Lama was paid $1 million to speak to 3,000 NXIVM followers and place a khata - a traditional ceremonial Tibetan scarf - around Raniere's neck.

Raniere left the US last year after the New York Times reported that some women who joined a group in his organization had been branded with a symbol that included his initials.

The women told investigators they were subjected to 'master-slave' conditions that involved physical punishments for disobeying orders.

'As alleged in the complaint, Keith Raniere created a secret society of women whom he had sex with and branded with his initials, coercing them with the threat of releasing their highly personal information and taking their assets,' US attorney Richard P. Donoghue said.

Sex cult leader Keith Raniere, 57, was taken into custody by Mexican authorities and deported back to the US after he was found at a luxury villa in Puerto Vallarta on Sunday

Many DOS slaves were branded on their pelvic areas using a cauterizing pen with a symbol which, unbeknownst to them, incorporated Raniere's initials, according to past members

The complaint said Raniere founded NXIVM about 20 years ago and held a series of purported self-help workshops. Since NXIVM's creation, Raniere has maintained poly-amorous relationships with its members, according to the complaint.

Courses associated with the group costs thousands of dollars each and participants are encouraged to pay for additional classes and to recruit others in order to rise within the ranks of NXIVM.

According to the complaint, Raniere created a secret society within Nxivm called DOS in 2015, which loosely translated to 'Lord/Master of the Obedient Female Companions', or 'The Vow'.

DOS operated with levels of women slaves headed by masters and most were recruited from within NXIVM's ranks.

When new DOS slaves were recruited, they were required to provide collateral, which included highly damaging information about friends and family members, nude photographs and/or rights to the recruit's assets.

The complaint says DOS slaves feared that their collateral could be released by the group if they left.

Many DOS slaves were branded on their pelvic areas using a cauterizing pen with a symbol which, unbeknownst to them, incorporated Raniere's initials, according to the court documents.

During the branding ceremonies, slaves were required to be fully naked and a master would order one slave to film the branding while the others restrained the slave being branded.

Mack was considered a high-ranking member of the cult and was believed to have been second in charge to Raniere.

Former Dynasty star Catherine Oxenberg had previously met with prosecutors in New York to detail her daughter India's experience in the group

Former Dynasty star Catherine Oxenberg had previously met with prosecutors in New York to detail her daughter's experience in the group.

Oxenberg, through her lawyers at Lewis Baach Kaufmann Middlemiss, said she hoped Raniere's arrest would go as far as reuniting her with her daughter.

'I want to help all the young women affected by this cult. They are the victims of human trafficking, which is slavery,' she said.

'For months, I have worked to expose Keith Raniere and Nxivm and today's arrest vindicates my efforts.

'I want my daughter to know I love her and that I want her back in my life.'

If convicted, Raniere could be sentenced to life in prison.

'As alleged, Keith Raniere displayed a disgusting abuse of power in his efforts to denigrate and manipulate women he considered his sex slaves,' FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge William F. Sweeney said.

'He allegedly participated in horrifying acts of branding and burning them, with the cooperation of other women operating within this unorthodox pyramid scheme.

'These serious crimes against humanity are not only shocking, but disconcerting to say the least, and we are putting an end to this torture today.'
Two New Jersey police officers have been suspended after one of them was caught on camera pushing a Domino's manager against a wall over some missing pizza.

Rodney Clark and Courtney Solomon have both been charged with disorderly conduct, harassment, and making terroristic threats during the scuffle.

It all began on Tuesday, when one of the officers ordered pizza and became upset when the pie allegedly didn't show up.

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New Jersey police officers Rodney Clark and Courtney Solomon have been suspended after one of them was caught on camera pushing Domino's manager Mena Kirolos against a wall

Surveillance footage captured the moment the two cops went into Kirolos' store and immediately confronted him

Kirolos' employees began to surround the trio as the cops allegedly became increasingly threatening to the manager

Manager Mena Kirolos said his driver left the delivery location after the customer didn't answer his calls.

One of the officers called Kirolos shortly afterwards to complain and said 'I am coming to your f*****g store to f**k you up motherf****r', according to CBS New York.

Kirolos said he waited 10 to 15 minutes but no one showed up.

Then, while the manager was in the back room, the two officers arrived in their patrol car and allegedly began cursing at a delivery man outside the restaurant.

A surveillance camera captured the moment the two officers barged into the store and immediately confronted Kirolos as he came out of the back room.

An argument ensued and then one of the cops allegedly grabbed Kirolos and pushed him up against a wall

Kirolos' employees began filming the altercation with their cell phones as the manager told the cops 'remove your hands' and 'don't touch me'

As they began to argue one of the officers allegedly grabbed Kirolos and pushed him up against the wall.

Kirolos said one of the officers told him, 'I'll lock you up' during the altercation

Some Domino's employees began to film the altercation with their cell phones as Kirolos told the officers 'remove your hands' and 'don't touch me'.

Kirolos said one of the officers told him, 'I'll lock you up' as they continued to argue.

'(I was thinking) What can I do? He's a police officer. I can't do anything back,' the manager told NBC New York.

The second officer tried to break up the two men, telling Kirolos 'I am trying to have a conversation with you'.

He then suggested that the trio go outside to 'have a friendly conversation' and they disappeared out of the camera's view.

The officers then told Kirolos they should step outside so that they could have a 'friendly conversation' away from the crowd

Kirolos decided not to press charges, saying all he wanted was an apology

Employee Marina Elsamina said the police officers did not leave until Kirolos called 911.

'We confront customers every day who fight us, but he's using his police powers,' she told Jersey Journal.

Kirolos chose not to press charges, saying all he wanted was an apology.

But the Hudson County Prosecutor's Office decided to fully investigate the allegations.

'Officers who abuse their power and break the law must be held accountable for their actions,' Hudson County Prosecutor Esther Suarez said in a statement.

The officers, who both joined the force in 2015, have been suspended without pay until their April 11 court date.
Brittany Zamora, 27, a teacher from Arizona, has been accused of having sex with a 13-year-old student on three occasions and performing oral sex on him in a classroom

The family of a 13-year-old boy whose teacher allegedly performed oral sex on him in a classroom have branded the married woman a 'monster' and called for her to be locked up for life.

The child's father and stepmother broke their silence a week after Brittany Zamora, 27, was arrested on suspicion of sexually abusing the student at Las Brisas Academy Elementary School in Goodyear, Arizona.

The pair reported Zamora after they found her lewd text messages on their son's phone, and now plan to file a civil lawsuit against the school district for failing to stop the alleged abuse.

The boy's father, who asked to remain anonymous, told AZFamily: 'You teach your kids there's no such thing as monsters at all. But in the real world, there are monsters. Brittany Zamora is a monster.'

According to the stepmother, who also asked not to be named, Zamora began grooming her pupil using a classroom group chat.

'It just progressed from there,' she said. 'He was taken advantage of. She was just using him for her own grotesque benefits.'

Court documents state Zamora had sex with her student on three occasions and performed oral sex in the classroom and in her car between February 1 and March 1.

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At her initial court appearance on Friday (pictured above), Zamora said: 'I'd love to go home to my husband.' The child's parents have slammed Zamora and called her a 'monster'

The father added: 'A big thing for us is that we want people to understand, just because it's a boy makes no difference.

'It's the same. It's a 13-year-old child who got taken advantage by a monster. I want her to spend the rest of her life in prison.'

The boy's parents recently claimed Zamora's husband Daniel called them and begged them not to report his wife to police after they saw her sexual texts, saying she had made a mistake.

During one text exchange, which presumably followed one of the pair's alleged sex romps, the boy wrote that he wanted to have sex with her again.

'I know baby! I want you every day with no time limit,' Zamora was alleged to have responded to him, reported AZcentral.com.

She also allegedly wrote to him: 'If I could quit my job and (have sex with) you all day long, I would,' according to court records.

Zamora had been at Las Brisas Academy Elementary School for less than a year

When interviewed by police, the boy claimed his relationship with his teacher started when Zamora began 'flirting' with him in a classroom chat group.

A second student later came forward to police saying he had witnessed Zamora having sex with the 13-year-old and admitted to receiving naked photos from the woman as well.

The parents of the alleged victim told police that Zamora's husband 'harassed' the father over the phone, begging him not to go to the authorities and insisting that his wife had 'made a big mistake, but that she loved the kids,' according to the documents.

Daniel Zamora also allegedly suggested that he and the boy's dad 'meet up' and 'settle this,' but the parent turned down his offer and hung up on him.

Zamora made her initial court appearance on Friday, telling a court commissioner: 'I'd love to go home to my husband.'

Her bond was set at $250,000 and she is due back in court on Thursday morning.

The boy's parents learned of the alleged inappropriate relationship after an app they used to monitor their son's text messages alerted them to certain key words of a sexual nature, officials said.

They took screenshots of the texts, which reportedly implied the relationship was physical and had taken place both on and off school grounds.

The teacher married Daniel Zamora, who she knew since she was 16, in 2015

'The text messages found are sexual in nature [and] allege an ongoing relationship between the two,' said Lisa Kutis of the Goodyear Police Department.

Superintendent Dr. Richard Rundhaug said school officials asked Zamora to come in to the school for a meeting with the principal on Thursday but she was arrested before.

'While employee privacy law does not allow us to comment on the employee issues, we have taken the corrective steps to separate the students and staff member,' the school said in a statement posted to their website.

Zamora had taught at the Goodyear school for less than a year.

According to Fox10, Zamora was known by parents as a wife and teacher of the year. They said she was the 'most sought-out' sixth-grade teacher.

Zamora was taken into custody hours after the boy's parents reported the relationship to the school principal

Students who spoke to the local media outlet said Zamora's relationship with the student in question seemed irregular.

'We all had suspicions, because they were really close,' one unnamed female student told Fox10. 'I hoped it was just rumors going around school.'

Zamora faces two counts of molestation of a child, one count of furnishing harmful material and nine counts of sexual conduct with a minor.

She married Daniel Zamora, whom she has known since she was 16, in 2015. They don't have any children.

'From the moment we first saw each other, we had been falling for one another. So, it was only appropriate to ask Brittany [to marry me] while falling; a.k.a. skydiving,' Daniel wrote on a blog about his over-the-top marriage proposal.
The 'black box' inside a lesbian couple's SUV should be able to determine how fast they were going when they plunged 100 feet off a California cliff with their six adopted children inside, experts say.

Jennifer and Sarah Hart, both 39, were killed when their 2003 GMC Yukon XL crashed off the scenic Pacific Coast Highway in Northern California this week.

Authorities say all eight members of the Hart family, including the six children aged 12 to 19, are presumed dead.

The bodies of three of the children - Markis Hart, 19, Jeremiah Hart, 14, and Abigail Hart, 14 - were located at the bottom of the cliff.

Police believe the couple's three other children - Hannah Hart, 16, Devonte Hart, 15 and Sierra Hart, 12 - were also in the car at the time but their bodies have not yet been found.

Mystery surrounds the horror crash given no one saw their SUV drive off a flat, dirt pullout overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

Jennifer (back, left) and Sarah Hart (back, right) and their six adopted children were in their SUV when it plunged 100 feet off a California cliff this week

This is an aerial view of the cliff the family plunged over in their car on the Pacific Coast Highway in California. To reach the cliff edge, the women would have had to have driven off the Pacific Highway and traversed 75ft of rugged dirt road before going over the cliff edge

Authorities say all eight members of the Hart family, including the six children aged 12 to 19, are presumed dead after their 2003 GMC Yukon XL was found crashed on rocks

Marcus Mazza, an engineer and reconstruction expert with Pennsylvania-based Robson Forensic, said on Thursday that the SUV was required to have a 'black box' that records accident data.

The recorder would show the car's speed and use of the brakes, according to Mazza.

It could help investigators determine the cause of the crash given there were no skid marks or signs the driver braked in the moments before they went over the cliff.

'There are a lot of unknowns on this,' Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman said on Thursday.

'Several of the questions that have been asked today will never be answered.'

To reach the cliff edge at the lookout, the women would have had to have driven off the Pacific Highway and traversed 75ft of rugged dirt road.

It is not known yet if they came to a stop at the edge before falling over.

'I can tell you it was a very confusing scene because there were no skid marks, there were no brake marks, there was no indication of why this vehicle traversed approximately over 75ft of a dirt pull out and went into the pacific ocean,' Sheriff Allman said.

'We have no reason to believe, we have no evidence, that this was an intentional act. Certainly people are wondering what caused this.

'If this was an intentional act, I truly believe we are going to come to that conclusion.'

Sarah (center) and Jennifer (far right) Hart are pictured with their six adopted children in 2016. Three of their children were found dead alongside them on Monday, while the three others are still missing

Sarah (left) and Jennifer (right), both 39, were killed alongside three of their teenage children when their car crashed off the scenic Pacific Coast Highway in California on Monday

Authorities in Washington state combed through the family's home (above) for information on Thursday. Deputies were looking for bills, receipts or anything else to shed light on why the family left

The two mothers were found dead inside the SUV, while three of their children were discovered outside the vehicle. A team on Thursday searched the rugged coastline for the three other children.

Authorities in Washington state combed through the family's home for information on Thursday.

The Clark County Sheriff's Office said deputies were looking for bills, receipts or anything else to shed light on why the family left and other circumstances related to the trip.

The case has thrown a spotlight on at least one previous run-in with the law by the Harts, along with neighbors' repeated concerns about the way the home-schooled youngsters were being treated.

Well before the wreck, Sarah Hart pleaded guilty in 2011 to a domestic assault charge in Douglas County, Minnesota, telling authorities 'she let her anger get out of control' while spanking her 6-year-old adoptive daughter, court records show.

Her plea deal led to the dismissal of a malicious punishment of a child charge.

Then, last week, Bruce and Dana DeKalb, next-door neighbors of the Harts in Woodland, Washington, called state child protective services because one of the children, Devonte, had been coming over to their house almost every day for a week asking for food.

Devonte, now 15, drew national attention after the black youngster was photographed in tears, hugging a white police officer during a 2014 protest in Portland, Oregon, over the deadly police shooting of a black man in Ferguson, Missouri.

One of the couple's children 15-year-old Devonte, whose body has not yet been found, made headlines in 2014 when a photo of him tearfully hugging a police officer at a rally went viral

The case has thrown a spotlight on at least one previous run-in with the law by the Harts, along with neighbors' repeated concerns about the way the six home-schooled youngsters were being treated

Dana DeKalb said Devonte told her his parents were 'punishing them by withholding food.'

The boy asked her to leave food in a box by the fence for him so his parents wouldn't find out.

Social service authorities opened an investigation and a state caseworker went to the house last Friday but didn't find anyone home. The agency had no prior history with the family, a state official said.

Neighbors said they saw the couple and their six adopted children leave the home in a hurry shortly after not answering the door to the child services worker.

The family's car was spotted at the bottom of the cliff three days later. It was discovered by a passing motorist Monday afternoon.

The DeKalbs also recounted that three months after the Harts moved into their house on 2 acres with a fenced pasture last May, one of the girls rang the DeKalbs' doorbell at 1.30am.

'(She) was at our door in a blanket saying we needed to protect her,' Bruce DeKalb said. 'She said that they were abusing her.'

The entire family came over to their house the next morning to apologize and explain it was a bad week.

Tracks lead away from the edge of the cliff Wednesday, March 28, 2018, where the SUV of Jennifer and Sarah Hart went off the Pacific Coast Highwa

The family's car was spotted at the bottom of the cliff on Monday and firefighters had to rappel down to retrieve the bodies

Courtesy of KOIN

Some family friends, though, say that doesn't track with their knowledge of the parents who they described as a loving couple who promoted social justice and exposed their 'remarkable' children to art, music and nature.

The brood was known as the Hart Tribe, a multiracial family of two women and six adopted children who grew their own food, took spontaneous road trips to camp and hike, and traveled to festivals and other events, offering free hugs and promoting unity.

Family friend Max Ribner took issue with the notion the crash was something other than a tragic accident. The couple adopted the six children, many of whom came from 'hard backgrounds,' he said.

'They transformed these kids' lives.'

'This is a tragic accident of a magnitude that cannot be measured,' said Zippy Lomax, a photographer who knew the Harts.

'They were really radiant, warm, adventurous, inspiring people. They were always on some grand adventure, and the kids were living this life that was kind of like this dream.'

A truck drives by the pullout where the SUV of Jennifer and Sarah Hart was recovered off the Pacific Coast Highway

Volunteers with the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office Search and Rescue team searches the waters off the coast using a telescope on Thursday in search of the missing bodies
A 15-year-old Georgia girl who disappeared from her grandma's house is now safely back home after a family friend spotted her on Snapchat and called authorities.

Dakota Moss, 27, rescued Amber Austin and sent Dayton Koop behind bars after he saw her family's pleas on Facebook for help in finding the teenager.

Austin allegedly ran away with Koop, 34, on Sunday after she told her mother she was sleeping at her grandmother's house.

Georgia man Dakota Moss, 27, rescued Amber Austin (left) and sent Dayton Koop (right) behind bars after he saw the missing girl in a Snapchat picture with Koop

The teen left in Koop's car and disappeared without a trace - or so it seemed.

Moss saw that both Austin and Koop were still posting on their Snapchat accounts, where he saw a photo of the two of them together, according to ABC 11.

On Wednesday Moss reached out to Koop on Facebook, pretending to be a woman.

Moss (pictured) pretended to be a woman on Facebook and reached out to Koop, offering him a place to hide with the teen

He told Koop he had been following his story with Austin and wanted to give them a place to hide.

When Koop and the teen arrived at Moss' home he immediately called the police.

Moss said authorities found Austin in the backseat of Koop's SUV with a bandana tied around her wrist, according to 11Alive.

'She seemed real scared,' Moss said. 'She had tears in her eyes. I prayed so hard that God would help me find this girl, and it all worked out for the best.'

Methamphetamine was also found in the car, according to Murray County Sheriff Eric White.

Austin was classified as a runaway who was not being held against her will, according to White.

Koop was charged with possession of methamphetamine, contributing to the unruliness of a minor, and obstruction or hindering law enforcement officers.

Austin allegedly ran away with Koop, 34, on Sunday after she told her mother she was sleeping at her grandmother's house. Moss said she looked 'real scared' when she was found

He is currently being held in the Gordon County jail on $15,000 bond.

Koop was accused of raping a woman in Dalton in 2014, according to WRCBTV.

The woman alleged that Koop broke into her home and forced himself on her, telling her 'next time it would be worse' before leaving.

She was granted a protection order but a grand jury ultimately chose not to charge him.
Michigan State University has said it will not discipline a sophomore who made a number of racist comments on social media.

Students at the East Lansing college expressed outrage over the decision by administrators not to respond to posts by Jillian Kirk, who tweeted 'GOD BLESS AMERICA, F*** THE BLACKS!'

In another tweet, she wrote: 'F*** n*****s I'm so over it.'

Kirk was also seen on a Snapchat post using the N-word repeatedly while out with friends.

The tweets were first reported by the Michigan State student-run campus newspaper The Tab.

Michigan State University has said it will not discipline a sophomore who made a number of racist comments on social media. Jillian Kirk (above) used the N-word in a number of social media posts on Snapchat and Twitter

Students at the East Lansing college expressed outrage over the decision by administrators not to respond to posts by Jillian Kirk, who tweeted 'GOD BLESS AMERICA, F*** THE BLACKS!'

In the above Snapchat post, she is seen with a piece of paper attached to her forehead. A racial slur is written on the note

Kirk's Twitter account has since been deleted.

The racist social media posts went viral and spurred calls from students for the university to take action against Kirk.

Miyanna Fowlkes, a freshman at MSU, posted the racist tweets and Snapchat videos. They were shared thousands of times.

But the university released a statement on Wednesday saying that while it does not approve of the posts, 'we do not get to control what every member of our community says.'

The racist social media posts went viral and spurred calls from students for the university to take action against Kirk

Miyanna Fowlkes, a freshman at MSU, posted the racist tweets and Snapchat videos. They were shared thousands of times

Kirk emailed MSU's student newspaper a statement saying she was sorry for the posts. 'Nothing was meant to cause pain to anyone, but I realize what was in those posts is hurtful and disrespectful,' she wrote

Fowlkes slammed the university's response, saying it was granting a license to slur minorities and that the university 'doesn't care about the black community.'

'Actions like this without consequences are unacceptable because people begin to realize nothing will happen to them,' said Fowlkes.

'I think everyone who said something hateful should receive some [type of] consequence - if not MSU is falling complacent to racism.

'MSU is legally allowed to kick her out but they chose not to.'

Kirk emailed The Tab a statement saying she was sorry for the posts.

'I apologize for the inappropriate social media posts I made,' she wrote.

'Nothing was meant to cause pain to anyone, but I realize what was in those posts is hurtful and disrespectful.

'What was said in these posts is not how I feel, but I know I need to learn how to be more inclusive and respectful to diversity of people and diversity of thought.

'It is my goal to work on my behaviors.

'The recent events have shown me how insensitive I was.

'Again, I want to apologize for my actions and to those I have hurt.'
The F.A.I.T.H. Riders Motorcycle Ministry of Cedar Grove Baptist Church will be hosting an annual motorcycle ride to benefit the Ronald McDonald House Charities of Alabama on April 21, 2018.

The 7th Annual Lyla Ride is a marble run, which requires the gathering up marbles at different locations in Shelby, St. Clair and Talladega counties. The marbles all have a point value and also have a meaning in evangelism.

Registration will begin at 7:00 am at Cedar Grove Baptist Church, located at 2001 Cedar Grove Road, Leeds, AL 35094. Fees are $25 per rider or $30 for a rider and passenger. Lunch will be provided for all participants and there will also be door prizes.

This annual ride began in April 2012 with a very sick little girl, Lyla Koenig, the granddaughter of Cedar Grove's pastor. The first year of her life was very tough for her and the family because she was in and out of hospitals all over the U.S. seeking treatment & staying in Ronald McDonald Houses. The F.A.I.T.H. Riders of Cedar Grove wanted to help the family by doing a motorcycle ride to raise monies for some of their expenses and the first ride was called The Ride For Lyla, with all proceeds going to the family.

Lyla began to get better & we F.A.I.T.H. Riders of Cedar Grove wanted to continue with the benefit ride, renaming it the Annual Lyla Ride with all the proceeds being contributed to Ronald McDonald House Charities of Alabama. Little Lyla is now a bouncy, bubbly, 7-year-old girl (just full of life) and we at Cedar Grove Baptist want to help other families through the Ronald McDonald House get through a storm in their life.

The motto of the F.A.I.T.H Riders is "NO ONE LEFT BEHIND" 2 Peter 3:9

For more information please call Ronny Burleson 205-229-2136 or the church office 205-699-8446.
27J Superintendent Dr. Chris Fiedler is rallying to switch to a four-day school week to 'recruit and retain' high quality teachers

A Colorado school district is rallying to switch the conventional Monday to Friday schedule to a four-day school week, in an attempt to attract high quality teachers.

School District 27J has submitted an application to the Colorado Department of Education with the hopes of launching their new school week that runs from Tuesday to Friday as soon as next school year.

The district claims that the three-day weekend will be a milestone achievement for teachers who are unable to receive significant salary increases, but can instead be given more time to prepare for their lessons.

'I realize this will be a significant change for our students, their families, and the communities we are so fortunate to serve, but our district can no longer be expected to do more with less financial resources,' 27J Superintendent Dr. Chris Fiedler released in a statement to KMGH-TV in Denver.

'We are 100 percent committed to providing our students with the necessary skills and competencies that will enable a future far beyond graduation,' he added.

'To that end, I believe it is in our students' best interest to provide high-quality, engaged teachers using 21st Century tools for learning four days a week rather than not have them five days a week,' he said.

The school district hopes to be approved and launch their new schedule as soon as next school year

Tracy Rudnick, the public information officer of District 27J, says the group is confident their proposal will be approved.

'They have not turned down any other school district that has had applied,' Rudnick said to ABC.

'We are pretty confident that its going to go through,' she added.

She noted that 98 other districts in Colorado have already adopted the four-day school week.

'We made this change, one, was for the clean and concise schedule,' Rudnick said.

The new schedule will add an additional 40 minutes to the typical school days. 98 districts in Colorado already follow the four-day week school schedule

'It was also to recruit and retain highly-quality teachers. This new schedule appeals to teachers because their professional development is built into their day. They were using their personal time to prepare for the day. They'll now have time in the morning before students come to school to either prepare individually or work into teams in educational lessons,' she added.

If approved students will spend an extra 40 minutes in class per day to meet the state requirement for instruction time of 1,080 hours per year.

The schedule will see children attend class Tuesday to Friday.

For the off-Mondays the district will offer childcare from 6am to 6pm for working families, for the price for $30 per child, per day.

The district move will affect its 18,000 pupils.

If approved the news schedule will begin on August 10 as the first day of school for middle and high school students, while elementary students will start August 14 and preschool on August 28.
A 17-year-old girl with Leukaemia has been rejected by Centrelink because they don't think she is sick enough.

Maddison Delaney said she has applied for a government Health Care Card 'multiple times' in order to get cheaper medication, however she has been rejected every time.

The young Sydney teenager wrote an online petition saying while she had finished her 'intensive treatment' since being diagnosed in 2016, she still needed to undergo 'oral chemotherapy and use 'antibiotics'.

Maddison Delaney, a 17-year-old girl (pictured) with Leukaemia has been rejected by Centrelink because they don't think she is sick enough for the benefits of a Health Care card

The young Sydney teenager wrote an online petition saying while she had finished her 'intensive treatment' since being diagnosed in 2016, she still needed to undergo 'oral chemotherapy and use 'antibiotics'

'To get this card, you have to be eligible for a benefit scheme, yet time after time we have been denied,' the 17-year-old wrote

'My family and I since I was first diagnosed have tried multiple times to get a Centrelink Health Care card, which would mean that my medication would be cheaper,' Ms Delaney wrote.

'To get this card, you have to be eligible for a benefit scheme, yet time after time we have been denied.

'We do not want any money. We just want the card so it cheapens my medication.'

The young teenager said Centrelink had refused to give her a Health Care card because she was 'over the age of 16 and under 18 at diagnosis' and did not have a 'terminal illness'.

Ms Delaney, who was diagnosed with the blood cancer at 16, said her doctors and oncologists have all written referral letters but the government continued to reject her request.

'When we are on the phone to Centrelink, the workers are amazing,' she said.

'We have gotten to the point where we have decided to just pay the excess amount instead of spending hours on the phone only to get another excuse.'

Since creating the petition seven days ago, it has received more than 26,000 signatures of support - with less than 10,000 to go until it reaches the goal.

The young teenager said Centrelink had refused to give her a Health Care card because she was 'over the age of 16 and under 18 at diagnosis' and did not have a 'terminal illness'

The teenager said she wants it to be easier for cancer patients to gain benefits from Centrelink.

Ms Delaney's medication was covered by the Medicare during the time she was in hospital but after becoming an outpatient, her family had to pay for 'maintenance' chemotherapy treatment, 9 News reported.

'It's not too expensive but it adds up. I think we are lucky because dad has a business and we are pretty financially stable but some parents, like my mum did, quit their jobs where their children are so sick,' she said.

'The campaign isn't just for me, it's for people who have been struggling overall with it.'

Centrelink General Manager Hank Jongen told Daily Mail Australia the department had contacted Ms Delaney's family to make sure she is 'receiving all appropriate support and payments'.

'The department recognises medical conditions can have a significant impact on people's lives, however, we do not have any discretion to provide payments or concession cards outside the criteria set down in legislation,' Mr Jongen said.
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At least 17 Palestinians have been killed and 1,400 were left hurt during one of the largest Palestinian demonstrations along the Israel-Gaza border in recent years.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians, pressing for a right of return for refugees to what is now Israel, gathered at five locations along the fenced 40-mile frontier where tents were erected for a planned six-week protest, local officials said.

Demonstrators were also seen burning and stamping on posters with the face of U.S. President Donald Trump, who ordered the US embassy in Israel moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The protesters have vowed to remain at the border until the embassy moves to Jerusalem on May 14.

Palestinian protesters kick a burning tire towards Israeli security forces during clashes along the Israel-Gaza border

Child demonstrators threw back tear gas canisters fire by Israeli troops during the violent confrontations

The Israeli military estimated there were 30,000 demonstrators and used a drone to drop tear gas on the massive crowds.

Gaza health officials said one of the 17 dead was aged 16 and at least 400 people were wounded by live gunfire, while others were struck by rubber bullets or treated for tear gas inhalation.

Protesters lit car tyres on fire and launched them at security forces while others picked up rocks and bottles and flung them at the troops.

Families brought their children to the encampments just a few hundred yards from the Israeli security barrier with the Hamas Islamist-run enclave and football fields were marked in the sand and scout bands played.

Bottles and rocks were chucked at security forces as at least 17 Palestinians died during 'The March of Return'

A Palestinian hurls stones at Israeli troops during clashes at the Gaza-Israel border at a protest demanding the right to return to their homeland, in the southern Gaza Strip

But as the day wore on, hundreds of Palestinian youths ignored calls from the organisers and the Israeli military to stay away from the frontier, where Israeli soldiers across the border kept watch from dirt mound embankments.

The military said its troops had used 'riot dispersal means and firing towards main instigators.' Some of the demonstrators were 'rolling burning tires and hurling stones' at the border fence and at soldiers.

Israeli troops fired live bullets and tear gas at protesters on the other side of the border fence, and thousands of Palestinians were wounded by army fire, Gaza officials said.

The violence on Friday is likely to spark a series of mass protests continuing for weeks to come. The Israeli military estimated there were 30,000 demonstrators and used a drone to drop tear gas on the massive crowds

Mass protest: A picture taken from the southern Israeli kibbutz of Nahal Oz across the border from the Gaza strip shows Palestinians participating in a tent city protest commemorating Land Day, with Israeli soldiers seen below in the foreground. Seventeen people have been killed in the clashes between Israelis and Palestinians

An Israeli drone dropping tear-gas grenades during clashes after protests along the border between Israel and Gaza Strip, in the eastern Beit Hanun town, in the northern Gaza Strip. Twelve Palestinians were killed and more 500 others injured during the clashes along the border with Israel.

Clashes: An injured Palestinian youth is carried by other protesters as they flee during clashes with Israeli forces near the border with Israel east of Jabalia in the Gaza strip

Anti-Trump: Palestinian protesters burn crossed-out posters depicting US President Donald Trump

The six-week protest has prompted the Israeli army to deploy reinforcements, including more than 100 special forces snipers, for fear of mass attempts to break through the security fence.

The Israeli military said thousands of Palestinians rolled burning tyres and threw stones at forces stationed on the border. It said troops opened fire at the 'main instigators'.

The military said it views with 'great severity any breach of Israeli sovereignty or damage to the security fence'.

Several hours before the confrontations, a 27-year-old Palestinian farmer was killed by Israeli shelling in Gaza as he was working on his land near the border.

Thousands of people, including women and children, are expected to march to the camps in the coming weeks, in a series of protests named 'The Great March of Return'.

Casualties: An injured man is carried through the crowd on a stretcher during a protest to mark Land Day - the killing of six Arab Israelis during 1976 demonstrations against Israeli confiscations of Arab land

Bigly angry: The protest will last for six weeks, until the opening of the new US Embassy in Jerusalem, another issue being protested in the camp

Protests: Hundreds of people are set to camp near the border between the Gaza strip and Israel in the run-up to the opening of the new US embassy

According to the United Nations, some 1.3million of Gaza's 2million residents are refugees or their descendants and 'The Great March of Return calls for them to be allowed to return to land that is now Israel.

Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum praised the turnout, saying: 'The large crowds ... reflect the Palestinian people's determination to achieve the right of return and break the siege and no force can stop this right,' he said.

Among those taking part on Friday was Ismail Haniya, the leader of the Islamist movement Hamas that controls Gaza.

'There is no alternative to Palestine and no solution except to return,' he said in a statement, referring to Palestinian refugees seeking to go back to land they fled or were expelled from in 1948 that is now inside Israel.

The protest camps are expected to remain in place for more than six weeks in the runup to the inauguration of the new US embassy in Jerusalem around May 14.

US President Donald Trump's recognition of the disputed city as Israel's capital in December has infuriated Palestinians, who claim its annexed eastern sector as the capital of their future state.

Hamas has fought three wars with Israel since 2008 and Israeli chief of staff Lieutenant General Gadi Eisenkot has warned the Gaza protests pose the most serious risk of renewed conflict since he took up his post in 2015.

Protests along the border are common, often culminating in young Palestinian men throwing stones at Israeli soldiers who respond with tear gas, and rubber and live bullets.

The March of Return protest is different because it involves hundreds of Palestinians, including whole families with women and children, camping along the border for weeks.

Five main camp sites have been set up spanning the length of the heavily fortified frontier, from near the Erez border crossing in the north to Rafah, where it meets the Egyptian border in the south.

A Palestinian protester hurls stones toward Israeli soldiers during a demonstration near the Gaza Strip border with Israel, in eastern Gaza City

Modern protest: A Palestinian youth takes a selfie while an older man chants slogans as he holds a Palestinian flag during protests east of Jabalia in the Gaza strip

A picture taken from the southern Israeli kibbutz of Nahal Oz across the border from the Gaza strip shows some of the participants in the tent city protest commemorating Land Day

Injured: A young Palestinian man lies on a stretcher following clashes between demonstrators and Israeli forces

Cultural events are planned in the larger communal tents, including traditional Palestinian dabke dancing, while tens of thousands of meals will be handed out on Friday, organisers said.

A young couple were married near one of the camps on Thursday evening.

The launch of the protests comes as Palestinians mark Land Day, commemorating the killing of six unarmed Arab protesters in Israel in 1976.

It is expected to begin on Friday morning but swell after the main weekly Muslim prayers at midday.

Organisers say the camps will remain in place until May 15 when Palestinians commemorate the Nakba, or 'catastrophe', when more than 700,000 Palestinians fled their land or were expelled during the war that led to the creation of Israel in 1948.

Washington's plans to launch its new embassy around the same time, to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the foundation of the Israeli state, have further stoked Palestinian anger.

Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, on Thursday labelled the protest an 'organised planned provocation' and reiterated 'Israel's right to defend its sovereignty and protect its citizens.'
Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who was fired by the Trump administration but has said he was terminated because he is a crucial witness in the Russia investigation, has raised over $350,000 in 10 hours to help cover costs defending against other ongoing government probes.

A statement on the GoFundMe internet page unveiled earlier on Thursday said the goal was to raise $150,000 from the public but it was raised to $250,000 because of a response that 'has been remarkable and beyond our expectations.'

The action represents an escalation of the battle between McCabe and the administration over his firing amid heavy criticism by President Donald Trump.

It also raises the prospect that McCabe could legally challenge his termination in the future.

'Andrew McCabe's FBI career was long, distinguished, and unblemished,' the statement said.

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe has raised nearly $350,000 in 10 hours to help cover costs defending against other ongoing government probes, the funding website showed

A statement on the GoFundMe internet page unveiled earlier on Thursday said the goal was to raise $150,000 from the public but it was raised to $250,000 because of a response that 'has been remarkable and beyond our expectations.'

The page features a photo of McCabe with his wife, two children and the family dog, Jeremiah

'His reward for that has been a termination that was completely unjustified, amidst repeated ad hominem attacks by the President of the United States.'

The page features a photo of McCabe with his wife, two children and the family dog, Jeremiah.

On March 16, US Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that he was terminating McCabe after the Justice Department's inspector general concluded that the Federal Bureau of Investigation veteran had leaked information to the press and misled investigators about his actions.

The report used as the basis for the firing has still not been made public.

Following McCabes termination, Trump took to Twitter, where he declared it was a 'great day for Democracy.'

McCabes dismissal came less than two days before his 50th birthday, when he would have been eligible to retire from the Federal Bureau of Investigation with his full pension.

The action represents an escalation of the battle between McCabe and the administration over his firing amid heavy criticism by President Donald Trump (seen on Thursday arriving in West Palm Beach, Florida on Air Force One)

McCabe has disputed the findings by the inspector generals office.

He said he believes he is facing administration retaliation because he is a crucial witness into whether Trump may have tried to obstruct a criminal probe now being led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

While he was the FBIs No. 2 official, McCabe was deeply involved in overseeing investigations related to former Secretary of State Hillary Clintons use of a private email server, and whether Russia colluded with Trumps campaign.

Trump has denied that any collusion occurred and Russia has denied meddling.

Reuters has reported that McCabe kept contemporaneous notes following his conversations with Trump, as well as notes related to former FBI Director James Comeys conversations with Trump.

Trump fired Comey in 2017, prompting Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to appoint Mueller as special counsel.

Trump later acknowledged in a televised interview that he fired Comey over 'this Russia thing.'
A man who sexually assaulted his partner's granddaughter in the belief that she was the reincarnation of someone he knew in a past life has been sentenced to nine years in prison.

The 68-year-old man - who cannot be identified - told the District Court that he experienced a profound sense of recognition upon seeing the girl for the very first time, when she was a mere 17 months old.

'(The infant) just looked up into my eyes and I looked into hers and it was the most amazing feeling of recognition and we knew each other, we had been here before,' he said.

The 68-year-old man sexually assaulted his partner's 6-year-old granddaughter, whom he felt he knew in a past life, claiming he had 'the most amazing feeling of recognition' when he first laid eyes on her as an infant

The man went on to explain that he believed in reincarnation, and felt that he had let the girl down in a past life and needed to make amends.

'I just felt perhaps in the past I had been in a past life and this little girl, that I had not stood by her, wasn't there for her, possibly even would have let her die somewhere  and here was my chance to stand by her,' he said.

The girl was six years old when the incidents of sexual abuse occurred, taking place in a caravan in the man's shed and lasting for the duration of about three months.

While the man denied any sexual contact between him and the girl, he admitted to continually sending her 'love letters' which he later urged her to flush down the toilet.

The man was sentenced to nine years in prison, with the judge stating that his refusal to admit guilt necessitated the severity of his sentence

He was found guilty of the persistent sexual exploitation of a child, with Judge Barry Beazley declaring that the man remained a danger as long as he retained his 'bizarre' world views.

'Despite your apparent sensitivity it did not occur to you that you were harming her,' said Judge Beazley.

The man was hit with a non-parole period of five years.

Despite the offender's previously 'unblemished, indeed impeccable record', Judge Beazley asserted that his refusal to admit guilt necessitated a heavy sentence.
The mother of a teenage girl who took her own life after being relentlessly bullied at school will ride 200 kilometres on a bike in just two days to raise awareness about mental health.

Joanne Cooper will set off from Ayr in north Queensland at 5am on May 20 - one day before the third anniversary of her daughter Breannah's death - and will cycle down to Airlie Beach.

Along the way, she plans to hand out flyers about bullying, depression and youth suicide, and share her daughter's story.

'May 21st 2018 marks three years since I heard my baby's voice, since I saw her smile light up the room, heard her quirky snorting giggles,' she wrote on a GoFundMe page for the ride.

Joanne Pivas (right) will ride a bike 200km through north Queensland in just two days to spread awareness about teen mental health and to share her daughter's story

Breannah Piva (pictured) was only 16 when she took her own life following nine years of bullying and abuse

'It will be three years since Breannah could be a 16-year-old child with dreams, hopes and goals. Three years since these bullies pushed my daughter over the edge to no return.'

Mrs Piva says her daughter was bullied for nine years by her peers, who taunted her at school, in town, at work and online.

'Breannah was physically, verbally & emotionally traumatised by her bullies on a daily basis,' she wrote.

'She would report most incidents to her school, QLD Education, parents of the bullies and our local police - however not one of Breannahs bullies were held accountable for the violence they inflicted on my daughter.

'Nor were the bullies texting her telling her to kill herself or they would do it for her and make sure her body was never found.'

Breannah allegedly received messages telling her to 'kill herself or [her bullies] would do it for her and make sure her body was never found'

Joanne and Michael Piva (pictured) have launched a lawsuit against the teenage girl's school, alleging the institution failed to protect their daughter from her tormentors

Breannah's parents Joanne and Michael have filed a lawsuit against her school for failing to protect her from the ongoing abuse.

Almost 30 bullying incidents over four years - which would start in school and continue long after the final bell went - were outlined in a set of court documents earlier obtained by Daily Mail Australia.

The court documents state she had a bottle of iced coffee thrown at her before marshmallow was rubbed over her face and uniform.

In another incident, the Piva family alleged Breannah was 'hit across the back of her head by another student' on various occasions in 2011.

The court documents state in 2013, Breannah was chased for five blocks while walking home and forced to hide in a supermarket after a group of five students said they were going to 'bash and kill' her.

Court documents allege Breannah was hit across the back of her head by another student on various occasions throughout 2011

'There was another incident in 2013 where Breannah was punched by another student after school and suffered a black eye,' the documents state.

On the GoFundMe page, which will help to get a free online anti-bullying program into Australian schools, Mrs Piva said while she could do nothing to change the past, she was determined to impact the future.

'I cant do anything to bring my baby girl back, but I will be darned if I sit here and do nothing in helping to prevent this happening to another child,' she wrote.

When contacted earlier this month, the school and Education Queensland declined to comment.

Readers seeking confidential support can contact Lifeline on 13 11 14.

A foundation has since been set up for Breannah (pictured) called 'Do It For Bree', which has produced a free online anti-bullying program for schools
A man suspected of fatally shooting an off-duty police officer in a small Kentucky city has been killed by law enforcement officials in Tennessee.

Kentucky State Police Trooper Rob Austin says in a statement Friday that 34-year-old James K. Decoursey of Hopkinsville 'had a brief encounter with law enforcement' officials in Clarksville, Tennessee, where he 'was shot and died from his injuries.'

Kentucky State police say Decoursey shot and killed 38-year-old Hopkinsville officer Phillip Meacham Thursday afternoon, then fled on foot then before taking off in a pickup truck.

James K. Decoursey (right) was shot dead after a 'brief encounter with law enforcement officials' in Clarksville, Tennessee, authorities said Friday. He had been on the run since killing Hopkinsville police officer Phillip Meacham (left) Thursday afternoon

Meacham was in his personal car when he is believed to have been pulled over and shot by the Decoursey.

Police would not elaborate on how or why Decoursey was impersonating a police officer.

Authorities located Decoursey early Friday morning after employees at a hotel in Clarksville called 911 and said that a man matching the suspect's description had come there asking for a cigarette.

Officers then found the pickup truck Decoursey had stolen parked at a Cracker Barrel restaurant across the street from the hotel.

Decoursey was located by officers behind this Clarksville Cracker Barrel early Friday morning

Scanner traffic indicates that officers found Decoursey behind the Cracker Barrel, where it appears that they got into a gun fight with the suspect.

Two Montgomery County deputies and a U.S. Marshal fired at Decoursey before he was fatall wounded. No officers were injured.

'DeCoursey appears to have ignored repeated commands and the situation escalated, resulting in the law enforcement officers firing upon DeCoursey, killing him,' the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said in a statement.

Meacham was in his personal car when he is believed to have been pulled over and shot by the suspect in Hopkinsville, Kentucky on Thursday. It's unclear why Decoursey was posing as a cop

It's unclear when exactly Decoursey was tracked down and killed by cops in Clarksville. Above, the scene from the first shooting

Decoursey is pictured above in a mugshot from a previous arrest

Meacham, who was married and had two school-age children, had been with the Hopkinsville department since May 2017. Before that worked for about 14 years with the Christian County Sheriff's Department.

Hopkinsville is about 73 miles northwest of Nashville, Tennessee.

'I just want to ask everybody for their thoughts and prayers for the family,' Hopkinsville Police Chief Clayton Sumner said.

He said mental health professionals and chaplains had been brought in to help Meacham's co-workers.

Gov. Matt Bevin announced the officer's death on Twitter.

'There is no greater sacrifice than that of a person willing to lay down their life for another... Thank God for the #ThinBlueLine,' Bevin tweeted.

In Frankfort, lawmakers in the House stood for a moment of silence after Rep. Walker Wood Thomas of Hopkinsville announced that an officer had been shot.




Special Counsel Robert Muller hopes to use Richard Gates as a cooperating witness to link Donald Trump's campaign to a Russian with an alleged spy background, new reports claim.

Court filings this week indicate that an alleged Russian intelligence officer communicated with Trump's former top campaign officials Paul Manafort and Rick Gates late in the 2016 presidential campaign.

The filings name the Russian only as 'Person A', but he is believed to be Manafort associate Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian Army-trained translator possibly tied to Russian intelligence.

Gates accepted a plea deal last month, admitting to participating in financial crimes while in Manafort's employ unrelated to the election, as well as lying to investigators.

Now, with Gates obligated to cooperate under the terms of the plea deal, Muller's investigators want to put the screws on him to describe what he knew about contact between the Trump campaign and Russians, a person familiar with the investigation told CNN.

Rick Gates is seen last month. He accepted a plea deal, admitting to participating in financial crimes while in Manafort's employ unrelated to the election, as well as lying to investigators

Manafort is seen earlier this month. He has pleaded not guilty to charges in two indictments filed by Mueller's office

During the plea negotiations, Mueller's team told Gates they weren't interested in his testimony against Manafort, his former boss and Trump's one-time campaign chairman, the source said. Rather they were looking for information on alleged 'collusion'.

It is the first public sign in recent months that Mueller still hopes to uncover criminal conspiracies between the Trump campaign and Russian state actors - the initial mandate of the investigation - rather than the incidental and process crimes his investigation has thus far brought charges on.

'The fact that an official who had an important role in the Trump campaign alongside (Paul) Manafort was dealing with an individual who he knew was tied to Russian intelligence is a big deal, as is the fact that Mueller decided to put that card face up on the table at this time,' said a person familiar with Mueller's investigation who spoke on the condition of anonymity, referring to the Wednesday court filing about 'Person A'.

'Hes playing chess, and moving that piece now suggests that no matter what Trump is saying about no collusion, that part of the investigation is still very much alive,' the person said.

Mueller is seen in June. The latest revelations are the first sign in recent months that his probe is still pursuing a criminal conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia

The Russian government has denied meddling in the 2016 election, and Trump has denied any collusion by his campaign.

Gates pleaded guilty last month to lying to the FBI and conspiring to defraud the United States, a tax evasion charge that stems from his work for Manafort before the election. In exchange for his plea, multiple other charges were dropped and his potential prison sentence was greatly reduced.

An attorney for Gates did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Manafort has pleaded not guilty to charges in two indictments filed by Mueller's office.

He has given every indication of fighting the charges all the way, with his lawyers this week demanding further information on a previously executed search warrant in an effort to get it tossed out.

The charges against Manafort range from bank fraud and filing false tax returns to conspiring to defraud the United States, conspiring to launder money and failing to register as a foreign agent when he lobbied for the pro-Russian government of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.

Lawyers for Manafort are seeking to dismiss the charges, arguing they have nothing to do with Russian interference and fall outside the scope of what Mueller is supposed to investigate, among other things.

A spokesman for Manafort, who is prevented by a court-imposed gag order from talking to the media, declined to comment.
Police have charged a Perth mother and stepfather over the alleged sexual abuse of the woman's eight-year-old daughter alongside one of their friends and sharing the child at swingers parties.

They are also investigating suspicions that at least another five young children may have been abused during the organised sex activities with groups of adults.

Another six properties have been searched and police have arrested three people in relation to the investigation, Perth Now reported.

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Taskforce Mirzam was launched last month after a recording device of the three people allegedly engaging in sexual acts with a girl was found at a Perth rental home

The trio were charged in February after police discovered a recording device at a Perth rental home that showed them allegedly engaging in sexual acts with the young girl.

They are facing 23 sexual penetration and indecent dealing charges between them.

Suspicions that as many as a dozen other adults were involved in the crime has prompted police to launch Taskforce Mirzam - an ongoing case that involves the alleged abuse of at least four other children, including three girls and one boy.

Across Perth officers searched six properties and arrested a further three people in connection to the alleged group sex activities that children may have been present at.

'As time went by we realised the magnitude of this particular investigation,' said Supt Sharon Leonhardt.

'It's absolutely devastating. It never ceases to amaze me what human beings do to one another. Particularly when parents are involved.'

The trio are facing 23 sexual penetration and indecent dealing charges between them

Police allege that at least some of the suspected victims were given meth and cannabis prior to being abused. Supt Leonhardt said all of the children suspected of being allegedly abused had been identified, however, and were no longer in danger.

'We believe that there are many more people involved in this alleged child abuse, both men and women, and police need the community's help,' she said.

Further arrests and charges are expected to be laid as police confiscated hard-drives, laptops, thumb drives and mobile phones are forensically examined by police.

They have requested that anyone who may have attended the parties in question and unwillingly been exposed to the alleged abuse to come forward.

Anyone with information is asked to call Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
The 15-year-old son of Alex Jones, the founder of the far-right site Infowars.com, has challenged Parkland survivor David Hogg to a debate.

The site posted a video featuring Rex Jones, who is seen in his fathers seat during a monologue blasting Hogg for his part in the public campaign pushing for stricter gun laws in the United States.

Hogg survived the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on February 14, which left 17 people dead.

A former student, Nikolas Cruz, was arrested for allegedly carrying out the massacre.

In the wake of the tragedy, Hogg and his fellow students have led a nationwide campaign demanding tougher gun laws.

Rex Jones (left), the 15-year-old son of Alex Jones, the founder of the far-right site Infowars.com, has challenged Parkland survivor David Hogg (right) to a debate

Infowars on Thursday posted a video featuring Rex Jones, who is seen in his fathers seat during a monologue blasting Hogg for his part in the public campaign pushing for stricter gun laws in the United States. Alex Jones is seen in an Austin, Texas courtroom last year

The campaign, however, has met with stiff criticism and resistance from conservatives who warn against taking action that infringes on their Second Amendment rights.

Hogg, you claim that the establishment is shaking in its boots in fear of you, Rex Jones says in the video.

No, they love you. They love gun control. Theyve wanted this for years.

The Infowars video is interspersed with clips of Democratic politicians speaking of the need to enact laws against assault weapons.

It is admitted they want to disarm the American people just as they have done with so many corrupt regimes in the past, Rex Jones said.

Rex Jones slammed Hogg for calling his father 'a s*** journalist'

He then named 20th century dictators who he claims were allowed to commit mass murder due to strict gun control laws.

Hitler, Stalin, Mao, North Korea  do you think those corrupt leaders allowed their citizens to have guns?

Do you think that the Jews were able to protect themselves when Hitler put them in concentration camps?

No, they were disarmed. And thats why they were enslaved.

Rex Jones blasted Hogg as a child human shield by the mainstream media so that you can go out and make outrageous statements without anyone being allowed to rebut you.

Hogg was being compared to Hitler after various videos emerged with the Nazi leader's voice dubbed over footage of him at March for our Lives. The video was played on Infowars

George Soros and the groups funding your anti-gun march are a clear and present danger to this country, Rex Jones said.

Jones said guns were not to blame for the massacre at Parkland, but Sheriff Scott Israel who failed to act.

Jones accused Hogg of making apologies for the sheriff and the armed deputy who stood outside of the school as the massacre was taking place.

You are submitting to tyranny, Jones said to Hogg.

You are begging to have the rights that our forefathers fought for stripped away.

I dont need talking points or a little teleprompter behind my CNN interview screen to get my point across.

He then challenges Hogg to a debate.

Name a time, name the place, name the venue. I will do it.

Hogg's emergence as a leading voice for stricter gun laws have made him a target for criticism from conservatives

Last month, Alex Jones invited Hogg onto his show for a debate. Hogg accepted, according to Raw Story.

Hogg apparently backed out of the interview, saying he was unaware of Alex Jones' habit of peddling wild conspiracy theories.

Earlier this week, Infowars came under fire after it played a video of Hogg and other Parkland survivors at the March for our Lives rally that depicted them as Nazis.

In the video, Hogg's voice is dubbed over with that of Hitler's.

At the end of his speech on Saturday, Hogg raised his fist in the air and right-wing social media immediately started claiming it resembled Hitler's Nazi salute.

YouTube put a viewer discretion warning on one of the Hitler comparison videos.

The 56-second video, which was posted on YouTube on Monday by user MAGA3D, was flagged as containing material that some viewers had found to be 'inappropriate or offensive'.

Viewers trying to watch the video were made to click 'I understand and wish to proceed' in order to watch it.

The YouTube user titled the video: 'Hogg Hitler! The little dictator in the making'.

Earlier on Thursday, several companies announced they were dropping Fox News personality Laura Ingraham after she criticized Hogg on social media.

Ingraham, a right-wing host who landed a rare one-on-one interview with President Donald Trump last year, wrote on Twitter, 'David Hogg Rejected By Four Colleges To Which He Applied and whines about it.'

Hogg, who filmed students hiding from the gunman in their classrooms during the massacre, was quick to respond, tweeting a list of a dozen advertisers and encouraging followers to immediately call them and ask them to drop Ingraham.

Hogg has faced intense criticism from right-wing conservatives and gun advocates who have falsely called him a crisis actor following the Valentine's Day shooting in Parkland that killed 17.

'Soooo @IngrahamAngle what are your biggest advertisers ... Asking for a friend,' he wrote with the hashtag #BoycottIngramAdverts.

The online home goods store Wayfair, food company Nestle, travel website TripAdvisor and Rachel Ray's dog food Nutrish all said they are removing their support from Ingraham.

Wayfair said in a statement that it supports 'open dialogue and debate on issues.

'However, the decision of an adult to personally criticize a high school student who has lost his classmates in an unspeakable tragedy is not consistent with our values.

'We do not plan to continue advertising on this particular program.'

Earlier on Thursday, several companies announced they were dropping Fox News personality Laura Ingraham after she criticized Hogg on social media

TripAdvisor says it does not 'condone the inappropriate comments made by this broadcaster. In our view, these statements focused on a high school student, cross the line of decency. As such, we have made a decision to stop advertising on that program.'

A telephone message left for Nutrish was not immediately returned but the company tweeted it was in the process of removing ads from Ingraham's show.

Ingraham apologized Thursday on Twitter, saying, 'On reflection, in the spirit of Holy Week, I apologize for any upset or hurt my tweet caused him or any of the brave victims of Parkland.'

Ingraham tweeted that she thought she was the first to feature Hogg on her show after the shooting and added, 'he's welcome to come on my show anytime for a productive discussion.'

Hogg tweeted later Thursday that an apology to save advertisers wasn't enough and that he'd only accept Ingraham's apology if she denounced the way Fox News has treated his friends.

'It's time to love thy neighbor, not mudsling at children,' Hogg wrote.
She or he may be a distant relative or your next door neighbor, but chances are you know one of the estimated 151,000 people, including 59,600 children, in the 11-county region of North Alabama who struggle with food insecurity at some point during the year.

From April 2 through April 30, residents can make a real difference in the lives of local families.

Walmart, Feeding America and the Food Bank of North Alabama kick off on April 2 the fifth annual nationwide "Fight Hunger. Spark Change." campaign online and in stores. Walmart and Feeding America are doubling their meal goal to help secure at least 200 million meals, increasing the number of suppliers participating to 14, and introducing the Walmart Credit Card as a new way for customers to get involved in the campaign. In another first, Walmart is uniting with social networking site, Nextdoor, to drive conversations in local communities across the nation on ways they can combat hunger.

"By working with Walmart, its 14 supplier partners and Synchrony Bank, we have an amazing opportunity to make progress toward fighting hunger in our community," said Shirley Schofield, executive director of the Food Bank of North Alabama. "This campaign will help increase awareness of hunger in America, allowing us to ultimately provide more food to people in need in our region of North Alabama. We hope people across the area will take action and participate in the campaign."

Beginning today through April 30, Walmart is offering four ways that customers can get involved to help secure meals for local food banks, including the Food Bank of North Alabama. Visit Walmart.com/fighthunger for further details. Here are the ways customers can fight hunger.

Purchase Product: For every participating product purchased at U.S. and Puerto Rico Walmart stores or on Walmart.com from April 2-30, the supplier will donate the monetary equivalent of one meal ($0.10) on behalf of a Feeding America member food bank, up to applicable limits. Participating suppliers include General Mills, The Coca-Cola Company, Kellogg, Kraft Heinz, PepsiCo/Frito-Lay/Quaker, Bush Brothers, Clorox Sales Company, Conagra, Motts, Unilever, Maruchan, Pinnacle Foods, Post and JM Smucker.

Donate money to your local Feeding America food bank at participating Walmart stores. Donations can be made at the register to the Food Bank of North Alabama in increments of $1, $2, $5 or an amount chosen by the customer. Donating is also an option at the self-checkout (Scan and Go) register. When customers click "Finish & Pay" on totals over $10, it will trigger the prompt with details on donating.

Make an online act of support: For every traceable post of campaign content with #FightHunger on Instagram and for every traceable share or retweet on Facebook and Twitter of campaign content, Walmart will donate $10 to Feeding America, and for every click on the support button on the program website, Walmart will donate $1 to Feeding America, up to $1.5 million.

Use the Walmart Credit Card: Synchrony Bank will donate the monetary equivalent of one meal ($0.10) for each Walmart Credit Card transaction made at Walmart stores and on Walmart.com during the campaign, up to $750,000.

The ''Fight Hunger. Spark Change.'' campaign launches at a critical time. In North Alabama food insecurity affects 1 in 4 children (59,600 kids). Nationally, one in eight Americans (41 million) struggle with hunger at some point during the year, according to the USDA.

Food insecurity also affects certain populations more profoundly including children, seniors and minority communities.

"In communities big and small across the country, there are families struggling with hunger," said Kathleen McLaughlin, president of the Walmart Foundation and chief sustainability officer for Walmart. "By working together during this campaign with our suppliers, customers and friends at Feeding America, we can help secure 200 million meals that will help those who need it most."

Last year, the Food Bank of North Alabama benefited from $102,000 through Walmart's "Fight Hunger. Spark Change." campaign. The Food Bank is also proud to partner with Walmart via our store donation program. Walmart locations across North Alabama donate excess food to help our region's families in need. To learn more about the campaign, visit www.walmart.com/fighthunger.

To download video and photos, visit https://corporate.walmart.com/newsroom

About the Food Bank of North Alabama: The Food Bank of North Alabama, based in Huntsville, works to end hunger by offering hunger relief programs that immediately feed people in need. It also addresses hunger's root causes through local food initiatives that foster entrepreneurship and healthy food access.

About Walmart Walmart Inc. (NYSE: WMT) helps people around the world save money and live better - anytime and anywhere - in retail stores, online, and through their mobile devices. Each week, nearly 270 million customers and members visit our more than 11,700 stores under 59 banners in 28 countries and eCommerce websites. With fiscal year 2018 revenue of $500.3 billion, Walmart employs approximately 2.3 million associates worldwide. Walmart continues to be a leader in sustainability, corporate philanthropy and employment opportunity. Additional information about Walmart can be found by visiting http://corporate.walmart.com, on Facebook at http://facebook.com/walmart and on Twitter at http://twitter.com/walmart.

Contact: Laura Fincher

256.382.0296

communityrelations@fbofna.org
Schoolgirls have been caught dangling their legs out of a van driving on a 100 km/h on a New Zealand Road.

The shocking moment was captured on a dash cam video by Danielle Silich, an Auckland woman.

The video shows the driver of the van turning a corner with the doors open, as the girls relax with their legs hanging out the door.

Ms Silich told Daily Mail Australia she was 'just shocked' as she watched the girls' legs hanging out the car for 15 minutes.

'So this van here, is driving in a 100 km zone with the door open and children's feet out,' she said.

'So dangerous.'

Schoolgirls have been caught dangling their legs out of a van (pictured) driving on a 100 km/h on a New Zealand Road

'I was really hoping nothing bad was going to happen. I knew the students as they are from the same small town as myself.'

Whangerei Girl's High School principal Anne Cooper told NZ Herald it was a 'miracle' the children were not killed or injured.

'I am extremely concerned that the girls concerned could so easily have been killed or seriously injured and it is a miracle that they weren't,' she told the publication.

The shocking moment was captured on a dash cam video by Danielle Silich, an Auckland woman

Social media users reacted with anger to the post on Thursday evening, with one person saying the footage was 'stomach churning'.



'The driver needs their licence revoked. How theyre allowing that is beyond me,' one user said.

A police spokesperson told NZ Herald the 'distracted' and 'unsafe' driving was dangerous and 'unacceptable'.

'The driver could be putting not only themselves at risk, but also their passengers, and particular innocent members of our community,' she said.

The students continued to have their legs hanging out of the car for 15 minutes until it started raining, according to Ms Silich.

The school will be investigating.
The Vatican has had to seal off part of St. Peter's Basilica after chunks of plaster fell from the ceiling just hours after Pope Francis is alleged to have proclaimed that 'Hell' does not exist.

Bits of the ceiling rained down over worshippers near Michelangelo's famed Pieta statue to the right of the main entrance, although no one was injured.

A Vatican spokesman said the basilica remains open with the affected areas sealed off until later today.

The sky is falling: Parts of the ceiling in the St. Peter's Basilica fell in on Thursday

It comes after the Pope was sensationally quoted as saying that hell does not exist and souls not worthy of heaven merely disappear instead of being tormented.

But the Vatican quickly denied the apparent dramatic theological shift, accusing atheist reporter Eugenio Scalfari of 'reconstructing' his words.

Catholic teaching dictates that 'immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into hell'.

Scalfari, 93, in his fifth interview of Pope Francis published in La Repubblica, asked what happened to 'bad souls' after their bodies died.

Denial: Hours before the incident in the Basilica, Pope Francis had to deny that he had told an Italian journalist that hell did not exist

'They are not punished, those who repent obtain the forgiveness of God and enter the rank of souls who contemplate him, but those who do not repent and cannot therefore be forgiven disappear,' he quoted the Pope as replying.

'There is no hell, there is the disappearance of sinful souls.'

The Vatican on Thursday said the Italian journalist and the Pope had a private meeting but claimed it was 'without giving him any interview'.

Holy Week sees floods of pilgrims and tourists visiting St. Peter's, taking part in Pope Francis' ceremonies, which are capped by Easter Sunday celebrations outside in St. Peter's Square.
Jeremy Corbyn today conceded he 'must do better' in tackling anti-Semitism as he desperately fights to quell the crisis engulfing Labour.

The Labour leader issued his strongest admission yet that he has failed to recognise the scale of the problems on the hard-left.

'It is easy to denounce antisemitism when you see it in other countries, in other political movements. It is sometimes harder to see it when it is closer to home,' he said.

But the admission, in a message marking Passover, will not satisfy critics as Labour continues to be plagued by examples of outrageous remarks by activists.

Mr Corbyn has been accused by respected scientist Lord Winston of 'encouraging and endorsing' anti-Semites.

Meanwhile, dozens of MPs and peers are demanding the suspension of Labour's former disputes chief who defended a Holocaust denier.

In his Passover video message today, Mr Corbyn - who has spent much of the week avoiding questions from journalists - said he wanted to 'remember all our Jewish brothers and sisters, who have battled against discrimination'

Christine Shawcroft (pictued) was forced to stand down as chair of the disputes panel this week after admitting she was 'wrong and misguided' to have sent an email calling for a council candidate in Peterborough to have his suspension lifted

Some 39 Labour politicians - including three shadow ministers - have signed an open letter insisting Christine Shawcroft must be suspended from the National Executive Committee (NEC).

Ms Shawcroft was forced to stand down as chair of the disputes panel this week after admitting she was 'wrong and misguided' to have sent an email calling for a council candidate in Peterborough to have his suspension lifted.

But she still holds a seat on the party's ruling body.

In an extraordinary act of defiance today, Ms Shawcroft released a statement dsmissing condemnation of her behaviour and saying the issues were being 'stirred up to attack Jeremy'.

'I have been trying to support members who have been affected by all the shenanigans around Council selections, and thought this case was just another one of those,' she wrote on Facebook.

'I had not seen the appalling and abhorrent post which was shared, and if I had seen it I would not have sent the supportive email.

'As soon as I saw it I told the member that he should have anti-Semitisim training.'

Ms Shawcroft said it was 'right' that she had resigned as chair of the disciplinary panel, but added: 'This whole row is being stirred up to attack Jeremy, as we all know.'

But Labour MP Wes Streeting said: 'Even when caught red handed defending a Holocaust denier, Christine Shawcroft still dismisses genuine concerns about antisemitism.

'Enough is enough. Christine Shawcroft must resign from the NEC immediately. She has no shame.'

In his Passover video message, Mr Corbyn - who has spent much of the week avoiding questions from journalists - said he wanted to 'remember all our Jewish brothers and sisters, who have battled against discrimination and faced the most horrific acts of violence and mass murder'.

He referred to 'rising levels of anti-Semitism around the world', pointing the finger at right-wingers in Poland and France.

But admitting that problems were harder to see 'closer to home', he added: 'We in the labour movement will never be complacent about antisemitism.

'We all need to do better. I am committed to ensuring the Labour Party is a welcoming and secure place for Jewish people.'

The activist, Alan Bull, a Labour candidate for Peterborough Council, was suspended for posting a link on Facebook to a fake news article titled: 'International Red Cross Report Confirms the Holocaust of Six Million Jews is a Hoax'

The controversy that hit Ms Shacroft centred on Alan Bull, who was suspended from the party last week after he was accused of being responsible for anti-Semitic posts on social media.

Ms Shawcroft said: 'I sent this email before being aware of the full information about this case and I had not been shown the image of his abhorrent Facebook post. Had I seen this image, I would not have requested that the decision to suspend him be re-considered. I am deeply sorry for having done so.'

Shadow chancellor John McDonnell later said it was right that Ms Shawcroft had quit the post, but said she did not need to also resign from the NEC.

Asked if she should step down from the ruling body, he told Sky News: 'Well, no. Jeremy has asked her to stand down as the chair of the disputes committee.'

He added: 'She's not at the head of that committee (the NEC). It is an elected position and it is up to the electorate to decide whether or not she should be elected again.'

However, the letter, signed by MPs including Siobhan McDonagh, Mike Gapes and LucianaBerger, said it was 'highly offensive to the Jewish community' that Ms Shawcroft remained a member of the NEC.

Mr Gapes said on Twitter: 'Time for action. Not just words.'

In an effort to draw a line under the raging controversy this week, Mr Corbyn acknowledged the problem was not just a matter of a 'few bad apples'.

But Labour peer Lord Winston said last night that Mr Corbyn had 'encouraged and endorsed' anti-Semites.

The scientist said hostility to Jews has 'infected the Labour Party so it's become endemic'.

Lucian Berger (pictured) is among 39 Labour politicians who have signed an open letter calling for Christine Shawcroft to be suspended from the National Executive Committee (NEC)

Lord Winston, who is Jewish, told BBC One's This Week: 'I feel deeply ashamed of my party. Whether he likes it or not, Jeremy Corbyn has a lot to answer for. He has encouraged anti-Semites and he's endorsed them.

'In the modern world using social media, their conspiracy theories about Jews and statements about hate, spread like a disease and this virus is infecting the Labour Party.'

The academic said he believes Mr Corbyn is a 'good man' who is not personally anti-Semitic but warned he was 'very worried about the quality of the leadership' because the firm action needed to tackle the problem had not materialised.

He claimed the Labour leader 'doesn't seem to understand that his attitude actually decreases the chance of peace and raises the risk of violence'.

Lord Winston warned that if Mr Corbyn stands by while Labour 'descends a disastrous path' he could make the party 'unelectable'.

Asked if Mr Corbyn was fit to be Prime Minister if he fails to tackle the problem, the peer replied: 'I fear that he's not unfortunately and it troubles me to say that on air.'

Another Labour peer last night accused Mr Corbyn of failing to act on an anti-Semitic email he received.

Lord Levy said that the party's leader in the Lords, Baroness Smith of Basildon, showed Mr Corbyn the abusive message on Wednesday night, but he heard nothing back on the issue.

The email received by Lord Levy read: 'I see that you dare to criticise Labour leader. Who the hell are you to comment on Jeremy Corbyn?

'You are just another Jewish pig, bloodsucker living on taxpayers' money. What are you doing in this country anyway?

Labour peer Lord Winston told BBC's This Week last night (pictured) that Mr Corbyn had 'encouraged and endorsed' anti-Semites

'Why don't you piss off to Israel? We don't need Jewish bastards like you in this country.'

Lord Levy told BBC2's Newsnight that he did not know if the email was from a supporter of Mr Corbyn, adding: 'But, I know that Jeremy was shown this email last night.'

The peer questioned why Mr Corbyn had not condemned the email and accused Mr Corbyn of not taking anti-Semitism seriously enough.

'There has to be a zero tolerance policy. Enough words. They are just not taking this seriously. I have never received such a disgusting email,' he said.

A Labour source said: 'Jeremy was shown some text on someone's phone for a matter of seconds when he was on his way to vote.

'Of course, if something so serious had been raised with Jeremy in more than a passing way for a few seconds he would have been able to engage with it, and would, of course, have acted.'

Lord Levy said he had reported the email to the police.
A mother has told how her teenage son was groomed for sex by men in Telford and claims abuse in the town is still ongoing.

The woman said her son was given money, drugs and alcohol by a gang who were abusing him as recently as six months ago.

The town in Shropshire - population 170,000 is at the centre of a probe following claims as many as 1,000 girls have been victims of sexual abuse dating back to the 1980s.

Telford in Shropshire is at the centre of an abuse scandal after it emerged up to 1,000 children were abused. A mother of a boy in the town says the abuse is still going on

It is alleged that reports of abuse had been mishandled by the authorities - and that three murders and two deaths could be linked to the scandal.

But the mother told the BBC abuse there was not simply historical and she knew people who were 'still going through it.'

Speaking anonymously, she said: 'They were giving him money, taking advantage of him, getting him drunk, giving him drugs - just really taking advantage of him.

'And they were using him for sex. There's no way anyone can say grooming isn't happening today, because I know it is.

'My own son has been going through it and there are other people I know who are still going through it.'

Lucy Lowe, was killed in 2000 along with her mother and sister after a 26-year-old man, who had got her pregnant at 14, set fire to their house

The Sunday Mirror reported groups of 'mainly Asian men' had been targeting girls in Telford.

But the teenage boy's mother said her son was abused by 'different white men' and the abuse was 'going on in all races'.

'It's not just Asian men who are doing it,' she said. 'It's white men, it's black men.' She said the victims were also of different background types.

'The girls are white, Indian, black, there's even Pakistani girls', she added.

Girls as young as 11 are said to have been lured away from their families then drugged, beaten and raped.

A 16-year-old girl, Lucy Lowe, was killed in 2000 along with her mother and sister after a 26-year-old man, who had got her pregnant at 14, set fire to their house.

He was jailed for murder but not sex crimes.

Rebecca Watson, 13, who died in a car crash in 2002, was also being abused, according to a family member.

And her friend Vicky Round died following a drugs incident after a grooming gang allegedly got her hooked on crack cocaine when she was 12.

A police investigation in 2010 identified more than 100 potential victims, most of whom were young white girls, who had allegedly been abused between 2007 and 2009.

Professor Alexis Jay is to look into the scandal during her independent inquiry into child abuse

The inquiry - Operation Chalice - was closed after seven Asian men were jailed in 2012 for a total of 49 years for charges against four girls including rape, trafficking and prostitution.

But the scale of the abuse is believed to much greater than these seven men and there have been claims that it has been mishandled by the authorities.

It is alleged that social workers first knew of abuse in the 1990s, but police took a decade before launching a probe.

Previously unseen files apparently showed that council staff viewed abused and trafficked children as 'prostitutes', not victims, and that the authorities had failed to keep details of abusers from Asian communities for fear of 'racism'.

Victims are now being asked to share their experiences with the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse.

The sexual abuse inquiry, led by Alexis Jay, is examining 13 areas of public life for child protection failings over decades.
Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump have touched down at Cheyenne Regional Airport as they begin their vacation in Saratoga, Wyoming.

Departing from Washington, D.C., the pair traveled in President Trump's personal Boeing 757 airliner - or 'Trump Force One'.

The pair were greeted by excited locals, eager to take selfies with the president's daughter and her husband, both Senior Advisers to the President.

Kim Brokaw, a member of the board of directors for Cheyenne Regional Airport, takes a selfie with the Trump Boeing 757

Trump Force One landed at Cheyenne Regional Airport, ferrying Ivanka and Jared to Saratoga for an Easter vacation

Cheyenne Mayor Marian Orr (picture in the plane's cockpit) was given a tour on arrival

Cheyenne's Mayor Marian Orr was at the airport to greet the couple, tweeting: 'Regardless of your politics, it's always exciting when a Presidential family is vacationing in SE WY.'

Orr was allowed a glimpse inside the plane, adding: 'What a fun treat to tour the plane. Enjoy your stay in our state!'

Cheyenne's airport runway was the closest to the Trump's vacation destination able to accommodate the 153-foot-long private jet, according to John Dunkin, Trump's personal pilot since 1989.

The jet was carrying as many as two dozen members of Kushner's family, reported KGWN.

The family took a private escort to Saratoga after disembarking.

The eponymous blue, red and white aircraft was one of the most recognizable symbols of Trump's campaign.

Now, however, the plane is used by members of the extended Trump family while the president, first lady Melania and their son Barron fly in the US Air Force One.

The jet is said to be worth USD$100million (63million).

Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner (pictured at President Trumps's State of the Union address) chose Wyoming as their vacation destination

Mayor Marian Orr descends the steps from President Trump's private Boeing 757, which played an integral part in his 2016 campaign

Inside Trump Force One: The jet has Rolls-Royce RB211 turbofan engines and has upholstery emblazoned with the Trump family insignia

The 757 interior features a lounge room with L-shaped couches and 52-inch flatscreen TV, and a bathroom with a circular shower and marble sinks with gold faucets.

There is sleek cream seating embossed with the Trump family crest and walnut tables and cabinets.

It is powered by Rolls-Royce RB211 turbofan engines - allowing it to fly for 16 hours at a speed of more than 500 miles per hour.

The jet will be remain at Cheyenne Regional Airport until the Trump family return in about a week.

It is unclear where the First Family are staying, however, Saratoga is known for its hot springs and lodge hotels.

President Trump also flew out this weekend to spend Easter at his Mar-a-Lago estate with family.

One astonished local snapped a selfie with the plane, adding that it had 'been a weird day'

Trump, Melania and Barron traveled last weekend but the President returned to Washington on Sunday just an hour before the 60 Minutes program featuring porn star Stormy Daniels aired.

First daughter Tiffany Trump was also spotted at the airport on Thursday having arrived on Air Force One with her father.

The 24-year-old, who is a student at Georgetown Law School, arrived wearing a black shirt and trousers with silver loafers.

Tiffany and her sister Ivanka had spent the afternoon in Cleveland, Ohio watching on as their father addressed industrial workers.
Chilling footage of an inmate being slashed with a sharp metal blade at the notorious Wormwood Scrubs prison has emerged online.

The 15-second video posted last week appears to show footage of an attack carried out on a prisoner accused of grassing at HMP Wormwood Scrubs in west London.

The shocking attack was uploaded to an Instagram account which promotes illegal activity in UK jails.

Scroll down for video

Horrific footage has emerged of an inmate apparently being attacked with a sharp metal blade at the notorious Wormwood Scrubs prison, in London

The feed is used by prisoners to brag about violent and illicit acts carried out while inside.

In the video, the victim appears pinned into a corner where he is held by an outstretched arm.

He looks fearfully towards the camera and tries to shield his head with his free arm.

Two men's voices can be heard in the footage and one says: 'Listen - so why do you snitch on Albanians, bro?'

The victim protests and the same voice interjects, saying: 'Yeah so how many boxes you gonna gimme today? One of each yeah?'

The victim then shouts out in pain as a man's arm lunges from behind the camera towards him and makes contact.

A voice can be heard over the victim's cries, shouting: 'Shut up, shut up - I'm stabbing him.'

The 15-second video posted last week appears to show footage of an attack carried out on a prisoner accused of grassing at HMP Wormwood Scrubs in west London

When the attacker's hand moves back into view a sharp piece of metal, similar to a razor blade, is visible in his hand.

A caption alongside the video says the victim is 'from West London and known as a grass locally'.

The description adds: 'He has been caught recently still snitching on the inside too!!'

The footage is another episode of violence at the west London prison, where two inmates have died this year.

The shocking attack was uploaded to an Instagram account which promotes illegal activity in UK jails. The feed is used by prisoners to brag about violent and illicit acts carried out while inside

Khader Saleh, 25, was found stabbed to death in his cell on January 31, leading to calls for prison reforms and better protection for inmates.

Ketheeswaren Kunarathnam, 45, died in custody on February 23.

Both deaths followed a December prison inspection of Wormwood Scrubs which highlighted a 'surge in violence' at the insitution.

In a statement about the Instagram account, a Prison Service spokesman said: 'This behaviour is completely unacceptable and we are urgently working to get the content removed from social media.

'We are taking decisive action to find and block mobile phones in prison, including a 2m investment to block mobile phone signals.'

There is a maximum two-year penalty for inmates caught with phones.
Justin Trudeau has seen his lead in the polls fall with his disastrous trip to India and focus on gender being blamed.

According to CBC's poll tracker the opposition Conservative Party is now in the lead with 37.7 percent of voting intentions ahead of Trudeau's Liberals on 33.7 percent and the left-wing New Democratic Party on 18.5 percent.

The 46-year-old Trudeau's good looks, progressive policies and youthful quirkiness, compared to traditional politicians, saw him ride high in the polls after his unexpected win in the 2015 election.

Trudeau in traditional Indian clothes while on a visit to the holy Sikh shrine of Golden temple in Amritsar

The Canadian Prime Minister was widely mocked for his apparent fondness for dressing up in Indian clothes

Trudeau's good looks have made him popular with female voters but an expert said he needs to win back men

As well as being mocked for his choice of clothes, Trudeau was criticised for a dinner invitation made to convicted Sikh terrorist Jaspal Atwal while in India.

Atwal tried to kill an Indian minister who was on a visit to Canada 1986 and though Trudeau said he was not told about the invitation and it was withdrawn, the episode was seen as damaging.

Pollster Nik Nanos told the Washington Post Trudeau's dip in popularity is completely 'self-inflicted'.

Nanos also said the electorate are also beginning to tire of self-proclaimed feminist Trudeau's focus on gender.

He said this divide grew more sharply as he continued to push a pro-feminist agenda, with Trudeau having lost about one-third of his male support since 2015.

'He's been very gender-focused. When you focus so much on gender, it means that other voters, i.e. men, aren't as important,' Nanos told the Post.

Nanos said Trudeau needs to return to an agenda 'that appeals to both men and women', to recover his position.

Trudeau's choice of quirky socks has been seen as a sign of his idiosyncratic style

Trudeau's decline in popularity comes despite a booming economy, relative success in NAFTA trade talks and a weak opposition.

David Coletto, chief executive of Abacus Data, an Ottawa polling firm, said: 'All of a sudden, we saw this drop.

'It's the first time since Trudeau became prime minister that we have results showing the Conservatives slightly ahead.'

But Stephen Azzi, associate professor of political management at Carleton University in Ottawa warned against attaching to much importance to polls 18 months ahead of an election.

'Governments tend to lag in Year 2 or 3 of their mandate. I think they should be worried, but I don't think it's all doom and gloom,' he said.
A serial killer dubbed 'China's Jack the Ripper' has been sentenced to death for the rape and murder of 11 women and girls including an eight-year-old.

Gao Chengyong, 54, was arrested in 2016 after a DNA test linked him to the crimes, bringing an end to the murder mystery spanning from 1988 to 2002.

Gao was compared to Victorian era murderer Jack the Ripper because of the way his victims' corpses were found mutilated, often with their breasts, reproductive organs, ears and hands cut off.

Death sentence: Gao Chengyong, 54, was compared to Jack the Ripper due the way his victims' corpses were found mutilated, often with breasts and reproductive organs removed

He killed his first victim, a 23-year-old woman, during a home invasion in his native city of Baiyin in north-western China's Gansu Province, in 1988.

Chinese media reported that, when his arrest finally ended the 28-year shadow looming over the city of Baiyin, local residents celebrated with fireworks.

Gao, a shopkeeper, confessed to all the killings and is said to have remembered in detail the precise time and place each one was carried out.

His youngest victim was an eight-year-old girl who he followed home, before raping and strangling her.

Close match: Gao is compared to one of the suspect sketches made during the 14-year hunt for him in Baiyin in north-western China's Gansu Province

Wanted: 'China's Jack The Ripper' haunted Baiyin from 1988 to 2002, but Gao was not arrested until a DNA match in 2016

Taken in: Gao Chengyong (centre) is pictured during his arrrest in 2016

Gao left the dead girl in her bedroom closet, where she was found by her mother.

Gao, who was rumoured to have targeted 'long-haired females dressed in red', reportedly showed no remorse when investigators interrogated him following his arrest in 2016.

His 'only emotional moment' was when he asked: 'Will my case affect my children?'

He has two sons and had been married 30 years upon his arrest.
Two people have been quizzed by police for allegedly revealing the identity of the woman who said she was raped by two Irish rugby stars.

The pair were interviewed by officers in Northern Ireland for allegedly announcing the complainant's name on social media.

She had claimed that Ireland rugby players Paddy Jackson, 26, and Stuart Olding, 25, sexually assaulted her but the pair were cleared following a nine-week trial.

And her name was said to have appeared in a number of social media posts which breaches her right to anonymity and is considered an offence in Ireland and the UK.

Paddy Jackson, 26, (left) and Stuart Olding, 25, (right) were accused of raping the woman at a party back at Jackson's home and were both cleared yesterday

Jackson, who played 25 times for Ireland, was photographed leaving Belfast Crown Court after being cleared of rape

Hundreds of #IBelieveHer campaigners gathered on O'Connell Street in Dublin on Thursday afternoon after two rugby stars were cleared of rape

A picture which was believed to be the woman involved in the high-profile was also alleged to have been sent around on WhatsApp, reports the Irish Independent.

The two people have been questioned by the Police Service of Northern Ireland who said they were interviewed in relation to an offence under Section 5 of the UK's Sexual Offences Amendment Act 1992.

Two files have been sent to the North's Public Prosecutions Service for consideration.

Social media pages Twitter and Facebook have said they will assist the police in cases similar to this in the past.

The offence has taken place in the UK before and people were fined for revealing the name of the complainant involved in the Ched Evans rape trial.

And it has now emerged that a separate investigation has been launched and police are looking into allegations that one of the jurors who sat on the trial has been communicating about the case on social media

A PSNI spokesman told MailOnline: 'There is an ongoing police investigation and two people have been interviewed in relation to an offence under section five of the Sexual Offences Amendment Act 1992.

'Two Files have been forwarded to the Public Prosecution Service for consideration.'

In relation to the juror, the spokesman added: 'We are aware of comments made on a social media platform.'

After Jackson was cleared on Wednesday, his solicitor Joe McVeigh referred to the 'vile commentary' on social media throughout the trial.

A section of the crowd at the #IBelieveHer solidarity demonstration at The Spire in Dublin

Solidarity: Karen Kelly and her brother from Conor traveled from Cabra West on the outskirts of Dublin to take part in the demonstration

He said the posts 'polluted the sphere of public discourse and raised real concerns about the integrity of the trial process'.

Mr McVeigh said: 'To that end we want to thank the learned trial Judge Patricia Smyth for her management of this trial in the face of an onslaught of toxic contempt, particularly on Twitter.

'Several days of this trial were lost due to problems thrown up by the intrusive infection of the process by social media.

'All the lawyers have been distracted by having to man the barriers against the flood of misinformed, misconceived and malicious content on the internet, particularly during the last phase of this trial, and worryingly even at the hands of public servants who should have known better.

'There's no reason to believe that this problem will not worsen.

Rory Harrison, 25, (left, pictured today) and Blane McIlory (right, pictured today) were also cleared

Jackson (pictured playing for Ireland) has not played at club or national level since he was charged in July last year

'To that end, we invite the office of the Lord Chief Justice, the Attorney General, and the Public Prosecution Service, to enter into fresh discussions with us to look at more robust mechanisms that can strike an effective balance between everyone's rights, but that properly secure the integrity of our criminal justice system.'

It comes after thousands of people took to the streets in protest after the players were cleared of rape.

The court heard the pair were in a WhatsApp group which discussed having a 'spit roast' and said sex with the woman was 'like a merry-go-round'.

But just hours after they were cleared, in response to the wider issues raised by the case and in support of the woman and others in a similar position, thousands of people tweeted #IBelieveHer.

The hashtag was trending in the UK, Ireland and worldwide and on Thursday a rally outside the Laganside courthouse took place along with others in Derry, Cork, Limerick, Galway and Dublin. Tonight a much smaller group of protesters have gathered in Marble Arch in London.

Both Jackson and Olding were cleared alongside their friend Rory Harrison, 25 - who denied perverting the course of justice and withholding information.

Another friend Blane McIlroy, 26, was accused of one count of exposure but the four defendants were cleared of all charges relating to the alleged incident in June 2016.
Two young sisters became first time mum's just hours apart in the same hospital when they went into labour on the same day.

Lauren Brennan, 20, had baby girl Sofia just hours after her younger sister Lily, 17, gave birth to Jaiden.

The sisters, from Bootle, Merseyside, were originally scheduled to be induced 12 days apart.

So as planned, Lauren went in to Liverpool Women's Hospital on March 23.

From left to right: The sister's father Phillip Brennan, Lauren with Sofia, Lily with Jaiden and mother Karen Kennedy

Lauren (left) and Lily (right) both gave birth in the Liverpool Women's Hospital just hours apart

But Lily's baby boy just couldn't wait to meet his cousin and decided to come early, as she went into labour on the same day.

She gave birth in Liverpool Women's Hospital at 12.19pm, just hours before her sister Lauren, who had her baby girl at 5.31pm.

Father and now grandfather Phillip Brennan, 47, said: 'I am over the moon. I am made up, I really am.

'I have been looking forward to being a grandad for what feels like ages. I am smiling like a big Cheshire cat.'

Mr Brennan said he was 'supportive' when his daughters told him they were pregnant, but said Lily did try and keep it a secret from him.

Lily proudly shows off baby Jaiden, who was born at 12.19pm and weighed 7lbs 5oz.

Lauren gave birth hours later, giving birth to baby Sofia at 5.31pm

He told the Liverpool Echo: 'Lauren was sat on the couch crying her eyes out when she told me and I just said 'what are you crying for? These things happen'.

'I was made up for her. And then a couple of months later I knew about our Lily, but she didn't want to tell me.

'You have got to support your children.'

Mr Brennan said on the day of the births, Lily had gone to the hospital with Lauren as she prepared to be induced.

She left to go home and meet her friends, but when she got home her waters broke.

Proud grandparents Mr Brennan and his partner Karen Kennedy with their grandchildren

She was taken to hospital and mother Karen Kennedy, who was already at hospital with Lauren, then had to split her time between her two daughters.

Lily, a former pupil at Hillside High School, Bootle, gave birth to baby Jayden, who weighed 7lbs 5oz.

And just five hours later Lauren welcomed little Sophia, weighing 6lbs 14oz.

Speaking about becoming a first-time mum, Lauren said: 'It's really good and Sophia is doing really well.

'I was really shocked when Lily went into labour. My mum and dad have both been a big help.'

Phillip, who said Lauren and Lily have been staying at the family home until they are settled, said: 'I am waiting until I can finally have my bed back.

'I have been on the couch, but it is fine - I am enjoying it all.

'Lauren is moving back in to her own house today and I am going to move in with her for a little while to help.

'We are all made up.'
Passengers on a hot air balloon that crashed and left sixteen people injured have revealed they were told to brace before it slammed into a paddock - amid claims the pilot didn't call Triple-0 because 'there was no emergency'.

'We hit the top of the gum tree, spun around, hit another gum tree ... and then we slammed into the paddock,' Michael MacGregor told 9 News of the incident in the NSW Hunter Valley.

He said they were told to 'brace yourself' as they hit the top of the first tree.

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A hot air balloon crash has left sixteen people injured in the Hunter Valley, New South Wales

Ambulance NSW said the injured arrived at the hospital by private vehicle and was not aware of any call to emergency services being made

No emergency call was made to authorities, despite the incident injuring 16 people.

'To our knowledge, there was no call to triple zero. We were notified through hospital processes,' New South Wales Ambulance Inspector Luke Wiseman said.

He explained the accident happened in a 'landing process', according to the information they had been given.

Balloon Safaris said the pilot deemed 'there was no need for emergency services to be called'.

Police are also questioning the actions of not calling Emergency Services.

Inspector Robert Post said: 'I think it would be common sense to make that call if you have injured people on the ground.'

However he said the company was cooperating.

The balloon, operated by Balloon Safaris, came down at about 8am, according to NSW Ambulance.

Balloon Safari director Michael Scaife told Daily Mail Australia he took three people to hospital as a precautionary measure with 'minor injuries'.

Sixteen people were rushed from the scene to Cessnock Hospital with injuries including spinal and broken bones

The balloon came down at the corner of McDonald's Road and Broke Road in Pokolbin

'Everyone climbed out of the balloon with no problems at all,' he said.

Balloon Safaris also said its balloon took off in calm conditions but after half an hour 'visibility decreased which influenced the pilot's decision to land at the first available landing spot'.

The balloon then hit some trees, landed firmly and there were 'some injuries'.

The sixteen people who presented to the hospital were aged between 7 and 38 years old and were taken to Cessnock Hospital by private vehicles with injuries including spinal and broken bones.

The two women with spinal injuries, aged 34 and 36, were transferred to the John Hunter Hospital in Newcastle for specialised help.

Police from Hunter Valley Police District have commenced inquiries into the circumstances surrounding the incident

The balloon came down at the corner of McDonalds Road and Broke Road in Pokolbin.

Police from Hunter Valley Police District have commenced inquiries into the circumstances surrounding the incident.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau has been notified.
Australian politicians disqualified from parliament during the national dual citizenship reckoning won't be made to pay back a single cent of their taxpayer salaries or expenses.

Half a dozen federal MPs in 2017 alone were ensnared by the citizenship crisis - including ex-Deputy MP Barnaby Joyce, Greens senator Larissa Waters and One Nation's Malcolm Roberts - who were forced to quit cabinet as their dual nationalities were exposed.

Despite the MPs being deemed 'ineligible' to have sat in Parliament while holding dual citizenship, their debts to the Government - including their envious salary packages and expenses - will be waived completely.

Half a dozen federal MPs in 2017 alone were ensnared by the citizenship crisis - including ex-Deputy MP Barnaby Joyce, (pictured) Greens senator Larissa Waters and One Nation's Malcolm Roberts - who were forced to quit cabinet

Greens senator Larissa Waters (pictured) was found to have Canadian citizenship

An alarming number of Australian politicians fell victim to the country's little-known dual citizenship clause and were urged to resign as the fallout continued.

Nationals MPs Barnaby Joyce and Fiona Nash, Greens Scott Ludlam and Larissa Waters and One Nation's Malcolm Roberts were all found to be dual citizens in 2017.

Joyce and Ludlam were outed as New Zealand citizens, Walters held Canadian citizenship while Nash and Ludlam were both found to have British citizenship.

Nick Xenophon, Jacqui Lambie, Skye Kakoschke-Moore and David Feeney also stepped down from Parliament because of their dual citizenships.

Only Resources Minister Matt Canavan - who was accused of having Italian citizenship - was eventually cleared by the High Court.

Under Clause 44 of the Constitution, it sets out restrictions on who can be a candidate for Federal parliament.

Nationals MPs Barnaby Joyce and Fiona Nash, (pictured) Greens Scott Ludlam and Larissa Waters and One Nation's Malcolm Roberts were all found to be dual citizens in 2017

Joyce and Ludlam (pictured) were outed as New Zealand citizens, Walters held Canadian citizenship while Nash and Roberts were both found to have British citizenship

The High Court found Malcolm Roberts (pictured) was a British citizen at the time he nominated for the Senate

It reads: 'Any person who: Is under any acknowledgement of allegiance, obedience, or adherence to a foreign power, or is a subject or a citizen or entitled to the rights or privileges of a subject or citizen of a foreign power shall be incapable of being chosen or of sitting as a senator or a member of the House of Representatives.'

It can now be revealed not a cent of the politicians' inflated salaries will be deposited back into the taxpayer purse.

Former Nationals Party Leader and Deputy MP Joyce earned a cushy base salary of $408,032, Walters received $220,934, Roberts earned $199,040, Nash at $343,344 and Ludlam at $199,040.

The parliamentarians were ruled ineligible from the 2 July 2016 Federal election onwards, meaning the wages bill for the MPs alone would have topped a staggering $1million.

Nick Xenophon, Jacqui Lambie, (pictured) Skye Kakoschke-Moore and David Feeney also stepped down from Parliament because of their dual citizenships

Only Resources Minister Matt Canavan (pictured) - who was accused of having Italian citizenship - was eventually cleared by the High Court

Any expenses the MPs may have claimed during their tenure holding dual citizenships will also be waived.

An internal review into the possibility of repaying their taxpayer salaries recommended the debts be waived as the politicians acted in 'good faith'.

'[The review found] all parliamentarians performed their duties in good faith for a proper purpose and that it was difficult for individuals at the time of nomination to know that they were ineligible for nomination,' Finance Minister Mathias Cormann said on Thursday.

'These debts include salaries, superannuation and electorate allowances, as well as non-salary expenses, such as, staff expenses, office expenses and travel expenses.'

The citizenship scandal is still brewing and the High Court is yet to rule whether Labor senator Katy Gallagher was a dual British citizen.
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An astonishing collection of photographs that provides a glimpse into the Victorians' morbid fascination with the afflicted is expected to fetch more than 30,000 when it goes up for auction.

The Jubilee Collection was amassed by one of the first specialist antique photographic dealers and collectors in London, Beryl Vosburgh - who was also a present of the BBC's children's show, Play School.

Some of the images depict disabled people whose conditions were exploited for the purposes of entertainment in Victorian Britain.

One shows the Bunker Brothers, two conjoined twins from Thailand and from whom the term 'Siamese Twins' originates.

They were spotted swimming by an American merchant in 1829 who paid off the twins' parents to take them on a world tour as a curiosity exhibit.

Another features a man with dwarfism  many appeared in travelling fairs, circuses and taverns across England since the 1600s.

The crystal-clear and sharp images were captured by many pioneering photographers of the time, including Julia Margaret Cameron, William Fox Talbot - one of the founders of modern photography - Angus McBean and Cecil Beaton.

But at the heart of the collection are several thousand cartes de visite - precursors to to photographic postcards - which are just as popular among collectors today as they were with Victorians.

Left: The Bunker Brothers - from where the name Siamese Twins come from. Right: Edward Sothern is seen sporting huge side whiskers as the amiable but foolish aristocrat Lord Dundreary in the British play 'Our American Cousin' by Tom Taylor

A man with dwarfism who worked as an entertainer looks jovial as he waves he cap around his head for the photographer

A man sports an unusually relaxed post in this carte. The astonishing collection of Victorian photographs include several thousand cartes de visite

Left: A Scottish military veteran poses while wearing medals that were likely awarded furing the Crimean War. Right: A man sports a rather unusual fancy dress costume

A young girl poses in fine clothes while sitting on a swing (left). Two child performers post for the camera circa 1850 (right)

Left: A young girl poses while sat on a chair. Right: A baby sleeps while a spaniel watches over her

It was especially rare to commission a photographer to take pictures at a wedding. Bridesmaids are seen clutching bouquets of flowers

The collection focuses largely on the glorious early years up to the mid-1860s, including some by London-based Frenchman Camille Silvy.

Silvy's cartes show 'unrivalled crispness, depth of tone and compositional skills', say auctioneers Special Auction Services.

Hugo Marsh, Director at Special Auction Services says: 'This really is a fascinating collection and a real reflection of social history.

'Beryl made her career out of buying and selling but it was her passion more than a job; she also took very special care sorting her cartes de visite into categories thus indicating her dedication to defining and presenting the past in the best possible way.

'We have not seen a collection this large since the 1990s and we anticipate the lots being very popular with collectors in the UK as well as worldwide.'

Left: Two Victorian girls pose for a picture. The majority of the images show individuals sitting or standing - sometimes in discomfort owing to the length of exposure - in studios. Right: An old woman sits in the Ladies Wishing Chair in Giants' Causeway - a throne formed from a perfectly arranged set of columns

Left: A vicar, believed to be a Crimean War veteran, poses for the camera while clutching a bible. Right: An important military man with campaign medals on his chest and order of the garter

Left: A man sports unusual attire while entertaining at a military camp overseas. Right: A working class family have their picture taken in the 1860s

Two women pose for a photograph while dressed up as a maid and street seller.

Left: W.C. Overton, a ventriloquist, poses for the camera with two dummies attached to his shoulders. Right: A woman dressed up as a fisher lady

A lady wearing an expensive-looking dresses poses for a photograph while playing croquet

The majority of the images show individuals sitting or standing - sometimes in discomfort owing to the length of exposure - in studios

But the cartes most sought after by Beryl were those depicting enchanting family groups, children with toys and dolls, views from around the world, sitters in British India and other parts of the Empire, as well as circus attractions, politicians and royalty.

One, from around 1860, shows the popular comic actor Edward Sothern sporting huge side whiskers as the amiable but foolish aristocrat Lord Dundreary in the British play 'Our American Cousin' by Tom Taylor.

Another depicts a young man photographed in India with dark hair and a beard who lost an arm, probably in the Indian Mutiny of 1857.

The Beryl Vosburgh Photographica Collection goes under the hammer on May 3 at Special Auction Services, in Newbury.

Lot estimates range from 50 to 80 upwards, making history affordable.
U.S. consulate staff in St. Petersburg, Russia's second-largest city, have been seen clearing out the building after the government ordered the consulate's closure.

Staff and security guards were spotted carrying out boxes and furniture as passers-by cheered them on, calling for the Americans to 'get out of here'.

The closure is part of Russia's mass-expulsion of more than 150 diplomats, 60 of them Americans, in a like-for-like response to expulsions all over the world in response to the poisoning of Sergei Skripal in the UK.

Security personnel carry pieces of furniture out of the U.S. consulate in St. Petersburg, Russia

A man carries boxes out from the U.S. consulate as a Russian police officer guards the entrance, in St. Petersburg, Russia, Friday

A van leaves the U.S. consulate in St.Petersburg after the government ordered its closure in the wake of the global expulsion of Russian diplomats

Skripal, a Russian former double agent, and his daughter Yulia are thought to have been poisoned from a nerve agent being smeared on the front door of his house in Salibury, Wiltshire.

Russia is widely thought to be behind the attack, and after the UK threw out 23 Russian diplomats, other nations followed.

Russia has today ordered further expulsion of British diplomats, telling London it has one month to cut its number of diplomatic staff in Russia to the same as Russia has in Britain.

Speaking to reporters in Moscow on Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov insisted that 'Russia didn't start any diplomatic wars' and had to respond.

Time to go: British Ambassador to Russia Laurie Bristow leaves the Russian foreign ministry building in Moscow, Russia

Should I stay or should I go: Ambassador of the Netherlands to Russia Regina Veronica Maria Jones-Bos and German ambassador to Russia Ruediger Von Fritsch arrives at the Russian Foreign Ministry headquarters

Irish exit: Ireland's Ambassador to Russia Adrian McDaid leaves a car as he arrives to the Russian Foreign Minister headquarters

Going out out: Australian ambassador to Russia Peter Tesch and Lithuania's ambassador to Russia Remigijus Motuzas arrive

As well as throwing out American diplomats, Russia also ordered the closure of the U.S. consulate in St. Petersburg in response to the U.S. announcement to shut the Russian consulate in Seattle.

An Associated Press reporter on Friday saw consulate staff carrying boxes from the building and loading them into a van.

Several mini-vans drove out of the consulate while security also detained a man who threw a Starbucks cup at the building.

Some of the passers-by near the U.S. consulate in St. Petersburg cheered the expulsions.

'Let them get out of here,' said 61-year-old pensioner Viktor Fedin. 'You won't put Russia on its knees.'

Moving day dinner: A U.S. consulate employee pulls a trolley with ordered pizzas into the consulate in St. Petersburg

Russia announced the expulsion of more than 150 diplomats, including 60 Americans, on Thursday and said it was closing a U.S. consulate in retaliation for the wave of Western expulsions of Russian diplomats over the poisoning of an ex-spy and his daughter in Britain

The U.S. flag flies at the U.S. consulate in St. Petersburg, Russia, Friday,

Others were more cautious, worried that the closures would affect visa processing for Russians.

'The Russian government has to respond to the hostile actions against Russia,' said 32-year-old researcher Yelena Bogomazova.

'But the escalation is bad. The closure of the consulate will make it difficult for people to get U.S. visas, they will have to go to Moscow.'

After Russia expelled several dozens of U.S. diplomats, the waiting list for U.S. visa applications in Russia has increased to weeks if not months. The U.S. embassy said it was unable to process visa applications faster because of the staff shortage.
Easter campers have outraged locals after being left stranded on a popular four wheel driving beach in Queensland.

The campers on Teewah Beach at Double Island Point had to pile up the dunes after a monster high tide swallowed up most of the popular beach.

As the tide swept in the normally picturesque spot turned into chaos, the Sunshine Coast Daily reported.

Easter campers were left stranded on the dunes at Teewah beach after a monster high tide left them scrambling to stay dry

The popular spot at Double Island Point turned to chaos after the tied started coming in

Photographs of the stranded drivers were posted on Facebook and heated tensions surrounding the right to drive on beaches flared again.

Within the Cooloola area it is an offence to drive on the dunes or over vegetation.

Most users expressed anger that the drivers had no consideration for the environment and were endangering baby turtles by being there.

Some questioned why no ranger was present while others argued that the state government did not put enough money in to keeping the local wildlife safe.

'Send the rangers along. Fine the lot of them. Then sack the rangers for allowing it in the first place,' said one.

'What is a gathering of bogans called anyway?' wrote another.

The pictures of the drivers on the dunes were posted to Facebook and have outraged locals who are concerned about the impact on the environment

There is usually a sizeable amount of beach to drive on without endangering the baby turtles that hatch there or the ecosystem

'Seems common sense is so hard to come by these days. A quick check on the tide conditions would have prevented this dune destruction,' added another.

A spokesperson for Surf Life Saving Queensland said that the monster tide meant there was no beach left for the vehicles to drive on.

'It's a really high tide there at the moment with very strong surges,' the spokesperson said.

'People are having to drive up on the dunes because there is nowhere else.'

'The camp-sites are completely booked out for the entire weekend so you can imagine how many people are there.'

There was one lifeguard on the beach at the time of the scramble but Surf Life Saving Queensland said it was their priority to ensure safety in the water.

Reports have indicated the tide is above 2 metres.
Sean Cole subjected his son to a horrific ordeal because he believed the child to be gay

A man and his girlfriend are facing life in prison after he got her to rape, sodomize and abuse his 11-year-old autistic son because he thought the child was gay.

A jury in Alabama convicted Sean Cole and Khadeijah Moore, of rape, sodomy and sexual abuse of a child younger than 12.

The offences took place during the week of Thanksgiving 2016 when the boy was in Huntsville to visit his 29-year-old father, said prosecutor Tim Douthit, the Madison County assistant district attorney.

After Cole found his son in a 'compromising position' with another boy, he directed Moore to perform sex acts on the child, AL.com reported.

According to trial testimony, Moore, who was 20 years old at the time, raped, sodomized and inappropriately touched the child, who was also forced the child to perform sex acts on her.

'It was solely that (Cole) was worried that his son was gay or might become gay,' Douthit said.

'There was no evidence he had a sexual attraction to his son or children. He just though he could, for lack of better words, "straighten him out" .'

The boy lived in Georgia with his mother and when he returned home, asked her questions about sexual behavior that made her suspicious and she altered Huntsville police.

'I have been prosecuting child sex crimes for a long time now, and this is the first time I've ran into anything like this,' Douthit said.

'The most terrible part of this is the little boy still doesn't understand it's not his fault.'

Khadeijah Moore (pictured) acted at the behest of Cole, her defense attorney said

When a forensic interviewer asked the boy what was going through his mind during the rape, the child replied: 'I was thinking why is my dad doing this to me. Dad said to tell no one. I failed him - I just told you.'

Despite his ordeal, the boy, who turned 13 on Tuesday, is doing well now the prosecutor said.

'But, he still thinks he's the bad guy. It's heartbreaking,' he added.

Cole has been in the Madison County Jail since his arrest while Moore is considered a fugitive because she didn't show up for trial after being released on bail.

Moore's lawyer Reta McKannan said: 'My client did everything at Sean Cole's direction. That doesn't make it OK. That doesn't make it right.'

The trial began Monday and wrapped up with the guilty verdicts Tuesday afternoon and sentencing is due for May 24 at 11 a.m.
Roger Moore and Britt Ekland were guests at The Clermont Club in Mayfair

A Mayfair casino once popular with aristocrats, Hollywood film stars, government ministers and gangsters has closed its doors.

The Clermont casino in Berkley Square opened in 1962 and hosted a range of celebrities such as Roger Moore, Britt Ekland, Joan Collins, David Frost, Ryan O'Neill and even Lord 'Lucky' Lucan.

The famous gambling haunt lost more than 6 million over the period of two years according to its last annual report. It is due to publish its latest figures tomorrow according to Companies House.

After a decade, the club, which was founded by John Aspinal, was sold to Playboy Enterprises and later passed on to the Mecca and Rank organisations before being bought in 2006 by Malaysian billionaire Quek Leng Chan.

The club was founded following a landmark legal case which legitimised casinos.

On one night, Lord Derby lost 300,000 playing in the club - which is worth around 7 million today.

On the night before he murdered his nanny in 1974, Lord Lucan went to the club to clear up his gambling debts before disappearing for good.

Before gambling was legalised, Aspinal took 5 per cent of the value of any bets on the table for the house. However, following the legalisation of gambling, the club's income was hit dramatically.

It was a regular haunt for celebrities such as Michael Caine, pictured with his wife Shakira

Journalist David Frost, pictured attended a party for Polly Bergen by Princes Mary Obolensky

According to its most recent annual report, the club, pictured, has lost 6m over two years

As a result, Aspinal and his business partners started scamming their clients using 'marked cards' in a scheme dubbed 'The Big Edge'.

Punters at the casino played a game called 'Chemmy'. During the big games, the casino would have their own secret player on the table who was able to identify the marked cards and bet accordingly.

One of those players ripped off by the scam was Colonel Bill Stirling - founder of the SAS.

Joan Collins, pictured, with husband Ron Kass, was also a regular at the high profile club

The club was founded by John Aspinal, pictured, who later sold it to Playboy

According to The Times, the club may be about to sold.

Local resident Brooke Greville described it as 'one of the best names in the casino world'.

He said he and his associates had made an offer to the current owners.

MailOnline has approached the club for comment.
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This is the incredible moment a whale shark gulped down a never-before-photographed 'tornado' of plankton.

Warren Baverstock, 49, hung a single light off the back of a boat to attract the phytoplankton that the huge fish love to eat - and then waited patiently out in the dark ocean.

He was delighted when a 11.4ft juvenile whale shark rose from the depths to gobble up the plumes of gathering food, and he hopped in to capture silhouetted by the light.

Warren Baverstock, 49, hung a single light off the back of a boat to attract the phytoplankton that the huge fish love to eat - and then waited patiently out in the dark ocean. He was delighted when a 3.5m juvenile whale shark rose from the depths to gobble up the plumes of gathering food, and he hopped in to capture silhouetted by the light

Baverstock was astonished to witness the microscopic plankton display shoaling behaviour and spiral into a 4m tornado of 'fish food' off the coast of Africa. Pictured: The enormous fish opening its huge jaws

Warren, from Devon, also captured an incredible photo of the whale shark rising below the swirling plume, with its enormous jaws parted as it feasted on the plankton

Warren, director of Aquarium Operations at the Burj Al Arab Hotel in Dubai, took the photos during his fifth trip to study whale sharks in Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa. He said: 'Just getting the whale shark was totally amazing'

Warren traveled to the Gulf of Tadjoura with a group of researchers to study the spot where hundreds of whale sharks gather to feed between September and January

Baverstock was astonished to witness the microscopic plankton display shoaling behaviour and spiral into a 13ft tornado of 'fish food' off the coast of Africa.

Warren, from Devon, also captured an incredible photo of the whale shark rising below the swirling plume, with its enormous jaws parted as it feasted on the plankton.

The aquarium director said he has never seen or heard of this behaviour and speculates it is microscopic plankton being hunted by larger plankton.

Warren, director of Aquarium Operations at the Burj Al Arab Hotel in Dubai, took the photos during his fifth trip to study whale sharks in Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa.

The beautiful fish was spotted off the coast of Djibouti on the Horn of Africa

He said: 'Just getting the whale shark was totally amazing. The people on the boat were really wanting to get in too.

'But to see that tornado, it was the icing on the cake.

'To have the whale shark, with the cloud, was amazing, but then to see and then capture it with this spiraling tornado of plankton was just incredible.

'I was expecting to attract the plankton but had never seen that kind of behaviour. I don't know if it is natural behaviour.

'If you look very carefully, you can see all that microscopic plankton is almost pink.

'It is possible that because of the presence of even microscopic predators, that was causing the smaller plankton to tornado, as a shoaling affect.

'I took from this that in fact different types of plankton with the microscopic plankton being hunted by larger types of plankton.

'We an only assume this is the case, because this tornado affect is not something I have ever witnesses before.'

Warren traveled to the Gulf of Tadjoura with a group of researchers to study the spot where hundreds of whale sharks gather to feed between September and January.

Hoping for a 'dream shot' of the animal feasting, he moored a boat 100m from the shore in the middle of the night, and suspended an LED light from the gangplank.

It attracted phytoplankton, which are attracted to the light, and in turn draw in bigger predators that prey on them.

On the third night a whale shark approached, but when Warren got into the water with his camera kit, it moved away.

He jumped in and waited for more than an hour, hoping it would return.

'I was in the water in the pitch black and felt really vulnerable and quite scared,' he said.

'When you drop down into the water you can see the shaft of light from the boat, but that's it.

'I'm sure there are other predators around, and whale sharks aren't the only sharks in that area.'

After one hour and 15 minutes the beast returned, this time totally distracted by the swirling tornado tower of plankton, which it swooped up to eat, for ten to 15 minutes.

On the third night a whale shark approached, but when Warren got into the water with his camera kit, it moved away. He jumped in and waited for more than an hour, hoping it would return

After one hour and 15 minutes the beast returned, this time totally distracted by the swirling tornado tower of plankton, which it swooped up to eat, for ten to 15 minutes

Hoping for a 'dream shot' of the animal feasting, he moored a boat 100m from the shore in the middle of the night, and suspended an LED light from the gangplank

The whale shark is the world's largest known fish. It originated about 60 million years ago. The majestic animal is most often found in tropical waters and can live for about 70 years on average

Warren added: 'With the bad publicity that sharks get world wide, this shows that not all sharks are fierce predators that humans should fear - some are gentle giants'

These stunning shots show the shark from above water as it approaches the surface to catch its meal. Photographer Warren said: 'I managed to capture a unique moment which otherwise would never be seen'

The aquarium director (pictured) said he has never seen or heard of this behaviour and speculates it is microscopic plankton being hunted by larger plankton

He took the photos by free diving down, and shooting from under the whale, having to dive deep in order to get the whale, plankton and light in the same shot.

He added: 'These photographs are special in such that they were shot using available light, of which there was barely any.

'I managed to capture a unique moment which otherwise would never be seen.

'With the bad publicity that sharks get world wide, this shows that not all sharks are fierce predators that humans should fear - some are gentle giants.'
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Filipino Catholics reenacted the crucifixion of Jesus after many of them marched through the streets whipping themselves and lacerating their backs with razorblades.

Gruesome footage from across the Southeast Asian country showed masked devotees performing the acts of self-inflicted pain to mark the Holy Week in a bloody religious ritual to atone for their sins.

Though frowned upon by the Church, the gruesome re-enactments of Christ's final moments draw thousands of believers - and tourists - in a carnival-like atmosphere that is big business for locals.

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A procession makes its way through Sorrento, Italy, on Good Friday as Easter celebrations sweep the country

A member of the procession which wound its way through Sorrento, Italy, on Good Friday carries a cross over his left shoulder

A procession makes its way through Sorrento, Italy, on Good Friday as Easter celebrations sweep the country. Members hold candles aloft as they make the solemn journey

A procession makes its way through Sorrento, Italy, on Good Friday as Easter celebrations sweep the country. Members hold candles aloft as they make the solemn journey

Penitents from the Good Dead Christ brotherhood take part in a procession in Zamora, Spain, in the early hours of March 27

Penitents from the Good Dead Christ brotherhood take part in a procession in Zamora, Spain, in the early hours of March 27

Penitents from the Good Dead Christ brotherhood take part in a procession in Zamora, Spain, in the early hours of March 27

Penitents from the Good Dead Christ brotherhood take part in a procession in Zamora, Spain, in the early hours of March 27

Penitents from the Good Dead Christ brotherhood take part in a procession in Zamora, Spain, in the early hours of March 27. One member holds a statue of Jesus above his head

Using bamboo whips, penitents from around the province of Pampanga in the Philippines self-flagellate until their skin breaks and blood pours out

Filipino Catholics reenacted the crucifixion of Jesus, nailing themselves to crosses for several minutes to show their extreme devotion

Eight people had 8cm spikes driven through their palms and feet in hot, dry fields meant to echo the site where Christ was crucified some 2,000 years ago, while actors dressed as Roman soldiers completed the picture

Among an otherwise male field of penitents was 39-year-old Mary Jane Sazon, who made her seventh trip up onto the cross

Filipino penitent Ruben Enaje is nailed to a wooden cross for the 32nd year on Good Friday in San Pedro Cutud village, San Fernando, Pampanga, north of Manila

While the ordeal is undeniably painful, the penitents' weight rests on a wooden step and they spend only a few moments nailed to the cross before being carried to the medical tent for treatment

The devotees are lifted up after being nailed to their crosses, just as Roman soldiers would have done to Jesus

Bloodied worshipers kneel in front of the crosses used to crucify several of them in extreme atonement

In a collection of towns located north of Manila, eight people had 8cm spikes driven through their palms and feet in hot, dry fields meant to echo the site where Christ was crucified some 2,000 years ago.

Among an otherwise male field of penitents was 39-year-old Mary Jane Sazon, who made her seventh trip up onto the cross.

'Fulfilling my vow is important to me because ever since I started this the Lord answers my prayers,' Sazon told reporters as she pushed her dark hair back with freshly bandaged hands.

She would not be drawn on being the only woman crucified on Friday, saying 'I don't care what other people might say.'

They earlier marched through the streets whipping themselves in a bloody religious ritual to atone for their sins

Gruesome footage from the sleepy town of Pakil, about 70km east of Manila, shows masked devotees performing the acts of self-inflicted pain to mark the Holy Week

Hugas Dugo flagellants gathers in town plaza and start whipping themselves. The town plaza is the first station where their backs will get cut with a razor blade

The gory scenes are traditional in small towns of the primarily Catholic nation before Easter

Penitents performing self-flagellation to atone for their sins, lie on the ground to pray inside a Catholic church during Maundy Thursday Lenten rites in Manila

Scores of bare-chested men, some of whose faces were concealed by hoods, lashed their backs bloody, as they walked through the streets before selfie-snapping onlookers

The swinging of their whips left droplets of blood on cars, houses and even bottles of soda displayed on snack vendors' tables that lined the road

While the ordeal is undeniably painful, the penitents' weight rests on a wooden step and they spend only a few moments nailed to the cross before being carried to the medical tent for treatment.

At the same time, scores of bare-chested men, some of whose faces were concealed by hoods, lashed their backs bloody, as they walked through the streets before selfie-snapping onlookers.

The swinging of their whips left droplets of blood on cars, houses and even bottles of soda displayed on snack vendors' tables that lined the road.

They struck their backs with wooden rods, one for each station of the cross as depicted in Catholic tradition of Jesus' walk to the hill of Golgotha where he was crucified.

'If one of my family members gets sick, this is what we do,' said Norman Lapuot, 25, as he flogged himself with a bamboo-tipped whip. 'I do this for my relatives.'

Though a majority of the Philippines' 80 million Catholics spend Good Friday at church or with family, participants undergo the ordeal to atone for sins or to seek divine intervention

In addition to whipping themselves, extreme Catholics cut themselves with razor blades to bleed as Jesus did

A man carries a cross while mocked up with fake blood in a reenactment of the Passion of Christ in Lagos, Nigeria

The man falls down illustrating one of the stages of the cross where Jesus collapsed as he struggled to carry the load

Men dressed as Roman soldiers carrying whips marched with the actor playing Jesus as they did on his fateful journey

In a modern twist the actor was splashed with water from a plastic bottle as he lay on the ground

The gory scenes are traditional in small towns of the primarily Catholic nation before Easter as a form of worship believed to cleanse sins, cure illness, and grant wishes.

'If one of my family members gets sick, this is what we do,' said Norman Lapuot, 25, as he flogged himself with a bamboo-tipped whip. 'I do this for my relatives.'

Mr Lapuot, who said it was his fourth time taking part in the ceremony, added that he believed the ritual bloodletting had helped his grandfather recover from a stroke.

Though a majority of the Philippines' 80 million Catholics spend Good Friday at church or with family, participants undergo the ordeal to atone for sins or to seek divine intervention.

A flagellant in the Philippines has his back cut dozens of times with a razor blade to cause pain like what Jesus suffered in his execution

Devotees cut each other's backs after tearing away a section of their shirts which will soon be covered in blood

The extreme form of worship is believed to cleanse sins, cure illness, and grant wishes

Flagellants meet at the bottom of Rizal bridge in the town of Pakil. They would dress themselves with dried banana leaves for aesthetic purpose and to catch dripping blood from their back

The gruesome sights left some of the roughly 12,000 in attendance wide-eyed and wincing with vicarious pain

The mock crucifixions and other self-punishments on Good Friday have been going on for decades despite official disapproval from the nation's dominant Catholic Church

Food stalls, cab drivers and even souvenir stands get a boost from the event which draws thousands of visitors every year

Nearly 80 percent of people in the Philippines are Catholic, a legacy of the nation's 300 years of Spanish colonial rule that ended at the turn of the 20th century

A man has his arm cut with a razor blade, causing blood to gush down his arm and all over his torso

He then took a knife to his own blood-soaked leg to put the pain all over his body in self-punishment

The gruesome sights left some of the roughly 12,000 in attendance wide-eyed and wincing with vicarious pain.

'The most terrifying was the feet part, when the guy was screaming very loud,' 28-year-old Juliette Pawinska, said, referring to when the spikes were driven in during one crucifixion.

'I actually felt the pain that he felt,' added the Polish national, who lives in the Philippines and works as a computer programmer.

The mock crucifixions on Good Friday have been going on for decades despite official disapproval from the nation's dominant Catholic Church.

They struck their backs with wooden rods, one for each station of the cross as depicted in Catholic tradition of Jesus' walk to the hill of Golgotha where he was crucified

The practice is condemned by the Catholic Church as being too extreme but that doesn't stop hundreds form doing it

Large crowds of spectators including children lined the sweltering streets to behold the extreme show of faith

The march continued into the night even s participants lost plenty of blood from their wounds

Night time did not stop continued cutting with razor blades as torches were used to aid the grisly process

A penitent from the Santa Vera Cruz brotherhood, known as 'Los Picaos', whips his back with tied rope during Good Friday celebrations in San Vicente de la Sonsierra, La Rioja, Spain

A cortege of penitents take part in the traditional 'Sanch' procession in the centre of Perpignan

'The Church never encourages self-flagellation, much less crucifixion,' Father Roy Bellen, a spokesman for the archdiocese of Manila, said.

'All sacrifices being asked from Catholics during Lent and Holy Week should lead to actions that benefit the poor and the needy,' he added.

Food stalls, cab drivers and even souvenir stands get a boost from the event which draws thousands of visitors every year.

Rose Anne Galang, whose full-time job is as a factory worker, said she pulled in some extra cash selling pork dumplings to hungry tourists.

'It's my first time, but business was really good,' she added with a smile. 'I'll be back next year.'

Actor James Burke-Dunsmore carries a wooden cross as he plays the role of Jesus Christ, during a performance of Wintershall's 'The Passion of Jesus' on Good Friday in Trafalgar Square in London

The Passion of Jesus tells the story from the Bible of Jesus's visit to Jerusalem and his crucifixion. One hundred Wintershall players bring their portrayal of the final days of Jesus to this iconic location in the capital

Mr Burke-Dunsmore wore a crown of thorns as he walked through Trafalgar Square during the bloody and lifelike performance

Before the walk with the cross he was chained to reenact being condemned to death by Roman authorities

The performance culminated with Jesus being tied (but not nailed) to a cross alongside two other actors playing the thieves he shared his execution with, according to the Bible

Joined by hundred of Christians, leader of the Catholic Church in Kenya, Cardinal John Njue carries a cross through the streets of Nairobi, Kenya

Meanwhile in India, Catholics reenacted the crucifixion in a less extreme way, with passion plays in town squares

An actor played Jesus alongside Roman soldiers and other Biblical figures and played out Jesus' last hours

The actor appeared to not be significantly harmed during the Good Friday presentation that was watched by hundreds of Christian onlookers in the Hindu-majority country

Nearly 80 percent of people in the Philippines are Catholic, a legacy of the nation's 300 years of Spanish colonial rule that ended at the turn of the 20th century.

Meanwhile in India, Catholics reenacted the crucifixion in a less extreme way, with passion plays in town squares where an actor played Jesus alongside Roman soldiers and other Biblical figures.

The actor appeared to not be significantly harmed during the Good Friday presentation that was watched by hundreds of Christian onlookers in the Hindu-majority country.

Similar scenes played out in Sydney as 24-year-old student Alec Green carried a cross down Martin Place in the CBD as hundreds followed on either side to watch the spectacle.

His effort was part of a more contemporary retelling of Jesus' last hours, using milk crates as sets.

Similar scenes played out in Sydney as 24-year-old student Alec Green carried a cross down Martin Place

Hundreds followed on either side of the CBD shopping and business strip to watch the spectacle

Mr Green had a look of pain and concentration as he walked with the heavy wooden cross

He was accompanied by a a priest wearing regalia, along with hundreds of onlookers as he made his walk

His effort was part of a more contemporary retelling of Jesus' last hours, using milk crates as sets

A different procession in Sydney, this time with the actor playing Jesus dressed up in rags with fake blood on his forehead and clothes

Another reenactment didn't go as well with the actor playing Jesus (pictured) attacked over a personal dispute in front of a congregation on the Gold Coast.

The procession was otherwise somber as light rain fell and churchgoers put their voices to prayer and song as they walked with 'Jesus', who carried a wooden cross to symbolise the crucifixion

Another reenactment didn't go as well with the actor playing Jesus attacked over a personal dispute in front of a congregation on the Gold Coast.

A man approached the actor, named only as Marco, and shoved him to the ground and threatened him after a verbal argument at the Sacred Heart Church at Clear Island Waters.

The procession was otherwise somber as light rain fell and churchgoers put their voices to prayer and song as they walked with 'Jesus', who carried a wooden cross to symbolise the crucifixion.

Across the world in Granada, Nicaragua, Catholic faithful took part in the Viacrucis Aquatic earlier this week on boats between the islets of Lake Cocibolca.

In Granada, worshipers in red robes and KKK-style white masks held ceremonies and marched through the streets carrying a figure of Jesus with an elaborately decorated cross on his shoulder, flanked by two angels and a lamb.

The Jesus of the Great Power procession started at the La Merced church with devotees assembling and holding small figures of Jesus carrying his cross dressed in similar robes to them

A small boy dressed up in purple robes and headgear meant to represent Jesus' crown of thorns with blood drawn on his forehead

The procession of boats carried the venerated image of Jesus with his hands tied, on boats decorated with flowers and flags followed by hundreds of believers in 40 other vessels.

They complete 14 stations of the cross from Catholic tradition and was started in 1980 by pastor Omar Cordero of the Church of Guadalupe as a way for islanders to mark to occasion.

'That is why he chose to move the tradition in an aquatic way. At first it was done in rowing boats, which year after year has increased and to date has reached great popularity,' Juan Ramon Estrada, tour guide of the Nicaraguan Institute of Culture, said.

Elsewhere in Granada worshipers in red robes and KKK-style white masks held ceremonies and marched through the streets carrying a figure of Jesus with an elaborately decorated cross on his shoulder, flanked by two angels and a lamb.

The Jesus of the Great Power procession started at the La Merced church with devotees assembling and holding small figures of Jesus carrying his cross dressed in similar robes to them.

In Granada, Nicaragua, Catholic faithful took part in the Viacrucis Aquatic earlier this week on boats between the islets of Lake Cocibolca

The procession of boats carried the venerated image of Jesus with his hands tied, on boats decorated with flowers and flags followed by hundreds of believers in 40 other vessels
Hollywood star Robert Downey Jr flew to Scotland to help an schoolboy with a rare condition that causes children to gain weight and suffer breathing difficulties.

The Iron Man actor became See You, Jimmy as part of a viral campaign to raise awareness for ROHHAD, a disease so rare it only affects 75 people worldwide.

And eight-year-old Aaron Hunter, of Alexandria, Dunbartonshire contacted the star on Twitter and was overjoyed when Downey Jr invited him and his family to London for a meet and greet to raise awareness for the condition.

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Hollywood star Robert Downey Jr flew to Scotland to help an schoolboy with a rare condition that causes children to gain weight and suffer breathing difficulties

Known medically as 'Rapid-onset Obesity with Hypothalamic dysfunction, Hypoventilation and Autonomic Dysregulation', the condition is potentially fatal.

So hoping to help the sweet schoolboy and give him a day to remember, Downey Jr posted a video of his new Muddy Puddle craze to raise money for ROHHAD research.

Downey Jr  all in white and wearing a See You, Jimmy hat  danced in mud as Aaron and his family laughed. The Instagram video has had 5.6million views.

Aaron's mother Elisabeth, 37, said: 'This was by far the most magical moment of Aaron's life. It was awesome.'

The Iron Man actor became See You, Jimmy as part of a viral campaign to raise awareness for ROHHAD, a disease so rare it only affects 75 people worldwide

She told the Daily Record: 'Aaron is quite poorly at the moment and this has come at the perfect time.

'It has kept the smile on his face and given our campaign a huge boost.

'He is very happy and he is wanting to thank everyone for helping him to reach Robert and making his wish come true.'

And eight-year-old Aaron Hunter (right), of Alexandria, Dunbartonshire contacted the star on Twitter and was overjoyed when Downey Jr invited him and his family to London

Downey Jr appeared in a video uploaded to his Facebook page last week, confirming his support and explaining the competition, run in conjunction with his foundation.

He and his wife Susan founded Random Act Funding to distribute financial support around the world.

owney Jr appeared in a video uploaded to his Facebook page last week, confirming his support and explaining the competition, run in conjunction with his foundation

Through it the actor is offering fans the chance to attend the world premiere of 'Avengers: Infinity War' with him in California on April 23.

He will fly the winner out and put them up in a four-star hotel for two nights.

Fans must donate $10 for a chance to win. Visit http://www.crowdrise.com/rdj to enter.
When one friend pulled out of a holiday at the last minute, his resourceful pals decided not to let his ticket go to waste - so apparently found a stranger with the same name.

Ross Smith, a London-based comedian, claims he was asked over Facebook whether he'd like to join a group of strangers on a trip to Hamburg this bank holiday weekend.

He agreed and the unlikely bunch are believed to now be in the German city.

Ross Smith (pictured), a London-based comedian, claims he was asked over Facebook whether he'd like to join a group of strangers on a trip to Hamburg this bank holiday weekend

The 28-year-old, of Thrapston, Northamptonshire, posted the Facebook message on Twitter with the caption: 'So this is happening. Im taking another Ross Smith's holiday place with a group of Lads I dont know.

'Will I be trafficked? Will I meet new best friends? Will I come back with both kidneys? Follow the saga at #iamrosssmith'

Now believed to be on holiday with the strangers, Ross told MailOnline: 'It's insane. It isn't something I'd normally do. But I put it out on Facebook and people unanimously said I should go for it.

'And I thought it's an adventure and could give me good material for my comedy sketches so I thought "why not?"

'But I haven't been on a lads holiday since 2008 so I am definitely outside my comfort zone.'

Ross claims Johnny Gardner messaged him earlier in the month and wrote: 'Hey Ross, me and a couple of mates are in that predicament in which we have a mate called Ross Smith.

'We booked him a trip to Hamburg 30th march - 1st April, but he's an ungrateful c*** and can't make it.'

He added: 'If you fancy a free trip, you are more than welcome to take his flight ticket and bed in the apartment. Appreciate it's short notice and of course not having any idea who we are...'

Ross claims Johnny Gardner (right) messaged him and wrote: 'Hey Ross, me and a couple of mates are in that predicament in which we have a mate called Ross Smith...'

After accepting the offer and handing over his passport details, Ross kept his Twitter followers up to date with his planning for the impromptu trip, using the hashtag #iamrosssmith.

But the up-and-coming comedian was obviously nervous and posted: 'Seven days before I go. I havent heard from them in two days. I hope to god theyre not finding another Ross Smith.'

He told the MailOnline: 'It was nerve-wracking when I met them at 6am at Stansted airport in the Wetherspoons.

The comedian tweeted a picture two pints of Guinness, a fruit cider and a light beer and asked his followers: 'guess which one's mine?'

'But there was also relief that they were real and that I hadn't been scammed. I'm a very sceptical person.'

The comedian added that the group, made up of himself, Johnny, Jan and Dorian, were still 'feeling each other out, like that first bit of a blind date'.

Not everyone was as excited for the trip however, as he wrote on Twitter: 'Just got off the phone with mother. She is not happy.'

He added: 'My mum told me it could be a scam and that I don't know these people.'

Ross has since updated social media users with a snap of his 'accommodation' - which he adds is 'surprisingly nice' apart from the fact he will have to 'sleep in a child's bed'.

Ross posted a picture of the group of strangers he was apparently going on the impromptu trip with
Stephen Hawking will be remembered at a funeral service in Cambridge tomorrow

The city of Cambridge is preparing for the funeral of one of its university's most famous professors.

A private service will be held in memory of Stephen Hawking at 2pm at Great St Mary's church in the centre of the city, following the scientist's death on March 14.

The church is close to Gonville and Caius College, where Prof Hawking was a fellow for 52 years.

Since his death at home earlier this month, thousands of people have visited this college to sign his book of condolence.

Despite having said he is an atheist, Prof Hawking's family felt a traditional church service would give his many friends in the city a chance to remember and pay tribute to him.

Stephen Hawking's children, Lucy, Robert and Tim, said in a statement: 'Our father lived and worked in Cambridge for over 50 years.

'He was an integral and highly recognisable part of the university and the city.

'For this reason, we have decided to hold his funeral in the city that he loved so much and which loved him. Our father's life and work meant many things to many people, both religious and non-religious. So, the service will be both inclusive and traditional, reflecting the breadth and diversity of his life.'

A service organised by Prof Hawking's children will be held at Great St Mary's church at 2pm

Reverend Peter Judd, the priest in charge at Great St Mary's, told Cambridge News: 'At the request of the family, it will be a traditional service tailored to the family's requirements. The capacity of the church is 700 but we understand there will be 500 people there.

'My colleague Devin McLachlan (the associate vicar) and myself will be there to greet people as they arrive.'

Following today's service, Prof Hawking's ashes with be interred next to the grave of Sir Isaac Newton at Westminster Abbey.

The Dean of Westminster, the Very Reverend Dr John Hall, said: 'It is entirely fitting that the remains of Professor Stephen Hawking are to be buried in the Abbey, near those of distinguished fellow scientists. Sir Isaac Newton was buried in the Abbey in 1727. Charles Darwin was buried beside Isaac Newton in 1882.

Some of the many flowers which will be brought to tomorrow's church service

'Other famous scientists are buried or memorialised nearby, the most recent burials being those of atomic physicists Ernest Rutherford in 1937 and Joseph John Thomson in 1940.

'We believe it to be vital that science and religion work together to seek to answer the great questions of the mystery of life and of the universe.'

Prof Hawking died on March 14, at the age of 76, after a lifetime as one of the world's most renowned scientists despite his battle with motor neurone disease.
JAMES COMEY

Clinton is furious that Comey, then the FBI director, publicly revealed the re-opening of the secret email server investigation just before election day - and has said so time after time after time.

THE FBI

Comey's entire organization does not escape her wrath.

'The FBI wasn't the Federal Bureau of Ifs or Innuendoes. Its job was to find out the facts,' she writes in What Happened.

VLADIMIR PUTIN

'There's no doubt in my mind that Putin wanted me to lose and wanted Trump to win,' she told USA Today in September last year while promoting What Happened.

It was hardly a new theme. As early as December the New York Times obtained audio in which she told her donors: 'Putin publicly blamed me for the outpouring of outrage by his own people, and that is the direct line between what he said back then and what he did in this election.'

THE RUSSIANS

Putin's entire apparatus gets a name-check. In May she told the Codecon convention how '1,000 Russian agents' had filled Facebook with 'fake news'.

She told NPR 'my path toward November was being disrupted with Russians'.

WIKILEAKS

The 'transparency website' is consistently ranked along with Comey by Clinton at the top of her blame list.

She told NPR : 'Unfortunately the Comey letter, aided to great measure by the Russian WikiLeaks, raised all those doubts again.'

And she writes of its founder Julian Assange in What Happened: 'In my view, Assange is a hypocrite who deserves to be held accountable for his actions.'

LOW INFORMATION VOTERS

'You put yourself in the position of a low information voter, and all of a sudden your Facebook feed, your Twitter account is saying, "Oh my gosh, Hillary Clinton is running a child trafficking operation in Washington with John Podesta.",' she told the Codecon convention in May.

'Well you don't believe it but this has been such an unbelievable election, you kind of go, 'Oh maybe I better look into that.''

THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE

'We have an electoral college problem. It's an anachronism,' she told Vox.

ANTI-AMERICAN FORCES

'I think it's important that we learn the real lessons from this last campaign because the forces that we are up against are not just interested in influencing our elections and our politics, they're going after our economy and they're going after our unity as a nation,' she told Codecon in May.

'What is hard for people to really accept - although now after the election there's greater understanding - is that there are forces in our country - put the Russians to one side - who have been fighting rear guard actions for as long as I've been alive because my life coincided with the Civil Rights movement, with the women's rights movement, with anti-war protesting, with the impeachment.

EVERYONE WHO ASSUMED SHE WOULD WIN

'I was the victim of a very broad assumption that I was going to win,' she told the Codecon convention.

BAD POLLING NUMBERS

Clinton says polls in key states did not serve her.

'I think polling is going to have to undergo some revisions in how they actually measure people,' she told the Codecon convention.

'How they reach people. The best assessments as of right now are that the polling was not that inaccurate, but it was predominantly national polling and I won nationally.'

BARACK OBAMA

Clinton has two beefs with Obama: one of them being that he won two terms. Clinton says that succeeding an incumbent is almost impossible for a Democrat.

'No non-incumbent Democrat had run successfully to succeed another two-termer since Vice President Martin Van Buren won in 1836,' she writes in What Happened.

But she also says his response to the Russian campaign of interference wasn't enough.

'I do wonder sometimes about what would have happened if President Obama had made a televised address to the nation in the fall of 2016 warning that our democracy was under attack,' she writes in What Happened.

WHITE WOMEN

'I believe absent Comey, I might've picked up 1 or 2 points among white women,' she told Vox in September.

'White woman... are really quite politically dependent on their view of their own security and their own position in society what works and doesn't work for them.'

'What happened in my election is I was on the way to winning white women until former director of the FBI Jim Comey dropped that very ill-advised letter on Oct. the 28th and my numbers just went down,' she said in a March 2018 speech in India.

'All of a sudden white women who were going to vote for me, and frankly standing up to the men in their lives and the men in their work places were being told, "She's going to jail, you don't want to vote for her. It's going to be terrible you can't vote for that." It stopped my momentum and it decreased my vote enough. Because I was ahead and I was winning and I thought I had fought my way back. '

THE NEW YORK TIMES

The newspaper was blamed as early as May at the Codecon conference in Rancho Palos Verde, California.

She singled out its managing editor Dean Baquet - the paper's most senior editor - and said of coverage of her email issue under his direction: 'They covered it like it was Pearl Harbor.'

JOE BIDEN

Biden could have run against her and didn't. But Clinton writes: 'Joe Biden said the Democratic Party in 2016 'did not talk about what it always stood forand that was how to maintain a burgeoning middle class.'

'I find this fairly remarkable, considering that Joe himself campaigned for me all over the Midwest and talked plenty about the middle class.'

BERNIE SANDERS

'His attacks caused lasting damage, making it harder to unify progressives in the general election and paving the way for Trump's 'Crooked Hillary' campaign,' she writes in What Happened.

'I don't know if that bothered Bernie or not.'

BERNIE BROS

'Some of his supporters, the so-called Bernie Bros, took to harassing my supporters online. It got ugly and more than a little sexist,' she writes in What Happened.

PEOPLE WANTING CHANGE

'I thought, at end of day, people would say, look, we do want change, and we want the right kind of change, and we want change that is realistic and is going to make difference in my life and my family's life and my paycheck,' she told Vox.

'That's what I was offering. And I didn't in any way want to feed into this, not just radical political argument that was being made on other side, but very negative cultural argument about who we are as Americans.'

MISOGYNISTS

Asked by CNN's Christine Amanpour at the Women for Women International event in new York in May if misogyny was to blame she said: 'Yes, I do think it played a role.'

TELEVISION EXECUTIVES

'When you have a presidential campaign and the total number of minutes on TV news, which is still how most people get their information, covering all of our policies, climate change, anything else was 32 minutes, I don't blame voters,' she told The View.

'They don't get a broad base of information to make decision on. The more outrageous you are, the more inflammatory you are, the higher the ratings are.'

NETFLIX

Hillary does not do Netflix and chill - or if she does, she doesn't find it very relaxing.

'Eight of the top 10 political documentaries on Netflix were screeds against President Obama and me,' she claimed at the Codecon convention.

FACEBOOK

'If you look at Facebook the vast majority of the news items posted were fake. They were connected to as we now know the 1,000 Russian agents who were involved in delivering those messages,' she told Codecon.

TWITTER

Usually mentioned in the same breath as Facebook, the micro-blogging site is seen by Clinton as one of the reasons for her loss.

She told the Codecon convention in may that Trump had a method in his tweets.

'They want to influence your reality. That to me is what we're up against, and we can't let that go unanswered,' she said.

CONTENT FARMS IN MACEDONIA

'Through content farms, through an enormous investment in falsehoods, fake news, call it what you will - lies, that's a good word too - the other side was using content that was flat out false,' she told the Codecon convention in May.

'They were conveying this weaponized information and the content of it, and they were running, y'know there's all these stories, about y'know, and you know I've seen them now, and you sit there and it looks like you know sort of low level CNN operation, or a fake newspaper.'

CAMPAIGN FINANCE

'You had Citizens United come to its full fruition.' she told Codecon in May.

'So unaccountable money flowing in against me, against other Democrats, in a way that we hadn't seen and then attached to this weaponized information war.

THE MEDIA

'American journalists who eagerly and uncritically repeated whatever WikiLeaks dished out during the campaign could learn from the responsible way the French press handled the hack of Macron,' she writes in What Happened.

Now-president Macron had a massive tranche of his emails hacked and released shortly before the French voted. Many outlets did not report on their contents.

STEVE BANNON AND BREITBART

'Provided the untrue stories,' she told the Codecon convention in May.

THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY

'I set up my campaign and we have our own data operation. I get the nomination. So I'm now the nominee of the Democratic Party. I inherit nothing from the Democratic Party,' Clinton said told the Codecon convention in May.

'I mean, it was bankrupt. It was on the verge of insolvency. Its data was mediocre to poor, nonexistent, wrong. I had to inject money into it.'

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY

The Republicans were far better prepared for a campaign than the Democrats she claimed, when it came to money and data, telling the Codecon convention: 'So Trump becomes the nominee and he is basically handed this tried and true, effective foundation.'

CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA

The data-targeting firm ultimately owned by Robert Mercer, the billionaire Breitbart backer, and his family, is said to have targeted voters to drive them away from Clinton.

'They ultimately added something and I think again we'd better understand that. The Mercers did not invest all that money for their own amusement,' she told the Codecon convention.

WOMEN PROTESTERS

The massive demonstrations in Washington and other cities in the wake of the election were organized as an immediate response to Clinton's shock defeat.

But that did not stop Clinton from writing in What Happened: 'I couldn't help but ask where those feelings of solidarity, outrage and passion had been during the election.'

MATT LAUER

The NBC Today show anchor quizzed both candidates at a 'commander-in-chief forum' on board Intrepid in New York.

But Clinton - who went first in the back-to-back interviews, complained about Lauer focusing on her secret server and whether it raised questions over her trustworthiness.

'Lauer had turned what should have been a serious discussion into a pointless ambush. What a waste of time,' she writes in What Happened. She later delighted in his firing for sexual misconduct, saying in December: 'Every day I believe more in karma.'

WHITE VOTERS

'White voters have been fleeing the Democratic party ever since Lyndon Johnson predicted they would,' she told Vox.

DEMOCRATIC DOCUMENTARY MAKERS

'We're not making the documentaries that we're going to get onto Netflix,' she told Codecon.

She was asked by the interviewer: 'This is because Hollywood isn't liberal enough?'

'No, it's because Democrats aren't putting their money there,' she replied.

BENGHAZI INVESTIGATORS

The attacks on the U.S. diplomatic compound in the Libyan city of Benghazi on September 11, 2012, happened when Clinton was Secretary of State. It claimed four American lives, and was the focus of intense investigation by Congress.

Clinton told the Today show: 'Take the Benghazi tragedy - you know, I have one of the top Republicans, Kevin McCarthy, admitting we're going to take that tragedy - because, you know, we've lost people, unfortunately, going back to the Reagan administration, if you talk about recent times, in diplomatic attacks.

'But boy, it was turned into a political football. And it was aimed at undermining my credibility, my record, my accomplishments.'

VOTER SUPPRESSION

Suppressing her voters was named by Clinton as one of the major factors in her defeat in her interview on the Today show when she rattled off her laundry list. 'What was at work here?' she said.

'In addition to the mistakes that I made, which I recount in the book, what about endemic sexism and misogyny, not just in politics but in our society, what about the unprecedented action of the FBI director, what about the interference of an adversary nation, what about voter suppression?'

It was a return to a theme - she suggested it was a problem in Wisconsin in an interview in May with New York magazine.

'I would have won had I not been subjected to the unprecedented attacks by Comey and the Russians, aided and abetted by the suppression of the vote, particularly in Wisconsin,' she said.

'Republicans learned that if you suppress votes you win.'

MITCH McCONNELL

The Senate majority leader is accused of stopping the Obama administration from revealing what Clinton says the Russians were up to, helping tip the balance against her because he did not want a third successive Democratic term in the White House.

'Mitch McConnell, in what I think of as a not only unpatriotic but despicable act of partisan politics, made it clear that if the Obama Administration spoke publicly about what they knew [on Russia], he would accuse them of partisan politics, of trying to tip the balance toward me,' she told the New Yorker.

THE SUPREME COURT

Clinton claims the Supreme Court watered down the Voting Rights Act at the Codecon convention.

'You had effective suppression of votes,' she said.

'I was in the senate when we voted 98-0 under a Republican president, George W Bush, to extend the Voting Rights Act and the Supreme Court says 'oh we don't need it any more' , throws it out, and Republican governors and legislatures began doing everything they could to suppress the votes.'

Clinton appears to be referring to Second 4(b) of the Act being ruled unconstitutional by the court in 2013, because it relied on out of date data which meant it was not in line with the 15th Amendment.

FATHERS, HUSBANDS, BOYFRIENDS, AND MALE BOSSES

Clinton says that James Comey's actions in re-opening the FBI investigation allowed men to influence their wives or girlfriends.

'Women will have no empathy for you because they will be under tremendous pressure - and I'm talking principally about white women - they will be under tremendous pressure from fathers, and husbands, and boyfriends and male employers, not to vote for 'the girl',' she told NPR.

THE INVISIBLE STATE

Named by her confidante Lanny Davis as the reason she lost at a reading of his book while Hillary nodded along in approval.

PIZZAGATE

The claim that members of the Democratic party and particularly the Clinton campaign were running a pedophile child trafficking ring out of the basement of a Washington D.C. pizza restaurant first surfaced before the 2016 election. She told an address to a women-only club in New York in April 2018: 'It spread like wildfire. You look and that and think, that's ridiculous. But you have no idea how many people will believe things that are presented as news.'

'MANY FUNNY THINGS'

Clinton said in September 2019 that 'many funny things' including Russian interference helped Trump win.
The Royal Air Force is set to mark its 100th anniversary on Easter Sunday with celebrations across the country and a special gala concert hosted by Carol Vorderman.

It was 100 years ago on April 1 1918 that the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service merged to create the RAF - the world's first independent air service.

And on the eve of the anniversary Vorderman and Dan Snow will host a gala at the Royal Albert Hall.

The special event will feature music, a ceremonial drill, recollections of those who have served and video footage.

Defence equipment which belongs to the Royal Air Force's 111(F) and 43(F) Squadrons based at RAF Leuchars in Fife

Handley Page 0/400 could be seen landing at RAF Andover, Hampshire, in November 1918

No19 Fighter Squadron, based at Duxford, Cambridgeshire, flying their two blade propeller Supermarine Spitfire aircraft in formation in the year of the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 (left) while two Royal Air Force pilots from Fighter Command walked from an aircraft in 1940

Vorderman said it is 'beyond an honour' to co-host a gala which will begin the celebrations marking the RAF's centenary.

The 57-year-old said: 'I could not have dreamt of it. It is beyond an honour for me.'

Describing the gala, she said there would be a 'wonderful mix' of elements as they celebrated the anniversary and told the story of the RAF.

When pressed on what the RAF of 1918 would make of the current service, the former Countdown presenter, herself a trained pilot, said they would be 'fascinated' by the history.

She added: 'They would have been astonished as to the scale of the technology, which has driven a lot of other technologies forward as well at a faster pace.

'I think they would have been hopping up and down with glee, because those people who were involved in the early days were obviously pioneers themselves.

'And other than balloonists, nobody had got into the air before - you didn't have that view of the world before, and it was dangerous and it still is, but it particularly was then.

Carol Vorderman arriving at RAF Coningsby, Lincolnshire, for a reception and an air display to mark the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight's 60th anniversary in 2017

The Red Arrows training in the skies above their base at RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire in 2012 (left) and Voderman (right) said it is an honour to be hosting the anniversary gala

Six Tornado planes performing a flypast over RAF Marham, Norfolk, after crews return home from service in Iraq in 2009

'They were all brave, courageous adventurers as much as they were military aviators in my view. They would have been astonished at what has come out of it.'

Mother-of-two Vorderman revealed there was no one on her Welsh side of the family who had any links to aviation, but discovered when she met her father in her 40s that she had cousins in the Dutch Air Force.

An honorary Group Captain in the RAF, when asked what her favourite RAF aircraft was, Vorderman described herself as 'utterly predictable' as she named the British-designed Harrier Jump Jet.

She added: 'They are just extraordinary, what they do is extraordinary, you just think 'oh my god it is going up', and then they rotate the engine and it is off.

'It is magical, totally magical, and she looks beautiful.'

Asked whether she would take the opportunity to fly one if she could, Vorderman joked: 'I would be beating people off with a stick to try and get to the top of the queue, definitely.'

A Royal Air Force pageant was held at Hendon, Greater London, on New Year's Day in 1932

he Red Arrows performing at the Bristol Balloon Fiesta at Ashton Court, Bristol, in August 2008

An RAF Hawker Siddeley Nimrod checking all is well on a North Sea oil rig during a routine offshore patrol with a Vulcan bomber in 1975

Describing the RAF as a 'unique organisation', Bristol-based Vorderman said those employed by the service were 'very clever and very well qualified'.

Meanwhile, a leading academic has said there could have been an entirely different outcome to the Second World War if the RAF had not been established 100 years ago.

Dr Matthew Powell is a teaching fellow in strategic and air power studies as part of the University of Portsmouth at the Royal Air Force College Cranwell.

He said if the RAF had not become a separate service in 1918, it could possibly have resulted in a situation where it was required to fight for independence.

Dr Powell, 33, said: 'I think you would still have seen an independent RAF but it probably wouldn't have come around until during or just after the Second World War.'

Pressed on whether history would have been different without an independent RAF during the Second World War, he said it 'quite possibly' could have been the case.

Dr Powell, from Newport, Wales, said: 'What you would have found is that the RAF as an independent air force focused very much on strategic bombing and home defence.

'It is questionable whether the Army and the Navy would have put the necessary resources and emphasis into that, and so you may have had a different situation with regards to the Battle of Britain.

'But on the other hand they may have been more effective in the proceeding operations in France in 1940 in an ability to prevent the German onslaught, but I think that is highly unlikely looking at how that battle went.

'There may not have been the push to develop a strategic bombing capability that was used to strategic effect to keep the US interested in what was happening in Europe after the fall of France in 1940.

'That was fundamental into drawing the Americans into the European war, I think in sort of 1941, which was the fact that we were still able to continue the fight in some way to the Germans.

Two BAC F2A Lightning fighters from 11 Squadron, based at RAF Binbrook, in preparation for the final ever landing at the station, with the aircraft are no longer being used in front-line NATO Operations in 1988

A Spitfire in Normandy invasion markings was photographed flying over Tower Bridge in London

Members of the last complete Second World War RAF Bomber crew (front left-right) Jimmy Spence, Bill Madeley and Len Wilson, (back left-right) Maurice Webster, Tom Grossett, Rex Waller, with two unidentified mechanics at either end of back row posed together in 1954

'It could have had a massive effect if there wasn't an independent RAF from 1918 onwards.'

The chief of the air staff has said that those who founded the RAF would be proud of what it has become a century on from its creation.

Just 15 years after the first ever powered flight undertaken by the Wright Brothers, the decision was made after the War Cabinet inquiry criticised the poor organisation of Britain's air forces.

Those recognised as the founders of the RAF include Lieutenant General Sir David Henderson and Lord Hugh Trenchard - the first chief of the air staff.

The current head of the RAF since 2016, Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Hillier, has previously said his inspiration for joining the service was his father, Aircraftsman Victor Hillier.

When pressed on what the founders of the RAF would make of the service today, he said: 'Trenchard said "We are building the foundations of a castle", and what we have done for the next 100 years is build the walls and complete that castle.

'Trenchard put in place our apprentices scheme to ensure we could attract talent from across society, train them and develop them.

'What he put in place then gave us so much strength and capability in the Second World War.

'Well, a month ago we won the national apprentice employer of the year award - he would look at that and say "Yes, you are doing good".

'What they would also look at is the spirit and the ethos and the character of the Air Force and say "Yes, we recognise that".'
Theresa May donned hi-vis gear and waterproofs today as she marshalled a race in her constituency.

The Prime Minister stepped in to direct participants at the 10-mile Easter fun run in Maidenhead.

And she seemed to be enjoying herself - happily posing for selfies with members of the public.

The event - a regular fixture in Mrs May's calendar - comes as she prepares to head for Wales on a walking holiday.

But the PM will have been given a taste of the tough conditions she is in for, as the weather forced spectators to wrap up warm.

The Prime Minister stepped in to direct participants at the 10-mile Easter fun run in Maidenhead today

Mrs May's husband Philip was also on hand to offer help and encouragement to the runners

The PM she seemed to be enjoying herself at the event today - happily posing for selfies with members of the public

The runners were delighted to see the PM had come along to support the charity event

The Prime Minister's short break with husband Philip raised eyebrows at Westminster - as the last time she went on a similar trip a year ago she called a snap election.

The disastrous Tory campaign that followed saw Mrs May stripped of her overall majority in June.

As a result she has had to enlist the support of the DUP to prop her up in power.

No10 has laughed off suggestions that Mrs May might pull a similar stunt this time around.

But journalists recall the vigorous denials that were handed out last year.

Mrs May let slip her holiday plans earlier this month at a Westminster dinner for political correspondents.

Joking that the previous event had to be delayed because of the election she said: 'I was looking forward to this event so much that I called a general election to get out of it.

'But I can't pull that stunt two years in a row.

Mrs may and her husband warmed up with a hot drink during the charity event today

Mrs May was on hand to guide runners in the right direction as they completed the 10 mile course in Maidenhead today. She also handed out medals to the runners

The PM was dressed for the bad weather in Maidenhead today with a warm hat and a hood

Mrs May was a popular target for selfies with runners and spectators, but kept smiling

'Or can I? I am, after all, going walking in Wales at Easter.'

Mrs May's official spokesman said the PM would be in Wales over the Easter weekend and will return to Maidenhead in the middle of next week.

'There will be an element of walking,' the spokesman added.

The Mays are known as fans of hiking holidays.

They often visit Switzerland in the summer, with Mrs May having previously disclosed that her favourite areas are Zermatt and the Bernese Oberland.

On her first overseas trip as premier, Mrs May gave German Chancellor Angela Merkel two books about hiking to reflect their shared passion for the hobby.

The event in mrs May's constituency is a regular fixture in her calendar, and she did her duties despite grim weather

Mrs May had togged up in waterproof gear and heavy boots for the occasion today
A respected Russian teacher is under investigation after pictures suggesting she had an affair with her star student were leaked online.

Irina Ibragimkhalimova, 41, a deputy head, is shown in alleged intimate images with Valeria Fedorova, now 18 but 17 during the supposed affair.

'Messages between the pair' have also been revealed.

Police said: 'If the information about a love affair between the teacher and the teenager is proved, a decision about launching a criminal investigation will be made without delay.'

Irina Ibragimkhalimova, 41, a deputy head, is shown in alleged intimate images with Valeria Fedorova, now 18, and 'messages between the pair' have been revealed

Valeria (left) claimed the intimate pictures (one of which is shown right) were altered by Photoshop, but a full scale investigation was launched into the conduct of Ibragimkhalimova, also a biology teacher, who has not commented on the scandal in Borovichi, 275 miles northwest of Moscow

Police said: 'If the information about a love affair between the teacher and the teenager is proved, a decision about launching a criminal investigation will be made without delay.' Pictured: The accused duo

Both the teacher - who has an adult son - and student have deleted their social media accounts, it was reported

The case has been handed to the Investigative Committee which examines serious crimes.

'Valeria and her teacher Irina are suspected of having a true sexual affair and this is supported by the evidence picked up in the social networks of both,' reported a local news website.

'Screenshots prove that they posted many pictures where they were together, hugging and kissing each other, and one particular photo posted by the teacher is really intimate making everyone think they did have sex.'

They both admit to being 'friends' and are backed by head teacher Lyudmila Krupkina

Valeria claimed the pictures were altered by Photoshop, but a full scale investigation was launched into the conduct of Ibragimkhalimova, also a biology teacher, who has not commented on the scandal in Borovichi, 275 miles northwest of Moscow.

The student said: 'I have spoken to Irina Ibragimkhalimova and she says she does not have this kind of underwear as in the pictures.

'It looks very old.'

She had never seen her teacher wear 'this strange male-style shirt', she said.

'And look the the breasts, I am sorry, this is not my size at all, they made it up,' she told Mash news outlet.

Both the teacher - who has an adult son - and student have deleted their accounts, it was reported.

They both admit to being 'friends' and are backed by head teacher Lyudmila Krupkina.

'Irina was a good friend to her student from earlier years,' said Krupkina, who claimed the leak of images could be linked to blackmail.

However, police indicated there was no sign of blackmail.

A leaked message allegedly from the teacher to the student read: 'I'm asking nothing from you

'It seems to me that I know you. I feel you. I love you.

'Words are useless here... my heart is beating like mad.'

The student is due to be awarded a 'gold medal' for her studies in the school, which gives her a fast track into top Russian universities

Valeria - 17 when the 'affair' is supposed to have taken place - allegedly told her teacher: 'The main thing in life is to meet somebody who understands you even when you keep silent! I LOVE YOU!'

A regional education ministry commented: 'Representatives of the Investigative Committee of Borovichi district are working in this school now.'

The student is due to be awarded a 'gold medal' for her studies in the school, which gives her a fast track into top Russian universities.

The teacher is 'highly respected', say colleagues.
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Actor Bill Maynard who was best known for playing lovable rogue Greengrass in ITV show Heartbeat has died in hospital aged 89 after falling from his mobility scooter and breaking his hip.

He was on the popular drama between 1992 and 2000 and was once Britain's top paid comic earning 600,00 a year in the 1990s.

Maynard, who appeared in 155 episodes of Heartbeat, had suffered with health problems in recent years and was using the scooter after having several strokes.

He had two children from his first marriage to Muriel Linnett between 1949 and 1983, when she died of cancer. In 1989 he wed actress Tonia Bern, widow of land speed record holder Donald Campbell, but when she filed for divorce eight years later he publicly revealed how he had never really loved her.

In real life the actor shared many similarities with his character with Greengrass, including a fondness for racehorses, greyhounds and the occasional drink. He also told how he often enjoyed a game of poker.

Maynard's death comes a year after he made a cameo in BBC series The Moorside, also on a mobility scooter, to prove he was 'still alive' after a radio station mistakenly announced his death four years ago.

The 89-year-old, whose real name was Walter Williams, chose his stage name as a reference to the sweet company, according to daughter-in-law Jacqueline Reddin.

Heartbeat actor Bill Maynard, pictured, has died aged 89, his family confirmed today

Heartbeat co-star Tricia Penrose, second right, led tributes to Maynard, and recently filmed an episode of Pointless Celebrities with him. They are pictured here with Richard Osman and Alexander Armstrong

Last year he made a cameo in BBC series The Moorside on a scooter (pictured) to prove he was still alive after a radio station mistakenly announced his death four years ago

Maynard enjoyed early success on television as a comedian but lost a fortune when the Inland Revenue pursued him for unpaid taxes

Maynard's character on Heartbeat was often a thorn in the side of police Nick Rowan, played by Nick Berry, right

Maynard, right, also appeared as Det. Chief Insp. Stephen Quirk alongside John Thaw, left, in The Sweeney, pictured

Maynard pictured with his second wife Tonia Bern, whom he wed in 1989

Maynard played lovable rogue Greengrass, left and right, on the show, a wily character who was always getting into trouble through dubious schemes

Maynard pictured with Heartbeat co-stars (from left back row) Derek Fowlds, Mark Jordon, Nick Berry; (from left front row) Tricia Penrose, Juliette Gruber and Kazia Pelka

He previously starred in the Carry On film franchise as well as having roles in notable British shows including The Sweeney and Worzel Gummidge.

The star died in hospital in Leicestershire shortly after breaking his hip in a fall off his mobility scooter, his daughter-in-law said.

Ms Reddin, who is also an actress, said: 'He was larger than life and he just loved showbiz.

'He was so proud of the fact that he had been working for 81 years.

'He leaves a son and daughter, five grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.'

Maynard was married twice, first to Muriel Linnett, with whom he had his two children including musician son Martin Maynard Williams, who performed with 1980s band Ryder in the 1986 Eurovision Song Contest, finishing seventh.

After Muriel's death from cancer in 1983, Maynard wed again six years later to actress Tonia Bern, widow of late land and water speed record breaker Donald Campbell.

He previously starred with Bern on his own television show Mostly Maynard in 1957.

Maynard was also once the best paid television comedian in Britain during Heartbeat's peak in 1997, earning around 600,000 per year.

He starred alongside Nick Berry who became a household name thanks to the show but has since retired from acting and set up his own production company, Valentine Productions.

That same year he suffered his first stroke which caused scripts to be rewritten to accommodate his health problems.

His ailing health forced his character to be written out in 2000, but he came back for spin-off The Royal in 2003.

At its peak Heartbeat was watched by up to 18 million and the comedy actor was loved for his scams in the heartwarming series set on the North Yorkshire moors in the 1960s.

At its peak Heartbeat, which made a household name of star Nick Berry, pictured left and right with co-star Niamh Cusack, was watched by 18million viewers

Maynard reprised his famous role as Greengrass, left, on Heartbeat spin-off The Royal, right

Maynard knew his second wife from decades before when she appeared in his 1957 comedy series Mostly Maynard. She was previously married to land and water speed record setter Donald Campbell

Campbell, pictured with his Bluebird vehicle, broke the land speed record in 1964 and then broke the water speed record later that year

Maynard, pictured with second wife Bern, said he led a 'grand life' and enjoyed poker in his later years

In a 2013 interview Maynard, pictured in 1976, said hiring a chimpanzee for 17 to help him with a joke song in 1953 saw his career take off

In the late 1950s Maynards career really took off after he forged a partnership with fellow future Carry On star Terry Scott.

They co-starred in hit show Great Scott, Its Maynard, before the future Heartbeat actor decided to pursue more serious roles and broke the team up.

But soon Maynard found himself in trouble with the Inland Revenue for unpaid taxes and was ordered to hand over a fortune in cash, property and cars to settle his debts.

Years in the acting wilderness followed until he resumed his comedy work in the 1970s with sitcom Oh No, Its Selwyn Froggitt.

Before embarking on a career as an actor, Maynard had hoped to become a professional footballer, having been a youth player at Leicester City and Notts County, only for a knee injury to curtail his dreams.

He then embraced comedy, having been entertaining audiences since the age of eight with impressions.

In 2013 he told the Leicester Mercury he led a grand life and even joked about being miffed he never got a peerage.

Maynard also played the title role in television series Oh No, It's Selwyn Froggitt!, left and right, in the 1970s

Maynard, pictured at home in 1997, also appeared in several Carry On films

Maynard pictured on the Alan Titchmarsh Show in 2010, having retired from serious acting in 2000 due to his health problems

Maynard, left, enjoyed a successful partnership with fellow Carry On actor Terry Scott, right, in the 1950s and they had a hit show called Great Scott, It's Maynard

Maynard said most of the films he did were 'rubbish' but added he enjoyed doing them and 'had a laugh' throughout his career

The star said he had no regrets and had spent his later years playing poker around the country, enjoying the social side as much as the financial rewards.

He said: I did 31 films. Confessions. Carry on. All rubbish. I did two films with Arthur Lowe. Lovely man, terrible films. I enjoyed doing them. It was a laugh, but they weren't great. They damaged my reputation.

'I think, looking back over my career, a lot of the things Ive done have either been brilliant or theyve been crap. I made 31 films. Most of them were rubbish. Theres no point trying to put a gloss on it. They were. But the rest of my career  Im proud of it.

'My first slot on TV was 60 years ago. That went quite well, but it was my next appearance on TV that did it. I did a jokey take on a popular song of that era, My Son, and had a chimp run out and hug me at the end of the song. It worked brilliantly. My career took off. It cost me 17 to hire that chimp. It was more than my TV fee. But it was money well spent. It made me.'

How Heartbeat's Greengrass was once the best paid TV comic in Britain before later squandering his earnings Bill Maynard went from earning 1,000 per week to 9 per week in the 1960s Bill Maynard was once one of the best paid TV comics in Britain but his tumultuous career took him to the brink of financial ruin. By 1960, Maynard was a household name and regularly featured on TV and magazines but despite the adoration of fans he felt something was missing. He claims to have been earning 1,000 a week in the early 1960s, a fantastic sum at the time. But Maynard decided to change the course of his career and went from a well paid job as a comic to doing 'serious' theatre acting. His income plummeted from 1,000 a week to 9 a week. As well as the severe drop in money, Maynard was also paying tax a year behind his earnings, meaning he was paying tax on 1,000 a week while earning a fraction of that. He was forced to sell his house, three cars and 'everything I possessed in Hampshire'. In an interview, Maynard said he went back to working in clubs where he was heckled with cries of 'has-been'. He said: 'It was awful. When we got back on our feet again, Muriel (Muriel Linnett, his first wife) looked after the money. 'I left it all to her. 'Just promise me one thing, my darling,' I said to her. "Never make me go back to the clubs again".' Advertisement

Speaking after his appearance on The Moorside, Maynard, who originally retired from acting in 2000, told the Leicester Mercury: 'Ken's an old mate of mine from the days of Selwyn Froggatt and The Gaffer and was director and producer of Heartbeat and The Royal and we've always kept in touch.

'Four years ago a national radio DJ wrongly told his audience I was dead.

'When Ken contacted me and told me he was doing the drama, he said there were only two lines and did I want to do it to show people I was still alive!'

He appeared in a scene in episode two alongside Sheridan Smith, who played Karen Matthews' friend Julie Bushby, and told two journalists to 's*** off'.

Maynard, pictured, also guest starred in an episode of Dalziel and Pascoe in 2002 after retiring from full time acting

Maynard is said to have been a similar character to Greengrass, pictured, enjoying horse racing and the occasional drink

The actor was also once the best paid television comedian in Britain, earning 600,000 a year at Heartbeat's peak in 1997

Maynard had just two lines in his recent appearance in The Moorside and said he only did it to 'prove he was not dead'

During the 1970s Maynard worked in various roles as a character actor, including this ITV Playhouse prodyciton of Love Affair with Celia Johnson

The scene took just one day to film and he also revealed that Sheridan herself asked for a snap with him after cameras finished rolling - but admitted he didn't recognise the acclaimed actress.

'I think she was a little bit in awe of me and, thankfully, didn't take offence.

'I only knew who she was when I looked at the paper the next day and there was a 10-inch deep picture of her!'

The actor also played the title role in Oh No, It's Selwyn Froggitt, and starred in Carry On films Carry On At Your Convenience, Carry On Matron and Carry On Dick.

In 1980 he played Sergeant Beetroot in the TV series Worzel Gummidge.

Ms Reddin said he had recently visited her and her husband in France and had also filmed an episode of the game show Pointless and was looking forward to watching it when it aired.

In 2013 the actor celebrated 60 years since his first TV appearance by releasing a version of What A Wonderful World.

He had a stroke in 1997 that led to Heartbeat scripts being rewritten to accommodate his health issues

Maynard pictured as Selwyn Froggitt, a role he played for four years as a bungling council labourer trying to improve his lot in life with unfortunate results

Maynard, pictured left in his heyday during the 1950s and right in his later years, had a daughter and a son with his first wife
Police put up a convicted paedophile in a Travelodge after he was driven out of his home by vigilantes, it was claimed.

Protesters were gathered outside the hotel in Musselburgh, near Edinburgh, after the pervert - named locally as Andrew Lothian - checked in yesterday.

He was convicted in 2014 for preying on a 14-year-old boy as he slept at his house.

Footage posted by the vigilantes appears to show him being hounded out of his home after protesters tracked him down.

Protesters from the group Get Him Out strung up banners as they demonstrated outside the Travelodge hotel in Musselburgh, near Edinburgh

A police officer spoke with the group outside Lothian's house, saying he 'couldn't discuss what's been going on here.

Police Scotland were not available for comment.

Lothian was taken to a Travelodge in Musselburgh, Edinburgh, the hotel chain confirmed.

A spokesman said he had now left the building, adding 'it's business as usual'.

But members from the group Get Out insist he is still inside  and also claim Travelodge cancelled bookings after the paedophile checked in.

And one guest claims his employer was refunded after its workers were asked to leave the hotel.

He told MailOnline: 'They rang my on call manager and told them that we have to leave and have a full refund.'

A spokesman for the budget hotel chain said that the 'individual concerned is not at the Edinburgh Musselburgh Travelodge, and at our hotel it's business as usual' but protesters are convinced he is still inside

One man who said he worked for a security company approached group members asking for the camera to be turned off

One of the protesters told MailOnline earlier: If he had come out then the security guards wouldnt still be here. Theyre still in there. You can see them at the door'

Protesters live streamed video from the Travelodge overnight and this morning.

One man who said he worked for a security company approached members asking for the camera to be turned off.

When they refuse, he responds: 'Well, I wont speak to you. I'll speak to you if you turn it off.

One of the protesters told MailOnline earlier: If he had come out then the security guards wouldnt still be here. Theyre still in there. You can see them at the door.

Ive been here since 3:30 this morning. The car park was basically full last night. There was a good 30-40 people here.

One man who said he worked for a security company approached group members asking for the camera to be turned off

We got a tip that he was here. A guy who recognised him followed him straight here and saw him go inside. Nobody has seen him come out.

We want him out. Ill be staying here until I know hes gone.

We are talking to people staying here and wanting them who is in there. There was a French couple that left last night when we told them.

A woman and two boys came out and she was only two doors down from him. The wee boy said he saw a police woman outside the door of the room.

She was really angry about it but she stayed anyway.

Obviously he was going to be somewhere.

Another woman, Kirsty, is a friend to the group and has been to a lot of protests, lives just up the street from here, said: Its disgusting. Its wrong, the fact that they put him in a Travelodge during the Easter weekend when there are going to be a lot of kids staying is disgusting.
A man has been sentenced to life in prison for shooting a Florida wildlife officer and then attempting to run him down with his own patrol boat.

Circuit Judge Brantley Clark Jr. ordered 22-year-old Samuel Reager to spend his natural life plus four more decades behind bars.

He was convicted for the August 2015 open-water gunfight with Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commissioner Officer David Brady in Panama City, Florida.

Scroll down for video:

Samuel Reager, pictured at the time of his arrest, has been sentenced to the natural term of his life plus 45 years

Wildlife officer David Brady approached a boat with Reager (left) and Lachlan Akins (right)

Reager then stole Brady's patrol boat and attempted to run over him with it before fleeing with his co-defendant, Lachlan Akins, now also 22.

Akins struck a plea deal for five years probation in exchange for his testimony.

It was reported at the time of the incident that Brady had approached a sailboat with the pair on board in St Andrew Bay, after calls about a disturbance.

When Brady asked to see identification, Reager, went into the cabin, returned with a handgun and began firing at Brady.

The officer jumped into the water and began firing back, hitting Reager in the hand.

Reager and Akins then boarded the officer's patrol boat and tried to run him over several times.

They then ran the boat aground near the Cove neighborhood of Panama City, triggering a massive manhunt.

Brady, who was wearing a bullet-proof vest, was hit twice during the exchange and was taken to hospital.

Reager was convicted February 9 of first-degree attempted murder on a law enforcement officer.

Officer Brady had approached a boat in St Andrew Bay (pictured) after calls about a disturbance before the violent struggle occurred

He did not speak during the sentencing, staring blankly into the distance as his father and Brady's family members addressed the court, the North West Florida Daily Times reported.

Prosecutor Larry Basford said: 'But for Dave Brady's training, his quick actions that day, this bulletproof vest and the U.S. Coast Guard, he too would have been another dead officer.

'Because there is one person who did everything he could to try and take Dave Brady's life.'

It was reported that Reager's sentences are consecutive, so if the life sentence is overturned for any reason, he would begin serving the 45-year sentence with no credit for time served.

His father, Wyndham Reager, gave an emotional plea for leniency and apologized to Brady's family for what happened

'Since no one else lost their life, I don't see why my son should lose his life,' he said.
Adorable footage shows the UK's only polar bear cub swimming with its mother for the first time.

In the cute clip, the tiny cub can be seen swimming behind her mother, Victoria, who helps it stay afloat by letting it hold on to her tail.

Keepers at the RZSS Highland Wildlife Park in the Scottish Highlands said it was a 'heart-pounding moment' as the cub, who is still unnamed, had never gone so close to the pond before.

In the clip, mother Victoria can be seen confidently swimming along while the baby cub, who has not been named yet, clings to her tail to keep afloat

At one point, Victoria lets the cub swim on its own alongside her, keeping a watchful eye on the cub who was only born mid-December

The adorable cub, whose gender is unknown, is the first to be born in the UK in 25 years.

At first, it flaps around a little and can be seen ducking under its mother's head, making sure to stay close.

The cub then follows the mother bear for an unsteady lap around the pond as onlookers can be heard cooing over the pair.

Sophie Di Sotto, 24, from Elgin, Moray, captured the footage yesterday afternoon. She said: 'I spoke to the keepers after the cub got out. Their radio was going nuts with them talking about it and it felt like they all raced up to see it.'

The social care charity administrator visited the park with her mother to see the bear before the Easter holidays.

She said: 'When she started moving towards the water I thought the cub was gonna just sit at the side, which it did at first, but then Victoria went over and helped it in.

Before the pair leave the pool, the tiny cub nuzzles into its mother's neck for comfort as it gets used being in the water

'It was amazing to see how gentle she was and how she goaded it into swimming with her. It grabbed her tail to help it stay afloat.

'It really was a heart-stopping moment. But Victoria never left its side and helped it out the water as well. Really good mum.'

She posted the footage on Facebook yesterday, where it has been liked more than 1,000 times.

Michelle Queen wrote: 'Wow, thanks so much for video, can't wait to go and see baby.'

Heidi Spencer wrote: 'What a fantastic thing to witness. Great video.'

On Monday the park posted footage of the cub on their Twitter investigating a paddling pool they had placed outside their den.

The inquisitive bear can be seen delicately dipping its paw into the water before taking the plunge and splashing around in the pool.

Staff at the park placed the paddling pool near its den so the tiny bear could get used to being in water before being introduced to the main pool when it grows older.

Victoria gave birth to the cub sometime in mid-December. Her enclosure re-opened last Wednesday so members of the public now have the opportunity to see the cub at the park.

Throughout the video the adoring crowd can be heard cooing over the cub, who is the first born in Britain for 25 years
The Pastor said the men may have had personal issues but he would investigate

As Jesus walks towards his Crucifixion, the heavy cross weighing down his back, the last thing he probably expected was a man wearing beige cargo shorts running up and shoving him to the ground.

But this is the scene that played out as the Sacred Heart Church on the Gold Coast performed their annual reenactment of Jesus's suffering walk on Good Friday.

An unknown man, known only as Marco, approached the actor playing Jesus and pushed him to the ground, the Gold Coast Bulletin reported.

The reenactment of Jesus's last day on earth was interrupted by a man wearing beige cargo pants who ran up and pushed the messiah to the ground

Sacred Heart Church on the Gold Coast perform their annual reenactment of Jesus's suffering walk

The actor playing Jesus was able to continue after the assault and teenagers symbolically played out nailing him to the cross

The pair had a verbal altercation before Marco threatened the messiah and ran off.

The exact motivation for the assault remains unknown.

Father Peter Dillion the Parish priest of Surfers Paradise Catholic Parish said he did not see the attack but found it troubling.

'We face people time to time who may be critical of the church and perhaps this fellow has taken issue with something I don't know, but I will be inquiring about it,' he said.

'It may have well been a personal issue.'

The assault came at the end of what was an otherwise peaceful service. Hundreds stood watching as rain poured over the recreation of Jesus's final day on earth.

The pair had a verbal altercation before Marco threatened the messiah and ran off

Umbrella's in hand, the congregation sung in unison, as 'Jesus' walked across the grass and a group of boys symbolically played out nailing him to the cross.

Father Dillion said that the reenactment offered a chance for regular church attendees and those who come for the one experience to celebrate their faith and the religious holiday together.

He honoured the artistic reproduction and said it was a positive thing in the present age where people were worried.

Asia's most Catholic country, the Philippines, has become renowned for their reenactment where zealots are actually nailed to the cross

'They want a reminder that good trumps bad every time and it gives them the inspiration to go into another year with hope,' he said.

Across the world, from Trafalgar Square to the Philippines, Jerusalem to the Gold Coast, devout Christians and Catholics celebrate Good Friday with a reenactment of Jesus's final day.

But in Asia's most Catholic country, The Philippines, they've become renowned for taking a realistic approach to the day's celebrations.

Each year thousands of people flock to watch a bloody display of religious frenzy. Zealots are nailed to crosses and are lashed till their backs are raw.
A murder wave sweeping London has continued after a 23-year-old man became the eleventh person to be fatally stabbed or gunned down in the capital in just 16 days.

Police launched a murder probe after the unidentified man was knifed in the neck in Greenwich on Thursday night, reportedly near Plumstead train station.

The man, who is yet to be formally identified, was able to call his friend who rushed him to hospital in his car but was unable to save him.

A murder epidemic sweeping London has continued today after a 23-year-old man became the eleventh person in 16 days to be gunned down or stabbed to death in the capital. Police have launched a murder probe after he was knifed in Greenwich on Thursday night

Police were called to the hospital just before 8.40pm after the victim presented himself to A&E suffering a serious stab wound.

A police cordon was put in place at the hospital while officers examined the car used to bring the victim to hospital. He died of his injuries later that evening.

Detective Chief Inspector Richard Leonard, of the Homicide and Major Crime Command, who is leading the investigation said: 'This investigation is in its very early stages and we are still piecing together exactly where and how the victim was attacked.

'Were you in the Plumstead area last night? Did you witness a commotion or altercation, or see anything that seemed unusual, like a person or group of people running in the area?

Lyndon Davis (left), 18, the youngest to have been named, was found suffering from a single stab wound in Chadwell Heath, east London on March 14. Joseph Williams-Torres (right), 20, was killed the same evening as he sat in a stationary car in Essex Close, Walthamstow

'Any fragment of information is useful to our investigation and I would urge you to call police immediately.'

The death makes it the 29th fatal stabbing in the capital this year bringing the grizzly death toll of murders to 43 since January 1.

It continues a bloody fortnight for the capital with eleven dead from gun or knife violence in 16 days.

Russell Jones (left), 23, became the eighth person in a week to be killed in London when he was ambushed outside shops near Ponders End station, Enfield. Father-of-two Tyrone Silcott (right), 42, died from knife wounds on March 18 after a St Patricks Day party

Romanian Beniamin Pieknyi, 20, (pictured) is believed to have jumped in to the fight in a bid to save his friend during the altercation at the Stratford Centre in east London

Lyndon Davis, 18, the youngest to have been named, was found suffering from a single stab wound in Chadwell Heath, east London on March 14.

Joseph Williams-Torres, 20, was killed the same evening as he sat in a stationary car in Essex Close, Walthamstow.

Russell Jones, 23, was ambushed outside shops near Ponders End station, in Enfield and stabbed and shot to death.

Hersi Hersi, who lived as a trans woman called Naomi, was pronounced dead at the scene after being found with knife injuries at Heathrow Palace in Hounslow. On March 19, Balbir Johal, 48, died after being stabbed in Southall

Father-of-two Tyrone Silcott, 42, died from knife wounds on March 18 after a St Patricks Day party.

It is alleged the car mechanic got into a row over two girls at a party in Homerton and was attacked.

Hersi Hersi, who lived as a trans woman called Naomi, was pronounced dead at the scene after being found with knife injuries at Heathrow Palace in Haslemere Avenue, Hounslow, at 10.50am on Sunday.

Jermaine Johnson (left), 41, died of knife wounds in Walthamstow. On March 25, 26-year-old Abraham Badru (right) was gunned down in Hackney

On March 19, Balbir Johal, 48, died after being stabbed in Southall and the next day 41-year-old Jermaine Johnson died of knife wounds in Walthamstow.

Romanian Beniamin Pieknyi, is believed to have jumped in to the fight in a bid to save his friend during the altercation at the Stratford Centre in east London on the 20th.

The 20-year-old, who only arrived in Britain two months ago, died in his best friend's arms after being chased and stabbed by a gang in the busy shopping centre.

David Potter, 50, was found stabbed to death in a property on Tooting High Street on Monday 26 (pictured)

On March 25, 26-year-old Abraham Badru was gunned down in Hackney.

The university graduate, who was murdered in Dalston, east London, on Sunday, was awarded the National Police Bravery Award in July 2009.

David Potter, 50, was found stabbed to death in a property on Tooting High Street on Monday 26.

While the unnamed 23-year-old in Greenwich brings the grizzly death toll to 11 in 16 days, not including two men who were assaulted and later died of their injuries.
Hershel Korngut, 34, was arrested for indecent exposure

A man has been accused of exposing himself at the Universal Studios theme park in Hollywood.

Hershel Korngut, 34, from Los Angeles, California, was arrested after deputies received a report about him allegedly exposing himself to a woman on January 1.

When Korngut returned to the theme park a week later, he was found and arrested.

Investigators later determined that Korngut might have other victims besides that one woman - including juveniles who were visiting the park.

The 34-year-old's Los Angeles home was searched and authorities reportedly found evidence of child pornography.

Korngut worked as an audiologist at a hearing care facility in Los Angeles and also mentored youth through an organization, officials said.

They believe he might have more victims besides the ones from the theme park.

Korngut is expected to appear in court on April 4 where he could face charges of possession of child pornography, lewd and lascivious act upon a child and sexual battery.

Authorities are seeking out other victims who might have come in contact with the man before he was arrested.

Anyone with information about the investigation is asked to call the Sheriff's Department's West Hollywood station at 818-622-9600.
A six-year-old celebrated finishing chemotherapy by helping out the Garda with roadside checks and even calling out a helicopter.

Little Ceejay McArdle has always wanted to be a Garda when he grows up but has been fighting leukaemia since the age of two.

He won that battle in February after completing his last day of treatment at Our Lady's Children's Hospital in Crumlin, Dublin before helping police officers in the town of Curragh and Kilcullen in County Kildare, Ireland.

In the clip, honorary officer Ceejay can be seen dressed in an adorable little Garda uniform while he waves down passing cars.

The drivers look delighted to stop for the boy with one fire fighter getting on his knees to let Ceejay administer a breathalyser test.

Later, the boy also waves down a helicopter and asks for help from the chopper to locate a black Ford Mondeo.

Ceejay McArdle, six, is an honorary Garda and helped police carry out roadside checks - even calling out a helicopter

At three years of age, Ceejay became the youngest member of the gardai.

He joined a group of officers graduating from the Garda training college in Templemore, County Tipperary

When Ceejay was just two years old, his parents Susan and Marcus got the news that their son had leukaemia.

The six-year-old encouraged a fire fighter to take a breathalyser test while helping out the officers (pictured)

He was eventually diagnosed in September 2014 after a three week period of suffering from temperature spikes.

But after years of treatment, he finished his last course of chemotherapy in February.

A Facebook page charting his journey shared the following update: 'As you all know by now Ceejay's final dose of chemo, please god, was last Friday.

The adorable honorary Garda could be seen waving down passing cars as he helped officers check the vehicles (pictured)

'Although he is still on some medications and will have regular check ups for the next 5 years we felt that at this time we had to thank all the gardai and members of police forces around the world who in so many ways made such a positive difference to his life and ours during the horrors of childhood cancer.'

Ceejay has a customised Garda uniform and his first duty was to conduct the Garda Band.

The six-year-old also has a Garda Bravery medal engraved with 'Our Hero  Ceejay McArdle'.

The adorable honorary officer also regularly receives messages of goodwill from Gardai around the country, as well as from different forces around the world, like the NYPD.
Miranda Polston, 34, was arrested on Wednesday and charged with first-degree criminal abuse

A Kentucky woman has been accused of forcing her 14-year-old daughter to get 'extremely' drunk as punishment.

Miranda Polston, 34, was arrested on Wednesday in Pulaski County and charged with first-degree criminal abuse.

Authorities say she caught her daughter drinking alcohol on March 10 and proceeded to 'discipline her' by giving her enough alcohol to become 'extremely intoxicated and sick.'

Not only did the mother allegedly engage in the unorthodox parenting, but the 'punishment' was caught on camera and posted on social media.

Video of the incident, which WKYT has seen, shows the highly-intoxicated young girl being held up in a chair so she doesn't fall off as she yells 'no'.

While one male juvenile held her up, another fed her more alcohol.

Police say Polston forced her daughter to drink excessive amounts of alcohol after she caught her drinking on March 10

The mother can be heard in the background telling her daughter she could be on MTV and get $1million if she continued to drink.

Police say the girl is heard making a 'gurgling sound' in the video, before she falls face-first on the floor as everyone in the room laughs.

Polston allegedly admitted that the incident was her form of disciplining her daughter and teaching her 'alcohol is bad for her.'

However, Polston has entered a not guilty plea.

Her attorney Greg Ousley told WKYT says Polston did not force her daughter to drink and she intends to fight the charges.

'The video has to be put in context and law enforcement wants to put it in one certain context to make it criminal,' Ousley said.

'But when I spoke to my client and she explained everything to me, I see nothing criminal.

Polston does not have custody of the girl and was on probation for another charge.
Two cities are embroiled in a cultural war over Houston's perceived copycatting of Chicago's iconic 'Bean' statue.

The fight between residents of America's third and fourth largest cities  Chicago and Houston, respectively  kicked off on Tuesday when Chicago Tribune columnist Kim Janssen wrote a column titled 'Unoriginal 4th place Houston gets its own bean sculpture... whatever.'

The opinion piece derided the newly unveiled installation of artist Anish Kapoor's 'Cloud Column' sculpture outside the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

A Chicago journalist claimed Houston was stealing Chicago's style after a Houston museum installed a similar looking stainless steel outdoor sculpture (pictured) to Chicago's 'The Bean'

Chicago's 'Cloud Gate,' AKA 'The Bean,' has been a tourist attraction since 2006

Houston's 21,000-pound sculpture, Janssen pointed out in his Chicago Tribune column, is 'er, in the shape of a bean, just like the Millennium Park icon. And its shiny and made of stainless steel.'

'Wherever did they get that idea?' he sneered.

The 22,000-pound, Kapoor-designed sculpture, 'Cloud Gate'  affectionately nicknamed 'The Bean'  has been a Chicago tourist attraction since its 2006 unveiling.

Janssen then went on to mock the Texas city's 'version of 'The Bean' as being 'uptight,' due to its vertical placement, whereas the 'chill Illinois bean' is horizontally-oriented.

Adding insult to injury, Janssen then wrote, 'If being surrounded by a cultureless abyss insufficiently communicates to confused tourists that they are in Houston, the beans verticality will therefore act as an additional reminder of their poor life choices.'

Both Chicago (pictured) and Houston's statutes were created by artist Anish Kapoor

Houston Chronicle's senior digital editor Lisa Gray took umbrage at Janssen's column and apparently fired off an email to him about it.

'Is Chicago feeling defensive? How bad is it there, knowing that Houston is set to pass you in population, taking your spot as third-largest city in the US? Are you feelingwell, to steal someone's joke from Twitterlike a "has-bean?"' Gray wrote in her email.

Janssen, who had noted in his column that Houston's statue was created in 2000, then emailed Gray to say, 'It's a leftover bean, a second-rate bean that's been lying around in storage for the better part of 20 years, because nobody else wanted it. Nobody except Houston wants a leftover, second-rate bean.'

Gray and Janssen's flurry of emails  and mutual hometown insults  wound up being printed in the Houston Chronicle on Wednesday, under the headline, 'Dear Chicago: Houston's bean is better. And so is Houston.'

The original column and resulting email spat spilled over into the hoi polloi, with residents of both cities taking to social media to hurl insults at the other city's denizens and statutes.

Chicago and Houston residents took to Twitter to argue over whose city was better

One Chicagoan tweeted, 'Wanting to live in Houston is like wanting to eat dinner in Applebee's.'

Meanwhile, a Houstonian wrote, 'i feel great rage at this article they called houston a CULTURELESS ABYSS i am ready to fight everyone from chicago.'

'why you got to be like that! Houston is the BEST! You guys are just threatened by us. We are better than you, stronger than you and nicer than you,' a Houstonian wrote.

And another Houstonian tweeted, on behalf of his city, 'Hey Chicago... f**k you,' and signed it 'Houston, Texas.'

Janssen's Bean-induced ire, he revealed in both his column and subsequent emails, was related to the fact that 'The president never has anything nice, or accurate, to say about us. Our state is broke, and people are leaving.'

He pointed out that Houston's population growth  gaining 94,417 residents in 2017, versus Chicago's loss of 13,286 residents  puts the Texas city on the path of overtaking Chicago as America's third-largest city within the next decade.
A male model turned-bikie-boss has been revealed as the new commander of the outlaw Comanchero bikie gang in Victoria.

Hasan Topal, who was one represented by Chadwick Models, rose as an emerging force in the motorcycle club following his alleged involvement in a strip club brawl in Fishwyk, Canberra last year.

The 28-year-old has now taken control of Comanchero following the imprisonment of former national president Mick Murray, the Herald Sun reports.

Topal pictured right with his wife Samantha Rabah, who he married in February 2016

Topal's (pictured) rise up the ranks of the bikie gang follows a flourishing modelling career

Topal has been established as the replacement commander in Comanchero's Victoria chapter with the approval of Murray, officers from Victoria Police anti-bikie Echo Taskforce believe.

'Our information is he has been inserted as commander in the absence of Murray,' Detective Acting Senior Sergeant Paul Topham said.

His rise up the ranks of the bikie gang follows a flourishing modelling career.

In 2013 the chiselled Comanchero boss posed for a series of pensive shots for elite Australian modelling agency Chadwick Models.

It is unknown if Topal was booked for any high-profile modelling gigs during his stint as a Melbourne male model.

The 28-year-old (pictured) has now taken control of Comanchero following the imprisonment of former national president Mick Murray

Hasan Topal, (pictured) who was one represented by Chadwick Models, rose as an emerging force in the motorcycle club following his alleged involvement in a strip club brawl in Fishwyk, Canberra last year

Topal (pictured) has been established as the replacement commander in Comanchero's Victoria chapter with the approval of Murray, officers from Victoria Police anti-bikie Echo Taskforce believe

In 2013 the chiselled Comanchero boss posed for a series of pensive shots for elite Australian modelling agency Chadwick Models

Topal also worked as a personal trainer and once ran a bespoke gym in Brunswick alongside a friend.

It was the same gym where he met his wife Samantha Rabah, who he married in February 2016.

The young bikie boss faced court last year after a brutal Comanchero-on-Comanchero fight which took place at Capital Men's Club in Canberra.

Topal was seen on CCTV footage smashing glass into his own forehead and taking off his shirt before he punched and kicked an associate, the court heard.

Victoria Police have growing fears of a dangerous rift emerging between Comanchero members.

It is understood an internal dispute between Victoria and New South Wales Comanchero factions may be fuelling the ongoing violence.

Victoria Police believe Topal's rise to commander has the blessing of jailed former boss Mick Murray (pictured)
Britain lashed back at Russia today and has threatened to close down the Russian trade mission in north London.

The UK described the mission in Highgate as 'den of spies' and a source confirmed closing the mission was 'something we will look at' as the Kremlin stepped up the war of words by declaring more British diplomats should be expelled.

Last night, Russia accused Britain of 'provocation' after a 'rummage' team of UK border officials searched an Aeroflot flight from Moscow - something which the Metropolitan Police deny took place.

Putin's government has four bases in the UK, including its embassy, a consulate, the trade mission and a country estate in the Home Counties.

One source confirmed the government was looking into shutting down the trade mission, adding 'The Highgate one is a den of spies', according to the Telegraph.

Britain also unveiled retaliations against EU countries - who along with the US and other allies have launched a bruising wave of sanctions in solidarity with the UK.

But the Foreign Office dismissed the latest swipe, saying the sabre-rattling by Moscow did not 'change the facts'.

British ambassador Laurie Bristow told reporters in the Russian capital: 'It is important to remember why this crisis has arisen.

'It is the use of a chemical weapon on the streets of the UK.'

The latest round of tit-for-tat was signalled earlier when Mr Bristow and his counterparts from states including France, Germany, Holland, Australia and Canada were summoned by the foreign ministry.

Britain lashed back at Russia today and has threatened to close down the Russian trade mission (pictured) in north London

Russia's President Vladimir Putin (L) and Russia's Energy Minister Alexander Novak during a meeting at the Moscow Kremlin

The Kremlin stepped up the raging row by declaring that more UK diplomats are being expelled

The latest round of titi-for-tat was signalled earlier when British ambassador Laurie Bristow (pictured) and his counterparts from France, Germany, Holland and Canada were summoned

Russia's President Vladimir Putin (centre), and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev (third left) at a meeting of the Security Council of Russia in the Kremlin

A man carries boxes out from the U.S. consulate as a Russian police officer guards the entrance, in St. Petersburg, Russia, Friday

Sergei Skripal (left) remains in a critical condition after the attack in Salisbury on March 4. and The condition of his daughter Yulia (right) is said to have improved

Moscow's foreign ministry gave Britain a month to cut its diplomatic staff to the same numbers as Russia has in Britain.

Russia has already vowed to expel 60 US diplomats and close Washington's consulate in Saint Petersburg, mirroring the action by America.

In all, more than 150 Russian diplomats have been ordered out by 29 nations including the US, EU members, and Nato countries. The UK expelled 23.

Ambassadors from 23 nations - Albania, Australia, Canada, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Spain, Sweden and Ukraine - were today told to send home the same number of staff they had ejected.

Russian also said it 'reserves the right to take retaliatory measures' against Belgium, Hungary, Georgia and Montenegro.

A Foreign Office spokeswoman said: 'It's regrettable but in light of Russia's previous behaviour, we anticipated a response.

'However, this doesn't change the facts of the matter. The attempted assassination of two people on British soil, for which there is no alternative conclusion other than that the Russian state was culpable.

'Russia is in flagrant breach of international law and the Chemical Weapons Convention and actions by countries around the world have demonstrated the depth of international concern.'

Dutch ambassador Renee Jones-Bos said she had been told two diplomats would be expelled.

'Two of my colleagues are leaving Moscow. But we (the embassy) are staying here,' state news agency TASS quoted her as saying.

Security personnel carry pieces of furniture out of the US consulate in St Petersburg, Russia

Time to go: British Ambassador to Russia Laurie Bristow leaves the Russian foreign ministry building in Moscow, Russia

Should I stay or should I go: Ambassador of the Netherlands to Russia Regina Veronica Maria Jones-Bos and German ambassador to Russia Ruediger Von Fritsch arrives at the Russian Foreign Ministry headquarters

French Ambassador Sylvie Bermann was also brought in to be informed of reprisals

A swathe of European states have expelled Russian diplomats alongside Canada and the US

Former double agent Sergei Skripal is still in critical condition following the Novichok nerve agent attack in Salisbury on March 4 - although his daughter Yulia has suprised doctors by showing signs her condition is improving.

The UK and its allies insist that only a state actor could produce and deploy the nerve agent - while Mr Putin has previously called for 'traitors' to get their comeuppance.

Russia's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov has suggested that its diplomatic response could be greater than the sanctions it has suffered.

Vladimir Putin's spokesman today blamed the West for triggering the diplomatic meltdown.

'Russia did not unleash any diplomatic war,' Dmitry Peskov said.

'Russia never initiated any exchange of sanctions.'

He said Russia had been 'forced to take retaliatory steps in response to hostile, illegal actions' by Washington.

But US state department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said: 'It's clear from the list provided to us that the Russian Federation is not interested in a dialogue on issues that matter to our two countries.'

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said Russia's expulsion of US diplomats marked a 'further deterioration' in relations between the two countries.

Vladimir Putin, pictured in the Kremlin this week, has denied Russia was involved in the attack
Police have charged married teachers with the sexual assault of a student in Pennsylvania.

Ruth Baggetta, 35, is a music teacher at a school in Scott, while her husband Nick, 29, Baggetta is a band director at a school near Carbondale close to the town of Scranton.

Police say the Nick began a sexual relationship with the 16-year-old girl before he had married his wife, who is now pregnant with their child.

Nick, 29, Baggetta is a band director at a school near Carbondal. Ruth Baggetta, 35, is a music teacher at a school in Scott. Both are accused of the sexual assault of a student in Pennsylvania

Ruth Anna Baggetta, 35, and her husband, Nick M. Baggetta, 29, were charged with institutional sexual assault and other offenses

Authorities say Ruth ended up supporting the relationship and later participated in sexual acts.

Both have been charged with institutional sexual assault, corruption of minors and endangering the welfare of children.

Ruth is also charged with failure to report child abuse.

Both Baggettas were suspended with pay March 20 but school authorities are now looking to make the suspensions indefinite and unpaid, according to WNEP.

Earlier this month the student, who is now 18 years old, came forward with allegations against the Baggettas of Greenfield Township.

Ruth allegedly knew about and encouraged an illicit relationship between her husband and a student. It ended only after Ruth allegedly asked the girl to join her in performing a sexual act on her husband

Nick was the band director at Lakeland Junior-Senior High School

According to arrest papers, the abuse began when she was 16 and the Baggettas were engaged to be married.

The girl told Nick about problems at home and they began a friendship that later allegedly turned sexual.

That relationship, the girl says, was supported by Ruth who allegedly told her husband to 'get it out of his system' before the couple married.

Ruth said she knew her future husband was attracted to her and told her to have whatever contact he needed before they were married, the affidavit said.

She encouraged the teen and Nick to spend time together, and she often met him at Ruth Baggetta's apartment when the band teacher wasn't there, it is claimed.

After the relationship turned sexual in the early spring of 2016, the girl said she apologized to Ruth, but the woman told her, 'Don't be sorry. You're not the one to blame,' according to the affidavit.

The girl told investigators that she often spent Friday nights with the couple, sometimes sleeping in their bed with them.

Ruth Baggetta was a music teacher at Lakeland High School and the school's band director

Authorities have charged Ruth with failure to report child abuse because she allegedly knew about her husband's relationship with the girl but said nothing. She has been suspended from her job at Lakeland

Nick allegedly gave her marijuana and alcohol at least a dozen times in Ruth Baggetta's presence according to the Times-Tribune.

The student said the relationship ended in December, by which time the couple were married after Ruth told her she had 'bribed' her husband to attend a holiday function by saying she and the girl would perform oral sex on him together, the affidavit said.

Ruth Baggetta has now been suspended from her job at Lakeland. The district solicitor confirmed the suspension in a statement.

It read: 'Ruth Baggetta was suspended from her employment with the school district immediately after the allegations were brought to the district's attention. The district is taking appropriate action to convert the suspension to indefinite and unpaid.'

The Baggettas were arraigned and released on $100,000 bail. The are back in court next week

The Fell Charter School released this statement regarding Nick Baggetta's employment status: 'Nick Baggetta, a full time special education teacher employed by the Fell Charter School was suspended from his employment with the Charter School on March 20th, 2018, immediately after the allegations were brought to the school's attention, with pay, pending further investigation.

'Fell Charter School is now taking appropriate action to convert the suspension to an indefinite period of time and unpaid. The school is fully cooperating with law enforcement during this investigation and has met its obligations required by the PDE and the law.'

Both Baggettas were arraigned and released on $100,000 bail. They're due back in court next week.
A United Nations employee who has accused a top official at the international organization of sexually assaulting her in a hotel elevator claims the UN has mishandled the investigation into her complaint and tried to sweep the scandal under the rug by offering her a promotion.

Martina Brostrom has worked at UNAIDS in various capacities since 2006, most recently as senior adviser at the United Nations' agency dedicated to combating HIV/AIDS worldwide.

Speaking to CNN's Christiane Amanpour for the first time, Brostrom claimed that Dr Luiz Loures, deputy head of UNAIDS, cornered her in the elevator of a hotel in Thailand where they were staying during a conference in 2015, forcibly kissed her on the mouth, groped her and attempted to drag her into his room.

Martina Brostrom, senior adviser at UNAIDS (left), has accused Dr Luiz Loures, deputy head of UNAIDS (right), of sexually assaulting her in 2015 - a claim he denies

Loures has denied the allegations of misconduct, and a 14-month investigation conducted by the World Health Organization has concluded that Brostrom's claims were unsubstantiated - an investigation that Brostrom slammed as 'deeply flawed.'

Two other women have come out accusing Dr Loures of similar sexual misconduct, among them an unnamed UN employee and feminist activist Malayah Harper, the recently appointed general secretary of World YWCA - a global organization promoting young women's leadership and rights.

Loures, 61, announced last month that he will not seek to renew his term in office, which expire this weekend, but a spokesperson said it was not reasonable to link his departure from UNAIDS after 22 years to the sexual harassment case.

He clearly feels that this is time for him to move on, UNAIDS Mahesh Mahalingam said in late February.

CNN reported that several people warned UNAIDS chief Michel Sidibe about Loures' conduct towards women over the past three years, but during a staff meeting last month, Sidibe reportedly denied being warned.

Sidibe reportedly praised Loures' decision to step aside for the good of the organization as 'courageous' and said that UN employees who spoke publicly about alleged sexual harassment 'do not have ethics.

Similarities: Brostrom (left) said Loures lunged at her in a hotel elevator, forcibly kissed her and tried to take her to his room. Feminist activist Malayah Harper (right) said Loures did almost the same thing to her in 2014

Out: Loures, 61, announced last month that he will not seek to renew his term in office, which expire this weekend

Brostrom, who has a Master's degree in public health from University of London and lives in Geneva, Switzerland, said that even before heading to Bangkok in May 2015 to attend an AIDS conference, she knew Loures' penchant for unwelcome physical contact.

She said that after a reception at the hotel where they were staying, she got into an elevator with Loures and he pushed her towards the wall.

He starts shoving his tongue into my mouth, trying to kiss me. And he is groping my body, including my breasts, she told CNNs Amanpour. The elevator door opens and he tries to forcefully pull me out of the elevator, drag me towards the corridor of his room.

Brostrom said she was able to escape his grip and retired to the safety of her room.

That night, she spoke to three co-workers and her mother, all of whom would later tell investigators that she seemed distressed and upset.

UNAIDS chief Michel Sidibe praised Loures' decision to step aside for the good of the organization as 'courageous'

It took Brostrom a year-and-a-half to file a formal complaint against Loures, after learning that following a reorganization within UNAIDS, her alleged assailant could become one of her direct superiors.

Brostrom explained the delay in filing the complaint by saying that she feared her allegations would not be taken seriously, or she could face retaliation at work.

She has been on paid medical leave from UNAIDS since April 2017, having been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

WHOs internal oversight services division carried out the confidential investigation into Loures, who told them, according to a report obtained by CNN, that on the night of the alleged incident, Brostrom had been drinking and had spoken to him about her sexual predilections.

Loures said the woman told him, 'you could never handle me.'

Brostrom denied being drunk and dismissed the suggestion that she raised the subject of her sexual preferences with Loures.

In the course of the investigation, Brostrom said UNAIDS chief Michel Sidibe tried to convince her to drop the case and accept an apology from Loures in exchange for a promotion.

Both Sidibe and Loures denied that Loures ever wanted to apologize to Brostrom.

Sidibe, however, did admit to WHO investigators that he told Brostrom it would be good to find a way to protect the organization and have a discussion about her work.

Brostrom rejected Sidibie's offer and the probe went forward. Last November, Sidibe recused himself from the case at the request of Brostrom's attorney.

A short time later, the investigation cleared Loures of any wrongdoing, concluding that there was no evidence to corroborate Brostrom's 'detailed' account of the encounter.

The report, however, included a recommendation that as a preventative measure, senior managers remind Loures of UNAIDS sexual harassment policy, especially with respect towards female colleagues, CNN reported.

Under UN rules, the decision to close the case may still be appealed to the administrative tribunal of the International Labor Organization.

The details of the incident, as described by Brostrom, rang true to Malayah Harper, who told CNN that Loures assaulted her in a strikingly similar manner in a hotel elevator in 2014, while she was still employed at UNAIDS.

He got into the lift with me, and then kind of lunged forward to kiss me, but I thought a kiss had to be consensual, she told the news outlet.

Harper never filed a formal complaint before leaving UNAIDS.

A third accuser, who currently works for the UN, told CNN that Loures forced himself on her, 'stuck his tongue' in her mouth and tried to grope her body, including reaching inside her blouse.

Loures told CNN in a statement that he cooperated fully with the independent investigation that found Brostrom's claims to be unsubstantiated.

He said he was surprised by Harpers allegation, which he also denied.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general, asked about the UNAIDS case, told a news briefing on February 7: 'On sexual harassment, I would like to assure you we have zero tolerance... (That) means we take the investigation very, very seriously.'

Forty allegations of sexual exploitation and abuse were made during the last three months of 2017 against U.N. peacekeeping missions, agencies, funds and programs as well as implementing partners.
PASCAGOULA, Miss. -- The Jackson County Exceptional School is doing its part in preparing students with disabilities for life with those who are different than them.

The school held a carnival for special needs children on Thursday where the kids had a dunking booth and other activities the kids enjoyed. Volunteers from Pascagoula High School and Resurrection came and assisted with the festivities.

Disability Rights Equalizing Access and Motivating Success (DREAMS) founder Shaudell Brooks partnered with the exceptional school to raise money for the school and her foundation. According to Brooks, she wanted to do something fun for the students.

"After doing the Christmas Toy Drive, I wanted to come up with new ways to get involved with the Exceptional School and more children with special needs," Brooks said. "I spoke with Mr. Rumfelt and he told me about the carnival, so I offered to sponsor the entire thing with my foundation."

As someone with a disability such as muscular dystrophy, Brooks understands that special needs children need to have outlets to express themselves and to feel as if they are like everyone else.

"Not only was it a way to get high school students involved, but it allows them the opportunity to interact with those from a different walk of life," Brooks said. "We are also planning on giving the exceptional school a donation at our annual Black-Tie Gala on June 2 to assist in their efforts of making their facility one of a kind for children with disabilities."

Pascagoula senior Breland Hadley said the experience showed him just how good he has it and realized that he shouldn't take things for granted.

"I just wanted to put myself in these kids shoes because you don't know what they could be going through," Hadley said. "I just wanted them to have a good time. I see now that I have it easy and they have it way harder than me, so I appreciated this experience."

The exceptional school serves student across Jackson County and finds ways to educate the community about students with disabilities. The school employs sensory and therapeutic services to help students.

Jackson County Exceptional School principal Robert Rumfelt is standing next to the dunking booth he was set to be dunked in. (PGSD)

"This is one of the few festivals across the coast that are specifically for students with disabilities," exceptional school principal Robert Rumfelt said.

The school possesses many options for the students -- one of those options is a mock grocery store where students can shop. They can then go over to the living center to practice living skills.

Art and music is the biggest opening this year, according to Rumfelt. This allows the students to express themselves and learn more about the arts. The school also has a therapy room that teaches the students how to walk up and down stairs and exercise.

The school, according to Rumfelt is for the community to know how to interact with people with disabilities.

"What I want the community to know about us is that our purpose in the community is not just for the kids -- our primary goal is to educate the community about people with disabilities," he said. "Once our kids finish here and the community goes to receive them, they know more about this population than they did before."
Oluseun Michael Olaifa, 26, from Tottenham, north London has convictions for attacking a string of teenage girls on public transport and was being held in a mental hospital

A dangerous sex offender who attacked a string of teenage girls has escaped from hospital during 'escorted leave' from a mental hospital.

Oluseun Michael Olaifa, 26, escaped from Barnet General Hospital while on escorted leave from an un-named north London mental hospital.

Police confirmed Olaifa fled at 3pm yesterday.

Olaifa, who is from Tottenham, north London, targeted teenage girls while travelling on trains and buses in the capital.

Scotland Yard have urged anyone who spots Olaifa to immediately call 999 due to the risk he presents young women and other members of the public.

He has been held in hospital since December 4, 2015, under the terms of the Mental Health Act, however he has repeatedly breached earlier Sexual Offences Prevention Order.

According to Scotland Yard: 'Officers are concerned that he presents a risk to the public, especially young females.'

He is described as a black man, between 5ft 4 and 5ft 5 in height and of slight build. He walks with a limp and has deformed ears which are both curled at the top.

The Met said he is a British national and has connections to Haringey.

Olaifa was on escorted leave from the mental unit to Barnet General Hospital when he escaped

According to Scotland Yard: 'When last seen he was wearing dark clothing, including a black hat which covered a plaster on his head. Olaifa is prohibited from travelling on public transport as his previous offending was committed on London buses.'

Officers said Olaifa should not be approached and if spotted, members of the public should dial 999 immediately.

Anyone with information which can lead to his recapture is asked to call Barnet CID via 101.
A hero police officer who was shot in the face during a pub siege has been stood down from his post following bullying allegations.

Sergeant Gary Hamrey, who headed the Gold Coast Police Dog Squad, last year received a bravery medal for his police work in the Arndel Tavern hostage situation in 2013.

Queensland Police confirmed a 56-year-old sergeant from the Operations Support Command had been stood down from official duty and would be tasked to a 'non-operational role' while the allegations are investigated.

Sergeant Gary Hamrey, (pictured) who heads the Gold Coast Police Dog Squad, last year received a bravery medal for his police work in the Arndel Tavern hostage situation in 2013

Queensland Police confirmed a 56-year-old sergeant from the Operations Support Command had been stood down from official duty and would be tasked to a 'non-operational role' while the allegations are investigated (Sgt Hamrey pictured)

'The officer is the subject of an investigation that the officer failed to treat co-workers with respect and dignity and in a reasonable, equitable and fair manner, failed to properly deal with property and failed to demonstrate high standards of professional integrity and honesty,' the statement read.

'In keeping with our commitment to high standards of behaviour, transparency and accountability, we have undertaken to inform the public when an officer faces serious allegations of misconduct.

'This does not mean that the allegations against the officer have been substantiated.'

Sgt Hamrey and a fellow officer were commended for their bravery when two suspects held 15 people hostage in the Arundel pub.

Sgt Hamrey and a fellow officer were commended for their bravery when two suspects held 15 people hostage in the Arundel pub

The bullet shot by the hostage robber tore through Hamrey's jaw and cheek at the tavern (pictured)

Sgt Hamrey and a colleague chased two robbers who held 15 people hostage at Arundel Tavern in 2013 (Scene pictured)

One of the thieves opened fire on Sgt Hamrey and a bullet tore through his cheek and jaw, before Senior Constable Stephen Cook returned fire and apprehended the offender.

The hero cop's first words in hospital following the shooting were to ask if his police dog Biff was okay.

It is understood Sgt Hamrey was stood down from official duty only days before he was due to carry the Queen's Baton at the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games.
A student at the University of Central Florida who owned high-powered rifles and exhibited 'disturbing behavior' will be deported after a judge found him in breach of his visa.

Police chiefs hailed the decision, saying that a 'very bad' situation may have been averted.

University staff noticed a 'dramatic change' in international student Wenliang Sun, 26 - who suddenly spent $70,000 cash on a new car and dyed his hair blonde.

Despite the fact Sun never made threats against the university or its students, police detected a number of 'red flags' about his behavior, University of Central Florida Police Department (UCFPD) Chief Richard Beary said.

Wenliang Sun, 26, an international student at the University of Central Florida, will be deported for breaching the conditions of his visa. He is pictured left before he died his hair and changed 'dramatically'

'In my mind, something very bad was going to happen somewhere in Central Florida,' he said. 'I think a disaster was about to happen and we stopped it.'

'That's the interesting thing in this case. There were no specific threats,' Beary said.

'It may not be any one thing, but when you start adding pieces together, there is cause for concern.'

He added that people who carry out shootings across the country often change their appearance, the Orlando Sentinel reported.

'On its own, dying your hair is not a big deal,' he said. 'But when we add it together with all of the other things we've seen  another big red flag.'

Sun exhibited 'suspicious behavior' after buying high-powered rifles, police said

Despite implicit warning from police he purchased a .308 caliber rifle along with a bipod and expensive optics

In previous police interviews Sun had referred to his weapon as a 'sniper rifle' instead of a 'hunting rifle'.

And, when asked, he said he did not want to harm himself or anyone else but police remain concerned.

Despite the implicit warning from officers, Sun purchased a second gun- a .308 caliber rifle along with a bipod and expensive optics - just days later.

The US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives began to investigate.

Both guns were purchased legally, as federal law allows non-immigrant visa holders to own firearms if they also carry a hunting license, which Sun did.

Despite worries about Sun's sudden change in appearance it was an unrelated matter that led to his deportation.

Sun stopped attending class - a requirement of is visa.

And once his visa was revoked his gun ownership was also rendered invalid.

Sun was taken into custody on February 7 by federal agents for violating the terms of his admission.

An immigration judge on March 21 ordered that Sun be sent back to China. He will not be able to return to the United States for at least 10 years, officials said.

Sun first came to the attention of local police in early February after he made 'unusual statements' to a school counselor.

University of Central Florida Police Department staff address the university on Sun's deportation

However, further information is unavailable due to medical and mental health confidentiality.

Sun was called in for questioning on February 2 where he told a police officer he owned an assault-style rifle and ammunition.

He stored these in a facility off-campus; The Verge on Jefferson Commons Circle, police said.

Detectives also questioned Sun about his new car, a Chevrolet Corvette he bought with $68,000 cash.

'In my country, that is a cheap car,' he replied, according to a police report.

Text messages released by the UCFPD confirm Sun's father gave him the money for the car.
A man was refused a pint at a pub because the barman thought he was drunk because he was wobbling - because of multiple sclerosis.

Simon Harding's night out with friends was ruined after staff allegedly said he had 'to prove' he was disabled and not intoxicated.

He and his friend Lawrence Doyle, who both have the brain condition, had gone out for St Patrick's day drinks with another friend at The Clock House in Teddington, south west London.

Simon Harding, bottom right, was with his friend Lawrence Doyle, top right, on St Patrick's night when a barman mistook his multiple sclerosis for drunkeness

The group arrived at the Clock House pub in Teddington, south west London around 7pm on St Patrick's Day when they were denied service as a barman thought Mr Harding was 'drunk'

Simon, 43, of Heston, west London, said: 'It's not very inclusive and welcoming and human.

'One of the things that happens is that you get a bit unsteady on your feet.

'Because I have been off balance people assume I am drunk when I am not.'

He was left fuming after a member of staff mistook him for being drunk.

The man approached Lawrence and 'thought by ignoring me and talking to my friends' he could handle the situation, said Simon, who works at a bike shop.

Simon said: 'It just seemed a bit off how we were treated, there were plenty of drunk people that were being quite intrusive to me.'

Lawrence, 43, an executive video games producer, of Hounslow, west London, said: 'We had been in the pub for about one minute when a man approached and said that he would not serve my friend - "he's had too much to drink".

'When I said he has MS the reply was, "Well he has to prove that".

'Well what a thing to say? We don't go around carrying "I have MS" cards because they just don't exist.'

They said they decided to leave rather than argue any further and the rest of the night in a pub down the road was uneventful.

The Clock House management have said they are an inclusive pub and this is the first they've heard of this allegation at around 7pm on Saturday, March 17.

The manager of The Clock House said: 'I am not aware of the situation.

'We adhere to a very responsible selling of alcohol.

'We don't discriminate, we have wheelchair access, we are very open-minded about everything and we listen to our customers.

'We work very hard to check our ages, we are a 21 and over unit - we have stuck with that even with our regulars.

'We have even taken people home to make sure they're ok. We work so hard to make sure everyone gets home safely.

'We're a family-run business and we look after people.'
The Vatican is hosting an exorcism training course for priests this month after a 'pastoral emergency' was declared in response to growing numbers of reported demonic possessions.

It be held in Rome - at the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum - between April 16-21 and will focus on the prayer of liberation, which is commonly used to deliver a persecuted soul from evil spirits.

The news comes after the Vatican was forced to deny that Pope Francis had said there is no Hell in an interview.

Reporter Eugenio Scalfari was accused of 'reconstructing' the pontiff's words after Francis reportedly said: 'There is no hell, there is the disappearance of sinful souls.'

According to Friar Beningo Palilla, there are now about 500,000 members of the faithful requiring exorcism in Italy alone each year

The news comes after the Vatican was forced to deny that Pope Francis had said there is no Hell during an interview

The International Association of Exorcists, which is backed by the Vatican, recently declared a 'pastoral emergency' after numerous priests complained of a surge in exorcism requests.

According to Friar Beningo Palilla, there are now about 500,000 members of the faithful requiring exorcism in Italy alone each year, Vatican Radio reported.

He blamed the increase on a growing number of people seeking the services of fortune tellers and Tarot readers in recent years.

Such practices 'open the door to the devil and to possession,' he claimed.

'We priests, very often, do not know how to deal with the concrete cases presented to us - in the preparation for the priesthood, we do not talk about these things,' he said.

At a conference in Sicily last month, Friar Cesare Truqui warned: 'The fight against the evil one started at the origin of the world, and is destined to last until the end of the world.'

He added: 'Today we are at a stage crucial in history: Many Christians no longer believe in [Satan's] existence, few exorcists are appointed and there are no more young priests willing to learn the doctrine and practice of liberation of souls.'

In January, an Irish priest called on Catholic bishops to train more exorcists after noticing a surge in 'demonic activity'.

Fr Pat Collins (pictured), Ireland's most prominent exorcist, said demand for his services has risen 'exponentially' in recent years

The Dublin priest added that he is 'baffled' by bishops' failure recruit more specialist priests to deal with ghost encounters and demonic possession. Pictured: A scene from the 1973 film The Exorcist, which drew attention to the phenomenon of supposed demonic possession

Fr Pat Collins, Ireland's most prominent exorcist, said demand for his services has risen 'exponentially' in recent years.

He has been overwhelmed by requests for his help, he added, stressing in an open letter to the church's senior clergy that he needs support.

'What I'm finding out desperately, is people who in their own minds believe  rightly or wrongly  that they're afflicted by an evil spirit,' Fr Collins told The Irish Catholic.

The Dublin priest added that he is 'baffled' by bishops' failure to recruit more specialist priests to deal with ghost encounters and demonic possession.

'I think in many cases they wrongly think [they are possessed], but when they turn to the Church, the Church doesn't know what to do with them and they refer them on either to a psychologist or to somebody that they've heard of that is interested in this form of ministry, and they do fall between the cracks and often are not helped,' Fr Collins said.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Catholic News Agency notes, stresses the need to separate signs of mental illness and apparent manifestations of the devil.

The training will be held in Rome - at the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum - between April 16-21 and will focus on the prayer of liberation, which is commonly used to deliver a soul from evil spirits

Paragraph 1673 explains: 'Exorcism is directed at the expulsion of demons or to the liberation from demonic possession through the spiritual authority which Jesus entrusted to his Church.

'Illness, especially psychological illness, is a very different matter; treating this is the concern of medical science.

'Therefore, before an exorcism is performed, it is important to ascertain that one is dealing with the presence of the Evil One, and not an illness.'

In November, Fr Collins said he was appalled there was no 'safeguarding from the evil spirits' in the church.

He said then that bishops were 'neglecting' the practice of fighting evil and that he was 'deeply' bothered by the lack of priests with exorcism training.

'It's interesting as people lose faith in God, they are increasing their interest in the devil and it's purely morbid,' he said.

'I'd say to anyone who's got that morbid interest, 'If you had to deal with evil as someone have to do, it is horrible, it is pure darkness'.'

He also added that his deep faith protects him from evil spirits, stressing that he 'knows who's boss'.

He said that the Lord has 'power and authority' over evil spirits and, because of that, exorcists also have authority over the demons.

'I believe there is nothing to be afraid of but priests and lay people need training in how to go about this and how to distinguish between psychological problems and spiritual problems and how they interconnect at times as they often do,' he said.
Hundreds of villagers have invaded the farm of former Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe's wife to dig for gold, hurling abuse and destroying her fruit trees.

The 400 illegal miners hurled abuse at 'Gucci' Grace Mugabe when she confronted them demanding they leave the Smithfield compound, north of Harare, immediately.

Ms Mugabe's state-of-the art irrigation system lay in ruins as the panners dug shafts, uprooted trees, and loaded gold into trucks for the unnamed Chinese miner.

Hundreds of villagers have invaded the farm of former Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe's wife Grace (pictured) to dig for gold, hurling abuse and destroying her fruit trees

The 400 illegal miners (mine site pictured) hurled abuse at 'Gucci' Grace Mugabe when she confronted them demanding they leave

'You don't tell us to leave, we are just workers. Go and tell that to those who employed us,' the miners shouted at her, according to NewsDay.

'You no longer have any power to remove us. This is the new dispensation, we do what we want.'

The former first lady reported the invasion to Mazowe Police Station on Thursday after failing to kick the miners off the land.

'I then asked them to stop their activities since I am the owner of the farm and I am the holder of a special grant for the whole area,' her police statement read.

'However, the crowd, which was being led by one known as Nyazvigo started to shout obscenities at me and continued with their unlawful activities.'

The former first lady reported the invasion to Mazowe Police Station on Thursday after failing to kick the miners off the land

Two years ago Ms Mugabe illegally forced hundreds of villagers out of their homes, dumping them in the bush where they were forced to survive on guava and melons

Ms Mugabe's farm was once a no-go zone locked down by hundreds of police and soldiers when her husband was president.

Since he was ousted in January after a 37-year rule the property has been undefended and 'become a playground' for disaffected villagers.

Two years ago Ms Mugabe illegally forced hundreds of villagers out of their homes, dumping them in the bush where they were forced to survive on guava and melons and drink water by peeling tree bark.

The evictions took place despite the villagers winning several court orders allowing them to stay. They were only this year granted $30,000 compensation.

Ms Mugabe's farm was once a no-go zone locked down by hundreds of police and soldiers when her husband (pictured) was president

Ms Mugabe angrily defended herself when NewsDay asked her for comment, claiming the incursion was a political plot.

'Does it mean that if President [Emmerson] Mnangagwa is removed tomorrow, he will be disposed of his investments?' she said of Mr Mugabe's former deputy and successor.

'Is this how he wants to be treated with his investments? This is politically motivated, as you can see that when we got there, they were singing kutonga kwaro garwe.'

Ms Mugabe was referencing a song closely associated with President Mnangagwa's rise to power with the help of Zimbabwe's military.
The street where a 22-year-old woman was found dead in her home in a suspected murder has been labelled an 'ice castle' by residents.

Teah Rose Luckwell's body was discovered on Robert Street in South Tamworth, New South Wales, on March 28.

Police collected CCTV footage and were door-knocking the Homes North Community Housing-run apartment block, according to the Daily Telegraph.

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Teah Rose Luckwell (pictured) has been identified as the woman who was found dead in a South Tamworth home

A grandmother identified only as Julie by the newspaper said: 'There were a lot of druggos here. We just had some people evicted because they were breaking and entering. They were fighting all day long.'

She said that is why the cameras were put in.

The building was originally built for people over 55 years old but younger people moved into the units that the older residents couldn't.

Police have declared the death suspicious and are hunting for the killer of the South Tamworth mum.

Investigators are looking into reports a man was seen running from the unit, according to the Northern Daily Leader.

People who live nearby Ms Luckwell said the street had a rise in crime after social housing unit built five years ago

Ms Luckwell's sister Sophie said she has had nightmares thinking about her sister's final moments

Police have described it as a 'violent and brutal death', according to 7 News Sydney.

Ms Luckwell's sister Sophie said she has had nightmares thinking about her sibling's final moments.

Ms Luckwell's one-year-old daughter was uninjured and is now in the care of her family.

Emergency services were called to the home on March 28 around 9.40pm.

In a statement police said: 'Officers found a 22-year-old woman deceased in the home. Police are treating the death as suspicious.

'Strike Force Penola, comprising investigators from the State Crime Command Homicide Squad and Oxley Police District has been formed to investigate the incident.

'Police continue to canvass the local area and are asking for anyone who witnessed anything in the area last night to come forward.'

Police were called to a home in South Tamworth, NSW on March 28 around 9.40pm

Police are urging anyone with information to come forward

A port mortem will be conducted on March 31 to help investigators determine cause of death.

Oxley Chief Inspector Phil OReilly spoke to Northern Daily Leader about the death.

He said that there were 'multiple lines of inquiry' and there are 'many aspects of the lady's life we don't have information about. We hope members of the community can assist us'.

Oxley Chief Inspector Phil OReilly said there were 'multiple lines of inquiry' and there are 'many aspects of the lady's life we don't have information about'

Chief Inspector O'Reilly said that police will follow every line of inquiry.

A crime scene will be in place until Saturday.

Anyone with information is being urged to contact Tamworth Police Station or Crime Stoppers.
The body of a missing US Marine has been discovered off Interstate 95 in Massachusetts - four months after he vanished.

The decomposed remains of 21-year-old Joseph Brancato were found after a person stopped to help a motorist in distress travelling southbound on Wednesday.

Brancato was from the North Shore but was living in Roslindale at the time of his disappearance. He was last seen in November.

Before his death, the 'gregarious' young man had plans to join the Marines.

After his disappearance in November Brancato's family announced a reward 'hoping someone will finally come forward, with information that will help us find out what happened to Joey.'

Before his death Joseph Brancato (pictured) had plans to join the Marines

Hours after hearing Brancato's body was discovered in a wooded area off the highway near Canton, the young man's mother Kim said through tears: 'My baby, to be on the side of the road for all that time  it kills me,' Kim Brancato said through tears at her Winthrop home yesterday afternoon.'

Describing her son as a 'good kid' she said: 'He wanted to go into the Marines. ... Joey knew everybody. He was like the mayor of Winthrop,' told the Boston Herald.

An autopsy performed Thursday failed to establish cause of death.

'Cause and manner of death remain undetermined and under investigation pending further testing,' the Norfolk District Attorney's Office said in a statement.

Ex-Marine recruiter Frank Walter Lipka, 39, was named a 'person of interest' in Brancato's disappearance and death.

Joseph had moved in with Lipka in August, his family said, and they had not heard from him since November 18.

Lipk cash bail was set at $10,000 Monday in West Roxbury District Court, where he was accused of waving a gun at a food delivery driver in September.

Frank Walter Lipka (pictured right) has been named as a 'person of interest'

State Police investigate the discovery of the body of Brancato's body in a wooded area off Interstate 95 South in Canton

Lipka is currently classified as a flight risk. The computer forensics expert is fluent in Russian, Serbian, Croatian and Mandarin - and began working as a Marine recruiter in Boston in 2015.

Prior to Brancato's disappearance, Lipka had been taken into custody for drunk driving, absence without authorization from work, and an altercation with two Marines in his unit.

He served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Kim Brancato said of Lipka: 'He's no patriot. He's no Marine. .Come clean. Come clean.'
Arnold Schwarzenegger has lived up to his famous catchphrase, 'I'll be back.'

According to The Terminator star's representative, his first words after waking up from emergency open-heart surgery were, 'I'm back.'

Daniel Ketchell tweeted on Friday that the 70-year-old actor is awake and is in good spirits following a valve replacement procedure, it was revealed this afternoon.

TMZ, which broke the news, said the former governor of California went to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles on Thursday to have a scheduled catheter valve replacement.

The procedure is said to be risky, and the seven-time Mr Olympia winner developed complications, leading to an emergency open-heart surgery that reportedly lasted several hours.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, pictured on March 18, has undergone an emergency open-heart surgery after a failed valve replacement procedure

Latest sighting: Puffing on a cigar, Schwarzenegger and a friend are seen leaving the Waldorf Astoria Hotel after having lunch with his son Patrick Schwarzenegger in Beverly Hills on Wednesday, a day before his procedure

A statement released on Twitter by Schwarzenegger's spokesman addressing his health scare

The scheduled catheter valve replacement was carried out on Thursday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles

EXPLAINED: ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER'S HEART OPERATION DESIGNED FOR HIGH-RISK PATIENTS Arnold Schwarzenegger, 70, underwent a transcatheter pulmonary valve replacement on Thursday. However, he suffered complications which led to emergency open heart surgery. He is now stable. WHO NEEDS A TRANSCATHETER PULMONARY VALVE REPLACEMENT (TPVR)? There are four valves which control the heart's blood flow. One of those if the pulmonary valve. It opens when the right ventricle of the heart contracts, allowing oxygen-parched blood into the lungs for oxygen. Any issues with this valve can impact blood flow to the entire body. Many can go years without pulmonary heart valve issues being spotted, since the symptoms of fatigue, arrhythmia and shortness of breath. WHY A TPVR INSTEAD OF SURGERY? TPVR operations are associated with shorter hospital stays compared to open surgery, but produce near-identical results. This strategy is often used as a safer bet for people who may have risks with their hearts. This includes people who have already undergone a valve replacement, as Schwarzenegger did in Mexico in 1997. At the time, he told reporters he'd had no symptoms but elected to get operated in an abundance of caution. The high-risk bracket also includes patients who show severe symptoms of aortic stenosis. Severe symptoms suggest the person has a high risk of succumbing to their condition if not operated on soon. Finally, doctors will also endorse a TPVR over open surgery if the patient suffers from other debilitating conditions, like lung disease and kidney disease. WHAT ARE THE RISKS? Though the operation is minimally-invasive, it carries a high risk of death, largely because it is performed on high-risk patients: Bleeding

Blood vessel complications

Problems with the replacement valve, such as the valve slipping out of place or leaking

Stroke

Heart rhythm abnormalities (arrhythmias)

Kidney disease

Heart attack

Infection

Death Advertisement

As of late Friday afternoon, his condition following the operation was described as stable.

DailyMail.com reached out to Creative Artists Agency seeking comment from Schwarzenegger's publicist and was awaiting a reply.

The veteran action star traveled to Mexico in 1997 to undergo surgery to replace a pulmonary valve. According to the American Heart Association, the valve closes off the lower right chamber and opens to allow blood to be pumped from the heart to the lungs (through the pulmonary artery) where it will receive oxygen.

It was reported earlier that the procedure was to replace an aortic valve.

'I've never felt sick or had any symptoms at all, but I knew I'd have to take care of this condition sooner or later,' Schwarzenegger said in a statement after the operation, according to the Los Angeles Times. 'I said to the doctors, "Let's do it now, while I'm young and healthy." They agreed this was the way to go.'

Pulmonary valve replacement is a procedure in which a patient's leaky, or partially blocked, pulmonary valve is replaced with an artificial heart valve.

The actor's spokesperson said at the time that he had a congenital heart defect that had nothing to do with steroids, which Schwarzenegger had admitted to using during his time as a world-class bodybuilder.

On Friday, Schwarzenegger's representative released a statement saying the replacement valve from 1997 was never meant to be permanent and has outlived its life expectancy, so he chose to replace it on Thursday through the less invasive catheter valve procedure.

A team of surgeons at Cedars-Sinai were on standby in case an open-heart surgery had to be performed, which ended up being the case.

Daniel Ketchell, the actor's spokesman, said that the valve was successfully replaced during the open-heart surgery.

Schwarzenegger presents Byoung Chan of Korea with the winners trophy for the Arnold Amateur Bodybuilding event, during the Arnold Sports Festival Australia at The Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre on March 18

Young and buff: Schwarzenegger poses during the 38th Cannes film festival (left), where he presented the documentary Pumping Iron. Pictured right: Schwarzenegger poses for a portrait on Venice Beach in August 1977

He'll be back: Schwarzenegger became a household name after he appeared in James Cameron's futuristic blockbuster The Terminator in 1984

Schwarzenegger's latest sighting was in Beverly Hills on Wednesday, when he was spotted puffing on a cigar in a friend's car while leaving the Waldorf Astoria Hotel after having lunch with his son Patrick in Beverly Hills.

The outspoken actor and politician appeared on CNN last weekend to talk about the future of the Republican Party in the age of Donald Trump, saying that the GOP is 'dying at the box office.'

The previous Sunday, the Austrian-born Predator star made an appearance at an amateur bodybuilding competition as part of the 2018 The Arnold Sports Festival in Melbourne, Australia.

A day before Schwarzenegger's procedure, his ex-wife Mariah Shriver took to Instagram to promote the documentary The Heart of Nuba, which focuses on the work of Dr Tom Catena, a Catholic missionary

Father-son quality time: Schwarzenegger is often photographed with his actor son Patrick. In January, the pair donned lederhosen during a visit to Austria (left). In an Instagram post on July 30, 2017, Patrick wished his famous dad happy 70th birthday (right)

Twinning: Arnold and Patrick Schwarzenegger are pictured during the GQ Men of the year Award 2017 at Komische Oper on November 9, 2017 in Berlin

Schwarzenegger appeared buff and well-tanned, and happily posed with fans for pictures.

In a recent interview he gave in Australia, Schwarzenegger said his age is just a number to him.

'I don't even think that I'm 70, I know I'm 70, but so what?' he told The Project. 'It's only on my passport or my driver's licence, but I feel the same way as I did 20 years ago.'

'I feel good about myself. I work out. I make my movies. Life is great. I feel useful and productive,' he added.

According to Schwarzenegger's IMDB page, the Hollywood heavyweight has a half-dozen film and TV projects in the works, including the action flick Viy 2: Journey to China co-starring Jackie Chan and an untitled Terminator reboot.

The divorced Conan the Barbarian alum has five children, including his son Patrick, who has followed his father's footsteps into acting and is currently starring in the new drama Midnight Sun opposite Bella Thorne.
Travellers on a Qatar flight from Bangkok to Doha were shocked to discover a stowaway bird soaring up and down the cabin four hours into their journey.

Jake Buckingham, from London, posted a clip of the small bird hiding above the overhead luggage before swooping down and flying around the aisles.

Several passengers are seen trying to grab the bird, including a small child, while others recorded the amusing sight.

In the clip, the bird swoops down from above the overhead lockers and flies around the cabin

Several shocked passengers are seeing filming the intruder, with many others attempting to grab the bird

After appearing four hours into the flight, the bird continued flying around for the next two-and-a-half hours until the plane landed.

The 29-year-old said: 'The air hostesses were trying to ignore it, there was no announcement or anything. There was a bit of a commotion when it first appeared but then people just started to get used to it.

'The flight staff tried catching it with their hands but they couldn't get anywhere near it - presumably they had to shoo it out of the plan after it had landed.'

The bird appeared when the plane was at around 39,000ft on Saturday March 24.

Mr Buckingham added: 'I don't think it had an owner - I think it was a stowaway bird from Bangkok that decided to catch a flight.'

At the end of December last year a Delta Air Lines flight from Detroit to Atlanta was forced to turn around after a bird was found in the cockpit.

The pilots thought they were rid of the bird after an hour of searching but the bird reappeared part way through the flight.

Jake Buckingham, who filmed the clip, said that the bird appeared four hours into the flight and nobody was able to catch it, so it continued flapping around for the next two-and-a-half hours
OCEAN SPRINGS, Mississippi -- Tim and Barbara Alamsha, owners of Rock U2 Academy of Popular Music in Ocean Springs, have been chosen as Mississippi's Small Business Persons of the Year by the U.S. Small Business Administration.

"Your hard work, innovative ideas, and dedication to your employees and community have helped you build an outstanding business that has strengthened your state's economy," wrote Linda McMahon of the SBA in a letter informing the Alamshas they had won.

Needless to say, the honor came as a surprise to the Alamshas, who opened Rock U2 in Ocean Springs in 2011.

"I was surprised," Barbara said. "My understanding is typically you have to get nominated a couple of times before they get to know you and your business. But we're just so honored. We're still pinching ourselves to be honored to represent Mississippi."

Tim Alamsha agreed.

"I think we were surprised and humbled," he said. "There's a lot of different types of businesses out there. We're sharing our love of music with children. I guess it's kind of neat that Mississippi -- the birthplace of American music and home of the blues -- would be celebrating people who are teaching children music."

As a state winner, the Alamshas will travel to Washington, D.C. in April during National Small Business Week, which has been celebrated each year since 1963, for a ceremony during which the national Small Business Person(s) of the Year will be announced, along with four runners-up.

The couple opened Rock U2 in a facility in downtown Ocean Springs, but after a few years realized they were maxed out for space. Through a series of improbable events, they were able to locate and secure the funding for a 9,000-square foot state-of-the-art facility on Government Street. They celebrated the grand opening in December.

Barbara acknowledged that the past few months have been a whirlwind for her and her husband.

"Never a dull moment," she said, laughing. "It has been a busy, busy time. Now we have the youth symphony here (at Rock U2) and several new instructors -- so yes, it's been quite an eventful time for us."

Rock U2 has an enrollment of more than 200 students in classes including vocal, drums, piano, guitar, dance, violins -- as well as a professional-grade recording studio and video production facilities.

Mayor Shea Dobson paid tribute to the Alamshas, saying the SBA award was well-deserved.

"Over the past few months, I've gotten to know the Alamshas and their business and I'm blown away by not only how professional it is, but how they work to enrich the lives of children and teach them music. They do great work.

"They're extremely deserving of this award," Dobson added. "They have a great, great business model and it couldn't have happened to two more wonderful people."
David Goodman, 25 (pictured), was sentenced to 125 years and eight months to life in prison in San Bernardino, California court on Wednesday

A former Disneyland employee who volunteered at a children's theater group was sentenced to more than 125 years in prison on Wednesday for child molestation.

David Goodman, 25, was found guilty last month of molesting multiple children between the ages of five and 11.

The charges included four counts of lewd act upon a child, three counts of oral copulation or sexual penetration, one count of forcible lewd act upon a child, one count of distributing or showing child or youth photography to a minor, and one count of possession of child or youth pornography.

On Wednesday, the pedophile was officially sentenced to 125 years and eight months to life in a California state prison.

During the trial, prosecutors detailed how Goodman gained access to children.

'In a detailed confession letter, the defendant mentioned the best way to gain access to kids was by befriending single mothers who he described as "easy targets,"' the district attorney's office said in a press release.

At the time of his arrested in December 2014, the pedophile had been working at Disneyland for two months (Disneyland pictured above in 2015)

At the time of his arrest in December 2014, the Banning man had been working at Disneyland for two months, and volunteered his time at a children's theater.

He was finally caught when someone called police to report him for masturbating in front of six- and nine-year-old boys at a home in Yucaipa.

Officers interviewed the two boys, as well as a five-year-old girl and one of their mothers, who said that Goodman committed sexual abuse on at least two separate occasions in the last several months.

When these crimes occurred, Goodman was 21 and had allegedly befriended two women in their early 30s, who each had children.

San Bernardino County Sheriff's deputies later found a 'manual' titled 'How to Practice Child Love' on Goodman's computer, which prosecutors introduced into evidence during the trial.

The victims testified during the trial, and were provided comfort by a victim advocate and a dog from the special victims K-9 unit.
More that 60 pit bulls have been found without food or water chained up outside a Dodge County home.

US Marshals believe the animals were part of a suspected dog fighting ring, according to documents filed in federal court in Dublin.

More than 63 pit bulls have been rescued from a dog fighting ring in Georgia. Pictured: One of the dogs rushes towards its rescuer

Dwight McDuffie (left) and James Lampkin (right) were arrested after police found evidence of dog fighting in a remote part of Dodge County

Deveon Hood (left) and Andre Archer (right) were also arrested on charges of dog fighting

Georgia State Patrol (GSP) troopers stopped a vehicle on March 17. Inside they found a pit bull, wounded and covered with blood.

Authorities say the driver admitted to having just attended a dog fight in a remote part of Dodge County, about 140 miles (225 kilometers) southeast of Atlanta, toldWGXA.

Joe Ford (pictured) was among those taken into custody

Later, officers raided a home at 2083 Rozar Goolsby Road, outside Eastman, finding a dog-fighting pit, training equipment and dozens of dogs chained to a gate.

Most of the dogs did not have food or water.

Nearby, they also discovered antibiotics and syringes for the dogs, and a treadmill with a rope attached to the front.

They also found four 'grave areas' and the buried bodies of five dogs.

Marshals seized the 63 dogs, which are now being treated by veterinarians, as well as three firearms, marijuana and cocaine.

Xavier Simmons, Benjamin Shinhoster, Dwight McDuffie, James Lampkin, Deveon Hood, Joe Ford and Andre Archer have all been arrested and charged with dog fighting, according to Dodge County Sheriff's department.

Federal government has gone to court to claim the animals as interstate dog fighting is a federal crime.
A man was found dead next to chemical spillage inside a remote farm cottage today forcing police to seal off the surrounding area.

Police say the death of the man, who was found on the floor of the property in a tiny village near Dumfries, in Dumfries and Galloway, is being treated as 'unexplained'.

Several roads in area have been closed and officers have been posted at various junctions to prevent anyone getting through.

A man was found dead lying next to chemical spillage inside a farm cottage today

Police say the death is being treated as unexplained. The man was found on the floor of the property in a tiny village near Dumfries in Dumfries and Galloway

Police Scotland said they were alerted at around 12pm today, Friday 30 March, and that a man had been found unconscious in a farm cottage about three miles from Dumfries.

Emergency services rushed to the scene and the area was quickly sealed off after chemicals were found in the cottage, located in the village of Terregles, near Dumfries.

Emergency services attended and discovered the body of the man lying on the floor of the property.

Police Scotland said they were alerted at around 12pm. Two units from the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service fire station at Dumfries were sent to the scene along with their special incidents vehicle

The area was quickly sealed off and several roads were closed

Two units from the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service fire station at Dumfries were sent to the scene along with their special incidents vehicle.

A police spokesman said: 'The man was found in the cottage and we are currently treating his death as unexplained.

'In addition, we came across a chemical spillage on the floor of the cottage.

Officers were posted at various junctions to prevent anyone getting through

'Enquiries are underway to establish the nature of the substance and an exclusion zone of 100 metres has been put in place as a precaution.'

The spokesman added: 'We haved had to close a number of roads between Terregles Village and the Old Glen Road to allow emergency vehicles to access to the location.

'We are urging members of the public to avoid the area at present.'
A British soldier embedded with US forces has been killed by a roadside bomb while on an anti-ISIS operation in Syria, the Ministry of Defence has said.

The unnamed individual, reported to be a special forces soldier, was taking part in an operation against the jihadist group when the blast occurred on Thursday, a spokesman said.

An American was also killed in the incident in the northern Syrian city of Manbij, which wounded five others. They are the first coalition service members to die in Syria this year.

Since 2014 the coalition has provided weapons, training and other support to forces fighting ISIS jihadists in Syria and Iraq

A convoy of U.S. armoured vehicles drives near the village of Yalanli, on the western outskirts of the northern Syrian city of Manbij

The U.S. is eager to withdraw from Syria as soon as possible 'We'll be coming out of Syria, like, very soon,' President Trump told industrial workers in Ohio on Thursday

America has more than 2,000 military personnel in eastern Syria, working with local militia groups to defeat IS while trying to keep out of Syria's broader civil war.

The improvised explosive went off around midnight (2100 GMT), a coalition statement said - but gave no further details about the victims.

Since 2014 the coalition has provided weapons, training and other support to forces fighting ISIS jihadists in Syria and Iraq.

ISIS remains active in the Euphrates Basin area of northern Syria, as well as pockets further to the south.

Special forces units are known to be operating on the ground in Syria to secure areas retaken from ISIS - but officials have refused to comment on their activities or their existence.

This latest incident brings the number of US personnel killed in action during the operation to 14.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.

Manbij is a Arab-Kurdish mixed town close to the border with Turkey which is at risk of falling to the Turkish invasion of northern Syria.

It is located between the northern city of Aleppo and the western bank of the Euphrates, less than 18 miles south of the border.

Manbij lies where several international influence zones meet and risks becoming a new flashpoint, experts say.

An MOD spokesman told MailOnline: 'It is with regret that we must confirm that a member of the UK Armed Forces was killed by an improvised explosive device in Syria yesterday.

'The individual was embedded with US forces on a counter-Daesh operation when the incident occurred.

President Trump's pledge to withdrawal U.S. forces from Syria is not likely to go unresisted by the military

'The family has been notified and our thoughts are with them at this difficult time.

'We cannot confirm any further details at this stage.'

US military spokesman Col. Ryan Dillon said: 'There is an investigation under way to identify who [the attackers] could possibly be.

'We have our initial assessment and thoughts on that but we won't provide until the investigation is complete.'

President Donald Trump said in a speech in Ohio on Thursday that the US would be coming out of Syria 'very soon'.

America has more than 2,000 military personnel in eastern Syria, working with local militia groups to defeat IS while trying to keep out of Syria's broader civil war.

But while the President wants to earn plaudits at home by pledging a withdrawal, senior officers at the United States Central Command (Centcom) - in charge of the fight against Isis - are determined to remain in Syria and Iraq until the group is decisively beaten.
Cooper Caffrey was among dozens of students at Madison High School, in Middletown, who received detention after they took part in the March 14 protests to call for gun control

A survivor of a 2016 school shooting in Ohio said he was ordered to apologize for taking part in a mass student walkout.

Cooper Caffrey was among dozens of students at Madison High School, in Middletown, who received detention after they took part in the March 14 protests to call for gun control.

The walk out took place just one month after the Parkland shooting that left 17 dead in Florida.

The Madison High Schoolers have experienced their own fair share of tragedy, Cincinnati.com reports.

Two years ago, student James Austin Hancock stole a gun from his great-grandmother and opened fire in the cafeteria. Four of his classmates, including Caffrey, were injured but thankfully, none were killed.

However, when the 43 students chose to join the national protest, they were punished.

Caffrey, now 16, said he felt like he's been 'shot all over again' after being told to apologize for taking part in a mass student walkout.

The teen had been tucking into his lunch on February 29, 2016, in the school cafeteria when he was shot by Hancock. Another student was shot, while two others were injured by shrapnel while running away.

When confronted over their decision to ask students to apologize, the school board simply: 'We are a society of rules.'

His father Marty Caffrey said that he never expected the school to support the movement.

'The whole purpose of a walkout is to protest against an establishment,' he wrote on Facebook.

In this February 29 photo, deputies are shown standing at the scene of the school shooting

James Austin Hancock sits next to his attorney Charlie Rittgers Sr. while in court in Hamilton, Ohio where he pleaded guilty to four counts of attempted murder and one count of inducing panic

The shooter pleaded guilty to four counts of attempted murder and one count of inducing panic, and was sentenced to six years in a juvenile facility with potential for an extended sentence if he commits another crime.

Authorities said Hancock, who was 14 at the time, took a relative's loaded gun to school and opened fire in the cafeteria, hitting two students.

Two other students were injured by shrapnel or while running away.

'There really isn't a good motive for what he did,' defense attorney Charles Rittgers said.

'You're dealing with the mind of a 14-year-old.

'And as most people know, especially at that age, they're immature and they act sometimes impulsively.'

He said Hancock's actions 'came totally out of the blue' and that he did not have a history of causing trouble.

He said the teen is sorry for what he did and is relieved no one was hurt more seriously than they were. Authorities have said all four students recovered.

Brant Murray, a 13-year-old student hit in the legs by shrapnel in the shootings, was at the court with his mother, Ginger Weaver.

Above parents run towards Madison Jr/Sr High School following the February 29, 2016, shooting. Authorities said Hancock took a relative's loaded gun to school and opened fire in the cafeteria, hitting two students

She said 'physically, he's fine,' but he does not talk much about that day, adding he did not even know Hancock.

She thought Hancock should have been charged as an adult.

'At 15 years old, he knows better. Period,' she said. 'I wanted more... This is my child.'

Hancock was indicted in March as a juvenile under a serious youthful offender classification.

Butler County Prosecutor Mike Gmoser said the grand jury had the option of indicting Hancock as an adult but chose to charge him under the juvenile classification.

The serious juvenile offender status results in a rare blended sentence with both juvenile and adult penalties.

Rittgers said Hancock will be in a juvenile detention center until he turns 21, and if he stays out of trouble in the meantime, the threat of the adult sentence would go away at 21.

If not, a prosecutor can request he be moved into the adult system.

There, he could face dozens of years in prison, depending upon Craft's sentencing decision in June.
The mother of a German backpacker who died after being pinned underneath a ride-on lawnmower on an avocado farm is still searching far answers.

Jennifer Kohl, 27, was riding the lawnmower with another man along the side of a hill on December 8 when it rolled over on top of her.

Emergency services were unable to save Ms Kohl, who died at scene near Tamborine Mountain, about 40 kilometres from the Gold Coast.

Jennifer Kohl, 27, was riding the lawnmower with another man along the side of a hill on December 8 when it rolled over on top of her

Her mother Corneila Schroder was back home in Leipzig when her daughter died and has spent the past four months wondering why

Her mother Corneila Schroder was back home in Leipzig when her daughter died and has spent the past four months wondering why.

The devastated mother said she felt empty and without peace and was contacting media, emergency services, and anyone who shared Ms Kohl's final hours.

'I want to know exactly what happened that day... I'm sick with sorrow and worry ... always crying for her,' she told the Gold Coast Bulletin.

'I do not want to blame anyone, I just want to know how Jennifer and her friends were doing at the farm.

Emergency services were unable to save Ms Kohl, who died at scene near Tamborine Mountain, about 40 kilometres from the Gold Coast .

The devastated mother said she felt empty and without peace and was contacting media, emergency services, and anyone who shared Ms Kohl's final hours

'I would like to speak with them... I hope they understand that they were the last ones who saw my daughter alive.'

The last time they spoke was four days earlier on the young woman's 27th birthday, telling her she loved her and missed her.

Ms Kohl was just two months from the end of her visa and a return home to her family.

Mourners at Ms Kohl's funeral remembered her as an independent woman who took her own path early in life.

They said she always had a 'green thumb' so working on a farm was a natural way for her to make money and extend her Australian visa.

Workplace Health and Safety Queensland are investigating Ms Kohl's death, and will prepare a report for the coroner.

Jennifer Kohl, 27, was riding the lawnmower with another man along the side of a hill on December 8 when it rolled over on top of her (pictured is a meadow near Tamborine Mountain)

Mathias, a friend of Ms Kohl's, paid tribute to his best friend of over a decade, who stuck by him through thick and thin.

'She was the one who gave me the power and motivation not to give up over and over again in just a unique way that I never seen before,' he said soon after her death.

'I will remember her as a strong woman, as someone who has enriched my life and I'm happy and proud to have met her.'

He said Ms Kohl, a native of Leipzig, had inspired him to draw and paint, and said he shared her passion for animals.
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Two Londoners who were part of the ISIS beheading gang dubbed 'The Beatles' and helped to capture, torture and kill more than 20 Western hostages have given an astonishing interview from captivity.

The two men El Shafee Elsheikh, 29, known as George and Alexanda Amon Kotey, 34, known as Ringo criticised Britain for revoking their citizenship and claimed they will not get a fair trial wherever it takes place.

Kotey said the execution of hostages including journalist James Foley and Brit Alan Henning by Jihadi John in propaganda videos was 'regrettable' and tried to shift the blame from himself.

They spoke to The Associated Press in an interview from their captivity Friday in northern Syria, the first to a media outlet since their detention.

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Londoners Alexanda Amon Kotey (left), known as Ringo, and El Shafee Elsheikh, known as George, gave the damning interview from their captivity

El Shafee Elsheikh and Alexanda Amon Kotey were captured in early January in eastern Syria by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces.

In the interview, they slammed the 'audacity' of the British government for its 'illegal' decision to strip their citizenship.

They did not admit any involvement in hostage-takings or beheadings.

Alexanda Amon Kotey reads a MailOnline article about his British citizenship being revoked while detained in Syria

Pictured: Kurdish security escorts the two blindfolded British ISIS Beatles members at a security centre in Kobani, Syria

Kotey (left) blamed Western governments for the deaths of some of their victims. He said hostages died because governments refused to negotiate ransoms

The cell became known for its brutality, holding in captivity more than 20 Western hostages, and torturing and killing several, including American, British and Japanese journalists and aid workers, in 2014 and 2015.

Though they spoke of their membership in the Islamic State group, they did not admit to belonging to the cell or to have been involved in any of the kidnappings or killings.

Elsheikh called the allegations 'propaganda.'

Asked about the beheadings of American journalist James Foley and other victims, Kotey said many in ISIS 'would have disagreed' with the killings 'on the grounds that there is probably more benefit in them being political prisoners.'

Elsheikh (left), 29, and Kotey, 34, were captured in Syria in January while trying to escape to Turkey, according to Kurdish-led forces

The alleged killers, pictured being transported to a security centre, said the UK revoking their citizenship denies them fair trial

Though they spoke of their membership in the Islamic State group, they did not admit to belonging to the cell or to have been involved in any of the kidnappings or killings

'As for my position, I didn't see any benefit. It was something that was regrettable,' he added. He also blamed Western governments for failing to negotiate, noting that some hostages were released for ransoms.

The leader of the cell, Mohammed Emwazi, was dubbed 'Jihadi John' in the British media after he appeared, masked, in a string of videos showing beheadings of the hostages. He was killed in a U.S.-led coalition drone strike in 2015 in the Syrian city of Raqqa, the de facto IS capital. Another member, Aine Lesley Davis, was arrested in Turkey and convicted there in 2017, sentenced to seven years in prison.

How the two Beatles were snared by their fingerprints... and may already be handing over vital information Kotey and Elsheikh were captured by the Kurdish-led Syrian democratic forces and identified by fingerprints and other biometric means, according to anonymous U.S. officials speaking to the New York Times. They were carrying mobile phones and other electronic equipment, which intelligence officials have gleaned for information. American spies will be especially keen to quiz the pair on the locations of surviving ISIS militants hiding out along the Euphrates River Valley near the border between Syria and Iraq. And officials will hope the men will have information about other hostages, such as the British journalist John Cantlie, who was abducted with his U.S. colleague James Foley in 2012 and has appeared in a series of ISIS propaganda videos. Advertisement

Elsheikh, whose family came to Britain from Sudan when he was a child, was a mechanic from White City in west London. Kotey, who is of Ghanaian and Greek-Cypriot descent and converted to Islam in his 20s, is from London's Paddington neighborhood. Both have been interrogated by U.S. officials since their capture.

Elsheikh traveled to Syria in 2012, initially joining al-Qaida's branch before moving on to IS, according to the U.S. State Department's listing of the two men for terrorism sanctions. It said he 'earned a reputation for waterboarding, mock executions and crucifixions while serving as an (IS) jailer.'

Kotey served as a guard for the execution cell and 'likely engaged in the group's executions and exceptionally cruel torture methods, including electronic shock and waterboarding,' the State Department said.

In the interview, the two men denounced the media for the spreading allegations of the 'Beatles' cell, at one point depicting the accusations as concocted as a pretext to kill them with drone strikes in Syria.

'No fair trial, when I am `the Beatle' in the media. No fair trial,' Elsheikh said.

They also denounced as 'illegal' the British government's decision in February to strip them of citizenship. The decision was widely reported in British media, though officials have not confirmed or denied it, citing privacy rules.

The revocation of citizenship exposes them to 'rendition and torture,' Elsheikh said, 'being taken to any foreign land and treated in anyway and having nobody to vouch for you.'

'When you have these two guys who don't even have any citizenship ...if we just disappear one day, where is my mom going to go and say where is my son,' he said.

The capture of the two men has sparked a debate over where and how to prosecute them. The U.S. has been pressing for the home countries of foreign jihadis in Iraq and Syria to take their nationals for trial.

Mohammed Emwazi, who was killed in a US air strike in 2015, appeared in a number of videos in which captives including British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning were beheaded

Britain's defense secretary has said they should not be allowed back into the country. Former captives of the cell and families of its victims have called on Elsheikh and Kotey to be given a fair trial, whether in the United States or Britain.

The pair were captured amid fears they were trying to return to the UK intending to bring bloodshed to British streets.

Along with Mohammed Emwazi - the killer nicknamed Jihadi John (pictured) - and Aine Davis, Kotey and Elsheikh are believed to have been part of a group named after the Beatles because of their English accents

Officials hope that both Britons' capture may lead to information on what happened to remaining hostages, including British journalist John Cantlie, who appeared in a series of propaganda videos and then vanished.

It is also hoped that they may yield information about the whereabouts of their victims' bodies.

Along with Mohammed Emwazi - the killer nicknamed Jihadi John - and Aine Davis, the pair are thought to have been part of a group named after the '60s band because of their English accents.

The four Londoners were linked to dozens of hostage murders in Iraq and Syria while serving under the self-styled caliphate.

Jihadi John was killed in an airstrike in 2015 in Syria. A fourth man, Aine Davis, is imprisoned in Turkey on terrorism charges.

The US government said the Beatles beheaded more than 27 hostages.

According to the State Department, Kotey 'likely engaged in the group's executions and exceptionally cruel torture methods, including electronic shock and waterboarding.'

Kotey also acted as an ISIS recruiter and was responsible for recruiting several Brits to join the murderous organisation.

The State Department said 'Elsheikh was said to have earned a reputation for waterboarding, mock executions and crucifixions while serving as an ISIS jailer.'

Former child refugee Elsheikh supported Queens Park Rangers and worked as a fairground mechanic.

He was born in Sudan, but his family fled the country and came to Britain in the early 1990s.

Elsheikh became heavily influenced by the sermons of a West London imam known for his radical beliefs.

The fourth member, Davis, was convicted of being a member of a terrorist organisation and jailed for seven-and-a-half years at a court in Silivri, Turkey, in May 2017

His father, Rashid Sidahmed Elsheikh, a translator and poet living in London, said his son had travelled to Syria to fight for jihadis at the start of 2012.

He described his son's radicalisation as 'lightning-fast'.

He said: 'We tried to handle this in a mild, considerate way but before we could do anything, he just left.'

Elsheikh's mother, Maya Elgizouli, said Elsheikh was the middle son of three raised alone by her after the family moved to Britain.

But she said he was affected badly when his eldest brother Khalid was sentenced to ten years in prison for possessing a firearm after the killing of a gang member involved in a dispute with the family.

Elsheikh's younger brother, Mahmoud, was killed fighting for ISIS in Iraq last year after following him to the war zone as a 17-year-old.

Salah al-Bander, a former Cambridge Liberal Democrat councillor who raised the alarm about Elsheikh's journey to Syria in 2012, said he had a stall outside Shepherd's Bush tube station from which he used to preach, adding that he was 'completely transformed' into a radical in a short period.

He told The Guardian: 'El Shafee was a really very quiet, kind, reflective young person. In a very short period of time, I mean weeks, he turned to be very radicalised, with very strong views about everything.'

Kotey, also a QPR supporter, was from Paddington and raised in a Greek Orthodox family. Neighbours said he was a 'reserved, polite boy'.

He converted to Islam after falling in love with a Muslim woman and had two daughters with her.

In January 2017, US authorities named Kotey as a member of the cell and said they had imposed sanctions on him.

Davis, a former tube driver and drug dealer from Hammersmith in west London who went to Syria in 2013, reportedly told a BBC journalist to 'f*** off' when asked to comment on the verdict.

According to the BBC, Davis was asked in court about his involvement with the terror cell and denied involvement.

'I am not ISIS. I went to Syria because there was oppression in my country,' he said.

Davis is thought to have converted to Islam shortly after being jailed in the UK in 2006 for possessing a firearm.

The son of a dinner lady and a John Lewis shopworker, he took the name Hamza and travelled the Middle East.

He befriended Emwazi at a mosque in west London shortly before leaving for Syria.

He is believed to have travelled to Syria in late 2012, where he fought for ISIS.

He abandoned four children by two different mothers when he left Britain on a flight to Amsterdam.

In 2014 Davis's wife, Amal El-Wahabi, then 27, became the first woman to be jailed for terrorism offences connected to Syria after she was caught paying a smuggler to take 20,000 (17,000) in cash to Turkey for her husband.

She was jailed for two years.

'John': Man Utd fan who turned into the most reviled man in the world Mohammed Emwazi later became the most reviled man in the world as ISIS's most notorious executioner Jihadi John Kuwaiti born Mohammed Emwazi, became the most reviled man in the world as ISIS's most notorious executioner Jihadi John. However, reports suggest he appeared to embrace British life after moving to the country as a six-year-old in 1993. Neighbours remember a polite, quiet boy who supported Manchester United, wore 'Western clothing' and played football on the affluent streets of west London. He became more religious after moving to Quintin Kynaston Community Academy, a secondary school in St John's Wood, in 1999. But it was only after he won a place studying computing at the University of Westminster that his behaviour began to change. The university has since been linked with several proponents of radical Islam - and Emwazi appeared to have fallen under their sway. He began attending different mosques and was known to associate with Bilal el-Berjawi, who was killed by a drone strike in Somalia four years ago. Emwazi, Alexanda Kotey and Aine Davis all attended the al-Manaar mosque in Labroke Grove, where Kotey emerged as the ring leader. The knife-wielding killer - dubbed 'Jihadi John' - beheaded hostages, including British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning, on camera. Emwazi is also believed to have killed the American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, as well as Abdul-Rahman Kassig, an aid worker. Advertisement

'Ringo': A 'polite' west London boy who fought for ISIS Alexanda Kotey, said to be a fan of Queens Park Rangers, was also described by neighbours as a 'polite' boy Alexanda Kotey, said to be a fan of Queens Park Rangers, was once described by neighbours as a 'polite' boy. But after he left the UK to join ISIS in Syria, he used social media to continue radicalising young men, an old friend told ITV. They added: 'The way he secretly operated he was a roadman, a gangster. 'He had the skills of influencing people he could see as influential or vulnerable so they could bring their friends in. 'They would have used the same tactics as gangs to recruit people. Like grooming, he gave them a sense of belonging. 'They couldn't get job or uni course they wanted. 'Through remote network and services, he would have people he delegated responsibility to. They could have helped and advise them on how to get to Syria.' Father-of-two Kotey, who is half Ghanaian, half Greek Cypriot, is believed to have been one of ISIS' key recruiters and helped them radicalise young men from London. He used to be a member of the Greek Orthodox Church but is said to have converted to Islam in his teens. He attended the al-Manaar mosque in Ladbroke Grove, west London, with Emwazi and Davis, it was reported. A local community worker said the trio were 'physically ejected' from the mosque because of their extremist views. They said 'He would definitely be standing there with, I'd say a dozen boys all listening to him. He was the speaker. He was the spokesman in that little group. 'It was Alex most definitely who was the lynchpin. The mosque did so much to keep these people at the fringes.' Advertisement

'Paul': A west London gangster and gun runner turned ISIS guard The third so called 'Beatle', Aine Davis, originally from Hammersmith, travelled to Syria to become an ISIS guard The fourth so called 'Beatle', Aine Davis, originally from Hammersmith, travelled to Syria to become an ISIS guard. Prior to fleeing the UK, Davis was convicted six times for possessing cannabis and was also heavily involved in gang circles, where he was known as 'Biggz.' The gangster worked as a gun runner, selling handguns before the weapons factory he worked for was busted by police. Davis is thought to have converted to Islam shortly after being jailed in the UK in 2006 for possessing a firearm. The son of a dinner lady and a John Lewis shopworker, he took the name Hamza and travelled the Middle East. He met his wife Amal el-Wahabi at Westbourne Park mosque in 2006 and despite the disapproval of her parents, they developed a close relationship. Davis' new found interest in religion led him to persuade his girlfriend that they should move to Yemen. He was detained by police in Turkey last year on suspicion of plotting a terrorist attack. His wife, Amal El-Wahabi, was jailed in 2014 for funding terrorism. When police raided his wife's home, Davis's iPod revealed he used to listen to lectures by radical American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. Advertisement

'George': Former mechanic who beheaded 27 hostages The fourth and final member of the infamous ISIS execution squad with Jihadi John El Shafee Elsheikh (pictured, as a teen) The third member of the infamous ISIS execution squad with Jihadi John El Shafee Elsheikh. Described as a 'kind and softly spoken' former fairground mechanic, from west London, he turned into a ISIS extremist who was part of the gang that beheaded 27 hostages and tortured many more in Syria. Elsheikh grew up in White City, just a few miles other members of the cell, and his mother said he was radicalised at local mosques within weeks of hearing sermons by infamous hate preacher Hani al-Sibai. He later travelled to Syria in 2012 to fight his holy war, and his younger brother Mahmoud followed him - and was killed fighting in Iraq last year. Elsheikh's identity was confirmed by a former US counter-terrorism official and investigators working to find The Beatles. The terrorist, who lived in Syria with two wives and two young children, has been captured after being hunted by security services on both sides of the Atlantic. His mother, Maha Elgizouli, revealed how the family moved to White City in west London when Elsheikh was just five years old, along with his two brothers. Both of his parents had fled the civil war in Sudan in the 1990s - where they were both members of the Communist Party - but the father, a poet, left the family when Elsheikh was just seven years old. They grew up a few miles from the first of the infamous Beatles group to be exposed, Mohammed Emwazi - who later became known as Jihadi John but was killed in a drone strike in 2015. Advertisement
A London bus driver who was found guilty of careless driving in a crash that left a 27-year-old woman in a coma for eight months has kept his job.

Donavan Daley, a Metroline bus driver, has been told he can resume his driving duties after being convicted of one count of careless driving.

Daley was given a 770 fine and nine penalty points on his licence, City of London Magistrates' Court heard on Monday.

The bus driver was found not guilty of one count of causing injury by dangerous driving.

Saba Mirza, 27, (centre) was hit by a bus being driven by Donavan Daley on a zebra crossing in Little Venice in west London which left her with life-changing injuries

Saba Mirza, 27, was hit by a bus being driven by Daley on a zebra crossing in Little Venice in west London which left her with life-changing injuries.

She was on her way to a dinner at her mother's house with her family when she was involved in the crash on November 25, 2016, the Standard reports.

Ms Mirza was in a coma for eight months after the collision and now needs support breathing

Ms Mirza, who now needs support breathing, became trapped beneath the number 46 bus and has remained in hospital ever since with her condition changing daily.

Although Daley was suspended while a three-month investigation was pursued, investigators have since decided he can return to work after passing additional driving and behavioral assessments.

Nicky Mirza, the mother of the young woman, claims the family are 'dismayed' by the news that Daley will return to work as a bus driver.

Speaking to the Standard, she said: 'I broke down in court, I had to be walked out. It broke my heart to hear Saba had to go through so much pain while the guy was still driving.'

She added said: 'My daughter Nabila and I have been at the hospital every day, and every day there are issues.

'We have gone back into the depths of fear and fright so many times, thinking 'this is it'. And it will be like that until she comes home.'

Ms Mirza, who now needs support breathing, became trapped beneath the number 46 bus (pictured the scene of where the collision happened)

Emergency services attended the scene of the crash which left Ms Mirza hospitalised

The family have since been told that Ms Mirza might need to go into a nursing home and also may never come off a breathing machine.

Ms Mirza's sister Nabila believes that the crash has ruined their lives and their whole family has been affected by the crash.

They have all been through therapy and her older sister had to take a year out of her law conversion course and cancel a placement year at the Houses of Parliament.

Before the crash Ms Mirza worked at Swiss Cottage School for disabled children as a teaching assistant.

A spokesman from Metroline said: 'Our thoughts remain with Ms Mirza and her family at this difficult time.

The crash took place outside Warwick Avenue tube station in Little Venice, west London

'Following our disciplinary procedures, Mr Daley was suspended whilst we conducted an investigation over a period of three months.

'This concluded that Mr Daley could safely resume his driving duties and he went on to pass additional driving and behavioural assessments required by our Transport Safety Team for any driver involved in a collision.

'Now that the Court case has been concluded, we will be informing the Office of the Traffic Commissioner.'

A TfL spokesman told MailOnline: 'This was clearly a serious incident and our thoughts go out to Ms Mirza and her family.

'We expect the highest standards of London bus drivers and have sought assurances from Metroline that those standards are met and that a thorough safety process has been applied before allowing the driver to resume duties.'

A 'Justice for Saba' petition has been launched by Ms Mirza's family in a bid to try and change the law.
Pope Francis presided over solemn Good Friday services amid heightened security at Rome's Colosseum for the Via Crucis procession and a new communications controversy at home.

The Pontiff was forced to deny reports that he told a well-known Italian journalist that 'there is no hell'.

The Vatican insisted that no quotations attributed to the Pope in an article in Italy's La Repubblica 'should be considered as a faithful transcription' of his words.

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A general view of the Colosseum during the Stations of the Cross celebrated by Pope Francis on Friday in Rome

Pope Francis lies down in prayer during the Good Friday Passion of Christ Mass, inside St. Peter's Basilica, at the Vatican earlier on Friday

Pope Francis presides over the Via Crucis (Way of the Cross) torchlight procession at the Colosseum on Good Friday

Pope Francis led the Good Friday Passion of the Lord Mass in Saint Peter's Basilica at the Vatican on Friday

Priests help Pope Francis during the Good Friday Passion of the Lord Mass in Saint Peter's Basilica at the Vatican

At the start of the most solemn period of the Catholic Church calendar, Francis lay prostrate in front of the altar in St. Peter's Basilica before the chant-filled Good Friday evening service got underway

The Colosseum - once the scene of gladiator battles -was on Friday the stage of one of the most holy of Christian ceremonies led by the Pope

Italian police, carabinieri and soldiers were on alert throughout Good Friday, with Holy Week, arresting several suspected Islamic extremists around Italy amid warnings from law enforcement about the return of foreign fighters from Iraq and Syria.

At the start of the most solemn period of the Catholic Church calendar, Francis lay prostrate in front of the altar in St. Peter's Basilica before the chant-filled Good Friday evening service got underway.

Later he travelled to the Colosseum to preside over the Way of the Cross procession re-enacting Christ's crucifixion - the seminal event in Christianity leading to Christ's resurrection celebrated on Easter Sunday.

The solemn commemorations coincide with a new communications controversy in the Vatican over the pope's reported assertion - at the height of Holy Week - that hell does not exist.

Pope Francis watches the Via Crucis (Way of the Cross) procession during Good Friday celebrations at the Colosseum in Rome

Francis, 81, watched the procession as it made its way around Rome's ancient Colosseum attended by 20,000 people on the day that Christians commemorate Jesus' death by crucifixion

Pope Francis leads the Via Crucis (Way of the Cross) procession during Good Friday celebrations at the Colosseum in Rome, Italy March 30, 2018. REUTERS/Remo Casilli

ROME, ITALY - MARCH 30: A view of the Colosseum before the Pope Francis led the Stations of the Cross on Friday

The Pope at times looked a little tired as he commemorated the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and his death at Calvary, in front of Rome's Colosseum, on Friday

A cross was lit before the arrival of Pope Francis for the Via Crucis (Way of the Cross) torchlight procession at the ancient Colosseum

People waited with candles for Pope Francis to arrive for the Via Crucis (Way of the Cross) torchlight procession on Good Friday

Security was tighter than last year, with more checks as participants approached the area. This week, Italian police carried out four raids against suspected supporters of Islamist terrorism, arresting seven people, including one man who was planning a truck attack

Francis wove his comments, made at the end of the torchlight service, around the themes of shame and repentance, conjuring up the image of a modern world where pride, arrogance and selfishness often trump humility and generosity

The Colosseum, in Rome's historic centre, is one of the tourist attractions in the city where police have set up military jeeps and armoured vehicles to form barriers against truck attacks

The Vatican has not denied Francis' comments to the La Repubblica newspaper, saying only the journalist reconstructed a conversation.

It was the fifth time in five years Francis has spoken to Repubblica's founder, Eugenio Scalfari, a devout atheist who admits he does not record or take notes during interviews.

Nearly every time a Francis interview has appeared on Repubblica's front page, the Vatican press office has insisted the pope's words were not necessarily accurate, without denying them outright.

That has prompted questions about why the pope continually lets himself be quoted by Scalfari.

Spokesman Greg Burke did not respond when asked whether the Pope believes in the existence of hell or not.

Francis has in the past spoke frequently about the devil and hell.

The doubts, however, have enraged Catholic conservatives, who have lost their patience with a pope who seems to care less about doctrine than dialogue, especially with atheists and people of other faiths.

Earlier on Friday the Vatican has had to seal off part of St. Peter's Basilica after chunks of plaster fell from the ceiling.

Although bits of the ceiling rained down over worshippers near Michelangelo's famed Pieta statue to the right of the main entrance, no-one was injured.

A Vatican spokesman said the basilica remains open with the affected areas sealed off until later on Friday.

Pope Francis lies on the floor during the Good Friday Passion of the Lord Mass in Saint Peter's Basilica at the Vatican on Friday

Pope Francis enters the Christian Holy Week with a row simmering over whether or not he had denied the existence of hell

The sky is falling: Parts of the ceiling in the St. Peter's Basilica fell in on Thursday
The holiday weekend hopped off on the wrong foot for travelers on American Airlines flight 1100 out of Phoenix on Friday morning.

The aircraft was in the air for less than 30 minutes when it was suddenly forced to turn around and land back at Phoenix Sky Harbor after two flight attendants became ill and reported a strange smell in the cabin.

Once on the ground, firefighters rushed in to investigate the odor.

Not so good Friday: A plane bound for Baltimore was forced to return to Phoenix Sky Harbor less than 30 minutes after takeoff on Friday

Back to the start: Two flight attendants fell ill due to a noxious odor in the cabin of the aircraft (plane's journey above)

A HAZMAT team was also said to be waiting after initial reports claimed that eight passengers had been sick, but both of those reports were found to be untrue.

'Phoenix Fire checked out a reported odor on the plane. No ill passengers. 2 flight attendants @AmericanAirlines evaluated as a precaution,' wrote the Phoenix Sky Harbor staff on Twitter.
JACKSON COUNTY, Mississippi -- An Ocean Springs man is in custody after investigators say he stabbed another man during an argument.

Jackson County Sheriff Mike Ezell said deputies responded to a call shortly before 2 p.m. Thursday in the 200 block of St. Andrews Drive in the St. Andrews subdivision southeast of Ocean Springs.

When they arrived, they found the victim suffering from a stab wound. The victim was taken by private vehicle to Ocean Springs Hospital with what were described as non-life threatening injuries.

Investigators learned the victim and another man were inside a vehicle when an argument ensued, leading to the stabbing.

Less than 30 minutes later, deputies initiated a traffic stop and in the process arrested 27-year-old Roy Allen Ward Jr. of Ocean Springs in connection with the stabbing.

The sheriff's department has not released any details as to what prompted the traffic stop.

Ward was booked into the Jackson County Adult Detention Center on a charge of aggravated assault. He remains incarcerated pending an initial court hearing.

Ward has an extensive criminal history, including arrests in Harrison County and Baldwin County, Ala., on charges including burglary, possession of a weapon by a felon, and possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine.
This is the heartwarming moment a boy who 'wished to be kissed by the man in white' rode with the pope in his Popemobile in Vatican City.

Peter Lombardi, 12, who has Down's syndrome, was diagnosed with leukaemia in 2015 and asked to be blessed by Pope Francis.

The young boy has since recovered from cancer and he and his family were on pilgrimage to the Vatican at the time Peter met the pope.

Peter, from Columbus in Ohio, was also treated to a balloon hat from the Head of the Catholic Church during his visit on Wednesday.

His mother, Brenda, told Inside Edition: 'Oh my gosh, he spent the most time with the pope of anyone today.'

She added: 'He just rode with it. That's what Pete does.'

Peter Lombardi, 12 was kissed by Pope Francis during a trip to Vatican City with his family after he had asked to be 'kissed by that man in white'

Peter's family had tickets to see the pope in Philadelphia when he visited the US however the young boy was too ill so they couldn't attend.

While he lay in hospital watching the papal service on television he said 'I want to be kissed by that man in white'.

Two years later when the family were in Italy they hired a tour guide they and told him about Peter's cancer and his wish to meet Pope Francis.

Pope Francis noticed Peter and beckoned him over to the Popemobile where he tried to clamber on board

Their guide, Mountain Butorac, had a friend named Joanna who was married to a member of the Pontifical Swiss Guard, who look after the pope.

Joanna was able to get the Lombardis into the front row for Wednesday's weekly general audience.

Pope Francis noticed Brenda shouting and holding her son and beckoned them over to him.

The pope asked Peter to join him on his journey through the crowds and gave him a balloon hat to wear

Peter's mother Brenda said she stood in shock and began crying when Peter met the pope

He then kissed Peter on the forehead and ruffled his hair before the boy then tried to clamber over the Popemobile's railings.

The pope then asked his guards to bring Peter around so that he could ride alongside him.

Brenda said: 'I just stood there in shock and then I started crying.'
Katherine Brewster, 27, had been staying in the village of Dom Jose

British traveller Katherine Brewster has been found alive and well after being reported missing in the Brazilian wilds, police have confirmed.

An experienced traveller with a 'philosophy of living in contact with nature', the 27-year-old had been staying in the village of Dom Jose, a tiny community in the south Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul.

Two local men found the 27-year-old Briton and described the dramatic moment he found her weak and injured by a waterfall.

Clairton da Silva, coordinator at the eco-village UniPermacultura, said: 'When she saw us she started to cry. She was very weak and could not walk.'

They had been hunting for five hours in the dense forest after tracking her route.

The forest where Katherine vanished is perilous as it is a natural habitat for cobras, dangerous insects and large deadly spiders.

When they found her, the Brit was too tired to walk so the two men carried her on their backs for nearly two miles sharing the responsibility.

Villagers had last seen her walking towards a wooded area on Sunday en route to a nearby dam, where she would often go to meditate.

Katherine Brewster pictured with the woman she has been staying with, Neli da Terra, after her rescue in the Brazilian forest

Clairton da Silva, who helped to rescue Miss Brewster, said the British tourist was 'crying and thanking us and saying that she had got lost and couldn't find her way back home'

Mr da Silva, who found the missing tourist with colleague Edson Medeiros, said: 'We started to search for her at six o clock in this morning [Friday] after failing to find her last night.

'We tracked Katherine down near a waterfall after five hours of looking for her and trekking over rugged and difficult terrain.

'Katherine had made a small shelter for herself out of leaves, twigs and branches and had been living on fruit and roots. She would hardly speak to us because she was so weak. She had suffered injuries to her feet because she had been walking for a long time barefoot.

'She couldn't walk because she was very tired and her feet were bleeding, damaged and bruised.

'Katherine was crying and thanking us and saying that she had got lost and couldn't find her way back home.

'As soon as she got home she wanted to have a shower and to speak to her family first. She has had a big scare and was frightened that if she hadn't been found she could have died there.'

Initial reports said she had been living in a nearby hippy commune run by an environmental organisation called UniPermacultura, but Mr da Silva later denied she had been 'a student, or a guest, or a resident' there.

In a Facebook post, Neli da Terra, who Miss Brewster was saying with, said: 'Katherine was a guest for a period of 32 days, in search of a contact with earth and nature, always with a quiet behaviour and relationship and without causing any damage to the community and our family'.

Katherine Brewster's rescuers Clairton da Silva (left) and Edson Medeiros (right)

She arrived arrived in the country over a month ago with the specific intention of staying at an eco-village (pictured) in the area

Mr da Silva revealed the precise circumstances of Miss Brewster's unusual arrival in the area. He told the Mail she had arrived in the Dom Jose village without warning and was 'extremely reserved'.

He said: 'The area where we found her was very difficult to access and very hard. But we tracked her movements because we found discarded fruit seeds, fruit skins and peels so we knew that this was the result of a human being trying to eat and keep themselves alive.

'We followed the traces left by her movements and found her near a waterfall. 'We found that she had built herself a small covering like tent with leaves, twigs and branches where she had taken refuge.

'She had been eating fruits and roots to survive on and drinking water from the waterfall.

'She was really weak and the first thing we said to her was ' how are you, are you fine? Let's take you home'.

Well-connected father: Mr Wallas's book has been praised by the Duchess of York (both pictured)

Mr da Silva said she would spend the whole day on her own in a wooded area just behind the house, reading and meditating and being with nature.

'On Sunday they woke up and she wasn't in her room, so they imagined she had gone off to meditate. When she hadn't come back at the end of the afternoon, they saw that she'd taken her passport and credit card and thought that she might have gone away,' he said.

'We don't believe she got lost in the woods because they are very small, or that she fell into the river because there were lots of people around that area who might have seen her. We are just hoping that for some reason she took herself off of her own accord and that she's alive and well.'

The Brazilian homeowner she had been staying with, Neli da Terra, said Miss Brewster had been renting a space in her home for 32 days, but had vanished on Sunday morning without 'leaving any note or information about her fate'.

Creative space: Two residents playing music at the remote resort in south Brazil

Her father, Andrew Wallas, 62, is a well-known counsellor and relationship adviser who calls himself 'The Modern Day Wizard' and counts Sarah Ferguson and Davina McCall as fans.

The Duchess of York was recently pictured with Mr Wallas alongside his latest book, Business Alchemy, which she described as 'great'.

Miss Brewster's mother, Dr Diane Brewster, 62, is an academic specialising in pedagogy who lives in the coastal town of Seaford, East Sussex.

Known to family and friends as Kat, Miss Brewster had also visited Bolivia, Morocco and India but had said she was planning to come back to the UK next year.
The annual White House Easter Egg Roll is just about here and this year's will feature something a little different.

In addition to the commemorative Easter eggs that will be available for purchase, there will be eggs on display made by children across the United States.

There are a few, in particular, that people are buzzing about.

The annual White House Easter Egg Roll has been planned for Monday, April 2, 2018

According to KRQE, students at the Arts Academy at Bella Vista in Clovis, New Mexico, put together a design that will be shown at the 2018 White House Easter Egg Roll.

The design features mountains, hot air balloons, White Sands and a Zia symbol - featured on the flag of New Mexico.

Another design, this one chosen by the Nebraska Department of Education, was created by students at Dorchester public schools. The design features Nebraska's state emblems.

So what do you need to know about the White House Easter Egg Roll?

What is the White House Easter Egg Roll?

According to the White House website, the White House Easter Egg Roll is an American tradition that dates back to 1878, or earlier.

It's traditionally planned by the First Lady, allowing her to incorporate her taste. First Lady Melania Trump is responsible for the egg rolling races people have come to expect at the White House Easter Egg Roll.

Here are details on the 140th White House Easter Egg Roll, which takes place this Monday on the South Lawn pic.twitter.com/yCrHlakSpt  Betsy Klein (@betsy_klein) March 30, 2018

The event features games, an appearance from the President, First Lady and other members of the family, an Easter bunny sighting and more.

It's customary to receive a wooden Easter egg upon leaving the event. It's been done since 1981 and has become something people look forward to.

This year's White House Easter Egg Roll is the 140th.

The 2018 White House Easter Egg Roll marks the 140th celebration of the event in history

White House Easter Egg Roll history

While some believe it was started by President Rutherford B. Hayes, others say it began as an informal celebration hosted by Abraham Lincoln.

Egg rolling on the United States Capitol's grounds became so popular in the 1870s that while he was president, Ulysses S. Grant banned it. He cited landscaping concerns as his reasoning.

In 1878 President Hayes changed that, after being approached by a group of children who hoped to play egg-rolling games at the White House. He told his guards to let the children in and, since then, Easter Monday at the White House has been a tradition.

Breaking Easter Egg Roll news from the White House: New this year: Bowling on the South Lawn  a special addition by the First Lady.   Judy Kurtz (@JudyKurtz) March 30, 2018

President Benjamin Harris introduced music to the White House Easter Egg Roll in 1889, inviting the United States Marine Band to play during the celebration.

As the years went by, the White House Easter Egg Roll grew bigger and bigger. It was around that time that it was decided the number of guests invited had to be limited.

The White House Easter Egg Roll did not occur from 1917 to 1920 or from 1943 to 1945 because of World War I and World War II. It didn't happen from 1946 to 1952 either because of food conservation and construction on the White House.

When is the White House Easter Egg Roll 2018?

This year's White House Easter Egg Roll will be held on Monday, April 2, 2018. Donald Trump and Melania Trump will host the event upon returning to Washington, D.C., from Mar-A-Lago in Florida.

Ive been rejected from many jobs, but the most insulting rejection Ive ever gotten has to be from the White House Easter Egg Roll volunteer program. Im literally unqualified to wear a bunny costume. pic.twitter.com/Fx0rJO6XsM  Alex Pankow (@ajpankow) March 8, 2018

White House Easter eggs

The 2018 commemorative White House Easter eggs are available for purchase here.

White House Easter bunny

Each year, the Easter Bunny makes an appearance at the White House Easter Egg Roll. In 2017, former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer revealed that before landing that gig, he was assigned to be the Easter Bunny at the event according to CNN.

Not that this is unexpected, but there's zero celebrity presence at this year's White House Easter Egg roll. pic.twitter.com/yQxFgrYkvp  Nikki Schwab (@NikkiSchwab) March 30, 2018

Twitter took this tidbit and ran with it, throwing together hilarious memes about Spicer's past as the beloved bunny. It was even spoofed on Saturday Night Live by Melissa McCarthy, who famously portrayed Spicer on the show.

It's unclear who's been tasked with filling his bunny suit following his resignation from the White House.
An independent medical examiner said Stephon Clark, 22, was hit by eight of the 20 bullets fired at him by Sacramento cops

Sacramento police shot at an unarmed Stephon Clark eight times, mostly in the back, according to an autopsy requested by his family and released on Friday.

The officers fired a total of 20 shots at Clark in his grandmother's backyard, hitting him eight times: four in the lower back, twice on the neck towards the back, and once on his left thigh.

Dr. Bennet Omalu, a medical examiner hired by Clark's family, performed an independent autopsy on Tuesday and revealed the results during a press conference on Friday afternoon.

'Each one of these bullets possessed, independently, a fatal capacity,' he said.

'All he needed to have died was just one of the seven.'

The forensic pathologist used a body diagram to show where each bullet hit the father-of-two, 22, breaking bones and piercing his lung.

He added: 'You could reasonably conclude that he received seven gunshot wounds from his back. He was shot from the back.'

This theory of what happened between Clark and police during the deadly confrontation directly contradicts what authorities have said: that Clark was pointing something they believed to be a weapon at them when they shot him dead.

'The proposition that he was facing the officers is inconsistent with the prevailing forensic evidence,' Omalu stated.

Dr. Bennet Omalu, a medical examiner hired by Clark's family, said he was surprised when he examined Clark and realized there were no fatal wounds to the front of his body

The forensic pathologist used a body diagram to show where each bullet hit the father-of-two, 22, breaking bones and piercing his lung

Omalu also said he was surprised when he examined Clark and realized there were no fatal wounds to the front of his body.

According to the expert, Clark did not die immediately after being shot, even if he was unresponsive as police asked if he was armed, and it took him between three and ten minutes to pass.

Still, Clark did not have many hopes of survival, Omalu said.

'Given the overkill nature of the shooting, the probability of survival was reduced by each gunshot wound.'

Results of the official autopsy by the Sacramento County Coroner are yet to be released.

Stephon Alonzo 'Zoe' Clark was chased by two police officers into his grandparent's backyard on March 18.

It was there he was riddled with bullets as officers yelled at him to put his hands up.

The pathologist added that Clark, a father-of-two, did not die immediately and it probably took him between three and ten minutes to pass

The horrific incident was caught on the officers' bodycam footage after police received a call about a man breaking car windows in the area.

Police say Clark 'turned and advanced towards the officers while holding an object which was extended in front of him,' and which they mistook for a firearm being pointed at them.

But Clark was found with just an iPhone beside him.

Five minutes after the shooting, backup arrived and Clark was placed in handcuffs before officers began life-saving efforts. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

His grandmother Sequita Thompson was at home that night and heard the gunshots. She said when police interviewed her, they made no mention of any fatalities.

Clark's funeral was held on Thursday, with Rev. Al Sharpton giving the eulogy.

Dr Omalu's version of events, that Clark was shot from the back, contradict what police said: that the father-of-two was facing them when they shot him dead

Clark's funeral was held on Thursday, with Rev. Al Sharpton giving the eulogy. He is pictured with Clark's older brother Stevante

Stevante Clark, his distraught older brother, took over the mic from Alice Huffman of the California NAACP as he spoke during the funeral at Bayside of South Sacramento church.

The 25-year-old led the crowd of around 500 to chant his dead sibling's name, while vowing that the 'Clark family will not be forgotten'.

Clark's name has been a rallying cry at protests and calls for police reform in California and beyond. In Sacramento, protests have been concentrated on the office of district attorney Anne Schubert.

Police later identified at least three vehicles in the area with damage that is believed to have been caused by Clark. A nearby home also had had a sliding door shattered.

Sequita Thompson recounts the horror of seeing her grandson Stephan Clark dead in her backyard and points to the white area on the patio where he lay dead

Clark's name has been a rallying cry at protests and calls for police reform in California and beyond

The two officers who shot Clark have two and four years with the Sacramento Police Department. However, both have four years prior law enforcement experience with other agencies.

As per department policy, both cops have been placed on paid administrative leave pending an investigation.

Clark leaves behind his two young sons, ages one and three.

He had been released from the county jail a month ago, according to his brother Stevante.

Court records indicate that Stephan had a criminal record that included two felony charges of domestic abuse, to which he pleaded guilty and was agreed to enter a treatment program.

In 2008, he was picked up on a robbery charges, and in 2013 he was arrested on counts of possession of a firearm and possession of a controlled substance.

A GoFundMe campaign has been launched by a friend to help the family with Clark's funeral expenses.




The multi-millionaire father-in-law of Pippa Middleton has been released on bail in Paris after he was accused of raping a minor.

David Matthews, 74, is alleged to have carried out the attacks on a teenage girl between 1998 and 1999. He is accused of one attack in Paris and another in St Barts.

A spokesperson for the family said: 'David Matthews categorically denies the allegation and unequivocally contests the untrue and scandalous accusation.'

An alleged witness is said to have reported him to the police in 2017, leading to Matthews reporting to judges in the French capital on Tuesday.

He is being investigated by French authorities and is currently 'mis en examen'.

David Matthews (right), pictured with James Matthews and Pippa Middleton after their wedding in Surrey last year

There is no precise equivalent in the British legal system but it is most similar to a charge, with authorities now having six months to decide whether he will be brought to trial.

Citing legal sources, French national news agency AFP said Matthews was now under investigation for the 'rape of a minor by a person with authority over his victim'.

Matthews has now been released on bail, subject to undisclosed conditions. It is not known whether he has retained his passport, or whether he can travel home.

He was first arrested on arrival at Paris Orly airport last Tuesday, and placed in custody at the Brigade for the Protection of Minors. He denies any wrongdoing.

Matthews, who lives permanently on St Barts with his wife Jane, 70, originally spent a full 48 hours in custody in Paris - the maximum allowed under French criminal law before charges have been filed.

The Juvenile Protection Brigade (BPM) building IN Paris where David Matthews was questioned by Police

The rape case is being dealt with by the BPM of the Paris judicial police, who arrested Matthews on Tuesday. Pictured: The BPM's building in the French capital

He is accused of two historic sex attacks, one in Paris, and one on St Barts, according to a judicial source.

Matthews is the father of James Matthews, 41, who is married to Pippa, the 34-year-old sister of Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge, who is married to Prince William.

James's brother Spencer Matthews made his name on British reality TV show Made in Chelsea.

The rape case is being dealt with by the Juvenile Protection Brigade (BPM) of the Paris judicial police, who arrested Matthews on Tuesday. An official said on Friday that David Matthews was questioned three days earlier by special police handling cases involving minors.

The Paris public prosecutor's office opened a judicial investigation, overlooked by an examining magistrate, a source said.

The allegation will now be subject to a judicial investigation and authorities in Paris now have six months to decide if Matthews will be brought to trial. He is currently 'mis en examen'.

David Matthews attends the wedding of Pippa Middleton and James Matthews at St Mary's Church in Berkshire, England, last year

David Matthews, 74, is alleged to have carried out the attacks between 1998 and 1999. Pictured right: Spencer Matthews

Matthews is a self-made multi-millionaire who grew up near Rotherham and started his professional career as garage mechanic.

After leaving school, he started work as an apprentice mechanic at his father Wallace's garage.

Aged 19, he started selling cars door-to-door and, in his spare time, indulged his love of motor racing at the local track. A skilled driver , he became division champion in the British Touring Car Championships in 1971.

But his dream ended in August 1973 in a catastrophic accident during a race at Silverstone. His car flipped at 130mph, killing one driver, critically injuring another and temporarily stopping Matthews' heart.

A bystander said: 'It was horrific. His car was airborne. How Matthews escaped is beyond me.'

After several successful years in business, Matthews retired after the recession and ventured into hotels, snapping up the Eden Rock (pictured) in St Barts in 1995

Matthews is a self-made multi-millionaire who grew up near Rotherham and started his professional career as garage mechanic

He married Anita Taylor, a fellow driver. The couple had a daughter called Nina together but divorced in 1969. Matthews was forced to retire in 1973 due to major injuries.

Matthews then focused on transforming a used-car enterprise into a large dealership, Kirkby Central Group.

Two years later, just before Spencer's birth, Kirkby Central was the subject of a 8.5 million takeover by Plaxton's, a firm which made buses and coaches.

He then met his second wife, Rhodesian-born artist Jane Parker. Moving out of a bungalow in Rotherham, they lived on a 30-acre, 18th-century estate in rural Lincolnshire, before moving to Paris, then Monaco.

He and Jane Parker had three sons, James, Spencer, and Michael, who tragically died when he was just 22 on an expedition up Mount Everest.

After several successful years in business, Matthews retired after the recession and ventured into hotels, snapping up the Eden Rock in St Barts in 1995, which he moved into and revamped.

David Matthews, 73, pictured with his wife Jane, was arrested in Paris on Tuesday

The Eden Rock hotel was wrecked and strewn with rubble after a devastating encounter with Hurricane Irma last year

Fancying a new challenge, at the age of 52, David moved in with his wife and eight-year-old Spencer, while the other children were already pursuing careers in Europe, and devoted his energy and money to restoring it to its former splendour.

The hotel - a hotspot for celebrities including Tom Hanks, Jessica Alba and Jennifer Lopez - also became a holiday destination for Pippa and James.

Matthews described the hotel, whose priciest suites cost 25,000 and which was visited in the 50s and 60s by guests including the Rothschild and Rockefeller families, as not just a hotel 'but a way of life'.

But it was wrecked and strewn with rubble after a devastating encounter with Hurricane Irma last year.

Matthews also owns the 10,000-acre Glen Affric Estate in the Scottish Highlands, which opened in 2012 as a luxury hunting lodge, offering guests deer stalking, whisky tasting and helicopter rides. Transfer of the title deeds made Dave a Scottish laird.

Despite their rags to riches story, the family's life has been marred by tragedy. Their son Michael was just 22 when he tragically died after reaching base camp of Mount Everest.

Mike died following bad weather in Nepal when he was on his way back down the mountain, in 1999.
A 57-year-old woman pushed a stranger onto the subway tracks with no warning as he walked past her, police said.

The incident occurred on early Friday morning when a 27-year-old man was walking along the Q train platform at Union Square station in Manhattan, New York.

The man from Queens was walking along the yellow safety strip when Marjorie Chambers shoved him onto the tracks.

He was able to remove himself from the tracks before a train traveled down that set of tracks.

Marjorie Chambers, 57, has been accused of shoving a stranger onto the subway tracks in New York City as he was walking past her. The 27-year-old man from Queens was able to get off the tracks before the next train arrived

Chambers told police that the man was bothering her but others say the attack was unprovoked, the New York Post reported.

Somebody called the police, and cops rushed to the platform to attend to the man.

He reportedly refused medical treatment or to be taken to a hospital after he was got off of the tracks.

The 57-year-old woman was arrested outside of the subway station and taken to a nearby NYC hospital for evaluation.

She was then charged with reckless endangerment after the random attack.

Chambers has two prior arrests for trespassing in 2017 and assault for when she allegedly stabbed someone with scissors in 1995.
Police in Ohio have caught a man who raced away from a traffic stop and dragged a cop along a road.

Cops say Jose A. Camacho fled a traffic stop on Thursday at around 12.15pm and an officer who became trapped in the driver's compartment door was dragged along the road.

Camacho was pulled over for a traffic violation but it was when the officer looked up his name that he discovered that there were several warrants for his arrest.

Police in Ohio were looking for Jose A. Camacho after he sped away from a traffic stop

The drama was caught on camera by the officer's body cam and police car dash cams

The officer spoke to Camacho as he opened the driver's side door to his car

Police say that when he was asked to exit the vehicle the man resisted and sped away.

Camacho has a long history of drug abuse.

The officer was treated at the hospital for a dislocated shoulder and then later released.

Brooklyn Police Chief Scott Mielke said Cleveland police arrested Camacho although no further details surrounding the arrest were released.

Camacho, pictured, appeared to be compliant until the officer found outstanding warrants

Camacho attempted to make a getaway after suddenly putting his foot on the gas while the officer was still holding onto the driver's side door
When travellers moved on to an historic plot of Somerset countryside, councillors promised swift action to remove them.

That was the summer of 2008. Astonishingly, they are still there, in a shanty village over four acres with more than 60 motorhomes, caravans and converted trucks.

Residents living in cottages near the site, on the outskirts of Glastonbury, have made countless complaints about dogs, bonfires, foul odours and music blaring at all hours.

They are also concerned about a queue of travellers waiting to join the camp, which has just two portable loos for sanitation.

Travellers set up camp in this plot of Somerset countryside in 2008

The angry locals cause has been taken up by Mendip District Council, which owns the land by an historic 19th century tannery. Officials have applied for an eviction order.

However, this is being thwarted by Glastonbury Town Council, which falls within the district council area. The town council is supporting the travellers right to stay  against the wishes of many of its own residents.

Led by mayor Emma George of the Green Party, the town council claims the travellers have become an integral part of the community.

Residents living in cottages near the site, on the outskirts of Glastonbury, have made countless complaints about dogs, bonfires, foul odours and music blaring at all hours

Miss George is even acting as the travellers McKenzie friend  a legal term for an individual who gives guidance to a plaintiff during court proceedings.

The travellers will cite Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees freedom from state interference in private life, when the case is heard next month. But one neighbour, who asked not to be named, said: This is supposed to be about human rights  but who is taking into account our rights?

We are having to put up with bonfires, dogs barking and loud music on a regular basis.

They are also concerned about a queue of travellers waiting to join the camp, which has just two portable loos for sanitation

The council have offered them alternative sites, but they dont want to move.

When the travellers arrived in 2008, the district and county councils promised swift action to have them removed.

However, the negotiations dragged on and eventually the site became a tolerated settlement, and the travellers were allowed to stay. Dogs roam freely around the camp, which has become a dumping ground for dilapidated cars.

The angry locals cause has been taken up by Mendip District Council, which owns the land by an historic 19th century tannery

Last March, the district council served an eviction notice so it could repossess the land, but the travellers vowed to fight it. Yeovil County Court, which deals with local land disputes, subsequently ruled that infringement of human rights was an arguable defence, allowing the case to go ahead.

John Brunsdon, a Tory district councillor, said: The issue has split the community. But there are better sites for these people to live so we can develop this site for everyones benefit.

However, this is being thwarted by Glastonbury Town Council, which falls within the district council area

The travellers were allowed to remain there and it became a permissive site, but it was never really suitable for their needs.

We offered other sites, but none were deemed acceptable.

Because of the proximity of a sewage farm and the smell it would cause, and coupled with the legacy of tanning, [the current site] was deemed unsuitable as a place for people to live.

If its unsuitable for humans to live there then these travellers should be moved on.

Miss George did not respond to a request for comment.
Five women who have accused Bill Cosby of sexual assault have testified at the comedian's retrial.

It was a big increase from the first trial, where there were just two women who took the stand - plaintiff Andrea Constand and Kelly Johnson.

This time Constand was joined by Janice Baker-Kinney, Janice Dickinson, Chelan lasha, Lisa-Lotte Lublin and Heidi Thomas.

Prosecutors had been hoping to have 13 women testify alongside Constand to speak to a pattern of behavior exhibited by the defendant.

Cosby, 80, has been accused of drugging and raping over 40 women.

Janice Baker-Kinney claims that in 1982 (left) she woke up naked in bed with the comedian - and he told her to keep their encounter to themselves

JANICE BAKER-KINNEY

Kinney said she was 24 in May 1982 when she and a friend met Cosby at the casino where she worked in Reno, Nevada.

She said the three of them went back to Cosby's apartment, where he gave her some pills.

Baker-Kinney willingly took two pills and said she began to get blurry vision while playing backgammon with Cosby.

Hours later, she claims, she woke up naked in bed with the comedian - and he told her to keep their encounter to themselves.

'I was mortified at what had happened,' said Kinney back in 2015 when she went public with her allegations at a press conference.

'All this time, and for many, many years, I felt that this was my fault.'

The defense tried to deny Baker-Kinney's admission as a witness by arguing that her story is 'nothing like Ms. Constand's' because she only met Cosby once, 'voluntarily' took quaaludes and apologized for passing out.

Janice Dickinson (left in 1982) claims that Cosby sexually assaulted her in 1982 after giving her an unknown pill while they were in Lake Tahoe

JANICE DICKINSON

The supermodel claims that Cosby sexually assaulted her in 1982 after giving her an unknown pill.

Dickinson said in that 2014 interview that Cosby invited her to dinner to discuss a role on The Cosby Show and at one point offered her a glass of wine and a pill.

'The next morning I woke up, and I wasn't wearing my pajamas, and I remember before I passed out that I had been sexually assaulted by this man,' she told Entertainment Tonight.

'I remember waking up with my pajamas off and there was semen in between my legs.'

Dickinson said her last memory of the night was of Cosby taking off his robe and climbing on top of her, and that the next morning she remembers 'a lot of pain.'

The supermodel claimed the incident occurred in Lake Tahoe, California in 1982.

In her memoir, Dickinson detailed some of her evening in Lake Tahoe with Cosby but told a very different story.

She said she was drinking with Cosby at dinner and after being invited back to his room told him she was tired, at which point he slammed his door in her face.

Legal claims made by Cosby and his team may be why she decided not to print her current version of the story.

She said back in 2014 that she came forward because she believes the other victims who have spoken publicly, and that it is the 'right thing to do.'

As for what she would say to Cosby if she saw him, Dickinson did not mince words.

'How dare you,' she said.

'Go f*ck yourself. How dare you take advantage of me. And I hope you rot.'

She is also currently preparing to face off with Cosby in a defamation lawsuit filed because of his response to her allegations.

Soon after that 2014 interview aired, Cosby's attorney Marty Singer responded to requests for comment by disputing Dickinson's claim that she was drugged and raped by his client and calling the allegation 'an outrageous defamatory lie.'

A judge ruled in November that because he sent out that statement and a subsequent press release Singer will also face claims in the case.

'We fail to see how justice is served by granting Singer a windfall immunity based on Cosbys pursuit of a meritless motion,' wrote California Second District Court of Appeals Associate Justice Laurence Rubin.

It was also ruled that Dickinson could recover all legal costs related to the appeal from Singer and Cosby.

Chelan Lasha (left in 1986) claims that Cosby attacked her when she was just 17 in 1986 when she was an aspiring model

CHELAN LASHA

Lasha said in a 2014 press conference that Cosby attacked her when she was just 17 in 1986 when she was an aspiring model.

She said her stepmother had sent pictures of her to the star and he called her at home in Las Vegas, inviting her to the Hilton Las Vegas, where he was performing and she had a job.

She then went up to Elvis Presley suite to meet him and after telling him she had a cold, he gave her a blue pill, which he said was an antihistimine, with a double shot of Amaretto.

She said: 'He was rubbing my neck and saying that he might have to have someone come in and give me stress therapy.'

She claimed he told her to change into a Hilton bathrobe and wet her hair to see the modelling scout.

Someone did briefly come up to the room, pertaining to be from the Ford Modelling Agency -telling her to she needed to lose 10 pounds - and taking some pictures.

Then, Chelan said, Cosby walked her to the bedroom and gave her another shot of Amaretto, which he claimed would help her cold.

'I laid down,' she said: 'He laid down next to me on the bed and began pinching my left nipple and humping my leg while he was grunting.

'I could not open my eyes. I couldn't move or say anything. I felt something warm on my legs. Then I blacked out.

'Thirteen to sixteen hours later I woke up by hearing Mr Cosby clapping his hands and saying 'Daddy says wake up'. He gave me $1500. He said the money was to buy something nice for me and my grandmother and he also invited me to go to the Temptations show with my grandmother.

'My grandmother went but I did not go because I was too sick. Then he invited us to his show. My grandmother really want to go. I did not, but I went with her and heckled him. As a result, I was fired my from job.'

Lisa-Lotte Lublin (left in 1989) believes she was sexually assaulted by Cosby while passed out in his hotel in 1989

LISA-LOTTE LUBLIN

Lublin said she met Cosby in 1989 at a hotel in Las Vegas and that he asked her to perform an improvisation so that he could evaluate her acting.

According to the ex-model, she and Cosby were in the Elvis Suite at the Hilton Hotel when he offered her two drinks and proceeded to pet her hair.

A short time later she passed out, but she remembered the color of the walls in the room and a flood of bright light she said in a 2015 press conference.

She said that she believes she was sexually assaulted by Cosby while passed out in the hotel.

Prior to this, she and her mother had gone for a run with the comedian.

The defense argued that Lublin assumes she is a victim based on other media accounts but can only remember Cosby stroking her hair.

Heidi Thomas (left in 1984) said she found herself in bed next to a naked Bill Cosby who was 'forcing himself' in her mouth back in 1984

HEIDI THOMAS

In 1984, Heidi Thomas, nee Johnson, was a 24-year-old model from Denver, Colorado, who was dreaming of a career in acting.

Thomas was being represented by the city's top modelling agency, JF Images, but by 1984 she was questioning whether or not she wanted to stay in the business.

Then one day in the spring of 1984, she got a call from an agent who told her that a famous entertainer was searching for young talent to mentor.

Thomas said that Annie Maloney, of JF Images, instructed her to travel to Reno, Nevada, where she was supposed to meet with Bill Cosby, who allegedly had expressed interest in becoming her acting coach.Cosby greeted Thomas at the entrance and ushered her inside, according to the woman.

The aspiring actress began by performing a monologue for Cosby, who then asked her to do a cold read of a person who was intoxicated.

Thomas said Cosby was not impressed because to his mind, she was not convincing as a drunk.

She recalled that Cosby wanted her to relax, so he poured her a glass of Chablis.

The married music teacher said that her memory of the next several hours is very hazy, but when she woke up later that night, she found herself in bed next to a naked Bill Cosby who was 'forcing himself' in her mouth.

According to the woman, the married comedian then got on top of her and said to her: 'I'm your friend... your friend is gonna [ejaculate] again,' according to the 54-year-old mother of three.

Thomas said she was confused as to what happened and eventually stormed out of the room and slammed the door behind her, but she later apologized to Cosby for being rude.

She spent three more days with Cosby and said they were all hazy and a blur.

The defense argued she has given three versions of her story.
A boy of 14 is believed to be the youngest person in Britain to die after taking the zombie drug Spice.

Luke Pennington suffered a severe reaction after taking the drug at a sleepover with friends.

Hours after he had taken the synthetic form of cannabis at a house in Stockport, the schoolboy was pronounced dead in hospital, an inquest was told.

Luke Pennington with his mum Stacey Webb. He is believed to be the youngest person in Britain to die after taking the zombie drug Spice

The youngster is pictured with his mother Stacey Webb on her Facebook page, and several relatives changed their profile pictures to those of Luke as a mark of respect.

Stockport Coroners Court heard that, hours before he died, Luke and a group of friends had bought some Spice, which often leaves users unable to move or speak.

Luke took the drug first, on March 17, followed by a friend, the inquest heard.

When the pair fell ill, paramedics were called and took the boys to Wythenshawe Hospital in Greater Manchester.

Luke Pennington suffered a severe reaction after taking the drug at a house in Stockport

From there, Luke was transferred to the intensive care unit at Alder Hey Childrens Hospital in Liverpool, but died at 1.55am on March 18.

Giving evidence at the opening of the inquest, Rita Wilkinson, a senior officer at Greater Manchester Police, said: Luke was with some friends at a sleepover.

They had purchased some Spice and that was taken. Luke had taken it first followed by one of his friends.

Luke had a severe reaction immediately after and paramedics were called.

The youngsters death is being treated as unascertained until toxicology reports are completed, the court heard. A full inquest will take place in October.

Greater Manchester Police later arrested a 16-year-old boy on suspicion of having Class A drugs with intent to supply. He has been released on bail pending further enquiries.

Luke, who attended St James Catholic High School in Cheadle Hulme, was described by his teachers as popular and well-liked.

Headteacher Tim Beesley said: Our thoughts, prayers and sympathy go out to his family and friends at this very difficult time.

'We are offering support for any of our students who have been affected by his death, particularly those who knew him, as he was a very popular and well-liked member of our school community.

St James Catholic High School in Cheadle Hulme where Luke was a popular and well-liked pupil

Spice was formerly a legal high but was outlawed last year, meaning it is now an offence to have it for personal use, supply it or have it with intent to supply.

An epidemic of Spice swept through Britains homeless population and prisons last year.

It was given the zombie label after users were seen unconscious or comatose on the streets.

Deaths from the drug, which is considered as addictive as heroin or cocaine, more than trebled from eight to 27 in a year.
Curious to explore where American education stands 35 years after the A Nation at Risk report that warned of dire consequences for the workforce if schools didnt shape up? The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute has an event on April 12 in Washington, D.C., that will explore that question.

The Reagan Institute Summit on Education will feature seven former secretaries of education, including Bill Bennett, who served under President Ronald Reagan; Lamar Alexander, who served under President George H.W. Bush; Richard Riley, who served under President Bill Clinton; Margaret Spellings, and Rod Paige, who served under President George W. Bush; Arne Duncan and John King, who served under President Barack Obama.

Condoleezza Rice, who served as President George W. Bushs secretary of state, and Janet Napolitano, who served as President Barack Obamas Homeland Security Secretary, will also be speaking.

State chiefs will be there, too, including John White of Louisiana and Carey Wright of Mississippi. In addition, Ras Baraka, the mayor of Newark, N.J., will attend.

The event will also include student perspective, including Telyse Masaoay, a student at Vanderbilt University, who has participated in some of the Reagan Institutes programs.

Anthony Pennay, the chief learning officer Ronald Reagan Foundation, said hes hoping the event will attract a mix of students, educators, and policy makers.

The idea is to bring together a coalition of folks who might necessarily sit down together or work together, he said. And getting a good mix of people is in keeping with the spirit of A Nation at Risk.

One of my favorite passages from a Nation at Risk is about the learning society, Pennay said. Thats why hes aiming for an audience of students, teachers, school administrators, folks from beyond the classroom.

Photo: Ronald Reagan at a news conference during his time as Californias governor in 1971. Reagan was president in 1983 when A Nation at Risk was published. (AP Photo)

Follow us on Twitter at @PoliticsK12 .
When Martin Parry received a call saying his wife Del had been hit by a car and needed life-saving surgery he was naturally distraught.

The caller said he was an NHS surgeon and that Mr Parry needed to hand over 300 before the operation could take place.

He sounded genuine and what made it more convincing was that it appeared that he was using Mrs Parrys mobile phone.

Martin Parry with wife Del: 'It was blind panic when I heard she was hurt and needed surgery'

But after her husband had transferred the money it quickly became clear that Mrs Parry had not been involved in an accident and that he had been conned.

The cruel fraudsters had used specialist technology to make it look like they were calling from her phone. The practice, known as spoofing, allows criminals to mask their identities and impersonate people.

Mr Parry, 47, said: It was blind panic when I heard that my wife was hurt and I fell for it for two reasons: it was a call from her phone and the fraudster was so convincing about her injuries.

I have never been caught out on a scam before. Im ex-military so Im pretty clued up with things like this. But I fell it for hook, line and sinker because it involved my family. And if they can get me, they can get a lot of people, they can get anyone.

Mr Parry received a call saying his wife Del had been hit by a car and an NHS surgeon told him he needed to hand over 300 before the operation could take place

The scammer introduced himself as Dr Verma, a consultant at South Tyneside District Hospital in South Shields, which is ten miles from Mr Parrys home in Whitley Bay.

He used medical terms and referred to 45-year-old Mrs Parry by her nickname, Del, an abbreviation of her middle name, Delyth.

Mr Parry, who served in the Royal Navy for 24 years before retiring in 2011 as a warrant officer weapons engineer, said: I got a phone call from my wifes phone  it came up with her name and number  at 4pm on Monday.

The scammer introduced himself as Dr Verma, a consultant at South Tyneside District Hospital in South Shields, which is ten miles from Mr Parrys home in Whitley Bay

It was a man with an Indian accent and he asked, Are you Martin Parry? He also knew my date of birth and my address. He said, Dont panic but I have your wife Del here. I fell for it is because shes got a very Welsh name and Del is her nickname. I thought, Bloody hell. It was all fitting into place.

He said, Im a surgeon at South Tyneside Hospital and Del has been involved in an accident. Shes been hit by a car and weve stabilised her but shes in intensive care.

He said that she needs to go in for an operation as soon as possible because shes got two compound fractures in her leg. After that shed have to have skin grafts from the right leg to the left leg.

The bogus doctor used medical terms and referred to 45-year-old Mrs Parry (pictured) by her nickname, Del, an abbreviation of her middle name, Delyth

He was talking through all the procedures as if he was a doctor and it was bloody good. He said, Dont worry about the cost, the NHS will cover everything but you need to transfer 300 into the hospital bank account to cover the metal and rods that we will be putting in her leg.

The conman explained that it was a paperwork exercise and that he would get the money back. Panicked, Mr Parry used online banking to transfer 300 to the fraudsters account and then hurried to the hospital to be by his teaching assistant wifes side.

He called relatives on the way to see if they could pick up the couples two children  Rachel, nine, and Jake, 11  from school. He spoke to Rhiannon Williams, Mrs Parrys sister, who said she was due to meet the couples daughter, Rachel, at a dance studio. Mrs Williams was in the dance studio and went outside to go and collect Rachel.

Mr Parry, a project manager in the safety industry, said: Rhiannon ran out and lo and behold there was my wife, sat in the car on the phone to the same man. He had been saying the same thing about me. My phone had phoned my wifes phone and the man said Id been run over.

Rhiannon ran up to the car door saying, What are you doing here? You should be in hospital, and Del said, No, Martins in hospital, hes been run over. And thats when the guy put the phone down.

Mr Parry reported the case to Northumbria Police, who told him it sounded like a data breach. The force passed the case on to Action Fraud, the UKs national reporting centre for fraud and cybercrime.

A spokesman for Action Fraud said: This type of scam, known as number spoofing, works by fraudsters cloning the telephone number of the organisation or person they want to impersonate and then making it appear on the victims caller ID display when they telephone them. The fraudsters will then gain the persons trust by highlighting the number to them, claiming that this is proof of their identity, before trying to scam them in various ways.

Mr Parry also called EE, his network provider, who said there was no evidence of a data breach from its end. A spokesman said: Spoof calling is an industry wide issue and something all operators are working hard to address.

Caller ID spoofing happens when a fraudster acquires a wide range of personal details about the victim  often bought from criminal organisations or found online  and then uses specialist online tools and services to hide their identity or impersonate another person when calling. They then pose as someone else and ask for information or, as in this case, payment.

Mr and Mrs Parry, who have been married for 22 years, have been left wondering how their personal information was leaked.

Mr Parry said: Ive never heard of a scam like this before and I dont get shaken up very often but this one shook me up. Im kicking myself now, how can I fall for this?
Shocking footage has emerged of a British tourist being pinned down by police after allegedly trying to steal a delivery van while drunk - and then crashing it into a parked car.

The man can be heard shouting in English while he is pinned to the ground as passersby look on near the scene in Benidorm.

He was arrested at around 5pm after he allegedly sped off in the Coca-Cola van while wearing his shorts and flip flops after the driver left the keys in the ignition during his delivery.

The truck driver filmed the incident and gave a running commentary as the tourist was apprehended by authorities.

In the video, he is heard saying: 'This drunk foreigner stole our van and everyone's looking.

'We phoned the police and I managed to get him out of the driver's seat as they arrived.'

A police officer can be heard telling him to be quiet as he holds him down near Benidorm's Casino Mediterranean.

It is unclear whether he is still in custody but local reports say the man refused to take a breathalyser. No-one was injured.

He was arrested in Benidorm's Mediterranean Avenue near a hotel called Don Pancho, a short distance from Filipinas Avenue where the delivery truck was taken.

The man can be heard shouting in English (left) while he is pinned to the ground as passersby look on near the scene in Benidorm (right)

One person said: 'Something has to be done with Brits like these. They can't be allowed to do whatever they want just because they bring money.

'I have lived in London and I can assure you that what they are doing in Benidorm they could never do in London.'

But another added: 'Not all British people are like this. Many who live in Spain are very nice people.'
A rise in keyless vehicles is fuelling a car crime epidemic across Britain, police officials fear.

Offences have nearly tripled in the worst-hit areas as thieves exploit the technology to steal vehicles from car parks and driveways.

One senior official said hacking cars was now childs play, with criminals able to get in and drive off in just 30 seconds.

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After more than a decade of decline, car thefts have surged in the past three years  up by 189 per cent in Warwickshire, 59 per cent in Hampshire, 57 per cent in West Yorkshire and 56 per cent in Norfolk.

It comes as keyless technology, once the preserve of expensive high-end vehicles, has become commonplace among more affordable family cars.

Earlier this week, Cleveland Police said it had received 90 reports of keyless cars being stolen since December, and half of them were Ford Fiestas  the countrys best-selling vehicle of the past decade.

Keyless technology is designed to increase convenience for motorists as it typically means they need just a small fob to unlock their cars, and can drive by pressing an ignition button.

But criminals are exploiting this with devices such as relay boxes, available to buy cheaply on Amazon and eBay for as little as 260.

In the footage, one of the men waved a box, which then received a signal from the key inside the home and transmitted it to a second box held next to the car

These gadgets let criminals pick up the signal from a cars keyless fob lying inside the owners home, and extend this signal to unlock the car and start it. The vehicles security system is tricked into thinking the key fob is present.

Offenders have been caught on camera strolling up driveways, before holding the devices against the car owners front door.

Criminals are also targeting car parks with a gadget that blocks the signal when a driver tries to use a fob to lock their vehicle. This leaves the car open for thieves.

Warning to check doors are really locked Thieves are targeting car parks with devices that block key fob signals, fooling drivers into believing their cars are locked, police say. When the victim thinks they are securing their car by pressing the fob, the jamming gadget intercepts the signal, ensuring the vehicle remains unlocked. The owner would spot this only if they physically checked by trying to open the car door. But if they walk away without noticing, the thieves can jump in and steal whatevers inside. In some car models, the criminals can also start the vehicle using another device. Detectives say thieves will often take the stolen cars  particularly cheaper models such as Ford Fiestas  straight to illegal chop houses. These are illicit garages where the cars are taken to bits so the spare parts can be sold on. Car manufacturers have urged owners of keyless cars to double check their cars are locked before walking away. One device which can be used to steal keyless cars  the HackRF One  is on sale on Amazon for 260.29 and available on eBay for 278.77. Advertisement

Manufacturers insist cars are more secure than ever, but police are urging drivers to buy old-fashioned steering wheel locks, and even to store fobs in biscuit tins or special cases to protect them.

David Jamieson, police and crime commissioner for the West Midlands, said the number of car thefts in his force had doubled in just two years.

Mr Jamieson, a former transport minister, blamed the increase in keyless security systems. Car thefts have doubled in two years  thats an epidemic, he said.

The West Midlands has probably experienced the biggest rise in the country outside [London], but this problem is getting worse everywhere with big urban areas.

This is making our lives really difficult. Its sucking up loads of police time that should be dealing with other more serious crime.

Mr Jamieson rejected motor industry claims that cars have never been more secure.

At the moment its kids play  it takes 30 to 40 seconds to get in and off you go, he added.

He said criminals were increasingly targeting modest vehicles such as Ford Fiestas, Focuses and Transit vans, which can be sold off or broken up in illegal chop house garages for parts.

Keyless systems have been available on Ford cars since 2008 and now come with almost all models.

Ford insists the figures do not suggest its cars are being targeted. But an analysis from West Midlands Police reveals that although Fords represent 13.7 per cent of cars registered in the region, they account for around a quarter of the cars stolen.

Car thefts had declined for a decade as manufacturers introduced immobilisers, alarm systems and tracking devices to stop criminals from hotwiring cars. But the offence has soared by almost a third in just three years in England and Wales. The latest figures, released by 40 police forces after Freedom of Information requests by the RAC, showed 85,688 vehicles stolen in 2016, up 30 per cent from 65,783 in 2013.

More vehicles are stolen in London than anywhere else in the UK with 26,496 reported to the Metropolitan Police in 2016. This represented a 29 per cent increase on 2013 when 20,565 were stolen. West Yorkshire Police reported 5,597 thefts  57 per cent more than in 2013. Greater Manchester Police revealed 4,999 vehicles were stolen in 2016, a 29 per rise from 2013. Essex saw the same percentage rise in car theft, up to 3,623.

Criminals are exploiting keyless cars with devices such as relay boxes (pictured), available to buy cheaply on Amazon and eBay for as little as 260. The signals from the box can travel through buildings, meaning thieves can open cars without needing to break into properties to steal keys

Of the 40 police forces, only five reported a fall in car theft.

Graham McNulty, National Police Chiefs Council lead for vehicle crime, has cited keyless car theft as one of the reasons for the rise in the number of cars stolen.

Other factors include an increase in organised criminal gangs exporting cars and an increase in motorcycle and scooter theft.

Mr Jamieson said manufacturers should take much of the blame. He said: The attitude among car manufacturers is this is a police problem  But we are working with strict budgets  Manufacturers have got to put some of their profits into looking after car owners after they have bought them. He said firms that fail to commit to more action to protect car owners will be named and shamed, with their stolen car numbers released by West Midlands Police.

We will say to car manufacturers, If you sell keyless cars its your responsibility to help owners protect it. They need to look at better systems that can be retrofitted  [and give] them big discounts on steering wheel locks.

Halfords said sales of steering wheel locks had soared by more than half since last summer. It has also begun selling anti-theft fob wallets for drivers of keyless cars.

Mike Hawes, of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, said: New cars are more secure than ever and the latest technology has helped bring down theft dramatically  which is why less than 0.3 per cent of the vehicles on our roads are stolen today.

But he also called for stronger safeguards to prevent the sale of cloning technologies, signal blocking and other devices.

A Ford spokesman said: Ford Motor Company takes vehicle security seriously and continuously invests in technology to deter theft of, and from, our vehicles. Fords are sold with competitive levels of standard security equipment.

The Ford Fiesta is Britains best-selling car and every new Fiesta comes with an immobiliser, preventing hot wiring as the engine will only run when the correct key is present.

Warwickshire Police recorded an 189 per cent rise in car theft over the three-year period  the biggest percentage increase  although just 275 cars were stolen, the third lowest tally in the country.
An appeals court has stripped the winner of the world's largest billfish tournament of his $2.8 million prize money, after he was accused of dropping his line too early and then failed a lie detector test about whether he cheated.

The U.S. Court of Special Appeals on Wednesday upheld a lower court's decision that tournament rules were violated by Phil Heasley of Naples, Florida, and members of his boat the Kallianassa.

Heasley had been suspected of breaking a rule that prohibits anglers from dropping lines before 8.30am to catch a 76.5-pound, 6-foot white marlin, and failed a polygraph test on his second attempt.

In this Aug. 9, 2016 photo provided by Larry Jock, Phil Heasley, second from left, poses with his catch and team at the White Marlin Open fishing tournament in Ocean City, Maryland

The appeal throws out Heasley's appeal of a June 2017 ruling by a federal judge that organisers of the White Marlin Open 2016 in Ocean City, Maryland, were right to disqualify him and divide the $2.8m among the 13 other winners.

In that court case, Heasley testified that his answers didn't pass the polygraph tests because he was worried about the questions' ambiguity, which lead to him to struggle to find certain answers, reported Delmarva Now.

In a hotel conference room, the examiner measured his heartbeat, breathing and perspiration and asked, 'Did you commit any tournament violations?' Similar questions followed.

The results were inconclusive. Another test was required. The unsuspecting and hung-over captain, David Morris, had to be tested too. The examiner said Morris indicated 'deception' during his exam. No one passed a second test.

The men still posed with a promotional check at the award ceremony. But the actual money was being withheld, they were told, pending Heasley's second polygraph and tests for the two mates

The prize pot consisted of $15,000 payout for the catch itself and the monster winnings from a bet that Heasley, the CEO of a financial software company, put on himself and the crew.

After an eight-day trial, the Appeals Court issued the following opinion: 'We have reviewed the record and find no reversible error. Accordingly, we affirm for the reasons stated by the district court.

The prize pot consisted of $15,000 payout for the catch itself and the monster winnings from a bet that Heasley, (pictured) the CEO of a financial software company, put on himself and the crew

'We dispense with oral argument because the facts and legal contentions are adequately presented in the materials before this court and argument would not aid the decisional process.

'In accordance with the decision of this court, the judgement of the district court is affirmed.'

A spokesman for the crew of the Kallianassa said they had 'no comment' to make on the ruling.

This is far from the first court fight over big prize money for a big fish.

In 2010, a boat crew sued over a $900,000 prize after catching an 883-pound fish in the Big Rock Blue Marlin Tournament.

The boat was disqualified because the mate who hooked the marlin lacked a fishing license. The tournament learned of the violation during a polygraph test.

The case went to North Carolina's Supreme Court before a settlement was reached in 2013.
A Los Angeles neighborhood has been lovingly caring for a dog that has been living in a local park by itself for at least 13 years.

John Hwang, of Los Angeles, said that the first time he saw 'The Dog in the Park,' as he's nicknamed it, was five years ago, while he was walking his own dogs in the park.

Hwang told MNN that, back then, the dog would run off every time he tried to get close to him.

This dog has been living in a Los Angeles park, by itself, for more than 13 years

Photographer John Hwang said that neighborhood residents leave food and water for the dog

After moving closer to the park in 2017 and visiting it daily, Hwang started to the see the dog regularly and began to notice how park neighbors seemed to be caring for the dog, something which they've been doing for more than 13 years now.

'Ive seen how people leave bowls of food and water for him, and leftovers,' said Hwang, a photographer who runs the documentary project, Skid Row Stories.

Hwang first saw the dog in the park five years ago. Back then, the dog would run away whenever he got too close to it

He noted that the dog 'nonchalantly' wanders around the park without bothering people or animals and never barks.

Animal control officers and animal rescue groups, including Hope for Paws, have tried to bring the dog in so that it could be given a traditional home, but the dog has apparently always evaded capture.

Hwang, however, managed to get close enough to the dog to take a series of pictures of it earlier this week.

In the photos, the dog, which appears to be well-fed and in good condition, can be seen lazing under a tree, regally surveying his park domain and greeting locals.

The dog has managed to evade both animal control officers and rescue groups over the years

Hwang said the dog roams around the park, without barking or bothering park goers

Neighborhood residents believe the dog was left behind when his owners moved away

'This dog is just very robust, resilient and smart,' Hwang told MNN. 'He lives a very free life. Like a hippie dog.'

In a Facebook post, Hwang wrote that because the dog has been a stray for more than 10 years, the dog is now considered feral.

Hwang also wrote that neighborhood residents told him that the dog seems to have been left behind by owners when they moved many years ago.
A white police officer who fatally shot black father-of-five Alton Sterling following a struggle outside a convenience store has been fired as shocking new bodycam footage emerged of the incident.

Blane Salamoni is seen screaming profanities at Sterling from the moment he arrives at the store, before drawing a gun and threatening to shoot if he does not turn around. Meanwhile, the visibly confused father says, 'What did I do, sir?'

Salamoni's partner Howie Lake II, who has been suspended for three days over the July 2016 incident, then Tasers Sterling before the pair wrestle him onto the tarmac forecourt of the Triple S Food store. After a brief tussle, Salamoni fires six shots.

Afterwards, a breathless Salamoni can be heard repeatedly saying 'stupid a** motherf*****' as Sterling lies lifeless on the ground with a bullet wound in his chest.

Fired officer Blane Salamoni (left) is seen screaming profanities at Alton Sterling (right) from the moment he arrives at the store on July 5, 2016, before drawing his gun and threatening to shoot if he does turn around as the visibly confused father says, 'What did I do, sir?'

Salamoni (left) and his partner Officer Howie Lake II, who has been suspended, then wrestle Sterling to the floor and shots are fired. Afterwards, a breathless Salamoni can be heard repeatedly saying 'stupid motherf*****' as Sterling lies motionless (pictured)

Baton Rouge police Chief Murphy Paul, who has been in the force for three months described the graphic footage as 'shocking to the conscience' at a press briefing on Friday (left). Pictured right: Officer Lake

Baton Rouge police Chief Murphy Paul, who described the graphic footage as 'shocking to the conscience', announced the disciplinary action on Friday, less than a week after Louisiana's attorney general ruled out criminal charges. Federal prosecutors decided against bringing charges last year.

That came as the final report into Sterling's death found he had a loaded .38 caliber handgun when he was shot, though this was not drawn, and had taken drugs including opioids, cocaine, cannabinoids, amphetamines and fentanyl.

Paul, who has served with the force for less than three months, insisted he had not chosen to punish the officers for political or emotional reasons. Salamoni, who along with Lake has been on paid leave since Sterling's death, will appeal the move.

The two officers were responding to reports that Sterling had threatened a man with a gun when they approached him as he was selling CDs on July 5, 2016.

In the 911 call which prompted the call-out out, a man's voice can be heard saying: 'He's got a pistol in his pocket. He turned it on me and told me to turn my head around.'

Footage of the ensuing encounter, filmed on Salamoni's bodycam and a surveillance camera in the convenience store, has been viewed by state and federal prosecutors. Neither brought charges so decided not to release the video.

It was made public by Murphy Paul, the Baton Rouge police chief, after he found Salamoni had breached use-of-force rules and failed to control his temper, reported The Advocate.

Salamoni's bodycam shows him moving towards Sterling and screaming: 'Don't f****** move or I'll shoot your f****** ass, b****.'

He then orders him to show he is unarmed, shouting: 'Put your f****** hands on the car. Put your hands on the car or I'll shoot you in your f****** head, you understand me? Don't you f****** move, you hear me?

Sterling pleads, 'What happened, what did I do?' as he is held against the car, before Salamoni says, 'Tase his a**'.

As the Taser is deployed the officers scream at Sterling to 'get on the ground', then struggle with him for 20 seconds before someone says 'he's got a gun' and six shots are heard.

The camera then shows Sterling lying dead, as Salamoni says, 'stupid a** motherf****'. The cop then rifles through Sterling's pockets with his bloodied hands while searching for a weapon.

L. Chris Stewart, a lawyer representing two of Sterling's five children, said the newly released videos show officer Salamoni attacked the father without provocation 'like a wild dog.'

'The most obvious thing that stands out is Alton wasn't fighting back at all,' Stewart said. 'He's trying to defuse it the whole time.'

Salamoni's bodycam shows him moving towards Sterling and screaming: 'Don't f****** move or I'll shoot your f****** ass, b****'

Sterling pleads, 'What happened, what did I do?' as he is held against the car, before Salamoni says, 'Tase his a**'

As the Taser is deployed the officers scream at Sterling to 'get on the ground', then struggle with him for 20 seconds before some six shots are heard being fired

Commenting on the new footage, Chief Paul condemned the officers' actions, although he insisted the footage did not 'tell the full story'.

'Our police officers are held to a higher standard,' he said. 'Fear cannot be a driver that responds to every incident. Unreasonable fear within an officer is dangerous.

'Rather an officer needs to respond with awareness of a situation and the ability to effectively and rationally evaluate a situation and it's appropriate response.'

Paul said Salamoni decided not to answer any questions during police department's investigation on the advice of his lawyer, who is appealing his termination. Paul added that Lake answered all questions, reported Wdam.com.

The chief insisted he had decided to dismiss Salamoni solely because he had broken the rules.

The police department's use of force policy says: 'Every member of the department shall use only the force necessary to effect an arrest or maintain the custody of a suspect.'

Paul added: 'Just to be clear, my decision was not based on politics.

'It was not based on emotions. It was based on the facts of the case. The testimony provided by our officers and witnesses and the recommendation from our board members during the disciplinary hearings.

'But I take full responsibility for the decision that I made. And it's a responsibility that I take very seriously. And I understand that this decision will not only affect the officers, but it will also affect their families and the community as well,' he said.

Salamoni's attorney, John McLindon, had said on Tuesday that he expected the officer to be fired, after Paul announced he had set up a disciplinary panel.

He called it 'grossly unfair' that a disciplinary hearing was planned less than a week after the end of the criminal investigations.

Lake's lawyer, Kyle Kershaw, said his client's actions complied with department procedures.

Salamoni had served as a Baton Rouge police officer for four years before the shooting; Lake was a three-year veteran of the force.

The camera then shows Sterling lying dead, as Salamoni says, 'stupid a** motherf****'

Salamoni then rifles through Sterling's pockets with his bloodied hands while searching for a weapon

Other officers arrive at the scene moments later after Salamoni and Lake radioed in to say shots had been fired

Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry concluded on March 27 that he would not be charging Salamoni or Lake as he released a 'thorough and exhaustive review' of the shooting. The same decision was made by federal prosecutors last year.

The report, from the Louisiana Department of Justice, stated that Sterling had a loaded .38 caliber handgun on him at the time of his shooting and 'was under the influence of a number of drugs.'

His urine tested positive for opioids, Cocaine, cannabinoids, amphetamines, and fentanyl.

His blood level for Methamphetamine was 280 ng/mL, which put him in the same range (200 - 600 ng/m) as 'methamphetamine abusers who exhibited violent and irrational behavior' according to the report.

That same report also states that after Sterling asked 'what I did' prior to the shooting, one of the officers withdrew his gun from its holster and stated: 'Don't f***ing move or I'll shoot you in your f***ing head.'

When officers Blane Salamoni and Howie Lake II arrived, Sterling did not draw his weapon but they began arguing, the report said.

The pair then wrestled Sterling to the ground and, while on top of him, Salamoni shot him six times. He claimed he believed Sterling was reaching for his own gun at the time.

Thursday, March 30: Attorney Mike Adams (right) makes a statement at the Law Offices of DeCuir, Clark & Adams on behalf of Alton Sterling's children following the press conference by Chief Paul

Tuesday, March 27: Andricka Williams (left), the mother of Sterling's three youngest children, joins attorney Mike Adams (center) and attorney Brandon DeCuir (right) for a meeting with Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, when he announced he would not be prosecuting over Sterling's death

Unidentified members of Sterling's family are pictured above arriving at the AG's office in Baton Rouge on Tuesday to learn if charges will be brought

Sterling's death led to protests across America, which were embodied in this iconic photograph of a glamorously-dressed Ieshia Evans being arrested by heavily-armed police outside the Baton Rouge police headquarters on July 9, 2016

Protestors place a sign on a car parked in front of Triple S Food Mart, where Sterling was shot, on March 27, 2018, after Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry announced no prosecutions would be brought over his death

Felma White and Assata Shakur stand in front of a mural in memory of Alton Sterling on the wall outside of Triple S Food Mart on March 27 this year

Before the most recent footage was released, only two videos existed showing the confrontation that led to Sterling's death.

Far less graphic than the new footage, they showed the officers arguing with Sterling and then throwing him to the ground.

As the officers both straddled him, they screamed: 'Don't move, I swear to God!'

Salamoni then pulled out his gun and fired three shots into his body at point blank range.

As Sterling struggled on the ground, they fired another three in to his back.

It is unclear if Sterling was in a relationship at the time of his death. His five children do not all have the same mother.

One of those women spoke of her grief last year when the Department of Justice announced it would not be pressing charges.

Sterling should not have been in possession of a gun when he died.

He was a convicted felon with a criminal history of battery, domestic violence and sexual offences.

EARLIER FOOTAGE RELEASED IN 2016:

The footage released in 2016 shows the cops straddling Sterling when Salamoni shot him six times at point blank range

The recent developments in Sterling's case come as protests continue over the shooting of unarmed black father Stephon Clark in Sacramento

Sterling's death inflamed racial tensions in the state's capital city and led to protests where nearly 200 people were arrested.

The recent developments in his case come as protests continue over the shooting of an unarmed black man by cops in Sacramento.

Stephon Clark was shot eight times, mostly in the back, according to an autopsy requested by his family and released on Friday.

The officers fired a total of 20 shots at Clark in his grandmother's backyard, hitting him eight times: four in the lower back, twice on the neck towards the back, and once on his left thigh.

Stevante Clark, his distraught older brother, took over the mic from Alice Huffman of the California NAACP as he spoke during the funeral at Bayside of South Sacramento church.

The 25-year-old led the crowd of around 500 to chant his dead sibling's name, while vowing that the 'Clark family will not be forgotten'.

On Tuesday, Stevante interrupted a council meeting and lambasted CNN host Don Lemon during a tense interview a day later.

Clark's name has been a rallying cry at protests and calls for police reform in California and beyond.

In Sacramento, protests have been concentrated on the office of district attorney Anne Schubert.

Black Lives Matter activists blocked the streets of Sacramento on Thursday for the third day in a row as a protest over Clark's shooting

Stephon Clark's brother Stevante embraces Rev. Al Sharpton on Thursday as he speaks at the funeral for his sibling who was shot 20 times by cops in his grandparents' backyard

Stevante disrupted a city council meeting on Tuesday, jumping on the platform and chanting his sibling's name at Mayor Darrell Steinberg
Elon Musk's SpaceX just got one step closer to building a space internet.

The Federal Communications Commission late Thursday granted the rocket firm a license to build a global broadband network using satellites, system it has dubbed 'Starlink'.

The win comes after the agency initially delayed the project due to concerns over the satellite network interfering with competing systems.

Now, Americans may be able to access the internet from space as soon as 2019.

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The Federal Communications Commission late Thursday granted the rocket firm a license to build a global broadband network using satellites, system it has dubbed 'Starlink'

'This is the first approval of a U.S.-licensed satellite constellation to provide broadband services using a new generation of low-Earth orbit satellite technologies,' the top U.S. telecommunications regulator said in a statement.

The system would use 4,425 satellites, according to the FCC.

In February, Starlink received a crucial endorsement from FCC Chairman Ajit Pai.

'Satellite technology can help reach Americans who live in rural or hard-to-serve places where fiber optic cables and cell towers do not reach,' Pai explained.

The endorsement came one year after the FCC had attempted to the delay the project due to concerns over interference.

Starlink is likely to work similar to Wi-Fi or wireless service on airplanes, Gizmodo noted.

SpaceX launched the world's most powerful rocket, the Falcon Heavy (pictured), in February. Now, Elon Musk's space firm has been approved to build a broadband network of satellites

However, SpaceX has said that the network will have fiber-fast speeds.

The Federal Aviation Administration said on Wednesday that SpaceX plans to launch a Falcon 9 rocket on April 2 at Cape Canaveral, Florida.

'The rocket will carry a communications satellite,' the FAA said.

The FCC said SpaceX has been granted authority to use frequencies in the Ka (20/30 GHz) and Ku (11/14 GHz) bands.

Each satellite in SpaceX's planned group will weigh about 850 lbs (386 kg) and be roughly the size of a Mini Cooper.

Musk, who also heads up electric car firm Tesla, introduced its plans for a satellite-internet business several years ago in 2015, saying it would help fund a future city on Mars.

Elon Musk's SpaceX, fresh off the successful launch this month of the world's most powerful rocket, won an endorsement on Wednesday from the top U.S. communications regulator to build a broadband network using satellites

WHAT IS ELON MUSK'S PLAN FOR A SPACEX INTERNET? SpaceX wants to launch satellite internet in 2019, with hopes to carry out the initial tests this year. Each satellite in SpaceX's planned group will weigh about 850 lbs (386 kg). They will orbit at altitudes ranging from 715 miles (1,150 km) to 790 miles (1,275 km). From this height each satellite will be able to cover an area on the ground about around 1,300 miles (2,120 km) wide. The satellites will orbit at altitudes ranging from 715 miles (1,150 km) to 790 miles (1,275 km). From this height each satellite will be able to cover an area on the ground spanning about around 1,300 miles (2,120 km). Pictured is SpaceX's satellite internet proposal to the FCC The project, which Musk previously said would cost at least $10 billion (8.03 billion), was first announced in January 2015. The plan hit a roadblock in September 2017 when US regulators expressed worries it will interfere with competing systems. But in February 2018, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai proposed the approval of an application by SpaceX to provide the broadband services using satellites in the United States and worldwide. Advertisement

SpaceX wanted to create a 'global communications system' that Musk compared to 'rebuilding the internet in space'.

It would be faster than traditional internet connections, he said.

SpaceX expects to attract more than 40 million subscribers for Starlink by 2025, which could amount to more than $30 billion in revenue, according to the Wall Street Journal.

'This is an important step toward SpaceX building a next-generation satellite network that can link the globe with reliable and affordable broadband service, especially reaching those who are not yet connected,' SpaceX Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell said.

'Although we still have much to do with this complex undertaking, this is an important step toward SpaceX building a next-generation satellite network that can link the globe with reliable and affordable broadband service, especially reaching those who are not yet connected,' she added.

Both SpaceX and fellow rocket-making firm Boeing have recently submitted plans, with the latter proposing a fleet of 2,956 satellites.

The system will be able to provide broadband service at speeds of up to 1 Gbps per end user, according to the original application to the FCC filed in November 2016. The aim of this network would be to provide high-speed internet to people around the world (stock image)

OneWeb, a company back by Virgin and Qualcomm, has asked permission to tap into the US market using thousands of UK-authorised satellites.

SpaceX plans to release more than 4,000 satellites into orbit in instalments between 2019 and 2024.

FCC has approved several requests to provide broadband services using satellite technology that the agency says 'holds promise to expand internet access in remote and rural areas across the country'.

About 14 million rural Americans and 1.2 million Americans on tribal lands lack mobile broadband even at relatively slow speeds.

FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democrat, said on Thursday that the agency needs 'to prepare for the proliferation of satellites in our higher altitudes'.

She highlighted the issue of orbital debris and said the FCC 'must coordinate more closely with other federal actors to figure out what our national policies are for this jumble of new space activity'.
It seems that Facebook's long-held mentality of 'Move Fast and Break Things' keeps coming back to bite it.

A newly leaked internal memo, written by top Facebook executive Andrew 'Boz' Bosworth' in June 2016, gives a candid look into how far the tech giant was willing to go in order to become the world's most popular social media platform.

In the memo titled 'The Ugly', Bosworth admits that the firm engages in 'questionable contact importing practices' and uses 'subtle language that helps people stay searchable by friends' -- all for the purpose of growing the service, according to a BuzzFeed report.

He even ventures as far as to say that if connecting people causes someone to 'die in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools' that it's all part of the effort to achieve growth.

Scroll down for video

Facebook's data collection tactics have been in focus after it was revealed that 50 million members' data had been harvested without their knowledge

The firm's collection of user call logs and messages has been a core revelation of the ongoing data scandal.

Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg quickly came to Bosworth's defense in a statement issued late Thursday.

'We've never believed the ends justify the means,' Zuckerberg said in a statement to BuzzFeed.

'We recognize that connecting people isn't enough by itself. We also need to work to bring people closer together.

'We changed our whole mission and company focus to reflect this last year,' he added.

Zuckerberg went on to say that Bosworth is a 'talented leader who says many provocative things,' but said the memo was something that 'most people at Facebook including myself disagreed with strongly.'

Some Twitter users called for Bosworth to resign as a result of the memo being leaked.

The firm's data collection tactics have been in focus after it was revealed that 50 million members' data had been harvested without their knowledge.

Bosworth's years-old comments appear in stark contrast to what has been said publicly by Facebook in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica row.

Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg have made the rounds in recent days to apologize for how it mismanaged users' data and have announced several steps to remedy the situation, including banning user data from third-party aggregators.

Facebook's VP of consumer hardware Andrew 'Boz' Bosworth (pictured) joined the company in 2006 from Microsoft. Since then, he's become one of CEO Mark Zuckerberg's top lieutenants

But Bosworth seemed to show little remorse for the unintended consequences of Facebook's controversial data collection techniques, which he says is all for the goal of 'connecting people'.

'We connect people. Period. That's why all the work we do in growth is justified,' Bosworth wrote in the memo.

'...That can be bad if they make it negative.'

'Maybe it costs a life by exposing someone to bullies.'

'Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools.'

'And we still connect people,' he added.

Since joining Facebook in 2006 from Microsoft, Bosworth has risen to become one of Zuckerberg's top lieutenants. He often speaks out in defense of the company on Twitter.

In a statement on Thursday, Bosworth said he 'didn't agree' with the BuzzFeed report.

A newly leaked internal memo, written by top Facebook executive Andrew 'Boz' Bosworth' in June 2016, gives a candid look into how far the tech giant was willing to go in order to become the world's most popular social media platform. 'Boz' responded on Twitter today

Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg (pictured) and COO Sheryl Sandberg have made the rounds in recent days to apologize for how it mismanaged users' data and have announced several steps to remedy the situation

A former Facebook executive defended Bosworth's internal memo, telling BuzzFeed that the memo was 'super popular internally'.

Another former Facebook employee said the memo was just 'Boz being Boz'.

Others said Bosworth exhibits questionable behaviors at the company.

'He is definitely a guy who isn't very diplomatic -- he'd blunder into internal debates and internal comms would tend to keep an eye on what he's doing and posting,' a former senior Facebook employee told BuzzFeed.

'The memo is classic Boz because it speaks to the majority of Facebook employee views but it's also polarizing.'

'This is clearly a post meant to rally the troops,' the employee added.

ANDREW BOSWORTH'S LEAKED FACEBOOK MEMO IN FULL 'All the work we do in growth is justified,' said Andrew Bosworth, VP of consumer hardware The Ugly We talk about the good and the bad of our work often. I want to talk about the ugly. We connect people. That can be good if they make it positive. Maybe someone finds love. Maybe it even saves the life of someone on the brink of suicide. So we connect more people That can be bad if they make it negative. Maybe it costs a life by exposing someone to bullies. Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools. And still we connect people. The ugly truth is that we believe in connecting people so deeply that anything that allows us to connect more people more often is *de facto* good. It is perhaps the only area where the metrics do tell the true story as far as we are concerned. That isn't something we are doing for ourselves. Or for our stock price (ha!). It is literally just what we do. We connect people. Period. That's why all the work we do in growth is justified. All the questionable contact importing practices. All the subtle language that helps people stay searchable by friends. All of the work we do to bring more communication in. The work we will likely have to do in China some day. All of it. The natural state of the world is not connected. It is not unified. It is fragmented by borders, languages, and increasingly by different products. The best products don't win. The ones everyone use win. I know a lot of people don't want to hear this. Most of us have the luxury of working in the warm glow of building products consumers love. But make no mistake, growth tactics are how we got here. If you joined the company because it is doing great work, that's why we get to do that great work. We do have great products but we still wouldn't be half our size without pushing the envelope on growth. Nothing makes Facebook as valuable as having your friends on it, and no product decisions have gotten as many friends on as the ones made in growth. Not photo tagging. Not news feed. Not messenger. Nothing. In almost all of our work, we have to answer hard questions about what we believe. We have to justify the metrics and make sure they aren't losing out on a bigger picture. But connecting people. That's our imperative. Because that's what we do. We connect people. Andrew Bosworth's reaction a year later after the memo was leaked I'm feeling a little heartbroken tonight. I had multiple reporters reach out today with different stories containing leaks of internal information. In response to one of the leaks I have chosen to delete a post I made a couple of years ago about our mission to connect people and the ways we grow. While I won't go quite as far as to call it a straw man, that post was definitely designed to provoke a response. It served effectively as a call for people across the company to get involved in the debate about how we conduct ourselves amid the ever changing mores of the online community. The post was of no particular consequence in and of itself, it was the comments that were impressive. A conversation over the course of years that was alive and well even going into this week. That conversation is now gone. And I won't be the one to bring it back for fear it will be misunderstood by a broader population that doesn't have full context on who we are and how we work. This is the very real cost of leaks. We had a sensitive topic that we could engage on openly and explore even bad ideas, even if just to eliminate them. If we have to live in fear that even our bad ideas will be exposed then we won't explore them or understand them as such, we won't clearly label them as such, we run a much greater risk of stumbling on them later. Conversations go underground or don't happen at all. And not only are we worse off for it, so are the people who use our products. Advertisement

Despite this, the memo gives a glimpse into how some of Facebook's top executive felt they were doing the right thing by trying to 'connect people.'

'The ugly truth is that we believe in connecting people so deeply that anything that allows us to connect more people more often is *de facto* good,' Bosworth wrote.

'It is perhaps the only area where the metrics do tell the true story as far as we are concerned'

'That isn't something we are doing for ourselves. Or for our stock price (ha!)'

'It is literally just we what we do. We connect people. Period.'

BuzzFeed noted that the memo was posted on Facebook in an employee-only group just one day after a Chicago man was shot dead on Facebook Live, the firm's livestreaming platform.

Facebook's vast treasure troves of user data have rapidly become the backbone behind its $450 billion market capitalization.

The firm now boasts 2 billion-plus advertisers -- a statistic that has become enticing to many advertisers.

Some Twitter users are saying Facebook's VP of consumer hardware, Andrew Bosworth (pictured), should resign as a result of the explosive memo leaked by BuzzFeed on Thursday

WHAT IS THE CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA SCANDAL? Communications firm Cambridge Analytica has offices in London, New York, Washington, as well as Brazil and Malaysia. The company boasts it can 'find your voters and move them to action' through data-driven campaigns and a team that includes data scientists and behavioural psychologists. 'Within the United States alone, we have played a pivotal role in winning presidential races as well as congressional and state elections,' with data on more than 230 million American voters, Cambridge Analytica claims on its website. The company profited from a feature that meant apps could ask for permission to access your own data as well as the data of all your Facebook friends. The data firm suspended its chief executive, Alexander Nix (pictured), after recordings emerged of him making a series of controversial claims, including boasts that Cambridge Analytica had a pivotal role in the election of Donald Trump This meant the company was able to mine the information of 87 million Facebook users even though just 270,000 people gave them permission to do so. This was designed to help them create software that can predict and influence voters' choices at the ballot box. The data firm suspended its chief executive, Alexander Nix, after recordings emerged of him making a series of controversial claims, including boasts that Cambridge Analytica had a pivotal role in the election of Donald Trump. This information is said to have been used to help the Brexit campaign in the UK. Advertisement

It's only now that many Facebook members are waking up to the fact that the firm has access to mountains of personal data, ranging from call logs to messages and other information.

Facebook maintains that it doesn't sell any user data and doesn't collect the contents of call logs or messages.

But that hasn't stopped many users from heavily criticizing the firm's data collection tactics.

Legislators and data privacy experts are now calling on Facebook to be regulated by the federal government.

In recent days, Zuckerberg has admitted that he believes Facebook and other tech giants should be susceptible to some kind of regulation.

The firm has also taken several steps to try and curb some of its data collection tactics.

The company is removing a feature that allowed marketers to target adverts using information from people's lives collected outside of Facebook.

Facebook on Wednesday also put all its privacy settings on one page and made it easier to stop third-party apps from using personal information.
A leaked memo by a top Facebook executive justifying the firm's controversial data practices has caused outrage at the company's headquarters.

More than 3,000 Facebook employees have reacted to an internal post about the memo by vice president of consumer hardware, Andrew Bosworth.

In the memo, Bosworth gives a candid look into how far the technology giant is willing to go in order to become the world's most popular social media platform.

He admits that the firm engages in 'questionable contact importing practices' but claims it is worth it even if it 'costs someone a life.'

Many employees are 'angry and heartbroken' that their colleagues are sharing internal company discussions with the media.

The contents of the memo, however, has caused very little criticism and has been described as 'super popular internally'.

Scroll down for video

More than 3,000 Facebook employees have reacted to an internal post about the memo by vice president of consumer hardware, Andrew Bosworth (pictured)

The Verge viewed an internal post in which thousands of Facebook employees responded with a combination of likes, 'sad,' and 'angry' reactions.

Many employees supported Bosworth, and praised him for sharing the company's feelings.

However, some criticised him for deleting the post because it looked like the company had 'something to hide'.

Others criticised the unknown leakers at the company and said the firm needed to crack down on employees that lack integrity.

Very few voiced outrage at the actual content of the memo, according to The Verge.

The comments were made in light of yesterday's publication of a June 2016 memo by Buzzfeed.

In the memo titled 'The Ugly', Bosworth admits that the firm uses 'subtle language that helps people stay searchable by friends' - all for the purpose of growing the service.

ANDREW BOSWORTH'S LEAKED FACEBOOK MEMO IN FULL 'All the work we do in growth is justified,' said Andrew Bosworth, VP of consumer hardware The Ugly We talk about the good and the bad of our work often. I want to talk about the ugly. We connect people. That can be good if they make it positive. Maybe someone finds love. Maybe it even saves the life of someone on the brink of suicide. So we connect more people That can be bad if they make it negative. Maybe it costs a life by exposing someone to bullies. Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools. And still we connect people. The ugly truth is that we believe in connecting people so deeply that anything that allows us to connect more people more often is *de facto* good. It is perhaps the only area where the metrics do tell the true story as far as we are concerned. That isn't something we are doing for ourselves. Or for our stock price (ha!). It is literally just what we do. We connect people. Period. That's why all the work we do in growth is justified. All the questionable contact importing practices. All the subtle language that helps people stay searchable by friends. All of the work we do to bring more communication in. The work we will likely have to do in China some day. All of it. The natural state of the world is not connected. It is not unified. It is fragmented by borders, languages, and increasingly by different products. The best products don't win. The ones everyone use win. I know a lot of people don't want to hear this. Most of us have the luxury of working in the warm glow of building products consumers love. But make no mistake, growth tactics are how we got here. If you joined the company because it is doing great work, that's why we get to do that great work. We do have great products but we still wouldn't be half our size without pushing the envelope on growth. Nothing makes Facebook as valuable as having your friends on it, and no product decisions have gotten as many friends on as the ones made in growth. Not photo tagging. Not news feed. Not messenger. Nothing. In almost all of our work, we have to answer hard questions about what we believe. We have to justify the metrics and make sure they aren't losing out on a bigger picture. But connecting people. That's our imperative. Because that's what we do. We connect people. Andrew Bosworth's reaction a year later after the memo was leaked I'm feeling a little heartbroken tonight. I had multiple reporters reach out today with different stories containing leaks of internal information. In response to one of the leaks I have chosen to delete a post I made a couple of years ago about our mission to connect people and the ways we grow. While I won't go quite as far as to call it a straw man, that post was definitely designed to provoke a response. It served effectively as a call for people across the company to get involved in the debate about how we conduct ourselves amid the ever changing mores of the online community. The post was of no particular consequence in and of itself, it was the comments that were impressive. A conversation over the course of years that was alive and well even going into this week. That conversation is now gone. And I won't be the one to bring it back for fear it will be misunderstood by a broader population that doesn't have full context on who we are and how we work. This is the very real cost of leaks. We had a sensitive topic that we could engage on openly and explore even bad ideas, even if just to eliminate them. If we have to live in fear that even our bad ideas will be exposed then we won't explore them or understand them as such, we won't clearly label them as such, we run a much greater risk of stumbling on them later. Conversations go underground or don't happen at all. And not only are we worse off for it, so are the people who use our products. Advertisement

He even ventures as far as to say that if connecting people causes someone to 'die in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools' that it's all part of the effort to achieve growth.

Many Facebook employees have since criticized the leakers at the firm.

'Leakers, please resign instead of sabotaging the company,' one wrote in a comment under Bosworth's post.

Another said: 'How f******* terrible that some irresponsible jerk decided he or she had some god complex that jeopardizes our inner culture and something that makes Facebook great?'

'Although we all subconsciously look for signal on integrity in interviews, should we consider whether this needs to be formalized in the interview process?' one wrote.

Wrote another: 'This is so disappointing, wonder if there is a way to hire for integrity. We are probably focusing on the intelligence part and getting smart people here who lack a moral compass and loyalty.'

Others slammed Bosworth for deleting the post.

'Deleting things usually looks bad in retrospect,' one wrote.

'Please don't feed the fire by giving these individuals more fuel (eg, Facebook execs deleting internal communications').

Facebook's VP of consumer hardware Andrew 'Boz' Bosworth (pictured) joined the company in 2006 from Microsoft. Since then, he's become one of CEO Mark Zuckerberg's top lieutenants

'If we are no longer open and transparent, and instead lock-down and delete, then our culture is also destroyed  but by our own hand.'

One employee suggested that Facebook had been targeted by spies.

'Keep in mind that leakers could be intentionally placed bad actors, not just employees making a one-off bad decision,' they wrote.

The firm's data collection tactics have been in focus after it was revealed that 50 million members' data had been harvested without their knowledge.

Bosworth's years-old comments appear in stark contrast to what has been said publicly by Facebook in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica row.

Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg have made the rounds in recent days to apologize for how it mismanaged users' data and have announced several steps to remedy the situation, including banning user data from third-party aggregators.

But Bosworth seemed to show little remorse for the unintended consequences of Facebook's controversial data collection techniques, which he says is all for the goal of 'connecting people'.

'We connect people. Period. That's why all the work we do in growth is justified,' Bosworth wrote in the memo.

A newly leaked internal memo, written by top Facebook executive Andrew 'Boz' Bosworth' in June 2016, gives a candid look into how far the tech giant was willing to go in order to become the world's most popular social media platform. 'Boz' responded on Twitter today

'...That can be bad if they make it negative.'

'Maybe it costs a life by exposing someone to bullies.'

'Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools.'

'And we still connect people,' he added.

In another tweet, Bosworth claimed his post was intended to be provocative and he was pleased with the debate it caused

Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg quickly came to Bosworth's defense in a statement issued late Thursday.

'We've never believed the ends justify the means,' Zuckerberg said in a statement to BuzzFeed.

Since joining Facebook in 2006 from Microsoft, Bosworth has risen to become one of Zuckerberg's top lieutenants. He often speaks out in defense of the company on Twitter.

In a statement on Thursday, Bosworth said he 'didn't agree' with the BuzzFeed report.

Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg (pictured) and COO Sheryl Sandberg have made the rounds in recent days to apologize for how it mismanaged users' data and have announced several steps to remedy the situation

A former Facebook executive defended Bosworth's internal memo, telling BuzzFeed that the memo was 'super popular internally'.

Another former Facebook employee said the memo was just 'Boz being Boz'.

Others said Bosworth exhibits questionable behaviors at the company.

'He is definitely a guy who isn't very diplomatic -- he'd blunder into internal debates and internal comms would tend to keep an eye on what he's doing and posting,' a former senior Facebook employee told BuzzFeed.

'The memo is classic Boz because it speaks to the majority of Facebook employee views but it's also polarizing.'

'This is clearly a post meant to rally the troops,' the employee added.

Despite this, the memo gives a glimpse into how some of Facebook's top executive felt they were doing the right thing by trying to 'connect people.'

'The ugly truth is that we believe in connecting people so deeply that anything that allows us to connect more people more often is *de facto* good,' Bosworth wrote.

'It is perhaps the only area where the metrics do tell the true story as far as we are concerned'

'That isn't something we are doing for ourselves. Or for our stock price (ha!)'

'It is literally just we what we do. We connect people. Period.'

BuzzFeed noted that the memo was posted on Facebook in an employee-only group just one day after a Chicago man was shot dead on Facebook Live, the firm's livestreaming platform.

Facebook's vast treasure troves of user data have rapidly become the backbone behind its $450 billion market capitalization.

The firm now boasts 2 billion-plus advertisers -- a statistic that has become enticing to many advertisers.

Some Twitter users are saying Facebook's VP of consumer hardware, Andrew Bosworth (pictured), should resign as a result of the explosive memo leaked by BuzzFeed on Thursday

WHAT IS THE CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA SCANDAL? Communications firm Cambridge Analytica has offices in London, New York, Washington, as well as Brazil and Malaysia. The company boasts it can 'find your voters and move them to action' through data-driven campaigns and a team that includes data scientists and behavioural psychologists. 'Within the United States alone, we have played a pivotal role in winning presidential races as well as congressional and state elections,' with data on more than 230 million American voters, Cambridge Analytica claims on its website. The company profited from a feature that meant apps could ask for permission to access your own data as well as the data of all your Facebook friends. The data firm suspended its chief executive, Alexander Nix (pictured), after recordings emerged of him making a series of controversial claims, including boasts that Cambridge Analytica had a pivotal role in the election of Donald Trump This meant the company was able to mine the information of 87 million Facebook users even though just 270,000 people gave them permission to do so. This was designed to help them create software that can predict and influence voters' choices at the ballot box. The data firm suspended its chief executive, Alexander Nix, after recordings emerged of him making a series of controversial claims, including boasts that Cambridge Analytica had a pivotal role in the election of Donald Trump. This information is said to have been used to help the Brexit campaign in the UK. Advertisement

It's only now that many Facebook members are waking up to the fact that the firm has access to mountains of personal data, ranging from call logs to messages and other information.

Facebook maintains that it doesn't sell any user data and doesn't collect the contents of call logs or messages.

But that hasn't stopped many users from heavily criticizing the firm's data collection tactics.

Legislators and data privacy experts are now calling on Facebook to be regulated by the federal government.

In recent days, Zuckerberg has admitted that he believes Facebook and other tech giants should be susceptible to some kind of regulation.

The firm has also taken several steps to try and curb some of its data collection tactics.

The company is removing a feature that allowed marketers to target adverts using information from people's lives collected outside of Facebook.

Facebook on Wednesday also put all its privacy settings on one page and made it easier to stop third-party apps from using personal information.
China's out-of-control space station carrying toxic chemicals is set to crash to Earth on Easter Sunday.

In an attempt to reassure the world, the Chinese government says it will 'promptly be in touch' if Tiangong-1 looks set to hit a nation.

But any warning may be too late, as China admits it still has no idea where parts of the space station will land.

The bus-sized space station, weighing 8.5-tons, is predicted to reenter Earth's atmosphere at 3pm BST (10am ET) on April 1, according to the latest estimates.

It could crash into a number of highly populated areas, including New York, Barcelona, Beijing, Chicago, Istanbul, Rome and Toronto.

When the station does eventually enter the atmosphere, it may unleash a 'series of fireballs' that could be seen by the naked eye, scientists claim.

The bus-sized space station, weighing 8.5-tons, is predicted to reenter Earth's atmosphere at 3pm BST (10am ET) on April 1, according to the latest estimates. It could crash into a number of highly populated areas, including New York, Barcelona, Beijing, Chicago, Istanbul and Rome

The latest prediction comes from Aerospace engineering, who claims the time for re-entry could be anywhere within 16 hours either side of this.

Others have more conservative estimates. China's space agency said that Tiangong-1 will re-enter the atmosphere some time between Saturday and Monday.

The European Space Agency has a smaller window between midday Saturday and early Sunday afternoon GMT time.

Speaking at a daily news briefing, foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said the government had been continually informing the U.N. space agency of the latest information about the Tiangong-1.

China had been responsible and transparent, Lu said.

WHICH CITIES LIE IN THE TIANGONG-1 'DANGER ZONE'? Name of city Country Name of city Country Barcelona Spain Milwaukee USA Beijing China Monaco Monaco Bilbao Spain Naples Italy Boise USA New York USA Boston USA Nice France Boulder USA Philadelphia USA Buffalo USA Pittsburgh USA Cannes France Punta Arenas Chile Chicago USA Rochester USA Christchurch New Zealand Rome Italy Cleveland USA Salt Lake City Spain Concord USA San Sebastian Spain Des Moines USA Sapporo Japan Detroit USA Sioux Falls USA Florence Italy Sochi Russia Istanbul Turkey Stanley Falkland Islands Kushiro Japan Toronto Canada Madrid Spain Trelew Argentina Marseilles France Valladolid Spain

'If there is a need, we will promptly be in touch with the relevant country,' he said.

'As to what I have heard, at present the chances of large fragments falling to the ground are not very great, the probability is extremely small.'

There is 'no need for people to worry', the China Manned Space Engineering Office (CMSEO) said on its WeChat social media account.

Such falling spacecraft do 'not crash into the Earth fiercely like in sci-fi movies, but turn into a splendid (meteor shower) and move across the beautiful starry sky as they race towards the Earth', it said.

At the Fraunhofer Institute, scientists can track Tiangong-1 using radar (pictured). Radar allows the institute to watch the station regardless of the weather, or if it is day or night

Due to its gentle descent, Tiangong-1 is now experiencing significant drag as it brushes against the planet's denser outer atmosphere and it is dropping out of orbit by about 2.5 miles a day.

During the uncontrolled re-entry, atmospheric drag will rip away solar arrays, antennas and other external components at an altitude of around 100 kilometres (60 miles), according to the Chinese space office.

The intensifying heat and friction will cause the main structure to burn or blow up, and it should disintegrate at an altitude of around 50 miles (80km), it said.

Most fragments will dissipate in the air and a small amount of debris will fall relatively slowly before landing, most likely in the ocean, which covers more than 70 percent of the Earth's surface.

Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, estimates that the Tiangong-1 is the 50th most massive uncontrolled re-entry of an object since 1957.

'Much bigger things have come down with no casualties,' McDowell told AFP.

'This thing is like a small plane crash,' he said, adding that the trail of debris will scatter pieces several hundred kilometres apart.

During the uncontrolled re-entry, atmospheric drag will rip away solar arrays, antennas and other external components at an altitude of around 100 kilometres (60 miles), according to the Chinese space office

This image of the Chinese Space Station was taken over a two second exposure and from the Virtual Telescope Project live feed. The space station was travelling at 18 degrees a second across the sky

At an altitude of around 40 miles (70km), debris will begin to turn into 'a series of fireballs', which is when people on the ground will 'see a spectacular show', he said.

The dramatic reentry will be unmissable, but keen astronomers are keeping their eyes peeled for Tiangong-1 throughout its final days.

Earlier this week, a live stream was set up by Virtual Telescope Project to capture Tiangong in one of its final passes across the sky.

At an altitude of around 40 miles (70km), debris will begin to turn into 'a series of fireballs'

It is visible to the naked eye and can be seen by people living in mid-latitude areas in both the Northern and Southern Hemisphere.

Like many satellites and the ISS, Tiangong-1 looks like an unblinking white light gliding swiftly across the sky.

Predicting when and where the rogue station will reach the surface is extremely difficult as it orbits the Earth at around 18,000 mph (29,000km/h).

To track the satellite, experts are using some of the most advanced and powerful telescopes in the world.

At the Fraunhofer Institute for High-Frequency Physics and Radar Techniques, scientists were recently able to capture images of the craft using radar imaging.

Commissioned by the ESA, Fraunhofer researchers are studying the speed of the satellite and its rotation.

The tracking and imaging radar system uses signals in the Ku-band (12 to 18 gigahertz) and I-band (100  150 megahertz) radio frequencies to follow Tiangong-1.

Radar allows the institute to watch the station regardless of the weather, or if it is day or night.

Fall of Chinese space station Tiangong-1 over time and potential landing spots and times. The odds of being struck by space debris at one in 1.2 trillion. That is roughly 10 million times less likely than getting hit by lightning

In a statement, Esa aid: 'The Chinese space station Tiangong-1 will re-enter the Earth's atmosphere where it will to a large extent burn up.

'It is possible that some debris will reach the Earth's surface.'

According to experts tracking the station at the European Space Agency (ESA), it has the highest chance of crashing along a narrow strip around latitudes of 43 degrees north and south.

This includes a number of highly populated cities including New York, Barcelona, Beijing, Chicago, Istanbul, Rome and Toronto.

There is a chance parts of the station containing hazardous hydrazine could plummet into these highly-populated area.

Hydrazine is a chemical which is included in rocket fuel that causes irritation of the eyes and throat, dizziness and can lead to the growth of cancerous tumours.

The chances of human injury are small, claims Stijn Lemmens, an ESA space debris expert based in Darmstadt, Germany.

'Over the past 60 years of space flight, we are nearing the mark of 6,000 uncontrolled reentries of large objects, mostly satellites and upper (rocket) stages,' he told AFP.

'Only one event actually produced a fragment which hit a person, and it did not result in injury.'

Mr Lemmens says the odds of being struck by space debris are at one in 1.2 trillion.

Scientists will only know the precise date Tiangong-1 will impact and exactly where debris will fall during the finals days of its decline. Pictured is a graph showing how the window of predicted impact dates (y-axis) has changed over time (x-axis)

That is roughly 10 million times less likely than getting hit by lightning.

Although nobody has ever died from being hit by space junk falling back to Earth, one Australian region did fine Nasa $400 for littering when its Skylab crashed around the town of Esperence in 1974.

'At no time will a precise time/location prediction from ESA be possible,' the agency's Space Debris Office, based in Darmstadt, Germany, said in a previous statement.

WHAT IS THE TIANGONG-1 SPACE STATION? The vehicle is 10.4 metres long and has a main diameter of 3.35 metres. It has a liftoff mass of 8,506 kilograms and provides 15 cubic metres of pressurised volume Tiangong-1 is China's first Space Station Module. The vehicle was the nation's first step towards its ultimate goal of developing, building, and operating a large Space Station as a permanent human presence in Low Earth Orbit. The module was launched on September 29, 2012. Tiangong-1 features flight-proven components of Chinese Shenzhou Spacecraft as well as new technology. The module consists of three sections: the aft service module, a transition section and the habitable orbital module. The vehicle is 10.4 metres long and has a main diameter of 3.35 metres. It has a liftoff mass of 8,506 kilograms and provides 15 cubic metres of pressurized volume. Advertisement

The Tiangong-1 space station (artist's impression) is hurtling towards Earth carrying a 'highly toxic chemical'. The doomed 8.5-tonne craft is believed to contain dangerous hydrazine

The doomed 8.5-tonne craft, which is roughly the size of a bus, has been hurtling towards Earth since Chinese scientists lost control of it in 2016

The doomed 8.5-tonne craft has been hurtling towards Earth since Chinese scientists lost control of it in 2016.

Although far smaller than some other satellites (the ISS is 450 tons (408,000 kg) for example) it is still the size of a school bus.

WHAT IS THE 'HIGHLY TOXIC' CHEMICAL ONBOARD CHINA'S TIANGONG-1 SPACE STATION? A 'highly-toxic' corrosive chemical could land on Earth when parts of an out-of-control Chinese space station crash into our planet. The chemical, called hydrazine, is used in rocket fuel and long-term exposure is believed to cause cancer in humans. It is being carried aboard the Tiangong-1 space station which is hurtling towards Earth. The warning over exposure to the chemical came from Aerospace Corp, a non-profit corporation based in El Segundo, California, which provides technical guidance and advice on all aspects of space missions. Hydrazine is a colourless, oily liquid or sometimes white crystalline compound with a very highly reactive base. A 'highly-toxic' corrosive chemical could be spread over the planet when a Chinese space station crashes to Earth, experts have warned. The substance, called hydrazine, is used in rocket fuel and is believed to cause cancer in humans (stock image) It has a number of industrial, agricultural and military uses, including in rocket fuel. Symptoms of short-term exposure to high levels of hydrazine include irritation of the eyes, nose, and throat, dizziness, headache, nausea, pulmonary edema, seizures, and coma, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Long-term exposure can also damage the liver, kidneys, and central nervous system in humans. The liquid is corrosive and may produce dermatitis from skin contact in humans and animals. Increased incidences of lung, nasal cavity, and liver tumours have been observed in rodents exposed to hydrazine. The EPA has classified hydrazine as a Group B2, a probable human carcinogen. Advertisement

The last time people set foot on the space station was in 2013.

After completing its final life phase, the space craft became unresponsive.

The descent is difficult to predict as the conditions in space are widely unknown and unpredictable.

The orbit pattern of Tiangong-1 is also making predictions more complex.

Explaining why, Dr Hugh Lewis, senior lecturer in Aerospace Engineering at the University of Southampton, compared the geometrical processes at work to crossing the road.

The last time people set foot on the space station was in 2013. After completing its final life phase, the space craft became unresponsive

Tiangong-1 is China's first Space Station Module. The vehicle was the nation's first step towards its ultimate goal of developing, building, and operating a large Space Station and it is set to die a fiery death as it reenters the atmosphere

Speaking to MailOnline, he said: 'The spacecraft is travelling around a more or less circular orbit, which is tipped with respect to the equator at 43.

'If you plot this path on a map of the Earth, it produces a sine wave pattern, with the slower curve of the wave in northern and southern latitudes and the faster straighter sections running from east to west.

'If you imagine the green low risk area on the map is the part of the road we're trying to walk across, the quickest way is to go at 90 degrees  straight across.

The descent of the space craft is difficult to predict as the conditions in space are widely unknown and unpredictable. The orbit pattern of Tiangong-1 is also making predictions more complex and leads to 'highly variable' predictions

'When the spacecraft crosses the equator, it's crossing the road at this point, and it does so really fast.

'When it goes across the red bands further north and south, it's crossing at a steeper angle - almost parallel to the road.

'It takes longer to cross at these latitudes, which is why it has a higher risk of coming down here.'

Predictions of Tiangong-1's most likely point of impact come from Aerospace, a US research organisation based in El Segundo, California, that advises government and private enterprise on space flight.

The vehicle is 10.4 metres long and has a main diameter of 3.35 metres. It has a liftoff mass of 8,506 kilograms and provides 15 cubic metres of pressurised volume

Tiangong-1 is experiencing drag as it brushes against the planet's denser outer atmosphere and it is dropping out of orbit by about 2.5 miles a day. When Tiangong-1, Chinese for Heavenly Place, reaches an altitude of about 43 miles above the surface, it will begin its re-entry

Estimates from Aerospace say the space station will enter the Earth's atmosphere on April 1, give or take a few days, and debris will fall no further north than 42.7 N latitude or south of 42.7 S latitude.

An interactive map from SatView allows you to track the space stations's descent in real-time.

There are two maps available; the largest one shows the past path and the predicted path as a series of dots, whilst the smaller inset map shows the space station's exact location above Earth at any given moment.

The Satview map shows several different satellites in orbit, including the Hubble telescope and the International Space Station.

Tracking website SatView allows users to follow the exact movements of a range of different satellites, the Chinese Tiangong-1 is one of them. It shows a predicted time of reentry to the atmosphere as well as information on where it has been and where it is going

The larger map which shows the dots revealing the satellite's route is produced by Satview.

The second map is powered by USstratcom (United States Strategic Command) and then overlaid on to Google Maps.

As more information is garnered as to when the reentry will take place, the site updates with the most likely landing spot for the space station.
Ajit Pai, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, wants to ensure that the E-rate funds schools and libraries receive to subsidize their internet and telecommunications costs are not spent on equipment or services that could pose a national security threat.

Thats the crux of a proposal released by the FCC on March 27 , which would affect four programs that receive Universal Service Fund monies, including the Lifeline program. That funding helps low-income families pay for phone and broadband service, which its supporters say help close the homework gap.

The proposed rule is apparently aimed at Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., a Chinese multinational networking, telecommunications equipment, and services company, that has been flagged in a government report for building a back door into its communications equipment. The concern is that this functionality could give Chinese officials spying capability into communications wherever the equipment is installed.

John Harrington, president of Funds for Learning, which helps thousands of schools and libraries prepare their E-rate applications each year, said only about a tenth of a percent of all E-rate applications would be affected in the latest round. A relative newcomer in the networking electronics business in the United States, Huawei has a very small, but growing presence, in the schools and libraries marketplace, he said.

Huawei is the largest telecommunications equipment manufacturer in the world. Its expansion into the U.S. consumer market has been dramatically slowed by the fact that FBI Director Christopher Wray and others warned, in testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee last month, about potential spying opportunities from foreign-made products . Last week, the company lost Best Buy as a distributor for its mobile devices , leaving only two online retailers as options for consumers to buy its devices.

Huawei and another company, ZTE, came under official scrutiny in a 2012 investigative report published by the U.S. House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence , which recommended that the U.S. should view with suspicion the continued penetration of the U.S. telecommunications market by Chinese telecommunications companies.

More recently, 18 U.S. lawmakers sent a letter to Pai in December objecting to the sale of Huawei smartphones by U.S.- based companies such as AT&T, which Pai cited in the proposed rulemaking notice.

The FCC is asking for comments about its proposed rule, which reads as follows:

...no universal service support may be used to purchase or obtain any equipment or services produced or provided by any company posing a national security threat to the integrity of communications networks or the communications supply chain. Seek comment on how best to implement this proposal, including (1) the types of equipment and services that should be covered by the proposed rule; (2) how the FCC should identify, and how USF recipients can learn, which suppliers are covered by the proposed rule; and (3) the costs and benefits of the proposed rule.

Comment is also being sought about how to enforce this proposed rule, and what penalties should be imposed against any entities found to be disregarding it.

See also:
A large crack, stretching several miles, made a sudden appearance recently in south-western Kenya.

The tear, which continues to grow, caused part of the Nairobi-Narok highway to collapse and was accompanied by seismic activity in the area.

Now researchers are claiming that in millions of years the African continent could split two.

In an article for the Conversation, Lucia Perez Diaz, Pa ostdoctoral Researcher at the Fault Dynamics Research Group, London's Royal Holloway, explains how this could happen.

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A large crack, stretching several miles, made a sudden appearance recently in south-western Kenya. This is what Africa could look like in millions of years

The Earth is an ever-changing planet, even though in some respects change might be almost unnoticeable to us.

Plate tectonics is a good example of this. But every now and again something dramatic happens and leads to renewed questions about the African continent splitting in two.

How the rift formed

The Earth's lithosphere (formed by the crust and the upper part of the mantle) is broken up into a number of tectonic plates.

These plates are not static, but move relative to each other at varying speeds, 'gliding' over a viscous asthenosphere.

Exactly what mechanism or mechanisms are behind their movement is still debated, but are likely to include convection currents within the asthenosphere and the forces generated at the boundaries between plates.

The East African Rift Valley stretches over 3,000km from the Gulf of Aden in the north towards Zimbabwe in the south, splitting the African plate into two unequal parts: the Somali and Nubian plates. Pictured here is the topography of the Rift Valley

These forces do not simply move the plates around, they can also cause plates to rupture, forming a rift and potentially leading to the creation of new plate boundaries.

The East African Rift system is an example of where this is currently happening.

What is the East African rift?

The East African Rift Valley stretches over 3,000km from the Gulf of Aden in the north towards Zimbabwe in the south, splitting the African plate into two unequal parts: the Somali and Nubian plates.

Activity along the eastern branch of the rift valley, running along Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania, became evident when the large crack suddenly appeared in south-western Kenya.

Why does rifting happen?

When the lithosphere is subject to a horizontal extensional force it will stretch, becoming thinner. Eventually, it will rupture, leading to the formation of a rift valley.

This process is accompanied by surface manifestations along the rift valley in the form of volcanism and seismic activity.

Rifts are the initial stage of a continental break-up and, if successful, can lead to the formation of a new ocean basin.

An example of a place on Earth where this has happened is the South Atlantic ocean, which resulted from the break up of South America and Africa around 138m years ago  ever noticed how their coastlines match like pieces of the same puzzle?.

Continental rifting requires the existence of extensional forces great enough to break the lithosphere.

HOW COULD AFRICA SPLIT IN TWO? Scientists believe that East Africa is breaking up. A huge tectonic plate boundary 3,100 miles (5,000km) long is running up along the eastern section of the continent. This can be seen the surface as the East African Rift System (EARS). The African plate has split into the Somalian and Nubian tectonic plates, which are pulling away from each other. This active rift zone is currently spreading at few millimeters per year. This means that in around 10 million years, a new ocean will emerge as the EARS continues to tear East Africa apart. Advertisement

The East African Rift is described as an active type of rift, in which the source of these stresses lies in the circulation of the underlying mantle.

Beneath this rift, the rise of a large mantle plume is doming the lithosphere upwards, causing it to weaken as a result of the increase in temperature, undergo stretching and breaking by faulting.

Evidence for the existence of this hotter-than-normal mantle plume has been found in geophysical data and is often referred to as the 'African Superswell'. Activity along the eastern branch of the rift valley, running along Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania, became evident when the large crack suddenly appeared in south-western Kenya.

Activity along the eastern branch of the rift valley, running along Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania, became evident when the large crack suddenly appeared in south-western Kenya. Pictured is the Great Rift Valley, Tanzania

This superplume is not only a widely-accepted source of the pull-apart forces that are resulting in the formation of the rift valley but has also been used to explain the anomalously high topography of the Southern and Eastern African Plateaus.

Rifts exhibit a very distinctive topography, characterised by a series of fault-bounded depressions surrounded by higher terrain.

In the East African system, a series of aligned rift valleys separated from each other by large bounding faults can be clearly seen from space.

Not all of these fractures formed at the same time, but followed a sequence starting in the Afar region in northern Ethiopia at around 30m years ago and propagating southwards towards Zimbabwe at a mean rate of between 2.5-5cm a year.

Although most of the time rifting is unnoticeable to us, the formation of new faults, fissures and cracks or renewed movement along old faults as the Nubian and Somali plates continue moving apart can result in earthquakes.

However, in East Africa most of this seismicity is spread over a wide zone across the rift valley and is of relatively small magnitude.

Volcanism running alongside is a further surface manifestation of the ongoing process of continental break up and the proximity of the hot molten asthenosphere to the surface.

What could happen now?

The East African Rift is unique in that it allows us to observe different stages of rifting along its length. To the south, where the rift is young, extension rates are low and faulting occurs over a wide area. Volcanism and seismicity are limited.

Towards the Afar region, however, the entire rift valley floor is covered with volcanic rocks.

This suggests that, in this area, the lithosphere has thinned almost to the point of complete break up.

When this happens, a new ocean will begin forming by the solidification of magma in the space created by the broken-up plates.

Eventually, over a period of tens of millions of years, seafloor spreading will progress along the entire length of the rift.

The ocean will flood in and, as a result, the African continent will become smaller and there will be a large island in the Indian Ocean composed of parts of Ethiopia and Somalia, including the Horn of Africa.

Dramatic events, such as sudden motorway-splitting faults or large catastrophic earthquakes may give continental rifting a sense of urgency but, most of the time, it goes about splitting Africa without anybody even noticing.
For those who suffer from seasonal allergies, the onset of spring can be a bittersweet time.

In recent years, it seems allergies in the US have been getting worse and worse  and, experts say urban landscaping practices may be to blame.

A bizarre phenomenon known as botanical sexism may be driving pollen overdoses in cities across the country.

Over the past few decades, landscapers have been increasingly planting male trees and plants, due to their litter-free nature, meaning they dont shed seeds, fruits, or pods.

But, what male trees lack in messy seeds, they make up for in pollen.

The problem is that while these trees and plants are litter-free, they all produce abundant allergenic pollen, Ogren explains, of male trees. Above, male begonias are pictured (file photo)

This is according to horticultural expert Thomas Leo Ogren, who first began searching for pollen-free plants for his yard a few years back to help alleviate his wifes allergies, according to MNN.

In doing so, Ogren found his city was dominated by male plants.

The influx of male plants startd after the mid-1980s, when millions of city trees were wiped out by Dutch elm disease, the expert explained in a 2015 op-ed for Scientific American.

Based on recommendations from the universities, cities around the US began planting clonal male trees to replace those that had died.

The problem is that while these trees and plants are litter-free, they all produce abundant allergenic pollen, Ogren explains, of male trees.

And, as they get bigger each year, they release more pollen.

To fight the issue, the expert urges landscapers to and local growers to use more female trees.

Hes even developed an online tool called the Ogren Plant Allergy Scale (OPALS) to rank common plants.

In recent years, it seems allergies in the US have been getting worse and worse  and, experts say urban landscaping practices may be to blame. A bizarre phenomenon known as botanical sexism may be driving pollen overdoses in cities across the country. File photo

WHAT IS BOTANICAL SEXISM? 'Botanical sexism' is a term coined by horticultural expert Thomas Lee Ogren. While it might sound odd, the phrase could help to explain the rise in pollen-related allergies across the US. Begonias are among the hanging plants that have become more popular in recent years. And, they're often male Botanical sexism describes a trend seen over the last few decades in which landscapers and urban growers increasingly plant male plants, instead of more 'messy' female plants. But, while female plants may shed seeds and pods, there are downsides to predominantly choosing male plants. The problem is that while these trees and plants are litter-free, they all produce abundant allergenic pollen, Ogren explains in an op-ed for Scientific American. As these male trees grow over the years, the produce and shed more and more pollen. Advertisement

As Ogren explains, much of the allergy issue originates right in your backyard.

Despite what we often read about pollen blowing in from hundreds of miles away, in fact most pollen lands and sticks quite close to where it is shed, Ogren explained.

The greatest amount of pollen from a large tree will normally land within 20-30 feet from the dripline of the tree itself.

This translates to what is known as proximity pollinosis or allergy that is triggered by the planets closest to where we live, work, play or go to school.

Almost all urban allergies now come directly from the planted landscape  they are homegrown.
When someone offers to share a meal with you, it's usually because they're a kind and generous person.

Not so for monkeys.

Scientists have developed a different explanation for why primates are willing to share with one another.

Monkeys only tend to be generous in public because they want to enhance their status (thereby appearing more attractive to potential mates), boost their offspring, or perhaps sharing is a required norm within the group.

But a new study has left scientists puzzled after marmoset monkeys seem to defy those scientific norms.

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Researchers often to refer to scientific norms to explain why monkeys share food: reputation, group rules or preserving their offspring. But marmosets (pictured) don't seem to fit the mold

The research, published in Biology Letters earlier this month, involved studying how much help marmosets provide to one another.

Anthropologists from the University of Zurich looked for differences in behavior when the marmosets were present in a group or when no audience was present.

For the study, they conducted 2,581 trials with 31 adult and 14 baby marmosets.

Strikingly, they found that marmosets shared more food with their little ones when no one was looking.

Specifically, the scientists found that adult marmosets shared their food with a begging baby in private 85% of the time.

By comparison, when they were in a group, the adults shared food with their baby only 67% of the time.

'Contrary to both predictions, we found a reverse audience effect on food-sharing behavior: marmosets would systematically share more food with immatures when no audience was present,' the study explains.

Scientists have always relied on those behavioral norms to explain acts of altruism.

Research published this month in the Biology of Letters studied whether marmosets are more generous in public or in private. Scientists were shocked to find they share more in private

One is commonly referred to as the 'pay-to-stay' model, wherein animals may be charitable to each other because that's required within the group.

If an animal isn't charitable, they risk getting kicked out of the group or being rejected by any potential mates.

In other cases, an animal may share food to keep their offspring alive, thereby preserving their genes are passed onto future generations.

A final explanation involves an animal shows generosity in order to enhance their status.

If the animal has more than enough food to share, they appear more prestigious, which may increase their pool of prospective mates.

But marmosets don't seem to exhibit generosity for selfish purposes.

Specifically, the scientists found that adult marmosets shared their food with a begging baby in private 85% of the time vs. just 67% when they were in a group setting

CAN A GOOD DAD MAKE FOR HEALTHIER KIDS? YES, IF YOU'RE A MARMOSET A study, published in the journal PLOS ONE and conducted by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, involved sorting two dozen marmoset fathers by playing them recordings of infant marmoset distress calls. The researchers found that 60 per cent of the fathers responded to the calls by searching for their source. Babies of the responsive fathers were far more likely to survive their first 30 days. A new study found that fathers in colonies of the common marmoset, a small primate found in Central and South America, split child care duties with their mates - but some marmoset fathers are more attentive than others 87 per cent of the infants born to responsive fathers survived, compared to 45 per cent of the offspring of fathers who didn't respond to the recorded distress calls. At around six to 12 weeks-old, young marmosets born to the more attentive dads began gaining weight faster than the offspring born to the inattentive fathers. This is the time at which marmosets begin weaning off their mother's milk, and marmoset fathers take an active role in moving babies from milk to solid food. The researchers also found that the responsive marmoset dads experience a boost of testosterone when they look for their crying baby after hearing the recording. Advertisement

'Helping in common marmosets, at least in related family groups, does not support pay-to-stay or the social prestige model, and helpers do not take advantage of the opportunity to engage in reputation management,' the scientists wrote.

'Rather, the results appear to reflect a genuine concern for the immatures' well being, which seems particularly strong when solely responsible for the immatures'.

The scientists believe that human behaviors may help explain why the marmosets were so kind in private.

'The marmoset pattern of results calls to mind the so-called diffusion of responsibility effect, which is well established in humans,' the scientists said.

'People are less likely to help in the presence of a larger number of bystanders, but feel more responsible alone with a needy individual'.
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Rare pictures have emerged of Concorde in a hangar at London Heathrow after it returned from its maiden flight to Bahrain in the Middle East in 1976.

What makes them extra remarkable is that they were taken by someone who snuck into the hangar dressed as an engineer.

In her disguise, Rosalind Griffiths, who was 20 at the time, excitedly posed next to the history-making supersonic airliner and snapped the cockpit and cabin.

Rare pictures have emerged of Concorde in a hangar at London Heathrow after it returned from its maiden flight to Bahrain in the Middle East in 1976. They were taken by 20-year-old Rosalind Griffiths, who disguised herself as an engineer

Don't press any buttons! Ms Griffiths was able to examine the outside of the aircraft and explore the interior, including the cockpit

Ms Griffiths explained to MailOnline Travel that she arrived on the back of a motorcycle in British Overseas Airways Corporation apprentice overalls and that security waved her through to see what the public has never seen until now

Ms Griffiths said: 'My friend Bob who worked on DC-10s and Concorde... donated to me his old green BOAC apprentice overalls and assured me that the security would wave us on through'

The launch of the Concorde service changed the way people perceived the size of the planet

Ms Griffiths, who's now 62 and retired, explained to MailOnline Travel that she arrived on the back of a motorcycle in British Overseas Airways Corporation apprentice overalls and that security waved her through to see what the public has never seen until now.

Ms Griffiths, from Oxfordshire, said: 'My friend Bob who worked on DC-10s and Concorde offered to sneak me into British Airways so I could see the famous plane and I leapt at the chance.

'He donated to me his old green BOAC apprentice overalls and assured me that the security would wave us on through, as in those days it was near impossible to carry a bomb on a motorcycle, then sure enough I was there!

'I don't know how long I was fixed to the spot just staring in awe but spotting a set of steps I got out of my overalls and climbed up for a photo.

'I ran my hand along the wing thinking most aeroplanes have joins with pop rivets and dull paintwork, but this was a perfect seamless finish with a high gloss.'

British Overseas Airways Corporation joined with British European Airways to make British Airways in 1974.

Concorde flew for the first time in 1969 for 20 minutes and entered service in 1976.

Once she was in, Ms Griffiths took off her apprentice engineer overalls and posed next to the aircraft

Concorde flew for the first time in 1969 for 20 minutes and entered service in 1976. Ms Griffiths revealed that she ran her hand along the wing

The overalls that Ms Griffiths used to fool the Heathrow security guards - she still has them to this day

It halved the flight time from London to New York.

In 2000, Air France flight 4590 caught fire on take-off after debris on the runway punctured a fuel tank. It crashed, killing 109 on-board and four on the ground.

Air France and British Airways subsequently grounded Concorde due to low passenger numbers and rising maintenance costs.

Pilot Jonny Knowlson told MailOnline Travel: 'Concorde was a flying machine too ahead of its time to survive. It took its final flight while I was still at school and was the reason I dreamed of becoming a pilot. I still have magical memories of hearing the sonic boom and looking up to catch a glimpse of the magnificent delta-wing beauty as she flew over the Isle of Wight at the speed of sound.

'I realised my dream to be a commercial pilot but will forever regret not stepping on board Speedbird One.'
Tickets for the Taj Mahal, Indias most popular tourist attraction, will only entitle holders to a three-hour visit from April 1.

The Archaeological Survey of India said that on occasion visitor numbers have surged to 50,000 a day and that some people linger there from dawn till dusk.

The time restriction is being implemented to help staff manage the crowds.

Tickets for the Taj Mahal, Indias most popular tourist attraction, will only entitle holders to a three-hour visit from April 1

An official told the Times of India: Weve had situations where over 50,000 visitors come to Taj Mahal in a single day. The monument space is limited and we cannot extend that.

Sometimes it gets very difficult to manage the crowd. There are some visitors who come in early and do not leave till closing time and that creates additional stress.

The Taj Mahal was built by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan as a tomb for his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal, who died giving birth in 1631.

The main crypt houses the couple's spectacular marble graves inlaid with semi-precious stones.

The graves also date back to the 17th century but do not actually contain the bodies of the royal couple, who are buried under a separate lower chamber.

The Archaeological Survey of India said that on occasion visitor numbers have surged to 50,000 a day and that some people linger there from dawn till dusk

Daily visitor numbers to the Taj Mahal average 10,000-15,000 but can be much higher at weekends.

Nearly 6.5million visited the monument in 2016, according to government figures.

The Taj Mahal has attracted world leaders and royalty including former US President Bill Clinton.

Diana, the late British princess, was famously photographed alone on a marble seat there in 1992.

But the mausoleum faces an array of threats, including the yellowing effects of smog.

In 2016 green stains on its rear wall were blamed on excrement from insects.

Authorities have in the past covered the iconic monument's facade with 'mud packs' made of Fuller's earth, which draws out the impurities, to restore its whiteness.
There is nothing viewers find more comforting than a Blast From The Past  unless those blasts turn up with different heads and bear no resemblance to their previous incarnations (EastEnders Michelle, you know who you are  or perhaps you dont?).

When Mel and Kat returned to EastEnders, it was like snuggling up in a warm blanket of ones childhood, and all was right with the world once more. The same happens every time Grant makes a welcome reappearance, and the make-up department dip into their Shiny Bald Head powder puff box.

Coronation Streets Martin made less of a fanfare, but Sean Wilson slipped back so easily into the role it was as if hed just been out buying a pint of milk  nobody querying why it had taken him so long.

Emmerdale regained its spark when Charity returned; her absence felt like ordering steak frites in a restaurant and being told the cow has jumped over the moon and wont be returning. To me, shes always been an essential cog in the wheel, and the Cain/Charity double act is as central to the show as well, steak is to steak frites. Bon appetit!

Mel warns Hunter to stay away from Phil, as she doesnt trust him in this week's EastEnders

EASTENDERS: DIET FOR DISASTER

Food and the Mitchells do not go together, as any witness to their fairm-ly get-togethers can testify.

So when Sharon arranges a big lunch to build bridges with Phil, there are no grounds for optimism, especially when Mel warns Hunter to stay away from Phil, as she doesnt trust him. (Pot, kettle, black? Remember Christmas Day 2000, when Mel and Phil locked turkey drumsticks? A table was involved  and not for eating on.)

Inevitably, Mels warning is a red rag to Hunter, who sneaks off to the lunch, where he and Phil get on like a house on fire (which it might literally be, if past Mitchell psycho meals are anything to go by).

Then a fuming Mel arrives to collect her errant son. Under the influence of secret drinking, Sharon picks a fight with Mel  what skeletons are going to come tumbling out of the closet? This really wasnt a good idea, was it Sharon? Anyone for low-flying dessert?

Joyces death was a shock, but where theres a chessboard, theres hope. When Teds horrid daughter Judith arrives, Ted is grateful when they bump into Bernie at the cafe and... wait for it... he ends up playing chess with her. They really arent going to let this go, are they?

Shona speaks to David Platt about the fact that they haven't been intimate for some time in Coronation Street

CORONATION STREET: SHAMED INTO REACTION

Jack P Shepherd has played the role of David Platt for 18 years, and in that time we have seen him grow from brilliant child actor to extraordinarily talented adult who is up there with the best of them.

The current storyline (which has seen a 1,700 per cent increase in calls to helplines) has taken his acting to a sublime level and, with Ryan Clayton (who brilliantly plays the abuser, Josh) he is producing award-winning stuff.

The fallout from the attack and Davids ashamed silence takes its toll on his relationship with Shona, who is mystified by his sudden change in behaviour  wanting to emigrate to New Zealand being the least of it. Its where they filmed Lord Of The Rings, David said on Monday  a good enough reason never to go there, in my book.

Maria pointed out that getting a visa might be a problem (yep  and theres that criminal record, too). Is breaking up with Shona the easiest way for David to cope with his pain?

Syd is beaten up by Cain and Robert in Emmerdale this week

Having suspected that Jude might not be the great marine biologist he pretends to be, Im not as surprised as Tracy is when she sees him picking up titles on the subject in the Kabin. Why would the Kabin be stocking Cod And Coral Monthly, or whatever marine magazines are called?

I cant remember the last time anyone bought a magazine full stop, let alone one containing readers letters about their dying algae/goldfish/shark. What secret is Jude hiding, and is he about to be found out?

EMMERDALE: MONEY FOR OLD ROPE

The Godfather IV continues, with yet another kidnapping. Did the show happen across a job lot of rope and toy guns? What other reason could there be for this ongoing gangster nonsense?

Still, it makes a change from 2016, when Aaron was the kidnapper (keeping up?). This time round, the problem is Syd, who was Adams cellmate, and after Syd is beaten up by Cain and Robert, the latter receives a live video of Aaron gagged (every cloud and all that) and bound.

And a burst water pipe is all it takes to get Bob and Laurel kissing passionately again. Ahhh. And who said romance was dead.
Other than the late physicist Stephen Hawking, there could probably never be a better guest star for The Big Bang Theory than Bill Gates  and fans were not disappointed by Thursday night's episode of the CBS show.

It kicked off with Penny, played by Kaley Cuoco, delivering big news to Leonard (Johnny Galecki) and his friends, revealing she was chosen by her boss to entertain Bill Gates while he was in town sorting out a deal with the company she works for.

His foundation is looking to partner with the pharmaceutical company to help develop affordable vaccines so, they asked me to help show him around, she explained.

Penny delivered some exciting news to the gang during episode 18 of Big Bang Theory

Leonard finally met his idol, Bill Gates, despite promising Penny he wouldn't hunt him down

Ever a skeptic, Sheldon (Jim Parsons) wasn't buying Penny's story. He was convinced she was pulling another one of her 'classic pranks' he said she's pulled on him every year for April Fool's Day. Penny was adamant that she 'literally never pulled a prank' on Sheldon, but he persisted.

'Oh really? What about last year when you sent me that email with the photo attached, but you didn't attach a photo?' he questioned.

'That was a mistake,' Penny insisted.

'Messing with me? Yeah, it was,' Sheldon quipped back. 'This year I am not falling for it. You know what they say: "Fool me N-times, where N equals the amount of times you've already fooled me, shame on you. Fool me N-plus-one-times, shame on me."'

Unable to convince him, Penny gave up.

The following day, Leonard's own jealousy set in. He tried to persuade his wife to bring him along on her outing with Bill Gates by suggesting the Microsoft founder may want to 'talk about high level language interpreters for micro-computers', but Penny insisted she didn't need her husband to save the day.

'Actually, I've already met him once before,' Leonard revealed. 'He gave a talk at Princeton and my mom took me.'

'Oh, really? Was he nice?' Penny asked, intrigued.

'He was super nice. I got pretty emotional and started crying and he didn't make fun of me or anything,' Leonard shared.

Determined not to mess up her once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, Penny decided to head into work on a Sunday.

Do you think you could get Bill Gates to sign something for me? Howard (Simon Helberg) inquired as she gathered her things together. My arm, my chest. His call.

She replied: His call will be to the police.

Bill Gates joined the cast of The Big Bang Theory for an episode in which he played himself

Howard and Raj (Kunal Nayyar) continued to try and convince Penny to bring them to meet the tech legend, but she was not budging. Not only did she fear doing so would make her look bad, but his schedule was already packed during the visit.

Penny showed Leonard their itinerary as proof, unknowingly giving her husband just what he needed to make his dream meeting happen. He waited until Penny was out of earshot to reveal that he knew where Bill Gates is staying and wanted to track him down.

Once he was sure Penny was on her way to work, the crew got the ball rolling on their mission to meet the brain behind some of techs early innovations.

Leonard, Howard and Raj arrived at the hotel without incident, all that was left to do was wait. While they sipped cocktails at the hotel, Leonard began to second guess his master plan.

Howard assured him: Were not doing anything wrong, were just hanging out in a hotel lobby. Plenty of people do that. The business men, the high end prostitutes.

Thats a fun new game  CEO or hoe? Raj joked.

Suddenly their casual gathering was interrupted as Bill Gates made his way into the lobby. The gang tried to keep their cool, which proved an impossible task.

Oh my god, Oh my god, Oh my god, Raj repeated to himself over and over.

Leonard seized the opportunity to go up and talk to his hero, hoping he'd remember their first introduction.

Weve actually met before, he said. 'You were so nice. It was really special to me because youve been such a big influence on my life, I mean ever since I was a kid Ive looked up to you like a hero, he said through tears.

As it turned out, Bill Gates did remember their first meeting and Leonard made sure he wouldn't forget their second either.

He returned home after accomplishing his goal of meeting Bill Gates face-to-face a second time and couldn't wait to tell Sheldon, who was still convinced he was being tricked. Rather than waste time trying to sway Sheldon, Leonard decided to have a little fun.

Once he had proven that he had, in fact, met Bill Gates at a hotel, he assured Sheldon he could do the same.

Hes probably still there, Leonard said, and directed Sheldon to La Quinta in Sherman Oaks, California. He added that the hotel was booked under the name Hernandez and Sheldon took off running.

April fools, Leonard whispered to himself.

Later, he returned home to his wife who was unaware that he'd gone behind her back to meet Bill Gates. Penny was dangerously close to figuring him out, though, so Leonard had to think fast.

While Leonard was home 'sick', Penny video called him and surprised him with an appearance from Bill Gates, not knowing that the pair already met at his hotel

Leonard wanted to make it right by Penny and set the mood in the apartment by getting a bouquet of flowers and making a romantic meal only to have the moment ruined by Sheldon

After pulling a few strings a work, Penny said she had been able to convince her boss to allow Leonard to join them at a reception for Bill Gates so the two could meet for what she believes is the second time.

I wonder if hell remember you, she said while her husband grew nervous.

Leonard confided in Raj and Howard about his problem and they were delighted by his misery.

Maybe he wont remember you, Howard said with a smirk.

Panicked, Leonard replied: I snoted on his tie.

Just then, Sheldon arrived at the comic book store after having being fooled into searching for Bill Gates. Raj and Howard managed to convince Sheldon that he was actually staying in Long Beach, California the whole time.

After some minor convincing from the duo, Sheldon took off again to track down his idol  at least he thought so.

In the meantime, Leonard came up with a foolproof plan to avoid being figured out by Penny. He decided to fake sick and leave his wife on her own at the reception.

Penny didn't let his ailment stop her from making her husband's dream of meeting his longtime hero come true, though. While Leonard was home 'sick', she video called him and surprised him with an appearance from Bill Gates.

Within seconds, the billionaire recognized Leonard and suddenly the jig was up.

'Wait, I know you,' Bill said while Leonard denied the accusation. He continued: 'Yes, I do. You were waiting for me at my hotel. You ruined my tie!'

Leonard hung up and got to work on making things right with Penny. He posted a sign on the door, set the mood in the apartment and gathered a bouquet of flowers only to have the big moment ruined by Sheldon - who was outside beating himself up for not having believed Penny in the first place.

Raj and Howard managed to convince Sheldon that he was actually staying in Long Beach, California the whole time, after he was convinced he was being pranked for April Fools

Mom-brain got the best of Bernadette, but Amy was right there to bring her back into reality and urged her to get out of the house and enjoy a meal with grown ups

While everyone else has was fawning over Bill Gates, Amy (Mayim Bialik) was trying to spend time with Bernadette (Melissa Rauch). She couldn't help but notice how much motherhood changed her best friend.

The kids headed out for a day at the park with Stuart (Kevin Sussman), who revealed he'd taken up learning Spanish in an effort to communicate better with the other nannies, and the ladies attempted to enjoy some quality girl time.

It became evident to Amy that mom-brain had gotten the best of Bernadette, who's become deeply invested in Bob The Builder and Peppa Pig and uses cutesy words like 'naners'.

'Sorry, mom-brain. I think I forgot how to talk to grown ups,' she explained to Amy. 'I meant BUH-naners.'

Bernadette urged her to get out of the house to enjoy a real meal with out her kids present. Eventually even she recognized that shed become one of those moms that cant talk about anything other than her children. Desperate to dig up even just a fragment of her old self, she turned to Amy for advice.

Pregnancy and child birth actually cause physical changes to the structure of your brain. Studies with rats show that new mothers are more sensitive to danger, better at multi-tasking and bolder in the pursuit of food, she said.

Amy encouraged Bernadette to start using her evolved brain for more intellectual things in an effort to get back to her old self. The mother of two began her mission at bed time, when she shared a story about the sun losing its mass with her children.

But dont worry, itll be millions of years before we all freeze to death, she said before returning downstairs where she discovered Leonard had been listening via baby monitor.

Bernadette excitedly explained: Amy made me realize that new mothers are cognitively primed to take in new information and Ive been wasting it making up songs about our babys toes!

Evolution gave me this mom-brain to focus on the baby, but I figure I can hack it to learn all kinds of new things.'

It didnt take long for Bernadettes brain hacking to go awry, of course. She and Amy headed out to share another meal together, only she could hardly focus beyond complex theories and advancements in photosynthetic efficiency.

Rather than make any more recommendations, Amy embraced the madness and ordered up a bottle of wine for herself.

As for Stuart, his mission to learn Spanish went relatively well. At least, if you ignore the fact that the other nannies at the park were fairly certain he was some kind of kid-stealing psycho. After learning his name, one nanny remarked to another in Spanish: 'Write that down. We may have to give it to the cops.'
He hit it off with his Married At First Sight co-star Ashley Irvin, 29, - with the pair spotted enjoying romantic dinners after the show wrapped.

But now it seems Justin Fischer is busying partying it up with other women while in New Zealand.

The 41-year-old divorced father-of-two took to Instagram to share a collage edited snap of himself with a bevy of beautiful women at the Dr Rudi's Rooftop Brewing Co. in Auckland.

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He's living it up! Married At First Sight's Justin Fischer enjoys a night out with a bevy of women in Auckland... but where's 'girlfriend' Ashley Irvin?

Justin was all smiles as he posed with stunning ladies who all wanted to get a picture with the reality TV star, while one of his male friends also featured in a cheeky selfie.

The soft serve ice cream entrepreneur took captioned his post: 'Had a great night with my Auckland friends last night.'

He added: 'Perfect way to finish off a week of business!' and included the hashtags: '#auckland #drrudis #easter #aucklandfriends'.

Fans of the curly haired millionaire appeared to love his post - and choice of company.

Having a ball: Justin has shared a number of posts from his trip to New Zealand (pictured with friends during a side trip to Wellington)

Where's Ashley? Missing from Justin's night out in the New Zealand city was his very close friend and MAFS co-star, who the millionaire is rumoured to be dating

One cheeky follower suggested: 'I'm telling you! Get yourself a Kiwi girl!'

She continued: 'They are fun, honest, supportive and humble. I know because I am one but I'm taken and waaaaay too old for you.'

A stunning blonde fan of the show, featured in the picture, also commented: 'So nice to meet you!'

Missing from his night out in the New Zealand city was his very close friend and MAFS co-star Ashley Irvin, who appeared to be in Australia's capital city instead.

On her Instagram, Ashley had last shared a snap of her dinner at the five-star Raku restaurant in Canberra.

'She travels as much as I do!': Justin recently told The Daily Telegraph his 'relationship' with Ashley worked because of their jet-setting lifestyles

Justin spoke to The Daily Telegraph last week about his 'perfect' bond with the Virgin Australia flight attendant.

'She travels as much as I do (for work), which is perfect. We definitely bonded inside the experiment and have stayed in touch,' he told the publication.

The soft serve entrepreneur also hinted that he would have made a better match than Ashley's 'ex-husband' Troy Delmege.

'Ashley and I did get on really well and possibly could have been a good match. All I'll say is: watch this space,' he added.
Indian Summer School

Rating:

Civilisations

Rating:

Headmaster Matthew Raggett of the Doon all-boys college in the Himalayan foothills, one of the worlds most successful schools, reckons the biggest scourge for teachers is the mobile phone.

Up to 80 per cent of problems in the classroom are caused by the distractions of electronic devices, he says. A child with a smartphone is incapable of concentrating on anything else.

Indian Summer School (C4) highlighted the benefits of Raggetts firm, but gentle, insistence on banning all mobiles. His students, many from Indias wealthiest families, were impeccably well behaved  much as youd also expect at a top English private school.

But as five under-achieving British lads joined the classes, this show revealed a deeper malaise in UK education, even more pernicious and destructive than the Facebook, selfie culture.

Indian Summer School (C4) highlighted the benefits of Raggetts firm, but gentle, insistence on banning all mobiles

Its worse than a truculent refusal to learn. Todays teens are taught, through celebrity worship and starmaker shows such as The X Factor, that they are born uniquely perfect, and any attempt to mould or educate them is tantamount to abuse.

Heroines of the night Heroines of the night: Victoria Derbyshire and pop star Michelle Heaton, who have both had mastectomies, were among the bold strippers on The Real Full Monty: Ladies Night (ITV). You shouldnt be afraid of your scars, said Michelle. Bravo! Advertisement

Cocky, lazy Jake summed it up best. The 18-year-old treated the Indian teachers with contempt from the day he arrived, smuggling a couple of bottles of rum in his suitcase and scrawling swearwords across his test papers. Thats my character, he said smugly, so obviously Im not going to change.

The producers didnt challenge the notion that every snowflake is sacrosanct. Even the school treated the idea with respect.

Inevitably, one of the five boys, 17-year-old Ethan from the Welsh valleys, believed hed been born in the wrong body. He wanted to transition as soon as he could afford sex-change surgery, but in the meantime he graciously allowed the teachers to address him as a male. It dont offend me, he assured the camera.

But the idea of having his shoulder-length hair cut to meet school regulations reduced him to hysterics. Nonsensically, he claimed short hair would prevent him from embracing his true feminine nature later in life  as if hair didnt grow, or no woman ever had a severe bob.

The school buckled and let him keep his locks. The other three boys in the experiment knuckled down and were soon improving their grades, hoping to pass the English and Maths GCSEs that had eluded them in Britain.

Its no coincidence that Ethan and Jake, the boys given leeway to be themselves, gained least from the experience.

Looking around with a sneer, Jake proclaimed that his obedient Indian classmates had allowed themselves to be brainwashed. But hes the one who has been duped, along with an entire British generation that thinks its an insult to be asked to learn.

Simon Schama inside the Suleymaniye Mosque

Indian education was the theme of a superb episode of Civilisations (BBC2), as art historian Simon Schama explored the flowering of Mughal culture from the walled city of Lahore to the splendour of the Taj Mahal. This series has sputtered as it attempts to include all world history, but it came thrillingly to life when Schama compared the Renaissance in East and West.

He was in awe of the gilded beauty created by Muslim artists, and imperiously confident as he explained the meanings hidden in great Dutch and Italian works.

His description of how Cellini cast a bronze statue of the Greek hero Perseus slaying Medusa was as breathless as an action movie  with a great twist at the end of the tale.

And his deconstruction of Rembrandts masterpiece The Night Watch could change the way we view it for ever. Unmissable.
They kissed on Monday's episode of Bachelor in Paradise.

But it appears Laurina Fleure and Blake Colman's first date does not result in a lasting romance.

A preview for the third episode hints at a showdown between the two contestants.

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'That's it! I'm DONE!' Bachelor In Paradise star Laurina Fleure (pictured) and Blake Coleman face off during a dramatic Rose Ceremony in a new teaser trailer

In the preview, a voiceover says dramatically: 'Get ready for the moment... that will make Bachelor history.'

Laurina then says in an on-camera confessional: 'I know that Blake is giving me his rose. And I'm excited.'

The scene then cuts to a tense Rose Ceremony, which sees the men handing out roses this time.

'F*ck! Oh my God!' A preview for the third episode hints at a showdown between the two contestants. Pictured: Blake Colman

Blake places his hand over his face and says: 'F**k! Oh my God!'

Laurina's face then quickly switches from confident to crushed.

Before the preview abruptly ends, Laurina says defiantly: 'That's it. I'm done!'

Revenge is best served cold! Before the preview abruptly ends, Laurina says defiantly: 'That's it. I'm done!'

Earlier this week, the production company behind Bachelor In Paradise released a statement defending their decision to cast Blake Colman.

Despite his checkered past, including a conviction for assaulting a stranger in 2015 and revenge porn allegations made against him last year, Warner Bros. claimed his police check was clean.

'Background checks, including police checks, are done on all contestants in reality shows, and these checks are conducted by the relevant production company.

'In Blake's case, his police check was clear.'
Newark Mayor Ras Baraka is calling for the state to push the pause button on charter expansion in the city.

About 30 percent of the citys public school students already attend charter schools, and that percentage could surpass 40 percent in the next five years based on plans that have been already approved, according to Chalkbeat.

Among districts with the largest percentage of students attending charters, Newark ranks 15th, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. In cities such as New Orleans, Detroit, and Flint, Mich., charter schools educate more than half of all public school students.

Baraka, a former principal who is running for reelection this year, argues that aggressive growth in the charter sector could siphon funds away from traditional public schools and suck the life out of traditional schoolsand we cant have that.

Baraka said he does not think that charters should expand arbitrarily and aggressively without thinking about the impacts on the traditional school system. The district will steer $237 million this year to charter schools, Chalkbeats Patrick Wall reported.

Baraka may find a sympathetic ear in newly-elected Governor Phil Murphy, a Democrat, who supported a time out for charter schools on the campaign trail. Earlier this month, Murphys education department said it planned to review the states charter school law. New Jersey has 89 charter schools, which educate nearly 50,000 students, according to NJ.com.



But the governor also said in a radio interview this month that he is not against charter schools, and he wont say hell no to them.

I just dont like the way weve done it, he said, according to NJ.com

Baraka is on board with allowing charter schools that already have approvals to go forward; but additional schools should not get the green light until the process is reviewed, he said. In that same interview Baraka acknowledged that charter schools were part of the citys education landscape and that Newark parents were choosing charter schools for their children.

Arianna Prothero contributed to this report.
Sean Penn isn't losing any sleep wondering what people think of him.

The Academy Award-winning actor, 57, has been on a media tour in support of his book Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff, stopping on Thursday at the Free Library of Philadelphia in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The actor wore the exact same ensemble to the event that he wore Monday on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert: A navy blue bomber-style jacket over a navy blue sweatshirt with blue jeans and a tousled coif.

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Unaffected: Sean Penn, 57, 'doesnt care at all what people think' of him, an insider told People on Thursday in the wake of the actor's bizarre appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert Monday. Penn was snapped in Philadelphia on Thursday

Penn made waves Monday with an unusual appearance on Colbert in which he smoked cigarettes and claimed he was under the influence of the sedative Ambien.

'Sean doesnt care at all what people think ... he likes controversy and debate and doesnt mind shocking people,' an insider told People Thursday about the Milk star.

Another insider said that Penn 'loves the fight,' adding that, 'Sean is a one-man band' and 'always has been.'

On Colbert, the Mystic River actor said he was 'doing well,' and joked to the host, 'Youve inherited a little of the Ambien I had to take to get to sleep after a red-eye last night.'

Casual: Penn appeared to be wearing the same outfit to his Q&A Thursday that he wore in his appearance on Colbert three days earlier

Marching to his own beat: 'Sean is a one-man band' and 'always has been,' a source told People

Affable: The veteran actor seemed to be in a good mood as he appeared at the venue

The Fast Times at Ridgemont High alum also relaxed with a few cigarettes in The Ed Sullivan Theater, prompting Colbert to impart a kind warning to Penn, for health's sake. Colbert said: 'Please dont smoke anymore - I dont mind - my parents smoked when I was a child so it gives me happy memories to smell cigarette smoke, but you know we want you to be around for a long time and those things are bad for you.'

Penn cracked in response that he was providing 'job security for oncologists,' doctors who specialize in treating cancer.

The appearance from the veteran entertainer, who was appeared tired and sported an unkempt coif - drew plenty of social media feedback. One user wrote: Just saw Sean Penn on @colbertlateshow smoking away. What a hot mess he is. He needs to get over himself.'

Another chimed in, 'Even Sean Penn's hair looks like it's confused as to who's head it's f*****g on.'

Penn's new book Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff is available now.

Smoke, smoke, smoke that cigarette: Penn puffed on cigarettes in his appearance on Colbert, rankling a few viewers
She gave birth on New Years Eve.

And on Thursday Jessica Alba, 36, proudly showed off three-month-old Hayes, the latest addition to her family, in an Instagram Story.

The bundle of joy was snapped taking a bath in Alba's sink.

Bath time! On Thursday Jessica Alba, 36, proudly showed off three-month-old Hayes, the latest addition to her family, in an Instagram Story

The adorable baby boy sat in a bowl inside the kitchen sink, gawking at the camera, his dark curls a wet mess atop the youngster's head.

The actress gave birth to her third child with husband Cash Warren in December.

Jessica already shares two daughters with her husband of nine years - Honor, nine, and Haven, six.

Baby love! The actress gave birth to her third child with husband Cash Warren in December. She's seen here in August 2017

Bad girl: The brunette beauty has recently been spotted filming scenes for an untitled Bad Boys spinoff with co-star Gabrielle Union

The brunette beauty has recently been spotted filming scenes for an untitled Bad Boys spinoff with co-star Gabrielle Union.

The series will follow Union's character Syd, from the original franchise, as she leaves her job at the DEA to join the LAPD as a detective.

On Thursday, the Sin City starlet posted pics of herself behind the scenes on the show, getting her makeup done in her trailer.

She captioned the candid shots with 'Getting [hair and makeup] did'.

Gettin' her hair did: On Thursday, the Sin City starlet posted pics of herself behind the scenes on the show, getting her makeup done in her trailer
Richard Gere is in final negotiations to play a business titan in what will be his first drama for BBC television.

The Hollywood star is expected to play Max, the daddy in MotherFatherSon, an eight-part thriller by Tom Rob Smith.

Smith is the bestselling novelist who wrote British-American TV hit drama London Spy, which was aired back in 2015 and featured Ben Whishaw, Jim Broadbent and Edward Holcroft.

The character earmarked for Gere is that of a ruthless media tycoon: he has the ear of the British Prime Minister, is keeper of powerful people's secrets and doesn't care about trampling over those who get in his way.

Richard Gere (left) and Billy Howle (right) are set to star in MotherFatherSon, an eight-part thriller by Tom Rob Smith

Max is divorced from blueblood Kathryn, the mother of their 30-year-old, living-dangerously son, Caden.

That role is on offer to the fast-rising Billy Howle, who was in the Witness For The Prosecution mini-series and Dunkirk and will appear in director Dominic Cooke's film version of Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach.

'KathrynMaxCaden' comprise the MotherFatherSon triangle.

Gere hasn't signed a contract yet, but executives at the Corporation must be praying he does because the scripts have been rewritten to reflect the star's physical attributes: his distinctive silver hair and deep tan.

Gere's people, meanwhile, believe the drama could recharge the 68-year-old's career at a time when a lot of big-name actors have been transitioning to TV.

From the late Seventies to the early Nineties, Gere was one of Hollywood's dominant leading men, thanks to some memorable roles in films such as An Officer And A Gentleman and Pretty Woman (pictured)

From the late Seventies to the early Nineties, Gere was one of Hollywood's dominant leading men, thanks to some memorable roles in films such as Yanks, American Gigolo, An Officer And A Gentleman and Pretty Woman (though there were some duds, too). Later, he was also a hit in Chicago, which showcased his trademark cocky swagger.

The role of Mother has yet to be cast, but is expected to be confirmed imminently. Filming is due to start soon on locations across the trendiest parts of London.

Billy Howle has done good work on screen and stage, including Richard Eyre's production of Long Day's Journey Into Night at the Bristol Old Vic.

But the gripping story arc for Caden that has been outlined to me is explosive. And if Howle can pull it off, it will make him a star.

The series will be shown on BBC2 towards the end of the year.
Lily James has been walking with a purpose, down the long and winding road of hits by The Beatles.

The actress, who appeared alongside Gary Oldman in his Oscar-winning turn as Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour, has been cast in the film musical All You Need Is Love, written by Richard Curtis and directed by Danny Boyle.

The film is about a musician and his relationship to the Fab Four's songs.

Lily James (pictured) has been cast in the film musical All You Need Is Love, written by Richard Curtis and directed by Danny Boyle

James has been preparing for her part  details of the role are sparse  by familiarising herself with Beatles' numbers.

The actress is having a busy year. She has the lead role in the film adaptation of bestselling novel The Guernsey Literary And Potato Peel Pie Society, which will be released here on April 20.

That's followed, on July 27, by Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, in which James plays the young Donna  the role portrayed by Meryl Streep in the 2008 Mamma Mia! movie.

Streep is also in the new film, with Cher as her mother. Curtis also had a hand in that screenplay, along with director Ol Parker, and Catherine Johnson  who wrote the original stage show for producer Judy Craymer.

The actress appeared alongside Gary Oldman (centre, with Dame Kristin Scott, left, and Lily James, right) in his Oscar-winning turn as Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour

And as if that's not enough, Edgar Wright (as I reported recently) is writing a sequel to his Oscar-nominated Baby Driver.

The plan is for Ansel Elgort and James to return  as pop-rock baby daddy and cool baby momma  though Wright has cautioned that it may take a couple of years before he starts filming.

Don't put Shakespeare on a pedestal, says Hamlet star

The actor Andrew Scott says we should stop putting Shakespeare on a pedestal and treating him so reverentially.

'If you make Shakespeare like eating your vegetables, people will go: 'I don't want to watch that!' ' says Scott, who can be seen playing Hamlet on BBC2 tomorrow night, in a broadcast of director Robert Icke's acclaimed Almeida Theatre production.

Tomorrow's three-hour programme was filmed after the ubiquitous producer Sonia Friedman transferred the play to the Harold Pinter Theatre.

Andrew Scott (pictured) says we should stop putting Shakespeare on a pedestal and treating him so reverentially

Scott also plays Edgar in Richard Eyre's modern-day adaptation of King Lear, with Anthony Hopkins as the elderly monarch who divides his kingdom for his three daughters  played here by Emma Thompson, Emma Watson and Florence Pugh. It also features Jim Broadbent, Jim Carter, John MacMillan and Karl Johnson.

The two-hour film, a collaboration with producers Colin Callender, Ms Friedman and Noelette Buckley, will be shown on BBC2 in May  possibly as counter-programming to the royal wedding.

Scott complains: 'Sometimes we talk about Shakespeare in a reverent way that we don't use with other drama.'

The actor, who also appears in Sherlock, adds: 'That's why it's brilliant you can find Shakespeare on TV. If it's entertaining, and emotionally engaging, young people will watch it. Don't make out like it's some sort of punishment: that it's virtuous if you watch Shakespeare.'

The New York smash heading this way

The household is filling up for the Tony Award-winning musical Fun Home.

The show  based on American cartoonist Alison Bechdel's graphic coming-of-age (and coming out) memoir about growing up in Pennsylvania with Bruce, her mercurial mortician father; Helen, her actress mother; and two younger brothers  will begin performances at the Young Vic from June 18.

Swedish-born actress Kaisa Hammarlund will portray grown-up Alison, who acts as a narrator, trying to make sense of her life, as it unfolds on stage.

Swedish-born actress Kaisa Hammarlund (pictured) will portray grown-up Alison, who acts as a narrator, trying to make sense of her life in Tony Award-winning musical Fun Home

Two other actors will portray 'small Alison' and 'medium Alison' (those parts are yet to be cast), revealing her relationship with her dad (played by Zubin Varla) and mother (Jenna Russell).

Cherrelle Skeete, who was in the original London company of Harry Potter And The Cursed Child, has got the part of Alison's college girlfriend, Joan.

Fun Home composer Jeanine Tesori told me that a lot of people were auditioned 'but we've got the cast we wanted'.

Tesori, who created the score for hit show Caroline, Or Change  which opened last week at the Hampstead Theatre in North London  said she and Lisa Kron, the production's book writer and lyricist, will try to be on hand when director Sam Gold begins rehearsals in May.

Fun Home, which originated at the Public Theatre in New York five years ago, will mark the last production of former artistic chief David Lan at the Young Vic.

Allison's dad will be played by Zubin Varla (left) and her mother by Jenna Russell (right)

Lan was given Kron's script by the Public Theatre's boss, Oskar Eustis, before the musical opened there.

'And then I heard the fabulous score,' Lan said, referring to Tesori's music that is all manner of styles  including a number that's pure Jackson Five (the Motown years).

'Profoundly deeply felt; hilarious; and tragic . . . just like life!' Lan said, warming to his theme.

'The first (to my knowledge) coming-of-age lesbian musical is the warmest, most life-enhancing, 'change-the-world-by-singing-about it' show ever!'

I had no clue what to expect when I first caught it at the Public, but I was soon hooked.

I saw it a year later, once it had moved to Broadway. That time I understood better the complex role of Alison's closeted father  taciturn one moment, outgoing the next  thanks to it being re-cast with Broadway veteran Michael Cerveris, who captured the essence of Bruce Bechdel's psyche through his brilliant interpretation of the carefully crafted songs.

I also realised that Fun Home is really about a girl and her dad.

Oskar Eustis agreed.

'What Fun Home does, in a way, is what Angels In America did 27 years ago. It takes the experience of lesbians  who are proudly and fully complicatedly lesbian  and says: 'We can not only present our experience, we can actually present everyone's experience.

'A lesbian daughter's relationship with her father is also any daughter's relationship with her father. That's the ultimate point.'

I loved how the show became a family affair for parents of all stripes, and their children.

I hope the run works out at the Young Vic.

The Broadway producing team, led by Barbara Whitman, will join with top producer Sonia Friedman in any West End transfer.

Watch out for...

Jim Carter and Russell Tovey, who will join stars Ian McKellen and Helen Mirren in director Bill Condon's film The Good Liar, based on Nicholas Searle's 2016 novel about a professional con artist (McKellen) out to perform one last sting on a seemingly vulnerable lady (Mirren).

Jim Carter (left) and Russell Tovey (right) will join stars Ian McKellen and Helen Mirren in director Bill Condon's film The Good Liar

Carter has joined the cast as, well, why not call him an investment banker? Tovey plays someone involved in similar, um, work.

I vaguely recall Searle's book being full of bluffs and double bluffs, so that you have to keep checking who, exactly, the victims are.

Condon and McKellen enjoy working together. I was on set when Condon directed the actor in Mr Holmes and Beauty And The Beast. They first teamed up on Gods And Monsters, which featured Lynn Redgrave (she was nominated at the 1999 Oscars) and Brendan Fraser. Was that the last time Fraser was any good on screen? Filming on The Good Liar starts next month.

It was Ruthie Henshall (pictured), as prison matron 'Mama' Morton, who stole the show

Sarah Soetaert, Josefina Gabrielle and Cuba Gooding Jr., who take top billing in the return of the musical Chicago at the Phoenix Theatre.

Gooding is fun as razzle-dazzle lawyer Billy Flynn, but singing is not his strong point  though he makes up for it with chutzpah.

But for me, it was Ruthie Henshall, as prison matron 'Mama' Morton, who stole the show. Ruthie has played both murderesses Velma Kelly and Roxie Hart in previous productions, but settled for matron this time around. And I missed her when she was off stage.
She was catapulted into the limelight after winning X Factor in 2013 and coming second in Eurovision in 2016.

But Dami Im has revealed she never forgets the humble beginnings of her ancestors, including her grandfather Suk Young Lee, who fled North Korea just before the war started in 1950.

The singing sensation, 29, explained that he arrived in South Korea with 'only a pack of squid' to his name and was never able to see his family again.

Tragic past: Dami Im has revealed she never forgets the humble beginnings of her ancestors, including her grandfather Suk Young Lee, who fled North Korea just before the war started in 1950

'He came to the South carrying only a pack of squid. My family said it was for food and also for him to sell and start a new life,' Dami told ABC News.

'He never saw his family again. After he fled the borders closed so he was separated from the rest of the family and was by himself in the South.'

She added regretfully: 'I never met him, which is really sad, because he passed away before I was born.'

Stranded in the south, Mr Lee met Bong-Hee-Moon, Dami's grandmother.

Sad: The singing sensation, 29, explained that he arrived in South Korea with 'only a pack of squid' to his name and was never able to see his family again (pictured, Dami with her parents)

Dami was just aged nine when she came to Australia from South Korea with her mother and brother to start a new life.

Her father stayed behind in South Korea to earn money to support them.

She is now an international popstar after winning the X Factor. The beauty performed at the Eurovision Song Contest in 2016, coming second place overall.

It's not the first time Dami got back in touch with her roots, as four years ago she completed the almost impossible task of crossing the restricted North Korean border.

Missed opportunities: Dami (pictured as a child) said regretfully: 'I never met him, which is really sad, because he passed away before I was born'

New horizons: Dami was just aged nine when she came to Australia from South Korea with her mother and brother to start a new life (pictured with her brother and uncle)

There was high drama at the most heavily armed border in the world as North Korean soldiers spotted the Im family and popstar Dannii Minogue crossing into North Korean land at the Joint Security Area.

The JSA is the only portion of the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) where South and North Korean forces stand face-to-face.

When I went there and saw what was going on and the tension between the soldiers, it was so intense,' Dami said at the time.

Generous: Her father stayed behind in South Korea to earn money to support them

'I realised it's right next to us and we're still at war and so many people on the north side are still suffering in prison camps and dying from hunger.

'It's so strange that we never really think about that, even though it's right next to where we live.

'Like Grandma said, we really need to be reunified - north and south,' she added.
He began his career as a respected consumer finance journalist.

But Sunrise host David 'Kochie' Koch isn't afraid to take a light-hearted approach to breakfast news.

The 62-year-old kissed a baby saltwater crocodile in a cringeworthy live TV moment on Friday morning.

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Crocodile Koch-ee! Sunrise host, 62, awkwardly kissed a baby reptile during a cringeworthy live TV segment on Friday morning

David was encouraged to kiss the crocodile by co-host Edwina Bartholomew during a wildlife segment with Australian Reptile Park keeper Dan Rumsey.

'Give it a kiss Kochie, go on!' Edwina said, which prompted Dan to give the reptile a quick peck to prove it was perfectly safe.

David eventually plucked up the courage and leaned in for a kiss.

While David appeared a little unnerved, the crocodile - nicknamed 'Little Smith' - took a liking to the presenter.

Dan joked: 'Look at the smile you put on its face.' Edwin added: 'Love is in the air!'

David then jumped back into his seat with a rather awkward look on his face, unsure of what to make of his close encounter.

'One, two, three!' David was encouraged to kiss the crocodile by co-host Edwina Bartholomew during a wildlife segment with Australian Reptile Park keeper Dan Rumsey

Zookeeper Dan also brought along a tiger snake and discussed how to 'milk' the venomous reptile.

It was a light-hearted segment for the embattled breakfast show, which is being investigated by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA).

On March 14, an episode of Sunrise featured an 'offensive' discussion about Indigenous at-risk children being adopted by non-Indigenous families.

The segment sparked a backlash, including protests outside Channel Seven's Sydney TV studios.
She's been living it up with friends following the drama-filled reunion episode of Married At First Sight.

And Davina Rankin was clearly enjoying the single life on Thursday, as she belted out some cheeky song lyrics at a Brisbane bar.

In a video posted to Instagram, the 27-year-old sang along to Pat Benatar's 1980 song Hit Me With Your Best Shot.

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'Hit me with your best c**k!' Married At First Sight's Davina Rankin sings obscene song lyrics during a wild night out with her friends in Brisbane

However, she adjusted the lyrics to: 'Hit me with your best c**k!'

That same night, the reality TV star was also caught on camera performing a frisky dance move with a mystery man.

In another video posted to Instagram, she appeared to drop to the floor next to a male friend and simulate a sex act.

On the prowl? Davina was clearly enjoying the single life on Thursday, as she belted out some cheeky song lyrics at a Brisbane bar

Davina's best friend Gillian Godwin recorded the MAFS star's sultry performance, later posting it to social media.

Gillian's video shows Davina dropping to her knees on the dancefloor, with her head positioned by the gentleman's crotch.

Davina then appears to place a hand on the man's trousers before shaking her head.

Simulated sex act: That same night, the reality TV star was also caught on camera performing a frisky dance move with a mystery man

Davina rose to fame on this year's season of Married At First Sight.

She was labelled the 'villain' of the series after being involved in a 'cheating' scandal with Dean Wells.

Applications for the next season of MAFS are now open.
She's expecting her first child with fiance Jesse Plemons.

And Kirsten Dunst looked the picture of happiness as she joined her beau for an outing in Los Angeles on Thursday.

The 35-year-old actress covered her growing baby bump in a springtime chic pink dress that matched the color of Jesse's plaid shirt.

Pretty in pink! Pregnant Kirsten Dunst, 35, looked healthy and happy for an outing in Los Angeles on Thursday

Daring to impress, the Interview With A Vampire star looked exquisite in a baby doll maternity dress that featured ruched details and short sleeves.

Her gorgeous gams were put on center stage as the adorable romper cut just above the knee.

Her trademark blonde tresses were left long and loose as they cascaded over her petite shoulders.

Kirsten met Jesse, 29, on the set of the show Fargo in 2015; the lovebirds got engaged in 2017.

What a pair! The actress covered her growing baby bump in a springtime chic pink dress that matched the color of her fiance Jesse Plemons' plaid shirt

Last June, Kirsten revealed to People that she doesn't plan on heading down the aisle anytime soon.

The star said she's 'very happy' with Jesse and 'not in any rush' to plan their nuptials.

Adding to People: 'I'm very relaxed when it comes to those things. I'm going to get married at some point.'

Baby doll: Daring to impress, the Interview With A Vampire star looked exquisite in a baby doll maternity dress that featured ruched details and short sleeves

Kirsten confirmed her pregnancy in a campaign for Rodarte, which was released in January.

The star has been longtime friends with the fashion label's designers Laura and Kate Mulleavy.

The shoot was for Rodarte's Fall Winter 2018 portrait series.
It was revealed that trouble was in store for the Slater family as debt collector Annie Pritchard returns to Walford.

And fans are set to witness Annie coming face-to-face with the Slater clan after she arrives to Albert Square with her henchmen in tow and slaps Stacey Slater across the face in a bid to get her dad's stolen 5,000 back.

In the images, Annie manages to enter the Slater family home and create an almighty scene, proving she's not one to be messed with.

Tempers flaring: Annie comes face-to-face with the Slater clan after she arrives to Albert Square with her henchmen in tow and slaps Stacey Slater in a bid to get her dad's stolen 5,000 back

Viewers will no doubt recognise the venomous blonde when is appeared in the Square after Kat and Jean made their triumphant return to the soap.

However the celebrations were cut short when it was revealed that Big Mo Slater had stolen cash from Annie's dad Terry in one of her schemes.

At the time, Mo was left desperate to raise funds to pay the Pritchards back that she lied to friends and family that Kat had drowned at sea and she needed money for her burial.

However, Mo's plan backfired after she accidentally gave the menacing family her address and they came looking for their money. Fearing for her life, she climbed into the coffin and pretended she was dead to ward off her victim's family.

No joke: In the images, Annie manages to enter the Slater family home and create an almighty scene, proving she's not one to be messed with

But Mo's attempt to ward them off the scent left her in deeper with the Pritchards after Annie visited Martin Fowler and asked if Big Mo was still alive to which he spilled the beans.

The news comes after it was announced that GOTs star Ricky Champ will be swapping Westeros for Walford later this year, as he is set to join the soap playing Mick Carter's childhood pal Stuart Highway.

The actor is expected to appear on screen later this year, portraying the younger brother of soldier Halfway - confirmed yesterday to be returning to the BBC One soap.

New face: The news comes after it was announced that GOTs star Ricky Champ will be swapping Westeros for Walford later this year, as he is set to join the soap playing Mick Carter's childhood pal Stuart Highway

Stuart is expected to cause carnage upon his arrival at the Queen Vic, being a bad influence on Mick (played by Danny Dyer) after the pair reunite.

Speaking about his new role Ricky said: 'Im so happy to be part of this brilliant team of people on this great show that I grew up watching. Look out Albert Square Stuarts coming.'

Fans may also know Ricky for his role as Paul Parker in the BBC Three comedy Him And Her opposite Russell Tovey and Sarah Solemani, as well as Gatins in the sixth season of Game of Thrones.

Screen star: Ricky was confirmed on Thursday to be joining the cast of the BBC soap, after previously starring in Him And Her (pictured with co-star Camilla Coudouri)

Comedic chops: The actor starred alongside Russell Tovey (above left) in the BBC Three comedy from 2010 to 2013

Details around Stuart's arrival are being kept under wraps, but fans can expect him to make a dramatic impact when he heads to Walford later this year.

His return comes as Stuart's younger brother Halfway was also confirmed to be reprising his role on Wednesday.

Fans last saw the character on Valentine's Day when he returned to his army duties after striking up a romance with Whitney Dean (Shona McGarty) - though the pair have stayed in touch via. video chat.

Thrilled: Mick Carter (played by Danny Dyer) will be thrilled to see his old friend in Albert Square, but things will soon turn sour as he is set to be a bad influence

But actor Tony Clay has revealed Halfway will be returning to Albert Square very soon, so perhaps Whitney could find love at last.

He said: 'Halfway is such a lovely role to play and I'm really looking forward to exploring his story further and seeing where it takes us.'

Halfway made a dramatic arrival on EastEnders on New Year's Day as part of the chaotic heist, appearing as friend of Mick's son who accidentally shot him in the shoulder.
Tyga has been sued for falling behind on his $40,000 a month rent payment to Simon Cowell's ex-fiancee Mezhgan Hussainy.

The 25-year-old rapper moved into a Beverly Hills home rented to him by Hussainy in March 2017, according to an article on Thursday by TMZ.

The lawsuit claimed that Tyga, real name Micheal Ray Stevenson, stopped paying rent in January.

Eviction lawsuit: Tyga, shown earlier this month in Los Angeles, was sued by Simon Cowell's ex-fiancee Mezghan Hussainy after failing to pay $40,000 a month rent

Hussainy was seeking to evict the rapper and payment for back rent.

Tyga's five-year-old son King Cairo was named as a defendant because the child's name was on the lease.

Hussainy, 45, was engaged to Cowell, 58, from 2010 to 2011.

They met in 2002 when she was a make-up artist on American Idol and he was a judge on the Fox show.

Seeking payment: Hussainy, shown in March 2014 in London, sued to evict Tyga and for payment of back rent

Cowell proposed to Hussainy on Valentine's Day in 2010 in London and she moved into his Beverly Hills home.

The English producer after ending their engagement in 2011 transferred ownership of his hilltop house in Beverly Hills to Hussainy.

Tyga is the father of King Cairo with is ex-fiancee Blac Chyna, 29.

Former coupe: Cowell, shown with Hussainy in November 2013 in Los Angeles, ended their engagement in 2011 and transferred ownership of his Beverly Hills house to her

The Rack City rapper dated reality star Kylie Jenner, 20, until their split in April 2017.

His ex Blac Chyna has a one-year-old daughter Dream with her ex-fiance Rob Kardashian, 31, who also is Kylie's half-brother.

Kylie announced last month that she had given birth on February 1 to daughter Stormi with her 25-year-old rapper boyfriend Travis Scott, real name Jacques Webster.
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, says teachers shouldnt get their hopes up for a 20 percent raise this year.

At an electrifying rally Wednesday, the states large teaching force threatened to strike unless they get a 20 percent raise. Most of the teachers ire was targeted toward Ducey who has scrambled in recent weeks to quell the growing movement.

On Thursday, Ducey pointed out to the Associated Press that the states legislature is currently debating a budget that provides teachers with a 1 percent raise, a move that will cost the state about $35 million.

Thats not enough, and theres more on the way, Ducey said

When he was running for governor in 2014, Ducey said he would cut taxes every year hes in office. But those tax cuts have hampered the states abilities to give teachers a substantial raise.

One of the teachers demands is that the state place a moratorium on tax cuts until the state funds its schools at the same level it did before the Great Recession in 2008.

Despite what Gov. Ducey said, it doesnt look like the teachers are backing down.

Its a slap to the face to all these educators out here who are doing everything they can to stick to this profession, Noah Karvelis, a teacher and organizer for the Arizona Education Association told the Associated Press. Doug Ducey will continue to side with corporations and huge donors and give them everything they want.

The states legislature adjourns April 15.
They've been enjoying some swimsuit time together in Mexico.

But on Thursday Scott Disick and his younger girlfriend Sofia Richie headed out for a different kind of recreation.

The duo-who are separated by a 15 year age gap-traded in the pool for the ocean, and proceeded to gobble up the miles on a speedy ATV.

No more bikini! On Thursday Scott Disick and his younger girlfriend Sofia Richie headed out for a different kind of recreation

Aside from some perspective shots, Sofia, 19, also shared a selfie via her Instagram story.

In the snap, the daughter of the legendary Lionel Richie appears in a silver helmet, bright red goggles and a hot pink protective scarf.

She also seemed to be wearing an orange knit tank top.

Scott, 34, also kept things quite casual for the outing, opting for a grey t-shirt.

Fun! The duo-who are separated by a 15 year age gap-traded in the pool for the ocean, and proceeded to gobble up the miles on a speedy ATV

Dressed to impress! In the snap, the daughter of the legendary Lionel Richie appears in a silver helmet, bright red goggles and a hot pink protective scarf

At one point he decided to have a bit of fun with his co-pilot Sofia, and raised his middle finger for one of her photos.

Later, the reality star had some more fun, as he posed with a camel in a sandy field.

He even donned a traditional keffiyeh and held up a sizable walking stick for the fun portrait.

Cheeky: At one point he decided to have a bit of fun with his co-pilot Sofia, and raised his middle finger for one of her photos

Scott of Mexico! Later, the reality star had some more fun, as he posed with a camel in a sandy field

Earlier in the week Sofia boasted about going on 'Spring break' with her beau as she shared an Instagram of the couple looking loved-up while standing in front of a private jet.

She captioned the shot: 'Spring break with my [heart emoji], but later shortened her message to read just 'my [heart]' and disabled comments after getting significant blow-back from followers about her older partner.

One follower replied: 'Doesn't she know students aren't allowed to date professors', while another quoted: 'So glad you have a chaperone. Stay safe!'

Showing some skin! They've been enjoying some swimsuit time together in Mexico

Fans continued to badger the model about the age gap, with another writing: 'You meant your babysitter', while one follower asked: 'What do you possibly talk about he's old enough to be ur dad'.

Though many have mocked them, the couple are apparently going strong.

Scott and Sofia have been nearly inseparable since first going public with their relationship in May 2017.
Earlier this week, Married At First Sight's Justin Fischer apparently confirmed he was sleeping with Ashley Irvin during an interview with The Kyle and Jackie O Show.

But Ashley's sister Summer Irvin has steadfastly denied the claims, accusing the 'millionaire' businessman of lying about their relationship.

Taking to Instagram on Thursday, the former First Dates star insisted Justin 'never slept with Ash' and they were only ever 'just mates'.

'You NEVER slept with her!' Taking to Instagram on Thursday, Married At First Sight star Ashley Irvin's sister insisted she and Justin Fischer were only ever 'just mates'

Summer shared a screen grab of an article posted to KIIS 106.5's Facebook page, which recapped Justin's interview with the radio program.

'Since everyone keeps tagging me. Not it's not true,' Summer said, denying Justin's claim that he and Ashley were sleeping together.

She continued: 'Justin stop lying, you never slept with Ash... You WERE just mates... maybe not after this I'm guessing.'

'Not it's not true': Summer steadfastly denied Justin's claims about his relationship with Ashley

On Wednesday, Kyle Sandilands and Jackie 'O' Henderson called up Justin and asked him directly about the rumours he was dating Ashley.

At the start of the phone call, Kyle tried to trick Justin into admitting he was in bed with Ashley.

He said: 'Good morning, I know it's early. Can you just roll over and put Ash on for a sec?'

Playing along with the joke, Justin replied: 'Hang on... Ash, wake up, wake up!'

Dating? Earlier this week, Married At First Sight's Justin Fischer apparently confirmed he was sleeping with Ashley Irvin during an interview with The Kyle and Jackie O Show

When asked about his relationship status, Justin remained coy and said he didn't want to say too much 'out of respect for Ash'.

However, he did admit they were 'still in touch', which prompted Kyle to ask: 'Right, so it's sex only - is that what you're saying?'

'Correct, yes,' Justin responded.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Ashley and Justin for comment.
Australian TV and radio stars bid farewell to departing Studio 10 host Jessica Rowe during her last day on the panel.

During a segment on Friday, stars including Waleed Aly and the cast of The Living Room paid tribute to the veteran journalist.

But when it was Kyle Sandilands and Jackie 'O' Henderson's turn to speak, they delivered a rather non-traditional message.

'Who leaves a television career to go home to look after children?' Kyle Sandilands pokes fun Jessica Rowe as he and Jackie 'O' Henderson pay tribute to the departing Studio 10 host

'Hi Jessica, we're so sorry to see you go,' Kyle began.

But unlike the other celebrities' tributes, Kyle wasn't so supportive of Jessica's decision to leave her TV career behind to spend more time with her family.

'I think it's a big mistake, actually,' he added.

Jackie O quickly jumped in, saying: 'I don't think it's a big mistake because it's what she wants to do.'

Kyle replied: 'Who leaves a television career to go home to look after children?'

'We will miss you so much,' Jackie added, ending their segment.

Leaving after five years: Australian TV and radio stars bid farewell to departing Studio 10 host Jessica Rowe (pictured) during her last day on the panel

Meanwhile, Waleed Aly said: 'Jess, it's the end of an era and I'm so sad that we've reached this moment.

'I'm very sorry to see you go but you're going to go on to bigger and better things as you always do. I've admired your work for so long and to be a colleague in the same network has been my privilege through the whole time that I've been here.

'Thank you for your contribution and you'll be missed and valued wherever it is you go next.'

Paying tribute: Waleed Aly said: 'Jess, it's the end of an era and I'm so sad that we've reached this moment'

The Living Room's Amanda Keller, Chris Brown and Miguel Maestre also joined in on the farewell video.

Amanda remarked: 'Jess, Channel Ten won't be the same without you. We'll all personally miss your smiling face around here.'

Chris Brown added: 'You're a gem Jess and we just love everything about you  you're such a good soul.'
He's the Married At First Sight star known for his timeless catchphrase #CoconutOil.

And on Friday, Nasser Sultan took to Instagram to demonstrate how to apply the beauty product.

The youthful reality TV star, 50, shared a clip of himself spraying the oil over himself while at the beach.

Referencing his famous put-down, 'It's not all hashtag Davina, hashtag Coconut oil', Nasser captioned the video: 'It's all about coconut oil.'

In the clip, a shirtless Nasser applies the spray in a beachside car park.

He says: 'Hashtag coconut oil by Nas... and you rub it in, and a little bit on the face.'

Showing Davina how it's done? On Friday, Married At First Sight star Nasser Sultan (pictured) demonstrates how to properly apply '#CoconutOil' at the beach

It comes after the aspiring beauty blogger posted a second 50-second video to Instagram on Wednesday, explaining how to put on moisturiser'.

He begins: 'Ladies, how are you? This is Nasser's Beauty Blogging, my new career!

'I'm going to quickly go through how to put on moisturiser. It's not about the hips, the lips or the t*ts - it's about beautiful, soft skin and a nice smell.'

Hashtag coconut oil! The aspiring beauty blogger sprayed the beauty product on himself before spending the day at the beach

He then takes out a bottle of Cetaphil Moisturiser, which retails between $15 and $24, and begins to carefully apply it to his face.

Nasser explains: 'Very quickly, you get your moisturiser, put it in your palm. Little dabble. Dab, dab, then three dabs up the top (forehead). Rub it in.

'Make sure it's all in. Go around - not in the eyes! - and just around all the creases. Frown a little bit so it's all in. Beautiful, eh? Nice, soft, glowing skin.'

It's not all about you! Nasser became an instant fan favourite after he delivered a devastating put-down to Davina Rankin, telling her: 'It's not all hashtag Davina, hashtag coconut oil!'

At the end of the video, Nasser reveals the finishing touch to his daily beauty routine - a spray of the finest cologne.

He says: 'Get your little smell... perfume, your favourite one. Spray under the chin and then walk in to it. And you're done.'

In the caption of his video, Nasser wrote: 'A 50 second tutorial to looking as good as Nass! #BeautyBlogger #NewCareer #MAFS'.

Interestingly, he also tagged Kim Kardashian.
After five years, Jessica Rowe said goodbye to Studio 10 on Friday.

And while much of the program was dedicated to paying tribute to the longtime presenter, her final goodbye speech was unfortunately cut short.

The 47-year-old journalist was interrupted by her husband Peter Overton, who told her the floor manager wanted her to wrap up her monologue.

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Was that really necessary? Studio 10's Jessica Rowe was told to wrap up her emotional farewell speech by the floor manager after the show devoted more time to advertising the Pain Erazor

'The floor manager is talking to you,' Peter said, gently telling his wife she needed to finish her emotional speech.

Jessica took the suggestion in good humour, however, telling him: 'You know me, Petey, I just keep talking and talking.'

'It's the wind!' the Channel Nine newsreader replied.

Angela Bishop, who was at the helm of Jessica's farewell episode, thanked her for her service to the network before the show swiftly cut to an episode of talk show Dr. Phil.

Priorities? Jessica's heartfelt final moments on the show, including her rushed speech, were reduced to just three minutes screen time. Meanwhile, a generous four minutes was dedicated to an advertorial for the Pain Erazor (pictured), which aired just before the journalist's farewell

Jessica's heartfelt final moments on the show, including her rushed speech, were reduced to just three minutes screen time.

Meanwhile, a generous four minutes was dedicated to an advertorial for the Pain Erazor, which aired just before the journalist's farewell.

The Pain Erazor claims to provide drug-free pain relief using the 'the science of electro-analgesia' by using pressure from a quartz crystal.

'The floor manager is talking to you': On Friday, the 47-year-old TV host was interrupted by her husband Peter Overton, who told her the floor manager wanted her to wrap up her monologue

Farewell: After five years, Jessica Rowe said goodbye to Studio 10 on Friday

While a pain-free existence may sound tempting, consumer group Choice has judged otherwise by awarding the contraption a Shonky Award last year.

At the beginning of her speech, Jessica proudly declared her role on Studio 10 was 'the best job (she) has ever had in the media.'

She continued: 'It has allowed me to find my voice again, to be confident, to be brave and the reason why is because of all these wonderful people who are sitting here around me.'

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Network Ten for comment.
Emily Ratajkowski has been cast in a pilot for an upcoming NBC sitcom titled Bright Futures.

The 26-year-old model-actress, who burst on the scene in 2013 in Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines video, has been cast alongside YouTube personality Lilly Singh, 29, for the single-camera show from Black-ish creator Kenya Barris, Deadline reported Thursday.

Calum Worthy, Shameik Moore and Jimmy Tatro round out the cast of the show, according to the publication, while Friends alum Lisa Kudrow will narrate the series.

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New project: Emily Ratajkowski, 26, will headline an NBC comedy pilot titled Bright Future. She was seen in Beverly Hills on January 7 in a black gown

The storyline of the show follows a friends who are evolving from aimless stretches in their 20s, into polished professionals.

Ratajkowski, who has a following of more than 16.2 million on Instagram, is set to play the role of Sarah, a girl-next-door who has the versatility to fit in with the fellas while glamming it up with the girls.

On the series, Singh plays Sid, who went to medical school in hopes of people addressing her as doctor.

Worthy plays Danny, a USC graduate about to enter the world of Hollywood writing, Moore plays a personal injury attorney, and Tatro plays Berger, a cynic who's loyal to his inner circle.

Standing tall: YouTube star Lilly Singh, snapped in LA in January, will also appear on the show

Voice of reason: Friends alum Lisa Kudrow will narrate the new show. She was snapped on January 18 in Culver City, California

Ratajkowski's career in front of the camera has been on the upswing in the five years since she made a splash dancing in clip for the summer hit alongside Thicke, T.I. and Pharrell.

She appeared in the 2014 movie Gone Girl, played herself in the film adaptation of Entourage in 2015, and has four films slated for release this year.

They include a starring turns in a crime film titled Lying and Stealing and a romance called Cruise; and supporting roles in the Amy Schumer comedy I Feel Pretty and the Aaron Paul thriller Welcome Home, according to iMDb.
She's the Hollywood actress known for her stylish looks at red carpet events.

And after dazzling in a black-and-white gown at Cartier's exclusive exhibition in Canberra on Wednesday, Naomi Watts, 49, looked street-style chic while strolling the streets of New York City on Thursday.

Wearing an understated navy-hued coat, the star showed off her lithe figure by tying the statement coat's wrap around her midsection.

Baby blues! Naomi Watts, 49, looked street-style chic while walking the streets of New York on Thursday

Keeping her look ever-nautical and New York street-inspired, the blonde beauty opted for a pair of light-washed jeans and a blue polka-dotted scarf to match.

To accessorise, Naomi wore black-framed oversized sunglasses and matched the look with a small leather side bag, worn across her body.

Keeping her look casual but equally chic, the King Kong actress paired her look with slate-grey suede boots, cutting off sweetly around the mid-calf.

Street style certified! Keeping her look ever-nautical and New York street-inspired, the blonde beauty opted for a pair of light-washed jeans and a blue polka-dotted scarf to match

Spotted strolling the streets of New York and flashing a smile, Naomi left her strands to roam free in the fresh air.

Wearing minimal makeup, Naomi flaunted her glowing natural complexion as she beamed from ear to ear.

The mother-of-two appeared to be on her own and enjoying a mid-day walk about the Big Apple after her return long-haul flight from Australia.

Feeling blue! Wearing minimal makeup, Naomi proved she's just as glamorous off the red carpet as she is on

On Wednesday, Naomi was entrusted with the role of hosting Cartier's exclusive exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra.

Wearing luxury pieces from the exhibition, Naomi said: 'We've seen them in movies, these pieces - incredible pieces - in paintings - they're part of our travelling through history.'

'There is nothing quite like seeing them up close and this particular selection of pieces is quite astounding.'
She recently enjoyed a family vacation in Hawaii before her second baby arrives.

But Ali Fedotowsky was back on the mainland as she was spotted at Hallmark's Home & Family event in Universal City, California on Thursday.

The 33-year-old television personality was springtime chic as she proudly showed off her growing baby bump in a pretty floral dress.

Bumping along: Ali Fedotowsky was spotted at Hallmark's Home & Family event in Universal City, California on Thursday

The former Bachelor contestant was all smiles as she leaned against an Easter-themed decorated mantel featuring an array of tulips.

Her figure was highlighted in the breezy navy flower checked dress that boasted short sleeves and a knee-length hem.

Ali was recently spotted with husband Kevin Manno - whom she married last year - as they took advantage of spring break to enjoy a babymoon to Hawaii.

The family trip included the couple's first child, one-year-old daughter Molly, and both of the toddler's grandmothers - on hand to give the parents-to-be some couple time.

Springtime! The former Bachelor contestant was all smiles as she leaned against an Easter decorated mantel featuring an array of tulips

Taking to her blog, Ali thanked her mother and mother-in-law for coming along on the trip.

'I cant believe this is our last vacation as a family of 3,' she wrote, before explaining the family dynamic.

'Well were really a family of 5 this trip because were lucky enough to have both grammies come with us.

All smiles: Her flawless figure was highlighted in the breezy navy flower checked dress that boasted short sleeves and a knee-length hem

In an interview with ET, the Ali Luvs blogger said that she's not prepared for her second child.

'No, I'm not ready at all. I'm in a lot of pain this time,' she began . 'I don't know if it's like I'm more stretched out the first time or what.'

'...It's different this time. The doctor legit told me to stop eating so much. I'm not even kidding you. The doctor was like, "How much weight have you gained?" I was like, "25 pounds." I was 27 weeks, this was just a week ago. And she's like, "So maybe you shouldn't eat quite as much as you've been eating.'''
Matt Damon has returned to Australia for the second time this year, fuelling rumours he is considering purchasing property in Byron Bay.

The Jason Bourne star was photographed with a fan while out in Lennox Head, located near Byron Bay, on Friday morning, the Courier Mail reported.

Meanwhile on Thursday Matt's wife Luciana Barroso was spotted shopping at a Byron Bay boutique with Chris Hemsworth's wife and close friend Elsa Pataky.

Spotted! Matt Damon has returned to Australia, amid rumours of looking to purchase property in New South Wales coastal town of Bryon Bay

Luciana and Elsa were photographed at accessory store Buffalo Girl, with the shop owner suggesting the women were buying items for Bluesfest Byron Bay.

'These gorgeous girls popped in today to pick up their beautiful custom made bags, ready to rock at @bluesfestbyronbay always lovely to catch up,' she captioned the post.

Matt and Luciana's return to Byron Bay comes barely two months after they rang in the new year down under with Chris and Elsa in the coastal town.

Shopping up a storm: Luciana and Elsa were photographed at accessory store Buffalo Girl, with the shop owner suggesting the women were buying items for Bluesfest Byron Bay

The high profile Hollywood couples were also joined by Chris' brother Liam Hemsworth and fiancee Miley Cyrus.

Matt and his family also visited Byron Bay for a short trip mid-last year.

Despite the Jason Bourne star's publicist denying rumours he is considering purchasing a Byron Bay holiday home, Matt's frequent visits to the area have done little to quell speculation.

Best pals! The Jason Bourne star rang in the New Year in Byron Bay just months ago with Australian-born Hollywood star Chris Hemsworth

Matt and Chris have been close friends for years, with the Thor star praising his BFF during a GQ interview in 2014.

'We became friends around the time I started to work, and Ive really benefited from watching how he handles himself,' he said.

'Matts just a normal guy who has the movie-star thing figured out.'
Toni Garrn got a little wild on Thursday at the premiere party for The Last O.G. in New York City.

The 25-year-old German model donned a leopard-print top with plunging neckline and black skinny trousers for the after party in Brooklyn.

Toni covered up in a long grey wool jacket with leather half-sleeves and completed her outfit with black heeled ankle boots.

Premiere party: Toni Garrn showed her wild side in a leopard-print top on Thursday at the after party for The Last O.G. premiere in New York City

The Victoria's Secret Angels model had her long blonde hair down in soft curls around her shoulders.

She was joined at the after party for the upcoming TBS series by the show's star Tracy Morgan, 49, and his wife Megan Wollover, 30.

Tracy wore several thick gold chains over a silver shirt and sported a chocolate Louis Vuitton vest.

He finished his ensemble with Louis Vuitton faded blue jeans and white Adidas sneakers with black stripes.

Classic pose: Megan Wollover embraced her husband Tracy Morgan from behind at the premiere for his new sitcom at The William Vale in Brooklyn

Dressed up: Tracy wore a Louis Vuitton vest and jeans to the premiere while Megan looked pretty in pink

Top model: Toni showed her long longs in black skinny jeans

Megan was pretty in pink as she wore a long-sleeved gown with a slit from her ankles to knees.

She polished off her look with open-toed silver heels.

Megan had her long dark hair pulled back into a ponytail and accessorized with hoop earrings.

Cute couple: Megan and Tracy cuddled up at the premiere

Tracy and Megan cuddled up and kissed while arriving at the premiere for the upcoming TBS comedy at The William Vale.

His series co-star Cedric The Entertainer, 53, looked dapper at the premiere in an all-black ensemble.

The comedian wore a black suit along with black shirt and black hat.

Tender moment: Tracy kissed his wife at the premiere for his latest show

Good times: Tracy stepped out onto the dance floor at the after party in Brooklyn

He added a pop of color with bright red under the brim of his fedora.

The premiere also drew actresses Maura Tierney, Alysia Reiner and Ilfenesh Hadera.

Male model Johannes Huebl was spotted at the after party looking sharp in all black.

The entertainer: Cedric The Entertainer looked dapper in a black suit

Lady in black: Maura Tierney also wore all-black to the premiere

TV stars: Alysia Reiner and Ilfenesh Hadera shined at the event
More than 20 school districts across Kentucky closed on Friday, after thousands of teachers, furious over the passage of a controversial pension reform bill, called in sick or requested substitutes.



Good morning #KY

Hope everyone is recovering from the epidemic #PensionFlu

Its very contagious and thought to be caused by a nasty Sewer bill passed on by legislators yesterday. Vaccination or #cashinfusions may help prevent spreading of extreme cases ie #underfundingsyndrome -- Terry Eidson (@teidson) March 30, 2018

The pension overhaul bill (which was tacked on to a bill about sewer system regulations) raced through both the state house and the senate in just a few hours on Thursday, on its way to the governors desk at 10:30 pm. The Republican governor has said he supports the bill, which has been vehemently opposed by the states teachers union.

The legislatures original proposal was to cut yearly cost-of-living increases for retired teachers from 1.5 percent to 1 percent until the pension system is 90 percent fundedits currently 56 percent fundedand change how long current teachers must work until they receive pension benefits. But a wave of teacher outcry and protests effectively stopped that proposal ; the bill that passed the legislature does not include those provisions.

New teachers, however, would now be placed in a retirement plan thats a mix of a traditional pension and a 401(k)-style plan. According to the Associated Press , the bill guarantees that those teachers will get back all of the money they and taxpayers contributed to their retirement accounts, plus 85 percent of any investment gains. The state would keep the other 15 percent.

However, the bill removes new teachers from an inviolable contract that would protect them from future benefit changes, leaving many educators worried about the future of the profession. The bill also limits the number of sick days teachers can accumulate to put toward their retirement pay.

Kentuckys pension is one of the worst funded in the country with more than $40 billion in liabilities. According to the AP, lawmakers expect this bill to save $300 million over the next 30 years.

According to the Courier-Journal, teacher absences forced more than 20 school districts , including some of the largest in the state, to close schools Friday. At least one, the Madison County district, explicitly tied the closure to the protests.

We share a passion for our students and for their futures that is unmatched and unwavering, the statement read. Tonight we have to balance that passion with the need to stand in solidarity with others in our profession across this state.

Many schools across the state will be on spring break next week.

More on Teacher Uprisings Across the Country:

Image: Teachers and other school workers rally against a proposed pension overhaul bill outside the state capitol on March 21 in Frankfort, Ky. Bruce Schreiner/AP
Her ex 'husband' Dean Wells, also known as DJ Visionz, opened her eyes to the world of hip hop and rapping on Married At First Sight.

And it seems Tracey Jewel has held on to the art of the rhythm and rhyme she was taught by Dean during their short-lived TV romance on the social experiment reality show.

The 34-year-old spent Good Friday with her co-star Ashley Irvin, 29, who flew into the brunette beauty's hometown of Perth, enjoying a road trip together in her car.

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Is this proof shes still in love with Dean? It seems Tracey Jewel has held on to the art of the rhythm and rhyme, as taught by her ex 'husband Dean', after share a clip of herself rapping along to Salt-N-Pepa's 1993 smash hit Shoop

Tracey took to her Instagram story to share a clip of herself rapping along to Salt-N-Pepa's 1993 smash hit Shoop.

The brunette beauty's delivery was a little shakey and she mumbled a few of the words, but Tracey nevertheless exuded confidence in her behind-the-wheel performance.

Her rendition clearly made an impression on Ashley, who was in stitches laughing in the passenger seat recording the moment.

She captioned the video: 'Ohh god... Tracey is rapping again,' adding the laughing and hands up emojis, as well as the 'lit' sticker.

Reunited: The 34-year-old spent Good Friday with her co-star Ashley Irvin, 29, who was in her hometown of Perth, enjoying a road trip together in her car

Fans of MAFS will remember Tracey was treated to an apology rap by her TV 'husband' Dean after he admitted to his 'affair' with Davina Rankin.

Showing off his way with words, he rapped: 'Tracey my little lady/ you drive me crazy/ after last week on the couch you probably hate me/ but you gave me a shot/ you're so hot/ plus your brain is next level/ show me what you got'.

In another episode, the relationship author unleashed her rapping goddess within dropping a bomb rap during a breakdancing lesson with Dean.

The single mother rhymed: 'Hey, hubby, I'm your new wife / Even though you've caused me strife / In front of couples and the experts / In my back like a knife.'

Not bad! The brunette beauty's delivery was a little shakey and she mumbled a few of the words, but continued to exude confidence in her behind-the-wheel performance

Both raps were not appreciated by MAFS audiences who slammed their efforts across social media.

Meanwhile earlier that day Tracey and Ashley enjoyed lunch at a local cafe in Perth, sharing a sweet snap of their reunion on social media.

After their meal the flight attendant jumped in the car with the relationship author and requested RnB music for their drive.

But to her dismay, Tracey put on techno dance music, 'I don't think we can do carpool karaoke babe... put on some beats!'
Home Again actress Lake Bell glittered in a gold dress for the first anniversary of the launch of her husband Scott Campbell's cannabis company Beboe in the Pacific Palisades on Thursday.

The ruffle-sleeved cocktail creation certainly showcased the 39-year-old mother-of-two's curvaceous 5ft8in figure, and she accessorized with a black clutch and caged booties selected by stylist Erica Cloud.

The Sundance Award-winning screenwriter kept her make-up minimal and wore her long chestnut locks down for the celebratory private dinner.

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Hostess with the mostest: Home Again actress Lake Bell glittered in a gold dress for the first anniversary of the launch of her husband Scott Campbell's cannabis company Beboe in the Pacific Palisades on Thursday

The 40-year-old tattoo artist teamed up with former fashion executive Clement Kwan on the venture labeled 'the Hermes of marijuana' by the New York Times for their disposable vaporizer pens and edible pastilles.

Campbell named the company after his maternal grandmother Be Boe, who used to bake marijuana-infused edibles to ease his mother's cancer-related pain.

'I remember one time, after a fresh batch of brownies, my mother put one of her chemo wigs on a remote control car of mine, and chased our dog around the house with it,' Scott told the paper.

'She and Grandma couldn't breathe, they were laughing so hard.'

Relies on stylist Erica Cloud: The ruffle-sleeved cocktail creation showcased the 39-year-old mother-of-two's curvaceous 5ft8in figure, and she accessorized with a black clutch and caged booties

Triple threat: The Sundance Award-winning screenwriter kept her make-up minimal and wore her long chestnut locks down for the celebratory private dinner

Named after his maternal grandmother Be Boe: The 40-year-old tattoo artist teamed up with former fashion executive Clement Kwan (R) on the venture labeled 'the Hermes of marijuana' by the New York Times

'Our idea of a birthday candle': Beboe is a line of disposable vaporizer pens and edible pastilles

Lake and Scott met on the 2011 set of her former HBO series How to Make It in America, and they're the proud parents of 10-month-old son Ozzi and three-year-old daughter Nova.

Acting-wise, Bell is 'feeling pretty lucky to get to play house' with Dax Shepard starting in June on the Fox sitcom pilot Bless This Mess from New Girl creator Liz Meriwether - according to Deadline.

The married couple of four years both excitedly posed with jewelry designer Lisa Eisner wearing a black ensemble beneath a zebra-print coat.

Also partaking in the luxurious weed festivities was Clueless alum Alicia Silverstone - wearing a blazer and black jeans - who's known for her outspoken anti-vaxxer, vegan, animal activist, and environmental views.

'I'm excited for these little nuggets to get older!' Lake and Scott met on the 2011 set of her former HBO series How to Make It in America, and they're the proud parents of 10-month-old son Ozzi and three-year-old daughter Nova (pictured January 11)

'More on this later!' Bell is 'feeling pretty lucky to get to play house' with Dax Shepard starting in June on the Fox sitcom pilot Bless This Mess from New Girl creator Liz Meriwether

Another hostess: The married couple of four years both excitedly posed with jewelry designer Lisa Eisner wearing a black ensemble beneath a zebra-print coat

Burlesque performer Dita Von Teese looked downright demure in her peachy scalloped blouse, pink silk clutch, and black maxi-skirt.

As usual, the 45-year-old pin-up (born Heather Sweet) sported her signature raven retro hairdo, alabaster complexion, and red lipstick.

And socialite China Chow, the 43-year-old daughter of famed restaurateur Michael Chow, rocked striking red eye make-up with a black oversized leather fanny pack and boots.

Clueless alum: Also there was Alicia Silverstone - wearing a blazer and black jeans - who's known for her outspoken anti-vaxxer, vegan, animal activist, and environmental views

Conservative: Burlesque performer Dita Von Teese looked downright demure in her peachy scalloped blouse, pink silk clutch, and black maxi-skirt

Marilyn Manson's ex-wife: As usual, the 45-year-old pin-up (born Heather Sweet) sported her signature raven retro hairdo, alabaster complexion, and red lipstick
She is a singer, actress, and style icon.

And Jennifer Lopez made the day of super fan Leslie Jones as she met with the SNL star backstage of her Las Vegas show on Thursday.

The singing sensation, 48, dazzled in a black crop top which showcased her envy-inducing physique as she danced with Leslie, 50, presumably following her concert at the Planet Hollywood.

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Fan favorite! Jennifer Lopez made the day of super fan Leslie Jones as she met with the SNL star backstage of her Las Vegas show on Thursday

The comedienne couldn't believe her lucky stars that she had a chance to meet and mingle with Jennifer, calling the songstress a 'queen' in the caption of a video of them meeting each other for the very first time.

Leslie was able to watch Jennifer that night at her concert, and was over the moon that she got to chat with the music icon.

The pair pulled each other in for a warm embrace before the SNL star confessed to the pop star what a huge fan she was.

'Then I met her and she let me lose my sh*t and be here backup dancer for second!! I even sang "coma la flor" to her at least tried I was sooooo nervous!! But she was a queen yal! I love her! Thanks @jlo for one of the best nights ever!' Leslie captioned the video.

Dance party! JLo wowed in her black crop top as she grooved alongside the SNL star

Making memories: The evening was clearly a night super fan Leslie won't soon forget

'Amazing show': Jones could not stop raving about meeting the pop icon

The fun-filled night including plenty of dancing, with JLo wowing party goers as she grooved and pretended to sing into a microphone.

Yet unbeknownst to the super star, Leslie was dancing hilariously right behind her.

The Maid In Manhattan actress was surprised to find Leslie dancing right behind her as she turned around to face the star, who slowed down the rhythm of her dance after she was caught by her idol.

Caught red handed! JLo turned around to find Leslie dancing hilariously behind her

'She let me lose my sh*t': Jennifer and Leslie pulled each other in for a warm embrace before the SNL star confessed to the pop star what a huge fan she was

It was clearly an evening Leslie won't soon forget.

'Ok Im home and bout yall get this @jlo light! one of the best shows I have ever been to.She took it to the next f**king level. Hardest working woman in the business!!

'I dance I scream, I sang , I cried and danced some more!! So fun! @phvegas Just gonna post everything #Allihave,' Leslie raved on Instagram.
Samantha X (real name Amanda Goff) has shared an Instagram post from the doctor's office, reminding women the importance of regular check ups.

Alongside her important message on Friday, the 44-year-old uploaded an image of an x-ray radiography machine.

Making reference to the content that usually graces her social media accounts, she wrote in the caption: 'Yeah not sexy folks but neither is breast cancer.'

'Not sexy folks but neither is breast cancer': Former escort Samantha X shares a social post from the doctor's office calling for women to remember to 'book in for your mammogram'

Important! Alongside her important message on Friday, the 44-year-old uploaded an image of an x-ray radiography machine

'This is your reminder to book in for your mammogram now! Dont wait for lumps and bumps'.

The former escort made a point of ensuring women were reminded that putting the confronting prospect off could result in far more confronting outcomes.

'If youre over 40, get one done regularly. Its not the nicest thing in the world to go through, but a darn sight more pleasant than breast cancer,' Samantha wrote.

'I have one done every two years.'

Better than the alternative: 'If youre over 40, get one done regularly. Its not the nicest thing in the world to go through, but a darn sight more pleasant than breast cancer,' Samantha wrote

In the comments, her supporters vented their frustration at the high costs of the procedure.

Acting as a voice of reason, Samantha explained: 'I just paid $300... was supposed to be $500 but if you have a history of it in your family...'

'Women with implants need ultrasounds as well as a mammogram.'

A follower added: 'Also important to note that if you have dense breasts, only an ultrasound will pick up on any abnormalities.'

Reminder: She also noted: 'Women with implants need ultrasounds as well as a mammogram'

'Mammograms alone are not a thorough screening process.'

Samantha is a former high-class escort who rose to prominence last year after announcing her relationship with Channel Seven presenter Ryan Phelan.

Sadly, she confirmed to Daily Mail Australia in January that the whirlwind relationship was over.

'Ryan and I have decided to end our relationship. The love was very deep between us, but sometimes love isn't enough,' she said.

On the rise: Samantha is a former high-class escort who rose to prominence last year after announcing her relationship with Channel Seven presenter Ryan Phelan
He is set to leave his role as Aidan Connor later this year.

But Coronation Street star Shayne Ward has defended boss Kate Oates as she faces yet more criticism for a slew of controversial storylines, which have included David Platt's shocking male rape plot, Pat Phelan's murderous rampage and Bethany Platt's horrific grooming ordeal.

Speaking at the National Film Awards on Wednesday, the 33-year-old praised Kate for not 'playing it safe' with her dark plot, telling The Sun it is inevitable that not all stories are going to be well received.

Defensive: Coronation Street star Shayne Ward has praised boss Kate Oates for her slew of controversial storylines, as he prepares to quit the soap after three years in the role

He said: 'You're going to get that as a producer to a show who is going to be coming in and showing she's willing to do some gritty story lines. And I think she's doing it brilliantly.

'The positives outweigh the negatives because the response to the latest rape storyline with David Platt has been incredible. She's doing a great thing for the soap.

'These particular things need to be challenged and you can't play safe all the time and she hasn't played safe. I think she's done great.'

Shayne quit his role on Coronation Street in December after three years in the role, but his exit has been kept tightly under wraps by bosses.

Controversial: Kate has faced a barrage of criticism from soap fans over her latest dark plots, including David Platt's rape ordeal and Pat Phelan's murderous rampage

Soap star: Shayne made his comments speaking to The Sun at the National Film Awards on Wednesday (pictured above at the event with fiancee Sophie Austin)

Kate has faced a barrage of criticism from fans in recent months, after David Platt's male rape storyline sparked 200 complaints to media watchdog OfCom.

Dark scenes saw David (played by Jack P Shepherd) led to the bedroom by Josh (Ryan Clayton) after being drugged, and the soap mainstay has struggled to cope with the aftermath, unable to tell anyone about what he has been through.

This followed outrage from fans surrounding Pat Phelan's violent murder of mechanic Luke Britton in January - sparking 541 complaints of which the soap has now been cleared.

In the explosive scenes, after turning a gun towards Luke (Dean Fagan), Pat (Conor McIntyre) trapped the character in his car before it was engulfed in an explosion.

Kate made a dramatic impact on the soap soon after taking over as producer in August 2016, setting the stage for Bethany Platt's grooming ordeal which left fans shell-shocked with the uncomfortable scenes.

Harrowing: Fans of the ITV soap were in tears earlier this month, as David Platt was drugged and raped by the villainous Josh Tucker

Violent: Pat Phelan's murderous rampage has also left viewers shell-shocked as that long-running storyline finally comes to a close tonight

The ex-Emmerdale producer spoke on This Morning earlier this month to defend her choice of dark plots, as fans expressed their outrage at scenes which saw David Platt drugged and raped by the villainous Josh Tucker.

She said: 'I think it's because it's a male rape it's in a different category. It's a double standard against male.'

Adding that the plot is formulated to focus on male mental health, and spark the difficult conversations among families, she admitted: 'It's not about shocking visual, we're pre-watershed and we make our decisions very carefully.'
They're the reality TV power couple who found love on the debut season of The Bachelor in 2013.

And on Friday Tim Robards and Anna Heinrich looked every inch the perfect pair as they enjoyed a loved-up day at Sydney's Hermit Bay.

Tim took to Instagram to share a happy snap of the engaged duo parading their good looks as they soaked up the sun at the exclusive harbour beach.

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Flamingood looks! Engaged Bachelor couple Tim Robards and Anna Heinrich show off their perfectly honed physiques while they enjoy a loved-up day at the beach

The former Bachelor heartthrob beamed as he wrapped his muscular arm around his fiancees' lithe shoulders.

Anna, 31, highlighted her trim, taut and terrific figure as she donned an inflatable pink flamingo around her hips.

The former criminal lawyer looked like the ultimate beach beauty in a mid-riff baring black bikini and dark aviators.

'Flamingo third wheeling': On Friday, Anna shared a similar snap of the pair's loved-up Hermit Bay sojourn

Meanwhile, Tim flaunted his perfectly sculpted bronzed body as he posed shirtless alongside Anna.

Fans got an eyeful of the fitness fanatic's shredded abdomen and muscular legs as he donned a pair of hot pink, thigh-skimming board-shorts.

In the Instagram post, the Bachelor hunk joked about his apparent 'little' legs.

'One of the more risky photos weve taken in a while with these little pins so close to an inflatable toy,' Tim wrote in the caption.

Must be love: The Tim and Anna love story began on the debut season of The Bachelor in 2013 when she batted out the other women competing for his affections

Also on Friday, Anna shared a similar snap of the pair's loved-up Hermit Bay sojourn.

'Just the three of us,' Anna joked alongside the smitten snap.

She accompanied the fun-loving image with the comical hashtag: 'flamingo third wheeling'.

The pair's affectionate display comes as the reality TV couple prepare to walk down the aisle this year.

The smitten pair got engaged in May last year when Tim got down on one knee while the pair were enjoying a boat trip.
He has become a hit in the States due to his quick wit and larger-than-life personality.

And James Corden appeared in high spirits as he greeted a female pal in Los Angeles on Thursday.

The Late Late Show host, 39, cut a casual figure as he chatted to his two friends outside the reception of the swanky Tower Hotel.

Catching up: James Corden appeared in high spirits as he greeted a female pal in Los Angeles on Thursday

James was clad in a navy polo t-shirt and chinos for the outing and coiffed his strawberry-blond locks in his signature style.

The Gavin and Stacey star beamed as he gave the brunette beauty a friendly hug as he put on an animated display.

The comedian, who has recently been in the UK to promote his latest role in the Peter Rabbit film franchise, seemed to be enjoying some time off from his busy schedule.

Animated display: The Late Late Show host, 39, cut a casual figure as he chatted to two friends outside the reception of the Tower Hotel

His outing comes after the father-of-three opened up about his difficult early days of fame, being different in the world of celebrity his family life and being an LGBT+ ally in a candid new interview with Attitude Magazine.

James admitted to 'feeling lost' after going through a relationship break-up just before his breakthrough role as Smithy in Gavin and Stacey, starting in 2007.

'There is nobody on Planet Earth who hasn't felt a bit lost at some point. Id broken up with my girlfriend of eight years, which in itself would be something massive to come out of, and then Gavin & Stacey happened about four months later.

'Any one of those things alone would be a disruption in your life. Both at the same time is just like dropping a bomb on your world

Friendly: James' pals beamed as they waved goodbye to the comedian

'But in truth that can be a wonderful thing for you in the long-term; you've got to go and explore all the things that you might want to explore in order to find out what you really want.'

The star also spoke about feeling an affinity with the LGBT+ community, saying: 'I've always looked different, not the societal ideal, but I've never felt like an outsider to the extent that my gay friends have felt.

'It would be naive of me to think I have. It comes back to the family as that's where you're educated; it's the people around you and the house you grew up in that shapes your views.

'No one is born wanting to dislike anyone, and my parents wanted to accept everyone.'

Before fame: James recently admitted to 'feeling lost' after going through a relationship break-up just before his breakthrough role as Smithy in Gavin and Stacey, starting in 2007

James recently welcomed his third child with wife Julia Carey and discussed teaching his children about gay relationships.

He said: 'They haven't brought it up, but we have lots of gay friends - like our friends Chris and Mark - who have come over a lot and stayed with us.

'I think my son has never questioned it as it's always been there.

'And if he did, I would know what those answers were, which is that these are simply two men that really love each other in the same way I love Mummy and Grandma loves Grandad and that's it.

James and Julia have been married for five years, and parents to son Max, six, and daughters Carey three and Charlotte, two months.

The couple recently admitted that the timing of their youngest child's arrival took them by surprise, as she came along two weeks earlier than they'd expected.
She's the brunette beauty who has returned to TV screens in the latest season of Bachelor in Paradise.

And now Laurina Fleure has shown why she is a picture perfect addition for TV, flaunting her clear complexion in a make-up free Instagram selfie on Friday.

Perhaps channeling the Fijian-island where the show is set, the beauty accessorised her tousled curls with a frangipani flower.

Flower power: Perhaps channeling the Fijian-island where the show is set, Laurina Fleure, 34, pairs her tousled beachy-curls with a frangipani flower in the new Instagram upload

Sporting a glowing complexion, the 34-year-old may have given away the secret to her age-defying skin by tagging a Melbourne laser skin clinic.

The Melbournian's return to The Bachelor franchise comes after she failed to win the heart of Blake Garvey in 2014.

Four years later, Laurina appears to be moving on to an equally controversial suitor - The Bachelorette's Blake Colman.

Timeless beauty: The 34-year-old may have given away the secret to her youthful looks with a tag to a Melbourne laser skin-care clinic

After sharing a kiss on the second episode, a preview shows the couple's future as uncertain, with a move from Blake in the upcoming rose ceremony said to 'make Bachelor history'.

Earlier this week, the production company behind Bachelor In Paradise were forced to defend their decision to cast 'bad boy' Blake due to his criminal history.

Despite his checkered past, including a conviction for assaulting a stranger in 2015 and revenge porn allegations made against him last year, a statement release by Warner Bros. claimed his police check was clean.

Second chance at love? Laurina has returned to the screen four years after she failed to win the heart of Blake Garvey

'Background checks, including police checks, are done on all contestants in reality shows, and these checks are conducted by the relevant production company,' a Warner Bros. spokesperson toldNews Corp earlier this week.

'In Blake's case, his police check was clear.'

Blake competed unsuccessfully for Sophie Monk's affections on last year's season of The Bachelorette.
He's the former Married At First Sight star who was accused of 'flirting' with 'ex-wife' Ashley Irvin's mother during the social experiment.

And on Friday, Troy Delmege's current girlfriend Carly Bowyer caught him flirting with her mother, treating the Bowyer matriarch to a 'Troy special' massage.

On Friday, the 32-year-old brunette took to her Instagram story to share a lighthearted video of her new beau giving her mother a neck and shoulder rub.

At the start of the clip, Troy is seen feverishly kneading his potential mother-in-law's shoulders.

Seconds later, Carly's mother announces: 'I needed a massage.'

Carly interjects with mock shock and asks: 'What is going on here?'

Troy is seen grinning from ear to ear as he jumps in and says: 'I'm just giving your mother a nice Troy special.'

'Hands off my mum': MAFS' Carly Bowyer is shocked after her boyfriend Troy Delmege flirts with her mother and treats Mrs Bowyer to a 'Troy special' massage

The 35-year-old's surprising comment instantly disturbed the buxom blonde matriarch as shortly thereafter she yelled: 'Stop!'

In the clip, Carly's mum was seen running away from the reality TV star's grip, as the trio erupted into fits of hysterical laughter.

Later on Friday Carly shared a happy snap of the trio cuddling up to one another at her mother's home in Adelaide.

'Welcome to the family Troy Delmege': Later on Friday Carly shared a happy snap of the trio cuddling up to one another at her mother's home in Adelaide

'Welcome to the family Troy Delmege,' Carly wrote in the caption.

The reality TV star added a number of comical hashtags to the post, including: 'hands off my mum, getting acquainted and connection'.

This isn't the first time the Married At First Sight star has displayed his penchant for older women.

During an episode of MAFS, Troy was seen appearing to awkwardly flirt with Ashley's mum Stephanie as viewers cringed along at home.

In a piece-to-camera, the IT manager stated: 'I'm excited to see Stephanie. I did feel like I had a strong connection to her on the day of the wedding... The gene pool is very attractive, especially from the mother's side.'

Mummy's boy? During an episode of MAFS, Troy was seen awkwardly flirting with Ashley's mum, Stephanie as viewers cringed along at home

Meanwhile in another episode of the controversial Channel Nine series, Troy seemed to flirt up a storm with his former co-star Melissa Walsh, 53.

'I think Melissa is fantastic,' Troy told the cameras as smooth saxophone music played in the background.

'She's a very beautiful woman, beautiful face. I can tell by her eyes she is such a decent person,' Troy revealed.

After just a few weeks of dating, Carly and Troy - who is originally from Sydney - are now living together in Melbourne.
She is expecting her first child with fiance Sean Ogilvy.

And Erin Molan's pregnancy is bumping along nicely, the Channel Nice presenter sharing a photo of her burgeoning belly to Instagram on Friday.

The bubbly blonde, who is 30 weeks pregnant, looked every bit the glowing mum-to-be as she posed for a Channel Nine promo shot.

Blooming beautiful! The Footy Show's Erin Molan flaunts her growing baby bump after revealing details of her 'awful' pregnancy and health scare

Erin wore a happy expression as she showed off her growing baby bump in a fitted green dress from Country Road.

Fans of the Channel Nine personality were quick to compliment Erin on her 'gorgeous' bump.

Last month, Erin told Today that while she feels blessed that her unborn child is healthy, her pregnancy has been far from easy.

Simply stunning! The bubbly blonde, who is 30 weeks pregnant, looks every bit the glowing mum-to-be

Difficult pregnancy: Erin told Today that while she feels blessed that her unborn child is healthy, her pregnancy has been far from easy

Earlier in February Erin was rushed to hospital after fainting at Channel Nine's Sydney studios.

Subsequent tests revealed the Footy Show host had low blood pressure, but her unborn baby was fine.

'I think I need to slowly learn that my body is not capable of what it was this time last year and that it does put a lot of pressure on your pregnancy,' Erin told Karl Stefanovic and Georgie Gardner.

'I think I need to slowly learn that my body is not capable of what it was this time last year': Erin, who is 25 weeks pregnant, was rushed to hospital last Friday after fainting at Channel Nine's Sydney studios

'I hit my knees, I hit my head but stomach maintained facing upwards which was good': Erin said she was fortunate that when she fainted she had fallen backwards rather than onto her stomach

'It takes a lot of the good out of you, having a child - in a lovely blessed kind of way.

'In other words everything good is going to the baby inside me, and not too much left over for me.'

Erin said she was fortunate that when she fainted she had fallen backwards rather than onto her stomach.

'Luckily my knees are black and bruised - I hit my knees, I hit my head but stomach maintained facing upwards which was good,' she said.

Tough times: While acknowledging she was fortunate to conceive and carry a child, Erin said her pregnancy had been extremely difficult

While acknowledging she was fortunate to conceive and carry a child, Erin said her pregnancy had been extremely difficult.

The Channel Nine reporter confirmed she had suffered from hyperemesis gravidarum, commonly known as extreme morning sickness, during the first few months of her pregnancy.

'I'm really blessed, it's been wonderful,' Erin said sarcastically, holding up her hands in quotation marks.

'It's been horrendous': The Channel Nine reporter confirmed she had suffered from hyperemesis gravidarum, commonly known as extreme morning sickness,

'It's been horrendous but I feel horrendously guilty even talking about it, because I know how blessed I am to even have children ... but it's been awful.

'It hasn't been fun, even all the things that give me joy like alcohol, runny eggs and raw meat and sushi I can't eat any more,' Erin joked.

Erin confirmed last December that she was expected her first child with fiance Sean Ogilvy.

The couple became engaged in April 2017, the policeman presenting Erin with a diamond sparkler reportedly worth $100,000.
Elementary students matched with the same teacher two years in a row show improvement in test scores, according to a new study .

Economics professors Andrew Hill of Montana State University and Daniel Jones of the University of South Carolina conclude in the study that looping, in which an entire class moves to the next grade with the same teacher, results in a slight but significant increase in student achievement. Even students assigned to a teacher for the first time experience gains when a large number of their classmates are with that teacher for a second school year. (Here an elementary teacher from Arkansas makes a case for this practice , which he says is largely underappreciated.)

The researchers looked at students in grades 3 to 5 in North Carolina between 1997 and 2013 who were assigned to the same teacher two years straight. They measured the effect of students spending a second year with the same teacher using math scores on standardized tests given at the end of each school year. The estimated gain from students spending a second year with the same teacher ranges from .02 to .12 test score standard deviations. Thats equivalent to an average students score increasing by one or two percentiles, from say the 50th to 51st percentile. (The authors focused on math scores, but the appendix show that students also demonstrated an increase in end-of-year reading scores, though the gains were slightly smaller.)

The benefits of repeated student-teacher matches were greatest for students of color, the study found. The reason, the authors suggest, could stem from the fact that most teachers are white, and when a white teacher works with students whose backgrounds and cultures may be unfamiliar there is more to gain from a longer period of getting to know one another. Once teachers know a student better, theres a greater chance they can adapt lessons to the students particular learning style. Another possibility is that teachers may see more potential in students once they know them better, leading to higher expectations.

Spending a second year with students appeared to benefit teachers too, in particular those deemed lower-performing.

The researchers also say the results explain why specialization, in which teachers serve as experts in a particular subject like math, science, or reading, has been shown to have negative effects on achievement. The implication is that students spend less time with teachers who only specialize in one subject, resulting in a less familiar relationship. This Education Week article explores the ups and downs of specialization , also known as platooning, in elementary schools.

In the end, the authors advise against schools assigning elementary teachers to a single subject like math or reading. The research shows the importance of allowing teachers to spend more than one school year with an entire class in order to better meet individual students needs and boost their achievement. As the researchers note, having teachers loop is a relatively low-cost measure that requires no legislative approval.

See also:


We didn't see the doctors of Grey's Anatomy practicing much medicine in this week's episode. Instead, they had long, soulful conversations with patients, lovers, and patient-lovers. And over the course of the hour, the show breathed life into a new romance and brought an old one to its bitter end.

At the start of the episode, Owen (Kevin McKidd) flies to Germany to show up on Teddy's (Kim Raver) doorstep unannounced. She's surprised  and even more surprised when he tells her he and Amelia are over.

'For the first time,' he says, 'there's nothing standing in our way.' (Except, of course, years of his baggage.) Teddy kisses him, consummating years of right-place-wrong-time romance.

Declaration: Owen surprises Teddy by flying to Germany and showing up at her door unannounced, telling her: 'For the first time there's nothing standing in our way'

Reunited: Owen flies to Germany to show up on Teddy's doorstep unannounced to tell her that he and Amelia are over and they can be together now, and they finally kiss

Post-coital: Teddy cracks up, thinking of 'Owen Hunt in my bed, naked, in Germany' and how preposterous that seems and they talk about him moving to Germany for her

When we next see Owen and Teddy, they're entwined in a post-coital snuggle. Teddy cracks up, thinking of 'Owen Hunt in my bed, naked, in Germany' and how preposterous that seems.

Owen even tells Teddy he'd move to Germany to work with her. 'For me,' she says, correcting him.

He says: 'I just know that I want you. This is not some grand gesture  But that doesn't make this any less. I am in love with you.'

That's swoon-worthy, but alas, this isn't Teddy and Owen's time either. She's discomfited when Owen says a conversation with Amelia 'led' him to her  and even more discomfited when she realizes Owen had been sleeping with Amelia when Amelia suggested he go to Teddy. Soon, poor Dr. Altman is in tears.

'You came here because your marriage is over, and you're terrified of being alone,' she yells. 'I am done being your fallback. I am done being your damn sloppy seconds. I am not your consolation prize.'

And despite Owen's protestations  he even mentions Henry, hearkening back to Season 7!  she pulls the plug. 'I'm done, Owen,' she says, showing him the door. 'We're done.'

Over: Despite Owen's protests, Teddy tells him they're done for good and shows him the door

Teddy yells at Owen: 'You came here because your marriage is over, and you're terrified of being alone. I am done being your fallback. I am not your consolation prize.'

Can we talk about something more pleasant? Yes, we can. Back in Seattle, Meredith (Ellen Pompeo) is just strolling through Grey Sloan Memorial, minding her own business, when a visiting surgeon collapses at her feet. And luckily for her, the fainting fella happens to be handsome and charming (and played by Scott Speedman of Felicity fame). Once he composes himself, this Dr. Nick Mars starts flirting with her relentlessly and she's not opposed.

Turns out, he's a Mayo Clinic transplant surgeon who just had a kidney transplant himself six weeks ago, and he's worried his body is rejecting the new organ.

As he and Mer await his lab test results, they get to talking. He's fully aware of her Harper Avery Award, and he's even more wowed when he finds out she's the widowed mother of three kids: 'I'm just looking for your superhero cape,' he says.

They bond over their 'B plan' careers  he was gonna be a shoe salesman, she was gonna work in a movie theater with Cristina  and their happy places  his is on a canoe with his father, hers in Sardinia where people live long and don't get sick.

New doctor: Meredith is strolling through Grey Sloan Memorial, minding her own business, when a visiting surgeon collapses at her feet and they instantly hit it off

Meredith's new patient: Dr Nick Mars is a Mayo Clinic transplant surgeon who just had a kidney transplant himself six weeks ago, and he's worried his body is rejecting the new organ

Results: Dr Nick has a blood clot in his renal vein so Meredith rushes him into surgery and saves his life, and once he's conscious, he immediately starts flirting with her again

Meredith tells Alex about Dr Nick: 'He made me feel something that I haven't felt since Derek'

Their daydreaming is interrupted when his labs come back. The results are inconclusive, so Mer does another ultrasound. And that's when she sees it: a blood clot in his renal vein, which he probably developing while sitting on the plane or standing in the operating room.

She rushes him into surgery and saves his life, and once he's conscious, he immediately starts flirting with her again.

Later, when Alex (Justin Chambers) finds Mer at the bar, she tells him she met someone who's smart, funny, and hot. 'So what's the problem?' Alex asks. The problem, says Mer, is that Nick is her patient. Still, she's clearly smitten.

'He made me feel something that I haven't felt since Derek,' she tells Alex. (So what was Nathan Riggs then? Chopped liver?)

The other major player this week was April (Sarah Drew), she of the booze-fueled crisis of faith. When the episode starts, April wakes up hungover at the bar, and her day only gets worse from there.

At the hospital, she treats a rabbi named Eli whom Bailey (Chandra Wilson) previously treated for diverticulitis. This time, though, he's complaining of a rash. Would that it were so minor! No, he actually has toxic epidermal necrolysis, a condition that's causing his skin to separate from his body.

The prognosis is grim, and the antibiotics Bailey had prescribed seem to be the culprit. April disses Bailey in front of Jackson (Jesse Williams), who's been concerned about his ex-wife's erratic behavior for weeks now.

'I'm just trying to clean up her mess,' April tells him, seething.

Clean up the mess: April disses Bailey in front of Jackson, who's been concerned about his ex-wife's erratic behavior for weeks now

Divine intervention: At the hospital, April treats a rabbi named Eli who has toxic epidermal necrolysis, a condition that's causing his skin to separate from his body

Dying: The prognosis for Eli is grim, and the antibiotics Bailey prescribed seem to be the culprit

Last breaths: Later, even on the verge of death, Eli senses April's inner pain and gives her some spiritual counsel. She breaks down, wondering why God has forsaken her

Later, even on the verge of death, Eli senses April's inner pain and gives her some spiritual counsel. She breaks down, wondering why God has forsaken her after she has spent her life following the letter of the Bible. She thought doing so would make her world good  or, at least, fair.

'Faith wouldn't be real faith if you only believed when things were good,' Eli tells her. Mid-therapy session, his condition takes a sudden turn for the worse, but he still refuses morphine because he's waiting for his wife to arrive.

Moments later, in his death throes, he mistakes April for his beloved. April goes along with it, sobbing as Eli dies thinking he's in his wife's arms.

Afterward, April finds Bailey in the chapel, struggling to light a candle for Eli. And finally, April seems to have made a revelation: 'Eli forgave you,' she tells Bailey. 'Some things just happen. And we don't get to know why.'

If there was ever a cast of characters who knew how random and fickle the universe can be, it'd be April and the rest of the surgeons of this jinxed hospital.

Tune in next week for more of their misery!

Grey's Anatomy airs every Thursday on ABC at 8pm ET (7 central).
He welcomed the latest addition to his family six months ago.

And Sam Wood took to Instagram on Friday to upload the latest snap of him cuddling up to his adorable daughter, Willow.

Holding up the tot, the fitness enthusiast grinned into the camera wearing shades, as Willow giggled in his arms.

Too cute! Grinning Sam Wood posts heart-melting selfie holding his six-month-old daughter Willow... after revealing he's ALREADY planning baby number two

He simply captioned the image: ' LOVE'

On Thursday, it was revealed that Sam and his other half Snezana Markoski are planning to expand their brood.

In an interview with OK! magazine, the couple discussed having another baby to add to their growing family of Willow and Snezana's daughter Eve, who is from a previous relationship and lives with them in Melbourne.

The pair told the publication: 'Willow is only six months old, but we are definitely think we want another baby!'

Baby number two! The Bachelor's Sam Wood and Snezana Markoski announce their exciting family news

Sam and Snezana fell in love on The Bachelor in 2015, became engaged later that year and welcomed their baby daughter Willow in October last year.

In recent months, Sam gave an insight into becoming a dad for the first time when Snezana gave birth to Willow.

'You fall in love straight away,' he told Daily Mail Australia.

Happy family: Sam and Snezana fell in love on The Bachelor in 2015, became engaged later that year and welcomed their baby daughter Willow in October last year. Snezana's daughter Eve, who is from a previous relationship, lives with them in Melbourne

'Never experiencing having a baby before, it is amazing how instantly the emotions just take over.'

Elsewhere in their OK! interview, Sam praised his fiancee, calling her the 'best mum'.

'Snez is the best mum to both Eve and Willow, and she's always taking care of us all. That's why I'm even more focused on ensuring she takes good care of herself, as she often needs a little reminder to do this.'
The fires on Grey's Anatomy spin-off Station 19 are hot, but the competition is hotter!

Andy (Jaina Lee Ortiz) and Jack (Grey Damon) are still locked in a Battle of Lieutenant Captains, taking alternating shifts as acting captain and trying to prove their mettle to Battalion Chief Frankel (Leslie Hope).

And because it wouldn't be a Shondaland show without questionable workplace romances, the competition doubles as foreplay for these two.

Also, it wouldn't be a Shondaland show without a love triangle, so hot cop Ryan (Alberto Frezza) is also in the mix, though he's not having much luck winning over Andy's ailing father and the former captain, Pruitt (Miguel Sandoval).

Tension: Andy and Jack are still locked in a Battle of Lieutenant Captains, taking alternating shifts as acting captain and trying to prove their mettle to Battalion Chief Frankel

Rescue: Dean and Ben respond to a fire at the apartment building of Dean's love interest JJ

Emergency: As the rest of Station 19 shows up to the blaze and clambers to the roof to vent the building, Dean finds out JJ has a boyfriend who's still in the building

Danger: Andy and Jack squabble about whether or not to 'cut a strip' in the roof to combat the blaze, the tactic works and contains the fire but weakens the roof

Hero: Andy begs Frankel to call Dean back before the roof collapses, knowing Dean won't stop searching for tenants in the building, including JJ's boyfriend 'Seth'

'Buttering me up won't get you in my daughter's pants,' Pruitt tells him.

Anyway, this week's episode picks up where the last one left off, with Dean (Okieriete Onaodowan) and Ben (Jason George) responding to a fire at the apartment building of Dean's love interest JJ (Brenda Song).

As the rest of Station 19 shows up to the blaze and clambers to the roof to vent the building, Dean finds out JJ has a boyfriend who's still in the building. As JJ dutifully suits up to head into the inferno, JJ assures him this Seth guy is just a friend. (Uh-huh.)

On the roof, Andy and Jack squabble about whether or not to 'cut a strip' in the roof to combat the blaze. Andy finally relents and lets Jack do it, and the tactic contains the fire but weakens the roof.

Back on terra firma, Andy begs Frankel to call Dean back before the roof collapses, knowing Dean won't stop searching for tenants in the building. Luckily, Dean emerges on his own accord, and he has even rescued Seth. Now he's even more of a hero in JJ's eyes.

'Fireflies follow us around,' he later tells Travis (Jay Hayden).

In one piece: Dean emerges on his own accord, and he has even rescued Seth. Now he's even more of a hero in JJ's eyes. 'Fireflies follow us around,' he later tells Travis

Heart-to-heart: Dean warns Ben not to make these cases too personal as he excavates JJ's beloved framed Prince album cover

Later, as he and the other guys of Station 19 comb through the rubble, Dean warns Ben not to make these cases too personal as he excavates JJ's beloved framed Prince album cover.

At home, Pruitt tells Andy he's Andy he's looking for desk jobs. She doesn't like the sound of that, wanting him to focus on his cancer recovery. He won't back down, though, so Andy calls Maya (Danielle Savre) and Victoria (Barrett Doss) over for boozy commiseration. Ryan crashes the party, and he claims he's just visiting to check on Pruitt. Maya and Victoria know better, though.

The next day is Ryan's first shift as acting captain, and he hires Pruitt as the station's receptionist, much to Andy's rage. Victoria and Maya warn her Jack is just getting in her head. (Seems like Ryan might be the front-runner in this love triangle now.)

The team gets a medical call and heads out in full force, though they expect it to be routine. It's anything but. They find several teens unconscious around a pool in the backyard of a house.

Dispute: During Ryan's first shift as acting captain,he hires Pruitt as the station's receptionist, much to Andy's rage since he should be recovering from cancer

Rivalry: Andy later asks Travis how Jack knew there was a kid missing, and Travis reveals Jack counted the flip-flops at the side of the pool, praising his quick thinking

A girl named Dallas is the only teen conscious, and she says she pulled all her friends out of the water. She also says they had been using liquid nitrogen to make ice cream and then put the nitrogen into the pool because it looked cool. (Foolish children.)

The firefighters realize the chemical reaction had asphyxiated the unconscious teens and get to work resuscitating them. Jack, meanwhile, dives into the pool and rescues a girl who was obscured by the fog. Andy later asks Travis how Jack knew there was a kid missing, and Travis reveals Jack counted the flip-flops at the side of the pool. Travis clearly respects Jack as a potential leader and not so much Andy.

'It is a skill to do what he does,' he says, 'a skill that you haven't figured out.' (Now that's colder than liquid nitrogen.)

Back in the rig, Maya and Victoria try to comfort Andy, but she lashes out at them and says she can handle herself. Oh, sure, that's obvious.

Just when the crisis at the pool party seems to have passed, Dallas starts having trouble breathing, and Ben realizes she's dry-drowning. As the first responders get ready to take her to Grey Sloan Memorial, Ben comforts her by describing all the rock star surgeons she's about to meet, including his wife, Dr. Miranda Bailey.

Deathly pool party: A girl named Dallas is the only teen conscious, and she says she pulled all her friends out of the pool after they added liquid nitrogen to it

Soothing: Ben comforts Dallas by describing all the rock star surgeons she's about to meet, including his wife, Dr. Miranda Bailey

'She'll knock you out just with her smile,' he says. 'I promise.'

At the firehouse, Frankel commends Jack for earning his spot instead of having his job handed to him, throwing clear shade at Andy, who happens to be eavesdropping.

But Andy leaves in a huff before hearing Jack defend her. Jack tells Frankel that Andy excelled even with her father's efforts to hold her back.

'Andy has earned her spot here,' he says.

As the rest of the team decompresses from the day's chaos, Ben tells his colleagues it's weird not to know how the people they help end up, since he comes from a world of surgical outcomes.

In the garage, JJ finds Dean and tells him her quasi-boyfriend actually died at the hospital  Seth, we hardly knew ye  and Dean admits he couldn't keep his feelings locked away on this day like he normally can.

And elsewhere in the station, Ryan finds Andy and makes sure she doesn't think of him as the 'screwed-up kid' he was when they were younger. She assures him she doesn't, and the sexual tension hangs thick in the air. As he leaves, she watching him go and actually licks her lips. Oh, girl, you've got it bad.

Station 19 airs on ABC every Thursday night at 9pm ET (8 central).
She finally confirmed their split last Saturday after weeks of speculation.

And things appear to be turning ugly between former Married At First Sight golden couple Sarah Roza and Telv Williams.

On Friday the buxom red head took a swipe at her 'ex-husband', accusing him of 'hooking up' with 'countless fame hungry insignificant randoms', after he appeared to debut a new relationship with blonde bombshell Maddie Carolan.

'I'm not in a rush like other people': MAFS' Sarah Roza accuses ex Telv Williams of 'hooking up with countless fame hungry insignificant randoms' ... after he debuted his new 'girlfriend'

Sarah hit back at her ex after a fan commented on one of her Instagram photos, comparing the reality TV star to Jessica Rabbit and asking if she was still single.

'Thank you lovely lady but I'm not in a rush unlike other people to just hook up with countless fame hungry insignificant randoms,' Sarah responded.

'Real love is truly important to me so I'm happy to ease slowly back into the dating life eventually when the time is right.'

Ouch! Sarah hit back at her ex after a fan commented on one of her Instagram photos, comparing her to Jessica Rabbit and asking if she was still single

Split: Sarah and Telv finally confirmed their split earlier this month after weeks of speculation

New romance? Sarah's comment comes as Telv is speculated to have moved on from their TV romance with blonde beauty Maddie

Sarah's comment comes as Telv is speculated to have moved on from their TV romance with blonde beauty Maddie.

The rumoured couple partied at Melbourne's Baroq bar on Thursday, with an onlooker telling Daily Mail Australia: 'They were flirty and very close.'

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Telv, Sarah and Maddie for comment.

The machinery technician, 33, appeared to be in particularly happy spirits as he posed for photos with his 'girlfriend'.

Golden couple: Sarah and Telv's split comes after the couple were one of Married At First Sight's most popular pairings

Maddie, who works as an area manager for haircare brand GHD, flaunted her slender figure in a low-cut black top and a floral skirt.

She happily posed for photos with Telv at the event and they made no attempt to hide their affection for each other.

An onlooker told Daily Mail Australia: 'They were flirty and very close. Nick (Furphy) was overheard saying, "That's Telv's new girlfriend".'

After weeks of speculation, Telv's 'ex-wife' Sarah Roza finally confirmed the couple had split last Saturday.

She wrote on Instagram: 'I truly wish only the absolute best for Telv because I undoubtedly will always love and care very deeply for him. But ultimately I deserve someone who shares the same life goals and aspirations as I do.'
She is starring as real-life British whistle-blower Katharine Gun in the thrilling political drama Official Secrets.

And Keira Knightley put on an animated display as filming got under way in West Yorkshire on Thursday.

In the scenes, the actress, 33, was spotted in a tense argument with her co-star Tamsin Greig.

Furious: Keira Knightley put on an animated display as filming got under way in West Yorkshire on Thursday

Keira was casually-clad in a black padded coat, which she layered atop a pale blue chunky knit.

She let her long brunette tresses fall naturally over her shoulders and opted for a natural make-up look.

The Pride and Prejudice star had a face of fury as she got into a taxi, seemingly in the midst of a furious argument with her co-star, who plays Elizabeth Wilmshurst.

Bundled up: The actress cut a casual figure in a black padded coat and pale blue knit and joked with a crew member in-between takes

Once the filming was over however, the brunette beauty seemed in high spirits as she chatted to a crew member.

The star has been given an understated makeover for her role in the project, which also features Ralph Fiennes, Matthew Goode and Matt Smith.

Keira portrays whistle-blower Katharine who leaked information to the press about an illegal NSA spy operation designed to push the UN Security Council into sanctioning the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Gun was a former Mandarin-language translator at the British intelligence agency GCHQ in Cheltenham.

When The Observer broke the story, Gun was arrested and charged under the Official Secrets Act, causing public backlash.

Enraged: The Pride and Prejudice star had a face of fury as she got into a taxi, seemingly in the midst of a furious argument with her co-star

Her trial took place in early 2004, but authorities soon dropped the case, and she was famously backed by celebrities including actor Sean Penn.

Directed by Gavin Hood, the film is based on the book The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War: Katharine Gun and the Secret Plot to Sanction the Iraq Invasion.

Fiennes is portraying Gun's barrister Ben Emmerson and Goode is set to play Peter Beaumont, one of the journalists who broke the story.
He's known for bringing the electric beats to any event.

And David Guetta seemed to be enjoying a well-deserved break from his gig at Ultra Music Festival in Miami, Florida on Thursday afternoon.

The 50-year-old music-maker went shirtless for some fun in the sun on the beach with his bikini-clad girlfriend Jessica Ledon.

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Relax: David Guetta seemed to be enjoying a well-deserved break from his gig at Ultra Music Festival in Miami, Florida on Thursday afternoon

Guetta rocked a pair of short-leg, navy blue swim trunks as he walked along the pristine shoreline.

His toned and tanned torso was fully on display as he opted to go shirtless and catch a few rays on his chest.

The Titanium hitmaker kept his eyes shielded from the bright sun with a pair of dark aviator sunglasses.

Vacation: The 50-year-old music-maker went shirtless for some fun in the sun on the beach with his bikini-clad girlfriend Jessica Ledon

Ripped: His toned and tanned torso was fully on display as he opted to go shirtless and catch a few rays on his chest

Hydrate: Guetta rocked a pair of short-leg, navy blue swim trunks as he walked along the pristine shoreline

His shaggy auburn hair matched a growing beard and mustache, with hints of salt-and-pepper peering through.

Jessica relaxed on a lounger as she showed off her killer curves in a strappy blue-and-white bikini.

She kept a pair of dark sunglasses over her eyes while sipping through a straw placed into a fresh coconut.

Love: David made sure to give his lady all the attention she deserved as he dropped down and kissed the aspiring actress

Hello there: She kept a pair of dark sunglasses over her eyes while sipping through a straw placed into a fresh coconut

Long talks: Jessica relaxed on a lounger as she showed off her killer curves in a strappy blue-and-white bikini

Catching up: The Titanium hitmaker kept his eyes shielded from the bright sun with a pair of dark aviator sunglasses

David made sure to give his lady all the attention she deserved as he dropped down and kissed the aspiring actress.

The French DJ started dating Jessica in 2015, with the couple going public with their relationship in February 2016 during a state dinner in honor of Cuban President Raul Castro at the Elysee Palace.

David divorced his events organizer wife Cathy, 50, in 2014 after 22 years of marriage and two children together.

The exes shares 13-year-old son Tim Elvis Eric and daughter Angie Guetta, nine.

Sweethearts: The French DJ started dating Jessica in 2015
Paris Hilton's fiance has agreed to sign a pre-np.

While walking arm-in-arm through the airport on Thursday, the heiress, 37, and Chris Zylka, 32, confirmed that there would in fact be a financial agreement in place before they say 'I do.'

'Well any gentleman that's about to marry a very wealthy and well-established business woman wouldn't be a gentleman to not bring up a prenup in the first place,' Chris told TMZ. 'So yes of course we're going to have one.'

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Financial security: While walking arm-in-arm through the airport on Thursday, Paris Hilton , 37, and fiance Chris Zylka, 32, confirmed that there would in fact be a prenup drawn up before they say 'I do' this year

'We don't need one because we're going to be together forever,' the Hilton heiress chimed in as she cuddled up to her man.

But her Aunt Kyle Richards disagrees with that logic.

When asked by TMZ if she thought her niece needed financial protection she said: 'H*** yeah.'

'Well any gentleman that's about to marry a very wealthy and well-established business woman wouldn't be a gentleman to not bring up a prenup in the first place,' Chris told TMZ. 'So yes of course we're going to have one'

'We don't need one because we're going to be together forever,' the Hilton heiress chimed in as she cuddled up to her man. But her Aunt Kyle Richards doesn't agree with that logic

Chris got down on one knee during a romantic trip to Aspen, Colorado back in January.

He proposed with a massive $2 million dollar ring that Paris recently misplaced in a Miami nightclub.

Before deciding to get hitched, the couple dated for two years after initially meeting at an Oscars party at Chateau Marmont more than eight years ago.

$2 million dollar rock: Chris got down on one knee during a romantic trip to Aspen, Colorado back in January

'I am so excited to be engaged to the love of my life and my best friend,' she gushed on Instagram.

'I have never felt so happy, safe, and loved. He is perfect for me in every way and showed me that fairytales really do exist!'

Chris and Paris are slated to be wed later this year.
They jetted off to Mexico on Monday for a holiday with his three children.

And on Thursday, Sofia Richie and boyfriend Scott Disick were spotted enjoying a pool day at their luxury resort in Cabo San Lucas.

Sofia, 19, flaunted her svelte form in a pale pink bikini while her 34-year-old beau kept a watchful eye on his kids: Mason, eight, Penelope, five, and Reign, three.

Staying close: Sofia Richie and boyfriend Scott Disick were spotted enjoying a pool day at their luxury resort in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico on Thursday

Sofia, 19, flaunted her slim form in a pale pink bikini while her 34-year-old beau kept a watchful eye on his kids: Mason, eight, Penelope, five, and Reign, three

He shares the kids with ex partner Kourtney Kardashian.

Scott and Sofia kept their PDA to an absolute minimum while spending time with his little ones.

Sofia, who is a successful model, put her flawless figure on full display in a tiny swimsuit.

The pink set featured a halter-style top with cheeky high-waisted bottoms, revealing her flat stomach and her pert derriere.

Keeping an eye: They jetted off to Mexico on Monday for a holiday with his three children; Penelope pictured on the right with Sofia

Devoted: He shares the kids with ex partner Kourtney Kardashian; Scott pictured talking to Reign as he lounges in the pool

Focused: The lovebirds kept their PDA to an absolute minimum while spending time with the little ones

Stylish duo: Sofia, who is a successful model, put her flawless figure on full display in a tiny swimsuit

She arrived to the pool wearing ripped Daisy Dukes and a cropped white top.

Sofia styled her classic pairing of jeans and a neutral tee with a bold red crossbody handbag.

Meanwhile, Scott showed off his form in dark hued swim trunks; he sported a heavy beard with retro shades shielding his eyes.

Kourtney, 38, is actually on her own holiday with her handsome model boyfriend, Younes Bendjima.

Not shy: The pink set featured a halter-style top with cheeky high-waisted bottoms

Sunshine: She arrived to the pool wearing ripped Daisy Dukes and a cropped white top

Relaxing: She donned her barely there ensemble after their pool day to head back to the hotel

Chic: Sofia styled her classic pairing of jeans and a neutral tee with a red crossbody handbag

Kourtney and Younes, 24, appear to be on a road trip in California; she is chronicling their adventures on Instagram.

Later in the day, Sofia and Scott rented ATV's for some beach fun.

The teenaged cover girl shared a selfie of herself rocking an orange ribbed top with a helmet, goggles and a bandanna around her neck.

Catching up: The duo enjoyed a brief conversation before joined by his kids

Family time: Penelope sat besides her dad during their lunch

Break time: Sofia, Scott and the kids had a meal by the pool

Watchful: Sofia and Penelope seen heading to the lounge area together

Tanning and swimming: Sofia styled her brunette locks pulled back into a ponytail

The bearded TV personality chose to wear a gray shirt with dark hued swim trunks

For some reason, Scott donned a turban with his T-shirt and shorts; he posed besides a camel in a social media shot.

On Monday, Sofia shared a picture on her Instagram of herself posing with Scott next to a private jet.

She originally captioned the snap 'Spring break with my love,' but by Friday, she edited the caption to read: 'My love.'

Strike a pose: Kourtney is actually on her own holiday with her handsome model boyfriend, Younes Bendjima; she shared this image on Friday

Selfie fun: Later in the day, Sofia and Scott rented ATV's for some beach fun

Interesting: For some reason, Scott donned a turban with his T-shirt and shorts; he posed besides a camel in a social media shot

'Reign drop': Scott posted a picture with his youngest son Reign as they played in the pool

The duo were first linked last May after they were seen cuddling on a yacht in Cannes.

They were spotted spending time over summer 2017.

By September, their friend Alec Monopoly confirmed their relationship after sharing a photo of Scott kissing the teen in Miami.

In October, Sofia posted their first Instagram picture together while on holiday together in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

Together: On Monday, Sofia shared a picture on her Instagram of herself posing with Scott next to a private jet

Going public: By September, their friend Alec Monopoly confirmed their relationship after sharing a photo of Scott kissing the teen in Miami
Her baby daddy Scott Disick, 34, is off gallivanting with the kids and his 19-year-old girlfriend Sofia Richie in Cabo.

Meanwhile, Kourtney Kardashian, 38, decided to go off on her own little rendezvous with boyfriend Younes Bendjima, 24, in Northern California.

The reality star flaunted her toned bod in a Calvin Klein Instagram ad on Friday as she was seen straddling her boy toy in a matching bra and underwear set.

Hot mama! Kourtney Kardashian flaunted her toned bod in a Calvin Klein Instagram ad on Friday as she was seen straddling her boyfriend Younes Bendjima in a matching bra and underwear set

Despite breakup rumors, Kourtney and Younes seem to be going strong.

The two embarked on their coastal road trip just days ago after Disick headed to a resort in Mexico with their three kidsMason, eight, Penelope, five, and Reign, age three.

According to OK Magazine, Bendjima has been shopping for engagement rings.

Quailty time: Despite breakup rumors, Kourtney and Younes seem to be going strong. The two embarked on a coastal road trip just days ago after baby daddy Scott Disick headed to a resort in Mexico with their three kidsMason, eight, Penelope, five, and Reign, age three

Missing her: While Scott may look blissfully happy with Sofia, sources revealed to Hollywood Life that he is actually reeling with 'jealousy' over the idea of Kourtney getting married again

And while Scott may look blissfully happy with Sofia, sources revealed to Hollywood Life that he is actually reeling with 'jealousy' over the idea of his former love getting married again.

'Scott's freaking out, he's heard the buzz about Kourtney and Younes possibly getting engaged and he isn't handling it well,' a friend of Scott's told the outlet.

'If it's true and Kourtney and Younes are getting married then you can bet Scott will do something to retaliate.'

They added: 'He's threatened to elope with Richie multiple times so that'd probably be his move. But who knows with Scott he might even purposely knock her up just to teach Kourtney a lesson.'

'Scott's freaking out, he's heard the buzz about Kourtney and Younes possibly getting engaged and he isn't handling it well,' a friend of Scott's told the outlet. 'If it's true and Kourtney and Younes are getting married then you can bet Scott will do something to retaliate'

Over the past few days, Disick and Richie have been spotted having some major fun in the sun.

Sofia has been prancing around in tiny bikinis while she bonds with Scott's three offspring.

'Kourtney didn't think it would last,' a source told PEOPLE in February. 'But now, Sofia spends a lot of time at Scott's, so Kourtney allowed her to meet the kids. She has met them a few times.'

'Baecation': Over the past few days, Disick and Richie have been spotted enjoying the sunshine in Mexico with his three kids

Young and beautiful: On Friday, Sofia was seen prancing around in a tiny pink bikini
Arnold Schwarzenegger is said to be recovering after undergoing emergency heart surgery on Thursday.

TMZ reported that the actor-turned-politician went to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on March 29, 2018, for a planned catheter valve replacement. The procedure is slightly experimental, according to sources, and Schwarzenegger developed complications as a result.

Doctors quickly made the decision to perform emergency open-heart surgery on the 70-year-old which, according to TMZ, lasted several hours.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is in stable condition after an emergency heart surgery procedure

Schwarzenegger is said to be recovering in stable condition.

So what do you need to know about Arnold Schwarzenegger?

Who is Arnold Schwarzenegger?

Arnold Schwarzenegger is an Austrian-American actor, former bodybuilder and former Governor of California.

He began training to be a bodybuilder at age 15 and won his first big competition, the Mr. Universe title, at 20 years old. He continued to collect titles and became well known on the bodybuilding circuit.

Schwarzenegger broke into acting in the 80s, first appearing in Conan the Barbarian. From there, he went on to star in The Terminator films, Commando, Predator, Twins, Total Recall, Kindergarten Cop and more.

In 2003, after a long acting career, Schwarzenegger made the move into politics. He was elected Governor that same year and served two terms.

Arnold Schwarzenegger net worth

According to Celebrity Net Worth, Arnold Schwarzenegger's net worth is $400 million (285m).

How did Arnold Schwarzenegger make his money?

When Arnold Schwarzenegger got his start, all the money he'd saved up came from winning body building competitions. He began making real estate investments after that and then got into acting.

Schwarzenegger reportedly took no salary as the Governor of California.

Arnold Schwarzenegger age

Arnold Schwarzenegger is 70 years old.

Arnold Schwarzenegger open heart surgery

Arnold Schwarzenegger has had a history of heart problems. He had his first heart surgery in 1997. According to TMZ, doctors didn't feel it was urgent at the time, but Schwarzenegger wanted to have it done while he was relatively young.

On Thursday, March 29, 2018, he went to a California hospital to undergo a planned procedure, from which he suffered complications. As a result, doctors decided to perform open heart surgery on Schwarzenegger.

TMZ reported that his condition had nothing to do with steroid use.

What is transcatheter aortic valve replacement?

According to Heart.Org, Transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR or TAVI) is a minimally invasive procedure in which a damaged heart valve is replaced without being removed.

Instead, a replacement valve is wedged where the aortic valve should be.

The TAVR method uses a collapsible replacement valve to replace the damaged one. Once in place, the valve expands and pushes the old valve's 'leaflets' out of the way to allow the new valve to take over.

The procedure is relatively new and is FDA approved for people with certain conditions.

Arnold Schwarzenegger wife

Arnold Schwarzenegger was married to journalist Maria Shriver for 25 years before they announced their separation in May 2011. Just a few days later, Schwarzenegger admitted fathering a love child with a member of their house staff, Mildred Patricia Baena, 14 years prior. Shriver, the niece of President John F. Kennedy, filed for divorce on July 1, 2011, citing irreconcilable differences, though it has yet to be finalized.

Arnold Schwarzenegger children

Arnold and Maria have four children together: Katherine, 28, Christina, 27, Patrick, 24, and Christoper, 21. The actor found out around 2005 that he was also the father of their housekeeper's son Joseph Baena. It was not made public until 2011. Joseph is now also 21, and was born a few days after Christoper.
Despite a teacher pay raise passed by the state legislature, many teachers in Oklahoma are planning to walk out of the classroom on Monday in protest of years of education funding cuts. The question now is, how long will they stay out? And will their districts and the community still support them in their protest?



Before the legislature passed a $6,100 pay raise this week , teachers had been planning a statewide walkout for about a month, fed up with low salaries that put them near the bottom in the nation for compensation. The Oklahoma Education Association had demanded the legislature pass a $10,000 teacher pay raise with a $200 million funding boost to public schools. Teachers had garnered strong community support, with dozens of districts planning to shut down schools indefinitely.

The Oklahoma state legislature requires a three-fourths majority vote in both chambers to pass a tax increasethis package is the first tax increase to pass in the state in nearly three decades. But now that the governor has signed the pay raise into law , districts are unsure if they will remain closed or for how long. Even so, many teachers still say they are planning to walk out of their classrooms, at least on Monday, when there are plans for a rally at the capitol.

The overwhelming sense I have and that Im getting from my colleagues is that the raise is not enough, but more importantly, the funding measures do not adequately replace the deep cuts weve been facing for the past 10 years (or more), said Sara Doolittle, a high school English teacher in Norman, Okla., in an email. I think the movement has grown and taken on a new focus that is less about our own salaries and more about the overall education funding picture in our state.

The Norman school district will be closed on Monday, after officials surveyed its teachers. Due to the significant amount of educators who plan to advocate at the state capitol on Monday for adequate funding for public schools, we will be unable to provide a productive, safe, and secure learning environment, the district said in an email to staff.

At least 35 districts , including Oklahoma City, will still close on Monday, according to local news. While some districts have announced they will reopen on Tuesday, others are prepared to remain closed for longer than one day.

In an email to parents , Mustang schools superintendent Sean McDaniel wrote that schools would be closed Monday and Tuesday. McDaniel said he had advocated for only closing schools on Monday to let teachers protest at the capitol, but when he surveyed the districts teachers, he learned they were prepared to stay out on Tuesday as well. He said he would continue to survey teachers next week, and schools would reopen when a significant percentage of teachers agreed to return.

I was concerned with the passage of the bills that if a walkout occurred anyway, it would gradually erode the incredible community support over time, he wrote. The support I have seen today from our community has been remarkable.

And the Yukon school district will be closed Monday through Wednesday to emphasize the need for a long-term commitment supporting our students and our state, according to a letter penned by the superintendent and the local union head.

At this point in time, even with the new revenue, public education has still not recovered to the 2008 per-pupil funding, while the student population has increased by 60,000 students, the letter said.

The district will evaluate the situation beginning Wednesday to see when it can resume classes.

Members of the Facebook group, Oklahoma Teacher WalkoutThe Time Is Now! have been calling for teachers to still walk out next week, even beyond one day. Alberto Morejon, the groups organizer, facilitated an anonymous survey for teachers, support staff, and administrators. So far, it has nearly 7,000 responses.

About 83 percent said they plan to walk out despite the bills passage. But that might hinge on support from administrators40 percent said they would walk out regardless of district support, while 20 percent said they would not walk out if their districts werent behind them, and 41 percent said they are unsure what they would do.

Meanwhile, Emily Clark, a 4th grade teacher in the Putnam City school district, said her school closed on Monday, but a decision hasnt been made yet for the rest of the week. Regardless of what the school board decides, she said in an email that she plans to use personal days to go to the capitol all week.

The funding package that was passed was historic, Clark said, adding: Sadly, its just not enough. We arent walking out only for our salary, but also for funding for our schools.

The legislation also included only a small increase for support staff, she pointed out. And the state house has already repealed a lodging tax that was part of the funding package and would have generated nearly $50 million in revenue.

Teachers are feeling tired and angry. We have been on an emotional roller-coaster for days and weeks, Clark said. But we will keep fighting!

Image: Teacher Adrien Gates pickets with other educators on a street corner in Norman, Okla., on March 27. Sue Ogrocki/AP
His rise to the top as a nightclub entrepreneur after being brutally stabbed as a teenager has already inspired the popular TV series Underbelly: The Golden Mile.

And John Ibrahim is reportedly set to attain global fame, as an international production company is said to be in talks to create a multi-million dollar series about his headline-making family.

Hollywood star Oscar Isaac is allegedly tipped to play John, the 47-year-old patriarch of one of Sydney's most high-profile families who is often described as the 'King of Kings Cross'.

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Nightclub boss John Ibrahim (L) will reportedly be played by Hollywood star Oscar Isaac (R) in a multi-million dollar TV series about his family

Production company Endemol Shine is involved, with executives and brothers Mark and Carl Fennessy spearheading the project, according to Private Sydney.

'This is for a global audience, not just Australia,' a source told the publication.

'They are a great story. A Lebanese migrant family comes to Australia with their beautiful sons growing up in Sydney during the '70s.'

Rumour has it: John is reportedly set to attain global fame, as an international production company is said to be in talks to create a multi-million dollar series about his headline-making family (pictured, from left, with his brother Michael, mother Wahibi and brother Fadi)

John has reportedly been named as a co-producer for the series about his clan.

The family patriarch's life has already been detailed in the Channel Nine series Underbelly, in which he was portrayed by actor Firass Dirani.

There is certainly plenty of material in John's history to draw on for the series, including a brutal knife attack in his teens.

Global fame? 'They are a great story. A Lebanese migrant family comes to Australia with their beautiful sons growing up in Sydney during the '70s,' a source told Private Sydney

At age 16, three years before he purchased a stake in his first nightclub Tunnel, John was left fighting for his life after coming to the aid of friend Bill Bayeh, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

As he swooped in, a man pulled a kitchen knife from inside a folded newspaper and lunged at the teenager, slicing through his stomach and ripping out his insides.

According to the Daily Telegraph, he had been 'gutted' and needed 5,000 stitches to repair the damage to his liver, intestines and lungs.

The violent altercation left him unconscious in intensive care for three weeks, followed by a further six months of recovery in hospital.

Control: John, 47, has reportedly been named as a co-producer of the show (pictured with his model girlfriend Sarah Budge, 28)

When he returned to the streets news of John's sacrifice earned him admiration.

In a chapter of 'People Of The Cross' John wrote that after leaving hospital he learned that he had 'proven himself' to Bill and that his 'status had been lifted', the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

'The person I'd helped gave me opportunities,' he wrote.

'Wherever we went - in the coffee shops, the clubs, the discos - we'd get everything we wanted because of our association with certain people. At 16 that was a big thrill.'
He's the ripped Bachelor who makes ladies swoon wherever he goes.

But on Friday, former Bachelor Matthew 'Matty J' Johnson decided to think of the 'fellas' out there when the muscle stud posted a shredded selfie.

Taking to Instagram while enjoying the beach at Jervis Bay, the former reality star's showed-off his gym-honed physique.

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'Doin' it for the blokes': Former Bachelor Matthew 'Matty J' Davidson, 30, dedicated a shredded selfie to the 'fellas' on Friday

'This one is for all the blokes out there,' he started in the caption, adding the hashtags #longweekend, #jervisbay and #fridayfeels.

'Happy Friday fellas.'

Despite handsome Matty thinking of the 'fellas', the selfie drew an immediate reaction from the TV personality's sizable female fan base.

'Ok, you can stop being so good looking now,' one Instagram user wrote, which was followed by another: 'I'm sure the ladies will be enjoying this more than the fellas.'

Even girlfriend Laura Byrne, 32, got in on the jokes: 'I'll give you a Friday feel,' she wrote from her Instagram account.

Earlier this month, Laura took to social media to complain about the amount of women who swoon over her genetically-blessed boyfriend.

Got some competition: Laura continues to film the growing crowd around her and at one point appears to get knocked into by an eager fan

Appearing at Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival (VAMFF) together, Matty was swamped by a number of female fans.

Reflecting on her time on The Bachelor, Laura filmed the crowd surrounding Matty before appearing to get pushed aside while he chatting with some adoring fans.

Referencing The Bachelor format, she said: 'just when you thought competing for your man was over.'

Say cheese! Matty can be seen smiling and laughing as he obligingly poses for selfies with his female fans at the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival earlier this month
She proved she is embracing single life when she was recently spotted enjoying a steamy smooch with a mystery man in Miami.

And Tiffany Watson made sure all eyes were on her as she enjoyed the star-studded Madison Club Brunch Party in London on Friday.

The Made in Chelsea star, 24, dressed to impress for the swanky bash, flaunting her endless legs in a thigh-skimming PVC-style mini-skirt.

Endless legs: Tiffany Watson flaunted her leggy frame in PVC mini-skirt as she partied at star-studded brunch in London on Friday

Tiffany caught all the attention in her chic emerald green faux-fur gilet, and wrapped up in a classic black long-sleeve blouse.

Adding height to her statuesque frame in skyscraper black heels, the reality beauty teamed her dramatic look with an elegant black quilted bag.

Tiffany's golden tresses held their natural wave, while glittering accessories amplified her glamorous ensemble.

Clearly a natural beauty, the screen queen accentuated her features with nude make-up at the daytime bash, which saw guests treated to Bulleit Frontier Whiskey cocktails.

Chic style: The Made in Chelsea star, 24, dressed to impress for the swanky bash, flaunting her endless legs in a thigh-skimming PVC-style mini-skirt

Rubbing shoulders: Adding height to her statuesque frame in skyscraper black heels, the reality beauty teamed her dramatic look with an elegant black quilted bag

Wonder in White: Former Saturdays singer Vanessa dazzled in a bell-sleeved white blouse

Smiles: Vanessa's cropped raven locks were slicked straight as she posed for photos at the fancy soiree

Tiffany - who stepped out solo for the bash but did rub shoulders with other celebs such as Vanessa White and Jamie Winston - has been enjoying the single life since splitting up with fellow MIC alum Sam Thompson.

The blonde beauty, who recently jetted to Thailand with pal Frankie Gaff, put on a sizzling display in the two-piece and enjoyed a smooch from a mystery man while soaking up the sun.

Tiffany has been making the most of her newfound freedom since bowing out of Made In Chelsea earlier this year.

Beaming: Tiffany's golden tresses held their natural wave, while glittering accessories amplified her glamorous ensemble

Statuesque: The I'm A Celeb star added height to her frame in a pair of vintage kitten heel shoes

Cheers to that: Vanessa enjoyed some drinks as she amplified her natural beauty with winged eyeliner and a berry lip

In 2018 alone, she has already enjoyed trips to Australia, Mexico, Hong Kong and Thailand, before jetting off to Miami on Thursday.

The reality star recently spilled the beans on the inner-workings of Made In Chelsea and discussed how she felt being forced into sharing every part of her life.

Tiffany left behind a rocky year on the show which saw the demise of her romance with Sam.

Close: Ray Winstone's daught Jamie posed alongside DJ Fat Tony

Shimmering: Jamie glittered in her shimmering silver wrap blouse and chic beret

Happier times: Tiffany left behind a rocky year on the show which saw the demise of her romance with MIC alum Sam Thompson (pictured February 2017)

The blonde reflected on having to share her private life with Sam on the series and admitted everything boiled over between the two in 2016 during a trip to the Maldives when she had to tell him she had slept with someone else.

Speaking to The Sun on Sunday, the reality star revealed she found it 'stressful' to play out that part of her relationship on TV after she was faced with having another cast member reveal her lie to Sam when she wanted to protect him.

She told the publication: 'I said we just kissed when actually we slept together. I had told one of the other cast members and she was going to tell him, so I had no choice but to admit what happened.

'I flew back to London sitting next to Sam and he wouldnt talk to me for the whole 22-hour flight. They didnt film that part but the whole thing was very stressful.

On the decks: Fat Tony controlled the tunes for the celeb shindig

Jubilant: Happily posing for the cameras, Jamie showed off her elegant camel trench coat and unique patterned handbag

I was in love with Sam, we even discussed getting married, and being on TV put pressure on the relationship. There were some things I didnt want to film because I wanted to protect him, but I knew I had to.'

At the end of season 13, Tiffany and Sam decided to go on a Ross and Rachel-style 'break', and agreed to see other people which appeared to be the beginning of the end.

Also at the fancy soiree, former Saturday's star Vanessa White dazzled in a crisp white bell-sleeved blouse and casual acid wash jeans.

Daughters of Ray Winston - Jamie and Lois - also enjoyed dared to impress in their startling ensembles - with Jamie opting for a metallic silver wrap blouse, and Lois rocking a faux-fur coat and rainbow-coloured platform heels.

Quirky style: Jamie's sister Lois couldn't be missed in her faux-fur jacket and striking platforms
TV and radio presenter Rove McManus is known for keeping his family life private.

But in a rare moment of revelation, the 44-year-old has opened up about the joys of being a father to his four-year-old daughter Ruby, in an interview with BW.

He told the publication that he is excited to share his favourite films with the youngster, who he shares with wife of nine-years actress Tasma Walton.

'I can't wait': TV and radio present Rove McManus has opened up about the joys of being a father to his four-year-old daughter Ruby and that he is excited to share his favourite films with the youngster

'Part of the joy of fatherhood is sharing the movies I loved as a child with my daughter and even the ones I loved as an adult, to be honest,' he said.

Rove, who recently returned to Network Ten, said that he has so far exposed her to classic films including The Wizard Of Oz, as well as Disney's Finding Nemo and Aladdin.

He also added: 'I can't wait until she's old enough to get stuck into the Harry Potter Series. I reckon she'll love them.'

Doting dad: 'Part of the joy of fatherhood is sharing the movies I loved as a child with my daughter and even the ones I loved as an adult, to be honest,' he said

Film buff in the making: Rove, who recently returned to Network Ten, said that he has so far exposed Ruby (pictured wearing an 'I love Daddy' wear) to classic films including The Wizard Of Oz, as well as Disney's Finding Nemo and Aladdin

The funnyman also is known for his voice cameo on Finding Nemo as a crab, as well as his Play School's Story Time series.

When asked if little Ruby had an idea about her famous dad's child-friendly roles, he said she is aware of his work.

'But I'm not sure it registers with her what it all actually means yet. I'm fine with that,' Rove added.

Proud parents: He shares daughter Ruby with wife of nine-years actress Tasma Walton

He is best known for his weekly evening talk show Rove Live on Network Ten, which ran from 1999-2009 before he relocated to the US to host Rove LA on Fox8 from 2011-2012.

Rove recently made his return to Network Ten hosting the new panel show Show Me The Movie! with team captains, actress Jane Harber and comedian Joel Creasey.

Show Me The Movie! is on Thursday at 7:30pm on Network Ten.
Dame Tessa Jowell's (left) daughter Jess Mills (centre) has married her partner of six years

Dame Tessa Jowell, who was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer last year, has reason to celebrate thanks to her daughter, Jess Mills.

The 36-year-old wed her partner of six years, fellow musician Finn Vine, in London last week, and brought forward the wedding so the former Labour MP, 70, could attend.

Pulling it off was the ultimate team effort, says Jess, who got engaged to Finn, father of her one-year-old daughter, in November.

It was a day to celebrate life and love and the people so central to our universe.

'We have had a tough year, but [the wedding] was the most powerful example of how joyousness can and must coexist amongst the hard times.

Jess looked pretty in a black and white polka-dot dress.

She shared online pictures of the nuptials, where guests included Matthews wife, bestselling food writer Ella Mills, 26.

Jess Mills with her new husband, musician Finn Vine, on their wedding day. Mills wore a stunning polka dot dress

Tessa Jowell with her daughter (right), daughter-in-law Deliciously Ella (left) and baby granddaughter

Former model Jodie Kidd wears sexy lingerie to boost her mood.

Its amazing how, mentally, if you are feeling a bit low, clothes can change that, says the 39-year-old (right), who is currently enjoying what she calls a close friendship with dashing former Marine Joseph Bates.

Former model Jodie Kidd during London Fashion Week. She wears sexy lingerie to boost her mood

Or a beautiful set of undies or something where you can look at yourself and think: I look good. Especially when youre wearing gorgeous lingerie. It really helps!

It might also help pull in the punters at her new pub, The Half Moon Inn, in West Sussex.

Rising star Frankie Herbert at a VIP dinner in London last year

Walking down the catwalk in front of the Queen at London Fashion Week in February, blue-blooded mannequin Frankie Herbert instantly caught the eye of the fashion elite.

Now, the 22-year-old niece of the Earl of Carnarvon, whose Highclere Castle in Hampshire was the set of Downton Abbey, is fast becoming a rising star.

Unveiled as the face of trendy London label Coco Fennell, I hear the daughter of the Queens confidant, Harry Herbert, and the beguiling Chica, is also working on a quirky fashion line of her own.

Kicking off her career in true millennial style (she was scouted from her Instagram account), Frankie walked for Dolce & Gabbana in Milan last month and also starred in their latest campaign  her first ever.

Id never been to Milan, she recalls.

Then, suddenly, Im being asked to walk alongside all these really cool kids doing interesting things. And I was like: Omg, I cant believe they want me there, too. Thats crazy. 

Brought up in Hampshire, privately-educated Frankie (right) now shares a flat with two friends in Brixton, South London, munching on takeaway pizza.

Friends of the 6ft beauty attribute her being single to a busy work life.

But Frankie could be forgiven for not prioritising love, as her parents are getting divorced after 25 years.

In this age of Tinder and online dating, could former Tory Cabinet minister Norman Tebbit be helping to revive a more civilised form of match-making?

Lord Tebbit tells me he helped bring about an arranged marriage for his only daughter, Alison, after her first union collapsed.

I and another friend of mine were aware of a Danish chap, Poul, whos about her age, says Tebbit.

His wife had deserted him and left him with teenage children to bring up; my daughter brought up her kids through her failed marriage.

'They were both a bit lost and didnt know what to do.

We arranged that the two would be seated next to each other at a dinner. In no time at all, they were married.

Legendary Sixties snapper Terry ONeill has set his sights on Prince Harrys fiancee, Meghan Markle.

Ive done the Queen, Princess Anne, the Duke of Edinburgh and Prince Andrew. Id love to photograph Meghan Markle, ONeill, 79, tells me.

Shes an interesting woman. Shes fresh and frank and honest and thats what I like in a subject. You can see it in her face. Harry will have himself a great wife.

Bruce Robinson at the premiere of The Rum Diary in New York in 2011

Withnail and I director Bruce Robinson admits hes finally caved in after fighting to keep the Eighties cult classic off the West End stage.

Theyve paid me a s***load of dough for the rights, so I said OK! Im getting old and thought: F*** it, go on then, Bruce, 71, tells me succinctly.

In 2006, Bruce battled to keep a production starring Jude Law out of the West End.

Ive sold the rights to George Waud, he adds, referring to the husband of celebrity make-up artist Charlotte Tilbury.

Hes a nice bloke. Absolutely loaded.
A social media campaign is encouraging visitors to return to Tathra as the NSW coastal town recovers from a bushfire.

A Facebook page and associated tag called "TathraStrong" was set up by local businessman Andy Willis in the aftermath of the March 18 blaze.

Mr Willis noticed "scattered" posts about the recovery, and recognised a need for a central group for residents to share positive stories.

"It's a beautiful place and if people really want to help come and visit, buy a coffee, a meal or a beer - it's an amazing place," Mr Willis told AAP on Friday.
A British man has been charged after an alleged one-punch attack outside a kebab shop in Sydney's eastern suburbs.

The 35-year-old victim was standing outside the Coogee shop about 3.10am Friday when he was allegedly punched in what police called an "unprovoked assault".

He fell and struck his head on the pavement, before being taken to St Vincent's Hospital in a stable condition.

The 22-year-old British national accused of assaulting the man fled the scene, but was apprehended by witnesses until police arrived to arrest him.

He was interviewed at Maroubra Police Station and charged with assault occasioning bodily harm.

The man is expected to appear at Waverley Local Court in April.
Cancer con artist Belle Gibson is yet to pay her $410,000 fine for duping Aussie consumers, six months after it was imposed by the Federal Court.

The fake wellness guru was fined in September for five contraventions of Australian Consumer Law, and had a week to ask the courts if she could pay in instalments.

But inquiries this week revealed the woman - described scathingly at the time by Federal Court Justice Debra Mortimer as having a "relentless obsession with herself" - has failed to pay up.

Gibson claimed she had brain cancer, healed herself with natural remedies and lied to well-meaning consumers that she would donate money from her Whole Pantry app and book sales to various charities, including a boy with inoperable brain cancer.

A spokesman for Consumer Affairs Victoria, which brought the action, says it is considering all legal options.

"The Federal Court has strict procedures regarding enforcement of its orders. Consumer Affairs Victoria is following this process while considering all legal options available in respect to the orders," he told AAP.

Enforcement may include issuing an order to seize and sell property or possessing land or goods.

Although Gibson received $440,500 from sales of her app and book, she only donated about $10,000 to charity.

She and her company Inkerman Road Nominees - which was placed in liquidation - only began making the small donations after the media began questioning her claims.

In handing down her judgment, Justice Mortimer said Gibson not only tried to garner sympathy for her own claimed cancer, but promoted herself as generous and selfless so people would buy her products.

The judge said her failure to apologise or attend any of her court hearings showed she again placed her own interests ahead of others.

"If there is one theme or pattern which emerges through her conduct, it is her relentless obsession with herself and what best serves her interests," she said.

Even after being put on notice during an interview with publisher Penguin - who offered her a book advance - that there were likely to be real questions about her charitable giving, Gibson continued the lies.

At the time, Consumer Affairs Victoria acting director Elizabeth Lanyon said the penalty showed that those seeking to profit from deceptive, misleading or unconscionable conduct would be held to account.

The maximum penalty Gibson could have faced was $1.1 million.
A man has been caught driving at more than six times the legal limit west of Brisbane.

The 58-year-old man recorded a blood alcohol level of .309 after being stopped for a roadside breath test at Redbank Plains Road at Redbank Plains around 2pm on Thursday.

He was one of a string of motorists caught across the state with high range alcohol readings during the first day of Queensland police's Easter road safety campaign.

A 21-year-old Townsville man was also caught more than four times over the limit after police saw him riding his bicycle down the middle of a street and almost falling over.
VIC FIRE REFORMS VOTED DOWN AT THE ELEVENTH HOUR

WHAT HAPPENED?

* Upper house began debating fire services bill at 7pm on Thursday.

* Labor looked likely to have numbers with support of crossbench and absence of conservative Rachel Carling-Jenkins due to illness.

* Debate rages overnight.

* Pairing arranged for MPs Bernie Finn and Craig Ondarchie for religious reasons at 12am on Good Friday.

* Two Labor MPs - Jaala Pulford and Philip Dalidakis - abstain from vote so numbers remain matched.

* At the bill's third reading, Mr Finn and Mr Ondarchie return to chamber and vote it down.

* Bill defeated 19-18.

WHAT THEY SAID:

* "Those people who prayed in front of us and begged us to let them go returned after we'd given them a pair on the twelfth hour, right at the end. The death knell of this legislation was when they smugly returned to the parliament to betray parliamentary convention" - Leader of Legislative Council Gavin Jennings.

* "Am so proud of my Upper House colleagues and the MPs who stood up for our CFA today and defeated the Andrews Govt plan to smash it up. The Liberal Nationals will always stand up for volunteers against this bully of a Premier" - Opposition leader Matthew Guy, in a tweet.

* "This is totally unprecedented. Two Liberal MP's asked for (what turned out to be) fake pairs for 'religious observance'. They hid in their offices till Labor MP's who paired them left the building. They then snuck back in for the vote. Never ever happened before" - Attorney General Martin Pakula, in a tweet.

* "We saw an act of treachery in the Victorian Parliament today with two Liberal MPs returning to the chamber to thwart a vote on long overdue rights to firefighters compensation" - Victorian Greens spokesperson for Emergency Services, Samantha Dunn.

* "This the dirtiest political trick I have ever seen in my 20 years around parliaments ... They have completely lost the trust and respect of the crossbench" - Reason MP Fiona Patten.
This week, a $29 million donation from cryptocurrency startup Ripple funded every open campaign on education crowdfunding platform DonorsChoose.org benefitting nearly 30,000 teachers and approximately one million students across the country.

On Tuesday nights episode of The Late Show, Stephen Colbert announced the gift, which is the largest single donation made since the site launched in 2000. Colbert, who serves on the DonorsChoose.org board of directors, made his own contribution to the site in 2015 by funding all open requests of teachers from his home state of South Carolina.

With the money, which was donated in the form of Ripples XRP cryptocurrency , DonorsChoose.org is fulfilling teachers requests for books, lab equipment, art supplies, and more.

Founded in 2012, Ripple uses blockchain technology to help banks and financial institutions make global payments. Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse had supported DonorsChoose.org since its beginnings in founder and CEO Charles Bests classroom. Thats why Best made the decision to email him with a request for Ripple to cover every open project on the site, according to The Chronicle of Philanthropy .

We all have so many teachers to thank in our lives and were thrilled to pay it forward, Monica Long, senior vice president of marketing for Ripple, tweeted on Wednesday .

In recognition of the donation, DonorsChoose.org launched a social media campaign under #BestSchoolDay . Teachers whose projects were funded have taken to Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to share their gratitude:

I logged into my Donors Choose account and saw that my project was fully funded!!! @Ripple is allowing my students to experience a week-long trip to Atlanta and Alabama to visit HBCUs. I cant believe it. Thank you!! #BestSchoolDay #HBCU  Joe Somerville (@joesomerville) March 28, 2018

Thank you @ripple for funding our Donors Choose project Next Generation Scientists! We cant wait to get our new, science experiment materials! #BestSchoolDay #hornetsr2 @Ripple_XRP1 pic.twitter.com/6TfHoDk6BV  Tiffany Acree (@tiffany_acree) March 28, 2018

As teachers continue to spend hundreds of their own dollars a year on school supplies, many have turned to sites like DonorsChoose.org to fund their efforts. Last year, we reported on a New Jersey teacher who raised $4,500 on GoFundMe and bought Christmas presents for every student at her school. And in 2017, DonorsChoose.org launched a life essentials program to support teachers requests for basic necessitieslike clothing, deodorant, and toothpasteto give to their students.

Image courtesy of Pablo .
England's batting shortcomings have been cruelly exposed again by New Zealand's pacemen on the first day of the second Test in Christchurch.

The tourists were teetering at 5-150 by tea after being sent in on Friday, with Ben Stokes and Jonny Bairstow facing a salvage job after the top order's miserable summer continued.

Subtle movement from Tim Southee (3-37) and Trent Boult (2-43) were enough to dislodge batsmen whose feet were too often rooted to the Hagley Oval pitch.

England at least didn't repeat their capitulation for 58 in the first Test at Eden Park but New Zealand have made a compelling start in their bid to clinch the two-Test series.

Three England wickets fell in the space of nine balls soon after lunch, the first ending a 55-run stand between dogged opener Mark Stoneman (35) and captain Joe Root (37).

Root had looked in control before inexplicably playing around a straight one to be bowled by Southee.

Malan departed for a lazy golden duck in Boult's following over, trapped plumb LBW.

An awkward 111-ball vigil from Stoneman ended when he snicked Southee to second slip, leaving Stokes (25 not out) and Bairstow (30 not out) to curtail their natural instincts in an unbroken stand of 56.

Their partnership is vital, with England's tail lacking any real batting prowess after Moeen Ali, Chris Woakes and Craig Overton were dropped from the team who lost the first Test by an innings and 49 runs.

In their place came batsman James Vince, debut spinner Jack Leach and quick Mark Wood.

England were 2-70 at lunch after Vince struggled to reach 18 in an innings marked by three LBW reviews, the last of which was successful for Southee.

Alastair Cook was earlier clean bowled by first-Test destroyer Boult for two to raise further questions about the veteran opener's international future.

Batting great Cook has scored 19 runs in his four innings since the magnificent double-century against Australia in Melbourne three months ago.

New Zealand's lone change was Ish Sodhi's recall in place of injured fellow-legspinner Todd Astle.
Victoria Police have already nabbed two speeding drivers just hours into their five-day Easter holidays road operation.

A motorbike rider clocked 142km/h in a 60km/h zone in Port Melbourne on Friday morning and has been charged on summons and fined.

Meanwhile, a 19-year-old P-plate driver was caught 53km/h over the speed limit on the Monash Fwy and had four passengers, which did not meet his licence allowance.

The P-plater had his car impounded and is expected to be charged on summons for driving-related offences.

The statewide operation will continue until Monday.
Kangaroo meat will keep going to the dogs, as the Victorian Government extends its pet food trial of the native animal for another year to assess the program.

The marsupials' carcasses - which would otherwise be left to decompose or be buried - have been turned into pet food since 2014, when the trial started, to reduce waste.

A second statewide kangaroo population survey will be conducted this year and the trial has been extended until March 31, 2019 in 16 local government areas.
A Byron Bay police officer has been blasted by the police watchdog for being too violent after he baton-struck a disoriented teenager more than 15 times.

The head of the independent Law Enforcement Conduct Commission, Michael Adams, criticised the officer's violent use of force during a hearing in Sydney on Thursday.

He questioned the number of blows delivered, along with officer E's failure to consider his actions whilst he was striking the boy.

The officer's motive appeared to be to inflict pain, he said.

The commission is examining the conduct of officers involved in the apprehension and detention of the drug-affected teenager.

Police arrested the teenager, who was found naked, sweating profusely and pacing up and down in a Byron Bay laneway, in the early hours of January 11.

Bystander video taken from a nearby balcony shows a police officer, known as E for legal reasons, striking the 16-year-old more than 15 times as he lay on the ground surrounded by up to three other officers.

Officer E said he began using his baton after earlier attempts to subdue the 16-year-old using pepper spray and a Taser had failed.

He said the boy - labelled AO by the commission - tried to get up after a baton blow to his knee had brought him to the ground and he also resisted officers trying to handcuff him.

"He needed to be compliant. He needed to be restrained," he said

But LECC Chief Commissioner Adams questioned whether the officer had warned the boy that his attempts to resist being handcuffed would be met with baton blows.

He said the number of strikes appeared excessive given the boy's mental state and the number of officers at the scene.

Officer E said the baton blows were assisting the other officers, who were struggling to handcuff AO as he wriggled around and pulled his arms under his body.

"This guy had been sprayed, had been Tasered twice and that's why I deemed that ... I was of the opinion that it needed more," he said.

He rejected the commissioner's suggestion that other methods of control may have been more effective and said despite his small size compared to the officers, the boy was strong.

"He was very violent, at no point did I feel we had control of him," he said.

Officer E rejected claims he had sworn at and threatened bystanders for videoing the arrest.

"I was the officer who approached people ... I would have liked footage of it," he said.
Today's birthday, March 31: Australian politician Kelly O'Dwyer (1977 - ).

As Minister for Women Kelly O'Dwyer is a fierce advocate for equality and became the first woman ever to have a child while in cabinet, so it's unsurprising she easily overcame a sexist campaign during her early entry to politics.

Born in 1977, O'Dwyer grew up in the scenic town of Emerald in Victoria's Dandenong Ranges.

After graduating from Melbourne University with honours in Law and an Arts degree majoring in history, O'Dwyer began her career in the legal sector, specialising in corporate law at the well established firm Freehills.

But in 2004 she swapped the law for politics, taking up a spot in the office of then-Federal Treasurer Peter Costello, first as an advisor and then working her way up to become a senior advisor.

After the Liberals lost the 2007 election O'Dwyer left politics and moved into a role as an executive at the National Australia Bank.

But when her former boss Costello decided to retire in 2009, it was the youthful O'Dwyer who he backed as his replacement for the historically strong seat of Higgins.

There were some who were unhappy with the young married woman being considered as a candidate for what was typically considered a "leadership seat", claiming she was unsuitable and that the role would damage her marriage.

The whispers prompted several senior Liberal MPs to hit back at the sexist campaign, with O'Dwyer winning preselection for the seat before she was convincingly elected in 2009 and again in 2016.

O'Dwyer went on to be appointed Minister for Revenue and Financial Services and later Minister for Women and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service in the Turnbull government

She made history as the first female cabinet minister to give birth while in the role, welcoming her second child with her husband in 2017, and has recently called on the coalition to do more to help women stand for parliament.
People with hospital insurance that does not offer full cover for mental health treatment will be able to upgrade their cover and access mental health services without having to wait two months.

Until Sunday, April 1, as a result of having either a basic or medium private hospital cover, many patients needing urgent access to mental health services have been hit with big bills.

If they opted to upgrade their policy, they were subject to a two-month waiting period.

"This will now change and it will be available straight away," federal Health Minister Greg Hunt said.

The minister said the change, outlined in the mid-year Budget review last year, would encourage younger people to take up private health insurance.
Shoppers in NSW will have at least three years to use gift cards under new laws that come into effect this weekend.

From Saturday, retailers will be forced to put a minimum three-year expiry date on cards sold in the state - triple the usual 12-month limit.

Businesses will also be banned from applying fees after the cards have been bought, which reduces the remaining balance.

The NSW government believes nearly one in 10 gift card recipients in the state don't use the full balance in time, meaning the changes could see up to $60 million a year back in the hands of shoppers.

"This is all about giving consumers confidence that when they buy gift cards for friends or relatives, they're getting value for money," Minister for Innovation and Better Regulation Matt Kean said.

The new laws prompted Woolworths to scrap expiry dates on its gift cards entirely, starting Saturday across Australia, putting pressure on other retailers to follow suit.

Consumer advocacy group Choice estimates Australians spend about $2.5 billion a year on gift cards but about $200 million is believed lost every year.

A 2014 Choice survey found one third of respondents had lost the full value of at least one gift card in the previous three years.

Cards bought in NSW before March 31 will have the same expiry date and terms and conditions that applied at the time of purchase.
Moscow will expel two Australian diplomats in retaliation for Canberra booting out two of its diplomats.

Australia's ambassador to Russia Peter Tesch was among the diplomats summoned to the Russian foreign ministry on Friday to be told of the expulsions.

The diplomatic mission in Moscow has 10 staff.

On Wednesday, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop had announced two Russian spies had been given six days to leave Australia, in a show of solidarity with the UK over the poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury.

In total, Russia will expel 59 diplomats from 23 countries following on the expulsion of 23 British and 60 American diplomats earlier in the week.
A combination photo showing Florida school shooting survivor David Hogg (L) and Fox News host Laura Ingraham, who accused him of "whining" about not being accepted into several colleges

A Fox News TV host, facing blowback with advertisers, apologized Thursday for criticizing a teenager who survived a Florida school shooting that left 17 people dead.

Laura Ingraham had accused David Hogg, one of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students pushing for tighter gun regulations after the rampage, of "whining" over not being accepted into several colleges.

"David Hogg Rejected By Four Colleges To Which He Applied and whines about it. (Dinged by UCLA with a 4.1 GPA...totally predictable given acceptance rates.)" Ingraham wrote on Twitter Wednesday.

Hogg, who has 628,000 followers on Twitter, tweeted a list of Ingraham's top advertisers, urging people to contact them to complain.

Several advertisers announced they were dumping Ingraham, including TripAdvisor, Wayfair and Nutrish, while Nestle is also reportedly ceasing to buy ads on her program.

Ingraham took to Twitter to apologize.

"On reflection, in the spirit of Holy Week, I apologize for any upset or hurt my tweet caused him or any of the brave victims of Parkland," she tweeted.

But Hogg dismissed Ingraham's reversal as an effort to keep advertisers rather than a sincere expression of remorse.

"An apology in an effort just to save your advertisers is not enough. I will only accept your apology only if you denounce the way your network has treated my friends and I in this fight. It's time to love thy neighbor, not mudsling at children," he tweeted.

Hogg, a 17-year-old, took refuge in a closet during the school shooting, and despite the terrifying circumstances, filmed interviews with fellow students while in hiding, which went viral.

He became one of the most visible student leaders in the movement calling for stricter firearms regulations, which has been driven by Parkland survivors.

The teen has been attacked and harassed online, and even accused of being a "crisis actor" paid to travel to tragedies to propagate liberal viewpoints.

More than a million Americans turned out on Saturday for nationwide protests to demand action on gun control.
VPNs give users in China a way to see blocked websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Google and Western news outlets

Chinese people and foreign firms are girding for a weekend deadline that will curb the use of unlicensed software to circumvent internet controls, as the government plugs holes in its "Great Firewall".

A virtual private network (VPN) can tunnel through the country's sophisticated barrier of online filters to access the global internet.

VPNs give users a way to see blocked websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Google and Western news outlets, as well as certain business network tools such as timesheets, email and directories.

But new government regulations unveiled last year sent chills among users of the software, with a March 31 deadline for companies and individuals to only use government-approved VPNs.

Currently, many foreign companies have their own VPN servers in locations outside of China. But in the future, dedicated lines can only be provided by China's three telecom operators.

Critics have slammed the new policy as a revenue grab that will eliminate cheaper VPN options and make internet users more vulnerable to surveillance.

But some companies are still planning to comply.

"We will apply for a VPN line with (the government)," the chief executive of a foreign-owned technology company told AFP.

"As a company that is globally-focused based in Beijing, I think that's the best option... because we don't want to break the rules or have our VPN access disrupted," she said, requesting anonymity.

Some embassies in Beijing experienced disruptions to their communications due to restrictions on VPN usage late last year, prompting the European Union delegation to send a letter to the government to complain, diplomatic sources told AFP.

American Chamber of Commerce Shanghai President Kenneth Jarrett warned that foreign companies and their employees could "bear the brunt of the new policies".

"Foreign companies, especially entrepreneurs and smaller companies rely on overseas platforms such as Google Analytics and Google Scholar," Jarrett told AFP.

"Limiting access to affordable VPNs will make it harder for these companies to operate efficiently and just adds to the frustration of doing business in China."

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has dismissed concerns that using state-approved providers could jeopardise the security of private data, saying they "are not able to see information related to your business".

- 'At the mercy of regulators' -

A member of China-based anti-censorship group GreatFire.org, which tracks internet restrictions, said the new rules are aimed at wiping out low-cost Chinese VPN providers and increasing control over access to information.

"Are foreign companies at the mercy of Chinese regulators? Yes, probably. Will there be more surveillance? Absolutely," said the member, who uses the alias Charlie Smith.

Under the new licensing regulations, it is unclear whether companies or individuals will be punished for using unauthorised VPNs, or if the software will be blocked.

But on December 21, Chinese citizen Wu Xiangyang from the south Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region was given a five-and-a-half-year prison sentence and 500,000 yuan ($76,000) fine.

Wu "illegally profited" from setting up VPN servers and selling software "without obtaining relevant business licenses", according to a news site managed by the Supreme People's Procuratorate.

It was the most severe known VPN-related conviction.

Last September, a 26-year-old man from Guangdong province was sentenced to nine months in prison in a similar case.

Samm Sacks, who researches China's technology policy at the US-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, said it is likely that China will be lenient to most foreign companies.

"We will probably see selective enforcement. So far, there have not been many foreign companies that have experienced problems with their company VPNs," Sacks said.

"It just adds a new layer of uncertainty at a time when foreign companies are already facing a host of challenges to doing business in China," she said.

In the European Chamber of Commerce in China's 2017 survey of its members, companies reported suffering from restricted internet and slow and unstable connections in China, before new VPN restrictions were announced.

"Poor internet connectivity not only damages China's efforts to portray itself as an innovative society, it also impacts overall productivity," chamber president Mats Harborn told AFP.

"Some reported losses of more than 20 percent of their annual revenue as a result."

- 'No, we don't sell VPNs' -

Earlier this month, in the southern trade hub of Guangzhou, a small shop with the letters "VPN" painted in red on its wall said they no longer offered them.

"No, we don't sell VPNs," a Chinese shopkeeper said curtly, refusing to explain why.

But it was business as usual for a nearby store that was licensed to sell VPNs from state-owned telecommunications operator China Telecom.

"We've had no problems. Our clients are mostly Chinese and African traders who want to keep in touch using Whatsapp," a technician said.
US artist Jeff Koons poses during an interview with AFP in Hong Kong

To his critics his work is overrated, overpriced and obvious. To his fans, he is a living legend -- the incarnation of the Pop Art movement. Either way, at 63, Jeff Koons says he just wants to focus on creating the art he wants to make.

Koons' works are brash, voluptuous and carry astronomical price tags but that hasn't dimmed appetite for his pieces in Asia, where he is presenting at Hong Kong's edition of Art Basel -- a top event for wealthy collectors looking to snap up new status symbols.

The American pioneer has brought some of his signature mirror-polished steel sculptures to the fair as well as his Gazing Ball series, in which shiny blue spheres are inserted into reproductions of classic European masterpieces, including works by Rembrandt and Tintoretto.

Koons set an auction record for the highest price paid for any work by a living artist in 2013 when his orange "Balloon Dog" fetched US$58.4 million at Christie's in New York.

But he insists the monetary value attached to his art is just an "abstraction" to him.

"Im flattered that my works are perceived by society as having some relevant value. But the beauty to have impact with real individuals, that they can come across their own potential, thats what really brings me joy," he tells AFP, impeccably dressed in a sharp dark blue suit.

His work is polarising. In January, artists, gallery owners and officials in Paris signed an open letter objecting to a planned 12-metre tall "Bouquet of Tulips" memorial designed by Koons as a tribute to the victims of the terror attacks on the city in November 2015.

US artist Jeff Koons poses in front of his artwork 'Bluebird Planter' at the Art Basel fair in Hong Kong

The letter described Koons as an "emblem of industrial art which is spectacular and speculative".

Koons would not comment on controversy, but when asked how he deals with criticism, he said he tries to focus on his work.

"I think that people always find honesty very shocking. So when you are honest and just make the things that you want, it reveals something about human nature," he said.

- Facing failure -

Pennsylvania-born Koons' works are bright, extravagant and large-scale.

He seems unafraid of controversy -- he gained notoriety for a series portraying himself and his porn star ex-wife Ilona Staller in explicit poses.

Today Koons is relaxed and lively at Hong Kong's David Zwirner gallery where some of his Gazing Ball pieces are on display, their glazed surfaces reflecting every corner of the exhibition space.

"Reflected surface affirms the viewer, affirms you, right here, right now, but it also affirms everything else in the world," says Koons.

Koons says surrealist art has been a means for self-exploration since he was a teenager

He describes the sapphire-coloured spheres as "objects trying to communicate with the viewers". His balloon animals are inspired by what it means to be a living, breathing organism, he says, with art a process of accepting oneself and others.

Koons says surrealist art has been a means for self-exploration since he was a teenager.

"Once you can go inward and find where you accept yourself, automatically you want to go outside, and you want to go to the external world. Thats the journey that art can take you (on)," he says.

Koons describes technology as a "wonderful tool" and recently partnered with Snapchat to create a Pokemon-Go type game in which users hunt virtual Koons sculptures around the world.

He says he is working on a virtual reality project to be released in a year's time but warns young artists not to see tech as a quick creative fix, rather a means to express something "metaphysical".

Most importantly, he says they must believe in themselves, recalling how when he started out there was no audience for his art and he had to move back in with his parents.

"Ive always been a risk taker, because I believe in going for something. I believe in the excitement, the stimulation, of trying to achieve something," he says.

"If there was failure, I really didn't have any option other than to go for it."
President Teodoro Obiang Nguema, who seized power in the oil-rich former Spanish colony in 1979, rejected the claim that a detainee was tortured to death, saying he had been ill

Equatorial Guinea carried out a wave of arrests and torture after an attempted coup last December, activists say.

Several members of the opposition Citizens for Innovation (CI) party among 38 who were held at the main police station in the capital Malabo -- which they dubbed "Guantanamo" -- told AFP of alleged abuse during their detention from December 28 to January 3.

"We were tortured for a week," said party activist Ernesto Obama Ondo, 42. "I received 150 lashes every day," he said in Malabo. "My buttocks were in shreds."

Mireille Buila Euka, 24, also recounted being lashed, with her hands and feet bound. "I was whipped 100 times the first night," she said.

The party has said that during their trial for "rebellion" in February, around 30 of the 147 defendants could not even stand up because of the alleged torture they endured at "Guantanamo".

Many were rounded up following a failed December 24 coup in the tiny West African state, it has said.

The authorities say the attempted overthrow was planned internally and carried out by foreign agents -- about 30 foreign armed men were arrested just inside neighbouring Cameroon.

A small state of 1.2 million people, awash with oil but mired in poverty and a reputation for corruption, Equatorial Guinea has been ruled with an iron fist by Teodoro Obiang Nguema since 1979.

He seized power by ousting his own uncle, first post-independence president Francisco Macias Nguema, who was shot by firing squad.

Obiang has since seen off at least half a dozen assassination or coup attempts. He won a fifth seven-year term in 2016 with nearly 94 percent of votes.

Some CI activists had been arrested before the attempted coup after trying to stage a rally in Aconibe, the birthplace of party leader Gabriel Nse Obiang Obono, ahead of legislative elections last November.

Clashes with police left three officers injured, with assailants seizing their service weapons from them, according to court documents.

- 'Who was tortured?' -

Equatorial Guinea's ambassador to France, Miguel Oyono Ndong Mifumu, dismissed the allegations of torture in an interview in Paris with AFP.

"Who was tortured?" he asked. "Torture is a word that's used when you want to tarnish someone's image.

"The (activists) weren't arrested because they were members of a political party (but) for sedition, disorderly conduct, defying authority and serious injuries" during the November clashes, he said.

Likening CI activists to "paramilitaries", Ndong Mifumu said around 200 people "beat up" police officers.

The 147 activists tried in late February faced the death penalty over the events in Aconibe.

The court ordered the party dissolved and sentenced 21 members including the CI's sole MP, Jesus Mitogo, to more than 30 years in jail, according to the party.

Obama Ondo said he and others were hospitalised with injuries suffered during their detention, an assertion confirmed to AFP by staff at Malabo's La Paz hospital.

It was at the hospital that Susana Esono, who is around 30, said she was nearly killed.

She was admitted with a broken arm and rib she said resulted from being beaten with an iron bar during her arrest on December 28.

"After two days at the La Paz hospital, a man... gave me an injection and I fainted," she said, adding that while still on a drip, she was taken to "Guantanamo" where the IV was removed.

- Dead detainee 'had been ill' -

The CI says another opposition activist, Santiago Ebee Ela, 41, was killed while in detention in mid-January.

Obiang has rejected the claim, saying Ela had been ill but promising an investigation into the death.

Lawyer Fabian Nsue and human rights watchdog Amnesty International said no such probe has begun.

Nsue said the victims were planning legal action but held out little hope for justice, telling AFP that the government aimed to "have done with CI".

Human Rights Watch (HRW) wants the United Nations to open an investigation, Sarah Saadoun, a researcher for the New York-based rights group, told AFP by email.

Amnesty researcher Marta Colmer said that since the November elections, "we have seen an increase in the number of reports of torture of members of the opposition."

The authorities' "unwillingness to collaborate makes it difficult for international organisations to verify human rights violations in the country," she added.

burs-cc/gd/ri/ceb
A couple watch television on Elephanta island near Mumbai, where hundreds of villagers have had mains electricity installed in their houses for the first time

Deepa Bhoir used to sit in darkness outside her island home and stare at Mumbai glowing in the distance. Now she stays up late watching soap operas -- one of millions of Indians whose lives have been transformed by a drive to get power to every corner of the country.

Bhoir and her husband Sasuram are among hundreds of villagers on the UNESCO world heritage-listed island of Elephanta to have had mains electricity installed in their houses for the first time.

Local officials hope tourists, who take a short boat ride from the bustle of Mumbai to visit the island's famed fifth century caves, will now spend more time and money there, boosting local businesses and jobs.

"We've waited decades for this and we're so happy. Now I can watch all my favourite shows without any interruptions. The TV is almost always on!" Bhoir tells AFP, grinning.

The island is renowned for its temple caves dating back more than 1,500 years and is home to around 1,200 people.

More than 16,000 Indian villages have been electrified since Prime Minister Narendra Modi was elected in 2014, according to government data

But despite living just 10 kilometres (six miles) from India's financial capital, islanders have spent much of their lives without power.

"Lacking electricity was depressing and we faced numerous hardships," says Sasuram, explaining that he and Deepa would often sleep outside during the summer to try to keep cool.

"It was sweltering inside. We would lie and look at the glittering lights of Mumbai and long for electricity to live fuller and more satisfying lives," the 54-year-old adds.

- Boredom -

Residents used kerosene lamps and candles until the late 1980s when they received diesel generators that provided intermittent electricity between 7:00 pm and 10:00 pm every night.

They were, however, unreliable and expensive and the limited supply meant the Bhoirs' two children regularly did their homework by candlelight.

Deepa and Sasuram were often unable to charge their phones or other electrical devices. They felt cut off from the world and battled boredom.

Local officials on Elephanta hope tourists, who take a short boat ride from the bustle of Mumbai to visit the island's famed fifth century caves, will now spend more time and money there, boosting local businesses and jobs

"We would go to sleep early because there was nothing much to do. But now we stay awake to midnight or 1 am watching our favourite shows. It's a welcome change," says Deepa, 43.

More than 16,000 Indian villages have been electrified since Prime Minister Narendra Modi was elected in 2014, according to government data.

There are still an estimated 33 million households without electricity and Modi wants them all to have power by the end of the year.

A meter was installed in the Bhoirs' home last month after the Maharashtra state government completed its 250-million-rupee ($3.8-million) electrification project for the island.

Engineers spent three months laying a seven-kilometre (four mile) undersea cable that connects a mainland substation to transformers in each Elephanta village.

In brightly painted homes, ceiling fans whirl at high speed as light bulbs illuminate dark rooms struggling to keep out the stifling early summer heat.

"It's been 70 years since India's independence and we've been promised electricity for so long. I'm just glad to see it before I die," says 69-year-old Bhagwan Tali.

- Embracing change -

Elephanta, also known as Gharapuri, meaning "the city of caves" is a world away from Mumbai. Monkeys outnumber humans and there are no cars on the island, just a miniature railway.

The only shops are stalls selling snacks and trinkets for tourists.

"My business is weak as most cold drinks, ice creams and chocolates can't be sold," says 52-year-old shopkeeper Surekha Bhagat, eagerly waiting for her stall to be hooked up to the grid.

Elephanta has one school -- for children under 16 -- and there is no hospital, leaving the elderly and sick vulnerable during a medical emergency.

In brightly painted homes, ceiling fans now whirl at high speed as light bulbs illuminate dark rooms struggling to keep out the stifling early summer heat

Every week, Tulsa Bhoir makes the one-hour boat trip to Mumbai to buy fresh vegetables, milk and other foodstuffs. The 43-year-old hopes electricity will spur infrastructure.

"I'm excited to see how our island changes for the better," she tells AFP.

Devendra Fadnavis -- the chief minister of Maharashtra state, of which Mumbai is the capital -- has said electricity means there is "tremendous scope for tourism" on Elephanta.

Every day several thousand people visit the island's seven caves, which contain ancient Hindu carvings, but leave before the last boat at 5:30 pm and rarely venture into the villages.

Officials hope electricity will persuade them to spend the night. Some locals -- including Sachin Bhagat, who wants banks and ATMs to open on Elephanta -- are already planning to offer their modest houses as homestays.

"The villagers aren't afraid of change but are embracing it," the 34-year-old says. "We want development so that our lives will become much easier."
A South Korean warship conducts an operation in 2013 near the tiny chain of rocky islands known as Dokdo in Korea and Takeshima in Japan, in the Sea of Japan (East Sea)

South Korea summoned Tokyo's ambassador on Friday to protest over new educational guidelines requiring high school students to be taught that disputed islands belong to Japan.

Seoul has controlled the islets in the Sea of Japan (East Sea) since 1945, when Tokyo's brutal colonial rule on the peninsula ended.

Tokyo also claims the islands, known in Dokdo in South Korea and Takeshima in Japan, accusing Seoul of occupying them illegally.

South Korea and Japan are both market economies, democracies and US allies, and both are threatened by nuclear-armed North Korea, but their relationship is heavily strained by historical and territorial issues.

Tokyo on Friday approved guidelines requiring high school textbooks and teachers to tell pupils that the islands are Japan's, mirroring measures applied last year in elementary and middle schools.

The guidelines, which are available on the ministry's website, say schools should "introduce issues involving our country's territories, such as the Takeshima islands and Northern Territories, being our country's own territories".

The assertion was "unjustifiable", Seoul's foreign ministry said in a statement, saying Dokdo was an "inalienable" part of South Korea's territory.

"We strongly condemn it and sternly call for its immediate withdrawal," it added, saying Tokyo was trying to "instil a distorted historical perception about Dokdo into future generations".

Japan is embroiled in a separate dispute with China over another set of islands, about which the guidelines said schools should "cover the Senkaku islands as our country's own territories and that there is no issue of territorial sovereignty to be resolved".

Seoul and Tokyo tried to resolve a long-running feud over Japan's wartime sexual slavery of Korean women with an inter-government agreement in 2015.

The controversy of the so-called comfort women -- those forced into sexual slavery for Japanese troops during World War II -- has marred relations between the two countries for decades.

Earlier this month, South Korean President Moon Jae-in said Japan cannot unilaterally declare the issue "over", repeating calls for Tokyo to apologise.

Japan has protested against changing the deal, which was agreed to by Moon's predecessor Park Geun-hye, saying any attempt to modify or scrap it could negatively affect relations.
Former Thai premiers and siblings Yingluck and Thaksin Shinawatra made a rare public appearance at a book launch in Tokyo

Thailand's junta will lift a near four-year ban on political activity in June, an official said Friday, as space for debate slowly expands in the kingdom with polls promised for next year.

Political gatherings of five or more people have been outlawed since Thailand's army grabbed power in a May 2014 coup, booting Yingluck Shinawatra's elected government from power.

The generals, who have repeatedly backtracked on promised returns to democracy, insist an election will be held "no later" than February 2019.

Yet while parties have been allowed to register in anticipation of the vote, they remain barred from discussing policy or meeting without junta permission.

Politicians have demanded the ban is lifted, while critics accuse the junta of buying time to bolster the chances of new army-linked parties in the upcoming election.

A defence ministry spokesman said the moratorium would soon be lifted, confirming comments the junta's number two made to the local press on Thursday.

"The initial plan is that the ban would be lifted in June so that newly set-up parties are ready," Lieutenant-General Kongcheep Tantravanich told AFP.

"While the big existing parties are already ready, the new parties need time... they will start their activities together in June," he added.

The restricted climate has left questions swirling about leadership shuffles in Thailand's biggest bloc -- the toppled Pheu Thai party, which has dominated elections for a decade but has been repeatedly cut down by coups and court rulings.

The faction -- the nemesis of the junta and Bangkok elite -- is officially without a leader after both of its figureheads were driven into self-exile in the wake of 2006 and 2014 coups.

The exiled pair, former premiers and siblings Yingluck and Thaksin Shinawatra, made a rare public appearance at a book launch for a Japanese minister in Tokyo on Thursday.

It was one of Yingluck's first public sightings since she fled Thailand last August ahead of a verdict in a court case she decried as a political witch-hunt.

Analysts say both leaders are unlikely to return to Thai soil any time soon after being convicted of graft charges in absentia.

But they may continue Thaksin's approach of directing the powerhouse party from abroad.

The latest coup is widely seen as an effort to squeeze the Shinawatras out of Thai politics for good.

The junta's new charter limits the purview of elected politicians while boosting the clout of appointed officials.

The next administration will also be straightjacketed by a "legally-binding" 20-year policy plan hatched by the junta.
A military vehicle patrols in El Salvador to fight violence blamed on street gangs

Suspected gang members in El Salvador gunned down a young priest Thursday on his way to celebrate Holy Week festivities, police said.

Father Walter Osmir Vasquez, 31, was driving on a dirt road outside the town of Lolotique, 130 kilometres (80 miles) east of San Salvador when gunmen cut him off and shot him dead, police in that town said.

No motive was given. The government condemned the killing and ordered an investigation.

Soldiers joined police searching for the killers in the area of the attack.

El Salvador has one of the world's highest homicide rates -- 60 per 100,000 inhabitants last year. The government blames powerful street gangs for much of the violence that has engulfed the poor Central American country.
Syrian children evacuated from the onetime rebel bastion of Eastern Ghouta reach out from a bus window as they near rebel-held in the northwestern province of Idlib on March 27, 2018

Syrian fighters and civilians boarded buses to leave the onetime rebel bastion of Eastern Ghouta on Friday as numbers for the week-long evacuation topped 30,000, state media said.

According to the SANA news agency, a total of 31,890 people have been bused out of the pocket of Ghouta that had been controlled by the Islamist group Faylaq al-Rahman.

The evacuation of that southern area of the former rebel enclave near Damascus began on March 24 following a deal brokered by Russia, the government's main backer.

Hundreds of buses later, residents -- including fighters who were allowed to bring their rifles -- were still pouring out of the devastated area, as five years of resistance under siege slowly came to an end.

Wael Alwan, Faylaq al-Rahman's Istanbul-based spokesman, had told AFP at the start of the process that he expected as many as 30,000 people to leave.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, more buses were in the south of Eastern Ghouta on Friday to take thousands of people out for a seventh consecutive day of evacuations from the Faylaq-controlled pocket.

The state news agency said that in all 135,000 people have left Ghouta over the past month.

They include people who fled through humanitarian corridors announced by Russia as well as those who left, so far mostly to the northwestern province of Idlib, as part of evacuation deals.

Evacuations had last week already emptied the smaller rebel pocket of Harasta, which was controlled by the Ahrar al-Sham group.

Talks are under way for a similar deal in the third and final rebel-held pocket, which includes Ghouta's largest town Douma.
India has seen a proliferation of fake news as more and more people turn away from traditional media to internet items on smart phones

Indian police have arrested the editor of a website for publishing a fake report that Muslims had attacked a monk from the Jain faith, officials said Friday.

Mahesh Vikram Hegde was arrested in southern Karnataka state on Thursday on charges of spreading fake and communally sensitive news on his right wing website, a senior police officer said.

Hegde's online Postcard news reported on March 18 that Jain monk Upadhyaya Mayank Sagarji was attacked by Muslims. Police said Sagarji was actually injured in a road accident.

"We have arrested Hegde for posting a fake news on his news portal Postcard alleging that a Jain monk was attacked by Muslims," Bangalore joint commissioner of police N. Satish Kumar said in a statement.

The cyber crime police "have registered a case against the portal and its owner Hegde for the false news", Kumar added.

Hegde also shared the "news" on Twitter where Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is one of his more than 78,000 followers.

The news item and tweet were later deleted, police said.

Postcard news is a controversial website which usually carries stories that glorify Modi and his right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party.

One story on the site details the heroism of an Indian soldier "who single-handedly killed 300 Chinese soldiers".

Another talks about how India would reduce nuclear China and Pakistan into "crumbling ruins" if it is faced with a "two-front war".

India has seen a proliferation of fake news as more and more people in the country of 1.2 billion turn away from traditional media to internet items on smart phones.

False stories peddled as news led to seven people being killed by a mob in eastern Jharkhand state last year after a rumour spred on WhatsApp that they were child-traffickers.
Israeli soldiers fire tear gas as thousands of Gazans march just across the border fence sparking clashes in which four Palestinians were killed and more than 200 wounded

Clashes erupted as tens of thousands of Gazans marched near the Israeli border in a major protest, with 16 Palestinians killed and hundreds more wounded in the conflict's worst single day of violence since the 2014 Gaza war.

Israel's military targeted three Hamas sites in the Gaza Strip with tank fire and an air strike after what it said was an attempted shooting attack against soldiers along the border that caused no injuries.

Protesters, including women and children, gathered at multiple sites throughout the blockaded territory, which is flanked by Israel along its eastern and northern borders.

Smaller numbers approached within a few hundred metres (yards) of the heavily fortified border fence, with Israeli troops using tear gas and live fire to force them back.

Israeli security forces used a drone to fire tear gas toward those along the border, in one of the first uses of the device, a police spokesman said.

The health ministry in Gaza said 16 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces.

More than 1,400 were injured, including 758 by live fire, with the remainder hurt by rubber bullets and tear gas inhalation, it said.

Palestinians accused Israel of using disproportionate force, as did Turkey.

Gaza protests

The UN Security Council held emergency talks Friday to discuss the risks of further escalation in Israeli-Palestinian violence in the Gaza Strip, but failed to agree a joint statement on the deadly clashes.

"There is fear that the situation might deteriorate in the coming days," said assistant UN secretary general for political affairs, Taye-Brook Zerihoun, urging maximum restraint.

Israel's military alleged that the main protests were being used as cover by militants to either break through the border or carry out attacks.

"It is not a peaceful demonstration," an Israeli military official told journalists.

The army said it estimated some 30,000 demonstrators were taking part in the protests.

"Rioters are rolling burning tyres and hurling firebombs and rocks at the security fence and at (Israeli) troops, who are responding with riot dispersal means and firing towards main instigators," it said.

- 'Playing with your life' -

Protesters were demanding hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees who fled or were expelled during the war surrounding Israel's creation in 1948 be allowed to return.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniya attended the protest, believed to be the first time he has gone so close to the border in years.

Hamas and Israel have fought three wars since 2008, the most recent of which in 2014 ended with a fragile truce.

The protesters were demanding hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees who fled or were expelled during the war surrounding Israel's creation in 1948 be allowed to return

The demonstration is planned to last six weeks, until the inauguration of the new US embassy in Jerusalem around May 14.

The upcoming embassy move has added to tensions surrounding the march.

US President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital in December has infuriated Palestinians, who claim its annexed eastern sector as the capital of their future state.

The protest also began as Jewish Israelis were to mark the Passover holiday.

Israel announced a "closed military zone in the area surrounding the Gaza Strip," accusing its Islamist rulers Hamas of using the lives of civilians "for the purpose of terror".

Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman said in a tweet directed to Gazans in both Hebrew and Arabic that "Hamas's leadership is playing with your life".

- Rare family protest -

Protests along the border are common but the "March of Return" protest is different because it is intended to include families with women and children camping near the border for weeks.

A Palestinian woman joins the protest in Gaza along the border with Israel that commemorates Land Day

Protester Saeed Juniya erected a small tent a few hundred metres from the border fence east of Gaza City, where he was accompanied by his wife and children.

"We are determined and not scared as we are not doing something wrong. The people are demanding their land and to return to their country," he said.

Organisers say the camps will remain in place until May 15 when Palestinians commemorate the Nakba, or "catastrophe", of the 1948 creation of Israel with the exodus of more than 700,000 Palestinians.

According to the United Nations, some 1.3 million of Gaza's two million residents are refugees and the protest is calling for them to be allowed to return to land that is now Israel.

Washington's plans to launch its new embassy to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the foundation of the Israeli state, further stoking Palestinian anger.

"We are deeply saddened by loss of life in #Gaza today," State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert wrote on Twitter.

"Int'l community is focused on taking steps that will improve the lives of the Palestinians and is working on a plan for peace. Violence furthers neither of those goals."

The launch of the protests comes as Palestinians mark Land Day, commemorating the killing of six unarmed Arab protesters in Israel in 1976.
Posted 3/29/18

Buffalo United Methodist Church will host an Easter egg hunt Saturday, March 31, rain or shine.The community is invited to this free event, where children 12 years old and younger can hunt for eggs 
China's defunct Tiangong-1 space lab crashed back to Earth on Monday, with most of it burning up in the atmosphere, officials say

Shortly after the Tiangong-1 space station re-entered Earth's atmosphere on Monday, most of it was vaporised, Chinese space officials said, with the remnants expected to have plopped harmlessly somewhere into the Pacific Ocean.

The defunct space lab joins a long list of craft that have burned up as they have hurtled back to Earth.

Here are the some of the more famous ones:

Mir - 2001

Launched in 1986, the Mir station was once a proud symbol of Soviet success in space, despite a series of high-profile accidents and technical problems.

Mir was the last space station launched by the Soviet Union, and was brought down in 2001 after 15 years in orbit

But Russian authorities, strapped for cash after the collapse of the Soviet Union, chose to abandon the orbiting outpost in the late 1990s and devote their resources to the International Space Station.

The massive 140-tonne station was brought down by the Russian space agency over the Pacific Ocean between New Zealand and Chile, and its burning debris was seen streaking across the sky over Fiji.

Salyut 7 - 1991

Salyut 7, launched in 1982, was the last orbiting laboratory under the Soviet Union's Salyut programme.

Jean-Loup Chretien (L) became the first Frenchman and Western European in space when he flew to Salyut 7 in 1982

When the Mir space station was launched in 1986, Soviet space authorities boosted Salyut 7 to a higher orbit and abandoned it there.

It was supposed to stay in orbit until 1994, but an unexpected increase in drag by the earth's atmosphere caused it to hurtle down in 1991.

The 40-tonne station broke up on re-entry and the parts that survived scattered over Argentina.

Skylab - 1979

Skylab was the first American space station, launched by NASA in 1973, and was crewed until 1974.

US space station Skylab's disintegration over Australia got worldwide media attention

There were proposals to refurbish it later in the decade, but the lab's orbit began to decay and NASA had to prepare for its re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere with only partial control over where it would come down.

The 85-tonne Skylab's eventual descent over Australia was a worldwide media event, with some newspapers offering thousands of dollars to people who recovered parts of the station that landed.

Columbia - 2003

The disintegration of large spacecraft has not always been without tragedy.

The destruction of space shuttle Columbia scattered tens of thousands of pieces of debris across Texas and Louisiana

In 2003, NASA's space shuttle Columbia broke apart during its re-entry into the atmosphere at the end of the STS-107 mission, killing all seven astronauts on board.

Columbia's left wing was damaged by a piece of debris during launch, leaving the shuttle unable to withstand the extreme temperatures generated by re-entry, and causing it to break apart.

The flaming debris from the 80-tonne craft was caught streaking across the sky over the southern US by local TV stations, with tens of thousands of the doomed shuttle's parts scattered over Texas and Louisiana.
Opened just over two weeks ago, the building hosts 183 students, most between the ages of five and 12

Dozens of girls in grey-and-white uniforms trooped into a building beneath a pine-covered ridge in Pakistan's mountainous Shangla district Friday for classes at the school built with Malala Yousafzai's Nobel Prize money.

The Khpal Kor Model School, three storeys tall and with a computer lab, playground and library, is a symbol of the change that Malala has helped bring to a deeply conservative region where she was once one among many girls struggling to receive an education.

But with many parents afraid to speak to the media for fears the building would be targeted by militants, it is also a sign of how far Pakistan has to go in its long battle with extremism, even in a region that it regularly touts as a security success story.

"We don't want this school to be publicised because if it happens, militants will target it," one parent said on condition of anonymity.

The road leading to the school's solid yellow gate is paved only partially

Opened just over two weeks ago, the building hosts 183 students, most between the ages of five and 12. Thirty-eight of them are orphans.

The road leading to its solid yellow gate is paved only partially, and girls walking up it are often escorted by fathers or elder brothers.

Some, said principal Sajid Shah, are transported by the school -- an initiative paid for, along with the books, uniforms, tuition for the orphans and poorer students, teachers' salaries and the building itself, by the Malala Fund.

Police have promised they will soon deploy three officers to guard the campus. When AFP visited Friday, they had not yet arrived.

- Target -

The school is built on the outskirts of Shahpur, a town in Malala's home district of Shangla -- part of the region known as Swat, the scenic valley once infested by the Pakistani Taliban.

Malala's schedule is being kept tightly under wraps out of security fears

In 2007, the militants took control, waging a campaign of beheadings, other violence and attacks on girls' schools before the army deployed 30,000 troops in 2009, declaring it secure by July that year.

Since then Pakistani and at times US officials have held up Swat -- recently designated a safe tourism destination once more -- as a success story in the country's fight against Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants.

But critics have long warned that Pakistan is not doing enough to fight the root causes of extremism, and beneath the surface peace in Swat was always fragile, as the attack on Malala herself three years later demonstrated.

By then she and her family had moved to Mingora, the main town in neighbouring Swat district -- also part of the Swat region -- and it was there that gunmen stopped her school bus on October 9, 2012, asked for her by name, and shot her in the head.

Her near-miraculous survival and subsequent fierce education campaigns have turned her into an instantly recognisable force for human rights.

Education is highly valued in Swat, which is also plagued with natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods

But her emotional return to Pakistan Thursday for the first time since the shooting has refocused attention on Swat.

Security there has improved "significantly", analyst Rahimullah Yusufzai said Friday, but rare attacks -- such as one that killed 11 soldiers in Swat on February 18 -- show the danger is not yet over years on.

"They (the militants) still have their facilitators and sleeper cells there," Yusufzai told AFP.

In Shangla, Afshaar Alam, a medical student who is guardian to his seven-year-old sister attending the Khpal Kor school, said it was the best school in the area.

However his family had opposed his decision to send her there, he said, "fearing it may be targeted".

- 'Malalas everywhere' -

Militancy aside, residents in Shangla said life in Swat was changing for girls and women, particularly in a conservative region where their access to education had long been problematic.

Security in Swat has improved 'significantly'

Education is highly valued in Swat, which is also plagued with natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods that in the past have left children studying in the open air even through harsh winters.

"I am grateful to Malala for her invaluable efforts to promote education, a task our leaders failed to accomplish," Shangla shopkeeper Farman Ullah said after dropping his three daughters at the school.

"We have just one Malala today but after a decade or so, we will have Malalas everywhere."

There was still no word Friday on whether the 20-year-old herself would go to Swat during her brief, unannounced visit to Pakistan.

Her schedule is being kept tightly under wraps out of security fears, which Yusufzai said was telling.

"Not taking her to her hometown means they are not confident," he said, referring to the government and military establishment.

"If the government can't provide her security, then what does it mean?"
Since 2014 the US-led coalition has provided weapons, training and other support to forces fighting Islamic State group (IS) jihadists in Syria and Iraq

Two members of the US-led anti-jihadist coalition -- an American and a Briton -- were killed by an improvised explosive device in the northern Syrian city of Manbij, US and British officials said Friday.

Five other coalition service personnel were wounded, the Pentagon said.

The attack in Manbij happened late Thursday -- the day US President Donald Trump said he would pull forces out of Syria "very soon."

"Two coalition personnel were killed and five were wounded by an improvised explosive device in Syria" at around midnight (2100 GMT), the coalition said in a statement which gave no further details about the victims.

A Pentagon official, speaking later on condition of anonymity, identified one of them as being American.

Britain's defence ministry confirmed the second fatality came from within its ranks.

"The individual was embedded with US forces on a counter-Daesh operation when the incident occurred," the ministry said, using an Arabic acronym to refer to the Islamic State (IS) group.

Since 2014, the coalition has provided weapons, training and other support to forces fighting IS jihadists in Syria and Iraq.

This latest incident brings the number of US personnel killed in action during the operation to 14.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.

The US-led coalition said it was withholding details on the circumstances of the attack pending further investigation.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor, said the attack hit a convoy in the heart of Manbij, also wounding four members of the local council.

Manbij used to be a hub for the jihadists when their self-styled "caliphate" was at its peak. It was retaken by Kurdish-led forces backed by the coalition.

- More than 2,000 US personnel -

Located between the northern city of Aleppo and the western bank of the Euphrates, less than 30 kilometres (18 miles) south of the Turkish border, Manbij lies where several international influence zones meet and risks becoming a new flashpoint.

"We'll be coming out of Syria, like, very soon. Let the other people take care of it now," Trump told industrial workers in Ohio on Thursday.

The United States has more than 2,000 military personnel in eastern Syria, working with local militia groups to defeat IS while trying to keep out of Syria's broader civil war.

Trump's eagerness to quit the conflict contrasts with a new US Syria strategy announced in January by then secretary of state Rex Tillerson -- who has since been sacked.

Also on Thursday, French President Emmanuel Macron met a delegation from the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), and Kurdish official Asya Abdullah said afterwards that France was planning to send "new French troops to Manbij."

The presidency did not explicitly deny the reinforcements, but stressed it was not planning any military operation in Syria outside the US-led coalition.

Turkey and its Syrian proxies launched a major offensive against the SDF in northern Syria in January that has already resulted in the capture of the Kurdish-majority region of Afrin.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to expand the operation to other areas where Kurdish forces are present, including the city of Manbij.
Sall, the highly popular mayor of Dakar, was held in pre-trial custody for months -- his detention sparked a campaign for his release

Leading Senegalese politician Khalifa Sall was handed a five-year jail term for fraud on Friday, a sentence that will rule him out of presidential elections due next February.

Sall, 62, who is mayor of Dakar, had denied the charges against him as politically motivated.

He had been accused of fraudulent use of public funds, for which he was also fined five million CFA francs (7,625 euros).

He was found not guilty on charges of criminal conspiracy, money laundering and misappropriating public funds.

Prosecutors had sought a seven-year prison term and a fine worth nearly $10 million (more than eight million euros). Sall was tried along with his financial director, Mbaye Toure, who was given the same sentences.

"We are going to file an appeal, obviously," one of Sall's lawyers, Cheikh Khouraissi Ba, told AFP.

The trial had been avidly followed in Senegal since the start of the year, throwing a spotlight on Sall's high popularity and stirring debate over next year's elections if he were to be convicted.

Sall represents a growing challenge to incumbent President Macky Sall, who shares the same name but is not a relation.

Police officers in riot gear had to clear a path for a judge after the sentencing

Supporters of the mayor protested loudly in the packed courtroom when the verdict was announced and police were deployed around the building.

- 'Kowtow' -

"Senegalese justice has kowtowed today. President Macky Sall issued an order which Judge (Malick) Lamotte carried out," Moussa Taya, one of the mayor's political advisers, told the press.

"The maximum sentence should have been three years but by sentencing him to five years today, they are preventing him from running in the elections," said Makhtar Diaw, a deputy mayor in a district of Dakar.

A dissident member of the Socialist Party, Khalifa Sall began his political activism at the age of 11.

He later held various ministerial portfolios under then Socialist president Abdou Diouf before being elected mayor of the capital in 2009.

Sall and Tour appeared in the dock with six other municipal employees who faced the same charges. Of these, four were given jail terms ranging from six months to five years and two were discharged.

The specific charge of misappropriating public funds centred on 1.83 billion CFA francs ($2.85 million, 2.7 million euros) of city money which allegedly was misused between 2011 and 2015.

The court heard allegations of a system of fake receipts for rice and millet, the money from which Sall was accused of using for "political purposes".

Sall said the money was not diverted for personal or political use but instead used for discretionary spending on sensitive issues such as security.

"Should I be robbed of my right to be a candidate because Macky Sall doesn't want Khalifa Ababacar Sall to become his opponent in 2019?" the mayor asked combatively on the trial's last day.
US visa applicants, such as these Chinese citizens seen in 2012, will be required to identify which social media platforms they use under new planned measures

Travelers to the United States will soon have to submit their social media identities, previous telephone numbers and email addresses, a measure that could touch 10 million people per year.

According to a State Department plan published Friday, visa seekers -- whether visitors or would-be immigrants -- will be presented with a list of social media platforms.

Applicants will be required to identify which they use and provide "any identifiers used by applicants for those platforms during the five years preceding the date of application."

"Other questions seek five years of previously used telephone numbers, email addresses, and international travel," the notice, published in the Federal Register, revealed.

When these new rules were first suggested last year as part of what US President Donald Trump has called "extreme vetting" of would-be visitors, civil liberties groups sounded the alarm about privacy.

But officials say they could identify potential extremists, such as one of the attackers in the December 2015 San Bernadino shooting -- who got a visa despite allegedly advocating "jihad" on social media.

The measures apply both to the DS-260 "Immigrant Visa and Alien Registration Form" and the DS-160 "Application for Nonimmigrant Visa."

In the last fiscal year, 559,536 people applied for US immigrant visas and 9,681,913 for various forms of visitor visa. Friday's announced measures will not touch diplomatic or official travelers.

The announcement begins a 60-day period in which interested bodies and members of the public will be allowed to submit comments on the rule changes, which are expected to be approved on May 29.
An Israeli drone drops tear gas canisters on Palestinian protesters during clashes with the demonstrators on March 30, 2018 near the Gaza Strip border with Israel

Israeli border police dropped tear gas from a drone onto Palestinian protesters in Gaza on Friday, a police spokesman told AFP, acknowledging operational deployment of new technology.

An AFP correspondent saw a drone release around 10 gas canisters as protesters on the border with Israel cursed the small craft.

A number of people were injured by the containers, which fell from a height of between 10 and 20 metres (30-60 feet), the correspondent said.

Use of unmanned aerial vehicles to launch gas is a recent innovation, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.

"It was used a few weeks ago around the Gaza Strip area and it is also being used today, in order to prevent protesters getting to the Gaza crossing or Gaza border," he said.

"It's a mini-drone which has the capability of flying over certain zones and certain areas and then letting go of tear gas in areas that we want to prevent protesters from reaching."

Video of the tactic in use was shown in a report earlier this month by the Lebanese Al-Mayadeen TV channel.

Tens of thousands of Gazans took to the streets Friday in mass protests calling for Palestinians to be allowed to return to land that their ancestors fled from in the 1948 war but that is now part of Israel.

Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the mini-drone "has the capability of flying over certain zones and certain areas and then letting go of tear gas in areas that we want to prevent protesters from reaching"

The Israeli military said that they threw rocks and petrol bombs at the border fence and troops on the other side.

The army has pledged to stop, by force if necessary, any attempt by protesters to cross into Israel.

At least were seven Gazans were killed as Israeli troops fired live ammunition at stone-throwing protesters gathering on the border, while an eighth man died from tank fire.

Israeli forces regularly use tear gas to disperse Palestinian protesters, whether thrown by soldiers or fired from specially equipped vehicles.
The leak and exam cancellations sparked fury among Indian students and their parents

Hundreds of angry students took to the streets of the Indian capital Friday as police quizzed dozens of people over the leaking of high school exams that will force more than one million students to retake tests.

Police have questioned 45 people, including students and tutors, over the leak but no arrests have been announced.

Mathematics and economics exam papers were distributed on the WhatsApp messaging app prior to the tests, forcing the cancellations and sparking fury among students and their parents.

On a second day of protests, hundreds of students in New Delhi chanted against the exam board, which they accused of negligence.

Education secretary Anil Swarup said more than one million students will have to resit the economics exam on April 25.

The mathematics test may be held in July. This could be restricted to Delhi and neighbouring Haryana state, however, as an investigation found the leak was limited to these areas.

Around 1.6 million students nationwide had feared they would have to retake the maths exam.

"It is most unfortunate... that children have been made to suffer on account of someone else playing dirty tricks," Swarup said.

Cheating and exam fraud -- such as paying bribes to buy test papers -- is common in India. More elaborate ruses have included relatives scaling the walls of exam centres to give crib sheets to students.

The Central Board of Secondary Education exams are crucial for students hoping to attend India's most prestigious universities.

Angry parents and students have demanded answers from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government, which has faced criticism over digital security in recent weeks, especially over an identity card database that holds the biometric and personal details of more than one billion Indians.

India's ruling and opposition parties have also accused each other of mining and sharing the personal information of people who follow their social media accounts or use their apps, similar to the recent Facebook data scandal.

That row erupted after a security expert alleged that user data of people linked to Prime Minister Modi's personal app was shared without their consent.
French judiciary police officers work near the site where Rahim Namazov, an Azerbaijani journalist living in exile in France, and his wife were targeted by gunfire in Colomiers, outside Toulouse

An Azerbaijani claiming to be an exiled journalist in France was seriously wounded and his wife was killed on Friday in a gun attack near the southern city of Toulouse, police said.

Rahim Namazov, a father of three, fled his oil-rich homeland in the Caucasus for France in 2010 after suffering death threats and being imprisoned, he said in a YouTube video posted online at the time.

The 39-year-old was fighting for his life in hospital after suffering serious back injuries, while his wife died after being hit in the head in the shooting in front of their home Friday morning in the Toulouse suburb of Colomiers.

One of their children, a 15-year-old boy, was in their apartment at the time and heard the gunfire, local authorities told AFP, adding that he was being looked after by a local trauma group.

The local Toulouse Journalists' Association said it had met Namazov in 2010 but was unable to confirm he was a reporter, while the mayor's office said it was unaware he was living in the area.

Media freedom group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said it was checking Namazov's identity, but regional specialist Johan Bihr drew attention to comments from respected Azerbaijani journalist Khadija Ismayilova who cast doubt on his claims.

Writing on Facebook, Ismayilova claimed that Namazov had pretended to be a journalist to get asylum in France and had recently got into a public argument with a mafia boss on the internet.

Police said that seven bullets were fired in total in the shooting in a car park on Friday morning after the couple had dropped their youngest child at school.

Azerbaijan has been ruled by the repressive family of a strongman president Ilham Aliyev since 1993.
A supporter of the Union for Democracy and Social Progress stands outside a memorial service in February 2018 for DR Congo's late veteran opposition figurehead Etienne Tshisekedi, whose son Felix Tshisekedi is the frontrunner in the party's leadership contest

The Democratic Republic of Congo's main opposition party met on Friday for a two-day congress to choose a new leader who is also likely to be its candidate in upcoming presidential elections.

Frontrunner among the four candidates vying for the leadership of the Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS) is Felix Tshisekedi, the son of the party's founder, former premier Etienne Tshisekedi, who died in Brussels in February last year.

Elections for DRC's head of state are due to take place on December 23 after two postponements that have stoked fears the sprawling, volatile state could spiral into war.

President Joseph Kabila has been in power since 2001 and should have stepped down at the end of 2016 after he reached his two-term constitutional limit.

He is staying on under a constitutional clause that empowers the president to remain in office so long as his or her successor has not been elected.

Escalating tension over Kabila's future has fed protests that have met with a crackdown that has claimed dozens of lives.

According to an opinion poll released Friday, 69 percent of the population do not trust the electoral commission to stage fair elections and 80 percent have a negative view of Kabila.

Sixty-six percent would vote for an opposition candidate, while Kabila would get only six percent if he sought to run again.

Among opposition candidates, the most popular was Moise Katumbi, a wealthy businessman and former governor of Katanga province, who was supported by 24 percent of those who gave an opinion.

He was followed by Tshisekedi with 13 percent.

Katumbi, who lives in exile, formally launched his presidential campaign on March 12, unveiling a political party called Together for Change.

The survey, conducted by phone among a thousand people in 26 provinces, was organised by BERCI -- the Bureau dEtudes, de Recherches et de Consulting International -- and the Congo Research Group (CRG) at New York University.

The UDPS was set up in 1982 at the height of the dictatorship of former president Joseph-Desire Mobutu. It has been in opposition ever since, and experienced numerous internal divisions.
Security has forced the Nobel laureate, whose arrival in the country dominated headlines and social media, to keep her itinerary while in the country tightly under wraps

Malala Yousafzai plans to return to Pakistan permanently once her studies are completed, she told Pakistani media in Islamabad Friday, the second day of her emotional trip back more than five years after being shot by Taliban gunmen.

Security has forced the Nobel laureate, whose arrival in the country dominated headlines and social media, to keep her itinerary tightly under wraps.

But in a televised interview with Pakistan's largest private broadcaster Geo TV Friday the 20-year-old said that the country, which has long battled extremism, is "becoming better".

"Definitely, there is a difference" between the Pakistan of today and in 2012, when she was airlifted to a British hospital after being shot in the head by Taliban gunmen angered over her stance as an advocate for girls' education.

"Things are becoming better, people are uniting and a campaign for better Pakistan is ongoing, people are active which is very good."

The Oxford student, who has said that she wants to run for prime minister one day, added: "It is my plan to return to Pakistan after completion of my education, because it is my country and I have equal rights on it like any other Pakistani."

Her comments came after she broke down in tears as she delivered an emotional televised speech Thursday saying it was a "dream" to be back in the country after so many years.

Malala Yousafzai

Malala is widely respected internationally as a global icon for girls' education, but opinion is divided in Pakistan, where some conservatives view her as a Western agent on a mission to shame her country.

"Pakistan has not done well by its heroes," an editorial in the English-language Dawn newspaper on Malala's homecoming said Friday, noting that the country's other Nobel laureate -- physicist Abdus Salaam -- had been widely shunned for being a member of the persecuted Ahmadi minority.

With intense criticism among the many messages of welcome, even the people she is meeting have been kept in the dark about her presence.

Women's rights activist Nighat Dad said that she and a group of other feminists from across Pakistan who were gathered on Thursday were not told they would be seeing Malala until the last moment.

The organiser, Oscar-winning director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, only told them "It'll be the highlight of your year," Dad said -- adding that she had been right.

- Changing lives -

Malala became a global symbol for human rights after a gunman boarded her school van on October 9, 2012, asked "Who is Malala?" and shot her.

The Pakistani Taliban accused her of "anti-Islamic" activities and of "smearing" the militant group in statements released after the attack.

She was treated for her injuries in the British city of Birmingham, where she also completed her schooling.

The youngest-ever winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014, she has continued to be a vocal advocate for girls' education while studying at Oxford University.

Swat, Malala's former home in Pakistan's rugged northwest, was overrun by the Taliban in 2007, where they imposed a brutal regime including banning girls from school.

They were pushed out in a military operation in 2009, but security has remained fragile, as the attack on Malala three years later demonstrated.

However in recent weeks authorities have lifted prohibitions against tourists visiting the mountainous region, famed for its beauty, as security improves.

Residents say Malala's story has changed the lives of other girls in the area.

"Parents are sending their girls to school so Malala has been successful in her aim," Swat resident Shahista Hakeem told AFP.

Many of those who live in the area were happy to hear of Malala's return to Pakistan, Hakeem said, adding: "We want that she should come to Swat also."
Posted 3/30/18

The Dallas County Economic Development Group and the Buffalo Area Chamber of Commerce are teaming up to offer Dallas County businesses some extra help this year. To boost shop local initiatives 
A Congolese woman and her child in a makeshift camp for displaced people with the government disputing NGO figures of more than four million fleeing violence in the conflict-torn country

Around 230,000 people have been driven from their homes in Democratic Republic of Congo, the government estimated Friday, a vastly different figure from the reports of humanitarian groups in the conflict-torn country.

Kinshasa put the figure at "231,241 internally displaced people" compared with the more than four million estimate of NGOs, Bernard Biango, humanitarian affairs minister said at a governmental meeting broadcast on public television.

At the same, Biango confirmed DR Congo's "non participation in the Geneva conference" on April 13, called by the United Nations and the European Union to raise $1.7 billion for humanitarian needs in the vast central African nation.

For several months, the UN and its agencies as well as NGOs have pointed to an alarming situation in DR Congo. They claim 4.5 million people have fled their homes in provinces across the country plagued with violence -- from Kivu and Tanganyika in the east, to central Kasai and most recently in northeast Ituri.

On March 23, Kinshasa said it would refuse to take part in the Geneva conference claiming tha the level of the country's humanitarian crisis was not so "excessive".

That is far from the view of the United Nations which considers DR Congo one of its humanitarian priorities along with Yemen and Syria.

"We are led by people who don't like us," commented the internationally-known Congolese gynaecologist Denis Mukwege, who cares for women rape victims in the troubled east.

He called the attitude of the Kinshasa authorities "scandalous".
At least 20 women have accused Donald Trump of engaging in sexual assault or harassment prior to becoming president

US President Donald Trump -- who has himself been repeatedly accused of sexual misconduct -- on Friday designated April 2018 "National Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month" amid a national debate over the issue.

"Sexual assault crimes remain tragically common in our society, and offenders too often evade accountability," said a proclamation from Trump released by the White House. "These heinous crimes are committed indiscriminately: in intimate relationships, in public spaces, and in the workplace."

"Too often, however, the victims of assault remain silent. They may fear retribution from their offender, lack faith in the justice system, or have difficulty confronting the pain associated with the traumatic experience," it continued.

"My administration is committed to raising awareness about sexual assault and to empowering victims to identify perpetrators so that they can be held accountable."

At least 20 women have publicly accused Trump of engaging in sexual assault or harassment prior to becoming president. The White House has maintained that the women are lying.

Last month, Trump described allegations that he kissed a receptionist without her consent as "Another False Accusation" in a post on Twitter, calling instead for coverage of "the story of the women taking money to make up stories about me. One had her home mortgage paid off."

Since former film mogul Harvey Weinstein's dramatic downfall over allegations ranging from harassment to rape, the #MeToo campaign has seen a deluge of accusations topple men from powerful positions in a number of industries including Hollywood, the media and politics.

In February, allegations of domestic abuse led two Trump staffers to resign. The Republican leader came under fire for lamenting the "shattered" lives of those accused, saying the allegations could be false.

The 2016 presidential campaign that launched Trump to the White House saw the unearthing of an infamous "Access Hollywood" tape in which the real estate tycoon bragged about groping women.

"I don't even wait," Trump says in the clip. "And when you're a star, they let you do it, you can do anything. Grab them by the pussy."

Trump dismissed his lewd comments as "locker room banter."
CAIRO (AP) - The initial results of Egypt's presidential election show a landslide win for President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, who faced no serious challenge, and a turnout hovering around 40 percent, pro-government media reported Thursday

Counting began after polls closed late Wednesday, wrapping up three days of voting. Egyptian authorities went to great lengths to bolster turnout in a bid to give the election legitimacy. Official results are expected on April 2.

Provincial governors and other officials promised incentives and financial rewards, and in some cases resorted to threats to get people to the polls. The National Elections Authority threatened fines of around $30 for anyone boycotting the election, but similar warnings have been made in the past without being widely enforced.

People travel on a public bus under an election banner for Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi with Arabic that reads, "you are the hope," in Cairo, Egypt, Wednesday, March 28, 2018. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil)

Local media, which is dominated by pro-el-Sissi commentators, also urged people to vote, portraying it as a national obligation and warning against foreign plots to undermine stability.

The website of the state-run newspaper Al-Ahram said around 25 million of the country's 59.7 million eligible voters cast ballots, with the overwhelming majority going to el-Sissi. It said el- Sissi leads with around 92 percent, with his little-known opponent, Moussa Mustafa Moussa, only getting 3 percent. Other media outlets released similar figures.

Figures reported by another daily, Al Youm Al Sabea, showed that invalid votes amounted to about 6 percent, or some 1.5 million, more than Moussa received.

In the 2014 election, el-Sissi won 96.9 percent of the vote, with official turnout of 47.45 percent. That was less than a year after he led the military overthrow of President Mohammed Morsi, Egypt's first freely elected leader, amid mass protests calling on Morsi to resign.

In the lead-up to this election, several potential candidates were arrested or withdrew from the race under pressure. Moussa joined at the last minute - sparing the government the embarrassment of a one-candidate race - and made no effort to challenge el-Sissi.

El-Sissi has waged a massive crackdown on dissent since Morsi's overthrow. Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood group, which won a string of elections after the 2011 uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak, has been outlawed as a terrorist group and driven underground.

Authorities have since jailed thousands of Islamists as well as several prominent secular activists. Unauthorized protests are banned, and hundreds of websites, including those of independent media and rights groups, have been blocked. Several local reporters have been jailed, and a British journalist was expelled last month.

El-Sissi has said such measures are necessary to defeat an Islamic State-led insurgency based in the northern Sinai Peninsula and to rebuild the economy after years of unrest.
MOSCOW (AP) - Russia's envoy for Afghanistan says both the Taliban and Moscow are deriding Washington's claims that Russia has been arming the extremist movement.

Zamir Kabulov said representatives of Russia and the Taliban laughed at the allegations during their conversations, with the Taliban saying they illegally buy all the weapons they need from the Afghan government and police and just need money for that. He added that Russian negotiators jokingly said: "Sorry, we have no money."

Kabulov told Thursday's briefing in Moscow that Russia's contacts with the Taliban aim to ensure the safety of Russian citizens in Afghanistan and encourage the Taliban to join peace talks.

He emphasized it's impossible to achieve peace in Afghanistan without engaging the Taliban, voicing hope they could join a new round of negotiations hosted by Russia.
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) - The Latest on the deported Kenyan opposition politician (all times local):

4:10 p.m.

A Kenyan judge has fined the country's interior minister, police chief and permanent secretary for immigration $2,000 each for contempt of court over the deportation of an opposition politician, Miguna Miguna.

Justice George Odunga says he cannot jail the officials because even "if they can't obey the orders of this court with such impunity, I do not see how any of their juniors will execute the warrants against them."

The judge had ordered the officials to appear in court on Thursday after Miguna was detained in an airport toilet while trying to enter Kenya. The politician has been targeted during lingering tensions over last year's disputed presidential election.

Miguna says he was drugged and forcibly deported to Dubai overnight by Kenyan authorities.

___

11:30 a.m.

Lawyers say that early Thursday Kenyan authorities deported an opposition politician whose attempt to enter the country led to him being detained in an airport toilet for more than a day.

Lawyer Cliff Ombeta said that Miguna Miguna, targeted in a Kenyan government crackdown amid lingering election tensions, was sent to Dubai even after a court ordered authorities to release him. Another lawyer, James Orengo, said police at the airport roughed up lawyers and forced them to leave when they tried to serve the court order.

Kenyan authorities did not immediately respond, though Kenya's immigration department re-tweeted a post urging the public to ignore a rumor that Miguna had been sedated.

The deportation ended the airport drama in which Miguna posted from what he called "Toilet at Terminal 2."
QASR EL-YAHUD, West Bank (AP) - Pilgrims seeking serenity during a visit to Jesus' traditional baptism site may be rattled to discover they are surrounded by thousands of land mines left over from dormant Mideast conflicts.

But a project now underway plans to rid the West Bank site of the explosive devices, clearing away the relics of war that have blemished the sacred place for nearly five decades.

Land mines still speckle many parts of Israeli war-won territory. But the effort at the baptism site carries particular weight because of its importance to the world's Christians and the delicate international diplomacy that was required to take the project off the ground.

This Tuesday, March 27, 2018 photo released by HALO Trust shows a digger working at de-mining the land near the baptismal site of Jesus Christ, Qasr al Yahud, in the West Bank. Pilgrims seeking serenity during a visit to Jesus' traditional baptism site may be rattled by what greets them: thousands of land mines left over from dormant Mideast conflicts. But a new project is working to rid the West Bank site of the explosive devices, clearing away the relics of war that have blemished the sacred place for nearly five decades. (HALO Trust via AP)

The project's organizers had to navigate a virtual minefield of often quarreling church denominations, as well as Israeli and Palestinian officials.

"To see a site that is visited by over half a million pilgrims and tourists each year and for them to come in their buses and be so close to land mines is very unusual," said James Cowan, the head of The HALO Trust, an international mine-clearing charity carrying out the project in partnership with Israel's Defense Ministry. "We hope that pilgrims and tourists will be able to visit this site and celebrate the baptism of Christ in the way that was intended."

Christians believe John the Baptist baptized Jesus at the site, a lush stretch of the Jordan River flanked by desert - Christianity's third holiest site after the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, built on the spot where Christian belief says Jesus was crucified and resurrected, and the Nativity Church in Bethlehem, constructed on the site where tradition holds Jesus was born.

The baptism marks the beginning of Jesus' public ministry. Many modern-day visitors don white robes and immerse themselves in the sacred waters in a show of faith.

Churches were built in the area as early as the 4th century. By the 1930s, Greek, Coptic, Syrian and Catholic churches, among others, all had plots in the river valley, erecting golden-domed shrines and other structures.

Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war. Shortly after that, clergy fled their plots and Israel began planting land mines both on church land and in the surrounding area to fend off enemies. Israeli officials say that among the 3,000 explosive devices in the baptism site's vicinity are also booby traps laid by Palestinian militants, as well as explosives from the time when the territory was under Jordanian control. Unexploded ordnances also litter the area.

"Israel sees this as a very important project, to restore this place to its former glory," said Marcel Aviv, the director of the Israeli de-mining authority, INMAA. "We will do all the necessary quality assurances so that the territory will be totally clean and totally safe so that civilians can wander around here."

A small path was cleared for Pope John Paul II's visit in 2000 and pilgrims for years had to coordinate their visits with the Israeli military, because of security and land mine concerns.

In 2011, the site was officially opened to the public after Israel cleared a narrow road leading to the Jordan River. Today, buses ferry hundreds of thousands of visitors along that road each year, with the surrounding area remaining off limits.

The $1.15 million de-mining project, half of which was funded by the Israeli Defense Ministry and half by private donors, aims to open up access to the area for pilgrims, clergy and tourists in about a year.

The de-mining project began earlier in March with work on the Ethiopian church's property, where barbed-wire fencing with yellow "DANGER MINES!" signs encircles crumbling, sand-hued buildings, one with a rusted cross. Bulldozers sifted through the mine-laden earth.

Within the church compound, an armored vehicle dug into the earth, hoisting up a chunk of soil and then straining it through a sifter, searching for anti-personnel mines the size of a block of Camembert cheese.

Mounds of soil were heaped in piles around the area, each marked cleared from mines or still hazardous. In the distance, a string of anti-tank mines, each slightly larger than a 30-centimeter (12-inch) pizza, protruded from the ground.

To detect the mines, experts have had to look at historical records, interview former Israeli soldiers and survey old maps.

Anti-tank mines, with heavier charges, are embedded to the west of an access road while anti-personnel mines and booby traps are located within the church plots.

But experts said the reconnaissance work isn't exact and the geography - the ever-shifting top soil of the Jordan River Valley - has displaced some of them. Painstaking hard work fills in the gaps, with drones, dogs, metal detectors and bulldozers used to sniff out and snuff out the leftover mines.

"It's a challenge that requires working slowly, in a safe way and not to take any chances," said Aviv, from Israel's de-mining authority.

Eight churches are scattered across the nearly 250-acre expanse of land that borders the baptism site. The churches share custodianship of many sites in the Holy Land and often butt heads over how to manage them. It took about four years to get all denominations to agree to the terms of the project, a process that saw Cowan, The HALO Trust director, meet church leaders, including Pope Francis.

HALO also waded into the Mideast conflict, seeking approval to work on the site from Israel, which controls the area, and getting a green light from the Palestinians who claim the West Bank as part of their future state.

Majid Fityani, the Palestinian governor of the nearby city of Jericho, welcomed the de-mining.

"We have been demanding the removal of these mines for a long time," he said. "We are interested in removing these mines that were planted by Israel because this is our land."

Mine agencies from both sides are brought in to supervise HALO's work, the group said. Jordan provides access to the baptism site from the other side of the river and Cowan also met with the country's king to discuss the matter.

"We pray and hope that the clearance of land mines around the baptism site will contribute to peace and reconciliation in our region, which is very much needed at this time," Theophilos III, the Greek Orthodox patriarch of the Holy Land, said in a statement. "We are glad that after many years, pilgrims from around the world will be able to fully experience and venerate this holy site."

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Associated Press writer Mohammed Daraghmeh in Ramallah, West Bank, contributed to this report.
ROME (AP) - Pope Francis urged inmates at a Rome prison on Thursday to never let their hopes be clouded like cataracts cloud the eyes - and revealed that he suffers from the condition and has to have surgery for it next year.

Francis, 81, disclosed the news as he bid farewell to inmates and staff at the Regina Coeli prison, where he washed the feet of 12 prisoners in a Holy Thursday ritual.

Francis frequently uses his visits to prisons to encourage inmates not to lose hope, and he repeated that Thursday by telling the prisoners that they must clear their eyes every day so they can see and spread hope.

Pope Francis washes the feet of inmates during his visit to the Regina Coeli detention center in Rome, Thursday, March 29, 2018, where he celebrated the "Missa in Coena Domini". Pope Francis visit to a prison on Holy Thursday to wash the feet of some inmates, stresses in a pre-Easter ritual that a pope must serve society's marginalized and give them hope. (Vatican Media via AP)

"At my age, for example, cataracts come and you don't see reality well. Next year I have to have an operation," he said.

He said the same thing happens with life, when disillusionment, errors and fatigue cloud the soul. Francis urged the inmates to do a daily cleansing of their view on life - a "cataract surgery for the soul" - so they can keep hope alive.

The Vatican's deputy spokeswoman, Paloma Garcia Ovejero, confirmed Francis was speaking about his own cataracts and is due to have surgery next year, though there were no details on when.

Francis is known to suffer from sciatica, which sometimes makes walking difficult. He lost much of one lung due to an infection in his 20s, but otherwise seems to enjoy good health.

During the foot-washing ceremony, Francis knelt down and one by one, poured water over the feet of the 12 inmates, wiped them dry and kissed them. Most of the men then embraced the pope in thanks.

The 12 inmates included Catholics, Muslims, an Orthodox Christian and a Buddhist, the Vatican said. They hailed from Italy, the Philippines, Morocco, Moldova, Colombia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone.

In his homily, Francis told them the ritual is meant to show his willingness to serve others "like a slave," as Jesus did.

"Your chief must be your servant," he said. "So often I think ... how many wars would have been avoided if all those kings, emperors and heads of state had understood this teaching of Jesus rather than command and be cruel and kill people."

Earlier Thursday, Francis presided over another Holy Thursday service in St. Peter's Basilica, where he urged priests to be spiritually close to their flocks and not insist only on preaching laws when they sin.

Even when people commit adultery, he said, priests should not condemn with legalisms but rather help them look forward so they don't sin again.

"The correct tone is that of the confessor who is prepared to repeat it 70 times seven," he said.

The admonition came as conservatives have complained that Francis is dividing the church by being open to letting divorced and civilly remarried Catholics receive Communion. Critics say Francis is disregarding church law about the indissolubility of marriage by effectively allowing adulterers access to the sacraments.

Francis appeared to be answering the criticism with his homily, choosing specifically to preach about how priests should accompany adulterers during a Mass meant to demonstrate the unity of the church.

Holy Thursday marks the start of an intense four days of activity leading up to Easter Sunday.

On Friday, Francis presides over the Way of the Cross procession at Rome's Colosseum re-enacting Christ's crucifixion. On Saturday night, he celebrates the solemn Easter Vigil in St. Peter's Basilica, followed by the joyful Easter Sunday Mass marking Christ's resurrection.

Pope Francis celebrates a Chrism Mass inside St. Peter's Basilica, at the Vatican, Thursday, March 29, 2018. During the Mass the pontiff blesses a token amount of oil that will be used to administer the sacraments for the year. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

Pope Francis blows inside an amphora containing holy oil during a Chrism Mass inside St. Peter's Basilica, at the Vatican, Thursday, March 29, 2018. During the Mass the pontiff blesses a token amount of oil that will be used to administer the sacraments for the year. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

An amphora containing holy oil is carried in front of Pope Francis during a Chrism Mass inside St. Peter's Basilica, at the Vatican, Thursday, March 29, 2018. During the Mass the pontiff blesses a token amount of oil that will be used to administer the sacraments for the year. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

An amphora containing holy oil is placed in front of Pope Francis during a Chrism Mass inside St. Peter's Basilica, at the Vatican, Thursday, March 29, 2018. During the Mass the pontiff blesses a token amount of oil that will be used to administer the sacraments for the year. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

Pope Francis washes the feet of inmates during his visit to the Regina Coeli detention center in Rome, Thursday, March 29, 2018, where he celebrated the "Missa in Coena Domini". Pope Francis visit to a prison on Holy Thursday to wash the feet of some inmates, stresses in a pre-Easter ritual that a pope must serve society's marginalized and give them hope. (Vatican Media via AP)

Pope Francis washes the feet of inmates during his visit to the Regina Coeli detention center in Rome, Thursday, March 29, 2018, where he celebrated the "Missa in Coena Domini". Pope Francis visit to a prison on Holy Thursday to wash the feet of some inmates, stresses in a pre-Easter ritual that a pope must serve society's marginalized and give them hope. (Vatican Media via AP)

Pope Francis washes the feet of inmates during his visit to the Regina Coeli detention center in Rome, Thursday, March 29, 2018, where he celebrated the "Missa in Coena Domini". Pope Francis visit to a prison on Holy Thursday to wash the feet of some inmates, stresses in a pre-Easter ritual that a pope must serve society's marginalized and give them hope. (Vatican Media via AP)

Pope Francis washes the feet of inmates during his visit to the Regina Coeli detention center in Rome, Thursday, March 29, 2018, where he celebrated the "Missa in Coena Domini". Pope Francis visit to a prison on Holy Thursday to wash the feet of some inmates, stresses in a pre-Easter ritual that a pope must serve society's marginalized and give them hope. (Vatican Media via AP)

Pope Francis leads a mass during his visit to the Regina Coeli detention center in Rome, Thursday, March 29, 2018, where he celebrated the "Missa in Coena Domini" and washed the feet of some inmates. Pope Francis visit to a prison on Holy Thursday to wash the feet of some inmates, stresses in a pre-Easter ritual that a pope must serve society's marginalized and give them hope. (Vatican Media via AP)

Pope Francis leads a mass during his visit to the Regina Coeli detention center in Rome, Thursday, March 29, 2018, where he celebrated the "Missa in Coena Domini" and washed the feet of some inmates. Pope Francis visit to a prison on Holy Thursday to wash the feet of some inmates, stresses in a pre-Easter ritual that a pope must serve society's marginalized and give them hope. (Vatican Media via AP)

Pope Francis leads a mass during his visit to the Regina Coeli detention center in Rome, Thursday, March 29, 2018, where he celebrated the "Missa in Coena Domini" and washed the feet of some inmates. Pope Francis visit to a prison on Holy Thursday to wash the feet of some inmates, stresses in a pre-Easter ritual that a pope must serve society's marginalized and give them hope. (Vatican Media via AP)

Pope Francis leads a mass during his visit to the Regina Coeli detention center in Rome, Thursday, March 29, 2018, where he celebrated the "Missa in Coena Domini" and washed the feet of some inmates. Pope Francis visit to a prison on Holy Thursday to wash the feet of some inmates, stresses in a pre-Easter ritual that a pope must serve society's marginalized and give them hope. (Vatican Media via AP)

Pope Francis walks towards an amphora containing holy oil during a Chrism Mass inside St. Peter's Basilica, at the Vatican, Thursday, March 29, 2018. During the Mass the pontiff blesses a token amount of oil that will be used to administer the sacraments for the year. (Vatican Media via AP)

Pope Francis waves prior to celebrate a Chrism Mass inside St. Peter's Basilica, at the Vatican, Thursday, March 29, 2018. During the Mass the pontiff blesses a token amount of oil that will be used to administer the sacraments for the year. (Vatican Media via AP)

Pope Francis blows inside an amphora containing holy oil during a Chrism Mass inside St. Peter's Basilica, at the Vatican, Thursday, March 29, 2018. During the Mass the pontiff blesses a token amount of oil that will be used to administer the sacraments for the year. (Vatican Media via AP)

Pope Francis blows inside an amphora containing holy oil during a Chrism Mass inside St. Peter's Basilica, at the Vatican, Thursday, March 29, 2018. During the Mass the pontiff blesses a token amount of oil that will be used to administer the sacraments for the year. (Vatican Media via AP)

Pope Francis celebrates a Chrism Mass inside St. Peter's Basilica, at the Vatican, Thursday, March 29, 2018. During the Mass the pontiff blesses a token amount of oil that will be used to administer the sacraments for the year. (Vatican Media via AP)

Pope Francis holds up the Gospel as he celebrates a Chrism Mass in St. Peter's Basilica, at the Vatican, Thursday, March 29, 2018. During the Mass the pontiff blesses a token amount of oil that will be used to administer the sacraments for the year. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

Pope Francis, white figure beneath the baldachin, celebrates a Chrism Mass inside St. Peter's Basilica, at the Vatican, Thursday, March 29, 2018. Francis urged priests on Thursday to be spiritually close to their flocks and not insist on preaching only laws when they sin. (Vatican Media via AP)

Pope Francis holds up the Gospel as he celebrates a Chrism Mass inside St. Peter's Basilica, at the Vatican, Thursday, March 29, 2018. Francis urged priests on Thursday to be spiritually close to their flocks and not insist on preaching only laws when they sin. (Vatican Media via AP)
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Pentagon is refusing to clarify portions of the Pentagon's recommendation on transgender troops and won't settle confusion about whether service members who have transitioned from one gender to another would be discharged under the proposed plan.

Chief spokeswoman Dana White says pending litigation challenging President Donald Trump's order to ban transgender forces prevents her from answering even the most basic questions, including who was on the panel that drafted the recommendations.

The memo was approved and signed by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, endorsed by the White House and posted on the Defense Department's website on Friday. It provides unprecedented details on the number of transgender forces serving in the military and how many have sought mental health help or are seeking transition surgery.
BEIRUT (AP) - The Syrian government has given a final, three-day ultimatum to the largest rebel group in the enclave of eastern Ghouta to leave the last remaining rebel-held town in the area, state TV reported on Thursday.

According to the TV report, the 72-hour deadline began on Wednesday night.

Talks have been deadlocked for days between the Army of Islam group, which controls the Syrian town of Douma, just outside of Damascus, and Russian mediators.

This photo provided Feb. 2, 2018, by the Syrian rebel group Army of Islam, shows a fighter with the Army of Islam rebel group, firing his weapon during clashes with government forces in Housh al-Dhawahira in the eastern Ghouta region near Damascus, Syria. In the spring of 2015, the Army of Islam rebel group held a massive military parade that included thousands of opposition fighters marching in formation and a striking display of tanks and armored vehicles in the town of Douma, at the doors of the Syrian capital. Now, the Army of Islam stands alone in eastern Ghouta, its fighters facing a stark choice: Surrender or die. (Army of Islam, via AP)

The Syrian government and its Russian backers have insisted that Army of Islam members leave the area for northern Syria.

Army of Islam spokesman Ammar al-Hassan said the government is insisting that the group's fighters move north but that they have rejected such demands.

Pro-government media have warned of an all-out offensive on Douma if the rebels don't withdraw.

In Moscow, the Russian defense minister said Syrian rebels attempted to put dozens of suicide attackers on buses evacuating residents from Damascus' eastern suburbs.

Sergei Shoigu said during Thursday's meeting with visiting U.N. envoy to Syria Staffan de Mistura that the Russian military received a tip about the planned attacks from locals in eastern Ghouta and disarmed the would-be attackers.

Shoigu said the military found seven belts packed with explosives for suicide missions on Monday, another 32 on Tuesday and nine on Wednesday.

"It's easy to imagine what would happen if those suicide attackers blew themselves up on the buses carrying women and children," Shoigu added.

He said that 130,000 civilians and 11,000 rebels have so far left eastern Ghouta over the past two weeks.

De Mistura, who also met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, said after their talks that it is essential to ensure the safety of civilians being evacuated from eastern Ghouta.

He noted that he had discussed provisions for the U.N. humanitarian assistance in eastern Ghouta and other regions of Syria. De Mistura also emphasized the need to give a new impulse to the talks on the political settlement in Syria.

FILE - This file photo released on Thursday March, 22, 2108, by the Syrian official news agency SANA, shows Syrian government forces overseeing the evacuation by buses of rebel fighters and their families, at a checkpoint in eastern Ghouta, Syria. In the spring of 2015, the Army of Islam rebel group held a massive military parade that included thousands of opposition fighters marching in formation and a striking display of tanks and armored vehicles in the town of Douma, at the doors of the Syrian capital. Now, the Army of Islam stands alone in eastern Ghouta, its fighters facing a stark choice: Surrender or die. (SANA via AP, File)

UN Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Syria Staffan de Mistura, right, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov enter a hall during their meeting in Moscow, Russia, Thursday, March 29, 2018. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)

UN Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Syria Staffan de Mistura, left, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov enter a hall during their meeting in Moscow, Russia, Thursday, March 29, 2018. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)

UN Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Syria Staffan de Mistura gestures while speaking to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, back to a camera, during their meeting in Moscow, Russia, Thursday, March 29, 2018. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)
FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) - The Latest on Kentucky bill to overhaul one of nation's worst-funded public pension systems (all times local):

10:50 p.m.

Kentucky's second-largest school district has announced it will close Friday, following a vote by lawmakers to approve an overhaul of the state's public pension system.

Retired teacher Lydia Coffey chants "Vote them out" as lawmakers in Kentucky debate a bill to make changes to the state's pension system on Thursday, March 29, 2018, in Frankfort, Kentucky. (AP Photo/Adam Beam)

Fayette County Public Schools posted a message on its website that it would be closed Friday because more than a third of its employees would be out. The announcement came moments after the Senate vote.

The message came moments after lawmakers sent a bill to the governor that would preserve most retirement benefits for current workers while having little immediate impact on the state's unfunded liability.

Hundreds of teachers protested the bill, chanting "shame on you" as Senators cast their final votes.

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10:30 p.m.

Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin has indicated his support for a state pension overhaul bill that passed in the face of teacher opposition.

Bevin tweeted late Thursday that public employees owe a debt of gratitude to lawmakers who voted for the bill.

The Senate voted 22-15 Thursday to approve a bill that preserves most benefits for current workers. Most of the changes would impact new hires. But the bill still drew the ire of hundreds of teachers protesting in the Capitol, with many chanting they would vote lawmakers out of office in November.

Republican Sen. Joe Bowen said the bill puts the state on a pathway to paying down its debt while assuring the system's strong financial future.

But Democratic Sen. Ray Jones said the bill would destroy everything teachers have fought for for decades.

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10 p.m.

Defying angry teachers, the Kentucky Senate has approved an overhaul of one of the country's worst-funded public pension systems and has sent it to Gov. Matt Bevin's desk for his signature.

The Senate voted 22-15 Thursday to approve a bill that preserves most benefits for current workers. Most of the changes would impact new hires. But the bill still drew the ire of hundreds of teachers protesting in the Capitol, with many chanting they would vote lawmakers out of office in November.

Republican Sen. Joe Bowen said the bill puts the state on a pathway to paying down its debt while assuring the system's strong financial future.

But Democratic Sen. Ray Jones said the bill would destroy everything teachers have fought for decades.

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8 p.m.

Kentucky teachers and their supporters are trying to make it as uncomfortable as possible for state lawmakers debating an overhaul of public pension systems.

About 200 people gathered Thursday evening at the bottom of steps to the Senate chamber as senators discussed the measure that re-emerged suddenly earlier in the day.

The protesters are chanting "We'll remember in November" - an election-year warning to the Republican-led legislature. They also are chanting "Shame on you" and "West Virginia" - the latter a reference to a recent teachers' walkout in West Virginia over a pay dispute.

The show of force comes amid growing unrest among public educators nationwide, led by thousands of West Virginia teachers who walked off the job for nine days earlier this year to secure a 5 percent pay raise.

Last week, about 2,000 teachers and other school employees rallied at Kentucky's Capitol with the goal of burying the proposed pension overhaul.

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7:45 p.m.

The House-passed bill to overhaul Kentucky's pension system is now before the Senate for debate in a late-night session at the state Capitol.

The measure would seek to preserve most benefits for public employees. Retired teachers, who are not eligible for Social Security benefits, would still get a raise of 1.5 percent each year. And it would not change how long current teachers must work before being eligible for full retirement benefits.

Republican Senate President Robert Stivers says the Senate is expected to vote on the bill later in the night and likely pass and send it to GOP Gov. Matt Bevin for his consideration. Says Stivers: "I would assume that we will accept it as is."

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7 p.m.

The Kentucky House of Representatives has passed a bill to overhaul one of the nation's worst-funded pension systems despite loud protests from public school teachers.

The House voted 49-46 to approve a bill that re-emerged suddenly Thursday afternoon. Eleven Republicans joined 35 Democrats in opposing the measure.

The bill preserves most benefits for current public employees. Teachers would still get a raise of 1.5 percent each year. And it wouldn't change how long current teachers must work before being eligible for full retirement benefits.

The Senate began debating the bill Thursday evening, and an expected decision to pass it would send it to Republican Gov. Matt Bevin's desk.

Thousands of teachers have protested in recent weeks, threatening lawsuits and a strike if the bill passes.
Posted 3/30/18

Several Skyline students recently participated in the District Music Festival.Out of seven entries, all of the Skyline entries received honor ratings, and two of the entries are headed for the 
HOPKINSVILLE, Ky. (AP) - An off-duty police officer in a small Kentucky city was shot and killed Thursday and authorities were searching for a suspect who fled in a stolen truck, Kentucky State Police said.

State police said Thursday night at a news conference that 38-year-old Hopkinsville officer Phillip Meacham was shot that afternoon and was taken to a hospital, where he died.

Trooper Rob Austin identified the suspect as 34-year-old James K. Decoursey of Hopkinsville, who police said fled on foot then took off in a 1997 white Chevrolet pickup truck with license plate 2070GH. Austin said Decoursey should be treated as armed and dangerous. He said a Tennessee Highway Patrol helicopter was aiding in the search, as were multiple other police agencies.

Meacham, who was married and had two school-age children, had been with the Hopkinsville department since May 2017 and before that worked for about 12 years with the Christian County Sheriff's Department, Austin said.

Hopkinsville Police Chief Clayton Sumner told reporters, "I just want to ask everybody for their thoughts and prayers for the family. Also for the men and women that are out there trying to find this criminal and bring him to justice." He said mental health professionals and chaplains had been brought in to help Meacham's co-workers.

He also said he spoke briefly to the slain officer's widow telling her two things: "We will find him," and "I'm sorry."

Gov. Matt Bevin announced the officer's death on Twitter.

In Frankfort, lawmakers in the House stood for a moment of silence after Rep. Walker Wood Thomas of Hopkinsville announced that an officer had been shot.

Hopkinsville is about 73 miles northwest of Nashville, Tennessee.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - An ex-Tennessee teacher who fled with a 15-year-old student last year and set off a 39-day nationwide manhunt has asked to change his plea in federal court.

A document filed by his lawyer Thursday in federal court in Nashville says 51-year-old Tad Cummins wants to change his previous not-guilty plea. It says he "would like to enter a plea of guilty."

He's charged with transporting a minor across state lines for the purpose of engaging in criminal sexual conduct and obstruction of justice.

FILE - This April 20, 2017, file photo released by the Siskiyou County Sheriff's Office shows Tad Cummins. Cummins, an ex-Tennessee teacher who fled with a 15-year-old student in 2017 and set off a 39-day nationwide manhunt has asked to change his plea in federal court. A document filed by his lawyer Thursday, March 29, 2018, in federal court in Nashville says Cummins wants to change his previous not-guilty plea. It says he "would like to enter a plea of guilty." (Siskiyou County Sheriff's Office via AP, File)

No date has been set for the requested hearing.

Cummins and the girl disappeared last March. They were found in April last year at a remote forest cabin near Cecilville, California, following a tip to police.

Cummins had planned to take the girl to Mexico and took a boat from San Diego on a test run, according to federal court documents. He switched vehicle license plates twice, disabled his vehicle's GPS system, used aliases, altered his appearance, paid only in cash and used back roads during his nearly six weeks on the run, according to the documents.

Authorities credit the caretaker of the remote northern California property for helping police find the girl and arrest her alleged abductor.

The Tennessee Board of Education revoked Cummins' teaching license in July.
BALTIMORE (AP) - For years, Adnan Syed sat behind bars serving a life sentence in the 1999 killing of his high school sweetheart, with little hope of ever getting out.

But then, in 2014, a new podcast called "Serial" delved into his case, casting doubt on his guilt and inspiring armchair investigators to unearth new information. "Serial" attracted millions of listeners and shattered records for the number of times a podcast had been streamed or downloaded.

Four years later, Syed is still reaping the benefits of the attention generated by the podcast. On Thursday, the Maryland Court of Special Appeals ordered a new trial for Syed, upholding a 2016 lower court ruling.

FILE - In this Feb. 3, 2016 file photo, Adnan Syed enters Courthouse East in Baltimore prior to a hearing. A Maryland appeals court has upheld a ruling, Thursday, March 29, 2018, granting a new trial to Syed, whose conviction in the murder of his high school sweetheart became the subject of the popular podcast "Serial." Syed was convicted in 2000 of killing Hae Min Lee and burying her body in a shallow grave in a Baltimore park. A three-judge panel on Thursday upheld a lower court ruling granting him new trial.(Barbara Haddock Taylor/The Baltimore Sun via AP)

Prosecutors can still appeal the ruling to the state's highest court.

But Syed's lawyer said he and Syed are savoring the victory and believe they have a strong chance of prevailing.

"If the state is so confident in their case, and if they're so confident that Syed is guilty, they should just try the case. We're ready to try the case," Brown said.

"If we get back in court for a jury trial, we like our chances. We like them a lot," he said.

Syed was convicted in 2000 of killing Hae Min Lee and burying her body in a shallow grave in a Baltimore park. He was 17 at the time.

During Syed's trial, prosecutors said Syed killed Mae after she broke off their relationship.

Brown readily acknowledges that "Serial" has had a huge impact on the case.

In its ruling Thursday, the appeals court found that Syed's trial lawyer was ineffective for failing to investigate and contact Asia McClain, a potential alibi witness who said she saw Syed at a public library in Woodlawn, Maryland, around the time the state claimed Syed killed Hae.

Brown said it was the attention generated by "Serial" that helped Syed's defense team locate McClain and bring her to Baltimore for a post-conviction hearing.

He said "Serial" also helped build a groundswell of support for Syed, "and that has really fueled these efforts and allowed us to keep fighting on the way that we have."

The three-judge panel said in its written decision that if testimony from McClain had been presented to the jury, it would have "directly contradicted the State's theory of when Syed had the opportunity and did murder Hae," and could have created reasonable doubt in at least one juror's mind and led to a different outcome.

Prosecutors declined to comment or to say whether they will appeal the ruling to the state's highest court.

"We are currently reviewing today's decision to determine next steps," Raquel Coombs, a spokeswoman for the Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh, said in an email.

During a hearing in June, Thiru Vignarajah, a special assistant attorney general arguing on behalf of the state, said it was reasonable not to seek out McClain because Syed's lawyer was focused on an alibi placing him at Woodlawn High School, not the library.

Syed has been behind bars since his arrest in February 1999.

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Associated Press writer Denise Lavoie contributed to this report from Richmond.
This photo gallery highlights some of the top news images made by Associated Press photographers in Latin America and the Caribbean published in the past week.

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Families were distraught in the Venezuelan city of Valencia after a fire swept through a police station's cells, killing 68 people. On the country's southern border, members of the indigenous Warao community joined in the flood of Venezuelans fleeing their homeland's economic collapse and political unrest.

In this Thursday, March 29, 2018 photo, relatives cry after learning their loved ones died in a fire a day prior that swept through a police station where prisoners were being kept in crowded cells in Valencia, Venezuela. Relatives of 68 people killed in the fire at the Venezuelan police station jail waited Thursday for officials to turn over the remains of their loved ones. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)

As the region observed Holy Week, cowboys in Uruguay competed in their annual rodeo and Guatemalans participated in the traditional "Strike of All Sorrows" to demand better public education.

Excited by his imminent canonization, devotees of the late Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero held an emotional Mass at the Divine Providence chapel, where the El Salvador prelate was assassinated in 1980.

Martin Vizcarra, a little known engineer, was sworn-in as Peru's new president, and Costa Rica prepared to hold a presidential runoff election on Easter Sunday. In Brazil, protesters threw eggs at a bus in the campaign caravan of former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Bolivian soldiers re-enacted a battle from the Pacific War of 1879 as their country presses Chile to restore Bolivia's access to the sea that it lost in the war. Relatives of 90 Argentine soldiers killed in the 1982 Falklands war visited the islands after their loved ones' remains were identified.

Venezuela bid farewell to Jose Antonio Abreu, the founder of the country's renowned "El Sistema" music program for young people.

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This photo gallery was curated by photographer Moises Castillo in Guatemala City. On Twitter: @moises1975 .

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AP photographers and photo editors on Twitter at https://twitter.com/AP/lists/ap-photographers

In this March 10, 2018 photo, a Warao boy from Venezuela dons a mask fashioned from cardboard at a a shelter in Pacaraima, the main entry point for Venezuelans in the Brazilian state of Roraima. Traditionally poor and marginalized in Venezuela, the Warao are arriving with even more health problems than other Venezuelans. Those health needs, combined with cultural and linguistic differences, mean authorities have no choice but to set up shelters just for them - and hope they can return to their home lands in Venezuela as integrating them into Brazilian society doesn't appear realistic. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)

In this Sunday, March 25, 2018 photo, an elderly woman holds palm fronds as she prays during Palm Sunday Mass at the Divine Child church in Bogota, Colombia. For Christians, Palm Sunday marks Jesus Christ's entrance into Jerusalem when his followers laid palm branches in his path, prior to his crucifixion. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)

In this Friday, March 23, 2018 photo, vendors watch the annual parade "Huelga de Todos los Dolores," or Strike of All Sorrows, in Guatemala City. The parade, organized by San Carlos de Borromeo students, dates back to 1898 that began as a strike to demand the government for better education. A Lenten tradition, the parade has evolved into a march that satirizes present day political issues and mocks current day politicians. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

In this March 24, 2018 photo, a gaucho watches the "Criolla del Prado" rodeo during Easter Week in Montevideo, Uruguay. "Gauchos," or cowboys from the plains of Uruguay and neighboring Argentina and Brazil compete by riding a bucking horse for 8 to 10 seconds. (AP Photo/Matilde Campodonico)

In this Sunday, March 25, 2018 photo, opponents of Brazil's former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva throw eggs at his caravan arriving to Sao Miguel do Oeste in southern Brazil. The former leader is leading polls for October's presidential election but is likely to be barred from running and judges could order him early as Monday to begin serving his sentence on a corruption conviction. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)

In this Saturday, March 24, 2018 photo, a man walks past a mural depicting the late Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero on an exterior wall of the Metropolitan Cathedral where Mass was offered to mark the anniversary of the archbishop's death, in San Salvador, El Salvador. Romero was shot and killed 38 years ago as he celebrated Mass at a hospital chapel. Pope Francis declared earlier this month that the churchman who became a hero for standing up for the poor and oppressed should be canonized along with the reformer Pope Paul VI. (AP Photo/Salvador Melendez)

In this Tuesday, March 27, 2018 photo, supporters of presidential candidate Carlos Alvarado of the Citizen's Action party kiss outside the location of the televised presidential debate in San Jose, Costa Rica. Alvarado's surprise arrival in the presidential runoff election set for April 1 was based in large part on his support for same-sex marriage. (AP Photo/Arnulfo Franco)

In this Friday, March 23, 2018 photo, Peru's President Martin Vizcarra waves as he makes his way to the House of Pizarro, the presidential residence and workplace, also known as Government Palace, in Lima, Peru. Vizcarra is taking over from his predecessor Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, who resigned over corruption allegations. (AP Photo/Karel Navarro)

In this Tuesday, March 27, 2018 photo, members of El Comercio newspaper hold a candle-light vigil outside the government palace to demand action from officials to secure the release of three kidnapped journalists in Quito, Ecuador. The journalists from El Comercio newspaper were kidnapped on Monday while working on a story along the conflictive Colombian-Ecuadorean border . (AP Photo/Dolores Ochoa)

In this Wednesday, March 28, 2018 photo, Bolivian soldiers re-enact the battle of "Canchas Blancas," which took place during the Pacific War in 1879 when Bolivia lost to Chile and in effect lost its access to the sea, in Canchas Blancas, Bolivia, the sight of the actual battle. Bolivia is currently waging a legal battle at The Hague's International Court of Justice to recuperate the lost Pacific coastal lands from Chile. (AP Photo/Juan Karita)

In this Monday, March 26, 2018 photo released by Argentina's presidential press office, a relative of an Argentine soldier killed during the 1982 war between Argentina and Britain sits by a tomb at the Darwin Military Cemetery on Falkland Islands, or Malvinas Islands. The relatives of 90 Argentine soldiers traveled to the islands after their remains were identified by a team led by the International Red Cross. (Argentina's presidential press office via AP)
SYDNEY (AP) - A hot air balloon landed heavily after hitting a tree north of Sydney on Friday, injuring 16 people, officials said.

The balloon was carrying a pilot and 24 passengers when it landed in a field in Hunter Valley after hitting the tree, Professional Ballooning Association of Australia spokesman Damian Crock said.

The Health Department said 16 passengers were treated at a hospital and at least 12 had been discharged late Friday.

Their injuries included suspected spinal damage and broken bones. None of the injuries was life-threatening, an ambulance official said.

Television reports showed branches strewn on the ground from a eucalyptus tree the balloon stuck and foliage still clinging to its basket after landing.

The circumstances of the landing will be examined by government crash investigators, Crock said.

The balloon's operator, Balloon Safaris, did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment Friday.

In January, four passengers were taken to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries when a Balloon Safaris hot air balloon made a heavy landing in Hunter Valley.
LOS ANGELES (AP) - Coffee sellers will have to post ominous warnings in California because each cup contains a chemical linked to cancer, a judge ruled.

The culprit is a byproduct of the bean roasting process that is a known carcinogen and has been at the heart of an eight-year legal struggle between a tiny nonprofit group and Big Coffee.

The Council for Education and Research on Toxics wanted the coffee industry to remove acrylamide from its processing - like potato chip makers did when it sued them years ago - or disclose the possible risk in signs or labels. The industry, led by Starbucks Corp., said the level of the chemical in coffee isn't harmful and any risks are outweighed by benefits.

FILE - In this Sept. 22, 2017, file photo, a barista pours steamed milk in a coffee at a cafe in Los Angeles. Superior Court Judge Elihu Berle has ruled that California law requires coffee companies to carry an ominous cancer warning label because of a chemical produced in the roasting process. Judge Berle wrote in a proposed ruling Wednesday, March 28, 2018, that Starbucks and other coffee companies failed to show that the threat from a chemical compound produced in the roasting process was insignificant. At the center of the dispute is acrylamide, a carcinogen found in many cooked foods, that is produced during the roasting process. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel, File)

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Elihu Berle said Wednesday that the coffee makers hadn't presented the proper grounds at trial to prevail.

"While plaintiff offered evidence that consumption of coffee increases the risk of harm to the fetus, to infants, to children and to adults, defendants' medical and epidemiology experts testified that they had no opinion on causation," Berle wrote in his proposed ruling. "Defendants failed to satisfy their burden of proving ... that consumption of coffee confers a benefit to human health."

The suit was brought against Starbucks and 90 companies under a law passed by California voters in 1986 that has been credited with culling cancer-causing chemicals from myriad products and also criticized for leading to quick settlement shakedowns.

The Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act, better known as Proposition 65, requires warning labels for about 900 chemicals known to cause cancer or birth defects. It allows private citizens, advocacy groups and attorneys to sue on behalf of the state and collect a portion of civil penalties for failure to provide warnings.

"This lawsuit has made a mockery of Prop. 65, has confused consumers, and does nothing to improve public health," said William Murray, president and CEO of the National Coffee Association, who added that coffee had been shown to be a healthy beverage.

Scientific evidence on coffee has gone back and forth for a long time, but concerns have eased recently about possible dangers of coffee, with some studies finding health benefits.

In 2016, the cancer agency of the World Health Organization moved coffee off its "possible carcinogen" list.

Studies indicate coffee is unlikely to cause breast, prostate or pancreatic cancer, and it seems to lower the risks for liver and uterine cancers, the agency said. Evidence is inadequate to determine its effect on dozens of other cancer types.

Coffee companies have said it's not feasible to remove acrylamide from their product without ruining the flavor.

But attorney Raphael Metzger, who brought the lawsuit and drinks a few cups of coffee a day, said the industry could remove the chemical without impairing taste.

"I firmly believe if the potato chip industry can do it, so can the coffee industry," Metzger said. "A warning won't be that effective because it's an addictive product."

Many coffee shops have already posted warnings that say acrylamide is cancer-causing chemical found in coffee. But signs that are supposed to be posted at the point of sale are often found in places not easily visible, such as below the counter where cream and sugar are available.

Customers at shops that post warnings are often unaware or unconcerned about them.

Afternoon coffee drinkers at a Los Angeles Starbucks said they might look into the warning or give coffee drinking a second thought after the ruling, but the cup of joe was likely to win out.

"I just don't think it would stop me," said Jen Bitterman, a digital marketing technologist. "I love the taste, I love the ritual, I love the high, the energy, and I think I'm addicted to it."

Darlington Ibekwe, a lawyer in Los Angeles, said a cancer warning would be annoying but wouldn't stop him from treating himself to three lattes a week.

"It's like cigarettes. Like, damn, now I've got to see this?" he said. "Dude, I'm enjoying my coffee."

The defendants have a couple weeks to challenge the ruling before it is final and could seek relief from an appellate court.

If the ruling stands, it could come with a stiff financial penalty and could rattle consumers beyond state lines.

The judge can set another phase of trial to consider potential civil penalties up to $2,500 per person exposed each day over eight years. That could be an astronomical sum in a state with close to 40 million residents, though such a massive fine is unlikely.

California's outsized market could make it difficult to tailor packaging with warning labels specifically to stores in the state.

That means out-of-state coffee drinkers could also take their coffee with a cancer warning. Cream and sugar would still be optional.

___

Associated Press writer Amanda Lee Myers in Los Angeles and AP Chief Medical Writer Marilynn Marchione in Milwaukee contributed to this story.

FILE -In In this Sept. 22, 2017, file photo, a customer pours milk into coffee near a posted Proposition 65 warning sign at a Starbucks coffee shop in Los Angeles. Superior Court Judge Elihu Berle has ruled that California law requires coffee companies to carry an ominous cancer warning label because of a chemical produced in the roasting process. Judge Berle wrote in a proposed ruling Wednesday, March 28, 2018, that Starbucks and other coffee companies failed to show that the threat from a chemical compound produced in the roasting process was insignificant. At the center of the dispute is acrylamide, a carcinogen found in many cooked foods, that is produced during the roasting process. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel)
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - South Korea says it is trying to find out what President Donald Trump meant when he made remarks linking the recently renegotiated South Korea-U.S. free trade agreement with talks on denuclearizing North Korea.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in's office said Friday that it is working through various channels to find out the President Trump's intentions following his speech in Ohio.

On Thursday Trump said he may hold up the free trade deal until after an agreement is reached with North Korea.

Two Koreas agreed to hold a summit on April 27 before a possible meeting between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Trump's comments raised concern since South Korea had viewed the revamped bilateral free trade deal as a separate issue from denuclearization talks on North Korea.
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) - A road accident in eastern Turkey has killed 17 people, mostly migrants, who had crossed into the country illegally, a senior official said.

Governor of Igdir province, Enver Unlu, said 36 people were also injured in the accident late on Thursday on a highway linking his province with neighboring Kars province.

Unlu said a minivan packed with migrants hit a light pole and caught fire. Some of the victims died in the crash while others were killed when they were hurled onto oncoming traffic and hit by another minivan that was also carrying migrants.

Members of emergency services work at the scene of a road accident near the northeastern city of Igdir, Turkey, late Thursday, March 29, 2018. A senior official says 17 people, mostly migrants, were killed in a road accident when a minivan packed with migrants hit a light pole and caught fire. (Suat Deniz/DHA-Depo Photos via AP)

The state-run Anadolu agency said the migrants were from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran and that their vehicles had crossed into Turkey illegally from Iran.

The cause of the accident was under investigation.

At least seven of the injured passengers were undergoing surgery at a hospital in Igdir, Anadolu reported. Some other passengers who were in serious condition were transferred to hospitals in the cities of Erzurum, Kars and Van.

Anadolu quoted Igdir's deputy chief health official, Taner Basaran, as saying as many as 50 migrants were "packed like sardines" into the minivans.

Unlu, the governor, said on arrival at the scene "we were faced with a painful migrant tragedy."
TOKYO (AP) - Families of Japanese abducted by North Korea decades ago urged Japan's leader on Friday to persuade U.S. President Donald Trump to help win the abductees' release during a possible summit with North Korea's leader.

Trump has said he will meet Kim Jong Un by the end of May, though North Korea hasn't directly commented on a message from a South Korean envoy that Kim wants to meet Trump.

Also Friday, a senior Chinese official briefed South Korean President Moon Jae-in in Seoul on the outcome of President Xi Jinping's meeting this week with Kim in Beijing. Moon and Kim are scheduled to meet on April 27.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in, right, shakes hands with Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi at the Presidential Blue House in Seoul, South Korea Friday, March 30, 2018. Yang is spending two days in Seoul briefing South Korean officials on the results of the talks between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping. Yang met with presidential national security director Chung Eui-yong on Thursday and met President Moon on Friday. (Kim Min-Hee/Pool Photo via AP)

The abductees' families urged Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to seek Trump's help because this could be their last chance to win their loved ones' release. Abe plans to visit the U.S. in April for talks with Trump.

"Please ask President Trump to discuss (with Kim) how to achieve the abductees' return," Shigeo Iizuka, 79, head of a group representing the families of abduction victims, told Abe. "We would like President Trump to ask Kim Jong Un to make specific arrangements for the abductees to return home."

Abe promised to do so, saying, "We should not let the abduction issue, which is very important to us, be left behind."

Iizuka's younger sister, Yaeko Taguchi, then 22, was kidnapped by North Korean agents in 1978, leaving behind two children - a baby boy and a girl - at a nursery. Iizuka adopted the boy and raised him as his fourth child, and the girl was adopted by an aunt.

Taguchi's whereabouts weren't known for nearly a quarter century until North Korea, after years of denials, acknowledged in 2002 abducting 13 Japanese citizens. Japan says North Korea has abducted at least four more Japanese.

North Korea allowed five of them to visit Japan in 2002 - and they stayed - but said the other eight had died, though their families say what the North said cannot be trusted. North Korea also promised a re-investigation of the eight and set up a committee, but its results were never presented as the North's missile and nuclear threats escalated.

Iizuka said he and the other families want Abe to "make use of each upcoming meeting" to achieve the abductees' return.

"We see a big chance coming up, and there will be no greater chance than this," he said.

In Seoul, Yang Jiechi, a member of the Chinese Communist Party's powerful political bureau who was sent as Xi's special envoy, met with Moon and delivered a detailed explanation of the talks between Xi and Kim, according to Moon's office. The office said Yang confirmed Chinese intentions to "actively cooperate" in seeking the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

Yang earlier in the day met with South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-hwa, who said it was encouraging that Kim during his talks with Xi expressed a "firm willingness" for dialogue with Seoul and Washington. Yang told Kang that Beijing hopes the Kim-Xi meeting will prove helpful to the success of talks between Pyongyang, Seoul and Washington, according to Seoul's Foreign Ministry.

Ahead of Moon's planned summit with Kim in late April, a group of 160 South Korean musicians is performing in North Korea this Sunday and Tuesday. The group, which includes some of South Korea's biggest pop singers, is to fly to the North on Saturday.

___

Associated Press writer Kim Tong-hyung in Seoul contributed to this story.

___

Follow Mari Yamaguchi on Twitter at www.twitter.com/mariyamaguchi

Find her work at https://www.apnews.com/search/mari%20yamaguchi

South Korean President Moon Jae-in, right, shakes hands with Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi at the Presidential Blue House in Seoul, South Korea Friday, March 30, 2018. Yang is spending two days in Seoul briefing South Korean officials on the results of the talks between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping. Yang met with presidential national security director Chung Eui-yong on Thursday and met President Moon on Friday. (Kim Min-Hee/Pool Photo via AP)

South Korean President Moon Jae-in, right, shakes hands with Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi at the Presidential Blue House in Seoul, South Korea Friday, March 30, 2018. Yang is spending two days in Seoul briefing South Korean officials on the results of the talks between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping. Yang met with presidential national security director Chung Eui-yong on Thursday and met President Moon on Friday. (Kim Min-Hee/Pool Photo via AP)

South Korean President Moon Jae-in, left, shakes hands with Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi at the Presidential Blue House in Seoul, South Korea Friday, March 30, 2018. Yang is spending two days in Seoul briefing South Korean officials on the results of the talks between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping. Yang met with presidential national security director Chung Eui-yong on Thursday and met President Moon on Friday. (Kim Min-Hee/Pool Photo via AP)
MINGORA, Pakistan (AP) - A Pakistani women's activist said Friday that Malala Yousafzai, who has returned to Pakistan's capital Islamabad for the first time since Taliban militants shot her in 2012, was hoping to visit her Swat Valley hometown but that the trip depended on security clearances from the government.

Security was visibly beefed up in Mingora, the Nobel Peace Prize winner's hometown, but authorities wouldn't confirm whether she would be arriving there. Yousafzai is expected to return to London on Monday.

Activist Adnan Tabassum, also from Swat, met with Yousafzai on Thursday in Islamabad. She said Yousafzai told her that she wanted to travel to Swat to see her former school friends and relatives.

A Pakistani student teaches her class fellows at the school of Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai in her hometown of Swat Valley in Pakistan, Friday, March 30, 2018. A Pakistani women's activist says Malala Yousafzai, who is back in Pakistan for the first time since the Taliban shot her in 2012, is hoping to visit her Swat Valley hometown but that the trip depends on security clearances from the government. (AP Photo/Naveed Ali)

According to Tabassum, 20-year-old Yousafzai asked authorities to allow her to go to Shangla village in Swat, where a school has been built by her Malala Fund.

"Malala is not afraid of going to Swat, where the terrorists opened fire on her in 2012 and wounded her. It is her wish to again see her hometown, her school and her home, where she spent years of her life," she told The Associated Press.

In October 2012, Yousafzai was shot in the head by a Taliban assassin who had jumped inside her school van and yelled, "Who is Malala?" She had been targeted for speaking out on education in her home of Mingora in the Swat Valley. Only 14 when she was shot, Yousafzai has since delighted in telling the Taliban that instead of silencing her, they have amplified her voice. She has since written a book, spoken at the United Nations and met with refugees.

Schoolgirls in Yousafzai's town said they were keen to see her.

"I admire Malala because she strived to promote girls' education," said Amna Khan, 12, as she entered one of the schools in Mingora.

On Thursday, Yousafzai met with Pakistan's Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi at his office, where she also attended a gathering and made an emotional speech in which she said it was one of the happiest days of her life to be in Pakistan.

Yousafzai won praise from across Pakistan on her return home, but some critics on social media have tried to undermine her efforts to promote girls' education, though these efforts have been snubbed by Information Minister Maryam Aurangzeb and Yousafzai's admirers.

Since her attack and recovery, Yousafzai has led the Malala Fund, which she said has invested $6 million in schools and to provide books and uniforms for schoolchildren. She became the youngest person to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014.

Yousafzai landed in Pakistan just before dawn Thursday, flanked by heavy security. Secrecy surrounded her arrival as well as details of her visit. The security was extraordinary as the Taliban had warned in the past that they would again target her again if she came back to Pakistan.

___

Ahmed reported from Islamabad.

In this photo released by the Press Information Department, Pakistani Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, second from left, receives a souvenir from Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, center, Prime Minister of Pakistan with her family members in Islamabad, Pakistan, Thursday, March 29, 2018. Yousafzai on Thursday said she was excited to be back in Pakistan for the first time since she was shot in 2012 by Taliban militants angered at her championing of education for girls. (Press Information Department, via AP)

FILE - In this Friday, Oct. 10, 2014 file photo, a Pakistani customer reads the book written by Malala Yousafzai, who survived a Taliban attack, in Islamabad, Pakistan. Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala returned to Pakistan early Thursday, March 29, 2018 for the first time since she was shot in 2012 by Taliban militants angered at her championing of education for girls. (AP Photo/B.K. Bangash, file)
K-State Gates Capital Stock Pitch Challenge





The Department of Finance invites Kansas State University students to put their stock analysis skills to the test with $10,000 in prize money on the line in the new K-State Gates Capital Stock Pitch Challenge.

The competition is completed at this time and will begin again in Spring 2022. Watch the 2021 recorded stock pitches and live judging below!

2021 Recordings /academics/departments/finance/stock-pitch/2021.html Y purple medium-basic 2021 Recordings

Goal of the Competition

The goal of the competition is to create campus-wide interest in stock investing and encourage students to further develop their stock analysis skills.

General Overview

Teams will source and research their best stock investment idea. The analysis will need to consider both the qualitative (competitive advantage, management, corporate governance, etc.) and quantitative (valuation, ratio analysis, etc.) aspects of the company. Based on the written reports, the top five teams will be selected to present their plans to a panel of judges comprised of investment professionals. A minimum of $10,000 in prize money will be awarded. This is a great opportunity for students to develop both their analytical and presentation skills while interacting with investment professionals.

Requirements to Participate

Each team will consist of 2-4 students.

The competition is open to all K-State students from any major or college.

Registration

Teams are required to register by completing the team registration form.

Registrations were due by end of day, Sunday, February 28, 2021.

A crash course on valuation will be held after registration closes to assist all teams by providing a high-level understanding of stock analysis.

Subject Company Requirements

$2 billion market cap

Stock price of at least $5

US-listed companies only

Pitch can be long (buy) or short (sell)

Initial Competition - Written Analysis

Each team will write a stock analysis paper consisting of: Cover page with company name and each team members name. Written analysis of the company (business, management, industry analysis, competitive advantages, valuation, etc.) no greater than 3-5 pages, double spaced with normal margins. An appendix to support as necessary. No limit on appendix pages but only the written analysis will be graded. Reference page.

Teams may use sources such as the internet, brokerage reports, and non-faculty business professionals as resources. Please cite all sources appropriately.

Primary research (first-hand information from employees, competitors, customers, etc.) is strongly encouraged.

Written analysis must be submitted electronically to Scott Hendrix (hendrix@ksu.edu) by Friday, March 26, 2021 at noon. Late submissions, including those at 12:01 p.m., will not be considered. Before submission, your written analysis MUST NOT be submitted with names of team members - include only your team name Submission should be submitted in PDF format

Late submissions, including those at 12:01 p.m., will not be considered. The written analysis will initially be graded by faculty to determine the best 12 papers. Those 12 papers will then be graded by investment professionals to determine the five teams for the oral competition.

Judging the Written Report

The written report will be judged using this rubric: 20% Originality 30% Qualitative analysis (competitive advantage, management, governance, etc.) 30% Quantitative analysis (valuation, ratio analysis) 20% Uniqueness of analysis (primary research)

The top 5 teams will be announced as finalists Wednesday, April 7, 2021. Finalists will be notified via email.

Final Competition

The top 5 teams will submit a 10-minute video presentation by Friday, April 16, 2021 . There will be a 10 minute live Q&A with judges via Zoom The public will be allowed to view submissions. Contestants consent to all submissions (paper, video, Q&A) to be posted online

. Location: Due to ongoing pandemic, this will be a virtual event hosted over Zoom - link will be sent out ahead of time

Team attire: Business professional

Time: Each presentation will last 20 minutes - 10 minutes for presentation + up to 10 minutes of Q&A

Judging the Final Competition

The presentation will be judged using this rubric: 20% Originality and uniqueness of analysis (primary research) 30% Qualitative analysis (competitive advantage, management, governance, etc.) 20% Soundness and rigor of quantitative analysis (valuation, ratio analysis) 30% Presentation quality (ability, involvement of all members, Q&A)

Live Virtual Judging will be held on April 23, 2021

Prizes
PRISTINA, Kosovo (AP) - Kosovo's prime minister on Friday fired both his interior minister and the country's intelligence chief for secretly deporting five Turkish teachers and a Turkish doctor without his permission.

Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj said Interior Minister Flamur Sefaj and the head of the country's intelligence service, Driton Gashi, had not told him about their decision. The six men were arrested, lost their Kosovo residence permits and deported on Thursday, and were arrested upon arriving in Ankara.

Addressing lawmakers, Haradinaj said he considered the deportations a "violation of the decision-making hierarchy." He said it was a bilateral operation of the intelligence services of both countries.

Students of Mehmet Akif College in Kosovo protest the arrest and deportation of their teachers in Kosovo's capital Pristina on Thursday, March 29, 2018. Kosovo police arrested five Turks working with a group of schools said to be owned by cleric Fethullah Gulen, who President Recep Tayyip Erdogan blames for an attempted coup two years ago. Turkey's state-run Anadolu Agency said the Turkish intelligence agency, MIT, used a private plane to take those arrested back to Turkey. They have been handed over to the judiciary. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)

"This is an institutional precedent that should not happen in the future," he said.

The Turkish teachers worked with schools owned by Fethullah Gulen, a cleric who the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan blames for an attempted coup two years ago. Gulen has denied the claims.

Tens of thousands of alleged Gulen supporters have been arrested or lost their jobs in Turkey since the July 2016 attempted coup. Many have proclaimed their innocence.

Turkish media, however, called the six deported Turks members of the Gulen "terror group's branch in the Balkans."

Erdogan on Friday hailed the role his country's intelligence police played in the deportations, according to the state-run Anadolu Agency.

"Our National Intelligence Organization brought six senior FETO representatives in the Balkans back to Turkey in cooperation with Kosovo intelligence," he said.

The deportations were criticized by rights groups, the U.S. ambassador and students in Kosovo.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch called the Turks' deportation and arrest "a callous disregard for human rights and rule of law."

The U.S. ambassador to Pristina, Greg Delawie, wrote on Twitter that "Transparency and commitment to due process and the rule of law are vital."

Scores of students at the Gulistan Education Institutions in Kosovo protested Friday in Pristina, the capital, with banners supporting their former teachers.

Leutrim Syla, a lawyer for one of the deported Turks, said they have no information on the men since they were arrested in Ankara.

"We are really concerned about their welfare, or their life," he said.

Students of Mehmet Akif College in Kosovo protest the arrest and deportation of their teachers in Kosovo's capital Pristina on Thursday, March 29, 2018. Kosovo police arrested five Turks working with a group of schools said to be owned by cleric Fethullah Gulen, who President Recep Tayyip Erdogan blames for an attempted coup two years ago. Turkey's state-run Anadolu Agency said the Turkish intelligence agency, MIT, used a private plane to take those arrested back to Turkey. They have been handed over to the judiciary. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)

Students of Mehmet Akif College in Kosovo protest the arrest and deportation of their teachers in Kosovo's capital Pristina on Thursday, March 29, 2018. Kosovo police arrested five Turks working with a group of schools said to be owned by cleric Fethullah Gulen, who President Recep Tayyip Erdogan blames for an attempted coup two years ago. Turkey's state-run Anadolu Agency said the Turkish intelligence agency, MIT, used a private plane to take those arrested back to Turkey. They have been handed over to the judiciary. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)
SAIQI, China (AP) - The twin-spired church in this southern Chinese village was packed with more than a thousand Catholics observing Good Friday, but the bishop who tends to the congregation was not among them. Just a day earlier, government agents had taken him away.

Bishop Guo Xijin is at the center of talks between the Vatican and the atheist Communist Party that will likely yield a deal on who appoints bishops in China. The move would be historic, uniting the country's Catholics for the first time since Beijing and the Holy See severed relations nearly seven decades ago.

At a pre-dawn Mass on Thursday, Guo had urged congregants at the Saiqi church to be brave and keep the faith. "Full of comfort and hope, we are inspired to more bravely face struggles and offer our love to God," he told them.

Chinese Catholics leave the Mindong underground Catholic church after attending the Good Friday service in Saiqi in southeast China's Fujian province, Friday, March 30, 2018. Good Friday celebrations in one Chinese parish had a conspicuous absence: their bishop, who just the day before was whisked away by the government. The bishop, Guo Xijin is at the center of talks between the Vatican and the atheist Communist Party that are expected to yield a historic deal on who appoints bishops in China and unite the country's Catholics for the first time since Beijing and the Holy See severed relations nearly seven decades ago. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

Not long after, government agents arrived and for the second time during Holy Week took Guo away for what they described as a "vacation" - a euphemistic term in China for an enforced disappearance.

For years, China's Catholics have been split between those who follow state-authorized churches outside the Vatican's authority and those who attend underground churches that swear fealty to the pope. Guo is the head of one such underground diocese.

Under the deal being discussed, the Vatican is expected to recognize seven Beijing-appointed bishops not chosen by the pope, and Guo and one other underground bishop would step aside.

Supporters say the deal would help the Holy See achieve its years-long goal of bringing all of China's 12 million Catholics ostensibly under the pope's wing.

Others, including a prominent Hong Kong cardinal, have accused the Vatican of selling out its followers to an authoritarian regime.

Guo's exile serves as a stark reminder of the power of a state that has been seeking to center the people's devotion on the ruling party.

It also highlights how high-level deliberations in the marble-columned splendor of the Vatican City and in Beijing's walled leadership compound could have reverberations in places like rural Saiqi for generations to come.

Guo's church sits atop a sloping hill overlooking meandering streets of small barbershops and noodle joints. Parishioners say they don't know what to expect from a deal they discuss mostly in whispered conversations between morning and evening services.

For decades, they say, they've been able to peacefully practice their religion despite being under the watchful eye of the state. But it wasn't always that way.

The story of the Catholic Church's dark period in China during Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution has been told and retold to the young people at Guo's parish. They've heard the tales of elderly relatives having their Bibles torn up, being paraded down the streets during public shaming sessions or sent away to labor camps.

"That generation had to go through so much," said Huang Weiping, 37, who manages a shop selling rosary beads and portraits of Joseph and Mary.

He said his relative was Guo's predecessor, Bishop Huang Shoucheng, who spent many years in prison.

Lin Qigua, a 55-year-old parishioner, said bridging the divide between the official and underground church would be difficult.

"Our parents always told us that the Catholic Church comes from Rome, and then suddenly the Communist Party comes out with its own church," Lin said. "There's a conflict here, isn't there? Our ancestors sacrificed so much - was their blood shed for nothing?"

The state-backed Chinese church at recent conferences has stressed the need to remain independent of the Vatican and to "Sinicize" itself - code for accepting party leadership and rejecting foreign links.

A Vatican official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to reveal the content of the talks with China acknowledged there were downsides to the potential deal. The official said it would limit the Holy See's activities in China and cede power to Beijing to nominate bishops, with the pope only able to exercise what amounts to a papal veto.

China's State Administration of Religious Affairs declined to be interviewed.

The underground Churches have had regular communications with Chinese authorities since the 1990s, and officials even ask the church for help with local disputes, said Rev. Peng Zhenkang, a priest in Guo's parish.

"Villagers here will listen to clergy," Peng said.

He said Guo is often taken away during "sensitive" periods and that the bishop doesn't resist. This time, Peng said, his exile was surely linked to the Vatican talks.

Reached by phone on Thursday, a priest who had been asked by authorities to leave Saiqi along with Guo said they were just getting off a train in Xiamen, a city more than 160 miles (255 kilometers) away

"It's inconvenient for the bishop to talk right now. I'm sorry," Rev. Xu Wenming said before hanging up.

The Vatican official said that under the proposed deal with China, Guo would become an auxiliary bishop to the official, state-recognized Bishop Zhan Silu, but would remain in charge of the churchgoers he had been leading. The official said Guo has agreed to that arrangement.

The other Vatican-appointed leader who would be affected by the deal is 88-year-old Bishop Zhuang Jianjian, the head of a rural parish in Guangdong province housed in a weathered stucco church built more than a hundred years ago.

Zhuang is described as a pillar of the Catholic communities in the villages clustered in Jiexi county. For decades, he has nurtured generations of Catholics and frequently administers blessings over newborns or newlyweds, the dead or dying, his parishioners say.

The bishop declined to speak to reporters outside his church.

"Please forgive me," Zhuang said, bowing in apology.

While several of Zhuang's parishioners expressed admiration for the bishop's generosity and dedication, none were certain they would oppose his departure if the Vatican ordered it.

"We will all stick to the church no matter how the negotiations go," said Huang Q. L., a descendant of three generations of Catholics whose hand-painted Biblical depictions adorn the church nave. "We have all experienced the faith deeply."

Zhuang's proposed replacement is Bishop Huang Bingzhang, who Beijing ordained "illicitly" in 2011 without Vatican approval. Zhuang declined to be interviewed.

One of his priests, Rev. Xu Jihua, said he expected Huang to be ordained by the Vatican. He said ending the divisions between the Vatican and Beijing will be good for Catholics across China.

"No one hopes to live a life of faith under these abnormal conditions," Xu said.

Then, repeating a belief expressed by underground and state-sanctioned churchgoers alike, the priest remarked: "The essence of faith, after all, is that it exists in light. If a faith is opaque and has its doors closed, that is darkness."

___

Associated Press writer Nicole Winfield in Rome contributed to this report.

Priests and their followers perform a procession during a Good Friday service at the Mindong underground Catholic church in Saiqi in southeast China's Fujian province, Friday, March 30, 2018. Good Friday celebrations in one Chinese parish had a conspicuous absence: their bishop, who just the day before was whisked away by the government. The bishop, Guo Xijin is at the center of talks between the Vatican and the atheist Communist Party that are expected to yield a historic deal on who appoints bishops in China and unite the country's Catholics for the first time since Beijing and the Holy See severed relations nearly seven decades ago. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

In this Tuesday, March 27, 2018 photo, a man stands outside the Hepo underground Catholic church in Jiexi county in south China's Guangdong province. Good Friday celebrations in one Chinese parish had a conspicuous absence: their bishop, who just the day before was whisked away by the government. The bishop is at the center of talks between the Vatican and the atheist Communist Party that are expected to yield a historic deal on who appoints bishops in China and unite the country's Catholics for the first time since Beijing and the Holy See severed relations nearly seven decades ago. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

In this Wednesday, March 28, 2018 photo, bishop Zhuang Jianjian walks to a car which waiting for him at the Hepo underground Catholic church in Jiexi county in south China's Guangdong province. Good Friday celebrations in one Chinese parish had a conspicuous absence: their bishop, who just the day before was whisked away by the government. The bishop, Guo Xijin is at the center of talks between the Vatican and the atheist Communist Party that are expected to yield a historic deal on who appoints bishops in China and unite the country's Catholics for the first time since Beijing and the Holy See severed relations nearly seven decades ago. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

In this Thursday, March 29, 2018 photo, Chinese Catholics offer prayers during a mass ahead of an Easter day at the Mindong underground Catholic church in Saiqi in southeast China's Fujian province. Good Friday celebrations in one Chinese parish had a conspicuous absence: their bishop, who just the day before was whisked away by the government. The bishop, Guo Xijin is at the center of talks between the Vatican and the atheist Communist Party that are expected to yield a historic deal on who appoints bishops in China and unite the country's Catholics for the first time since Beijing and the Holy See severed relations nearly seven decades ago. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

In this Thursday, March 29, 2018, photo, Chinese Catholics offer prayers during a mass ahead of an Easter day at the Mindong underground Catholic church in Saiqi in southeast China's Fujian province. Good Friday celebrations in one Chinese parish had a conspicuous absence: their bishop, who just the day before was whisked away by the government. The bishop, Guo Xijin is at the center of talks between the Vatican and the atheist Communist Party that are expected to yield a historic deal on who appoints bishops in China and unite the country's Catholics for the first time since Beijing and the Holy See severed relations nearly seven decades ago. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

In this Thursday, March 29, 2018 photo, Chinese people walk by Catholics offer prayers during a mass ahead of an Easter day at the Mindong underground Catholic church in Saiqi in southeast China's Fujian province. Good Friday celebrations in one Chinese parish had a conspicuous absence: their bishop, who just the day before was whisked away by the government. The bishop, Guo Xijin is at the center of talks between the Vatican and the atheist Communist Party that are expected to yield a historic deal on who appoints bishops in China and unite the country's Catholics for the first time since Beijing and the Holy See severed relations nearly seven decades ago. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

In this Thursday, March 29, 2018 photo, a woman carries a child stands near a door as a priest speaks during a mass ahead of an Easter day at the Mindong underground Catholic church in Saiqi in southeast China's Fujian province. The notice on the right is to advice churchgoers switch off their mobile phones and no photography during the mass." Good Friday celebrations in one Chinese parish had a conspicuous absence: their bishop, who just the day before was whisked away by the government. The bishop, Guo Xijin is at the center of talks between the Vatican and the atheist Communist Party that are expected to yield a historic deal on who appoints bishops in China and unite the country's Catholics for the first time since Beijing and the Holy See severed relations nearly seven decades ago. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

In this Wednesday, March 28, 2018, photo, bishop Zhuang Jianjian is approached by journalists as he getting into a car at the Hepo underground Catholic church in Jiexi county in south China's Guangdong province. Good Friday celebrations in one Chinese parish had a conspicuous absence: their bishop, who just the day before was whisked away by the government. The bishop, Guo Xijin is at the center of talks between the Vatican and the atheist Communist Party that are expected to yield a historic deal on who appoints bishops in China and unite the country's Catholics for the first time since Beijing and the Holy See severed relations nearly seven decades ago. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

In this Wednesday, March 28, 2018, photo, bishop Zhuang Jianjian gestures as he tries to avoid the journalists' questions at the Hepo underground Catholic church in Jiexi county in south China's Guangdong province. Good Friday celebrations in one Chinese parish had a conspicuous absence: their bishop, who just the day before was whisked away by the government. The bishop is at the center of talks between the Vatican and the atheist Communist Party that are expected to yield a historic deal on who appoints bishops in China and unite the country's Catholics for the first time since Beijing and the Holy See severed relations nearly seven decades ago. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

In this Wednesday, March 28, 2018 photo, bishop Huang Bingzhang gestures as he tries to avoid the journalists' questions at the Shantou Catholic church in Shantou in south China's Guangdong province. Good Friday celebrations in one Chinese parish had a conspicuous absence: their bishop, who just the day before was whisked away by the government. The bishop is at the center of talks between the Vatican and the atheist Communist Party that are expected to yield a historic deal on who appoints bishops in China and unite the country's Catholics for the first time since Beijing and the Holy See severed relations nearly seven decades ago. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

In this Tuesday, March 27, 2018, photo, a man writes notes near the Catholic newspapers on display at the Hepo underground Catholic church in Jiexi county in south China's Guangdong province.Good Friday celebrations in one Chinese parish had a conspicuous absence: their bishop, who just the day before was whisked away by the government. The bishop is at the center of talks between the Vatican and the atheist Communist Party that are expected to yield a historic deal on who appoints bishops in China and unite the country's Catholics for the first time since Beijing and the Holy See severed relations nearly seven decades ago. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

In this Tuesday, March 27, 2018 photo, Chinese Catholics chat at the main entrance of the Hepo underground Catholic church in Jiexi county in south China's Guangdong province. Good Friday celebrations in one Chinese parish had a conspicuous absence: their bishop, who just the day before was whisked away by the government. The bishop is at the center of talks between the Vatican and the atheist Communist Party that are expected to yield a historic deal on who appoints bishops in China and unite the country's Catholics for the first time since Beijing and the Holy See severed relations nearly seven decades ago. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

In this Tuesday, March 27, 2018 photo, people chat at the main entrance of the Hepo underground Catholic church in Jiexi county in south China's Guangdong province. Good Friday celebrations in one Chinese parish had a conspicuous absence: their bishop, who just the day before was whisked away by the government. The bishop is at the center of talks between the Vatican and the atheist Communist Party that are expected to yield a historic deal on who appoints bishops in China and unite the country's Catholics for the first time since Beijing and the Holy See severed relations nearly seven decades ago. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

In this Tuesday, March 27, 2018, photo, Chinese Catholics chat after attending a morning service at the Hepo underground Catholic church in Jiexi county in south China's Guangdong province. Good Friday celebrations in one Chinese parish had a conspicuous absence: their bishop, who just the day before was whisked away by the government. The bishop is at the center of talks between the Vatican and the atheist Communist Party that are expected to yield a historic deal on who appoints bishops in China and unite the country's Catholics for the first time since Beijing and the Holy See severed relations nearly seven decades ago. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

In this Wednesday, March 28, 2018 photo, a worker stands on a scaffolding as he preparing the up coming Easter day mass at the Shantou Catholic church in Shantou in south China's Guangdong province. Good Friday celebrations in one Chinese parish had a conspicuous absence: their bishop, who just the day before was whisked away by the government. The bishop is at the center of talks between the Vatican and the atheist Communist Party that are expected to yield a historic deal on who appoints bishops in China and unite the country's Catholics for the first time since Beijing and the Holy See severed relations nearly seven decades ago. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

In this Wednesday, March 28, 2018 photo, a worker stands on a scaffolding as he preparing the up coming Easter day mass at the Shantou Catholic church in Shantou in south China's Guangdong province. Good Friday celebrations in one Chinese parish had a conspicuous absence: their bishop, who just the day before was whisked away by the government. The bishop is at the center of talks between the Vatican and the atheist Communist Party that are expected to yield a historic deal on who appoints bishops in China and unite the country's Catholics for the first time since Beijing and the Holy See severed relations nearly seven decades ago. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

In this Wednesday, March 28, 2018 photo, a worker stands on a scaffolding as he preparing the up coming Easter day mass at the Shantou Catholic church in Shantou in south China's Guangdong province. Good Friday celebrations in one Chinese parish had a conspicuous absence: their bishop, who just the day before was whisked away by the government. The bishop is at the center of talks between the Vatican and the atheist Communist Party that are expected to yield a historic deal on who appoints bishops in China and unite the country's Catholics for the first time since Beijing and the Holy See severed relations nearly seven decades ago. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)
PARIS (AP) - French airline Air France says a quarter of its flights have been cancelled due to a day-long strike over pay.

The company said in a statement that 20 percent of its long-haul flights were cancelled Friday as well as 30 percent of its medium-haul flights arriving and departing from Paris-Charles de Gaulle.

Air France recommends that passengers check their flights before going to the airport and has offered to change tickets for free.

The strike aims to put pressure on management to increase salaries by 6 percent.

It comes amid protests against French President Emmanuel Macron's economic changes - trains, planes, schools and other public services have been disrupted.
FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) - Hundreds of Kentucky teachers called in sick Friday to protest last-minute changes to their pension system, forcing nearly two dozen districts to close while angry educators rallied outside the governor's office to demand he not sign the bill.

With thunderous chants of "shut it down" echoing throughout the Capitol Rotunda, Democratic Attorney General Andy Beshear used a megaphone to announce he would sue to block the bill's implementation if Republican Gov. Matt Bevin signs it into law.

Bevin had not signed the bill as of Friday afternoon. Thursday night, he tweeted public employees owe lawmakers a "debt of gratitude" for passing the bill.

Hundreds of Kentucky teachers protest outside of Gov. Matt Bevin's office on Friday, March 30, 2018, in Frankfort, Ky. State lawmakers passed a bill late Thursday night that makes changes to the state's pension system. Bevin could sign the bill into law on Friday. (AP Photo/Adam Beam)

The show of force comes amid growing unrest among public educators nationwide, led by thousands of West Virginia teachers who walked off the job for nine days earlier this year to secure a 5 percent pay raise. Teacher unrest spread to another deep red state in Oklahoma, where the GOP-led legislature approved money for teacher raises and more school funding. Teachers are mulling whether the current offer from lawmakers is enough to avert a work stoppage.

Kentucky Education Association President Stephanie Winkler said the union did not organize Friday's school closures, saying "I can't control what teachers do."

"I support their right to call in sick if they are ill, and they are sick," Winkler said during a news conference at KEA headquarters, prompting some teachers in the crowd to begin coughing.

Jefferson County officials in Louisville, one of the largest school districts in the country, said they couldn't get enough substitutes to cover all their classes Friday. In Fayette County, officials said more than a third of school employees in the Lexington district were staying home.

North of Lexington, the Scott County school district called off classes. It said on Facebook that since the bill's passage, dozens of teachers requested substitutes to fill in for them Friday.

"We can currently only fill 54 of the nearly 150 that we need," the statement said. "That leaves too many classes not covered, which causes a situation that is unsafe and unproductive for students and staff."

Winkler said a statewide work stoppage is still an option. The union is planning a rally Monday at the state capitol when much of the state is on spring break and lawmakers are scheduled to reconvene to possibly vote on a two-year operating budget.

"If this budget is not in the best interest of public education students and public service then we will react," Winkler said.

Kentucky's pension system is among the worst-funded in the country. The state is at least $41 billion short of the money it needs to pay retirement benefits over the next 30 years, placing a strain on state and local government finances.

On Thursday night, the state legislature passed a bill that preserves most benefits for current public workers. But it would require all new teachers to use a hybrid plan that does not guarantee them a set pension amount when they retire. Instead, they would live off the money accumulated in their accounts from contributions and investment returns, which would be guaranteed not to lose money.

"Why would anybody go into teaching now in the state of Kentucky," asked Whitney Walker, a government teacher at Lafayette High School in Fayette County, the state's second-largest district that was forced to close Friday. "We need good teachers, not just anybody who would walk in the door."

Beshear, a potential candidate for governor in 2019, said the bill violates the state's inviolable contract by freezing the accumulation of sick days to boost retirement benefits. Winkler said the KEA supports Beshear and will join him in any potential lawsuit. But Republicans who support the bill noted a proposal the KEA supported included similar language.

Another option would be to challenge the way lawmakers passed the bill. A state law requires the bill to have a financial analysis before passing. But acting House Speaker David Osborne said the Supreme Court has interpreted that law as a House rule, which lawmakers can suspend at any time.

___

Schreiner reported from Louisville, Kentucky.
NEWARK, N.J. (AP) - Federal authorities will prosecute the drug and gun charges that rapper Juelz Santana faces following an incident at Newark Liberty International Airport earlier this month.

Santana had faced both state and federal charges in the matter. But the state charges were dismissed this week, as Essex County prosecutors said they would defer to federal authorities.

Santana had pleaded not guilty to state charges. He remains jailed pending further hearings.

Authorities say security personnel found a loaded .38-caliber handgun and oxycodone pills Santana didn't have a prescription for in a carry-on bag containing his identification.

They say he fled the area, leaving two bags behind. He turned himself in three days later.

The 36-year-old New York City-born rapper lives in Totowa, New Jersey. His real name is LaRon James.
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) - A Florida university student is being sent home to China because police say he exhibited "disturbing behavior," and bought a second assault weapon after coming to the attention of police.

University of Central Florida Police say they spoke with 26-year-old Wenliang Sun in early February after he made unspecified "unusual statements" to a counselor.

The Orlando Sentinel reports Friday he also stopped attending classes, dyed his hair and bought an expensive car. UCF Police Chief Richard Beary said these actions, taken together, raised alarms.

Because he was not attending classes, his student visa was revoked and he was taken into custody last month. An immigration judge last week ordered him deported. He remains jailed awaiting deportation.

Beary said investigators believe "we just saved a bunch of lives."
NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) - The Cypriot government said Friday that it's ready to "tangibly support" the sale of the island nation's Cooperative Bank to private investors and to guarantee the security of deposits.

Cyprus government spokesman Prodromos Prodromou said that there's already been interest from domestic and foreign investors, which bodes well for its prospects.

But he said an "organized whispering campaign" and irresponsible rumors has led to an "unjustified" withdrawal of deposits.

Prodromou blamed a political party he didn't name for trying to reap political gain by spreading rumors that have rattled depositors.

The bank is 77-percent state-owned and is the number one bank for domestic deposits. But it's weighed down by bad loans, representing nearly 60 percent of the total loan book.

The bank appointed Citigroup Global Markets to look for investors as part of its strategic plan. The deadline for expressions of interest expired March 29.

Depositor jitters are primarily owed to a 2013 banking crisis that forced Cyprus to accept a rescue deal that included a seizure of unsecured deposits in the country's two largest lenders.

Andros Kyprianou, leader of Communist-rooted AKEL denied "unacceptable and condemnable" suggestions that his party urged depositors to take their savings out of the bank, saying that AKEL "would never behave in such a away."

Finance Minister Harris Georgiades told state broadcaster RIK earlier that depositors have nothing to worry about and that the bank's sale would only help boost its viability.

The government will retain a stake in the bank after its sale.
MOSCOW (AP) - The crisis between Russia and the West over the poisoning of a former double agent in Britain heightened Friday as Russia ordered new cuts to the number of British envoys in the country.

Russia also summoned 23 foreign ambassadors to inform them that some of their diplomats would be expelled, a day after ordering 60 U.S. diplomats to leave and demanding that Washington's consulate in St. Petersburg close on short notice.

The massive expulsion of diplomats on both sides has reached a scale unseen even at the height of the Cold War.

The British Embassy building, foreground, with the Russian Foreign Ministry building, background right, in Moscow, Russia, Friday, March 30, 2018. The Russian Foreign Ministry said Friday it has ordered Britain to reduce the number of its diplomats in Moscow to the level that Russia has in London, escalating a diplomatic war with the West over the poisoning of an ex-Russian spy in Britain. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)

Two dozen countries, along with NATO, ordered out more than 150 Russian diplomats this week in a show of solidarity with Britain over the nerve-agent poisoning of Russian ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Britain that London blamed on Russia.

Moscow has vehemently denied involvement in the March 4 nerve agent attack in the English city of Salisbury and announced the expulsion of the same number of diplomats from each nation.

The ministry escalated its response Friday, saying it has ordered Britain to reduce the number of its diplomats in Moscow to the level that Russia has in London. The exact number wasn't immediately clear, but state news agency RIA Novosti agency quoted an unidentified Russian diplomat as saying the number of British diplomatic personnel in Russia exceeds the number of Russian envoys in Britain by more than 50 people.

The ministry said it summoned the British ambassador to hand him a protest over the "provocative and unsubstantiated actions by Britain, which instigated the expulsion of Russian diplomats from various nations for no reason." It gave London one month to reduce its diplomatic personnel in Russia.

Adding to the tensions, the ministry late Friday said a plane belonging to Russian state airline Aeroflot was being searched by police in London. Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said there was no explanation given for the search, which she called "the latest provocation." The plane left London's Heathrow Airport for Moscow about three hours behind schedule.

Commenting on the Russian move to expel more U.K. diplomats, a spokeswoman for the British Foreign Office said "it's regrettable but in light of Russia's previous behavior, we anticipated a response."

"However, this doesn't change the facts of the matter: the attempted assassination of two people on British soil, for which there is no alternative conclusion other than that the Russian state was culpable," she said. "Russia is in flagrant breach of international law and the Chemical Weapons Convention and actions by countries around the world have demonstrated the depth of international concern."

The expulsions affect not only the diplomats but their families as well, forcing them to take their children out of school in the middle of the year.

A hospital treating the Skripals said Thursday that the 33-year-old daughter Yulia was improving rapidly and was now in stable condition but her 66-year-old father remained in critical condition.

Speaking to reporters Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov insisted that "Russia didn't start any diplomatic wars," and "remains open for developing good ties."

He added that Russia has called a meeting of the international chemical weapons watchdog next week to press for an "unbiased and objective investigation."

Russia has accused Britain of failing to back up its accusations with evidence and refusing to share materials from the probe. The Foreign Ministry said it told the British ambassador on Friday that Moscow is ready to cooperate in the investigation.

Earlier this week, the Russian Foreign Ministry alleged that British special services could have been involved in the poisoning and claimed that Britain, the U.S., the Czech Republic and Sweden all have researched the class of nerve agent that London said was used to poison Skripal.

Britain and its allies have rejected the Russian nerve agent claims.

The countries informed Friday by Russia of diplomat expulsions were Australia, Albania, Germany, Denmark, Ireland, Spain, Italy, Canada, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Ukraine, Finland, France, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Sweden and Estonia.

The Foreign Ministry added that it would also consider mirror expulsions of diplomats from Belgium, Hungary, Georgia and Montenegro.

Bulgaria announced it would not expel any Russian diplomats. The country is heavily dependent on Russian gas supplies and tourists.

In response to the U.S. move earlier this week to close the Russian Consulate in Seattle, Moscow also shut the U.S. Consulate in St. Petersburg, giving it until Saturday to vacate the premises.

An Associated Press reporter on Friday saw U.S. consulate staff carrying boxes from the building in St. Petersburg and loading them into a van. Several mini-vans drove out of the consulate while security also detained a man who threw a Starbucks cup at the building.

Some passers-by near the U.S. Consulate cheered the expulsions.

"Let them get out of here," said 61-year-old retiree Viktor Fedin. "You won't put Russia on its knees."

Others were more cautious, worried that the closures would affect visa processing for Russians.

"The Russian government has to respond to the hostile actions against Russia," said 32-year-old researcher Yelena Bogomazova. "But the escalation is bad. The closure of the consulate will make it difficult for people to get U.S. visas. They will have to go to Moscow."

After Russia expelled several dozen U.S. diplomats, the waiting list for U.S. visa applications in Russia has increased to weeks, if not months. The U.S. Embassy said it was unable to process visa applications faster because of the staff shortage.

Russia also warned that the expulsions of its diplomats could slow down issuing visas.

In a statement that reflects the soaring tensions, Moscow also accused Washington of trying to recruit the Russian diplomats it has expelled as spies.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said the U.S. special services have engaged in "frantic efforts" to make cooperation offers to the expelled Russian diplomats. The ministry described the alleged U.S. overtures as "cynical and disgusting," adding that they have failed.

___

Gregory Katz reported from London. Irina Titova in St. Petersburg, Jim Heintz and Nataliya Vasilyeva in Moscow contributed to this report.

British ambassador to Russia, Laurie Bristow, leaves after a meeting at the Russian foreign ministry building in Moscow, Russia, Friday, March 30, 2018. The Russian Foreign Ministry said Friday it has ordered Britain to reduce the number of its diplomats in Moscow to the level that Russia has in London, escalating a diplomatic war with the West over the poisoning of an ex-Russian spy in Britain. (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin)

Canadian Ambassador to Russia John R. Kur leaves the Russian foreign ministry building in Moscow, Russia, Friday, March 30, 2018. The Russian Foreign Ministry says it is summoning ambassadors from the countries that expelled Russian diplomats over the poisoning of an ex-spy in Britain, to serve them notices about Moscow's response. (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin)

Greek Ambassador to Russia Leonidas S. Markides leaves after a meeting at the Russian foreign ministry building in Moscow, Russia, Friday, March 30, 2018. The Russian Foreign Ministry says it is summoning ambassadors from the countries that expelled Russian diplomats over the poisoning of an ex-spy in Britain to serve them notices about Moscow's response. (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin)

Greek Ambassador to Russia Leonidas S. Markides arrives for a meeting at the Russian foreign ministry building in Moscow, Russia, Friday, March 30, 2018. The Russian Foreign Ministry says it is summoning ambassadors from the countries that expelled Russian diplomats over the poisoning of an ex-spy in Britain, to serve them notices about Moscow's response. (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin)

Irish Ambassador to Russia Adrian McDaid leaves after a meeting at the Russian foreign ministry building in Moscow, Russia, Friday, March 30, 2018. The Russian Foreign Ministry says it is summoning ambassadors from the countries that expelled Russian diplomats over the poisoning of an ex-spy in Britain to serve them notices about Moscow's response. (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin)

A van leaves the U.S. consulate in St.Petersburg, Russia, Friday, March 30, 2018. Russia announced the expulsion of more than 150 diplomats, including 60 Americans, on Thursday and said it was closing a U.S. consulate in retaliation for the wave of Western expulsions of Russian diplomats over the poisoning of an ex-spy and his daughter in Britain, a tit-for-tat response that intensified the Kremlin's rupture with the United States and Europe. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)

Employees enter the U.S. consulate in St.Petersburg, Russia, Friday, March 30, 2018. Russia announced the expulsion of more than 150 diplomats, including 60 Americans, on Thursday and said it was closing a U.S. consulate in retaliation for the wave of Western expulsions of Russian diplomats over the poisoning of an ex-spy and his daughter in Britain, a tit-for-tat response that intensified the Kremlin's rupture with the United States and Europe. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)

Boxes are packed and ready for shipping as the Russian Consulate office closes in Seattle, Wash., Thursday, March 29, 2018. Russia's expulsion order on Thursday was in response to the U.S. decision to send home 60 Russian diplomats and close the Russian Consulate in Seattle. The U.S. move was in response to the poisoning of a Russian ex-spy and his daughter in an English city, which British authorities blame on Russia. Moscow vehemently denies any involvement. (AP Photo/Manuel Valdes)

People walk past the U.S. consulate in St. Petersburg, Russia, Friday, March 30, 2018. Russia announced the expulsion of more than 150 diplomats, including 60 Americans, on Thursday and said it was closing a U.S. consulate in retaliation for the wave of Western expulsions of Russian diplomats over the poisoning of an ex-spy and his daughter in Britain, a tit-for-tat response that intensified the Kremlin's rupture with the United States and Europe. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)

The U.S. flag flies at the U.S. consulate in St. Petersburg, Russia, Friday, March 30, 2018. The U.S. flag is flown at half-mast to mourn victims of Kemerovo fire killing 64 people. Russia announced the expulsion of more than 150 diplomats, including 60 Americans, on Thursday and said it was closing a U.S. consulate in retaliation for the wave of Western expulsions of Russian diplomats over the poisoning of an ex-spy and his daughter in Britain, a tit-for-tat response that intensified the Kremlin's rupture with the United States and Europe. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)

A policeman and security guards stand at the entrance of the U.S. consulate in St.Petersburg, Russia, Friday, March 30, 2018. Russia announced the expulsion of more than 150 diplomats, including 60 Americans, on Thursday and said it was closing a U.S. consulate in retaliation for the wave of Western expulsions of Russian diplomats over the poisoning of an ex-spy and his daughter in Britain, a tit-for-tat response that intensified the Kremlin's rupture with the United States and Europe. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)

The U.S. flag flies at the U.S. consulate in St. Petersburg, Russia, Friday, March 30, 2018. The U.S. flag is flown at half-mast to mourn victims of Kemerovo fire killing 64 people. Russia announced the expulsion of more than 150 diplomats, including 60 Americans, on Thursday and said it was closing a U.S. consulate in retaliation for the wave of Western expulsions of Russian diplomats over the poisoning of an ex-spy and his daughter in Britain, a tit-for-tat response that intensified the Kremlin's rupture with the United States and Europe. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)

Canadian Ambassador to Russia John R. Kur arrives for a meeting at the Russian foreign ministry building in Moscow, Russia, Friday, March 30, 2018. The Russian Foreign Ministry says it is summoning ambassadors from the countries that expelled Russian diplomats over the poisoning of an ex-spy in Britain, to serve them notices about Moscow's response. (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin)

Canadian Ambassador to Russia John R. Kur leaves the Russian foreign ministry building in Moscow, Russia, Friday, March 30, 2018. The Russian Foreign Ministry says it is summoning ambassadors from the countries that expelled Russian diplomats over the poisoning of an ex-spy in Britain, to serve them notices about Moscow's response. (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin)
FRESNO, Calif. (AP) - A jury has convicted a California man of attempted murder in the shooting of two unarmed officers in the lobby of a county jail.

The Fresno Bee reports that Fresno County jurors returned the verdict against 38-year-old Thong Vang on Thursday, rejecting his claim of self-defense.

Authorities say Vang shot officers Juanita Davila and Toamalama Scanlan in 2016 when they approached him after he cut to the front of the visitors' line at the downtown Fresno jail.

Scanlan's wife, Tespatasi, testified that her husband can no longer walk, talk or feed himself. Davila was shot in the neck and said she still needs another surgery to mend her broken jaw.

Vang had prior rape convictions. Prosecutors say he is now facing a sentence of more than 100 years in prison.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Fifty years after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., only 1 in 10 African Americans think the United States has achieved all or most of the goals of the civil rights movement he led, according to a new poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Three-quarters of African Americans said there has been little or no progress on fair treatment by police, and more than half answered the same about fair coverage by the media, political representation or equal economic opportunities.

Currently, things are steadily "going on a quick downward spiral," said Stephanie Sutton, 42, a Silver Spring, Maryland, housewife who is black. "Inequality touches everything, from work, police, schools, education, income, houses."

FILE - In this Thursday, Jan. 17, 2013 file photo, people look at the portrait of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. following a service celebrating King's birthday inside the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta. Fifty years after King's assassination, only 1 in 10 African Americans think the United States has achieved all or most of the goals of the civil rights movement he led, according to a new poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Even when it comes to voting rights - the high point for perceived progress for all of Americans in the poll - just 34 percent of blacks said there has been a lot of progress made toward equality. Another 29 percent said there has been at least some progress.

"We're going backward to where we're starting to see more black males mostly getting assaulted by police officers unjustly and stuff like that," said Kyla Marshall, 28, of Lansing, Michigan, a state government worker who is black.

Americans overall were only slightly more optimistic. More than half said major progress has been made toward equal voting rights for African Americans, but just a quarter said there has been a lot of progress in achieving equal treatment by police or the criminal justice system. Among whites, 64 percent think there's been a lot of progress and another 25 percent think there's been minor progress on voting rights, while 28 percent think there's been a lot of progress and 31 percent partial progress toward equality in the criminal justice system.

The poll found that 30 percent of American adults - 35 percent of whites and just 8 percent of blacks - said all or most of the goals of the 1960s civil rights movement have been achieved. Most of the remainder said partial progress has been achieved.

"I think the civil rights movement was phenomenal in forcing banks, political systems and educational systems" to change, said Grant Jay Walters, 53, of Hamburg, New York, who is white. "I think it absolutely achieved its goals. I do not think the civil rights movement can go in and change the hearts of men. There's still a lot of racism in the communities and I'm not sure how you can ever make that go away."

The poll was taken about six weeks ahead of the 50th anniversary of King's death.

King was shot and killed April 4, 1968, outside his second-?oor room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, by segregationist James Earl Ray. King has since been acknowledged as an American hero for his quest for freedom, justice, equality and peace among all races.

The poll found only one area - voting rights - where a majority said a lot of progress has been made for racial equality since the civil rights movement. In total, 57 percent of Americans said there has been major progress on equal voting rights, though just 39 percent said there has been major progress on political representation for African Americans.

Close to half said there has been major progress on reducing segregation in public life - 47 percent - and equal access to good education - 48 percent. About a third said there has been at least some progress in those areas.

On the lowest end of the spectrum, just 23 percent said there has been a great deal of progress in fair treatment of blacks by police or the criminal justice system, and nearly half said there has been little to no progress in either of those areas.

Whites were more likely than blacks to think there has been progress in every area asked about in the poll.

Blacks are "claiming racism but I don't see it myself," said Tommy Romero, 47, of New Iberia, Louisiana, who is white. "They're claiming it but it's all about what they feel about the past, slavery and everything else. That's how I feel."

Romero said that things overall have gotten much better considering the racism of the past, especially in the South.

"Things were terrible back then," he said. "The way minorities were treated, drinking at separate fountains, eating at separate restaurants, and sitting on certain parts of the bus, stuff like that, police beating on them, that just made no sense."

In general, 54 percent of Republicans and just 14 percent of Democrats think most or all of the goals of the civil rights movement have been achieved. That ranged from 76 percent of Republicans and 46 percent of Democrats saying there has been a lot of progress on voting rights, to 43 percent of Republicans and 9 percent of Democrats saying there has been a lot of progress on fair treatment by police.

Just over half of all Americans - including 79 percent of blacks and 44 percent of whites - said African Americans continue to face disadvantages to getting ahead in the United States. That's compared with 22 percent who said blacks actually have advantages and 26 percent who said their race makes no difference in getting ahead.

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The AP-NORC poll of 1,337 adults was conducted Feb. 15-19 using a sample drawn from NORC's probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.9 percentage points.

The poll includes a total of 388 black respondents, who were sampled at a higher rate than their proportion of the population for purposes of analysis. The margin of sampling error among blacks is plus or minus 7.3 percentage points. For results reported among all adults, responses among blacks are weighted to reflect their proportion among all U.S. adults.

Respondents were first selected randomly using address-based sampling methods, and later interviewed online or by phone.

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Online:

AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research: http://www.apnorc.org

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For AP's complete coverage marking 50 years since Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, go to https://apnews.com/tag/MartinLutherKingJr
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BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) - A settlement agreement has been reached in a family's lawsuit over the fatal shooting of a 6-year-old autistic boy during a traffic stop by law enforcement in Louisiana.

U.S. District Judge Dee Drell dismissed the suit late Thursday as the parties worked toward a final agreement. Drell's order says he can reopen the case if the settlement isn't "consummated" within 90 days.

Steven Lemoine, an attorney for relatives of the slain child, Jeremy Mardis, said in a text message that he can't disclose the terms.

Mardis was strapped into the front seat of his father's car when two deputy city marshals in Marksville opened fire on the vehicle after a November 2015 chase, killing the boy and critically wounding his father, Christopher Few.

One deputy, Derrick Stafford, was convicted of manslaughter last March and sentenced to 40 years in prison; the other, Norris Greenhouse Jr., pleaded guilty last September to negligent homicide and was sentenced to 7  years in prison.

The Nov. 3, 2015, shooting was captured on video by a police officer's body camera. Defense attorneys claimed Stafford and Greenhouse acted in self-defense, but prosecutors said the video shows the deputies firing on Few's car from a safe distance while his hands were raised inside the vehicle.

The family's 96-page lawsuit, filed in October 2016, claims Marksville city officials had failed to properly train the deputies on the use of deadly force. The suit also says the officers involved did nothing to stop the boy's bleeding or alleviate his suffering, even after one of them found a pulse on the child.

"Sadly, Jeremy was left to suffer - and die - while the officers casually searched for gloves," the suit said.

The boy's father and two other relatives sued the town of Marksville and its city court, Avoyelles Parish, Marksville City Marshal Floyd Voinche Sr., and the officers involved in the shooting.

Drell's order doesn't specify whether all of the parties are involved in the settlement agreement.

Court filings show Stafford and Greenhouse were ordered to be brought to Alexandria this week for a two-day settlement conference before a federal magistrate judge.

Attorneys for Avoyelles Parish and Stafford declined to comment Friday.

Stafford was a Marksville police lieutenant. He and Greenhouse, a former Marksville police officer, were moonlighting as deputy marshals.

Marksville's deputy marshals were part-timers who normally serve court papers, but Voinche had them stopping cars, writing traffic tickets and going on patrols for months before the shooting because the City Council slashed the city court's budget at the recommendation of Mayor John Lemoine.

The city court, which presides over traffic citations, sued the city over the deep cuts in July 2015, saying Marksville had stopped paying the salaries of Voinche, Judge Angelo Piazza III and the court's clerks.

The family's lawsuit calls the shooting a "barbaric and excessive use of deadly force" that fit a pattern of behavior unpunished by town officials who supervised the two deputies.

The deputies' lawyers claimed Few drove recklessly while leading officers on a 2-mile (3-kilometer) chase and then rammed into Greenhouse's vehicle as he was getting out of it, before he and Stafford opened fire.

Stafford testified at his trial that he didn't know the boy was in the car and didn't see Few's hands in the air. But he said he shot at the car because he feared Few was going to back up and hit Greenhouse with his vehicle.

Few is white, as was his son. Stafford and Greenhouse are black. Their defense attorneys accused investigators of rushing to judgment, arresting the officers less than a week after the shooting. One of Stafford's attorneys questioned whether investigators would have acted more deliberately had the officers been white.
BAGHDAD (AP) - Hundreds gathered in Baghdad to protest the upcoming visit of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Protesters gathered Friday afternoon following midday prayers, some carrying signs calling him a war criminal, blaming the kingdom for crimes committed by the Islamic State group in Iraq.

Prince Mohammed is planning to visit Iraq in the near future, according to the office of Iraq's prime minister, but a date has not yet been set.

Iraq and Saudi Arabia have long had a strained relationship, but recently mended ties with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi visiting Riyadh last year after diplomatic ties between the two counties were restored in 2016.

The kingdom's heir apparent is currently on an extensive tour of the United States. Earlier this month he visited the United Kingdom.
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) - A Louisiana police chief said Friday he has fired the white officer who fatally shot a black man during a struggle outside a convenience store nearly two years ago, a killing that set off widespread protests.

Baton Rouge Police Chief Murphy Paul announced officer Blane Salamoni's firing less than a week after Louisiana's attorney general ruled out criminal charges in Alton Sterling's July 2016 shooting death.

Paul also suspended officer Howie Lake II, the other officer involved in the deadly confrontation, for three days. Lake helped wrestle Sterling to the ground but did not fire his weapon that night.

FILE - In this July 5, 2016 image made from video provided by Arthur Reed, Alton Sterling is restrained by two Baton Rouge police officers, one holding a gun, outside a convenience store in Baton Rouge, La. Moments later, one of the officers shot and killed Sterling, a black man who had been selling CDs outside the store, while he was on the ground. The investigation of the deadly police shooting that inflamed racial tensions in Louisiana's capital city has ended without criminal charges against two white officers who confronted Sterling. . Experts in police tactics think the bloodshed could have been avoided if the Baton Rouge officers had done more to defuse the encounter with Sterling. .(Arthur Reed via AP, File

"My decision was not based on politics," Paul said during a news conference. "It was not based on emotions. It was based on the facts of the case."

Both officers had remained on paid administrative leave since the shooting.

Police also released body camera footage and other videos of the officers' deadly encounter with Sterling.

In the body camera footage of the encounter, an officer can be heard repeatedly using profanity as he shouts at Sterling and at one point threatens to shoot him in the head as Sterling asks what he did.

Salamoni shot Sterling six times during a struggle outside the Triple S Food Mart, where the 37-year-old black man was selling homemade CDs. Lake helped wrestle Sterling to the ground but didn't fire his weapon.

The officers recovered a loaded revolver from Sterling's pocket. As a convicted felon, Sterling could not legally carry a gun.

L. Chris Stewart, a lawyer representing two of Sterling's five children, said the newly released videos show officer Salamoni attacked Sterling without provocation "like a wild dog."

"The most obvious thing that stands out is Alton wasn't fighting back at all," Stewart said. "He's trying to defuse it the whole time."

Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry announced Tuesday that his office isn't charging either officer with state crimes. The Justice Department ruled out federal criminal charges last May.

Sterling's death inflamed racial tensions in the state's capital city and led to protests where nearly 200 people were arrested.

In June 2017, Baton Rouge Mayor Sharon Weston Broome called on Paul's predecessor, Carl Dabadie Jr., to fire Salamoni. Dabadie refused, saying it would be improper and premature because the shooting remained under investigation.

Paul said Tuesday that he and three deputy chiefs would preside over a disciplinary hearing - closed to the public - before imposing any punishment. He detailed the results of that hearing at a news conference.

Salamoni's attorney, John McLindon, had said Tuesday that he expected the officer to be fired. He called it "grossly unfair" that a disciplinary hearing was planned less than a week after the end of the criminal investigations. Lake's lawyer, Kyle Kershaw, said his client's actions complied with department procedures.

Salamoni had served as a Baton Rouge police officer for four years before the shooting; Lake was a three-year veteran of the force.

Two cellphone videos of the incident quickly spread on social media after the shooting. Paul said Tuesday that he will release other videos of the incident, including footage from the officers' body cameras and the store's surveillance camera, after he makes a disciplinary decision.
KOBANI, Syria (AP) - The Latest on two detained notorious British IS group members (all times local):

7:55 p.m.

Two British members of the Islamic State group thought to be members of a cell notorious for beheading hostages in northern Syria say the International Court of Justice may be "fairer" than a trial in the United States.

Alexanda Amon Kotey, left, and El Shafee Elsheikh, who were allegedly among four British jihadis who made up a brutal Islamic State cell dubbed "The Beatles," read a news article about themselves during an interview with The Associated Press at a security center in Kobani, Syria, Friday, March 30, 2018. The men said that their home country's revoking of their citizenship denies them fair trial. "The Beatles" terror cell is believed to have captured, tortured and killed hostages including American, British and Japanese journalists and aid workers. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

Alexanda Amon Kotey tells The Associated Press in an interview Friday that would be the "logical solution or the logical option."

"Unless America wants to be the big bully and say no, no," he said.

The AP interviewed Kotey and another member of the IS cell dubbed "The Beatles" that are believed to have captured, tortured and killed hostages including American journalist James Foley and Western aid workers.

The parents of the victims say the two, who are being held in northern Syria by a U.S.-backed force, should be brought to America to face the U.S. justice system.

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6:45 p.m.

A British man accused of belonging to an Islamic State group cell that captured, tortured and killed western hostages in Syria says their killing was "regrettable" and could have been avoided.

Alexanda Amon Kotey tells The Associated Press in an interview Friday that many people within the Islamic State group would have disagreed with the execution of all the western hostages on the grounds that there is "probably more benefit" in them being political prisoners, than to kill them.

"I didn't see the benefit in executing them," he says.

The AP interviewed Kotey and another member of the IS cell dubbed "The Beatles" that are believed to have captured, tortured and killed hostages including American journalist James Foley and Western aid workers.

The men said the accusations against them were media "propaganda."

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6:35 p.m.

Two British members of the Islamic State group who allegedly belonged to a cell notorious for the beheading of hostages in northern Syria say that revoking their citizenship denies them a fair trial.

The two men are thought to be among four members of the IS cell dubbed "The Beatles" that are believed to have captured, tortured and killed hostages including American journalists and aid workers.

They spoke to The Associated Press in an interview from their captivity Friday in northern Syria, the first to a media outlet since their detention. El Shafee Elsheikh and Alexanda Amon Kotey were captured in early January in eastern Syria by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces.

In the interview, they slammed the "audacity" of the British government for its "illegal" decision to strip their citizenship. They did not admit any involvement in hostage-takings or beheadings.
WASHINGTON (AP) - A diplomatic crisis in the Middle East is also unfolding in Washington as bitter rivals Qatar and the United Arab Emirates battle for influence.

Disclosure records filed with the Justice Department show both countries spent heavily over the last year on lawyers, lobbyists, public relations specialists and advertising firms.

On Qatar's roster are Republican former Attorney General John Ashcroft and ex-advisers to Donald Trump's presidential campaign. Ashcroft's law firm received a $2.5 million retainer.

The UAE's embassy pays The Harbour Group up to $5 million annually to orchestrate a public diplomacy and communications program. The UAE's ambassador to the United States also hired his former director of legislative affairs to be the embassy's chief liaison to Capitol Hill. She makes $25,000 a month.
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) - Lawyers for the family of a Connecticut attorney found fatally shot in the head in a wrecked sport utility vehicle intend to challenge a judge's ruling that would allow a prosecutor to refuse to answer questions about how he determined there was no evidence of a homicide.

Gugsa Abraham "Abe" Dabela was found dead in his wrecked Mercedes a short distance from his home in Redding in April 2014. The medical examiner ruled his death a suicide, and Danbury State's Attorney Stephen Sedensky III concluded there was no evidence to support the belief of Dabela's relatives that he was murdered.

Dabela's father sued Redding police over their handling of the investigation of his death, saying authorities rushed to judgment that Dabela killed himself. His family also believes race - Dabela was black and Redding is a predominantly white town - was a factor in the investigation's findings, which authorities deny.

During a deposition in the lawsuit last year, Sedensky cited executive privilege in declining to answer questions about how he concluded there was no evidence of a homicide. A federal judge last week approved Sedensky's request to bar Dabela's lawyers from asking similar questions in the future, saying prosecutors' decision-making processes are not open to public review because of executive and other privileges.

Sedensky has, however, released a report on Dabela's death, listing all the evidence collected.

Keith Altman, a lawyer for Dabela's father, said Thursday that he plans to challenge the judge's ruling, possibly with an appeal to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York.

"He said the evidence does not support the conclusion of a homicide," Altman said, referring to Sedensky. "He refused to answer the question in terms of what was the basis of that statement. We think we should be able to question that."

A spokeswoman for the state Attorney General's Office, which is representing Sedensky in the lawsuit, declined to comment. Sedensky, who is a witness and not a defendant in the suit, has defended his investigation of Dabela's death, but has declined to comment about the lawsuit.

Dabela's family says many questions remain unanswered, including why his DNA was not found on the gun's trigger or the bullet that killed him, why there was a footprint on his back and why his body wasn't tested for gunshot residue.

Redding police, who deny the lawsuit's allegations, have said the gun found in Dabela's vehicle was his, one bullet was missing from the ammunition magazine and a bullet found on the ground at the scene matched characteristics of a bullet later test fired from Dabela's gun.

Dabela, who grew up in Bethesda, Maryland, received a vague text message on the night of his death that read, "turn he just didn't," apparently referring to the SUV crash, according the lawsuit. The lawsuit alleges information about the sender of the text was deleted sometime after Dabela's death.

The lawsuit also alleges animosity between Redding officials and Dabela. It says Redding police wrongly delayed Dabela's application for a permit to carry a concealed handgun in 2013 before finally giving it to him, and that he and a town finance official had a heated argument over property taxes two nights before his death.
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) - Crews are drilling at the bottom of the Grand Canyon to test the idea of shifting where water is drawn to serve millions of people at the national park's popular South Rim.

Water for the park comes from a natural spring that flows through 12.5 miles of pipeline.

But the decades-old pipeline that twists and turns around trails and through rocky terrain frequently breaks. Repairs cost an average of $25,000 every time.

FILE- This undated file photo provided by the National Park Service shows water spraying from a break in an exposed section of the Grand Canyon trans-canyon waterline as a worker attempts repairs. Crews are drilling at the bottom of the Grand Canyon to test the idea of shifting the area where water is drawn to serve millions of people at the park's popular South Rim. The national park's water supply comes from a natural spring that flows through 12.5 miles of pipeline. But the 1960s aluminum pipeline to the South Rim twists and turns around trails and through rocky terrain, frequently breaking and leaking. (National Park Service via AP, File)

Pulling water from farther downstream would eliminate 5 miles of pipeline in an area most prone to breakages. Grand Canyon officials say the change also would preserve the lush environment of the natural spring.

A helicopter flew in equipment this week to drill wells. The work is being done over the next few days, stopping for mule traffic.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Liberal billionaire philanthropist George Soros and his foundations did not pay protesters to rally against gun violence in the U.S. capital.

The Tea Party Commander Center blog claimed Soros paid protesters $300 each at the March for Our Lives in Washington on March 24. The piece included an image of an online advertisement that it said Soros organizers posted, but the ad is a freelance job listing for people to sell merchandise at a sister march in Los Angeles.

"Neither Mr. Soros nor the Open Society Foundations paid protesters," said Laura Silber, the foundations' chief communications officer.

Students organized the rallies after a Feb. 14 shooting that killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Some survivors have called for a ban on high-capacity magazines and assault-type weapons, comprehensive background checks for gun buyers and a higher minimum age to purchase guns.

Soros is known for his support of American liberal and progressive causes. He is a frequent target of conspiracy theories.

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This is part of The Associated Press' ongoing effort to fact-check misinformation that is shared widely online, including work with Facebook to identify and reduce the circulation of false stories on the platform.
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - As families of two slain teenagers called for the closure of the abandoned Utah mine shaft where the teens' bodies were dumped, a state mining official said Friday she's hoping it can be sealed off.

The bodies now confirmed to be Riley Powell, 18, and Brelynne "Breezy" Otteson, 17, were dumped in the mine in late December. The teens were stabbed to death following a visit to a woman whose boyfriend had warned her not to have male visitors, Utah County sheriff's officials said.

They were found down a hole large enough to swallow a car, one of hundreds of abandoned mine shafts near the desert town Eureka, about 75 miles (120 kilometers) south of Salt Lake City, said Utah County Sheriff's Sgt. Spencer Cannon. It's nearly 1,800 feet deep, and if the bodies hadn't landed on a shallow ledge they might never have been recovered, he said.

Sgt. Spencer Cannon, public information officer for Utah County Sheriff's office, answers questions at the end of the press conference at the Utah County Sheriff's office on Thursday, March 29, 2018, in Spanish Fork, Utah. (Evan Cobb/The Daily Herald via AP)

Abandoned mines are a serious problem in the former silver mining area, "just sitting right there waiting for someone to fall in them or get put in them," Powell's father, Bill, told reporters at a Thursday news conference.

The West is dotted with abandoned mines, and there are about 20,000 in Utah alone, Hollie Brown said, spokeswoman for the Utah Division of Oil, Gas and Mining.

"Sadly, it's a great place to go and dispose of, unfortunately, bodies and other items," she said.

The state has closed several thousand abandoned mines, but the shaft known as the Tintic Standard No. 2 is on private land, she said. She's hoping the state can work with the landowner to seal it off.

Tim Buchanan with the Chief Consolidated Mining Company, the company that owns the land, declined to comment.

The bodies found Wednesday were believed to be the missing couple, but a Friday determination from state medical examiners made the identification official.

Under arrest on suspicion of aggravated murder and other charges is Jerrod W. Baum, 41. Police say he tied up the two teenagers, stabbed them to death and dumped their bodies in the abandoned mine shaft after they visited his girlfriend in late December. His attorney has not returned calls seeking comment.

His girlfriend told police that Baum told her he'd made Powell suffer after the teenage couple visited their shared home to smoke marijuana with her, but kept Otteson's death quick and painless because he felt bad, according to police documents.

He said he'd already warned his girlfriend about having male friends at the house and "it was too bad because he has never killed an innocent before," she told authorities, according to police documents.

The break in the case came Sunday, when police say the girlfriend was found with weapons in her car after an unrelated traffic stop. She led them to the mine where police eventually recovered the bodies.

Bill Powell, left, and Amanda Hunt, right, listen to questions during the press conference at the Utah County Sheriff's office on Thursday, March 29, 2018, in Spanish Fork, Utah. The press conference came after Jerrod William Baum was arrested in relation to the deaths of Riley Powell and Brelynne "Breezy" Otteson. (Evan Cobb/The Daily Herald via AP)
DETROIT (AP) - The more than 400 people U.S. prosecutors charged in a health care fraud scheme last year weren't all Muslim nor from a single Midwestern state, despite claims in a story being shared widely online.

The story on the site mydeeptruth includes a misleading headline and provides no evidence that all the suspects are Muslim or from Michigan. The article blames Obama administration immigration policies for turning Michigan into what it calls a "Sharia swamp."

Last July, federal prosecutors did charge at least 412 people in more than 20 states in connection with health care and opioid fraud scams, including more than 100 health care professionals. Thirty-two Medicare fraud cases were in the Eastern District of Michigan and some of the 96 people charged with defrauding Medicaid were in Michigan. Federal officials included no mention of the religion of the suspects.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions, right, with Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, speaks about opioid addiction during a news conference, Thursday, July 13, 2017, at the Justice Department in Washington. On Friday, March 30, 2018, The Associated Press has found that stories circulating on the internet that all the suspects charged in a health care fraud scheme in 2017 are Muslim are untrue. At the time, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions called it the "largest health care fraud takedown operation in American history." (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

At the time, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions called it the "largest health care fraud takedown operation in American history."

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This is part of The Associated Press' ongoing effort to fact-check misinformation that is shared widely online, including work with Facebook to identify and reduce the circulation of false stories on the platform.
MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) - A package of gun restrictions is on track to become law in Vermont after the state Senate on Friday approved raising the legal age for gun purchases, expanding background checks for private gun sales and banning high-capacity magazines and rapid-fire devices known as bump stocks.

The measure, which the House approved this week and Republican Gov. Phil Scott has said he will sign, reflects a remarkable turnaround for a state that has long opposed gun control measures.

Scott acknowledged that many Vermonters would be disappointed by the vote and by his support for provisions that he opposed as recently as two months ago.

Megan Pennell, a 12th grader at Brattleboro Union High School, stands with fellow students outside the school in Brattleboro, Vt., on Friday, March 30, 2018, before the start of classes to hold a rally in support of the Second Amendment and gun rights. (Kristopher Radder/The Brattleboro Reformer via AP)

"I share it. I know why they are disappointed," Scott said. "But I think at the end of the day, they'll soon learn that what we have proposed, what's being passed at this time, doesn't intrude upon the Second Amendment. It doesn't take away guns, and I believe that we will get accustomed to the new normal, which is trying to address this underlying violence that we are seeing across the nation."

The turning point in this state came one day after the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, that killed 17 people: A Vermont teenager was arrested on charges he was planning a shooting at the Fair Haven Union High School, which he once attended. Vermont police said tragedy was averted only because a friend of the teenager alerted authorities.

In one day, Scott, who had previously said he did not favor any gun restrictions, changed his mind and urged lawmakers to act.

About 2,500 students and supporters rallied in front of the Vermont Statehouse last weekend as part of the national "March for our Lives" movement. But for the past several weeks, gun-rights supporters, many wearing hunter orange vests or hats, have filled the halls of the Statehouse showing their opposition to gun restrictions.

The 17-13 Senate vote on Friday came after an emotional debate in which lawmakers from the largely rural state spoke of the centuries-old traditions that allow people who live far from the nearest police station to keep weapons as a means of self-defense. Others countered that the modern reality of mass shootings demanded change.

Democratic Sen. John Rodgers, of Glover, an area known as Vermont's Northeast Kingdom, argued for a version of the bill with fewer restrictions on guns.

"The soil of the Kingdom is in my blood and a fair amount of my blood is in that soil," he said. "And because of the way I grew up, I feel dedicated to protecting that area."

But Democratic and Progressive Sen. Philip Baruth, from Burlington, said the violence and mass shootings require change.

"Our attitudes are changing," he said. "And they are changing for a very, very good reason."
A man accused of sending money to his sister in Syria has appeared in court charged with a terror offence.

Salim Wakil, 24, is alleged to have arranged a payment of around 2,550 (exactly 3,000 US dollars) in February last year.

Prosecutors say the money was for his sister, who allegedly left the UK aged 16 in 2014.

Westminster Magistrates Court in London (Nick Ansell/PA)

Wakil, from Fleet, Hampshire, appeared at Westminster Magistrates Court on Thursday charged with a single count under Section 17 of the Terrorism Act 2000.

The charge states he entered into or became concerned in an arrangement to make available money, knowing or having reasonable cause to suspect that it may be used for a terrorist purpose.

Wakil spoke only to confirm his name, date of birth and nationality as British during the brief hearing.

Chief magistrate Emma Arbuthnot granted him conditional bail and said he will next appear at the Old Bailey on April 17.
Britain will be a different country after Brexit, Theresa May has said.

As she conducted a whistle-stop tour of the four nations of the United Kingdom to mark a year until Brexit day, the PM called on Britons to come together to seize the great opportunities she expects as a result of EU withdrawal.

Mrs May said additional money will be available to spend on priorities like the NHS and schools once Britain is no longer sending vast sums annually to Brussels.

But, in a BBC interview, she steered clear of repeating Boris Johnsons term Brexit dividend and twice ducked the question of whether she believes Brexit will be worth it.

Theresa May met workers at the Alex Begg textile company in Ayr (Russell Cheyne/PA)

I think there are real opportunities for the United Kingdom, she told interviewer Laura Kuenssberg.

I think its a bright future out there. And yes, I think Brexit is going to deliver a country that will be different, but I think there are real opportunities for us as an independent nation for the future.

Speaking earlier in the day to LBC radio, Mrs May said she was looking forward to Brexit day on March 29 2019.

Yes, I am looking forward to it because it presents great opportunities for the United Kingdom, she said.

The Prime Minister kicked off her tour with a visit to a textile company in Ayr, before attending a mother and toddler group in Newcastle and taking lunch with farmers near Belfast.

She was later due to go on to Barry in south Wales for a round-table discussion with businesses, before completing her tour in west London with a group of Polish citizens who have made the UK their home.

Tony Blair, who spoke at a London conference on Brexit, said EU withdrawal could still be stopped (Kirsty OConnor/PA)

Mrs Mays all-day plane trip comes amid polling suggesting the UK remains deeply divided over Brexit, but has little appetite for a second referendum on the issue.

One survey this week recorded a 53%-47% lead for continued EU membership. But 65% in a new ComRes poll for the Daily Express said they did not want a second referendum and 68% said that Remain voters should respect the will of the majority who backed Brexit.

Labours shadow chancellor John McDonnell accused the Government of being in chaos over Brexit, following a series of defeats in the House of Lords on its flagship EU Withdrawal Bill.

(PA Graphics)

Mr McDonnell played down suggestions from Emily Thornberry that Labour would probably support the deal obtained by Mrs May in a Commons vote this autumn, saying that the shadow foreign secretary was being sarcastic.

Former prime minister Tony Blair urged Mrs May to offer a free vote in the Commons on the final Brexit deal, telling the Independent that if she did not, Labour and Tory MPs should be ready to vote with their conscience and rebel.

And Mr Blair told BBC Radio 4s Today programme it was more likely we can stop (Brexit) now than it was a few months ago.

Kicking off in Scotland, the Prime Minister visited textile workers at a factory in Ayrshire #RoadtoBrexit https://t.co/dKSzOAzlOe pic.twitter.com/ERUfiyDCHZ  UK Prime Minister (@10DowningStreet) March 29, 2018

Scottish National Party spokesman Michael Russell accused Mrs May of planning a power grab by repatriating some responsibilities currently exercised in Brussels to Westminster rather than Edinburgh.

By pursuing a disastrous hard Brexit, regardless of the cost to jobs and living standards, Theresa May and the Tories have shown they think they can now do anything to Scotland and get away with it, said Mr Russell.

But Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said that a glorious view awaits Britain when it finally quits the EU.

Writing in the Express, Mr Johnson said: Like an unstoppable express, we are heading for Brexit and frankly, my friends, we cant arrive soon enough.

To mark one year to go until Brexit, the PM is embarking on a day-long tour across the UK to demonstrate her determination to deliver a deal that works for every community and protects the integrity of the union #RoadtoBrexit https://t.co/cbWKfurjNj pic.twitter.com/B9OJJpJXxH  UK Prime Minister (@10DowningStreet) March 29, 2018

Speaking in Ayr, Mrs May said: I believe we can negotiate a good agreement which is tariff-free and as frictionless trade as possible, so we maintain those markets in the EU, but also that we open up markets around the rest of the world.

Brexit provides us with opportunities. I want to see us coming together, the four nations across the United Kingdom.

We have a very strong union, that is in our interests and it is in our interests to come together and really seize these opportunities for the future.
Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai has made an emotional return to her native Pakistan for the first time since being shot in the head by Taliban militants in 2012 for speaking up for womens education.

Within hours of touching down amid tight security on Thursday morning, Ms Yousafzai, 20, and her family were given a warm personal welcome home by Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi.

Her voice broke and she wiped her eyes during a brief tearful speech on national television, in which she switched between English and the Pashto and Urdu languages.

Malala Yousafzai was just 15 when she was targeted by the Taliban (Daniel Leal-Olivas/PA)

She said: I am very happy and still cant believe that this is happening.

Ms Yousafzai, who now lives in the UK where she was airlifted for treatment, said: Today is the happiest moment of my life. I always dreamt of returning to my country.

In statements released by PTV World, which is part of the state broadcaster, she also said: I still cant believe that I have returned home.

The Nobel Peace laureate Malala Yousafzai has returned to #Pakistan after 5 years and being honoured by the Prime Minister of Pakistan at a special ceremony. MoS for MOIB @Marriyum_A was also present on the occasion along with PM's Special advisor Mussadiq Malik.#MalalaYousafzai pic.twitter.com/uYTNSu5ipP  Government of Pakistan (@GovtofPakistan) March 29, 2018

I have been through tough times from an early age. I saw women facing challenges in my society.

I never wanted to leave my country but my doctors advised me to go abroad.

She was guest of honour at a special ceremony at the prime ministers office.

He tweeted: We have fought hard to eradicate terrorism & we will continue to fight extremism & defeat it @Malala this is your home & we are glad you are home.

"Today is the happiest moment of my life. I always dreamt of returning to my country" - #MalalaYousafzai pic.twitter.com/RpzZpt3Tc8  PTV World (@WorldPTV) March 29, 2018

The Pakistan Muslim League said that ministers Marriyum Aurangzeb and Anusha Rahman Ahmad Khan plus politician Marvi Memon were at the meeting.

Ms Memon, who is the chairwoman of the Benazir Income Support Programme, tweeted Welcome home @Malala while minister Musadik Malik described her as a homecoming queen.

Pakistani television channel Geo TV had earlier aired footage showing Ms Yousafzai leaving Benazir Bhutto International Airport and getting into a car escorted by a security convoy.

Since being gunned down Ms Yousafzai, who is now studying at Oxford University, has become an international symbol for human rights and a powerful education rights campaigner.

Earlier this month she congratulated students on their first day at KKF Model School in Shangla  the school in Pakistan that was built with the help of her 2014 Nobel Peace Prize money.

She was just 15 when she was targeted by the Taliban for her outspoken campaigning over girls rights to an education.

Her career as an activist began in early 2009, when she started writing a blog for the BBC about her life under Taliban occupation and promoting education for girls in Pakistans Swat Valley.

But her campaign angered local militants and she was shot during an assassination attempt while taking the bus to school.

She was treated at Birminghams Queen Elizabeth Hospital and, fearing reprisals in her native country, made the city her home.

In 2014 she became the youngest person to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and her campaign for childrens rights to education across the world has seen her address the United Nations on the issue.
Moscow will expel the same number of diplomats from the nations that have expelled Russian diplomats over the poisoning of an ex-Russian spy in Britain, Russias foreign minister said.

Sergei Lavrov said US ambassador Jon Huntsman was summoned to the foreign ministry where he was given notice that Russia is responding quid pro quo to the US decision to order 60 Russian diplomats out.

Mr Lavrov said Moscow will also retaliate over the US decision to shut the Russian consulate in Seattle by closing the US consulate in St Petersburg.

The US consulate in St Petersburg (Dmitri Lovetsky/AP)

He said the same approach will be applied to other nations that expelled Russian diplomats this week.

Two dozen countries, including the US and many EU nations, and Nato have ordered more than 150 Russian diplomats out this week in a show of solidarity with Britain.

Mr Lavrov renewed Russias demand for access to Yulia Skripal, a Russian citizen who along with her ex-spy father Sergei Skripal was poisoned in Britain this month and is reportedly recovering.

British health authorities said Ms Skripal, 33, was out of critical condition and is improving rapidly.

It was not immediately clear if her condition would allow her to talk with British or Russian officials about the March 4 poisoning in Salisbury.

Mr Lavrov said at a news conference in Moscow that we have again demanded to be guaranteed access to Yulia as she is a Russian citizen. I hope the British side can fulfil its obligations under the Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations.

Elsewhere, UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres said the world is approaching a situation similar to the Cold War as tensions rise between the United States and Russia.

But Mr Guterres said it is different in two important ways: There are more players in conflicts than during the two-superpower era and fewer communication channels set up to keep problems from escalating.

He told reporters he is very concerned.
A tweet by pro-Brexit organisation Leave.EU has been branded offensive by a cross-party group of MPs.

The All Party Parliamentary Group for British Muslims has called on Leave.EU to withdraw the inflammatory post and apologise.

Is it any wonder that Labour can't be bothered to deal with the disgusting antisemitism in their party when they are so reliant on the votes of Britain's exploding Muslim population? It's a question of maths for these people, not justice!



Support us at https://t.co/ntwXbJeHQw pic.twitter.com/klQoCIzxYF  Leave.EU (@LeaveEUOfficial) March 29, 2018

The controversial tweet said: Is it any wonder that Labour cant be bothered to deal with the disgusting antisemitism in their party when they are so reliant on the votes of Britains exploding Muslim population? Its a question of maths for these people, not justice!

Tory MP Anna Soubry has led cross-party calls for pro-Brexit group to apologise for tweet (Yui Mok/PA)

Tory MP and co-chairman of the APPG for British Muslims, Anna Soubry, said: This tweet is thoroughly distasteful and offensive. It is also nothing to do with leaving the EU.

It is however proof that Leave.EU is a front organisation for a far-right group that is more interested in spreading hatred and creating division than upholding British values of respect and tolerance.

Labour MP Wes Streeting, who is co-chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Group for British Jews, said: Muslim and Jewish communities will be disgusted by this cynical and nasty attempt to stir up hatred and division.

Muslims and Jews know what it is to experience prejudice based on their race and religion and will stand together against this type of ugly rhetoric.

Leave.EU should withdraw this tweet and apologise immediately.
Sam Ryder birdied four of six holes on the back nine  but was unable to complete his first round at the Houston Open due to darkness.

The American is sitting at the top of the leaderboard in Texas on eight under after carding a 32 on the front nine.

Fellow countrymen Lucas Glover and Kevin Tway are a shot behind on seven under having completed their rounds, while Beau Hossler has the same score through 16.

USAs Lucas Glover shares the clubhouse lead (Mike Egerton/PA)

Leader in the clubhouse. pic.twitter.com/BeDAoczeYg  PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) March 29, 2018

A group of five sit a shot behind that, including Irelands Paul Dunne.

Phil Mickelson  43-time PGA Tour winner  shot a 30 to start his week, helped by an approach shot within five feet on the par-5 4th.

Phil Mickelson just shot a THIRTY to start his week. pic.twitter.com/zdJOxZIuYM  PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) March 29, 2018

But the form did not continue into the back nine where he double bogeyed the par-3 14th and sits tied for 26th on four-under along with Justin Rose.

Stuck in the sand.



Phil makes double bogey.#QuickHits pic.twitter.com/pmLbwnogNk  PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) March 29, 2018

Defending champion Russell Henley carded a 69 to sit tied for 48th.

The first round will resume at 7.20am on Friday.
As the Royal Air Force celebrates its centenary, here are some of the key dates, facts and figures surrounding the first 100 years of the junior service.

 On April 1 1918 the Royal Air Force was born when the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service merged  becoming the worlds first independent air force.

(PA Graphics)

 The Ministry of Defence said that at the outbreak of the First World War in August 1914, the Royal Flying Corps had 146 officers and around 100 aircraft.

The Royal Naval Air Service had over 700 personnel, 93 aircraft, two balloons and six airships.

By the end of the war in November 1918, the Royal Air Force had grown in strength to 27,000 officers and 260,000 other personnel operating more than 22,000 aircraft.

No19 Fighter Squadron, based at Duxford, Cambridgeshire, flying their two blade propeller Supermarine Spitfire aircraft in formation in 1939 (PA)

 RAF Museum researcher Kris Hendrix said early RAF aircraft were no different to civilian aircraft, and that later on there were more and more military aircraft.

A lot of those very first aircraft looked very different to how aircraft look now  not only because they were biplanes, but also the engine was at the back instead of the front, he said.

They didnt have a proper fuselage as you have now  the connection between the main body and the tail was actually sometimes just a few wooden beams connected with cables  there was nothing in between.

 In 1919, a converted out-of-service RAF Vickers Vimy heavy bomber, a type of aircraft used during the First World War, was flown by former RAF pilots Captain John Alcock and Lieutenant Arthur Whitten-Brown from Newfoundland to Galway, Ireland, on the first non-stop transatlantic flight.

 A key moment in RAF history was the Battle of Britain in the Second World War, as it was the first major battle to be fought entirely by air and was a critical factor in preventing a Nazi invasion of Britain.

Lasting from July 10 to October 31 1940, the Luftwaffe had about 3,000 fighters and bombers pitted against the RAFs 1,200. The RAF victory led to Winston Churchills famous remark that never in the history of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few.

 The Mark 1 Spitfire, with eight machine guns in the wings, entered service with the RAF on August 19 1939, and at the outbreak of war only 182 were in service. It was the only Allied fighter to see continuous frontline service from 1939 to 1945.

Two Royal Air Force pilots from Fighter Command walking from an aircraft during the Second World War (PA)

 With radar used during the Second World War by both the RAF and Germans, Mr Hendrix said it was during this conflict that the British employed countermeasures such as electronic jamming.

He said Lancaster bombers would carry big bundles of aluminium foil and drop them out of the aircraft to overload the German radars  making them unable to find RAF bombers. Mr Hendrix said the technique is not so different to that which is used in modern aircraft, as they still use electronic countermeasures derived from that.

 The biggest bomb dropped during the Second World War was known as the Earthquake Bomb or the Grand Slam and weighed 22,000lb. Mr Hendrix said these were dropped from RAF Lancasters in 1944 and 1945.

 The British-designed Harrier Jump Jet entered RAF service in 1969, making the RAF the first in the world to use its revolutionary vertical take-off and landing capabilities. The Harrier saw active service in the war to regain the Falkland Islands in 1982, proving its impressive manoeuvrability in combat.

Mr Hendrix said the idea behind the Harrier was that if World War Three did break out, there would be nuclear devastation, and aircraft would be required that could take off without a runway, and be placed or hidden anywhere.

Six Tornado aircrafts performing a flypast over RAF Marham, Norfolk (PA)

 The supersonic Tornado, which is due to go out of service next year after nearly four decades of operations, was designed to fly at very low altitudes. It has been at the forefront of RAF operations since its introduction, including the campaign to eradicate Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.

 The UK currently has 14 F-35s, the worlds most advanced fighter jet, being tested in the United States ahead of flight trials off the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth later this year. Chief of the air staff Sir Stephen Hillier has revealed that the UKs first F-35 Lightning Squadron will arrive back at RAF Marham with the jets very soon and in time for the centenary flypast over central London on July 10.

 Figures show that as of April last year there were 828 RAF aircraft  a figure which includes tri-service training aircraft. As of January this year there were more than 36,963 service men and women in the RAF  both regular and reserves.

 The Latin motto of the RAF, Per ardua ad astra, translates to English as through adversity to the stars.
Firefighters have nothing to apologise for over the delayed response to the Manchester Arena terror attack, says the Mayor of Greater Manchester.

In an open letter to the countys firefighters, Andy Burnham acknowledged those on the front line on the night of May 22 were desperate to help but were prevented from doing so by decisions taken above you.

Mr Burnham told them it was failure of process, leadership and culture.

Lord Bob Kerslake unveiling his report into the emergency response to the Manchester Arena terror attack (Peter Byrne/PA)

A report by Lord Bob Kerslake, commissioned by the mayor, found poor communications between the police and fire service meant the valuable assistance of fire crews was delayed by two hours and six minutes after the bombing, which left 22 dead and scores injured.

Dawn Docx, the interim chief fire officer of Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service (GMFRS), made a public apology while Mark Rowe, the north west secretary of the Fire Brigades Union, said members felt ashamed they could not help casualties more quickly.

On Friday, Mr Burnham wrote: Over the past few days it has been hard to read comments from firefighters on duty on the night of the Manchester Arena attack.

Some have spoken of their shame and even asked for forgiveness from the people of Greater Manchester.

While I understand why people feel like this, it is important for me to say that I think that they are wrong. No frontline firefighter in Greater Manchester has to apologise for anything. You and colleagues did nothing wrong on that night.

In fact, I know that you were desperate to help but were prevented from doing so by decisions taken above you. The failure is not yours but one of process, leadership and culture.

I know this because you told me of your concerns in the days after the attack. This prompted me to commit to an independent report into what happened and that has been published this week.

He added: Difficult as this week has been, I think we will look back on it as a turning point in our fire services proud history when we resolved together to make it a service where the excellence of the front line is matched by everything above it.

The then 155,000-a-year GMFRS chief fire officer, Peter OReilly, has now retired, keeping his pension with no action taken against him.

Suicide bomber Salman Abedi detonated his home-made device in the foyer of the venue as 14,000 people streamed out at the end of an Ariana Grande concert.
Furious mothers have today blasted a hospital trust for penning a letter that referred to formula milk as 'artificial'.

Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust wrote the note to inform new mothers about its decision to no longer supply formula milk.

Scores of outraged women flocked to Twitter, where the letter has been shared, to criticise the choice of language used by the trust.

They attacked its decision to call formula milk 'artificial' and warned mothers who are unable to breastfeed 'need support and understanding'.

The language used was criticised (Philip Toscano/PA)

So when did it start to be 'artificial feeding'? I really can't believe this wasn't proofread before going out. @DrRanj @keirshiels @WorcsAcuteNHS pic.twitter.com/ICzKEiJYVC  Kathryn Booth (@privateuni) March 28, 2018

Bosses at the Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust announced the controversial move will come into play at the start of May.

It will mean new mothers giving birth at the trust's maternity unit will no longer be provided with formula milk for free.

Parents will have to purchase their own formula milk from supermarkets if they wish to 'artificially feed' their baby.

Alis Roberts, from Stratford-upon-Avon, blasted the wording in the letter. She wrote on Twitter: 'This made me feel sick to the stomach.

'My baby couldn't breastfeed - I know that formula is "artificial" but these things need to be more carefully worded when the whole baby feeding issue is so emotionally charged.

'Can't imagine how I'd felt if I'd read this in hospital.

Vicky Melville, from North Wales, claims that if she received the letter it 'would have pushed me over the edge'.

She wrote on Twitter: 'No matter how many HCA helped, cajoled, held, intervened, we just couldn't get my son to latch.

'I felt I'd failed him on his first hurdle and took a while to get over. I was devastated.'

Hi Kathryn, thanks for getting in touch. We take the views of our mums and families very seriously, and will consider carefully all of the feedback on the wording of our information.  Worcestershire Acute NHS (@WorcsAcuteNHS) March 28, 2018

Kathryn Booth, who posted the letter, said mothers 'need support and understanding'.

QUESTIONS ABOUT BREASTFEEDING? ASK ALEXA First she played music and answered questions about the weather. Now Alexa  Amazons voice assistant  is to become a breastfeeding friend for new mothers, it was reported earlier this month. Public Health England employed the services of the voice-activated assistant to provide help and support to new mothers 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Based on NHS advice and working with Mumsnet, new mothers can ask the device everything from if their baby is getting enough milk to tips on getting them to latch on. This comes despite patients being told to avoid using Google to self-diagnose illnesses before visiting a health professional. Advertisement

'It's already an intense, overwhelming experience without feeling extra pressure,' she added.

'My daughter and I just couldn't somehow manage it either, and after days of being manhandled and just feeling awful and barely any milk, I gave her a bottle and the immediate difference [was] amazing. But at every turn in hospital I felt ashamed.'

A spokesman for the trust replied to the comments on Twitter. They said: 'We take the views of our mums and families very seriously, and will consider carefully all of the feedback on the wording of our information.'

The UK has one of the lowest rates of breastfeeding in Europe.

Data from 2010 show that only 34 per cent of babies are receiving some breast milk at six months of age compared with 49 per cent in the US and 71 per cent in Norway.

Figures for England in 2015/16 show that while almost three-quarters of mothers started breastfeeding, this fell to 43 per cent when babies were between six and eight weeks old.

Social stigma is a major barrier to breastfeeding, according to the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH).

It suggests mothers should be encouraged and supported to breastfeed exclusively for up to six months.
Tennessee hits the road for the first time this season with a showdown against SEC East rival Florida in primetime on Saturday night in Gainesville. The Vols are coming off a 56-0 shutout of Tennessee Tech last weekend and will look to carry that momentum into Saturday as they look to spring the upset against the 11th-ranked Gators. BROADCAST INFO Saturday's game will be ... (click for more)

The Covenant cross country teams dominated the course at the Maryville Invitational Friday afternoon. The women came in first of five with 22 points in their 6k race, while the men were also first of five in their 8k race with 26 points. The women had three runners in the top five. Claire Mackes continued her stellar performance, coming in first place overall with her ... (click for more)
John Stones will miss Premier League leaders Manchester Citys trip to his former club Everton this weekend.

The England defender will sit out after suffering a head injury in Tuesdays international friendly against Italy at Wembley.

The 23-year-old has now recovered from the blow, but will not be available on Saturday evening due to concussion protocols.

#PEP: Apart from John Stones who has a concussion from his last international game, everyone is ok. #efcvcity  Manchester City (@ManCity) March 30, 2018

Manager Pep Guardiola said: John Stones  a concussion in the last game of the international break. He feels really good but the rule is seven days off, so thats why hes not available.

Top scorer Sergio Aguero is also unlikely to be involved at Goodison Park as City look to claim a victory that would then enable them to secure the title against rivals Manchester United next week.

Aguero missed Citys last outing against Stoke and Argentinas friendlies against Italy and Spain with a knee problem.

With the first leg of Citys Champions League quarter-final against Liverpool coming next Wednesday, Guardiola is likely to err on the side of caution this weekend.

He is much, much, much better, Guardiola said, but when asked if Aguero could feature at Everton the City boss gestured it was unlikely.

Well see tomorrow, Guardiola added.

Guardiola, speaking at a press conference, stressed the importance of retaining the services of Raheem Sterling, but was unwilling to discuss in detail reports the club are poised to open contract talks this summer.

Sterling, who has two years to run on his present deal, is enjoying the most prolific season of his career having struck 20 times for City.

Raheem Sterling has enjoyed a prolific season (Dave Howarth/Empics)

No doubts, its so important, said Guardiola. But you know the deals are the deals  agents and many circumstances, maybe other clubs are interested in him. Anything can happen.

But he knows how important he is to us.

City are 16 points clear at the top of the table and their crowning as champions seems inevitable.

Despite that, Guardiola insists his players will be fully focused on Everton, regardless of whether the two legs against Liverpool are now the real priority.

#PEP: We are almost there, we are in an ideal situation but it isnt done. Especially in this league... Goodison Park is a good ground and of course the Derby will be very very difficult and we all know how good Spurs are at Wembley so it is not done. #efvctiy  Manchester City (@ManCity) March 30, 2018

He said: Im not going to deny (there are thoughts about Liverpool), but, believe me, I am preparing for Everton like its the most important game we have to play.

My decisions (are made) to beat Everton, not thinking about Liverpool. That would be a big mistake from my side.

City were beaten 4-0 on their last visit to Goodison Park in January 2017, Guardiolas heaviest defeat in the Premier League.

He said: I dont analyse what happened last season. Tomorrow is another game and you start 0-0 with the same conditions as the opponent.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying 10 satellites for Iridium Communications has blasted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California.

The rocket lifted off at 7:13am on Friday and arced over the Pacific west of Los Angeles.

The satellites are expected to be deployed into low Earth orbit about an hour after liftoff.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on Friday (Len Wood/The Santa Maria Times/AP)

The Falcon 9s first stage was previously launched on an Iridium mission last October and was recovered.

The payload is the fifth set of 10 new satellites launched for Iridium, which is replacing its entire global satellite network.

The three billion US dollar project is scheduled for completion this year, with a total of 75 new satellites in orbit.

Iridium, based in McLean, Virginia, provides mobile voice and data communications.
Britains most senior police officer has blamed social media for the soaring rate of knife crime in the UK, particularly among children.

After 13 Londoners were killed in two weeks this month, Met Commissioner Cressida Dick said websites and mobile phone applications such as YouTube, Snapchat and Instagram were partially to blame for the bloodshed.

Speaking to the Times, Ms Dick said trivial disputes could escalate into violence within minutes when rivals set out to goad each other on the internet.

Cressida Dick has blamed social media for escalating knife crime among teens as youngsters try and humiliate each other online (Victoria Jones/ PA)

Theres definitely something about the impact of social media in terms of people being able to go from slightly angry with each other to fight very quickly, she said.

She said that insults or threats online makes [violence] faster, it makes it harder for people to cool down. Im sure it does rev people up.

She compared the speed at which youths with no previous or very limited criminal record can become killers to the way some Islamic extremists become radicalised in a matter of days.

Last August, 15-year-old Jermaine Goupall was knifed to death in Thornton Heath in the climax of a feud between rival gangs posting mocking videos on YouTube.

So far this year, 29 people have been knifed to death just in London and fatal stabbings in England and Wales are at their highest levels since 2010-2011.

Ms Dick said drug dealing and absent fathers were also a challenge, but emphasised it is absolutely as much about socioeconomic factors as anything else.

She urged recreational drug users to consider the fear and misery they were causing by fuelling street dealing and the associated knife crime.
Army Commander Mahesh Senanayake said the possibility of releasing more lands to civilians in the North would be explored in line with government policy.

He expressed these views during a meeting with Northern Province Chief Minister C.V. Vignewswaran at the Chief Minister's Office in Nallur, Jaffna yesterday.

The Commander citing examples highlighted the Army potential available all the time for the civil- military cooperation.

The Commander in his discussion pointed out to the Chief Minister that Army was capable of providing leadership for school cadeting programmes if the provincial department of education sought such assistance.

The Army Chief also offered his assistance to resolve issues pertaining to the fishing community in a more practical and friendly manner if such issues were referred to the required military formations.
Those who betray, I have found out, often carry boulders on their shoulders

All rabble rousers, political or racist are the Godfathers of crime and violence

Betrayals are nothing new and have happened in one form or another from time immemorial. Today, on Good Friday, a day of mourning for Christians, we recall the betrayal of Jesus by Judas, done with a kiss for a reward of 30 silver coins. Then we have Brutus who betrayed and assassinated Julius Caesar. There are many kinds of betrayals. Friends betray each other, sometimes for jealousy. We have others who betray their peers and colleagues or employers to obtain promotions or to further their limitless ambitions. We have politicians too who betray their voters by their actions. The priority to a politician is surely service to the people who voted him or her in. But today, once they get elected to office, their personal agenda to better themselves soon replaces their promises of service to their voters and to the nation.We hear today of fighting for particular Ministries and of demands which were never a part of politics earlier on. In the good old days you took what you were given and requests for particular ministries were never entertained; it was a case of taking what your are given or you get nothing. While a wife of a VVIP stands in regular queues, refusing preferential treatment wherever she goes and also has no security, those who are less important get security and vehicles and the opportunity to go ahead of others. These individuals also get security for their nearest and dearest too.This too, to me is nothing short of a betrayal of the people who voted them in.We have recently seen betrayals in the form of appointments being made so that people can take up positions in the municipal and local councils. Those who were angry at not being appointed staged protests or in some cases joined hands with the opposite side and helped them to win control. This again is betrayal of the party to which they belong, when they contested and requested voters for their vote.



Childhood trauma



Employees who are not supposed to throw their weight around, boss others around, use their position to gain favours by dropping names, have easy access at all times to important employers and luxurious offices, are often used by enemies of the employer who will pay them for acts of betrayals. This kind of betrayal and hypocrisy have unfortunately become very common today. I am a firm believer in a persons right to honesty and to fight and stand up courageously for what one believes in. Thats what my father taught me, and these values have stood me in good stead through my life. People should be intelligent enough to direct the course of their own lives without depending on others or handouts to get ahead.Those who betray, I have found out, often carry boulders on their shoulders, throughout their lives. This is due to some childhood trauma caused by the desertion of a parent or abuse. These past events influence them to take revenge on others. This kind of boulder carries with it a back pack of anger like cement, that cannot be dislodged.



Loyalty to the leader is important in Business, in any company, organization or in a political party. Differences should be ironed out within and not with the discretion of town criers as has happened recently. There are those who love publicity, who are easy prey for those who have ulterior motives to destroy people, who they cannot control, or who refuse to give in to their unreasonable demands to favour them over others. All rabble rousers, political or racist are the Godfathers of crime and violence and should be more responsible in statements made at all times. Unfortunately, words seems to leave their mouths before they are sorted out in their brain. One can never gain success or happiness by trying to destroy another, by word or by deed. Winston Churchill called the Nazis a collective abomination. Thats what I call those who are hurling abuse and trying to remove and destroy Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. As the former ruler swaggers about, forgetting his murky past rule and trying to hide the atrocities committed by some of his supporters even recently, after the Local Government Elections, he has forgotten that his group which is a combination of more than one party got only 44.6 % of the vote. The UNP as a single party garnered 32%. Certainly the UNP has to wake up, strengthen the grassroots, do restructuring, do more for supporters and most important of all fight to get those guilty of murder and corruption in the last regime, dealt with and punished fast as they deserve to be. There should also be more discipline instilled in Ministers, MPs and other members of Parliament. In a home, when a child fails to abide by and violates the laws of the home, he or she may feel grieved that they have blundered or been ineffectual, and will submit themselves to discipline, knowing they still belong and that the rules are for their own good, this should be so in political parties as well. There is no valid reason to try to get rid of a leader who stood firmly and loyally by the party, throughout his political journey, when others deserted it at the worst time and returned to share the glory, once the scent of victory was in sight. I would also like to question whether any other politician would have been able to regain the friendship and help of the International community, as he has done and regain the GSP plus?



Then out spake brave Horatius, the Captain of the Gate.



To every man upon this earth death cometh soon or late.



And how can man die better than facing fearful odds,



For the ashes of his fathers and the temple of his Gods.



With weeping and with laughter, still is the story told,



How well Horatius kept the gate in the brave days of old.



Thomas Macaulay
AFP: British drivers were this week given the chance to join collective legal action against German carmaker Volkswagen over the emissions-cheating Dieselgate scandal.



Londons High Court recommended a Group Litigation Order to manage the thousands of legal claims being brought against VW, said law firm Leigh Day which is representing 1,850 UK drivers.



The firm will work alongside solicitors from Slater and Gordon, which has already amassed 40,000 clients in the case, and both legal teams have urged other drivers to come forward.



Volkswagen admitted in September 2015 that it installed software in 11 million cars worldwide that reduced emissions of harmful Nitrogen Oxide (NOx) when it detected the vehicle was undergoing tests.



The Dieselgate scandal affected 1.2 million Audi, Seat, Skoda and Volkswagen vehicles in Britain, meaning the case could become the largest consumer action in UK legal history.



It has been two years since the scandal broke and the only thing that VW has offered UK consumers is a fix that our clients have told us doesnt work, said Gareth Pope, a litigation lawyer at Slater and Gordon.



Now those consumers have the chance to hold VW to account for their deceit and will finally have their day in court, he added.

Volkswagen has already agreed a multi-billion settlement with the US authorities and owners of affected vehicles, but the company has said it will fight the UK legal action.



We intend to defend these claims robustly and are confident of a successful outcome, a Volkswagen spokesperson said, stating the software has not been proven illegal in the UK and many cars had been fixed.



We have implemented the technical measures in over 840,000 vehicles in the UK and in over 6.4 million vehicles across Europe, and the overwhelming majority of customers with these vehicles are satisfied, they added.
By Indika Sakalasooriya

While the Sri Lankan entry of Bank of China marks a major landmark in Sino-Lankan relations, it also has the potential to really move the needle on Sri Lankas economic development, according to the countrys Central Bank Governor Dr.Indrajit Coomaraswamy.



Entry of Bank of China marks what could be the beginning of an extremely productive and constructive relationship. It has the potential to really shift the needle as far as the support for the development of the economy is concerned, Governor Coomaraswamy said.



He made these comments during a ceremony held to announce the launch of the Colombo branch of Bank of China on Wednesday, at which Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe was the chief guest.



Dr.Coomraswamy noted that the entry of Bank of China to Sri Lanka has vast potential in terms of promoting trade and investment not only between China and Sri Lanka but also in terms of assisting Sri Lanka to integrate with a wider region of the global economy.

The Bank of China with its vast network of clients, both in China and across the globe, is well placed to help Sri Lanka to leverage new commercial opportunities, he said.



Bank of China, a Fortune Global 500 company, with an asset base of US $ 2.7 trillion, is the worlds 4th largest bank and is listed in both Hong Kong and Shanghai stock exchanges. The bank has presence in 54 countries including Sri Lanka.



Governor Coomaraswamy expressed confidence that the entry of Bank of China would allow Sri Lankan manufacturing firms to secure relatively cheap capital given its massive financial clout. In the same manner, he said, Bank of China will assist Chinese businesses and investors to find commercial opportunities in Sri Lanka.



Public private partnerships in infrastructure are a very high priority for the country given our fiscal constraints. It is also very important to link our small and medium sized companies to cross border production sharing networks - i.e. supply chains. Also the industrialization of Sri Lanka hasnt been very buoyant.



I believe Bank of China can play a key role in these spheres, Dr.Coomraswamy said.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said the Bank of China Colombo branch is another strong step towards building a strong economy for Sri Lanka.



This shows, in the last three years, we have been successful in our economic management as one of the largest banks in the world has come to Sri Lanka, Wickremesinghe said.



Although Sri Lankas relations with China date back to over a 1000 years, the modern economic relations between the two nations began with the Rubber-Rice pact signed in 1952.



In the present context, Sri Lanka is an important pillar of Chinas ambitious Belt and Road (B&R) initiative masterminded by Chinese President Xi Jinping. Premier Wickremesinghe said Sri Lanka is also eyeing to be the trade hub of the Indian Ocean.



Asia is going to be a power house and China will be a major player in this equation. I must say in this backdrop, we are in a very fortunate position. We are negotiating a free trade agreement with China in addition to what we already have with India, Pakistan and Singapore.

So going forward Bank of China has a very important role to play, he said.
Sri Lankas first venture fund to focus on digital startups, is managed by BOV Capital

From left: Prajeeth Balasubramaniam, Co-founder, BOV Capital, Supun Weerasinghe, Group Chief Executive, Dialog Axiata PLC, Fariq Cader, Vice President  Digital Services, Dialog Axiata PLC, Sameera Wijerathna, CEO, MyDoctor.lk, Mustafa Kassim, CEO, Roar Media and Vipula Dharmapala, Director/CEO  Insureme.lk

Dialog Axiata PLC, Sri Lankas premier connectivity provider, has selected new media platform, Roar, insurance broker, InsureMe and integrated healthcare platform MyDoctor.lk as its first phase of investments.



The Digital Innovation Fund managed by BOV Capital, marks a definitive shift to foster startups and build further on the business capabilities of digital technology and talent within the country.



The Rs.2.3 billion Digital Innovation Fund was debuted by the Malaysian Prime Minister in December 2017, and invests in growth stage Sri Lankan digital startups, with investments ranging between Rs. 50 million and Rs. 200 million. 20 percent of the total fund has also been set aside for investments in early stage or seed startups, particularly those looking for investments less than Rs. 40 million.



The initial screening by BOV Capital considers several factors including revenues, user traction and scalability and includes a comprehensive study of the business model. Subsequently, the startups are approved by the Investment Committee of the Digital Innovation Fund, for further evaluation prior to awarding the funding.



One of the investee companies, Roar, is a South Asian new media platform that creates high quality content in five languages, namely English, Sinhala, Tamil, Hindi and Bangla and is gaining online traction for its eight different sites drawing over three million unique readers and over thirty four million video views each month. Ranked amongst the top 50 websites for

Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, the site contributes more than 500 articles per month covering current affairs, business, lifestyle, technology, arts, and culture.



Commenting on whats next for Roar Media, Mustafa Kassim, CEO of this New Media Platform said, Roar has grown immensely across the South Asian continent over the last 24 months, and now, with backing from Dialog Axiata and BOV Capital, we can accelerate this growth even further. We can leverage these networks across South Asia to help us reach many more users and drive sales to the next level.

InsureMe is a dynamic and innovative insurance broking company backed by a team of professionals with unmatched experience in the insurance industry, offering a transparent and unbiased professional service comparison encompassing a wide range of convenient insurance solutions direct from key insurers in the country.



Speaking about InsureMes plans to change the landscape of insurance, Vipula Dharmapala, Director/CEO said, We are delighted to partner with Dialog Axiata and BOV Capital through the Digital Innovation Fund, and are confident that this partnership will take the Sri Lankan insurance industry to a new level, which will definitely benefit the Sri Lankan consumer. With this partnership, we are committed to offering the best digital insurance experience that aims to deliver on our promise of making insurance convenient by providing value with professional advice.

MyDoctor.lk, Sri Lankas pioneering digital health platform and the first runner up at The Commonwealth Digital Health Awards in 2017, brings together visionary medical thinking and cutting edge digital technologies to introduce an integrated full suite of medical and wellness services.

Speaking about MyDoctor.lk and the future of digital health services, Sameera Wijerathna, CEO, MyDoctor.lk said, We have partnered leading medical professionals and healthcare institutions in Sri Lanka to provide services such as a doctor on demand, medicine delivery, lab reports and healthcare partner discounts. The Digital Innovation Fund provides us great opportunity to leverage MyDoctor.lks revolutionary platform to transform the way you experience healthcare services.



Elaborating on the Digital Innovation Funds selection of Roar, InsureMe and MyDoctor.lk as its first investments, Fariq Cader, Vice President  Digital Services, Dialog Axiata PLC said, Dialog continues to be at the forefront of innovation in the countrys ICT sector and we are happy to propel currently established or emerging companies in the field of digital based services. Roar, InsureMe and MyDoctor.lk, were selected based on a systematic evaluation process with the intent of furthering the digital services ecosystem in Sri Lanka.



Signaling the next step for the Digital Innovation Fund, Prajeeth Balasubramaniam, Co-founder, BOV Capital said, We see a lot of potential for digital startups in the areas of Fin Tech, Health Tech, Edutainment, IoT and Media/Ad Tech. Since Dialog has provided the initial investment, we are focusing on finding and engaging with charismatic entrepreneurs who have a can do attitude and those with a well-thought-out business plan, who are ready to go after the next big thing.
FinMin official website has no mention about economy between 2005 to 2014

Lists out Sri Lankas post-independence economy into Economic Phases



By Chandeepa Wettasinghe

The Finance Ministrys amnesia on the Sri Lankan economy from 2005 to 2014 may lead visitors to the ministrys official webpage wonder what exactly had happened to the countrys economy during the period.



The Finance Ministry, in its website, has listed the Economic Phases of Sri Lanka, which include the Journey Since Independence from 1948 to 1955, The Emphasis on Self Reliance from 1956 to 1976, Towards an Open Economy from 1977 to 2005 and Vision 2025 from 2015 onwards.

The 2006 to 2014 period, which was missing from the Finance Ministrys history lesson, was from the time when former President Mahinda Rajapaksa was the Finance Minister.



Interestingly, a link from a separate part of the website outlines a Vision for the Future from 2005 to 2014, but it links to the Vision 2025 page.

The Rajapaksa era saw Sri Lanka return to being one of the most protected countries on earth, a theme which is strong in SLFPs political ideology and was present during the 1956 to 1976 period as well. In both cases, a handful of monopolists and oligopolists dominated the economy at the cost of the consumers.



The SLFP has repeatedly implemented these policies of keeping away foreign competition with the intention of empowering local industries.

However, the Rajapaksa regime also implemented some of the largest infrastructure projects in the countrys history, including much needed highways, but also an airport and a port, which are considered white elephants, through expensive Chinese funding.



The current government came into power by accusing the Rajapaksa government of corruption by pointing out the high price tags on the projects, and the benefits enjoyed by Rajapaksa loyalists at the taxpayers expense.



Rajapaksa however is also well respected for being able to push through projects.



The Finance Ministrys amnesia with regard to this period of history does not seem to have rubbed off on its political master, since Finance & Mass Media Minister Mangala Samaraweera is always quick to point out the Rajapaksa era dictatorship and economic mismanagement which has restricted the economic policy directions of the current government.



While the ministry appears to have forgotten all about these developments during the 9-year period in question, it has admitted the constraint of the current government to get things done like Rajapaksa did.

As in all democracies, progress is often not made in straight lines. Sri Lanka too, like all other countries in the world, is susceptible to the influence of global developments, natural disasters, and related challenges, and faces setbacks as a result, the ministry website said.



However, the ministry does not have any qualms about accepting reports and statistics published between 2005 and 2014, which economists have pointed out could be a mistake of the current government due to concerns over the previous government massaging data.

Finance Ministry however extolled the current governments vision on eradicating corruption, re-establishing democracy, promoting ethnic harmony, improving international relations and uplifting the economy in the Vision 2025 economic phase, it failed to explain the fingers being pointed by President Maithripala Sirisena and international organizations on corruption occurring today.



The Finance Ministry website also has failed to mention that during the current economic phase, its former Finance Minister and another UNP loyalist, the former Central Bank Governor Arjuna Mahendran, were linked to the biggest bank heist in the countrys history, costing public funds billions of rupees through government bond auctions conducted by the Central Bank.

As in all democracies, progress is often not made in straight lines. Sri Lanka too, like all other countries in the world, is susceptible to the influence of global developments, natural disasters, and related challenges, and faces setbacks as a result, the ministry website said.



However, the ministry does not have any qualms about accepting reports and statistics published between 2005 and 2014, which economists have pointed out could be a mistake of the current government due to concerns over the previous government massaging data.



Finance Ministry however extolled the current governments vision on eradicating corruption, re-establishing democracy, promoting ethnic harmony, improving international relations and uplifting the economy in the Vision 2025 economic phase, it failed to explain the fingers being pointed by President Maithripala Sirisena and international organizations on corruption occurring today.



The Finance Ministry website also has failed to mention that during the current economic phase, its former Finance Minister and another UNP loyalist, the former Central Bank Governor Arjuna Mahendran, were linked to the biggest bank heist in the countrys history, costing public funds billions of rupees through government bond auctions conducted by the Central Bank.
France (Daily Mail), 29 March 2018 -

Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy has been ordered to stand trial for corruption and influence peddling involving a judge, from whom he tried to get information about an investigation, a legal source said Thursday.



According to prosecutors, Sarkozys lawyer tried to get information from judge Gilbert Azibert over the status of a campaign financing investigation.



In that inquiry, Sarkozy was suspected of accepting illicit payments from the LOreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt for his 2007 presidential campaign.



Sarkozys lawyer Thierry Herzog and Azibert must also stand trial in the case dating back to 2014, the source said, confirming a report in French daily Le Monde.The decision to send the case to trial comes a week after Sarkozy - who already faces a trial for illegal campaign financing in his 2012 re-election campaign - was charged with accepting millions of euros in funding from late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi



The new trial came about after investigators using phone-taps to examine the alleged links to Gaddafi began to suspect he had kept tabs on a separate case through a network of informants.
Tennessee American Water will join local and state law enforcement officials next Wednesday to raise awareness on the dangers of distracted driving and to support Tennessees mission, Drive to Zero, a multi-agency collaboration to decrease traffic fatalities statewide.



Distracted driving is a danger to all of the public. Any non-driving activity you engage in is a potential distraction and increases your risk of crashing, said Manager of Operations for Tennessee American Water Casey Allen. Drivers should remain focused and diligent at all times.



Tennessee American Water and other utility or public work employees often perform work on roadways. In an active work zone, workers are especially vulnerable, said Mr. Allen. Fatalities with Tennessee Department of Transportation employees in the last couple of years, unfortunately, made this all too clear.



The Move Over Law requires that motorists change lanes, if safe to do so, or slow down when a vehicle with flashing lights is parked on the side of the road, he said. This law protects utility workers, in addition to police and other emergency vehicles.



On Wednesday, Tennessee American Water will join the Tennessee Highway Safety Office, the Tennessee Highway Patrol and local law enforcement in Chattanooga for Tennessees third statewide bus tour to crack down on distracted driving. The event will begin at 8:30 a.m. at the THP Chattanooga headquarters, 4120 Cummings Hwy.



Texting is one of the most common and dangerous distractions. Other examples are talking on the phone, applying makeup, eating, playing loud music or driving with a pet in your lap. Distractions can even be mental or emotional, officials said.



In 2017, there were 24,781 traffic crashes statewide where distracted driving was a contributing factor, according to the Tennessee Integrated Traffic Analysis Network. Of those crashes, 120 were fatal.
From left: Ashwin Parab, Varsha Bhosle, Sreedhar Venkatram, Ralph Hays, Daljit Singh Kohli and Irfan Jaffer from the New Zealand Trade & Enterprise office for Sri Lanka and South India

Kiwi biz delegation representing 13 firms to arrive in Colombo on 3-day visit



A New Zealand business delegation representing 13 innovative companies will arrive in Colombo on April 2 for a 3-day visit to continue forging business and trade links with Sri Lanka.



Sri Lanka is an increasingly important partner for New Zealand in South Asia, evidenced by the recent visits from New Zealand businesses and the New Zealand High Commission scheduled to open in Colombo next year.



With one of the highest per capita incomes in South Asia and a growing urban population, Sri Lankas demand for quality manufactured goods and access to healthcare and technology services is rising.



New Zealand companies are well positioned to meet this demand due to our strong trade links throughout South Asia and our focus on delivering premium but cost-effective solutions, said Ralph Hays, who leads New Zealand Trade & Enterprises (NZTE) activity in Sri Lanka and South India.

The companies in the delegation are ADInstruments, DGL International Powder Coatings, Fisher and Paykel Healthcare, FRAMEDCAD Holdings, Medtech, New Zealand International Commercial Pilot Academy, Powershield, Redesign, Reese Group, Sealegs, Staah Limited, Tait Communications and Vista/ Book My Show.



Im pleased to be leading such an innovative and diverse group of business leaders and its encouraging to see more New Zealand companies exploring the opportunities Sri Lanka has to offer. We see potential to combine the skills and resources of both countries to take value-added goods and services to the world, Hays said.



The programme includes a traditional cultural welcome from Kandyan and Maori culture groups, an infrastructure seminar involving FRAMECAD, Redesign and DGL International Powder Coatings, which will also explore emerging trends in the construction sector, as well as business meetings and site visits.



New Zealand and Sri Lankas two-way trade is NZD 367 million (Rs.41.3 billion), with tea (NZD21 million), rubber tyres and other rubber products (NZD5.5 million) and food preparations (NZD1.8 million) leading Sri Lankas exports to New Zealand.



While New Zealands top exports to Sri Lanka are milk powder (NZD279 million), butter (NZD3.6million) and fruit (NZD3.1 million).

The companies in the delegation are ADInstruments, DGL International Powder Coatings, Fisher and Paykel Healthcare, FRAMEDCAD Holdings, Medtech, New Zealand International Commercial Pilot Academy, Powershield, Redesign, Reese Group, Sealegs, Staah Limited, Tait Communications and Vista/ Book My Show.



Im pleased to be leading such an innovative and diverse group of business leaders and its encouraging to see more New Zealand companies exploring the opportunities Sri Lanka has to offer. We see potential to combine the skills and resources of both countries to take value-added goods and services to the world, Hays said.



The programme includes a traditional cultural welcome from Kandyan and Maori culture groups, an infrastructure seminar involving FRAMECAD, Redesign and DGL International Powder Coatings, which will also explore emerging trends in the construction sector, as well as business meetings and site visits.



New Zealand and Sri Lankas two-way trade is NZD 367 million (Rs.41.3 billion), with tea (NZD21 million), rubber tyres and other rubber products (NZD5.5 million) and food preparations (NZD1.8 million) leading Sri Lankas exports to New Zealand.



While New Zealands top exports to Sri Lanka are milk powder (NZD279 million), butter (NZD3.6million) and fruit (NZD3.1 million).
West Bank (dpa), 30 March 2018 - After more than two years of wrangling with the various parties in control of the area where Jesus is believed to have been baptized, a British charity has finally started the arduous task of clearing away mines, mortars and booby-trapped churches left there from conflict.



Light brown water gently flows as pilgrims from around the world submerge themselves in a small patch of the Jordan River where Jesus is believed to have been baptized.



However, the West Bank holy site - known as Qasr al-Yahud and visited by hundreds of thousands of people each year - is only partly accessible, due to the fact that the surrounding territory is littered with mines, mortars and booby-trapped churches. Last week, after more than two years of wrangling with Israelis, Palestinians and eight different Christian denominations, the British mine-clearing charity Halo Trust began the arduous process of rendering the area free of explosives.
A 41-year-old Nepali, who is reported to have swallowed pills coated with heroin, was arrested by Police Narcotic Bureau officials at the Bandaranaike International Airport today after a scan confirmed he had swallowed the pills.

He had arrived from Dubai and the pills were being retrieved at the Negombo General Hospital. (T.K.G. Kapila)
President Maithripala Sirisena and the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) are reported to have pledged their support to Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe with regard to the no-confidence motion against him, the United National Party (UNP) said today.

UNP MP Kavinda Jayawardana said according to reports received from sources the President is backing the Prime Minister.

However, we are not sure to what extent the reports are true. What we know is that the President will protect the government which he created and the UNP will protect the President. When others defamed him, we stood by him. Even if all SLFPers leave the President tomorrow, we wont leave him. He is one of ours, he told a news briefing held at Sirikotha.

The MP said the objective of the joint oppositions no-confidence motion was to isolate the President and to destabilize the country.

MP Hirunika Premachandra said SLFP General Secretary and Minister Duminda Dissanayake has confirmed they would also back the Prime Minister.

The SLFP Secretary has said they will vote against the motion. Its the opinion of the party leader President Sirisena which is being expressed through the secretary. Therefore, the statements made by other SLFP members cannot be held as the official views of the party, she said.

Ms. Premachandra said the SLFP members at the Dehiwala- Mt.Lavinia Municipal Council decided to support the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) at the last moment due to the ambiguity in SLFP's decision-making prosess.

When I asked why they supported the SLPP, the SLFP members said they received contradictory instructions from President Sirisena, Minister Duminda Dissanayake and Minister Mahinda Amaraweera. The President has to resolve this, she said. (Lahiru Pothmulla)

Pics by Nisal Baduge
DPA, 29th MARCH, 2018- US President Donald Trump on Wednesday dismissed his secretary of veterans affairs, a move that had been expected for weeks amid a shakeup of personnel on Trumps team.



Trump announced in a tweet his intention to replace Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin, a medical doctor and former hospital executive, with White House doctor Ronny L Jackson. He thanked Shulkin for his service to the country and its veterans.



Jackson, a Navy admiral, was in the spotlight in January when he declared Trump fit for duty and mentally very sharp, very intact after conducting his first physical examination since taking office.

He has served as White House physician during the administrations of presidents George W Bush and Barack Obama, a White House statement said. After joining the Marines in 2005 he served in Iraq as an emergency doctor.



Shulkin, the only holdover from the Obama administration to join Trumps cabinet, appeared to lose favour with Trump when the Department of Veterans Affairs suffered a series of negative headlines.
Three significant short films will be shown for the first time at the Chattanooga Film Festival (CFF), slated for April 5 -8, 2018. VIP Badges for CFFs full weekend are now on sale at chattfilmfest.org, along with daily wristbands and individual tickets to films.

42 COUNTS from filmmaker Jill Gevargizan, HAJJI from from filmmaker R.H. Norman, and THE AFTER PARTY from filmmaker Colin Costello will all make their world premiere debut at CFF 2018. Following is the full list of short films, organized by the block they will be presented in.

SHORT ENDS BLOCK

Two of the aforementioned short films will premiere during the Short Ends Block, which is sponsored by Nerdist and will be hosted by THE MONSTER SQUAD and WOLFMANS GOT NARDS stars Andre Gower and Ryan Lambert.

42 COUNTS | Jill Gevargizian

*WORLD PREMIERE

The latest work of talented director Jill Gevargizian (THE STYLIST) is inspired by a true story. Two unsuspecting victims spend their night off watching scary movies in an apartment rented from their bossuntil they uncover something much more sinister than what they're watching on screen.

AMY | L. Gustavo Cooper.

Set against the backdrop of the deadliest heatwave in recorded history and inspired by Americas most prolific female serial killer, L. Gustavo Cooper's Amy provides a surreal and distorted glimpse into a killing spree that captivated a nation in the early 1900s.

BABS | Celine Held

An estranged son discovers an alarming purchase made by his late father.





BESTIA | Gigi Guerrero

Bestia follows the lone survivor (Mathias Retamal) of a disaster as he awakens on a deserted beach. It becomes clear that there are more dangers lurking in the woods than a hungry beast.

GREAT CHOICE| Robin Comisar

A woman gets stuck in a Red Lobster commercial.

THE AFTER PARTY | Colin Costello

Meet Skye Monroe. Reality Show Star. Social Media Queen. And blissfully unaware of how self-centered she is. Skye drinks what she wants, snorts what she wants and takes who she wants. Skye doesn't really have friends, but followers, tagging along for every moment of her life thanks to her endless streams of posts. But tonight, Skye will be put on trial for her deeds. Her courtroom is a little dive bar tucked away in the corner of any urban decay, appropriately called, The After Party. Her jury will be four sophisticated women shooting a game of billiards.

TRANSMISSION | Varun Raman

Welcome to Britannia. Together we stand alone.

WE SUMMONED A DEMON | Chris McInroy

They just wanted to be cool. Instead they got a demon.

SALUTE YOUR SHORTS





A FISTFUL OF PISTOLS | Joseph Heath

Two men meet in the wild west for a good old fashioned quick draw shoot 'em up situation.

BEANS | Maxwell Nalevansky

An idiosyncratic story of an elderly artist who lives and paints alone on a property in the woods. Steve, the painter, decides one day to make a sign that reads "Free Beans," offering a bowl of steaming hot beans to any drifter who might stumble by. Our Narrator takes the audience through a rhapsodic telling of the day he met the painter who cooked him a life-changing bowl of beans.

DAHLIA | Ana Mouyis

Through a metaphorical narrative about love, Dahlia explores a relationship between two people which is burdened by mental illness. Journey through a colorful and ever-changing world; a hand-painted realm that shifts and morphs to portray a darkened state of mind.

HAJJI | R.H. Norman

*WORLD PREMIERE

From writer/director R.H. Norman and produced by friend of CFF, David Lawson, Jr. Hajji shows the fateful encounter between two U.S. Marines and an Afghan teenager fuels a wartime cycle of violence in this inspired-by-true-events short starring Ross Marquand (The Walking Dead) and Dayo Okeniyi (Hunger Games).

MY DEAD DADS PORNO TAPES | Charlie Tyrell



In this touching documentary, filmmaker Charlie Tyrell attempts to gain a better understanding of his deceased father through his personal effectsincluding a stash of VHS pornography tapesand an exploration of his family history.

MY LETHAL WEAPON | Hope Leigh



A young blonde must navigate treacherous power dynamics after she's pulled over by an increasingly "friendly" cop.

RALPH AND OLLIE | Thomas Bell

Do you ever have trouble relating to other people? No? Yeah, me neither.



POISON | Brandt Shandera

A Tinder date goes from awkward to frightening when the conversation turns to poison.



RETURN FROM DESOLATION | Justin Clifton

Garrett Eaton, an Afghan war vet, oilman, and river guide, has fought his way back from addiction and certain death with the help of the wild, serpentine rivers of the American Southwest. This is a story of renewal, forgiveness and healing, but its also a bridge between what we think we know and the nuance of what it means to be human in a complex society. Through Garrett's experience, we see the importance of wild, public landscapes to help us all find our way home.

THE SILVER SCREEN | Paul Williams

Film buffs Marty and Anna come into conflict when dreamer Marty's desire to reopen the local movie theater clashes with the reality of the impending birth of their child.

WTF (WATCH THESE FILMS)







ALLEN ANDERS | Laura Moss

Found footage of Allen Anders famed 1987 performance at New York City's Comedy Castle offers a revealing window into the troubled comedian's psyche.

BFF GIRLS | Brian Lonano

Three dorky American girls magically transform into beautiful Japanese superheroes and fight a tampon monster as they begin their journey into womanhood.

COME ON MANDY | Josh Wilmott

A doc/fiction hybrid about a dog who refuses to listen.

HECTOR FELIX | William Bagley

A thriller/comedy with a retro vibe, Hector Felix is about a drunk who stumbles upon a group of thugs playing cards in the back of a gas station. Shot on 16mm, and accompanied by a killer soundtrack; Hector Felix is nothing short of a good time.





HOMER_A | Milos Mitrovic

Found VHS footage tells a disturbing day-in-the-life story of a broken family.

SETACEOUS | Tel Benjamin

A group of neighbors, after being awoken in the dead of night by its alarm, investigate a seemingly abandoned car in the middle of their cul-de-sac in the inner suburbs. Slowly they begin to realize the car may not be as abandoned as first perceived and holds something far darker in store for them.

SOCKS ON FIRE | Bo McGuire

A failed poet takes up cinematic arms when he returns home to Hokes Bluff, Ala. to find his aunt has locked his drag queen uncle out of the family home.

STAY | David Mikalson

A cult of women summon a demon, but one rogue member, Carol, gets in the way of their plans.

THE ACCOMPLISS | John F. Beach, Jonathan Hoeg

A man discovers his unwitting participation in a bank robbery across a series of increasingly incriminating (and hilarious) answering machine messages.

WEIRD | Fausto Montanari

In this animated film, a young girl explains how personal preference and individuality are the ties that bind us all together.

THE TENNESSEE FILMMAKER BLOCK



CFF knows that Tennessee is filled with talented filmmakers and has always wanted to give them their place to shine. Were proud to be showing these amazing films, in addition to welcoming former CFF award winners Madeleine Hicks and Graham Uhelski back. This block is presented by the Tennessee Film Commission.

AIM CENTER SHORTS | Judith Mogul and Trey Forbes

A compilation of 12 stop-motion animations created by members of the AIM Center under the direction of artist Judith Mogul and videographer Trey Forbes. AIM is a center for psychiatric rehabilitation located in Chattanooga, Tenn. Using cutout paper in the style of filmmaker Lotte Reiniger, members manipulated their created forms to tell intimate, humorous and often poignant stories. These shorts provide moving insight into the minds, hearts and souls of people living with mental illness.

BIG AND TALL | Clint Till



A young girl and her best friend set off into the woods to find proof of a mythological creature.

BLACKOUT DAY | Graham Uhelski

Blackout Day is a mini documentary about peoples experiences on the day of the total solar eclipseAugust 21, 2017. A filmmaker collaboration of an incredible celestial event.

LEGS | Madeleine Hicks



Cara Smart dreams of one day becoming a professional swimmer, but her mother and doctor have plans to remove her body parts instead. This is a tale as old as time.

THE ELEPHANT TREE | Judith Mogul

Combining live action with stop motion animation, The Elephant Tree reveals the intimate relationship between an artist and the landscape around her. Through sketches, sculptures and puppets, a world evolves in the artist's studio that reflect her reverie and sadness for the environment, which eventually is threatened when a developer begins to clear the land.

THE LOTTERY | Karen Louisa

What kind of life can you have when your life is assigned for you by your government? One young woman tries to exercise what little freedom she has in order to change her life.

THE ORDER | Chad Cunningham

Three young scouts have been selected for a prestigious opportunity, but as they struggle to prove themselves, they realize nothing is what it seems.

STUDENT FILMMAKER BLOCK

CFF is proud of this block. There is amazing up and coming talent in the film world. Every short here is a jewel.

10 MINUTES TO SHOW | Joshua DeFour

Punk-rock drummer Charlotte "Charlie" Howe desperately wants to win an Austin battle of the bands competition, but 10 minutes before her band is set to perform, everything seemingly goes to hell backstage.





HEAD ABOVE WATER | Eric Shahinian

A devoted husband is forced to confront his doubts about remaining the caretaker of his wife suffering from Alzheimer's disease.



POSERS | Sean Thiessen

A coming-of-age creature feature that's also a story of teenage friendship, budding love, and figuring out how to fit in.

REDSHIFT | Benjamin Crane

After a bio-chemical attack renders earth infertile, mankind is forced to colonize Mars and mine the earth of its remaining resources. Among the miners is David Cain, who has grown tired of earth and longs for a new life. After the company decides to relocate to the red planet, David is given the option to transfer or remain on earth with his family. As tension rises between him and sister as they care for their dying father, David must weigh his commitment to family and his desire for a better life.

THE MEMORY BANK | Andrew Faust



Karen awakens to discover that her payment has been declined at The Memory Bank, a cloud-based organization that retains and organizes customers memories. Shes then forced to delete memories in order to create new ones.

THE SECRET LIFE OF ART | Catherine Mosier-Mills



What if art came to life at night? Do works of art have personalities ? Do they wish to escape their assigned interpretations and roles? How do these works hold up in a modern context? This digitally-animated piece brings to life well-known works by masters such as Michelangelo, Raphael, Degas and Gauguin and explores what would happen if they could interact with each other during a chaotic night at the museum.



TWINKLE TWINKLE | Mark Winzenburg

A young woman named Amy discovers a mysterious record in her home. The record plays the tune "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star," but Amy begins to fear for her life when it won't stop, no matter what she does.

In addition to the above blocks, three films will be paired with feature films.



EMERGENCY | Carey Williams

Faced with an emergency situation, a group of young Black and Latino friends carefully weigh the pros and cons of calling the police.

*Paired with LOWLIFE

HEARTLESS | Kevin Sluder

Based on Edgar Allan Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart." An overlooked associate struggles to complete a corporate presentation as a horrific secret gnaws at her conscience.

*Paired with DEMENTIA PART II

MY MONSTER | Izzy Lee

Christmas is coming. If that's not stressful enough, Lily (Brea Grant) has to contend with a clueless partner (Adam Egypt Mortimer) and an unexpected, inter-dimensional holiday guest who just wants two thingsblood and cuddles.

*Paired with ALL THE CREATURES WERE STIRRING
In the article about Brock Candy Company, mention is made about the move from Chestnut Street to Jersey Pike. Although they may have constructed the Jersey Pike facility in 1961, it was used primarily as a warehouse until sometime around 1980.

When I worked at the plant, Horton Corwin was in charge of quality control and Frank Brock was one of the plant managers: Many of the employees had decades with Brock Candy Company and some were second (or more) generation.



I worked second shift and mostly reported to Charles Gass, making hard candy (butterscotch, sour balls, peppermint starlight, peanut butter inside a hard shell, cinnamon, etc.)

The ambient air temperature in the room was extremely hot so that the near-liquid sugar and corn syrup mixture did not cool too fast. As a result the candy-makers were always covered in sweat: The sweat would flow down your skin inside your shirt and pants and pool in your shoes, which often squished when you walked.

Everything had to be kept covered in corn starch to keep the near-liquid product from sticking to the equipment. The clouds of corn starch swirling around in the room left a white crust around your eyes nose and mouth as well as any skin that was covered in sweat and exposed.

All of the candy-makers wore very large, heavy, thick gloves, but despite this most of us had fingertips which were frequently covered in large blisters: Once I had a blister that covered the entire pad of my thumb and that blister had a blister in the center of it that protruded even further.

If you ate candy to see if everything tasted right, over time you tended to lose your appetite for sweets. Many employees who were overweight when they started working lost weight over time (but part of that may have been from working in the sauna for eight hours a day)

Later I worked on a very automated system which produced candy corn and circus (marshmallow) peanuts as well as those famous chocolate-covered cherries.

If the equipment was humming everyone worked steadily and then, after the end of a long, hot, hard shift, dumping your powdery clothes into a plastic bag and enjoying a nice hot shower, washing off all of the accumulated dirt, it was so great to walk out into the night air feeling fresh as a daisy.

It was a challenging job, but I still have fond memories of my time at Brock Candy Company, the products we made and the people with whom we worked.

The new wing from the 1950's must have been built to withstand a nuclear explosion, because it took forever to bring it down during the demolition. I went by the site and picked up a beige-painted brick which I still have.

All of that site and other property were acquired by the Carter Street Corporation and demolished to facilitate construction of the Trade Center, Hotel and Parking Garage, all projects in which I was also able to participate as a design team member, less than a decade after working at Brock Candy Company as a candy-maker.

terryd_reynolds@bellsouth.net
There will be a local candidates forum on April 5, from 5-7 p.m. at the Eastdale Youth and Development Center Gym, at 1312 Moss Street.

The event is sponsored by the North Brainerd Community Council.
Lee Universitys all-female choir Ladies of Lee visited Washington D.C. on its spring tour. The group performed at various churches and schools and met United States Senators Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker.

It was a significant moment for the choir to meet individuals face-to-face who serve in high ranking offices of our nations government, said Dr. Jonathan Rodgers, director of Ladies of Lee and assistant professor of music.

They were so gracious to give up time out of their busy schedule on the hill to interact with our students and answer their questions.

The tour began in Maryville, Tn., at William Blount High School. From there, the group traveled to Patrick Henry High School in Roanoke, Va,; Colgan High School and Mountaintop Church in Manassas, Va.; Centerpointe Church in Fairfax, Va.; and Chincoteague Church of God in Chincoteague Island, Va.



Dr. Rodgers said the purpose of the tour was to spread the word of God in song and share the Lee story.



In addition to meeting Senators Alexander and Corker in D.C., the choir visited historical locations and museums along the National Mall, attended the ceremony of the Changing of the Guard at Arlington National Cemetery, and visited the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.



Alexander and Corker were eager and interested to connect with us, and we appreciated the opportunity to meet them, said Dr. Rodgers. It was also great to connect with Bill Huizenga, a congressman from Grand Rapids, Michigan, and the father of Lee music major Adrian Huizenga.



Ladies of Lee frequently tours throughout the southeastern United States. Later this spring, the group will travel to Costa Rica to sing and serve.



For more information about Ladies of Lee, contact Dr. Rodgers at jrodgers@leeuniversity.edu or the School of Music at 423 614-8240.
A free home ownership workshop will be April 14 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Greater Second Baptist Church, 810 Shallowford Road.

Councilwoman Demetrus Coonrod said, "Real estate is a sound investment that offers wealth-building opportunities. Lets work together to increase home ownership in District 9 and surrounding areas.

"Register to attend this free home ownership workshop hosted by myself and Corri Bischer. #thriveN9."
The City of Cleveland is having five community meetings over the next several weeks to seek input in the development of the citys long-term strategic plan. These meetings provide a great opportunity to meet elected city council representatives, city staff and neighbors in the community.

Resident and stakeholder participation during these community meetings is instrumental in identifying goals the city would like to achieve over the next serval years. All meetings will begin at 6:30 p.m. The meeting schedule is listed below.

Tuesday, April 10: Councilman Charlie McKenzie, District 1, Museum Center at 5ive Points, 200 Inman Street, Cleveland, TN 37311

Tuesday, April 17: Councilman Tom Cassada, District 3, Cleveland Middle School, 3635 Georgetown Road, Cleveland, TN 37312

Thursday, April 19: Councilman Bill Estes, District 2, College Hill Recreation Center, 264 Berry Street NE, Cleveland, TN 37311

Tuesday, May 3: Councilman Dale Hughes, District 5, Cleveland High School, 850 Raider Drive, Cleveland, TN 37312

Tuesday, May 8: Councilman David May, District 4, Mayfield Elementary School, 501 20th Street NE, Cleveland, TN 3731




Posted Thursday, March 29, 2018 1:00 pm

Officers responded March 2 to the report of stealing in the 500 block of South Main Street.

Officers responded March 3 to the report of a disturbance in the 700 block of Zoll Street.

Officers responded March 3 to the report of theft from vehicle.

Officers responded March 1 to the report of fraud at Bi-Lo.

Officers responded March 1 to the report of a hit and run.

Officers responded Feb. 6 to the report of a hit and run in the 300 block of Jackson Street.

Officers responded Feb. 19 to the report of an injury collision at the intersection of Zoll and Broad streets when Alexander J. Zarifis is reported to have been distracted/inattentive as he is turned left from northbound Zoll Street onto westbound Broad Street causing a collision between his 2012 Ford Focus and Margie J. Fleeners 2015 Ford Focus that was southbound on Zoll Street.

Officers responded Feb. 16 to the report of a hit and run on Hillcrest Drive.

Officers responded Feb. 19 to the report of a multi-vehicle injury collision in the northbound lane of Maguire Street when Rickie L. Kampe, Clinton, is reported to have been distracted/inattentive causing a collision between his 2004 Chevrolet Tahoe and Brandon S. Ferris, Clinton, 2013 Ford Fusion. The report states the collision caused Ferris to collide with Emily K. Nolkers 2006 Toyota Corolla which then caused Nolker to collide with Benjamin A. Barnetts, Oak Grove, 2009 Chevrolet Cobalt. The police report states Kimber M. Jones, Clinton, was a passenger in Ferris vehicle and was transported to the hospital for examination.

Officers responded Feb. 19 to the report of a collision at the intersection of Ming and South Washington Streets when Elizabeth A. Gravemann is reported to have been distracted/inattentive as she traveled westbound through the intersection on Ming Street causing a collision between her 2005 Ford and Audrey E. Murphys 2003 Toyota Matrix that was southbound on South Washington Street.

Officers responded Feb. 20 to the report of a collision in the southbound lane of Maguire Street when Craig A. Ebert is reported to have followed too closely causing a collision between his 1999 Buick Le Sabre and Shelby W. Scotts, Clinton, 2015 Ford F150.

Officers responded Feb. 20 to the report of a hit and run in the 600 block of South Washington Street. Officers later reported Joshua A. Collins is reported to have been distracted/inattentive as he backed out of a parking space causing a collision between his 2011 Kia Sorento and Michael D. Wingers parked 2013 Honda Accord.

Officers responded Feb. 22 to the report of a collision at the intersection of Railroad and North Maguire streets when Wyatt W. Fleming, Leeton, is reported to have failed to yield as he attempted to turn right from eastbound Railroad Street onto southbound North Maguire Street causing a collision between his 2006 GMC and David L. Benwells 2012 Toyota Yaris that was southbound on North Maguire Street.

Raesean A. Williams, 20, was arrested March 6 on a warrant in another jurisdiction when he turned himself in.

Kevin D. Demoss, 20, was arrested twice on March 7 on charges of two counts of trespassing. He was arrested the first time when officers responded to the report of a verbal disturbance in the 600 block of West Clark Street. He was arrested a second time when officers responded to the report of trespassing.

Tabetha R. Beebe, 33, was arrested March 8 on a warrant in another jurisdiction, and a charge of possession of a controlled substance when officers conducted a traffic stop at Maguire and Christopher streets.

Officers responded Feb. 13 to the report of theft in the 500 block of North Washington Street.

The Division of Family Services informed officers Feb. 28 of a sexual misconduct complaint.

Officers responded Feb. 28 to the report of an assault that occurred Feb. 21 in the 400 block of Care Center Drive.

Officers responded March 2 to the report of sexual assault past occurred.

Officers responded March 5 to the report of a threat in the 200 block of North Devasher Drive.

Officers responded March 5 to the report of identity theft in the 500 block of Anderson Street.

Officers responded March 6 to a complaint of possible elder abuse.

Officers received March 6 property and attempted to return it.

Officers responded March 6 to the report of property damage and harassment in the 900 block of East Market Street.

Officers responded March 6 to the report of larceny in the 300 block of East Cooper Boulevard.

Sydnie F. Armstrong, 17, was arrested March 8 on a charge of passing school bus/stop arm violation when officers conducted a traffic stop.

Gary E. Alley, 54, was arrested March 8 on two probation and parole violation warrants.

He was placed in the Johnson County Jail.

Officers responded Feb. 28 to the report of stealing.

Officers responded March 3 to the report of burglary past occurred in the 400 block of West Pine Street.

Officers responded March 7 to the report of counterfeit money use on March 6 and 7 at McDonalds. The report states both bills were identified before a purchase was made and that real money was then used to complete the transaction. The report states the counterfeit bills were collected.

Officers responded March 7 to the report of a physical domestic disturbance but were unable to determine a primary aggressor.

Robert D. Shafer, 45, was arrested March 10 on a warrant in another jurisdiction.

He was transported to the Johnson County Jail.

Officers responded March 5 to the report of property damage in the 1400 block of East Hale Lake Road.

Officers responded March 9 to the report of possible fraud in the 300 block of Hamilton Street.

Officers responded March 9 to the report of potential threats in the 600 block of East Young Street.

Officers responded March 9 to the report of theft in the 1600 block of Amhearst Place.

Officers responded March 9 to the report of an animal bite.

Officers responded March 10 to the report of theft in the 500 block of Swallow Street.

Officers responded March 9 to the report of trespassing at Walmart.

Officers recovered and returned March 11 a backpack that was later reported as stolen in the 1400 block of Grandview Drive.

Kevin D. Allard, 44, was arrested March 12 of a charge of stealing  shoplifting when officers responded to the report of stealing.

Michael A. Moeller, 19, was arrested March 12 on charges of headlights required, no financial proof of insurance and possession of drug paraphernalia when officers conducted a traffic stop at Maguire and North streets.

Holly K. Hargrove, 19, was arrested March 13 on charges of possession of drug paraphernalia when officers conducted a traffic stop at South Maguire and Clark streets.

Bailey A. Adams, 20, was arrested March 13 on a warrant in another jurisdiction when officers conducted a traffic stop at Maguire and Christopher streets.

Adams posted bond.

Officers responded March 8 to the report theft in the 400 block of North Holden Street.

Officers responded March 8 to the report of possible child abuse.

Officers responded March 9 to a contact call and located a subject deceased.

Officers responded March 5 to the report of a hit and run in the 1000 block of South Maguire Street.

Officers responded March 2 to the report of a collision in the eastbound lane in the 1400 block of Kimberly Drive when Preston F. Peterson is reported to have had vision obstructed causing a collision between his 2012 Chevrolet Impala and Michelle Marinellos parked 2004 Mazda.

Officers responded March 2 to the report of a collision at the intersection of Maguire Street and Hawthorne Boulevard when Mary E. Bursby, Chilhowee, is reported to have failed to yield as she attempted to turn left from westbound Hawthorne Boulevard onto southbound Maguire Street causing a collision between her 2003 Dodge Stratus and Nicole L. Farrs, Boonville, 2012 Toyota Sienna Van that was through the intersection eastbound on Hawthorne Boulevard.

Officers responded March 8 to the report of a hit and run.

Officers responded March 8 to the report of a multi-vehicle collision in the westbound lane of Ming Street near South Mulberry Street between Shannon N. Dycus 2006 Toyota Avalon and the parked vehicles of Daniel Staggs, Floristell, 2005 Nissan Altima, and Ken Hillerman, Washington, 2001 Chevrolet Silverado.

Officers responded Feb. 6 to the report of a hit and run in the 300 block of Jackson Street.

Officers responded Feb. 23 to the report of a collision at the intersection Gay and Maguire streets when Allison L. Hughes, Pleasant Hill, is reported to have failed to yield as she traveled through the intersection on eastbound Gay Street causing a collision between her 2006 Nissan Quest and Jimmie D. Dahmans truck that was northbound on Maguire Street.

Officers responded Feb. 23 to the report of a multi-vehicle injury collision in the southbound lane of Maguire Street when Madison P. Wood, Knob Noster, is reported to have followed too closely causing a collision between her 2009 Honda Accord and Pamela S. Reicherts 2009 Chevrolet Cobalt. The report states the collision caused Reichert to collide with Christopher J. Taylors 2009 Toyota Tacoma. The report states an ambulance took Reichert to Western Missouri Medical Center.

Officers responded Feb. 25 to the report of a collision at an intersection in the 300 block of Christopher Street between Jennifer L. Fadlers, Independence, 2006 Chevrolet that was turning onto westbound Christopher Street and John J. Jones, Fenton, 2011 Chevrolet Malibu that was eastbound on Christopher Street.

Officers responded March 25 to the report of a collision in the northbound lane of Maguire Street near North Street when Abbie L. Upshaw, Paola, Kansas, is reported to have been distracted/inattentive causing a collision between her 2009 Nissan Versa and Zephaniah Bashipakas 2017 Toyota Corolla.

Officers responded Feb. 26 to the report of a collision in the westbound lane of Grover Street when Somnath Sarkar is reported to have improper lane usage/change when she attempted to turn from eastbound to westbound Grover Street causing a collision between her 2006 Mercedes-Benz 280 Series and Dillyn J. Raneys, Pleasant Hill, parked 2013 Kia.

Officers responded Feb. 26 to the report of a collision between a vehicle and dog in the 200 block of West South Street.

Officers responded Feb. 28 to the report of a hit and run on Burkarth Road.

Chelsey C. Grunlien, 26, was arrested March 13 on a warrant in another jurisdiction.

She posted bond and was released.

Christopher E. Holzhauser, 28, was arrested March 13 on a warrant in another jurisdiction.

He was transported to the Johnson County Jail.

William L. Wells, 34, was arrested March 13 on a charge of possession of marijuana when officers responded to the report of a disturbance in the 400 block of Jefferson Street.

Dennis Kumm, 18, was arrested March 12 on a warrant in another jurisdiction when officers conducted a traffic stop in the 500 block of West Clark Street.

Kumm was transported to the Johnson County Jail.

Garry T. L. Walker, Jr., 30, was arrested March 9 on charges of forgery and stealing when officers responded Feb. 28 to the report of stolen checks that were forged.

Garry T. L. Walker Jr., 30, was arrested March 9 on a charge of forgery after officers responded Jan. 27 to the report of forgery at Sonic.

James D. Kirchner, 37, was arrested March 13 on a charge of driving while suspended/revoked when officers conducted a traffic stop in the area of Young and Holden streets.

Bobby G. Packham, 49, was arrested March 14 on a warrant in another jurisdiction.

He was transported to the Johnson County Jail.

Regina A. Simms, 58, was arrested March 14 on a charge of trespassing when officers responded to the report of trespassing in the 600 block of West Clark Street.

Dallas E. Sizemore, 22, was arrested March 14 on a warrant in another jurisdiction.

He was released after posting bond.

Donna J. Doak, 28, was arrested March 14 on a Warrensburg warrant.

Derrick W. Roar, 37, was arrested March 14 on charges of possession of marijuana, assault, property damage and resisting/interfering with arrest for a felony when officers responded to the report of a disturbance in the area of PCA Road and Stahl Drive.

He was transported to the Johnson County Jail and placed on a 24-hour hold while a warrant was sought.

Ernest J. Stewart, 27, was arrested March 14 on a probation and parole violation warrant when officers responded to the report of a disturbance in the 200 block of McGoodwin Street.

Officers responded March 5 to the report of a cat bite in the 300 block of W. South St.

Officers located March 7 a suspicious item at the Warrensburg Police Department.

Officers located and notified the owner March 7 after finding a license plate.

Officers received March 7 an identification and contacted the owner.

Officers stopped a juvenile driver March 8 at Russell Avenue and Holden Street. Officers report the driver did not have a license and took a parents license.
The explosion in the popularity of handheld devices and other technologies is phenomenal; yet, few American girls are gaining expertise in science, technology, engineering and mathSTEMfields.According to a recent story in The Atlantic, even with more gender equality there are fewer female students who are electing to pursue STEM-related careersonly 27 percent of all students taking the AP Computer Science exam in the U.S. are female and just 18 percent of American computer-science college degrees are earned by women.TVA recognizes the importance of preparing the next generation of students at all educational levels, particularly female students, for future career opportunities at TVA and businesses throughout the Valley.In fact, several TVA employees are actively helping to increase the number of female students who may wish to choose a STEM-related career.Civil Projects senior project manager Karen Officer-Bell and Enterprise Project Management office senior program manager Tracy Hightower are helping girls and young women through their support of the Chattanooga Girls Leadership Academy (CGLA).The exacting college-prep education at CGLA focuses on STEM and the arts, said Ms.Officer-Bell. The curriculum helps give the students self-confidence, inspires leadership, encourages critical thinking and promotes academic excellence.Ms. Hightower added that their goal is to provide the access students will need to succeed in college and as leaders in their communities and the world.Mechanical and Civil Design Engineering program manager Kendra Ware, who recently was elected as the TVA Nuclear Fleet chair for Women in Nuclear (WIN), is leading efforts to engage young women to consider a career in nuclear power. U.S. Women in Nuclear is a network of more than 8,000 women and men who work in nuclear- and radiation-related fields around the country. Ms. Ware said the industry needs the fresh new ideas that a more diverse workforce provides. By truly embracing diversity, we are not leaving one person or group behind, she said. Were giving everyoneno matter their religious preference, gender or lifestylea voice at the table.Other TVA employeesKenyatta Adams, Sue Collins, Rachel Crickmar, Janice Horn, Stacey Parrott, Amy Tate and Jacinda Woodward, to name a fewfrom across the Valley also help support STEM programs, including the Madisonville Community College Girls in Engineering and Technology program, which serves approximately 600 sixth-grade girls in Hopkins and Muhlenberg counties in Kentucky; and Girls Inc., which equips girls to navigate gender, economic and social barriers, and grow up healthy, educated and independent.Young people should be prepared to think deeply and to think well, said Llisa Prater, TVAs Diversity and Inclusion program manager. Our goal in supporting young female students is to help them have opportunities to become the innovators, educators, researchers and leaders of tomorrow who can solve the most pressing challenges facing our company, our industry, our nation and our world.
The legal fraternity of the state is optimistic of the move to highlight the interference of the Centre in the judiciary, which has had an adverse impact on its functioning.

They were responding to a letter written by Supreme Court Justice J Chelameshwar, accusing Chief Justice of the Karnataka High Court Dinesh Maheshwari of being "willing to do the Executive bidding," by initiating an inquiry against Justice P Krishna Bhat, in a case in which he was cleared twice.

In the letter dated March 21, addressed to the Chief Justice of India (CJI) Dipak Mishra, Justice Chelameshwar has asked the CJI to call for a full-court meeting to address the issue of government interference in the appointment of judges to high courts.

Former Justice of the Karnataka High Court Justice Chandrashekaraiah said, "If the Centre wanted an inquiry into the matter, it should have requested the Chief Justice of India to direct the Chief Justice of Karnataka to hold an inquiry, instead of directly communicating to the High Court. Let us see the result of the full-court meeting."

A few retired judges of the Supreme Court, retired chief justices of various high courts refused to comment, but admitted that the Centre should have followed due procedure.

Speaking to DH, A P Ranganatha, president of the Advocates' Association, Bengaluru, said that he completely endorses the views expressed by Justice Chelameswar.

"He has raised one of the major concerns of interference by the central government in judiciary. Such interference is a threat to the judiciary at large. I am hopeful that he will also raise other issues concerning the central government's involvement in the judiciary during the full-court meeting," he said.

Similar opinions were shared by Sadashiva Reddy, co-chairman of the Bar Council of India. He said, "Once the recommendations made by the Supreme Court collegium are sent to the Centre for approval, the Centre can return the same to the collegium if it chooses. Thereafter, the collegium will reconsider the names and send it back to the Centre. Then, the Centre has no choice, but to approve them. Thus, the Centre does not have a say in the judicial process. The request to the Chief Justice of India to call a full-court meeting by Justice Chelameswar is the right move in this direction."
President Donald Trump today said the US troops would withdraw from Syria "very soon" as he lamented that America has wasted USD 7 trillion in wars in the Middle East.



At the same time, he said the US was using all its resources to defeat ISIS and drive them out of the captured territory. We're knocking the hell out of ISIS. We'll be coming out of Syria, like, very soon. Let the other people take of it now, Trump said in Ohio where he had gone to deliver a speech on infrastructure.

"Very soon we're coming out. We're going to have 100 percent of the caliphate, as they call it -- sometimes referred to as "land" -- taking it all back quickly, quickly. But we're going to be coming out of there real soon. Going to get back to our country, where we belong, where we want to be," he said. Trump, in his remarks, lamented that US has wasted USD 7 trillion in wars in the Middle East.

"We spent USD 7 trillion in the Middle East. We'd build a school, they'd blow it up. We'd build it again, they'd blow it up. We'd build it again -- hasn't been blown up yet, but it will be. But, if we want a school in Ohio to fix the windows, you can't get the money. If you want a school in Pennsylvania or Iowa to get federal money, you can't get the money," he said. We spent USD 7 trillion in the Middle East. What we have for it? Nothing. Remember I used to say 'keep the oil' as a civilian. We never kept the oil. If we kept the oil, we would have been OK. If we kept the oil, we wouldn't have ISIS. Because you know who kept a lot of the oil? ISIS. That's how they funded themselves. They kept the oil. We didn't keep the oil. Stupid, stupid, he said.

As a result, Trump said, the US has little money for its infrastructure.

"We have to fight for our military. But we're becoming so strong again. And you watch -- not going to take very long. I've asked Republicans and Democrats in Congress to come together and deliver the biggest and boldest infrastructure plan in the last half century. I don't think you're going to get Democrat support very much. And you'll probably have to wait until after the election, which isn't so long down the road," he said.

Earlier in the day, Defense Department Spokesperson Dana White said while the coalition has significantly degraded ISIS, the important work remains to guarantee the lasting defeat of the extremists.

"Our commitment to win must outlast the so-called physical caliphate, and the warped ideas that guide the calculated cruelty of ISIS," she said.

This is a group that plots and launches terror attacks globally, White said, adding that they have no regard for anything decent or valuable in life.

"As long as they exist and bring death and destruction around the world, we will continue to degrade, destroy and ultimately defeat ISIS," she said.

We cannot allow our focus to deviate from the most important task of eliminating ISIS from the region. The ISIS terrorist network is more fragile than it was one year ago, but it still presents a capable and committed threat. ISIS is taking full advantage of any opportunity to regain momentum. We must not relent on ISIS or permit these terrorists to recover from their battlefield loses," White said.

Noting that the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)have repeatedly shown that they are a capable force on the ground to defeat ISIS, she said the US will continue to support the SDF in their fight against the extremists.

At a separate press conference, the US State Department alleged that Russia was not doing anything to help in Syria.

"Russia is the huge part of the problem for the tens of thousands of innocent civilians who have been killed and are still being killed each and every day as we look at the video that's coming out of Eastern Ghouta. Russia is responsible for that," State Department Spokesperson Heather Nauert said.

"Russia is directly responsible for propping up Bashar-al-Assad, who has been killing his own people for far, far too long -- Iran also responsible. We don't anticipate that Russia is going to -- based on their actions -- to help right now," she said.
Enraged by her lover's attempts to entice her 14-year-old daughter, a 32-year-old woman killed him in the early hours of Thursday in Annapurneshwari Nagar in Doddabidrakallu.



Raghu (33), a native of Tamil Nadu, had been in a five-year relationship with his killer, Rupa. He worked with her husband for two years at a factory and so they knew each other's family. Despite being married to a woman from Tiptur, who was living in a rented house with their two children, Raghu had taken a liking for Rupa.

According to the police, Rupa's husband had left for Tiptur two days ago. Learning this, Raghu was at Rupa's house in an inebriated condition at 11 pm Wednesday. He had a quarrel with Rupa, saying he wanted to sleep with her daughter.

An incensed Rupa decided to kill him. She talked Raghu into having dinner first and served him ragi mudde laced with powdered sleeping pills. When Raghu fell asleep, she cleaved his abdomen with a kitchen knife and clubbed him with a vegetable grater.

Confessing to the crime, Rupa told the police that Raghu had been eyeing her daughter for a long time and had misbehaved with her on several occasions. She warned him not to visit her again, but Raghu came visiting her on Wednesday night, ignoring her words.

After murdering Raghu, Rupa sat beside his body for nearly half an hour. Her children emerged from their rooms and began screaming at the sight of their mother seated next to the blood-soaked body. The neighbours, alerted by the children's screaming, informed the police about the incident.

Arriving at the scene, the police took Rupa into custody and shifted Raghu's body to a hospital for post-mortem. The Peenya police have booked a case of murder and are conducting further investigations.
Gao Chengyong listens to the court's ruling at the People's Intermediate Court in Baiyin, Gansu Province on March 30, 2018. [Photo by the Baiyin People's Intermediate Court]

A court in northwest China's Gansu Province has announced its decision to sentence serial killer Gao Chengyong to death for robbery, rape, murder and corpse abuse.

Gao confessed at the people's intermediate court of Baiyin City and said he would not file an appeal.

Dubbed the Chinese "Jack the Ripper," Gao killed 10 women and one girl between 1988 and 2002. Many of his victims were wearing red when their mutilated bodies were found.

Gao raped the victims before killing them and dismembering their bodies.

Gao committed the crimes in Baiyin, Gansu Province and Baotou, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

Gao was arrested in August 2016. He confessed to all 11 murders during his trial last July.
Union minister Babul Supriyo and a senior West Bengal BJP leader were on Thursday stopped by police from entering the Asansol-Raniganj area, which has been on the boil since Sunday, over clashes following a Ram Navami rally.



Supriyo claimed that two FIRs were lodged against him after which he also filed a complaint against the police. However, there was no confirmation from the police whether such FIRs were lodged or not.

State BJP Mahila Morcha president Locket Chatterjee was also barred from visiting the affected areas today as the situation continued to remain tense there.

Internet services remained suspended and prohibitory orders under Section 144 of the CrPC were clamped in the area, following clashes between two groups on Sunday and Monday over a Ram Navami rally at Raniganj, the police said.

However, no fresh incident of violence was reported from the area since last night, the police said, adding that the situation was "under control".

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee today held a high-level meeting at the secretariat after her return from Delhi. Chief secretary, home secretary, DGP and ADGP (law and order) were present at the meeting.

Banerjee did not comment on the situation at Asansol-Raniganj.

Speaking to TV channel ABP Ananda, Supriyo claimed he had learnt that two first information reports (FIR) were lodged against him after he had tried to enter the Asansol-Raniganj area, which led to a heated verbal exchange between him and the cops.

Supriyo, the MP from Asansol, tried to enter the Railpar area in Paschim Bardhaman district, where police stopped his car, citing security reasons.

A group of people shouted slogans against the minister and demanded that he immediately leave the area.

TV channels showed him engaged in a verbal spat with police personnel, who had surrounded his vehicle.

"As a public representative, I have every right to visit my constituency, especially when people are in trouble. It is my duty. But the police is saying I won't be allowed to go as Section 144 is imposed in the area. Being a minister, I cannot violate rules," Supriyo said.

He said he would inform Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Rajnath Singh about the incident.

Supriyo claimed that only the deployment of central forces could bring back peace to the area as locals did not have faith in the police.

The minister, earlier this week, had blamed inaction on part of the police for Sunday's violence over Ram Navami celebrations in Raniganj, neighbouring Asansol.

When asked, the police did not immediately confirm if complaints were lodged against the Union minister.

Locket Chatterjee, who was en route to Raniganj, was also stopped by police at Durgapur. In protest, the actress-turned-politician staged a sit-in.

State Parliamentary Affairs Minister Partha Chatterjee alleged that the BJP was trying to destroy communal peace and harmony in the state.

"When the police is patrolling the area, why do they want to visit Raniganj? Are they not satisfied after unleashing violence for the last two days," he claimed.

Chatterjee, also the TMC secretary general, claimed that Supriyo was seen pushing the on-duty police officers.

S N Gupta, a senior police officer, said the situation was under control. He, however, advised the people not to pay heed to rumours and stay indoors.

In all, 60 people were detained in connection with the violence, he said.

A district police officer said a contingent of the police and the Rapid Action Force (RAF) were patrolling the area.

"There have been no fresh incidents of violence, although Section 144 is still imposed in the area," he said, adding, the situation was still tense.

One person was killed and two police officers were injured in the violence that erupted on Sunday and Monday.

Senior IPS officers Jawed Shamim, Siddhinath Gupta and Vineet Goyal have been deputed on special duty to bring the situation under control.

Governor K N Tripathi has also been advised not to visit Durgapur to see a police officer injured in the violence in Raniganj in view of deployment of police in the area, an official release said yesterday.
A Hizbul Mujahideen militant, who was involved in a shoot-out with the Army in Shopian district, has surfaced in SKIMS Hospital here in an injured condition, police said.



"Asif Ashraf Malik, an active militant of outlawed Hizbul Mujahideen outfit has been admitted with a bullet injury at SKIMS hospital here," a police spokesman said.

He said the preliminary investigation suggests that he was injured at Ahgam in Shopian district last night when militants, travelling in a car, opened fire on an Army patrol.

Malik, a resident of Krawoora in Shopian, has been active as a militant since October last year.

Militants last night opened fire on an Army patrol at Ahgam in Shopian last night, drawing retaliatory fire from security forces.

The car in which the militants were travelling at the time of the incident had veered off the road and hit a tree.

Security forces had launched a search operation in the area but the militants managed to escape and Malik managed to travel a distance of more than 50 kilometres to reach the SKIMS Hospital here for treatment.

The spokesman said police is investigating the matter.
BJP president Amit Shah met the family of Raju of Kyathamaranahalli in Mysuru city on Friday. Shah is on a tour of Mysuru district for campaigning.

It maybe recalled that Raju was killed by a rival gang on Udayagiri Main Road on March 13, 2016, in broad daylight.

One accused Abib Pasha, was arrested but the remaining accused are still absconding. Police said Pasha is wanted in many more murder cases and is currently out on bail.

Shah said there was no place for violence in politics. He warned Chief Minister Siddaramaiah that protecting people who murder Hindu and BJP workers may not help him to win the polls.

Shah added that if BJP is voted to power, the Yeddyurappa government will take steps to arrest all the accused, no matter where they are hiding, and punish them.

He said Raju was representative of the 24 activists who have died fighting for principles and assured the families of all victims that the BJP is with them.
In a bid to exert pressure on the Centre, DMK on Friday announced it would hold black flag protest against Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his proposed visit to Chennai on April 11 for the delay in constituting Cauvery Management Board as per Supreme Court order.

The principal Opposition party, which has 89 MLAs in the 234-member Tamil Nadu Assembly, also announced the convening of a meeting of like-minded parties on April 1 to decide the future course of action to be taken on the sensitive Cauvery river water issue.

The decisions were taken at the DMK's Executive Council meeting on Friday that also demanded cancellation of a nod to the expansion of Sterlite Copper Plant in Thoothukudi and dropping of INO Neutrino project in Theni district.

"DMK has decided to hold black flag protests against Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Chennai on April 11 as a mark of protests demanding immediate constitution of Cauvery Management Board. I will myself participate in the protest," Stalin told reporters after the meeting.

He said invitations for the "all-party meeting" would be sent to all Opposition parties. To a question whether DMK MLAs will resign in a bid to put pressure on the Centre, Stalin replied: "If the AIADMK MPs and MLAs resign, our MPs and MLAs will follow suit the next minute."

Meanwhile, a meeting of all farmers' association held under the aegis of the PMK resolved to observe day-long bandh on April 11 demanding constitution of CMB. "Since the bandh is being called to protect the interests of the farmers, we request people from all walks of life to participate in the bandh and make it successful," PMK MP Anbumani Ramadoss said.
Congress president Rahul Gandhi today kept up his attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the CBSE leaks, saying he would now write a sequel to his book "Exam Warriors" to teach students stress relief after their lives were "destroyed" due to paper leaks.



Mocking the prime minister on Twitter, Gandhi attached a photograph of Modi playing with children.

"PM wrote Exam Warriors, a book to teach students stress relief during exams.

"Next up: Exam Warriors 2, a book to teach students and parents stress relief, once their lives are destroyed due to leaked exam papers," he tweeted.

The prime minister had also talked about fighting exam stress in his "Mann ki Baat" programme ahead of the board exams.

The Congress has been attacking the prime minister on the CBSE announcing a retest of the Class 10 mathematics and Class 12 economics papers after reports that they were leaked.

It has demanded the sacking of HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar and CBSE chairperson Anita Karwal and a judicial probe by a high court judge.

In another tweet on the occasion of Good Friday, Gandhi hoped peace and love fill everyone's hearts and homes.

"On this Good Friday, let us forgive those who have hurt us; make peace with those with whom we are at war; let peace and love fill our hearts and our homes," he said.

Yesterday, Gandhi had targeted Modi over the series of leaks, including CBSE board papers, to say that the "chowkidar" was weak.
Holding the Centre responsible for the leak of CBSE examination papers, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena President Raj Thackeray on Friday called upon students and parents to boycott the re-examinations.



"I appeal to all the parents that under no circumstances let your children sit for a re-exam. If you bend and adjust now and the govt gets to know of it, you will be made to bend more in the future," said Thackeray, the nephew of late Shiv Sena founder Balasaheb Thackeray.



"The government is incapable of safeguarding the question papers and yet it is the students who have to bear the anguish of a re-exam. Why should they (students) be made to undergo this ordeal for no fault of theirs?," he said after a delegation of parents and students called on him at his Shivaji Park-Dadar residence.



Saying that the MNS was with them, he said, "You all please take a stand and be firm on it. Let the government take their decisions."



Blaming the Centre, Thackeray said, "The exam papers of the CBSE were leaked prior to the exams. This is basically the complete oversight on behalf of the government. Instead of owning up to their mistake, the govt is again burdening the students with a re-exam."
Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan today announced raising the retirement age of state government employees to 62 years from the current 60 years.



He made the announcement while speaking to reporters here today. He, however. did not disclose details of this decision. There are about five lakh regular government employees in the state.

The opposition Congress, accusing the government of "deceiving" the state's unemployed youth by increasing the retirement age, demanded that such youth be given a "berozgari bhatta" (unemployment allowance).

Replying to a question on the Supreme Court's order related to the promotion of state government employees. Chouhan said, "Several state government employees are not able to get promotion due to the apex court's order in a case related to 'reservation in promotion' pending with the SC. We will not allow any employee to retire without him getting his due promotion. This is why we have decided to increase the retirement age from 60 to 62 years."

The state government had made a provision for reservation for SC/ST employees in promotion, which was set aside by the Madhya Pradesh High Court.

The state's appeal against the order is pending in the SC with the latter ordering a status quo. This, officials said, has kept on hold promotions of state government employees.

Chouhan expressed hope that SC would take a decision on it within next two years.

Attacking the government, the opposition Congress said the decision was not going to help employees.

"This decision is not going to benefit employees. On the contrary, this would deprive younger officials and employees from getting a promotion. The CM should now announce an unemployment allowance of Rs 2,000 per month to jobless educated youth of the state," said Ajay Singh, Leader of Opposition in the Assembly.

He added that the state government should address the problems of contract employees, who are staging protests.

Meanwhile, the Berojgar Sena, an outfit of the educated unemployed, has opposed the government's decision and called it "cheating".

"Chouhan has deceived 1.5-crore educated unemployed youth of Madhya Pradesh by increasing the retirement age of state government employees. This decision will harm the BJP. We will tour the entire state to apprise the youth about this. We will also take legal recourse," said Akshay Hunka, the outfit's chief.
A record high of 608,000 students from China studied overseas in 2017, an increase of 12% on the previous year, according to recent figures from the Ministry of Education.



Most of the students choose to study in Europe and North America, although countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative are an increasingly popular choice.

Parents at the 2018 China International Education Exhibition Tour on March 24, 2018. [Photo: VCG]

Among the students from China who studied overseas last year, 31,200 were sponsored by the government, and 35,900 were funded by their employer. But the overwhelming majority of them - 89% - studied at their own expenses.

An increasing number of these students, especially the top performers, are choosing to return to China after they finish their studies. Almost half a million returned home in 2017, up 11% on the previous year. Over the last four decades, of the 5.2 million students from China who studied abroad, more than three million have returned to China.

The number of foreign students studying in China is also on the rise. Last year, almost half a million students from more than 200 countries came to study at universities and colleges in China. The five countries sending the most students to study in China are South Korea, Thailand, Pakistan, the United States, and India. China has become the most popular destination in Asia for overseas students.




Dr. Prakash Ambedkar, grandson of Dr. B R Ambedkar --the architect of the Indian Constitution--gave people a call to unite strongly against forces that were out to change the Indian Constitution. "The country will survive only of the Constitution survives," he said.



He spoke at the 'Save Constitution, Save India' program organised at the town hall in Tumakuru on Friday by a federation of pro-people organisations working at both the state and district levels.

Those who swore on god and the Constitution and came to power have now set out to change the Constitution. "Central minister Ananth Kumar Hegde has made a public statement and others have also hinted at changing the Constitution," he added.

The Constitution gives equal rights to all without discrimination based on caste, creed, religion, financial status. The value of the vote of a citizen be it Chief Minister Siddaramaiah or state BJP president B S Yeddyurappa, or a common citizen; is the same.

Though there are many religious groups and castes, the Constitution gives them the right to propagate their beliefs without hurting others. It also gives every citizen the right to follow any faith of his or her choice.

"It is ironical that leaders who took an oath on such a Constitution are now talking of changing it," Ambedkar added.
Human Resource Development (HRD) minister Prakash Javadekar reached out to the country's engineering students on Friday, urging them to come out with solutions for making examinations leak proof.



"Come out with the solution for making examinations leak proof. Accept this challenge and work on the solution of full proof examination," he said while addressing the contestants of the final round of a 36-hour non-stop nationwide coding contest which began on Friday.

The minister's appeal to the budding technocrats came at a time when his ministry along with the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) is facing much heat over reports of the leakage of Class X mathematics paper and Class XII economics paper of the board examinations.

As many as 8000 engineering students participated in the final round of the Smart India Hackathon-2018 to come up with innovative technical solutions for a list of problems placed by various departments of the central government.

As demand for a technical solution for holding leak-proof examinations was not pre-assigned to the contestants, the minister appealed to the students to work on this problem and provide a solution after the contest concludes.

The contest was held at a total of 28 different centres under the aegis of the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE).

A total of one lakh students participated in the previous rounds since the AICTE began the second season of the coding contest a few months ago.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to address the participants later in evening.



Under this year's Smart India Hackathon, the AICTE is also holding a contest to promote innovation in computer hardware. Dates of the final round of the contest will be notified in the coming months.
Amnesty International India on Friday released a human rights charter for political parties taking part in the Karnataka Assembly elections 2018. The organisation is calling for political parties to include six key human rights goals in their election manifestos.

"For any political party, an election manifesto is a declaration of the commitments it makes to all people," said Asmita Basu, Programmes Director of Amnesty International India. "Through our human rights charter, we are urging all political parties to commit to make human rights a key part of their agenda, and to improve the states human rights record," Basu told Deccan Herald.

Human rights goals

The goals focus on constitutional rights. They include:

1. Protection of the freedom of expression and privacy.

2. Ending discrimination based on gender, gender identity or sexual orientation.

3. Ensuring justice for those who face abuse due to their caste or religion.

4. Improving the functioning of the criminal justice system.

5. Strengthening human rights institutions and protecting human rights defenders.

6. Building a culture of respect for human rights through education.

The major demands in the charter are police reform, state amendments to IPC Section 124A (sedition), Section 377 (unnatural offences) and IPC Section 375 (rape).

The charter calls on the new government to ensure the effective implementation of the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and Their Rehabilitation Act, 2013. It also asks the government to take steps to reduce excessive undertrial detention and repeal the Karnataka Goondas Act, 1985.

Other demands include filling all vacancies in the Karnataka State Human Rights Commission and integration of human rights education into school syllabi and teacher training courses.

The charter also calls for the full implementation of The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009.

"These issues are by no means exhaustive, and effective action will need collaboration with other relevant authorities, including the central government," said Amnesty International India in their statement

Incidents increasing

Basu told DH that there is a steady increase in violence against religious minorities and human rights defenders in India.

"Across the country, there has been an increase in the demonisation of religious minorities and human rights defenders," said Basu. "Freedom of expression has come under attack, and people continue to face discrimination and violence on the basis of their gender, caste and religion. The lack of response from authorities has exacerbated the situation."

Rights violations right here

Amnesty International notes that there have been many human rights violations in Karnataka.

"Karnataka has also witnessed a range of human rights abuses, ranging from attacks on human rights defenders such as Gauri Lankesh, violations of freedom of expression, deaths of people employed in manual scavenging, excessive pre-trial detention and sexual harassment of women garment workers," said Basu.

It is not the first time that Amnesty International India has released a human rights election charter. "We had published a similar charter in 2014 ahead of the national elections, and will be publishing similar charters for other state elections and the national election," said Basu.
A team of engineering students of Tumakuru's Siddaganga Institute of Technology (SIT university) will participate in an aero design competition hosted by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), California, USA. The contest will be held between April 6-8.

In a national-level competition titled 'Manovegam' hosted at SIT by SAE's Bengaluru chapter, the team won the first place for its design and a working model of a radio controlled, unmanned aircraft.

As many as 75 teams will compete in the SAE competition in California. Including the SIT team, five teams from India will take part in the USA contest.

SIT students had participated in 2013, 2014 and 2016 and won awards.

This year, the students led by Alok Raj and guided by Assistant Professor Dr Shivasiddaramaiah of the mechanical engineering department, are bound for America to take part in the competition. The college director Dr Channabasappa has wished them the best.
The Supreme Court collegium had disregarded a complaint of sexual harassment made by a woman judicial officer against her superior while considering his name for elevation to the Karnataka High Court on two occasions, senior government functionaries said today.



Rejecting Justice J Chelameswar's recent charge that the executive was stalling the judiciary's recommendations on appointments, they said the government was in no hurry to take a call on the recommendation of the collegium to elevate principal district judge PK Bhat.

The comments came in the wake of Justice Chelameswar's charges earlier this month in a letter to the Chief Justice of India (CJI). He had urged the CJI to consider convening a full court to take up the issue of alleged executive interference in the judiciary, cautioning that "the bonhomie between the judiciary and the government in any State sounds the death knell to democracy".

Reacting to the charge that the government was in no hurry to take a call on the collegium's recommendations, a functionary said "we are free to sit on the file. There is no timeline mentioned in the memorandum of procedure -- a document that guides the elevation and posting of HC and SC judges."

Refuting Justice Chelameswar's charge, the functionaries, who requested anonymity, said the Law Ministry had twice returned the file relating to the elevation of principal district judge P K Bhat because the collegium did not comply with the Vishakha guidelines.

They said the collegium in particular and the judiciary in general, did not follow the guidelines on sexual harassment laid down by the Supreme Court itself.

"When on the second occasion the file of Bhat's elevation was sent back to the collegium, the complainant wrote to the Rashtrapati Bhawan and the PMO. So, following a standard procedure, the Department of Justice wrote to the registrar of Karnataka HC to look at the complaints. The government cannot ask a chief justice to probe. That power is not with us," a functionary explained.

He said complaints forwarded from the PMO or the President's office have to be sent to the concerned department seeking their views. "This is the procedure every government department has to follow," he said.

The discreet inquiry report cleared by the previous chief justice of the Karnataka HC did not place on record anything to suggest that the complainant was allowed a fair chance to explain her allegation, the functionaries said.

The Supreme Court Collegium had reiterated the elevation Bhat in April 2017 after the then chief justice of Karnataka High Court called the complaints against him incorrect and concocted on the basis of the discreet inquiry. "The probe has to follow the Vishakha case guidelines. It cannot be discreet," one of the functionaries said.

Justice Chelameswar's unprecedented letter, copies of which were also sent to 22 other apex court judges, had questioned the probe initiated by Karnataka High Court chief justice Dinesh Maheshwari against Bhat at the instance of the law ministry, despite his name being recommended for elevation twice by the Collegium.

"Someone from Bangalore has already beaten us in the race to the bottom. The Chief Justice of Karnataka High Court is more than willing to do the Executive bidding, behind our back," he wrote in the six-page letter.

Justice Chelameswar, who had held the unprecedented January 12 press conference along with three other senior judges questioning the allocation of cases by the CJI, referred to the "unhappy experience" where the government sat tight over the files even after the Collegium recommended names for appointment in the higher judiciary.

"For some time, our unhappy experience has been that the government's accepting our recommendations is an exception and sitting on them is the norm. 'Inconvenient' but able judges or judges to be are being bypassed through this route," he had claimed.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and China's top legislator Li Zhanshu met with Namibian President Hage Geingob in Beijing Friday, vowing to boost bilateral relations.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang shakes hands with Namibian President Hage Geingob in Beijing on March 30, 2018. [Photo: gov.cn]

Calling Namibia China's important cooperation partner in Africa, Premier Li said China expected to consolidate political trust with Namibia, enhance win-win cooperation and coordination in regional and global affairs to jointly build a brighter future for bilateral ties.

Hailing the progress and broad prospects of China-Namibia substantial cooperation, Premier Li said China hoped to synergize development strategies with Namibia, and deepen cooperation in such key areas as agriculture and agricultural technology, infrastructure, production capacity and tourism.

The premier vowed joint efforts with Namibia to support economic globalization as well as trade and investment liberalization and facilitation, take a clear stand to oppose trade protectionism, and promote common development and mutual benefits.

Hailing the traditional friendship between the two countries, Geingob said that the two sides had agreed to update their relations to a comprehensive strategic partnership, and signed a series of important cooperation documents.

"This will further boost bilateral exchanges and cooperation in the areas of politics, economy and strategy," he said.

Geingob said Namibia expected to deepen cooperation with China in various areas and boost stronger ties.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang meets with Namibian President Hage Geingob in Beijing on March 30, 2018. [Photo: gov.cn]

In his meeting with Geingob, Li Zhanshu, chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), said the NPC was willing to work with the Namibian side to implement the consensus reached by their heads of state, and boost closer friendly exchanges.

He called on the two sides to firmly support win-win China-Africa cooperation under the framework of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, as well as the Belt and Road Initiative.

Li Zhanshu asked the two sides to offer a better investment environment and legal protection for each other's investors, consolidate the foundation of social and public opinion for China-Namibia friendship, and boost greater development of bilateral ties in the new era.

Geingob spoke highly of China's policy to Africa, adding his country hoped to strengthen pragmatic cooperation with China in various areas and support more legislative exchanges between the two countries.

On Friday afternoon, Geingob also laid a wreath at the Monument to the People's Heroes in downtown Beijing.
Saare jahan se achchaa -- many can recall the famous words relayed back by Rakesh Sharma in April 1984, when then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi asked the first Indian astronaut in space about how India appeared from where he was. But few can remember what Sharma ate while he spent seven days in space.



We had prepared a variety of food items for him, including peas pulav, rabadi, chicken pulav and mutton kheema, said K. Radhakrishna, head of Freeze Drying and Food Technology Division at Defence Food Research Laboratory (DFRL), speaking with The Hindu.



We have come a long way since and Radhakrishna and a few others scientists in the country have done the impossible. A few years ago, they created space idlis.



No, not the kind of cakes and edibles served at a cafe in Amsterdam that will figuratively take you to space. Scientists at the DFRL lab in Mysore have made tiny, coin-sized moisture-free idlis, with the shelf life of a year.



Therefore, when the day comes that India picks its next astronaut for a manned space mission, he or she can break away from the monotony of their regular space menu with idli sambhar. The scientists also have other tricks up their sleeves, including space biryani, space yoghurt and space rasgullas!



It is the perfect snack...and the cost, though I havent calculated it precisely, is minimal: Rs 8 or 10 for a pack, said Anil Dutt Semwal, senior category F scientist at DFRL, while discussing space idlis in an article published in Open Magazine.



Paying Rs 8 or Rs 10 for a pack of specially prepared space idlis, even without the imprecise calculations, is truly astounding, considering the intricacies involved in the manufacturing. But an equally astounding fact is the variation in costs of idlis around the world.



Based on analysis applied by Anirvan Ghosh in a 2015 article he wrote for HuffPost where he compared dosa prices at different international Saravana Bhavan outlets around the world, heres the idli price index:

Location Cost in local Currency In Rupees Converted)

New Delhi 114 Chennai 39 London 2.75 251.57 Frankfurt 4.9 392.64 New York

$7.99

520.07 Dubai



. 8

141.77



For those wondering what possible benefit can one accrue from learning about the price of Idlis around the world?



Well for one, comparing prices of single food items between countries is a common technique used by economists to explain differences in exchange rates between countries.



The Economists Big Mac Index which measures the purchasing power parity (PPP) between nations using the price of a McDonald's Big Mac as the benchmark is the most prominent example.



And for another, comparing prices of Idlis; Rs 5 for 3 in our local Indira Canteen versus Rs 520.07 for 3 in New Yorks Saravana Bhavan, if nothing, is food for thought on World Idli Day.




Nepal's Prime Minister K P Sharma Oli will visit India next week. Oli will hold a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his visit to New Delhi.

He will also call on President Ram Nath Kovind and Vice President Venkaiah Naidu.

This is going to be Oli's first visit to New Delhi after taking over as Prime Minister of Nepal for the second term on February 15. His first term in the office of Prime Minister of Nepal from October 2015 to August 2016 witnessed escalation of tension between New Delhi and Kathmandu over Nepal's new constitution.

"India and Nepal enjoy age-old, special ties of friendship and cooperation. The upcoming visit will provide an opportunity to the two sides to review wide-ranging cooperative partnership, and to progress it further for the benefit of the two people," the Ministry of External Affairs said in a statement on Friday.

A coalition of the Oli's Communist Party of Nepal (United Marxist Leninist), Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre) led by Prachanda and the newly floated Naya Shakti won the elections in the neighbouring country last month.

The reports received in New Delhi indicated that China had played a role in bringing the three leftist parties together a ostensibly to pose a challenge to India's traditional influence in politics of Nepal.

It was during Oli's tenure as Prime Minister of Nepal that New Delhi's relations with Kathmandu came under stress after the new constitution adopted by the Constituent Assembly of the neighbouring country in September 2015 triggered protests. The disgruntled communities like Madhesis and Tharus resorted to protests in Terai region of Nepal, alleging that the new constitution failed to allay their concerns over further marginalization and to meet their aspirations.

India has been prodding Nepal to make the new statute inclusive and broad-based in approach.
China has offered to synchronize its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's pet programme Make-in-India, to secure New Delhi's support for the cross-continental connectivity project.



Beijing mooted the proposal during Chinese Commerce Minister Zhong Shan's visit to New Delhi early this week.

Zhong conveyed to his counterpart Commerce Minister Suresh Prabhu that Beijing was ready to work with New Delhi to sync its BRI with Modi Government's Make-in-India and Digital India initiatives, sources told the DH.

China's proposal was apparently yet another attempt by it to secure India's support to its ambitious connectivity initiative.

New Delhi remained non-committal on Beijing's new proposal, but maintained that it was open to further discussion on it.

It was conveyed to the Chinese commerce minister that India had some "legitimate concerns" on the BRI, and it would remain open to "any effort" to address those.

The two neighbouring nations are now trying to bring their troubled ties back on track after it hit a new low with the 72-day-long military face-off at Doklam Plateau in western Bhutan in 2017.

New Delhi and Beijing lined up several engagements in the coming months, culminating with Modi's meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sideline of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization's summit in Qingdao on the east coast of China in June this year.

Beijing is likely to convey to New Delhi over the next few months the details of its offer for dovetailing the BRI with Make-in-India and Digital India initiatives. It may come up for discussion during Xi-Modi meeting in June, sources said.

New Delhi has since long been opposing China's BRI, arguing that the connectivity initiative should have been "based on universally recognized international norms, good governance, rule of law, openness, transparency and equality".

India in the past strongly criticized the BRI of China, arguing that connectivity initiatives "must follow principles of financial responsibility to avoid projects that would create unsustainable debt burden for communities; balanced ecological and environmental protection and preservation standards; transparent assessment of project costs; and skill and technology transfer to help long term running and maintenance of the assets created by local communities".

India is particularly opposed to the BRI's flagship component CPEC, which will link Kashgar in Xinjiang in north-western China and a deep sea port at Gwadar in Balochistan in south-western Pakistan. New Delhi has been opposed to the CPEC corridor, as it is proposed to pass through parts of Kashmir that India claims as its own and accuses Pakistan of illegally occupying.

In view of the renewed efforts by the two nations to mend ties, New Delhi, however, may avoid criticizing the BRI as a whole in public, but limit its opposition only to the CPEC, which it says infringes on the sovereignty of India.
No infringement on the rights of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes will be tolerated in the country as long as Narendra Modi is the Prime Minister and BJP is in power, Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi said here today.



Addressing a function organized on the occasion of the birth anniversary of Dalit icon Baba Chauharmal, the senior BJP leader also said that the Centre was likely to file a review petition challenging the Supreme Court judgement on SC/ST Act.



He also defended the decision of the Yogi Adityanath government in the neighbouring Uttar Pradesh to replace the name of Bhim Rao Ambedkar with "Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar", in all government documents saying "this was how he had put his signature in the original copy of the Constitution".



Sushil also said that the BJP was firmly committed to the welfare of SCs and STs and opposed to introduce creamy layer in the quotas meant for them but strongly in support of reservation in promotions and ensuring adequate representation of the depressed classes in the judiciary.



"The Atal Bihari Vajpayee government had brought in reservation in promotion by amending the Constitution. The Nitish Kumar government did the same in Bihar though it was set aside by the Supreme Court.



The state government will try to bring the provision into force by plugging the loopholes", Sushil said. He also said "SC/ST Act is acts as a shield which protects the weaker sections against atrocities. It is not proper to dilute such a law for fear of misuse.



The BJP is firmly with Dalits on this issue and the Government will file a review petition next week".



The Bihar Deputy CM also said, "the option of putting the Act in the Constitution's 9th Schedule should be exercised so that no scope of judicial intervention remains".



"It is unfortunate that the UP government's decision to correctly spell Ambedkar's name in government records is being misrepresented.



It has been a tradition in Maharashtra to write the name of one's father as one's middle name", the BJP leader said. "SCs and STs of the country should rest assured. There can be no violation of their rights as long as Narendra Modi is the Prime Minister and BJP is in power", he asserted.
A 20-year-old cyclist died after being run over by an autorickshaw in central Bengaluru in the early hours of Friday, police said.



Surjeet (20) was heading towards Anepalya after work when the autorickshaw rear-ended his bicycle. His friend, who was on another bicycle, stopped the auto-rickshaw and rushed him to a hospital where doctors declared him brought dead.

Police said the autorickshaw driver fled the spot after learning that Surjeet was dead. The victim hailed from Agartala, Tripura, and worked at a hotel. The Ashok Nagar police have registered a case.
BJP president Amit Shah will tour three districts of Mumbai-Karnataka region from April 2.



This is the first time Shah is visiting the region and has a packed schedule during his two-day tour. He will be covering three districts - Belagavi, Bagalkot and Haveri.

On April 2, Shah will be starting his tour from Belagavi by garlanding the statues of Kittur Rani Channamma, Sangolli Rayanna and Shivaji.

He will later interact with the students of KLE College. Shah's next stop will be Nippani where he will interact with the representatives of the Jain community. He will also address a women's convention. Shah's evening schedule includes a road show in Gokak.

The next day, Shah will visit Bagalkot where he will interact with the members of the business community. He will also hold a closed-door meeting with party functionaries from the Mumbai-Karnataka region. He will have lunch at former minister Govind Karjol's residence. Shah's last stop will be at Badami, where he will call on seer of Shivayoga Mandir.
The Day One of BJP president Amit Shah's tour of old Mysore region on Friday began on an embarassing note with Dalit leaders confornting him on continuation of Union Minister of State for Skill Development Anantkumar Hegde in the Council of Ministers, despite his statement that the Constitution would be changed.

At an interaction Shah had with with Dalit leaders at Rajendra Kalamandira here, the participants questioned the logic behind Prime Minister Narendra Modi continuing Hegde in the ministry. BJP state vice president V Srinivas Prasad told Shah that the people see the party as 'anti-Dalit' due to Hegde's statements.

The Dalit leaders flung accusations at the party and Shah and asked him to clarify the BJP's stand on Hegde's statement. "Due to Hegde's statement, Dalits have developed a negative impression about the party," they stated.

When Shah claimed that the BJP has no connection with Hegde's statement, Choranahalli Shivanna and his supporters condemned Shah and raised slogans against him. "Though Hegde defamed the Constitution compiled by Dalit leader B R Ambedkar, the BJP has not dropped him from the ministry. You (Shah) have been claiming that the BJP has no connection with his statements. We have no faith in your words," they said.

Commotion prevailed as participants rained several questions and did not even allow Shah to answer them. When MP Prathap Simha directed party volunteers to evict the participants who were behaving arrogantly, some of them left the venue shouting slogans against the dignitaries.

When Shah continued his speech, someyouths, apprentice with the Railways, alleged that Karnataka Dalits are being neglected by the Centre with regard to promotions. They forced Shah to receive their memorandum. Shah said Modi and Railway Minister Piyush Goyal have discussed the issue and will take appropriate measures.

Shah also attended a Scheduled Tribes convention in Chamarajanagar town. The BJP chief visited Suttur seer Shivaratri Deshikendra Swami at JSS Mutt, before meeting the members of the erstwhile royal family at the Amba Vilas Palace. He held talks with Pramoda Devi Wadiyar and her son Yaduveer Krishnadatta Chamaraja Wadiyar. He also greeted Yaduver's baby Aadyaveer Narasimharaja Wadiyar. While the visit to the mutt is supposed to seek the support of the seer, in the wake of the state government's recommendation for minority tag for Lingayats, visit to the Palace was to garner the support of the Wadiyars.

Shah also had an audience with Siddeshwara Swami of Vijayapura-based Jnanayogashrama at JSS mutt at Suttur. He also sought blessings met was Ganapathi Sachidanada Swami of Avadootha Datta Peetha.

In view of strengthening the 'Hindutva' credentials of the party, he met the family members of Raju of Kyathamaranahalli, a RSS activist and BJP member, who was murdered in 2016 in Mysuru city by a gang of suspected People's Front of India activists.

Shah said Raju is a 'symbol' of the 24 RSS/BJP activists who have died fighting for principles and, assured the families of all the victims that the BJP is with them.

Shah held a meeting with the leaders of Krishnaraja, Chamaraja and Narasimharaja, Kollegal and Hanur constituencies.
BENGALURU: Six months after the grandson of a renowned politician crashed his SUV into a small car and injured six people, the police are yet to file a charge sheet, giving the case a silent burial.



On September 28, Geetha Vishnu, the grandson of businessman and politician, the late D K Audikesavulu, sparked the wreck under the influence of drugs and left six people, including two children, injured. People caught him as he tried to flee the scene and handed him over to the police.

Police later seized his SUV and found 110 grams of marijuana inside the vehicle. Vishnu broke free from police custody while in hospital and was recaptured from Madikeri on October 4.

But the police seem to have lost interest in the case. Rules say they should file a charge sheet within 60 days of filing the FIR in serious offences punishable by a 10-year sentence and have 90 days for charge sheet in serious cases where the punishment is more than a 10-year sentence. Both the deadlines have long gone in Vishnu's case.

Without the charge sheet, the case cannot proceed to trial. Police Commissioner T Suneel Kumar, who transferred the case from the Jayanagar police to the Central Crime Branch for expeditious investigation, said he needed to check the case's status.

"The case may be pending for forensic report, since police must've sent the seized marijuana for test at the FSL," Kumar said.

"There's only one FSL for the whole state and so, I'll pick up the case soon."

But the Senior Public Prosecutor said the case was as good as dead. While the police showed no interest in filing a charge sheet and kick-start the trial process, their hands will be full for the next two months due to elections. After that, the case would be given a silent burial.

Mysteries, procedural flaws

A few details of the case also remain mysterious. It is unclear as to why the police should let Vishnu go home on the night of September 28 after the crash. They discover the marijuana from the vehicle he left at the accident spot a day later on September 29.

Vishnu's family told police he was taken to hospital they own. Doctors later told the police that Vishnu was not in a position to give a statement. But he managed to escape from the hospital and was captured a week later at Madikeri and produced before the court that granted him bail.

The case is also strewn with procedural failures. Police should have taken Vishnu for a medical test on the night of the accident. They also failed to arrest him despite finding him possess marijuana beyond permissible limit. Also, they allowed him to get treatment in his own hospital and believed his doctor's statements.

Disturbing questions

Such treatment of a rich man raises disturbing questions: will the police allow a common man causing injuries to so many people in an accident walk free? Will they wait 12 hours to arrest someone possessing a large amount of narcotic drug? And why none of the officials involved was suspended for negligence?

Most importantly, will they take six months to file the charge sheet in all such cases?
Stepping into the home turf of Chief Minister Sidddaramaiah, BJP president Amit Shah on Friday told him that his "time" has come to an end and he would be mistaken if he thought that saffron ideology could be stalled by unleashing violence against BJP and RSS workers.



Thew BJP chief began his fourth round of visit to the poll-bound Karnataka with a tour of old Mysuru areas, asserting that Siddaramaiah and the JD(S) would receive "biggest shock of their lives" from the region in the Assembly elections scheduled to be held on May 12.

Addressing a BJP convention in the City of Palaces, Shah said: "It is said that the BJP is a bit weak here (Old Mysuru region), but after seeing the work of the party workers, I expect Siddaramaiahji and the JD(S) to get the biggest shock of their lives from this (Old) Mysuru region."

Shah is presently covering Mysuru, Chamarajanagara, Mandya and Ramanagaram districts, where BJP failed to win even a single seat in the 2013 Assembly elections. The principal challenger to the ruling Congress in these districts is the JD(S).

Referring to his gaffe at Davanagere earlier this week, Shah said though he had committed a mistake in his speech while referring to Siddaramaiah's corruption, people of the state would not do the same because they knew Siddaramaiah's rule well.

"Siddaramaiah and Rahul Gandhi were very happy over my gaffe while speaking about Siddaramaiah's corruption. I had made a mistake, but the people of Karnataka will not make it, because they have understood Siddaramaiah's government very well," he

said.

In a slip of the tongue at a press conference at Davangere, while attacking the Siddaramaiah dispensation as the "most corrupt" one, Shah had said the Yeddyurappa government would get the number one award in corruption.

He had, however, corrected himself after being prompted by party MP Pralhad Joshi, who was seated next to him.

In Mysuru, Shah also accused Siddaramaiah of playing with Karnataka's pride by not celebrating the "jayanti" of Kannada poet laureate

Kuvempu or renowned engineer and legendary statesman Bharat Ratna Sir M Visvesvaraya.

"Siddaramaiah only remembers to celebrate the jayanti of Tipu Sultan to get votes," he said.

Later, the BJP chief visited the influential Suttur Mutt seer Shivaratri Deshikendra Swami before meeting the members of the erstwhile royal family at the Amba Vilas Palace.

He held talks with Pramoda Devi Wadiyar and her son Yaduveer Krishnadatta Chamaraja Wadiyar.

He also greeted Yaduveer's baby Aadyaveer Narasimharaja Wadiyar.

Shah also had an audience with Siddeshwara Swami of Vijayapura-based Jnanayogashrama at JSS mutt at Suttur and Ganapathi Sachidananda

Swami of Avadhootha Datta Peetha.

He also met the family members of Raju of Kyathamaranahalli, a RSS-BJP worker who was murdered in 2016 by a gang of suspected PFI activists.
Prepare for the bikeshare onslaught.

Five North County cities are banding together to gather information from bikeshare companies in the hopes of finding one to run a one-year pilot program that could launch within the next two months.

Encinitas, Del Mar, Solana Beach, Carlsbad and Oceanside have agreed to enter into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the North County Transit District and Camp Pendleton to see if a bikeshare company can run the pilot program at little or no cost to the cities. The thinking is that the bicycles, and possibly electric scooters, will cover the first and last mile of trips based around train stations, giving coastal visitors an option for leaving their cars at home. Cutting into vehicle miles driven is at the heart of the long-term climate plans the cities have adopted in the past few years. In Solana Beach, for example, 63 percent of the citys greenhouse gas emissions come from the transportation sector.

Rather than a docking-based system like the one that has been operating in San Diego for three years, the North County cities will give preference to dockless bikes and scootersthe free-roaming, GPS-enabled vessels that have flooded neighborhoods in the City of San Diego over the past month.

Riders rent the bikes and scooters through a smartphone app, typically for $1 or $2 an hour. The bikes are tracked via GPS and have self-locking mechanisms, allowing them to be picked up and dropped off anywhere.

But wherever they have appeared, a backlash has quickly followed, with irate residents bemoaning the abundance of bikes strewn throughout their neighborhoods.

LimeBike and ofo began operating in San Diego last month after its city attorney ruled that allowing them does not conflict with the citys contract with Discover Bikes, which uses docking stations. Complaints mounted almost immediately, crystallized in a photo that made the rounds on social media showing more than a dozen bikes piled into a tangled eyesore at an intersection in the Gaslamp district.

Coronado has since declared dockless bikes a public nuisance and is impounding any that are found in public rights-of-way. Ocean Beach is working on regulations to rein bikeshares in, driven in large part by brick-and-mortar rental businesses that worry the companies have an unfair advantage. And in Santa Monica, where Bird electric scooters launched last year, officials became so dismayed by the companys refusal to obtain vendor permits and business licenses that the city issued an eight-count criminal complaint.

Under the North Countys MOUwhich is non-bindingEncinitas will take the lead in conferring with bikeshare companies. If viable candidates emerge, the cities will agree on a single vendor then reach separate agreements with that company.

Each citys agreement will spell out terms for resolving the pitfalls that have plagued bikeshares and for settling various as-yet-unanswered questions, including how to enforce helmet laws and whether the bikes will be used at night.

Solana Beach and Encinitas voted on March 14 to join the bikeshare partnership. Del Mar agreed on March 5. Before its 4-0 vote, Del Mar Deputy Mayor Dave Druker warned of the importance of understanding the companies financial viability.

I dont want to see a business plan that says, Were going to be the Uber of bike rentals, Druker said. A lot of cities are finding that theyre interesting and they sound great on paper. Ultimately theyre having difficulty with them because the [companies] dont have a business plan that is actually sustainable for the long term.  Ultimately theres no such thing as a free lunch.
Reviews were mixed on the first set of design drawings for the new Pacific Highlands Ranch Library at a Carmel Valley Community Planning Board design subcommittee meeting on March 19. Planned to open in three to four years, the new 18,000-square-foot library will border the Village of Pacific Highlands Ranchs open space promenade on Village Center Loop Drive.

Jim Gabriel, of Hanna Gabriel Wells Architecture, unveiled his vision for a modern building that he said drew inspiration from the pastoral and farmhouse history of Carmel Valley, as well as notes from the hacienda-style architecture of Pacific Highlands Ranch.

The design features strong flat white walls with a large peaked gray roof with screens and lattices to shade and temper the environment and fill the space with beautiful dappled light and shadows. A veranda area creates a connection between the library and the civic promenade of the Village, a bridge of two important civic destinations.

The view of the library from the civic promenade. (Courtesy )

At the PHR Library design subcommittees first meeting in February, resident Karen Dubey urged the architects to consider drawing inspiration primarily from the Santa Barbara style that is prominent in the community, such as in the Village, fire station and community monuments. She asked for it to be somewhere in the middle between the contemporary designs of Canyon Crest Academy, Pacific Trails Middle School and the recreation center across the street, which was also designed by Hanna Gabriel Wells.

I think you completely missed the mark and its a missed opportunity, Dubey said. I just dont feel this is what the community wants.

I think people live in Pacific Highlands Ranch like the Santa Barbara style and this isnt it, echoed committee member and CV Community Planning Board member Ken Farinsky, noting that the design seemed too boxy, like a big box store.

Farinsky said he was disappointed in the design process and had envisioned the architect coming forward with multiple sketches of different possibilities and then everyone working together on a design. He said it seemed like the design decisions have already been made.

Committee member Stella Rogers said while she does prefer Santa Barbara style, she acknowledged that the design does offer something a little different that wouldnt get lost in the mix. That being said, Rogers said she still thinks the design should better reflect the community.

Others did not mind the contemporary style as much.I think it looks sophisticated and I think sophistication is something that resonates with a library, said Allen Kashani, a member of the planning board.

Gabriel took in the groups feedback and said while the design is more contemporary, he believes he incorporated the hacienda style with the consistency of the simple white walls as well as the detailing and articulation.The subcommittee encouraged adding something to those blank white walls such as color or tiles. Carmel Valley Community Planning Board Chair Frisco White said that neighbors will not want to look at a plain white wall.

The Village Loop elevation needs to be given just as much weight because it is what everyone will see every day, White said.

The library will feature a large community room that opens into an enclosed patio space and a variety of seating areas and stacks. Misty Jones, San Diego Public Library director, said they are aiming to have a collection of 75,000 books.

A rendering of the PHR Library. (Courtesy )

We need a large collection because we have a lot of readers here, Jones said.

The plan is to have teen-friendly spaces like a lounge, areas to do homework and study and an idea lab. A large childrens area will feature playful stacks like ones that children can crawl into or use as reading nooks.

At the meeting, JT Barr, of Schmidt Design Group, shared details about the landscaping and outdoor spaces that the library will provide.

Bridges will lead people up into the library veranda from the promenade, an area serves as an extension of the reading and learning environment with fixed and flexible furniture and seating. Landscaping will stich the two functions together within the heart of the community, Barr said.

Barr said they plan to introduce whimsy into the childrens outdoor space such as synthetic turf mounds reminiscent of Dr. Seuss. In the front arrival area, there will be a uniquely different spacean enclosed courtyard that can serve as a quiet, intimate reading nook with a small water feature.

The library will be surrounded by 35 trees and the subcommittee asked that bigger trees be placed closest to the road to help screen the parking lot.

The library parking was designed with 65 stalls with two-way traffic flowthe subcommittee asked the Gabriel to study an option with angled spaces and one-way circulation as it might be easier to navigate.

By comparison, the Carmel Valley Library parking lot is 56 spaces, and White said is very narrow and crammed although the one-way flow seems to work for people picking up kids and dropping off books.

Gabriel said they could come back with an option of a one-way loop which would have wider aisles.

The subcommittees next meeting date has not yet been set. To get on a mailing list for future meetings, email white@wwarch.com.
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By JOSEPH PISANI

AP Retail Writer

NEW YORK  President Donald Trump took another shot at Amazon.com Thursday, tweeting that the online retailer pays little or no taxes and that it uses the U.S. Postal Service as their Delivery Boy.

Trump's frustrations with Amazon are no surprise. He has accused the company of not paying enough taxes before, and in December tweeted that the U.S. Postal Service should charge Amazon more for delivering packages. His latest missive comes a day after Axios reported that Trump has wondered aloud if there was a way to go after Amazon with antitrust or competition law.





. . .
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SANDPOINT, Idaho (AP)  An Idaho water advocacy group says another railway bridge across Lake Pend Oreille would double rail traffic, increasing the chances of derailments of crude oil and coal shipments.

The Bonner County Daily Bee reports the Lake Pend Oreille Waterkeeper is calling on state and federal officials to extend the public comment period for the planned BNSF Railway bridge across the northern Idaho lake, so its potential effects can be better analyzed.





. . .
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KENT  Kennedy Wilson is continuing to sell percentages in a Kent apartment complex called Atrium on James at 6248 S. 242nd Place.

Last week it sold a 10.5 percent interest to three Japanese investors for almost $10 million, according to King County records. Brokers were not announced.





. . .
Court strikes down Seattle housing law

SEATTLE (AP)  A King County Superior Court judge has struck down a Seattle law designed to limit housing discrimination.

The law, enacted in 2016, requires landlords to rent to the first qualified applicant for their property. The idea was to reduce the role that bias plays in who obtains housing.

But several property owners sued, calling the measure unconstitutional, and Judge Suzanne Parisien agreed in a ruling Wednesday. Parisien called the law unduly oppressive and said it infringes on their rights to dispose of their own property, as well as their free-speech right to negotiate with potential tenants.

Ethan Blevins, an attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation who represents the landlords, called it a major victory for property rights.

The Seattle City Attorney's Office said it disagreed with the court's ruling but was still determining its next steps.




Refugees living in Berlin will be telling their stories to students as De Montfort University Leicester (DMU) continues its work with the United Nations #JoinTogether campaign DMU has been asked by the UN to take the lead in developing a global network of universities and students keen to help refugees, asylum seekers and migrants in their communities.Next week, a group of more than 20 students head to Berlin with #DMUlocal and #DMUglobal where they will be working with partner universities and seeing how organisations, people and institutions are working to support refugees.Among the activities planned are helping at charities running workshops for refugee families, discussing free law clinics run by Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin for refugees and migrants, and meeting teams who help refugees settle in to Berlin.A special event on Thursday created for the DMU visit will introduce students to many of the organisations working to support refugees in Berlin. It will include presentations, discussion groups between students, discussion panels, refugees and support workers followed by food and live music.They will also have the opportunity to see a special photography exhibition by artist Heike Steinweg, called I Never Said Goodbye: Women In Exile, which features women refugees who have made their home in Germany.Mark Charlton, Head of Public Engagement at DMU, said: We have been overwhelmed by the enthusiasm from students about supporting our work with refugees. Were sure that this visit will be an eye-opener for many students but it will also be an incredibly rewarding experience.Above all, we hope to work with partners and take away lessons which can help us have even more of an impact in our work with refugees in Leicester.Throughout the visit, students will be sharing their experiences through blogging, vlogging, podcasting or photography. Speech and Language Therapy student Sumayyah Bapu helped teach English to Syrian children in her home town of Nuneaton to help them before they started school. She said: Im really looking forward to it, she said. Im particularly interested in seeing the work they do with children and how they are able to communicate when there is a language barrier.Vikesh Mistry, final-year Business, Entrepreneurship and Innovation student, has been a regular volunteer with #DMUlocal projects and wanted to extend his volunteering experience in Berlin.He said: I think this trip will be a lot different to the volunteering I have done before. This is about humanity, seeing what can be done to help others. I think we all need to ask, what can I do with my time that can make a difference? It is so rewarding.#DMUlocal has worked with refugees to put together a list of projects that students can volunteer for. They are: Interviewing refugees and their families for the Share My Story project, which will create an oral history archive of the different experiences of refugees Nurturing new talent by volunteering at #DMUlocals refugee art club Fundraising to support refugee scholars at DMU Mentoring  to provide educational support for young people who arrived in the UK Join a DMU conference to discuss refugee and people trafficking issues on May 18 Suggesting a pitch for a project to the #DMUlocal team Volunteering at a new Get Together cafe being run by #DMUlocal Becoming a music mentorThis year DMU was made a member of the United Nations' Academic Impact (UNAI) programme  one of the world's largest higher education networks. The UNAI, which has more than 1,000 members, aligns higher education institutions with the goals and mandates pursued by the UN. These include promotion and protection of human rights, access to education, sustainability and conflict resolution.




By NY Daily News , Mar. 29, 2018





MOSCOW (AP)  The latest on the nerve agent attack on an Russian ex-spy in Britain (all times local):





2:20 a.m.





The White House says Russia's expulsion of 60 American diplomats was "not unanticipated" and the U.S. "will deal with it."





Russia kicked out the Americans in retaliation for the U.S. expelling 60 Russian diplomats earlier in the week as punishment for Moscow's alleged involvement in the poisoning of a former spy and his daughter in Britain. NATO allies and other U.S. partners overseas also kicked out Russians.

Read More:



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Dear @IlhanMN,



I hear you plan to go on a fact-finding tour of Israel. In fact, Israel is doing pretty well. Its, Somalia, your native country, that could truly use your formidable skills. Maybe you could use your frequent flyer miles and swing by.
Erdogan reacts to Macron over France's YPG support

President Erdogan asked Macron: Who are you to talk about mediation between Turkey and terror group?

The offer of France to mediate between Turkey and the PKK-led SDF terror group in Syria exceeds its limit, President Erdogan said on Friday.

Speaking at the provincial leaders meeting of the ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party in capital Ankara, Erdogan said that Turkey is very saddened by France's completely wrong approach regarding Syria, adding that the remarks of suggesting intermediation between Turkey and the YPG-dominated SDF, if true, were remarks "far beyond one's limit."

"If the remark [by the France presidency] that we can be a mediator between Turkey and SDF is true, it far exceeds the limit of the person who says that. Who are you to talk about mediation between Turkey and a terror group?

Last week I spoke to Macron himself, and found him saying very bizarre things. As he said those bizarre things, we had to tell him, in a bit of a high frequency. Because it is not up to anyone to put us, our armed forces in a place we can never accept." President stated.

Erdogan rejected any scope for negotiations with terror groups, saying Turkeys fight against terrorism would continue resolutely like the ongoing Turkish military operation in northwestern Syria.
A harrowing expose reveals that Nickelodeon's Ren & Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi preyed on teenage girls throughout his career. The allegation comes from two women who opened up about their experience with the animator as teenagers.

Robyn Byrd

At 16, Robyn Byrd became Kricfalusi's girlfriend and live-in partner after he established a mentor-mentee relationship with her after she sent him a letter about her interest to pursue animation at age 13. Byrd, now 37, recalled receiving gifts from the then-39-year-old Kricfalusi: boxes of toys and art supplies. He also helped her get her first AOL account and convinced her that he could help her become a great artist.

Soon after he established her trust, Kricfalusi started making personal visits. He visited Byrd at the trailer park where she lives in Tucson, Arizona. Then when she was 16, he flew her to Los Angeles where he showed her his studio and talked about her future. It was also there that Kricfalusi allegedly touched her genitals, as she lay frozen on the floor.

Byrd eventually interned at Spumco, Kricfalusi's studio and lived with him as his 16-year-old girlfriend and intern. She moved in with the animator permanently at age 17 after she graduated from senior high at a private school which Kricfalusi paid for her tuition. Byrd and her mother believed his promise that he could give her an animation career in Los Angeles.

"I made my dream come true," Byrd tells BuzzFeed and recalls that Kricfalusi once described their 25-year age gap as "romantic." However, she eventually left the creator in 2002 after she realized that his interest has drifted off to another woman, to 18-year-old Katie Rice.

Katie Rice

Rice never had any physical relations with the Ren & Stimpy creator although remembered that he masturbated while he was on the phone with her. She also said that Kricfalusi wrote her flirty letters and in 2004, begged her to be in a relationship with him. Rice said the sexual harassment got worse when she worked from his home office.

She told Byrd through correspondence that he did bizarre things like waiting naked in his living room in the morning and walking around with his genitals hanging out of his pants. He also talked about raping her. However, Kricfalusi's attorney denied the accusation of sexual harassment and said the rape comment was a joke.

Rice left her job after the rape-threat and after she found child porn on his computer. Kricfalusi's ex-girlfriend, who refused to be named, also saw naked photos of prepubescent girls on his computer.

Tony Mora, art director at Warner Bros., tells the publication that Kricfalusi showed him a stack of polaroids of him and Byrd having sex. He also showed him other photos of Byrd naked in his pool.

Byrd said that Kricfalusi ruined a good part of her childhood and gave her PTSD. Meanwhile, Rice says that she owes becoming a better artist to the animator although wished she is not, so she would not have to talk about him anymore.
Allison Mack could face jail time if found guilty of her alleged involvement with sex cult NXIVM. She could be arrested next especially after a video showed she was there when police arrested cult leader Keith Raniere.

The Arrest

The video shows Mack at the scene of Raniere's arrest in Mexico over the weekend. The footage shows the former Smallville star watching helplessly close by as police captured Raniere at the resort of Puerto Vallarta.

Mack allegedly chased down the cops. In the footage obtained by TMZ, a woman can be heard telling the actress to follow the police in a separate car. Raniere was reportedly immediately extradited to the USA following his arrest, where he faces charges of sex trafficking and conspiracy to commit forced labor.

The video comes from former NXIVM publicist Frank Parlato, who has worked for years to document the inner workings of the New York-based sex cult, which claims to be a self-help organization. He blew the whistle on the group last summer at which Raniere then fled to Mexico. Parlato claimed that the women are blackmailed into sex slavery. They are also branded with Mack and Raniere's initials using a hot iron on their pubic region.

'Pimp Mack'

Now the 35-year-old American actress is facing her imminent arrest where she is bound to face the same charges as Raniere. Mack is said to be a high-ranking member of the cult. She is believed to be the second-in-command. Her nickname among defectors is "Pimp Mack."

Mack has been a member of the cult since 2006. She gave up her acting career following Raniere's advise and has since worked closely with NXIVM co-leader Clare Bronfman, the heir to the Seagram's fortune. Bronfman, Mack, and Raniere allegedly founded the sex cult with Bronfman financing the illegal operation.

Parlato claimed that Mack was completely enamored with Raniere. He said that she and Smallville costar Kristin Kreuk, who played Lana Lang in the series, were the cult's poster girls. They were used to recruit more women into the group. However, Kreuk got out of the group in 2009 before it became bizarre and involved anything sexual, according to former member Susan Dones.

Raniere has since denied the accusations and called them "disturbing" and reasoned that he prides of "non-violence" as one of his important values. NXIVM also issued a statement, saying they were cooperating with authorities and promised to clear Raniere's name.

As for Mack, the Smallville star has yet to comment on her involvement with the sex cult. She was living with Raniere at the $10,000-a-week villa in Mexico prior to his arrest.
Judge Steven O'Neill, who has presided over the Bill Cosby sexual assault case for over two years, will not step down from the case.

Cosby's Recusal Request Denied

Last week, Cosby's lawyers had filed a recusal motion stating that judge O'Neill should be replaced as the presiding judge. The defense team argued that O'Neill was biased because his wife is a social worker and an advocate for assault victims.

However, O'Neill denied the defense team's request during a pretrial hearing on Thursday, March 29. The judge said that he is "not biased or prejudiced" by his wife's involvement with an organization for sexual assault victims and that the defense's claim that he and his wife share the same views or that his wife's profession has influences his rulings "is faulty, plain and simple."

"How are my wife's independent views  of an independent woman  connected to me?" O'Neill said. "She's an independent woman and has the right to be involved in anything that she believes in."

The judge also pointed out that Cosby's previous counsel had also considered filing a motion for his recusal in December 2016 but did not follow through.

Defense Dealt With Another Blow

The recusal motion was one of many last-ditch efforts made by Cosby's team to delay the trial. The Cosby Show alum has been accused of drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand, a former Temple University employee at his Philadelphia residence in 2004. O' Neill also presided over the first trial but failed to reach a verdict due to a hung jury.

Cosby's defense, led by high-profile attorney Tom Mesereau, has suffered a series of setbacks this month. Not only will five accusers be allowed to testify against the comedian when the trial starts next week, but former model Janice Dickinson, who has accused Cosby of raping her in a Lake Tahoe hotel room in 1982, will be among the prosecution's witnesses.

Jury To Be Sequestered

O'Neill also announced on Thursday that the jury for Cosby's retrial on sexual assault charges will be chosen from suburban Philadelphia and will be sequestered in a local hotel.

The jury for the first trial was picked from Pittsburgh, located 300 miles away, and was sequestered in Norristown.

The pretrial hearing is expected to continue on Friday, March 30, before jury selection begins on Monday, April 2. The date for the retrial was set for April 9 after both parties agreed to the same.
Kanye West was a happy man when he and his wife, Kim Kardashian West, took their two oldest children to the zoo. Kardashian and West were spotted having a family day with North and Saint West.

A Family Day Gone Right

Kardashian took to social media to share their time at the San Diego Zoo with their followers. She posted a photo of Kanye and Saint via Snapchat to thank the zoo. West was all smiles as he posed with his only son. Their youngest child,2-month-old Chicago West, was not pictured.

Kardashian and her family are no strangers to the San Diego Zoo. Kim, along with her siblings Kourtney, Rob, and Khloe often visited the zoo when they were little.

Even their mother, Kris Jenner, said she celebrated her first birthday at the San Diego Zoo. Now, it looks like Kanye and Kim are continuing the family tradition with their two oldest children.

North has certainly been enjoying family time as well. Their trip to the zoo came after her trip to Washington D.C. with her famous parents. The family took part in the March of Our Lives protest over the weekend.

How KimYe Makes Time For Their Kids

Interestingly enough, Kim and Kanye dont get to spend as much time with their children as they like because of their hectic schedules. Word is Kanye is finally working on new music while Kim continues to build her empire with the success of her cosmetics line, KKW Beauty.

Kim also has money from her apps and starring in E!s Keeping Up With The Kardashians. Still, the couple doesnt hesitate to make time for them.

They dont have the most traditional way of raising their kids because theyre so busy, said one insider. When theyre not together, Kim and Kanye FaceTime with the kids and talk to them as much as they can.

Khloe To Follow Suit

It looks like theyre doing something right as Khloe Kardashian, who is currently pregnant with her first child, will reportedly take after Kim and Kanyes parenting style.

Khloe has really only been asking Kim for advice, said another source. She agrees more with Kims parenting style than Kourtneys.

Kourtney is a mom to three children, Reign, Penelope, and Mason. Kylie is the only other sister who is a mother. The insider said that Kylie, who is developing her own parenting style, is too young for Khloe to go to her for advice.

Be sure to keep up with Enstars for the latest news and updates on your favorite celebrities.
Television host Laura Ingraham is facing a major backlash from advertisers.

Many companies have backed out of advertising on her show after she made fun of a Parkland shooting survivor, David Hogg.

Laura Ingraham vs. David Hogg

Hogg was one of the hundreds of students that survived the Florida high school massacre that left 17 dead. He has been very outspoken about gun control and has served as a major voice in taking steps to prevent another tragic shooting.

One of his latest moves was speaking at the March For Our Lives protest in Washington, D.C. over the weekend. A photo of Hogg at the rally went viral as well as one of Ingrahams comments about him.

While the movement has received lots of support, Ingraham made fun of Hogg. She said he was crying about not getting accepted into four major schools despite holding a 4.1 GPA.

David Hogg Rejected By Four Colleges To Which He Applied and whines about it. (Dinged by UCLA with a 4.1 GPA...totally predictable given acceptance rates.) https://t.co/wflA4hWHXY  Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) March 28, 2018

It didnt take Hogg long to respond on Twitter. He shared a list of 12 advertisers that support Ingrahams show The Ingraham Angle with his more than 650,000 followers. He urged his followers to contact the companies and encourage them to back out in support of him.

Advertisers That Sided With David

It looks like Hoggs efforts were successful. Various advertisers announced they will no longer support Ingrahams show. TripAdvisor was one of the first companies that said it would stop running ads, adding that it does not condone the inappropriate comments made by this broadcaster.

Wayfair also spoke on its decision to remove advertisements from Ingrahams show.

The decision of an adult to personally criticize a high school student who has lost his classmates in an unspeakable tragedy is not consistent with our values, stated Wayfair.

Streaming service Hulu also announced its decision to back out of its support for Ingraham. Nestle is also on the growing list of advertisers who will no longer support Ingraham. It said that it will not be purchasing any more ads.

Nutrish, a pet food company owned by celebrity chef Rachael Ray, also released a statement and said it was in the process of taking its ads from Ingrahams series.

Interestingly enough, in a turn of events, Ingraham's fans and followers said they would no longer purchase items from the companies that are backing out of their support for Ingraham.

She Tries To Make It Right?

Ingraham issued an apology for her tweet and recognized that it could come across as offensive for Hogg and his classmates who experienced the tragedy. She even sent an invitation to Hogg to come on her show.

Any student should be proud of a 4.2 GPA incl. @DavidHogg111 . On reflection, in the spirit of Holy Week, I apologize for any upset or hurt my tweet caused him or any of the brave victims of Parkland. For the record, I believe my show was the first to feature David...(1/2)  Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) March 29, 2018

Hogg wasnt so forgiving and said he would only accept her apology if Ingraham calls out Fox network for how it has treated Hogg and other teens that are involved in the fight against gun violence.

I 100% agree an apology in an effort just to save your advertisers is not enough. I will only accept your apology only if you denounce the way your network has treated my friends and I in this fight. Its time to love thy neighbor, not mudsling at children. https://t.co/H0yWs4zMGk  David Hogg (@davidhogg111) March 29, 2018

Be sure to keep up with Enstars for the latest news and updates.
Arnold Schwarzenegger had an emergency open heart surgery on Thursday, March 29. The actor is reportedly in a stable condition following the surgery. Schwarzenegger went to Cedar-Sinai Medical Center to reportedly have a catheter valve replaced.

Following this, the 70-year-old actor experienced some complications which prompted doctors to perform the surgery.

Arnold's Previous Health Scare

This isn't the first time the former Governor received surgery for his heart. The film legend underwent a secretive heat surgery in 1997 to replace an aortic valve. The operation took place in Mexico.

"I've never felt sick or had any symptoms at all, but I knew I'd have to take care of this condition sooner or later. I said to the doctors, 'Let's do it now, while I'm young and healthy.' They agreed this was the way to go," the actor stated about the operation.

Schwarzenegger opted not to tell his wife, Maria Shriver, at the time that he was getting the procedure due to the fact that she was pregnant. The actor lied and told his wife that he was going a quick vacation.

"I told him, 'Here is the plan, I am going to have the heart surgery, you do it quietly, no one knows about it, we do it at six in the morning. Four days later I am out of here and I go to Mexico and I will tell Maria I am down here, a little busy and I am on vacation, when I come back I'll be tanned and no one will know," the actor stated in 2012 during an interview.

The Terminator star admitted to using steroids during his time as a professional bodybuilder in the 1970s. The doctor's who performed the surgery on the actor stated that his previous use of the drugs were not the reasons the actor had surgery but was more so because of health issues that hereditary.

The Predator actor's family has not commented yet. Schwarzenegger is still legally married to Maria, though the two have separated following the announcement that the actor fathered a child with their housemaid fourteen years ago.

The estranged couple has four children together: Patrick, Katherine, Christina, and Christopher.
The Supreme Courts judgment on 31 August 2016 to return the acquired land to farmers with compensation in Singur, West Bengal brought euphoria to the displaced farmers in Barnala district, Punjab. Since no project has been initiated on the acquired land in Barnala after 10 years, land acquisition should be cancelled by the Supreme Court taking suo motu cognisance. This article highlights how, in a high-handed manner, farmers land was grabbed by the politico-corporate lobby under the guise of land acquisition.

In May 2005, the Government of Punjab issued notifications to 125 farmers for acquiring 376 acres of land from the three villages of Sanghera, Fatehgarh Chhana, and Dhaula in Barnala district for the Tridentgroup in order to establish a sugar mill.1 At the time, the pace of land acquisition had increased, and protests against this had intensified in many states of India. In Punjab, Barnala was the centre of the storm. Resistance and State Violence
Despite the recent act of solidarity with the United Kingdom over the poisoning of a former Russian spy, Europe is still doing little to blunt Kremlins espionage weapons used for political interference and other preventive and preemptive actions remain modest.

Since Russias annexation of Crimea, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has toughened its military readiness but the non-military response has been weak as European governments disagree over where the biggest threats lie and when the provocations are big enough to trigger a response. At an EU summit last week, leaders urged to look for new measures by the beginning of summer to increase the blocs resilience to Russian-based threats.

Earlier this week, NATO said that it was revoking accreditation of seven diplomats and rejecting the application of three new ones, all parts of a policy that will now cap the headcount of the Russian mission to a maximum of 20. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg described the retaliation as going beyond a reaction to the poisoning, saying these measures were part of a broader response of allies to reckless behavior by Russia. Russia has underestimated the unity of NATO allies, Mr. Stoltenberg added.

Moscow-backed interventions include cyberattacks, espionage and election meddling in the US, Europe and elsewhere. But all are meant to question the origin or responsibility in order to minimize a Western response. The latest attacks included the interfering in Frances domestic elections, the jailing of an Estonian intelligence officer who Tallinn says had been kidnapped from its side of the border as well as a hacker attack involving a false story about Lithuanian Defense Minister Raimundas Karoblis. It started as fake news, but in fact it was a cyberattack, an attempt to spread a virus meant to take over key systems, Mr. Karoblis said.

As part of the new EU emphasis on the prevention against Russian activities, European leaders have vowed to increase their efforts, acknowledging that much work needs to be done to blunt cyberattacks and propaganda. It is clear that we should reinforce our preparedness for future attacks, said European Council President Donald Tusk last week. And we need to increase our resilience to hybrid threats, such as undermining trust in our democracies through fake news or election-meddling.
Lake Grace Engineering has become a true family business with directors Clint (not pictured) and Tracey Earnshaw's two younger sons, Cody (left), 16 and Cooper, 20, happily taking on responsibility and new tasks in metal fabrication.

IT seems to becoming less common that young people want to work for their parents business, particularly in rural areas, but the Earnshaw family from Lake Grace appears to be defying the odds.

Lake Grace Engineering was established in 1999 by Clint and Tracey Earnshaw when they decided to move to the eastern Wheatbelt town for the adventure of running their own business.

Clint started his career in welding and fabrication working at Austal Ships and later held various positions in metal fabricating and operations, managing and supervising at Geraldton and Narembeen, before he and Tracey made the big move further south to Lake Grace.

The business started off as a one-man show with Clint being the only fabricator.

Nineteen years later, it has grown to have eight staff members who service the local area and surrounding towns with machinery maintenance and repairs and manufacturing new augers and seed and super bins.

Of their five children  Cayson, 22, Cody, 20, Cooper,16, Charlee,16 and Summer,12, the three boys have taken an interest in the fabrication trade and been involved in the family business.

Perhaps inspired by his parents, Cayson has moved to Canberra to run his own business in the building, maintenance and general handyman industry and Cody and Cooper are still working with their parents.

All three boys started their full-time apprenticeships when they were 15-years-old and Tracey is proud to see her sons develop their careers with determination and focus.

Having the boys train at such a young age has enabled them to learn exactly the way we want them to, ensuring they develop the correct skills and knowledge for them to grow while in a safe and busy workshop, Tracey said.

She said her sons always had an interest in building and various trades as they spent a lot of their childhood watching and helping Clint in the workshop and experimenting with tools.

Tracey wasnt surprised when the boys decided to learn a trade and do their apprenticeships through the family business, but said having all three of them involved in the business was surreal.

We were surprised that all three of them chose to do the trade - you often dont see that very much with family businesses, Tracey said.

Even though they are or have been the youngest people in the workshop, in some cases they are actually the most experienced and are quite capable of teaching others because they have grown up knowing what things in the workshop are and how they work, all just by watching their dad.

Cody has five years metal fabricating experience under his belt, which is much more than you would expect for a 20-year-old, and he is building the Lake Grace Engineering range of products including seed and super bins and self-propelled augers.

It is rewarding to be able to service farmers and other customers machinery when it breaks down, Cody said.

There is pretty much something different to be done every day and I enjoy the challenge of having to work out how to fix things for people  its up to us to know how or figure out how to fix it.

Cooper is in the second year of his apprenticeship and said he appreciates the variety of the work and the flexibility of working for his parents.

I like learning all the different tasks and enjoy using all the different equipment and its good to have a mix of jobs to do almost every day, Cooper said.

Tracey said trying to find new staff was the biggest challenge for the business over the years.

Its no secret that people are often hesitant to move to the country and given Lake Graces location the Earnshaws have struggled to attract long-term staff.

It seems that people think the country isnt an exciting place to live, so we have opted to use the skilled migration scheme which seems to be the most effective way to get people to come here, Tracey said.

It gives them the chance to experience life in the country and if they can move and settle here then they are likely to stay.

Five of their staff  which is more than half  were recruited through the scheme which has created a great dynamic of mixed cultures in the business, including workers from Croatia, Estonia, The Philippines and an Afghanistan refugee.

It is good to get to know people from different cultures and understand where they have come from and their experiences, Tracey said.

While running their own business is rewarding, Tracey and Clint said they have never lost focus of the customers they served or supporting their staff.

Our staff are here to earn a living and support their families, so we need to make sure we have enough work to keep them on, Tracey said.
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Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston are reportedly set to reunite on Netflix comedy 'Murder Mystery'.

Adam Sandler

The two stars - who last appeared opposite each other in 2011's 'Just Go With It' - are said to be working together for the first time in seven years on the upcoming movie.

According to Variety, the film will see Sandler and Aniston star as a New York police officer and his wife, as they find themselves as prime suspects in the murder of an elderly billionaire during a trip to Europe.

'The Amazing Spider-Man' scriptwriter James Vanderbilt has penned the comedy, while 'Workaholics' co-creator Kyle Newacheck will direct.

It will be Sandler's sixth Netflix movie as part of his deal with the online streaming service - sealed via his own Happy Madison Productions - following 'The Ridiculous Six', 'The Do-Over', 'Sandy Wexler', 'The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)', and 'The Week Of', which is released on April 27.

Last April, the star signed a four-film deal with Netflix, and said in a statement that he loves "collaborating with them".

He sai: "I love how passionate they are about making movies and getting them out there for the whole world to see. They've made me feel like family and I can't thank them enough for their support.'

Netflix's Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos described Sandler as "one of the leading comedians in the film world".

He added: "His movies have proven to be extremely successful with our subscribers around the world."
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Janjua Brings Years of QSR Expertise to Iconic Tex-Mex Chain

DALLAS, TX / ACCESSWIRE / March 29, 2018 / Taco Bueno announced today that it has appointed industry veteran Omar Janjua as Taco Bueno Restaurant's chief executive officer, effective immediately. Janjua will oversee a team of corporate executives and more than 2,700 employees in four states from Taco Bueno's headquarters in Irving, Texas.

Janjua brings more than 35 years of quick serve restaurant (QSR) leadership to Taco Bueno. Most recently, Janjua served as the chief executive officer for The Krystal Company with more than 350 restaurants in 11 states. Prior to joining Krystal, he was president and chief operating officer for Sonic, where he oversaw operations, training, franchising, developing and quality assurance. Janjua also served as vice president and chief operating officer at Steak Shake after 18 years with Pizza Hut, where he provided support to 75 franchise groups operating 2,600 restaurants in 27 states.

"Taco Bueno is an iconic brand with a deep heritage and passionate fans, a fresh menu and a business model that aligns well with what customers want today," said Janjua. "As CEO, I'm thrilled to join the team at this amazing concept and look forward to driving the company in its next phase of development, excellence across every aspect of our business and bringing the authentic Tex-Mex experience to food fans who value fresh food, value and convenience."

Janjua holds a Master's Degree in Business Administration from Minnesota State University and is a graduate of Georgia Institute of Technology, with a major in Operations Management.

In 2018, the North Texas-based Tex-Mex fast food chain announced its focus on its core business: providing the best tasting Tex-Mex for lunch and dinner, including a new customer-inspired menu. Most recently, Taco Bueno introduced the Pick 3 for $2.99 Menu, in which customers can build the ultimate combo meal for less than $3.

Taco Bueno currently has 179 locations and offers door-to-door delivery options through a variety of delivery apps, including UberEats, GrubHub and DoorDash. For more information, please visit www.TacoBueno.com.

About Taco Bueno Restaurants LP

Taco Bueno is committed to creating an authentic Tex-Mex experience. Taco Bueno is passionate about providing better tasting Tex-Mex, prepared daily with fresh, hand-selected ingredients. Founded in 1967 in Abilene, Texas, Taco Bueno operates 179 restaurants in Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas. The company is privately owned by TPG Growth. Learn more about Taco Bueno by visiting www.TacoBueno.com or www.facebook.com/BuenoHeadquarters.

Media Contacts:

Jackie Smith

TrizCom Public Relations

Office: 972-247-1369

Mobile: 214-763-7729

Jackie@TrizCom.com

SOURCE: Taco Bueno Restaurants
Fujitsu Limited Public and Investor Relations Tel: +81-3-3215-5259 URL: www.fujitsu.com/global/news/contacts/

TOKYO, Mar 30, 2018 - (JCN Newswire) - Fujitsu Limited and Blue Prism Group PLC today announced that they will be working closely together to deliver Blue Prism's market leading Robotic Process Automation(RPA)(1) offering to enterprise clients across a wide range of industries.With the acceleration of digital transformation in recent years, the use of RPA has drawn attention in the context of automating processes to achieve improvements in productivity and quality of service. As Proof of Concept (PoC) and full-scale RPA deployments gain traction and wide scale adoption, Fujitsu and Blue Prism have agreed to collaborate to meet this demand.Through this collaboration, the companies intend to support the creation of a framework for customers in Europe, North America, Japan and beyond to launch, operate and entrench, and grow their RPA-related activities. They will do this by applying Fujitsu's AI and other cutting-edge technologies to Blue Prism RPA software through joint planning, proposals, and proof of concept creation for solutions, building on Blue Prism's proven record of delivering large-scale enterprise systems around the world.Blue Prism was named one of MIT Tech Review's 50 Smartest Companies for 2017, as well as being the winner of the 2017 UK Tech awards. The company has also been recognized by Everest Research as an RPA market leader in their PEAK Matrix Assessment report in 2018. Billions of transactions and hundreds of millions of hours of work are executed on Blue Prism robots for renowned companies.(1) Robotic process automation (RPA) Software that can automate and improve the efficiency of white-collar processes, in particular, by substituting software robots for defined tasks that were previously done by people. It has also been called digital labor, because it can execute processes as a supplement to people.About Blue PrismAs the pioneer, innovator and market leader in Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Blue Prism delivers the world's most successful Digital Workforce. The company's software robots automate repetitive administrative tasks while meeting the requirements of the most demanding IT environments, where security, compliance and scalability are paramount.Blue Prism provides a scalable and robust execution platform for best-of-breed AI and cognitive technologies and has emerged as the trusted and secure RPA platform of choice for the Fortune 500. For more information about Blue Prism (AIM: PRSM), visit http://www.blueprism.comAbout Fujitsu LtdFujitsu is the leading Japanese information and communication technology (ICT) company, offering a full range of technology products, solutions, and services. Approximately 155,000 Fujitsu people support customers in more than 100 countries. We use our experience and the power of ICT to shape the future of society with our customers. Fujitsu Limited (TSE: 6702) reported consolidated revenues of 4.5 trillion yen (US$40 billion) for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2017. For more information, please see http://www.fujitsu.com.* Please see this press release, with images, at:http://www.fujitsu.com/global/about/resources/news/press-releases/Source: Fujitsu LtdContact:Copyright 2018 JCN Newswire . All rights reserved.
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - March 30, 2018) - Arctic Star Exploration Corp. (TSXV: ADD) (OTCQB: ASDZF) (FSE: 82A1) (the "Company" or "Arctic Star") announces that it has completed the first tranche of its previously announced non-brokered private placement (the "Private Placement"), as described in its News Release dated March 23, 2018, pursuant to which it has issued an aggregate of 4,200,000 units (each, a "Unit") at a price of $0.17 per Unit for gross proceeds of $714,000. Each Unit consists of one common share in the capital of the Company (each, a "Share") and one non-transferable share purchase warrant (each, a "Warrant"). Each Warrant is exercisable into one additional Share at a price of $0.25 per Share for a period of 24 months from the closing date. The Company intends on completing additional tranches of the Private Placement.

The securities issued under the Financing, and the shares that may be issuable on exercise of the Warrants, are subject to a statutory hold period expiring on July 30, 2018.

The Company paid cash finder's fees of $57,120 to a certain finder and issued 336,000 share purchase warrants (the "Finder's Warrants") to one finder in connection with the first tranche of the Financing. Each Finder's Warrant is exercisable into one Share at a price of $0.17 per Share for a period of two years from the date of issuance.

The Company plans to use the proceeds from the Private Placement for exploration on the Timantti and Diagras Diamond Projects and for general working capital.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF

ARCTIC STAR EXPLORATION CORP.

/s/ Patrick Power

Patrick Power, President

+1 (604) 218-8772

This news release contains "forward-looking statements" including but not limited to statements with respect to Arctic Star's plans, the estimation of a mineral resource and the success of exploration activities. Forward-looking statements, while based on management's best estimates and assumptions, are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements, including but not limited to: risks related to the completion of further tranches of the planned private placement and the Company's plan to use all or some portion of the proceeds for exploration of the Foriet Diamond Property. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Factors that could affect our plans include the possibility that we are unable to raise all of the funds we are seeking to raise, in which event we may require all funds raised, if any, to be used for working capital rather than for exploration of the Foriet Diamond Property; in addition, our acquisition of the Foriet Diamond Property has not yet been approved by the TSX Venture Exchange, and our proposed use of proceeds is subject to receipt of that approval. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Arctic Star undertakes no obligation or responsibility to update forward-looking statements, except as required by law.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
MUMBAI, India, March 30, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The Company reviews the carrying value of its assets at each reporting period end considering market developments such as long term commodity price assumptions, regulatory changes and other developments. In light of the Supreme Court of India judgement dated February 07, 2018 wherein the Court has directed that effective March 16, 2018 all mining operations in the state of Goa are to be stopped, the Company wishes to inform its investors that there could be a likely impairment of Rs 1,500 Crore to Rs 1,800 crore net of taxes [Rs 2,100 Crore to Rs 2,400 crore gross of taxes] on this account. This is mainly related to mining reserve and would be reflected in the results for FY 2017-18. Impairment is non-cash accounting item. Further, the closure of Group's iron ore business in Goa would not have any material impact on the Group's profitability.

About Vedanta Limited

Vedanta Limited is a diversified natural resources company, whose business primarily involves producing oil & gas, zinc - lead - silver, aluminium, copper, iron ore and commercial power. The company has a presence across India, South Africa and Namibia. Vedanta Ltd has a portfolio of world-class, low-cost, scalable assets that consistently generate strong profitability and have robust cash flows. The company holds industry-leading market shares across its core divisions.

Vedanta Limited is the Indian subsidiary of Vedanta Resources Plc, a London-listed company. Governance and Sustainable Development are at the core of Vedanta's strategy, with a strong focus on health, safety and environment and on enhancing the lives of local communities. The company is conferred with the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) 'Sustainable Plus Platinum label', ranking among the top 10 most sustainable companies in India. To access the Vedanta Sustainable Development Report 2017, please visit http://sd.vedantaresources.com/SustainableDevelopment2016-17/

Vedanta Limited is listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange and the National Stock Exchange in India. The company is in the Nifty 50 Index and has ADRs listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

For more information please visit www.vedantalimited.com

Vedanta Limited

Vedanta, 75, Nehru Road,

Vile Parle (East), Mumbai - 400 099

www.vedantalimited.com

Registered Office:

Regd. Office: 1st Floor, 'C' wing, Unit 103,

Corporate Avenue, Atul Projects,

Chakala, Andheri (East),

Mumbai - 400 093

CIN: L13209MH1965PLC291394

Disclaimer

This press release contains "forward-looking statements" - that is, statements related to future, not past, events. In this context, forward-looking statements often address our expected future business and financial performance, and often contain words such as "expects," "anticipates," "intends," "plans," "believes," "seeks," "should" or "will." Forward-looking statements by their nature address matters that are, to different degrees, uncertain. For us, uncertainties arise from the behaviour of financial and metals markets including the London Metal Exchange, fluctuations in interest and or exchange rates and metal prices; from future integration of acquired businesses; and from numerous other matters of national, regional and global scale, including those of a political, economic, business, competitive or regulatory nature. These uncertainties may cause our actual future results to be materially different that those expressed in our forward-looking statements. We do not undertake to update our forward-looking statements.
Regulatory News:

The shareholders of Gecina (the "Company") (Paris:GFC) are invited to attend the Combined General Meeting to be held on:

Wednesday April 18, 2018, at 3 pm

at Pavillon Cambon, 46 rue Cambon, 75001 Paris

A meeting notice containing the agenda and the proposed resolutions has been published in the Bulletin des Annonces Legales Obligatoires (BALO) (French official legal announcements publication) n26 of February 28, 2018.

The notice of convocation is published in the BALO and the legal announcements journal "Les Petites Affiches" of March 30, 2018.

The Company will be sending out the postal and proxy voting forms directly to all its shareholders.

The preparatory documents for this Meeting will be made available to the Company's shareholders in accordance with the regulatory conditions and timeframes applicable.

All shareholders may ask the Company to send them these documents with written requests to be sent to the Company's registered office by post or faxed to +33 (0)1 40 40 64 81 up until the fifth day (inclusive) before the Combined General Meeting on April 18, 2018, i.e. April 13, 2018.

They may also be consulted at the Company's registered office.

The documents relating to this Meeting referred to at article R. 225-73-1 of the French Commercial Code are available on the Company's website (www.gecina.fr).

The Board of Directors

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180330005092/en/

Contacts:

Gecina

Laurent Le Goff, Tel.: 33 (0)1 40 40 62 69
HAIKOU, China, March 30, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --Today HNA Group, a global Fortune 500 company focused on aviation, tourism, logistics and financial services, announced the opening of "Five Plus Five: Sculptures From China and Great Britain in Hainan", a seminal art exhibition held in Haikou, the capital of the tropical island province of Hainan in Southern China, the site of the company's founding and base of its operations for the last 25 years.

The exhibition is organized and sponsored by HNA Group and jointly curated by British art world legend Sir Norman Rosenthal and celebrated Chinese art curator and critic Yu Ke. The artworks include pieces from renowned Chinese and British artists such as Antony Gormley, Jim Lambie, Sarah Lucas, Tony Cragg, Sui Jianguo, Zhan Wang, Huang Yongping, Shen Yuan and more.

The artworks will be displayed for six monthsat two locations, in Haikou's Evergreen Park and Mova Square. The vision for the exhibition is to bring the art of sculpture directly to the people of Haikou. This encounter with contemporary and international art within a public space will be a first for many in Hainan and HNA Group's support of the project reflects its long held commitment to giving back to the local community and furthering cultural dialogue between China and the West.

The British artists included in the exhibition represent the UK's important role in the history of sculpture. Pieces by Tony Cragg and by Anthony Gormley remember the period of 'New British Sculpture' beginning in the 1970s, which started a tradition of British sculpture breaking with the orthodoxies of conceptual art. Furthermore, the featuring of Sarah Lucas' sculptures reflects the influence of the'Young British Artist' movement, while Jim Lambie of the Glasgow School of Art's spectacular sculpture 'Shaved Ice', composed of ladders filled with mirrors installed prominently on Mova Square shows clearly that British creativity is far from confined to London.

The Chinese artists are drawn from the country's burgeoning contemporary art scene. They use a modern style rooted in Chinese traditional elements such as Scholar's Rocks and bridges that feature in Chinese landscape painting.

HNA has a tenured commitment to supporting the arts.Examples of HNA's commitment to art include its management of the 300 year old Zhengyici Peking Opera Theatre, its long partnership with the National Centre for Performing Arts in Beijing and the organisation of multiple other art exhibitions worldwide.

About HNA Group:

HNA Group is a global Fortune 500 company focused on aviation, tourism, logistics and financial services with significant operations globally. Since its founding in 1993, HNA Group has evolved from a regional airline based on Hainan Island in southern China into a global company with over $230 billion of assets and over $100 billion in annual revenues based on 2017 figures, primarily across America, Europe and Asia. HNA's tourism business is a fast-growing, vertically-integrated global player with market-leading positions in aviation, hotels and travel services. HNA's logistics business is a leader in logistics and supply chain management with capabilities in shipping and equipment manufacturing, maritime transportation, third-party payment platforms and project finance. In financial services, HNA is China's largest non-bank leasing company, and a leading provider of a diverse set of businesses in equipment leasing, insurance, asset management, investment banking and credit services. For more information, visit www.hnagroup.com

Media Contact:

Sam Martin

+8618701600950

sim.ma@hnair.com

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/660971/Bristish_artists_works.jpg

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/660972/Chinese_artists_works.jpg
Regulatory News:

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180330005142/en/

Updated composition of Nanobiotix shareholding structure as of December 31, 2017 (Graphic: NANOBIOTIX)

NANOBIOTIX (Paris:NANO) (Euronext: NANO ISIN: FR0011341205), a late clinical-stage nanomedicine company pioneering new approaches to the treatment of cancer, today announces its audited consolidated results for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2017:

Expansion of the Nanobiotix clinical development program activities seven clinical trials running in eight indications on 3 continents in relation to the market access of NBTXR3, Nanobiotix's lead product, have impacted operating expenses as planned.

Continuation of the structuration of the Company: several recruitments, notably within the Medical Affairs department, opening of 2 affiliates in Europe and preparation of a new manufacturing site.

Consolidation of the cash available at 47.2M strengthened by the completion of two private placements executed in April and October 2017.

The audited consolidated financial statements for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2017 have been approved by the management board and reviewed by the supervisory board of the Company dated on March 29, 2018.

Consolidated Income statement1

2017 2016 Total revenue 3,721,525 5,421,613 Sales License Other sales Services Other revenues Subsidies Research Tax Credit Other 251,968 146 23,205 228,617 3,468,557 153,721 3,259,478 56,358 1,558,101 1,075,372 99,450 383,279 3,863,512 98,095 3,703,278 62,139 Cost of sales R&D costs (16,336,844) (16,915,243) Selling, General and Administrative (SG&A)

(Market Access, BD and other corporate costs) (9,708,781) (8,370,208) Costs associated with payments in shares (2,605,054) (1,990,855) Core operating loss (24,929,153) (21,854,693) Other operational costs (337,888) Core loss (25,267,041) (21,854,693) Financial result (876,187) 64,607 Core pre-tax loss (26,143,228) (21,790,086) Tax (20) (90,425) Net Profit Loss (26,143,249) (21,880,511)

1 Financial statements have been audited

Financial Review

Total Revenue in 2017 amounts to 3.7M vs. 5.4M in 2016, in line with our operational development expectations, mainly due to:

Revenues from PharmaEngine amounting to 252K (vs. 1,558K in 2016), generated by the recharge of goods and services provided related to activities planned as per the partnership convention with PharmaEngine; and

Other revenues of 3,469K (vs. 3,864K in 2016) mainly related to the Research Tax Credit (CIR), moving in line with the level of R&D activities.

Total Operating expenses reach 28.7M in 2017 vs. 27.3M in 2016:

R&D expenses in 2017 were 16.3M, lower than 2016 R&D costs by - 0.6M, due to lower clinical development costs as per fluctuation in patient recruitment phases during the year, as well as lower research costs. This decrease is offset by the increase in R&D headcount in the U.S. subsidiary.

SG&A costs reached 9.7M (+1.4M ), mainly due to some changes in the structure (creation of the COO position in February 2017), and the increase of headcount, as well as consulting fees, hiring fees and communication costs in accordance with the group's growth strategy.

Share based payment-related costs were 2.6M in 2017 (vs. 2.0M in 2016), being the result of an accounting treatment (having no cash impact).

Total consolidated headcount reached 85 as of December 31, 2017 vs. 67 in 2016, in line with the company's growth.

Net loss after tax amounts to 26.1M (vs. 21.9M (loss) in 2016), in line with operational development expectations.

Cash available at December 31, 2017 amounts to 47.2M.

In April, the Company completed a private placement of 25.1M providing additional resources to support the group's development. This operation has been an opportunity for Nanobiotix's institutional shareholders to reinforce their position and to welcome new shareholders from U.S. and EU.

In October, Nanobiotix successfully completed an approximately 27.2M placement of new shares. This operation opened the opportunity for Nanobiotix to welcome new investors specialized in life sciences and biotechnology mainly from the U.S. and from Europe.

The cumulated amount of money raised in 2017 is about 52.3M.

Nanobiotix activities and achievements in 2017

Reported positive interim phase I/II data withNBTXR3 in Head Neck cancer ASCO

Interim readout and completion of recruitment in phase II/III withNBTXR3 in Soft Tissue Sarcoma

Advanced phase I/II in HCC/liver metastasis

Initiated phase I/II in prostate cancer under company IND

Reported positive IO biomarker study data in STS patients SITC

IND granted to start phase I/II combination study with checkpoint inhibitors

Company buildout and expansion with the addition of Chief Operating Officer and establishment of European Operations

2018 perspectives

NBTXR3 is now being evaluated in head and neck cancer (locally advanced squamous cell carcinoma of the oral cavity or oropharynx), and the trial targets frail and elderly patients who have advanced cancer with very limited therapeutic options. The use of Nanobiotix's NBTXR3 in this population aims to provide better local and systemic disease and prolongs survival with the improvement of Quality of Life.

Given the very promising Phase I/II trial results presented at ASCO 2017, Nanobiotix has filed a protocol amendment to expand the study to more patients in order to confirm the efficacy of NBTXR3. Nanobiotix is also planning to open 12-15 additional clinical trial sites in Europe and to expand this study to the U.S. at a later stage.

This indication is critical to establish the medical value of the product regarding the local control of the tumors, the potential metastatic control through in situ vaccination, and its rare safety profile.

Nanobiotix is running an Immuno-Oncology program with NBTXR3 that includes several studies. In the U.S., the Company received the FDA's approval to launch a clinical study of NBTXR3 activated by radiotherapy in combination with anti-PD1 antibody in lung, and head and neck cancer patients (head and neck squamous cell carcinoma and non-small cell lung cancer). This trial that shall start in Q2 2018, aims to expand the potential of NBTXR3, including using it to treat recurrent or metastatic disease.

Many IO combination strategies focus on 'priming' the tumor, which is now becoming a prerequisite for turning a "cold" tumor into a "hot" tumor. Compared to other products that could be used for priming the tumor, NBTXR3 could have a number of advantages: it is a physical and universal mode of action that could be used widely across oncology; it involves a one-time local injection; it is a good fit within existing medical practice already used as a basis for cancer treatment; it has a very good chronic safety profile and a well-established manufacturing process.

Nanobiotix is focusing on delivering new clinical and pre-clinical data confirming that NBTXR3 could play a key role in oncology and could become a backbone in immuno-oncology.

The Company expects to present the results of its Phase II/III trial of NBTXR3 in soft tissue sarcoma in Q2 2018.

In December 2017, regarding the technical file, LNE/G-MED informed Nanobiotix at this time they would need a few more months to finalize the evaluation required for CE marking for soft tissue sarcoma (STS).

Nanobiotix is also running multiple Phase I/II trials in order to widen the usage of the product.

2018 should be another year of growth for Nanobiotix with various milestones:

First patient recruitment in Phase I/II clinical trial in the U.S. looking at the potential of NBTXR3 to transform anti-PD1 non-responders into responders. The multi-arm trial will include recurrent and/or metastatic lung, and head neck cancer patients

Presentation of the results of Phase II/III STS, when the analysis is complete

First market approval in Europe (CE Marking)

Interim update from Phase I/II head and neck cancer trial with high risk elderly patients

Additional news on other clinical trials and programs

The proportion of institutional investors slightly increased in 2017 to 47% of the shareholding base (vs. 39% FYE 2016), following the successful completion of both private placements in April and October 2017. These operations have been an opportunity for Nanobiotix's institutional shareholders to reinforce their position and to welcome new investors, mainly from the U.S. as well as from Europe, that are specialized in life science and biotechnology.

-Ends-

Next financial press release: revenue for Q1 2017 on May 15, 2018

Nanobiotix informs that its Annual General Meeting will be held on May 23, 2018 at 2:30 pm, InterContinental Marceau Marceau room 64, avenue Marceau 75008 Paris, France.

About NANOBIOTIX: www.nanobiotix.com

Incorporated in 2003, Nanobiotix is a leading, late clinical-stage nanomedicine company pioneering new approches to significantly change patient outcomes, and bringing nanophysics to the heart of the cell.

The Nanobiotix philosophy is one rooted in designing pioneer physical based approaches to bring highly effective and generalized solutions to address high uned medical needs and challenges.

The Company's first-in-class, proprietary lead technology, NanoXray, aims to expand radiotherapy benefits for millions of cancer patients. Furthermore, the Company's Immuno-Oncology program has the potential to bring a new dimension to cancer immunotherapies.

Nanobiotix is listed on the regulated market of Euronext in Paris (Euronext: NANO ISIN: FR0011341205; Bloomberg: NANO: FP). The Company's Headquarters are based in Paris, France, with a U.S. affiliate in Cambridge, MA, and european affiliates in Spain and Germany.

Disclaimer

This press release contains certain forward-looking statements concerning Nanobiotix and its business. Such forward-looking statements are based on assumptions that Nanobiotix considers to be reasonable. However, there can be no assurance that the estimates contained in such forward-looking statements will be verified, which estimates are subject to numerous risks including the risks set forth in the reference document of Nanobiotix filed with the French Financial Markets Authority (Autorite des Marches Financiers) under number D.17-0470 on April 28, 2017 (a copy of which is available on www.nanobiotix.com) and to the development of economic conditions, financial markets and the markets in which Nanobiotix operates. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are also subject to risks not yet known to Nanobiotix or not currently considered material by Nanobiotix. The occurrence of all or part of such risks could cause actual results, financial conditions, performance or achievements of Nanobiotix to be materially different from such forward-looking statements.

This press release and the information that it contains do not constitute an offer to sell or subscribe for, or a solicitation of an offer to purchase or subscribe for, Nanobiotix shares in any country. At the moment NBTXR3 does not bear a CE mark and is not permitted to be placed on the market or put into service until NBTXR3 has obtained a CE mark.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180330005142/en/

Contacts:

Nanobiotix

Sarah Gaubert

Director, Communications Public Affairs

+33 (0)1 40 26 07 55

sarah.gaubert@nanobiotix.com

contact@nanobiotix.com

or

Noel Kurdi

Director, Investor Relations

+1 (646) 241-4400

noel.kurdi@nanobiotix.com

investors@nanobiotix.com

or

Media relations

France Springbok Consultants

Marina Rosoff

+33 (0)6 71 58 00 34

marina@springbok.fr

or

United States RooneyPartners

Marion Janic, +1 (212) 223-4017

mjanic@rooneyco.com
Information concerning the availability of preparatory documentation

Regulatory News:

SFL (Paris:FLY):

The shareholders of the SOCIETE FONCIERE LYONNAISE are invited to participate in the Annual General Meeting that will take place on Friday April 20, 2018, at 11am in the Edouard VII conference center in the Edouard VII building at 23 square Edouard VII in the 9th arrondissement of Paris.

Notice of the meeting was published in the Bulletin des Annonces Legales et Obligatoires (Bulletin of Mandatory Legal Notices or BALO) on 16 March, 2017 (Bulletin n 33 publication n 1800505).

This notice contains the agenda and draft resolutions as well as the conditions for participating in and voting at this meeting. This notice can also be consulted on the Company's website: www.fonciere-lyonnaise.com/en/publications/general-meeting

In accordance with the provisions of article R.225-88 of the French Commercial Code, any shareholder in possession of registered shares may ask to receive a copy of the documents and information covered by articles R.225-81 and R.225-83 of the French Commercial Code.

Holders of bearer shares may also request these documents from their authorised financial intermediary.

Shareholders can also consult these documents at the headquarters of the SOCIETE FONCIERE LYONNAISE (42 rue Washington, 75008 PARIS) as well as on the Company's website: www.fonciere-lyonnaise.com/en/publications/general-meeting

About SFL

Leader in the prime segment of the Parisian commercial real estate market, Societe Fonciere Lyonnaise stands out for the quality of its property portfolio, which is valued at 6.2 billion and is focused on the Central Business District of Paris (cloud.paris, Edouard VII, Washington Plaza, etc.), and for the quality of its client portfolio, which is composed of prestigious companies in the consulting, media, digital, luxury, finance and insurance sectors. As France's oldest property company, SFL demonstrates year after year an unwavering commitment to its strategy focused on creating a high value in use for users and, ultimately, substantial appraisal values for its properties.

Stock market: Euronext Paris Compartment A Euronext Paris ISIN FR0000033409 Bloomberg: FLY FP Reuters: FLYP PA

S&P rating: BBB+ stable outlook

www.fonciere-lyonnaise.com

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180330005160/en/

Contacts:

SFL

Thomas Fareng, Phone +33 (0)1 42 97 27 00

t.fareng@fonciere-lyonnaise.com
With 50 Aireon payloads in orbit, system testing is underway by airlines

MCLEAN, Virginia, March 30, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Aireon announced today the fifth successful launch and deployment of its space-based Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) payloads, hosted by the Iridium NEXT satellite constellation. At 7:13:51 AM PDT (14:13:51 UTC), a flight-proven SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, bringing the total number of Aireon payloads in orbit to 50.

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/660688/Aireon_Logo.jpg

When the Aireon payloads from the fifth launch come online, the system will have nearly global coverage with 15-minute or better update intervals. This signifies optimal timing for airlines to begin testing the capabilities of space-based ADS-B. This will assist airlines with meeting the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) regulations that require aircraft be equipped with an aircraft tracking system for those flights not tracked by air traffic control by the end of 2018. With the Aireon service and access to the space-based ADS-B data, airlines can meet this directive set by regulators and safety organizations.

"We're over two-thirds of the way there," said Don Thoma, CEO, Aireon. "And as we get closer to a fully operational system, thorough testing and validation is now underway with our customers and partners." Thoma continued, "Aireon is working closely with not only ANSPs, but partners like FlightAware to ensure airlines have early access to this global data, ahead of regulations and requirements. Aireon will be able to help airlines meet these mandates, and upon completion of the constellation, update rates of a few seconds will be the service standard around the world."

FlightAware and Aireon have worked together to create GlobalBeacon, a first-of-its-kind product. GlobalBeacon combines FlightAware's data processing platform and web-interface with Aireon's space-based ADS-B data, for a cost-effective, easy to deploy solution to help meet the ICAO Global Aeronautical Distress Safety System (GADSS) standards.

"We are fusing Aireon data with FlightAware data to empower airlines and other aircraft operators with products that exceed GADSS recommendations for flight tracking," said Daniel Baker, founder and CEO, FlightAware. "With the satellites from today's successful launch, customers will be able to beta test coverage that meets the November 2018 requirement for aircraft tracking."

In addition to GlobalBeacon, FlightAware is delivering the data through services that are already commonly used by airlines and industry leading service providers such as SITAONAIR.

"Our partnership with FlightAware means that any airline using AIRCOMFlightTracker will have at its fingertips a dynamic tool providing an overview of the exact position, speed and altitude of its airborne fleet," said Dominique El Bez, Vice President, Product and Strategy, SITAONAIR. "Most critically, the coverage will now be 100% even over oceanic, remote and polar areas. By receiving once-per-minute positions from Aireon's network of space-based ADS-B receivers, airlines will exceed the ICAO GADSS upcoming 15-minute recommendation."

The Aireon system is hosted on the Iridium NEXT satellite constellation, which will consist of 66 low-earth orbit crosslinked satellites. A total of 81 Iridium NEXT satellites are being built, all of which will have the Aireon payload onboard. Currently, 75 satellites are planned to be deployed with nine serving as on-orbit spares and the remaining six as ground spares. The constellation is planned for completion in 2018.

For more information about Aireon LLC, visit www.aireon.com

For more information about Iridium NEXT, visit www.IridiumNEXT.com

For more information on FlightAware, visit www.flightaware.com

For more information on SITAONAIR, visit https://www.sitaonair.aero/

About Aireon LLC

Aireon is deploying a space-based air traffic surveillance system for Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) equipped aircraft throughout the entire globe. Aireon will harness next-generation aviation surveillance technologies that are currently ground-based and, for the first time ever, extend their reach globally to significantly improve efficiency, enhance safety, reduce emissions and provide cost savings benefits to all stakeholders. Real-time ADS-B surveillance will cover oceanic, polar and remote regions, as well as augment existing ground-based systems that are limited to terrestrial airspace. In partnership with leading Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs) from around the world, like NAV CANADA, the Irish Aviation Authority (IAA), ENAV and Naviair, as well as Iridium Communications, Aireon will have an operational, global, space-based air traffic surveillance system by 2018. For more information, please visit www.aireon.com

Press Contact

Jessie Hillenbrand

Aireon

+1 (703) 287-7452

Jessie.Hillenbrand@Aireon.com
The blockchain agnostic platform simplifies development on blockchains through the creation of programmable applications that drive new revenue systems and put power into the hands of value creators.

ZUG, Switzerland, March 30, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --BLOCKv today launched its Platform and Developer Portal that enable anyone to build dynamic, scarce, smart virtual objects of value on or off blockchain. The platform promises to usher in the next generation virtual goods economy spanning a wide array of industries from gaming, advertising, ticketing, AR/VR to healthcare, identity, cryptocurrencies and more.

The BLOCKv platform provides the building blocks for developers to create fully programmable, obtainable anywhere, digital goods that have real-world value, are immune from fraud, and bridge the gap between digital and physical worlds. Lowering the costs and time to market, the protocol reduces the complexity mask to blockchain applications and provides accessibility to developers. The BLOCKv technology stack enables individual developers and business units alike to generate revenue from developing, selling, redeeming and exchanging digital objects and provides developers control over the authenticity, scarcity and the lifecycle of their objects.

"We have transitioned from Blockchain 1.0 days of censorship resistant transactions through Bitcoin and Blockchain 2.0 programmable governance via smart contracts to Blockchain 3.0 bringing interactive engaging user experience across digital and physical environments through smart objects that leverage the power of blockchain technology and provide ownership and transaction mechanisms (redemption, collection, tradeability etc.)," said Reeve Collins, CEO of BLOCKv.

The company spent three years developing the platform and raised ~72,000ETH earlier in 2017 through its token sale. This release is the first milestone in company's roadmap and staged roll out. Application based beta-version of the BLOCKv platform together with a developer portal come with a comprehensive knowledge base, documentation with step-by-step guides, in-depth tutorials and templates, Web APIs and Mobile SDKs, user friendly tools, profile management, customer support channels, distribution pathways and analytics that allow developers to design, code and publish vAtoms on an already scalable platform. An Interactive Lab allows developers to quickly try out the APIs without writing an app. Developers have the tools to write custom applications or use the ready sample apps. The platform's publisher integration includes a wallet for paying for the lifecycle of published digital goods using the company's token VEE.

BLOCKv developer platform brings the user interface layer for blockchain applications and delivers dynamic end-user experience. During this beta release, BLOCKv will onboard a limited number of developers in several waves and will provide grants in VEE tokens for developers to create their first vAtoms. Developers can request access to the platform by filling out an application on BLOCKv Developer Portal.

About BLOCKv

Headquartered in Zug, Switzerland, BLOCKv provides a development platform and community for the creation and distribution of dynamic, intelligent, experiential digital objects that bridge the gap between digital and physical worlds, called vAtoms. Built on secure blockchain technologies, BLOCKv's 'smart' digital objects work on any digital platform, are obtainable anywhere, store actual transactional value and are immune from fraud. When combined with the power and name-recognition of major brands, BLOCKv digital objects have the power to transform the landscape of physical, digital and social advertising; micro-transacting; ticketing; gifting; coupons and promotions; and more. For more information, please visit https://blockv.io/.
WEST PALM BEACH, FL / ACCESSWIRE / March 30, 2018 / Saveene.com Inc. (Saveene) www.saveene.com is a firm offering fine and exotic car rentals, fractional yachts, luxury villas and yacht charters. In a recent interview on Spotlight on Business, Andrea Zecevic discussed how Saveene has made it affordable for everyone to cruise in a fine yacht and rent a luxury car at a fraction of what is paid elsewhere.

Andrea Zecevic explained that the prices are even lower for its members. In addition to this Saveene offers fractional yacht ownership for those that wish to own a yacht and enjoy it. These programs are designed for folks that want to enjoy yachting without the headaches and expenses that stem from one single person maintaining the yacht.

Andrea Zecevic the President of Saveene.com was asked to shed some light on price points and on how Saveene prices compare with its competitors. Andrea Zecevic explained that for instance the Maserati or high-end vehicles usually rent for $200-$300 a day with their competitors. With Saveene the same car is listed at only $99/ day for non-members and $88/ day for its members.

Saveene offers two different types of memberships one for the luxury cars and one that includes both the cars and yachts membership. The cost of this is only $86/year for the luxury cars and $96/year for both the yacht and car membership. The membership has numerous perks and benefits as Saveene members receive discounts from Saveene sponsors and advertisers. Saveene sends out news announcements through their platform on to all its members on any special discounts offered by its advertisers, deals on its luxury fleet of cars and yachts are also announced. Moreover, Saveene announces any special events for members to attend and enjoy.

For the yacht charters, Saveene offers incredible pricing which includes the captain and onboard beverages. Such yachts Andrea Zecevic explains are normally chartered for $1800 plus or more.

Saveene has been approached for Graduation parties onboard, Engagement parties, Bachelorette parties, Bachelor parties, Birthdays, Anniversaries, and many more special occasions making it a memorable experience for all those involved.

Andrea Zecevic discussed how the drop off and after hour program worked adding convenience to its clients. Ms. Zecevic also explained the 24-hour non-attendant pickup and drop off option for our repeat and member clients. Ms. Zecevic said, "Currently, Saveene services three major airports in South East Florida namely Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and West Palm Beach."

See Spotlight on the Business interview here: https://tinyurl.com/Andrea-Zecevic-Interview

About Saveene.com Inc.

Saveene offers Fine car rentals, yacht charters, Memberships with discounts on our fine fleet available, and fractional yachts. We bring affordable solutions to consumers seeking to drive a fine or luxury car while in Florida, charter a yacht or even own luxury assets at a fraction of the entire cost. Saveene makes its home in the beautiful city of West Palm Beach, Florida. We welcome all interested parties to call us at 1-888-978-4808.

Become a member and save over 85% of the regular charter prices or fine car rental prices. Call our office now 561-570-4301 or visit our website www.saveene.com.

To become a sponsor or advertiser and be included in the Saveene newsletters to our members simply email or call our office.

Saveene.Com Inc.

Phone: (561) 570-4301

Toll-Free: 1 888 978 4808

Email: saveene@saveene.com

Making Your Dream A Reality At A Fraction Of The Cost

224 Datura St Suite 1015

West Palm Beach, Florida 33401

561 570 43 01

www.saveene.com

SOURCE: Saveene.Com Inc.
Electric, a NYC-based platform to provide an automated, intelligent IT support channel for small and midsized businesses, raised $9.3M in Series A financing.

The round was led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from Bowery Capital and Primary Venture Partners. In conjunction with the funding, Bob Goodman from Bessemer will be joining Electrics board of directors.

The company will use the funds to further develop its proprietary automation technology and to expand sales and marketing efforts to cities across the US.

Founded in October 2016 and CEO Ryan Denehy, Electric provides small and midsized corporate customers with an automated, intelligent IT support solution to get fast, efficient IT support across their organizations directly through Slack. Since inception, the company has signed over 130 customers and expanded service from their home market in New York to include a list of US cities including San Francisco, Los Angeles and Philadelphia.

FinSMEs

30/03/2018
However, IndiGo, the first to express an interest in acquiring national carrier Air India, will have to meet some conditions when it puts down a solo bid.

Interglobe Aviation Limited, which operates no-frills carrier IndiGo, is the only domestic airline company eligible to table a solo bid for Air India, because Interglobe is the only player in the country with a positive net worth, according to a media report.

Mumbai-traded Interglobe Aviation had a net worth of Rs 62 billion as of September 2017 and a net worth of Rs 38 billion as of March 2017. Every other competitor has a negative net worth, owing to accumulated losses. This compels IndiGos rivals, bidding for Air Indias 76% stake, to form a consortium to meet the net worth criteria specified by the government, reported the Business Standard.

However, IndiGo, the first to express an interest in acquiring the ailing national carrier, will have to meet some conditions when it puts down a solo bid. This includes submission of audited financial accounts for financial year 2017-18, along with its expression of interest (EoI), by 14 May, the newspaper added.

Employee emoluments

Post privatisation, the Centre could bear the cost of health and travel benefits usually extended to retired Air India employees, a senior aviation ministry official told The Economic Times. The governments stand on this will be clarified in the request for proposal (RFP) document, which will be out in a few months. The move will help lower the liability of Air Indias future owner.

The RFP will also make clear the Centres stand on its representation on the reconstituted Air India Board.

The union government has already agreed to pay salary arrears amounting to Rs 1,300 crore, post the Justice Dharmadhikari committees proposals.

The attraction

The Ministry of Civil Aviation will sell stakes in loss-making Air India and two of its subsidiaries. Disinvestment-bound Air India has more than 6,200 slots for domestic and international flights, which could be among the key attractions for potential bidders, according to an official document. Besides, Air India Express has around 555 slots at different local and overseas airports.

With inputs from agencies
Clarification by the Centre regarding the bail-in clause has failed to ease anxiety in the two southern states.

Thanks to a fear of losing their hard earned money, because of a bail-in clause in the Financial Resolution and Deposit Insurance (FRDI) Bill, people in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana are queuing up to withdraw fairly large amounts from their bank accounts, according to a media report.

The salaried, who typically withdraw only Rs 5,000 to Rs 10,000 in the first few weeks of any month, have been queuing up to draw the entire amount from ATMs immediately after their salary gets credited, reported The Times of India.

The FRDI Bill, which proposes to check the fallout of the failure of a financial institution, includes a bail-in clause that states depositors will have to bear a part of the resolution cost by a corresponding reduction in claims. Clarification by the Centre regarding this bail-in clause has failed to ease anxiety in the two southern states.

Bankers have reportedly asked their customers not to panic. The State Bank of India's (SBI) Chief General Manager for the Hyderabad Circle, Swaminathan J, told clients that, "there is no need to panic. The FRDI Bill is still a Bill and the government has clarified on the bail-in clause and said that depositors will be protected. There is no history of depositors facing a situation where they have lost their deposits in public sector banks. All their deposits are safe and secure."

Any prolonged bank run could impact banking operations in the two states.

Earlier, Telangana Finance Minister Etala Rajender told the Telangana Legislative Council, The crunch is due to inadequate supply of currency by RBI, reduction in cash inflow from the public, high demand for higher denomination notes. ATMs are going dry and banks are also not giving cash. RBI officials are saying cash going out of banks is not coming back in Telangana and Andhra.
It has plans to list its branded apparel business, Arvind Fashions, into a separate entity

Mumbai: Arvind Limited, textile to retail and brands conglomerate along with INVISTA, integrated producers of fibres, has launched its latest denim collection named Gravity, at its annual event Arvind Festive 2018. It also introduced Ikat denim, a new indigo dyeing technology, which it claims is sustainable compared with traditional dyeing techniques.

Woven-knit denims category has been driving the Indian denim market for last few years. Commenting on the Festive 2018 event, Aamir Akhtar, CEO, Denims, Arvind Ltd. said, Arvind Limited is taking steps for leveraging innovative technologies to create the fabrics across performance, fashion, and functionality." Ahmedabad-based Arvind Ltd expects Rs 10,000 crore business from its textiles business in the next four to five years, a top company official said.

Ahmedabad-based Arvind Ltd expects Rs 10,000 crore business from its textiles business in the next four to five years, a top company official said, a PTI report said. Besides, in the next three to five years, the company intends to invest Rs 1,500 crore in the textiles business to expand capacity of its existing units as well as set up new facilities.

The company is exploring newer areas such as athleisure, where it is sensing a significant opportunity. "Overall the textiles business for us is around Rs 6,000 crore and we would take it to Rs 10,000 crore over the next 4 to 5 years," Akhtar said.

The company expects to continue its CAGR growth of 16 percent and above in the coming years, he added.

Arvind Ltd is in the process of demerging its branded apparel and engineering businesses. It has plans to list its branded apparel business, Arvind Fashions, into a separate entity. Arvind Ltd is in denim, knits & wovens and voiles textiles segments.
So who stands to benefit from an Ola-Uber merger? It is not the customers or the drivers as the monopoly will drain the market off of choices.

Uber Technologies Inc. had to eat crow and almost exit Southeast Asia because of competition from rival Grab, but for a deal that gives the American firm a 27.5 percent stake in the latter. After news of that surrender broke earlier this week, rumours about Uber merging its operations in India with that of its biggest competitor Ola have been doing the rounds.

Sources in the know of the development have reportedly confirmed that senior executives from both firms have met several times over the past several months. The talks indicate that homegrown Ola will take over Uber India. However, the blueprint of a deal is yet to be worked out and could take several months, an unnamed source told the PTI. Japan's SoftBank is the largest investor in both firms and is facilitating these talks.

Ola shot down claims about talks with Uber, and told the news agency that, "Ola is always actively looking for opportunities to expand its footprint. SoftBank and all other investors are committed to realising this ambition."

Two analysts Firstpost spoke to were of the opinion that a merger seems unlikely. Two others said it could go through.

Paula Mariwala, Partner, Seedfund and co-founder, Stanford Angels, ruled out the possibility of a merger. She reasoned that both taxi-hailing apps were the fastest growing in the sector that they operate in. Both face the same issues and have come in the crosshairs of the government. For instance, they were pulled up for surge-pricing in the NCR during the Delhi government's implementation of the odd-even car scheme. Mariwala added that there is no need for consolidation, given that there is no other player like Ola and Uber in the Indian ecosystem, referring to their deep pockets.

Another reason cited for a merger not going through is that there is considerable headroom for growth for both players. Kavan Mukhtyar, Partner and Leader - Automotive, PwC India said that when there are leading players in any sector, there isnt much scope for consolidation. There is private equity capital that both the players are pursuing and there is expectation of growth.

Ola has seen an increase in its market share, from 53 percent in July 2017 to 56.2 percent in December 2017, according to market intelligence firm KalaGato. Ubers market share for the same period slid from 42 percent to 39.6 percent, according to a report in Scroll. But there is still room for growth, especially in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, Mukhtyar added.

It's possible

Ola and Uber have a 95 percent market share in the cab-aggregator space in the subcontinent. In such a scenario, a merger can be explored. Devangshu Dutta, chief executive of management consultancy Third Eyesight said it is logical for companies with a common principal investor to explore collaboration at the very least, if not an outright merger. "This can include sharing of resources and market information such as the spread of demand-and-supply. But, the resultant pricing implications of that may not be positive for consumers. Cartelisation is known to happen in many sectors around the world, and can only be checked when competition is diverse and fragmented, or if there is a strong and well-equipped competitive regulatory authority overseeing the market, Dutta added.

Given that SoftBank is a key investor in both Ola and Uber, it makes sense to merge and eliminate the level of competition that exists between the two, said Kaushik Madhavan, Director - Automotive & Transportation, MENASA at Frost & Sullivan. Both players have ambitious strategies for organic growth, customer service and footprint. The biggest question mark is to understand if both players are on the same page when it comes to a merger, Madhavan added.

But what if a merger does go through? A merger will be subject to regulatory approvals, and in this case it would give the merged entity absolute control of the market, which will not be allowed by the regulator. For starters, consumers will be at a disadvantage owing to a lack of options.

It is going to be bad for Indian consumers because Uber-Ola will become a monopoly. The Competition Commission of India (CCI) will come into play and may not allow this to take place, pointed Arvind Singhal of Technopak Advisors. He feels that given the market buzz about a merger, there might be a possibility of integrated back-end operations while the two players run operations under the Ola and Uber brand names. But that would become a case of monopoly or duo-poly, pointed out Singhal.

According to media reports, the merger is being driven by SoftBank and is not in the interest of either Ola or Uber. Media reports also indicated that neither Ola nor Uber are keen on a merger. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has said that the US-headquartered firm will be more focused on organic growth in the markets it operates in. India is already among the top three markets for Uber after the US and Latin America.

So who stands to benefit from an Ola-Uber merger? It is not the customers or the drivers as the monopoly will drain the market off of choices. It appears that the companies themselves are not keen, going by media reports which suggest that only SoftBank is gunning for a merger. So, clearly the ball lies in SoftBanks court.
A Belgium-based company, which conducted a forensic audit of Nirav Modi's firms, is under the scanner for alleged tax evasion.

A Belgium-based company, which conducted a forensic audit of Nirav Modi's firms, is under the scanner for alleged tax evasion.

According to The Indian Express, Punjab National Bank appointed consultancy firm BDO to conduct the audit. But BDO India and its partner MSKA and Associates are themselves facing charges of alleged non-payment of Goods and Services Tax (GST) since July 2017.

The report quoted official sources as saying that BDO India and MSKA had at least 14 GST registrations in different states.

On Wednesday, PTI reported that the Enforcement Directorate (ED) arrested a "close" associate and the vice president of a firm of diamantaire Nirav Modi in connection with a money laundering probe in the over Rs 12,000-crore PNB bank scam.

Shyam Sunder Wadhwa, the vice-president of the Firestar group, was arrested under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). He was described as a "close confidant" of Modi.

The central probe agency has filed two money laundering FIRs against Nirav Modi and his uncle and Gitanjali Gems promoter Mehul Choksi to probe the alleged fraud in Punjab National Bank.

It has conducted a total of 251 country-wide searches in the case after it began the criminal probe against the accused in February. The total seizure and attachment of diamond, gold, precious and semi-precious stones and other movable and immovable assets in the case stand at Rs 7,664 crore.

PNB has also refused to disclose records pertaining to the process of issuing loans to Nirav Modi.

In a response to Mumbai-based RTI activist Anil Galgali, the bank has cited section 8(1)(h) of the RTI Act to deny the information sought by him. Galgali said he had sought details of all the records including minutes of the meeting, agenda notes, total loans sought by Nirav Modi and the amount sanctioned by the bank.

The sections bars disclosure of information that would impede the process of investigation or apprehension or prosecution of offenders.
Only a critical mass of researchers, who become entrepreneurs, consultants and manpower for the industry can bring about a change.

India has arguably the worlds fastest growing startup ecosystem. Yet, none of our companies made it to the MIT Technology Reviews Smartest Companies list (2012-2016). In contrast, China had 14 and US had 105 companies on that list. One of our companies made it to the list in 2017, but I do not see any great globally competitive technological innovation from the firm. In the same vein, 106 of the worlds unicorns are in the US, 98 in China and only 10 in India.

Why dont our companies create global impact and significant economic value? We do not have the worlds largest internet companies, mobile companies, app companies and will probably not have the worlds largest artificial intelligence (AI) companies if we do not put our act together. Why couldnt we take a leadership role in these disruptions? Research developments in universities and those funded by government led to these disruptions. An ecosystem of startups and companies in proximity to these universities, in geographical and other terms, made use of these disruptions to build large companies.

Google is a great example  it was born out of a Stanford PhD thesis. Equally good examples are the Silicon Valley buoyed by the California University ecosystem, led by Stanford University, and the Boston life sciences ecosystem buoyed by MIT and other great universities in the area. Similarly, the Chinese startup ecosystem is driven by their great research universities that took global leadership positions in the last 20 years. For instance, Tshingua University publishes more AI papers in top conferences than the whole of India, every year. Which great research universities are at the center of our startup ecosystems in Bangalore and Gurugram?

Our research universities and productive research manpower are few in number. Our total number of productive researchers is a mere 27,500, seven times lower than China and 17 times lower than USA. Another tactical mistake is that the bulk of our researchers (75 percent) work in government labs and not in universities. In contrast, in the rest of the world the ratio is skewed the other way around  the primary efficient way of research being faculty working with PhD students. Lack of research in universities, also means lack of good PhD programmes and choking the supply of future researchers. As a result, our high impact research output is just seven percent of US and 15 percent of China.

Research is a lacklustre career in India. The JEE and CAT are the talk of every media article. Who cares about GATE or NET, exams for pursuing a PhD in top Indian universities? Students perceive that the research career pays low, takes too long to complete, has poor professional outcomes and low overall social standing. While some of this is indeed true, our students are just not aware of some of the improvements over the last decade. Compare this with a PhD admit in MIT, Stanford or a UC Berkeley, that inspires awe among the best students of the country. Not only do we lose our top undergraduates to other countries but also to the industry. The bright ones who pursue research in India are only those in deep love with India or those who continue to be here for family reasons  not really attracted by market forces.

Thus the first step for India is to have many more research positions in top universities and to make the research career attractive. Then, we need to provide a liberalised and competitive research environment to the research community. Our universities work like pre-liberalisation corporate India slow, bureaucratic and socialist in approach. Universities have little financial autonomy  freedom to spend money, faculty salaries, fee and promotion policy. Buying equipment and getting research funding is also marred by bureaucracy, delays and cronyism at times. For instance, to buy something that costs more than $5000, the process of tenders, committees, etc. takes three to six months as compared to overnight shipping in the US! 61 percent of our researchers at top universities rate getting equipment and funding in a timely and non-bureacratic manner as below average.

Liberalisation and autonomy has to be counterbalanced with competition and meritocracy. This is pretty much missing at all levels in our research ecosystem. It needs to start at the government, which should make its universities to compete for money rather than doling out money equally to them or according to whims of few influential people. Same stands true for research faculty. Low performing faculty do not have much financial disincentives. On the other hand, high performing faculty neither get financial incentives, nor the sway to hire more faculty in their are get more resources and decision power to build a large and successful program. Similarly, funding agencies generally prefer to fund more number of researchers with low budgeted projects than fund bold expensive proposals by high performing researchers.

By contrast, China is very effective in offering resources and incentives for performance. They carry out detailed benchmarking of individuals, departments and universities and accumulate resources to the high performing ones. China has been able to capture nine spots in the list of worlds top 200 universities in the last two decades. Universities in the US have the tenure system. In some cases, top universities show the door to 50 percent of their lower performing faculty members after the first seven or eight years. On the other hand, high performing faculty become celebrities within and outside the universities and gather resources around them. Consider, Rodney Brooks, Andrew Ng and Geoffrey Hinton  all celebrity figures in AI, with money chasing them! We also need to accumulate our resources in performing institutions and researchers, so that they can multiply their success and disrupt. Those not performing should have disincentives. Nothing can be worst for research than a socialist non-competitive environment.

The third issue is around collaboration. Researchers multiply their success by discussing their research, learning from each other and eventually collaborating. Unfortunately, the modern means of communication, the phone and the internet, are not good at this  they do not transmit tacit knowledge and spur collaboration. Studies show that research collaboration decreases exponentially with the geographic distance separating researchers. We do not have the critical mass of researchers, the right structures and a culture of collaboration to facilitate such discussions. For a given field, say AI, number of our productive researchers, are in lower double digits. This also means that they have limited impact on industry and startups to create economic value.

On top of this, our interaction with the outside world is limited. Lack of travel money is cited as one of the top issues by researchers I spoke to. A faculty gets money for two international trips (plus an option to apply for one more) in three years. A PhD student gets money for a single international trip during her PhD. Both low and high performing researchers get the same amount of money. In contrast, the editor of a US technology magazine told me that he sees top AI researchers from China in the US almost every other month! I made six international trips in my two years at MIT as a graduate student. Thus, we do not have enough opportunity to learn and collaborate with international researchers. With no critical mass within and the lack of contact with the outside world, we become frogs in a small well!

I will now like to get back to where I started  how our research can fuel our industry and startup ecosystem to create globally competitive organisations. Today, there is lack of what I call problem proximity  the proximity of our researchers to the real-world problem they seek to solve. Pre-liberalisation our industry and economy wasnt mature, wealthy or large enough to interact with our researchers. Our research universities thus didnt build the structures and culture to interact with industry. They didnt access original questions from industry  rather they did derivative research inspired by Western papers. This made their research less impactful. At the same time they couldnt and didnt make a difference to the industry. This hasnt changed even as our industry has grown manifolds in the last 25 years.

To realise the Indian startup dream, we need a high quality research ecosystem vigorously interacting with entrepreneurs, industry, venture capitalists and actual users of products. Industry needs to supply problems to researchers and researchers need to supply technology advancement and breakthrough solutions to industrial problems. Only a critical mass of researchers, who become entrepreneurs, consultants and manpower for the industry can bring about a change. A few would just fail and not move the needle. Over and above, we need a society and funders who respect science entrepreneurship, are ready to invest in them and go in for the long haul to create real value. Then only we can achieve startup India.

(Varun is the author of 'Leading Science and Technology: India Next?' and the co-founder of Aspiring Minds and www.ml-india.org)
Following violence over Ram Navami celebrations in West Bengal, the police are putting in place elaborate arrangements to avoid any untoward incident during Hanuman Jayanti celebrations in the state on Saturday.

Kolkata: Following violence over Ram Navami celebrations in West Bengal, the police are putting in place elaborate arrangements to avoid any untoward incident during Hanuman Jayanti celebrations in the state on Saturday.

Apart from a ban on armed rallies, additional forces will be deployed in each district and police personnel will be placed outside every religious place.

"Elaborate arrangements have been made. Police will be deployed in every corner of the state, we will keep a tab on any suspicious movement. No one will be allowed to take out armed rallies," a senior police officer said in Kolkata.

Besides the deployment of additional forces, mobile police teams would patrol the sensitive areas round-the-clock and special monitoring would be done at the Bangladesh border and the inter-state borders, another police official said.

"We have reports that those involved in Sunday's violence (in the Asansol and Raniganj areas of West Burdwan district) were outsiders," the official said.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had held a meeting on Thursday with the state director general of police, ADG (law and order), home secretary and chief secretary.

Apart from taking stock of the prevailing situation in Raniganj and Asansol, the chief minister had directed the police to make strict arrangements in order to avoid any untoward incident.

Three persons were killed in West Burdwan and Purulia districts and several others, including police personnel, were injured during Ram Navami celebrations.
Police on Thursday night called off its anti-terror operation in Rajouri hills in Jammu and Kashmir, where four terrorists were killed in an operation on Wednesday

Jammu: Police on Thursday night called off its anti-terror operation in Rajouri hills in Jammu and Kashmir, where four terrorists were killed in an operation on Wednesday.

"Police tonight (Friday) called off its area sanitisation operation at the site of yesterday's (Wednesday) encounter in Sunderbani. A huge cache of arms and ammunition belonging to the militants were recovered from the area," Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) of Rajouri district Yougal Manhas told PTI.

The bodies of the militants were also buried on Thursday after legal formalities, the officer said.

The four terrorists, who were part of a suicide squad, were killed in a day-long encounter with security forces in the Sunderbani area on Wednesday.

The fidayeen, or suicide attackers, had infiltrated into the Indian territory from across the Line of Control (LoC) about four-five days ago, prompting security forces to launch a search operation in the area.

Authorities had ordered the closure of educational institutions in the Sunderbani tehsil in view of the search operation.

This is the second major terror incident in the Jammu region this year after Sunjuwan army camp attack in which five armymen, civilian and four terrorists were killed on 10 February.
Nawada District Magistrate Kaushal Kumar said that as soon as the news spread, a protest erupted, leading to violent clashes between two communities.

Patna: Communal tension gripped Bihar's Nawada town on Friday after a religious idol was found damaged, police said.

Nawada District Magistrate Kaushal Kumar said that as soon as the news spread, a protest erupted, leading to violent clashes between two communities.

Angry mobs damaged vehicles, torched shops and pelted stones at the police.

However, the situation was soon brought under control, Kumar added.

Additional security forces have been deployed in the town to maintain law and order.

The Nawada parliamentary constituency is represented by Union Minister Giriraj Singh, who is known to be a vocal champion of Hinduvta politics.

Communal tension had erupted in Nawada last year and also in 2013.

In the past week, communal tension that first started in Aurangabad district during Ram Navami processions, spread to Samastipur, Munger, Nalanda, Sheikhpura and Gaya districts.

The Opposition Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) has attacked Chief Minister Nitish Kumar for failing to handle he situation.
Ovleno Business Intelligence (OBI) director Amrish Tyagi on Thursday denied any links with Cambridge Analytica and said that OBI never worked for JD(U)

Ovleno Business Intelligence (OBI) director Amrish Tyagi on Thursday denied any links with Cambridge Analytica and said that OBI never worked for Janata Dal (United), according to media reports.

"OBI was never associated with Cambridge Analytica (CA). Any work of any nature, if any, undertaken by CA cannot be read against OBI. We would like to make it clear that OBI was never associated with CA," ANI quoted Amrish as saying in a statement.

"At the time of its incorporation neither of its directors had undertaken any work of political nature," the statement added.

He further said, "The political parties namely BJP, Congress never signed any digital project with us nor assigned any work during any elections so there is no point of any type of Facebook or any other social media data breach. Also as claimed by CA website for 2010 Bihar elections OBI or SCL UK/Cambridge Analytica never worked with JD(U) for any assignment," reported The Indian Express.

Christopher Wylie, the whistle-blower in the Facebook data leak controversy had revealed a list of SCL Group (Cambridge Analytica's parent company) projects in India on Wednesday. Wylie tweeted that he had been getting a lot of requests from Indian journalists to disclose SCL's past projects in India.

According to Scroll, the British behavioural research company's Indian arm carried out surveys of voters for Janata Dal (United) during the 2010 Bihar Assembly elections, as well as for a "major political party" during the 2007 polls in Uttar Pradesh.

"SCL India was asked to provide electoral research and strategy for the 2010 state elections for the Janata Dal (United). SCL undertook a behavioural research programme targetting over 75 percent of households. to assist the client in not only identifying the correct battlegrounds, but also the right audiences, messages and most importantly the right castes to target with their campaigns," Wylie claimed.

With inputs from agencies
The All India Parents Association on Friday said it would file a petition in the Delhi High Court on Monday seeking a court-monitored probe into CBSE paper leak

New Delhi, Mar 30 (PTI) Amid a widespread outrage over the CBSE question paper leaks, the All India Parents Association on Friday said it would file a petition in the Delhi High Court on Monday seeking a court-monitored probe into the matter.

"The leaks have rocked the confidence of parents and students. Question is now being raised over the examination system being followed," president of the association and lawyer Ashok Agarwal said.

"We cannot allow this to happen and will be moving a petition in the Delhi High Court on Monday for a high court-monitored investigation," he said.

Agarwal said the petition will also seek a direction from the High Court to the CBSE for liberal award of marks for the re-examinations.

Education Secretary Anil Swarup on Friday said that the re-examination of the CBSE's Class 12 economics paper will be held on 25 April, while the re-test for Class 10 mathematics paper, if required, is likely to be conducted in July.

Delhi police is already conducting a probe into the CBSE question paper leaks.

Agarwal said since differently-abled students will be greatly impacted by appearing for the re-examinations, the association would also seek a direction for "special considerations" for them which could be in the form of certain relaxations.
The ruling BJD's student wing on Thursday demanded resignation of Union minister Prakash Javadekar, protesting against the CBSE's decision to re-conduct two papers of Class X and Class XII.

Bhubaneswar: The ruling BJD's student wing on Thursday demanded resignation of Union minister Prakash Javadekar, protesting against the CBSE's decision to re-conduct two papers of Class X and Class XII.

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has decided to re-conduct examinations for Mathematics paper of Class X and Economics paper of Class XII.

The activists of the Biju Chhatra Janata Dal (BCJD) gheraoed the CBSE office in Bhubaneswar pressing for their demand.

"Why is Prime Minister Narendra Modi silent at a time when the future of lakhs of students is at stake? He should take responsibility and answer. We demand resignation of Javadekar for his incompetency," said BCJD president, Rana Pratap Patra.

Patra also demanded a high-level probe into the leak to bring the culprits to book.
As protests against the CBI paper leak intensifies, Congress launched a fresh a salvo on the Narendra Modi government accusing it of turning a blind eye to corruption in the education sector and protecting a mafia that is ruling the education sector in the country

As protests against the CBI paper leak intensifies, Congress launched a fresh a salvo on the Narendra Modi government accusing it of turning a blind eye to corruption in the education sector and protecting a mafia that is ruling the education sector in the country.

Taking a jibe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Sibal said that the prime minister has turned a blind eye to issues facing the education sector. "It's like when there is darkness in the whole country, even the chowkidar goes to sleep," he said.

Criticising the Centre's reaction to the recent paper leak in CBSE Class X maths and Class 12 economics papers, the former HRD minister said on Friday that the cost of education is growing in the country, and so is corruption with it.

"Till today, no step has been taken that would send the message that they would end this mafia in education. They saved the mafia in the Vayapam case. It seemed they are involved in this as well," Sibal alleged during a press conference on Friday.

He also said that in Bihar, students were paying Rs 25,000 for one paper.

Sibal also urged the government to take responsibility for the recent cases of corruption in the education sector. "CBSE paper leak is not the only paper leak. The SSC scam was another major concern. If the government does not take accountability for its wrongdoings, then who will?" Sibal asked.

The senior Congress leader also lamented the rising cost of education in India. He said, "Recently, in Uttarakhand, medical institutions where fees were Rs six lakh have been increased to Rs 23 lakh. They are telling some universities that they can charge as much as they want. People in India, don't earn that much. How will people pay for the fees?"

"Look at any country, the government pays for education. In Germany, education is free. In the US, education is not free, but funding is available. But it's not the case in India," Sibal said while accusing the government of not doing enough to make education affordable.

The senior Congress leader said that the government is burdening students and families with its tall promises. "They are saying global salary will be paid to teachers. But if they want global salary, the students will have to pay for it. Which family can educate their children after taking loans of Rs one crore?"

Making references to the lack of clarity over re-exam of Class X maths and Class XII economics papers, Sibal said: "The time after exams are usually spent planning for summer vacation, but now students have to prepare for another exam. And they don't even know when the exam will take place. What have they (students) done?"
An email sent to the Central Board of Secondary Education chief on the night before the Class 10 mathematics exam urged for cancellation for the paper.

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The CBSE has taken cognisance of certain happenings in the conduct of certain examinations as are being reported. With the view to uphold the sanctity of the Board Examinations and in the interest of the fairness to the students, the Board has decided to re-conduct the examinations. Dates for fresh examinations and the other details shall be hosted on the CBSE website within a week, a CBSE notice said.

The SIT team comprising two deputy commissioners of police, four assistant commissioners of police and five inspectors has been set up to investigate the matter. The team will be directly supervised by the joint commissioner of police (crime), PTI reported.

The Delhi Police Crime Branch is conducting raids at various locations across Delhi, ANI reported on Wednesday. The crime branch set up a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the alleged leak. The SIT has been formed after the CBSE registered two cases with the Crime Branch. According to media reports, Special Commissioner of Police RP Upadhayay said that the SIT team will be headed by by Joint Commissioner Alok Kumar and will also have other rank officers in the probe.

According to News18, the leak has been traced to a coaching centre in West Delhi. According to the report, the owners of the coaching centre have denied any involvement, however, ANI tweeted out a copy of the complaint filed by CBSE against the coaching centre.

Students took to the street in Delhi's Jantar Mantar as angst against re-test loomed large over their heads. Protesting students said that either there should be re-examinations of all subjects or else of neither. Students also raised 'we want justice' slogans.

Either conduct re-examination of all papers, or none, say protesting students at Jantar Mantar

"We have received snapshots of the handwritten paper circulated through Whatsapp from the complainant. We are trying to ascertain the source of these messages. Since Whatsapp messages are end-to-end encrypted, we are facing a bit of difficulty in tracing the source," said an officer privy to the probe. The officer said they have not questioned any official from any of the examination centres or from the board. The questioning will happen once the source of messages is traced.

In a statement, the Delhi Police said that they have registered two cases. The first case in connection with the leak of economics paper was lodged yesterday while the case pertaining to mathematics paper was lodged today, following a complaint by the regional director of CBSE. The cases were registered on charges of criminal breach of trust, cheating and criminal conspiracy.

What is important to note is why didn't the CBSE cancel the exams on Monday itself?

According to reports , the perpetrators who leaked the Economics paper had sent the answer-sheet (which was hand-written) to the CBSE Academic Unit on Monday. The exam for the Economics paper was supposed to be held on Tuesday.

Perpetrators had sent hand-written answer sheet of the Economics paper to CBSE a day before the exams

Speaking to Firstpost, Class 12 Students of Dr SRS Mission School protesting against the CBSE paper leak at Delhi's Jantar Mantar said, "Aside from English paper, there were rumours about every paper being leaked. Then why re-examination only for Economics."

Other papers were leaked too, then why re-test only for Eco and Maths, ask students

He pointed out that when NEET was being implemented, CBSE was chosen as the body to helm it. It did so even while being overloaded with work.

Javadekar called the event unfortunate. He said that he understood the pain and anguish of both parents and students. He insisted that CBSE has earned a name for conducting exams well.

He added that he will make all efforts to ensure that exams continue without any breach and will work to make the system foolproof.

Javadekar further insisted that the authorities will not let anyone go scot-free. The police is on the case and he has faith in them. He has instituted an internal inquiry into the matter as well.

Class 12 students of Kendriya Vidyalaya, Naraina say they will boycott the exam alleging that if the CBSE had a fair idea about the paper leak around 9 am on the day of the exam, then why was the exam held? They ask if 28 lakh students boycott the re-examination, then what can the government do?

Some girls were chanting the slogan 'abki baar paperleak sarkaar'. Another group was waving the Indian flag and screaming 'bharat mata ki jai'.

The contingents of paramilitary and police forces outnumbered the students. There were no representation from the administration of these schools. A couple of teachers running private tuition centres were there, alleging that they were well aware of the paper leak.

Less than 50 students from schools like Kendriya Vidyalaya, St Thomas, St Columbus and Dr SRS International are protesting against the leak at a tiny nook adjacent to Jantar Mantar's famous protest street. NGT had banned all protest activities here in 2017.

A student of Class 12, shows a scanned copy of the Economics paper on his phone. He says that it was available for two to three thousand rupees before the examination and if the students were aware of it, then why was the board so oblivious? He also alleged that Economics wasn't the only paper that was leaked and there should be a re examination for other subjects as well.

Tejaswi, a class 10 student of St Thomas School, Mandir Marg says students cannot go into the CBSE office and leak papers. Her demand is that the CBSE officials have to be held accountable for what has happened to students like her.

CBSE sources have said that the exam body will try its best to choose a date for re-examination that doesn't clash with other exams, CNN-News18 reported.

Will try our best re-exam dates don't clash with other entrance exams: CBSE sources

Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala questioned the government over leak. He asked the Centre to clarify why it cut short the tenure of previous CBSE chief in September 2017. He questioned that why did the government give the job to someone who had previously worked with prime minister Narendra Modi.

The Delhi police have accused a Rajouri Garden-based coaching teacher for allegedly being involved in the paper leak. CNN-News18 reported that the teacher is being questioned and eight more people are under scanner.

"Since we call them warriors, I'll tell you they did their job. They cannot be punished and the tension among the parents and students is going to be enormous. I think it's not fair to make the students go through mistakes of the government," Haasan said.

"It is absolutely shocking and heart rendering that the future of 24 Lakh students is in severe jeopardy... It may just turn out to be the tip of the iceberg as multiple news reports and social media stories on how the Biology, Chemistry and English papers have also been leaked are also surfacing now. Despite registration of an FIR and an enquiry, shockingly; CBSE has admitted the leak of 3 exam papers," Congress said in a press release. Here is the complete press statement of the body.

Kejriwal said responsibility should be fixed in the matter, a day after the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) announced re-examination in Class 10 mathematics and Class 12 economics papers in wake of reports of papers being leaked.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal today demanded strict action against people involved in the alleged leak of CBSE examination papers, and said he feels "sorry and sad" for students who will have to re-appear for the exams.

Another solution is to install mobile jammers at exam centres to prevent students from using Bluetooth-enabled devices to cheat.

The primary hiccup in this method, however, is connectivity in rural areas and the time taken to print the question paper on the morning of the exam.

Herold D'Costa, CEO of Intelligent Quotient Security System (IQSS), who devised the system for the University, also suggests the use of a centralised server, which would house a variety of question papers. Question papers would then randomly be selected and links sent to exam centres to downloaded and print them. The paper would be downloaded by an authorised person or the principal just a few minutes before the exam.

The Mumbai University has a model whereby question papers will be downloaded by colleges after a facial-recognition scan. The downloading and printing process would also be recorded via CCTVs to prevent a leak at that stage.

The police also said that the 18 college students were mostly alumni of certain schools or former students at some specific coaching centres. Upadhyay, however, said that it was not prudent for him to reveal any names at this point.

Upadhyay said that the police have been questioning 25 people in all, including 18 college students, five tuition teachers and two others.

The police has questioned 25 people in the case so far, RR Upadhyay Special Commissioner crime branch, told reporters on Wednesday, even as he refused to share more details about the investigation.

Delhi Police in a press conference said that the police is right now focusing its investigation in Delhi only as there was nothing to suggest a nation-wide leak as of now. The police, however, denied to share any details of the investigation.

"We haven't yet found proof of any being offered or exchanged anywhere in this case. But the investigation is still on," Delhi Police said.

Rahul Gandhi slams Centre over CBSE paper leak, says this is only the beginning

CNN-News18 reported that the students are now planning to protest again on 30 March at Jantar Mantar.

The police have said that they got the accused tuition teacher Vicky's name from CBSE. He got the papers and forwarded it to his students, the police said.

The CBSE on Wednesday said it will re-conduct examination in the maths and economics papers for Class 10 and Class 12 respectively following the leak of question papers.

"How many leaks? Data leak! Aadhaar leak! SSC exam leak! Election date leak! CBSE papers leak! There is leak in everything. The watchman (Narendra Modi) is weak," Gandhi said in a tweet.

Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Thursday attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the CBSE paper leak, saying he is a "weak watchman" as there were leaks in everything.

The moratorium will be for the course period plus 1 year, he said.

The government has made a provision of Rs 6,600 crore for bearing the interest component on education loans, he told reporters.

Quick Response (QR) Code is a machine-readable code consisting of an array of black and white squares, typically used for storing web-links or other information for reading by the camera on a smart-phone.

NCERT published textbooks would have QR codes from next year (2019-20) which will help students to understand chapters better by watching a film or reading additional content on laptops and digital boards, Union minister Prakash Javadekar said today.

Chairperson of CBSE, Anita Karwal had a concise meeting with HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar this morning at Shastri Bhawan. The meeting, which happened before the Union ministers press conference, lasted for almost 2 hours, CNN-News18 reported.

CBSE chairperson Anita Karwal finally gave a statement on the paper leak issue and she said that the board will take a decision that will be in favour of students. She said that the dates of the fresh examinations will be issued soon.

Javadekar is expected to give some clarity on the date of re-examinations as the students remain in a fix. He is also expected to explain the reasons for the paper leak shortly.

Amid nationwide protests from aggrieved students and parents and Opposition parties, Union Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Prakash Javadekar met examination body officials on Friday to seek resolution of the crisis.

We may not have the perfect solution, there are no perfect solution: HRD ministry

The HRD ministry has said that the re-examination for Class 12 economics paper will be held on 25 April. The decision was taken to not keep the students in limbo any longer as they have to take entrance tests as well. The Education secretary accepted that this was not a perfect solution but it was the most viable solution in the lack of a detailed probe.

The ministry said that since in the case of Class 10 students, it was possible to wait for a detailed enquiry, we have decided to take a final decision later. However, preliminary enquiry suggests that the leak affected papers only in Delhi and Haryana region only, so a retest, if at all needed will be held in that region only.

Class 10 exams to be rescheduled in July, if at all, in Delhi and Haryana regions only

The confirmation came back only after 10 am when exams at all centres were underway. It was a balanced solution that the board decided to take. Even at that time a re-exam would have to be announced but it would have created unsurmountable panic.

The HRD ministry secretary acknowledged that media reports stating that CBSE chief received an email at around 1.30 am on 28 March was true. He said that the chairperson did not check her email at 1 am but noticed the message at 8.55 am the next day. She intimated the controller of examination immediately, who went on to verify the details.

CBSE chairperson Anita Karwal said that the email received the night before did not contain the leaked paper, so they did not take the decision to cancel the exam immediately. "However, the next day we received a lot of emails from students looking at which the police also decided that the papers indeed leaked the day before. This is why we took the decision for a retest only later," Karwal said.

The email received on the night before did not contain leaked paper; decision to cancel exam taken after police probe: CBSE chief

HRD ministry secretary said that he admitted that there were problems in the process as well, but the fixation of blame is a process for a later time. The new processes and security measures will be implemented only in the next academic year. However, the situation at hand warranted that the future of Class 12 students should not be left in limbo, so the best possible solution was taken.

Accept process was breached but action against guilty only after further probe: HRD ministry

This is not a perfect solution, in such a case there is no perfect solution possible. But we tried our best to limit the damage as much as possible. The information is limited and we are yet to ascertain what went wrong. Thus in such a situation, this decision was the best alternative we had.

"Our immediate concern of the children who have suffered and this decision is in that context. We will nail the person who did this," Secretary education said.

Today's decision only for welfare of children; move on preventive, retributive action to be taken later

Decision on delay in Class 10 exam results to be taken later: Education Secy

We may not have the perfect solution, there are no perfect solution: HRD ministry

The HRD ministry has said that the re-examination for Class 12 economics paper will be held on 25 April. The decision was taken to not keep the students in limbo any longer as they have to take entrance tests as well. The Education secretary accepted that this was not a perfect solution but it was the most viable solution in the lack of a detailed probe.

The ministry said that since in the case of Class 10 students, it was possible to wait for a detailed enquiry, we have decided to take a final decision later. However, preliminary enquiry suggests that the leak affected papers only in Delhi and Haryana region only, so a retest, if at all needed will be held in that region only.

Class 10 exams to be rescheduled in July, if at all, in Delhi and Haryana regions only

The confirmation came back only after 10 am when exams at all centres were underway. It was a balanced solution that the board decided to take. Even at that time a re-exam would have to be announced but it would have created unsurmountable panic.

The HRD ministry secretary acknowledged that media reports stating that CBSE chief received an email at around 1.30 am on 28 March was true. He said that the chairperson did not check her email at 1 am but noticed the message at 8.55 am the next day. She intimated the controller of examination immediately, who went on to verify the details.

CBSE chairperson Anita Karwal said that the email received the night before did not contain the leaked paper, so they did not take the decision to cancel the exam immediately. "However, the next day we received a lot of emails from students looking at which the police also decided that the papers indeed leaked the day before. This is why we took the decision for a retest only later," Karwal said.

The email received on the night before did not contain leaked paper; decision to cancel exam taken after police probe: CBSE chief

HRD ministry secretary said that he admitted that there were problems in the process as well, but the fixation of blame is a process for a later time. The new processes and security measures will be implemented only in the next academic year. However, the situation at hand warranted that the future of Class 12 students should not be left in limbo, so the best possible solution was taken.

Accept process was breached but action against guilty only after further probe: HRD ministry

This is not a perfect solution, in such a case there is no perfect solution possible. But we tried our best to limit the damage as much as possible. The information is limited and we are yet to ascertain what went wrong. Thus in such a situation, this decision was the best alternative we had.

"Our immediate concern of the children who have suffered and this decision is in that context. We will nail the person who did this," Secretary education said.

Today's decision only for welfare of children; move on preventive, retributive action to be taken later

Decision on delay in Class 10 exam results to be taken later: Education Secy

Latest update on CBSE re-examination dates: The CBSE failed to take action because of wealth of misleading information of paper leaks. But a probe is underway and the responsibility will surely be fixed, the secretary at Human resource Development ministry said.

Vociferous protests by students and Opposition leaders over the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) paper leak controversy continued on Friday. Amid the agitations, Union Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Prakash Javadekar met examination body officials to seek resolution of the crisis.

Javadekar is expected to give some clarity on the date of re-examinations as the students remain in a fix. He is also expected to explain the reasons for the paper leak.

The Union HRD minister, who also addressed students at a hackathon in New Delhi on Friday, accepted that the exponential development in information and technology tools warrants an upgrade in the security mechanism of the exam bodies too, as he told students he understands their anguish and will take action to prevent such incidents in future.

Meanwhile, police investigation in the case revealed that around 10 WhatsApp groups were used to spread the leaked question papers and parents had paid as much as Rs 35,000 to buy the leaked question papers, NDTV reported.

The police has reportedly also asked Google for help to trace down the whistleblower, who alerted the CBSE days before the examinations were actually held, the news channel said.

While the police has refused to name any schools, coaching centres or individuals in the case and has not yet made any arrests, the CBSE already seems to have reached the conclusion that its officials were not at fault.

CNN-News18 reported that CBSE sources have ruled out the possibility of an insider hand. The sources are said to have claimed that exam superintendents, who are tasked with taking the exam papers to centres, may have been involved in the leak.

The police has, however, refused to comment on the specifics of the case. The Delhi Police crime branch has also questioned the controller of examinations, CBSE in the case.

All this while, the question remains as to why the CBSE did not take preventive action, or cancel examinations, despite a whistleblower sending exact inputs two days prior to the exam via e-mail and courier.

Meanwhile, protests raged on in the national capital and other parts of the country as students were still unclear over the dates of retest, and whether or not they will clash with their other entrance tests. A parents and teachers association in Mumbai has written to the CBSE and the home ministry claiming that the paper leak has not affected the examination process in the state of Maharashtra, and therefore the students there should not be compelled to take a retest.

The aggrieved parents and teachers have turned down offers of political parties to back their protests.

CBSE students protesting against the cancellation of their Class X Mathematics examination have rejected an offer of intervention made by the National Students' Union of India (NSUI), saying the Congress party's youth wing didn't consult them before formulating a memorandum.

Furthermore, Section 144 of the CrPC has been imposed outside Prakash Javadekar's house in New Delhi.

An anonymous email sent to the CBSE chief on the night before the Class X Mathematics exam urged for cancellation for the paper stating that the question paper was leaked on WhatsApp, the second FIR filled in the CBSE exam paper leak has revealed.

According to the FIR, a person named Dev Narayan had emailed CBSE chairperson Anita Karwal's official ID at around 1.39 am on 28 March, urging her to cancel the exam. In the email, the FIR reveals, the sender stated that "the mathematics paper has been leaked today on WhatsApp, please cancel tomorrow Maths paper (sic)".

The email also contains 12 pages of jpg attachments comprising of hand-written question paper of mathematics, says the FIR, which News18 posted on its website. The maths exam took place on 28 March.

The police is also investigating the handwritten notes.

In the meanwhile, News18 quoted a source at the HRD ministry as saying on Friday that dates for the re-exam have not been fixed yet. Citing a source, the news channel said that the government is still gauging the extent of the paper leak and that it's still unsure if a leak indeed took place.

Karwal had broken her silence on the paper leak on Thursday, stating that fresh exams will be announced soon. She had said that the decision to conduct fresh exams were taken in the interest of students.

However, students across India are not happy with the decision, accusing the central board of negligence. Students protested outside Jantar Mantar in Delhi on Thursday and they were back on the streets on Friday as well.

The Class XII accountancy paper was also reportedly leaked on WhatsApp and social media, which prompted Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia to order a probe and lodge a complaint with the CBSE.

More than 28 lakh candidates appeared for the Class X and XII examinations conducted by the CBSE from 5 March.

A total of 16,38,428 candidates had registered for the Class X examination, while 11,86,306 candidates had registered for the Class XII examination.

With inputs from PTI
Swarup said that a re-exam will not e held for CBSE students outside India because the impact of the leak was limited to India only.

The Ministry of Human Resource Development on Friday came out with several firefighting measures to curtail the controversy over the leak of Class 10 Mathematics and Class 12 Economics question papers of the Central Board of Secondary Education, or CBSE. In what was termed as an imperfect, but the most viable solution, the HRD ministry decided to re-conduct exams in a manner in which the impact of the process failure is minimised on the students.

While accepting that it was indeed a process failure, the HRD ministry secretary Anil Swarup made it clear that the immediate priority of the government is to make things easy for the students as far as possible who are at the receiving end. He said that administrative decisions can be taken at a later stage and that those did not precede the students' interest in order of priority. Swaroop refused to fix accountability on anyone pending enquiry including the CBSE chairperson Anita Karwal who was part of the press conference but largely remained muted while assuring that due corrective measures would be taken after examining the whole process threadbare.

"We don't have any perfect answers available to us. We have limited set of information. It may not be a perfect decision, our immediate concern is that the children should not suffer. Children's interests are supreme. Other things can wait," Swarup said.

Here are key points from the education ministry's press conference:

1) Re-examination for Class 12 Economics to be held on 25 April: The education secretary said that keeping in mind the paucity of information on the exact impact of the leak, it is unfair to keep the students in limbo. He said that Class 12 was a critical academic level and given the fact that the students will have to partake in various college/university admission procedures, the ministry could not have waited for a detailed probe to come up with a solution. Therefore, the time and situation necessitated that a re-examination across the nation should be held as soon as possible.

2) Decision of re-exam for Class 10 Mathematics paper in next 15 days: Swarup said: "The leak was restricted to Delhi and Haryana, if at all a re-exam will happen, it will happen only in these states in July. A decision will be taken on this in the next 15 days." He said that the situation of Class 12 students was more critical but there was no similar urgency in case of Class 10. So, a final call will be taken after a thorough probe in the next 15 days, depending on the impact of the leak, even within these regions. Swarup said the decision to conduct fresh exams won't affect the date of publication of the results which usually happens in May end.

3) No re-exam for CBSE schools outside India: Swarup said that a re-exam will not be held for CBSE students outside India because the impact of the leak was limited to India only.

4) Decision on fixing the blame after probe: Swarup said that it would be unfair to fix the blame without thoroughly understanding the lapses. He said the Special Investigation Team is probing the matter and the perpetrators will be nailed after that. He also ruled out a possibility of sacking the CBSE chairperson Anita Karwal. "Action will be taken against whoever is responsible. But you cannot pre-empt the inquiry. Without inquiry action will not be possible. "There are two levels of inquiry - one is the police inquiry and the other is a departmental inquiry. We cannot say what exactly went wrong but we are trying to find out."

5) Wealth of misleading information delayed action on leak tip-off: Swarup confirmed the media reports claiming that an email warning of mathematics paper leak was received on Karwal's official ID a day before the exam. But in the CBSE chairperson's defence, he said that email was received around 1.30 am on 28 March. Karwal saw the email at 8.55 am the next morning and immediately notified the controller of examination. His report came only after 10 am when all examinations were underway. He also cited the sheer volume of such tip-offs, which turned out to be untrue, as the reason why CBSE did not cancel the exam outright and waited for a confirmation.

Karwal, however, came up with a slightly different clarification. She told reporters that the delay in cancellation of the exam was because the paper appended with the said email, wasn't the real paper. However, later on the complaint of a lot of students and following preliminary enquiry it was established that the paper was indeed leaked on the previous day.

Asked whether the government can guarantee that there will be no leaks in the future, Swarup said nobody can guarantee about the future. "I cannot guarantee that there will be no leakage in the future. But we will take all steps to see such leakage doesn't happen."

Swarup also did not comment on reports that six students were detained in Jharkhand's Chatra district in connection with the paper leak case.

Delhi Crime Branch has also been cracking down, and questioned 45 people since Thursday, including the administrators of the 10 WhatsApp groups, coaching centre's owner, 18 students and some tutors, about the leak.

The Delhi Crime Branch also "interacted" with the CBSE controller of examinations in connection with the leak to understand the examination process.

The Delhi Police has registered two cases. The first case in connection with the leak of the economics paper was lodged on 27 March and the case pertaining to the mathematics paper was lodged on 28 March, following a complaint by the regional director of the CBSE.

The cases were registered on charges of criminal breach of trust, cheating and criminal conspiracy.

In the complaint pertaining to the mathematics paper, the board has said that a day before the exam, an e-mail was received on the CBSE chairperson's official ID informing about the leak, the officials said.

In the mail the sender had stated that the mathematics paper was leaked on WhatsApp and that it should be cancelled, they said.

The mail also contained attachments of the handwritten mathematics paper allegedly leaked on WhatsApp, according to the complaint.

A Special Investigation Team (SIT) comprising two deputy commissioners of police, four assistant commissioners of police and five inspectors has been set up to investigate the matter.

The team is being supervised by the joint commissioner of police (crime).

The CBSE decision came as students and their parents took to the streets across India to denounce the question paper leak and, in some cases, demand the sacking of the CBSE head Anita Karwal. The leak and re-test has affected lakhs of students and forced their families to postpone or cancel planned holidays.
With this, the total number of Keralites, killed after joining Islamic State in Afghanistan, has gone up to eight after the NIA last year confirmed the death of four.

Kasargode : A family of three and another man from Kerala's Kasargode, who had joined terror group Islamic State in Afghanistan, are reported to have been killed in a bomb attack, police said on Friday.

A police intelligence officer here told IANS that they have heard the news but there is no official confirmation from the National Investigation Agency (NIA).

"What we have come to know is that the dead include Shihaz, his wife and their child besides another man. We are awaiting more details," said the official who did not wish to be identified.

With this, the total number of Keralites, killed after joining Islamic State in Afghanistan, has gone up to eight after the NIA last year confirmed the death of four.

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan in 2016 said that 21 people, including children, were missing  17 persons from Kasargode district and four from Palakkad.
With India's military plans in Seychelles hitting roadblock, New Delhi must demonstrate greater willingness to assume the burdens of being a major power.

With Seychelles' opposition coalition refusing to ratify an important security pact with India, New Delhi's efforts to develop a strategically located island in Seychelles have received a severe jolt amidst China's relentless push to steadily consolidate its power in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR). Wavel Ramkalawan, head of the opposition coalition Linyon Demokratik Seselwa (LDS), has declared: "This deal is dead". The LDS holds a majority in the parliament of Seychelles.

This negative development indicates that India is losing ground in Seychelles as well. The Seychelles opposition's refusal comes three years after the agreement to develop Assumption Island was signed during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's landmark visit in March 2015. Development of island infrastructure is an internationally accepted euphemism for development of strategic assets.

Both America and China have many such island assets in the region. The agreement was supposed to enable India to help Seychelles build military infrastructure for the Seychelles People's Defence Forces (SPDF) on Assumption Island. The ratification would have made India's relationship with Seychelles truly strategic in its orientation.

For some inexplicable reasons or simply due to bureaucratic inefficiency on the part of Seychelles, the deal was not ratified by the Seychelles parliament during the term of the previous president, James Michel. After President Danny Faure assumed office in October 2016, discussions with India on the agreement were reopened since Seychelles wanted to take a "relook" at the agreement to build military infrastructure on Assumption Island.

The Modi government had to send then Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar on an unannounced visit to Seychelles in October 2017, as the deal had run into trouble. Jaishankar had met Faure. Differences were sorted out, and the country's Attorney-General Frank Ally was quoted as saying that 'India would be able to gain access to the facility as well as other friendly countries in the region, but it will not be used to transport or keep nuclear arms'. This official position of Seychelles' government was incorporated in the re-negotiated agreement.

The re-negotiated agreement was finally signed by Jaishankar in January this year during his Seychelles visit. The main objective of the agreement is to provide a framework for assistance to Seychelles by India, by helping enhance the military capabilities and maritime surveillance of the Seychelles Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), protection of the EEZ and the outer islands and search and rescue in the region.

Jaishankar had said in a statement: "India and Seychelles have drawn up a cooperation agenda that covers within its purview shared efforts in anti-piracy operations and enhanced EEZ (Exclusive Economic Zone) surveillance and monitoring to prevent intrusions by potential economic offenders indulging in illegal fishing, poaching, drug and human trafficking." Underlining the importance of the project, Faure declared that it "attests to the kinship and affinity that exists between our two countries."

Unfortunately for India, the controversy did not die with the signing of the agreement. So-called copies of the agreement were leaked online in early March, alleging that the Seychelles government had sold off Assumption Island to India. It is believed that the documents were leaked by a government insider, a day before the president called on the parliament to ratify the revised agreement. Faure had to clarify in the parliament that, "land on Assumption has not been sold or leased to the government of India Assumption belongs to Seychelles and Seychellois."

Seychelles is an archipelago of more than 100 small islands in the Indian Ocean, off East Africa. Diplomatic ties between India and Seychelles have existed since Seychelles gained independence in 1976. With Seychelles, India enjoys close security ties as the two nations have managed to carve out a forward-looking partnership aimed at strengthening bilateral cooperation.

New Delhi has provided training and equipment for its defence forces. Two patrol boats, one interceptor and a Dornier aircraft DO-228 aircraft to Seychelles' coast guard were provided by India to carry out surveillance and anti-piracy missions. Second Dornier is likely to be handed over soon. Six coastal radar systems were also installed by India: the radar initiative is aimed at building a maritime domain awareness network across the Indian Ocean.

Various Indian naval ships have visited Seychelles as part of their anti-piracy deployment and protection of Seychelles EEZ. The warmness in India-Seychelles relationship can be demonstrated by the fact that in 1986, Air Indias secret mission had prevented then Seychelles president Albert Rene from being overthrown in a coup as Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi lent Rene his own plane to return to Seychelles from a meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement in Harare. A few months before this incident, the Indian Navy had deployed INS Vindhyagiri at the Seychelles Port of Victoria to abort another attempted coup against Rene.

Seychellois of Indian origin account for an estimated 10 percent of the total population of less than one lakh. Indian-origin Wavel John Charles Ramkalawan, Seychelles' leader of the opposition, has a powerful role in the country's political affairs. It cannot be forgotten that for the first time in Seychelles' history, the ruling party lost the 2016 parliamentary elections and the majority of seats in the house were grabbed by the opposition coalition, LDS.

Although Seychelles has a presidential form of government, the parliament has significant powers of oversight, and therefore Ramkalawan is effectively the leader of the members of parliament. With the opposition controlling the parliament, Faure knows that he needs their support. Acknowledging the opposition to the pact with India, he was quoted in a press conference: "It is therefore not proper for me to send the agreement to the Speaker when the Leader of the Opposition, who is in majority in the Assembly, has signalled he will not ratify it."

India has consistently courted Ramkalawan, as reflected in his recent trip to India, in order to participate in the meeting of parliamentarians of Indian origin. During this visit in January this year, Ramkalawan delivered a talk 'Seychelles of my dreams', which was hosted by the Indian Council of World Affairs in New Delhi. He spoke about the opportunities and challenges in his country, and the special relationship between India and Seychelles.

Underlining India's magnanimity in providing aid, he said: Whenever we ask India for help, it doesn't look at us as a high-income country. Europe would tell us, you're a high-income country so go sort it yourself We consider India as the main partner...India has helped us with hydrological maps and not sold to us, but given to us as gifts. And, we want the ties to go higher."

Despite this warmth towards India, it is surprising that Ramkalawan remains opposed to India's military presence in his country. During the lecture, when he was asked about reports of a naval base being planned by India in the Assumption Island, he unambiguously replied: "Seychelles would never accept any naval base of any country, be it the US or India or any other."

It is not clear whether his dislike is driven because of his actual wish for Seychelles to avoid 'Great Power rivalry' between India and China or due to political manoeuvring directed against the president.

India's natural influence in many small island nations of the Indian Ocean including Mauritius and Seychelles is an undeniable fact because of large ethnic Indian base populations. New Delhi has often acted as a security provider to these islands, including thwarting coup attempts on several occasions. India has also been the major contributor of military equipment and training to both countries.

Therefore, the nature and the scale of the influence China is seeking in these islands will certainly be different from the influence that India should have. Ideally speaking, there should not be much internal resistance to any project with India. But New Delhi has been increasingly concerned at China's expanding strategic influence and growing naval presence in the IOR, which has been listed by Indian Navy's 2015 Maritime Security Strategy as India's primary areas of maritime interest.

Though Seychelles is not yet the part of China's ambitious geopolitical project One Belt One Road (OBOR), Beijing has been pushing for Seychelles to be part of its maritime Silk Road project. It is rightly believed that military facilities in Seychelles, Mauritius and Oman can be a force multiplier for India.

It is because of this reason that during Modi's 2015 visit as part of SAGAR strategy, special plans were devised for development of two islands in the Indian Ocean  Seychelles' Assumption Island and Agalega in Mauritius  for use by the Indian military. It was a definite signal that the Indian Ocean littoral is at the heart of India's maritime policy priorities.

It needs to be mentioned that Assumption Island is located near the northern end of the Mozambique Channel. Along with the Suez Canal, the Channel is the main route for shipping between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and control over this has long been a key objective of the Indian Navy. And Agalega is located around 1,000 kilometres northeast of Madagascar. Using Agalega as a staging point can considerably help India's maritime reconnaissance efforts in the western flank of the Indian Ocean.

It is often observed that India's overcautious attitude has forced it to move slowly and underplay its strategic strengths. In fact, New Delhi's actual security role falls short of its aspirations towards a leadership role in the IOR. However, at a time when India is planning to redefine its strategic space in the 'Indo-Pacific' region, New Delhi must demonstrate greater willingness to assume the burdens that come with being a major power.

China has already begun to build a blue water navy. As Beijing, with deeper pockets, is trying to undercut New Delhi's geographical advantages in the Indian Ocean, India needs to invest greater economic and military resources to preserve its vital interests in the region and to continue to play its traditional role of regional security provider despite temporary setbacks due to political controversies. India cannot avoid acquiring its own assets in the IOR if it wants to break free from its traditional strategic preoccupations in South Asia.
Six students, who allegedly went into their class 10th Mathematics exams with solved papers, were detained in Jharkhand's Chatra district on Friday in connection with CBSE paper leaks, the police said in Chatra.

Chatra: Six students, who allegedly went into their class 10th Mathematics exams with solved papers, were detained in Jharkhand's Chatra district on Friday in connection with CBSE paper leaks, the police said in Chatra.

Chatra sub-divisional police officer (SDPO) Gyan Ranjan said the six were sitting with solved Maths papers at their test centres on March 28.

They have been detained," he said.

One of the detainees claimed they allegedly received the papers from Patna, following which a police team was sent to the Bihar capital city for further investigation, the SDPO said.

An FIR has been lodged against the four but no arrest has been made as yet, the SDPO said.

The CBSE Board examination paper leaks earlier this week has drawn widespread criticism from across the country and triggered students protest.
Mumbai's rail network has expanded further, with the Harbour Line extending its services till Goregaon station. This section of the Harbour Line was hitherto only till Andheri

Mumbai: Mumbai's rail network has expanded further, with the Harbour Line extending its services till Goregaon station. This section of the Harbour Line was hitherto only till Andheri.

Railway Minister Piyush Goyal inaugurated the Andheri-Goregaon Harbour Line stretch at an event held at Goregaon

station on Thursday.

Forty-nine regular services will start daily on the 5.12-km line from 1 April, railway officials said.

"The Harbour Line will be further extended till Borivali," Goyal said, adding the Union government has undertaken projects worth Rs 54,777 crore for improving the railway infrastructure in Mumbai.

The event, which was delayed by over two hours, started after Goyal's arrival at the station at around 9 pm.

Goyal, who flagged off the inaugural train at 10.08 pm, said he was stuck at the Mumbai airport for some 45 minutes since the aerobridge could not dock into the plane.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Thursday held 'very productive' talks with her Japanese counterpart Taro Kono and met Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Thursday held "very productive" talks with her Japanese counterpart Taro Kono during which the two leaders discussed a wide-range of bilateral, regional and global issues of mutual interest.

Swaraj, who is in Tokyo on a three-day visit  her first to Japan in the capacity of the external affairs minister  and Kano reviewed the entire gamut of bilateral ties during the 9th India-Japan Strategic Dialogue.

The two leaders took stock of progress since Prime Minister Abe's "highly successful" visit to India in September.

"Foreign Minister Kono and I had very productive talks, covering a wide-range of bilateral, regional and global issues of mutual interest," Swaraj said.

Asserting that India regards Japan as a "natural partner", she said there is vast scope to combine "our relative advantages, whether of capital, technology or human resources, and to work for mutual benefit."

"Japan's presence is visible in major infrastructure and capacity-building projects across India. Our flagship initiatives such as Smart City, Digital India, Start Up India and many others welcome Japan's entrepreneurs with new opportunities. We are happy to note that Japanese investments in India, both public and private, are on the rise," she added.

Swaraj said the two sides had very productive discussions on how India and Japan are working closely to build robust ties in high speed rail, information and communications technology, innovation, space science, healthcare and food processing and other fields.

"We also exchanged views on some new areas of focus in our engagement, such as skills development, Japanese language training in India and the possibility of Indian professionals working in Japan under the Technical Intern Training Programme," she added.

The minister said the bilateral relations between India and Japan have expanded rapidly in recent years and it is reflected in the number of high-level visits exchanged and the several official dialogue mechanisms that are in place.

"The Special Strategic and Global Partnership between our two countries that was established during Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi's landmark visit to Japan in 2014, has been constantly strengthened through our mutual efforts. There is optimism on both sides about the potential of our future ties.

"India and Japan have shared values, with a long history of friendly exchanges. Buddhism unites us. We are both democracies. We value openness, transparency, rule of law and respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity," she said.

"Our Special Strategic and Global Partnership has acquired a broader significance in the current global context. Our growing convergence on economic and strategic issues is important for peace, stability and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region," Swaraj said.

She said as part of Japan's sustained participation in India's economic modernisation, both sides will exchange notes for Japanese Overseas Development Assistance for four new developmental projects in the states of Himachal Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra.

Swaraj also said that there should be a "zero tolerance" on terrorism.

"We shared the view that terrorism in all its forms and manifestations is a global scourge that requires global action in the spirit of zero tolerance, including by rooting out terrorist safe havens, disrupting terrorist networks and financing channels and halting cross-border movement of terrorists," she said.

She also emphasised the need for concerted global action to deal with other common challenges such as climate change.

Swaraj also called on Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Friday. According to MEA spokesperson Raveesh Kumar, Abe said traditional friendship are characterised by heart-to-heart bonds and blessed with a huge potential for growth.

EAM @SushmaSwaraj called on Japanese Prime Minister @AbeShinzo today morning in Tokyo. EAM conveyed the greetings of PM @narendramodi to PM Abe. PM Abe said that  traditional friendship are characterised by heart-to-heart bonds and blessed with a huge potential for growth pic.twitter.com/jN8GWI4Nau  Raveesh Kumar (@MEAIndia) March 30, 2018

The discussions have laid a sound foundation for the visit of Prime Minister Modi to Japan for the next bilateral annual summit later this year, Swaraj said.

"That visit, I am confident, will give renewed thrust to our Special Strategic and Global Partnership," she asserted.

"On sidelines of the strategic dialogue between EAM @SushmaSwaraj and Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono, documents were signed/exchanged between the two sides," Ministry of External Affairs Spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said.

On sidelines of the strategic dialogue between EAM @SushmaSwaraj and Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono, documents were signed/exchanged between the two sides. pic.twitter.com/G8wdzoolHz  Raveesh Kumar (@MEAIndia) March 29, 2018

Earlier, Swaraj met Chairman of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party Policy Research Council and former Japanese foreign minister Fumio Kishida.

"Fruitful discussion on taking relationship forward across diverse sectors. Mr. Kishida's role in strengthening our ties are invaluable," Kumar tweeted.

Swaraj also addressed a gathering of Indian diaspora at the Vivekanand Cultural Centre in Tokyo.

Addressing the gathering, she lauded the contribution of the diaspora for strengthening the bond with Japan and creating a positive image about India in Japan.

According to official figures, Japanese FDI in India during 2016-17 was $4.7 billion, an increase of 80 percent over the last year.

In 2016-17, India-Japan trade reached $13.61 billion, showing a decrease of 6.21 percent over 2015-16, when the total bilateral trade was $14.51 billion.

India's export to Japan for 2016-17 was $3.86 billion, whereas India's import from the East Asian country for 2016-17 was $9.76 billion.

With inputs from PTI
External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj on Friday met Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe and the two leaders discussed ways to strengthen the bilateral ties.

Tokyo: External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj on Friday met Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe and the two leaders discussed ways to strengthen the bilateral ties.

Swaraj, who was here on a three-day visit, also conveyed the greetings of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Abe.

"EAM @SushmaSwaraj called on Japanese Prime Minister @AbeShinzo today morning in Tokyo. EAM conveyed the greetings of PM @narendramodi to PM Abe," Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said in a tweet.

During the meeting, Abe told Swaraj that the traditional friendship between the India and Japan was characterised by "heart-to-heart" bonds and blessed with a huge potential for growth.

"PM Abe said that India-Japan traditional friendship is characterised by heart-to-heart bonds and blessed with a huge potential for growth," Kumar tweeted.

EAM @SushmaSwaraj called on Japanese Prime Minister @AbeShinzo today morning in Tokyo. EAM conveyed the greetings of PM @narendramodi to PM Abe. PM Abe said that  traditional friendship are characterised by heart-to-heart bonds and blessed with a huge potential for growth pic.twitter.com/jN8GWI4Nau  Raveesh Kumar (@MEAIndia) March 30, 2018

Swaraj, who was on her first visit to Japan in the capacity of the external affairs minister, had reached Tokyo on Wednesday to attend the ninth India-Japan Strategic Dialogue.

She met her counterpart Taro Kano on Thursday and the two leaders reviewed the entire gamut of bilateral ties.

Describing the meeting as "very productive", Swaraj said her trip had laid a sound foundation for Modi's visit to Japan for the next bilateral Annual Summit later this year.

Hours after meeting Abe, Swaraj departed from Tokyo, concluding her first official trip to Japan.

"Sayonara! EAM @SushmaSwaraj departs from Tokyo after her first official visit to Japan for the 9th #IndiaJapan Strategic Dialogue," Indian Embassy in Tokyo tweeted.

Sayonara! EAM @SushmaSwaraj departs from Tokyo after her first official visit to Japan for the 9th #IndiaJapan Strategic Dialogue. Ambassador @SujanChinoy and @MofaJapan_en Ambassador Hideaki Hoshi see off EAM at Narita Airport. #KonnichiwaNamaste pic.twitter.com/hk2jmZKQY8  India in Japan (@IndianEmbTokyo) March 30, 2018

On Thursday, Swaraj met Chairman of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party Policy Research Council and former Japanese foreign minister Fumio Kishida.

Swaraj also addressed a gathering of Indian diaspora at the Vivekanand Cultural Centre in Tokyo.

According to official figures, Japanese FDI in India during 2016-17 was $4.7 billion, an increase of 80 percent over the last year.
BJP MP from Asansol and Union minister Babul Supriyo took to Twitter to clarify his point of view and said that Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee cannot stop him from doing his 'duty'.

A day after an FIR was registered against Union minister Babul Supriyo for allegedly assaulting an IPS officer in violence-hit Asansol-Raniganj area, the BJP MP from Asansol took to Twitter to clarify his point of view and said that Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee cannot stop him from doing his "duty".

Earlier on Thursday, Supriyo and a senior West Bengal BJP leader were stopped by the police from entering the Asansol-Raniganj area, where the situation continued to remain tense after violence erupted over a Ram Navami procession.

Internet services were suspended and prohibitory orders under Section 144 of the CrPC were clamped in the area, following clashes between two groups on Sunday and Monday over a Ram Navami rally at Raniganj.

Posting a video tahtshowed women and men agitating, Supriyo claimed that crying women came to him and pleaded he visit Chandimari "where their homes hv been burnt down, looted, false cases registered against their children" and said in a tweet, "I wil drive away being their elected MP?I dont hv a duty towards my people-they dont hv a Party or Religion, they r Victims."

2/3:C this videoWomen crying& pleading me 2 visit Chandmari where their homes hv been burnt down, looted, false cases registered against their childrenI wil drive away being their elected MP?I dont hv a duty towards my people-they dont hv a Party or Religion, they r Victims pic.twitter.com/cuIXoRSu9N  Babul Supriyo (@SuPriyoBabul) March 30, 2018

Supriyo also said that he will take those responsible to the court and vowed to fight against the "injustice". The BJP leader also said he has already file an FIR against the "one Police officer who assaulted me, pushed&threatened me". He also questioned why the Rapid Action Force (RAF) surrounded him. "Why encircle me with RAF?What ws RAF doing when the victims were beaten, their houses burnt down&looted?" Supriyo said in a tweet. Supriyo, who is the Minister of State for Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises, also said that the police stopped him from talking to people form his own constituency. "Police file cases against me cuz I visit the Victims in my OWN constituency where victims belong 2 ONLY one community?Is that a crime in Bengal?Everytym the same story!!Police wil push&pull me&stop me frm talking 2 people cuz they r spelling the truth out?" he said in another tweet.

4/5:Check this vdo tooPolice file cases against me cuz I visit the Victims in my OWN constituency where victims belong 2 ONLY one community?Is that a crime in Bengal?Everytym the same story!!Police wil push&pull me&stop me frm talking 2 people cuz they r spelling the truth out? pic.twitter.com/CjL0osyjq6  Babul Supriyo (@SuPriyoBabul) March 30, 2018

He also hit out at Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said that she had forgotten "her own struggle against CPIM atrocity" and that she cannot stop him from doing his duty.

He also said that a TMC councillor was allowed to move freely but when he tried out of the car, the RAF had to be controlled by the RAF. "TMC councillorS can move around freely in an area&if I try 2 get down frm the car I am a criminal who needs 2 b engulfed by RAF, wrapped tight by Cop-hands, TOUCHING me bodily?Didi probably forgot her struggle against CPIM atrocityShe JUST CANNOT STOP ME FROM DOING MY DUTY," Supriyo said.

5/5:TMC councillorS can move around freely in an area&if I try 2 get down frm the car I am a criminal who needs 2 b engulfed by RAF, wrapped tight by Cop-hands, TOUCHING me bodily?Didi probably forgot her struggle against CPIM atrocityShe JUST CANNOT STOP ME FROM DOING MY DUTY pic.twitter.com/ZcSid4TXXZ  Babul Supriyo (@SuPriyoBabul) March 30, 2018

He also slammed media reports that claimed that he came to the area with 150 boys in tow. Supriyo said the reports were false and that he had only six to seven men with him. He was talking to a few elderly people sitting in his car and decided to get out of it as "it isnt courteous 2 sit in car&talk". He claimed that's when a few victims rushed to him and asked him to visit the camp across the street, complaining of police brutality and complete non-cooperation. He criticised Banerjee and said all of this was in line with the "appeasement politics" of the Trinamool Congress chief.

Supriyo claimed police officers and three TMC workers started abusing him and threatening people who spoke to him.

Supriyo had tried to enter the Railpar area in Paschim Bardhaman district, where police stopped his car, citing security reasons.

Reportedly, a group of people shouted slogans against the minister and demanded that he immediately leave the area.

He also claimed that only the deployment of Central forces can bring back peace in the area as locals don not have faith in the police.

News channels showed him engaged in a verbal duel with police personnel, who had surrounded his vehicle.

"As a public representative, I have every right to visit my constituency, especially when people are in trouble. It is my duty. But the police is saying I won't be allowed to go as Section 144 is imposed in the area. Being a minister, I cannot violate rules," Supriyo said.

The minister, earlier this week, had blamed inaction on part of the police for Sunday's violence over Ram Navami celebrations in Raniganj, neighbouring Asansol.

With input from PTI
Prohibitory orders remained in force and internet services suspended on Friday even as life was limping back to normal in the southern parts of the town, official sources said.

Asansol: Prohibitory orders remained in force and internet services suspended on Friday even as life was limping back to normal in the southern parts of the town, official sources said.

Shops and markets opened and vehicles started plying in the southern parts of Asansol, Sub-Divisional Officer (SDO) P Roychowdhury said, adding that tension still prevailed in the northern parts of the town.

There was no fresh incident of violence, but the prohibitory orders were in force in Asansol, he said.

Internet services would remain suspended till 4 April, the SDO added.

The police staged a route march in the town to instill a sense of security among the people, he said.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had held a high-level meeting at the secretariat in Kolkata on Thursday, after returning from New Delhi, to review the situation in the Asansol-Raniganj area. The chief secretary, the home secretary, the director general of police (DGP) and the ADGP (law and order) were present at the meeting.

One person was killed and two police officers were injured in the violence that had erupted in the area on Sunday and Monday.

The Imam of Noorani Masjid, Imdatullah Rashid, had on Thursday said his younger son was killed in the violence and that his body was found on Wednesday night.

There was no confirmation from the police about the incident.

The Imam has appealed to the people to restore peace in the area.

Union minister Babul Supriyo had last night said two FIRs were lodged against him by the police, following which he also filed a complaint against the police.

Supriyo and state BJP Mahila Morcha president Locket Chatterjee were stopped by the police from entering the Asansol-Raniganj area.

A scuffle had ensued between BJP supporters and the police when the Union minister tried to enter Asansol, his Lok Sabha constituency.

State Parliamentary Affairs Minister Partha Chatterjee had accused the BJP of trying to destroy the peace and communal harmony in the state.

"When police is patrolling the area, why do they want to visit Raniganj? Are they not satisfied after unleashing violence for the last two days," he had said.
The Election Commission has ordered to scrub all photos as well as mentions of Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and works conducted by the Congress government over the past few years being scrubbed from the government's online presence

In less than six months after its launch, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah's namesake app was removed from the Android Play Store. Now, the Karnataka chief minister is staring at all mentions of him and work conducted by the Congress government over the past few years being scrubbed from the government's online presence, reports claimed.

According to The Hindu, an Election Commission official told the newspaper that the "Election Commission of India has ordered the removal of all pictures of Siddaramaiah and other Congress Minister from government websites", and could also include "previous posts on social media championing achievements of the government".

The removal, it claims is as a result of the Model Code of Conduct which is now in effect in the state following the announcement of the election dates, and requires ministers contesting an election to not use government resources or official media for electioneering, a report published in the Hindu claimed.

The Model Code of Conduct state that "official mass media during the election period for partisan coverage of political news and publicity regarding achievements with a view to furthering the prospects of the party in power shall be scrupulously avoided", the Election Commission of India Model Code of Conduct reads.

Quoting an ECI official, the news report said, "We have already got the chief ministers photos removed from the government websites. On similar grounds, any data stored on government works or achievements should be removed from official online content."

The e-governance Department officials claimed that a team will also be "reviewing over 5,600 tweets on the Chief Ministers official page or 10,000 tweets on the Karnataka Varthe page".

The Siddaramaiah app's removal had launched suspicions earlier especially since its removal came soon after the Indian National Congress app was alleged of data leak and linked to the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica row.

The political data analytics firm is accused of using unauthorised Facebook data to help political parties manipulate public opinion. Several political parties including Congress has been named as its client.
BJP president Amit Shah on Saturday said his party, if voted to power, would make efforts to hunt down the killers of RSS and BJP workers in Karnataka.

Mysuru: BJP president Amit Shah on Saturday said his party, if voted to power, would make efforts to hunt down the killers of RSS and BJP workers in Karnataka, and hand out severest of punishment to them.

"I would like to tell the people of the state that Siddaramaiah's time has come to an end. Soon after the BJP forms the next government under Yeddyurappa's leadership, it will make all efforts to hunt down the killers (of RSS and BJP workers) from any corner of the world," he said.

Shah was speaking to reporters after meeting the family members of BJP worker Raju, who was hacked to death in March 2016.

"They will be sent to jail and handed out stringent punishment," he added.

Shah said Siddaramaiah was mistaken if he and his government thought they could stall the saffron ideology from spreading by unleashing violence against BJP and RSS workers.

"In politics, there is no room for violence. If Siddaramaiah and his government think they can stall our ideology from spreading, then he is mistaken," he said.

Shah alleged that police were not initiating any action against those who killed as many as 22 BJP and RSS workers across Karnataka.

He alleged that the Siddaramaiah government has been releasing jailed killers and they have been "given opportunity" once again to kill people.
Like a true bureaucrat, the Gujarat-cadre IAS officer ostensibly ignored the mail. A prompt notice of the exam's postponement till a later date could have saved the day.

The leaked CBSE question papers may not only affect the future of millions of students, it may also queer Narendra Modi's pitch when he sits for the Lok Sabha exam in 2019. The rapidly escalating controversy has a direct impact on India's millions of first-time voters, a politically unattached constituency that the prime minister has been wooing through different outreach programs. When millions of affected students and their parents enter the booths to cast their ballots, the CBSE's bungling and the Union HRD ministry's ineptitude will be fresh on their minds.

It would be a little cynical to suggest that Modi's concern for students stems solely from electoral compulsions. Through his radio addresses, speeches, programs, events, the prime minister comes across as a leader who wants to communicate with the young and is genuinely interested in addressing issues that worry them. For instance, Modi has authored a book on exam-related anxieties. He has held a 'charcha' with students on 'Pariksha', an interactive session to deal with the pressure of examinations.

The irony of his own government adding to the students' exam distress is therefore, stark.

More than two million students will now be forced to take a retest  for no fault of theirs  on subjects that they have studied diligently all through the year.

Mathematics (Class X) and economics (Class XII) are crucial papers that shape a million futures. Students are reportedly apprehensive that the revised papers might be tougher than the ones they have cleared. This possibility cannot be dismissed, as the fear that a tougher paper might adversely affect the students' prospects.

The CBSE failed at multiple points. It failed to ensure the sanctity of a system on which rests the future of our children. It failed again when the issue of a leaked mathematics paper was brought to the notice of CBSE chief Anita Karwal the night before the exam through an email to her official ID.

Like a true bureaucrat, the Gujarat-cadre IAS officer ostensibly ignored the mail. A prompt notice of the exam's postponement till a later date could have saved the day. The inconvenience of appearing for a cancelled exam is considerably lower than having to clear it twice.

The board was guilty twice of dereliction of duty and it failed the third time when it issued a casual notification asking the students to reappear for the exams while chief Karwal went incommunicado, ostensibly to take advantage of a long weekend. She eventually surfaced when the situation has spun out of control to declare that: We have taken the decision in favour of the students and in utmost fairness. Very soon we will announce the dates (for re-test). Students don't have to worry about anything. We are with them.

In case the CBSE chairperson needs reminding, forcing the students to suffer for board's incompetence isn't synonymous with "favour". Mere words that "we are with you" when actions tell otherwise are of no help. Karwal's reaction reveals the mindset of an official who has grown accustomed to wielding power sans accountability  in short an incompetent bureaucrat among many such who wheel the system and hinder, not help, India's progress. Her approach to a crisis speaks of irresponsibility, callousness and insensitivity. If the students have now broken into a protest, refused to be penalized for the Board's crime and demanded justice, their outrage is justified.

If the CBSE failed its students, so did the Union HRD ministry. Prakash Javadekar's failure lies not only in ensuring a fool-proof system for exam, he also failed miserably to mitigate the crisis. He had little to offer in news conferences beyond an assurance that such leaks won't happen again. Few take a politician's promise seriously. Javadekar appeared clueless and short of ideas beyond placatory noises when affected students and their families wanted to see some accountability.

However, the minister's bigger failure lies in his inability to crack the whip and showing Karwal the door. Surely some amount of accountability needed for a systemic failure on this scale? Justice, in this case, not only should be done but also seen to be done. The sum of all the chaos that we have witnessed so far is this  over 28 lakh students must appear for a retest while the CBSE refuses to show any contrition or tender apology for its recklessness, and the minister fails to hold even one individual within the system that he runs, as responsible.

The final responsibility for this real and perceived injury lies with the prime minister, as does the burden of his Cabinet colleague's inability to deal with a crisis. Modi's outreach to the young and proactive efforts to make them a part of the 'New India' story now lies in tatters. He might still be the most popular leader among students but he suddenly finds himself vulnerable to attacks from the Opposition and insinuations that his concern is 'vote-deep'.

PM wrote Exam Warriors, a book to teach students stress relief during exams. Next up: Exam Warriors 2, a book to teach students & parents stress relief, once their lives are destroyed due to leaked exam papers. pic.twitter.com/YmSiY0w46b  Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) March 30, 2018

The exam leaks destroy the hopes and futures of millions of students. The Congress always protected our institutions. This is what happens when institutions are destroyed by the RSS/BJP. Believe me when I say, this is only the beginning.  Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) March 29, 2018

The Congress has quickly jumped in to create some political capital out of students' crisis but in his zeal to target Modi, Rahul Gandhi may have forgotten that the erstwhile UPA regime was a sieve when it came to paper leaks. A memory refresher course on leaked question papers during Congress reign is available here, here and here.

This cannot be the BJP's argument, however. Instead of trying to deflect the blame or seek excuses, it must act, and do so quickly. The young doesn't forget.
Students and Congress youth leaders on Friday held protests in several parts of the national capital against CBSE board papers being leaked.

New Delhi: Students and Congress youth leaders on Friday held protests in several parts of the national capital against CBSE board papers being leaked, accusing the board of negligence and demanding immediate action against the guilty.

While some students gathered at Parliament Street in the heart of the city, members of the Congress' National Students Union of India (NSUI) began marching towards Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar's residence but were stopped.

Student groups and the Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee (DPCC) also demonstrated outside the CBSE headquarters in east Delhi's Preet Vihar, raising various demands, including an independent investigation.

"The leaks have exposed the capture of the highest academic institutions by the exam mafia under the watch of the Modi government as well as the abdication of authority by the HRD minister and the CBSE chairperson," NSUI leader Neeraj Mishra said.

He added that they would demand the resignations of Javadekar and CBSE chairperson Anita Karwal.

The NSUI's list of demands includes announcement of the retest of the Class 10 Maths and the Class 12 Economics papers as early as possible. They are also demanding that students should not be forced to take the retest.

Though the NSUI march was stopped at the Udyog Bhawan metro station, a short distance from Javadekar's Kushak Road residence, NSUI president Fairoz Khan and DUSU vice president Kunal Sehrawat were taken by Delhi Police to meet the minister.

Javadekar assured them that a decision on the issues raised by them would be taken by the end of the day, Sehrawat said.

A delegation of the RSS-backed ABVP also met the union minister raising similar demands, including necessary procedural changes to ensure "leak-proof" exams and early declaration of the retest dates keeping in mind other competitive exams, said a leader.

The Congress' Delhi wing, DPCC, shouted slogans outside the CBSE headquarters, demanding an independent investigation into the issue.

Earlier in the day, scores of students also demonstrated outside the CBSE headquarters, asking for an early resolution to their problems.

The CBSE announced a retest of the two papers earlier this week following reports that the papers were leaked.
Siddaramaiah answers Narendra Modi's aggressive nationalism with equally strong Kannadiga sub-nationalism. He counters Modi's Hindutva politics with caste arithmetic and Modi's development talk is welfare

As the Karnataka poll battle turns into Narendra Modi-Siddaramaiah personality clash, BJP suffers from a deficit which Congress had in Gujarat. Unlike in other states where BJP relies on the Modi cult, the saffron party plans to win the Karnataka poll riding on the popularity of Lingayat icon BS Yeddyurappa despite his tainted image.

Yeddyurappa's 'ghar wapsi' helped BJP in 2014 prompting the party to depend upon the same social engineering model. But, Siddaramaiah cleverly discounted the Yeddyurappa factor by rallying Lingayats on religious identity card forcing BJP to bring in the Modi factor into a south Indian state where 'Kannadiga Asmitha' is assiduously cultivated by its political patrons.

BJP countered Congress' revitalised campaign in Gujarat led by a transformed Rahul Gandhi by rousing the 'Gujarati Asmitha' epitomised through Modi-Shah duo who personally led the party's campaign. The Karnataka chief minister now seeks to inflict the 'Kannadiga Asmitha' damage on Modi-led BJP's campaign avenging what Congress lost in Gujarat campaign trail.

The statistical trend certainly concerns Karnataka Congress. No incumbent government has come back to power since 1985. Besides, the Modi-led BJP won 17 of the 28 Lok Sabha seats in 2014 elections. The BJP still hopes to wrest power from Congress relying on the Modi mania. But, BJP's campaign themes are vulnerable. The party's time-tested mantra of politico-religious mobilisation is at work.

BJP calls Siddaramaiah anti-Hindu and Narendra Modi is expected to focus on this. But, such politics of polarisation may not work in the entire state except coastal Karnataka. The state has distinct geographical regions with varied economic and political landscapes. In other regions of Karnataka, more than the religion, caste appeal seems to be more effective. Siddaramaiah has mastered this social engineering called Ahinda philosophy. Ahinda is a Kannada acronym for minorities, backward classes, and Dalits. Through clever budgetary provisions and cultural engineering in the form of celebrating the anniversaries of OBC icons, besides Tippu Sultan, Siddaramaiah has put this Ahinda politics into practice. Siddaramaiah said that Ahinda as a socio-political philosophy can be used as a tool to prevent youths from backward classes and Dalit communities from joining the Hindutva brigade.

Thus, Siddaramaiah's social engineering can prove to be an effective antidote to Modi's Hindu nationalist narrative.

Modi's pet election theme is to promote himself as a messiah of development euphemistically called the Gujarat model of development. But, Siddaramaiah effectively counters this with his welfare economics, which critics may dismiss as political populism. But, his schemes like free rice, subsidised farm ponds, etc, have cut ice with the people as several regions of the state are economically backward and such sops certainly matter in elections.

Modi's common electioneering theme in Opposition-ruled states is that the state government has either misused the Central funds or did not deliver despite Central government generously routing funds to the state. But, the Karnataka Congress chief minister has already challenged this narrative by putting forth the North-South divide discourse. He has even roped in chief ministers of other South Indian states. The terms of reference of the 15th Finance Commission is the latest trigger.

In fact, Siddaramaiah is trying to pull state BJP leaders into the campaign debate. He can simply dismiss any support for Modi by stating that the election is for the chief minister's gaddi. Modi's proxy cannot be Modi. This was the tactics RK Hegde adopted against Rajeev Gandhi when the latter could attract large crowds.

Siddaramaiah is a typical Congress chief minister akin to YS Rajasekhara Reddy of united Andhra Pradesh. He is a regional satrap in a national party. The electoral history reveals that Modi has been vulnerable if he is pitted against regional leaders. The election results in Bihar and Delhi since 2014 illustrate this.

Congress is normally known for myriad leaders indulging in constant infighting for the chief minister's gaddi. Karnataka is no exception. But, Siddaramaiah through his personalised politics and governance effectively silenced his critics within the party. This is more similar to what Modi could accomplish in BJP.

Unlike in Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat, Congress' organisational machinery is strong in Karnataka as the party is not only in power but won the local bodies elections too in February 2016. Besides, Siddaramaiah is adept at political management as he encouraged defection of Janata Dal (S) MLAs into Congress. The BJP cannot find fault with this as its earlier regimes did much worse.

Siddaramaiah answers Modi's aggressive nationalism with equally strong Kannadiga sub-nationalism. Siddaramaiah counters Modi's Hindutva politics with caste arithmetic which the chief minister has even philosophised. Siddaramaiah's answer to Modi's development talk is welfare.

Howsoever great public speaker Modi may be his Hindi oratory can easily be balanced if not surpassed by Siddaramaiah's Kannada articulation. Finally, Modi's attack on Siddaramaiah rule as corrupt cuts no ice with the Karnataka electorate as BJP's chief ministerial nominee Yeddyurappa was thrown out of the party on corruption charges. Amit Shah, in fact, inadvertently referred to Yeddyurappa regime as corrupt during his recent visit to the state.

(The writer is former MLC in Telangana, former editor of The Hans India, and professor of journalism at Osmania University)
Union Minister Giriraj Singh on Friday accused the Congress of inciting communal violence in Bihar and West Bengal, saying this was being done to 'weaken' the majority Hindu community at these places.

Lucknow: Union Minister Giriraj Singh on Friday accused the Congress of inciting communal violence in Bihar and West Bengal, saying this was being done to "weaken" the majority Hindu community at these places.

At a brief stop over at the circuit house in Allahabad, while on his way to Pratapgarh, the senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader, known for his controversial comments, alleged all this was happening on the directions of Congress president Rahul Gandhi under "a well-planned conspiracy".

"Rahul Gandhi is working overtime to disrupt communal harmony and to weaken Hindus," he claimed, adding that the Congress chief's only aim is to discredit the Narendra Modi government and they are weakening Hindus to split the nation.

"Wherever the Hindus are being weakened, incidents like those taking place in Bihar and West Bengal happen," he said, but declined to elaborate of the communal unrest in some districts of Bihar as he has not been visiting his home state for some time.

He also defended the decision of the Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh for inserting 'Ramji' in the name of Dalit icon Bhimrao Ambedkar and added that there was nothing wrong in it as "this was the real name of the Architect of the Constitution".

Ambedkar belongs to everyone, irrespective of caste or creed and hence he cannot be owned by any person or party, he said in an apparent reference to the Bahujan Samaj Party, which has been crying foul over the name change.
The Karnataka Congress on Friday filed a complaint to the Election Commission against Amit Shah and other BJP leaders for violation of model code of conduct

The Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee on Friday filed a complaint with the Election Commission against Amit Shah and other BJP leaders for violating the model code of conduct.

#BREAKING -- KPCC complaint against BJP President Amit Shah and other BJP leaders for giving Rs 5 lakhs for the family of Raju in Mysore in an alleged violation of model code of conduct. #BattleForKarnataka pic.twitter.com/4lwWTcAokS  News18 (@CNNnews18) March 30, 2018

According to CNN News18, the Congress alleged that the BJP president handed over a cheque of Rs 5 lakh to the family of of H Raju, an RSS worker who was murdered in 2016. The Congress has alleged that this is a "gross" violation of the model code of conduct. Amit Shah, who is on a two-day visit to the poll-bound state met the family of Raju in Kyatamaranahalli on Friday morning. Raju was killed on the Udayagiri Main Road on 13 March, 2016, in broad daylight, Deccan Herald reported.

The police later arrested one accused, but the remaining accused are still absconding, the report added. Speaking to the media, the BJP president has said that the modus operandi of the killing of Raju was similar to that of the killing of 22 of 24 party workers. Shah has alleged that the state police has not taken any action despite this, The Times of India reported. The report further quotes the BJP president as saying, "If Siddaramaiah and the Congress party believe that by use of violence they can stop the flow of our ideology, then they are living in a world of dreams."

In the complaint, the Congress has claimed that Shah handed over a cheque of Rs 5 lakh to the victim's family. BJP's chief ministerial candidate BS Yeddyarappa, Union minister Ananth Kumar and MP Pratap Sinha too accompanied Shah.

Congress alleged that "Shah visited the state and Mysore many times but never made an effort to visit the family earlier. Thus it is safe to presume in the light of the coming elections, that the money was paid with the intent to woo the voters".
The ruling Congress on late Thursday expelled its senior Karnataka legislator MV Guttedar from the party for deciding to join its rival BJP ahead of the 12 May state Assembly election.

Bengaluru: The ruling Congress on late Thursday expelled its senior Karnataka legislator MV Guttedar from the party for deciding to join its rival BJP ahead of the 12 May state Assembly election.

"Afzalpur MLA and Karnataka Housing Board Chairman MV Guttedar has been expelled from the party for six years, for his anti-party stand," said the party's state unit in a statement Bengaluru, quoting Parameshwara.

A six-time legislator from the state's northern Kalaburgi district, Guttedar met BJP's state unit president BS Yeddyurappa in the city earlier in the day and told the media later that he had decided to quit the Congress as he was ignored by its leadership and was denied ministership despite his seniority.

"I have decided to join the BJP under the leadership of Yeddyurappa, quitting Congress," Guttedar told reporters in Bengaluru later.

Singling out Congress leader in the Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge for the raw deal meted to him by the party, Guttedar said some leaders have been treating the party as their family property.

"Only sycophancy is rewarded in the Congress. A six-time MLA like me got nothing from the party, whereas a first-time MLA like Priyank, son of Kharge, was made minister with two-three portfolios, lamented Guttedar.

Guttedar is likely to join the BJP in the presence of its national president Amit Shah at Mysuru on Friday or Saturday.

"Many of my supporters will also be joining the BJP with me," he added.
In the wake of violence over Ram Navami processions in West Bengal, BJP chief Amit Shah constituted a four-member committee comprising senior party leaders, who would visit the state and submit a report to him in this regard

New Delhi: In the wake of violence over Ram Navami processions in West Bengal, BJP chief Amit Shah on Friday constituted a four-member committee comprising senior party leaders, who would visit the state and submit a report to him in this regard.

Shah condemned the violence in Asansol in West Bengal and said "such incidents are unfortunate and painful", the saffron party said in a statement.

The four-member committee the BJP chief formed comprises the party's national vice-president Om Mathur, spokesperson Shahnawaz Hussain and two MPs  Roopa Ganguly and VD Ram.

The committee members will visit the state and submit a report to Shah, the statement said.

Earlier, the BJP had hit out at West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee over the incidents of violence in the state and accused the Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo of doing politics while the state was burning.

A clash had broken out between two groups over a Ram Navami procession at Raniganj, near Asansol, on Monday. One person was allegedly hacked to death while a deputy commissioner of police had lost a hand after being hit by a bomb.
Those who think that the Karnataka Assembly election will set the tone for national politics are bound to be overwhelmed by the next set of political calculations that may emerge from the Assembly elections in Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh

In India, every election is unique in its own way. Each can be called a trendsetter for future politics, although the reality is that an election often resets established political equations. Those who think that the Karnataka Assembly election, to be held on 12 May, will set the tone for national politics are bound to be overwhelmed by the next set of political calculations that may emerge from the Assembly elections in Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh later in the year.

With the Lok Sabha election still a year away, the state Assembly elections or by-elections can give political analysts a broad pointer to the emerging political contours. But its reliability would be highly suspect given the fact that the Indian electorate has over the years acquired the features of a flash mob.

Take for instance a slogan that was coined after the BJP's drubbing in three by-elections in Rajasthan in February: "Rani teri khair nahin; Modi tumse bair nahin (The queen will not be spared although we have nothing against Modi)". Obviously, this slogan was not coined by any media consultant or expert in giving currency to catchy slogans. Far from it, it came impromptu from ordinary people using social media. Of course, the anger against Vasundhara Raje Scindia is quite palpable in Rajasthan.

Similarly, in the Karnataka elections, many variables will be at play. The Congress made a smart move to fight the election on state-specific local issues, shifting the focus away from the personality of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The shrewd politician that he is, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah had raised the issue of Kannada sub-nationalism by hoisting a separate flag for the state. He also granted the status of religious minority to the powerful Lingayat community, seeking to wean them away from the Hindutva fold.

All this appears smart and sound  in theory. But there is little doubt that Siddaramaiah has been bearing the brunt of a very strong anti-incumbency mood in his state. Although he may be known as an astute politician, he is not regarded as a performer in the state. Besides deteriorating law and order, the state has been facing serious handicaps in building infrastructure. The lack of job-creation and extent of rural distress are quite evident when one travels in the state. Hence, Siddaramaiah's last ditch attempt to retain his turf is through the usual tactics of playing with emotions.

Of course, emotions play a critical role in Indian politics. But rarely have they played a role in rescuing the fortunes of a losing leader. If Siddaramaiah emerges as an exception, he must thank his stars. But there is little doubt that he has muddied the Karnataka election waters so much that it has become difficult for political analysts to discern a clear trend. This handicap of political analysts does not apply to the electorate that may have taken a decision by now about the vote.

The Karnataka election will be closely followed by crucial elections in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh where the BJP has to defend its turf. And there are ample chances of the ruling party losing ground in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh should the electorate's disillusionment with their respective state government be taken as an index. In Madhya Pradesh, the stories of rural distress and corruption are being circulated furiously. And some of them carry an enormous amount of credibility as well. The anti-incumbency sentiment that the Raje government is facing was clearly reflected in the latest by-elections in the state.

By all accounts, there are bound to be varied election results in the state Assemblies in the run-up to the Lok Sabha election. But it would be untenable to prepare a collage of the political landscape of 2019 election on the basis of conflicting results of these Assembly elections. In most of these states, the elections will be contested on the performance of local leaders. Most of the state Assembly elections or by-elections are fought on local issues that do not take the national scenario into consideration.

Apparently, this is emphasised time and again in the political history of the country. For instance, in the 1960s, although the anti-Congressism had swept across the country dislodging the Congress from power in various states, Indira Gandhi won the 1971 Lok Sabha elections hands down. More recently, the BJP lost the 2012 UP Assembly elections abysmally even though in the Lok Sabha elections in 2014, the party and its ally won 73 out of the 80 seats. Despite the BJP's impressive show in Bihar, winning 31 of the 40 Lok Sabha seats, it lost the state Assembly elections badly only a year later. The same story was repeated in Delhi, where the party won all seven seats in the Lok Sabha, only to face the most conclusive loss in the Assembly elections soon afterwards.

The Lok Sabha election is a different ball game altogether.

Unlike state Assembly elections where local issues will be at play, the Lok Sabha elections in 2019 will be dominated by a discourse in which Modi's persona will loom large. Modi's performance, credibility and his formidable skill at political management will be put to the test against his rivals whose possibility of coming together is still a story in the making. Given past experience, Modi has a unique ability to spin a powerful positive narrative out of most adverse situations. In a situation where the electorate often gets swayed by smart slogans and dumbing-down by social media, one year is a long, long time in politics.
Reuters

A committee of British lawmakers published written evidence on Thursday provided by a whistleblower who says information about 50 million Facebook users ended up in the hands of political consultancy Cambridge Analytica.

Cambridge Analytica said the documents did not support whistleblower Christopher Wylies testimony to the committee this week. Wylie, who formerly worked for Cambridge Analytica (CA), alleges the data was used to help to build profiles on American voters and raise support for Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

He also alleges that CA was linked to Canadian firm AggregateIQ (AIQ), which he says was involved in the development of the software used to target voters. AggregateIQ, he says, received payment from a pro-Brexit campaign group before the 2016 referendum when Britain voted to quit the European Union.

This was co-ordinated with the lead Vote Leave group in a breach of British electoral funding rules, Wylie alleged. Vote Leave denies any wrongdoing.

Wylie appeared before the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee of the British parliament on Tuesday. The committee said Wylie provided it with documents including a services agreement between AIQ and SCL Elections, an affiliate of Cambridge Analytica, dated September 2014.

Reuters was unable to independently verify the authenticity of the documents made public by the committee. None of these documents support the false allegations made in Tuesdays hearing, Cambridge Analytica said in a statement, adding that Wylie had left the company in July 2014 and would have no direct knowledge of its work or practices since then.

It is wrong to suggest that Cambridge Analyticas earlier relationship with Aggregate IQ implies that we were involved with their work for Vote Leave. Cambridge Analytica did no work in any capacity in the 2016 EU referendum.

AIQ did not respond to a Reuters request for comment after Tuesdays committee hearing, but in an earlier statement said it had never entered into a contract with Cambridge Analytica and had never been part of the firm.
Reuters

French President Emmanuel Macron promised 1.5 billion ($1.85 billion) of public funding into artificial intelligence (AI) by 2022 in a bid to reverse a brain drain and catch up with the dominant US and Chinese tech giants.

The investment is part of an AI strategy laid out by the centrist leader at the elite College de France research institute in Paris and builds on a report that points to the assets and drawbacks of France in the field.

Business-friendly Macron wants to turn France into a startup nation and bets that easing labour laws and higher investments technology will create jobs, alleviate the domination of Alphabets Google, Facebook and lay out the seeds for Europe-based champions.

Theres no chance of controlling any effects (of these technologies) or having a say on any adverse effect if weve missed the start of the war, the president said on 29 March in front of a row of ministers and top executives, including BNP Paribas Jean-Laurent Bonnafe.

He spoke between two blackboards covered with complex equations in the main amphitheatre of the institute, founded in the 16th century.

The first goal is to make better use of the French higher education system that trains computer engineers and mathematicians only to see them leave for jobs at top US tech companies. Some of them have secured high-level positions Google and Facebook, and Facebook, which opened an AI research centre in Paris in 2015.

What a waste, said Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire earlier on 29 March. France pays for the training of doctoral students who then head to the United States.

Lady Gaga of mathematics

The AI plan was inspired by a government-commissioned report by Cedric Villani, the self-styled Lady Gaga of Mathematics and winner of the mathematics equivalent of the Nobel Prize.

Villani, who is also a lawmaker in Macrons party, said in the report the brain drain to Silicon Valley companies showed the excellence of French schools and justified a doubling of their salaries, a proposal that was eventually left out.

The report also pointed to the need for greater collaboration between government research centres and private companies to keep the best minds at home, an idea that was praised by Macron and could lead an easing of the conditions needed for state researchers to work in for private companies.

Macrons AI plan calls for the opening up of data collected by state-owned organizations such as Frances centralized healthcare system to drive up efficiency through AI, the field in computer science that aims to create machines able to perceive the environment and make decisions.

The amount to be spent, about $450 million, represents a drop in the ocean of AI spending worldwide, which consultancy firm McKinsey estimated between $20 and 30 billion for the biggest tech companies alone in 2016.

In a sign Macrons efforts to woo top scientists and businesses may be starting to bear fruit, Samsung Electronics, Japans Fujitsu and London-based Google-owned DeepMind announced plans to beef up their operations in Paris earlier.

IBM also announced on Thursday its intentions to recruit 400 AI experts in France over the next two years.

Before unveiling his plan, Macron hosted a dinner with about a dozen AI experts at the Elysee Palace.

Guests included Yann LeCun, the New York-based Frenchman who until recently ran Facebooks AI research lab, and Demis Hassabis of London-based DeepMind, creator of the AlphaGo system that in 2016 beat an elite human player of the Chinese game Go.
PTI

The government has shot-off notices to Facebook and Cambridge Analytica on the data breach issue and will decide on action to be taken after receiving their responses, IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said on 29 March.

"We are very tough when it comes to data protection in India. Notice has gone from the Indian government to the two companies. We should wait for their reply. We will take action after their reply," Prasad told reporters.

Following up on its earlier warning, the IT Ministry had issued a notice on 28 March to social networking giant Facebook seeking its response over the user data breach and details of the measures it has put in place to ensure safety and prevent misuse of personal data.

The ministry raised five questions for Facebook, including whether the personal data of Indian voters and users has been compromised by Cambridge Analytica or any other downstream entity in any manner, and gave the networking giant a deadline of 7 April to send detailed response.

It questioned whether the company or its related or downstream agencies utilising the data on the social media platform have previously been engaged by any entity "to manipulate the Indian electoral process".

The letter sent to Facebook noted that it has largest footprint in India in terms of user base and sought its reply on proactive measures being taken by the company to ensure safety, security, and privacy of such large user data and to prevent its misuse by any third party.

A similar notice was earlier sent to Cambridge Analytica over media reports about questionable practices attributed to the UK-based firm in their efforts to influence elections by harvesting data of Facebook users.

Prasad further said that a UK parliamentary committee is conducting an investigation and added that he did not wish to comment on the views of one of its members.

"I will not comment on that. A parliamentary committee of Britain is doing an investigation, and one of the members in that has commented, so I should not make any comments on that. If that committee sends any report, then we can think on it," Prasad added.

The past few days have seen a global outrage over the breach of user data on Facebook, forcing the company to issue an apology. Data mining firm Cambridge Analytica has been accused of harvesting personal information of over 50 million Facebook users illegally to influence polls in several countries.

Facebooks data breach scandal sparked a furore in India with Prasad last week warning the firm of "stringent" action for any attempt to influence polls through data theft and threatening to summon Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, if needed.
Reuters

A cellphone application blocked by the Colombian commerce regulator said on Thursday it has not shared Colombian users data with Cambridge Analytica, the political consultancy that has been accused of violating Facebook users privacy to influence elections in Britain and the United States.

Colombia, which will hold presidential elections in May, on Wednesday blocked access to the Pig.gi app, which gives users free top-ups in exchange for receiving ads and completing surveys. The app has more than a million downloads in Colombia and Mexico combined.

The regulator said the app might be connected to Cambridge Analytica, accused by a whistleblower of improperly accessing data to target U.S. and British voters in recent elections.

A representative for the app told Reuters in an email on Thursday that Pig.gi did not have a relationship with the consultancy in the Andean country and that it has not shared any data gained from surveys of Colombian users with Cambridge Analytica. Pig.gi also said it had not yet been informed of the ban by the Colombian regulator.

Pig.gi users have the choice to share their opinions consensually in exchange for internet connectivity coins. Their opinions are always anonymized before they are sent in accordance with Colombian and Mexican law, the app said in a statement posted on its Facebook page.

The app cut ties with Cambridge Analytica in Mexico after the data scandal broke, saying it had shared results of two election polls of Mexican users with the consultancy and other partners.

The commerce regulator said it would comment when its investigation had concluded.

Facebook said on Wednesday it would end its partnerships with several large data brokers who help advertisers target people on the social network. The company says the information of about 50 million Facebook users wrongly ended up in the hands of Cambridge Analytica.

Cambridge Analytica has denied Facebook data was used to help to build profiles on American voters and build support for Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
IANS

The search for worlds circling stars far beyond our solar system will resume in the coming weeks with NASA's launch of a spacecraft scientists hope will enlarge the known catalogue of so-called exoplanets believed capable of supporting life.

NASA plans to send the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, into orbit from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket set for blast-off between 16 April and June on a two-year, $337-million mission.

The latest NASA astrophysics endeavour is designed to build on the work of its predecessor, the Kepler space telescope, which discovered the bulk of some 3,500 exoplanets documented during the past 20 years, revolutionising one of the newest fields in space science.

NASA expects TESS to detect thousands more previously unknown worlds, perhaps hundreds of them Earth-sized or "super-Earth"-sized  no larger than twice as big as our home planet.

Such worlds are believed to stand the greatest chance of having rocky surfaces or oceans and are thus considered the most promising candidates for the evolution of life, as opposed to gas giants similar to Jupiter or Neptune.

Astronomers hope to end up with anywhere from 10 to 30 more rocky exoplanets for further study.

The new probe will take about 60 days to attain its highly elliptical, first-of-a-kind orbit that will loop TESS between Earth and the moon every two and a half weeks.

Kepler's positioning system broke down in 2013, about four years after its launch, and it has nearly run out of fuel.

"So it's perfect timing that we'll be launching TESS to continue the great activity of looking for planets around stars other than our sun and thinking about what it might mean for life in the universe," Paul Hertz, NASA's director of astrophysics, told reporters at a news briefing in Washington on Wednesday.

TESS, roughly the size of a refrigerator with solar-panel wings, is equipped with four special cameras to survey 200,000 stars that are relatively near the sun and thus among the brightest in the sky, seeking out those with planets of their own.

Like Kepler, TESS will use a detection method called transit photometry, which looks for periodic, repetitive dips in the visible light from stars star caused by planets passing, or transiting, in front of them.

But unlike Kepler, which fixed its glare on stars within a tiny fraction of the sky, TESS will scan the majority of the heavens for shorter periods and focus much of its attention on stars called red dwarfs, which are smaller, cooler and longer-lived than our sun.

One reason is red dwarfs have a high propensity for Earth-sized, presumably rocky planets, making them potentially fertile ground for closer examination, said David Latham, TESS science director for the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Also because red dwarfs are so small, and their planets orbit more closely than the Earth does to the sun, the dip in light from a planetary transit of a red dwarf is more pronounced compared with a larger star, Latham said.

"It's easier to find interesting planets around smaller stars," he said.

Measuring dips in starlight can determine the exoplanet's size and orbital path. Further observations from ground telescopes can supply its mass and ultimately the planet's density and composition -- whether largely solid, liquid or gas.

Latham said fewer than 10 rocky, Earth- or super-Earth-sized planets have previously been confirmed, and NASA hopes to double or triple that number through the TESS mission.

The most favourable discoveries will undergo closer scrutiny by a new generation of larger, more powerful telescopes now under development that will search for telltale signs of water and "the kinds of gases in their atmospheres that on Earth are an indication of life," Hertz said.3

"TESS itself will not be able to find life beyond Earth, but TESS will help us figure out where to point our larger telescopes," he said.
Reuters

Uber Technologies Inc does not use the self-driving platform architecture of Nvidia Corp, the chipmakers Chief Executive Jensen Huang said on 28 March.

The ride-hailing service uses Nvidias graphics processing units known as GPUs, Huang told an audience on the final day of Nvidias GPU conference in San Jose, California.

Uber does not use Nvidia DRIVE technology. Uber develops its own sensing and drive technology, Huang said in response to a question asked at the conference.

The Nvidia DRIVE platform is used by over 370 companies developing self-driving technology, including automakers and robotaxi companies and makers of self-driving hardware, such as sensors.

Huangs comments provide more detail as to the relationship between Nvidia and Uber, one of its many partners.

Nvidias shares have fallen by about 9.5 percent since the company said on 27 March it was temporarily halting its self-driving tests on public roads out of respect for the victim in the 18 March accident involving an Uber self-driving vehicle. An investigation is ongoing.

The chipmaker is continuing tests on closed enclosures, the chief executive said.

Uber suspended self-driving tests in North America after an autonomous vehicle struck and killed a woman crossing a street in Arizona earlier in the month.
Reuters

Britains Information Commissioner welcomed Facebooks decision to end its partnerships with several large data brokers who help advertisers target people on the social network.

Facebook made the move after a scandal over how it handles personal information knocked billions of dollars off of its share price.

I welcome Facebooks announcement that it will be shutting down its partner category service, using third-party data to inform targeted advertising, said Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham in a statement on Thursday.

I have been examining this service in the context of my wider investigation into the use of personal data for political purposes and had raised it with Facebook as a significant area of concern, she added.
Reuters

The top U.S. telecommunications regulator on Thursday gave formal approval to a plan by Elon Musks SpaceX to build a global broadband network using satellites.

This is the first approval of a U.S.-licensed satellite constellation to provide broadband services using a new generation of low-Earth orbit satellite technologies, the Federal Communications Commission said in a statement.

The system proposed by privately held SpaceX, as Space Exploration Holdings is known, will use 4,425 satellites, the FCC said. SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai in February had endorsed the SpaceX effort, saying: Satellite technology can help reach Americans who live in rural or hard-to-serve places where fiber optic cables and cell towers do not reach.

The Federal Aviation Administration said on Wednesday that SpaceX plans to launch a Falcon 9 rocket on April 2 at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The rocket will carry a communications satellite, the FAA said.

The FCC said SpaceX has been granted authority to use frequencies in the Ka (20/30 GHz) and Ku (11/14 GHz) bands. Musk, who is also the founder and chief executive of electric automaker Tesla Inc, said in 2015 that SpaceX planned to launch a satellite-internet business that would help fund a future city on Mars.

SpaceX wanted to create a global communications system that Musk compared to rebuilding the internet in space. It would be faster than traditional internet connections, he said.

Over the past year, the FCC has approved requests by OneWeb, Space Norway and Telesat to access the U.S. market to provide broadband services using satellite technology that the FCC said holds promise to expand internet access in remote and rural areas across the country.

About 14 million rural Americans and 1.2 million Americans on tribal lands lack mobile broadband even at relatively slow speeds. FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democrat, said on Thursday that the agency needs to prepare for the proliferation of satellites in our higher altitudes.

She highlighted the issue of orbital debris and said the FCC must coordinate more closely with other federal actors to figure out what our national policies are for this jumble of new space activity.
At the same time, he said the US was using all its resources to defeat Islamic State and drive them out of the captured territory.

Washington: President Donald Trump on Friday said the US troops would withdraw from Syria "very soon" as he lamented that America has wasted $7 trillion in wars in the West Asia.

At the same time, he said the US was using all its resources to defeat Islamic State and drive them out of the captured territory.

We're knocking the hell out of ISIS. We'll be coming out of Syria, like, very soon. Let the other people take of it now, Trump said in Ohio where he had gone to deliver a speech on infrastructure.

"Very soon we're coming out. We're going to have 100 percent of the caliphate, as they call it  sometimes referred to as "land"  taking it all back quickly, quickly. But were going to be coming out of there real soon. Going to get back to our country, where we belong, where we want to be," he said.

Trump, in his remarks, lamented that US has wasted $7 trillion in wars in the West Asia.

"We spent $7 trillion in the Middle East. We'd build a school, they'd blow it up. We'd build it again, they'd blow it up. We'd build it again - hasn't been blown up yet, but it will be. But, if we want a school in Ohio to fix the windows, you can't get the money. If you want a school in Pennsylvania or Iowa to get federal money, you can't get the money," he said.

We spent $7 trillion in the Middle East. What we have for it? Nothing. Remember I used to say 'keep the oil' as a civilian. We never kept the oil. If we kept the oil, we would have been OK. If we kept the oil, we wouldn't have ISIS. Because you know who kept a lot of the oil? ISIS. That's how they funded themselves. They kept the oil. We didn't keep the oil. Stupid, stupid, he said.

As a result, Trump said, the US has little money for its infrastructure.

"We have to fight for our military. But we're becoming so strong again. And you watch - not going to take very long. I've asked Republicans and Democrats in Congress to come together and deliver the biggest and boldest infrastructure plan in the last half century. I don't think you're going to get Democrat support very much. And you'll probably have to wait until after the election, which isn't so long down the road," he said.

Earlier in the day, Defense Department Spokesperson Dana White said while the coalition has significantly degraded Islamic State, the important work remains to guarantee the lasting defeat of the extremists.

"Our commitment to win must outlast the so-called physical caliphate, and the warped ideas that guide the calculated cruelty of ISIS," she said.

This is a group that plots and launches terror attacks globally, White said, adding that they have no regard for anything decent or valuable in life.

"As long as they exist and bring death and destruction around the world, we will continue to degrade, destroy and ultimately defeat ISIS," she said.

We cannot allow our focus to deviate from the most important task of eliminating ISIS from the region. The ISIS terrorist network is more fragile than it was one year ago, but it still presents a capable and committed threat. ISIS is taking full advantage of any opportunity to regain momentum. We must not relent on ISIS or permit these terrorists to recover from their battlefield loses," White said.

Noting that the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have repeatedly shown that they are a capable force on the ground to defeat Islamic State, she said the US will continue to support the SDF in their fight against the extremists.

At a separate press conference, the US State Department alleged that Russia was not doing anything to help in Syria.

"Russia is the huge part of the problem for the tens of thousands of innocent civilians who have been killed and are still being killed each and every day as we look at the video that's coming out of Eastern Ghouta. Russia is responsible for that," State Department Spokesperson Heather Nauert said.

"Russia is directly responsible for propping up Bashar-al-Assad, who has been killing his own people for far, far too long - Iran also responsible. We don't anticipate that Russia is going to  based on their actions  to help right now," she said.
Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena has reduced the responsibilities of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe as a power struggle worsened within their uneasy coalition.

Colombo: Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena has reduced the responsibilities of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe as a power struggle worsened within their uneasy coalition.

Sirisena took away the central bank, the policy-making National Operations Room and several other institutions from the control of Wickremesinghe, who had held them since coming to power in January 2015.

The changes were published in a government gazette notice issued Wednesday which transferred the responsibilities to Finance Minister Mangala Samaraweera.

There was no official explanation for why the Central Bank of Sri Lanka had been taken away from the prime minister's control. In 2015 a central bank governor appointed by Wickremesinghe, Arjuna Mahendran, was accused of insider trading.

Sirisena appointed a special inquiry which cleared Wickremesinghe of any wrongdoing. But Mahendran was held responsible for passing sensitive information to his bond-dealer son-in-law Arjun Aloysius to make $75 million in undue profits.

Sirisena joined hands with Wickremesinghe's United National Party (UNP) to oust strongman president Mahinda Rajapakse in January 2015 after a decade in power.

But since then their alliance has fractured, with Sirisena clashing with free-market champion Wickremesinghe over economic policy.

Relations worsened further after their coalition did badly in local government elections last month.

The president blamed the premier for their electoral setbacks.

Earlier this year, Sirisena publicly lambasted Wickremesinghe and his UNP, saying they had mismanaged the economy. Sirisena said the current government was also more corrupt than the former regime they toppled together.

A section within Sirisena's party supports a no-confidence move against Wickremesinghe slated for April 4. However, the UNP is the largest single party in the 225-member assembly and commands a comfortable majority with the help of allies.

The premier could be brought down only if Sirisena can unite his own fractured Sri Lanka Freedom Party and engineer defections from Wickremesinghe's UNP.

Tensions between the coalition partners have also escalated over Sirisena's attempts to extend his presidential term by one more year till 2021, a move that was rejected by the Supreme Court earlier this year.

The UNP has suggested that it may go it alone at the next general election in 2020.

Presidential powers to sack the government and call early elections were removed through a constitutional amendment introduced in the early days of the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe coalition.
Washington earlier ordered the expulsion of 60 diplomats and shut down the Russian consulate general in Seattle.

Moscow (Russia): Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday Moscow would expel 60 US diplomats and close its consulate in Saint Petersburg in a tit-for-tat expulsion over the poisoning of ex-double agent Sergei Skripal.

Lavrov said the US ambassador had been informed of "retaliatory measures", saying that "they include the expulsion of the equivalent number of diplomats and our decision to withdraw permission for the functioning of the US consulate general in Saint Petersburg".

Washington earlier ordered the expulsion of 60 diplomats and shut down the Russian consulate general in Seattle.

Lavrov added that Russia would also issue tit-for-tat responses to the other countries that have expelled diplomats in a mass show of support for Britain which has blamed Moscow for the poisoning of Skripal and his daughter Yulia with a nerve agent in the city of Salisbury.

"As for the other countries it's also all symmetrical measures as to the number of people who will be leaving Russia from diplomatic missions, and that's all so far," Lavrov said.

He added that Russia was reacting to "absolutely unacceptable actions that are taken against us under very harsh pressure from the United States and Britain under the pretext of the so-called Skripal case."

He accused London of "forcing everyone to follow an anti-Russian course."

He said Britain had informed Moscow of the state of health of Yulia Skripal on Thursday and that Russia had asked again for access to her as a citizen.

Lavrov vowed at the briefing in Moscow that "we want to establish the truth" over the poisoning and accused Britain of "making mockery of international law."

He said that Russia had asked for a meeting with the executive council of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons on Tuesday to ask questions to "establish the truth."

"We are counting on our Western partners not evading an honest conversation," Lavrov said.
About 1.5 lakh Rohingya refugees, who fled violence in Myanmar to settle in crowded camps in Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar, are living in flood-prone areas and must be relocated ahead of the coming rainy season, said the UN

United Nations: About 1.5 lakh Rohingya refugees, who fled violence in Myanmar to settle in crowded camps in Bangladesh's Cox's Bazar, are living in flood-prone areas and must be relocated ahead of the coming rainy season, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said.

"In relation to Cox's Bazar, the monsoon is the biggest concern. We believe that about 1,50,000 people are in areas that are flood-prone or can be negatively impacted by the monsoon in a dangerous way for the people," he told reporters on Thursday.

The UN chief was responding to a question on the need to relocate the Rohingya refugees currently living in camps in the border town of Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh.

Guterres said he has had the opportunity to discuss with the Bangladesh government the best way to relocate these people. "And I think the best way to relocate these people is in higher areas that can be outside... treated to accommodate this group that, of course, is extremely vulnerable to the monsoon," he said.

He added that on-ground officials of the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and other agencies will be talking with the Bangladesh authorities on the issue. "We believe the higher ground is the best place for this kind of relocation," he said.

When asked why has he not yet appointed a special adviser on Myanmar, Guterres said he has been conducting a number of consultations for that appointment.

"I hope it will come soon. It is not an easy function that everyone is ready to accept, but I'm sure that we will have a solution soon," he said.

Veteran Indian diplomat Vijay Nambiar had served as UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's Special Adviser on Myanmar from 2010 till December 2016. Guterres is yet to name his successor.

Meanwhile, the World Health Organisation appealed to the international community to contribute generously to enable appropriate and timely health services to the Rohingyas in Cox's Bazar, now facing grave risks to their lives and health in view of the coming rainy season.

"This is one of the biggest humanitarian crisis in recent times. No single agency or the government of Bangladesh alone can meet the massive health needs of such a large population group," WHO South-East Asia Regional Director Poonam Khetrapal Singh said at a meeting of partners in Dhaka.

WHO said the country's health sector is grossly underfunded to meet the needs of 1.3 million Rohingyas in Cox's Bazar.

"The Rohingya population are settled in an area that is prone to cyclone and a terrain that would be flooded as soon as rains begin. The risk of outbreak of life threatening water and vector-borne diseases under such conditions is huge," Singh said.

Coordinating the work of over a 100 partners on the ground along with the Ministry of Health, WHO has facilitated the contingency plan for the rainy season and coordinated a simulation around it. The plan aims at continuity of health services during rains and floods to minimise the risk of disease and deaths among the affected population.

Since August 2017, nearly 7,00,000 minority Muslim Rohingya have fled violence in Myanmar across the border into Bangaldesh's Cox's Bazar, joining several hundred thousand more that were already settled there in overcrowded camps.

Since the start of the Rohingya crisis, 9,00,000 doses of cholera vaccine were administered to the refugees and their host communities, in addition to two vaccination campaigns for measles and three for diphtheria, which concluded earlier this week with WHO support.

"However, much of the health sector's capacity to respond depends on availability of resources," Singh said.

Moreover, the vulnerable population will need continued services for reproductive, maternal and child health, communicable and non-communicable diseases, as well as psychosocial support, the WHO regional director noted.

The WHO has appealed to partners for $16.5 million for continued support in 2018, which is part of the $113.1 million being sought by all health partners under the Joint Response Plan for the Rohingya crisis.
The US is on track to meet the targets of the Paris climate agreement despite President Donald Trump's plan to withdraw from the accord, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said

United Nations: The United States is on track to meet the targets of the Paris climate agreement despite President Donald Trump's plan to withdraw from the accord, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Friday.

Guterres said emissions-cutting plans put in motion by American businesses, regional governments and cities meant that the goals set by the former US administration which signed the deal in 2016 were within reach.

"We have seen in the cities, and we have seen in many states, a very strong commitment to the Paris agreement, to the extent that some indicators are moving even better than in the recent past," Guterres told reporters at UN headquarters in New York.

"There are expectations that, independently of the position of the administration, the US might be able to meet the commitments made in Paris as a country."

Under the deal, the administration of former president Barack Obama pledged to cut domestic greenhouse gas emissions 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.

Nearly 200 countries and parties have signed the landmark agreement after intense negotiations in Paris, where all nations made voluntary carbon-cutting pledges running to 2030.

The agreement is aimed at limiting global warming to within two degrees Celsius, but Guterres warned that more action was needed by 2020 to reach that goal.

Trump faced condemnation when he announced in June 2017 that the United States was pulling out, painting the accord as a "bad deal" for the US economy.

Under the agreement, the United States can formally give notice that it plans to withdraw in 2019, three years after the accord came into force, and the withdrawal would become effective in 2020.

Describing climate change as "the most systemic threat to humankind," Guterres said recent data on extreme weather events showed that "2017 was filled with climate chaos." "2018 has already brought more of the same," he said.

"Food security, health, stability itself all hang in the balance." Guterres is planning to host a major summit next year to take stock of progress in implementing the climate deal, but it remains unlikely that Trump would attend.
The daughter of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal is getting better after spending three weeks in critical condition due to a nerve toxin attack at his home in England

London: The daughter of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal is getting better after spending three weeks in critical condition due to a nerve toxin attack at his home in England, the hospital where she is being treated said on Thursday.

After the first known use of a military-grade nerve agent on European soil since World War Two, Britain blamed Russian president Vladimir Putin for the attempted murder, and the West has expelled around 130 Russian diplomats.

Russia has denied using Novichok, a nerve agent first developed by the Soviet military, to attack Skripal. Moscow has said it suspects the British secret services are trying to frame Russia to stoke anti-Russian hysteria.

British counter-terrorism police said they now believe Skripal and his 33-year-old daughter Yulia were poisoned with a nerve toxin that had been left on the front door of their home in the genteel English cathedral city of Salisbury.

Im pleased to be able to report an improvement in the condition of Yulia Skripal, Christine Blanshard, Medical Director for Salisbury District Hospital, said in a statement.

She has responded well to treatment but continues to receive expert clinical care 24 hours a day, she said.

Her father remained in a critical but stable condition, the hospital said. Last week, a British judge said the Skripals might have suffered permanent brain damage as a result of the attack.

Police said on Thursday they had placed a cordon around a childrens play area near the Skripals modest house as a precaution.

Yulia and her 66-year-old father were found slumped on a bench outside a shopping centre in Salisbury on 4 March.

Britain has blamed the attempted murder on Russia and expelled 23 Russians it said were spies working under diplomatic cover in retaliation.

Russia, which denies carrying out the attack, responded by throwing out 23 British diplomats. Moscow has since accused the British secret services of trying to frame Russia to stoke anti-Russian hysteria.

Enough is enough

The attack on Skripal, a former colonel in Russian military intelligence who betrayed dozens of Russian agents to Britains MI6 spy service, has plunged Moscows relations with the West to a new post-Cold War low.

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said late on Wednesday the Kremlin had underestimated the Western response to the attack, which also injured a British policeman.

Johnson told an audience of ambassadors in London that 27 countries had now moved to expel Russian diplomats over Moscows suspected involvement.

These expulsions represent a moment when a feeling has suddenly crystallised when years of vexation and provocation have worn the collective patience to breaking point, and when across the world  across three continents  there are countries who are willing to say enough is enough, Johnson said.

Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for Russias foreign ministry, told reporters in Moscow on Thursday Britain was breaking international law by refusing to provide information on Yulia Skripal despite the fact she was a Russian citizen.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia was watching closely a media report that Britain might limit Londons role in marketing Russian debt to investors.

Skripal, recruited by British spies while in Spain, ended up in Britain after a Cold War-style spy swap that brought 10 Russian spies captured in the United States back to Moscow in exchange for those accused by Moscow of spying for the West.

His house, which featured a good-luck horseshoe on the front door, was bought for 2,60,000 pounds ($3,60,000) in 2011. Skripal was listed as living there under his own name.

Since emerging from the world of high espionage and betrayal, he has lived modestly in the cathedral city of Salisbury and kept out of the spotlight until he and his daughter were found unconscious on 4 March.

In the years since he found refuge in Britain, he lost both a wife and son.

The attack on Skripal has been likened to the killing of ex-KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko in Britain. Litvinenko, a critic of Putin, died in London in 2006 after drinking green tea laced with radioactive polonium 210.

Russia denied any involvement in that killing.

An inquiry led by senior British judge Robert Owen found that former KGB bodyguard Andrei Lugovoy and another Russian, Dmitry Kovtun, carried out the murder of Litvinenko as part of an operation probably directed by Russias Federal Security Service.
.    26         40-  38-       .        .   8.30 .  18.30 .   26   8.00 .  16.30 .               38-       ...
Razer today announced that it will be rolling out the Android 8.1 Oreo update to everyone from mid to late April 2018. However, the developers preview is available for those who wish to try out the update before the official roll out.

Since the developers preview is an early release of the Oreo update, the company warns about the bugs and stability issues. It also mentioned that Manually flashing the Razer Phone by unlocking the bootloader will void your warranty. The company is skipping the 8.0 update and is directly pushing the 8.1 Oreo.

Attention Razer Phone owners! Were making the jump straight to Android 8.1 Oreo and were pleased to announce that the update will be coming to you mid to late April 2018.



Want in on the milk and cookies early? Download the Developer Preview now.  https://t.co/4ftaevUT4x pic.twitter.com/SIvzOQQDQo  R  Z  R (@Razer) March 29, 2018

While the company hasnt provided an official changelog, it is safe to assume that all the Oreo features like picture-in-picture, apps restrictions running in the background, notification dots by app icons, and more. The developers preview will come with February 5, 2018, security patch, which will also be the same security patch when the official version releases.

The company also clarified that the Developers preview will not contain any carrier-specific modifications and is same to everyone except for the VoLTE support, Wi-Fi calling support. If you have the Razer Phone and want to try out the 8.1 Oreo developers preview, you can download the update file from here and manually flash it.
Earlier this month, Xiaomi launched the Redmi Note 5 in China which was launched as Redmi Note 5 Pro in India. The Redmi Note 5 China variant has a couple of changes as compare to Redmi Note 5 Pro, it runs Android 8.1 (Oreo) with Treble support and has Dual 4G VoLTE support for both the SIM cards. Earlier, this week, MIUI Global Beta ROM for Redmi Note 5 Pro was leaked, which is based on Android 8.1 (Oreo).

We have installed this ROM on our unit and in case you also want to flash Android Oreo based MIUI Global ROM on your phone this guide will help you,

Requirements

Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 Pro with an unlocked bootloader  To Unlock the bootloader of your device, apply here for unlocking the bootloader.

MIUI ROM for Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 Pro  Download the ROM ZIP file from here, we have installed 8.3.29 build on our device and links for Latest ROMs are updated every day.

TWRP for Redmi Note 5 Pro  You can download the recovery file from here.

ADB software (For windows) / Android zip file (For Mac)

If you are on a Mac you need to

Extract the Android zip and place the folder on your Desktop.

Open Terminal

Type cd Desktop/Android

Enter ./ADB-Install-Mac.sh

Switch off the phone and boot it into Fastboot mode by long pressing Power and Volume down buttons simultaneously. Connect your phone to PC by a USB cable, open command prompt on your PC and navigate to the folder where you have downloaded TWRP Recovery ZIP. Type fastboot devices in command prompt and check if the device is detected by the system. If the system detects the phone, type fastboot flash recovery twrp_filename.zip and hit enter, the process will be completed in seconds. Now long press the Volume up and Power Button to boot the phone in recovery mode. It will ask to allow modifications, Slide towards right to allow Modifications. Select Wipe, and choose Advanced Wipe, tick on Dalvik / ART Cache, System. Data, Cache and then swipe towards right to Wipe. Go back and click on Install, navigate to the location where you have stored ROM file, its better to keep ROM file on SD Card or USB OTG drives. Select the ROM file and swipe towards right to flash. Click on Reboot and then System, it might show No OS Installed, but there is no need to worry and you can continue booting the device. Within 5 minutes device will boot with latest MIUI Beta ROM.

MIUI Global Beta 8.3.29 comes with April security patch as mentioned in About Phone section under Settings. This update also has support for Dual 4G VoLTE but it didnt work in our case, we tried with Jio and Airtel connections. The MIUI Beta ROM is based on Android Oreo 8.1 with Treble Support, the update also enables iPhone X-like gestures on the Redmi Note 5 Pro. If you face any issues installing let us know in the comments below.

Warning disclaimer: Bootloader and flashing ROM doesnt void warranty of Xiaomi devices, but FoneArena is not responsible for any damage or loss caused to your Redmi Note 5 Pro.
Itll take all the king's horses to put this Italian stallion back together.

Police in England have uncovered evidence of a major chop shop operation in a self-storage facility where the scattered remains of a $200,000 Ferrari California were recovered among parts from several stolen cars.

Authorities are searching through roughly 200 shipping containers at the Birmingham location, SWNS reports.

A steering wheel, dash board, trunk lid and a carbon ceramic brake unit worth thousands of dollars are a few of the recognizable pieces of the Ferrari that police said were destined for the black market.

Over $4 million worth of counterfeit alcohol and tobacco products were also discovered in the 30 containers examined so far.

This is a significant blow to organized criminals who wrongly believe they can operate under the radar and out of sight, Detective Inspector Rod Rose of the West Midlands Police said.
Corey Feldman recounted his harrowing alleged stabbing in minute detail.

The incident, which happened late Tuesday, allegedly began when Feldmans security guard claimed he and Feldman were being followed.

The cars pulling up to people almost looking like hes going to hit them, Feldman, 46, told TMZ on Wednesday night. And then [the other driver] slows down and aligns himself with our window on the passenger side  The guy on the passenger side, which is where my securitys sitting because Im driving  he starts giving [my security guard] the evil eye.

Feldman continued, describing a short guy, bald head, Mexican fellow who approached the vehicle. [My security guard is] like, Get back in your car. You might want to move away. Dont approach our car. And the guys like, What you gonna do about it? You got a gun? 

Somebody gets out of the passengers side when theyre right next to me. He comes over, I lock my door  He goes to pull the handle, it doesnt work. And then all of a sudden  he pulls it again with extra strength and the door flies open and he just lunges in, Feldman alleged. Hes got a weapon in his hand, he stabs at me one time.

Feldman claims that he immediately pulled his body back and shut the door after he felt the alleged puncture.

He got one stab in, that was it. And it was a very small [puncture], he said. It was bleeding, but it was like a dot. So I dont know if he just got me with just the tip of the knife, or if he got me with a syringe. Thats the part we dont know.

Feldmans rep previously told Page Six that the actor believes he was stabbed with a syringe.

A rep for the LAPD told Page Six that they are investigating the matter as a road rage incident and that no suspects have been named. The police also noted that it remains unclear what was used to stab Feldman.

Feldman believes that the attack was likely motivated by his campaign to out sexual predators in Hollywood.

One thing I can tell you for sure is that there is 100 percent for a fact that there is a conspiracy [against me], he insisted. I do know for a fact that that conspiracy has to do with every false accusation that youve heard about me in the media within the last six months  It all has to do with the pedophilia claims that Ive made.

I cant say that this incident was related, but what I can say is that its very odd that a group of Mexican guys would pull over a car, go as far as opening a door and stabbing the person inside, he added. If theyre going to do that kind of an aggressive move, theyre going to ask for a wallet at that point, theyre going to ask for your car keys, theyre going to ask for some kind of demand  The guy just got back in his car and left. That sounds pretty direct to me. That sounds like a message.

Feldmans attorney, Perry Wander, told Page Six, My client is paranoid and has a genuine concern because people have been trolling him on the internet and social media, both privately and publicly  I believe he has a genuine fear, which resulted in him hiring a security guard.

Wander said he believed the security guard didnt react appropriately to the incident and that it is likely a road rage case unrelated to Feldmans pedophilia ring fears, and advised his client to avoid social media for the near future.

The wound is not serious, but it shook him up and scared him, Wander added. Hes more on edge than he was before, and he was already on edge.

This article originally appeared in Page Six.
After a controversial season of The Bachelor, Arie Luyendyk Jr. and Lauren Burnham are moving in together.

Burnham, 25, is moving her possessions from her home in Virginia Beach, Virginia, to Luyendyks residence in Scottsdale, Arizona, People reported. The couple, who recently got engaged, are documenting their move on social media.

Luyendyk Jr., 36, posted a selfie of the two in the car with Burnhams dog while traveling through Tennessee.

MOST SHOCKING BACHELOR FINALE EVER? FANS, GOP STATE REPRESENTATIVE WEIGH IN ON ARIE

Gezellig, which translates to cozy in Dutch, wrote Luyendyk on an Instagram post.

The couple just recently returned from a trip to Europe, where they visited Barcelona and Iceland.

Bachelor fans were shocked at the reality shows season finale earlier this month. Luyendyk Jr. originally chose Becca Kufrin, 27, to be his future wife but changed his mind less than two months after the proposal.

BECCA KUFRIN SAYS DEEP DOWN SHE KNEW AFTER BACHELOR FINALE AS SHOCKED FANS SEND MONEY IN SUPPORT OF HER

Luyendyk Jr. had a change of heart because there was another woman on his mind  the runner-up, Burnham. His breakup with Kufrin was filmed and shown to the television audience. Kufrin was furious over the decision but has since been named next seasons Bachelorette.

On After the Final Rose, Luyendyk Jr. proposed to Burnham and the two have shared their time together on social media.

Were both very excited about marriage and starting a family, Burnham told People.
Jim Carrey once again provoked outrage Thursday after tweeting a photo of an open-robed President Trump rubbing his hairy chest in front of a bowl of ice cream. The actor and comedian directed the tweet to the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., asking if he could submit his "official portrait" of the president early.

"Its called, 'You Scream. I Scream. Will We Ever Stop Screaming?'" Carrey, 56, wrote in a tweet that has now been shared more than 18,000 times.

Carrey fans were quick to comment, some applauding the comedian for his "brilliant" and "truly inspired" art. While others labeled him a bully and called him out for being distasteful and disrespectful to the president.

"Hmm, use my influence to create change? Nah, I'll just bully everyone I don't like and call it "art". Ridiculous," one Twitter user replied.

"Trashy art inspired by a trashy human," another added.

"So disrespectful @JimCarrey. Movie career floundering? Dont care for either your movies or artwork," a woman said Thursday.

But Carrey doesn't seem to mind the mixed feedback. He has been showcasing his unusual -- sometimes graphic -- art on Twitter almost daily in the past few weeks. Last week, the comedian was under fire for portraying Trump as the Wicked Witch of the West.

"If you liked my last cartoon you may also enjoy... 'THE WICKED WITCH OF THE WEST WING AND PUTIN'S FLYING MONKEYS," Carrey tweeted, referring to the evil antagonist from "The Wizard of Oz."

Days prior, Carrey posted an image of a furrow-browed woman resembling White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders, calling it a "portrait of a so-called Christian whose only purpose in life is to lie for the wicked."

"Monstrous!" he added.

His spokesperson wouldn't confirm Sanders' identity to The Associated Press, but to many Twitter users the clarification wasn't necessary -- it was obvioius.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, Sanders' father, condmened the portrait and called Carrey "classless."

"Pathetic BULLY, sexist, hater, bigot & 'Christaphobe" who "attacks @PressSec for her faith; what would be hypocritical Hollywood reaction if he called someone a 'so-called Muslim' or 'so-called Jew?'" he tweeted on March 19.

It's not unusual for Carrey to make political statements with his art. He also posted an anti-Trump cartoon during Trump's first official State of the Union address in January.

"...and the blind shall see and the lame shall walk and the cheats shall inherit the earth!" he wrote.

Fox News' Nicole Darrah contributed to this report.
Martha Stewart was reliving her glory days when she posted a steamy "Throwback Thursday" picture of herself donning a black strapless dress, sheer tights and high heels.

The TV personality reminisced on the social media platform Thursday with a caption that read, "My assistant found this great photo of me in my library at turkey hill Wish it was taken last month."

Photographer Henry Wolf was credited with taking the photo, which garnered nearly 40,000 likes, featuring Stewart with her legs outstretched posing in a vintage ottoman chair in front of a bookcase.

Fans were quick to offer their praise and admiration of the picture.

"Smoking hot!" one Instagram user replied.

"You will always be a fox," another assured the star.

"Oh my goodness! Please post more and more forever," one user begged.

The 76-year-old told the TODAY Show Friday that the picture was taken during a "boring photo shoot" most likely during the '80s.

"That's what I look like when I go out," Stewart joked.

Stewart mentioned that the photo was taken in Turkey Hill, which she describes on her website as "a beautiful farmhouse" in Westport, Connecticut, which she bought in 1971.

"The house, on a tract of land that stretched south toward Long Island Sound and had once been an onion farm, came with two acres of deep, loamy soil, a few large trees, and not much else," Stewart explained.

Stewart's throwback may have caught a few people off guard, but avid fans weren't surprised to see the star's bashful pose.

"Must have been in her modeling days. Gorgeous!" one user pointed out.

"YES MARTHA YESSSS! I see that arched left foot. #timelessmodel," another added.

Before Stewart became a multi-million-dollar TV personality, she tried a career in modeling. The star used money from gigs to pay her college tuition, InStyle Magazine reported.

"It was quite awhile ago and it was really fun, Stewart told a fan who asked her about her modeling days in Paris. We worked really, really hard. We did photography during the daytime and maybe a show and then at night when the couture dresses were available for photography we then worked all night modeling the couture. So it was really a busy time, but lots of time for parties, too."
Respected DePauw University professor Jeffrey McCall accused CNN of doubling down on sexual escapades in a piece that will surely draw the ire of the networks president, Jeff Zucker.

McCall penned an op-ed for The Hill Friday headlined, CNN lost its way in struggle to find an audience, and blasted the increasingly liberal network for its recent programming decisions, such as promoting the anti-Trump Chris Cuomo.

McCall mocked CNNs Anderson Cooper as seeking to corner the market on interviewing shapely women who have been friendly with Trump after the AC 360 host sat down with both Playboy playmate Karen McDougal and porn actress Stormy Daniels.

CNNs warped obsession with reporting about supposed adultery demonstrates a larger problem at the once-proud and groundbreaking channel, McCall wrote.

With a primetime lineup of Cuomo and Cooper, CNN will have back-to-back evening anchors representing elite, east coast, powerful families, McCall said.

CNN will have back-to-back evening anchors representing elite, east coast, powerful families.  DePauw University professor Jeffrey McCall

CNN recently announced that Cooper, the Vanderbilt family scion, will have his show slashed in half to make room for Cuomo, the son of Democrat icon Mario Cuomo and younger brother of New Yorks powerful governor, Andrew.

Yet CNN will still wonder why working class viewers and people in the heartland cant relate to its on-air talent, he added.

Cooper and Cuomo intersected in the early 1990s as wealthy scions at Yale, a Gothic stomping ground for the Northeast's most privileged, and both went on to careers at liberal ABC News, where they worked until their careers there faltered and they decamped to CNN.



Zucker, who helped increase Trumps star power by greenlighting The Apprentice when he was an executive at NBC, has seemingly installed an anti-Trump programming strategy. The result has been a president of the United States who often refers to CNN as fake news, and a network filled with anchors who dont exactly hide their disdain for Trump.

The professor also pointed out that Danielss attorney, Michael Avenatti, gets more face time on CNN than some of the channels anchors, and he doesnt think Zuckers network is doing a good job covering the sleazy stories.

It has apparently not occurred to the CNN producers that Avenatti is playing them for all the publicity he can get, McCall wrote. There might well be journalism to be had in the sagas of McDougal and Daniels, but CNN has found little of it.

McCall noted that sensationalism must eventually lead to substantive news to be considered actual journalism.

A journalistic conclusion that Trump is a cad hardly moves the this is news needle on the public barometer, he wrote. CNNs focus is not on news, but on distracting itself and the nations news consumers with peripheral and sensational gibberish that fails to enhance the national dialogue.

The op-ed also noted that CNN mentioned McDougal and Daniels significantly more often than the recently passed government spending bill, adding that the bill isnt photogenic, and therefore not as critical to Zuckers vision for the network as Playmates and porn stars.

McCall went on to bash CNNs dismal ratings, mock its the most trusted name in news slogan and call out White House correspondent Jim Acosta for working hard to be the Trump administrations harshest antagonist.

The scathing op-ed concludes by stating that America could use a down-the-middle cable news network, but McCall doesnt think CNN is the answer with the current leadership and current anchor talent in place.
Stephen Colbert has been known to throw punches President Trump's way with nightly monologues and headline skits that criticize the president and his administration. However, Thursday night the Late Show host did something he hasn't done before: apologize.

While discussing the popular "Roseanne" revival, which returned this week after a 20-year hiatus, Colbert stopped to admire the sitcom's stellar reviews  just hours after Trump announced that he called Roseanne Barr, who plays unabashed Trump supporter Roseanne Conner in the show, to congratulate her on the success.

"The reason why Trump crowed about the ratings is because on the show the character Roseanne agrees with Donald Trump, and a lot of people have called that refreshing," Colbert says of the show's political approach. "Well, I would like 18 million people to watch my show."

Therefore, Colbert said he "sincerely" apologizes to Trump, admitting that there is something the pair can agree on: "CNN lies." The comedian was referring to Trump's repeated accusation that the cable TV network disseminates fake news.

"I take everything back. I apologize. Donald Trump is a great president, come on."  Stephen Colbert

OMAROSA TELLS STEPHEN COLBERT SHE DOESN'T REGRET 'TRYING TO BE A VOICE OF REASON' IN TRUMP ADMINISTRATION

Colbert continues, "Hear me out. Last night, we had my old friend Dana Carvey on the show, and he did a fantastic impression of the new national security adviser, John Bolton."

The next morning, Colbert said, he noticed CNN posted an article about the short skit with the headline, "Look who's playing John Bolton on SNL." Colbert then pointed to a screenshot of the headline, which was highlighted in bold letters.

CNN later issued a correction and updated the headline on the website to "Iconic 'SNL' star spoofs Trump staffing pick."

"A headline on our mobile homepage mistakenly identified this skit as taking place on 'SNL.' The skit took place on 'The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,' the network explained in an online correction. "Comedian Dana Carvey shows off his impression of President Trump's newly appointed national security adviser John Bolton."

"Fake news," Colbert commented on the network's alleged mix-up. "I take everything back. I apologize. Donald Trump is a great president, come on."

Colbert then gave the network a friendly reminder that he is not, in fact, the host of "SNL."

"Come on, CNN  this isnt SNL," he continued, as the audience applauded and roared with laughter. "Unless you think S-N-L stands for Stephens Nightly Laughs."

He then gave the network a few clues to look for in order to determine whether they're watching "SNL" or "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert."

STEPHEN COLBERT SAYS TRUMP SHOULD BE SPANKED REGULARLY AFTER STORMY DANIELS INTERVIEW

"Here's how you can tell that clip wasn't on Saturday Night Live: It was a Wednesday, we tape during the daytime and were not live," he said. "You got three things wrong in three letters. Still, its nice just to be recognized. So, thank you, MSNBC.

While Colbert insinuated he wanted to draw more conservative viewers (like those who watch "Roseanne"), he still continued to take jabs at the president. Earlier in the show, Colbert pointed out Trump's speech on infrastructure in Ohio, replaying an old clip of Trump saying he was always the "best" at building  even better than being president.

"Don't sell yourself short, sir: You suck at both," Colbert said.
CNNs stand-alone Turkish network CNN Turk, which has long been criticized for being a tool of Turkeys increasingly anti-American dictator, is getting a new owner, raising new questions about why CNN allows its storied name to be used by the controversial network  for a lucrative licensing fee.

A reported $890 million deal will hand control of CNN Turk and other key media outlets from the Dogan group, which paid CNN a license to independently operate the news network, to a conglomerate led by Erdogan Demiroren, an even stronger supporter of Turkish strongman Tayyip Erdogan, whose repressive policies have shuttered or disrupted dozens of media operations in recent years.

Fox News asked one of CNNs highest ranking executives about whether the sale would cause CNN to reconsider licensing its name to CNN Turk.

We will be meeting with the new owners in due course to discuss the implications of the sale. If, following those conversations, we have any reason whatsoever to believe the journalistic integrity of the channel could be compromised by the new owners, we will revoke the license, said Allison Gollust, CNNs worldwide executive vice president and chief marketing officer.

Its not clear, however, how much more CNN Turks oft-criticized journalistic integrity would have to suffer for the network to reconsider its relationship. Critics say the network that infamously aired a nature documentary about penguins - while thousands of Turkish protestors were being brutalized in the streets by Erdogan security forces back in 2013 - is already so far gone that its hard to imagine what will change.

"It is not that significant, journalist Abdullah Bozkurt, who says he has been targeted by the Erdogan regime in the past, told Fox News about the sale, saying the previous ownership was parroting Erdogans narrative anyway.

Speaking before the sale, Bozkurt told the Daily Caller that CNN Turk is already damaging the name and reputation of CNN brand.

Gollust noted that CNN Turk operates as a wholly independent channel, and editorial decisions are not made by CNN's stateside executives. However, the bio of CNN executive vice president Tony Maddow specifically says he is responsible for an international news and information portfolio that includes CNN Turk.

Gollust said CNN licenses its brand to several channels around the world, but claimed her company isnt getting a piece of this deal.

Neither Time Warner, Turner nor CNN would stand to profit in any way from the sale of Dogan empire, she said. We have no ownership nor financial interest whatsoever in CNN Turk, other than the license fee.

CNN did not respond when asked why it would allow a Turkish network to use its branding for only a license fee, and declined to reveal how much CNN receives as a license fee. Nor did CNN respond when asked if CNN Turk's decision to air a penguin documentary while dissent was being brutally suppressed met CNN's journalistic standards.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson recently said CNN Worldwide President Jeff Zucker peddles his networks airtime to repressive regimes around the world, and used CNN Turk as an example. They use the CNN brand to brainwash and control their populations, Carlson said.

Gollust told Fox News that Zucker has nothing to do with the editorial content at CNN Turk. But Carlson argued, as others have, that Zuckers brand is being used to add credibility to the network.

Its state-controlled propaganda, and Jeff Zucker is getting rich from it, Carlson said.

Turkish media organizations have for years become less critical of the Erdogan regime, which has worked steadily to erode press freedom across the country. Part of the reason for the sale, Bozkurt and others have suggested, was to head off any remaining meddling in upcoming elections this year in Turkey.

Demiroren, the namesake of the new ownership group, is strongly pro-Erdogan, and reportedly once called the Turkish president his boss. He was even caught apologizing to Erdogan for a negative newspaper article, according to The New York Times. Demiroren was heard weeping, promising Mr. Erdogan that he would find the source, the Times reported.

The deal marks an increasing monopolization of opinion author and Turkey commentator Andrew Finkel told Reuters. In fact, some believe that Dogan was forced to sell.

"He had to do it," Turkish TV channel Tele1 reporter Aysenur Arslan recently said, according to the Stockholm Center for Freedom. If he didnt sell going to prison was in the cards.

Whatever the fate of the new deal for the larger CNN operation, there is little hope the sale will improve the situation of journalists in Turkey. Citing the Turkish Journalists Association, Reuters reported that 154 journalists were in jail as of January for acting as independent media members. Many other media organizations have simply been shut down altogether.

Fox News Alex Pfeiffer, a producer for "Tucker Carlson Tonight," contributed to this report.
New details have emerged concerning last week's assault of a 17-year-old McDonald's employee in Wisconsin.

The Glendale Police Department has charged a 19-year-old woman, identified as Debreaka Jones, with disorderly conduct and physical abuse of a child in connection with the incident, FOX 6 News reports. Police say Jones may also face felony assault charges over the incident.

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Jones had become angry over getting the wrong breakfast order  she wanted a bacon breakfast sandwich, but instead received a sausage biscuit  leading her to assault the employee working behind the counter, according to a criminal complaint.

The incident originally took place on the morning of March 18, after the suspect and her friend pulled up to the drive-thru of McDonalds and placed a breakfast order for the bacon sandwich, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. The customer was mistakenly provided with the wrong food, however, and soon turned violent.

What the [expletive] is this? I didn't order no sausage biscuit, said the woman, who then threw the food back at the drive-thru operator.

SEE IT: 'WILD' FIGHT BREAKS OUT AT WENDY'S IN MILWAUKEE

A McDonalds manager reportedly gave Jones a new sandwich, though she and her friend returned to the restaurant  this time entering the dining area  and continued to berate the manager, claiming her order was still wrong. The manager then provided her a refund, according to FOX 6 Now.

The suspect, still angry, walked behind the counter while continuing to argue with the manager, where she ended up shoving a 17-year-old female employee into a fry station.

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In footage of the incident, the employee can be seen getting knocked backward and hitting her head before slumping to the ground. She was later transported to St. Josephs hospital in Milwaukee for evaluation, WISN reported.

The Glendale Police Department later announced on Facebook that they had apprehended the suspect thanks to dozens of tips provided by the public.
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A woman who thought she had bad Chinese food had the surprise of her life when she discovered that her excruciating pain wasn't the result of too much MSG or a two-day-old egg roll.

She was actually pregnant.

Very pregnant.

Crystal Gail Amerson thought she was suffering from food poisoning early Sunday when she awoke to stomach pains that had her running to the bathroom, according to the Pensacola News Journal.

The 29-year-old told the Journal, "I had Chinese food the night before and I kind of figured maybe I had food poisoning or something like that." It turns out, the Pensacola woman was 37 weeks pregnant and about to give birth to her second son.

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"The stomach pains were just excruciating and I could hardly move," Amerson said. "I think it was about 6:30 [a.m.] when [the ambulance] got there. ... It escalated so quickly that I was having contractions and we figured out kind of what was going on because at first we really didn't know what was going on."

During her first pregnancy, Crystal told the Pensacola News Journal she never felt a lot of pregnancy symptoms.

"I gained a little bit of weight, but I think with my first baby I didn't notice either," Amerson said. "I never gained that pregnancy shape, really. And then I wear scrubs to work because I work at a retirement home for Alzheimer's and dementia patients. So I guess the way they fit me as well, it was hard to notice anything or tell anything."

Dr. Julie DeCesare, an obstetrician-gynecologist with Sacred Heart Hospital, told the Journal it is possible for a woman to learn of her pregnancy just hours before going into labor, but not common.

"Sometimes a woman doesn't have a normal menstrual cycle so they don't notice when they don't have a period," DeCesare said. "Or they use a method of contraceptive so they think they can't get pregnant, but then that method fails. Or some I've seen are just flat out in denial."

SURPRISE BABY: WOMAN WHO THOUGHT SHE HAD KIDNEY INFECTION WAS IN LABOR

Dr. DeCesare said Amerson was a rare exception, and when it comes to warning signs, "usually by 20 weeks you can feel the baby kicking."

Little Oliver James was born in the back of an ambulance at 6:59 a.m. on Sunday, weighing 5.27 pounds and measured 18.9 inches long.
A California court judges ruling ordering coffee companies to put cancer warning labels on their products is not changing the minds of scientists and health professionals who say there is no credible evidence to warrant the dramatic move.

Some say that despite any well-meaning intention that may have prompted the ruling by Superior Court Judge Elihu Berle on Wednesday, it could end up unnecessarily confusing and even frightening people.

Many studies tying a chemical, acrylamide  which is formed when coffee beans are roasted  to cancer were conducted using animals who were given quantities much larger than a human would consume, J. Leonard Lichtenfeld, the deputy chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society, told Fox News.

The substance is present in many of our foods, not just coffee, said Lichtenfeld, who has worked in oncology for decades. There was a minor scare about it being in French fries, and foods that are cooked in higher temperatures. Demonstrating a direct cause to cancer is very difficult. You always have to put a [suspected] risk into perspective.

Im going to come right back and say we have other areas we need to put more attention to, he said. Smoking and obesity are some of those [risky] areas.

The Council for Education and Research on Toxics, a nonprofit group, sued Starbucks and about 90 other companies, including grocery stores and retail shops, under a state law that requires warnings on a wide range of chemicals that can cause cancer. One of those chemicals is acrylamide, present in coffee.

The Metzger Law Group, which filed the suit, says on its website: "Acrylamide is an industrial carcinogen which, in recent years, has unfortunately been recognized as a substantial constituent of many foods we eat."

"In 2002, Swedish researchers published an important study showing that potatoes and certain other foods heated at high temperatures contain very high levels of acrylamide," it added. "The highest levels of the carcinogen were found in french fries and potato chips, but high levels of acrylamide have also been found in cereals, breads, and coffee."



The coffee industry had claimed the chemical was present at harmless levels and should be exempt from the law because it results naturally from the cooking process necessary to make the beans flavorful.

The ruling came despite eased concerns in recent years about the possible dangers of coffee, with some studies finding health benefits.

In 2016, the International Agency for Research on Cancer  the cancer agency of the World Health Organization  moved coffee off its possible carcinogen list.

The substance is present in many of our foods, not just coffee. You always have to put a [suspected] risk into perspective.  J. Leonard Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society

Studies indicate coffee is unlikely to cause breast, prostate or pancreatic cancer, and it seems to lower the risks for liver and uterine cancers, the agency said. Evidence is inadequate to determine its effect on dozens of other cancer types.

"Coffee is connected to cancer development by the fact that coffee is sometimes drunk by living people and only living people develop cancer," said Robert A. Weinberg, an oncologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to The Los Angeles Times.

Kathryn M. Wilson, a cancer epidemiologist at Harvard University who has studied the impact of acrylamide on human, told the newspaper: "I think the evidence that acrylamide makes a difference for human cancer risk is pretty weakIt's a lot more helpful to look at coffee as a food."

She noted, for instance, that coffee is a source of antioxidants, and has been shown in credible studies to have significant benefits, such as reducing the likelihood of liver cancer and Type 2 diabetes.

Critics of the lawsuit and, now, ruling, say it feeds further into Californias penchant for regulations over what they say are trivial and even questionable issues.

Parking garages, for example, have to post that breathing air there exposes drivers to carbon monoxide and gas and diesel exhaust and that people should not linger longer than necessary. There are also warnings in elevators and airports, among other places.

I remember noting one in a parking garage during my first visit to the state, said writer Alexander Nazaryan in an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times. It was outrageously useless. What were people supposed to do, not park their cars?

Justin Goodman, vice president of advocacy and public policy at taxpayer watchdog White Coat Waste Project, made another point:



Mice dont drink mochas," he said. "Americans can thank Uncle Sams misleading and wasteful multimillion-dollar animal tests for Californias unnecessary coffee cancer warning that only scares consumers and hurts industry.



Efforts by Fox News to get a comment from Raphael Metzger, the lawyer in the coffee warning label case, were unsuccessful.



Lichtenfeld said Californias law and regulations are frequently different than in other parts of the country.

The state, he said, has been helpful in some cases, such as when it raised awareness nationally about the benefits of reducing auto emissions.

But you can sometimes get so far into the weeds that you end up with a law or regulation that is well-intentioned but where the practical application in our lives is very limited, Lichtenfeld said.

Too many health warnings can also have the unintended effect of overwhelming people and confusing them, and causing them to tune out both important and less urgent information, he added.

It could be counterproductive, people start to pay less attention.

The Associated Press contiributed to this report.
Emergency rooms in Illinois are noticing a spike in synthetic pot users suffering from "severe bleeding," and state health officials are warning the public to remain vigilant.

The Illinois Department of Health (IDPH) issued a statement on in March announcing that at least six people in northeastern Illinois had been hospitalized after using the man-made substance -- also known as "fake weed," "K2" or "spice." On Wednesday, the number of cases climbed to 118, including three deaths, the health department reported.

"All cases have required hospitalization for symptoms such as coughing up blood, blood in the urine, severe bloody nose, and/or bleeding gums," the IDPH said. "Numerous have tested positive for brodifacoum, a lethal anticoagulant often used in rat poison."

There are now cases in at least 12 Illinois communities including Chicago, Cook County, Dupage County, Fulton County, Kane County, Kankakee County, Mason County, McLean County, Peoria County, Tazewell County, Will County and Woodford county. But officials believe that number will grow, as it's possible contaminated products have been sold across the state.

This bleeding is not expected, at least in such a significant population so quickly."  Dr. Melissa Millewich

Despite the perception that synthetic cannabinoids are safe and a legal alternative to marijuana, many are illegal and can cause severe illness, IDPH Director Nirav D. Shah said in a statement on March 27. The recent cases of severe bleeding are evidence of the harm synthetic cannabinoids can cause.

Synthetic pot is made up of hundreds of different chemicals -- and their effect on the human body is unpredictable.

"These chemicals are called cannabinoids because they act on the same brain cell receptors as the main active ingredient in marijuana," IDPH explained, warning that the drug's impact can be life-threatening. "Synthetic cannabinoid products are unsafe. It is difficult to know whats in them or what your reaction to them will be."

Users have reported a wide range of symptoms, from bleeding gums and bloody noses to blood in the urine. Women who are menstruating have also experienced a higher than average flow. Bleeding from the eyes and ears is also possible after use, IDPH said.

The bleeding that doctors have seen in recent days has been severe.

This bleeding is not expected, at least in such a significant population so quickly, Dr. Melissa Millewich, an emergency room physician at Advocate Good Samaritan Hospital in Downers Grove, told the Chicago Tribune.

Health officials urge those who have purchased synthetic cannabinoid products within the past month -- whether it was from a convenience store or a dealer -- to not use the product. IDPH spokeswoman Melaney Arnold told the Chicago newspaper that the product is banned for sale across the state, but some manufacturers alter the "molecular makeup of the products" to get around the law.

Anyone who starts experiencing symptoms, including severe bleeding or bruising, should be taken to the hospital immediately, the IDPH said.
Twin brothers in Michigan had an unexpected surprise on Tuesday when both of their wives gave birth on the same day.

Joshua Thorington and his wife, Denise, welcomed a baby boy named Jack at 4:18 a.m. on March 27. Just an hour later, WPBN reported, Justin Thorington and his wife, Alex, arrived at the same hospital -- Munson Medical Center in Traverse City -- because she was in labor.

After the couple announced Jack had been born, family members starting asking when they could come see the newborn. Everyone except for Alex and Justin, that is.

We didnt hear from them [Alex and Justin] right away so I thought something was up," Joshua told Fox News on Friday.

Thats when Joshuas brother, Justin, told him that his wife Alex was in labor. Just before midnight that same day, Alex gave birth to a baby girl named Lucy.

It was kind of destined to be, Joshua told WPBN.

Initially, the babies were due roughly two weeks apart from each other, Joshua said. The entire pregnancy we joked about how it could happen."

Both families are ecstatic the cousins will now share the same birthday.

Its been crazy how much attention is been getting. At first it didnt really hit me how unique this was, (maybe because Im a twin), but the more I think about it the more I realize how special it is, Justin told Fox News.

The aspect that Justin thinks is the most special, he said, is that Lucy and Jack will always have someone in life to have fun with, and someone that can be there to lean on or provide support to through difficult times. They will always have a friend.

Lisa Thorington, Joshua and Justins mother, told Fox News the family is over the top about the births.

The twins are extremely close so on some level it just makes perfect sense, she said.

Justin said he's thankful the two couples will have each other to go through this experience as parents together and learn from each other."

"I think it will bring us even closer together," he added.
The Pope hit out at the 'abuse' of the crucifix by people who wear them as fashion accessories.

In a speech at St Peter's Square in the Vatican, Pope Francis said that the crucifix is a religious sign to be 'contemplated and understood', rather than merchandised. He said that the crucifix is a sacred sign not to be "abused" by being treated as an ornament or clothing accessory.

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Pope Francis said: "The crucifix is not an ornamental object or a clothing accessory which is sometimes abused, but a religious sign to be contemplated and understood. The image of Jesus crucified reveals the mystery of the death of the Son as the supreme act of love, the source of life and salvation for humanity of all times."

Delivering his speech after a Sunday Angelus service, the Pope stressed the meaning religious meaning of the cross.

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He said: "How do I look at the crucifix? Like a work of art, to see if it's beautiful or not beautiful? Or do I look inside, within the wounds of Jesus up to his heart? I look at the mystery of God annihilated to death, like a slave, like a criminal.

"Jesus wants to make it clear that his extreme affair  that is, the cross, death and resurrection  is an act of fruitfulness. His wounds have healed us  a fruitfulness that will bear fruit for many."

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This story originally appeared in SWNS.
Groupon has issued an apology after several ads with racial slurs appeared on its site, but the company is still facing a wave of backlash following the incident.

People on social media are calling for a Groupon boycott after the discount retailer ran ads from third-party sellers featuring shoes available in N-word brown, with the derogatory word spelled out. The listings, from sellers Kojwa and Margines, were for womens boots, which also came in Apricot, Black and Brown colors, according to the New York Post.

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The retailer immediately removed the ads, banned the sellers from the site and issued an apology. We are appalled that this language was displayed on our site, Groupon said in an apology per the Post.

This product description was provided by a third-party seller via our self-service platform. Regardless, this is completely unacceptable and violates our policies  to say nothing of our values.

Despite the companys reaction, people on social media still expressed their outrage over the offensive language.

I will no longer purchase anything from Groupon due to boots you advertise for sale describing the color as n----r-brown. Poor taste and highly offensive, but Im glad you felt comfortable selling them....now I know how you really feel. No more of my $$$, one person wrote.

That's disgusting!!! BOYCOTT GROUPON!!! another commented.

Groupon, here is a brilliant idea in order to avert a boycott -donate to the NAACP. It has a better n-word, someone else suggested.

Others did point out that Groupon was just a third-party seller and shouldnt be punished because of something another company wrote on its site.

It's not Groupon... it's the retailer. Margines is the problem. Groupon has nothing to do with what a retailer does... they're just a yellow pages. Know who to boycott. Don't ruin the economy by boycotting all willie nillie, someone commented.

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Groupon did not immediately return Fox News request for comment.

Groupon isnt the only retailer to come under fire for racist content recently. Heineken was called out this week for its terribly racist commercial with the slogan sometimes lighter is better. The beer company removed the ad after many who took offense to it expressed their concern on Twitter.
While most busy college kids might spend their days in sweats, one student at Howard University was a notable exception: He's accused of stealing $429,000 in financial aid from 2011 to 2017 to buy fancy clothes.

Students of the historically black university in Washington, D.C. are protesting on Friday over the incident, as well as a larger scandal alleging financial mishandlings which came to light just recently, NBC Washington is reporting.

On March 27, an anonymous writer by the name of Veritas 1867 (in a likely nod to the schools motto and founding year) posted a bombshell report to Medium claiming that $1 million in financial aid was diverted between 2013 and 2017.

The writer suggested that Howard University President Wayne Fredrick and his administration have been aware of this fraud since May 2017, and points out that at least seven senior-level financial aid officials have either resigned or been quietly removed since then.

Two individuals allegedly involved in the scam were identified by name: Brian Johnson, former associate director of financial aid, and law student Tyrone Hankerson Jr., who purportedly received roughly $429,612 in grants and various scholarships through his undergraduate and graduate years at the school.

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In addition to a $65,000 University Need Based Grant to a $22,683 Mock Trial Scholarship, as well as a $21,000 Trustee scholarship, a $6,000 study abroad scholarship, and a $5,645 university grant, the Medium story claims that Hankerson received additional financial aid awards and massive stipends from Office of Student Life & Activities and the Student Employment program.

If true, such large grants for a single student are bizarre, as costs to attend the private institution in 2017-2018 tuition round out at $43,501 between tuition, mandatory fees, and room and board, according to their website.

I was alerted in December 2016 that there may have been some misappropriation of University-provided financial aid funds, President Frederick said statement on March 28, assuring students that funds embezzled from 2007 to 2016 by university employees did not result in a loss of student financial aid.

However, Howard collegians largely arent buying it.

We are frustrated to see the Universitys statement being sent to the press and not addressed to students first, the student association tweeted that day. This clearly is a betrayal of our trust and shouldve been addressed to the Howard Community months ago.

WALMART TO REMOVE COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE FROM CHECKOUT LINES

Meanwhile, Twitter is having a field day with Hankerson  or the Wolf of Sixth Street, as one Twitter critic calls him  as he also ran a fashion blog and was known to wear expensive clothes, Yahoo Lifestyle reports. Though hes since deleted all of his social media accounts, stylish photos of Hankerson are quickly circulating. Some were quick to mock Hankerson, but others were sickened by the injustice of the situation.

My poor mother, breaking her back to pay all my "back balances" every semester fighting to register me into classes. Whole time y'all stealing money.. I'm disgusted, one Twitter user wrote.

"The Tyrone Hankerson situation upsets me to the core bc there has been MANY times during my dealings w/ Howard I sat up at night & cried HARD bc financial aid played w/ my livelihood," another Howard Law alumni wrote. "Yet, dude got a smooth $430K w/o being noticed. I want reparations."

Hankerson denied the allegations against him through his lawyer with a statement to ABC News.

When the truth comes out, it will be confirmed that I followed all rules and protocol with the approval of the, then, financial aid officers in any grants, scholarships or awards given to me as a student who attended class all year round and traveled abroad, the statement said. [T]he story that was posted this morning fails to explain the full scope of my 7-year experience at Howard University and is most misleading if taken out of context.

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As Blavity notes, if the allegations are true, Hankerson was brazen to slam the student-loan debt crisis a few years ago when he was a graduating senior. In an April 2015 interview, Hankerson said that his work-study position in Howards Office of Financial Aid has given him insight to a larger national issue.

For many of my classmates, their families simply do not have the financial resources to pay for college, he said at a student debt forum convened by Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings. What I have witnessed in my role are determined students who try their hardest to find a way through.

"They search high and low for scholarships, they take classes over the summer at cheaper rates so they can graduate on time, they take semesters off, and they come back, and sometimes, when all has failed them, they are left with no option but to give up," he said at the time.
The Vatican on Thursday worked to set the record straight on whether Pope Francis denied the existence of hell in an interview with a well-known Italian journalist.

The controversy started when 93-year-old journalist Eugenio Scalfari, the founder of La Repubblica newspaper, publisheda report that he asked Francis where bad souls end up going, USA Today reported. Francis reply, according to the journalist, was that those who repent could be forgiven but those who do not, disappear.

The article, which ran on March 29, reported that Francis said hell does not exist.

"They are not punished, those who repent obtain the forgiveness of God and enter the rank of souls who contemplate him, but those who do not repent and cannot therefore be forgiven disappear," Francis is quoted as saying. "There is no hell, there is the disappearance of sinful souls."

Scalfari, an atheist, does not usually use tape recorders during interviews, The USA Today report said. The Vatican said the story was the result of the reporters reconstruction.

What is reported by the author in todays article is the result of his reconstruction, in which the literal words pronounced by the Pope are not quoted, the Vatican said. No quotation of the aforementioned article must therefore be considered as a faithful transcription of the words of the Holy Father.

The Catholic News Agency reported that Scalfari has misrepresented the pope in the past. The agency reported that Scalfari aslo falsely reported that Pope Francis had made comments denying the existence of hell in 2015.

According to Catholic Church teachings, there is a hell and it is for eternity.

Immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into hell, where they suffer the punishments of hell, 'eternal fire.' The chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God, in whom alone man can possess the life and happiness for which he was created and for which he longs," according to CNA.

In 2007, Pope Benedict XVI said hell really exists and it eternal, even if nobody talks about it much any more.

In 1999 Pope John Paul II declared that Heaven was "neither an abstraction nor a physical place in the clouds, but that fullness of communion with God which is the goal of human life." Hell, by contrast, was "the ultimate consequence of sin itself ... Rather than a place, hell indicates the state of those who freely and definitively separate themselves from God, the source of all life and joy."

The Associated Press contributed to this report
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WASHINGTON -- The Trump administration is being sued over its plans to include a question about citizenship in the 2020 Census, which California Attorney General Xavier Becerra (D) says "is not just a bad idea - it is illegal."

No, it's not. There is nothing wrong with asking about citizenship. Canada asks a citizenship question on its census. So do Australia and many other U.S. allies. The U.S. government asked about citizenship for 130 years - from 1820 to 1950 - as part of the decennial "short form" census and continued to do so in the "long form" survey - distributed to 1 in 6 people - through 2000, when the long form was replaced by the annual American Community Survey. The ACS goes to about 2.6 percent of the population each year and asks about citizenship to this day.

So why are many on the left up in arms over a question that should be relatively uncontroversial? Answer: Money and power. Democrats are worried that adding a citizenship question will dampen participation in the census by illegal immigrants, reducing the total population count in the Democratic-leaning metropolitan areas where illegal immigrants are largely concentrated. Because census data is used to determine the distribution of federal funds, that could decrease the cities' share of more than $675 billion a year in federal funding. And because census data is also used to create and apportion congressional seats, Democrats fear that if illegal immigrants don't participate it could shift power from Democratic cities to rural communities, which tend to vote Republican.

At least, that's Democrats' theory. But there is no evidence that a citizenship question would dramatically impact census participation. The census is not like a telemarketing survey where people have the option of adding their names to a "do not call" list. Everyone is required by law to respond. If a household does not fill out the census form, then census workers visit that household to gather census data. If they still cannot get a household to cooperate, nonrespondents can be fined or prosecuted - though in practice they rarely are. Usually, the Census Bureau instead asks neighbors about the household in order to get as much accurate information as possible. This may add costs to the census, but it is not likely to produce inaccurate data.

Moreover, if asking about citizenship is a deterrent to participation by illegal immigrants, then what about the existing census question that asks whether respondents are "of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin" - the only ethnic group specifically called out. Respondents are required by law to tell the government whether they are of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban or other Hispanic origin, which they are required to list ("print origin, for example, Argentinean, Colombian, Dominican, Nicaraguan, Salvadoran, Spaniard, and so on"). If that does not deter the participation of many illegal immigrants, how would a question on citizenship?

There is no good reason not to answer the census, whether one is here legally or illegally. As the Census Bureau points out, "It is against the law for any Census Bureau employee to disclose or publish any census or survey information that identifies an individual or business .?.?. the FBI and other government entities do not have the legal right to access this information." Furthermore, the proposed question is about citizenship, not legal status. This question should not be a deterrent to participation for anyone.

But let's say for the sake of argument that some illegal immigrants do decide not to participate in the 2020 Census. So what? Illegal immigrants are here illegally. If they choose to violate U.S. law yet again by refusing to participate in the census because of a perfectly legitimate question about citizenship, that's not the U.S. government's fault.

This is a losing issue for Democrats. They are effectively arguing that sanctuary cities should be rewarded with more federal money for interfering with the federal enforcement of our immigration laws and turning themselves into magnets for illegal immigrants. And Democrats, who claim to be deeply concerned about foreign interference in our democracy, seem to have no problem with foreign interference when it comes to noncitizens in the United States illegally affecting the distribution of seats in Congress. If Democrats want to make that argument to the American people, go for it. It will further alienate millions of voters who abandoned the Democratic Party in the 2016 election.
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For Christians as well as Jews, Passover  beginning at sundown Friday and ending at sundown on April 7  is a particularly important holiday.

You say that Christians dont celebrate Passover? But of course we do. Easter is Passover.

Most modern languages bear witness to this and use similar words to describe both the Jewish and Christian holidays. The words are taken from Pesach, the Hebrew name for Passover. Spaniards call Easter Pascua. Italians call it Pasqua. And the Dutch say Pasen. In Zulu its IPhasika.

Only a few languages  English, German, Polish  give the Christian holiday a name unrelated to Passover. We call it Easter, though it loses much in that translation.

In ancient Israel, Passover was a sacrificial feast of massive proportions. The first century historian Josephus tells of one year when 255,660 lambs were slaughtered in the Jerusalem Temple. Other sources tell us that the citys streams ran red with blood from the sacrifices.

It was a holy day of obligation. The Book of Exodus (23:1417) required all Israelite males to celebrate three feasts in the holy city, and Passover was chief among the three. At Passover a family would share a meal tightly scripted with prayer, known as the seder. Theyd share the sacrificial lamb along with unleavened bread and four cups of wine.

Jesus Last Supper had a Passover setting and character, and so it was a solemn, sacrificial banquet. But his offering was not an ordinary lamb. It was rather the person made known in the Gospels as the Lamb of God. It was Jesus himself.

In the Upper Room, Jesus made an offering of his body and blood. He spoke of the action as his memorial (another synonym for sacrifice). Echoing the Passover Haggadah (the prayer book and guide used to conduct the seder, still used today) he told those who attended to repeat the action they had witnessed.

The sacrifice offered at the Last Supper was consummated on the cross. The sacrifice that took place once for all was extended to all peoples by its re-presentation in the meal that Christians call the Lords Supper or Eucharist. In his First Letter to the Corinthians, Saint Paul called Christ our paschal lamb who has been sacrificed (5:7).

It was Jesus action at the Last Supper that transformed his death from an execution to a sacrificial offering. At the Last Supper he gave his body to be broken, his blood to be poured out on the altar of the cross.

Because he did so, his death on Calvary was not simply a brutal and bloody execution. Jesus death had been transformed by his self-offering in the Upper Room. It had become the offering of an unblemished Passover victim  the self-offering of a high priest who gave himself as a victim for the redemption of others. Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God (Ephesians 5:2).

Christians came to understand this event  Jesus suffering, death, and resurrection  as the Paschal Mystery. It is the mystery of Passover, foreshadowed from the dawn of creation by the blood of Abel, the murdered shepherd. It is the mystery of Passover, prefigured by Abrahams offering of his son Isaac on Mount Moriah. It is the mystery hidden in Israels deliverance amid the final plague visited upon Egypt.

All of these mysteries found fulfillment in Jesus Passover, which the early Christians understood as a once for all sacrifice (Hebrews 7:27, 10:10).

It was a supremely important event. As Jews renewed their covenant through the Passover sacrifice, so Christians renewed their new covenant through the offering of the body and blood of the Lamb of God. They marked every Sunday as the Lords Day by re-presenting the once-for-all sacrifice. And Passover  Pesach  was the first feast the Christian Church celebrated annually.

We still celebrate Passover every year. In our country we might call it by a different name, but the reality remains the same as it ever was. Dont let it pass you by without a keen awareness of its deepest meaning.
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I joined President Trump on Thursday at an event in Richfield, Ohio where he discussed his bold plan to rebuild infrastructure in America with minimal federal involvement. Im proud to support his proposal because its in best interests of my nearby congressional district and of America as a whole.

The Council of Economic Advisers estimates the presidents plan will spur significant gross domestic product growth and create hundreds of thousands of jobs. In addition, his proposal includes critical reforms to improve access to high-quality education and workforce development programs.

Skills training and apprenticeship programs like those offered at the training facility run by the International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) Local 18  where President Trump spoke Thursday  are a necessary resource that helps prepare workers for high-demand, good-paying jobs.

President Trump understands that Americas roads, bridges and airports are collapsing. Right now, we have 80-year-old bridges built with a 40-year lifespan. Infrastructure is desperate for a facelift in Ohio and across this county.

Just look at Cincinnatis Brent Spence Bridge. When it opened in 1963, it was designed to accommodate 80,000 cars per day. Today more than 160,000 cars use the bridge daily. For the last decade, the Cincinnati City Council has been working to deal with the problem. Like with any major investment project, the issue has been funding.

As a businessman for the last three decades, I understand the value of a dollar. I didnt come to Congress in 2011 to spend dollars that cant produce growth, yet too often that is what Congress winds up doing.

President Trumps plan calls for a private-public partnership that would spur $1.5 trillion of private investment, while only requiring $200 billion in federal spending.

Half the federal funding would be allocated to an incentive program through which every state, local and private dollar invested will also receive a partial federal match. However, before the state, local and private investors can receive federal funding, each project milestone would have to be reached by a specific deadline. This gives the program a layer of accountability that is a nice change coming out of Washington.

While we are creating jobs, we must also prepare our workforce to thrive within the construction industry. President Trump shares my passion for bringing vocational education and training back to schools. I dont believe college is the answer for everyone, and I have been speaking out about the importance of expanding apprenticeships, work-based learning and dual-enrollment opportunities.

We must encourage course offerings in high schools to prepare students for high-skilled infrastructure jobs. Its clear as I travel the state the industry is hungry for such workers.

Now its up to Congress to draft legislation that can turn President Trumps vision of an infrastructure plan into a reality.

I am hopeful that fixing our crumbling roads and bridges can be a bipartisan endeavor. America is due for improved infrastructure that increases safety and diminishes traffic congestion. Ohio deserves better and I am ready to put Ohio first.
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Boys and girls at Hampton Middle School in Georgia were instructed by their teacher to write letters to lawmakers calling for stricter gun control laws.

"You are trying to persuade lawmakers to have stricter gun laws to help prevent another school shooting from taking place," the assignment declared. "For this assignment, you are writing a letter to the lawmakers of the United States. The purpose of this letter is to pressure lawmakers to have stricter gun laws in the United States.

Blue Lives Matter obtained a copy of the social studies assignment from a police officer whose son was in the classroom.

"I asked him what he had for homework that night, and he said he had to write a paper on gun control," William Lee told Blue Lives Matter. "I looked at it, and I told my son, 'No, you're not doing that assignment.' Then I emailed his teacher the next day and told him that my son would not be writing that."

Good for Officer Lee!

The teacher told Officer Lee his son would be excused from the lesson and would not be penalized.

I reached out to Henry County Schools and they tell me the assignment was not a part of any approved curriculum.

"We would never approve of a politically biased assignment or directive given by a teacher," the district spokesman told me.

He assured me the letters were not sent and there was never any intent to send them.

"This activity took the wrong approach in limiting the ability of students to share any thoughts outside of what was directed of them when the subject elicits many different viewpoints from people, including students," the spokesman told me.

Henry County School, he said, does not advocate for or against gun control and had the lesson been submitted for approval -- it would not have been approved.

"It is unfortunate that this isolated incident occurred, but we are appreciative of those individuals who brought it to our attention so we could take corrective action and stop it from continuing further," the spokesman said.

The school district spokesman said the teacher has been spoken to and they tell me this will not happen again.

Let's hope not.

Public school is supposed to be about education -- not indoctrination.
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Poor California. Its politicians thought they were declaring war on the federal government, but now the state is embroiled in a war with itself, as at least one county has said enough is enough with the scourge of being part of a sanctuary state for criminal illegal immigrants.

Orange County will now join a lawsuit filed by Attorney General Jeff Sessions that argues California's SB-54, which restricts local law enforcement agencies from cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in matters related to undocumented immigrants, is unconstitutional, United Press International reported.

Californias Democrats dont like President Trump, so they decided to punish their own citizens by becoming a sanctuary state. The sponsor of the legislation made his impetus clear, stating: California is building a wall  a wall of justice  against President Trump's xenophobic, racist and ignorant immigration policies."

When Gov. Jerry Brown signed the bill that transformed California into a haven for illegal immigrant criminals, California State Sheriffs Association President Bill Brown said that as the result of the new law, people who are chronic or serial criminals that just haven't risen to a particular level of crime yet are going to go back out into the community, and people are going to be victimized."

Its now undeniable that liberal policies have destroyed the quality of life in one of our most beautiful states.

Now, after a few months, we are finally seeing the stirrings of a revolt. Orange County, the third-largest county in the country, is joining the federal lawsuit against the sanctuary law.

UPI reported: The 4-0 vote from the Republican-controlled Orange County Board of Supervisors follows actions by other Orange County leaders to resist SB 54. Earlier this month, the city council of Los Alamitos voted to opt-out of the law and this week, Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens decided to put release dates of county jail inmates online to the public, which allows ICE officials to get that information without having to go directly through local law enforcement.

Lo and behold, in the face of this rejection of the absurd, California officials suddenly issued new guidance on what state and local law enforcement are allowed to do, including sharing information about criminal illegal immigrants with the Department of Homeland Security, the parent agency of ICE.

The state also deigned to permit California law enforcement officers to assist any law enforcement official, even if those officials are engaged in immigration enforcement, but only when the California law enforcement officer is enforcing state law. How nice.

If the chaos surrounding the protection of criminal illegal immigrants wasnt enough, Californians are dealing with the results of Proposition 47, which was passed by the voters in 2014. Californians were told the measure would allow them to put fewer people in jail and save the state tens of millions of dollars, which could be invested in diversion programs. In other words, the state decriminalized certain drug and property crimes.

Instead of rainbows and unicorns, what actually happened was a disaster.

Proposition 47 downgraded a variety of non-serious, nonviolent crimes that had previously been considered felonies to misdemeanors. A thief may now steal something under (a $950 limit) on a daily basis and it will never rise to felony status. In the event that a perpetrator is pursued and apprehended, the consequence can be a small fine or a brief stay in jail. In reality, these repercussions are rare, reported National Review.

Outrage in these circumstances is apolitical. Every bicycle in our building has been stolen, says Karen Burns, president of a San Francisco condo association. Ive caught so many people stealing packages. They dont care. They know nothing will happen to them. Its crazy. Its horrible. I feel like these people need to go to jail.

Proposition 47 also downgraded personal use of illegal drugs to misdemeanor status. The result is the destruction of any semblance of safety and quality of life. In San Francisco, National Review notes: Now more than ever, residents and merchants are living with a proliferation of addicts who roll up their sleeves, inject, and then nod off on the sidewalks or careen down the street and into traffic. Why not shoot up wherever you want, leave bloody syringes in piles, steal, and deal when there are few if any consequences?

With policy like this, it wasnt a surprise when the FBI reported in September that violent crime was up in California for the second straight year. Housing and wage crises are also gripping the used-to-be Golden State.

Its now undeniable that liberal policies have destroyed the quality of life in one of our most beautiful states. This isnt hyperbole, its an objective assessment by US News and World Reports Best States ranking, which places California dead last in the Quality of Life category.

Not at all distracted by the dumpster fire their policies have created  including explosions in homelessness, drug abuse, crime, and criminal illegal immigrants enjoying state protection  Californias Democrats have decided their next big mission is to sue the federal government over the citizenship question being included again on the U.S. census form.

In addition to a lower census count possibly costing California a seat in the House of Representatives, Newsweek reported that Californias attorney general complained that depressed participation (in the census by illegal immigrants) would deprive California and its cities and counties of their fair share of billions of dollars in federal funds.

And with that, we finally found something California liberals want from the federal government  everyone elses money.
All of the 60 Russians expelled by the United States this week were undeclared spies pretending to be diplomats, a senior administration official told reporters on Thursday, saying the Russians were unwelcome -- persona non grata.

These are not diplomats that we expelled. These were intelligence officers that were engaging in activities that were not commensurate with their diplomatic roles and functions at an embassy, the official said. And theyre operating under diplomatic cover.

The decision to kick out 48 Russians from their embassy in Washington, D.C., and consulate in New York City, plus another 12 allegedly working for the Russian Mission at the United Nations, was announced Monday. The 60 Russians had seven days to leave, according to the order.

It came in light of the nerve-agent poisoning of a former Russian double agent, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter, Yulia, in the British city of Salisbury on March 4.

The senior administration official added, Having these undeclared Russian intelligence officers inside our country is a threat to our national security interest and is one of the points that were going to make to our partners around the world.

Asked if the U.S. was satisfied with the response from Europe, the official called the collective action an unprecedented show of transatlantic unity and an amazing response to a breach of the postwar order. The official said it could be a turning point in how the U.S. and its allies view Russia's activities in the West. And so a joint action by a series of countries... sends a stronger message of our unity against the Russians abhorrent behavior.

Questioned about the relationship between the U.S. and the U.K., the senior administration official said the special relationship is as strong as it ever has been, and that the U.K. is and always will remain our strongest ally, rooted in NATO, and before and after its exit from the European Union.
A federal judge in Brooklyn, N.Y., who has called the Trump administration's immigration policy "heartless," ruled Thursday that a lawsuit seeking to preserve the federal DACA program can continue -- citing candidate Donald Trump's "racial slurs" and "epithets."

In a fiery ruling, U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis, who was appointed to the bench by former President Bill Clinton, shot down the government's motion to dismiss the case.

Garaufis said Trump's "overt expressions of prejudice" during the 2016 presidential election suggest that his attempts to roll back DACA since taking office in January 2017 were unconstitutionally arbitrary and capricious -- a high standard rarely invoked to override executive action.

One might reasonably infer, the judge wrote, that a candidate who makes overtly bigoted statements on the campaign trail might be more likely to engage in similarly bigoted action in office.

"Im just glad I was born in Paterson, New Jersey, and not in Mexico City."  U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis

DACA (Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals) is an Obama-era program designed to delay the deportations of people who came to the U.S. illegally as children. President Trump has expressed interest in ending the program.

The plaintiffs, who include state Democratic attorneys general and other lawyers, won an injunction from Garaufis in February that preserved DACA while the suit proceeded. That injunction resembled an earlier one effected by a California court.

Garaufis' injunction did not require the government to accept new DACA applications. At the time, Garaufis said he was "sympathetic to those who could not apply in time.

SESSIONS SLAMS 'ACTIVIST JUDGES' FOR NATIONWIDE DACA INJUNCTIONS

Garaufis has a history of taking an unusually emotional, political approach to his cases.

In September, he publicly excoriated a Justice Department lawyer arguing for a DACA renewal deadline.

This is a democracy; these people have thrived in America, and you cant just come into court and espouse a position that is so heartless, Garaufis said in the courtroom. Im 68 years old, and Ive worked in every branch of government, and Ive never seen a position like this.

He continued by suggesting that the Trump administration is motivated by xenophobia.

Its unacceptable, quite frankly, to me, as a human being and as an American," he said at the hearing. "Im just glad I was born in Paterson, New Jersey, and not in Mexico City."

WHAT IS DACA, AND WHAT IS TRUMP DOING WITH IT?

In 2013, a New York federal appeals court removed Garaufis from handling aspects of a lawsuit alleging discrimination by the New York City Fire Department, saying he appeared to be too biased.

In that case, Garaufis ordered the department to implement racial quotas, and called evidence of improper discrimination "incredible."

The appeals court found that an objective observer would have a reasonable basis to question the judges impartiality in assessing that evidence at trial.
It's a tale of two targets.

Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser and retired three-star Army general, is on the brink of financial ruin, selling his Virginia home in order to pay his mounting legal bills.

Meanwhile, Andrew McCabe  the wealthy ex-FBI official fired by Attorney General Jeff Sessions whose wife is a physician  raised an extraordinary $400,000 online from 10,000 people in one day to pay his lawyers.

Both Flynn and McCabe have been accused of lying. Only Flynn has been charged with a crime. But both are expected to continue racking up enormous legal fees in the months to come.

Most people have no idea how expensive top flight representation costs in white-collar cases, Robert Stahl, a criminal defense attorney and a former assistant U.S. Attorney, told Fox News.

Stahl said experienced attorneys generally charge between $700 to more than $1,000 an hour, often with multiple attorneys working on the case. Many top tier attorneys charge a minimum of $3 million or more for a complex federal white-collar trial, he said.

MCCABE SOLICITING ONLINE DONATIONS FOR LEGAL DEFENSE FUND

Multiply the amount of time spent meeting with the client to obtain the facts, the hours reviewing documents and case law, and meeting with the government, and you can see how legal bills quickly escalate, Stahl said.

Most people have no idea how expensive top flight representation costs in white-collar cases"  Robert Stahl, white-collar criminal defense attorney

McCabe, who spent more than 20 years at the FBI, was fired earlier this month by Attorney General Jeff Sessions after the DOJs inspector general determined McCabe was not truthful during his review of the Clinton email investigation. The FBIs Office of Professional Responsibility recommended his firing.

On Thursday, he set up a GoFundMe page to crowd source donations for his legal defense fund. In less than a day, it raised more than $400,000, including from many small donations of $5 and $10. The GoFundMe page makes an apparent appeal to anti- Trump activists.

His reward for that has been a termination that was completely unjustified, amidst repeated ad hominem attacks by the President of the United States, the fundraising page reads.

McCabes GoFundMe says a legal defense fund is needed because he will likely have to respond to congressional inquiries, as well as the Department of Justices Inspector General Investigation and any potential lawsuits he might consider.

Meanwhile, Flynn, who served in the U.S. Army for 33 years, is struggling financially in the wake of his prosecution.

FLYNN SELLING HOME TO PAY FOR LEGAL FEES AFTER PLEADING GUILTY IN TRUMP PROBE

"I'm not going to sugarcoat it, this has been a trying experience, his youngest brother, Joe Flynn, recently told ABC News. "It has been a crucible and it's not over."

Flynn was fired from the White House last year for misleading Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations with Russias ambassador and then pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. A source close to Flynn said financial and emotional pressure helped lead to the decision to plead guilty, rather than endure a drawn-out court battle.

Flynns siblings set up a legal defense fund for the former Trump administration official to collect donations from supporters, though have not used a crowd funding platform like GoFundMe that reveals how much money has been raised.

Family members of the retired three-star Army general recently said he put his home in the Old Town neighborhood of Alexandria  just outside Washington, D.C.  on the market in December with an asking price of $895,000 to help pay his legal bills.

ABC News reported that Flynn has since moved back to Rhode Island.

An attorney for Flynn declined to comment. Barbara Redgate, Flynn's sister who set up the legal defense fund, did not immediately return a message Friday asking how much money has been raised.

But Flynn's siblings have said any money made from the sale of the Virginia home will go toward Flynns legal fees.

"The costs of legal representation associated with responding to the multiple investigations that have arisen in the wake of the 2016 election place a great burden on Mike and his family," the website for the legal fund says.

Fox News Nicole Darrah contributed to this report.
Hillary Clinton has been known to make huge sums in speaking fees, but Thursdays reported payment may sound like she was short-changed.

Clinton was paid $25,000 to speak at Rutgers University about being targeted as a woman in politics, the upcoming elections and the Trump administration, among other topics, NJ.com reported.

But the money she made seemed to be considerably less than some other high-profile guests who've spoken at the New Jersey school.

For example, Nicole Snooki Polizzi, of Jersey Shore fame, was paid $32,000 for her Rutgers appearance in 2011. Students paid for her appearance using money from the student activity fees undergraduates pay at the school, according to NJ.com.

CLINTON CALLS 2016 ELECTION TRAUMATIC, ADMITS SHED LIKE TO TAKE BACK SOME THINGS SHE SAID

Polizzi didnt offer any political talking points, but told students: Study hard, but party harder.

Rutgers also paid Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison $30,000 to speak in 2011 and the university shelled out $35,000 for former White House press secretary and longtime PBS journalist Bill Moyers, NJ.com reported.

And while Clinton's fee for Thursdays speech was nothing to scoff at, it was considerably smaller than what she reportedly received for apearances in past years.

Clinton, at one point, was asking for $275,000 to speak at a University of Missouri luncheon, according to the Washington Post. In 2008, she was reportedly paid $225,000 by the futures brokerage firm CME Group.

Nonetheless, Clinton probably isnt paying any mind to her speaking fees. The former presidential candidate sold 300,000 copies of her book What Happened in just its first week of release, according to Time magazine.
A U.S. House Democrat -- who has been prominent in the #MeToo movement against sexual harassment -- apologized Thursday, saying she failed to protect female members of her staff who claimed to have been harassed by the lawmakers former chief of staff.

U.S. Rep. Elizabeth Esty, D-Conn., now serving her third term in Congress, also reimbursed the federal government out of her own pocket for $5,000 in severance pay issued to Tony Baker, the former staffer.

Baker was fired in August 2016, about three months after Esty became aware of allegations against him, the Washington Post reported.

What I did was not good enough and it didnt protect [my staff] enough, Esty told the newspaper.   Im hopeful now with this conversation and this coming out that Ill be able to be much more direct and help other people in Congress understand the risks they are placing their staff at when they dont think they are.

"What I did was not good enough and it didnt protect [my staff] enough."  U.S. Rep. Elizabeth Esty, D-Conn.

One woman who formerly served on Estys staff claimed she received death threats and that Baker punched her in the back.

You better f-----g reply to me or I will f-----g kill you, Baker said to the woman, Anna Kain, who had once dated Baker, the Washington Post reported. Kain provided a copy of a May 2016 voicemail recording to the newspaper.

Baker was Esty's chief of staff from 2014 to 2016. His spokesman has denied many of the allegations against Baker.

After leaving Estys staff, Baker took a job in Ohio working for Sandy Hook Promise, a gun-control group created after the December 2012 massacre in Newtown, Conn., which is part of Estys congressional district.

Baker, who had obtained the Ohio job based in part on Estys personal recommendation, left the position Monday, the Connecticut Post reported.

Esty has been known in Congress for advocating women's rights issues. She was among the Democrats who pressured longtime U.S. Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., to resign last year after he faced accusations of sexual misconduct, the Washington Post reported.

Timothy Daly, Estys current chief of staff, said the lawmaker was advised by the Office of House Employment Counsel to enter into a nondisclosure agreement with Baker as part of a settlement deal that included Baker being paid his unpaid leave and about $5,000 in severance.

Daly said the nondisclosure agreement was a recommendation that was provided to the congresswoman as part of a means to get Tony out of the office as soon as possible.

He said the congresswoman was speaking about the situation now because she believes the agreement is "moot" given the media coverage, as well as her decision that "it's time and appropriate to be transparent."

Andrew Ricci, a friend and spokesman for Baker, told the Connecticut Post that Baker lives in Columbus, Ohio. A phone number listed for a Tony Baker was disconnected, according to the Associated Press.

Ricci also told Hearst that Baker denied punching Kain in the back at Esty's Washington, D.C., office.

Ricci said Baker has "spent a lot of time over the past two years becoming a stronger person." He added, "I know he's been living a sober life, and I can tell you anger management was really helpful."

The Associated Press contributed to this story.
Kentucky lawmakers passed a pension reform bill Thursday, sending it to Gov. Matt Bevins desk -- but also prompting backlash about the speed of its passage, reports said.

The proposed pension overhaul would preserve benefits for most workers, but do little to address the states massive debt.

The 291-page proposal came up for a vote suddenly Thursday, taking the place of a sewage bill that was on the docket.

The GOP-controlled House approved the bill 49-46, and the Senate later passed it, 22-15, as about 200 teachers and other opponents chanted "Shame on you" from outside the chambers, the Louisville Courier-Journal reported.

Bevin defended the passage of bill.

"Tonight 49 members of the Kentucky House and 22 members of the Kentucky Senate voted not to keep kicking the pension problem down the road," the governor tweeted, but it was not clear when he planned to sign it.

The bill came up so quickly that some lawmakers signaled that they didn't know how it would financially affect the state. Republican Rep. John "Bam" Carney said lawmakers expect the plan to save $300 million over the next 30 years. But Kentucky is at least $41 billion short of the money it needs to pay retirement benefits over that same time.

"There was some hope that some of the things we could do in pension reform could make a larger impact on that future liability, but at the end of the day there just wasn't the will to do that," Acting House Speaker David Osborne said.

Morgan Taylor, a 28-year-old high school chemistry teacher from Rockcastle County, told the Courier-Journal that lawmakers had "clearly not had time to even read" the bill before voting.

"As a teacher, I would never, ever give my students something that I haven't read myself," she said. "I think a select group of people know what's in this (bill) and everyone else is just expected to toe the line."

As of 10:30 p.m. local time, the bill had not been posted online for the public to read, FOX 41 reported.

Democratic Rep. Tom Burch, reflecting the impassioned pleas among teachers and public workers, called the bill "garbage" as he slammed it on the table during a hastily called committee meeting Thursday.

"This bill is going to be found unconstitutional," Democratic Rep. Derrick Graham said, according to FOX 41. "Remember this day. Let your voices be heard in November, for those that were with you in the grind and those who were against you."

The bill removes some of the most vilified provisions of previous proposals. Current and retired teachers, who are not eligible for Social Security benefits, would still get annual raises of 1.5 percent in their retirement checks. Current workers would not have to work longer to qualify for full benefits.

But new hires would be moved to a hybrid plan. They would be guaranteed to get back all of the money they and taxpayers contributed to their retirement accounts, plus 85 percent of any investment gains. The state would keep the other 15 percent.

Teachers told the Courier-Journal that the bill would significantly diminish benefits for future teachers and discourage young people from considering teaching as a career.

How are you going to attract and keep good teachers in the state when they dont have a retirement? Holbrook asked.

Almost immediately after the bill's passage, Fayette County Public Schools announced that classes would be canceled Friday.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals died Thursday in Southern California, a court spokesperson confirmed. He was 87.

Reinhardt died of a heart attack during a visit to a dermatologist in Los Angeles, the court spokesperson said.

As a judge, he was deeply principled, fiercely passionate about the law and fearless in his decisions, 9th Circuit Chief Judge Sidney Thomas said in a statement. He will be remembered as one of the giants of the federal bench.

Eric Garcetti, Mayor of Los Angeles, called Reinhardt "one of the greatest jurists of our time. A searingly brilliant Angeleno and true progressive icon."

Reinhardt was appointed by President Jimmy Carter in 1979 and went on to become the sixth longest-serving judge on the court.

Reinhardt was a liberal stalwart on the bench, which he used to try to help the underdog, including immigrants and minorities, The Los Angeles Times reported.

Last year he wrote in an opinion that a Trump administration order to deport a man who entered the country illegally nearly three decades ago and became a respected businessman in Hawaii was inhumane and contrary to the values of the country and its legal system.

In 2012, he wrote an opinion that struck down Californias gay marriage ban. He also wrote a 1996 opinion that struck down a Washington state law that prohibited doctors from prescribing medication to help terminally ill patients die.

He was a giant -- not just on the 9th Circuit, but within the law, University of California, Berkeley, law school Dean Erwin Chemerinsky told The Times. He also was a judge with a particular vision of the law, based on enforcing the Constitution to protect people.

He was among the federal judges who decided that overcrowding in Californias prison system was unconstitutional.

Reinhardt joined another judge in ruling that the words under God in the Pledge of Allegiance were unconstitutional, a decision that was later overturned.

Hector Villagra, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and a former Reinhardt clerk, called Reinhardt's death "devastating," The Times reported.

He recalled the judge working in his chambers at 11 p.m. on a Saturday writing a dissent to the courts decision not to rehear a death penalty appeal.

"He knew it was totally pointless," Villagra said. "It wasn't going to affect the outcome. But it was the right thing to do, and that's what mattered. He wanted his voice and his objections heard."

After serving two years in the U.S. Air Force, Reinhardt served as a clerk for a federal judge in the District of Columbia, then entered private practice in Los Angeles. He served on the Los Angeles Police Commission from 1975 until his appointment to the 9th Circuit.

He was born in 1931 in New York. His grandfather fled Nazi Germany, which inspired Reinhardt to be vigilant in upholding human rights, The Times reported.

Reinhardt is survived by his wife, Ramona Ripston, the former director of the ACLU of Southern California; three adult children, Mark Reinhardt, 57, a professor of political science at Williams College; Justin Reinhardt, 52, a musician; and Dana Reinhardt, 47, a novelist; and seven grandchildren.

His family has asked that, in lieu of flowers, donations in Reinhardt's memory may be made to the ACLU, BuzzFeed News reported.

His death creates a new vacancy on the 9th Circuit, which President Trump will now be able to fill with his own nominee, the report said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The tripartite meeting was attended by employers representatives, workers representatives and the government.
An interstellar object that whizzed through our solar system last year is confounding astronomers trying to understand how planets, comets and asteroids form.

The object, called 'Oumuamua, has a composition that suggests it should have formed close to its parent star. But in a twist, astronomers said it's hard to imagine how the object left its parent solar system, because it's hard to eject an object orbiting so close to a star.

'Oumuamua (pronounced oh-MOO-ah-MOO-ah) was discovered on Oct. 19, 2017, using the NASA-funded Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) at the University of Hawaii. ['Oumuamua Explained: An Interstellar Visitor in Pictures]

After looking at 'Oumuamua's high speed and highly inclined path through the solar system, scientists at the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center concluded the object was interstellar. The discovery of 'Oumuamua marks the first time an interstellar object was confirmed in our solar system.

"This object was likely ejected from a distant star system," said Elisa Quintana, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, in a NASA statement.

"What's interesting is that just this one object flying by so quickly can help us constrain some of our planet-formation models," added Quintana, who is a co-author of a new paper in the journal the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The paper, released today (March 27), describes what 'Oumuamua observations are revealing about the formation of planetesimals, which are small, rocky objects that could come together under gravity's pull to form planets.

Icy mystery

Observations of 'Oumuamua suggest that the object was probably pretty dry. Before its discovery, 'Oumuamua zoomed past the sun at about 196,000 mph (315,400 km/h). While the object was traveling fast enough to escape our solar system, its speed was somewhat similar to that of a comet passing by the sun, NASA said.

Comets are loose collections of ice and rock. As they draw near the sun, their surface warms, and this loosens gas and dust to escape into space. 'Oumuamua didn't leave behind such a trail.

Some scientists have suggested that in its own solar system, 'Oumuamua likely formed in a different region than comets formed in our own neighborhood. But the new paper has a counterargument.

Solar systems such as our sun and its planets form out of vast clouds of gas, dust and ice. Objects, such as comets, that form far away from their parent sun can remain icy. If the objects are close to the sun, it's too hot for ice to remain, so they coalesce into objects such as asteroids.

But if 'Oumuamua formed as close to its star as an asteroid, it's difficult to imagine how it was ejected away from that zone, the new paper suggests.

"The total real estate that's hot enough for that is almost zero," said lead author Sean Raymond, an astrophysicist at the French National Center for Scientific Research and the University of Bordeaux, in the same statement. "It's these tiny, little, circular regions around stars. It's harder for that stuff to get ejected, because it's more gravitationally bound to the star. It's hard to imagine how 'Oumuamua could have gotten kicked out of its system if it started off as an asteroid."

"If we understand planet formation correctly, ejected material like 'Oumuamua should be predominantly icy," added Thomas Barclay, an astrophysicist at Goddard and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. "If we see populations of these objects that are predominantly rocky, it tells us we've got something wrong in our models."

How 'Oumuamua's journey began

While researchers are further investigating where 'Oumuamua formed, they have come up with a plausible scenario for how it was ejected. Based on simulations from other work, they suggest a gas giant planet  something similar to a Jupiter  flung 'Oumuamua into interstellar exile.

As a gas giant plows by small objects such as asteroids, the planet exerts intense gravitational forces on the objects. In some cases, gravity breaks the objects apart. In the case of 'Oumuamua, the planet's gravity exerted pressure on the object, forcing it into the cigar-like shape observed today.

"The researchers calculated the number of interstellar objects we should see, based on estimates that a star system likely ejects a couple of Earth-masses of material during planet formation," NASA said. "They estimated that a few large planetesimals will hold most of that mass but will be outnumbered by smaller fragments like 'Oumuamua."

Original article on Space.com.
A camera that washed up on a beach in Taiwan will be returned to its owner more than two years after the device was dropped during a scuba diving excursion off a Japanese island.

Park Lee was with his class of elementary school students cleaning up a beach in Taiwan when an 11-year-old picked up an item covered with barnacles and shells, the BBC reported on Thursday. Lee looked at the item and discovered it was a camera with a waterproof case.

"An 11-year old boy found the camera," Lee told the BBC. "We thought it was broken but then by chance, knocked off a barnacle on the casing and found a button to open the case."

The case did its job, protecting the camera from the seawater. The boy pressed the power button and the camera turned on, revealing dozens of images on the device.

DECADES-OLD CAMERA REVEALS FORGOTTEN IMAGES OF MOUNT ST. HELENS ERUPTION

Lee said he and the students contemplated what to do with the camera.

"Some children thought we had earned the camera and could keep for ourselves. Others suggested we should try to find the owner -- and so we all sat down to think about how to do that, Lee said.

Lee posted a lengthy message on Facebook in Chinese and Japanese after seeing several photos were taken in Japan. He said clues indicated the camera was owned by young people and posted several of the photos to help identify the owner. Within a day his post received more than 10,000 shares and a response from the owner, Serina Tsubakihara.

"I couldn't believe it," Tsubakihara told the BBC. "I was super surprised when my friends told me about this and sent me the post with those pictures."

Tsubakihara said she lost the camera in 2015 while she was on vacation on the island of Ishigaki, Okinawa, about 155 miles east of Taiwan. The camera then drifted hundreds of miles, eventually washing ashore the beach in Taiwan.

"I was scuba diving and I lost the camera when one of my friends ran out of air and needed my help, Tsubakihara said. "I am so lucky and happy to have this miracle opportunity to feel kindness of people in my life.

Tsubakihara said she is planning to visit Taiwan in June to pick up her camera and personally thank the teacher and students for finding it.

"Those pictures remind me of old memories and brought me back to those," she said.
A leaked Facebook memo from an outspoken senior executive that details the risks associated with the social networks pursuit of growth has sparked controversy.

The incendiary memo from June 18, 2016, which was written by Facebook Vice President Andrew Boz Bosworth, was published by BuzzFeed Thursday. Titled The Ugly, the note had not been previously circulated outside Silicon Valley. After the memo was made public, Bosworth quickly disavowed the provocative note, saying that it was meant to trigger discussion among Facebook employees.

With Facebook currently reeling from the scandal over Cambridge Analyticas alleged misuse of user data, the leaked memo has thrust the social networks strategy even further into the spotlight.

DATA FOR 136,000 FACEBOOK USERS STILL NOT DELETED BY CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA, REPORT SAYS

We connect people. Period. Thats why all the work we do in growth is justified. All the questionable contact importing practices. All the subtle language that helps people stay searchable by friends. All of the work we do to bring more communication in. The work we will likely have to do in China some day. All of it, Bosworth wrote in the memo, according to Buzzfeed.

So we connect more people, he wrote elsewhere in the note. That can be bad if they make it negative. Maybe it costs someone a life by exposing someone to bullies.

Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools, Bosworth added. The ugly truth is that we believe in connecting people so deeply that anything that allows us to connect more people more often is *de facto* good."

FACEBOOK EXPLORING FORENSIC AUDITS TO INVESTIGATE CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA CLAIMS

Bosworth, who is currently Facebooks vice president of virtual reality/augmented reality, was previously the social networks vice president of ads. The executive downplayed the memo in a tweet Thursday.

I dont agree with the post today and I didnt agree with it even when I wrote it, he said, in a tweeted statement. The purpose of this post, like many others I have written internally, was to bring to the surface issues I felt deserved more discussion with the broader company.

Bosworth, who is regarded as one of the companys more outspoken executives, said that the memo should not be seen as a reflection of his, or Facebooks, beliefs.

FACEBOOK DATA SCANDAL PROMPTS REDESIGN OF SETTINGS, PRIVACY PAGES

Having a debate around hard topics like these is a critical part of our process and to do that effectively we have to be able to consider even bad ideas, if only to eliminate them, Bosworth added. To see this post in isolation is rough because it makes it appear as a stance that I hold or that the company holds when neither is the case.

In a subsequent tweet Bosworth said that the memo was one of the most unpopular things he has written internally, but added that the ensuing discussion helped shape our tools for the better.

The tech giant, which has over 2.1 billion monthly active users, has more than 25,000 employees around the world.

OBAMA 2012 CAMPAIGN 'SUCKED' DATA FROM FACEBOOK, FORMER OFFICIAL SAYS

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg also quickly disavowed from the memo. Boz is a talented leader who says many provocative things. This was one that most people at Facebook including myself disagreed with strongly. Weve never believed the ends justify the means, he said, in a statement obtained by Reuters.

The memo has emerged at a difficult time for the Facebook boss, who is wrestling with the fallout from a major data scandal.

Reports emerged earlier this month that data mining firm Cambridge Analytica improperly used information from more than 50 million Facebook accounts, prompting the social network to suspend the U.K.-based company. Cambridge Analytica, which has ties to Donald Trumps 2016 presidential election campaign, denies any wrongdoing.

FACEBOOK THINKS IT KNOWS WHETHER YOU'RE LIBERAL OR CONSERVATIVE: HERE'S HOW TO FIND OUT

Zuckerberg apologized for the data scandal in a lengthy post last week and in newspaper ads last weekend. He also described the situation as a major breach of trust" in an interview with CNN.

The scandal has already prompted a redesign of Facebooks privacy settings.

The Facebook chief will reportedly testify in front of U.S. lawmakers with regard to the Cambridge Analytica data scandal. Zuckerberg, however, has so far rebuffed similar calls from lawmakers in the U.K.

FACEBOOK ALTERNATIVES: ARE THERE SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS THAT DON'T COLLECT AND SELL YOUR DATA?

Cambridge Analytica has agreed to a forensic audit by a firm hired by Facebook.

Aleksandr Kogan, a psychology researcher at Cambridge University who worked with Cambridge Analytica via his company Global Science Research (GSR), is also embroiled in controversy. Last week he told the BBC that both Facebook and Cambridge Analytica have tried to place the blame on him.

Fox News Christopher Carbone and the Associated Press contributed to this article.

Follow James Rogers on Twitter @jamesjrogers
A Russian airline forced five Indian-American passengers to fly to Delhi, India instead of their original destination of New York because of their skin color, a racial discrimination complaint claims.

Aeroflot staff reportedly threatened the group of U.S. citizens, who were connecting in Moscow, saying that they would be deported to India if they did not board the flight back to Delhi, The Independent reported.

The alleged incident took place on Jan. 7.

According to reports, their connecting flight to JFK International Airport was canceled because of heavy snow, leaving the group stranded.

70-YEAR-OLD MAN REMOVED FROM PLANE FOR 'RACIAL ABUSE'

They tried to book alternate flights, but were allegedly told by Aeroflot crew that no seats were available.

According to the complaint, the airline offered alternative connections to the United States to other American passengers with light skin.

The Indian-American passengers were then given a choice to go back to India on a later flight or be deported to India by Russian officials because they did not have transit visas, according to the complaint. Under Russian law, passengers can only remain in the country for 24 hours without visas.

The American passengers called the U.S. embassy in Moscow, but the officer at the embassy was not able to get through to Aeroflot, the complaint claims.

Although the officer on duty at the embassy repeatedly asked to speak with Aeroflot to correct the situation, Aeroflot employees refused to speak with him, instead reiterating their threat that the passengers would be deported and that if they did not return to India," the complaint reads. "Aeroflot would make matters worse for them  including through criminal deportation and heavy fines.

One of the passengers recorded an incident with an Aeroflot employee, which he posted on Facebook, in which the employee tells the group they will be deported back to India. In the video the family argues with the employee that they should be deported back to America, since they are American citizens.

The employee storms away, but later returns with boarding passes for a flight to Delhi, according to The Independent.

The five passengers eventually boarded the India-bound flight, fearing for their safety and feeling that they had no other choice after Aeroflots repeated threats, as per the complaint. About 20 other passengers who had traveled from India were forced to return as well.

Once the passengers arrived in Delhi, they discovered there were no Aeroflot flights to New York for more than a week, The Independent reported.

Four of the five passengers spent thousands of dollars booking another flight on Qatar airlines to take them to the United States. The fifth flew back with Aeroflot six days later.

Each of the five missed several days of work or school. In a Facebook post, one wrote:

"We clearly fell short of our customary high standards of service in this incident, which occurred more than two months ago, and indeed we contacted the passengers immediately afterwards to offer our apologies."  Aeroflot

I have lost a week of work (I will not be allowed to vacation this year) and faced tremendous mental stress. I have been flying for over 17+ years and never ever been harassed or treated this way.

Aeroflots behavior is appalling and beyond any justification, Juvaria Khan, staff attorney at Muslim Advocates, the firm representing the passengers, told The Independent. DOT must conduct a full and thorough investigation and hold Aeroflot accountable for its discriminatory actions and ensure that no other travelers endure this type of mistreatment.

FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE FOX LIFESTYLE NEWS

Aeroflot denied any discrimanatory practicies in a statement to Fox News:

"We clearly fell short of our customary high standards of service in this incident, which occurred more than two months ago, and indeed we contacted the passengers immediately afterwards to offer our apologies. However, our thorough internal investigation established that this was not a case of discrimination based on appearance, and we do not accept this characterization in the complaint."

The Russian airliner has previously been fined by American officials for violating U.S. passenger protection rules.
If youve ever yearned for just a little more room to sleep or stretch out on a plane, Qantas Airlines may be your ideal airline for future travel.

Earlier this week, Alan Joyce, CEO of the Australian carrier, suggested creating a new cabin class in the cargo hold, giving passengers room to sleep in large pods and exercise, The Telegraph reported.

PILOT KISSES GROUND AFTER EMERGENCY LANDING IN FLORIDA

As part of Joyces plan for Project Sunrise, what he calls the last frontier of aviation, the exec envisions launching a non-stop flight between Australia (from either Sydney or Melbourne) and the U.K., as well as another direct flight to New York City, by 2022.

Such a flight would take more than 20 hours and could potentially require a redesign of aircraft, MarketWatch notes.

In doing so, we need to re-imagine the whole travel experience. Is there a new class thats needed on the aircraft? What are the out-there ideas that could apply to this and really change air travel for the future? Joyce said during the announcement at the Australia-United Kingdom Chamber of Commerce in London. And nothing, nothing is off the table.

"I don't know if in 2022 there's going to be another class, but if there is, Qantas is likely to be the airline that creates it, he reportedly said.

RUSSIAN AIRLINE SENT AMERICAN PASSENGERS TO INDIA INSTEAD OF NEW YORK BECAUSE OF THEIR SKIN COLOR, COMPLAINT ALLEGES

Days before, Qantas celebrated a historic milestone with the airlines first ever Perth to London trip.

Though not quite the worlds longest flight  the record is currently held by a Doha-Auckland service operated by Qatar Airways  the route signals the beginning of the end of the so-called Kangaroo Route, which has seen planes make the journey from Europe to Australia in a series of hops since the advent of aviation, the Telegraph reports.

Meanwhile, consumer advocate Christopher Elliott thinks that the airline may be better off improving the basic flight experience for passengers before tackling such a massive new project. Apparently, Qantas economy-class passengers seats are 17.5 inches wide and just 31 inches away from the seat in front of it, which would prove quite uncomfortable for such long-haul flights.

FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE FOX LIFESTYLE NEWS

Its more profitable but its also highly unethical, Elliott told Marketwatch. Instead of thinking about exercise rooms and luxury berths for its elite passengers, maybe Qantas should find ways of giving all of its customers a humane amount of legroom.
Authorities said Thursday that a suspicious package sent to Marine Corps Base Quantico in northern Virginia is linked to a Seattle-area man accused of sending 11 other suspicious parcels to government agencies and military installations in the Washington D.C. area.

Base officials told Fox 5 DC that the package arrived at the base's post office Thursday. Investigators said they were expecting the package to arrive.

The Marine Corps Base Quantico Explosive Ordnance Disposal responded to the post office at about 12:30 p.m. and gave the all clear at about 1 p.m., according to officials. The package was rendered safe and turned over to the FBI. There were no injuries or damage to property reported.

Thanh Cong Phan, 43, of Everett, Wash., was charged in federal court Tuesday with one count of shipment of explosive materials. According to a complaint, Phan sent packages to the U.S. Secret Service White House Mail Screen Facility, the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division, in Dahlgren, Virginia, and the mailing facility for FBI headquarters in Baltimore, among other government facilities.

Each package contained what appeared to be a homemade explosive device in a small glass bottle with an unknown black power with a fuse, the complaint says. It also contained a typewritten letter with "ramblings about neuropsychology, mind control, and other subjects including terrorism."

The facilities were evacuated and shut down when the packages were discovered, causing considerable disruption to government operations, the complaint said.

No packages exploded or caused injuries.

Federal authorities told Fox 5 DC that they suspect more packages could have been mailed to processing facilities in the D.C. area. They are continuing to work to locate and isolate all of the packages.

A detention hearing for Phan is set for Friday.

Click for more from Fox5DC.com.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Austin bombings suspect Mark Anthony Conditt was labeled a domestic terrorist by the citys police chief on Thursday.

The comment from Austin Police Chief Brian Manley came during a meeting focused on the response by the community and by officials to the string of attacks that terrorized Texas throughout March.

"I actually agree now that he was a domestic terrorist for what he did to us, Manley said, as he and other panelists fielded questions.

AUSTIN PACKAGE BOMB ATTACKS TIMELINE

The admission didn't go far enough for some present, who continued to ask questions about racism in Austin.

Since the incident began, Manley has refrained from classifying the attacks as terrorism, noting the ongoing investigation.

Conditt died amid a confrontation with police in the early hours of March 21, during which he detonated one of his own explosive devices. Following the conflict, authorities recovered a roughly 25-minute recording made by the suspect. The contents, Manley said, were the outcry of a very challenged young man talking about challenges in his personal life.

AUSTIN BOMBER CALLED HIMSELF A PSYCHOPATH, HAD NO REMORSE, CONGRESSMAN SAYS

He added that Conditt did not mention anything about terrorism, nor does he mention anything about hate. The 23-year old did not mention any racial motivation in his recording, but investigators previously said they were not ruling out the bombings as a hate crime.

On the recording, Conditt called himself a "psychopath," but otherwise offered little about his motivations for the bombings. Authorities have not released that recording.

The explosives killed Anthony Stephen House, 39, and Draylen Mason, 17, in separate incidents when they were disguised as packages left on doorsteps.

Four other people were wounded in the series of incidents. One of two explosive packages detonated at a FedEx sorting facility outside of San Antonio the day before Conditt died. Authorities ultimately tracked Conditt down by using surveillance images of him dropping off packages at FedEx.

Fox News' Katherine Lam and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
An attempted robbery of a Tennessee home Wednesday night turned deadly when the homeowner fatally shot one of the alleged robbers, who was a convicted felon.

Terry Adams, Jr., 27, died Wednesday night in Nashville during a home invasion, the Metro Nashville Police Department said in a news release.

MAN SAYS PRAYER BEFORE BREAKING INTO NYC STORE, POLICE SAY

Adams, along with another robber who remains at large, allegedly entered the home of 43-year-old Brent Bishop through a back door and hit his wife in the face.

Bishop, according to police, saw the rear door was open and went to the kitchen, before then being "struck on the head with a blunt object." The man was ordered to hand over "three long guns and a pistol" from a safe, which the robbers left with.

Looking for his wife -- who had fled to a neighbor's house -- Bishop got a pistol from another room and went outside to look for her when he once again met Adams and his partner.

Police said that Bishop fired shots at the two, "fatally wounding Adams." The second robber "dropped the long guns and the pistol that had been taken from the safe and ran away."

Adams, who's had convictions of auto burglary, attempted burglary, felony theft and aggravated assault, is a suspect in a Feb. 6 burglary at Bishop's home, in which a flat screen TV was stolen.

GUN-TOTING WOMAN SHOT BY NYPD OFFICERS AFTER ALLEGED CRIME SPREE, REPORTS SAY

The now-deceased robber had been arrested in July 2017 for felony meth possession for resale and unlawful gun possession by a convicted felon and was being sought by authorities for two probation violation warrants.

Bishop was hospitalized with a skull fracture from the incident. The second robber who fled the scene remains at large.
After admitting to spending nearly a decade fraudulently cashing her dead mothers Social Security checks, Pamela Thompson, 63, of Algiers, Louisiana, was sentenced in February to three years probation and restitution of $297,325 for theft of government services.

Death can be lucrative. Similar crimes may not be that difficult for fraudsters because of faulty government tracking of which beneficiaries are still alive. Audits have found federal agencies doling out millions in taxpayer dollars to dead people.

Referring to a case in his state, a lead co-sponsor of a bill to curb fraudulent payments, Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., said the near $300,000, never should have been sent in the first place.

Its pretty simple: Dont pay dead people, Kennedy said in a statement.

Kennedy and Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., introduced the Stopping Improper Payments to Deceased People Act in February.

Its pretty simple: Dont pay dead people."  Sen. John Kennedy, R-La.

An inspector general report last August found the Social Security Administration made $37.7 million in payments to 746 individuals after they died. Without a change, the SSA would likely issue $7.3 million more in the following year, the audit found. It could be even worse, as the IG found the program issued payments to 3,925 labeled as dead on a separate Department of Veterans Affairs database.

This comes after the SSAs internal watchdog in 2015 identified 6.5 million individuals listed as being older than 112 years of age, but not listed as dead.

Its not just Social Security. The Government Accountability Offices audit of fiscal year 2015-2016 found $144.3 billion in improper payments across federal agencies, and identified payments to the dead as a substantial improper payment problem.

It is a horror show, its scandalous and its outrageous, Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, told Fox News.

The data exists of who is alive and who is not alive, but its not available to the people who write checks, Norquist said. It opens the door to corruption. Its beyond silly and incompetent.

Fiscal policy groups such as Americans for Tax Reform joined with government watchdog groups such as the Project on Government Oversight in a coalition of groups from the left and right to urge members of Congress to back the bipartisan legislation.

The Social Security Administration has the most complete federal database of individuals reported to have died, but most federal agencies dont have access to the official list and rely on incomplete and outdated information.

The bill would provide all federal agencies access to the Social Security list, while also requiring the SSA to improve the lists accuracy, and require oversight of agency death data by both the GAO and the Office of Management and Budget.

The Trump administrations fiscal year 2018 budget proposal called for similar measures.

Among the most consequential agencies having faulty data is the Drug Enforcement Administration, said Peter Tyler, a senior policy analyst at the Project on Government Oversight.

Thats because the DEA is responsible for maintaining the database of physicianschecked by U.S. pharmacieswho can prescribe controlled substances, such as opioids. However, the DEA doesnt have full access to the most reliable information. This could allow someone to use the name of a dead doctor, Tyler said.

Unlike many waste, fraud and abuse issues, the solution is not complicated, Tyler told Fox News. Its a solvable problem that Congress should address. The good news is that we have a bipartisan solution.

While not perfectas demonstrated by IG auditsthe Social Security death database is fixable, and the legislation requires improvements, Tyler said, adding that other agency lists are a subset of the more complete SSA data.

However, the bill could be counterproductive in obtaining data, warns Shawn A. Webster, executive director of National Association for Public Health Statistics and Information Systems, or NAPHSIS, which represents state records and public health statistics offices, and opposes the legislation.

The security of their death datadata they are legally responsible for protecting will be compromised when shared government-wide by SSA, as SSA is not a statistical agency, data collection sharing is not core to the agencys mission, and it lacks the adequate resources to do so, Webster told Fox News in an email.

If this bill passes, some jurisdictions would likely stop voluntarily sharing death data with the Social Security Administration, Webster said.

In the House, Reps. Greg Gianforte, R-Mt. and Cheri Bustos, D-Ill., introduced a companion bill.

Taxpayers deserve to know that were protecting their hard-earned dollars and I cant think of a more egregious example of government waste than writing checks to dead people, Bustos said in a statement.
Law enforcement in Tennessee killed the man authorities said posed as a cop and fatally shot an actual police officer after pulling him over in his car.

James Decoursey, 34, who was considered armed and dangerous, was killed in Clarksville, Tenn., according to a Facebook post by Logan County Sheriff's Office.

Authorities identified the slain officer as Phillip Meacham, 38. Decoursey was on the run after stealing a white Chevrolet pickup truck.

Gov. Matt Bevin previously confirmed in a tweet that a Hopkinsville officer had died.

Authorities reported to the scene on Paulette Court after 5 p.m., WKRN reported. Hopkinsville is about 70 miles northwest of Nashville.

According to a Hopkinsville Police Department news release, the off-duty officer was pulled over in his own car by someone "pretending to be a police officer." Not long after, the officer reportedly was shot by the suspect. He was rushed to the hospital where he ultimately died from his injuries, authorities said.

Meacham worked for the Hopkinsville Police Department since May 2017 and previously worked at the Christian County Sheriff's Department for about 12 years, officials said at the news conference. The slain officer reportedly was married and had two children.

In a followup tweet, Bevin said "There is no greater sacrifice than that of a person willing to lay down their life for annother...Thank God for the #ThinBlueLine."
President Trump will posthumously award the Medal of Honor to a World War II veteran for gallantry shown as an Army intelligence officer during the final months of the war, the White House said Thursday.

Trump will honor then-1st Lt. Garlin Conner posthumously for his actions on Jan. 24, 1945. According to the White House, Conner left a position of relative safety to get in a better position "to direct artillery fire onto the assaulting enemy infantry and armor."

Conner remained in an exposed position for three hours, despite the enemy coming within five yards of his position and friendly artillery shells exploding around him.

According to Military.com, Conner's heroism took place during a battle near Houssen, in northeastern France. The website reported that Conner had received the Distinguished Service Cross for his actions in that battle.

According to a citation for the Distinguished Service Cross, Conner "was individually credited with stopping more than 150 Germans, destroying all [six German] tanks and completely disintegrating the powerful enemy assault force and preventing heavy loss of life in his own outfit."

Conner, a Kentucky native, enlisted in the Army in March 1941 and saw combat in North Africa, Sicily and Western Europe during World War II. In all, Conner received four Silver Stars, one Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts in addition to the Distinguished Service Cross. He died in 1998, according to the Lexington Herald-Leader.

Conner's wife and family will join Trump at the White House for the medal ceremony. A date has not been set.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
In some versions of a story March 30 about a family killed when their SUV went off a cliff, The Associated Press linked an incorrect video. The video was of a different crash.

The story is below:

Officials seek clues in SUV cliff crash that likely killed 8

Searchers are still looking for three children believed to have been inside an SUV with five other immediate family members when it went over a cliff in California

By PAUL ELIAS and PHUONG LE

Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO (AP)  Accident-reconstruction investigators are trying to figure out what caused an SUV carrying a family to plunge off a California cliff in a deadly wreck that happened shortly after child-welfare authorities went to their home to investigate possible abuse.

Five members of the Hart family  a free-spirited brood from Washington state who grew their own food and took up activist causes  were found dead. Searchers kept looking Friday for three more children believed to have been in the vehicle when it went over a scenic coastal overlook and landed on rocks in the Pacific Ocean below. The missing children may have been washed out to sea.

"There are a lot of unknowns on this," Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman said. "Several of the questions that have been asked today will never be answered."

Allman said there is no reason so far to think the crash was intentional but also mentioned there were no skid marks or signs the driver braked as the GMC Yukon crossed a flat, dirt pull-off area, about 75 feet (23 meters) wide, where motorists on the Pacific Coast Highway often walk their dogs.

Accident-reconstruction experts said investigators would look at road conditions along with such possibilities as brake failure or a blown tire. The sheriff appealed to anyone who might have seen the family of eight to come forward.

Known as the Hart Tribe, the multiracial family of two married women  Sarah and Jennifer Hart  and six adopted children took spontaneous road trips to camp and hike and traveled to festivals and other events, offering hugs and promoting unity.

One of the children, Devonte Hart, drew national attention when the black youngster was photographed hugging a white police officer during a 2014 protest in Portland, Oregon, over the deadly police shooting of a black man in Ferguson, Missouri. Devonte was holding a "Free Hugs" sign.

A passing motorist discovered the wreck Monday, three days after social service authorities opened an investigation apparently prompted by a neighbor's complaint that the children were being deprived of food.

A state caseworker went to the Harts' house in Woodland, Washington, on March 23 but didn't find anyone home, officials said. The Department of Social and Health Services had no prior history with the family, said Norah West, an agency spokeswoman.

Bruce and Dana DeKalb, next-door neighbors of the Harts, said they called child protective services because 15-year-old Devonte had been coming over to their house almost every day for a week, asking for food.

Dana DeKalb said Devonte told her his parents were "punishing them by withholding food." The boy asked her to leave food in a box by the fence for him, she said. She told The Oregonian/OregonLive that Devonte asked for things like tortillas and peanut butter and eventually was coming over three times a day.

She said the boy's first words when he came to the door March 22 were: "Have you called?"

"I almost got the feeling it was more of, 'What are you waiting for, lady?" Dana DeKalb said.

Authorities don't know exactly when the wreck took place. But by Saturday, the family's SUV was gone from the driveway, Bruce DeKalb said.

Well before the wreck, Sarah Hart pleaded guilty in 2011 to a domestic assault charge in Douglas County, Minnesota, telling authorities "she let her anger get out of control" while spanking her 6-year-old adoptive daughter, court records show.

The two women, both 38, were found dead inside the SUV, while three of their children  Markis Hart, 19, Jeremiah Hart, 14, and Abigail Hart, 14  were discovered outside the vehicle. Searchers were looking for Hannah Hart, 16; Sierra Hart, 12; and Devonte.

Their model of Yukon was presumably equipped with a black box recorder that would show its speed and use of the brakes, said Marcus Mazza, an engineer and accident-reconstruction expert with Lancaster, Pennsylvania-based Robson Forensic.

Authorities in Washington state searched the family's home Thursday. The Clark County sheriff's office said deputies were looking for bills or anything else that could shed light on why the family left and other circumstances related to the trip, Portland, Oregon, news station KGW-TV reported.

Family friend Max Ribner took issue with the notion the wreck was something other than a tragic accident. The couple adopted many of their children from "hard backgrounds," he said. "They transformed these kids' lives."

___

Le reported from Seattle. Associated Press Writer Tom James contributed from West Linn, Oregon.
A Burger King manager was arrested Tuesday in Florida after he was accused of kidnapping a 10-year-old girl, forcing her to wear a dog collar and have sex with him.

Jonathan Diaz Fundora, 23, of Miami was charged with kidnapping, sexual battery by a suspect over 18 on a victim under 12, traveling to meet a minor, five counts of possession of child pornography, three counts of directing the sexual performance of a child and two counts of use of a computer to seduce a child, the Polk County Sheriffs Office announced.

"This suspect groomed and manipulated a little girl online and then traveled all the way to Polk County to sexually abuse her  he is the poster child for why it is critical that parents monitor their childrens activities online," Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said. "I commend our patrol deputies for catching him in the act of sexually abusing a child, and I shudder to think of what the other horrible consequences would have been had her parent not immediately reported her missing."

FLORIDA BEACHGOERS DISCOVER HOLY GRAIL OF SHIPWRECKS AFTER REMAINS OF 18TH CENTURY SHIP WASH ASHORE

Investigators said the fast food manager met the 10-year-old girl online about six weeks ago on an app and communicated with her through text messages and Facebook. Fundora directed the girl "to perform sex acts and send him photos and videos," according to the Polk County Sheriff's Office. A preliminary investigation of Fundoras electronic devices showed he had the photos and videos of the girl, officials said.

Fundora allegedly set up a meeting with the girl on Tuesday close to her home in Lakeland, Fla., taking three days off from work in order to meet with her. The girl wrote a note to her parents telling them she was staying with a friend for a few days. Upon seeing the note, the victims parents called the police to report their daughter was missing.

Polk County Sheriffs Office deputies were able to identify the suspect and his car about 35 minutes after the parents' phone call. Deputies used photos of Fundoras car that he posted on Facebook and were able to track the vehicle to a Motel 6 in Lakeland. When officers arrived, they discovered the victim hiding in the bathroom, wearing a pink dog collar.

PILOT KISSES GROUND AFTER EMERGENCY LANDING IN FLORIDA

The victim and Fundora told deputies they had sexual intercourse. Police said a sexual assault kit confirmed the sexual abuse.

Fundora was booked into the Polk County Jail and his bail status was not immediately available.
A Colorado man shot and killed his neighbor Tuesday after an argument about how the victim disciplined his dog, the victims fiancee said.

Michael Kourosh Sadeghi, 32, was arrested for investigation of first-degree murder after Thornton police discovered Dustin Schmidts body in his backyard, FOX31 Denver reported.

Police didnt officially establish a motive in the killing and said detectives were still investigating the events that led up to the shooting.

Right now no motive has been established, police spokesman Matt Barnes said. All indications are that these people  up until last night  got along. Were still trying to figure out why one neighbor shot another.

COLORADO HOUSE RANSACKED AFTER ESTATE SALE MIX-UP

Vicki Branaghan, Schmidts fiancee, told the Denver Post that they had a friendly relationship with Sadeghi and that they shared a fence in the backyard. But Branaghan said her dog started to become an issue because they were having trouble keeping it in the backyard.

The dog jumped the five-foot fence again Tuesday and went into Sadeghis yard -- nearly hanging itself, she told the newspaper. She said Schmidt went over to pull the dog back into their yard and hit the dog in the process to discipline him.

Mike started screaming: Did you hit that dog?' Branaghan said.

Sadeghi snapped and accused Schmidt of beating the dog, she said. Schmidt started to walk back into his home when Sadeghi shot him in the back of the head five times, she said.

ANIMATRONIC T-REX BURSTS INTO FLAMES AT COLORADO DINOSAUR PARK

We were all three standing there, Branaghan told the Denver Post. Mike pulled the gun out and shot Dustin in the back of the head five times. I was just a few feet away. Mike turned around and walked back to his house as though nothing happened.

She described Schmidt as being "loud and funny" and someone who helped her cope with her son's death in 2015.

They both died here, Branaghan told the newspaper. I need to move. I cant stay here.

Sadeghi was arrested soon after the shooting. He was being held at the Adams County Detention Facility.
A former teacher in Tennessee who has been charged with transporting a minor for sex has reportedly decided to plead guilty after personal reflection.

Tad Cummins faces charges including obstruction of justice and transporting a 15-year-old across state lines for the purpose of engaging in sexual conduct, the Tennessean reported.

Cummins attorney announced his clients reversal of course in a court filing Thursday. The client drew nationwide attention in March 2017 when he allegedly disappeared with a former student.

After a five-week manhunt, Cummins and the girl were discovered in a remote forest cabin in Northern California.

In May 2017, Cummins pleaded not guilty, and later claimed that police and his wife had coerced him into admitting he had a sexual relationship with the teen.

After case review, consultation, and personal reflection, he would like to enter a plea of guilty to both counts as charged in the Indictment, a federal public defender wrote in Thursdays filing.

If convicted, Cummins faces 10 years to life in prison, FOX 17 reported.
A University of Central Florida international student who abruptly changed his appearance and called his high-powered weapon a "sniper rifle" will be deported to China, an immigration judge has ruled.

Wenliang Sun, 26, violated the terms of his F-1 visa by not attending classes, police said -- an offense that would normally lead to a slow process of notices and warnings.

But officials said he was fast-tracked for deportation because of a series of sudden "red flags," including dyeing his hair blond, alarming his roommates, and buying a $70,000 Chevrolet Corvette in cash with his father's money.

In my country, that is a cheap car, Sun told detectives investigating reports of his strange behavior, according to a police report.

MAN BUSTED WITH ALLEGED WEAPONS STOCKPILE CLAIMS HE'S ON SECRET GOVERNMENT MISSION

School officials first reached out to cops Feb. 1 after reports from Sun's friends and roommates that he had changed dramatically, according to local reports.

Sun legally owned a LWRC 300 Blackout rifle and ammunition, as well as a .308 Ruger Precision caliber rifle equipped with a bipod and scope, police said. He also had a hunting license.

But Sun's predilection for calling his weapon a "sniper rifle" instead of a hunting rifle alarmed authorities, UCFPD Chief Richard Beary said, according to the Orlando Sentinel.

So did Sun's statement that he liked to play with" and "look at" his weapons, according to a police report.

When Sun lost his non-immigrant visa status by not attending classes, he also lost his right to own weapons under federal law.

"Some of the [investigators] with a lot of years of experience  walked away and said, 'We just saved a bunch of lives'"  UCFPD Chief Richard Beary

An immigration judge ordered his deportation on Mar. 21, the Orlando Sentinel reported. He was being held Thursday at Baker County Detention Center in northern Florida.

DID PARKLAND SCHOOL SHOOTER SHOW ANY WARNING SIGNS?

Authorities said that even though Sun did not make any threats or attempt to harm anyone, he still posed a major risk to student safety.

Aurora, Co. movie theater gunman James Holmes dyed his hair bright orange before his killing spree, and also abruptly stopped attending his neuroscience program.

Some of the [investigators] with a lot of years of experience  walked away and said, we just saved a bunch of lives,  Beary told the paper. Theres no doubt about it.
A high school in Connecticut was on lockdown Wednesday after a school employee who wanted to execute every white man threatened to go on a killing rampage, police said.

A suspect identified as Carl Lemon, 63, an in-school suspension coordinator at Harding High School in Bridgeport, was charged with second-degree threat and breach of peace, the Connecticut Post reported. He was released on $5,000 bond.

Officers responded to the school following an alert of a possible threatening situation. Dane Brown, the schools principal, said the man made threatening comments to a teacher.

Police claim Lemon said he hates white people and couldnt wait for the panthers to give the OK and a revolution begins because he will execute every white man he gets his hands on.

The school staff member also allegedly stomped on an American flag and told students in the classroom that This is what I think about it.

During the police investigation, Principal Brown said she found an anonymous note in her mailbox regarding Lemons troubling behavior.

Mr. Lemon talks about shooting whites a lot! He watches radical stuff during class. I am scared he will do something  he is crazy, the note reportedly read.

Lemon previously faced charges of creating a public disturbance, disorderly conduct, and harassment. The charges were later dropped.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
NOPE. Dr. Fisher says this: During the March for Our Lives, my team sampled 256 people who were randomly selected. This gives us the chance to provide evidence about who attended the March for Our Lives and why.



256 people along a mile-long route. Tens of thousands of people coming and going throughout the day. Dr. Fishers uses terms like "more than likely" "possibly". Fisher noted a few caveats: A lot of teens were concentrated in a single area near the stage, and the survey ended at 1 pm, potentially undercounting the number of teens and kids by a small amount. Many of the children also may have attended the event with parents, slightly inflating the true level of adult interest.



Sorry. Fisher's data doesn't prove anything. This data comes from one survey, has not been confirmed or peer reviewed. Try again, genius.
Before she walked into the meeting room with the rest of her colleagues at the Denver Post two weeks ago, 25-year-old reporter Elizabeth Hernandez knew the axe was going to fall. What she didnt know was how deep the coming cuts would be.

For the second time in as many years, Lee Ann Colacioppo, the editor in chief, announced layoffs at the Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper. Thirty jobs will be cut from the staff of just under 100; Hernandez broke into tears at the news.

Over the past decade, newspapers across the country have seen their profit margins, coverage and staff shrink. The marked decline has left many a town and city without a staple of its community: a healthy newspaper.

Denvers media ecosystem has been declining for years, the largest hit coming with the closure of the Rocky Mountain News in 2009. The final edition of the paper reached an estimated audience of 350,000. The papers staff had won four Pulitzer Prizes since 2000.

The death knell has long been ringing for the industry as more and more newsrooms weather layoffs. While reporters and editors suffer the most immediate impact, its often the readers who shoulder the most destructive burden. When coverage shrinks, readers are left with a void in their information intake; society, democracy and community are all impacted when newspapers collapse.

Reasons for the industrys decline are myriad; some blame the rise of digital platforms, others place the onus on declining advertising revenue, while still others look to decreasing subscription and circulation numbers. In truth, its probably a combination of those factors and more that have influenced the collapse.

The advertising end of the business is difficult and getting more difficult all the time, David Chavern, CEO of the News Media Alliance, said. I dont think theres anybody thats figured it out completely.

Chavern fears that if newspapers continue to die out in local communities, fake news will rise to fill the curiosity gap.

Fake news will become very much a local experience, and very much a destructive one. If we get disappointing journalism, then we lose civil society.  David Chavern, CEO News Media Alliance

Fake news will become very much a local experience, and very much a destructive one, Chavern said. If we get disappointing journalism, then we lose civil society.

Advertising revenue for the industry as a whole has steadily fallen over the past decade. In 2016, the entire industry brought in just over $18 billion in advertising dollars. Compare this to 2006, a high water mark when the industry made nearly $50 billion in advertising. These losses have forced many papers to consolidate under larger and larger ownership umbrellas.

One such umbrella is Alden Global Capital, a hedge fund that became a controlling stakeholder of MNG Enterprises, which owns the Denver Post along with a plethora of other newspapers. In its heyday, the Post employed over 400 journalists to cover the city, state and nation. A decade of layoffs have threatened the papers ability to continue the award-winning coverage it has done in the past.

Theres one less reporter at city council meetings, were not watching the suburbs like we used to, Keilan Nicholson, Post reporter and chairman of the newsroom unit of the Denver Newspaper Guild, said. We want to be the light that shines on suburban cities.  And its just gotten more and more difficult to do that.

Alden, lambasted by many of the Posts employees for their divestment, is currently the defendant in a lawsuit brought forward by Solus, a minority shareholder in the company.

In 2017, Alden amended the stockholders agreement to remove the information-rights covenant and eviscerate the Companys reporting obligations to stockholders, according to the lawsuit. This restructuring, which the plaintiff alleges allows Alden to obfuscate investments that arent related to the success of its newspapers, is at the heart of the lawsuit. Since the agreement was amended, the lawsuit claims that Aldens financial reporting has been nearly useless.

Lawyers for Sola LTD and Ultra Master LTD, collectively known as Solus, did not return requests for comment. Similarly, counsel for MNG Enterprises, Inc. did not return requests for comment.

While the industry is surely struggling, there are bright spots. Chavern said local newspapers have an information monopoly on the towns they operate in, affording a window of opportunity for experimentation.

We have a period of time where we can figure out how to make a digital business work while we still have a print business that helps support the whole enterprise, he said.

Some arent so optimistic. Amy Webb, a futurist and founder of the Future Today Institute, said the time for newspapers to rethink their sustainability models is overdue. She said newspapers need to find different funding models, which begins at the research and development level.

You have to look at this enduring problem with a new perspective, Webb said. Im not talking about making small changes to local news businesses, like adding in an events vertical. Im talking about a radically different business model for news writ large.

While the industry grapples with the steady drumbeat of layoffs and shrinking margins, reporters like Hernandez are struggling to simply see another day. Working at the Denver Post was her dream job, one thats now in jeopardy with the latest round of impending cuts.

Anyone would be lucky to get a job there -- if the vulturous hedge fund wasnt our owner, she said. Its a pretty grim reality.
Mary Kay Letourneaus student-turned-husband was reportedly arrested and charged with driving under the influence after crashing his SUV into two cars in Washington state.

Vili Fualaau, 34, failed to stop his 2002 Mercury Mountaineer and slammed into two cars stopped at a light in Burien in February, TMZ reported Thursday, citing court documents.

Fualaau was about to take a field sobriety test when Letourneau showed up and told him to stop cooperating with police because their lawyer was coming, TMZ reported. Fualaau reportedly took a blood test at a police station and was booked and released on the DUI charge, according to The Daily Mail.

Fualaaus BAC was .08 and he also had THC in his blood, prosecutors told TMZ.

He was not required to take a mugshot when he was booked, The Daily Mail reported. He is reportedly set for a court hearing next week.

Fualaau filed for separation from Letourneau last May, nearly 20 years after she was jailed for having a sexual relationship with him while he was in sixth grade, TMZ reported at the time.

Letourneau, 56, was a married mother of four and an elementary school teacher when she began her affair with Fualaau. She was arrested in March 1997 after a relative of her then-husband, Steve Letourneau, notified police. She gave birth to a daughter fathered by Fualaau in May 1997.

Letourneau eventually pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree child rape and was sentenced to six months in jail. She was barred from contact with Fualaau as part of her plea bargain, but broke the agreement in 1998 when she became pregnant with Fualaaus baby for a second time. She ended up being sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in state prison.

The pair married when she was released, at which time Fualaau was 22. Fualaau had to get another court order to lift the original court order that prohibited Letourneau from seeing him.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Investigators scouring the area where a family of eight plunged to their deaths this week say they're still trying to figure out how the family's SUV careened off a California highway and fell to the rocky coastline below.

The wreck near Westport on the Pacific Coast Highway was discovered by a passing motorist Monday afternoon and its cause remains unsolved, though authorities are examining everything from how much gas was in the tank to credit card information in a bid to clear up a lot of unknowns surrounding the incident.

Were looking for everything, Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman told SFGate. Was there a pillowcase, a suitcase, who knows what?

Police said they have no reason so far to believe it was an intentional crash that claimed the lives of two women and at least three of their six adoptive children just days after Child Protective Services tried to contact the family over concerns about the kids' living conditions.

"There are a lot of unknowns on this," Allman said.

The women, Jennifer and Sarah Hart, both 38, were found dead inside the SUV, while three of their children  Markis, 19, Jeremiah, 14, and Abigail, 14  were discovered outside the vehicle.

A team on Thursday continued to search the rugged coastline for the three other children, also believed to have been in the SUV and all presumed dead: Hannah Hart, 16, Sierra Hart, 12, and Devonte Hart, 15.

Investigators have said there were no signs of skid marks or of the GMC Yukon braking and the Alameda County Sheriffs Office has been assisting in the search by sending a drone to videotape miles of the rugged coastline.

Were they northbound, southbound, we dont know the answer, Allman said, according to SFGate. That wreck could have happened two days before, or it could have happened an hour before it was reported.

He added that police requested bank and credit card information to try to determine where the Washington state family was before the crash, and where they may have been heading.

The Associated Press reported investigators also are looking at factors such as brake failure, blown tires and weather. That model of Yukon was presumably equipped with a black box recorder that would show its speed and use of the brakes, said Marcus Mazza, an engineer and accident-reconstruction expert with Lancaster, Pennsylvania-based Robson Forensic.

Investigators can calculate the SUV's speed based on where it landed and the height of the drop.

"It's basic physics," Mazza told the Associated Press.

Family friend Max Ribner took issue with the notion it was something other than a tragic accident. The couple adopted children, many of whom came from "hard backgrounds" and "they transformed these kids' lives," he said.

One of the children, Devonte, drew national attention after the black youngster was photographed in tears, hugging a white police officer during a 2014 protest in Portland, Ore., over the deadly police shooting of a black man in Ferguson, Miss. Devonte was holding a "Free Hugs" sign.

Allman appealed to anyone who might have seen the family of eight to come forward.

On Friday, three days before their vehicle was found, Child Protective Services were called to the Hart house in Woodland, Wash., a small city outside Portland, Ore. where they moved to in May 2017, according to Oregon Live.

The Washington State Department of Social and Health Services had opened an investigation after the children were identified as potential victims of alleged abuse or neglect, Oregon Live reported, citing the Cowlitz County Sheriffs Office. Bruce and Dana DeKalb, the next-door neighbors of the Harts in Woodland, told The Associated Press they called child services on Friday because they thought Devonte was going hungry. They said he had been coming over to their house too often in the past week asking for food.

Authorities attempted to reach the family three times since Friday, but couldnt get in contact. The third attempt was made Tuesday, a day after their SUV was found. Signs showed the family planned for a short trip.

The agency had no prior history with the family.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A gang of teenagers beat a New Jersey man and left him to die on the street Wednesday, authorities said.

Sebastian Aguilar, 36, of Guttenberg, was found lying on a street in the town, NJ.com reported. He was transported to Palisades Medical Center and pronounced dead Thursday, Hudson County Prosecutor Esther Suarez said.

DOCTORS REMOVE 30-POUND TUMOR FROM MANS BEER BELLY

Aguilar was mobbed by a group of about eight people while walking through Guttenberg, police said.

At least two suspects, a 14- and 15-year-old, were arrested and charged with aggravated assault and endangering an injured victim, police said. Additional charges against the teens were expected to be filed.

It wasnt the first time the accused teenagers allegedly attacked someone, a Guttenberg resident told NBC New York.

DAD WHO STEPPED OVER DYING 2-YEAR-OLD SON TO FLEE COPS AFTER CRASH IS CONVICTED OF MURDER

Police are investigating a motive and additional suspects in connection to the incident. The Hudson County Prosecutors Office has asked anyone with information on the attack to contact authorities.
The manhunt continued Friday for a man suspected of fatally shooting an off-duty police officer in a small Kentucky city, then fleeing in a stolen truck, according to Kentucky State Police.

State police said Thursday night at a news conference that 38-year-old Hopkinsville officer Phillip Meacham was shot that afternoon and was taken to a hospital, where he died.

Trooper Rob Austin identified the suspect as 34-year-old James K. Decoursey of Hopkinsville, who police said fled on foot then took off in a 1997 white Chevrolet pickup truck with license plate 2070GH. Austin said Decoursey may have changed vehicles and should be treated as armed and dangerous. He said a Tennessee Highway Patrol helicopter was aiding in the search, as were multiple other police agencies.

Meacham, who was married and had two school-age children, had been with the Hopkinsville department since May 2017 and before that worked for about 14 years with the Christian County Sheriff's Department, Austin said.

Hopkinsville Police Chief Clayton Sumner told reporters, "I just want to ask everybody for their thoughts and prayers for the family. Also for the men and women that are out there trying to find this criminal and bring him to justice." He said mental health professionals and chaplains had been brought in to help Meacham's co-workers.

He also said he spoke briefly to the slain officer's widow telling her two things: "We will find him," and "I'm sorry."

Gov. Matt Bevin announced the officer's death on Twitter.

In Frankfort, lawmakers in the House stood for a moment of silence after Rep. Walker Wood Thomas of Hopkinsville announced that an officer had been shot.

Hopkinsville is about 73 miles (117.48 kilometers) northwest of Nashville, Tennessee.
An Ohio woman has drawn attention for making a face in her mug shot after she was arrested for drunken driving -- and accused of threatening to burn down a neighbor's home.

Amber Legge, 32, of Piqua, allegedly made the threat in an argument over money, and was later arrested after police pulled her over while she was allegedly driving while drunk, the Dayton Daily News reported.

Legge can be seen in her mug shot -- taken by the Montgomery County Sheriffs Office -- sticking her tongue out and grimacing.

According to a police report, the woman got into an argument with the resident of a home in Huber Heights, claiming she was owed money. During the confrontation Legge reportedly threatened to beat the victim and burn her house down before fleeing the scene.

Legge was arrested on suspicion of aggravated menacing and operating a vehicle under the influence of alcohol and drugs, the New York Post reported.
A longtime spiritual adviser to President George W. Bush bilked vulnerable and elderly investors out of more than $1 million after selling them worthless Chinese bonds, federal prosecutors said.

Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell was accused in an indictment of using his prominence as the pastor of a Houston mega-church to lure investors into the scheme, Shreveport (La.) U.S. Attorney Alexander Van Hook said Thursday.

Caldwell, 64, is one of the most well-known and wealthiest ministers in the Houston area, Fox 26 Houston reported. His Village United Methodist Church has more than 16,000 members.

The pastor has served as a spiritual advisor to President George W. Bush for years, the station reported. Bush asked Caldwell, a political independent, to introduce him at the 2000 Republican Convention. Caldwell offered the benediction at Bushs 2001 inauguration and even joined the former president on his first visit to the World Trade Center after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Caldwell also officiated at the 2008 wedding of Jenna Bush, the former presidents daughter.

An email sent Friday by Fox News to Bushs office for comment was not immediately returned.

The indictment alleges that the pastor and a co-defendant, financial advisor Gregory Alan Smith, 55, of Shreveport, promised investors exorbitant rates of returns.

Instead of investing the funds, the defendants used them to pay personal loans, credit card balances, mortgages, vehicle purchases and other personal expenses," Van Hook said in a news release.

Caldwell and Smith were accused of peddling bonds that had been issued decades ago.

Van Hook said that the bonds had been issued by the former Republic of China prior to losing power to the Communist government in 1949.

They are not recognized by Chinas current government and have no investment value, the prosecutor said.

Both men face 20 years in prison for wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fruad. They also each face 10 years in prison for money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

Caldwell said through an attorney that he was innocent, Fox 26 reported.

"Reverend KJC is not only a religious leader, hes wrongfully accused, the station quoted the attorney as saying. He trusts the legal process but most importantly his faith. He will be absolved. We look forward to trying this case in the court of law."

Click for more from Fox 26 Houston.
At one point, it was the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. Two years after 49 people were massacred inside a crowded nightclub in Orlando, the wife of the gunman responsible was put on trial -- with families of the victims looking for justice.

Omar Mateen opened fire with a Sig Saur semi-automatic rifle on June 12, 2016, killing dozens of people before he was fatally shot hours later by police. The trial of his widow, Noor Salman, was the only criminal prosecution for the incident.

Testimony began on March 14. After deliberating for three days, the jury announced on March 30 that Salman was found not guilty of obstruction and providing material support to a terrorist organization.

In light of the verdict, here's what you need to know.

What was she being accused of?

Salman pleaded not guilty to charges of aiding and abetting Mateen's allegiance to the Islamic State. She was also charged with obstruction of justice, as FBI agents say she lied to them during questioning hours after the attack.

Assistant U.S. Attorney James Mandolfo said Salman gave conflicting statements to FBI agents. In one conversation with authorities, before they informed her of any details of the attack, she said, "My husband is safe with guns."

"No one ever told her about guns," Mandolfo said.

FBI agents interviewed Salman three times after the attack. They said she was aware Mateen was planning to do something and that texts to her husband prove it.

"She knew he was going to conduct the attack," federal prosecutor Roger Handberg told a judge during a hearing in Oakland on Jan. 17, 2017.

One text recovered from Salmans phone reads, If ur mom calls say nimo invited you out and noor wants to stay home. Another reads, She asked where you were xoxo. Love you.

Nimo, or Nemo, is the name of one of Mateens friends, whom defense attorneys said Mateen often used to cover his tracks when he went out to cheat on his wife.

She shopped with her husband at Walmart the night before the attack when he bought five containers of ammunition, a source close to the investigation previously told Fox News.

A law enforcement source also told Fox she had driven her husband to Pulse nightclub at least once before the deadly shooting.

What was her defense?

The family and Salmans lawyers denied she had anything to do with Mateens plot.

In a November 2016 interview with The New York Times, Salman apologized for her husband's act and claimed she was unaware of his plan.

"I don't condone what he has done," she told the newspaper. "I am very sorry for what has happened. He has hurt a lot of people."

Defense attorneys described Salman as a simple woman with a low IQ, who was abused by her husband and was in constant fear for her life. Her attorneys also claimed she wasn't given proper Miranda warnings, which tell suspects they have a right to remain silent and have an attorney present, before she made statements.

I knew when he left the house he was going to Orlando to attack the Pulse Night Club, Salman confirmed in a signed statement written by an FBI agent, according to documents obtained by the Orlando Sentinel.

Defense attorney Linda Moreno argued that this confession was coerced and, therefore, should not be admissible in court.

"Noor Salman denied any knowledge of Omar Mateen's plans for hours," Moreno said, claiming agents told Salman that she could go to jail and not see her child.

What about her family?

FBI agents arrested Salman in January 2017 inside her California home, where she had been living with her young son, whom she shared with Mateen.

The now 5-year-old boy, who lives with his maternal grandmother in California, has since learned about his father's act and hasn't had any contact with Mateen's side of the family, Susan Clary, spokeswoman for Salmans family, told the Orlando Sentinel.

Salman reportedly calls the boy daily.

"They talk about what he learned in his kindergarten class that day and what his favorite toys are," according to the Florida newspaper.

What were the highlights of her trial?

U.S. District Judge Paul G. Byron, federal prosecutors and defense attorneys picked 12 jury members and six alternates on March 12.

Opening statements started in federal court on March 14 in downtown Orlando.

On the first day of the trial, jurors listened to a witness who hid under a dead body for three hours as shots were fired and an Orlando police detective who choked up on the stand. They also watched a video taken during the shooting by a survivor inside the club.

Jurors watched graphic videos of the massacre the next day. Salman shielded her face as the videos and images were displayed on screen, the Orlando Sentinel reports.

One video showed Mateen opening fire  shooting people already lying motionless on the dance floor. He then walked toward the restroom where he began targeting people hiding in the bathroom stalls.

On March 18, Salman's defense team filed a motion, asking the judge to ban the prosecution from using any damning statements the widow may have made to an FBI agent about Mateen's plan, according to the Orlando Sentinel.

The next day, FBI Special Agent Ricardo Enriquez took the stand to reveal the statement Salman had given him the night he questioned her about the mass shooting.

I am sorry for what happened, Enriquez read Salman's note, according to the Orlando Sentinel. I wish Id go back and tell his family and the police what he was going to do.

Salman's defense attorneys argued those statements weren't accurate.

On March 20, the mother of Mateen's friend, known only by the nickname "Nemo," testified in court. She discussed the pair's relationship, and told the court her son was working that night in Washington, D.C., and had not been with Mateen.

Jurors got a deeper look into Mateen's past on March 21 as they searched through his browser history, which included ISIS propaganda and beheading videos. They also flipped through photos taken inside his Florida home.

Final text messages between the couple were then read aloud in court.

Salman texted Mateen twice during his hours-long standoff with police, asking, "Where are you?"

Mateen responded, "You heard what happened."

"????" Salman replied. "What happened?!" Salman texted.

"I love you babe," Mateen wrote in his last text message at 4:29 a.m.

"Habibi what happened?!" Salman wrote, using an Arabic term of endearment. "Your mom said that she said to come over and you never did."

On March 22, jurors watched security footage of Salman standing by her husband's side -- with their young son close by -- as Mateen bought ammunition at Walmart.

"I knew Omar was preparing for Jihad when he bought the rifle, was going to the range to shoot, was spending a lot of money and bought the ammunition, Salman said, according to a transcribed statement jurors were given earlier, the Orlando Sentinel reported. I saw these things as a green light for Omar to do an act of violence."

On March 24, lawyers revealed that Mateen's dad was a secret FBI informant for more than a decade -- a revelation that led to immediate calls by the defense for a mistrial.

"Seddique Mateen was a FBI confidential human source at various points in time between January 2005 and June 2016, the defense lawyers, in a court document, quoted United States Attorney Sara Sweeney as saying in a letter.

Salmans lawyers, who denied she had anything to do with the attack, added: Moreover, the defenses questioning of the Governments witnesses has also been hindered by the Governments actions. During the cross-examination of Shahla Mateenshe denied any knowledge of a relationship between Seddique Mateen and the FBI. This was either false and the Government knew it since Seddique Mateen had been working with the FBI for eleven years or Seddique Mateen had kept this information from his wife  a situation ripe for cross-examination.

U.S. District Judge Paul Byron rejected the defense's motion for a mistrial on March 26, saying it had little bearing on the trial.

"This trial is not about Seddique Mateen. It's about Noor Salman," Byron said.

Sweeney told the 12 jurors on March 28 that Mateen's initial target was not Pulse, but Disney Springs.

The target of that terrorist attack was not the Pulse nightclub. ... The target of his attack was Disney, Sweeney argued during closing arguments, showing the jury photos of a baby stroller and doll she believed Mateen planned to use to hide his weapons and get into Disney, according to the Orlando Sentinel.

Salman's defense lawyers said Sweeney's information didn't make the incident "any less tragic" and argued that it had nothing to do with his wife's knowledge of an attack.

"It's a horrible, random, senseless killing by a monster. But it wasn't pre-planned," defense attorney Charles Swift said. "And if he didn't know, she couldn't know."

Deliberations began following the closing arguments around 2 p.m. on March 28.

On March 30, after deliberating for three days and 12 hours, the jury in Salman's case reached a not guilty verdict on all counts. The widow was found not guilty of obstruction and providing material support to a terrorist organization.

Fox News' Phil Keating and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Like other resistance protests, and like previous gun-control marches, the March for Our Lives was mostly women. Whereas the 2017 Womens March was 85 percent women, the March for Our Lives was 70 percent women. Further, participants were highly educated; 72 percent had a BA or higher.



Contrary to whats been reported in many media accounts, the D.C. March for Our Lives crowd was not primarily made up of teenagers. Only about 10 percent of the participants were under 18. The average age of the adults in the crowd was just under 49 years old, which is older than participants at the other marches Ive surveyed but similar to the age of the average participant at the Million Moms March in 2000, which was also about gun control.



Participants were also more likely than those at recent marches to be first-time protesters. About 27 percent of participants at the March for Our Lives had never protested before. This group was less politically engaged in general: Only about a third of them had contacted an elected official in the past year, while about three-quarters of the more seasoned protesters had.



Even more interesting, the new protesters were less motivated by the issue of gun control. In fact, only 12 percent of the people who were new to protesting reported that they were motivated to join the march because of the gun-control issue, compared with 60 percent of the participants with experience protesting.



Instead, new protesters reported being motivated by the issues of peace (56 percent) and Trump (42 percent), who has been a galvanizing force for many protests.



March for Our Lives protesters were also more likely to identify as ideologically moderate. About 16 percent did so, higher than at any other protest event since the inauguration. But unsurprisingly, it was still a very liberal crowd: 79 percent identified as left-leaning and 89 percent reported voting for Hillary Clinton.
A local Italian restaurant in Texas is donating 100 percent of its Friday profits to the family of a 16-year-old girl who was killed earlier this week in a hit-and-run.

The profits from Pasta Company's two locations in Corpus Christi will help Rai-ane Garzas family pay for the teen's funeral expenses, the restaurant announced.

"Our community has suffered the loss of one King High School student and the hospitalization of another this week," Pasta Company in Corpus Christi wrote on Facebook. "Come and support this great cause and lets continue to pray for the student in the hospital and both families."

A representative for Pasta Company could not be reached for comment when contacted by Fox News.

The high school junior was killed after a driver fatally struck her Tuesday outside of King High School. Garza was walking with friends to get an after-school snack when the incident occured, Kimberly Castillo Lawson, Garzas cousin, told Fox News. Garzas 15-year-old friend, Madi, was also struck by the driver and was transported to a local hospital in critical condition, she said.

Lawson said she and her family are thankful for all the support theyve received from the Corpus Christi community.

We are really grateful to the community. We are grieving, but we are also witnessing how everyone is coming together in her name and we are just thankful for that," she said.

Lawson, who's also managing a fundraiser for Garzas funeral expenses, said she could tell her younger cousin had a heart of gold from the moment she was born, adding that the 16-year-old was still our baby but was becoming a leading woman in her own right.

She particularly enjoyed singing, Lawson said, adding that Garza, who celebrated her sweet sixteen in November, was a part of her high schools choir.

She could sing before she could talk, Lawson said. She first learned to sing Ready to Run by the Dixie Chicks.

The alleged driver, later identified as 42-year-old Elton Wayne Holmes Jr., was arrested shortly after the incident, but was bonded out of jail Wednesday on a $100,000 bail. According to The Caller Times, Holmes was back in jail Thursday night after he allegedly violated the conditions of his release. He is now being held without bail.

If we could change the circumstances we would rather have our baby, Lawson said. But we just keep saying that were doing all of this for her.

Pasta Company in Corpus Christi is located at 5630 Saratoga Blvd and at 128 S. Staples St. in Carmel Village.
A Utah man is accused of killing a teenage couple and dumping their bodies in an abandoned mine shaft because he was jealous they were spending time with his girlfriend, police said Thursday.

Jerrod W. Baum, 41 was arrested on suspicion of aggravated murder, kidnapping, abuse of a dead body and other charges Wednesday, hours after police recovered the bodies on a shallow ledge inside a deep mine shaft near Eureka, about 75 miles south of Salt Lake City.

He is accused of killing Riley Powell, 18, and Brelynne Breezy Otteson, 17. The couple was reported missing on Jan. 2, 2018, but vanished on Dec. 30, 2017, FOX 13 reported.

Morgan Henderson, Baums girlfriend, told police Baum was upset when he found Otteson and Powell at his home visiting her.

Henderson, 34, said Baum warned her about having male friends at the house and it was too bad because he has never killed an innocent before, she told authorities, according to FOX13, citing police documents.

Facebook messages between Powell and Henderson appeared to show the couple agreed to meet at Morgans house sometime after midnight on Dec. 30, 2017. It was not immediately clear how the teens knew Henderson.

GRANTED LIQUOR LICENSE, UTAH AX-THROWING VENUE HAS NO AX TO GRIND

Henderson told authorities the couple arrived after midnight on Dec. 30 in Powells Jeep and they stayed in the house for nearly an hour, smoking marijuana, FOX13 reported, citing a probable cause statement. Henderson reportedly said she didnt know what happened when they left.

Henderson talked to investigators again, however, after police discovered an ax, a rifle, and knives in her car during an unrelated traffic stop Sunday.

The bodies believed to be Powell and Otteson were then recovered Wednesday, police said.

Police said Baum caught the two teenagers, tied them up and left them in Powells Jeep. Baum then told Henderson to get in the Jeep to go for a ride and have a talk. He allegedly then took them all out to an abandoned mine site and killed the teenagers by stabbing them to death.

Baum told Henderson he would make Powell suffer but kept the death of Otteson quick and painless because he felt bad, Utah County Sheriffs Officials said.

Following the incident, Baum threatened Henderson and dumped the Jeep at a nearby reservoir, Henderson said.

UTAH BILL EXPANDING MEDICAID COVERAGE, REQUIRING WORK, GETS GOVERNORS OK

Additional arrests in the case are possible, Utah County Sheriff's Sgt. Spencer Cannon said, though he did not elaborate.

Court records show Baum has a rap sheet dating back to the early 1990s including theft, assault and weapons charges.

Powells father, Bill, asked why Baum had so much hate.

"What went wrong? Why did he have so much hate? There's no reason," Powell said.

Eureka residents told FOX13 they were shocked over Baums arrest and said he was well known in the town for having a bad past.

Heike Anderson, a Eureka resident, said Baum asked her about a missing persons poster which had Powell and Ottesons names on it.

"We were standing outside and we were talking, and he was pointing at the poster we have up there and asking, 'Is there anything new about these kids [Otteson and Powell]?'" Anderson recalled. "It just makes me sick, because he knew it all along."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A Texas woman was sentenced to five years in prison this week following her conviction for illegally voting in the 2016 presidential election.

Crystal Mason, 43, of Tarrant County, Texas, is a convicted felon for tax fraud and voted while still on supervised release, the Dallas Morning News reported.

Texas law prohibits felons from voting until their full sentence, including supervised release, is served.

Mason opted for state District Judge Ruben Gonzalez to determine her sentence, instead of standing trial in front of a jury, the paper reported.

During testimony, Mason said she was given a provisional ballot at the polling station after learning that her name was not on the registered voter list. However, Gonzalez pressed Mason over the affidavit form she was required to sign to get the provisional ballot, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported.

The affidavit form outlines the necessary requirements needed to vote, according to the Dallas Morning News.

Mason, who served just under three years in federal prison, argued she was never informed of the law that prevents felons from voting, and didnt recall reading anything on the form that would exempt her from voting -- adding that she would never have voted had she known it would mean going back behind bars.

The 43-year-old said she voted only because her mother insisted, the Star-Telegram reported.

"I was happy enough to come home and see my daughter graduate," she said. "My son is about to graduate. Why would I jeopardize that? Not to vote. ... I didn't even want to go vote."

Immediately following the ruling, Masons attorney, J. Warren St. John, told the paper an appeal was filed and he hopes to have Mason released from custody on bond soon.

"I find it amazing that the government feels she made this up," St. John told the court. "She was never told that she couldn't vote, and she voted in good faith. Why would she risk going back to prison for something that is not going to change her life?
An American was identified Friday as one of the two coalition troops killed yesterday by a roadside bomb in Syria, marking the first time this year a U.S. service member has been killed in action in the war-torn country, two U.S. officials told Fox News.

Its not immediately clear about the nationalities of the others killed and wounded.

A statement from the U.S.-led coalition did not identify the exact location of the blast.

A Syrian official had told The Associated Press earlier that a roadside bomb exploded in the mixed Arab-Kurdish town of Manbij.

Mohammed Abu Adel, the head of the Manbij Military Council, an Arab-Kurdish US.-backed group in the town, said the bomb went off hundreds of yards away from a security headquarters that houses the council just before midnight on Thursday.

The wounded personnel received immediate care and are being evacuated for further medical treatment. The names of the deceased will be released at the discretion of the pertinent national authorities.

The names of the deceased will be released at the discretion of the pertinent national authorities, the statement read.

The Associated Press and Fox News Lucas Tomlinson contributed to this report.
A man who has been dubbed Chinas Jack the Ripper was sentenced to death Friday for raping and murdering 11 women and girls during a 14-year spree.

Gao Chengyong, 54, was convicted of multiple counts of homicide, rape, robbery and mutilation of corpses after he admitted to killing 11 people between 1988 and 2002.

Authorities said Gao targeted young women in the northwest Baiyin city in Gansu Province and Boatour city in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Sky News reported. He followed them home to rape and kill them.

The youngest victim was just eight years old.

Ending a 28-year search, Gao was arrested in August 2016 at his own grocery store following a DNA test stemming from an unrelated crime committed by one of his relatives, the state televisions English channel reported.

The suspect has a sexual perversion and hates women, police said in 2004 after linking the crimes together. Hes reclusive and unsociable, but patient.
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The Kenyan opposition figure who claims he was drugged and forcibly deported to Dubai says he is "marooned" at the airport there but intends to return to Kenya as soon as possible.

A Kenyan court on Thursday fined top officials including the interior minister and national police chief over the treatment of Miguna Miguna, who was targeted amid lingering election tensions. Earlier this year he stood beside opposition leader Ralia Odinga during a mock inauguration to protest President Uhuru Kenyatta's re-election.

Miguna later was deported to Canada but a Kenyan court ordered authorities to allow him back into the country. His attempt to return this week ended up with him detained in an airport toilet.

Miguna says he holds Kenyan and Canadian citizenship but authorities have disputed his Kenyan status.
An aide to French first lady Brigitte Macron has filed a legal complaint over identity theft, after his accounts were apparently used to seek special Formula One tickets and other VIP treatment.

The French presidential palace said Friday an investigation is underway.

Hotels and other businesses in multiple countries received requests for special services from someone claiming to be Brigitte Macron's aide, according to a presidential official. Some businesses verified the requests with the Elysee Palace, alerting it to suspicious activity.

No one appeared to benefit from the requested perks.

Brigitte Macron is not involved in the lawsuit, said the official, who was not authorized to be publicly named.

Separately, two Frenchmen went on trial this month for allegedly stealing Emmanuel Macron's online identity when he was running for president.
Ninety-six-year-old Prince Philip missed a traditional Maundy church service that he was scheduled to attend Thursday with Queen Elizabeth II, raising concerns about his health.

The service is a traditional pre-Easter event held at St. Georges Chapel at Windsor Castle.

The princes last-minute decision to skip the service was related to some trouble with his hip, a source told People magazine.

The prince previously missed son Prince Andrews March 22 appointment as colonel of the Granadier Guards, the magazine reported.

He announced in May 2017 that he planned to step away from many traditional royal duties beginning last fall.

Prince Philip and Queen Elizabeth have been married since 1947. Elizabeth became queen in 1952, following the death of her father, King George VI.
A new intercontinental ballistic missile hailed by Russian President Vladimir Putin as being able to fly over the North or South Poles and strike any target in the world reportedly was test-launched for the second time Friday.

Russias defense ministry released a video purportedly showing the Sarmat ICBM blasting off in spectacular fashion from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in its northern Arkhangelsk province, the move coming just hours after the Kremlin announced it would expel 60 American diplomats and close the U.S. consulate in St. Petersburg in retaliation for U.S. measures taken in response to the poisoning of an ex-Russian spy and his daughter in Britain.

The video shows the missile  dubbed Satan 2 by NATO -- rising out of the ground and seemingly floating in the air for a brief moment before more flames erupt, kicking up massive clouds of smoke and snow.

"No defense systems will be able to withstand it," Putin said about the missile during his state-of-the-nation speech in early March.

The test-launch also comes after Putins recent re-election and a congratulatory phone call from President Trump -- in which Trump reportedly also warned his Russian counterpart, "if you want to have an arms race we can do that, but I'll win," according to two officials that spoke to NBC News. Days before the launch, the U.S. Navy test-fired its own ICBM from a ballistic missile submarine off the coast of Southern California.

Russia has been working for years to develop a new ICBM to replace the Soviet-designed Voyevoda, the world's heaviest ICBM and known as "Satan" in the West. That ICBM carries 10 nuclear warheads, the Associated Press reported. Putin announced during his March speech the Sarmat missile was undergoing tests and debuted a video purportedly showing its first test launch, which he said happened in December.

Putin said Sarmat weighs 220 tons and has a higher range than "Satan," allowing it to fly over both poles of the Earth. He also said it accelerates faster than its predecessor, making it harder for an enemy to intercept it in its most vulnerable phase after the launch. Putin added Sarmat also carries more -- and more powerful -- nuclear warheads than the "Satan" ICBM.

Johnny Michael, a Pentagon spokesman, said Friday, We did not receive any advance notice of this missile-related testing activity. I would defer you to the Russian Ministry of Defense to explain where an ejection test falls in the very early stages of the development of an ICBM missile program, and how far the item in question actually traveled.

Russian state-run news agency TASS has reported the Sarmat missile will go into mass production in 2020 and is expected to become operational the year after, according to EuroNews.

"No one has listened to us. You listen to us now, Putin boasted during the March speech, when he revealed other weapons his country apparently has in the works, such as an underwater drone armed with a nuclear warhead powerful enough to sweep away coastal facilities and aircraft carriers, and a nuclear-powered cruise missile that's "invulnerable to any existing or prospective air and missile defense systems.

The White House responded to Putins March 1 speech by saying he merely confirmed what the U.S. already knows: that Russia has been developing "destabilizing weapons systems for over a decade in direct violations of its treaty obligations."

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said President Trump understands the threats and that America is "moving forward to modernize our nuclear arsenal and ensure our capabilities are unmatched."

Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White also said the Defense Department wasn't surprised by Putin's bluster, adding the U.S. military is prepared to defend the nation.

"You will have to assess that new reality and become convinced that what I said today isn't a bluff," Putin had said. "It's not a bluff, trust me."

He said the creation of the new weapons has made NATO's U.S.-led missile defense "useless," putting an end to what he described as years of Western efforts to sidetrack and weaken Russia.

"I want to tell all those who have fueled the arms race over the last 15 years, sought to win unilateral advantages over Russia, introduced unlawful restrictions and sanctions aimed to contain our country's development: All what you wanted to impede with your policies has now happened," he said. "You have failed to contain Russia."

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said it was "unfortunate" to watch animation depicting "a nuclear attack on the United States" that accompanied Putin's speech, calling the video "cheesy" and adding "we don't think it's responsible."

Another new weapon Putin unveiled during the state-of-the-nation speech, called Avangard, is an intercontinental hypersonic missile that would fly at 20 times the speed of sound and strike its targets "like a meteorite, like a fireball.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
While millions of South Sudanese flee their country in what the United Nations has called the world's fastest-growing refugee crisis since the Rwandan genocide, hundreds of thousands of people from neighboring Sudan have found an unlikely haven there from fighting at home.

Their presence brings concerns that their improvised camps are a hiding place for militants. But local officials worry that if the refugees are forced to leave, crucial humanitarian aid will disappear as well.

The Associated Press visited one such camp of more than 50,000 people that South Sudan's government ordered closed almost two years ago. It continues to thrive, and officials worry that the rainy season that begins in May will bring more of the militants who have been fighting for more regional autonomy from Sudan's government.
Hillary Clinton cites sexism in criticism she should exit political stage



Hillary Clinton suggested Thursday that the criticism she should "go away" following her election loss to President Donald Trump is based in sexism, arguing that her critics never asked that of losing candidates who are male.



"That began to happen after the election. ... I was really struck by how people said that to me -- you know, mostly people in the press, for whatever reason  like, 'Oh, you know, go away, go away,'" Clinton said at an event at Rutgers University.



Ruth Mandel, director of the university's Eagleton Institute of Politics, had asked Clinton what her response has been to people who call for her "'get off the public stage and shut up.'"



"They never said that to any man who was not elected," Clinton said. "I was kind of struck by that."

What living bullshit. Hillary, your attitude, overconfidence, elitism, and inattention to details lost the 2016 election putting our nation into dire straits.Go away.
A Syrian official says a roadside bomb has gone off in a tense, mixed Arab-Kurdish town not far from the border with Turkey.

Mohammed Abu Adel, the head of the Manbij Military Council, an Arab-Kurdish US.-backed group in the town, says the bomb went off hundreds of meters away from a security headquarters that houses the council just before midnight on Thursday.

A U.S. military official said on Friday an incident involving coalition forces was reported in Manbij but said no more information was available.

Col. Ryan Dillon said the coalition was still gathering information about the incident.

Manbij is under threat of a Turkish military operation. Ankara says Syrian Kurdish militiamen it views as "terrorists" and an extension of Kurdish insurgents inside Turkey is in control of the town.
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Fujitsu Middleware Limited and Fujitsu Limited today announced that Fujitsu Middleware has concluded a sales partnership agreement with UiPath in the robotic process automation (RPA)(1) field in Japan. Under this agreement, Fujitsu Middleware and Fujitsu Limited will offer sales of UiPath's RPA software beginning in early April 2018 in Japan.

In recent years, workstyle transformation has been promoted in Japan, and there has been an increasing demand for the use of RPA software to substitute for processes done by hand in order to improve productivity.

Now, in light of this increased demand for the implementation of RPA solutions, the Fujitsu Group will begin offering sales of UiPath's RPA software, which has a proven global track record, that support systems of every size, to customers in Japan beginning in early April 2018.

In order to ensure that customers can deploy RPA with peace of mind, the Fujitsu Group is expanding the number of its employees taking courses at UiPath Academy, UiPath's official certification program (offering training certification essential for RPA development), with plans to train about 300 personnel in the use of UiPath in fiscal 2018, enhancing its support for customers' workstyle transformations.

UiPath Overview

UiPath is one of the world's leading RPA vendors, offering a unified software platform for efficiently automating customer work processes. Based in the US, UiPath has offices in Japan, the UK, Romania, France, Germany, India, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Australia, with a track record of successfully providing automation via RPA to about 700 companies.

UiPath's subsidiary in Japan was established in February 2017, and its software is already being used by more than 160 companies (as of the end of February 2018), with numerous companies undertaking proofs of concept.

Related Links

UiPath
Dog attacks on sheep are unacceptably high across the UK  despite public awareness campaigns.

Figures Farmers Weekly has obtained on sheep worrying attacks across the country from 2015-17 reveal the problem is endemic across the UK, on average resulting in one dog shot dead each week.

Our investigation suggests significant under-reporting by farmers, so in many counties recorded incidents are likely to be the tip of the iceberg.

Rural policing budgets are stretched and forces struggle to properly investigate incidents. And only on rare occasions are dog owners brought to justice for sheep attacks committed by their out-of-control pets.

See also: Farmer shoots dog after two pregnant ewes killed

Even when suspects are named and victims give statements, dog owners are often let off the hook because of insufficient evidence.

The key findings Police failure to investigate cases thoroughly and press charges is common across many forces

North Wales is the worst-hit region in the UK for recorded incidents of dog attacks on sheep

The Highlands and Islands is the worst-affected part of Scotland for sheep worrying

More dog attacks on sheep were recorded in Cumbria last year than in any other English county

Results suggest significant under-reporting of incidents by farmers, with some forces recording only a handful of cases

Police forces with bespoke rural crime teams take the issue of sheep worrying more seriously

How police are tackling the problem

Our findings suggest that, although some police forces are making the right noises about sheep worrying, many are still failing to respond effectively.

Some forces, including North Wales Polices Rural Crime Team, North Yorkshire Police and Police Scotland, should be praised for their dynamic social media campaigns to inform the public about the consequences of sheep worrying. They also mete out appropriate punishments and rehabilitate offenders.

But others  including Derbyshire Constabulary, Staffordshire Police and South Wales Police  are failing to prosecute offenders.

For example, Staffordshire Police recorded 39 reports of sheep worrying between 2015 and 2017. Seven of these were recorded as crimes, while a formal complaint was recorded as criminal damage. None of these incidents led to a prosecution, however.

See also: The law on shooting dogs on your land

Derbyshire Constabulary recorded 149 dog attacks on sheep over this three-year period. In total 116 sheep were killed and 45 were injured. Police said the true figures were likely to be higher as some were listed as some killed or sheep found dead. Not a single case resulted in a prosecution.

South Wales Police recorded 106 sheep worrying incidents, with three individuals charged/reported for summons. One person was found guilty in 2015 for owning a dog worrying livestock on agricultural land.

How we investigated In January, Farmers Weekly sent a request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to 43 police forces in the UK asking them to provide data on: Recorded incidents of dog attacks on sheep between 2015-17

The number of sheep injured/killed as a result of these attacks and the number of people prosecuted Thirty-five out of 43 (81%) responded with relevant information. Eight police forces did not provide information, either due to high costs/time, including the Police Service of Northern Ireland, Thames Valley Police, Hampshire and Lancashire constabularies.

Yorkshire shows huge variation

Statistics varied hugely across Yorkshire. West Yorkshire Police recorded 24 cases of dogs worrying/chasing sheep in 2017. As a result, 27 sheep were attacked/injured, 16 were killed and four dogs were shot.

South Yorkshire Police recorded no incidents in 2015 and only four in 2016, resulting in 10 sheep injured and one killed. Similarly, only four incidents were recorded in 2017.

North Yorkshire Police did not reveal how many incidents have been reported over the three years. However, it said five individuals were charged with offences from 2015-17.

The force is part of a five-strong group  including Devon and Cornwall, Sussex, Hertfordshire and North Wales Police  that is trying to tackle the problem. It is pushing for changes to the law, including making dog attacks a recordable crime, giving police powers to seize dogs, the creation of a DNA database for offending dogs and harsher sentences for owners.

Scottish campaign

In the wake of a number of serious incidents, a campaign launched by NFU Scotland, NSA Scotland, Scottish Land and Estates, Police Scotland and others runs until the end of May.

According to Police Scotland, there were 130 cases of livestock worrying in Scotland last year  down from 179 in 2016. Inspector Jane Donaldson, Police Scotlands rural crime co-ordinator, said: While reported livestock-worrying crimes reduced last year, we remain focused on and committed to reducing these incidents further.

Our crime figures show the vast majority of these dog attacks are on sheep and that incidents rise over the spring months.

Snapshot of incidents across seven forces Incidents 2015/

sheep killed Incidents 2016/

sheep killed Incidents 2017/

sheep killed Cumbria 87/37 74/24 63/25 Devon and Cornwall 47/10 44/10 33/8 Durham 73/16 59/21 42/17 Norfolk 22/2 14/12 18/8 Northamptonshire 29/41 19/7 28/11 North Wales 449*/151 449*/131 449*/117 South Wales 43/21 34/16 29/18 *449 is the total number of sheep worrying incidents in North Wales, 2015-17

Wales worst-affected

The scale of dog attacks in North Wales is the highest among all forces. From September 2013 to July 2017, 648 livestock (mostly sheep) were killed and 376 injured.

A total of 52 dogs were shot  again, the highest number recorded by all forces. About one-quarter of the 648 incidents (169) involved escaped dogs, and in 89% of cases the dog owner was not present.

NSA view

The National Sheep Association (NSA) says it is vital farmers report incidents to build a true picture of sheep worrying and add pressure to police and the law courts to respond better.

NSA chief executive Phil Stocker says: Victims need to detail the emotional and financial impact of sheep worrying. But I can understand why many farmers have given up, as the police response is often inadequate.

Three key action points for farmers Continue to work with the public on the importance of responsible dog ownership in the countryside, using posters, word-of-mouth, meetings, etc. Report every case of livestock worrying to police on 101, with a full impact assessment where possible. Use social media, including Twitter and Facebook, to engage with dog owners about the need to keep dogs on leads around livestock. Source: NSA
News

County to 'fight like dogs' for federal flood money

Galveston County will get part of $5 billion the U.S. Congress allocated to Texas for long-term disaster recovery, but officials dont know how much of the post-Hurricane Harvey money would go to Dickinson, Friendswood and League City or whether affluent neighborhoods would get anything at all.

The three cities were badly flooded after Harvey hit the county Aug. 25 with more than 50 inches of rain in places. All three cities also have long lists of flood mitigation projects.

The Texas General Land Office is overseeing the states $5 billion Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery allocation.

At least 70 percent of Community Development Block Grants-Disaster Recovery funds have to benefit low- and moderate-income families, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development posting in the Federal Register.

Galveston County Commissioner Ken Clark is concerned that would leave only 30 percent of the funds for the other neighborhoods, he said.

The land office will have a complete program that includes details about where the money is going ready for review and comments by April 6, spokeswoman Brittany Eck said.

After a 14-day comment period, the report would go to HUD for approval.

Weve been working on an action plan since before Congress allocated the funds, Eck said.

The land offices Community Development and Revitalization program will administer the plan.

The disaster-recovery money could be used for a wide variety of activities, including housing redevelopment, infrastructure repair and long-term planning.

A large portion of the money would go to restore flood-damaged streets and drainage in residential areas, Eck said. An example would be a damaged bridge connecting a neighborhood to the rest of a community, she said.

Residents in affluent parts of Friendswood and League City are concerned projects wont be funded in their neighborhoods because of federal requirements to use most of the money in low- and moderate-income areas, Clark said.

After Hurricane Ike, similar disaster recovery funds were split between low- and moderate-income areas and more affluent ones.

Theres always a low- to moderate-income component, County Judge Mark Henry said.

Galveston County and its cities need to present a compelling case for a bigger share of the funds for more affluent communities, Clark said.

Were going to have to fight like dogs, Clark said. This isnt right.
County leaders are preparing to argue that federal housing funds anticipated to be awarded to the county for Hurricane Harvey recovery should be allowed to go to a greater range of income levels than currently allowed under federal law.
The 951-foot Grand Princess will department from the Port of Los Angeles World Cruise Center Berth 93 about a month after the 1,060-foot Carnival Panorama marked the return of cruises out of the Port of Long Beach. The return of...
xspraise at 30-03-2018 03:02 AM (3 years ago) (m)

Forget whatever the naysayers wants to preach, living a life of affluence didn't just start now for this delectably gorgeous businesswoman and now designer- Bunmi Olatunji. While still a much younger damsel living then on the mainland, her home at her dad's house used to be a beehive of activities, where the best of the best automobile's reigning then used to queue for attention.

Forget whatever the naysayers wants to preach, living a life of affluence didn't just start now for this delectably gorgeous businesswoman and now designer- Bunmi Olatunji. While still a much younger damsel living then on the mainland, her home at her dad's house used to be a beehive of activities, where the best of the best automobile's reigning then used to queue for attention.

The big eyed, fashion conscious lady has always known what the time said and her busunbus acumen has always been intact. A few years back, her brand "Water to Wine" one of the many brands she owned, was into drinks of all sorts and was most probably the biggest and most well equipped in the business, with several stores owned inside Ikota shopping complex and serving at some of the best and biggest parties then. Then Bunmi was a businesswoman par excellence, having her hands in different pies, which surely must have raked in so much money for her somewhat.



According to those in the know, fast forward to now, Bunmi must have done extremely very well for herself to such extent that her house inside Nicon town off the Lekki-Ajah Expressway is probably one of the most intimidating, if not the most intimidating at that yet in that estate. The humongous edifice of a mansion sits atop a magnicent expanse of land which on its own alone is of massive value. According to a few that have had the privilege of visiting the very hardworking, sumptuously shaped & curvaceous lady with the bedazzling eyes, who is a lover of awesome jewelry collection. Infact based on fact, very few can stand one on one with her when it comes to her wrist-watches and humongous jewelry collection that she loves the flaunt on the social media.



Her watch collection from the accounts we have heard, is the stuff that legend can be written about and spoken of, even some so called well made men would go siddon Jeje with intimidation at the value of what a woman owns, a woman in this case like Bunmi!



Back to Bunmi Olatunji''s house, not only is it said that it is stately, it is also said to be very well appointed with all the awesome, well valued, totally top notch goodies that separates boys from men, in this case, "lady from girls" and boys or even men at that. Imagine having in her garage a top of the range G Wagon, Mercedes GL550, A Hummer Jeep, just to mention a few! Someone even valued the badass house and says it is cheap at 400 million Naira and could have cost far more!



Still on Bunmi, according to our findings, she's probably the wealthiest Nigerian designer currently, bar none. And her eponymous fashion brand Bunmi, is home to many of our many top fashionistas, celebrities and stars, who all seem to love her brand to high heavens, especially all that Bunmi has had to conjure up for them.























The big eyed, fashion conscious lady has always known what the time said and her busunbus acumen has always been intact. A few years back, her brand "Water to Wine" one of the many brands she owned, was into drinks of all sorts and was most probably the biggest and most well equipped in the business, with several stores owned inside Ikota shopping complex and serving at some of the best and biggest parties then. Then Bunmi was a businesswoman par excellence, having her hands in different pies, which surely must have raked in so much money for her somewhat.According to those in the know, fast forward to now, Bunmi must have done extremely very well for herself to such extent that her house inside Nicon town off the Lekki-Ajah Expressway is probably one of the most intimidating, if not the most intimidating at that yet in that estate. The humongous edifice of a mansion sits atop a magnicent expanse of land which on its own alone is of massive value. According to a few that have had the privilege of visiting the very hardworking, sumptuously shaped & curvaceous lady with the bedazzling eyes, who is a lover of awesome jewelry collection. Infact based on fact, very few can stand one on one with her when it comes to her wrist-watches and humongous jewelry collection that she loves the flaunt on the social media.Her watch collection from the accounts we have heard, is the stuff that legend can be written about and spoken of, even some so called well made men would go siddon Jeje with intimidation at the value of what a woman owns, a woman in this case like Bunmi!Back to Bunmi Olatunji''s house, not only is it said that it is stately, it is also said to be very well appointed with all the awesome, well valued, totally top notch goodies that separates boys from men, in this case, "lady from girls" and boys or even men at that. Imagine having in her garage a top of the range G Wagon, Mercedes GL550, A Hummer Jeep, just to mention a few! Someone even valued the badass house and says it is cheap at 400 million Naira and could have cost far more!Still on Bunmi, according to our findings, she's probably the wealthiest Nigerian designer currently, bar none. And her eponymous fashion brand Bunmi, is home to many of our many top fashionistas, celebrities and stars, who all seem to love her brand to high heavens, especially all that Bunmi has had to conjure up for them.

Post Reply I am Victor, I write reportage on sport news and latest metro happenings in Nigeria. Posted: at 30-03-2018 03:02 AM (3 years ago) | Hero
kacylee at 30-03-2018 07:16 PM (3 years ago) (f)

Nollywood actress, Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde aka Omo$exy has taken to social media to celebrate her daughter, Princess Ekeinde who turned a year older today. Omo$exy said that even the Nurses and Doctors acknowledged she was special from birth.

Nollywood actress, Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde aka Omo$exy has taken to social media to celebrate her daughter, Princess Ekeinde who turned a year older today. Omo$exy said that even the Nurses and Doctors acknowledged she was special from birth.

The actress who still looks hot even after four children shared several photos of Princess Ekeinde and revealed that whatever she writes will never be enough to express her feelings.



Omo$exy wrote:



Happy Birthday Princess. @tolar_ek My first Fruit. Ive been holding my phone almost feeling like whatever I write about you will Never truly be enough.



Even now it feels like so. Where do I start? You came and everyone in the Hospital said shes special BIG brown eyes, and a Big mouth that was either screaming in a heartwrenching manner or smiling So Big it took your breathe away.



Youre still so Special.



The kindest Girl I know Youre secure, happy, God fearing and constantly aiming, you are Special. In my first Album, I wrote and sang about My Baby girl, I meant every word.



Youre me. A more improved version.



I love you, Princess, continue to be as Hospitable, Understanding yet strong. You are Truly Special.



May God continue to watch Over you and Bless you Richly. #Stronggirl #Greatheart #Babygirl #HappybirthdayPrincess.















Still on birthdays



The talented actress recently celebrated her birthday which was tagged #Omotola4point0 and it took place at the prestigious Landmark Centre, Victoria Island on Sunday, February 11th, 2018. The Nollywood actress threw a wonderful celebration as she clocked 40 years.



Some of the celebrities and prominent Nigerians at Omotolas event include 2face Idibia, King Sunny Ade, Shina Peters, Dbanj, Tiwa Savage, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, Senior Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on Sustainable Development Goals, Adejoke Orelope Adefulire, The Esama of Benin Kingdom, Chief Gabriel Osawaru Igbinedion, The Otunba Adekunle Ojora and wife, The Erelu Ojuolape Ojora, Senator Ben Murray Bruce, Bashorun Dele Momodu, Mr. Tony Elumelu and wife, Awele Elumelu, British High Commissioner to Nigeria, Paul Arkwright, Otunba Oyewole Fasawe, Debola Williams among others. The actress who still looks hot even after four children shared several photos of Princess Ekeinde and revealed that whatever she writes will never be enough to express her feelings.Omo$exy wrote:Happy Birthday Princess. @tolar_ek My first Fruit. Ive been holding my phone almost feeling like whatever I write about you will Never truly be enough.Even now it feels like so. Where do I start? You came and everyone in the Hospital said shes special BIG brown eyes, and a Big mouth that was either screaming in a heartwrenching manner or smiling So Big it took your breathe away.Youre still so Special.Still on birthdaysThe talented actress recently celebrated her birthday which was tagged #Omotola4point0 and it took place at the prestigious Landmark Centre, Victoria Island on Sunday, February 11th, 2018. The Nollywood actress threw a wonderful celebration as she clocked 40 years.Some of the celebrities and prominent Nigerians at Omotolas event include 2face Idibia, King Sunny Ade, Shina Peters, Dbanj, Tiwa Savage, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, Senior Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on Sustainable Development Goals, Adejoke Orelope Adefulire, The Esama of Benin Kingdom, Chief Gabriel Osawaru Igbinedion, The Otunba Adekunle Ojora and wife, The Erelu Ojuolape Ojora, Senator Ben Murray Bruce, Bashorun Dele Momodu, Mr. Tony Elumelu and wife, Awele Elumelu, British High Commissioner to Nigeria, Paul Arkwright, Otunba Oyewole Fasawe, Debola Williams among others.

Post Reply I have been reporting for several years now and I am very interested in visual news reportage with strong inclusion of photos and video multimedia. Posted: at 30-03-2018 07:16 PM (3 years ago) | Addicted Hero
kacylee at 30-03-2018 07:27 PM (3 years ago) (f)

President Cyril Ramaphosa has stunned South Africans as he was spotted travelling to Durban in economy class.

President Cyril Ramaphosa has stunned South Africans as he was spotted travelling to Durban in economy class.

It was on a Safair flight from Pretoria on Friday morning. He was on his way to attend the Covenant Fellowship Church International in eSikhaleni, Kwazulu Natal north coast.



Ramaphosas co-passengers snapped photos with the president which were shared on Twitter, according to News24.



While some commended the South African leader for cutting costs, some others were cynical, dismissing the gesture as a PR stunt.



Ramaphosas spokesperson Khusela Diko told News24 that the president will at all times use the mode of transport which is most practical, convenient and cost effective for his duties.















Ramaphosa who is 65 years old is South Africas fifth President. He succeeded Jacob Zuma on 15 February 2018. Zuma resigned after the African National Congress recalled him.



It was on a Safair flight from Pretoria on Friday morning. He was on his way to attend the Covenant Fellowship Church International in eSikhaleni, Kwazulu Natal north coast.Ramaphosas co-passengers snapped photos with the president which were shared on Twitter, according to News24.While some commended the South African leader for cutting costs, some others were cynical, dismissing the gesture as a PR stunt.Ramaphosas spokesperson Khusela Diko told News24 that the president will at all times use the mode of transport which is most practical, convenient and cost effective for his duties.Ramaphosa who is 65 years old is South Africas fifth President. He succeeded Jacob Zuma on 15 February 2018. Zuma resigned after the African National Congress recalled him.

Post Reply I have been reporting for several years now and I am very interested in visual news reportage with strong inclusion of photos and video multimedia. Posted: at 30-03-2018 07:27 PM (3 years ago) | Addicted Hero
bohlah at 30-03-2018 10:30 PM (3 years ago) (m)

A suspected homosexual was nabbed red handed while trying to sleep with a young boy in Benin city, Edo state. The man who claimed that his name is Daniel and hails from Edo state  almost had his way in penetrating the boy from behind before he was caught by the boys elder sister.

A suspected homosexual was nabbed red handed while trying to sleep with a young boy in Benin city, Edo state. The man who claimed that his name is Daniel and hails from Edo state  almost had his way in penetrating the boy from behind before he was caught by the boys elder sister.

The sister raised an alarm as other residents and neighbors apprehended the suspect and beat him mercilessly.





The suspect who said he is a bus conductor  confessed in a chilling footage how he was nabbed and also revealed that this is not the first time he has done something like that. He claimed to have slept with three young boys in Warri, Delta state. The sister raised an alarm as other residents and neighbors apprehended the suspect and beat him mercilessly.The suspect who said he is a bus conductor  confessed in a chilling footage how he was nabbed and also revealed that this is not the first time he has done something like that. He claimed to have slept with three young boys in Warri, Delta state.

Post Reply I have been reporting on latest news from Nigeria for almost 10 years now. I report on every possible news area I come across, but always ensure my reports are compiled with dignity and fact to uphold my personal values and duty as a journalist Posted: at 30-03-2018 10:30 PM (3 years ago) | Addicted Hero
English Lithuanian

General meeting of shareholders of AB Kauno Energija (code of enterprise 235014830, address Raudondvario av. 84, Kaunas) is convoked on 26 April 2018 by the decision No 2018-10-1 of 30 March 2018 of Companys Management Board.

The date of General meeting is 26 April 2018, Thursday. Time  10 a.m. Place  Companys hall at Raudondvario av. 86A, Kaunas, Lithuania. Registration of shareholders starts at 9.30 a.m.

The agenda and the resolutions projects for the General meeting of shareholders:

1. Approval of Consolidated and Companys Financial statements of the year 2017, prepared according to the International Financial Reporting Standards accredited to use in European Union, presented along with Consolidated Annual Report and Conclusion of independent auditor.

Resolution project  to approve the audited AB Kauno Energija Consolidated and Companys Financial statements of the year 2017, prepared according to the International Financial Reporting Standards accredited to use in European Union (included).

2. Allocation of AB Kauno Energija profit (loss) of the year 2017.

Resolution project  to allocate AB Kauno Energija profit (loss) of the year 2017 in accordance to the profit (loss) allocation project provided to the General meeting of shareholders by the administration of AB Kauno Energija (included).

AB Kauno Energija shall not provide the possibility to participate and vote in the General meeting of shareholders through electronic communication channels.

The account date of General meeting of shareholders  19 April 2018. Persons, who will own the shares of AB Kauno Energija as at the end of the working day of 19 April 2018, are entitled to take part and to vote General meeting of shareholders.

Share capital of AB Kauno Energija is divided into 42,802,143 (forty-two million eight hundred and two thousand one hundred forty three) ordinary registered shares. All of these shares carry the right to vote with their shareholders.

The person participating in General meeting of Shareholders must submit an identity document. A person who is not a shareholder must also submit a document confirming the right to vote at the General meeting of shareholders along with this document. The authorized person shall have the same rights as it should represent by the shareholder at the General meeting of shareholders. Shareholder's right to attend the General meeting of shareholders also include the right to ask questions.

Please be informed that shareholders, who are entitled to participate at the General meeting of shareholders, carry the right to authorize physical or legal person to attend and vote on behalf of them at the General meeting of shareholders by electronic means. Power of attorney that is issued by the shareholder must be submitted by sending e-mail s.meskauskas@kaunoenergija.lt not later than until the end of working day of 25 April 2018 (4.30 p.m.).

Please be informed that issues which are included into agenda of the General meeting of shareholders can be voted in written by completing the general ballot paper. If the person who had completed the general ballot paper is not a shareholder, the completed general ballot paper must be accompanied by a document confirming the voting right. The duly completed general ballot paper (voting bulletin) should be sent by mail or delivered directly to the Company's office at Raudondvario av. 84, room 208, Kaunas till 26 April 2018 (9.30 a.m.). The Company reserves the right not to include in the shareholder vote early, if the general ballot paper does not meet the third and fourth parts of the 30 Article of Law on Companies requirements or the general ballot paper is written in a way that it is impossible to establish shareholders will on a separate issue.

The agenda of the General meeting of shareholders may be supplemented by initiative of shareholders who own shares no less than 1/20 of all the votes. Proposals to the agenda of the General meeting of shareholders may be submitted by mail or delivered to the Company's representative office at Raudondvario av. 84, room 208, Kaunas no later than 12 April 2018.

Please be informed that the resolution projects or explanations on each of the proposed issue if the resolutions shall not be adopted, must be submitted along with a proposal to supplement to the agenda of the General meeting of shareholders.

Please be informed that, shareholders who own shares with no less than 1/20 of all votes carry the right to propose new resolutions projects related to the issues included into agenda at any time before the General Meeting of Shareholders or during the meeting in written or by mail.

Shareholders have the right to submit the questions to the Company, concerning the agenda of the General Meeting of Shareholders of 26 April 2018. Questions may be submitted by e-mail s.meskauskas@kaunoenergija.lt or delivered directly to the Company's office at Raudondvario av. 84, room 208, Kaunas, not later than till the end of the working day of 20 April 2018 (2.00 p.m.).

The shareholders can get acquainted with Companys documents related to the agenda of shareholders meeting, with resolutions projects of the meeting and with the information related actualization of shareholders' rights starting from 4 April 2018 by coming to the Company at Raudondvario av. 84, Kaunas, room 208 or on the Companys website at (http://www.kaunoenergija.lt).

Loreta Miliauskiene, Head of the Economics Department, tel. +370 37 305 855

IFRS KE 2017 en



VOTING BULLETIN 20180426_EN



Draft appropriation of profit_2017
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The marine environment is critical to Grenadas economy and closely linked to the islands income generating tourism sector. Grenadas tri-island ocean state is not just a hub of maritime activity, but also home to unique marine biodiversity
If you live in Chicago and spend time on any of the big social media sites, you may notice some rather unusual ads: streaming commercials telling you that if youre a millennial, you should pack up and move to Wisconsin.There are four of these spots. Each is a slick 20-second polemic. One of them starts by showing a frazzled young woman in a crowded and messy studio apartment somewhere in Chicago. The narrator reminds us that rents in Milwaukee average 42 percent less than what shes paying now. For the price of a tiny, cramped third-floor walkup in the bigger city, she could have a spacious loft in Milwaukees gentrified Third Ward. And the overall cost of living would be at least 20 percent lower.The ads arent just on social media. The Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation has spent a million dollars placing variations of them on Chicagos elevated trains, in gyms and on drink coasters in bars. They all talk about how short the commute would be if you just relocated 90 miles up the road to live and work.So far, there are no reports of hatchbacks crammed with hipster possessions causing traffic jams on northbound Interstate 94. But Wisconsins promotional team thinks it is on to something. They have concluded that the two things millennials worry about most are commuting times and the cost of living. Wisconsin believes it can use those issues to attract younger Chicagoans across the state border to a cheaper, more efficient and more relaxing life.Will it work? There are reasons to be skeptical. Much of the target audience knows that Milwaukee isnt exactly a utopia. Moving there may reduce commuting time, but it wont be an escape, for example, from crime or racial tension. Those are about as bad in Milwaukee as they are in Chicago.Still, the whole exercise calls forth some larger questions about the needs and wishes of the countrys largest generational cohort. There are about 80 million millennials, if you accept the common definition of those born between 1980 and 1999; they moved past the baby boom generation in size a couple of years ago. What do millennials really want? And how do planners and governments go about giving it to them? Those are hard questions. But maybe there are rewards for communities that get the answers right.For the first few years of the current decade, there seemed to be a clear solution to the millennial puzzle: Young people, many millions of them, wanted to live in cities. That conclusion was supported by some solid numbers. Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and a lot of other cities were seeing more population growth than the suburbs around them, and that was thanks mostly to millennials.The urban millennial idea was pretty convincing until mid-decade, when researchers began to notice that the trend was starting to reverse itself. Not only were the hot cities failing to maintain their millennial growth spurt, but several of them were actually losing younger residents. Dowell Myers, the influential demographer at the University of Southern California, coined the term peak millennial to describe the phenomenon of stagnating urban millennial numbers.In Myers view, young people had been staying in cities because they couldnt afford to move anywhere in a sluggish economy. Once the economic picture improved, they began to head out to the suburbs. That was why suburban populations began to grow again after about 2013.The next couple of years appeared to lend some credence to Myers hypothesis. In 2016, Boston lost 7,000 millennials. Los Angeles lost 2,500. Chicago managed to stay even, but just barely. The notion that most millennials secretly covet a suburban lifestyle began to approach conventional wisdom. A few months ago,magazine opined that Americas big cities have already reached peak millennial as young people begin to leave.But there is a problem with the peak millennial idea, as the urban economist Joe Cortright was first to point out. The entire millennial cohort, like the rest of us, is getting older. A decade ago, the oldest millennials were still in their 20s. Now the oldest of them are 38.many of them will move to the suburbs; people in their late 30s can be expected to do that as they marry and have children. But their interest in suburbia tells us nothing about whether younger adults -- those under 30 -- have lost their urban fascination.Actually, there is some evidence that they havent lost it at all. The urbanist Pete Saunders looked at the numbers recently and found that in 33 core metro areas, educated young millennials were choosing cities over distant suburbs by a ratio of 1.5 to 1. This was certainly the case in Chicago. It was also true in Cleveland, Detroit, Pittsburgh and St. Louis.Young people who opt for the suburbs arent suffering from some mysterious form of urban ennui. They are reacting to the absence of sufficient, affordable housing in or near the city center to meet the demand. Cities could stave off whatever level of peak millennial shrinkage actually does exist by promoting the construction of such housing, and especially of units with two and three bedrooms for families with children. But there is little sign that many cities are doing this.So if millions of younger millennials are squeezed out or priced out of downtown, and dont want to move 30 miles beyond the city limits, what are they likely to do? One answer is that many of them will be drawn to close-in suburbs that have been reconfigured to look as much like urban neighborhoods as possible. Real estate developers, who are generally ahead of policymakers on these questions, have been betting on this trend for the past decade.June Williamson of the City University of New York, a diligent student of urbanized suburbia, estimates that a decade ago there were about 80 projects in the country that fit that description. Today, she thinks, there are more than 1,500. Many have been built on the ruins of conventional suburban shopping malls of the 1970s that have gone out of business. Nearly all offer outdoor shopping districts with apartments and condos above and adjoining the retail units. No one has the illusion that these developments recreate traditional city neighborhoods, but their rising property values suggest that they are attracting a sizable share of millennials willing to leave the city but unwilling to tolerate a long exurban commute.But as promising as the developments of urbanized suburbia have been so far, there will be millions of millennials who dont want it, who see it as a clever but unsuccessful attempt to make something look like a city when it isnt a city. Is there still another option for these people?There may be one more. Its the one that the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation believes it can cultivate. Its the option of moving from an expensive big city to a smaller, cheaper and perhaps less nerve-wracking place -- for example, the option of picking Milwaukee over Chicago.The evidence that this might work is almost entirely anecdotal. But it does exist. In January,took a close look at Columbus, Ind. Columbus is a prosperous town of 45,000 with an enlightened industrial corporation as its dominant presence and a large collection of striking modern architecture. Columbus has been seeking to attract educated millennials, and has done it. The number of Columbus residents between 25 and 34 who possess college degrees increased 62 percent between 2010 and 2017. On average, they spend less than 20 percent of their income on housing. Most homes cost less than $150,000. One-bedroom apartments in the compact, appealing downtown rent for an average of $750 a month.Columbus is such an unusual place that it might not be the most instructive example of millennials going small. But there are others. The mortgage data firm Ellie Mae looked at millennials home-buying and found that the champion at attracting them was Athens, Ohio, a town of 25,000 with a nice university campus but not much else. As of 2017, millennials were buying 59 percent of the homes in Athens, more than in any other city in the study. The average list price of a house in Athens was $189,000.Milwaukee, with a population of nearly 600,000, isnt exactly a bucolic small town. But it might feel like one to a young person who has been living with Chicagos congestion and housing costs. Or so Wisconsin economic development officials have come to believe. Their campaign may or may not bring in large numbers of millennials, but its probably worth a try. At the very least, its an interesting experiment.As for what millennials really want, I think there is a simple answer. The answer is all of the above. Out of a cohort of 80 million people, there will be enough to keep most urban city centers vibrant, enough to make the projects of urbanized suburbia profitable, and enough to invigorate a decent number of smaller towns that have attractive amenities and can mount clever promotional campaigns.All of this is promising news. The one big mistake you can make is to assume that most millennials will want the same thing. Baby boomers werent like that, despite the best efforts of the media and social pundits to stuff them into a few rigid stereotypes. What are the members of the millennial generation really looking for? In the end, it just depends on which one you ask.
Kentucky's largest public school districts are closed due to widespread absences Friday among teachers angered by the Legislature's passage of a pension overhaul. Students in Louisville and Lexington are affected as at least eight Kentucky school districts have had to close schools due to employee absences.The Kentucky Education Association calls it a "shameful" bill that was swiftly and narrowly approved by the Republican-led Legislature without a hearing or chance to comment on the final version.Republican lawmakers passed a pension overhaul that preserves benefits for most workers and does little in the short-term to address the state's massive debt. The lawmakers passed the bill it in response to one of the worst-funded public retirement systems in the country and in defiance of a powerful teachers union that vowed political retribution.
After five years of failed attempts to expand Medicaid, Utah Gov. Gary Herbert signed a bill last week to do just that. It may come as a surprise that the bill was sponsored by a Republican.Republicans have historically opposed making more low-income people eligible for the government health insurance program. Under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), President Obama's signature legislation, the federal government pays 90 to 100 percent of the costs for any state that expands. But Republican-led states have been slow to expand Medicaid, and nearly 20 of them still have not.The Trump administration, however, made expansion more enticing for some Republicans by letting states tack on new eligibility rules, such as work requirements and time limits -- provisions that the Obama administration denied.The Trump administration has shown a real willingness to work with us and allow us to come up with our own solutions. This could turn into a movement for states, says Utah state Rep. Robert Spendlove, who sponsored a Medicaid expansion bill.Indeed, Utah isn't the only state where Republicans are re-examining the possibility of expansion. A similar effort is underway in Virginia.Considering President Trump spent most of his first year in office trying to repeal the ACA, he may not have intended to strengthen the law's impact. Nevertheless, hundreds of thousands more low-income people could soon be eligible for Medicaid in these two states.Utah's bill requires approval from the federal government. It includes several requests that depart from traditional Medicaid expansion: requirements for applicants to prove they are working, volunteering or job training; an end to the expansion if federal officials lower their contribution from 90 percent; and an eligibility limit that stops at the poverty line, which is $12,140 for a single person.That last request may not be granted.Last month, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) denied a request from Arkansas to trim its eligible population down to just the poverty line. ACA law, however, requires Medicaid expansion to cover residents making up to 138 percent of the federal poverty line,which is an annual income of $16,642 for a single person.If any portion of Utah's request is denied, Utah House Speaker Greg Hughes told the Salt Lake Tribune that lawmakers would have to take another look at the bill, calling it a "package deal."Like Utah, Virginia's GOP-controlled Legislature had stalled the governor's hopes of expanding Medicaid for years. But with the option to add more conservative elements, Republicans are now actively supporting it.Chris Peace, a Republican delegate in the Virginia House who supports expansion but didn't under the rules of the Obama administration, says these new developments give lawmakers more freedom to practice compassionate conservatism.But the road to expansion is rockier in Virginia.The House passed a budget that included Medicaid expansion with work requirements, while the Senate passed a separate budget standing strong against it. Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, called a special session to hammer out a deal, starting April 11 and ending June 30. Northam favors Medicaid expansion without caveats but has expressed willingness to work with Republican lawmakers on a compromise.We want these training programs and annual evaluations [of eligibility] as a symbolic measure to show its not a free ride," says Peace. "But in Virginia, if youre a family of three and making more than $6,700 a year, you dont qualify for Medicaid now. Can you imagine a family of three getting by on that? Thats just not something I think is doable.If the legislature can strike a deal, its estimated that 400,000 Virginians would be newly-qualified for Medicaid. In Utah, 70,000 more would be eligible for free or low-cost health care.Some health advocates, however, aren't pleased with the progress being made."We are not going to be supportive of any effort trying to link access to health insurance to a work requirement," Frederick Isasi, executive director of the health advocacy group Families USA, told Vox Since the Trump administration signaled a willingness to approve work requirements (and other Medicaid changes), Arkansas, Indiana and Kentucky have received federal approval to implement one.Eight other states either have requests pending or are debating whether to add work requirements to their existing programs.Research shows that adding work requirements, time limits and other eligibility rules to Medicaid coverage hinders people from enrolling. And in Kentucky, 100,000 people are estimated to lose health insurance once the state's new rules go into effect in July.(A lawsuit, however, is pending to block them.)Given Virginias inability to get this far with the Medicaid expansion debate in the past, other left-leaning organizations take a more pragmatic approach.Its worth celebrating if they get there because itll mean hundreds of thousands of people will get coverage. It does look like theyre going to go with a work requirement, and obviously that means some people who can't work, can't find work or can't jump through the extra hoops won't get coverage. But overall, it would be a good thing, says Jesse Cross-Call, senior policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.There are also efforts to get the question on the ballot this year in Idaho, Missouri and Utah, where the voters could expand Medicaid more than lawmakers have. Advocates of expansion are hoping to replicate the success in Maine , where voters last year became the first in the nation to expand Medicaid through a referendum.Although Republicans have been a roadblock to the ACA, Virginia's Peace notes that the idea that everyone should have some form of health coverage was actually a conservative idea decades ago."We dont want to rewrite history here. These programs were written by the Heritage Foundation, with Mitt Romney pioneering it in Massachusetts. So in a sense," he says, "were going back to our roots."
Safe Republican

Likely Republican

Lean Republican

Tossup

Lean Democratic

Likely Democratic

Safe Democratic

The last five months have been a busy time in politics. And yet, since our last handicapping of the 2018 gubernatorial races , the broad outline of this years 36 contests has barely budged.In fact, weve changed the rating of only one state: New York moves from safe Democratic to likely Democratic.Otherwise, 18 seats are still vulnerable -- 12 of which are held by the GOP, compared to just five by the Democrats and one by an independent, Alaskas Bill Walker. Of those 18, three GOP-held seats -- Illinois, Maine and New Mexico -- currently lean Democratic. By contrast, no Democratic seat leans Republican, though three are rated tossup: the open seats in Colorado, Connecticut and Minnesota.Overall, the GOP holds a 33-16 edge in gubernatorial offices and will have more governorships to defend this year -- 26 to the Democrats nine.As we wrote in October, we predict that in a neutral political environment, Democrats would be able to gain up to three governorships nationally. But with the political winds in the Democrats favor -- for the first time since 2006 the GOP will control the White House and Congress during a midterm election -- the net gain could be as high as five to seven seats for the Democrats.That said, its worth remembering that the national political environment doesnt always impact gubernatorial candidates. Many voters are able to distinguish between the political and personal factors that affect state races and those that affect federal races.Before we delve in to the state-by-state breakdown of each 2018 race, a few notes. Vulnerability in our ratings does not mean an incumbent governor is at risk of losing a primary contest -- only a general election. Our handicapping is based on consultations with dozens of experts in the states as well as national party strategists. And within all categories, the seats are listed from most likely to go Republican to most likely to go Democratic. Our categories are safe Republican, likely Republican, lean Republican, tossup, lean Democratic, likely Democratic and safe Democratic.And for an interactive version of the map, click here. GOP Attorney General Marty Jackley and U.S. Rep. Kristi Noem are facing off in a highly competitive Republican primary. Whoever wins the nomination will be an overwhelming favorite in this solidly red state.Meanwhile, the Democrats are expected to nominate state Sen. Billie Sutton, a former rodeo star who was injured in the ring and is now in a wheelchair. Sutton will be fighting against the current in the general election.The Republicans have a big field of potential successors for Otter, but three candidates in particular have the strongest prospects for winning the nomination: Lt. Gov. Brad Little, U.S. Rep. Raul Labrador and deep-pocketed Boise developer Tommy Ahlquist. All three have been campaigning for close to a year now -- a primary of unusual length and intensity for Idaho -- and the contest is wide open.On the Democratic side, theres also a competitive primary, pitting the 2014 Democratic nominee, A.J. Balukoff, against former state Rep. Paulette Jordan. Balukoff is seen as the establishment candidate and more of a moderate; Jordan is a member of the Coeur d'Alene tribe and is from a rural area.Barring something unexpected, whoever ends up as the Republican nominee should be heavily favored in November.Republican Secretary of State Ed Murray -- the early favorite -- quit the race due to a sex scandal. That leaves state Treasurer Mark Gordon and businessman Sam Galeotos in the primary.On the Democratic side, former state House Minority Leader Mary Throne is running. Shes moderate enough to be a credible candidate, but any Democrat faces long odds in Wyoming these days.Gun activist and Fox News personality Jan Morgan is challenging Hutchinson from the right. Morgan, who has knocked the incumbent as a progressive, trails in funding. Nonetheless, Hutchinson, who remains the favorite to win renomination, is responding to the taunts by tacking right on a variety of issues.The leading Democrat is a fresh face with an impressive resume: former NASA scientist and nonprofit executive Jared Henderson. But even in a Democratic wave election, he will face a steep uphill climb in Arkansas.State Sen. Bob Krist, a former moderate Republican, has decided to run as a Democrat and seems likely to defeat other potential primary candidates. In the general election, though, Ricketts remains heavily favored to win a second term in this solidly red state.Abbott is the most popular politician in the Lone Star State. He has a campaign war chest of more than $40 million, the ability to raise much more, and will be facing a second-tier Democratic rival in November after former San Antonio mayor and ex-HUD Secretary Julian Castro and Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings decided not to run.Instead, the May 22 Democratic runoff will pit Andrew White, a first-time candidate and the son of former Democratic Gov. Mark White, against former Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez. White has steered a more centrist course, hoping to woo Republicans who have become disenchanted with the state GOPs rightward sprint. Valdez, for her part, has strong support from Democratic elites and is running on a more liberal platform. In the March 6 primary, Valdez won 43 percent to Whites 27 percent, and she comes into the runoff as the favorite, despite Whites impressive showing as a candidate.Both Democrats trail Abbott in fundraising by large amounts, however, and the incumbent remains the heavy favorite in the race.Ivey, who ascended to the governors office when fellow Republican Robert Bentley resigned amid a sex scandal, wont have a free ride to a full term. Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle is her strongest challenger, but she also faces credible opposition from state Sen. Bill Hightower and minister Scott Dawson for the GOP nomination.The Democrats, meanwhile, are pinning their hopes on one of three potential candidates: Tuscaloosa Mayor Walt Maddox, former Alabama Chief Justice Sue Bell Cobb and former state Sen. James Fields.But Alabama remains a deep red state despite Democrat Doug Jones defeat of Republican Roy Moore for an open U.S. Senate seat. With the economy in good shape, Ivey has a strong case to make for a full term.Even though term-limited Fallin has experienced a rough stretch due to falling oil prices, the states heavy Republican lean gives the GOP the edge. The two Republican frontrunners are Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett and Lt. Gov. Todd Lamb. Other contenders include Tulsa businessman Kevin Stitt, who has promised to spend several million dollars on his campaign, and Tulsa attorney Gary Richardson. If no one gets a majority, the top two finishers will face each other in a runoff.Democrats, for their part, hope that residual concerns about the economy and divisions on the GOP side will give them a boost. The Democratic primary includes former Attorney General Drew Edmondson and former state Sen. Connie Johnson.There are several well-known, well-funded Republicans who are looking to succeed Haslam, but the Democrats prospects have risen a bit in recent months.The GOP field includes U.S. Rep. Diane Black, former state economic development chief Randy Boyd, House Speaker Beth Harwell and businessman Bill Lee. Black and Boyd are the preliminary favorites, but Harwell and Lee could catch on.The Democratic frontrunner is former Nashville Mayor Karl Dean, though House Minority Leader Craig Fitzhugh is challenging him in the primary. Democrats are hoping for a bloody GOP primary and some updraft from a competitive U.S. Senate campaign by former Democratic Gov. Phil Bredesen.Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle and Secretary of State Brian Kemp head the list of Republican candidates seeking to succeed Deal, though the field also includes state senators Hunter Hill and Michael Williams, as well as ex-Navy SEAL and tech executive Clay Tippins. In the short term, Cagles efforts to punish Delta Airlines for ending a National Rifle Association discount have been popular with the GOP base, but some business leaders have been spooked by the move.On the Democratic side, the race of the Staceys continues -- former House Minority Leader Stacey Abrams and former state Rep. Stacey Evans. Abrams is African-American and more liberal, and Evans is white and more moderate. Despite Democratic progress in the state, particularly in suburban areas, the gubernatorial race remains a relative longshot for the Democrats this fall.Baker, the Bay States popular moderate Republican governor, looks ever stronger to win a second term. No one in the Democratic field -- including Newton Mayor Setti Warren and former state finance secretary Jay Gonzalez -- is getting traction.Despite Vermonts deep blue shadings, the Republican incumbent has governed as a moderate, and thats been broadly popular. Scott may face a challenge from the right by a candidate representing the states pro-Trump contingent, especially after he supported some gun rights restrictions. Still, Scott would have a significant edge in winning renomination.The Democratic field includes Christine Hallquist, a transgender former CEO of the Vermont Electric Co-Op, and James Ehlers, an environmental activist.McMaster, who moved up from lieutenant governor after Nikki Haley resigned to become U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, wont have a free ride to the GOP nomination. While hes the favorite, he still faces a primary field that includes Kevin Bryant, the new lieutenant governor, and Catherine Templeton, who ran two agencies under Haley and who has posted strong fundraising numbers.On the Democratic side, state Rep. James Smith is the frontrunner. Observers consider him a strong contender because of his Afghan War background. Another expected Democratic hopeful is consultant Phil Noble. Democrats are strengthening their organization in the state, and some demographic trends point in their direction.Still, South Carolina remains a red state, and the GOP nominee starts with the edge.Ducey, who has had a relatively quiet first term, has outraised his two leading Democratic opponents, state Sen. Steve Farley and Arizona State University professor David Garcia. It remains to be seen how much of a boost a national wave will give Democrats in Arizona, which voted for Trump.Reynolds, who succeeded GOP Gov. Terry Branstad after he was named ambassador to China, is considered personable and is seen as a strong campaigner. But the race could turn on how the state's budget situation is resolved, and whether a national wave can give Democrats a boost despite Trump winning the state easily in 2016. The leading challengers on the Democratic side are businessman Fred Hubbell and state Sen. Nate Boulton.Walker, running for a third consecutive term, is a known quantity in Wisconsin. The Democratic field is considerably less so. It includes State Superintendent Tony Evers, state Sen. Kathleen Vinehout, Assemblyman Dana Wachs, Madison Mayor Paul Soglin, businessman Andy Gronik, former state Democratic Party chair Matt Flynn, political activist Mike McCabe, firefighters union president Mahlon Mitchell and former state Rep. Kelda Helen Roys. Still, Walkers favorability rating is hovering around 48 percent, which means hes vulnerable, especially if Democratic turnout is energized by a national wave.Attorney General Mike DeWine has teamed up with one of his former rivals, Secretary of State Jon Husted, on a ticket, effectively making him the frontrunner in the GOP primary against Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor. The Democratic field has also solidified, with Richard Cordray, the former state attorney general and head of the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, teaming up with former U.S. Rep. Betty Sutton as his running mate. They lead the field against former U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, whos making a surprisingly strong bid, as well as former state Supreme Court Justice Bill ONeill and state Senate Minority Leader Joe Schiavoni. The GOP starts with an edge, but the race should be competitive.Historically, New Hampshire voters are loath to oust a new governor after only their first two-year term. This boosts Sununus chances of winning reelection, despite the likelihood of a national Democratic wave and the recent voting patterns in this swing state. Sununus approval numbers are strong thanks to a good economy, which has helped scare off top-tier Democrats. For now, at least, it looks like Sununu should be able to withstand a Trump-related downdraft.Hogan, a moderate Republican, has maintained his distance from Trump -- a necessity in his blue state. Its enabled him to put together 60 percent-plus approval ratings. Still, his polling on whether residents want him to win reelection hovers below 50 percent, which is a potentially troubling sign.The three leading Democratic contenders are former Prince Georges County Executive Rushern Baker, Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz and former NAACP President Ben Jealous. Regardless of who wins the Democratic primary, expect a nasty race in the fall. The Hogan camp already has taken shots across the bow at Baker and Kamenetz regarding school-related scandals in their respective jurisdictions. If Jealous is the nominee, Hogan is expected to tie him to the left wing of the Democratic Party in a bid to peel off moderate Democrats.Hogan is not as safe as either Baker of Massachusetts or Scott of Vermont. But for now at least, the race tilts slightly his way.The race to succeed the unpopular and staunchly conservative Brownback has become even more complex in recent months.Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer was elevated to the governorship after Brownbacks departure for an ambassadorship. As Colyer has grappled with a tough school funding issue and a battle over Medicaid expansion, hes been forced to confront a contested GOP primary. Secretary of State Kris Kobach is a favorite of the partys right flank, but hes a polarizing figure for his anti-immigration and anti-voter-fraud positions. The other Republicans are Insurance Commisisoner Kel Selzer and former state Sen. Jim Barnett, who is probably too moderate to win over the GOP primary base.Despite Kansas Republican leanings, Democrats see an opportunity after Brownbacks difficult two terms, especially if a controversial GOP candidate such as Kobach wins the GOP nomination and a national Democratic wave materializes.The Democrats have four major candidates: House Minority Leader Jim Ward, former Wichita Mayor Carl Brewer, former agriculture Secretary Josh Svaty and state Sen. Laura Kelly. Kelly is a late entrant, but with the backing of former Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, shes become the frontrunner.A wild card is independent Greg Orman, who got 43 percent of the vote against incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts in 2014. Conventional wisdom suggests that a strong Orman bid would hurt Democrats, allowing even a polarizing Republican to win with 40 percent of the vote.For now, were keeping this race at lean Republican, but it could move into the tossup category before long.Walker, a Republican-turned-independent, has mediocre approval ratings and is facing a challenge from several Republicans, including former state Sen. Mike Dunleavy, businessman Scott Hawkins and state Rep. Mike Chenault.So far, no significant Democrat has entered the race, though former U.S. Sen. Mark Begich has toyed with a run.This is a GOP pickup opportunity, but for now, were calling it a tossup.While Connecticut remains generally Democratic, Malloy has presided over a persistently sluggish economy and an even weaker fiscal picture that was punctuated by a lengthy budget standoff this year. Republicans have already made legislative gains in 2016 and are poised to make a strong run at the governorship in 2018. But both partys fields are extraordinarily large and virtually impossible to handicap at this point. Everything about this contest screams tossup.Attorney General Bill Schuette is the GOP frontrunner. His indictments against figures involved in the Flint water crisis could insulate him from Snyders most problematic legacy. Hes running against state Sen. Patrick Colbeck, who has Tea Party and libertarian leanings, and Lt. Gov. Brian Calley.On the Democratic side, former state Sen. Gretchen Whitmer is the frontrunner and has the backing of Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan. Others running include Abdul El-Sayed, the former Detroit city health director, and entrepreneur Shri Thanedar.Given that Michigan voters have not typically given one party control of the governor's office for three consecutive terms, the Democrats have a decent shot this year despite their disappointing presidential results in the state in 2016.The Florida gubernatorial race is a free-for-all on both sides.For the Republicans, the field includes Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam; U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis, who has the backing of Trump; and outgoing state House Speaker Richard Corcoran. In the wake of the Parkland school shooting, guns will likely be a big issue among the GOP electorate, with Corcoran currently taking heat for a bill that passed on his watch that includes provisions opposed by the National Rifle Association.The Democratic field is led by former U.S. Rep. Gwen Graham and wealthy former Miami Beach Mayor Phil Levine. But other significant candidates include Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum and businessman Chris King.The Trump factor continues to loom large and could be decisive in this tossup race.The Democrats have high hopes after eight years under Sandoval, a popular moderate Republican. But despite the prospect of a national Democratic wave, the party has seen its registration lead shrink in recent months and faces a rough primary between two commissioners in populous Clark County, Steve Sisolak and Chris Giunchigliani.The Republicans also have a primary that pits Attorney General Adam Laxalt against State Treasurer Dan Schwartz.The shape of the race should become clearer after the nominations are set; for now, this remains a tossup.In the Democratic caucuses in March, former state treasurer and Denver CFO Cary Kennedy received a surprising 50 percent of the votes cast, outpacing the candidate who had been the presumed frontrunner, U.S. Rep. Jared Polis. Former state Sen. Mike Johnston and Lt. Gov. Donna Lynne are also running. Polis, who has deep pockets, could come back in the primary, but the caucuses gave Kennedy significant positive momentum.On the GOP side, the biggest names include State Treasurer Walker Stapleton; former state Rep. Victor Mitchell, who has deep pockets; and Trump backer Steve Barlock. Stapleton starts as the favorite for the nomination.Colorados significant suburban and Hispanic electorates bode well for the Democrats in this election cycle, but until the nominees are set well keep this in the tossup category.The Democratic field includes U.S. Rep. Tim Walz, state Auditor Rebecca Otto and state Rep. Erin Murphy. Otto and Murphy are competing for Twin Cities liberal support against Walz, who is hoping he can prevail by appealing to the more rural, blue-collar, pro-resource development wing of the party.On the Republican side, 2014 GOP nominee Jeff Johnson has emerged as the favorite for the party endorsement at the state convention, with his major rival being former state party chair Keith Downey. Mayor Mary Giuliani-Stephens of Woodbury and Phillip Parrish, a naval reserve officer and Afghan War veteran, are also in the GOP race. Its also increasingly likely that former GOP Gov. Tim Pawlenty will run again.It would be unusual for Minnesotans to give the Democrats a third consecutive gubernatorial term, especially given Trump's surprisingly narrow loss in Minnesota in 2016. But if the national wind at their backs is strong enough, state Democrats could overcome that pattern.The success of Trump in Maines rural areas in 2016 means the 2018 gubernatorial race should be competitive. The GOP field includes Mary Mayhew, the state commissioner of human services; state Senate Majority Leader Garrett Mason; state House Minority Leader Ken Fredette; and 2010 independent candidate and now Republican businessman Shawn Moody.On the Democratic side, the field is equally big, with no clear favorite. It includes businessman Adam Cote, Attorney General Janet Mills, former state House Speaker Mark Eves and state Senator Mark Dion. History is on the Democrats side: Maine hasnt elected back-to-back gubernatorial candidates from the same party since 1958.But the wild card, as always in Maine, is whether a third-party candidate, such as Democrat-turned-Independent State Treasurer Terry Hayes, can sneak in with a plurality, as the controversial LePage did. Until the primaries clarify the lineup for November, were keeping this race at lean Democratic.A March poll found Raimondo with only a 37 percent approval rating and in a statistical dead heat with Republican Allan Fung. But Raimondo can count on incumbency, a fundraising edge and a crowded field.Two Democrats are challenging Raimondo in the primary: former state Rep. Spencer Dickinson and environmentalist Paul Roselli.But Raimondos biggest threat may come from former Secretary of State Matt Brown, a Democrat who will run from the left as an independent. Other Independent candidates include ex-state Rep. and Trump campaign chair Joe Trill, and Luis-Daniel Munoz, a physician and political novice.Fung -- the mayor of Cranston -- is considered the frontrunner on the GOP side, but hell have to get past state House Minority Leader Patricia Morgan and former state Sen. Giovanni Feroce.Even before the March 20 primary, Rauner was vulnerable, thanks in part to an ongoing battle with the Democratic-controlled legislature, which kept the state without a full budget for more than two years, as well as from a conservative backlash over his decision to sign a bill providing state funding for abortions for low-income women. On primary day, he barely edged out socially conservative challenger Jeanne Ives.Meanwhile, J.B. Pritzker, a multibillionaire and the brother of the former Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, easily defeated Chris Kennedy, a businessman and the son of Robert F. Kennedy, and progressive state Sen. Daniel Biss.The contest between Rauner and Pritzker is expected to get ugly, as Rauner has already been spending money on TV ads attacking Pritzker, linking him to impeached and jailed former Gov. Rod Blagojevich. But in a Democratic state in a Democratic year and with an unpopular Republican governor who has lost faith on the right, this is Pritzkers race to lose.With Martinez bowing out after two terms, Democratic-leaning and heavily Latino New Mexico continues to be ripe for a takeover, though not without some Democratic infighting along the way. Democratic U.S. Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham prevailed at a somewhat messy pre-primary nominating convention. She has two credible primary opponents -- state Sen. Joe Cervantes and businessman Jeff Apodaca, son of former Gov. Jerry Apodaca.The expected Republican nominee is U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce, who has a record of winning in a heavily Hispanic and Democratic congressional district, and who may be able to put some distance between himself and Martinez, who has accumulated baggage during her tenure. Still, Trump is unpopular in the state, so were keeping this at lean Democratic.Wolfs approval ratings may not be exceptionally high, but he also doesnt have any insurmountable problems. He has proposed unpopular general tax hikes in his first two budgets, but at the same time hes increased education spending and supports a shale tax -- both of which are popular.His leading GOP rivals, state Sen. Scott Wagner and retired health care executive Paul Mango, are wealthy and aligned with Trump, which may not be as much of a benefit in the Keystone State in 2018 as it was in 2016.It has not been a good stretch for Cuomo, who is seeking a third term. First, former Cuomo advisor Joseph Percoco was convicted on fraud and bribery charges. Then, actress Cynthia Nixon launched a high-profile primary challenge from Cuomos left. Even if Nixon doesnt defeat Cuomo in the Democratic primary, the incumbent might get bloodied.If the GOP aligns behind moderate Dutchess County Executive Marcus Molinaro, the general election could become a race. For now, though, thats a lot of dominos that need to fall. Until they do, were shifting this only as far as likely Democratic.A recent poll shows Brown up over GOP state Rep. Knute Buehler, 45 percent to 29 percent. While Buehler is relatively unknown, hes moderate enough to compete in this blue state and should have enough money to mount a credible campaign. First, though, he must survive challenges from his right, including from Greg Wooldridge, a former Navy Blue Angel whos been endorsed by Oregon Right to Life. (Buehler, an orthopedic surgeon, favors abortion rights.)Brown got through the limited, off-year legislative session without too much damage. Democrats will do everything to tie Republicans -- who are barely a fourth of Oregon's registered voters -- to Trump. Being a Democratic incumbent in a Democratic state in a likely Democratic year should be sufficient for Brown.Ige was already facing a strong, well-funded challenge from Democratic U.S. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa, when an incorrect missile alert was sent on Iges watch. Hanabusa has been using that incident to sharpen her challenge. Whoever wins the Democratic primary should prevail in November, despite a bid by GOP state Rep. Andria Tupola. The Democrats have a virtual stranglehold on the Hawaii Legislature, with not a single Republican in the state Senate and only a half dozen in the state Assembly.California Democrats have only been increasing their dominance in the state, and with Californias top-two primary system, its possible that no Republican will make it to the November ballot. The list of candidates on both sides is long, but two Democratic candidates matter the most: Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. A relatively new entrant whos been attracting attention is former Democratic congressional aide Amanda Renteria.
The political consulting firm at the heart of a scandal involving Facebook data didn't just use its legally questionable methods in an attempt to help Donald Trump win the presidency.In 2014, it also may have helped Republicans capture control of the Colorado state Senate, assisted in the campaign for U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, and was involved in candidate Arthur B. Robinson's unsuccessful bid for an Oregon state Senate race.The British company, Cambridge Analytica, has been embroiled in scandal since mid-March when a joint investigation byandof London revealed that the company had improperly obtained Facebook data from 50 million people in order to help Republicans target political messages during campaigns. The firm was hired in 2016 by the Ted Cruz campaign and, later, by the Trump campaign.News of the improperly obtained data -- and Cambridge Analyticas unique method of using it to create "psychographic profiles" of target voters -- has sparked an outcry against Facebook , which is now facing an investigation by the Federal Trade Commission for potentially violating privacy rules. A bipartisan groupof 36 state attorneys general signed onto a letter demanding that Facebook turn over information on how it protects users' privacy.Another potential legal pitfall is the possibility that foreign nationals at Cambridge Analytica made high-level campaign strategy decisions, which is against U.S. law. reported that the political consulting firm is mostly staffed by Canadians and Europeans.The scandal raises questions about who campaigns at all levels of government are hiring to help them with data collection and messaging, says Matt Dallek, a political scientist at George Washington University.It was incumbent on the campaigns [that used Cambridge Analytica] to know who they were doing business with, he says. Campaigns often get into trouble when they dont know whos actually doing the work for them and when they dont have solid faith and trust in who they hire.The Trump campaign, and the state campaigns that partnered with Cambridge Analytica in the 2014 election cycle, have faced questions over the last several weeks about how extensively they used Cambridge Analytica data.The Trump campaign disputes the importance of Cambridge Analytica's contributions to the campaign. Alexander Nix, the firm's CEO, has said they didn't have time to create psychographic models specifically for Trump voters and leaned on what they had compiled for Cruz.None of the Republicans who won their state legislative races with the aid of Cambrige Analytica that year responded tos requests for comment. Colorado Sen. Beth Martinez Humenik, whose campaign was aided by Cambridge Analytica, toldthat she was not aware of the firm's work on her campaign."I don't know that it helped me," she told theIn Colorado,the firm helped Republicans target five state Senate districts: 16, 19, 20, 22 and 24, according to. The GOP candidate won in three of those five races (16, 19 and 24), effectively flipping the Senate back to GOP control. Denver Channel 7 reported that the firm took more than $444,000 in payments from Colorado campaign organizations that year.According to Channel 4 News in Britain , there is still a cache of campaign data floating around containing information about 136,000 Coloradans leftover from those races. Similar information exists for residents of Oregon, according to the news organization. The information was inappropriately mined from Facebook and contains data about individual users' likes, dislikes, interests and personality characteristics.The firms work in Colorado started with then-Senate Minority Leader Bill Cadman, who ascended to Senate President when the party recaptured the majority in 2014.According to Denver Channel 7, Cadman -- who left office in 2017 -- provided the firm with seven districts he thought could use their help, and the firm eventually chose to focus on five. It's unclear whether Cadman sought out Cambridge Analytica or whether the firm approached him. With data and targeting help from the firm, Republican fundraising organizations in Colorado sent out targeted mailers and fliers. Republican party officials in the state initially said the firm was only behind six mailers, but documents obtained byshow they could have been behind as many as 80.Democratic state Sen. Andy Kerr, who narrowly won reelection against one of the Cambridge Analytica-backed candidates, specifically recalls the mailers the political consulting firm sent out.Now that I know which ads they sent out, I clearly remember those because they were very deceitful and beyond the scope of even normal negative advertising, saying that I supported gender-specific abortions Kerr says. Also, they were sending things out to a lot of people we knew were strong Democrats, and at least one of the mailers was pro-choice. We thought at the time their targeting was just off, but maybe with this new Facebook data, thats exactly what they were trying to do.Judy Solano, who lost her race against Cambridge Analytica-backed Republican Beth Martinez Humenik, remembers being very surprised to lose her race.My race was supposed to be the safe race. They kept telling me, 'Youre fine Judy, dont worry about it,' Solano says. Its hard to tell [what effect Cambridge Analytica had] because that year was tough for a lot of people. But I wouldnt be surprised [if it was meaningful].The Colorado GOP denied involvement."The state party has never had a contract with Cambridge Analytica. What has been reported is that a Senate Majority Fund [a fundraising arm of the Republican party] did," Daniel Cole, a spokesman for the Colorado GOP, toldThe Colorado Democratic Party says it's calling on the state's Attorney General (a Republican) to investigate the campaign groups that contracted with the firm in 2014."We can't ignore all the groups in the Republican archipelago that were helped [by Cambridge Analytica]," says Eric Walker, a spokesman for the state's Democratic Party.
A district judge sentenced a Tarrant County woman to five years in prison Wednesday for illegally voting in the 2016 presidential election.Crystal Mason, 43, was on supervised release for a 2011 conviction for tax fraud when she voted. In Texas, convicted felons can't vote until they complete their full sentence, including supervised release.After her conviction, Mason chose to forgo a jury trial and have her sentence assessed instead. State District Judge Ruben Gonzalez oversaw sentencing.In cases such as Mason's, the state must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was aware that she was not allowed to vote, Tarrant County prosecutor Matt Smid said.The investigation began after a worker at the polls reported problems with Mason's ballot, said Samantha Jordan, a spokeswoman for the Tarrant County district attorney's office.When Mason voted in 2016, her name was not on the list of registered voters. The election judge offered her the option to vote provisionally after signing an affidavit. The document lists several requirements to vote, including that the voter is not a felon or has served the full sentence."The affidavit was a stop sign in front of her face," Smid said.Smid said sentencing in such a case depends primarily on what the judge feels is deserved because there are very few cases to use as precedent. The judge had the option to sentence Mason to anywhere between two to 20 years in prison or probation.Mason told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that she was never told she was not eligible to vote, and she would not intentionally risk her freedom to vote."I inflated returns," Mason told the Star-Telegram. "I was trying to get more money back for my clients. I admitted that. I owned up to that. I took accountability for that. I would never do that again. I was happy enough to come home and see my daughter graduate. My son is about to graduate. Why would I jeopardize that? Not to vote. ... I didn't even want to go vote."Mason's defense attorney J. Warren St. John told the Star-Telegram an appeal has been filed in Mason's case in order to allow her to be released on bond.
President Donald Trumps administration must defend a lawsuit targeting his plan to end a program offering protection from deportation for hundreds of thousands of children of undocumented immigrants.U.S District Judge Nicholas Garaufis in Brooklyn, New York, narrowed but didnt dismiss the suit on Thursday, finding that there was a plausible inference that it was illegally aimed at Mexicans. He previously blocked the U.S. government from ending the program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, and from halting the renewal process, but hadnt decided whether to allow the case to proceed.On Thursday, Garaufis said those suing the U.S may proceed with a claim that Trumps policy was driven by unlawful racial animus against Latinos, and in particular, Mexicans, who make up about 78 percent of the program. He also said that ending the program violates Constitutional protections because it disproportionately affects them.
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GIS - 30 March, 2018: Cooperative societies must be encouraged to embrace new principles of good governance in order to ensure the absence of financial scandals and malpractices. The notion of good governance will help improve public confidence and project a better image of cooperatives in the society.

This was the gist of the speech of the Minister of Business, Enterprise and Cooperatives, Mr Soomilduth Bholah, at the launch of an informative workshop by the Mauritius Co-operative Alliance Limited (MCAL) on Good Governance for Cooperatives held yesterday at the Mauritius Institute of Training and Development in Phoenix. He was addressing some 100 participants including members of cooperatives, secondary and university students as well as other stakeholders.

Minister Bholah underlined that the core principles applicable in the cooperative sector are transparency, accountability, leadership, cooperation and high ethical behaviour. In the wake of widely publicised financial scandals, there is an increasing urgency to sensitise cooperatives on the need to set up credible and higher standards in order to win back the trust and faith in cooperative entities, he emphasised.

He underscored that Government reckons the importance of the cooperative sector and has undertaken to further strengthen the cooperative movement by providing the appropriate legal, fiscal and policy support. I n a bid to eliminate illicit activities in cooperatives, he said that necessary amendments were made to the Cooperatives Act 2005 whereby various loopholes and practical impediments were addressed. The Cooperatives Act 2016, he pointed out, encompasses concepts such as Corporate Governance and Code of Ethics and best practices which must be grounded at the basis of cooperatives.

Speaking of the MCAL, Minister Bholah underpinned that it is the apex body of the cooperative movement regrouping secondary and primary cooperative societies. He pointed out that its function is to reinforce cooperatives and assist them in their operational activities while ensuring the social and economic interests of cooperatives at regional, national and international level.

He commended the laudable initiative of the MCAL and urged cooperatives to avail themselves of all the services offered by this tertiary body. With regard to the workshop, he said that it will help raise awareness of cooperative leaders on good governance and best practices comprising the challenges and associated risks in the financial sector.

For his part, the Chairman of the MCAL, Mr D. Kona Yerukunondu, underscored that the MCAL should be considered as the mouthpiece of the cooperative movement in Mauritius. The organisation, he emphasised, is responsible for facilitating the development of cooperatives through the creation and provision of legal and institutional environment together with adequate support as well as incentives.

He added that there is a great need for cooperative societies to be aware of the MCAL and its various services put at their disposal. The workshop, he stated, will enhance the visibility of the institution and will sensitise the population especially the youth about the relevance of cooperative societies.
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GIS - 30 March, 2018: The SADC Council of Ministers which met on 26 and 27 March 2018 in Pretoria, South Africa deliberated on several issues of importance to the region in relation to the priority programmes contained in the Regional Indicative Strategic Development Plan 2015-2020; the Strategic Indicative Plan for the Organ; and the SADC Industrialization Strategy and Roadmap 2015-2063.

At a postCouncil media briefing on 27 March 2018 in South Africa, the Minister of International Relations and Cooperation of the Republic of South Africa and Chairperson of the SADC Council of Ministers, Dr Lindiwe Sisulu, said that the Council received status reports on the implementation of decisions it had taken in August 2017; as well as progress on the implementation of the 2017/18 Corporate Plan of the Secretariat, and operational plan and budget for 2018/19.

Achievements recorded across the SADC priority areas of industrial development and market integration; infrastructure support for regional integration; peace and security; special programmes of regional dimension; cross-cutting issues as well as corporate services and institutional reforms, were also noted by the Council, she added.

The Council was apprised of progress made on the implementation of the SADC Industrialization strategy and roadmap for 2017/18. The highlights include: the identification, profiling and commencement of the development of value chains in the pharmaceutical, minerals and agro-processing sectors. The Secretariat has been directed to convene meetings to assist Member States with negotiating and developing value chains in leather, soya, aquaculture, iron and steel, copper, cement and manufacturing of ARVs, malaria medicines and mosquito bed nets.

Dr. Sisulu pointed out that the Council noted the progress on the development of the SADC Regional Resource Mobilisation Framework and directed the Secretariat to finalise the framework and other viable and alternative options of financing regional projects. The Council also took note of the progress made towards the operationalisation of the SADC University of Transformation, which will contribute towards capacity building in the region, as well as deliver educational training using the vocational educational training model.

Approval was also conveyed for the establishment of a regional financing facility for SADC transfrontier conservation areas to be supported by International Cooperating Partners resources. SADC Secretariat was directed to finalise modalities to operationalise the facility.

In regard to the outbreak of listeriosis in the region, Council urged Member States to harmonize prevention, detection and response procedures; strengthen the control of food industries in terms of compliance to food safety standards; and enforce policies that are aligned to international codes.

Member States have been urged to strengthen cross border collaboration in the importation of processed foods. They have been invited to establish mechanisms for inter-sectoral and multi-sectoral coordination and effective communication to facilitate implementation of core public health capacities, all hazards risk assessment approach including addressing risk management for listeriosis outbreak.
(TNS)  Two major U.S. cities were crippled this week by ransomware, but even in the heart of Silicon Valley, Bay Area government officials tasked with safeguarding a growing trove of sensitive data feel vulnerable to what they see as a constant and ever-evolving threat.More than a fourth of U.S. local governments are subject to hourly cyberattacks, according to one recent national survey, and about one in seven experience yearly electronic security breaches that result in confirmed unauthorized access to sensitive information and systems. Nearly a third said the hackers were seeking ransom.Every city sees on a routine basis ransomware attacks, its just a matter of which ones get through, said San Jose Chief Information Officer Rob Lloyd. Weve had minor ones weve been able to resolve. You lose a little ground, but you recover. We really feel for our colleagues in Atlanta and Baltimore. No ones immune to these types of attacks. Everyone is running into the same type of threats.In Oakland, hackers in 2014 shut down various city websites, including the police departments, and two years earlier released personal information, including home addresses, of city leaders. Spokeswoman Karen Boyd said there havent been any recent ransomware attacks, but it is always a concern.Attacks like the one that occurred in Atlanta remind us that it is critical that we continue to build upon the security systems we have in place to keep our city safe, Boyd said.On March 22, ransomware rocked Atlanta with a digital extortion that the New York Times called one of the most sustained and consequential cyberattacks ever mounted against a major American city. Dell SecureWorks, an Atlanta company helping the city respond, said it was the work of a hacking crew called SamSam that demanded $51,000 to free the city networks.On Sunday, an attack on Baltimore shut down the citys automated emergency dispatching for some 17 hours, according to the Washington Post. On Wednesday, the citys chief information officer declared it the work of ransomware perpetrators.Officials in Walnut Creek and Contra Costa County had no immediate response Thursday to how often they are attacked. Lloyd said that San Joses efforts to keep ransomware hackers at bay starts with individuals being vigilant with own practices.Thats a key part of our cybersecurity plan, making sure our practices and habits lend to a more secure environment, Lloyd said.Boyd said that Oaklands Information Technology Department takes security concerns very seriously and has technology and protocols in place to protect the citys assets and maintain security.Ransomware is one of many types of security threats they must guard against, in which hackers commandeer computer systems and threaten to destroy data or paralyze networks unless they are paid.Its really alarming frankly whats happening in Atlanta, but many people in the national security space have been worried about this for a long time, said Kenneth Geers, senior research scientist at cybersecurity firm Comodo.While businesses also are subject to such cyberattacks, experts say local governments are an appealing target for several reasons. They have lots of valuable personal data such as birth certificates and operate vital public systems such as emergency dispatch and wastewater treatment. They provide lots of information on the internet and have large staffs they must train to protect their networks. And they have limited budgets for upgrading their networks and security systems.All kinds of public institutions including universities are ripe targets for folks involved in deploying this type of malware, said Brian Krebs, author of the security website KrebsonSecurity.com . And eventually they dont outrun the bear.In 2016, the International City/County Management Association, a professional organization for local government administrators, surveyed 3,423 local governments serving populations of 25,000 or more on cybersecurity.The association found that more than one in four  26 percent  reported experiencing cyber attacks, attempts to gain unauthorized access, at least once an hour, and 32 percent said the motivation was ransom. About one in six  16.3 percent  reported security incidents at least once a year in which their network security was compromised. And about one in seven  14 percent  reported security breaches at least once a year in which unauthorized access was confirmed.But the most troubling results, the survey study authors said, were the high percentage of respondents that did not know how often they are attacked (27.6 percent) and experience incidents (29.7 percent) and breaches (41.0 percent).These data strongly suggest that, on average, local governments in the United States are not doing the kind of job necessary to achieve high levels of cybersecurity, the study concluded.Cory Fleming, a senior technical specialist, with the International City/County Management Association, said it is something I dont think a lot of local government managers have stopped to think about.Our technology has been growing so fast, Fleming said, but so have the technologies to thwart that technology.The cost of data breaches can be staggering. A 2016 BetaNews article put the total average cost of a data breach at $6.53 million, including $3.72 million in lost business. Fleming said its become so costly that some municipalities are buying insurance to cover the costs of cyberattacks.Fleming said that for many ransomware victims, its cheaper for them to pay the ransom so they can continue to operate than to not pay them.Its unclear how the ransomware invaded Atlanta and Baltimore. But Krebs said that most breaches happen when organizations fall behind in patching some kind of server.Local governments spend billions on information technology  more than $30 billion for cities and $22 billion for counties, according to a 2017 report in Government Technology magazine.But the typical state or local government agency spends less than 5 percent of its information technology budget on cybersecurity, while the typical commercial enterprise spends more than 10 percent, according to the management association report.But guarding against attacks requires more vigilance than money. Security requires funding for hardware and software capable of detecting, cataloging, and preventing attacks, and for a sufficient and well-trained cybersecurity staff.The good news, the report said, is that, for the most part, local governments can  improve cybersecurity without spending a lot of money.
The Toyota Mobility Foundation (TMF) has selected ten researchers to receive grants from the research program to support innovative hydrogen energy solutions launched last year. (Earlier post.)

The Hydrogen Research Initiative started in July 2017 to support innovative research to reduce the output of carbon dioxide and/or the cost of hydrogen and hydrogen systems. Research proposals are to yield practical results in these areas between the years 2025 and 2030. This fiscal year, TMF solicited applications in four fields:

Hydrogen generation

Hydrogen storage and transport

Hydrogen applications

Energy systems

Toyota received 32 applications; a screening panel of hydrogen energy experts from universities and public research organizations determined the final grant awardees.

Hydrogen generation Topic Researcher Institution Dynamic Simulation of Hydrogen Production System Using Estimated Renewable Electricity Profiles and a Water Electrolyzer Model KOJIMA,

Hirokazu National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology Investigation of catalyst / electrolyte interface structure during photoelectrochemical water splitting SATO,

Masahiro The University of Tokyo Innovative surface reforming technology development for functionalization of stainless steels as water electrolysis catalysts TODOROKI,

Naoto Tohoku University Development of air electrodes for proton-conducting solid oxide electrochemical cells MATSUI,

Tosihaki Kyoto University Development of oxide-based electrocatalyst of water electrolysis for production of CO 2 -free-hydrogen MATSUZAWA,

Koichi Yokohama National University

Hydrogen storage and transport Topic Researcher Institution Computational Design for Higher-Order Porous Structures Suitable for Efficient Hydrogen Storage under Room Temperature -Molecular Dynamics Approach- Kim,

Hyeon-Deuk Kyoto University Development of organic hydride electrolyzer for hydrogen energy carrier synthesis NAGASAWA,

Kensaku Yokohama National University

Hydrogen applications Topic Researcher Institution Examination of alternative measure for safety distance in high pressure hydrogen storage facility using porous wall ASAHARA,

Makoto Gifu University
Ministry of Justice reports

Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Germany to the Republic of Armenia Matthias Kiesler on March 28, 2018, during a press conference, said that from 3 April 2018 the application for a Schengen visa for Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Austria and Sweden in Yerevan would be hosted not by the German embassy, but by the limited liability company "VisaMetrick", which is a Russian-Turkish consortium. Taking into account the ambassador's statement, numerous media publications on the statement, as well as the great public interest on this issue and the fear of transferring the personal data of the RA citizens, the RA Ministry of Justice's Personal Data Protection Agency initiated the verification process on its own initiative to find out how the processing of personal data the limited liability company "VisaMetrik" complies with the RA legislation. Within the framework of the powers set forth in the RA Law on Personal Data Protection, the Agency is examining, among other things, the raised issue to ensure compliance with the law in the processing of personal data by "VisaMetrick", in order to enforce the law and prevent possible violations of the processing of personal data. We will periodically inform the public about the agency's actions and their results, office of Information and Public Relations of the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Armenia reports.
Photo: Will Pryce/Getty Images

A San Francisco restaurant says its developed a system to deal with abusive customers thats so good at combating the behavior that incidents have now ceased to be a problem.

Homeroom is a seven-year-old mac-and-cheese joint in Oakland run by Erin Wade, a former lawyer who describes herself as an overtly feminist restaurateur. She writes in a Washington Post opinion piece that up until three years ago, she thought shed created a diverse and inclusive restaurant that was counter to many damaging industry norms. That was when she received a flood of emails from staff labeled harassment and requesting a meeting with me.

Turns out, the harassment was coming from customers, not the womens co-workers, but it terrified Wade regardless. What triggered the meeting was a diner feeling up a server as she bused the table where he and his four kids had eaten; other staffers told stories about reporting harassment to male managers, only to have the customers misbehavior dismissed as unthreatening. Wade writes that she started bawling and realized that relying on men [to make] judgment calls on womens stories was just inherently a system that was failing all of us.

They created something called the Management Alert Color System  or, aptly, MACS. All employees are now trained on it, and it gives servers three colors to categorize incidents. An incident is yellow if a customer has a creepy vibe or gives an unsavory look. If a guest verbally comments on the servers appearance or says anything with sexual undertones, the situation escalates to orange. Finally, it becomes red if theres an overtly sexual act (physical contact, lewd language, or repeat orange offenses).

When category yellows occur, servers can ask managers to take over the table, or to just monitor it. Oranges require managers to take the table automatically. And reds mean the customer gets the boot.

Regardless which color it is, the server doesnt have to justify or even explain what happened  its an auto-response from the manager. Wade believes the simple system keeps servers from having to chronicle (and therefore relive) the event, and its a godsend for managers because they no longer have to make judgment calls. Wade adds that they still get occasional oranges, or very rarely, a red, but that the protocols in place make managing them seamless.

Wade argues that, in this climate of crisis for the hospitality industry, its time to tell stories of success  instead of only discussing the misbehavior of men  because they can help everybody figure out how to solve the problems plaguing their industry.
Karasus lamb udon mazeman. Photo: Melissa Hom

Every month in New York, there are a bewildering number of new dishes to eat, drinks to imbibe, and food-themed events to attend. Often, the hardest part is just figuring out whats really worth your limited time. So Grub kicks off each month with a curated collection of dishes, drinks, and events that should absolutely be on your agenda. Make your plans now.

1. Drop by Llama Inn for its new Japanese-Peruvian tasting menu.

Llama Inn serves Peruvian food unlike anywhere else in town, and starting April 10, chef Erik Ramirez will serve a Tuesday tasting menu inspired by Nikkei cuisine. Dubbed the Mr. Roboto Tuesday Tasting ($110), its a seven-course dinner of Japanese-Peruvian-inspired dishes like toasted quinoa tofu with caviar and chancaca (a raw-sugar syrup), mackerel and octopus causa nigiri with potato puree subbing for rice, and miso with banana and algarrobina (black carob).

2. Head to Karasu for udon noodles with lamb ragu.

Fort Greenes Karasu offers a lot of reasons for you to come back, and with a new spring menu theyve given you a few more. To start, theres a ruddy-looking red miso soup ($6) and chirashizushi ($22), with salmon and pickled vegetables among other things. If youre in the mood for noodles, theres a lamb mazeman with chewy udon noodles ($22), lamb ragu, and fresh mint and shiso. Pair it with the tart and refreshing Hawkeye Highball, made with Japanese whiskey and house green-apple soda. During happy hour, its only $7 and otherwise its $14.

3. Or eat mushroom pho at New Yorks best Vietnamese restaurant.

The East Villages Hanoi House serves the best Vietnamese food in town, but chef John Nguyen never stops cooking up new dishes. Now, for his fans who love soup but are veg-heads, hes offering a nontraditional, meat-free pho ($15) with a dried kombu seaweed and mushroom broth. Seasoned traditionally, its served with yet more mushrooms (yellow oyster, shiitake, and shimego), morning glory, and the usual rice noodles. Speaking of noodles, Ichiran has brought its solitary ramen eating chambers to Manhattan with a new location at 132 West 31st Street.

4. Have a drink, eat an egg roll, and buy some pastries  all for good causes.

Every Monday in April, the Standards Narcbar will be taken over by a different Brooklyn bar. Each will serve its own drinks, set the tone with its own playlist, and  most important here  a donation will be made to the ACLU. First up is Honeys, followed by Dirty Precious, Mood Ring, Jupiter Disco, and, finally, Doris. Drinks for all are still being planned, but Honeys Arley Marks will serve ones like the Kvass Kollins (oak-barrel-aged gin, house kvass, aquafaba, lemon, honey, and an edible straw). Pinch Chinese will launch its own monthly chef collaboration series, and to kick it off theyve teamed up with Matt Hyland for a sampler platter ($18) of egg rolls that riff on Emilys Colony pizza (pepperoni, pickled chili, and honey with marinara dipping sauce); pan-fried dumplings with bacon, kimchee, sesame, and miso queso; and clam rangoons that are fried, stuffed, and with Calabrian chili. All proceeds will go to City Harvest. Lastly, at Cafe Altro Paradiso, pastry chef Natasha Pickowicz will host her second annual bake sale benefiting Planned Parenthood with all the participants from last year (Superiority Burger, Le Coucou, etc.) along with lots of new ones like Atla, King, and Mah-ze-Dahr. Great sweets for a great cause, whats not to like?

5. Feast on pork at Elmhursts most exciting new Thai restaurant.

Elmhursts Thai Town is still as hot as the spiciest larb. The latest addition to the neighborhoods scene is Lamoon, the neighborhoods only restaurant dedicated to the cuisine of Chiang Mai. It takes over what was the home of Ploy Thai, and the owners given the space new life and lots of color. The murals on the wall evoke Brooklyns Ugly Baby, though not at all in a derivative way. Dishes tend to be pork-centric, like the aromatically seasoned ground pork sausage called sai aua ($12) and khao jun jin, rice with ground pork, pork blood, and chili ($7).

Claros marquesota. Photo: Melissa Hom

6. Have a Oaxacan brunch in Brooklyn.

The brunch boom is not over. Ever-more restaurants serve brunches that are actually interesting, and the latest to do so is Gowanuss Claro. It will keep its Oaxacan focus in the morning, bringing dishes like its memelas (one with chorizo and egg for $13; another with wild mushrooms and goat cheese crema for $17) to the a.m. There are also some newer additions, like chilaquiles ($16)  de rigueur, but theyre the breakfast of champions  and shrimp tamales ($17). Also on the menu is marquesota ($9), a dry bread often used for dipping and here served with pasilla jelly and crema.

7. Learn about the late, great writer Edna Lewiss legacy.

Edna Lewis was one of the 20th centurys most important chefs and food writers, who fought for recognition of the fundamental contributions of black cooks to American cuisine. On April 17 at the 92nd Street Y ($29; tickets here), Washington Post food editor Joe Yonan, acclaimed Savannah chef Mashama Bailey, and the National Conference of State Legislatures Nina Mbengue-Williams will talk with writer Sarah B. Franklin about their experiences with Lewis and her lasting contributions to American food culture.

8. Have a roast pork sandwich at a new Brooklyn deli.

A new arrival to Bushwick, Carmentas looks like a parm descendant with a cleaner aesthetic tailored for the age of Instagram. (See the neon sign in the shape of an eggplant emoji.) The space feels a bit sparse with its high ceilings, white tile floor, and uncluttered shelves. But the food, or at least some of it, is promising: Theres the requisite combo and a meatball parm, but also the roast pork sandwich that Philadelphians lust over. The sandwich is so oily its wrapper, after a short walk, will be slick, but the meat is moist, there are quarter-moons of cherry peppers, and the bitterness of the broccoli rabe and nuttiness of the aged provolone play very nicely together. Along with the sandwiches, there are a few homemade pastas as well as sides like arancini and pickled eggplant.

Llama Inns quinoa tofu. Photo: Matt Taylor-Gross

9. Go to a crawfish boil run by a pitmaster from the famous Ubons BBQ.

Just in time for, hopefully, warming weather, the outdoor Gowanus barbecue spot Pig Beach will host its first crawfish boil on April 28 and April 29. The mudbugs will be brought straight from Mississippi by Craig Verhage of the famous Ubons BBQ, who will prepare them in water with beer, aromatics, potatoes, corn, and sausage. The $30 ticket will get you a pound of crawfish, seasoned after cooking, along with with potatoes, corn, and sausage. Picnic tables for parties of ten are available for $300, and reservations can be made by emailing info@pigbeachnyc.com.

10. Have lunch at New Yorks latest fancy food court.

Outdoor market operators Urbanspace have now opened their second permanent indoor food hall. Also located in Midtown East, Urbanspace at 570 Lex features some vendors from their Vanderbilt food hall (like Bushwick pizzeria Robertas, Ippudo spin-off Kuro-Obi, and Japanese-inspired tacos stand Takumi) but most are, actually, fresh. Rockaway Clam Bar has brought its fried shellfish from the beach, Trapizzino is now serving its sandwich pockets to suits, and Bao by Kaya has found its first permanent home for its cow bao and popcorn chicken.

11. Check out a fancy new cocktail bar in Chinatown.

Move over, the Aviary? In Chinatown, Stray Light has opened under combination izakaya and omakase sushi counter Juku. The drinks are heady and also expensive (running from $15 to $27) and include the Miyata ($15; Strawberry Campari, lemon, and soda water) and the White Geisha ($16; gin, sushi rice, myoga, Cointreau, banane, and sesame). The staircase down glows bubble-gum pink, and the actual bar reads like what you might imagine the Vermont lodge of an eccentric, stained-glass-loving millionaire  maybe one who had a youthful penchant for psychedelics  would like.

12. Have a beer at a new German bar downtown.

What was Spritzers Corner is now the remodeled and slightly different Grunhaus. Therere still communal tables and tons of beer (a rotating selection of 30 on tap, plus bottles and cans) to drink at them. But while Spritzers was a gastropub, theres more of a German bent here a la Williamsburgs Spritzenhaus. That means out with burgers and in with the sausages ($9$13), in varieties like krainerwurst and buffalo, plus sides like Belgian fries ($6) and soft pretzels ($4).
Gagik Makaryan: Recently, the problems of gender equality have become more active (video)

Despite the fact that in Armenia, men and women are equal, and there is no law of giving men advantages, but Armenia is moving to a field, where the formulations of violation of women's rights are put. Today in a conversation with journalists, the same opinion was voiced by the president of the Republican Union of Employers Gagik Makaryan. "Recently, the problems of gender equality have become more active. Many experts cite data, according to which, among the total labor resources, women's resources are 55%. Among women under 29, 45% neither study nor work. 68% of officially registered unemployed are women. But one of the reasons for this is that men simply do not apply and are not registered. Women receive a salary of 68% of the salary of men," said Gagik Makaryan. Gagik Makaryan, referring to the development of the business environment, the need to improve business culture, stressed that this required the attention of government agencies. "There is still a merger of business and government officials. In the state apparatus there is a lack of motivation for people occupying public positions. There is also negligence. They often make mistakes on different occasions, but do not bear responsibility for these errors or the question ends with a request for forgiveness."
Ruben Safrastyan: This is a very complex problem, and research institutes work on it (video)

Specialist in Turkic philology Ruben Safrastyan had the impression that all parties playing a role in Syria were tired. "There is a hope that the peace process can get swept," he said. Speaking about Turkey's actions in Syria, Ruben Safrastyan noted that Turkey received support from Russia and the United States. Except for Syria and Iran, no state condemned Turkey's actions. "There is no resolution, statement. Turkey's aggressive policy does not face obstacles," he said. According to Safrastyan, the situation in Syria was changing every hour. In order to understand it, one needs to take into account the oil factor. "We need to consider who owns the oil fields, oil wells, where the oil is exported, who controls the roads through which this oil is transported to the world market, who carries out the transportation of this oil. Only by deeply studying this, one can understand who and how responds to the events in Syria. This is a very complex problem, and research institutes work on it," he said.
Serzh Sargsyan meets with Young Scientists Support Programs managerial staff

Today, Serzh Sargsyan met with the leadership of the Young Scientists Support Program (YSSP). The meeting was attended by program consultant, Minister of Education and Science Levon Mkrtchyan. The young scientists reported on the activities carried out in 2017 within the framework of the above-mentioned program under the auspices of Serzh Sargsyan, summarized the work done in 2012-2017 and referred to future activities. Introducing the activities carried out in 2017, the program coordinators divided them into five key areas: providing young scholars with financial support for international scientific trips, assistance with the holding of symposia, schools and seminars, provision of grants, financial support for publications of young scientists research papers in authoritative scientific periodicals and financial support for organizing the Effective Young Researcher contest. Meant to promote the development of science and research capacity in Armenia, as well as young scientists creativity, the program fully complies with its purpose, and is a great incentive for those young people wishing to engage in research activities. The young scientists in attendance thanked Serzh Sargsyan for continued support provided all the way through the project implementation. Serzh Sargsyan assured that considering the importance and effectiveness of the program, it would be continued ahead, and urged the youth to expand the program with new ideas and initiatives. The meeting participants once again highlighted the importance and the need for a generation change in science. The young scientists were pleased to note that they could see a positive shift in this field in recent years, and went on to assure that they would continue endeavoring with the same sense of commitment and responsibility, involving new partners and promoting the development of science in the country.
By Starrla Cray

Associate Editor DASSEL, MN  Quilting is a little bit like life  sometimes it takes awhile to see how all the pieces will fit together. Linda Poirier of Dassel has experienced this. Shes been a quilter for decades, and the hobby has spilled over into opportunities for jobs, friendships, and serving others. A lot of my quilts kind of have stories with them, Poirier said. In January, she was a featured quilter at the Sewing for Sight Quilt Show in New Ulm. Of the 250 quilts featured, 50 were created by Poirier. This was the seventh year, Poirier said of the event, which raises money for eye care in San Lucas-Toliman, Guatemala. One of the quilts Poirier brought to the show depicts owls, butterflies, and foxes  a pattern she found two years ago while visiting her dad in Florida. It rained eight of the 10 days. So, what do you do? You visit quilt shops, she recalled. Poirier joked that when she and her husband, Dale, are traveling, he likes to put blinders on her. If I see a quilt shop, we have to stop, she laughed. Three days a week, Poirier works at Gone to Pieces Quilt Shop in Kimball. There, she gets to assist other quilters and sew samples for display. There are always new patterns, techniques, and equipment, she said. One of Poiriers goals is to learn English paper piecing, a technique that involves wrapping paper templates around fabric to create intricate designs. At any given time, Poirier has 10 quilting projects in various stages of completion. I try not to start a new one until I finish one of the 10  but sometimes I cheat, she said. For some quilts, Poirier starts with the pattern and finds the fabric later, and for others its the opposite. One quilt in particular took more than 12 years to finish from the time Poirier bought the fabric. She saw the colorful leaf fabric while at a quilting retreat in De Soto, WI, and said it jumped out at her. It reminded me of a Matisse painting, she said. Poirier knew she wanted the fabric, but didnt yet have a plan for how the quilt would be created. She bought all that was left at the shop  2.5 yards  and took it home. It sat there for many years, because I didnt know what to do with it, Poirier said. Eventually, the perfect pattern came along, incorporating large squares from the leaf fabric with smaller squares of coordinating colors. Poirier searched several quilt shops for the exact right colors to match, and the quilt finally came together. Many of Poiriers quilts have a vibrant, cheerful vibe, and she also enjoys working with traditional fabrics and color combinations. I am really eclectic, she said. . . . Im not a fan of the color orange, but so many of my quilts have orange in them [as an accent color]. Love at first stitch Poiriers first quilting memories are from when she was 10 years old doing piecework for her dolls. I would go into my mothers sewing stash, Poirier recalled, explaining that shes always loved activities like quilting, knitting, crocheting, and cross-stitch. In junior high, Poirier took sewing lessons at Daytons near her home in Minneapolis. She continued learning while attending college at the University of Wisconsin-Stout, studying home economics with a focus on clothing and textiles. Poirier taught home economics for several years in Clarissa, and later owned Stepping Stone Gallery in Hutchinson. After she closed that business, she opened Stepping Stone Cottage in Baxter, where she hosted quilting retreats. Now, Poirier enjoys attending these types of retreats, which usually have eight to 10 quilters participating. You get to know them and what theyre working on, Poirier said. Its inspiring and encouraging. Poirier also participates in a quilting group at St. Johns Catholic Church in Darwin, and is a member of the Dassel-Cokato Sew Friendly Quilt Guild in Cokato. For a list of quilting groups in Minnesota, follow the link at www.dasselcokato.com.
UCOM offers affordable gadgets at bigger discount

Foreign Minister of Armenia Ararat Mirzoyan will pay a working visit to New York

Governments preventing publication of Haykakan Zhamanak newspaper during state of emergency

UCOM prolongs the unlimited internet offer for the level up 4700 and level up 5500 subscribers

Ucom employees received recognition for their services to the homeland

Karen Vardanyan has allocated 105 million AMD to rescue the Yerevan Botanical Garden.

"The Power of One Dram" to overcome childhood cancer

Generation A 13  your chance to be the change

President of the Artsakh Republic Arayik Harutyunyan met with Russian Co-Chair of the OSCE Minsk Group Igor Khovayev

"uDays" special offer at Ucom: discounts for all smartphones and accessories for 2 days only

For more than 3 hours, 50 or more Azerbaijani servicemen have blocked the interstate road

Call on the international community for an adequate response against azerbaijani aggresssion

Transformation and trust are important for success in modern banking. Artak Hanesyan

UCOMS LEVEL UP 1700 REGIONAL TARIFF PLAN USERS TO RECEIVE MORE THAN THOSE IN YEREVAN

Joint statement

Statement by the Co-Chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group

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Covid-19: 163 new cases in Armenia

Armenia: Remarks by Commissioner Oliver Varhelyi at the press point with Acting Deputy Prime Minister Mher Grigoryan

The United States Welcomes Azerbaijans Release of Armenian Detainees and Armenias Actions to Facilitate Demining

The Coronavirus-Related Situation in Armenia

International aviation: Council greenlights signing of major agreements with four countries

With UCOMs level up tariff plans subscribers have unlimited access to Netflix, Duolingo and Zoom

Armenia: Statement by the Spokesperson on the early parliamentary elections

Armenias Parliamentary Elections PRESS STATEMENT

COVID19:77 new cases

Armenias early parliamentary elections were competitive and well run, but polarized and marred by aggressive rhetoric, international observers say

International election observers to Armenias early parliamentary elections held press conference

Drop Charges Against Rights Defender Sashik Sultanyan

The Coronavirus-Related Situation in Armenia
Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan received Russian Ambassador to Armenia Ivan Volynkin who is completing his diplomatic mission in our country. To begin with, Karen Karapetyan expressed condolences on the tragedy that had occurred several days before in Kemerovo. The Prime Minister thanked the Ambassador for cooperation and fruitful work, noting that he appreciated Mr. Volynkins personal contribution and efforts toward the development of bilateral relations. It should be noted that we have unique relationship with the Russian Federation. But this does not mean that we should rest, especially considering that we have a great field of work and, in general, we need to work continuously in order to maintain and strengthen the ties of friendship. I wish you all the best and I am sure you will not forget us. We will always be happy to see you in Armenia, Karen Karapetyan said, stressing that there is still a great field of work. Ambassador Volynkin noted that it was a great honor for him to work in friendly Armenia and contribute to the development of Armenian-Russian friendly relations. I would like to express my gratitude for cooperation and warm relations. I am leaving Armenia with mixed feelings as I felt at home over here. I am sure that by leaving Yerevan, I will not give up my ties with Armenia, the Ambassador noted.
The teenager was interrogated at the Criminal Investigation Directorate for hours and was only released after signing the confession.



(AhlulBayt News Agency) - The LuaLua TV website has learned that members of Manamas security apparatus tortured and ill-treated 15-year-old Ali Marhoun before forcing him to sign a confession saying that he was guilty of arson.



The teenager was interrogated at the Criminal Investigation Directorate for hours and was only released after signing the confession.



Last April, a Manama court placed the young Marhoun under observation by the security forces.



Minors in Bahrain are routinely taken into custody without cause or an arrest warrant. Many are subjected to torture and other forms of ill-treatment.







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In a letter to the United Nations, Iran once again rejects imaginary and unfounded Saudi claims of Tehran sending missiles to Yemen, saying the Riyadh regime has repeatedly used the same scenario to divert attention from its ongoing atrocities against the Yemeni people.



(AhlulBayt News Agency) - In a letter to the United Nations, Iran once again rejects imaginary and unfounded Saudi claims of Tehran sending missiles to Yemen, saying the Riyadh regime has repeatedly used the same scenario to divert attention from its ongoing atrocities against the Yemeni people.



Accusing Iran of providing or smuggling ballistic missiles to one of the parties to the conflict in Yemen is nothing but an attempt to conceal the brutal and unlawful aggression in Yemen and the extremely appalling situation caused by such aggression, Irans Ambssador to UN Gholamali Khoshroo said in the letter addressed to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and Security Council chief Karel Jan Gustaff van Oosterom on Thursday.



Khoshroo argued that Saudi Arabias aerial and maritime blockade on Yemen continues to impose intolerable suffering [on] the Yemeni people, making it impossible to provide military equipment to Yemeni forces.



The letter came days after the Saudi envoy to the UN Abdallah al-Moallimi wrote to the world body, claiming that Iran should be held accountable for supplying Yemens Houthi Ansarullah movement with missiles to target Saudi soil.



The Saudi-led coalition, which has been waging a bloody war on Yemen for three years, recently displayed wreckage of what it called fragments of missiles recently fired from Yemen, and claimed forensic analysis showed they were supplied by Iran.



The coalitions spokesman, Turki al-Maliki, accused Iran of being behind multiple Yemeni retaliatory missile attacks on the kingdom and threatened the Islamic Republic with retaliation.



Khoshroo further rejected Malikis statement as unlawful, adding that it is a usual scenario for the Saudi rulers and military to repeat their unfounded assumptions and allegations followed by the threat to use of force against a United Nations member state in clear defiance of Article 2(4) of the UN Charter.



The Saudi-led military campaign has, since March 2015, killed and injured over 600,000 civilians, including more than a quarter of a million children, according to the Yemeni Ministry of Human Rights. It has also destroyed the countrys infrastructure, the healthcare system in particular, leaving it defenseless against a deadly outbreak of cholera.



The war is aimed at crushing Yemens Houthi movement and reinstalling a Riyadh-friendly government there.



The Houthi movement has been both running state affairs in the absence of an effective government and successfully defending the country against Saudi-led aerial and ground attacks.



It has repeatedly denied receiving military equipment from Iran, and said it has managed to domestically strengthen its defense capabilities.



Khoshroo said the Saudi aggression is the root cause of what the UN has called the largest humanitarian crisis in the world, and yet the Saudi leaders seek to cover up their reprehensible crimes by introducing false charges against other countries or attempt to spread the crisis beyond Yemens borders.



Numerous reports by the United Nations and other relevant bodies and institutions have so far documented the crimes committed by the Saudi-led coalition against Yemeni civilians, as well as many incidences of engagement by the Coalition in violating international law, international humanitarian law and international human rights law, he further explained.



In his letter, Khoshroo also blasted those permanent UNSC members that have been providing Riyadh with advanced weapons over the course of war despite international outcry.



The US, the UK and France, Saudi Arabias largest arms providers, have thrown their weight behind Riyadhs claims against Iran, proposing failed resolutions to condemn the Islamic Republic.



It is tragic that the three Permanent Members of the Security Council who stoke smuggling allegations against Iran in tandem with the Saudi regime are the ones who are selling billions of dollars of deadly, advanced weaponry to Saudi Arabia that are regularly used against civilians and civilian targets in Yemen, the Iranian envoy said.



Khoshroo then called on the international community to stop arms trade with the kingdom, help establish a ceasefire in Yemen and ultimately hold Saudi leaders accountable.



Iran strongly urges the Saudi regime to immediately put an end to its destabilizing policies in the region, including its military intervention as well as its starvation campaign in Yemen, and continues to call on all parties in Yemen to pursue diplomatic ways and means to resolve the conflict, he wrote.







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In a Thursday statement, Qassemi categorically rejected the latest allegations raised by French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian about Irans supply of weapons to Yemen and said, The claim is absurd and a big lie.



(AhlulBayt News Agency) - Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qassemi dismissed Paris claim that Tehran is supplying Yemen with weapons, describing it as a big lie.



In a Thursday statement, Qassemi categorically rejected the latest allegations raised by French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian about Irans supply of weapons to Yemen and said, The claim is absurd and a big lie.



He further noted that Frances rehashing of the claims made by certain regional and trans-regional states will have no impact on Irans resolve to enlighten the worlds public opinion about one of the worst humanitarian crises and war crimes in the contemporary era and the oppression of the innocent and defenseless people of Yemen.



Qassemi said it is natural for those who export arms to Saudi Arabia to describe the Saudi jet fighters relentless and daily attacks on the oppressed and innocent nation of Yemen as an instance of self-defense because the Yemen war, the massacre of Yemenis and the destruction of the countrys infrastructures have funneled huge profits to their economies.



He underlined that the people of the countries selling weapons to Saudi Arabia should be aware that their governments are playing a role in the emergence of the worst humanitarian crises in the contemporary history as well as the daily war crimes against Yemenis and must be held accountable for them.



Qassemi referred the French officials to the teachings of French thinkers and intellectuals from the past and today and urged them to learn from far or recent past and get closer to some extent to the concepts of humanity, equality, and human rights regardless of their color, race and nationality.



He also noted that equipping the aggressors, playing a blame game and leveling accusations against others will lead to nowhere and the vigilant souls across the world will finally judge (all decisions and measures).







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Browsing recently at a Denver airport store on my way home to Orlando, I was greeted by the clerk. Exchanging pleasantries, I asked him how his day was going. Counting the hours, maam. Just counting the hours.

It cant be that bad, I replied.

I am working a 15-hour shift in a newspaper stand in an airport, he said. And this with a college degree. As I said, Just counting the hours.

Okay, so this young man was not living his dream. But all I could think of is that the clerk appeared to be the same age as a friend of mine who became a quadriplegic as a result of a freak accident 20 years earlier.

Be grateful for what you have, I wanted to say to this total stranger. Dont count the hours; count your blessings.

On Passover, we Jews celebrate the physical and spiritual redemption from slavery. Each year, we sing Dayanu, a song that lists the steps leading to our freedom. In it, we are reminded of our needour responsibilityto be grateful for all G-d has given to us.

Yes, it is sometimes difficult to be grateful. College degrees sometimes lead to menial job. Cars break down; toilet overflow; a bite into a hard candy results in a $3,000 dental bill. But as a dear friend said to me after I complained about a costly home repair, these are all First World problems.

In addition, in our highly commercial, secular world, it is sometimes difficult to be happy with just enough. We are bombarded with advertisements promising us happiness if we only purchase a new car, a new home, even a new brand of soap. We are exposed to all this noise on television, on billboards, on ever-targeted ads on the Internet between our Facebook posts.

I am sure the Jews who escaped Egyptian slavery complained. Some of the kvetching is recorded in the Torah, but I can only imagine the grumblings that were not written down. Manna that tastes like coconut cream pie again? For one night, cant it taste like my mothers matzoh ball soup? Or Who put Moses in charge? Weve been wandering this desert for 40 years. The man cant find his way out of a paper bag!

I was the child of parents who were on different ends of the cup half full/cup half empty continuum. I struggled as to whether my fathers rose-colored view of the world was a better way to go than my mothers practical but less than optimistic outlook. Whereas my father was content with his life, my mother often compared herself and our lives to others, and she saw the grass as greener in the others yard.

Comparison is the thief of joy, said Theodore Roosevelt. And also, in my eyes, the thief of gratitude.

When looking for property in Florida, Larry and I made the conscious decision to downsize. We chose a smaller home that, in line with most houses in the Sunshine State, had no basement and a fairly inaccessible, extremely hot attic. We purchased the home with all its furnishings in a community with a homeowners association that took care of our lawn and shrubbery. As a result, we were able to divest ourselves of much of our belongings and start over. Once we unpackedand gave another load of unneeded items to a local charitywe assured ourselves that we were never going back to having so much.

Despite my best intentions, however, I began to fall into my old habit of acquiring more than we needed. The search for that one last item to complete our new homea new outdoor seating set, a water softener, updated lighting fixtures was taking me away from where I wanted to be: grateful for what I had.

One day, while at a salon getting my hair cut, I saw a poster with the following affirmation: Gratitude turns what we have into enough. And somehow that quote from Melody Beattie was the kick in the pants I needed.

Researching studies in positive psychology, I learned that those who are habitually grateful are significantly happierand even healthier than those who are not. One recommended method to enhance these feelings is by maintaining a gratitude diary in which one records, on a regular basis, three to five things for which one is grateful.

Using a beautiful floral-covered journal a dear friend had given me as a going away gift, I started counting my blessings each night before I went to bed. Some entries were major milestones: I saw my granddaughter crawl for the first time! Other days reflections were more mundane: Larry and I laughed our way through a great Big Bang Theory episode. No matter what the magnitude, I was ending my day focusing on the positive.

In the process, I have turned the focus from how many material possessions I have to how much goodness I have in my life. Collect moments, not things, says a Hindu expression. The journal gives me the opportunity to capture those moments: savoring an Upstate New York apple, reading a book to my granddaughter, sitting on our lanai and viewing the wildlife in our pond, appreciating one more day of good health.

If the only prayer you said in your whole life was thank you, wrote Meister Eckhart, that would suffice. Or, in the words of the Passover seder, Dayanu! Chag Samaech! Happy Passover!

Marilyn Shapiro lives in Kissimmee. She writes regularly for the Jewish World in Schenectady, and published her book There Goes My Heart, which is available on Amazon. You may also follow her on her blog, theregoesmyheart.me.
(JTA)-The American toy company that created the Barbie doll announced a new doll honoring Iris Apfel, the 96-year-old Jewish fashion guru.

The Apfel doll wears the same green Gucci suit and jewels that the real-life Apfel wears on the cover of her latest book, "Accidental Icon," the New York Post reported Thursday.

"Her long-spanning career makes her the perfect subject of a one-of-a-kind doll, the highest honor Barbie bestows," a Mattel representative told the Post in a statement. The new Apfel Barbie will not be available for sale.

Apfel, a New York-born fashion journalist and illustrator turned designer, won the Women Together Special Award in 2016. In 2005, the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York premiered an exhibition about Apfel's style titled "Rara Avis."

Since 2014, she has been the subject of two internationally distributed documentaries: "Iris" by Albert Maysles and "If You're Not In the Obit, Eat Breakfast."

Last week, to celebrate International Women's Day, Mattel released a "Sheroes" collection featuring more than 15 one-of-a-kind doll versions of inspiring women, including Olympic gold medalist Chloe Kim, ballerina Misty Copeland and artist Frida Kahlo.
(JNS)-Passover is called the holiday of freedom for good reason. Every year for the last 3,000 or so years-wherever we are and in whatever form of bondage we find ourselves-we manage to celebrate our liberation after 210 years of serving Pharaoh, complete with the horror of watching our infant sons thrown into the Nile.

Passover, or Pesach in Hebrew, runs this year from tonight through Saturday, April 7 (after Shabbat). It is, after all, the Jewish holiday most redolent of freedom. In the space of a single seder night, we climb from the lowest of the low-the degradation of Egyptian enslavement-to the highest of the high, as no less a power than G-d partners with surviving infant son Moses to save the Israelites.

And ever since then, generation after generation, the Jewish people have placed a high premium on freedom.

Exactly how high?

In December, hundreds of well-wishers danced in the streets, both outside the jail and in front of his home in Monsey, N.Y. when Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin-chief executive officer of the Agriprocessors kosher-meat slaughterhouse and packing plant in Postville, Iowa-was released after eight years of incarceration of an original 27-year sentence for fraud.

Though not a pardon (Rubashkin's conviction stands, along with a supervised release and restitution requirement), the freedom from imprisonment was enough to get Jews on their feet, says Rabbi Yom Tov Glaser, who teaches at Aish HaTorah in Jerusalem.

The same week Rubashkin was released, another prisoner (who wasn't Jewish) was freed after serving 32 years for a crime he never committed, according to the rabbi. "Who came to get him? His lawyer and his mother. Who came to the jail to celebrate with Rubashkin? Hundreds of strangers dancing in the street. This is how we greet another Jew's freedom."

Jews also partied exuberantly in 2011 at the release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who had been imprisoned for five years by the terror organization Hamas.

Shalit, the first IDF soldier to be released alive in 26 years, was the subject of an intense campaign, with his parents sitting on a busy Jerusalem thoroughfare day after day advocating for their son's release. The exchange raised questions, as well as celebrations: Shalit was traded for 1,027 convicted terrorists, responsible for the deaths of 569 Israelis-the highest price Israel has ever paid for a single soldier.

And there was jubilation aplenty at the 2015 freeing of Jonathan Pollard (also not complete; he remains under modified house arrest) after 30 years of a life sentence for spying for Israel.

'So lucky to be alive'

Although their numbers drop daily, Holocaust survivors can still testify to the sweet taste of freedom.

Agi Geva was 14 when the Nazis invaded her native Hungary and sent her to Auschwitz. "In the camps, we didn't know what day it was, so we had no awareness of holidays," she says 74 years later. With her sister and mother, she survived a death march at war's end with little food or water, and rags around their feet instead of shoes. But four years later, at 19, she found herself in Israel experiencing Passover-and freedom-in ways she never dreamed possible.

"Passover we spent at my sister's kibbutz near Hadera," says Geva, now 87. "It was very emotional, very uplifting, with 400 people together at the seder. I couldn't believe I was so lucky to be alive and to be in Israel."

Now living near Washington, D.C., Geva has volunteered at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum for 16 years.

"I tell the students what I tell my children and grandchildren-that there is nothing I appreciate more than freedom," she says. "We Jews have lost it so many times that we have such a love of freedom. When the Nazis came, we were not free anymore; we were forced to wear the yellow star, live in the ghetto, do what we were told."

So sure was she that she would die a prisoner that she "could not even imagine freedom."

Geva says she kept her story private until she heard about Holocaust-deniers. "So now, I tell my story to as many people as I can. I show them the numbers on my arm. I'm just grateful I can still do it."

'Thank you for bringing us here'

Refuseniks like Marina Kitrossky know the value of freedom, too. From the time she and her husband, Levi, applied for a visa to leave the Soviet Union for Israel in 1979, doors began to slam shut all around them as they were banned from jobs and university, with the only work her chemist husband could find in a factory producing known toxins.

A seder? If you had one, you better not let anyone know. "The phones were tapped, so we needed to be very careful," she says.

It took eight years for those doors to swing open with Perestroika. "When we got to Israel with our three children, we were so happy to be able to celebrate openly, to not be afraid anymore of what our 5-year-old might say in public," recalls Kitrossky.

Holocaust survivor Agi Geva shows her number tattoo from Auschwitz.

These days the 60-year-old runs Machanaim (Hebrew for "two camps"), a Jerusalem-area Jewish-education center for Russian-speakers. "Living in Israel, it's strange to recall what it was like in the Soviet Union; everything Jewish was so clandestine," she says. "It took us a year to get used to being openly Jewish."

Kitrossky's children (now seven in all) wrote her a song for their mother's 60th birthday. The refrain? "Thank you for bringing us here."

And even in these times of relative peace, the story of liberation continues to resonate powerfully with Jews everywhere, insists Sarah Bassin, associate rabbi of Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills, Calif.

"We can learn the lesson of the Israelites who, before they could be freed, had to acknowledge their situation and cry out to G-d to save them," she says. "We all need to see ourselves in the Passover story-our eternal narrative of coming out of Egypt, Mitzrayim, a narrow place."

"It's often compared to coming out of the birth canal," she adds, "and on the other side is freedom and life."
Children from the Dekalim Elementary School in The Valley of the Springs, Israel, spoke with select members of the recent volunteer program to Beit Sh'ean. Shown mixed in with the children are teaching volunteers (l-r), Joyce Hoffer, Harriet Friedman, Frank Buchwald, Jane Edelstein and Joan Shall.

When an Iranian drone was shot down in a field this past February, news focused on the ensuing Israeli plane shot down in Syria, and on the long-term implications for the United States' involvement in Syria. But what of the Israelis who heard the drone fall almost literally in their backyard? What of the thousands of Israelis who were awakened at 4 a.m. just after Shabbat, in a panic about the siren that was going off?

"I awoke, dressed in my uniform, and comforted my neighbor next door, who was outside crying," noted Efi Mazor, a captain in the reserve unit of the Israel Defense Forces. "Many people here thought (missiles) might be coming, because there was (no hint) of anything before."

Indeed, "here" is Beit She'an, a small city of just 17,000 people, located in the north of Israel at the junction of the Jordan and Jezreel Valleys. The drone was shot down a few kilometers north of the city.

Captain Efi Mazor

Although the adults were reportedly somewhat panicked, some children seemed to take it more in stride. "The kids were not freaked out-they've lived with (bomb shelter) drills and the sound of helicopters overhead their whole lives," said Genoa Taylor, the head English teacher at Dekalim Elementary School in the Valley of the Springs (a more rural community located next to Beit She'an.) And some adults on kibbutzim attributed it to more mundane factors. "We (adults in the kibbutz) heard the siren and thought it was the usual-a wild pig setting off an alarm," Tammy Steiger, another English teacher, said. "We absolutely feel secure where we live."

Children at the school said they were afraid when they were awakened, but were not panicked. In broken English, they recalled their feelings: "We heard the helicopter; I wanted to be brave because I saw my mother (crying)," said one girl. A second girl said, "My family talks about this kind of thing, so I am OK." A boy, with perhaps the best response of all, "I slept through the whole thing. Not sorry I missed (it.)"

A second boy noted that the next morning he wanted to bicycle over to the drone crash site and see the debris. It was way too late. The local authorities had cordoned off the area immediately.

Jane Edelstein recently returned from an almost 2-month stay in Israel.
The Jewish Community at UCF hosted a one-of-a-kind event on campus on Feb. 22. Sami Steigmann, a Holocaust survivor and motivational speaker addressed a gathering of over 50 people.

The audience was brought together with the help of CAMERA on Campus, ZOA, UCF Hillel, JewCF Chabad, UCF Greek Chapters AEPi, and AEPhi, and the hosts of the event, Knights for Israel. At the age of 3, Steigmann and his family were sent to a hard labor camp. Because he was so young, his only value was as an experimental guinea pig. Steigmann's talk focused on how his struggles shaped him to be the man he is today, and his connection to Zionism. He gave students a rare opportunity to meet a survivor of a genocide that decimated over one-third of world Jewry. His talk, however, became so much more. Steigmann addressed the crowd as a man whose life story has given him the moral compass and outlook that could positively affect young people across the country.

After the Holocaust, due to Romanian anti-Semitism, Steigmann and his parents faced many obstacles that prevented their Aliyah (immigration to Israel). Ironically, rather than kick the Jews out of Romania, they refused to allow them to move to Israel. Steigmann and his family were unable to escape to Israel until 1961. It was easy for Steigmann (as a Holocaust survivor) to appreciate the Jewish Peoples' right to self-determination as he immediately felt a connection to Zionism. He even voluntarily joined the IDF's Air Force. He lived in Israel for seven years until deciding to move to the US in 1968. While he didn't live there for long, it was clear in his talk that his connection to Zionism has only increased throughout the years.

Steigmann referenced three important moments that morphed him into the man he is today. He taught himself to give up hateful feelings; he hit rock bottom when he fell victim to homelessness in Manhattan; and last, was overcome with joy with the birth of his son. After surviving Nazi medical experimentation, Steigmann lives his day-to-day life while in great pain, and still requires multiple operations on a yearly basis. His hate toward the Nazis who did this to him is warranted, and yet it's non-existent. Seventy-five years after his liberation, Steigmann has not sought out justice for his suffering and to this day has no idea how he was experimented on.

Steigmann's motto is "I am NOT what happened to me, it's not my identity. I am who I choose to be." His proverb spoke volumes to the students who were present.

The Jewish people's population has increase by only three million in 2500 years, as they survived genocide after genocide, as well as a history of being victims of persecution. While we are all familiar with the history of the Jewish people, we have not allowed ourselves to accept this piece of the narrative as if it were our entire identity. We are no longer the rest of the world's prey. Just look at Israel, the homeland of the Jewish People as a point of reference. In Israel's short history, they have had to defend themselves in eight wars, including one war that saw the Jewish people reclaim their eternal capital, Jerusalem. To this day, there isn't a single state that prioritizes its security more than Israel. Steigmann's and the state of Israel's ideology of perseverance are one and the same. The people of Israel have also emulated Steigmann's doctrine on "never holding on to hate." Even after our history as being at odds with the Syrian people, Israeli medical personnel have gone out of their way to ensure that refugees and survivors receive emergency medical care and more during Syria's ongoing civil war.

Steigmann's story has given many people a new outlook on life, as we learn to appreciate what we have, rather than take life for granted. His story gives us a new found respect for the Jewish State as a safe haven from anti-Semitism. During his talk, the country of Poland passed a law that denied their involvement in the Holocaust, and with that, they denied history. We, the Jewish people, recognize our history, while at the same time, we don't allow that history to define us as we learn from it.

Jake Suster is a CAMERA Fellow as well as a business major in his third year at the University of Central Florida.
It is often said that enthusiasm can be contagious. It is the enthusiasm exemplified by volunteer Carina Gerscovich that has been contagious, and, likewise, successful with furthering the work of The Jewish Pavilion. To commemorate her generous donation of time and resources, The Jewish Pavilion has named Gerscovich as the official honoree for the 2018 Elayne Burke Wershil Fashion Show.

Gerscovich initially became involved with the Jewish Pavilion two years ago. A lunch meeting with Nancy Ludin, CEO of the Jewish Pavilion, led to Gerscovich's participation as a volunteer with the Pavilion. Soon after, she was asked to be a member of the organization's Friends Board, a group that leads the Pavilion's multiple annual fundraising events. It was a strategic networking connection made by Gerscovich with the Citrus Club that proved to be the most impactful for the Pavilion.

Each month, the Citrus Club's Leadership Alliance board hosts "United For a Purpose," a networking event that spotlights one local nonprofit. During the event, the Club provides space in a spectacular downtown venue featuring sunset and city views, a selection of delicious hors d'oeuvres and a cocktail to attendees for the pre-event purchase price of $10 to Citrus Club members, $15 to nonmembers. Tickets purchased at the door the night of the event cost $20. The spotlighted nonprofit does not pay for the event and 100 percent of the evening's proceeds are contributed back to the organization. The event gives Citrus Club members the chance to learn about important, local nonprofits, while the participating organization has the opportunity to increase both donations and volunteer efforts through networking.

As a then-member of the Citrus Club's Leadership Alliance and an ongoing supporter of The Jewish Pavilion, Gerscovich spearheaded a connection that allowed one of last year's events to benefit The Jewish Pavilion. That evening's event resulted in record attendance for the Citrus Club (200 compared to the next closest of about 110), over $5000 raised for the Pavilion, and an unheard-of invite for the organization to return for another "United For a Purpose" event this year.

Commenting that it was a team effort of leadership within the Pavilion and board members to facilitate that record attendance Gerscovich said, "It was great to be able to introduce the organization to so many people."

The success of the Citrus Club event led Jewish Pavilion Board Chairman Paul Stenzler to appoint Gerscovich to the organization's board of directors.

"We are thrilled to honor Carina Gerscovich", said Ludin. "She single-handedly organized a fantastic fundraising event at the Citrus Club last year and did such a great job that they invited the Jewish Pavilion to return this year on April 16th. We are so excited that she will chair 'United For a Purpose' again this year."

Gerscovich is the daughter of Dr. Eugenio and Katherine Gerscovich. A graduate of Trinity Preparatory School and the College of Charleston, she has worked in the finance industry for the past seven years and is currently employed by Merrill Lynch.

Gerscovich said that she became involved with The Jewish Pavilion because it connected her back to her 104-year-old grandmother, who currently resides in Buenos Aires, Argentina. "It really made me think about my grandmother and if she was able to have something in Argentina like The Jewish Pavilion, it would be such a nice addition," said Gerscovich.

"At the first volunteer event, I assumed my role would be to sit and visit with some of the elderly residents. It wasn't until I actually did it that it made an impact," said Gerscovich. "It's not as simple as we're just going to sit there and give them someone to listen to them for an hour or bring them a meal. For some of these people, we really are their only source of interaction other than the people that work there or live there."

She recalled a meaningful moment at one of the program visitations.

"We were all singing songs and I kept watching this one woman-she was not singing, she was not smiling. She was just sitting there in her wheelchair with her head down," said Gerscovich. "We started singing this one song that was an era piece, something from her time. All of a sudden, her head popped up and she started singing the entire song, word for word. She was just beaming from ear to ear. It was that moment that the impact of what we were doing hit me. She was brought back to some type of memory, something that happened to her however long ago that put this huge smile back on her face."

Speaking of the honor at the Fashion Show, Gerscovich added, "It does mean a lot. And I am very appreciative for it."

When asked how she would encourage other young people to get involved with the Jewish Pavilion, Gerscovich said, "You should do it because you are doing such a good thing. And bringing a lot of joy to people's lives. But ultimately you should do it because it brings a lot of joy to your life."

The Elayne Burke Wershil Memorial Fashion Show takes place Thursday, April 12, at 10:45 a.m. The event will be held at the Mall of Millenia, inside Bloomingdale's on Level 2. Ticket prices range from $25-$500 and can be purchased online at JewishPavilion.org.
By Ron Kampeas

WASHINGTON (JTA)An omnibus spending bill approved by Congress more than doubles spending for security grants that have been overwhelmingly tapped by Jewish institutions.

The $1.3 trillion bill approved Thursday includes $60 million for the security grants, up from $25 million last year. More than 90 percent of the grants have been used to harden security at Jewish institutions since the nonprofit security grant program was launched in 2005.

Nathan Diament, the Washington director of the Orthodox Union, one of the lead advocates for the grants, said a spike in threats on Jewish institutions over the last year drove the increase. According to the Anti-Defamation League, anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S. in 2017 increased by 43 percent over 2016, not including a spate of bomb threats carried out against Jewish institutions by a Jewish man in Israel.

We didnt have to educate members of Congress that the past year has seen an increased set of threats and activity, Diament said in an interview.

Of the $60 million, $10 million for the first time will go to areas outside major metropolitan areas. Diament said that will allow Jewish institutions outside such designated areas to apply for the funds. He named Monsey, in upstate New York, as an example of an area with a high Jewish concentration that until now has not been able to access the existing program.

Also advocating for the security grants over the years were the Jewish Federations of North America and Agudath Israel of North America.

The bill also includes $175 million over the next 10 years to improve security at schools, a provision that was accelerated after the deadly school shooting in Parkland, Florida, last month. The bill will fund training in violence prevention, police-school coordination and crisis intervention, and will be extended to private and parochial schools as well as public schools.

JFNA praised the inclusion in the omnibus bill of $5 million for the Holocaust Survivor Assistance Program, double the amount of previous years. The program partners with Jewish institutions to deliver assistance to elderly Holocaust survivors.

There are approximately 100,000 Holocaust survivors living in the United States today, with an estimated 30,000 living in poverty, said William Daroff, the Washington director of JFNA, in a statement. By doubling funding levels to $5 million, the program now will be able to provide immediate support to ensure that Holocaust survivors are able to live in dignity and comfort for the remainder of their lives.

Also wrapped into the omnibus is the Taylor Force Act, which slashes funding to the Palestinians until the Palestinian Authority stops payments to Palestinians killed or arrested during attacks on Israelis.

Taylor Force was an American who was murdered by a Palestinian terrorist in a stabbing attack in Tel Aviv in 2016.

Palestinian officials say that only a small portion of the targeted money goes to violent attackers, and that much of the money serves as a welfare program for Palestinians who are imprisoned by Israel, many without charges.

U.S. funding for the Palestinians currently stands at about $260 million a year. None of the money targeted goes directly to the Palestinian Authority, instead funding programs run by NGOs that assist Palestinians.
(JNS)-Since Hamas came to power in the Gaza Strip more than a decade ago, it has built, trained, and armed a terrorist-army and guerilla force, and planted it in high-rise buildings, underground bunkers, and tunnels, in the midst of the civilian population.

Israel and Hamas have engaged in three large-scale conflicts and numerous smaller-scale flare-ups over the past ten years, and, as the IDF looks ahead to the future, it is preparing new ways for its units to operate in this urban warfare jungle, if the need arises.

The Israel Defense Forces recently held a war exercise for its infantry commanders to prepare them for the challenges of combat in Gaza.

The drill, held by the Givati infantry brigade, played out over a number of areas, including the southern city of Ashkelon, where officers simulated fighting in and around tall residential towers.

In Gaza, such multistory buildings double up as military bases for Hamas's armed wing. The terror group uses them as command posts, lookouts and firing positions for its cells. Such buildings will, in the IDF's assessment, be used as positions by Hamas cells armed with shoulder-fired missiles, sniper rifles and additional heavy firepower.

The exercise showed the commanders how to operate in such an environment, as well as served to teach them how to train their own soldiers.

'Concept of the 360-degree threat'

"In this last drill, we focused in a major way on the concept of the 360-degree threat. The fact is that the enemy can appear from above and below," Maj. Guy Madar, a former Givati deputy battalion commander and a key planner of the drill, told JNS.

"When they enter the combat arena, they could have [enemy] people under their feet. And they need to look up. The enemy is not naive. It wants to try its own surprises against us," said Madar. "Those who will win are those who act with cunning and creativity. It will be those who know how to think differently."

Madar added that "this exercise is about Gaza. We wanted to achieve four training goals: nighttime combat; fighting in armored vehicles; combat in urban closed areas, with a strong emphasis on tall buildings and tunnels; and focusing on the smaller units, at the level of platoons and companies."

The drill reflects the new thinking in the IDF. It's these kinds of smaller units-the companies and platoons-that will ultimately decide the outcome of urban battles against Gaza's armed factions.

As a result, the training of commanders has become a top priority. Commanders of larger units, like battalions, oversee a wider area, said Madar. "The platoon commanders are at the operational edge. They will be the ones experiencing friction with the enemy... It is the platoon commander who will encounter the enemy."

The training also made use of the IDF's digital network, which links up commanders to tanks and air-force strike aircraft.

"I can identify an enemy, press the coordinate on the [digital] map, and it will show up immediately in the tank," said Madar. "Our lethality has grown."

Use of drones represents a 'huge change'

The drill involved new quadcopters that recently entered service in the IDF. The drones-currently commercially made, but which will be replaced with military quadcopters in the future-have revolutionized the ability of low-ranking commanders to request and receive aerial picture of their battle space.

"Until today, it was the air force that provided this. Now, the military company provides it," said Madar. "This is a huge change."

The exercise marks the start of a four-month war-training period, meaning that the Givati brigade has rotated away from active missions. The first step focuses on showing commanders how to train others. "In the civilian world, it would be like preparing the managers to run their departments," said Madar.

In addition, the need to train commanders in dealing with civilian populations during combat is critical, he added.

Soldiers in the exercise role-played as civilian families and wounded civilians. The commanders "experienced civilians shouting and chaos" that the Israeli military will have to face.

As Madar explained: It is clear to us that the deeper one maneuvers, the more civilians one will have to deal with."

IDF Spokesperson Unit A soldier from the Givati infantry brigade trains in a simulated urban warfare scenario with his canine companion.

Platoon commander Sec.-Lt. Nadav Serlin, who took part in the exercise, told JNS about an unprecedented level of intelligence that commanders now receive about the threats that await them in Gaza. "We heard about how the enemy is preparing itself against us... the knowledge of what is going on, on the other side, and hearing specific information on what is waiting for us makes us feel much more prepared," he said.

"We understand that in Gaza, many of the main multistory buildings contain a lot of threats," said Serlin. "These tall buildings give control of the area."

Training on how to cooperate closely with the armored corps and the air force is key to victory, he added: "You have to use all of the additional means [at your disposal] to get over the limitations of the infantry. Knowing how to train our soldiers is the most important thing. There is always room to improve, but this was a significant step up."
WASHINGTON (JTA)The Trump administration in a statement said it sympathizes deeply with the families whose lawsuit against the Palestine Liberation Organization may soon be considered by the Supreme Court, but continues to maintain that the lawsuit does not meet the standards for review by the high court.

The United States condemns acts of terror in the strongest terms and the Department of Justice is committed to prosecuting those who commit terrorist attacks against innocent human beings to the fullest extent that the law allows, said a statement emailed this week to JTA by a Justice Department spokeswoman.

The United States sympathizes deeply with the American families who, in 2004, sued the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization for acts of terrorism committed against their loved ones between 2002 and 2004, the statement said. The court of appeals decided, however, that the suit was not consistent with due process under the Constitution, and its decision does not meet the usual standards for Supreme Court review.

The Supreme Court will say by March 29 whether it will consider the appeal by the litigants in the case known as Sokolow v. Palestine Liberation Organization. The plaintiffs won $656 million in a 2015 federal jury verdict, but it was overturned a year later by an appellate court.

A filing by the solicitor general last month siding with the PLO drew rebukes from conservatives, including some of the Trump administrations most steadfast Jewish community defenders.

Solicitor General Noel Francisco supported the appellate courts finding in a Supreme Court filing last month, mostly on technical grounds.

The lead plaintiff, Mark Sokolow, his wife and two of his daughters were injured in a Jerusalem suicide bombing in 2002 that killed an 81-year-old man. His fellow plaintiffs are families of victims of terrorist attacks in Israel that killed 33, including several Americans, and wounded over 450. Their suit argued that the late PLO Chairman Yassir Arafat had paid attackers and their families.

The plaintiffs this week filed a response to the solicitor general arguing that the Supreme Court should consider the case if only because it is undergirded by the Anti-Terrorism Act, a law passed by Congress in 1992 that specifically targets perpetrators of terrorist attacks overseas.

The Anti-Terrorism Act is an important, thoughtfully considered, congressional effort to defend United States citizens from international terrorism, the filing said. At the very minimum, this law is entitled to consideration in this Court in the face of the Second Circuits constitutional decision stripping it of its core purpose and meaning.

Lawmakers in Congress from both parties have urged the Trump administration to back the plaintiffs.

Congress passed the Anti-Terrorism Act to hold accountable dangerous entities for acts of terrorism, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the minority leader, said in a statement emailed this week to JTA.

In the case of Mark Sokolow, the judge and jury found the Palestinian Authority and the PLO guilty in the heinous attack that maimed and killed dozens, including our fellow Americans, Schumer said. Despite this, the Trump administration has urged the Supreme Court to not take up this casea move that goes against the well-decided verdict that would hold accountable the Palestinian Authority and PLO for this repugnant terror attack.

The Zionist Organization of America, a group that has come to the defense of President Donald Trump when he and some of his top staffers have been accused of insensitivity toward Jews, has been at the forefront of expressions of outrage at the solicitor generals filing.

In a March 7 statement, the ZOA said the Trump administrations argument hurts the American terror victims, aids and comforts terrorists, and makes them less concerned about facing consequences for their hideous actions.
Charging ahead with the dramatic remaking of his White House, President Donald Trump announced the ouster of National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, to be replaced by former Ambassador to the UN John Bolton, a foreign policy hawk entering a White House facing key decisions on Iran and North Korea.

After weeks of speculation about McMasters future, Trump and the respected three-star general put a positive face on the Thursday departure, making no reference to the growing public friction between them. Trump tweeted that McMaster had done an outstanding job and will always remain my friend.

The role of national security adviser does not require Senate confirmation.

The White House has said the president is seeking to put new foreign policy leaders in place ahead of a not-yet-scheduled meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jung Un. Another consideration appears to be the upcoming May 12 deadline to recertify the Iran nuclear agreement.

Bolton has been a force in Republican foreign policy circles for decades, having served in the administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. He has since been a senior fellow of the conservative American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, known for his hardline approach to North Korea as well as his strong condemnation of the Obama administrations policies on Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Secretary of State Rex Tillersons exit just over a week ago, to be replaced by CIA director John Pompeo, also forecast trouble for McMaster, who had aligned himself with the embattled secretary of state in seeking to soften some of Trumps most dramatic foreign policy impulses.

Trump continues to appoint true friends of Israel

Danny Danon, Israels Ambassador to the UN, applauded the choice, saying Bolton has been a true friend of Israel going back many years.

Education Minister Naftali Bennett tweeted, Great appointment of Amb. John Bolton, an extraordinary security expert, experienced diplomat and a stalwart friend of Israel. Good luck John!

President Trump continues to appoint true friends of Israel to senior positions, and John Bolton is one of the most prominent of them, Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked said Friday morning. Bolton has great experience and original thinking, and I wish him great success in his position.
Stoneman Douglas High School alumni say the blessing over the challah at the Shabbat of Champions, in honor of the fallen Parkland students and staff.

Five hundred and fifty students, faculty and community members partook in the largest Shabbat dinner ever held at UCF on Feb. 23 in the Pegasus Ballroom. The annual Mega Shabbat was called "Shabbat of Champions," a nod to the undefeated UCF Knights. With many Stoneman Douglas High School alumni in attendance, the event was also a moving tribute to the victims of the tragic Parkland High School shooting, which had taken place just one week prior to Shabbat of Champions.

To honor the victims, the co-director of Chabad at UCF, Rivkie Lipskier, called the Stoneman Douglas High School alumni in attendance to the stage. They observed a moment of silence and then lit Shabbat candles in the memory of the 17 killed. As Lipskier explained, "a candle represents a person's connection to the divine. The wick represents the body, and the flame represents the divine soul. While the bodies can be destroyed, the soul can not."

Lipskier urged those in attendance to tap into their souls and the 17 beautiful souls of the departed as they lit their Shabbat candles, and to take on a mitzvah (good deed) in their memory.

Rabbi Chaim Lipskier, who directs Chabad with his wife Rivkie, then spoke about how moved he was to see the dozens of students from many organizations who had dedicated hundreds of hours to make the event possible.

Becca Coven, president of the Chabad Jewish Student Group then took the stage. "Growing up in a Jewish home, Shabbat is something that I got to look forward to every week, a time to gather around the table with your family and friends and just enjoy the end of your week, and the beginning of your weekend. Looking out at all of you here tonight I couldn't be more proud of the work Chabad has done to put this event together," she said before introducing Dr. Terri Susan Fine, a professor of political science at UCF and Chabad's faculty adviser.

Dr. Fine contrasted the UCF Knights, who's kicker Nader Golshahr was in attendance, to Chabad. "Unlike the champion Knights, Chabad at UCF is not once-in-a-lifetime. Chabad at UCF is here for all of UCF's Jewish students all the time and they are not going anywhere," said FIne.

Following the traditional prayers over wine and bread, a catered kosher meal that included Shabbat staples like challah, gefilte fish, and chicken was served.

"Shabbat is one of the centerpieces of Jewish life, and has been so since the infancy of our nation," said Rabbi Lipskier. "Shabbat of Champions was a chance for Jews from across campus to connect with each other in a meaningful way."

Shabbat of Champions was co-sponsored by Student Government Association, Judaic Studies at UCF, UCF Hillel, Alpha Epsilon Pi, Alpha Epsilon Phi, Zeta Beta Tau, Gamma Phi Beta, Knights for Israel, ICC, ZOA, Camera and Stand With Us. For more information about Chabad at UCF please visit jewishucf.com
Slain Paris Holocaust survivor was targeted because she was Jewish, French police say

(JTA)Prosecutors investigating the slaying of a Holocaust survivor in Paris said the two suspects in custody targeted her because she was Jewish.

The development in the investigation of the March 23 slaying of Mirelle Kanol came with the arrest of two men on Monday, Le Figaro reported, citing a police source.

The supposed or actual belonging of the victim to a religion was a grounds for the attack, the source told Le Figaro, in addition to her being vulnerable.

One of the suspects in custody, a 29-year-old man, was a neighbor of Kanol and knew her well, Le Figaro reported.

In addition, Kanols son told the French news agency AFP that one of the suspects was a regular visitor of his mother whom she treated like a son. The son said the suspect had visited her that day.

The prosecutors office reportedly has asked that the suspects remain in preventative custody. They will face possible charges of murder related to the victims religion, real or imagined, as well as aggravated robbery and destruction of property, AFP reported, citing judicial sources.

On Sunday, a spokesperson for SPCJ, the official monitor and security unit of the French Jewish community, told the 7sur7 news website that a preliminary examination of the crime does not reveal an anti-Semitic characteristic, but this possibility has not been discounted as police investigate further.

Kanol escaped the Velodrome dHiver roundup of Jews by French police for their deportation to death camps and murder by the Nazis.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, who is in Israel on an official visit, said Monday afternoon following a meeting in Jerusalem with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that France needs to continue fighting against anti-Semitism.

I had a very moving and difficult moment when I had just concluded my visit to Yad Vashem. I heard about the outrageous murder of Mirelle Kanola Holocaust survivorin Paris, Le Drian said. We cannot yet say if the motive for the murder was anti-Semitism but it is reasonable to assume, it will not be surprising and, therefore, this only strengthens the fact that this struggle has not ended, and that we will need to continue fighting against anti-Semitism.

According to the National Bureau for Vigilance Against Anti-Semitism, or BNVCA, the octogenarians body was set on fire Friday night. Her charred body also had at least 11 stab wounds.

A forensic examination of the apartment showed that an arsonist started a fire in at least five distinct areas of that space, the report also said.

The barbarity of this murder sends us back to that of Sarah Halimi just one year ago, Francis Kalifat, president of the CRIF umbrella of French Jewish communities, said in a statement Monday. CRIF is organizing a memorial march in Kanols memory Tuesday.

Prosecutors say Halimi, a 66-year-old Jewish teacher and physician, was murdered by her Muslim neighbor in April partly in connection with her Jewish identity.

Jews cant dance, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo jokes at a Harlem church

(JTA)George Gershwin may have written I Got Rhythm and Ethel Merman may have popularized the tune, but New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo says Jews dont have it.

Cuomo offered his views on the Jews alleged shortcoming during a speech Sunday at a predominately black church in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City

I want you to know as a matter of full disclosure, I am a Catholic. Catholics basically believe the same teachings that Baptists believe. We just do it without the rhythm. But we try, Cuomo said at the Mount Neboh Baptist Church, the New York Post reported Monday. We are not as without rhythm as some of our Jewish brothers and sisters.

Cuomo singled out Democratic consultant Hank Sheinkopf, a former campaign adviser who was ordained as an Orthodox rabbi in 2011. Sheinkopf was at the church because he works for its pastor, the Rev. Johnnie Green, and his Mobilizing Preachers and Communities advocacy group.

I was watching Mr. Sheinkopf here in the front row moving to the music, Cuomo said. It was ugly, Ill tell you the truth.

Sheinkopf told the Post that not many congregants laughed at the governors joke and added that he didnt feel humiliated.

Cuomo spokeswoman Dani Lever told the newspaper: He was clearly poking fun at himself and one longtime friend who was in the audience.

Cuomo, who is being challenged for re-election by Sex and the City star Cynthia Nixon, was at the church to promote spending plans in the state budget to be unveiled on Saturday. The budget calls for $550 million to clean up public housing.

Rabbi and labor leader form their own union

(JTA)Randi Weingarten, who heads the national union for teachers, and Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum of New Yorks leading synagogue for LGBT Jews were married in New York.

Their union at a downtown Manhattan restaurant, La Marina, was featured in the Weddings section of The New York Times on Sunday, their wedding day.

Weingarten 60, is the president of the American Federation of Teachers, headquartered in Washington, D.C. Kleinbaum, 58, is the senior rabbi of Congregation Beth Simhat Torah in New York, whose membership includes a significant number of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender congregants.

The couple first met in the mid-1990s, they told The Times.

We were two lesbians in New York fighting for different things, Weingarten said. We liked each other. We had good banter. It wasnt as if there were a lot of high-profile gay women who were active in leadership roles. I thought she was fun, witty and smart.

In 2006, Kleinbaum asked Weingarten to speak at her congregations Gay Pride Shabbat service, which Weingarten called a turning point in how she saw herself as a lesbian.

Kleinbaum divorced in 2012 after an 18-year relationship and two daughters. The women soon began dating and later moved in together.

Were not spring chickens, Kleinbaum told The Times. We didnt believe we would get this kind of love this late in our lives.

Judge Michelle Schreiber of the New York City Housing Court officiated, with the religious ceremony led by Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld, the president of Hebrew College in suburban Boston.

Thousands in London protest anti-Semitism in UK Labour Party

(JTA)Approximately 2,000 people gathered outside the houses of Parliament in London to protest anti-Semitism in the British Labour Party.

The protest Monday also criticized Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, whom British Jewish leaders have charged with enabling anti-Semitism in the party. Corbyn published a written apology ahead of the protest.

Organized by Britains Jewish Leadership Council and the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the protest attracted a few members of Parliament from Corbyns party. One was Luciana Berger, who is Jewish and told the crowd that the anti-Semitism issue is real, according to Haaretz.

She added: I want to be able to address Jewish audiences with my head held high.

Labour lawmaker John Mann, according to the BBC, said The very existence of my Labour Party is at stake. It is time for Jeremy Corbyn to act.

The protest came one day after British Jewish leaders sent an open letter condemning Corbyn for associating with anti-Semites and not doing enough to combat anti-Jewish discrimination in his partys ranks.

Corbyn, long a virulent critic of Israel, was elected party leader in 2015. Since then, his critics say, Labour has tolerated anti-Semitism among its members. Labour officials have been expelled from the party for anti-Semitic statements, and a 2016 inquiry into Labour anti-Semitism said there was an occasionally toxic atmosphere in the party

Corbyn has also faced criticism for associating with anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers, and for some statements he has made. In 2009, he described the terror groups Hamas and Hezbollah as friends, and was also a member of Facebook groups that included anti-Semitic statements. The issue flared anew this week when a 2012 Facebook post by Corbyn resurfaced in which he supported the creator of an anti-Semitic mural.

Today, leaders of British Jewry tell Jeremy Corbyn that enough is enough, said the letter sent Monday to John Cryer, the chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party. He is repeatedly found alongside people with blatantly anti-Semitic views, but claims never to hear or read them... He issues empty statements about opposing anti-Semitism, but does nothing to understand or address it. We conclude that he cannot seriously contemplate anti-Semitism, because he is so ideologically fixed within a far left worldview that is instinctively hostile to mainstream Jewish communities.

Corbyn condemned anti-Semitism in a statement Sunday, and sent a letter apologizing to the Jewish community ahead of the protest. He called for an urgent meeting with British Jewish leadership. He also has apologized separately for the 2012 Facebook post, as well as for his 2009 comments about Hamas and Hezbollah.

I recognise that anti-Semitism has surfaced within the Labour Party, and has too often been dismissed as simply a matter of a few bad apples, the Monday letter said. This has caused pain and hurt to Jewish members of our party and to the wider Jewish community in Britain. I am sincerely sorry for the pain which has been caused, and pledge to redouble my efforts to bring this anxiety to an end.

While condemning Israels treatment of the Palestinians, Corbyn also acknowledged that some criticism of Israel veers into anti-Semitism.

Comparing Israel or the actions of Israeli governments to the Nazis, attributing criticisms of Israel to Jewish characteristics or to Jewish people in general and using abusive phraseology about supporters of Israel such as Zio all constitute aspects of contemporary anti-Semitism, Corbyn wrote.

A pro-Corbyn group, Jewish Voice for Labour, held a small counterprotest next to Mondays demonstration.

Over 20,000 protest coming deportation of African asylum seekers

JERUSALEM (JTA)More than 20,000 protested against a government plan to deport African asylum seekers from Eritrea and Sudan to a third country in Africa during a rally in Tel Aviv.

The rally in Rabin Square was organized by NGOs and Sudanese and Eritrean groups, as well as the Stop the Deportation movement and the South Tel Aviv against the Deportation group, the Jerusalem Post reported. Several asylum seekers spoke at the rally, and spoke of the persecution they faced in Eritrea and Sudan.

Signs read: Stop the deportations! South Tel Aviv is against the deportations, and We shall neither expel nor kill the stranger and refugee.

The deportations were scheduled to begin on April 1, during the Passover holiday. But Israels Supreme Court has halted the deportations until it reviews a petition filed against the practice. The government has until March 26 to respond to the petition against deportations.

Israels Cabinet in January approved a plan and the budget to deport thousands of migrants from Sudan and Eritrea.

Prior to that, the Population and Immigration Authority notified the migrants that as of Jan. 1, they must return to their own countries or to a third nation, or be sent to jail until they are deported. According to the government plan, migrants who choose to leave by March 31 will receive a payment of $3,500 as well as free airfare and other incentives, according to reports.

For now, deportation notices will not be issued to women, children, fathers of children, anyone recognized as a victim of slavery or human trafficking, and those who had requested asylum by the end of 2017 but have not received a response, Haaretz reported.

There are up to 40,000 Eritreans and Sudanese living in Israel, including 5,000 children.

Human rights activists in Israel and major U.S. Jewish organizations have urged the Israeli government not to go ahead with the plan to force the migrants to choose between jail and deportation.

West Bank construction starts rose about 17 percent for 2017, Peace Now reports

JERUSALEM (JTA)Construction starts in West Bank settlements rose by 17 percent during 2017, with most of the new housing in isolated spots, according to Peace Now.

In its annual settlement construction report released Sunday, Peace Now said that 2,783 new housing units began construction in the West Bank in 2017, approximately 17 percent higher than the yearly average rate since 2009. The report does not include housing construction in eastern Jerusalem.

Peace Now also found that 78 percent of the new construction, or 2,168 housing units, was in settlements east of the proposed Geneva Initiative bordersettlements that are likely to be evicted in a two-state agreement.

At least 282 of the new housing units were constructed illegally, the majority in illegal outposts, according to the left-wing groups report.

In addition, construction was started on at least 68 new public buildings such as schools and synagogues.

In addition to the new housing starts, 6,742 housing units were advanced trough promotions for plans in 59 settlements in 2017, compared to 2,657 units in 2016, according to the report. Two-thirds of those housing units, or 4,471, were east of the Geneva Initiative border.

Three new settlement outposts were established in 2017, as well as the new settlement of Amichai, being built south of Nablus, to house the families evicted from the Amona outpost.

The Israeli government had not responded to the report by Monday night.

Actor Anton Yelchins parents reach settlement with carmaker over fatal accident

(JTA)The parents of actor Anton Yelchin reached a confidential settlement with the makers of the car that crushed him to death in his driveway two years ago.

The settlement was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court late last week, People magazine first reported. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, the company that manufactures the Jeep Grand Cherokee, confirmed the settlement in a statement.

The settlement will go to the Anton Yelchin Foundation and to the filming of a documentary on Antons life, Yelchins publicist, Jennifer Allen, said in a statement to People. The foundation assists young people in the arts who face career challenges due to debilitating disease or disability.

Yelchin, 27, who starred in the rebooted Star Trek movies, was found dead at his home in Studio City, California, on June 19, 2016, after being crushed by his 2015 Jeep Grand Cherokee.

Friends found Yelchin pinned between his car and a brick pillar; the vehicle was in neutral and running. Yelchin was presumed to have returned to his house to get something, which is why he was outside of the car while it was running.

The Jeep was part of a global recall of 1.1 million vehicles announced by Fiat Chrysler in April 2016. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration urged the recall because of complaints from drivers that a problem with the gear shift made it difficult to tell whether the car was in park. When not in park, the vehicle could roll away. A class-action lawsuit was filed in that case.

Yelchin starred as Chekov in the 2009 and 2013 Star Trek movies, and is seen in the third film in the series, Star Trek Beyond, which was released last month. He also appeared in films including Like Crazy, Alpha Dog, Terminator Salvation and Fright Night. His final film, Thoroughbreds, began playing in theaters earlier this month.

Yelchin, a native of St. Petersburg, Russia, immigrated to the United States with his family as an infant. He was the son of figure skaters Irina Korina and Viktor Yelchin, who reportedly were persecuted for being Jewish.

Pro-Israel charity sues businessman for not paying for paintings of the Trumps he won at auction

(JTA)A pro-Israel non-profit organization is suing a Florida businessman for failing to pay for two 6-foot tall paintings of President Donald Trump and his wife Melania that he won at a charity auction.

Timothy Lane, of the Hong Kong-based Everest Advisors, agreed to pay $21,530 for the paintings at the auction last month at the Trump-owned Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, the Palm Beach Post reported. The paintings were created by speed artist Michael Israel, who creates the large images in about 6 minutes.

Some 500 people attended the Feb. 25 benefit for The Truth About Israel organization.

The group says on its website that The Truth About Israel is a not-for-profit company formed to educate and train the public about the facts of Israel in todays world. Our mission is to advocate for Israel, covering the core values of the state of Israel, and the fundamental rights and justice for the Jewish people.

The lawsuit was filed earlier this month in Palm Beach County Circuit Court.

Lane, 70, reportedly has not allowed the purchase to go through on his credit card because the charity did not give him its federal tax identification number so he could write off the purchase as a charitable deduction.

Boca Raton businessman Steven Alembik, who organized the benefit, told the newspaper that the charity was issued a federal identification number on March 8 after the Internal Revenue Service approved the organizations tax-exempt status. He said he provided the number to Lane.

The tax ID has been provided to him, Alembik told the Palm Beach Post. He can come up with all the excuses he wants. At the end of the day, hes going to pay. Hes going to court and hes going to lose.
NEW YORK (JTA)Slate podcaster Mike Pesca has a theory that whenever President Donald Trump says everybody it means almost nobody, and when he says nobody or anybody it means almost everybody.

Try it: When Trump said, Nobody knew health care could be so complicatedwell, nearly everybody disagreed. And when he says, Everybody knows there was no collusion, he means, I insist there was no collusion, but am worried that nobody else, including Robert Mueller, agrees with me.

That kind of verbal irony has become a way of arguing on social media. A Facebook friend complained recently that two weeks after Louis Farrakhan gave yet another anti-Semitic speech, no one really cares. In fact, the Farrakhan speech was widely reported in the mainstream media, from The Washington Post to CNN to Fox News to Rolling Stone, especially after a leader of the Womens March attended the Nation of Islam leaders speech and refused to acknowledge his hate or apologize. By waiting too long to release a tepid statement on the incident, march leaders kept the story going another week. So did the right, which used Farrakhans re-emergence into the public spotlight as an opportunity to bash the left.

You could say people now care about Farrakhan more than they have in 20 years.

I dont mean to pick on my friend; the everybody and nobody trope is everywhere these days. In part it is a symptom of news overloadimportant things that demand attention disappear at the speed of a tweet about some other thing that demands immediate attention. Everybody knows that Trump is adept at changing the subject, and almost nobody knows how to resist the bait. And while the web has democratized news and made it theoretically easier to get a story out to the public, it also means that many more stories and ideas are jockeying for attention.

Bill Moyers does an annual survey of Overlooked, Under-Reported and Ignored Stories. Last years list included the growing movement for Medicare for All, U.S. airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq and the impact of Trumps policiesnot his tweets, not his scandalson American society. Last week, on the radio show On The Media, social media monitor Thalia Beaty spoke about how hard it is to get attention for the Syrian governments vicious siege of the Damascus suburb of eastern Ghouta.

It just doesnt seem that media outlets know how to tell this story of human suffering without a geopolitical angle, she said.

But usually when people say that nobody is talking about something, they mean not enough people are talking about a story the way I want them to talk about it. That could mean that The New York Times or CNN hasnt put the story on the front page or at the top of the hour. Or that legislators have sent the issue to the back burner Or that activists are focused on X when they should be focused on Y.

Jewish activists and media professionals seemed to do a Freaky Friday switch over the weekend when The New York Times published an essay by one of its editors charging that American Jewish leaders have done too little to call out the troubling anti-Semitism of the past two years. Jonathan Weisman, who was a target of alt-right anti-Semites during the 2016 campaign, has written a book called (((Semitism))): Being Jewish in America in the Age of Trump. In Sundays essay, he claimed the American Jewish Committee, the Jewish Federations of North America and other leading Jewish organizations have been remarkably quiet on the rise of anti-Semitism.

His evidence is rather narrow, having to do with the Anti-Defamation League and its condemnation of two popular alt-right figures for spreading anti-Semitic theories. When Ohios Republican state treasurer, Josh Mandel, lashed out at the ADL in defense of the two conspiracy theorists, Weisman wrote, I did not see any organized effort to rally around the institution, one of the few major Jewish groups in the United States that is still not predominantly engaged in debate over Israel.

Its an odd charge. First, the ADL talks plenty about Israel. Second, if the Jewish community were a government, the ADL would be its Department of Defense, AJC would be its Department of State and JFNA would be the IRS. Thats not to say that their missions dont frequently overlap, but the ADL is usually deferred to when it comes to anti-anti-Semitism. The AJC does a lot of work on anti-Semitism, but mainly in Europe. The JFNA is a fundraising trade group that generally avoids made-for-Twitter issues like the ADL-Mandel ruckus.

But coming after a period that included Charlottesville, the JCC bombings and a general feeling of disquiet following the 2016 campaign and the rise of the alt-right, its just weird to conclude that Jewish organizations are ignoring or downplaying anti-Semitism. The ADL certainly has been loud and consistent in calling it out in the past 16 months, joined frequently by the American Jewish Committee, Simon Wiesenthal Center, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and, ahem, the Jewish media.

Weisman only gets it partly right when he talks about how partisanship has distorted the internal Jewish debate on anti-Semitism. Partisanship hasnt silenced or cowed the ADL or left it isolated, as he suggests. But it has made it harder for Jews to agree on what constitutes the greatest anti-Semitic threat of the moment. Right-wing critics say the ADL goes after the alt-right in order to tarnish Trump. They accuse the ADL of ignoring left-wing anti-Semitism as represented by the Boycott Israel movement, which the ADL also consistently and assertively condemns. The Jewish left, meanwhile, says the Jewish establishment spends too much time vilifying domestic critics of Israel and should really be focused on the rise of white nationalism.

Thats certainly how the Farrakhan debate is playing out. The right has raised Farrakhans anti-Semitism as a symbol of all that plagues the left. And the left insists that the rights focus on Farrakhan is meant to deflect from its own coddling of white nationalists and other hatemongers.

So nobody is talking about anti-Semitism? Everybody is talking about anti-Semitism. Theyre just not listening to each other.
(JNS)The Trump administrations conference on the situation in the Gaza Strip this week focused on the need for the Palestinian Authority to take control over Gaza, a White House official told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. If that report is accurate, it means that the United States still doesnt understand the basic problem in Gazaor how to solve it.

The idea that Hamas is the bad guy and the Palestinian Authority is the good guy is a fallacy that began with the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, and is still the mindset of too many people in Washington.

The attempts to distinguish between the moderate P.A. and the extremist Hamas always foundered on the reality that the P.A. regards Hamas as its brother, not its enemy. Brothers may quarrel from time to timethey may get into a scuffle now and then, or even try to kill each otherbut they remain brothers.

The P.A. leadership promised, as part of Oslo, to disband all terrorist groups, seize their weapons and outlaw themin short, to put them out of business. But here we are, 25 years later, and Hamas still has active terrorist cells throughout the P.A.-controlled parts of Judea and Samaria.

Theres no doubt that the P.A. has the means to eliminate Hamas in the territories; it has one of the largest per-capita security forces in the world. Yet it has never even outlawed Hamas. It has never made a real effort to capture its members or confiscate its weapons. It has not extradited a single Hamas terrorist to Israel, even though the Oslo agreement obligates it to do so.

Even The New York Times, a longtime cheerleader for the P.A., has occasionally conceded that Hamas and other terrorists roam free in P.A.-run cities. On March 23, 2014, the Times reported that Israeli troops were forced to enter the Jenin refugee camp in pursuit of terrorists because although Jenin is under the full control of the Palestinian Authority, the Palestinian [security forces] did not generally operate in refugee camps.

When the P.A.s newspapers, television and radio glorify terrorists as martyrs and heroes, they dont talk about only Fatah terrorists. They glorify Hamas murderers, too.

When the P.A. pays salaries to imprisoned terrorists and the families of dead terrorists, they dont give out the payments only to Fatah members. They pay Hamas murderers and their families, too.

So theres no reason for surprise that the P.A. boycotted this weeks conference on Gaza in Washington. No matter how hard the State Department crowd wishes it, the P.A. is not going to fight Hamas for control of Gaza. In fact, its not going to fight Hamas at all.

The solution to Gazas various ills is not to pump more international money into the region. That has been tried for decades, and it hasnt worked. The solution is regime change. But a change from Hamas to the P.A. even if it were possible and even if the P.A. were amenable to that would not represent genuine change. It would mean replacing one corrupt, violent Palestinian dictatorship with another corrupt, violent Palestinian dictatorship.

Not every group of people with a grievance deserves, or is ready for, self-rule. Some have too little experience with the culture of democracy to establish and run a free society; the last thing the world needs is more dictatorships. Some are too violent to live in peace with their neighbors; that is the danger Israel faces.

For years, advocates of Palestinian statehood urged Israel to grant self-rule to the Arabs in Gaza. They claimed that if the Gazans were allowed to rule themselves, they would become peaceful neighbors since surely they wouldnt want to risk losing their self-rule. It would be an experiment to see if giving them a fully sovereign state could succeed. Yitzhak Rabin took that risk (my family paid a high price for it) and then Ariel Sharon decided to take that risk.

The tens of thousands of rockets fired from Gaza at Israel over the years have demonstrated that the experiment was an abject failure. Gaza proves that the Palestinian Arabs are not yet ready for self-rule. Neither conferences in Washington nor handouts from the international community will change that.

Stephen M. Flatow, a vice president of the Religious Zionists of America, is an attorney in New Jersey. He is the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995.
Our Torah tells us of a man named Abram who probably lived in what is now Iran. He was head of a small Clanalso identified as a Tribe. The Tribe consisted of a group of loosely connected family members: sons, daughters (of which Abram had none of either at the time), cousins, etc.

Our Torah tells us that one day he decided to move the Tribe from the pleasant and fruitful land in which they dwelled to a barren strip of sand over a thousand miles almost due east. But, our Torah tells us God came to Abram in a dream and told him to go and that Abram and his Tribe could have that land.

It was a time when a Tribe had familial relations, a strong leader and perhaps some advisersall members of the Tribe. As the Tribe grew, some of them left for other places. Today, thats a lot more common. However, this Tribe survives to this day and we, as Jews, are its members.

For centuries, people of a given heritage, a distinct persona, kept together out of a sense of loyalty and common beliefs. It worked as a means of survival in a world without civilization, limited communication.

In a Tribe, there was the comfort of people who look like you, think like you, act like you and have the same beliefs. It allowed its members to have an inner peace knowing that those with whom they interacted on a regular basis were like themselves.

Times change. As the world grew more civilized and diversified, as travel and communication became easier, there was no longer a need for tribalism as a means for survival.

A certain orthodoxy prevails. In Arab cultures the symbolism of the Tribe is as active as it was centuries ago. An old Arab saying is: Me against my brother; my brother and I against my cousin; me, my brother and my cousin against you. Well, this worked fine when the Tribes needed these things to survive.

This is an interactive world. It was so before the Internet and supersonic jets and all forms of instant communication. My father was raised at the beginning of the last century. He had to fight his way to school from his Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn through the Italian neighborhood and the African-American neighborhood.

When Jewish families moved for most of the 20th century, they looked for a Jewish neighborhood with a few shuls within a short distancemaybe a Kosher butcher you could drive to, even in some cases, a Country Club.

That custom is disappearing. With the changes in society, with our instant communications, with intermarriage and many other diverse reasons, the Tribal society should be pretty much dead.

Except its not.

We have elected a president who, in his campaign tapped into the strong Tribal feelings still felt in our country. His campaign proved that those ancient feelings are amazingly close to the surface. In a broad sense it means that whatever happens in the world, as long as it is not an imminent threat to the United States, we should not be concerned about it. That we take care of our own.

Fine. Until it comes time to define our own. As Jews we have certain internal differences, of course. Theres Orthodox and Conservative and Reform and Reconstructionist and Hasidism and splits in each of those. BUT: We are all still Jews. There are white Jews and black Jews, brown Jews and multi-colored Jews. There are even Jews who, God forbid, do not believe in the State of Israel.

In the case of the philosophy behind the Trump campaignit was to single out the Other as an enemy and our need to take America First. Jews are often accused of Double Loyaltyindicating that Jews tend to show loyalty to America and Israel. On its face this might sound dicey. But as Jews, we do in our kishkas feel an empathy and a love for the ancient homeland where the Third Jewish Commonwealth is about to celebrate its 70th birthday.

I never met an American Jew who did not love this nation. I admit I have met a few who disapprove of the way Israel is being governed. My answer to them has always been if you feel that strongly about it, move there, pay taxes there and vote.

Of course many Jews voted for President Trump because they believed that the country was on the wrong track and wanted to see a change. They got it. The danger lies again in the Us versus You mentality. It is at the core of Tribal.

When the Tribes of the Native Americans made peace with each other, it wasnt that they were abandoning their own Tribal ways. It was that they felt as they all were Native Americans they should respect their differences as well as love their oneness.

As Jews we have disagreements. It is built into our DNA. As Jews when we travel and meet another Jew, we always feel like Mishpucha. We still, from time to time, talk about each other as Members of the Tribe. Disagreements among family, Tribe and others are bound to occur. To remember that we are members of the same Tribe is always important.
Master engineer Gerhard Neumann helped keep the Tigers flying and enabled the Allies to evaluate the first captured Japanese Zero.

He was an enemy alien living in China when Claire Chennault recruited him into the American Volunteer Group. The Flying Tigers knew him as Herman the German. He would rebuildtwicethe first Japanese Zero to fall into American hands, and sneak behind enemy lines on daring missions for the OSS. It took the U.S. secretary of wars approval to get him into the Army Air Forces, and an act of Congress to finally make him a U.S. citizen. But that was just the beginning of a long aviation career that would see him earn accolades for innovative jet engine design.

Gerhard Neumann was born into a Jewish family in Frankfurt an der Oder in 1917. At age 16 he was apprenticed to a tough old master mechanic, and he later attended Germanys prestigious Mittweida technical college. In April 1939, he set off for China, but when he arrived in Hong Kong he found that the Chinese transport agency that had hired him had vanished. He talked his way into a job with a local auto repair company, and within days was swearing in Chinese and running the shop.

Three months later, when Britain and Germany went to war, the young German found himself behind barbed wire. He was soon released, but in June 1940 the British confiscated his passport and gave him a choice: Leave Hong Kong within 48 hours or be shipped to an internment camp in Ceylon. Neumann knew that without a passport he would not be admitted by any neutral country, so he decided to try for a job with the Chinese National Aviation Corporation. With his parole due to expire at midnight, he was told to come back the next day. Leaving the CNAC office he met a Pan American Airways executive, a sympathetic American who put him on a plane for Kunming, China, minutes before midnight.

Neumann arrived in Kunming with an introduction to a retired U.S. Army captain, Claire Lee Chennault, then serving as chief adviser to the Chinese air force. This wasnt the time to get into Chinese aviation, Chennault told him, and recommended that he try the local Renault plant. The Burma Road was almost finished, and the plant was building the trucks that would be used on it. The German engineer joined Renault and was chosen to lead the first convoy on the Burma Roadan exploration of primitive roads over inhospitable mountain terrain and swaying bridges. The convoy was a success, with only one truck lost due to a landslide.

On the morning of the Pearl Harbor attack, Chennault asked Neumann to join the AVG, and he accepted without hesitation. The Flying Tigers nicknamed him Herman the German and made him one of their own. In return, Neumann taught the groups ground crewmen how to keep machines running by improvising when spare parts were scarce that cow manure made a great radiator seal  ant, for instance, or that buffalo horn was an acceptable substitute for Bakelite.

When the AVG was disbanded in July 1942, Chennault asked the U.S. secretary of war for permission to enlist Neumann into the USAAF as a staff sergeant. He was subsequently assigned to the 76th Fighter Squadron as chief engineer. That October Chennault told him that the Chinese had captured a Japanese navy Mitsubishi A6M2 Zero, and it was vital that the Allies test-fly and evaluate the fighter. As Chennault pointed out, if anyone could put it into flyable condition it was Neumann.

The aircraft in question had made a forced landing on the beach opposite Hainan Island, in an area under Japanese control, but the Chinese managed to disassemble it and drag it into the woods near an emergency airstrip at Liuchow. The Japanese regularly sent recon planes over that region, but they never spotted anything, as the plane was well camouflaged.

The Zero was in generally good condition, although many parts had been damaged or lost. Neumann had a team of Chinese mechanics and one American working with him. Using hand tools and a charcoal-fired forge, they repaired many parts and replaced others with components salvaged from wrecks.

The team worked on the Zero for two months, and Neumann was impressed with the innovations in what was largely a handcrafted plane. The wings and cockpit area were a single unit. The entire engine assembly was held to the firewall with four nuts. Fuel and oil lines ran into a junction box that could be quickly disconnected. Although it took eight hours to replace a Curtiss P-40 engine, the Zero engine could be removed in 30 minutes. Since eliminating weight was a Japanese priority, there was no armor or self-sealing fuel tanks as well as no self-starter, which would have required a heavy battery.

Once assembled, the Zero would have to be flown out to Kweilin quickly, before the Japanese could spot it on the airstrip. To fly it Chennault chose John Alison, the first Army Air Corps ace in China, and later a founder and co-commander of the 1st Air Commando Group. A North American B-25, with Neumann aboard, accompanied the Zero to protect it from possible friendly fire.

Chennault, the American ambassador and hundreds of GIs were waiting when the Zero arrived. The fighter touched down gently, but then the right landing gear suddenly folded up and the plane slewed across the runway. The left gear snapped off, and the Zero dropped down on a belly tank full of 100- octane fuel. Fortunately there was no explosion, but the prop was badly bent, and the wings and fuselage were twisted.

Neumann found that gravel had lodged in the right landing gear during takeoff, preventing it from locking down. Chennault looked over the wreckage and told him to rebuild it. Many years later, during a 1984 interview with the Cincinnati Inquirer, Neumann remembered the crash as the low point of my life. But, he continued, Then I was given the opportunity to reconstruct it again (and it flew perfectly). That showed great confidence in me. It turned into the high point of my life.

At Kweilin the work was easier, since there was a hangar with electricity and power tools. But when Neumann fell ill with typhus and malaria, work stopped for almost a month while he recovered in a Kunming hospital. When he returned he was still so weak that he directed the mechanics from a cot in the hangar, huddled under blankets and wearing a fur-lined flying suit.

After the job was finished, the Zero was flown to Kunming (this time with the gear locked down), where American pilots test-flew it against U.S. fighters. Its light weight made it highly maneuverable, confirming the tactics Chennault had taught his pilots: Dont try to dogfight with Japanese fighters; make a pass and dive away.

The Zero was shipped Stateside for technical examination and a war bond tour, while Neumann returned to Chennaults expanded Fourteenth Air Force. With spare parts still in short supply, he continued to use his imagination and skill to keep the airplanes flying. When tires became scarce, for example, Neumann re placed them with rope wrapped around the wheel rims. One Douglas C-47 flew missions for a week equipped with one rubber tire and one rope substitute.

At one point legendary Flying Tiger Tex Hill needed some North American P-51s for a long over-water flight, but the battle-weary Mustangs were leaking from their oil and coolant radiators. The ever-resourceful Neumann went to a nearby village and bought four old bicycles, cut spokes from the wheels, inserted them into the radiators and sealed them with rubber washers cut from the inner tubes. Every last one of those jury-rigged aircraft returned from Hills famous 1943 Thanksgiving Day raid on Formosa.

Neumanns ability to speak Chinese sparked a request for him to join the Air Ground Forces Resources and Technical Staff, actually a unit of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). He served for 11 months as a member of two-man teams that sneaked into enemy territory to observe the Japanese. If good targets presented themselves, the team directed airstrikes via a hand-cranked radio. They sent coded reports to their base, but when the aircraft were overhead, they spoke to the pilots in the clear.

The teams also reported on activities of the Chinese army, whose operational reports often did not jibe with reality. After one such mission, in October 1944 Chennault ordered Neumann to Washington, D.C., to brief the OSS chief, Maj. Gen. William Wild Bill Donovan. Told that Neumann could not travel to the States legally, Chennault responded that it would be done illegally. The FBI met Neumann in New York, but released him when assured by the OSS that he was one of theirs.

Chennault had asked Donovan to get Neumann a direct field commission, and Donovan had his staff look into it. After briefing Donovan, Neumann went on leave for 60 days. During that time he met his future wife, Clarice, who was then working as an attorney for the Justice Department.

Despite everyones best efforts, Neumann could not be commissioned, since he was technically an enemy alien. Donovan said he would resolve this absurd situation, even if it took an act of Congress. In May 1945, a bill was introduced in Congress and a year later President Harry Truman signed it: Herman the German was now an American citizen.

Neumann finished the war in China, where he and Clarice married. Upon his return to the States he worked for Douglas Aircraft, but in 1947 he went back to China to help Chennault start an airline. The next time he returned to the U.S.accompanied by Clarice and dog Mr. Chipshe traveled much of the way by jeep, driving 10,000 miles on rough roads and trails from Thai  land to Jerusalem.

Back in America Neumann embarked on a 32-year career with General Electric, where in his early years he invented and developed the variable stator, now used in virtually every jet engine built. It was the first of his eight patents. In the early 1950s, he led the team that developed the J79, a military turbo jet that powered the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter and shattered a series of speed and altitude records.

By the 1960s, GE had 85 percent of the worlds jet engine business, and Neumann was made general manager of its 20,000- employee Flight Propulsion Division. He was widely hailed as one of the most innovative engineers in aviation history, the recipient of many awards, including the 1958 Collier Trophy (for the J79), NASAs Goddard Award and the French Legion dHonneur. He retired from GE in 1980, and died in 1997 as a result of complications from leukemia.

In 1984 Neumann published his autobiography, Herman the German: Just Lucky I Guess. No doubt he was a lucky man, but a poster that hung behind his desk at GE may have best summed up his guiding philosophy: The harder I work, the luckier I get.

The Gerhard Neumann Museum in Niederalteich, Germany, celebrates Neumanns life and accomplishments. For more information, see www.f-104.de/english/home_english.html.

Originally published in the September 2009 issue of Aviation History. To subscribe, click here.
Ross Perot Jr. was just 23 when he set out on a bold venture: to circumnavigate the world in a helicopter. He had only a year of flying under his belt at the time. Fortunately for him, his father, the well-known Texas business magnate and sometime presidential candidate, was willing to buy into his dream.

Ross Sr. asked Jay Coburn, who had played a central role in Perots rescue of two Electronic Data Systems employees from Iran in 1979, to join his son in the cockpit of a brightly painted Bell 206L LongRanger II, equipped with special communications, safety and navigation equipment. They lifted off from Love Field in the chopper, fittingly dubbed Spirit of Texas, on September 1, 1982, trailed by a Lockheed C-130 Hercules carrying supplies and fuel.

While they had no major mechanical problems, they found plenty of adventure during one stormy leg of the journey. Low on fuel over the North Pacific, they fought hard to set the chopper down on a 40-foot square platform atop a container ship tossed by typhoon-force winds. Twenty-nine days after leaving Texas, having flown over 26 countries, they returned home, mission accomplished. In all, they had refueled a total of 56 times. Today Spirit of Texas is on display at the Smithsonians National Air and Space Museum.

Two weeks after returning home, Ross Jr. joined the U.S. Air Force. This time his goal was to fly fightersand again he succeeded. He piloted McDonnell F-4 Phan  toms for the next eight years, first on active duty and then as a reservist. But even after reentering civilian life (hes chairman of the board of Perot Systems and a real estate developer), Ross Jr. remained committed to the Air Force. As chairman of the Air Force Memorial Association, he was instrumental in efforts to construct a monument to the USAF in the nations capital, which was dedicated in 2006.

Originally published in the July 2009 issue of Aviation History. To subscribe, click here.
The course of World War II would have been very different without Rolls-Royces immortal Merlin engine.

The British Overseas Airways Corporation flight from Stockholm, Sweden, landed at an airfield in Leuchars, northern Scotland, one of several hundred round trips the airline made between the two cities. But this was no ordinary flight. The year was 1943, and although the plane carried civilian markings and the pilot and navigator were nominally civilian employees of BOAC, it was a de Havilland Mosquito bomber. And the passenger who emerged, stiff from being crammed into an improvised bunk in the bomb bay of the unpressurized aircraft, was physicist Niels Bohr, 1922 Nobel Prize winner and pioneer in nuclear fission research.

Bohr had determined that the uranium isotope U-235 could create a chain reaction, and therefore could be used to construct a powerful atomic bomb, findings he detailed at a January 1939 conference in Washington, D.C. By 1943 the Nazi roundup and deportation of Jews in Denmark put Bohr at great risk, as his mother was Jewish. Word leaked that he was about to be arrested and would face a stark choice: Join Adolf Hitlers atomic weapon project or be sent with his wife and son to almost certain death in a concentration camp.

With the help of the British secret service, Bohr had been smuggled to neutral Sweden. On December 6 he flew from England to the United States to join the Manhattan Project.

The Mosquito was the only aircraft fast enough to evade German fighters patrolling the North Sea to intercept the BOAC flights, which conveyed clandestine personnel and precision supplies such as ball bearings. The Nazi atomic bomb project ultimately fizzled, but it might have ended differently if Bohr had been in charge, coerced by threats to his family.

Of course, he might never have been rescued if Britain had lost the ferocious aerial struggle for its existence in the summer of 1940. If the close-run Battle of Britain had gone the other way, Great Britain, with much of its armor, trucks and heavy weapons left behind in the evacuation of Dunkirk, would have been in a precarious position. The effect of a possible British capitulation on subsequent events in Russia, North Africa, Normandy and the Far East can only be imagined.

Two months after Bohrs harrowing flight, on December 13, 1943, North American P-51B Mustang fighters accompanied 710 U.S. Army Air Forces bombers on a mission to Kiel, Germany. The 980-mile round trip was the first fully escorted long-distance raid of the war, and the beginning of successful daylight precision bombing and the progressive destruction of the Luftwaffe.

These three momentous eventsBohrs rescue, Germanys defeat in the Battle of Britain and Americas long-distance fighter escort missionshad one thing in common: They were all made possible by the same aero enginethe magnificent Rolls-Royce Merlin. Without the inspired genius of a gifted mathematician and the dedication of a small group of engineers who developed the Merlin, the world today might be a very different place.

The Merlins origins date back to the 1920s, with the 21-liter V12 Kestrel, the first Rolls-Royce production engine to be supercharged. Strongly influenced by the Curtiss D-12, the Kestrels basic design was so sound that its derivatives, in various sizes and versions, were produced to the end of the companys piston engine era. Its enlargement to 37 liters resulted in the Buzzard, from which a 1929 racing version, called simply R by Rolls-Royce, eventually developed 2,500 hp. The R gave Britain victories in the Schneider Trophy seaplane races three years in succession, a world air speed record of 407.5 mph and possession of the trophy in perpetuity. Significantly, the winning planes were designed by Reginald J. Mitchell and built by the Supermarine Company. Thus the stage was set for the engineers and designers of Rolls-Royce and Supermarine to create, five years later, the immortal Spitfire.

The R also powered cars to world land speed records, ultimately achieving 357 mph in 1938, and a boat to a world water speed record of 142 mph in 1939. As a result, before World War II the engine held or had held all three world speed records, on land, water and in the air.

Despite popular lore, the Merlin was not a derated R; instead it was the most important development of the Kestrel, enlarged to 27 liters. Another myth holds that the engine was named after the wizard of Arthurian legend, but in fact it simply followed Rolls practice of naming its inline aero engines after birds of prey. The merlin is a species of falcon with thin, pointed wings that allow it to dive at high speeds. It was an appropriate choice in view of the engines future use.

The first engines, called PV-12 for Private Venture 12-cylinder (as no government funds had been allocated to the design), were ready for bench testing in 1933, rated at 790 hp. The engine, now uprated to 950 hp, first flew in 1935 in a Hawker Hart, Sydney Camms last biplane and a forerunner of his Hurricane.

Type testing revealed a host of problemsparticularly in the cylinder head design, bearings and gearswhich had to be corrected for the engine to become a practical power plant. By the mid-1930s it was still unreliable, repeatedly failing the civilian 50-hour type test. It seemed the Merlin would never be successful.

It should be remembered that at the time Rolls-Royce was a relatively small company, employing fewer than 7,000 people. Simultaneously with the Merlin, it was also working on several other piston aero engines and a marine Merlin for use in fast patrol boats. In 1938 the company would also undertake development of gas turbine (jet) engines. By 1945 Rolls employed more than 55,000 people.

With war clouds gathering and aircraft manufacturers clamoring for the new engine, they continued to improve the Merlin, following Sir Henry Royces 1915 principle of identifying the weakest link by gradually increasing the engines speed and load, redesigning the problem component and going on to demand even more, even if this meant running it to destruction. Other than dynamometers, instrumentation of the period was rudimentary. But the company had technicians and mechanics of exceptional talent and experience in the testing shops, who, like Royce, had worked their way up through long apprenticeships. They could tell instantly when the sound of an engine changed, and detect the onset of detonation (knocking) by holding a short piece of steel between their teeth and resting the other end on the cylinder block of an engine running at full throttle. Thus the Merlin experienced a steady increase in power output that, in 12 years, would more than double its original rating while retaining reliability.

Rolls-Royce was extremely fortunate in being able to lure the brilliant young Stanley Hooker away from the Admiralty Research Laboratories in 1938. An Oxford graduate in mathematics, he had also done postgraduate work on fluid dynamics, and would become probably the worlds greatest expert in fluid- and thermodynamics applied to supercharging. In Hookers hiring interview at the Derby plant, Works Manager Ernest W. Hives questioned him on a technical point. I explained as best I could, recounted Hooker, and then he said, leaning forward, Youre not much of an engineer are you? I had to agree, and he replied: Never mind, this place is full of the best engineers in the world and they will teach you.

On joining Rolls-Royce, Hooker was surprised to learn that supercharging science was scanty, despite aircraft engines having used pressure boost since before World War I. All the formulas being used to design superchargers were based on parameters derived by the Royal Aircraft Establishment that he found to be inaccurate. Hooker approached the head of the Experimental Workshop and asked to see a supercharger. Which supercharger? he was asked. Any one will do, because Ive never seen one before. He was then taken to a test rig. This is a Merlin engine. This is the front end where the propeller is bolted on, and this contraption at the back end is the supercharger with the gears that drive it. And its your job to make it do better.

As a new employee, and a mathematician to boot, Hooker was at first hesitant to question the work of Rolls engineers who had produced the giant supercharger that enabled the R engine to win the Schneider Trophy and set a new air speed record. He checked and rechecked his calculations: The figures were unassailable. Redesigning the rotor and diffuser would yield an immediate 15-percent increase in efficiency, and that would only be the start. Within a few months Hooker, who had never previously seen an aero engine either, added 30 percent more power to the Merlin. (He went on during the war to turn the rudimentary Whittle turbojet into a production engine, raising its thrust from 1,800 pounds to 5,000. By the time he retired in 1967, after being knighted by the queen, Sir Stanley Hooker had been deeply involved in the design of almost every modern British aero engine, including those for the Concorde supersonic airliner and the Harrier jump jet.)

Many brilliant engineers worked doggedly, and in some cases into early graves, to develop the Merlin, but it was Stanley Hooker who, by applying advanced scientific principles to the flow and compression of air, was most responsible for boosting its power from 1,025 hp at the beginning of WWII to well over 2,000 hp at the end. The Merlin consistently outperformed considerably larger aero engines.

The exhaust-driven supercharger, or turbocharger, seems to offer something for nothing, utilizing otherwise wasted heat energy from the engines exhaust to drive the supercharger, instead of the power-consuming geared method. It was the preferred system of boost for high-altitude operations for American military radial aircraft engines in WWII. Rolls-Royce had experimented with turbocharging on its Condor III engine as far back as 1923.



Repairmen put their backs into their work as they manhandle a damaged Spitfire Mk. IX at a forward airfield in Normandy in June 1944. (IWM CL 0186) Repairmen put their backs into their work as they manhandle a damaged Spitfire Mk. IX at a forward airfield in Normandy in June 1944. (IWM CL 0186)

In discussions about its possible use with the Merlin, Hooker pointed out the lack of suitable locations for a turbocharger on the Hurricane, Spitfire or Mosquito, and proposed that exhaust energy could be utilized in a much simpler way. Experiments with exhaust stack designs had produced a short ejector shape imparting reaction (jet) thrust that added aircraft speed equivalent to an additional 150 hp. This would be lost in turbocharging. He predicted that the turbochargers main benefitmaintaining power at high altitudecould be obtained by using two superchargers in series, driven by the same engine gears. In fact the Merlin 61, the first equipped with a two-stage supercharger, increased the Spitfire IXs ceiling from 30,000 to 40,000 feet and its top speed by 70 mph.

The appearance in September 1941 of the new Focke Wulf Fw-190A, with its 42-liter BMW radial engine, came as a nasty shock to the RAF, as it easily outclassed the Merlin 45powered Spitfire V in speed and climb. But within weeks, Rolls was producing the Merlin 61. Only two-thirds the size of the Fw-190s engine, it nevertheless produced more power, especially at high altitudes, where most of the action took place. Equipped with the Merlin 61, the new Spitfire IX regained the upper hand, surprising Luftwaffe pilots with its performance surge, since the two Spitfire types looked almost identical. Air Marshal Sir Harry Broadhurst, a top WWII RAF fighter pilot, vividly recalled his first flight in a Spitfire IX, particularly the astonished look on the face of an Fw-190 pilot as Broadhurst climbed past him with ease.

In a similar horsepower race with the Merlin (and later Griffon), the 34-liter Daimler-Benz DB 601which powered the early Spitfires main adversaries, the Messerschmitt Me-109E and Fgrew into the 36-liter, 1,475-hp DB 605 in the 109G. But by then the Spitfire IXs Merlin 61 was producing 1,560 hp, soon to become 1,710 in the Merlin 70. Daimler-Benz finally enlarged the 600 series into the 44.5-liter 603. With only 40 more horses than the Merlin 70, and too heavy for any of the Luftwaffes single-engine fighters, it was relegated to twin-engine aircraft. The similar Jumo 211 V12 from the other major German engine manufacturer, Junkers, fell halfway in size between the DB 601 and 605 at 35 liters, but by 1942 was only yielding 1,400 hp.

Germanys comparatively deficient engine power has been mistakenly blamed on the scarcity of high-octane fuel. But Britain entered the war with aviation gasoline of around 87-octane regular, while Germany already had 100-octane. By 1942 the Germans had raised this to 150. Rolls had tested the Merlin with 100-octane gasoline, and found it would happily motor on with manifold pressure raised from 43 to 48 inches of mercury, boosting output by 135 hp, but this was of academic interest as there was no 100-octane fuel in the RAFs storage tanks. Fortunately, the Esso tanker Beaconhill arrived from the United States just before the Battle of Britain, bringing enough of the new fuel to serve the Hurricanes and Spitfires throughout the conflict. With higher permissible boost pressures, the additional speed and rate of climb were decisive. Without it, what was in the words of the Duke of Wellington (referring to the 1815 Battle of Waterloo) a damned close-run thing might well have turned the other way.



Illustration John Batchelor, all rights reserved Illustration John Batchelor, all rights reserved

Direct fuel injection in the Daimler-Benz engines yielded a temporary advantage. In combat a Messerschmitt pilot, pursued by an early Hurricane or Spitfire, could push the stick forward and dive, while the same maneuver would cause the Merlin to cut out due to mixture leaning from negative G. The carburetors float would respond to what it now thought was down, flooding the engine for several secondsand several seconds can mean life or death in aerial combat. RAF pilots would roll inverted and pull back on the stick to keep positive G, but by that time their quarry had frequently escaped.

Beatrice Tilly Shilling, a scientist at the Royal Aircraft Establishment, designed a simple flow restrictor to solve the problem. Resembling a metal washer, it allowed a maximum fuel flow of what was required at full throttle. The device became known at the Rolls factory by the somewhat indelicate name Miss Tillys Orifice. Luftwaffe pilots, accustomed to escaping by diving, now experienced a nasty surprise on finding the pursuing Hurricane or Spitfire still behind them. Later models of the Merlin used in fighters utilized Bendix or Rolls-Royce single-point fuel injection into the eye of the supercharger impeller, and Miss Tillys Orifice eventually passed into legend.

Radial engine proponents point out that liquid-cooled power plants are more vulnerable to battle damage: While a radial often continued to run even with a cylinder shot completely off the crankcase, a bullet in the cooling system of its inline counterpart could bring the flight to a rapid end. But well-designed liquid-cooled engines like the Merlin could run for long periods beyond normal operational limits without overheating, as liquid cooling is more efficient than air cooling, particularly for the cylinder head and valves. And they could operate at higher altitudes, reducing risk from anti-aircraft fire.

Far from being delicate and temperamental, as some round engine devotees maintain, the Merlin proved time and again that it could take abuse and still bring wounded aircraft home. Accounts of its fortitude are legion, including heavy bombers returning with half their engines disabled by flak or fighters, using throttle and boost far beyond the specified maximums for hundreds of miles. For example, one bomber pilot wrote, I had to return from Nuremburg in a Wellington on one engine and used maximum boost and revs on a Merlin X for five hours with no sign of distress. In another incident, an Avro Lancaster pilot who lost an engine just after takeoff pressed on to Stuttgart, fully loaded with fuel and bombs, using climb power on three engines for the whole trip.

The Merlin served in all war theaters, with all Allied air forces including the Sovietsand was the only British engine to be used in American warplanes. In fact, it was in the P-51 Mustang that the Merlin, produced under license as the V-1650 by the Packard Motor Car Company, gained perhaps its greatest renown.

American precision daylight bombing of key targets deep inside Germany, by unescorted heavy bombers of the Eighth Air Force, began badly. By late spring of 1943, Luftwaffe strength was growing and its fighter tactics were improving. Bomber losses reached 14 percent during the April 17 raid on Bremen. In July 128 bombers were shot down, with 1,280 crewmen either killed or taken prisoner, and half the surviving aircraft had suffered battle damage.

The assumption that bombers, flying in mutually defensive formations, could penetrate Germany without fighter escort all the way to the target was proving to be a disastrous repeat of the Luftwaffes experience against Britain three years earlier. It persisted in the face of all the evidence for the same reason: There were no suitable long-range fighters. The Republic P-47s radius, even with drop tanks, was only 400 miles. The twin-engine Lockheed P-38 had the range, but in a dogfight was outperformed by well-handled single-engine fighters, just as the Messerschmitt Me-110 had been in 1940. Losses in raids on Schweinfurt and Regensburg on August 17 reached as high as 20 percent, and a return raid on Schweinfurt on October 14 resulted in an intolerable 27 percent loss34 percent if planes scrapped on their return were countedforcing the Eighth Air Force to suspend raids until a solution could be found.

Even if a factory was hit, it was almost impossible to destroy the vital machine tools and presses. Once wreckage was cleared away, production often restarted within days. Despite temporary disruptions, German fighter production continued to increase until the wars last months. The Germans simply decentralized their fabrication and assembly to smaller, satellite plants and cottage industry sites.

The Allison V-1710, the only American inline engine used in WWII, was very similar to the Merlin in several ways, but lacked the power development potential and altitude capability, relegating the RAFs early Allison-powered Mustangs to low-level photoreconnaissance. In a marriage made in heaven, five P-51s were fitted with Merlin 65s at Rolls-Royces research airfield at Hucknall in 1942, transforming a good fighter into a superb one, faster than the Fw-190 and Me-109 at all altitudes and superior to both in virtually all respects. Carrying 270 gallons of fuel internally and two 75-gallon drop tanks, the Packard Merlinpowered Mustangs had an endurance of 7 hours. They could escort the B-17s and B-24s to any target in Germany, and outfight any Luftwaffe plane on the way there and back.



Mechanics work on one of four Merlins powering an Avro Lancaster bomber of No. 207 Squadron at RAF Bottesford airfield, Lincolnshire, in June 1942. (IWM TR 0020) Mechanics work on one of four Merlins powering an Avro Lancaster bomber of No. 207 Squadron at RAF Bottesford airfield, Lincolnshire, in June 1942. (IWM TR 0020)

Legendary 357th Fighter Group ace Clarence Bud Anderson wrote of the Merlin-equipped Mustang in his memoir To Fly and Fight, The Merlin had great gobs of power, and was equally at home high or low, thanks to a two-stage, two-speed supercharger. Bob Goebel, who flew Mustangs with the 31st Fighter Group in the Mediterranean theater, explained the superchargers operation in Mustang Ace: The P-51 had a two-stage blower in the induction system that was controlled automatically with a barometric switch. Around 17,000 feet, when the throttle had been advanced almost all the way forward just to maintain normal cruise, the blower would kick into high, the manifold pressure would jump up, and the climb could be continued to 30,000 feet.

Although bomber losses dropped dramatically with the Mustang escorts, Maj. Gen. James H. Jimmy Doolittle believed the Eighth Air Force was committing the same mistake Hermann Goring had in the Battle of Britaincompelling the escorts to stay close to the bombers instead of allowing them to range free, around and ahead of the formation. On assuming command of the Eighth on January 6, 1944, he noticed a sign at VIII Fighter Command headquarters: THE FIRST DUTY OF THE EIGHTH AIR FORCE FIGHTERS IS TO BRING THE BOMBERS BACK ALIVE. Doolittle ordered it changed to: THE FIRST DUTY OF THE EIGHTH AIR FORCE FIGHTERS IS TO DESTROY GERMAN FIGHTERS. The bombers would be bait to trap the Luftwaffe, the objective being the total destruction of its fighter arm and the achievement of Allied air superiority over Europe, in preparation for D-Day and to enable U.S. and British aircraft to bomb key targets at will.

Soon whole fighter groups were allowed to freelance, and the Luftwaffe hunters became the hunted. Communication experts in England monitored German radio transmissions and vectored the Mustangs in to attack enemy fighters as their formations assembled. Free-ranging Mustangs destroyed German fighters, including Messerschmitt Me-262 jets, on the ground or during takeoff and landing. In February and March 1944, the Luftwaffe lost 4,236 aircraft. Although German fighter production rose from 24,807 in 1943 to 44,000 in 1944, lack of fuel and relentless pressure by the Allied air forces overwhelmed the Luftwaffe. Pilots were being killed faster than they could be replaced, and by the time of the last major Allied raid on April 25, 1945, the once-dominant force had virtually ceased to exist.

Without the P-51 Mustang, and its Merlin engine, the Allies could not have achieved air superiority over Europe in 1944. The Normandy invasion might have been delayed or even failed, and the war could have dragged on into 1946. The prospect of a strong Luftwaffe, equipped with thousands of piston engine and jet fightersnot to mention scores of Arado Ar-234 jet bombersis unpleasant to contemplate. Instead, as Albert Speer, Hitlers armaments minister, told the Japanese ambassador at the outset of the escorted bombing campaign, For the first timeraids, which might deal a really fatal blow to Germany, have begun.

The 1939 Merlin Mk. I was rated at 950 hp. By 1945 the Merlin RM17SM had been flight-tested at a continuous 2,200 hp, with 2,640 hp available for short periods. No other engine achieved such a remarkable power increase while continuing to run reliably. Some 160,000 Merlins were produced during WWII, more than 100,000 in Britain, the rest by Packard in the U.S. They were used in more applicationsair, marine and landand appeared in more marks (50) and power ratings (21) than any other engine. They powered aircraft of more purposes (nine) and types (31). Today Merlins continue to propel many warbirds in the U.S., Britain and elsewhere, and the engines throaty growl can still be heard at airshows around the world.

In an ironic coda to the Merlin story, the final variant of the Me-109, the Spanish-built Hispano Aviacion HA-1112-M1L Buchon, was equipped with the 1,600-hp Merlin 500-45 engine. Remaining in service until December 1965, it was later used, disguised as Me-190Es and Gs, in films such as Battle of Britain, Memphis Belle and The Tuskegee Airmen. And so the circle was completed: 30 years earlier, a Rolls-Royce Kestrel had powered the prototype Messerschmitt Bf-109V1.

Nicholas ODell served in the RAF from 1958 to 1962. For further reading, he recommends: Clash of Wings, by Walter J. Boyne; Allied Piston Engines of World War II, by Graham White; and Not Much of an Engineer: An Autobiography, by Sir Stanley Hooker and Bill Gunston.

Originally published in the September 2009 issue of Aviation History. To subscribe, click here.
Thirty years after Amelia Earhart vanish, another woman flier set out to retrace her unfinished journey.

The Lockheed Model 10 Electra circled above the vast Pacific, its crew members straining their eyes in search of a small island, just two miles long and rising about 10 feet above the ocean. Rain obscured their vision and played tricks on them. Was that land? No, just raindrops clouding the endless vista. The Pratt & Whitney radials continued their steady drone, but the crew realized they didnt have much time left before their fuel ran dangerously low.

The Electras pilot was a young, vivacious blonde, but her name was not Amelia. Ann Holtgren Pellegrenos love of flying and yen for adventure had led her to undertake this ambitious journey in July 1967. She and her crew were re-creating the ill-fated around-the-world attempt of Amelia Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan in 1937, last heard broadcasting to the Coast Guard cutter Itasca, desperately trying to locate tiny Howland Is  land. Earharts plane vanished into the shadows of a mystery that continues to this day.

There were many parallels between the two pilots. Like Earhart, Ann Holtgren grew up in the Midwest, south of Chicago. Ann and her sister Lois enjoyed adventures usually re  served for young boys, just as Amelia and her younger sister Muriel had. By the time Holtgren reached her teens, she enjoyed watching planes take off and land at Midway Airport. But thats as close as she got to aviation until the year after she and her husband Don graduated from the University of Michigan, when both were bitten by the flying bug.

My first lesson was in an Aeronca Champ at Young Field, several miles west of Ann Arbor, Michigan, Ann recalled. Meanwhile she taught English at nearby Saline Junior High School, just as Amelia had near Boston before starting her aviation career. After achieving her commercial and flight instructor ratings, Pellegreno taught flying at Ann Arbor Airport.

It was the Pellegrenos aircraft mechanic, Lee Koepke, who suggested Ann participate in a commemorative flight. Koepke owned a restored Lockheed Model 10, a sister ship to the one Earhart flew, and envisioned re-creating that 1937 odyssey with the help of a woman pilot. He had taken great pains during the planes refurbishment to prepare it for an around-the-world journey. But the true test of his skill would be how the old Electra performed on such a long flight.

Planning began in January 1967. They wanted to make the flight at the same time of year as the original attempt, and they hoped to follow Earharts route as closely as possible. Additional fuel tanks were needed to raise the capacity to 850 gallons, along with fuel and oil transfer systems, as well as state-of-the-art communication and navigation equipment. For that they would need to find sponsors. Earhart had benefited from Purdue Universitys generous purchase of her Electra, which was dubbed a flying laboratory. When Pellegreno learned that Earhart had taken more than 10,000 flight postal covers with her to have canceled at designated stops, for sale to stamp and aviation memorabilia collectors in sets, she decided to do the same.

Eventually donations began trickling in from the Champion Spark Plug Company, Jeppesen & Company, Goodyear and Garwin-Weston. There was even a much-appreciated check for $12.76 from the seventh-grade students at the school where Pellegreno had taught.

The navigation challenges seemed overwhelming at first. Earhart of course had help from Fred Noonan, who was considered one of the best navigators of his time. Noonan had been instrumental in laying out the Pacific routes for Pan Americans famous Clippers. Pellegreno and Koepke needed someone who could recommend the proper equipment and perhaps a potential navigator. Bill Polhemus, president of an Ann Arbor based navigation research engineering firm, fit the bill. He knew exactly what equipment they would need and had contacts within the industry who were willing to loan the team whatever they required. Polhemus himself had served as a lead navigator in the U.S. Air Force on Convair B-58s in the 1950s, participating in record-breaking flights.

Pellegreno and Polhemus studied maps and plotted primary routes, alternate routes, magnetic courses and potential overnight stops. That must have been some flight in 1937, Polhemus remarked at one point. Look at those areas in Africa. Nothing but sand. No radio aids either. Not many now. The more I look at their route and know the equipment they used, the more I respect and admire those two.

Earharts plan was to fly close to the equator, and Pellegreno and Polhemus wanted to retrace her path. There was to be only one major deviation from the 1937 flight: Instead of flying across central Africa, political issues would force them to go from Dakar, Senegal, north to Lisbon, Portugal, then east across Europe, picking up Earharts route in Karachi, Pakistan. And since How  land Island was no longer inhabited, they planned to drop a commemorative wreath during a flyover, then continue on to Canton Island.

Pellegreno recalled: Amelia Earharts Lockheed had been equipped with a three-axis autopilot called a Sperry Robot Pilot to relieve the physical strain of flying. My lack of flying experience outside the United States combined with the tight schedule before the flight, the small amount of time I would have to fly the plane, and no autopilot meant a copilot was mandatory. Enter U.S. Air Force Colonel William R. Payne, who had flown B-58s with Polhemus as well as Beech C-45s, very similar in configuration to the Electra. Payne managed to get a months leave from active duty. Their flight would be designated Rapid Rocket. It seemed the perfect teamPellegreno, Koepke, Polhemus and Paynehad been assembled.

At 10:45 a.m. on June 9, 1967, Electra N79237 lifted off the runway at Oakland, Calif., heading east. Fuel stops at Tucson and Miami, with an overnight in New Orleans in between, comprised the continental U.S. stops. By the time the crew was ready to leave U.S. airspace, everyone had settled into a routine and learned the Electras little quirks.

Tropical storms in the Atlantic caused them to change course frequently as they headed toward South America. The last fuel stop before crossing the Atlantic was at Natal, Brazil. The flight after that would be over almost 1,900 miles of ocean, lasting more than 15 hours and requiring nearly 600 gallons of fuel. That meant the Electra would be dangerously close to its maximum takeoff weight, and it would require every inch of runway. The takeoff from Natal had been risky for Earhart as well; she and Noonan had paced off the length of the grass runway and had lifted off at 3:15 a.m., using the entire strip.

As Pellegreno started down the runwayonly visible to the halfway point, since it sloped downhill after thatKoepke was poised behind her, his hand on the fuel dump valve just in case. She pushed the throttles forward and the Lockheed slowly gained speed. I could have run faster! Pellegreno recalled. Finally, with the green lights marking the runways end fast approaching, the plane staggered into the air. We were relieved when 1,000 feet had been gained, she said, but even then if an engine failed, the Lockheed might be almost in the ocean before we had dumped enough fuel to lighten the plane sufficiently. Thus began a long flight, through the darkness and rain squalls, with no landmarks in sight.

Prior to landfall on the African continent, Polhemus gave Ann a course correction that put them right into Dakar. Flying across southern Europe, the Lockheed was cleared to altitudes above 10,000 feet, where everyone had to bundle up. Warmth greeted them when they landed in Tehran, Iran; by the time they made it to Karachi, they were back on Earharts trail.

When they reached Port Moresby on New Guinea, Polhemus purchased a wreath made of green, yellow and red leaves, with a white card bearing the words In memory of Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan1937. The next days flight took them across the island to Lae, their final stop before leaving for Nauru and Howland Island, and the last place Earhart and Noonan had re  fueled 30 years earlier.

More than 400 people, some of whom recalled witnessing Earhart and Noonans takeoff, greeted them at Lae. In fact the Rapid Rocket Electra occupied the same hangar that Earhart had used, one of a handful of the islands structures not destroyed by bombing during World War II.

At dawn the next day, July 1, Pellegreno embarked on the journeys most significant legthe 3,000 miles from Lae to Canton Island, with a flyover of Howland. Following a quick refueling stop at Nauru Island, it would be empty ocean and skirting squall lines, with Polhemus calling out navigation corrections roughly every 10 minutes. Earhart had left Lae a day later, but Pellegreno timed her flight so she could send a message from aloft to members of the Ninety-Nines, an international organization of women pilots, and Amelias sister Muriel Morrissey, who were gathered at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.

About 400 miles west of Howland Island, Pellegreno broadcast: Thirty years ago another silver Lockheed 10 was flying toward Howland Island about this time. In essence weve been back in that year, 1937.Weve thought about Amelia Earhart and other aviation pioneers. Along with these thoughts has come the realization of the tremendous undertaking an around-the-world flight was in 1937. My navigator has worked out a sun line, the same one Amelia was working and we will attempt to find Howland using the method used during the 1937 flight.

The success of this leg was now up to Polhemus. But as with the earlier flight, everyone would have to be vigilant to spot tiny Howland Island in the middle of that vast blue ocean. As they neared Howlands coordinates, rain squalls blocked their view. The ETA came and went with no landfall. At Polhemus suggestion, and with the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Blackhaw verifying their position, they flew in several directions, believing they couldnt be very far from Howland. But by 20 minutes past their ETA, everyone was be ginning to get tense. Given their fuel level, they would soon have to head for Canton Island.

Pellegreno recalled: I heard another message echo. KHAQQ calling Itasca. We must be on you but cannot see you. Thirty years later we had the same feeling. We must be near Howland, but where was it? The bearing taken on the Blackhaw indicated we were in the right area.

It was Koepke who finally spotted Howland Island through a break in the clouds, lying about 10 miles to their south. Soon everyone could see the red and white tower on the isles western side that houses the Earhart Beacon, as well as foundations of other buildings that once stood there. As we circled Howland, lying jewel like in a dark blue ocean, I felt a sense of historyan exciting feelingand also one of extreme relief that we had found the island, Pellegreno remembered. This was where another Lockheed 10 should have landed thirty years ago. No trace of the three runways prepared for the other plane was visible, the scrub brush having obscured them. It was easy to imagine that high above us the ghostly silver wings of another Lockheed 10 were casting a shadow on the island which had been there in 1937 too.

Pellegreno went back to where Koepke had secured himself in his seat. He opened the door and held onto her, to keep her from being pulled out into the slipstream as she tossed out the wreath. As she leaned forward, the wreath was wrenched from her hands and fell earthward.

There was no time to waste. The crew was exhausted by the time they arrived at Canton about three hours later. But by midnight the next day, everyone was again ready to go. Honolulu was about 2,000 miles to the northeast. It was July 4, the day Earhart and Noonan had planned to be back in the States in 1937. Roughly 14 hours after takeoff, the Lockheed taxied up to the Pan American gate.

The crew still faced the longest leg of the trip, nearly 2,500 miles over nothing but ocean between Honolulu and Oakland Airporta little over 17 hours flying time. Headwinds cut back on their airspeed for a time, but eventually the winds diminished and skies cleared. They all knew they were nearing journeys end when a twin-engine plane with news photographers aboard drew alongside to get the first shots of their return. At last they spotted the California coastline. The Electra headed for the same runway it had used one month before on its departure.

The crew was mobbed with well-wishers, family members and corporate sponsors. Celebrations were held at Oakland, Denver and Newton, Kan., where Muriel Morrissey thanked Pellegreno for completing her sisters flight.

Then the Electra continued on to Oshkosh, Wis., Koepkes hometown, and finally back to Detroits Willow Run Airport. As Pellegreno cut the throttles for the last time, she had mixed feelings. We were breaking up a family of fivethe four of us and that grand old Lockheed, she recalled. It had taken the cooperation and assistance of hundreds of people to get the Lockheed around the world. We had completed Amelia Earharts flight plan from Oakland to Oakland, and now had finished ours. The right synthesis of plane, people, and flight plan had brought this venture to a successful conclusion.

The following year Koepke sold the Electra to Air Canada, and it now has pride of place in the Canada Aviation Museum, part of Ottawas National Museum of Science and Technology. He subsequently opened the Detroit Institute of Aeronautics at Willow Run.

Polhemus returned to his Ann Arbor navigation company, where he helped to develop a helmet-mounted display for the military and equipment for precision instrument approaches. Payne rejoined the Air Force, later retiring to become the personal pilot for the owner of a development company.

Ann and Don Pellegreno went on to build or restore several aircraft. After contributing articles on her great adventure to Air Progress and McCalls magazines, Ann wrote a book, World Flight: The Earhart Trail, published in 1971, as well as a three-volume history of Iowa aviation, Iowa Takes to the Air. The recipient of many writing and flying awards, she has also been inducted into the Iowa Aviation Hall of Fame, the Michigan Aviation Hall of Fame, the EAA Hall of Fame and the Iowa Womens Hall of Fame. In 2004 she received the Amelia Earhart Pioneering Achievement Award.

Shortly before her last flight, Amelia Earhart wrote, failure must be but a challenge to others. Ann Pellegreno agrees. To women hoping to make a career in aviation, she says: Just forget your gender and learn to fly or pursue any of the hundreds of other related jobs. Thousands of other women have essentially led the way into virtually all aspects of aviation.

Pellegreno should know; shes one of them.

Scott Fisher is a retired teacher who writes from Allerton, Iowa. For further reading, he recommends: World Flight: The Ear  hart Trail, by Ann Holtgren Pellegreno; and The Sound of Wings: The Life of Amelia Earhart, by Mary S. Lovell.

Originally published in the September 2009 issue of Aviation History. To subscribe, click here.
The US website BuzzFeed has published an extraordinary memo which will invite fresh scrutiny of the social media behemoths business model and practices

The US website Buzzfeed has published in full an extraordinary internal memo, written by Facebook Vice President Andrew Boz Bosworth. In it, one of the companys key figures  who has worked with Facebook since 2006  acknowledges the ugly truth that the companys growth will cost lives.

The gist of the memo, which was written on 18 June, 2016, is that anything the company does to grow and to connect people is justified  even if people lose their lives as a result.

"So we connect more people, the memo says.

"That can be bad if they make it negative. Maybe it costs a life by exposing someone to bullies. Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack co-ordinated on our tools.

"And still we connect people.

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"The ugly truth is that we believe in connecting people so deeply that anything that allows us to connect more people more often is *de facto* good. It is perhaps the only area where the metrics do tell the true story as far as we are concerned."

In an astonishing paragraph, Bosworth also seems to acknowledge that Facebook itself consciously engages in data mining of a potentially illegal kind.

"That's why all the work we do in growth is justified, the memo says. "All the questionable contact importing practices. All the subtle language that helps people stay searchable by friends. All of the work we do to bring more communication in. The work we will likely have to do in China some day. All of it."

Since the publication of the memo on BuzzFeed, Bosworth has attempted to distance himself from its contents. Via Twitter, he has said that he didnt agree with with the post, but that it had been shared with staff to be provocative.

"Having a debate around hard topics like these is a critical part of our process and to do that effectively we have to be able to consider even bad ideas," he added.

However, it is a defence which will hardly convince the growing number of people who are deeply disillusioned with the invasive exploitation of their data for profit by the tech giant. The companys motto is: "Move fast and break things. The memo suggests that this might now be amended to Move fast and kill things.

After all, who really cares?

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You can read the memo here
The band debuted a new collaboration with rapper Snoop Dogg, titled 'Hollywood', at Lollapalooza in Chile.

There might be more Gorillaz music on the way before their headliner at Malahide Castle this summer.

NME reports that at a recent concert in Chile, front man Damon Albarn told the crowd If you go and tell anyone that were putting a new album out very soon, then Ill deny it because I didnt say that, alright?

The band then proceeded to debut 'Hollywood', a new track which features Snoop Dogg (not present at the gig).

This isn't the first time the the virtual alt-hop band have collaborated with Snoop. The rapper featured on Gorillaz's 2010 album Plastic Beach. Check out the footage from the concert below.

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Gorillaz will play at Malahide Castle on June 9.
The line-up for Good Fridays Late Late Show with Ryan Tubridy has been announced  and its not to be missed.

Boomtown Rats frontman and activist Bob Geldof will join Ryan in conversation likely to revolve around his recent controversy when, in a PR stunt gone awry, he handed back his Freedom of the City to Dublin City Council, only have the Council to strip him of the award anyway. Geldof's actions were in response to the awarding of the same medal to Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Geldof was attempting to protest the treatment of Rohingya muslims in Myanmar.

Also on the cards is a discussion of the Marriage Equality referendum, and what the result means for his relationship with his homeland.

Former RTE newsreader and national treasure Bryan Dobson will appear, recounting the most memorable moments as a newsreader in his 21 year career and discussing his feelings on moving to a new position on radio at Morning Ireland.

Cork-born New York based comedian Maeve Higgins will join Ryan on the sofa to discuss breaking the notoriously difficult US market.

Multi-instrumentalist Finbar Furey will perform and chat to Ryan about his new album, and signing a new record deal at the age of 71.

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Home of the Year judges Hugh Wallace, Deirdre Whelan and new judge Patrick Bradly will drop in to discuss the criteria for actually making it as Home of the Year.

Animal lovers are in for a treat as mistreated donkeys nursed back to health by the Donkey Sanctuary make an appearance.

This evenings show will also see Northern Irish band Relish perform.
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Concord Music Shifts European Licensing From PRS To ICE

Independent publisher Concord Music is signing a deal with European licensing organization ICE for representation of Concords digital rights.

As a result of the agreement, first reported by MusicWeek, Concord will pull its rights from PRS For Musics independent publishers online licensing organization IMPEL.

News of the new licensing deal comes less than a year after US-based Concord moved into European markets with the purchase of European indie publisher Imagem Music Group.

IMPEL, which is currently a component of the MPA Group Of Companies, is currently undergoing restructuring under the guidance of CEO Jane Dyball, including the development of new leadership team, MusicWeek reported.

That group of publishers always wanted to be fully independent, and have their own entity, Dyball told Music Week.

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Adams-Cheshire Superintendent Robert Putnam and McCann representative Daniel Maloney Jr. present their budgets to the Selectmen on Wednesday.

Adams Selectmen Approve Budget for Fiscal 2019

ADAMS, Mass.  The Selectmen on Wednesday unanimously approved a $15,648,022 fiscal 2019 budget that is a .51 percent increase over this year.

The board ran through it one final time and made some final changes. The spending plan now goes to the Finance Committee, which meets on Tuesday night at 6 p.m.

"It is unanimous," Chairman John Duval said. " and I want to thank everyone involved in creating this budget."

Over the past few weeks, the Selectmen met with department heads to review a budget that is essentially level funded and uses free cash to lower the tax rate.

Interim Town Administrator Donna Cesan made a small addition in asking the Selectmen use $15,000 to purchase a machine to maintain the Ashuwillticook Rail Trail, for which the town is now responsible.

The $15,000 will be taken from $250,000 allocated to make repairs to Hoosac Valley Elementary School. Cesan said this amount can be made up in the Hoosac Valley Elementary School repair line item if need be.

Wednesday's meeting was scheduled to tie up any final concerns and vote on the budget, so it can be reviewed by the Finance Committee, but before taking this vote the board reviewed the Adams-Cheshire Regional School District budget and the McCann Technical School budget.

ACRSD Superintendent Robert Putnam said the $19,750,146 budget is a 2.46 percent increase over fiscal 2018. He said it continues with the trends set this year and brings on a new STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) teacher and a full-time psychologist.

"I think that budgets happen in the context of a long-range plan ... and I think the work that has happened over the past year speaks volumes of how things are moving forward," Putnam said. "You asked where we were going and what our vision was .... and I think that vision is coming into clarity and I think it is getting sharper and sharper."

Adams' assessment, within the levy limit, will be $4,966,936, which is a .528 percent increase.

Selectwoman Christine Hoyt thanked the School Committee for its consideration and said the smaller increase allowed the town to allocate the $235,000 from free cash to make repairs to Hoosac Valley Elementary.

"I want to thank the School Committee and the administration for listening to the town of Adams," Hoyt said. "We did take you to task last year ... I appreciate all the work that was done."

Daniel Maloney Jr., Adams' representative on the McCann School Committee, presented the vocational school district's $9,340,159 budget that is virtually level funded with a .04 percent increase.

He said the budget was designed to provide some relief to the member towns while maintaining a high level of service.

"We do understand the financial realities our communities face and ... state funding is the problem everything goes up ... and it is very hard to build a budget without an increase there," he said. "They just keep pushing more and more on to the communities."

Adams' assessment will be $940,171 which is an $88,242 decrease from this year. He added these numbers are mostly driven by student enrollment and that Adams' assessment is based on 129 students.

The Selectmen had no major qualms with the school budget and they thanked the administration for keeping the communities' finances in mind.

"I just want to commend McCann. You guys do a good job and put out a good product," Selectman Joseph Nowak said.

The members of the board then had the opportunity to hold any line item within the budget for discussion, however, none of the selectmen raised any concerns.

The budget will be voted at the annual town meeting in June.
Finance Committee members, from left, Elisabeth Goodman and Elaine Neely follow Wednesday's presentation.

Williamstown Finance Committee Reviews School Spending Proposal



Interim Superintendent Kimberley Grady presents the fiscal 2019 budget to the Williamstown Finance Committee on Wednesday. WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass.  The Finance Committee on Wednesday reviewed the fiscal 2019 spending plan for the Mount Greylock Regional School District, and its members were pleased to hear that the district plans to maintain or add to its programs with only a modest impact on the town's assessment.

The newly expanded region benefited from no increase in health insurance rates from FY18, as did the town.

For Williamstown's taxpayers, who will see a single assessment for preK-12 education on this May's town meeting warrant, the middle-high school portion of the bill is up by $226,521, a 3.54 percent increase from $6.4 million in FY18 to $6.6 million for the coming school year.

For the elementary school, the assessment needs some context. Some of the revenue that used to be associated with the town budget (when Williamstown Elementary was a town department) now goes to the regional school district, and some of the costs that used to be born by the school (for health insurance of retirees prior to July 1, 2018) now goes to the town.

When those costs are adjusted for an apples-to-apples comparison, the property tax burden for Williamstown Elementary comes out to $6.5 million, up from $6.4 million this year, a change of 1.84 percent.

Combined, Williamstown taxpayers will be asked to pay an assessment of $11.8 million, the sum of its assessment for the elementary school and Mount Greylock.

In the "apples to apples" sense, Williamstown's total tax burden for education -- after cost and revenue shifts -- is $13,101,073. Last year, it was $12,275,757, so the increase is $343,316, or 2.7 percent.

Some of that increase is associated with the last year of a phased-in increase to taxpayers in Williamstown and Lanesborough for bond payments associated with the building project at Mount Greylock.

On the operational side, there are program enhancements at both schools associated with FY19 budget, interim Superintendent Kimberley Grady told the Fin Comm.

At Williamstown, the district will maintain staffing and provide 1:1 ChromeBooks in Grades 3 to 5 to bring the school up to the level at Lanesborough Elementary. The elementary budget also includes funds for the school's Math Club, Lego Robotics team and Shakespeare & Company residency; all three of those programs were removed from the appropriated budget a couple of years ago but continued through funding from the school's charitable endowment.

At Mount Greylock, the FY19 budget includes the return of a school resource officer, additional co-curricular funding targeted at the arts and the addition of a school adjustment counsellor.

"We have had a rise in students with anxiety disorders and those in need of alternative education programs," Grady explained to the Fin Comm.

Grady and Mount Greylock Principal Mary MacDonald also talked about how the middle-high school is going to handle an incoming "bubble" class that has been percolating through both feeder elementary schools.

The projected seventh-grade next fall stands at 120 (with no new choice seats and just 11 choice students matriculating from the two elementary schools, combined). The renovated and rebuilt Mount Greylock was designed for a student population of 535, which converts to an average of about 90 per class.

Grady said that 535 number really is more of an issue for student lockers than classroom space.

"The design of the building  still gives us flexibility to give us the kind of programming we want," MacDonald said. "Juniors and seniors will probably share lockers. They do right now.

"We may have to do some more creative assignments [for middle school teachers]. We anticipate this is for one group coming through."

That said, the Level 1 middle-high school continues to be a draw, MacDonald said.

"I take a lot of calls from parents interested in coming to Mount Greylock," she said. "When they hear there aren't [School Choice] seats, they want to know who is selling real estate. So, we'll see."

The Finance Committee, which earlier this winter received a couple of sneak peaks at how regionalization would impact the way the school budget is built, did not take any votes Wednesday on whether to recommend the district's budget to town meeting. That vote will come later in the spring when the committee makes its advisory votes on all fiscal warrant articles.

The Fin Comm members Wednesday agreed to pass along any additional questions on the spending plan to Grady and Mount Greylock Transition Committee Chairman Joe Bergeron and left open the possibility of further discussion of the school budget at next Wednesday's Fin Comm meeting.
SVMC Welcomes New Physician Assistant to Northshire Campus

BENNINGTON, Vt.  Southwestern Vermont Medical Center welcomes Alessandro Cavalcante to the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Putnam Physicians. Cavalcante is certified by the National Commission on Certification of Physician Assistants.



Cavalcante received his masters in Physician Assistant Studies and a bachelor's degree in biology both from Union College in Nebraska. His previous medical experience includes positions at Cris Oncology and The Lung Clinic, both in Kissimmee, Fla.



SVMC's Northshire Campus offers comprehensive medical care for the whole family. Its services include pediatrics, obstetrics, health promotion and wellness programs, and on-site telemedicine, laboratory, and x-ray services. The office is located at 5957 Main Street in Manchester Center, Vt. Appointments are available 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Fridays. Call 802-362-4440 for an appointment.
Choreographer Wins Jacob's Pillow Dance Award

BECKET, Mass.  Faye Driscoll, hailed as "a postmillenium postmodern wild woman" by Deborah Jowitt of The Village Voice, has received the 12th annual Jacob's Pillow Dance Award.



The Bessie Award-winning choreographer, director and alumnus of The School at Jacobs Pillow joins a group of honorees that includes Annie-B Parson and Paul Lazar of Big Dance Theater, Kyle Abraham of Abraham.in.Motion, Michelle Dorrance of Dorrance Dance, Camille A. Brown of Camille A. Brown & Dancers, and Liz Lerman of Dance Exchange.



The award will be formally presented as part of the Jacobs Pillow Season Opening Gala on June 16, followed by the presentation of Driscolls work at Jacobs Pillow Dance Festival for the second consecutive summer, Aug. 1-5.



"Faye Driscoll is an artist/philosopher who is asking important questions: what does performance tell us about participation and about our responsibility to engage? She is keenly aware that the moment of performance is only made by the presence of both performer and audience member, and she is interested in the highly charged space that forms between them. She's consistently interrogating what it means to be human and all the ways we put on personas in our lives. She's unafraid to take risks, to ask questions we may not want to ask, and its the purity of that quest that I so admire. We are also so proud that she is an alumnus of The School at Jacob's Pillow," Jacob's Pillow Director Pamela Tatge said.
Vermont State Police Name New Public Information Officer

WATERBURY, Vt.  Longtime Vermont News reporter and editor Adam Silverman has been named public information officer for the Vermont State Police.



Silverman will be responsible for helping the state police provide accurate and timely information to the public and the news media on public safety matters, and to engage the citizens and visitors of Vermont. He will advise the state police on best practices for the release of public information and support the vision of the state police to be leaders in policing with an emphasis on fairness, compassion and service.



Silverman joins the Vermont State Police following nearly two decades with the Burlington Free Press, where he began his journalism career as a reporter before becoming one of the newsroom's lead editors. He also served as president of the Vermont Press Association before stepping down following his appointment as Vermont State Police PIO.



"We welcome Adam and we are fortunate to have someone with his depth of experience joining the Vermont State Police," said Colonel Matthew Birmingham, director of the Vermont State Police.
Imperial Valley News Center

First Border Patrol Academy Class Graduates under the New Curriculum

Artesia, New Mexico - The United States Border Patrol Academy is celebrating the graduation of Class 1084 by holding an official ceremony at the Artesia High School Auditorium. The Border Patrol Academy has invited and encourages the community to attend this historic event. Class 1084 is the first Border Patrol class to officially graduate from the Academy under the new curriculum.

The new 117-day curriculum has greatly improved new agent training by increasing training hours in almost every discipline.

The graduation starts at 6:00 p.m. on April 20, 2018 at the Artesia High School Auditorium, located at 215 S. 15th St. in Artesia, N.M. (88210). The graduation is open to the public.
Rescued Bengal Tiger Cub Moka Recovers from Surgery; Reunites with Best Friend Rakan at San Diego Zoo Safari Park

Escondido, California - Guests visiting the San Diego Zoo Safari Parks Tull Family Tiger Trail exhibit this morning (Thursday, March 29, 2018) were delighted to see Bengal tiger cub Moka and his Sumatran tiger buddy Rakan, once again enjoying some playtime togetherrunning, pouncing and climbing in an outdoor area. Two days ago, veterinarians determined that Moka was recovering well from his March 6 emergency surgery to correct intestinal adhesions, and could to go back outside and resume his normal routine. Until today, he had been spending his days recovering in his bedroom area at Tiger Trailwith his best friend Rakan by his sideunder the care of veterinarians and keepers.

Mokas sutures are looking great, hes healing well and his prognosis for a full recovery is really good, said Katie Christofferson, keeper, San Diego Zoo Safari Park. Moka will continue to get a veterinary check once a week for the next couple of weeks, but hes now hes able to run, jump and pounce, while honing his tiger skills.

Mokas dedicated keepers and veterinarians closely monitored him throughout the healing process to ensure a safe and smooth transition back to his active life on Tiger Trail. Guests will be able to see both cubs daily from around 9 a.m. until noon most days, in one of the outdoor exhibits at Tiger Trail.

Now that the cubs are getting older, there are some noticeable differences. Rakan is much darker in color and his stripes are much closer togetherand hes the more dominant of the two. Moka is lighter in color and is now the larger of the two cubs, weighing in at 100 pounds. Rakan currently weighs 90 pounds.

Bengal cub Moka was confiscated by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers during a vehicle inspection Aug. 23, 2017, at the U.S./Mexico port of entry near San Diego. The cub remains under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. As part of the organizations broader efforts to lead the fight against extinction, San Diego Zoo Global is committed to reducing wildlife trafficking and the demand for illegal wildlife products.

The U.S. is a party in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, an international agreement commonly known as CITES. This treaty regulates trade in endangered species of wildlife, plants and their products. International trade in species listed by CITES is illegal unless authorized by permit. Additional information on importing and exporting endangered species is available at cbp.gov.

Bringing species back from the brink of extinction is the goal of San Diego Zoo Global. As a leader in conservation, the work of San Diego Zoo Global includes on-site wildlife conservation efforts (representing both plants and animals) at the San Diego Zoo, San Diego Zoo Safari Park, and San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research, as well as international field programs on six continents. The work of these entities is inspiring children through the San Diego Zoo Kids network, reaching out through the internet and in childrens hospitals nationwide. The work of San Diego Zoo Global is made possible by the San Diego Zoo Global Wildlife Conservancy and is supported in part by the Foundation of San Diego Zoo Global.
Update to Immigrant Visa Processing for Cuban Nationals

Washington, DC - Since January, immigrant visa interview appointments for Cuban nationals have been scheduled at U.S. Embassy Bogota. This was due to a drawdown in staffing in Cuba to protect the safety of our personnel.

On April 1, we will begin transferring current immigrant visa applications and scheduling immigrant visa interviews for Cuban nationals at U.S. Embassy Georgetown, Guyana. Guyana will then be the primary site for processing immigrant visa applications for Cubans. The first interviews will take place in June.

As we transition immigrant visa operations for Cuban nationals to Guyana, we will continue to communicate with applicants, so they have current information. No applicants should make travel plans until they have a scheduled visa interview appointment.

In determining an alternative location, now Georgetown, Guyana, we considered a number of factors including availability of flights, visa requirements, space to accommodate additional applicant files, and availability of staff. Cubans do not need a visa to travel to Guyana. As before, Cuban applicants for routine non-immigrant visas may apply at any U.S. embassy or consulate outside Cuba.
California woman with arrest warrant apprehended by CBP at Peace Arch

Blaine, Washington - U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Office of Field Operations at the Peace Arch Port of Entry, detained a 40-year-old McFarland, California, woman Friday when a systems check revealed she was the subject of a National Crime Information Center (NCIC) warrant for burglary in the second degree, criminal trespass in the first degree and contributing to delinquency of a child.

The warrant was issued by Maricopa County Sheriffs Office in Phoenix, Arizona. After confirmation of the warrant, Whatcom County Sheriffs Office took custody of the woman and transported her to the Whatcom County Jail pending extradition to Maricopa County.

CBP officers remain diligent in their efforts to intercept wanted individuals, said Area Port Director Kenneth Williams. Our work is vital to protecting the homeland and officers consistently do an outstanding job of taking people off the street that may pose a concern to our communities.

NCIC is a centralized automated database designed to share information among law enforcement agencies including outstanding warrants for a wide range of offenses. Based on information from NCIC, CBP officers have made previous arrests of individuals wanted for homicide, escape, money laundering, robbery, narcotics distribution, sexual child abuse, fraud, larceny, and military desertion.
Protect Civil Society in Ukraine

Washington, DC - The United States strongly encourages the government of Ukraine to repeal legislation that requires the asset declarations from civil society and international members of state-owned-enterprise supervisory boards. Ukraines asset declaration system should hold public officials accountable and not place unnecessary burdens or pressure on civil society.

This punitive law targets those very individuals who seek to increase transparency and accountability in Ukraine, fulfilling the promises of the Euromaidan and the Ukrainian peoples aspirations for a democratic country governed by the rule of law. We urge the Ukrainian government to expeditiously cancel the asset declaration requirements, in line with recommendations by the Venice Commission, and, in the interim, provide a temporary amnesty for those individuals who do not file declarations by the upcoming deadline.
In todays world of endless choices, stresses and demands, your bedroom is something of a safe haven. A place you go to recharge and escape the outside world - or at least try. Too many of us get by on poor quality sleep and a crucial factor you may be forgetting is the bedding youre using. Youre going to spend a third of your life sleeping, so why not make sure you get the best rest possible?

There are a few important aspects to consider when choosing your bedding: thread count, fabric, and aesthetics.

A common mistake is equating high thread-count with quality, but many brands will try to trick you here. Thread-count refers to the number of threads used vertically and horizontally per square inch of fabric, with a higher count meant to increase softness and density. However, many manufacturers use multi-ply threads in order to strengthen weaker cotton and then include each ply in the final count; a 250 thread-count of 3-ply fibers can masquerade as 750, while still feeling rough on your skin. To avoid this, prioritise the quality of the fiber above the count. (Weve done this work for you when making our selections).

When it comes to fabric, its all about personal preference. Your most common options are percale cotton; sateen cotton; linen, and microfiber. Percale has the same number of horizontal threads as vertical threads in its weave, while sateen has more vertical threads. The result? Percale tends towards a crisp feel; sateen is silky. For warmer weather or hot sleepers, linen is a great choice that tends to look more lived-in, more relaxed. Lastly, microfiber is a synthetic fabric which can provide unparalleled softness, often at much lower costs.

Once youve got your base, you can consider the look - print or plain, bright or neutral, trims or simplicity. Thats the fun part!

Finding the right bedding will be one of the most valuable things you do this year, so let this guide do the legwork for you. We looked at both the comfort and style of bed linens across the market and here is our pick of the best.

All prices based on the Full/Queen size

Parachute Percale Venice Set: from $299, Parachute

An homage to Parachutes Californian roots, the percale Venice set has an undeniable light breeziness to it. Available in shades like sand and powder, the washed-out tones give a bohemian charm without compromising on quality or luxury. The percale stays cool on the skin throughout the night and is stonewashed to ensure it continues to soften over time. As an added bonus, with every purchase a malaria bed-net is donated to Nothing but Nets, a United Nations Foundation anti-malaria campaign. Now you really will sleep easy.

Buy now

Brooklinen Classic Hardcore Sheet Bundle: from $198, Brooklinen.com

The simplest set in the range, Brooklinens Classic collection is anything but ordinary. By using only single-ply, long-staple cotton, the result is a seriously smooth and light percale fabric that stays cool and crisp, even at their lowest thread count (the Classic still clocks in at 270). The color selection only includes neutrals and simple stripes, but the tasteful palette suggest curation rather than limitation. With the bundle including a flat sheet, top sheet, 4 pillow cases and a duvet set, this is a great balance of affordability and quality.

Buy now

The Casper Sheets: from $140, Casper

The mattress experts have expanded into the entire bedding range and for good reason: they know what theyre doing. Theres only one style, available in 6 two-tone or plain colors, but nevertheless this is good bedding. Not only is the percale cotton exceedingly comfortable, but the Casper team have added a few handy details to ensure maximum practicality. Snap ties inside each duvet corner, a hidden zipper at bottom, clear labels on the fitted sheet to tell you which side is which - sleeping well has never been so simple.

Buy now

Threshold Performance Sheet Set Solids 400 Thread Count: from $44.99, Target

A national favorite for a reason, this bedding by Target is affordable, soft and available in 21 colors. There are no patterns or extra flourishes here, just simple and classic sheets that still rack up a 400 thread count. The sateen weave gives an especially soft and slippery feel on the skin, yet they still hold up well in a tumble dryer and all sheets include practical labels of the top, bottom and sides. Although this set doesnt include a duvet cover, there are plenty of accompanying options in the Threshold range which keep up the standard.

Buy now

Pinzon Paris Printed Egyptian Cotton Sateen Duvet Set: from $54.99, Pinzon by Amazon

Its easy to feel like Amazon is taking over the world but its also hard to say no to this duvet set. With a subtle filigree pattern on either eggshell or gray Egyptian cotton, these covers look far more expensive than their price tag. The sateen weave is perfect for those who like their sheets on the silky side but need something durable; multiple reviews claim them to be pet-proof. Available on Prime shipping, youre just two days away from a great nights sleep.

Buy now

The White Companys Savoy Bed Linen Collection: from $169, The White Company

British-based The White Company has recently expanded into the US market, to great success. Winning New York Magazines Best Sheets prize earlier this year, the Savoy collection is a perfect example of the brands Egyptian cotton bedding. Unsurprisingly, the options are all white-based but you can opt for delicate cord trim in Silver, Navy or Mink. Soft yet still crisp, these are the sheets that will make you feel like youve brought the five-star hotel experience into your own bedroom.

Buy now

Mellanni Brushed Microfiber Bed Sheet Set: from $24.70, Mellanni

This option by Mellanni is one of the best-sellers on Amazon with over 37,000 customer reviews and a 4.5 star rating - the people have spoken and they love these sheets. Instead of cotton, theyre made from microfiber which creates an especially soft feel while still being thin and lightweight; perfect for quick washing and easy storage. Hypoallergenic, available in 36 colors and budget-friendly, these sheets have proven particularly popular with families, students and young kids.

Buy Now

The Verdict: Best bedding sets

Our ultimate favorite has to be Parachutes Venice set. It may not have the va-va voom of print, it may not pack in any secret details, but it did give us the best nights sleep of the bunch. Jumping into bed became a real treat, rather than simply the last step at the end of the day, and Parachutes flawless shades earned a lot of compliments from jealous roommates. Although its not the most wallet-friendly of the bunch, this set includes everything you need to completely makeover your bed - what are you waiting for?

For the more economically-minded, you really cant go wrong with Mellannis Microfiber offering. It is unbelievably soft, easy to store and the durability is impressive considering how affordable it is. We couldnt find a comparable range of colors on the market - or a more loyal fanbase. This buy is reliable without being boring.

And if youre somewhere in the middle budget-wise, looking to maybe try something new as summer creeps nearer, why not go with Loomsteads linen set? Its beautiful to look at, even better to sleep in, and heavily rooted in sustainability. Win, win, win.

IndyBest product reviews are unbiased, independent advice you can trust. On some occasions, we earn revenue if you click the links and buy the products, but we never allow this to bias our coverage. The reviews are compiled through a mix of expert opinion and real-world testing.
Out of the mouths of babes there is great wisdom. I couldnt help but think of this as I heard young person after young person speak last week during the various March for Our Lives rallies that were held worldwide in opposition of gun violence.

Their efforts reminded me of Dr. Martin Luther Kings efforts, particularly now as we commemorate the 50th anniversary of his death.

Kings efforts as well as those at the forefront of the March for Our Lives rallies remind us not to remain silent in the face of hate, violence and injustice. The same is true for those who adamantly stand up in opposition of the continuous, senseless killing of unarmed Black men. They too remind us that if we want change, we have to speak up and firmly demand specific changes and offer ideas on how that change can be made.

However, it is not lost on me that key advocates of the Black Lives Matter movement havent been hailed or celebrated in such as a way as the core group of teenage survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting that occurred last month in Parkland, Florida.

Granted, national media outlets have provided coverage of the Black Lives Matter movement, and the movement has graced the covers of esteemed publications like TIME, however, there has not been such universal acceptance of that movement; a stark contrast to what weve seen relative to the gun control movement sparked by mostly white teenagers.

However, I am not deterred because I am hopeful positive change is on the way. In the words of King, We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.

A key element to the success of Kings efforts was when the world saw what was occurring in the American South. Worldwide, people saw respectfully dressed Black men, women and children peacefully marching in opposition of segregation and racial injustice. The world also saw the unwarranted attack of the marchers. Whether it was the police officers with their batons, the dogs angry bites, or the hate spewed on the faces of white men as they physically assaulted innocent Blacks  the world watched. And because the world saw such horrible acts of violence, because well-intentioned American whites protested alongside Blacks, because Blacks, under the influence of King were united and clear about their demands, positive change eventually came.

Blacks are going to need that type of intervention from the world and our well-intentioned white brothers and sisters to adamantly stand with us and not only decry police brutality and racial injustice, but also continuously work to expose the wrongdoings, offer tangible solutions to the problem and implement true change.

King said it best time after time:

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

The time is always right to do what is right.

And my favorite of all time: In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

Seeing such continuous overt racism and injustice on so many levels weighs me down at times. It literally makes my heart heavy. But rather than remain in that place of despair and defeat, I strive to do more; be it documenting the injustices on the pages of the Recorder so more people are aware and feel impassioned to help or having authentic dialogues with my white friends and associates so they can understand a different perspective. We all must do our part to make the world a better place.

One of my newest heroes certainly is doing her part to make the world better. Eleven-year-old Naomi Wadler was one of the youngest people who spoke at the March for Our Lives rally in Washington. Her remarks urged the country to not forget the vast number of Black women who are overwhelmingly victims of gun violence.

Congressman John Lewis, who worked alongside King and has dedicated his life toward racial and social justice recently stated, Of all the gifts given us by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., I think the greatest has been the belief in societys ability to change and the power each of us has to affect that change.

We each have the power to make a change, we just have to do it. I hope now, more than ever, it is impressed upon you to do what is necessary to make a positive change.
Bollywood actress Raveena Tandon had adopted two daughters in 1995 when she was only 21. She has been approached by a New York-based school called Film Connection for a documentary, which shall outline her journey of raising two daughters as a single mother. (photo provided)
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Tiger Shroff (left) and Disha Patani are seen in a still from their film "Baaghi 2." Shroff plays an Army officer in the film and looks amazingly like his father, Jackie Shroff. (photo provided)
Prof. Achyuta Adhvaryu of the University of Michigan. The Indian American researcher started the Good Business Lab to study interventions that have the potential to impact worker welfare while also promoting the growth of firms. (Twitter photo)
Indian American Navroze Mody (center) was fatally beaten outside the Gold Coast Bar in Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1987, by members of a gang who called themselves the Dotbusters. New Jersey has a long history of hate violence against Indian Americans, but a new report released March 28 by New Jersey state Attorney General Gurbir Grewal shows only three incidents of hate crimes against Asian Indians in 2016. (archived photo via Modys parents)
Twelve states, including New Jersey, have agreed to sign on to a lawsuit which seeks to block a question about citizenship being asked on the 2020 Census. Particularly in the current national climate, a citizenship question will obviously cause great consternation and discourage participation in the Census, said New Jersey state Attorney General Gurbir Grewal, who is Indian American. (Facebook/New Jersey Office of the Attorney General photo)
Fazlur Rehman Khalil, an ex-ally of Osama bin Laden and co-founder of Harakat-ul-Mujahedeen, a group accused by the U.S. of training militants, is travelling around Pakistan championing a fatwa against militant violence inside the country. The U.S. says Khalils freedom calls into question Pakistans commitment to fighting terror. (YouTube screengrab)
March 29, 2018 " Information Clearing House " - I was inside the CIAs Langley, Va., headquarters on Sept. 11, 2001. Like all Americans, I was traumatized, and I volunteered to go overseas to help bring al-Qaedas leaders to justice. I headed counterterrorism operations in Pakistan from January to May 2002. My team captured dozens of al-Qaeda fighters, including senior training-camp commanders. One of the fighters whom I played an integral role in capturing was Abu Zubaida, mistakenly thought at the time to be the third-ranking person in the militant group.

By that May, the CIA had decided to torture him. When I returned to CIA headquarters that month, a senior officer in the Counterterrorism Center asked me if I wanted to be trained in the use of enhanced interrogation techniques. I had never heard the term, so I asked what it meant. After a brief explanation, I declined. I said that I had a moral and ethical problem with torture and that  the judgment of the Justice Department notwithstanding  I thought it was illegal.

Unfortunately, there were plenty of people in the U.S. government who were all too willing to allow the practice to go on. One of them was Gina Haspel, whom President Trump nominated Tuesday as the CIAs next director.

Putting Haspel in charge of the CIA would undo attempts by the agency  and the nation  to repudiate torture. The message this sends to the CIA workforce is simple: Engage in war crimes, in crimes against humanity, and youll get promoted. Dont worry about the law. Dont worry about ethics. Dont worry about morality or the fact that torture doesnt even work. Go ahead and do it anyway. Well cover for you. And you can destroy the evidence, too.

Described in the media as a seasoned intelligence veteran, Haspel has been at the CIA for 33 years, both at headquarters and in senior positions overseas. Now the deputy director, she has tried hard to stay out of the public eye. Mike Pompeo, the outgoing CIA director and secretary of state designee, has lauded her uncanny ability to get things done and inspire those around her.

Im sure thats true for some. But many of the rest of us who knew and worked with Haspel at the CIA called her Bloody Gina.

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The CIA will not let me repeat her resume or the widely reported specifics of how her work fit into the agencys torture program, calling such details currently and properly classified. But I can say that Haspel was a protege of and chief of staff for Jose Rodriguez, the CIAs notorious former deputy director for operations and former director of the Counterterrorism Center. And that Rodriguez eventually assigned Haspel to order the destruction of videotaped evidence of the torture of Abu Zubaida. The Justice Department investigated, but no one was ever charged in connection with the incident.

CIA officers and psychologists under contract to the agency began torturing Abu Zubaida on Aug. 1, 2002. The techniques were supposed to be incremental, starting with an open-palmed slap to the belly or the face. But the operatives where he was held decided to start with the toughest method. They waterboarded Abu Zubaida 83 times. They later subjected him to sleep deprivation; they kept him locked in a large dog cage for weeks at a time; they locked him in a coffin-size box and, knowing that he had an irrational fear of insects, put bugs in it with him.

Rodriguez would later tell reporters that the torture worked and that Abu Zubaida provided actionable intelligence that disrupted attacks and saved American lives. We know, thanks to the Senate Intelligence Committees report on CIA torture and the personal testimony of FBI interrogator Ali Soufan , that this was false.

I knew what was happening to Abu Zubaida because of my position in CIA operations at the time. I kept my mouth shut about it, even after I left the CIA in 2004. But by 2007, I had had enough.

President George W. Bush had steadfastly denied to the American people that there was a torture program. I knew that was a lie. I knew torture didnt work. And I knew it was illegal. So in December 2007, I granted an interview to ABC News in which I said that the CIA was torturing its prisoners, that torture was official U.S. government policy and that the policy had been personally approved by the president. The FBI began investigating me immediately.

A year later, the Justice Department concluded that I had not committed a crime. But CIA leaders were still furious that I had aired the agencys dirty laundry. The CIA asked the new Obama Justice Department to reopen the case against me. It did, and three years later, I was charged with five felonies , including three counts of espionage, resulting from that ABC News interview and a subsequent interview with the New York Times . Of course, I hadnt committed espionage, and the charges were eventually dropped, but only after I agreed to plea to a lesser charge. I served 23 months in prison.

It was worth every day. Largely because the CIAs conduct became public, Congress has specifically prohibited waterboarding and other techniques that the agency used at the secret sites. A ban on torture is now the law of the land.

But while I went to prison for disclosing the torture program, Haspel is about to get a promotion despite her connection to it. Trumps move hurts morale among CIA officers who recognize that torture is wrong. It comforts people at the agency who still believe enhanced interrogation is somehow acceptable. I spoke with a senior officer this past week who said, The more things change, the more they stay the same. Theres an attitude of defeatism among opponents of torture.

And the message it sends to our friends and allies (and the countries we criticize in the State Departments annual human rights reports) is this: We say were a shining city on a hill, a beacon of respect for human rights, civil rights, civil liberties and the rule of law. But actually, thats nonsense. We say those things when its expedient. We say them to make ourselves feel good. But when push comes to shove, we do what we want, international law be damned.

The meaning of Haspels nomination wont be lost on our enemies, either. The torture program and similar abuses at military-run prisons in Iraq were among the greatest recruitment tools that al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and other bad actors ever had, according to legal experts, U.S. lawmakers and even the militants themselves. It energized them and gave them something to rally against. It sowed an even deeper hatred of the United States among militant groups. It swelled their ranks. It was no coincidence that the Islamic State paraded its prisoners in front of cameras wearing orange jumpsuits (like those worn by Guantanamo Bay detainees) before beheading them. Haspel and the others at the CIA who engineered and oversaw the torture program are at least partially responsible for that, because they showed the world how the United States sometimes treats captives.

Do we Americans want to remain a nation that tortures people, like North Korea, China and Iran? Are we proud of the era when we snatched people from one country and sent them to another to be interrogated in secret prisons? Do we want to be the country that cynically preaches human rights and then violates those same rights when we think nobody is looking?

Our country cannot afford that. We cannot look the other way. We cannot reward the torturers. Gina Haspel has no business running the CIA.

John Kiriakou is a former CIA counterterrorism officer and a former senior investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He co-hosts "Loud and Clear" on Sputnik Radio, which is funded by the Russian government.
By Mehdi Hasan

March 29, 2018 " Information Clearing House " - Who better to advise the bully-in-chief, Donald Trump, on when to make war and kill people than another bully? Its difficult, after all, to avoid the label  that of a bully  when thinking of John Bolton, the former Bush administration official-turned-Fox News pundit who Trump recently picked as his national security adviser.

John Bolton is a bully, Jose Bustani, the retired Brazilian diplomat and former head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, told me when I reached him by phone in Paris earlier this month.

There are a number of people who claim to have been bullied or intimidated by Bolton  including Bustani. The latters criticisms of the famously mustachioed hawk have been public for many years now, but some of the details of his tense encounter with Bolton at the OPCW have never been reported before in English.

In early 2002, a year before the invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration was putting intense pressure on Bustani to quit as director-general of the OPCW  despite the fact that he had been unanimously re-elected to head the 145-nation body just two years earlier. His transgression? Negotiating with Saddam Husseins Iraq to allow OPCW weapons inspectors to make unannounced visits to that country  thereby undermining Washingtons rationale for regime change.

In 2001, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell had penned a letter to Bustani, thanking him for his very impressive work. By March 2002, however, Bolton  then serving as under secretary of state for Arms Control and International Security Affairs  arrived in person at the OPCW headquarters in the Hague to issue a warning to the organizations chief. And, according to Bustani, Bolton didnt mince words. Cheney wants you out, Bustani recalled Bolton saying, referring to the then-vice president of the United States. We cant accept your management style.

Bolton continued, according to Bustanis recollections: You have 24 hours to leave the organization, and if you dont comply with this decision by Washington, we have ways to retaliate against you.

There was a pause.

We know where your kids live. You have two sons in New York.

Bustani told me he was taken aback but refused to back down. My family is aware of the situation, and we are prepared to live with the consequences of my decision, he replied.

After hearing Bustanis description of the encounter, I reached out to his son-in-law, Stewart Wood, a British politician and former adviser to Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Wood told me that he vividly remembers Bustani telling him about Boltons implicit threat to their family immediately after the meeting in the Hague. It instantly became an internal family meme, Wood recalled. Two former OPCW colleagues of Bustani, Bob Rigg and Mikhail Berdennikov, have also since confirmed via email that they remember their then-boss telling them at the time about Boltons not-so-subtle remark about his kids.

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Another former OPCW official, then-Special Assistant to the Director-General for External Relations Gordon Vachon, who was in the room for the meeting with Bolton, has confirmed that the Bush administration official implicitly threatened Bustani. The OPCW chief could go quietly, with little fuss and restraint on all sides and without dragging your name through the mud, Vachon recalled Bolton saying, in an email to The Intercept. I cannot say from memory that I heard Mr. Bolton mention DG Bustanis children, probably because I was reeling from Mr. Boltons thinly-veiled threat to DG Bustanis reputation.

I reached out to John Bolton and the White House for a response to these allegations. Rather than issue an outright denial, the White House responded via a press spokesperson that referred me to a section of his 2008 memoir, Surrender is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations, which deals with Bustani and the OPCW. In the book, Bolton said the U.S. viewed Bustani as a management disaster (without mentioning Powells praise), but claims to have offered him a gracious and dignified exit  if, that is, he went quietly.

To call Boltons rhetoric undiplomatic is an understatement. He visited Bustani in his capacity as a top U.S. State Department official, yet his behavior was more thuggish. How on earth can a senior diplomat, representing a democratic government, justify implicitly threatening the children of an international official in order to win a political argument? How is such a person now fit to hold the office of national security adviser  the most senior position in the U.S. government that doesnt require an election win or Senate confirmation?

The problem with this man is that hes so ideological, so brutal; he doesnt open the door to dialogue, the former OPCW chief told me on the phone. I dont know how people can work for him.

Boltons history of bullying, in fact, is well-documented. Carl W. Ford Jr, the State Departments former intelligence chief, called Bolton a serial abuser of junior employees and a quintessential kiss-up, kick-down sort of guy. Testifying before the Senate in 2005, Ford discussed the case of Christian Westermann, the former chief bioweapons analyst at the State Department who had refused to sign off on a speech accusing Cuba of possessing a secret bioweapons program and had been berated by Bolton, who then tried to have him fired.

Melody Townsel, a former U.S. Agency for International Development contractor, said she was harassed by the short-tempered Bolton, then a lawyer in the private sector, on a visit to Kyrgyzstan in 1994: Mr. Bolton proceeded to chase me through the halls of a Russian hotel  throwing things at me, shoving threatening letters under my door and, generally, behaving like a madman, she later recalled, in a letter to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

According to Time magazine, his former boss Colin Powell privately warned Republican senators in 2005, during the confirmation hearings for Boltons controversial nomination as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, that he had been troubled by the way Bolton had treated subordinates who did not agree with him.

Yet the big problem is that Bolton  the madman, the serial abuser, the bully  happens to also be pretty effective at getting things done. This is perhaps what makes him so dangerous. Take the case of Bustani and the OPCW: Bolton succeeded in having the Brazilian removed from his post. Only a few weeks after the U.S. officials visit to the Hague, the OPCW chief was pushed out of office in an extraordinary meeting of the organizations member countries (and in a decision, incidentally, that an administrative tribunal of the International Labour Organization would later call unlawful).

Bolton himself proudly recalled in his memoir how then-Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., criticized his views while praising his abilities during the 2001 congressional hearings to confirm him as under secretary of state. My problem with you, over the years, has been, youre too competent, Biden remarked, according to Bolton. I mean, I would rather you be stupid and not very effective.

Now, therefore, is the time to panic; now is the moment to sound the alarm. The bullies have come together. The ideological and brutal Bolton is about to be given a desk a few feet away from the Oval Office. As national security adviser, hell be the first one in the room and the last one out. Trump is utterly ignorant of the world, prone to making impulsive decisions, and tends to defer to the most forceful voice in the room, especially when it conveys information with confident bluster, observed Damon Linker in the The Week. That would give Bolton enormous power to shape policy  which means the power to get the United States to launch big new wars as well as expand the numerous ones were already waging across wide swaths of the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia.

Is it any wonder, then, that Bustani  who did so much to prevent the threat of conflict and the proliferation of chemical weapons before being ousted by Bolton  believes the latters appointment as Trumps national security adviser could spell disaster for the world?
March 29, 2018 " Information Clearing House " - The nuclear deal with Iran hangs by a thread. The appointment of John Bolton  an unapologetic proponent of war with Iran  as U.S. national security advisor has prompted celebrations among Iran deal detractors. The announcement that nuclear talks with North Korea will be held around the same time that U.S. President Donald Trump must decide whether to keep or kill the Iran deal has further complicated the picture. Yet few in Washington understand how Trumps gamble with Pyongyang may impact Tehrans nuclear calculations.

Conventional wisdom declares that Trump would be foolish to kill the Iran deal (formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA) if he genuinely seeks to reach an agreement with the North Koreans. If Trump shows that he does not honor Americas agreements, why would Pyongyang strike a deal with him?

But Trump is anything but conventional. His logic runs in the opposite direction, and Bolton will be more than happy to enable Trumps worst instincts. By killing the JCPOA, Trump thinks hell signal to the North Koreans that they should have no doubt that he is ready to walk away from the talks if he doesnt get what he wants. After all, walking away from ongoing negotiations is much easier than killing an existing deal.

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Trump may know bluster, be he does not know diplomacy. Strong-arming subcontractors may work in the Manhattan real estate market, but it wont work in international diplomacy. Sovereign states dont react like jilted architects and electricians.

How will Iran react if Trump pursues this path? For Tehran, the JCPOA was never just about the nuclear issue. It was a test to see if the West could come to terms with the Islamic Republic and accept Iran as a regional power. By testing this proposition, the talks became a defining showdown between the two dominant schools of thought within the Iranian elite.

The first school, dominated by conservative elements in the government and military, argues that the United States  pressured by Israel and Saudi Arabia  is inherently hostile to Iran and will never recognize the country as a regional power or come to terms with its regime, regardless of Irans policies or the compromises it offers. The inclusion Tehran seeks can only be achieved by forcing the United States and its allies to accept the reality of Irans power. The hard-liners skepticism of diplomacy and resistance to compromise is partly rooted in their belief that no Iranian compromise can change Washingtons hostility to Tehran.

Irans second, more moderate group of policy-makers recognizes both that the countrys own actions have contributed to infectious conflict and that the United States has legitimate concerns about Iranian policies. An American acceptance of Irans inclusion in the regional security architecture can be obtained, they argue, through diplomacy and a genuine give-and-take. If Iran compromises, so will the West, the logic goes.

Up until the nuclear negotiations began in earnest, the debate between these two schools was theoretical. Though Tehran had made many diplomatic overtures in the past, Americas willingness to come to terms with Iran had never been tested through a mutual compromise that both sides had signed on to.

Until, that is, the JCPOA.

The Iran nuclear deal was the first time the United States and Iran had agreed to a significant exchange of concessions that not only eliminated Irans pathways to a bomb and lifted sanctions, but also put an end to almost four decades of American efforts to completely isolate Iran. It signaled that America, 36 years after the Iranian revolution, was coming to terms with Iran.

Both sides agreed to painful concessions, both faced fierce domestic political opposition, and both recognized that the agreement signaled a major break with past policies. America was coming to terms with Iran. And the Islamic Republic was speaking of the United States not as the Great Satan, but as a negotiation partner.

It was a major victory for the second school of thought in Iran  at least for the moment.

But increasingly, the JCPOA has become a victory for the hard-liners. Despite Irans concessions and its adherence to the deal (confirmed by 10 reports by the International Atomic Energy Agency), Trump, Saudi Arabia, and Israel have clearly rejected Irans regional integration under any circumstance. Changes in Irans policies proved insufficient, so nothing short of Irans complete capitulation can seemingly satisfy Trumps allies.

This conclusion will be unavoidable in Tehran if Trump kills the JCPOA to make a deal with Pyongyang. It will strengthen the Iranian hard-line narrative that Tehrans mistake was that it only obtained enrichment capabilities  but not a bomb  before it agreed to seriously negotiate. Had it built a bomb  like the North Koreans  then the United States would have no choice but to show Iran respect, strike a deal with it  and honor that deal. Trump will essentially incentivize Iran to go nuclear.

Ultimately, Trumps bluster wont work. He lacks a properly staffed State Department with the capacity to negotiate, and his new national security advisor ideologically opposes diplomacy. By killing the Iran deal to impress Pyongyang, Trump will destroy one functioning arms deal without securing a new one. And in the process, he will tilt the balance in favor of those in Tehran who have argued all along that America only understands the language of force.

Trita Parsi
More Lies from the Presstitutes

By Paul Craig Roberts

March 29, 2018 " Information Clearing House " - The shameless liars that comprise the US media intentionally exaggerated the marchers against gun violance by four times the acutal number.

Why?

Why are the media presstitutes involved in advocacy of agendas and not in reporting factual news?

Recent polls show that a majority of Americans believe that gun ownership makes people safer. Americans do not believe that people should be denied safety because of an occasional nutcase or a staged shooting to advance the gun control agenda. Indeed, they wonder who is behind the gun control agenda. They wonder about the dumbshits who are protesting the Second Amendment instead of Washingtons rush into conflict with Russia.

I have no doubt that gun control groups are organized by agents of the police state. The United States is falling apart. All of the increase in income and wealth is going to the One Percent. Everyone else is hurting more each day. See Chris Hedges, for example: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49082.htm

The vast majority of Americans are being ground into the dirt by government at all levels. There is no democracy. There is only looting. The One Percent fear that sooner or later even insouciant Americans might rise up. But they cant if they are disarmed. That is all gun control is about.

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Deaths from what the propagandistic gun violance shills for the police state hype as a massive problem are such a small percentage of US deaths that they do not even show up statistically. Yet we have all this protest over an infintestimal number of deaths, and no protests at all by opponents of gun violence over police killings, which are larger that gun violence deaths or over Americas massive murders on a world scale. Where are the gun violence protests over the millions of deaths and millions of displaced peoples in Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan? Where are the gun violence protests against Trumpts chosen national security adviser John Boltons plan to bomb Iran and North Korea into the stone age?

They are nowhere to be found. How much more evidence do you need that the gun violence people are totally insensitive to real violence and only serve a police state agenda?

A reader sent me this . I dont have the time to check it out. So some of you check it and let me know. If correct, I will acknowledged it, and also if incorrect.

This was posted by a friend on FB, I thought it worthy

Sharing this data from a friend who has researched these statistics

thoroughly. There are 30,000 gun related deaths per year by firearms,

and this number is not disputed. The U.S. population is 324,059,091 as

of June 22, 2016 (the last searchable census numbers) Do the math:

0.00925% of the population dies from gun related actions each

year. Statistically speaking, this is insignificant! What is never

told, however, is a breakdown of those 30,000 deaths, to put them in

perspective as compared to other causes of death:

-65% of those deaths are by suicide, which would never be prevented by gun laws.

-15% are by police.

-17% are through criminal activity, gang and drug related or mentally

ill persons.

-3% are accidental discharge deaths.

So technically, gun violence is not 30,000 annually, but drops to

5,100. Now lets look at how those deaths spanned across the nation:

-480 homicides (9.4%) were in Chicago

-344 homicides (6.7%) were in Baltimore

-333 homicides (6.5%) were in Detroit

-119 homicides (2.3%) were in Washington D.C. (a 54% increase over prior years)

So basically, 25% of all gun crime happens in just 4 cities. All 4 of

those cities have strict gun laws, so it is not the lack of law that

is the root cause. This basically leaves 3,825 for the entire rest of

the nation, or about 75 deaths per state -an average because some

States have much higher rates than others. For example, California had

1,169 and Alabama had 1.

Now, who has the strictest gun laws by far? California, of course, but

it is not guns causing this. It is a crime rate spawned by the number

of criminal persons residing in those cities and states. So if all

cities and states are not created equal, then there must be something

other than the tool causing the gun deaths.

Are 5,100 deaths per year horrific? How about in comparison to other

deaths? All death is sad and especially so when it is in the

commission of a crime but that is the nature of crime. Robbery,

death, rape, assault are all done by criminals. It is ludicrous to

think that criminals will obey laws. That is why they are called

criminals.

But what about other deaths each year?

Nearly 75% of all deaths in the United States are attributed to just

10 causes, with the top three of these accounting for over 50 percent

of all deaths. Over the last 5 years, the main causes of death in the

U.S. have remained fairly consistent.

1. Heart disease

2. Cancer (malignant neoplasms)

3. Chronic lower respiratory disease

4. Accidents (unintentional injuries)

5. Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases)

6. Alzheimers disease

7. Diabetes

8. Influenza and pneumonia

9. Kidney disease (nephritis, nephritic syndrome, and nephrosis)

10. Suicide

Guns dont even make the top ten list. Not to mention:

-40,000+ die from a drug overdoseTHERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR THAT!

-36,000 people die per year from the flu, far exceeding the criminal gun deaths.

-34,000 people die per year in traffic fatalities(exceeding gun deaths even if you include suicide).

-200,000+ people die each year (and growing) from preventable medical errors. You are safer walking in the worst areas of Chicago than you are when you are in a hospital!

-710,000 people die per year from heart disease. Where is the real war on fast food? Why are we not teaching healthy eating in schools?

So what is the point? If the liberals and the anti-gun movement focused their attention on heart disease, even a 10% decrease in cardiac deaths would save twice the number of lives annually of all gun-related deaths (including suicide, law enforcement, etc.). A 10% reduction in medical errors would be 66% of the total number of gun deaths or 4 times the number of criminal homicides -Simple, easily preventable 10% reductions! So you have to ask yourself, in the grand scheme of things, why the focus on guns? Its pretty simple: (to Steven Waughs point)

Taking away guns gives control to governments. The founders of this nation knew that regardless of the form of government, those in power may become corrupt and seek to rule as the British did by trying to disarm the populace of the colonies. It is not difficult to understand that a disarmed populace is a controlled populace.

Thus, the second amendment was proudly and boldly included in the U.S. Constitution. It must be preserved at all costs. So the next time someone tries to tell you that gun control is about saving lives, look at these facts and remember these words from Noah Webster: Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts' latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West , How America Was Lost , and The Neoconservative Threat to World Order .
On the Verge of Nuclear War?

By Paul Craig Roberts

March 29, 2018 " Information Clearing House " - One wonders if this latest extremely provocative and hostile accusation against Russia, supported by Washingtons empire, is the prelude to war. There is no basis whatsoever for the statement of the US Department of State that on March 4, Russia used a military-grade nerve agent to attempt to murder a British citizen and his daughter in Salisbury.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-03-26/trump-expel-60-russian-diplomats-shut-seattle-consulate

Considering the fact that no evidence has been presented that any nerve agent was involved, no evidence that it was a Russian nerve agent, and no evidence that Russia, or Putin himself according to the crazed British foreign secretary, is responsible, this accusation is the most reckless and irresponsible charge imaginable.

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If the Russians do not now realize that the only terms on which they are acceptable to the West is as a vassal state of the West, they are beyond all hope and will be destroyed. If the Russian Atlanticist Integrationists continue to paralyze the Russian government, Russia is finished. There is no greater threat to Russia than its own Atlanticist Integrationists.

What will be Washingtons next orchestration through one of its vassal states, such as Great Britain? Can it get any worse? If the Russian government is realistic, it will expect an incoming nuclear ICBM strike. There is no other reason for the long collection of false charges against Russia except to prepare the insouciant Western peoples for war. If the Russian government does not realize that Washington is bringing war to Russia, the Russian government is endangering Russias survival.

If the Russian government continues to believe that the door to dialogue is open, the Russian government is deluded beyond repair.

The insouciant Western people, concerned with things of no consequence, sit in their stupidity while their corrupt politicians tell them lies. The populations of the West are so stupid that they do not have a clue as to the consequences of the lies that they are fed.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts' latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West , How America Was Lost , and The Neoconservative Threat to World Order .
It seems that the 'Novichok' fairy-tale the British government plays to us provides for a happy ending - the astonishing and mysterious resurrection of the victims of a "military grade" "five to eight times more deadly than VX gas" "nerve agent" "of a type developed by" Hollywood.

Happy Easter!

Yulia Skripal no longer in critical condition, say Salisbury doctors

The condition of Yulia Skripal, who was poisoned with a nerve agent in Salisbury along with her father, is improving rapidly, doctors have said. Salisbury NHS foundation trust said on Thursday the 33-year-old was no longer in a critical condition, describing her medical state as stable. Christine Blanshard, medical director for Salisbury district hospital, said: Im pleased to be able to report an improvement in the condition of Yulia Skripal. She has responded well to treatment but continues to receive expert clinical care 24 hours a day."

...

Her fathers condition is still described by the hospital as critical but stable.

Only yesterday the Skripals chances to survive was claimed to be 1 out of 99. Nerve agents are deadly weapons. A dose of ten milligram of the U.S. developed VX nerve agent will kill 50% of those exposed to it. The 'Novichok' agents are said to be several times more deadly than VX.

It seems less and less likely that the British government claim about 'Novichok' poisoning is actually true. Way more likely are other explanations, for example food poisoning or an allergic shock soon after eating out at a fish restaurant.

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The claims of a nerve agent and 'Novichok' seem to have been taken from the script of the British-American spy drama Strike Back (clip) which recently ran on British and U.S. TV. The sole purpose of the 'Novichok' drama is to implicate and damage Russia.

Yulia and Sergej Skripal were found unconscious on the afternoon of March 4.

The U.S. State Department says that its campaign to use the Skripal incident as a tool against Russia started on March 6, only two days after the incident and six full days before the British government raised accusations against Russia.

In her press briefing on March 27 the U.S. State Department spokeswomen Heather Nauert talked about the coordinated ousting of Russian diplomats by some "western" countries:

Our Deputy Secretary Sullivan, Assistant Secretary Wess Mitchell, and many others in the building across the interagency process have worked tirelessly over the past three weeks to achieve this unprecedented level of cooperation and also coordination. The end result  151 Russian intelligence personnel sent home to Moscow  is a testimony of how seriously the world takes Russias ongoing global campaign to undermine international peace and stability, to threaten the sovereignty and security of countries worldwide, and to subvert and discredit Western institutions.

The above quote is from Nauert's prepared remarks, not the more free wheeling Q&A section.

The British prime minister made her allegations against Russia only on March 12:

"It is now clear that Mr Skripal and his daughter were poisoned with a military grade nerve agent of a type developed by Russia. This is part of a group of nerve agents known as 'Novichok'."

(See our earlier pieces, linked below, for many details on 'Novichok' and its history.)

May's announcement was similar to Tony Blair's "45 minutes" claim. A lie, concocted in a common propaganda operation with the U.S. government. As the Downing Street Memos said of the preparations for the war on Iraq:

C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.

bigger

There are several details that debunk the 'Novichok' thesis.

The specialists in the British chemical weapon laboratory in Porton Down, which gets millions of U.S. military research dollars, did not agree with the 'Novichok' claim for whatever effected the Skripals. May's phrase "of a type developed by Russia' was politically negotiated. As ambassador Craig Murray provided:

I have now received confirmation from a well placed FCO source that Porton Down scientists are not able to identify the nerve agent as being of Russian manufacture, and have been resentful of the pressure being placed on them to do so. Porton Down would only sign up to the formulation of a type developed by Russia after a rather difficult meeting where this was agreed as a compromise formulation.

But was there really a nerve agent involved?

A doctor who administered first aid to Yulia Skripal for 30 minutes was not effected at all. The emergency services suspected the victims had received on overdose of fentanyl.

Doctor Steven Davies, who leads the emergency service of the Salisbury District Hospital, wrote in a letter to the London Times:

Sir, Further to your report "Poison exposure leaves almost 40 needing treatment", (Mar 14), may I clarify that no patients have experienced symptoms of nerve agent poisoning in Salisbury and there have only been ever been three patients with significant poisoning.

A Court of Protection judgment about the Skripals issued on March 22 quotes as witness a Porton Down chemical and biological analyst:

Blood samples from Sergei Skripal and Yulia Skripal were analysed and the findings indicated exposure to a nerve agent or related compound. The samples tested positive for the presence of a Novichok class nerve agent or closely related agent.

"Indicated exposure" is a rather weak formulation. It means that no 'novichok' was found but decomposition products of something that may have been a nerve agent or not. A blood sample may "test positive" for all kinds of stuff but that does not say anything about the amount or about the lethality of any of the "positive tested" elements. The 'Novichok' nerve agents are organophosphates like many of the usual insecticides are. These break down relatively fast. A walk through a field freshly sprayed with some insecticide or the domestic use of such a product might leave similar decomposition products in the bloodstream as a nerve agent attack.

The Court of Protection also said that no relative or friend contacted the authorities about the Skripals. That was evidently false (ru).

Today, 25 days after the incident, the police say they suspect that the Skripals were poisoned from the front door of their home. Today, 25 days after the incident, they removed the front door. I believe that this decision was based on a "most plausible story" guess and not on material evidence. If the door had tested positive for a nerve agent it would have been removed weeks ago. This is, like those people in high protection suits roaming around Salisbury, just theater.

The Skripals were said to have left their home at 9:00am in the morning. They collapsed relatively sudden at 4:00pm in the afternoon. Is this seven hour delay consistent with being severely affected by a "military grade" highly toxic nerve agent? I doubt it.

But even if a nerve agent of the 'novichok' type was involved the jump to allegations against Russia is baseless. David B. Collum is Professor for Organic Chemistry at Cornell University:

Dave Collum @DavidBCollum - 12:54 AM - 27 Mar 2018

I will say it again: Anybody who tells you this nerve agent must have come from Russia is a liar--a complete and utter liar. They are simple compounds.

The Skripals are getting better. Good for them. But their resurrection from certain death is a further dint in the British government's claim of 'nerve agent' 'of a type developed by Russia'.

The whole anti-Russian campaign constructed out of it is just ridiculous and deeply dishonest. The five page propaganda handout the British provided to other governments is a joke. It provided no solid facts on the case. To respond to it rationally, as Russia tries to do, makes little sense.

---

Previous Moon of Alabama reports on the Skripal case:
By Finian Cunningham March 29, 2018 " Information Clearing House " - There are many reasons for doubting the official British position blaming Russia for the Sergei Skripal poisoning. This week's 'diplomacy dramatics' of mass Russian expulsions are just too contrived to be taken seriously. Skripal Poison Saga Just Another Episode in West's Propaganda Campaign to Corral Russia

Two factors raising doubt stand out in particular: the unseemly, impossible rush to judgment and carnival of reaction; and, secondly, the immediate, concerted follow-up demand being made on Russia to "change its behavior." The cause-and-effect sequence here is just too neat to be left to random events. Within days of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia having apparently been poisoned in a public space in the English city of Salisbury on March 4, senior British government officials were accusing Russia of attempted assassination. The whirlwind British media campaign to find Russia guilty and the rapid international response to expel over 100 Russian diplomats from more than 25 countries this week  all mounted in a matter of three weeks  inevitably betray a premeditated public relations operation.

As Anatoly Antonov, Russia's ambassador to the US, said this week: "The scale of inflicted damage and the preceding information campaign speak of the fact that it had been planned beforehand  simply postponed for the right moment."

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We should recall that Britain's top investigators at Scotland Yard were initially saying that it would take weeks to establish the facts of the apparent crime committed against the Skripals. Britain's most senior chemical warfare expert, Professor Alastair Hay, went as far as advising media it could take "months" to confirm suspicions of a nerve agent.

Yet, the British government preempted by claiming its scientists had identified the poison apparently used on the Skripals as 'Novichok'  "of a type developed by the Soviet Union."

Former British ambassador Craig Murray has contested serious flaws in official claims about the alleged nerve agent. Murray points to the sly wording used by the British government inferring authoritative knowledge implicating Russia when in fact, he contends, there is a paucity of hard information.

Russia has also categorically denied any involvement or being in possession of the hypothetical chemical weapon.

The British government has yet to produce any verifiable evidence to back up its claims about the "Soviet-era" nerve agent and how that incriminates Russia  despite British media headlines suggesting it has.

"Britain divulged 'unprecedented levels of intelligence' to convince other countries that Russia carried out attack," according to The Independent.

It went on to report: "The material provided to the allies included sensitive reports and the conclusions of the military research base at Porton Down, as well as an explanation of how these were obtained. The information senior government officials hold was key to 23 states and NATO carrying out a mass expulsion this week of over a hundred Russians working under diplomatic credentials."

But the British government's supposed "evidence" is far from convincing. It still remains a collection of innuendo and unverified assertion. Even the United States and other allies have admitted that they are simply "taking the word of the British" in making accusations against Russia.

If Britain really did have definite evidence, then why aren't the British authorities permitting Russia to access samples to carry out its own independent examination? Such protocol is mandated by the Chemical Weapons Convention to which the UK and Russia are signatories.

Incredibly, we now see a whole host of countries orchestrating an all-out campaign to expel Russian diplomats. Most of the nations are members of NATO or the European Union, and several of them have an anti-Russian axe to grind, such as Poland and the Baltic States. However, several European countries have declined to expel Russian envoys, saying they require evidence first.

The other significant factor is the way that Moscow is being promptly demanded to make concessions.

Speaking in Parliament this week, British Prime Minister Theresa May said: "I have found great solidarity from our friends and partners in the EU, North America, NATO and beyond over the past three weeks as we have confronted the aftermath of the Salisbury incident."

Then she added: "And together we have sent a message that we will not tolerate Russia's continued attempts to flout international law and undermine our values."

UK Foreign Minister Boris Johnson also hailed what he called "a turning point" this week in which he said a "united response" from British allies was demonstrating that Russia had to change its behavior.

Nikki Haley, US ambassador to the UN, said the expulsion of 60 Russian diplomats from her country  the biggest single number in this week's sanctions  was a clear message to Moscow that "these actions must stop."

US Defense Secretary James Mattis said Russia "has the potential to be a partner" with NATO but it has "chosen to seek a different path."

European Council President Donald Tusk and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg also hinted that there would be "more penalties" on Russia unless it changed its "pattern of unacceptable behavior."

US State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert caused consternation when she apparently invoked a Nazi Germany-era propaganda meme by describing Russia as a "sea monster with many tentacles."

The insidious effect of the expulsions this week makes all Russian diplomats and overseas officials targets for accusations they are "spies." This delegitimizes and indeed criminalizes the Russian government for conducting normal international business.

The State Department's spokeswoman made the explicit linkage to the Skripal incident and what is being demanded from Russia.

"If Russia wants to improve relations, it needs to first acknowledge its responsibility for the attack, and cease its recklessly aggressive behavior," she said.

Therein lies an alternative, but plausible explanation for recent events. The apparent poisoning incident of the Skripals  we still don't know what really happened due to official British secrecy  has been turbocharged into a criminal conviction against Russia. The concerted international reaction by Britain and its ideologically aligned anti-Russian allies is, in turn, being fashioned into a plea bargain for Moscow to accept.

The plea bargain is: admit your guilt and change your behavior.

And what does "changed behavior" entail? It would entail what the US and the NATO alliance have been seeking for several years from Russia under Vladimir Putin's leadership.

That is, a capitulation of Russia's independence to become a vassal of the Anglo-American capitalist world order. That would translate into Russia allowing US corporations to plunder its natural resources, steal its vast energy export markets in Europe, subjugate Russia from unfettered NATO threats, and for Russia to allow the US and its subordinates to run amok militarily anywhere in the world they choose, such as Syria and other oil-rich Middle East countries.

President Putin and Russia have demonstrated over and over they are not willing to be vassals under American hegemony. That's why we see endless repetition of Western propaganda campaigns to corral Russia.

The latest British-featured poison saga is just another episode.
Nigerians on Twitter couldnt hold their emotions when a photo of American Superstar Model, Naomi Campbell and Nigerias president Buhari hit the internet. Bashir Ahmad, Personal Assistant to President M. Buhari on New Media, setting the record straight says Naomi Campbell met at the Eko Atlantic City while Mr. President was touring the project, and she requested to take photos with him during his 2-day visit to Lagos State and wasnt invited by the government as speculations suggest.

For the sake of clarity, President @MBuhari didnt invite Ms. Naomi Campbell to any event during his 2-day visit to Lagos State. They only met at the Eko Atlantic City while Mr. President was touring the project, and she requested to take photos with him.  Bashir Ahmad (@BashirAhmaad) March 30, 2018

However, some Nigerians have this to say about Ms Campbell, the handshake with Buhari and many more.

Naomi Campbell laundered BLOOD DIAMONDS in Liberia where our soldiers died. Today, the APC led government in Lagos and Federal rolls out the red carpet for her.  Nnamdi Anekwe-Chive (@nnamdianekwe) March 30, 2018

How come Naomi Campbell is with President Buhari, by the way where is Aisha Buhari? Hope he didn't leave her all alone in the "Other Room". pic.twitter.com/bcJuDs3ldq  GREAT GRACIOUS (@GreatGracious) March 30, 2018

Why are Nigerians so salty?

Naomi Campbell is here for Arise Fashion Week. You don't know why she's here, you won't research and you're saying she's here to meet sugar daddy.

What's the matter with you?

Ignorance can kill oh. It's not bliss everytime.  Lex Ash (@TheLexash) March 30, 2018

Naomi Campbell just got easy money #appearancefee.

Apart from Ambode, these pensioners don't know who she is. Maybe they told PMB she's MLK's daughter. pic.twitter.com/aiKxksERJx  Wale Gates  (@walegates) March 30, 2018

why import a foreign excort like Naomi Campbell when we can patronise our local runsgirls like toke makinwa..tonto dikecossy orjiakor..toyin ..tboss..daniella okeke..chika ike..etc  Bleach (@Kenpachi_5) March 30, 2018

Since 2015, Buhari has not attracted any tangible foreign investment to Nigeria. The Chinese whom he met are already grumbling. Perhaps Naomi Campbell would be the only visible foreign direct investment of Buhari in 3yrs!  Jackson Ude (@jacksonpbn) March 30, 2018

Since Buhari became President, I have not heard him hosting our own Omotola, Genevieve, Mercy Johnson or any of our Nollywood stars but he would have dinner with a Naomi Campbell who was sailing the world with Kola Aluko on the Galactica bought from stolen money from NNPC!  Jackson Ude (@jacksonpbn) March 30, 2018

Mr Bean Government. I was actually going to tweet earlier today that this Naomi Campbell visit would end in drama. Lo and Behold, it has started another round of drama. Naomi said Buhari invited her. Buhari says he didn't. So Naomi just came to Nigeria & bumped into Buhari?  Gege (@nigeriasbest) March 30, 2018
Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo has said that the present government would continue to talk about the corruption under PDP for as long as possible. He said this while speaking at Bola Tinubus 10th colloquium. However, spokesman of the PDP, Kola Ologbondiyan, had asked Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo to either name those accused of being corrupt or keep quiet.

At a press conference in Lagos on Friday, Lai Mohammed, minister of information, said the identities of looters were unveiled as a result of the challenge of PDP.

The PDP has challenged us to name the looters under their watch. They said they did not loot the treasury, Mohammed said. Well, I am sure they know that the treasury was looted dry under their watch. Yet they decided to grandstand. This shows the hollowness of their apology. This list is just a tip of the iceberg, and the PDP is aware of this. We did not make these cases up. Many of these cases are in court and the records are available. Some of the people on this list are seeking to plea bargain, and that is a fact. We insist that Nigeria was looted blind under the watch of the PDP and that the starting point in tendering an apology is for them to return the loot. Its like a robber admitting to stealing your car and apologising, but then saying he will keep the car anyway. It doesnt work that way. The PDP is a hypocrite. And that reminds me of what English writer, William Hazlitt, said: The only vice that cannot be forgiven is hypocrisy. The repentance of a hypocrite is itself hypocrisy. We will not stop talking about the massive looting by the PDP. They brought Nigeria to this sorry pass. We are now looking around for loans to build infrastructure, and they ask us not to talk about it. we will talk about it.

Here are te names below;
A student identified as Emmanuel Onaghise of the Ambrose Alli University, Edo State was hacked to death at Obalende roundabout in Lagos.

The 27-year-old was reportedly ambushed by suspected cultists around 10.25p.m on Monday, 26th March 2018.

Emmanuels sister, Lizzy Onaghise, took to her Facebook page to mourn the untimely demise of her brother.

Why why whyyyyyyyyy. Why Emmanuel onaghise, my brother, my blood you never told me u were going to live me today. U left me in sorrow, in sadness, darkness, u Left Mumsy in pains. You left us in pains. 26-03-2018 u left me u left us Emmanuel onaghise can I ever forget about you I dont think so. Pip my lovely brother u will always live in my heart she wrote.
49yrs old Uchena Elumadu, who allegedly raped his daughter in the Agege area of Lagos, has confessed to the act, claiming that he was drunk the first time he r*ped her.

Funny enough, Mr. Elumadu claimed that it was his friends who made him drink too much.

It was reported that the Imo State indigene r*ped his first child at their home on Martins Street, new Oko Oba, Agege, each time his wife was not around.

He was said to have administered drug on her each time he slept with her to prevent pregnancy.

Mr Elumadu, who was paraded before pressmen on Thursday after he was arrested, said he had only slept with his daughter twice.

He said, I dont know what came over me. I have only r*ped her twice. My wife doesnt know I have been doing this. I first slept with her sometime last year.

That day, I had gone for a naming ceremony and I was drunk. My friend had abused me that I always took non-alcoholic drinks and I should try a little alcohol. It was the little I took that made me misbehave. The second time, I was in the house with my wife when I sneaked into the room and r*ped her.

I was not the one that deflowered her. When I slept with her the first time and I asked why she was not a virgin, she could not answer me. I have committed a great sin and I have asked God to forgive my wrong.

The state Commissioner of Police, Fatai Owoseni, said the father would be charged to court.
As Christians all over the world celebrate Easter, a nun, Reverend Sister Emmanuel, has revealed her encounters with Jesus Christ.

The nun, who bears two male names, Emmanuel Emmanuel, because, according to her, Catholic Sisters answer male names, said for years Jesus Christ has been appearing and giving her divine messages.

Reverend Sister Emmanuels world is interesting. As a habit, her hair is always covered, while she ties a rosary around her left wrist and holds a small crucifix in her right hand. She blesses you with the crucifix when you meet her.

The nun wears no make-up at all. She lives a simple life. In fact, she is not worldly in every material particular. She denies her life every atom of comfort or luxury. For instance, she sleeps on a wooden bench without pillow and, during the Lenten season, she sleeps on the floor using a piece of stone to lift her head. Again, she has removed all the cushions on her chairs.

In a chat with Daily Sun at the Marian Centre in Imo State, the nun said Jesus Christ appears to her frequently. She also said she has seen the Virgin Mary on a number of occasions.

According to her, she experienced the first divine visitation as a student in the United States in 1979.

Your name is Emmanuel, which is strange for a woman in this part of the world. Why are you called Emmanuel?

Im called Emmanuel because Catholic Sisters answer male names. I am a victim soul, a mystic and a seer; that means a visionary, and Im a nun, that is, a Reverend Sister. Im a professed religious sister of a special monastic order. I am also the end of time Mary our Lord Jesus Christ revealed and gave the new name Emmanuel. And Jesus calls me Victorious Emmanuel. I am originally from Ubulu Ihejiofor in Oru West Local Government Area of Imo State.

We learnt that Jesus appears to you. Can you explain this?

Jesus Christ has appeared to me consecutively for many years. It started on the New Year eve of 1979. I was in my room at the university compound in the United States, about midnight, when it started. That night, some Nigerian students told me that they were going for a party in Detroit and they wanted me to join them. I said no because I had heard that that city was big and I didnt want violence on a New Year. So, I didnt know that God had a different plan for me.

At midnight, my room was flooded with baby angels. They were all over my bed. Wherever I turned, I saw them. I managed to lie on the bed, facing up. I didnt know that Jesus was there, facing me. He was floating on the air, near the ceiling. I was alarmed and wanted to phone the priest that conducted mass for us at the chapel but it was too late. So, I waited till morning and after mass on New Year morning, I told him. He explained it as much as he could. Then I returned to Nigeria to do my youth service corps programme.

After my National Youth Service Corps programme, the apparitions continued. But what I think is important is to receive the message of Christ. I dont want to be heard by people. I live a humble life, a monastic life.

Is Jesus a white or black man? Or does He come in form of a white man or black man?

Thats a good question. Jesus is God, who took flesh. He can appear in any form. He can appear in light skin or any other skin colour.

So, which colour does he appear to you?

What happens is that when He appears to you, His divinity will consume you more than any other thing. Whatever He wants you to know, your attention will be focused on that. I think sometimes, the skin will be light, other times it will be lighter.

How does Jesus appear to you? Is it when you are sleeping or do you see Him while awake?

Have you watched television before? When you watch television, are you awake or asleep? When Jesus wants to appear to you, you will be awake when He will appear. He appears to me when Im awake. Sometimes, he can wake me from sleep and give me a message. Most of the time He appears to me when Im awake.

How do you feel after an encounter with Jesus? Is there any physical difference?

I feel happy after every encounter. You will feel the presence; you will recollect yourself. You will be quiet for sometime to absorb the message given. Sometimes, when I pray, He will talk to me on the altar of the Sacred Heart here.

What kind of messages does He give you whenever He appears to you?

They are urgent end-of-time message of repentance and salvation, which our Lord Jesus had even warned His Church, that is, the Roman Catholic Church, the priests, the pope and the whole world.

We also heard that Mary appears to you. How true is this?

Yeah she appears to give complementary message, to make up the messages given by her son and to encourage me.

Did you go to the United States to study as a nun?

I went there as an ordinary student; I became a nun when I came back to Nigeria. But the most important thing is the message.

When were you called?

I was consecrated in August 1989.

What did you study abroad and what is the name of the school you attended there?

I studied Education/Biology for my first course and I minored in Psychology at Eastern Michigan University. But these things are not important. The message of God is more important than all these things.

Were you trained by the church?

I was a private student.

How did your parents receive it when you wanted to become a nun?

The important thing now is to receive Gods messages. Well, my parents received the news and my father blessed me even though Im the only daughter of my parents. I have four brothers.

Are your parents still around?

Jesus told me to publish His messages, not my biography.

What is Marian Centre all about?

Marian Centre is a monastery and pilgrimage centre. It is an office of the kingdom of heaven instituted by our Lord Jesus Chris the saviour in honour of His most holy mother, Mary Immaculate, for the purpose of crushing the Devil and preparing souls for heaven. Jesus said that Marian Centre is a Catholic prayer ministry of the Holy Spirit. He said it is a holy family, a Eucharistic adoration family. It is, perhaps, the end-of-time Rome.

What is your relationship with the Catholic Church? Are you still a nun with them?

A nun is a nun forever.

When you told the church that Jesus was appearing to you, what was the reaction?

We are not interested in reactions. We give messages of God and people take it or leave it because it is for their own good if they take it. And it is to their detriment if they dont. So, we dont force anybody to accept the message.

Nuns belong to different orders. Which one do you belong to?

Ive said I belong to a special monastic order.

Is it part of the Catholic Church?

It is part of the Catholic Church; it cannot be outside the Catholic Church. Mary is the mother of the Catholic Church and this is Marian Centre.

Were you a virgin at the time you became a nun? Put differently, are you a virgin?

I dont want to elevate myself. God knows what I am.

Before you become a nun, you must do nun surveillance and pass through some processes. In other words, did you meet the prerequisites for becoming a Catholic Sister or nun?

Im a professed religious sister. Im a nun.

That is to say, you are a self-styled reverend sister?

No, not self-styled. Im a nun and nothing else is important now except the message of God.

We really want you to talk about yourself so that people will not think it is a fairy tale

Those who want to believe should believe and those who dont want to believe will not be forced by anybody because Jesus said that as it was in the beginning, it would happen again. During the time of Noah, people were dancing and getting married when God warned them to prepare that there would be deluge, that He would destroy the world. Many did not believe but it happened.

Did you ever do a secular job? Did you work in an office?

I taught in many places but that is not important. When I returned from the United States, I did my youth service at Nsukka, Enugu State. Then I came to Anambra State, but the important thing is the messages of the Lord. I worked until a few years ago.

How is Marian Centre funded?

It has not been publicised. Ive been concentrating on writing, doing prayer and penance. I do farming to sustain myself. Occasionally, people give alms.

Are your brothers supporting your ministry in any manner?

They are encouraging me.

As a child, was there anything that stood you out from your peers?

I noticed that, before anything would happen, I would know. I thought everybody was like that but as time went on, I realised that not everybody had that experience. So, I withdrew and kept to myself; I stopped talking about my experiences to people.

Did you tell your parents when those things were happening? If you did, what was their reaction?

Yes, I relayed some of them to my parents. My grandfather had the gift of vision and my father also had. So, it wasnt a surprise.

Can you mention one specific occurrence in those days?

Before the Nigeria/Biafra civil war, God, the Father, appeared to me here. It was the apparition that I saw as a young girl.

How did you recognise God because nobody has seen Him?

Immediately He appears, God will put it in your mind and tell you whatever He wants and you will know.

Was it the same thing that happened when Jesus appeared to you first?

When Jesus appeared on Easter eve, He showed me the wounds on his legs, hands and ribs. They were visible.

With which language does He communicate with you?

He uses English language, Igbo, my native language, and Latin language. And I dont know Latin. So, when He does that, Ill write it the way He pronounces it and look for priests, who are fluent in Latin, to help me translate.

As a seer, have you looked into your crystal ball, so to say, to know if Nigeria will break up or remain one entity?

A seer does not see everything; you see what is shown to you. But I was given a warning early this year. I was shown a soldier in military uniform without a belt. His belt was lying beside him and he was talking to me in a language I did not understand. But I knew it was a warning message. God warned me, through him, to pray more and do more penance in order to avert war breaking out in Nigeria. So, Ive continued praying and doing more penance. I believe the prayer has been heard because there were ominous signs not long ago.

Do you have healing powers? Do you pray for sick people and they become well?

That is one of the first gifts God gave to me; its a supernatural gift. It is a gift above nature. I pray for people and they get well. I heal people suffering stroke and other sicknesses, both spiritual and physical. God also gave me the power to disarm the Devil and bring out souls. Ive brought out many people in secret societies, including Ogboni. I gave them prayer and they denied it, and they are alive, nothing happened to them.

Without an Ogboni member or occultist confessing, can you recognise such a person?

Sometimes, I do. Sometimes, my inner self, the God within, will let me know. You also know them by their stickers, rings and mannerism. I met one boy at a bank and I had some feelings about him and I called him out of the queue. I told him that I didnt know which secret society he belonged but that the God within was telling me he belongs to one. He said that he belonged to one but he was opting out. He said that his progress had been distorted while his mates had gone far ahead.

I have been with you for more than one hour now. Can you assess me spiritually?

I dont need to assess you spiritually, but for coming here on a Sunday, I take it that you are not serious with your God. Because, if you are serious, you wont come today, thereby encouraging drivers that operate on Sundays. It pains our Lord; it is one of the core messages that people desecrate the Lords Day. The drivers that operate on Sunday dont go to worship God because they are being patronised. So, you should be more serious with your God. Dont use Sunday for business.

Why did you decide to stay in the village instead of coming out where more people can benefit from your gifts?

Our Lady appeared here and said that this is her family, and Jesus wants me to be here. I had wanted to go to other places but He didnt want me to go. He gave the name, Marian Centre, Ubulu Ihejiofor. Jesus wrote the name on a banner, brought it here and showed it to me. It was a mystical banner; after showing to me, He disappeared with it. People will benefit because He has made here a pilgrimage centre and the whole world will come here. The way people go to Rome or Jerusalem is the same way they will come here.

Nigeria is blessed with human and material resources yet the people lack. Is there hope for the country?

Im a positive thinker and I know that there is hope. As soon as people stop bribery and corruption in high and low places, the changes will be felt. You may commit sin behind closed doors but God is recording it. If you hide from human beings, you cannot hide from God. Nigerians have to turn away from their evil ways to enjoy the blessings of God in abundance.

What would be your message to the world at this point in time?

My message to the world would be the message of Jesus. He said I should tell the world that His second coming is near and that they should repent of their sins and go for sacramental confession, not private confession. They should confess their sins before a priest of the holy Catholic Church and pray the rosary daily to save their souls from hell.

Source: Daily Sun
A Muslim woman identified as Hajiya Ramatu Tijjani, has taken a bold step to ensure that the peaceful coexistence that exists in Nigeria is cemented. This she did by giving out chicken to about 50 poor Christians ahead of the the coming Easter festivities.

When interviewed, she The Muslim woman spoke of how the economic hardship currently experiened in the country made her to make the gesture so that many can have a happy festivity.

Christians worldwide are finishing their 40 days fasting and prayers this week. There is need to support the widows with chickens and other food stuff to enable them celebrate the Easter with joy, and happiness like other Christians round the world.

I commence the chickens distribution with the Church of Christ Evangelical and Intercessory Fellowship, Sabon Tasha Kaduna. Because of my good friendship with all the members of the church, I am hoping to spread the gifts to other neighbouring churches in Kaduna.

this is a method of promoting peace, building inter-religious tolerance and better understanding among different faith based organisations in Nigeria. We are worshiping one God and Allah and both Muslims and Christians are from one family and both have Holy Books which are Bible and Quran. Both believe in paradise and hell, therefore we are all one family under one God, she said.
Women are making gains by selling their virginity through Cinderella Escort and a Nigerian lady has now joined the bandwagon.

Stacey, a 24-year-old Nigerian lady is selling her virginity, starting from 50,000 Euros, over 22 million in naira. Stacey is a Bachelors degree holder and says shes selling her virginity inorder to further her education.

Explaining her reason for selling her virginity, Stacey said:

Selling my virginity has been something that I have always wanted to do. I want to sell my virginity through Cinderella Escorts because I want to pursue a masters degree and a PhD.

I already have a B.A. but I want to take my education even further since I believe that being educated will allow me to have my dream career and life.

Interested men are expected to bid on her. Whoever is the highest bidder will meet with Stacey in Germany for legal reasons. The buyer can choose a hotel of his choice, where Stacey will spend one night with him.

In order to make sure that Stacey is a true virgin, the buyer can either bring a doctor to a meeting or visit a doctor in Germany a day beforehand.
Ghanas Black Jesus (Bibini Yesu), released The Agony of Christ inspired photos to celebrate Good Friday and we think its amazing and very creative. You agree???

Good Friday is observed on March 30, this year and on this day Jesus was crucified on the cross. Christians named this day Good Friday because they believe that the Lord Jesus gave up his life for the good of people. Jesus was nailed to a wooden cross by Roman soldiers and the crucifixion is still remembered in Jerusalem.
A Nigerian oil and gas engineer was, yesterday, jailed for seven years for the rape of an 18-year-old student in Aberdeen, three months after his lavish wedding in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State in December, 2017.

Kufre Umoh Uwem, 34, of 6 Waterton Lawn, Stoneywood, Aberdeen, who was a sub-sea project engineer, detained the woman against her will in his flat and then removed her clothing and raped her. .

He was also convicted of intent to rape a second woman in her flat. The offences were committed on October, 18, 2012, and October 30, 2016, at flats in Aberdeen. .

At the High Court in Glasgow, judge Lord Arthurson told Uwem: This was a course of violent and predatory sexual offending, notwithstanding the four years between the two offences. .

The court heard that Uwems first victim was a first-year student who Uwen met by chance and invited her to his flat. Once there he raped her. .

In a victim impact statement to the court the victim said that the rape had a monumental impact on her life. Uwems second victim was attacked in her own home. .

Uwem restrained her, removed her lower clothing with intent to rape her. He stood with his head bowed as Lord Arthurson told him: The consequences are truly catastrophic for you. Uwem, who has an MSc in pipe engineering, was placed on the sex offenders register.
According to reports, one young lady asked why cant they use the pedestrian bridge as she decided to disobey the state order. The young lady was beaten by the policemen and also arrested alongside with one other man who tried to help her  to the shock of other bystanders..

Meanwhile, Nigerians have condemned the virtual shutdown of Lagos due to the visit of President Muhammadu Buhari.

They also berated the Governor Akinwunmi Ambode-led government for shutting down the nations commercial hub.
As she spoke, Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds focused on the recent statistic that Iowa is the #1 state in the nation, a position she committed to maintain. She became governor in May 2017 after then governor Terry Branstad was appointed the United States Ambassador to China.
President-elect Donald Trump speaks during a rally as part of his USA Thank You Tour, in Des Moines during the evening of Dec. 8. Trump spoke about the general election, how he would repeal Obamacare, bring jobs back to the US, and reform care for veterans.
The novelty of Facebook has definitely waned and usefulness of it may have passed its prime as well. There could be less Facebook traffic if there arent any incentives to log on.
Apple recently unveiled the 2018 version of its low-cost iPad. Yes, Apple is simply calling it the iPad (6th generation). From the outside, the new iPad looks the same, but the internals get an overhaul. The killer feature? Apple Pencil support. Heres everything you need to know about the new iPad.

The Same

First, lets talk about the things that havent changed. The external casing, the colors, the screen size (9.7-inch), the resolution (1536 by 2048), battery life (10 hours), are all the same.

1. Apple Pencil Support

Now for some good news. The new 2018 iPad comes with support for Apple Pencil. If youve wanted a tablet you can doodle on, or start using for creative purposes, you dont need to shell out $599 on the 10.5 inch iPad anymore. You can get the same functionality for just $329.

Apple Pencil is amazingly accurate, natural to use and comes with pressure sensitivity. Apple is even updating its iWork suite so it works better with Apple Pencil. With the new update, you can directly annotate and highlight text in the iWork suite using Apple Pencil. Apple Notes also has great support for Apple Pencil built-in.

Apple Pencil costs $99 ($89 for students). But if you dont want to spend the dough, you can buy Logitech Crayon for $49. It has the same features but has a different casing and standard lightning input for charging.

Read more: 11 Must Have Apps for Apple Pencil and iPad Pro Users

2. A10 Chip

The 2018 iPad features the A10 chip. This is an upgrade over the A9 chip. It scored 3254 for single-core and 5857 for multi-core in Geekbench. This puts it in the line of last years iPhone 7. This comes with the M10 motion co-processor. Thanks to which the iPad can run AR games more smoothly.

3. 2 GB RAM

The 2018 iPad still has the same 2 GB of RAM.

4. The Cameras

In fact, even the cameras and the Touch ID sensors are the same. 2018 iPad gets the same 8 MP sensor without flash.

5. First Generation Touch ID Sensor

The bigger deal might be the first generation Touch ID. This is from the iPhone 5s era is its quite a bit slower than Touch ID 2 thats present in the new iPad Pros. Another downer? The 2018 iPad still uses the unlaminated display.

Special Student Pricing

Apple will sell the iPad for $299 to students. The Apple Pencil will cost $89. Thats only $40 savings. Do you think thats enough to sway schools and parents?

Will this $299 iPad deter the wrath of Chromebooks which have taken over schools? Share with us in the comments below.
Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong visits Vo Thi Thang primary school. (Photo: VNA)

Established in 1968, the school dedicated a space exhibiting many objects and materials featuring Vietnam, especially a photo of Vo Thi Thang who wore a victory smile in a court of the US-backed Saigon administration. The victory smile became part of the schools curriculum as a symbol of Vietnamese peoples struggle against the invasion of US imperialists.

Sending his greatest affection to teachers and pupils, the Party General Secretary noted that despite thousands of miles of distance, Vietnam and Cuba established close-knit ties and fraternal solidarity, which have been fostered by President Ho Chi Minh, leader Fidel Castro and generations of Party and State leaders. The school named after Vietnamese female hero Vo Thi Thang is vivid evidence of the special relationship between Vietnam and Cuba, he said.

He expressed his hope that the school would enhance its teaching quality and educate the next generation into good citizens, inheriting their predecessors legacy and continuing fostering Vietnam - Cuba relations.

Cuban Minister of Education Ena Elsa Velazquez said the school is honoured to be named after a brave Vietnamese, who began fighting invaders in her twenties.

She also said thanks to Vietnamese people for supporting Cuba in every condition, confirming that Cuban people would continue to protect the relationship and solidarity between the two countries.

Party General Secretary Trong inaugurated a 30-computer IT classroom, which was his gift to the school; and presented symbolic computers to representatives from three primary schools named after Vietnamese people or places, including the Uncle Ho, the Nguyen Van Troi and Ben Tre./.
Ministry of Climate Change MOCC Islamabad Jobs 2018

Latest Ministry of Climate Change Management Posts Islamabad 2021 Green Pakistan Program, Ministry of Climate Change MOCC Islamabad, Government of Pakistan required applications from experienced candidates for the posts of Admin & Finance Officer, and LTV Drivers.

How to Apply on Ministry of Climate Change Job Advertisement

Apply as per details in job advertisement. In some cases, you may apply online at vacancies after registering at https://www.jobz.pk online.



Telephone: 051-9249183

Official Website: www.mocc.gov.pk

Note: Beware of Fraudulent Recruiting Activities. If the employer asks you to pay money for any purpose including processing to shortlisting, do not pay at all and report us using our contact us form. Apply as per instuctions & dates mentioned in official job ad. Govt jobs cannot be applied online here. Error & omissions excepted.
UH Rector Gustavo Cobreiro Suarez presents the Doctor Honoris Causa title to Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong. (Photo: VNA)

nation

During the visit, the Party General Secretary was granted the Doctor Honoris Causa title in political science by the University in recognition of his important contributions to Vietnamsconstruction and development, as well as practical and theoretical views. The event, which was attended by Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez, Politburo member and First Vice President of the Councils of State and Ministers of Cuba, together with many leaders of Cuban ministries and sectors, was broadcast live on Cuban national radio and television.

The UH, the most ancient and famous university of Cuba and a leading one in Latin America, has experienced the 290 years of development. It is not only connected with Cuban history and outstanding names of the Cuban revolution, especially leader Fidel Castro, it is also linked with generations of Vietnamese students in the 1960s.

Marking the 290th birthday of the university, the Party General Secretary sent teachers and students best regards, expressing his thanks to the university for the title, considering it a vivid demonstration of the Cuban Party, State and people for Vietnam.

He also appreciated the university for helping train different generations of Vietnamese students, with many of them having become leaders or leading experts in production and scientific research.

He also spent time answering students questions on inheriting leader Fidel Castros and President Ho Chi Minhs ideology for further promoting the relationship between the Cuban and Vietnamese nations in the current period, for boosting cooperation in diverse areas, and on Vietnams renewal process./.
It is not a bad thing for us, that the route known as the Goldene Strae or the Golden Road as we will get to know it- has escaped the attention of so many. It has been spared being overrun by hordes of tourists and as you will discover


remaining of

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[JURIST] Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy [BBC profile] must stand for trial [BBC report] for charges of corruption and influence the 2007 French presidential election. The case will focus on alleged phone calls that transpired between Sarkozy and a French judge who was, at the time, investigating claims that Sarkozys 2007 election was illegally funded.

In the phone calls, Sarkozy is alleged to have asked Gilbert Azibert, the senior judge of Frances highest court, to provide him with information on the investigation into his actions in exchange for a promotion to a position in the very wealthy principality of Monaco. It is unclear whether or not the Azibert ever provided the requested information, however, Azibert has been ordered to stand for trial alongside Sarkozy.

Thierry Herzog [POLITICO profile], the lawyer who represents both Sarkozy and Azibert, will also be tried in the matter.

The investigation was officially opened in 2014 [Guardian report], and all three defendants had previously been ordered to stand trial in May 2015. However, the case has been repeatedly delayed by numerous appeals on behalf of the defendants.

Sarkozy has faced numerous legal challenges in the past. Last week, Sarkozy was taken into custody [JURSIT report] for questioning in connection with allegations that he received millions of euros in illegal campaign financing from former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. Following his failed 2012 presidential campaign, Sarkozy was charged with spending nearly double the legal limit of 22.5 million euros on his campaign. Prosecutors claim that many of these purchases were made using falsified bills from a public relations firm called Bygmalion. Sarkozy has been ordered to stand trial on the matter. In 2013 Sarkozy was cleared of other illegal campaign funding allegations surrounding his acceptance of donations from LOreal Heiress Liliane Bettencourt, who was at the time the richest woman in France.
Four transgender people filed a lawsuit [complaint] in the US District Court for the Southern District of Ohio Thursday against the Ohio Department of Health [official websites] and Office of Vital Statistics due to the plaintiffs inability to change their birth certificates to match their gender identity.

The lawsuit was filed through the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, the American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal [advocacy websites].

The lawsuit claims violations of the equal protection and due process clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, as well as violations of the First Amendment right to free speech. Under the equal protection claim, the lawsuit argues that birth certificate policy discriminates against transgender people because the government is creating a classification based on sex and forces transgender people to be classified as a sex contrary to their gender identity. The lawsuit also argues that policy deprives all transgender people, and only transgender people, who were born in Ohio of access to an accurate birth certificate that they can use without sacrificing their privacy, health, safety, dignity, and autonomy.

The lawsuit claims that the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is violated because the policy results in an involuntary disclosure of ones transgender identity which violates their right to privacy and plac[es] ones personal safety and bodily integrity in jeopardy.

The lawsuit claims that the First Amendment is violated because it violates the right to refrain from speaking. This is violated by not allowing transgender people to refrain from speaking because it forces them to disclose their transgender status and to identify with a gender that conflicts with who they are. It also prevents transgender people from accurately expressing their gender.

The lawsuit requests that the Birth Certificate Policy be rued unconstitutional and defendants be prevented from refusing to provide birth certificates that accurately reflect the sex that is consistent with the persons gender identity.

The lawsuit is the latest in progressing transgender rights. In August two lawsuits were filed [JURIST report] challenging President Donald Trumps transgender military ban. Trump revoked [JURIST report] the order earlier this month but instated a ban on transgender troops if they require surgery or significant medical treatment.
GRANTS PASS, Ore.  An armed robbery at New Hope Market in Josephine County led police officers on a trail to two previous robberies, according to Oregon State Police (OSP).

The robbery at New Hope Market occurred on March 24, but OSP troopers found the suspects gone when they arrived. Detectives investigating the New Hope robbery caught wind of a similar armed robbery at Levi's Market on March 7th.

Daniel Anderson (left) and Kenneth Frankel (right). Brendan Shapiro's mugshot is not yet available. Daniel Anderson (left) and Kenneth Frankel (right). Brendan Shapiro's mugshot is not yet available.

Investigators also learned of a cash theft that occurred at the Williams County Store, and they found that third incident to be related to the first two.

Over a period of three days, officers arrested three suspects in connection with the robberiesstarting with 18-year-old Kenneth Frankel on March 27. Frankel has been lodged in the Josephine County Jail for two counts of 1st Degree Robbery, three counts of 1st Degree Theft, Unlawful Use of a Dangerous Weapon, and Unlawful Use of Stun Gun, Tear Gas, or Mace.

18-year-old Daniel Anderson was arrested on March 28. He has been lodged in the Josephine County Jail for two counts of 1st Degree Robbery, three counts of 1st Degree Theft, Unlawful Use of a Dangerous Weapon, and Unlawful Use of Stun Gun, Tear Gas, or Mace.

18-year-old Brendan Shapiro was arrested on March 29. He has been lodged in the Josephine County Jail for two counts of 1st Degree Robbery, two counts of 1st Degree Theft, Unlawful Use of a Dangerous Weapon, and Unlawful Use of Stun Gun, Tear Gas, or Mace.

OSP was assisted by the Josephine County Sheriffs Office, The Grants Pass Department of Public Safety and Josephine County District Attorneys Office. During the course of the investigation the OSP Criminal Division also received several investigative tips from alert citizens, which ultimately assisted in the identification and apprehension of the suspects.


LAPINE, Ore.  Two drivers were rushed to the hospital after a broadside collision near Lapine in Klamath County on Thursday. The crash occurred on US 97, at the junction with Highway 31, according to Oregon State Police (OSP).

OSP reports that one driver in a black 2014 Chevrolet Silverado pickup was traveling south on US 97, and tried to make a left turn onto Highway 31. Another driver in a white 2007 Hyundai Accent 4-door was traveling northbound.

The driver of the black pickup turned directly into the path of the driver in the white 4-door, resulting in a broadside collision. The two vehicles came to an "uncontrolled rest" in the northbound lane, according to OSP.

Both drivers were men, and both were alone in their vehicles at the time of the crash. The driver of the pickup was brought to St. Charles in Bend. The driver of the white 4-door had to be taken by air ambulance, also to St. Charles in Bend. There is no word yet on the extent of their injuries.

Highways 97 and 31 were blocked for about an hour, according to OSP.

OSP was assisted at the scene by the Oregon Department of Transportation, the Deschutes County Sheriff's Office, Airlink, Lapine Fire District and the Crescent Fire Medics.

The investigation is ongoing. No further information is available at this time.
GRANTS PASS, Ore.  Fire crews were able to save one dog and four baby chickens after fire consumed a house at 1887 Nebraska Avenue in Grants Pass Thursday night.

Josephine County 911 received the report of a structure fire at 10:16 p.m. on Thursday. When crews from Grants Pass Fire and Rural Metro Fire arrived at the scene, they found a house that was covered in flames.

After beginning an "aggressive attack," fire crews were able to knock down the flames in about 12 minutes, according to Grants Pass Department of Public Safety (GPDPS). After that, crews began the long process of ensuring that fire inside the building was fully extinguished.

Fire crews were able to save the animals while fighting the flames. There was a single person residing at the house, but they were able to make it out safely with no injuries.

GPDPS says that the house suffered "significant damage." The Red Cross is assisting with shelter arrangements for the resident. Grants Pass Police, American Medical Response, and Rogue Valley Chaplains also assisted in the incident.

The cause of the fire is still under investigation. GPDPS asks that anyone with information about the cause call them at (541) 450-6260.


Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced this week that he would introduce legislation to legalize hemp as an agricultural commodity.

Local hemp grower, Kit Doyle, owns Murphy Hemp Company. He started the business after the banking crisis of the early aughts. The business produces a variety of products, everything from salves to tinctures to smoking cessation products. Still, because hemp is cannabis, it's a controlled substance. This means a whole host of problems on a federal level.

"It's challenging because you have to do certain things to get banking and do normal business," explains Doyle.

This is an obvious problem for a plant that promises a wide array of uses. Doyle says it's full spectrum of possibilities are not even yet fully known because research and development has been hindered by it's status.

Despite this, Doyle says someone could build a house with hemp alone. "It makes a chemical reaction and bonds like a cement or concrete," he explains. "It has great anti-microbial properties. It sequesters carbons. In the green world, there's no better building product. You can turn it into plywood. You can build anything out of it."

Kim Reese is an employee at the Murphy Hemp Company. She says she worked in health care for most of her life and she sees the many benefits the plant offers. Additionally, she see the industry as a way for the community to rebound economically.

"It used to just be we mainly had the mill for folks to work," she detailed. "The industry that cannabis has brought for our area is extraordinary!"

Doyle believes changes on the federal level will only keep getting better for Oregon.

""It already has and will continue to bring in industry," says Doyle. "More people to employ more Oregonians. That's really what this is about."
In this combination photo, Fox News personality Laura Ingraham speaks at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland on July 20, 2016, left, and David Hogg, a student survivor from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., speaks at a rally for common sense gun legislation in Livingston, N.J. on Feb. 25, 2018. Some big name advertisers are dropping Ingraham after she publicly criticized Hogg, a student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas school on social media. The online home goods store Wayfair, travel website TripAdvisor and Rachel RayAos dog food Nutrish all said they are removing their support from Ingraham. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, left, and Rich Schultz)
A Shaw Communications sign at the company's headquarters in Calgary on Januaary 14, 2015. Analysts said Thursday that Shaw Communications Inc. was the big winner from Ottawa's decision to set aside 43 per cent of the next spectrum auction for regional wireless carriers and potential new rivals, but stock markets didn't react. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh
Herb Manweiler holds the Legion of Honour awarded to him by France for his work reconstructing bridges blown up by the Germans as they retreated across France in 1944.
Priests and their followers leave the prayer hall as they perform a procession during a Good Friday service at the Mindong underground Catholic church in Saiqi in southeast China's Fujian province, Friday, March 30, 2018. Good Friday celebrations in one Chinese parish had a conspicuous absence: their bishop, who just the day before was whisked away by the government. The bishop, Guo Xijin is at the center of talks between the Vatican and the atheist Communist Party that are expected to yield a historic deal on who appoints bishops in China and unite the countryAos Catholics for the first time since Beijing and the Holy See severed relations nearly seven decades ago. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)
Kelowna RCMP are asking the public if anyone knows anything about this truck or the man found dead inside it March 22 on Myra Canyon Forest Service Road.
Minister of Science Kirsty Duncan announces some of the Canada 150 Research Chairs in Gatineau, Quebec on Thursday, March 29, 2018. Last June, Science Minister Kirsty Duncan hung out the "we're hiring'' sign and dangled grants of up to $1 million to try and lure some of the best and brightest international researchers to come to work in Canada. THE CANADIAN PRESS/ Patrick Doyle
In this picture taken Thursday, March 29, 2018, U.S. soldiers, left, sit on a house that turned to an outpost on a road leading to the tense front line between U.S-backed Syrian Manbij Military Council fighters and Turkish-backed fighters, at Halawanji village, north of Manbij town, Syria. The front line has grown more tense in recent days as Turkey threatens to advance on the town to clear it of the U.S-backed fighters. U.S troops have increased their patrols in the area, local commanders say, to prevent an outbreak of fighting and to prevent Turkey from advancing on Manbij. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
This photo provided by Kentucky State police shows James K. Decoursey. Decoursey, suspected of fatally shooting an off-duty police officer in a small Kentucky city was killed by law enforcement officials in Tennessee, authorities said Friday, March 30, 2018. Kentucky State Police said Decoursey fatally shot 38-year-old Hopkinsville officer Phillip Meacham Thursday afternoon, then fled on foot and drove away in a pickup truck. The details about his final encounter with law enforcement in Tennessee werenAot immediately released. (Kentucky State police via AP)
Authorities were investigating at the home of Jennifer Jean Hart, Sarah Margaret Hart and the six Hart children onThursday, March 29, 2018. An investigator could be seen taking photos of a white coupe parked near the multistory house, but most of the activity appeared to be taking place inside the home, which is situated off a winding, wooded road in rural Woodland. (Jim Ryan/Staff)/The Oregonian via AP)
The U.S. Embassy is reflected in a car in Moscow, Russia, Thursday, March 29, 2018. Britain has accused Russia of a nerve agent attack on ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, the accusations Russia has fiercely denied, calling them unfounded. (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin)
A burnt double-decker bus is seen in Tak province, Thailand, Friday, March 30, 2018. Police say a fire on a bus carrying migrant workers to Thai factories has killed 20 people. It occurred in a western province along the border with Myanmar, and reports say the workers were from there. Police said the driver told police the fire started in the middle of the bus and spread quickly, trapping victims at the back of the bus.(Daily News via AP)
In this photo taken Thursday, March 29, 2018, French President Emmanuel Macron delivers a speech during the Artificial Intelligence for Humanity event in Paris. Macron met Thursday with Syrian opposition forces in Paris. Afterward, a Kurdish leader at the meeting claimed that Macron had promised to send troops to Manbij near Syria's border with Turkey. (Etienne Laurent/Pool Photo via AP)
FILE - In this Feb. 23, 2017 file photo, a U.S. Coast Guard law enforcement team from the USCG cutter Stratton boards a small fishing boat that was stopped carrying close to 700 kilos of pure cocaine, in the Pacific Ocean hundreds of miles south of the Guatemala-El Salvador border. The U.S. Coast Guard is teaming up with the Mexican and Colombian navies off South America's Pacific coast to go after seafaring smugglers, opening a new front in the drug war. (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills, File)
FILE - In this file photo dated Thursday, Sept. 3, 2015, Labour's Andy Burnham arrives for a Labour party debate at the Sage in Gateshead, England. ManchesterAos mayor Burnham said Friday March 30, 2018, that the cityAos firefighters do not need to apologise for the delayed response to the suicide bombing at the Manchester Arena, which left 22 people dead and injured scores more on May 22. A report earlier this week found that firefighters were not allowed to go to the scene for more than two hours because of confusion about whether an attacker was still on the loose. (AP Photo/Scott Heppell, FILE)
This undated image released by Knopf shows Anita Shreve, author of of nineteen novels, including, "The PilotAos Wife," "Resistance," and "The Weight of Water." Shreve died Thursday, March 29, 2018, at her home in New Hampshire after a battle with cancer. She was 71. (Elena Seibert/Knopf via AP)
EUGENE, Ore -- A lawsuit was filed against Lane County and a former parole and probation officer whose son committed suicide in 2017.

The suit was filed by the son's estate on Wednesday, March 28. It claims that William Han Manstrom-Greening, 18, would still be alive if his father had not left his service weapon unattended. That is when the teenager found the gun and used it to kill himself on Valentine's Day 2017.

The lawsuit claims that Lane County failed to ensure that Glenn Greening, an armed Lane County parole officer, stored his handgun. The suit also claims that Greening was suspended from carrying a gun in 2004 for threatening and harassing Manstrom-Greenning's mother. Despite that, the county re-authorized Greening to carry a gun in 2012.

David Park is the attorney representing the estate of the teenager. He said, "Law enforcement officers should be held to the highest of firearms safety. Doing so requires careful selection of the persons authorized to carry firearms and careful supervision of those persons, once selected."

At the time of his death, William was a senior at Marist High School in Eugene.
ALBERT LEA, Minn.  A fire that began when cooking oil on a stove caused around $10,000 in damage to an Albert Lea residence Friday morning.

At 10:30 a.m., Albert Lea Fire and Rescue and the Albert Lea Police Department were dispatched to 308 Euclid Ave.

Upon arrival smoke was found coming from the roof and windows of the second floor apartment unit. Tenants of both units were found in the main level apartment unit and evacuated out of the building, the Albert Lea Fire Department said.

The fire was kept to the kitchen and a small portion of the attic space. The scene was clear at 12:30 p.m.

Albert Lea Fire Rescue would like to remind residence that cooking fires remain one of the leading causes of home fires. If something on the stove catches fire use a lid to extinguish the fire, they said.
CLEAR LAKE, Iowa - Iowa State Trooper Justin Kane says his act of kindness he performed on Interstate-35 near the Mason City/Clear Lake exit is one he's very humbled about. But for the woman that captured it all on video, she can't thank him enough.

What was meant to be a day of just people watching became a day Mallory Lubbock won't forget.

I realized, I squinted my eyes and realized he was shoveling her out and it was amazing, Lubbock said.

Lubbock captured video of Trooper Kane shoveling a seven-month pregnant woman out of the snow March 24. There was a tow ban in place due to the road and weather conditions. That left Kane having to make a quick decision to help or not. He says whenever they can dig someone out safely and not have them have to pay a tow fee, its worth it.

I was just so shocked. I was sitting here shaking. I was like 'this was awesome, glad it happened right here so I could capture it,' Lubbock said.

Lubbock lives right off I-35 and says she's never seen an act of kindness like this right outside her door. More than 900 shares later, her video is going viral.

Whenever I see law enforcement on the news, a lot of the time its so negative. And I have family members, friends that have family members, friends who are in law enforcement that would do anything for anybody. I wanted people to know they're real people, they want to go home at the end of the day, just like we do, Lubbock said.

Kane ended up digging five cars out of the snow that Saturday. That included digging his own vehicle out toward the end of his shift.
BUFFALO CENTER, Iowa  Police say a sizable amount of marijuana was found in a vehicle in the parking lot of North Iowa Community School.

Ramiro Tiverio Resendiz, 19 of Rake, is charged with possession with intent to deliver marijuana. Buffalo Center Police went to the school on March 8 and say a K9 indicated a controlled substance in a parked vehicle. According to the criminal complaint, Resendiz was brought out by school staff and admitted it was his vehicle.

Police say a search of the vehicle found the marijuana in a book bag in the backseat, along with a small scale, a marijuana grinder, and rolling papers. Officers say Resendiz confessed that the marijuana belonged to him.
CALHOUN COUNTY, Iowa  A Humboldt man is injured and another person is dead after a two-vehicle collision Wednesday in northwest Iowa.

The Iowa State Patrol says it happened around 8:30 pm on Highway 20 by mile marker 91 when 37-year-old Deja Kirbylynne De Rubio of Albion was driving east in the westbound lanes. The State Patrol says De Rubio crashed into the front of the westbound vehicle driven by 53-year-old Tony Romey Christensen of Humboldt.

Both vehicles came to rest in the median. The State Patrol says De Rubio was killed and Christensen was flown by helicopter to Iowa Methodist Hospital in Des Moines for treatment. Three passengers in Christensens vehicle were taken by ambulance to Trinity Regional Hospital but their names have not been released.

This incident is still under investigation.
Mason City, Iowa  A man is accused of obstructing the breathing abilities of a woman after police say he covered the nose and mouth of the victim.

Abel Olmedo, 26, of Mason City, has been charged with felony domestic abuse assault while impeding air/blood flow after an incident early Tuesday morning.

Police say it happened in the 1600 block of S. Hampshire Ave.

Olmedo did cause bodily injury by scratching were on the nose and leaving an abrasion at the base of the victims neck, according to court documents.

He is being held in the Cerro Gordo County Jail on $5,000 bond.
MASON CITY, Iowa  A man who opted not to pull over for police for nearly a mile is facing an eluding charge and an additional felony drug charge.

Chad Wolfe, 42, of Mason City, was arrested around 11:13 p.m. Thursday night at 230th St. and Quail Ave.

A deputy attempted to pull over Wolfe when he allegedly continued for just under a mile, authorities said.

Mr. Wolfe admitted he did not pull over like he should have and did so because he did not want to go to jail, the criminal complaint states.

A search found a baggie of methamphetamine in Wolfes pocket, authorities said.
WAVERLY, Iowa (AP)  A northeast Iowa college has begun bolstering security following reports that a man entered unlocked dorms and bathrooms and harassed female students.

The Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier reports that no charges have been filed against the man. The complaints say he entered dorm rooms and bathrooms at Wartburg College in Waverly in February, touched students without their permission and stole money. Police say charges are likely when an investigation is finished.

Security cameras have been installed in 11 new spots in addition to 30 already located around campus. Locks also will be installed on bathrooms, and motion-sensor light switches will be changed so bathroom lights are always on.

___

Information from: Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier, http://www.wcfcourier.com
* Little demand for USD/JPY post-Tokyo fix, fix last for current fiscal year. * Japanese importer demand not as large as thought, US yields heavy too. * Nikkei initially up following Wall St rally o/n but upside limited so far. * Tokyo sees USD/JPY marginally off from 106.53 early to 106.25. * Smattering of option expirations nearby but nothing major. * Some players already starting to hunker down for long wait till New York. <^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ USD/JPY: ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^>

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and may not reflect those of Kitco Metals Inc. The author has made every effort to ensure accuracy of information provided; however, neither Kitco Metals Inc. nor the author can guarantee such accuracy. This article is strictly for informational purposes only. It is not a solicitation to make any exchange in commodities, securities or other financial instruments. Kitco Metals Inc. and the author of this article do not accept culpability for losses and/ or damages arising from the use of this publication.
SHANGHAI, March 30 (Reuters) - China's Ministry of Finance auctioned 10 billion yuan ($1.60 billion) of 3-month bills in the interbank market on Friday at an average yield of 2.9223 percent, traders said. The auction yield came in below Thursday's benchmark secondary market yield of 3.0003 percent . For stories on Chinese debt issues, click on . ($1 = 6.2682 Chinese yuan) (Reporting by the Shanghai Newsroom Editing by Jacqueline Wong) andrew.galbraith.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net ; Twitter:

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and may not reflect those of Kitco Metals Inc. The author has made every effort to ensure accuracy of information provided; however, neither Kitco Metals Inc. nor the author can guarantee such accuracy. This article is strictly for informational purposes only. It is not a solicitation to make any exchange in commodities, securities or other financial instruments. Kitco Metals Inc. and the author of this article do not accept culpability for losses and/ or damages arising from the use of this publication.
* Global IPO proceeds up 26 pct to $38.9 bln in Q1 2018 * Companies raised $186.7 billion in equity in Q1 2018 * Bankers look to "unicorn" IPOs despite tech sell off By Dasha Afanasieva LONDON, March 30 (Reuters) - Global proceeds from initial public offerings (IPO) rose to $39 billion in the first quarter of 2018, the highest since 2014, as companies rushed to take advantage of generally strong equity markets and robust economic growth amid signs they may not last.

Companies raised a total of $186.7 billion in equity, up 3.5 percent from the same period last year, Thomson Reuters Equity Capital Markets (ECM) data to March 26 showed. Activity fell in Europe, though, after several big bank fundraisings last year. Global IPO proceeds jumped almost 26 percent to $38.9 billion, driven by strong increases in Europe and the Americas. "CEO confidence is up, investor activity is up and valuations are attractive because of a strong secondary market. Corporates are taking advantage of that," Gareth McCartney, head of Europe Middle East and Africa (EMEA) ECM syndicate at UBS said, adding an early Easter also encouraged issuers to push ahead with IPO plans. European IPO proceeds more than tripled, with two of the three largest offerings globally coming from Germany: the long awaited listing of Siemens's 28 billion euro ($35 billion) medical equipment arm Healthineers and Deutsche Bank's 6.5 billion euro asset management arm . "Pockets of Europe are increasingly attractive to investors, with German and French leadership secure," said Philip Drury, head of EMEA capital markets at Citi, referring to elections last year in both countries.

After unusual market calm in 2017, 2018 began with a sell-off in January and February and the biggest ever rise in stock volatility .

Rapidly escalating tensions over global trade, with a threat of U.S. tariffs on up to $60 billion of imports from China, and major tech sector wobbles were keenly felt by markets. Bankers also blamed the looming end to central bank bond buying programmes, which had helped inflate asset prices and stoke growth, for the increased market sensitivity. "Currently, there is more nervousness within market participants relative to this time last year. Having said that, issuers need to move forward into windows when available. Increased rhetoric from the U.S. has an impact on the global capital markets, Drury said. In Europe, a large rights issue to help Bayer fund its planned $66 billion takeover of Monsanto is anticipated. A series of large IPOs is also expected in the region in the second and third quarters, but some bankers caution the chain of upcoming listings reflects sentiment from last year, when companies would have decided to go to market. Bankers are also looking ahead to the potential listing of U.S. tech unicorns - companies that have achieved $1 billion valuations without tapping stock markets - such as Uber and Airbnb, to see if they can shrug off a recent sell off in the FAANGs (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google)on privacy concerns after it was revealed that 50 million Facebook users' data was misused. "The market rally that we've seen in the U.S. was incredibly narrow with a small number of companies creating a disproportionate amount of value. It's a bit of profit taking and does not necessarily translate to a broader rotation out of technology," McCartney said.

Morgan Stanley topped the league table for global ECM issuance overall and global IPOs.

($1 = 0.8116 euros) <^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ IPOs at the largest stock markets FACTBOX-Airbnb, Spotify among unicorns likely to list in 2018 Europe's IPO hopefuls face investor caution over quality, price Equity capital markets proceeds globally Global initial public offerings ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^> (Reporting by Dasha Afanasieva; Editing by Mark Potter)
By Hilary Russ NEW YORK, March 29 (Reuters) - New Jersey will sell $3.2 billion of tobacco refunding bonds on April 4 in a deal that effectively strips the debt of its junk rating and elevates it to investment grade. The deal, the largest of next week's $8 billion of U.S. municipal bond and note sales, will refinance what remains of $3.6 billion of bonds issued in 2007 by the state's Tobacco Settlement Financing Corporation. S&P Global Ratings currently rates those bonds a B, in speculative territory. But the credit agency expects to assign various investment-grade ratings to the new bonds - from BBB to A depending on the seniority and maturity, according to bond documents. In 1998, big tobacco companies agreed to make annual payments to most U.S. states to cover medical costs for sick smokers.

Many states opted to securitize that stream of money by selling municipal bonds backed by the expected payments from tobacco companies. However, the payments are tied to smoking rates. Fewer shipments of cigarettes means less money to back the bonds, and smoking rates have been falling.

The New Jersey deal is part of a new generation of refinanced tobacco bonds and takes into account that more smokers are quitting, according to Alan Schankel, managing director at Janney Montgomery Scott. Like most other tobacco bonds of an earlier era, New Jersey's 2007 bonds "were based on assumptions that cigarette smoking declines would not exceed 4 percent annually." The new bonds being issued next week are designed around different expectations - that consumption will continue to decline as much as 8.72 percent by the time the 2046 senior term bonds mature. The deal is "reflective of lower smoking rates and more realistic assumptions," Schankel said. The state expects to save $250 million immediately on the refinancing. Ahead of New Jersey's offering, debt from Ohio's Buckeye Tobacco Settlement Financing Authority traded higher at $98.75, according to analyzed price data from Markit.

There were more than $30 million of trades this week in the 2046 maturity of Ohio's 2007 tobacco bonds with a 5.875 percent coupon, according to trade data from the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board. Also in New Jersey next week, the fiscally stressed seaside resort Atlantic City plans to price $49.37 million of taxable bonds rated 'BBB+' through sole manager Morgan Stanley & Co. Inc. Proceeds from the bonds, which are backed by a state program, will be used to pay pension and healthcare contribution with interest that the city deferred in 2015. (Reporting by Hilary Russ Editing by James Dalgleish)

Messaging: hilary.russ.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))
(Removes extra word in headline) March 30 (Reuters) - Shanghai Dazhong Public Utilities Group Co Ltd : * SAYS 2017 NET PROFIT DOWN 13.4 PERCENT Y/Y AT 474.1 MILLION YUAN ($75.48 million) * SAYS IT PLANS TO ISSUE UP TO 2.0 BILLION YUAN COMMERCIAL PAPER, 1.5 BILLION YUAN MEDIUM-TERM NOTES Source text in Chinese: ; Further company coverage: ($1 = 6.2814 Chinese yuan renminbi) (Reporting by Hong Kong newsroom) Reuters Messaging: min.zhang@thomsonreuters.com))

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and may not reflect those of Kitco Metals Inc. The author has made every effort to ensure accuracy of information provided; however, neither Kitco Metals Inc. nor the author can guarantee such accuracy. This article is strictly for informational purposes only. It is not a solicitation to make any exchange in commodities, securities or other financial instruments. Kitco Metals Inc. and the author of this article do not accept culpability for losses and/ or damages arising from the use of this publication.
* KOSPI index hits over 1-week high, foreigners sell

* Korean won steady versus U.S. dollar * South Korea bond yields down SEOUL, March 30 (Reuters) - Round-up of South Korean financial markets: ** South Korea's KOSPI stock index rose on Friday, buoyed by gains on Wall Street overnight. The Korean won was steady while bond yields fell. ** At 01:17 GMT, the KOSPI was up 18.42 points, or 0.76 percent, at 2,454.79. ** Hyundai Mobis and Hyundai Glovis shares fell as much as 6.3 percent and 7.1 percent, respectively, on worries its parent group's restructuring plan will disadvantage Mobis shareholders. ** Kumho Tire Co Inc's shares jumped as much as 16.7 percent ahead of the tyre manufacturer's decision whether to enter court receivership with investors expecting a dramatic agreement between the company and its labour union. ** The won was quoted at 1,065.3 per dollar on the onshore settlement platform , 0.06 percent firmer than its previous close at 1,065.9. ** In offshore trading, the won was quoted at 1,064.8 per U.S. dollar, down 0.26 percent from the previous day, while in one-year non-deliverable forwards it was being transacted at 1,048.5 per dollar. ** MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was up 0.30 percent, after U.S. stocks ended the previous session with gains . Japanese stocks rose 0.88 percent. ** The KOSPI is down around 1.3 percent so far this year, and up by 2.14 percent in the previous 30 days. ** The current price-to-earnings ratio is 12.10, the dividend yield is 1.28 percent and the market capitalisation is 1,242.04 trillion won. ** The trading volume during the session on the KOSPI index was 142,292,000 shares, and of the total traded issues of 878, the number of advancing shares was 593. ** Foreigners were net sellers of 47,308 million won worth of shares. ** The U.S dollar has fallen 0.15 percent against the won this year. The won's high for the year is 1,056.67 per dollar on Jan. 14, 2018 and low is 1,098.4 on Feb. 6, 2018. ** In money and debt markets, June futures on three-year treasury bonds held steady at 107.7. ** The Korean 3-month Certificate of Deposit benchmark rate was quoted at 1.65 percent, while the benchmark 3-year Korean treasury bond yielded 2.223 percent, lower than the previous day's 2.23 percent. (Reporting by Dahee Kim; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu)

Messaging: dahee.kim@thomsonreuters.com))
BANGKOK, March 30 (Reuters) - An auction of 20 billion baht ($0.6 billion) of 14-day central bank bonds fetched an average accepted yield of 1.02534 percent on Friday, the Bank of Thailand said. The accepted yield range was 1.0050-1.0270 percent and the bid-to-cover ratio was 1.78. For auction results: For benchmark Thai bonds ............... For Thai debt data by contributors....... ($1=31.21 Baht) Reporting by Bangkok Newsroom; (+662 6489729) Keywords: THAILAND BONDS/

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and may not reflect those of Kitco Metals Inc. The author has made every effort to ensure accuracy of information provided; however, neither Kitco Metals Inc. nor the author can guarantee such accuracy. This article is strictly for informational purposes only. It is not a solicitation to make any exchange in commodities, securities or other financial instruments. Kitco Metals Inc. and the author of this article do not accept culpability for losses and/ or damages arising from the use of this publication.
* Board to discuss funding plan on Friday * Fund-raising includes issuance of over 30 bln yen in new shares * Search for global partnership taking longer than expected * New shares to be issued to domestic, overseas funds - NHK (Adds detail from NHK, background) TOKYO, March 30 (Reuters) - Embattled liquid crystal display (LCD) maker Japan Display Inc said its board will discuss on Friday a plan to raise 50 billion yen ($470 million), including more than 30 billion yen through a third-party allotment of new shares. The fundraising, which Japan Display said would also include a sale of assets, underscores the challenges being faced by the company as it stares at a fourth straight year of net losses and struggles in its search for a global partnership. The firm's woes stem from its delayed adoption of organic light-emitting diode (OLED) screens that has cost the display maker orders from customers such as Apple Inc , which opted to use OLED screens for its high-end iPhone X, buying components from Samsung Electronics . Japan Display will turn to investment from domestic and overseas funds for now to shore up its finances, national broadcaster NHK reported earlier in the day. The display maker has previously said it wants to start mass-producing OLED screens to better compete with South Korean rival Samsung Electronics Co Ltd , and that it needs capital to do so. Japan Display, formed in 2012 by combining the LCD businesses of Hitachi Ltd , Toshiba Corp and Sony Corp , has been making half its revenue selling LCDs to Apple.

Shares in Japan Display were down 1 percent in Friday morning trade, underperforming a 1 percent rise in the benchmark Nikkei average . ($1 = 106.4100 yen) (Reporting by Chang-Ran Kim; Editing by Himani Sarkar)

Messaging: ran.kim.reuters.com@reuters.net))
(Adds details on funds, analyst quote, table, byline) By Trevor Hunnicutt NEW YORK, March 29 (Reuters) - U.S. fund investors drained the most cash from the stock market since early February's market meltdown, dodging declines while making a tactical bet on fallen technology companies, Lipper data released on Thursday showed. More than $14 billion rolled out of the funds during the week ended March 28, according to the research service, yet tech sector funds pulled in $101 million as some investors appeared to bet that the declines in Facebook Inc and some of its peers were temporary. Tom Roseen, head of research services at Thomson Reuters' Lipper unit, said the so-called FANG stocks - Facebook, Amazon.com Inc , Netflix Inc and Google parent Alphabet Inc - were "bloodied and black-eyed" this week but the selling pressure made it a buying opportunity. U.S. President Donald Trump accused Amazon on Thursday of not paying enough tax, taking advantage of the U.S. postal system and putting small retailers out of business. The company's stock sank more than 6 percent over the past week. Amazon declined to comment on Trump's tweet on Thursday. "These market darlings have had a strong ride for so long and this mini-tech wreck or breather is kind of what we needed," said Roseen.

INTERNATIONAL STOCKS PUNISHED During the latest week, U.S. investors also turned on international stocks, which have been a popular place to sock away gains from the domestic market. Non-domestic equity funds recorded $340 million in withdrawals during their first week of outflows this year. European stock funds posted $1.2 billion in withdrawals, their fourth straight week of outflows, according to Lipper. The euro zone's momentum has been losing pace, according to Citigroup's economic surprise index for the currency bloc , which is crouched near a two-year low. Japanese stock funds posted $638 million in withdrawals during the week, the most since July, Lipper said. Both Japanese and European markets, which carry currency risks for U.S. investors, are down over the last month. It was the second week of pressure for stock funds, which posted $9.6 billion in withdrawals the week prior, according to Lipper. Overall, the funds have attracted $55 billion this year. The following is a breakdown of the flows for the week, including mutual funds and ETFs: Sector Flow Chg % Assets Assets Count ($blns) ($blns) All Equity Funds -14.379 -0.21 6,753.743 12,195 Domestic Equities -14.039 -0.30 4,526.210 8,664 Non-Domestic Equities -0.340 -0.01 2,227.533 3,531 All Taxable Bond Funds 0.121 0.00 2,701.840 6,072 All Money Market Funds 2.370 0.09 2,696.273 1,042 All Municipal Bond Funds 0.037 0.01 403.378 1,475

(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt; Editing by Jennifer Ablan and Richard Chang)
* Mobis investors say as yet unconvinced of plan's value * Glovis set for biggest daily percentage drop since 2015 * Plan will be put to shareholders for approval on May 29 (Updates shares, adds profit margin data, Samsung merger background) By Hyunjoo Jin and Joyce Lee SEOUL, March 30 (Reuters) - Shares of Hyundai Mobis dropped almost 7 percent on Friday, hurt by worries that a proposed restructuring plan would benefit the parent group's controlling family at the cost of the company's shareholders.

As a part of auto-to-steel giant Hyundai Motor Group's move to streamline its complex ownership structure, key affiliate Hyundai Mobis is to spin off its domestic module and after-service parts businesses and merge them with logistics firm Hyundai Glovis . The plan will be put to shareholders for approval on May 29, but worries Mobis could be giving away cheaply what is seen as the more profitable part of its business will pose a challenge.

Glovis is personally backed by the auto-to-steel group's controlling Chung family, with Chairman Chung Mong-koo holding 6.7 percent and his son, Vice-Chairman Chung Eui-sun, holding 23.3 percent. The chairman has about a 7 percent stake in Mobis. Uncertainty over shareholder approval drove down Glovis shares almost 10 percent, on track for their largest daily drop since 2015. The wider market was up 0.8 percent.

"From the perspective of Mobis shareholders, they are highly likely to vote against the deal, which is disadvantageous to Mobis and beneficial to Glovis," said Lee Jae-il, analyst at Eugene Investment & Securities.

"Should the deal collapse, Glovis shares, which rose on expectations of the merger, may lose ground."

DOUBTFUL INVESTORS

Mobis investors have already said they were not convinced of the deal's benefits to the auto parts maker. Deals that change the ownership structure of South Korean family-run conglomerates, or chaebol, typically attract closer scrutiny by institutional investors since the high-profile union of two Samsung firms in 2015 ran into shareholder opposition.

A merger planned between two Samsung affiliates in 2015 was opposed by U.S.-based hedge fund Elliott that said the deal "significantly undervalues" one of the firms and was not in the interests of the shareholders. The merger was finally approved by shareholders, resulting in Samsung C&T .

According to Mobis' presentation to investors, the business earmarked to be spun off had a profit margin of 10.3 percent in 2017, while the rest of Mobis had a margin of 4.7 percent.

As part of the restructuring plan, Hyundai Motor Group's chairman and vice chairman will sell their shares in Glovis to buy stakes in Mobis. Affiliates Kia Motors , Glovis and Hyundai Steel will sell their stakes in Mobis.

A fund manager noted there were signs in the deal structure that show the management took pains to take into consideration the Samsung merger, but he added it was not enough to convince him as an investor.

"This is a key business that is being transferred to Glovis ... it's a big hit to the business model itself," the fund manager said, declining to be named as he was not allowed to speak to media.

"We expect to vote against the spinoff in order to reserve our right to ask the company to buy out our shares." (Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin and Joyce Lee; Additional reporting by Dahee Kim; Editing by Himani Sarkar)

Messaging: hyunjoo.jin.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))
TOKYO, March 30 (Reuters) - The Bank of Japan has maintained the target amount for its government bond buying programme for April at its regular market operations compared with March, the central bank's bond buying plan released on Friday showed. Many market players suspected the BOJ was reluctant to reduce the target range of its purchase amount because of fears such a move could be taken as a reduction in its stimulus and spur a rise in the yen. (Reporting by Hideyuki Sano Editing by Shri Navaratnam) Messaging: hideyuki.sano.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and may not reflect those of Kitco Metals Inc. The author has made every effort to ensure accuracy of information provided; however, neither Kitco Metals Inc. nor the author can guarantee such accuracy. This article is strictly for informational purposes only. It is not a solicitation to make any exchange in commodities, securities or other financial instruments. Kitco Metals Inc. and the author of this article do not accept culpability for losses and/ or damages arising from the use of this publication.
BEIJING, March 30 (Reuters) - The outstanding amount of China's dollar-denominated Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (QFII) programme rose to $99.36 billion as of March 29, from $99.16 billion at the end of February, the foreign exchange regulator said on Friday. The QFII scheme was created by China to allow foreigners to invest in Chinese capital markets. (Reporting By Beijing Monitoring Desk) Keywords: CHINA INVESTMENT/QFII

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and may not reflect those of Kitco Metals Inc. The author has made every effort to ensure accuracy of information provided; however, neither Kitco Metals Inc. nor the author can guarantee such accuracy. This article is strictly for informational purposes only. It is not a solicitation to make any exchange in commodities, securities or other financial instruments. Kitco Metals Inc. and the author of this article do not accept culpability for losses and/ or damages arising from the use of this publication.
BEIJING/SHANGHAI, March 30 (Reuters) - China's securities regulator said on Friday it would issue draft guidelines on the ownership structure of securities firms. The China Securities Regulatory Commision (CSRC) told a news conference that major and controlling shareholders of a securities firm must be "industry leaders". The regulator also said it would set new rules on what entities could own stakes in securities companies. CSRC added it would seek to revise rules on initial public offerings by the end of this year. (Reporting by Beijing and Shanghai Newsroom Editing by Jacqueline Wong) Messaging: samuel.shen.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net)) Messaging: samuel.shen.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and may not reflect those of Kitco Metals Inc. The author has made every effort to ensure accuracy of information provided; however, neither Kitco Metals Inc. nor the author can guarantee such accuracy. This article is strictly for informational purposes only. It is not a solicitation to make any exchange in commodities, securities or other financial instruments. Kitco Metals Inc. and the author of this article do not accept culpability for losses and/ or damages arising from the use of this publication.
ATHENS, March 30 (Reuters) - Greece will sell 875 million euros ($1.08 billion) of six-month treasury bills on April 4 to refinance a maturing issue, debt agency PDMA said on Friday. Athens rolled over six-month T-bills last month, with the paper priced to yield 1.19 percent. In a rollover, T-bill holders renew their positions instead of getting paid on the maturing paper they hold. The settlement date of the new T-bills will be April 10. Only primary dealers will be allowed to participate and no commission is to be paid. Primary dealers can submit non-competitive bids for up to an additional 30 percent of the auctioned amount until April 5, PDMA said. ($1 = 0.8111 euros) (Reporting by George Georgiopoulos Editing by Karolina Tagaris) Reuters Messaging: george.georgiopoulos.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))

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March 30 (Reuters) - Indian banks' loans rose 11.1 percent in the two weeks to March 16 from a year earlier, while deposits rose 6.4 percent, the Reserve Bank of India's weekly statistical supplement showed on Friday. Outstanding loans rose 309.50 billion rupees ($4.75 billion) to 83.77 trillion rupees in the two weeks to March 16. Non-food credit rose 344.20 billion rupees to 83.35 trillion rupees, while food credit fell 34.70 billion rupees to 421.70 billion rupees. Bank deposits fell 265.70 billion rupees to 111.61 trillion rupees in the two weeks to March 16. Source text: ( ) ($1 = 65.1100 Indian rupees) Keywords: INDIA CENBANK/LOANS

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PORT LOUIS, March 30 (Reuters) - The economy of Mauritius is expected to grow by 3.9 percent this year, down from a previous forecast of 4.0 percent in December, due to an expected slowdown in agriculture and fishing activities, the statistics office said on Friday. The Indian Ocean island economy expanded by 3.8 percent in 2017, lower than the previous estimate of 3.9 percent. Statistics Mauritius said agriculture would expand by 1.1 percent this year instead of 2.0 percent, due to no growth in sugarcane and lower growth in other agricultural activities. Mauritius, which markets itself as a bridge between Africa and Asia, has been working to shift the economy from reliance on sugar, textiles and tourism towards offshore banking, business outsourcing, luxury real estate and medical tourism. (Reporting by Jean Paul Arouff Editing by Maggie Fick and Edmund Blair)

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March 30 (Reuters) - Hedge funds and money managers upped their net long position in COMEX gold contracts in the week to March 27, U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission data showed on Friday. They also cut net long positions in silver and copper futures and options, the data showed. (Reporting by Chris Prentice Editing by Susan Thomas) Reuters Messaging: christine.prentice.thomsonreuters@reuters.net))

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WARSAW, March 30 (Reuters) - Poland's finance ministry plans to offer treasury bonds worth 15 billion zlotys ($4.39 billion) to 25 billion zlotys at three to five regular bond auctions in the second quarter, the ministry said on Friday. The ministry said it plans to conduct one to three switch auctions in the second quarter, at which it would buy back papers due this and possibly next year. Auctions of treasury bills are not planned for April, the ministry said. Deputy Finance Minister Piort Nowak said in a separate statement that Poland has financed half of its 2018 borrowing needs in the first quarter.

Following is a table with a breakdown of Poland's treasury debt auctions planned for April:

BONDS OFFERED OFFER VALUE DATE OF AUCTION (bln PLN)

REGULAR T-BOND

TENDERS: OK0720/PS0123/WZ0524/W 4.0-8.0 April 27 S0428/WZ0528/possible WS or IZ type bond

SWITCH TENDER For sale: --- Apr. 5 OK0720/PS0123/WZ0524/W S0428/WZ0528 For buy-back: PS0418/PS0718/OK1018

More information about the tenders is available on the ministry's pages in the Reuters system ($1 = 3.4150 zlotys) (Reporting by Marcin Goettig)

Messaging: marcin.goclowski.reuters.com@thomsonreuters.net))
PORT LOUIS, March 30 (Reuters) - The weighted average yield on Mauritius' 91-day Treasury bill fell to 3.63 percent at auction on Friday from 3.64 percent at the last sale on March 23, the central bank said. The Bank of Mauritius offered a total of 1.2 billion rupees ($35.84 million) for both the 91-day and the 182-day paper. It sold 755.6 million of the 91-day instruments.

Complete auction results were as follows: MATURITY 91-DAY 182-DAY 364-day WEIGHTED AVERAGE PRICE THIS AUCTION 99.103 98.174 96.312 LAST AUCTION 99.101 98.179 96.330 WEIGHTED AVERAGE YIELD (PCT) THIS AUCTION 3.63 3.73 3.84 LAST AUCTION 3.64 3.72 3.82 BIDS ACCEPTED (RUPEES) 755.6(MLN) 750(MLN) 444.4(MLN)

(The table includes both government (182-day) and Bank of Mauritius (91-day, 364-day) bills) ($1 = 33.4800 Mauritius rupees) (Reporting by Jean Paul Arouff Editing by Maggie Fick)
(Adds details on incident, context) By Marta Nogueira RIO DE JANEIRO, March 30 (Reuters) - Brazilian environmental regulators ordered miner Anglo American Plc to halt operations in the country following a pipeline leak. Anglo American had previously suspended mining operations in its Minas-Rio system in Brazil, which transports iron ore from the company's mine and processing facility in the state of Minas Gerais to a port in the state of Rio de Janeiro, between March 12 and March 27 following a previous leak. "The event led the company to paralyze the process of resuming iron ore transportation," Anglo American said in a statement. "The company will also put employees on paid leave." The pipeline carries a mixture of iron ore concentrate and water. The statement did not give any further information on the accident nor say when operations were expected to resume. A document by Brazilian environmental watchdog Ibama seen by Reuters said Anglo American would only be allowed to resume operations once it demonstrates the pipeline's security. (Reporting by Marta Nogueira; Writing by Bruno Federowski; Editing by Bill Trott and Jonathan Oatis) bruno.federowski.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))

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HANOI, March 30 (Reuters) - Following are domestic prices of Vietnam's key commodities. Unit: Million dong per tonne Item March 26-30 March 19-23 Location Robusta beans 35,4-37.1 36.4-37.2 Central Highlands Black pepper 53.0-55.0 52.0-55.0 Southern region Refined sugar 15.0-16.0 15.0-16.0 Southern region Summer-autumn paddy 6.0-6.8 6.0-6.8 Mekong Delta SJC gold 3.680-3.712 3.670-3.685 Hanoi, HCMC City NOTES: Gold prices are low/high selling prices quoted in million dong per 3.75-gramme ingot during the week by top manufacturer SJC. Prices in the previous week are updated. Coffee export prices Rice export prices Historical data Central bank's gold auction ($1 = 22,793 dong) (Reporting by Khanh Vu) khanh.vu.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net)) khanh.vu.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))

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Renault's Cyril Abiteboul wants F1 to halt all engine development for the 2019-2020 interim seasons which will precede the sport's big regulation change in 2021.

Abiteboul is pushing for restrictions to help manufacturers focus fully on F1's new-spec power unit which teams will learn more about next week in Bahrain where Liberty Media will reveal to teams F1's framework for the future

"The one thing we will not want to do is to have the burden of developing two engines in parallel," the Renault Sport F1 boss told Motorsport.com.

"That's one thing that is sure, but it's too early to talk about the technicalities of the way achieve that.

"There are two things basically in our key message and our position at Renault. First before committing to a regulation, we need to understand the bigger picture.

"And secondly we don't see it's acceptable or sustainable to have to work on two engines in parallel at the same time, for the simple reason that if there was to be a new entrant, which is what we wish, he will have a fantastic advantage in being able to focus on the future, and not to have to worry about the present and the customers, and so and so forth," added the French manager.

"I'm just discussing principles which I think are logical, and fair for the next steps."

Red Bull's Helmut Marko agrees with Renault's engine-freeze demand, but also wants parity installed between manufacturers for the next two years, although the latter condition is seen as a means of reining in Mercedes' current power advantage.

"If new engine rules are coming which we hope should be announced pretty soon, than we have to freeze the engines as they are now," Marko told Motorsport.com.

"And there should be a rule that every engine has to be within three percent, and that is to be properly fulfilled.

"Then we can live until 2020. Nobody has to make development on these engines, and that's the way to go."

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McLaren has revealed that part of an upgrade package scheduled for Melbourne was delayed because of the reliability issues encountered by the team in pre-season testing.

The Woking-based outfit was banking on several updates and new components to boost its performance in Australia.

McLaren racing director Eric Boullier has indicated however that the missing specs - which include a new bargeboard design worth several tenths of a second a lap - will likely appear on its car in Bahrain next week.

"We were obviously not prepared for Barcelona and I'm glad we fixed the reliability issues for the weekend," McLaren racing director Boullier told Motorsport.com.

"But during the last few weeks [before the race] we spent our energy fixing the reliability issues and not bringing the upgrade faster to the track.

"So we are going to have another batch coming in Bahrain, which should have been in Australia."

Boullier believes the team will have caught up with the implementation of its development work by the first European race, the Spanish Grand Prix.

Overall, the Frenchman was pleased with the team's performance last weekend at Albert Park, but insists a solid potential for improvement is in the works.

"We are happy with the correlation, so we have not lost what was one of the strengths of McLaren last year," he said, speaking on how the MCL33's track performance measured up with factory simulations.

"That's one of the reasons I guess why Fernando was supportive and happy this weekend, because we have lots of things coming that have been signed off already.

"We are now going to push to make sure we can bring things as soon as possible."

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A journalist takes photos during a preview exhibition of Sotheby's spring auction in Hong Kong, south China, March 29, 2018. The spring auction is held here from March 30 to April 3, during which 3,700 treasures will be displayed. (Xinhua/Li Peng)

8

1

[ Editor: zyq ]
BERLIN, March 29 (Xinhua) -- German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz (SPD) has rejected a proposal from fellow party members to create a "basic solidarity income" for long-term unemployed Germans on Thursday.

Scholz defended the current "Hartz IV" benefit system while expressing sympathy with the desire among proponents of a "basic solidarity income" to "significantly reduce long-term unemployment." Earlier, Berlin Mayor-Governor Michael Mueller (SPD) had called for the creation of a so-called social labor market where Germans who struggled to find employment could earn tax-financed income of 1,200 euros per month with work for communal governments.

The proposal was supported by the president of the Federation of German Trade Unions (DGB) Reiner Hoffman and Labor minister Hubertus Heil (SPD). "This is a necessary debate that we need to engage in," Heil told the newspaper "BILD".

However, employer representatives and communal governments largely rebuffed the idea of a social labor market as inappropriate in times of record low unemployment figures. Speaking to the newspaper "WELT", Karl-Josef Laumann, president of the Christian Democratic Union's (CDU) employer committee, said that "Hartz IV does not need to be reformed or eliminated and it also does not need a new name."

Similarly, Ingo Kramer, president of the Confederation of German Employers' Associations (BDA), rejected the new initiative. "The basic idea of a basic solidarity income is nothing other than to massively create artificial employment which would not persist in entrepreneurial competition," Kramer said.

By contrast, the Left party (Linke) welcomed the debate in the SPD over a reform of the existing Hartz IV system provoked by Mueller's comments. Speaking to the public broadcaster "ZDF" on Thursday, Left party leader Gesine Loetzsch urged the SPD to show "more self-confidence" in the matter and make a "concrete proposal" for a new system.

[ Editor: Xueying ]
By Yoon Ja-young



DGB Financial is facing the worst crisis in its history, with its chief stepping down following allegations of having a slush fund and irregular hiring.



Former DGB Financial Chairman Park In-kyu resigned Thursday amid increasing pressure from shareholders and the labor union. He convened an emergency executive meeting, where he said he feels responsible for the current crisis the group is facing. He said that he would like to offer his sincere apology to the shareholders, customers and employees for causing the problem. Shares of DGB Financial closed at 11,650 won Friday, unchanged from the previous day.





Former DGB Financial Chairman Park In-kyu
By Kim Rahn



North Korea has stressed that cooperation with China is essential for peace on the Korean Peninsula, saying they are "blood allies."



The stance comes after its leader Kim Jong-un visited Beijing for a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping earlier this week. This was Kim's first trip outside the North and first bilateral talks with the head of a foreign state since taking power in late 2011.



Pyongyang's state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper published an editorial titled "A historic visit that unfolded a new era of North Korea-China friendship," Friday, and said Kim's visit to China clearly showed Pyongyang values its relations with Beijing.



"The blood alliance has been made through holy struggles that aimed for joint great achievement," it said. "As the relationship is not severable, it has been maintained and remained intact despite various troubles throughout history."



The newspaper indirectly admitted relations had been strained before the summit, saying the two countries have faced changes in situations through time. "However, through the hardship, it was again proved that strengthening solidarity and cooperation between the nations is an essential prerequisite in building people's happy future and keeping the peace and stability of the region."



It said the Pyongyang-Beijing friendship and brotherhood would last forever like the flow of the Amnok River, called the Yalu River in China, which runs along the western border of the two countries.



Xi's exceptional hospitality to Kim





North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, second from left, and Chinese President Xi Jinping, third from left, have dinner along with their wives during Kim's visit to Beijing for summit, Monday. / Yonhap
By Kim Bo-eun



Libya's process of denuclearization, in which rewards were provided after the regime made an instantaneous decision and completely dismantled its nuclear program, cannot be applied to resolving the North Korea nuclear issue, a Cheong Wa Dae official said Friday.



He hinted at solutions through phased disarmament and verification, which is somewhat different from hard-line U.S. officials' preference for a package settlement similar to the Libya disarmament process



Libya gave up its nuclear and other destructive weapons in 2003, in return for normalization of relations with the U.S. and easing of economic sanctions. Attention has grown over the Libyan case as the White House's newly appointed national security adviser, John Bolton, has backed this model as a means to address North Korea.



"I believe it is impossible to apply the Libyan process to North Korea," the senior official told reporters on condition of anonymity.



Citing that the North Korean nuclear crisis has dragged on for 25 years, he said it cannot be solved instantly like pulling a TV plug out.



"The reality is that verification and nuclear disarmament can only be done sequentially," the official said.



Earlier this week, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un stated in a surprise visit to China that the regime would be willing to denuclearize, on a step-by-step basis.



"Once the U.S. and South Korea take phased and simultaneous measures in response to our peace efforts, the issue of denuclearization on the peninsula can be resolved," he said.



The U.S. has said that it will maintain maximum pressure on North Korea until complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement of its nuclear program is achieved. Hardliners contend that looking back over the past 25 years, a step-by-step process has only enabled the North to buy time to develop its nuclear program.



Despite differences in stance, the Cheong Wa Dae official said both Washington and Pyongyang appear to be willing to resolve the issue.



"We are able to tell, from the announcements that U.S. President Donald Trump and Kim will meet by May, that they are willing to deal with the issue," he said.



Following Kim's meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing, Trump posted on Twitter, "Now there is a good chance that Kim Jong-un will do what is right for his people and for humanity. Look forward to our meeting!"



The Cheong Wa Dae official said, "The views of the parties coming to the negotiation table will differ. (South Korea) will attempt to adjust the differences and aid compromise, as a mediator."



President Moon Jae-in and Kim will hold a summit April 27; and Trump and Kim, in late May to discuss Pyongyang's denuclearization.



Regarding the Washington-Pyongyang summit, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said "it is something of global importance and we want to make sure that it's done as soon as we can, but we also want to make sure it's done properly," in a briefing Thursday.



Meanwhile, Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi met with Moon, Friday, as Xi's special representative, to brief him on details of Kim's meeting with Xi earlier this week.



He also held a meeting with Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha.



"We support the hosting of the inter-Korean summit and the Pyongyang-Washington summit, and we are hoping for important achievements to be made through them," Yang told Kang.



"We wish to strengthen communication with South Korea so that tension on the Korean Peninsula can be eased even more."



A day earlier, the Chinese official spoke with National Security Office chief Chung Eui-yong about the Kim-Xi summit.


U.S. President Donald Trump threatened Thursday to "hold up" a renegotiated free trade agreement with South Korea until he reaches a deal with North Korea on its nuclear weapons program.



Calling the trade deal a "very strong card," Trump hinted it could be used as leverage to get Seoul to do more to denuclearize the North.



"I may hold it up 'til after a deal is made with North Korea," he said during a speech on infrastructure in Ohio. "Does everybody understand that? You know why, right? You know why? Because it's a very strong card."



Seoul and Washington announced Wednesday that they had agreed "in principle" on a revision to the KORUS trade deal. Among other things, the revision calls for further opening South Korea's auto market to the U.S., and comes with an agreement to exempt South Korea from new U.S. tariffs on steel imports. Instead, South Korea will face a quota on its steel exports to the U.S.



"I want to make sure everyone is treated fairly," Trump said. "And we're moving along very nicely with North Korea. We'll see what happens."



The U.S. president is set to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un before the end of May to talk about dismantling the regime's nuclear weapons program. South Korean President Moon Jae-in will also meet with Kim on April 27.



"We'll see how it all turns out. Maybe it'll be good and maybe it won't," Trump said. "And if it's no good, we're walking. And if it's good, we will embrace it. But it's going to be very interesting over the next period of time."



Trump has slammed KORUS, which went into effect in 2012, as a horrible deal that took away American jobs and widened the U.S. trade deficit with South Korea. He threatened to terminate the agreement last year but stopped short amid calls to strengthen cooperation with South Korea after North Korea's sixth and most powerful nuclear test to date in September.



South Korea has been "wonderful," Trump said, but "we'll probably hold that deal up for a little while, see how it all plays out."



Tensions escalated as Trump and Kim exchanged fiery rhetoric and personal insults. A mood for rapprochement set in this year after North Korea reached out to the South over its participation in the PyeongChang Winter Olympics.



"Certainly, the rhetoric has calmed down just a little bit, wouldn't you say?" Trump quipped.



State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert declined to comment on the president's remarks but said the trade agreement has yet to be finalized.



"We believe that this will be better for American workers and for the U.S. economy," she said at a regular press briefing. "But this is not a done deal. It's not a final agreement."



Shortly after the revision was announced Wednesday, Trump hailed it as a "great deal for American and Korean workers" and said: "Let's now focus on our important security relationship."



Earlier this month Trump also made remarks suggesting he could withdraw U.S. troops from South Korea if a trade deal was not reached.



The U.S. has some 28,500 troops stationed in the Asian ally nation to deter North Korean aggression, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War that ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty. (Yonhap)




All snack stands and vending machines located inside subway stations in Seoul are scheduled for removal by 2020, according to the Seoul Metro Sunday. Yonhap

snack stands, machines will join phone booths' demise



By Kim Hyun-bin



Vending machines and snack stands located inside subway stations in Seoul will be history starting 2020.



Seoul Metro announced Sunday the move is to facilitate foot traffic on subway platforms.



Also, with a growing number of consumers using e-commerce platforms to purchase daily necessities via smartphones, the need for snack stands and vending machines has diminished.



Korea's policy for a coinless society has also led people to make less use of them, analysts say.



"The vending machines and snack bars in subway stations hinder foot traffic, and become an obstacle in emergencies," a Seoul Metro official said.



"Considering these reasons we plan to remove them."



Snack stands sell a variety of products from newspapers to beverages and earphones.



There are 151 stands installed throughout the city that are scheduled to be removed by 2020.



The city plans to remove 16 vacant snack stands starting this year.



"It's a shame the city plans to remove the stores and vending machines," said Lee Jung-ho, a Seoul resident. "I take the subway often and sometimes use them, when thirsty. I have never thought it got in my way."

A Seoul Metro official said, "Since the city decided to remove the stands, we will no longer advertise or receive applicants to run the stands."



To systematically remove the stands, the Seoul Metro plans to go through negotiations with the current lease owners.

"We plan to reduce the stands one by one until each contract expires," the official said. "Even if the contract exceeds the year 2020, we are looking to move the stands to the station's waiting areas."



The city has rented out the stands to help the livelihoods of people in need including people 65 years or older, the handicapped and single parents.



Concerns over small biz



Some people are voicing concerns the removal could negatively affect the store owners.



"By removing the stands it could affect the livelihoods of the owners," said Park Chi-hyoung, a Seoul resident. "The city should find another location for the owners to sell their goods not on the platform, but maybe on the floor above."



Out of the 151 stands, more than two-thirds of their contracts will expire before 2020.



However the remaining 40 stands' leases are scheduled to end in August 2020.



"We are currently negotiating with the owners to move the stands by 2020," the official said.



Not only the stands but also snack and beverage vending machines are scheduled for removal.



There are 418 beverage and 212 snack vending machines inside subway stations in Seoul. About 180 are operated by private enterprises.




NAIROBI, March 29 (Xinhua) -- The Kenyan government expects Chinese private sector to participate in projects dealing with food security, affordable housing, manufacturing and affordable healthcare, says Henry Rotich, the country's cabinet secretary for The National Treasury to Xinhua on Wednesday.

Rotich said Kenya will sell its economic agenda dubbed the Big Four during the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) Summit to be held in September 2018.

"The agenda for Kenya during the FOCAC will be the Big Four. We want Chinese private sector to participate in projects associated with this agenda," Rotich told Xinhua in Nairobi.

The Big Four agenda is a set of four targets by Kenyatta meant to be implemented in the next five years in order to grow the economy, create more jobs and improve the living standards of the county, the cabinet secretary said.

"There are huge opportunities for Chinese investors in the Big Four. As much as we partner with the Chinese government, we want to encourage more of the Chinese private sector to invest in Kenya. That is why we have continued with reforms to make it easier for investors to set up their facilities here," said Rotich.

FOCAC Summit will be held in September in China. FOCAC was initiated in the year 2000 as a structured cooperation mechanism between China and all African countries which have diplomatic ties with the country.

Kenya's agenda during the previous FOCAC summits has been on cooperating with China on infrastructure development and even under the Big Four, that component will be given the priority, the Kenyan official said.

"Infrastructure remains an enabler and is crucial to the realization of the Big Four," said Rotich.

[ Editor: Xueying ]
Kendallville, IN (46755)

Today

Chance of a morning shower. Mostly cloudy early, then afternoon sunshine. High near 65F. Winds WNW at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

A mostly clear sky. Low 47F. Winds light and variable.
Kendallville, IN (46755)

Today

Chance of a morning shower. Morning clouds will give way to sunshine for the afternoon. High around 65F. Winds WNW at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Mostly clear skies. Low 47F. Winds light and variable.
LANZHOU, March 30 (Xinhua) -- A court in northwest China's Gansu Province Friday handed down a death penalty on a man for crimes of murder, robbery, rape and insulting bodies.

Gao Chengyong confessed at the people's intermediate court of Baiyin City and said he would not file an appeal.

[ Editor: Xueying ]
A visitor takes photo of lasted car control system showed by Benz during the media preview of the 2018 New York International Auto Show (NYIAS) in New York, the United States, March 29, 2018. The 2018 New York International Auto Show will open to public from March 30 to April 8. (Xinhua/Wang Ying)

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[ Editor: Xueying ]
An illustration by Wei Dongni from China. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Monsters in the Forbidden City is a series of bestselling tales for children that has sold more than 1 million copies in Chinese and will be published in Korean, Arabic and Thai.

During the ongoing Bologna Children's Book Fair in Italy, which is held March 26-29 and features China as the guest of honor, three new titles from the series were launched.

The author Chang Yi writes the series to record the childhood stories she heard from the retired staff of the Palace Museum, and to tell the world that Chinese people from earlier times are full of creativity and fantasies.

Traditional monsters are generally good-natured and kindhearted, Chang said.

The publisher solicited illustrations for the series from worldwide artists, based on their knowledge and imagination.

Here are some of the images of ancient Chinese monsters and fairies from the global illustrators.

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[ Editor: WPY ]
LANZHOU, March 30 (Xinhua) -- A court in northwest China's Gansu Province Friday handed down a death penalty on a man for crimes of murder, robbery, rape and mutilating corpses.

Gao Chengyong, 53, was found to have killed 11 female victims between May 1988 and February 2002 in Gansu Province and neighboring Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, according to the people's intermediate court of Baiyin City.

The court found he killed the victims to cover up robbery or rape in Baiyin, Gansu and Baotou, Inner Mongolia.

Gao confessed in court and said he would not file an appeal.

Police hunted Gao for 28 years until one of his relatives committed a crime and underwent DNA testing in 2015, which led to his arrest in August 2016.

[ Editor: Xueying ]
Milan, March 30 - An Italian financial broker has been found dead in Mexico with two shot wounds to the head, the La Provincia Pavese has reported. The body of Alberto Villani, a 37-year-old who lived in the northern city of Pavia, was found in a large plastic bag in Tlaltizaplan, some 100km from Mexico City, the local daily reported. "This happened to me because I'm a thief" was reportedly written in Spanish beside the body. The body was reportedly found on March 26. The last time he had contact with his partner, who lived with him in Pavia and is originally from El Salvador, was March 20, the newspaper said.
Rome, March 30 - A Moroccan man residing in Italy was detained by Carabinieri police in a dawn raid in the northern region of Piedmont on Friday over alleged terror links. The operation was related to a Rome probe into the "criminal activities" of Ilyass Hadouz, a 19-year-old resident in the Piedmont town of Fossano, and suspicions he is part of a terrorist association. Investigators believe the young Moroccan conducted "intense jihadist propaganda", via a number of accounts on social media sites including Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Hadouz is thought to have radicalised himself at home, via videos and extremist Islamist online chats. "It's depressing to die of old age," he allegedly said via Facebook. "The unbelievers are set for dark days that will make their children's hair turn white". Friday's is the latest in a string of operations targeting suspected Islamist terrorists this week. These included the arrest of five people in Rome and Latina on Thursday accused of being linked to Anis Amri, a Tunisian who carried out the 2016 Berlin Christmas-market truck attack in which 12 people were killed. Interior Minister Marco Minniti called for an additional reinforcement of security checks at crowded places "in view of the Easter holidays" at an extraordinary meeting of the Committee of Strategic Antiterrorism Analysis (CASA) on Wednesday follow the terror-linked arrests. In an interview with La Stampa newspaper Wednesday, Minniti said "the picture of the ISIS threat remains unchanged".
Rome, March 30 - Outgoing Interior Minister Marco Minniti has signed a decree setting the date for an upcoming round of local elections to select to new mayors and council assemblies of many towns and cities for June 10. The run-off ballots will take place on June 24.
Rome, March 30 - Forza Italia (FI) leader and former premier Silvio Berlusconi has launched a legal petition to end his ban on running for public office, Corriere della Sera reported on Friday. The six-year ban, which prevented him running for parliament in this month's general election, stems from a 2013 tax-fraud conviction. The petition asking for Berlusconi's "rehabilitation" on the grounds that three years have passed since the sentence was served, was presented in Milan on March 12. The 81-year-old media magnate has also appealed to the European Court of Human Rights against the ban. The ECHR is not expected to rule on the appeal before the autumn.
Rome, March 30 - The interior ministry said Friday that 6,161 asylum seekers arrived in Italy via sea in the first quarter of this year, down 75% on the 24,278 arrivals in the same period in 2017. The number of migrants to set out from Libya was 4,399, down 81% on the 23,549 in the first three months of 2017. The ministry said 1,551 of the asylum seekers were from Eritrea and 1,187 were Tunisian, making them the two biggest national groups for asylum seekers. It said 909 minors arrived. The ministry added that the number of asylum seekers to go to other European countries via the relocation system climbed to 12,354.
Naples, March 30 - Three Neapolitan men who went missing in Mexico on January 31 are alive according to investigators, a lawyer said at an Italian foreign ministry meeting with their relatives in Rome Friday. "For the Mexican authorities our co-nationals are alive and the investigative activity is moving in this direction," said the lawyer, Claudio Falletti. Caretaker Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano recently called for "urgent" action to find the trio. It has been reported by their family that the three Neapolitan street vendors were sold by police to a gang in the State of Jalisco for 43 euros. The relatives of Raffaele Russo, his son Antonio, and nephew Vincenzo Commino have repeatedly appealed to the government to intervene. The Italian foreign ministry confirmed that four Mexican police have been arrested. The three street vendors went missing in the high-crime city of Tecaltitlan, in the State of Jalisco. photo: torchlit parade in Naples for the three
VIENTIANE, March 30 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese embassy and Chinese community in Laos pledged their support on Friday to work with the Lao government to combat illegal wildlife trade in Laos.

A meeting, hosted by the Department of Forest Inspection (DOFI) under the Lao Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF), was to enhance the local Chinese community's understanding and observance of the law and regulations on wildlife protection and against illegal wildlife trade.

It was also to build cooperation among the law enforcement authorities in Laos, the Chinese embassy and the Chinese community, to take action against illegal wildlife trade, said a press release of the meeting.

"We all play an active role in combating illegal wildlife trade. Illegal wildlife trade is a serious concern and will be penalized accordingly under Lao laws and regulations," said Lao Deputy DOFI Director General Thongphanh Rattanalungsy.

Li Nengbin from the Chinese embassy in Laos said:" The Chinese government highly values the efforts to protect wildlife, and commits itself to effectively combating wildlife trafficking."

Towards the end of the meeting, representatives from the Chinese community, which includes the China General Chamber of Commerce, Guangdong, Fujian, Zhejiang, Sichuan and Hunan Chambers of Commerce in Laos as well as the China Southern Airlines, expressed their support to the commitment and efforts by both the Lao and Chinese governments in stopping illegal wildlife trade.

They vowed to work and cooperate with Lao and Chinese authorities in preventing and reporting these illegal activities, and refraining from participating and engaging in activities that contribute to illegal wildlife trade.

[ Editor: Xueying ]
Rome, March 29 - Rome prosecutors on Thursday opened a probe into the death of 33-year-old Italian manager Alessandro Fiori, missing in Turkey for two weeks and found Thursday with his skull caved in in the port area of Istanbul, judicial sources said. Prosecutors are awaiting a first report on the case, the sources said. Fiori, form near Cremona, went missing on March 14 after leaving for Turkey on March 12. His documents, phone and empty wallet were found in his Istanbul hotel room.
Rome, March 29 - There is an extremely slim chance that parts of the Chinese space station will hit Italy as it disintegrates on returning to the Earth's atmosphere this weekend, Italian experts said Thursday. The chance is currently 0.02%, they said.
BUSINESS SPOTLIGHT:

BMW Encinitas makes it its mission to not only provide reliable cars to the North County community, but to also support the area and various charities.

The dealership, which has been around since the 1970s and with its most recent owners since 2006, first started by working with local animal organizations, such as the Rancho Coastal Humane Society and Helen Woodward Animal Center.

Now, BMW Encinitas, as well as Autonation, also support various cancer nonprofits, like Susan G. Komen . The dealership is also a sponsor of the annual Bro-Am music and surf festival at Moonlight Beach in Encinitas.

Its not all about selling a car, said Darrin Fetterolf, general manager of the dealership. Its about the relationship and giving back to your community.

Fetterolf said he feels a personal connection to these causes because hes rescued about a dozen dogs in his lifetime and has lost family members to cancer.

Autonation, which has BMW Encinitas in its network, has donated millions of dollars to cancer research through its Drive Pink campaign, which began last October. The effort, which won Autonation the Best Campaign for a Dealer Group by MediaPost, supports breast cancer research and promotes the message through trendy pink license plates.

Not only are we fixing cars, selling cars and repairing cars, weve donated more than $12 million to cancer research because we want to get a cure, Fetterolf said. Its about a bigger picture.

BMW Encinitas was also honored March 13 as one of 35 of BMW of North Americas Centers of Excellence. The award is based on eight different sales and after-sale key performance indicators.

Fetterolf said the dealership, which has 111 employees, is known for its customer service; inventory of new and pre-owned cars; and reputable service center.

BMW Encinitas is at 1302 Encinitas Blvd. in Encinitas. (760) 335-6124. bmwencinitas.com

 Business Spotlight features commercial enterprises that support La Jolla Light.
Completed in 1927, the McClintock house on Sierra Mar Drive was one of the largest private investments in La Jolla at the time  both in scale and cost of the project. The house is considered the best-preserved example of architect Herbert Palmers trademark use of artistry and handicraft.

Historical-home enthusiasts gathered at the McClintock house March 18 to celebrate La Jolla Landmarks Week 2018. Invitees were given tours of the home and heard a brief presentation about the architect and preservation. The third week in March is La Jolla Landmarks Week, proclaimed by the City of San Diego in 2016 to celebrate and encourage preservation in La Jolla.

For information about La Jolla Historical Society and its other special events, visit lajollahistory.org

La Jolla Historical Society Landmarks Group chair Seonaid McArthur says a few words about preservation of historical places. (Ashley Mackin-Solomon)

Terry Fox with La Jolla Historical Society executive director Heath Fox (Ashley Mackin-Solomon)

Ric Erdman and Theresa Jarvis (Ashley Mackin-Solomon)

Pete Seymour and Susan Comden (Ashley Mackin-Solomon)

Historic homeowners Susan and David Ketring, Lisa and Raul Albanez, and Debra and Don Duford (Ashley Mackin-Solomon)

Historic homeowners Phil, Erin and May McConkey with Lucy and Tom Jackson (Ashley Mackin-Solomon)

The house features a Belle Baranceanu mural, similar to the one at the historic La Jolla Post Office (Ashley Mackin-Solomon)
Patrons of the Prado (PoP) held their annual Afternoon of Friendship & Fashion, March 9, 2018 at the Neiman Marcus store in Fashion Valley. Funds raised from the event support PoPs Bucks4Buses program, which provides the transportation needed so children from financially disadvantaged schools may visit Balboa Parks many educational museums. PoP members oohed and ahhed over the glamorous gowns presented, and after the show, expressed their gratitude to the retailer for sponsoring the event. patronsoftheprado.org

Carrie OBrien, Julie Sarno, Carol Lorsch (Vincent Andrunas)

Jo Ann Kilty, Vicki Eddy, Judi Freeman (Vincent Andrunas)

Lynne Wheeler, gala chair Roxi Link, Kim Alessio (Vincent Andrunas)

Lola Green, PoP founder Barbara McColl, Dianne York (Vincent Andrunas)

Joan Peters, Jan Reital, Monika Nochisaki, Carly Maduca (Vincent Andrunas)

Charlotte Rand, Emma Zuckerman, PoP president Clarice Perkins (Vincent Andrunas)

Reena Horowitz, gala chair Stephanie Brown, Helene Gould, Kristi Pieper (Vincent Andrunas / Vincent Andrunas)

Phyllis Parrish, Nemeth Foundation director Teresa Castiglione, Sandy Redman, Cristull Hasson (Vincent Andrunas)

Christina Maggiora, Reinette Levine, Esther Nahama, Miriam Summ (Vincent Andrunas)

Christina Maggiora, Reinette Levine, Esther Nahama, Miriam Summ (Vincent Andrunas)

Mary Ann Bosanac, Christina Jordan, Lisa Arnold (Vincent Andrunas)

Spring fashion on the runway (Vincent Andrunas)

Spring fashion on the runway (Vincent Andrunas)
Editors Note: The venerable La Jolla Womans Club is seeking new members and new programs to offer the community.

 Its successful Women in Leadership lecture series continues this month with a presentation by Dr. Margaret Leinen, director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, 5:30-7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 29, 2018 at the historic club house, 7791 Draper Ave. The event is free with RSVP at (858) 454-2354.

 Club membership requires attendance at two events and payment of yearly dues ($75). Membership chair is Debbie Williams at (858) 454-2354.

Margaret Leinen, Ph.D., is an award-winning oceanographer and an executive with national and international experience in ocean science, global climate and environmental issues, federal research administration, and non-profit startups. (Courtesy)

 GUEST COMMENTARY:

In 1894, a small group of women in La Jolla met to talk about current affairs and literature. Speakers such as Helen Keller and Lucy Stone were invited to address a variety of topics, including womens suffrage and the lack of female representation in the American political system.

In 1901, Ellen Browning Scripps became president of the club and the name became La Jolla Womans Club.

The club evolved into a large prominent group and was very influential in local and national politics. Legislation for child welfare was heavily influenced by members of the club, along with a California bill to protect the redwoods and national forests, and the insistence that women be appointed to the Board of Education.

Special programs for children with disabilities in public schools was another interest of club members. In 1914, club president Dr. Mary Ritter (also state chair of Public Health of California) adopted the slogan: All knowledge is futile that is not used for others, and the club embarked upon an ambitious program of events and fundraising.

The club endorsed a resolution to the 65th U.S. Congress recommending, as War Measure Legislation, the early passing of the Susan B. Anthony Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (womens right to vote), and investigated subjects such as the value of a scientific education.

During both world wars, the club raised money and gave time to the Red Cross and its efforts overseas.

Following World War II, the status of women was forever changed. Previously closed doors opened. Women were welcomed into the Chambers of Commerce, all levels of government and politics, civic organizations and corporate boards.

The La Jolla Womans Club gradually evolved into a more social organization, where members met and enjoyed monthly luncheons, yoga sessions and a book club. While the club still hosts meetings, it has re-focused its attention to spearheading the role and status of women in all arenas  work, society and home.

About the building:

Ellen Browning Scripps commissioned Irving Gill, preeminent architect of the Modernist era, to design and build La Jolla Womans Club, and it was finished in 1914. Gill used many new materials and methods to construct a space that simultaneously evokes tranquility and purpose.

It was designated as Historic Site No. 79 on the City of San Diego Register, March 2, 1973 and on the National Register of Historical Places, Nov. 5, 1974. The Historic American Building Survey measured it in 1971, and its drawings are filed in the Library of Congress. In 2017, the San Diego Association of Architects gave it their top award.

Boards and committees:

Currently there are two boards: La Jolla Womans Club Foundation, a 501(3)(c), and the Board of Directors. The latter has six officers  president, first vice-president, second vice-president, recording secretary, corresponding secretary and treasurer  and six directors who serve as chairs of these committees: communications, history, hospitality, house, rentals and reservations.

Available to rent:

The La Jolla Womans Club is an events venue, with manager Auriel ONeill organizing the space for weddings, fundraisers, galas and corporate meetings. Working with facilities manager Mario Hernandez, she transforms an already beautiful venue  with open space, iconic views and historic charm  into an even more magical, breathtaking space.

 La Jolla Womans Club, 7791 Draper Ave., La Jolla. (858) 454-2354. lajollawomansclub.org
NAIROBI, March 26 (Xinhua) -- Low investment by African governments is to blame for inefficiency in providing services to the people, a World Bank official said on Monday.

Khama Rogo, the World Bank's Lead Health Sector Specialist and Head Health in Africa Initiative, said total health spending per capita in the countries is less than five percent of the Gross Domestic Product in Sub-Saharan Africa.

"The governments must reduce inefficiencies by embracing smart financing and smart procurement in order to attain the Universal Health Cover (UHC)," Rogo said during a conference on accelerating the business of universal health care in Nairobi.

He said the countries stand a better chance of leaping to better economic growth if they invest in health care.

"You need to build on your strength while learning from others like China, Thailand, Cuba and Mexico that have made great progress in achieving UHC by injecting subsides from the budget," he added.

The World Bank official said it is unfortunate that public health spending as a share of total health spending in Africa is low at 22 percent, compared to 36 percent for Low and Middle Income Countries and 57 percent for upper middle income countries.

Rogo said that with proper investment in the sector, the countries stand to create additional jobs and reduce mortality by 11 percent.

Rogo observed that Kenya is capable of attaining the UHC due to the political will but the country must embrace innovation and entrepreneurship through public private partnership.

He said financing health sector requires stronger and systemic public financial management and transparency.

"Consider mixed revenue streams by combining both public and private while at the same time prioritize domestic resource mobilization," he added.

Miriam Were, the Chancellor of Moi University in Kenya, attributed lack of Community Health Extension Workers as a major barrier for the establishment of Community Health Services.

Were said extension workers are the key health cadre in supervising and supporting community level health workforce that has to be in place in all parts of the country.

"Kenya is capable of achieving UHC through community health services by 2022 once it embarks in disease prevention and health promotion in reducing disease burden thus reducing cost in the health sector," Were added.

Kenyan Health Cabinet Secretary Sicily Kariuki reiterated that the government will continue focusing on improving scope and quality of health services.

"This is essential in ensuring we have a productive population that will contribute positively to the growth of Kenya's economy," Kariuki added.

She said plans are underway to decongest the leading referral hospital Kenyatta National Hospital by ensuring that all public hospitals get enough and relevant equipment to handle all manner of ailments.

[ Editor: Xueying ]
In author Mark Sarvas Santa Monica apartment, beside a wall of meticulously organized books, hangs a print of Ernst Ludwig Kirchners German Expressionist painting Berlin Street Scene, which served as the inspiration for the fictional work of art at the heart of his second novel, Memento Park.

The story of a second-generation Hungarian Americans attempt to reclaim that valuable painting, which may have been looted from his fathers family in Budapest during the Second World War, Memento Park, says Sarvas, has been a long time coming.

In the mid-90s, when he began publishing short fiction, his bio read, Mark is working on his first novel, he confessed over glasses of sparkling water. The books subject matter? Looted Nazi art.

There was a moment where I saw pretty clearly that I wanted to do more with the book than I felt able to, said Sarvas. So I thought, Im going to put this in a drawer and not write it as my first book, because Im not ready. Instead he debuted with Harry, Revised, which he called his training novel.

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 Memento Park,  he said, feels like the book I was waiting to write. A dense, layered novel  part history, part mystery  it reckons with heritage, faith, fatherhood and the complications of confronting the past.

In conversation, Sarvas listens with a controlled, coiled energy that springs alive when hes ready to speak or leap up to refill a glass. That quick twitch earned him fans  and foes  as the voice behind early literary blog the Elegant Variation; in a 2008 interview, The Times Scott Timberg described him as acid fingered, noting a simmering feud with fellow author Steve Almond, which Sarvas says has long been laid to rest.

Mark Sarvas, 2005. (Gary Friedman )

Acid fingered, bad boy blogger, Sarvas shouldered his share of nicknames  and was happy to play the part. People used to love getting the controversial quote out of me, he said, a little wistfully. Its not that Im being coy  I dont feel that scathing toward people anymore.

The experience of writing a first novel, in which he came to realize firsthand how much a person pours into that, softened Sarvas tongue. Furthermore, he became a father, and between raising a child and teaching creative writing at UCLA Extension, hes moved away from criticism to mentorship. Those things, they mellow you out a little. In private, with friends, over bourbons, Ill still say stuff thatll make your hair stand on end, but those barbs remain behind closed doors, in part because the literary world already feels saturated with them. In this hateful cacophony of Twitter, I dont think it adds anything.

Memento Park is written by a matured Sarvas, if not a chastened one; its a personal book (Sarvas is the child of Hungarian Jewish immigrants and his protagonist, Matt Santos, winkingly shares his initials) that paints Gabor Santos, the character based on his father, unflinchingly. Sarvas waited to write the novel for that reason, too.

When I knew that my father wouldnt be alive to see the finished book was the only time that I had the courage to sit down and start writing it, he said. Simultaneously, I had this awareness of losing access to a part of his past and to the story of who he was; because we didnt get along terribly well, we werent super close, we didnt have those kinds of conversations.

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The tension between examining his relationship with his father at the very moment that relationship began to slip irrevocably away became a central theme in the novel. What happens when the past is gone forever? When youve waited too long to ask those questions, how do you move forward?

Memento Park by Mark Sarvas (Farrar, Straus and Giroux )

One way, Sarvas discovered, is research. In the novel, Santos examines his lack of faith; to write about Judaism with authority, Sarvas took an 18-week introduction to Judaism course at the American Jewish University primarily aimed at prospective converts. I was the only Jew in this class, and theyre all kinda looking at me like, Wait a minute, youre already in, why are you here? But I knew next to nothing, he said.

Sarvas also traveled to Budapest, where he visited family, the house where his father was raised and the open-air museum strewn with Soviet-era statues from which the book borrows its title.

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You walk around these fallen warriors and its weirdly moving and theres something sort of beautiful about it in spite of all the repression and the horrors that we know it represented, he said. The trip was an effort to reconstruct the past, but it confirmed his sense that, in some ways, the past is disconcertingly present. These things that feel like they were vestiges of another era are alive and well and very much with us, said Sarvas.

In Memento Park, the quest to reclaim a stolen painting is fraught with the weight of family secrets and history. Its a story of restitution that begs the question: Is storytelling a kind of restitution in and of itself?

Sometimes all thats left is the story, said Sarvas. I found myself thinking, maybe this character, Gabor Santos, was my fathers last gift to me. In turn, Sarvas gives it to us  and to his family. My daughter never knew my father, he said, but shell know him through this book.

agatha.french@latimes.com

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@agathafrenchy
California is bracing for a high-profile fight over the states housing crisis. And the clash is pitting Silicon Valley technology executives, who want to cut regulations that make it hard to build multi-story apartment buildings, against existing homeowners and affordable housing advocates.

The housing crunch, particularly acute in Bay Area cities such as San Francisco and San Jose, is a problem that the tech industry helped create by attracting well-paid new workers who can outbid longtime residents. That, combined with zoning restrictions, has helped to push up housing prices to the highest in the nation, with a median price of $1.3 million in San Jose, according to the National Association of Realtors. Los Angeles, home to Snap Inc., is in similar straits.

At the same time, the technology sector is frustrated with the limited housing supply and high prices in its home state that make it difficult to recruit workers and foster a diverse community. It has spent years building the political machinery to push for change: It has state and local lobbying groups, a long list of donors and favored politicians.

Now, it also has a sledgehammer of a bill, which would force California cities to allow new multi-story apartments to be built near public transportation. The bill  SB 827, introduced this year by state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco)  is set to be one of the most contentious pieces of legislation in Sacramento this session. The Los Angeles City Council recently voted unanimously to oppose the bill.

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A new guard of powerbroker chief executives has put their names and wealth behind the pro-growth movement thats laying the groundwork for the bill, including Twitter Inc. Chief Executive Jack Dorsey, Stripe Inc. co-founders Patrick and John Collison, Lyft Inc. CEO Logan Green, and Yelp Inc. CEO Jeremy Stoppelman.

Facebook Inc. is getting on board, too. Facebook supports legislation that spurs the creation of new housing near high-quality transportation to reduce traffic congestion on local roadways, Ann Blackwood, Facebooks state and local public policy manager, said in a statement.

Theyre up against neighborhood preservation groups and affordable housing activists who for years have dominated housing policy in the Bay Area.

Neighborhood councils often block new construction projects, since locals want to preserve the citys charm and, critics say, impose artificial limits on housing inventory that keep home values rising. They fear the bill would lead to the Manhattan-ization of the Bay Area, with towering buildings casting shade on iconic single-family Victorian homes.

Its about damn time that the tech sector started to engage in housing policy. Calif. State Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco)

Whats more, they argue that the new construction wont help with lowering costs because their proximity to public transportation will make them premium rentals.

Its about damn time that the tech sector started to engage in housing policy, Wiener said in an interview. This is a major industry in our state. It employs an enormous amount of people and the tech sector, like other economic sectors, relies on the health of our state to succeed.

At the end of 2017, 56% of households in the U.S. could afford the median-priced U.S. house, according to the California Association of Realtors. But only 21% of people in the Bay Area can afford the median-priced house there, which rose to a record $825,000 in November.

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To address that problem, with Stoppelman at the forefront, Silicon Valley is bankrolling the YIMBY movement  Yes in My Backyard  a network of pro-housing, pro-development groups.

In California, we have dug ourselves into a massive housing hole in the last 50 years by making it progressively harder to build housing by making it more time consuming and expensive, says Brian Hanlon, who heads the California YIMBY group. Were past the point of viewing housing as a pure local issue. It is a statewide concern.

California YIMBY has raised more than $1 million and has a registered lobbyist on its payroll. The group hopes to collect another $1.5 million this year, Hanlon says. He estimates that about 90% of the money has come from technology executives.

Marco Zappacosta, the 32-year-old CEO for the local services start-up Thumbtack Inc., is a contributor. Technology companies have such insane margins that theyre one of the few sectors that can continue to be viable in this environment  Google and Facebook and all of us are going to continue to be OK, he said. The real question is do you want plumbers and cleaners and baby-sitters?

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A mix of self-interest and shared ideology is motivating the tech industrys housing obsession. Companies such as Lyft and Pandora Media Inc. have moved their customer support offices away from Silicon Valley to save money. Thumbtack has opened offices in Salt Lake City, where it is cheaper to live and to hire workers. The company also has a team of remote contractors in the Philippines.

And while tech workers are generally free-market minded, in the battle for housing theyre also taking a moral stand. The tech industrys high-profile role championing the legislation comes amid rising scrutiny of companies  from Facebook to Google  and a tech backlash.

The bills critics come in various stripes. Homeowners and neighborhood groups worry that the legislation will negatively alter the character of historic neighborhoods. Other opponents say the bill will just encourage teardowns and evictions and ultimately create more high-end housing. Without protections such as rent control, they say, new, taller apartment buildings will cater to the areas wealthy residents and attract more tech interlopers.

Theres a whole lot more money, as Scott Wiener has shown, in trying to gentrify communities, says Damien Goodmon, director of the Housing is a Human Right campaign. He compares the proposal to an Ayn Rand, trickle-down housing philosophy that assumes that more high-end housing supply will somehow help the poor.

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The market is not going to build to a level thats affordable, he said.

The bills drafters say that theyre in the process of revising the legislation to avoid unintended side effects, mitigate some local concerns, and to win over more supporters. Protections have been added that would make it more difficult to tear down housing that already has affordable units.

As proposed, the new housing could be as much as eight stories high, depending on the location, though many would be just three stories tall, Hanlon said. The bill also eliminates local requirements that new housing projects near public transportation create additional parking spaces.

The bill is a work in progress, Wiener said. We definitely have a winding path ahead of us and a lot of people to convince.

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Newcomer writes for Bloomberg.
by Olatunji Saliu

ABUJA, March 22 (Xinhua) -- "We trekked a very long distance... we were kept in a thick forest, we cooked our own food."

Those were the words of some of the 104 Nigerian schoolgirls who have just been released by Boko Haram fighters after spending 30 days in the terror group's den.

The girls, whose ages range between 11 and 19, were ostensibly looking weak upon their release by Boko Haram early Wednesday.

They had been in Boko Haram's captivity since Feb. 19 when the terror group stormed their all-girl college in the northeastern town of Dapchi, forcefully taking away 110 of them.

Raking over the ashes of their captivity, one of the girls simply identified as Fasima said five of them, apparently, the very young ones, died of exhaustion on the day of the attack by Boko Haram.

On the day of the abduction, outside Dapchi, some of the girls who were already tired and hungry were only given some water, groundnut cake, and soft drinks as they continued the long journey to an unknown destination in the dead of night.

"We continued our journey until we got to a place with a big tree, they (the Boko Haram fighters) stopped and we were asked to cook food. It was very dark, so they put on lamps," Fasima recalled.

"Then we continued the journey for a long time after eating until we got to a place where there is a river, we came down from the trucks and they asked us to enter some canoes that took us across the river," she said.

Later that night, the girls were taken to a house in a small village which they can only see in their minds' eye now but cannot remember the name. They spent the rest of the night there.

"The next day, they came to ask us to come out and we were taken to the river and continued the journey until we got to a thick forest area. That was where they kept us and did not change our location since then," Fasima said.

According to the girls' narration, none of them was either molested or beaten. The abductors communicated with the girls in Arabic and the local Kanuri language that is spoken in the northern part of Nigeria.

Khadija Grema, another released girl, said all the abductors were dark-complexioned and none of them looked like a foreigner, adding that the militants even fed them well.

Grema said the captors had told them right from the day they were forcefully taken away that one day they would be free.

And freedom came on Wednesday when the Boko Haram fighters brought back the girls to Dapchi town in trucks, the same way they were abducted from their dormitories at the Government Girls Science and Technical College on Feb. 19.

The girls were released through back-channel efforts, the Nigerian government said.

For the release to work, the government had a clear understanding that violence and confrontation would not be the way out, authorities said, adding during negotiation, the Boko Haram group had insisted on returning the girls to where they were abducted from.

Another girl and a boy were also freed along with the 104 schoolgirls.

Local media on Thursday reported that another girl was withheld by Boko Haram "for not renouncing her Christian faith."

The father of the girl has also confirmed that his daughter was not released by the terror group because "she vehemently insisted on being a Christian."

The Nigerian government said it cannot ascertain the death of any girl for now.

The 104 schoolgirls and the two others who regained freedom early Wednesday were airlifted to the Nigerian capital city of Abuja through a military transport plane.

Dapchi, where the kidnapping took place a month ago, is located 100 kilometers from Damaturu, the capital of the northern state of Yobe.

Boko Haram is a Jihadist militant organization based in northeastern Nigeria. The United Nations believes Boko Haram has killed more than 20,000 innocent people since 2009 through terror attacks.

[ Editor: Xueying ]
In a high-profile legal action aimed at the financial cost of healthcare consolidation, Californias attorney general has sued Sutter Health, the largest hospital system in Northern California, alleging anticompetitive business practices that unfairly drove up costs for patients.

The lawsuit filed Friday in San Francisco County Superior Court alleges that Sutter Health engaged in anticompetitive contractual practices and that it charged prices for hospital healthcare services that far exceed what the company would have been able to charge in a competitive market.

The complaint also alleges that the excess profits went toward extreme levels of executive compensation, purchasing other health firms and financing the companys insurance arm.

Its time to hold healthcare corporations accountable and bring down illegally inflated healthcare costs that are imposed on Californias families, state Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra told reporters in Sacramento. We seek to stop Sutter from continuing this illegal conduct.

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Sutter Health is aware that a complaint was filed, but system administrators had not seen it and therefore declined to comment on specific claims, spokeswoman Karen Garner said.

Sutter Health is proud to save patients, government payers and health plans hundreds of millions of dollars each year by providing more efficient and integrated care, Garner said in a statement, adding that on average, total charges for an inpatient stay in a Sutter hospital are lower than what other Northern California hospitals charge.

Sutter consists of some two dozen acute-care hospital facilities with 8,200 physicians and 48,000 employees in 19 counties in Northern California, according to the state Department of Justice. The companys nonprofit health system has 35 surgery centers and 32 urgent care clinics. Sutter reported net income of $893 million last year on $12.4 billion in revenue.

Becerra alleged that Sutter set excessively high prices for out-of-network healthcare and restricted insurance companies from providing low-cost options.

The lack of competition for healthcare in California has concerned state officials for some time, and this latest legal fight will attract attention from employers and policymakers across the country amid growing alarm about the financial implications of industry consolidation.

A 2016 study found that hospital prices at Sutter and Dignity Health, the two biggest hospital chains in California, were 25% higher than at other hospitals around the state. Researchers at the University of Southern California said the giant health systems used their market power to drive up prices  making the average patient admission at both chains nearly $4,000 more expensive.

This week, researchers at UC Berkeley issued a report that examined the consolidation of the hospital, physician and health insurance markets in California from 2010 to 2016. The authors said 44 of Californias 58 counties had highly concentrated hospital markets.

The problem is worse in Northern California, and the report said prices for medical procedures are often up to 30% higher there than in Southern California, which has more competition. Becerra cited the Berkeley study, which said the average patient hospital procedure in Northern California, $223,278, exceeded that in Southern California, $131,586, by more than $90,000.

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Sutter Health has gobbled up doctor practices across the Bay Area, gaining market muscle that has pushed costs upward. Obstetrician-gynecologists employed by Sutter Health, for example, are reimbursed about three times more for the same service than independent doctors, according to a Kaiser Health News review of OB-GYN charges on several insurers online cost estimators. Its a key reason why Northern California is the most expensive place in the country to have a baby.

Becerras lawsuit could build off a similar civil case filed in 2014 by a grocery workers health plan.

The plaintiffs in that case, scheduled for trial next year, allege Sutter is violating antitrust and fair competition laws. The plaintiffs have been requesting documents related to contracting practices, such as gag clauses that prevent patients from seeking negotiated rates and choosing a cheaper provider. They also are challenging all-or-nothing terms that require every facility in a health system to be included in insurance networks.

In November, the state judge handling the grocery workers case said Sutter was grossly reckless when it intentionally destroyed 192 boxes of documents that employers and labor unions were seeking in the lawsuit. San Francisco County Superior Court Judge Curtis E.A. Karnow said Sutter destroyed documents knowing that the evidence was relevant to antitrust issues.  There is no good explanation for the specific and unusual destruction here.

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The lead plaintiffs, the United Food and Commercial Workers and its Employers Benefit Trust, are a joint employer-union health plan that represents more than 60,000 employees, dependents and retirees. The court certified its case as a class action in August, allowing hundreds of other employers and self-funded health plans to potentially benefit from the litigation.

Terhune writes for Kaiser Health News.
You might be asked any day to sign a petition supporting a proposed California ballot initiative called the Healthy Homes and Schools Act  and who doesnt like the idea of healthy homes and schools?

What the person gathering signatures wont tell you is that the deceptively titled Healthy Homes and Schools Act is in fact a super-sneaky attempt by major paint companies to avoid paying hundreds of millions of dollars in remediation for selling people products with toxic levels of lead.

What the signature gatherer wont say is that the paint companies would rather stick you with the tab instead.

This initiative should be called the Let Us Get Off The Hook And You Pay Millions Of Dollars For Our Mistake Act, said Assemblywoman Wendy Carrillo (D-Los Angeles).

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Shes one of half a dozen state lawmakers who introduced bills last week to counter the paint companies duplicitous ballot drive and make sure theyre accountable for the mess they created or inherited through acquisitions.

The companies knew their paint had lead in it and they sold it anyway, Carrillo said. Theyre putting profits over people.

To understand this story, you have to go back nearly two decades to when Los Angeles County and nine other California jurisdictions sued companies that at one time made lead-based paints. That led to 13 years of litigation.

In 2014, the jurisdictions won a $1.15-billion judgment from the Santa Clara County Superior Court, which ruled that the companies marketed lead paint as a safe product even though they knew it was poisonous, especially to kids.

Lead paint has been banned for residential use since 1978, but it can still be found in millions of homes, particularly in lower-income communities.

The paint companies, facing more than $1 billion in payouts to remove lead paint from California homes, wasted no time in appealing the 2014 decision.

In November, the states 6th District Court of Appeal tweaked the lower-court ruling to say that the judgment applies only to homes built prior to 1951, when the companies stopped advertising lead paint. That means a smaller payout for the manufacturers but still probably hundreds of millions of dollars.

The California Supreme Court last month declined a request by the paint companies to take up the matter.

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So the firms came up with a new plan: leave taxpayers holding the bag.

The companies  Sherwin-Williams, Conagra and NL Industries, none of which are based in California  hired a bunch of local lobbyists and ponied up $2 million apiece to concoct the Healthy Homes and Schools Act, which they hope to qualify for the November ballot.

If passed, it would get them off the hook for the lawsuits hefty remediation by having the state issue $2 billion in bonds to cover a more comprehensive cleanup that would include mold, asbestos and other issues, along with toxic paint.

The initiative is dressed up in all sorts of sympathetic causes, such as concern about affordable housing and a shortage of rental properties.

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It makes the case that any response to Californias housing crisis must be to rehabilitate existing homes that are either uninhabitable or pose potential health risks to their residents due to structural or environmental hazards.

The solution, it says, is for the state to borrow $2 billion for a far-reaching overhaul of the housing market, including remediation of structural and environmental hazards which includes, but is not limited to mold, asbestos, radon, water, pests, ventilation and lead hazards.

And then this inoccuous-seeming provision: Lead-based paint on or in private or public residential properties, whether considered individually, collectively or in the aggregate, is not a public nuisance.

That one line is the ballot initiatives entire reason for being.

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Under California law, anything which is injurious to health ... so as to interfere with the comfortable enjoyment of life or property ... is a nuisance.

The law says its a crime if anyone maintains or commits any public nuisance or willfully omits to perform any legal duty relating to the removal of a public nuisance.

The California jurisdictions that brought the lawsuit based their entire case on this premise, and the courts agreed. An illegal public nuisance was created and perpetuated by the paint companies.

The Healthy Homes and Schools Act says this wasnt really the case, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.

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It also says any lawsuit pending on appeal on, or filed after, Nov. 1, 2017 becomes null and void, which basically throws the two costly court decisions out the window. Kind of like how Marty McFly could change the present by altering the past.

Kendall Klingler, a hired PR gun serving as spokeswoman for the ballot initiative, acknowledged to me that the Healthy Homes and Schools Act is a direct response to the court rulings. But she insisted that the initiative is actually a good thing for Californians.

The rulings created a huge burden for homeowners, Klingler said. It labeled millions of homes public nuisances, which can cause a loss of property value.

Not so, countered the California Assn. of Realtors.

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We dont think thats the case at all, said June Barlow, the organizations general counsel. She said the state already requires disclosure of lead paint during home sales, so the risk has been reflected in property values for years.

Barlow also said a close reading of Novembers court decision indicates that lead paint in general is being labeled a public nuisance, not the presence of lead paint in individual homes.

Any house or apartment building built before 1978 is likely to contain lead paint, unless its been subsequently removed. According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 24 million poorly maintained housing units nationwide pose a danger of lead paint exposure.

Even low levels of lead in blood have been shown to affect IQ, ability to pay attention and academic achievement, the CDC says. And effects of lead exposure cannot be corrected.

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Some California neighborhoods, including downtown L.A., have been found to have rates of childhood lead poisoning surpassing those of Flint, Mich., where the local water supply was determined in 2015 to have been contaminated with lead and other toxins.

Carrillo, the assemblywoman, had it right when she told me the paint companies just want taxpayers to pay for their mess.

Insult to injury: The state Legislative Analysts Office figures that if we borrowed $2 billion, like the paint companies want us to, it would cost California taxpayers nearly $4 billion to pay back the principal and interest over the 35-year length of the bonds.

Thanks, but no thanks.

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David Lazarus column runs Tuesdays and Fridays. He also can be seen daily on KTLA-TV Channel 5 and followed on Twitter @Davidlaz. Send your tips or feedback to david.lazarus@latimes.com.
Mission San Fernando has stood watch over the Valley floor in one form or another for the last 220 years.

The building were familiar with today is on the site where generations of Angelenos have marked the milestones of life, from joyful baptisms to the solemn business of funeral Masses, and the confirmations, quinceaneras and weddings that fill the years between.

It provides a connection between todays Los Angeles and its foundational era  a rare continuity in an ever-changing metropolis  but the well-worn path between the past and present is not unbroken. The acts of men and the periodic convulsions of the unsettled earth have seen the mission razed and rebuilt several times over.

As has happened to so many relics of L.A.s past, the mission enjoyed a heyday that was followed by a long period of neglect. The slow, patient reclamation of the adobe church by the elements was accelerated by the devastating 1812 Wrightwood quake, which claimed a number of missions across Southern California as its victims. By the 1880s, the place stood in ruins.

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When the Pacific Electric Railway opened a line from Los Angeles to San Fernando, picnicking trips to the sun-bleached ruins of the mission, spurred on by the romanticization of the Spanish colonial era, became a popular way to while away a Sunday afternoon.

This steady stream of visitors spurred interest in restoring the old mission to something approaching its former glory, and in 1916 the painstaking process of bringing the church and its outbuildings back to life began.

Twenty five years later, the church was rededicated. Thirty years after that, the Sylmar quake damaged it so severely that it had to be demolished, and a new church in the style of the old was built in its place.

In the years between the missions latest rebirths, the area around it had changed dramatically. Once one of the Valleys few remaining pockets of agricultural land, the neighborhood that would be dubbed Mission Hills saw explosive suburbanization in the post-war years.

It eventually became, in effect, the crossroads of the Valley, encircled by three freeways that funnel traffic to destinations near and far. Just a few blocks away, on the quiet grounds of the old mission, girls of another generation pose proudly in pastel dresses as they celebrate their passage into womanhood.

1 / 3 A supporter signals support as a military craft flies over the annual San Fernando Valley parade commencing in Mission Hills. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times) 2 / 3 The mission has been destroyed and rebuilt during its two centuries. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) 3 / 3 The steakhouse is on Devonshire Street. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Neighborhood highlights

The history of the Valley: From the grounds of the old mission itself to the Andres Pico adobe, there are few places outside the plaza that give a better sense of early European life in L.A.

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At the crossroads: Whether youre commuting to Santa Clarita, downtown, the Westside or Pasadena, Mission Hills has a freeway with your name on it.

Affordable Valley living: You wont break the bank buying in Mission Hills, where median home prices are in the mid-$400,000s, with the low end of prices dipping into the high-$300,000s.

Neighborhood challenge

Particular about particulates: The convenience of all that freeway access comes with a big asterisk  poor air quality caused by the hundreds of thousands of cars that pass by every day.

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Expert insight

Adrian Lopez, a real estate agent active across the Valley, said that even though Mission Hills has been growing, its identity still gets lumped in with larger neighbors such as Granada Hills and San Fernando.

Your commute may be longer, but you can get a three-bedroom, two-bathroom home much cheaper here than in other areas, Lopez said.

He added that home prices have drawn many families the last few years, and developers are having a hard time keeping up with demand.

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Looking ahead, overpopulation may become more of a problem, Lopez said.

Market snapshot

In the 91345 ZIP Code, based on three sales, the median sales price for single-family homes in February was $475,000, with no change year over year, according to CoreLogic.

Report card

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The one public school in Mission Hills, San Jose Street Elementary, scored 831 on the 2013 Academic Performance Index.

Highlights in the area include Danube Avenue Elementary, which scored 848, and Haskell Elementary, which scored 836. The areas two high schools, Arleta High and San Fernando Senior High, scored 718 and 671, respectively.

Times staff writer Jack Flemming contributed to this report.

hotproperty@latimes.com

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Arts events this weekend include the drama-with-music Evangeline, the Queen of Make-Believe and the return of Shen Yun. Also, Center Theatre Groups annual Block Party kicks off with a remount of Bloodletting, the wonders of the ancient world are on display in two exhibitions and Rubicon Theatre wraps its run of Shakespeares King Lear.

Bloodletting at the Kirk Douglas

There will be Bloodletting. Two Filipino American siblings go to the Philippines to scatter their fathers ashes in a remount of Playwrights Arena staging of Boni B. Alvarezs drama. The play kicks off Center Theatre Groups second annual Block Party showcase, a collaboration with smaller theater companies to spotlight notable homegrown productions. Kirk Douglas Theatre, 9820 Washington Blvd., Culver City. 8 p.m. Saturday, 6:30 p.m. Sunday; ends April 8. $25-$70; series passes available. www.centertheatregroup.org

Shen Yun returns to SoCal

Think of it as a journey to the Middle Kingdom without leaving Southern California. Shen Yun 2018, the latest iteration of this touring show, celebrates 5,000 years of Chinese music, dance and art. The first of several stops around the region will be at Bridges Auditorium, Pomona College, 450 N. College Way, Claremont. 7:30 p.m. Friday, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, 1 and 6 p.m. Sunday. $80-$150. www.shenyunperformingarts.org

The touring production "Shen Yun 2018" celebrates 5,000 years of Chinese arts and culture. Shen Yun Performing Arts

Evangeline at Plaza de la Raza

A young Latina from 1960s East L.A. finds her way to the riotous Sunset Strip in Evangeline, the Queen of Make-Believe. Ashley Diane plays the title role in this musical coming-of-age fable, which includes Latin Grammy winner Gaby Moreno performing a song score by David Hidalgo and Louie Perez of Los Lobos. Plaza de la Razas Margo Albert Theatre, 3540 N. Mission Road, L.A. 8 p.m. Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday; ends April 8. $15-$30. www.eventbrite.com

The cast of "Evangeline, the Queen of Make-Believe": Adrian Brizuela, left, Moises Castro, Blanca Araceli, Ashley Diane, Kye McCleary and Keyla Monterroso Mejia. Theresa Chavez

Artifacts at the Getty and LACMA

Set the way-back machine for way, way back with two recently opened exhibitions: Beyond the Nile: Egypt and the Classical World at the Getty surveys cross-cultural connections between Egypt, Greece and Rome, while the Los Angeles County Museum of Arts City and Cosmos: The Arts of Teotihuacan features recent archaeological discoveries from that ancient Mesoamerican city. Beyond the Nile, Getty Center, North Sepulveda Boulevard and Getty Center Drive, L.A.; ends Sept. 9; free; www.getty.edu. City and Cosmos, LACMA, 5905 Wilshire Blvd., L.A.; ends July 16; $10-$25 (children 17 and younger free); www.lacma.org

An ancient mask on display as part of LACMA's "City and Cosmos: The Arts of Teotihuacan" exhibition. Museo Nacional de Antropologia / INAH

Lear closes at Rubicon in Ventura
Evil can look benign. It can appear official. It can masquerade as kind. It can show up at the door in the form of a boy you watched grow up, now wearing a crisply pressed military uniform as he strides about asking questions.

In the new play The Madres at the Skylight Theatre in Los Feliz, the malignity emanates from the military dictatorship in Argentina from 1976 until 1983. During that period, an estimated 9,000 to 30,000 people disappeared during the forced conformity of the National Reorganization Process. Then as now, the mothers of the disappeared gathered publicly to show those in power that they saw what happened and werent going to let anyone deny or forget.

They are the madres of a story by Los Angeles playwright Stephanie Alison Walker. Because of family connections she visited Argentina as a child throughout the 1980s, and she lived and worked there for several months in 1998. She learned about the madres as an adult and once went to march with them. Among her reasons for writing the play is to educate Americans about a history that many dont know.

Thats a worthy goal, and Walker layers in a lot of information. The piece is explanation-heavy, however, and slow to build. Most crucially, it lacks menace in a mostly flat, momentumless staging overseen by director Sara Guerrero.

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The story unfolds in Buenos Aires in 1978. As the performance begins, photographs of marching women and portraits of missing loved ones are projected onto the walls of an unassuming apartment (set design by Christopher Scott Murillo, projections by Nick Santiago). A nations tumult has insinuated itself into every nook and cranny of this household, which is presided over by Josefina Acosta, a precise, plain-spoken woman in her late 60s (portrayed through this weekend by Margarita Lamas, then by Denise Blasor).

Josefina is perfectly ordinary, but her family has become of interest to authorities. Unannounced visits begin. The first is by a priest (Gabriel Romero) from their parish who was reassigned to a government facility. Then comes a young soldier (Alexander Pimentel) who grew up alongside Josefinas granddaughter.

The granddaughter has gone missing and her mother  Josefinas daughter, Carolina (Arianna Ortiz)  has become one of the marching madres.

The Skylight production is most effective at capturing family interplay, quarrelsome when boundaries are overstepped, fond when common ground is regained. Although the first act drags through stretches of exposition, the second half sparks to life in the simultaneously tender and fierce emotions surging between Ortizs Carolina and Natalie Llerena as a visitor whos only half-expected. Their haunted minutes together are raw and real  a riveting depiction of all thats precious.

Theaters in San Diego, Chicago and Austin, Texas, have lined up to present The Madres, so decision-makers clearly see value in this script, particularly at a time when female solidarity is making headlines. This first production isnt all that it could be, but perhaps Walker and her future theatrical partners will find ways to move audiences hearts into their throats.

         

The Madres

Where: Skylight Theatre, 1816 N. Vermont Ave., Los Feliz

When: 8:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays, 8 p.m. Mondays (except April 2); ends April 29

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Tickets: $15-$41

Info: (866) 811-4111, skylighttheatre.org

Running time: 1 hour, 55 minutes

daryl.miller@latimes.com

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Twitter: @darylhmiller

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Revelation seemed to follow revelation at Walt Disney Concert Hall on Thursday night as guest conductor Andrew Manze led the Los Angeles Philharmonic in a stunning program of three seldom-performed works by Grazyna Bacewicz, Mozart and Ralph Vaughan Williams.

The concerts centerpiece was Mozarts gracious Piano Concerto No. 18 (K. 456), with Richard Goode as soloist. It was the first time the L.A. Phil performed the piece since 1990.



For the record: An earlier version of this article erroneously said the Los Angeles Philharmonics concert Thursday was its first performance of Mozarts Piano Concerto No. 18 (K. 456). The concert was the orchestras first performance of the piece since 1990.

The Mozart concerto isnt showy, to be sure. But Manzes clear-textured rendition, featuring Goodes crisp articulation and alluring tone, made a convincing case for the many delights of this intimately scaled score, with its poignant central Andante and charming Allegro finale.

After intermission, Manze gave a stunningly assured traversal of Vaughan Williams haunting, modern-sounding Symphony No. 6. (The English conductor is close to completing a cycle of the composers nine symphonies with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic on the Onyx Classics label.) The Sixth, composed between 1944 and 1947, received its last L.A. Phil performance in 1981, with Leonard Slatkin on the podium.

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The Phil has had 37 years to recover, Manze quipped, preparing the audience for the symphonys uncharacteristically disquieting mood of spiritual desolation. Theres a beautiful moment in what we might call the first movements second theme, Manze said. Cherish it, because its the only one.

Known as the most prominent figure in the British pastoral school of composing, Vaughan Williams had already shocked some listeners who expected the atmospheric charms of his Third Symphony (A Pastoral Symphony). When he wrote the percussively intense Symphony No. 4 (1935), it was widely seen as a presentiment of the Second World War.

Although the composer said the Sixth had more to do with rage at the dying of the light  he was in his mid-70s when he completed the score  earlier autobiographical elements were clearly at play. Here was a man who had seen the worst of World War I serving in the ambulance corps at the French front, one who was only 2 years old when he lost his father. Manzes reading conveyed the composers pervasive sense of loss with a gripping opening Allegro that, in that one beautiful moment, looked achingly backward to a world that existed briefly, if at all.

After the tautly rendered first movement, Manze let the Moderato, which he described as Shostakovich tough, unfold in brittle, menacing fashion, with superb playing from principal oboist Anne Marie Gabriele and the resonant L.A. Phil brasses.

Expertly performed by Patrick Posey, the touching tenor saxophone solo in the concise Scherzo was reportedly Vaughan Williams tribute to a friend, a jazz musician killed in the Blitz.

The real test of a great performance of the Vaughan Williams Sixth is whether the long Epilogue finales pianissimo playing can sustain meaning and tension over some 11 minutes. This one did. The audience remained in thrall, with not a single exit. Manze and the orchestras fine strings suspended time itself, with a heartbreaking solo by principal cellist Robert de Maine only adding to the emotional affect.

The concert began with an understandably under-rehearsed yet still driving account of Polish composer Bacewiczs knockout 1943 Overture, a first performance for the L.A. Phil.

See all of our latest arts news and reviews at latimes.com/arts.

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After five years of operating out of an old piano warehouse on the outskirts of Boyle Heights, 356 Mission, the artist-run space founded by Los Angeles painter Laura Owens and Wendy Yao, founder of the art bookstore Ooga Booga, will come to a close in May, after shows by painter Alake Shilling and installation artist Charlemagne Palestine come down.

It was a labor of love, with finite resources, and never intended to last forever, read a written statement released to The Times on Thursday afternoon. We still believe that art spaces are vital to the cultural empowerment of all people, and that artists can be allies of vulnerable communities.

The closing comes in the wake of a steady stream of anti-gentrification protests that have seized headlines since 2015, when a growing number of art spaces began to establish commercial storefronts in the industrial area that hugs Mission Road, just across the river from the Arts District. 356 Mission, on at least two occasions, was the target of protests from activist coalitions such as Defend Boyle Heights.

Last year, staff at the gallery met with protesters who demanded that art galleries leave Boyle Heights. Owens declined to do so, responding via a statement on the gallerys website: Alongside the protesters demands to close, we have also heard the voices of artists, community groups, families, and individuals in the area who want 356 to remain open.

Owens and Yao say their decision to now close has more to do with the natural life cycle of an artist-run space coming to an end than any protests.

It was just time, says Yao.

356 Mission began as Owens studio in 2012, where the artist produced a series of large-scale paintings that she then put on view in the space. That 2013 exhibition led to other exhibitions and events. In a subsequent performance, for example, artist Joe Sola and Michael Webster fed one of Owens massive paintings into a wood chipper.

That was amazing, says Owens with a laugh.

Charlemagne Palestine's exhibition at 356 Mission is one of the art space's final exhibitions. Brica Wilcox

After five years of doing what we wanted to do, we felt that for personal and practical reasons ... this is the right moment to close. Laura Owens, founder, 356 Mission

Over time, 356 Mission grew from an informal studio and gathering spot into a more established artist-run space with a staff of eight. Over five years, they have staged more than 300 events and more than 50 exhibitions  featuring emerging unknowns as well as established figures such as Gary Indiana and appropriation artist Sturtevant in her last U.S. show before her death.

In this lightly edited conversation, Owens and Yao discuss what led them to close the space, the tug-of-war between art and gentrification and the unusual nature of the 356 Mission program.

What were the circumstances that led you to shut down 356 Mission?

Owens: Our lease was ending and we felt it was the right time. After five years of doing what we wanted to do, we felt that for personal and practical reasons that we had had a great experience and this is the right moment to close. The lease ends at the end of June. We will be closing in May.

Did the anti-gentrification protests spur the decision?

Owens: If it was for that, we could have closed a long time ago. Wendy and I have talked about this so many times. If youre in the neighborhood, you make an effort to engage.

Yao: I felt that there was more that we could do there than not being there. While we dont agree with the demands of the protesters, we really were trying to show up. But we have a lot of reasons for why we are leaving. It had sort of run its course. Doing the space was always a labor of love and was always really hard on both of us. And the protests added to this weight.

Owens: For Wendy and I, it was like our third jobs. I teach at Art Center. Im an artist. Wendy has a store in Chinatown [which will remain open]. She also has other jobs. So we would go there and do this after.

A member of an activist group in Boyle Heights protests the presence of galleries in 2016. Steve Saldivar / Los Angeles Times

What will happen to the space after you move?

Owens: We talked to the landlord and we recommended ideas for a nonprofit. But we have no control over it. The landlord [Vera Campbell] is sensitive to the issues of the neighborhood. But she owns the building and she can do whatever she wants. I really dont think its up to us to say what would be appropriate there.

What led you to establish 356 Mission to begin with?

Owens: Its something Id done in Los Angeles for many years. Id had shows in my studio. Id organized shows at the Eagle Rock cultural center in the early 90s. [For the first shows at 356 Mission] we had the space and while my paintings were up, we invited people to do performances. Wendy and I got excited about saying yes to artists ideas.

Yao: Ive been operating my bookstore in Chinatown for a long time and Ive been organizing free public programming in different ways for more than 20 years. Laura found this space and invited me to be a part of it. And it made it possible for me to continue the kinds of programs Ive always been doing, but in ways that couldnt exist within the limitations of my store, which is like 325 square feet.

Artist Laura Owens in March 2013 with works that were part of her "12 Paintings" series displayed in the studio/exhibition space that became 356 Mission. Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times

How did 356 Mission sustain itself financially?

Owens: We were not a nonprofit. We had different ideas at different times for how it could sustain itself. We thought we could sell art from some of the shows and sometimes that happened. We did get a grant for the last show we did, but that was really only one time.

Mainly I would sell a painting and my gallery, [the New York-based Gavin Brown], was helping by donating money from art I was selling. We did an art fair that helped fund this. If someone put their heart into something, then getting them some money for the work they made was a positive thing. But that wasnt the motivation.

Yao: And there was never a motivation for us to take home the proceeds. We reinvested everything back in the space.

Owens: We operated at a loss the whole time.

How much of a loss?

Owens: Thats not something I would like to think about.

An installation view of "The Seth Bogart Show" at 356 Mission in 2015. Brica Wilson / Seth Bogart, 356 Mission

How did exhibitions at the space evolve over time?

Yao: Things just unfolded. We worked with a musician Ive known since the 90s, Seth Bogart. Hes been making these short films and papier-mache sculptures. We loved what he was doing and invited him to do a show. But the way the exhibition would unfold, it included music performance and a lip sync festival.

When Kerry Tribe did an exhibition [that explored aphasia, a condition that affects the way the brain processes language], there was a panel talk on aphasia with people from an aphasia group.

Owens: I really liked being behind the scenes and seeing what artists we could invite. Gary Indiana came and made art. Eric Wesley came. Watching their thinking process as they created their shows was eye-opening.

We were trying to challenge the gallery model. Wed have things up for three months, for one month, wed let someone live in the space and make work. Wed try to follow a writer or performers ideas, not say no as much as possible.

A scene from the "Ovahness 12: Gothic Playground" party held at 356 Mission last year. Reach LA / 356 Mission

At what point did the anti-gentrification protests begin and what did you do to address them?

Yao: That was early last year.

Owens: It had started before. [One of our staff members] had been to a community meeting. We had been reaching out to them to talk about ways we could work together. Then the Hammer [Museums] Artist Council, which consists of Andrea Fraser, Charles Gaines and myself, had a meeting. It was about how can artists get involved and better organized and be better activists. So there was a meeting and they protested that meeting. We only had that particular protest and then another one  so just two.

Anyhow, we kept trying to meet with them and we did meet with them. But I discussed most of this in the statement I made [last year].

Laura Owens, a founder of the art space 356 Mission, at the launch of her book "12 Paintings," at the space in 2014. Alexandra Noel

Developers will often do things like establish art competitions and artist residencies as a way of promoting real estate interests. How do you contend with the ways in which art is used as a tool for development?

Yao: This conflict has raised a lot of important questions and self-reflection about the role that art can play. At the end of the day, we feel we have more in common with the protesters than not. Artists can be instrumentalized by a real estate developer  but I think thats why artists should work with protesters. To make sure that artists and galleries dont fall into that. We are against displacement, but we dont feel that galleries closing their doors will solve those problems.

Owens: We have been talking about this  about what art gets into a gallery and what does a white wall represent. Its a difficult issue, but its an important one for artists and galleries not to be unwittingly used. But there were artists who attended events and they proposed events to us before, and then they turned around and said, Were not going there.

A youth workshop held at 356 Mission in March. Jessica Renzelm / 356 Mission

Do you see a resolution between the galleries and the protesters in Boyle Heights?

Owens: Thats what we asked [the protesters]. We had a long list of ideas for common ground. And it is something that galleries need to do, to work with local communities and make sure they are supportive of local economies and communities.

Yao: We did that in a lot of different ways. On a very basic level, we had lists in our space of local businesses that we patronized: if we had to go to the hardware store, if we needed to buy food. If visitors came, wed share that list so that we could be participating in the local economy. People on staff reached out to neighboring residences and schools to invite them to participate in events. We had weekly programs and workshops. We were constantly re-examining. It was about being good neighbors.

Owens: When there was a concern about increased police surveillance because of the galleries, we were proactively against police surveillance. We wrote to the Hollenbeck captain and asked them to end the hate crimes investigation. And we asked them to refrain from intervening in protests in our space.

But ultimately we really believe in art and music and performance and books and all of these things. This is a place where people can meet each other, where they can experience something that is reaffirming.

An installation view of Wu Tsang's "The Luscious Land of God Is Sinking" at 356 Mission in 2016. Brica Wilcox / Wu Tsang, 356 Mission

What of 356 Mission will remain with you after it closes?

Owens: I am just awed by how many different ways people use their body and their mind to create something inventive and unique. We really did have such a wide range of artists  from the very, very young vegan cookbook writer to a 90-year-old artist. I always felt enlightened. I was given many gifts through their words and their bodies and their art.

Yao: I grew up sitting on the floors of bookstores and record stores. Those spaces were a big part of my growth as a human. My bookstore is not a library, but its still a free place to hang out. You dont have to buy anything. People can come to exchange ideas and learn. Looking back at this experience, holding space for community, its intense, its inspiring, its rewarding and its also really heartbreaking and hard. But all I can say is Im extremely grateful to have been a part of this.

+++

Alake Shilling, Monsoon Lagoon, and Charlemagne Palestines CCORNUUOORPHANOSSCCOPIAEEAANORPHANSSHHORNOFFPLENTYYY

Where: 356 S. Mission Road, Boyle Heights, Los Angeles

When: Shillings exhibition is on view through April 29; Palestine is on view through April 22

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carolina.miranda@latimes.com

@cmonstah

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Three Tall Women may not be widely considered the best play Edward Albee wrote (I rank it among his top three), but it is his most affecting and personally inhabited.

This 1994 Pulitzer Prize winner is also the work that rehabilitated his reputation, which had taken a drubbing after a series of flops that made The Zoo Story and Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf? seem like the works of a different author.

The subject of Three Tall Women, which opened Thursday at Broadways Golden Theatre in a production led by a rancorously electrifying Glenda Jackson, is Albees adoptive mother, a statuesque patrician with a vituperative manner, from whom he was long estranged. Recollecting her after her death if not with tranquility than with the cool distance of art, the playwright imposes on his autobiographical material an aesthetic form that was at once characteristically inventive and somewhat less characteristically emotionally generous.

The autocratic old lady (played by Jackson with Zeus-like wrath) is given a letter (A) rather than a name. The other two tall women onstage receive the designations of B (a vibrant Laurie Metcalf) and C (the radiant Alison Pill). Their relationships undergo a change between the first and second acts, as the women weve known as As caretaker (B) and legal assistant (C) become younger incarnations of the character.

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With stylish help from costume designer Ann Roth, B transforms from a middle-aged retainer to an already jaded 52-year-old aristocrat while C changes from a self-assured young working professional to an attractive and resourceful 26-year-old who still believes that her happiness is in the future.

The play is set up as a diptych, but its really an anatomy of a single life. This Broadway production, gracefully directed by Joe Mantello, performs the work without an intermission, underscoring the seamlessness of Albees vision.

Jackson has the central role, and she attacks it with the same vehemence that she brought to her portrayal of King Lear at Londons Old Vic in 2016. That Shakespearean thunderclap was her first time back on stage in 25 years. The two-time Oscar-winning actress took a 23-year detour into politics, and clearly her blistering broadsides as a member of Parliament against the Conservative opposition have kept her histrionic powers sharp within a certain range. At 81, shes as puissant as ever.

A queen in a beheading mood, Jacksons A is enthroned in her lavishly appointed bedroom, which resembles a suite at the Hotel Ritz in Paris. Her lavender dressing gown hints at a feminine softness, but theres nothing gentle in the peremptory way she treats her underlings, who dutifully try to manage her urinary and verbal incontinence. As useless arm is bound in a sling, but when she yelps in pain its accusatory, an unveiled threat.

Jackson affects a cumbersome accent that for much of the first half made me think of one of Margaret Dumonts society matrons in the Marx Brothers films. The strained artificiality eases over time, but Jacksons performance kicks into another gear after she jettisons the quavering stage-dowager tone.

A more intimate A emerges after she suffers a stroke while telling the tale of her marriage to a short, wealthy philanderer whose mother and sister resented her necessary strength. Rather than going gently into the good night, A steps away from the bed upon which an effigy has been set in her place during the transition. She continues the conversation as the still-intact mind of the character.

Jacksons ferocity will no doubt win her raves and accolades. She commands the stage with an unfaltering intensity that finds room for childlike vulnerability, somber disillusionment and philosophical wisdom. I was bowled over by the force of her stage presence, but her performance isnt as thrillingly mercurial as Myra Carters  the original and to my mind irreplaceable A.

The rapid fluctuations of mood, the swift shifts from truculence to flippancy, the cracks in obduracy revealing longing and despair  Carter delivered an off-Broadway master class that traveled in effect from Rachmaninoff to Chopin. Jacksons path is narrower, stylistically and emotionally, which is perhaps why I found myself paying close attention in this New York revival to B and C, who provide color and variety.

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Metcalf can give any actor a run for her money, but this exemplary team player chooses to react to Jackson rather than to compete with her. She blends sympathy with sarcasm as A runs through her obstreperous routines. B has heard all the stories before. She has grown acclimated to the invective, the racism, the viciousness and the conniving self-pity. Metcalf revels in the gallows humor of an eldercare companion who has emptied one too many bedpans.

Pills C cant hide her impatience toward A, whose corrosive remarks are meant to get under everyones skin. B runs interference, forcing C to question her own callow certainties. But C doesnt fully come into focus until later in the play, when as the younger A, she wonders what series of disappointments could possibly have transformed her into these frightening older versions of herself. Pill is heartbreaking in these moments, Metcalf helplessly wise, Jackson unflinchingly farseeing.

Mantellos smoothly calibrated staging takes care of any awkwardness in the structure of Albees unconventional drama. The grandly deluxe, conceptually brilliant scenic design by Miriam Buether creates an effect with mirrors that momentarily suggests some of the action is taking place inside a looking glass.

The ensemble, which includes a young man (Joseph Medeiros), who serves as a stand-in for the playwright as he silently pays his respects to the woman he could neither forgive nor forget, becomes more unified over time. Jackson may not draw out the full range her roles tragicomic music, but her mercilessness potently conveys the playwrights existential realism.

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Albee once quipped that his play is about a woman who you dont like in act one, and who you like a little better in act two. Three Tall Women is more profoundly about the shape of a human life, seen objectively by the artist as its experienced subjectively by the protagonist at different stages of her existence.

Broadway might not be the ideal home for a play that has no interest in sugarcoating its truth. A smaller venue would draw us in more quietly to a vision better served by understatement. But Albees writing is sublimely searing, Mantellos staging is magnificent to behold and these three larger-than-life actresses are nothing short of transfixing.

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National joint-stock company Naftogaz Ukrainy in April could start recovery of $2.6 billion debt from Russia's Gazprom to execute the award of the Arbitration Institute of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce, Naftogaz Chief Commercial Officer Yuriy Vitrenko has said.

"[The appeal to courts] could start in the near future, in April. We have warned them," he said on the 24 Channel TV late on Wednesday.

He said that the recovery could take up to six months, while Naftogaz hopes that the Russian company would execute the arbitration tribunal's award in the near term in an honest manner. He said that Gazprom has not yet filed a counterclaim against the tribunal's award on the gas transit contract.

"From a point of view of law, even if they already filed the counterclaim, it does not stop the execution of the arbitration tribunal's award. That is they must pay this money to us, and then wait for a year and a half until their counterclaim is heard and the respective decision is made," he said.

Vitrenko did not rule out the possibility of arresting the Russian company's gas in underground storage facilities in Europe or shares of the Nord Stream pipeline operator in a Swiss court for debt recovery.
A politely sleazy thriller, the new film Gemini is a gripping murder mystery that reveals new dimensions of Los Angeles on screen. Its examination of the world of celebrity and the contemporary slippage of identity is set against a vision of the city that is both glossy sleek and comfortably lived-in.

Written and directed by Aaron Katz, the film focuses on a young Hollywood assistant, Jill LeBeau (Lola Kirke), who cleans up the personal and professional messes of her celebrity boss, actress Heather Anderson (Zoe Kravitz). A dead body shot with Jills gun leaves behind a lot of suspects from Heathers life, including a frustrated filmmaker (Nelson Franklin), a jilted boyfriend (Reeve Carney) and a secret girlfriend (Greta Lee). A low-key detective (John Cho) sifts through the messy possibilities.

With its unusual mix of genre plot propulsion and odd character moments, the film makes for an eccentric alchemy. Katz is an avowed devotee of watching movies on VHS as well as literary crime fiction by writers such as John Dickson Carr. As reference and inspiration, he mentions such thrillers as the San Francisco-set Jade and the Florida-set Body Heat alongside L.A.-set movies such as Dead Again, American Gigolo and Bad Influence.

It feels like thrillers have this great capacity to express something about the city that they are taking place in, Katz said while recently tucked into a back booth at Tonga Hut, the North Hollywood tiki bar seen in the movie.

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Maybe in part because geography is really important in a thriller and the mechanics of how you get from here to there has an outsized importance in the plot, he added. So I feel like you get to see a lot of the city and immerse the movie in the fabric of what it means to live in the city at a particular time.

Katz, 36, is originally from Portland, Ore., and after emerging with two well-received micro-budget features, 2006s Dance Party USA and 2007s Quiet City, he first stepped into genre territory with the slacker detective sibling mystery Cold Weather in 2010. His next film, Land Ho! was a road comedy set in Iceland co-directed with Martha Stephens. After moving to Los Angeles in late 2012, he began working on the script that would become Gemini as a tribute to the city as he was exploring its lesser-seen corners.

Lola Kirke and John Cho in a scene from Gemini. (NEON )

On the day after the films recent L.A. premiere, Kirke and Cho met up at Franks Coffee Shop in Burbank, a location where their characters have a pivotal conversation in the movie.

When you come back to a location, Im never quite sure whats us, what production put up, and what is the original restaurant, Cho said. Looking around the room, he added, Theres always less.

Both Kirke and Kravitz grew up with show business and the attention it can bring as part of their lives. (Kirkes father is Bad Company drummer Simon Kirke and her mother is designer Lorraine Kirke; Kravitz is the daughter of actress Lisa Bonet and musician Lenny Kravitz.) The exploration in Gemini of the unusual dynamic between a celebrity and an assistant  the blurred boundaries between the personal and the professional, on-duty and off-hours  was something they both instinctively understood.

I think thats something the movie does really well in general, show you different sides of things you think you really know already, Kirke said. It shows you a different side of celebrity and it shows you a different side of Los Angeles.

There is such an intriguing balance of light and dark here, emotional light and dark, Kravitz said in a separate interview by telephone from Los Angeles. And I think what Aaron did was kind of look at both sides of a lot of things, seeing the positive and the negative sides of all those things. It is a hard thing to capture but I think thats what this story is about, is looking at everything from both sides.

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The production covered a lot of ground: from a parking lot off Western, an apartment building in Koreatown, an elaborately tiled house in Laurel Canyon, a glamorous retreat in Topanga Canyon, a house above the Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood and El Matador State Beach. Along with Tonga Hut and Franks, restaurants and bars such as Yamashiro, Casa Bianca Pizza Pie and Star Karaoke are all featured prominently.

Katzs own house in Eagle Rock served as the house of a film director  thats his Spirit Award seen as set dressing in the background, as well as the computer on which he edited the movie  and his local coffee shop, Found Coffee, is in a scene as well.

The Tesla and Mercedes featured as celebrity cars cost well more than Katzs earliest movies. The small Nissan hatchback that Kirkes character drives in the film was a rental that Katz also used to get to and from the shoot, driving Kirke and cinematographer Andrew Reed along the way.

Though he had never met her, Katz wrote the part of Jill with Kirke in mind after seeing her in Noah Baumbachs Mistress America. Once Kirke was signed on, she suggested Kravitz, a friend, for the role of Heather. (Katz had already met Kravitz for a project that never materialized.) From there, Katz rewrote the roles based on input from his actresses, collaborating on their characters and their world.

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There is something really particular about Aaron as far as filmmakers go, particularly male filmmakers, there is a complete lack of ego in the most incredible way, Kirke said. Hes so open to collaboration and open in general. And those were really refreshing qualities to see. I definitely think Aaron is an auteur, but none of that auteur ego lives within him.

Zoe Kravitz in Aaron Katzs Gemini. (NEON )

Katz acknowledged that Kirke and Kravitz already knew more than him about the world of fame and its orbit just from their own lives. So, he said, it made sense to ask them for input on anything from dealing with pushy paparazzi on the street to when and how to assert celebrity privilege to gain special treatment.

I think fame is a very complicated thing, Kravitz said. I like seeing a story that shows if you dont have your feet on the ground and you get swept up in it, you can find yourself in a very unstable place emotionally. Which is where we find Heather. And yet I think she is also very much addicted to being famous and having that kind of attention on her.

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And I relate to it in some ways, she added. But I think fame is something whether you are famous or someone who kind of participates from afar and watches celebrities, I like the idea of looking at. Its a bizarre thing, its not normal.

A murder mystery, a study of characters and celebrity and an essay on the city itself, Gemini captures the enigmatic nature of life in Los Angeles, from the fringes to the center of the action.

L.A. is a mystery, there are so many things going on here, Cho said. Its confusing and it isnt well planned, but its wonderful and awful and its filled with incredible successes and tragic failures and strange pockets of life. So enigmatic is right. Everything is slippery in this town.

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All but seven of the 68 people killed in this weeks prison riot and fire in central Venezuela had been identified by Friday as the government continued to remain silent about how the conflagration occurred.

Authorities at the police command center in Valencia, about 100 miles west of Caracas, distributed photos to family members to help in the identification effort. Smoke inhalation or burns were the most common causes of death.

In addition to the deaths, 48 prisoners were injured in the fire Wednesday.

Families were still clamoring for official answers to how the fire started in the overcrowded jail. Unnamed officials have told local media that it began when prisoners set fire to their mattresses.

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Some families have accused guards of starting the fire after one was disarmed and stabbed by a prisoner during a surprise early morning search of cells.

Relatives are also seeking information on the identities of the 100 prisoners who have been transferred from Valencia in central Carabobo state to other jails, according to the Carabobo News Agency.

Venezuelas prison system has long been denounced by human rights groups for overcrowding, rampant gang violence and other abysmal living conditions. There have been several riots in recent years, including one at the Amazonas state prison that left 38 dead.

Family members are also expressing outrage at the way some prisoners have been left in the Valencia detention center for months, even though the law requires they be held for no more than 48 hours before being transferred to court or other jails.

Neither Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro nor Iris Varela, minister of the prison system, has publicly commented on the fire.

Mogollon is a special correspondent.
USC names retired aerospace executive Wanda Austin as acting president, announces Nikias departure By Harriet Ryan USC appointed a retired aerospace executive as interim president and laid out a detailed plan for selecting a permanent leader Tuesday, ending speculation about whether outgoing President C.L. Max Nikias might remain in the post. Nikias, embattled over his administrations handling of a campus gynecologist accused of sexually abusing patients, relinquished his duties after a meeting of USCs board. The trustees tapped one of their own, Wanda Austin, an alumna and former president of the Aerospace Corp., to temporarily run the university. The trustees also approved the formation of a search committee and the hiring of firm Isaacson, Miller to coordinate the selection of a successor. A second search company, Heidrick & Struggles, will also advise trustees. Read More Facebook

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Ex-student sues elite Brentwood School after teacher is charged with sexually abusing him By Richard Winton A former student sued the elite Brentwood School on Monday in the wake of a female teacher being charged with repeatedly having sex with the minor, alleging that other faculty members encouraged the unlawful behavior and failed to report it to authorities. The lawsuit accuses the private school, whose students include the children of many of Hollywoods elite and L.A.s powerful, of acting negligently and allowing Aimee Palmitessa to abuse and batter the teenager sexually. The suit alleges that the student was abused in summer 2017 after one of the schools counselors offered words of encouragement to the then-17-year-old, identified in the suit as only John Doe, to engage in an illegal relationship with the teacher. Read More Facebook

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Civil jury vindicates fired Montebello school executives in whistleblower case By Howard Blume The Montebello school district is in dire straits  at risk of insolvency and under apparent criminal investigation. An outside audit in July found some teachers earning more than $200,000 a year, as well as improper raises, excess paid vacation time and inappropriate overtime, sick leave and car allowances. Fixing the district and pinpointing blame could take time. Read More Facebook

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L.A. schools fall short on safety measures, new report warns By Howard Blume After the mass shooting at Floridas Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in February, Los Angeles school officials reassured parents that much had been done to keep local schools safe. California had tougher gun laws, after all, and the school district paid close attention to students mental health. But a new report issued Monday by a panel convened to take a close look offers some cause for concern, flagging inconsistent campus safety measures, thinly spread mental health staff and inadequate coordination between the school district and other public agencies. With the stakes this high, we must strive to do better, said L.A. City Atty. Mike Feuer, who assembled the panel. Read More Facebook

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L.A. school district says more are graduating, but rate may not show it By Howard Blume The L.A. Unified School District has hopes of continuing its winning streak this year with another record graduation rate, but the official numbers may not show it. A senior district administrator warned the board Tuesday that graduation rates were likely to decline 2% to 3% across the state, even though L.A. Unified is likely doing better than ever in producing graduates, he said. The issue is that the state will now count high school students who transfer to adult school as dropouts, said Oscar Lafarga, who heads the districts office of data and accountability. Previously, schools treated these students as though they had simply enrolled in another high school, he said. Read More Facebook

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Betsy DeVos to California: Not so fast on that federal education plan By Joy Resmovits Education Secretary Betsy DeVos (Erik Lesser / European Pressphoto Agency) In April, Californias top education officials breathed a sigh of relief. After months of debate and back-and-forth with Betsy DeVos staff, they had finalized a plan to satisfy a major education law that aims to make sure all students get a decent education. The state focused on aligning its plan to fulfill the requirements of the federal Every Student Succeeds Act with Californias Local Control Funding Formula, which gives extra money to districts to help students who come from low-income families, are in the foster system or are English learners. But this week, DeVos team said not so fast. Jason Botel, the U.S. Department of Educations principal deputy assistant secretary, sent California education officials a letter asking for more information in such areas as measuring student progress, graduation rates and English learners. In an unsigned statement, the California Department of Education declared itself surprised and disappointed because officials thought  after a meeting with federal officials in Washington  that they were on the right track to get approval. Now the Every Student Succeeds Act plan will be up for discussion once again at the July meeting of the State Board of Education. The U.S. Department of Education has already approved most state plans. Every Student Succeeds is the Obama administrations 2015 replacement for the No Child Left Behind Act. Facebook

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L.A. school board sets a new goal: prepare every grad to be eligible to apply for Cal State or UC By Sonali Kohli Last month, Los Angeles school board president proposed a spate of highly ambitious mandates aimed at ensuring that every district graduate be eligible to apply to one of the states public four-year universities by 2023. By the time the L.A. Unified school board unanimously approved the resolution Tuesday, the original language had been watered down. The goal is no longer that in five years 100% of students meet the long list of benchmarks, which include not just college eligibility for graduates but first-grade reading proficiency and English fluency by sixth grade for all students who enter the district in kindergarten or first grade speaking another language. The original college-readiness goal, for example, called for 100% of all high school students to be eligible to apply to one of the states four-year universities. Now the goal seems to offer more wiggle room: Prepare all high school graduates to be eligible to apply to a California four-year university. Read More Facebook

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We have been hurt. More women say they were mistreated by USC gynecologist By Richard Winton USC student Anika Narayanan says she vividly recalls her first appointment with Dr. George Tyndall at the campus health center, alleging that he made several explicit comments during an examination she felt was inappropriate and invasive. When she came back for a second visit in 2016 after a nonconsensual sexual encounter, he allegedly chastised her, she said in a civil lawsuit and at a press conference Tuesday. He asked me if I had forgotten to use a condom again,  said Narayanan, 21. At one point, she said, Tyndall asked if I did a lot of doggy style,  she said. Read More Facebook

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L.A. Unified gives inspector general brief contract extension By Howard Blume The Los Angeles school board on Tuesday extended the contract of Ken Bramlett, its inspector general, by three months, though his job is far from secure and questions remain about the future direction of his watchdog office. Board members also unanimously promoted Vivian Ekchian, who had been the runner-up for the superintendents job, to deputy superintendent  the districts No. 2 position. Both moves had elements of peacemaking between different factions on the board. Read More Facebook

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USCs handling of complaints about campus gynecologist is being investigated by federal government By Harriet Ryan The U.S. Department of Education announced Monday that it has launched an investigation into how the University of Southern California handled misconduct complaints against a campus gynecologist, the latest fallout in a scandal that has prompted the resignation of USCs president, two law enforcement investigations and dozens of lawsuits. In revealing the inquiry by the departments Office of Civil Rights, officials rebuked USC for what they alleged was improper withholding of information about Dr. George Tyndall during a previous federal investigation. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, who has been criticized for taking a less vigorous approach to examining sexual misconduct than predecessors, called for a systemic examination of USC and urged administrators to fully cooperate. Read More Facebook

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Judge to sentence woman and her boyfriend for the murder of an 8-year-old that led to L.A. child welfare reforms By Marisa Gerber A woman and her boyfriend are expected to be sentenced Thursday for the torture and murder of an 8-year-old boy whose killing in 2013 provoked public outrage, prompted sweeping reform of Los Angeles Countys child welfare system, and led to unprecedented criminal charges against social workers who handled the childs case. Pearl Sinthia Fernandez, 34, faces life in prison without the possibility of parole for her role in the death of her son, Gabriel. A jury decided last year that her boyfriend, Isauro Aguirre, 37, should be executed. When paramedics arrived at the boys Palmdale home in May 2013, Gabriel had slipped out of consciousness. He had a fractured skull, broken ribs, burned skin, missing teeth and BB pellets embedded in his groin. A paramedic would later testify that every inch of the boys small body had been abused. Read More Facebook

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L.A. Unifieds spending out of step with similar school systems, task force says By Howard Blume The Los Angeles school district is out of step with similar school systems, spending more on teachers pay and health benefits and less on activities that could enhance student learning, according to a new report by an outside task force. The L.A. Unified School District Advisory Task Force did not make specific recommendations, but instead posed a series of questions it said the district needs to answer to make sure its funding is aimed at providing a full opportunity for all students to succeed. What were trying to say is: Lets put the data on the table. Lets look at the truth. Lets be transparent and here are the numbers, said task force member Renata Simril. This is not to say that  we should cut teachers salaries. Read More Facebook

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Top USC medical school official feared dean was doing drugs and alerted administration, he testifies By Paul Pringle A former vice dean of USCs Keck School of Medicine testified Tuesday that he feared the schools then-dean, Dr. Carmen A. Puliafito, could be doing drugs and expressed concerns about his general well-being to the universitys No. 2 administrator before Puliafito abruptly left his job in 2016. Dr. Henri Fords testimony at a hearing of the state Medical Board marks the first suggestion that any USC administrator had suspicions about Puliafitos possible drug use before he stepped down. A Times investigation in 2017 found Puliafito led a secret second life of using illegal drugs with a circle of young criminals and addicts. Puliafito testified about his behavior at the hearing Tuesday, saying he took drugs with one young woman on a weekly basis. Ford said that he decided to alert USC Provost Michael Quick after receiving reports in early 2016 that Puliafito was partying in hotels with people of questionable reputation, and that he came to worry about his mental stability. Read More Facebook

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Why L.A. Unified may face financial crisis even with a giant surplus this year By Jessica Calefati With more than half a billion dollars socked away for next school year, the Los Angeles Unified School District hardly seems just two years from financial ruin. Its a scenario that is especially tough to swallow if youre a low-wage worker seeking a raise or a teacher who wants smaller classes. But budget documents show that todays $548-million surplus cannot be sustained  and that even basic services face steep, seemingly unavoidable cuts because of massive problems barreling the districts way. Theres a disconnect between the rosy short-term picture and what we know is coming, said board member Kelly Gonez. Read More Facebook

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We have failed: Top USC officials try to reassure students amid gynecologist scandal By Joy Resmovits Top administrators at USC are reaching out to students in the wake of misconduct allegations against the universitys longtime gynecologist, acknowledging failings and vowing reforms as they try to address growing outrage over the revelations. Several USC deans have sent out messages trying to reassure students and faculty that the university is committed to changing. We have failed, wrote Jack H. Knott, dean of USCs Sol Price School of Public Policy, in a May 24 letter. What happened is antithetical to everything we know is right. Read More Facebook

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Rick Caruso is named chair of USCs trustees, vows swift investigation of gynecologist scandal By Thomas Curwen The University of Southern Californias board of trustees has elected mall magnate Rick Caruso to be the new chair of the board, giving fresh leadership as the university navigates a widening scandal involving a longtime campus gynecologist. The move marks the latest effort by USC to address the case, which has sparked a criminal investigation by the Los Angeles Police Department and dozens of civil lawsuits. More than 400 people have contacted a hotline that the university established for patients to make reports about their experience with Dr. George Tyndall. In his first act as chairman, Caruso announced that the white-shoe L.A. law firm OMelveny & Myers would conduct a thorough and independent investigation into the gynecologists conduct and reporting failures at the clinic. He set an ambitious timeline for the review, pledging it would conclude before students return for the fall semester. Read More Facebook

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UC Berkeley students persistence helps win more liberal rules for in-state tuition By Teresa Watanabe Ifechukwu Okeke thought shed be a shoo-in for in-state tuition when she was admitted to UC Berkeley for fall 2016. She had moved to the United States from Nigeria in 2012 to go to Chaffey College in Rancho Cucamonga. By the time she got her acceptance to transfer to UC to study molecular and cell biology, she had lived in California four years. She had a California drivers license, bank account and rental records as proof. UC Berkeley, however, ruled she was a nonresident  which meant she would have to pay nearly $27,000 more. Read More Facebook

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State medical board calls former County-USC doctor a sexual predator, suspends his license By Matt Hamilton A UCLA cardiologist has been temporarily stripped of his medical license after state regulators described him as a sexual predator who assaulted three female colleagues when he was working and training at L.A. County-USC Medical Center. Read More Facebook

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Global California 2030' aims to get more students learning more languages By Joy Resmovits Tom Torlakson (Andrew Seng / Associated Press) Outgoing state Supt. of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson on Wednesday announced a new statewide effort to encourage students to learn more languages. Called Global California 2030, its goal is to help more students become fluent in multiple tongues. Torlakson said that by 2030, he wants half of the states 6.2 million K-12 students to participate in classes or programs that lead to proficiency in two or more languages. By 2040, he wants three out of four students to be proficient enough to earn the State Seal of Biliteracy. Torlakson announced the initiative at Cahuenga Elementary School, which offers a dual-language immersion program in English and Korean. Californias public school students speak more than 60 languages at home, and 40% come to school with knowledge of a language other than English. Torlakson called his plan a call to action that invites parents, legislators, educators and community members to pool resources to expand language offerings in schools and get more bilingual teachers trained. He said the state already is working with Mexico and Spain to expand a teacher-exchange program. Fluency, the plan argues, can help students succeed economically  and language acquisition can help their overall critical thinking. The initiative builds on Proposition 58, a ballot initiative passed in 2016 that undid an earlier requirement that English learners be taught in English-immersion classes unless their parents signed waivers. Torlakson recently visited Mexico and met with that countrys education secretary. They later signed a pact to increase collaboration, particularly in language education. This [Global California 2030] is great follow-through on Toms part and very important, Patricia Gandara, a UCLA education professor who hosted the Mexico meeting, said in an email. It hands over a plan to move forward in an area in which California has a unique advantage, but must seize the opportunity. Facebook

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Jury convicts man of murder in 2015 slaying of UCLA student found inside her burning apartment By Marisa Gerber A jury on Tuesday convicted a man in the 2015 slaying of a UCLA student found dead inside her burning apartment  a gruesome stabbing case that led to a fierce rebuke of the police response amid concerns that the killing could have been prevented. The panel deliberated for about six hours before finding Alberto Medina, 24, guilty of murder, arson, burglary and animal cruelty. On Sept. 21, 2015, firefighters found the charred body of Andrea DelVesco inside her apartment after responding to the complex a block from campus. The 21-year-old student  an Austin, Texas, native known to her sorority sisters as a fearless giver who befriended others with ease  was stabbed at least 19 times, authorities said. Read More Facebook

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LAPD begins sweeping criminal probe of former USC gynecologist while urging patients to come forward By Adam Elmahrek The Los Angeles Police Department said Tuesday it is investigating 52 complaints of misconduct filed by former patients of USCs longtime campus gynecologist as detectives launch a sweeping criminal probe into the scandal that has rocked the university. LAPD detectives also made an appeal for other patients who feel mistreated to come forward, noting that thousands of students were examined by Dr. George Tyndall during his nearly 30-year career at USC. More than 410 people have contacted a university hotline about the physician since The Times revealed the allegations this month. Tyndalls behavior and practices appear to go beyond the norms of the medical profession and gynecological examinations, said Asst. Chief Beatrice Girmala. We sincerely realize that victims may have difficulty recounting such details to investigators. We are empathetic and ready to listen. Read More Facebook

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At L.A.'s only school for the deaf, parents want leaders who speak the same language By Anna M. Phillips Ever since her son was 6 months old, Juliet Hidalgo has been bringing him to the Marlton School, a low-slung building in Baldwin Hills that for generations has been a second home for deaf and hard-of-hearing students in Los Angeles. Marlton staff taught Hidalgos brother and sister, both of whom are deaf. The school was where her deaf son learned to make the signs for milk and food. Hidalgo had planned to enroll her daughter, taking advantage of a popular program that allows hearing children to learn American Sign Language alongside their deaf siblings. But after more than a decade of involvement, she and other family members are considering withdrawing their children. They are not alone. Read More Facebook

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Fueled by unlimited donations, independent groups play their biggest role yet in a California primary for governor By Ryan Menezes An unprecedented amount of money from wealthy donors, unions and corporations is flowing into the California governors race, giving independent groups  unrestricted by contribution limits  a greater say in picking the states chief executive than ever before. The groups have already spent more than $26 million through Thursday, the most ever spent by noncandidate committees in a gubernatorial primary, according to a Times analysis of campaign finance reports. California elections have always been expensive, and the future is even more expensive, said Jack Pitney, a political science professor at Claremont McKenna College and a former state Republican leader. The stakes are very real. Read More Facebook

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2 hurt in Indiana middle school shooting; suspect in custody, authorities say By Associated Press Authorities say two victims in a shooting at a suburban Indianapolis school are being taken to a hospital and the lone suspect is in custody. Bryant Orem, a spokesman for the Hamilton County Sheriffs Office, said in a news release that the victims in Friday mornings attack at Noblesville West Middle School are being taken to Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis and their families have been notified. He says no other information is available about the victims. Orem said the suspect is believed to have acted alone and was taken into custody. No additional information about the suspect was made public. Read More Facebook

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For new L.A. schools chief Austin Beutner, some key unions are giving no honeymoon period By Howard Blume In the less than two weeks since Austin Beutner took charge of Los Angeles schools, unions representing teachers and administrators have staged a job action and a protest. Theyve made it clear that they will not give the new superintendent the traditional honeymoon period, and they are bashing him for his wealth and lack of experience running either a school or a school district. Beutner is a billionaire investment banker with zero qualifications, local teachers union President Alex Caputo-Pearl told members in a phone alert urging them to participate in a Thursday afternoon rally in Grand Park. The board is saying that billionaires who made their money blowing institutions up and making money off it know best  not the education professionals who have dedicated our careers to working with students. Read More Facebook

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Pressure grows on Board of Trustees amid USC gynecologist scandal By Paul Pringle USCs large and powerful Board of Trustees is coming under growing pressure to provide a stronger hand as the university faces a crisis over misconduct allegations against the campus longtime gynecologist that has prompted calls for President C.L. Max Nikias to step down. Allegations that Dr. George Tyndall mistreated students during his nearly 30 years at USC have roiled the campus, with about 300 people coming forward to make reports to the university and the Los Angeles Police Department launching a criminal investigation. USC is already beginning to face what is expected to be costly litigation by women who say they were victimized by the physician. So far, the trustees to whom Nikias reports have expressed sympathy for the women who have come forward and launched an independent investigation while also publicly backing the president. Read More Facebook

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UC regents approve leaner budget for Janet Napolitano By Teresa Watanabe University of California regents on Thursday unanimously approved a leaner, more transparent budget for President Janet Napolitano, moving to address political criticism over the systems central office operations. The $876.4-million budget for 2018-19 reflects spending cuts of 2%, including reductions in staffing, travel and such systemwide programs as public service law fellowships, carbon neutrality and food security. Napolitano shifted $30 million to campuses for housing needs and $10 million to UC Riverside to support its five-year-old medical school. She also permanently redirected $8.5 million annually to help enroll more California students, as required by the state. Read More Facebook

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USCs Academic Senate calls on university president to resign after a series of scandals By Matt Hamilton The body that represents USCs faculty called on President C.L. Max Nikias to resign Wednesday in the wake of relevations that the universitys longtime gynecologist faced years of accusations of misconduct by students and colleagues at the campus health clinic. The Academic Senate took the vote late Wednesday afternoon after a fiery town hall meeting attended by more than 100 faculty members, many of whom voiced outrage over Nikias and the Board of Trustees leadership. The vote came a day after the trustees executive committee stood firmly behind Nikias, saying it has full confidence in his leadership, ethics and values. At the town hall meeting, Senate President Paul Rosenbloom said he did not think Nikias or Provost Michael Quick committed wrongdoing but that the university president deserved criticism for a lack of transparency. Read More Facebook

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Californias public universities on the way to getting a big longed-for boost in funding By Teresa Watanabe The University of California and California State University systems are poised to get major funding boosts that will help them enroll thousands of additional state students and eliminate the need for tuition increases in the coming school year. A key Assembly budget panel on Wednesday approved $117.5 million in new funds for the UC. A Senate panel approved a similar sum last week. The same committees recently approved even more funding for the Cal State system. Read More Facebook

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UC regents to scrutinize Janet Napolitanos office budget in a step toward stronger oversight By Teresa Watanabe University of California regents this week plan to scrutinize the budget of President Janet Napolitano, whose office came under political fire last year for questionable spending and murky accounting. Regents will vote on the proposed $876.4-million budget for 2018-19 during their two-day meeting, which starts Wednesday, at UC San Francisco. They also will discuss state funding, financial aid, online education and transfer student policies. Board Chairman George Kieffer said regents are stepping up to exert stronger oversight of the presidents office after a blistering state audit last year found financial problems including an unreported $175 million budget reserve. Read More Facebook

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State legislative panels approve major funding boost for Cal State By Teresa Watanabe Cal State students protest against a tuition increase outside the chancellors office (Irfan Khan) After months of intensive lobbying, Cal State University has convinced two key legislative panels to approve funding to enroll nearly 11,000 more students, hire more faculty and expand housing aid to those without shelter this fall. An Assembly budget panel on Tuesday approved $215.7 million more for Cal State, adding to Gov. Jerry Browns proposed $92.1 million general fund increase. A Senate budget panel approved a similar increase last week. The extra funding  which went beyond Cal States own request to the Legislature of $171 million  is still subject to final budget negotiations with Brown. But the actions by the Senate and Assembly panels amount to a demand from Democrats that the governor hike higher education spending. Cal State University is the workhorse undergraduate university serving hundreds of thousands of Californians, said Assemblyman Kevin McCarty (D-Sacramento), who heads the Assembly Budget Subcommittee on Education Finance. We need more graduates for the California workforce and higher education is the ticket to the middle class. Cal State Chancellor Timothy P. White hailed the actions, but said it was too soon to celebrate. The CSU has a singular focus on helping students earn high-quality degrees sooner, and the entire university community has rallied to reinforce that message to our states lawmakers, he said in a statement. The actions taken thus far by the Assembly and Senate are promising and show that our message is being received, but there is still work to be done. Funding for the University of California was not taken up Tuesday as originally scheduled. McCarty would not comment on sticking points but said he was confident that a resolution would be reached this week. Were looking to provide resources above whats in the governors budget, but negotiations are ongoing, he said in an interview. State per-student funding is not what it once was, leaving both Cal State and the UC in a tough financial squeeze. Both systems raised tuition last year after a six-year freeze on higher costs. For this year, Cal State had asked for funding to enroll an additional 3,621 students, but both the Senate and Assembly panels approved three times that amount. Cal State, the largest public university system in the nation, turned away 32,000 eligible students last year because its campuses werent able to accommodate them. The panels asked that at least $50 million of the extra funding be used to hire more tenure-track faculty to help boost graduation rates. The Assembly panel also approved one-time funding of $5 million to ease hunger on campuses and $14 million for rapid rehousing pilot projects at three campuses, offering needy students rental support and short-term case management. Other items approved include $5 million to support the CSU Long Beach Shark Labs research on sharks and beach safety and $2 million for equal employment opportunity practices. This post has been updated to include comments from Assemblyman Kevin McCarty and Cal State Chancellor Timothy P. White. Facebook

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Faculty members call for USC president to step down: He has lost the moral authority to lead By Matt Hamilton Two hundred USC professors on Tuesday demanded the resignation of university President C. L. Max Nikias, saying he had lost the moral authority to lead in the wake of revelations that a campus gynecologist was kept on staff for decades despite repeated complaints of misconduct. Read More Facebook

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Gun battle, negotiations lasted 15 minutes before Texas school shooter was apprehended, sheriff says By Molly Hennessy-Fiske Minutes after a school shooter opened fire in an art class last week, killing 10 people and wounding 13, including a local police officer, fellow officers returned fire in a protracted gun battle before isolating the suspect, the local sheriff said Monday. Galveston County Sheriff Henry Trochesset praised first responders as well as Santa Fe Police Officer John Barnes, who was working as a resource officer at the school the day of the shooting. Their actions, he said, prevented the attack from spreading to other classrooms and potentially claiming additional victims. As officials continue to probe last Fridays shooting at Santa Fe High School, students are worried about returning to the scene of the attack when classes resume next week. Read More Facebook

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6 women sue USC, alleging they were victimized by campus gynecologist By Richard Winton Six women filed civil lawsuits Monday alleging that a longtime gynecologist at the University of Southern California sexually victimized them under the pretext of medical care and that USC failed to address complaints from clinic staff about the doctors behavior. One woman alleged Dr. George Tyndall forced his entire ungloved hand into her vagina during an appointment in 2003 while making vulgar remarks about her genitalia, according to one of the lawsuits. Another woman alleged that Tyndall groped her breasts in a 2008 visit and that later he falsely told her she likely had AIDS. A third woman accused the doctor of grazing his ungloved fingers over her nude body and leering at her during a purported skin exam, the lawsuit states. The wave of litigation comes as USC continues to grapple with the scandal, which legal experts said could prove costly to the university as scores of former patients come forward about their experiences with the gynecologist. Read More Facebook

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Fatalities reported in Texas high school shooting; suspect arrested, officials say By Associated Press Houston-area media citing unnamed law enforcement officials are reporting that there are fatalities following a shooting at a local high school Friday morning. Television station KHOU and the Houston Chronicle are citing unnamed federal, county and police officials following the shooting at Santa Fe High School, which went on lockdown around 8 a.m. The Associated Press has not been able to confirm the reports. The school district has confirmed an unspecified number of injuries but said it wouldnt immediately release further details. Assistant Principal Cris Richardson said a suspect has been arrested and secured. Read More Facebook

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This student followed the new L.A. schools chief on his first-day tour L.A. schools Supt. Austin Beutner is greeted by Van Nuys High School principal Yolanda Gardea. (Melissa Barales-Lopez) Melissa Barales-Lopez, a senior at Garfield High School followed Supt. Austin Beutner on his first day on the job, as he toured a variety of programs around the Los Angeles Unified School District. Heres what she took from the experience. LAUSD students and staff alike are looking for a personal champion, someone who will address and improve the difficulties afflicting their education.  What LAUSD students need is someone whos willing to listen and learn, someone who can understand the current issues affecting their schools and act to efficiently amend them, someone who can unlock the full potential of LAUSD students and enable them to reach their goals. During the entirety of his first day, superintendent Austin Beutner did indeed demonstrate a willingness to learn. Posing questions to teachers and students, Beutner engaged with the student communities he encountered to gain a better comprehension of the minutiae and nuances that distinguish each school inside an overwhelmingly large district. From inquiries about Grand View Boulevard Elementary Schools dual language program to questions regarding the services of LAUSDs after-school program, Beyond the Bell, Beutner revealed he has a lot to learn about the system. But, Beutner also showcased a willingness to tackle challenges head-on on his first day. Read More Facebook

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USC let a gynecologist continue treating students despite years of misconduct allegations By Matt Hamilton For nearly 30 years, the University of Southern Californias student health clinic had one full-time gynecologist: Dr. George Tyndall. Tall and garrulous with distinctive jet black hair, he treated tens of thousands of female students, many of them teenagers seeing a gynecologist for the first time. Few who lay down on Tyndalls exam table at the Engemann Student Health Center knew that he had been accused repeatedly of misconduct toward young patients. The complaints began in the 1990s, when co-workers alleged he was improperly photographing students genitals. In the years that followed, patients and nursing staff accused him again and again of creepy behavior, including touching women inappropriately during pelvic exams and making sexually suggestive remarks about their bodies. Read More Facebook

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Cal State trustees to discuss Browns latest budget proposal, which they say still falls $171 million short By Joy Resmovits Just how much money does California State University need to serve its students? In recent years, this question has been front and center for the nations largest public university system. Cal States leaders say that to keep their campuses quality from slipping, they need much more money than the state is giving them. This year, theyre also at odds with Gov. Jerry Brown on the question of whether any extra money should come in one-time bursts or be ongoing. Read More Facebook

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On his first day as L.A. schools chief, Beutner plans a day of visits across the district By Howard Blume L.A. Unifieds new superintendent, Austin Beutner, will kick off his first day of work on Tuesday with a choreographed tour of the nations second-largest school district, from the San Fernando Valley to Carson. His day is scheduled to begin at 5:15 a.m. at a school bus depot and end more than 12 hours later at a parent meeting at Garfield High School. Along the way, Beutner is expected to be joined by school district administrators, L.A. Unified board members and the vice president of the union that represents school bus drivers. Though he will be covering a lot of ground, Beutners tour has him skipping Tuesdays school board meeting, when board members are expected to discuss labor negotiations in closed session. Read More Facebook

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Cal State trustees to discuss Browns latest budget proposal, which they say still falls $171 million short By Joy Resmovits Just how much money does California State University need to serve its students? In recent years, this question has been front and center for the nations largest public university system. Cal States leaders say that to keep their campuses quality from slipping, they need much more money than the state is giving them. This year, theyre also at odds with Gov. Jerry Brown on the question of whether any extra money should come in one-time bursts or be ongoing. Read More Facebook

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Why a handful of rich charter school supporters are spending millions to elect Antonio Villaraigosa as governor By Ryan Menezes California voters have seen a barrage of sunny television ads in recent weeks touting former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosas record on finances, crime and education, aired by Families & Teachers for Antonio Villaraigosa for Governor 2018. But the group is, in fact, largely funded by a handful of wealthy charter-school supporters. Together they have spent more than $13 million in less than a month to boost Villaraigosas chances in the June 5 primary  at a time when his fundraising and poll numbers are lagging. Reed Hastings, the founder of Netflix, jump-started the group with a $7-million check, by far the largest donation to support any candidate in the election. Their efforts are part of a broader proxy war among Democrats between teachers unions  longtime stalwarts of the party  and those who argue that the groups have failed low-income and minority schoolchildren. Read More Facebook

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Talking schools with L.A. Unifieds new superintendent By Anna M. Phillips Al Seib / Los Angeles Times ( Incoming L.A. schools Supt. Austin Beutner talks to students at Belmont High School.) Austin Beutner, who officially starts Tuesday as the new superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, is taking on a famously difficult job at a particularly difficult time. The school board is divided and did not back him unanimously. The nations second-largest school district has deep-seated problems, including declining enrollment, lagging academic achievement and rising pension and healthcare costs that eat away at its budget. The 58-year-old former investment banker and former L.A. Times publisher has years of experience in the financial world but none as an educator. Earlier this week, he sat down with the Times education team to discuss the challenges facing the district, which has about 60,000 employees and 500,000 students in traditional public schools. He did not talk about his plans  saying repeatedly, stay tuned  but he spoke in broad terms about his mindset in approaching the tough decisions ahead. Read More Facebook

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Suspect detained, authorities search campus after reports of armed man at Palmdale high school By James Queally One person has been detained after a report of an armed man at a Palmdale high school sparked a massive law enforcement response Friday morning. The suspect was spotted at 7:05 a.m. on the campus of Highland High School in Palmdale, according to Sheriffs Department spokeswoman Nicole Nishida. The person was detained in a nearby parking lot, according to Nishida, who did not know whether that person was an adult or juvenile. Deputies at the scene are clearing the school methodically, and students will be transported home via school buses once the campus is deemed safe, Nishida said. Read More Facebook

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The education of Bertha Perez: How a UC Merced custodians disenchantment led to a political awakening By Robin Abcarian Its the third day of a three-day strike, and UC Merced custodian Bertha Perez is taking a break from a picket line at the universitys unremarkable entrance, an intersection with stop lights. Photos from other UC campuses this week have shown big crowds of striking service workers  members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees  marching and chanting pro-labor slogans as they try to force the University of California back to the negotiating table. But here, at UC Merced, whose handful of big buildings rise from a flat expanse of farmland, the picket line is tiny, maybe two dozen workers and a few students. Its not a big-city-style show of force. Then again, a union sympathizer is banging relentlessly on a snare drum, so its noisier than youd expect. Read More Facebook

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Ref Rodriguez resigns from teacher credentialing commission By Howard Blume Ref Rodriguez appears during a court appearance. (Al Seib/Los Angeles Times) Los Angeles school board member Ref Rodriguez has resigned from the states Commission on Teacher Credentialing, which oversees the integrity and quality of Californias teachers. Rodriguez faces felony and misdemeanor charges for political money laundering. Separately, his former employer, a charter school organization, has accused him of improperly authorizing checks to a nonprofit under his control. Rodriguez has denied wrongdoing. Rodriguezs resignation from the state body was effective May 4, days after he cast a crucial vote as part of a narrow majority that voted to authorize contract negotiations with Austin Beutner to become superintendent of the L.A. Unified School District. Beutners first official day on the job is Tuesday. Rodriguez remains in his $125,000-a-year position on the Los Angeles Board of Education. The mission of the state body is to ensure integrity, relevance, and high quality in the preparation, certification, and discipline of Californias teachers. Critics had questioned Rodriguezs continued service on the commission, given that teachers can be suspended from work if they face criminal charges. They also can lose their jobs for lapses in personal behavior, such as excessive drinking, with the potential to affect their performance. Police in Pasadena arrested Rodriguez on a Friday afternoon in March for public drunkenness. He was not charged in the incident and has apologized. The state commission reviews teacher discipline cases and can take action to remove a teachers credential to work in a California classroom. The commission has 15 members. Rodriguezs departure was disclosed in a one-sentence announcement on the agencys website. Facebook

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School board members request for restraining order against blogger is rejected By Priscella Vega An Orange County Superior Court judge on Wednesday denied a school board members petition for a permanent restraining order against a Huntington Beach blogger. Attorney Jeffrey W. Shields filed the petition on behalf of Ocean View School District trustee Gina Clayton-Tarvin, 46, who alleged in court documents that Charles Keeler Johnson, 56, has threatened her on social media and at school board meetings, causing her to fear for my own safety and for that of my immediate family members. Johnson, who goes by Chuck and publishes HBSledgehammer.com, said the trustee tried to stifle his freedom of speech. He also contended that Clayton-Tarvin took his blog posts and Facebook comments too seriously and out of context, saying anyone who is afraid of metaphors has serious issues. Read More Facebook

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Deal with workers averts one-day strike that could have shut down L.A. schools By Howard Blume Los Angeles school district and union officials announced a contract agreement Tuesday night that averted a one-day strike planned for next week. The pact, which runs through June 2020, removes one labor problem from the desk of incoming Supt. Austin Beutner  whose first day on the job would have coincided with the strike. Plenty of other challenges remain. Read More Facebook

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UC labor strike expands with show of support from more unions By Teresa Watanabe Fong Chuu is a registered nurse who has assisted with countless liver transplants, kidney surgeries and gastric bypasses during 34 years at UCLA. Working with her are scrub technicians who sterilize equipment, hand medical instruments to the surgeon and dress patient wounds. They are a team, Chuu says, which is why she walked off her job Tuesday in support of those technicians and other members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299. The 25,000 member AFSCME local, the University of Californias largest employee union, launched a three-day strike Monday. Read More Facebook

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We are humans too: Voices of UCLAs striking custodians, hospital aides and imaging technicians By Joy Resmovits Demonstrators parade in front of Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times) This week, thousands of UC employees are staging a three-day strike for better pay and working conditions. On Monday, more than 20,000 custodians, cooks, lab technicians, nurse aides and other members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299 walked off their jobs. By Tuesday, two more unions joined in sympathy strikes. The union and UC reached a bargaining impasse last year. The university has said it wont meet the workers demands. The strikers said they wanted better pay, more equity in the allocation of work, stable healthcare premiums and an end to the universitys use of contract workers. These are their stories. Read More Facebook

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Massive UC workers strike disrupts dining, classes and medical services By Joy Resmovits A massive labor strike across the University of California on Monday forced medical centers to reschedule more than 12,000 surgeries, cancer treatments and appointments, and campuses to cancel some classes and limit dining services. More than 20,000 members of UCs largest employee union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299, walked off their jobs on the first day of a three-day strike. They include custodians, gardeners, cooks, truck drivers, lab technicians and nurse aides. Two altercations involving protesters and people driving near the rallies were reported at UCLA and UC Santa Cruz. At UCLA, police took a man into custody Monday after he drove his vehicle into a crowd, hitting three staff members. They were treated for minor injuries at the scene and released, said Lt. Kevin Kilgore of the UCLA Police Department. Read More Facebook

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Sen. Kamala Harris to skip UC Berkeley commencement in support of striking workers By Teresa Watanabe Sen. Kamala Harris (Chris Dekmas) California Sen. Kamala Harris has canceled plans to deliver UC Berkeleys commencement address this weekend in support of UC workers who are on strike over wages and health benefits. Due to the ongoing labor dispute, Sen. Harris regretfully cannot attend and speak at this years commencement ceremony at UC Berkeley, said a statement from Harris office issued Monday. She wishes the graduates and their families a joyous commencement weekend and success for the future. They are bright young leaders and our country is counting on them. UCs largest employee union, the 25,000-member American Federation of County, State and Municipal Employees Local 3299, launched a three-day strike Monday and had earlier called for a speakers boycott. The union and university reached a bargaining impasse last year and subsequent mediation efforts have failed to produce an agreement. The union is asking for a multiyear contract with a 6% annual pay increase while the university is offering 3% annual increases over four years. UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ will deliver the keynote address instead, the university announced. About 5,800 students are expected to participate in the ceremony Saturday. Facebook

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School mural depicting Trumps bloody, severed head sparks controversy By Gary Warth A Chula Vista school mural that depicts the bloody, severed head of President Trump on a spear sparked a controversy that prompted officials to cover it and issue a response distancing themselves from the work. The statement also said the artist will alter the painting. We understand that there was a mural painted at the event this past weekend that does not align with our schools philosophy of non-violence, read the statement from MAAC Community Charter School director Tommy Ramirez. We have been in communication with the artist  who has agreed to modify the artwork  to better align with the schools philosophy. Read More Facebook

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New blackface incident at Cal Poly prompts calls for state investigation By Kim Christensen Cal Poly San Luis Obispo officials have asked the state attorney generals office to investigate after a new photo of a white student in blackface surfaced on a fraternity groups private Snapchat. I am outraged, Cal Poly President Jeffrey D. Armstrong said in a video address Friday to the campus. These vile and absolutely unacceptable acts cannot continue. We must not allow these acts to define us as an institution. Armstrong said the latest photo was intended to imitate an incident last month in which a white member of the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity was photographed at a party wearing blackface. Read More Facebook

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More than 50,000 UC workers set to strike this week but campuses will remain open By Teresa Watanabe More than 50,000 workers across the University of California are set to strike this week, causing potential disruptions to surgery schedules, food preparation and campus maintenance. The systems 10 campuses and five medical centers are to remain open, with classes scheduled as planned. UCs largest employee union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 3299, plans to begin a three-day strike Monday involving 25,000 workers, including custodians, gardeners, cooks, truck drivers, lab technicians and nurse aides. Read More Facebook

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New L.A. schools chief Beutner pledges to listen, learn and take action By Howard Blume New Los Angeles schools Supt. Austin Beutner proved Wednesday that hes a quick learner even without an education background. Like countless public officials before him, he appeared at an important event  his first speech and news conference  with a photogenic background of students. His message  that he would put those students first  seemed heartfelt if hardly original. Nor was it a huge surprise that he pledged to push cooperatively but unflinchingly to improve the districts academic performance and stabilize its finances. As an introduction, Beutner, a former investment banker who made a fortune on Wall Street, offered little flash, but that was partly the point. Read More Facebook

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In a school lockdown, one student takes stock of the stressful scene (Phalaen Chang) At the beginning of lunch one day late last month, Duarte High School, Northview Middle School, and California School of the Arts-San Gabriel Valley were advised by the Los Angeles Sheriffs Department to go into lockdown mode due to police activity in the immediate area. Phalaen Chang, a junior at the California School of the Arts, wrote a series of notes on her iPhone while she sat in a room with her classmates. By the time the lockdown ended an hour later, she wrote, she knew which of her friends would hold open the door for others, be the ones calming others down, be the ones barricading the doors. She knew that all of them have the potential to be such strong people. Read More Facebook

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Tale as old as time: L.A. Unified superintendent pick follows a historical pattern of outside-the-box choices By Joy Resmovits Navy Vice Adm. David L. Brewer III, superintendent from 2006-2008. (L.A. Times file photo) L.A. Unified has long gone back and forth between picking insiders and outsiders to run the nations second largest school district. The choice of Austin Beutner, announced Tuesday, places the district squarely back in the outsider camp  months after a consummate insider, Supt. Michelle King, announced that she had cancer and would not return to the job. Check out this timeline of former L.A. superintendents to see how the school board members have changed their minds, sometimes favoring leaders who come from the world of education and sometimes executives from elsewhere, recruited to shock the system into change. At one point, the district hired someone from the military  retired Navy Vice Adm. David L. Brewer III, who served as superintendent from 2006-2008. In hiring Brewer, board members had opted for a non-educator  largely because they sought a fresh thinker, unwedded to the bureaucracy, unafraid to make bold, even unorthodox moves, reads a 2008 Times story. Facebook

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Austin Beutner named superintendent of Los Angeles schools By Howard Blume Austin Beutner, a philanthropist and former investment banker, on Tuesday was named superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, the nations second-largest school system. His selection was the biggest move yet by a Los Angeles school board majority elected with major support from charter school advocates. The decision came after lengthy public testimony, most of it in support of the other remaining finalist, interim Supt. Vivian Ekchian, who is well known within the school system. Beutner, 58, has no background leading a school or school district. Less than 2 years ago, a school board with a very different balance of power named Michelle King, a former teacher who rose through the district throughout her career, to L.A. Unifieds top job. Read More Facebook

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Hearing delay gives both sides more time in Ref Rodriguezs potential trial By Howard Blume Ref Rodriguez and his attorneys will have more time to prepare their defense against charges of political money laundering, a judge ruled Monday. The preliminary hearing in the case had been scheduled to begin May 9, but that date will now be pushed back to July 23 per the ruling from L.A. Superior Court Judge Deborah S. Brazil. Rodriguez, 46, faces three felony charges of conspiracy, perjury and procuring and offering a false or forged instrument, as well as 25 misdemeanor counts related to the alleged campaign money laundering. Read More Facebook

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L.A. school board poised to name Beutner as superintendent By Howard Blume The Los Angeles Board of Education is poised to select philanthropist and former investment banker Austin Beutner to be the next superintendent of the nations second-largest school system. Barring a last-minute development, the only mystery is whether Beutner emerges with four or five votes from the boards seven members. Terms of his contract already have been under discussion, according to sources close to the process who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak. The selection of Beutner, 58, who has no experience managing a school or a school district, would be a signal that the board majority that took control nearly a year ago wants to rely on business management skills instead of insider educational expertise. Read More Facebook

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Teacher walkouts in Arizona and Colorado continue national debate on money for schools By Michael Livingston Following the lead of teachers who walked off the job in other states in recent weeks, thousands of teachers and their supporters took to the streets in Arizona and Colorado for the second day in a row to demand better pay and more funding for education. Read More Facebook

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Three decades before the #MeToo movement, UC San Diego led the way against sexual assault By Teresa Watanabe When Nancy Wahlig first started her fight against sexual assault, one company was marketing a capsule for women to stash in their bras and then smash to release a vile odor. Because of the very nature of society, the only person who can prevent rape is the woman herself, read a 1981 advertisement for the Repulse rape deterrent. Ideas about how to prevent sexual violence have come a long way since then, and Wahlig has helped lead that evolution on college campuses. In 1988, she started UC San Diegos Sexual Assault Resource Center (SARC), the first stand-alone program at the University of California. Today, she remains the systems most senior specialist. Read More Facebook

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Andres Alonso withdraws from consideration for L.A. schools job By Howard Blume Andres Alonso, believed to be one of three remaining finalists to lead the Los Angeles school system, has withdrawn from consideration. The remaining known candidates in the confidential search are former investment banker Austin Beutner and interim Supt. Vivian Ekchian. Alonso, 60, announced his decision on Twitter on Thursday night, saying he had notified the L.A. Unified School District on Monday. The exit of Alonso, the former Baltimore schools chief, seems to solidify the front-runner status of Beutner, who also was a former L.A. Times publisher and a Los Angeles deputy mayor. He held each of those positions for about a year. Read More Facebook

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Heres why the apparent increase in autism spectrum disorders may be good for U.S. children By Karen Kaplan The prevalence of autism spectrum disorder among American children continues to rise, new government data suggest. And that may be a good thing. Among 11 sites across the U.S. where records of 8-year-olds are scrutinized in detail, 1 in 59 kids was deemed to have ASD in 2014. Thats up from 1 in 68 in 2012. Normally, health officials would prefer to see less of a disease, not more of it. But in this case, the higher number is probably a sign that more children of color who are on the autism spectrum are being recognized as such and getting services to help them, according to a report published Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Read More Facebook

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UC shelves tuition increase for now, in hopes of getting more state funding By Teresa Watanabe University of California regents will not vote on a tuition increase next month, shelving the plan for now in hopes that state lawmakers will come through with more funding. Raising tuition is always a last resort and one we take very seriously, UC President Janet Napolitano said Thursday in a statement. We will continue to advocate with our students who are doing a tremendous job of educating legislators about the necessity of adequately funding the university to ensure UC remains a world-class institution and engine of economic growth for our state. Last week, Cal State Chancellor Timothy P. White said the 23-campus system no longer would consider a plan to raise tuition for the 2018-19 academic year. But unlike Cal State, UC officials have not taken a tuition increase off the table entirely. Read More Facebook

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A chemical spill, unchecked eyewash stations, poor training: Audit details Cal States lax lab safety By Joy Resmovits In May 2016, two bottles tumbled off a poorly supported shelf and broke, leading to a chemical spill in a Sacramento State University lab. The liquid got onto one students legs and soaked anothers feet. Five employees cleaned up the mess, even though no one knew for sure what it was and whether it was dangerous. They called fellow employee Kim Harrington, their union representative, to let her know what happened. Read More Facebook

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After blackface incident, minority students at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo say they dont feel welcome By Hailey Branson-Potts Aaliyah Ramos was walking through the Cal Poly San Luis Obispo campus last year when a prospective student approached her. Ramos was the only black person, the young woman said, that she and her mother had seen that day. They asked about the quality of education and the diversity of the student body. Ramos, a mechanical engineering student, didnt want to sugarcoat the truth: Cal Poly long has been predominantly white. But she told the young woman  who also was black  that she didnt want to discourage her from applying, because that wouldnt help with diversity at a school where only 0.7% of students are African American  the lowest percentage of any university in the California State system. Read More Facebook

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El Camino Real Charter High School in Woodland Hills wins the 2018 U.S. Academic Decathlon By Carlos Lozano El Camino Real Charter High School in Woodland Hills has won the 2018 U.S. Academic Decathlon, officials said. The winner was announced early Saturday at a ceremony in Frisco, Texas. More than 600 students from the U.S., Canada, China and the United Kingdom gathered there over the last three days to compete in the 37th annual U.S. Academic Decathlon. Congratulations to El Camino Real Charter High School for another impressive victory, said Vivian Ekchian, interim superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District. Your academic stamina and competitive spirit to win is remarkable. The entire L.A. Unified family is so proud of you. Read More Facebook

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Anticipation mounts as L.A. school board meets over superintendent selection By Howard Blume L.A. schools superintendent candidate Andres Alonso got an endorsement Friday, but Austin Beutner and Vivian Ekchian also have supporters. (Elizabeth Malby) The Los Angeles Board of Education is reconvening in closed session Friday at noon as anticipation mounts about the choice of the next leader of the nations second-largest school system. The presumed front-runner is former investment banker and philanthropist Austin Beutner, but interim Supt. Vivian Ekchian and former Baltimore Supt. Andres Alonso also are in the running. Most district insiders appear to be rooting for Ekchian, who has spent her entire career in education within the school system. After her 10 years as a teacher, her roles have included head of human resources, chief labor negotiator and regional administrator for campuses in the west San Fernando Valley. Shes managed the district since September, when then-Supt. Michelle King went on medical leave and chose Ekchian to fill in for her. King, who is battling cancer, never returned and announced her retirement in January. Numerous influential civic leaders have urged  and pressured  the board to select Beutner. Also lending their weight have been advocates for charter schools, which are independently operated, growing in number and competing for students with district-operated campuses. Four of the seven board members  enough to control the outcome  were elected with major financial support from charter supporters. Beutner has two ongoing connections with the L.A. Unified School District. The first is his leadership of an outside task force that is making recommendations on how to improve the school system. The second is his charity, Vision to Learn, which supplies glasses to low-income students. The charity and the school system are in a dispute at the moment over who is responsible for delays in providing services to students as part of a $6 million contract, half of which is paid for by L.A. Unified. Unlike Ekchian and Buetner, Alonso, who currently teaches at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, has no deep-seated local constituency, but the prospect of his selection has generated some excitement. While in Baltimore, Alonso was recognized for pushing for progress at low-performing schools, and for being willing to take strong action. While in Baltimore, he also weathered a test-score cheating scandal and occasionally rocky relations with the teachers union. But by the time he resigned, after six years, he and union leaders seemed to be working together without rancor. Leaders of some community groups have split from the pro-Beutner camp. They worry that Beutners approach to confronting the districts financial problems could shut out their voices or involve severe economic cutbacks that would undermine programs that are helping students. Some prefer Ekchian; some Alonso. Theyve been reluctant to speak out publicly because theyll have to work with whoever is selected, but they have tried to get the ear of board members. On Friday morning, one leader of a community group decided to come out in favor of Alonso. L.A. Unified has the opportunity to bring in an instructional leader of color with a history of success, said Alberto Retana, president and chief executive of Community Coalition, which works on behalf of low-income students and families in South Los Angeles. If we have a shot at that, we should go for it  because its in the best interests of our kids and of our community. Retana said his statement was not meant to criticize Beutner or Ekchian but to alert board members that there also is community support for Alonso. Facebook

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Cal State leader shelves proposed tuition hike: Its the right thing to do, but its not without risk By Joy Resmovits Cal State, the nations largest public university system, will no longer consider a plan to raise tuition for the 2018-19 academic year, Chancellor Timothy P. White announced Friday. The decision is a bet that Sacramento will come through in the end. If Cal State loses that bet, it could mean cuts to campus programs. White said in an interview that Californias economy is strong enough that families should not be shouldering the burden of higher college costs. Read More Facebook

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L.A. students to participate in national walkout activities on Friday By Joy Resmovits (Los Angeles Times) Students are taking to the streets again Friday to protest gun violence on the 19th anniversary of the Columbine school shooting. Starting at 10 a.m., students at many schools will spend 13 seconds honoring the 13 people  12 students and one teacher  killed on that day in Littleton, Colo. After that, theyll participate in a host of different activities. Within L.A. Unified, one school is having an open-mic event for students to talk about school violence, and lawmakers are visiting campuses to hear students thoughts. According to a central hub for organizing the protests  written by the students of Ridgefield High School in Connecticut  the walkouts are intended to drive the political change necessary to curb school violence. The day is also a time for students to interact on an elevated platform they have never had before, the site states. It is a day of discourse and thoughtful sharing. Bringing together communities and students to get a national discussion rolling. Organizers have suggested using the event to convey the importance of curbing gun violence to legislators. They are encouraging students to push legislation that would ban assault weapons and tighten up rules around who can buy guns and how. Over 2,500 schools nationwide are expected to participate. In L.A., some students  at campuses including Eagle Rock High School, the Ramon C. Cortines School of Visual and Performing Arts and Bravo Medical Magnet  plan to walk out. Students from various schools expect to join area marches, including those in Santa Monica and Huntington Park. Other schools are hosting career days and voter registration drives. At 1 p.m., students plan to start a rally in front of L.A. Unified headquarters. For the record: An earlier version of this article stated that 12 teachers and one student were killed in the Columbine shooting. The opposite is true: twelve students and one teacher died. Facebook

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Stabbing of popular student devastates South El Monte High School; teen friend suspected in slaying By Sonali Kohli When administrators at South El Monte High School called Jeremy Sanchezs parents to say he never showed up for class Wednesday, his father began to worry. It was unusual for the 17-year-old junior to miss school, so his father filed a missing persons report and assembled two of Jeremys close friends to look for the popular student-athlete. Their search took them to a scenic stretch of the San Gabriel River Trail, where one of the friends  a 16-year-old boy  made a tragic discovery. Among the bushes in the riverbed near Thienes Avenue and Parkway Drive was Jeremys body, punctured with stab wounds, according to Lt. John Corina of the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department. Read More Facebook

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Racist fliers spark outrage at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo By Alene Tchekmedyian Soon after Neal MacDougall arrived on the Cal Poly San Luis Obispo campus Tuesday, the professor noticed university police standing outside a restroom near his office. A racial slur against African Americans had been scrawled in red marker on a stall wall. Later, he discovered a series of racist fliers pinned up next to his door. Someone had also slashed posters hed hung outside his office supporting students in the country illegally. The discovery was the latest controversy on the prestigious campus  which the president said is less than 55% white  that MacDougall said demonstrates a culture of racism at the university. Last week, photographs emerged of white fraternity members, including one in blackface, flashing gang signs. Read More Facebook

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The superintendent waiting game, paying for L.A.'s College Promise, Princetons slave history: Whats new in education By Joy Resmovits Acting LAUSD superintendent Vivian Ekchian is a finalist for the permanent job. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times) In and around Los Angeles: The L.A. Unified school board spent 10 hours interviewing and discussing candidates for superintendent. When they adjourned after 10 p.m., they said they would reconvene on Friday. Who is paying for Mayor Eric Garcettis much-touted College Promise, a program that promises two years of community college for LAUSD grads? In California: The Legislature is considering a proposal that would boost K-12 education funding for black students. When the cost of living is taken into account, California has the highest rate of child poverty. Nationwide: The families of two children killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School are suing Alex Jones and Infowars for saying the school massacre never occurred. Princeton will name two spaces  an arch and a garden  after slaves who lived or worked on the campus. Facebook

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L.A. school board meets privately with finalists and debates choice for school district leader By Howard Blume The Los Angeles Board of Education adjourned late Tuesday after spending more than 10 hours interviewing candidates and trying to reach a decision on who would be the next leader of the nations second-largest school system. When the meeting finally recessed at 10:11 p.m., a spokesman announced only that the school board would reconvene Friday at noon. Going into the days meetings, there were apparently four finalists, according to sources who could not be named because they were unauthorized to speak. Read More Facebook

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Two Sandy Hook families sue Alex Jones and Infowars for saying the school massacre never happened By David Altimari Families of two children killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School have filed lawsuits in Texas against controversial radio host Alex Jones for continually claiming the massacre never happened. Neil Heslin, the father of Jesse Lewis, and Leonard Pozner and Veronique De La Rosa, whose son Noah Pozner died in the massacre, filed separate lawsuits late Monday in Travis County, Texas. The lawsuits allege that Jones defamed the parents by constantly calling them crisis actors and insisting the shooting was a false flag operation; they also claim Jones accusations have led to death threats against the Sandy Hook families by Jones followers. Read More Facebook

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Beutner emerges as a top pick for L.A. schools superintendent amid last-minute jockeying By Howard Blume Austin Beutner has emerged as a leading contender to run the Los Angeles school district, with backers saying he is smart enough and tough enough to confront its financial and academic struggles. Though he does not have a background in education, the former investment banker has in the last year examined some of the districts intractable problems, serving as co-chair of an outside task force with the support of then-Supt. Michelle King. Sources inside and outside the school district said Beutner appears to have more support on the seven-member board than other finalists, and his name could come up for a vote as early as Tuesday. Read More Facebook

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Challenge at Chicago school construction site: Watch for 38,000 unmarked graves By Nereida Moreno A 15-year effort to build a school in Chicagos Dunning neighborhood is underway with an unusual complication: Construction workers are taking careful steps to avoid disturbing human remains that may lie beneath the soil. The $70-million school is to be built on the grounds of a former Cook County Poor House, where an estimated 38,000 people were buried in unmarked graves. Among the dead are residents who were too poor to afford funeral costs, unclaimed bodies and patients from the countys insane asylum. There can be and there have been bodies found all over the place, said Barry Fleig, a genealogist and cemetery researcher who began investigating the site in 1989. Its a spooky, scary place. Read More Facebook

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Oklahoma teacher walkout winds down despite lawmakers failure to meet demands By Washington Post Oklahomas largest teachers union has announced an end to a walkout that has drawn thousands of educators out of classrooms and to the state Capitol demanding greater investment in the states schools, which have endured the nations steepest funding cuts. The announcement Thursday from the Oklahoma Education Assn. does not necessarily end the protests at the Capitol, as teachers not affiliated with the union vowed to stay longer. Instead of a walkout, the union and school districts across the state have said they plan to send delegations of teachers to Oklahoma City to keep the pressure on lawmakers. Teachers and their supporters have also promised to push education issues to the forefront of November elections, when the state chooses a new governor. As school districts begin to reopen, the protests may lose steam. The Legislature is not in session Friday, and observers are waiting to see what happens Monday, when lawmakers return. Read More Facebook

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Most Californians are worried about school shooting threats and oppose arming teachers, survey finds By Joy Resmovits Hamilton High School student Aiyana Dabriel holds a sign during a March 14 walkout in support of the Parkland shooting victims. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times) Most Californians are worried that a school shooting like the one that occurred in Parkland, Fla., in February could shed blood closer to home, a new survey found. Some 73% percent of adults and 82% of public school parents said they were very concerned or somewhat concerned about school shootings. The Public Policy Institute of California surveyed 1,704 adults in the state by phone just after the March for Our Lives protest against gun violence. Latino and black respondents were significantly more likely to be concerned about school violence than white or Asian respondents, the institute found. Two-thirds of adults and public school parents said they opposed letting more educators carry weapons in school. The response differed across party lines, with 86% of Democrats and 69% of independents voicing their opposition, while 60% percent of Republicans said they would support a measure to arm educators. The poll, which had a margin of error of 3.2% in either direction, also asked Californians about school funding, educational issues in the governors race and the impact of immigration enforcement on students. You can find the full results here. Facebook

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Californias largest virtual charter school network agrees to contract with its teachers By Anna M. Phillips Nearly four years after teachers at Californias largest online charter school voted to unionize, they have reached a deal to increase pay and create job protections, according to a spokesman for the California Teachers Assn. The contract, which is still tentative and subject to ratification, is a victory for the teachers union. Although charter schools are publicly funded, most are privately managed and their employees arent protected by labor contracts. Under the terms of the contract  the result of years of negotiation and legal wrangling  approximately 500 teachers working for California Virtual Academies will no longer be at-will employees who can be dismissed for almost any reason. Their average salary will rise to just over $45,000, according to union estimates, a figure that remains far below the norm for traditional public school teachers. Still, it is an improvement over the previous average of $38,000. The accord also places a limit on the number of students each teacher is responsible for monitoring in online homeroom classes. Were very satisfied with the gains we made, said teacher Brianna Carroll, president of California Virtual Educators United. I think were going to see some extraordinary changes in our schools. According to Carroll, teachers at California Virtual Academies  better known as CAVA  had grown frustrated with the organizations foot-dragging and were making preparations to go on strike when CAVAs leadership agreed to the deal. CAVA and K12, the Virginia-based for-profit company linked to its schools, did not immediately respond to an email Tuesday asking for comment. The network currently operates nine virtual charter schools across California. In 2016, the charter network agreed to pay $8.5 million to settle claims of false advertising, misleading parents and inadequate instruction. The state attorney generals office had also accused K12 of controlling the charters for its own financial benefit. Neither CAVA nor K12 admitted to wrongdoing in the settlement. A year later, the state imposed a $2-million fine on CAVA after an audit found that it had misspent public funds. The network disputed the findings. Facebook

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School board approves a new formula for funding high-need schools By Sonali Kohli L.A. schools will soon get more money if they are located in neighborhoods with such problems as high levels of gun violence and asthma. The Los Angeles Unified school board voted unanimously Tuesday to adopt a new formula to determine how to dole out some funding to schools, based not only on the characteristics of the student populations but on the traumas that affect the communities around campuses. The new formula will be applied to $25 million in funding next fiscal year and about $263 million annually in future years  a small part of the districts $7.5 billion annual budget. Read More Facebook

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Protesters demand Ref Rodriguez resignation outside school board meeting By Sonali Kohli Students, parents, teachers and UTLA marching outside the board meeting chanting "Ref resign" pic.twitter.com/W0LRWZSIXY  Sonali Kohli  (@Sonali_Kohli) April 10, 2018 A few dozen parents, students and teachers marched outside the Los Angeles Unified School Board meeting Tuesday, some calling for board member Ref Rodriguez to resign the week after news broke that he was taken into custody on suspicion of being drunk in public at a Pasadena bar and restaurant. Rodriguez was not cited or charged in that incident, but was held for more than five and a half hours before being released. The school board member faces felony and misdemeanor charges for political money laundering. He is accused of getting more than two dozen people people to donate to his campaign for his school board seat with the understanding that he would reimburse them. He stepped down from his post as school board president after he was charged last fall, but he did not give up his seat on the board. He has pleaded not guilty to three felony counts of conspiracy, perjury, and procuring and offering a false or forged instrument, as well as 25 misdemeanor counts related to the alleged campaign money laundering. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for May. He cant give his full focus to our students, said Rebecca LaFond, a Highland Park parent whose three children marched with her as she chanted, Ref resign. One daughter marched in front of her, using a drum stick to hit the bottom of a gallon-size empty water jug. Our kids deserve someone who has the utmost ethical standards representing them, LaFond said. The protests continued into the board meeting, where some addressed Rodriguez directly, calling on him to step down during public comment portions of the meeting. Rodriguez, through his chief of staff, declined to comment. Some parents outside the board meeting did not know about the charges against Rodriguez but came out to protest the possibility of sharing their school campuses with charter schools. Protesters also oppose colocation  not all of the parents are here to ask Ref Rodriguez to step down pic.twitter.com/1Co8zQ9zSi  Sonali Kohli  (@Sonali_Kohli) April 10, 2018 Cynthia Martinez said her son, who goes to Christopher Dena Elementary School in Boyle Heights, has been bullied in the past by students from a charter school sharing the campus. She said she didnt know who Rodriguez was. Some parents and teachers are worried about losing computer labs, robotics rooms and fitness centers if they are required to share their campus with charter schools, said Ilse Escobar, a parent community organizer for United Teachers Los Angeles. The issues of Rodriguez and colocation are related, Escobar said. Rodriguez is part of a majority on the school board elected with financial backing from charter school supporters, and many parents, she said, feel that the school board is compromised if he is a part of it. Staff reporter Howard Blume contributed to this post. Facebook

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Delaine Eastin tries to gain momentum in the California governors race, one voter at a time By Seema Mehta Delaine Eastin was a sophomore in high school when a drama teacher urged her to try out for a part in The Man Who Came to Dinner. She hesitated until he told her: This is a metaphor for your whole life. If you never try out, you will never get the part. Eastin auditioned and won the role. Decades later, the advice sticks with the former state schools chief, this time in her unlikely run for governor. Despite calls for more women in leadership roles in state politics following sexual misconduct allegations in Sacramento, Eastin has been largely overlooked in the race, lagging far behind her Democratic rivals in fundraising and the polls. Read More Facebook

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Arizona high court rejects in-state tuition for DACA recipients By Associated Press Young immigrants granted deferred deportation status under a program started by President Obama are not eligible for lower in-state college tuition, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled Monday. The unanimous ruling will affect at least 2,000 students attending the states largest community college district and hundreds more at other colleges and the states three public universities. The Maricopa County Community Colleges District and state universities said they would begin raising tuition immediately for the coming school year. Read More Facebook

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New York high school students injured when bus strikes overpass By Associated Press A charter bus carrying teenagers returning from a spring break trip Sunday night struck a bridge overpass on Long Island, seriously injuring six passengers and mangling the entire length of the top of the bus. The crash happened shortly after 9 p.m. Sunday on the Southern State Parkway in Lakeview, according to New York State Police. One of the six injured passengers had very serious injuries, said State Police Maj. David Candelaria. Thirty-seven other passengers suffered minor injuries. Read More Facebook

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Some good news for California in national student test scores By Joy Resmovits National test scores for fourth- and eighth-graders were generally flat from 2015, but eighth-grade reading scores showed some improvement. Every two years, the nations fourth- and eighth-graders are tested in math and reading  and newly released results from last years tests give California at least a little reason to be pleased. The 2017 results  out Monday night  were mostly flat nationwide compared with 2015, though the average score in eighth-grade reading went up. But while that improvement largely came from the increased scores of the highest-performing students, California eighth-graders showed some reading progress from the lowest levels to the highest. Read More Facebook

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Under state control, Inglewood school districts financial picture worsened By Anna M. Phillips When Eugenio Villa agreed to return to the Inglewood schools for a second tour last summer, he knew the district remained one of Californias most troubled. Inglewood Unified had been nearly insolvent when it was taken over by the state Department of Education in 2012. Six years later, its enrollment was still declining. Its school buildings were tired  some edging into decrepitude. Its test scores and graduation rates were still below the state average. And the public was out of patience. Still, Villa, who had signed back on as the districts chief business official, was shocked at what he found when he arrived in June 2017. Two years earlier, he had left the school system on what he thought was firm ground. Read More Facebook

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Charter school group drops two lawsuits against L.A. Unified By Howard Blume A charter schools advocacy group last week announced that it would end two long-running lawsuits in which it was seeking more classroom space and construction money from the Los Angeles school district. The decision, the California Charter Schools Assn. said, reflects better relations between charter schools and the L.A. Unified School District. But the move also suggests that the litigation, which already contributed to significant gains for area charters, was unlikely to produce much more. It takes time, money and effort to litigate, said Ricardo Soto, general counsel for the charter group. Maybe its better to see if we can find the time and opportunity for collaboration. Read More Facebook

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L.A. school board member Ref Rodriguez is arrested on suspicion of public intoxication By Richard Winton Los Angeles school board member Ref Rodriguez was arrested recently on suspicion of being drunk in public at a Pasadena restaurant, the latest trouble for an elected official who faces political money-laundering charges. Pasadena police took Rodriguez into custody on March 16, according to city spokeswoman Lisa Derderian. Officers arrested Rodriguez at about 4:30 p.m. at the Yard House restaurant and bar at the Paseo Mall and held him in jail for more than five-and-a-half hours. Rodriguez was ultimately released without being cited or charged, Derderian told The Times. Other details about the arrest were not available, she 
On a Sunday night nine years ago, musician Kevin Robert Harris II was sitting in his parked car outside an Inglewood studio when a car pulled alongside him and someone inside opened fire, emptying numerous rounds into the promising young artist.

Voviette Morgan, FBI special agent in charge of the criminal division in Los Angeles, said the number of rounds and different guns used is significant  [and] unusual in an investigation like this.



For the record: An earlier version of this article misspelled the first name of Katheryn Harris as Kathryn Harris.

The young music producer known as Track Bully died 40 minutes later in a hospital Sept. 20, 2009.

Immediately, the case seemed odd to investigators. Harris had no gang ties, no obvious enemies and no troubled relationships, officials said. Instead, he was a churchgoing, young African American man from Westchester whose music had gained the attention of Ice Cube and others, according to investigators.

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Now, the case is getting a new look, and officials think Harris music might have played a role in his death.

Sources familiar with the investigation say agents and detectives think the 21-year-old musicians slaying may have been the result of jealousy from a music rival.

The very talent that made Harris special cost him his life, authorities say.

Kevin was a really good kid, said FBI Special Agent Sean Sterle, who has spent hundreds of hours interviewing those who knew the producer.

The last nine years have been torture for Harris family.

As the investigation grew colder, the sorrow of his parents, Kevin and Katheryn Harris, turned to resolve. They prodded Inglewood detectives and the FBI into making the killing a priority. They called weekly until their cries could not be ignored, they said.

We want justice more than anything that could ever be imagined because that was a cowardly, despicable act that you perpetrated on our son, our loving son that cared about everyone, said Kevin Harris Sr., his father, speaking at a news conference.

Aided by FBI special agents using high-end forensic techniques and cellular tracking, Inglewood investigators began to make progress.

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On Thursday, the FBI put up a $25,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction. With Inglewood police already offering the same amount, someone with knowledge of the shooting stands to receive $50,000.

We know there is valuable information people have that will allow us to get to the finish line, Morgan said.

His father begged those who know what happened to come forward. He was a young man who cared for everyone, he said. The older Harris said the killer or killers did not just shoot his son. They overkilled my son, he said, adding that guns are too readily available.

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Let your conscience be your guide. We have $50,000 for you now, he added. Anyone that knows these people [or has] heard anything about this, all we need is one piece of evidence to get this going. And in case anyone wonders out there, yes, we are still crying about Kevin and we will until our hearts can have justice.

Katheryn Harris, battling back tears and occasional sobbing, added, I just would like to have a fair date in court for my son, she said. If black lives matter, then stop killing each other.

Why would [God] give birth to an angel, then someone comes and takes his life away for no reason? she asked at the news conference, with FBI officials appealing for help in identifying the shooter or shooters.

Her son was her life, she said. The younger Harris learned to play piano as a freshman at St. Bernard Catholic High. By his sophomore year, he was composing, mixing and looping beats. His name Track Bully came from his skills at mastering the beats.

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His friend Jimmique Parsons, told The Times that after initially sampling and mixing songs from popular hip-hop artists such as Kanye West and Dr. Dre, Harris quickly moved to composing his own music, then mixing it and looping it digitally with other instruments.

He would go into the studio, play around on the piano for an hour or so, then start recording. Then he would find chords to bring in, then drums, Parsons said. It was amazing; he would start from scratch.

After high school graduation, Harris worked a number of odd jobs during the day and spent his nights in the studio, Parsons said. He worked at Urban Outfitters, Vons and eventually at a mattress store while at night the studio paid him to mix tracks for local artists.

Coming from a military family, he was considering enlisting in the U.S. Navy. A week after his death, his mother said, she got a letter from a Navy recruiter.

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Speaking directly to her sons killers, she asked that they surrender: You not only destroyed him, you destroyed me.

Anyone with information is urged to call Inglewood police at (310) 412-8771 or the FBIs L.A. office at (310) 477-6565.

richard.winton@latimes.com

Twitter: @lacrimes

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UPDATES:

7:20 p.m. Updated with background about Harris and his career.
Authorities are looking for a man who attacked a 13-year-old boy at a Boyle Heights church, sexually assaulting him before leaving him unconscious in a secluded stairwell.

On the afternoon of March 17, the boy went to use the restroom after an event he attended at the church, near the 1700 block of Cesar E. Chavez Avenue, with his family, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.

The man approached and punched the boy in the face, knocking him to the ground before dragging him from the restroom toward a storage room. The boy lost consciousness as the suspect tried to rip off his shirt.

The boy was later found unconscious in a stairwell. .

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We just know this young, innocent kid was assaulted, said LAPD Officer Tony Im, a spokesman for the department.

Surveillance footage at the church did not capture the suspect, Im said. But he was described by the boy as a bald black man with a beard and light-colored eyes. He wore a yellow long-sleeve T-shirt, light blue jeans with designer tears and red Timberland boots with light tan colored soles.

Anyone with information on the suspect is asked to call Det. Sandra Lopez at (323) 342-8997.

alene.tchekmedyian@latimes.com

Twitter: @AleneTchek
If you look up in the sky off the California coast Friday morning and see a looping swirl of white gas, dont worry, its just the latest launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base.

That long, fading contrail line in the sky above Central California can mean only one thing: a rocket launch.

At 7:13 a.m., SpaceX launched its latest Falcon 9 rocket hauling 10 commercial satellites from Vandenberg Air Force base. The launch was originally set for Thursday but was delayed to allow the satellite operators team to work on an issue with one of the satellites.

Vandenberg AFB launch pic.twitter.com/XWwaUJSpu2  Sandra Bailey (@BaileySbailey24) March 30, 2018

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I always love a rocket launch in the morning :-) pic.twitter.com/RDCjeBi0i9  Kevin M. Gill (@kevinmgill) March 30, 2018

This was operator Iridium Communications Inc.s fifth launch with SpaceX. The McLean, Va., company is launching satellites in batches of 10 to eventually create a constellation of 75 satellites.

According to the National Weather Service, outside of a thick blanket of fog along the coastline, the skies were clear across most of Central and Southern California with little wind, allowing the rockets contrail line to remain visible long enough for it to be captured on countless social media posts.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on Friday, March 30, 2018, carrying 10 Iridium NEXT satellites into orbit. (Len Wood / AP )

Times staff writer Samantha Masunaga contributed to this report.

joseph.serna@latimes.com

For breaking California news, follow @JosephSerna on Twitter.
Former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is in stable condition Friday after undergoing emergency open-heart surgery during a procedure to replace a valve in his heart, according to his spokesman.

Schwarzenegger, 70, went to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on Thursday for a planned procedure to replace a pulmonic valve that was originally installed in 1997 due to a congenital heart defect, Schwarzeneggers spokesman Daniel Ketchell said in a statement.

Schwarzenegger opted for a less-invasive catheter valve replacement but during that procedure an open-heart surgery team stepped in to replace the valve due to complications.

His pulmonic valve was successfully replaced after open-heart surgery and he is currently recovering from the surgery and is in stable condition, Ketchell said in a statement.

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We want to thank the entire medical team for their tireless efforts, Ketchell said in a statement.

Ketchell tweeted that Schwarzenegger woke up Friday morning and his first words were: Im back  a reference to the actors famous catchphrase Ill be back.

Schwarzenegger interrupted his career as an action movie star to serve as governor from 2003 to 2011.

Schwarzenegger has kept an active political life since leaving office. Last week he appeared with Ohio Gov. John Kasich and former California Assembly Republican leader Chad Mayes in Boyle Heights to promote a centrist GOP advocacy group called New Way California.

UPDATES:

11:35 a.m.: This article was updated with more comments from Schwarzenegger spokesman Daniel Ketchell.

10:50 a.m. This article was updated with new informaton from Schwarzenegger spokesman Daniel Ketchell.

This article was originally posted at 10:15 a.m.
New revelations in the case of Stephon Clark, the unarmed African American man whose shooting by Sacramento police has generated controversy, raise new questions about the officers actions.

But how much do they changes our view of what happened?

An independent forensic pathologist hired by the family found that Clark was shot six times in the back.

Dr. Bennet Omalu conducted an autopsy, which said Clark was hit by eight bullets, and all but one entered while his back was turned toward police. One bullet entered Clarks left thigh from the front and was probably fired while he was on the ground and had already been shot multiple times, Omalu said.

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From the beginning, there has been debate among police use-of-force experts about whether the officers actions were wrong, let alone criminal, as his family and supporters have said.

Here is how two law enforcement experts say the findings fit in:

Ed Obayashi: Its not surprising

Ed Obayashi, legal advisor and sheriffs deputy in Plumas County, said he believes the officers decision to shoot was reasonable based on the circumstances when confronting the young man in the backyard with an object in his hands that they perceived as a weapon and one officer yelled gun.

The shots in the back. They dont change my opinion at all. Under these physical circumstances, its not surprising he was shot in the back, Obayashi said. This is a situation of two to 2 seconds with multiple rounds being fired here and that time passes very fast.

The human brain  the mind in these situations  cannot process quick enough to stop firing, Obayashi said, so it is not uncommon to see those in confrontations with the police to be hit in the back. These officers arent Wyatt Earp, and this isnt all Hollywood.

Obayashi said the public should understand that it is as if a boxer throws a punch and misses because the opponent ducks. With firearms, it is even harder with targets moving constantly, so shots miss and eventually hit when the person swivels or changes direction.

He said the audio also suggests that officers still perceived Clark as a threat on the ground because they said, Dont move, dont move. In criminal terms, Obayashi said, it boils down to what would a reasonable officer do under these circumstances based on the information he or she possesses.

Seth Stoughton: Shooting after he is down on the ground

Seth Stoughton, a University of South Carolina law professor who studies shootings and was a Tallahassee, Fla., police officer, said watching the helicopter video, it seems the officers are shooting after he is down on the ground.

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Stoughton said that when combined with the video images the back shots suggest that the young man was likely down or had fallen to the ground when officers continued to fire.

If the police are justified in shooting someone, they can be justified in shooting on the ground.  Just because someone is on the ground it does not mean they are not a threat, he said.

However, Stoughton said, that assumes the officers or the public face a threat in this situation. The big question here is was the shooting justified at all. And I dont think the videos provide a clear answer one way or another.

Stoughton said the videos show officers confront Clark, seemingly duck for cover and then confront him again by shouting about a gun. The question is how well did officers see Mr. Clark? Another question is whether officers who had some cover could have maintained their position of relative safety until they could assess the situation.

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Charles Sid Heal: Is that reasonable?

Retired Los Angeles County sheriffs Cmdr. Charles Sid Heal also said the autopsy findings need to be looked at in a larger context.

I am not surprised he was shot in the back  he may have turned and ran, Heal said, adding that the officers deadly shooting is just not pretty.

In this case, he said, the officers made their decision based on circumstances. Is that reasonable? is the question. Once you are convinced the suspect has a weapon, you go into response mode. Self-preservation takes over. We try to train that out of people.

Police: A narrative of the shooting

Clark, 22, was fatally shot in his grandmothers backyard on March 18 by Sacramento police, who were looking for a vandal in the neighborhood.

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On Wednesday, a police spokesman said Clark remained the sole suspect in vehicle break-ins and what a sheriffs deputy said was the attempted break-in of a home. It was a call about those incidents that sent police to the neighborhood the night Clark was shot.

A Sacramento County Sheriffs Department helicopter spotted a man in a backyard and directed police toward him, authorities said. Deputies told officers that the man had picked up a toolbar and broken the window of a home.

The man was seen running south, toward the front of the house, where he stopped and looked into another car, police said. Police body camera footage shows that officers intercepted Clark in the backyard of his grandmothers house, and one of them yelled gun! as he turned a corner and saw Clark. The officer ducked momentarily, then looked around the corner again, shouted Gun! gun! gun! and began rapid fire. His partner then joined the shooting.

The officers told other police who arrived on the scene they thought Clark was pointing something at them. It looked like a gun from our perspective, an officer said.

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The object found when they rolled over Clarks body was a white cellphone.

Clark was pronounced dead at the scene. Police video shows that several minutes passed until officers approached Clarks body. They then handcuffed him before appearing to attempt resuscitation.

Clark family: Autopsy contradicts police accounts

Clarks family has disputed police accounts of what led to the shooting, and denies that he was the man police were looking for.

The familys attorney said the autopsy adds to the questions.

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Its very simple. The narrative thats been put forth is they had to open fire because he was charging toward them, said civil rights litigator Ben Crump, who is representing Clarks family. Yet the autopsy shows, Crump said, all of the bullets were from behind.

Omalu said it appeared that the coroner did not seek to determine the pathway of the bullets, which is key to determining the sequence.

A cluster of bullets that entered Clarks back decimated his body, each carrying fatal capacity, Omalu said.

One round fractured Clarks right arm, shattering a section of bone that completely lacerated all the blood vessels around the wound, he said. Another cut through Clarks flesh and hit his spinal cord, where it caused massive bleeding.

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A round went under Clarks rib, piercing his lung and caused massive bleeding in his chest, Omalu said. Another injured his aorta.

The combination of trauma, bleeding and a punctured lung would have cut off oxygen to Clarks brain but he did not die instantly, Omalu said. It took several minutes, he said.

Omalu was brought in by lawyers for Clarks family in preparation for a planned federal lawsuit against the city and its police officers. He resigned last year as chief forensic pathologist in neighboring San Joaquin County, citing allegations that the sheriff sought to sway findings to protect officers responsible for fatal shootings. Others in Omalus office also quit, but the sheriff denied the allegations.

St. John reported from Sacramento, Winton and Serna from Los Angeles.

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richard.winton@latimes.com | Twitter: @LAcrimes

paige.stjohn@latimes.com | Twitter: @paigestjohn

joseph.serna@latimes.com | Twitter: @JosephSerna

UPDATES:

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7 a.m., March 31: This article was updated with comments from retired Los Angeles County sheriffs Cmdr. Charles Sid Heal.

This article was originally published at 3:25 p.m., March 30.
The business court of Kyiv on March 28, 2018 fully satisfied a claim of THEO Worldwide Corp. against PrivatBank (Kyiv) and affiliated UK SPV Credit Finance (UK) seeking to collect $663,000 of debt on loan participation notes issued by the UK-based SPV, a source with direct knowledge of the situation told Interfax-Ukraine.

The source said that the details of the court ruling cannot be published, as the non-disclosure agreement was signed.

According to the unified register of court rulings, THEO Worldwide Corp. in H1 2017 filed a claim to the business court of Kyiv against PrivatBank and UK SPV Credit Finance. Other defenders in the lawsuit are the Finance Ministry of Ukraine, the Individuals' Deposit Guarantee Fund, the National Bank of Ukraine and other claimants are GLAS Trust Corporation Limited and trustees Deutsche Trustee Company Limited and Madison Pacific Trust Limited.

The claimant asked the court to declare invalid the bail-in procuedre for the bank's loan participation notes during the nationalization of the bank and collect $663,000 of debt from the bank on securities held by the claimant.
Hector Barajas, who became the face and voice of deported veterans after his own deportation, will be allowed to return to the place he considers home and become a U.S. citizen.

Barajas burst into joyous tears seated on a couch Thursday afternoon in front of a large U.S. flag as he read a document informing him that he would be sworn in as a citizen on April 13 in San Diego.

Im coming home, Mom! he added.

Nathan Fletcher, a candidate for county supervisor who has championed the deported veterans cause, sat beside Barajas on the couch, his hand rubbing Barajas shoulder in congratulations. Norma Chavez-Peterson, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in San Diego, sat on the other side of Barajas, telling him that an ACLU attorney had already arranged how he would get back home.

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Barajas was honorably discharged from the Army in 2001 but struggled readjusting to civilian life. He took a plea deal for a charge of shooting at an occupied car in 2002. Because of that conviction, the government took away his green card, and he was deported in 2004 after he finished a prison sentence.

I made bad decisions, he told the Union-Tribune last year about that time in his life. I put myself in that situation. ... I wouldnt put myself in that situation again.

Barajas founded the Deported Veterans Support House, known to many as the Bunker, in 2013 to support deportees in Tijuana. He became a leader in a push for legislative changes to help U.S. military veterans who had not become citizens avoid deportation and to bring back those who were already removed.

He was born in Mexico but raised in Los Angeles from age 7. Because he had a green card, he was able to serve in the Army and was part of the 82nd Airborne Division from 1995 to 2001. At the time, he thought hed automatically become a citizen, but that was not the case.

Members of the military are allowed to apply for citizenship with no waiting period. They still have to fill out the paperwork and pass the tests.

Noncitizens who serve in the military are still at risk for deportation if they commit crimes that can cause the U.S. to revoke their green cards.

Advocates have argued that conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder and other challenges that veterans face when they leave the military can make it more likely that they commit such crimes. They say that the veterans should be expected to serve whatever sentences theyre given for the criminal convictions but that deportation goes too far. The ACLU has documented at least 239 cases of deported veterans living in 34 countries.

Critics of the deported-veterans movement say that a green card is a contract and any violation should result in deportation, regardless of military service.

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In April 2017, Gov. Jerry Brown pardoned Barajas, along with two other deported veterans, saying he has shown that since his release from custody, he has lived an honest and upright life, exhibited good moral character and conducted himself as a law-abiding citizen.

Barajas hoped that might eventually allow him to return to the U.S., but he knew it was no guarantee. He applied for citizenship before receiving the pardon.

Marco Chavez Medina, a deported Marine whom Brown also pardoned, crossed back into the U.S. in December after his green card was reinstated. Barajas and several other deported veterans escorted him to the San Ysidro port of entry.

Barajas has a middle-school-age daughter named Liliana who lives in Los Angeles. He said that while he waited to find out if the U.S. would let him back in, he dreamed of reuniting with her.

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Finally, after years of fighting for the rights of deported veterans to return to the U.S., Hector will be able to return home as an American citizen, said Jennie Pasquarella, director of immigrants rights for the ACLU of California and one of Barajas attorneys. Hector, like a true soldier, has fought day in and day out since his deportation on behalf of deported veterans across the globe. He never gave up hope that he would one day return to his home and be reunited with his family.

To read this article in Spanish click here

Morrissey writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.
A man suspected of fatally shooting an off-duty police officer in a small Kentucky city has been killed by law enforcement officials in Tennessee.

Kentucky State Police Trooper Rob Austin said in a statement Friday that 34-year-old James K. Decoursey of Hopkinsville had a brief encounter with law enforcement officials in Clarksville, Tennessee, where he was shot and died from his injuries.

Kentucky State police say Decoursey shot and killed 38-year-old Hopkinsville officer Phillip Meacham Thursday afternoon, then fled on foot before taking off in a pickup.

Meacham, who was married and had two school-age children, had been with the Hopkinsville department since May 2017. Before that he worked for about 14 years with the Christian County Sheriffs Department.

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Hopkinsville is about 73 miles northwest of Nashville.

Suspect in Hopkinsville cop's death shot, killed by law enforcement in Clarksville https://t.co/ALqT1SLVmr via @tennessean  Stephanie Ingersoll (@StephLeaf) March 30, 2018

UPDATES:

4:20 a.m.: Updated with the suspects death.

This article was first published at 3 a.m.
Hundreds of Kentucky teachers called in sick on Friday to protest last-minute changes to their pension system, forcing nearly two dozen districts to close while angry educators rallied outside of the governors office to demand he not sign the bill.

With thunderous chants of shut it down echoing throughout the Capitol Rotunda, Democratic Atty. Gen. Andy Beshear used a megaphone to announce he would sue to block the bills implementation if Republican Gov. Matt Bevin signs it into law.

The show of force comes amid growing unrest among public educators nationwide, led by thousands of West Virginia teachers who walked off the job for nine days earlier this year to secure a 5% pay raise. Teacher unrest spread to another deep red state, Oklahoma, where the GOP-led Legislature approved money for teacher raises and more school funding. Teachers are mulling whether the current offer from lawmakers is enough to avert a work stoppage.

Teachers in Kentucky indicated they did not know what they would do beyond Friday. Much of the state is on spring break next week. Kentuckys Legislature didnt meet Friday, but is scheduled to reconvene Monday. They may be greeted by throngs of angry teachers, as leaders with the Kentucky Education Assn. are hoping to get as many people here as possible, an association official said.

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Kentuckys pension system is among the worst-funded in the country. The state is at least $41 billion short of the money it needs to pay retirement benefits over the next 30 years, placing a strain on state and local government finances.

On Thursday night, the state Legislature passed a bill that preserves most benefits for current public workers. But it would require all new teachers to use a hybrid plan that does not guarantee them a set pension amount when they retire. Instead, they would live off the money accumulated in their accounts from contributions and investment returns, which would be guaranteed not to lose money.

Why would anybody go into teaching now in the state of Kentucky? asked Whitney Walker, a government teacher at Lafayette High School in Fayette County, the states second-largest district that was forced to close on Friday. We need good teachers, not just anybody who would walk in the door.

Acting House Speaker David Osborne said the bill gets the state out of the risk business, while acknowledging it would not save the state much money in the short term. But Beshear, a potential candidate for governor in 2019, said lawmakers broke the law by passing the bill without a financial analysis of how it would affect the retirement system.

Osborne said the state Supreme Court has interpreted that law as a House rule, which lawmakers can suspend at any time.

Republicans turned to state Rep. John Bam Carney to carry the bill on Thursday, a former social studies teacher who still works for his local school district.

I understand people being frustrated and concerned, but again I would hope that we as a profession, educators and all, would remember what we got into this business for, he said Friday.

Jefferson County officials in Louisville, one of the largest school districts in the country, said they couldnt get enough substitutes to cover all their classes Friday. In Fayette County, officials said more than a third of school employees in the Lexington district were staying home.

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North of Lexington, the Scott County school district called off classes. It said on Facebook that since the bills passage, dozens of teachers requested substitutes to fill in for them Friday.

We can currently only fill 54 of the nearly 150 that we need, the statement said. That leaves too many classes not covered, which causes a situation that is unsafe and unproductive for students and staff.

Gov. Bevin supports the bill and tweeted Thursday night that public workers owe a deep debt of gratitude to the lawmakers who voted in favor of it.
A package of gun restrictions is on track to become law in Vermont after the state Senate on Friday approved raising the legal age for gun purchases, expanding background checks for private gun sales and banning high-capacity magazines and rapid-fire devices known as bump stocks.

The legislation, which the House approved this week and Republican Gov. Phil Scott has said he will sign, reflects a remarkable turnaround for a state that has long opposed gun control measures.

Scott acknowledged that many Vermonters would be disappointed by the vote and by his support for provisions that he opposed as recently as two months ago.

I share it. I know why they are disappointed, Scott said. But I think at the end of the day, theyll soon learn that what we have proposed, whats being passed at this time, doesnt intrude upon the 2nd Amendment. It doesnt take away guns, and I believe that we will get accustomed to the new normal, which is trying to address this underlying violence that we are seeing across the nation.

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The turning point in Vermont came one day after the school shooting in Parkland, Fla., that killed 17 people. A Vermont teenager was arrested on charges that he was planning a shooting at Fair Haven Union High School, which he once attended. Police said tragedy was averted only because a friend of the teenager alerted authorities.

In one day, Scott, who had previously said he did not favor any gun restrictions, changed his mind and urged lawmakers to act.

About 2,500 students and supporters rallied in front of the Vermont Statehouse last weekend as part of the national March for Our Lives movement. But for the last several weeks, gun rights supporters, many wearing hunter orange vests or hats, have filled the halls of the Statehouse showing their opposition to gun restrictions.

The 17-13 Senate vote on Friday came after an emotional debate in which lawmakers from the largely rural state spoke of the centuries-old traditions that allow people who live far from the nearest police station to keep weapons as a means of self-defense. Others countered that the modern reality of mass shootings demanded change.

Democratic Sen. John Rodgers, of Glover, an area known as Vermonts Northeast Kingdom, argued for a version of the bill with fewer restrictions on guns.

The soil of the Kingdom is in my blood and a fair amount of my blood is in that soil, he said. And because of the way I grew up, I feel dedicated to protecting that area.

But Democratic Sen. Philip Baruth said the violence and mass shootings required change.

Our attitudes are changing, he said. And they are changing for a very, very good reason.
The Trump administration is poised to scrap an ambitious program that was designed to confront climate change.

TOP STORIES

Trumps EPA Aims to Tap the Brakes on Fuel Economy

When the Obama administration unveiled a plan in 2011 to set stronger fuel economy targets for cars and SUVs, the Environmental Protection Agency called it the most significant federal action ever taken to reduce [greenhouse gas] emissions. Now the Trump administration is gearing up to weaken those standards. EPA chief Scott Pruitt, a climate change skeptic, has previously suggested that he thinks the targets are too onerous for automakers. But whether he can set lower standards for the entire nation is a matter of dispute, and California leaders are ready to fight to maintain the Obama-era rules in the Golden State.

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Current EPA targets call for a significant increase in fuel economy. (Los Angeles Times )

The Chill of a Cold War

Russia and the West are now fully engaged in a Cold War-style chess match. Moscows latest move: tossing out 60 American diplomats and scores of other Western envoys in response to a coordinated expulsion of Russians from Britain, the U.S. and European countries. It may not end there, especially if the next step involves hitting President Vladimir Putins oligarch-heavy inner circle with economic sanctions. Some analysts think Putin may have misjudged how Britains allies have stood in solidarity since the poisoning of a former Russian spy and his daughter on British soil. But there are still rifts within Europe, and within NATO, for Putin to exploit.

More Politics

-- In Ohio, President Trump renewed his call for more spending on Americas infrastructure, but his meandering speech helped explain why he hasnt gotten Republicans in Congress behind him.

-- During that speech, Trump also said he may put a hold on a new trade deal with South Korea just to make sure things are moving along very nicely in talks to end North Koreas nuclear program.

-- Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions named a federal prosecutor to head a review of Hillary Clintons emails and the Justice Departments actions in the Russia investigation but did not heed Republican calls for a second special counsel.

-- Trump keeps attacking his predecessors, but Barack Obama and the other former presidents have remained mostly silent.

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-- Facing a boycott, Fox News host Laura Ingraham has apologized after taunting Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg over his being rejected from getting into some colleges.

Who Was Stephon Clark?

On the day Stephon Clarks funeral was held, protesters once again filled streets in downtown Sacramento. They called, once again, for justice in the fatal police shooting of the 22-year-old African American man in the backyard of his grandmothers house. Yet while Clarks death has gained national attention, only fragments of his life have surfaced. Who was Stephon Clark? Heres what we know about the father of two boys who was surrounded by love, tragedy and trouble.

Those Who Did This Should Pay

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In Venezuela, there is also mourning and anger  over a deadly fire at an overcrowded jailhouse 100 miles west of the nations capital. Officially, the death toll stands at 68, but many expect that number to rise. The government of President Nicolas Maduro maintained official silence Thursday over the cause. Opposition leaders pointed to the tragedy as an example of a failed administration and a society that is unraveling.

FLASHBACK FRIDAY

Some of the World War II aircraft were famous for flying combat missions. Some had just rolled off the production line. By the thousands, they were sold or dismantled after the war had ended. As these photos from March 29, 1946 show, they arrived at an airfield near Kingman, Ariz., to meet their fate.

March 29, 1946: Surplus World War II aircraft sit at Kingman Army Airfield in Arizona awaiting disposal. (Phil Bath / Los Angeles Times Archive / UCLA )

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-- Easter eggs: Weve got an easy way to marbleize them.

-- Should you see Ready Player One? Film critic Kenneth Turan says its an excellent adventure.

CALIFORNIA

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-- Judge Stephen Reinhardt, the liberal lion of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, has died at age 87. A spokesman said Reinhardt died of a heart attack during a visit to a dermatologist.

-- Starbucks and other coffee purveyors probably will have to use warning labels after an L.A. judge ruled that they failed to prove they should be exempt from a state law on carcinogens and toxic chemicals.

-- Days before an SUV carrying a family of eight plummeted from a Mendocino Coast cliff, child welfare authorities in Washington state had attempted to contact the childrens parents about abuse allegations.

YOUR WEEKEND

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-- How to avoid losing your mind to Alzheimers or dementia? Hint: Start now, says Maria Shriver.

-- Forty-eight Easter recipe ideas to help you plan your menu.

-- For Passover, make these gluten-free almond macaroons.

-- Theres more to Carpinteria than choppy surf and blowing sand on a spring weekend escape.

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HOLLYWOOD AND THE ARTS

-- Tyler Perry wanted to make a movie with Taraji P. Henson so badly, they filmed her starring role in Acrimony in five days. She explains.

-- With the success of Roseannes return to TV, Roseanne Barr is back to raising eyebrows.

-- How good is the King Tut exhibition at the California Science Center? Our art critic weighs in.

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NATION-WORLD

-- A Maryland appeals court has upheld a ruling granting a new trial to Adnan Syed, whose conviction in the murder of his high school sweetheart became the subject of the popular podcast Serial.

-- In Oklahoma, teachers are getting a boost from superintendents and school boards as they prepare to walk off the job Monday unless the Legislature significantly raises their pay.

-- The CDC says opioid overdose deaths are still rising in nearly every segment of the U.S.

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-- Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, who was shot by Pakistani Taliban militants for championing girls education, made a surprise return to her home country.

-- A velvet fist in an iron glove? China talks tough about Taiwan but is showing signs of a softer policy.

BUSINESS

-- After years of spectacular gains, shares of tech giants such as Facebook, Amazon and Netflix fell sharply this week, although they bounced back Thursday. The question now is whether theyre poised to rebound further.

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-- Theres yet another new electric vehicle Silicon Valley start-up, but this one already has procured two manufacturing plants and has some experience.

SPORTS

-- For the first time since 2010, the Dodgers lost on opening day, dropping a 1-0 game to the San Francisco Giants. Though it didnt end well, the fans were glad to be back.

-- Meanwhile, the Angels lost 6-5 to the Oakland As after 11 innings, four hours and two minutes. So much for the new pace-of-play rules.

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OPINION

-- Pardoning former national security advisor Michael Flynn and former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort would be grounds for an impeachment investigation.

-- Advocating for a repeal of the 2nd Amendment is a gift the NRA doesnt deserve.

WHAT OUR EDITORS ARE READING

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-- David Shulkin, hired and fired by Trump as the secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, says hes been falsely accused and is speaking out against those who seek to harm the V.A. by putting their personal agendas in front of the well-being of our veterans. (New York Times)

-- The Parkland, Fla., gunman is getting stacks of fan mail and love letters sent to the Broward County jail, along with hundreds of dollars in contributions to his commissary account. (Sun-Sentinel)

-- The tale of a little lost dog is told in the form of a childrens book. (Boston Globe)

ONLY IN L.A.

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From beautiful downtown Pomona, its  the Beverly Hills Dog Show!? For the second year in a row, more than 1,200 dogs made the trek to the Fairplex for an all-breed competition hosted by the Kennel Club of Beverly Hills. The organizers hope it will become an Easter TV tradition  even if it does take place 40 miles east of the 90210 ZIP Code.

If you like this newsletter, please share it with friends. Comments or ideas? Email us at headlines@latimes.com.

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Its impossible not to be alarmed by reports that one of President Trumps lawyers discussed the possibility of presidential pardons with lawyers for former national security advisor Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort, who served as Trumps campaign chairman. Even the hint that the president is considering pardons could undermine the investigation being led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.

That Trump might use the promise of a pardon to offer a lifeline to his former aides  and possibly persuade them not to testify against him  isnt an entirely new concern. Trump has relentlessly criticized the Mueller investigation, and he already has abused his clemency authority to grant an unconscionable pardon to a political supporter, former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Sheriff Joe, as Trump calls him, was convicted of criminal contempt for violating a court order to stop racially profiling Latinos.

But speculation that Trump might try to use his pardon power to obstruct Muellers investigation increased this week when The New York Times and the Washington Post reported that John Dowd, one of Trumps lawyers, had talked about possible pardons last year with lawyers for Manafort and Flynn.

Dowd, who resigned from Trumps legal team last week, has denied discussing pardons with lawyers for the presidents former aides. There were no discussions. Period, he told The New York Times.

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After the reported discussions between his lawyer and Dowd, Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and agreed to cooperate with Muellers investigation, which apparently now extends beyond possible collusion of the Trump campaign with Russia to include the possibility that Trump obstructed justice. Rick Gates, an associate of Manaforts and former deputy chairman of the Trump campaign, also has submitted a guilty plea and is cooperating with Muellers investigators.

Mueller must be allowed to proceed with his investigation, and the president should not hinder the course of justice under the guise of showing mercy.

Manafort, however, is not cooperating with Mueller. He has been indicted on several counts of fraud, conspiracy, money laundering and conspiracy and has pleaded not guilty. If he and his lawyer thought that a pardon was in the offing, it might explain why he was unwilling to cooperate.

The presidents constitutional power to grant pardons for offenses against the United States is broad and generally thought to be unreviewable by the courts. Congress is also powerless to reverse pardons, though President Bill Clintons eleventh-hour pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich led to an inquiry by the House Government Reform Committee.

But even if the president has the unfettered right to issue pardons, if he exercises that power in an attempt to silence potential witnesses against him that would constitute obstruction of justice in our view.

Trump, who has protested his innocence of any collusion with Russia or other wrongdoing, should make it clear that he wont use his pardon authority to abort or undermine Muellers investigation. So far he has not made that unequivocal assurance. Indeed, last December, after Flynns guilty plea, the president said I dont want to talk about pardons for Michael Flynn yet. Well see what happens.

What should happen is this: Mueller must be allowed to proceed with his investigation, and the president should not hinder the course of justice under the guise of showing mercy. If Trump attempts to use the pardon power to short-circuit Muellers investigation, Congress should immediately launch an impeachment investigation.

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It was the most surprising political decision of the 20th century: On March 31, 1968, 50 years ago Saturday, President Lyndon Johnson announced he would not run for reelection.

Might Trump do the same? Probably not, but history provides some tantalizing parallels.

LBJ withdrew mostly because it looked like he would lose the election. That was true even though almost every Democrat in Congress supported him, and everyone assumed he would run.

Right now it looks like Trump would lose to virtually any Democrat in 2020. Nevertheless, almost every Republican in Congress supports him, and everyone assumes he will run. But there are many months to go before primary season. Anything could happen.

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Heres what happened in Johnsons case. In December 1967, U.S. News & World Report predicted that he would carry only 12 states with 110 electoral votes, losing the rest of the 44 states he had carried in 1964, mostly because of growing antiwar sentiment in the Democratic rank and file. At that point, LBJ had already confided in a few people that he had doubts about running for reelection.

The following month, in January 1968, he asked his speechwriter to put a resignation announcement at the end of his State of the Union address  but he didnt deliver the line. Two weeks later, the Tet Offensive made it clear to Americans that we werent going to win the war in Vietnam, that all of the Johnson administrations statements about light at the end of the tunnel had been wrong.

The event that ultimately provoked LBJs announcement came in March: He nearly lost the New Hampshire primary to a little-known antiwar senator from Minnesota, Eugene McCarthy. The result stunned the country. It also inspired LBJs nemesis, the charismatic Robert Kennedy; a few days later, Kennedy announced that he, too, would challenge Johnson for the nomination.

There are signs that Trump might not win the New Hampshire primary in 2020.

There are signs that Trump might not win the New Hampshire primary in 2020. It looks like John Kasich and Jeff Flake will enter the race, and a February Washington Post poll showed that support for Trump is sinking in the state, with only 36% of voters approving of his performance as president. His approval level there is more than 20 points below the states Republican governor.

Of course, Trump is nothing like Johnson. LBJ devoted his entire life to politics, to becoming, in biographer Robert Caros words, Master of the Senate. Trump devoted his life to real estate and reality TV. LBJ had won the popular vote overwhelmingly, by 61%. Trump lost the popular vote, getting only 46%. LBJ had historic achievements in his first two years: the Voting Rights Act, the War on Poverty, the first real immigration reform since the 1920s, and Medicare. Trump has failed thus far to achieve most of his legislative goals, except cutting taxes for the rich.

Johnson didnt say he was withdrawing from his own reelection campaign because he feared he would lose. He said he was quitting so that he could work full time on ending the Vietnam War. Some historians have accepted that argument. But after dropping out, his approach to ending the war was to increase the bombing, which did not persuade the North Vietnamese to make a peace deal. (It didnt help that Richard Nixon sent an emissary to Saigon to urge the South not to agree to a deal with the North.) Johnson left office without ending the war.

If Trump were to announce his withdrawal from the 2020 race, presumably he, too, would offer a reason other than fear of losing. He might say he could be more effective in his battle to drain the swamp by working from the outside. Or he could simply declare Mission Accomplished because of the tax cuts.

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What we do know for sure is that circumstances will change between now and 2020. Trump is not going to become more thoughtful or judicious, but, as Thomas Frank pointed out in Harpers, things might happen to make Trump a stronger candidate than he seems now. A terrorist attack on American soil might rally the country around him, like it did around George W. Bush. Or his team could dream up mini-New Deal schemes, as Frank put it, that would revive parts of the Rust Belt and make him a hero of the common folk, like FDR was.

Or he might resign after impeachment by the House rather than face a trial in the Senate, like Nixon.

Johnson withdrew seven months before the election. For Trump, that would be two years from now. A long way off, yes, but he opened his 2020 reelection campaign in February, earlier than any president. Does that suggest a certain anxiety about his prospects?

In any case, hes already hired a campaign chief and started raising funds. Nobody thinks hell quit. But nobody thought LBJ would quit, either.

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Jon Wiener is professor emeritus of history at UC Irvine. Hes working with Mike Davis on a book about 1960s Los Angeles.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion or Facebook
To the editor: So, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom is sitting out the debates with his rivals. (Front-runner Gavin Newsom to sit out governors race debates until May March 28)

Thats too bad, except for the fact that probably hardly anybody is watching them. Political commentator Dan Schnur said, the candidates for governor of California gathered to debate less than 24 hours after Stormy Daniels went on television and you wonder why nobody noticed. Since I was lucky enough to hear about the debate, I did tune in. But nobody else I know even had a clue it was on.

As for Newsom, whom I had been previously inclined to support, his non-appearance in the debate caused me to take a closer look at the others and I found someone who really impressed me. Someone who can tell it like it is and knows what shes talking about. I am probably going to vote for her instead. Sorry Gavin, but I dont like to vote for political cowards.

Lenard Davis, Newport Beach

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To the editor: Unlike Conor Friedersdorf, who is still watching the gubernatorial campaign play out, John Chiang has won my vote. (Handicapping Californias celebrity-free governors race March 29)

I went to a fundraiser for him (with a friend who knows his first cousin) where he answered questions on a whole range of topics with specificity and candor. One man gave a complicated introduction to his question and Chiang responded, I am not familiar enough with that issue to respond. Please email me with both your question and any material you have.

A Sacramento-based legislative aide told me, The other major candidates are show horses. Chiang is a workhorse.

Carol Mitchell, Marina del Rey

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To the editor: Ms. Schweitzer of USC summarizes it well: [L]ocal governments are not going to upzone voluntarily . That leaves us with Senate Bill 827. (Plan to dramatically increase development would transform some L.A. neighborhoods March 25)

The concerns of low-income housing organizations are a smokescreen. Low-income housing development is a niche industry; it benefits from specialized knowledge of government housing programs, financing, and tax incentives. Far from being gentrification on steroids, SB 827 will render low-income housing organizations obsolete due to its massive increase of new housing units.

There are additional benefits to SB 827: The new housing will satisfy state energy efficiency standards, as well as modern fire safety, seismic design, and accessibility requirements. Also, the ongoing construction activity will bolster the regional economy.

SB827 is a blunt instrument, and unintended consequences are guaranteed. But it is a case of getting the government we deserve.

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Ed Salisbury, Santa Monica

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To the editor: What we have seen for the past 25 years in most big cities in America is the rise of developers tearing down affordable housing of the working class. They are being replaced by expensive housing for the upper classes. Thus far our politicians have not addressed this in their plans for density near major rail and bus stops.

When I was in Madrid, Spain, I visited a family living in a 15-unit high-rise complex in the middle of the city. It had many 3- and 4-bedroom units, and they were for working-class families. Some were rentals and some were being purchased with long-term, low-cost mortgages. It had green space. It had recreational facilities. I hear nothing about this type of high-density construction for our city.

Without these considerations, we must object. The NIMBY issue should be secondary. We need to provide for all of our residents. Do not talk about high density if you are not building many of them for families and working-class people. See how it is done in Madrid and other parts of Europe.

Lillian Laskin, Los Angeles

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To the editor: SB 827 is a bill that will do more harm than good and should be defeated by the Legislature. I am sure Sen. Wiener (D-San Francisco) has good intentions in wanting to provide more housing to help the homeless.

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The fact is that SB 827 will undoubtedly accomplish the goal of providing more housing, but as a retired developer, I can assure you that the new housing will be even more expensive and less affordable, and would likely have the effect of creating more homeless people, but will certainly be a boon to the bank accounts of real estate developers.

Another case where well-intentioned legislation has the opposite effect of its intended purpose. It has been historically evident that central planning of development from a distant capital city never works. Planning and development are best left to local communities and local residents who can determine the type of development they prefer to have in their neighborhoods.

Gary Aminoff, Playa Del Rey

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Allies balk at Trump administration bid to block Chinese firm from cutting-edge telecom markets By David S. Cloud Britain and Germany are balking at the Trump administrations call for a ban on equipment from Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei, threatening a global U.S. campaign to thwart Chinas involvement in future mobile networks. Both countries are expected to limit Huawei and other Chinese companies from providing core components including routers. But other types of Chinese equipment for next-generation, high-speed communications could still be installed on British and German networks, officials and analysts say. The U.S. push to ban Huawei has provoked a global dispute in recent weeks, with senior U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo, publicly urging NATO allies in Europe to exclude the company and warning that the United States might limit its military presence in countries that did not do so. Read More Facebook

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Confucius Institutes: Do they improve U.S.-China ties or harbor spies? By Don Lee Hanging red lanterns welcome visitors to the University of Marylands Confucius Institute, the oldest of about 100 Chinese language and cultural centers that have popped up over the last 15 years on American campuses, subsidized by millions of dollars from Chinas central government. But last fall, when four U.S. Senate investigators walked into the Confucius offices in Maryland and spent hours questioning staff, they werent looking for an educational exchange. The committee has been seeking detailed information from the university about the program, including contracts, email exchanges and financial arrangements that school administrators have kept under wraps since it started in 2004. American colleges once viewed these jointly funded institutes as an economical way to expand their language offerings  one that could also bring warmer ties with China and, importantly, an influx of Chinese international students paying full tuition. Read More Facebook

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U.S. policy toward China shifts from engagement to confrontation By David S. Cloud For decades, China had no closer American friend than Dianne Feinstein. As San Francisco mayor in the 1970s, she forged a sister-city relationship with Shanghai, the first between American and Chinese communities. As U.S. senator, she dined with Chinese leaders at Mao Tse-tungs old Beijing residence. And in the 1990s, she championed a trade policy change that opened a floodgate of Western investment into China. Today the Democratic senator sees China as a growing threat, joining a broad array of Trump administration officials, national security strategists and business executives who once favored engagement with Beijing and now advocate a confrontational approach instead. Read More Facebook

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Mnuchins attempt to calm markets backfires as Trump takes another shot at the Federal Reserve By Jim Puzzanghera An attempt by Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin to calm plunging financial markets backfired Monday, further rattling investors with new fears about whether major U.S. banks have enough cash on top of worries about interest rates, political instability in Washington and a slowing global economy. Adding to the volatile mix was a fresh attack on the Federal Reserve by President Trump, who declared that the central bank was the U.S. economys only problem and that it didnt have a feel for the market. The Fed is like a powerful golfer who cant score because he has no touch -- he cant putt! Trump said on Twitter. Read More Facebook

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He speaks to Democratic hearts. But is Beto ORourke a serious White House contender? By Mark Z. Barabak Hes a failed U.S. Senate candidate with an undistinguished congressional record who, for the moment, is a blazing-hot 2020 presidential prospect  despite the fact that he may not run and faces long odds if he does. Beto ORourke suggests the will-he-or-wont-he speculation is something he himself cant quite fathom. I think thats a great question, he responded in a Dallas Morning News interview when asked whether his unsuccessful November Senate bid merited a promotion to the White House. I ask that question myself. Read More Facebook

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Russian disinformation teams targeted Robert S. Mueller III, says report prepared for Senate By Craig Timberg, Tony Romm, Elizabeth Dwoskin Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. (Associated Press) Months after President Trump took office, Russias disinformation teams trained their sites on a new target: special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. Having worked to help get Trump into the White House, they now worked to neutralize the biggest threat to his staying there. The Russian operatives unloaded on Mueller through fake accounts on Facebook, Twitter and beyond, falsely claiming that the former FBI director was corrupt and that the allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election were crackpot conspiracies. One post on Instagram  which emerged as an especially potent weapon in the Russian social media arsenal  claimed that Mueller had worked in the past with radical Islamic groups. Such tactics exemplified how Russian teams ranged nimbly across social media platforms in a shrewd online influence operation aimed squarely at American voters. The effort started earlier than commonly understood and lasted longer while relying on the strengths of different sites to manipulate distinct slices of the electorate, according to a pair of comprehensive new reports prepared for the Senate Intelligence Committee and released Monday. Read more Timberg, Romm and Dwoskin report for the Washington Post. Facebook

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President Trump announces Mick Mulvaney as acting White House chief of staff By Associated Press President Trump says budget director Mick Mulvaney will serve as acting chief of staff, replacing John F. Kelly in the new year. I am pleased to announce that Mick Mulvaney, Director of the Office of Management & Budget, will be named Acting White House Chief of Staff, replacing General John Kelly, who has served our Country with distinction. Mick has done an outstanding job while in the Administration....  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 14, 2018 Facebook

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It aint over when its over: In Michigan, Wisconsin and elsewhere, losers seek to undermine election results By Mark Z. Barabak Democrat Gavin Newsom has yet to become California governor, but already a candidate for state Republican Party chairman is promoting a recall effort. In Michigan and Wisconsin, GOP lawmakers have rushed through legislation to thwart their incoming Democratic governors and hamper others in the opposing party from doing the jobs voters chose them to do. In Congress, GOP leaders have echoed President Trump and sought to undermine the legitimacy of Democrats strong midterm performance, raising unsubstantiated allegations of fraud and political malfeasance. Read More Facebook

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New CFPB Director Kathy Kraninger says she wont be a puppet of Mick Mulvaney By Jim Puzzanghera On her first full day leading the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Kathy Kraninger said she wont be a puppet of Mick Mulvaney, the controversial acting director whom she replaced in the powerful regulatory position. To underscore that point, the former White House aide said she would even reconsider a Mulvaney action that critics saw as a gratuitous jab at Democrats who championed the agencys creation: changing its name to the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection. Kraningers declaration during a meeting with reporters Tuesday addressed one of the main criticisms of her selection. She is considered a protege of Mulvaney, her boss at the White House Office of Management and Budget who has executed a dramatic, industry-friendly shift at the watchdog agency. Read More Facebook

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Trumps pick for chief of staff, Nick Ayers, out of running By Associated Press Nick Ayers, right, with Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, at the funeral service for George H.W. Bush on Dec. 3. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Associated Press) President Trumps top pick to replace John F. Kelly as chief of staff, Nick Ayers, is no longer expected to fill that role. Thats according to a White House official who is not authorized to discuss the personnel issue by name and spoke on condition of anonymity. Ayers is Vice President Mike Pences chief of staff. The official says that Trump and Ayers could not agree on Ayers length of service. The father of young children, Ayers had agreed to serve in an interim capacity though the spring, but Trump wanted a two-year commitment. The official says that Ayers will instead assist the president from outside the administration. Trump announced Saturday that Kelly would be departing the White House around the end of the year. Thank you @realDonaldTrump, @VP, and my great colleagues for the honor to serve our Nation at The White House. I will be departing at the end of the year but will work with the #MAGA team to advance the cause.  #Georgia  Nick Ayers (@nick_ayers) December 9, 2018 Facebook

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U.S. hiring slows to 155,000 jobs, unemployment rate holds at 3.7% By Jim Puzzanghera Job growth slowed significantly in November but still was solid, indicating the economy remains in good shape but not expanding so quickly that it will lead to sharply higher interest rates. U.S. employers added 155,000 jobs last month, well below analyst expectations and a steep decline from Octobers strong 237,000 figure, the Labor Department reported Friday. Still, monthly job gains are averaging 206,000 this year, the best since 2015. Even the slower pace of 170,000 over the last three months is close to last years average of 182,000 and well above the amount needed to keep up with population growth. Read More Facebook

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Trump is expected to pick State Department spokeswoman for U.N. ambassador By Associated Press Heather Nauert at a briefing at the State Department on Aug. 9, 2017. (Alex Brandon / Associated Press) President Trump is expected to nominate State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert to be the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Two administration officials confirmed Trumps plans. A Republican congressional aide said the president was expected to announce his decision by tweet on Friday morning. The officials were not authorized to speak publicly before Trumps announcement. Trump has previously said Nauert was under serious consideration to replace Nikki Haley, who announced in October that she would step down at the end of this year. Trump has been known to change course on staffing decisions in the past. Nauert was a reporter for Fox News Channel before she became State Department spokeswoman under former Secretary Rex Tillerson. Facebook

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Senate confirms new consumer financial protection chief: Kathy Kraninger, protege of industry-friendly Mick Mulvaney By Jim Puzzanghera The Senate, in a party-line vote Thursday, confirmed White House aide Kathy Kraninger to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and experts predicted a continuation of the industry-friendly shift it has taken since President Trump installed an acting director last year. Kraninger is a protege of acting director and White House budget chief Mick Mulvaney, an outspoken critic of the agency that was created in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis to prevent predatory lending and other abuses that led to it. Democrats and consumer advocates have denounced him for sharply departing from the aggressive watchdog role the bureau had pursued under its first director, Obama-appointee Richard Cordray, including scaling back enforcement and moving to reassess tough new rules on payday loans and narrow the definition of abusive practices by banks and other firms. Read More Facebook

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Shutdown postponed by two weeks under plan approved by Congress By Erik Wasson Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), shown at the Capitol on Tuesday, says President Trumps border wall is a waste of money. (J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press) Congress passed a two-week stopgap spending bill that will delay the chance of a partial government shutdown until Dec. 22 as lawmakers and President Donald Trump negotiate over his demands to pay for a wall on the southern border. The House and Senate passed the measure Thursday without dissent, and Trump has indicated hell sign the bill before the current shutdown deadline of midnight Friday. Negotiations were delayed by memorial services this week for former President George H.W. Bush. The temporary measure gives Democrats and Republicans more time to find a resolution to their biggest hurdle: funding a wall on the U.S. Mexico border wall. Trump says he wants $5 billion for parts of a concrete wall on the southern border and is willing to shut down the government if he doesnt get it. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York has said Democrats will provide no more than $1.6 billion for border security, because the wall is a waste of money. The presidents demands for wall funding from Congress come after he said during the campaign that Mexico would pay for it. This week he said on Twitter that a $25 billion border wall would pay for itself in two months, without providing evidence. Most of the U.S. governments $1.2 trillion discretionary budget has been appropriated already by Congress for the fiscal year that began on Oct. 1. Departments at a risk of a partial shutdown late this month include the departments of State, Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, Justice, Treasury and Homeland Security. Talks to resolve the differences have been on hold since a meeting among Trump, Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California originally slated for Dec. 4 was postponed due to Bush memorial events. The three are scheduled to meet on Tuesday, according to a person familiar with the matter. Senate Appropriations Chairman Richard Shelby of Alabama told reporters the rest of the seven-bill spending package being negotiated is basically done. Shelby in recent weeks had tried to broker a compromise in which Trumps $5 billion request would be split over two years, but Schumer has rejected that. Some Democrats have been willing to trade border wall funding for deportation protections for young undocumented immigrants. Pelosi ruled out such a deal in remarks to reporters Thursday. The stopgap government funding measure also would extend the National Flood Insurance Program, which provides subsidized coverage for homes in flood-prone areas, to Dec. 21. Facebook

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Bipartisan Senate group wants to formally blame Saudi crown prince for journalists killing By Karoun Demirjian Saudi Arabias Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the G-20 summit in Buenos Aires. (Associated Press) A bipartisan group of senators filed a resolution Wednesday condemning Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as responsible for the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, directly challenging President Trump to do the same. This resolution -- without equivocation -- definitively states that the crown prince of Saudi Arabia was complicit in the murder of Mr. [Jamal] Khashoggi and has been a wrecking ball to the region jeopardizing our national security interests on multiple fronts, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said in a statement accompanying the release of the resolution. It will be up to Saudi Arabia as to how to deal with this matter. But it is up to the United States to firmly stand for who we are and what we believe. The resolution put forward by Graham and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who are expected to lead the Judiciary Committee together next year, comes just one day after CIA Director Gina Haspel briefed leading senators about the details of the agencys assessment that Mohammed ordered and monitored the killing and dismemberment of Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. Senators emerged from that closed-door briefing furious not only with Saudi Arabia, but Trump as well for dismissing the heft of the CIAs findings. You have to be willfully blind not to come to the conclusion that this was orchestrated and organized by people under the command of MBS and that he was intricately involved in the demise of Mr. Khashoggi, Graham said following the briefing, referring to Mohammed by his initials. He added that Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo and Defense Secretary James N. Mattis, who briefed senators last week, were at best being good soldiers and at worst were in the pocket of Saudi Arabia for presenting the evidence of Mohammeds involvement as inconclusive. The release of the resolution condemning Mohammed also comes as the Senate is preparing to move ahead with debate on a resolution to curtail U.S. support for the Saudi-led military campaign in Yemen. Though the Yemen resolution does not directly address Khashoggis murder, its popularity is a sign of how strained the United States patience with Saudi Arabia is on multiple fronts, including its role in worsening the civilian cost of the war in Yemen, cited by the United Nations as the worlds worst humanitarian crisis. Last week, the Senate voted 63 to 37 to advance the Yemen resolution past an opening procedural hurdle. But Graham and Feinsteins resolution on the crown prince has the potential of drawing broader support, especially from Republicans, who are deeply divided about how fiercely to punish Saudi Arabia over Khashoggis killing. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who has been an outspoken advocate for human rights and is seen as one of the more influential foreign policy voices in the GOP, did not vote for the Yemen resolution last week or sign on to a bipartisan measure last month to sanction Saudi officials and cease weapons transfers to the kingdom. But he is an original co-sponsor of the resolution condemning Mohammed over Khashoggis death. So is Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.), who represents the other end of the GOP spectrum in terms of recent Saudi-related votes and endorsements. Young was an initial co-sponsor of the bill Graham wrote with Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) to sanction Saudi officials deemed responsible for Khashoggis killing and stop the sale of anything but exclusively defensive weapons to the kingdom until it ceased hostilities in Yemen. Young also voted to advance the Yemen resolution  something Graham did as well, though Graham has signaled he will not be lending any similar support to the measure, fearing it may establish a precedent of invoking the War Powers Act too broadly. Sens. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Chris Coons (D-Del.) are listed as original co-sponsors of the resolution condemning Mohammed, which also urges Saudi Arabia to negotiate with Houthi rebels to end the Yemen war, work out a political solution to its standoff with Qatar and release political prisoners. But how much sway the resolution has probably comes down to how forcefully the administration decides to heed it -- and thus far, Trump has not shown any interest in condemning the crown prince the way the senators hope he will. Demirjian reports for the Washington Post. Facebook

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Los Angeles County offices and U.S. Postal Service closed Wednesday in honor of George H.W. Bush By Brian Park The Honor Guard carries the casket of former U.S. President George H. W. Bush following his funeral on Dec. 5 in Washington, DC. (Doug Mills - Pool/Getty Images) The U.S. Postal Service will suspend regular mail delivery Wednesday, which President Trump has declared a national day of mourning in honor of former President George H.W. Bush. All retail postal outlets will be closed, and package delivery will be limited. In Los Angeles, all nonessential county departments, offices and libraries will be closed for the day, L.A. County officials said. The Los Angeles County Library said no overdue fines will be assessed for books, and due dates will be moved forward one week. Los Angeles County Department of Public Health offices also are closed Wednesday. The Sheriffs Department, Fire Department, clinics and hospitals will continue to operate, the county said. The Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health clinics are being operated with reduced staffing, and the department asked patients to confirm or reschedule any appointments. All county courts and the disaster recovery centers for the Woolsey fire in Malibu and Agoura Hills will remain open. Larger federal government operations will be closed Wednesday. To honor the life and legacy of President Bush, the Postal Service will observe the National Day of Mourning. Learn how Postal operations will be affected. https://t.co/Mffch7bPCh pic.twitter.com/vG46BsIOpm  U.S. Postal Service (@USPS) December 4, 2018 L.A. County offices and libraries will be closed tomorrow (Dec 5) in observance of the #NationalDayOfMourning for President George H. W. Bush.



The Countys Disaster Recovery Centers in Malibu & Agoura Hills will remain open from 10 a.m. - 8 p.m. pic.twitter.com/Sv1J7GoJ7T  Los Angeles County (@CountyofLA) December 4, 2018 @LAPublicHealth offices will be closed tomorrow December 5 in observance of the national Day of Mourning for President George H. W. Bush. Essential Services including clinics and other services will remain open: https://t.co/tZGoGGHRlg pic.twitter.com/ypXsV6vlYY  LA Public Health (@lapublichealth) December 4, 2018 Facebook

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Former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick to skip 2020 White House race, sources say By Associated Press Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick speaks during an interview in Boston on Dec. 15, 2014. (Elise Amendola / Associated Press) Former Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts will soon announce he wont launch a 2020 presidential campaign, according to three sources familiar with his plans. They did not say why the Democrat decided against a run. A formal announcement was delayed as the country observed a day of mourning for President George H.W. Bush, one source said. News of Patricks plans was first reported by Politico. Patrick, 62, served two terms as governor, from 2007 to 2015, was assistant attorney general for civil rights in the Clinton administration and since leaving the governors office has been a managing director for Bain Capital. Patrick traveled the country in support of Democratic candidates in the recent midterm election. Earlier this year, some of Patricks supporters and close advisors started the Reason to Believe political action committee, a grassroots organization dedicated to advancing a positive, progressive vision for our nation in 2018 and 2020. Reason to Believe PAC had been holding meetups across the country, including in early presidential primary states. While Patrick is opting against a 2020 run, dozens of Democrats are considering jumping in, including nearly a half-dozen members of the Senate, several House members, and other Massachusetts politicians. On Tuesday, Michael Avenatti, the attorney for adult film star Stormy Daniels and a vocal critic of President Trump, said in a statement that he would run. Patrick had previously expressed some concerns about breaking through if he sought the nomination, telling David Axelrod, a former advisor to President Obama, that he wasnt sure he could stand out in such a large field. Its hard to see how you even get noticed in such a big, broad field without being shrill, sensational or a celebrity, and Im none of those things and Im never going to be any of those things, Patrick said in a September interview with Axelrod. Facebook

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Former Trump adviser Roger Stone invokes 5th Amendment right and wont testify before Senate Judiciary Committee By Associated Press Roger Stone in 2017. (Joe Raedle / Getty Images) Roger Stone, an associate of President Trump, says he wont provide testimony or documents to the Senate Judiciary Committee. An attorney for Stone said in a letter to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the committees top Democrat, that Stone was invoking his 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination in refusing to produce documents or appear for an interview. Stone has been entangled in investigations by Congress and special counsel Robert S. Mueller III about whether Trump aides had advance knowledge of Democratic emails published by WikiLeaks during the 2016 election. Stone has not been charged and has said he had no knowledge of the timing or specifics of WikiLeaks plans. In the letter to Feinstein, Stone said the committees requests were far too overbroad, far too overreaching and far too wide-ranging. Facebook

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Watch live: Vice President Pence and lawmakers honor George H.W. Bush at the U.S. Capitol before he lies in state Facebook

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Rebuilding crumbling infrastructure has bipartisan support. But who gets to pay for it? By Jim Puzzanghera The grades for major U.S. infrastructure would give any parent indigestion if they were on a childs report card. Roads: D; bridges: C+; dams: D; ports: C+: railways: B; airports: D; schools: D+; public transit: D-. The nations overall grade: D+, which translates to being in fair to poor condition and mostly below standards with significant deterioration and a strong risk of failure, according to an evaluation last year by the American Society of Civil Engineers. Read More Facebook

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Trump calls former lawyer Michael Cohen a weak person who is lying By Associated Press President Trump says his former lawyer Michael Cohen is lying to get a reduced sentence. The president is reacting to Cohens guilty plea Thursday to lying to Congress about work he did on a Trump real estate project in Russia. During a surprise court hearing, Cohen admitted to lying in testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee about a plan to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. Cohen in his guilty plea said he made the false statements to be consistent with Trumps political message. Cohens lawyer says he continues to cooperate with special counsel Robert S. Mueller IIIs investigation into Russian election interference and possible coordination with Trump associates. Facebook

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As California Republicans confront a congressional wipeout, GOP leader Kevin McCarthy faces a reckoning By Mark Z. Barabak When the House voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Kevin McCarthy trooped with other Republican lawmakers to a splashy Rose Garden celebration, smiling alongside President Trump as they celebrated the moment. As majority leader, McCarthy had helped round up the votes to narrowly pass the hard-fought legislation, convincing 13 other California Republicans to go along, even though several faced tough reelection fights. Fewer than half will be returning in January. Read More Facebook

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As California Republicans confront a congressional wipeout, GOP leader Kevin McCarthy faces a reckoning By Sarah D. Wire When the House voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Kevin McCarthy trooped with other Republican lawmakers to a splashy Rose Garden celebration, smiling alongside President Trump as they celebrated the moment. As majority leader, McCarthy had helped round up the votes to narrowly pass the hard-fought legislation, convincing 13 other California Republicans to go along, even though several faced tough reelection fights. Fewer than half will be returning in January. Read More Facebook

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Michael Cohen, President Trumps ex-lawyer, pleads guilty to lying to Congress about Trump real estate project in Russia By Associated Press Michael Cohen, President Trumps former personal lawyer, pursued a Russian real estate project on candidate Trumps behalf well into the 2016 campaign, he said Thursday while pleading guilty to lying to Congress. Cohen had previously said that the project was abandoned in January 2016, but he now admits he continued to pursue a deal and says he updated Trump and members of his family about the negotiations, according to a new court document. Read More Facebook

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James Comey says acting Atty. Gen. Whitaker may not be the sharpest knife in our drawer By John Wagner Acting Atty. Gen. Matthew Whitaker speaks at the Justice Department in Washington on Nov. 14. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais / Associated Press) Former FBI Director James B. Comey apparently isnt too impressed with the mental prowess of President Trumps acting attorney general. Matthew Whitaker may not be the sharpest knife in our drawer, Comey said during a radio interview on Monday night in which he sized up the man Trump installed this month to replace ousted Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions. Comey was asked by WGBH News in Boston if he thinks Whitaker could derail the investigation of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Whitaker has spoken critically of the probe, and Trump  as recently as Tuesday  continues to call it a witch hunt. I think its a worry, but to my mind not a serious worry, Comey said. The institution is too strong, and [Whitaker], frankly, is not strong enough to have that kind of impact. He may not be the sharpest knife in our drawer, but he can see his future and knows that if he acted in an extralegal way, he would go down in history for the wrong reasons, and Im sure he doesnt want that, added Comey, who was fired by Trump last year and later wrote a book that portrays the president as an ego-driven congenital liar. Whitaker, a former U.S. attorney in Iowa, was Sessions chief of staff before being picked by Trump to lead the Justice Department. Trump has called Whitaker a very smart man. Earlier this year, Trump called Comey an untruthful slime ball. Wagner writes for the Washington Post. Facebook

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Interior Department watchdog clears Zinke in investigation of Utah national monument By Juliet Eilperin Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke, third from the left, and Gov. Jerry Brown tour fire damage in Paradise, Calif., on Nov. 14. (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press) The Interior Departments Office of Inspector General has cleared Secretary Ryan Zinke in a probe of whether he redrew boundaries of a national monument in Utah to aid the financial interests of a Republican state lawmaker and stalwart supporter of President Trump. In a Nov. 21 letter to Zinkes deputy, David Bernhardt, Deputy Inspector General Mary Kendall wrote that her office found no evidence that the secretary or his aides changed the boundaries of Utahs Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in an effort to help former Utah state representative Mike Noel, who serves as executive director of the Kane County Water Conservancy District. Last December, Trump shrank the monument, first established by President Clinton in 1996, by 46% based on Zinkes recommendation. Noel owns 40 acres that had been surrounded by the monument, but now lies outside its boundaries. The new boundaries also would make it easier to construct the proposed Lake Powell Pipeline, which would deliver water to sites in Kane County that include Noels property. Earlier this year, the Interior Department had proposed selling off 120 acres of federal land from the former monument that lay adjacent to some of Noels land holdings, but later reversed the plan. We found no evidence that Noel influenced the DOIs proposed revisions to the [monuments] boundaries, that Zinke or other DOI staff involved in the project were aware of Noels financial interest in the revised boundaries, or that they gave Noel any preferential treatment in the resulting proposed boundaries, Kendall wrote. Neither the Interior Department nor the inspector generals office would release the actual investigative report. In the letter, Kendall writes that her office will provide the report to Congress no sooner than 31 days from Nov. 21, when it is provided it to Zinkes office. The Associated Press first reported the inspector generals conclusions Monday night, but did not provide details from the report itself. Noel emailed Zinke about the effort to alter Grand Staircase-Escalante, according to emails released by Interior under the Freedom of Informational Act. But those emails do not make references to Noels land holdings. Noel also pushed to rename a Utah highway in honor of Trump, but abandoned that effort in March after some of his fellow Republicans objected to the idea. Noel did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday. The inspector generals office still has at least two ongoing probes of the secretary, including one focused on his real estate dealings in Whitefish, Mont., and another regarding his decision to deny a permit to two Connecticut tribes who were hoping to jointly run a casino after MGM Resorts International lobbied against it. Interior Department spokeswoman Heather Swift welcomed the watchdogs conclusions. The report shows exactly what the secretarys office has known all along  that the monument boundaries were adjusted in accordance with all rules, regulations and laws, she said in an email. This report is also the latest example of opponents and special interest groups ginning up fake and misleading stories, only to be proven false after expensive and time consuming inquiries by the IGs office. But Kendalls spokeswoman, Nancy DiPaolo, defended the inquiry, even though she said the report has not been publicly released and we will not be speaking specifically about the matter at this time. The OIG opens investigations based on credible allegations and reports our findings objectively and independently, DiPaolo added. Any time or resources spent investigating conduct or activity that may be a violation of law, regulation or policy is a service to the public, Congress and the Department. Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona, the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, said in a statement that he still intended to investigate the way Zinke and his colleague redrew the boundaries for Grand Staircase-Escalante and another Utah national monument, Bears Ears, next year. I have great respect for the inspector general, and I accept these findings, but Secretary Zinke should have known the people he listened to while destroying our national monuments had disqualifying conflicts of interest, he said. Should I chair the Natural Resources Committee in the next Congress, the process he and President Trump used to destroy Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante will be front and center in our oversight and investigations efforts. We need to know why they ignored overwhelming public expressions of support for both Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante, why they ignored Native American tribes throughout their decision-making, and why they removed protections on parcels of land with known mineral deposits. Eilperin and Rein report for the Washington Post. Facebook

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Trump advisor Larry Kudlow says China must do more to end trade war By Jim Puzzanghera Larry Kudlow, President Trumps top economic advisor, said Tuesday that Chinas response to U.S. efforts to rework the two economic superpowers trade relationship has been extremely disappointing but the planned meeting this weekend between the nations leaders is an opportunity for a breakthrough. They have to do more. They must do more, Larry Kudlow, director of the White House National Economic Council, told reporters ahead of a Saturday dinner between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Group of 20 Summit in Argentina. I think the president is exactly right  to show strong backbone when prior administrations did not, to break through these Chinese walls, Kudlow said. Theyre so resistant to change. We have to protect the country. We have to protect our technology, our inventiveness, our innovation. Read More Facebook

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Watch live: White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders holds a media briefing amid tensions at the border By Los Angeles Times Staff Facebook

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Democrat TJ Cox grabs lead over Republican David Valadao in nations last remaining undecided House race By Maya Sweedler Democrat TJ Cox slipped past Republican incumbent David Valadao on Monday to take the lead in the countrys sole remaining undecided congressional race, positioning Democrats to pick up their seventh House seat in California and 40th nationwide. Cox, who trailed by nearly 4,400 votes on election night, has steadily gained as ballot counting continues nearly three weeks after the Nov. 6 election, a pattern consistent with the states recent voting history. On Monday, he pulled ahead by 438 votes after Kern County updated its results. Read More Facebook

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Former CIA director Michael Hayden hospitalized after suffering a stroke By Deanna Paul Then-CIA Director Michael Hayden testifies before a Senate committee in 2008. (Saul Loeb / Getty Images) Former CIA Director and retired Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden has been hospitalized after suffering a stroke, his family said Friday. He is receiving expert medical care for which the family is grateful, according to a statement issued by his namesake organization. The General and his family greatly appreciate the warm wishes and prayers of his friends, colleagues, and supporters. Hayden, 73, served as director of the CIA and National Security Agency during the George W. Bush and Obama administrations. He retired from the CIA in 2009. Hayden has been a vocal critic of Donald Trumps campaign and presidency. Earlier this year, after Trump decided to revoke the security clearance of former CIA director John Brennan, Hayden was one of several former intelligence leaders who signed a statement in opposition. Criticizing the president for crossing a line, he quickly became one of the individuals whose security clearance Trump threatened to review. Deanna Paul writes for the Washington Post. Facebook

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Trump tells troops hes thankful for what hes done for the U.S. and rails against courts and migrants By Associated Press President Trump talks with troops via teleconference from his estate in Palm Beach, Fla., on Thanksgiving. (Susan Walsh / Associated Press) President Trump used his Thanksgiving Day call to troops deployed overseas to pat himself on the back and air grievances about the courts, trade and migrants heading to the U.S.-Mexico border. Trumps call, made from his opulent private Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla., struck an unusually political tone as he spoke with members of all five branches of the military to wish them happy holidays. Its a disgrace, Trump said of judges who have blocked his attempts to overhaul U.S. immigration law, as he linked his efforts to secure the border with military missions overseas. Trump later threatened to close the U.S. border with Mexico for an undisclosed period of time if his administration determines Mexico has lost control on its side. The call was a uniquely Trump blend of boasting, peppered questions and off-the-cuff observations as his comments veered from venting about slights to praising troops  You really are our heroes, he said  as club waiters worked to set Thanksgiving dinner tables on the outdoor terrace behind him. It was yet another show of how Trump has dramatically transformed the presidency, erasing the traditional divisions between domestic policy and military matters and efforts to keep the troops clear of politics. You probably see over the news whats happening on our southern border, Trump told one Air Force brigadier general stationed at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan, adding: I dont have to even ask you. I know what you want to do, you want to make sure that you know who were letting in. Later, Trump asked a U.S. Coast Guard commander about trade, which he noted was a very big subject for him personally. Weve been taken advantage of for many, many years by bad trade deals, Trump told the commander, who sheepishly replied, Mr. President, from our perspective on the water  we dont see any issues in terms of trade right now. And throughout, Trump congratulated himself, telling the officers that the country is doing exceptionally well on his watch. I hope that youll take solace in knowing that all of the American families you hold so close to your heart are all doing well, he said. The nations doing well economically, better than anybody in the world. He later told reporters, Nobodys done more for the military than me. Indeed, asked what he was thankful for this Thanksgiving, Trump cited his great family as well as himself. I made a tremendous difference in this country, he said. Facebook

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Trump contradicts CIA assessment that Saudi crown prince ordered Jamal Khashoggi killing By Josh Dawsey | Washington Post (Susan Walsh / Associated Press) President Trump on Thursday contradicted the CIAs assessment that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had ordered the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, insisting that the agency had feelings but did not firmly place blame for the death. Trump, in defiant remarks to reporters from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, defended his continued support for Mohammed in the face of a CIA assessment that the crown prince had ordered the killing. He denies it vehemently, Trump said. He said his own conclusion was that maybe he did, maybe he didnt. I hate the crime .... I hate the cover-up. I will tell you this: The crown prince hates it more than I do, Trump said. Asked who should be held accountable for the death of Khashoggi, who was killed at the Saudi Consulate in Turkey, Trump refused to place blame. Maybe the world should be held accountable because the world is a very, very vicious place, the president said. He also seemed to suggest that all U.S. allies were guilty of the same behavior, declaring that if the others were held to the standard that critics have held Saudi Arabia to in recent days, we wouldnt be able to have anyone for an ally. Trumps remarks came after he held a conference call with U.S. military officers overseas, during which he repeatedly praised his administration and sought to draw the officers into discussions of domestic policy. Facebook

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Former FBI Director James Comey gets subpoena from House Republicans By Bloomberg Former FBI Director James B. Comey said he has received a subpoena from House Republicans, according to a Twitter post on Thursday. Bloomberg News reported last week that Comey would be receiving a subpoena alongside former Atty. Gen. Loretta Lynch as part of continuing probes into their handling of investigations into Hillary Clinton and Russian election meddling, according to a top House Democrat. Happy Thanksgiving. Got a subpoena from House Republicans. Im still happy to sit in the light and answer all questions. But I will resist a closed door thing because Ive seen enough of their selective leaking and distortion. Lets have a hearing and invite everyone to see.  James Comey (@Comey) November 22, 2018 Read More Facebook

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Republican David Valadaos lead slips to 447 votes over Democrat TJ Cox in still-undecided Central Valley House race By Mark Z. Barabak Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford), right, finds himself in an increasingly harrowing cliffhanger against Democrat TJ Cox. (Bill Clark / CQ Roll Call) On election night, it looked like Rep. David Valadao had survived a close shave and was destined to return to Washington for his fourth term. But on Wednesday, when Fresno County announced its latest vote totals, the Hanford Republican found himself in an increasingly harrowing cliffhanger against Democrat TJ Cox, with his lead in the Central Valley district shrunken to 447 votes. Thousands remain to be counted. Valadao, a repeated Democratic target, finished election night with a lead of nearly 4,440 votes. Cox, an engineer and a business owner who unsuccessfully ran for Congress in 2006, has steadily gained ground in the 21st Congressional District ever since. The trend is consistent with historic patterns showing Republicans in California tend to vote early and Democrats later, meaning their mail ballots continue to stream in past election day. Under California law, ballots postmarked up to midnight on Nov. 6 will be counted. Democrats have already picked up six House seats in California. They ousted Reps. Dana Rohrabacher, Mimi Walters, Steve Knight and Jeff Denham and won the seats of retiring Reps. Ed Royce and Darrell Issa. All six represented districts that backed Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump in 2016. Valadao was the seventh California Republican in a district Clinton won, though his previous successes  he last won reelection by a 14-point margin  suggested his ouster was a longer shot for Democrats. If Cox prevails, it would give Democrats a 40-seat gain nationwide, far more than the 23 seats needed to take control when Congress reconvenes in January. Facebook

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Trump says no new punishments against Saudi Arabia in Jamal Khashoggi murder By Eli Stokols In this Oct. 25 photo, candles are lit in front of a photo of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. (Lefteris Pitarakis) President Trump made it clear on Tuesday that he does not intend to punish Saudi Arabia or Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for the murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, an American resident killed by Saudi officials in Turkey in October. In a remarkable statement replete with exclamation points, Trump cast doubt on the CIAs reported conclusions that it has a high degree of confidence that the crown prince ordered Khashoggis murder and sent his closest allies to Saudi Arabias consulate in Istanbul to carry it out. Read MoreThis article has been updated with staff. Facebook

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Sixteen House Democrats vow to oppose Nancy Pelosi as next speaker By Mike DeBonis | Washington Post House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press) Sixteen House Democrats said Monday that they will vote to deny Rep. Nancy Pelosi another stint as House speaker, a show of defiance that puts her opponents on the cusp of forcing a seismic leadership shake-up as their party prepares to take the majority. Their pledge to oppose Pelosi (D-San Francisco), both in an internal caucus election and a Jan. 3 floor vote, delivered in a letter sent to Democratic colleagues, comes as Pelosi has marshaled a legion of supporters on and off Capitol Hill to make her case. But her opponents said Monday they are convinced it is time to select a new leader. We are thankful to Leader Pelosi for her years of service to our Country and to our Caucus, they wrote. However, we also recognize that in this recent election, Democrats ran on and won on a message of change. Pelosi has expressed complete confidence that she will retake the speakers gavel in January  eight years after she lost it following massive Republican gains in the 2010 midterms and 16 years after she was first elevated to the top Democratic leadership post in the House. Come on in, the waters fine, she said Friday about a potential leadership challenge. The signers might not be able to force Pelosi out themselves. The size of the Democratic majority remains in flux, but Democrats have already won 232 seats, according to the Associated Press, with five races still undecided. All those races have Republican incumbents, but the Democratic challenger is ahead in only one of them. If the leads hold in the uncalled races, Democrats would have won 233 seats, a 16-seat majority. That means Pelosi could lose as many as 15 Democratic votes when she stands for election as speaker on Jan. 3. Read More Facebook

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Democratic senators sue over Whitakers appointment as acting attorney general By Associated Press Acting U.S. Atty. Gen. Matthew Whitaker (Nicholas Kamm / AFP/Getty Images) Three Senate Democrats filed a lawsuit Monday arguing that Acting Atty. Gen. Matthew Whitakers appointment is unconstitutional and asking a federal judge to remove him. The suit, filed by Sens. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Mazie Hirono of Hawaii and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, argues that Whitakers appointment violates the Constitution because he has not been confirmed by the Senate. Whitaker was chief of staff to Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions and was elevated to the top job after Sessions was ousted by President Trump on Nov. 7. The Constitutions Appointments Clause requires that the Senate confirm all principal officials before they can serve in their office. The Justice Department released a legal opinion last week that said Whitakers appointment would not violate the clause because he is serving in an acting capacity. The opinion concluded that Whitaker, even without Senate confirmation, may serve in an acting capacity because he has been at the department for more than a year at a sufficiently senior pay level. President Trump is denying senators our constitutional obligation and opportunity to do our job: scrutinizing the nomination of our nations top law enforcement official, Blumenthal said in a statement. The reason is simple: Whitaker would never pass the advice and consent test. In selecting a so-called constitutional nobody and thwarting every senators constitutional duty, Trump leaves us no choice but to seek recourse through the courts. The lawsuit comes days after a Washington lawyer challenged Whitakers appointment in a pending Supreme Court case dealing with gun rights. The attorney, Thomas Goldstein, asked the high court to find that Whitakers appointment is unconstitutional and replace him with Deputy Atty. Gen. Rod Rosenstein. Rosenstein, the second-ranking Justice Department official, has been confirmed by the Senate and had been overseeing special counsel Robert Muellers Russia investigation. Whitaker is now overseeing the investigation. The Justice Department issued a statement Monday defending Whitakers appointment as lawful and said it comports with the Appointments Clause, the Federal Vacancies Reform Act and legal precedent. There are over 160 instances in American history in which non-Senate confirmed persons performed, on a temporary basis, the duties of a Senate-confirmed position, Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec said. To suggest otherwise is to ignore centuries of practice and precedent. Facebook

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Gov. Rick Scott says Sen. Bill Nelson concedes Florida Senate race By Associated Press Republican Senate candidate Rick Scott speaks with his wife, Ann, by his side at an election watch party in Naples, Fla., on Nov. 7. (Wilfredo Lee / Associated Press) Floridas Republican Gov. Rick Scott says incumbent Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson called him to concede defeat in their extremely tight race. Scott issued a statement Sunday saying Nelson graciously conceded their Senate race shortly after the states recount ended. The final results show Scott defeated Nelson by just over 10,000 votes out of 8 million cast. Nelson is scheduled to release a videotaped statement later Sunday. The defeat ends Nelsons lengthy political career. The three-term incumbent was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 2000. Before that he served six terms in the U.S. House and as state treasurer and insurance commissioner for six years. Scott spent more than $60 million of his own money on ads that portrayed Nelson as out-of-touch and ineffective. Nelson responded by questioning Scotts ethics and saying he would be under the sway of President Trump. Facebook

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Orange County goes blue, as Democrats complete historic sweep of its seven congressional seats By Michael Finnegan Gil Cisneros defeated Republican Young Kim on Saturday in the last of Orange Countys undecided House races, giving Democrats a clean sweep of the states six most fiercely fought congressional contests and marking an epochal shift in a region long synonymous with political conservatism. With Cisneros victory, Democrats will constitute the entirety of Orange Countys seven-member congressional delegation, the first time since the 1930s that the birthplace of Richard Nixon, home of John Wayne and spiritual center of the Republican Party will have no GOP representative in the House. Sitting back in the 1960s, I would never have believed this would happen, said Stuart K. Spencer, a party strategist who spent more than half a century ushering Republicans, including President Reagan, into office. Read More Facebook

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Going, going ... with midterm wipeout, California Republican Party drifts closer to irrelevance By Michael Finnegan For a party in freefall the last two decades, California Republicans learned that its possible to plunge even further. The GOP not only lost every statewide office in the midterm election  again, in blowout fashion  but Democrats reestablished their supermajority in Sacramento, allowing them to legislate however they see fit After major defeats in Orange County and the Central Valley, two longtime strongholds, Republicans will have a significantly smaller footprint on Capitol Hill. (Democrats hold both Senate seats.) When the vote-counting is finished, the GOP may not even have enough lawmakers in Californias 53-member House delegation to field a nine-person softball team. Read More Facebook

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Congresswoman-elect Katie Porter says she will support Rep. Nancy Pelosi for speaker By Maya Sweedler Democratic Rep.-elect Katie Porter is congratulated by volunteers at her campaign headquarters in Irvine. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) Congresswoman-elect Katie Porter said she plans to support Rep. Nancy Pelosis bid for speaker of the House and will make campaign finance reform her top priority when she enters the chamber in January. Im going to continue to have conversations, but so far I feel like Leader Pelosi is definitely making the things that were a priority to the families that elected me her priorities, including announcing her support for campaign finance reform and anti-corruption as HR1, Porter said in her first public appearance since being declared the winner in Californias 45th Congressional District on Thursday evening. It means a lot to me that she is a Californian. She understands our state, Porter added. When we talk about environmental protections, this is a person who understands as a Californian how fragile our environment is and whats at risk in things like drilling off our coasts. Porter, a law professor at UC Irvine, defeated two-term Republican Rep. Mimi Walters. The 45th District, covering inland Orange County, has never been represented by a Democrat. Porter became the third Democrat to claim a Republican-held seat in Orange County, following the victories of Harley Rouda in the 48th District and Mike Levin in the 49th. A fourth, Gil Cisneros, is running slightly ahead of his Republican opponent in the race for the open seat in the 39th District, which extends into Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties. Porter attributed the massive political shift in the county, for decades a conservative stronghold, to increased levels of political engagement. Folks here care about education, they care about the environment, they believe climate change is real, they want healthcare that protects preexisting conditions, they want a tax system that doesnt punish California, they want our schools and places of worship to be safe from gun violence, she said. Those are the issues we campaigned on, and to the extent that Donald Trump and Mimi Walters were on the wrong side of those issues, the voters have made clear what direction they want us to go. Porter was flying back from the East Coast when her race was called, she said. She turned on her phone to find 167 text messages from friends and supporters. Among them was Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who was one of Porters teachers in law school and with whom she has remained close. The pair spoke via FaceTime this morning, she said. Facebook

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Bitter battle for Senate seat in Florida goes to hand recount By Associated Press Employees look through damaged ballots during a recount Thursday in West Palm Beach, Fla. (Wilfredo Lee / Associated Press) Floridas acrimonious battle for the U.S. Senate headed Thursday to a legally required hand recount after an initial review by ballot-counting machines showed Republican Gov. Rick Scott and Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson separated by less than 13,000 votes. But the highly watched contest for governor between Republican Ron DeSantis and Democrat Andrew Gillum appeared to be over, with a machine recount showing DeSantis with a large enough advantage over Gillum to avoid a hand recount in that race. Gillum, who conceded the contest on election night only to retract his concession later, said in a statement that it is not over until every legally casted vote is counted. The recount so far has been fraught with problems. One large Democratic stronghold in South Florida was unable to finish its machine recount by the Thursday deadline due to machines breaking down. A federal judge rejected a request to extend the recount deadline. We gave a heroic effort, said Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Susan Bucher. If the county had three or four more hours, it would have made the deadline to recount ballots in the Senate race, she said. Meanwhile, election officials in another urban county in the Tampa Bay area decided against turning in the results of their machine recount, which came up with 846 fewer votes than originally counted. Media in South Florida reported that Broward County finished its machine recount but missed the deadline by a few minutes. Counties were ordered last weekend to do a machine recount of three statewide races because the margins were so tight. The next stage is a manual review of ballots that were not counted by machines to see whether there is a way to figure out voter intent. Scott called on Nelson to end the recount battle. Its time for Nelson to respect the will of the voters and graciously bring this process to an end rather than proceed with yet another count of the votes  which will yield the same result and bring more embarrassment to the state that we both love and have served, the governor said in a statement. The recount has triggered multiple lawsuits, many of them filed by Nelson and Democrats. The legal battles drew the ire of U.S. District Judge Mark E. Walker, who slammed the state for repeatedly failing to anticipate election problems. He also said the state law on recounts appears to violate the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that decided the presidency in 2000. We have been the laughingstock of the world, election after election, and we chose not to fix this, Walker said during a morning hearing. Walker vented his anger at state lawmakers and Palm Beach County officials, saying they should have made sure they had enough equipment in place to handle this kind of a recount. But he said he could not extend the recount deadline because he did not know when Palm Beach County would finish its work. This court must be able to craft a remedy with knowledge that it will not prove futile, Walker wrote in his ruling turning down the request from Democrats. It cannot do so on this record. This court does not and will not fashion a remedy in the dark. The overarching problem was created by the Florida Legislature, which Walker said passed a recount law that appears to run afoul of the 2000 Bush vs. Gore decision by locking in procedures that do not allow for potential problems. A total of six election-related lawsuits are pending in federal court in Tallahassee as well at least one lawsuit filed in state court. Walker also ordered that voters be given until 5 p.m. Saturday to show a valid identification and fix their ballots if they have not been counted due to mismatched signatures. Republicans appealed the ruling, but an appeals court turned down the request. State officials testified that nearly 4,000 mailed-in ballots were set aside because local officials decided the signatures on the envelopes did not match the signatures on file. If those voters can prove their identity, their votes will be counted and included in final official returns due from each county by noon Sunday. Walker was asked by Democrats to require local officials to provide a list of people whose ballots were rejected. But the judge appointed by President Obama refused the request, calling it inappropriate. Under state law, a hand review is required with races that have a margin of 0.25 percentage points or less. A state website put the unofficial results showing Scott ahead of Nelson by 0.15 percentage points. The margin between DeSantis and Gillum was at 0.41 points. The margin between Scott and Nelson had not changed much in the last few days, conceded Marc Elias, an attorney working for Nelsons campaign. But he said that he expected the vote tally to shrink due to the hand recount and the ruling on signatures. The developments fueled frustrations among Democrats and Republicans alike. Democrats want state officials to do whatever it takes to make sure every eligible vote is counted. Republicans, including President Trump, have argued without evidence that voter fraud threatens to steal races from the GOP. Facebook

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Democrat Gil Cisneros pulls ahead of Republican Young Kim as more votes are tallied in Orange and San Bernardino counties By Michael Finnegan Congressional candidate Gil Cisneros (Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times) Democrat Gil Cisneros pulled ahead of Republican Young Kim in one of Californias undecided congressional races Thursday, an ominous sign for a GOP already reeling from its loss of four House seats in the state. In updated vote counts released by the registrars for Orange and San Bernardino counties, Kim fell 941 votes behind Cisneros in the contest to succeed Republican Rep. Ed Royce in Californias 39th Congressional District. The 39th straddles Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Orange counties. In another unresolved House race, Democrat Katie Porter pulled further ahead of Republican incumbent Mimi Walters in the 45th District, which includes Mission Viejo, Tustin, Irvine, Rancho Santa Margarita and Laguna Hills. Porter, a consumer attorney and UC Irvine law professor, is now 6,203 votes ahead. The Nov. 6 midterm election has been devastating to Republicans in California. If Cisneros and Porter win, the party will have lost six of its 14 House seats in the state, essentially a wipeout in every contest that both parties spent heavily to win. The three Republicans already bounced from Congress are Reps. Dana Rohrabacher of Costa Mesa, Steve Knight of Palmdale and Jeff Denham of Turlock in the San Joaquin Valley. Democrat Mike Levin won the seat of retiring GOP Rep. Darrell Issa of Vista in the fourth district flipped so far. Facebook

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Florida Senate race likely headed to second recount By Associated Press A Palm Beach County Sheriffs deputy walks past boxes of ballots before a recount on Nov. 15 in West Palm Beach, Fla. (Wilfredo Lee) Unofficial Florida election results show that the governors race seems to be settled after a machine recount but the U.S. Senate race is likely headed to a hand recount. Republican Ron DeSantis is virtually assured of winning the nationally watched governors race over Democrat Andrew Gillum. Florida finished a machine recount Thursday that showed Gillum without enough votes to force a manual recount. Unofficial results posted on a state website show the margin between U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson and Gov. Rick Scott is still thin enough to trigger a second review. State law requires a hand recount of races with a margin of 0.25 percentage point or less. Counties have until Sunday to inspect the ballots that did not record a vote when put through the machines. Those ballots are re-examined to see whether the voter skipped the race or marked the ballot in a way that the machines cannot read but can be deciphered. The election will be certified Tuesday. Read More Facebook

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Pelosi says she has the votes to become the next House speaker By John Wagner Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi speaks during a news conference in Washington on Nov. 14. (Susan Walsh) House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi insisted Thursday that she has the votes to become the chambers speaker despite solid opposition from more than a dozen Democrats who want fresh leadership when the party takes control next year. I have overwhelming support in my caucus to be speaker of the House, the San Francisco lawmaker told reporters. I happen to think at this point, Im the best person for that. A vote within the Democratic caucus is scheduled for Nov. 28. The full House votes on Jan. 3 to elect a new speaker. During her remarks, Pelosi touted the size of the Democratic victory in the midterms, which she called almost a tsunami. With a few races still to be decided, Democrats are poised to pick up close to 40 seats in the chamber. Pelosi called that the biggest victory for the Democrats since 1974, when the Watergate babies came in. Pelosis comments come as she faces solid opposition from at least 17 Democrats, setting the stage for a battle over who will ascend to one of the most powerful positions in Washington. After a campaign in which some Democrats prevailed in competitive districts by promising to oppose her, a coalition of incumbents and newly elected members has denied her a smooth path to the speakership. The defections, if they stand, would leave Pelosi, who has led the Democrats for more than 15 years, several votes short of the 218 she would need when the full House votes for speaker Jan. 3. However, no Democrat has stepped forward to run against her for a job she held from 2007 through 2010. Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio) told reporters Wednesday that shes being encouraged to stand for speaker if Pelosi doesnt have the votes. In an interview with the Washington Post on Thursday, she said she has been overwhelmed by the support from many of her colleagues for her possible entry into the race for House speaker. Over the last 12 hours, Ive been overwhelmed by the amount of support Ive received, Fudge said, adding that there are probably closer to 30" Democrats who have privately signaled that they are willing to oppose Pelosi. Things could change rapidly, Fudge said. Fudge, 66, a former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, said she is building a diverse coalition as she mulls a speaker run, talking with allies in the caucus, moderate Democrats and newly elected members. To this point, Pelosi has enjoyed the strong backing of the Congressional Black Caucus. On Thursday, Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), one of its members, wrote a letter to colleagues praising her insight, fortitude and strategic thinking and urging support for her speakership bid. Former Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr., an African American who is contemplating a 2020 presidential bid, also voiced support for Pelosi, praising her in a tweet as an architect of the recent midterm success. Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), a leader of the resistance to Pelosi, said during an interview on CNN on Thursday that Fudge is the kind of new leader that we need in this party. Shes in touch with middle America. She understands what the American people want. Shes a next-generation leader that people will look to and say, Thats the future of our party, thats the future of our country, and thats exactly the kind of leader that I want to see as our next speaker. Wagner reports for the Washington Post. The Posts Robert Costa, Erica Werner, Mike DeBonis, Paul Kane and Elise Viebeck contributed to this report. Facebook

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GOP Rep. Jeff Denham concedes to Democrat Josh Harder in Central Valley race By Maya Sweedler Rep. Jeff Denham (Bill Clark / CQ Roll Call) Republican Rep. Jeff Denham has conceded to Democrat Josh Harder in the race to represent Californias 10th Congressional District in the San Joaquin Valley. It has been an absolute honor to serve our community and represent the Central Valley in Congress over the past eight years, the 51-year-old congressman said. The enormity of the responsibility was never lost on me. My wife Sonia and I look forward to starting the next chapter of our lives. Harder said he had spoken with Denham and the two were committed to a productive transition. Denham, an Air Force veteran, previously represented the region in the state Senate for eight years and founded a company specializing in plastic packaging used in agriculture. While a member of Congress, he sat on the Transportation and Infrastructure, Veterans Affairs and Agriculture committees. First-time candidate Harder was born and raised in the district. After graduating from Stanford University, he served as vice president of a Silicon Valley venture capital firm. Since moving back, he has been teaching at Modesto Junior College. Denhams House seat is one of four in California that Republicans lost in the Nov. 6 election, with two contests in Orange County still undecided as of Thursday morning. Jeff Denham called me this morning and we had a very productive conversation. I'm honored that I've been chosen to serve our community in Congress, and we're both looking forward to a productive transition that best serves the people of District 10.  Josh Harder (@JoshHarder) November 14, 2018 Facebook

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Democrat Katie Porter now nearly 3,800 votes ahead of GOP Rep. Mimi Walters By Maya Sweedler Rep. Mimi Walters thanks all of her supporters as she watches election results in Irvine on Nov. 7, 2018. (Alex Gallardo / Associated Press) Democrat Katie Porter opened a 3,797-vote lead Wednesday over Republican Rep. Mimi Walters in Orange Countys 45th Congressional District. In the neighboring 39th, Democrat Gil Cisneros has nearly tied the race against Republican Young Kim. Cisneros now trails Kim by a razor-thin margin of 122 votes. The 39th District straddles Los Angeles, Orange and San Bernardino counties; Wednesdays updated ballot counts came from the latter two. There are more than 202,000 ballots left to count in Orange County, which includes parts of seven congressional districts. The 45th is entirely in inland Orange County. In California, the ballots counted first tend to lean Republican and those tallied later skew Democratic. In the Central Valleys 21st Congressional District, Democratic challenger TJ Cox has pulled within 2 percentage points of Rep. David Valadao, who is serving his third term. The Associated Press had projected a win for Valadao on election night, but his 4,839-vote advantage has shrunk to 2,090. Back in CA-21, Valadao (R) wins a batch of ballots from his stronghold in Kings Co., but by a considerably smaller margin (14 points) than his previous ~30-point margin in the county. We're moving to Lean R from Likely R; today a bit scary for Valadao.https://t.co/WqJVUVkqGW  Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 15, 2018 A spokesman for Valadao told the Fresno Bee that the changes were expected and that [s]tatistically, David Valadao has won this race. Democrats in California have already flipped four House seats, defeating three Republican incumbents and claiming an open seat previously held by the GOP. Reps. Steve Knight of Palmdale, Dana Rohrabacher of Costa Mesa and Jeff Denham of Turlock have already lost their races, and retiring Rep. Darrell Issas San Diego County seat was claimed by Democrat Mike Levin. Facebook

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Trump aide departs West Wing after rebuke from Melania Trump By Associated Press First Lady Melania Trump. (Alain Jocard / AFP-Getty Images) Deputy national security advisor Mira Ricardel is leaving the White House, one day after First Lady Melania Trumps office issued an extraordinary statement calling for her dismissal. No replacement was named. Aides said Ricardel clashed with the first ladys staff over her visit to Africa last month. Yet it is highly unusual for a first lady or her office to weigh in on personnel matters, especially the presidents national security staff. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Ricardel would have a new role in the administration. On Tuesday, Stephanie Grisham, the first ladys spokeswoman, released a statement saying, It is the position of the Office of the First Lady that she no longer deserves the honor of serving in this White House. President Trumps White House has set records for administration turnover. Ricardel was the third person to hold the post under Trump. An ally of national security advisor John Bolton, Ricardel began her service in the Trump administration as associate director in the White House Office of Presidential Personnel, then moved to the Commerce Department last year. Bolton brought her into the West Wing shortly after taking the job in April. He is traveling in Asia this week alongside Vice President Mike Pence. Facebook

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Race for House Minority Leader is Kevin McCarthys to lose By Associated Press (Bill Clark / CQ Roll Call) House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy is running to take over next years shrunken caucus in closed-door elections that will set the tone for the new Congress. The race for minority leader is McCarthys to lose Wednesday. But the California Republican, who is an ally of President Trump, must fend off a challenge from conservative Jim Jordan of Ohio. Jordan is a leader of the House Freedom Caucus. The two encountered questions and finger-pointing during a private meeting with lawmakers Tuesday night as the GOP sorted through the midterm defeat that put Democrats in the majority next year. Elections Wednesday will also determine party leadership in the Senate. Voting for the biggest race, Nancy Pelosis bid to return as the Democrats nominee for speaker, is later this month. Read More Facebook

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Melania Trump calls for the firing of deputy national security advisor By Justin Sink First Lady Melania Trump arrives at the Chateau de Versailles outside Paris on Nov. 11. (Alain Jocard / AFP/Getty Images ) First Lady Melania Trumps office said she wants Mira Ricardel, the deputy national security advisor, ousted from the White House. It is the position of the Office of the First Lady that she no longer deserves the honor of serving in this White House, Trumps spokeswoman, Stephanie Grisham, said in a statement in response to a question about reports the first lady had sought Ricardels removal. Ricardel is the top deputy to national security advisor John Bolton. She drew the first ladys wrath after threatening to withhold National Security Council resources during Melania Trumps trip to Africa last month unless Ricardel was included in her entourage, one person familiar with the matter said. Grishams statement comes as several media outlets have reported that President Trump is considering a broader shakeup of his administration, including ousting Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. Sink and Jacobs report for Bloomberg. Read More Facebook

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CNN sues Trump over the suspension of Jim Acostas White House press credentials By Jim Puzzanghera CNN said Tuesday that it is suing President Trump and other administration officials over the decision to suspend the White House press credentials of correspondent Jim Acosta after a conflict at a news conference last week. The suit, to be filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, escalates an ongoing battle between Trump and the cable news outlet that he frequently accuses of disseminating fake news for its aggressive coverage of him and his administration. The wrongful revocation of these credentials violates CNN and Acostas 1st Amendment rights of freedom of the press, and their 5th Amendment rights to due process, CNN said in a written statement. If left unchallenged, the actions of the White House would create a dangerous chilling effect for any journalist who covers our elected officials. Read More Facebook

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Maxine Waters to take aim at Wells Fargo and Deutsche Bank as new head of House Financial Services Committee By Jim Puzzanghera Rep. Maxine Waters plans to zero in on two big banks  Wells Fargo & Co. and Deutsche Bank  when she becomes head of the powerful House Financial Services Committee. The Los Angeles congresswoman, now the committees top Democrat, is widely expected to gain the gavel after her party won control of the House in last weeks elections. While Waters has outlined a wide-ranging agenda, she said her focus on bank oversight will target two large institutions she has been tangling with for a while  including one, Deutsche Bank, that spills into her bitter feud with President Trump. With Trump in the White House, I know that our fight for Americas consumers and investors will continue to be challenging. But I am more than up to that fight, Waters wrote in a letter last week to her Democratic colleagues on the committee that was obtained by The Times. Read More Facebook

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Heres how a controversial voting system will decide a congressional race in Maine By Kurtis Lee For the first time in U.S. history, a controversial voting system known as ranked choice is being used to decide a federal election. Its happening in Maine, which adopted the system in 2016. Rather than marking a single candidate, each voter ranks them all, assigning a first-place vote, a second-place vote and so on down the ballot. Read More Facebook

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ACLU files suit to stop Trumps new asylum limits By Associated Press A group of Central American migrants march to the office of the U.N.'s humans rights body in Mexico City on Nov. 8. (Rebecca Blackwell / Associated Press) The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a legal challenge to President Trumps order denying asylum to migrants if they cross the U.S.-Mexico border illegally. The lawsuit was filed Friday in federal court in San Francisco and argues the new rules are against the law. Attorney Lee Gelernt said the regulations will put families in danger. The suit seeks to declare the regulations invalid and wants a judge to stop the rules from going into effect while the litigation is pending. The new rules were spurred in part by caravans of Central American migrants slowly moving north on foot, but officials say they will apply to anyone caught crossing illegally. Officials say about 70,000 people who enter the country illegally claim asylum. The order invoked the same national security powers Trump used to push through his travel ban. Read More Facebook

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Trump on new acting AG: I dont know Matt Whitaker By Associated Press President Trump talks with reporters before departing for France on the South Lawn of the White House on Nov. 9. (Evan Vucci / Associated Press) President Trump is moving to distance himself from Matthew Whitaker as he faces criticism over his choice for acting attorney general. Trump told reporters Friday that I dont know Matt Whitaker and said he didnt speak with Whitaker about special counsel Robert Muellers Russia investigation. Whitaker has made public comments critical of Muellers investigation, and critics have called on Whitaker to recuse himself from oversight of the inquiry. Under former Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions, the investigation was overseen by Deputy Atty. Gen. Rod Rosenstein. Of the scrutiny Whitaker is facing, Trump said: Its a shame that no matter who I put in they go after. He also called Whitaker a very highly respected man. Whitaker was Sessions chief of staff before Trump made him Sessions interim replacement. Facebook

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Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg out of hospital after fall By Associated Press The Supreme Court says 85-year-old Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is home after being released from the hospital. She had been admitted for treatment and observation after fracturing three ribs in a fall. The court said Ginsburg was released Friday. Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg says she is doing well and working from home. The court had previously said the justice fell in her office at the court on Wednesday evening and went to George Washington University Hospital in Washington early Thursday after experiencing discomfort overnight. Ginsburg broke two ribs in a fall in 2012. She had two prior bouts with cancer and had a stent implanted to open a blocked artery in 2014. Facebook

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Gun-control activist Lucy McBath defeats GOP Rep. Karen Handel in Georgia By Associated Press Lucy McBath speaks during a rally for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams on Nov. 2 at Morehouse College in Atlanta. (Alyssa Pointer / Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP) Democratic gun-control activist Lucy McBath has defeated Republican Rep. Karen Handel of Georgia in a suburban congressional district long considered safe for the GOP. Handel had to seek reelection after winning her seat last year in a close special election race against Democrat Jon Ossoff. McBath became an advocate for stricter gun laws after her son, Jordan Davis, was fatally shot at a Florida gas station in 2012 by a man angry over loud music the teenager and his friends were playing in a car. McBaths margin of victory was narrow enough for Handel to have requested a recount. The Associated Press declared McBath the winner Thursday after Handel conceded. Handel conceded in a statement Thursday morning, stating that after reviewing all of the election data, its clear she came up a bit short in Tuesdays vote. Handel congratulated McBath, offering good thoughts and much prayer for the journey that lies ahead for her. McBath, who is African American, declared victory Wednesday. Facebook

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Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg hospitalized after fracturing 3 ribs in fall By Associated Press Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Jacquelyn Martin / Associated Press) The Supreme Court says 85-year-old Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg fractured three ribs in a fall in her office at the court and is in the hospital. The court says the justice went to George Washington University Hospital in Washington early Thursday after experiencing discomfort overnight. The court says the fall occurred Wednesday evening. Ginsburg was admitted to the hospital for treatment and observation after tests showed she fractured three ribs. Ginsburg broke two ribs in a fall in 2012. She has had two prior bouts with cancer and had a stent implanted to open a blocked artery in 2014. Facebook

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White House suspends press pass of CNNs Jim Acosta after heated exchange with Trump By Associated Press The White House on Wednesday suspended the press pass of CNN correspondent Jim Acosta after he and President Trump had a heated confrontation during a news conference. They began sparring after Acosta asked Trump about the caravan of migrants heading from Latin America to the southern U.S. border. When Acosta tried to follow up with another question, Trump said, Thats enough! and a female White House aide unsuccessfully tried to grab the microphone from Acosta. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders released a statement accusing Acosta of placing his hands on a young woman just trying to do her job as a White House intern, calling it absolutely unacceptable. The interaction between Acosta and the intern was brief, and Acosta appeared to brush her arm as she reached for the microphone and he tried to hold onto it. Pardon me, maam, he told her. Acosta tweeted that Sanders statement that he put his hands on the aide was a lie. CNN said in a statement that the White House revoked Acostas press pass in retaliation for his challenging questions Wednesday, and the network accused Sanders of lying about Acostas actions. This conduct is absolutely unacceptable. It is also completely disrespectful to the reporters colleagues not to allow them an opportunity to ask a question. President Trump has given the press more access than any President in history.  Stephanie Grisham (@PressSec) November 8, 2018 Contrary to CNNs assertions there is no greater demonstration of the Presidents support for a free press than the event he held today. Only they would attack the President for not supporting a free press in the midst of him taking 68 questions from 35 different reporters...  Stephanie Grisham (@PressSec) November 8, 2018 As a result of todays incident, the White House is suspending the hard pass of the reporter involved until further notice.  Stephanie Grisham (@PressSec) November 8, 2018 Sanders provided fraudulent accusations and cited an incident that never happened. This unprecedented decision is a threat to our democracy and the country deserves better, CNN said. Jim Acosta has our full support. Journalists assigned to cover the White House apply for passes that allow them daily access to press areas in the West Wing. White House staffers decide whether journalists are eligible, though the Secret Service determines whether their applications are approved. Facebook

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Trump spars with reporters at post-election news briefing, ordering several to sit down By Associated Press  President Trump assails CNNs Jim Acosta at a White House news conference. President Trump sparred with reporters at his post-election news conference, ordering several to sit down and telling another hes a rude, terrible person. He told another reporter hes not a fan of yours, either. The presidents mood turned sour Wednesday after reporters pressed him on why he referred to a migrant caravan making its way to the U.S. on foot through Mexico as an invasion. Trump ramped up his anti-immigrant rhetoric against the caravan in the final days of the midterm elections. Trump was also pressed on why his campaign aired an ad featuring a Mexican immigrant convicted of killing American police officers and linking the mans actions to the caravan. Several television networks pulled the ad after airing it or declined to air it at all. Facebook

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Im living one hour at a time at this point By Christine Mai-Duc Republican congressional candidate Young Kim and gubernatorial candidate John Cox campaign in Rowland Heights. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times) Republican congressional candidate Young Kim greeted gubernatorial candidate John Coxs giant campaign bus, the words HELP IS ON THE WAY emblazoned across it, as it rolled into the parking lot outside her Rowland Heights field office. Standing beside Cox on Saturday, Kim predicted that a string of GOP victories Tuesday would start with voters repealing the gas tax hike. Can you imagine Gavin Newsom being our governor? Can you imagine Gil Cisneros being your representative? Kim asked the crowd, to loud boos and cries of Nooo! The former state assemblywoman who worked for retiring Rep. Ed Royce (R-Fullerton) is vying for his seat with Democrat Gil Cisneros. She led the crowd in chants of Enough is enough! and, though short-lived, Drain the swamp! Ive served you in Sacramento and Ive seen dysfunction personally, Kim continued. We cannot continue that route. She urged her supporters to stay and help make phone calls or walk neighborhoods. Lets get out there  the 72 hours is really critical. Its all going to come down to a few votes, it could be your vote, she said pointing to her left, then pivoting right, it could be your vote. So dont sit back and do nothing. Every night I go to sleep thinking, OK, how many more votes can I get or how many more people can I call tomorrow? Kim said. It can be physically exhausting but Im mentally, emotionally very energized. She listed off her events so far that day  and the next one she was heading to. Thats just what I can remember, she said. Im living one hour at a time at this point. Kims campaign invited press to two of her events on Saturday. After she was whisked away to her next event  a high tea fundraiser in Walnut, a couple dozen volunteers remained. John Freeman, a statewide field manager for the state Republican Party, tried to pump them up. This is the Super Bowl. Were not in an NFL stadium, were not getting paid millions of dollars, but you know what? Freeman said. Were walking on the field right now. This is that high-stakes-level game. Facebook

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Its going to be tough out there Democratic candidate Katie Porter speaks to volunteers in Mission Viejo. Jon Bauman, Bowzer from the band Sha Na Na, is in the background. (Victoria Kim / Los Angeles Times ) Judging from the cheers in the crowd, about half those assembled at Katie Porters campaign headquarters in Mission Viejo Sunday morning were old enough to remember 70s rock n roll star Bowzer from the band Sha Na Na. Jon Bauman, as Bowzer is known off stage, said it was her position on senior issues including retirement and social security that has him out supporting Porter over her opponent, incumbent Rep. Mimi Walters. I want you to make sure every phone is called and every door is knocked, he told the crowd of about 80 volunteers. There has never been a more important election. Both Bauman and his nephew, California Democratic Party Chairman Eric Bauman, were interrupted by yells from Trump supporters coming from an adjoining hillside. We love Trump, the voice cried out. We love him too, he makes great fodder, the younger Bauman retorted, before introducing Porter. Porter, a UC Irvine law professor and first-time candidate, acknowledged the uphill battle some of her canvassers might face in this more conservative end of the long-red Orange County district. I know its going to be tough out there, she said, motioning to the hillside. But she said the attacks meant the other side viewed her campaign as a significant threat. This election is going to be close, she said. If we dont fight all the way to the finish line, until 8 oclock on Tuesday, this could slip away. Bowzer then took to a keyboard piano to lead the crowd in a reworded rendition of the song Good Night Sweetheart: Good night, Mimi Walters, he crooned. A woman in a black tank top, jeans and flip flops holding a cup of coffee later joined the crowd with her two sons, 17 and 14, the younger one wearing a Trump 2016 T-shirt. She declined to give her name, saying she was concerned about being attacked, but said she lived up the hill and said she had been the one yelling. She said she was encouraging her sons to talk to people on both sides and make up their own minds. We need to have a government that runs the way government teachers are telling kids its supposed to be run, said the woman, a retired registered dental assistant who voted early for Mimi Walters. Referring to Democrats, she said: Theyve had control over all these years and Californias gone to crap. Among those canvassing was Stacie Campbell, 37, who was at the launch with her husband Jerome and three children, the youngest of whom was 2 months old. Campbell, a Mission Viejo resident who runs a business, had never canvassed or volunteered for campaigns before, and her husband is a French citizen and unable to vote. She said they had been talking to their children  the older ones are 5 and 2  about the presidency and the government since Trumps election. Together, they worked on homemade Katie Porter lawn signs and put them up around town. This is the first time its felt like a big deal and there isnt a president up for election, she said. Because her city is a mix of conservatives and liberals  her next-door neighbor is an NRA-supporting Republican  she the race felt m
Mobile operator lifecell launches 4G communications in 24 cities of Ukraine, no plans to have separate tariffs for 4G traffic

The mobile operator lifecell has begun to provide 4G (LTE) communication services in 22 regional centers, as well as Kramatorsk and Severodonetsk, while 3G + and 4.5G traffic will be charged the same way, the operator said on Friday.

"In one third of the cities, namely in Mykolaiv, Chernihiv, Zhytomyr, Rivne, Cherkasy, Vinnytsia, Severodonetsk and Kramatorsk, lifecell is the only operator that started to provide 4G communication services," the operator said in a press release.

According to the operator, 49% of smartphones in the lifecell network support LTE technology.

4G mobile services will be provided using LTE Advanced Pro (4.5G) technology, which provides up to five times faster download speed, up to 10 times faster upload speed, as well as instant reaction of websites and applications in comparison with 3G.

To use a next generation connection, a subscriber needs to have a SIM-card with support for the 4G/LTE standard (USIM-card) and a smartphone supporting at least 4G/LTE.

"The USIM card not only supports the 4G (LTE) standard, but it also has other advantages: higher security and additional options. The main difference is larger memory, and the USIM address book can store up to 500 contacts with extended data: several contact phone numbers and an e-mail address," the press service of the operator said.

The operator lifecell also does not plan to set a separate tariff for 4G traffic.

"3G+ and 4.5G traffic will be charged the same way. The subscribers will choose which technology to use in the phone's settings," the press release said.

The second wave of 4.5G deployments from lifecell in the 1800 MHz band is expected in July 2018.
It seems at times like a reality television show.

President Trump has ousted more than two dozen members of his administration, creating the impression of chaos and a national guessing game of who will be next.

Most of the casualties have been senior aides  remember Stephen K. Bannon and Anthony Scaramucci? Of his original Cabinet  positions that require confirmation by the Senate  a total of three have been dismissed or forced to resign. They are Tom Price (secretary of Health and Human Services), Rex Tillerson (secretary of State) and, this week, David Shulkin (secretary of Veterans Affairs).

But in Trumps orbit, few people are safe. Heres a look at some key officials and why they might stay or go:

Pablo Martinez Monsivais / Associated Press

Ben Carson, secretary of HUD

Why he might stay: Carson is a loyalist, and we all know that Trump favors those. Shortly after Carson dropped out of the 2016 presidential race, he tossed his support to Trump and tried to help him make inroads with black and Latino voters. Hes also the lone African American with a high-level position in the Trump administration and has defended the president on racial issues. In August, when Trump said both sides were to blame for violence at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., Carson said the ensuing criticism was blown out of proportion.

Why he might go: Hes been relatively quiet since Trump took office, but in recent weeks that has changed. Carsons wife bought a dining room set for his office that cost the Department of Housing and Urban Development $31,000. Speaking before a House committee this month, Carson addressed the purchase, saying hes not really big into decorating.

If it was up to me, my office would probably look like a hospital waiting room, the former neurosurgeon said.

The furniture order has since been canceled.

Pablo Martinez Monsivais / Associated Press

Betsy DeVos, secretary of Education

Why she might stay: In recent weeks, Trump has shown confidence in DeVos as the two have been in lockstep on a controversial issue: whether to arm teachers. Since the Feb. 14 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., both have staunchly supported the idea. This month, Trump tapped DeVos to head a school safety commission that will craft measures to keep students safe and explore how to prevent mass shootings.

Why she might go: Bad ratings. Shes often greeted by protesters  primarily teachers unions  because of her support for charter schools, which are publicly funded and set up by teachers, parents, or community groups, outside the state school system. She was also widely ridiculed for a 60 Minutes interview in which she gave vague answers on school choice, sexual assault on college campuses and other issues.

Steve Schmidt, a longtime Republican strategist, who served as a senior advisor on John McCains 2008 presidential campaign, described the interview in one word: Bad.

She humiliated herself and the administration, he said. Thats what Trump hates most  humiliation. But, for now, she remains.

Evan Vucci / Associated Press

John F. Kelly, chief of staff

Why he might stay: Hes a retired four-star general, and Trump has said he likes generals. Since he became chief of staff in July, Kelly has sought to bring order to the West Wing, something at the time Trump reportedly said was much needed. In public, at least, Trump says he likes Kelly.

Why he might go: In private, however, its been reported that Trump is souring on Kelly. In recent weeks, Trump has complained the management structure in the West Wing doesn't suit the freewheeling style he employed as a businessman, according to several news outlets. Kelly made negative headlines recently when he acknowledged he mishandled accusations of domestic abuse that were made by ex-wives of Rob Porter, who resigned in February from his job as White House staff secretary.

Cliff Owen / Associated Press

James N. Mattis, secretary of Defense

Why he might stay: Hes a general. And for the most part, Trump has avoided confrontation with Mattis and stayed out his way at the Pentagon. The president has also made concessions at the request of Mattis. Last week, Trump signed a spending bill after threatening a veto. Mattis had been vocal in his support for the bill because it boosts Pentagon funding.

Mattis is a towering figure that is indispensable to this administration and country, said Schmidt, the Republican strategist.

If he goes, its not good for the safety of our country, he said. He keeps Trump in line.

Why he might go: His allies are leaving the administration. In recent weeks, its been announced that both Rex Tillerson and H.R. McMaster will be relieved of their duties as secretary of State and national security advisor, respectively. Mattis has also publicly split with the president on issues such as North Korea and Iran. If he becomes more vocal, that could lead to his departure as well.

Michael Reynolds / AFP/Getty Images

Steven T. Mnuchin, secretary of Treasury

Why he might stay: Mnuchin is a New Yorker and hes rich  two things he shares with Trump. Mnuchin has also defended the presidents policies relentlessly. At a gathering of global economic leaders this month, Mnuchin faced a barrage of questions about Trumps plan to hit other countries with stiff tariffs on aluminum and steel imports and never backed down. He said the administration was prepared for a trade war.

Were not afraid of it, Mnuchin said at the Group of 20 finance ministers meeting in Argentina. This administration is going to make sure that were treated fairly.

Why he might go: Hes been in the news for all the wrong reasons.

Last summer, Mnuchin took a military jet from New York to Washington, saying he needed a secure phone line. The Aug. 15 flight cost at least $25,000, ABC News reported. Mnuchin and his wife also drew criticism for flying on a government plane to Kentucky, where they viewed the solar eclipse. Treasury officials defended the visit as official travel  Mnuchin attended a luncheon and visited the gold vault at Ft. Knox  and said he would reimburse the government for his wife's costs.

Alex Brandon / Associated Press

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, press secretary

Why she might stay: Huckabee Sanders is a staunch defender of the president. She is willing to battle reporters on issues such as the Russia investigation and Trumps alleged affair with adult film actress Stormy Daniels. Unlike her predecessor, Sean Spicer, she has avoided drawing ire from her boss.

Why she might go: Its simple: Trump is his own spokesperson. At any moment, he could become upset with her performance and shell be out.

Mandel Ngan / AFP/Getty Images

Jeff Sessions, U.S. attorney general

Why he might stay: If Trump fires Sessions, it could open a legal morass. Its been reported that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, who is investigating whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, is looking into whether Trump tried to pressure Sessions to resign and whether that could be part of an obstruction of justice case.

In addition, firing Sessions could ignite a strong response in Congress, where many Republicans are still very supportive of the former senator from Alabama. Hes also been willing to implement some of Trumps most controversial policies, including a travel ban targeting nationals of several majority-Muslim countries.

Why he might go: Since Sessions recused himself from the Russia inquiry last year, Trump has assailed him relentlessly.

So why aren't the Committees and investigators, and of course our beleaguered A.G., looking into Crooked Hillarys crimes & Russia relations? Trump tweeted last summer.

At some point the humiliation may just be too much to overcome, Schmidt said. Sessions might leave on his own  you would think that might have happened months ago.

Win McNamee / Getty Images

Ryan Zinke, secretary of the Interior

Why he might stay: He is another Trump loyalist. The former congressman from Montana was an early supporter of Trumps presidential bid. And hes the point man for Trumps widely touted plan to expand offshore drilling, including along the Gulf Coast and the California coast. In January, Zinke and Trump released a proposal to open for exploration the largest expanse of the nations offshore oil and natural gas reserves ever offered to global energy companies.

Why he might go: Zinke has amassed bad headlines. In October, the Office of Inspector General launched an investigation after news reports revealed that Zinke chartered a $12,375 flight from Las Vegas to an airport near his home in Montana, where he spent the night.
After police killed an unarmed black man in Sacramento earlier this month, California legislators are poised to again try to loosen some of the nations strictest prohibitions on the release of officer shooting and misconduct investigations.

State Sen. Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley) plans to introduce a bill next week that would require the disclosure of investigations of serious uses of force, including police shootings.



For the record: A previous version of this article said Stephon Clark was 23. He was 22.

The legislation, which civil rights groups across the state support, is necessary because people have a right to know how law enforcement treats those cases, said Lizzie Buchen, a legislative advocate for the American Civil Liberties Union of California.

Currently, the public is completely shut out of the entire disciplinary process, Buchen said. When an officer kills someone, which is an extreme example of their ability to use force, the public has no way of actually knowing how it was handled by that agency.

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California has some of the most stringent laws against disclosing police personnel records. Most information about discipline is presumed confidential, even when complaints are determined to be valid. Californias rules are so rigorous that last year a state appellate court ruled the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department isnt even allowed to tell prosecutors the names of deputies with confirmed cases of misconduct. The California Supreme Court is now reviewing that case.

Over the years, lawmakers have tried to open up some information. But law enforcement groups have fought back, arguing that disciplinary records should remain private to protect officer safety and limit the sensationalizing of such incidents.

The latest attempt came in 2016 under growing pressure from civil rights activists to respond to disputed police shootings in Ferguson, Mo., San Francisco, Los Angeles and elsewhere. An effort from former state Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) was shelved in a Senate committee after intense lobbying from law enforcement groups.

No state legislator proposed a bill on the issue last year, and Leno has said the police lobby is so strong that it might take a statewide ballot measure for the law to change.

This year, the union that represents professors and lecturers in the California State University system is supporting Skinners bill. Buchen said she expects other labor groups to join, which would broaden the list of organizations that have supported similar legislation.

The latest legislation, which has been planned for months, has taken on new urgency since the March 18 killing of 22-year-old Stephon Clark by Sacramento police, Buchen said. Clarks death has sparked daily protests in the capital city after police shot him in his grandmothers backyard during a vandalism investigation while he was unarmed and carrying a cellphone. Under current law, the Sacramento Police Department investigation wont become public except through any potential criminal prosecution of the officers or civil litigation against the city.

About two dozen representatives from civil rights groups and relatives of those killed by police rallied before a meeting of the states anti-police racial profiling board in Compton Thursday morning. They called on lawmakers to pass Skinners legislation and increase police accountability provisions.

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We are going to demand justice, Melina Abdullah, a professor of Pan-African Studies at Cal State L.A. and a member of the Black Lives Matter movement, said at the rally. We are going to pass this bill as a first step in ending the murders of our people.

Besides opening access to use of force investigations, Skinners proposed bill would also require the disclosure of confirmed cases of sexual assault and lying while on duty.

Representatives with the California State Sheriffs Assn., California Police Chiefs Assn. and the Peace Officers Research Assn. of California  the states largest police labor organization  declined to comment on the legislation. All three groups and two dozen other law enforcement and labor organizations opposed Lenos bill two years ago. Brian Marvel, the labor groups president, said public safety groups planned to meet with Skinner next week.

Were trying to work with the senator to find some common ground, Marvel said. We realize the importance of this issue.

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Skinner said she wouldnt comment on the bill until she introduces it.

liam.dillon@latimes.com

@dillonliam

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Updates on California politics
Two years ago this month, The Times investigated one of the longest-lingering questions in California politics: Are some voters mistakenly joining a political party when what they really want is to be an electoral free agent?

The answer seemed to be yes, with substantial evidence of citizens who thought they were an unaffiliated independent voter but instead registered with the American Independent Party. And no, those arent the same thing.

The American Independent Party was organized 50 years ago in California to boost the presidential candidacy of former Alabama Gov. George Wallace, best known for his support of segregation. Current party leaders insist those days are long gone, focusing now on a platform opposed to abortion and same-sex marriage while praising the 2nd Amendment and border security. In 2016, the party joined Republicans in nominating Donald Trump for president.

More than a half-million Californians are now registered as members of the American Independent Party. The AIPs share of first-time registrants since 2017 is more than three times the size of any other minor party  even as the AIPs website still showcases information from 2016 and has no statewide candidates this year. All the while, its leaders continue to boast of it being the fastest-growing political party in California  which has come at the same time that more Californians are rejecting parties outright and registering as No party preference voters.

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The American Independent Party has maintained official recognition by the size of its registration. Asked for comment via email, an AIP leader dismissed this column as another hit piece on us and the idea of widespread voter confusion as speculative.

Are you an independent California voter? Not if you checked this box 

In 2008, top state elections officials privately circulated a memo that suggested the Legislature could pass a law banning party names with words such as American or United States or independent. The litmus test would be applied when the party renewed its official status, after each gubernatorial election. The goal, the memo said, would be to reduce or eliminate the number of people who think theyre registering as an unaffiliated voter.

Such limitations are rare but real. Wyoming, for example, has long banned the word independent in the name of any new political party. California, though, bans only names that are so similar to the name of an existing party so as to mislead the voters  a regulation thats silent on the potential pitfalls for voters who refuse to join a party.

Confusion has been reported by Californians from all walks of life  students, celebrities, even the incoming owner of this newspaper. Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, who is buying the Los Angeles Times and the San Diego Union-Tribune, is registered as a member of the American Independent Party. A spokesman says it was a mistake and Soon-Shiong is changing his status to no party preference.

That time I realized I was registered to vote with the wrong party 

The issue caught fire in 2016, when unaffiliated California voters were invited to cast ballots in the Democratic presidential primary. Those who discovered on election day that they were in the American Independent Party were out of luck. One Santa Cruz County AIP voter balked, successfully persuading a judge to let her switch affiliations and cast a ballot.

Sacramento lawmakers have largely dismissed the issue for years  either over concerns about forcing a name change or because, as Democrats and Republicans, theyre not that worried about non-party voters. And so voter education may be the only solution, including more clarity in voter registration materials.

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Political data researcher Paul Mitchell, perhaps Californias most impassioned critic on the issue, used to send AIP voters a card on April Fools Day to show them what theyd done. With that annual celebration now upon us, it might be worth logging on to the secretary of states website to check your status. If you end up surprised, just remember that youre not alone.

john.myers@latimes.com

Follow @johnmyers on Twitter, sign up for our daily Essential Politics newsletter and listen to the weekly California Politics Podcast

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Updates on California politics
Over the last few weeks, President Trump has fired Cabinet secretaries and lost key White House aides. He has discomfited longtime U.S. allies with tariffs that threaten a possible trade war. And he has contended with a sex scandal that threatens to drag him into court.

Through it all, his standing in polls has ticked upward  not hugely, but still by enough to matter.

Why? Credit a growing economy and consolidating support among Trumps fellow Republicans. For more on what that portends for this years midterm elections, read on.

Sign up for the Essential Politics newsletter 

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ANOTHER WEEK, ANOTHER FIRING

This time, it was Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin who got the boot  or, to use a more Trumpian image, the tweet.

The firing itself came as no surprise: As David Cloud reported, Shulkin had been undermined for weeks by allegations of ethical lapses and a determined campaign by conservatives, including political appointees in his own department, to oust him because he opposed rapid privatization of the VA health system.

The jolt this time came with the replacement. Trump, in his Twitter message announcing the firing, said he planned to nominate the White House doctor, Adm. Ronny Jackson, to head the Veterans Affairs department.

Jackson is greatly admired by former White House officials in both parties. He has been a White House doctor since the George W. Bush administration and was a favorite of Barack Obamas staff. (Here is a profile of Jackson by the Washington Post.) But as several key members of Congress and leaders of veterans organizations immediately noted, he has no experience running a big government agency and no known views on key policy issues.

Trumps decision to put his personal doctor in charge provides the clearest example of how he values personal relationships and loyalties over traditional ideas of expertise.

Now the question is whether the Senate will consent or whether the doctor will become this administrations version of Harriet Miers, the White House lawyer Bush nominated in 2005 for the Supreme Court, who withdrew within weeks amid accusations of cronyism.

A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

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Are you a California voter and an independent? Are you sure?

As my colleague John Myers has reported, more than a half million Californians remain registered with the American Independent Party, a group formed a half century ago to back the presidential candidacy of George C. Wallace.

Despite considerable evidence that many of those registrations are errors by voters who consider themselves independent, i.e., not a member of any party, lawmakers havent acted to eliminate the confusion, Myers wrote.

The problem for voters is that registering as a member of the AIP can prevent them from participating in Democratic or Republican primaries. Voters who correctly register as no party preference voters often can participate in primaries.

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A BATTLE OVER CARS, MILEAGE AND CALIFORNIA

As Evan Halper reported, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has sent the White House his recommendations for a huge rollback of federal mileage standards for new cars and trucks.

The new policy, which could be announced as early as this weekend, would end an Obama administration plan to boost average mileage by 2025 to 55 miles per gallon (about 44 mpg under real-world conditions). The Obama policy was designed to cut greenhouse gas emissions from the nations vehicles in half compared with 2010 levels.

The change would put the federal government on a collision course with California and a dozen other states that follow its standards, as Halper explained. Ultimately, the car companies could have to build and sell two different sets of vehicles  one for red states and one for blue states.

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Some automakers have pushed for a compromise. Well find out in a few days if they succeed.

AND A FIGHT OVER THE CENSUS

The administrations decision to add a question about citizenship to the 2020 Census generated a huge outcry from immigrant groups and officials in California and other Democratic states.

State attorneys general rushed to court. As Halper reported, their chances of winning probably depend less on big constitutional issues than on more technical questions such as whether the administration has provided enough time for a new question to be tested before its added to the every-10-year population count.

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The fear in immigrant-heavy areas is that asking about citizenship, which the full census has not done since 1950, will discourage a large number of people from participating. That, in turn, would lead to an undercount that could cost California a seat in Congress and billions in federal money.

INFRASTRUCTURE, AGAIN?

Infrastructure week has become a punchline in Washington.

In theory, rebuilding the nations roads, bridges and airports is a priority for Trump. In practice, each time the White House says the president will spend a week focused on the issue, he blows up the plan with a high-profile firing, an incendiary tweet or some other distraction.

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This week ran true to form, as Cathy Decker and Christi Parsons wrote: After firing Shulkin, Trump went to Ohio, ostensibly to talk about infrastructure, but held forth on almost everything but.

SEX, THREATS AND LAWYERS

The latest infrastructure week began with Stormy Daniels much anticipated 60 Minutes interview in which she alleged that she had been threatened by an unidentified man who warned her not to talk about an alleged sexual encounter with Trump.

As Michael Finnegan wrote, Trump has remained uncharacteristically quiet about the allegations by Daniels and Karen McDougal, the former Playboy model who alleges she had a 10-month affair with Trump.

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But lawyers for the two women and Trump have been busy talking in and out of court.

EVERYONE HAS LAWYERS, EXCEPT TRUMP

Even the lawyers have lawyers now. This week, David Schwartz, the lawyer for Trumps lawyer, Michael Cohen, said in a CNN interview that Cohen had deliberately never told Trump about the $130,000 hush money agreement he struck with Daniels on Trumps behalf.

That immediately led to questions about whether the non-disclosure agreement Daniels had signed was actually binding. She increasingly seems to be ignoring it, in any case.

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The one person having trouble getting lawyers is the president. He lost two more this week, as Chris Megerian wrote  Joe DiGenova and his wife and law partner, Victoria Toensing, decided not to join Trumps legal team, ostensibly because of conflicts.

That leaves Trump with a heavily depleted defense, increasingly reliant on Jay Sekulow, who is best known as an advocate for conservative religious causes, not as an expert on complex issues of criminal law.

OTHER NOTABLE DEVELOPMENTS

Gina Haspel, Trumps nominee to head the CIA, has spent a three-decade career wrapped in secrecy. Until last year, she had worked almost her entire adult life undercover.

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When she goes before the Senate later this spring for a confirmation hearing, she will suddenly be under an intense spotlight, Megerian reported. Most of the attention likely will focus on her involvement in the Bush administrations torture of detainees after the 9/11 attacks.

Haspel almost certainly will need Democratic votes to win confirmation. That makes Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the former chair of the Intelligence Committee, a key vote.

Feinstein, meantime, continues to steam toward reelection. This week, she picked up the endorsement of former Vice President Joe Biden, Sarah Wire reported.

California remains the great ATM for Democratic politics. Seema Mehta reports that Barack Obama heads to the state in May for his first, big post-presidential fundraiser, aimed at helping the partys most endangered Senate incumbent, Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri.

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Earlier this month, Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions pleased Trump by firing former FBI deputy director Andy McCabe. But this week, Sessions defied conservative wishes by refusing to appoint a second special counsel to probe the FBIs handling of politically charged investigations.

Sessions said he would ask a career prosecutor to look into the allegations, but as Joe Tanfani wrote, thats unlikely to quell demands on the right for a special counsel.

Trumps been anxious to reassure supporters that his border wall is moving ahead. So he keeps seizing on existing border construction projects to claim progress. The latest inaccurate claim involves fencing near downtown Calexico, Brittny Mejia reported.

In the face of Trumps attacks, Obama, Bush and other former presidents have remained mostly silent, Christi Parsons reports.

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SEX, POLLS AND THE MIDTERMS

The sex allegations have gotten big ratings on television; America is clearly tuning in. But as I noted at the outset, Trumps poll standing has gone up, not down.

Whats that about, and what does it mean for the midterm elections?

Forecasting the outcome of this falls midterms has become a favorite game for political insiders, and theres just enough evidence on both sides to keep everyone playing.

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On the one hand, as Mark Barabak reported, the number of incumbents deciding not to run again has reached the highest level since 1994, with Republicans making up the vast majority.

Thats a bad sign for the majority party since open seats are far easier targets for the opposition.

Another piece of evidence for Democratic hopes  the results of the special elections so far. Democrats consistently have performed well above their typical level.

On the other hand, special elections tend to be low turnout affairs. Can Democratic enthusiasm maintain a big turnout advantage in the fall, when overall turnout likely will be higher?

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And then there are the polls.

A presidents approval rating is one of the most reliable numbers for forecasting how midterm elections will turn out. If the incumbents approval number sits in the mid-30s, as Trumps did in mid-December, his party faces dire trouble.

Since mid-December, however, Trumps approval has risen 4 to 5 points in polling averages. Thats not a lot  Trumps approval fluctuates in a narrow band  but its enough to move the GOP majority from meltdown territory to merely badly at risk.

The shift largely involves Republicans. Trump hasnt won converts  he really doesnt try. But he has consolidated support within his own party, partly because hes no longer talking about healthcare, an issue on which the policies he backed were deeply unpopular, even among many Republicans. Presumably, Republicans who back Trump either dont believe Stormy Daniels or dont think shes telling them anything they didnt already know or suspect.

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How will all this play out in November? Despite much talk, no one really knows. About the most we can say is that the House majority is up for grabs, and either party could win. Well find out in a little more than seven months.

LOGISTICS

That wraps up this week. My colleague Christina Bellantoni will be back Monday with the weekday edition of Essential Politics. Until then, keep track of all the developments in national politics and the Trump administration with our Essential Washington blog, at our Politics page and on Twitter @latimespolitics.

Send your comments, suggestions and news tips to politics@latimes.com.

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David.lauter@latimes.com

@davidlauter
NASA has launched many groundbreaking missions to Mars, but its next mission will do so literally.

The Mars InSight lander, planned for launch May 5, will be the first spacecraft dedicated to studying the deep interior of the red planet. The discoveries it makes could unlock hidden secrets about the structure of Mars, how it evolved and how other rocky planets  including Earth  came to be.

The goal of InSight is nothing less than to better understand the birth of the Earth, the birth of the planet that we live on, and were going to do that by going to Mars, said Bruce Banerdt, InSights principal investigator at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada Flintridge.

Short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, InSight will be the first spacecraft to land on a planet since Curiositys Seven Minutes of Terror on Mars in 2012. When it touches down Nov. 26 in a flat plain just north of the equator called Elysium Planitia, it will unfurl its solar arrays and deploy a set of instruments designed to interrogate the planets insides.

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The lander will use its robotic arm to place a seismometer on the smooth surface. That seismometer will pick up the vibrations from marsquakes  seismic waves that have been modified by the different layers of material they have passed through. Those altered waves will allow scientists to determine what those layers of material are made of.

InSight will also hammer a heat-flow probe about 16 feet beneath the surface. The deeper the probe goes, the higher the temperature rises  and the researchers can use this to calculate how hot Mars deep interior really is.

The spacecrafts third major experiment will measure the shift in radio signals between it and Earth to figure out how much Mars north pole wobbles over the course of a Martian year. The size and frequency of that wobble will reveal clues about the planets core, including its size and density.

Understanding Mars from within could help scientists better understand the evolution of other rocky planets, including Earth as well as exoplanets far beyond our solar system. Thats because the Earths interior experienced much more churning than Mars did, erasing crucial information about what its insides used to look like. Mars inner structure should more closely reflect that early stage of planetary evolution.

How we get from a ball of featureless rock into a planet that may or may not support life is a key question in planetary science, Banerdt said.

InSight will be the first interplanetary mission launched from the West Coast  and many Southern Californians will be able to look to the skies and briefly watch the spacecraft on its journey to Mars, said Tom Hoffman, InSights project manager at Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

It should be spectacular, Hoffman said.

The launch will be an early show, he added; it is scheduled for about 4 a.m.

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amina.khan@latimes.com

Follow @aminawrite on Twitter for more science news and like Los Angeles Times Science & Health on Facebook.

MORE IN SCIENCE

NASAs dangerous Juno mission: Unravel the mysteries of Jupiter and solve the mysteries of life

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For a 3-year-old boy, a risky operation may mean a chance to hear
Author Faith Strongs name is almost synonymous to her nature.

At 95 years old, Strong may be stronger than ever.

The longtime Dana Point resident published her sixth book, The Glories of Aging, last July, earning her a first place award in the 2017 Bookvana Awards in the Health and Healing: Aging/50+ category.

It took Strong about a year to write the collection of essays which focuses on the various tribulations and delights of growing older. She placed an emphasis on the idea that just because one grows older, it does not mean he or she must become silent or even fearful.

The book also discusses the transition from being a senior to being an elderly person and the challenges that come with that change. But most of all, Strong said her book is meant to inspire everyone  no matter what age  that aging is also a time to see new beauty, new perspectives, increase self-knowledge and make a difference in the world.

I knew this was my last journey, and I wanted to help myself and others by sharing it, Strong said. I wanted others to know that growing older doesnt have to mean being quiet, afraid or betrayed by pain. While it inevitably comes with its own set of challenges, aging can be a joyful time of reflection, gratitude and acceptance.

I would describe the book as honest, humorous and applicable to other peoples lives.

Strong has authored books including Boundaries That Keep Us from Living the Words We Are One (2013), The Glories of Sobriety (2010) and Distractions That Keep Us from Being Who We Are and Doing What We Really Want to Do (1997).

Strong said in addition to being an author, she has been a philanthropist, activist and organizer.

Born in Kansas City, Mo., in 1922, Strong said she has always had a creative mind, and studied piano, painting, writing and dance. As an activist and philanthropist, Strong spent most of her life designing and conducting retreats, workshops and seminars that focus on transformational and spiritual growth.

Strong continues to be active in charity and volunteering for various local and state charities, including the Hunger Project, a nonprofit New York-based organization fighting world hunger.

As a recovered alcoholic of 54 years, Strong created Pills Anonymous, the first 12-step program for addiction to prescription medication in La Jolla during the 1960s. In 1983, she founded Creating a Sober World, a project that led to the first Alcoholics Anonymous in the Soviet Union three years later.

Strongs latest form of activism translates through her self-help and inspirational books, sharing her wisdom she has gained from living over nine decades. Although it is difficult for her to choose her favorite quote in The Glories of Aging, she said she feels one passage is most poignant:

In my nineties, my perspective of time has been transformed, she wrote. It has become more valuable, precious, and serious. I dont take it for granted anymore. Its no longer just an empty space in my day. Its up to me how I choose to spend it and live in it. If I find myself getting upset over a triviality or some insignificant moment, I try to think of something beautiful. As easy as it is to waste time, its just as easy to make it count.

Strongs latest book is available through Amazon.

My hope is that the book will help many people navigate the aging process with grace, humor and gratitude, and that they will recognize that aging can be a joyful process as well as a difficult one, Strong said. I hope that my own experiences will resonate with others and encourage them to overcome the hurdles of aging with a positive mindset.

Jackie Moe is a contributor to Times Community News.
Religion and satire make strange bedfellows; one is often hesitant to mock the beliefs of the other. So why is Segerstrom Center for the Arts packed to the rafters for its third visit from The Book of Mormon?

Quite simple  its not only because the show is hilarious, its because its so well-crafted. Authors Trey Parker and Matt Stone cut their creative teeth on TVs South Park and, with colleague Robert Lopez, came up with an outrageously funny scenario.

Young Mormon men and their two-year mission provide the starting point for this wacky clash of cultures when the two main characters are dispatched to Uganda, where almost everyone has AIDS and the local warlord is circumcising all young women. Uganda be kidding, right? Of course, right.

Sterling performances by Kevin Clay as the upright shining example youth and Conner Peirson as his schlumpy companion who tends to make things up drive this flamboyant touring production under the direction of Parker and choreographer Casey Nicholaw. The latter deserves high praise for his staging of the complex ensemble numbers.

Clays robust self-aggrandizement (You and me, but mostly me) and Peirsons continual stretching of the truth (Youre making things up again, Arnold) are rendered with satiric zeal. Theyre ably abetted by Kayla Pecchioni as a native Ugandan girl who gets under Peirsons skin so much that each of his references to her are by a different name, a clever running gag.

Nicholaws superior choreography highlights the showier segments with six other Mormon missionaries comprising a stellar dance team. The local Ugandans also are pretty light on their feet as they join in on the synchronized swiftness.

The choreographic highlight  and the one return visitors eagerly await  is the Spooky Mormon Hell Dream, in which Clays character is consumed by his guilt. Here he encounters such historic villains as Hitler, Genghis Khan, Jeffrey Dahmer and  Johnny Cochran, whose big sin is getting O.J. off. Against the backdrop of Scott Pasks hellish setting, its a monster number.

Strong supporting performances by Corey Jones as General Butt F. Naked and Ron Bohmer, tripling as Mormon founder Joseph Smith, Clays dad and the mission president, strengthen the show considerably.

You wont find a funnier show  or a more potentially offensive one, depending on your personal religious beliefs  than The Book of Mormon, which, unfortunately, will be gone after April 1. If you havent caught it the first two times it played here, dont miss this incarnation.

If You Go

What: The Book of Mormon

When: 1 and 6:30 p.m. April 1

Where: Segerstrom Center for the Arts, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa

Cost: Tickets start at $34.75

Information: (714) 556-2787 or visit scfta.org.

TOM TITUS reviews local theater.
Fountain Valley is next in line to discuss taking a stand on Californias sanctuary state immigration laws.

The City Council, at the suggestion of Councilman Larry Crandall, will take up the issue at its meeting Tuesday.

The Los Alamitos City Council kicked off a trend of resistance in Orange County when it approved an ordinance March 19 exempting the small north county city from the sanctuary laws, which aim to shield immigrants here illegally from deportation.

Since then, the Orange County Board of Supervisors passed a resolution against the laws and voted to join a federal lawsuit against California.

Several other Orange County cities have taken stances opposing the sanctuary laws or are considering taking action.

On Monday, the Huntington Beach City Council will discuss how to seek relief from the laws. And last week, Newport Beach Councilman Kevin Muldoon asked to have the sanctuary issue placed on a future agenda.

Mayoral selection

Also on Tuesday, the Fountain Valley council will consider changing the way its mayor and mayor pro tem are appointed. Both posts are for one year and are largely ceremonial.

The council was set to consider a new ordinance at its March 20 meeting, but Colin Burns, the citys attorney, said he wanted to reschedule the matter so he could tighten up the proposed language.

The council has four ordinances to look at to potentially replace the current one, in which council members choose the mayor and mayor pro tem from among themselves based on seniority on the council. The mayor pro tem typically is next in line for the top spot.

The proposed options differ in the amount of discretion afforded the council. Currently, council members have ultimate discretion, and they invoked it the past two years when they skipped then-Councilman Mark McCurdy when he came up in the rotation.

The action drew objections from McCurdy and some residents, and McCurdy resigned from the council in January, saying he needed to find work outside the area.

Tuesdays meeting starts at 4:30 p.m. with a study session, followed by the regular meeting at 6 p.m. at City Hall, 10200 Slater Ave.

hillary.davis@latimes.com

Twitter: @Daily_PilotHD
A recently completed state audit of the South Orange County Wastewater Authority, whose member agencies serve Laguna Beach, has concluded that the authority has had inadequate accounting practices and continues to have unclear guidelines regarding pension obligations.

The estimated $260,000 audit  released March 22 and done at the request of state Sen. Pat Bates (R-Laguna Niguel) and Assemblyman Bill Brough (R-Dana Point)  also notes that SOCWAs financial reporting issues stretch back some 15 years and have included a failure to understand the value of assets and to file audited statements. The report contends SOCWA has been slow to correct deficiencies in internal controls in recent years.

The seven-month audit states that if the authority were to dissolve, its unclear who would pay out employee retirement benefits. It suggests seeking clarification on the matter.

The audit also acknowledges that the Dana Point-based authority  whose members include the Emerald Bay Service District, South Coast Water District and city of Laguna Beach  has been instituting some improvements, such as hiring an outside firm to determine asset values and making plans to ensure that financial statements are filed on time. It did not specify any adverse direct effects on ratepayers.

However, the report says, there remains a $354,000 discrepancy between audited financial statements and accounting records in the amount of cash collected but not yet spent. SOCWA is investigating the gap.

SOCWA does not levy its own taxes but relies primarily on funding from its member agencies. It serves more than 500,000 homes and businesses.

SOCWA Chairman Dan Ferons said the authority fundamentally agrees with the states characterization of our past as well as our current efforts to ensure strong, transparent and accountable financial management.

Since 2014, we have worked hard to transform financial systems within SOCWA, he said. We appreciate the state auditors encouragement and support to continue on our current path.

In a joint statement, Bates and Brough said the audit validates how SOCWA has been mismanaged over several years. Missing financial statements, failure to report assets and unfulfilled public records requests are worrisome.

The legislators said they felt encouraged that SOCWA agreed with the audits findings.

We urge SOCWA to work with their stakeholders and the county auditor to remedy these issues and create better oversight in a timely manner, they said.

Officials announced the audit of SOCWA in June, a few weeks after the authority, the city of Laguna Beach, the South Coast Water District and the Emerald Bay Service District sued the Moulton Niguel Water District, alleging it had failed to pay more than $755,000 in bills toward SOCWAs wastewater treatment facility in Aliso Canyon.

Moulton Niguel filed a cross complaint in August alleging various accounting and record-keeping problems at SOCWA that were eventually examined in the state audit.

The litigation is continuing.

bradley.zint@latimes.com

Twitter: @BradleyZint
When Tess Messiha was prescribed three weeks bed rest by her physician during her pregnancy, she was worried she would have to take a leave of absence.

But the UC Irvine law student attended classes virtually in December with help from a robot she controlled from home. She could talk, listen and be called on during class discussions through her computer.

It was cool, Messiha said. I didnt feel like I missed out on anything. Its the next best thing to being in class.

The telepresence robot, called the Double 2, is made by Burlingame-based technology company Double Robotics. Its essentially a tablet computer mounted on a scooter-like dual kickstand that stands 4 feet tall and can extend.

The robot is self-balancing, with six- to eight-hour battery life. It sells for about $3,000, though prices can vary for individual products, according to the Double Robotics website.

Members of UCIs class of 2016 used their senior class gift to buy four telepresence robots for the university.

UC Irvine law and political science professor Rick Hasen stands next to student Tess Messiha, seen on the Double 2, a telepresence robot that is essentially a tablet computer mounted on a scooter-like dual kickstand that stands about 4 feet tall. (Courtesy of UCI Law )

Law and political science professor Rick Hasen described the experience with the Double 2 as unusual but said it helped instill camaraderie in his class.

In past years, Hasen said, classes would be recorded and students would watch later and email him with questions.

It wasnt bad, but this was much better, Hasen said.

Messiha is the second student to use the robot, according to Somphone Eno, assistive technology manager for the UCI Disability Services Center, which dispatches the device when needed.

Messiha could have navigated the robot around campus with her computer keyboards arrow keys, but Eno said university staff decided to pick it up and take it to her next class or a charging station to prevent wear and tear.

Messiha recently gave birth to a healthy baby boy and is now back in class in person.

The university went above and beyond to accommodate me, she said. Now its going really well.

Priscella.Vega@latimes.com

Twitter: @vegapriscella
Coal produced in non-government controlled areas in Donetsk region is supplied to Russia, as well as some enterprises that continue to work in certain areas of Donetsk region, the head of the Donetsk regional civil and military administration, Pavlo Zhebrivsky, has said.

"Yenakiyeve Iron and Steel Works aunched, and Makiyivka Metallurgical Plant is running a bit. Some mines such as Komsomolets Donbasu, Skochynsky mine, Zasiadko mine, are producing some very serious coals. They also launched some coke and chemical plants. In principle, coke is supplied to metallurgical factories of temporarily occupied Donetsk region and to Russia," Zhebrivsky told the 112 Ukraine television channel on Friday.

At the same time, he expressed doubt that this coal enters Ukraine.

"Even if Ukraine takes anthracite coal from Russia, customs officers check it on the border, and it is possible to distinguish between anthracite coal extracted on the territory of temporarily occupied Donetsk region and in the territory of Rostov or other regions of Russia."

Zhebrivsky stressed that laboratory studies had not currently confirmed any fact of the entrance into Ukraine of Russian coal extracted in the occupied territory.

"These are also no metallurgical products [that enter Ukraine] since they actually come to Turkey and were also supplied to Poland," he added.

According to Zhebrivsky, "after a serious scandal" Poland stopped purchasing coal from occupied Donbas through Russia.
The Childrens Hospital of Orange County this week celebrated completion of an 18-bed mental health inpatient facility, the only center in the county to offer inpatient services to kids younger than 12.

The 12,000-square-foot center is being touted as a vital answer to the deficit of mental health care for children in the county.

Up until now, the kids in the county would have to go to the emergency room, said Dr. Wayne Nguyen, the medical director of the new inpatient center. If they are so severe that they need hospitalization, then they would have to go out of the county.

The center will begin admitting patients on April 17. Plans for the facility were announced in May 2015 and CHOC began construction in September 2016.

Nguyen said there likely will be a waiting list.

The center, located on the third floor of the hospital in Orange, will serve to stabilize children, ages 3 to 17, in the grips of a mental health crisis. Children will usually be admitted from the emergency room, though sometimes through referrals from doctors, Nguyen said.

To be admitted to the unit, children have to be either a danger to themselves and others or be gravely disabled.

The new mental health inpatient center at Childrens Hospital of Orange County has 18 separate patient rooms. (Scott Smeltzer / Staff Photographer )

CHOC chief psychologist Heather Huszti said Monday during a tour of the center that the facility is not seeking to cure patients, but rather to discharge them after aiding them through their crisis with a new set of practices and principles to help in warding off future mental breaks.

Stays will generally range from five to seven days.

It will be the only center in California to have a private room for each patient. Young children will have the option to have their parents stay with them.

Huszti said the center wants to include parents in the healing process.

Also atypical for inpatient services, the facility will run specialty programming every day. Nguyen said the programs will span the day, with community groups where patients can set goals, various activities that teach coping skills, recreational classes that outline how to play and time management, classwork time and meetings with therapists.

Aside from the 18 separate rooms for each patient, which are fairly small and consist of a sole bed and chair, the center has a variety of rooms to support the programming.

Theres a classroom with a big-screen television, activity rooms with game tables, one high-sensory room and another low-sensory room  both meant to aid patients in managing their emotions.

The sensory-rich room contains a fuzzy, blue LED-lit wall and a bubbling tube of water that changes color by flipping a large, colored dice. The low-stimulation room has a blue chair and orange bin.

An activity room at the new mental health inpatient center at Childrens Hospital of Orange County. (Scott Smeltzer / Staff Photographer )

Walls throughout the facility are adorned with various nature art meant to promote a calming environment.

A vibrantly-colored outdoor playground will offer patients the ability to engage with soothing activities like play on a colored drum set, gaze at a sensory wall with art of various sea life or take a stroll along a blue track.

Safety was an important part of the centers design.

Each part of the facility was planned with the tendencies of suicidal children in mind. Special handles are affixed to doors, sprinklers are sunken into the ceiling and cabinet handles dont have spaces for finger holds so patients cannot hang themselves.

The top of each door also has a sensor to monitor whether someone is trying to hang themselves.

Each patients room has a smaller door that only opens from the outside in case a hospital team member needs to access the room quickly.

During the planning phase, hospital members visited various facilities throughout the state and country for inspiration, including Clarity Child Guidance Center in San Antonio and the Seattle Childrens Hospital.

One of several group rooms at the new mental health inpatient center at Childrens Hospital of Orange County. (Scott Smeltzer / Staff Photographer )

Nguyen said the center is the first new mental health facility in Orange County in more than two decades and it will play a crucial role in treating the generally underserved mental health needs of the countys children. Traditionally, parents have had to bring their children to the emergency room, which isnt equipped to deal with mental health issues.

Most emergency rooms arent set to deal with mental health problems because its time consuming and it requires specialty care that they dont usually have, Nguyen said.

Nguyen said there are only about 40 psychiatric beds available for adolescents in the county. More than half of the countys kids are forced to leave its boundaries for inpatient services.

This has always been needed  its just that there hasnt been anybody willing to step up, Nguyen said. Its not a money-making venture for hospitals to provide psychiatric beds.

The $13.2-million facility was funded through individual donations, government funding and grants. Sandy Segerstrom Daniels, founder of the nonprofit Festival of Children Foundation, donated $5 million to the center.

benjamin.brazil@latimes.com

Twitter:@benbrazilpilot
Its that time of year again, when Christian believers attend Easter services and hear the story of Jesus resurrection. People of other faiths have their own ways of speaking about the nexus between life and death, many of which provide opportunities for respectful and mutually helpful interfaith conversation.

And then there are those who suspect that words like resurrection, afterlife or immortality are vestiges of ancient mythology that provide ways to escape the reality of death. The truth be told, there are many people attending religious services who harbor plenty of doubt about the literal, metaphysical resurrection as well.

If you are one of those for whom the whole idea of resurrection is suspect, I commiserate with you. The usual course of resurrection-speak lessens the value of life by arguing that, since there is life after death, death itself is simply a passageway from a lower form of being to a higher one.

That, in turn, diminishes the meaning and value of life-as-we-know-it into nothing more than a necessary step toward that passageway. In the end, such an approach to resurrection leaves us with no reason to care about the environment, or health, or justice, or anything beyond doing what it takes to get through the door to resurrection.

There is a better way of understanding resurrection, and it is grounded in an obscure argument that Jesus had with some of his folk who believed the Scriptures but not in the resurrection (Mark 12:18-27). It takes a while to unpack the nuances of this conversation, but the upshot is this: Jesus treats resurrection less as a doctrine from reading the Scriptures and more as a lens through which one can read the Scriptures. I would suggest that resurrection is not only a lens for reading the Scriptures, but can also be a lens for viewing the world.

Lets mark out in broad strokes what the Scriptures can mean when interpreted through the lens of resurrection. Creation stories show death to be part of a larger story of the fertility of life  the seed must fall to the ground and die to produce abundance. The stories of the covenant that God made with Abram and Sarai shows how two persons, whose own capacities for fertility were dead, bring life through which all nations will be blessed.

The law becomes a dying and rising reality, not a dead letter etched in stone. The rise and fall of kingdoms, the suffering and return of exiles, the despair of the suffering servant, the hope of the one coming in clouds, the expectation of Elijahs return  are all stories of how inasmuch as God lives, so do Gods promises. Resurrection makes all the difference between seeing the Scriptures as accounts of things that happened but are not happening anymore, and as accounts of how God continuously brings new life where no life is expected.

And lets wonder in broad strokes what the world can mean when interpreted through the lens of resurrection. In a time when the ecosystems, species, and the sustainability of life-as-we-know-it itself are imperiled, resurrection does not say, Its OK, once this world passes well all be in heaven.

Instead, resurrection gives us the courage that this world itself can be the dead stump that sprouts new life, so we can live with hope for renewing the earth. In a time when we are tempted to write off homeless persons as hopeless persons, resurrection invites us to see the redemptive possibilities of their lives and to treat them as neighbors.

In a time when our only solution to gun violence is to arm more of us and ramp up the violence into a localized version of mutually assured destruction, resurrection enables us to see that living with constant vigilant fear is not really living. Just as the early Christians found resurrection to be a power that disarmed the Roman Empires culture of death, resurrection today can redefine the powers that threaten to undo us, which diminish the nature and value of life itself.

Our celebration of Easter this weekend need not be all about providing an escape route from lifes troubles or from a world that is headed toward disaster. It is about believing that even in our deepest despair God brings new life.

MARK DAVIS is the pastor of St. Mark Presbyterian Church in Newport Beach.
Ive been following the plight of the homeless from the Santa Ana River, and the almost universal rejections by the local communities to provide emergency space for them to live is appalling.

We have rallies to protest building a wall, we complain about an administration rejecting those from abroad who need help and then immediately turn our back on local community members who simply need a place to lay their head at night.

Supporting a group with such specific needs and inherent difficulties is challenging, but their lives are challenging each and every minute. We only prolong their pain when we only consider our comfort.

Eric Kuyper

Costa Mesa

An alternative to proposed Koll project

The developers are planning to build 260 very large condominiums stacked inside three, 13-story towers on top of parking lots currently located within a large office complex. They are being marketed to people without children who are supposedly looking for a luxury residence and have over $2 million to spend for it. Im not sure a condo in the middle of an office park is what theyre looking for, no matter how luxurious it might be.

But nearby housing in the area is what the folks who work inside those offices want and need. Right now theyre making up to two-hour commutes to work every day from what are currently the only affordable homes in the area. How about building some moderately priced town houses for them on this property?

Add a little nursery school, a playground in a park and a little market. In 10 minutes the residents can walk to work, and as theyre walking home, pick up their child from nursery school and buy a bottle of milk from the mini-mart. And they can do all of this without once getting into the car and adding to our miserable traffic congestion. Nice for them and nice for us.

Andrea Lingle

Newport Beach

How to get published: Email us at dailypilot@latimes.com. All correspondence must include full name, hometown and phone number (for verification purposes). The Pilot reserves the right to edit all submissions for clarity and length.
Dignity Health Glendale Memorial Hospital recently received a $2.5-million donation from the S. H. Ho Foundation.

In honor of the contribution, hospital officials will rename the plaza in the center of the facilitys campus as the S. H. Ho Plaza.

We are truly grateful for the S. H. Ho Foundation and [its] unwavering confidence in our mission to serve the poor and disenfranchised, said Julie Sprengel, senior vice president of operations for Dignity Health Southern California and interim chief executive of Glendale Memorial. We truly value our shared belief that the homeless, sick and suffering deserve access to healthcare delivered with humankindness.

With this recent gift, the Glendale Memorial Health Foundation has raised $4.1 million in its three-year Humankindness in the Making campaign, which started in 2016, with a goal to secure $5 million for facility upgrades and expansion, including the relocating and remodeling of the hospitals digestive health lab and the Center for Wound Healing and Hyperbaric Medicine.

mark.kellam@latimes.com

Twitter: @lamarkkellam
You can fly round trip to Mexico City from LAX for $198, including all taxes and fees, on Aeromexico and Delta.

The fare, subject to availability, must be purchased at least 21 days in advance. It is for travel through May 31 any day. You must stay at least seven nights.

A magnitude-7.1 quake struck the capital on Sept. 19, killing 225. But staff writer Christopher Reynolds wrote after a trip to Mexico City in February that he found it was business as usual at tourist attractions in the capital and at the pyramids at Teotihuacan.

In other parts of the city, he wrote, Many buildings remain shut or under reconstruction, especially in the Roma and La Condesa neighborhoods.

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Puebla, a colonial town about 85 miles southeast of Mexico City, was largely untouched.

Info: Aeromexico, (800) 237-6639; Delta, (800) 221-1212.

Source: Airfarewatchdog

travel@latimes.com

@latimestravel
Spring fashion weeks in New York, London, Milan and Paris are over, but museum shows featuring Cardin, Dior and others are not. Here are five exhibitions that teach us about style, couture and why its easy to obsess on fashion.

New York City

Each spring, the Metropolitan Museum salutes fashion in a grand way. The 2018 exhibition promises styles and designs inspired by what the museum calls the Catholic imagination. Religious patterns echo in early 21st century couture pieces, such as John Gallianos gold-and-white fitted gown for Dior that looks like a papal vestment, complete with a mitre-shaped hat.

Dolce & Gabbanas full-length dress shimmers with what looks like pieces of a religious mosaic. In addition to contemporary styles, the exhibition will also feature items from the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City, including papal vestments, rings and tiaras from the 18th century to the modern day. The show will be on display at the Met Fifth Avenue and its sister location, the Cloisters.

Bath, England

With the May 19 royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle on everyones mind, an exhibition at the Fashion Museum Bath might be the perfect mood-setter. Royal Women shows the fashions that have defined wives and daughters, sisters and mothers of queens and kings.

From Queen Elizabeth IIs collection come a gray silk satin ball gown worn by her mother in 1954 and glamorous designer gowns worn by her sister, Princess Margaret. Historic pieces include a wedding dress worn by Alexandra, Princess of Wales.

Info: Royal Women, through April 28

London

Frida Kahlo on a bench, carbon print, 1938, photo by Nickolas Muray. The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection

Artist Frida Kahlo as a fashionista? But of course. In 2004, cupboards and rooms in her beloved Blue House in Mexico City were opened after half a century.

Now some of those possessions  clothing, accessories, jewelry, photographs and even one of her prosthetic legs  will travel to Londons V&A. The show includes her paintings, such as My Dress Hangs There (1933) and The Love Embrace, (1943), as well as items that show the connection between her clothes and personal effects and her distinctive style.

Denver

Denver has put together one of the biggest Christian Dior retrospectives around. The citys Art Museum will host a show that looks at 70 years at the Paris fashion house. It starts with the style revolution after World War II and continues to the modern day.

The designer changed everything by creating feminine, fitted waists and accentuated busts in the postwar era. The show features 150 dresses plus accessories, photographs, fashion drawings and runway videos that tell a chronological tale.

Atlanta

Pierre Cardin's cocktail dresses with conical breasts, 1966. Archives Pierre Cardin / Savannah College of Art and Design

The work of another French designer known as the vanguard of the avant-garde is on display at SCAD FASH Museum of Fashion + Film. Pierre Cardin gets a retrospective that underscores his futuristic styles of the 1960s.

Case in point: his cocktail dresses with conical breasts circa 1966. Cardin, who will be 95 in July, broke with the couture model in 1959 and sent ready-to-wear clothes down his fashion runways. His actions redefined the business side of the industry.

The retrospective exhibition chronicles seven decades of his work.
A fire on a double-decker bus carrying migrant workers killed 20 people early Friday, a week after two other incidents showed the continuing dangers of Thailands roads.

The fire was reported to police around 1:30 a.m. in Tak province in western Thailand along the border with Myanmar. The bus was heading to a factory in an industrial zone near Bangkok. Local media said the workers were from Myanmar.

Police Lt. Raewat Aiemtak said 27 people managed to escape the fire, with one severely burned.

The cause of the fire wasnt immediately known, but Raewat said the driver reported the fire started in the middle of the bus and spread quickly. People in the front managed to escape but those in the back of the vehicle were trapped, he said.

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On March 21, a chartered tour bus lost control on a downhill curve in Thailands northeast and slid off the road, killing 18 people and injuring 33. A day later, a bus on a school trip in the central province of Ayutthaya skidded in the rain and flipped, injuring 39 people.

Thailand has the second-highest rate of traffic fatalities in the world after Libya, according to World Health Organization statistics.
Two coalition troops were killed Thursday in Syria and five others were wounded when an improvised explosive device detonated, the U.S.-led coalition announced Friday. The attack was considered a harbinger of increased tensions in areas where the U.S. is present

A coalition statement Friday said the attack occurred at approximately 9 p.m GMT, but did not reveal the location of the explosion nor the nationalities of those who were killed or wounded.

Later, a Pentagon official said one of those killed was a U.S. serviceman.

The U.K.s ministry of defense also confirmed in a statement that one of its soldiers embedded with U.S. forces on a counter-Daesh operation was killed. Daesh is the Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

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Three activists in the Arab-Kurdish town of Manbij, where U.S. troops are stationed, approximately 50 miles northeast of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, reported hearing a large explosion late Thursday night.

In its aftermath, residents said ambulances and security vehicles gathered in the area while the sounds of aircraft could be heard flying overhead.

Munir Hajji, an activist in Manbij, said in a conversation on Facebook Messenger on Friday that the explosion was caused by a mine attached to a pickup truck in the towns center.

The truck was parked near the headquarters of the Northern Sun Battalion, a militia that is part of the Syrian Democratic Forces, a grouping of Arab and Kurdish militias that has become the U.S. main ground force in its battle against Islamic State.

But Turkey classifies the SDFs militiamen as terrorists linked to restive Kurdish separatist groups at home, against which it has fought a decades-long insurgency war.

Infuriated by Washingtons support for Syrias Kurds, Ankara launched a wide-scale campaign in January, dubbed Operation Olive Branch, to rout the SDF from near the Syrian-Turkish border. The militiamen had hoped the area could become a Kurdish state on Syrian soil.

Earlier this month, Turkish special forces working alongside Syrian rebel groups captured Afrin, a Kurdish-majority enclave near Aleppo city. They now have Manbij in their sights, said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a March 21 speech, even if it meant attacking U.S. troops working alongside the Kurds there.

[U.S. troops] reportedly wont get out of Manbij, Erdogan said, according to Turkish state news operator Anadolu. You have no right to be there in the first place. Why are you coming here from 11,000 kilometers? Are these your lands?

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The dispute has intensified despite attempts by former U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to reach an agreement with Ankara on Manbij, including a proposal for joint U.S.-Turkish patrols and removal of all SDF elements and associated administrative bodies in the town.

The attack in Manbij came hours after President Trump said the U.S. would be coming out of Syria very soon, contradicting recent Pentagon statements referring to a long-term U.S. presence in the country.

We are knocking the hell out of ISIS. Well be coming out of Syria, like, very soon, said Trump in a speech in Ohio on Thursday, using an acronym for Islamic State.

We are going to have 100% of the caliphate, as they call it, sometimes referred to as land. ... But we are going to be coming out of there real soon. We are going to get back to our country, where we belong, where we want to be.

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He added that the U.S. had spent $7 trillion in the Middle East.

And you know what we have for it? Nothing.

Bulos is a special correspondent.

UPDATES:

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12:25 p.m. This article was updated throughout with staff reporting and new details, including that that the other soldier killed is British.

8:55 a.m. This article was updated with the information that one of the troops killed was American.

This article was originally published at 3:25 a.m.
ICRC hands over about three tonnes of medicines to ORDLO

About three tonnes of medicines were donated by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to ORDLO on Thursday, the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine has reported.

"One truck from the International Committee of the Red Cross Mission with medical supplies with a total weight of 2.8 tonnes has travelled through the Novotroyitske checkpoint [Donetsk region] over the past day," the State Border Guard Service said on Friday.
Mykolaiv Governor Savchenko files letter of resignation pending probe into death of acting director of Mykolaiv Intl Airport Voloshyn

Head of Mykolaiv Regional State Administration Oleksiy Savchenko has submitted to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko a letter of resignation pending the probe into the suicide case of acting director of Mykolaiv International Airport Vladysav Voloshyn.

"I submitted a letter of resignation on this matter and registered it today. It was registered on March 30, its number is 3231934301," Savchenko told journalists in Kyiv on Friday, demonstrating a handwritten document.
Following three nights of interviews with candidates, Allentown City Council deadlocked for 11 rounds of voting Thursday night, unable to select a new interim mayor.

On the 12th ballot, a council member finally gave in, giving former city Councilman Ray O'Connell the win.

O'Connell will serve through Dec. 31, 2019, the day before the city's next mayor elected by voters is to be sworn in.

He succeeds disgraced ex-Mayor Ed Pawlowski, who resigned days after his conviction in his federal corruption trial. Council President Roger MacLean has been serving as interim mayor.

O'Connell, a longtime Allentown educator, was one of two candidates for interim mayor who was nearly barred from consideration. The other was Hasshan Batts, who is director of operations for Promise Neighborhoods of the Lehigh Valley in Allentown.

The city solicitor's office said O'Connell is ineligible to serve because the city's 1987 Home Rule Charter prohibits any city appointment within one year of someone leaving the city's employ; O'Connell's council tenure ended in January.

Batts was ineligible to be mayor because of prior felony convictions, the solicitor's office ruled.

Going against the solicitor's opinion, council voted to consider the candidacies of both O'Connell and Batts.

Through 11 ballots Thursday night in council chambers, three council members each voted for O'Connell and for Charlie Thiel, another of the 17 city Democrats with whom council scheduled interviews this week. An initial field of 32 candidates was whittled down over other eligibility issues.

Councilwoman Cynthia Mota consistently voted Thursday night for Batts before backing O'Connell in the 12th round. City Clerk Michael Hanlon, who read council's handwritten ballots aloud, said after 15 rounds of deadlock, the decision on who becomes interim mayor would have been out of council's hands.

Had council failed to appoint someone, Lehigh County Court could have been petitioned by three council members or 10 registered city voters to fill the vacancy with someone who is qualified.

The other council members backing O'Connell were Ed Zucal, Daryl Hendricks and Julio Guridy. Voting for Thiel were council members Candida Affa, Courtney Robinson and MacLean, the president and interim mayor.

"No Dr. Batts? No O'Connell," angry residents started to chant, a reference to the solicitor's office concerns about their eligibility. Batts holds a doctorate degree in health science from Nova Southeastern University in Florida.

Robinson was among those who spoke out on Batts' behalf, but indicated council's hands were tied.

"Unfortunately we are just coming out of a situation in which rules that elected officials didn't like were ignored, and that's why we're here tonight," he said. "That's why the candidates are here tonight."

MacLean said he was impressed with Batts and his ideas, but he voted against allowing both O'Connell and Batts to continue with their candidacies this week.

Residents spoke out from the audience, and Allentown officials confirmed, that York residents elected a mayor with prior felony convictions. But that was based on a York County Common Pleas Court decision, not a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling that cites the Pennsylvania Constitution and takes precedence, Assistant Solicitor Frances Fruhwirth said.

"A person with a felony is ineligible to hold a position of public trust," Fruhwirth said Thursday night. "In other words, it's a disqualification by virtue of Constitutional mandate. It's not something city council has any control over."

Emily Opilo, who covered Pawlowski's indictment and trial and the mayoral selection extensively for The Morning Call, shared via Twitter the opinion of city Solicitor Daniel McCarthy's office that Batts is ineligible to be interim mayor after having pleaded guilty to two counts of drug possession with intent to deliver and being sentenced to prison. Authorities found him with 5 kilograms of cocaine, two bales of marijuana, six loaded guns and $50,000 cash, according to the ruling.

Here's the Allentown solicitor's opinion on Batts' eligibility pic.twitter.com/f211kKt9hY  Emily Opilo (@emilyopilo) March 29, 2018

Batts, who is 42, had been arrested in September 2007 in the Lehigh County case. He was sentenced in August 2008 to five to 10 years in state prison. His court docket reads as of October 2012, "Penalty Satisfied."

He was upfront about his past, writing in his application letter to council: "I've experienced firsthand the negative impact of incarceration and the redemption that is possible through hard work and a commitment to actualize one's potential. Overcoming the difficulties of growing up in an impoverished neighborhood helped me develop the compassion, grit and unique perspective of someone who's experienced the pain of poverty, crime, drugs and struggle up close."

MacLean, a former Allentown police chief, said that with 40 years' law enforcement experience, he appreciates what it takes for someone to turn their live around.

"It's beyond city council's ability to change it right now," he said.

Mota, along with a sizable and vocal chunk of the audience Thursday night, was unswayed in her view that Batts was the right person for the job.

"We gave him an opportunity to interview. We listened to the public," she said, turning to Guridy, who had commended residents for speaking out with a sense of "hope for the city, regardless of who the mayor is."

"I agree with you, they're asking for change, for hope," Mota said. "But I mean, we need to give people hope and giving hope is also part of changing, part of changing the system. And it is a shame."

She said council is guilty of a double standard, after its vote to ban the box on city job applications that asks whether someone has been convicted of a crime.

O'Connell served on Allentown City Council from 2009 through 2017, and also waged a write-in campaign for mayor last year after Pawlowski refused to suspend his campaign while under indictment. O'Connell had come in second in the 2017 Democratic primary election behind Pawlowski, who went on to win a fourth four-year term that began this past New Year's Day.

O'Connell was sworn-in immediately Thursday night.

He has a master's in education from Lehigh University and worked for the Allentown School District from 1972 until 2010, most recently as a consultant in human resources, alternative education programs and community and student services.

"My first priority will be to restore trust and confidence in city government," O'Connell wrote in his application to be considered for interim mayor. "We must make it absolutely clear that the 'for sale' sign put in front of city hall is gone for good.

"We will do this by reforming the ethics board, rekindling a relationship with city staff and city council and making sure that our fiscal house is in order."

Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Aaron Ibrahem (Courtesy photo)

Authorities have identified a masked gunman fatally shot by a trooper outside a Lehigh Valley Walmart.

Aaron Ibrahem, 26, of Longswamp Township, Berks County, was shot multiple times Wednesday night after he allegedly shot at a trooper investigating a possible theft at the store in Lower Macungie Township.

Ibrahem died of multiple gun shot wounds. The manner of death will be determined after the investigation into the fatal shooting is complete.

No one else was injured and the shooting is under investigation by state police.

Ibrahem served county prison sentence for leading police on a chase in Northampton County, and threatening to shoot officers.

On Aug. 14, 2014, officers tried to stop Ibrahem for cracks in his windshield. Ibrahem led police on a chase where he drove through stop signs and struck a parked car, only stopping after his vehicle burst into flames on Schoenersville Road.

Ibrahem falsely claimed he had a gun behind his back, and threatened to shoot police if they used stun guns on him, court records say. Police eventually stunned Ibrahem and arrested him.

He pleaded guilty to fleeing and attempting to elude police, resisting arrest, driving under suspension and leaving the scene of an accident involving an unattended vehicle.

Pennsylvania court records show his last criminal case was retail theft and criminal mischief charges in Montgomery County in 2016. He pleaded guilty to two counts of retail theft and was sentenced 94 days to 23 months, followed by two years of probation.

Records show he was paroled in May 2017.

State police said a little before 9 p.m. Wednesday, Ibrahem walked into the store at 1091 Mill Creek Road wearing a wig and mask.

Employees saw him filling up a shopping cart, and called state police, who cover the township.

State police Capt. Richard D'

Ambrosio said Ibrahem saw a trooper arrive at the store, abandoned the shopping cart and tried to leave.

The trooper, who has not yet been identified, told the man to stop. Instead, Ibrahem allegedly took off through the parking lot, pulled a .40-caliber Glock from his waistband and fired a shot at the trooper.

Ibrahem was able to get into his white van in the parking lot, and pointed the gun at the trooper, who opened fire, police said. Authorities said the trooper shot nine times, and struck the man multiple times through the van's windshield and side door.

Ibrahem died at the scene, and the gun was found in his lap.

The trooper, a four-year state police veteran who just joined the Fogelsville barracks this week, was placed on administrative duty while the incident is under investigation.

Police have said Ibrahem matched the description of a theft suspect in Saint Clair, Schuylkill County.

In that incident in early March, a man in a mask and wig was approached by a loss prevention officer at Walmart. The suspect pulled a handgun and was able to get away, state police said.

Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @SarahCassi. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
A 69-year-old Berks County man is charged with killing his 96-year-old mother by not providing her with "necessary care and medication," the Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office reports.

Anton Bodanza, 69, of Wernersville, Pennsylvania. (Courtesy photo | For lehighvalleylive.com)

Anton Bodanza, of Wernersville, was arraigned Thursday on a singe count of criminal homicide related to the June death of Sarafina Bodanza, Attorney General Josh Shapiro said in a news release.

After authorities were contacted, Sarafina Bodanza was treated for five days in a hospital for symptoms of fluid overload, congestive heart failure and respiratory failure, Shapiro said.

"This is a horrific case where a man essentially neglected his mother to death," Shapiro said in a prepared statement. "Our Medicaid Fraud Control Unit's Neglect Team works every day to protect seniors and vulnerable citizens. We're using every resource at our disposal to protect care-dependent Pennsylvanians."

Anton Bodanza was his mother's primary caregiver and as such was supposed to give her Lasix to reduce water retention caused by her heart failure, Shapiro said.

But Anton Bodanza regularly told medical professionals that the medication caused her to urinate too frequently, Shapiro said.

When challenged by police about his mother's declining health, Anton Bodanza said, "God doesn't want her to have medicine and God will take care of her." He later admitted he "was tired of cleaning up the mess" from her frequent urination, Shapiro said.

During a visit, Sarafina Bodanza's daughter Cheryl Wall noticed her mother had gained 40 to 50 pounds of water weight between March and June 2017, Shapiro said. She called emergency services on June 15 and, when EMS arrived, Anton Bodanza "refused to acknowledge Sarafina's dire physical state and was resistant to allowing medical attention," Shapiro said.

Anton Bodanza was held without bail, records show. His preliminary hearing is tentative scheduled 9:30 a.m. April 10 in District Judge Ann L. Young's court.

Court papers do not show an attorney for Anton Bodanza.

Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
KYIV. March 30 (Interfax-Ukraine) - NGO "Odesa Natives Together" invites foreign ambassadors, in particular those from the G7 countries, to Odesa in the hope of attracting more foreign tourists to the city in future.

"We plan that foreign tourists, whom, unfortunately, there are not so many in Odesa, [will come] ... I would like people from Europe, Canada, the United States to come here," Head of NGO "Odesa Natives Together" Illia Luponosov said at a press conference at Interfax-Ukraine.

"A good and fast way to help the city is to attract tourists, show our city, invite people," he added.

According to the head of the organization, activists, actors, the "living statues" of Potemkin and Duke de Richelieu with theatrical performances on March 30 visit the embassies of foreign countries in Kyiv and invite ambassadors to visit Odesa.

Luponosov noted that representatives of the public organization also state "they guarantee security and good rest" in the city.

He added that invitations will be given in the diplomatic missions of the G7 countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States), as well as Bulgaria and Belgium.
Business ACEX lifehacks. What Freights are Going by Plane.



30.03.2018 14:12:34 - Based on practical experience of managers of the company with the 25years experience in airfreight.



(live-PR.com) - Participants of foreign trade activities employees, manufacturers and exporters dont know how to organize the cargo transportation and what to start from sending necessary goods abroad. The representatives of such companies address forwarding agents and consult at a planning stage with them.



This publication is aimed at informing the experts who require defining independently whether it is necessary to send - Participants of foreign trade activities employees, manufacturers and exporters dont know how to organize the cargo transportation and what to start from sending necessary goods abroad. The representatives of such companies address forwarding agents and consult at a planning stage with them.This publication is aimed at informing the experts who require defining independently whether it is necessary to send freight by air and to understand how the logistic companies experts act.



Types of Cargo for Airfreight



Most of people have an assumption that the airfreight is expensive, and we have to define what can specifically be sent by air and why:



- expensive, valuable freights because of high need for strict control of process of transportation or protection of the goods. The owners need to know constant placement of freights and the exact schedule of delivery. It can be objects of art, jewelry, historical values, banknotes and so on.;





- time critical cargo, i.e. when it is necessary to deliver even inexpensive goods, but very quickly. It can be spare parts / components / machines, the equipment or when penalties for delay of delivery of goods are higher, than expenses on airfreight (the medical or hi-tech equipment);



- delivery of perishable goods, food, flowers (fresh);



- live animals: antelopes, tigers, seals, etc.;





- when airfreight is the only way of delivery;



- cargo of small volume and weight, and dimensions.



"All these factors are relative, and it is necessary to make a start from needs of the client,  the coordinator of ACEX agency network Evgenia Vidulina tells. It is possible to haul the same freight equally both by air and by car. Transit time in airfreight and road delivery from Europe to Moscow dont differ much. But in this case cost is more relevant".



How to Choose Airline



If you have decided to send cargo by air, then the choice of airline which will be engaged in sending your product will be made on the basis of knowledge and experience of the carrier. Airlines generally don't work directly with cargo owners therefore it is necessary to address the forwarding agent. Members of ACEX Alliance have preferences in the choice of airlines.



The world of air transportation has a structure of the transported cargo between cargo airlines and the passenger companies. The expert knows what airline carries out necessary service during the first conversation with the client. "It is generally connected with type of passenger planes, - the director of ACEX St. Petersburg Evgeny Apasov comments. In shortly - and medium-haul types of planes there are restrictions on weight and dimensions of freights. Modern long-haul planes have an opportunity to transport freights of considerable volume. Airfreight is generally carried out on averages and long distances. And consolidation of freight traffics happens between the developed historically and economically regional cargo hubs (for example Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Dubai, Hong Kong, Shanghai)".



Charter or Regular Flight?



There are no restrictions on the weight of a cargo, it is possible to carry an envelope, and the maximum volume defines the direction speaking about regular flights. Besides, there are always charters which can load decent dimensions. Everything depends on characteristics of the aircraft which can take your cargo. According to the director of the department of cargo charters of Air Charter Service (ACS), the member of ACEX Alliance, Dmitry Nikulin the field of activity of their company isn't mass business for a number of reasons. Nevertheless, there is a set of situations when the client needs charter transportation. These are projects with delivery by air of large-size, urgent or dangerous loads, cases when it is necessary to deliver a cargo to remote places, and also when the cargo can't be delivered by regular flights but urgent transportation is necessary. "Charters transport consumer goods as well during the periods of peak demand, - Dmitry Nikulin tells.  During a flu epidemic we carried out the project on transportation of medical masks from China. Charters often are the unique way of urgent delivery of larger consignments as, for example, for delivery of humanitarian aid after natural disasters  by inquiries of the humanitarian organizations ACS organized delivery of hundreds of tons of the help to affected regions".



There are no Rules without Exceptions



Specialist can even deliver the most "not aviation freight" by plane. Transportation of 300 tons of ceramic proppant from Moscow to the UAE for the oil-extracting industry which has been realized by the staff of ACEX Moscow in 2009 can be an example of such a delivery. The material represents sand for drilling of oil wells. The delivery was required in a short time because of urgent works in the UAE.



Depending on objectives, specialists of the logistic companies select several options of cargo delivery. It is necessary to pay attention to features and requirements of the country of departure/appointment. The requirements of the transit countries to documents, packing, marking of cargo, so the client could estimate possible risks and also financial and temporary advantages of this or that route and type of transportation.



For reference:



The international basic statistics which is almost not changing under the influence of economic crisis is as follows: weight share of the cargo transported by the air transport makes only 1,3-1,5% of all the cargo transported in the world by all means of transport, but at the same time makes this share is 35% of their total cost.



In other words, it makes sense to transport by air small on volume but expensive goods .

freight by air and to understand how the logistic companies experts act.Types of Cargo for AirfreightMost of people have an assumption that the airfreight is expensive, and we have to define what can specifically be sent by air and why:- expensive, valuable freights because of high need for strict control of process of transportation or protection of the goods. The owners need to know constant placement of freights and the exact schedule of delivery. It can be objects of art, jewelry, historical values, banknotes and so on.;- time critical cargo, i.e. when it is necessary to deliver even inexpensive goods, but very quickly. It can be spare parts / components / machines, the equipment or when penalties for delay of delivery of goods are higher, than expenses on airfreight (the medical or hi-tech equipment);- delivery of perishable goods, food, flowers (fresh);- live animals: antelopes, tigers, seals, etc.;- when airfreight is the only way of delivery;- cargo of small volume and weight, and dimensions."All these factors are relative, and it is necessary to make a start from needs of the client,  the coordinator of ACEX agency network Evgenia Vidulina tells. It is possible to haul the same freight equally both by air and by car. Transit time in airfreight and road delivery from Europe to Moscow dont differ much. But in this case cost is more relevant".How to Choose AirlineIf you have decided to send cargo by air, then the choice of airline which will be engaged in sending your product will be made on the basis of knowledge and experience of the carrier. Airlines generally don't work directly with cargo owners therefore it is necessary to address the forwarding agent. Members of ACEX Alliance have preferences in the choice of airlines.The world of air transportation has a structure of the transported cargo between cargo airlines and the passenger companies. The expert knows what airline carries out necessary service during the first conversation with the client. "It is generally connected with type of passenger planes, - the director of ACEX St. Petersburg Evgeny Apasov comments. In shortly - and medium-haul types of planes there are restrictions on weight and dimensions of freights. Modern long-haul planes have an opportunity to transport freights of considerable volume. Airfreight is generally carried out on averages and long distances. And consolidation of freight traffics happens between the developed historically and economically regional cargo hubs (for example Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Dubai, Hong Kong, Shanghai)".Charter or Regular Flight?There are no restrictions on the weight of a cargo, it is possible to carry an envelope, and the maximum volume defines the direction speaking about regular flights. Besides, there are always charters which can load decent dimensions. Everything depends on characteristics of the aircraft which can take your cargo. According to the director of the department of cargo charters of Air Charter Service (ACS), the member of ACEX Alliance, Dmitry Nikulin the field of activity of their company isn't mass business for a number of reasons. Nevertheless, there is a set of situations when the client needs charter transportation. These are projects with delivery by air of large-size, urgent or dangerous loads, cases when it is necessary to deliver a cargo to remote places, and also when the cargo can't be delivered by regular flights but urgent transportation is necessary. "Charters transport consumer goods as well during the periods of peak demand, - Dmitry Nikulin tells.  During a flu epidemic we carried out the project on transportation of medical masks from China. Charters often are the unique way of urgent delivery of larger consignments as, for example, for delivery of humanitarian aid after natural disasters  by inquiries of the humanitarian organizations ACS organized delivery of hundreds of tons of the help to affected regions".There are no Rules without ExceptionsSpecialist can even deliver the most "not aviation freight" by plane. Transportation of 300 tons of ceramic proppant from Moscow to the UAE for the oil-extracting industry which has been realized by the staff of ACEX Moscow in 2009 can be an example of such a delivery. The material represents sand for drilling of oil wells. The delivery was required in a short time because of urgent works in the UAE.Depending on objectives, specialists of the logistic companies select several options of cargo delivery. It is necessary to pay attention to features and requirements of the country of departure/appointment. The requirements of the transit countries to documents, packing, marking of cargo, so the client could estimate possible risks and also financial and temporary advantages of this or that route and type of transportation.For reference:The international basic statistics which is almost not changing under the influence of economic crisis is as follows: weight share of the cargo transported by the air transport makes only 1,3-1,5% of all the cargo transported in the world by all means of transport, but at the same time makes this share is 35% of their total cost.In other words, it makes sense to transport by air small on volume but expensive goods . Press Information:

ACEX



30, Kommunalny proezd, Khimki, 141400, Russia



Contact Person:

ACEX Alliance Press center



Phone: 8-800-777-22-39, +7-495-120-66-68

eMail: eMail



Web: http://www.acexgroup.net/en/





30.03.2018 14:12:34 -

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The ceremony was attended by General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) Nguyen Phu Trong, who is paying a State visit to France, and leaders from the two countries.

The logo features the image of a Vietnamese woman wearing a Non La (palm-leaf conical hat) and a red Ao Dai (traditional silk dress) holding hands with a French woman wearing a beret and a blue-white plaid dress.

Speaking at the ceremony, VietJet Air Managing Director Luu Duc Khanh said that the aircraft was in recognition of VietJet Airs contributions to promoting Vietnams image to the international community. Standing high from the profoundly comprehensive collaborations among Vietjet and French partners, we will contribute more to the development of economic-cultural-trade cooperation between the two countries, he added.

The ceremony was attended by General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) Nguyen Phu Trong, who is paying a State visit to France, and leaders from the two countries.

The newly added A321 aircraft is the 43rd of a total of 121 aircraft that Vietjet ordered from Airbus.

The aircraft will allow the airline to pursue its strategy of improving its services and expanding its operations to farther destinations in the Republic of Korea, Japan, India, Australia and other destinations in the Asia - Pacific region.

Earlier, Vietjet also signed a comprehensive agreement with Safran-CFM on supplying 321 engines to power the airlines 148 aircraft, as well as on fleet management services, training, R&D programmes and technical management.
The Deputy Minister was speaking during the first Vietnam-US Energy Security Dialogue, which was co-hosted by the Vietnamese Ministry of Industry and Trade (MOIT) and the US Department of State, in Hanoi on March 30.

Deputy Minister Vuong said that, in recent years, Vietnam's energy production has tended to be stable, mainly due to the stable volume in commercially exploited products. With the high demand for primary energy for economic development and energy security, Vietnam has become an energy importer since 2015, he added.

As predicted by the MOITs Institute of Energy, by 2035 the total energy demand will increase 2.5 times against 2015. The total energy could rise from 54 million TOE to roughly 90 million TOE by 2025. According to Vuong, the above figures show a high demand for energy development in Vietnam, making it a great cooperation opportunity for energy enterprises and investors in this field in the country.

Although several leading US energy companies, such as ExxonMobil, Murphy Oil, Chevron and UOP have made their presence in Vietnam with a range of projects across the country, the cooperation between the two sides remains modest against their high level of development and the increasing demand for energy in Vietnam, the Deputy Minister said.

For that reason, there is still huge room for energy cooperation between the two sides, he said, adding that the two sides could work towards cooperation in oil and gas exploration and production, oil refinery and petrochemical projects, as well as investment in infrastructure for importing energy in Vietnam.

US Ambassador to Vietnam Daniel Kritenbrink stated that the US wants to become Vietnams partner in strengthening its energy security towards a more prosperous and independent Vietnam.

In the modern world, no country can be self-sufficient in energy. For reliable energy supplies, and for a sustainable energy strategy, reliable and trustworthy long-term partnerships are crucial, the diplomat stated, adding that US side is willing to share their experiences and learn from Vietnam in the field.

During the dialogue, both sides exchanged their views on securing critical infrastructure and resources, diversifying strategic energy supplies, pricing and energy taxes, technical assistance, renewable energy technology, new energy, regional energy cooperation and energy trade.

In addition, they also discussed opportunities for US businesses in the energy sector in Vietnam. US businesses expressed their strong interest in working with Vietnamese partners on a range of energy initiatives.

A day earlier, the two sides held a technical meeting in Hanoi. The dialogue is the sixth of its kind that the US has organised around the world.
The beginning of the school year when you got to show off your new duds, new cars, new looks!

Sports! Playing, cheering, watching high school athletics.

The arts: Dramatic arts, musical groups and shows, graphic arts groups, debate, etc.

The prom! No dancing the night away or punch bowl antics.

The daily interactions. Just being with the group, hanging with friends and classmates.

Access to college recruiters and advisors  its harder to line up higher education.

Walking onstage to get a diploma while all the family is watching with everyone elses family.

Vote

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Motoring

Here are the signature Top 100 Yachting Personalities in the boating world in Asia-Pacific highlighted in our recent YACHT STYLE features and expert columns. We also honour the important people in the boating world with short and engaging summaries. Read more

Mar 15, 2018 | By Yacht Style

CAUDRELIER Charles (CHINA)

One of Frances best offshore sailors, Caudrelier made the step from success in the Solitaire du Figaro and the Transat Jacques-Vabre to play a key role onboard winning boat Groupama in 2011-12. He returned the following race as skipper of Dongfeng Race Team, writing a new chapter in Chinas sailing history  and lines up with a solid, mixed crew for a third consecutive edition in 2017-18. Caudrelier is tough, honest and experienced  and he is willing to share his skills with the Chinese sailors to help progress towards a full Chinese crew in future races. Caudrelier is a merchant navy officer by trade.

EVANS Mark (CHINA)

Evans is the Managing Director of McConaghy Boats in Zhuhai. Specialists in bespoke racing yachts, McConaghy shipyard built the award-winning superyacht Adasta, and also the VO70 Green Dragon, and the first (and last) Chinese IACC entry, CHN95. The list of nautical excellence is almost endless.

FONG Nan (CHINA)

As a forward-thinking boat owner, Fong set up the Da Mei Sha Marina and Yacht Club, one of the few marinas in southern China, which can accommodate superyachts up to 40 metres long.

FOK Eric (CHINA)

As Commodore of Nansha Marina, Fok conceived and executed the first 5 gold anchor marina in China with 300 plus berths at the Human Gate on the Pearl River. Located near where the Opium Wars were fought, the marina design reflects the history of the region. Nansha Marina hosted the Guangzhou stopover of the 2017-2018 Volvo Ocean Race.

LI James (CHINA)

Li is founder of Speedo Marine in 2003. The company represents several major yacht brands in China, including the Ferretti group, Fountaine Pajot, Prestige and Jeanneau power and sailing yachts. Headquartered in Shenzhen, Speedo Marine has seven sales and service centres along the China coastline

LI Quan Hai (CHINA)

Li is a Vice President of International Sailing Federation (ISAF) and the past President of the China Yachting Association (CYA). Over the years he has been closely associated with China Cup International Regatta, and he is now Vice Director of the Chinese National Aquatic Administration Centre.

TAN Xuguang (CHINA)

Tan is the Chairman of the SHIG-Weichai Group, which acquired a controlling interest in the Ferretti Group with a total investment of 374 million and Tan becoming the Chairman of Ferretti S.p.A in 2012. The Ferretti Group retained its key management team, headquarters and production bases in Italy.

WANG Chao Yong (CHINA)

Wang is founding partner and CEO of China Equity group since 1999, a China-based independent venture capital firm focusing on the technology, media and telecommunications sectors in Greater China. As co-Chairman of China Team, the first Chinese competing team of the Americas Cup, Wang invested recently in luxury automotive and yachting with ambitious developments ahead.

WANG Jian Lin (CHINA)

As Chairman of the Dalian Wanda Group, he acquired, ownership of yacht builder Sunseeker in a deal worth 320 million in 2013, Wang then said, We wanted to buy 30 Sunseeker yachts since we are planning to build three marinas in China. We then thought it would be a better deal if we just bought the company.

WANG Ming Liang (CHINA)

Wang is the Managing Director of the Shanghai UBM Sino Expo International Exhibition Co, which runs the China (Shanghai) International Boat Show and also hosts the Asia Marine and Boating Awards (AMBA).

XU LiJia (CHINA)

Trained as a swimmer, Golden Lily began racing Optimists at the age of 10, then moved on to the Laser Radial class and won the World Title in 2006. At the London Olympics in 2012, she won a gold medal in the same class and was voted ISAF Rolex Sailor of the Year.

YANG Xinfa (CHINA)

Being active in the boat building business in China, Yang is Chairman of the China Boat Industry and Trade Association; he acts as a driving force behind the Asia Marine and Boating Awards and the China (Shanghai) International Boat Show.

ZHANG Xiaodong (CHINA)

The current President of the China Yachting Association, Zhang is a Chinese sailor who won the Silver Medal in Womens Windsurfer in the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona. Her appointment is welcomed by the sailing community in China, which has grown significantly in recent years.

ZHAO Xuhung (CHINA)

Zhao is the Chairman of Shenzhen-based Sundiro Holdings, which acquired 22 per cent of Sanlorenzo in 2013, and in 2015 purchased an initial 10 per cent equity in Simpson Marine with the intention to gradually increase its stake over three years.

ZHONG David (CHINA)

CEO of the China Cup International Regatta. The event is the biggest keelboat sailing event in China. The regatta is now in its 12th year and has four one-design fleets: Beneteau 40.7, ASAF Class, FarEast 28R, J/80 that are available for charter.

***This article is republished from Issue 41 of Yacht Style. View the full list from page 62.
As an initiative of host Vietnam, the event aims to strengthen dialogues between enterprises and governments and connect businesses in the region and the world, while encouraging resources from the private sector for the GMS Programme.

It will serve as an opportunity for GMS leaders, head of international and regional organisations, representatives of development partners, business sectors and academia to share their views on key development issues of the GMS region and discuss ways to strengthen cooperation among different stakeholders.

Speaking at the event's GMS Business Council Open Session, Dr. Vu Tien Loc, President of the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI), said despite numerous achievements, the GMS remains the low land of the development in comparison with ASEAN, Asia and the world, in terms of per capital GDP, infrastructure, technology, finance, and human resource quality.

With favourable geo-political location, rich natural resources, and abundant, cheap and young human resources, as well as the extensive reform and integration amid the fourth industrial revolution, the GMS can become the kitchen and the workshop of the world, he noted.

According to Loc, the biggest challenges of the GMS economies remain in the quality of institutions and business competitiveness to meet the international standards and to join the global supply chain.

He attached significance to start-up spirit, saying that the driving force of the GMS economies must be start-up, micro-, small- and medium-sized, and women-led enterprises.

Applauding the initiative of the Cambodia Government on establishing a GMS business connect, he said the VCCI also proposes a women-led business network and GMS startup network.

He hoped that together with initiatives, programmes, and projects to promote regional connectivity, trade and investment facilitation, human resources training, environment protection and sustainable development, the business community network will multiply GMS efforts in international integration and development.

During the session, delegates introduced the private sector to the development vision for the GMS in its third decade and the private sector led programmes.

On the occasion, Sok Phiset, Vice Chairman of the GMS Business Council and President of Cambodia Young Entrepreneurs Association, launched the GMS Business Connect (GBC) Application.
In its Terminal Report No. 416 issued on March 26, the commission concluded that the dumping margin for Hoa Phat, and for all other exporters from Vietnam, is negative.

ADCs conclusion also defined the dumping margin for exports from the Republic of Korea (RoK) and Indonesia at 20.9% and 16%, respectively.

According to the regulations of the World Trade Organisation and Australian Trade Law, the dumping of imported goods into the country with a margin of less than 2% would not be considered dumping. The Vietnamese steel exported to Australia was dumped at a margin of less than 2%.

ADCs decision is good news for Vietnamese steel producers as Australia is a steel market with strong potential for trade.

A representative of Hoa Phat Group said they had cooperated with relevant agencies and ADC in answering questions and providing adequate information and documents for direct examination in August 2018.

In addition to this, the group also submitted the plaintiffs arguments against an application lodged by OneSteel Manufacturing Pty Ltd.

ADC concluded that there was no support from the Vietnamese Government relating to power tariffs and input material for steel producers, including Hoa Phat Group, as well as there being no special market situation for coiled steel rod in Vietnam.

ADC used the normal price comparison method in the local market and export prices to define the dumping margin. It decided to terminate the investigation as Vietnamese steel exports had not caused any harm to the Australian steel industry.

Following an application by OneSteel Manufacturing Pty Ltd, on June 7, 2017, ADC initiated an investigation into the alleged dumping of coiled steel rod exported to Australia from Indonesia, the RoK and Vietnam.

OneSteel claimed that goods were being exported to Australia at prices lower than their normal value and that dumping had damaged the Australian steel industry through a loss of sales, market share, and profits.
He said that the economic performance in the first quarter of the year was outstanding, with gross domestic product expanding by 7.38%, primarily driven by strong manufacturing activity and exports.

But he warned that there are still a number of drawbacks that need to be dealt with effectively.

The Deputy PM elaborated that the business climate has improved but has yet to meet the expectations of enterprises, while infrastructure remains underdeveloped, productivity is low and competitiveness is weak.

Furthermore, market risks, input costs and trade barriers are growing and the impact of natural disasters and climate change is becoming more severe.

Therefore, Deputy PM Dung asked the ministries, agencies and local authorities to continue to effectively restructure the tasks to promote production and economic growth.

He said that the restructuring process must be market-based, aligned with climate change mitigation efforts and suited with the conditions of each enterprise and locality.

In addition, the ministries, agencies and local authorities need to review their development plans, determine the priorities and develop measures to deal with difficulties and boost growth.
When Al Horford signed with the Boston Celtics in 2016, the Celtics were also targeting then-Oklahoma City Thunder star Kevin Durant, hoping to pair Durant with Horford and Isaiah Thomas. That would have been a formidable squad, albeit not as powerful as the Golden State Warriors, who Durant (of course) ultimately joined.

Durant's decision sent shockwaves through the NBA. Most believed he would remain with the Thunder, while others thought if he was going to leave, ditching the Western Conference and joining an Eastern Conference team on the rise in Boston made sense.

Since joining the Warriors, Durant has appeared on Bill Simmons' podcast multiple times, granting the head of The Ringer some of the most enlightening player interviews we've heard in recent years. In Simmons' latest interview with Durant, the long-time Celtics fan suggested the Celtics were the runners-up behind the Warriors when Durant was making his decision.

Durant shot him down.

"No, you weren't," Durant said flatly, and then, when asked who did come in second, added, "OKC. It wasn't Golden State/Boston."

While this was the safest answer Durant could have given -- he has never really indulged Simmons' (good-natured) opining for a scenario in which he chose Boston -- it also lines up with the reporting at the time, which suggested the race had come down to OKC and Golden State. The Celtics made some sense from a team-building and optics perspective (the Warriors had knocked the Thunder out of the playoffs the year prior, giving the impression Durant had simply joined them after he couldn't beat them), but Oklahoma City had been his home, and the Warriors offered his best chance at a title. Leaving the former was difficult, but the most logical destination was always going to be the latter, where he could potentially win multiple rings.

A year later, Durant (like Gordon Hayward) might have looked at the Celtics -- who had just been to the conference finals -- a little differently, especially if he had an inkling they could land a "king hooper" like Kyrie Irving. Durant has repeatedly expressed admiration for Irving's game, and if that what-if doesn't pretzel your brain, you have a stronger mind than me.
An investigation is underway in Boston after a man was fatally shot in Dorchester Friday morning.

Boston Police on assignment in Roxbury responded to a call of a shooting near 120 Quincy Street in Dorchester around 9:11 a.m. Friday morning.

Officers arrived to find a man in his mid-30's suffering from a gunshot wound. He was taken to a local hospital where he died.

Boston Police say they are actively investigating the shooting.

This is a developing story.
Updated at 1:57 p.m.: Schwarzenegger is in stable condition Friday after undergoing heart surgery in Los Angeles, his spokesman Daniel Ketchell told The Washington Post.

_____

Former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger underwent emergency open-heart surgery Thursday, according to TMZ.

The 70-year-old actor-politician entered Los Angeles' Cedars-Sinai for a catheter valve replacement, but doctors determined during that procedure that he needed open-heart surgery. That surgery lasted several hours according to the report, but Schwarzenegger is reportedly in stable condition.

Schwarzenegger, a former Mr Universe, underwent heart surgery 21 years ago to have an aortic valve replaced, due to a condition he said was congenital and nothing to do with his use of steroids as a bodybuilder.

In his book "Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story," Schwarzenegger revealed that he initially kept that first operation a secret from his then-wife, Maria Shriver, by telling her he was on vacation in Mexico.

Known for his roles in "The Terminator" films and "Total Recall," Schwarzenegger is one of the most successful action movie stars of all time.

Schwarzenegger was elected governor of California in 2003 and served two full terms, leaving office in 2011.

He has since returned to acting.

Last month, Amazon Studios announced they were working with Schwarzenegger to develop a new Western series entitled "Outrider" in which he will star and executive produce.
HOLYOKE -- The public schools' maintenance director detailed the need for renovations at Kelly, Sullivan and Morgan schools in a video Thursday.

"These boilers were installed in 1974...These boilers, while they still do operate, they're very inefficient and the replacements would be highly efficient and much smaller," said Whitney G. Anderson, maintenance administrator for the Holyoke public schools. (see video above)

Anderson was describing the two H.B. Smith Co. cast iron hot water boilers operating in the basement of Kelly School, 216 West St.

Combined, the three schools also need nearly 1,000 windows replaced with energy efficient models. The renovations will address deteriorated window frames, glass with discolored glazing and warped to the point of unattractiveness, missing sealants and windows that had to be screwed shut to prevent break-ins, Anderson said.

"Old, at the end of its life," he said of windows on the back of Sullivan School, 400 Jarvis Ave.

The City Council Finance Committee will discuss a proposal to borrow nearly $13.8 million to renovate three schools April 9 at 6:30 p.m. at City Hall.

The $13,797,581 would pay for replacement of the boiler and windows at Kelly School, 216 West St., and new windows at Sullivan School, 400 Jarvis Ave., and Morgan School, 596 South Bridge St.

The Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) has told officials here the state will reimburse the city for 77 percent of the cost, Zrike said.

That would mean the state will pay $10.6 million and the city $3.1 million.

Kelly School opened in 1975 and has 86,302 square feet. It has an enrollment of 587 students in kindergarten to grade eight, Anderson said.

Pending City Council approval of the borrowing, the boiler would be replaced this year for nearly $1.5 million. After state reimbursement the city share would be over $376,000, he said.

Installation of new windows at the three schools would begin next year, he said.

Replacing the windows at Kelly School would cost over $4.9 million. The city's share after state reimbursement would be $1.1 million, he said.

Sullivan School opened in 1961 with renovations in 1969 and 1989 and has 112,000 square feet. An enrollment of 621 attends kindergarten to grade eight, he said.

Replacing the windows at Sullivan School would cost over $4.9 million. The city would pay $1.1 million after state reimbursement, he said.

Morgan opened in 1963 and was renovated in 1990. Students attend preschool to grade eight and enrollment is 442 with 62,397 square feet of space.

Installing new windows at Morgan School would cost over $2.4 million, with the bill to Holyoke after reimbursement at nearly $567,000, he said.

"The value of this infrastructure to the community is tremendous," Anderson said.
He made the statement while meeting with President of Cubas National Assembly Esteban Lazo Hernandes in Cuba on March 29, in which he recommended both sides adopt rational mechanisms and solutions to fully tap their potential, support each other, and improve the efficiency of business projects to serve the development of each side in the future.

Vietnam will stand by Cuba in the nations struggle for socialist ideology and the update of its socio-economic development model, the Vietnamese Party chief said, adding that Vietnam is willing to share its experience in 30 years of Doi moi (Renewal) with the Latin American nation.

On the occasion, he congratulated Cuba on its successful organisation of the 9th Congress of the National Assembly, expressing his belief that the Cuban people will reap further achievements in their new development phase.

Esteban Lazo Hernandes, for his part, underlined the special Vietnam-Cuba ties and spoke highly of Vietnams experience in the Doi moi process, affirming that Cuba always treasures and wants to bolster ties with Vietnam.

Both sides expressed their delights over the fruitful relations between the two National Assemblies and their contributions to promoting the traditional friendship between the two Parties and States.

They agreed to create favourable conditions for the two legislative bodies to foster delegation exchanges to share experience in legislative activities and the organisation of legislative apparatus.

Also, they reached consensus on facilitating works of the friendship parliamentary group so that they can take a leading role in developing cooperative ties between the two law-making bodies in the future.
China's first space station will fall to Earth this weekend, and scientists have begun to zero in on where and when it will crash and burn.

The 9-ton, 40-foot long Tiangong-1 will fall anytime between Saturday morning and late Sunday night, but the forecast has been trending toward the latter half of that window of time, CNET reported on Friday.

Aerospace Corp., which is tracking the space lab's fall, emphasized the danger of being hit by falling debris is tiny, as low as one in 1 trillion, as the structure is likely to burn up in the atmosphere during reentry.

Likely crash sites have been targeted by the European Space Agency.

The school bus-size Tiangong-1 is tumbling as it falls, which makes it hard to predict how atmospheric drag will affect the spacecraft's re-entry time and path, according to Space.com.

Tiangong-1, which means "heavenly palace," is now about 124 miles above the Earth.

It was launched in September 2011 as a prototype for China's ultimate space goal: A permanent space station which is expected to launch around 2022. But the Chinese government told the

in May 2017 that their space lab had "ceased functioning" in March 2016, without explaining why.
WESTFIELD - The two finalists for the Franklin Avenue Elementary School principal position will meet with parents, guardians and staff April 3 during a public session.

Each candidate will meet with community members for 30 minutes beginning at 5:30 p.m.

Former Principal Frances St. Peter-Sanft retired in December and Chris Tolpa-Matuszczak, one of the finalists, is serving as interim principal. The other finalist is Christine Wenz, an assistant principal in Attleboro.

"I am impressed by the school-based background of all candidates and connection with students," said Superintendent of Schools Stefan Czaporowski.

The candidates were narrowed to two finalists from a field of applicants by a screening committee made up of Franklin Avenue parents and staff, a district elementary school principal and central administrators.

Tolpa-Matuszczak has been with the district for 20 years, beginning as assistant principal at Westfield High School for three years. For the past 17 years, she has been the supervisor of humanities (social studies, art, English, foreign language and music curricula). Tolpa-Matuszczak was also an English teacher in West Springfield for almost six years.

Wenz has 21 years of experience in education. After receiving her bachelor's degree from North Adams State College, she began her career as a preschool teacher and was a preschool director for three years in Framingham. She became a math and science teacher at a private school in Webster for 11 years, while also attaining her master's degree in elementary education. Wenz was the technology integration specialist at Peter Thacher Elementary School in Attleboro for three years. She also completed her certificate of advanced graduate studies in school administration. In 2014, she began her current role as assistant principal at Peter Thacher Elementary School.

Both candidates will be interviewing all day on Tuesday. They will meet with staff, students, administrators and central office administrators during the day. The evening public session will take place at the school.

Westfield Public Schools Human Resources Director Paula Ceglowski said the process for filling this position was different than recent hiring practices because of timing.

"The retirement came in December, so we were able to recruit during the school year," Ceglowski said. "We were able to bring candidates in to interact with students and staff during the school day and have the public forum before selecting a principal."

Ceglowski said retirements or staff changes often come at the end of the school year, and there is not the same opportunity for candidates to meet with a large number of staff, students and parents over the summer.

The community is welcome to ask questions during the meet-and-greet session Tuesday, Ceglowski said.

Czaporowski is expected to select a principal soon.

"I anticipate an announcement prior to April vacation," said Ceglowski. "Once a selection is made, we need to enter contract negotiations and the new principal would start July 1."

Czaporowski said this process was more open to the community.

"We are able to provide stakeholders the opportunity to meet the finalists and provide me with input prior to my selection of the new Franklin Avenue principal," he said. "I am pleased that this hiring process has expanded to include these opportunities."
CHICOPEE - The Great New England Air Show is returning to Westover Air Reserve Base this summer with the Air Force's demonstration team the Thunderbirds as the headline act and multiple other military and civilian acts planned.

"This will be the first time in 10 years that the Air Force's official aerial demonstration team are performing at Westover," said Senior Master Sgt. Andrew Biscoe, acting chief of public affairs.

The show is scheduled for the weekend of July 14-15, but there will multiple events leading up to the event for the first time. As always, admission and parking are free, he said.

Westover last held its air show in May 2015 and attracted 375,000. The event celebrated the base's 75th anniversary and attracted four major acts: the U.S. Navy's Blue Angels demonstration team, the Golden Knights Army parachute team, the Canadian Snowbirds and the F-22 Raptor fighter jet.

This year's show will celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Air Force Reserve and will also incorporate elements of space and cyberspace, Biscoe said.

With four months to go before the event, all the details have not been announced yet, but several civilian acts are planned including the Geico Skytypers and stunt pilot Rob Holland, who is a New England native. Multiple vintage aircraft known as the Warbirds will also return.

In the past, Westover held an air show every two years and typically scheduled shows in August, but that changed after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, when shows were canceled because of security reasons, personnel being deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan and other issues.

Now shows no longer happen every two years and the dates are scheduled based on the availability of the headline performer. This year's dates were selected because the Thunderbirds could come July 14-15, Biscoe said.

Westover personnel planning the show are being joined by the civilian Galaxy Community Council, a nonprofit agency that supports the air show and Westover in general. The Council raises money, helps find sponsors and assists with other planning for the event, said Connie Brown, president.

For the first time, the Galaxy Community Council is holding a couple of events building up to the show, including a 5-kilometer road race and 2-mile walk on June 16 that will start at Westover Metropolitan Airport and run through the air base.

"They will run under five C-5 tails. I'm super excited for the folks who will be running, they will experience something new," Brown said, adding few people are ever allowed on the runway at the air base or have a chance to stand under a Westover jet.

The Run the Runway race is being held collaboratively by the Council, the Chicopee Chamber of Commerce and the Metropolitan Airport.

In the weeks before the show, the Commemorative Air Force is also bringing several vintage planes including a B-29 Superfortress, a C-34 Skymaster and a T-6 Texan to the municipal airport to promote the Great New England Air Show.

The date for that vintage show will be announced soon, Brown said.

The Council will hold its annual breakfast July 13, the day before the Great New England Air Show. In a nod to the space theme this year, Col. Catherine "Cady" Coleman, a retired astronaut from Shelburne, will be the guest speaker, Brown said.

The breakfast and the race will serve as fundraisers for the Galaxy Community Council, which has a goal of raising $300,000 to help the air show.

The group has already found some sponsors and will be looking for many more to fund the show, she said.

"We have great sponsors on board. Big Y is one, and we could not feed the volunteers and the VIPs without Big Y," she said.

The money raised pays for the vintage aircraft and civilian acts. The Council also pays for things like tents, tables and chairs, she said.

The Council also rents out exhibit space for anyone interested in promoting their business, product or organization during the show, Brown said.

Mayor Richard J. Kos said the show benefits Chicopee in many ways, and city officials welcome it.

"The air show contributes a large economic impact to the city and region while providing a secure, quality family-fun event that shows off our 'crown jewel' Westover ARB to all of New England. How do you put a value on having our community be a destination for those far and near?" he said.

A study done after the last event estimated the Great New England Air Show pumped $11.6 million into the local economy.
SPRINGFIELD - Two Chicopee men are being held on a combined $1 million bail following a shooting that claimed the life of former Springfield murder defendant Christopher Montgomery.

Angel Rodriguez, 19, and Brandon Reynolds, 20, pleaded not guilty Thursday in Springfield District Court to firearms charges. Rodriguez was charged with carrying a loaded firearm without a license; Reynolds was charged with possessing a firearm without a license and possessing ammunition without an FID card.

Judge John Payne set each defendant's bail at $500,000, the figure requested by prosecutors.

The two men and a juvenile were arrested shortly after a shooting Wednesday afternoon on Knox Street that killed Christopher Montgomery, 20, of Springfield, and injured another man, police said.

Witnesses reported hearing five shots and seeing Montgomery on the ground outside 67 Knox St. Two men wearing ski masks and carrying firearms got into a waiting vehicle, which then drove toward the Springfield Cemetery, according to the arrest report.

Montgomery was shot by a suspect wearing a brown T-shirt, gray sweatpants and black Beats wireless headphones, witnesses told police.

Stopped a few blocks from the shooting scene, both Rodriguez and the juvenile had loaded firearms in their waistbands, police said. Reynolds, who was driving the car, had no gun "but was actively engaged in the criminal activity of his associates," according to the arrest report.

In requesting $500,000 bail for Reynolds, Assistant District Attorney Jill O'Connor said the shooting remains under investigation and murder charges could be filed against all three suspects.

Defense lawyer Kelly Auer asked for $5,000 cash bail for Reynolds, saying his only involvement in the case was driving the car that police stopped after the shooting. No firearm was found on Reynolds, and no mention of murder is made in his arrest report, Auer said.

Reynolds is due back in court for a pretrial hearing on May 4.

Assistant District Attorney Kerry Koehler requested $500,000 bail for Rodriguez, citing the firearms charges and the potential sentence he faces if convicted.

The judge granted the prosecutor's bail request and ordered Rodriguez to return for a pretrial hearing on April 30.

Montgomery was a familiar figure in district court, where he was charged with murder in March 2015 following the fatal shooting of Rakeem Nixon, 22, on a side street off Boston Road.

The case was dismissed in August 2016 after a juvenile witness recanted grand jury testimony that he saw Montgomery shoot Nixon. The witness initially told investigators Montgomery was upset because the victim looked at him funny when they passed on the street.

Three days after those charges were dropped, Montgomery and another teenager were arrested by Springfield police for allegedly attempting to a sell a stolen motocross-style bike on Facebook.

That case was still pending when Montgomery was arrested for allegedly assaulting, robbing and attempting to strangle the mother of his 3-year-old child in February 2016. In December, after 186 days in jail, he pleaded guilty to an assault charge and was sentenced to time served. The robbery and strangulation charges were dropped.
NORTHAMPTON -- A 19-year-old man from Chester was sentenced to jail Wednesday for his role in a 2016 South Hadley home invasion where the victim was shot and injured, court documents show.

Joseph Massa pleaded guilty in Hampshire Superior Court to charges of home invasion, armed robbery, assault and battery by discharge of a firearm, unlawful possession of ammunition, conspiracy and unlawful possession of a firearm.

Three other charges -- assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, possession of a loaded firearm and possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number -- were dropped.

Massa was sentenced by Judge Mary-Lou Rup to 18 months in jail followed by two years probation.

On Nov. 26, 2016, Massa arranged to buy marijuana from the 29-year-old victim and brought Dupree Hinds, 31, of Chicopee, and Robert Vanhoy, 20, of South Hadley, to rob the victim, court documents show.

Once at the house, Hinds pulled out a 9-mm handgun and demanded that the victim "run it." The victim told the men that his landlord was upstairs, that he would hear them, and that he was going to call the police, at which point Hinds shot him in the abdomen.

After Hinds fired the weapon, the victim jumped up and punched Hinds in the face. The men subsequently robbed the victim of marijuana then fled the house.

The three were arrested the following month.

Defense attorney Marissa Elkins argued that Massa had been susceptible to the influence of the older Hinds, the Daily Hampshire Gazette reported.

Hinds was sentenced March 21 to one and a half to two years in state prison after pleading guilty to three counts of assault and battery on a correctional officer. He is still facing charges related to the home invasion.

The status of charges against Vanhoy was unclear Thursday.
Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker called the information laid out in the indictment of Bryon Hefner, the husband of Sen. Stan Rosenberg, "distressing" and pointed to an internal state Senate investigation that's on a separate track.

A statewide grand jury indicted Hefner, and he was charged him with five counts of indecent assault and battery, one count of lewd behavior and the dissemination of nude photos without consent.

The criminal investigation should be "followed through and followed through to completion," Baker told reporters after an event in South Boston.

Baker pointed to the separate investigation launched by the Senate Ethics Committee. After the allegations against Hefner first surfaced in the Boston Globe in 2017, the committee tasked a law firm with determining if Rosenberg, D-Amherst, broke any Senate rules.

"If that turns up information that implies or suggests that he was aware of or knew about this stuff, then at that point yeah I think he should resign," Baker said.

Rosenberg, who separated from Hefner, has repeatedly said he was not aware of the allegations until the newspaper raised them. He reliquished the Massachusetts Senate presidency but has remained a senator and launched a re-election campaign.

Asked whether the indictments will have an impact on the ethics investigation, Baker said, "I don't know exactly what's going on with respect to the ethics investigation, I'm assuming they're talking to many of the same people. But of course I would anticipate that the information that's made available through the indictments would end up being part of the ethics investigation as well."

He added that "people need to be held accountable for their actions."

"And if it turns out that other people in the Senate were involved or participated, or knew and didn't do anything, then that has to be all factored into the decision-making process, absolutely," Baker said.
Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey lit into the State Police and called on Gov. Charlie Baker to take a more aggressive stance in cleaning up the troubled law enforcement agency.

A series of scandals, from a scrubbed arrest report of a judge's daughter to phantom overtime shifts, have roiled the ranks of the State Police. The Baker administration has pointed to a new superintendent atop the agency but acknowledged Thursday that "more work remains to strengthen the public's trust."

"These are significant issues and the public is understandably upset and concerned about what continues to come out and what continues to be reported," Healey told reporters on Thursday. "I think this is a matter of transparency, accountability, and I think it's time that the Baker administration take a leadership role in this issue."

Healey said the problems involve the culture of the agency as well. "It needs to be fixed and it needs to be addressed now," she said.

Healey's office is investigating potential criminal violations involving Troop E and phantom overtime shifts and Healey said they're available to take on additional referrals.

State Police Col. Kerry Gilpin earlier this month said 21 troopers ranging in rank are being investigating for overtime traffic patrols. After an audit uncovered the skipped overtime shifts, Gilpin referred the matter to Healey's office for potential criminal charges.

In her call for a more aggressive stance from the Baker administration, Healey appeared to point to Troop F, which handles patrols for Logan Airport and the Seaport, and had not been properly disclosing pay records.

"This is about accountability, this is about transparency and the public needs to have confidence in our state departments," Healey said Thursday.

A deal between various state agencies announced earlier this week seeks to correct the lack of disclosure after the years-long practice had been uncovered by the Boston Globe.

Along with the review of criminal charges in the Troop E matter, Healey's investigation into the edited arrest report of a judge's daughter, Alli Bibaud, remains ongoing, according to the attorney general's office.

Two rank-and-file troopers have filed a federal lawsuit, saying they were forced by supervisors to scrub embarrassing information from the arrest report in October 2017.

The scandal led to Col. Richard McKeon, then the head of the State Police, stepping down and Baker tapping Gilpin as the new leader in November 2017.

"The Baker-Polito Administration appointed a new colonel recently and under her leadership, apparent abuses of overtime rules were unearthed and referred for potential criminal charges while she continues to review accountability and supervisory policies to determine opportunities to improve the department's performance," Baker administration spokesman Brendan Moss said in a statement.

"Governor Baker agrees more work remains to strengthen the public's trust in the department, and is working with Colonel Gilpin as she undertakes a thorough review of the State Police," he added. "Additionally, the Baker-Polito Administration looks forward to the Attorney General's timely review of the Troop E matter so that those who broke the law can be punished appropriately."
A day after Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey dinged him over the scandals at the State Police, Gov. Charlie Baker said a "series of reforms" is coming to the troubled law enforcement agency.

"First of all, I think we all agree that the State Police has some work to do rebuild public trust and credibility," Baker said after an event in South Boston.

Col. Kerry Gilpin, installed by Baker in November 2017 as the new State Police superintendent, "took the first step" with an audit of Troop E and alleged skipped overtime shifts, according to Baker. The findings of the audit were forwarded to Healey's office for review of potential criminal activity.

Baker said he speaks frequently with Gilpin.

"She's working on a whole series of reforms that I think are exactly what the doctor ordered with respect to some of the issues of the State Police," he said. "We'll have more to say on that shortly."

The governor did not elaborate.

His comments come a day after Healey, a Democrat, told reporters that Baker, a Republican, needs to show "leadership"" when it comes to the problems at the State Police.

"I think the new colonel is exactly the right person to drive this train and to drive it hard and I'm going to do everything I can to support her on that agenda," Baker said when asked a follow-up question on Healey's comments.
Mathew Locke, the man charged with lying to police in the case of a slain West Brookfield family, has a checkered past with the law, including an arrest in 2009 where he was accused of threatening to kill a man and cut his head off.

According to witness statements in court records obtained by MassLive, Locke showed up to a home in Warren in 2009 where his ex-girlfriend and the couple's daughter were visiting with friends, "barged in the front door" and demanded to know who had been sleeping with his ex-girlfriend.

Locke then reportedly picked his daughter up off the couch and told the woman they were leaving.

According to a witness statement made by the alleged male victim, Locke then turned to him and said "If you're the one I am going to cut your head off."

Locke was arrested and charged with domestic assault and battery as a result of the incident but charges against him were dismissed in 2011 at the request of his ex-girlfriend, court records show.

Once outside, Locke's ex told police that Locke placed the couple's daughter in the backseat of her car and that he got in the driver's seat. When she told him to get out, Locke began punching the dash with his fist, she told police.

The woman told police she then got in the car and told Locke to get out. According to her account, he shouted "no," grabbed her arms and pushed one of her arms back injuring her shoulder.

At this point, both the woman and the her male friend reported that Locke repeated his threat, and "began screaming toward the house that he was going to 'kill that motherf------."

In her statement, the woman said she tried to knee Locke in the groin, but missed and hit the vehicle.

When police arrived, Locke told officers he had gone to the home to see his ex-girlfriend and that he was concerned for the welfare of his child. He claimed that the when he had entered the house he found "everyone sitting around the living room smoking" marijuana. Police said when they entered the home they found no evidence of marijuana use.

Locke also claimed that the woman had slapped him several times across the face and he had grabbed her in defense. After examination, the officer said he could not find any injuries to either Locke or the woman.

The incident is part of a lengthy criminal history for Locke, which includes an arson conviction and a history of domestic violence allegations, according to records obtained by MassLive.

In 2010 he set a fire outside a trailer belonging to a man who was dating his ex-girlfriend, said Joel Davis, a sergeant with the Maine State Fire Marshal's Office. The victim had taken out a restraining order against Locke after he allegedly made threats against him and his children.

Locke is accused lying to police investigating the killing of Sara Bermudez and her three children in their Old Warren Road home in West Brookfield. Sources tell MassLive the bodies were found burned.

Locke is the cousin of Sara's husband Moses Bermudez.

Locke has not been charged with the West Brookfield killings. His arrest is the first in connection with the case, and came after he allegedly provided a false story to investigators about possible MS-13 involvement in the crime.

Investigators claim Locke lied to them about Moses Bermudez referencing MS-13 involvement in the crime.

In the 2010 arson, the victim and his girlfriend spotted Locke outside the trailer carrying a red plastic gas can, Davis said. Shortly after, they smelled smoke and found a fire outside the trailer, which they quickly extinguished.

"He said he was trying to get her attention," Joel Davis, a sergeant with the Maine State Fire Marshal's Office told MassLive. "Didn't want to hurt anybody."

The burned bodies of Bermudez, 38, and her children, 8-year-old Madison, 6-year-old James and 2-year-old Michael were found in an upstairs bedroom of their West Brookfield home on March 1. Little is publicly known about the state of the investigation, beyond Worcester County District Attorney Joseph Early's announcement on March 3 that authorities were searching for a yellow diesel fuel can missing from the house.

_________

MassLive reporter Dan Glaun contributed to this story.
The widow of the gunman who killed 49 people at a gay Orlando nightclub has been acquitted on charges of lying to the FBI and helping her husband in the 2016 attack.

Noor Salman was found not guilty of charges of obstruction and providing material support to a terrorist organization.

Salman was married to Omar Mateen when he attacked the Pulse nightclub.

Prosecutors say Salman knew about Mateen's guns, his affinity for violent Muslim extremist videos and his intention to attack a location, but did nothing to stop him.

Defense attorneys described Salman as a simple woman with a low IQ who was abused by her husband, and who didn't know of his plans because he concealed much of his life from her.

Officials from U.S. District Court in Orlando said Friday that the jury had reached its decision in the trial of the widow of the Orlando nightclub shooter who killed 49 people in 2016.

Noor Salman was charged with obstruction and providing material support to a terrorist organization. She faces life in prison if convicted.

Salman was married to Omar Mateen when he attacked the gay nightclub.

Prosecutors say Salman knew about Mateen's guns, his affinity for violent Muslim extremist videos and his intention to attack a location, but did nothing to stop him.

Defense attorneys described Salman as a simple woman with a low IQ who was abused by her husband, and who didn't know of his plans because he concealed much of his life from her.

Prosecutors said Salman knew about Mateen's plans and did nothing to stop them. Her lawyers say she had no knowledge of them and was mentally and physically abused by him. They say she wasn't an Islamic extremist.
Founded in 1968, the school dedicated a space exhibiting many objects and materials featuring Vietnam, especially a photo of Vo Thi Thang who wore a victory smile in a court of the US-backed Saigon administration. The victory smile became part of the schools curriculum as a symbol of Vietnamese peoples struggle against the invasion of US imperialists.

Greeting teachers and students there, the Party chief stressed that despite located apart thousands miles, Vietnam and Cuba have established a close-knit ties and fraternal solidarity, which have been fostered by late President Ho Chi Minh, Leader Fidel Castro and generations of Party and State leaders.

The school named after Vietnamese hero Vo Thi Thang is an example of the special friendship, Party leader Trong added.

He said he expects the establishment to enhance its teaching quality and educate the next generation into good citizens, inheriting their predecessors legacy and continuing fostering Vietnam  Cuba relations.

Cuban Minister of Education Ena Elsa Velazquez said the school is honoured to bear the name of a brave Vietnamese, who began fighting invaders in her twenty.

She highlighted education as a pillar of the Cuban revolution in line with the ideology of Fidel Castrol.

On behalf of students and teachers at the school, Ena Elsa Velazquez thanked support from Vietnam toward Cuba in all circumstances and affirmed that Cubans will continue protecting the friendship and solidarity with Vietnam.

On the occasion, the Vietnamese Party leader inaugurated an IT classroom, which was his gift to the school. The room was equipped with 30 computer sets.
NORTHAMPTON - The Northampton City Council will vote on a resolution that advocates for stricter gun laws in Massachusetts at its meeting April 5.

The non-binding resolution asks Councilors to support "legislation to reduce gun violence" by backing a number of legal restrictions for firearm owners.

The resolution has been recommended by Council President Ryan O'Donnell and Ward 7 Councilor Alisa Klein.

The legislation comes on the heels of student protests across Massachusetts and the country over gun violence. Students at Northampton High School as well as schools throughout the Pioneer Valley participated in the national walkout on March 14, followed shortly by the nationwide March for Our Lives protest on March 24.

Citing the recent local and statewide activism, the Northampton City Council's resolution expresses "gratitude to the organizers and participants in the Pioneer Valley March for Our Lives march and all those who continue to demand action."

The resolution states that the march "demonstrates and affirms that renewed leadership and urgent action are required to end gun violence in Massachusetts and the United States."

The resolution support of a number of restrictions on gun owners, including:

The instatement of "extreme risk protective orders."

Universal background checks

Data collection on firearm purchases.

State divestment of gun manufacturers and retailers

The resolution will be have its first reading at the Council's next meeting, Thursday, April 5, at 7 p.m.
CHICOPEE - Police are investigating a shoot-out between moving vehicles in the area of Carew and East Main Street Friday afternoon, according to police spokesman Michael Wilk.

No one is know to be injured, he said. Witnesses reported one car shooting at another car, he said.

Police pursued one of the vehicles drove through the Aldenville section of the city and onto Interstate 391. The car fled toward Holyoke, he said.

The Chicopee, Holyoke police and the Massachusetts State Police are all involved in the search for the suspect vehicle, he said.

Wilk reported that a suspect was taken into custody in Holyoke, roughly 30 minutes after the shooting, which was reported at about 1:15 p.m.

The suspect was in the process of being booked. The name and charges were not yet available.

This is a developing story and more information will be added later.
SPRINGFIELD - A Springfield man on probation in an animal cruelty case is facing new charges after investigators allegedly found cats at his home with severe infections and ruptured eyeballs.

Russell H. Corby, 66, pleaded not guilty Monday in Springfield District Court to three counts of cruelty to animals. He was released on personal recognizance and ordered to return for a pretrial hearing in May.

The charges were filed after the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals found kittens and adult cats suffering from respiratory infections and missing eyes during a recent inspection at Corby's home at 66 Switzer Ave.

Corby denied neglecting his kittens and said they sometimes poke each others' eyes out while nursing, according to the complaint filed by the MSPCA. Three of Corby's cats suffered ruptured eyeballs due to untreated corneal ulcers, which are commonly treated with antibiotics and pain medication, the complaint said.

Left untreated, corneal ulcers can result in ruptured eyeballs, a condition that is "gruesome and horrific" for the kittens. "This is not the first time that cats have suffered at this residence. In the past, cats have been brought in ... missing eyes and suffering from severe flea anemia," the complaint stated.

In 2017, Corby was placed on probation after MSPCA officials charged him with animal cruelty for allegedly failing to seek veterinary care for numerous kittens, several of whom allegedly died as a result of neglect.

Under the terms of his probation, Corby agreed to let the Thomas J. O'Connor Animal Control and Adoption Center conduct periodic inspections at his home.

A visit on March 1 found that Corby continued to allow his "cats to suffer unnecessarily ... (by) failing to seek veterinary care for them," MSPCA investigator Christine Allenberg wrote.

Corby is due back in court for a pretrial hearing on May 7.

The cats listed in the complaint have names such as "Sebastian," "Bach," "Snowflake," "Left Eye," "Cyclops" and "Happy, Happy."
Vermont State Police are seeking a man with Western Massachusetts ties wanted for burglary, aggravated assault and other charges.

Robert Dondi, 46, is known to frequent Pittsfield and North Adams, according to a release issued by Vermont State Police. He has brown hair, brown eyes and is 5 feet 9 inches and approximately 180 pounds.

Those coming into contact with Dondi are asked to call 911 and not make contact with him. Those with information on his whereabouts are asked to call Vermont Stata Police in Shaftsbury at 802-442-5421.
The man accused of misleading police investigating the brutal killing and burning of a West Brookfield mother and her three children is a convicted arsonist with a history of domestic violence allegations, according to records reviewed by MassLive.

Mathew P. Locke, 31 has a lengthy criminal history in Massachusetts -- and also in Maine, where he was charged with arson in 2010 and later convicted.

Locke, who has been accused lying to police investigating the killing of Sara Bermudez and her three children, is the cousin of Sara's husband Moses Bermudez.

In 2010 he set a fire outside a trailer belonging to a man who was dating his ex-girlfriend, said Joel Davis, a sergeant with the Maine State Fire Marshal's Office. The male victim had taken out a restraining order against Locke after he allegedly made threats against the victim and his children.

The burned bodies of Bermudez, 38, and her children, 8-year-old Madison, 6-year-old James and 2-year-old Michael were found in an upstairs bedroom of their West Brookfield home on March 1. Little is publicly known about the state of the investigation, beyond Worcester County District Attorney Joseph Early's announcement on March 3 that authorities were searching for a yellow diesel fuel can missing from the house.

Locke has not been charged with the West Brookfield killings. His arrest is the first in connection with the case, and came after he allegedly provided a false story to investigators about possible MS-13 involvement in the crime.

John F. Madaio, Locke's attorney, declined to comment for this story. The Worcester County District Attorney's Office also declined to comment, saying the homicides remained under investigation.

In the 2010 arson, the victim and his girlfriend spotted Locke outside the trailer carrying a red plastic gas can, Davis said. Shortly after, they smelled smoke and found a fire outside the trailer, which they quickly extinguished.

"It involved the use of an accelerant," Davis said.

Locke confessed to an investigator from the fire marshal's office, saying he was trying to send a message to his ex girlfriend.

"He said he was trying to get her attention," Davis said. "Didn't want to hurt anybody."

On March 23, Locke allegedly told investigators that he visited the Bermudez home and spoke with Moses Bermudez. Locke claimed Bermudez made a reference to MS-13 -- an international criminal organization linked to cartel drug trafficking and brutal slayings across the United States.

"Locke stated that when he pulled into the driveway Moses Bermudez was sitting in his truck. Locke told investigators that Moses stated that they should pay attention to the news in the coming days because anyone associated with MS-13 was going to get hurt and die," court documents read.

But according to Bermudez and Joshua Gagnon, an associate present during the conversation, Bermudez said no such thing. Locke was charged with misleading a police investigation and held on $10,000 cash bail following his arraignment on Monday.

Court records show Locke has a long history with the criminal justice system, from motor vehicle violations to felonies.

Locke was charged with arson, violating a protective order and violating terms of release in Superior Court in Machias, Maine in the 2010 case. He subsequently skipped court dates and traveled to Massachusetts, where he was arrested on a default warrant in 2012 and turned over to Maine authorities.

He pleaded guilty to those charges in September of 2012 and was sentenced to nine years in prison, with two to be served and the rest suspended.

In November of 2014, just months after the scheduled expiration of his sentence, he was arrested again in Maine for burglary. He was found guilty in March of 2015 and had his probation from the arson case partially revoked.

And in between his arraignment and his sentencing on the burglary case, he was arrested again -- this time on misdemeanor counts of theft. He was found guilty on those charges as well, and given a six month suspended sentence.

On May 9, 2007, Locke was doing 50 mph donuts in his car when he lost control of the vehicle and crashed, according to a Ware Police Department statement of facts filed in Eastern Hampshire District Court.

"Matthew Locke did operate his motor vehicle in a reckless manner by spinning his vehicle around in a 360 degree circle twice. Mathew then was speeding causing him to leave the roadway and travel across a lawn striking a tree," said Ware police officer Raymond Chartier.

Locke's case was continued without a finding on the condition that he complete a safe driving course.

In March of 2009, Locke admitted to sufficient facts on a charge of driving with a suspended license. And a month later, the mother of his child filed a restraining order against him, alleging that he stole her car while drunk, drove to a liquor store and tried to use her debit card.

The day after he allegedly broke into her house, the woman said in an affidavit. He claimed to have been intoxicated at the time, she wrote.

"I was cooked, maybe I broke into your house, Maybe I didn't, I don't know what I was doing," he allegedly told her, according to her affidavit.

The woman also alleged that Locke had threatened to choke and strangle her in 2008, and in 2009 had grabbed her wrist and pushed her against a door while they were staying in West Brookfield.

In October of 2009, Locke was charged with assault and battery in East Brookfield District Court after allegedly threatening and physically the same woman and a male friend.

The woman, who had recently broken up with Locke, told police that she was with a group of friends when Locke arrived at the house and thratened to cut the head off of a man he believed she was sleeping with. She also said entered her car, refused to leave and physically assaulted her when she tried to remove him.

The male friend in question corroborated her acount, but the charges were later dropped at the woman's request.

In January of 2012 she filed another restraiing order against him, alleging that he accused her of "snooping" and punched a wall near her head after she found a cooked spoon and a syringe in her bathroom.

"He said he wished he could punch me in the face," she wrote. "He told me he wishes he could kill me sometimes."

Locke was also arrested in January of 2014 for operating under the influence, after a Ware police officer stopped him after seeing his car with headlights on at night in St. Mary's Cemetery. Locke allegedly had bloodshot eyes and an open budweiser beer in his cup holder.

But the charges were dismissed after Locke's attorney challenged the legality of the stop, with prosecutors agreeing that the cemetery was open the public and the officer did not have reasonable suspicion to pull Locke over.
The Hangover Pub and Broth by The Hangover in Worcester will be closed for the near future.

The announcement was posted on social media Friday afternoon.

The two Green Street restaurants are popular for their creative take on food, with The Hangover focusing its dishes on bacon and Broth specializing in ramen.

Jay Grey wanted to ensure customers that the restaurants were not closing for good. When they will re-open is not yet clear.

Grey declined to comment on the exact reason for the temporary closure.

"We love our customers," Grey said, thanking faithful diners for the support.

The closure comes a day after Christopher Slavinskas, a former owner of The Hangover Pub, pleaded guilty in federal court to lying to the Drug Enforcement Administration about hiding and spending drug money proceeds belonging to former restauranteur Kevin A. Perry Jr.

Slavinskas was listed on The Hangover Pub's liquor license. He petitioned for the license from the city in January 2016.

A city spokesman said the Hangover owner and manager surrendered their liquor license on Friday.

He pleaded guilty to the lying charge in federal court in Worcester on Thursday, admitting to hiding a toolbox containing upwards of $330,000 in Perry's drug proceeds, using some of the money for an Atlantic City vacation.

Grey on Thursday said that Slavinskas is no longer associated with The Hangover Pub.

"In regards to Christopher Slavinskas we are currently in the process of removing Chris from our liquor license and are working with the City of Worcester to expedite this process," he said. "As soon as the transfer is complete, this information will be made public record. Chris is no longer affiliated with The Hangover Pub and once removed from our liquor license will have no involvement in our business moving forward."

Slavinskas is scheduled to be sentenced in June.
When the guy who hired you has a never-ending stack of get-out-of-jail-free cards, fretting over the finer points of the law can become a needless frippery.

Our nation's president has the authority to issue pardons. Legal experts agree that the constitutionally mandated power is vast, but not all see it as unlimited.

This is why reports that John Dowd, who recently resigned as personal lawyer for President Donald Trump, discussed possible pardons with lawyers representing Trump's first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, and his onetime campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, are so disturbing. Reports of Dowd's discussions appeared in both The New York Times and The Washington Post in recent days. Dowd denied the news accounts, and lawyers for Flynn and Manafort refused comment.

Why is this such a big deal? That's simple: If Trump, who has never shown any sign that he cares a whit about observing the norms of governance, has let it be known that he'll gladly pardon associates who run afoul of the law, then the executive branch of our federal government will have become much like the doings in some third-world dictatorship. The guy in charge is in control. Period. The legal system can't touch him or his friends or family members. Because he holds all the cards.

Even those who believe that a president's pardoning power is absolute wouldn't likely argue that the framers of our Constitution planned for a president to wield it in such a fashion. They were endeavoring to create a nation of laws, not of men. They had had more than enough of a tyrannical king who could act as he chose -- just because. This is why they separated powers, provided checks and balances.

And this is why reports that Dowd floated the possibility of pardons for Flynn and Manafort cannot be brushed aside. Do they know things about the Trump campaign that might well be damning? About contacts with Russia, for example? Might they be less inclined to spill those beans if they knew that the president had their back?

Flynn has pleaded guilty to charges of lying to the FBI and is cooperating with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. Manafort, on the hook over charges of money laundering and other financial misdeeds, has chosen another path, and is fighting Mueller at every turn.

But if Dowd, perhaps speaking for the president, either explicitly or implicitly, has spoken to lawyers for the two men about possible pardons being in the offing, then they have both effectively been put in the same boat when it comes to worries about any possible legal ramifications ahead.

And that's not how things are supposed to work in America.
Its gotten even more personal.

Gov. Steve Bullock entered the fray Thursday over a recent ribbing of Montana by "The Daily Show" by inviting its host, Trevor Noah, to visit the Treasure State.

And he sweetened the deal by offering to make him lunch.

"The Daily Show" sent correspondent Roy Wood Jr. to the March for our Guns rally Saturday at the state Capitol in which 150 people attended while a March for our Lives rally was held across town in which about 1,000 people attended.

Phil Drake, [email protected]

https://www.greatfallstribune.com/story/news/2018/03/29/governor-asks-daily-show-host-see-real-montana/471371002/
Sunil Bholah a pris la parole lors de la ceremonie douverture dune atelier de travail organise par lInternational Organization for Standardization en collaboration Mauritius Standards Bureau sur le Leadership and Management Programme le 26 novembre 2019.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It gives me great pleasure to address you this morning on the occasion of the opening ceremony of the ISO workshop on Leadership and Management Programme organized by the International Organization for Standardization in collaboration with the Mauritius Standards Bureau.

On behalf of the Government of Mauritius and in my own name, I wish to extend a warm welcome to all the overseas delegates and resource persons who have travelled all the way to attend this workshop. I hope you will be able to spare some of your precious time to visit Mauritius. I also wish to thank the International Organization for Standardization for choosing Mauritius for this workshop. It is indeed a matter of pride and prestige to host this ISO flagship event. This gives Mauritius its rightful place in the fraternity of ISO Members and will evidently further consolidate our relationships as regards international standardization.Ladies and Gentlemen,

On 1st January 1995, Mauritius Standards Bureau became a full Member of the International Organization for Standardization. It marked a new beginning for the Bureau as it opened the door for international standardization. This was in consonance with the Government policy to adhere to WTO-driven trade liberalization process and to eliminate and reduce technical barriers to trade through the use of international standards and harmonized standards.

This event was a game-changer for the Mauritius Standards Bureau as it kick-started a long and fruitful journey for collaboration, cooperation and partnership between our two institutions.

It is worth mentioning that the building at Moka which houses MSB purpose-built laboratories and offices was inaugurated in the presence of the late Secretary-General of ISO Dr Lawrence Eicher and the late President of ISO, Mr E. Mollmann.

It would be appropriate here to briefly highlight the collaboration between ISO and MSB during the last two decades.

In 2012, the Bureau hosted the ISO Regional Workshop on Stakeholder Engagement and Participation in Standardization which enlisted the participation of Standards Bodies from several African countries. The workshop provided an overview of the importance of international standardization as a key enabler for unlocking world markets, promoting technical progress and ensuring sustainable development.

In the same year the Mauritius Standards Bureau conducted a study on the economic benefits of standardization in Mauritius in collaboration with ISO to determine the contribution of standards to the national economy and industrial productivity. The report of the study and similar reports from other countries have been published by ISO in a compendium.

Similarly, MSB is in the process of developing the National Standardization Strategy of Mauritius based on a framework established by ISO. As a first step, an intensive consultation has been conducted to assess the needs and demands of our stakeholders. The strategy will map out the standardization activities of the country for the coming five years and will support the socio-economic development of Mauritius.

The Mauritius Standards Bureau has also benefitted from an ISO Project Sponsorship Programme to be a Member of the CASCO Working Group 46 for the development of the International Standard ISO/IEC 17029 on General Principles and Requirements for validation and verification bodies. The Acting Director of the Mauritius Standards Bureau attended all the meetings of the Working Group for the full cycle development of that standard. The standard has been recently published. This was a first milestone for Mauritius and its National Standards Body.

The Mauritius Standards Bureau was also invited by ISO at the 34th ISO CASCO Plenary Meeting and Workshop this year to share its experience as a Member of ISO Working Group 46 with other National Standards Bodies from developing countries.

The Mauritius Standards Bureau has also the privilege to get the support and partnership of ISO within its Action Plan for Developing Countries to define the content of a CASCO toolkit which will provide the technical underpinnings to public policies to facilitate trade and enhance ease of doing business.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Overcoming the steep curve of learning is one of the major challenges of National Standards Bodies in developing countries. Without a strong and

synergistic partnership with world-class standards bodies and ISO, it would be impossible for standards bodies to scale up their capacities and capabilities.

It is useful to recall that out of 164 Standards Bodies affiliated to ISO over 120 are from developing countries.

These national standards bodies will not be able to derive benefits from international standardization unless they build their capacity and participate more actively in the development of international standards. Most of these national standards bodies like the Mauritius Standards Bureau are standards takers. They should make the shift and become standards setters. To this end, ISO should enlist the participation of its Members from developing countries in Technical Committees or Working Groups.

It is comforting to note that ISO has renewed its commitments for capacity building and inclusive international standardization in its Strategic Plan 2030. The Workshop on Leadership and Management Programme is a step in the right direction as leadership and management are key elements which determine the success of a country and an organization.

Ladies and Gentlemen

It is often said that the standards and conformity assessment infrastructure of a country is anchored in the social, economic and cultural realities of that country. In this sense the Mauritius Standards Bureau has evolved in response to the economic, industrial and social needs of Mauritius. It has continuously provided the scientific and technical underpinnings to the economic and industrial operators to boost the economic growth, bolster regional and international trade, promote the welfare of the citizen and protect the environment.

The Bureau has adopted a horizontal approach to standardization whereby Metrology, Standards Development and Conformity Assessment services are provided under a single roof. This model is adequate and suitable given the limited technical and financial resources available.

It is widely acknowledged that Mauritius is today at the cross-road of its development path. The strategies and policies which propelled the nation from a low-income economy to a middle-economy have outlived their purposes and are inadequate for the next phase of its development. A new Economic Model including innovative strategies are required to fuel the economic growth and uplift the standard of living of the citizens. A new development plan has already been elaborated to transform Mauritius into a high-income economy while ensuring inclusive growth and sustainability.

My Ministry is in the process of reviewing the National Export Strategy with the main objective of establishing the building blocks and engines of growth of the future. The strategy outlines the roadmap for the development of key sectors having high export potential.

The next phase of development will no doubt pivot on the strengthening of the standards and conformity assessment infrastructure as a competitive tool to spur growth and create gateways for trade in the complex world of market access and market acceptance.

Ladies and Gentlemen

With these remarks, I have now the pleasure to declare the ISO Workshop on Leadership and Management open and wish all the participants fruitful deliberations.
General Secretary Trong thanked the UH and considered this as a clear demonstration of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) and the Cuba State and peoples friendship towards Vietnam. He also appreciated the UHs training of generations of Vietnamese students, many of whom have become leaders or prominent experts in different fields in Vietnam.

He then delivered a speech at the UH, focusing on the promotion of sustainable development and social equality as seen from Vietnams reforms.

The event, broadcast live on the national radio and television channels of Cuba, was also attended by Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez, Politburo member and First Vice President of the Councils of State and Ministers of Cuba, along with many leaders of Cuban ministries and sectors.

Addressing UH lecturers, students, and Cuban officials, the CPC leader, who is on a State visit to the Latin American nation, talked about Vietnams efforts to settle issues relating to sustainable development and social equality, noting a harmonious solution to the relationship between sustainable development and social equality reflects the pre-eminence and humanism of socialism that Vietnam and Cuba are building.

He stressed the CPVs consistent viewpoint of putting humanism at the centre of the development strategy, seeing humanism as both the target and the driving force of development.

Vietnam targets rapid and sustainable development as well as a harmonious combination of economic growth and social progress and equality, which matches the regional and global agenda, including the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

In Vietnam, the Doi moi (Renewal) process over the last three decades is an intensive and comprehensive transformation process to achieve the target of a prosperous people, strong country, and a democratic, equitable, and civilised society, he said.

Vietnams economy has achieved and maintained a burgeoning rate of growth for a relatively long period. Poverty reduction and social welfare policies have been implemented effectively. The rate of low-income earners dropped from 58% in the early 1990s to under 10% in 2010, which means that in just two decades about 30 million Vietnamese people have escaped from poverty.

With correct and effective policies, the country has curbed the increase of inequality that has often occurred during the shift to a market economy in countries with the same development level, General Secretary Trong noted.

He emphasised that the market economy itself does not lead to socialism, but to successfully build socialism, it is necessary to develop a market economy in an appropriate manner.

It is a fact that the more reforms are made, the more challenges and difficulties occur alongside new opportunities, he said, adding that the Fourth Industrial Revolution is creating many problems in terms of the growth model, as the competitive edge belongs to the sectors based on knowledge and high technology, and the most important development factor is still human resources.

Meanwhile, shortcomings that have existed in the economy for a long time and many social aspects in Vietnam cannot be addressed overnight, requiring the country to adopt synchronous solutions, a suitable roadmap, and resolute and persistent directions, based on firm scientific grounds, he added.

The visiting leader said the reforms in Vietnam and the economic model update in Cuba cannot be achieved in one fell swoop, noting the need for countries to be patient and learn lessons from the implementation of the reforms and update.

In his speech, he expressed his belief that with the visionary leadership of the PCC, the Cuban Governments drastic actions, and peoples support, the country will definitely obtain even greater achievements and successfully build socialism.
The discussion was among key points Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh and Cuban FM Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla exchanged during their talks in Havana on March 29, on the sidelines of General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) Nguyen Phu Trongs State visit to Cuba from March 28-31.

Deputy PM Minh spoke highly of the close Vietnam-Cuba relations which have been strengthened through regular exchanges of visits at all levels and across multiple fields.

The bilateral ties in economics and trade have grown steadily, he said, noting that two-way trade amounted to US$240 million in 2017 and the two sides have maintained effective bilateral cooperation mechanisms with close links at international organisations and multilateral forums.

Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla, for his part, said he wants both sides to continue their close coordination to boost their bilateral and multilateral relations in the time ahead.

He expressed his support for the fifth political consultation between the two foreign ministries set to take place this year and vowed to work closely with the Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs to organise celebrations of the 45th anniversary of Cuban Leader Fidel Castros historic visit to a newly-liberated area in Quang Tri in 1973.

The two sides said they are ready to cooperate on the implementation of agreements reached during this visit. They later exchanged views on regional and international issues of mutual interest and agreed on the importance of settling territorial disputes through peaceful means, without the use of force or threats to use force, with respect for diplomatic and legal processes, in line with international laws and related UN conventions.

Deputy PM Minh invited his host to make an official visit to Vietnam, which was duly accepted by Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla.
The GMS is an area interconnected by the Mekong River which covers an expanse of 2.6 million km2 and has a total population of about 340 million. The GMS cooperation mechanism was initiated in 1992 with the support of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) which included Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and China (with two representative provinces of Yunnan and Guangxi).

With a long-term goal of promoting and facilitating mutually beneficial economic development among members and turning the GMS into a rapidly growing and prosperous region in South East Asia, GMS cooperation has been boosted by its members to achieve significant progress and attract the attention of large partners both within and outside the region.

2017 marked the 25th anniversary of the establishment of the GMS cooperation mechanism. After more than two decades of operations, the GMS cooperation mechanism has helped to promote economics, trade, and investment cooperation among members while narrowing the development gap within ASEAN and enhancing the voices of its members.

The CLV cooperation mechanism was established in 1999 by the Prime Ministers of the three member countries, with the aim of strengthening solidarity and cooperation between the three countries, and contributing to ensuring security, political stability, poverty reduction, and socio-economic development in the region.

CLV cooperation focuses on the areas of security - foreign affairs, transportation, industry, agriculture, trade and investment. After more than 18 years of implementation, the CLV cooperation mechanism basically serves as a link between the three countries to maintain a peaceful and stable environment in 13 border provinces and to promote practical economic cooperation to contribute to the transfer of economic structures in the border provinces.

Vietnam is an active and proactive member in both cooperation mechanisms. From the beginning of GMS cooperation, Vietnam has actively contributed to almost all GMS cooperation initiatives in the areas of transport, energy, investment, information, and communications, and agriculture. Vietnam's contributions have brought about positive results in terms of economic development, hunger eradication, and poverty reduction as well as in increasing regional economic integration.

As of December 2017, cooperation projects in Vietnam under the GMS cooperation mechanism have a scale of about US$6 billion, accounting for about 30% of total GMS loans and grants.

Currently, Vietnam is an important link and gateway for the North - South and East - West economic corridors as well as for the southern coastal region, which plays a crucial role in the GMS. Regarding the CLV cooperation mechanism, Vietnam continues to play a leading role in the development of guideline documents and a list of specific projects.

Vietnam's hosting of the GMS-6 and CLV-10 aims to confirm that the Mekong region is a constant focus of Vietnam and an important market for Vietnamese businesses. The organisation of the events is also expected to promote the active and responsible image of Vietnam in the GMS and CLV cooperation mechanisms.

These summits are also an occasion for Vietnam to expand and deepen diplomatic relations with many important partners. Through these forums, Vietnam will continue to make a good impression on international friends of a peaceful, stable, cooperative, and dynamic country which is home to creative and hospitable people.

With the ceaselessly improved position and strength, together with the support and trust of international friends, may the GMS-6 and CLV-10 presided over by Vietnam be a great success to affirm the prestige and position of Vietnam in the international arena and demonstrate Vietnam's commitments to building a Mekong sub-region of peaceful, stable, sustainable, and comprehensive development.
Earlier on the same day, the top legislator visited and held a working session with the NACO company, an affiliate of Royal HaskoningDHV, specialising in airport design and consultancy. Over the past years, Vietnam and the Netherlands have implemented many cooperation programmes in this area, including the Dutch Aviation Vietnam (DAV) Cluster programme.

NA Chairwoman Ngan stated that the aviation solutions offered to Vietnam by the Dutch side under the DAV Partners for International Business (DAV PIB) programme in the 2016-2019 period is a public-private cooperation initiative targeting joint actions to foster connections and establish bilateral business relations, while recommending research activities for creative solutions in training activities between key agencies in the Dutch and Vietnam aviation industries.

She highly appreciated and expressed her belief that NACO will succeed in its role as the main coordinator representing the group of eight Dutch companies, universities, and institutes to join the programme.

The NA leader said she believes that aviation infrastructure projects in Vietnam will offer good opportunities for firms, consultants, manufacturers, and training institutions in the Netherlands aviation and aerospace industry.
The Bua Liem Vang (Golden Hammer & Sickle) Press Awards, aims to recognise outstanding works in disseminating information and promoting understanding of the Partys policies and Party building, it is open to Vietnamese citizens at home and abroad.

Unlike the previous editions, this years contest will be open to entries which have won prizes at local press competitions. However, those participating in national, sectoral, and inter-sectoral contests are not eligible to enter.

Entries must be sent to the Party building magazines headquarters at 11B Cat Linh, Quoc Tu Giam ward, Dong Da district, in Hanoi, or email bualiemvang@xaydungdang.vn, no later than November 10.

According to Politburo member and head of the PCC's Organisation Commission Pham Minh Chinh, who is also the Chief Organiser of the awards, one special prize, five A prizes, ten B prizes, 15 C prizes, and 25 consolation prizes will be granted to entries across all forms of media, including newspapers, radio, TV, and multimedia.

In addition, the organising board will present 15 awards for organizations. Consolation prizes for Party building theory, senior citizens, young participants, and overseas Vietnamese will be added.

The awards ceremony will take place on February 3, 2019, to mark the 89th anniversary of the Communist Party of Vietnam.

Politburo member Pham Minh Chinh expressed his wish that the media will continue to support the Party in its quest to strengthen its foundation and improve transparency.
At the talks following the official welcome ceremony, Raul Castro Ruz affirmed that the State visit by the CPV leader is of special importance to the reinforcement of the ties between the two Parties, States and peoples.

He congratulated Vietnam on its enormous achievements over 30 years of Doi moi (renewal), voicing his belief that under the CPVs leadership, the Vietnamese people will continue to gain more victories in national development and protection.

General Secretary Trong underlined that the Party, State and people of Vietnam have a sincere friendship with their Cuban counterparts. He stressed late leader Fidel Castro was a big friend of Vietnam, and his example, ideology and revolutionary career will live in the heart of the two peoples forever.

He also congratulated the Cuban Party, State and people on their persistence in the revolutionary path, the accomplishments in updating their socio-economic model, initiated and implemented by the PCC, and recent successful local and national assembly elections.

He expressed his belief that the Cuban Party, State and people will keep solidarity to tackle all challenges and difficulties to promote the countrys revolutionary cause.

At the talks, the two leaders noted that the special Cuba-Vietnam relationship, nurtured by late President Ho Chi Minh and leader Fidel Castro, is a priceless asset of the two Parties, States and peoples. The two sides need to make unceasing efforts to protect, develop and pass those ties down to future generations.

Raul Castro lauded the support the Vietnamese Party, State and people have given to Cuba, appreciating Vietnams decision to free the Cuban Government from its debt to Vietnam during the visit.

Noting with pleasure the fruitful relationship between Vietnam and Cuba, the leaders agreed to increase high-level exchanges and meetings, improve the quality and efficiency of cooperation mechanisms and implement signed agreements.

At the same time, they will intensify the sharing of experience, especially in leadership and management training, socio-economic development and Party building.

Host and guest decided to step up cooperation in economy, trade, investment and education for young generations, while continuing close affiliation in national defence and security, as well as external affairs.

Apart from enhancing mutual support and coordination at multilateral forums, the two sides will intensify people-to-people exchange and education for youths of the two countries.

The leaders also agreed to work together to seek solutions to elevate bilateral economic ties more effectively, matching the potential for their cooperation.

They also highlighted complete similarities in the two countries stance on many international issues, and agreed to maintain mutual support at international organisations and multilateral forums to which both are members, particularly the UN.

Vietnam committed to backing Cubas bid to run for a seat in the UN Human Rights Council for 2021-2023. Meanwhile, Cuba pledged its support for Vietnams nomination for a seat in the UN Security Council for 2020-2021.

Party General Secretary Trong invited the Cuban leader to soon return Vietnam. Raul Castro Ruz accepted the invitation, saying he will visit the country at an appropriate time.

Earlier, Party General Secretary Trong and his entourage paid floral tribute to Cubans national hero Jose Marti at his statue.
The Lao leader is currently in Hanoi for the sixth Greater Mekong Sub-region Summit (GMS-6) and the 10th Cambodia-Laos-Vietnam Development Triangle Summit (CLV-10) from March 29-31.

The President expressed his belief that the participation of PM Thongloun Sisoulith will contribute greatly to the success of these summits, creating an impetus for the cooperation in the sub-region and between Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam.

He congratulated Laos on their immense, important attainments across sectors and expressed his belief that under the leadership of their Party and State, Lao people will succeed in building their country more wealthy.

Vietnams consistent policy is respecting and giving the top priority to preserving and developing the special solidarity with Laos. Vietnam will wholeheartedly support the comprehensive reform, national defence, and nation-building efforts of Laos, he stated.

Built on the successes of the Vietnam-Laos Solidarity and Friendship Year 2017, 2018 will be a favourable year for the two countries to reinforce and expand their traditional friendship, special solidarity, and comprehensive cooperation, and lift their cooperation to the next level, the Vietnamese President said.

He suggested pushing communications campaigns to educate young people on the special solidarity between the two countries, as well as connectivity between the two economies, especially in transport and energy.

PM Thongloun Sisoulith praised Vietnams organisation of GMS-6 and CLV-10 and its initiatives to the events and expressed his belief that the summits will be successful.

He told his host that the Party, State and people of Laos are working hard to accomplish the goals set by the Lao Peoples Revolutionary Party at its 10th Congress.

He asked the two countries to actively deploy high-ranking agreements based on the outcomes of the annual meeting between the two Political Bureaus and the 40th meeting of the Vietnam-Laos Intergovernmental Committee, to accelerate economic connectivity, especially in transport, energy and key cooperative projects.

He expects that the two countries will continue coordinating closely and supporting each other at multilateral forums.
Addressing the event, VMFA President Do Huu Dao reviewed the Vietnam-Malaysia friendly ties and cooperation over the past 45 years, stressing that Vietnam and Malaysia share a lot of similarities in terms of culture and customs, with their people having soon fostered exchanges and mutual learning.

The friendly relations and cooperation between the two nations have recorded developments across all fields, including politics, economy, trade, security, national defence, culture, education, and labour, he said.

Dao expressed his belief that with the joint efforts exerted by the two Governments and peoples, the Vietnam-Malaysia strategic partnership would continue to grow and bring about practical outcomes, meeting the benefits of the two countries for peace, stability, cooperation, and prosperity in the region and around the world.

Musical exchanges between the two countries at the ceremony. (Photo: baoquocte.vn)

On the occasion, he introduced the operations of the VMFA in strengthening exchanges and mutual understanding between the two countries people.

On his behalf, Malaysian Ambassador to Vietnam, Mohd Zamruni Bin Khalid, affirmed that over the past 45 years the Vietnam-Malaysia relations have witnessed multiple achievements, notably the signing of an agreement on the establishment of a bilateral strategic partnership and the acceleration of cooperation across all spheres.

The celebration offers an occasion for Vietnam and Malaysia to discuss and work out directions, aiming to consolidate and expand the relations between the two countries in the future, he stated.
Diplomats and experts gathered at an international seminar co-hosted by the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam and the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung Foundation in Hanoi, on March 30, to exchange views on the current global situation and lessons learned from the nations that have been elected to the seat, while offering Vietnam suggestions in the run for the non-permanent berth. The vote is scheduled to take place in June 2019.

Speaking at the opening session, Deputy Foreign Minister Dang Dinh Quy emphasised the important role of the UN in general, and of its Security Council in particular, in maintaining peace and stability around the world, strengthening post-conflict reconstruction, and building mechanisms for ensuring international security through anti-terrorism and the anti-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

However, the international security situation remains challenging, rooted in conflicts between nations or within states, as well as non-traditional security challenges. In that context, being elected and participating in the UN Security Council is an honour but also holds great responsibility for non-permanent members.

Recognising the issue, Vietnam has decided to run for a non-permanent seat at the council for the term 2020-2021. The continuation of the second term in this important body after the successful 2008-2009 term affirms Vietnam's determination to implement its peaceful foreign policy of independence, cooperation and development. It is also the highest reflection of its diverse and multilateral foreign policy, with active participation in international forums and organisations.

Ambassador Bui The Giang, former Deputy Permanent Representative of Vietnam to the UN, said that, compared to the 2008-2009 term, the world has witnessed many changes and Vietnam is also a different place from that of ten years ago, with an increased reputation in the region and around the world.

Swedish Ambassador Olof Skoog, Permanent Representative of Sweden to the UN, said that the international community has high expectations for Vietnam. The Swedish diplomat expressed his wish that, as a nation that is aware of the catastrophic impact of war, Vietnam would be a strong candidate for the 2020-2021 term, focusing on peaceful solutions to conflicts, respecting international laws and disseminating propaganda on protection for people and children in armed conflicts.

Delegates at the four session workshop discussed topics on current challenges to a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council, the experiences of Vietnam and other countries such as Sweden, Australia and Indonesia, in serving their duty at the body and proposals for Vietnam if elected to the council for the 2020-2021 term.
PM Phuc made the statement during a reception in Hanoi on March 30 for ADB President Takehiko Nakao, who is in the capital city to attend the sixth GMS Summit and the tenth CLV Development Triangle Summit.

The PM noted that Vietnam attaches importance to the GMS and CLV cooperation and stands ready to work closely with member countries, ADB and development partners.

The Vietnamese Government supports ADBs Strategy 2030 to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals and to continue assisting its member states in dealing with issues such as poverty, uneven development, climate change and development of the private sector, he said.

PM Phuc spoke highly of ADBs policies of incorporating low-cost capital and special loans into a balance sheet, thus helping to increase loan resources for member countries, from US$14 billion in 2014 to an estimated US$20 billion in 2020.

Hailing ADB as one of the leading capital and technical assistance suppliers and consultants, the PM said ADB has funded over US$16 billion to 165 programmes and projects in Vietnam, which helped build roads, electricity and irrigation system, schools and hospitals.

The Vietnamese leader told his guest that the government is striving to reform economic sectors, including finance-banking, and wants to receive assistance from ADB, especially the Asian Development Fund (ADF)s preferential loans with extended payment deadline.

PM Phuc called for ADBs continued technical assistance, capacity improvement and policy consultations for Vietnam, as well as official development assistance (ODA) and loans used in prioritized fields of climate change, infrastructure, rural agriculture, education, health care and poverty reduction.

The government leader said Vietnam will do its best and coordinate with ADB to successfully hold the GMS Summit.

Nakao, for his part, described Vietnam as an important partner of ADB, adding that the bank wants to offer more capital to Vietnam, given that its economy is growing with the public debt-to-GDP ratio of nearly 61%.

The President said ADB will provide roughly US$613 million in ADF preferential loans for Vietnam this year and suggested the country use the funding in several fields, including finance and hoped that it will be used effectively.

Nakao said ADB wants to receive the list of projects using such loans in the middle of this year so that it could be approved in the third quarter.

He added that ADB and several partners are planning to offer roughly US$1 billion in low-cost loans to foster Vietnams development, especially in its efforts to respond to climate change.
Welcoming the Thai leaders attendance at the sixth Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS) Summit, PM Phuc said that this reflects Thailands attaching importance to and its positive role in GMS cooperation, thus contributing to the success of the summit.

He agreed on the transport connectivity between Thailand, Laos and Vietnam, and affirmed to create all favourable conditions to speed up the work.

PM Phuc said he had assigned the Ministry of Industry and Trade and related ministries and sectors to remove difficulties regarding automobile imports from Thailand.

He suggested the two countries maintain close coordination in addressing illegal fishing, including the establishment of a hotline between marine law enforcement agencies of Vietnam and Thailand.

The Vietnamese leader also requested Thailand to solve bottlenecks in labour cooperation, while urging the two foreign ministries to set up a hotline between the two PMs in order to address arising problems.

For his part, PM Prayuth Chan-ocha said that he always reminds Thai enterprises to abide by the host countrys law, pay attention to employees living conditions and protect the environment when investing in Vietnam.

He expressed his hope that the Vietnamese Government will deal with difficulties in transport connectivity among Laos, Vietnam and Thailand in order to facilitate the flows of goods between the three nations.

The Thai PM proposed Vietnam to create favourable conditions for Thai investors to effectively invest in a wind power plant project in Bac Lieu province, as well as for Thai banks to expand presence in Vietnam.

The Thai leader agreed to step up the implementation of bilateral cooperation mechanisms in 2018, including the fourth Joint Cabinet Meeting, the third meeting of the Joint Committee on Bilateral Cooperation, and the third meeting of the Joint Trade Committee.
Assoc. Prof., Dr. Tran Dac Phu, Head of the MoHs Department of Preventive Medicine has granted Nhan Dan Online an interview regarding the Quinvaxem vaccine conversion and the introduction of new vaccines into the expanded immunisation programme for 2018. He stated that the health sector is capable of ensuring adequate vaccinations for children, as well as producing its own supply of new vaccines to reduce imports.

Currently, in Vietnam, there are more than 30 vaccines and several are used in extended vaccinations, such as the 5 in 1 Quinvaxem and vaccines against tuberculosis, diphtheria, measles, pertussis, tetanus, poliomyelitis, hepatitis B, meningitis, rubella, and rota. The 5 in 1 Quinvaxem vaccine has been used since 2010, and 42 million doses have been injected during the national expanded immunisation programme. Over the past seven years, Quinvaxem have made great strides, contributing significantly to the prevention and control of the most common childrens infectious diseases, including diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, hepatitis B, and pneumonia/meningitis caused by Hib bacteria.

Pointing to the impressive statistics for immunisation in 2017, Dr. Phu informed that vaccination coverage nationwide last year reached over 95%. 2017 is the 18th year in a row that Vietnam successfully prevented any new case of polio and also the 12th consecutive year of maintaining zero infections of neonatal tetanus. Measles and rubella are still controlled with no large-scale outbreaks. At the same time, it was also the first year that the expanded immunisation programme has covered 95% of children under one year of age.

The Korean manufacturer has announced it is ceasing production of Quinvaxem, so Vietnam and other countries using this 5 in 1 vaccine must convert to alternatives. The replacement is normal, Dr. Phu said, adding that the MoH had developed a roadmap to select the vaccines with similarities to Quinvaxem in ingredients and effectivity as a suitable replacement. The remaining nationwide stockpile of Quinvaxem vaccine is enough to satisfy demand until the end of next May.

"We will select the most widely used vaccines in the world for import to Vietnam and will carry out small-scale injections in four provinces first. From next June, the programme will be carried out on a national scale. Currently, the MoH has not finalised the vaccine yet," Dr. Phu informed.

Dr. Tran Dac Phu, Head of the MoHs Department of Preventive Medicine, stated that the health sector is capable of ensuring adequate vaccinations for children, as well as producing new vaccines to reduce imports.



In order to ensure that children are vaccinated on a continuous basis with sufficient vaccines, the senior health official suggested that parents should not hesitate in getting their children injected with the new 5 in 1 vaccine. In particular, he advised people not to avoid the injection for 5 in 1 vaccine to avoid the high threat of diseases like diphtheria and pertussis.

Regarding the MoHs plan to replace several vaccines with domestically produced alternatives this year, in addition to the 5 in 1 vaccine conversion, the ministry will put into use MR 2 in 1 - a measles-rubella vaccine produced by the Centre for Research and Production of Vaccines and Biologicals on a national scale for children aged 18 months from next month. This will reduce the costs of importing the foreign made MR vaccine.

In addition, to continue promoting achievements in anti-poliomyelitis, along with the continuation of letting children from two to four months of age use three doses of the routine oral bOPV vaccine, the MoH will add the injected IPV vaccination for 5-month-olds to the expanded vaccination programme from August this year.

Investment in vaccine production is necessary because of the large population in Vietnam, Dr. Phu said, adding that self-produced supplies would ensure vaccine security and help the domestic health sector to reduce dependence on imported vaccines. Currently, Vietnam has produced more than ten types of vaccines, including those against tuberculosis, measles, rubella, rota, cholera, typhoid, diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, and combined measles-rubella. The Institute of Vaccines and Medical Biologicals in Nha Trang is developing influenza and 5 in 1 vaccines.

We are going to produce multi-dose vaccines to help children avoid getting multiple injections. However, we are still unable to produce the 5 in 1 vaccine yet, so, in future, we will have to continue to improve vaccine technologies to produce "made in Vietnam" vaccines, Dr. Phu stressed.
The content is part of a new letter of intent (LoI) on boosting cooperation that was reached on March 29, between the Vietnamese Ministry of Constructions Urban Development Agency and the Dutch Smart Cities Consortium that gathers leading Dutch institutes, businesses and agencies in the field of urban development.

The signing was part of an international seminar themed Developing Smart Cities in Vietnam towards Green and Sustainable Growth held by Ministry of Construction and the Embassy of the Netherlands in Hanoi, on Thursday.

Accordingly, both sides agreed to share their experience and effective practices in urban development, smart city development, airport development and the living environment. They will also work together to develop a cooperative framework for seeking opportunities in smart city development in both countries.

Speaking at the seminar, Deputy Minister of Construction Nguyen Dinh Toan said that Vietnam is witnessing rapid urbanisation at a rate of 37.5% nationwide. Urbanisation has contributed a significant part to Vietnams successful socio-economic development in recent years, contributing 70% of the GDP.

Deputy Minister of Construction Nguyen Dinh Toan calls for further Dutch support in smart city building in Vietnam. (Photo: NDO/Trung Hung)



However, rapid urbanisation also poses challenges for major cities in solving tasks on urban management amidst effectively using infrastructure and land resources and the mitigation of negative impacts on the environment. In such a context, according to Deputy Minister Toan, IT application and the successful building of smart cities would create a breakthrough for urban development in Vietnam.

Highlighting the important cooperation between the two countries in various fields, particularly urban management and smart city construction, he expressed his wish to receive practical suggestion from the Dutch side in the field to support Vietnam in developing a suitable smart city model for its conditions.

Last year, during the official visit by Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc to the Netherlands, a model and strategy for developing smart city were presented to the Vietnamese PM. Following up the visit, the Urban Development Agency, on behalf of the Ministry of Construction, has been assigned to work with the Netherlands Smart Cities Consortium to foster cooperation in the relevant fields under smart city building and urban development.

Dutch Ambassador to Vietnam Nienke Trooster stated that certain transitions would definitely take place, such as the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Resilience also means that a city can accommodate short term upheavals, such as a flood. Smart cities offer architecture for structuring procedures in such a way that cities will be resilient enough to handle all of those future developments, she affirmed.

At the seminar, experts from both sides discussed the current situation and challenges to smart city development in Vietnam and Vietnams ICT capability and potential in developing smart cities. They also shared experience on smart city construction in the Netherlands and other countries, drawing lessons and recommendations for Vietnam to facilitate the field with great potential for bilateral cooperation.

Experts at the seminar discuss the current situation and challenges to smart city development in Vietnam. (Photo: NDO/Trung Hung)
Alex Wong/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- Democrats in Congress are demanding that Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt disclose details about his 2017 use of a Capitol Hill home tied to a top energy lobbyist.



U.S. Rep. Don Beyer, a Virginia Democrat called on Pruitt to immediately make clear the terms of his housing agreement and publish all correspondence with the veteran lobbyist whose wife co-owns townhouse.



ABC News reported Thursday that Pruitt lived in a townhouse that is near from the U.S. Capitol complex for much of his first year in Washington, property records from 2017 show.



The lobbyist J. Steven Hart, would not disclose how much Pruitt paid to live there and the EPA did not respond to requests for comment. Hart's wife, Vicki, co-owns the property. Vicki Hart reached on her cell phone, said she would call back to discuss the matter but never did.



Hart is the chairman of lobbying firm Williams and Jensen that lobbies on EPA policies like the Clean Air Act, according to its website. The firm also lobbied on issues related to the export of liquefied natural gas and represented Cheniere Energy Inc., which owned the only active Liquid Natural Gas export plant in the United States at the time.



Pruitt traveled to Morocco last December and the EPA said in a press release that liquid natural gas exports a topic of discussion during that trip.



Cheniere Energy spokeswoman Rachel Carmichel told ABC News the company ended its relationship with Harts firm in December 2017. The spokeswoman went on to say Cheniere was and said the company was unaware of the relationship and had not used Harts firm to have conversations with the EPA.



The EPA did not respond to ABC News' questions about whether Hart's lobbying firm had any involvement in arranging meetings during Pruitt's trip to Morocco.



Multiple Republican members of Congress also did not return ABC News' requests for comment about the revelations, including Sen. John Barrasso, chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Barrasso is from Wyoming and led Pruitt on a coal mine tour Thursday with fellow Wyoming Sen. Mike Enzi.



But Democrats on the key congressional committees that oversee the EPA expressed outrage over the undisclosed arrangement.



Administrator Pruitt should reveal the rental agreement so we can see if he received any preferential treatment, as well as his meeting schedules and itineraries because he has been the most secretive Administrator at the EPA that weve ever had, said U.S. Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M.



Unfortunately, this seems to be another example in a concerning pattern with Mr. Pruitt, said U.S. Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.



Democrats from the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over EPA, tweeted about the ABC News report and some Democratic members tweeted about the housing arrangement using the hashtag #BootPruitt, which is part of a coordinated campaign against the administrator launched by several environmental groups this week.



That effort includes groups like the Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, and League of Conservation Voters, who argue that Pruitt's decisions benefit the oil and gas industries.



"The Administrator of the EPA should stand up to corporate polluters, not live in their homes while pushing their agenda at every turn," Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune said in a statement.



The head of the nonprofit watchdog group the Environmental Integrity Project and former EPA Director of Civil Enforcement Eric Shaffer called on the EPA's inspector general and Congress to look into the issue.



Does this explain why Pruitt flew to Morocco to pitch natural gas exports, which isnt really an EPA concern? Schaeffer wrote in a statement.



The EPA inspector general's office is aware of the report, according to spokesman Jeff Lagda.



The agency's inspector general is already looking into the cost of Pruitt's travel and whether the agency followed all proper procedures.



The EPA previously confirmed that Pruitt often flies first or business class, citing security reasons, but he later told CBS News that he has asked his staff to revisit that policy. That report is expected to be made public later this year, as well as an audit into the cost of Pruitt's personal security detail.

Copyright  2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
Addressing a UN Security Councils open discussion, themed Collective Action to Improve UN Peacekeeping Operations, on March 28 in New York, the Vietnamese ambassador emphasised that peacekeeping activities should be reformed to improve their efficiency in responding to the complex challenges at present.

She shared the viewpoints of Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) countries and the ASEAN members that peacekeeping operations should be implemented within the framework of international law and the UN Charter, with respect to national sovereignty and non-interference in the internal affairs of states.

The operations must be conducted with the agreement of all relevant parties without using force except for the purposes of self-defence and mission implementation, he added.

Ambassador Nga affirmed that Vietnam will continue its efforts to contribute to UN peacekeeping operations, she noted, adding that the country is deploying a level-two field hospital in South Sudan.

Recognising the role of women in peace keeping and building missions, Vietnam has sent the first female officer to join the peacekeeping operations and will deploy other female officers when the field hospital in South Sudan is executed, said Nga.

Meanwhile, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on the member countries to sustain their political engagement and push for political solutions and inclusive peace processes, including through bilateral diplomacy and sanctions if necessary. He noted that peace operations cannot succeed if they are deployed instead of a political solution, rather than in support of one.

As UN peacekeeping missions are now operating in far more dangerous, complex and high-risk environments, they are under threat from armed groups, criminals and terrorists, who have access to powerful modern weapons, he said, adding that UN peacekeepers are often under-equipped, under-prepared and unready for the dangerous environments in which they now operate. There are gaps in command and control, as well as in culture, equipment and training.

Last year, the UN lost 59 peacekeepers through malicious acts  a sharp increase since 2016, when the figure was 34. He suggested that the member states should focus their efforts in three areas: refocusing peacekeeping with realistic expectations; making peacekeeping missions stronger and safer; and mobilising greater support for political solutions and for well-structured, well-equipped and well-trained forces.
A NorthPointe Christian High School student is using her senior project to leave a legacy for future refugee students.

Mikayla Bosma, a senior, is raising funds for the NorthPointe International and Refugee Program.

The program currently serves students from Haiti, Guatemala, Rwanda, Tanzania and the Congo.

Staff and administration at NorthPointe work closely with students to break language and education barriers, providing English as a second language (ESL) and individualized education solutions to best fit the needs and gaps of refugees.

Every senior at the high school participates in a senior presentation and project of some type. The goal of doing so is for students to articulate and display the intersection of their education, Christianity, personal talents and interests through a project, service, mission trip or anything creative of their choosing.

Each spring, the upcoming graduates make an oral presentation on their projects to family, friends and guests.

"I want these refugee students to have the same opportunities I've been afforded. I've seen the difference the International and Refugee Program at NorthPointe Christian can make in the life of students," Mikayla said.

She set up a GoFundMe page and is also in the process of sharing the story of her refugee friends and classmates. Mikayla has begun a letter-writing campaign and hopes to be able to possibly acquire avenues for speaking and sharing at local churches.

"I have been really impressed by the way Mikayla has identified with an issue and taken it to the next step in wanting to do something about it," program director Sara Roberts said.

"This is what we want to see from our students when they graduate NorthPointe Christian...a merging of head knowledge and heart knowledge and the skills and drive to want to be able to be part of a solution."

Mikayla's interest in ESL and working with immigrant and refugee students sparked after taking a class on world justice, she said. After graduation, she plans to pursue ESL at the University of Michigan.
GRAND RAPIDS, MI -- Three rare automobiles built in Grand Rapids during the early 20th Century will make a homecoming at the Grand Rapids Public Museum this summer.

The 1909 Austin Model 60, the 1920 Lorraine and the 1932 De Vaux are believed to be the only examples left of the Grand Rapids-produced cars as the auto industry was in its infancy.

The cars will be among several rare and collectible cars and motorcycles on display for a May 2 "Collections and Cocktails" reception at the museum. The three Grand Rapids-built cars will remain on display through the summer.

The star of the display will be the Austin Model 60, a gigantic open roadster that has not been back to Grand Rapids since it was sold at the 1909 Chicago Auto Show. The car, which fetched $345,000 at a Florida auction in 2014, is on loan from Stahl's Auto Museum in Detroit.

"Things didn't have to turn out they way they turned out," observed Alex Forist, chief curator of the Grand Rapids Public Museum as he surveyed the massive brass-trimmed 1909 Austin Model 60 parked in the museum's main gallery.

While Henry Ford was building his first cars in Detroit in 1903, Walter Austin was building his first automobiles in Grand Rapids.

Where Ford would mass-produce his tiny horseless buggies by the millions, the Austin Automobile Co. focused on hand-building brass-trimmed cars that would become bigger and faster every year, attracting wealthy buyers like newspaper titan William Randolph Heart and boxer Joe Jackson.

Austin, the son of Grand Rapids lumber baron James Austin, got out of the automobile business in 1920 when his family turned to real estate development. The 17-year-old company had produced a total of 575 vehicles when it shut down its assembly line on S. Division Avenue.

Carrying a lofty list price of $7,000, the Austin Model 60 was one of the finest on the market with its 141-inch wheelbase, brass hardware and a muscular 784 cubic-inch engine turning out 90 horsepower.

The Model 60 has been kept in pristine condition since it was purchased by Charles Herbst of Lima, Ohio. The car stayed in the family until it was sold to a Detroit collector in 1946. It was later displayed at the Crawford Museum in Cleveland for 30 years before it was restored in 2003 by its third owner.

The Lorraine and De Vaux have been part of the museum's permanent collection for several years. They were donated by Grand Rapids car collector Joseph A. Moch.

The blue Lorraine touring car, with just 1,871 miles on its odometer, is a much more compact vehicle with a four-cylinder engine. The car was brought out of storage this week and is parked on the second floor.

The Lorraine Motor Co. made cars in Grand Rapids and Detroit with the help of David Buick, who left the company he founded in Detroit after a series of bad business ventures, according to the Standard Catalog of American Cars.

The 1932 De Vaux, a red and silver convertible with a rumble seat, has been parked near the entrance to the museum's main gallery for years. An 1950s Chevrolet station wagon that was one of the first vehicles to cross the Mackinac Bridge, will be replaced by the Austin.

The De Vaux - Hall Motors Co., was founded by Norman De Vaux, a California businessman who had success selling Cadillacs, Buicks and Chevrolets on the West Coast. Though De Vaux also owned a factory in Oakland, Calif., he moved production to Grand Rapids because of the central location, according to a 1965 article in the "Automobilist."

"Production started in Grand Rapids on April 1, 1931 but ten months and 7,038 cars later, on February 13, 1932, the company went into receivership, a victim of the Great Depression," according to a 1974 Grand Rapids Press article.

"Continental Motors Company of Muskegon bought the Michigan assets of the De Vaux - Hall Company and continued to produce modified models of the car for another year before it too ceased production."

In addition to the vintage cars and motorcycles, the museum's transportation display also will include "Herpolsheimer's Santa Express," an elevated trolley which carried children through the former downtown department store.
ANN ARBOR, MI - An early morning shooting inside a Holiday Inn hotel in Ann Arbor is believed to be narcotics-related, according to hotel management.



One person was shot about 2:50 a.m. Friday, March 30 in a fourth-floor room of the hotel at 3600 Plymouth Road, according to a press release issued by hotel management. Someone in the room alerted hotel front desk staff, and an on-call auditor called 911.



Police have said one man suffered a gunshot wound, but the injuries are believed to be non-life threatening. Washtenaw Metro SWAT responded to the scene, per department protocol, said Ann Arbor police Lt. Renee Bush. The incident remains under investigation.

1 injured in shooting at Ann Arbor hotel



Suspects in the incident fled the hotel moments before police arrived, but were caught on surveillance footage and are being sought, according to the hotel.



"The incident was isolated and believed to be narcotics related, according to local law enforcement, though we don't believe at this time, that any narcotics were on-property," hotel management said in the statement.



Police did not immediately respond to request for further comment.



The hotel went into lockdown about 4 a.m. and guests were escorted to a banquet room, so police could search the building, according to the statement. Guests were allowed to return to their rooms about 6:45 a.m.



"The Holiday Inn Near Ann Arbor is accommodating guests and ensuring they are as comfortable as possible," according to the release.



The hotel is also providing local crisis hotline information to guests in need.



Many guests were unaware of the incident initially and Mark Ross, 67, of Chicago, said half a dozen police woke him up about 5:30 a.m. to send him to the hotel's conference room. About 20 or 25 other people from rooms and floors surrounding the shooting area were also escorted to the room.



Ross said he came to Ann Arbor to visit his daughter at the University of Michigan, and the hotel served beverages, and attempted to keep the crowd comfortable.



"For the most part, it was just a way to lose some sleep," he said.



The incident, however, was alarming for guests such as Otaymah Bonds, who said she was pulled into the conference room on her way to meet her father ahead of his open-heart surgery. She didn't make it in time, but was headed to see him about 11 a.m. Friday.



She and fellow guest Annette Brown, who she was traveling with, expressed frustration with the lack of information she received initially about the incident.



"When something happens like this, we need to know what's going on," Brown said.
ANN ARBOR, MI - Changes are coming on how the University of Michigan deals with potential conflicts of interests on its Investment Advisory Committee, its Board of Regents announced Thursday, March 29.

Regent Andrew Richner announced the changes on behalf of the board, which includes formalizing the disclosure of any potential conflicts of interest by requiring members of the committee - which advises UM on its nearly $11 billion endowment - document them in writing on an annual basis, or as they may occur.

The change comes after the Board of Regents completed a review of the policies, procedures and practices that surround the investment office and considered best practices, Richner said.

"A small number of the university's investments are in funds managed by members of the IAC," Richner said. "Going forward, should the university make new investments in such funds, it will call specific attention to them for Regents to ensure transparency and prepare a plan to manage any perceived conflict."

Changes to the investment committee policies come after a Detroit Free Press investigation in January showed executives at some of the nation's top investment firms donated hundreds of millions of dollars to UM while the university invested as much as $4 billion in those companies' funds.

The university's response to the investigation noted the current value of investments the university has in funds being managed by members of UM's Investment Advisory Committee represent 2 percent of the university's total investment portfolio.

The Free Press' report noted that the university invested in companies at the time owned or co-led by four current members of the nine-member IAC made up of wealthy donors and alums.

Richner and the board recommended the investment committee re-designate an endowment it previously established to support UM's investment office to a need-based student scholarship, or other other areas of the institution as selected by donors to avoid any perception of a conflict.

In its report, the Free Press noted the nine-member IAC contributed more than $1 million in total to a single fund called the "Chief Investment Officer Endowment Fund," designed to help defray the costs of paying the salary of UM Chief Investment Officer Erik Lundberg.

"The university will not accept any future donations, specifically in support of the investment office," Richner said.

In the future, Richner noted that UM's Chief Investment Officer will present the overarching investment strategy annually at a regents meeting.

"While the IAC advises on overall investment strategy, and does not discuss specific investments, should it ever occur, members who might be conflicted will be recused from any such discussion," Richner said.

"We are grateful for the expertise of the investment experts who volunteer their services on the Investment Advisory Committee in assisting and achieving our investment objectives," Richner added.

UM Spokesman Rick Fitzgerald said the additional measures regarding investments grew out of discussions involving the Board of Regents and others who work with investments, including Lundberg and Chief Financial Officer Kevin Hegarty.

The discussions involved "looking at ways to make it clear that we have strong processes and policies in place," Fitzgerald said. "Everyone agrees these are good steps to take."
Rioting and a fire in the cells of a Venezuelan police station in the central city of Valencia killed 68 people on March 28, according to the government and witnesses.

"We urge the Venezuelan authorities to carry out a prompt, thorough and effective investigation to establish the cause of these deaths, provide reparations to the victims families, and, where applicable, identify and bring those responsible to justice," the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a statement voicing concern at prison conditions.

Earlier, the authorities have launched an urgent investigation to find the causes and those responsible for the tragedy.
BAY CITY, MI -- The Bay City Commission meets behind closed doors this coming week with an attorney representing an Essexville couple who have a lawsuit pending against a police officer, alleging he and others violated their constitutional rights by entering their home without permission.

The Commission's executive session with attorney Thomas M. Loeb, representing husband-and-wife Dennis F. Brenay Sr. and Linda Brenay, is to take place the evening of Monday, April 2. Also expected to be present is attorney Timothy S. Ferrand, representing Bay City Public Safety Officer Troy Sierras, named as a defendant in the Brenays' federal lawsuit.

Contacted by The Bay City Times-MLive, Bay City Manager Dana Muscott said the purpose of the meeting is to update the commission on the case. Asked if the city is planning to settle, Muscott said she could not discuss a pending case.

Loeb also said he was not at liberty to discuss potential resolutions.

The Brenays filed their lawsuit seeking an unspecified amount of damages at the federal courthouse in downtown Bay City back in September 2015. It initially named Sierras, former Essexville Public Safety Director Michael Schartow, Essexville Public Safety Officer Kyle Glocksine, Bay City, and Essexville as defendants.

The suit has its origins in the officers' alleged conduct on Nov. 30, 2013, at the Brenays' home in the 500 block of Essexville's Borton Avenue.

According to court records, Sierras handled a complaint filed by a woman alleging Dennis F. Brenay Jr. had violated a personal protection order she had against him. Sierras met with Schartow, then a sergeant, and Glocksine to plan to arrest Brenay Jr. at his parents' home.

They did not acquire a warrant to perform such an arrest, the suit alleges.

When the three officers knocked on the door of the home, Brenay Sr. answered and told them his son was upstairs. He then closed the door, with police writing in their reports that he "slammed" the door, according to court records.

Brenay Sr. then reopened the door and stood just inside the house with his son behind him, court records state.

The lawsuit alleges that one or more of the officers began questioning Brenay Jr. and when his father asked the officers a question, one of them stated, "I'm not talking to you."

"Thereafter, plaintiff tried to shut his front door, which was his legal right," the suit states.

The suit goes on to claim that the officers acted in concert and "violently prevented" Brenay Jr. from shutting the front door.

From the suit:

"The defendant officers then illegally entered plaintiff's home and began brawling with Dennis Brenay Jr. In the process of illegally entering plaintiff's home and physically tussling with plaintiff's son, plaintiff Dennis Brenay Sr. was slammed into the hallway wall and nearly knocked over. During the officers' unlawful entry into the plaintiffs' home, Mrs. Brenay was also battered and bruised. While in plaintiffs' home, one of the officers intentionally, violently and unnecessarily kicked plaintiffs' pet dog."

The officers stunned Brenay Jr. with a Taser, placed him in handcuffs and arrested him, according to the suit.

Both Brenay Sr. and Brenay Jr. were subsequently charged on the state-level with assaulting, resisting or obstructing police, a two-year felony. They went to trial in July 2014, with a jury acquitting the father and convicting the son. A week after the guilty verdict was reached, then-Bay County Chief Circuit Judge Kenneth W. Schmidt issued a directed verdict of not guilty. Defense attorneys Adam C. Reddick and Marcus Garske had made the request on the argument that police illegally entered the Brenays' home and thus they had the legal right to resist them.

The Brenays' lawsuit states that the officers needed a warrant, consent or exigent circumstances to enter the Brenays' home. As officers lacked these justifications, they violated the Brenays' Fourth Amendment right prohibiting unreasonable searches and seizures, the suit states.

The lawsuit further states the three officers in their respective reports "did knowingly and deliberately, or with a reckless disregard for the truth, make false statements or omissions, and those statements or omissions were necessary to the finding of probable cause to prosecute Dennis Brenay, Sr."

In the fall of 2016, the parties agreed to dismiss Glocksine, Essexville, and Bay City from the suit. In November 2016, U.S. District Judge Thomas L. Ludington dismissed the suit with prejudice.

Loeb, however, appealed Ludington's dismissal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati.

Nearly a year later in September 2017, the U.S. Court of Appeals reversed Ludington's dismissal regarding Sierras, but upheld his decision to dismiss Schartow from the suit. As such, Sierras remains the lone defendant.

Currently, on trial date is set for the lawsuit.
BAY CITY, MI -- Connie Velasquez can feel the smoke creeping through the hallways of Smith Manor in her lungs.

But come May 1, that will no longer be an issue.

The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development has mandated all public housing authorities nationwide -- including in Bay City -- must have a smoke-free policy in place by July 31, 2018.

Beginning May 1, residents living in low-income housing units will not be able to smoke inside or outside of their units.

"I think it is a good thing," said Velasquez, 57, who suffers from asthma and bronchitis. "There are people in here on oxygen."

The housing authority said that HUD's new policy will apply to their 527 units in four high-rise buildings and its 193 single family and duplex-style units scattered throughout Bay City neighborhoods.

Another resident, who only identified himself as Wayne, said he feels the housing authority is taking resident's rights away.

"They pay rent and they should be allowed to smoke," he said.

According to Bill Phillips, CEO of the Bay City Housing Commission, about 35-50 percent of their current residents and guests smoke.

"Our residents live in close proximity with one another and the impacts of secondhand smoke on them and the accumulated effects of first and second-hand smoke on the physical property are too serious to continue unaddressed," he said, in a statement.

"We remain convinced that applying HUD's ruling to all our properties, coupled with our creating healthier environments that lower health risks associated with smoking for our residents, is the correct path for us."

The Housing Commission has recently launched plan to drastically change its business model from scattered home sites throughout the city to a handful of high-rise projects on both sides of the Saginaw River. After the transition, the scattered homes would be sold at market rate, officials have said.

The model is more efficient to maintain and makes private sector funding more accessible, Phillips said.

"It puts us in a position to operating identically to a private sector developer," he previously said.

The new rule didn't seem to bother David Walker, who sat outside on a bench Friday afternoon, March 30, smoking a cigarette.

"If I have to go across the street, I just go across the street," Walker said.
CORUNNA, MI -- A 13-year-old girl has been charged as a juvenile after police say she admitted to writing a threat inside a bathroom stall at Corunna High School.

Corunna police Chief Nick Chiros confirmed Thursday, March 29, that one count of reporting a false terrorist threat has been authorized by the Shiawassee County Prosecutor's Office against the teen.

The threat found around 1:30 p.m. Monday, March 26, read "Tomorrow here I am going to place a bomb and have all my friends shoot up the school," according to police. The date March 27 was also found in the stall.

Chiros said the building was placed in secure mode the rest of the day and a Michigan State Police bomb dog was brought in Monday night to search the building.

No bomb was found and students returned Tuesday morning with Chiros, an Owosso police officer and MSP troopers on the grounds.

"We were at the school just to greet kids and show them everything is OK and that we are there to protect them," said Chiros.

Police were able to develop the suspect during an investigation, Chiros said, and "after interviewing her she confessed."

"She didn't tell me why. There was no real reason," he said on the potential reasoning behind the threat.

The charge is punishable by up to 20 years in prison, a fine of $20,000, or both.

It's not the first threat the district has discovered amid the 2017-18 school year, with five coming after the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, that left 14 students and three staff members dead.

"It's going like wildfire," Chiros said of the threats, with several taking place even after he met with students during an assembly to address the potential consequences.

"We're not going to give any warnings or excuse the first offense," he said. "It disrupts the school day; all the other students suffer. It uses up manpower that could be used for other things. We've got to take every threat seriously. We don't' know what's real or fake."

The girl was released to her parents. She is currently suspended from school.
GENESEE COUNTY, MI - A Flint man was sentenced this week after he delivered the dose of heroin that led to the November 2016 death of a 47-year-old Grand Blanc Township man.

Antonio Levelle Brown, 24, was sentenced March 26 to 29 months to 15 years in prison by Genesee Circuit Judge Celeste Bell after pleading guilty to one count of involuntary manslaughter for the death of Chad Elliott Decker.

He initially faced a single charge of delivery of a controlled substance causing the death, which is punishable by up to life in prison.

Brown received credit for 285 days served in the Genesee County Jail.

Officers from the Flint Area Narcotics Group were able to track down Brown and set up a meet with him in mid-2017 in Flint, and he was taken into custody.

Grand Blanc Township police Detective Matt Harburn said Brown expressed remorse over the incident.

"He confessed and wrote an apology letter to the man's family," Harburn said.
GENESEE COUNTY, MI - Stand up and stand out. This motto was a driving message to help Natalie Willyerd find her confidence during TeenQuest.

The first time she had to stand up in front of 28 of her peers, the 14-year-old Swartz Creek High School freshman remembers her face turning bright red and her voice fluctuating to extremely high pitches.

In five weeks, her nerves have gone away, allowing her to be one of five student speakers in front of more than 200 people at the TeenQuest graduation on Thursday night, March 29.

"I don't get nervous to talk in front of people anymore," said Willyerd, who said she wants to pursue a career as an orthodontist. "I learned so much, like taking initiative and keeping a positive mental attitude. Attitudes are contagious and it effects everybody around you, so it's really important to be positive."

A total of 121 teenagers graduated from TeenQuest on Thursday at the Swartz Creek Performing Arts Center. TeenQuest is a pre-employment and leadership training program designed to help young people navigate today's competitive job market.

This is the program's fourth graduation of the 2017-18 school year. It seeks to develop skills in more than 700 students annually throughout Genesee County between the ages of 14 and 19.

Rhetta Hunyady, vice president of education and training for Flint and Genesee Chamber of Commerce, said students in the program cannot become the "invisible kid in the classroom," as each are asked to engage in highly-participatory two-hour sessions, four days a week for five weeks.

Hunyady said the program's focus is to help build an understanding of workplace expectations, which many may not have yet.

She listed a few examples, including standing up in front of a group, working as part of a team, working independently, critically thinking, resolving conflict without raising your voice or using physical force and doing all of this with integrity and respect for all parties.

"We teach them how to set goals -- smart goals -- and how to achieve them," Hunyady said. "The readiness for skills that are transferrable to the workplace, but also toward home life and school. It's going to make them a great employee or entrepreneur. It's going to make them a better student. It's going to make them a better member of the community and help them build that community around them."

Parents and grandparents in the audience were given a chance to vocalize their support for the students completing the program. The students then took to the stage, declaring the career path the hope to pursue publicly and receive a certificate of completion during the commencement ceremony.

One skill that the students most consistently said they needed to improve on was communication, whether that be becoming more comfortable with public speaking, improving an inviting demeanor like Flint Powers Catholic High School freshman Haliee Clack, or becoming more comfortable in socialization like Carman-Ainsworth High School freshman David Southward.

Clack, who seeks a career as a political journalist, said the program helped her to "smile more and host a better attitude."

She said she realized she is not the only one struggling with these issues, which motivated her to work harder.

Southward, who wants to be a neurosurgeon, said he realized he could get along with just about anybody through engaging with less talking and more listening, a skill he never knew he possessed.

"I learned perseverance and to stick with something," Southward said. "I didn't want to lose out on this opportunity because it's life-changing."
GRAND RAPIDS, MI -- State environmental officials are working with Michigan's second-busiest airport to investigate potential groundwater contamination at the site.

Concerns are tied to a type of foam used in firefighting operations and training at airports around the world that contains per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, called PFAS or PFCs. The contaminants are tied to a growing list of sites with groundwater contamination in Michigan, and exposure to PFAS chemistry has been linked to certain cancers, thyroid malfunction and other diseases.

Gerald R. Ford International Airport CEO James Gill said he was first made aware of the possible threat about a year ago.

"Our awareness was really just a general awareness of the situation and the fact that airports like us, throughout the country and the world, have used this foam," Gill said. "Not that we had a problem or an issue."

Former fire chiefs at Gerald R. Ford International Airport said thousands of gallons of the foam were sprayed during training exercises at the Cascade Township facility during the 1970s, 80s and 90s, according to a report from WOOD TV8.

Gill said he cannot confirm those volumes, but said the airport is now looking through documentation and talking with airport staff about when and how the chemical was handled in the past. Relying on advice from state officials and environmental experts, he said the airport is also launching an investigation to see if PFAS contamination exists.

The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality sent the airport a letter Thursday, March 29, advising the airport on steps it should be taking, including the installation of monitoring wells to determine at what concentrations PFAS might exist in the ground beneath the property.

"If that happens, unfortunately, to be the case, then we will work with the DEQ and take the appropriate next steps," Gill said.

Cascade Township Supervisor Rob Beahan said the township government has reached out to the airport as well as state and county officials to seek answers on potential PFAS contamination and how it might affect local residents.

"We are working to help our residents whose well water may be affected to access accurate and timely information," Beahan said in an email. "While the township does not have direct oversight on private wells nor on the airport, we are committed to work with county and state officials, as well as the airport, to provide our residents with access to information."

The township has created a dedicated space on its website to provide residents with updates on the situation.

Gill said no steps are being taken to test any of the private wells in the area surrounding the airport. Without more data on the scale of the problem, if there is one, Gill said such action would be premature.

"I think that occurs after we sort of get an understanding of what's going on on the property and where it's at," he said.

Without any evidence of contamination, Kent County Health Department spokesman Steve Kelso said the department has decided to continue issuing well permits for properties surrounding the airport. Without any data, Kelso said, there is no reason to enact a blanket ban on such permits.

"At this point, that would be completely premature," he said. "We're certainly monitoring it."

Gill stressed there has not yet been any confirmation whether firefighting foam used at the airport resulted in any lingering contamination in or around the airport property.

Groundwater contaminated with PFAS is the subject of a growing number of lawsuits in Michigan, and an investigation recently launched by state government has alreday identified 30 contaminated sites. That list includes sites in northern Kent County, where the dumping of PFAS-laden sludge by Wolverine World Wide resulted in contamination of residential wells, many of which tests have shown contain PFAS levels well above the federal benchmark.

Some of the the 30 sites on the state's list are military installations, where PFAS contamination is tied to the use of firefighting foam.

Aqueous film-forming foams (AFFF) have long been used by firefighters, particularly at airports and military bases, because of their ability to help extinguish jet-fuel fires.

"Frankly, the chemical does its job," Gill said.

For many years, he said, firefighter training was conducted in an open area near the northeast corner of the airport's property. Two small streams wind northeast from that corner of the property, flowing through a residential neighborhood on the other side of Interstate 96 and ultimately into the Thornapple River.

Though they are still working to determine how much of the chemical might have been sprayed during emergencies, training exercises and tests in the past, Gill said there has only been minimal use of the product on site since 1999, when the airport's training site was decommissioned. The site was tested for contamination at that time, Gill said, though tests likely did not look for PFAS.

Since that time, he said, only very small amounts would have been used during twice-yearly nozzle tests to determine if the airport fire department's systems were working properly.

"We're talking gallons," Gill said.

Since 1999, he said, the airport's firefighters have traveled to either Chicago or Detroit for regular training exercises.

He expects the volumes of foam used there to be much less than military installations where training with AFFF material has been linked to PFAS groundater contamination.

Those links were made as early as 2003, when an Oregon State University study was published, based on 1998 and 1999 testing done at Wurtsmith Air Force Base in northeastern Michigan.

Last year, Gill said, the airport voluntarily switched to a new formula of the firefighting foam.

With a slightly shorter chain of carbon atoms -- six, as opposed to eight -- the "C6" formula is marketed as more environmentally friendly. When a new tanker truck was purchased, Gill said, the airport made the choice to fill it with the new form of AFFF and to stop using the remaining stock of older-formula foam. They are still holding onto the leftover material until better guidance is provided on how to properly dispose of it, Gill said.

Grand Rapids' airport, the state's second-busiest after Detroit Metropolitan Airport, is not alone in its use of firefighting foam containing PFAS chemistry.

"The only chemicals authorized to be used by the FAA -- military-specification certified -- still contain PFAS, just contain a less environmentally hazardous form of PFAS," Gill said. "It's being used everywhere."

The airport fire department was one of 1,028 departments across Michigan that received a survey Thursday from the state fire marshal's office. The survey seeks information on how much PFAS-laden firefighting foam each department has, when it most recently used it during training exercises and where it has been used in response to emergency incidents. All departments are asked to respond to the survey by April 13.

The Department of Environmental Quality is also requiring a response to its Thursday letter to Gerald R. Ford International Airport within 13 days.

"Our top priority remains protecting people and the environment and we are committed to working with aviation officials, the state fire marshal and first responders throughout the state to maintain public safety and protect the environment," DEQ spokesman Scott Dean said in a statement.

Though airport officials are hopeful there is no lasting affect on the property and surrounding homes and businesses, Gill said they are taking the situation seriously.

"At this point in time, because of what we're aware of and the concern of the public, we're investigating it earnestly," he said.

The airport, formerly county-run and now overseen by a seven-member airport authority board appointed by the Kent County Board of Commissioners, has undertaken a handful of projects to address environmental issues tied to storm water, the use of de-icing chemicals and other issues. A 2015 report outlines much of the work done in recent years to address those concerns.

"We take that environmental stewardship responsibility we have very seriously," Gill said.

He pointed to the airport's most recent project -- a $30 million reconstruction of the terminal's apron area -- and said it will include new upgrades to improve collection and proper handling of de-icing chemicals.

"We still don't think there's the high risk out there, but we're certainly willing to look into this a little bit further because our stakeholders are asking questions and we want to make sure we're responsive to that," Gill said.
MACKINAC ISLAND, MI - A new fitness event with a big side of history is making its debut this spring on Mackinac Island.

The Fort2Fort Five Mile Challenge will take runners and walkers from Fort Mackinac to Fort Holmes - the highest spot on the island - and back again, passing some scenic landmarks on mostly paved trails along the way.

The entire course is within Mackinac Island State Park.

Online registration is now open for the Saturday, May 12 event.

For more details and to sign up, go to the RunMackinac.com website.

If you register before April 1, the cost is $35. After that, it rises to $40, and then again to $45 after May 1.

All participants will receive:

A great Inaugural Fort2Fort Tech shirt

A unique Inaugural Finisher Medal (wood disk on a leather cord)

All day entry to Fort Mackinac and the Richard and Jane Manoogian Art Museum (using your race bib).

Free photos posted online and available for download.

A restored Fort Holmes was dedicated on Mackinac Island in 2015. The historic fort was constructed by British soldiers in the summer of 1814 as United States and British forces fought for control of the Michigan peninsulas during the War of 1812. (Courtesy | Kelsey Schnell, Michigan DNR).

The 5-mile run and walk both start at 9 a.m. So if you're coming over to the island that morning, you'll want to catch an early ferry.

The island has long been known for its picturesque bike routes. It also has a handful of races also hosted by RunMackinac Events that get people off their seats and onto their feet each year, including the Lilac 10K in June, the Mackinac Island Eight Mile Trail Run in September, and the Great Turtle Trail Run in October.

Now Fort2Fort is added to the lineup - a spring event that comes before the summer crowds arrive.

Race organizers Anne and John Gault said they'd been looking to add a fourth race that was a little different. With Fort2Fort, they found a way to partner with the island's state park that would get people into its beautiful interior trails and offer some history.

"It's kind of bringing people to the history of the island," Anne Gault said of the course. "It goes by Arch Rock, it goes by Sugar Loaf, it goes by the cemeteries."

"It's going to have its challenges," she added, noting the climb to Fort Holmes is steep but gradual. "But it gets people into the interior and that's the heart of the island."

Proceeds from the race will be donated to historic preservation projects in the park.

Participants will start inside Fort Mackinac, and be sent off with a musket salute.

From there, they'll head up to Fort Holmes, which sits atop the island and offers a gorgeous view. The defensive outpost was built by British forces during the War of 1812 as that army fought Americans for control of the Michigan Territory.

In 2015, it was reconstructed using plans filed with the National Archives.

After that dose of history, walkers and runners will head back down to Fort Mackinac.

Finishers can enjoy some refreshments and explore the fort that overlooks the island's Main Street and also has a great view of the Straits of Mackinac.

Fort Mackinac was founded during the American Revolution.

Thinking their mainland fort was too susceptible to attack, the British built a fort on the island in 1780, according to the Mackinac State Historic Parks. Americans took it over in 1796, but it was recaptured by the Brits at the start of the War of 1812. It was returned to the U.S. after the war and remained an active military fort until 1895.

More from MLive
A woman reported missing in Wisconsin has been spotted in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

Holly Ringen, 43, of Monona, Wisc., was spotted with her dog near an unnamed town in the U.P. on March 28. Police said she was reported to be in good condition, but no contact has been made with her family members, who are very concerned.

Ringen, who is described as 5-foot-8, 140 pounds, had been missing since 8:30 a.m. on March 27 when she dropped her children off at their father's residence in Stoughton, Wisc. She said she was going to the dog park, police said, but has not reported to work and her phone has been off.

The Monona Police Department is looking for Ringen to check her well-being.

"Being that we don't know her intentions, it is requested that people continue to look for her," a press release reads.

As of March 28,, Ringen was last seen driving a grey-colored Ford C-Max hatchback, with WI license plate 812KZE. She has her dog, a brown and white beagle terrier mix named Jynx with her.

Anyone with information is asked to contact the Monona Police Department at (608) 222-0463, Crime Stoppers at (608) 266-6014, or by texting "MONONA" followed by your information to TIP411 (847411).
JACKSON, MI - After an item on new public comment rules was stricken from the Tuesday, March 27 City Council agenda, multiple public commenters at the meeting applauded the move.

But the issue is coming back with minor tweaks at a future City Council meeting, City Manager Patrick Burtch said.

The original resolution of 15 rules was removed from the agenda prior to the March 27 meeting.

"When it got on my agenda, I was looking at it saying, 'Some of these things aren't what I think was originally discussed,'" Burtch said.

The set of rules doesn't need to be approved by council, Burtch said, it's something Mayor Derek Dobies can set himself. Council will still vote on it Burtch said. He added the resolution will have various minor clarifications, but didn't specify the changes being made.

"We don't always like everybody's comments - I certainly don't," Burtch said. "But that doesn't mean that they don't have a right to say it."

Many of the guidelines are enforcing what already happens during public comment at the meetings - like a time limit of three minutes. Other points are new - like moving comments about non-agenda topics to the end of the meeting. Here are the proposed rules:

The mayor is responsible for ensuring the meeting is conducted in an orderly, efficient and respectful manner.

Individuals are encouraged to speak or write to council members prior to the meeting to get their questions answered.

Written comments can be submitted for the record instead of giving verbal comments, bring 10 copies to distribute.

Anybody can speak at the meeting, as long as they submit a public comment slip to the clerk before the meeting. Slips submitted after the meeting begins won't be accepted.

Individuals with a shared position are encouraged to have one person speak on behalf of the group.

People addressing issues on the agenda will speak at the start of the meeting, people addressing issues not on the agenda will speak at the end of the meeting.

Each speaker is limited to three minutes.

Individuals are limited to their time during public comment and may not disrupt the meeting after the session.

City Council isn't required to answer questions during public comment, but may designate a staff member to address the questions with the individual at a later time.

Individuals are encouraged to refrain from personal attacks against public officials and other individuals. Criticism must be related to official actions, not personal attacks unrelated to city business.

The mayor may find disruptive people out of order and exclude them from the rest of the meeting. A majority of council can also compel such a decision or overrule the mayor's decision.

If disruptive behavior rises to the level of a criminal offense, the person may be charged with a criminal offense.

Refrain from the use of profanity.

Individuals are not permitted into the council seating area and must remain seated during the meeting.

Signs and posters must be small enough so it doesn't impair the view of other members in the audience.

Is it legal?

Robin Luce-Herrmann, Michigan Press Association general counsel, had one main issue with the proposed rules.

The resolution seems to make it easier to kick people out of meetings than the Open Meetings Act allows, Luce-Herrmann said. Michigan's OMA states a person can't be excluded from a meeting "except for a breach of the peace actually committed at the meeting."

"My interpretation is, a breach of the peace is a higher standard than what they're trying to impose," Luce-Herrmann said.

City officials were made aware of this discrepancy by the Jackson Citizen Patriot/MLive prior to the item being removed from Tuesday's agenda. City Attorney Bethany Smith looked Luce-Herrmann's concerns, but doesn't believe there's an issue, Burtch said.

"The city attorney reviewed it and she gives the opinion that she thinks this policy is completely within the law," Burtch said. "Nobody's going to drag somebody out because they don't like what they say. You can ask people to leave simply because they're being so disruptive that you can't perform your meeting."

If someone is removed from a meeting for anything less than a breach of the peace, they could challenge the decision in a lawsuit, Luce-Herrmann said.

The topic surfaced one meeting after citizen Cindy Eby was removed from the meeting for interrupting conversation about the city's demolition program. Dobies said this wasn't the sole reason for the resolution, but is one example of why it's needed.

"All we're asking for is some level of decorum so that we can get through the business of the meetings and have productive meetings," Dobies said.

Eby spoke again Tuesday, saying the resolution is unconstitutional and that the city is punishing all citizens because of her actions.

"I feel like that was a really beneficial action that I took for our city," Eby said. "I was willing to be arrested for that, if necessary. And I may in the future feel that it's necessary again, because you (council members) don't listen."

Is it open and transparent?

City officials argue the new rules make for more open and transparent meetings.

"We're really encouraging people's free speech. When there's no decorum, people stamp on other people's right to free speech," Burtch said. "It doesn't mean that they're trying to - in any way, shape or form - stop public comment. It's actually to encourage more."

By moving unrelated comments to the end of the meeting, Burtch and Dobies said the city can address the business of the meeting first.

So far in 2018, public comment sessions have had more than a dozen speakers per meeting, lasting roughly 35 minutes per meeting.

Per the new rules, commenters must submit a slip to the council before the meeting begins to have an opportunity to speak at either comment session. This requires citizens to sit through the entire meeting - which can last a couple hours - to make their voice heard.

Luce-Herrmann said some of the guidelines could unintentionally inhibit public comments.

"A public body can institute rules to make it efficient and to avoid disruptions," Luce-Herrmann said. "The concern always is, are you unintentionally - or otherwise - making it more difficult for people to feel comfortable raising the issues? Or inadvertently disenfranchising people from being able to speak?"

Currently, people can submit comment slips at any time before public comment ends. Luce-Herrmann said she suggests a trial period for the new rules and allow for later tweaks.

"You want to be careful to make sure the people have a true opportunity," she said.
BARRY COUNTY, MI -- The 16,000-acre Barry State Game area will grow by over 300 acres with the addition of land on its southeast side.

The Schoneboom property was purchased by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources Wildlife Division after nearly eight years of discussion, according to a news release from the Southwest Michigan Land Conservancy.

The 355-acre property is the "largest-ever addition to the Barry State Game Area, and consists of a mix of farmland, forest and wetlands, as well as a headwaters segment of the Glass Creek, which is recognized as the highest quality stream in the Thornapple River Watershed," the release said.

The addition will be dedicated during a public event hosted by the DNR on April 17.

"Wolf Tree," a giant maple tree stands on Schoneboom property, the latest land to be added to the Barry State Game Area. (Courtesy of SWMLC)

In a conservation plan created by the SWMLC in 2009, the Schoneboom property was identified as the top priority land parcel to protect. Conservation efforts in the area began in 2010 by SWMLC Conservation and Projects Manager Emily Wilke.

"Conserving this property was so important because it helps prevent forest fragmentation, and creates one, large contiguous protected natural area that includes the headwaters of the Glass Creek Watershed," Wilke said in the release. "This region also protects extremely ecologically sensitive lands and provides essential habitat for rare and endangered species like the Cerulean warbler."

Wilke and the SWMLC partnered with the DNR, the Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund and Tyden Ventures to fund the purchase of the new property.

DNR Wildlife Biologist Randy Heinze said they are "grateful to all the partners who worked so hard to bring this project to completion."

The Schoneboom property adds 355 acres to the Barry State Game Area. (Courtesy of SWMLC)

"We are pleased to be able to add this property to the Barry State Game Area to help increase the amount of public land open to wildlife-based recreation in Southwest Michigan," Heinze said.

The Barry State Game Area is in western Barry County, east of Gun Lake and the Yankee Springs Recreation Area.

A dedication of the Schoneboom property addition is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 17 across the road from McCallum Church, 5505 Otis Lake Road, north of Delton. There will be remarks from leaders of the various organizations, light refreshments and a guided hike through the new land beginning at 2:30 p.m.
China on Thursday applauded the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the Republic of Korea (ROK) for fixing the date of their first summit in more than a decade, expressing the hope that the momentum of dialogue can continue.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang at a routine news briefing on March 29, 2018 [Photo: fmprc.gov.cn]

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang said at a daily press briefing that China appreciated the efforts made by both the DPRK and the ROK.

As a close neighbor of the Korean Peninsula, China has always been glad to see the DPRK and the ROK hold dialogues, improve relations and promote reconciliation and cooperation, as these are conducive to peace and stability in the region, Lu said.

"We hope the momentum of dialogue can continue and peace can last," he said.

The DPRK and the ROK on Thursday agreed to hold a summit on April 27 in the truce village of Panmunjom, the first meeting between the leaders of the two sides in 11 years.

The agreement was reached during a high-level dialogue between the two sides, which were held earlier in the day at Tongilgak, a DPRK building in Panmunjom.

Positive changes have taken place on the Korean Peninsula this year, said Lu.

He called on all parties concerned to support the improvement of inter-Korean ties and make concrete efforts to facilitate peace talks so as to promote the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and a political solution to the Korean Peninsula issue to bring peace, stability, development and prosperity to the region.
CASSOPOLIS, MI -- A 19-year-old Indiana man was injured Friday in a crash involving three vehicles when he ran a stop sign north of Cassopolis, police said.

Jason Thrasher, of Jasper, Ind., was westbound on Kelsey Lake Street in Penn Township at about 10 a.m. March 30 when he ran a stop sign at the intersection of Decatur Road, the Cass County Sheriff's Office said in a news release.

Thrasher collided with a commercial vehicle driven by Roger Turner, 69, of Cassopolis, whose vehicle was then struck by an oncoming commercial vehicle driven by Jeffrey Leland, 50, of Cassopolis.

Thrasher was taken to Elkhart General Hospital for treatment. The severity of his injuries was not released.

Seatbelts were believed to be used by all drivers and alcohol was not a factor in the crash, the sheriff's office said.
LANSING, MI -- Gov. Rick Snyder has announced the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) has approved a request for a physical and economic disaster declaration for four Michigan counties.

The declaration means residents and businesses affected by severe flooding in February are eligible to apply for financial assistance, the governor's office announced Friday, March 30.

The declaration covers Arenac, Berrien, Ingham, and Kalamazoo counties and the neighboring counties of Allegan, Barry, Bay, Branch, Calhoun, Cass, Clinton, Eaton, Gladwin, Iosco, Jackson, Livingston, Ogemaw, Shiawassee, St. Joseph, and Van Buren.

The disaster declaration was made for the four primary counties, and neighboring counties receive access to the same benefits, the governor's office said, explaining the process.

"I am pleased the Small Business Administration will provide financial assistance to individuals and businesses affected by the severe flooding," Snyder said. "The availability of these loans will bring some relief to those working to recover and rebuild."

State officials requested representatives of the SBA to conduct a preliminary damage assessment of the affected area to document damage to homes and businesses that sustained uninsured losses of 40 percent or more. The assessment happened from March 16 to March 20, Snyder's office said.

The SBA disaster assistance program provides low-interest disaster loans for uninsured losses incurred by homeowners, renters, businesses and nonprofit organizations to repair or replace real estate, personal property, machinery and equipment, inventory and business assets that have been damaged or destroyed, the governor's office said, and the SBA tailors the repayment of each disaster loan to the borrower's financial capability.

The SBA will establish a disaster loan outreach center in the affected area for one-on-one assistance. Loan applications will also be made available online or by mail.

Snyder declared a state of disaster on March 12 for 17 counties and two cities after heavy rainfall and snowmelt in late February resulted in widespread flooding damage, making state aid and financial assistance available to communities in the disaster area.
KALAMAZOO, MI - The Victorian Bakery plans to relocate from flood-prone Crosstown Parkway to a space adjacent to the Park Street Market on Kalamazoo's North Side.

Owner and baker Maria Brennan said the move will give her business more room to grow but the change is primarily motivated by her fear of more flooding.

The business will remain open at 116 W. Crosstown Parkway until she can announce a date for the relocation. That is not expected before May 1.

"The bakery has been growing and space is an issue but after the last flood, it was so stressful," Brennan said, referring to flooding that occurred in parts of central Kalamazoo during the last week of February.

She said water that gathered behind her shop starting on Feb. 22 - from heavy rains, melting snow and rising groundwater -- flooded parts of Crosstown Parkway and the basement of the building that the bakery shares with chocolate shop Confections With Convictions. It forced her to close for seven days, losing revenue.

The bakery has used the location since December 2010, but it has only faced flooding during the past 18 months. Those have been serious situations that have left businesses in low-lying areas inaccessible to customers just south of downtown Kalamazoo, and to the east.

Brennan estimated that all together the business lost about $18,000 in supplies and sales when it shut down on those three occasions.

"The last flood was the worse regarding length of time and revenue lost," Brennan said.

She said the $18,000 may be a drop in the bucket to some businesses, but not hers. She said she did not want to relocate, a process that may cost more than $100,000 in total. And if she had the power, she would move the bakery's current building a few blocks away from the flood plain and keep operating. But the thought of facing more flooding is totally unsettling.

"I'm like stalking the Weather Channel," she said, trying to inject humor into the situation on Thursday, March 29. "It was raining this morning."

Speaking of flooding, she said, "It's a huge issue and it's spring in Michigan. It always rains."

If she gets approvals she needs from the city of Kalamazoo, her business will relocate but not before May 1. It must refurbish a 2,000-square-foot space in the same building that houses the Park Street Market at 512 N. Park St. The space, which was previously used by a beauty shop, is 800 square feet larger than her current space.

A maker of pastries, cakes, pies, scones, baguettes and other baked goods, Victorian Bakery was listed among the top 10 following MLive's search for Michigan's Best Bakery earlier this year.

The bakery also plans to have a special area to display its products inside a new supermarket that is under development at the former Harding's Marketplace location at 412 Howard St. (between South Westnedge Avenue and South Park Street).

Called Midtown Fresh, the supermarket is part of a plaza of stores being developed by the owners of Park Street Market. It is expected to open in late spring.

Of relocating to North Park Street, Brennan said, "It's back in our neighborhood, where we were beforehand, and it's an underserved part of the community."

Brennan, who was born and raised in Ireland and lived for several years in the Middle East, described boundaries others may see between communities as imaginary. And she said she likes having the bakery closer to her home, a Victorian-style residence where she she started the business in 2006.

She said she also anticipates growth from walk-in traffic as well as an increase in sales as a result of higher visibility and the many motorists who travel along North Park Street, which is an traffic artery to U.S. 131.

She said being next door to Park Street Market should also be a benefit. The market is well patronized by the surrounding community and at lunchtime and around 4 p.m. each weekday, its deli area is often swarmed by customers from all over.

"Food breaks down barriers," Brennan said.

That Victorian Bakery has attracted customers from as far away as Grand Rapids, she said. Its customers include local people who want to know where the business sources its eggs and from which area farmers its buys.

She said her sales have grown by 10 to 15 percent each year. It recently added four new workers, enlarging its staff to 13. With the relocation, Brennan said, "We'll need more counter people. We're looking to hire people from the neighborhood and giving them a new skill set."

She said she will need two to three more people over the next three to six months.
GRAND RAPIDS, MI -- A Kalamazoo man will spend the rest of his life in prison for selling heroin that led to a Portage man's death.

Steven Craig Whyte, 29, was convicted Wednesday, March 28, by a federal jury of five crimes, including distribution of heroin resulting in death, conspiring to distribute heroin and possession of a firearm in furtherance of drug trafficking.

Whyte had been convicted previously drug distribution and faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison.

Whyte sold heroin that killed Adam Boomers, 29, of Portage.

According to evidence presented at trial, Whyte conspired with others to sell heroin in Kalamazoo and to get guns to protect the drugs and the money he received from selling it. Officers found heroin, drug packaging materials and a gun in the February 2016 execution of a search warrant of Whyte's residence.

Police also searched Whyte's phone, which showed pictures that indicated he used multiple guns to traffic drugs.

On Oct. 15, 2016, Whyte sold heroin via an intermediary to Boomers. Boomers used it and died.

"The opioid crisis is ravaging communities around the country, and West Michigan is no different," U.S. Attorney Andrew Birge said in a press release. "We grieve Adam's loss with his family and with his community. The serious sentence in this case will send a message that the federal government will pursue those who deal deadly drugs to the fullest extent permissible under law."

Whyte's case was investigated by the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Kalamazoo Valley Enforcement Team and the Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety.
THREE RIVERS, MI -- Police believe three children considered "missing and endangered" are with their mother and father and want the public's help to find them.

Three Rivers police on Thursday, March 29 issued a notice on the department's Facebook page about the children.

The children are 6-year-old Nehemiah Sweet, 5-year-old Benjamin Sweet and 2-year-old Mila Sweet.

In the Facebook post, police did not divulge why the children were considered missing and endangered.

Police think they are with Audra Sue Sweet and Adam Wayne Sweet, both 32, and say the parents may be driving a silver Ford Escape with a faded temporary paper plate.

Anyone with information about the whereabouts of the children or parents can call St. Joseph County Central Dispatch at 269-467-4195.
Sen. Tonya Schuitmaker, R-Lawton.

ALLEGAN, MI -- Students in Allegan County are calling for state Sen. Tonya Schuitmaker, R-Lawton, to resign and also drop out of the race for the attorney general after she said she was disappointed over recent student walkouts over gun reforms.

Schuitmaker said, in part, "I am greatly disappointed in the adults who are encouraging these demonstrations which are nothing more than a statement which solves nothing," according to the Senate Majority Communications Office.

The comment was made in reference to school walkouts held around the country on March 14, one month after a shooting killed 17 people at a high school in Florida.

Students at Allegan High School and the Allegan Tech Center, within Schuitmaker's district, said in a letter on March 15 they were saddened by the statement and asked her to cut ties to the National Rifle Association and apologize for the statement.

Now, on March 29, they're calling on Schuitmaker to resign and drop out of the AG race.

"Almost two weeks later, the statement is still unacceptable," the students said in a news release. "Senator Schuitmaker's statement is nothing more than a talking point.

"We strongly believe that if the Senator wanted to get something done, she would sponsor or vote yes on bills in the State Senate to address this long-time issue," the students said of the lawmaker's stance on gun legislation.

Schuitmaker responded to the latest criticism from the students, by email, writing, "I am a strong supporter of the Second Amendment, was endorsed by the NRA and voters elected me because they know I will uphold and defend our Constitutional rights and support putting dangerous criminals in prison. The horrific shooting in Florida occurred because a violent student was never held accountable, not because of law-abiding gun owners or the Second Amendment. School safety is an important priority and solutions require a comprehensive, evidenced-based approach."

Allegan High School senior Matthew Cogar, left, and Allegan Tech Center student Austin Marsman.

Schuitmaker represents Michigan Senate's 26th District that includes all of Allegan and Van Buren Counties, and Gaines Township and Kentwood in Kent County.

She is a life member of the NRA and consistently receives an "A" rating from the NRA, according to Schuitmaker's campaign for Michigan Attorney General.

"The senator is caught in her National Rifle Association mindset and has been for years," Austin Marsman, a senior at Martin High School, said in a prepared statement.
UNION CITY, MI -- Police are investigating a home break-in that they say may be connected to others in northern Branch County.

Doors to an unoccupied home on the 900 block of Adolph Road in Union Township, just south of Union City, were kicked in sometime between midnight Wednesday, March 28 and 4:30 p.m. Thursday, March 29, Michigan State Police in Coldwater said in a news release.

Jewelry was stolen, but police believe the thief or thieves were looking for guns, the release said.

The suspect or suspects could be connected to other break-ins in the immediate area within the last two days, police said. In those incidents doors were also kicked in and door frames broken to gain entry.

Anyone who sees suspicious people or vehicles in the area is urged to call police.
KALAMAZOO, MI -- Clearly, a Kalamazoo area parolee was not expecting the police to be on the other side of his door when he answered it Thursday.

He probably would not have been holding an ounce of crystal meth in one hand if he had.

Officers with the Kalamazoo Valley Enforcement Team and Michigan Department of Corrections were doing unannounced compliance checks on parolees when they came to a residence in the 700 block of Charlotte Avenue.

The compliance checks are made to make sure parolees are obeying their terms of release.

Police said they knocked on the Charlotte Avenue door and the parolee answered with the meth in his hand. it appeared as though he planned to conduct a drug transaction, police said.

Officers then searched the residence and found more than one pound of high-grade marijuana and evidence of drug sales.

Police arrested the parolee, a 25-year-old Kalamazoo man, and say he is expected to be charged with possession with intent to deliver methamphetamine, possession with intent to deliver marijuana and several parole violations.
FRUITPORT TWP., MI - About 30 dogs died in a fire at a West Michigan boarding kennel early Friday morning, with many of their owners out of town on spring break.

The fire was reported in the 6900 block of East Mount Garfield Road around 4:41 a.m. March 30, said Brian Michelli, public safety director for Fruitport Township. Storm's Ahead Kennels describes itself as "your dog's vacation resort." It's located between Muskegon and Grand Rapids.

The kennel was engulfed in flames when the first firefighters arrived on the scene, Michelli said.

"There was no ability to do a rescue," he said.

The kennel owners live on the property, he said. One of the home occupants got up to use the restroom and noticed the fire's "glow," Michelli said.

It was obvious the fire had been burning for some time while the owners were sleeping, he said.

"When we pulled in, the structure was fully engulfed and there was a partial collapse," he said.

Spring break began Friday for most schools in the area. The kennel was full due to spring break, and the kennel owners were starting to contact the dog's owners, Michelli said.

"Obviously, it's very traumatizing for them," he said.

The kennel's website lists the owners as Janet Rehfus and Michael Weiden.

Firefighters may never know what caused the fire, Michelli said, adding that it is not considered suspicious.

The area is not served by hydrants, and the Crockery Township and Egelston Township fire departments assisted with tankers, Michelli said. Canteen 450 out of Norton Shores also responded to support firefighters at the scene.
FRUITPORT TOWNSHIP, MI - The owners of a West Michigan boarding kennel that caught fire early Friday morning, killing about 30 dogs, said they are stricken with grief over the tragedy.

"We're just devastated," said Janet Rehfus, one of the owners of Storm's Ahead Kennels, located at 6911 E. Mount Garfield Road in southern Muskegon County. "Many of those dogs have been coming to me for years, some of them were dogs that we bred and sold. We're heartbroken and trying to make sense of it all."

Rehfus told MLive/Muskegon Chronicle that she woke up around 4:41 a.m and noticed the fire's glow. The kennel house was located nearby and to the right of Refhus' residence on the same property. She immediately called the fire department, and began notifying customers around 5 a.m.

The kennel was engulfed in flames when the first firefighters arrived on the scene, said Brian Michelli, public safety director for Fruitport Township.

"There was no ability to do a rescue," he said.

As of 9:30 a.m., most of the kennel's customers had been made aware of the fire, Rehfus added.

"Everyone has been very apologetic and reaching out to us," said Rehfus, who has operated the kennel for nearly 17 years.

That includes many of their customers who lost pets in the early morning fire.

"They're sending lots of prayers," Rehfus said. "They are praying for us as much as they are praying for them. We've been crying together with them all morning long."

Storm's Ahead Kennels describes itself as "your dog's vacation resort." It's located between Muskegon and Grand Rapids.

The area is not served by hydrants, and the Crockery Township and Egelston Township fire departments assisted with tankers, Michelli said. Canteen 450 out of Norton Shores also responded to support firefighters at the scene.

Spring break began Friday for most schools in the area and the kennel was full as a result, Michelli said.
The Chinese navy's recent large-scale training in the South China Sea is "normal and routine" and does not target any third party, the Defense Ministry said Thursday.

Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Ren Guoqiang at a regular news conference on March 29, 2018 [Photo: mod.gov.cn]

Senior Colonel Ren Guoqiang, the ministry's spokesman, made the remarks in response to media inquiries about recent satellite photos taken by the United States, which show aircraft and about 40 Chinese naval vessels, including the CNS Liaoning aircraft carrier, traveling in formation in the South China Sea.

"The exercise is part of the year's planned training to improve combat capabilities. It is normal and routine and does not target any certain country or party," Ren said at a regular news conference.

He emphasized that China's defense policies are defensive in nature, and its military construction will not threaten regional and world peace.

The naval exercise came amid growing tension between China and the US in bilateral relations. On March 23, China dispatched the Type 054A guided-missile frigate CNS Huangshan, and Type 056 corvette CNS Liupanshui to identify and warn off US Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Mustin after it trespassed into waters around China's islands and reefs in the South China Sea.

"The fact that the US has continuously sent its naval ships to trespass in these waters has severely jeopardized China's sovereignty and security, and undermined basic principles in international relations as well as regional peace and stability," Ren said in a online statement on the same day.

On Thursday, Ren urged the US to see the big picture of Sino-US military relations and transform it into a stabilizing factor for developing overall relations between the two countries.

Last week, US President Donald Trump proposed tariffs on up to $60 billion of imports from China as well as harsher restrictions on Chinese investments, triggering concerns across the globe of a trade war between the world's two largest economies.

Before the proposed tariffs, Trump had also signed a controversial Taiwan-related travel bill into law, which allows reciprocal visits between Taiwan and the US by officials at all levels, including visits by military officials.

China has strongly criticized the bill, saying it has increased friction in cross-Straits and Sino-US relations for undermining China's sovereignty.

"We resolutely oppose any countries, including the US, to have any official interactions with Taiwan," Ren said on Thursday.

"Taiwan is an inseparable part of China, and the Chinese military has enough confidence and capability to protect its territorial integrity. All efforts to resist Taiwan's reunification are futile," he added.
KOCHVILLE TWP, MI -- A former-Saginaw Valley State University police sergeant is suing the school on claims they laid him off without offering another position because of his age.

Christopher T. Rupp, 56, lost his job in October 2017 after almost ten years on the force, according to the lawsuit recently filed by his attorney, Kevin J. Kelly.

In the suit, Rupp claims the university police contract entitled him to keep on the force by taking a demotion from sergeant to police officer, making an officer with less seniority take the layoff.

Instead, the university denied that request and kept on younger officers who had less seniority, according to the suit.

SVSU spokesperson J.J. Boehm said the university does not discriminate.

"We are aware of the lawsuit filed by Mr. Rupp," Boehm said. "We maintain that SVSU does not discriminate, and we are confident that is what the facts will show in this case."

Rupp was notified the month before of the upcoming layoff by SVSU Police Chief Leo Mioduszewski, who gave him a letter stating his sergeant position was being cut, the lawsuit states.

Rupp then wrote Mioduszewski and president of the Police Officers Association of Michigan stating that, under the contract, he should be reassigned to the police officer bargaining unit, affording him the chance to demote to officer and bump out someone with less seniority.

Two days later, Mioduszewski responded to that request, saying, "The University has reviewed your letter and respectfully disagrees that you are entitled to be assigned to a police officer position."

The police department posted a job opening for a "police clerk" the next day, the lawsuit states.

Apart from clerical and civilian workers, the SVSU police force currently has a chief, one sergeant and seven officers, Boehm said.

Rupp met with Jeanette O'Boyle, the benefits manager within SVSU's human resources department, who told him he had bumping rights, meaning he was entitled to take the place of a police officer with less seniority, when it came to layoffs, according to the lawsuit.

The suit claims O'Boyle was unaware the sergeant position was being cut until Rupp asked to meet with her about it.

The suit alleges the university violated Michigan's Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act on the grounds of age discrimination. It seeks more than $25,000 in damages.

Before joining the SVSU police force in 2008, Rupp served for 25 years with the Bay City Police Department.
SAGINAW, MI -- The Catholic Diocese of Saginaw says many parishioners are celebrating Holy Week with "very heavy hearts" after recent search and seizures on two church properties and the home of Bishop Joseph R. Cistone as part of an investigation into sexual abuse by priests

Just days before Holy Week, which started March 25 and concludes with Easter Sunday on April 1, police raided the bishop's home, a cathedral rectory and the diocese offices. The search warrants were executed, because, prosecutors allege, diocese officials failed to fully cooperate in the ongoing investigation into sexual abuse within the diocese.

On Tuesday, March 27, Cistone commented on the doubts some parishioners might have about clergymen.

"Many of those we serve have doubts about the integrity of the priesthood and the sincerity of our commitment," Cistone said. "Tragically, the doubts and mistrust which people feel toward their priests often broadens into a mistrust of the church herself.

"Parishioners lose faith in the church as a community and institution. Unfortunately, they tend to separate the church into two parts: they the people and those who form the hierarchy of the Church."

"But, there is only one church and, together, we all form the one body of Christ, with Jesus as our head," the bishop continued.

Cistone gave those remarks Tuesday at a Chrism Mass at the Cathedral of Mary of the Assumption in Saginaw. At the Chrism Mass, priests of the Catholic Diocese of Saginaw renewed their priestly promises, said Erin Looby Carlson, a diocese spokesperson.

Since the raids, some parishioners have called for Cistone to resign, citing his past as a high-ranking member in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and a grand jury report on sexual abuse and cover-up within that diocese.

Carlson did not comment on that, offering only remarks the bishop made following the search and seizures.

"I understand this news is distressing and disheartening for the greater community and most especially our Catholic faithful," Cistone previously stated. "The diocese has made a sincere effort to cooperate with law enforcement to date and will continue to do so moving forward."

To date, only one diocese priest, the Rev. Robert DeLand, has been criminally charged. He was arrested Feb. 25 on accusations he sexually assaulted two males -- a 21-year-old and a 17-year-old -- in his Saginaw Township condominium.

Since DeLand's arrest, numerous tips and allegations about further sexual abuse dating back as far as three decades have flooded area police departments, investigators previously said. Among the tips were allegations against other clergymen.

In early March, the Saginaw County Prosecutor's Office formed a special investigative team to coordinate and investigate allegations of abuse involving "officials" within the Catholic Diocese of Saginaw.

The investigation ramped up with the raids March 22 on the bishop's home on Corral Drive in Saginaw Township, the rectory at Cathedral of Mary of the Assumption in Saginaw and the Catholic Diocese of Saginaw offices in Saginaw Township.

Another diocese priest, the

, was suspended earlier in March by the diocese after they received a report he allegedly sexually assaulted a person when they were a minor. He has not been criminally charged.
UPDATE: The shooting occurred shortly before 8 a.m. at Pheasant Run Apartments off of Center near Michigan, authorities say. There are no suspects at-large.

SAGINAW TWP, MI -- A man with a gunshot wound to the leg showed up to an area hospital Friday morning, and now police are trying to figure out where and when the shooting occurred.

Saginaw Township Police Chief Donald Pussehl said the man was dropped off at an area hospital Friday morning, March 30, by his girlfriend. Saginaw County 911 reported just before 9:20 a.m. that police were investigating.

The man and woman gave "limited information" to hospital staff about the shooting, Pussehl said. Because the woman lives in Saginaw Township, officers from Pussehl's agency were dispatched to follow-up.

Pussehl said the man had a gunshot wound to the leg.

Investigators are working to determine where and when the shooting occurred.
SAGINAW, MI -- Namaste beer lovers.

An upcoming "Yoga on Tap" event at Oracle Brewing promises to be a fun time for yogis and beer lovers alike. For $26, you can enjoy a 50-minute yoga class followed by a flight of Oracle beer (it's $18 just for the yoga class). The event takes place at 2 p.m. Saturday, April 21.

Kathryn Spagnuolo, who will lead the class, said the event is the perfect opportunity for beer lovers interested in trying yoga for the first time.

"We're having fun and usually it's not like a traditional yoga class," Spagnuolo said. "People are laughing, people are chatting with their friends."

Oracle Brewing opened last year at 122 N. Michigan Ave. in Old Town Saginaw. Cody Smith owns the microbrewery with Chris Younk. He said they "want people to come in, have fun and use our space as a community gathering area."

"This is the first time doing a yoga event. We just kind of thought it would be cool," Smith said. "We'll scoot everything to a corner, make room for about 20 people, the event will last for about an hour and then we'll open up and drink beer."

Spagnuolo, certified yoga instructor and owner of Yoga by Kathryn, has hosted Yoga on Tap events at Loggers Brewing Co. in Saginaw, The Maple Grille Restaurant and Microbrewery in Hemlock and Sporty's Wing Shack & Smokehouse also in Saginaw. She has plans to offer more across the region in the coming months.

The class is "BYOM" (bring your own mat) and will be accessible to beginners and experienced yogis alike. She'll have a few mats to lend to people who don't have them.

"It will be for all levels and you don't have to be flexible," Spagnuolo said. "Flexibility is a result of doing yoga, it's not a prerequisite."

Spagnuolo also offers yoga classes at Serenity Spa, the Saginaw Art Museum, Seung-ni Fit Club on Bay Road and, during the summer months, at William H. Haithco Recreation Area and Roethke Park. She also plans to teach at a lavender farm in Hemlock and at Eastman's Forgotten Ciders in Midland County this year.

But, despite a recent trend, you won't catch her offering yoga classes with goats, cats or any other animals.

"That is where I draw the line," she said lightheartedly. "I will drink beer, I will drink wine, but animals? No thanks."

If you're into yoga with animals, though, the Humane Society of Midland in May is hosting "Cats on Yoga Mats" at The Loft at Ashman Plaza. Who wouldn't love a little nuzzle from a kitty while in the downward dog position?
As the guessing game ramps up over where pieces of an out-of-control Chinese space station could fall to Earth this weekend, the answer to when it will drop got a little clearer.

The European Space Agency updated its prediction today, saying Easter Sunday is the best bet for the 8.5-ton Tiangong-1 to plunge into the Earth's atmosphere. Specifically, later in the day on Sunday.

As always, they are couching this timeframe. "This is highly variable," the agency said in its update. "At no time will a precise time/location prediction from ESA be possible."

Earlier estimates had given a wide window for when the defunct space station the size of a school bus would fall to Earth. Scientists have said most of it is expected to burn up on reentry, but not all of it. Chunks weighing up to 220 pounds could hit the ground or fall into the ocean.

So why did the impact window narrow? The solar wind.

"A high-speed stream of particles from the Sun, which was expected to reach Earth and influence our planet's geomagnetic field, did, in fact, not have any effect, and calmer space weather around Earth and its atmosphere is now expected in the coming days," the ESA said.

"This means that the density of the upper atmosphere, through which Tiangong-1 is moving, did not increase as predicted (which would have dragged the spacecraft down sooner) and hence the ESA Space Debris Office has adjusted the predicted decay rate.

"This implies that the new (and still uncertain) reentry window has shifted to later in the day on 1 April."

As for where it will fall, that band of possibility has not narrowed in the last day. Scientists say debris could fall anywhere on Earth, roughly between the latitudes 43oN and 43oS.

Southern Lower Michigan is included in that possible debris area.

On Thursday, Gov. Rick Snyder announced Michigan was activating its Emergency Operations Center to monitor Tiangong 1's reentry.

Regions with higher chances of seeing debris include northern China, central Italy, northern Spain, the Middle East, New Zealand, Tasmania, South America, southern Africa and northern states in the U.S., the ESA and U.S.-funded Aerospace Corporation have said.

China's first space station has had a nearly seven-year run. It was launched in September 2011.

It was designed to be a manned lab, has two modules, including sleeping space for two astronauts, according to the Aerospace Corporation. There have been two manned missions to visit the space station, one in 2012 and another in 2013.

One of those missions included China's first woman astronaut.

Two years ago, China said it had lost telemetry services with Tiangong-1, the Aerospace Corporation said. Shortly after that, trackers said it had gone into an uncontrolled orbit.

China initially said they expected the space station to fall in late 2017, then later revised the estimate.
Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi will attend the sixth summit of the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) Economic Cooperation, and pay an official visit to Vietnam from Friday to Monday at the invitation of the Vietnamese government, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Thursday.

Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi [File photo: Xinhua]

Spokesperson Lu Kang made the announcement at a routine news briefing, saying that the GMS is an important platform for economic cooperation in the subregion and has made positive contributions to subregional countries over the years.

He said Wang's attendance at the summit in Hanoi shows that China attaches great importance to boosting subregional cooperation and developing friendly ties with subregional countries.

Wang will attend a closed door meeting, a large scale meeting and a business summit during the GMS, with aims to deepen political mutual trust, enhance friendship and mutually beneficial cooperation between subregional countries, and promote subregional cooperation to a higher level, according to the spokesperson.

Countries under the GMS program, which focuses on increased regional cooperation and integration for inclusive and sustainable development, include Cambodia, China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam.

During his stay in Vietnam, Wang will meet with Vietnamese leaders, and hold talks with Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh, so as to further implement consensus reached during Chinese President Xi Jinping's last visit to Vietnam, Lu said.

Wang's visit is also expected to strengthen bilateral strategic exchanges, enhance mutually beneficial cooperation in various fields, and push for further development of the China-Vietnam comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership, he said.

Wang is the first senior Chinese official to visit Vietnam since China's new government took office, which shows that China attaches great importance to developing China-Vietnam ties as bilateral ties continue to get better, he said.
The recent visit to Beijing by Kim Jong Un, the leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), has reaffirmed China's central role in denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula.

"The trip affirms China's central role in keeping the peace in the region after a flurry of diplomatic activity had shifted the focus to South Korea (ROK) and the United States," an article by The Economist noted on Wednesday.

Jamie Tarabay, a senior producer at CNN Digital, said the visit sent a message to all parties that there can be no deal with Pyongyang without China's involvement.

Chinese President Xi Jinping (R2) and his wife Peng Liyuan (R1) meet with DPRK leader Kim Jong Un (L2) and his wife Ri Sol Ju (L1) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing during Kim's visit to China from March 25 to 28, 2018. /Xinhua Photo

DPRK 'committed to denuclearization'

In his first overseas trip since taking power in 2011, Kim said the DPRK is committed to denuclearization and willing to have dialogue with the United States.

"The issue of denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula can be resolved, if South Korea (ROK) and the United States respond to our efforts with goodwill, create an atmosphere of peace and stability while taking progressive and synchronous measures for the realization of peace," Kim told Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Kim echoed Xi by saying the DPRK hopes to make joint efforts with China to safeguard the trend of consultation and dialogue as well as peace and stability on the peninsula.

Amid the easing of tensions on the peninsula and ahead of the summit between Kim and US President Donald Trump in May, the Xi-Kim meeting was a significant step in promoting reconciliation between relevant parties and creating further conditions for dialogue.

Commenting on the latest development, Trump tweeted on Wednesday that there is a good chance that Kim will do "what is right for his people and for humanity," adding that he looks forward to meeting with the DPRK leader.

The Republic of Korea (ROK) on Thursday welcomed the meeting between Chinese and DPRK leaders, calling it a significant development that will help denuclearize the DPRK and establish peace on the peninsula.

"We believe China's participation in dialogue for peace on the Korean Peninsula, realized by the recent summit, will help stabilize conditions on the Korean Peninsula," Kim Eui-kyeom, a spokesman for the South Korean presidential office Cheong Wa Dae, said in a statement.

The DPRK and the ROK have agreed to hold a leaders' summit on April 27.

'China will never be marginalized'

Beijing has stressed many times that it is committed to the goal of denuclearization of the peninsula, calling for a peaceful resolution of the DPRK nuclear issue through dialogue and negotiation.

As a first step, China has been urging the DPRK to halt its nuclear and missile activities in exchange for the suspension of large-scale US-ROK military exercises. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said the approach has worked.

"China's suspension-for-suspension proposal has proven to be a right prescription for the problem," Wang said at a press conference on March 8.

Pyongyang has not conducted any missile test since the end of November, while Washington and Seoul have postponed their routine military drills until after the PyeongChang Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games.

"China has never been absent from the issue of the peninsula, and will never be marginalized," Su Xiaohui, deputy director of Department for International and Strategic Studies of China Institute of International Studies, wrote in an online commentary after Kim's visit to China.

"The meeting was a milestone in China's perennial effort to achieve the ultimate goal of lasting peace and stability in Northeast Asia," Victor Gao, vice president of the Center of China and Globalization, told CGTN.

As Pyongyang, Seoul and Washington strive to address the remaining challenges, such as the US-ROK military drills, the presence of US troops and THAAD missile defense systems in South Korea, and how to deal with the DPRK's existing nuclear arsenal, China will continue to play a constructive and leading role in the process.
Accident

A gray BMW SUV collided with the side of a residential building at 310 E. Dunne Ave. The accident was reported 2:51pm March 22.

A silver pickup truck drove off the road and onto the property of a residence, coming to a stop after becoming stuck on a retaining wall. The accident happened in the area of La Crosse Drive and La Bella Court. It was reported 6:22pm March 26.

A Nissan Altima collided with a bicyclist in the area of Burnett Avenue and Monterey Road, resulting in minor injuries to the cyclist. The accident was reported 6:59pm March 27.

Suspicious person

A witness called police to report that a man was walking along the railroad tracks I the area of Saint Agatha Lane and Diana Avenue, with his pants pulled down below his buttocks. An officer contacted the man, who agreed to move along and keep his pants up. The incident was reported 6:35pm March 22.

Battery

An employee of Saint Louise Regional Hospital called police to report a patient was receiving treatment after being assaulted by two suspects at Gavilan College, at the Morgan Hill Community and Cultural Center, 17000 Monterey Road. The victim suffered busted teeth and facial injuries. The crime was reported 9:22pm March 22.

A Safeway employee was jumped by three unknown suspects in the parking lot of the store at 235 Tennant Station Way. The battery was reported 11:04pm March 23.

Petty theft

A thief stole two television sets worth about $400 from Target, 1061 Cochrane Road. The crime was reported 12:15pm March 27.

A female suspect stole hair spray and other beauty items from Safeway, 840 E. Dunne Ave. The crime was reported 12:15am March 28.

Someone stole a backpack that a customer accidentally left at Burger King, 1107 Cochrane Road. Inside the backpack were four French passports, four ID cards from Mexico, four L.A. Lakers tickets, four tickets to Universal Studios in Los Angeles and one credit card. The theft was reported 10:16am March 28.

A customer of DSW, 1015 Cochrane Road, stole two pairs of shoes from the store and left the area in a silver Honda. The theft was reported 5:33pm March 24.

A suspect stole two Fitbit devices, worth about $300 each, from Target, 1061 Cochrane Road. The crime was reported 9:25pm March 25.

A thief stole two bottles of alcohol from Safeway, 235 Tennant Station Way. The crime was reported 7:17am March 26.

Narcotics complaint

An employee of Ross Dress For Less, 16955 Monterey Road, complained that two customers inside the store were acting suspiciously. One of the male customers, who was in a wheelchair, was seen carrying a gun in his pocket. The incident was reported 2:03pm March 28.

Fraud

A thief or thieves used a victims debit card number to make a purchase for about $1,230, plus $40 cash back at Rite Aid, 16000 Monterey Road. The fraud was reported 11:50am March 26.

Theft

Someone stole a gas leaf blower and electric compressor from an unlocked shed at Woodland Estates, on the 100 block of Walnut Drive. The crime was reported 12:15pm March 23.

Burglary

A resident of Murphy Court returned home to find the residence ransacked and a truck missing. A door into the garage was open. The crime was reported 2:19pm March 23.

A resident of Tarragon Avenue returned home to find the residence burglarized. The burglar or burglars ransacked the home. The burglary was reported 5:37pm March 23.

Fight

A male customer of the Metro PCS store at 16415 Monterey Road got into a fight with employees of the store. The fight was reported 5:19pm March 23.

At least four males were fighting in the rear parking lot of the M&H Tavern, 17365 Monterey Road. The subjects had been celebrating a 21st birthday party. One of the fighters mother arrived to take them home. The fight was reported 12:07am March 25.

Stolen vehicle

Someone stole a black Honda Civic from an apartment complex on the 100 block of Cosmo Avenue. The crime was reported 3:15pm March 24.

Auto burglary

Someone smashed the window of a blue Honda on the 200 block of Burnett Avenue. The victim said two other vehicles on the same street appeared to have been broken into. The crime was reported 3:06pm March 25.

A thief or thieves broke into a Ford F250 in the parking lot of 24 Hour Fitness, 850 Tennant Station Way, and stole a credit card and $100 cash. The credit card was later used at a Best Buy store. The burglary was reported 3:35pm March 29.

Grand theft

A thief or thieves stole outdoor playground equipment from Trinity Bible Church, 16100 Caputo Drive. The approximate value of the stolen items was $2,000. The crime was reported 5:06pm March 25.

Domestic incident

A female resident of Thomas Grade Avenue told police that her husband had spread gasoline all over the interior of the house, and poured gasoline on her leg. No injuries resulted, and the man was arrested. The incident was reported 7:07pm March 25.

Animal control

A dog that lives on the 2900 block of Bent Oak Lane was bitten by the neighbors dog, and it was the second time it has happened since summer 2017. The victim dog suffered two large puncture holes in the latest incident, which was reported 6:22pm March 28.

A resident of the area of Oak Canyon and Jackson Oaks drive saw a large mountain lion disappear into the bushes, just outside a public works substation near the road. The predator sighting was reported 10:57am March 20.

Vandalism

Someone ripped the door to a small utility room on the 15500 block of Monterey Road off its hinges. The crime was reported 9:57am March 29.

All subjects are innocent until proven guilty. Information is compiled from public records.
Soldiers escort coffins containing the remains of Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War during a burial ceremony at the Cemetery of Revolutionary Martyrs in Shenyang, northeast China's Liaoning Province, March 29, 2018. A burial ceremony for the remains of 20 Chinese soldiers killed in the war was held here on Thursday. The Chinese People's Volunteers (CPV) fought side by side with the army of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in the Korean War against the South Korean army and U.S.-led UN forces. Tens of thousands of CPV soldiers died on the Korean Peninsula during the war, which ended in 1953. (Xinhua/Yang Qing)

SHENYANG, March 29 (Xinhua) -- A burial ceremony for the remains of 20 Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War was held at the Cemetery of Revolutionary Martyrs in Shenyang, capital of northeast China's Liaoning Province, on Thursday.

More than 300 people including government and military officials, Korean War veterans, and members of the public, attended the ceremony.

"I'm so glad my comrades are finally home, but it is a great pity they cannot witness the prosperity of our country now," said Li Weibo, 87, a Korean War veteran.

Some 197,653 Chinese People's Volunteers soldiers are confirmed to have died during the war, most of whom were buried on the Korean Peninsula.

According to an agreement between China and the Republic of Korea (ROK), the two sides arrange an annual hand-over of remains of Chinese soldiers found in ROK, which usually occurs before the Tomb-Sweeping Day.

The remains of 569 soldiers were returned to China from ROK between 2014 and 2017.
After US President Donald Trump signed an executive memo, slamming $60 billion tariffs on Chinese goods, US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said a detailed list would be announced in the near future.

A spokesperson of Chinas Ministry of Commerce said, do not use China as an excuse. He said Beijing firmly opposes tariffs, saying "if a trade war were initiated by the US, Beijing will fight to the end."

The US started this trade conflict unilaterally, and this conflict shows how US acts on its hegemonic thinking and zero-sum concept. The question is, what made US confident on its obstinate approach?

The US establishes its fundamental theories based on the China-US trade deficit. According to statistics by the US Department of Commerce, the China-US trade deficit rose to $375.2 billion in 2017.

However, the US erred by focusing on these superficial statistics. The $375.2 billion is a number summed up from papers and ignores the reality of global economy. In fact, a big part in the price of Chinese goods is the cost of parts purchased from all over the world, and patent fees paid to US companies. It is unreasonable, therefore, to include these costs from the US statistics.

According to Chinas Ministry of Commerce, the China-US trade surplus in 2017 was $275 billion, a $100 billion less than US statistics. The amount representing the China-US trade deficit is high, but this is caused by US companies proactively moving out of the US in recent decades, which caused the US to shift from a manufacturing country to a country that relies on imports. The problem lies with the US itself, and the US should not blame China for its own failings. It is unfair to ask China to take the blame for the US losing its position in the global value chain.

The US also smeared China by stating the Chinese market is not open enough for US in the 301-report released by USTR. In China, US branded cellphones, computers, and automobiles are everywhere. The Chinese market contributed to over 20 percent sales for US companies, including the Standard & Poors 500 (S&P 500) companies. The Chinese market also represents the fastest gross-sales for US companies. How can US companies have such a sales performance without the open Chinese market?

Sure, a huge portion of US branded goods are manufactured and sold in China and are not counted toward the trade volume. However, this comes from the US companies investment plans, and the US companies have benefited and earned their profits too.

On the other hand, the US market is limited to Chinese companies and investors, it wont be a surprise to hear Chinese companies investment plans have been shut down by the US government. In terms of investment, China and US are in such an imbalanced situation. US will only achieve the re-balanced trade relationship if US markets opens more to China.

The White House trade adviser has another idea. He admits the US will hit on Made in China 2025 and worries that the US will not be the innovation leader anymore. This is an outdated theory on China-US trade relations. Innovation usually comes from the change in needs and production pressures.

In todays world, most of the commodities are manufactured and sold in multiple countries, and parts come from all over the world. The industrial system should adapt to the needs of different countrys market.

Therefore, innovation is often a collaboration process. Although the global value chain is changing, it is clear to see what corporations are taking the lead. It is not about the leading country anymore since the world markets are connected. The US would be too outdated if it still thinks it can lead the global innovation solely.

It is easy to see the US used unrealistic expectations, and illogical excuses to bring up the trade conflict topic, and USs confidence is based on nothing but unrealistic expectations.

US President Donald Trump represents populism. A big reason behind his election is his depoliticized image, which is also the cause of pan-politicization influences in US society. Pan-politicization prevented the US administration from seeing the trend of the global economy, which made US administration think it is able to solve structural problems by having aggressive attitude towards trade relations.

If the US decides to impose tariffs on Chinese goods in an aggressive way, it will be surprised by the fact that China has the ability to fight back, aggressively too. After all, the US relies on Chinese merchandise more than China relies on US goods.

(The author is chief researcher at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at the Renmin University of China.)
What does it take to recruit and retain talented and diverse faculty? Listening, analysis and amping up helps build a campus where career advancement and job satisfaction is attainable for all.

"If you want to build a ship, dont drum up people together to collect wood and dont assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea." Antoine de Saint-Exupery

The words of journalist and pioneering aviator Saint-Exupery exemplify the spirit behind the Advanced Matrix Process for University Programs (AMP-UP) at Michigan Technological University. First piloted in November 2015, AMP-UP is a highly collaborative, inclusive structure to broadly engage the campus community in creating an environment that welcomes, values and supports women, underrepresented minority individuals and those who have traditionally experienced an excess of bias that accumulates into measurable disadvantages for career progress and job satisfaction.

AMP-UP began as a vision put forth by our NSF ADVANCE team after a year-long, highly reflective process, assessing career progression of women and under-represented faculty," says Adrienne Minerick, associate dean for research and innovation and assistant to the provost for faculty development.

The main group of "original, die-hard advocates," Patricia Sotirin, Sonia Goltz and Minerick were joined by other passionate individuals, including but not limited to Anita Quinn, Andrew Storer, Audrey Mayer and Jacqueline Huntoon.

"AMP-UP has grown into a highly inclusive team that has undertaken continuous improvement projects to improve our workplace," Minerick says, explaining that some projects have been quickly institutionalized, like the Early Career Management committees. Others are still in development, like the Male Advocates and Allies effort or the use of WebFocus to transparently share progress. "Over time, this grassroots effortwith significant administrative supportwill have lasting positive impacts on Michigan Tech, says Minerick.

Charting and accelerating equity in AMP-UP

Figure 1: The three initiativesscholarship and research dynamics, unit climate and partner engagementinteract with data collection and analysis, program adaptation/development and continuous improvement, to make way for adaptations and interventions moving forward.

AMP-UP launched with three main teams to work on initiatives (Figure 1): scholarship and research dynamics, unit climate and partner engagement. These initiatives were selected based on data analysis that shows Michigan Tech has made progress toward equitable conditions, but that inequities remain across all advancement indicators (representation, salaries, start-up packages, space, promotion, retention and leadership. See Figure 2).

Attrition occurs in female faculty.

Some stages reveal equal pay between male and female faculty; the notable exception is full tenured faculty.

Women tend to receive less in start up funds as faculty.

Full tenured faculty tend to have more research space by square footage; female faculty tend to have less space than their male counterparts.

For example, women comprised 18 percent of STEM faculty in 2008 (46 women out of 260) and only grew to 23 percent in 2016 (63 of 278). To better understand some of the reasons behind this slow progress, the indicator data was supplemented with three interview studies: an externally conducted study of eight women who left the University between 2011-2015; interviews with department chairs; and focus group discussions and phone interviews with dual career faculty and their partners. Patterns that emerged indicate the need to focus on equal opportunity to build credentials in scholarship and research dynamics, inclusive workplaces in unit climate and career opportunities and growth for significant others in partner engagement.

Moving towards an inclusive campus

Academia is notoriously slow to change. So AMP-UPs vision to broadly engage the community necessitated a continuous improvement model; an ongoingself reflective data gathering and analysis, along with strategic interventions and programmingwill sow the seeds of change. In their matrix, the AMP-UP teams outlined the three stages of the continuous improvement cycle; output from the process are interventions and programs to educate or start new processes. AMP-UP concurrently maintains ongoing conversations, activities and policy updates that improve the campus climate for all.

AMP-UP teams have made considerable progress over the last two years. At the Presidents October Campus Forum, each initiative team reported on their projects and progress. Posters provided additional information and are available on the ADVANCE webpage. Attendees were also asked to rate the importance of ongoing and future efforts.

Topic: Continuous Improvement Criteria Importance Expansion of Partner Cost-share Pilot 19 Review Action Items from the Unit Climate Survey 14 Advocates and Allies Program (vetted intervention relating to sexism in the workplace) 14 Review of Family Friendly Policies 11 Continued Focus Groups in Support of Ideas that Spring Forth from the Unite Climate Survey 8 Embed People Highly Skilled in Continuous Improvement Using Lean Principles on the AMP-UP Teams 5 Collective Advertising and Website Pilot 2

Topic: Scholarship and Research Dynamics Criteria Importance Personalized Career Development Plans 15 Clearly Define Faculty Service within each Academic Unit 12 Career Development: Review Non-Tenure Promotion Path; Lecturers, Instructors, Professor of Practice 9 Recruitment Process for Executives and Academic Administrators 9 Consider Academic/Promotional Track for Librarians 8

Topic: Programs, Interventions and Implementation Criteria Importance Identify and Build Reports that are Generated in Time for Key Decisions Aligned with the University's Strategic Plan 24 Align Metrics to Track University Goals Utilizing WebFocus 13 Industry Engagement Kaizen (see additional poster for more information) 10 Build a Mechanism to Share the Analyzed Data so that others can learn 10 Standardize University Level Metric Collection, Archiving and Reporting 6 Develop an Annual Communication Mechanism to Inform the Community about the Data Available 5 Sabbatical Retention Survey/Intervention 3 Revamp the Reporting Screen in Digital Measures to Help Close the Loop on Sabbatical Leaves 2

Make a Difference If you would like to learn more or join an AMP-UP initiative to improve Michigan Tech, please contact Adrienne Minerick minerick@mtu.edu and Anita Quinn aquinn@mtu.edu

Michigan Technological University is a public research university, home to more than 7,000 students from 54 countries. Founded in 1885, the University offers more than 120 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in science and technology, engineering, forestry, business and economics, health professions, humanities, mathematics, and social sciences. Our campus in Michigans Upper Peninsula overlooks the Keweenaw Waterway and is just a few miles from Lake Superior.
Is a U.S. pet food company using food safety as an excuse to fan the flames of anti-Chinese sentiment and promote Tibetan independence? Richmond News, a newspaper in Richmond, British Columbia, Canada, recently reported that residents were offended to discover a brand of dog food with the label no ingredients from China.

The brand in question, The Honest Kitchen, a producer and supplier of pet food products and supplies based in San Diego, California, United States, has been promoting its China-free slogan since at least 2012. The companys website states that we make ALL of our cat and dog foods without ingredients from China  nothing, zip, nada!

But as the report points out, Chinese are offended that a pet food brand essentially defines quality as not from China.

I felt offended when I saw the package and I dont feel very comfortable that a product like this exists in the market, Richmond resident Lily Du was quoted as saying by the newspaper. A different resident, Ekki Wang, told the newspaper, I strongly felt this is discrimination against the Chinese nation and the slogan has crossed the line.

A spokesperson for the company reportedly said the no ingredients from China label reflects the brands food safety control and is not against any country, citing the pet food recall in the United States in 2007 as the reason.

China has had food safety issues. Xinhua News Agency reported that in 2008, infant formula produced by the Sanlu Group, a leading dairy firm in northern China, was found to have contained melamine, which caused death of six babies. China has been improving the safety of food products ever since, including the enactment of the nations first Food Safety Law in 2009.

It is ridiculous to judge Chinas food quality based on the melamine pet food recall, especially in the face of new facts. China places high value on food safety and has been making great efforts to improve the quality and safety of its food. Its actions against the Chinese people show that it is not "honest" at all.

Food safety is a global concern. Both the United States and Canada for instance have had serious food safety incidents, including a deadly bacterial outbreak from bagged spinach in the United States in 2006 and a listeriosis outbreak linked to ready-to-eat meats in Canada in 2008. More recently, there was global panic over millions of poisoned eggs from Europe, and up to 53,154 pounds of raw beef products contaminated with Salmonella were recalled in the United States, and the list goes on.

The point being, it is offensive and wrong to define healthy as not from China, especially for a business that reportedly makes $30 million a year in revenue, some of which comes from Chinese customers.

But there is another question to consider. What does the Free Tibet slogan have to do with food safety? If this is really an issue about food safety and nothing else, why put the Tibetan flag next to the message: 0: The number of food ingredients we use from China (P.S., Free Tibet!). The argument that the no ingredients from China label is not against the Chinese people simply does not hold water, because there is clearly a political motivation.

With that said, a persuasive argument can be made that trying to build a brand around such political slogans has little to do with food safety and much to do with promoting an anti-Chinese agenda. And, as recent events have shown, making oneself an enemy of the Chinese people is not the right way to do business.
Chinese PLA Navy Marine Corps conducted a massive-scale military exercise in real combat scenario recently. Thousands of soldiers were dispatched remotely to Yunnan province and Shandong province, covering a distance of over 2,000 kilometers. After landing, soldiers promptly joined combat scenarios that took place in various terrains including jungles, mountains, deserts and water.
In Focus with Allison Walker is a 30-minute public affairs program, featuring a roundtable of newsmakers representing a range of perspectives, including local officials and expert analysts as they tackle topical issues of importance to Floridians.

In Focus airs Sundays at 11:30 a.m. and 8:30 p.m., right after Political Connections.
Environmentalists are urging Gov. Rick Scott to veto legislation that would allow developers to pump treated wastewater into the Floridan aquifer, the source of most of the state's drinking water.

HB 1149 passed both Florida House and Senate

Critics point out treated wastewater still contains dangers

Scott has until end of week to act on bill

The measure (HB 1149) reached the governor's desk Monday on the heels of swift passage by the state House and Senate. Supporters have billed it as an environmentally responsible way of spurring growth in parts of the state where traditional supplies of water are hard to come by.

But critics warn that allowing developers to replace aquifer water with treated wastewater could lead to environmental calamities. Despite being filtered, treated wastewater often still contains relatively high levels of nutrients that have been found to cause algae blooms.

In addition, some remnants of human waste - including antibiotics and antidepressants - can't be fully removed, either.

"You're using the water, what we all depend on, and you're discussing tainting that with treated water," said Trimmel Gomes, an environmental policy consultant. "Once you open this can, you can't close it back. You're pumping that treated water into our underground aquifer, what we all depend on."

While Scott has generally been a pro-development chief executive - going so far as to dismantle the state's growth management agency shortly after taking office in 2011 - he has also shown a green streak, securing increased funding for environmental protection. In January, Scott announced an agreement in principle with Energy Secretary Ryan Zinke to remove Florida from the federal government's list of states under consideration for coastal oil drilling.

While the agreement has been largely dismissed as devoid of legal standing, it was seen as another step by Scott to appeal to conservation-minded voters as he prepares for a likely campaign to unseat Democratic U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson.

"We can continue to make sure this is the state that people want to continue to travel to, they want to live in, because we have the most pristine environment in the world," Scott said at the time.

As a result, environmentalists are now hoping the governor will be inclined to block the wastewater legislation, which they've less-than-affectionately dubbed 'toilet to tap.'

"It would contradict all the work that has been done on springs protection," Gomes said.

Scott has until the end of next week to act on the bill.
The suspected leader in what federal agents say was a stolen firearms ring around Central Florida was taken into custody Friday night, they said.

ATF: Suspect in stolen firearms ring taken into custody

Kendric Collier arrested Friday in Altamonte Springs



More than 150 firearms stolen around Central Florida

Richard Jernigan, 30, Robert Tilmon, 31, Raymond Williams, 28, and Jermeil Williams, 28, are all facing charges in connection to the burglaries, Attorney General Pam Bondis Office said in a news release.

The ring is accused of stealing more than 150 firearms around Central Florida.

Kendric Collier, 28, was arrested Friday afternoon at an apartment on Oyster Bay Circle in Altamonte Springs, a spokesperson with the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said.

"According to ATF, law enforcement has recovered approximately 35 of the 156 stolen firearms, most seized from prohibited individuals involved in previous violent criminal acts, according to the news release.

The men are also accused of other crimes, such as burglaries targeting cash, jewelry, electronics and other items in Orange, Polk and Seminole counties, authorities said.

"We have organized, violent groups still in our communities. Who steal guns, who sell stolen guns, and use them to commit acts of violence, every single day in our community," said Danny Banks, special agent in charge of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

Agents said they'd recovered about 35 of the stolen guns.
A Chinese research and rescue team consisting of volunteers was hailed by the Communist Youth League of China because of its outstanding assistance during the major earthquake that took place in southern Mexico this February.

Jun He carries out rescue in Mexico.

The team, named Ram Rescue, is a research and rescue team under Chinas civil organization Ram Union. Classified as a Medium Team within the International Search and Rescue Advisory Group (INSARAG), it can reach any rescue sites in the world within 24 hours.

The civil rescue team has participated in earthquake assistance in China in places such as Wenchuan, Yushu, Yaan and Jiuzhaigou, and they have also left their footprints at destinations abroad including Nepal and Pakistan.

The Ram Union was founded by Jun He in 2003, the owner of a jewelry identification organization based in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou. The members, most of whom were young entrepreneurs, believe that it is significant and meaningful to help people in need.

In the first five years, the organization offered charity randomly and without a common goal. However, with the increasing frequency of rescues offered, it gradually became more professional.

After participating in a disaster relief program in Wenchuan in 2008, the Ram Union established the professional team  Ram Rescue targets disaster emergency response. He said that civil organizations have only limited power, so they have managed to shift their focus to what they are really best at.

Now Ram Rescue has set up multiple branches in both China as well as in foreign countries including the US (Dallas) and Italy.

According to He, the rescue team will conduct evaluations before it goes for missions every time, and rescues will be initiated within two hours of each evaluation.

He hopes to build a time-honored brand of Chinas civil organization which has a big say on the international stage. The Ram Union is working to become such an organization, He said.
SOUTHINGTON  Roseanne Grindle hopes all those who helped search for her dog will turn their efforts to the many other lost animals in the area.

It was really eye opening to see how many dogs go missing, said Grindle, whose family searched for their 4-year-old labradoodle for 32 days after he bolted out the door on Feb. 22.

Lost for more than a month, including freezing temperatures and four noreasters, Teddy was found in Bristol earlier this week after an extensive search and outpouring of support on social media. The family is planning a fundraiser in the summer where people can visit Teddy and make donations to the recovery volunteers, Grindle said Friday.

Meanwhile, Teddy continues adjusting to being home.

We can actually enjoy Easter now, Grindle said.

When her husband, Gary Grindle, returned with Teddy, the dog ran through the front door and jumped on their 11-year-old daughter.

Hes Natalees little boy, Roseanne Grindle said.

After a veterinarian check-up the next day, he was treated to a trip to the groomer for a shave, bath and massage. While hes still settling back in, Roseanne Grindle said hes becoming less skittish.

He was surprisingly in really good shape for being gone as long as he was, Roseanne Grindle said. Poor thing, braving four storms. I dont know how he did it.

Dogs are very resilient and resourceful, said Carol Ferrucci, an administrator of the Connecticut Dog Gone Recovery Volunteers, which helped search for Teddy. Theyre going to find and make their own shelters out of the natural environment.

The volunteer group donates its time looking for dogs around the state, employing methods such as self-closing cage traps, cameras and bacon burns, where meats are cooked on a grill with nearby traps to attract the dog.

Ferruci has found dogs hidden under dry leaves and heating vents for dryers to escape the elements, including a Chihuahua which survived heavy snow one winter. While she couldnt tell where Teddy had hidden out, she said the sheds, bushes, branches and rock crevices prevalent in the area could have provided shelter.

Im always worried and amazed by how resilient dogs can be, she said. Im just amazed that he made it through all that.

Southington and the surrounding communities helped searched for Teddy over the past month. The family received calls about sightings of Teddy across Southington, Plainville and Bristol, where he was eventually found.

The town was aware and keeping an eye out, Roseanne Grindle said. As many eyes as possible looking for him was really important.

A lot of people from the community joined us, she said Everyday I was out I could see people all over the place.

I think its peoples love of animals that brings people together like that, Ferrucci said. When he was found we could not have been more happy, more relieved.

Were so grateful for every person that prayed, looking, hiked, Roseanne Grindle said. Every single one of those people helped us to not lose hope.

Ultimately, it was two children in Bristol who found Teddy and helped get him to safety.

Two little kids were able to get him when hordes of adults were looking, Roseanne Grindle said.

For now, the family is happy to have Teddy back.

I can focus on school and be happy, Natalee Grindle said.

dleithyessian@record-journal.com

203-317-2317

Twitter: @leith_yessian
How much money can US households save each year from imported commodities from China?

How much money does an American household save each year from the imported commodities from China? To what extent does the average American household benefit from China-US trade?

A senior Chinese journalist Wei Jing living in the US recently conducted a survey and did the math after US president Donald Trump signed a memorandum that imposes high tariffs on imports from China, revealing that the trade war will definitely cause negative impacts on millions of American families.

Wei took toys as an example. Thanks to the low labor costs, the toys made in China are generally sold at prices around $30 each. A mother of a set of twins in the US told Wei that if a toy is sold at more than $30, she is not likely to double the order for both of her children.

Based on conservative estimates, an American family could at least save $100 every year buying Chinese toys.

China-made Christmas trees are another kind of commodity which US citizens should be grateful for as well. Most of the Christmas trees in the country are produced in China. Wei said that she only spent $35 for a 2-meter-high Christmas tree, and the price included accessories. Given the minimum wage of around $10 per hour in some states, the price of such a tree will unavoidably go higher than $35 if it is manufactured in the US.

According to a supplier of major US retailers surnamed McRoy, American retailers prefer imported goods from China because of their low cost, which endows them with more flexibility in terms of pricing on the US market, hence more profits.

Direct imports are just part of the China-US trade model, and Chinese contributions to US families can be seen everywhere. Almost every state has China-invested companies, and Chinese companies even hired about 150,000 employees in the Rust Belt.

McRoy said that China has become a vital part in the supply chain of global commerce, adding that the speed, quality and volume of made-in-china items are all irreplaceable.

A report by the US-China Business Council indicated that maintaining trade between the two major countries can save each typical American household about $850 annually. Both Wei and McRoy believe that smooth trade cooperation between China and the US will save more for them.

To start a trade war against China is not the best solution, said McRoy.
Once derided as the worlds factory that only churns out low-quality imitation goods, China has been making progress in upgrading its domestic products, altering the consumption patterns of the countrys young population.

According to a Credit Suisse survey released in March, 90 percent of the Chinese interviewees who are under the age of 29 prefer to buy electronic devices made in China, as well as other products. The percentage of Chinese clients who would like to buy domestic sportswear has risen to 19 percent.

Chinese products used to be ridiculed as copycats and rubbish. The situation has changed swiftly in recent years, nowadays when we talk about smartphones, I personally think about Chinese brands like Huawei and Vivo, which are cheaper than Samsung and Apple yet have similar quality and even better functions, Lin Jiazhi, a 26-year-old IT engineer told Peoples Daily Online.

The preference of youth in China for domestic products is predominately caused by Chinas recent landmark achievements in science, innovation and technology. According to Xinhua, every minute during the morning rush hours, China has 40,000 car-hailing journeys; 70 percent of Chinese mobile netizens are using mobile payments, and China now boasts the world's largest online shopping market.

Dockless shared bicycles, high-speed trains, mobile payments and e-commerce have all earned reputations as China's "four great new inventions" in recent times. These innovations have changed the way of living in China and are now reshaping ideas of consumption amongst Chinese.

The rising reputation of overseas Chinese companies has also attracted consumers both in and out of China. For instance, a Chinese telecom company completed the first 5G phone call in the entire world this past February, signifying that it very well may take a leading role during the forthcoming 5G era.

Along with rising quality, Chinese products have also ignited the publics sense of cultural identity and national pride, attracting even more young Chinese to buy them, Xiao Xueping, member of China Association for Mental Health, told the Sputnik.
Vancouver authorities have decided to issue an apology to Chinese-Canadians for its historic discrimination on April. 22, which is also the citys Chinatown Cultural Day.

China town in Vancouver

According to an announcement from the local government, the apology event will be held in Vancouvers Chinese Cultural Center, with events featuring traditional Chinese food and dance lessons. The apology is made on behalf of previous city councils and will address wrongdoings in the citys legislation, regulation and policies.

In addition to English, the apology will also be read in Siyi Yue and Cantonese, which are primarily spoken in Guangdong province. According to China News, such arrangements were made due to the fact that most Chinese immigrants that were discriminated against in Canada were from Guangdong.

Three Chinese-Canadian representatives, including an old veteran, a middle-aged official and a young woman will participate. They will respond to the local authorities apology during the event.

"In order to move forward, we must first acknowledge the harm that was committed and how this unfortunate chapter in Vancouvers history continues to impact the lives of Chinese Canadians," Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson was quoted by CTV News as saying.

According to the local authorities report in 2017, residents of Chinese descent werent allowed to vote when the city incorporated in 1886 until 1948. Vancouver also encouraged discriminatory measures against Chinese residents, including charging federal head tax and barred Chinese-Canadians from civic employment between 1890 and 1952.

In 2014, a formal apology was delivered on behalf of all members of the B.C. legislative assembly to Chinese Canadians for historical wrongs committed by past provincial governments, while on May 15, 2014, the Government of British Columbia apologized to its Chinese Canadian community for the historical wrong doings.
Bulgaria, which has a strong pro-Russian lobby in government, needs more time to decide whether to follow NATO and EU allies in expelling Russian diplomats over a nerve agent attack on a former Russian spy, its deputy prime minister said on Thursday.

EU presidency chair Bulgaria has recalled its ambassador from Moscow after the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter in England in the first known use of a military-grade nerve agent on European soil since World War Two.

But it has stopped short of following most EU members and allies in NATO, including the United States, which have expelled dozens of Russian diplomats in a show of solidarity with Britain over the March 4 attack.

"The political situation in Bulgaria is such that these types of decisions have to be taken by consensus," deputy prime minister Tomislav Donchev said, referring to a strong body of opinion in the coalition government and opposition which favours pursuing good ties with Russia.

"At the moment, for good or bad, there is no such consensus," he said.

Bulgaria, which was liberated from Ottoman rule by Russia, became one of the most obedient Soviet satellite states during the Cold War.

Many Bulgarians feel a strong cultural affinity for Russia, with which they share the Cyrillic script and orthodox Christianity.

This legacy translates into a coalition government in which the centre-right GERB party shares power with three smaller nationalist parties which to varying degrees support better ties with Russia and argue that Bulgaria should take a balanced position over the Skripal case.

They have opposed a call by a senior GERB official for Bulgaria to follow the lead of its allies and expel Russian diplomats.

Both President Rumen Radev and the biggest opposition party, the Socialists, are also insisting that more concrete proof is needed of Russian involvement in the Skripal poisoning.

The government's Security Council was to discuss the attack on Friday and the coalition partners themselves were due to meet to discuss possible next measures in the affair.

"I categorically think these (calls for Bulgaria to expel Russian diplomats) are a mistake," said Volen Siderov, leader of the pro-Russian, nationalist Attack party, one of GERB's junior coalition partners.

"We have one unclear case. We have no evidence of Russia's participation," he said in a statement.

Donchev, in an interview with Reuters, said any action undertaken by Bulgaria would be seen as a signal of solidarity with Britain and its allies and also as a signal to Russia.

Speaking of the internal situation, he said: "Taking into account that our government is a coalition one ... I am not convinced that such a decision can be taken so easily and so quickly."

Donchev said Bulgaria would wait for a report from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons for the time being, saying that Sofia was monitoring developments closely.

"What happened in Great Britain is ... unacceptable. It is barbaric, it is a chemical weapon, it is a military toxic substance," Donchev said.

Referring to Bulgaria's history of close ties with Russia, Donchev said: "This is an undeniable fact. History, though, is sometimes a good, and sometimes a bad, teacher in politics."

Short link:


By Express News Service

KOCHI: Call it over enthusiasm or a case of misinterpretation. A day after the much celebrated announcement by Education Minister C Raveendranath on the floor of the Assembly that around 1.24 lakh students in the state have not declared their religion in their school admission forms, it has been revealed the data has been sourced from incomplete information uploaded by the schools.

According to Director of Public Instruction (DPI) K V Mohandas, the details of students admitted to schools are uploaded on the Education Departments website using the Sampoorna school management software.

READ HERE | Kerala government goofed up with 'no religion' figures

It is not mandatory to fill up the columns declaring religion and caste in the application form for Class I admission. The department has sourced the data from the information entered by schools on the website. Teachers might have filled only the mandatory columns while entering the students details, he said.

The Sampoorna software has two types of forms to fill in student details. The entry form for Class I students has 59 columns while the form for admitting students to other classes on the basis of transfer certificate (TC) has 65 columns. Among the 59 columns for Class I admission, only 25 columns are mandatory.

While it is mandatory to fill the column regarding the name of the guardian, it is not compulsory to enter the names of father and mother. Likewise, though there are columns to enter the religion and caste of the student, they are not mandatory. As the schools have to furnish the details of students by the sixth working day, the teachers and school staff will rush the details filling only the mandatory columns, Kerala Pradesh

School Teachers Association (KPSTA) state vice president V K Ajith Kumar told Express. There are many schools in the state functioning without computer and internet facility. The school headmaster might approach an internet cafe to enter the details of the students. The Minister might have presented the data before the Assembly without knowing the fact it is sourced from incomplete data. Maybe, someone who provided the data was enthusiastic to prove Kerala is growing non-religious. But that is inaccurate.

For example, 46 students studying at Tanur Cheerankadappuram AMLPS have been listed as non-religious. But most of the students studying in this school belong to the Muslim community and they are very religious. The same is the case of Tanur Govt UPS where 126 students have been listed as non-religious, said Ajith Kumar.

School rejects Edu Mins no religion, caste claim

Malappuram: A day after Education Minister C Raveendranath told the Assembly as many as 1.24 lakh school students had not mentioned their religion or caste while seeking admissions, a school in the district rejected his claim, at least partially. The authorities of Al-Hidayath English Medium School at Kondotty said technical errors may have driven the minister towards making the statement.

It is true we found 921 Muslim students left their caste column blank in the admission forms for out school. But all of them, did fill Islam in the religion column and OBC in the category column. The school employees found the caste column was not mandatory while uploading data on the Education Department. Hence, they opted not to enter any data while uploading the details of some students. But they did fill the column for religion and category, said secretary of the school Beerankutty Haji.
There were very few patients at the Arish Military Hospital  which has 200 beds, three fully-equipped operating rooms and an intensive care ward  when we arrived.

Behind the calm, however, was a palpable sense of readiness, that the staff is prepared to deal with any emergency.



We were received by the hospitals second in command. We are fully equipped to save lives, he said. Routine surgery can be performed here alongside more specialised surgery. We have yet to receive a case with which we are not equipped to deal.



The staff includes two surgical teams and orthopaedic, neurosurgical and other specialists. Although a military hospital, it often contracts civilian medical staff though during Comprehensive Operation Sinai (COS) 2018 the basic staff in all disciplines is naturally drawn from the military medical corps.



The hospital is expected to offer immediate treatment to personnel who sustain injuries in the course of military operations. Some cases are critical and require urgent intervention to save the patients life.

The most complicated cases may have to be transferred to hospitals with special facilities: the task of the hospital then becomes one of keeping the patient stable and facilitating his transfer.



Sometimes I find that I have to transfer a patient to another hospital. We provide primary care in order to stabilise his condition so that he can be transferred safely to another hospital where he can receive treatment requiring a higher degree of specialisation. The cases we receive vary from simple wounds to neurological cases.



The interview with the hospitals deputy head was interrupted by the ringing of his phone. After hanging up he explained that general command calls him throughout the day for updates on patients.



Like other units in the Armed Forces the military hospital offers staff in-service training programmes to promote the transfer and development of expertise.



We do this to introduce new physicians to the system as quickly as possible. The staff has to be alert and prepared to act at all times in an emergency. Emergencies are not the right time to give instructions which need to be familiar to staff in advance. The staff here is ready for any emergency.



There were only two soldiers among the patients, a reflection of the low rate of injuries during COS 2018.



But what about the morale of the wounded soldiers?



Each case tells a different human story. For example, a patient might get out of his bed in order to check on the welfare of a fellow soldier, whether or not he knows him personally. That same patient will want to get back to his post as soon as possible.

He doesnt want to stay in the hospital and he doesnt want to hear me, as a doctor, tell him that, in his condition, he needs more rest. In fact, it is we, here, who receive a dose of morale-lifting from these heroes and not the reverse. I imagine that events, here, have strengthened those men and made them closer to each other and more unified.



According to the physician the ambulance services are very effective, something we were able to confirm on meeting an ambulance worker who had just brought a patient to the hospital.

Asked about first-aid services in COS 2018, he said the Egyptian Ambulance Organisation was responsible for transferring patients to hospitals. As for response time, the ambulance worker said: I start moving the moment I receive a call. Generally, I get the rest of the information over the walkie-talkie while the ambulance is on the move.



Injuries are often a result of explosive devices, said the young ambulance worker, who has been in service for a year.



The bombing of Al-Rawdah Mosque west of Arish in November was his worst time on the job because of the number of victims.

One of the main difficulties ambulance workers in North Sinai face, he said, is that ambulances themselves come under terrorist fire, something he experienced during the Al-Rawdah Mosque incident.



How did he react?



He continued to rescue the people he could and notified control an attack was in progress so the army could deal with it and prevent the obstruction of other ambulances coming to or from the scene of the bombing.



Back in the hospital we visited the two wounded soldiers. One had received a bullet in his left foot and the other had been shot in his right shoulder during a raid against a terrorist lair.

Both soldiers had undergone successful surgery. One had been discharged and was about to leave the hospital but he wanted to check up on his colleague and say good-bye first.

The moment he saw our camera, he said: Please dont photograph me. My injury is minor. I dont want to get my family worried. I want to get back to my squadron and resume my duties.

His companion echoed the same request. He too wanted to report back to duty as soon as possible. The physician was right: these soldiers do lift the morale of others.



The present reporter went to the nurses room. They were examining the lists of patients and one was on her way to the injured soldier to give him a scheduled dose of medicine.

They, too, shared a spirit of camaraderie generated by a joint sense of mission. One of the nurses, from Arish, said she was looking forward to the operation achieving its objectives and her home city being free from the threat of terrorism.

About work at the hospital another nurse said staff had all the facilities necessary to perform their tasks effectively.

A third said she had refused to take scheduled leave even though the hospital was well staffed.



Its enough for me that I know that theyre well and they know that Im well, she said.

*This story was first published in Al-Ahram Weekly

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Islanders coach Matt Kestler earned his first victory since taking over the program as Middletown topped the Central Falls/Blackstone Valley squad.
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As victory chants rang through the air and soldiers distributed food to the people of Arish an elderly man seemed to be the focus of everyones attention. People were offering him a place in the queue ahead of them. A middle-aged man bowed respectfully and kissed the mans hand. A soldier, who noticed this attention, went over to the man and offered to help him. The man insisted on waiting his turn.



Sheikh Mohamed Muslim Al-Kashef (83) is an elder of the Al-Kashef clan. He proudly related the part he played in the resistance against the Israeli occupation of Sinai and then related that time to the current counter-terrorist operation. As with any enemy, it was important to sustain the fight against terrorism and use all possible force to eliminate it, he said.

Al-Kashef was a member of the Sinai Mujahideen organisation. His task was to help conceal intelligence officers from Cairo in occupied Sinai and assist them in their missions. One of the officers most important tasks was to photograph the Bar Lev Line.



He would tune in to the Sawt Al-Arab radio station. In the midst of those conventional programmes in which people would call in to dedicate a song to a friend and send greetings to their families and relatives, he would pick up a coded message, a greeting that would include, among the names of relatives cited, the identity of the intelligence officer assigned a mission and the name of a liaison officer and any others involved in the mission. This would set in motion Al-Kashefs own assignment which involved hiding the officer in his house and helping disguise him as a merchant or fisherman as he photographed some strategic locations behind enemy lines.



The octogenarian relates that one day he was on his way home when he was stopped by an Israeli commander demanding his help in capturing an Egyptian officer. That officer was the same intelligence agent he was assisting. Al-Kashef says he pretended to help in exchange for permission to move freely for a week. During that period he was able to photograph sensitive locations that would have been inaccessible otherwise. Meanwhile, the intelligence officer returned safe to base and called up the Israeli commander to introduce himself. Al-Kashef recounts that, after the Egyptian victory in the October 1973 War, the intelligence officer described what a surprise he had given the enemy at the time.



Al-Kashef also had the opportunity to work as a driver for a petroleum company operated by the occupation authorities in Sinai. In this capacity he was able to observe the enemy and dispatch messages on its activities and circumstances. At one point Israeli intelligence issued him permit to travel to Tel Aviv.



In 1971 Al-Kashefs espionage activities were discovered. He was arrested and tortured only to be released when his health deteriorated. Eventually he managed to reach the Egyptian Embassy in Jordan where he was given a heros welcome.



Al-Kashef has been awarded numerous medals. He still receives a pension as a veteran freedom fighter. But, he says, I would have been happy to do what I did without these honours. It was my duty. I think everyone should know their duty and perform it without expecting anything in return.



Today, Al-Kashef sends messages from a freedom fighter to the people of Sinai to urge them to remain resolute in the battle against terrorism. An enemy is an enemy, even if he disguises himself in a religious cloak, he says.



This time, of course, the messages are not coded as was the case with those relayed via Sawt Al-Arab during the War of Attrition. He conveys them openly, in meetings with friends and relatives and in public gatherings with the people of Sinai. His message is one of hope and resolve. As he put it to Al-Ahram Weekly: The army is capable of winning the battle. It will defeat the enemy who wears a mask and hides like a coward just as it defeated the enemies who occupied this land.



He acknowledges that there were some who collaborated with the enemy. That can happen anywhere, he says. But the majority of the people of Sinai are not lured by the enemys temptations. The real jihad is to defend the land and sacrifice yourself for the nation.

*This story was first published in Al-Ahram Weekly

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French President Emmanuel Macron held talks with a delegation from Syria, including the Kurdish YPG militia, on Thursday after criticism at home over his response to a Turkish military operation against the militants in the north of the country.

As well as the YPG, which Turkey is trying to sweep out away from its border, the delegation also included its political arm the PYD. Kurdish officials and Macron's office said the meeting covered the situation in the north of country, where Ankara launched its operation nearly two months ago.

Turkey, which stormed the northern Syrian town of Afrin last week, has repeatedly threatened to push its operations further east to Manbij where US troops are stationed.

"An Arab, Kurdish and Christian delegation from Syria is being received at the Elysee to discuss the situation in Afrin and northern Syria," the representative office of the northern Syrian Rojava region, which is largely controlled by the Kurds, said on Twitter.

"Important announcements are expected from France."

Macron spoke to US President Donald Trump on Wednesday on the situation in northern Syria. Macron's office said in a statement that the two had agreed that the fight against Islamic State group was their absolute priority and nothing should be done to deter the coalition fighting it.

The Kurdish YPG has been at the forefront of the battle.

Former president Francois Hollande, who originally approved French support for the Kurds, bemoaned on March 23 Macron's Syria policy, in particular his attitude to the Kurds, accusing him of abandoning them.

Before Thursday's meeting, a Kurdish official said the delegation included military and political officials, including a YPG spokesman.

Ankara considers the YPG to be an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a decades-long insurgency against the state within Turkey.

France, like the United States, has extended arms and training to the YPG-led militia in the fight against Islamic State group in Syria, and also has dozens of special forces based in the region. That has infuriated Turkey.

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Thousands of people flocked to the iconic Al-Sabeen Square in Sanaa in Yemen this week to mark the third anniversary of the beginning of the Saudi-led Storm of Resolve Operation in the country or the start of the fourth year of steadfastness in the face of the aggression, as the Houthi rebel media called it.

In his 80-minute televised address to supporters rallied in the square, Abdel-Malak Al-Houthi, leader of the Houthi Movement that now controls the north of the country, made no mention of his recent meeting with new UN Special Envoy to Yemen Martin Griffiths, who arrived in the Yemeni capital on Saturday for his first official visit since he was appointed to succeed Ould Cheikh Ahmed who resigned in February.

Before flying to Sanaa, Griffiths travelled to the Saudi capital Riyadh where he met with representatives of the internationally recognised Yemeni government in the hope of restarting negotiations.

According to sources in Sanaa, the Houthis demanded a halt to the Saudi-led Coalitions bombardments as a precondition for restarting the talks.

At the same time, they fired seven missiles into Saudi Arabia as a way of marking the third anniversary of the Operation that Saudi Arabia launched against them in Yemen three years ago.

According to a communique issued by the official spokesman for the coalition, Turki Al-Malki, on Sunday, coalition air forces had tracked seven ballistic missiles fired from Yemeni territory, three in the direction of Riyadh, one in the direction of Khamis Mashit, another in the direction of Najran, and two in the direction of Jazan.

The missiles had been fired off at random with the intention of striking civil and residential targets in Saudi Arabia, but they had all been destroyed by the Saudi airforce, he said.

The Houthi media displayed images of the missile launches, which it said varied from middle to long-range missiles. One video featured the launch of a Burkan 2H long-range missile said to have been fired in the direction of the King Khaled International Airport in Riyadh.

Another was listed as a mid-range Qaher-2M ballistic missile fired in the direction of the Abha Airport in southern Saudi Arabia.

The other missiles were of the Badr1 class and were fired in the direction of the Jazan Airport and other targets. Most of the missiles were Iranian-made and some carried the same name as their Iranian versions, such as the Qaher 2M.

The Houthi missiles, reportedly fired from different locations, were clearly intended to convey a reminder of the Houthis missile power, one of their strongest ripostes to Saudi Arabia.

The missile fire occurred while Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman was on a visit to the US, and the US State Department issued a statement on Monday condemning the Houthi missile fire and affirming Washingtons support of its Saudi allies.

Commenting on the display of Houthi missile fire, Egyptian military expert Mohamed Qashqoush observed that had the missiles reached their targets simultaneously it would have meant they were fired from seven different platforms, an indication of the Houthi Movements growing expertise.

The ability of the Saudi air defences to intercept the missiles lay in securing the targets rather than the deployment of defences along the border with Yemen, which would be difficult given its length. Because of the intensity of the missile fire there may have been problems in intercepting all the missiles, he said.

Qashqoush said the US would furnish Saudi Arabia with more anti-missile batteries. There is talk about a missile dome for the Gulf, he said. I believe that it is in the US interest to sell these systems [to the Gulf countries] quickly. The subject will be on the agenda during the crown princes current visit to the US.

On the question of the negotiations, a source close to the Yemeni government in Riyadh told Al-Ahram Weekly that the new UN envoy, in his meeting with President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi, now living in the Saudi capital, had proposed picking up the talks from the point they left off under Ould Cheikh Ahmed in Kuwait and Muscat.

But the source said that Griffiths wanted to reengineer the negotiations even though he did not have a sufficient grasp of the issues, which was why he was meeting with many different people in Riyadh including individuals who had left the political scene such as former Yemeni prime minister Khaled Bahah.

Griffiths also met with representatives of the Southern Movement during a visit to the port of Aden in South Yemen, the source added. I doubt he will succeed, the source said.

The new envoy will spend a lot of time researching details, straying from the strategic points. He is the first envoy who doesnt know Arabic, which will also be a challenge.

Khaled Alyan, a Yemeni political analyst who spoke with the Weekly from Riyadh, said Griffiths will work according to a plan, probably a pre-prepared one. However, it will require some time.

The new recipe is basically cooked in the US kitchen and it will pave the way for the new US secretary of state playing a part in the coming phase.

We only have to note the meetings the US ambassador is having with Hadi, his Vice President Ali Mohsen Al-Ahmar, and Prime Minister Ahmed Obeid bin Daghr to see this. All this is a sign of the US recipe that is on its way.

*This story was first published in Al-Ahram Weekly

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Liberation war fighters are piling pressure on President Emmerson Mnangagwa to arrest former first lady Grace Mugabe over her attainment of a doctorate degree under controversial circumstances but analysts have cautioned that any punitive action against the first family might backfire for Zanu PF at the polls.



In a statement issued yesterday, the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association (Znlwva) said failure to arrest Grace, alleged to have been corruptly awarded the PhD by officials at the University of Zimbabwe (UZ) would make a mockery of Mnangagwas anti-corruption crusade.



The president has made a clarion call to permanently destroy the vice of corruption, leaving no sacred cows. This means the conduct of all those who hold office, impacting on other peoples lives, should be open to rigorous public scrutiny and they must be held accountable without fear or favour, Znlwva said in the statement.



It is mind-boggling that an institution, (such) as the University of Zimbabwe, mandated to nurture and educate our young members of society is led by people who protect and cover-up corruption and abuse of office. Why should corruption at UZ be considered a sacred cow?



Grace was awarded the PhD in 2014 after about three months of study. Doctorates typically require several years of full-time research and writing. Levi Nyagura, the vice chancellor of the UZ was arrested last month after the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission initiated investigations into the matter. He is currently out on bail.



Znlwva yesterday said it believed that the saga provides a litmus test for Mnangagwas government, which has pitched the fight against corruption on top of its agenda.



The association said unfettered investigations should commence forthwith into the conduct of the countrys oldest university to rid the institution of any practices that taint the current dispensation as this potentially poisons learners.



The war veterans said if government fails to handle the case properly, it will tarnish the integrity of Zimbabwes education system.



We, veterans of Zimbabwes liberation struggle and the vanguard and custodians of the revolution and architects of this new dispensation demand explanation from all involved institutions and organs of the State mandated to uphold our educational system. These organs must perform the honourable task of explaining to the Zimbabwean public the exact circumstances, the procedures and all the processes followed in awarding Grace ... a doctoral degree by the UZ.



We cannot afford to have our education system marred by individuals who use their positions of office to circumvent rules, customs and practices that all others are subjected to. We shall leave no stone unturned in our demands, said Znlwva.



They further said, We know that Generation 40 (G40) elements thrive in our midst and are fighting to sustain and cover up the vice. Prominent G40 activists jump the fence and start to advance their agenda in the new dispensation. These individuals do not repent and consider themselves as irreplaceable which is totally fallacious.



Grace is also facing charges of illegal dealings in ivory while she was still the first lady.

Police have confirmed that they are investigating her.



Analysts canvassed by the Daily News this week said Mnangagwa cannot move against the former first family now as that would hurt Zanu PF in the forthcoming elections.

They said the threats coming from government targeted at the Mugabes were more of sabre-rattling and designed to remind the former president and his wife that things have changed with the aim of silencing them.



Political scientist Eldred Masunungure said for now Mnangagwa just wants to send warning shots to his former master, who has been throwing barbs at his administration, accusing him of ruling illegally.



I am not sure the aim is to arrest. This is meant to embarrass her and show her that there is a new sheriff in town and that they should watch their steps; its really to tell the former first family where the power now lies. She is just being reminded that the power has left and now lies elsewhere, he said.



Political analyst, Maxwell Saungweme, said while Mnangagwa can move against Mugabe, such a move would be suicidal.



It is possible to move in against them. But it is politically heedless. It will backfire since the regime has so many skeletons in the cupboard Mugabe and G40 are aware of, he said.



A move on Grace and Mugabe will be good for the transparency and ridding the country of corruption, but will also rope in Mnangagwa and the military. It will be a self-defeatist manoeuvre. It will end the junta admin- good for democracy, added Saungweme.



Professor of World Politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London in the United Kingdom, Stephen Chan, said Mnangagwa was better advised to leave Mugabe in peace.



It should wait till after the elections have accorded it full constitutional legitimacy, and then take action through the courts. Even in the case of the Mugabes, there needs to be a new page with rule of law and transparent procedure, said Chan.



After the military arm-twisted Mugabe into resigning in November last year, Mnangagwa was elected Zanu PF leader and subsequently sworn-in on the 24th of the same month as the countrys second executive president.



Although he promised to protect Mugabes legacy, Mnangagwa is now seemingly growing impatient with his former master with his loyalists pushing for his expulsion or even arrest. Daily News
Chaos is reigning supreme at the Beitbridge Border Post on the South African side where travellers are spending hours in winding queues for clearance.



The situation has been building up over the past three days as thousands of people began travelling between the two countries for the Easter holidays.



Some travellers are now opting to use other ports of entry into South Africa during peak periods to avoid delays and congestion, which have become perennial.





Investigations by the Chronicle reveal that people are spending between three and eight hours to enter or leave South Africa, with others reportedly aborting their journeys.





The travellers are accusing the South African immigration officials of staging a go-slow as resistance to the deployment of more anti-corruption officers at the border.





Ironically, the same people are spending less than 30 minutes on the Zimbabwean side for similar processes. This includes those leaving or entering the country.

There are 10 computer units on the Zimbabwean side of the border for processing both arrivals and departures while South Africa has over 46 for the same purpose.





Long static winding queues have become a common feature on the arrivals and departure sides of the South African border.

South Africas Home Affairs Minister Mr Malusi Gigaba said on Wednesday that more staff including security officers had been deployed to many ports of entry, including Beitbridge to curb illegal migration and smuggling.





The deployment of intelligence members and Department of Home Affairs Inspectorate at major ports of entry has exposed a lot of illegal activities.





They discovered 29 fraudulently obtained (South African) passports, seven birth certificates, two identity documents, 13 passports (Lesotho) and three fake immigration stamps from a Zimbabwean at Beitbridge he was using to facilitate illegal movement of travellers across the border, he said.

Travellers who spoke to The Chronicle yesterday called on the South African government to urgently attend to the situation at Beitbridge.





Imagine I spent eight hours here just to get clearance out of South Africa, a process which takes less than 10 minutes on the Zimbabwe side, said Ms Nomagugu Mlotshwa.

It appears the immigration officers here are demonstrating quietly against the deployment of more security officers to monitor their activities.





When we arrived at the border there were only four officers clearing both arrivals and departures  that is two were dealing with arrivals while the others handled departures.





Another traveller, Mr Chamunorwa Moyo blamed the South Africans for taking a business as usual approach in light of an increase in both human and vehicular traffic.





It was disheartening to see women struggling to manage restless and anxious children. We were exposed to the sun for the better part of the time we spent at that border.





I am happy that the Zimbabwean border authorities seem to be more organised this time around. It took us just 20 minutes to complete all the border formalities, said Mr Moyo.





South Africas department of Home Affairs spokesperson, Mr Mayihlome Tshwete had not responded to written questions by the end of the day yesterday.





A border official who preferred anonymity said some wheeler dealers had besieged the South African component of the border where they are charging desperate travellers between R100 and R200 to facilitate their jumping the queues.





A total of 15 000 people (inclusive of arrivals and departures) use the border post daily and the number increases to 35 000 during peak periods. Chronicle
The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (Zec) expects the provisional voters roll to be ready by the end April or the first week of May, while the final one would be completed in June.

This was said by Zec chairperson, Justice Priscilla Chigumba, in an interview yesterday on the state of preparedness ahead of the elections.



The provisional voters roll will be out by the end of this month or the first week of April, she said. Once its published, it would be open for inspection for a period between 14 to 21 days.

We will be inviting Zimbabweans to come and audit the voters roll and make any corrections if there are any. When the areas that need to be corrected have been identified, we will need a week to make the corrections and the final voters roll will be produced.





Justice Chigumba said the final voters roll will then be produced when the corrections have been made, following which President Mnangagwa will proclaim the election dates. When the corrections have been made, we will then send the final voters roll for gazetting through the Ministry of Justice,

Legal and Parliamentary Affairs and thereafter the President will then proclaim the dates for the elections, she said.





Justice Chigumba said they were waiting for the delivery of both the hardware and software of the automated fingerprint identification system that would be used to weed out double or multiple registrants.





We are waiting for the automated fingerprint identification system and we have already paid the supplier 60 percent of the money required and have signed the contract, she said.

Justice Chigumba said they were working on voter education material, among several initiatives to urge people to take part in the elections.

At the moment, we are working on voter education material, including looking at whether or not we can have a bulk short message service to registered voters to encourage them to inspect the voters roll and other elections material, she said.





Justice Chigumba expressed confidence that Zec would produce a credible voters roll. Herald
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France's promise to back Syrian forces led by a Kurdish militia amounts to support for and legitimisation of terrorist groups, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag said on Friday.

French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday assured the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), dominated by the Kurdish YPG, of Paris' support to stabilise northeastern Syria against Islamic State

"Those who enter into cooperation and solidarity with terror groups against Turkey...will, like the terrorists, become a target of Turkey," Bozdag wrote on Twitter. "We hope France does not take such an irrational step."

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(Newser)  Locked away in France's Bastille prison in 1785, the Marquis de Sade wrote a tale so dark and twisted it helps explain why the term "sadism" is derived from his name. The 120 Days of Sodom, which details rape and torture, was thought lost when the French Revolution erupted in 1789. The manuscript survived, however, and as Joel Warner writes at Esquire, it has re-emerged again at the center of what is alleged to be the largest Ponzi scheme in French history. It revolves around Gerard Lheritier of investment company Aristophil, who began buying up rare manuscripts and letters and offering investors a chance to own shares of them. These investors would be able to sell them back after five years, and independent brokers promised big returns. Sales boomed, and after Lheritier announced he'd acquired The 120 Days of Sodom for $10 million in 2014, it was sold to 420 investors for $15 million.

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A year later, Lheritier could only watch as his company was dismantled and his fortune seized by investigators over accusations that he deceived 18,000 clients out of $1 billion. Authorities said Aristophil had refused to repurchase clients' shares. Lheritier's lawyer says future deals were never guaranteed and it was brokers who went back on promises of hefty returns. But "maybe if I hadn't touched the [Sade] manuscript, Aristophil would still be here," Lheritier tells Warner from a villa in Nice, where he's awaiting a criminal trial. If convicted of charges including fraud, money laundering, deceptive marketing practices, and breach of trust, the villa could be Lheritier's last home before he finds himself behind bars, just like Sade. Click for the full story, which suggests Sade's work will end up in France's National Library. (Read more Longform stories.)
(Newser)  A judge on Wednesday rejected Saudi Arabia's motion to end a New York lawsuit seeking to hold it responsible in the Sept. 11 attacks, the AP reports. In dismissing the motion, US District Judge George Daniels said the plaintiffs' allegations met the requirements for the court to assume jurisdiction under the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act. Congress passed the act in 2016 over then-President Obama's veto, allowing the claims to go forward against Saudi Arabia after they were rejected once in the courts. "This is really a historic day for the families," said Sean Carter, attorney for the plaintiffs. "The families have been trying for many years to have an opportunity for the Saudi government to answer on the merits." A message seeking comment from lawyers representing the Saudi government was not immediately returned.

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In Wednesday's ruling, he also dismissed claims against two Saudi banks and a construction company with ties to Osama bin Laden, saying he lacked jurisdiction. Hundreds of victims' relatives and injured survivors, along with injured corporations, sued the Saudi government in 2003, saying its employees knowingly assisted hijackers who carried out the attacks and fueled al-Qaeda's development into a terrorist organization by funding charities that supported the group. Fifteen of the 19 attackers were Saudis. Per Reuters, Daniels said plaintiffs could attempt to show that Saudi Arabia was responsible for the alleged actions of two Saudis living in the US who allegedly helped some of the hijackers transition to life in the US and get ready for the attacks.The Saudi government has long denied any involvement in the attacks.

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(Newser)  Serial subject Adnan Syed moved a step closer to a new trial Thursday when Maryland's Court of Special Appeals upheld a 2016 decision to overturn his murder conviction from 2000 and grant him a retrial. Prosecutors, who objected when a lower court vacated the conviction, haven't said whether they'll appeal the decision from the state's second-highest court to its highest court, the Court of Appeals, reports the AP. The case of Syed, who was 17 years old when he was convicted of killing ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee, came to national attention with the 2014 Serial podcast, which cast doubt on the conviction.

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The appeals court panel decided 2-1 that Syed's lawyer in 2000 failed him by neglecting to investigate an alibi witness who said she saw him in a library around the time Lee was murdered. Syed's attorney, C. Justin Brown, tells the Baltimore Sun that the court's decision is "incredible." "It's been a really long wait, and that's been hard and it's been stressful, obviously not just for us but for Adnan, who's now been in prison for 19 years, going on 20 years," he says. "I firmly believe that he is innocent, and our goal is to get him out of prison." Syed has been in custody since his February 1999 arrest. A judge denied a request to release him on bail after the conviction was first overturned, and Brown says he plans to talk to Syed about filing a fresh request. (Read more Adnan Syed stories.)
(Newser)  All her family knew was that 15-year-old Amber Austin had disappeared from her grandmother's house in northwest Georgia. Family friend Dakota Moss had a bit more information, and what he did with it has earned him the title of hero. After seeing Facebook posts from family members asking about the teen, who was reported missing Sunday, Moss turned to Snapchat and on Wednesday found a photo of Amber and a male, later identified by police as 34-year-old Dayton Koop of Dalton, per 11Alive. Moss, 27, then set a trap. In a Facebook message to Koop, Moss offered the pair a place to hide out, Murray County Sheriff Eric White tells ABC News. (11Alive reports Moss pretended to be a woman to lure Koop.) Koop took the bait, arriving at Moss' place with Amber in tow, White says.

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Sending his roommate out to meet the suspect, Moss then called 911. Responding sheriff's deputies found Amber hiding in Koop's vehicle, covered in clothes, White says. Though the sheriff says Amber wasn't being held against her will, Moss says "she seemed real scared" and "had tears in her eyes." He adds he only did what any father would do. "I prayed so hard that God would help me find this girl, and it all worked out for the best." Koopwho was accused of raping a woman in her home in 2011, but never charged, per Fox Newsnow faces charges of possession of methamphetamine, contributing to the unruliness of a minor, interference of child custody, and obstruction, and is held on a $15,000 bond, according to White. Amber was turned over to authorities, per ABC. (Read more missing person stories.)
(Newser)  Authorities raided a Nashville-area PetSmart on Thursday, seizing hamsters, mice, and a guinea pig, WSMV reports. According to the Tennessean, PETA says it received photos and videos from a PetSmart employee showing store managers "repeatedly refusing to provide sick, injured, and dying animals with veterinary care in order to keep costs down so that they would receive bonuses." PETA says the mistreated animals "were being left to endure slow, miserable deaths" and included a guinea pig with an abscessed knee joint that spread infection to its heart and brain; another guinea pig with an abscessed wound on its back, dehydration, and gastrointestinal stasis; and a mouse whose inflamed eye and respiratory infection went untreated for a month prior to its death. PETA passed the footage along to Metro Animal Care and Control.

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Metro Animal Care and Control says the photos and videos showed "what appeared to be inadequate care for injured animals," WKRN reports. Police and the health department raided the PetSmart and seized six animals, giving them to a local vet for care. "We confiscated any injured or sick animals and have requested veterinary records as well as their policies on animal care," a health department spokesperson tells the Tennessean. No arrests have been made, but charges are possible. PetSmart says it's investigating the allegations and the video itself, as it claims some of the footage "is several years old." It defended its animal-care practices, saying, "There is no adverse effect on a store team that takes every step possible to care for pets." (Read more PetSmart stories.)
(Newser)  Ren & Stimpy creator Jon Kricfalusi is seen as something of an elder statesman of animationbut to two former employees, he seems more like a dirty old man. Robyn Byrd and Katie Rice say they were in their early teens and Kricfalusi was nearly 40 when he contacted and groomed them, sending them art supplies and promising to get their careers in animation started at his Spumco studio, BuzzFeed reports. Byrd ended up leaving her home in Tucson to live with Kricfalusi as his girlfriend and intern in Los Angeles in 1997, when she was 16. Their relationship was an open secret, former colleagues say, despite the fact that California's age of consent is 18. She says he told her the 25-year age difference was "romantic." Byrd was with Kricfalusi off and on for the next five years, but she says she regrets getting "swept up" in the relationship.

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He "ruined a good bit of my childhood and my early adulthood, gave me PTSD, and forced me to change careers," Byrd says (she no longer works in animation). Her former colleague, artist Katie Rice, says she began communicating with Kricfalusi when she was 14. She says his creepy behavior when she was a minor included masturbating over the phone. Rice says that while they never had a physical relationship, he persistently sexually harassed her when she started working for Spumco at age 18. She says she left after he joked about raping her and alleges she found child porn on his computer. A lawyer for Kricfalusi, who is now 62, says the animator did have a 16-year-old girlfriend when he was 41, though he was struggling with alcoholism at the time and was diagnosed with mental illness in 1998, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. (Read more sexual misconduct stories.)
(Newser)  China's defunct and reportedly out-of-control Tiangong 1 space station is expected to re-enter Earth's atmosphere sometime this weekend. It poses only a slight risk to people and property on the ground, since most of the bus-size, 8.5-ton vehicle is expected to burn up on re-entry, although space agencies don't know exactly when or where that will happen. The European Space Agency predicts the station will re-enter the atmosphere between Saturday morning and Sunday afternoonan estimate it calls "highly variable," likely because the ever-changing shape of the upper atmosphere affects the speed of objects falling into it. The Chinese space agency's latest estimate puts re-entry between Saturday and Wednesday.

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Western space experts say they believe China has lost control of the station. China's chief space laboratory designer Zhu Zongpeng has denied Tiangong was out of control, but hasn't provided specifics on what, if anything, China is doing to guide the craft's re-entry, the AP reports. Based on Tiangong 1's orbit, it will come to Earth somewhere between latitudes of 43 degrees north and 43 degrees south, or roughly somewhere over most of the US, China, Africa, southern Europe, Australia, and South America. Out of range are Russia, Canada, and northern Europe. Based on its size, only about 10% of the spacecraft will likely survive being burned up on re-entry, mainly heavier components such as its engines. The chances of anyone on Earth being hit by debris is considered less than one in a trillion.

(Read more Tiangong-1 stories.)
(Newser)  An off-duty police officer in Kentucky was pulled over and shot dead by a suspect impersonating an officer, police say. Phillip Meacham, a 38-year-old Hopkinsville officer, was fatally shot in the small Kentucky city Thursday afternoon when his private vehicle was pulled over, ABC 11 reports. Police say the suspect, 35-year-old local man James Kenneth Decoursey, fled the scene on foot before stealing a white Chevrolet pickup truck. A manhunt was launched and Kentucky State Police troopers announced early Friday that the suspect had a "brief encounter" with police in which he "was shot and died from his injuries" about 30 miles away in Clarksville, Tenn., reports the AP.

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Hopkinsville Police Chief Clayton Sumner says the department is familiar with Decoursey, though police haven't commented on why the suspect was impersonating an officer. Meacham, the married father of two school-age children, served in the Christian County Sheriff's Office for 12 years before joining the Hopkinsville force last year, the New York Daily News reports. The Lexington Herald-Leader reports that state lawmakers held a moment of silence for Meacham Thursday night and Gov. Matt Bevin paid tribute to the fallen officer. "Tonight a police officer in Hopkinsville, KY was killed in the line of duty," the governor tweeted. "There is no greater sacrifice than that of a person willing to lay down their life for another." (Read more Kentucky stories.)
(Newser)  A Palestinian farmer was killed by an Israeli tank shell in the Gaza Strip early on Friday, hours before Palestinians were to stage mass sit-ins along the border with Israel, a health official and a witness said. Ahead of the protests, called for by Gaza's militant Hamas rulers, Israel's military said it doubled its standard troop level along the border, deploying snipers, special forces, and paramilitary border police units that specialize in riot control, the AP reports. Hamas said the activities would be peaceful and the chief Israeli military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Ronen Manelis, said Israel wants to avoid violence, though dozens of protesters clashed with troops along the border later in the day.

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However, previous protests near the border fence have turned deadly, with Israeli soldiers firing live bullets at Palestinians burning tires, throwing stones, or hurling firebombs. Manelis said the military will not allow the crowds to breach the fence or damage military infrastructure. In Friday's incident, the Israeli military said troops directed tank fire toward two suspects who approached the fence along the southern Gaza Strip and acted suspiciously. It said it is aware of reports that a Palestinian was killed. The sit-ins are seen as a new attempt by Hamas to break a crippling, decade-old Gaza border blockade by Israel and Egypt that has made it increasingly difficult for the Islamic militant group to govern.

(Read more Gaza stories.)
France does not anticipate launching any military operations in northern Syria that fall outside the international coalition's fight against Islamic State, a French presidency source said on Friday.

The official's remarks came a day after the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces said President Emmanuel Macron's pledge of support to stabilise the region against Islamic State would include more troops.

Shortly before the Elysee official spoke, Turkey's deputy prime minister said France's offer of support for the Kurdish YPG militants, who form the largest contingent within the Syrian Democratic Forces, amounted to support for terrorists.

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(Newser)  Crystal Mason cast her vote in the 2016 presidential election just like millions of other Americansbut unlike millions of other Americans, the Texas woman was a convicted felon, and on Wednesday she was sentenced to five years for that vote in Tarrant County. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports Mason, now 43, was on supervised release after three years in federal prison for tax fraud when she went to her polling place and found her name missing from voter rolls. She was given a provisional ballot, plus an affidavit to sign that noted convicted felons must have completed their full sentences, including supervised release. That affidavit should've been a "stop sign in front of her face," a prosecutor says, per the Dallas Morning News.

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But J. Warren St. John, Mason's attorney, says she was never told she couldn't vote and hadn't read the affidavit closely because an elections official was helping her. "Why would she risk going back to prison for something that is not going to change her life?" he says. Mason says she hadn't even wanted to vote, but her mom had talked her into it, per the Washington Post. Sentencing Project chief Marc Mauer tells the Star-Telegram there's a "great deal of misinformation" among states on the complex laws surrounding voting protocol for felons, and that black felons are disproportionately disenfranchised compared with others. He also says there needs to be "perspective" when courts dole out punishments in such cases. As for Mason, "I don't think I'll ever vote again," she told the Star-Telegram after being indicted last year. St. John says an appeal has been filed. (Read more voting stories.)
(Newser)  Vicky Momberg didn't just say the slur one time to black police officers. She said it nearly 50 times, and that rant has now earned her a three-year prison sentence, with one year suspended. The BBC calls the South African ruling a "landmark" one, as it's the first time there a white person has been sentenced to prison for racism. Her conviction and sentencing arose out of an incident that happened in Johannesburg in February 2016, when Momberg made an emergency call to say she'd been robbed. When black cops showed up to help her, she didn't like that, and hurled the word "kaffir"an offensive word often used to describe blacks during the era of apartheidat them a total of 48 times in what the BBC deems a "rage-filled, vitriolic assault." Someone caught her diatribe on tape, and it soon went viral.

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"I do not want a black person to assist me," she can be heard saying in the video (edited version here), per BuzzFeed, before threatening to run the cops over and shoot "everybody." Momberg was convicted in November of crimen injuria, the use of racial or other emotionally damaging insults that "unlawfully, intentionally, and seriously [impair] the dignity of another." Momberg's lawyers argued she'd gone through an "emotional storm" after being robbed, per the BBC, and that she should be sent to rehab, not a jail cell. Many online celebrated Momberg's sentence, though some agreed she needs help. One commenter on Twitter called her a "hateful racist" but noted that "paying damages to the cop she insulted & community service in a black community" would have served as a more "restorative justice" than prison time. Momberg's attorney says she'll appeal the conviction and sentence. (Read more South Africa stories.)
(Newser)  Wow, rough few months for Grace Mugabe. One day she's first lady of Zimbabwe, the next she's trying and failing to kick 400 illegal gold miners off her farm. The BBC reports Mugabewhose husband was ousted from power in Novemberwas "shocked to find approximately 400 men illegally panning for gold" while she toured her farm Thursday. Mugabe says she confronted the minerswho were digging shafts, tearing out lemon trees, and loading gold ore into trucksbut they "started to shout obscenities at me and continued with their unlawful activities." According to AFP, the miners were reportedly waving shovels and machetes at Mugabe.

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Mugabe had forced villagers from their homes in the area in 2015, and one of the illegal miners is said to have yelled at her, "You no longer have any power to remove us." Mugabe says the miners' actions are "politically motivated," NewsDay reports. The miners allegedly claimed to be working for a Chinese outfit but wouldn't name it. Mugabe reported the illegal gold miners to police, but police weren't immediately able to verify her claims. (Read more Grace Mugabe stories.)
(Newser)  It shouldn't be surprising that a survivor of a school shooting might want to demonstrate against gun violence in schoolsbut maybe a little bit surprising that his school would punish him for it. That's the plight of Cooper Caffrey, a sophomore at Madison High School in Ohio, where he took part in a student walkout that transpired at schools across the nation on March 14. The Cincinnati Enquirer reports that 16-year-old Caffrey, who was shot in the stomach in 2016 while eating chicken nuggets in the school cafeteria, received detention, along with 42 other students, for the protest earlier this month. Caffrey was one of two boys shot by fellow student James "Austin" Hancock, who'd stolen his great-grandmother's gun; two others were hurt after being struck by shrapnel or while running, per the AP.

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Cooper originally had no intention of protesting on March 14, especially since the student council had agreed with the administration it wouldn't seem "unified" to protest in favor of gun control (the area is a rural GOP stronghold). But then the principal made an announcement that anyone who disrupted the day would get punished, and Cooper got angry at being told how he could react, as he texted his dadso he and a few dozen others walked out. One person who supports Cooper's detention: his dad, Marty, who says he gets that the school wants to keep students safe. "The whole purpose of a walkout is to protest against an establishment," he wrote in a Facebook post. "I do not expect the establishment to support the walkout." Read the 2017 Enquirer story on how Cooper dug deep after he was shot and forgave the boy who shot him. (Read more school shootings stories.)
(Newser)  No longer able to skirt the issue, one of Asia's largest airlines will allow its female flight attendants to wear pants, the Guardian reports. According to the BBC, female flight attendants for Hong Kong-based Cathay Pacific had been required to wear short skirts since the airline's founding in 1946. Flight attendant unions requested changes to the uniform in 2014, arguing that the short skirts could lead to sexual harassment, and reiterated their request this month. Theres sexual harassment, not only in the workplace but even in public transport, people trying to take pictures under their skirts, the Guardian quotes the vice-chair of the Hong Kong Dragon Airlines Flight Attendants Association as saying.

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Negotiations between the unions and Cathay Pacific ended Thursday. The uniform rule changes will apply to flight attendants and other uniformed staff for Cathay Pacific and Cathay Dragon. The stereotype of the flight attendant is very old-style already: looking pretty, full make-up, and wearing a skirt," the chairwoman of the Cathay Pacific Flight Attendants Union tells the South China Morning Post. "It is a good time to have a revamp of our image." But the unions say the changes won't actually go into effect until Cathay next updates its uniforms, which could take three years. "Just as we recognize it is important to provide our customers with more choice, the same is also true for our colleagues," a Cathay spokesperson says. (Read more flight attendants stories.)
(Newser)  A roadside bomb in northern Syria killed two coalition personnel, including an American, and wounded five others in a rare attack since the US-led coalition sent troops into the war-torn country, a US defense official said Friday. The military didn't say where the attack took place, but it came hours after a Syrian official said a roadside bomb exploded in the tense, mixed Arab-Kurdish town of Manbij not far from the border with Turkey, per the AP. A US military statement said the attack happened Thursday night and that the wounded were being evacuated. A DOD official in DC said one of the two killed was an American service member and the other was of another nationality that the official wouldn't specify. No other information on the American was immediately available.

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Earlier Friday, US military rep Col. Ryan Dillon couldn't yet say who was behind the attack. "We have our initial assessment and thoughts ... but we won't provide [them] until [an] investigation is complete," he said. Dillon added the coalition has had other fatalities in Syria over the past three years, though "perhaps by different means." The head of the Manbij Military Council, an Arab-Kurdish group backed by the US, said the bomb went off around midnight hundreds of yards from a security headquarters that houses the council. The town has seen small explosions, protests, and an assassination attempt on a council member in recent weeks. Local officials blame Turkey and other adversaries for trying to sow chaos in the town that was controlled by ISIS militants until the summer of 2016.

(Read more Syria stories.)
(Newser)  A New York judge accused of breaking into a neighbor's home to steal her worn underpants pleaded not guilty Friday to a felony burglary charge, the AP reports. Robert Cicale, a Suffolk County district court judge, admitted he had broken into the woman's Long Island home several times and stolen underwear out of her clothing hamper, District Attorney Timothy Sini said. The 23-year-old woman once worked as an intern for Cicale when he was a town attorney. She was alone in the East Islip home Thursday when she heard a noise and saw a man running off, police said. The woman called her mother, who then called 911. When officers arrived, they found Cicale on the street carrying several pair of the woman's soiled undergarments, authorities said.

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Cicale told investigators that on Thursday he "went into the house to take the panties again," according to court documents. It was unclear why Cicale at the time would have been carrying underwear he had taken on a previous occasion. The judge told the officers that he had taken the underwear during another break-in, Sini said. "This is very disturbing," Sini said. "In his confession, he noted he had urges to do this, to engage in this behavior." Investigators are still investigating to try to figure out how many times Cicale broke into the woman's home, the district attorney said. "He admitted he had gone into the home unlawfully on a few other occasions," Sini said. Cicale was "temporarily relieved of his judicial duties" and the matter was referred to the state's Court of Appeals to determine whether to suspend the jurist, a court system spokesperson said.

(Read more underwear stories.)
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Turkey on Friday accused Israel of using "disproportionate force" against the Palestinians as clashes in Gaza near the Israeli border left at least eight people dead and dozens wounded.

"We strongly condemn Israel's use of disproportionate force against Palestinians during the peaceful protests today (Friday) in Gaza," the foreign ministry said in a statement.

Tens of thousands of people took part in protests along the border with Israel that Gaza's Islamist rulers Hamas had said would be peaceful.

The Palestinian Red Crescent reported some 355 people wounded from live fire, while the health ministry in the Gaza Strip said seven people were killed in one of the most violent clashes in recent years, in addition to an eighth man left dead from tank fire.

Israel's military said protesters were hurling stones and firebombs at soldiers. There were no reports of Israelis injured or killed.

The Turkish foreign ministry expressed "concerns" over the casualties.

"It is necessary that Israel rapidly ends use of force that would further raise the tensions in the region," it said.

"We are inviting the international community to fulfil its responsibility to convince Israel to give up on its hostile attitude."

Turkey and Israel reached a deal in 2016 to end a six-year diplomatic crisis that erupted when Israeli commandos killed 10 Turkish activists travelling on an aid flotilla to break the siege of Gaza.

*This story was edited by Ahram Online.

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Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities crews open the Taylor Highway from the Alaska Highway to the city of Eagle. The road opened on Friday, March 30. Photo courtesy Alaska DOT&PF
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New Delhi:

An RTI query on Friday has revealed that the controversial state funeral of legendary Bollywood actress Sridevi was under the instructions of Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis.

RTI activist Anil Galgali asked the General Administration Departments Protocol Department on who had the power to authorise the state funeral for Sridevi and other previous receivers of it.

In the reply, the department stated that the full powers to grant a funeral with state honours was with Chief Minister.

ALSO READ: How to keep human race alive: A space colony is the answer, says Chiaki Mukai

"With regards to the full state honours for the late Amma Yangar Ayyappan, known as the famed actress Sridevi, verbal ordered were received from the CMO on February 25, 2018 and conveyed to the Mumbai Suburban District Collector and Mumbai Police Commissioner the following day to do the needful," Galgali said, quoting the RTI reply.

The activist said he filed the RTI query to clear the confusion on who has the authorisation to grant a state funeral.

"Among the speculation was that state funeral can be accorded to a person who is conferred with a National award or a Padma honour, but now a new information has come to light that it actually falls within the CM's discretion," Galgali said.

Sridevi, who died due to accidental drowning on February 24 was honoured with state funeral, leading to country-wide debates.

40 other eminent personalities besides Sridevi were given a full state funeral between June 22, 2012 to March 26, 2018 , as per RTI reply.

For all the Latest Entertainment News, Bollywood News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
A member of the British armed forces, embedded with the United States military, has been killed by an improvised explosive device in Syria, the Ministry of Defence said Friday.

The unnamed individual, reported to be a soldier, was taking part in an operation against the Islamic State jihadist group when the blast occurred on Thursday, a spokesman said.



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New Delhi:

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Babul Supriyo, who was booked for assaulting an IPS officer in West Bengals Asansol on Thursday, has filed a counter-FIR against the police namely Rupesh Kumar.

Earlier in the day, the BJP MP got into a scuffle after police stopped him from entering his constituency, citing security reasons. Section 144 of the CrPC was imposed in the Asansol-Raniganj area and Supriyo allegedly attacked Kumar to enter the Railpar area in Paschim Burdwan district. He was seen engaged in a verbal spat with police personnel, who surrounded his vehicle.

The Asansol-Raniganj area has been on the boil since Sunday, over clashes following a Ram Navami rally.

"Supriyo claimed that two FIRs were lodged against him after which he also filed a complaint against the police. However, there was no confirmation from the police whether such FIRs were lodged or not," according to PTI.

Talking about the latest developments Supriyo said, "As a public representative, I have every right to visit my constituency, especially when people are in trouble. It is my duty. But the police is saying I won't be allowed to go as Section 144 is imposed in the area. Being a minister, I cannot violate rules".

State BJP Mahila Morcha president Locket Chatterjee has also been barred from visiting the violence affected areas on Friday. In protest, the actor turned politician staged a sit-in.

Later in the day, Home Minister Rajnath Singh called Supriyo to enquire about the cuurent situation prevailing in the place. The BJP leader has informed Singh and Prime Minister Narendra Modi about the incident.

Also Read | Babul Supriyo calls for temporary ban on Pakistani artistes

Though there have been no fresh news of violence, Section 144 is till imposed in Asansol. The internet services were also suspended following the clashes between two groups on Sunday and Monday over a Ram Navami rally at Raniganj.

Clashes during #RamNavami: Section 144 still imposed, internet services continue to be suspended in #Asansol. #WestBengal  ANI (@ANI) March 30, 2018

State Parliamentary Affairs Minister Partha Chatterjee alleged that the BJP was trying to destroy communal peace and harmony in the state.

One person was killed and two police officers were injured in the violence that erupted on Sunday and Monday.

Senior IPS officers Jawed Shamim, Siddhinath Gupta and Vineet Goyal have been deputed on special duty to bring the situation under control.

Governor K N Tripathi has also been advised not to visit Durgapur to see a police officer injured in the violence in Raniganj in view of deployment of police in the area, an official release said on Thursday.

Also Read | Babul Supriyo: 'Hurl eggs at me, will make omelette and eat as I am a non-vegetarian'

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday held a high-level meeting at the secretariat after her return from Delhi. Chief secretary, home secretary, DGP and ADGP (law and order) were present at the meeting.

However, she did not comment on the situation at Asansol-Raniganj.

(With PTI inputs)

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Asansol:

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday formed a four-member panel of party leaders to take stock of the situation in violence-hit Asansol in West Bengals Burdwan district.

The four-member panel formed by BJP chief Amit Shah will be led by the saffron partys vice-president Om Mathur.

According to the announcement made by the party, Shahnawaz Hussain, Roopa Ganguly and BD Ram are part of the panel.

The four-member team after visiting the area will submit a report to Shah, the party said in a statement.

A number of incidents of violence were reported from Asansol. According to reports, police personnel were also injured in the incident.

Also Read | SC/ST Atrocities Act: Modi government relents, to file review petition against SC ruling

The BJP has slammed West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.

She is busy politicking in Delhi when there is violence in her state, said BJP leader Mukul Roy.

Early in the day, BJP leader Babul Supriyo, who was booked for assaulting an IPS officer in West Bengals Asansol on Thursday, filed a counter-FIR against the police namely Rupesh Kumar.

The BJP MP reportedly got into a scuffle after police stopped him from entering his constituency, citing security reasons. Section 144 of the CrPC was imposed in the Asansol-Raniganj area and Supriyo allegedly attacked Kumar to enter the Railpar area in Paschim Burdwan district. He was seen engaged in a verbal spat with police personnel, who surrounded his vehicle.

The Asansol-Raniganj area has been on the boil since Sunday over clashes following a Ram Navami procession.





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Bengaluru:

Ahead of the Assembly polls in Karnataka, BJP chief Amit Shah on Friday visited old Mysuru region, where the party had not won a single seat in the previous election.

"BJP President Amit Shah visited Suttur Math in Mysore & met Math head Shivarathri Deshikendra Mahaswamiji; Ananth Kumar & BS Yeddyurappa also present," the news agency ANI reported.

Later in the day, the party chief met erstwhile royal family of Mysuru, which triggered speculations about their supporting or joining the BJP.

However, scion of royal family Yaduveer Krishnadatta Chamaraja Wadiyar has ruled out political entry and said he got to know about Shah's meeting with the family through the media.

"I have got this information only through the press. I can't say anything about it," he told reporters in Mysuru, when asked about the meeting with Shah.

"I have told several times that I'm not interested in politics. There is no chance at all about me joining any party. I'm not interested in politics. Through social work we will continue our relationship with the public," he said.

Ananth Kumar and BS Yeddyurappa were also present during Shah's vsiit to the Mysuru palace.

BJP President Amit Shah met erstwhile royals of Mysuru at the Mysuru Palace. Ananth Kumar & BS Yeddyurappa were also present. #Karnataka pic.twitter.com/inM10Lbx25  ANI (@ANI) March 30, 2018

"Condemn the killing of BJP & RSS workers under Congress rule. More than 24 workers have died & the police hasn't taken any action against the killers, they are roaming around free. Siddaramaiah govt's end is nearing & once BJP is in power we will ensure justice said the BJP cheif during his visit to Mysuru.

Also Read | Amit Shah goofs up in Karnataka, calls BJP's Yeddyurappa 'most corrupt CM'

"In a slip of tongue, I said that Yeddyurappa govt is corrupt instead of Siddaramaiah's, & the entire Congress party started to rejoice. I want to tell Rahul Gandhi, that I might have made a mistake but the people of Karnataka will not," Shah stated while addressing a gathering in Mysuru.

Later in the day Shah interacted with Dalit leaders at Rajendra Kalamandira in Mysuru after slogans were raised against Union Minister Ananth Kumar Hegde over his remarks on the constitution.

#WATCH Disturbance at BJP President Amit Shah's interaction with Dalit leaders at Rajendra Kalamandira in Mysuru after slogans were raised against Union Minister Ananth Kumar Hegde over his remarks on the constitution. #Karnataka pic.twitter.com/33BQsMz8z1  ANI (@ANI) March 30, 2018

As part of his Karunada Jagruti Yatre, Shah will also tour Chamarajanagara, Mandya and Ramanagara districts on March 30 and 31.

Out of the total 26 seats in the four districts, considered as the Vokkaliga heartland, BJP did not win even a single seat during the 2013 Assembly elections.

Moreover, the region is the home turf of Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, who hails from Mysuru.

Former Chief Minister and state JD(S) chief H D Kumaraswamy and senior minister D K Shivakumar enjoy considerable influence in the region.

Continuing his two-day tour, Shah will also visit the famous Nanjanagudu Srikanteshwara and the Melukote Cheluvanarayanaswamy temples.

Also Read | Amit Shah writes to Chandrababu Naidu, says TDP left NDA for 'political consideration'

Shah's schedule also includes meeting with Dalit leaders and lunch with them. He will also interact with organic farmers and women, take part in ST convention, visit Channapatna Craft Park and interact with silk growers and silk industry.

BJP President Amit Shah visited Suttur Math in Mysore & met Math head Shivarathri Deshikendra Mahaswamiji; Ananth Kumar & BS Yeddyurappa also present. #Karnataka pic.twitter.com/crj3RZ6VGj  ANI (@ANI) March 30, 2018

Recently, Congress President Rahul Gandhi too toured the region for two days.

Interestingly, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah too is camping in Mysuru from Froday till April 2 and will take part in the campaign activities.

Siddaramaiah has already announced his intentions to? contest from Chamundeshwari constituency in Mysuru district.

Also Read | Lok Sabha polls 2019: BJP will win over 21 seats in Northeast, says Amit Shah

This is the fourth leg of Shah's tour in the state. He has already covered parts of coastal and Malnad, north, and central regions of the state.

The Election Commission had announced a single-phase election on May 12 for the 224-member Karnataka Legislative Assembly.

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New Delhi:

The re-examination for the Class-XII economics paper will be held on April 25 and that of Class-X mathematics paper is likely to be held in July, the Union government announced on Friday.

"Re-examination of Class 12th exam will be held on April 25," Secretary Education Anil Swarup said.

The secretary education said that for Class-X they have found in the preliminary probe that the leaks were restricted in Delhi and Haryana.

"If the re-examination for class 10 will happen, then the exam will be held only in the two states and it will be conducted in July," Swarup added.

The secretary education further added that the re-examination of class 10th mathematics paper will be taken within 15 days.

"We will arrest the persons behind the leak soon," Swarup added.

The Mathematics and Economics exams were held on March 28 and March 26 respectively. The CBSE chairperson Anita Karwal had received an email alerting her about the Class 10 Mathematics paper leak a day before the exam.

The board on Wednesday had announced to conduct a re-examination for class 10 mathematics and class 12 economics paper. Soon after the announcement CBSE students in large numbers took to the streets to protest the re-scheduling across the country .

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New Delhi:

Under pressure after several rounds of protests by Dalit groups and the Opposition Congress, Narendra Modi-led NDA government on Friday relented and decided to file a review petition against the Supreme Court ruling on Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989.

Announcing the central governments decision, Union Minister Thawarchand Gehlot appealed to all the protesting people and groups to end their agitation.

The government of India has decided to file a review petition against the Supreme Court ruling on Atrocities Act. I request all the protesting people and groups to call off their agitation, Gehlot tweeted.

The apex court had laid down new guidelines that protect public servants from immediate arrest after a complaint is filed against them under the SC/ST Atrocities Act.

On March 23, Congress president Rahul Gandhi, along with other party MPs had gathered outside the Gandhi Statue in Parliament to protest against the Centre for not filing a review petition against the top court ruling.

Also Read | SC ruling on SC/ST act: Congress MPs protest, demand Centre to file review petition

Earlier on March 21, the Congress president had said that the "complicit" Modi government was working in favour of anti-Dalit BJP and RSS and failed to defend the act in the Supreme Court.

The SC/ST Act is the most important instrument to prevent atrocities on Dalits/Adivasis. A complicit Modi Govt failed to defend it in the Supreme Court. The PM must not abdicate his duty in favour of the anti-Dalit mindset of the BJP/RSS, Rahul had said.

On Wednesday, a delegation of NDA's SC and ST MPs, led by LJP chief Ram Vilas Paswan and Gehlot, had met Prime Minister Narendra Modi to discuss the apex court judgement diluting provisions of the atrocities act.

The National Commission for Scheduled Tribes (NCST) and the National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC) have also conveyed their views and demanded a review of the verdict, saying the original Act, as it existed before the SC verdict, should be restored.

(With inputs from agencies)

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New Delhi:

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday addressed the Grand Finale of Smart India Hackathon via video conference and stressed on interlinking of rivers.

Modi batted for inter-linking of rivers in the country and insisted that it can help to resolve the issue of imbalance between those with excess water and those facing scarcity of it.

While replying to a question by a student during the Smart India Hackathon, PM Modi said India has only four per cent of water even after having 17 per cent of the world population.

"Water is limited for our population...There are areas which face floods. Then there are rivers which are dry. If there is inter-linking, the problem can be solved," he said, adding river inter-linking is the vision of the government and will come true one day.

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Addressing over one lakh participants, the Saffron party leader said nobody was blessed with all the knowledge of the world.

"This applies to governments too. The biggest mistake governments make is to think they alone can bring about change. What brings about change is a participatory governance," he said.

He emphasised on tackling every problem and stated that innovation is not just a word.

"Innovation is a continuous process. Questioning is an important aspect of innovation," he said.

The prime minister said IPPP - innovate, patent, produce, and prosper - will take innovation forward in coming days.

"We should innovate more, patent them, make their production easier and take it to the people. This is what brings prosperity," he said.

The hackathon was organised to crowd-source solutions to governance-related problems.

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New Delhi:

An unprecedented protest by not only students and parents, but also different organisations continued on Friday at the CBSE office as anger mounts over the examination paper leak issue. They slammed the board's "utter negligence" in conducting the examinations fairly and demanded justice.

From the Delhi unit of All India Democratic Students' Organisation to National Students' Union of India (NSUI), several student unions across the national capital were raising their voice against CBSE's decision to conduct the Class 10 Mathematics and Class 12 Economics examination again.

Raising slogans against the board, scores of agitating students also staged protests in Ludhiana, Kanpur and other parts of the country.

They demanded justice and said they were suffering because of CBSE's mistake.

"CBSE is at fault, they were not able to keep the paper safe. Why do we have to suffer due to this?" a student said.

The All India Democratic Students' Organisation demanded a high-level probe into the CBSE question paper leak case, and said it showed the board's "utter negligence" in conducting examinations fairly.

Raising slogans of 'we want justice', one of the agitated students near Jantar Mantar branded the re-examination decision as 'hanging the students without getting hurt' and said, "If they wanted to hang someone, hang the CBSE bosses, arrest the CBSE chairman, the leak was done by the CBSE, not the students, then why punish".

Also Read | Exam Paper Leak: 10 more people questioned, police 'interacts' with CBSE controller of exams

"The CBSE should re-schedule all exams because multiple papers have been leaked, or just apprehend the ones involved and not hold any re-examinations at all, and what guarantee is there that the re-examination papers won't be leaked. No CBSE official has been arrested yet, they might just leak it again," ANI quoted another CBSE board examinee.

In the wake of these massive street protests in several parts of Delhi, Section 144 has been imposed near Union Minister Prakash Javadekar's residence at Kushak Road.

A large number of Security Forces personnel have also been deployed outside the CBSE's Panchkula office to control the situation.

Delhi: Section 144 imposed near Prakash Javadekar's residence on Kushak Road #CBSEPaperLeak pic.twitter.com/4m0HynasjT  ANI (@ANI) March 30, 2018

Alleging that the 'exam mafia' was being encouraged under the Narendra Modi Government, Congress president Rahul Gandhi said that exam leaks destroyed the hopes and future of millions of students and warned that "this is just a beginning".

The exam leaks destroy the hopes and futures of millions of students.



The Congress always protected our institutions. This is what happens when institutions are destroyed by the RSS/BJP.



Believe me when I say, this is only the beginning.  Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) March 29, 2018

Meanwhile, on Friday, the Crime Branch of Delhi police had sought reply from Google about the email that was sent to CBSE chairperson. A mail was sent to the chairperson from a Gmail ID with images of handwritten questions papers.

#CBSEPaperLeak: Crime Branch has sought reply from Google about the email that was sent to CBSE chairperson. A mail was sent to the chairperson from a Gmail ID with images of handwritten questions papers  ANI (@ANI) March 30, 2018

The Crime Branch had identified over 10 WhatsApp groups, each having 50-60 members, being connected to the paper leak issue.

#CBSEPaperLeak: Delhi Police Crime Branch identifies over 10 WhatsApp groups, each having 50-60 members. Investigation & questioning underway  ANI (@ANI) March 30, 2018

Also Read | Kejriwal feels sad for students, demands strict action in CBSE paper leak case

Police detained six students for questioning in Jharkhand's Chatra's Sadar Police Station area on Friday. The group of students was suspended for being a part of the CBSE paper leak scandle.

#Jharkhand: 6 students detained by Police for questioning in Chatra's Sadar Police Station area, on suspicion of being a part of #CBSEPaperLeak.  ANI (@ANI) March 30, 2018

Talking about the alleged paper leak Congress's Mallikarjun Kharge said, "This shows the HRD ministry's failure. The future of 28 lakh students is at stake. We will raise this issue in the parliament."

This shows the HRD ministry's failure. The future of 28 lakh students is at stake. We will raise this issue in the parliament: Mallikarjun Kharge, Congress on #CBSEPaperLeaked pic.twitter.com/7VkO1dwtFI  ANI (@ANI) March 30, 2018

"It's the failure of Govt, without accepting it, why do they want students to re-appear for exam? I request to the parents throughout the country, don't let your child sit for re-examination in any condition," said MNS chief Raj Thackeray.

It's the failure of Govt, without accepting it, why do they want students to re-appear for exam? I request to the parents throughout the country, don't let your child sit for re-examination in any condition: Raj Thackeray #CBSEPaperLeak pic.twitter.com/2FGlVxXfDF  ANI (@ANI) March 30, 2018

Connecting the CBSE Paper Leak issue to the recent SSC scam, Congress's Kapil Sibal said, "If the government does not take accountability for its wrongdoings, then who will?"

#CBSEPaperLeak is not the only paper leak. The #SSCscam was another major concern. If the government does not take accountability for its wrongdoings, then who will?: Kapil Sibal, Congress pic.twitter.com/AN7tJ6yTfU  ANI (@ANI) March 30, 2018

However, the exams would be re-conducted just after all the Class-X and Class-XII examinations get over on April 4 and April 12 respectively. Candidates are advised to visit CBSE's official website cbse.nic.in. to know more details regarding the same.

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New Delhi:

External Affairs Minister (EAM) Sushma Swaraj on Thursday co-chaired the Ninth India-Japan Strategic Dialogue with her Japanese counterpart Taro Kono and discussed a wide-range of bilateral, regional and global issues of mutual interest.

This is Sushma's first visit to Japan in the capacity of the External Affairs Minister and Kano reviewed the entire gamut of bilateral ties during the address.

The two leaders took stock of progress since Prime Minister Abe's 'highly successful' visit to India in September.

"We are both democratic countries who respect openness, rule of law, sovereignty and territorial integrity," Sushma Swaraj said while addressing the media with Mr Kono following the talks.

"The Special Strategic and Global Partnership we share is extremely important in the context of today's world," she said.

"Both our countries seek a peaceful, stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific region," Swaraj said.

Strengthening our Special Strategic and Global Partnership with Japan! EAM @SushmaSwaraj departs on a 3-day visit to Japan for the 9th India-Japan Foreign Ministers Strategic Dialogue in Tokyo. #KonnichiwaNamaste pic.twitter.com/IInVyJVSj7  Raveesh Kumar (@MEAIndia) March 28, 2018

Asserting that India was Japan's most important partner Mr Kono said, "Our Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy and India's Act East Policy should be further merged."

Talking about their 'natural partnership' Swaraj stated, "there is vast scope to combine "our relative advantages, whether of capital, technology or human resources, and to work for mutual benefit."

"Japan's presence is visible in major infrastructure and capacity-building projects across India. Our flagship initiatives such as Smart City, Digital India, Start Up India and many others welcome Japan's entrepreneurs with new opportunities. We are happy to note that Japanese investments in India, both public and private, are on the rise," she added.

Also Read: Kapil Sibal threatens to sue Smriti Irani over land scam allegations

Swaraj said the two sides had very productive discussions on how India and Japan are working closely to build robust ties in High Speed Rail, Information and Communications Technology, Innovation, Space Science, Healthcare and Food Processing and other fields.

"We also exchanged views on some new areas of focus in our engagement, such as skills development, Japanese language training in India and the possibility of Indian professionals working in Japan under the Technical Intern Training Programme," she added.

EAM @SushmaSwaraj delivered a press statement after 9th India-Japan Foreign Ministers Strategic Dialogue. Watch the statement at https://t.co/BdUIU7eiJK pic.twitter.com/1PFU3KwMi6  Raveesh Kumar (@MEAIndia) March 29, 2018

The minister said the bilateral relations between India and Japan have expanded rapidly in recent years and it is reflected in the number of high-level visits exchanged and the several official dialogue mechanisms that are in place.

"The Special Strategic and Global Partnership between our two countries that was established during Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi's landmark visit to Japan in 2014, has been constantly strengthened through our mutual efforts. There is optimism on both sides about the potential of our future ties.

"India and Japan have shared values, with a long history of friendly exchanges. Buddhism unites us. We are both democracies. We value openness, transparency, rule of law and respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity," she said.

Also Read: EAM Sushma Swaraj re-tweets Congress poll assessing her failure as Foreign Minister

"Our Special Strategic and Global Partnership has acquired a broader significance in the current global context. Our growing convergence on economic and strategic issues is important for peace, stability and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region," Swaraj said.

She said as part of Japan's sustained participation in India's economic modernisation, both sides will exchange notes for Japanese Overseas Development Assistance for four new developmental projects in the states of Himachal Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra.

Swaraj also said that there should be a 'zero tolerance' on terrorism.

"We shared the view that terrorism in all its forms and manifestations is a global scourge that requires global action in the spirit of zero tolerance, including by rooting out terrorist safe havens, disrupting terrorist networks and financing channels and halting cross-border movement of terrorists," she said.

She also emphasised the need for concerted global action to deal with other common challenges such as climate change.

On Friday morning Swaraj has also met Japanese Prime Minister Sinzo Abe in Tokiyo.

Tokyo: External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj meets Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Tokyo. pic.twitter.com/eJdb7w8oaS  ANI (@ANI) March 30, 2018

During the meeting, the two leaders discussed ways to further enhance the bilateral ties between India and Japan. Swaraj also conveyed the greetings of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Prime Minister Abe.

On the other hand, the Japanese Prime Minister added that the traditional friendship between the two countries was characterised by heart-to-heart bonds and blessed with a huge potential for growth.

The discussions have laid a sound foundation for the visit of Prime Minister Modi to Japan for the next bilateral Annual Summit later this year, Swaraj said.

"That visit, I am confident, will give renewed thrust to our Special Strategic and Global Partnership," she asserted.

"On sidelines of the strategic dialogue between EAM @SushmaSwaraj and Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono, documents were signed/exchanged between the two sides," Ministry of External Affairs Spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said.

Earlier, Swaraj met Chairman of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party Policy Research Council & former Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida.

EAM @SushmaSwaraj met Chairman of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party Policy Research Council & former Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida. Fruitful discussion on taking relationship forward across diverse sectors. Mr. Kishida's role in strengthening our ties are invaluable. pic.twitter.com/aUCs9Ov5Un  Raveesh Kumar (@MEAIndia) March 29, 2018

"Fruitful discussion on taking relationship forward across diverse sectors. Mr. Kishida's role in strengthening our ties are invaluable," Kumar tweeted.

Also Read | Watch: Shoe hurled at Devendra Fadnavis after Anna Hazare calls off hunger strike

Swaraj also addressed a gathering of Indian diaspora at the Vivekanand Cultural Centre in Tokyo.

Addressing the Indian diaspora, EAM @SushmaSwaraj said that India's relations with Japan have strengthened under the leadership of PM @narendramodi and Japanese PM Abe pic.twitter.com/0EcJLcWWbF  Raveesh Kumar (@MEAIndia) March 29, 2018

Addressing the gathering, she lauded the contribution of the diaspora for strengthening the bond with Japan and creating a positive image about India in Japan.

According to official figures, Japanese FDI in India during 2016-17 was USD 4.7 billion, an increase of 80 per cent over the last year.

In 2016-17, India-Japan trade reached USD 13.61 billion, showing a decrease of 6.21 per cent over 2015-16, when the total bilateral trade was USD 14.51 billion.

India's export to Japan for 2016-17 was USD 3.86 billion, whereas India's import from the East Asian country for 2016-17 was USD 9.76 billion.

(With inputs from agencies)

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New Delhi:

A team of 30 researchers directed by Chiaki Mukai at the Tokyo University of Science are studying new methods to keep human race alive on possibly Moon or Mars.

Its in our nature to explore. The Earth is too small for us, dont you think? questioned a high-spirited and dynamic 66-year-old Mukai, who have spent more than 500 years in space on two separate missions.

With new operations like Elon Musks SpaceX and US President Donald Trumps pledge to scout beyond the moon and towards Mars, Human space exploration is entering a new era, said Mukai.

Multi-billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has monumental visions for space exploration, including touring people into orbit around the moon and settling in Mars. Earlier in December, US President Donald Trump directed NASA to frame a lunar base as an infant step in a mission to Mars.

Its very realistic to establish a colony on the moon by 2030, said Mukai, while stating humans need to think beyond International Space Station.

The Research Centre has developed a system to generate electricity with the help of thermoelectric sensors that could be linked to a potential colony up in space.

The colony would have comfortable room temperature but will face 130 degrees Celsius during the day and -230 at night, outside the premises.

Mukai said many of the technologies on which they are working would have applications here on Earth.

We are not only developing the technology for a moon base but as a spin-off, we will be able to help many issues that we need to solve on Earth, she said.

For an instance, she said hydroponic technology; growing food without soil, could be of extreme value in parts of African countries lacking natural resources and minerals.

Mukai is confident of seeing a fully-functioning moon colony in her lifetime, and wants to desperately go back into space, taking former US astronaut John Glenn and former colleague, who visited the orbit aged 77.

My dream is to get a job as a flight attendant on a commercial spaceflight so I can help to get people to the moon, she said.

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New Delhi:

Russia on Friday, expelled four German diplomats in retaliation for their decision to expel Russian diplomats over agent attack on an ex-spy in the United Kingdom.

Russias Foreign Ministry said on Friday that it was summoning ambassadors from Western countries who had taken unfriendly steps.

Diplomats from various countries like Germany, Italy, Finland and others have also been expelled, foreign ministries reported.

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"This decision by Moscow is not a surprise," said Heiko Maas, Minister of Foreign Affairs Germany.



Russia also summoned representatives of the French, Croatia, Belgium, the Netherlands, Czech Republic and Ukraine foreign ministries.

Earlier, the Russian Foreign Ministry had declared 58 US diplomats in Moscow and two consulate officers as persona non-grata and said the consulate should suspend work within two days.

The US diplomats should leave Russia by April 5, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

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Russia expelled 60 US diplomats on Thursday and announced it would eject scores from other countries that have joined London and Washington in censuring Moscow over the poisoning of a spy.

The US ambassador was also ordered to shut the consulate in St Petersburg, in Russia's retaliation for the biggest expulsion of diplomats since the Cold War.

The response, which precisely mirrored steps taken by Western governments against Russian diplomats, appeared to show Moscow was not seeking to escalate the standoff over the nerve agent poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury, England.

Washington, however, indicated that it is could retaliate for Russia's "regretable, unwarranted action," raising the possibility that the crisis could intensify.

"We reserve the right to respond further. We're reviewing our options," said State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert, who charged that the attack on the Skripals violated an international chemical weapons ban.

She declined to discuss what additional measures the Trump administration could take.

Britain has blamed Russia for the poisoning, and has been backed up by dozens of Western countries which have ordered Russian diplomats to leave. The United States charges that the 60 Russians that it targeted are intelligence officers operating under diplomatic cover.

"The United States, in concert with many countries, made the decision to kick out Russian spies," said Nauert. "We don't see this as a diplomatic tit-for-tat."

Moscow denies involvement in the attack on the Skripals.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, facing a stuttering economy and an unusual show of Western unity that included even states traditionally friendly towards Moscow, appeared to have stuck to the diplomatic playbook with the symmetrical response.

Ambassador Jon Hunstman was summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry, a gothic skyscraper built under Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, and told that 60 diplomats from U.S. missions had a week to leave Russia, as Washington had expelled 60 Russians.

At a meeting with Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, Huntsman was also told that the US consulate in St Petersburg would be closed -- a like-for-like retaliation for the US closure of Russia's consulate in the US city of Seattle.

"As for the other countries, everything will also be symmetrical in terms of the number of people from their diplomatic missions who will be leaving Russia, and for now that's pretty much it," said Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

That approach will mean that, among other countries affected, France, Germany and Poland would each have four of their diplomats in Moscow sent home, Ukraine would forfeit 13 diplomats, and Denmark, Albania and Spain would each have two of their embassy staff expelled.

Russia has already retaliated in kind after Britain initially expelled 23 diplomats.

Daughter Better

Skripal, 66, a double agent who was swapped in a spy exchange deal in 2010 and went to live in England, and his daughter Yulia Skripal, 33, were found unconscious on a public bench in a shopping centre in Salisbury on March 4.

Former Russian military intelligence officer Skripal remains in a critical condition but his daughter is getting better, the hospital where they are being treated said on Thursday.

British authorities say a Soviet-era nerve toxin called Novichok was used in an attempt to murder the pair.

British Prime Minister Theresa May said that Russia was culpable for the attack and urged allies to join in condemning Moscow for the first known offensive use of a chemical weapon on European soil since World War Two.

Russia says Britain has failed to produce any persuasive evidence of Russia's guilt. Officials in Moscow accused London and Washington of pressuring other nations to sign up to an international campaign of "Russophobia" which, they said, could drag the world into a new Cold War.

Announcing the expulsions of Western diplomats on Thursday, Lavrov said the Skripal poisoning was being exploited by an "Anglo-Saxon axis forcing everyone to follow an anti-Russian path."

British counter-terrorism police said they believed the military-grade nerve agent that poisoned the Skripals had been left on the front door of Sergei Skripal's home, on a quiet street in Salisbury, southern England.

"Specialists have identified the highest concentration of the nerve agent, to date, as being on the front door of the address," Scotland Yard said in a statement.

Police said they had placed a cordon around a childrens play area near the Skripals' house as a precaution.

Christine Blanshard, Medical Director for Salisbury District Hospital, where the two victims are being treated, said in a statement that Yulia Skripal's condition had improved after three week in a critical condition.

"She has responded well to treatment but continues to receive expert clinical care 24 hours a day," said Blanshard.

Short link:


10:25 p.m.

The United States says there's "no justification" for Russia's retaliatory moves to expel 60 U.S. diplomats and shutter the American Consulate in St. Petersburg.

U.S. Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman says in a statement that it shows Moscow isn't interested in dialogue with the United States about important matters. The comments come after Huntsman was summoned late Thursday by Russia's government and given a list of diplomats who must leave within 48 hours.

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert says that "Russia should not be acting like a victim." She calls Russia's actions "regrettable" and "unwarranted."

She says the U.S. reserves the right to respond to Russia's response.

Russia kicked out the diplomats after the U.S. and other nations kicked out Russian diplomats to punish Moscow for alleged involvement in an ex-spy's poisoning in the U.K.

9:45 p.m.

A top Russian lawmaker says Moscow's decision to expel 60 U.S. diplomats and close the American Consulate in St. Petersburg should make Washington examine its own mistakes.

Russia's expulsion order on Thursday was in response to the U.S. decision to send home 60 Russian diplomats and close the Russian Consulate in Seattle. The U.S. move was in response to the poisoning of a Russian ex-spy and his daughter in an English city, which British authorities blame on Russia. Moscow vehemently denies any involvement.

Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the foreign relations committee in the upper house of the Russian parliament, was quoted as saying by the news agency Interfax, that "our opponents should have the opportunity to look themselves in the mirror in order to be horrified by the actions taken by their own side."

__

9 p.m.

Russia's foreign minister says Moscow is renewing its demand for access to Yulia Skripal, a Russian citizen who along with her ex-spy father was poisoned in Britain this month and reportedly is recovering.

British health authorities said Thursday that Yulia Skripal, 33, was out of critical condition and is improving rapidly. It was not immediately clear if her condition would allow her to talk with British or Russian officials about the March 4 poisoning in Salisbury, England.

Foreign Minister Sergey Llavrov said at a news conference in Moscow that "we have again demanded to be guaranteed access to Yulia as she is a Russian citizen. I hope the British side can fulfill its obligations under the Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations."

U.S. and other Western nations have expelled more than 150 Russian diplomats over the poisoning. On Thursday, Russia announced it would expel the same number of Western diplomats.

___

8:45 p.m.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says the world is approaching a situation "similar" to the Cold War as tensions rise between the United States and Russia.

But Guterres said Thursday it's different in two important ways: There are more players in conflicts than during the two-superpower era and fewer communication channels set up to keep problems from escalating. He told reporters Thursday he is "very concerned."

The U.S. other Western nations and NATO are expelling more than 150 Russian diplomats whom they consider spies, including a dozen posted to Russia's U.N. mission, over the poisoning of a former Russian spy in England.

Russia said Thursday it will expel an equal number of diplomats from those nations.

___

8:10 p.m.

Russia's foreign minister says Moscow will expel the same number of diplomats from the nations that have expelled Russian diplomats over the poisoning of an ex-Russian spy in Britain.

Sergey Lavrov said U.S. Ambassador Jon Huntsman has been summoned to the Foreign Ministry on Thursday, where he was given notice that Russia is responding quid pro quo to the U.S. decision to order 60 Russian diplomats out.

Lavrov said Moscow will also retaliate to the U.S. decision to shut the Russian consulate in Seattle by closing the U.S. consulate in St. Petersburg.

Lavrov said the same approach will be applied to other nations that expelled Russian diplomats this week.

Two dozen countries, including the U.S., many EU nations and NATO, have ordered more than 150 Russian diplomats out this week in a show of solidarity with Britain.

___

7:15 p.m.

Russia's Foreign Ministry says Britain, the U.S., the Czech Republic and Sweden all have researched a nerve agent that London said was used to poison an ex-Russian spy in Britain.

The ministry's spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, said Thursday that the Western research into the class of nerve agent called Novichok was reflected in numerous open source documents of NATO members.

Britain has accused Russia of involvement in the March 4 poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, saying they were poisoned with the Soviet-designed agent called Novichok, the accusations Russia has fiercely denied. Britain and its allies have dismissed previous Moscow claims that they possessed that type of nerve agent.

Zakharova accused London of failing to provide evidence and stonewalling Russian demands for access to materials in the probe.

___

6:35 p.m.

The Russian Foreign Ministry says Moscow will retaliate shortly to the Russian diplomats' expulsions over the poisoning of an ex-Russian spy in Britain.

The ministry's spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, said Thursday the Russian response will come "in the nearest time."

Two dozen countries, including the U.S. and many EU nations, have ordered more than 150 Russian diplomats out this week in a show of solidarity with Britain. Zakharova said the expulsions came after "colossal" pressure from Washington and London, adding that the nations that succumbed to it "made a grave mistake."

She denounced Britain's assertion that Russia was behind the nerve agent attack on ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter as a "swindle" and an "international provocation."

Zakharova insisted that Moscow is demanding access to materials of the investigation.

___

5:20 p.m.

British health officials say the daughter of a Russian ex-spy has responded well to treatment and is no longer in critical condition after a nerve-agent attack.

Yulia Skripal's father Sergei remains in critical condition.

Salisbury NHS Trust, which oversees the hospital where the pair are being treated, says 33-year-old Yulia is "improving rapidly and is no longer in a critical condition. Her condition is now stable."

Medical director Dr. Christine Blanshard says "she has responded well to treatment but continues to receive expert clinical care 24 hours a day."

Yulia Skripal and her father, an ex-spy, were found unconscious in the English city of Salisbury on March 4.

British authorities say they were poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent and have blamed Russia. Moscow denies involvement in the attack, which has sparked a diplomatic crisis between Russia and the West.

___

4:25 p.m.

The former Soviet republic of Georgia says it will expel a Russia diplomat in solidarity with Britain over the nerve agent poisoning of a former Russian spy.

Thursday's announcement follows the expulsion of more than 150 Russian diplomats by European Union nations, the United States, NATO and other countries in response to the March 4 poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter.

Georgia severed diplomatic ties with Russia following a brief war in the breakaway republic of South Ossetia. Russian diplomats have been operating out of the special interests section of the Swiss embassy in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, since 2009.

Georgia's Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Thursday that the diplomat has been declared persona non grata and must leave within a week. The ministry condemned the poisoning, calling it a "serious challenge to common security."

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At least eight people, including civilians, were killed late Thursday in a suicide car bombing of a security barricade in the east of Libya, the second such attack in less than a month, local security and hospital sources said.

A suicide attacker exploded his vehicle at a barricade manned by forces loyal to Libyan strongman Khalifa Haftar near the city of Ajdabiya some 840 kilometres (520 miles) from Tripoli, general Fawzi al-Mansouri, a top officer in the local security forces, told AFP.

Eight other people were injured.

Five people died on arriving at the hospital shortly after the attack, a source at the citys public hospital told AFP.

The three other victims died later of their injuries, the source who requested anonymity said.

There were civilians among the dead and injured, Mansouri said, adding that no one has yet claimed responsibility.

A suicide attack which injured three people on March 9 south of Ajdabiya was claimed by the Islamic State group.

Despite the loss of its Sirte bastion in northern Libya in December 2016, IS remains active in the centre and south of the country.

The oil-rich North African country has been wracked by chaos since a 2011 uprising that toppled and killed long-time dictator Moamer Kadhafi.

Two authorities  the Tripoli-based unity government and a rival administration in the east  are vying for control of Libya.

Haftar, who opposes a UN-backed unity government based in Tripoli, announced the liberation of the eastern city of Benghazi last July after a three-year campaign.

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Until six months ago, the Lovimi family from Iran had never heard of Serbia.

But here they are, currently in Belgrade, after arriving without visas last August, waiting to continue on to Germany, where they plan to build a new and better life in the future.

The family of four comes from the town of Ahvaz in the province of Khuzestan in Iran's south west, where the majority of the population is Arabic.

They complain that, as Arabs, they have few rights in Iran, their children are forced to learn Farsi and not Arabic in school, and they are treated as second-class citizens, with little hope of finding a job.

So, when Belgrade and Tehran abolished reciprocal tourist visas last August, the Lovimis decided to take their chance and come to Belgrade. And from there, they hoped to continue on to the EU and a better future.

The Lovimis are not the only ones.

According to official statistics, around 7,000 fellow Iranians have arrived in Serbia since August, intially as tourists, but some of them with no intention of returning home.

Shahla Lovimi, a 40-year-old housewife, says she and her family had originally gone to Turkey with the intention of carrying on from there to Germany via Italy.

"We have never had the intention to go through Belgrade. We have never heard about Belgrade. We went to Turkey and the smuggler took us here," she tells AFP.

She and her car mechanic husband and their two children, aged 11 and 17, paid the smuggler 22,000 euros ($27,000).

For two months, they lived in various Belgrade apartments and hostels, waiting for the smuggler to pick them up and take them to the EU by car.

But when the smuggler vanished four months ago, leaving them on their own, the Lovimis turned to Info Park, a local non-governmental group helping refugees.

According to Info Park's communication officer Stevan Tatalovic, a number of Iranians are using the visa liberalisation agreement to come to Europe and stay there illegally as migrants.

Their intention is not to seek asylum in Serbia, but to continue on, often to Britain or other EU countries, he said.

Serbia argues that visa liberalisation will help develop tourism between the two countries and attract business investment in the longer term.

Nevertheless, Serbian Trade Minister Rasim Ljajic said the two countries are aware of, and will clamp down on any possible abuses of the visa-free scheme.

However, Info Park's Tatalovic said that with direct flights between Tehran and Belgrade resuming after 27 years, up to 600 Iranians could soon be arriving in Serbia every week.

Two airlines are already offering flights and a third will follow in April and most of the flights are already fully booked until the end of summer.

"The migration systems in Europe must recalibrate for this new route," Info Park warned in a recent statement.

While the numbers cannot be compared with hundreds of thousands who passed through Serbia in 2015 and 2016, EU officials are nevertheless concerned.

Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic said recently that the EU and Germany were already asking why the country had abolished the visa regime.

Hundreds of thousands of migrants travelling to western and northern Europe passed through Belgrade along the so-called Balkan route until it was shut down in 2016.

Several thousands of them got stuck in Serbia, but every day dozens try to continue their journey.

Shahla Lovimi says her family will try to reach the EU on foot.

"The smuggler has disappeared and we have no money to pay another one. We will maybe try our luck walking," she says.

The family was intercepted by police when they tried to enter EU member Croatia earlier this month, and they were sent back to Serbia.

But Lovimi insists they will try again as going back to Iran is not an option for them.

"There is no other way than to go through Croatia because all other borders are closed," she says.

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St Louis and the City of Angels were seized by Egyptomania this week when the Sunken Cities: Egypts Lost World and Tutankhamun: Treasures of the Golden Pharaoh exhibitions opened in the cities this week.

The St Louis International Airport, streets, shops, buses and hotels were all plastered with posters of granite colossi of the goddess Isis, the Nile god Hapi, Ptolemaic royal figures and the head of Caesarion, Cleopatras son by Julius Caesar, half buried in the seabed, for the Egypts Lost World exhibition.

Others showed divers coming face-to-face with monuments beneath the waves decorating sections of the St Louis Art Museum (SLAM) facade, while a large 3D photograph of one of Napoleons sunken vessels dominated the main wall of the museums central courtyard and connecting the six grand galleries of the exhibition. St Louis, it felt, had come under the spell of the Ancient Egyptian sunken treasures.

The exhibition displays 293 objects excavated from beneath the Mediterranean. It was inaugurated by Minister of Antiquities Khaled El-Enany and SLAM Director Brent Benjamin in the presence of Egyptian MPs Osama Heikal, head of the Culture, Antiquities and Media Committee, and Sahar Talaat Mustafa, head of the Tourism and Aviation Committee.

Enormous care had been taken in recreating the Alexandrian theme.

The different galleries of the exhibition had been designed to resemble the sunken cities of Heracleion and Canopus in Abu Qir Bay, and all the galleries were painted light blue and dark sandy-red to reflect the colours of the sea and sand.

Giant plasma screens showed films documenting the progress of marine archaeologists as they uncovered the mysteries of Alexandrias ancient Eastern Harbour within the display theme.

A prologue and an epilogue provided information about the underwater missions of the Institut Europeen dArcheologie Sous-Marine (IEASM) that discovered the treasures and the natural disasters that had led to the submergence of the area more than 1,000 years ago.

Benjamin had no doubt about the block-busting nature of the show in a city that already boasts one of the worlds finest collections of Egyptian antiquities. The first exhibition of these Egyptian treasures is one of the cultural highlights of 2018.

This exhibition will attract and enthrall St Louis inhabitants as well as their neighbours, he told Al-Ahram Weekly, adding that he expected one million people to visit the exhibition during its six-month duration.

The museum has permitted only 200 visitors per hour in order to protect the monuments and provide people with a positive experience. This week, for example, we succeeded in selling 1,000 tickets in only one day, Benjamin said.

He described the exhibition as very important for American audiences as it combines both archaeology and underwater aspects at one time. We grew up watching the TV specials of [French diver] Jacques Cousteau, and here they are combined together which makes the exhibition more compelling to Americans, Benjamin told the Weekly.

He said the exhibition was a good opportunity for those who had not had the chance to visit Egypt, as it gave them an idea of Egypts great civilisation. It also encouraged others to visit Egypt. As the minister said, these exhibitions are good ambassadors of Egypt, Benjamin said.

Frank Goddio, head of the IEASM and leader of the underwater archaeological missions that recovered the artefacts, said the exhibition was an ideal opportunity to encourage people to visit Egypt and to explore its art and culture.

He told the Weekly that the aim of sending the exhibition to the United States was to open the new discoveries to the widest public and to encourage visitors from the United States.

He explained that the interior design of the exhibition was totally different from earlier outings in Paris and London. It had a different sonography focusing more on museological techniques and history than on a spectacular ambience, he said.

The exhibition is divided thematically. Among the objects on show are three giant pink granite colossi featuring the Nile god Hapi, a statue of a Ptolemaic king, and an unidentified Egyptian queen dressed as Isis.

There is a customs stelae from Heracleion with inscriptions in hieroglyphics and Greek, a black granite sphinx representing king Ptolemy XII, father of the more famous Cleopatra, a head of Serapis and the Naos of the Decades, a black granite shrine covered with figures and hieroglyphic texts relating to the ancient calendar.

Pots and pans, knives, forks, bottles and plates are exhibited alongside navigational instruments, cannons, swords and guns from Napoleons fleet, sunk by the British admiral Nelson during the naval Battle of Abu Qir off Alexandria in 1798. Golden rings, earrings, necklaces and bracelets are also displayed.

This is the exhibitions fourth leg after its premiere in Paris at the Institut du monde arabe, followed by the British Museum in London, the Riteburg Museum in Zurich, and today in St Louis to start its tour around the United States.

It will then move to Boston and Denver in Colorado. The exhibitions 293 underwater artefacts were carefully selected from the Bibliotheca Alexandrina Museum, and the Graeco-Roman Museum and the Maritime Museum in Alexandria, as well as the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

A bronze statuette of a Pharaoh discovered in the temple of Amun-Gereb in Thonis Heracleion is an undoubted masterpiece. It depicts a Pharaoh in a striding, confident pose wearing the blue crown and royal headdress of Ancient Egypt.

His belt buckle is roughly inscribed with the Pharaohs name. It is difficult to read, but it suggests that the statuette was probably an already ancient object when it was placed in the temple of Amun-Gereb as a symbol of dynastic continuity, an exhibition curator told the Weekly.

Amun-Gereb was revered as the god who granted the Pharaohs the sacred right to rule, and masterpieces from several Egyptian museums, such as the Apis bull from the Serapeum in Alexandria, are also shown alongside magnificent recent finds from the sea.

One such piece is a stunning sculpture from Canopus representing the eldest daughter of Ptolemy I, founder of the Ptolemaic Dynasty, Arsinoe II.

This Graeco-Macedonian queen became a goddess beloved to both the Egyptians and the Greeks after her death, and she is depicted in the statue as the embodiment of Aphrodite, the ancient Greek goddess of beauty.

Tutankhamun In Los Angeles:

The scene is different in the City of Angels, where the Tutankhamun fever is hitting the city. The facial features of the boy-king can be seen everywhere in the city centre, including in restaurants and residential buildings.

The collection of the young Pharaoh is back, eight years after its last visit in 2005.

On the day of its opening, the California Science Center was transformed into an Ancient Egyptian necropolis, as Egyptian and American officials unveiled the long-heralded exhibition entitled Tutankhamun: Treasures of the Golden Pharaoh.

The opening took attendees back in time to the early 20th century when the tomb was discovered, with strains of oriental music filling the air and waiters wearing appropriate costumes greeting visitors as they made their way to meet the boy-king.

Actors dressed as excavators strode through the crowds carrying equipment to reconstructed archaeological digs, while other characters including fictitious Egyptologists offered to interpret the names of guests in hieroglyphics. Women carrying parasols explained how they whiled away the hours as their husbands searched for Tutankhamuns tomb.

Before entering the exhibition, visitors enter an immersive environment that begins with a four-minute introductory film on a 180-degree screen meant to transport them to the Valley of the Kings on the west bank of the Nile at Luxor where Tutankamuns tomb was discovered.

During the nine-gallery exhibition that follows, guests pass through the six gates of the underworld as they travel with the king on his journey to eternity. Along the way, they encounter good-luck amulets, weapons meant to fight off demons, alabaster containers of oils that the Ancient Egyptians believed enabled him to see and hear in the underworld, and figurines of gods meant to guide and protect him.

New 3D scans of objects are animated on video screens on top of display cases, so viewers can zoom in and spin the objects onscreen for an interactive experience.

Theres a lot more technology in this exhibition when it comes to being able to help tell the story. With these videos, visitors really get to see these objects in a way they have never seen them before, John Norman, managing director for exhibitions of the IMG company that organised the show, told the Weekly.

For the next nine months, the California Science Center will display 166 magnificent objects from the collection that has captivated American attention since its first tour there in the late 1960s.

Dramatically laid out in nine galleries, it relates the story of one of the most interesting and perplexing kings in Ancient Egyptian history almost 3,300 years ago. Each section showcases the dazzling craftsmanship of ancient artisans that characterised the earlier Tutankhamun exhibition.

California Science Center President Jeff Rudolph said the exhibition used multimedia displays to stimulate interest in the sciences related to archaeology.

Visitors also learn how the scientific analysis of the Pharaohs 3,000-year-old mummy had revealed new information about his health and lineage, as well as how cutting-edge archaeological tools were assisting in discovering tombs and analysing existing ones in ways never before imagined, he said.

The last galleries in the show focus on the discovery of the tomb itself and the history of Egyptian archaeology, along with new scientific analysis of the mummy.

This is provided through a video table in the exhibition showing scan data of Tutankhamuns mummy. The scan is from 2005, but advances in technology have made it possible to glean more information about it, including that Tutankhamun had a club foot and an impacted wisdom tooth.

New DNA testing shows that the young Pharaoh also suffered from malaria and had a badly broken left leg above the knee that pierced his skin. This likely resulted in the infection that caused his death.

The exhibition also takes visitors through the afterlife, visualising it through objects from Tutankhamuns tomb. It combines technology, music and animation in novel ways.

We have used a lot of technology in the exhibition, Norman asserted, describing it as a very theatrical experience. He said that each gallery space had its own music to ground viewers in Ancient Egypt and provide context for the exhibition.

Osama Heikal, head of the Culture, Antiquities and Media Committee in the Egyptian parliament, praised the exhibition design and displays, leading him to describe it as efficient and spectacular.

The exhibition is very well designed, with a special lighting system that shows the importance of the objects as well as their skillful craftsmanship, Heikal said, wishing that Egyptian curators could gain more experience in the field.

Sahar Talaat Mustafa, head of the Tourism and Aviation Committee, said that the centre had sold more than 100,000 tickets, mostly through word of mouth.

Tutankhamun may be making some pop-up appearances around Los Angeles, she said, adding that according to the centre director, all the 3,500 tickets available for the first day had been sold. The centre had had to extend its official opening hours for more than three hours, she said.

The most important artefacts on show include a 40cm gold coffin, the gold diadem from Tutankhamuns mummy, a gold fan featuring an ostrich hunt, a small gold canopic coffin ornamented with faience, a silver trumpet used for religious ceremonies, a gilded wooden statuette depicting the king riding a black varnished leopard, four marble canopic jars, and a gilded wooden jackal-headed figurine with the god Duamutef on the base.

There is a wooden travelling chest with gilded knobs inlaid with ebony and ivory, gold finger rings with images of the god Amun-Re on a cartouche-shaped bezel, a marble game board, and tapestry woven linen gloves.

Curator Abdel-Ghaffar Wagdi, who is accompanying the exhibition, said it was protected by a state-of-the-art security system installed in the galleries and inside every showcase. This was connected to an alarm system that rings if any unusual behaviour occurs, he said.

He said that the Ministry of Antiquities had full supervision not only over the artefacts, but also over the number of visitors per hour. It monitored visitor attitudes and the level of humidity inside the galleries and the showcases during the exhibition.

No one can remove, rearrange or change the display of any object unless with my permission, Wagdi said.

He added that every object had its own printed ticket and every showcase had its own serial code on its surface. If for any reason a showcase had to be opened, this could only be done in the presence of security guards.

The exhibition features the finest treasures of Ancient Egypt and offers visitors the experience of a world of artefacts they might otherwise never see, he said.

People of all ages have an enduring fascination for Tutankhamun. And now a new generation will discover the wonders of the Pharaoh, El-Enany said in his speech opening the exhibition.

He said there was a love story between America and Tutankhamun that had started in 1961 when some of his collection made its world premiere tour to the United States.

The exhibition arrives in Los Angeles for the fourth time as a message of peace from the Egyptians to the Americans to show how the Ancient Egyptians built their own great civilisation with passion, faith, love, knowledge and art, El-Enany said. He said that the exhibition came as part of the policy of the

Ministry of Antiquities to resume sending temporary exhibitions abroad. Three temporary exhibitions were officially opened this month: the World of the Fatimids in Toronto, the Sunken Cities in St Louis, and Tutankhamun in Los Angeles, he said.

These exhibitions allow humanity to admire our treasures and encourage visitors to come to see the fascinating monuments in their original context in Egypt, he said.

He invited the American audiences to come to Egypt to admire its wonderful monuments and to explore the 5,000 objects in the Tutankhamun collection that will be on display at the Grand Egyptian Museum in less than a year.

Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti highlighted the friendship between Egypt and Los Angeles in his speech at the exhibition. He said a sister-ship agreement between Cairo and Los Angeles had been underway, but had been stopped in 2011. He now expected it to continue.

Egypts Minister of Tourism Rania Al-Mashat said the exhibition would raise the number of Americans visiting Egypt, as it did in 2005. After this splendid inauguration, we are expecting to receive more American visitors in Egypt this year, as cultural tourism is one of the most important elements of Egypts tourist policy, she said.

Egyptologist Zahi Hawass said the treasures on show were among the worlds greatest cultural legacies.

The Tutankhamun exhibition which toured the world in the 1970s gave birth to the trend for blockbuster exhibitions, he said, its tour of seven US cities from 1976 to 1979 attracting more than eight million visitors. This time organisers expect an even greater number that will break previous attendance records.

*This story was first published in Al-Ahram Weekly

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ROME, N.Y. -- A Rome business owner sold equipment on eBay, but never delivered the machinery, according to New York State police.

Cody A. Madonia, 26, of Rome, was arrested Thursday and charged with second-degree grand larceny, scheme to defraud and falsifying business records, police said.

New York State Police worked with police departments in three states, including Pennsylvania, Indiana and Tennessee, police said.

Madonia owns Proforce Excavation and Equipment, which is located at 8490 Turin road in the City of Rome, police said. He sold equipment for more than $90,000 and never delivered it, police said. Madonia was arrested on Jan. 15, 2018 for grand larceny in the third degree and police received complaints after his arrest, police said.

That arrest stemmed from Madonia selling a Bobcat skid-steer on eBay and receiving a $17,500 payment but never providing it, police said.

He is being held in Oneida County Jail for centralized arraignment, police said.
If you drive on the New York Thruway often, you might notice some construction on the side of the road about six miles south of the Angola Travel Plaza.

A crew is working to build an off-ramp nowhere near an exit. It does not include an overpass and connects only to one side of the highway.

Eric White, the owner of Big Indian Smoke Shop in Irving, is taking steps to build his own off-ramp that leads to his smoke shop.

White is a member of the Seneca Nation of Indians. He's reportedly building the ramp as part of a personal protest after losing a legal battle with New York state over allegedly selling untaxed cigarettes, according to WGRZ.

On March 15, an administrative law judge issued a ruling which upheld fines of $2.4 million accusing White of transporting untaxed cigarettes. White has claimed that the sale and transportation of cigarettes were legal because they were Native brands being shipped from one reservation to another in the state.

Read more about the judge's ruling here.

According to WBEN, White's attorney Paul Cambria says there's an ongoing tax dispute between White and the state.

"Eric is currently exploring the authority of the Thruway easements over his land," says Cambria. ".. he feels the state is taking advantage of nation people."

While the Seneca Nation is aware of White's construction work, they do not have a role in his personal activity.

"While we are aware of the activity being undertaken by an individual on the Cattaraugus Territory, the Seneca Nation has no role whatsoever in what is taking place. Although we know the reason for his actions, we look for a safe resolution addressing this situation," the statement read according to WRGZ.

As for the Federal Highway Administration, officials are looking into the matter. New ramps usually need approval, however, officials are not sure how that policy applies to tribal land.
Bola Tinubu, national leader of the All Progressives Congress, APC, on Tuesday said President Muhammadu Buhari was on a journey of redirec...

Bola Tinubu, national leader of the All Progressives Congress, APC, on Tuesday said President Muhammadu Buhari was on a journey of redirecting Nigeria to the path of greatness.





The former Governor of Lagos State made the disclosure during the colloquium in commemoration of his 66th birthday.





He said though the APC met several challenges on assumption of power, the Buhari-led government was on the voyage of retooling Nigeria, re-inventing Nigeria and re-directing Nigeria.





He, however, noted that Its not an easy course to embark upon.





Tinubu also cautioned Nigerians against accepting PDPs apology.





The APC chieftain further berated former President, Olusegun Obasanjo over his letter criticising the Buhari-led Federal Government.





Tinubu described Obasanjo as a bad belle letter writer.





The full text of Tinubus speech below:

Your Excellency, President Muhammadu Buhari, the Vice President and my co-conspirator, Yemi Osinbajo and his wife, Dolapo; our dear governor of Lagos State, Governor Akinwunmi Ambode. I have personally witnessed your good work in the last three years that has brought tremendous progress and development to the state.

Your Excellencies, the various governors, all of the governors from across the country. All the deputy governors, particularly Idiat Onabule (Lagos Deputy Governor) for her friendship and collaboration with our governor. I thank you my dear wife, Oluremi Tinubu. Thank you for tolerating me, as if you have a choice; the Speaker Lagos State House of Assembly. I can see some of my very faithful friends and compatriots over the years like Governor Rochas Okorocha, my friend Aliko Dangote, Jim Ovia and Oba Otudeko. Im just lost for words.





We have to put our heads together, believing in ourselves that we are going to do it. We can give our people the best through the competent hands that we have.

I have a prepared speech, but I am not going to dwell on that. Life is not without challenges. Our logo is broom, we come together, you have a Nigeria focusing against terrorism, against corruption and to promote economic revival of the country.

We have faced challenges in the last three years. We came in with a lot of hope and enthusiasm as APC leaders. We gave our people hope; we believed in Nigeria and in ourselves, thinking we can change Nigeria for good and we are still going to do it. Life is nothing without challenges. Our logo is broom bound together. This symbolizes a united Nigeria against terrorism, corruption and revival of the economy.





I can see what the government is doing with the little resources at its disposal. This has been demonstrated in practical terms.

Whats the lesson to all Nigerians: forget those parties; they wont come back. We did not envisage that there would be so much challenges. So, we would report back to Nigerians about what we found on ground. We did not say that there would be no challenges, because even America is facing challenges. They have wasted our resources.

Thank you Nigerians for being patient with us! But there is a clear understanding here; that the difference between us and them is like day and night. My grandmother used to ask me to write letters to her. Somebody is writing letters now, letter of politics these days. As if they have not been there before. Bad belle letters!





Im happy the President can change the course of the ship wreckage. The ship of this country that is headed in the wrong direction. To steer the ship back or anchor before redirecting it, which of course is necessary. And we started this journey. The voyage is on. The voyage of hope, the voyage that we are reclaiming Nigeria, that we are retooling Nigeria, re-inventing Nigeria and re-directing Nigeria. Its not an easy course to embark upon

For 16 years they looted the country and they say we shouldnt talk about it, as if we should just go ahead and run our government. On our part, we have good leaders to salvage the situation and we have hope that we can do it. We must put all that is necessary in place, to stimulate the economy.





Dont take their apologies; they lied, they falsified, they changed figures, they made fake promises and they say we shouldnt talk about them.

We have a nation to rescue; we have a good leader to emulate and we have hope. We have reduced the propensity for corruption. We must strengthen the pension plank to stimulate growth. I will submit a proposal on how we can stimulate the economy. We dont have to pay for a house of N10 million in one dayand with cash; we need mortgage. This would discourage corruption.




President Muhammadu Buhari on Friday expressed appreciation to foreign and local investors that agreed to invest in Nigeria.Buhari, who unveiled a plaque to commemorate his visit to the Eko Atlantic City project, expressed his appreciation to investors after being shown round the project by Gov. Akinwunmi Ambode of Lagos State.He said that their investment had helped to provide employment for Nigerians, reducing the rate of unemployment in the country.I am extremely grateful to those that agreed to invest so much in our country.I have just gone round to see the Eko Atlantic City. I am extremely impressed with the potentiality of this project and the amount of jobs and its effect on the economy and what it is capable of bringing, Buhari said.The President, while expressing his satisfaction with the ocean reclamation by the state government and its partners, said that the investment had impacted on the countrys economy.Earlier, Ambode said that the project was an example of what the private sector could do to the nations economy.Ambode, who said the project was initiated by the Bola Tinubu administration, noted that it had actually saved the whole of Victoria Island.He said that the project, which would spread over 750 square kilometers, upon completion, would eventually be bigger than Victoria Island.In an interview with newsmen, Tinubu, who accompanied the President on the tour, described the Eko Atlantic City project as a solution to a potentially dangerous liability.According to Tinubu, the ocean surge at the Ahmadu Bello end could have wiped out the whole of Lagos Island.He, however, advised the Federal Government to replicate the project on the nations coastline.The inspection marked the end of Buharis two-day visit to the state.
The Presidency has explained that the visit of the Martin Luther King family led by the familys Matriarch, Naomi Barbara King, where a commemorative plague was given to President Muhammadu Buhari for his fight against corruption was a private visit and was not funded by the Nigerian government.The presidency also noted that it was after two days in the country, one of the members of the delegation granted interview to journalists where he had solicited support for President Buhari to continue in office so as to rid the country of corruption which some members of the MLK family viewed as political and had asked him to refute but he has refused to refute his call for the Presidents support.The Senior Special Assistant to the President on Foreign and Diaspora Matters, Hon. Mrs. Abike Dabiri-Erewa in a statement in Abuja, urged the public to discountenance any fake news about the visit and avoid the temptation of destroying all the good things for the sake of Politics .The statement which was signed by Abdurrahman Balogun, Special Assistant to Hon. Dabiri-Erewa with the title, Martin Luther King Family visit to Nigeria: The Facts, expressed shock over what it described as fake online news reports on the visit.The statement read, Our attention has been drawn to obviously fake on line news reports on the visit of some members of the MLK family to Nigeria.The members, led by the Matriarch of MLK, Naomi Barbara King, were in Nigeria as part of the activities initiated to celebrate a low- key Black History Month in Nigeria as part of deepening partnership between Africa and its Diaspora.As part of the activities, they visited President Muhammadu Buhari and gave him a commemorative plaque for his fight against corruption and what they termed from the  Africania Diaspora a term for Africans in Diaspora for which the oldest of them all Naomi Barbara King was selected to present on behalf of the family (NOT MLK CENTER) as a sign of appreciation to the Nigerian President.It must be categorically stated here that the trip was totally privately funded and not one kobo was spent by the Nigerian government as it was all a private initiative.However, after two days in Nigeria, one of the members apparently granted an interview which was seen as being political , asking Nigerians to give President Muhammadu Buhari a chance to continue his good works especially of fighting corruption in Nigeria.As a non political group , he was asked to refute the statement , which he refused to , insisting that was how he felt , and it was his personal opinion, not that of the family nor the centre, of which he is a board member and was the Chief Operating Officer for over five years.This may have led to some arguements among them , which they have said they will resolve when they get back to the US., which apparently led to the tweet being circulatedThe visit to Nigeria was quite successful that they extended their stay for two major days, surprised at the negative reports on Nigeria.Members of the public are hereby urged to please discountenance any fake news about the visit and avoid the temptation of destroying all the good things for the sake of Politics.President Muhammadu Buhari achievement in the fight against corruption is undeterred and sacrosanct.The social media has been awash since Thursday over the award of the MLK family to President Buhari as commentators and aggrieved Nigerians accused some of the presidential aides of being behind the award allegedly procured by the government for cheap political gain.This development appeared to have jolted The King Centre which hitherto on Wednesday dissociated itself through its twitter handle.A statement released via @TheKingCenter stated, The award given to President Buhari of Nigeria was not given by The King Center at the request of The King Center or by the children of #MLK and CorettaScottKing.With the clarifications from the MLK family, there were litany of comments suggesting that the Nigeria government may have procured the award. An online platform, LeadersNG, on Thursday published that the Nigerian government might have paid up to $3 million to procure what it described as fake award for the president.
Catholic Pontiff, Pope Francis on Thursday washed the feet of 12 prisoners, including a Nigerian at Regina Caeli prison in Rome.

Catholic Pontiff, Pope Francis on Thursday washed the feet of 12 prisoners, including a Nigerian at Regina Caeli prison in Rome.

According to Vatican News, the twelve men, selected by prison authorities, come from Italy, the Philippines, Morocco, Moldavia, Columbia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone.









Eight of them are Catholics, while two are Muslims, one is a Buddhist and one is an Orthodox Christian.





The rite, performed yearly on Holy Thursday, commemorates Jesus Christs Last Supper with the apostles. The ceremony is part of the run-up to Easter Sunday.





Everyone always has the opportunity to change life and one cannot judge. I am a sinner like you but today I represent Jesus God never abandons us, never tires of forgiving us, Pope Francis said to the inmates.




The Presidency has said the award given to President Muhammadu Buhari by the family of Martin Luther King, late American human rights activist, is a commemorative plaque.Abike Dabiri-Erewa, Senior Special Assistant, SSA, to the President on Foreign Affairs and Diaspora, said the award was not given on behalf of The King Center.On Tuesday, pictures of the president being presented the award surfaced on social media.The award was given to him by Naomi Barbara King, a matriarch of the King family.The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP scoffed at the award, describing it as a national disgrace and embarrassment.Reacting, Dabiri-Erewa, yesterday said the award was given by Naomi in a personal capacity and not on behalf of The King Centre.Speaking through a statement by Abdulrahman Balogun, her spokesman, Dabiri-Erewa said Naomi gave the plaque to Buhari in recognition of his fight against corruption, saying The members, led by the matriarch of MLK, Naomi Barbara King, were in Nigeria as part of the activities initiated to celebrate a low- key Black History Month in Nigeria as part of deepening partnership between Africa and its Diaspora.As part of the activities, they visited President Muhammadu Buhari and gave him a commemorative plaque for his fight against corruption.
The Townsends Inlet Bridge in Cape May County will close again Monday, this time for several weeks, to undergo repairs that are part of an ongoing rehabilitation project.

The span, which links Avalon and Sea Isle City, will stay open for Easter weekend before shutting and then is expected to open again by the end of the month, officials said.

Avalon officials have installed a sign on Avalon Boulevard to alert drivers of the upcoming closure.

Workers will be installing a new stronger railing designed to prevent cars from breaking through. This is the second of four construction phases. The northbound lane on the Avalon side of the bridge will be closed during the third phase.

Cape May County officials say the project is expected to cost about $2.6 million.

The bridge had closures over several days when a nor'easter lashed the Shore earlier this month. It was also closed for two months last year for emergency repairs.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. Jeff Goldman may be reached at jeff_goldman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JeffSGoldman. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
Do you dream about having the luxury of lingering over a delicious home-cooked meal with family or friends? Maybe you're sipping a glass of wine. Hopefully, there's a lot of laughter. There definitely aren't any interruptions or clock-watching.

Celebrity chef Giada De Laurentiis calls this la dolce vita.

"It means a very sweet life," says De Laurentiis, who was born in Rome, in a recent phone interview. "It's why so many people are attracted to Italian people and food. It's our exuberance for food and life in general."

Over the past couple of years, De Laurentiis, who lives in Los Angeles, has filmed her Food Network show "Giada in Italy" on location in Positano and Florence. Her new cookbook, "Giada's Italy: My Recipes for La Dolce Vita" (Clarkson Potter, 288 pp., $35), captures the flavors of her homeland.

"They are traditional Italian recipes with a modern spin," says the chef, whose resume also includes best-selling author (this is her ninth cookbook, and she writes children's books, too), restaurateur (she has two eateries in Las Vegas) and Daytime Emmy Award winner (for outstanding lifestyle host.)

The dishes in "Giada's Italy" include calamari panzanella ("In Italy, we make it with octopus, but at home it's easier to make with squid"); tortellini in Parmigiano-Reggiano brodo ("In the north of Italy, this is traditionally served at Christmas dinner, but it shouldn't be reserved for the holidays"); and fennel upside-down cake ("Fennel turns up in lots of recipes in Italy ... I thought it would be fun to borrow the American tradition of upside-down cake and combine it with this unexpected ingredient").

"Italians know how to take their time, slow down, and appreciate what they've made -- and the people they are sharing it with," writes De Laurentiis. "It's a lesson we can't learn too often."

Aspiring Italophiles should "adopt the culture little by little," she says. "Start with whatever grabs your attention in the book, but don't go directly to (the chapter called) 'La Dolce Vita' -- not because those recipes are difficult, but because some of them take multiple pairs of hands or more time."

Exhibit A: sartu di riso, a timbale with a rice crust and meatball filling. "In Naples, its birthplace, this impressive dish is usually only made on Sunday, when the family is all together and can participate in the preparation," she writes.

If you are an amateur in the kitchen, De Laurentiis has some advice just for you.

"If you are not a confident cook, don't cook. Just assemble," she says.

For example, De Laurentiis suggests putting together a meat and cheese platter or a salad. Or make the recipe in "Giada's Italy" for antipasti in a jar: baby mozzarella balls, grape tomatoes and green olives tossed in extra-virgin olive oil and seasonings. She writes that she sometimes uses the jars as hostess gifts or at place settings when she is entertaining.

"As you get better in assembly, move to the next level," says De Laurentiis. "You don't always have to turn on the stove to learn how to cook, although it helps to stock your pantry with the right ingredients."

While Parmesan cheese rinds, speck (a cured ham) and Calabrian chile paste are among the items she recommends in the book for an Italian pantry ("They offer so much big authentic flavor that you really can't duplicate any other way," she writes), she says the most important ingredient in her kitchen is a bit more basic: dried pasta.

"I have a 10-year-old daughter," says De Laurentiis. "When all else fails, I know I can feed her."

Tracy Ann Politowicz: tpolitowicz@advancelocal.com

Giada De Laurentiis

What:

Signing of "Giada's Italy." Book is $35.

Short Hills:

Williams Sonoma, the Mall at Short Hills, 1200 Morris Turnpike; April 2, 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.; tickets required, visit eventbrite.com.

Bridgewater:

Costco, 325 Promenade Blvd.; April 3, 4 to 6 p.m.; no tickets required.

Positano Pizzas

"While spending time in Positano, I was served a version of this dish as an amuse-bouche at a beachside restaurant called Le Tre Sorelle. The pizzas are so much fun to make with (my daughter) Jade and her friends back home, and they are also a great light lunch or snack."

Makes six 5-inch hearts.

Positano pizzas from "Giada's Italy," the ninth cookbook by celebrity chef Giada De Laurentiis. (Aubrie Pick)

1 (16-ounce) ball of

store-bought pizza dough

1 pint

cherry tomatoes

3 tablespoons

olive oil

1/2 teaspoon

kosher salt

4

garlic cloves

, smashed and peeled

2

fresh basil sprigs

All-purpose flour

, for dusting

1/2 cup

freshly grated mozzarella cheese

1/2 cup

freshly grated

Parmigiano-Reggiano

2 tablespoons

extra-virgin olive oil

, plus more for drizzling

1/2 teaspoon

dried oregano

1.

Place pizza dough in lightly oiled bowl, cover with towel, and allow it to rest in warm place for 1 hour.

2. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Pierce each tomato with tip of paring knife. On small rimmed baking sheet, combine tomatoes, olive oil, salt, garlic and basil. Toss to coat and roast for 30 minutes, or until tomatoes begin to blister. Set aside to cool.

3. Raise oven temperature to 425 degrees. On lightly floured board, use rolling pin to roll out pizza dough to 1/4-inch thickness. Using cookie cutter or tip of sharp knife, cut out six 5-inch hearts and place them on rimmed baking sheet. Bake for about 12 minutes, or until lightly puffed and beginning to brown. Remove from oven and cool slightly.

4. Split hearts in half horizontally. Divide mozzarella and tomatoes over bottom halves and sprinkle evenly with Parmigiano-Reggiano. Replace tops and brush with extra-virgin olive oil. Sprinkle each heart with oregano. Bake for 5 minutes, or until cheese is melted and tops are golden. Serve warm, drizzled with more extra-virgin olive oil, if desired.

-- All recipes from "Giada's Italy" by Giada De Laurentiis (Clarkson Potter, 288 pp., $35)

Grilled Scallops with Prosciutto and Basil

"My friend Pam makes these pretty skewers on the grill at her beach house on Long Island. Pink peppercorns make them beautiful and summery -- as if you're eating a spicy rose petal. You could serve this with (or atop) an arugula salad. Add a squeeze of juice from a grilled lemon half if you like."

Makes 4 servings.

Grilled scallops with prosciutto and basil from "Giada's Italy." Author Giada De Laurentiis suggests serving them with or on top of an arugula salad. (Aubrie Pick)

6 thin slices

prosciutto di San Daniele

12 large

sea scallops

1/4 teaspoon

kosher salt

12

fresh basil leaves

1 tablespoon

olive oil

1/2 teaspoon

crushed pink peppercorns

1.

Preheat grill pan over medium-high heat.

2. Cut prosciutto slices in half lengthwise to make 12 long strips. Season scallops evenly with salt. Place 1 basil leaf at end of strip of prosciutto, folding it in half lengthwise, if necessary. Place one scallop on its side on top of basil and carefully roll scallop inside basil and prosciutto. Secure with toothpick or skewer. Repeat with remaining ingredients.

3. Drizzle scallops with olive oil. Place scallops on heated grill pan, pressing down gently to make sure scallops make direct contact with hot surface. Grill for 2 to 3 minutes per side, or until nice grill marks form and scallops are just warm in center (see note below). Remove scallops to a plate and sprinkle with pink peppercorns.

Note: To check if scallops are done, insert thin metal cake tester into center and leave it there for 10 seconds. Remove and place metal against skin beneath your lower lip. If tester feels warm, scallop is done.

Olive Oil and Honey Panna Cotta

"I haven't included panna cotta recipes in many of my books because, to be honest, panna cotta isn't my favorite dessert. However, I'm clearly in the minority, because you find it on the menu of just about every Italian restaurant, both here and in Italy. This rendition has a slightly spicy bite from the olive oil, which makes it a little bit unusual and less like nursery food. Use a grassy green olive oil and top it with some flake salt and a drizzle of the same oil to play up the distinctive flavor if you like."

Makes 6 servings.

Olive oil and honey panna cotta, from "Giada's Italy." Author Giada De Laurentiis says it has "a slightly spicy bite from the olive oil." (Aubrie Pick)

1/4 cup

cold water

1 (0.25-ounce) package

powdered gelatin

2 cups

heavy cream

1/3 cup

raw honey

, plus more for drizzling

1/2 teaspoon

pure vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon grated

lemon zest

1/4 teaspoon

kosher salt

1/3 cup

extra-virgin olive oil



1 cup

whole milk

Fresh raspberries

, for garnish (optional)

1.

Pour water into small bowl and sprinkle gelatin over it. Stir to combine. Set aside to soften for 5 minutes. Scrape softened gelatin into medium saucepan and add heavy cream, honey, vanilla, lemon zest and salt. Bring to simmer over medium heat, stirring with rubber spatula to dissolve gelatin and honey. Simmer for 2 minutes. Remove mixture from heat.

2. Stir olive oil into cream mixture and, using immersion blender, blend until combined and emulsified. Stir in milk. If large amount of froth has formed on surface, use small ladle to skim it off and discard as much of foam as possible. Divide mixture among 6 small ramekins or pour into shallow 1-quart dish.

3. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 5 hours, or until mixture is set. Serve topped with fresh raspberries and extra drizzle of honey, if desired.
Tamyra Cottman was in a tight spot.

The babysitter for her three special needs children suddenly quit. None of her coworkers could cover her overnight shift. And her boss told her that she might be fired if she didn't come in to work as a residential counselor at a group home.

So she quit.

When the Vineland woman filed for unemployment benefits her claim was denied.

Then it was denied again by a tribunal and the board of review. But a New Jersey Appellate Court on Thursday ruled in her favor saying, "an employee need not wait to be fired when discharge is imminent. At that point, the employee may resign and still be eligible for benefits."

A representative for Cottman's former employer, Quality Management Associates, Inc. did not dispute or even address Cottman's version of events, according to the court ruling.

A representative for Quality Management Associates declined to comment.

Earlier rulings in the matter found that Cottman left work voluntarily, without good cause attributable to her work. And they decided that leaving work to care for her children was not good cause.

But the Appellate Court ruled that, "With few exceptions, leaving work for personal reasons unrelated to the work, no matter how reasonable, disqualifies an employee from receiving unemployment benefits. However, when an employee knows that he or she is about to be fired, the employee may quit without becoming ineligible."

Attempts to reach Cottman were not immediately successful.

Allison Pries may be reached at apries@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @AllisonPries. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
When Nifees Ingram was looking for a new ride, he turned to Facebook.

Nifees Ingram. (Essex County Correctional Facility)

That's according to the FBI, whose agents say Ingram confessed to luring the online sellers of a 2005 Ford Mustang and a 2007 Audi Q7 to face-to-face meetings before flashing a gun and speeding off in two separate carjackings in North Jersey earlier this month.

Ingram contacted the owners of both cars over Facebook on March 4, expressing interest in making the purchases, according to a complaint filed by an FBI agent in U.S. District Court.

Investigators say he met the owner of the Mustang later that day in Newark, tricking them into thinking he was about to hand over cash before starting to drive off with one of the owner's family members still in the car.

Ingram ultimately flashed a gun in his waistband before ordering his involuntary passenger out of the car and speeding off, authorities said.

When he went to inspect the Audi in North Bergen on March 12, an agent wrote, the owner's son met him for a test drive. Authorities say Ingram ended up taking the boy for a ride instead, authorities allege, finally taking his cellphone and forcing him out of the car only after he'd driven all the way to Newark.

Both cars were later recovered in Newark, and Ingram identified from a photo lineup by the second victim, according to investigators. Ingram, who is being represented by the Federal Public Defender's Office, made his first appearance in court Thursday afternoon following his arrest by federal law enforcement officers earlier that day.

Ingram allegedly confessed to both carjackings in a statement to investigators following his arrest.

Prosecutors said he faces a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison if convicted of using a firearm in a violent crime, and a maximum of 15 if convicted of carjacking.

Thomas Moriarty may be reached at tmoriarty@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @ThomasDMoriarty.

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The church may be willing to forgive the vandal who hacked the hands and feet off three statues of Jesus, Mary and St. John outside Our Lady of the Lake Church, but not the Verona police.

The incident is being treated as a bias crime, police said. Verona detectives and investigators with the Essex County Prosecutor's Special Victims Unit are searching for a suspect.

"Any offense that targets religious symbols or artifacts will be investigated keenly and with vigor," acting Police Chief Christopher Kiernan said. "As outlined by the New Jersey Attorney General, these incidents undermine the foundations of freedom."

The vandalism was reported at 2 p.m. last weekend, on Palm Sunday, to the three cement statues outside the church on Lakeside Avenue. The damage, however, may have been inflicted in February and not been noticed on the five-foot tall statues due to the weather, Kiernan said.

The statue of Jesus mounted to a cross had its feet smashed off.

"A statue of the Blessed Mary showed signs of damage to the face and feet and a statue of Saint John had damage to the feet and also the hands were broken off," Kiernan said in an email.

Damage to religious statues outside Our Lady of the Lake church in Verona is being treated as a bias crime, police say. (Verona PD)

Father Joseph D'Amico, church pastor, said in a statement through police he "forgives the person responsible and prays for him/her."

"I can't imagine the spiritual darkness, desperation and desolation that would lead someone to mock, deface and destroy something so precious and holy to others," D'Amico said later in a Facebook post. "I hope and pray that you too be renewed and transformed knowing you are loved, forgiven and precious to God and this community."

Jim Goodness, spokesman for the Archdiocese of Newark, did not have a damage estimate. He said the statues have been on church grounds for decades.

"We were very concerned about it," Goodness said. "The police have been working very hard on it and we're sure they'll find the person responsible."

This is not the first time the statues have been targeted for vandalism.

In 2012, a vandal used a hammer to knock off part of Mary's face, Saint John's nose and bashed the statue of Jesus until its lower left leg fell off, according to myveronanj.com.

An arrest was made in that incident but Goodness did not know if the same person is a suspect in the recent vandalism.

"Because it's an active investigation the police are not disclosing that information right now," Goodness said.

Goodness said the statues were fixed after the 2012 attack and that church officials are looking into whether the recent damage can be repaired.
JERSEY CITY -- A 40-year-old Jersey City man is facing charges related to two guns and 85 grams of cocaine following his arrest on Wednesday, officials said.

Leshawn Alston, of Eastern Parkway, is charged with two counts each of unlawful possession of a weapon and possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose in regard to two handguns, the criminal complaint says.

He is also charged with possession of a weapon by a felon, possession of a weapon while committing a drug offense and receiving stolen property regarding one of the guns, the complaint says.

Alston is also charged with possession of 85 grams and three vials of cocaine, as well as distribution of cocaine within 1,000 feet of School 20, located at 239 Ocean Avenue, and within 500 feet of public property, the complaint says.

The complaint says that the arrest came as a result of an investigation and surveillance in which a digital scale, sandwich bags and numerous empty vials and caps were also found.

Alston made his first appearance on the charges yesterday in Criminal Justice Reform Court in Jersey City yesterday via video link from Hudson County jail in Kearny.

In 2013, Alston pleaded guilty to a weapons possession charge and was sentenced to three years in prison, according to electronic court records.

At the hearing yesterday, the state moved to detain him through the course of his prosecution. A detention hearing is set for Wednesday before Hudson County Superior Court Judge Paul DePascale in the Hudson County Administration Building in Jersey City.
JERSEY CITY -- Christ's passion and crucifixion were remembered on the streets of Jersey City today as some 100 people participated in the Stations of the Cross with each station located at the scene of a violent crime from the last year.

"Our journey is through Jersey City and as Jesus Christ stopped 14 times, we will stop 14 times and each stop represents a place of violence," the Rt. Rev. Bishop Mark Beckwith prayed at the first station: Jesus is Condemned to Death.

"Let us walk the Way of the Cross."

The first stop for the Good Friday ceremony was at 262 Clinton Ave., where Rasasim Foster was fatally shot on July 3, 2017. A first nail was hammered into a cross covered in newspaper clippings at the location. Holy water was sprinkled on the sidewalk already wet from overnight rain.

After praying, "At this place a beloved child of God was assaulted" and "We reclaim this place defiled by violence in the name of Jesus Christ," the faithful responded "Amen."

With the cross at the lead, the procession then headed to the second station, Jesus Takes Up His Cross, singing "I want Jesus to walk with me." The station was at Clinton and Kennedy Boulevard.

"At this place a child of God was assaulted," said the Rev. Ivan Alberts. A second nail was driven into the cross and holy water was sprinkled on the ground. The procession continued with some among the crowd carrying smaller crosses with t-shirt draped over them. Each shirt bore the name of a 2017 homicide victim.

Other stations were at 21 Lexington Ave., 422 Bergen Ave., Union and Bergen avenues, Forrest Street between Bergen, various addresses along Martin Luther King Drive, 28 Madison Ave., 60 Crescent Ave., Clinton and Seidler Street and 1 Jackson St.

This is the fourth annual walking of the Stations of the Cross on the streets of Jersey City. The event was founded by Rev. Tom Murphy of St. Paul's Episcopal Church and the Rev. Laurie Wurm of Grace Church Van Vorst.

"We do it to commemorate Jesus' suffering and death 2,000 years ago and the suffering of our community today," Murphy said.

Casper Ewig, a parishioner at St. Paul's, has walked in the event ever year it has been held.

"I think it's a great expression of concern for what's really going on in the world," Ewig said. "The religious idea of the Stations of the Cross is to recall the tribulations Christ went through between the trial and crucifixion, so we use this to pray for an end to violence."

Alberts' wife, Alveera Alberts, said the event is special because it connects with the community.

"In a church, we are within the walls and we do it just for our own needs," Alveera Alberts said. "We are associating this with the suffering that is here in Jersey City."

Parishioners and clergy from numerous local churches participated in the event, which was put together with help from the Jersey City Police Department. Along the route, residents stood on their stoops or walked down to the sidewalk as the procession stopped at each station.

The 14th and final station included the reading of a prayer for those who perpetrate violence.

"Sisters and brothers, hear the words of our Lord, Jesus Christ," Beckwith prayed. "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your father in heaven."
The county prosecutor admonished the Carteret police department's leadership in a letter this week, calling its top sworn officer "ineffective" after reports of serious excessive-force complaints and failing to run background checks on gun buyers for two years.

The scathing letter sent by Middlesex County Prosecutor Andrew Carey to borough officials --which was obtained by NJ Advance Media Thursday but dated Monday -- orders the recently hired Carteret police director, Kenneth Lebrato, to take over the department's internal affairs unit for at least six months.

Lebrato is a retired assistant prosecutor, who worked previously as the borough's municipal attorney and under Carey during his time at the Middlesex County Prosecutor's Office.

Carey described Lebrato as "uniquely well qualified" because of his experience in the prosecutor's office.

Citing internal affairs issues in the letter, Carey calls current Carteret Deputy Chief Dennis McFadden, who is referred to as the chief in the borough's news releases, "ineffective in executing his official duties."

Mayor Daniel Reiman and McFadden did not return immediately return calls for comment.

The borough and its 50-person police force have made headlines over the last year after the violent arrest of a local teen involving the longtime mayor's brother, Joseph Reiman, was captured on dashcam recording.

Reiman -- who had accounted for more than a fifth of the department's incidents involving force during his 23-month tenure -- has since been indicted on charges of official misconduct and assault in connection with the May 31 encounter.

The 31-year-old officer is currently suspended with pay.

The prosecutor's office, the top law enforcement agency in the county, is allowed under state guidelines to step in and appoint someone to take over a department's internal affairs unit, allowing that person to investigate and order others to investigate potential criminal activity in the department.

In the letter, Carey calls the intervention an "extraordinary measure" and writes, "It's otherwise quite apparent that the Carteret Police Department is in need of effective leadership at the highest level. As such, the duties associated with internal affairs must fall to another."

Capt. Michael Dammann has been handling the internal investigations. According to civil service records, Dammann, who was promoted from lieutenant sometime last year, has not yet passed the captain's exam.

The borough, however, was allowed to make the temporary promotion since the civil service list for the rank of captain was incomplete in April of 2017, with only captains Robert Wargocki and Jeffrey Van Woeart achieving the certification, according to the state agency.

None of the Carteret police captains were named in the letter or have been accused of any misconduct.

Borough residents who have had run-ins with Reiman previously told NJ Advance Media they had filed complaints against the officer but were ignored, and most said they dealt with Dammann during the process.

In the hours after the arrest of the teen last year, three officers were recorded candidly discussing the incident and Reiman's reputation on the force, in which they say the officer's reputation was well-known, but the department had covered for the officer.

NJ Advance Media published the officers' conversation on Saturday.

The prosecutor's office also said last week the police department's top cops were not properly performing background checks when processing more than three dozen gun permits and licenses over the last two years.

In New Jersey, local police are charged with vetting applicants seeking firearms ID cards and handgun purchase permits. The police chief is often the one responsible for contacting references and checking mental health status, but the job can be tasked to another supervisor in the department.

The New Jersey State Police have since taken over issuing gun permits and licenses in the borough.

Before Lebrato was hired last November, Carteret had been without a police director since early 2016 when Ronald Franz was charged with DWI after just weeks on the job.

In 2012, Carey's office stepped up its involvement in Edison police's internal affairs but stopped short of appointing a monitor despite the police chief Thomas Bryan request for outside oversight.

Read Carey's letter to Carteret officials below:

Prosecutor's Letter to Director Lebrato March 26 by Craig McCarthy on Scribd

Craig McCarthy may be reached at 732-372-2078 or at CMcCarthy@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @createcraig and on Facebook here. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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A man who admitted to gunning down another man after an argument at a pizza shop in Asbury Park in 2013 will serve 12 years in prison, a judge ruled Thursday.

Dominique Moore, now 25, shot Daniel Graves, 23, near the corner of Bangs and DeWitt avenues on Jan. 10, 2013, prosecutors said.

Moore got in an argument with Graves at a pizza shop before deciding with two other men to grab his 9mm handgun and "get the victim for being disrespectful," Assistant Monmouth County Prosecutor Meghan Doyle said at Moore's detention hearing.

He was arrested after the Monmouth County Prosecutor's Office spent four years investigating the death of Graves -- a father and "peacemaker," relatives said.

The last investigator to work on the case promised Graves' stepfather that an arrest would be made. Last year, prosecutors charged Moore after witnesses came forward and linked him to the shooting.

Prosecutors argued for Moore to remain in jail between court proceedings because he told police he was in a gang.

Moore eventually pleaded guilty to aggravated manslaughter, and was expected to face 15 years in prison. But his own experiences with gun violence after shooting Graves helped teach him a lesson better than prison could, Superior Court Judge David Bauman said in court. Moore was shot about two years after shooting Graves, Bauman said, according to the Asbury Park Press.

"He felt the same cold, hard ball of steel that ended the life of Mr. Graves, and I've got to believe that he learned something," Bauman said, according to the Press.

The judge also credited Moore with sparing the family "the heartache of living through the trial," prosecutor's spokesman Chris Swendeman said.

Under the No Early Release Act, Moore must serve 85 percent of the sentence before he is eligible for parole, and will be on parole supervision for five years.

Joe Brandt can be reached at jbrandt@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JBrandt_NJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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Two New Jersey men are headed to prison after being caught in Louisiana with four pounds of methamphetamine packaged as Mexican candy and stashed in a hidden compartment.

Javier Munoz, of Vineland, and Beljavier Rodriguez, of Millville were convicted last week of possession with intent to distribute 500 grams or more of methamphetamine, the U.S. Attorney's Office fo Louisiana's Western District announced Thursday.

The two were in a vehicle traveling east on Interstate 10 through Lake Charles on Sept. 9, 2016 when they were stopped a corporal from the Calcasieu Parish Sheriff's Office.

A search of the car turned up a false electronic compartment built into the center console that had two bags of what looked like professionally printed Mexican candy.

Labeled "Pelon Peloneta," the packages actually contained 21 individually wrapped bags of methamphetamine with a street value of more than $272,000, officials said.

Munoz, 51, faces 10 years to life in prison with while Rodriguez, 26, could receive five years to life in prison, three years of supervised release, officials said. Both will be sentenced June 10.

Police found 4 pounds of meth packaged to look like Mexican candy.

Jeff Goldman may be reached at jeff_goldman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JeffSGoldman. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
Another person was shot and killed in Newark late Thursday night; the second shooting homicide in the city in two days.

Essex County Chief Assistant Prosecutor Thomas Fennelly said that Najee Odom, 38, of Newark was found shot to death in the 100 block of Vassar Avenue. Odom was transported to University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 10:20 p.m.

The Essex County Prosecutor's Office Major Crimes Task Force is investigating.

On Wednesday afternoon, Tyree Lamar Barba, 25, of East Orange, was found dead in a parking lot at the corner of Chancellor Avenue and Wainwright Street, Essex County Prosecutor's Office spokeswoman Kathy Carter said.

Chris Sheldon may be reached at csheldon@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @chrisrsheldon Find NJ.com on Facebook.
The New Jersey Chamber of Commerce a left-wing special interest group?

Really?

A comment by the spokeswoman for Republican U.S. Rep. Rep. Tom MacArthur fighting back against accusations he sold out New Jerseyans in voting for President Donald Trump's tax plan this week put the pro-business Chamber of Commerce on the attack Thursday.

When asked about a new report that says 10.2 percent of New Jersey households will see their federal income taxes rise this year as a result of the Republican tax changes, Camille Gallo slammed "left-wing special interest groups, politicians, and many in the media" of conducting a "dishonest smear campaign."

The chamber has been a big critic of MacArthur's vote, saying it will hurt New Jersey. MacArthur, R-3rd Dist., was the sole New Jersey lawmaker from either party to support the tax plan.

On Thursday, chamber President Tom Bracken took issue with the statement.

"If stating the facts and fighting for New Jersey, as we did in opposing the federal tax legislation, constitutes a 'smear campaign' and being misguided, as suggested by Rep. MacArthur's spokesperson in this nj.com article, then sign me up," he said in a statement.

On Friday, MacArthur's office said Gallo's comments had nothing to do with the Chamber of Commerce.

"This shoddy and lazy nj.com report is more focused on grabbing clicks and creating a controversy where one doesn't exist, than the truth. Our office was never asked about the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce and certainly would never consider them a left-wing special interest group," the statement reads, adding:

"A simple policy difference with a local affiliate doesn't change the fact that Congressman MacArthur is an entrepreneur who created and preserved thousands of American jobs, who was just presented the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Spirit of Enterprise Award in recognition of his support for pro-jobs, pro-growth policies in Congress."

New Jersey has the highest percentage of residents who will pay more under the tax plan, according to the report by the Tax Policy Center, a research group. Maryland and California are next in line.

That's in large part due to a new $10,000 cap on state and local tax deductions, which hits hard high-tax states like New Jersey.

Others like Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr., D-9th Dist., accused Republicans in Congress of "sticking it to the Northeast."

MacArthur's spokeswoman Gallo accused its opponents of ignoring the benefits: "New Jersey families are seeing bigger paychecks and lower utility bills, frontline employees are getting bonuses and better benefits, and the tax cuts are helping to lower the cost of living."

Samantha Marcus may be reached at smarcus@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @samanthamarcus. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.
As the procession of vehicles, led by the Salem County Sheriff's Office, drove down South Broadway in Pennsville with their lights flashing on Thursday, it was apparent the K-9 officer unit is a tight-knit community.

Roxy, a member of the Salem County Sheriff's Department K-9 Unit since 2010, died on duty Tuesday of natural causes at the age of 10. She had assisted in over 500 narcotics investigations as well as performed searches at the Salem County Correctional Facility.

Roxy's remains were carried past other K-9s, officers and civilians, and the contingent stood at attention as she was taken into the Salem County FOP Lodge. Officers and their K-9 counterparts from as far north as Monmouth County to as far south as Cape May County came to pay their respects. The New Castle County and Middletown police departments in Delaware even made the trip across the bridge for the memorial.

Kim Fisher, a resident of Clinton, stood on the side of the road with her dog Mello to wait for the procession. An avid animal lover who has three dogs and seven cats, Fisher wanted to be at the memorial.

"I am out here to pay my respects to Roxy for what she has done," Fisher said "Animals mean a lot to me. I have two German Shepards, a Shih Tzu, and seven cats."

Inside, a ceremony was held to remember the longtime K-9 officer who played a vital role in law enforcement in Salem County. Sheriff Charles Miller, Undersheriff John Cuzzupe and others spoke to those gathered about the contributions Roxy made to the Salem County Community. One of the people who spoke was Pennsville Patrolman Jimmy Endres -- one of Roxy's handlers when he was working at the sheriff's department.

"She was the best dog I ever had," Endres said. "She loved the work, and she loved the job. She had the drive to keep going. You could play and throw the ball with her until she could pass out. She was always ready."

Even after leaving the sheriff's department, Endres would still see Roxy on occasion whenever he had to go to the Salem County Correctional Facility.

"I was happy to see her when I went to the jail," he said. "Her kennel was right outside where we would drop off the prisoners. When she heard my voice, she would get excited and start jumping around. I wish I could have got in to pet her and play with her, but I have a ton of pictures that I will be able to reflect back on that, videos from training and drug seizures. I will never forget her, and she will definitely be missed."

Officer Andrew Hecksher was another one of Roxy's handlers. The corrections officer held on to her ashes while the ceremony was going on inside the lodge.

"I have another K-9 at the house, K-9 Oliver. He had a partner, as well as I did, so we both lost a great partner," Hecksher said. "She had a flawless track record as far as 500 searches, four different academies, and four different handlers. She transitioned to the jail, and she loved it. She was a happy dog, and she brought a smile to everyone's face, it did not matter who it was. I am sure some of the bad guys she indicated on probably laughed and smiled at her. She was a good dog."

Hecksher, like Endres and other members of K-9 units across the state, knows the bond between an officer and his canine companion is unique.

"There is a bond like no other, they go to work with us, we take them home, they go on vacation with us if we take them," Hecksher added. "We are with them 24/7 so that bond is unbreakable. There was never words spoken by the animal to us but the actions the dog had, the companionship it gave you, the bond you have with the dog meant everything. No words need to be spoken to show the love that dog had. Every K-9 handler knows that. It is always watching and protecting and supporting you. You can tell that dog anything, even on your worst day and the dog will listen. It is a great bond to have."

Chris Franklin can be reached at cfranklin@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @cfranklinnews. Find NJ.com on Facebook. Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tips
Angelina Gioe knows well how both Sicily and New Orleans share a similar devotion. She moved to New Orleans at 14, and although at that age she hadn't yet helped build a St. Joseph's Day altar, she knew even then how important they were to the people of her hometown.

Gioe said the first altar she got involved with was at St. Mary's Church, in the French Quarter.

She said a gentleman in the parish said his mama was "losing her mind," so he wanted St. Joseph to intercede in exchange for the altar. Gioe helped him by learning to bake cookies.

Since then, she's participated in creating devotional altars to St. Joseph in New Orleans, Chalmette, and on the north shore. Today, Gioe is among the women who bake, braid, cook, decorate and create for the St. Joseph's altar at St. Jane de Chantal Catholic church in Abita Springs.

She then got involved in Chalmette.

"In 1976, we had a club in St. Bernard Parish," she said. "It was the Italian-American Society.

For about ten years, she was in charge of the society's huge, horseshoe-shaped altar with multiple levels.

"There were 3,000 people coming in to view the altar," she said.

Then, when Gioe moved to the north shore about five years ago, she began to work closely in braiding breads for the altar organized by Joy Lewis, president of the St. Jane de Chantal St. Joseph's Altar Guild.

"Really, we just do it for our church," Lewis said, of her involvement. "We put our hearts and souls in it. We don't do it for recognition at all."

Throughout St. Joseph's Day -- March 19 -- parishioners and the general public stopped by to admire the altar, enjoy a meal of meatless Italian foods such as artichoke leaves with stuffing and pasta with red gravy, and pick up little bags containing sweet anise cookies and a lucky fava bean.

It takes quite some time to put together meals for hundreds and decorate a large altar.

"We started January 22, and we finished it yesterday," Lewis said. "I could not do it without these ladies and these men." She also expressed a hearty "thanks" to the Abita VFW.

Once the day is done, Lewis said the foodstuffs decorating the altar are donated to the community.

"We bring them to the police department, the fire department, the hospital, the old folks home, and if we still have some left, we distribute them to people who are homebound," Lewis explained.

Gioe said she has told her family back home in Sicily about what she does here in Louisiana.

"They find it interesting," she said, adding that she hopes the tradition will be carried on by younger Catholics and will "never end."

Why does Gioe think the altar tradition persists with Louisianians?

"Because of the faith," she said, simply. "They have a faith, and they believe it."

Contributor Kara Bachman may be reached at kara@KaraMartinezBachman.com or via Facebook.com/BachmanWrites. She welcomes your news tips and story ideas.
Three Alabama residents were arrested after four children -- all under the age of 3 -- tested positive for methamphetamine, according to a story from AL.com.

The story said the adults were arrested after deputies executed a search warrant on a home in Cullman County, which is north of Birmingham. All three adults lived in the home, the story said.

The report said the children ranged in age from 2 months to 3 years and "tested positive for methamphetamine from exposure to the drug." The sheriff of Cullman County said in the story that an investigation revealed that methamphetamine, prescription medication and marijuana were being used by the adults in the home, the story said.

The arrested people ranged from 20 to 49 years old.

"As sheriff I am proud of the effort by our investigators and the Department of Human Resources to protect our children, however, as a father and sheriff it angers me that the very ones who should ensure the children's safety have exposed them to this type of environment,'' the sheriff, Matt Gentry, said.
A proposal in Florida to build apartments on school property for teachers is gaining traction in Miami-Dade county, according to a report from The Miami Herald.

The preliminary proposal involves the construction of a new middle school with a floor devoted to residential units, as well as space for parking. If that goes well, the newspaper reports the county could build a full-fledged housing complex with as many as 300 apartments next to Phillis Wheatley Elementary.

The school system told told the newspaper county teachers would get housing priority, followed by the rest of the school employees. The proposal comes as school officials cite housing prices as Miami's top recruiting hurdle for teachers.

"When you look at teacher salaries, it's just impossible for them to get into the housing market," said Ned Murray, associate director of Florida International University's Metropolitan Center, according to the newspaper.

Read more about the proposal housing plan at The Miami Herald's website.

. . . . . . .

Wilborn P. Nobles III is an education reporter based in New Orleans. He can be reached at wnobles@nola.com or on Twitter at @WilNobles.
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St. Tammany Parish authorities have asked the FBI to review a January incident in which a Pearl River Police Department report said deputies tased and beat a man with a baton without provocation.

In a statement, Sheriff Randy Smith said an internal investigation has cleared the five deputies of any wrongdoing in their handling of Army veteran Chris Cambre, 47, at his camper at Messer's trailer park. However, Smith said the department turned its Internal Affairs report over to the FBI's Civil Rights Division for its review in the interest of "full transparency."

North Shore District Attorney Warren Montgomery has also asked federal authorities to look at the case.

Pearl River Police Chief JJ Jennings said his officer on the scene - a graduate of the police academy just two months earlier - was in "total shock" about what took place on the night of Jan. 21.

"He was compliant," Jennings said of Cambre. "He was very calm. He was as calm as could be. I don't get it."

According to the Pearl River PD report, Officer Jessica Picasso was dispatched to the trailer park to check on Cambre after someone became concerned about a Facebook post and the fact that Cambre wasn't answering phone calls. Picasso and a fire department paramedic talked to Cambre, who made a statement about wanting to return to his camper and "finish it" and said "if he was dead he wouldn't have to worry about paying bills," the report said.

Cambre's demeanor appeared to be "calm, nervous and soft spoken," according to the report.

Fire District 11 Assistant Chief Matt Parrish arrived and told Picasso that Cambre would have to go to a hospital for evaluation. The report stated that Parrish called for Sheriff's Office backup because Cambre had military training and had previously mentioned committing suicide by cop.

Deputies showed up at the scene carrying rifles, which they put away after Cambre, appearing frightened, raised his shirt, spun around and said he had no weapon, the report said. Picasso told deputies Cambre needed to go to a hospital but didn't want to go. "It should be noted at no time did any of the deputies ask Patrolman Picasso if Mr. Cambre was being aggressive or if there was any other information they needed to know."

According to the report: Two deputies approached Cambre from his left side. Without speaking to Cambre or getting a sense of his demeanor, one deputy yelled, "I'm tired of dealing with your (expletives); get down on your knees!" The second deputy then tased Cambre and all five deputies jumped on him, with one repeatedly hitting Cambre with a baton.

Cambre, his face swollen and blood running from near his ear down his neck, was then loaded onto a stretcher, the report said.

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No charges were filed against Cambre.

In his statement, Sheriff Smith said "a brief struggle--during which the individual was subdued with a Taser--resulted in the subject being taken into custody." Smith said a doctor had ordered Cambre to be taken into protective custody.

Investigators interviewed the deputies, reviewed their reports and interviewed witnesses before determining the deputies' actions were in compliance with both agency policy and their training, Smith said.

The Pearl River PD report named the deputies as Chris Harmon, Chad Melendez, Roger Gottardi, Jason Wilson and Cpl. Ryan Hopkins. Gottardi was among a number of deputies named in a recently dismissed federal lawsuit alleging deputies beat up a handcuffed motorist along Interstate 12 in 2006.

Cambre, who served as a military police officer during the Iraq War, declined this week to be interviewed by NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune.

He recently told WWL-TV and the New Orleans Advocate that he suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which makes him anxious and depressed. On Jan. 21, he posted, "I'm struggling over here" on Facebook, prompting someone to call police to check on him.

During the encounter with the deputies, one of the deputies eventually shined a flashlight in his face, Cambre told the news agencies.

"I took a couple of steps back and I look behind the shed and by the time I turned around, I mean, next thing I know I hear an asp coming out," Cambre said, referring to a collapsible police baton. One deputy then cursed him and the tasing ensued, he said.

"They roughed me up pretty good," he told WWL. "I had bruises from the top of my leg down to my knee. The bottom of my rib cage was all bruised up," he continued. "The side of my face from right about here all the way down was bruised and lacerated."

Parrish, the assistant fire chief, declined to discuss the incident Friday, saying it may still be under investigation or the subject of litigation.
According to a recent report from NPR, some Puerto Ricans who've gone to FEMA for help rebuilding their homes after Hurricane Maria are being denied funds because they can't prove that they own the damaged property. Their experiences are similar to those of Louisianians who were living in homes that their parents or grandparents had bought when the hurricanes of 2005 damaged or destroyed them. Not having papers to prove ownership hadn't been much of a problem for them until the Road Home program demanded documentation.

In Louisiana, a group of attorneys, many of them working pro bono, mobilized to help Louisianians establish clear title to their storm-damaged property. Louisiana Appleseed, part of a larger legal advocacy network throughout the United States, has been encouraging the Louisiana Legislature to make it easier for residents to get the documents they need to show ownership and encouraging residents to get their papers in order.

Even if no storms come, and even if nobody else is challenging the de facto owner's ownership, Louisiana Appleseed's executive director Christy Kane said March 22 that it's still a good idea to have documentation. "We need to move from an informal system to legal system to build wealth," she said. For all intents and purposes, a person might own a house. They might be paying the taxes and the insurance premiums. But for that person to use the house as an asset, she said, "it still has to be in their name."

Jose Lopez told NPR that 39 years ago, his grandfather, the foreman for a Puerto Rican dairy farm, asked the farm's owner if he could build a house on the edge of the farm for his divorced daughter, Lopez's mother. That's the house Lopez was living in when Maria made landfall on the island. "They say I have to justify why I don't have title to the house. But back then, when people made agreements, all that mattered was their word and a handshake."

Cynthia Caldero told NPR that FEMA had denied her four times, sending letters that read, "Assistance not approved because you were unable to prove that you owned the home at the time of the disaster." She and her husband built their house by hand, but they haven't been able to prove to the federal government's satisfaction that it's theirs. "I've already told my husband that if they deny me a fifth time," she told NPR, "I'm giving up. I'm not going to ask again."

Michael Byrne, the top FEMA official in Puerto Rico, told NPR that FEMA is trying to be both responsible and compassionate and that the agency is not "incentivizing no's. We're incentivizing doing whatever we can to help the family."

After reading about the frustrations so many Puerto Ricans are having, I wondered how much has changed in Louisiana. If, heaven forbid, a destructive storm made landfall in this state in 2018, would more people have their documentation in order?

"I feel like we haven't learned our lesson yet," Kane said. She said she can't prove her hunch with statistics, but that great numbers of people had problems proving ownership of their homes after the massive Baton Rouge flood, and that flood was less than two years ago. "Baton Rouge was a clear indicator that other cities are facing the same problems," Kane said.

Ten years ago, Malcolm Meyer, a real estate attorney who was trying to help more people get clear title, said that different rules for movable and immovable property made it harder for an heir to get a $50,000 house than the benefits from a $1 million life insurance policy. The laws governing successions have changed multiple times since then, Kane said. After lawmakers made it possible for immovable property to be legally transferred in a small succession proceeding, they have raised the maximum value of that property from $50,000 to $75,000 to $125,000.

For this legislative session, Sen. Eddie Lambert, R-Gonzales, wants to raise to $250,000 the maximum amount that can be transferred in a small succession proceeding.

While the people in Puerto Rico may be feeling frustrated at FEMA, Kane said that there was at least one big difference in the way FEMA responded to the Louisiana flooding in 2005 and the Louisiana flooding of 2016. After the Baton Rouge flood, she said, "they were much more willing to share info with the legal aid community who wanted to help." Those attorneys are now able to make public record requests for the people FEMA denied for lack of documentation and establish the necessary documents.

It doesn't always take a hurricane or a flood for these problems to become apparent, Kane said. Land is washing away in the coastal parishes, and people who live there may find themselves needing to prove that they owned land that's gone under. Not having the papers is "not a problem," Kane said, "till it's a problem."

Jarvis DeBerry is deputy opinions editor for NOLA.COM | The Times-Picayune. He can be reached at jdeberry@nola.com or at twitter.com/jarvisdeberry.
Opponents are worried about how school systems will collect lunchroom money, but the House Education Committee did the right thing Wednesday.

The committee passed Baton Rouge Rep. Patricia Smith's House Bill 284 to prevent public schools from shaming children who owe lunch money by making them wear wristbands or handstamps to show they are in debt or making them do chores to earn meals.

"The whole thing is we're trying not to stigmatize the kids, and that's the right thing to do," State Rep. Scott Simon, a Republican from Abita Springs, said in support of the bill. It is the right thing to do, but not every school seems to understand that.

Across the country, children have had their lunches thrown away in front of other students, their hands stamped to show they owe money and other punishments.

New Mexico passed a law forbidding those methods last year. Gov. John Bel Edwards is backing HB 284.

Although not widespread, some Louisiana schools are refusing to feed children who have an unpaid meal bill. Making sure children are fed shows basic decency, and it is important to their ability to learn.

Dr. Rachel Herdes, a pediatrician from Children's Hospital New Orleans, told the House committee that a school meal could be the one full meal some students eat that day. "No child should go a whole day without eating something nutritious," she said. Of course not.

Nor should they be punished because their parents have an outstanding debt for their meals.

Under HB 284, schools would be forbidden from withholding privileges from a child or requiring them to throw a meal away after it has been served. Schools would provide an alternative meal to a student who asks for one. The legislation calls for schools to notify parents directly about what is owed for meals, not to communicate through children.

There still could be consequences. A parent who fails to pay for 10 or more meals during a school year could be reported to the state Department of Children and Family Services if neglect is suspected.

Jeanie Donovan, policy director for the Louisiana Budget Project, said the legislation should not cause a significant amount of debt for schools because the issue is not pervasive in Louisiana. The state Education Department found that schools statewide denied 439 meals last year. That is a small number considering that there are more than 1,400 public schools and 700,000 students in Louisiana.

But for the children who were denied those meals, it is a big deal. Rep. Smith is right to try to get ahead on the issue. Other states have had egregious examples of children being shamed for lunch debt.

There will be no unpaid costs for some school districts. Congress approved a program in 2010 to allow schools with at least 40 percent low-income students to serve every child breakfast and lunch at no cost without having to do individual paperwork. School districts have to opt in to the program.

As of the 2016-17 school year, 78 percent of eligible Louisiana school districts were participating, according to the Food Research & Action Center. The state added more than 100,000 students to the program between 2016 and 2017, its report said.

Every Louisiana school that qualifies ought to participate. Not only would it help schools financially, but the program makes sure every child at a school can be fed without any stigma attached to a "free lunch."

Hunger is a chronic problem in Louisiana. One in four children here live in poverty. Many families have trouble making ends meet, even if their income isn't low enough to qualify for the federal free or reduced-cost school meal program.

Schools ought to be a place where every child can find nourishment.
Twelve years down the road, the depth and breadth to which the state went to bring sensational charges of rape against an opposition leader has been revealed by a son of a key state witness in the case that gripped the nation in 2006.

Now the son to the maid who testified against Dr Kizza Besigye in the notorious rape case wants government to pay for locking him up with his late mother and forcing her to lie in court. JOSEPH KIMBOWA brings you the story.

Kibuule shows a newspaper article published after his mother testified against Besigye

Besigye was sensationally accused of raping a one Joanita Kyakuwa twice; in 1997 and 1998, when the university student was living with his family in Luzira. It was into this scheme that Ayisha Kiguli was conscripted as a state witness.

The son, Kasimu Kibuule, says his mother was forced to spy after being planted at Besigyes home and later compelled to tell lies in court as a state witness. For this, she was allegedly promised a good life by a high-profile government personality, an undertaking which never came to fruition.

The 31-year-old father of three says his mother, Ayisha Kiguli, did everything asked of her but state agents connived to rip her off in a devious plot which tragically ended in Kigulis suspicious death in August 2006. He now wants to be paid because his mother was a state witness who died in government hands.

HOW IT STARTED

Kibuule says that at the burial of his father, Umaru Mandeevu Bumaali, in the early 1990s, a certain man told his mother that her husband had been a state operative. The man reportedly claimed that government wanted to take care of the family.

He then told Kiguli to go to Kampala and meet one Jajja Marita [Namayanja] who would take her to a high-ranking government official. Along with young Kibuule, Kiguli came to Kampala and met Jajja Marita, who took them to this gentleman linked to State House.

Around this time, former regime insider Besigye had fallen out with the government, and was nursing presidential ambitions  which made him a prime target for surveillance.

After some prepping, Kiguli was somehow planted at Besigyes home in Luzira as a maid. She reported directly to Jajja Marita.

Since she was a spy, and uneducated, she had no official appointment letter or salary; but she did the job, Kibuule says.

It is partly because there is no record of her engagement that Kibuule says he has found it hard to lodge a claim for compensation.

ROGUE SPY

But towards the 2001 election campaign, in which Besigye first challenged Museveni for the presidency, Kiguli became close to the colonels family and eventually switched sides.

She told me that she was the one that saved Besigye from state capture after the 2001 elections. She learnt of a plot to abduct him and immediately told him to leave the country, Kibuule says.

Before fleeing into exile, Besigye took Kiguli to his Kasangati farm house where she remained in his employ as a caretaker. After completing primary education in 2002, Kibuule says he found his way to Kasangati to live with his mother. He enrolled at Tender Talent Magnet School, Kasangati, in 2003 for secondary education.

But then state operatives located his mother. They first claimed that some State House official wanted to talk to her about Besigye. But Kiguli told them to leave her alone. The next time they came to abduct her.

In 2004, one day I returned from school and I was told my mother had been abducted by men in plainclothes. They told me the men came wielding pistols, grabbed her and put her in a car. I was left confused because I could not call anyone, Kibuule says.

Four days later, Kibuule says he was abducted by the same men, riding in a silver Toyota Land Cruiser Prado with police number plates.

I later found out that the car belonged to Elizabeth Kutesa, the then director of Criminal Investigations [Department], he says.

When he approached the car, the occupants lowered the tinted windows.

I saw my mother. She was sitting in the middle with three men around her. She called me in and I obliged, he says.

Kibuule says Kutesa was not in the car but she would later, in January 2006, testify against Besigye. The car then sped off and ended up in the Naalya housing estate. They were taken to a house where they found two men dressed in military fatigues.

SAFE HOUSE

Mother and son were led into a tiny room with one bed and two mattresses. This would turn out to be their home for the next two years. They never went back to Kasangati.

When they left us in there, my mother opened up to me and told me everything about her spy work and how she had been recruited by [a State House official], says Kigulis only son.

He says she told him how they had tortured her into accepting to testify against Besigye if she wanted to save the lives of her four children: Rukia Nansikombi, Kasimu Kibuule, Salima Nakibuule and Mastulla Nakibuule.

The plan was to frustrate Besigye, who was scheduled to return to the country the following year to run for president in the 2006 elections.

As part of the state strategy, several cases would be slapped against Besigye, tying him down in court instead of campaigning. They also wanted to taint his reputation. This is where Kiguli came in. Her role would be to tell the world that Besigye is a rapist.

She told me, my son, I am going to do it [say Besigye is a rapist], but it is not true. Please dont hate me, just understand my predicament, he says.

For the following two years, the two were held in this safe house and were not allowed to get out or communicate with anyone. They would, however, eat well and read newspapers every day. He says Kutesa occasionally visited the house and stopped at the gate to talk to his mother, but he never met her in person.

Kibuule and his mother eventually turned into Born-Again Christians, to have some faith and hope.

When they realised that we were cooperating, they even allowed me to go back to school and they took me to the boarding section of Muyenga High. But they kept monitoring me, he says.

When Besigye returned to a rapturous welcome in October 2005, he asked his lawyer, Sam Kalega Njuba (RIP), to petition court to compel government to produce Kiguli dead or alive, Kibuule says.

In court, state lawyers said the person they had was called Aisha Nakiguli, not Aisha Kiguli.

This was a ploy by [a state agent] and a government lawyer (names withheld). One day I saw that lawyer come to the safe house and I overheard them discussing changing my mothers name, and I think they forced her to sign it, he says.

The habeas corpus petition collapsed at that point and Kiguli and her son remained under state witness protection.

It was around the same time that the state charged Besigye with rape. Kiguli (now Nakiguli) eventually testified against him.

Before testifying, she told me that she went to Entebbe with Elizabeth Kutesa and was reassured that if she did a good job, she would get unlimited security, a house in the city and another one in the village, start a cattle farm and educate her children, he says.

But after this case, which was dismissed by High court judge John Bosco Katutsi as a crude and amateurish attempt to ruin the image of an otherwise upstanding man, and the declaration of Museveni as victor in the 2006 elections, things started to change.

Among others, Katutsi had also poured scorn on Kutesas purported testimony, noting how she had lied that police began investigating the alleged Kyakuwa rape in June 2001, which was a month before the complainant had even reported the alleged crime!

Kibuule says his fees continued to be paid and he would occasionally receive pocket money, but other benefits stopped coming.

He alleges that the state agent and Gideon Waiswa Isabirye got some money and bought a plot of land (measuring 40x100 feet) from Zedekia Ssentamu Lutakome at Shs 5 million in Nakwero, Gayaza, where they started building a two-bedroom house.

My mother told me about the house and I even left school and visited the house, he says.

After they complained that the plot was too small, the state operative organised for an extension of the plot. They paid Shs 1 million in cash and promised to pay the balance (Shs 700,000) soon. They never paid!

The construction, however, stopped at the wall-plate.

The operatives became hostile and even threw Kiguli out of the Naalya safe house, dumping her in an incomplete two-room house in the neighbourhood.

My mother called me to this house and I could not believe it. There was only one bed, one mattress, one cup and one plate. That is all. The house was unfinished but they wanted us to shift there, he recalls.

MYSTERIOUS DEATH

Soon after, Kibuule received a call [he had used his upkeep money to buy a phone] from his mother informing him that she was sick and admitted at Kadic hospital in Bukoto [where they used to get medical care].

He went to see her and she looked okay. But the following day, Kibuule received another call from his aunt, Betty Namukasa, notifying him that his mother had been taken to the Joint Clinical Research Centre in Mengo.

Kibuule found his mother on life support.

She told me my son, if you can run, please go. Things have changed. These people want us dead. I have been poisoned and I am not going to survive. Just say the last prayer for me and run, Kibuule remembers his mothers last words.

According to Kibuule, there was a white doctor who claimed his mothers medicine had been tampered with and a poisonous substance given to her. Kiguli died that night.

The next morning, I found her belly had protruded and she had white foam coming from her nose and mouth, Kibuule says.

According to Kibuule, the body was taken to Mbuya [Army Hospital] and thereafter to the village, Nabyewanga, Nkoni, near Masaka, for burial.

I insisted on moving with them. They never allowed us to announce my mothers death and the military financed all burial expenses, he says.

Shockingly, when Kibuule was given his mothers death certificate, it read that the deceased was called Kamya Marita, and her next of kin was Betty Kamya, people unknown to Kibuules family.

Kibuule displaying his mothers death certificate with wrong names and age

Although Kigulis voters card shows that she was born in 1969, her death certificate indicated that she had died on August 30, 2006, aged 41, implying she was born 1965.

On the certificate signed by Dr A Buruku of Joint Clinical Research Centre, the cause of death was lymphoma and respiratory failure. The other conditions leading to her death were moderate anemia and underlying immune suppression (HIV/ Aids).

Everything they wrote there was a lie. My mother did not have Aids as far as I know. I am sure she was poisoned, Kibuule insists.

According to Kibuule, Kigulis father was so shocked by his daughters death that he suffered a stroke which killed him a few years later. Kigulis mother is still alive, but lives in confusion and fear and vowed never to talk about her daughter again.

When The Observer visited her recently, she looked frail, under the care of two grandchildren and wept when the matter was mentioned.

My son, Kaweesi [Andrew Felix] had a lot of guards and guns and he was killed. People are being killed every day. But look at me. Why do you want to reawaken those things? I am 80 years old and sick. I dont want any riches or prominence. Just leave that matter alone. I lost my daughter and nothing will bring her back. Why do you want to risk the lives of my grandchildren? she pleaded.

NEVER GIVE UP

Since he was in S4 and preparing to sit final exams, Kibuule went back to school after his mothers burial. His other siblings stayed with his grandmother. After his O-level, he also joined his grandmother in Masaka (now Lwengo) in their two-room house and chose to live a quiet life.

I sold my fathers land and I enrolled for A-level at St Josephs SS Nkoni, he recalls.

But as he entered S6 in 2008, his mothers tormentors came calling again. He says the agent (name withheld) informed one of his aunties that he wanted to take Kibuule for further education and that he would pick him on Wednesday. He then called Kibuule and told him he was coming for him that very day (Monday).

When I saw the contradictions in this mans statements, I sensed danger. I immediately ran out of school and went into hiding, he says.

The agent, indeed, came to Kibuules home and even went to the school but did not find him. Kibuule hid for some time before returning to complete S6 after learning that the chase had ended.

But before this incident, Kibuule had contacted one Isabirye, a CID officer, and questioned him about the compensation he was promised.

Isabirye told me that the only thing I could do was to sell the plot of land they had bought for us and use the money for something else. When I called the agent for the paperwork, he told me he was no longer in charge of our case and I should go to State House for help, he says.

Kibuule then met the area chairman of Nakwero B, Lumano Mukasa, where the plot is located. He was shocked to learn that the land had been sold at just Shs 4 million.

Kibuule says he has tried to reach the concerned government officials in vain. He tried to go through the Masaka RDCs office in 2009 but was referred to Captain Abbey Mukwaya, a senior presidential advisor sitting at Okello House in Kampala.

When he met Mukwaya, he promptly threw him out of his office and threatened to have him jailed if he ever saw him again. By resorting to the media, Kibuule wants one thing, to be given what is due to him.

He is also considering legal action against government because his mother, a state witness, died in their custody. When The Observer tried to reach the state agent on his known contact, a male voice said it was a wrong number as soon as we mentioned the name.

Elizabeth Kutesa couldnt be reached for an interview for this story. She now lives in France, working for Interpol on secondment by government.

BESIGYE SPEAKS

The Observer contacted Dr Besigye by email about Kiguli and he said this in reply:

(Hajjat) Aisha was introduced to me by Marita Namayanja (commonly known as Mama Chaama) who I stayed with since 1983, during the war, up to 1986. Aisha worked and lived with us in our Luzira home from about 1994 to 2001.

When in 2000, I decided to contest against Museveni, and refused advice from Marita to seek support of witchdoctors, she turned against me and joined Mr Musevenis campaign.

She then started to put pressure on Aisha to help her do some things within our home, which she resisted. When the pressure became unbearable, I shifted her to the farm in Kasangati. This is where she stayed until she was arrested and tortured, when I was in exile in South Africa.

I also learnt what happened to her during the rape trial. I never got to meet or talk to her before her (mysterious) death.

Aisha, herself, testified in court (under oath) about the deals she was given or promised by then Director CID, ACP Elizabeth Kutesa, for her to testify against me.

Thats all I can say about the matter.

When asked about Kigulis family living in fear since her death, Besigye said: One of our leaders [in FDC] told me about it during the Kyotera district Woman MP election last year. However, I havent been able to meet any of the family members.

THEY OWE ME

Interviewed for a comment, Mzee Zedekia Lutakome Ssentamu said, I remember those men (the agents). They bought the kibanja in 2006 and they still owe me Shs 700,000.

Then before I knew it, they had sold the kibanja to someone else, he added.

Lumano Mukasa, the chairman of Nakwero A, said in an interview: Those things happened a long time ago. I remember two men were brought to me by a man called Kasule who had identified a plot of land being sold by Mzee Zedekia Lutakome. The two men looked like police officers, but the one whose name I remember was called Waiswa or Isabirye.

I learnt that they were buying the land on behalf of a woman who had been working at Besigyes home. I never saw this woman but at least her son later came claiming to be the rightful owner of the land.

As a chairman, I signed off to the transaction after Mzee Zedekia agreed to sell. I dont remember how much they bought the kibanja for. They immediately started building a house and we were told money was coming from State House.

When the house reached the wall plate, they stopped. Then I heard that the plot had been sold to a businessman in Kampala. I did not witness the second transaction and those people concluded it in Kampala. I just saw the son of that said Muslim businessman come and finish the house and he had documents that the plot had been sold to him by the two men.

Then Kibuule came claiming the land but did not have any supporting documents; and I think the other policemen had primarily bought the land in their names. So, I could not help him.

WHAT JUSTICE KATUTSI SAID ABOUT NAKIGULI

The March 6, 2006 ruling by Justice John Bosco Katutsi that acquitted Besigye of the rape charges all but confirms Kibuules assertions. Here is what Katutsi partly said about Nakiguli (Kiguli).

I now turn to the testimony of Aisha Nakiguli (PW2) which prosecution sought to corroborate the evidence of the complainant. Here is a witness who twice refused to talk to the police about the accused.

She is arrested and taken to an unknown place, which she thought was CMI. I take CMI to mean the Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence. This is what she stated in her evidence:

That day I was interrogated. I did not say anything. The following morning, I was taken somewhere, I think CMI.

It is of note that as she described her ordeal, she broke down and cried

After being humiliated into submission, Aisha was rewarded, as it were, with a house in the prime area of Nalya and a poultry business.

In justification of the reward, the learned DPP submitted. again to Aisha, to tackle the issue of the assistance and facilitation she was givenI realised from cross-examination of this witness by the defence [as] they were imputing, insinuating that Aisha was giving evidence to this court because she had been facilitated with chicken business and a [house]; correct, the witness was given chicken business and a housethey were (the police) duty bound to resettle her.

Be that as it may and despite the oratory of the learned Deputy DPP, and while I do not go to the full length of imputing fraud on the part of police, I am with respect forced to observe that the circumstances of this case seem to me to suggest a course of conduct by the police to secure evidence using methods that seem to amount to an abuse of process. Let us call a spade a spade.

The largeness of the property offered to Aisha, the inadequacy of the alleged reasons for offering it and this in spite of the oratory of the learned Deputy DPP raises a lot of doubts as to the real intentions of the State in offering that property to Aisha Nakiguli. Can such evidence be free from suspicion?

It is tainted. It is disgraceful and unworthy of credit.
A chicken from the Ratchaburi Province in central Thailand has been hailed as a true warrior for surviving more than a week after being decapitated. It has now been adopted by monks who are feeding it by pumping food into its throat with a syringe.

The headless chicken first made news headlines earlier this week, after photos and videos of it went viral on Thai social media, but no one actually expected it to survive so long without a head. Facebook user Noppong Thitthammo was the first to share the story of the resilient bird, along with photos showing the mangled remains of its neck. He wrote that a vet in the Mueang Ratchaburi district of Ratchaburi Province had been caring for it, feeding it by dropping food down its neck and giving it antibiotics to prevent the infection of its wounds.

The animal has its life. If it wants to live, we feed it, Supakadee Arun Thong, the vet who had adopted the headless bird, told Thai reporters.

Nobody seems to know how the chicken lost its head, although many suspect it must have been attacked by an animal predator. Regardless of the circumstances in which it lost its head, everyone agrees that the decapitation should have proved fatal, but the bird refuses to die. And not only is it still alive, but it can also stand and walk around aimlessly.

At first, most people thought that the whole thing was a hoax, and that the photos of the headless chicken had been photoshopped, but then a video of it started doing the rounds online, and western news outlets started picking up the story as well.

Believe it or not, this is not the first time chicken to survive without a head. Mike the headless chicken was also a media sensation between 1945 and 1947, surviving a whopping 18 months. He too was believed to be a hoax, until his owner took him to the University of Utah in Salt Lake City for confirmation.

These rare cases of survival are apparently linked to their unique anatomy. The chickens brain is located in their skull at an angle, so if they are beheaded to high up the neck, the rear part of the brain, which controls automatic functions like breathing, can remain intact. So if the jugular somehow doesnt rupture, causing the bird to eventually bleed to death, the bird can apparently survive even without a head.

After seeing that the headless chicken in her care didnt feel like dying anytime soon, Supakadee Arun Thong started wondering what would come of it.



Who will take him and care for him? He will need lifelong care. I have to admit that this chicken is a true warrior with a very tough heart, she told reporters.

Luckily, monks at a temple in Ratchaburi Province were more than happy to adopt the headless chicken and are reportedly feeding it food and water by pumping them down its throat with a syringe.


Madain Saleh

APCO Worldwide is repping Saudi Arabia's Royal Commission for Al-Ula and its effort to line up informational meetings officials from American museums, arts, cultural and civic institutions.

Established in 2017, the Commission's goal is to spotlight the natural and cultural significance of Al-Ula, a settlement founded in the 6th century in northwest Saudia Arabia.

The region also is home to Madain Saleh, archeological site that is on UNESCO's World Heritage list.

The Saudi's believe Al-Ula has "the potential to be a beacon for the Arab world, a gateway that welcomes local and international visitors to experience Saudi Arabia's unique culture, and the stories built on ancient civilizations," according to the Commission's LinkedIn page.

The Commission authorized APCO on March 20 to begin work on its outreach.


David Pecker with Donald Trump

American Media CEO David Pecker may be using his ties with President Trump as a bargaining chip as he considers expanding his business into Saudi Arabia, according to the NewYork Times. The story notes the presence of Kacy Grine, a French businessman who has brokered deals between Saudi investors and companies in France, Senegal and the U.S., at a July White House meeting that included Pecker and Trump. American Media has put out a glossy magazine, The New Kingdom, that extols the virtues of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and his country. The magazine, which includes an interview with Grine (who is pictured posing with Trump in the Oval Office), is being sold at outlets including Walmart. The National Enquirer, an American Media publication, has a long history of favorable coverage of Trump. In addition to giving Trump the first presidential endorsement the paper ever made, the Enquirer also paid a $150,000 kill fee to ensure that former Playboy model Karen McDougals account of her alleged affair with the President was not published. Peckers ties with the Saudis include a January attempt to secure Saudi funding for the potential acquisition of Time magazine.



Laura Ingraham

Laura Ingraham has formally apologized for a tweet mocking Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg, but she only did so after the success of a campaign by Hogg that called for advertisers on Ingrahams Fox News show to pull their ads. TripAdvisor, Wayfair, Hulu, Nutrish, Nestle and Stitch Fix all agreed to remove their ads, and Expedia said it had also pulled its spots from the program. Ingraham then jumped back onto Twitter to post her apology. On reflection, in the spirit of Holy Week, I apologize for any upset my tweet caused him or any of the brave victims of Parkland, her tweet says. Hogg was unimpressed by the apology. Shes only apologizing after a third of her advertisers pulled out and I think its really disgusting the fact that she basically tried promoting her show after apologizing  or apologizing to me, Hogg said in a CNN interview.



Jacob Brogan

Jacob Brogan is coming on board at the Washington Post as an editor for the papers Outlook/PostEverything digital team. Brogan currently hosts the Slate podcast Working, in addition to writing about culture, politics, and the natural world for the site., He has also written for publications including The New Yorker, Smithsonian and The New Republic, covering TV, literature, emerging technologies and Internet history, among other topics. He has also served as an editor at the think tank New America. Brogan will join the Post on April 9.


Cindy Riccio

They say you always remember your first placement. As a young public relations professional, your first signified a major magazine placement you finally and painstakingly, after months  if not years  of pitching, secured for your client.

For me it was Vogue, which was the equivalent of winning gold for my client, Argyle Diamonds of Australia. The sheer influence and reach of Vogue set the standard for fashion, beauty and lifestyle media coverage, and it was  and remains  at the top of every clients wish list. And while Vogues staying power continues, today we operate within an industry that is constantly evolving.

With technology driving our lives, it wasnt surprising to hear that Teen Vogue gave up its imprint to go digital, or that social influencers are securing front-row seats at fashion shows and new product mega reveals. As for my staff today, their firsts look quite different: they exist in real time with social influencers who have millions of followers.

Superinfluencer Arielle Charnas has proven this paradigm with her recent Nordstrom deal for a standalone Something Navy collection set to launch this fall. The Elevated Basic collection will feature a line of apparel, jewelry and accessories priced between $49-$399. Bag Snob co-founder Tina Craig started her career with a passion for handbags before becoming an influencer in her own right after launching a bag collection with DKNY and landing articles in Womens Wear Daily.

The news of Teen Vogues print shuttering created a swirl of buzz, but it was a wickedly smart move for the publication to recalibrate its format, platform and voice to reach digital-dependent Millennials. For PR professionals, technology challenges us each day to pivot our strategies in order to deliver strong ROI and engagement for our clients as the evolution of influence has changed the core tenets of communication.

Another case in point is the inevitable demise of Time in light of Time Inc.s purchase by Meredith Corporation. This structural shift is a direct correlation with the rise in digital marketing and advertising. Where people had once received latest news, beauty and style tips from emerging business brands, now theyre directing their attention to a superfluity of digital networks that induce content from profitable constituents. This evolution, promoted by venture capitalists, depict the ineludible migration from print to digital networks and platforms.

As we counsel our clients on the influx and impact of emerging channels and platforms along with tutorials about the influencers and voices that are critical to a brands marketing success, we find an eagerness for them to examine their communications efforts in a bright new light thats all-inclusive and open minded to the reduction of print editorial.

For lifestyle product marketers, were customizing and characterizing our messages to an audience of influencers that reaches far beyond editors, writers, producers and researchers. WWD has said that these influencers are the new sales associates, and as weve seen, if they believe in your product, their endorsement  paid or otherwise  can be a powerful sales tool. We now have exciting web personalities whose blogs, Vlogs, Instagrams and Snaps deliver critical access to reach potential customers.

These influencers are self-proclaimed fans of fashion, beauty, food and everything else, stylists who have the ear of A-list celebrities, former journalists who have re-imagined their voice and are using new platforms and channels to share their opinions. While they continuously push out content, many are approached for magazine features, TV talk and reality shows and ad campaigns. Even my own team members are creating their own blogs as a channel to share their product passions and style imprints. So, as we navigate the ever-evolving digital deities, the greater challenge we face is #howtostandout with real time news, noise and queries to Alexa.

Amidst this shifting media landscape, Ive found that two truths remain: you must have an interesting and authentic story to tell; and all those influencers require content. The best stories pique curiosity, take a stand, solve a problem, fulfill an unmet need, offer a new perspective, inspire awareness, challenge conventional wisdom and most importantly, compel others to tell your story. Whether youre talking to a journalist, producer, blogger, stylist, celebrity or BFF to a star, you can #standout on the strength of a story thats customized to reach your customer of choice. Stories can be told with smart copy, vibrant visuals, 140 characters, #great news, emotion, an invitation and good reason.

So, as the evolution of influence evolves, well continue to work with our clients to tell interesting stories to interesting people and along the way, continue to help our staff members celebrate their firsts.

***

Cindy Riccio is president and founder of New York-based agency CRC.
New Managers

BULLETIN: Australian hedge fund veterans launch Asian funds management business, A.W. Jones launches A.W. Jones Private Advisors, A&P Emerging Manager Index

Australian hedge fund veterans launch Asian funds management business

LSL Partners, a new boutique funds management company, has launched in Sydney today. It will be constructing alternative investment products focusing on the Asian region for Australian and international investors. Based in Sydney, LSL Partners plan to launch a Hong Kong office in 2019.

Its Principals are Timothy Cheung, Kim Ivey, Chung Ip and David Gray. Timothy Cheung (CIO) and Chung Ip (Head of Research) met at the Wharton Business School and have joined ranks after successful international careers in hedge funds, private equity and asset management. They gained experience at top-tier financial firms including, JP Morgan, Colonial First State, Accel-KKR and Perpetual Investments. Both Timothy and Chung are of Chinese heritage and were educated in the West.

Kim Ivey, (CEO & Chairman), a pioneer of the Australian alternative investment industry states: "LSL Partners will offer investors innovative choices when investing in Asia. With the right people and a deep understanding of the region, there are many reasons why a skilled investment business can, and should be established in Australia, with links into Asia. LSL Partners is purposefully built to fill this need. Right now, many Australian and offshore investors are underexposed to Asian investment opportunities."

"We are bringing a strong team to work on these opportunities. Along with Timothy and Chung, David Gray, a seventeen year veteran of UBS's prime broking business in Australia and Asia, is our COO and brings twenty-five years of institutional operational experience to the business. The Board is also augmented with three very experienced and capable independent directors."

LSL Partners' first product, The Fury Fund, will be an Asian long/short equity fund, investing in Asian public markets with an absolute return focus and an expected overweighting to China and Hong Kong. ......................

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The half brother of Portland Trail Blazer star Damian Lillard was shot in the Clackamas Town Center parking lot Thursday after getting into an argument with two other men, according to authorities and news reports.

The shooting was reported around 9 p.m near a Macy's Home store, the Clackamas County Sheriff's Office said. According to KATU News, Jahrell Lillard, 20, was wounded in the incident and later taken to a hospital.

It's not immediately clear if the injured man knew the other two people, the sheriff's office said. No arrests have been announced.

The argument occurred as the three were leaving the mall. At one point, the wounded man was shot at by one or both of the other two men, the sheriff's office said.

Cars parked in the lot were also hit. The injured man went into the Macy's store and collapsed, the sheriff's office said. He was taken to a hospital in the area. His condition has not been released by the sheriff's office.

The two accused in the shooting ran away afterward.

-- Everton Bailey Jr.

ebailey@oregonian.com

503-221-8343; @EvertonBailey
A driver traveling the wrong way down Interstate 5 near Lake Oswego was critically injured early Friday after she clipped the side of one tractor trailer and smashed head-on into another, Oregon State Police said.

Sydney Lopez Martinez, 25, was airlifted to OHSU Hospital following the wild crash that also involved a third semi-truck, police said.

Sgt. Yvette Shephard, a state police spokeswoman, said authorities believe alcohol was a contributing factor in the crash, which occurred just before 2 a.m. None of the other drivers was injured.

Martinez, of Cornelius, was heading south in the northbound lanes of I-5 near Kruse Way when truck operator James Cropper, 66, saw the headlights of her black Mazda M6 heading right for him, he told police.

Cropper, a Gervais resident, swerved his white Volvo tractor trailer to avoid a collision and sideswiped a red Freightliner driven by 29-year-old Victor Amaro of California, Shephard said.

Martinez clipped the rear tires of Cropper's truck and then careened head-on into a white Freightliner operated by 30-year-old Dilpreet Singh of California, police said.

The Mazda and the Singh's Freightliner came to rest on a grassy shoulder, police said.

-- Shane Dixon Kavanaugh

skavanaugh@oregonian.com

503-294-7632 || @shanedkavanaugh
The Oregonian/OregonLive

Some chefs are expansion-minded, widening their repertoire of dishes with each new restaurant in their growing empires.

Nongs Khao Man Gai owner Narumol Poonsukwattana is doing the opposite.

At her new brick-and-mortar restaurant, Poonsukwattana, who everyone knows as Nong, will serve just one dish. And as you might have guessed, that dish is khao man gai, the deceptively simple, obsessively perfected chicken and rice that took Nong from anonymous cook to a winning appearance on reality show Chopped and features in every major food magazine in America.

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The Oregonian/OregonLive

In a conversation earlier this month, the new mom said her new restaurant would not replicate the five-dish menu found at her shuttered second cart near Portland State University and her first brick-and-mortar restaurant on Southeast Ankeny Street. Instead, the hip space has the same focus as her original cart at Southwest 10th Avenue and Alder Street, a location that could be forced to move any day by a proposed 11-story hotel.

If she had to do it all over again, she would have stuck to one dish all along, Nong said.

"It just makes sense to me to stick to one dish and do it really well," she says.

(Fans of the restaurants Coca Cola-braised pork and peanut sauce chicken dont need to worry -- the Southeast Portland restaurant serves cocktails, and per OLCC regulations, needs to maintain five distinct dishes in order to keep its liquor license.)

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The Oregonian/OregonLive

Nong arrived in Oregon in the early 2000s with $70 in her pocket, down from $300 after splurging on a bottle of Chanel perfume (she still has the bottle today). After working as a waitress at Thai restaurants in Beaverton, she landed a cooking job at Pok Pok, all the while perfecting her recipe for khao man gai in her free time. Eventually, she bought an old food cart off Craigslist for $1,300, only to find it was stuffed to the ceiling with kettle corn.

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The Oregonian/OregonLive

Khao man gai hails from Hainan, an island off the southern coast of China, but its popularity has spread through many parts of Southeast Asia, particularly Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand.

For her traditional version, Nong poaches free range chickens, reserving bones for stock, fat to infuse the jasmine rice and skin to become crunchy curls of fried skin, a must order (unless theyve run out for the day).

The chicken is served either on a plate or wrapped in thick white paper with cucumbers, cilantro, a soup made from chicken stock and winter squash and a bowl of Nongs khao man gai sauce, a sweet ginger-garlic sauce meant for pouring over everything. For the curious, a shelf stable version of that sauce is available at grocery stores throughout Portland.



After passing its health inspection Friday, Nong says her new restaurant will hold a soft opening Saturday at lunch with an official opening Sunday, April 1 in the short-lived Heart Pizza space at 417 S.W. 13th Ave.

-- Michael Russell

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The Army Corps of Engineers reported late Wednesday that 474 gallons of oil is missing and could be in the Columbia River downstream of The Dalles Dam.

Employees at the dam said the oil disappeared from a turbine that generates electricity from running water, but they don't know where it went or when it went missing. It could have occurred anywhere from Feb. 7 to March 22.

There's also a chance the spill ended up within the facility without entering the river, said Tom Conning, a corps spokesman. Staffers have not spotted any oil sheens, though it's possible the oil simply mixed in with the moving river.

The Army Corps notifies the Columbia River fishing tribes, some environmental groups, as well as the state of Washington, when these spills occur. Sometimes the leak is as small as a tablespoon, sometimes it is a few hundred gallons.

If the oil is in the water, Conning said he didn't know whether there would be any attempt to contain the oil.

"It probably depends on several different factors, but I don't know the specific response," Conning said.

Curt Hart, spokesman for the Washington Department of Ecology, said the oil would be near impossible to clean up, because it quickly disperses and then dissipates.

The turbine leaked a light mineral oil that would spread quickly over the surface of the water, suffocating life below it, Hart said.

Washington, which oversees The Dalles Dam, considers anything more than 25 gallons to be a significant amount of oil. Hart said 474 gallons is quite large, and while not catastrophic, any amount of oil in the river causes damage to fish and other life.

The state cannot demand the Corps pay a fine the way it would penalize a private company or public utility, because the Corps is under the military department and has sovereign immunity.

However, the state wishes the spills would stop.

"It happens with more frequency than we would like," Hart said. "For us, our first goal is to prevent spills from happening in the first place. There's really no oil spill that's an acceptable oil spill."

Lauren Goldberg, attorney for Columbia Riverkeepers, said that bigger spills happen more often than they should. Last year, 1,600 gallons of oil was spilled at the Lower Monumental Dam on the Snake River in Washington, which connects to the Columbia River.

"The Army Corps clearly can't control oil spills from the dams, which is why the Corps needs to start using eco-friendly oil," Goldberg said. "If oil spills happen, let's make sure it's not harmful, toxic oils like the Army Corps' history on the Snake River."

The Army Corps is supposed to decide soon whether to switch to less environmentally damaging oils in its operations, after a study it conducted as part of a settlement with the Riverkeepers.

The settlement also called for the Army Corps to apply for water quality permits from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which could require the Army Corps to monitor or reduce pollution. The Corps has, but has not received the permits yet.

"People care deeply about the Columbia River and are investing in strong salmon runs now and into the future and the Army Corps needs to take responsibility for its oil spills," Greenberg said.

Tribal fishing crews have not reported seeing oil in the river, said Chuck Hudson of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission. As salmon season begins, tribal members who make their livelihood fishing the river are especially concerned about real or perceived effects of oil on fish and water quality.

Hudson said the tribes' involvement in clean-up is determined on a case-by-case basis.

The fish commission alerts fishing crews, as well as people who live along the river year-round and during fishing season, when there are spills or the risk of one. This is to ensure they are extra cautious about the fish they eat and sell.

"We want, of course, data first and then assurances that the fish they are catching and consuming safe," Hudson said.

-- Molly Harbarger

mharbarger@oregonian.com

503-294-5923

@MollyHarbarger
Here are our picks for theater, classical music performances and visual arts events for March 30-April 5.

"The Very Hungry Caterpillar Show"

Oregon Children's Theatre presents a mashup of four Eric Carle stories for preschoolers, including this very popular one about a young insect on an eating spree. The hour-long show features a whopping 75 puppets working with the human cast. 2 and 5 p.m. Saturday, 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. Sunday, March 31-May 13, Winningstad Theatre, 1111 S.W. Broadway. $14-$28, octc.org or 503-228-9571.

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Portraits from Fazal Sheikh's "Common Ground" exhibit at Portland Art Museum.

Portland Photo Month

The eighth annual Portland Photo Month this April features a range of exhibits and artists talks. Here's a sampler:

For more information about Portland Photo Month exhibits and events, visit photolucida.org or call 503-317-2083.

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(Courtesy of Snowman Foundation)

Ten Grands

Michael Allen Harrison's annual fundraiser for music education is back. This year's edition of pianists playing 10 grand pianos features several young composers as well as Grammy nominee Julianne Johnson-Weiss on vocals. Proceeds go to Harrison's Snowman Foundation. 7 p.m. Saturday, March 31, Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 S.W. Broadway. Tickets start at $25, snowmanfoundation.org or 503-746-1080.

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(Courtesy of White Bird)

Stephen Petronio Company

This popular New York company returns to Portland with works from Petronio's "Bloodlines" project, which pays homage to Trisha Brown and other postmodern dancers who've influenced him. They include Yvonne Rainer, whose "Trio A with Flags," featuring dancers interacting with images of the Star-Spangled Banner, will be part of the show. "It's not anti-American in any way but it's fun," said Paul Jaffe of White Bird, the show's presenter. Pro tip: The work contains nudity. 7:30 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, April 5-7, Newmark Theatre, 1111 S.W. Broadway. Tickets start at $26, whitebird.org or 503-245-1600.

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Butoh performer Yumiko Yoshioka. (Courtesy of Water in the Desert)

Butoh College Performance Series

The dance-theater art form known as butoh originated in Japan in the 1950s and has been evolving ever since. Several women butoh pioneers will present their work in a performance series, "The Future is Female," which the Portland arts nonprofit Water in the Desert is presenting at 8 p.m. each Wednesday in April. The festival will also include two student performances. Yumiko Yoshioka, April 4; Maureen Fleming, April 11; Mizu Desierto and Anastazia Aranaga, April 18; Degenerate Art Ensemble, April 25; student performances, 7 p.m. April 22 and 29, Headwaters Theatre, 55 N.E. Farragut St. $15-$25, witd.org and at the door.

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Lynne Woods Turner, "Untitled"

"Flower(s) in Concrete"

The current group show of small-scale work at Fourteen 30 Contemporary gives an impression of quiet airiness. Leonie Guyer, a San Francisco-based artist, paints on tablet-sized slabs of marble, her spare, geometric shapes recalling the forms of Cycladic sculptures. The Portland-based painter Lynne Woods Turner's minimalist canvases are a whisper of pencil lines drawn over neutral backgrounds and shapes painted in oil. Wayne Smith, also based in San Francisco, draws tight ink grids on blocks of hardwood, his meticulous lines in full harmony with the underlying wood grain, which, counterintuitively, is accentuated rather than obscured. --Briana Miller, For The Oregonian/OregonLive

Noon-5 p.m. Friday-Saturday and by appointment through April 22, Fourteen30 Contemporary, 1501 S.W. Market St. Free, fourteen30.com or 503-236-1430.

***

If you would like your event to be considered for coverage, email the details to fineartsbestbets@oregonian.com.
A member of Portland's Historic Landmarks Commission did not recuse herself from a discussion about an affordable housing development proposed across the street from her Northwest Portland home.

Instead, Commissioner Wendy Chung -- who, like all of the landmarks commissioners, serves in a volunteer capacity -- argued to shrink the development proposed at 1727 N.W. Hoyt St., which she said was out of scale with the immediate neighborhood.

Chung, a neighborhood activist who was appointed to the commission in 2016 by then-Mayor Charlie Hales, appears to have met her legal obligation by twice disclosing a potential conflict of interest.

She's also taken a harder stance on the size of the project than her fellow commissioners. And underlining the awkward position Chung has put herself in is the fact that her husband, Tony Schwartz, testified against the project at a hearing where Chung was sitting as a commissioner.

In an interview, Chung said it wasn't clear what effect development on the site could have on the value of her condominium and that her input was consistent with positions she's previously taken on the commission.

The Historic Landmarks Commission, and a sibling board, the city Design Commission, wield a great deal of influence in the design and size of buildings in certain parts of the city. In this case, the landmarks commission gets to weigh in because the proposal is in the Alphabet Historic District, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

On the site near Chung's home, Northwest Housing Alternatives has proposed to build an affordable housing development aimed at seniors and low-wage workers. The plan would preserve the historic Buck-Prager Building on the site, which was built in 1918 as the Women's Hospital of Portland and is recognized as a contributing structure to the larger historic district.

Input from the entirety of the Historic Landmarks Commission has led the architects of the Northwest Housing Alternatives project to reduce its size from six to 5 stories, reducing the number of affordable units by 16, to 149.

That change satisfied two commissioners -- including Commissioner Matthew Roman, an architect who leases an office on an adjacent block -- while two more said they still had concerns about the development's proposed scale. Chung went further, saying the proportion of the development was incompatible with nearby historic structures.

State conflict-of-interest rules require officials to recuse themselves from decisions from which they would derive financial benefit or be harmed. But if the financial impact is uncertain, they're required only to disclose the conflict. Chung said she had consulted with city attorneys over the issue, and that their advice had led her to the opinion that she had no conflict.

In response to a complaint filed by Portland attorney Alan Kessler, the Oregon Government Ethics Commission found the latter applied in this case, and that Chung had met her legal obligation by disclosing the potential conflict.

But it's also not uncommon for officials to recuse themselves from a decision merely to avoid the perception of a conflict of interest. City Commissioner Dan Saltzman, for example, recused himself from a decision on raising the building heights on a downtown site earlier this month because his family's real estate company owns property nearby and had opposed the changes.

Kessler, a housing activist who's not representing a party in the case, said the landmarks commission has frequently sought to override the city's zoning allowances by reigning in the size of new developments.

"To see the HLC doing their protectionist, NIMBY thing on a 100 percent affordable project is kind of the perfect storm," said Kessler, referring to an acronym for "not in my backyard." "And then there was such a clear conflict in one of the commissioners."

Chung said she had originally planned to recuse herself from the case, but ultimately decided not to at the urging of fellow commissioners. She said her recusal could lead developers to try and sway outcomes by sidelining certain commissioners.

"I took an oath to apply to approval criteria the way the code is written," Chung said. "I don't want any applicant or member of the public to think they can sway the outcome of an individual land-use case by raising issues that are irrelevant to the approval criteria."

As a neighborhood association official, Chung had previously weighed in on development on the site. She advocated against demolishing the Buck-Prager building, and the Northwest District Association, in which Chung had served as a board member until she was appointed to the landmarks commission, also advocated to reduce the density allowed on the site.

Chung said disqualifying an official from participating in a decision based on previous activism could have a chilling effect on public involvement. She said she believed she was appointed based on her efforts as a historic preservation activist, as well as her experience as a lawyer, on a board mostly populated by architects and other building industry professionals.

The proceeding was a design advice hearing, where the commissioners don't take an up-or-down vote on a building's design. Instead, they offer feedback in an effort to avoid costly redesigns later on.

Chung said she hadn't decided whether to recuse herself from a future vote.

-- Elliot Njus

enjus@oregonian.com

503-294-5034

@enjus
I am a retired Presbyterian clergyman, and feel compelled to respond to Marc Thiessen's March 23 commentary ("Why conservative Christians are sticking with Trump"). He characterizes The Cakeshop vs. Colorado case as one of religious liberty. However, if Cakeshop prevails, it would permit discrimination on the basis of a particular religious view. It would give conservative Christians the right to discriminate against the LGBTQ community, racial minorities and minority religions. This is a misinterpretation of scripture.

We as a country need a strong wall separating church and state, and not have the dictates of one single religious viewpoint become part of the law for us all. Freedom of religion also means freedom from any religion's sub-group which wants to speak for all Americans from its own narrow exclusive perspective.

Thiessen also states that President Donald Trump, "may be the most pro-religion president." This ignores Trump's anti-Muslim ban, his sh**hole statement and his breaking of at least five of the Ten Commandments. (See Commandments 6-10).

There are progressive Christians in America who support anti-discrimination laws and women's rights, including the right to an abortion. We vote and will support candidates who share our religious values of justice, inclusion, and peace.

Rev. James P. Freda, Jr., Southeast Portland
Years before Devonte Hart told neighbors his parents withheld food from him as punishment, his younger sister, who was then 6 years old, told police and a social worker she would not be given meals when she misbehaved.

In a 2010 interview with authorities, Abigail Hart also said one of her mothers had struck her with a closed fist and later placed her in a cold bath before hitting her again in a fit of anger.

"She had a penny in her pocket and this made her mom mad," reads an Alexandria, Minnesota police report obtained Thursday by The Oregonian/OregonLive.

Abigail's parents told police their daughter had a problem with lying. And at least two of her five other siblings said during an investigation their parents grounded them or sometimes gave spankings but were never violent.

But Sarah Hart later pleaded guilty to abusing their daughter, even though Abigail  who was found with bruises on her stomach and back  told authorities it was her mother Jennifer who had physically hurt her and withheld meals.

The police report comes after at least five members of the family were found dead Monday at the bottom of a California coastal cliff, and three of the children remain missing and feared dead.

One of the missing children is Devonte Hart, a boy who in 2014 was at the center of a viral photo showing his tender embrace with a Portland policeman.

Authorities say it remains unclear if those three were also in the vehicle, though a search has focused on whether they were possibly thrown into the cliffs or surf.

The family  same-sex parents and six adopted children who had lived for years in West Linn and recently relocated to Woodland, Washington  was beloved by some in the community for their activism and boundless spirit, but recent revelations also showed periods of trouble in the home.

The investigation in California has yielded more questions than answers since the grim incident. The crash was discovered as authorities in Washington tried multiple times to visit the family home after receiving reports of abuse and neglect concerning the children.

Nearly eight years earlier, the Minnesota report surfaced.

Police in Alexandria, a small town about 130 miles northwest of Minneapolis, opened an investigation in November 2010 after Abigail told a teacher at Woodland Elementary School she had "owies" on her tummy and back.

The teacher said she found bruises that stretched from the little girl's sternum to her belly button and from her mid-back to the waist band on her jeans.

The discovery prompted the teacher to contact social services and police.

In an interview, according to the police report, Abigail told a detective and a social worker her mother Jennifer had grown angry with her the day before because a penny had fallen out of her pocket and onto the floor.

The girl said Jennifer then dragged her into the bathroom and submerged her head under cold water in the bathtub.

Afterward, Abigail said she was "spanked" repeatedly, imitating her mother's hand with a clenched fist.

She was later grounded, a punishment that would sometimes include missed meals, she said.

"When asked what happens when she gets grounded, she stated that she has to stay in her bed and has no lunch," the report reads. "[She] also stated that she had missed lunch this past Saturday."

No one else in the house witnessed the abuse, Abigail told police. She said her other mother, Sarah, later saw the bruises and placed an ointment on them.

Abigail added that "mom Jen spanks the most and acts tough when she is upset with the children," according to the police report.

Police and the social worker also interviewed some of Abigail's siblings, whose names were redacted from the records obtained by The Oregonian/OregonLive.

One sibling said their sister had lied about the beating and had only received a time out for her misbehavior, adding that their parents rarely doled out spankings and always used an open hand.

Another sibling told authorities that getting grounded only meant they had to stay in bed and not do anything. This sibling also said their parents did not spank them or ever withhold food.

Authorities later interviewed Sarah Hart, who told them Abigail had been "lying out of control" lately and that she and Jennifer had recently resorted to spanking their children.

Sarah Hart then said it was she  and not her partner Jennifer  who had struck the child. Sarah Hart said she had bent her daughter over the bathtub and "swatted" her repeatedly, which likely led to the bruising.

"Sarah again stated she had lost her temper, mostly due to lying, and that she had lost her control," the police report says.

Sarah told police she worked while Jennifer stayed at home.

Sarah Hart was eventually arrested. She pled guilty to misdemeanor domestic violence and in 2011 received a 90-day suspended jail sentence and a year of probation for the incident.

Former Alexandria Police Department Det. Sgt. Larry Dailey, who investigated the case, recalled the girl's injuries weren't severe compared with other incidents involving children he'd seen in his 31-year law enforcement career. Nor had there had been signs of other abused or injured siblings in the home.

What struck Dailey, however, was how the girl's parents bristled at him and a state social worker who were contacted by the school, he said.

"From what I recall, they were very anti-system folks." Dailey, who retired in 2014, told The Oregonian/OregonLive on Thursday. "They didn't like the school or that the police intervened, and they certainly didn't like the outcome."

Dailey also said the two white women and their six black children stood out in Alexandria, a small city of 13,000.

"I think they had faced a lot of problems and were leaning in the direction to move out of town," Dailey said.

Shortly after, the family moved to the West Linn. They relocated to Woodland in northern Clark County about 10 months ago, records show.

The Harts and their children left their rural home Friday shortly after no one answered the door for a visit by the authorities, according to neighbors and the Clark County Sheriff's Office.

Bruce and Dana DeKalb, who lived next door, said they rarely spoke with the family.

Dana DeKalb said Devonte had come to their home a dozen times to ask for food, saying his parents had withheld it as punishment.

She recounted how Devonte's requests for food escalated. First, he asked if the DeKalbs had any tortillas. The next morning, he came back and asked if they had any bread. She didn't, but she gave him a bunch of tortillas.

He later came back asking for more. Then he asked for peanut butter. Then a case of peanut butter. Non-perishables. The list went on. He was eventually coming over three times per day.

DeKalb told him she'd have to call for help.

And on last Thursday night, she said, the boy's first words when he came to the door were: "Have you called?"

"I almost got the feeling it was more of, 'What are you waiting for, lady? ... How much more do I have to tell you?'"

She and her husband decided the situation was more serious than teens needing extra food, and she called authorities.

The DeKalbs also recounted that three months after the family moved into a home on 2 acres last May, one of the girls rang their doorbell in the middle of the night.

The girl, Hannah Hart, "was at our door in a blanket saying we needed to protect her," Bruce DeKalb said. "She said that they were abusing her."

Such interactions prompted the DeKalbs to contact authorities last week, they said Wednesday outside their home.

A Clark County deputy accompanied Cowlitz County Child Protective Services to the Hart family's home Friday but nobody answered the door, Sgt. Brent Waddell, a Clark County Sheriff's Office spokesman, told The Oregonian/OregonLive.

The family and its GMC Yukon were gone the next day, Bruce DeKalb said.

On Monday, a passerby along California's Route 1 in Mendocino County discovered the SUV upside down at the bottom of a 100-foot cliff.

The bodies of Abigail, now 14, and her siblings Markis, 19, and Jeremiah, 14, were found near the wreckage. None of them were wearing safety restraints, the California Highway Patrol said.

The crash also killed their mothers, who were found inside the vehicle wearing safety restraints. Jennifer Hart was driving.

In addition to Devonte Hart, the other missing children are Hannah, 16, and Sierra, 12.

There were no skid marks or brake marks indicating why the vehicle went off the cliff.

-- Shane Dixon Kavanaugh

skavanaugh@oregonian.com

503-294-7632 || @shanedkavanaugh

Jim Ryan of The Oregonian/OregonLive staff contributed to this report
WESTPORT, California  Four days after an entire Oregon family appears to have died when their SUV plunged over a cliff on the rugged California coast, friends and investigators alike are trying to untangle the knot of contradictions that led up to the tragedy.

The GMC Yukon landed on its roof at the edge of the Pacific Ocean in Mendocino County. Inside were Jennifer Jean Hart, the driver, and Sarah Margaret Hart, both 38. Three of their six adopted children, Markis, 19, Abigail, 14, and Jeremiah, 14, were thrown out of the SUV.

The other three children are missing and investigators said they also may have been thrown from the SUV.

One of the missing children is Devonte Hart, a boy who in 2014 was at the center of a viral photo showing his tender embrace with a Portland policeman during a protest. The other missing children are Hannah, 16, and Sierra, 12.

Many questions swirling around the case stem from the location of the crash and the family's seemingly last-minute trip on the same day child welfare workers knocked on their door in a remote part of northern Clark County. They had recently moved to Washington from West Linn, where they lived for about four years.

No one apparently witnessed the crash. It could have been hours or more than a day before a passerby spotted the SUV and reported it.

The SUV was at the bottom of a 100-foot cliff, across a 75-foot dirt turnout, on a straight section of Route 1 just north of the town of Westport. To drive off the cliff, Jennifer Hart would have had to make a hard 90-degree turn from the road, traverse the entire turnout and drive up and over a short berm that sits at the clifftop.

Investigators with the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office have said they found no skid marks or signs of hard braking in the area of the crash.

California Highway Patrol Officer Olegario Marin said roads along the Northern California coast -- winding stretches that often sit hundreds of feet over the ocean -- are dangerous, but he can't remember any crashes at the turnout in question in his nearly six years working the area.

But he said again Friday that detectives so far have no reason to believe the crash was intentional.

"We are still treating this as an accident," he told The Oregonian/OregonLive.

Authorities pulled the Hart's SUV from the rocks on Monday and the highway patrol's Multidisciplinary Accident Investigation Team is now working the case from a number of angles. Officers are examining the SUV hoping to gain information from a black box device that records data including speed of travel and when airbags deploy.

Other officers are trying to reconstruct the 24 hours preceding the report of the crash at 3:30 p.m. Monday.

The most direct route from the family's home in Woodland, Washington, to Westport covers about 550 miles and follows Interstate 5 south to Grants Pass, then to U.S. 199, which cuts through the Siskiyous and connects with U.S. 101 in Crescent City, California. It would take about 10 1/2 hours.

Marin said the highway patrol had received some tips, but declined to say how many or if any had yielded information of value.

The county coroner has begun performing autopsies on the victims, he said, but he had no further information. The Mendocino County Sheriff's Office, which oversees the coroner, didn't immediately return requests for comment.

The Harts and their children left home last Friday after no one answered their door for a visit by child protective services, according to neighbors and the Clark County Sheriff's Office.

Bruce and Dana DeKalb, who lived next door in Woodland, said Devonte had come to their home a dozen times to ask for food, saying his parents had withheld it as a form of punishment.

The DeKalbs also recounted that three months after the family moved into a home on 2 acres last May, one of the girls rang their doorbell in the middle of the night.

The girl, Hannah Hart, "was at our door in a blanket saying we needed to protect her," Bruce DeKalb said. "She said that they were abusing her."

Court records in Minnesota, where the family lived previously, show Sarah Hart received a 90-day suspended jail sentence and a year of probation in 2011 after daughter Abigail, then 6, arrived at her public elementary school with bruises on her stomach and back. The teacher contacted social services and police.

Abigail told authorities that her mother struck her repeatedly with a closed fist, submerged her head under cold water and withheld meals from her for misbehaving, according to report by police in Alexandria, a small town northwest of Minneapolis. Though the girl said Jennifer Hart was the one who hit her, Sarah Hart pleaded guilty to misdemeanor domestic assault.

The Harts home-schooled their children, according to friends and neighbors in Oregon, Washington and for a time in Minnesota. But they never filed the proper notices in Oregon and Washington, according to agencies in both states.

The two states require families to tell officials that they're home-schooling their children, with notice to their local school system in Washington and to their regional service district in Oregon.

The Clackamas Education Service District, which oversees West Linn, said it had no record of the children. David Holmes, superintendent of schools in La Center, Washington, said the same thing.

Officials have no other way to track when home-schooling families move in or out of their district, Holmes said. "It's totally up to the family to notify."

Joe Carbajal, a Vancouver real estate broker who represented the Harts in buying their house in Washington, said the picture that's emerged in news reports runs contrary to his experience with the family.

"It was just an absolute shock to us, especially after getting to know them so well," he said.

Carbajal said that although the family was initially reserved, he grew close to them over a four-month search for a home to buy. They had rented the house in West Linn and planned to buy a home when their lease was up.

They were looking in outlying areas in part because of the attention the photo of Devonte Hart and the police officer had brought. People had sent threats, and Jennifer Hart previously told The Oregonian/OregonLive that the family avoided going out in public for fear that Devonte would be recognized and threatened.

"They just got so much attention after that picture was taken, they just needed to get away from that," Carbajal said. "There was just too much going on."

The children frequently tagged along during the search and always seemed happy, Carbajal said.

"When the children were involved, which was about 90 percent of the time, they were happy and smiling and some of the most well-behaved kids I'd ever come across," he said. "They were giggly, and they were so respectful."

He also said the family frequently took day trips, often at the last minute.

"They had the pleasure of just waking up in the morning and just saying, 'We're going to the beach today,'" he said.

The 1,300-square-foot Woodland house they bought for $375,000 in May 2017 sat on two acres. It included a chicken coop and a stable where the family hoped to raise goats, Carbajal said.

-- Kale Williams

kwilliams@oregonian.com

503-294-4048

(Elliot Njus, Molly Young, Shane Dixon Kavanaugh and Jim Ryan of The Oregonian/OregonLive contributed to this report.)
BALTIMORE  Maryland's second-highest court ruled Thursday that "Serial" podcast subject Adnan Syed should receive a new trial in the killing of Woodlawn High School classmate Hae Min Lee.

The Court of Special Appeals' opinion upheld a lower court's decision to overturn Syed's 2000 conviction in the case, sending it back to Circuit Court for a retrial there.

The opinion, which found Syed's previous counsel had failed him in deciding not to call a key alibi witness at his trial two decades ago, could be appealed to the Court of Appeals, the state's highest court. That would mean many more months before Syed finds out whether his conviction will remain or if he will get a new trial.

Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh's office, which represents the state in the case, said that it is "currently reviewing today's decision to determine next steps," including whether to appeal. It has 30 days to do so.

C. Justin Brown, Syed's attorney, called the higher court's opinion "incredible."

"It's been a really long wait, and that's been hard and it's been stressful, obviously not just for us but for Adnan, who's now been in prison for 19 years, going on 20 years," Brown said. "I firmly believe that he is innocent, and our goal is to get him out of prison."

Brown said he had spoken to Syed after the opinion came down, and that Syed had asked him "to convey his deep gratitude and thanks from the bottom of his heart for all those people who supported him this long, and all those people who have believed in him"  including his family and those who have championed his cause since his case was spotlighted by "Serial."

Syed was convicted in 2000 and sentenced to life in prison for the killing of his former girlfriend, whose body was found in Leakin Park.

Syed maintained his innocence, and in 2014 his case attracted international attention when it was featured on the "Serial" podcast, which was downloaded millions of times and prompted legions of listeners to scrutinize the case online.

Brown said Thursday that he would be discussing with Syed whether to file a motion requesting Syed's release from prison pending his new trial. A similar motion failed after the lower court overturned Syed's conviction.

Lee's family could not be reached for comment Thursday, though they expressed frustration when Syed was first granted a new trial in 2016.

"We do not speak as often or as loudly as those who support Adnan Syed, but we care just as much about this case. We continue to grieve," the family said in a statement at the time. "We continue to believe justice was done when Mr. Syed was convicted of killing Hae."

In the court's opinion Thursday, Chief Judge Patrick L. Woodward wrote that a "deficient performance" by Syed's attorney during his initial trial  namely, her failure to call a witness named Asia McClain  "prejudiced Syed's defense."

Woodward was joined in his opinion by Judge Alexander Wright Jr., while Judge Kathryn Graeff wrote a dissenting opinion.

Syed was granted a post-conviction hearing in February 2016, during which his new attorneys argued that his original counsel had failed to call McClain  now McClain Chapman  as an alibi witness. They also questioned the reliability of cellphone evidence used to place Syed at the spot where Lee's body was found.

Four months later, retired Judge Martin Welch, who had denied Syed's previous request for a new trial, vacated his conviction and ordered a new trial. The judge said questions about the cellphone tower evidence should have been raised by Syed's original team.

The state appealed the lower court judge's ruling. Syed's attorneys then filed a separate conditional appeal, asking the court to look at the alibi issue.

In the opinion Thursday, the court upheld the lower court's decision to vacate Syed's conviction, but on different grounds.

The higher court rejected the argument that the mishandling of cellphone tower evidence was grounds for a new trial, as the lower court had found. But it accepted the argument that Syed's defense should have called McClain Chapman to the stand as an alibi witness, something the lower court had not accepted.

"It was essentially a flip-flop" of the lower court's decision, but in Syed's favor nonetheless, Brown said.

Woodward found that, "there is a reasonable probability that McClain's alibi testimony would have raised a reasonable doubt in the mind of at least one juror about Syed's involvement (in) Hae's murder, and thus 'the result of the proceedings would have been different.'"

The Court of Special Appeals had considered the case during a hearing last June.

There, judges had focused more on the alibi witness angle, questioning attorneys for Syed and the state attorney general's office about what weight they should give to McClain Chapman, who claimed to have seen Syed at the Woodlawn library when prosecutors said Lee was killed.

"How can you possibly evaluate an alibi witness without speaking to her?" Woodward asked during the state's presentation by Thiru Vignarajah, a special assistant attorney general. Vignarajah referred questions to Frosh's office on Thursday.

The judges asked Brown, Syed's current attorney, whether there was any case law that would establish that Syed's attorney, the late M. Cristina Gutierrez, provided ineffective counsel to Syed because she did not speak to McClain.

Graeff asked Brown whether it is a defense attorney's responsibility to speak to any possible alibi witness  to which Brown said yes.

In her dissent published alongside the court's majority opinion issued Thursday, Graeff seemed to adopt the argument of the state that Gutierrez had good reason not to call McClain as a witness. Graeff noted records in the case, including a detective's notes on communications between McClain and Syed, "indicate potential cause for concern regarding the trustworthiness of Ms. McClain's alibi, and therefore, the reasonableness of counsel's decision not to contact Ms. McClain or pursue her alibi."

Graeff wrote that, "To the extent that Ms. McClain's potential alibi could give the prosecution ammunition to argue that Syed and Ms. McClain were working together to falsify an alibi, it would be a reasonable decision not to contact Ms. McClain to pursue that alibi."

Brown said that split opinions at the Court of Special Appeals, like the 2-1 split in Syed's case, are probably more likely to be appealed again to the Court of Appeals. But he said he hopes the state does not appeal, and agrees to move foward with the retrial in Circuit Court.

"We hope that they will come to the conclusion that this has gone on for long enough," he said. "Let's take it to a jury in Baltimore city and let them decide if Adnan Syed is guilty or innocent."

-- Tribune News Service
The conservation group Oregon Wild on Friday sent a letter to Gov. Kate Brown asking her to have the state claw back the remaining public investment in a southern Oregon sawmill project that went belly-up.

The Oregonian/OregonLive detailed the failed Rough & Ready mill project this month in its story "Destined to fail: Oregon officials missed taxpayer-backed mill project's red flags." The newsroom highlighted how state and federal officials OK'd more than $12 million in taxpayer financing sought by the mill's owners, Jennifer and Link Phillippi, and green-centric nonprofit Ecotrust to retool the once-mothballed mill despite evident problems with the plan.

The mill briefly reopened but closed for good soon after. It was then sold, leaving just $5 million intact after the massive public investment.

Ecotrust and the Phillippis ran afoul of state tax credit usage rules when the nonprofit arranged and failed to disclose a one-day, $4.9 million loan within the complex webbing of the mill financing plan. That loan was used to buy the mill property from the Phillippis and transfer it to a company 99 percent owned by the Phillippis  an illegitimate use of funds, Oregon's top tax official would later declare.

After The Oregonian/OregonLive began inquiring about the deal's legitimacy, the state told Ecotrust and the Phillippis it would seek repayment of $1 million because of improper spending. Ecotrust and the Phillippis have denied wrongdoing and expressed remorse about the project's failure.

Ecotrust and the Phillippis can avoid the claw back with a legitimate investment of at least $2.9 million, according to the state. They've signaled their intention to make such an investment by purchasing timberland. Oregon Wild said in its letter that spending the money on forestland for the Phillippis to manage would be "inconsistent" with the original intent of the taxpayer investment: to create jobs in the unemployment-racked Illinois Valley.

"Timberland changing hands from one owner to another will not create additional jobs in southwest Oregon," wrote Oregon Wild director Sean Stevens. Oregon Wild generally lobbies for stricter logging rules that prevent or limit clearcutting and other industry practices.

Along with Brown, the letter was sent to Chris Harder, head of economic development agency Business Oregon, and other state officials. A spokesman for Brown said the governor's office has received Stevens' letter, but declined to comment further. A Business Oregon spokesman did not immediately return a request for comment.

Stevens said Brown and Harder have a chance to make sure the taxpayer funds invested in Rough & Ready go to legitimate use.

"The public was told that the allocation of their tax dollars to support Rough & Ready was a wise investment that would benefit southern Oregon's economy while improving environmental health," Stevens wrote. "While much of their money was wasted, it is not too late for you to ensure the remainder is actually spent on programs that achieve those goals."

-- Gordon R. Friedman

503-221-8209; @GordonRFriedman
Oregonian file photo

By Hillary Borrud

The Oregonian/OregonLive

With two weeks left to use her veto on any bill passed by the Legislature this year, Gov. Kate Brown is still deciding whether to kill a tax plan that would net the state a quarter-billion dollars.

Brown, a Democrat who has vocally opposed the policies of President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans, is now in the bizarre position of considering whether to copy part of their signature legislative achievement into Oregon law.

To help her decide, Brown invited supporters and opponents of the plan to lobby her on it. The governor has until April 13 to veto the bill, though she must announce whether she intends to do so by April 6. She could also decline to sign the legislation and simply allow it to become law.

Oregons built-in connection to the federal tax code means that if the state does nothing, certain types of businesses would automatically get the same new deduction on their state taxes that they can claim on their federal returns under the GOP tax overhaul. These businesses, including S corporations, partnerships and sole proprietorships, pass through earnings to their owners who pay personal income taxes on them.

Don't Edit

Randy L. Rasmussen/The Oregonian/OregonLive

Larry George, a former state lawmaker and treasurer of the Oregon Small Business Association's political action committee, says pass-through businesses need a new break on their state taxes to help level the playing field with large corporations.

Democrats in the Legislature passed Senate Bill 1528 to prevent the state from copying the federal tax break. They argued it would disproportionately benefit the wealthy and that it would amount to a double-helping of tax cuts for so-called pass-through businesses because many already pay lower rates under a 2013 state law.

Republicans and businesses that would benefit from the new state deduction contend the bill would amount to a tax increase, because it would take away a tax break they would receive automatically if the state did nothing. Larry George, a former state lawmaker and business owner who has met with lawmakers and the governors staff to advocate against SB 1528, said it would also widen the tax advantage that large corporations have over small businesses.

It actually ended up keeping the playing field level, George said of Oregons automatic replication of the new federal tax deduction.

George is also treasurer of the Oregon Small Business Association's political action committee, and played a key role in negotiating the 2013 state tax break for pass-through businesses.

Don't Edit

Motoya Nakamura/The Oregonian/OregonLive

The Oregon Student Association wants Gov. Kate Brown to sign SB 1528 into law because it would raise money for need-based scholarships.

The governors staff also met with a representative from the Oregon Student Association, which supports the bill because it includes $14 million a year in new tax credits that would raise money for need-based college scholarships. Lawmakers added that provision so that higher earning Oregonians, who face a new federal cap on the deduction for state taxes, could purchase the credits and then claim them as charitable contributions on their federal returns.

The Governor still seemed on the fence, but were hoping shell prioritize higher education, Devin Hutchings, communications director for the group, wrote in an email. Students from around the state are pushing for the Governor to support them.

The governors indecision on the issue reflects the political blowback she could face from the business community in an election year. Political nonprofits pitched in to urge voters to oppose the bill, both during and after the legislative session.

Don't Edit

Gordon Friedman/Staff

Republican gubernatorial candidate Knute Buehler has called for the governor to veto SB 1528.

The Taxpayers Association of Oregon sent a letter calling Democrats' tax plan a "hidden backdoor tax," and asked people to sign an initiative petition that would make it more difficult for lawmakers to raise taxes. The Oregon Small Business Association paid for robocalls with warnings about the tax bill, George said. Then earlier this month, Republican gubernatorial candidate Knute Buehler calls on Kate Brown to veto Democrats' tax plan.

Should Brown veto the bill, she will only add to the anticipated budget gap she and lawmakers will likely face in 2019. Public pension rates are certain to skyrocket next year and House Speaker Tina Koteks office already predicts the state will need $1.2 billion in new revenue to prevent cuts to current state spending. After Democrats in the Legislature failed to pass a corporate tax increase last year, Brown announced she would wait until 2019 to tackle tax reform.

Brown declined, through her spokesman, to comment on whether she plans to sign the bill or what questions she still has about it.

But when the governor took questions from reporters after the Legislature wrapped up work earlier this month, she said her administration needed more time to understand the effects of the Trump tax plan on Oregon. "We're still deciphering the implications of this legislation on Oregon and we're going to do lots of work before making a decision whether to sign or veto the bill, Brown said.

On Thursday afternoon, George made a similar point. What I kept telling everyone was, You aren't understanding the ramifications of the Trump tax plan, he said.

This story has been updated to reflect the following clarification: an earlier version of this story incorrectly stated legislative Democrats promoted SB 1528 as a way to address doctors and lawyers use of a pass-through business tax break. The tax break that benefits doctors and lawyers is in state, not federal, law and Democrats removed the provision to address it before passing the bill.

-- Hillary Borrud

hborrud@oregonian.com

503-294-4034; @hborrud
The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality cited a Northeast Portland auto scrap yard where a five-alarm fire broke out earlier this month, saying the business stored more than 1,500 tires with no permit and allowed car oil to mix with rainwater and drain into underground dry wells.

NW Metals also allowed used oil to mix with antifreeze, the environmental quality department announced Thursday. The agency also issued a cleanup order to the business Wednesday, requiring it to remove all cars, tires and other debris damaged in the March 12 fire, determine if there are any possible groundwater impacts and do testing at the scrap yard and two nearby burned properties for possible contamination.

NW Metals has a week to hire a contractor to dispose of the burned debris still on the property, said Laura Gleim, an Oregon DEQ spokeswoman. Next, the agency will determine if the scrap yard should face any fines or other penalties, a process Gleim said could take several months.

The cause of the fire at NW Metals, at 7600 N.E. Killingsworth St., is still under investigation, said Capt. Louisa Jones, a Portland Fire & Rescue spokeswoman.

The fire torched scores of tires, cars and other items on the property. The blaze destroyed a duplex and two detached homes, displacing four families and killing 16 pets, Portland fire said.

The fire began in the morning of March 12 and wasn't extinguished until the afternoon the next day. At one point, as many as 4,000 Northeast Portland residents were told to evacuate their homes due to the heavy smoke and unhealthy particles in the air.

-- Everton Bailey Jr.

ebailey@oregonian.com

503-221-8343; @EvertonBailey
Six southwest Washington siblings presumed dead after their family vehicle careened off a coastal California cliff were adopted through the Texas foster care system, officials confirmed Thursday.

Jennifer and Sarah Hart adopted the children from southeast Texas in 2006 and 2009, said Tiffani Butler, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.

The bodies of three of the children, Markis, 19; Jeremiah, 14; and Abigail, 14, were discovered along with the bodies of their mothers at the bottom of a cliff near Westport, California. Hannah, 16; Devonte, 15; and Sierra, 12, remain missing. Police are investigating what happened.

The family gained international attention in 2014 after a photo of Devonte hugging a Portland police officer was shared widely online. The Harts lived in West Linn at the time, but moved last year to Woodland, Washington.

They spent much of their children's early years in Minnesota. In May 2005, Sarah Hart petitioned to change her last name from Gengler to Hart. She said she lived in Alexandria, a town of 13,000 about 130 miles northwest of Minneapolis.

The Hart family expanded the next year.

Siblings Markis, Abigail and Hannah were adopted by the Harts in September 2006 from Colorado County, Texas, Butler said. The county seat is 70 miles west of Houston.

The Harts adopted a second set of siblings, Devonte, Jeremiah and Sierra, in February 2009 from Harris County, where Houston is located, Butler said.

In a post shared by friends on Facebook, Jennifer Hart described meeting Jeremiah and his siblings on a hot Houston day. "Sarah and I walked out to the playground at the CPS building, and without hesitation, he let go of the social worker's hand and walked right up to me. Jeremiah wrapped his tiny arms around my legs and didn't let go."

It's unclear why the children were removed from their birth families.

Butler said records pertaining to the adoption would be in their court files. Clerks at the Harris and Colorado county courthouses said Texas adoption records are closed and require a judge's order to open.

The link between the Harts and the Texas foster care system is also a mystery.

Ellen Yarrell, a Houston adoption attorney, said state officials are first required to search for relatives who may be able to take in the children of parents whose rights were terminated. After a 90-day period, the state can then consider other placements, such as foster parents.

Butler said judges must consider what's best for children. It's not uncommon for children to be adopted out of state, she said. "If the family in Minnesota is the best family for that child, then that's where the child is placed."

Social workers must also try to keep siblings together, said Mark Fiddler, a Minneapolis adoption attorney. It can be difficult to find families who can accommodate several siblings. "Counties can cast a wider net for families that are trying to adopt sibling groups," he said.

Another standard law governs adoptions that cross state lines. A family's home state must complete a home study before a family can adopt a child from another state. It's a rigorous process in Minnesota, Fiddler said. The laws also require monitoring after the placements, he said.

Katie Bauer, a spokeswoman for Minnesota's child protection agency, said any records regarding its involvement with the Hart family were not immediately available.

However, court records indicate the agency had at least one interaction with the family after the children were adopted.

Sarah Hart faced criminal charges for hitting her daughter Abigail, then 6, in November 2010, about 1 1/2 years after the couple's final adoption was completed. A court filing says a social worker interviewed Abigail after she said her mom hit her.

Though the girl said Jennifer Hart was the one who hit her, Sarah Hart pleaded guilty to misdemeanor domestic assault in April 2011 and received a 90-day suspended sentence and one year of probation.

The family moved soon after to Oregon, then to Washington in 2017.

Social workers there tried unsuccessfully to contact the family three times within the last week in response to a call of concern made by neighbors. The family was seen leaving Friday after social workers visited the home for the first time.

Mike Fealy lived across from the Hart family in Minnesota. Fealy and his wife chatted with the Harts but did not know them intimately. They learned the Harts adopted the children from abusive situations. One mother home-schooled the children while the other worked at a clothing store, he said. They kept up their house and yard, and the children appeared well-dressed, he said.

"Everything was on the up and up," he said.

-- Molly Young

myoung@oregonian.com
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Attacking a Teenage Shooting Survivor Is Not a Good Look, Conservatives

By Dustin Rowles | Politics | March 30, 2018 |

As of this morning, nine advertisers have stopped sponsoring Fox News The Laura Ingraham Show after she mocked Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg because he couldnt get into UCLA with a 4.1 GPA. David Hogg called for an advertiser boycott; several advertisers dropped the show. Laura Ingraham, under financial pressure, apologized. Hogg did not accept the insincere apology and several more advertisers  like Hulu and Johnson and Johnson  who saw right through Ingraham and dropped the show.

Q: Do you accept Ingrahams apology?

DAVID HOGG: No. Shes only apologizing after a third of her advertisers pulled out, and I think its really disgusting the fact that she basically tried promoting her show after apologizing to me. (CNN) pic.twitter.com/9NEYLPRJIn  Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) March 30, 2018



This comes only a few days after the conservative blog, Red State, conjured up a conspiracy theory  that later went viral  suggesting that David Hogg wasnt even at school during the Parkland shooting.

Can we just back up for a moment and remember the crimes that Hogg (and Emma Gonzalez, who has been similarly attacked) have committed against the right: Their classmates were gunned down with an AR-15 assault weapon, they spoke out against gun violence, advocated for gun reform, inspired literally hundreds of thousands of people to march around the country last weekend, cost Fox News hundreds of thousands of dollars, and effected actual change in some states.

The Vermont House has passed a bill to make background checks mandatory for all gun sales, ban high-capacity magazines, ban bump stocks, and raise the purchase age for rifles to 21; GOP Gov. Phil Scott, a gun owner, says he'll sign it: https://t.co/F8t4Px5V28  Daniel Dale (@ddale8) March 29, 2018

Anyway, David Hogg  a 17-year-old  has seriously gotten under the skin of conservatives. I mean, no one  including President Obama  has been able to move the needle on gun reform for the last 20 years, and these kids come along and tilt the national conversation in their favor. And conservatives, who have no leg to stand on when it comes to policy, instead turn to personal attacks.

I mean, look: This guys Dad is under indictment and is likely going to cooperate with Robert Mueller and go to prison in order to save his son.

Someone (hint: parents) clearly didnt smack this kid much growing up. Your emotional high will run out soon so savor it while it lasts. https://t.co/AJ5v80T9bK  MFLYNNJR (@mflynnJR) March 29, 2018

Look at this garbage below. And for the most part, these arent rando Twitter eggs with 17 followers. Theyve got thousands of followers, and this is how they show their asses:

David Hogg who is trying to get his 15 min of fame off dead kids, went after @IngrahamAngle sponsors bcus she tweeted abt him being turned down by 4 colleges. He vows to destroy her. Is this really a kid you want to make important decisions on our #2A rights? #HitlerUsedKids2  AmericanWoman (@LWilsonDarlene) March 30, 2018

I often wonder if that shooter might've been after David Hogg. He seems like the kind of guy that shooters want to take out.  Kurt (@kurtfredy) March 30, 2018

No, status as a Parkland survivor should not immunize you from loud condemnation, if you seek to stifle the dissemination of speech you dont like. BS.



Once you go down that road, like @DavidHogg111 did from Day 1 (@NRATV), you forfeit the moral right to sympathy.



Permanently.  David Henry (@imau2fan) March 30, 2018

So, @davidhogg111 proves he's just another arrogant little bitch that will throw a tantrum if you don't agree with his agenda. NEXT!  RealLeeLewis (@LeeLewis1972) March 30, 2018

David Hogg please go back to eating tide pods. We have work to do.  Lori Hendry (@Lrihendry) March 30, 2018

The sun would burn out before I'd apologize to a power-mad pipsqueak like David Hogg.  Philip Schuyler (@FiveRights) March 30, 2018

I wish you could mute faces on Twitter like you can mute words. I would get rid of Emma Gonzalezs and David Hoggs.  Laura  (@thisislaurat) March 30, 2018

Ask David Hogg, Emma Gonzalez and all the other teenage March For Our Lives protesters if theyd accept banning smartphones in exchange for banning all semi auto assault rifles in America.



What is a child without his or her phone these days?



Put these rats to the test.  GRANT J. KIDNEY  (@GrantJKidney) March 29, 2018

Keep attacking Hogg and Gonzalez, folks. Every time you do, youre hurting your sham cause and showing yourself for who you really are: Classless, scared, and impotent against the power of teenagers on the right side of history.

Im a year older than @Emma4Change but I want to be her when I grow up.  Rachel R. Gonzalez (@RachelGonKCMO) March 30, 2018

Same.

 Ben Affleck is 'Fine,' 'Ren & Stimpy's' Creator is Not, and 'Deadwood' Ain't Happening | Sanrio's Death Metal-Loving Red Panda Retsuko Gets Netflix Series, 'Aggretsuko' 

Dustin is the founder and co-owner of Pajiba. You may email him here, follow him on Twitter, or listen to his weekly TV podcast, Podjiba.
The United States Census Bureau will not ask questions pertaining to LGBTQ+ household members in a newly-released draft of the 2020 Census form, reports NBC News. An previous draft version of the form had included questions regarding sexual orientation and gender identity, but was quickly corrected to scrub the questions.

In a statement, The U.S. Census Bureau confirmed that will not specifically count LGBTQ+ Americans. "The Subjects Planned for the 2020 Census and American Community Survey report released today inadvertently listed sexual orientation and gender identity as a proposed topic in the appendix," the Bureau said to NBC News. They also confirmed that the previous draft, which had proposed the inclusive questions, was an error. "[LGBTQ+ questions are] not being proposed to Congress for the 2020 Census or American Community Survey. The report has been corrected."

The removal of the questions has prompted fierce criticism from LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations. "This is an assault on science as well as on a uniquely vulnerable group of Americans," said Jennifer C. Pizer, the law and policy director for Lambda Legal in a statement to HuffPost. "Social science researchers, health professionals, educators, and so many others striving to meet the needs of our communities for years have been decrying the lack of population-based data about who and where we are, the elevated rates of poverty we endure, and other serious challenges."

The National LGBTQ Task Force told NBC that it will "continue to push for accurate data collection on LGBTQ people." Its Criminal and Economic Justice Project Director, Meghan Murray, also said that the Task Force will seek answers from the Trump administration about why the question was removed. She called the removal "yet another step to deny LGBTQ people freedom, justice and equity," noting that such data is critical to asses if LGBTQ+ people are being represented fairly. "Information from these surveys helps the government to enforce federal laws like the Violence Against Women Act and the Fair Housing Act and to determine how to allocate resources like housing supports and food stamps," said Murray.

The Task Force also posted two version of the Census draft form on Twitter, noting the previous version which included sexual orientation and gender identity, and the newest version with the removal.

BREAKING: Trump Administration Omits LGBTQ People from 2020 Census and American Community Survey https://t.co/WZm8pBqhmM #lgbtq pic.twitter.com/vNxet7I8bG

 The Task Force (@TheTaskForce) March 28, 2017

The Census conducts a nationwide survey of the country's inhabitants every ten years. The last United States Census was conducted in 2010. That Census did not count LGBTQ+ Americans either, and queer organizations pushed for inclusion in the upcoming 2020 survey. In 2016, 80 members of Congress even wrote a letter urging the Bureau to collect data about LGBTQ+ people in the next census. "Expanded data collection on LGBT people is needed to help policymakers and community stakeholders understand the full extent of [employment, housing, and justice system] disparities, as well as identifying the needs of these communities so they can be better served," wrote the bipartisan Members.

The Census Director, John H. Thompson, addressed that letter in a statement written on his blog. He indicated that while the Census Bureau considered the Congressional recommendation, "our review concluded there was no federal data need to change the planned census and ACS subjects."

"In 2020, our goal is to conduct a complete and accurate census. The Census Bureau remains committed to reflecting the information needs of our changing society," wrote Thompson.
You remember Adnan Syed: the man convicted in 2000 of murdering his former girlfriend, Hae Min Lee, and burying her body in a Baltimore park. Syed rose to worldwide prominence after his case became the subject of the first season of the highly popular podcast Serial.

Sarah Koenig, who hosts the podcast, dug up sufficient evidence, or lack thereof, to persuade most listeners to demand Syed be given a new trial. Eighteen years after his incarceration, it appears that's finally going to happen.

Syed's attorneys had persuaded the Court of Appeals to grant him a new trial in 2016 based on insufficient assistance during his initial court hearings almost two decades ago. However, that decision was halted by prosecutors in appellate court.

Now, the Maryland Court of Special Appeals has granted Syed a new trial for all charges. See below:

BREAKING: SYED TO GET "NEW TRIAL ON ALL CHARGES." https://t.co/MnxahtYzdE

 Chris Geidner (@chrisgeidner) March 29, 2018

Additionally, Syed attorney Justin Brown tweeted his ecstasy at the news:

WE WON THE APPEAL. #FreeAdnan

 Justin Brown (@CJBrownLaw) March 29, 2018

Photo via Getty
John Mulaney will serve as host of Saturday Night Live on the April 14 episode, alongside musical guest Jack White. It's the standup comedian and Broadway star's first time in the iconic gig.

Mulaney had worked as a writer on the series for years before setting his sights on a Hollywood career. During his time with the show he was responsible for some of its most prolific characters, like Bill Hader's Stefon.

Jack White has recently released his latest studio album, Boarding House Reach, and will soon begin a tour in support of his new music.



The pair follow a powerful April 7 lineup that sees Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman hosting with musical guest Cardi B.

Check out the SNL announcement, below:

Excited to announce our full April line-up! #SNL pic.twitter.com/Ydz8WhsB06

 Saturday Night Live - SNL (@nbcsnl) March 29, 2018
Talking to British indie-pop star Kate Nash feels like catching up with a best friend, not just because she's funny and charming, but because the conversation feels immediately intimate. It's no wonder that she talks so much about writing music about her friendships as a teenager, and how the women she worked with on the female-wrestling show Glow have given her a newfound sense of confidence. It's easy to imagine people, especially women, relating deeply to someone who opens up her wounds and her insecurities and lays them out shine, giving them the same weight and space in conversation as her many accomplishments.

She tells me she's had a tumultuous few years in the music industry, and is therefore fiercely dedicated to remaining independent with her new album Yesterday Was Forever, which she self-funded via Kickstarter, so that no one controls her sound or her lyrics besides her.

With her new album, Nash returns to her bubbly pop roots while also delving deep into anxieties, mental health issues, and heartache, represented sonically though darker punk sounds. She reread her teenage diaries while writing, fully embracing adolescent melodrama and sincerity in her songwriting. In conversation, she's just as candid, telling me about how she practices self-care, the way she thinks of herself as both a happy and dark person, and how much she loves collaborating with women.

Stream Yesterday Was Forever, and read our conversation, below.

All of your albums have interesting names, from Girl Talk to Yesterday Was Forever. How did you decide on the name of this album?



When I wrote it, it felt like a deep, sentimental, teenage thing. Like, written in a diary. I was doing a lot of archiving and finding diaries i had written in. I had completely forgotten how intense the writing was. I was like, "Fuck, I forgot that I felt that fucking depressed at that age." It was a funny being literally like 12 years old writing, "Merry X-Mas," and, ""We got a video [camera]," all of these things. And then I'm 13, and everything's shit and I'm trying to understand. Being a teenager was really painful, and I just wrote "Yesterday was forever" and I thought that just feels like that. This feeling of being trapped in that. When you're in a moment, you think that's how things are going to be forever.

Now that I'm older I know everything's going to change all the time. But when I was a teenager, and even in my early twenties, I was kind of like, "This is life! This is how I'm going to be." It just felt like an exhausting permanence.

And in a weird way, it kind of makes more sense, this album, than I ever knew it would. I felt like fucking trash when I was figuring out how to make this record. I felt like my music career was over. I didn't know how I was going to do it. I got screwed over by some people, and I felt very trapped there. It felt weird that this album and the title means so much more to me than when I kind of whimsically came up with it because it sounded like something from a teenage diary. I like that it sounds like it can be written off, like "Oh my god, that's so melodramatic, it doesn't mean anything." I like that it's two different things.

I like the idea of leaning into being melodramatic, because that's something that especially women artists are accused of being a lot by critics. To claim it is really cool, to say that it's okay to be melodramatic.

It's very sincere. I did these workshops with teenage girls in schools, and I was so amazed by their depth and their sincerity. It's almost as if they didn't know how intense or sincere or deep they were being sometimes, it was just really genuine. It's who they were. And when you're a teenager you're just that way and you're really into being that way. You're also not overthinking it, because you're feeling so many hormones and emotions, there's something very true in that. I think as an adult, we're always thinking, "Well I have to be professional," or, "I have to come off like this. I want people to see me this way." And when you're a teenager you're obsessed with trying to search for an identity. And there's no shame about it, because you're really fucking feeling everything so dearly, and I love it.

What were you like as a teenager?

I feel like I was daydreaming constantly. I loved being out. I was loud. I was a mix of still being a kid and wanting to go to the woods and play in the parks and climb trees and desperately hold onto childhood. I really loved being with my friends, I wanted to have sleepovers all the time. We were just giggling a lot. But then there was another part of me in my bedroom daydreaming, listening to music, and swinging around in my chair.

Do you feel like the experiences you've had since then are similar to what you daydreamed about as a teenager?

Well, I'm still a vivid daydreamer. I still can totally stay in my house forever and think, be with myself and close the door. I think as an adult, I learned a little bit more about that as also a mental health issue. There's a more serious side to that. It's not okay to just close the door and not leave the house for a really long time. But I think that I still really love to create thoughts. And I really daydream about projects and ideas and wonder how I can to do them. So I think my dreams are similar, but there's always more to dream about as an artist.

You've been writing music since you were fourteen. What were those songs like?

They were written on the piano, about my friends, about everything not being black or white. And I felt politically charged as a teenager. I went to Catholic school, and we were shown a movie about this girl living on the wrong side of the tracks and she was a crazy party girl, and then she became a missionary and she died saving people. And I was like "I want to fucking be her!" I wanted to have vodka in my cornflakes and die saving people doing something dangerous.

I kind of feel like music is that, in some weird way. There's a wild nature to it. I don't really party because I'm not attracted to being fucked up constantly. But the nature of performance and the element of rock n' roll that's true, wild, and free performance on stage and being able to connect through music is what I'm attracted to. Also having this emotional depth for strangers who are going through things and who connect with you. You help them, because music is so healing and that's why I love doing what I do.

I read that you want people to feel comfortable with who they are and to feel happy when they listen to your music. What kind of things do you do to show yourself that self-care?

Not enough. I think that we all like to preach about it and not practice it enough. But part of preaching it is helpful to me, because I feel a responsibility to try and forgive myself. That's the main thing, I think I'm very judgemental towards myself. I would never talk to someone else the way I talk to myself, and I try to compare myself to that. I also like walking in the woods around nature, going to the ocean and being with my dog and reading books and learning, being active, is the main thing.

Your music captures very specific observations. I was struck by the line about biting your lips until you taste metal. How do you capture these moments and observations?



I write a lot of notes on my phone, I write in notebooks, on my laptop. Also stream of consciousness is my favorite way to write- feeling an emotion and just trying to express it in a cinematic way. My music is really about my mental health issues and my brain, but I'm not trying to be like, "Here's a description of my mental health issues." It's more like, "This is what it would feel like if I was watching a short about being in my brain."

I'm in this battle of running away and giving up, being chased by the horrors in my brain and getting beaten by them. And then I see myself and go, "Get the fuck up, you're not done. You're not giving up." I'm literally doing that to myself, there's different voices in my head that I'm battling. One of them is always trying to save me and the other one is trying to give up.

That also translates to the sounds on your record, too. There are sweet, melodic pop sounds, but then also these rough punk-rock moments. I think specifically of the song "California Poppies." Do you think about that sonically, juxtaposing aggressive sounds with pop sounds?

Yeah, I like dark lyrics mixed in happy sound. That feels genuine for me. I'm a really positive person. I love happiness and I strive for that, and I feel like a positive influence to my fans and I love life. And there's also a darkness to me that exists that is a struggle. I'm very attracted to darkness, but I fight it with the happiness. Dark doesn't mean that you're not also happy and being a positive person doesn't mean that you're not battling something dark.

It's almost like this secret code, as if you're in a war and you're putting out this positive pop music, and then you're secretly delivering a message of what's really going on. And not in a fucked up way, just looking out for other people, too. We still celebrate life, we enjoy as much as we can, and counsel each other, but this is also what we're really dealing with.

It relates to what you were saying about writing songs as a teenager that explore how things aren't black and white. Life is a mixture of all these emotions. You can be a complex person that feels happy and sad and scared all at the same time. I also saw a lot of exploration of insecurities and anxieties on this record, like in "Life in Pink," or in "Today." Were these songs scary to write?

I felt pretty comfortable at this point. It's natural for me to be that open, it's kind of like therapy for me to write it. So when I can express that, it makes me feel better. I feel happy when I've done that. I feel like I've done something good, so it doesn't feel uncomfortable.

You are releasing your album independently, and you crowdfunded Girl Talk. Why is that important to you as an artist?

Staying independent is really important to me now. The more I hear about the industry, the more it makes me really want to stay independent. People seem to be having a lot of negative experiences and are made to doubt themselves so much. I'm past the point of being comfortable with so many people having an opinion on what I'm doing and trying to change for the sake of radio. It just isn't my world, it's not where I fit in. So it's really nice to accept that. There has to be a world where I can do this and it isn't cookie-cutter. And I think that there is. By making a Kickstarter, I still have been proving to myself that anything is possible.

I saw that you wanted to collaborate with a woman for your "Drink About You" video, and you worked with Liz Nistico. Does it feel different collaborating with women than with men?

I'm always excited to work with women. I love women, I'm very inspired by women. I feel comfortable in a different way because there's just something that you don't have to explain. We're just going through similar political stuff that we think about daily as women that I don't have to explain to a woman when I'm working with her, because there's already this understanding. Also, some men get that, and I love working with those men, other men don't. And it's really difficult to work with them when they don't.

What has your work on Glow been like?

I love Glow, it's completely changed my life. The women on the show and the wrestling and the environment I'm going into work everyday is such a fucking blessing. I feel so lucky. I really do. I feel like I just walked into my dream job. They're my real friends. I've been gifted all these women who are just incredible and they've helped me develop a whole new physical relationship with myself. I'm so lucky, I've had quite a difficult four years, and it changed my life in such a positive way and filled me with confidence. It gave me my fight back.

Catch Kate Nash On Tour:



04/04 - Vancouver, BC - Imperial

04/05 - Seattle, WA - The Showbox

04/07 - Portland, OR - Hawthorne Theatre

04/09 - San Francisco, CA - The Fillmore

04/10 - Los Angeles, CA - The Fonda Theatre

04/12 - San Diego, CA - The Observatory  North Park

4/13  Santa Ana, CA  The Observatory OC

04/14 - Phoenix, AZ - Crescent Ballroom

04/16 - Salt Lake City, UT - The Depot

04/17 - Englewood, CO - Gothic Theatre

04/19 - Minneapolis, MN - Fine Line Music Cafe

04/20 - Chicago, IL - Park West

04/21 - Detroit, MI - Majestic Theatre

04/23 - Toronto, ON - Mod Club

04/24 - Montreal, QC - Theatre Fairmount

04/25 - Boston, MA - Royale

04/26 - Philadelphia, PA - Theatre of Living Arts

04/28 - Atlanta, GA - Buckhead Theatre

04/29 - Charlotte, NC - The Underground

04/30 - Washington, D.C. - 9:30 Club

05/02 - New York, NY - Irving Plaza

Photography: Kate Bellm
The trailer for a new Chicago-based indie film, titled Make Out Party, premieres today on PAPER.

Directed by Emily Esperanza, it tells the story of a young woman who invites all of her friends over to make out with each other. Judging by the trailer, they get around to doing a little more than just kissing.

The over-the-top, hyper-colorful, stylized nature of the film is somewhat reminiscent of A Clockwork Orange, or a Dr. Seuss book.

The queer film will have its world premiere at VAM Studio this weekend as part of the 25th anniversary celebration of the Chicago Underground Film Festival, and then screen at Athens International Film and Video Festival.

Featured artists in the movie include Dorian Electra, Weston Allen, Molly Hewitt, Eve Rydberg, Hereaclitus Here Vernon, and Samantha Hollice.

Take a look at the trailer, below:
M is one of pop music's most important artists, not only consistently creating strong solo material, but also contributing to the larger community. In addition to her most recent EP When I Was Young, the Danish musician has collaborated with Diplo on "Get It Right," Charli XCX on "Porsche," ALMA on "Dance For Me," and Noah Cyrus on "We Are F**ked"  and today, M dropped another solo standout, called "Nostalgia."

The new track builds off an incessant pounding beat, as M speaks through her nostalgic verses: "I remember the first time I was in love/ It was all the way back in 1997," she says. "I stole my mama's cell phone/ Yes, and I was turning it up/ Tracked down your number boy/ I was so in love." The chorus is giant and euphoric, much like M's biggest hits, from "Final Song" to "Don't Leave."

PAPER caught up with M to talk about "Nostalgia," and what's next on her packed agenda. Watch the song's lyric video, below, with old family photos curated by M's parents.

"Nostalgia" is a very honest song. Is it easy for you to get into this headspace while writing?



I think the best songs always happen when one writes from an honest place. It's the only place I really know how to write from, even if I try to mask it. I find it much harder if I try to do a less honest song. It always turns out wrong.

Related | A Guide to All the Female Artists Charli XCX F**ks With

You have such a strong pool of collaborators. Who did you work on this song with?

It all started with a demo beat that I had received from a producer friend of mine a while ago. The moment I heard the drums I opened my mouth and started talking over the beat. I did the verses and the pre-chorus like that, and when I played it for my producer Stint, whom I've worked a lot with recently, he got this idea for a chorus that he had done with a couple of other producer/songwriter friends of ours a while ago. So it was kind of like a patchwork  a mishmash of beautiful coincidences.

Do you consider yourself a nostalgic person?



I'm a super nostalgic person, but at the same time I'm obsessed with moving forward and constant change. I feel addicted to the nostalgia, as well because that's where I draw 70 percent of my inspiration from. So having that feeling with me as I'm rushing into the future is a good compromise I think.

Related | Alma Is a Legend For Life

This single follows your When I Was Young EP. Is an album on the way?

I can tell you that there's a lot more on the way. I'm very excited for this year!

Stream "Nostalga" here, and revisit When I Was Young, below.

Photo Courtesy of M
It's no secret that New Zealand's creative scene has never been more fertile, and among those flourishing are dream design duo, Auckland's Paris Mitchell and Georgia Cherrie of Paris Georgia, who have evolved their brand from basics to instantly iconic styles that are anything but. Just as smoke indicates fire, when there's fashion insider buzz there's generally a flaming hot designer that's ripe for discovery, and Paris Georgia inarguably lives up the hype.

Related | Only Slashed By Tia Can Serve You Slutty Elegance

Known for their proclivity to minimalist chic (they were once labeled "Paris Georgia Basics" after all), Paris Georgia have expanded to balance simplicity and individuality with their later designs. Expect flowing fabrics and form-fitting styles that simultaneously flatter and accentuate, all of which ensure the Paris Georgia woman will turn heads wherever she walks. The two reference vintage menswear and develop earlier designs with their Spring '18 line to create the perfect pieces to take you through the day and onto the dance floor, incorporating a bolder palette of emeralds, ruby reds and even buttercup yellow  a far cry from the muted neutrals privileged in previous lines.

"Each season our design ideas just expanded beyond our initial vision for the brand," Cherrie says of the collection. "We still love a minimalist element to our clothing however found our selves drawn to more tailored pieces and sculptured silhouettes. By starting off with basics we learnt to focus on fabrics, quality and fit which are still so crucial to our brand but we quickly felt the need to grow beyond that."

Related | 7 Brands Behind the Sexiest Slips to Impress

The pair is determined, despite their rapid growth, to keep their production in New Zealand to avoid succumbing to what Cherrie describes as "trend-driven consumerism," which they consider to be the the reason behind the industry's widespread disregard for the environment. This emphasis on quality over quantity in turn renders their styles even more seductive.

Check out the full collection, below, and dream of slithering into one of their silky numbers.

Photography: Ana Kras

Model: Lechie Smith

Styling: Paris Mitchell
Burma continues to be an enigma in the minds of most Americans today. With a population that is nearly 90% Theravadin Buddhist, many Westerners imagine a land of peace and smiles, ancient pagodas, and silent lines of monks and nuns passing on alms rounds. And while these are real aspects of the country, there is much, much more beneath the surface.

Stanley A. Weiss writes for the Diplomat about recent military-political factors shaping the country, summarized in a report called Weaponizing U.S. Economic Engagement in Burma. Weiss writes of the report that, It has been widely shared across defense and intelligence networks worldwide the past two months, and with good reason: Its warning of a Burma in crisis is stark. (emphasis added) The report goes on to suggest that U.S. policy-makers have been duped into thinking real reform was taking place, while military leaders continue to hold a tight grip on political and economic aspects of the country.

An example of the measured optimism can be found in this 2013 Department of State testimony to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. There you see the positive: new peaceful elections, opposition party winning, revisions of economic and media policies to open; as well as the negative: communal violence and anti-Muslim discrimination in Rakhine State and beyond, ongoing ethnic violence elsewhere in the country, and a constitutional and legal infrastructure still firmly favoring military rule of the country.

However, this new report, written by former commander of the Green Berets, Colonel Tim Heinemann, emphasises a much less optimistic view of the country. He writes, US government and businesses are being deceived by mischaracterizations of realities past and present in Burma. By the time the rules of this game are figured out, the US public and private sectors will be fully committed on the ground. It will then be too late, as has been the case in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It is notable that Heinemann warned of problems in Iraq in 2003, a warning that was ignored at the time. Heinemman suggests several steps to avoid the failures of Iraq and Afghanistan, namely focusing on small-scale and ethical businesses and individuals and looking at the younger generation of change-makers who will not so easily succumb to older generations prejudices.

On the Buddhist front, Burmese American Buddhists have formed a group called Saddha, releasing a video plea to the world to end violence against the Rohingya last fall. As discussed here in October:

Recounting the facts of the last few months, surveying reports from both within and outside Burma, they say:

Our online and personal interactions have shown us that not many Burmese Buddhists express sympathy towards the Rohingya, even as fellow human beings.

Indeed, this is consistent with numerous reports from within the country, personified by Ashin Wirathu but not limited to him, of regarding the Rohingya, and Muslims more broadly, as like dogs. They continue:

The Rohingya have been dehumanized online in Burma as illegal Bengali immigrants, terrorists who breed like animals and convert Buddhist women in Rakhine state.  There are Burmese people who believe the Rohingyas presence in Burma risks the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Rakhine state and threatens our Buddhist heritage.

Turning to the future of Burmese Buddhism, they express a shared concern, saying that, we believe that what is happening now will jeopardize Buddhism far more than anything else today, our Buddhism has become the face of inhumanity to the rest of the world.

Of particular help in Weiss article is this description of the ethno-religious political landscape of Burma:

Since most Americans arent familiar with the geography of Myanmar, lets use the U.S. political map to demonstrate what Heinemann is talking about. As we all know, America is blue (referring to Democratic states) on each coast and red (Republican states) across the vast middle of the country. Now, imagine if this divide were even more stark: that there was a continuous belt of blue along both coasts connected by a long blue line across the top of the country, surrounding the red states like a horseshoe. Imagine if everyone in the red states were Christian and Caucasian and everyone in the blue states were people of color and of many different religions. Now, imagine if the vast majority of Americas economic resources were all in the blue states, but that the U.S. government was operated by and for the red states, with an all-powerful and unaccountable U.S. military that constantly exploited the resources of the blue states for its own gain while denying its people basic rights.

Along with this article by Weiss, see Matthew Gindins excellent recent discussion in Tricycle Magazine. In that article, Gindin recounts asking, Burmese dissidents and Rohingya survivors about potentials for resistance to the violence there,The Burmese people at the event said resistance in Burma is very difficult and made rarer by the pervasive brainwashing of the Burmese Buddhist public, who have been largely convinced to regard reports of atrocities against the Rohingya as fake news.'

Gindin continues, quoting U Kyaw Win, an elder dissident of Burma and friend of Aung San Suu Kyi, what happened at Dachau and Auschwitz is going on in Burma. It is a slow genocide. It is a way of getting rid of a certain group of peopleyou can do it quickly or very slowly.

Another activist, Khin Mai Aung, a New Yorkbased racial justice and immigration rights lawyer, is also quoted, saying, The country has lived under military control for some time, and it doesnt have a strong foundation for a civil society. People have difficulty distinguishing fact from state fiction, having lived under military propaganda for so long.

So, internally the Burmese face government propaganda, sometimes in alignment with opportunistic Buddhist leaders, externally they face either a general lack of information or idealization. The road forward remains thus very uncertain. The growing connections of diasporic Burmese (notably not only Buddhists, but also Hindus, Christians, and Muslims in Gindins article) might generate a positive and lasting counterbalance to the military and Chinese and Russian forces who profit from the authoritarian state. But the road to democracy could be a very long one. As Weiss writes:
First of all, I would like to ask for some help. Because of my article on Islam in the current issues of the Ensign and the Liahona, Im currently under heavy attack from some circles  relatively small circles, I hope and think  of Latter-day Saints.

In some ways, its a refreshing change from the usual daily round of attacks by anti-Mormons, alienated ex-Mormons, and marginal Mormons. Moreover, noting the angles of the attacks is helpful to me for a book that Im writing, on Islam for a Mormon audience. Its useful to know exactly what the current issues and misconceptions are.

One recurrent theme in the latest barrage is that Islam is proved evil by the enormous surge in violent crime  especially in sexual assaults, particularly rape  that has allegedly accompanied the arrival of Muslim immigrants and refugees to Europe. By these accounts, places like England, Germany, and Sweden have become miniature earthly hells, and especially so for women.

I know that at least a few people in Europe  and particularly in England, Germany, and Sweden  occasionally read this blog. So I hope that they will notice this request for help. Ive spent a fair amount of time in all three places, but that is no substitute for on-the-ground residency. How do actual residents of Europe, and particularly of the three countries Ive named, react to the claim that life in their homelands is now violent and terrifying? Do they feel like prisoners in their own homes? I would love to hear. And if there are any good recommendations for reading, I would appreciate those. Thanks in advance to any who offer some help on this issue.

***

And now, with wearisome monotony, its back to The Manuscript:

One problem, however, is that it is very difficult for any Muslim, even the most devout, to escape the influence of the West. He may rail against it, and consign it and all its offspring to hell, but he will probably do so over a loudspeaker manufactured on the basis of Western technology. The Ayatollah Khomeini, first exiled in Iraq and then in France, communicated with his followers within Iran prior to that countrys Islamic Revolution by means of sermons recorded on cassette tapes. When he returned to Tehran, he flew in on a Boeing 747 jetliner and then rode in triumph through the crowds in a Chevrolet. Such facts as these never allow the Muslim to forget the fact of Western dominance.

This seemingly one-sided relationship hurts Muslim pride. Many educated Arabs are wounded by the realization of how uninformed the West is about them. They follow the West almost with obsessiveness, but the West, and especially the United States, has often been abysmally ignorant about them. Muslims feel that the West has persistently denied its debt to the civilization created by their ancestors. They are proud of their contributions to mathematics and medicine and other disciplines, yet they see no evidence that people in the West know about these contributions or care. They feel unappreciated, especially in view of the great debt they know they owe to the West in modern times. Our ignorance, they rightly note, has practical consequences. We have tended to favor the Israelis over the Palestinians simply because we knew nothing about the Palestinians. We didnt care about the wrongs and injustices that they had suffered because we had never heard of them. There is no Arabic equivalent to the novel or the movie Exodus. If most of us cant find the United States on a map, and most of our high school students thought Mikhail Gorbachev was a ballet dancer, it isnt very likely that well be able to find Qatar or Bahrayn, or to identify the emir of Kuwait. The terrorism and saber-rattling that have so often characterized relations with the West, the cruel taking and keeping of hostages, the horrific beheadings perpetrated by the so-called Islamic State, are often simply ways of getting our attention. By grabbing an American off the streets of Beirut, an immature college graduate with an identity crisis and no decent job prospects can attract the gaze of the president of the United States. It is much the same reason that leads nonentities to shoot celebrities. (John Hinckley so badly wanted the actress Jodi Foster to notice him, that he shot President Ronald Reagan.)
Iranian Receives U.S. Visa To Help Brother With Cancer

03/30/18

Source: Radio Farda

An Iranian man has been allowed to travel to the United States to donate bone marrow to his U.S. citizen brother with blood cancer, the family's lawyer says. Kamiar Hashemi was granted a visa by the U.S. State Department, obtaining a rare waiver to President Donald Trump's travel ban, Mahsa Khanbabai said on March 29.

Iranian granted U.S. visa to aid brother with cancer despite travel ban https://t.co/KNPFzGAwiX  Reuters Iran (@ReutersIran) March 30, 2018

Hashemi had applied for a U.S. visa at the U.S. Consulate in Yerevan, Armenia, in February when he learned he was a rare 100 match for a transplant that could save his brother Maziar's life, Khahbabai said.



The consulate confirmed the visa had been granted during a telephone call on March 29, according to the lawyer.



Trump's travel ban bars most travelers to the United States from Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Chad, and North Korea.



The U.S. Supreme Court allowed it to go into effect on December 8, 2017, after months of legal battles.



The ban does allow for case-by-case waivers to be granted, but critics say the process is difficult with few clear guidelines on how to apply and why waivers are, or are not, granted.



"It's unfortunate that so much effort had to go into getting just one, clearly urgent, visa approved," Khanbabai said. "There are thousands of people are stuck, also with urgent cases, with no idea what is happening."\

Based on reporting by Reuters and CNN
There Will Be War With Iran If Sanctions Do Not Work, Crown Prince Warns

03/30/18

Source: Radio Farda

Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman has once again urged the international community to squeeze Iran economically and politically, The Wall Street Journal reported on March 29.



"The Second Pahlavi"

(refers to deposed Iranian King Mohammad Reza Pahlavi)

Source: Cover of Iranian magazine Mosalas



The Saudi crown prince told the WSJ that sanctions "will create more pressure on the regime". Meanwhile Prince Mohammad insisted that Riyadh was trying to avoid military conflict with Tehran.



"If we do not succeed in what we are trying to do, we will likely have war with Iran in 10-15 years", he stated.

Saudi Arabia's crown prince calls for more pressure on Iran. 'We have to succeed so as to avoid military conflict,' he says.https://t.co/A80OXigla8  The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) March 30, 2018

The 32-year-old Saudi crown prince was appointed as the heir to the throne by his father less than a year ago.



Saudi Arabia has witnessed a comprehensive reform campaign under the prince since his ascension to power.

The power struggle with Iran has been the main political challenge before the prince who famously threatened the Islamic Republic with war "inside Iran".
The Upper Wassa based mining company, C & G Aleksa Ltd in the Western Region, has debunked allegations against the firm that they have been engaged in illegal mining operations, popularly called galamsey in the Upper Wassa Forest Reserve.



The allegations, the company believed are calculated ploy by certain few individuals to malign and cause disaffections to the company in the eyes of the public.



General Manager of the company, Mr. Donald Entsuah, in an interview with this paper said, C & G Aleksa Company Ltd is a registered mining firm with valid licenses and permits from relevant regulatory mining agencies and authorities, to operate and therefore, cannot involve in any unlawful activity.



According to him, the company was given Prospecting License on the 9th August 2016 and later, received its Entry Permit from the Forestry Commission on 10th August same year, after they had submitted application on 27th July, 2015 before moving its equipment to site.



The companys response follows a Press statement last week jointly signed by Messrs. George Kofi Amponsah and Evans Kwafo, representatives of James Acquah and Cecilia Gyapong of Agona Wassa family of Wassa Juabo, in which they accused the C & G Aleksa Ltd of illegal mining and other claims that went viral in the media.



The paper is informed, the chiefs and elders of that traditional area are not in favour of the continuous attacks by these few individuals, identified to be constituency executives of some political parties, who are hiding behind a certain Agona Wassa family of Wassa Juabo, to lay malicious claims against the mining.



This papers checks has established that, NOT every indigene of Wassa Juabo in Amenfi Central District, are happy or in support of this diabolical plot against the company, but rather a handful disgruntled top galamsey operators, who are angry over the ongoing ban on their usual galamsey works, hence the attempt to dirty and damage the image of C & G Aleksa Ltd.



The companys concession, which is about 72kilometer square is said to be very rich in gold and, as such, the hotspot and main target for most galamsey operators in that area, hence the resolve to fight the company at all cost; and have been doing so since the company moved to the area.



Documentations sighted by this paper also revealed the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resource, Mineral Commission and the Forestry Commission, as well as,the District Assembly under whose jurisdiction the companys concession falls, have all recognized C & G Aleksa Ltd as a legalized company, doing legitimate mining business.



This paper, also sighted many receipts of payments the company made to Forestry Commission as Entry Payments fees and also to District Assembly on various dates and occasions, as required per the mining regulations and law.



Although the Wassa Forest Reserve belongs to the government, one of the elders of thearea, the Abusuapanyi of Wassa Ajakamanso, who are the original owners of the land, told this reporter in a telephone interview that, he is not aware of the alleged illegal mining activities of the company in question.



The Abusuapanyi, although would not comment further on the issue because he did not know the identity of this reporter, indicated that, the C & G Aleksa Ltd is the only mining company under his jurisdiction he knew, is doing legitimate mining works; but not galamsey activity.



Narrating the issues, the Manager said the company did not move just in a day and entered into the area for mining, but engaged the communities and t chiefs one after the other, by way of comprehensive consultations in line with mining laws and procedures.



According to him, their accusers started attacking the company, some were arrested by the police and later granted bail. Later, he said, due to the attackers aggression towards them in the area, it became a national security issue and so the company had applied to the Ghana Armed Forces for military protection and they were given.



The General Manager said, it is also not true that the companys licenses have been revoked or terminated as being alleged in the press statement, except suspension of the license which happened at the time when their accusers had attacked the company and authorities were conducting investigation into the matter.



He noted, however, that even so, soon after the investigations were over and no wrongdoings have been established against the company, their licenses were restored immediately.



This reporter also sighted a correspondence from the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources dated 27th June 2017, addressed to C & G Aleksa Company Ltd, asking the firm to continue with its operations.



He told the paper that the company does not work in the vacuum, but with the relevant state regulatory authorities that supervise their operations. He said just last week Tuesday, the Executive Director of the Forestry Commission, EPA, the Regional Manager and other officials from the Commission visited the companys mining site for inspection.



Sounding very sober, Mr. Donald Entsuah wondered if the company was not licensed and thus doing any illegal mining as claimed by their accusers, would authorities be asking them to submit the companys certificates to be forwarded to Parliament for ratification.



Responding to another allegation that the company had badly polluted River Ankobra, the General Manager said it is never true, but it was rather the activities of the illegal miners themselves, who have been secretly engaging in the illegal mining, despite the ban  that was causing serious pollution to the river bodies in the area.



He explained that, as law-abiding mining firm, they drilled about eight bore-holes within the companys concession which at all material times, they normally use for their works. He said it also not true that the company uses thugs to harass the people in the community.



According to him, the company has what he called Operation Flash out Galamseyers comprising the military, police, Forestry Commission security guards and the Immigration, which they use periodically to drive away the illegal miners.



Social Responsibility



Also touching on claims that management of the company had renege on its social responsibilities to the communities in the area, General Manager said the accusers are simply being disingenuous to the reality. He mentioned communities such as Sraha, Dwobo, Ayem, Amanase, Akatrika as well as Ajakamanso which have all been supported and still benefiting.



At Amanase, he said the company promised the community six-classroom structure and a clinic. The classroom block is currently at the lintel level whiles the clinic will also start immediately after the construction of the school project has been completed.



Also, at Dwobo community, the people have asked the company to help them complete their Community Centre project which is under construction, and as we speak, the company is assisting them. Aside the project, the community also demanded monies ranging from GH60, 000 to GH100, 000 which have all been handed over to them.



He further mentioned that at Ayem community, they requested for KVIP toilet facility which is also under construction now, in addition to cash amount of GH80, 000 given to the community, aside various compensations paid by the company to the community for their teak trees which may be affected by the companys operations.



At a community by name Akatrika, C & G Aleksa Company Ltd has also constructed major bridge and dug boreholes for that community. The companys General Manager wondered why such malicious accusations would be thrown at the company, despite the verifiable various assistance and social responsibilities it has been making to the area.



Mr. Entsuah said, as he speaks, C & G Aleksa Company Ltd has nothing doing at Jacubu Forest and none of the companys excavators has been moved to that area as alleged by their accusers.



Caution

He insisted that C & G Aleksa Ltd is a responsible company that works closely with all stakeholders and government agencies across the country, i.e. the media; but warned that we will not allow ourselves to be maligned by any individual or the media.



He reiterates, the company wishes to assure its regulators and Ghanaians that it is not involved in any unlawful acts in the Upper Wassaw Forest Reserve.



The General Manager assured, as a responsible Company, it will continue to conduct its legitimate activities according to Ghanas laws and regulations and resist any attempt by persons engaged in illegal mining to tarnish its image.

Source: Peacefmonline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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"One integral part to the development of any community or country is security, which the Cambridge English Dictionary defines as protection of a person, building, organization, or country against threats such as crime or attacks. We cannot leave this task to the government alone", those were the touching words of Dr. Osei Kwame 'Despite', when he officially handed over an ultra-modern building to the people of Wiamoase, to serve as a Police Station.



The occasion was also used to enstool him as Nkosuohene of Wiamoase (where he hails from) under the stool name, Nana Dr. Baffour Osei Kwame Despite.



It was a royal affair as chiefs and queen mothers clad in rich traditional attire could not help but appreciate the benevolence and goodwill of the CEO of the Despite Group of Companies.



As part of his birthday celebration on February 2nd this year, Dr Osei Kwame decided to make three donations, a childrens block at the 37 Military hospital, (which was commissioned on his birthday), a new Office complex for the Tesano police Divisional Headquarters / DOVVSU in Accra (yet to be inaugurated) and another newly built Police Complex at his hometown, Wiamoase which was inaugurated today.



Since charity begins at home, Dr Osei Kwame deemed it fit to build a new complex for the Wiamoase police which was smaller and couldn't accommodate all the officers there.



The Wiamoase police station project which commenced during the latter part of 2016 includes six well furnished air conditioned offices (three downstairs and three upstairs), a 10-12 seated conference room, two cell blocks with washrooms, a kitchen with a dinning area and three washrooms for officers and one for walk-in or visitors.



The completion of this complex, it is hoped, will foster harmony among police officers and ensure the safety of the people in Wiamoase.









Dr Osei Kwame Despite Officially Commissions Wiamoase Police Station





Dr Osei Kwame Despite Officially Commissions Wiamoase Police Station





Dr Osei Kwame Despite Officially Commissions Wiamoase Police Station





Dr Osei Kwame Despite Officially Commissions Wiamoase Police Station





Dr Osei Kwame Despite Officially Commissions Wiamoase Police Station





Dr Osei Kwame Despite Officially Commissions Wiamoase Police Station





Dr Osei Kwame Despite Officially Commissions Wiamoase Police Station





Dr Osei Kwame Despite Officially Commissions Wiamoase Police Station





Dr Osei Kwame Despite Officially Commissions Wiamoase Police Station





Dr Osei Kwame Despite Officially Commissions Wiamoase Police Station





Dr Osei Kwame Despite Officially Commissions Wiamoase Police Station





Dr Osei Kwame Despite Officially Commissions Wiamoase Police Station





Dr Osei Kwame Despite Officially Commissions Wiamoase Police Station





Dr Osei Kwame Despite Officially Commissions Wiamoase Police Station





Dr Osei Kwame Despite Officially Commissions Wiamoase Police Station





Dr Osei Kwame Despite Officially Commissions Wiamoase Police Station





Dr Osei Kwame Despite Officially Commissions Wiamoase Police Station





Dr Osei Kwame Despite Officially Commissions Wiamoase Police Station





Dr Osei Kwame Despite Officially Commissions Wiamoase Police Station





Dr Osei Kwame Despite Officially Commissions Wiamoase Police Station





In a speech read on his behalf by Kwami Sefa Kayi, host of PeaceFm's flagship programme, "Kokrokoo", Nana Dr. Baffour Osei Kwame prayed the "facility will be properly maintained with the highest maintenance culture it deserves and accorded the necessary relevance at all times in order to have it fully utilized".



He also acknowledged the contribution and support from all and sundry.



".....this facility couldnt have come to reality without the Grace and Blessings from the most high God, advice and support from family...My brother, partner and best friend Dr Ernest Ofori-Sarpong president of SPECIAL GROUP OF COMPANIES. Friends from the East Legon Executive keep fit Club, all workers...all stake holders of Despite Group of Companies. I say a big thank you."



Present at the function were the Ashanti Regional Minister, Hon Simon Osei Mensah; Director-General, PIPS, who was the Regional Commander when the project started and who represented the IGP, COP Kofi Boakye; Ashanti Regional Police Commander, DCOP Ken Yeboah; CEO of Special Group of Companies Dr Ernest Ofori-Sarpong; Omanhene of Tepa Traditional Area, Nana Adusei Atwenewa Ampem; Berima Okyeredom Amakye Dede the 1st, known in real life as Amakye Dede representing the Agogo manhene; Council of State Member and President of Agona Traditional Council, Hon Nana Owusu Achiaw; Actor cum artiste, Kwadwo Nkansah Lilwin together with his colleague, Akrobeto and Salinko

0

Source: Rebecca Addo Tetteh/Peacefmonline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has lauded the European Union's (EU) contribution to Ghana's sustained democratic development, assuring that the country would continue to entrench the principles of democracy.



He said Ghana cherished the contributions of the EU in addressing its challenges it and would continue to work with the bloc to further develop and improve the living conditions of its citizens.



President Akufo-Addo made these remarks when the outgoing EU Ambassador to Ghana, William Hanna, called at the Flagstaff House, in Accra, to bid farewell to him, on Wednesday.



During Mr Hannas for four-year tenure, there were fruitful and beneficial exchanges between the EU and Ghana.



The President, therefore, commended Mr Hanna for the success of his tenure, noting that Ghana-EU relations had been stronger during the period.



He expressed optimism about building on the achievements to facilitate the move from aid dependency to trade.



Mr Hanna, for his part, commended the Government for taking deliberate measures to stamp out corruption from the country.



He also praised the Government for the establishment of an independent office of Special Prosecution to investigate and prosecute corruption allegations, saying that the move would, to a large extent, help address that challenge in the country.



Mr Hanna said term in Ghana was "very enjoyable" and that the EU during that period had supported the Government and other state institutions to carry out their activities effectively.



Also the EU had help to engender confidence in Ghana's economy by making a number of investments in the country, with many European leaders enhancing economic cooperation with Ghana during their visits.



The outgoing envoy was full of respect for Ghana's democratic credentials, saying his tenure witnessed one of the most successful democratic changes of governments in the country.



He said the EU was proud to be associated with Ghana because its people had continually proved to the rest of the world that Africa had one of the best democracies in the world with the successful conduct of the election and the, subsequent, change of government.



The EU, he assured, would help Ghana to further develop and build strong institutions of state.

Source: GNA









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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The Centre for Democratic Development (CDD)  Ghana, says attaining Ghana Beyond Aid (GhBA), would be the truest meaning of independence for Ghana.



Professor Henry Kwasi Prempeh, the Executive Director, CDD  Ghana, said the idea of GhBA had stirred up some nationalistic feeling as Ghanaians began to envision a future free of aid dependence.



Prof Prempeh said this at a Stakeholders Meeting on framing the GhBA.



The seminar, which was organised by CDD-Ghana on the theme: Ghana Beyond Aid: Moving from Vision to Action, was attended by Ghanas development partners, members of the diplomatic community, policy makers, civil society organisations and the academia.



Prof Prempeh commended President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo for the bold initiative to move Ghana out of dependence on aid for its socioeconomic development.



The Executive Director said GhBA was a bold attempt to confront an approaching reality; because the year since Ghana was classified as a lower middle income country, aid as a component for its national budget, had been dwindling significantly.



He suggested that the burden of GhBA should be shared by the citizenry; adding that, it would be shared by a multiplicity of stakeholders including the Ministries, Departments and Agencies.



Therefore, we think that this is really a conversation that we must all be intimately interested in having and participating in, he said.



He said it was important to move it on as a national project and not as a regime agenda and called on civil society leadership not to politicise it.



He said GhBA would require a new kind of citizenship - the citizen as a tax payer, the citizen as a stakeholder and the citizen with a seemingly strong voice but not the happy beneficiary citizens.



Prof Prempeh said GhBA was an important strategic opportunity as a turning point in Ghanas history.



We can use it to underwrite and implement the kind of hard political economic choices that we are unable to do due to some challenges in our politics.



He said: GhBA is not just about getting our economy and public finances right, it is also about getting our politics and political governance right, because a good deal of a bad economic government choices and decisions over decades that has brought as here.



Prof Emmanuel Gyimah-Boadi, Executive Director, Afrobarometer, said previous governments in practise had given empty slogans over the years, however, the current administration must ensure that GhBA does not fail.



He urged the government to come out with a clear definition of GhBA, and also outline steps to be taken to attain it.



Mr Nicholas Ekow de-Heer, the Head of Programmes, Institute of Fiscal Studies said the rising national debt was making the attainment of GhBA a daunting reality; stating that using 40 per cent of Ghana's tax revenue to service debt was a huge amount.



Dr Abekah Nkrumah of the University of Ghana Business School, said GhBA did not necessarily mean Ghana would not take aid; stating that it only implies that Ghanaians have the capacity to generate local resources.



Dr Kojo Asante, Director of Advocacy and Policy Engagement  CDD  Ghana said: How government governs, how and what they use our taxes, this is the reason why we have intensified our activities in promoting social accountability through our districts and anti-corruption board.



He said the Presidents call to action around GhBA and why it had attracted an emotional response with the ordinary citizen, in a sense reflects our deep desires and aspirations to develop our nation.

Source: GNA









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.
Yesterday, John Dramani Mahama had the power to disregard a Supreme Court ruling, and he freed three people who were jailed by the apex court. Today, he cannot secure a bail for his party's deputy general secretary.



Yesterday, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo could not prevent rowdy party youth from pelting his private residence with stones. Today, some people living close to that residence have been forced to vacate, and he has changed the name of the most important edifice in Ghana.



These two men have no power except what we the people give to them. And they should not forget to use it for the things that matter most to the welfare of the people who own the power.

Source: Manasseh Azure Awuni/facebook









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Technology giant, Microsoft, has presented computers to the pupils of Bentenase M/A Junior High School (JHS) after photographs of an ICT teacher, Richard Akoto Appiah, drawing parts of the computer on a chalkboard went viral on social media.



Microsoft, in collaboration with its local Education partner in Ghana, eSolutions Consulting, equipped the computer lab of the school with 27 laptop computers, tables and chairs for both pupils and teachers, a projector, a UPS back-up and routers, as well as one year 3G internet connectivity.



The organizations also donated mathematical sets and school uniforms to the school.



On his part, Mr Appiah, who goes by Owura Kwadwo Hottish on Facebook, expressed his appreciation to Microsoft. He wrote on Facebook, I want to say a very big thank you to #Microsoft for what they have given to my school #BetenaseMAjhs. I really appreciate and God richly bless you all abundantly.









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A member of the National Communication team (NDC) Sammy Gyamfi has issued a stern warning to the Greater Accra Operations Commander of the Ghana Police Service, Chief Supt. Kwesi Ofori.



Contributing to discussions on Kokrokoo on Peace FM, Sammy Gyamfi sent an advance notice to the Police Officer saying he should "remove his Police Uniform" and "hide it under his bed", should the NDC regain power.



Branding Chief Supt. Kwesi Ofori as an "NPP Police Officer", Mr. Gyamfi recounted to host Nana Yaw Kesseh how Kwesi Ofori gave orders for Police Officers to fire rubber bullets at a charged crowd who had assembled at the Police CID Headquarters on Tuesday to empathize with the NDC Deputy General Secretary Koku Anyidoho.



The Ghana Police Service had to employ the use of water cannon vehicles and the firing of teargas to disperse the group of supporters protesting the arrest of Koku Anyidoho and had massed up at the entrance of the Police edifice



Angry Supporters



The supporters were chanting songs and had blocked the main Danquah CircleKwame Nkrumah Interchange road. They also burnt car tyres when they realised there was no sign Mr Koku Anyidoho was going to be released. The Police said they had to use force to expel the crowd after diplomacy and negotiations had failed.



The law enforcement agency sprayed hot water and tried to effect some arrests leading to various degrees of injury by some of the protesters. And the NDC Communicator is accusing the police officer of ordering the "assault".



'Charge On Them'



Sammy Gyamfi thus cautioned Kwesi Ofori that when he hears that there is a change of government, he has to remove his Police Uniform, hide it under his bed and cease being a police officer. He was the one who came to the Headquarters, amidst the peaceful crowd, and gave an order that charge on them.



He also admonished all security officers who he believed have affiliation with the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) to advise themselves as the NDC will deal with them when the party regains power.



Background



Koku Anyidoho was "arrested" by the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of Ghana Police Service after making instigative comments. While commenting on the ratification of the controversial defence cooperation agreement between Ghana and the US, Anyidoho stated that President Akufo-Addo will be overthrown just like his father was in 1972.



Somebody should tell Nana Akufo- Addo, [massa], history has a very interesting way of repeating itself, on the 13th of January 1972, a certain Colonel Ignatius Kuntu Acheampong led an insurrection that removed the progress party from power, Busia was the prime minister, Akufo-Addos father was the ceremonial president. Somebody should tell Nana Akufo-Addo that history has an interesting way of repeating itself, Koku Anyidoho told Happy FM on Monday.



Therell be a civilian coup detat; therell be a social revolution and the movement is starting on Wednesday. He [Akufo-Addo] will be fed up at the Presidency, the opposition firebrand had opined.

Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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I was recently asked to write the entry on school vouchers for publication in the upcoming Encyclopedia of Public Administration. Here it is.

Introduction. School voucher proposals gained traction in the late 1980s as part of a broader movement to privatize services previously delivered by government through its employees. Unlike the privatization program undertaken by Margaret Thatcher in England, in which public enterprises were sold off to the private sector, relieving government of further responsibility for their operation, in the United States privatization referred to the practice of contracting out delivery of governments programmatic responsibilities to for-profit or non-profit third-party surrogates. Enthusiasm for this method of public service delivery led to a significant expansion of such practices, generating mixed results depending upon the service involved and the adequacy of government oversight. Voucher programs allowing parents to enroll their children in participating private schools of their choice, and to pay the tuition in full or in part with a government-issued voucher, have become one of the more contentious elements of the larger privatization agenda.

Enthusiasm for a market-based approach to schooling received impetus from a 1990 study by John Chubb and Terry Moe, Politics, Markets and Americas Schools. Although several researchers subsequently challenged the data and methodology used in that study, which painted a grim picture of Americas schools, fewer critics initially took issue with their definition of effective schooling, which was to be measured against academic criteria only. For Chubb and Moe and those who agreed with their prescription for school privatization, the mission of the schools was limited to imparting competency in the math, science and language skills deemed crucial to economic self-sufficiency and Americas ability to succeed in the global marketplace. Only later did criticism of that premise become a major point of controversy between proponents and opponents of school vouchers.

Philosophy and Partisanship. At its intractable extremes, the school voucher debate is a conflict between two long-standing elements of the American political tradition: the commitment to personal choice and individual freedom, on the one hand, and an equally compelling belief in the importance of a common civic infrastructure and collective interests on the other. Debate over vouchers has become so contentious in large measure because it reflects the tension between these largely incompatible political priorities.

Rather than debating whether public schools are as deficient as some have portrayed them, and if so, in what respects, or debating the merits of one reform measure over another, the policy issue has become whether America should continue to support a system of free, publicly-controlled schools or whether governments educational role should be reduced to that of funder, enabling families to use a specified number of taxpayer dollars to buy educational services in the marketplace.

Initial support for school vouchers came from several interest groups: Catholics desiring financial support for their parochial schools; political libertarians opposed to government control of education on ideological grounds; business interests concerned about public schools ability to produce a skilled workforce; and the Christian Right, which had advocated for Protestant prayer and religious instruction in the public schools and had been rebuffed by the Supreme Court in a series of cases begining in 1962, when Engel v. Vitale struck down the practice of official prayer in public school classrooms. These constituencies were, and are, largely aligned with the Republican Party, while the most reliably anti-voucher interest groups public educators, especially teachers unions; the African-American community; and civil libertariansrepresent important Democratic constituencies. Voucher programs have thus become a partisan issue. (Kennedy 2001) The political dimension of the voucher debate has been underscored by the very active role taken by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a corporate lobbying organization that supports voucher programs. ALECs education task forces are funded primarily by libertarian interests, including the Charles Koch Foundation, the DeVos Foundation, and the Friedman Foundation. (Shaffer, Ellis & Swensson 2018)

Voucher proponents argue that competition in education leads to better schools at less cost. They point to test results showing that student achievement in private schools has historically been superior to the performance of students attending public schools. Opponents respond that much of the research purporting to compare public and private school outcomes fails to control for major differences in student body composition, including but not limited to parental socio-economic status and educational motivation.

Opponents and even supportive academics also warn of potentially damaging social consequences. John Witte, an educational researcher who evaluated and supported one of the earliest voucher programs, a 1990 experiment in Milwaukee, nevertheless noted that the program led to more segregation in the schools than otherwise would have been the case. (Witte 2000) Other researchers have worried about religious balkanization, since an estimated 80% of the private schools participating in voucher programs are religious. Still others have expressed concern that voucher programs largely abandon the civic mission of the schools. (Covaleskie 2007)

Legal issues. As voucher programs grew, opponents raised both First Amendment and state constitutional concerns, arguing that the use of public funds to pay tuition at religious schools violated both the First Amendments Establishment Clause and state-level prohibitions known as Blaine Amendments. The Supreme Court considered the First Amendment arguments in 2002, in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris. That case challenged an Ohio voucher program that affected only the Cleveland City School District. In 1999 and 2000, 82% of the schools participating in the Cleveland program were religiously affiliated, and 96% of the students using the vouchers were enrolled in one of those religious schools. Both the District Court and the Court of Appeals ruled for the parents who were challenging the program; however, the Supreme Court reversed. The Court accepted the defenses argument that the vouchers were payments to the parents, whose choice of religious schools was made freely and voluntarily, and that as a result, the vouchers could not properly be characterized as tax support for the religious schools. Since the choice of school was made by the parents, and the programs goal of allowing low-income children to escape a failing school system was secular, the Court held that the voucher program did not run afoul of the Establishment Clause.

State courts have largely adopted the logic of the Zelman decision, allowing voucher programs to operate despite state constitutional provisions forbidding the payment of state tax dollars to religious institutions. These provisions, commonly called Blaine Amendments, were named for Congressman James Blaine, who sponsored a federal constitutional amendment in 1875 that would have forbidden public funding of religious schools. Blaines amendment was seen as an effort to prevent government from supporting the Catholic schools that had originally been established in response to Protestant bible-reading in public school classrooms. Blaines effort at a federal amendment failed, but thirty-eight states subsequently added such provisions to their state constitutions. In sixteen states where Blaine Amendments seemed likely to preclude judicial approval of voucher programs, so-called neo-vouchers have used tax credits to circumvent the problem; the subsidies have been deemed tax reductions rather than direct spending. Arizona is the most prominent state employing this tactic; its Supreme Court upheld the states tax credit scholarships in 1998. In two states, Massachusetts and Michigan, both vouchers and neo-vouchers have been held to violate those states constitutions. (Davis 2016)

Performance. Recent research on statewide voucher programs in Louisiana and Indiana has cast doubt on the educational benefits promised by voucher proponents. (Dynarski & Nichols 2017) Public school students who received vouchers to attend private schools subsequently scored more poorly on reading and math tests when compared to similar students who remained in public schools. The magnitudes of the negative impacts were large, and the results could not be explained by the particular tests that were used or the possibility that students receiving vouchers had transferred out of above-average public schools. According to a Brookings Institute overview of available research, a Louisiana public school student who was average in math (at the 50th percentile) and began attending a private school using a voucher declined to the 34th percentile after one year. Students in third, fourth, or fifth grades had a steeper decline, to the 26th percentile. A student at the 50th percentile in reading declined to about the 46th percentile. In Indiana, a student who had entered a private school with a math score at the 50th percentile declined to the 44th percentile after one year. Earlier studies of voucher programs had shown more mixed results when measured by test scores, with scores improving for some students in some places, and failing to improve for other students in other places.

In January, 2018, The Wall Street Journal analyzed data on Milwaukees program, the nations oldest, and found that the citys 29,000 voucher students, on average, have performed about the same as their peers in public schools on state exams.

A variety of explanations have been offered for the continued lack of evidence that vouchers improve student performance. Among the theories: Public schools have improved more than private ones since the early 1990s; business interests, often lacking background in education, have established schools they are ill-equipped to run; before vouchers, private school classrooms were occupied by children from more privileged backgrounds, and test scores tend to correlate highly with parental income. To date, no consensus has formed around any of these explanations.

Indianas results are particularly concerning, because the state has the nations largest, and arguably least restrictive, voucher program. Initial enrollment caps have been abandoned, as has the rule that children would not be eligible for a voucher unless theyd attended a public school for at least one year. (The initial justification for vouchers was to allow poor children to leave failing public schools.) The program is no longer limited to poor children; recent research suggests that nearly a third of Indianas voucher families could afford private school tuition without state subsidies. (Shaffer, Ellis & Swensson 2018)

Civic Dimension. If communities are created and sustained by the things we have in common, by mutual engagements that build social capital, it is particularly important to consider how overarching values and civic commitments are transmitted, supported and reinforced in a society as heterodox as that of the United States. The public schools have traditionally been seen as important to the forging of social solidarity, and have long been regarded as a public good. The public schools play a major role in introducing students who come from increasingly diverse backgrounds to each other and to Americas civic aspirations. To date, there are no research studies comparing public and private school performance in transmitting civic knowledge or success in encouraging civic behaviors.

Voucher proponents will generally not dispute the classification of education as a public good and except for the most ideological libertarians among them, do support a role for the state: the role of funder. Where they differ from proponents of a strong public education system is on the identity of the provider of educational services. Privatization proponents argue that the market can and should provide the education services and that government should enable individual families to purchase them. On the theoretical level, the voucher debate is one more instance of the tension between the libertarian belief in the efficacy of markets and the primacy of individual choice, and the more communitarian preference for mechanisms that encourage social cohesion.

Funding and Oversight. Education in the United States is a function specifically assigned to the states, and funding for public education has consistently been a major state-level budget item. Given state educational systems dependence upon the fiscal health and tax revenues of their home states, school funding and institutional quality across the country has been uneven. Voucher programs must be funded out of those same state budgets, and opponents of those programs charge that they are siphoning off funds desperately needed by the public schools. In Indiana, the state with the countrys largest voucher program, state support for vouchers in 2016-17 totaled 146.1 million dollars; between 2011 and 2017, the state spent 520 million dollars. Public school administrators assert that these are funds that would otherwise have gone to the states public schools, while advocates for voucher programs insist that the programs actually save the state money.

The fiscal impact of vouchers, and the veracity of the dueling claims, is difficult to assess for several reasons. Differences in the way in which states construct their programs means that impacts vary from state to state. Voucher proponents claim that vouchers save taxpayers money is based upon the fact that most vouchers are issued for amounts that are less than the per pupil cost of educating a child in the states public schools. Since the money that follows the child is less than the cost incurred by the public system to educate that child, the public school retains the difference. That claim, however, overlooks two reasons why such savings are more theoretical than real: first, a growing number of students enrolled in voucher programs were never in the public system. Second, there is not a one-to-one reduction of public school expense when a student leaves. For example, if one or two students leave a class of 25, the school system must still provide a teacher, a classroom and supplies for the 23 who remain. The school system must continue to maintain its facilities and pay sufficient personnel to conduct necessary administrative functions. It is only when large numbers of children take vouchers and depart that school districts can realize savings by closing buildings, consolidating classes and firing teachers. Thus far, there has been little to no credible research on the actual fiscal effects of the various iterations of voucher and neo-voucher programs on public school systems.

This lack of research is at least partially due to a lack of data. Oversight of voucher programs by most states has been minimal. Despite the large amounts of money involved, private schools accepting vouchers have not generally been subject to reporting requirements, either curricular or fiscal. In Louisiana, independent reporting found many religious schools teaching creationism in science class and using grossly inaccurate, religiously proselytizing texts in history. In Ohio, a 1999 investigation by the Akron Beacon Journal found school choice legislation had been developed as a quid pro quo for campaign contributions and documented improper political behavior by a local businessman who then established private schools specifically to take advantage of the opportunity created by the legislation. His schools generated 16 million dollars from vouchers in the 1999-2000 academic year; the students who attended his schools were subsequently found to perform more poorly than those in the public schools. In Florida, the Miami News Times won an award for its expose of a voucher program for children with physical and learning disabilities; the paper reported safety violations, physical abuse, frequent relocations, a lack of curriculum, and virtually no state oversight.

Conclusion. The combination of cutbacks to public schools, reports of malfeasance by voucher schools, and the emergence of data undercutting the claim that privatization would improve student performance has dampened much of the initial enthusiasm for school vouchers; however, the programs still have substantial political support. It remains to be seen whether that support can be maintained, and whether private schools accepting vouchers can improve their results sufficiently to justify continuation of these educational experiments.

References

Covaleskie, J.F. 2007. What Public? Whose Schools? Educational Studies. Vol.42, #1.

Davis, Carl. 2016. State Tax Subsidies for Private K-12 Education. Institute on Taxation & Economic Policy. October.

Dynarski, Mark and Austin Nichols. 2017. More findings about school vouchers and test scores, and they are still negative. Economic Studies at Brookings: Evidence Speaks Reports. Vol. 2, #18, July 13.

Kennedy, Sheila Suess. 2001. Privatizing Education: The Politics of Vouchers. Phi Delta Kappan. Vol. 82, Number 6. February.

Shaffer, Michael B., John G. Ellis and Jeff Swensson. 2018. Hoosier Lawmaker? Vouchers, ALEC Legislative Puppets, and Indianas Abdication of Democracy AASA Journal of Scholarship and Practice. Vol. 14, No. 4 Winter

[Originally published at SheilaKennedy.net on March 28, 2018]

Peacock Panache readers:

Sheila Kennedy is a former high school English teacher, former lawyer, former Republican, former Executive Director of Indianas ACLU, former columnist for the Indianapolis Star, and former young person. She is currently an (increasingly cranky) old person, a Professor of Law and Public Policy at Indiana University Purdue University in Indianapolis, and Director of IUPUIs Center for Civic Literacy. She writes for the Indianapolis Business Journal, PA Times, and the Indiana Word, and blogs at www.sheilakennedy.net. For those who are interested in more detail, links to an abbreviated CV and academic publications can be found on her blog, along with links to her books..

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Michelle A. Krek, 35, was absolutely glowing since becoming pregnant, family and friends tell the media in western Pennsylvania. She was due to give birth in May. But that happy event will never take place.

For reasons still unknown, her boyfriend, Naader E. Rizk, 38, shot and killed Krek and her unborn baby inside a Washington County, Pa., apartment Wednesday evening, then turned the gun on himself.

The Observer-Reporter newspaper writes Krek, who was seven months pregnant, was shot in the back and in the head, while Rizk had a single gunshot wound to the head. A 9 mm handgun was found, and a bullet was recovered in the neighbor's apartment.

Police told the newspaper there was no history of domestic violence at the residence, nor was there a protection-from-abuse order in effect.

The only time police were called to the apartment was when Rizk complained about a neighbor being noisy, the newspaper wrote, adding:

Krek, who had a master's degree in information technology, dated Rizk for about a year, and she lived with him for much of that time.

However, Rizk's parents described the relationship as rocky but not violent to the Observer-Reporter:

"They broke up five, maybe six (times) just in that one year," said Marsha Rizk, Naader's mother. "They didn't get time to know each other. ... Getting pregnant that quickly ... Really, you don't know the person until you're with them for a while."

Others said the couple seemed happy, "like any normal couple having a baby."

Tragically, it was not to be.
If you live in the counties that surround Harrisburg, you are in one of the fastest-growing areas in Pennsylvania.

According to new data from the Pennsylvania State Data Center, despite there being slower population growth overall between 2010 and 2017, the counties in this area of the state have seen considerable growth.

At the top? Cumberland County with a 6.2 percent population growth in the past seven years. Maybe Trader Joe's should take a hard look at that. Lebanon and Lancaster counties also landed in the top five for population growth since 2010.

Despite the good news for us, more than two-thirds of the state have had population losses so far this decade. How much did your county gain or lose? Check the list below.

Adams County

2010: 101,417

2017: 102,336

Percent change: .9%

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Allegheny County

2010: 1,223,338

2017: 1,223,048

Percent change: 0%

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Armstrong County

2010: 68,938

2017: 65,642

Percent change: -4.8%

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Beaver County

2010: 170,539

2017: 166,140

Percent change: -2.6%

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Bedford County

2010: 49,768

2017: 48,480

Percent change: -2.6%

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Berks County

2010: 411,538

2017: 417,854

Percent change: 1.5%

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Blair County

2010: 127,076

2017: 123,457

Percent change: -2.8%

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Bradford County

2010: 62,709

2017: 60,853

Percent change: -3%

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Bucks County

2010: 625,238

2017: 628,341

Percent change: 0.5%

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Butler County

2010: 183,862

2017: 187,108

Percent change: 1.8%

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Cambria County

2010: 143,674

2017: 133,054

Percent change: -7.4%

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Cameron County

2010: 5,085

2017: 4,592

Percent change: -9.7%

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Carbon County

2010: 65,248

2017: 63,853

Percent change: -2.1%

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Centre County

2010: 154,030

2017: 162,660

Percent change: 5.6%

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Chester County

2010: 499,175

2017: 519,293

Percent change: 4%

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Clarion County

2010: 39,991

2017: 38,458

Percent change: -3.8%

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Clearfield County

2010: 81,594

2017: 79,685

Percent change: -2.3%

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Clinton County

2010: 39,241

2017: 38,998

Percent change: -0.6%

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Columbia County

2010: 67,296

2017: 65,932

Percent change: -2%

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Crawford County

2010: 88,761

2017: 86,159

Percent change: -2.9%

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Cumberland County

2010: 235,408

2017: 250,066

Percent change: 6.2%

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Dauphin County

2010: 268,100

2017: 275,710

Percent change: 2.8%

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Delaware County

2010: 558,699

2017: 564,696

Percent change: 1.1%

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Elk County

2010: 31,946

2017: 30,197

Percent change: -5.5%

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Erie County

2010: 280,564

2017: 274,541

Percent change: -2.1%

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Fayette County

2010: 136,602

2017: 131,504

Percent change: -3.7%

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Forest County

2010: 7,716

2017: 7,297

Percent change: -5.4%

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Franklin County

2010: 149,618

2017: 154,234

Percent change: 3.1%

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Fulton County

2010: 14,844

2017: 14,590

Percent change: -1.7%

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Greene County

2010: 38,686

2017: 36,770

Percent change: -5.0%

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Huntingdon County

2010: 46,031

2017: 45,491

Percent change: -1.2%

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Indiana County

2010: 88,893

2017: 84,953

Percent change: -4.4%

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Jefferson County

2010: 45,196

2017: 43,804

Percent change: -3.1%

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Juniata County

2010: 24,636

2017: 24,514

Percent change: -0.5%

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Lackawanna County

2010: 214,440

2017: 210,761

Percent change: -1.7%

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Lancaster County

2010: 519,447

2017: 542,903

Percent change: 4.5%

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Lawrence County

2010: 91,140

2017: 87,069

Percent change: -4.5%

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Lebanon County

2010: 133,577

2017: 139,754

Percent change: 4.6%

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Lehigh County

2010: 349,673

2017: 366,494

Percent change: 4.8%

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Luzerne County

2010: 320,916

2017: 317,343

Percent change: -1.1%

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Lycoming County

2010: 116,108

2017: 113,841

Percent change: -2.0%

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McKean County

2010: 43,450

2017: 41,330

Percent change: -4.9%

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Mercer County

2010: 116,674

2017: 111,750

Percent change: -4.9%

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Mifflin County

2010: 46,682

2017: 46,388

Percent change: -0.6%

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Monroe County

2010: 169,838

2017: 168,046

Percent change: -1.1%

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Montgomery County

2010: 799,930

2017: 826,075

Percent change: 3.3%

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Montour County

2010: 18,267

2017: 18,272

Percent change: 0%

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Northampton County

2010: 297,696

2017: 303,405

Percent change: 1.9%

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Northumberland County

2010: 94,514

2017: 92,029

Percent change: -2.6%

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Perry County

2010: 45,965

2017: 46,127

Percent change: 0.4%

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Philadelphia County

2010: 1,526,006

2017: 1,580,863

Percent change: 3.6%

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Pike County

2010: 57,353

2017: 55,691

Percent change: -2.9%

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Potter County

2010: 17,458

2017: 16,802

Percent change: -3.8%

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Schuylkill County

2010: 148,289

2017: 142,569

Percent change: -3.9%

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Snyder County

2010: 39,709

2017: 40,801

Percent change: 2.8%

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Somerset County

2010: 77,746

2017: 74,501

Percent change: -4.2%

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Sullivan County

2010: 6,428

2017: 6,089

Percent change: -5.3%

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Susquehanna County

2010: 43,352

2017: 40,985

Percent change: -5.5%

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Tioga County

2010: 41,896

2017: 40,793

Percent change: -2.6%

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Union County

2010: 44,949

2017: 44,595

Percent change: -0.8%

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Venango County

2010: 54,983

2017: 51,762

Percent change: -5.9%

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Warren County

2010: 41,815

2017: 39,659

Percent change: -5.2%

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Washington County

2010: 207,848

2017: 207,298

Percent change: -0.3%

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Wayne County

2010: 52,820

2017: 51,205

Percent change: -3.1%

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Westmoreland County

2010: 365,164

2017: 352,627

Percent change: -3.4%

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Wyoming County

2010: 28,269

2017: 27,322

Percent change: -3.3%

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York County

2010: 434,998

2017: 446,078

Percent change: 2.5%

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A view of Carlisle shows the Dickinson College campus at College Street and West High Street. (Dan Gleiter, PennLive.com/file)

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Celebrity chef Robert Irvine took time out of a bottle signing to catch up with one of his favorite "Restaurant Impossible" subjects, owners of Dodge City Steakhouse in Harrisburg.

Irvine was at the Fine Wine & Good Spirits Premium Collection Store at the Capital City Mall in Lower Allen Township March 29 as part of a promotion for Boardroom Spirits.

Visitors lined up to meet Irvine, who is co-owner of the Lansdale, Pa. distillery and makers of vodka produced with all-natural ingredients in flavors such as ginger, cranberry and citrus.

Among those in line were Dodge City's owners Doug and Debbie Krick.

"We just wanted to see him. We were close to him and he is very, very busy. He always answers our emails and our texts," Doug Krick said. "We just have a really special relationship."

In 2011, Irvine revamped the restaurant as part of the Food Network television show, and while many of Irvine's victims ended up failing, the Kricks took Irvine's advice to heart.

"These are my success stories or one of the biggest success stories I have ever had," Irvine said. "Talk about great people, number one. But talk about a restaurant that was failing that didn't deserve to fail ... These are the ones that listened."

At the bottle signing, Irvine worked the crowd requesting pushups, taking about Boardroom and cracking jokes. He partnered with Boardroom after meeting the owners at a Beats & Eats dinner in Philadelphia through his Robert Irvine Foundation, a group honoring men and women in the military.

Irvine said Pennsylvania plays a big role in his life including FIT Crunch products based in Pittsburgh. He also has an office in the state and regularly tapes television shows in Pennsylvania.

Boardroom is made with fresh, all-natural ingredients and no syrups or artificial flavors. In addition, a percentage of proceeds from Boardroom's sales go to the military through Irvine's foundation.

"For us as a company, we want to make a great success story out of the state of Pennsylvania and Robert is willing to do anything that it takes to make that successful" said Justin Leonard, chief operating officer at Robert Irvine.

"One of our new tag lines is 'The buzz starts in Pennsylvania,'" he said.
A 26-year-old man who ran 31 stop signs while fleeing a state trooper who was attempting to arrest him on an outstanding warrant was sentenced in Dauphin County Court Wednesday.



Kyle Cooley was ordered to spend 16 months to five years in state prison for fleeing the traffic stop and the subsequent chase Dec. 15, 2017. The pursuit began near Sixth and Schuylkill Streets in Harrisburg when Trooper David Taylor saw Cooley driving a vehicle in the area and attempted to stop him on a felony domestic assault warrant, according to a news release from the Dauphin County district attorney's office.

Cooley ran the stop signs and was traveling about 75 mph on Second Street before a state trooper stopped him using a pursuit intervention technique, stopping the vehicle on Kelker Street. Senior Deputy District Attorney Stephen R. Zawisky said Cooley endangered numerous people when he fled the stop and drove recklessly through the city, showing a lack or regard for human life.

Cooley also pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of simple assault and will spend a year on probation after his release from prison.
A 31-year-old Springettsbury Township man admitted to attacking his father with an axe and a knife last year.

Kevin Martin Blanch entered the guilty plea and said he was mentally ill at a hearing Thursday in York County Court. Blanch had been charged with attempted homicide, but the charge was changed to attempted first degree murder, according to online court records.

Kevin Blanch

On Feb. 19, 2017, police arrived at Blanch's home on the 4100 block of Old Orchard Road and found Blanch standing outside with blood on his hands, neck, chest and ripped shirt. His father, Dennis Blanch, 61, told police his son attacked him with an ax, and he suffered cuts on his chest and neck area and left wrist.

In his interview with police, Kevin Blanch said his father confronted him the morning after an argument he had with his mother the night before about eating too much pot pie, which he had made with his brothers.

When he got up around 1 p.m. Sunday, he said his father asked to speak with him, and he walked past him. His father stood in his path and refused to move after being asked to move several times, so Kevin said he picked up his throwing ax.

After his father said "Do it" in a challenging manner, he swung, trying to strike him in the neck and shoulder area, where the jugular vein is located, court records state.

As he struck him in the chest his father tried to grab the ax, and a struggle ensued. Kevin said he tried to get a knife out of a sheath on his belt, but his father grabbed it.

Asked what he was going to do with the knife, Kevin Blanch told police he was "going to end things quickly by slicing his father's throat." He said he wanted to "neutralize the threat," and that he "wanted to kill" his father, court records state.

"K. Blanch said that one thing he remembered from his training in the military was how to neutralize the threat," police said in court records.

The victim gave police the M48 Tomahawk throwing ax and knife he said were used in the attack. The son had other knives in his room, which the father said he unsuccessfully tried to get during the struggle.

Blanch is scheduled for sentencing March 30 and will undergo mental health evaluations.
A Pennsylvania man who claimed a 5-year-old girl begged him for a sex act has failed to convince a state appeals court his prison term is too long.

Instead, the Superior Court panel found the 15- to 30-year jail sentence fits Brigham Lawless' crime just fine.

Lawless, 47, of Cresco, didn't challenge his convictions for sexually assaulting the child while making another 5-year-old watch in December 2015. He pleaded guilty to involuntary deviate sexual intercourse with a child.

Lawless only contested the severity of the punishment imposed by Monroe County President Judge Margherita Patti Worthington.

The state court disposed of Lawless' appeal in an opinion by Judge Jack A. Panella.

Panella called Lawless' appeal contradictory and confused. He noted the penalty Worthington chose is right in the standard sentencing range for such child-sex crimes.

To overturn his sentence, Lawless would have to prove it was unreasonable, Panella noted.

"That is simply not the case here," he wrote. "Lawless had (the girl) perform oral sex on him while (the other child) watched. And he claimed she 'begged' him to do that."
A federal judge got it right when he calculated a Rite Aid Corp. executive and a conspirator scammed the drugstore giant out of more than $11 million, a U.S. appeals court has ruled.

That conclusion by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit means ex-Rite Aid Vice President Timothy Foster and businessman Jay Findling will keep serving years in federal prison. They also will remain on the hook to pay back every cent U.S. Middle District Judge John E. Jones III found that they stole.

In appealing to the circuit court, the two claimed Jones overstated the financial scope of their con when he sentenced them in November 2016.

Foster was in charge of disposing of Rite Aid's surplus inventory. Findling, a New Jersey businessman, was in the liquidation business.

Investigators said the two conspired to under-report to Rite Aid the amount of money obtained through the surplus item sales. While $132 million was garnered from those sales, only $102 million was reported to Rite Aid. Findling and Foster pocketed the $29.7 million difference on a 70-30 split, with Findling keeping the larger share, authorities said.

Findling pleaded guilty to a wire fraud charge and was sentenced to 4 years in prison. Foster received a 5-year jail term after pleading guilty to making false statements.

The circuit court sided with Jones' ruling in an opinion by Judge Kent A. Jordan.

Jordan rejected Findling's and Foster's claims that Jones didn't fully credit them for the full value of their liquidation services to Rite Aid. Findling argued that Jones' loss calculation didn't include unreimbursed expenses he claimed to have incurred in moving the surplus merchandise.

Findling didn't provide enough solid proof of those supposed unreimbursed expenses, Jordan wrote, calling Findling's claim nothing more than "poorly supported allegations."

"There was no error in (Jones') value assessment," Jordan concluded.
Pennsylvania First Lady Frances Wolf and the Pennsylvania Commission for Women honor 16 female military veterans for their service to state and country in a ceremony at the Governor's Residence in Harrisburg, Pa., March 28, 2018.

Wolf, the Commission and Maj. Gen. Anthony Carrelli, Pennsylvania's Adjutant General, hosted this third annual Female Veterans Day ceremony.

"Each of these women, and all those who have served before them, have made profound sacrifices for the betterment of their country," First Lady Fraces Wolf said.

This year's honorees included:

Megan Andros, Pittsburgh, who was a captain in the U.S. Army and served in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Dr. Elaine H. Berkowitz, Pittsburgh, a Lt. Col. in the U.S. Army who after 20 years as a dental assistant became a dentist and deployed four times to Iraq and Bosnia.

Bobbi Cumpston, Washington, honored for her current service in the U.S. Army and has served with the Pennsylvania Army National Guard for 15 years.

Lance Cpl. Natalie Aysha David, Philadelphia, honored for her service in the U.S. Marine Corps including her part on the Global War on Terrorism.

Hazel Marie Diaz, Annville, was honored for her service in the U.S. Marine Corps and is a 2004 graduate of Lebanon High School. She was recently appointed Chair of the Veterans Caucus for the Pennsylvania Democratic Party.

Cheryl Grant,York, honored for her service in the U.S. Army and is employed with the City of York Parking Bureau.

Carol Griffitts, Abington, honored for her service in the U.S. Navy where she served as a medical corpsman.

Kimberly Henderson-Rosario, Philadelphia, honored for her service in the U.S. Army and served with the 224th Military Intelligence Unit and 4074th Reception Battalion. She was awarded the Army Achievement Medal.

Charmaine Ijeoma, Norristown, was honored for her service in the U.S. Navy from 1985 to 1989. After leaving the military, Charmaine graduated cum laude from Temple University but in 2008 lost her job and became homeless. She is now the Homeless Veterans Outreach Officer at the Montgomery County Veterans Affairs Office.

Amanda Kloehr, Camp Hill, honored for her service in the U.S. Air Force she suffered a horrific car accident in 2008 and used that experience to educate others about the dangers of distracted driving.

Staff Sgt. Rachel Kovach, Clinton, honored for her current service in the U.S. Army as a training manager for the Pennsylvania National Guard where she has served for 13 years.

Monica Mihlbauer, York, honored for six years of service in the U.S. Marine Corps. Today she is employed with the York City Bureau of Health as a Personal Health Services Supervisor.

Master Sgt. Stephanie Reid, Pittsburgh, honored for her current service in the U.S. Army where she was awarded the Bronze Star for meritorious service leading 35 combat convoy missions during Operation Iraqi Freedom, a second Bronze Star for a 2011 deployment to Afghanistan.

First Class Sgt. Theresa Walls, Chalfont, honored for her current service in the U.S. Army, and over 28 years in the United States Armed Forces, including the U.S. Navy and the Pennsylvania Army National Guard.

Cheryl A. Wormley, York, honored for her service in the U.S. Marine Corps. and after a seven-year break 24 years in the Pennsylvania Army National Guard in Harrisburg.

Adelle Zavada, Dallas, honored for her 30-year career as an aircraft maintenance and logistics officer in the U.S. Air Force. She retired in 2008 as a colonel.
A leading Central Pennsylvania health insurance company has suspended its advertising on Harrisburg's ABC television affiliate in the wake of a sexual discrimination complaint by a popular former news anchor.

The move by Capital Blue Cross, first reported Thursday by the Central Pennsylvania Business Journal, was taken in response to the complaint filed last week with the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission by Flora Posteraro.

Posteraro has alleged she was moved off of her weekday news anchor slot, and ultimately terminated, in retaliation for complaints about what she saw as unequal treatment of female staffers by the station's general manager, Robert Bee.

Here's what Capital Blue Cross said about its decision in a statement shared with PennLive Thursday afternoon:

"Capital BlueCross is committed to supporting fair and safe workplace environments, both within our company and in the community.

"We decided to suspend advertising with abc27 until the public complaint against the station's general manager is appropriately resolved.

"We take the matter of due process seriously and have not made any judgments as to fault in this matter. But we also take allegations of sexual harassment or retaliation in the workplace very seriously, leading us to this decision.

"We look forward to resuming our advertising with ABC 27 once the matter is appropriately resolved and Capital can be confident in the appropriate treatment of all employees in the workplace by ABC 27 and its management."

A company spokeswoman declined further further comment on the matter.

PennLive was not able to reach Bee for comment by the time of this posting.

According to several WHTM station employees, officials with Nexstar Media Group Inc. - the station's corporate parent - gave Bee their strong support in a staff meeting late last week.

At that meeting, the staffers said, the company vowed a vigorous defense against Posteraro's allegations.

Capital BlueCross, headquartered in Susquehanna Township, is a leading health insurance provider in Central Pennsylvania and the Lehigh Valley. According to company profiles, it provides insurance coverage and other services to about 1 million members, spanning 21 counties.

The company's president and chief executive officer, Gary St. Hilaire, is also the father of one of WHTM's reporter / anchors, Amanda St. Hilaire.

Amanda St. Hilaire was one of several of Posteraro's abc27 colleagues, present and past, who voiced support for their former colleague in various social media platforms after her departure earlier this month.
A badly-needed lifeline for dairy farmers in Lebanon and Lancaster counties is turning into a growth opportunity for a Harrisburg business.

Harrisburg Dairies confirmed this week that it has now inked milk purchasing agreements with nine of the 26 midstate farms told they were being dropped by a national milk processor earlier this winter.

Alec Dewey said the farms represent the addition of two new tanker routes for the company, which is made possible by its own strategic growth opportunities in the topsy-turvy dairy world.

The fact that they can do that while potentially saving some of the region's farms makes it all the better.

"We're into the family business aspect," Dewey told PennLive, noting that his father and he are actually the third- and fourth generations of his family working at the bottling plant at 20th and Herr streets.

Most of the farms they deal with, he noted, have similarly been in those families for multiple generations, too.

Dean Foods said it would be ending its relationship with scores of farms across the country this spring due to a decision by Wal-Mart, one of its major customers, to open its own milk processing plant in Indiana.

The dominos fell hardest on smaller, independent producers, who were left scrambling to find new buyers for their milk at a time when the dairy market is wracked by over-supply problems.

The cuts affected 42 total farms in Pennsylvania, including the 26 in Lebanon and Lancaster counties and another 16 farms in western Pennsylvania, according to Jayne Sebright of the state's Center for Dairy Excellence.

One immediate goal has been to appeal to Dean to provide an extension to the affected farmers through the end of the year.

But a much better solution has emerged for nine of the families in the form of Harrisburg Dairies, a venerable regional milk label that's been churning out milk from the capitol city since 1931.

"We're able to sleep again," said Alisha Risser, a co-owner of one of the Dean Foods producers that has been signed on.

Ironically, Dewey said Harrisburg Dairies' growth has been made possible by holes left as other, small milk processors have closed - including most recently the Elmhurst Dairy in New York City and a few years before that, Farmland Dairies in Wallington, N.J. - due to price wars with each other.

That has created some new milk markets to tap in the New York / New Jersey area, Dewey said.

Harrisburg Dairies also produces milk on a private label for Whole Foods' east coast stores, which has been one of the nation's fastest-growing grocery companies over the last decade.

Dewey said the company believes it will be able to use the milk from the former Dean farms, and - if additional contracts can be landed - may even be able to add a third new route with the Lebanon / Lancaster farmers this spring.

Balancing supply and demand is key, especially in a business built around a highly-perishable product.

By law, processors have 72 hours to get raw milk pasteurized and bottled. Harrisburg Dairies picks up from its suppliers every other day, and tries to maintain a 48-hour turn-around.

"We have some room to grow," Dewey said, "but we have to be strategic about it."

The new contract is nothing sort of a Godsend for Brent Hostetter, whose family milks 105 cows from his property on East Hanover Township in Lebanon County.

"It's huge," Hostetter said, noting his farm will make the switch to Harrisburg on April 15. "We were fortunate to be in an area where they already pick up some some farms, and that they're trying to expand their sales area."

From the farm perspective, Hostetter said, the price he's getting for his milk will be virtually the same as what Dean paid. The key thing there, he noted, is Harrisburg Dairies produces fluid milk, which farmers get the best price for.

Now Hostetter said, he's hoping that some more of his former Swiss Premium brethren will catch the same kind of break before Dean's May 31 cut-off.

Sebright, with the Center for Dairy Excellence, said that in addition to the Harrisburg Dairies deal, she knows of five more former Dean farms statewide that have new buyers to date.

"There is some optimism that more will find a market before the May 31 date," Sebright said.

As a backstop, she noted, the center is also working to help families explore the possibility of transitioning to other types of farming. But, for now, most are still looking for their own business lifelines.
In a recent letter to the Centre Daily Times, a reader named Joe Russo praised U.S. Rep. Tom Marino "for getting legislation through in DC."

I'd advise Russo and others to take a careful look at the results of that legislation.

According to The Washington Post: "In April 2016, at the height of the deadliest drug epidemic in U.S. history, Congress effectively stripped the Drug Enforcement Administration of its most potent weapon against large drug companies suspected of spilling prescription narcotics onto the nation's streets. The chief advocate of the law that hobbled the DEA was Rep. Tom Marino, a Pennsylvania Republican."

The pharmaceutical industry contributed $1.5 million to 23 lawmakers who sponsored or co-sponsored four versions of the bill. Pennsylvania's Tom Marino received nearly $100,000.

In 2016, there were 42,249 opioid-related deaths in the United States. That same year, Pennsylvania's opioid death rate was third highest in the nation, claiming 4,642 lives.

In the year since Marino's legislation passed, Pennsylvania saw an 87 percent increase in opioid deaths.

Marino withdrew his name as President Donald Trump's nominee for drug czar the day after he was reported to be the force behind the law that crippled the DEA.

Pennsylvania needs representatives in Congress who will help the DEA do its job.

Marc Friedenberg, a graduate of Columbia Law School, teaches at Penn State. He will fight for a comprehensive and sustained national response to the opioid crisis.

This May I'm voting for Marc Friedenberg for Congress as if lives depend on it.

Because, in fact, they do.

BRUCIE SERENE, College Township
By Christian B. Miller

As Americans begrudgingly work through their taxes this year, many could be facing a moral struggle about whether to be honest or not. They might be thinking about exaggerating that donation to Goodwill, or not reporting that side job, among other things.

It is true that each year many people do cheat on their taxes. According to findings released by the IRS in 2016, tax evasion costs the federal government over US$450 billion each year.

As a philosopher whose research focuses on character and ethics, I can say that there isn't much controversy that cheating, in most situations, is morally wrong - and that includes cheating on one's taxes.

So, how can we stay honest this tax season?

We want to consider ourselves honest people

First let's dive into the recent psychological research on cheating.

Researcher Lisa Shu and her colleagues published a study in 2011 in which participants were given a test with 20 problems for which they would be paid $0.50 per correct answer. Their answers were checked by a person in charge, and they were paid accordingly.

This part of the experiment was pretty straightforward.

But then they changed the setup a bit. The participants were told that they would be the ones grading their answers with no one checking on them. The incentive and the test remained the same. They were also told that their paperwork would be shredded and they could report their own "scores."

Here's the difference it made in what people ended up doing: In the first setup where there was no opportunity to cheat, participants averaged about eight correct answers. In the second setup where there was ample opportunity to cheat, the number of "correct" answers jumped all the way to 13.22.

Researchers have found that moral reminders can stop people from cheating. Roman Pelesh/Shutterstock.com

This finding and other published results like them, provide an important lesson about the psychology of cheating: When people think they can get away with cheating, and they also think it would be worthwhile to cheat, they are often motivated to do so.

But that is not all the research has to offer. Using the same basic framework as Shu's study, other research has added some interesting variations. For instance, participants in another study were first asked to recall as many of the Ten Commandments as they could before they took the test. In another variation, the participants were college students who first had to sign their school's honor code before they began.

Researchers found the average number of problems solved was essentially the same as when participants had no opportunity to cheat and their answers were graded by someone else.

Psychologists have provided an explanation for what is happening here. While people often want to cheat in certain cases if it would benefit them, they also want to think of themselves as honest. What the honor code and the Ten Commandments did in the experiments was to serve as moral reminders of the importance of being honest.

Other studies of cheating have found that even more subtle reminders can be effective. In one such study, cheating continued even when the instructions said, "Please don't cheat. ... Even a small amount of cheating would undermine the study." However, when researchers changed the wording for a second group, people did not cheat. This group was told: "Please don't be a cheater. ... Even a small number of cheaters would undermine the study."

The switch to "cheater" called to mind how the participants wanted to think of themselves as honest. Most fascinating of all, psychologists stopped study participants from cheating simply by having them sit in front of a mirror.

When given a moral reminder, it is hard for most people to cheat.

What can you do to stay honest?

How can you stay honest? Natee Meepian/Shutterstock.com

Coming back to the tax season, the question is how we can stay honest. Based on the research mentioned here, I want to suggest three practical steps:

We shouldn't cheat on our taxes, not because we necessarily care about the IRS, but because we care about being people of honesty and integrity.

The Conversation

Editor's note: This piece is part of our series on ethical questions arising from everyday life. We would welcome your suggestions. Please email us at ethical.questions@theconversation.com.

Christian B. Miller is the A.C. Reid Professor of Philosophy at Wake Forest University. He wrote this piece for The Conversation, where it first appeared.
By Sarah E. Daly

I have spent seven years studying events like the tragedy in Parkland, Florida, and I use my 11 years in public education in New Jersey as a Spanish teacher and counselor to ground my research in experience and practice.

I'd like to present four suggestions for your consideration. I bring them to you with an eye toward practicality, safety, and research, and I hope that they may offer guidance as you examine bills related to school safety.

The first focuses on knowing the warning signs. While the increased number of student threats has been alarming in the recent month, it is also inspiring to see that other students recognize the seriousness of these threats and report them.

In the same vein, teachers, administrators, and parents need to be able to recognize more subtle warning signs such as a pseudo-commando mentality, a fascination with school shooters, and novel aggression.

The use of an anonymous tip line to report threats and concerns is immensely helpful. However, it should also be supplemented with the incentivizing of programs designed to educate the community about warning signs.

The organization Sandy Hook Promise offers free programs like "Know the Signs" and "It Starts With Hello." These programs are founded in research and have clearly defined curricula for easy implementation.

Further, there should be a partnership between schools, law enforcement, and mental health professionals. They need a streamlined process to address the threats and provide the help that troubled teens need.

With a focus on warning signs, I also ask you to consider Extreme Risk Protection Orders. They allow for a safeguard that retains Second Amendment rights to citizens but also allow families and law enforcement to petition a court to temporarily suspend a person's access to firearms.

In the face of evidence that an individual is threatening to harm to himself or others, he must surrender his weapons and cannot buy, sell, or possess firearms for up to one year.

In my dissertation research, I found that nearly 40 percent of the school shooters exhibited some type of warning signs about potential violent behavior that included clearly stated verbal threats. In those instances, an Extreme Risk Protection Order could have saved lives, and so, too, could it have saved lives in Parkland, Florida.

Secondly, I would urge caution against arming teachers, even if only a select few. If there is even to be a discussion about it, I strongly suggest conducting a thorough problem and policy analysis before implementing it.

This would allow lawmakers to consider the unintended consequences, examine prior cases, and consult with law enforcement.

Third, I noted the number of proposed bills related to bullying. This is certainly an important issue facing children, especially given the research on the impact of cyberbullying in adolescence.

However, I would also point out the ways that this would impact schools and support staff. In a time when educators are often overwhelmed with increasing responsibilities in the classroom and out, it's important to recognize that state-mandated bullying policies require additional time and resources.

As a high school counselor in a state with comprehensive harassment, intimidation, and bullying legislation, I can tell you that addressing these issues were profoundly time-consuming.

While it was certainly within the scope of my job description and important, it often required me to take time from other students who may have already felt overlooked and ignored in school.

If you consider supplementing these policies with additional funds for support staff, including counselors and Student Assistance coordinators, it ensures that more students will have access to resources and help.

And finally, in establishing a commission to review policies, I recommend that you include policymakers, practitioners, and researchers.

In doing so, it would ensure that they are evidence-based and founded on theory and research. I understand the urgent need to implement policies for immediate change, but they should be well-planned and evaluative in nature.

In sum, I believe that future policies and bills should be considered in terms of community partnerships and efforts.

This burden is not one for schools to bear alone, and we all share a responsibility to our children to consider all possible outcomes and effects. I thank you again for the opportunity to testify and your commitment to addressing school safety issues.

Sarah E. Daly is an assistant professor of criminology at Saint Vincent College in Latrobe, Pa. This op-Ed is an edited version of testimony she presented to the Pennsylvania state House Education Committee.
By

Sean McMenamin

When Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney first proposed imposing a beverage tax on city families, local businesses warned it would be both economically devastating for Philadelphia's neighborhoods and a disastrous long-term funding source for ongoing programs such as expanded pre-K, community schools and the Rebuild program targeting aging city infrastructure.

Unfortunately for the citizens of Philadelphia, the business community and the city as a whole, those predictions have both come true.

The mayor's tax has already cost America's poorest big city nearly 1,200 jobs, according to a recent study. A recent report found that families have taken their shopping to the suburbs to evade the tax, emptying supermarkets and corner stores of shoppers who have been customers for generations.

As a second-generation owner of two Philadelphia ShopRite supermarkets - both located near the Bucks County border - I have seen how the beverage tax is hurting our city's working class neighborhoods and damaging the local economy.

The 1.5 cents-per-ounce levy has forced shoppers to pay significantly more for thousands of popular beverages - from iced teas to juices. Many of the working families who live in our neighborhood can't afford to pay these higher prices and are fleeing the city to buy these products elsewhere.

Over the past year, our stores' sales of taxed beverages plummeted more than 40 percent. Our overall sales fell 8 percent for the year.

The supermarket business is an extremely competitive one with razor-thin margins, and these declines have hurt our more than 500 employees - the majority of whom are union members. To compensate for lost revenue, we cut nearly 50,000 employee hours. While we avoided layoffs, this equates to 36 fewer jobs.

And we're not alone. Grocery stores are economic engines for Philadelphia's neighborhoods, providing fresh groceries while powering neighborhood commercial corridors.

The industry employs thousands of workers, providing family-sustaining careers in a city struggling with high unemployment and endemic poverty. The mayor continues to attack the global beverage companies, but local businesses and the Philadelphia families they employ are hurting.

We now know that this tax is a disastrous long-term funding source for the extremely important programs it was designed to fund.

After a year of missing his tax-collection targets, Mayor Kenney finally bowed to reality in his recent budget address. He admitted that the tax was not generating enough revenue to sustain the city's pre-K program or community schools initiative at the level he promised.

The mayor's latest budget proposal slashes 1,000 seats from the pre-K program and also reduces the number of community schools.

At the same time, the administration has acknowledged that the persistent beverage tax shortfalls will force the city to change its plans for the Rebuild initiative, a $500 million investment in aging parks, recreation centers and libraries.

These decisions represent a broken promise from the mayor to the children of Philadelphia, who were promised better educational opportunities.

Now that the mayor has finally acknowledged that this tax has failed to generate the revenue needed to support the programs he promised, the people of Philadelphia should be asking why the city is doubling down on a tax that is economically ruinous.

Our elected officials - including Mayor Kenney and members of City Council - ran on a platform of helping neighborhoods left behind by Center City's growth. Rather than being wedded to an unpopular policy, we need a mayor who is enough of a leader to admit he was wrong and roll back the beverage tax while prioritizing funding of these important programs in a fiscally sustainable way.

It's time for Philadelphia voters to demand that our elected officials keep their promises to our communities and to our families.

We need a mayor who can find enough money in a more than $4 billion budget to fund the city's priorities without taxing working families and local businesses.

We need economic policies that lift up local businesses and incentivize job creation, not ones that punish entrepreneurs and working families.

We need real leadership from City Hall, not voodoo budgeting that leaves our local businesses and the thousands they employ struggling.

Sean McMenamin is the president of McMenamin Family ShopRite , which operates two ShopRite grocery stores in northeast Philadelphia. Readers may email him at sean.mcmenamin@wakefern.com.
By Max Boot

After the Vietnam War, the U.S. military deliberately set out to forget everything it had learned about the brutal and unpleasant business of fighting guerrillas. The generals were operating under the assumption that if they didn't prepare for that kind of war, they wouldn't be asked to fight it.

The emphasis in the 1980s and 1990s, even after the collapse of the Soviet Union, was on fighting conventional, uniformed adversaries. That worked out well in the 1991 Gulf War but left the U.S. armed forces tragically ill prepared for the post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

I fear that history may be about to repeat itself. In discussing my new book about the legendary Vietnam-era covert operative Edward Lansdale, I have been visiting military installations, including the Army War College, Fort Benning, the Naval Postgraduate School and the Pentagon.

And everywhere I go, I hear that the military is switching its focus from counterinsurgency to conventional conflict.

This is in keeping with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis' National Defense Strategy, which states: "Inter-state strategic competition, not terrorism, is now the primary concern in U.S. national security."

Mattis concedes that "threats to stability remain as terrorist groups with long reach continue to murder the innocent and threaten peace more broadly," but he is more exercised about the threats from "revisionist powers" (Russia, China) and "rogue regimes" (Iran, North Korea).

His analysis makes sense on a certain level, given that all those anti-American countries are expanding their military capabilities.

But low-intensity conflict isn't going away. It's been around since the dawn of time (tribal warfare is essentially guerrilla warfare), and it will remain a major threat despite the Islamic State's loss of its caliphate.

While we still face terrorist and guerrilla threats, we also confront unconventional challenges from countries such as China, Iran and Russia that wage what is known as "asymmetric," "gray-zone" or "hybrid" warfare.

As the National Defense Strategy notes: "In competition short of armed conflict, revisionist powers and rogue regimes are using corruption, predatory economic practices, propaganda, political subversion, proxies, and the threat or use of military force to change facts on the ground."

Russia is particularly adept at this type of warfare. Special Counsel Robert Mueller indicted, and the Treasury Department imposed sanctions on, the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg for its successful efforts to subvert the 2016 election. At virtually the same time, Russian mercenaries working for a private firm called the Wagner Group attacked a U.S. base in Syria, suffering heavy losses from American airpower.

The Internet Research Agency and the Wagner Group are owned by the same man: Yevgeniy Prigozhin, a Russian oligarch who is known as President Vladimir Putin's "chef" because he got his start running restaurants.

Prigozhin wouldn't go to the bathroom without Putin's permission, but the fact that he is not a government employee gives the Kremlin "deniability" in carrying out its aggression. By employing "little green men" in Ukraine and in Syria, Putin has expanded his sway while minimizing the risk of World War III.

The Russian dictator has brought a similarly canny, covert-action mind-set to his influence operations in Europe and the United States.

He has backed Russophile leaders such as Trump, Silvio Berlusconi in Italy and Viktor Orban in Hungary, while sowing dissent and confusion in Western societies. Mueller's indictment details how Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort paid a group of European politicians - reportedly including former Austrian chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer - $2.5 million to lobby on behalf of a pro-Russian government in Ukraine.

There's nothing wrong with rebuilding the United States' conventional combat capacity.

By all means, buy more fighter aircraft and navy ships. Spend more time training with artillery and tanks.

Those weapons are needed to maintain deterrence and keep the peace. But don't imagine that all this firepower will keep us safe. The United States urgently needs to upgrade its defenses against hybrid warfare.

Countries such as Sweden and Italy are working to combat Russian election interference by educating citizens about "fake news" and closing loopholes that hackers can exploit. (Even so, pro-Russian populists won the recent Italian election.)

But Adm. Michael Rogers, outgoing head of U.S. Cyber Command, told Congress that he hasn't been granted enough authorities to fight back against the Kremlin's meddling and that the Russians "haven't paid a price . . . that's sufficient to get them to change their behavior."

Generals are often accused of fighting the last war. Actually, they are more likely to prepare for a future war that never arrives while neglecting a current conflict.

The Pentagon will be repeating that mistake if it focuses its energy on conventional wars rather than the hybrid threat. In fairness, that's not all Mattis' fault. Combating hybrid warfare requires extensive civilian- military cooperation. But it's hard to fight a war when the foremost beneficiary of the enemy's attack is the commander in chief.

Max Boot, a Washington Post columnist, is the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick senior fellow for national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is the author of "The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam."
FILE In this Nov. 15, 2010 file photo, Facebook engineer Andrew Bosworth talks about the new Facebook messaging service at an announcement in San Francisco, Calif. Bosworth says he didn't agree with a provocative memo leaked to Buzzfeed in which he describes the company's mentality to grow and connect people at all costs. Bosworth said on Twitter Thursday, March 29, 2018, that he didn't agree with the post even when he wrote it. In the 2016 internal memo titled "The Ugly," he writes that "all the work the work we do in growth is justified," even if it costs someone their life because they are exposed to bullies or die in a terrorist attack. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)
Ruben Enaje grimaces as he's nailed to a cross for the 32nd year in a row during a reenactment of Jesus Christ's sufferings as part of Good Friday rituals in the village of San Pedro Cutud, Pampanga province, northern Philippines March 30, 2018. Thousands of Filipino Roman Catholic devotees and tourists descended Friday on a farming village north of Manila to witness the crucifixion of several men in a reenactment of Jesus Christ's sufferings, a gory annual tradition church leaders frown upon. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)
Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland gestures during a news conference in Toronto on Thursday, March 8, 2018. Global Affairs Canada says four Canadian diplomats have been expelled from Russia as the dispute between the Kremlin and the West escalates over the alleged poisoning of a former spy and his daughter earlier this month. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young
Adam Bettahar is shown in a Calgary Police handout photo. Police believe a fleeing suspect who died in an exchange of gunfire with officers in Alberta was wanted for the murder of a Calgary woman, a sister of the woman says. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-Calgary Police MANDATORY CREDIT
Nnamdi Ogba is shown in an undated police handout photo. Toronto police have arrested a third suspect in connection with a fatal shooting earlier this month. Ogba, 26, was shot to death while walking to his car in a Toronto Community Housing complex in the city's west end after visiting friends on March 16. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO - Toronto Police Service MANDATORY CREDIT
El Shafee Elsheikh, allegedly among four British jihadis who made up a brutal Islamic State cell dubbed "The Beatles," speak during an interview with The Associated Press at a security center in Kobani, Syria, Friday, March 30, 2018. AuThe BeatlesAu terror cell is believed to have captured, tortured and killed hostages including American, British and Japanese journalists and aid workers. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
In this photo taken on Thursday, March 15, 2018, Britain's Prince Charles looks on ahead of delivering his Easter message at Clarence House in London. Prince Charles has released a videotaped Easter message offering support for persecuted Christians around the world. The message released Friday, March 30 was recorded earlier this month at CharlesAo Clarence House residence in central London. He expresses sympathy for people who have Auhad to flee for their faith and for their lifeAu and says he has been deeply moved by their courage and ability to forgive.(AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)
Guyana files case against Esequibo claim by Venezuela with International Court of Justice

By Kiana Wilburg



GEORGETOWN

Petroleumworld 03 30 2018



Guyana yesterday submitted its application to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) requesting the court to confirm the legal validity and binding effect of the 1899 Arbitral Award regarding the boundary between Guyana and Venezuela.



According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the application follows the decision of UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, in choosing the ICJ as the next means of resolving the controversy that arose as a result of the Venezuelan contention that the Arbitral Award of 1899 about the frontier between British Guiana and Venezuela was null and void.



In its application to the Court, Guyana highlighted that Venezuela had, for more than 6o years, consistently recognized and respected the validity and binding force of the 1899 Award and with the 1905 map agreed by both sides in furtherance of the award.



However, Venezuela only changed its position formally in 1962 as the United Kingdom was making final preparations for the independence of British Guiana and threatened not to recognize the new state, or its boundaries, unless the United Kingdom agreed to set aside the 1899 award and cede to Venezuela all of the territory west of the Essequibo River, amounting to some two-thirds of Guyana's territory.



The Ministry disclosed that Guyana's application notes that while Venezuela has never produced any evidence to justify its belated repudiation of the 1899 award, rather it has used it as an excuse to occupy territory awarded to Guyana in 1899, to inhibit Guyana's economic development and to violate Guyana's sovereignty and sovereign rights.



The UN Secretary-General's authority to choose the ICJ as the means for resolving the controversy is rooted in the Geneva Agreement of 1966, negotiated just before Guyana attained independence.



The Ministry also pointed out that on January 30, 2018, Secretary General Guterres concluded that the Good Offices Process, in which the parties had engaged for almost 30 years, had failed to achieve a solution to the controversy and chose the ICJ as the next means of settlement.



The application was handed over to Philippe Couvreur yesterday, Registrar of the ICJ by Carl Greenidge, Vice President and Minister of Foreign Affairs, who will serve as Guyana's agent in the proceedings before the Court.



According to Minister Greenidge, in filing its application, Guyana has respected the Secretary General's decision and placed its faith in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to resolve the controversy in accordance with its statute and jurisprudence, based on the fundamental principles of international law, including the sanctity of treaties, the maintenance of settled boundaries and respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of States.



Following the 2015 discovery of oil and change of Government, Venezuela had upped its claims on Guyana, with its aggression even seeing actions taken to end a rice-for-oil deal to pressure this country.



Guyana later that year went to the United Nations and made a complaint to the General Assembly.



Guyana has also earmarked some monies from the oil agreement with ExxonMobil, about US$18M to fight the case at ICJ.



The ICJ has its seat in The Hague, The Netherlands, and is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations.



The legal team of Guyana is being led by Sir Shridath Ramphal, an experienced lawyer and former Attorney General of Guyana who successfully also played a lead role in the 2007 successful award in the arbitration regarding the delimitation of the maritime boundary between Guyana and Suriname.

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Guyana's Oil and Gas sector needs to be subjected to parliamentary scrutiny





By Kaieter News



GEORGETOWN

Petroleumworld 03 30 2018



Guyana must ensure good deals are made in the extractive sector Int'l Consulting Agency

In the case of Norway, one is able to observe that oil and gas revenues can transform nations for the better. But there are other cases where countries have not been so fortunate.

It is on this premise that the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI) believes that the parliamentarians must ensure strict oversight of the oil and gas sector. NRGI is an independent nonprofit organization dedicated to improving countries' governance over their natural resources.



The Institute stressed in a parliamentary briefing that parliamentarians should also exercise their oversight role to ensure that good deals are made in the extractive sector.



NRGI said, Through their oversight role, parliamentarians should ensure that all legislation affecting the fiscal elements of oil, gas and mining projects are coherent.



Some countries have wrestled with inconsistencies between pieces of legislation. For example, mining laws and investment promotion laws might each spell out distinct incentives, which together may give away far too much or result in a lack of clarity as to which incentives apply.



In the interest of transparency and accountability, the Organization noted that opposition parliamentarians should ask the government to provide revenue projections over the life of any major project particularly when special fiscal exemptions or incentives are granted.



It also said that the Opposition MPs should request a detailed listing of all assumptions (prices, costs, etc.) upon which these projections are based.

The Institute asserted, Over time, legislators should request regular reporting of revenues the state receives and compare them against these projections.



NRGI stated, too, that there should also be a request for disclosure of all contracts with companies. It said that this is pertinent so that parliamentarians can access information about deals, including all the exemptions and incentives offered to companies that may deviate from those contained in generally applicable law.



It stressed that contract disclosure is essential for effective parliamentary oversight.



In another note to opposition parliamentarians, NRGI said that they should ask Government officials to explain the actions they take to ensure compliance with the fiscal regime, including conducting independent tax audits.



CRITICS AGREE



Local critics have also expressed the opinion that the oil and gas sector will require strong oversight from the parliament.



Chartered Accountant, Chris Ram, noted that the ExxonMobil agreement should have been tabled and approved in the National Assembly. He said that this should have been the way forward for all Production Sharing Agreements.



These contracts have long term effects, so what you have is a Minister binding a Parliament or a country for decades. The practice of having Production Sharing Agreements go through the Parliamentary process can be seen in places like Tanzania, Ghana and Nigeria. That is how it should be done, because there are long term effects with these contracts 



The Chartered Accountant said, What we have before us is proof that this is what should be done. But in addition, I think even the scheme in which the Executive negotiates should be revised 



Executive Member of the Working People's Alliance (WPA), Dr. David Hinds is also in agreement with Ram's points.



Dr. Hinds noted that the oil and gas sector is a defining one and as such, he would recommend that Parliament set up a standing committee on energy.



He said that such oversight is necessary, given how much is at stake. Perhaps as a start, the University Professor said, there should be a select committee to look at what has transpired thus far in relation to the contract and other related issues. He emphasized that such a committee should hold hearings, so that it gets to hear from government operatives and other expert witnesses.



UNFAIR DEAL



Local commentators have also expressed concern over the lopsided deal Guyana signed with ExxonMobil, especially when it is compared with the agreement Exxon Mobil signed onto with the African country, Ghana.

The glaring disparities between the two contracts also underscore the need for the Guyana-ExxonMobil contract to be scrutinized by Parliament, critics say.



The Ghanaian contract has an entire section dedicated to procurement laws, which ExxonMobil must follow at all times. Those provisions are in place to ensure that a significant number of the local companies are able to benefit from the nation's oil sector. On the other hand, Guyana's contract mentions nothing about procurement laws.






PM calls for an urgent report into faux pas by TT's Ambassador to OAS





By Gail Alexander



PORT SPAIN

Petroleumworld 03 30 2018

The Foreign Affairs Ministry is investigating circumstances which led to this country's representative at a recent meeting of the Organization of American States (OAS) where T&T s representative to decline to support Dominica's bid to waive its OAS contributions.

Prime Minister Keith Rowley who's asked for a report on the matter will receive one shortly, the Ministry also confirmed yesterday.

The Ministry claims T&T's position offered by Ambassador Anthony Phillip-Spencer was misrepresented.

Foreign Affairs Minister Dennis Moses, in an interview with Guardian Media, said: Our position is not at variance with what was being sought by the country concerned. What was being sought by the country and agreed upon across the board, we are not at variance with that position.

The developments were listed in a Ministry statement yesterday.

In the face of the public objection, the Government has sought to assure its support for Dominica is still strongand pacify regional concernsfollowing reports that T&T had blanked hurricane-ravaged Dominica's recent bid to get a waiver on its contribution to the OAS for the 2018-2019 period.

T&T's position on the OAS matter had been notedand criticisedin some quarters. At the recent OAS meeting T&T's Ambassador to the OAS, Phillip Spencer, reportedly said despite the goodwill expressed by the other delegations, including those from Caricom, T&T wouldn't support Dominica's waiver bid.

Phillip-Spencer reportedly said T&T would instead consider supporting either the deferral of payments of contributions by member states and where possible the implementation of a payment plan.

Dominica, which was severely affected by two hurricanes last year, had urged OAS members to approve its waiver.

Yesterday, Opposition MP Rodney Charles, panned T&T's decision, calling on Rowley to remove Foreign Affairs Minister Dennis Moses whom he said has failed on a number of matters.

Apologising to Dominica, Charles noted T&T's decision had been widely reported.

Another UNC MP, Suruj Rambachan, who once held the portfolio of foreign affairs minister, said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in its attempt to distance itself from the position taken by Trinidad and Tobago against the waiver of fees for Dominica at the OAS reflects in no small way the deterioration in the management of our Foreign Affairs and diplomatic relations.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs must produce the documentation communicated to the TT-OAS Representative on this particular matter since representatives of Trinidad and Tobago Missions abroad in general, take positions based upon communication from head office.

The Minister cannot wash his hands from this matter. If he is so convinced that an official acted on his own then he should proceed to fire that official.

The Minister himself has not been a competent and efficient Minister in matters of Foreign Affairs leaving large gaps in policy coordination that would effectively guide our representatives abroad.

The slap meted out to our Dominican neighbours is highly regrettable and have done more to affect our relations not only with Dominica but with our Caricom neighbours, given my understanding that Caricom had decided on a common position which was the waiver, Rambachan said in a statement.

Soon after Charles spoke, the Foreign Affairs Ministry issued a press release.

It stated: In an unqualified way, the Ministry of Foreign and Caricom Affairs regrets the misrepresentation of the position of T&T offered by a public official of T&T during a meeting of the OAS' Permanent Council (held 23rd March) relative to a request from Dominica for a waiver of its financial contribution to that Organization for 2018 to 2019.

Currently, an investigation into the briefing arrangements of the public official and the circumstances involved in the discussion at the OAS is underway.

Shortly a report, as requested, would be made available to the Honourable Prime Minister.

Reiterating unwavering support for Dominica, the Ministry said this was tangibly demonstrated in T&T's recent aid and expressions of empathy to that country.

The statement added: A suggestion by a public servant at an OAS meeting that Dominica's dues not be collected at this time but be deferred to some future time in no way reflects any change in the demonstrated concern of T&T for the welfare of the people of Dominica.

T&T's solidarity with the people of Dominica is without question.

The actions, co-operation (be it technical, financial or diplomatic) with Dominica and advocacy over time, most recently in the advent and aftermath of hurricanes, Erika (in 2015) and Maria (last year) attest to the strong and abiding relationship between Dominica and T&T, it added.

The position presented at the OAS isn't aligned with the actions, policy or orientation of T&T towards Dominica.

The unswerving commitment of T&T is that the fraternal bond between Caricom member states and peoples of the Caribbean continue to be further strengthened.




MIT/Harvard trained Ould Kadour takes on as CEO of Algeria's Energy Sonatrach

By Lamine Chikhi



ORAN, Algeria

Petroleumworld 03 30 2018

When the U.S.-educated CEO of Algeria's state energy company Sonatrach ended a speech to staff by seeking questions, an executive sitting next to him quickly picked up the microphone.

There are no questions, he said, and some 1,000 employees filed straight out.

The scene revealed the scale of the challenge facing Abdelmoumen Ould Kadour, who took over Sonatrach a year ago with a mission to improve communication and transparency in a company that is central to stability in Algeria and beyond.

Sonatrach funds 60 percent of the state budget, and falling oil prices have created pressure for change, while Algeria's role as a major gas supplier to Europe means new tension between the continent and gas giant Russia could play into his hands.

He will soon unveil a plan to lift stagnant output and has revived ties with European oil majors. But project delays, fraud scandals, secrecy and red tape abound in a country where adults remember civil war and change is often resisted.

It's hopeless, he confided to colleagues accompanying him to the company office in the northwestern city of Oran, one of dozens of such visits by the 66-year-old alumnus of MIT and Harvard to Sonatrach outposts witnessed by Reuters.

On his first day, he said on another occasion, he was given so much paperwork to sign he feared he would do little else. There was no medium and long term strategy, there was no communication, no coordination between Sonatrach's executives, every single piece of information was confidential.

No stranger to setbacks, he spent two years in an Algerian jail for collaborating with foreigners after a decade in charge of a joint Algerian-U.S. engineering company co-owned by oil services firm Halliburton.

He has brought in his own team to lead the revamp at Sonatrach, declining requests for an interview but sharing his views during his tour of the company.

A company source said his turnaround plan would be unveiled within weeks, if not days. Designed partly to attract foreign investment, it is likely to come during or before a conference he hosts on April 16-18 which the CEOs of France's Total, Italy's ENI and Norway's Statoil are expected to attend.

FOREIGN PARTNERS

His broad goal is to turn Sonatrach into an integrated energy company by 2030 from its current sprawling state, which includes an aircraft maker and extensive social programmes and excludes renewables, which come under the environment ministry.

While Western CEOs will expect concrete steps after years of bold announcements, the plan has spread unease among executives, several of whom told Reuters they feared sweeping management changes in Ould Kadour's declared battle with red tape.

In Oran, he told staff that Statoil, set to resume work at the Hassi Mouina gas field, had previously left because of bureaucracy. Better communication, a better environment is key to convince foreign partners to work in Algeria, he said.

A Sonatrach source said Statoil is expected to invest $500 mln in gas, a figure described by a Statoil source as speculation. Last month Statoil and Britain's BP agreed to strengthen cooperation in upstream oil exploration and explore solar energy to allow Algeria to export more of its gas.

In December Ould Kadour revived ties in December with Total, ENI and Saipem, but his ability to nurture those relationships and reverse years of stalling production will depend on how his company's 40,000 employees respond to his message of change.

He is an unlikely manager in a country known for secrecy and a suspicion of Westerners dating from ties to the Soviet Union and the trauma of the 1954-1962 independence war with France.

But energy revenues have halved since 2014 and President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the 81-year old leader who might run for a fifth term next year, is struggling to maintain a welfare state necessary for social stability.

The government has launched austerity measures, banning the import of 900 goods and freezing public sector hiring and development projects.

Doctors and teachers have been on strike in several cities for three months demanding better pay and conditions and the state has been unable to end dissent by paying out as it did when a barrel of crude cost $100 instead of $70 as now.

This has turned improving the efficiency of the state oil company into a political imperative. Ould Kaddour has no choice but to succeed as Sonatrach's CEO, a former energy minister told Reuters.

Critics of the CEO say he has only been appointed because of Bouteflika and will last no longer than his many predecessors.

If Bouteflika quits, Ould Kaddour would be sacked in the next five minutes, a former Sonatrach executive said.

BALANCING ACT

With the presidential election looming, Ould Kadour has sought to cut Algeria's import bill by recruiting oil trader Vitoil to swap crude for the petrol in growing need at home.

The strategy was to show that Algeria, which is a big oil producer, is not spending gigantic sums on imports of products, an oil insider said.

One delayed gas field was brought online last year with three more slated to start producing this year, lifting annual gas output of 94 billion cubic metres by 9 billion cubic metres.

Sonatrach has signed a $1 billion deal with Turkey to build a petrochemical facility, discovered crude in Niger and explored cooperation with Iraq. It is also considering shale, but protests in 2015 from Algerians fearing environmental damage have made that politically unpalatable for now.

In further signs of a balancing act, company sources say Sonatrach will offer more flexible short-term gas contracts on terms of 10-15 years or less instead of 20-25 and invest $250 million in the Tinhert gas field project using Algerian firms.

Ould Kadour's sentencing by a military court in 2007 on charges working for a foreign country was part of an internal regime conflict typical for Algeria, observers say.

An elite made up of the ruling FLN party, army and security has controlled Algeria since independence, with officials or executives of state firms sometimes losing jobs when a new faction takes over in power plays behind closed doors.

After serving his two-year jail term, he worked in Qatar, France, Senegal and the United Arab Emirates before Bouteflika made him Sonatrach CEO in March 2017.

Anis Rahmani, owner of private Ennahar TV station, said the CEO had told him he was devastated by being branded a traitor. But the man has vision, a plan to transform the company into a modern and performing one, which is not the case now, he said.

He is more powerful than the energy minister, one insider said, but must also win backing from politicians resistant to opening up the country too much. A key energy law has been stalled for years but a draft is now due in July.

It is likely to retain Sonatrach's majority stake in all energy projects but offer tax incentives for investors, a Sonatrach executive said. The law needs to be attractive, he said. If not it will be useless.




Exxon big winner in Brazil's latest oil & gas licensing round

Jornal do Brazil



Brazil's 15th oil & gas licensing round was consider very succesfull by the Brazilian government, oil company executives and experts who attended the event March 29.

By Marta Nogueira, Alexandra Alper



RIO DE JANEIRO

Petroleumworld 03 30 2018

Exxon Mobil Corp roared into Brazil's prolific offshore oil fields again on Thursday, clinching eight blocks in partnership with other oil firms eager to lap up the country's choice reserves ahead of presidential elections later this year.

Exxon along with Petrobras and Qatar Petroleum Intl shelled out 2.8 billion reais ($844 million) for just one block in Brazil's offshore Campos basin as the American oil major seeks to replace dwindling reserves.

Chevron Corp, Repsol SA, Royal Dutch Shell Plc, BP Plc and Statoil ASA also spent top dollar to lock down stakes in Brazilian offshore blocks, some of which may be part of the coveted pre-salt play, where oil is trapped under layers of salt beneath the ocean floor.

We are more confident in investment in Brazil, without a doubt, said Carla Lacerda, Exxon's top executive in Brazil, after the round. We have lots of opportunities ahead. We are analyzing each round. We want a robust portfolio here.

Another big winner was Brazil's cash-strapped government, raking in 8 billion reais ($2.4 billion) of signing bonuses, a record for a concession-style auction and nearly double the 4.6 billion reais it forecast, despite a court's surprise decision on Wednesday to eliminate the top two blocks from the auction.

Behind the resounding success is oil majors' urgency to lock in stakes in Brazil before a presidential election in October that could bring to power a government seeking to halt or slow private investment in Brazil's oil sector.

An oil auction earlier this week was less successful in regional rival Mexico, where leading center-left candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has asked the president to postpone oil auctions if he wins in a July election.

Brazil has better geology and less political risk than Mexico, said Adriano Pires, a consultant at Brazil's Center for Infrastructure.

There was a strong showing despite deflated expectations after a Brazilian audit court removed the two most attractive blocks, on the grounds that they should be auctioned under a production-sharing regime to create more value for the government. Now officials aim to auction those blocks in a June pre-salt round.

Exxon, which will operate six of eight blocks it won Thursday, took 10 blocks in a September round last year and a pre-salt block the following month.

Before that, it was among the few oil majors without a presence in the exploration of the vast offshore fields discovered off the Brazilian coast over the past decade.

Chevron, which has kept a low profile in Brazil since a spill in 2011, won four blocks  its first acquisitions in Latin America's top economy in five years.

Wintershall, the oil and gas subsidiary of Germany's BASF, also took seven blocks.

Higher oil prices and the need to replace shrinking reserves have boosted appetite among oil majors for costlier, higher-yield offshore ventures, though some projects are still seen as too pricey to be viable.

Despite the big bonuses paid to the government, it only awarded 22 of 68 blocks on offer and failed to offload any onshore blocks.

($1 = 3.30 reais)

Brazil's 15th licensing round results



Source: epmag -ANP






Oil going up in 2018 as OPEC wages tug-of-war with U.S. shale producers - Survey

CNN



Prices rise 5.4 percent in March, erasing February loss.



By Apeksha Nair



BENGALURU, India

Petroleumworld 03 30 2018

Oil prices are likely to rise this year thanks to supply disruptions and an OPEC-led deal to limit production, but doubts over the future of compliance with the multilateral agreement and rising U.S. production could stem the upward momentum, a Reuters poll showed on Thursday.

A survey of 31 economists and analysts polled by Reuters showed Brent crude LCOc1 would average nearly $64 a barrel in 2018, versus $63 forecast in the February survey, but below the $67.18 average for the benchmark so far in 2018.

Brent prices have risen 4 percent this year, supported by a deal between the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and non-OPEC producers led by Russia to curb output by about 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd) through 2018.

The price briefly rose above $70 a barrel this week, supported by tension in the Middle East and declining output in Venezuela, one of the group's largest producers, where economic crisis has cut production to its lowest in nearly 30 years.

A sustained drawdown in U.S. inventories also helped push the price up towards $70, a peak last seen in December 2014.

We view it rather unlikely that OPEC will exit already by mid-year. However, talking about a possible extension of the deal beyond 2018, we are rather skeptical, Hannes Loacker of Raiffeisen Capital Management said.

We see a big challenge in bringing in Russia once more. Without Russian participation, the will of some other OPEC members may also be abating somewhat.

Saudi Arabia and Russia are working on a long-term pact that could extend controls over world crude supplies by major exporters for many years.

Even if OPEC compliance with pledged supply remains elevated through the balance of 2018, the explosive growth in U.S. shale oil supply accompanied by growth in crude oil export capacity will likely tip the balance towards lower oil prices in the second half, BNP Paribas analyst Harry Tchilinguirian said.

Analysts expect U.S. production to grow by at least 1 million bpd this year. U.S. output now stands at nearly 10.4 million bpd C-OUT-T-EIA, taking it past top exporter Saudi Arabia and within reach of biggest producer Russia.

The balance between strong production growth in the U.S., on the one hand, and continued restraint by OPEC and Russia, on the other, remains the key factor on the supply side, said Cailin Birch, an analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit.

On the demand side, emerging Asia will remain the key region for new demand growth.

The International Energy Agency said this month that global oil demand would increase by 6.9 million bpd by 2023 to 104.7 million bpd, boosted by economic growth in Asia and a resurgent U.S. petrochemicals industry.

Analysts said oil prices could also be pushed up by fears of renewed sanctions on Iranian oil exports after the United States threatened to withdraw from a nuclear deal.

U.S. light crude CLc1 will average $59.85 a barrel in 2018, the poll found, up from $58.88 forecast in February.

Elsewhere, the recent launch of China's yuan-denominated oil futures, which many expect to become a third global price benchmark alongside Brent and WTI, made a roaring start as Western players and Chinese majors eagerly traded the world's newest financial oil instrument.






Pictured in 2015, the former Embreeville state hospital site has continued to deteriorate in West Bradford Township, Chester County. According to the developer who purchased the land on which the complex sits, the psychiatric facility suffers from asbestos, mold, and possible soil contamination. Read more

Developers and community residents are hardly ever on the same page when it comes to large-scale real estate projects.

Which makes at least part of what is happening in West Bradford Township a tiny miracle: Residents, officials, and a developer agree that the deteriorating, shuttered Embreeville State School and Hospital complex should be demolished.

Their rare harmony, however, falls apart when it comes to deciding what should happen next to the controversial psychiatric site in this affluent Chester County town. For years, developers, residents, and officials have squabbled and litigated what should replace the hospital and the land that encircles it. Finally, on Wednesday, a key zoning decision may offer some clarity.

If Embreeville Redevelopment LP  the group that purchased the property in 2013  has its way, the 225-acre property would be transformed into a sprawling residential and commercial complex, erasing the crumbling 16-building hospital site, plus dozens of acres of open land, to build 1,100 residential units and more than 50,000 square feet of commercial space.

But many West Bradford area residents want those largely untouched fields and forests to stay just as they are. Others, meanwhile, acknowledge that development is eventually likely and are arguing now  before it's too late, they say  for a more modest project, such as a retirement home, that would less severely affect roads and schools.

The fierce debate over the fate of this West Bradford swath  soon entering its fifth year  is the latest example of the land-use feuds in the Pennsylvania suburbs. As with the fight to preserve Crebilly Farm in Westtown Township, or the argument over the Archdiocese of Philadelphia land in Delaware County, the conflict brewing in West Bradford underscores the tensions that townships face as they plot future growth.

Yet the West Bradford property is different from other suburban fights, mostly because it consists of more than just untouched land. Beyond determining the fate of hills and woodlands, a decision on the Embreeville site requires figuring out what to do with a 900,000-square-foot former psychiatric facility  one not only steeped in a dubious past, but also an expensive future. The estimated bill for demolishing the buildings and removing the asbestos, mold, and possible soil contamination on the site is more than $13 million.

On Wednesday, the West Bradford Zoning Hearing Board will decide on the developer's challenges to the zoning ordinance, thereby green-lighting or derailing Embreeville Redevelopment's path toward ultimate approval. Residents and the developer are expected to appeal if it does not go their way.

"We cannot expect an automatic victory to come from whatever decision is made," said State Sen. Andy Dinniman (D., Chester). "My experience in Chester County is that our citizens are bright, they know to organize, and they understand the law very well. So the developer will not be in" for an easy time.

A model hospital gone awry

The psychiatric facility and its surrounding land had been the subject of attention even before Embreeville Redevelopment purchased it from the state for slightly more than $1 million in 2013.

Starting in 1798 as land for the Chester County poorhouse  Pennsylvania's first  the rolling West Bradford hills eventually became home to the county's insane asylum, too. In the early 1900s, the state took control, forming a network of public hospitals serving Pennsylvania's mentally ill.

In many ways, the Embreeville psychiatric hospital was initially a standout, according to news accounts. Lauded in the mid-1900s for its "open hospital" policy  meaning that wards were unlocked and patients could travel in and out at will  the Embreeville complex was known for its low return rates, efficient discharges, and "model hospital" designation. In 1968, a reporter for the Gettysburg (Pa.) Times wrote that "the image of the mental hospital as a dark and festering dungeon where mentally ill struggle to merely survive  is being offset by hospitals like Embryville."

By the 1990s, however, the situation at Embreeville had shifted. More than a decade earlier, the state psychiatric hospital had closed, and a smaller state-run institution for the intellectually disabled had replaced it. There, abuse allegations began to surface  reports of rape, drugging, and assault. In 1994, a year after the U.S. Department of Justice sued Pennsylvania over the allegations, a settlement came: Embreeville would close.

The Embreeville center was not the lone target of allegations  or closure. In the late 20th century, public mental institutions were shuttered nationwide amid a deinstitutionalization wave. From a mental-health standpoint, the policy meant moving patients out of state "insane asylums" and into centers where they could get better care.

For savvy real estate developers, it meant available  albeit complicated  land.

In the drivers seat

Even before Embreeville closed in the 1990s, officials were exploring what to do with the complex and its surrounding acres. Fearing the space could become a "dumping ground" for unwanted uses, said Jack M. Hines Jr., township manager at the time, officials looked at a variety of ideas: a park, community college, or fire training center, for example. One even suggested offering the facility to production companies for horror-film sets.

Amid the planning and evaluating, the Embreeville facilities deteriorated. Outside, weeds and tall grass sprouted. Inside, paint chipped, windows caved, and asbestos coated the floors.

A few yards away, though, pristine open space  fields, forests, creeks, and wetlands  flourished, supporting recreational fields and an Indian gravesite memorial.

State and local politicians knew even a decade ago that development pressure was mounting. Situated in the center of Chester County, West Bradford had already experienced a shift away from its rural landscape and toward a residential one. Between 1990 and 2005, the township's population spiked 12 percent, nearing 12,000 residents. Much of Chester County was experiencing the same.

So Dinniman, with Republican Chris Ross, a state representative at the time, arranged for the township to buy the 200-plus acres from the state for less than $1 million.

"We knew there were controversies around other pieces of state property, such as the Haverford State Hospital, so we said, 'Let's avoid all that; let's get the land to the township at a very reasonable price,' " Dinniman said. "Then, the township could develop a portion if they thought a portion should be developed, but the township was going to be in the driver's seat."

Ultimately, however, West Bradford Township backed out, citing a declining real estate market, high cleanup costs, and an unfair taxpayer burden. In 2012, the township wrote that the acres had been appraised, and its value "determined to be negative $6.87 million."

The lone bidder

A few months later, the state moved to sell the property  zoned as institutional and mixed use  in a public bid. The lone bidder: developer Ken Hellings, who, in partnership with Conrad Muhly, the CEO of Terra, an environmental remediation company, and a member of the Brandywine Valley SPCA's board of directors, formed Embreeville Redevelopment LP with a third unidentified backer.

Hellings declined to comment. His lawyer could not be reached. But according to Hellings' most recent public plans, the developer hopes to build multifamily units, single-family homes, and commercial space on the site. In a 2013 memo, Hellings' team said the development would be "compact" to "maximize open space and minimize land disturbance." It also planned for "active recreation" and a dog park.

Hellings has said in the past that the scale of his design is necessary to account for the demolition and cleanup costs. To make his plan work, Hellings originally asked the township to approve an amendment to the zoning ordinance allowing for residential use on the site. Since, however, Hellings has challenged West Bradford's entire zoning ordinance as invalid, alleging that it does not meet the township's obligation to provide enough multifamily housing.

If West Bradford's zoning board rules for Hellings, that does not automatically give him the go-ahead, said Justin Yaich, West Bradford's township manager. "He would still have to go through the planning process, the permitting process  there are still a lot of things that go into play  than a simple vote of the board."

Even so, dozens of residents are expected to attend Wednesday's decision.

"We're saying, why would we put high-destiny building in the furthest corner of the township  away from grocery stores and public transportation?" said township resident Eric Bennett, 38. "1,200 units easily equates to 2,500 extra cars. Roads already have traffic congestion problems.  And the builder's profits come at the expense of residents who will have to pay for the infrastructure to support it."
Arcadia University was preparing to let go 14 professors, or nearly 8 percent of its full-time faculty, over the next 15 months  until Ajay Nair, who takes over as president Monday, put the brakes on the plan.

The university's plan under interim president Hank Brown had called for the contracts of seven professors not to be renewed in December and the contracts of another seven not to be renewed at the end of the 2018-19 academic year. The move was expected to help offset a projected $3 million budget gap for fiscal year 2019, or approximately 2.5 percent of the university's $120 million operating budget.

Programs and courses with lower enrollment were being examined, said Dan DiPrinzio, university spokesman.

Nair, a Philadelphia native who comes to Arcadia from Emory University in Georgia, where he was a senior vice president and dean of campus life, said he wants time to review the university's finances before any decisions are made, DiPrinzio said.

"So everyone can come together to address the situation," he said.

But faculty and students at the Glenside university remain concerned.

Some students are preparing to protest next week, and an open letter from a group of faculty to students expressed concern that the postponement of the faculty reduction will be temporary.

"The faculty do not deny that budgetary considerations, in a time of massive student loan debt and increased competition in higher education, must be addressed by every campus," the letter said. "Through its actions, the university has signaled to us all that our problems should be met by removing teachers from our midst. We disagree."

Ana Maria Garcia, faculty senate president, said faculty are deeply concerned for colleagues who may lose their jobs and the impact their loss may have on the institution, but also understand the university's financial constraints and need to thrive.

"The university and our students are our top priority, and making sure this institution stays vibrant and viable in the future," said Garcia, an associate professor of sociology, anthropology, and criminal justice.

Garcia said faculty are behind Nair and were pleased that he wanted to look at the situation before deciding on any reduction in faculty.

"We're really looking to him to bring us some new ideas," she said.

In recent years, Arcadia has been roiled by leadership turnover and tight finances. The university's former president, Nicolette Christensen, left last spring after less than four years on the job. She had stepped in to lead the university as chief operating officer in March 2013 after the board fired its previous president, Carl "Tobey" Oxholm III.

The university also had significant turnover in other leadership positions and on its board of trustees. In August 2016, the Inquirer reported that 10 members of the board had resigned in recent months and that five left as their terms expired. That means nearly half the board that oversaw the university a year earlier was no longer there. The departures occurred as the university was trying to close a budget deficit.

And in fall 2016, Chris van de Velde stepped down as chairman.

DiPrinzio emphasized that the university's current budget is balanced and that the university was attempting to be proactive and head off any potential shortfall for 2019. Other cuts besides faculty reductions also were being made, the university said. The faculty cuts would have covered about half of the projected shortfall.

DiPrinzio also said the university had added 49 full-time faculty members since 2010, raising the number to 183. The university enrolls 2,300 undergraduate and 1,500 graduate students.
Getting into the nation's top schools continues to get harder, as the latest round of acceptances for the fall of 2018 has proved.

The University of Pennsylvania this week admitted 3,731 students for the Class of 2022  just under 8.4 percent of the applicant pool, a record low for the Ivy League school and down from 9.1 percent last year.

Other Ivy League universities also set records.

Harvard proved the toughest to get into, with only about 4.6 percent of applicants accepted. Princeton came next. The New Jersey Ivy accepted 1,941 students out of a record 35,370 applications, just 5.5 percent of the pool. Last year, the school took 6.1 percent.

Yale accepted 6.3 percent, Brown 7.2 percent, and Dartmouth 8.7 percent. Cornell was the easiest of the pack  if you call a one in 10 shot easy. The university admitted 10.3 percent of its more than 51,000 applicants. (Columbia did not respond to a request for its numbers.)

"Getting into one of these institutions is tantamount to winning the lottery," said Barmak Nassirian, who formerly worked for the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers and now is with the American Association of State Colleges and Universities.

Some other non-Ivy League colleges that are also highly selective proved tougher to enter, too. Swarthmore accepted 980 students, just 9 percent of applicants, down from 10 percent last year.

Stanford, which has been one of the most selective universities in the nation, announced Friday that it offered admission to 4.3 percent of applicants  2,040 out of 47,450. Last year, the school took 4.6 percent of applicants.

Driving the increase in selectivity are large jumps in applications at the schools, and some university officials believe part of that boost is due to higher scores on the new SAT, which may have persuaded more students to apply.

Penn saw a 10 percent jump in applications. The university received nearly 44,500 for the fall of 2018.

"With where our applicant pool is right now, we're not going to see a 10 percent increase unless something else happens," said Eric Furda, Penn's dean of admissions, citing the new SAT and its higher score range.

Nationally, students scored an average 527 in math and 533 in reading and writing out of a possible 1600 points. The scores on the old test were lower, because some of the content was different and the tests were scaled differently. Higher numbers don't necessarily mean smarter students. But the scores may have bolstered students' aspirations.

Jim Bock, vice president and dean of admissions at Swarthmore, agreed that higher SAT scores could have played a role in the school's 14 percent increase in applications.

"From a student's perspective, if their score was higher, they may have felt based on previous data that they might have had a better chance at admission or at least be competitive in the process," he said.

Also driving the increase, he said, is an increase in students who are first in their family to attend college  nearly a quarter of Swarthmore's admitted students fall in that category  and the school's decision to allow students to self-report standardized test scores rather than pay to have them sent in, removing a financial barrier.

Because the nation's top schools have been getting more selective every year, it's hard to pinpoint the exact cause, Nassirian said.

"This is not a fluctuation. This is a trend line," he said.

It's most indicative, he said, of "the hyper-competitiveness of the anxious class."

Certainly, he said, the top schools' financial ability and willingness to provide full grants to students from needy families is an incentive.

"For some people, that alone may be worth taking a shot," he said.

A lot of the schools fill a good portion of their class with early decision candidates. Students who apply early decision commit to attending if they are accepted. Penn, for example, filled 54 percent of its 2,445 freshman class slots with early decision candidates, Furda said.

That made it even tougher on regular decision applicants.

Penn received more than 7,000 applications for early decision, a record, and that process was more competitive this year, too.

An increase in applications can mean an uptick in revenue. Penn, for example, charges $75 to apply. The school waives the fee for students with need, more than a quarter of the applicant pool, said Furda. That means, the university takes in less than $2.5 million in application fees, a relatively small number at a school that operates on a $9.2 billion budget, including its health system, and has a $12.2 billion endowment.

Furda said Penn is proud that the university extended offers to more traditionally underrepresented students. One out of seven students accepted are the first in their families to attend college. Fifty-three percent of the pool identify as students of color, the school said.

Of the accepted students, 175 are from Philadelphia.

Admitted students must notify the colleges by May 1 whether they will attend.
(Clockwise from top left) Pennsylvania news anchors Jessica Guay, Jen Johnson, Ryan Cummins, Jamie Innis, Jasmine Brooks and Robb Hanrahan were all forced to read the same script about fake news, provided by management at Sinclair. Read more

Several local Pennsylvania newscasts sounded similar this week, as anchors at Sinclair Broadcast Group stations were forced to read from the same script decrying "fake stories" and "biased reporting."

The script, which anchors at stations across the country were required to read, echoes announcements that aired last year by Scott Livingston, the vice president of news at Sinclair, which accused the national news media of publishing "fake news stories."

"This promo addresses the troubling trend of false stories on social media, and distinguishes our trusted local stations as news destinations where we are committed to honest and accurate reporting," Livingston said in a statement to CNN, which had obtained a draft of the script from a memo Sinclair management sent to local stations. "This promo reminds our viewers of this mission."

Jane Hall, a professor at American University and a former Fox News media critic, didn't share Livingston's opinion about the scripts.

"It's naked in the sense that it's forcing people in the news to read something that is a corporate piece of propaganda, in my opinion," Hall said this month on NPR's Morning Edition, noting that it highlights the idea of "fake news" pushed by President Trump. "[It's] something that just can't be seen as anything other than promoting Donald Trump's view of the rest of the news media."

Sinclair doesn't own any news stations in Philadelphia, but has four news stations across Pennsylvania, in Harrisburg, Altoona, Pittsburgh and Scranton.

The company has angered many of its local journalists by forcing stations to run content that has a pro-Trump bend, including "must-run" political segments by former Trump campaign advisor Boris Epshteyn and Terrorism Alert Desk segments that almost exclusively focus on stories involving Islam.

Here are four almost identical clips from Pennsylvania stations that were forced to read the corporate-sponsored script. The first, read by WHP anchors Robb Hanrahan and Jasmine Brooks, aired on CBS21 in Harrisburg during the 10 p.m. news on March 23:

The second, read by WJAC anchor Jen Johnson, ran on NBC6 in Johnstown on March 23 during the noon news:

The third, read by WOLF anchors Ryan Cummins and Jamie Innis, aired on Fox56 in Scranton on March 24 during the 6 p.m. news.

The fourth also aired on CBS21, this time read by read by anchor Jessica Guay. Guay's segment aired on Wednesday during the station's 5:30 p.m. newscast:

Sinclair is attempting to work out a deal to purchase 42 television stations owned by Tribune Media Co., which includes WPHL 17 in Philadelphia. If the FCC allows the deal, valued at $3.9 billion, to go through, Sinclair would gain access to more than 30 additional television markets and become the country's largest broadcaster by far, reaching about 72 percent of homes nationwid .

Ajit Pai, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission selected by President Trump, is under investigation by the FCC inspector general for his ties to Sinclair. Pai suggested changing ownership rules related to how many local stations a company could own, which would pave the way for Sinclair's purchase of Tribune.

"I am particularly concerned about reports that Chairman Pai may have coordinated with Sinclair to time a series of Commission actions to benefit the company," Rep. Frank Pallone (D., N.J.), one of two congressmen to request the investigation, said in a statement in February.

Here is the full script all three news organizations read from:

Hi, I'm [name] with [station]. Our greatest responsibility is to serve our communities. I am extremely proud of the quality, balanced journalism that [station] produces, but I'm concerned about the troubling trend of irresponsible, one-sided news stories plaguing our country.

The sharing of biased and false news has become all too common on social media. More alarming, some media outlets publish these same fake stories without checking facts first. Unfortunately, some members of the media use their platforms to push their own personal bias and agenda to control exactly what people think. This is extremely dangerous to our democracy.

At [station], it is our responsibility to report and pursue the truth. We understand the truth is neither politically left nor right. Our commitment to factual reporting is the foundation of our credibility now more than ever. But we are human, and sometimes our reporting might fall short. If you believe our coverage is unfair, please reach out through our [station] website by clicking on "Content Concerns." We value your comments and we will respond back to you.
Anna Maciejewska, who has been missing since last year and is presumed dead, and her father, Zygmunt, on a family trip to Rome, Italy in 2011. Read more

The Malvern woman vanished, leaving behind a young son, a husband, a successful career as an actuary, and a new custom-designed home.

In the weeks before she went missing last April, she canceled a trip to her native Poland for her father's 80th birthday and only texted with those outside her home. By May, her car was found, parked for an unknown length of time less than two miles from her home. Friends and family grew worried, organizing search parties, looking for any clues. In time, police said, her husband stopped cooperating and hired an attorney.

For a year, Pennsylvania State Trooper Chadwick S. Roberts said, there has been no sign of the 43-year-old. Now, the case is being investigated as a homicide.

Yet most in the Philadelphia area have never heard of Anna Maciejewska. Media attention on her case has been sporadic, with some of the most consistent coverage coming from a weekly Delaware County newspaper called the Spirit.

"There's a hierarchy of missing persons cases, and while we'd like to believe we [as a society] treat everybody equally, we don't," said Mark G. Hopkins, chief of Greater Philadelphia Search and Rescue, which authorities called in last spring to help look for the woman. "We're not comfortable with names we can't pronounce. We're not comfortable with people that don't look like us."

In March, many in the region were reading dozens of articles about Mark Dombroski, a Media native and St. Joseph's University rugby player who went missing in Bermuda and was found dead from what was ruled an accidental fall.

"Handsome lad," Hopkins said. But in recent years, "there have been about six other missing people right here, local, who have just as much of a right to life, that nobody cares about."

Anna Maciejewska, he said, is one of them.

"We feel like we're living in a horrendous nightmare, from which we're not able to wake up," said Anna's mother, Janina Maciejewska, 78.

More than 4,000 miles away in Warsaw, Poland, Janina and her husband, Zygmunt Maciejewski, keep busy. Both cancer survivors, they struggle with health problems and require near-constant medical supervision. They know hardship and loss. But the void left by their daughter weighs on them most heavily.

Due to emotional stress, exacerbated by the anniversary of Anna's disappearance, her parents declined a request for a phone interview but corresponded via email.

Janina apologized for taking a couple of days to answer a long list of questions; she needed to consult her husband.

"I am more optimistic then he is," Janina said. "It helps me to survive."

Throughout the investigation, police have focused on two weeks: Tuesday, March 28, 2017, when Anna last spoke on the phone with her mother, to Tuesday, April 11, 2017, when Anna was reported missing.

On March 28, Anna told her mom that she and her 4-year-old son, Andrew, planned to arrive in Poland that Thursday and surprise her father for his birthday, Janina said. Anna's husband, Allen Gould, was thinking about coming, too, and the couple would discuss the trip that evening, Janina said.

"I'm sorry, I can't come," Anna texted a day later, her mother said. On March 30, Zygmunt received a birthday text from Anna. But the message had mistakes in the Polish language, something that in retrospect seemed ominous considering that was Anna's native tongue, Janina said.

"We think the text message was not written by Anna," Janina said.

Efforts to reach Gould were unsuccessful. His lawyer, Evan Kelly, declined requests for comment, which included a summary of statements made about his client in this article.

For more than a week, Janina said she tried to reach Anna on her landline phone (there was poor cell reception in the Malvern home). Once, Gould answered, saying Anna was sick and would call in a few days, Janina said.

On Tuesday, April 11, Janina said, Gould delivered an alarming message. He said Anna had left for work the day before and never returned.

That same day, Anna's West Chester employer, Voya Financial, called police to report that she had not shown up for work, authorities said.

On Wednesday, Gould reported Anna missing, telling police he last saw his wife Monday, when she had been running late for work and left home in a "panic," police said. Several of Anna's former coworkers, who asked not to be identified because of the ongoing investigation, said any meeting that morning would have been routine and Anna would have faced no consequences for being late.

A filmmaker in Los Angeles, Michal Wronski, 30, is Anna's closest blood relative, her nephew, and Andrew's godfather.

The day after Anna was reported missing, Wronski flew to Philadelphia, meeting Janina at the airport. They called Gould. He was at Andrew's swim practice, Janina said. Gould said he would meet them, but he was trying to maintain Andrew's routine, Wronski said.

Gould told her he had no idea where Anna was and logistics involving a layover on her planned flight to Poland had led her to cancel the trip, Janina said.

At first, Gould cooperated with police, Roberts said, but "at this point he is not cooperating with us at all."

Asked if Gould was a person of interest, Roberts said,

"I won't say that he's not. I also wouldn't rule out anybody else."

Police have searched the Chester County area, Roberts said, and multiple residences. (Anna had two homes: the Malvern home on Hedgerow Lane and a West Chester townhouse, which she purchased before meeting Gould.)

Hopkins said it was his understanding that Anna's phone and wallet never left her Malvern house  a detail that alarmed coworkers, who said Anna was attached to her phone.

Anna came to the United States in 1997 to pursue a graduate degree in actuarial mathematics at the University of Louisville, Janina said. She followed her then-boyfriend, who had come over from Poland to start classes there a year before.

Her ex-boyfriend, who lives in California now, asked not to be named due to the ongoing investigation. He said he and Anna broke up when she moved to West Chester for a job at ING, which would become Voya.

Anna met Gould on a ski trip in the mid-2000s, her mother said.

"She thought he had no flaws," Janina said. Gould seemed infatuated with Anna, too, and they married in 2006.

The marriage looked like a happy one, Janina said, until Andrew was born and Gould developed "eyes only for Andrew," which caused Anna to feel less close to her husband.

After Anna suffered a miscarriage in 2016, she was treated for depression, Janina said, and began to feel better.

But during the last phone call with her daughter, Janina said, she sensed Anna was in a bad mood. She said she wishes she had asked if anything was wrong.

Hopkins' calendar is full of depressing reminders. With Greater Philadelphia Search and Rescue, he has worked about 250 missing persons cases. Anna's story gnaws at him.

He often thinks about Toni Sharpless, the Downingtown mother who disappeared in 2009 after leaving the Penn Valley home of a then-76ers guard. For eight years, Sharpless' case has gone unsolved. He hopes Anna's family is not left waiting that long.

Anna's friends still communicate on the "Finding Anna" Facebook group, sharing updates and planning vigils. Anna's parents know the odds are slim, but they have faith their daughter could be found alive, Janina said, citing a Polish saying.

It translates to "Hope dies last."

Authorities ask anyone with information about Anna's disappearance to call the Pennsylvania State Police at 610-486-6280.
As alumni, taxpayers, and supporters of public education, we were glad to learn that Abington High School would not be renamed after Stephen Schwarzman. Earlier in the week, we, along with other members of the Abington alumni community, were dismayed and alarmed by the Abington school board's decision to grant naming rights for our beloved  publicly funded  alma mater in exchange for $25 million from hedge-fund billionaire Schwarzman.

While Schwarzman is a fellow graduate of Abington High, we have doubts that he is a true friend to public education, or to the mission of providing quality K-12 schooling to every child, regardless of race or nationality.

Schwarzman once compared the policies of President Barack Obama to those of Adolf Hitler. As a prominent supporter of President Trump, he has been complicit in attacks against public education, immigrants, people of color, women, low-income communities, and our very democracy.

The destructive forces of institutionalized greed have decimated once-sacred institutions, including public education, and have consequently weakened the political power of working people and middle-class families in America. The cult of Wall Street and corporate largesse has done no favors for working people, such as the thousands of teachers in West Virginia who launched a historic walkout after receiving no raises for four years.

Those of us who were lucky to be raised in the diverse, affluent Montgomery County suburbs didn't know this in our youth, but Pennsylvania has the most inequitable public education funding system in the country. Due to years of policy failures at the state and federal levels, local school districts have had no choice but to force homeowners to shoulder much of the cost of public education through ever-soaring property taxes.

Unfortunately, not every community has the tax base of Abington, and we see the byproducts of a public education system lacking investment every day as working adults. Too many schools in Pennsylvania  and across the nation  make do with too few resources, too few teachers and support personnel, overcrowded classrooms, unsafe drinking water, leaky roofs, and broken heating systems. The kids who attend these schools are sent a message of how little they are valued by leaders in government and private industry, and it sets them up for failure as adults.

Equitable education funding is essential to building all of the things we want: safe, diverse communities and a strong economy. There is something grotesque in endowing millions of dollars to one of the wealthiest school districts in the commonwealth  one that, however unintentionally, has benefited from systemic inequality.

Changing the name of our high school to honor a hedge-fund billionaire would have been a slap in the face to all of the educators, parents, schoolchildren, and allies in labor who have been fighting to ensure that all public schools, especially those that serve the most vulnerable children, have the resources they need. It's especially offensive to students, teachers, and families in those communities who have been attacked by the Trump administration.

The point of publicly funded institutions is to provide collective funding, but also collective ownership, collective responsibility, and collective accountability. Public school systems are accountable to taxpayers and, in the case of the Abington School District, they're accountable to the voters. Inserting private funding of this magnitude has the tendency to confuse decision-makers about to whom they answer. The fact that a billionaire donor was given naming rights after making a significant contribution, without public input, exemplifies the problems with this type of funding arrangement.

Whatever people think about taxation, public money is honest money; it's collected from the hard work of taxpayers and appropriated in public meetings by elected legislators and school directors. This donation by Schwarzman can hardly be called transparent.

The outcry to this toxic gift from the Abington community and from alumni currently residing as far away as Washington state demonstrates just how specious it was to entertain the ego of a billionaire and claim that it was in service to the students. "Abington Schwarzman High School" would have been insulting to taxpayers, to parents, to teachers, to students, and to alumni who have supported public education through their time, their money, and their advocacy.

Our alma mater  Abington Senior High School  is a public school, and a very good one at that. It prepared us to be successful in college and in our careers in government and politics. Abington belongs to the public and should be accountable to the public. Bidding off pieces one by one runs counter to the very point of institutions that were created to strengthen the middle class and all communities. Twenty-five million dollars is a lot of money  but our core democratic values should not be for sale.

Joe Corrigan, Abington Class of 2004, is principal at Edge Hill Strategies LLC. Julie Wertheimer, Abington Class of 2003, lives and works in Philadelphia.
Alita and Haashim Johnson were killed in the fire at 1855 North 21st Street in North Philadelphia this week. Read more

As they probe the fatal fire last week that killed four tenants of an unlicensed North Philadelphia boarding house, city officials have pledged to fully investigate  and potentially prosecute  the building's owner, whose mismanagement they blame for contributing to the tragedy.

They won't be the first to do so.

Since 2006, Granite Hill Properties, a small California firm, has bought up a vast portfolio of distressed buildings in poverty-stricken neighborhoods across the city. But despite regularly drawing the scrutiny of code inspectors, tax authorities, and even the U.S. Justice Department over the last 12 years, the business and its owner, Tyrone Duren, have rented their properties unhindered to dozens of low-income tenants  often without a license to do so, an Inquirer and Daily News analysis of court records and city regulatory actions shows.

In 2016, federal prosecutors in California indicted Duren  a 47-year-old former agent of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security  alleging he used Granite Hill as a money-laundering front to hide thousands of dollars in cash he stole from drug traffickers along the Mexican border. Some of those proceeds, investigators claim, were used to finance Duren's property purchases in Philadelphia.

Two years earlier, the Department of Licenses and Inspections sued Granite Hill for running a boarding house at 1855 N. 21st St. without proper authorizations. As part of the settlement in that suit, Duren agreed to stop renting the building to tenants. And yet, when fire broke out March 20 on that building's second floor, fire investigators say, six to 10 people were living inside.

One of those tenants, whom officials have not identified, died jumping from a window to escape the flames. Three others  Alita Johnson, 25; her father, Horace McOuellem, 64; and her 3-year-old son, Haashim  were suffocated by smoke, their bodies discovered three days later in a third-floor bathroom.

Speaking at a news conference earlier this week, David Perri, commissioner of L&I, said investigators believe Granite Hill failed to install the required smoke detectors that might have saved lives in the blaze. His agency has since launched a full review of about 30 other buildings that Granite Hill owns in neighborhoods across North and Southwest Philadelphia.

Still, William Sanders, Duren's former business partner, can't help feeling that last week's tragedy might have been avoided.

For years, Sanders, of Hemet, Calif., has repeatedly tried to alert authorities in Philadelphia and California to what he described in a 2011 lawsuit as Duren's mismanagement of the properties they co-owned before their partnership dissolved.

"I'm glad they're doing something now," he said this week. "It's just a shame that it took a fire and the deaths of these people to get their attention."

Four years ago, Sanders sent an email to Philadelphia city code inspectors identifying potentially dangerous violations at 34 of Granite Hill's properties. Many, he warned, appeared to be stealing utilities or operating as unlicensed boarding houses. At others, work by unlicensed contractors threatened to put tenants at risk, his message alleged.

At 1855 N. 21st, Sanders warned then, tenants appeared to be living in the house despite the earlier court settlement that it be vacated.

City records show that L&I followed up on some of those complaints, filing enforcement actions piecemeal for various violations, and at times taking Granite Hill to court.

But the company's business continued unabated.

"We've been watching this for years," Sanders said. "It's absolutely unbelievable."

I am tied into Philadelphia

Neither Duren nor his lawyer, John Kirby, responded to multiple requests for comment this week.

But court filings in California and Pennsylvania paint a portrait of the former federal agent as an aggressive and short-tempered businessman, as likely to pull a gun on a contractor during a payment dispute  a claim detailed in a 2011 deposition  as he was to liberally quote the ancient Chinese general Sun Tzu in missives threatening his business partners.

"My family is vast and controls a large section of the city," he once warned Sanders in an email. In another, he boasted: "I am tied into Philadelphia. Nothing happens there without my knowledge."

Despite his holdings in Philadelphia, his hometown, Duren lives full time in a luxuriously furnished $700,000 house outside San Diego and frequently travels to Canada, the Bahamas, the Turks and Caicos Islands, the Cayman Islands, Russia, Israel, and Europe, court records show.

When federal agents confronted him in 2014 with their belief that he was funding that lavish lifestyle with stolen drug proceeds, Duren lashed out.

"I'm a fing millionaire," he said, according to a transcript included in court filings in that case. "I move anywhere between $7 and $800,000 in cash every year, OK? I don't need to f with some little dirtbag's money."

Although he has been charged only with one 2013 theft,. from a car he stopped near San Ysidro, Calif., prosecutors have said in court papers that they suspect him of taking far greater sums during his six-year career with Homeland Security.

Duren, free on bail but confined under court order to California, has denied the allegations and is scheduled for trial in June. But as the case has played out in federal court in San Diego, investigators have frequently thrown up their hands while trying to untangle the web of holding companies, multiple LLCs, and more than 25 bank accounts through which Duren and Granite Hill have moved their assets over the last several years  including one opened in Croatia after Duren learned of the federal probe.

"Agents discovered numerous suspicious hard-money loans, payments, rental agreements and other business practices that are inconsistent with what would be expected with a property management company," Homeland Security Special Agent Thomas Miller wrote in an affidavit last year. "A legitimate company would not need numerous [burner] phones and over 25 bank accounts. Duren's business practice  and his general banking activities are indicative of criminal activity."

While it's clear that somehow Duren has access to hundreds of thousands of dollars  which he is charged with depositing in small increments in his accounts to avoid federal reporting requirements  prosecutors say they can find no legitimate source for that income.

Granite Hill's tax returns suggest the company is barely breaking even, and Duren has not filed personal income tax returns for several years.

The company's tangled finances and corporate structure may explain why efforts by local investigators to probe the company in the past have produced few results.

But in the wake of last week's fire, city officials are pledging they won't be deterred this time.

"Landlords and developers don't always like it, but government rules and regulations regarding housing exist in order to keep people safe  period," City Council President Darrell L. Clarke said in a statement Tuesday. "Those who flout the law to make a quick buck must be held accountable."
Gerard Jerry Sweeney, president and CEO of Brandywine Realty Trust, said tax reform could boost Philadelphia's anemic job growth towards the national average (Credit: Chamber of Commerce for Greater Philadelphia). Read more

Will Amazon make the difference in bringing jobs to Philadelphia? Gerard "Jerry" Sweeney says maybe  but Philadelphia could create even more jobs just by changing its tax structure and doing more to boost business in the city.

The president and CEO of Brandywine Realty Trust addressed the Chamber of Commerce for Greater Philadelphia on Thursday morning to a packed house, and said that whether or not Amazon picks the city for its next headquarters, Philadelphia needs to generate more jobs.

Currently, Philadelphia lags in job growth, at just 1.3 percent annually over the last six years, compared with the national average of 2.1 percent over the same period, he said.

The average job growth rate of the top 25 cities is 2.8 percent annually. "We have an anemic job growth track record," he said. "Amazon has done a great job disrupting procurement. I love that they broke the bounds of traditional site selection processes. What they wind up doing, who knows? I was delighted we put together a great proposal in Philadelphia. We'll see what happens."

Amazon promised to bring 50,000 jobs to the city, which now has 600,000 jobs.

But more important, Sweeney said, "if Philadelphia grew at just the national average growth rate, we could generate 90,000 jobs over 10 years. That's the important thing. It's not 'Amazon, please pick us.' We've got to look inward to drive that growth."

Compared with Austin, Texas, where Brandywine has business interests, and other high-growth cities, Philadelphia can do better, he said.

"We're the largest landlord in Austin, one of the highest-growth markets in the U.S. One hundred and thirty people a day move into Austin. Last year, 50 companies moved their headquarters to Austin," he said. "Every week. They have great weather, but the reality is, they have a business community that drives the agenda."

Like Austin, "Philly's business community has to drive the agenda."

Sweeney is lobbying for a change in the state constitution that would allow commercial real estate to be taxed at a higher rate than residential property. If that change was made, the commercial real estate tax rate alone could be raised to offset cuts in the wage tax. Mayor Kenney supports the plan, Sweeney said. "He views it as a tool."

But City Council does not.

"They're focused on the ability to have commercial properties to pay more, but that money has to go into the general fund," he said. "It's a grow jobs program, not a grow government program."

At the state level, "the response from Philadelphia's house delegation and leadership in Harrisburg is good. The Committee of 70, the African American Chamber and Hispanic Chamber, the Philadelphia Chamber did not support our plan. They feel the break in uniformity is a slippery slope. We've had that forever. It hasn't helped us out too much. Let's pass it at the state level. It doesn't obligate the city to do anything. It makes Philadelphia more competitive to grow jobs.

"Currently, only 19 percent of tax revenue comes from commercial real estate taxes. We get almost 70 percent from taxing wages and businesses. So we think it's great to reset the formula."

Sweeney and Brandywine's proposal would give the city the option to have commercial properties pay 15 percent more than residential properties, as long as that was dedicated to wage and business tax reduction. "It would bring the wage tax down to three percent in 10 years and cut business taxes 50 percent, which would generate 100,000 jobs and $300 million for the school district" over the decade.

But City Council "want that money to go into the general fund," instead of schools, Sweeney said.

In terms of office rental trends, "rents in Philadelphia are low compared to the cost to build. The amount of office inventory in the city today is the same as it was almost 20 years ago. Despite Cira Center and FMC Tower and Comcast buildings, the reality is there were 15 buildings taken out of service due to residential conversions. To build a new building in the city today, you need rents all in the mid $50s" per-square-foot.

"That's a 20 percent premium over what existing stock trades for."

"That's a far cry from other cities. In New York, they're building Hudson Yards, Manhattan West. In Austin we're breaking ground on a high-rise, and rents down there will be in the $55 range. And we'll move rates up during the development cycle."

In the suburbs, King of Prussia could be "a Reston, Virginia, or a Silicon Valley. Simon Properties is investing millions to renovate the mall. Simon, one of the best investors in real estate, sees King of Prussia as a growth vehicle, the potential for the [Septa] rail, which will open up neighborhoods, and that's worthwhile to invest."

"We are constantly around the world selling Philadelphia. One of our first undertakings was this building" in the Cira Center with Amtrak as a partner. Brandywine redeveloped the post office across from 30th Street Station and next will come the University City District in partnership with Drexel University, starting with Drexel Square, a $13 million park and public square outside of the west portico of the train station.

"We think it will be one of the country's best mixed-use innovative communities," Sweeney said. "The city is on the rise."
Heidi Austin, with her father, Josef Wituschek, displays a photo of guardian Gloria Byars from Byars Facebook page during an interview last year in Wituscheks home in the Fox Chase section of Philadelphia. Read more

Relatives of Edmund and Margareta Berg were shocked to learn, a little more than a year ago, that the court-appointed guardian handling the Fox Chase couple's finances had a record of fraud, bad checks, and forgery.

Around that time, Marie Frisby began questioning the guardian appointed to help her husband, Hank. They contend that his bills weren't being paid and, as a result, they had to sell their home in Wyncote, Montgomery County.

Meanwhile, Nu Vuong, a naturalized U.S. citizen who doesn't speak English, had been moved by her guardian from her Kensington home to a Delaware County nursing facility where no one spoke her language.

In each case, the guardian was the same woman, Gloria Byars of Aldan, Delaware County.

Questions about Byars' financial management led judges to remove Byars last year as guardian of the Bergs and Hank Frisby. She has since been removed from about 100 cases in Philadelphia, Montgomery, and Delaware Counties.

The experiences of the Bergs, Frisby, and Vuong demonstrate how well-meaning relatives can be swept away by a guardian who may not be acting in a person's best interests. And Byars' criminal record underscores what some advocates say is a broader issue: a lack of oversight in a beleaguered system responsible for caring for thousands of often elderly Pennsylvanians.

"We do have a crisis with professional guardians," Philadelphia Orphans' Court Administrative Judge Matthew Carrafiello said at a February hearing at which he ordered Byars removed from all her remaining guardianships. "We just don't have enough."

Nationwide, guardians oversee an estimated 1.3 million adults and $50 billion of their assets, said Brenda Uekert, principal court research consultant at the National Center for State Courts. And as the population ages, the demand for them is likely to grow.

In Philadelphia, about 6,800 adults are under guardianship care, many of whom are overseen by family members. Five lawyers also regularly serve as guardians, and others on an occasional basis, as well as about 17 non-attorney professional guardians, like Byars.

Any interested person or agency may petition a court to appoint a guardian. A judge then holds a hearing to determine if the person is "incapacitated"  unable to manage his or her own personal or financial affairs. Once appointed, a guardian is paid through that person's assets or income. Their fees vary: Some could charge $100 an hour, observers say, but they also could make much less overseeing a poor client's finances.

Guardians must file with the court regular reports of the assets, income, and expenditures they manage. But otherwise, they are generally left alone.

The only legal requirement to become a guardian in Pennsylvania is the ability to read and write in English. And that in turn opened the door to applicants like Byars.

Philadelphia judges appointed her to 93 cases from 2015 until last summer, in most cases based on a recommendation by the Philadelphia Corporation for Aging. The nonprofit, which provides home care to more than 21,000 and helps thousands more through its tip line, is supposed to act as a watchdog for the city's most vulnerable citizens.

But an attorney for the agency told a judge at a hearing last year that PCA did not know about Byars' convictions for fraud and bad checks  a past that a simple Google search would have uncovered.

Abbey Porter, an agency spokeswoman, declined to discuss why PCA had recommended Byars and whether the agency had conducted a background check. She wrote by email that PCA is "aware of the complexities and challenges of the guardianship system, including the 'vetting' of guardians."

Byars, 57, has not been charged for her role in any guardianship cases. She repeatedly has declined to speak to the Inquirer and Daily News, when approached in person or through phone calls and letters left at her office and home. Lawyers representing her also have declined to comment.

Diane Menio, executive director of the Center for Advocacy for the Rights and Interests of the Elderly (CARIE), in Philadelphia, said Byars' record shows agencies and courts need more due diligence in choosing guardians.

"Someone convicted of financial crimes is certainly not someone who you want managing an incapacitated person's finances," said Menio. "This whole thing is based on trust."

Unbelievable

Court records show that in 2005, Byars was charged in Virginia with defrauding several people by using their discarded credit-card convenience checks, fished out from post-office trash cans. She pleaded guilty that October and was later sentenced to 37 months in federal prison and ordered to pay $29,503 in restitution.

After completing her term in December 2007, which included stints in a halfway house and on home confinement, Byars, who had once lived in Camden, moved to Delaware County. Her supervised release, which ended in December 2010, barred her from working in a job that required her to handle money or have access to financial accounts.

At some point, she began working for Robert Stump, a guardian and owner of RES Consulting in Havertown. According to one LinkedIn account, she worked there from 2008 to 2016. Stump did not return calls seeking comment.

The same LinkedIn account says Byars received an associate of arts degree in business administration from Kaplan University in 1981. A spokeswoman for Kaplan, headquartered in Chicago, said the university, which offers online courses, has no record of Byars' taking classes.

In 2016, Byars branched out on her own, opening Global Guardian Services in Lansdowne, Delaware County.

That Dec. 6, Byars was appointed guardian for the Bergs, upon PCA's recommendation. The couple, both in their 80s, didn't want to leave their house on Borbeck Avenue, which they bought in 1961, relatives said.

But in late December, Margareta Berg was discharged from a hospital and  without the knowledge of her brother, Josef Wituschek  moved to a Montgomery County rehab facility. A panicked Wituschek and his daughter, Heidi Austin, then tried to call Byars, only to learn that she was in Spain, they said.

Austin grew suspicious. A Google search led her to a 2005 Virginia newspaper article about Byars' most recent arrest. Soon afterward, Austin discovered Byars' criminal history through an online background check.

That January, Byars moved the Bergs into a Montgomery County nursing home, then in February 2017 had their Fox Chase house cleaned out to sell it.

An accounting filed by Byars last year said she collected $4,487.50 in guardianship fees from the Bergs from January to July, a sum that consisted of monthly fees of $100 or $200, plus $2,000 for her to oversee the two-day cleanout of their house. (It's unclear how much she made from all of her guardian cases, but court records show that she finally paid off her restitution in the federal fraud case by February 2017.)

After Byars sought court approval to sell the house, Wituschek hired a lawyer. Attorney Daniel McElhatton learned that the company Byars had hired to clean the house, DEPCO LLC, was owned by Byars' husband, Leon DeShields.

The lawyer says he found it "unbelievable" that Byars didn't disclose the conflict of interest. He opposed the sale of the house and an $11,000 payment to DEPCO, alerted Orphans' Court Judge John Herron to Byars' criminal convictions, and asked the judge to remove her as guardian.

At a hearing in July 2017, Herron scolded Byars for failing to disclose the conflict and for not getting his approval to pay DEPCO. "It was self-dealing and should not have happened, and it should be refunded immediately," the judge said.

McElhatton also questioned thousands of dollars in other withdrawals Byars had made from the Bergs' accounts. Byars said she paid $5,000 in cash to the Bergs' nursing home, but didn't get a receipt  a step Herron called "negligent" and "reckless."

Herron ordered Byars removed as the Bergs' guardian and as guardian of 31 other active cases. He appointed Wituschek as successor guardian for the Bergs. Wituschek had previously not been able to serve because he was mourning the death of his wife.

Byars has since reimbursed the Bergs the $11,000 paid to her husband's cleaning company, $5,200 for an unexplained cashier's check she wrote from their account, and an additional $900 she collected from an auction of valuables from the cleanout of the Bergs' house. The family is still questioning other expenses and items they suspect are missing.

At the July hearing, Byars' then-attorney Robert Feliciani III, said she had 113 active guardianships, mostly in Philadelphia and Montgomery County.

Sam Brooks, an elder law attorney at Community Legal Services of Philadelphia, said other professional guardians at times carry caseloads as large or larger. A manageable caseload is closer to 40, he said, but to make a profit, guardians deal in volume, he said.

"There's no money in it, for the most part, unless you have a person who's incapacitated who has a substantial estate," said Menio, the advocacy center director.

Guardians can still make money from low-income clients. They are assured $100 a month if the person is in a nursing home and receives medical assistance. They also can petition the court to sell a person's house, then request compensation from the sale.

Billed for a birthday party

Hank Frisby was a Philadelphia police officer from 1960 to 1980, rising to the rank of sergeant. He then served full time in the Pennsylvania Air National Guard, and later in Montgomery County's human resources department.

In early 2016, though, he was separated from his wife, Marie. After a nurse who was taking care of him at his Wyncote home suspected he was being abused by a relative, the nurse contacted the Montgomery County Office of Aging and Adult Services.

That March, Montgomery County Senior Judge Stanley Ott deemed Hank Frisby incapacitated after finding that he suffered from dementia and had problems paying his bills. The Office of Aging had recommended Stump's company, RES Consulting, and Byars, who at the time was still working for Stump, was appointed his guardian, court records show.

While the Frisbys agree that his finances weren't in the best of shape, they say that in the ensuing months, Byars didn't pay his mortgage, real-estate taxes, or income taxes.

But she threw him a birthday party. In June 2016, he was invited to a party that Byars threw for him and other clients at her home. The party included an ice cream truck, a live band, food, alcohol, and boxes of sheet cake, including one for him, Hank Frisby said.

"I didn't know anybody there," Hank Frisby, now 79, said in an interview. "I stayed a couple of hours and left."

He thought it was nice, he said, until he later saw a $750 charge on his account for being at the party for six hours.

Later that year, the Frisbys reunited, and Marie Frisby realized the state of his finances. In December 2016, their house was targeted for foreclosure.

They sold the house in May, then moved to the River Park section of Philadelphia.

Marie Frisby, 70, said she has seen no indication of how Byars spent her husband's pension checks, totaling $80,000 a year, to his benefit  except once, when she bought a stair lift for him at the Wyncote house.

She also said Byars wouldn't let her see her husband's bank statements.

"We had no charges about how much she paid anybody, just her fees on what she charged us to do for us," she said.

Concerned, she had filed a petition in court to have Byars removed as guardian, contending Byars was failing to pay her husband's bills. With the help of a lawyer, Diane Zabowski, the Frisbys got Byars replaced as guardian in June.

State Sen. Art Haywood, the Democratic minority chair of the Aging and Youth committee, said Thursday that Marie Frisby will be meeting April 5 with a staffer in his office to see if there is any recourse for her husband. Haywood, a former Wyncote neighbor of the Frisbys, said he found it "outrageous" that they had to sell their home.

Haywood, who represents parts of Montgomery County and Philadelphia, said his staff is looking into the process of how guardians are appointed and removed.

My mom is not a prisoner

Vuong's son, Hue Quach, experienced similar outrage. On May 26, 2016, Byars was appointed Vuong's guardian. A week later, she transferred Vuong, then 73, to a Delaware County nursing home without telling her son.

"Not only did she put my mom in this [nursing home] without telling me, she prohibited me from going in and seeing my mom" without Byars' permission, he said in an interview.

Quach said his mother cried when he was allowed to visit her because no one in the nursing home could understand her  she speaks Vietnamese and Chinese.

He said he told Byars: "'My mom is not a prisoner. She did nothing wrong.'"

Quach then petitioned the court to be his mother's guardian. At a July 2016 hearing, Judge George Overton appointed Quach co-guardian. Quach then moved his mother to a South Jersey nursing home that has staff and residents who speak Chinese.

Byars has since been removed from that case  and the others in surrounding counties.

The final two removals came March 20 in Delaware County. The Orphans' Court clerk there, Mary Walk, said the office began reviewing Byars' cases after learning about her removals in other counties, but found no evidence of malfeasance in the two cases.

At the February hearing, Carrafiello, the Philadelphia Orphans' Court administrative judge, had said he was unaware of any malfeasance in Byars' caseload in his court. But he stripped her from the cases because he concluded she was no longer up to the task of being a guardian.

Montgomery County officials declined to discuss why she was removed from cases there.

Calls for improvement

Unlike 18 other states, Pennsylvania does not require professional guardians to undergo criminal background checks.

A state Supreme Court Elder Law Task Force had in November 2014 recommended that all guardians be required to undergo criminal background checks in a wide-ranging report that examined problems in the guardianship system, issues of elder abuse and neglect, and access to the justice system for elders.

That decision would fall to the state's Supreme Court justices. The court's Orphans' Court Procedural Rules Committee at an April 20 meeting will be considering the issue of instituting background checks, said Northampton County Orphans' Court Judge Emil Giordano, a committee member. His county already bars felons from serving as professional guardians.

State Rep. Mark Gillen (R., Berks) said in a March 23 interview that he soon would introduce a bill requiring criminal background checks for prospective guardians and prohibiting felons from serving.

Other legislators also have been trying to improve the system. State Sen. Stewart Greenleaf (R., Montgomery), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, last year reintroduced a bill that would, among other things, require court approval for any guardian fees.

Keelin S. Barry, a Philadelphia lawyer who served on the task force and whose office provides guardianship and elder law services, said "there is a huge shortage" of people willing to serve as guardians, but a great need.

"The elderly population has exploded," said Barry, who was appointed to replace Byars as guardian for Hank Frisby. "And people who in the past would have taken care of their older family member, now have moved across the city or across the country and are not able to take care of that person anymore."
Philadelphia City Councilman David Oh is shown as he was recuperating at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center in Philadelphia after he was stabbed near his home May 31, 2017, in an attempted robbery. With him are his wife, Heesun; their son, Daniel, and daughter, Sarah. Read more

After spending the last 10 months in jail awaiting trial, Shawn Yarbray was found not guilty Thursday afternoon of trying to rob and kill Philadelphia City Councilman David Oh in front of the councilman's Southwest Philadelphia home.

The verdict, on the first day of jury deliberations in Common Pleas Court, resulted from the failure of the District Attorney's Office to present evidence corroborating Oh's testimony that pointed to Yarbray as his attacker, said juror Kathleen Taintor.

"I was holding out for a guilty verdict because I believed the councilman, but then there was no corroborating evidence," said Taintor, a paralegal. "So basically, if there was some corroborating evidence  the knife was found, there was DNA, or a bloody shirt or something  that would have established it more clearly. But without that corroborating evidence, the only thing to go on was the testimony of Councilman Oh."

The jury also included two city corrections officers, two accountants, a makeup artist, a teacher's aide, a registered nurse, retirees, and several customer service employees.

The jury forewoman, who would not give her name and declined to comment, was overheard telling Yarbray's relatives and friends on the courthouse sidewalk, "He's a good-looking guy, he don't need to be in jail."

During the conversation, the forewoman gave Yarbray's father, Karif Roberts, a pamphlet from her church.

Yarbray, 25, of the Kingsessing section of the city, showed no outward emotion when the verdict was read, but his family and friends appeared relieved, grateful to his defense attorney, Samuel C. Stretton, and respectful toward Oh, who was not in court when the verdict was read.

"For Councilman Oh, I'm sorry that an ordeal did happen to him, but like I said, it was not my child. It was not my son. Maybe someday the police will find the person who did do it," said Roberts, who testified as a character witness for his son.

Reached by phone, Oh, an at-large Republican, said he respects the verdict but stands by his belief that Yarbray attacked him, puncturing his right lung and slashing an arm.

"I'm not disappointed. [The verdict] is the result of having due process and a system of justice that we put our faith in, but which is not perfect," said Oh, who added that he's hopeful Yarbray has changed for the better since the attack.

In court, Stretton hammered away at the fact that the prosecution's only evidence was Oh's identification of Yarbray in a police file photo two days after the May 31, 2017, attack. The lawyer told the jury that eyewitness testimony has been proven unreliable, especially when the witness and the accused are of different races. Oh is Asian American; Yarbray is African American.

The racially diverse jury included no black men.

Stretton argued that if Oh had gotten such a good look at his attacker, it was hard to understand why he failed to notice  and to tell police  that the man had two moles on his nose and a tattoo on his right hand, which held the knife. Yarbray showed the jury that he has two moles and a hand tattoo.

Stretton took aim at Oh's description to police that the attacker resembled the drug-addict character portrayed by Chris Rock in the 1991 film New Jack City. During his closing argument Wednesday, the lawyer held up a photo of his client and a photo of Rock's movie character. "This is not what my client looked like," he told the jury.

"I truly believed that my client was innocent," Stretton said after leaving the courthouse. "I think the jury struggled with that issue in terms of the strong identification that Councilman Oh made, but they came to recognize the argument that we made of the inherent unreliability of identification without other corroboration. So I think justice was done."

Assistant District Attorney Lori Edelman-Orem, who tried the case, could not be reached for comment afterward. Ben Waxman, a spokesman for the office, said: "We feel that we had a strong case. We felt that our witnesses performed extremely well on the witness stand. But we respect the process and the findings of the jury."
Gov. Murphys budget proposal would give more money to the vast majority of school districts. But the most underfunded districts are frustrated and say the state needs to remedy disparities in funding. Read more

When Chesterfield Superintendent Scott Heino learned of the funding increase that Gov. Murphy planned for his school district, his reaction was "absolute shock." This was worse than nothing.

By his calculation, the $41,060 increase was a mere 1/100th of the Burlington County district's entitlement, about $4 million, based on how its student population has grown.

"I think if we would have received the same exact number of aid as last year, I wouldn't have been as shocked," said Heino. "The fact that there was an effort made, and changes were made and money was allocated, and still we only received the $41,000,  it was a blow."

School officials were hopeful about the new Democratic governor's pledge to remedy years of failure by the state to follow its own law for funding public schools. But some were crestfallen when they saw the details of the new governor's proposed plan  despite its nearly across-the-board increases.

"It was deflating, honestly, when those numbers came out," said Joe Meloche, superintendent of the Cherry Hill School District, another one that is getting an aid boost but felt short-changed.

That dissatisfaction speaks to difficulties Murphy confronts in fulfilling his promise to "fully fund" schools. Driven by landmark court rulings that sought to reduce disparities among schools in rich and poor communities, New Jersey's funding formula has been hailed by education advocates.

Yet the state hasn't been able to put it into practice.

In theory, New Jersey's formula works like this: The state determines what it costs to educate students in each district based on enrollment, with added money for students with greater needs. It calculates what the district can afford to pay, then makes up the difference.

In reality, it's more complicated. As the formula was being adopted in 2008, lawmakers realized that some districts stood to lose money because of it. Rather than make cuts, the state added a provision to the law giving those districts "adjustment aid." Many districts still receive it.

At the same time, the state hasn't spent the money the formula requires, with years of near-flat funding under Gov. Chris Christie. Districts that have grown, or that are enrolling more needy students, have racked up charges that the state hasn't paid.

Even with the $283 million in additional aid Murphy proposes to give school districts next year, it would cost the state an additional $831 million to fully fund districts under the formula. The state allocated just over $8 billion to schools for this year.

But the deficit is much larger if enrollment changes are fully taken into account, and the formula limits how much additional aid a district can receive each year. If those caps are removed, 363 districts are owed nearly $1.9 billion, according to an Inquirer and Daily News analysis of data provided by the state Department of Education. Murphy's proposed budget for next year is $37.4 billion, and includes $1.6 billion in tax increases.

"After reviewing the individual state aid notifications, our association remains seriously concerned about the plight of severely underfunded school districts," Lawrence Feinsod, executive director of the New Jersey School Boards Association, said in a statement Thursday.

Under- and Overfunded Public Schools in South Jersey

On the other end, 228 districts are slated to get a total of $740 million more in state aid than they would be entitled to if they were funded on the basis of their enrollments. Some are getting two, three, or even five times what they're owed.

While lawmakers last year reached a compromise to reduce aid to some districts and redirect money to those that were underfunded, Murphy's proposal doesn't cut any district's aid. The budget gives increases to the vast majority of districts.

Murphy spokesman Dan Bryan said the governor's budget represents "the first step toward his commitment of fully funding the school funding formula over the next four years."

The governor "looks forward to working with the Legislature to modernize the school funding formula and address any disparities that may exist," Bryan said.

The imbalances in New Jersey's school funding aren't just at the state level. Some districts aren't taxing as much as they should be under the formula, while others are raising more than their fair share.

"The burden that's on our taxpayers is so incredibly great here in Cherry Hill," said Meloche, the superintendent. Cherry Hill property owners pay on average more than $8,000 in property taxes.

By the state's calculation, the district should be able to raise $136 million to pay for schools; last year, the township's total was nearly $170 million.

The state would owe Cherry Hill nearly $30 million if funding were based on enrollment. Under Murphy's proposal, Cherry Hill would get an additional $596,000 next year, bringing its total to just under $15 million.

Chesterfield, where enrollment has nearly doubled over the last decade, is slated to get just 21 percent of the total aid it's owed  the smallest share in the state. The district has been unable to replace its social studies curriculum, now 12 years outdated, Heino said. It needs, but is unable to hire, another special-education teacher. And with more students, it needs more room in its bike racks.

Some districts fared far better despite being "much closer to 100 percent funding," Heino said. "I just don't understand how."

Lawmakers agreed last year to shift aid from districts getting more than their share of state funding to those underfunded by the state. The move was pushed by Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D., Gloucester)  who earlier this year announced his own funding plan  but fiercely opposed by the New Jersey Education Association, the state's largest teachers' union.

Sweeney said last week he was committed to helping underfunded districts. "We started to make progress last year on school funding and we need to continue it," he said on radio station NJ 101.5. While the Murphy administration has said it's open to changes in school funding, Sweeney said, "It has to happen this year."

David Sciarra, executive director of the Education Law Center, which argued the Abbott v. Burke cases that laid the groundwork for the state's school-funding formula, said districts like Chesterfield have "valid complaints" about their state aid. The problem is the state's chronic underfunding of schools, he said: "It's not like [Murphy]'s targeting these districts somehow for particular treatment."

If lawmakers add money to Murphy's budget, Sciarra said, they should direct it to districts that are spending less than their "adequacy" budgets  the formula's calculation of what each district must spend to give its students a "thorough and efficient" education  and are owed large amounts of money by the state. The law center has also recommended the state lift the 2 percent property-tax cap for some districts that aren't raising enough local revenue.

"The entire educational community has to come together and realize it's going to take a while for districts to come back after what they've experienced over the last eight years," Sciarra said.

Others questioned how Murphy would manage to ramp up funding in the coming years given other demands on the state budget, like the pension liability, and Murphy's other goals  like offering free community college tuition.

"We haven't addressed the seriousness of the underfunded nature of our formula," said John Donahue, executive director of the New Jersey Association of School Business Officials. "The fundamental problem at this point is finding resources" to support it.
The FirstEnergy Corp. Beaver Valley nuclear power station stands next to the Shippingport Bridge in Shippingport, Pa. Read more

In the latest blow to the struggling U.S. nuclear industry, a subsidiary of the large Ohio-based utility firm FirstEnergy announced plans Wednesday to shut down three nuclear plants, one in Pennsylvania, which collectively produce a steady stream of 4 billion watts of electricity.

The company, FirstEnergy Solutions, cited "market challenges" to the plants, which are being undercut by cheap natural gas and a growing wave of renewable energy installations, according to the nuclear energy industry.

But the company then went a step further, filing an emergency request with the Energy Department that asks for help to keep the plants, as well as a number of its coal plants, open.

The move reignited debate over prior attempts by Energy Secretary Rick Perry's department to subsidize struggling coal and nuclear plants on the grounds that they provide crucial security and stability to the electric grid.

Perry previously tried to give favorable financial treatment to coal and nuclear plants in grid compensation decisions due to the resiliency they provide, as the plants run more or less continually. But the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which regulates the interstate transmission and wholesale sales of electricity, rejected that effort.

But now FirstEnergy Solutions appears to be seeking a similar result through other means, arguing in its request that due to the emergency that plant failures could pose, Perry should order grid operators to "promptly compensate at-risk merchant nuclear and coal-fired power plants for the full benefits they provide to energy markets and the public at large, including fuel security and diversity."

Environmental groups reacted strongly to FirstEnergy's effort. The Sierra Club called it "clearly illegal," because the Federal Power Act, under which the request was filed, is reserved for situations of emergency.

FirstEnergy "is desperate to pad its bottom line at the expense of its customers," said John Moore, director of the Sustainable FERC Project at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

"The region is awash in cleaner and cheaper resources, and [FirstEnergy] can't compete in the market," said Moore. "This move is stunning given that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the Department of Energy, and the state of Ohio have all rejected these bailouts."

FirstEnergy, the parent company, has also resisted renewable energy mandates in Ohio.

The natural gas industry  which is largely responsible for the economic challenges that nuclear plants are facing  was also dismissive of the request.

"Competitive markets have a long track record of delivering affordable power to customers," Dena Wiggins, chief executive of the Natural Gas Supply Association, said in a statement. "It would be counterproductive and send the wrong signal to the market for DOE to grant this request."

FirstEnergy Solutions generates electricity in parts of Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Its three aging nuclear plants, Perry, Davis Bessie and Beaver Valley (the largest plant with two nuclear reactors), are located in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

FirstEnergy Solutions saw its credit rating downgraded by Moody's in January, citing an "increased likelihood of a default occurring within the next few months," although the parent company, FirstEnergy, was rated stable.

One part of the argument advanced by FirstEnergy Solutions to Perry is that the company "likely will file for bankruptcy by the end of March 2018."

The company argues that the recent cold spells in the Northeast proved the value of its assets to the grid.

"If not for the over-performing nuclear and coal-fired generating plants . . . the eastern portion of the country would likely have seen grid reliability impacts, as natural gas plants significantly underperformed in large part due to natural gas price spikes and supply interruptions," the document states. It also cites a recent Energy Department report on the recent "bomb cyclone" in late December and early January, finding that coal and nuclear played a key role in keeping the lights on during that extreme cold event.

But it's not entirely clear just how much the grid depends on the company's nuclear plants for stability of service, several experts suggested.

Nora Brownell, a FERC commissioner between 2001 and 2006, says an "independent" assessment is needed in light of Perry's prior support for subsidizing coal and nuclear plants.

"I think we need to make sure these aren't political decisions, but they're economic decisions," she said.

"What people forget is these plants are fully depreciated. They all earned buckets of money before shale gas became the more economic choice. So maybe it's time for them to retire," Brownell continued. "So barring any independent validation of the need, for reliability purposes, I'd say, time to shut them down."

From an environmental perspective, meanwhile, the struggling state of FirstEnergy's nuclear plants is a complex matter  whatever the remedy may be.

Although the company didn't cite the climate change benefits of its plants in its letter to Perry, those are substantial, said Sue Tierney, a former Energy Department official and an expert with the Analysis Group. That's especially because unlike wind and solar installations, nuclear plants produce energy continually with little stoppage, and unlike natural gas plants, they don't emit greenhouse gas emissions.

"The loss of 4,000 megawatts of power plants with 90 percent capacity factors is a lot of greenhouse gas emissions reduction that would have to come from, at the moment, the combination of energy efficiency, wind, solar, biofuels and storage," Tierney said. "That would be expensive and hard to replace immediately."

Moreover, she added, once nuclear plants are shut down it is "not practical" to bring them back online later. "So these are lost forever, and difficult to replace at this scale quickly from a greenhouse gas point of view."

Under the Obama administration, then-Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz highlighted a pattern: As nuclear plants closed in a number of areas, greenhouse gas emissions rose.

In 2017, the United States got about 20 percent of its electricity generated at large facilities from the country's 61 operating nuclear plants, a number of which have more than one nuclear reactor as part of their design. But the U.S. nuclear industry has been racked by announced plant closures in recent years, including the planned closing of California's last nuclear plant, Diablo Canyon.

Adding the four FirstEnergy Solutions reactors, 18 reactors in total have either been shut down or set on a path to shutdown in recent years, said John Kotek, vice president of policy development and public affairs at the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry group.

And with FirstEnergy Solutions's plants, "if they go away, the generation is going to be overwhelmingly replaced by power from fossil fuel plants," Kotek said.
When Sally Friedman didnt have to share, and all the daughters were home for Passover. (L to R): Amy, Sally, Vic, Nancy and Jill. Read more

Years ago, when my newly married older sister attended her husband's family Passover seder, my mother was devastated. "I hate change!" she said to me with considerable emotion. "Ruthie belongs with us."

I thought that was extremely selfish.

Then, I became a mother. And for one long stretch, when our daughters were all in their 20s, change came in a steady, pummeling stream.

They graduated from college. They took the next steps  graduate school, jobs, travel to what we perceived as dangerous places. It seemed that we were always saying goodbye to someone dashing off somewhere.

And then they all got married.

After the high-risk/high-decibel/high-stress of rearing kids, their father and I looked forward to the rewards. Like, spending holidays with these daughters and their husbands. And then, as they followed the biblical injunction, "Be fruitful and multiply," their seven delicious grandchildren. That wish to be together became even more urgent.

We had an antique oak dining room table that stretched for miles, and because I'm a yard-sale freak, we had a huge collection of mismatched chairs that allowed our sons-in-laws' parents  and even their siblings  to be with us. Interspersed were high chairs. It was glorious.

Passover is our favorite holiday, and we loved hosting it. Foolishly, we thought this custom would go on forever. Even when we moved to a smaller space, that behemoth of a table came with us. And so did the hodgepodge of chairs.

But life brings changes. Just ask anyone who is not longer younger than springtime about that.

Eventually, one son-in-law's parents moved, and the trip to our Moorestown home was a bit too much. Then another set fled to the warmth of Florida. So there were significantly fewer guests.

As time inexorably marched on, so did our guest list march off. Share and share alike, we were reminded. Less need to stretch the old oak table to capacity. The assorted old bridge chairs remained in the basement.

Then came the Passover when, for various complicated reasons, all of our daughters and their extended families were missing from our table.

That year, we had some friends with us, but I hid in the kitchen after the holiday meal and cried. How juvenile! How selfish! But there I was  absence was the huge presence in the room.

I know that nothing stays the same in families. How can it? I know that adult children need to seek their own destinies and become parts of other families.

It happens in families all around us at Thanksgiving and Christmas, Hanukkah and Easter. An equal-opportunity phenomenon, this sharing of adult kids.

My sensible husband does better than I do. But sometimes as the population at the Passover table shrinks, I catch a glimpse of him looking a bit wistful and forlorn. Like me, he's wondering where the years went  and wishes that his daughters were just a hug away.

This year, the seder is at daughter Nancy's in Montclair. She has the biggest house and the biggest table now.

And next month, we move into a smaller space. Much smaller. In all likelihood, too small even for our oak table without extra leaves.

Sometimes, when no one is looking, I want to stamp my feet and say, "No fair!" like a first-grader might.

And I'm reminded of the simple honesty of our grandson Jonah, now a college freshman. Once, when I picked him up at the nursery school door, he came out visibly upset.

With hazel eyes blazing, he looked up at me and said: "I HATE to share my crayons. I'd rather keep them all."

Out of the mouths of babes.

Sally Friedman writes from Moorestown. pinegander@aol.com
Off the Map Travel offers a night of viewing the Northern Lights outside Kilpisjarvi, Finland, in a glamping cabin that measures 2.5 meters wide, 4.5 meters long, and 2 meters high (about 8 feet by 15 feet by 6.5 feet), with a bed for two, a table, a dry toilet, a heater with thermostat, and a stove. Read more

Anyone traveling to the far northeastern corner of Finland to the village of Kilpisjarvi, deep in the Arctic Circle, only a few miles away from either Sweden or Norway and 750 miles from Helsinki, now has the option of watching the Northern Lights in a glass-roofed cabin on skis that can be towed onto the tundra for unimpeded viewing.

Off the Map Travel offers three glamping cabins that measure 2.5 meters wide, 4.5 meters long, and 2 meters high (about 8 feet by 15 feet by 6.5 feet), with a bed for two, a table, a dry toilet, a heater with thermostat, and a stove.

A sample itinerary listed on its website (www.offthemap.travel) of four days and three nights  two nights in a log chalet (with hot tub, of course) and one night in the mobile cabin, with all meals  is about $2,200 per person, double occupancy, and includes transportation from the airport in Troms, Norway.
Royal Caribbean Cruises is planning a $200 million upgrade to its CoCoCay private island in the Bahamas, to include, among many other amenities, two massive water towers and 13 water slides. Read more

For three decades, Royal Caribbean Cruises has been offering passengers on its Bahamas and Eastern Caribbean voyages what it hopes is your idea of a perfect day  white sands, blue seas, and complimentary beach barbecues on a relatively quiet private island.

Now, that tiny Bahamas island, CocoCay is getting a $200 million renovation.

The new version of CocoCay will comprise 125 acres of "thrill and chill" attractions  including what will be one of the Caribbean's largest water parks. Dubbed "Perfect Day at CocoCay," it represents an effort to court millennials and new-to-cruise families.

Included in the revamp: two massive water towers and 13 water slides, including Daredevil's Peak, which, at 135 feet above the sand, will become the tallest slide in North America when it's completed next spring.

A 1,600-foot zip line will deposit guests into the water, while a helium balloon ride will take passengers 450 feet into the air. All this takes place above the largest wave pool in the Caribbean. A freshwater pool, also the Caribbean's largest, has in-water loungers, a swim-up bar, and poolside cabanas.

If all that sounds like the opposite of your perfect day, there are opportunities to escape the crowds that can be generated by two ships docking simultaneously at CocoCay (with as many as 10,000 travelers). At the island's new VIP zone, Coco Beach Club, there will be Maldives-style over-water cabanas with private water slides that plunge into the sea. Each will be staffed by a cabin attendant.

Separate charges will apply for water slides, wave pool, balloon rides, zip line, and the Coco Beach Club. Bar tabs may also increase, thanks to the new swim-up bars. (The food, however, will remain free.)

"We talked to a lot of customers and guests about what really would be their perfect day in the Caribbean on vacation," said Michael Bayley, president and chief executive officer of Royal Caribbean, which conducted extensive market research. "We're intending on delivering literally the perfect day for you"  while acknowledging that this can mean radically different things to different people.

CocoCay will ultimately be a completely manufactured experience. While 160 Bahamians will be hired to staff the island, integrating Bahamian traditions and meaningful interactions with locals simply aren't part of the equation.

Royal Caribbean sees the Perfect Day experience as having legs elsewhere in the Caribbean and beyond, including Asia and Australia. The company is already teasing announcements of new "purchase and lease deals" for other private islands that will form a "Perfect Day Island Collection." Each will have experiences that relate to the location, at least in the sense that CocoCay reflects a Caribbean day at the beach, Bayley says.

Not everyone is so enthusiastic. In Nassau, the capital, 55 miles from CocoCay, environmental activist Heather Carey said on Facebook: "Just another example of how the cruise ship industry does little to benefit us locally, and instead continues to make the visitor experience more insular to the cruise ship islands."

Among her main concerns was that the private island will funnel visitation and excursion revenues away from Nassau  which relies heavily on the cruise tourism economy.

The initiative is part of a broader trend: Disney Cruise Line, Carnival Corp. & Plc's Holland America Line, and Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd. also own private islands in the Bahamas, and MSC Cruises plans to open its own Bahamian island next year. Across the board, passengers tend to rate these private retreats as some of their favorite ports of call.

The changes at CocoCay will occur in stages: The water park will open in spring 2019, and the rest of the project should be complete about six months later.

Royal Caribbean, at the announcement last month, also said it would spend $900 million over the next four years to modernize 10 ships with such features as virtual reality bungee jumping, laser tag, and tiki bars, including two ships that will focus on three- and four-day cruises around the Bahamas.
Question: I saw a story on your consumer-advocacy site about someone who lost her luggage on British Airways and was told to file a police report instead of a lost luggage claim. The same thing happened to me. I was hoping you could help me.

Here's my story: I had visited India to attend a wedding, and on my return trip, British Airways lost my checked bag. I filed a claim with the airline. British Airways rejected my claim, saying that the bag might have been stolen and that I need to file a police report. The bag and its belongings were worth $4,927.

Can you help me recover my luggage or persuade British Airways to pay my claim?

Answer: British Airways shouldn't have lost your bag. But if it did, the airline should have done the right thing. Instead, it told you to call the bobbies.

What is wrong with this picture? Well, everything.

British Airways should accept responsibility for your bag from the time you drop it off at the ticket counter to the time you pick it up. Period. The fact that this isn't the first report of British Airways pushing people off on the police is a cause for concern. If it's happened to two of my readers, chances are it's happened to more. It may even be part of a new policy, which would be really unfortunate.

British Airways' site is a little vague on its responsibility (britishairways.com/en-us/information/legal/notice-of-liability). According to the carrier, it is "liable for destruction, loss or damage to baggage up to 1,131 SDRs (about $1,500). In the case of checked baggage, it is liable even if not at fault, unless the baggage was defective."

Yet it doesn't really specify when that duty of care begins  or ends. This language is not unique to British Airways. It's from the Montreal Convention, an international treaty that governs matters such as lost luggage.

Perhaps British Airways is testing a novel interpretation of this duty of care. If it can successfully argue that its responsibility ends after the plane lands but before the luggage is delivered to the carousel  in other words, by suggesting that thieves operating in the airport may have been responsible for the disappearance of your bag  then imagine how much money it could save in lost-luggage claims.

An appeal to one of the airlines' customer-service executives might have persuaded British Airways to reconsider this position. I list the names, numbers and email addresses of the British Airways executives on my consumer-advocacy site: elliott.org/company-contacts/british-airways.

I asked British Airways if it had adopted a new interpretation of the Montreal Convention, if not a new luggage policy. A representative assured me that it had done neither. I also asked the airline to review your case. It did, and it offered you $500 to settle your claim, which you accepted.

Christopher Elliott is the ombudsman for National Geographic Traveler magazine and the author of "How to Be the World's Smartest Traveler." You can read more travel tips on his blog, elliott.org, or email him at chris@elliott.org.
Longtime abc27 anchor Flora Posteraro (left), seen her joking with former colleage Ali Lanyon, claims she was forced out of the station after complaining internally about misconduct by station manager Robert Bee. Read more

For more than 20 years, Flora Posteraro has been a local news icon in Harrisburg, where she anchored both the noon and 5 p.m. newscasts for abc27.

But this month, the former 6ABC reporter and weekend anchor suddenly announced on Facebook that she was no longer employed at the station.

At the time, Posteraro didn't explain the reason behind her departure beyond making it clear the move wasn't her decision. But she offered hints, referring to the current environment as "a powerful moment for women to demand equality, fairness, and professionalism in the workplace."

Despite support from viewers and some former colleagues, Posteraro has mostly stayed silent since leaving the station. But a complaint she filed with the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission reveals Posteraro's version of the events that led to her abrupt departure.

According to Posteraro, she was reassigned to the evening and weekend shift after having signed an internal complaint about her boss, station manager Robert Bee. Among the allegations in the complaint against Bee, who started at abc27 in January 2017 after Nexstar Media Group Inc. acquired the station, was that he referred to one of the network's female anchors as a "fat pig" and used profanity to describe another.

The complaint further alleges that Bee gave preferential treatment to male anchors while installing a restrictive dress code for female anchors, including banning sleeveless dresses due to the "flabby arms" of the women. He is also alleged to have referred to female anchors who defied his dress code as "streetwalkers."

Posteraro was dismissed on March 12, 10 days before she filed the Human Relations Commission complaint.

Bee, who previously worked at television stations in Wilkes-Barre, Pittsburgh, and Lancaster, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Nexstar did not return a call for comment.

The company "communicated to me that they will deny all the allegations and vigorously defend the suit," said Charles Curley, Posteraro's attorney.

On Thursday, Capital BlueCross announced it was pulling all advertising from the station following Posteraro's ouster.

"We decided to suspend advertising with abc27 until the public complaint against the station's general manager is appropriately resolved," Capital BlueCross said in a statement. "We take the matter of due process seriously and have not made any judgments as to fault in this matter. But we also take allegations of sexual harassment or retaliation in the workplace very seriously, leading us to this decision."

According to Curley, the next step is for an investigator assigned by the state to look into Posteraro's claims and determine whether there was probable cause to sue. Once a ruling has been made, Posteraro could take Bee and Nexstar to court.

On March 23, a day after Posteraro filed her complaint, corporate representatives from Nexstar held a staff meeting at the station. According to a source who was present at the meeting, the executives denied that Posteraro had been fired and told employees the company planned to defend the "false accusations" against Bee.

FTV Live's Scott Jones was the first to report on the meeting.

Employees were also reminded they were not authorized to speak to the press. Several current employees of the station took to social media after Posteraro's ouster to support her.

Bee isn't the only Nexstar manager to be accused of discriminatory behavior. Craig Marrs, the vice president and general manager at Fox 44 and ABC 22 in Burlington, Vt., is being sued by Catherine Iraheta, a former employee who claims that rampant sexual harassment forced her to leave her job as a sales executive.

Nexstar, which is headquartered in Irving, Texas, owns 170 television stations across the country, most major network affiliates. All told, Nexstar reaches 100 television markets. In addition to Harrisburg, the company owns Pennsylvania stations in Altoona, Erie and Wilkes-Barre.

Here is Posteraro's full complaint:
The Mazzoni Center, Philadelphia's largest health-care provider for LGBT people  which forced out its longtime chief executive last year amid accusations that she fostered a hostile environment for people of color, and ignored sexual misconduct claims against a former medical director  is defending its hiring as a new CEO Lydia Gonzalez Sciarrino, a straight Latina woman.

"We are disappointed members of the community  our community  chose to judge Lydia without first meeting her, based on their perceptions of her race, gender identity and orientation, and not her qualifications," the center's board of directors, which hired Sciarrino, said in a statement Thursday evening.

The Black and Brown Workers Cooperative, an activist group that called attention to racism at the center last year, has called for Sciarrino to resign, using the hashtag #ByeLydia. They say she's not local and has no experience in HIV and transgender-related health.

"Why is a straight Latinx woman running an LGBTQ-specific health center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania? She's from Florida. Why?" asked Abdul-Aliy Muhammad, co-founder of the collective and a former HIV prevention counselor at the center, in a Facebook video this week.

Sciarrino comes from Whole Family Health Center in South Florida, where she was CEO.

"Whole Family  was an HIV/AIDS clinic before it became the larger organization," Mazzoni's board of directors said in its statement. "The majority of clinic patients were LGBTQ."

A spokesman for Mazzoni, citing a confidentiality agreement with a firm that helped find candidates for the center's CEO position, said Friday it could not discuss how many people were interviewed, including how many identified as LGBT or people of color.

In a statement last Friday announcing her hiring, Sciarrino said: "The advances made in the areas of race and gender equality are under fire and the LGBTQ community continues to face insurmountable challenges in every aspect of life. Mazzoni Center is sitting on the cusp of a new movement and I want to be a part of it."

Mazzoni leaders have been scrambling to restore order since former CEO Nurit Shein and several board members left the agency last year. That shake-up followed allegations of sexual misconduct by former medical director Robert Winn, who also resigned.

Black employees at the center had also reported having been singled out for disciplinary action and having faced retaliation for filing complaints. As a result, Philadelphia's Commission on Human Relations ordered the center to undergo anti-discrimination training. Another LGBT-related organization, Philadelphia FIGHT, and most bars in the city's Gayborhood also had to undergo the training.

>> Read more: Tackling racism in the Gayborhood: City updates its progress
Police are trying to locate Kayla Sparano, a 12-year-old Collingswood girl who may be traveling with a Florida man. Read more

Police late Friday night said they had located a 12-year-old Collingswood girl who had been reported missing and may have been traveling with a 21-year-old Florida man.

>> READ MORE: Florida man charged with kidnapping Collingswood 12-year-old

Collingswood police posted the news shortly after 11 p.m. on its Twitter account.

"Update Kayla Sparano has been located safe in Philadelphia. Special thanks to the Philadelphia Airport Police, the Philadelphia Police Department, Collingswood Police Department and the Camden County Prosecutors Office Special Victims Unit. Incident is still under investigation," the Collingswood police tweeted at 11:04 p.m.

Kayla Sparano was last seen Thursday by a friend at Collingswood High School. She also was seen around 2 p.m. Thursday at the Collingswood PATCO station. Police said she may have be accompanying Liam Heim, of Gulfport, Fla., who has been in contact with the juvenile.

There was no immediate word on Heim's whereabouts.

Anyone with helpful information can call the Collingswood Police Department at 856-854-1900 or Detective Latesha Jones of the Camden County Prosecutor's Office at 609-422-7219.

Information may also be emailed to ccpotips@ccprosecutor.org.
Bell Floor Co., at 1050 North 2nd Street. Northern Liberties wants to build up the commercial strip which has a high vacancy rate with the creation of a business improvement district. Read more

Ask longtime residents of Northern Liberties how the neighborhood has changed and they respond with "rapidly," "all of a sudden," and "a Philadelphia Eagle lives down the street from me now."

But ask businesses in the area and the reaction is decidedly more muted: "It's all food," "there's no retail," and "we have a lot of empty storefronts."

The historic, onetime manufacturing hub is now not only one of the city's hippest neighborhoods  it's also one of the wealthiest. How rich? As of the most recent census data, Northern Liberties (and a section of Fishtown) had the third-highest median income in the city, $78,775 per household, behind only Southwest Center City ($79,821) and Chestnut Hill ($80,127).

But as old factory buildings get rehabbed into luxury condos, commercial strips have languished. Now the neighborhood wants to create a business improvement district (BID) in hopes of making Northern Liberties more of a destination for visitors.

"Without a BID, Northern Liberties is not going to become what it could be," said Matt Ruben, head of the Northern Liberties Neighbors Association. "It's going to stagnate."

The improvement district, which would be the city's 14th, would require commercial property owners  not homeowners  to pay assessments. These funds would pay for streetlamps, sidewalk sweeping, and litter pickup within designated business district boundaries. There would be money for marketing and grants to aid local businesses.

The nonprofit's first-year budget would be $374,000 and calls for one full-time employee, who would connect landlords with interested tenants. That's a significant issue in Northern Liberties, where 20 percent of the commercially zoned buildings lie vacant. The citywide average is 4 percent.

Harvey Bell's father opened a floor-covering store in 1936 on a Northern Liberties block when that stretch of Second Street was known as "Linoleum Row," for all its flooring companies. Bell Floor Covering nearly closed in the 1970s when the neighborhood declined, but loyal customers kept it afloat. Now they've evolved with the neighborhood, from moving low-priced linoleum to hardwood floors and higher-end tile designs.

"There's a lot of residential development happening, but there is a lack of care for the basic necessities that a neighborhood should have," Bell, 74, said. "And it has dissuaded a lot of commercial operators from joining us." He thinks a district that paid for even modest improvements  sidewalk repairs and better trash pickup  could lure more businesses.

"We can take money and invest it in ourselves as opposed to waiting for the city to fix the things we're complaining about," Bell said. "Right now businesses are taking a look and saying, 'I bet I can go somewhere better.' "

Northern Liberties' population has boomed in the last 20 years. More than 8,000 people live in the neighborhood by the Delaware River, north of Center City. In 2000, it had just 3,500 residents. That number will rise, given plans for as many as 2,000 more apartments or condos.

Ira Upin and his wife, Jen, paid $6,000 for a sprawling brick warehouse when they moved there in 1977. Ira used the downstairs as an artist's studio and upstairs the couple raised their children. Jen would walk around the neighborhood, peeking in windows to see if any other families were around.

Now their section of North American Street is home to a pair of seven-story condo buildings. The Eagles safety Malcolm Jenkins lives nearby, as do linebacker Mychal Kendricks and several Comcast executives. Last month a home a block away sold for $1.6 million.

"A lot of the families who moved in when we did have remained, but today anyone of an average income can't move here anymore," said Upin, who serves on the neighbor association's zoning committee. "The diversity starts to be lost. It's mostly people with money, a lot of money."

Shimi Zakin built one of the first million-dollar homes in the neighborhood in 2012. The developer and architect, who lives in Northern Liberties, has plans for 110 luxury apartments and condos in three buildings on North Second and North Third Streets.

Zoning for most of the condos going up will allow commercial spaces on the ground floors. That, Zakin said, is where the improvement district could help by surveying neighbors on what businesses they want, and ensuring those spaces fill.

But there's a reason commercial development has lagged, with the exception of restaurants and bars to feed the neighborhood. Northern Liberties is a bedroom community where most people live but don't work. During the week, businesses get very little foot traffic. Add high rents and that can make a risky place to set up shop.

Erin Waxman, co-owner of Art Star, has kept her handmade arts and clothing store alive for 14 years through a combination of walk-ins, online sales, and exhibitions she holds in the store.

"I think a lot of businesses in Northern Liberties are probably like that," Waxman said. "Just relying on walk-in retail is difficult, but if we get more, that could change. Right now each block only has one or two retail spots, tops. We need much more if we're going to be a place that attracts daytime shoppers."

Renee Gillinger has heard those concerns before. For seven years she headed the business improvement district on East Passyunk Avenue and is now the lead consultant on Northern Liberties' proposal. She said such a district could help tenants and landlords come to fair terms on rent and in some cases get grants for improvements. "When you build a relationship with people, you can get so much more done," Gillinger said. "We want to help old businesses stay and vet new business to make sure they're a good fit for the corridor."

She points to nearby Fishtown and Kensington, where the New Kensington Community Development Corporation has helped support and pull in new businesses along Frankford Avenue. "There's just no one doing that kind of work here right now," Gillinger said.

Lois O'Neill, who owns a sewing repair shop, Keystone Sewing Machine Co. Inc., on Second Street, said she's in a minority of those who don't like the idea.

"My problem is they keep on putting on more and more taxes," said O'Neill, who opened the shop 25 years ago. "City taxes, use and occupancy taxes. I have an accountant who does nothing but figure out how much we owe in taxes. This would mean a couple thousand dollars more a year. I would like to see improvement, but I feel the city should pay for it."
A technician prepares Philadelphia voting machines in 2016 that have no paper trail to detect fraud and are vulnerable to hacking, experts say. Read more

One Pennsylvania county official claims his voting machines are unhackable. Another admits hers are old, but the county can't afford to buy new ones. A third says he's waiting for the state to tell him which new voting machines are safest for Pennsylvania voters.

At a time of national concern over foreign interference in U.S. elections, 57 percent of the voters in Pennsylvania, including Philadelphia's, are casting their ballots on machines that are outdated, hackable, and don't provide a paper record of each vote to safeguard against fraud.

After Texas, Pennsylvania has the most registered voters using machines with no paper trail, according to Verified Voting, a nonpartisan group promoting trustworthy voting systems.

In February, Gov. Wolf and Secretary of State Robert Torres told counties that any voting machines they buy must be able to produce a paper record for each individual vote. The state didn't include any funding to help counties purchase new equipment and hasn't yet certified any models.

Most of Pennsylvania's counties  50 out of 67  use machines with no paper trail. (New Jersey, Delaware, and three Southern states rely entirely on the problematic machines.)

Earlier this year, reporters from the graduate journalism program at Stanford University contacted those 50 counties about their plans to upgrade their voting equipment. Of the 41 that responded, only Montgomery County intends to replace its machines in time for the 2018 midterm election. Officials from just three counties  Beaver, Blair, and Greene  said they expect to have appropriate machines by the 2020 presidential election.

Officials in the other counties gave a host of reasons for keeping the vulnerable systems:

*The new technology could cost millions of dollars at a time of stretched budgets.

*The state's directive was an unfunded mandate they didn't have to follow.

*The current machines aren't at peril because they're not connected to the internet.

*No recounts had been challenged, so why change?

During the 2016 presidential election, Pennsylvania had failures in at least 30 machines in Lebanon, Cumberland, Perry, and Butler Counties.

Dauphin County, which includes Harrisburg, relies on machines installed in 1985, about two decades past the manufacturer's suggested replacement date. Jerry Feaser, county director of elections and voter registration, said of his vintage machines:

"I could put the machine in the Red Square in Moscow and I would bet that no Russian would be able to hack it unless they came at it with an ax." Plus, he said, it could cost $5 million for new ones.

His comfort isn't shared by Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen, who warned the Senate Intelligence Committee in late March:

"We recognize that the 2018 midterm and future elections are clearly potential targets for Russian hacking attempts." She endorsed paper ballots. "If there's no way to audit the election, that's absolutely a national security issue."

In late March, Congress approved spending $380 million to boost the security of election systems across the country, with Pennsylvania projected to get $13.5 million.

But it's not enough to cover the costs of replacing the machines, said Marian Schneider, former adviser to Wolf on election policy and deputy secretary at the Pennsylvania Department of State. As president of Verified Voting, she urges all states to switch to safer machines by 2020.

She added that Pennsylvania could do three things that would speed replacement of problematic machines: Allocate state funding; decertify the vulnerable machines, which would force counties to replace equipment; and identify acceptable replacement machines.

The secretary of state will announce a handful of certified models in the coming weeks and months, said agency spokeswoman Wanda Murren.

If the state really wants to be ambitious, it could make the changeover by the 2018 midterms, Schneider said.

"I'm not saying it's going to be easy," Schneider said. "But I think we should try."

Surprising turnout

On a rainy Saturday morning in February, officials in Montgomery County invited voters to give feedback about new voting equipment the county was considering buying  all of it featured some form of paper audit for each vote cast. The county expected 100 or fewer attendees, but 300 citizens showed up, including Ayodele Fitzgerald, a resident of Abington.

"As elections become more and more contentious we need bipartisan oversight but also the ability to investigate if necessary," Fitzgerald said. A paper backup "gives a sense of security that may help people feel their vote, their voice, is being heard."

Using paper ballots isn't as low-tech as it might sound. With optical scan systems, voters fill in bubbles indicating their choices and then the ballot is scanned and tabulated electronically. Officials retain the paper ballots in case they are needed.

In a swing state like Pennsylvania, where the last presidential election was decided by fewer than 50,000 votes, safeguarding Montgomery County's 577,000 voters can make a difference. Officials said they don't yet know how much the new machines will cost.

At least 13 counties have come up with estimates for the eventual cost of new voting machines: Cameron County, with slightly more than 3,200 registered voters, estimated the tab to be at least $100,000; Dauphin and Berks Counties, with more than 450,000 voters combined, said new systems would cost $3 million to $5 million.

Of those three, Cameron County is waiting for state certification of machines it can install. Dauphin and Berks have no plans to replace their machines.

Philadelphia and Allegheny Counties say they are looking at replacing voting equipment but have no timeline or estimates.

Northampton County would have to "come up with several million dollars" to replace its paperless voting machines, said David Zawick, the custodian for the county's voting machines, which were purchased in 2008.

"There's always complaints every year as far as the paper trail," Zawick said. The county doesn't intend to replace all of its old machines until mandated to do so.

Replacing all 700 of Lehigh County's machines would take $3.5 million, said Timothy Benyo, the chief clerk of voter registration and elections. He suggested that most counties would have to raise local taxes to cover the cost.

"There's not a surplus of money anywhere to fund the machines," Benyo said.

Securing funding to help counties replace machines is a priority this year for the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania, a lobbying group that represents Pennsylvania counties, said executive director Douglas Hill.

"Almost all of our counties are ready to move forward, [but] some of them have it as a higher priority," Hill said. "I think that for many of them it really is a matter of affordability."

Hacked in minutes

In 2007, Princeton University computer-science professor Andrew Appel obtained access to a 1996 Sequoia AVC Advantage, a type of voting machine in use today in Montgomery and Northampton Counties. He wanted to see if he could hack it.

It took him only minutes. With no paper record, the AVC Advantage and others like it have little chance to show failures, deliberate or otherwise.

The AVC Advantage is a "direct-recording electronic" voting machine, or DRE. Widely used, DREs feature push-buttons, touchscreens, or dials to record a voter's vote directly into computer memory.

In 2006, many Pennsylvania counties installed scores of the DRE machines using federal funding from the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). The law was enacted after the 2000 presidential recount in which incompletely punched holes in paper ballots  "hanging chads"  caused confusion in Florida over which candidate was selected by the voter and forced the disqualification of thousands of votes.

In Dauphin County, its DRE machines "predated the internet," election official Feaser said. "The only outlet is the electrical switch. The machines are self-contained computers."

Feaser said the county tests each machine before use and audits each machine by printing a randomly generated representation of each individual vote cast.

Even so, DRE machines are computer systems, at risk to system crashes or hacking, the Brennan Center for Justice reported in March.

Computers used to program election machines may have previously been connected to a network and can pose a risk, said Daniel Lopresti, a computer science professor at Lehigh University.

"Even if it isn't connected to the internet now, it might have been connected to the internet two years ago," Lopresti said. "And even if it was never connected to the internet, it's still running software that has a lot flaws in it because it's running a standard operating system."

From 2006 through 2008, Lopresti and several students acquired four types of DRE machines, took one apart and analyzed all of the machines' electronic circuitry to see how they could be manipulated. The answer: easily.

"That would just probably take about 15 minutes to take the back off the machine and insert new firmware chips and close it back up again," Lopresti said.

Election officials in Philadelphia and other counties could take a lesson from their counterparts at the 13 Pennsylvania counties already using voting machines with a paper trail.

Montour County, for instance, switched in 2006 from using punch-card ballots to optical scan machines.

Director of Elections Holly Brandon said it cost the county of about 20,000 residents less than $200,000 to make the switch to optical scanners.

It was an easy decision, she said.

"It kind of seemed like a no-brainer to us," Brandon said. "We were concerned about integrity in the process. And with the optical scan, I can actually hold the entire election in my hand  because we're using paper."

This story was written by Katlyn Alo and Jackie Botts and reported by Alo, Botts, Amy Cruz, Christina Egerstrom, Marnette Federis, Dylan Freedman, Charlotte Kosche, Noemie Levy, Michael McLaughlin, Anthony Miller, Jacob Nierenberg, Marta Oliver-Craviotto, Isha Salian, and Simone Stolzoff.
Bill Cosby arrives for a pretrial hearing in his sexual assault case, Friday, March 30, 2018, at the Montgomery County Courthouse in Norristown, Pa. Read more

The judge presiding over Bill Cosby's sexual assault retrial signaled Friday that he might ban Cosby's prior testimony about obtaining Quaaludes, prescription sedatives, and using them to seduce women.

The entertainer's decade-old statements, made under oath, about his use of Quaaludes  remarks that when unsealed in 2015 led to the reopening of the criminal investigation against Cosby  were read to jurors at the first trial, which ended with a mistrial in June.

But as he wrapped up two days of pretrial hearings, Montgomery County Judge Steven T. O'Neill said he may exclude them this time, in part because he is now permitting testimony from five women who say they were victims of sexual misconduct by Cosby before Andrea Constand, the alleged victim in the case. At the first trial, prosecutors were allowed to call just one other accuser.

"The evidence has changed in this case, pure and simple," O'Neill told the lawyers during the hearing in Norristown on Friday. "And I don't know what it is going to look like."

O'Neill said he would not rule on the admissibility of the Quaalude testimony until the trial is underway.

The Cosby deposition that included statements about Quaaludes were read again to jurors as deliberations dragged on. Cosby gave the testimony as part of a civil lawsuit Constand filed against him in 2005. The case was settled out of court in 2006, and Cosby's lawyers are now seeking to include that settlement agreement as evidence at trial. O'Neill said he would rule on that issue before the trial begins.

After presiding over pretrial hearings, O'Neill retired to a private conference room with lawyers in the case Friday afternoon to discuss what is all but certain to be a contentious process. Court staff, meanwhile, began setting up a courtroom for the jury panel.

On Monday morning, 187 Montgomery County residents will be asked to appear in court as potential jurors, O'Neill said. Of that number, 120 will be questioned and could become part of the panel tasked with determining Cosby's fate. Opening arguments are scheduled to begin the following Monday, after 12 jurors and six alternates have been selected and sequestered.

Lawyers on both sides have expressed concern about tainting the jury pool; one of Cosby's lawyers on Friday went so far as to ask the judge to have a flier removed from the courthouse cafeteria that read, "Believe and support survivors."

Jury selection for the first trial lasted three days. Jurors were chosen in Allegheny County and transported across the state by bus. Cosby's lawyers did not seek to have an out-of-town jury for the retrial.

The selection process grew heated at times during the first trial, perhaps most notably when Cosby's lawyers accused prosecutors of seeking to exclude black jurors. The publicity of the first trial hangs over the retrial.

Cosby's lawyers have also said their client  who denies nonconsensual sexual contact with any women  faces an "increasingly hostile" environment and jury pool in the wake of the #MeToo movement.

The entertainer's new legal team has proposed additional questions to ask potential jurors. Though their questions were not made public, District Attorney Kevin R. Steele said in court Friday that he intended to object to some of them.

Also Friday, O'Neill heard arguments about a variety of other pretrial motions. In one, Cosby's lawyers are seeking to exclude testimony from 14 witnesses who prosecutors said could corroborate the stories of the five additional accusers. O'Neill indicated he would not rule on those issues until the trial is underway.

But before the trial begins, he said, he will issue rulings on whether to permit evidence about the 2006 out-of-court settlement in Constand's lawsuit against Cosby, as well as testimony from a Temple employee whom defense lawyers claim Constand told of a plan to fabricate a sexual-assault claim.
We want the community to know its for them, says a doctor running the health clinic that will open in April along the 7400 block of Frankford Avenue in Holmesburg. Read more

A free health clinic whose Islamic affiliation stoked fear and skepticism among some Northeast Philadelphia residents when it was announced last year is set to open in April, and organizers say they hope residents will embrace them.

"The community has been more positive. I know initially it had a little bit of hesitation," said Ammar Shahid, a doctor with ICNA Relief, the nonprofit launching the Holmesburg clinic. It will be open to anyone who can't afford basic health care and will offer free blood-pressure screenings, dental work, and counseling.

The clinic has emphasized that it will be available regardless of religion or race. A similar clinic run out of a mosque in Cherry Hill stressed that as well when it opened last year.

The openings come as reports of discrimination against Muslims have surged nationwide.

For Northeast Philly, one of the city's most rapidly diversifying areas, the clinic's affiliation with Islam has been a test of tolerance.

One woman, upon reading a story about the clinic posted last year on a Mayfair Facebook page (Mayfair borders Holmesburg), said Muslims should "go back to wherever you came from." Some people on another neighborhood Facebook page reacted with fear  "God help us!"  and suggested the clinic was a sign of the area going downhill.

Councilman Bobby Henon's office received a handful of angry phone calls about the clinic last year. One person asked why Muslims need doctors, while another called the clinic a "terrorist group," he said. Henon has said the callers "don't reflect the neighborhood," most of which has supported the clinic, despite some vocal opponents.

"The neighborhood knows what the right thing is, and they're going to do the right thing," Henon said. The Northeast also has a growing immigrant population, he said, "but affordable health-care options are not there. So this is a much-needed service."

>> Read the story: GOP asks if you're concerned about Sharia law. We clear up the misconceptions.

ICNA Relief operates several free health clinics across the nation. This will be the organization's first in Philadelphia.

A soft opening occurred at the end of February. The grand opening will be April 7 (details are on the flier below). Henon said he plans to attend.

The clinic will then be open every other Saturday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
George Badey, a Delaware County lawyer and longtime spokesman for the Mummers, is running for Congress in Pennsylvanias Fifth District. Read more

Do gaffes exist in politics anymore? Can an imprudent comment still sink a campaign?

Or did grab-them-by-the-you-know-what President Trump vaporize the very concept of gaffes?

Clout has been asking itself that question since a candidates' forum Wednesday among Democrats running in Pennsylvania's Fifth Congressional District.

A moderator at the event, hosted by the liberal activist group Indivisible Main Line South, asked the men in the race a pointed question: Why, in the Year of the Woman, should voters consider a male candidate?

George Badey, a Delaware County lawyer and longtime spokesman for the Mummers, gave an answer that raised some eyebrows.

First, he noted that all of Pennsylvania's members of Congress are men. "It's a legitimate problem," he said, in a reply that, like the rest of the debate, was posted on Facebook. Then he said he's the only candidate who can stop a certain Philadelphian from winning the primary.

Richard Lazer is an ally of the city's politically powerful building trades, and some Delaware County Democrats are worried he'll smash their dream of putting a Delco resident in Congress. The vast majority of the Fifth District is in Delaware County, but it includes a sliver of South Philly, where Lazer lives. Political observers think Lazer may be able to win if he captures the majority of the city's ballots at the same time that the suburban vote is fractured among the race's numerous Delco candidates.

Badey said he can prevent that from happening by taking South Philly votes from Lazer: "I grew up there. I was a Democratic committee person there. I know South Philly."

Then Badey crammed his foot into his mouth: "I'm the only one that can win. So your choice, it's a false choice. I don't think a woman can win this primary. It's either going to be the guy from South Philly or me."

Badey said afterward that he meant he is the only candidate  male or female  who can beat Lazer. "Not because of my gender," he said, "but because of my background and history." If the Philadelphia political machine threw its weight behind a woman candidate from Philly, she would get lots of city votes too, he said.

He added that there are "several really strong, excellent female candidates running," and that he is a "strong advocate for women's issues."

Not everyone was satisfied with Badey's explanation.

"I just don't think that's an acceptable thing to say as a candidate," said David Landau, leader of Delaware County's Democratic Party. "There are a number of extraordinary women running for office in the Fifth Congressional District, and any one of them will win if they're a nominee in the fall."

Shelly Chauncey, a former CIA officer, is one of the six Democratic women running against Badey and Lazer.

"I see the argument that he's trying to make. I just don't buy it," she said. "I plan on showing George and any other man that a woman can do this."

Badey is one of the six primary candidates (out of 14) recommended Monday for the seat by the Delaware County Democratic Party. The county's committee people will vote on an endorsement next month.

Did GOP leaders try to recruit a write-in candidate to run against the sole Republican in Pa.s Sixth District?

When Pennsylvania Republican Ryan Costello announced in the eleventh hour that he would not run for reelection to Congress, the GOP's chances of keeping his seat took a nosedive.

Not that they were very rosy to begin with. Costello was facing what many political insiders believed was among the toughest campaigns in the country for a Republican incumbent. Hillary Clinton won his Chester County-based district, which became even bluer when the state Supreme Court imposed a new congressional district map last month. Even the head honcho of the National Republican Congressional Committee said Costello's Democratic challenger, Chrissy Houlahan, is formidable.

Costello's last-minute decision to drop out of the race irked some Republicans, particularly since he made the decision after the deadline passed for other candidates to submit paperwork to get on the ballot. Only one Republican will be on the ticket this spring: attorney Greg McCauley Sr.

Rumor is that Chester County GOP leaders discussed this week the possibility of recruiting another Republican to run a write-in campaign: businesswoman and lifelong Coatesville resident Amber Little-Turner.

Chester County and Pennsylvania GOP Chairman Val DiGiorgio said he did not enlist Little-Turner to throw her hat in the ring: "I'm just making sure the committee understands all their options."

Little-Turner said she is not thinking about running for Congress "as of right now." She is campaigning for the state House.

Alan Novak, a former state GOP chairman who lives in Chester County, said Little-Turner was one of the names "in the mix" when local leaders were previously considering what to do in the event that Costello retired, though he wasn't aware of any push for a write-in campaign.

She has the inside track on the party nomination for state representative, so turning away from that for a long-shot write-in campaign could be difficult, Novak said. "She's got a tough decision to make."

Little-Turner has been involved in the county party and was recommended for the 74th District state seat by its outgoing representative, Harry Lewis, Novak said.

"I'm a big fan of hers," he said. But he and former U.S. Rep. Jim Gerlach, also of Chester County, said write-in campaigns are difficult to pull off.

"It's rarely done," Gerlach said. "There'd have to be a coordinated effort to do that."

McCauley did not respond to a request for comment.

Charlie Gerow, a GOP political consultant talking to McCauley about potentially joining his team, said, "My understanding is they just simply didn't have any substantive support to challenge [McCauley] with a write-in campaign."

He added that McCauley "has to do in six weeks what many candidates would do in six months, so he has to hit the ground running."

All while fending off attempts within his own party to sabotage him, apparently.

Staff writers Jonathan Tamari and William Bender contributed to this column.
The assertion by the FBI agent was stark: As part of a scheme to conceal illegal campaign contributions, Marjorie Margolies in 2014 falsely reported a nearly $25,000 donation funneled through her personal bank account as a loan to her congressional campaign.

"The investigation has uncovered evidence which indicates that Margolies" and others engaged in a conspiracy "to violate federal campaign finance laws," special agent William Bezak wrote in an affidavit last year to obtain a search warrant for a political consultant's home.

Prosecutors outlined the scheme in a superseding indictment filed March 20 charging the consultant, Ken Smukler, of Villanova, with conspiracy, facilitating illegal campaign contributions, causing false statements, and obstruction.

Margolies, a former congresswoman who lives in Wynnewood, wasn't charged. She also isn't named in the indictment, but she matches its description of "Candidate C." The charging document says Smukler "instructed" her to make the bank transfer and "caused" the campaign to falsely report it as a loan.

Reached by phone Friday, Margolies declined to comment.

Some of the charges Smukler faces were announced in October and stem from his campaign work for another congressional candidate, U.S. Rep. Bob Brady. Like Margolies, Brady was identified as a participant in a scheme to skirt campaign-finance laws. But he, too, was never charged.

Experts said Margolies, 75, was almost certainly once a target of the criminal probe, given the language used in the application for the search warrant.

Why prosecutors decided to charge Smukler but not his former clients isn't known. Spokesmen for the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office in Philadelphia declined to comment.

That the two high-profile politicians were entangled in the cases but appear to have escaped prosecution has not gone unnoticed. Smukler himself has brought it up in his defense. That Brady wasn't charged is proof of a "vindictive prosecution," his lawyers wrote in a February motion to dismiss the indictment.

Adav Noti, a former federal prosecutor and lawyer with the Federal Election Commission, said candidates facing investigations into their campaigns typically argue that they stay at arm's length from their staff: "I don't micromanage that stuff. My campaign people do what they do and I trust them to do it."

"Hard to make that [argument] when you're receiving and cutting personal checks," said Noti, now senior director of trial litigation at the Campaign Legal Center in Washington.

Smukler previously pleaded not guilty though he hasn't been arraigned on the new charges.

But for his part, the 57-year-old communications specialist appears to be enjoying the fight, accusing the government of targeting him in retaliation for opinion articles he wrote that were critical of prosecutors for their work in other investigations. Smukler, publisher of the independent weekly newspaper Liberty City Press, also lashed out at the U.S. attorney in Harrisburg for failing to punish prosecutors there who had received salacious emails in a scandal known as Porngate.

His lawyers said in court papers that the FBI's surveillance of Smukler in the summer of 2016  years after the alleged criminal activities and coinciding with the publication of his articles  showed the government was likely "motivated by animus."

(Prosecutors called this theory "absurd" and said they hadn't even read Smukler's articles.)

The conspiracy began with a February 2012 meeting in which Brady agreed to use campaign funds to pay the campaign debts of a rival, Jimmie Moore, the indictment says. In exchange, Moore would drop out of the Democratic primary. The men agreed that the payment would be concealed in part as the purchase of a poll, according to prosecutors.

The indictment, which refers to Brady as "Candidate A," characterizes that meeting as central to the criminal conspiracy.

In the following months, Smukler and fellow Brady aide Donald "D.A." Jones routed $90,000 in campaign funds through their companies to Moore's campaign coffers, well in excess of the $2,000 maximum contribution one candidate could make to another in the 2012 primary under federal election law. They conspired to conceal it from the FEC by causing false campaign reports, the indictment says.

Jones, Moore, and Moore's campaign manager, Carolyn Cavaness, have pleaded guilty and are cooperating with investigators.

Brady, the longtime chairman of the Philadelphia Democratic City Committee, has denied wrongdoing. He announced earlier this year he wouldn't run for reelection in November, saying he wanted to spend more time with his family after serving 20 years in Congress.

Authorities did try to build a case against him. A search-warrant affidavit signed by an FBI agent describes Brady as an active participant in the conspiracy. A judge authorized the warrant to search Brady's personal email account in November, after Smukler and Jones were first indicted, court records show.

But there's a higher bar to prosecuting a sitting member of Congress, which typically requires authorization from top Justice Department brass in Washington. Prosecutors likely wanted Smukler's cooperation to go after Brady, said Mark Lee, a white-collar criminal defense attorney at Blank Rome LLP and a former federal prosecutor.

Prosecutors might have had a stronger case on Margolies, given her personal involvement in one of the transactions they say involved an illegal contribution. But without a cooperating witness, the case is circumstantial and could be tough to win in court, legal observers say.

"Smukler isn't the big fish, but they can't get a bigger fish unless they flip him," said Lee, who represented former U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah (D., Pa.) during his corruption trial.

Lee pointed to the failed prosecution of Sen. Bob Menendez (D., N.J.), who prevailed in a document-driven bribery trial that lacked damning government witnesses.

Margolies, formerly Margolies-Mezvinsky, was elected to the House in 1992 and served one term. Her son Marc Mezvinsky married Chelsea Clinton in 2010. Margolies is a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Social Policy & Practice.

The indictment says that when the Margolies campaign ran out of money in the May 2014 primary, Smukler caused the campaign to use contributions designated for the general election, in violation of FEC regulations.

Smukler is accused of raising money from his brother to pay for advertising during the primary. After Margolies lost, Smukler raised more money from a friend to help the campaign repay donors who had earmarked contributions for the general election, prosecutors say. Those illegal campaign contributions totaled about $225,000, according to the indictment.

There's no evidence that Smukler's brother or friend knew that Smukler would use the money for the campaign.

The crime, according to prosecutors, occurred when Smukler broke contribution limits, lied about it by causing the campaign to file false reports, and obstructed an FEC investigation into the campaign. The FEC had dismissed a complaint against the campaign.

Smukler caused the campaign to report these contributions falsely as "refunds" of money it had set aside for his companies in advance of the general election, prosecutors say.

The FEC discovered that Smukler's companies had "refunded" the campaign more than it had initially paid the consultant in the first place. To fix this problem, the government says, Smukler wrote a $25,000 check from his company's PNC Bank account to Margolies and "instructed" her to transfer the bulk of that from her personal checking account at TD Bank to the campaign.

The campaign reported the money as a personal loan from Margolies, but it was in fact an illegal contribution from Smukler's company, prosecutors say.

Noti, of the Campaign Legal Center, said that "usually with these sorts of shifting-money-around schemes, it's usually because the treasurer has been embezzling."

"I can't think of one where the candidate was allegedly personally involved," he said.

Margolies may be cooperating  if so, the government would have to put her name on a list of potential witnesses, Lee said.

And Smukler may yet "have a conversion on the way to the courthouse, so to speak," Lee said. "That's always possible."

Staff writer Jeremy Roebuck contributed to this article.
This print depicts the riots when an influx of immigrants, mostly Irish Catholics, clashed with nativist Protestant groups over Philadelphia school officials decision to permit the use of both the King James and the Latin Vulgate version of the bible in the public school system. Read more

In late November 1867, events in Manchester, England, reverberated around the world, sparking public displays of Irish nationalism from Dublin to Philadelphia. Three Irish nationalists  William Allen, Michael Larkin, and Michael O'Brien  were executed by English authorities for the killing of police officer Charles Brett. The men belonged to a secret society known as the Irish Republican Brotherhood (also known as the Fenians), which had carried out a raid on a police caravan carrying two of the organization's leaders. In the process of freeing the prisoners, the band killed Brett.

Allen described his pending execution in a passionate letter to family members on Nov. 22: "I am dying an honorable death. I am dying for Ireland, dying for the land that gave me my birth, dying for the island of Saints, and dying for liberty." The following day, authorities publicly hanged Allen, along with Larkin and O'Brien, before thousands of onlookers.The three became known as the Manchester Martyrs.

Philadelphia's Fenians planned one of the largest North American demonstrations in response to the executions. Irish activists built coffins symbolizing Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien and marched through the city, arriving at Broad and Chestnut Streets to listen to the fiery oration of prominent lawyer John O'Byrne, who called for armed retribution.

The Fenians represented a grave threat to British rule of Ireland, in part because of their formidable international network. Irish Americans were particularly open to Fenian politics. In the 1840s, the Great Famine  during which one million Irish died from starvation and disease even while the British exported food from Ireland  had a profound impact on Irish opinion regarding British occupation, and also led to mass emigration to the United States. In U.S. cities, Irish immigrants confronted bigotry and nativist violence, which further contributed to Irish nationalist sentiment.

A group of Irish Americans organized the Fenian Brotherhood in 1858 as part of the revolutionary Fenian movement, providing financial and political support to their counterparts overseas.The Fenians were particularly active in Philadelphia, which had an Irish population of approximately 72,000 by the 1850s. (The city had also witnessed its share of nativist violence, evident in the anti-Irish riot of 1844, which shaped the politics of the city's Irish residents.)

Philadelphia's prominence in the Fenian movement during the 1850s and 1860s stemmed in part from the efforts of printer James Gibbons, who helped found the group's national body and helped bring the Fenians' first national convention to the city in 1863. In Philadelphia and in cities across the United States, Fenians contributed to recruitment efforts of former Union soldiers to travel back overseas and participate in the armed struggle against the British. They also supported nonviolent activities, funding protests and contributing to relief funds abroad.

The Brotherhood's revolutionary zeal and predilection for armed violence caused debate within the Catholic Church, which played a central role in the religious and social lives of Irish Americans. Many leading Catholics in Philadelphia, including Archbishop James Wood, denounced the Fenians. On St. Patrick's Day in 1868, the Philadelphia-based Catholic Herald declared that "nothing but trouble and misery has been created both in America and Ireland" by the Fenian movement. Some rank-and-file priests, however, sympathized with the nationalist cause, including Father Patrick Moriarty, pastor of St. Augustine's Church at Fourth and Vine Streets.

Defying Archbishop Wood's directive for clergy to forsake Fenian politics, Moriarty delivered a rousing speech at an organizing event at the Academy of Music in 1864 during which he called Britain a "tyrant, robber, [and] murderer" and justified armed resistance to the British government. Gibbons printed the speech at his Chestnut Street press.

Due to internecine conflicts, the Fenian Brotherhood lost influence throughout the 1870s and disbanded in 1880. Clan na Gael  another Irish American group  emerged from the collapse of the Fenian Brotherhood, and existed into the 20th century. It became the largest organizational funder of the Easter Uprising in 1916 and the Irish War for Independence.

Patrick Glennon is a communications officer at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. pglennon@hsp.org
The Pennsylvania House of Representatives: Where reform goes to die. Read more

What exclusive and expensive club in Pennsylvania has just 253 members, an annual budget of $325 million, and a staff of more than 2,220?

Here's a clue: This bloated bunch spends your money but routinely resists transparency.

If you guessed the Pennsylvania General Assembly, you get the same prize as the rest of us  an oversized, underperforming government with a penchant for partisan bickering and a long history of rebuffing reform  until legislators hear a clamor from angry voters.

For example, there was the surprise, middle-of-the-night pay raises legislators voted to give themselves in 2005, just before adjourning for a long summer break. They had to rescind that a few months later and grudgingly agreed to some procedural reforms after angry constituents voted a few legislators out of a job.

Then came the "Bonusgate" criminal investigation, netting 12 Democrats and eight Republicans in 2008 and 2009 for using taxpayer resources to run political campaigns, putting a stop to that shady tradition.

It shouldn't take scandal and political peril to secure commonsense reforms.

It might take an election, though: Most General Assembly seats are up for election this year  all 203 in the House and 25 of the 50 in the Senate. This is when voters have leverage.

That's why, for the next few months, we will be presenting The Agenda, examining and advocating for commonsense changes that will benefit citizens. For example:

Reduce the size of the state House

We already called on the House and Senate last month to stay the course on legislation to reduce the size of the House from 203 seats to 151. Pennsylvania now has the largest full-time legislature in the country.

The legislation is awaiting action in the Senate. The bill's sponsor estimates it would save taxpayers $15 million per year.

Require receipts for per diem payments

Latin for "per day," per diem better translates in Harrisburg to easy cash with no questions.

Members of the House and Senate are paid $87,180 per year. Those who live outside a 50-mile radius of Harrisburg also collect tax-free payments of up to $183 per day for travel expenses, with no requirement to produce receipts.

In the 2015-16 legislative session, taxpayers shelled out $2.4 million for per diems, according to a PennLive.com analysis.

Plenty of politicians cashing those checks ran on promises to run government like a business. We don't know any business that would pay travel expenses without seeing receipts.

No pay for blown budget deadlines

Businesses also operate on deadlines. But deadlines mean nothing to legislators. The General Assembly is required to finalize with the governor the state budget each year by June 30. But partisan bickering has sent the last three budgets well into overtime.

Legislators and the governor should have their pay cut off at June 30 until they sign a budget agreement. Gov. Wolf last month made no-budget/no-pay part of an ethics plan he proposed.

Uncertainty in the state budget process trickles down to municipal and school budget planning, causing fiscal uncertainty.

Ban gifts, detail outside income, and limit campaign contributions

Our government would function better if we knew exactly whom our legislators are representing. Just 10 states allow gifts to legislators. Pennsylvania is one of them.

Legislators must list gifts on their annual statements of financial interests, forms that don't require enough detail. They must also list secondary sources of income from side jobs. These forms should require exact-dollar detail for side jobs.

And when it comes to campaign donations, Pennsylvania must go even further. It is long past time for campaign-finance limits on the money individuals and political action committees donate to candidates or organizations supporting them.

Need an example of how bent this system is? Some state legislators protect natural gas drillers from taxes and regulations. And the drillers spent at least $46.6 million on lobbying and $14.5 million on political donations in Pennsylvania from 2007 to 2017.

Whom were the state representatives and senators representing in all that?

That's the question voters should be asking this year.

And we'll be re-asking these questions frequently over the coming months, and monitoring progress.

If there are other reforms you think we should add to this list, let us know by emailing agenda@phillynews.com.
African swine fever (ASF) looms large over the EU pig farming sector as a clear and present danger.

So far it has affected the fringes of the EU pig industry but is now too close for comfort to its heartland. Denmarks plans for a 44-mile fence along its German border to keep wild boar out highlight the current nervousness.

The official risk status of incursion to the UK remains low. But, as the NPA points out, this does not take into account the devastation that would be wreaked if the virus did reach these shores. What makes the situation particularly worthy of attention is that, as with foot-and-mouth in 2001 and classical swine fever (CSF) in 2000, it only takes a single incident to bring the industry to a standstill. And that is likely to be down to human error.

I invite, once again, all member states free from African swine fever, to scale up their preventive measures in line with the EU strategy, EU health & food safety commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis told EU ministers in February, stressing, once again, the crucial importance of the human factor.

What is ASF?

ASF is a highly contagious viral disease of pigs, warthogs, European wild boar and American wild pigs.

The clinical signs include:

Fever

Loss of appetite

Lack of energy

Lack of energy Sudden death with few signs beforehand

Vomiting and diarrhoea

Vomiting and diarrhoea Red or dark skin on the ears and snout

Swollen red eyes

Laboured breathing and coughing

Abortions, stillbirths and weak litters

Weakness.

There are several different strains. Severe strains are generally fatal, with mortality rates as high as 100%. It doesnt affect humans and there is no vaccine.

The virus can be spread by:

Pigs eating infectious meat or meat products

Contact with infected pigs or wild boar or their faeces or body fluids

Contact with infected pigs or wild boar or their faeces or body fluids Contact with anything contaminated with the virus, including people and their clothing and vehicles and other equipment.

The history of ASF

ASF was first documented in Kenya in 1921, but was retrospectively identified as having affected pigs as far back as 1906, according to an article in Veterinary Pathology.

It remained restricted to Africa until it was discovered in Portugal in 1957, causing nearly 100% mortality. The virus made its way into various other countries beyond Africa in the 1970s and 80s, but was eradicated from all of them, except Sardinia, where it remains.

Then in 2007, the virus arrived in Georgia, probably via the port of Poti in ship waste containing contaminated pork products disposed of in local dumps. Molecular analysis linked the strain to Madagascar.

This was the furthest north it had ever been discovered  and from that moment its spread in wild boar, backyard pigs and commercial farms across Europe has been relentless.

Within two months, 52 of Georgias 65 districts had been affected and more than 30,000 pigs had died. Neighbouring Armenia, Azerbaijan, and then Russia, in November 2007, were soon affected. Ukraine recorded its first outbreak in 2012, followed by Belarus (2013), and  marking its entry into the EU  Lithuania, Poland and Latvia (all 2014) and Estonia (2015). Moldova followed in 2016.

Russian perspective

An estimated two million pigs have been killed in Russia alone as a result of ASF. Sergey Yushin, chairman of Russias National Meat Association, told Pig World the disease had been allowed to spread out of control because the Russian Federal Government and the veterinary authorities had initially underestimated the problem.

Wild animals have been the main cause of ASFs spread. Yet, even recently, plans to cull wild boar in Russia were thwarted by animal welfare campaigners, he said.

The virus is proving very costly. Large commercial pig farms, up to 6,000 sows, can be forced to spend $1 million on unprecedented and extremely expensive measures to keep the disease out, for example on high fences and disinfection posts, Mr Yushin said.

They are also buying up pig populations from backyard farmers, with a promise they will never breed pigs again, while workers are being paid more to remain on farms for at least two weeks as a bioscurity measure. Farmers are also paying hunters to kill wild boar.

This is on top of the blow it is dealing to Russias export plans. For years, ASF was largely contained in its European regions, prompting big pork companies to invest further east with a view to securing regionalised exports to the likes of China and Japan. That plan appears to have been thwarted after the virus made its way thousands of miles east into Siberia in 2017.

Last year, it also gained a foothold in Belgorod Oblast  Russias densest pig area  in the west of the country, hitting large commercial farms owned by the countrys biggest pig producer Miratorg. A few weeks ago, 10,000 pigs were culled in Kaliningrad Oblast, another part of the Russian Federation.

Rapid EU spread in 2017

In June ASF made a big geographic leap into the Czech Republic for the first time, where it was found in wild boar. Soon after, Romanias first case was discovered in backyard pigs near an infected part of Ukraine.

In the autumn Poland recorded cases in wild boar near Warsaw, 100km further west than previously. This is of particular concern, according to the Animal Plant and Health Agency (APHA), because of the high density of domestic pig production in north-west Poland and the proximity to the pig industry in neighbouring Germany and Denmark.

In February, Polish farm leaders said ASF had already ruined thousands of farms. From January to March 2018 local vets registered 511 infected wild boars, compared with 741 in all of 2017, including 388 cases reported in the last quarter. This data suggests the flow of infected wild boar coming to Poland is growing fast and it is causing new outbreaks among domestic pigs.

Taken together with the Russian situation and new outbreaks in Lithuania, this signifies a spread in geographic distribution of ASF, a possible drop in biosecurity awareness and therefore a further increase in the weight of infection in East Europe, APHA said.

Generally, these jumps have arisen because wild boar have been illegally fed contaminated meat, it added. Polish farmers were blamed, for example, for grazing cattle in areas where wild boar had access.

Worryingly, there is evidence that some wild boar have tested positive for antibodies, suggesting they survive initial infection and may be acting as a reservoir host.

Much of what has happened tallies with modelling by Russian veterinary body Rosselkhoznadzor, which estimated that ASF was travelling at an average speed of 20km per month, east and west. This would see western Europe becoming vulnerable in the not-too-distant future.

EU containment measures

The EU has laid down prevention and control measures that regionalise areas where ASF is suspected or confirmed on holdings or in wild boar. Measures in place to control ASF within the EU include:

Restricted ASF areas preventing movement of pigs and pork products outside infected areas. This includes border checks.

Wild boar culling and safe disposal of dead wild boar carcases, which are tested for ASF. Feeding of wild boar is banned in some places.

Enhanced wild boar surveillance for ASF in EU countries bordering Ukraine, Russia and Belarus.

Moves to prevent spill-over of infection into domestic pigs.

Increased awareness of pig keepers of the signs of ASF and more rapid detection and removal of infected pigs.

The Commission is providing financial and other support in some areas, including managing wild boar populations, awareness campaigns, surveillance, veterinary advice and research in diagnostics and the development of a vaccine. It has also provided funding for small farmers in infected areas of Poland on the condition they stay out of pig production.

Affected member states often adopt additional measures. Current evidence indicates that the Czech Republic has contained its outbreak in wild boar using a combination of strict measures, including fencing off a 40sq.km high risk zone, intense wild boar culling and testing within and outside this zone, and heightened biosecurity.

Denmarks plans for a fence and wild boar culling hit the headlines last week. Although no cases of ASF have yet been detected in Denmark, the countrys Minister for Food and the Environment Esben Lunde Larsen said the country did not want to take any risks.

If African swine fever virus broke out in Denmark, all exports to third countries would immediately stop, Mr Larsen said. Denmarks pig exports amount to 33 billion Danish krone (3.85bn) per year. An outbreak of the disease in Denmark would shut down the entire industry.

Poland plans to build a 1,200-km fence, costing around 48 million, on its border with Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Lithuania to protect it against wild boar. It wants EU funding but the Commission is reportedly not keen, fearing it will do little to stem the flow of wild boar across the border. In Russia, wild boar have been know to enter farms by burrowing under fences.

Not out of control

In his February address to EU Ministers, Mr Andriukaitis refuted suggestions ASF was out of control, pointing out that, thanks to the EUs regionalised and regularly updated ASF programme, it has advanced less than few hundred kilometres in four years. This compares favourably with the spread witnessed in countries to the east, he added.

Calling for an interdisciplinary collaborative approach to combatting and preventing ASF in the EU, he stressed the seriousness that the Commission attaches to the threat of ASF.

The recent public pronouncements and actions seen in countries like Denmark and Poland in recent weeks suggest that, despite his assurances, concern over the virus is growing across much of the continent.

Additional reporting by Vladislav Vorotnikov

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Gunnar Malm, formerly of Albin and Pine Bluffs, announced his intent to run for Laramie County Commission last week at an event in Cheyenne.

Malm currently works as a real estate agent/owner with Caldwell Banker.

A Central High School graduate, Malm participated in speech and debate where he found success, according to a press release from the campaign.

In the press release, Malm says he will effectively serve Laramie County residence due to his business experience and experience on various community advisory boards.

Those include serving as public policy chair for the Wyoming Association of Realtors.

Malm also currently serves as the vice chairperson of the Laramie County Planning Commission.

The 2018 election is in August.
The 1950's. Turbulent. Fearful. Korean War. Senator Joseph McCarthy and the Communist threat - Communists have infiltrated the government and there's a Communist under every rug and behind every door. Russia and China have acquired the atomic bomb. More fear. Something has to be done!

Ta Ta Da. Ta Ta Da. Ta Ta Da. Hollywood to the rescue! Enter the era of the "Big Bug" science fiction movies. Dr. Raymond Cloyd, Professor and Extension Specialist, Horticultural Entomology/Plant Protection, from Kansas State University gave a lighthearted and fun talk at the Wyoming Bee College Saturday evening on the History of the "Big Bug" Science Fiction Movies from Hollywood. How and why did these movies come about? Dr. Cloyd has explored these questions and used his discoveries as the basis of his presentation.

Five movies from 1952 to 1957 were used as examples. All the movies took advantage of our natural fear of insects to create the horror. "Them" was released in 1953 (with James Arness and Leonard Nimoy, no less) and was the biggest movie of the year in 1954. The premise of the movie was that atomic testing had created giant ants that threatened to take over the planet. Now we know where Mr. Spock learned handle those strange creatures in outer space. The "Beginning of the End" features Peter Graves fighting giant grasshoppers that were  wanna guess?  created by atomic testing and threatened to destroy Chicago. He captures one of the grasshoppers and creates a pheromone that allows him to act as the Pied Piper and lead the grasshoppers to Lake Michigan to drown, saving Chicago. An interesting factoid about this movie. Burt Gordon, the producer, brought 200 male grasshoppers from Kansas to California to film. When they were finally allowed into the state, he found that they had been eating each other and only 20 were left to use in the movie. So, the dead grasshoppers were stuck to the model buildings as if they were in the process of destroying the city.

Clint Eastwood began his career in "Taratula". Again, atomic testing is the culprit and has created a giant tarantula to terrorize the city. In the end, the tarantula is lured to the outskirts of the city in an effort to set it up for destruction. Enter Clint Eastwood, riding in on his mechanical horse, an Air Force fighter jet armed with missiles. No surprise as he obliterates the tarantula and saves the city.

The Black Scorpion" deviated from the atomic destruction premise. In this movie, a volcanic eruption releases giant scorpions from beneath the earth. The movie is set in Mexico City, but in one scene (still in Mexico City), the Empire State Building is shown in the background. The interesting twist in this movie is that the "Granddaddy of 'Em All" scorpion, the big boy, ate the smaller scorpions. In the end, Mexico City  1, scorpions  0.

"Earth vs. Spider" ended the era with what was probably the worst of the "Big Bug" movies. Once again, the giant spider is the product of the atomic era. This spider is killed with DDT (remember that stuff) early in the movie and is taken to the local high school gym to display. Oops! The spider really isn't dead. It comes back to life and escapes to terrorize the city. But, the spider keeps changing size. Is it more than one spider? No. Just cheesy production. The spider changes size three times during the movie. In the end the spider is electrocuted and the city is saved.

These movies really weren't about making high-quality, award-winning movies, though. They were a release for the American public. True, they used our natural fear of insects and of atomic weapons, but they meant far more. The bugs represented the Communist menace. The fact that we always came through and destroyed the bugs was meant to show the American people that we would prevail. That our military was the mightiest in the world and obviously superior to the Russians because we were the ones who killed the bugs and saved the day. In the end, the Communists would lose the Cold War and we would prevail. And guess what? We did. And the "Big Bug" movies gave us a lot of screams and laughs along the way.
As the star of the 20th Century Fox thriller Red Sparrow (opening March 2), actress Jennifer Lawrence plays Dominika Egorova, a former Bolshoi ballerina who becomes a dangerous and cunning spy. Though ballet is relegated only to the first 10 minutes of the film, Lawrence needed to dance six minutes of Firebird choreography by Justin Peck alongside dancer-cum-actor Sergei Polunin. In the fall of 2016, on Pecks recommendation, director Francis Lawrence invited American Ballet Theatre principal Isabella Boylston to be Lawrences dance double and asked Kurt Froman, a former New York City Ballet dancer whose many credits include training Natalie Portman for the 2010 film Black Swan, to turn the notoriously clumsy Lawrence into a convincing ballerina in just four months.

They started in the studio. Peck and Froman spent a week building material on Boylston and fellow ABT principal James Whiteside, who acted as a stand-in for Polunin. We were rehearsing our normal ABT season as well, so we would just rehearse after hours, whenever we could squeeze it in, says Boylston. During this time, Froman also started working with Lawrence in New York. In my first rehearsal with Jen I had to explain alignment, says Froman. I told her that for the whole movie, whether she was dancing or not, dancers have a certain way of holding their shoulders back and their ribs closed and kind of a freedom of movement. Froman spent much of the next four months in Los Angeles, training Lawrence in her garage, where shed set up ballet barres and mirrors.

Kurt Froman leading an onstage warmup before a performance of the 2nd National Tour of Billy Elliot, the Musical. Photo by Kyle Froman, Courtesy Kurt Froman.

In January of 2017, the groups converged in Budapest to film in the Hungarian State Opera House. Dancers from the Hungarian National Ballet were cast as the corps. We were really lucky because they were very classical in their style, and believably Russian-looking, says Froman. Accustomed to working with Whiteside, Boylston had to quickly adjust to partnering with Polunin. We actually didnt even really know each other, but I was impressed by how quickly we were able to make it feel natural, she says.

Though the cameras would focus mostly on Lawrences upper body, she had to perform the same choreography as Boylston and follow the same footprint onstage in order for the films editors to graft the footage together. Otherwise they would be lit differently. If Isabella was in plie before a turn, Jen would have to be in plie, and if Isabella was on pointe, Jen would have to be on demi-pointe. Those highs and lows had to completely correspond, explains Froman. On most film sets Froman has worked on, about 50 extras may sit in the audience, and a full crowd is later edited in. But in Budapest, they filmed with probably a thousand people, says Froman. Jen was performing to a full audience. I cant even begin to imagine what that must feel like when youre used to the privacy of the camera.

For Boylston, dancing for the film came with different challenges. It was so grueling. We shot really long days and we would shoot the same sequence over and over, she says. They want to get as many takes and angles as possible so they can edit it together. Another main change from the ballet world was the budget. They made three of the same exact tutu so that during the shoot, once the first tutu was deemed rumpled, I moved to another one. From costumes to trainers, an enormous amount of time, effort and funds went into filming just six minutes of choreography for the screena far cry from the dance world, where a full-length ballet can be mounted within weeks.
A suspect is at large after an officer with the Hopkinsville (KY) Police Department was shot and killed Thursday evening

According to the Hopkinsville Police Department, at 5:10 p.m., the off-duty officer was driving in his personal vehicle when a man "pretending to be a police officer" pulled over the real officer's car.

Police haven't specified what transpired, other than "shortly after that," the off-duty officer was fatally shot, the department said in a news release Thursday night.

Authorities are searching for the suspect, 35-year-old James Kennith Decoursey, who remains at large, the Leaf-Chronicle reports.
The Fort Drum staff sergeant accused of killing New York State Police Trooper Joel R. Davis last summer during a domestic incident is headed to trial in the fall.

On Wednesday, Justin D. Walters appeared in Jefferson County Court for an evidence suppression hearing in which a trooper testified that Walters told him he was just trying to scare him when he allegedly shot Trooper Davis in the driveway of the defendants County Route 46 home last July.

Walters also is accused of shooting his wife, Nichole V., 27, multiple times, killing her at their Theresa home on July 9 and injuring her friend, Rebecca Finkle. Trooper Davis was responding to a domestic incident. Finkle has since recovered from her injuries, the Watertown DailyTimes reports.


Attorney General Jeff Sessions has announced the Second Annual Attorney General's Award for Distinguished Service in Policing.

The Attorney General's Award recognizes individual state, local or tribal sworn, rank- and-file police officers and deputies for exceptional efforts in community policing. The awarded officer(s) or deputy(ies) will have demonstrated active engagement with the community in one of three areas: criminal investigations, field operations or innovations in policing.

"President Trump and I support law enforcement at all levels  and we always will. We know whose side we are on. We are on the side of law-and-order. This means we are on the side of the approximately 85 percent of all law enforcement officers that serve at the state, local, and tribal level," said Attorney General Sessions. "These men and women serve and protect us from violent crime, dangerous opioids, and criminal gangs. The Department of Justice is committed to supporting the law enforcement community that keeps this great nation safe and makes it even safer. Today we honor our law enforcement officers by announcing the second annual Attorney General's Award for Distinguished Service in Policing."

Within each category, an award will be given to law enforcement agencies serving small, medium, and large jurisdictions:

Small: Agencies serving populations of fewer than 50,000

Medium: Agencies serving populations of 50,000 to 250,000

Large: Agencies serving populations of more than 250,000

By distinguishing and rewarding these efforts, the Department strives to promote and sustain its national commitment to policing and to advance proactive policing practices that are fair and effective.

With the Attorney General's Award for Distinguished Service in Policing, the Office of the Attorney General recognizes that within and across the nation's more than 18,000 law enforcement agencies, individual officers, and deputies are working hard to keep our communities safe.

The application for nominees can be found at https://www.justice.gov/ag/policing-award.
Activists protesting the police shooting of Stephon Clark blocked downtown Sacramento streets again Thursday, taunting stoic police and angry drivers, but they ended their latest march without going near Golden 1 Center, where the Kings were playing the Indiana Pacers amid heightened security.

In addition, the Kings announced a plan early Thursday to partner with activist organizations such as Black Lives Matter to provide educational support for Clark's two young children and others.

The latest protest began around 3 p.m. outside the office of Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert. Protesters have been demanding that Schubert prosecute the officers who shot and killed Clark on March 18 in his grandparents' backyard in Meadowview. The demonstration ended about 3 1/2 hours later outside Schubert's office after winding through downtown streets, blocking some intersections and halting light-rail trains, the Sacramento Bee reports.

Stevante Clark, Stephon Clarks brother and a leader of the protests, asked protesters to stay on the sidewalk and clear the streets. Nevertheless, around 5:30 p.m., the demonstration grew more combative as dozens of protesters got in the faces of bicycle cops at the entryway of a parking garage.

One protester sat on the hood of a driver's car. The crowd repeatedly chanted at the bicycle cops and shook fists at them. The confrontation ended when the officers backed away.
James K. Decoursey was suspected in the killing of Hopkinsville, KY, police officer Phillip Meacham, who was ambushed by a gunman posing as a police officer Thursday night. He was killed in Tennessee by law enforcement officers. Photo: Kentucky State Police)

A suspect wanted in connection with the fatal shooting of a Hopkinsville, KY, police officer was shot and killed overnight in an encounter with law enforcement in Clarksville, TN, according to the Kentucky State Police.

"James K. Decoursey is no longer a threat to the public," a statement from KSP said. Decoursey, 35, was shot and died from his injuries.

KSP identified the dead officer as Phillip Meacham, 38, who has worked for the Hopkinsville Police Department since May 2017. Meacham was off duty Thursday night when he was pulled over by a man reportedly impersonating a police officer. The suspect shot and killed Officer Meacham, officials say.

Josh DeVine, spokesman for the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, said that about midnight Thursday two Montgomery County Sheriff's deputies and a U.S. Marshal encountered Decoursey after receiving a tip from a hotel regarding a man matching Decoursey's description, the Leaf-Chronicle reports.

The TBI said Decoursey appears to have ignored repeated commands and the situation escalated, resulting in the law enforcement officers firing upon Decoursey, killing him. No law enforcement officers were injured in that incident.

No motive for the killing of Officer Meacham has been divulged.

Hopkinsville Police Chief Clayton Sumner said he was unsure whether Meacham and Decoursey knew each other personally, but "considering they're both from here, it's very likely."

Decoursey was known to the police department from prior arrests, Sumner said.
Four years ago, the Obama administration promulgated a Dear Colleague letter on school discipline. It was a joint Department of Justice/Department of Education production.

The Dear Colleague Letter applies a disparate impact analysis to school discipline. Its premise is that discipline should be meted out in the same proportion to students of all races. Non-discriminatory treatment isnt enough. DOJ/DoEd wanted to see equal results.

The Obama DOJ/DoEd policy is perverse. Education remains the pathway to success for minority group members. Education is undermined when unruly students disrupt the process. Thus, black students and their parents have a strong interest in the maintenance of classroom discipline. The Dear Colleague letter is inconsistent with that interest.

Accordingly, I assumed that the Dear Colleague letter would not survive long once President Trump took office. I was wrong.

The Justice Department did its part. It supported rescinding the Dear Colleague letter.

Unfortunately, the Department of Education was unwilling to pull the trigger. I complained about this here.

Finally, a few days ago, the Education Department said it will rescind the Dear Colleague later this year. There was an important caveat, though. DoEd will rescind the letter only after drafting another rule to replace it.

What does this mean? I suspect it means that DoEd is trying to have it both ways. It wants to appease conservatives by saying, were working on it, but start a drawn out process of drafting alternatives and obtaining public comment in order to delay matters and forestall negative headlines from the liberal press.

If the Department has already decided to pull the letter, what is the point of a long public comment period? A senior DoEd official claims that just withdrawing the letter without replacing it with another letter interpreting disparate impact more narrowly would do little to convince school officials to change their discipline policies back.

But many schools dont need to be convinced. They just need to be set free.

Im told there are schools that are afraid to implement or enforce policies against tardiness because the letter specifically identifies tardiness policies as something that, even without discriminatory intent, could bring the Federal attorneys knocking on the school door.

These schools likely will jump at the chance to reverse course on tardiness (for example) the minute the Dear Colleague letter is rescinded. They are unlikely to do so while the letter still stands and DoEd is fiddling around developing a replacement policy the contents of which are not known.

The Dear Colleague Letter is an abomination. It should have been rescinded many months ago.

Conservatives should view the Department of Educations announcement as a victory. We need to keep up the pressure on DoEd until victory is achieved.
The Senate is sitting on 78 of President Trumps nominees who have already been passed out of committee but cant get a floor vote. Chuck Schumer and his loyal band of Democrats accomplish this obstruction by objecting to unanimous consent that a nomination be taken up. This triggers a motion for cloture which brings with it 30 hours of floor debate.

The Wall Street Journal, in an editorial denouncing the Democrats practice, notes that cloture votes used to be almost unheard of for nominations other than judges. At this point in the past four presidencies combined, only 15 executive-branch nominees had been confirmed after cloture. In the current Congress, Democrats have already invoked cloture on more than 50 Trump nominees.

Consequently, 43 percent of Trumps nominees await confirmation, according to Sarah Huckabee Sanders. And there have been 102 fewer confirmations so far than in even the slowest recent administration.

Why the Schumer stall? Its not because Trumps nominees are unqualified or too extreme. Last week, the Dems blocked Richard Grenell, who was nominated in September to be ambassador to Germany, a rather important post. Grenell is the longest-serving U.S. spokesman at the United Nations. Hes openly gay and has the backing of some liberal groups.

The Democrats are blocking Grenell and so many others as part of their resistance to Trump. Its that simple. As the Wall Street Journal puts it, their goal is simply to slow the formation of a GOP government. . . .

What to do? Try to change the rules requiring 30 hours of floor debate, a move that should have been made months ago. Sen. James Lankford has proposed that the debate time be shortened to eight hours. This, as the Journal notes, was the standard in 2013-14 after Republicans, then in the minority, agreed to a request by Harry Reid, then the Majority Leader.

It takes 60 votes to change this rule, so some Democratic support is needed. If its not forthcoming, and I dont expect it to be at this juncture, then the Wall Street Journal editors urge Republicans to keep the Senate operating five days a week and even weekends until the deck has been cleared of nominees.

With so many Senate Democrats up for reelection in tough states, and therefore needing to campaign back home, this measure might cause some Senate Democrats to reconsider whether its worth the price to delay further the filling out of the Trump administration.

Right now, the Democrats are paying no price for their obstruction. This has to change.
We have barely begun to plumb the depths of the scandal arising out of the 2016 presidential election. James Comey, John Brennan, Christopher Steele, Fusion GPS, the DNC, the Hillary Clinton campaign, the Perkins Coie law firm, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, unknown Russians, Andrew McCabethe list goes on and on, and it keeps getting longer.

The latest report comes from Congressional investigators, via Fox News:

Newly uncovered text messages between FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page suggest a possible coordination between high-ranking officials at the Obama White House, CIA, FBI, Justice Department and former Senate Democratic leadership in the early stages of the investigation into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, according to GOP congressional investigators on Wednesday. The investigators say the information provided to Fox News strongly suggests coordination between former President Barack Obamas Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, then-Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, and CIA Director John Brennan  which they say would contradict the Obama administrations public stance about its hand in the process.

The texts indicate that Strzok and Page knew their actions were illegal or, at a bare minimum, improper, and intended to keep them safe from FOIA requests or Congressional investigations. (To be fair, this was standard practice in the Obama administration.)

Page texted Strzok on Aug. 2, 2016, saying: Make sure you can lawfully protect what you sign. Just thinking about congress, foia, etc. You probably know better than me.

The White House was involved in the Democrats plans from an early date, contrary to Barack Obamaa public claims:

Days later, on Aug. 8, 2016, Strzok texted Page: Internal joint cyber cd intel piece for D, scenesetter for McDonough brief, Trainor [head of FBI cyber division] directed all cyber info be pulled. Id let Bill and Jim hammer it out first, though it would be best for D to have it before the Wed WH session. In the texts, D referred to FBI Director James Comey, and and McDonough referred to Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, the GOP investigators said.

So Obamas White House was in on the FBIs machinations more or less from the start.

The congressional investigators pointed out to Fox News that the CIA and FBI are supposed to be independent agencies, and noted that coordination between political actors at the White House and investigators would be inappropriate, raising questions about the level of involvement of Obama White House officials.

But thats not all. Democrats at the CIA and the FBI brought Senate Democrats into the act as well:

But weeks later, on August 25, 2016, Brennan went to Capitol Hill to brief Harry Reid  and it was unclear whether FBI officials attended the briefing, a congressional source told Fox News. Two days after the briefing, Reid penned a letter to Comey requesting an investigation into potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Harry Reid was the Senate Minority Leader at the time. Did John Brennan brief the Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, as well? Is there any acceptable reason why he would share information only with the Senate minority? In any event, Brennans meeting with Reid had the desired effect, as Reid wrote James Comeywho presumably was in on the plan all alongrequesting an FBI collusion investigation. This, I assume, was done to provide cover. Reid likely wasnt told that the requested investigation had already been going on since July.

Strocz and Page commented on the significance of Reids letter:

The following day, Aug. 30, 2016, Strzok texted Page: Here we go, sending a link to the Times report titled, Harry Reid Cites Evidence of Russian Tampering in U.S. Vote and seeks FBI inquiry. Page replied: D [Comey] said at am brief that Reid called him and told him he would be sending a letter. Congressional investigators suggested that the Reid letter possibly provided cover for the fact that the FBI and Justice Department had already begun investigating the Trump campaign in mid-July on what they called questionable ethical and legal grounds. The here we go text between Strzok and Page indicates the FBI/ DOJ knew the letter from Reid was coming, a congressional source told Fox News. This created the inference they knew it would create public calls for an investigation into Russian interference  covering them.

The Democrats planned to block Donald Trump from being elected, and to destroy his administration in the event that he won, by fabricating and distributing false claims of cooperation between the Trump campaign and the Russians. The irony is that despite the fact that the Democrats scheme has now been exposed, it is still being carried out and has been quite successful.
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Inne oferty, ktore mogy byc w kregu Twoich zainteresowan:
President Andrzej Duda has vetoed a bill allowing demotions of officers and soldiers found to have acted against Polish interests in the years 1943-1990. "I have doubts," the president said.

"Stripping the WRON management of their military ranks is not very debatable, but WRON was not only made up of those people," President Duda explained.

The bill is primarily aimed against General Wojciech Jaruzelski, Poland's late communist-era strongman and later Polish president and members of Poland's 1981-83 Military Council of National Salvation (WRON), a military junta under Jaruzelski which administered the People's Republic of Poland after the December 13, 1981 imposition of martial law in the country.

Among the demotion candidates is also Czeslaw Kiszczak, a longtime head of communist-Polish security, both of whom held the rank of general. Also considered for demotion was Miroslaw Hermaszewski, Poland's first and, to date, only astronaut, who also sat on the WRON body.

Explaining his veto on Friday, Andrzej Duda said the decision had been difficult, and stressed that he saw the purposefulness of the demotions of Jaruzelski and the remaining WRON members, as they "were people who worked to Poland's detriment, who helped build a system that oppressed us Poles." However, President Duda observed, the act had serious drawbacks and proposed "unjust solutions," which prompted him to veto it.

The president said his main objection was that the bill offered no possibility of appeal or defence means for those being demoted, and provided no form of representation for deceased defendants in demotion cases. According to Andrzej Duda these were "serious moral drawbacks."

"(In the demotion act) there is no spokesperson for deceased persons, (...) nor any mandatory defence provisions. I think this should be in the act and I hold this as a very serious moral drawback of this act," President Duda said. He added that the bill in its present form violated democratic standards.

"The solution adopted in the act, namely that the WRON members (...) have no possibility of lodging explanations or appeals (...) is something I cannot accept as president," Andrzej Duda stated.

He also informed that after Easter he planned to discuss the matter with the defence minister, the head of the Office for War Veterans and Victims of Oppression and veteran representatives. (PAP)
Chinese President Xi Jinping (L) holds a welcome ceremony for his Namibian counterpart Hage Geingob before their talks at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 29, 2018. (Xinhua/Rao Aimin)

BEIJING, March 29 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Namibian counterpart Hage Geingob agreed Thursday to establish a comprehensive strategic partnership of cooperation between the two countries.

The two heads of state reached the consensus during their talks at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

Geingob is on a state visit to China from March 28 to April 3 at the invitation of Xi.

Hailing the profound friendship between the two countries, Xi said China and Namibia stood side by side in their struggles against imperialism and colonialism in the past, and supported each other in their nation building.

As the two countries' development has entered a new stage, their development strategies and economic cooperation are mutually complementary, and they shared similar governance philosophy, Xi said.

As an "all-weather friend of Namibia," China is ready to work with the African nation to boost stable growth of ties in order to benefit the two peoples, Xi said.

He called on both sides to start from the new point of forging comprehensive strategic partnership of cooperation, to enhance high-level exchanges and cooperation among various levels, cement political mutual trust, and support each other on issues regarding their core interests and major concerns.

Xi proposed to focus on priority areas and key projects, and further tap potential to boost bilateral win-win cooperation.

"China welcomes Namibia to participate in the Belt and Road Initiative, and hopes to strengthen policy coordination and synergy of development plans, and facilitate cooperation in key areas," he said.

"China is willing to enhance cooperation with Namibia in wildlife protection," Xi said, pledging zero tolerance to illegal activities such as trafficking of wildlife products.

The Chinese president also called for enhanced coordination between the two countries in global and regional affairs, to better protect the common interests of Africa and developing countries.

Geingob congratulated Xi on his re-election as Chinese president, and congratulated China on its great achievements in economic and social development under the leadership of the Communist Party of China with Xi at the core.

He wished China success in building into a great modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious and beautiful.

Calling China the best friend of Africa, Geingob said the two countries had traditional friendship and Namibia attached great importance to its ties with China.

Namibia is willing to cooperate more with China in such areas as infrastructure, sustainable development, human resources, technology, poverty reduction, people-to-people exchanges and major cooperation projects, he said.

He stressed the fact that China never colonized Africa and has always treated small and medium-sized African countries on an equal footing.

Geingob said the African people opposed unfounded accusations against China.

Namibia supports cooperation under the framework of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, and enhanced coordination between China and Africa in international affairs, he said.

Calling China and Africa a community with shared future and interests, Xi said China-Africa relations had set an example for South-South cooperation.

"In the past when China was not well off, Chairman Mao Zedong and other Chinese leaders decided that China ought to support Africa despite its own difficulties," Xi said. "As China has well developed, it will offer more help to Africa."

"China has upheld justice and pursued shared interests and built relations with Africa based on sincerity, affinity and good faith," Xi said.

"China will combine its development with helping Africa's development, to realize win-win results and common development," Xi said, expressing the hope to strengthen African countries' capability of independent sustainable development through China-Africa cooperation.

Xi said he believed China and Africa would join hands to build a closer community with shared future and inject new impetus to China-Africa ties.

After their talks, the two heads of state jointly witnessed the signing of several bilateral cooperation documents in fields such as infrastructure, financing, inspection and quarantine.

Prior to the talks, Xi held a red-carpet welcoming ceremony for Geingob.
PUNE, India, March 30, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

The report "Agricultural Surfactants Market by Type (Non-ionic, Anionic, Cationic, Amphoteric), Application (Herbicides, Fungicides), Substrate Type (Synthetic, Bio-based), Crop Type (Cereals & Grains, Fruits & Vegetables), and Region - Global Forecast to 2022", published by MarketsandMarkets, the market was valued at USD 1.37 Billion in 2017 and is projected to reach USD 1.88 Billion by 2022, growing at a CAGR of 6.46%. Agricultural surfactants reduce the surface tension and allow the spray solution droplets to spread on the surface of the leaf. They are added to pesticides to increase their efficiency, provide greater coverage of the spray solution, and improve the retention & penetration of pesticides. One of the major factors driving the growth of the Agricultural Surfactants Market is the modern agricultural practices and technologies that involve the use of surfactants.

(Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/660509/MarketsandMarkets_Logo.jpg )

Browse 77 market data Tables and 43 Figures spread through 148 Pages and in-depth TOC on "Agricultural Surfactants Market"

https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/agricultural-surfactants-market-52947416.html

Early buyers will receive 10% customization on this report

The non-ionic segment dominated the market with the largest share in 2017.

Most agricultural surfactants are non-ionic and are used for general wetting and spreading. Non-ionic surfactants reduce the surface tension and contact angle of individual spray droplets; they are most compatible with water-soluble herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, and plant growth regulators (PGRs).

Download PDF Brochure: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/pdfdownload.asp?id=52947416

The fungicides segment is projected to grow at a higher rate during the forecast period.

The fungicides segment is projected to grow at a higher CAGR during the forecast period; this growth is attributed to the growing usage of surfactants in fungicide formulations to improve the adhesion of fungicides to the crops. In addition, combining fungicides and surfactants increases the efficacy of the existing control options by helping fungicides stick to plant surfaces.

The North American region is estimated to dominate the market in 2017 while the South American region is projected to grow at the highest rate during the forecast period.

The North American region accounted for the largest share due to the presence of players such as DowDuPont (US), Huntsman Corporation (US), Helena Chemical (US), and Stepan Company (US). Moreover, the presence of these companies in technologically advanced countries such as the US and Canada results in an increase in the adoption of surfactants in agriculture.

The South American region is projected to grow at the highest rate during the forecast period. This growth can be attributed to the increasing need for high-quality surfactants for the agricultural application.

The report Agricultural Surfactants Market includes a study of the marketing and development strategies, along with the product portfolios of leading companies. It also includes the profiles of leading companies such as DowDuPont (US), BASF (Germany), AkzoNobel (Netherlands), Evonik (Germany), and Solvay (Belgium).

Know more about the Agricultural Surfactants Market:

https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/agricultural-surfactants-market-52947416.html

About MarketsandMarkets

MarketsandMarkets provides quantified B2B research on 30,000 high growth niche opportunities/threats which will impact 70% to 80% of worldwide companies' revenues. Currently servicing 5000 customers worldwide including 80% of global Fortune 1000 companies as clients. Almost 75,000 top officers across eight industries worldwide approach MarketsandMarkets for their painpoints around revenues decisions.

Our 850 fulltime analyst and SMEs at MarketsandMarkets are tracking global high growth markets following the "Growth Engagement Model - GEM". The GEM aims at proactive collaboration with the clients to identify new opportunities, identify most important customers, write "Attack, avoid and defend" strategies, identify sources of incremental revenues for both the company and its competitors. MarketsandMarkets now coming up with 1,500 MicroQuadrants (Positioning top players across leaders, emerging companies, innovators, strategic players) annually in high growth emerging segments. MarketsandMarkets is determined to benefit more than 10,000 companies this year for their revenue planning and help them take their innovations/disruptions early to the market by providing them research ahead of the curve.

MarketsandMarkets's flagship competitive intelligence and market research platform, "RT" connects over 200,000 markets and entire value chains for deeper understanding of the unmet insights along with market sizing and forecasts of niche markets.

Contact:

Mr. Salgarkar

MarketsandMarkets INC.

630 Dundee Road

Suite 430

Northbrook, IL 60062

USA: +1-888-600-6441

Email: [email protected]



Visit Our Blog: http://www.marketsandmarketsblog.com/market-reports/agriculture-industry

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SOURCE MarketsandMarkets
According to a new research report published by MarketsandMarkets, "Automotive Glass Market by Type (Laminated, Tempered), Application (Windshield, Sidelite, Backlite, Rear Quarter Glass, Side & Rear-View Mirrors), Material (IR-PVB, Metal Coated, Tinted), ICE & EV, Aftermarket, and Region - Global Forecast to 2025" , the market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 4.80%, to reach a market size of USD 23.59 Billion by 2025, from an estimated USD 16.21 Billion in 2017. The market is driven by increasing vehicle production & sales, demand for advanced glass technologies such as smart glass device & embedded glass, and government regulations for vehicle safety.

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Browse 149 market data Tables and 67 Figures spread through 205 Pages and in-depth TOC on "Automotive Glass Market"

https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/automotive-glass-market-229009655.html

Early buyers will receive 10% customization on this report

"Suspended Particle Device (SPD) is estimated as the leading automotive smart glass technology"

With growing demand for premium passenger cars and hybrid & plug-in hybrid vehicles (HEV & PHEV), the demand for smart glass is growing. Owing to the high cost associated with smart glass, the technologies are presently limited to premium vehicles. Of the smart glass technologies, the SPD technology is expected to dominate the automotive smart glass market. SPD regulates the amount of heat and light entering in a vehicle, provides 99% protection from harmful UV radiations, controls the cabin temperature, thereby reducing the air conditioning unit's consumption, and enhances safety and other factors. The largest application of SPD technology is in passenger car sunroofs. Advancements related to sunroofs based on this technology such as MAGIC SKY CONTROL, panoramic roofs have been employed in high end luxury models by OEMs such Mercedes (Germany) and BMW (Germany).

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Laminated Glass is the fastest growing segment in the Automotive Glass Market

The laminated glass market is projected to be the fastest growing market during the forecast period. Laminated glass in the windshield has a PVB layer that protects the passengers from broken glass pieces. It also offers clear visibility. Increased safety when compared with tempered glass and possible applications of laminated glass in sidelites (in addition to windshield) are the key reasons for the growth of laminated glass market. Side glazing trend started in Europe and now other key countries such as US and Japan are also following the trend where vehicles are fitted with side laminated glazing. Laminated side glazing improves safety of the passenger and driver. It also improves the NVH (Noise, Vibration & Harshness) conditions of the vehicles.

"Asia Oceania: Largest Automotive Glass Market"

Asia Oceania is estimated to be the largest Automotive Glass Market and is also projected to grow at the highest CAGR from 2017 to 2025. This growth can be due to the rising GDP, increasing per capita income, and growing demand for passenger vehicles especially for compact SUVs in this region. Additionally, shifting consumer preference for SUV especially in countries such as India and China are driving the Automotive Glass Market. The average volume of glass required in SUV is significantly more than that in sedans and other passenger cars. Saint-Gobain has expanded its facility in Chennai, India, with an investment of USD 300 million to develop high-end glass for automotive market. Asahi Glass has also expanded its facility in Indonesia to manufacture float glass for the automotive industry. These expansions help the companies to increase their market share in the growing Automotive Glass Market in the region.

The major players in the Automotive Glass Market are Saint-Gobain (France), Asahi Glass (Japan), Fuyao Glass (China), Samvardhana Motherson (India), Webasto (Germany), Xinyi Glass (China), Nippon Sheet Glass (Japan), Gentex Corporation(US), Corning (US), and Magna International (Canada).

Know more about the Automotive Glass Market

https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/automotive-glass-market-229009655.html

About MarketsandMarkets

MarketsandMarkets provides quantified B2B research on 30,000 high growth niche opportunities/threats which will impact 70% to 80% of worldwide companies' revenues. Currently servicing 5000 customers worldwide including 80% of global Fortune 1000 companies as clients. Almost 75,000 top officers across eight industries worldwide approach MarketsandMarkets for their painpoints around revenues decisions.

Our 850 fulltime analyst and SMEs at MarketsandMarkets are tracking global high growth markets following the "Growth Engagement Model - GEM". The GEM aims at proactive collaboration with the clients to identify new opportunities, identify most important customers, write "Attack, avoid and defend" strategies, identify sources of incremental revenues for both the company and its competitors. MarketsandMarkets now coming up with 1,500 MicroQuadrants (Positioning top players across leaders, emerging companies, innovators, strategic players) annually in high growth emerging segments. MarketsandMarkets is determined to benefit more than 10,000 companies this year for their revenue planning and help them take their innovations/disruptions early to the market by providing them research ahead of the curve.

MarketsandMarkets's flagship competitive intelligence and market research platform, "RT" connects over 200,000 markets and entire value chains for deeper understanding of the unmet insights along with market sizing and forecasts of niche markets.

Contact:

Mr. Salgarkar

MarketsandMarkets INC.

630 Dundee Road

Suite 430

Northbrook, IL 60062

USA: +1-888-600-6441

Email: [email protected]

Visit Our Blog @ http://mnmblog.org/market-research/automotive-transportation

Connect with us on LinkedIn @ http://www.linkedin.com/company/marketsandmarkets



SOURCE MarketsandMarkets
TORONTO, March 29, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Bank of Montreal (TSX:BMO)(NYSE:BMO) today announced that it has entered into an automatic securities purchase plan ("ASPP") with its broker, BMO Nesbitt Burns Inc., in order to facilitate repurchases of BMO common shares ("Common Shares") under its previously announced normal course issuer bid ("NCIB").

The Bank previously announced that it had received approvals from the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) and the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions Canada (OSFI) to repurchase for cancellation up to 22 million common shares under its NCIB, which commenced on May 1, 2017, and expires on April 30, 2018. Under the NCIB, the Bank may repurchase shares through the facilities of the TSX and alternative Canadian trading systems or by such other means as may be permitted by a securities regulatory authority, including private agreements or share repurchase programs under exemption orders issued by securities regulatory authorities. All repurchased shares will be cancelled. The timing and amount of purchases under the NCIB are subject to regulatory approvals and to management discretion based on factors such as market conditions.

Under the Bank's ASPP, the Bank's broker may purchase Common Shares at times when the Bank ordinarily would not be active in the market due to insider trading rules and its own internal trading blackout periods. Purchases will be made by the Bank's broker based upon parameters set by the Bank prior to the commencement of any such blackout period and in accordance with the terms of the automatic purchase plan. The ASPP has been approved by the TSX.

For further information: For Media Relations Enquiries: Paul Gammal, Toronto, [email protected], (416) 867-3996; For Investor Relations Enquiries: Jill Homenuk, Toronto, [email protected], (416) 867-4770; Christine Viau, Toronto, [email protected], (416) 867-6956, Internet: www.bmo.com, Twitter: @BMOmedia

Related Links

http://www.bmo.com



SOURCE BMO Financial Group
SHENZHEN, China, March 30, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The 26th China (Shenzhen) International Gift and Home Product Fair, hosted by Reed Huabo Exhibitions, is scheduled to be held from April 25 to 28, 2018, at Shenzhen Convention & Exhibition Center. As Asia's premier and most anticipated gift & home sourcing event with more than 2,500 exhibitors and 5,000 booths expected, the show will showcase top gifts & premiums, consumer products and electronic appliances from around China and beyond.

The highlights of the fair:

NEW Hall 3: Mobile Electronics



According to the latest report on CES 2018, the top tech trends for 2018 will be about the coming of 5G, artificial intelligence, companion robots, smart cities, mixed reality, sports innovation, digital therapeutics, and other areas projected to play a big role in the global economy for years to come. Meanwhile, Mobile Electronics and wearable devices are playing an important role in the gift industry recently. Complying with this situation, there will be a brand new hall 3: Mobile Electronics, satisfying the increasing demand of intelligent products. Moreover, 80% of the exhibitors can undertake OEM, ODM or customized orders.



According to the latest report on CES 2018, the top tech trends for 2018 will be about the coming of 5G, artificial intelligence, companion robots, smart cities, mixed reality, sports innovation, digital therapeutics, and other areas projected to play a big role in the global economy for years to come. Meanwhile, Mobile Electronics and wearable devices are playing an important role in the gift industry recently. Complying with this situation, there will be a brand new hall 3: Mobile Electronics, satisfying the increasing demand of intelligent products. Moreover, 80% of the exhibitors can undertake OEM, ODM or customized orders. Industry associations and manufacturing bases bring competitive products



The exhibition will be supported by over 10 manufacturing bases and industry associations, including Shenzhen electronic products, Zhongshan household appliances, Gaoyang Towel, Yiwu Commodities, Henan Porcelain, Nantong home textiles, etc. These associations and manufacturing bases are very professional to their specialty with strong manufacturing ability and experience.



The exhibition will be supported by over 10 manufacturing bases and industry associations, including electronic products, Zhongshan household appliances, Gaoyang Towel, Yiwu Commodities, Henan Porcelain, Nantong home textiles, etc. These associations and manufacturing bases are very professional to their specialty with strong manufacturing ability and experience. Co-work with e-commerce



Shenzhen Gift and Home Fair always leads the industry and stays one-step ahead. This time the fair will co-work with the famous Chinese e-commerce platforms: Taobao, Alibaba and JD. Over 100 online suppliers will bring their outstanding products to visitors. The online to offline cooperation enables more efficient buying.

Opening hours for the show are:

Apr. 25-27 from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Apr. 28 from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

About Reed Huabo

Reed Huabo - the most influential exhibition company in China, is a member company of Reed Exhibitions - the world's leading event organizer, based in the UK. It committed to leading the industry development and continuously creating values for customers from all over the world.

For more info and get free tickets, please visit us at: www.chinagiftsfair.com

CONTACT:

Lisa Li

+86-755-3398-9311

[email protected]

SOURCE Reed Huabo Exhibitions
Developing the relations between the Chinese and U.S. militaries requires not only seeing the immediate interests, but also the long-term common interests, a spokesperson of China's Ministry of Defense (MOD) said Thursday.

It also "requires protection against potential risks when things are developing well, as well as hope in times of adversity," Ren Guoqiang said at an MOD press briefing.

He said developing healthy and stable relations between the Chinese and U.S. militaries accords with the consensus between the presidents of the countries, meets the common interest of both countries and militaries, and lives up to the common expectation of the international community.

"The Chinese military attaches great significance to relations between the militaries, while resolutely safeguarding China's sovereignty, security and development interests," Ren said.

"We hope that the U.S. side can meet China halfway, grasp the momentum of the development of the relations between the countries and militaries, and make the military relations a stable factor in China-U.S. relations," he said.
HYDERABAD, India, March 30, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

According to the new market research report by IndustryARC titled "Steering Columns System Market: By Vehicle Type (Passenger Cars, Heavy Commercial Vehicle, Light Commercial Vehicle); By Pivot Alignment (Lower Pivot Steering Column, Upper Pivot Steering Column, Others); By Steering Systems & Steering Columns Type; By Geography - Forecast (2018-2023) ", the steering columns market is expected to hit $18.25 Billion at a CAGR of 7.6% by 2023.

(Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/660951/IndustryARC_Logo.jpg )



On the basis of market segment based on vehicle types, the passenger cars segment is expected to account revenue at a relatively high CAGR of 3.4% during the forecast period and will obtain 75% of shares worldwide. The segment is driven by the increasing demand for power consumption vehicles, followed by commercial vehicles segment that will also witness a high growth.

Asia-Pacific continues to lead the market share and growth during 2018-2023.

The highest growth for steering columns is forecast in the Asia-Pacific due to the projected growth in the automotive market. The region accounted for $6.8 billion revenue in 2017. The growing development of steering column parts is closely interrelated to the growth of the automotive market and is anticipated to continue its position. The North American region was the second largest marketplace in 2017, accounting for $4.2 Billion in revenue and is projected to grow at a high rate further, followed by European countries.

American and European regions are showing positive signs of growth. Companies are looking forward to leverage sales due to the growing demand from these regions. These expansions have been viewed as ventures to characterize the demand from the region. These expansions have been viewed as a key strategy and have been led by European steering column companies to expand into other markets, especially in the European region.

Talk to one of our sales representative about the full report by providing your details in the below link:

https://industryarc.com/support.php?id=1325

Se lected /Sample Analysis done in the full Report:

Power steering systems currently occupy nearly 95% of the steering column market, with manual steering making up the remaining market. The power steering mechanism systems in particular have faced growing adoption. These systems have found its increased utilization in electric vehicles due to their advanced positioning options and positional memory, thus allowing for automatic changing positions based on external factors as well as driver comfort. These systems also offer improved safety and comfort for parking and narrow roads as they can be quickly adjusted. The increased demand for adjustable steering columns is projected to propel the steering column market.

Electric power assisted steering (EPAS) systems are estimated to reduce fuel consumption by nearly 4%. The major cause of this diminished fuel consumption is the lower energy utilization in electric power steering system, thus resulting in increased customer demand. Electric power steering systems also offer improved driver comfort due to low efforts required while operating as compared to manual steering systems. The steering column industry is expected to witness growth through 2024. The steering column companies are only focused on the automotive parts market and have similar strategies for growth. The growing nature of the steering column market, due to the growth in the automotive industry, combined with the concentrated nature of the companies, raises industrial rivalry.

Selected / Sample Market Growth Factors Mentioned in the Full Report:

The collapsible steering column is the latest trend in the market these days. In case of an accident, the steering column collapse to the automotive floor, preventing the driver from getting hurt. Development of hybrid, electric and hydraulic steering are some of the examples. Integration of various operational switches for convenience in steering wheels and column is indeed a timely innovation, which can also be claimed as one important innovation in the automobile industry. Companies such as Delphi, TRW and Nexteer have focused on new energy, absorbing steering columns with lightweight plastic components that reduce impact on occupants of the vehicle have been launched in recent years, leading to a growing utilization of these products. Customers prefer high mileage vehicles and thus, automakers have started utilizing parts which reduce the fuel consumption. Electric power assisted steering systems are at the forefront of this drive for reduced fuel intake. This has led to growth in the corresponding electric power steering column market.

Access free table of contents or buy the full report

https://industryarc.com/Report/1325/steering-columns-system-market-research-analysis.html

Key players of Steering Columns System Market :

Robert Bosch Automotive Steering GmbH. holds the highest share of 24% in 2017 in the global steering column market, owing to the large distribution and production units' network as well as the brand identity. ZF Friedrichshafen AG and Nexteer are the next dominant steering columns system manufacturers, with a combined share of 35% in the steering column market. The other companies in the global steering systems include NSK, and Mando. These companies have a dominant position in the market by doing M&A, New Product Launches, Strategic Joint Ventures, Etc.

Companies C i ted / I nterviewed :

COBO International Coram Group Denso Corporation Eaton Corporation Flaming River Industries, Inc. Fuji Kiko Co., Ltd. Hella KGaA Hueck & Co. Hyundai Mobis Co.,Ltd JTEKT Corporation Kongsberg Automotive Kostal of America Mando Corporation Marimba Auto, LLC Nexteer Automotive NSK Ltd. Pailton Engineering Ltd thyssenkrupp AG ZF Friedrichshafen AG Company 19 Company 20

Steering Columns System Market Report is segmented as indicated below.

Steering Columns System Market by Vehicle Type Passenger Cars (Segmented) Heavy Commercial Vehicle (Segmented) Light Commercial Vehicle (Segmented) Steering Column Systems Market by Pivot Alignment Lower Pivot Tilt Steering Column Upper Pivot Tilt & Telescope Steering Column Lower pivot Tilt and Telescopic Steering Column Upper pivot Tilt Steering Column Steering Column System Market by Steering System Hydraulic Power Steering System Electric Power Steering System Manual Rack and Pinion Steering System Manual Worm & Roller Steering System Manual Recirculating Ball & Nut Steering System Steering Column Systems Market by Column Type Non-Adjustable Steering Columns Rake Adjustable Steering Columns Tilt-Adjustable Steering Columns Power Adjustable Steering Columns Active-Energy Absorbing Steering Columns Power one touch Adjustability Columns Touch Control Electronic Transmission Shifter Steering Column Steering Columns System Market by Geography (Covers 15+ Countries) Steering Columns System Market Entropy Company Profiles Appendix: Abbreviations, Sources, Research Methodology, Bibliography, Compilation of Experts, Disclaimer.

Related Reports:

Driver Monitoring Systems

https://industryarc.com/Report/172/driver-monitoring-systems-global-market-report.html

Electric Power Assisted Steering Market

https://industryarc.com/Report/16/electric-power-steering-market-analysis-forecast-report.html

What can you expect from the report?

The Steering Columns System Market Report is Prepared with the Main Agenda to Cover the following 20 points:

Market Size by Product Categories Market trends Manufacturer Landscape Distributor Landscape Pricing Analysis Top 10 End user Analysis Product Benchmarking Product Developments Mergers & Acquisition Analysis Patent Analysis Demand Analysis (By Revenue & Volume) Country level Analysis (15+) Competitor Analysis Market Shares Analysis Value Chain Analysis Supply Chain Analysis Strategic Analysis Current & Future Market Landscape Analysis Opportunity Analysis Revenue and Volume Analysis

F requently A sked Q uestions :

Does IndustryARC publish country, geography or application based reports in Steering Columns System ?

Yes, we do have separate reports as mentioned below

America Steering Columns System Market (2018-2023) South America Steering Columns System Market (2018-2023) Europe Steering Columns System Market (2018-2023) Asia Pacific Steering Columns System Market (2018-2023) Middle East and African Steering Columns System Market (2018-2023) Passenger Type Steering Columns System Market (2018-2023) Light Commercial Steering Columns System Market (2018-2023) Heavy Commercial Steering Columns System Market (2018-2023) Global Steering Columns System Market Tracker (2011-2030) - Subscription (40+ countries and 100+ companies, 50+ products with analysis on raw material manufacturers, product manufacturers, distributors, end users and startups)

Does IndustryARC provide customized reports and do you charge additiona l l y for limited customization?

Yes, we can customize the report by extracting data from our database of reports and annual subscription databases. We can provide the following free customization:

Increase the level of data in application or end user industry. Increase the number of countries in the geography chapter. Find out market shares for other smaller companies or companies which are of interest to you. Company profiles can be requested based on your interest. Patent analysis, pricing, product analysis, product benchmarking, value and supply chain analysis can be requested for a country or end use segment.

Any other custom requirements can be discussed with our team; we can provide a separate quote based on your requirement. You can drop in an e-mail to [email protected] to discuss more about our consulting services.

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PUNE, India, March 30, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

The report "Industrial Nitrogen Market by Form (Liquid, Compressed), Technology (Cryogenic distillation, Membrane separation), Transportation (Cylinder, Bulk, Pipeline), End-use industry (Metal manufacturing, Food & beverage), and Region - Global Forecast to 2022", published by MarketsandMarkets, the Industrial Nitrogen Market size is projected to grow from USD 15.03 Billion in 2017 to USD 19.96 Billion by 2022, at a CAGR of 5.83%. This market is witnessing considerable growth due to technological advancements in the industrial gases sector. Growing demand from end-use industries such as metal manufacturing & fabrication, food & beverages, and pharmaceutical & healthcare sector is the key factor driving the growth of the industrial nitrogen market.

(Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/660509/MarketsandMarkets_Logo.jpg )



Browse 138 market data Tables and 32 Figures spread through 156 Pages and in-depth TOC on "Industrial Nitrogen Market"

https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/industrial-nitrogen-market-146964494.html

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Cryogenic fractional distillation is projected to grow at the highest rate during the forecast period.

The cryogenic fractional distillation segment is projected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period. Cryogenic fractional distillation is the most widely used technique for producing high-purity industrial gases such as oxygen, nitrogen, and argon on an industrial scale, as it is one of the most cost-effective and economical technology solutions for high production rate plants.

Get PDF Brochure @ https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/pdfdownload.asp?id=146964494

The bulk mode of transportation & distribution is projected to grow at the highest rate during the forecast period.

The bulk segment is projected to be the fastest-growing mode of transportation over the next five years. Large volumes of gas are supplied by bulk deliveries, either as a cryogenic liquid or a high pressure gas into storage on customer sites. When a large amount of industrial gas is required, bulk delivery is usually preferred as bulk systems provide the product safely and cost-effectively.

Asia Pacific accounted for the largest market share in 2017 and is projected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period.

The Asia Pacific region accounted for the largest market share in 2017 and is projected to grow at the highest CAGR from 2017 to 2022. The market in China is expected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period. The growth in the Asia Pacific region is supported by the improving economic conditions, continuous improvements in government budgets, rising number of standards in building codes, positive demographic outlook such as the increasing population and rising per capita income, and the growing manufacturing industries in the region.

The major players in the industrial nitrogen market include Praxair (US), Air Products and Chemicals (US), Air Liquide (France), Linde (Germany), and Taiyo Nippon Sanso (Japan). Other players in this market include Messer Group (Germany), Nexair LLC (US), and Gulf Cryo (Kuwait).

Know more about Industrial Nitrogen Market:

https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/industrial-nitrogen-market-146964494.html

About MarketsandMarkets

MarketsandMarkets provides quantified B2B research on 30,000 high growth niche opportunities/threats which will impact 70% to 80% of worldwide companies' revenues. Currently servicing 5000 customers worldwide including 80% of global Fortune 1000 companies as clients. Almost 75,000 top officers across eight industries worldwide approach MarketsandMarkets for their painpoints around revenues decisions.

Our 850 fulltime analyst and SMEs at MarketsandMarkets are tracking global high growth markets following the "Growth Engagement Model - GEM". The GEM aims at proactive collaboration with the clients to identify new opportunities, identify most important customers, write "Attack, avoid and defend" strategies, identify sources of incremental revenues for both the company and its competitors. MarketsandMarkets now coming up with 1,500 MicroQuadrants (Positioning top players across leaders, emerging companies, innovators, strategic players) annually in high growth emerging segments. MarketsandMarkets is determined to benefit more than 10,000 companies this year for their revenue planning and help them take their innovations/disruptions early to the market by providing them research ahead of the curve.

MarketsandMarkets's flagship competitive intelligence and market research platform, "RT" connects over 200,000 markets and entire value chains for deeper understanding of the unmet insights along with market sizing and forecasts of niche markets.

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SOURCE MarketsandMarkets
Brick-and-Mortar stores winning in Customer Experience

SINGAPORE, March 30, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Brick and mortar retail is in trouble: as ecommerce gradually erodes physical retaileffectively commoditizing the routine shopping experienceretailers are finding it hard to survive. Competition based on price alone is a prescription for failure; and ecommerce sites, based on their massive scope and scale, are capable of underselling any local merchant. Yet, brick and mortar commerce has an advantage over ecommerce that most retailers are not leveraging: personalized experience.

Frost & Sullivan recently collaborated with NEC Corporation to develop an infographic, "Evolving Retail Landscape: Brick-and-Mortar Winning in Customer Experience", to further demonstrate that physical stores are critical to multichannel approach. Nearly half of millennial consumers prefer to shop in physical stores despite the robust growth of ecommerce as human interaction still holds significant value for consumers today.

Click here to download the infographic, visit: LINK

"Retailers today place almost equal focus on customer experience and ecommerce. However, many retailers face hurdles in managing the front-end and back-end systems efficiently," noted Ajay Sunder, Vice President, Digital Transformation team at Frost & Sullivan Asia Pacific. "Advanced technology solutions can enable global retailers to optimize store operations while providing greater visibility into customer behavior."

The infographic explains how NEC's Stanchion Store retail software solutions easily integrate with back-office systems to deliver customer information directly to the POS  transforming those into "Point of Service". Furthermore, its NeoFace Face Recognition Suite can instantly recognize a customer entering the store and retrieve past transactions and preferences and thus, creating a personalized shopping experience.

As a key vendor of retail technology solutions, NEC has partnered with 122,000+ retail stores worldwide to improve in-store customer experience using its cutting edge technologies.

About Frost & Sullivan

Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, works in collaboration with clients to leverage visionary innovation that addresses the global challenges and related growth opportunities that will make or break today's market participants. For more than 50 years, we have been developing growth strategies for the global 1000, emerging businesses, the public sector and the investment community. Is your organization prepared for the next profound wave of industry convergence, disruptive technologies, increasing competitive intensity, Mega Trends, breakthrough best practices, changing customer dynamics and emerging economies?

Contact Us: Start the discussion

About NEC Corporation

NEC Corporation is a leader in the integration of IT and network technologies that benefit businesses and people around the world. By providing a combination of products and solutions that cross utilize the company's experience and global resources, NEC's advanced technologies meet the complex and ever-changing needs of its customers. NEC brings more than 100 years of expertise in technological innovation to empower people, businesses and society.

For more information, visit NEC at http://www.nec.com

The NEC Group globally provides "Solutions for Society" that promote the safety, security, efficiency and equality of society. Under the company's corporate message of "Orchestrating a brighter world," NEC aims to help solve a wide range of challenging issues and to create new social value for the changing world of tomorrow.

For more information, please visit: http://www.nec.com/en/global/about/vision/message.html

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SOURCE Frost & Sullivan
AI helps to personalize email by making the message more relevant, targeted, timely and containing the right call-to-action, based on the big data AI collects and automatically segments. Thanks to these innovations, E-Commerce business owners can now expect better interaction and engagement with their customers in the following innovative ways:

Micro-personalization: AI predictive suggestions create a highly targeted message from subject line to content, visuals, and call to action.

Improved Send time: AI estimates an optimal time for sending emails to each customer based on their history of activity online and location.

Guaranteed performance: blockchain-powered Smart Contracts include any action chosen by the e-commerce entrepreneur. Once the terms of the Smart Contract have been fulfilled, the business owner pays Triggmine for the conversion.

According to Ed Wiley, AI expert and the advisor at Triggmine. "AI is the secret ingredient in your marketing strategy. Unlike most conventional email marketing solutions, AI tools are simple to set up and use. It's a godsend for time- and money-strapped entrepreneurs".

To make their application even more useful for e-commerce entrepreneurs, Triggmine has launched Token Sale to grow its AI platform.

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/658763/Triggmine_AI_Email_Marketing.jpg

SOURCE Triggmine
Vedanta Limited is a diversified natural resources company, whose business primarily involves producing oil & gas, zinc - lead - silver, aluminium, copper, iron ore and commercial power. The company has a presence across India, South Africa and Namibia. Vedanta Ltd has a portfolio of world-class, low-cost, scalable assets that consistently generate strong profitability and have robust cash flows. The company holds industry-leading market shares across its core divisions.

Vedanta Limited is the Indian subsidiary of Vedanta Resources Plc, a London-listed company. Governance and Sustainable Development are at the core of Vedanta's strategy, with a strong focus on health, safety and environment and on enhancing the lives of local communities. The company is conferred with the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) 'Sustainable Plus Platinum label', ranking among the top 10 most sustainable companies in India. To access the Vedanta Sustainable Development Report 2017, please visit http://sd.vedantaresources.com/SustainableDevelopment2016-17/

Vedanta Limited is listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange and the National Stock Exchange in India. The company is in the Nifty 50 Index and has ADRs listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

For more information please visit www.vedantalimited.com

Vedanta Limited

Vedanta, 75, Nehru Road,

Vile Parle (East), Mumbai - 400 099

www.vedantalimited.com

Registered Office:

Regd. Office: 1st Floor, 'C' wing, Unit 103,

Corporate Avenue, Atul Projects,

Chakala, Andheri (East),

Mumbai  400 093

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TORONTO, March 29, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Bank of Montreal (TSX:BMO)(NYSE:BMO) today announced that it has entered into an automatic securities purchase plan ("ASPP") with its broker, BMO Nesbitt Burns Inc., in order to facilitate repurchases of BMO common shares ("Common Shares") under its previously announced normal course issuer bid ("NCIB").

The Bank previously announced that it had received approvals from the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) and the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions Canada (OSFI) to repurchase for cancellation up to 22 million common shares under its NCIB, which commenced on May 1, 2017, and expires on April 30, 2018. Under the NCIB, the Bank may repurchase shares through the facilities of the TSX and alternative Canadian trading systems or by such other means as may be permitted by a securities regulatory authority, including private agreements or share repurchase programs under exemption orders issued by securities regulatory authorities. All repurchased shares will be cancelled. The timing and amount of purchases under the NCIB are subject to regulatory approvals and to management discretion based on factors such as market conditions.

Under the Bank's ASPP, the Bank's broker may purchase Common Shares at times when the Bank ordinarily would not be active in the market due to insider trading rules and its own internal trading blackout periods. Purchases will be made by the Bank's broker based upon parameters set by the Bank prior to the commencement of any such blackout period and in accordance with the terms of the automatic purchase plan. The ASPP has been approved by the TSX.

For further information: For Media Relations Enquiries: Paul Gammal, Toronto, paul.gammal@bmo.com, (416) 867-3996; For Investor Relations Enquiries: Jill Homenuk, Toronto, jill.homenuk@bmo.com, (416) 867-4770; Christine Viau, Toronto, christine.viau@bmo.com, (416) 867-6956, Internet: www.bmo.com, Twitter: @BMOmedia

Related Links

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SOURCE BMO Financial Group
USA Almost Doubles Oil Export in 2017

In 2017, the United States oil export reached 1,1 million barrels on average, which is almost twice as much as exported in 2016. These figures are confirmed by the EIA.

th place with Apparently, Barack Obamas decision to cancel the oil export embargo in 2015 has been contributing to this oil export growth. Its interesting to note that in 2017, the number of outlets for the US oil exports increased from 27 all the way to 37 countries all over the world. Canada still remained the key outlet but its share in the USA s overall oil export dropped from 61% all the way down to just 29%. China, which is the second-biggest importer of American oil, increased its share up to 20%. The UK and the Netherlands come third and forth with 9% and 8% respectively. As for the new buyers of American oil, India took the lead last year with 22K barrels a day by sharing the 10place with Spain



its also interesting to note, that the export of crude oil increased its share in the overall U.S. export up to 19%, which is much higher than the previous record of 13% seen in 1999. In absolute figures, the record is even more impressing  6,3 million barrels a day in 2017 against 1 million barrels a day in 1999.

The U.S. crude oil production increased by 500K b/d up to 9,3 million b/d on average in 2017. According to the recent EIA report released in March, this year the average daily production of crude oil in the United States may increase by a stunning 1,4 million barrels.



The bottom line is, American oil companies seem to be outperforming their production and export plans for the year. According the International Energy Agency (IEA), Februarys daily global supply of crude oil turned out to be 740K barrels higher than in February 2016, mostly because of the bigger oil export coming from the United States. It seems that American oilers have been reducing to nothing all the efforts made by the OPEC+ since the global commercial oil inventories increased in February for the first time since July 2017. They increased by 18 million all the way up to 2,871 billion barrels.

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Soldiers escort coffins containing the remains of Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War during a burial ceremony at the Cemetery of Revolutionary Martyrs in Shenyang, northeast China's Liaoning Province, March 29, 2018. A burial ceremony for the remains of 20 Chinese soldiers killed in the war was held here on Thursday. The Chinese People's Volunteers (CPV) fought side by side with the army of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in the Korean War against the South Korean army and U.S.-led UN forces. Tens of thousands of CPV soldiers died on the Korean Peninsula during the war, which ended in 1953. (Xinhua/Yang Qing)

A burial ceremony for the remains of 20 Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War was held at the Cemetery of Revolutionary Martyrs in Shenyang, capital of northeast China's Liaoning Province, on Thursday.

More than 300 people including government and military officials, Korean War veterans, and members of the public, attended the ceremony.

"I'm so glad my comrades are finally home, but it is a great pity they cannot witness the prosperity of our country now," said Li Weibo, 87, a Korean War veteran.

Some 197,653 Chinese People's Volunteers soldiers are confirmed to have died during the war, most of whom were buried on the Korean Peninsula.

According to an agreement between China and the Republic of Korea (ROK), the two sides arrange an annual hand-over of remains of Chinese soldiers found in ROK, which usually occurs before the Tomb-Sweeping Day.

The remains of 569 soldiers were returned to China from ROK between 2014 and 2017.

Soldiers escort coffins containing the remains of Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War during a burial ceremony at the Cemetery of Revolutionary Martyrs in Shenyang, northeast China's Liaoning Province, March 29, 2018. A burial ceremony for the remains of 20 Chinese soldiers killed in the war was held here on Thursday. The Chinese People's Volunteers (CPV) fought side by side with the army of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in the Korean War against the South Korean army and U.S.-led UN forces. Tens of thousands of CPV soldiers died on the Korean Peninsula during the war, which ended in 1953. (Xinhua/Long Lei)
Kochi (Kerala), March 24 : An NIA court here on Saturday sentenced a woman from Bihar to seven years in jail in the first Islamic State (IS) case registered in Kerala.

The case is in connection with 15 persons from Kasargode district who travelled to Afghanistan to join the terror group in 2016.

Yasmin Mohammed Zahid was arrested in Delhi July 30, 2016, when she on her way to leave for Afghanistan with her child.

The case was first registered by the Kerala Police in Kasargode. It was later taken over by the National Investigation Agency.

The agency found evidence of the accused persons activities through their social media accounts.
Riyadh, March 30 : Saudi air force intercepted on Thursday a missile shot by Houthi militia from Yemen towards border city Jazan, Al Arabiya news reported.

The Saudi forces have dealt with 104 ballistic missiles shot by the Houthis since June 2015, including seven fired this week at a number of Saudi cities such as Riyadh, Xinhua reported.

The country, leading a war against Houthis in Yemen for the last three years, accused Iran of backing the militia by trafficking weapons and missiles and contributing to the instability of the country.

Yemenis have been suffering from clashes between armed groups, airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition and devastating living condition of scarcity of food and medical supply.

The United Nations Security Council on Wednesday condemned a barrage of missile attacks against Saudi Arabia by Yemen's Houthi group and expressed grave concerns over reports of violations of a UN arms embargo on Houthi leaders.
Cairo, March 30 : Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi discussed on Thursday mutual military cooperation with visiting chairman of the Pakistani Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee Zubair Mahmood Hayat.

In a statement, Sisi and Hayat discussed bilateral relations and boosting military cooperation between the two countries, Xinhua reported.

They also talked about the latest regional developments, mainly war on terror, which is a major challenge for both countries.

On Thursday, Egyptian state media reported that Sisi won 92 percent of the votes in the 2018 presidential election, with 23 million Egyptians voting for him.

Sisi was expected to make an easy win on his sole rival, a little-known politician, for a second four-year term.
San Francisco, March 30 : Giving a fresh impetus to his vision of achieving Intelligent Cloud and Edge, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has realigned duties of his core senior team, announcing that Terry Myerson, Head of Windows and Devices Group (WDG), was leaving the company.

Myerson and the WDG team transformed Windows to create a secure, always up-to-date, modern operating system (OS).

"His strong contributions to Microsoft over 21 years from leading Exchange to leading Windows 10 leave a real legacy. I want to thank Terry for his leadership on my team and across Microsoft. He will work with me on the transition over the coming months," Nadella said in an internal email to employees on Thursday.

Rajesh Jha, Executive Vice President, Office Product Group at Microsoft, will lead Experiences and Devices that will include Windows, Office, third-party applications and devices into a more cohesive Microsoft 365 experience.

"Jha will expand his existing responsibilities to lead a new team focused on Experiences & Devices. The purpose of this team is to instill a unifying product ethos across our end-user experiences and devices," Nadella said.

Nadella announced the formation of two new engineering teams to accelerate innovation at Microsoft.

For Microsoft Devices, Panos Panay will serve as Chief Product Officer to ensure end-to-end devices business execution excellence.

"Joe Belfiore will continue leading our Windows experiences and will drive Windows innovation in partnership with the PC and device ecosystem," Nadella wrote.

Brad Anderson will continue to lead Windows Enterprise deployment and management efforts with even tighter alignment across Microsoft 365 and will partner closely with the EMS teams within Cloud + Artificial Intelligence (AI) Platform.

Scott Guthrie will lead the Cloud + AI Platform.

Jason Zander has been promoted to Executive Vice President of Azure Cloud. The Windows platform team led by Harv Bhela, Henry Sanders and Michael Fortin will join Zander's team.

"For Business AI, the customer service, marketing and sales Insights teams, previously led by Gurdeep Singh Pall, will join James Phillips' Business Applications Group," the Microsoft CEO said.

"I am thankful for Gurdeep's leadership in building these new AI solutions that are going to help differentiate Microsoft in this area," he added.

When it comes to AI perception and Mixed Reality (MR), Alex Kipman will lead the new team.

"This team will continue to build first-party products and the core building block cloud services for third parties on Azure," Nadella added.
Gaza, March 30 : A Palestinian farmer was killed and another was injured on Friday by Israeli artillery fire on eastern Gaza Strip, officials said, hours before a major protest by Palestinians along the border.

Gaza's Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf al Qedra said 27-year-old Omar Wahid Samur was killed and another one was moderately injured when the Israeli fire hit east of al-Garara town east of Khan Younis.

The shelling came as the Palestinians were preparing to launch a six-week protest dubbed the "Great March of Return", scheduled to start on Friday amid Israeli Army presence on the borderline area with the Gaza Strip, the BBC reported.

Hamas, the militant group which dominates the Gaza Strip, accused Israel of trying to intimidate Palestinians by killing the farmer and by urging them not to participate in the protests.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry said the protest was a "deliberate attempt to provoke a confrontation with Israel" and that "responsibility for any clashes lies solely with Hamas and other participating Palestinian organisations".

March 30 marks Land Day, which commemorates the killing of six protesters by Israeli security forces during demonstrations over land confiscation in 1976.

According to witnesses, the two men were hit by tank fire while collecting parsley in a field.

Palestinians erected five main camp areas along the Israel border for the protest, from Erez in the north to Rafah near the Egyptian border in the south.

The protest is scheduled to end on May 15.
New Delhi, March 30 : Netherlands Prime Minister Mark Rutte will be on a two-day visit to India on May 24-25, the country's embassy said in a statement here on Friday.

Ahead of the visist, a Dutch delegation comprising officials, companies and institutions will arrive on May 22 and stay till May 25.

Rutte's visit comes within a year of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to the Netherlands last June.

"The state visit will further boost the economic and political cooperation between India and the Netherlands while focusing on the existing and the potential partnerships in agriculture, water management, healthcare, innovation, start-ups among several other sectors," the statement said.

Rutte will be accompanied by a high-level delegation comprising Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation Sigrid Kaag, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality Carola Schouten, Minister for Infrastructure and Water Management Cora van Nieuwenhuizen and Minister for Medical Care Bruno Bruins.

This will be Rutte's second visit to India since June 2015, but the first after being re-elected as Prime Minister in 2017.
Madurai/ Chennai, March 30 : With anger sweeping Tamil Nadu over the Centre's failure to set up a Cauvery Water Management Board (CMB), the ruling AIADMK announced a hunger strike on April 3 and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister K. Palaniswami hinted the state will move the Supreme Court with a contempt plea against the Centre.

Reports have it that the contempt plea may be filed in the apex court on Saturday.

The AIADMK, which first announced that the hunger strike programme will be held on April 2, subsequently postponed it by a day to April 3.

On the rival front, the DMK demanded that the Chief Minister convene a meeting of his cabinet and pass a resolution condemning the Central government and Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the Cauvery issue.

DMK leader M.K. Stalin also said after a meeting of the party Executive Council that the state government should file a contempt of court petition in the Supreme Court against the Modi government for not setting up the CMB within six weeks, which deadline expired on Thursday.

Seething with anger against the Central government for not setting up the CMB, political parties in Tamil Nadu are planning protests including hoisting black flags in condemnation.

At a wedding function in Madurai, AIADMK Coordinator and Deputy Chief Minister O. Panneerselvam had said the AIADMK would go on a day's hunger strike on April 2 at all district headquarters.

He said the government of late Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa would take all steps to protect the rights of Tamil Nadu.

In his speech, Palaniswami said the AIADMK had created "history" in Parliament by disrupting the Lok Sabha's functioning for the last 17 days continuously. "Such a disruption has not been done in the history of the Lok Sabha in support of a demand of a state.

"The Centre has failed to implement the Supreme Court order on the constitution of the CMB. We want the Centre to implement it. And we will take legal steps in this regard," Palaniswami said in an apparent reference to the moves to approach the Supreme Court.

Tamil Nadu Fisheries Minister D. Jayakumar told reporters in Chennai that the state government would fight for its rights and it was "friendly" with the Modi government only to get various developmental projects approved.

Stalin said the Tamil Nadu government should have approached the apex court with a contempt petition when the Union Minister for Water Resources and the Union Water Resources Secretary spoke against the apex court order on constituting the CMB.

He said the party would show black flags to Prime Minister Modi, who is reportedly set to visit Tamil Nadu on April 15. He also said the DMK would sit with like-minded parties to decide what type of protests should be held on the issue.

A DMK Executive Council meeting condemned both the Central and state governments.

PMK founder S. Ramadoss accused the Centre of "betraying" Tamil Nadu's interests and said people of the state would not believe the state government on the issue.

Party activists led by Ramadoss and former Union Minister Anbumani Ramadoss hoisted black flags on their houses.

Tamil Nadu parties allege that the Modi government did not set up the CMB as it does not want to alienate voters in neighbouring Karnataka, which is opposed to the Supreme Court order.
Moscow, March 30 : Russian and Chinese Foreign Ministers Sergey Lavrov and Wang Yi will hold negotiations on April 5 in Moscow, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Friday.

"Special Envoy of the President of China, State Councillor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, will be visiting Russia on April 4-5," the Russian Foreign Ministry was cited as saying by Tass news agency.

"Negotiations with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov are scheduled for April 5."

The Ministry said that Lavrov and Wang will share their views "on the state and prospects of further development of Russian-Chinese relations of comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation, as well as extension of mutual coordination in international and regional affairs".

Wang's visit to Russia was initially scheduled for March 27-28. However, the visit was postponed due to changes in the Russian administration's schedule in the wake of the Kemerovo shopping mall tragedy which claimed 64 lives.
Lucknow, March 30 : Union Minister Giriraj Singh on Friday accused the Congress of inciting communal violence in Bihar and West Bengal, saying this was being done to "weaken" the majority Hindu community at these places.

At a brief stop over at the circuit house in Allahabad, while on his way to Pratapgarh, the senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader, known for his controversial comments, alleged all this was happening on the directions of Congress President Rahul Gandhi under "a well-planned conspiracy".

"Rahul Gandhi is working overtime to disrupt communal harmony and to weaken Hindus," he claimed, adding that the Congress chief's only aim is to discredit the Narendra Modi government and they are wearing Hindus to split the nation.

"Wherever the Hindus are being weakened, incidents like those taking place in Bihar and West Bengal happen," he said, but declined to elaborate of the communal unrest in some districts of Bihar as he has not been visiting his home state for some time.

He also defended the decision of the Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh for inserting 'Ramji' in the name of Dalit icon Bhimrao Ambedkar and added that there was nothing wrong in it as "this was the real name of the Architect of the Constitution".

Ambedkar belongs to everyone, irrespective of caste or creed and hence he cannot be owned by any person or party, he said in an apparent reference to the Bahujan Samaj Party, which has been crying foul over the name change.
New Delhi, March 30 : Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia on Thursday asked Union Human Resource Development Minister Prakash Javadekar to convene a meeting of Education Ministers from across the country in wake of the CBSE papers leak.

In his letter to Javadekar, Sisodia, who also holds the Education portfolion, expressed concern about the "backdrop of the extremely serious issue" of the leak of question papers of maths and economics for Class 10 and Class 12 respectively.

"...there have been concerns regarding leaks of several other exam papers as well. Not only does it affect the future of 26 lakh students, but also puts a question mark on the sanctity of the CBSE assessment system...

"I request you to immediately convene a day-long brain-storming of all Education Ministers, so that we can ensure that such serious incidents do not happen again," he said in his letter.

Sisodia also said that there was a need to move beyond politics because when an examination is leaked -- "be it CBSE, SSB or DSSSB -- the negative consequences are for the country, not just to any one government or one party".
An H-6K bomber during an exercise. YANG JUN/XINHUA

An elite bomber unit of the People's Liberation Army Air Force sent 12 H-6K bombers on Monday on a long-range combat training mission that is believed to be the Air Force's largest deployment of bombers in a single operation in recent years.

The unidentified bomber division, based in Shaanxi province, conducted the training to hone its strategic strike capability, a statement published by the Air Force on Tuesday said without elaborating.

Photographs released by the Air Force showed the bombers flying above what appeared to be bodies of water and islands.

Sources close to the Air Force told China Daily that it was the largest deployment of bombers in a single mission in at least a decade, noting that such a big formation "would be capable of carrying 72 land-attack cruise missiles to make a devastating strike".

Senior Colonel Shen Jinke, the Air Force's spokesman, was quoted in the statement as saying that pilots in the division have been training to carry out missions around the clock.

The division, which was visited three years ago by President Xi Jinping, who also serves as chairman of the Central Military Commission, has performed several long-range training operations over the western Pacific Ocean over the past three years and handled "interference" by foreign military planes during some of the operations. The unit has also conducted drills over the South China Sea, the statement said.

Hao Jianke, commander of the division, said that his pilots will continue to conduct exercises over the ocean regardless of foreign militaries' interference and hindrance.

In another development, the Air Force said that it sent several H-6Ks, Su-30 fighter jets, refueling planes and reconnaissance aircraft over the Bashi Channel and conducted combat drills over the western Pacific on Monday. It added that this was part of an annual training plan and was not aimed at any specific nation.

The exercises are the latest in a host of long-distance combat training operations by the Air Force over the past several months.

Earlier last week, a group of aircraft including H-6K bombers and Su-30 fighters flew over the Miyako Strait and conducted combat drills over the western Pacific to verify long-range operational capabilities. At the same time, another group of bombers, Su-35 fighter jets and other aircraft conducted a joint combat patrol over the South China Sea, practicing aerial maneuvers and strike tactics at sea.

The Air Force began performing long-range drills over the ocean in March 2015 and has organized dozens of such operations since.
Ghaziabad, March 30 : The Uttar Pradesh government is committed to Ram Rajya, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath declared on Friday while inaugurating 20 projects worth Rs 1,800 crore here.

Defining "Ram Rajya", he said it amounted to providing homes for the homeless, electricity to to the poor, ration card to those below poverty line and security to everyone.

Before addressing a public meeting at Kavi Nagar, Adityanath inaugurated a 10.3-km elevated road connecting newly developed Raj Nagar Extension township with UP Gate on Delhi border.

He said his government was committed to providing homes for 3.5 lakh families under the Prime Minister's housing schemes.

During last 15 years, he accused the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party of dividing the society.

Under the Swachh Bharat Mission, eight districts of western Uttar Pradesh would be declared open defecation free (ODF) on October 2, 2018.

"Only true nationals will survive in the state," the Chief Minister thundered. "Criminals will either leave the state or will remain in jails."
New Delhi, March 30 : Amid outrage over leak of CBSE question papers, the government on Friday said re-examination of Class 10 maths paper will be held only in Delhi, NCR and Haryana, "if at all", while fresh Class 12 test for economics students will be conducted on April 25.

Anil Swarup, Secretary School Education in Union Human Resources Development Ministry, said the CBSE Class 10 mathematics question paper was leaked only in Delhi and Haryana as there was no evidence that it was a pan-India affair.

"The leak was restricted to Delhi and Haryana, if at all a re-exam will happen, it will happen only in these states in July. A decision will be taken on this in the next 15 days," Swarup told reporters.

He said the Class 12 economics re-exam will be held on April 25. But there will be no fresh test outside of India.
Thane (Maharashtra), March 30 : In a major swoop with deep ramifications, the Maharastra Police's Crime Branch here has busted a five-member gang of international robbers - some of whom used to fly down from Dhaka - to carry out armed robberies, officials said here on Friday.

The matter came to light after members of the gang were arrested for committing a robbery at gunpoint in a house in Kashimira where they looted cash and jewellery worth around Rs 898,000 on March 22, said Superintendent of Police, Thane Rural, Mahesh Patil.

Pointing to a well-planned operation, taking advantage of the early hours, the gang, carrying various equipment, struck at the home of Gokul R. Wagh around 3 a.m., cut through the window grilles, tied up the entire family and escaped with loot.

Following an uproar over the incident, the Thane Rural police and Kashimira's Crime Branch Unit set up special squads to investigate and nab the culprits.

After tracking several leads, CCTV footage and tips from informers, police learnt that the gang was travelling in a Chevrolet car towards Vasai town, in adjoining Palghar district, on Wednesday.

A police team managed to intercept the vehicle and arrested the occupants who admitted that they were Bangladeshi nationals and staying her illegally.

The shocking revelation was that three among the arrested, holding valid passports with Indian visas, used to regularly fly to and from Dhaka to Mumbai to commit the robberies and return undetected.

Police are now tracking their visa and immigration records to ascertain how many times they entered the country and whether they operated in other cities besides Thane.

The accused were identified as Mohammed Palash Ismail Havaldar, 32, Bappi Akubar Shaikh, 27, Mohammed Munir Latif Shaikh, 31, Mohammed Akram Irfan Ali, 28, all hailing from different villages in Bangaldesh's Khulna district while the fifth Lukman Cheena Miyan, 23, is from Sylhet district there.

They were placed under arrest on Wednesday and produced before a court which sent them to police custody till Monday, said Patil.

Hinting at widespread ramifications, Investigating Officer Pramod Badakh said that the gang has been operating with "local support", prompting a wide scale of investigations.

This would include probing local hoteliers, eateries and bars, locals with Bangladeshi contacts, including some former dance bars employees and others who may have helped the gang in its operations, he added.
New Delhi, March 30 : Questioning Prime Minister Narendra Modi's silence on the CBSE paper leak, the Congress on Friday said that a "mafia" is controlling India's examination system and if the government can't ensure security of school question papers, how will it ensure the seurity of the country.

The party also asked why Modi and his government was not apologising to the students for the CBSE paper leak. "When there is darkness in the country, the 'chowkidar' (the Prime M
New Delhi, March 30 : Amid nationwide protests over leak of CBSE question papers and against re-test, the government on Friday said re-examination will be held for Class 12 economics paper throughout the country on April 25 while fresh test for Class 10 maths paper will be held only in Delhi, NCR and Haryana, "if at all", in July.

Admitting that "some wrong" has happened, Anil Swarup, Secretary, School Education, in the Union Human Resource Development Ministry, said the CBSE Class 10 mathematics question paper was leaked only in Delhi and Haryana as there was no evidence that it was a pan-India affair.

"The leak was restricted to Delhi and Haryana. If at all a re-exam will happen, it will happen only in these states in July. A decision will be taken on this in the next 15 days," Swarup told reporters.

He said since the Class 12 economics paper was leaked across the country, its fresh test will be held on April 25. But there will be no fresh exam outside of India because there was no leak.

Swarup said the decision to conduct fresh exams won't affect the date of publication of the results which usually happens in May end.

Bombarded with questions on who will be held responsible and why the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) chief Anita Karwal has not been removed following the lapse, he said responsibility can be fixed only after inquiry.

"Action will be taken against whoever is responsible. But you cannot pre-empt the inquiry. Without inquiry action will not be possible.

"There are two levels of inquiry - one is the police inquiry and the other is a departmental inquiry. We cannot say what exactly went wrong but we are trying to find out."

Asked about the decision to hold the re-test, Swarup said: "We don't have any perfect answers available to us. We have limited set of information. It may not be a perfect decision, our immediate concern is that the children should not suffer. Children's interests are supreme. Other things can wait."

Asked about rumours that several CBSE question papers were leaked, the officer said false information was being spread through social media.

"In many cases, it was found that the papers were not leaked. Leak did happen. We were informed before exams that paper has been leaked. But our responsibility was to confirm that whether it's really a leak or not, that needed time. So we could not stop the exams.

"How did the paper leak, where was it leaked from... My request to you is that only after investigation I can say something."

Asked whether the government can guarantee that there will be no leaks in the future, he said nobody can guarantee about the future. "I cannot guarantee that there will be no leakage in the future. But we will take all steps to see such leakage doesn't happen."

The CBSE decision came as students and their parents took to the streets across India to denounce the question paper leak and, in some cases, demand the sacking of the CBSE head Anita Karwal. The leak and re-test has affected lakhs of students and forced their families to postpone or cancel planned holidays.
Agartala, March 30 : Over four lakh poor families in Tripura will be provided free cooking gas connections under the PMUY to ensure clean energy access to all and to protect the health of rural women, an IOC official said on Friday.

"Our target is to provide free Liquefied Petroleum Gas connections under the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) to over 400,000 poor families in Tripura," state-run Indian Oil Corp Chief General Manager Uttiya Bhattacharyya told the media here.

Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb on Friday flagged off 50 mobile publicity vans to help PMUY benefits to reach across Tripura.

Deb said the state government was committed to make Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision of smoke-free India a reality.

"Within 100 days, as many as 100,000 LPG connections under the PMUY will be handed out to poor families with IOC support," he added.

Food and Civil Supplies Minister Manoj Kanti Deb and Revenue Minister Narendra Chandra Debbarma were present on the occasion.

The PMUY was launched in May 2016, under which cash assistance is given to beneficiaries to get deposit-free LPG connections.

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs chaired by the Prime Minister last month approved to increase the PMUY target from five crore to eight crore with an additional allocation of Rs 4,800 crore. The revised target would be achieved by 2020.
Kolkata, March 30 : Parts of Raniganj in West Bengal's Paschim Burdwan district that remained tense for most of this week following clashes over Ram Navami rallies limped back to normalcy on Friday even as large number of police and para-military forces continued to be deployed in the area to prevent any breach of peace.

"We are maintaining a tight vigil. The situation is normal. No further untoward incidents have happened so far," a police officer from the district said.

A large number of security personnel were deployed on the streets of Raniganj while a section of shops opened their shutters after remaining closed for the last five days.

"Things are slowly becoming normal. We could not come out of our houses since the clash broke out. Today I am able to go to office," a commuter said.

The internet services remained suspended even on Friday.

Meanwhile, a four-member committee formed by BJP President Amit Shah is set to visit the trouble hit areas of Raniganj on Sunday and submit a report, a leader of the party's state unit said.

The committee, led by BJP Vice President Om Mathur, also has former Union Minister Shahnawaz Hussain and MPs Roopa Ganguly and B.D. Ram.

A clash broke out between two groups centring a Ram Navami procession in Raniganj on Monday. A person was allegedly hacked to death while a Deputy Commissioner of Police lost a hand after getting hit by a bomb.

The Union Home Ministry has sought a report from the state government on incidents of arson and violence during the processions.

The Trinamool Congress government blamed the Bharatiya Janata Party for the unrest.

Several shops and houses were vandalised and set ablaze during the clashes in parts of Paschim Bardhaman district. Police have arrested 19 people for fomenting trouble.

Five police personnel were injured as clashes broke out over a Ram Navami rally organised by the saffron outfit and the Sangh affiliates in an area in Purulia district.

The BJP, which is trying to pitchfork itself as the main challenger to the Trinamool in the state, has been using the Ram Navami celebrations since last year to appeal to the sentiments of the majority Hindu population.

Sensing the BJP's motive, the Trinamool also resorted to celebrate the occasion massively on its own this year.
Moscow, March 30 : Russia on Friday ordered the expulsion of diplomats from the European states in a tit-for-tat response over the expulsion of its diplomats following the poisoning of a former spy in the UK.

The measure came a day after Russia kicked out 60 US diplomats -- 58 from the US mission in Moscow and two from Yekaterinburg -- for activities "incompatible with diplomatic status". It had also ordered closure of the St. Petersburg consulate, Sputnik news agency reported.

Russia has been on the defensive since the UK government blamed it for the poisoning of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, on British soil on March 4. Skripal remains in a critical but stable condition but his daughter's condition was said to be improving.

So far, 29 countries have expelled 145 Russian officials in solidarity with the UK, and NATO also ordered 10 Russians out of its mission in Belgium.

In retaliation, Moscow on Friday expelled four Polish diplomats, three diplomats each of Lithuania and the Czech Republic, two diplomats each of Italy and the Netherlands, and one diplomat each of Finland, Latvia and Sweden. Moscow also expelled one military attache of Estonia, Sputnik news agency reported.

Earlier in the day, the Russian Foreign Ministry summoned the ambassadors of the countries, including the UK, for "hostile actions" over the Skripal case in order to hand them notes, protest and inform of response measures over the expulsion of Russian diplomats.

Russia told the UK ambassador to reduce British diplomatic staff in Russia to equate the Russian presence in the UK. Both countries have already expelled 23 staff. Moscow had also ordered the closure of the British Council.

According to the news agency, envoys of 15 European countries, including Italy, Poland, Netherlands, Albania, Romania, Ukraine, Czech Republic, Belgium, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Croatia, Sweden, Denmark, Greece, Ireland, as well as the Australian and Canadian ambassadors were summoned.

Earlier this week, the US expelled the largest single number -- 60 diplomats -- and closed the Russian consulate general in Seattle. Russia retaliated on Thursday with the same move, which the US said was "expected" and warned it may take further action.
New Delhi, March 30 : The CBI has registered three cases in connection with four alleged staged shootout deaths in Manipur in which personnel of the state police, Assam Rifles and CRPF are accused, an official said on Friday.

The FIRs were filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Wednesday following the Supreme Court's March 12 order on writ petitions filed by the families of the deceased.

In the first FIR, the CBI named five Manipur Police personnel and some unidentified policemen for taking Manipur resident R.K. Laksana in custody on February 15, 1999, and later allegedly killing him in a staged shootout.

The named accused are Sub-Inspector Pebam John Singh and Constables Longjam Rokhon Singh, Thangmang Kipgen, K. Bijoy Tarao and Fajur Rahman.

In the second case, the CBI booked unidentified personnel of 20 Assam Rifles on the charge of killing Ramaso Shingnaisui on July 17, 1997, in custody. "As per Shingnaisui's post-mortem report, he died of shock and haemorrhage as a result of multiple blunt force injuries, which were homicidal in nature," the FIR said.

In another FIR, the CBI booked unidentified personnel of the Central Reserve Police Force's 121 and 134 Battalions for killing Asem Romajit and Yumnam Robita Devi in a staged shootout in 2002.

"It was alleged that on April 9, 2002, some personnel of CRPF's 121 and 134 Battalions were attacked by unidentified armed insurgents in Pangei Bazar, which resulted in the killing of four CRPF troopers and injuries to many more.

"The CRPF personnel subsequently carried out searches of all houses in the area and started firing indiscriminately, during which Romajit was shot dead from close range. Similarly, Robita, who was waiting for a passenger bus, lay down on the ground to save herself but was shot dead by CRPF personnel," the FIR said.

The CBI had registered on Wednesday an FIR against unidentified personnel of 19 Assam Rifles to probe the alleged arrest, torture and murder of Manipur college student Khundrakpam Tejkumar Singh in 2004.
New Delhi, March 30 : A majority, 61 per cent of the people, support the government move to replace the Medical Council of India (MCI) with a state-appointed regulatory body, according to a pan-India survey on the proposed amendments to the National Medical Commission (NMC) Bill.

The bill also proposes renewal of licences of doctors every three years.

The survey conducted by a citizen engagement platform LocalCircles found that an overwhelming 83 per cent citizens agreed with the clause on the three-year licence renewal, while 12 per cent disagreed and another five per cent did not comment.

The amendments were proposed in the wake of a parliamentary committee's revelation that the country's sole medical regulatory body, MCI, is a "club" of influential medical practitioners who act without any fear of governance and regulations.

The NMC bill allows medical colleges to raise the number of seats without any upper limit or any condition of infrastructure enhancement.

About 82 per cent of the respondents opposed this and only 16 per cent supported this condition in the bill. The poll had a sample size of around 42,000 people.

The NMC bill does not refer to capitation fees, donations, development expenses, etc., charged by private medical colleges. Around 86 per cent of the respondents said they wanted such fees to be banned. Only 9 per cent said it was not a problem.

The NMC bill also frees up the medical colleges and allows them to charge any quantum of fees for 60 per cent of the seats.

Half the citizens who polled said that fees can be raised for 60 per cent seats but there should be an upper cap and 38 per cent said percentage of seats to be sold privately should be lowered.

Only 10 per cent felt it was the right move as it would lead to more investments in medical colleges.
Members of the fifth Chinese peacekeeping police team in Liberia take part in an integrated tactical drill in Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, on Friday in preparation for a variety of emergency situations. (Photo/Xinhua)

A Chinese envoy said Wednesday that United Nations peacekeeping missions must strictly adhere to UN Charter principles and fully respect the sovereignty of host countries.

"Member states and the Secretariat must adapt peacekeeping operations to changing situations on the ground," said Ma Zhaoxu, China's permanent representative to the United Nations, at the "Collective Action to Improve UN Peacekeeping Operations" open debate of the UN Security Council.

"Secretariat support for peacekeeping must be enhanced, with priority given to troop security," he said.

"It was imperative to enhance the capacity of troop-contributing countries, particularly developing countries, and to reinforce partnerships with regional organizations," he added.

Emphasizing that China was the second largest troop-contributing country among Security Council members, and the second largest contributor to the peacekeeping budget, he said China had established an 8,000-strong peacekeeping standby force, and had deployed its first helicopters to a mission in Africa.

The debate was chaired by the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Mark Rutte. The objective of the debate was to discuss ways to improve engagement of all actors in support of UN peacekeeping operations.
New Delhi, March 30 : Union Human Resource Development (HRD) Minister Prakash Javadekar on Friday called the CBSE's decision on reconducting exams for class 10 and 12 leaked papers to be in "wider interest of the students and academics".

"Class 12 examination is important for career and the retest of 12th economics paper will happen on April 25, 2018. I think the confusion should be over and there is clarity. It's in the wider interest of the students and academics, " Javadekar said in a tweet.

"The sensitive government has taken decision in the interest of students. No nation wide retest for class10 mathematics paper barring Delhi, NCR and Haryana, that too if needed.

"But if we have to take the retest of 10th class Math paper in Delhi, NCR and Haryana it will be done only after getting full information and will be conducted in July," he added.

The announcement for the reconduct of exams -- provisionally for class 10 and across the board for class 12 -- was made by Anil Swarup, School Education Secretary at the HRD Ministry, on Friday evening.

Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) had on Wednesday said that it will reconduct the exams for the Maths and Economics paper for class 10 and class 12, after it learnt that question papers for the two subjects were leaked on social media.
Bengaluru, March 30 : Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and BJP President Amit Shah were on Friday accused of violating the model code of conduct, regarding which complaints were filed with the Election Commission.

The opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) alleged that Siddaramaiah gave Rs 2,000 to a priest for performing rituals during a visit to a temple in Mysuru on Friday.

BJP state unit's General Secretary Ravi Kumar said in his complaint to the election panel that Siddaramaiah had given a "bribe" of Rs 2,000 each to two women who welcomed him during a visit in Chamundeshwari Assembly segment in Mysuru on Thursday.

On the other hand, the ruling Congress claimed that Shah gave a cheque of Rs 5 lakh to the mother of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) worker H. Raju who was allegedly murdered in 2016 in Mysuru.

During his two-day trip to Mysuru region, Shah on Friday visited Raju's family here along with Union Minister Ananth Kumar and the party's state unit President B.S. Yeddyurappa.

"Shah and other (BJP) leaders handed over a cheque for Rs 5 lakh to the family, which is in gross violation of the model code of conduct," said a complaint filed against Shah by the state unit Congress leaders.

"It is safe to presume in the light of the ensuing elections that the money was paid with an intent to woo voters," the leaders said.

The Election Commission on Tuesday announced that Assembly polls would be held on May 12 for 224 seats and the votes will be counted on May 15.
In your startups early expansion, its imperative that you find a way to host in-person interviews.

Steven Buchwald of Buchwald & Associates today explained the necessary measures overseas startups should take when seeking employees for operations in the US.

"One of the greatest challenges in expanding to a new market is hiring new employees in that locale," explains Buchwald. "Partially, this is because the culture, regulatory climate, and language are often vastly different  so much so that some startup founders can have difficulty adjusting. The key is to learn and understand the culture, then use the cultural differences to your advantage."

While I would strongly advise hiring a law firm to help you navigate the vast differences in laws and regulations, the cultural difference between your startup and the United States can actually work in your favor, says Buchwald. It can help you target a certain subset of employees that might be looking for something different than the bog-standard for their industry. Used effectively, this can give you a considerable advantage in the hiring process.

The most important thing, Buchwald continues, is to give yourself time to find new staff before establishing your office. Figure out what location will give you the best access to skilled staff  which city or region has the sort of employees and the customer base youre looking for  and start a hiring drive there. Beyond that, it is simply a matter of screening based on both qualifications and their fit for your culture.

In your startups early expansion, its imperative that you find a way to host in-person interviews, says Buchwald. Hiring the right employees is critical to your ventures success. By understanding U.S. culture, embracing the differences between your business and domestic businesses, and positioning yourself effectively, you can easily track down the best and brightest for your organization.

Buchwald, meanwhile, will continue to offer his services to overseas startups, providing them with the legal advice they need to establish themselves in new markets.

About Buchwald & Associates

Founded with the intent of providing legal services to tech startups, Buchwald & Associates focuses on corporate and intellectual property law, Internet law, international mergers & acquisitions, structuring complex transactions, and technology transfer. It also represents individuals in small and mid-sized companies on immigration and naturalization issues. Featured in multiple publications such as Inc., Entrepreneur, Forbes, and TechCrunch, Buchwald & Associates is one of the leading legal authorities for business professionals, particularly entrepreneurs and investors.
Holocaust victim descendant Steve Finkelman and Nazi Descendant Barbel Pfeiffer To comfort all who mourn, To console those who mourn in Zion,To give them beauty for ashes,The oil of joy for mourning,The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness;That they may be called trees of righteousness, The planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified.

NOTE: News media who plan to attend must contact Rozalie Jerome, media coordinator for the event, at 832-287-5057 by noon Friday, April 13.

On Sunday, April 15, in a city still recovering from the ravages of Hurricane Harvey-related flooding, the public will gather on the Rice University campus to remember the Holocaust, honor survivors and their families, listen to personal testimonies of suffering and triumph, remember those who served as liberators, upstanders, and rescuers, and march as sign of their commitment to never forget the price of remaining silent in the face of persecution, prejudice, and indifference. The March of Remembrance opening service features pastors, rabbis, government officials, and community leaders, as well as professors from Texas A&M Galveston and Rice University, not to mention Boy Scouts and the Texas A&M Galveston Corps of Cadets Color Guard.

The order of service includes two exciting pre-events: at 11:30 at the Grand Hall Rice University Memorial Center, live music will begin with Gideon Stanley's band and Ashley Stringer, daughter of Doug Stringer (Somebody Cares Houston). At noon, Dramatic Truth Ballet Dance Theater from Kansas City will perform a specially choreographed Holocaust ballet. Meanwhile, harp and violin music will set the mood in the chapel adjacent to the Grand Hall; a traditional name-reading ceremony will begin at 12:30, with Hillel students joining the adults in reading the names of Holocaust victims. The young adult choir from The Church at Bethel's Family will sing before the shofars blow just prior to 1:00 p.m., when Doug Stringer will open the service. Texas Holocaust and Genocide Commissioner, Rabbi Brian Strauss of Congregation Beth Yeshurun will pronounce a rabbinical blessing during a symbolic stone ceremony between a local survivor and one of her children; that ceremony will symbolize the passing of the torch of testimony of the lessons of the Holocaust to the younger generations. Paul Sarvadi , CEO and co-founder of Insperity and Dr. Victoria Sarvadi will read the mayoral proclamation, and Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo will speak. Consuls, survivors, second and third generation survivor descendants, along with past Holocaust Memorial scholarship winners and current scholarship applicants, as well as liberator descendants and Texas Holocaust & Genocide Commission commissioners, will all be recognized at this significant point in the service. Israeli Consul General Gilad Katz will address the assembly. Survivor and descendant testimonies will follow, featuring beloved local survivor and March advocate Ruth Steinfeld, as well as Steve Finkelman, distinguished leader in the Jewish community and child of Holocaust survivor Wolf Finkelman. Another key speaker will be Luisa Lupprich, a German Christian and repentant Nazi descendant who will express her remorse for her ancestors' role in the Holocaust. Rice University History Professor Carl Caldwell will describe the death marches before Texas A&M History Professor David Lawhon directs the crowd in assembling for the memorial walk. Pastor Walter August and Rabbi Dan Gordon will close the service in prayer and pronounce a blessing over the walk itself.

Everyone will be invited to march to Congregation Emanu El and to attend this years Citywide Yom HaShoah Commemoration, a remembrance event facilitated annually by the Holocaust Museum Houston and the Greater Houston Jewish Federation. The event coincides with the nations annual commemoration of the Holocaust that is established by Congress and led by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. This commemoration is held and honored by the March of Remembrance and global March of Life movement.

There have been marches in over 300 cities in fourteen different nations around the world. This year in the USA, Marches of Remembrance are being held in Arkansas (Russellville, Springdale), Arizona (Prescott, Tucson), California (Crestline, Fullerton, Murrieta), Colorado (Loveland), Florida (Miami, Ocala), Hawaii (Honolulu), South Carolina (Spartanburg), Texas (Arlington, Canton, Dallas, Houston, and Saginaw), and Washington (Bellingham). For more information on the location nearest you, including dates and times, please visit http://www.marchofremembrancehouston.org. Moreover, on May 13-15, 2018, there will also be a March of the Nations in Jerusalem, where participants from around the world will convene. Together with Israelis from all spheres of society, thousands of Christians will walk from the Knesset to Mt. Zion to honor Holocaust survivors and publicly demonstrate a united front saying "No!" to anti-Semitism. May 4-16th is organised with Dr.Richard Booker and Rabbi Dan Gordon as tour educators. Visit http://www.marchofremembrancehouston.org to register and http://www.mon2018.com concerning the Holocaust conference in Jerusalem.

The Holocaust was the state-sponsored, systematic persecution and annihilation of European Jewry by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945. Jews were the primary victimssix million were murdered. However, Roma and Sinti (Gypsies), the mentally and physically disabled, as well as nationalities such as the Poles were also targeted for destruction for racial, ethnic, or national reasons. Millions more, including homosexuals, Jehovahs Witnesses, Soviet prisoners of war, and political dissidents, also suffered grievous oppression and death under Nazi Germany. The March of Remembrance provides a way for the community to come together and to say, Never Again will we be silent!

Visit our website for free registration, videos, details, and more about the March of Remembrance Houston. We are available at: http://marchofremembrancehouston.org

https://www.facebook.com/MarchofRemembrance/
Jason Carr, Senior V.P. for PNC Bank GMA helps support a thriving manufacturing ecosystem across Georgia by providing a forum for sharing valuable ideas and offering access to relevant information, resources, educational and networking opportunities, said Jason Carr, senior vice president and commercial market lead for PNC Bank in Ge

The Georgia Manufacturing Alliance (GMA) is on the move with new members and sponsors joining their team as the excitement grows to strengthen the U.S. manufacturing sector. PNC Bank continues its support as a Developer Sponsor of GMA, further aligning the company with the manufacturing community.

GMA helps support a thriving manufacturing ecosystem across Georgia by providing a forum for sharing valuable ideas and offering access to relevant information, resources, educational and networking opportunities, said Jason Carr, senior vice president and commercial market lead for PNC Bank in Georgia. Through our sponsorship with the GMA, PNC has the opportunity to connect and share invaluable insights and knowledge with GMAs members.

In 2017, PNC Bank was recognized with nine Greenwich Excellence Awards in Middle Market Banking, including Overall Client Satisfaction. With more than 160 years of experience helping manufacturers optimize their performance, PNCs local team works closely with Georgias manufacturers to bring a depth of experience and financial services expertise to the regions communities.

As a Main Street bank, PNC can help GMA members and manufacturers address their most critical challenges, including access to capital, efficient cash cycle management, and risk mitigation, said Jason Moss, CEO of the Georgia Manufacturing Alliance. We are excited to have PNCs support for the manufacturing community and their vision for developing educational programs designed to help our members have a better bottom line.

About PNC Bank: PNC Bank, National Association, is a member of The PNC Financial Services Group, Inc. (NYSE: PNC). PNC is one of the largest diversified financial services institutions in the United States, organized around its customers and communities for strong relationships and local delivery of retail and business banking including a full range of lending products; specialized services for corporations and government entities, including corporate banking, real estate finance and asset-based lending; wealth management and asset management. For information about PNC, visit http://www.pnc.com.

About GMA: The Georgia Manufacturing Alliance (GMA) is a professional membership-based organization founded in 2008 to support Georgias manufacturing community. GMA provides monthly plant tours, educational sessions, tradeshows, and unique networking opportunities designed to help make profitable business connections for its members. The Georgia Manufacturing Directory, Georgia Manufacturing Summit, Georgia Manufacturing Calendar, and BuyFromGA website are additional resources produced by GMA. To learn more please call 770-338-0051 or visit their website http://www.GeorgiaManufacturingAlliance.com .
Alex Ruggieri

SVN | Ramshaw Real Estate, Inc., one of the nations premier net lease brokerage firms, has completed the sale of a 414-unit multifamily portfolio consisting of Campaign House, Hessel on the Park and Westbury Apartments, for $21.25 million in Champaign, Ill. Alex Ruggieri, CRE, CCIM, CIPS, SEC, MBA of SVN | Ramshaw Real Estate, Inc. brokered the transaction.

There is considerable demand for stabilized multi-family assets from the investment community in this area of Illinois. This portfolio, although a bit older, represented a high quality, well maintained affordable housing stock that serves as a great value add for both the buyer and seller, said Ruggieri.

The three-property portfolio is conveniently located just north of Chicago and is in close proximity to the major transportation options, including interstate 57, 72 and 74, Willard Airport and the Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit District. The first property, Campaign House, located at 1511 W. Kirby Avenue, features 84 two- to three-bedroom homes. Hessel on the Park, located at 1862 Valley Road, includes 285 one- to two-bedroom homes. The third property, Westbury Apartments, located at 1801 W. John Street, features 45 three-bedroom homes.

About SVN | Ramshaw Real Estate, Inc.

SVN | Ramshaw Real Estate, Inc. is an independently owned and operated SVN office. The SVN organization is a globally recognized commercial real estate entity united by a shared vision of creating value with clients, colleagues and our communities. The SVN Brand is comprised of over 1,600 Advisors and staff in more than 200 offices across the globe. Our brand pillars represent the transparency, innovation and inclusivity that enables all our advisors to collaborate with the entire real estate industry on behalf of our clients. SVNs unique Shared Value Network is just one of the many ways that SVN advisors create amazing value with our clients, colleagues and communities. For more information, visit http://www.svn.com.
Brian Resendez

SVN | Bluestone & Hockley, one of the nations premier net lease brokerage firms, has completed the sale of a 99,215-square foot, 78-unit, resort & spa spanning across 34 acres in North Bonneville. Brian Resendez, CCIM, Managing Director of SVN | Bluestone & Hockley brokered the sale of Bonneville Hot Spring Resort & Spa for $15.45 million.

FRN Washington, LLC purchased the resort and spa, located at 1252 E. Casacade Drive, with plans to redevelop the property into a rehabilitation treatment center.

The Bonneville Hot Springs Resort and Spa was among the most exciting transactions we have worked on so far. The property was well built and offered many unique amenities that served as a value add for the buyer, said Resendez. The transaction was successful due to strong and creative deal crafting, and always being present to our client in resolving any challenges that surfaced in the deal-making process.

Located 45 minutes outside of Portland, OR, North Bonneville is home to the massive Bonneville Lock Dam and Powerhouse constructed in 1933. Traditionally an area within the Pacific NW that sees limited inventory available to purchase within the hospitality sector in recent year. The town is uniquely positioned along the Colombia George National Scenic Area offering access to hot springs, privacy and serenity.

About SVN | Bluestone & Hockley

SVN | Bluestone & Hockley is an independently owned and operated SVN office. The SVN organization is a globally recognized commercial real estate entity united by a shared vision of creating value with clients, colleagues and our communities. The SVN Brand is comprised of over 1,600 Advisors and staff in more than 200 offices across the globe. Our brand pillars represent the transparency, innovation and inclusivity that enables all our advisors to collaborate with the entire real estate industry on behalf of our clients. SVNs unique Shared Value Network is just one of the many ways that SVN advisors create amazing value with our clients, colleagues and communities. For more information, visit http://www.svn.com.
Spring flea market

Spring is a busy time for flea markets. Kovels has compiled a list of spring flea markets that are well worth a trip. Each of the 9 markets is renowned for its variety of items, negotiable prices, popularity among vendors and shoppers, and great food. Its the best time to find antiques and collectibles that dealers discovered during the winter and a great time to get out and enjoy the bustling hunt for vintage furniture, clothing and jewelry. Kovels Top 9 are listed below, with details on each flea market.

1. Elephants Trunk Country Flea Market

Every Sunday beginning March 25, 2018, through mid-December, including Sundays on all holiday weekends.

490 Danbury Rd. (Rte. 7 / 202), New Milford, Conn.

The Elephants Trunk Country Flea Market season opens their 2018 season on March 25. Treasure hunters, antiques collectors, up-cyclers, farmers and foodies have been flocking to The Trunk since 1976. The early years found dealers set up on the lawn in front of the 19th century Victorian house, which faces Route 7. More than 40 years later, it has become a popular New England tradition. Typical Sundays feature over 500 vendors and an ever-changing mixture of food trucks from all over the east coast. Visitors love its Americana treasures, art, vintage furnishings and cold watermelon sold by the slice. Regular buyers are admitted at 7:00 a.m. for a $2 admission fee, early buyers at 5:45 a.m. for $20, and super-early buyers at 4:45 a.m. for $40. Many treasures await on the field but leave Fido at home  no pets are allowed.

2. Original Round Top Antiques Fair  Spring Antique Week

Monday, April 2 through Saturday, April 7, 2018

4036 Texas Hwy., Round Top, Texas 18954

Everything is bigger in Texas and its premier flea market is no exception. Spring and Fall Antiques Fairs are held during the week that ends on the first Saturdays of April and October each year. This year it runs from April 2 through 7. Its a giant marketplace with 100 percent antique and vintage merchandise, attracting thousands of dealers and tens of thousands of buyers from around the world. There are four locations in Round Top  the Big Red Barn, Big Red Barn Tent, Continental Tent and Carmine Dance Hall. Admission is $10, $20 for a VIP early shopping pass. Parking is free. Find American and European antiques, vintage decorator items and collectibles, all kinds of art, glass, signs, toys, clothes, jewelry, architectural and repurposed items, and much more. There are also more than 50 other shows that start March 22 and run through April 8 in neighboring communities (like Warrenton, Carmine and Shelby) within about 15 miles of Round Top, mostly along Highway 237. Interested? Contact the Round Top Chamber of Commerce or the City of Warrenton.

3. Nashville Flea Market

Nashville Expo Center, Tennessee State Fairgrounds, 625 Smith Avenue, Nashville, Tennessee

Spring Fling: March 23 to 25, 2018

Spring Extravaganza: April 27 to 29, 2018

Spring Fest: May 25 to 27, 2018

Friday 8 a.m. to 5p.m., Saturday 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., Sunday 7 a.m. to 4 p.m.

The Nashville Flea Market is considered by many to be one of the top ten flea markets in the country. Its been operating for almost 60 years. With an average of 2,000 booths, dealers and vendors from 30 states offer items every month. It advertises a huge and unique selection of antique furniture, dishware, clothing, rugs, jewelry, leather goods, more, as well as specialty foods. One thing that sets the Nashville Flea Market apart from other flea markets is its monthly themes. Past themes have included things like retro revival, romance junkies, down memory lane, vintage galore, Americana cool and old-school rules. Admission is free.

4. Rose Bowl Flea Market

The Rose Bowl, Pasadena, California

Second Sunday of every month: April 8, May 13, and June 10, 2018

This gathering on the second Sunday of every month is considered one of the best on the West Coast. It attracts as many as 2,500 vendors and 20,000 shoppers. Find clothes, shoes, jewelry, sunglasses, ceramics, glass, furniture, pictures, crafts, keepsakes, art, fabric, bikes, costumes, music  every imaginable type of merchandise. Its open rain or shine. Admission: Special preview VIP admission from 5:00am - 7:00am at $20.00 per person; early admission from 7:00am - 8:00am at $15.00; and regular admission at 9:00 is $9.00. Children under 12 are free with an adult. No credit cards. Theres no admission after 3 p.m., plenty of free parking, lots of food from cheeseburgers to sushi, and even celebrity sightings.

5. Long Beach Antique Flea Market

Long Beach Veterans Stadium, 4901 E. Conant St., Long Beach, California

Third Sunday of every month: April 15, Special 5th Sunday Super Sale April 29, May 20, and June 17, 2018

The Long Beach Antique Market calls itself The Flea Market with Style. Over 800 sellers feature a huge selection of antiques, collectibles and everything chic, cheap, unique and vintage, all at bargain prices. Find collectibles, home decor, jewelry, furniture, vintage clothing and more. The sale is spread out over 20 acres at the Veterans Stadium in Long Beach. Come rain or shine. Admission 6:30 until 2:30 is $6.00; early admission from 5:30 to 6:30 a.m., $12; children under 12 are free. Theres food and free parking, too.

6. Renningers Kutztown Antique and Collectors Extravaganza

April 26 to 28, 2018 and June 28 to 30, 2018

740 Noble St., Kutztown, Pennsylvania

8 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Renningers Kutztown hosts a flea market extravaganza three times a year, April, June and September. The extravaganza is set up behind Renningers Antique & Farmers Market, with exhibitors outside, under tents and in two 350-foot long pavilions. The Indoor Antique Market and the Indoor Farmer's Market are also open during the Extravaganza. Admission is $10 on Thursday, $6 on Friday and $4 on Saturday. Dress for all weather; the show runs rain or shine.

7. Springfield Antique Show & Flea Market

April 21 & 22, May 18, 19 & 20 Extravaganza, and June 16 & 17, 2018

Clark County Fairgrounds, Springfield, Ohio

Saturday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sunday 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

The Springfield Antiques Show and Flea Market has been called One of Americas Best by CNN and some top publications. Held 9 times a year at the Clark County Fairgrounds in Springfield, Ohio, it is known for a vast selection of antique and vintage items, as well as midcentury modern pieces. In addition to the regular shows, there are Extravaganza weekends in May and September that feature over 2,000 vendors, 20,000 customers and lots and lots of food. They pride themselves on a unique mix, saying to expect the unexpected vintage, antique, re- & up-cycled, artisanal goods and locally sourced producers.

8. D.C. Big Flea & Antiques Market

April 28 & 29, 2018

Dulles Expo Center

Chantilly, Virginia

Sat. 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., Sun. 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The D.C. Flea is the mid-Atlantics largest indoor antiques and collectibles flea market. Shop for anything from fine antiques to vintage clothing and accessories at over 700 booths in two huge halls. Dealers showcase a wide variety of merchandise including porcelain, glass, silver, jewelry, collectibles from all eras, art and lots of midcentury modern. Admission, $10, is valid for the whole weekend.

9. Brimfield Antiques and Collectibles Show

May 8 to 13, 2018

Brimfield Town Hall, 23 Main St., Brimfield, Massachusetts

Hours vary but most are from early morning to late afternoon

Make your way to central Massachusetts to visit the market that attracts over 50,000 people three times a year. The six-day Brimfield Flea Market hosts Tuesday-through-Sunday shows each year in May, July, and September. Over twenty independent fields of dealers make up the market, and they have a staggered opening and closing schedule. Some fields have an admission fee of about $5 but most are free. This large market, stretched along a mile on both sides of Route 20, is an exciting tradition that attracts visitors from many states and countries.

Spring flea markets await thousands of antique enthusiasts and collectors  be sure to plan your visit soon. Kovels.com has more information and tips on navigating flea markets, negotiating smart deals and identifying original objects. Kovels booklet, Flea Market Strategies: How to Shop, Buy, and Bargain the 21st-Century Way, has tips on what to wear, what to bring along and how to negotiate. Also included, tips on spotting fakes, advice on how to pay for purchases, and a list of the latest smartphone apps to help buyers shop, share and ship. Available at Kovels.com.

Terry Kovel is Americas foremost authority on antiques and collectibles. She is the well-known columnist and author of more than 100 books on antiques and collecting. The 2018 / 50th anniversary edition of Kovels Antiques & Collectibles Price Guide is currently available at Kovel.com and local bookstores. Terry Kovel will discuss antiques and collectibles topics with accredited media. Photographs are available. Contact pr(at)kovels(dot)com.

About Kovels.com

Kovels.com, created by Terry Kovel and her daughter, Kim Kovel, provides collectors and researchers with up-to-date and accurate information on antiques and collectibles. The company was founded in 1953 by Terry Kovel and her late husband, Ralph. Since then, the Kovels have written some of Americas most popular books and articles about antiques, including the best-selling annual Kovels Antiques & Collectibles Price Guide. The website, Kovels.com, online since 1998, offers more than a million free prices, and includes a free weekly email, Kovels Komments. It gives readers a birds-eye view of the market through the latest news, auction reports, a Marks Dictionary, readers questions and answers and much more.

Contact Information:

Liz Lillis

216.752.2252

Pr(at)kovels(dot)com
Ivy League International, Ltd., the parent company of AA Auto Protection, is celebrating 29 years in business by actively pursuing growth opportunities. With the vehicle service contract (VSC) industry poised for substantial growth in the next six years, the company is looking to take advantage of this trend.

We are very happy to celebrate this significant milestone, stated James Fortino, COO of AA Auto Protection. Were also excited about taking the business to the next level by potentially joining in on the mergers and acquisitions currently happening in the industry.

Ivy League International sold vehicle service contracts in dealerships between 1989 and 2003. In 2004, they launched the direct to consumer platform known today as AA Auto Protection. Over the past 39 years, Ivy League International has been a stable, innovative force in the vehicle service contract industry where many other businesses have struggled or faltered.

AA Auto Protection has maintained an A rating with the Better Business Bureau (BBB). The company attributes this to top notch customer service. They have also emphasized working hand in hand with the BBB to come to satisfactory resolutions for customers.

From the beginning, AA Auto Protection has utilized systems that have helped them stand out and succeed within the industry. They were one of the first companies to allow consumers to purchase vehicle service contracts online without needing to talk to a salesperson. They have also brought in the necessary technology so that their sales force has the flexibility to work remotely. And in 2005, they implemented A.I. within their software to provide customers with the best possible pricing options. As the industry has changed, they have strived to implement those changes to ensure the best possible experience for their employees as well as their customers.

According to a recent report by investment banking firm, Colonnade Advisors, the vehicle service contract industry totals at $33 billion in yearly sales. This figure represents a large and important component of overall automotive sales and profitability.

Since 2010, more than 40 companies in the VSC industry have changed ownership, which reflects the trend towards healthier, well-run businesses. Vehicle service contract sales are also on the rise for both new and used cars causing private equity firms to take notice. A positive outlook through 2024 is also spurring increased acquisitions and investments throughout the industry. These factors are expected to lead to increased product distribution and improve sales and revenue margins.

We see 2018 as a historic year for our company, says Daniel Rorapaugh, owner and founder of AA Auto Protection. With the changes going on in the industry, we expect many opportunities to come our way.

Mr. Rorapaugh started his venture into entrepreneurship at an early stage. He attended Neshaminy High School in Langhorne, Pennsylvania, where they offered an entrepreneurial program. Members of this program attended school for half the day, then worked for a local business for the remainder of the day. The company Mr. Rorapaugh worked for made dog collars, and he assisted in the engineering of the machine that made the actual collars. It was this experience that led him to start his own business and consistently seek out additional entrepreneurial opportunities.

Ivy League International seeks to benefit from the positive trends occurring in the industry. Their goal is to become a driving force within the industry while continuing to grow and expand their business.

For more information about AA Auto Protection, visit https://www.aaautoprotection.com/.

About AA Auto Protection

AA Auto Protection, whose parent company is Ivy League International, Ltd., is a vehicle service contract broker who is dedicated to helping their customers obtain the highest possible level of coverage within their budget. The company originated in 2004 and is highly committed to providing honest and fair service to consumers. To this day, they are one of the few companies that work directly with consumers online to protect them from unexpected and often expensive auto repair costs.
Encore Energy, Inc., through its wholly-owned subsidiary, Encore Operating Kentucky LLC, has plans to drill multiple horizontal wells off-set to proven production and recent permit activity in the Upper Devonian Berea Oil Sandstone play of Lawrence County, Kentucky.

The Company has made a continued and growing investment to de-risk its assets and preparation for multiple horizontal well drilling operations in Lawrence County, said Steve Stengell, Encores President CEO. We remain extremely confident that the economic viability of this project and the execution of Encores business model should attract institutional and industry investment capital to further de-risk and support a large scale, sustained horizontal oil well program in the future, providing much needed jobs and economic growth to the most rural areas of the Commonwealth, added Stengell.

We believe that oil prices have made a tremendous recovery and are in the infant stages of a long-term bull market, said Joseph Hooper, Encores Executive Vice President and Director. This price outlook is important because it dramatically improves todays economic yield while enhancing tomorrows financial exit strategy, added Hooper.

Oil and gas exploration, development and production and related investments involves a high degree of risk, uncertainty and are only suitable for qualified industry participant(s), institutional investors and SEC defined accredited investors who are sophisticated in making investment and business decisions. No assurances can be made as it relates to production, reserves, income, profit, projected timelines or any other estimates. The information herein may contain forward-looking statements and actual results may vary.

For more information, please contact Joseph Hooper at (270) 842-1242, ext. 224 or at Joseph.Hooper@encore-energy.com

Assumptions, Disclaimer and Cautionary Statement: The information herein may contain forward-looking statements, and actual results may vary. Words such as "estimate", "will," "intend," "continue," "target," "expect," "achieve," "strategy," "future," "may," "goal," or other comparable words or phrases or the negative of those words, and other words of similar meaning indicate forward-looking statements and important factors which could affect actual results. Forward-looking statements are made based upon Management's current expectations and beliefs concerning future developments and their potential effects upon Encore Energy, Inc. Oil and gas investments involve a high degree of risk, uncertainty and are only suitable for qualified Accredited (SEC Definition) investors who are sophisticated in making business decisions and can bear the financial loss of their entire investment, while delivering a turnkey profit to the Company for proving the prospect development, lease acquisition, drilling, completion, engineering and ongoing production operations. The Company does not provide tax advice and investors should seek the advice of their tax professional. Any tax and/or other information herein is provided for illustration purposes only and may include estimates that are uncertain and subject to change. It is impossible to accurately forecast profitability, production, reserves, income, expenses and timelines for any project. No assurances can be made as it relates to reserves, production, income, profit, prices, timelines and/or other estimates. Actual production and results are beyond the control of management. In the event that commercial production is achieved, it may take many years for the investor to recoup his or her investment. The Company's lease acreage position under is subject to change and includes acreage under lease, Farmout agreement, verbal agreement, renewals, expired terms and any other prospective acreage in which the Company has communicated and/or negotiated with the landowner the leasing of oil and gas rights, now or in the future, and the lease / mineral owner has leased or communicated their intent to lease there mineral lease rights to the Company. It is important for qualified investors to acknowledge the fact that the US government provides them with tax savings (100% IDC tax deduction) to mitigate or at least off-set some of the financial risk associated with domestic oil and gas investments. This is not an offer to sell or buy a security. An offer shall only be made pursuant to SEC Regulation D, Rule 506(c) by a private placement offering memorandum, and this is not a private placement offering memorandum.
Source: Khmer Times

A helicopter is deploying on the last day of the joint military exercise (Golden Dragon 2018) in Kampong Speus Samroang Tong district. KT/ Ven Rathavong

In a live-fire exercise or LFX, which is part of the Cambodian-Chinese joint military exercise Golden Dragon 2018, a helicopter deploys soldiers to rescue hostages. This took place in Kampong Speus Samroang Tong district on March29, at the end of the two-week exercise.

The exercise had helicopters and armoured personnel carriers simulate a military intervention involving hostages. To make the scenario more realistic, the tests of weapons and weapon systems may require the limited use of real ammunition.

The exercise started March 17, a date chosen to celebrate 60 years of diplomatic relations between Cambodia and China. The Golden Dragon is a dry-run of the required response to an outside threat to the security and population of the Kingdom.

It aims to strengthen the alliance of both military forces in combating terrorism; maintain stability; assist in disaster relief; and, in a general sense, safeguard peace and security nationally and globally.

The Cambodia Defense Minister General Tea Banh and Chinese Ambassador to Cambodia Xiong Bo were at the site to witness the exercise and its command structure.
As Attorney General I will push for ethics reform and stronger enforcement of the laws we have on the books. I will set up a triple-check ethics review system to include an independent ethics oversight committee and judicial review to restore trust back to the Attorney Generals office.

Constance Anastopoulo is an experienced litigator and law school ethics professor. Voted Best Professor by the Charleston School of Law students, Anastopoulos commitment to a better South Carolina motivates her work with future lawyers and her work to improve ethics in politics in South Carolina. This breadth of experience and demonstrated success makes Anastopoulo uniquely qualified to be a great South Carolina Attorney General.

I seek the position of Attorney General because the people of South Carolina deserve an Attorney General who, as the chief law enforcement officer of the state, enforces the law instead of interfering with the process, said Anastopoulo. As Attorney General I will push for ethics reform and stronger enforcement of the laws we have on the books. I will set up a triple-check ethics review system to include an independent ethics oversight committee and judicial review to restore trust back to the Attorney Generals office.

Anastopoulo will work to strengthen the enforcement of laws against domestic violence and will devote the Attorney Generals resources to deny domestic abusers access to guns. She will also work to enhance mental illness reporting, particularly in relation to limiting these individuals access to firearms. Using her experience as a litigator, she will take up the opioid epidemic fight to hold drug manufacturers responsible for the devastation caused by their addictive drugs.

About Attorney Constance Anastopoulo

Constance Anastopoulo is a first generation Greek American, who is proud of the example of hard work provided by her parents. She is a graduate of the University of Virginia and obtained her J.D. from the University of North Carolina School of Law. Upon graduation, Anastopoulo received a prestigious grant from the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation to work with women in prison. This experience was formative in her commitment to serving those who often have no voice. She joined the Charleston School of Law Faculty in 2007 teaching Evidence, Torts, Ethics, and Insurance Law. Prior to joining the Charleston School of Law, Anastopoulo served for fifteen years as a senior civil litigator at the Anastopoulo Law Firm, LLC, where she litigated numerous cases and managed the appellate practice for the firm, appearing before the S.C. Court of Appeals, the S.C. Supreme Court, and the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. Additionally, she served as Plaintiffs counsel in the seminal case In Re: OxyContin representing hundreds of litigants whose lives had been impacted by addiction to OxyContin.

Constance Anastopoulo has been active in community service and has served on the Board of Directors of My Sisters House, Inc., the Advisory Board of the Women and Gender Studies Program at the College of Charleston, as Vice President of the Charleston Area League of Women Voters, and is past president of Daughters of Penelope Philanthropy, which operates Penelope House, a shelter for women fleeing domestic abuse.

Constance Anastopoulo has been married to her husband, Akim Anastopoulo, for 25 years and they have two daughters, ages 22 and 17. She resides in Charleston.
Many older adults find it difficult to keep up with regular housework as they age. This can lead to clutter, stress and safety risks. Home Instead Senior Care reminds families of a few simple tips for spring cleaning that can help seniors stay safe in their own homes.

There are many reasons staying organized and keeping the home clean become more challenging as people age. Mobility issues, cognitive disorders and mental health problems, such as depression, can all impact an older adults ability and desire to keep up with housework. In some cases, seniors unwittingly create safety risks in their homes by holding on to belongings they no longer need.

A few easy chores, such as donating items that are no longer used, organizing the medicine cabinet or giving the home a deep cleaning can create a safer, healthier environment for a loved one, said Lakelyn Hogan, gerontologist at Home Instead Senior Care. Spring cleaning season is a good time to make small changes that can have a big impact on an older adults health and happiness.

Companionship can be helpful for older adults that need to de-clutter their homes. If family members arent local or available to help, a caregiver can provide help with light housework. As spring cleaning season begins, Home Instead reminds families of specific steps to take to help older adults keep their homes safe and organized:



Make a checklist. Write down everything that needs to get done. Tasks might include wiping out the refrigerator, removing clutter from walkways, replacing light bulbs, and more.

Schedule it. Block off time specifically for spring cleaning. This could all be done in one weekend, or as one chore at a time over several weeks.

Enlist help. The more people that can help, the better. If family is unavailable, a professional caregiver can assist with light housekeeping tasks like vacuuming and laundry.

Involve your senior loved one. Despite any limitations an older loved one may have, keep them involved in the cleaning process. Have them handle simple tasks while the rest of the home is being taken care of.

De-clutter, then clean. A lifetime of belongings often results in a cluttered and unsafe environment. The answer may not be to immediately throw all of the items away. Its important to understand why somone holds on to a particular piece before deciding what to do with it. Remember to tackle clutter first - then clean.

Identifying signs of needed assistance and getting care are important in ensuring an older adults ability to age in a safe environment. For more information, visit CareGiverStress.com.

# # #

ABOUT HOME INSTEAD SENIOR CARE

Founded in 1994 in Omaha, Nebraska, by Lori and Paul Hogan, the Home Instead Senior Care network provides personalized care, support and education to help enhance the lives of aging adults and their families. Today, this network is the world's leading provider of in-home care services for seniors, with more than 1,100 independently owned and operated franchises that provide more than 60 million hours of care throughout the United States and 11 other countries. Local Home Instead Senior Care offices employ approximately 70,000 CAREGiversSM worldwide who provide basic support services that enable seniors to live safely and comfortably in their own homes for as long as possible. The Home Instead Senior Care network partners with clients and their family members to help meet varied individual needs. Services span the care continuum  from providing personal care to specialized Alzheimers care and hospice support. Also available are family caregiver education and support resources.
Providence office team members, left to right: Lisa do Rego, Brendan Kenahan, Ashley Adams, Melissa Pruett, Jennifer Dubois. We are thrilled that we have so many qualified and dedicated people joining our teameveryone is excited about the extra bandwidth and were looking to drive past our growth goals this year. --Tom DeCotis

DeCotis Specialty Insurance, an industry leader in surplus and excess insurance, announced the addition of new team members to their Braintree, MA and Providence offices. Joining their Braintree office are Michael Yanikoski, Ryan Smith, and Keisha Williams. In addition, five new members have joined the Providence office: Lisa do Rego, Brendan Kenahan, Ashley Adams, Melissa Pruett, and Jennifer Dubois. The newest members of DeCotis are joining the agency at an opportune time as the agency continues to eye growth in the Northeast and beyond.

We may sell insurance products every day, but we know that at our core, we are a service business. In order to properly serve our agent customers, we need to continually strengthen our bench to make sure that front line producers and underwriters have support that allows them to respond to business coming in. We are thrilled that we have so many qualified and dedicated people joining our teameveryone is excited about the extra bandwidth and were looking to drive past our growth goals this year. With our current pool of talent, anything is possible. The proof will be in our customers feedback as we move forward through 2018, but the initial response has been great. Were really looking forward to the coming year.  Tom DeCotis

The Braintree office will gain considerable experience from Ryan Smith and Michael Yanikoski, both joining as Brokerage Account Managers, and Keisha Williams who joins the agency as a new Customer Service Representative. And the main Providence office will be further strengthened by the skill sets of Ashley Adams (Marketing Associate), Jennifer Dubois (Underwriting Assistant), Brendan Kenahan (Broker), Melissa Pruett (Small Business Unit Customer Service Representative), and Lisa do Rego (Administrative Assistant).

The addition of these eight team members will further cement DeCotis reputation as an experienced resource for retail agents who are seeking skilled and knowledgeable advice in order to place their clients policies. And guided by forward-thinking leadership, the continued growth of the agency ensures that DeCotis is poised to meet this need.

ABOUT DECOTIS

DeCotis Specialty Insurance is a surplus lines wholesaler, working directly with independent and tied licensed insurance agents. DeCotis provides retail agents with access to surplus lines and specialty markets and assists agents in selecting the appropriate solutions for their customers. The agency was founded in 1989, opening their first office in Rhode Island. In response to the repeated growth that the agency observed with their Massachusetts and Northern New England retail agents, a second branch was opened in the Boston area in 2007. Today, DeCotis continues to thrive and has expanded their footprint beyond their New England roots.

http://www.decotis.com
Bay Area cloud consulting pioneer, Foghorn Consulting, Inc. has achieved Amazon Web Services (AWS) DevOps Competency status. This designation recognizes Foghorn Consultings expertise in DevOps best practices, tools, and delivery of consistent customer success. Foghorns process, procedures and performance were analyzed to quantify their history of building, testing and deploying applications on AWS, while providing strong outcomes and reducing time to market for their clients.

Achieving the AWS DevOps Competency differentiates Foghorn Consulting as an AWS Partner Network (APN) member that provides specialized demonstrated technical proficiency and proven customer success with specific focus on strategy, planning, execution and managed cloud services. Foghorn has evangelized and delivered on turning the modern IT department into a silo free, dynamic tool to unleash innovation for their clients and make IT a profit center. During the nearly ten years of Foghorns existence, they have taken pride in a unique delivery of application migration and transformation capabilities that provide continuous integration, automated deployment and take advantage of the clouds elastic, highly available infrastructure.

We are honored to have achieved AWS DevOps Competency status, said Alex Roosakos, CEO of Foghorn Consulting. We take great pride in providing elegant, efficient and custom cloud architecture solutions for our clients who are deploying applications on AWS. The Foghorn team will continue to innovate with AWS and empower enterprise to benefit from the highly secure and available cloud infrastructure.

Foghorn CEO Alex Roosakos and CTO Peter Roosakos will be on hand for the upcoming AWS Summit San Francisco with other members of the Foghorn team on April 4, 2018. Cloud professionals and IT media professionals can attend free of charge. Foghorn Consulting is a Sponsor of this AWS Summit and they can be located in the Expo hall at the Moscone West in Booth #1418.

Foghorns flagship offering, FogOpsSM, leverages modern DevOps principles to maximize the speed to market and capabilities of the cloud, while optimizing spend. FogOpsSM provides customers with the hands-on engineering capabilities, ChatOps tooling, and Infrastructure as Code modules to ensure that both build and run activities are efficient and successful.

FogOpsSM presents a distinct delivery model at a very affordable price point that allows our clients to benefit from our deep cloud expertise as well as from our investment in best practices automation, shares Alex Roosakos. FogOpsSM provides an effortless way for companies to receive the value and benefits of the AWS DevOps Competency without having to build this capability themselves.

AWS is enabling scalable, flexible, and cost-effective solutions from startups to global enterprises. To support the seamless integration and deployment of these solutions, AWS established the AWS Competency Program to help customers identify Consulting and Technology Partners in the APN with deep industry experience and expertise.

About Foghorn Consulting, Inc.

Foghorn Consulting was founded in 2008 with a mission to ensure that cloud computing initiatives deliver maximum value for its customers. Based in the Silicon Valley, Foghorn provides domain expertise in strategy, planning, execution and managed cloud services to high-growth and enterprise companies seeking a cloud partner. Our team of DevOps engineers, SREs and certified cloud architects bring over 20 years of domain expertise to ensure your cloud initiatives are a success.
Yaydo

After teaming up with Future on his LX Xander produced single "Insurgents", Yaydo returns with his brand new single and video for "UBETCHA". The track was jointly produced by LX Xander & Centaur Beatz and features Yaydo snapping off verses while dodging shots inside a laser-tag arena. The video can be seen online at http://www.youtube.com/ghostcraftmusic and is the new single from Yaydo on Ghostcraft.

The track is more or less a parody of the state of rap these days, the simplistic lyrical styles alongside a bass-heavy beat. In almost an '8 Mile' sort of twist I use the phrase 'Ubetcha' as a self-aware jab at myself but at the same time using that same ammunition to make it cool," commented Yaydo. "I had an absolute blast getting random people and fans in on the shooting of the video and their genuine enthusiasm reflected in the video, Im very much excited for the release both for myself and for everyone that was involved. Originally the track started life as a joke, a dare of sorts, my brother and I were having a laugh about the odd and very on the nose nature of some of the sayings we have here in northern Minnesota. He had bet me that I couldnt use one of those sayings on a track and make it a banger, haha well I tried my best and after a few hours of trying to find just the right phrase to use we settled on that one and Im happy to say Im pretty pleased with the results.

Hailing from Minnesota, 22-year old Yaydo has been rising the ranks of hip-hop's freshman. Emerging on the scene with his "Mama's Know Best" video, which quickly racked up nearly 100,000 Youtube views before Yaydo had ever stepped foot on stage to perform for the first time. With his second release, Yaydo dropped "The Red Room" featuring Hopsin, which went viral collecting over 1 million plays and becoming a staple of Spotify playlists. Since then Yaydo has stepped up his social media game interacting with his 15,000 followers on Instagram and another 13,000 on Twitter on a daily basis. With his combination of high-energy, rapid-fire raps, and trap banging beats, Yaydo is making his case to become head of the freshman class.
Patrick van den Bossche "Patrick has a rare blend of financial, analytical and business acumen with a passion for connecting with people uniquely qualifying him for this leadership role," said David Tedesco, Realty Executives International CEO.

Realty Executives International, a leading real estate brand and one of the largest and most established global real estate franchises, named Patrick van den Bossche as its new president. This appointment rounds out the global real estate firms leadership team focused on aggressive network growth and expansion.

It is an honor to lead an organization with the powerful combination of a strong, 50+ year legacy and forward-leaning vision, states van den Bossche. Realty Executives has its roots in market disruption, which is what attracted many of our top performing brokers and agents to the company. I am excited to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with these incredible leaders and professionals to move the brand forward into its next stage of growth.

Van den Bossche was born in Rotterdam, Netherlands, immigrating as a teenager to the United States with his parents who were immigrants from Indonesia. He brings with him 30 years of experience as a C-suite executive managing fast growth, start-up and next-growth companies. His track record of success leading companies across multiple industries includes Barrett-Jackson Auction Company, Echo Automotive Inc., SPI Holdings Inc., and Modtech Holdings Inc. He is also an industry insider, getting his real estate license in 2005 and leveraging it throughout his business dealings.

We took our time in selecting a President for Realty Executives and are confident we have found the right individual to catalyze our growth while nurturing a community-centric culture that focuses on our brokers and agents, said David Tedesco, Realty Executives International CEO. Patrick has a rare blend of financial, analytical and business acumen with a passion for connecting with people that uniquely qualifies him for this leadership role.

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About Realty Executives Intl. Svcs. LLC

Established in 1965, Realty Executives International is one of the largest and most established real estate franchise systems in the world, with over 8,000 agents and 500 offices globally. The company offers disruptive pricing models particularly attractive to top performing agents. Its unrivaled mobile technology, business tools, training and concierge service are coupled with protected territories and financing for qualified franchisees. The Scottsdale-based, privately held company has been ranked as a leader in the real estate industry by publications like Entrepreneur, Success and Inc. magazines. For additional company information visit http://www.RealtyExecutives.com.
We want everyone to be highly engaged. When your people are engaged, your customers, company, and employees reap the benefits.

Relus has been awarded a 2018 Top Workplaces honor by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The list is based on employee feedback gathered through a third-party survey administered by research partner Energage, LLC (formerly WorkplaceDynamics), a leading provider of technology-based employee engagement tools. The anonymous survey measures several aspects of workplace culture, including alignment, execution, and connection, just to name a few.

Top Workplaces is more than just recognition, said Doug Claffey, CEO of Energage. Our research shows organizations that earn the award attract better talent, experience lower turnover, and are better equipped to deliver bottom-line results. Their leaders prioritize and carefully craft a healthy workplace culture that supports employee engagement.

The Relus leadership team prioritizes hiring elite talent and holding them accountable to the values that drive the entire organization. A few perks available to employees include professional development, daily snacks, community outreach programs, weekly lunch and learns, top-of-the-line massage chairs, company-paid Teslas (for overachieving sales reps), and access to the in-house startup incubator, 22 Tech Park.

When youve built a team like the one weve created at Relus, its important to retain them and help them continue to be their best, says Mark Metz, CEO of Relus. We want everyone to be highly engaged. When your people are engaged, your customers, company, and employees reap the benefits.

Becoming a Top Workplace isnt something organizations can buy, Claffey said. Its an achievement organizations have worked for and a distinction that gives them a competitive advantage. Its a big deal.

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About Relus

Relus Cloud helps customers prepare for growth, eliminate uncertainty, train their technical teams, and move faster in a cloud-first world. Our core competencies are focused on Migrations, DevOps and Data and Analytics, with an emphasis on strategy consulting, architecture and design, cloud migration, cloud native development, culture change, managed services and talent delivery. For more information, visit http://www.reluscloud.com.

About Energage, LLC

Headquartered in Exton, Pa., Energage (formerly known as WorkplaceDynamics) is a leading provider of technology-based employee engagement tools that help leaders to unlock potential, inspire performance, and achieve amazing results within their organizations. The research partner behind the Top Workplaces program, Energage has surveyed more than 47,000 organizations representing well over 16 million employees in the United States.
Danny Lee, PhD, ME, Senior Vice President of Blue Oak Energy Our team is driven by the inevitability of solar energy, and renewables in general, said Lee. Theres nothing more gratifying than doing what we do best, which is designing real world solutions that allow our developer, IPP, and EPC customers to put more solar on the grid.

Danny Lee, PhD, has been named senior vice president of Blue Oak Energy, a nationally recognized solar engineering firm and wholly owned subsidiary of Coronal Energy. Now in his 13th year with Blue Oak, Dr. Lee has become synonymous with the organization, having started his solar career as engineering manager during Blue Oaks first year of operation. Since then he has headed business development while assembling a team of engineers and designers that have delivered over 2.4 GW of commercial and utility-scale PV systems across North America and abroad. Over the past two years, Dr. Lee has also overseen Blue Oaks integration with Coronal Energy, a leading solar independent power producer (IPP) that incorporates Blue Oaks engineering capabilities within its end-to-end development model.

Danny Lee was the clear choice for leadership at Blue Oak Energy, said Jamie Evans, executive vice president of Coronal Energy. He is respected throughout our industry as a solar engineering veteran who combines his intellect and hands-on experience with an easy, customer-centric demeanor that has always typified the Blue Oak brand.

As senior vice president, Dr. Lee manages the daily operations of the firm, including leadership of a multidisciplinary civil, structural, and electrical engineering team focused on the planning and design of commercial and utility-scale solar projects as large as 300 megawatts.

Our team is driven by the inevitability of solar energy, and renewables in general, said Lee. Theres nothing more gratifying than doing what we do best, which is designing real-world solutions that allow our developer, IPP, and EPC customers to put more solar on the grid.

Prior to joining Blue Oak Energy in 2006, Dr. Lee worked as a research assistant at the University of California at Davis, while earning his PhD in mechanical and aeronautical engineering. Published in university and scholarly engineering journals, he also holds a BS in mechanical engineering from the University of California at Berkeley, a MS in mechanical engineering from Portland State University, and is the inventor of a patented motion sensor.

About Blue Oak Energy

Blue Oak Energy is a comprehensive solar engineering services firm supporting utility scale, commercial, agricultural, and industrial clients since 2007. Our ground-breaking team of multi-disciplinary engineersknown for their technical due diligence and delivery of challenging designs for prestigious clientshas supported more than 2.4GW of operating solar facilities, including storage projects, globally. Blue Oak Energy is a wholly owned subsidiary of Coronal Energy, powered by Panasonic. Additional information can be found at BlueOakEnergy.com

About Coronal Energy

Coronal Energy, powered by Panasonic, is a leading independent power producer providing turnkey solar energy solutions tailored for diverse enterprise customers across North America, including utilities, corporations, and the public sector. It unites the financial strength of a Fortune Global 500 company (#110) and Panasonics award-winning history of solar innovation and sustainability leadership with the project development, finance, engineering, construction, and asset management experience of Coronal Energy. The result is smarter solar that translates to smarter business for customers. The collective experience of Coronal Energy, powered by Panasonic, includes projects in 40 states totaling 2.3 GW, with more than 3.4 GW of greenfield and brownfield projects under construction/contract or in development. For more, please visit CoronalEnergy.com and follow us @CoronalEnergy on Twitter.

For further information, please contact Coronal Energy

Val Newcomb, Vice President of Marketing & Communications

434-299-0759

vnewcomb@coronalenergy.com
Everest Rehabilitation Hospitals Announces a New Hospital in Northwest Arkansas "We firmly believe that patients thrive exponentially when their environment and their care far exceed their expectations."

Everest Rehabilitation Hospitals, LLC, today announced the plans to construct its fourth physical rehabilitation hospital in the ever-growing Northwest Arkansas region. . . home to Walmart, J.B. Hunt and Tyson.

Everests modern comprehensive medical rehabilitation hospital will be constructed on 4.96 acres, just south of Bentonville, Arkansas. The hospital site is only one block east of Interstate 49 at the intersection of S. Dixieland Rd and S. Pleasant Crossing Blvd in Rogers, Arkansas. The construction is planned for completion in April of 2019. Among the amenities, the approximate 40,000 square foot hospital includes numerous uncommon details and 36 private patient bedrooms and baths designed as if you were in a luxury hotel versus a hospital. All of Everest Rehabilitation Hospitals are identical and pre-designed for the expansion of an additional 18 private bedrooms as the market dictates. The hospital also includes spacious, state-of-the-art equipped inpatient and outpatient gyms, an outdoor mobility courtyard for therapeutic use, aqua therapy, a fully furnished training apartment with kitchen and bath, several family gathering areas, an open dining hall, in-house dialysis and an in-house pharmacy. The hospital will serve patients recovering from injuries and illness or living with disabilities and chronic medical conditions.

Everests $23 million-dollar rehabilitation hospital project will create approximately 140 direct jobs and provide for an $8 million-dollar a year payroll to the community. Everest Rehabilitation Hospital will feature a comprehensive and interdisciplinary physician-led team of rehabilitation therapists focused on increasing patient strength and endurance and improving quality of life in a modern, naturally lit setting. We are extremely excited to be a part of the NWA community. We firmly believe that patients thrive exponentially when their environment and their care far exceed their expectations. Our enormous level of care in our acute rehabilitation hospital setting cannot be provided at other levels of care such as skilled nursing facilities or nursing homes, Jay Quintana, Everest Rehabilitations CEO said. We provide one to one therapy, five to seven days a week, daily medical visits by rehab physicians and a strong nurse patient ratio that contributes to the optimal outcomes and the highest quality of care.

Everest Rehabilitation Hospitals therapy programs are led by a physician specifically trained in medical rehabilitation and provide for around the clock registered nursing care to patients overcoming a stroke, brain injury, neurological deficits, orthopedic conditions, pulmonary disease, spinal cord injury, amputations and other medically complex conditions.

Everest Rehabilitation Hospitals, LLC is based in Dallas, Texas

http://www.everestrehab.com

Jay Quintana, CEO

Jquintana(at)everestrehab.com

469-713-1145
Rishika Maitra (center) received the Women of Innovation Award in the Youth Innovation and Leadership category. She is pictured with her parents Subhajit (left) and Sanchita Maitra. We have a growing network of nearly 700 women whom weve honored over the past fourteen years. CTC is committed to cultivating a diverse and inclusive tech talent pipeline in our state.

Fifty women from across Connecticut were honored for their innovation and leadership during the fourteenth annual Connecticut Technology Council Women of Innovation Awards presentation on Wednesday, March 28, at the Aqua Turf Club in Southington. The Women of Innovation program recognizes women innovators, role models, and leaders in science and technology professions, including outstanding young women at the high school and collegiate level pursuing technology studies. Of these 50 women, 13 were recognized as winners in their respective categories.

The awards dinner officially kicks off our Women of Innovation program for 2018, said Bruce Carlson, President and CEO of the Connecticut Technology Council. We have a growing network of nearly 700 women whom weve honored over the past fourteen years. CTC is committed to cultivating a diverse and inclusive tech talent pipeline in our state, and were encouraging these women to attend upcoming Women of Innovation networking events to provide career support and enrichment for one another.

The evenings awards ceremony was emceed by longtime Women of Innovation supporter Diane Smith, a Connecticut media veteran and Distinguished Lecturer in the Department of Communication, Film and Media Studies at the University of New Haven. The event also featured a panel discussion entitled Women in STEM: Leading Connecticut Through Innovation. The panel was moderated by Susan Huntington, a Connecticut partner at Day Pitney LLP, and it included past Women of Innovation honorees Wendy Davis (Founder of GestVision), Radenka Maric, PhD (Vice President for Research at the University of Connecticut), and Elizabeth Waller Peterson (Electrical Engineering Specialist at General Dynamics/Electric Boat).

Presenting Sponsors of this years awards were the law firm of Day Pitney LLP, medical device manufacturer Medtronic, and United Technologies Corporation. The Lead Sponsor for the program was ESPN, and Supporting Sponsors were Axinn, Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, CNC Software, Datto, and Pfizer.

The following 13 women were chosen as category winners.

YOUTH INNOVATION & LEADERSHIP

Rishika Maitra, Senior at Academy of Aerospace and Engineering

Rishika lives in Middletown, Connecticut. At the Academy of Aerospace and Engineering, she is a senior member of the math team and an editor of the school newspaper. When she is not competing in programming contests and hackathons, she spends time on bioinformatics and computational biology research. In her free time, she enjoys playing the piano, baking, and reading.

As the winner of this category, Rishika will receive the Medtronic Youth and Innovation Scholarship.

COLLEGIAN INNOVATION & LEADERSHIP

Qin Lu, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at the School of Engineering, University of Connecticut

Qin is a PhD candidate in electrical engineering. She is a highly self-motivated researcher, contributing to eight journal papers and 10 conference papers in her research field in the past three years. Her contributions include both theoretical derivations and algorithm implementations.

ACADEMIC INNOVATION & LEADERSHIP (SECONDARY)

Susan Meabh Kelly, Science Teacher at Henry Abbott Technical High School, Connecticut State Department of Education

Susan organizes opportunities for secondary students to engage in science research by designing local, national, and international out-of-school programs. In the hope of seeing more teachers and scientists provide similar opportunities, Susan is leading a national effort to facilitate partnerships between K-12 teachers and scientists. She is pursuing this in conjunction with her PhD studies at the University of Connecticut.

ACADEMIC INNOVATION & LEADERSHIP (POSTSECONDARY)

Karen Wosczyna-Birch, Executive Director at Connecticut State Colleges & Universities, College of Technology

Karen is a champion of engineering and tech education and has been instrumental in creating nationally recognized pathway programs between high schools, community colleges, and universities. She serves as Executive Director of the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities College of Technology and the Regional Center for Next Generation Manufacturing (a National Science Foundation Center of Excellence). She is also a Professor at Tunxis Community College.

COMMUNITY INNOVATION & LEADERSHIP

Nicole Gagnon, Mechanical Design Engineer at Pratt & Whitney

Nicoles passion for aviation motivated her to pursue an active role in the aerospace community. She is a member of the Society of Women Engineers, Women in Aviation International, and Civil Air Patrol. She has earned an M.A. in Aerospace Engineering, and her aspirations and drive have guided her successful career with Pratt & Whitney and made her a valued contributor to the aerospace industry.

ENTREPRENEURIAL INNOVATION & LEADERSHIP (2 winners)

Candace Freedenberg, Founder and President of Untapped Potential Inc.

Candace is a technologist and business leader with experience at Laboratory for Laser Energetics, IBM, and Kodak. Her work has yielded more than a dozen patents. Now, as the Founder of Untapped Potential Inc., she is engineering social change for women impacting gender equity, diversity, and work-life balance. She was a finalist for the Small Business Administrations InnovateHER award, a finalist for the CT Entrepreneur Award, and she received the reSET Incubator Award.

Ashley Kalinauskas, Founder and CEO of Torigen Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Ashley leads Torigen Pharmaceuticals, a startup that resulted from her graduate thesis project at the University of Notre Dame. Ashley graduated from the University of Connecticut in 2012 with an undergraduate degree in Pathobiology and then chose to continue her education at Notre Dame. Torigen and its first product, VetiVax, are based upon the research of former University of Notre Dame professor Dr. Mark Suckow.

RESEARCH INNOVATION & LEADERSHIP (2 winners)

Christine Finck, M.D., Associate Professor of Surgery & Pediatrics at UConn Health Center and Connecticut Childrens Medical Center

Christine is the Surgeon-in-Chief at CCMC. She completed her pediatric surgery fellowship at Arkansas Childrens Hospital and her medical degree and residency at Syracuse. She is focused on developing novel ways to treat neonatal lung and esophageal defects. Her innovations were recognized by The Group on Women in Medicine and Science, who awarded her the Outstanding Clinical Scientist Woman Faculty Award.

Susan J. Baserga, M.D., PhD, Professor of Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry, Genetics, and Therapeutic Radiology at Yale University

Susan was the first woman graduate of Yale College to receive tenure in the biological sciences in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Yale. Her laboratory has pioneered the molecular basis of how ribosomes are made in our cells, and they are now pursuing the mechanistic basis of human diseases called ribosomopathies. Susan has a PhD in Human Genetics from Yale.

SMALL BUSINESS INNOVATION & LEADERSHIP

Marcia LaFemina, President of The Pennsylvania Globe Gaslight Company

As a natural problem solver, Marcias outside-the-box approach is driving the Penn Globe team to develop and launch new products that economically integrate Smart IoT capabilities into the American streetscape. With a strong commitment to statewide workforce creation and hiring the unemployed and underemployed, Marcia is creating a dynamic manufacturing model for both product and people development.

LARGE BUSINESS INNOVATION & LEADERSHIP (3 winners)

Sarah E. Kelly, PhD, Vice President of Pharmaceutical Sciences at Pfizer Inc.

Sarah is head of Pharmaceutical Sciences Small Molecule in the Pfizer Research and Development division based in Groton. Sarahs team works from early discovery through to technology transfer and manufacturing on every small molecule drug that Pfizer develops. She joined Pfizer in 1986 after receiving her PhD in Synthetic Organic Chemistry from Yale University. Sarah lives in Mystic.

Honey Reddi, PhD, Clinical Laboratory Director at The Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine

Honey is a clinical molecular geneticist with a PhD in Biotechnology and more than two decades of experience in translational research with diverse organizations including the Mayo Clinic. As the Clinical Lab Director at Jackson Labs, she is passionate about impacting patient care through her innovative work and is known for inspiring women in biomedical sciences through her leadership ethic.

Margaret Steinbugler, Manager of Materials Analysis and Mechanics at Pratt & Whitney

Margaret has led innovative teams to deliver new technologies and solutions at four UTC divisions. At UTC Power, she headed the development of a record-setting zero-emission fuel cell for buses. At Pratt & Whitney, she led the materials engineering team that made the companys first ever CMC turbine blades. In her current role, she has been recognized on four Leadership Award finalist teams, including one winning team.

About the Connecticut Technology Council

The Connecticut Technology Council (http://www.ct.org) is Connecticuts industry association for the technology sector. The mission of the Connecticut Technology Council is to spark innovation, cultivate tech talent, advocate for industry-beneficial law and policy, expand the scope of industry networking and professional development, and celebrate industry achievements in the state. Our vision is to support and promote Connecticuts tech ecosystem to lead as a national model.
By Guo Yuandan

BEIJING, March 30 (ChinaMil) -- Chinas Ministry of National Defense (MND) directly told the world on March 29 that the main reason why the newly appointed Chinese defense minister chose Russia for his first visit is that the China-Russia relationship is the best major countries relationship in today's world.

Chinese State Councilor and Defense Minister General Wei Fenghe will attend the 7th Moscow Conference on International Security in Russia, and pay a visit to Russia and Belarus from April 1 to 8, 2018, said Senior Colonel Ren Guoqiang, deputy director of the Information Bureau of the Office for International Military Cooperation of Chinas Central Military Commission and spokesperson for Chinas MND, at a regular press conference on March 29, 2018.

As for why Wei Fenghe chose Russia as his first visit destination after he assumed the position of the defense minister, Ren said that China and Russia are each others primary and most important strategic partner of coordination. The China-Russia relationship is the best major-country relationship in todays world. This relationship is as firm as a rock.

In contrast, Pentagon officials said in mid-January that the US Secretary of Defense James Mattis planned to visit China for the first time this spring. Ren said that the Chinese and the US defense establishments are still coordinating Secretary Mattis visit to China.

This statement did not reveal specific progress compared to the press release in January. However, Ren stressed that other exchange programs between the two militaries are also proceeding smoothly.

The attitude of the Chinese military is very clear when it comes to China-US relations. The development of a healthy and stable relationship between the Chinese and US armed forces is an important consensus of the two heads of state. It is also the common interest of the two countries and the two armed forces.

However, the Chinese military also firmly defends Chinas sovereign security and development interests. This is the reason why the Chinese MND took a tough stance when US Navy ships entered waters near the Chinese islands and reefs in the South China Sea.

When it comes to the overall assessment of the China-US relationship, the MND spokesperson said that we should consider not only each others immediate interests but also our common interests in the long run. We should not only resort to practical steps to address specific issues, but also a broad vision to put in mind a bigger picture. And we should not only be aware of the potential risks and dangers ahead when things go smoothly, but also be able to see the light of hope when we find ourselves in difficulties.
#1 SaaS Grant Management System The acquisition of CostTree will introduce a new way for our state, local and tribal government customers to maximize their grant funding

eCivis announced that it has recently acquired CostTree, a leading provider of SaaS cost allocation and cost management solutions for the public sector. The acquisition expands eCivis core capabilities into new areas of financial management that are not addressed by ERPs and general ledger systems. Expanded capabilities of the CostTree platform include cost allocation, indirect cost calculations, management of negotiated rate proposals and rates, and the ability to produce formal cost plans and reports. These features will allow governments to make more informed choices and drive greater organizational and community impact.

The acquisition of CostTree will introduce a new way for our state, local and tribal government customers to maximize their grant funding, said James Ha, CEO of eCivis. Grants are revenue and, like any enterprise, there are costs associated with that revenue. CostTree provides a platform that helps calculate those costs for every grant award. Understanding the economics of pursuing and administering a grant is a data point that is calculated by an average cost today. A better command of these costs can produce significant returns for governments and support their efforts to be good stewards of grant funds.

CostTree's software gives context to costs by making indirect costs transparent across an agency or department and showing how those numbers matter, said Nicky Lettini, CEO of CostTree. Knowing those costs can help city managers and finance directors strategize effectively. Cost allocation is the tool that organizations use to receive reimbursement for services performed throughout the agency and to the public. This partnership just adds another opportunity for organizations to receive even more funding through grants. There's no one else doing this. There's no one else telling the whole story.

CostTree has been deployed in nearly 100 state and local governments, including Boston; El Paso County, CO; Glendale, CA; and the Maryland Department of Education. CostTree's cost allocation platform helps organizations maximize their indirect cost reimbursements, better understand their true cost of service, and run scenarios to determine what cost structure provides the greatest organizational impact. Other features include comprehensive audit tools for cognizant and reviewing agencies and their recipients; a dynamic Indirect Cost Rate Proposal framework that removes the frustration and complexity from your rate submission and review processes; and powerful transfer pricing and cost analysis tools that put full control at the fingertips of the end user.

About eCivis

Since 2000, eCivis ( http://www.ecivis.com ) has been most trusted and widely used SaaS grant management system by state, local and tribal governments. eCivis helps thousands of government agencies maximize their grant revenues, track their financial and program performance, prepare cost allocation plans and budgets, and access free open data tools to make sense of Federal data.
Ideal CU President/CEO Brian Sherrick presented a $1,000 check to the White Bear Area Emergency Food Shelf at the first-ever "Party with a Purpose" fundraiser on March 23rd. Terrie and I were honored to host this important event and help raise awareness of the great work the White Bear Area Emergency Food Shelf, its staff, volunteers and supporters provide to our neighbors in need. - Ideal CU President/CEO Brian Sherrick

Ideal Credit Union President/CEO Brian Sherrick and wife Terrie hosted a first-ever Party with a Purpose fundraiser at their home on March 23rd to benefit the White Bear Area Emergency Food Shelf. The event drew 54 of the Sherricks family and friends and helped raise over $5,000, which far exceeded expectations. Among those in attendance were Ideal CU Board Members Bob Vance Jr. and Peter Olsen, Supervisory Committee Members Mary Westberg and Dan Olson, and Minnesota Credit Union Network President Mark Cummins.

Terrie Sherrick volunteers weekly at the White Bear Area Emergency Food Shelf. She also serves on the Resource Committee. The Sherricks graciously offered to host the fundraiser. Ideal CU generously sponsored the event with a $1,000 donation.

As part of Minnesota FoodShares March campaign, participating food shelves receive an allocation from its FoodFund based on the number of individuals they serve annually and the cumulative pounds and dollars they collect from February 26 to April 8. The Sherricks successful fundraiser will help the food shelf stretch those dollars even further.

The White Bear Area Emergency Food Shelf has served as a critical resource for families struggling with food insecurity since 1977. In 2017, the food shelf provided 602,005 meals to 3,900 individuals at 11,921 visits. Of the individuals served, 51% were children, 11% were seniors over 65 and one-third were visiting for the first time. Over 625 families received food and support in any given month. Staff and volunteers also help connect neighbors to community resources for housing, energy assistance, health care, job support, legal advice and other support as needed.

As an active community partner, Ideal Credit Union supports a variety of important causes that help fill a void and bring essential services to those in need, and works to create awareness of opportunities to help. Terrie and I were honored to host this important event and help raise awareness of the great work the White Bear Area Emergency Food Shelf, its staff, volunteers and supporters provide to our neighbors in need, said Ideal CU President/CEO Brian Sherrick. We are grateful for the overwhelming response and generosity of those who attended.

Founded in 1926, Ideal Credit Union is a member owned financial institution that is dedicated to providing financial services driven by a sincere and personal interest in the needs of our employees, members and community. Ideal CU offers a complete range of services, including a full suite of electronic banking products, savings, checking, loans, mortgage products, exclusive VIP member payback, business services, investment services and more. Offices are located in Eagan, Hugo, Inver Grove Heights, North St. Paul, Stillwater and Woodbury. Visit idealcu.com for details and directions. Equal Housing Lender.
ACMTs 2018 Annual Scientific Meeting (ASM) will be held Friday, April 6Sunday, April 8, at the Washington Marriott Georgetown in Washington DC. Our annual Satellite Session, 'Toxic Threats, Chemical Security and Counterfeit Pharmaceuticals' will precede ASM on Thursday, April 5, at the same venue.

The ACMT Annual Scientific Meeting (ASM) is an opportunity for specialists in the field of medical toxicology to gather together, network, and learn from the cutting-edge research of their peers. The event will elevate the fields discourse by featuring national and international authorities speaking on current practices in medical toxicology.

A few of this years outstanding presentations include:

The Great US Cannabis Experiment: Short & Long-Term Consequences

Marilyn A. Huestis, PhD, MS, AB, Senior Fellow, The Lambert Center for the Study of Medicinal Cannabis and Hemp, Institute of Emerging Health Professions, Thomas Jefferson University

The Art and Design of Interpersonal Communication: Graceful Self-Promotion

Luanne Thorndyke, MD, Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs and Professor of Medicine, University of Massachusetts Medical School

The Physician Advocate: Advocacy and Medical Toxicology

Arthur Kellermann, MD, MPH, Dean, F. Edward Hebert School of Medicine, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences

Beyond Atropine: Advanced Antidotes & Alternative Countermeasures

David Jett, PhD, Director, National Institute of Health CounterACT Program, NINDS Office of Translational Research

Bring your perspective to this fascinating collaboration as we discuss these all-important issues in Washington DC.

ACMTs 2018 Satellite Session and Annual Scientific Meeting take place at the Washington Marriott Georgetown in Washington DC. Attendees may register for one or both events and do not need to be a member of ACMT to attend.

For full agenda and registration information visit the ASM Webpage

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ACMTAdvancing the Toxicological Care of Poisoned Patients and Populations

The American College of Medical Toxicology (ACMT) is a professional, nonprofit association of more than 700 physicians with recognized expertise in medical toxicology. Medical toxicology focuses on the diagnosis, management, and prevention of poisoning/toxicity and other adverse health effects resulting from medications, chemicals, occupational and environmental

substances and biological hazards.
VALIDATE Body Fluids will make it easier for laboratories to support LDT validation, documentation of linearity, calibration verification and verification of the AMR for analytes in cerebrospinal, peritoneal ascites, pleural and pericardial body fluids, via our simulated body fluid matrix.

LGC Maine Standards releases the only comprehensive body fluids kit on the market, VALIDATE Body Fluids, Order Number 205ro, for easier linearity and calibration verification.

The kit, in a simulated body fluid matrix, will assist in the documentation of linearity, calibration verification and verification of linear range for Albumin (ALB), Amylase (AMY), Cancer Antigen 19-9 (CA 19-9), Carcinoembryonic Antigen (CEA), Cholesterol (CHOL), Creatinine (CREA), Glucose (GLU), Lactate (LAC), Lactate dehydrogenase (LD), Total protein (TP), Triglycerides (TRIG), and Urea Nitrogen (UN). Each VALIDATE Body Fluids kit, liquid and ready- to-use, prepared using the CLSI EP06-A equal delta sample preparation, offers five distinct concentrations to establish the reportable range. Simply dispense the solution from each dropper bottle, directly into five sample cups, and run in replicates.

Release of VALIDATE Body Fluids allows clinical laboratories to complete their required Body Fluids linearity and calibration verification, validation of in-house methods or laboratory developed tests (LDT) for analytes in body fluids  maximizing the reportable range while minimizing manual dilutions. Use of this product, while augmenting daily QC, assists with fulfilling various quality control requirements  such as Analytical Measurement Range (AMR) and Clinically Reportable Range (CRR)  for linearity and calibration verification under CLIA 88, CAP, COLA, JCAHO, JCI and ISO 15189.

The addition of VALIDATE Body Fluids to the LGC Maine Standards expanding portfolio of products demonstrates a continued commitment to manufacture high-quality linearity and calibration verification products that meet industry needs.

LGC Maine Standards is located in Cumberland Foreside, Maine and manufactures VALIDATE linearity and calibration verification kits for over 130 analytes, including General Chemistries, Urine Chemistries, Enzymes, Lipids, HbA1c, Therapeutic Drugs, Cardiac Markers, Thyroids, Serum Proteins, Vitamin D, Tumor Markers, Anemia, Fertility, Hemostasis, Whole Blood Glucose, and Body Fluids.

LGC Maine Standards MSDRx data reduction software is available at no charge for real-time data analysis or a laboratory can send their data to LGC Maine Standards where a technical specialist will complete the data analysis and return a report within five business days. Peer group comparison is also available upon request.

Contact: Maine Standards Company, LLC 221 US Route 1, Cumberland Foreside, ME 04110 1-207-892-1300 x1473 Adriano.Ciccomancini(at)LGCGroup(dot)com http://www.mainestandards.com

About LGC

LGC is an international life sciences measurement and testing company with leading positions in growing markets. LGC provides a range of measurement products and services which underpin the safety, health and security of the public, including reference materials and proficiency testing, calibration verification / linearity testing, genomics reagents and instrumentation, and expert sample analysis and interpretation. LGC serves customers across a number of end markets including Pharmaceuticals, Agricultural Biotechnology, Food, Environment, Government and Academia.

LGCs headquarters are in London and the company employs over 2,000 people, operating out of 22 countries worldwide. Its operations are extensively accredited to international quality standards such as ISO/IEC 17025, GMP, GLP, ISO Guide 34, ISO/IEC 17043 and ISO 13485:2003.

With a history dating back to 1842, LGC has been home to the UK Government Chemist for more than 100 years and is the UK National Measurement Laboratory and Designated Institute for chemical and bio measurement. LGC was privatized in 1996 and is now owned by funds affiliated with KKR. For more information, please visit http://www.lgcgroup.com.
Eric Dillinger, Woolpert Vice President and Managing Director of Strategic Consulting

Woolpert has hired Eric Dillinger as Vice President and Managing Director of Strategic Consulting, expanding the firms planned strategic growth in integrated advisory services for its clients. Dillinger, who most recently served as the Vice President of Jacobs Buildings and Infrastructure Americas consultancy practice, has more than 30 years of experience providing planning, design, consulting and advisory services for the infrastructure and built environment.

Woolpert has been offering strategic consulting to clients for decades; excelling in areas like military master planning, organizational and sustainability implementation services for water clients, and information technology master planning, said Scott Cattran, President and CEO of Woolpert. We have hired Eric to expand our consulting services to run across all our verticals, including transportation and aviation, water and energy, facilities and buildings, and federal agencies. This strategic consulting will help all our clients with their overarching capital planning, regulatory compliance, operations and maintenance, asset management and process improvements.

According to Dillinger, Woolpert is the right size and has the right DNA for him to expand its strategic consulting business.

Woolpert has a vision to be the premier architecture, engineering and geospatial (AEG) firm in the industry, and I wanted to be a part of this. I wanted to get back into a firm that was more entrepreneurial, with a collaborative culture and a focus on delivering innovative solutions across a range of public and private sector markets, Dillinger said. Woolpert has an incredible history of thought leadership and technology consulting with an ongoing focus on serious innovation through Woolpert Labs. Woolpert has the architects, engineers and geospatial experts required to support strategic consulting with practical and implementable solutions.

Woolpert was founded in 1911, with 25 offices nationwide and close to 800 employees. Woolpert Labs is a cross-functional group of industry leaders within the company, focused on discovering new uses for technology and practices that will continue to fuel industry advances in the architecture, engineering and geospatial verticals.

Organically, Woolpert has already developed an exceptional portfolio of technology leadership and is seen as a high-value partner to its clients, so that groundwork has been laid, Dillinger said. On top of that, Woolpert is heavily invested in research and development. Unlike firms who say theyd like to move into R&D, Woolpert already has the patents, the innovation and the cool technology to support this essential aspect of its growth.

In 2015, Dillinger was recognized by the International Facility Management Association (IFMA) with the Chairmans Citation for ongoing thought leadership in strategic asset management and achieving a sustainable built environment. The citation stated that Dillinger excelled through inspired leadership in the formation of IFMAs Airport Facilities Council in 2003 and outstanding continued support and guidance; as a subject matter expert in facility management system design and implementation, capital finance, facility planning and design, operations and maintenance, emergency preparation and response, business continuity and recovery; and as a published author and contributor to best FM practices for more than 25 years with a focus on total cost of ownership.

Dillinger holds a degree in industrial engineering from Kansas State University, has written multiple publications regarding asset management and is a member of the IFMA, The Institute of Asset Management, the Society of American Military Engineers and the Airport Council International, among others.

About Woolpert

Woolpert is the fastest growing architecture, engineering and geospatial (AEG) firm in the country, delivering value to clients in all 50 states and around the world by strategically blending engineering excellence with leading-edge technology and geospatial applications. With a dynamic R&D department, Woolpert works with inventive business partners such as Google and Esri; operates a fleet of planes, sensors and unmanned aircraft systems (UAS); and continually pushes industry boundaries by working with advanced water technologies, asset management, building information modeling (BIM) and sustainable design. Woolperts mission is to help its clients progress and become more progressive. For over 100 years - and with 25 offices across the U.S., Woolpert serves federal, state and local governments; private and public companies and universities; energy and transportation departments; and the U.S. Armed Forces. For more information, visit woolpert.com or call 937-531-1258.
Haakon, Crown Prince of Norway (left), discusses aviation with EAA's Bret Steffen at the "Spirit of Aviation" unit's stop at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, in March 2018. The Spirit of Aviation unit encompasses immersive activities and virtual reality experiences, giving visitors a glimpse into the world of aviation, as well as inviting them to be part of EAAs dynamic member community.

The Experimental Aircraft Association will again deliver the excitement of flight throughout the United States in 2018 as EAAs Spirit of Aviation mobile unit, sponsored by the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA), visits numerous events this year. The mobile experience brings introduces EAA to aviation enthusiasts through hands-on, member-tested activities engaging people in aviation.

During our inaugural year in 2017, the Spirit of Aviation brought our passion for flight and our mission of growing participation in aviation to tens of thousands of people in a fun, engaging way, said Dave Chaimson, EAAs vice president of marketing and business development. The Spirit of Aviation unit encompasses immersive activities and virtual reality experiences, giving visitors a glimpse into the world of aviation, as well as inviting them to be part of EAAs dynamic member community.

The Spirit of Aviation mobile unit made its first stops at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, and the Melbourne Air & Space Show in Florida earlier this month. Upcoming visits throughout the year include (tour schedule subject to change without notice):



April 6-8: USA Science & Engineering Festival; Washington, D.C.

May 5-6: MCAS Cherry Point Air Show; Havelock, North Carolina

June 9-10: Thunder of Niagara International Air Show; Niagara Falls, New York

June 27-July 1: Summerfest; Milwaukee, Wisconsin

July 23-29: EAA AirVenture; Oshkosh, Wisconsin

August 23-September 3: Minnesota State Fair; St. Paul, Minnesota

September 21-23: California Capital Air Show; Sacramento, California

October 11-14: Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta; Albuquerque, New Mexico

October 20-21: Wings Over Houston Air Show; Houston, Texas

The 53-foot unit is also a rolling billboard for EAA, including graphics highlighting a Long-EZ homebuilt aircraft and its futuristic design representing EAAs experimental aircraft roots. It also features visibility for EAA AirVenture Oshkosh and the Young Eagles program.

Its fun, its discovery, and its even flying in virtual reality style, Chaimson said. Stop by and connect with the adventures in the world of flight. At selected locations, we are even bringing along our own Stan Lee-inspired superhero  Aviore!

Stan Lee personally introduced Aviore to audiences last July at the EAA AirVenture Oshkosh fly-in convention in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Aviore was created through a cooperative effort by EAA and the Stan Lee Foundation, as an inspiration to young people all over the world, encouraging them to follow their passions and find their place in the sky.

Visitors will be able to build their own Aviore gliders, supported by Flite Test, and take virtual flights with Samsung Gear VR headsets to connect with the Spirit of Aviation. There are also Redbird flight simulators for flight training experiences, hands-on building stations, and much more as part of EAAs mission to grow participation in aviation.

About EAA

EAA embodies The Spirit of Aviation through the worlds most engaged community of aviation enthusiasts. EAAs 210,000 members and 900 local chapters enjoy the fun and camaraderie of sharing their passion for flying, building and restoring recreational aircraft. For more information on EAA and its programs, call 800-JOIN-EAA (800-564-6322) or go to http://www.eaa.org. For continual news updates, connect with http://www.twitter.com/EAA.
TrueUSD from TrustToken We believe that TUSD is the best option for traders and funds who dont want the risk of Tether but still want to hold crypto assets in a price-stable token, said Rafael Cosman, CTO.

Since launching in early March, TrueUSD (TUSD) is proving its value by being quickly interchangeable and tradeable with top cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. The market has shown healthy demand for TUSD with average daily trade volumes around $1 million. Today, TrustToken is announcing that TUSD is directly tradeable with Tether on Bittrex. This pairing facilitates faster and cheaper transactions out of Tether and into TrueUSD, the worlds only legally-backed stable cryptocurrency. (For full information, please visit TrustTokens blog.)

We believe that TUSD is the best option for traders and funds who dont want the risk of Tether but still want to hold crypto assets in a price-stable token, said Rafael Cosman, CTO of TrustToken, the company behind TrueUSD. Weve worked with top legal and accounting firms to develop best practices like providing regular attestation reports and never transferring traders money ourselves. We want to provide this service to the trader community to help further the growth of the cryptocurrency ecosystem.

TrustTokens legal framework enables token holders to exchange USD directly with an escrow account -- TrustToken never touches the funds. Instead, traders get access to one of the escrow accounts in the network of fiduciary and banking partners to purchase or redeem TrueUSD. This reduces the counterparty risk that is common in other collateralized stablecoin projects. Additionally, every TrueUSD is always fully collateralized by USD, held in a professional fiduciary partners escrow account. TrustTokens publicly verified smart contracts mint TrueUSD when USD clears the escrow accounts and burn TrueUSD when USD is redeemed to ensure a 1:1 parity between the TrueUSD in circulation and the USD held as collateral.

How to Purchase TrueUSD

Apply to the TrueUSD alpha access group. TrustToken is currently receiving a high volume of inbound applications, so it may take several days to process your application. In compliance with regulations, the full process involves passing KYC/AML, wiring funds, and then receiving the TrueUSD tokens. For details, follow this link.

About TrustToken

TrustToken was founded by a team from Stanford, UC Berkeley, Palantir, and Google, and is backed by BlockTower Capital, Stanford-StartX, Founders Fund Angel, FJ Labs, and Stanford-StartX. The company has developed a legal framework for collateralized cryptocurrencies in collaboration with Cooley, WilmerHale, and Arnold & Porter, and has a growing network of fiduciary, compliance, and banking partners. Learn more about TrustToken and its TrueUSD product at http://www.trusttoken.com.
Patrick J. (P.J.) McCarthy, shareholder in the Washington, D.C. office of global law firm Greenberg Traurig, LLP, has been named to DCA Lives 2018 Rising Stars of Law. Each of the honorees will be recognized at a special reception Tuesday, April 10, in Washington, D.C.

Nominated by leaders in the Washington legal community, DCA Lives Rising Stars of Law recognition is awarded to 40 attorneys under age 40, who have demonstrated exceptional performance and made significant contributions to grow and innovate within their company. According to the website, DCA Live has hosted events since 2014 featuring the fastest growing companies and most dynamic professionals in the Washington, D.C. regions legal, association and nonprofit, entrepreneur, federal tech, real estate, and corporate communities.

McCarthy is a first chair patent litigator with particular experience in litigating patent litigation matters at the International Trade Commission. He assists his clients in litigating within many jurisdictions and across a broad range of complex technologies. He has also delivered oral arguments before the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals and is barred at the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

McCarthy is an active member in the local community. He is a trustee and engages in pro bono projects for the Washington Lawyers Committee, an organization that provides pro bono legal services to address discrimination and entrenched poverty in the Washington, D.C. area.

About Greenberg Traurigs Washington, D.C. Office

Greenberg Traurigs Washington, D.C. office is home to a multidisciplinary team of lawyers and governmental affairs professionals with strategic experience helping companies of all sizes to navigate the federal government. The offices work encompasses governmental affairs, federal procurement, global trade and investment, health and FDA business, litigation, government contracts, antitrust, insurance recovery and advisory, energy, telecommunications, real estate, intellectual property, representation of foreign governments, and national defense and homeland security. Greenberg Traurigs clients range from the federal defense sector to energy, telecommunications, and health care companies, which the firm represents before government agencies, regulatory bodies, Congress, and the courts. The firms Washington, D.C. attorneys are also involved in handling a wide range of regulatory, corporate, and finance work for clients in these industries.

About Greenberg Traurig, LLP

Greenberg Traurig, LLP (GT) has more than 2,000 attorneys in 38 offices in the United

States, Latin America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. One firm worldwide, GT has been recognized for its philanthropic giving, was named the largest firm in the U.S. by Law360 in 2017, and is among the Top 20 on the 2017 Am Law Global 100. Web: http://www.gtlaw.com Twitter: @GT_Law.
For the third consecutive year, Brevards Facial Plastic Surgeon Ross A. Clevens, MD, FACS is among the few doctors nationwide to receive the prestigious Compassionate Doctor Award. The honor, presented annually by Vitals, recognizes physicians who treat patients  not just conditions  with care and grace.

The founder and medical director of Clevens Face and Body Specialists, Dr. Clevens is a Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeon who trained at Yale, Harvard and the University of Michigan. He has served patients throughout the Central Florida area for more than 20 years, providing facial plastic surgery procedures such as facelift, rhinoplasty and his signature Laser Assisted Weekend Necklift. Dr. Clevens is a noted author, educator, and innovator in his field of facial plastic surgery. He is frequently invited to speak at medical conferences around the world to share his expertise with other physicians and aesthetics practitioners.

Compassionate Doctor winners are selected based on reviews from actual patients and other quality metrics. A Vitals Index survey recently revealed 1 out of 3 respondents feel the most important quality indicator is a doctor who listens and spends time with them.

This great honor is particularly special to me because its based on the experience our own patients have at our practice and the care they receive, says Dr. Clevens. The patient-provider relationship is based on trust. This award goes beyond achieving excellent results for patients and is a testament to the commitment our team has to delivering an exceptional experience for every patient, every day. I am truly grateful to my outstanding team for their dedication to patient care, and to our patient family for trusting us to help them love the way they look and feel.

With nearly 8 million ratings and reviews, Vitals has the largest collection of crowd-sourced data on doctors -- more than any other website. "The doctor-patient relationship is not much different from any other relationship we value," said Mitch Rothschild, Executive Chairman and Founder of Vitals. "Its based on mutual respect and fairness, as well as the ability to communicate with one another effectively. Patients who leave doctor ratings and reviews make it easier for everyone to identify these doctors who practice medicine with humanity."

With offices in Melbourne and Merritt Island, Clevens Face and Body Specialists helps patients look and feel their best by providing comprehensive patient care including facial plastic and reconstructive surgery, breast surgery and body contouring, injectables and fillers, incisionless hair restoration, laser treatments, tattoo removal, laser hair removal, complete skin cancer care and medical grade skin care. Known for giving back to the community, the practice has been recognized for its dedication to excellence in achieving beautiful, natural-looking results for patients.

To learn more about Dr. Clevens, contact Clevens Face and Body Specialists at 321.727.3223, or visit http://www.drclevens.com.
Children playing with Imagination Playground blocks The next stop of the Spring Learn & Play Tour will take place from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday April 7th, and 12 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Sunday, April 8th at the Childrens Museum of Houston.

Imagination Playground, LLC, creators of the breakthrough, block-based play system that transforms childrens minds, bodies and spirits through self-directed, creative free play, announced today that it will feature their popular Big Blue Blocks in Houston as part of the companys 2018 Spring Learn & Play Tour.

The 17-city tour, in partnership with some of the finest Childrens Museums and Science Centers throughout North America, launches seasonally in the hopes of spreading the companys larger mission of illustrating the powerful benefits of unstructured, child-led free play. Studies have shown this type of play helps to create strong connections between both sides of a childs developing brain. It bridges together emotional as well as intellectual capacity, along with the kind of skills necessary for functioning in the world as a cooperative problem solver and inclusive team member.

Imagination Playground wants to transform the lives of children, parents, educators, caregivers, researchers and leaders by uniting them in a community of advocates who believe in the importance of creative free play. Using their innovative signature building blocks, kids will create, and collaborate for a joyful and inspiring time. They will learn how to work together and how to let their imaginations run wild. Itll even encourage parents to get down on the floor with their kids, join in on the fun, and get their own lesson in creative problem solving and democratic play.

The Childrens Museum of Houston is excited to bring families this opportunity to unleash their childrens creativity and ingenuity, said Keith Ostfeld, Director of Educational Technology and Exhibit Development at the Childrens Museum of Houston. Imagination Playgrounds building blocks with their open-exploration and inquiry-based approach to learning enriches families experiences at the Museum while building 21st century learning skills and generating interest and excitement in STEAM.

The next stop of the Spring Learn & Play Tour will take place from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday April 7th, and 12 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Sunday, April 8th at the Childrens Museum of Houston. The event will bring together children and adults from all walks of life to enjoy true playtime and witness firsthand the excitement and inspiration that unleashes when children get to see their imaginations turn to reality in front of them.

Through playing with and building their own worlds with our Big Blue Blocks, it starts a fire for these kids to realize their own dreams and make their thoughts and visions turn to reality, said Dave Krishock, President of Imagination Playground. We are honored to be part of such a great team here in Houston and realize together the shared vision of helping children to reach for the stars and realize their unlimited potential as they grow up in this world.

In addition to the fun, children age 2 to 10 will have their first opportunity to submit their creations to Imagination Playgrounds 2018-2019 Build-A-Thon contest during the Houston event. Now in its fourth year, Imagination Playgrounds Build-A-Thon allows kids to submit photos of their captivating designs by web or through the official Imagination Playground 3D app, available on both iPhone and Android. Between now and March 2019, children will have an opportunity to submit their designs for a chance to win special prizes, including a meet and greet with David Rockwell, the renowned inventor and designer of Imagination Playground, in New York City. For submission guidelines, please visit http://www.imaginationplayground.com/promotions/build-a-thon/index.html.

The Learn & Play Tour will visit 17 cities in North America, including San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago and New York. Beyond receiving teaching credit for their attendance, educators will receive a Small Block Sample Pack. And families will receive a pop-out Mini Playground for attending. To RSVP for the Houston Learn & Play event, please visit https://form.jotform.com/80637548584166. For more information and a schedule of events, visit http://www.imaginationplayground.com/mission/learn-play-tour.html.

About Imagination Playground, LLC

Imagination Playground creates unique, innovative playground equipment systems for use in schools, childrens museums, parks, daycare centers, camps and hospitals. The companys patented blue blocks allow children to create play spaces, animals, robots, rocket ships or any other structure or object that kids can imagine.

Their breakthrough play space concept was developed to encourage child-directed, creative free play. The kind of play that experts say is critical to childrens intellectual, social, physical, and emotional development. Invented by architect and designer David Rockwell and the Rockwell group, Imagination Playground enables children to play, dream, build and explore endless possibilities. Imagination Playground finds its home in daycare centers, kindergartens, elementary schools, childrens museums  and science, nature, discovery centers, camps, community centers, childrens hospitals, hotels and resorts, public parks and more  in North America and over 70 countries around the world. For more information, visit http://www.imaginationplayground.com
MOSCOW, March 30 (Xinhua) -- Russia has conducted a second drop test of its latest heavy intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement on Friday.

The heavy missile was test-dropped at the northern Plesetsk spaceport. The military said the trial had confirmed its pre-launch and first flight stage characteristics.

The Defense Ministry also released a rare video of the Sarmat test on its social media account.

The first launch of this rocket took place in late December last year.

It will replace the Soviet-built Satan missile, which is approaching the end of its service life.

In his annual address to parliament on March 1, President Vladimir Putin said Russia has begun testing Sarmat which has "practically no range limits" and can penetrate any missile shield.

Sarmat reportedly has a shortened active phase of flight. It has enhanced capabilities to overcome missile defense and is capable of carrying large quantities of ammunition.
Cerritos Ribbon Cutting

Los Angeles-based FRIMEX Hospitality Group, owner of Frida Mexican Cuisine restaurants, celebrated the ribbon cutting and official Grand Opening of its Cerritos restaurant on Monday, March 26, 2018, accompanied by local business leaders and guest of honor Consul General of Mexico in Los Angeles, Carlos Garcia de Alba.

Frida Cerritos, which opened its doors in fall of 2017, is the fourth Frida restaurant opened by FRIMEX Hospitality Group. The 6,000 square foot space has a seating capacity of 250 and was designed by Los Angeles-based interior design group, Ideation Architecture. The design concept was inspired by some of Mexico Citys most notable restaurants and the interior blends modern and upscale elements with unique art, decor and bright colors, while keeping with the traditions of Mexico. Frida Restaurants are the vision of Founder and CEO, Vicente del Rio.

The location of the restaurant is centrally located amongst some of Cerritos most prominent business such as the Cerritos Auto Square Mall and Cerritos Mall. The Cerritos restaurant is a showcase for Fridas artisanal and traditional fare from south of the border. Guests can enjoy an assortment of beautifully prepared dishes including standouts such as rib eye tacos, pescado a la talla, arracherra nortena, tableside guacamole and ceviche tasting with freshly handmade tacos.

We are very excited and privileged to be here in the beautiful city of Cerritos, FRIMEX Hospitality Group CEO Vicente Del Rio told the gathering of business leaders and members of the Cerritos Regional Chamber of Commerce. Its great to make new friends here and we are very fortunate to be part of this special community. Del Rio added: Our customers and other local businesses have been so friendly and helpful in welcoming us to the area and we are so grateful.

Scott Smith, President/CEO of The Cerritos Regional Chamber of Commerce and many local business and community leaders from around the city joined in the celebration of the ribbon cutting ceremony and helped in making this a momentous day for all.

Weve waited a long time for Frida Cerritos to open its doors and when they did we as a community welcomed them with open arms. The food is excellent, the service is impeccable and we are thrilled to have a restaurant such as Frida Mexican Cuisine in our city and them be a part of the Cerritos community.

Guest of honor Consul de Alba praised Del Rio for his dedication to building up the FRIMEX business and for providing many jobs. These guys are working hard. They really care about quality food and good drinks, he said. Thank you so much for helping us bring authentic, good Mexican food to Southern California and for helping to create work for so many deserving individuals in Cerritos and in all of the other Los Angeles communities. Noting that Frimex Hospitality Group recently opened its fifth restaurant located in Sherman Oaks, CA, in February 2018, de Alba added: Lets keep working hard altogether for the benefit of California and the benefit of Los Angeles and Mexico.

The Cerritos location is an extraordinary milestone for Mexico City native del Rio, who launched his flagship Frida restaurant over 15 years ago in Beverly Hills; a stones throw from Rodeo Drive and which today remains one of the most upscale and consistently busy Mexican restaurants in Beverly Hills. Frida Mexican Cuisine Cerritos is located 20 miles south east of Downtown Los Angeles at 11169 183rd St. Cerritos, CA. For reservations or to book a private event, please call (562) 403-3666. To learn more about Frida Cerritos, please visit http://www.FridaRestaurant.com.

Instagram - @fridamexicancuisine

Facebook - @FridaMexicanCuisine

Media Inquiries:

Cavalry PR - Sophia Paliov Tel: (949) 525-5022

Cavalry PR  David Thompson Tel: (310) 484-4952

ABOUT FRIMEX HOSPITALITY GROUP

FRIMEX Hospitality Group was established in 2010 soon after the launch of their flagship restaurant FRIDA in Beverly Hills in 2002. Since its launch, FRIMEX Hospitality Group has grown close to 300 hundred employees with a total of five Frida restaurant locations which include: Frida Westwood, Frida Torrance at Del Amo Fashion Center, Frida Cerritos at Plaza 183 and the just opened Frida Sherman Oaks. The FRIMEX Hospitality Group are also the creators of their taco-focused establishments, Frida Tacos (3 locations), and Taco Libre where they offer quick and affordable Mexican food with authentic flavors. For more information about Frida Mexican Cuisine please visit http://www.fridarestaurant.com. For more information about FRIMEX Hospitality Group please visit http://www.frimexgroup.com.
License Plate Recognition with Smartphone Get the benefits of LPR cameras at the price of smartphones.

Building Intelligence Inc. now offers security officers and loading dock staff the technology to capture and recognize US based license plates with their smartphone. Building Intelligence Inc. improves on SV3Mobiles ability to process vehicles as they enter a secure area. As an additional module, SV3Mobile users can take a photo of a license plate, process the plate to text and compare it to watch lists, a fleet of scheduled vendors, a list of approved vehicles or use it to enter the information on a new vehicle.

Building Intelligence Inc. will be demonstrating SV3Mobile at ISC West 2018 at Booth 21131, Sands Convention Center, Las Vegas NV 89169

SV3 mobile extends it capabilities to support process without wires, with the addition of the feature of using the camera for gathering license plates, security guards can affect a more accurate vehicle identity, expedite process, and reduce mistakes gathering more data on each entry. Using the smart phone as a License Plate Reader, the mobile app can guide the security officer to require a vehicle inspection. Background services and integrations can trigger additional warnings and alert other groups to take action.

By adding the LPR feature, we improve the process, add to the data capture and refine the solution. Clients will be able to get the benefits of LPR cameras at the price of a smartphone, argues Jeffrey C. Friedman, CEO of Building Intelligence. Building Intelligence continues to leverage smartphone technology for security, logistics, accountability and efficient operations.

With the SV3Mobile, a security officer can check a vehicle against a watch list. The officer can check if the vehicle part of a fleet from a contractor, owned by someone on campus or see if the vendor has been there before. With a suspicious vehicle, security officer may capture the license plate and send the data to the operations center for a deeper dive into why the vehicle is on site.

Building Intelligences SV3 platform supports vehicle, vendor and visitor entry. To serve loading docks and vehicle control points, SV3 supports integrations to underground vehicle inspections systems, weight scales, fixed license plate readers and drivers license scanners. The combined integrations and workflow of process from mobile to web, serves Building Intelligences clients with a complete solution to manage Trusted Access.

About Building Intelligence Inc.:

Building Intelligence is a software company providing innovative technology solutions for security practitioners and building owners to manage visitors, vehicles and vendors. Building Intelligence Inc. is a privately-owned business based in New York, NY. SV3 is a modular solution set being widely adopted in many major metropolitan markets. It is being sold, deployed and supported by authorized security systems integrator channels with expertise in the identity and access management domain. SV3 is Safety Act Designated and covered by several issued patents.
Yesterday, Under Armour, Inc. announced that its MyFitnessPal app had been breached, and that information on its 150 million users had been accessed by an unknown entity. The Better Business Bureau has advice for users of this app and others that collect personal information.

Under Armour says the the affected information included usernames, email addresses, and hashed passwords  the majority with the hashtag function called bcrypt used to secure passwords. The companys press release said no government-issued identifiers (i.e., Social Security or drivers license numbers) or credit card information were affected. The company is working with a data security firm and law enforcement authorities to investigate the breach.

Users of the app have been notified about the security steps they can take, including changing their password, which will be required. NOTE: The email from Under Armour does not ask its MyFitnessPal users to click on a link or open an attachment. Any email that includes such instructions is a scam and should be deleted immediately. Additional information for users is available on the companys website.

April is Digital Spring Cleaning Month, and the Better Business Bureau has joined with the National Cyber Security Alliance in offering tips to safeguard your personal data at BBB.org/Digital-Spring-Cleaning.

Additional information is available at BBB.org/IdentityTheft and BBB.org/Passwords.

For information on scams and how to avoid them, check out BBB.org/ScamTips.

To report a scam, go to BBB.org/ScamTracker.

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MEDIA CONTACTS: For more information, journalists for national media outlets should contact Katherine Hutt (212-705-0131) or khutt(at)council.bbb(dot)org. Journalists for local media outlets should contact their regional spokesperson (bbb.org/bbb-locator).

ABOUT BBB: For more than 100 years, the Better Business Bureau has been helping people find businesses, brands and charities they can trust. In 2016, people turned to BBB more than 167 million times for BBB Business Profiles on more than 5.2 million businesses and Charity Reports on 11,000 charities, all available for free at bbb.org. The Council of Better Business Bureaus is the umbrella organization for the local, independent BBBs in the United States, Canada and Mexico, as well as home to its national and international programs on dispute resolution, advertising review, and industry self-regulation.
We are excited about our new partnership with Top10 Best Business Loans.

Top10 Best Business Loans is a free, online resource that provides valuable content and comparison features to businesses looking for capital. Top10 Best Business Loans is a global leader in the comparison space, operating in markets throughout North America, Europe, South America, and Australia. Top10 Best Business Loans works with one goal in mind: to help customers make better educated, informed decisions when choosing an online service provider.

With respect to Top10 Best Business Loans, the site focuses on providing businesses with the best way to find the capital that they need. On the website, you are able to compare different funding options, all depending on the exact features of your business.

If you are a startup business, it can be very difficult to find capital. Top10 Best Business Loans has teamed up with Seek Capital to make it easier for these businesses to get the money that they need to get started or grow the business.

According to CEO Roy Ferman, "We are excited about our new partnership with Top10 Best Business Loans."

Ferman further stated, "the startup business funding market is underserviced and we are working hard at Seek Capital make sure that as many business owners as possible have the chance to realize their dreams. By joining forces with such a wonderful organization, we are furthering our mission to provide realistic funding options to startup businesses throughout the United States.

ABOUT SEEK CAPITAL

Seek Capital is the leader in startup business funding, specializing in unsecured lines of credit. Launched in 2015, Seek Capital has helped solve the challenge of early stage business owners obtaining capital to launch and grow their small business.

The company has grown by combining the Seek Capital proprietary lender matching platform, Capital Seeker with its dedication to providing a hands-on, consultative approach to each client. By utilizing the Capital Seeker the company is able to provide real time underwriting decisions allowing business owners to instantly know their funding options.

To date, the company has used the matching software for over 20,000 successful applications across the United States. Seek Capital has an A rating with the Better Business Bureau, is a consistent Top 3 rated or Winner of Lending Trees Lender Award and was Ranked #44 by Glassdoor Best Place to Work 2017.
Welcome Guest! You Are Here:
President Donald Trump has apparently taken notice of Russian President Vladimir Putin's chest-beating over his country's nuclear arsenal.

Putin's actions had "really got under the president's skin," according to a White House official cited by NBC News on Thursday.

During his national state of the union speech in March, Putin touted Russia's new generation of "invincible" nuclear weapons that could not be intercepted.

Trump reportedly responded to Putin's claims during a phone call with the Russian president last week, according to two officials who spoke to NBC News: "If you want to have an arms race we can do that, but I'll win," Trump allegedly said.

After the conversation, Trump said that he and Putin had "a very good call," and that they planned to talk about preventing an arms race, NBC News said.

Though Putin mentioned several weapons, including nuclear-propelled cruise missiles that have unlimited range, US officials reportedly said that some of the weapons had failed during the testing process and were not yet operational.

"I want to tell all those who have fueled the arms race over the last 15 years, sought to win unilateral advantages over Russia, introduced unlawful sanctions aimed to contain our country's development: All what you wanted to impede with your policies have already happened," Putin said during his speech.

"You have failed to contain Russia," Putin added.

Despite Trump's reported threats to Putin, his public comments on Russia have been decidedly muted, according to officials, in part because he insists that he wants to maintain a reasonably cordial relationship with the Kremlin.

One White House official told NBC News that Trump doesn't want too much public criticism of the Kremlin from the White House.

"He doesn't want us to bring it up," a White House official said to NBC. "It is not something he wants to talk about."

Trump reportedly told his aides not to publicize his decision to arm Ukraine, Russia's adversary, with US-made weapons, such as Javelin anti-tank missiles. According to the officials, Trump believed that Putin would be agitated by the moves, NBC reported.

Trump frequently receives criticism for not taking Russia to task as strongly as he has with other countries.

Earlier in March, Trump ignored warnings from his national security advisors and congratulated Putin on his reelection.
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I still dont believe my daughter is dead even after her burial because her songs are all over reminding me of the great daughter I bore.

I plead with you the people in media not to stop playing her songs, she told Kofi Adoma Nwanwani.

She also debunked rumours circulating that she and her daughter were not really on good terms hence her behaviour.

My daughter and I were very close and I used to come to Ghana twice every year to spend time with her but the nature of her job did not allow us to spend much time together as we would have expected She said.

According to her she is surprised at the manner in which some Ghanaians talk about the supposed grudge between them.
He told Starr FM's Starr Drive: The money was never paid, I wasted one year of my life chasing it and I have since moved onInfact I was going to go to court but a lot of my friends, family asked me not to.

You know Ghana we are very petty and if I had taken this to court a lot of people will say Chief Moomen has taken his government to court.

Last year he accused the government of making his work difficult after several attempts to get his money for staging his Wogbejeke theatre.
North Korea has accepted South Korea's proposal of high-level talks in the truce village of Panmunjom on Thursday. The two sides will discuss agenda for a scheduled inter-Korean summit in April.

Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon will head the South Korean delegation, while Ri Son-gwon, the chairman of the North's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland, will lead a North Korean side.
If you cant keep up, better sit up because the Easter Festival is about to deliver to you a memorable four (4) days of endless succession of fun-filled events that will bring you alive and distress you for the next quarter of 2018.

The celebration tagged as the RELAUNCH OF THE BIGGEST KETA EASTER FIESTA spans from Friday, March 30 through to Monday, April 2, 2018. The event was planned to enable you savor the beauty of Keta through the delicious cuisine and breathtaking sights and coastal landmarks.

 On Friday, 30th March, a community Clean-up is scheduled to take place and kick start the celebrations with a launch the Street way in the evening at the Scoop Pub.

 "Your health is your wealth" so join the celebration on Saturday 31st March, Fitness and Health walk to get in shape, and later, fun beach games at Aborigines and Coco Bay beach. The walk will commence at 0530 Hrs GMT (05:30 a.am) and the point of convergence is the Jubilee Radio Premises. Come in looking sporty, break some sweat through walk, work and fun.

 The Fun runs into the next after church on 1st April by Repping a color for the Rep a color pool party. You are not to miss the massive fun. Ocean View Resort in Tegbi will host the fun at a cool rate. Guys get your flower shorts and shirts, Ladies rep a color with your sexy bikinis and swim wears. The fun promised you is of the charts to cool you off for the climax.

 Easter Monday, the mother of all events comes on where Keta and the whole GH will party hard! It is an All-White afternoon Beach Carnival at the Aborigines and Cocobay Beach. Party with your favorite stars like The Man from the Street, Kwaw Kese, and the future of GH reggae dancehall, Eye Judah alongside like Afrima nominee Jah Phinga, Hecta, Het Pee,TonyWeb, and many others while enjoying your free drink served at the entrance.
Most Christian-based religions observe Easter to honor the death and resurrection of their Lord while secular celebrations focus on vacations, clubbing, and some self-time. Believe it or not, these two seemingly opposite traditions are steeped in more religious roots than you might think. These are just some of the Easter staples that you thought you knew all about.

Pulse.com.gh brings you four things you probably dint know about Easter.

One.

Easter is on a different date every year. Its the first Sunday after the full moon after the spring equinox. (This year Easter will be April 1.) Dates for Easter fall between March 22 and April 25.

Two.

The name Easter comes from Eostre (Ostara in German), a goddess of dawn and east. Other scholars trace the name of the holiday to the Latin phrase hebdomada alba, which means white week. According to tradition, new Christians were baptized into the faith on Easter while wearing white clothes.

Three.

The UK celebrates Easter with fruitcake. Fruitcake isnt just for Christmas for the English folks its also enjoyed at Easter time. The Easter Simnel is a fruitcake style dessert filled with apricot jam and topped with marzipan balls. Many presume that the marzipan is meant to symbolize Jesus and his 12 apostles, but food historians have dismissed that as a myth.

Four.
According to a report by Starr News, scores of these passengers have been left stranded after failing to secure buses to make their travels.

However, unfortunately, most of the terminals have been inundated by long and winding queues as available buses are not enough to cater for the huge number of passengers.

Easter is a time when all Christians across the globe come together to mark the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.

On this day, many Ghanaians have also joined in marking the occasion, with some preferring to spend time with their families, whiles others also opt to move to serene places to enjoy the occasion.

Most often, Kwahu in the Eastern region, is the preferred place for many Ghanaians during the Easter festivities due to the wide range of fun activities on display over there.
In a Facebook post, Ofosu Kwakye explained that President Akufo Addo who was elected by Ghanaians is not doing as much as his wife who was not on the ballot sheet.

READ ALSO: Anyidoho opens up on custody time

In what seems to be a praise for the first lady, he said Rebecca Akufo-Addo has helped to construct a babys unit at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH).

According to him, President Akufo-Addo has done nothing tangible in that sector, yet spends lots of resources there.

"As things stand now, the First Lady, Mrs Rebecca Akufo Addo, has achieved more in the health sector than President Akufo Addo, who was voted for."

READ ALSO: How Ghana was shortchanged in the controversial US military deal

"At least she has built a baby's unit at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital. The President has nothing tangible to show in that sector, yet wastes resources dabbling in a totally unnecessary renaming of the seat of government." he posted.
READ MORE: NDC vows to put pressure on government over presence of US troops

The ratification of the agreement has sharply divided the nation, resulting in a protest on Wednesday organised by the Ghana First Patriotic Movement, with people chanting Ghana is not for sale.

Demonstrators held placards that read Shithole government, Trump take your military base away. Ghana not for sale, and Ghana is better than $20 million.

Civil society groups and opposition politicians have skewered the deal as one-sided and questioned what is in for Ghana.

Government spokespersons say the agreement is not different from the ones signed in 1998 and in 2015.

Shortly after the protest, both the government and the US Embassy in Accra issued separate statements to explain that the US does not intend to establish a base in Accra.

The US Embassy said Washington had not requested, nor does it plan to establish a military base or bases in Ghana.

It added: "This year, the United States of America is investing over $20m in training and equipment for the Ghanaian armed forces.

The Deputy General Secretary of the National Democratic Congress Koku Anhidoyo, while commenting on the military deal, found himself in trouble when he said there will be "civilian coup detat if the deal is not reversed.

He has picked up by the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) on Tuesday and kept in Bureau of National Investigations custody.
Collins Owusu Amankwaa said Ghanas military high command made inputs and subsequently greed with every word of the deal..

In an interview with JoyNews, Mr Amankwaa said the committee met with the top hierarchy of the military before it was brought to Parliament.

He said with this background, he does not understand the controversies arising after the deal was made public.

He added that the Foreign Affairs Ministry and the Attorney Generals Department also made inputs.

The military High Command were involved at every level. So what you see there is an agreement all stakeholders made inputs in. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Attorney General all contributed.

READ ALSO: Here are 2 fellow MPs Ken Agyapong admires most

This led to a demonstration by the Ghana First Patriotic Front which was fully supported by the opposition NDC.
According to reports, the NPP members quenched the fire, one of the furious caterers, Abraham Dzikunu, allegedly gave one of the members a physical blow, causing him to bleed from his nose.

In rebuttal, the NPP member also grabbed a stick and hit him in the head.

The women's organizer, Madam Ansah in an interview on Accra-based Adom FM said they would not allow the headmistress, Madam Mercy Tetteh to cook since she is not known in the polling station.

One of the NPP members alleged that the headmistress cooking the food for the students has not been authorized to do so.

He said several warnings have been issued to Madam Tetteh but she has failed to heed to any of them.

However, Abraham Dzikunu, whose head was hit with the stick said the headmistress didn't help the party during the election campaigns in the 2016 general elections so they didn't understand why she has been appointed to handle programme.

READ ALSO: NPP suspends four members over School Feeding brawl

"He is called Kobby he told me to stop. When I stopped he used the Banku Ta to hit my head. I have made a report. This is one constituency and people need to know who is working there. When we got there they were doing the food in the school madams house.
The United States on Thursday declared there is no justification for Russia's retaliatory expulsion of American diplomats.

The Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, Heather Nauert, also criticized Moscow's actions, which were announced earlier in the day by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

"Russia should not be acting like a victim," the State Department spokeswoman added, remarking that the only real victims are those poisoned and inconvenienced by the March 4 release of a nerve agent in the British city of Salisbury.

Lavrov announced the expulsion of 60 U.S. diplomats in response to Washington ordering the departure of the same number of Russian envoys.

Russia also is closing the U.S. consulate in the city of Saint Petersburg, ordering it to cease operations in two days. "It's clear from the list provided to us that the Russian Federation is not interested in a dialogue on issues that matter to our two countries," Nauert told reporters at Thursday's State Department briefing. "We reserve the right to respond."

The United States, along with more than two dozen other nations, has revoked the credentials of Russian diplomats the nations accuse of working as spies after Moscow was blamed for the nerve agent attack on former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, earlier this month in Salisbury. "The United States is better off with fewer Russian spies," Nauert told reporters at Thursday's State Department briefing.

All of the Americans declared persona non grata -- 58 diplomats in Moscow and two officials of the consulate in Yekaterinburg -- are to leave Russia by April 5.

Russia also is expected to expel diplomats from the other countries that took action against it. Moscow denies responsibility for the nerve agent attack. It alleges that the attack was carried out by British intelligence services in order to make Russia look bad. Britain dismisses that allegation.
A Chinese national, Li Yanping has gotten a bail of N10million after he was arrested and arraigned at a Federal High Court sitting in Abuja for allegedly trying to smuggle the sum of $300,000 (N108m) out of Nigeria to Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Nigeria's anti-graft agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission arraigned Yanping, before Justice Babatunde Quadri after he was arrested for failing to inform officers of the Nigerian Customs Service as required by Section 2 (3) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act, 2011 (as amended by Act No. 1 of 2012).

Yanping was arrested by the Presidential Task Force on Trans Border Cash Movement on March 15, 2018, for failure to disclose the said sum while attempting to board an Emirate flight, EK 8786 en route to Dubai.

Yanping charges

According to a statement from the anti-graft agency, the charge against Yanping read, That you, Li Yanping, on or about March 15, 2018, at the Nnamdi Azikwe International Airport, Abuja, within the jurisdiction of the Federal High Court, had in your possession cash in the sum of $300,000 during your outbound clearance for travel to Dubai and failed to declare the said sum of $300,000 to the officers and men of the Nigerian Customs Service as required under the provision of Section 2 (3) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act, 2011 (as amended by Act No. 1 of 2012), thereby committing an offence punishable under Section 2(5) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) Act, 2011 ( as amended by Act No. 1 of 2012).

Yanping had pleaded not guilty to the charge as his counsel, Chinedu Eze, prayed the court to admit the defendant to bail after the EFCC's counsel, Ene Emonye, asked the court to remand Yanping while a date for trial was fixed.

Court's decision

Justice Quadri of the Federal High Court, Abuja, granted Yanping bail in the sum of N10m with two sureties in like sum.

The sureties, according to him, must not be below salary grade level 12 in any of the federal ministries or parastatals, and must have traceable addresses.

Justice Quadri added that the sureties must comply with bail bonds accompanied with their passports.
A US-based Nigerian model, Nneoma Anosike, has just won herself a sum of N10million ($27,778) after slamming a copyright suit on Nigeria's Wema Bank.

On Thursday, March 29, 2018, a Federal High Court in Lagos ordered Wema Bank to pay the sum as damages for the infringement of her intellectual property.

According to the court's judgment, Wema bank was found guilty of breaching Anosikes privacy by using her photograph in a campaign material without her consent.

Model's other gains

The Federal High Court further ruled that apart from financial damages to be paid to Anosike, the court gave an order of injunction restraining Wema bank from further passing off or enabling others to pass off Nneomas professional services.

The Nigerian Bank was also directed to tender a letter of apology to the young woman, and to publish a written apology in two dailies in the US and in two national newspapers circulating around Nigeria.

What you need to know about Nneoma Anosike

Nneoma, who was represented by her father, Frank Anosike, in the case against Wema Bank, was a 2014 brand ambassador of Pepsi Cola Nigeria.

The model has also represented one of the dark shades of Rihannas Fenty Beautys foundation in a 2017 campaign.

Nneoma entered into a three-year management contract with Ford Model Incorporated, New York in 2014 for which she travelled to the United States of America to continue her career.
There are growing concerns in the Nigeria's ruling party, All Progressive Congress, as key members shun the party's national leader, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu's 66th birthday.

While President Muhammadu Buhari, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, nine state governors and six Federal ministers attended an annual colloquium organised to celebrate Tinubu's birthday, other key members of the APC were absent at the event.

Top on the list of absentees at the colloquium are the All Progressives Congress Chairman, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun and Senate President Bukola Saraki.

Other notable APC members absent were the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, and the Minister of Solid Minerals, Kayode Fayemi.

The crack in APC

Both politicians have been avoiding each other even after the national leader had openly condemned some of the activities and ideas of the national chairman saying they didn't conform with the ideologies of the party.

The rift between the two party giants had degenerated to branches of the ruling party leading to President Buhari's decision to appoint Tinubu on the mission to resolve all conflicts and rancours in the party ahead of the 2019 general election.

Though it is unclear why all of key members of the ruling party were absent at Tinubu's 66th birthday, but Oyegun is at the centre of a one year tenure elongation granted to the executive of the party at all levels, which Tinubu had openly opposed.

Crack in party became obvious at last NEC

On Tuesday, March 27, 2018 during the 5th National Executive Council meeting of the APC in Abuja, the crack in the ruling party became obvious with President Buhari tilting towards Tinubu's take on the tenure elongation of executives of the party at all levels.

The president had faulted the decision of the partys NEC to grant one year extension to the party executive, citing a breach of relevant sections of the partys constitution, as well as the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 (as amended), as the basis for his opinion.

This move saw Ondo State governor, Rotimi Akeredolu and the party national legal adviser, Muiz Banire opposing the president's view.

The two senior legal practitioners had maintained that the president's view and take of the matter is sub judiced.

However, President BUhari asked the partys NEC to rescind its earlier decision so as not to give the opposition the grounds on which to reap from the crisis which is likely to result from the constitutional breaches.
The leader of the Roman Catholic church was at the Regina Coeli prison for a foot-washing ceremony on March 29, 2018, according to The Washington Post.

There, he washed the feet of a Nigerian inmate, as well as others from Italy, Morocco, Moldova, Colombia, and Sierra Leone, according to the Vatican.

Eight of them are Catholics, two are Muslims, one is a Buddhist while the remaining one is an Orthodox Christian.

Pope Francis offers advice perfect for Nigerian politicians

Listen up, Nigerian politicians! Pope Francis has some advice that is perfect for you. Actually, it also works for everyone.

While washing the feet of 12 prisoners in a regular Holy Thursday ritual, Francis emphasized the need to serve others like a slave, as Jesus did.

Your chief must be your servant. So often I think  how many wars would have been avoided if all those kings, emperors and heads of state had understood this teaching of Jesus rather than command and be cruel and kill people, he said.

The pontiff also encouraged the inmates to keep hope alive.

Disclosing the fact that he has cataracts, a condition that clouds the eyes, the pope advised the inmates to do a daily cataract surgery for the soul in order to keep hope alive.

At my age, for example, cataracts come and you dont see reality well. Next year I have to have an operation, he added.

Pope Francis advises priests

Earlier that day, the pontiff also offered some advice to Catholic priests.

During another Holy Thursday service in St. Peters Basilica, Pope Francis taught priests how to deal with sinful members.

He urged priests to teach members, adulterers in this case, how to avoid sinning again instead of condemning them with the laws.
The 23-year-old patient was reportedly stabbed on the head when a fight broke out at a bar he was having drinks at.

This happened on Tuesday, March 20, 2018, according to Times Live News, which added that the victim immediately rushed to the Tshepong Hospital for medical attention.

CEO of the Klerksdorp/Tshepong Hospital Complex, Polaki Mokatsane, described the operation as a complicated one.

The surgery took five hours to complete successfully. The patient underwent craniotomy to open a portion of the skull.

"The knife was carefully disengaged and withdrawn from the brain in a controlled manner, without causing internal bleeding or injury to the structures of the brain.

"This patient was very lucky. Had the object cut through the major internal carotid arteries or injured the brain stem he could have lost his life," says Mokatsane.

Nasty God Is Good bus accident has got woman thanking God for life

The miraculous survival of her sister who was involved in a nasty car accident has made a woman, Joy Joseph, offer thanks to God.

A video shared on Facebook showed a massive wreckage involving a God Is Good (GIG) bus enroute Benin and another vehicle.

According to Joseph who is Law degree undergraduate at the University of Benin, her sister had just arrived Nigerian following a trip abroad.

"So my elder sister survived this and you wanna tell me there's no God up there.

"Tell me what He can't do, lemme show you what He has done...

"She just came back to the country to spend the Easter with us and they wanted to change the narrative. She had the accident on her way to Benin.

"I can't even describe how grateful I am right now.
The event has brought back harsh reminders of apartheid and a subtle jolt that there are still remnants of the system of segregation in South African society.

In 2016, a video clip of the incident between estate agent Vicki Momberg and the policeman whose name has been withheld went viral.

In it, the officer attempted to help Momberg after thieves broke into her car at night at a shopping centre.

ALSO READ: Documentary by Amarachi Nwosu explores what it means to be black in Japan

Momberg refused to be helped, insisting she would prefer the assistance of a white or ethnic Indian officer.

Her reason? That black people were plain and simple useless and they are clueless.

She also referred to the policeman as a kaffir, an apartheid-era slur used to refer to a black person and one of the worst terms of hate speech in South Africa.

A groundbreaking verdict

After a long trial, Momberg was sentenced to three years of jail time, with one year suspended, for directing offensive slurs at the officer.

The ruling is believed to be the first time a person is going to jail for using racial slurs in South Africas storied history.

Previously, persons convicted of the same crime have been let off with a fine.

In a world where Donald Trump is President of the United States and movements like Black Lives Matter have gained global significance, the bias and behaviours that have been termed racism have become more important on a global scale.

The case is usually made that racism is now an institutional problem, something that you can only notice in how companies hire staff or who is more likely to win an election, for instance.

But as instances like this show, there are many overt instances of racism but the perpetrators rarely suffer any sanctions for their misdeeds.

It is a major point of the demand for equality; that racism is no longer viewed as a cultural relic that occasionally rears its ugly head but seen as the very present evil that it is and criminalised accordingly.

That is the obvious first step, but the long journey is in eliminating racism from all society until no man is judged by the colour of his skin.

Is there racism in Nigeria?

The importance of this may be lost on persons who live in countries like Nigeria where the population of white persons is miniscule enough that racism is not particularly felt, but that, in itself, is a misconception.

Many Nigerians who interact or work with persons of other races are ofte subjected to inhumane treatment for no just reason. This is very common among unskilled workers.

ALSO READ: Africans in Israel are painting their faces white to avoid deportation

To be fair, it often goes the other way too. Nigerians can view caucasians as "soft" and treat them accordingly.

Even at that, the extent of its prominence is negligible. But still, you cannot avoid it when you eventually make that trip to Europe and you're received like the slightly-civilised monkey that your hosts see you as or when in a firm with white colleagues, you stagnate, despite having obvious skill.

Our real problem is tribalism, a system of bigotry that has taught us to look down on our fellow nationals because of their tribe.

We have a war and several uprisings and massacres as testaments of just how deeply this problem runs.
This is not true, of course, what they have is a denial of the obvious that is based on suppressing a culture they do not approve of until it no longer exists.

In parties held in hotels around cities like Lagos, men find a space to be openly gay, the Guardian reports.

At one of such parties, the turnout is low but men sit, fiddling with each others hair as music and drinks fill the space, anticipating more members of an oft-maligned society.

Nigeria is one of the five most homophobic countries in the world, and while there are activists who make a case for the countrys LGBT persons to be afforded their rights, being gay in Nigeria is a death sentence.

While the hostility towards gay persons has always been a part of societys fabric, the Same-Sex Prohibition Act, which banned gay relationships and institutionalised intolerance was signed into law by former President Jonathan in 2014, all but certifying all forms of injustice against LGBTQ persons.

In July 2017, at Club Owode in Lagos, 70 men and boys were arrested by police.

"In the majority of these cases, the police extort funds from them, knowing that any court case will out their sexuality, says Okoye, For most of them, their single wish is to pay and get out, and the police use it against them

But its not just law enforcement.

Are you trying to get rid of gay people too?

After the names of members of the House of Rainbow Church, an LGBT friendly ministry in Abuja was published in the newspapers, about a dozen of its members were attacked and beaten.

Omolara Oriye, a director at the Initiative for Equal rights told the Guardian that since the beginning of 2017, the spate of violent attacks had reduced, instead what has increased is extortion, blackmail, infringement of the right to assembly.

Gay persons often have to move in secrecy due to the hostility that they face on a daily basis. In Nigeria, it is no different.

Most of them keep their orientation and relationships hidden.

It explains why, when they have gatherings it is in secluded places, where secrecy and privacy are paramount.

But even at that, some of the participants are pressured or coerced into ratting out their peers. In other cases, they simply cant be trusted.

A gay man shared a story of how his friends lived in his home for over three years.

Some of them had lost or left jobs because people had found out about their sexuality, some of them werent allowed to be around their own family, he says.

I was paying for everything, our food, our bills, even giving them money to go to places they needed to.

Then one of his friends had a party while he was away. One attendee took pictures and tried to blackmail them, saying hed show the police.

It should be said that this behaviour of extortion and underhanded practices is not unique to homosexuals. The Nigerian Police had a soiled reputation for unprofessionalism and corruption.

The Police is not your friend

Just recently, a social media campaign under the hashtag #EndSars highlighted the brutality of the Polices Special Anti-Robbery Squad with photos and accounts of beatings, extortion and in cases, murder.

This is possible mostly because many Nigerians do not know their rights and when they do, they can be pressured into believing in that time and place, they do not matter.

For gay people, it is more extreme: they are a demographic whose lifestyle is viewed as indecent and so, finding support in the face of oppression is very unlikely.

To fight this and to help their peers find safety in the country of their birth, many activists have put their foot down and resources in place to protect their interests.

Azeenarh Mohammed, a 32-year old lawyer based in Abuja, is one of such.

You live life here as a gay person, knowing that theres no future in Nigeria if you want to live an open life, but I really wanted to change that

In 2011, she spoke at a hearing in the National Assembly about gay rights, even though the lawmakers expected her to talk about the environment.

This sort of defiance is what it takes, but perhaps more importantly, we must also unlearn our homophobia.

The impact of narratives taught by religious institutions and families is instilling homophobia in a new generation.
Yes, he may decide to try out a few foreign accents once in a while or refuse to come home for an entire year, but Ayo Balogun is a national treasure.

Over the past few years, he has been one of the main ambassadors of the Nigerian sound. Snagging a few minutes of play on one of the most highly anticipated action-fantasy blockbusters of the year was another step in that direction.

The Hollywood star had in December disclosed that Pacific Rim: Uprising, would heavily target Nigeria as a main marketing spot.

Boyega on his Instagram wrote One of the most exciting things about producing Pacific Rim Uprising was the opportunity to influence the creative choices.

So I put @wizkidayo song Daddy yo in the movie. Jaegers need afrobeats too!"

After months in the works (people call these things rollouts), the movie finally released on March 22 in Nigeria.

I definitely looked forward to seeing machines the size of skyscrapers beat monsters to a pulp, but even though I could play a couple of thousand nairas to hear music anytime I want, I really just wanted to hear Wizkids debut in Hollywood.

It lasted between 1015 seconds.

John Boyega, the movies lead character, was at a crossroads between being a Philistine and responsibility when he was narrating his reckless lifestyle.

The scene where the music comes on is like a montage of a party scene and the after party mess.

Daddy Yo comes on as we see Boyega enjoying the life of his head, and then, as quickly as it starts, it ends.

I was slightly pained.

A part of me expected that I would have the chance to get into the groove of the song, or at least, examine how the movies scene would interact with the music.

But the short cameo did one thing.

It made me identify with John Boyega as a Nigerian more than anything else, so when he went out in his Jaeger to fight the monstrous Kaiju, I wanted to fight with him, side by side in my own Jaeger, painted in Lagos colours with the full version of Wizkids song playing in our ears.

I reckon thats what these songs do. A song like Daddy Yo creates a connection between you and the movie that makes you invested in it.

You may be tempted to feel like this means the world is paying attention to us like we did when Captain America brought his caped crusaders to Lagos in Captain America: Civil War and they are, but for the money more than how good the Jollof Rice tastes.

Nigeria has a population of over 150 million people. It is the single largest economy on the continent, which means for investors and businesses looking to explore their frontiers, it only makes sense that they market their products to Nigeria.

Pacific Rim is very important to me because Pacific Rim will actually be the first movie that I have done that I would heavily target Nigeria as a main marketing spot, John Boyega said, in the lead-up to the movies release

One unintentional effect of this, though, is that it heightens your sense of loyalty and identity. Hearing Wizkids Daddy Yo on a blockbuster with a Nigerian in the lead makes you proud of your country.

For years, the perception of Nigeria in the outside world has been determined by Nollywood, Internet fraudsters and corrupt politicians.

Recently, our music and creative talents, in general, have done well to paint us in a better light, and after years of ignoring the obvious, the world is finally turning their heads our way.
Ajimobi made the call in his Easter message signed by his Special Adviser on Communication and Strategy, Mr. Bolaji Tunji and made available to newsmen in Ibadan on Friday.

I also want you to particularly remember to pray for the safe return of the last Dapchi girl, Leah Sharibu and the Chibok girls still under Boko Haram captivity, he said.

He also urged Christians to pray for all the trouble spots across the country, particularly in the North-East to enjoy the restoration of peace and tranquility.

According to him, the Christians should intensify their prayers for the country to enable it to overcome its current socio-economic challenges.

The governor noted that the nation could only attain greatness in an atmosphere of love, togetherness and renewed commitment to the countrys oneness and unity.

Ajimobi appealed to the perpetrators of acts of terrorism, insurgency, militancy and kidnapping, among other acts to embrace amnesty and drop their arms.

Violence and criminality are ill winds that blow no one any good.There is no religion that is in support of taking peoples lives under whatever guise.

Therefore, we must put immediate stop to all acts of terrorism, insurgency, militancy and kidnappings in all parts of the country.

Im appealing to the perpetrators to take advantage of the amnesty being offered them and drop their arms.

We should all be promoting activities that will further enhance our peaceful co-existence and unity as a people.

It is only under this atmosphere that our dear country can achieve the much-desired greatness, he said.

The governor urged Nigerians to emulate Jesus Christ whom he said offered himself as sacrificial lamb for the redemption of making.

while congratulating Christians on the successful completion of the 40-day left, Ajimobi enjoined the Christians to use the period of the Easter to reflect on the essence of the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ.

Easter is not about wining and dining alone, but an occasion to realise the need to love one another as exhibited by God.

It is out of Gods love for mankind that He offered Jesus Christ to die for our sins and to give life more abundant.

Let us eschew all divisive tendencies, violence and other things that are antithetical to the teachings of Jesus Christ, which centered on love and compassion for one another, he said.
An official at the Presidency, who craved for anonymity, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Friday that governors and company owners had called the President and Vice President to push for the extension of the programme.

We are expecting Mr President to make an announcement on the tax amnesty deadline by this weekend.

To be frank and honest, nobody knows whether the President will decide to extend it or not, but there has been calls by state governors and key private sector players calling for the extension.

However, it still remains unclear if the President will take the recommendation to extend it by another three months, since he had been advised otherwise by the Minister of Finance and Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) chairman, the source said.

Meanwhile, the Adamawa state Commissioner for Finance, Mr Mahmoud Yunusa, told NAN that many of the states were in support of extending the tax amnesty past the March 31 deadline.

It should be extended because people are just beginning to buy into the programme. We see people coming up willingly to declare their assets and it shouldnt end soon.

Nigerians deserve more time and I believe that some of them are still collating their assets to know their worth before doing so.

Also, some havent declared because they operate businesses without any formal documentation so it will take time before they get their books in order.

So its my opinion that extending it for another six months would ensure better success, he said.

Yunusa lauded the programme, saying that in Adamawa State, it had helped the state to improve its Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) by more than 200 per cent despite still recovering from insurgency and recession.

Also, Mr Tunde Dare, an economist, held the view that the VAIDs programme should be extended.

Even though I think the programme should be extended, I think the government went about this business of tax amnesty the wrong way.

I think the scheme should be aimed at capturing more people into the scheme without asking them to pay backlog of taxes, he said.

Meanwhile, on Thursday, which was the last working day before the expiration of the programme, many accountants and lawyers stormed the offices of the FIRS to submit applications of their clients.

NAN gathered that many tax defaulters, who had thought that the amnesty programme would be extended, were making last minute efforts to key into the scheme.

The VAIDs programme was launched on July 1, 2017 and was expected to last for nine months.

The government threatened to prosecute tax evaders that do not take advantage of the scheme thereby risking imprisonment of up to five years.

According to the Minister of Finance, Mrs Kemi Adeosun, the Federal Government had the political will as well as the means to gather evidence that will enable it to prosecute tax evaders.

She once said that using Project Lighthouse, a data mining agency, the government had been gathering information from different sources to enable it to identify and properly prosecute tax evaders after the expiration of the deadline.

She said information had so far been gathered from Bank Verification Number records, engagement with foreign private investigation firms on a retainership to trace assets of Nigerians abroad.

ALSO READ:Experts commend FG over VAIDS

Also, the Federal Government plans to use the Nigeria Financial Intelligence Unit records and land ownership records in locations like Maitama, Asokoro, Garki, Wuse, Banana Island, Magodo, Lekki, Ikoyi, and Victoria Island.

The government further plans to beam its searchlights on people that over the years have received major payments from it or foreign exchange allocation and also people with private jets.

Also, the Federal Government have agreements with many foreign governments like the United Arab Emirates and United Kingdom to get records of Nigerians with property there.
Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy was ordered to stand trial Thursday on charges of corruption and influence peddling.

The case focuses on phone calls Sarkozy allegedly made to a judge who was investigating claims that his 2007 presidential campaign was illegally funded.

The hard-charging conservative politician allegedly offered to help the judge get promoted in exchange for information about the investigation into his campaign. In a phone call to Judge Gilbert Azibert, then a senior judge in France's highest court, Sarkozy allegedly offered to help him get a coveted position in neighboring Monaco. The phone call was wiretapped by police.

The latest development comes only days after an investigation was launched into claims Sarkozy accepted illegal financial donations from late Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi for his successful presidential campaign 11 years ago.


Buhari, who unveiled a plaque to commemorate his visit to the Eko Atlantic City project, expressed his appreciation to investors after being shown round the project by Gov. Akinwunmi Ambode of Lagos State.

He said that their investment had helped to provide employment for Nigerians, reducing the rate of unemployment in the country.

"I am extremely grateful to those that agreed to invest so much in our country. I have just gone round to see the Eko Atlantic City. I am extremely impressed with the potentiality of this project and the amount of jobs and its effect on the economy and what it is capable of bringing," Buhari said.

The President, while expressing his satisfaction with the ocean reclamation embarked upon by the state government and its partners, said that the investment had impacted on the country's economy.

Earlier, Gov. Ambode said that the project was an example of what the private sector could do to the nation's economy.

Ambode, who said the project was initiated by the Bola Tinubu administration, noted that it had actually saved the whole of Victoria Island from potential danger.

He said that the project, which would spread over 750 square kilometres, upon completion, would eventually be bigger than Victoria Island.

In an interview with newsmen, Tinubu, who accompanied the President on the tour, described the Eko Atlantic City project as a solution to a potentially dangerous liability.

According to Tinubu, the ocean surge at the Ahmadu Bello end could have wiped out the whole of Lagos Island.

He, however, advised the Federal Government to replicate the project on the nation's coastline.
In the message posted on his official Facebook page, Jonathan, who was president between 2010 and 2015, said he expects Nigeria to overcome its challenges as long as Nigerians are united in helping it grow.

He wrote, "Easter is a time when we celebrate the resurrection of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, who died for the sin of the world. In this season where we mark renaissance, I believe and expect Nigeria to rise and overcome her national challenges because our shared experiences are bringing us to the conclusion that no matter what the forces of evil can do, we as Nigerians, united in doing good, can and will prevail.

"I urge all Nigerians, even if we feel that we are not in a position to do much to help Nigeria to overcome, let us at least believe that she will overcome. That is a lot. That is a lot. Happy Easter."

People plotting against me - Jonathan

The former president recently disclosed that there is a plot against him by unknown people to unleash a campaign of lies to damage his reputation.

He took to his Facebook page on Sunday, March 25, 2018, to allege the plot, maintaining that he'll remain resolute and hope that the truth prevails.

"What I will say however, is that no matter how far and fast falsehood has traveled, it must eventually be overtaken by truth," he said.

The former president has recently been in the news most notably for corruption during his tenure and attempted election manipulation during his reelection campaign in 2015.

While speaking on Monday, March 19, 2018, during the 7th presidential quarterly business forum in Abuja, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo accused the Jonathan administration of withdrawing N150billion from the federation account just days before the 2015 election.

He said, "In one single transaction, a few weeks to the 2015 elections, sums of N100billion and $295million were just frittered away by a few."

The former president responded to the allegations through his former aide, Reno Omokri, saying that the Vice President should provide proof.

"On this most recent allegation, let me state categorically that Jonathan did not share N150 billion two weeks to the 2015 election. If Osinbajo has proof that Jonathan did so, then we challenge him to publish his proof," Omokri said.

In new revelations that emerged last week, The Guardian UK revealed that an unnamed Nigerian billionaire paid 2m to a foreign data company called to influence the 2015 presidential election for Jonathan.

Cambridge Analytica staff were flown to Nigeria, Israeli hackers were hired to break into then-opponent Muhammadu Buhari's emails to exhume his financial and medical records. Staff were also handed videos put together to scare voters in Buhari's stronghold of the north.

The Cambridge Analytica team were lodged in a hotel in Abuja a few weeks to the presidential election and worked on a communications campaign for Jonathan.

The Israeli intelligence operatives who worked with Cambridge Analytica during this period claimed that France and Israel wanted Jonathan to win the presidential election.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the bandits attacked the area after some members of the community held a meeting to discuss measures to be taken against the bandits during the 2018 farming season.

The bandits had earlier threatened that there would be no farming activities in the area in this year's rainy season.

Liman Umar, one of the community leaders and the deputy Imam of the village, told newsmen that the bandits had been harassing people in the area, brandishing sophisticated weapons without talking to anyone.

"It was shortly after our local vigilante members held the meeting on Tuesday that the bandits finally struck and killed only men including those who tried to escape," Umar said

He said many bodies were found decomposing in the bushes, and that some of the corpses could not be brought into the village for proper burial because people were afraid to go and get them as the bandits were believed to be hiding on the outskirts of the village.

He said one of the villagers, Danladi Shabalai, who was caught communicating with the bandits, was shot and killed by security men.

The Chairman of Anka LGA, Alhaji Mustapha Gado, confirmed that 32 people were buried including a woman and her child who died at a hospital in Gusau.

Gado said more bodies were still being searched for in the bushes and that security measures had been stepped up in the area, but that the villagers had all fled out of fear that the bandits might return.
The Commissions Head of Media Unit, Mrs Fatima Mustapha, made this known in a statement made available to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), in Abuja.

She said that the commission would use the period to conclude further process for the announcement of 2018 Hajj fares, adding that there would be no uniform Hajj fares for 2018 pilgrimage.

The head of media unit explained that the 2018 hajj package would be in accordance with the services that would be provided to the pilgrims by each state.

Following town hall meetings to sensitise the intending pilgrims on deadline of March 31, 2018 for payment of 2018 Hajj fare, series of appeals for extension of registration were raised.

 Based on the appeals and the popular demand from the public, the National Hajj Commission of Nigeria (NAHCON) has approved the extension of registration period to the end of April, 2018,  she said.

Mustapha, therefore, advised intending pilgrims to take advantage of the grace period to register and deposit N1.5 million as paid in 2017, before the announcement of 2018 Hajj fare package.

According to her, the commission appreciates the efforts of the State Pilgrims Welfare Boards, Agencies and Commissions for mobilising prospective intending pilgrims to register which had recorded great response by them.

Pilgrims are to note that the 2018 Hajj fares for each state would be jointly determined by the Commission and the state concerned, Mustapha said.

She also called on the intending pilgrims to ensure their registration for the 2018 Hajj before the stipulated deadline because no further extension would be granted by the commission thereafter.
Osinbajo made the call on Friday at the wedding reception of the in-law to President Muhammadu Buhari, Hamza Ahmed at the Banquet Hall of the Presidential Villa in Abuja.

The Vice President advised the couple to always do things together and imbibe the Spirit of togetherness.

News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the wedding fatiha was conducted by the Chief Imam of Abuja National Mosque Prof. Shehu Galadanchi, after a payment of N100,000 as dowry by the representative of the groom Prof. Abdullah Abba.

The wedding fatiha was attended by President Muhammadu Buhari, President of the Senate, Bukola Saraki, National Security Adviser, Babagana Munguno, Inspector General of Police, Ibrahim Idris among others.

Osinbajo, who was the special guest of honour at the event, enjoined the couple to dedicate their life and time to ensure the success of the marriage.

Also speaking, the Governor of Oyo State, Abiola Ajimobi, called on the couple to tolerate one another and avoid any negative tendencies that could lead to disagreement among them.

Ajimobi also urged the couple to take their marriage an act of worship by providing the necessary support to one another.

The representative of the bride and the Managing Director of Federal Airport Authority (FAAN), Mr Saleh Dunoma, prayed for the almighty God to always provide the means for groom to take good care of the bride.

According to him, as from today, the welfare and wellbeing of the bride is now the sole responsibility of the groom.

In his closing remark, the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Mr Boss Mustapha, urged the groom to take the counsel of Vice President seriously as the only way to attain successful married life.

 Hamza your marriage is beautiful but on constant basis, I plead with you to always abide with God in your marriage because He is the only one that can sustain that marriage he said.

The SGF, therefore, thanked the invited guests and prayed to almighty God to take everyone back to their various destinations.
According to a report by TheCable, the clergyman said the government has been unable to curb the recent menace of herdsmen across the country and is making the situation worse by ordering citizens to surrender their illegal firearms.

He said that the surrender order should also affect herdsmen who have been at the center of several attacks in 2018 that has led to the death of at least 200 victims across the country, especially in Benue and Taraba.

He said, "This is why I said this government is compromised completely. If you are making such a rule, let it be a statute of general application, let it apply to all. Nigerians to wake up, shine their eyes and put their own destinies into their hands. They should fight for themselves. There are several ways to do it.

"Civil unrest is one of them, protest is another. We (Nigerians) can shut this government down. We have the numbers and we will show them that we have done it before and we will do it again."

The cleric also ripped into President Muhammadu Buhari's administration, criticising the Federal Government for mismanaging fuel subsidy.

He said, "Show me in the world, any civilised society or any nation that is developed where government does business. Government job is to create enabling environment for business to thrive and flourish. Government job is to set policy.

"In Nigeria, the sleaze they get from it (subsidy) is why they are not letting go. There is only one word for either this government or any government, Buhari inclusive: let him that stole steal no more."
Jibril, 58, a three-term member of the House of Representatives, was buried amidst tears from families, friends and colleagues that thronged Lokoja for the burial.

The burial was attended by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mr Yakubu Dogara, Kogi Deputy Governor, Mr Simon Achuba, Kogi House of Assembly Speaker, Mr Matthew Kolawole, members of the house, among others.

Dogara, who spoke with newsmen after the burial, described Jibril as a fine colleague and brilliant law maker.

He lamented the loss of many lawmakers at the same time, and prayed God to halt the tide.

I dont think it has happened before; not to my recollection. We have lost about three senators and five members of the House of Representatives in the past few weeks, he said.

Mr Matthew Kolawole, the Speaker, Kogi House of Assembly, told newsmen that the state government, the Kogi House of Assembly, and the entire Kogi would miss him a lot.

Dont forget that he was a former speaker of Kogi House of Assembly, we will miss him a lot.

I pray that God almighty will give all of us the heart to bear the irreparable lost.

What happened today is a big lesson to all of us who are still living.

No matter how rich you are, just remember that sometime, someday, you will drop dead, and when you do, you are going to give account of your life to God.
As of today, the Senate has passed 201 Bills. We still have 15 months to go, yet, we have reached this milestone. I would like to thank my Distinguished Colleagues for their hard work and cooperation over the last 33 months.
In a statement Ashafa said: On behalf of the good and hardworking people of Lagos East Senatorial District in general and the good people of Ikorodu in particular, I seize this opportunity to commend His Excellency, President Muhamadu Buhari and the Honourable Minister for Power, Works and Housing, on the recent approval of the sum of N20billion for the rehabilitation of the Ikorodu  Sagamu road. We called and you answered.

I also thank His Excellency, our dear Governor for the role he has played at the executive level in ensuring the approval of the funding for the construction/rehabilitation of this project.

Eastern district

Noting the role he and lawmakers of the Eastern District of Lagos played, Ashafa stated that: "having observed the perennial strain and discomfort that the above stated road project has caused our teeming constituents, I led the clamour of other legislators from the Lagos East Senatorial District via my letter dated 24th July, 2017 in urging the Hon. Minister for Power, Works and Housing to prioritize the award of the said project.

"The Honourable Minister graciously directed the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry to respond vide a letter dated 18th October, 2017 with Reference Number: DDHMS/CR/62/NASS/111/409 confirming that the said project has been prioritized and that the procurement process for the project had indeed commenced.

"Yesterdays approval of funding by the Federal Executive Council therefore marks the end of the award process.

Excited

Ashafa said he is excited aboutthe positive effect the road will have on the people of Ikorodu.

He said he has confidence that the federal government will speedily complete the project.

I am deeply excited because the completion of this project would greatly improve the quality of life of our constituents, by easing the stress they currently face commuting that route while also easing the stress on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, by serving as a viable alternative to commuters.

"I am confident that work would commence in earnest towards the speedy completion of this important infrastructural project soonest", Ashafa said.
Sirika, while addressing stakeholders on Thursday at the 4th Aviation Stakeholders Forum in Abuja, said the Lufthansa Group earlier appointed by the Federal Government failed to accept the offer.

He explained that the consortium failed to communicate its acceptance or rejection of the offer to the government six months after leading to the delay in the process.

The minister added that when the company eventually responded, it came up with a counter offer, which the government could not accept leading to the cancellation of the offer.

He said that Lufthansa asked the government to open an escrow account in abroad as well as requesting that transactions be carried out in foreign currencies.

In order not to rush and take wrong decision, we decided to take time to engage the consortium comprises Airline Management Group Ltd, Avia Solutions Ltd and Tianerro FZE.

Airline Management is a UK based firm with experience and expertise in Airline Start Ups and turn around, which has led to some of the most successful transformation and cost reduction programme in the Aviation industry.

The Transaction Advisers have all commenced work and are liaising with the Project Delivery Team to outline Business Case for adopting PPP methodology.

They are to develop a well-structured PPP procurement process and select a PPP Partner.

This is not the first time the transaction advisers are starting the job, they have been on ground but because the Nigerian public are eager to know them.

We decided to unveil them and let them talk to the stakeholders.

People want to know if those advisers are legally engaged, whether due process was followed in accordance with the ICRC regulations and like you heard from ICRC person, we followed the due process, he said.

Mr Noggie Meggison, Chairman, Airline Operators of Nigeria (AON), urged the Transaction Advisers to always engage the stakeholders in the processes of all the projects.

Meggison pointed out that the existing facilities owned by some private companies in the country like MRO should be taken into consideration when establishing a new one.

He called for a win-win situation for all stakeholders in the industry, while urging the government to reconsider its position on the Single African Air Transport Market (SAATM) initiative.

According to him, it is good to sign an open sky agreement but the government must look at it to see how the country can take advantage of it.

Mr Ilitrus Ahmadu, National President, Air Transport Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (ATSSAN), said the forum had afforded them opportunity to see how they could grow the industry.

Ahmadu urged the government to come to the rescue of Aero Contactors to save jobs through Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON), adding that government could do more.

He explained that their earlier stance against the concession of airport was borne out of their struggle to save their jobs.

Our primary concern is the welfare of our members because we dont want to go the way of the Nigerian Airways workers.

Let the concession be the model that suits everybodys interest and we intend to engage the transaction advisers for the various projects, he said.
The young girl sustained several skull injuries and after receiving emergency treatment at a Pakistan army hospital, she was flown to Britain to undergo surgery.

Malala was returning home from school in October 2012 when masked gunmen intercepted her school van and shot her in the head.

"It is the happiest day of my life that I have come back to my country and standing on my native soil after more than five-and-a-half years," she said before breaking down into tears. Whenever I travel in a plane, car I see the cities of London, New York and I was told that just imagine this is Pakistan, imagine that you are traveling in Islamabad, imagine that your are in Karachi. And it was never true. But now today I see I am here. I am extremely happy."

In an emotional speech broadcast live by television stations, Malala said she had dreamed of returning to Pakistan and setting foot on her native soil.

"I still can't believe that this is actually happening," Malala later told a specially organized gathering at the prime ministers office where senior officials, cabinet members, lawmakers, civil society activists and young students were in attendance.

The 20-year-old global education activist met with Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi just hours after landing in Islamabad.

Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai returned Thursday to her native Pakistan, nearly six years after she was shot by Islamist militants in her northwestern home district of Swat for advocating female education.

The outlawed Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for plotting the attack and vowed to target her again. The group justified its action, accusing Malala of promoting western culture.

Malala has since been living in Britain and studying at Oxford University. She is the co-founder of the Malala Fund helping girls receive secondary education in conflict-hit countries, including Syria, Kenya, Nigeria, Jordan and Pakistan.

The Malala Fund champions every girls right to 12 years of free, safe and quality education. Malala began speaking out at the age of 11 for girls education in her largely conservative home district.

Malala said that though she was just 20 years-old she has already gone through too many challenges, but added she had never thought of leaving Pakistan.

"From growing up in the beautiful Swat valley, to then seeing extremism and terrorism in 2007 till 2009, and then seeing how many difficulties women and girls face in our society and how we can fight those challenges," she explained, "and then the attack on me taking place, leaving my own country. Everything was just happening itself like you could not control anything."

Her critics, mostly Islamist fundamentalists at home, saw the Malala shooting as stage-managed by Western powers campaigning to malign Pakistan.

In her speech Thursday, the young activist emphasized the need to educate Pakistani girls, saying her organization has already spent more than $6-million in girls' education.

Malala urged Pakistanis to join her in the mission to economically empower women for a "better" future of her country. She has used her Nobel Prize money to build a girls' school in Swat which was inaugurated earlier this month. Local media speculated she might visit the school.

Swat used to be a stronghold of the militants where they had blown up girls' schools and imposed their harsh interpretation of Islamic law, or sharia until a major military operation flushed them out of the scenic valley in 2009.

Prime Minister Abbasi said he was extremely happy to welcome a daughter of the Pakistan nation who has earned massive fame and respect from the entire world, has come back home.

"You are the most famous citizen in the history of Pakistan. The world has honored you and Pakistan will also do so... It is your home. You are no more an ordinary citizen and your security is now also our duty," Abbasi said.

The prime minister went on to say that terrorism was at its peak in Pakistan in 2012 when Malala also became a victim and left the country. But Pakistani security forces, he added, have since effectively tackled the challenge.

"We have fought a difficult war in which 6,500 soldiers, 25,000 policemen, paramilitary forces and civilians embraced martyrdom," Abbasi noted.

These sacrifices as part of ongoing anti-terrorism operations in Pakistan have established peace in the country and eliminated terrorism, Abbasi said.


As the event wore on, trust us not to miss a thing. Here are 10 for your reading pleasure.

1. Babachir Lawal is a lonely man these days

Remember him?

Lawal is the former Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF) accused of corruption and sacked by President Buhari in October of 2017.

First told he had been sacked by the presidency, Lawal famously asked State House correspondents: who is the presidency?

He was so powerful, he thought he was the presidency.

Well, at the BAT Colloquium, he looked less so. The power of the Bleck Penther appeared to have been stripped ewey from him.

Lawal sat with Nuhu Ribadu and Andy Ubah at the extreme left of the stage; far from where the presidency, Ministers, Governors and important aides sat. And he was really looking lost and lonely at intervals.

Life really does come at you fast.

2. Tinubu is the most revered politician in the land

It takes a certain kind of political clout to bring serving Governors, Ministers, Vice President and a President to Lagos annually for a lecture series in your honour.

Every big name in the APC attended this eventand youd be right to call them Jagabans children.

Just goes to show how much respect the big names in the nations politics have for Tinubu and how they wont stop eating from his palms.

3. Is there a better speaker in Nigeria than Osinbajo?

Hes mastered the art of speech delivery so much, Osinbajo can ditch a teleprompter and an iPad and still deliver a helluva speech.

Speeches have become cakewalk for him.

As always, his speech at the BAT Colloquium was a masterclass in the fine art of public speaking. His cadence dictated the mood of the audience as he progressed.

He would begin with a wisecrack, delve into the meat of his essay and close with a nugget. Without breaking a sweat.

And as always, when he rounded off his speech here, the audience handed him a standing ovation.

4. Obanikoro has probably been hitting the gym

Former Minister in the Jonathan era, Sen Musiliu Obanikoro, is looking all trim and buff these days.

And it has nothing to do with the fact that he spent a few weeks in jail for alleged corruption, we are certain.

As he settles in with his new friends in the APC, Obanikoro may just have been hitting the gym to keep fit for the political battles ahead.

Smart alec.

5. Colloquium or campaign?

The BAT Colloquium used to be a forum where the best of minds discussed policies and ideas that would shape the polity.

However, since the APC sacked the PDP from the center, the BAT colloquium appears to have lost its original purpose and shine.

This edition will be remembered for its boring presentations and documentaries on Buharis achievements and social investment programs.

6. The cameramen, SSS fights

The job of keeping the president and politically exposed persons safe is a really tough one.

Ask the gentlemen in black at the BAT Colloquium who had a really tough time keeping photographers and photo journalists in check.

They would form a barricade with their burly bodies, but the photographers would find a way to push past the barricade each time.

When it was time for cutting of Tinubus cake, the SSS chaps gave up as all photo-journalists poured onto the steps of the stage, shoving security orderlies aside.

However, it has to be said that a few photographers would be undergoing massage therapy as you read this, because they were pushed to the floor by irate security operatives time and again.

7. Tinubu is so fit

I came face to face with Tinubu at least twice. Once, when he was stepping out to receive Buhari and when he was dashing for lunch after the event.

He was literally sprinting on each occasion as his orderlies and wife tried to keep up with him.

66? Nah, the man has the energy levels of a 30-year-old.

8. Buhari is certainly the king of political comedy

Ok, you may say hes got dry jokes and all, but Buhari always has a way of making his audience laugh so hard when he speaks.

He did it again here at intervals. He also chuckled as others spoke, you've got to admit that he's got a sense of humour.

He may not be Ali Baba but hey, he does try.

9. Politicians can sleep sha

Maybe its because they stay awake all night trying to ruin your country, but I havent been at a political event where some top politician isnt throwing their head backward in deep, snoring sleep.

You know that sleep where the mouth is hanging open? Yeah, that one.

I counted five big men sleeping their heads off today, right in the middle of the event.

I must confess that I had the urge to go wake them up, but I was raised well.

10. Sycophancy is a thriving industry

Whats with these guys who are always beating talking drums and chanting praises each time a politician is about to make his way into an event venue?

Ok, they were here again in their numbers. Draped in APC colours and stuff.

I caught a few inside the event hall as well. During Tinubus speech, they went: On your mandateon your mandatewe shall stand".

Give these guys medals already.
The 39-year-old was fighting for his life in hospital after suffering serious back injuries, while his wife died after being hit in the head in the shooting in front of their home Friday morning in the Toulouse suburb of Colomiers.

One of their children, a 15-year-old boy, was in their apartment at the time and heard the gunfire, local authorities told AFP, adding that he was being looked after by a local trauma group.

The local Toulouse Journalists' Association said it had met Namazov in 2010 but was unable to confirm he was a reporter, while the mayor's office said it was unaware he was living in the area.

Media freedom group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said it was checking Namazov's identity, but regional specialist Johan Bihr drew attention to comments from respected Azerbaijani journalist Khadija Ismayilova who cast doubt on his claims.

Writing on Facebook, Ismayilova claimed that Namazov had pretended to be a journalist to get asylum in France and had recently got into a public argument with a mafia boss on the internet.

Police said that seven bullets were fired in total in the shooting in a car park on Friday morning after the couple had dropped their youngest child at school.
Under such agreements, rebels agree to hand over territory in exchange for safe passage for them and civilians to opposition zones in northwest Syria.

More than 36,000 people have already been bussed out of the enclave, and fresh evacuations were under way on Friday.

Around 1,000 people, a quarter of them fighters, were boarding buses in a pocket of Ghouta held by the Faylaq al-Rahman rebel faction, according to Syrian state media.

That agreement, reached last week, left the overpopulated, devastated town of Douma as the final rebel holdout in the region.

Russia's defence ministry on Friday said it had brokered a deal that would see rebels abandon Douma "shortly", but the fighters there quickly denied it.

"We categorically refuse leaving or being displaced," said Jaish al-Islam's spokesman Hamza Bayraqdar.

"That's an essential demand of the negotiations. We have not reached an agreement yet," he told AFP, adding that talks were ongoing.

Eastern Ghouta was the armed opposition's last stronghold around Damascus, which groups regularly targeted with rockets and mortar rounds.

Stalling talks

To secure Damascus, President Bashar al-Assad launched a ferocious air and ground assault on February 18 to oust rebels from their perch in Ghouta.

More than 1,600 civilians have been killed in the onslaught, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group.

Troops pursued a divide-and-conquer strategy, seizing most of the enclave then breaking up what was left of it into three isolated pockets.

Moscow stepped in and swiftly announced two withdrawal agreements with rebels, the first of which saw more than 4,500 fighters and civilians bussed out of the town of Harasta.

The second deal, reached with Faylaq al-Rahman one week ago, has seen more than 31,000 people quit the towns of Arbin and Zamalka and the Jobar district.

In the first two deals, rebels caved in to Russia's "leave or die" approach but negotiations for the Douma pocket, held by Jaish al-Islam, has looked more arduous.

Douma's population has swelled to an estimated 200,000 with people displaced from other bombed-out districts.

Jaish al-Islam had been in talks with Russia to reach a settlement whereby they could stay, instead of being bused out like other rebels.

But negotiations faltered over the group's demands of a general amnesty and safe passage for Douma residents to move freely across the country, a source with knowledge of the talks told AFP.

Moscow threatened Jaish al-Islam with a renewed blitz on the town if they did not agree to withdraw, and Syrian troops have amassed around the holdout.

'Nearly wiped out'

The rebel movement have also come under growing pressure from Douma's residents, hundreds of whom have organised demonstrations demanding a status update on the talks.

On Thursday, Russia's foreign minister said Syrian forces had ousted nearly all rebels from Ghouta.

"As a result of this anti-terrorism operation in Eastern Ghouta, terrorist elements have nearly been wiped out of this suburb of the Syrian capital," Sergei Lavrov said.

Syria's state news agency SANA said around 29,000 civilians had fled Douma in recent days, using a "corridor" opened up by advancing Syrian troops.

SANA said a total of 143,000 people in total had streamed out of Ghouta along such corridors and as part of the evacuation deals.

It did not confirm the agreement with Jaish al-Islam, but its correspondent said "preliminary information" indicated a deal was close to being reached.

The rebels evacuated so far were bussed to the northwestern province of Idlib and one of the sticking points in the Douma talks appears to be the destination.
He added, Well probably hold that deal up for a little while, see how it all plays out.

It was unclear what leverage Trump believed he could gain in the North Korea talks by delaying the deal with the South. The move could be an attempt by Trump to prod President Moon Jae-in of South Korea to hold a firm line with North Korea when talks begin over its nuclear program. Raj Shah, a White House spokesman, said in a statement that South Korea and the United States had reached an agreement in principle.

The president, taking into account all relevant considerations  including negotiations with North Korea  will determine the best time to sign a finalized agreement on behalf of the United States, he said.

But Trumps comments seemed to undercut a weeklong White House effort to promote the agreement. And they were in keeping with the at-times confusing tone of Trumps speech at a muddy-floored training center for union workers here in this Cleveland suburb: His appearance was billed as an attempt to promote his infrastructure plan, but Trump addressed it only briefly near the end of his remarks, and said it was unlikely to pass soon.

After a week marked by persistent scandals and high-profile staff departures, policy was not at the forefront of the presidents mind. Trump seemed intently focused on delivering his own progress report to supporters on a range of red-meat issues, including his zeal for improving border security, his promise to construct a border wall with Mexico, his administrations efforts to roll back what he called job killing regulations and his thwarting of Democrats.

Really, I have gotten done much more than I promised, Trump said. We did a lot of things I didnt even promise.

In the driving rain, Trump made his way to the training center, where he had been scheduled to sell an ambitious plan that would try to leverage $200 billion in federal spending to generate $1.5 trillion in total spending on projects such as tunnels, bridges and highways. White House officials had framed the event as a ramp-up, but this conflicted with the presidents decision to say he would push the plan to next year, declaring that he did not expect it to pass at least until after the November midterm elections.

Also curiously, Trump spent little time on the trade deal struck with South Korea this week, which had been a win for his administration. That continued a relatively muted celebration: The announcement of that agreements details came not from Trump or his White House, but from South Korean officials; Trump administration officials unveiled the plan days later in a conference call with reporters.

Instead, Trump disparaged a previous version of a South Korea trade agreement as a horror show and a Hillary Clinton special. He mused to the crowd that he might hold up finalizing the deal while he pursues planned talks with North Korea.

Certainly, the rhetoric has calmed down just a little bit, would you say? Trump asked the crowd. Well see how it all turns out.

Trump seemed to veer off script in other areas as well. At one point, he suggested that he planned to pull U.S. troops out of Syria, where they have aided a military campaign that has recaptured the vast majority of the territory once controlled by the Islamic State, or ISIS. Were knocking the hell out of ISIS, he said. Well be coming out of Syria, like, very soon. Let the other people take care of it now.

As the crowd applauded, he added: Very soon, very soon were coming out. Were going to have 100 percent of the caliphate, as they call it  sometimes referred to as land  taking it all back quickly, quickly.

The comment seemed in conflict with plans by his national security team to keep a small force in place. As recently as Tuesday, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said that while U.S. forces were no longer in an offensive effort on the ground and had drawn off slightly to avoid accidental conflict with Russian troops, they continued to play a role. We continue the operations in Syria, he said.

Some foreign policy specialists said a complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria would leave a dangerous void. If were pulling those troops out, were ceding the remnants of Syria to the Russians and the Iranians and the other actors, which actually I would argue would be a big victory for Russia, said Jamie M. Fly, a Republican scholar at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

Trump eventually focused on infrastructure on Thursday, zeroing in on his plan to speed up permitting. But the subject and timing of the presidents focus on his plan, announced in February, are curious. Congressional Republicans have not shown much appetite for taking up the infrastructure package, and neither have Democrats, who prefer proposals with much more federal spending.

Trump acknowledged some of that reality in his remarks.

I dont think youre going to get Democrat support very much, he said. Youre probably going to have to wait until after the election.

Administration officials have not mounted any sort of effort, in public or private, that matches the scale of the pressure campaign they employed before the passage of Trumps signature tax cut package in 2017. Perhaps the most prominent advocate of the infrastructure proposal, Gary D. Cohn, recently left his post as director of the National Economic Council. His successor, Larry Kudlow, is less enthusiastic about increases in federal infrastructure spending.

The administration envisions states, local governments and the private sector contributing the bulk of the funds, a recipe that experts doubt would result in anywhere close to the targeted level of investment.

Richard Trumka, the president of the AFL-CIO, which has lobbied for a large infrastructure bill, said he was skeptical that the presidents visit would spur any action.

He and Congress didnt blink whenever they shelled out a trillion and a half dollars in tax giveaways for the rich, Trumka said, but we havent seen a nickel yet for infrastructure. He can talk about it forever, but hes got to do something.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the minority leader, echoed that sentiment on Thursday. Democrats are eager to work with the administration on infrastructure, he said, but theres been a lack of seriousness on this issue from the White House.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
In the photograph, Devonte clung to the officer, a mix of fear and anguish in his eyes.

But the intense news media coverage that followed may have been the reason the Hart family decided to flee to Washington state, the authorities said on Wednesday.

Then, the unthinkable: The familys sport utility vehicle plunged off a 100-foot cliff in Northern California and was discovered on Monday  upside down, engulfed by the waves of the Pacific Ocean.

Both parents, Jennifer and Sarah Hart, were found dead inside the SUV; three of their children were discovered dead outside it; and the three other children, including Devonte, were still missing on Wednesday evening and feared dead, law enforcement officials said.

We have every indication to believe that all six children were in there, however only three bodies have been recovered, said Sheriff Tom Allman of Mendocino County. We have no evidence and no reason to believe this was an intentional act. Certainly people are wondering what caused this.

Still, authorities did not discount the possibility that some of the children may have been staying with friends.

At a news conference on Wednesday, Allman conceded that many questions remain: When did the accident, as he called it, occur? Why did the SUV drive across at least 75 feet of dirt before plummeting into the ocean? Why werent there skid marks?

Allman said his office knew of no witnesses.

In the meantime, troubling reports about the family have emerged.

Washington state Child Protective Services learned on Friday of allegations of abuse against the Harts and tried to make contact with them that day, but no one answered when its employees visited their home, Norah West, a spokeswoman for the states Department of Social and Health Services, said on Wednesday.

West said that Child Protective Services had opened the inquiry because of allegations of abuse or neglect in the home.

She said the childrens agency made two subsequent attempts to establish contact with the family, visiting the home again on Monday and Tuesday, but was unsuccessful. A spokesman for the Clark County Sheriffs Department in Washington state said he was not aware of any previous interactions with the family.

A neighbor of the Harts in Woodland, Washington, Dana DeKalb, told the NBC affiliate KGW that Devonte, the child from the 2014 photograph, had recently begun venturing over to her home to ask for food, sometimes several times a day.

According to DeKalb, Devonte said his mothers sometimes withheld food from the children as punishment and disallowed them from going outside.

DeKalb said she was the one who brought the family to the attention of Child Protective Services. She told KGW that when the childrens agency visited on Friday, the Harts refused to answer the door, and that the family left only hours later.

Publicly available records show that Sarah Hart had lived in Minnesota for years before eventually moving to West Linn, Oregon, and finally Woodland, Washington. Court records show that she was convicted of misdemeanor domestic assault in Minnesota in 2011. A copy of the complaint obtained by The New York Times shows Sarah Hart had also initially been charged with one count of malicious punishment of child.

The complaint says Sarah Hart admitted spanking one of her children, who was 6 years old at the time. The defendant admitted that she let her anger get out of control, the complaint said.

The child was found to have had marks on her stomach, which Sarah Hart acknowledged probably came from the girl having been bent over the edge of a bathtub while being spanked, the complaint said.

The crash was discovered Monday afternoon by a passer-by who had used a pullout along the road and saw a vehicle off the embankment on the rocky shoreline. Deputies were sent to that area, called Juan Creek, along Highway 1, more than 500 miles from the Harts home.

Investigators soon found the vehicle and the bodies, identifying the two adults as Jennifer and Sarah Hart, both 38, of Woodland Washington. By Wednesday, coroners officials had identified the bodies of the three children: Markis, 19; Jeremiah , 14; and Abigail, 14. Authorities say the three missing children are: Devonte, 15; Hannah, 16; and Sierra, 12.

In 2014, Devonte was photographed at a demonstration in Portland, one of many protests across the country of a grand jurys decision not to bring criminal charges against Darren Wilson, the police officer who fatally shot Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Devonte, who was then 12, had been holding a Free Hugs sign, and a police officer, Sgt. Bret Barnum, approached him to ask why he was crying.

The photograph of the two embracing, which was first published by The Oregonian, ricocheted around social media and was featured by major news media outlets.

In an interview at the time with The Oregonian, Barnum said the boy told him that he was sad about the protests, kind of about national events.

I just kind of sighed, he recalled, and said, Im sorry.'

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
According to the commissions website, its purpose is to enforce the New York City Human Rights Law, which prohibits discrimination in New York City. The areas covered by the Human Rights Law include employment, housing and public accommodations.

We are investigating the Wing after receiving a tip from the public and reading media coverage of their policies, Hoy said. The news was first reported by Jezebel.

There are two other Wing locations, in SoHo and in Brooklyns Dumbo neighborhood. With expansion planned for other cities, the Wing has more than 2,000 members and has hosted discussion about films, books and current events, attended by prominent women including Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., actress Jennifer Lawrence and journalist Christiane Amanpour. An all-access membership, when paid monthly, costs $3,000 per year.

It has retained the services of some men. For instance, Tony Florence, a general partner at the venture capital firm NEA, led an $8 million fundraising round (the Wing has raised more than $40 million total). The Wing has also used male plumbers and electricians. But membership is for people who identify and live as women, said Audrey Gelman, a founder of the Wing, in an interview with The New York Times in October. We still believe women deserve spaces of their own, she said.

The Colony Club and the Cosmopolitan Club, both in Manhattan, are womens membership clubs, but they permit men on their premises as guests of members, which the Wing does not. The Colony and Cosmopolitan both employ men in positions such as doormen and waiters.

In a recent interview, Gelman said the Wing does employ men, but she would not say how many or in what capacity.

Hoy declined to cite any specific potential violations the commission was investigating. We cant speak about open investigations and we cant discuss the scope of possible violations, he said.

Asked if there are male-only clubs in New York and if the commission is investigating them as well, Hoy said: Im sure there are. We dont comment on open or potential investigations.

A lawyer representing the Wing said the commissions use of the term investigation is an overstatement of its action. All that has happened is that the Wing and the commission have mutually agreed to have a conversation, said Karen L. Dunn, a lawyer with the firm Boies Schiller Flexner, whose chairman, David Boies, represented Harvey Weinstein in the film producers effort to help block press coverage of allegations of sexual harassment. Dunn, who was not personally involved in Weinsteins representation, is a litigator who has previously represented Uber and is a crisis management expert, according to a biography on her company website.

This has not seemed to result in a public relations crisis for the Wing. Gelman has many influential friends and professional contacts, and the Wings membership includes many journalists, including some at The Times. Dozens of supporters have rallied on social media to defend the Wing.

Hari Nef, the trans model who appeared on the cover of the Wings magazine, No Mans Land, used the same hashtag to register her support: the @nycchr is investigating @the_wing on the basis of gender discrimination. the wing is a work and community space for women in new york, washington, and soon la. the wing is a safe and necessary space and im proud to call it my home away from home #istandwiththewing

Monica Lewinsky posted #IStandWithTheWing, and actress and director Amber Tamblyn directed a post to Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York: Why are you allowing my tax dollars to be used by @NYCCHR to investigate a cherished space for women called @the_wing when we can barely obtain safety for our bodies, let alone our working environments?

Last week, Eric Phillips, a spokesman for de Blasio, told The Daily News, The mayor is fully supportive of the Wings mission, and we are confident the human rights commission and the Wing can work together to ensure the law is being followed so that the Wing can continue to focus on its important work. Phillips and Gelman previously worked together at SKDKnickerbocker, a public relations firm.

Gelman also has a supporter in the city comptroller, Scott M. Stringer, for whom she worked as spokeswoman during his campaign in 2013. It is hard enough for women- and minority-owned businesses to get off the ground and we should be celebrating them, Stringer said in a telephone interview. Like all government departments, the Commission on Human Rights has limited resources, I wonder if this really is a priority.

A fourth location of the Wing is scheduled to open in Washington in early April.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
"Just watched Mr Tuju state on that the Judge in the Miguna case discovered he could "not arrest the IG"... a most unfortunate statement !! This saga and its litany of arrogant characters are doing untold damage to our institutions," he stated.

Abdikadir Mohamed is the former Mandera Central MP, former legal advisor to the State House. He rejected a post as ambassador to South Korean personal grounds.

The Harvard trained lawyer also served on the Parliament Select Committee on the Constitution which birthed the 2010 constitution.

This is due to the unceremonious deportation of self proclaimed general of the National Revolutionary Movement Miguna Miguna.

Earlier in February, Miguna had been detained incommunicado for days before finally being "stripped" of his Kenyan citizenship then flown back to Canada.

ALSO READ: Joho to visit Miguna Miguna in Dubai hospital

Miguna attempted re-entry into the country on Tuesday but was blocked from any entry into Kenya by the police.

Intervention by opposition leader Raila Odinga, human rights groups and Miguna's lawyers bore no fruit as Miguna was put on a plane to Dubai on Thursday.
Miguna's lawyers had last evening announced that their client had been deported to Dubai but the true version of events only came about on Thursday morning.

Unknown to many Kenyans, the first distress message from Miguna was published by NASA leader Raila Odinga's daughter, Winnie.

The former Prime Minister's daughter was one of the first people Miguna texted after he woke up to find himself in Dubai.

"I have just received the following distress from General Miguna Miguna," she stated before posting the message from the NRM General.

It was then that Miguna's message starting spreading.
QUIZ: Guess the Road Songs

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Choi announced the unexpected news in a handwritten letter posted to her fan site on the very day of the wedding.

Actress Choi Ji-woo tied the knot with her boyfriend, whom she has been dating for a year, in a surprise private ceremony in Seoul on Thursday.

"Today is the day I get a fresh start with my life partner," she wrote. "We will make a home together. I'm sorry that I kept it a secret. He is not a celebrity, so I was afraid I might cause trouble for him."

Her management agency confirmed the marriage, saying, "Choi held a private wedding with only family members attending." Her agency did not provide personal details about the groom, except that he is an office worker.

Choi got her start as an actress after winning an audition in 1994. She shot to fame in the TV series "First Love," which garnered viewer ratings of up to 65 percent when it aired from 1996 to 1997.

She came into her prime after starring in the megahit TV series "Winter Sonata" in 2002. Thanks to her pure image, she gained immense popularity in Japan, together with the drama's male lead Bae Yong-joon, and even earned the nickname "Ji-woo hime," meaning "Princess Ji-woo."

The Asahi Shimbun and other Japanese media outlets reported on her wedding.
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Fine imposed on Russian eccentric artist Pavlensky for FSB headquarters arson upheld

 facebook.com/tolokno

11:59 30/03/2018

MOSCOW, March 30 (RAPSI, Nikita Shiryayev)  The Meshchansky District Court of Moscow on Friday declined to replace a fine imposed on Russian eccentric performance artist Pyotr Pavlensky for setting fire to the Federal Security Services (FSB) headquarters with another non-custodial sanction, RAPSI reported from the courtroom.

A motion for the substitution of punishment was lodged by a court bailiff.

In June 2016, Pavlensky was found guilty of setting fire to the Moscow headquarters of the Federal Security Service (FSB). The Meshchansky District Court of Moscow imposed a 500,000-ruble ($8,700 at the current exchange rate) fine on Pavlensky and collected 481,000 rubles in compensation from the artist in favor of FSB. Later, the ruling was upheld by the Moscow City Court.

Pavlensky is known for his controversial performances.

In July 2012, he sewed up his mouth and stood at the Kazan Cathedral with a poster in support of Pussy Riot.

In May 2013, Pavlensky lay down on the ground in front of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly naked with barbed wire around his body.

In November 2013, also naked, Pavlensky nailed his scrotum to the Red Square pavement near the Lenin Mausoleum.

In October 2014, the man staged an eccentric stunt on the roof of the Serbsky Mental Institution in Moscow by cutting off one of his earlobes.

In February 2015, Pavlensky and his accomplices burned car tires, waved Ukrainian flags and banged sheet metal with sticks in a show of solidarity with the anti-government protesters in Ukraine. The performance was held near the Church of the Savior on Blood in St. Petersburg.

In May 2016, Pavlensky was sentenced to 1 year and 4 months of restriction of freedom for setting tyres on fire on Maly Konyushenny Bridge in St Petersburg. However, the artist was released from punishment because of expiry of the period of limitation for bringing to criminal responsibility.

In May 2017, he received political asylum in France. Shortly after, in October, French authorities charged Pavlensky and his partner Oksana Shalygina with setting fire to the Banque de France office that caused a serious damage to the building. Pavlensky was put in a mental hospital but later released from medical surveillance. The defendants could face up to 10 years in French prison if convicted and a fine of up to 150,000 euros.
Russian Credit Bank demands $67.8 million from VIM Airlines

 RIA Novosti, Alexander Tarasenkov

12:59 30/03/2018

MOSCOW, March 30 (RAPSI)  The Russian Credit Bank has filed an application with the Commercial Court of Tatarstan seeking to include a 3.9 billion-ruble ($67.8 million) debt owed by troubled VIM Airlines into the list of creditors demands, the court documents read.

The application will be heard on May 3.

Also, VIM Airlines has appealed February 19 ruling of the court initiating monitoring procedure against the company. Hearings over the bankruptcy of the airline is to commence on June 14.

According to a representative of VIM Airlines, the company has enough property to pay debts, and it expects additional 500 million rubles ($8.6 million) to be transferred from the budget.

In December 2017, the airlines CEO Vyacheslav Kononenko said that the company is facing a serious problem in that it cant pay salaries because of debts before the FTS reaching 500 million rubles ($8.8 million). According to Kononenko, all funds transferred to the airlines accounts are automatically blocked and transferred to tax authorities.

Earlier this month, the Federal Tax Service of Russia (FTS) filed an application with the court seeking to include a 333.3-million-ruble debt (5.8 million) in the list of creditors' claims.

A representative of the Russian Credit Bank said that the company owed it over 100 million rubles ($1.7 million) and that two parties are currently negotiating the settlement.

On October 17, 2017, a criminal case was launched over premeditated bankruptcy of VIM Airlines.

Investigators believe that certain top managers and owners of the air carrier intentionally made losing bargains in 2016 and 2017 including those aimed at siphoning of assets abroad. The deals led to enormous financial outlay and undoubtedly resulted in the companys failure to pay debts to creditors in full.

According to investigators, employees of the VIM Airlines continued to sell tickets to clients despite being aware that the airline was not able to transfer passengers because there were not enough funds to buy fuel. Investigators believe that the employees embezzled more than one million rubles ($17,000).

VIM Airlines CEO and chief accountant, Alexander Kochnev and Yekaterina Panteleyeva, have been arrested as part of the case. Co-owners of VIM Airlines Rashid Mursekayev and Svetlana Mursekayeva fled Russia and are currently residing abroad, according to investigators. Allegedly Mursekayev and Kalashnikova fled Russia to hide from investigative authorities. In December, the Basmanny District Court of Moscow issued an arrest warrant for Mursekayev in absentia.

Investigators also believe that between 2015 and 2017 the defendants abused their office positions to buy overpriced aviation fuel from companies controlled by Mursekayev.
Ombudsman asks Prosecutor General for help in return of Russian businessmen from UK

 RIA Novosti

13:59 30/03/2018

MOSCOW, March 30 (RAPSI)  Business ombudsman Boris Titov has asked Prosecutor General Yury Chaika to render assistance in return of Russian businessmen under investigation from abroad, the ombudsmans press service has told RAPSI.

Earlier, Titov submitted the so-called London list which comprises more than 20 persons evading Russian justice in Britain to the President. The ombudsman reminded Chaika of Vladimir Putins order to handle each case and asked Prosecutor General for help in the impartial investigation, the statement reads.

According to the ombudsman, Russian tycoons living in the UK have asked for safe coming back home without being arrested and detained until the end of investigation. Several years ago, criminal cases over economic crimes were opened against each of them. Later, the cases were shelved, but they can be reopened at any moment, Titov said. Defendants in economic crime cases should not be detained, the ombudsman believes.
Ex-president of Baltiyskiy Bank charged with embezzlement arrested in absentia

 Fotolia/ V.P.

18:52 30/03/2018

ST. PETERSBURG, March 30 (RAPSI) - The Kuibyshevsky District Court of St. Petersburg on Friday issued an arrest warrant in absentia for a co-owner and ex-president of Baltiyskiy Bank Oleg Shigayev charged with a 3 billion-ruble ($55 million) embezzlement, according to the United press service of St. Petersburg courts.

In April 2016, the Prosecutor Generals Office of Russia forwarded to Switzerland a request for extradition of Oleg Shigayev.

According to investigators, Shigayev had demanded that members of the banks credit committee approved loans to firms under his control. After that in June through August 2014 more than 3.3 billion rubles were transferred to the accounts of the said commercial companies.

Shigayev has been charged in absentia with fraud and money laundering. The Baltiyskiy Bank ex-head moved to Switzerland in autumn 2014 prior to the rehabilitation of the bank.

Baltiyskiy Bank is one of Russias oldest commercial banks. It was established in 1989 and has branches in 30 cities over the country. According to RIA Rating as on July 1, 2014, Baltiyskiy was 69th among Russian banks in terms of total assets. The amount of the banks assets made 85.7 billion rubles ($1.5 billion) at that time, whereas the amount of household deposits was at 58 billion rubles ($1 billion) as in early June.

In August 2015, the Bank of Russia announced the launch of financial restructuring of Baltiyskiy Bank, included in the top 100 of largest Russias banks. The Deposit Insurance Agency was set as a turnaround manager; the Central Bank had provided a credit line in amount up to 10 billion rubles ($174 million) so the agency could manage the banks liquidity. Since August 20, the agency has acted as an interim administrator of the bank.

According to reports, the decision to rehabilitate the bank had been taken in the situation, where problems relating to the quality of assets were apparent. However, these problems did not affect liquidity, thus the bank could carry out its activities seamlessly.

In October 2014, Alfa Bank, Russias largest private bank in terms of total assets, equity, customer accounts and loan portfolio, bought an 88 percent stake in Baltiyskiy Bank.




Czech Republic extradites alleged Russian hacker Nikulin to U.S. - report

 flickr.com/Surian Soosay

16:59 30/03/2018

MOSCOW, March 30 (RAPSI) - Alleged Russian hacker Yevgeny Nikulin has been extradited from the Czech Republic to the U.S., iRozhlas.cz reports Friday.

In November 2017, the Supreme Court of the Czech Republic approved extradition of the Russian citizen to the U.S. On March 20, the countrys Constitutional Court dismissed an appeal by Nikulin and therefore lifted obstacles to his extradition. A final decision on this matter was to be made by Czech Justice Minister.

U.S. authorities charged the Russian national with stealing personal data of LinkedIn users in 2012. In the meantime, he was charged in Russia with cybercrime which caused damage totaling to $3,500. In November 2016, Czech authorities received requests for Nikulins extradition from the both countries.
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Actress Oh Yeon-seo recently started dating actor Kim Bum, who is two years her junior.

"Oh and Kim first met through friends early this month and have recently grown closer," her management agency said in a press release on Thursday. Kim's management agency also admitted his relationship with Oh, saying, "They just started dating and are currently getting to know each other."

They admitted their relationship almost immediately after a sneaky paparazzo caught them dating in Seoul's upscale Cheongdam-dong.


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By Elizabeth Kwiatkowski, 03/30/2018



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Elizabeth Kwiatkowski is Associate Editor of Reality TV World and has been covering the reality TV genre for more than a decade.

OG star Maci Bookout has filed for an order of protection against ex-boyfriend Ryan Edwards.There have been two protection orders filed in Tennessee against Ryan, who shares 9-year-old son Bentley with Maci, Us Weekly reported , citing court documents from Hamilton County.The docket reportedly lists Maci's husband, Taylor McKinney, having one order against Ryan as well as another order of protection listing Maci and her three children vs. Ryan.Maci, 26, and Taylor have two children together: Jayde, 2, and Maverick, 22 months.It's unclear when Maci and Taylor filed the paperwork, but a judge is scheduled to hear the cases on Monday, April 2, according to Us.Ryan, 30, was arrested for a violation related to a previous heroin possession on Tuesday.Ryan -- who frequently appears on OG -- was reportedly arrested in his Tennessee home and taken into custody around 3PM ET for violating his probation in connection with a prior heroin possession.A representative for Hamilton County Jail told RadarOnline that Ryan was held on $5,000 bond but secured his release with collateral hours later at 10:15PM that day.Ryan's drug issues came to light last year, when he was caught nodding off behind the wheel of his car as he was driving to his wedding to Mackenzie Standifer during an episode of OG.And in another episode that aired in December, 21-year-old Mackenzie was shown claiming that Ryan spent about $10,000 a week on drugs. But in May 2017, Ryan reportedly completed a 30-day rehab stint."There have been major concerns about Ryan's sobriety," a source close to the MTV reality series told Us, adding that the subject will be a major storyline in the reunion episodes scheduled to air April 16 and 23. "Ryan needed more inpatient treatment, longer than what he previously got."Ryan will hopefully get the help he needs, as MTV just aired a preview clip earlier this week for the next OG episode that showed Mackenzie flashing a positive pregnancy test to one of the producers.Mackenzie, who is also mom to 4-year-old Hudson from her first marriage to Zachary Stephens, appeared ecstatic over the baby news with a huge smile on her face.
China has tightened controls against North Korean defectors again as Beijing and Pyongyang cozy up closer.

At least seven defectors were arrested by Chinese police in the few days ahead of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's visit to China on Monday. All face deportation.

Three teenage girls were arrested at Shenyang railway station last Saturday, an activist here working for human rights in North Korea said Thursday. Locals reported them to police when they were waiting for a train.

There are even rewards out for turning in defectors. On Sunday, four including a child were caught in Kunming on the way to the Lao border by train.

Meanwhile, a video clip released by Radio Free Asia shows a female defector being shot dead by a North Korean border guard as she tries to cross the Apnok River in Hyesan, Ryanggang Province.

The clip shows her lying down on the ice with another woman, apparently her mother, wailing beside the body. RFA said the two were attempting to flee across the river in broad daylight through a hail of bullets.


Porterville, CA (93257)

Today

Clear skies. Areas of smoke and haze are possible, reducing visibility at times. Low 62F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

Clear skies. Areas of smoke and haze are possible, reducing visibility at times. Low 62F. Winds light and variable.
In the atmosphere created by the reaction to the PNB fraud and RBIs resolution framework, dont lend, dont resolve is bound to become the bankers new mantra, says T T Ram Mohan.

Illustration: Uttam Ghosh/Rediff.com.

A spectre is haunting the Indian economy today -- the spectre of banking paralysis.

If it lingers for too long, it could seriously undermine the ongoing economic recovery.

Two developments are contributing to paralysis in banking.

One is the hysteria that seems to have gripped policy-makers and the media following the disclosure of the Rs 12,700-crore (Rs 127-billion) fraud at Punjab National Bank.

The other is the resolution framework that RBI has laid out for banks and that has taken effect from March 1.

The fraud is certainly a cause for concern. Every fraud shows up weaknesses in systems and processes.

In the PNB case, there have been lapses on the part of management and auditors.

The banking supervisor may also be at fault, although this is by no means obvious.

The lapses have to be addressed quietly and efficiently. Instead, we have had a huge over-reaction.

The PNB fraud is being wrongly conflated with the larger problem of bad loans at public sector banks.

Many commentators routinely mention the two in the same breath. This is incorrect in two ways.

First, the PNB fraud is not a case of a loan fraud. It is a case of operational fraud.

Loan exposures were created that were not authorised by management.

These exposures were created by subverting the technology system in place for sending messages.

Secondly, the bulk of the bad loans in Indian banking are not cases of outright fraud. They are not about politicians and bankers joining hands with businessmen to loot PSBs.

We have it on the authority of the Economic Survey of 2016-17 that bad loan problem is mostly the result of factors extraneous to management.

The global financial crisis, unexpected difficulties in getting land and environmental clearances, the collapse in steel prices, the fall in the spot rates for power have all contributed to the bad loan problem (not to mention adverse court judgments, such as the ones in 2G spectrum and coal block allocation).

In the storm that has erupted over the PNB fraud, politicians and the media have overlooked these crucial nuances.

We are witnessing something along the lines of a witch-hunt. An impression is being created that all is rotten at PSBs.

The government has asked PSBs to look into all loans above Rs 50 crore (Rs 500 million) and identify cases of fraud.

Several bank executives have been summoned by the investigating authorities and asked to explain their banks exposure to firms connected with Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi.

The RBI has banned the issue of letters of undertaking. There are indications that credit may be drying up for firms in the gems and jewellery sector.

This is bound to impact healthy firms in the sector. Import credit, in general, will become more expensive.

The SBI chairman has declared that his bank will not finance interest during the construction period in project finance. This amounts to putting the brakes on project finance.

PSBs plan to finance all loans of over Rs 250 crore (Rs 2.5 billion) through a consortium.

This is a welcome move as it will improve credit discipline at PSBs.

However, it will also tend to slow down loan sanctions and may also result in lower loan exposures.

The overall effect of developments in recent weeks has been to create a fear psychosis at PSBs. This is bound to tell on loan growth.

Then, we have RBIs resolution framework for bad loans.

In respect of non-performing assets, banks have 180 days to resolve loan exposures of over Rs 2,0000 crore (Rs 20 billion).

If they fail to do so, the cases will go to the National Company Law Tribunal for resolution.

In the case of restructured assets, even a single days default will result in the case being referred to NCLT.

There is little incentive in this framework for banks to arrive at a resolution plan through negotiation with borrowers.

At PSBs especially, going to the NCLT will become the default option.

Bankers will ask themselves: Why invite the complications that go with achieving resolution on our own?

Banks (and NBFCs that are exposed to such cases) thus face a significant rise in NPAs without having much room to negotiate a resolution.

Never mind that the prospect of hundreds of cases going to the NCLT spells low recovery rates on loans.

In the atmosphere created by the reaction to the PNB fraud and RBIs resolution framework, dont lend, dont resolve is bound to become the bankers new mantra.

The authorities concerned cannot possibly be unaware of the consequences of their actions.

They must know that the combination of low credit growth, rising NPAs and poor recovery will worsen the condition of several distressed PSBs.

The additional capital required to keep them going will be so large as to pose a major challenge to the exchequer.

The only way out then would be infusion of private capital and a dilution in the governments stake in some PSBs to below 51 per cent.

It's hard to resist the feeling that conditions are being created for precisely such a denouement whatever the medium-term cost to the economy.

T T Ram Mohan is a professor at IIM-Ahmedabad.
'It is important that employees are trained to acquire skills that would be needed in future, when the company sees disruption coming -- that is, much before the disruption occurs or the company plans to change the business model,' says Asish K Bhattacharyya.

Illustration: Dominic Xavier/Rediff.com

A large number of jobs in the information technology sector are at stake.

Automation and new technology are disrupting the industry.

Skills that created value so far are becoming redundant.

New skills are required to work with new technologies, such as big data, artificial intelligence, Internet of things, robotics and virtual reality.

Companies have started up-skilling existing employees and recruiting those with required skills.

Employees who are unable to acquire new skills are losing jobs.

In the above context two questions have emerged.

The first question is whether it is better for the top management to take a pay cut rather than to lay-off employees in difficult years.

The other question is whether IT employees should form a union to protect their interest when the going gets tough.

The first question is relevant when the job loss is due to a slowdown, which is transitory.

In that situation, the pay cut by the top management will be for a short period in order to retain the talent that will be used after the bad period is over.

It is not relevant when jobs and skills become redundant due to disruption caused by technological advancement or some other mega event.

The second question is relevant in all situations from the perspective of the employees.

Having access to bargaining power is relevant in all types of negotiations and collective bargaining is desirable when individual bargaining power is low.

Protecting the job during tough times or securing adequate compensation when a job is lost requires hard negotiation with the employer.

Therefore, it is no surprise that employees, including IT employees, have the propensity to form a union.

There are no straight answers to both the vexed questions.

Although the IT industry is in focus at present, such disruptions occur in almost all industries due to the fast changing technological, social and geopolitical environment. Therefore, it is appropriate to examine the issue from the perspective of corporate governance.

A company creates value through its operations, while complying with the law and social norms and taking care of social and environmental concerns.

A very small portion of the value is shared with the socially and/or economically marginalised population of society through corporate social responsibility.

Shareholders, customers, providers of inputs (including human capital and debt capital) and the government share the value created by the company.

The government gets its share through direct and indirect taxes.

Companies, through industry associations or otherwise, lobby with governments to reduce their share of the value.

The share of customers and input providers in the value created by the company depends on the market forces and their relative bargaining power vis-a-vis the company.

The share of shareholders is the residual amount.

The shareholders' primacy is well established in corporate governance. Therefore, companies focus on creating 'shareholder value' while being ethical and fair to the other stakeholders.

There are two reasons for the same.

First, financial capital is sticky in the sense that once invested in non-financial assets (such as plant and equipment) to build capacity, it cannot be recovered without substantial loss.

Second, the non-controlling shareholders, after entrusting their funds to the company, cannot participate in strategic and operating decisions.

In the absence of focus on creating 'shareholder value' and effective monitoring, the management might misallocate the resources, causing the shareholders' wealth to deplete permanently.

Human capital is also 'sticky' like financial capital.

After completing a substantial period of employment in a company, employees develop specialised skills which are not useful in other industries. Consequently, their market value outside the industry is very low, almost zero.

Similarly, when a business model or technology changes, many of those skills become redundant.

Therefore, those who lose their job due to a change in the business model or technology cannot find an alternative employment.

In this context, it is important to consider whether employees should also be considered as a primary stakeholder along with shareholders.

Companies should focus on both 'creating shareholder value' and 'protecting and creating employee value'.

It is not enough to merely honour the initial employment contract with an employee.

It is important that employees are trained to acquire skills that would be needed in future, when the company sees disruption coming -- that is, much before the disruption occurs or the company plans to change the business model.

Companies should ensure alternative livelihood for those who cannot acquire new skills, particularly if they are employees earning a low salary.

The issue is complex, particularly because companies engage a large number of employees on short-term contracts and in off-roles. It deserves serious debate among academicians, regulators and practitioners of corporate governance.

Asish K Bhattacharyya is an adjunct professor at the Institute of Management Technology, Ghaziabad, and chairman of the Riverside Management Academy.
'I am quite optimistic that sooner or later, my wishful thinking would turn into a reality.'

'The only hitch is that the INC president's own career ambitions may be hurt if the Congress merges with the BJP,' says Sudhir Bisht.



IMAGE: Congress President Rahul Gandhi greets Prime Minister Narendra D Modi, right.

I am sure that the title of my article would draw ridicule from most and perhaps a bit of laughter from some, to start with.

Upon reading the title again, many readers would term it absurd. But I quote the great Albert Einstein who said, 'If at first the idea in not absurd, then there is no hope for it.'

I am giving a call to the Indian National Congress, the party with the most glorious past, to merge with the party of the future, the Bharatiya Janata Party.

I have my five reasons for my supposedly weird merger proposal that will produce a huge nationalistic party that will hold India together.

My first reason is entirely nationalistic.

Even with its fading fortunes, the INC remains a pan-India party that has some presence left from Jammu and Kashmir to Kerala.

The INC is well entrenched in Punjab where it is in power, in Haryana where it remains sleepy but strong and in Gujarat where it lost to the BJP but has reasons to be proud of its performance.

The INC has its chances, from very limited to considerably good chances, in the Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan assembly elections in the future and everyone knows that the INC is still alive, though not really kicking, in Goa, Telengana and Maharashtra.

On the other hand, the BJP is the most dominant force in almost all big states in northern India, western India and in the north east.

It has a throttlehold in the central states of MP and Chhattisgarh, till the next elections at least, and with its astounding win in Assam and recently in Tripura, the BJP has very nearly conquered the north east in tandem with its allies.

It is in power with its old ally, the Janata Dal-United, in Bihar and is making steady inroads in Bengal and Odisha too.

So the BJP is on the ascendant everywhere in eastern, western and northern India.

In the southern state of Karnataka, too, it may topple the INC to form the state government.

The two national parties, however, face a serious threat from the regional parties that have just one parochial agenda -- of garnering maximum funds from the Union government.

Most regional parties clamour for getting some kind of a special status for their states so that they can appropriate a disproportionate quota of Union government funds.

The Telugu Desam Party's recent withdrawal from the National Democratic Alliance is the most recent example of this.

Even Nitish Kumar of the JD-U, who rules Bihar in alliance with the BJP, has recently said that he has never given up on his demand for special status for Bihar.

The regional satraps are always demanding funds, without any accountability and without adhering to even the basic financial obligation of having to submit any utilisation report, from the Union government.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banejee has been blaming the Centre for withholding Rs 13,000 crore (Rs 130 billion) in developmental funds meant for 2017.

The state governments, especially where the regional parties are in power, are always seen to be engaged in a war with the neighbouring states over resources like water.

The Cauvery water dispute between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka could have been easily resolved if it were not due to the one-upmanship between the two Dravidian parties in Tamil Nadu.

In Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, the rise of caste-based parties like the Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party and Rashtriya Janata Dal are anathema to the concept of India that is trying to shed its caste identity.

Instead of the INC or the BJP aligning with these parties, the two national parties could merge and fight them with double the power that they individually command for now.

The dominance of regional parties in national politics is an embryonic threat to India.

State parties without the vision of a larger national perspective are not particularly interested in national issues.

The two principal parties of India, the rising BJP and the declining INC, should not have to tie up with any regional party in the national or state elections.

If the state parties are allowed to remain in ascendant mode, then the day is not far when we will again have to work under a khichdi sarkar or a hodgepodge government, like the ones in the past of Morarji Desai and Chaudhary Charan Singh.

Would the country not suffer if it has weak and frail governments at the Centre like the ones we had under Chandra Shekhar, H D Deva Gowda or I K Gujral?

Imagine a situation in the 2019 general election if a group comprising Mamata Banerjee, Nara Chandrababu Naidu, M K Stalin, Mayawati, Akhilesh Yadav, Tejashwi Yadav and K Chandrashekhar Rao are able to get a good number of seats in the Lok Sabha.

Would they be able to provide any kind of good governance given their own parochial interests that are aligned to their own states?

My second reason for the call for merger is ideological.

I have no doubt in my mind that in terms of economic ideology, both parties are right of centre now.

While the INC thought of Aaadhar and Goods and Service Tax, the BJP had the courage to implement both concepts with gusto that seems, to me, praiseworthy.

The prime minister took a political risk to implement GST even as it angered all those traders who were long used to the system of cash purchase and sale with zero obligations to pay taxes, even the ones they always collected from customers.

It is another matter that the INC is opposing Aadhar's wide usage and GST's implementation now, just as the BJP had opposed these concepts before May 2014.

The protests then and the protests now are just for the sake of opposition and nothing else and both parties can be held guilty or be pardoned for that.

On the opening up of defence sector, Manohar Parrikar and Arun Jaitley as defence ministers did what A K Antony was thinking to do. They ordered the purchase of aircraft that their predecessor could not.

The BJP government is going about privatisation of PSUs in a far more aggressive manner.

And while I personally believe that investment in one PSU by another PSU is not really a disinvestment, the INC too did in the past what the BJP is doing now.

In terms of Foreign Direct Investment in single brand retail, the BJP government has done what it had always opposed in its avatar of principal Opposition party.

It has allowed 100% FDI in single brand retail through direct route. The BJP's bold approach must have gladdened Dr Manmohan Singh, the architect of economic liberalism in India though it is impossible to think that he would rise and applaud Jaitley for this act.

In terms of religious ideology, the BJP and INC appear to be competing for the same space now.

The INC president's temple run and proclamation of being a janeu-dhari, Shiv bhakt may appear to be a mere sham to BJP supporters, but it vindicates the prophecy of Dr Subramanian Swamy who said almost five years ago that the day was not far away when all major political parties would jostle with one another to be seen as a party that is pro-Hindutva.

My third reason for the proposed merger is based upon the recent political movements of men across the two parties.

Of late, I have started to realise that there is not so much of difference between the INC and BJP leaders. In fact, between the leaders of all political parties I find a sense of new found professionalism.

Leaders can jump parties just as a corporate executive from HLL can jettison the Lever ship and get on the Godrej bandwagon. A Nestle guy can move across to Patanjali without much fuss.

The same is becoming true for political parties. The switch of Naresh Aggarwal -- who was peeved at not getting a Rajya Sabha ticket -- from the SP to BJP, is a recent example.

The 180 degree bend achieved by our dearest Navjot Singh Sidhu to touch the feet of Sonia Gandhi at the recent Congress plenary session is another noteworthy instance of the ease with which leaders can change their political colours.

No stigma attached there. A certain Himanta Biswa Sarma, an old Congressman, is now a 5-star performer for the BJP, helping it win quite a few states in the north east.

Both parties have no reservations about welcoming allegedly corrupt leaders from the rival camp to their fold. The only criterion is that the person needs to command a sizeable percentage of votes.

It is no wonder then that 3 out of 10 ministers in Uttarakhand's BJP government are former Congressmen. This clears the test of acceptability for Congressmen. They are welcome in the BJP, if that makes the BJP stronger.

Even in terms of marketing management, the INC and BJP appear to be merging into one another's character.

The INC seems intent to be following the BJP's media strategy, for better or for worse.

Its IT cells are being readied at campaign centres to outdo the BJP's social media outreach.

Voting trend analysis, psychographic segmentation of the electorate and other such stuff is being outsourced to data analytic companies at a huge price. No thought is given to the methodology of data collection.

What matters is the meaningful data that could help devise an appropriate social media strategy to sway voters.

So my question is: Why compete when there is so much to gain by a merger? It is a huge gain, little loss proposition.

The BJP and INC have been trading corruption charges at one another, but the image of their respective contenders for chief ministership of a state that is about to go to the polls is far from clean.

Both men wear white-and-white. While one has a liking for a white safari suit, the other is dressed in a more humble dhoti and shirt, but both have a lot of dirt thrown at them.

So I don't see why the entire Congress cannot join the rank and file of the BJP.

The BJP, after all, is the biggest political party in the world.

It has a prime minister who is most likely to lead his party to victory in 2019.

The scale of the victory may be less than the grand triumph of 2014, but you can never undermine the impact of Narendra D Modi's oratory with the booth level support it gets from a 110 million strong army of registered party members, marshalled by Amit A Shah, the smartest CEO that any Indian organisation ever produced.

My fourth reason for call to merge is to achieve overall organisational efficiency.

A merger with the BJP will save millions of rupees that the INC and BJP spend in holding press conferences against one another.

It will save the parties the need for useless protests and needless name-calling.

A merged entity will also provide the BJP access to some of the brilliant minds in the INC that are currently out of work.

Imagine the addition of Manmohan Singhji to the Margdarshak Mandal.

The sprawling new BJP headquarters can accommodate a few dozen more workstations, I am sure. There merged entity will be one CA less and many donors more.

The nation also stands to achieve if the Congress considers a merger with the BJP.

Parliament that is being stalled almost all the time in the ongoing Budget session will start to function again.

The two parties will stop patronising publicity houses and that money could be spent in paying some kind of stipend to humble party workers.

There will be no need to try and split people on the lines of religion. In fact, there would be no attempt to split religion itself, a la Siddaramaiah.

This then is my fifth reason to ask the Congress to embrace the BJP. It will save the country a bitter fight in the name of religion.

I am quite optimistic that sooner or later, my wishful thinking would turn into a reality.

The only hitch is that the INC president's own career ambitions may be hurt if the Congress merges with the BJP.

But that is not an issue for me. The INC is a party where I believe the leadership ambitions of many brilliant party leaders -- read Sardar Patel and Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose -- were blunted by the greatest Congressman of all time, Mahatma Gandhi himself, in favour of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru.

So it may be payback time for Nehru's great grandson.

Sudhir Bisht, PhD, Delhi-based author and columnist, tweets at @sudhir_bisht
59 years ago, on March 31, the man revered as the bodhisattva Avalokitesvara arrived in India, seeking sanctuary from the Chinese who had over-run his country.

'From exile in India, he keeps the Tibetan cause blazing on the world radar.'

'He could take himself very seriously indeed -- hundreds of millions of people do, after all.'

'Instead,' discovers Mitali Saran, 'he is a joyous, laughing beacon of dissent, both political and spiritual.'



IMAGE: His Holiness The Dalai Lama.

Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, is a fabulous old egg.

People of consequence tend to be a bit buttoned up, but he wears his eminence -- wise learned monk, political firebrand, spiritual leader -- like the lightest of cloaks.

Everything he says comes with a gleeful "khi-khi-khi", or a hearty guffaw.

At almost 83, he jokes that after this life he might wind up downstairs rather than upstairs, "khi-khi-khi"!

He takes the most infectious delight in everything.

His ability to see the funny side of things is what makes him a truly enlightened chap, at least to my atheist eyes.

His Holiness could easily play up the gravitas.

I mean, hello, he is revered as the bodhisattva Avalokitesvara, the embodiment of compassion, who sticks around in this vale of tears to serve those who are suffering when he could perfectly well be relaxing in Nirvana.

Of all spiritual leaders on earth, of all the godmen and sadhus and cardinals and imams and rabbis and shamans, he is arguably the most loved.

From exile in India, he keeps the Tibetan cause blazing on the world radar. He could take himself very seriously indeed -- hundreds of millions of people do, after all.

Instead, he is a joyous, laughing beacon of dissent, both political and spiritual.

Like the Buddha -- that most fabulous of all old eggs -- he speaks of the vital importance of not deifying people or teachings, of not following mindlessly; of the importance of engaging in critique, questioning, independent examination, and independent practice.

He is interested in testing the old scriptures against science, and in updating them where necessary.

In other words, he's loving, humble, rational, secure, intellectually and spiritually adventurous, and he's got a wicked sense of humour.

No wonder he's so loved.

It's enough to make you want to leap into his lap and hug him forever, while making side-eyes at the dreary gargoyles who celebrate four years of buttoning up India so tightly that nobody can breathe.

All that these gargoyles seem to know how to do is bow and scrape before gods and men and scripture and each other, all the while speaking of pride; tom-tom each other's manliness and strength, all the while being too frightened to utter a word of dissent.

All they do is impose with violence what they cannot achieve with argument.

And, my god -- and please read this in a very shouty voice -- they have no sense of humour, like, none!

Everything is just so terribly sacred and pompous and self-important and fearsome and worshipful!

If they weren't such stuffed shirts, they might admit how ridiculous they are, achieving the opposite of everything they aim for.

Newsflash: You can't love your country by oppressing your countrymen. It's stupid to be proud of made-up 'facts'.

Stamping out questions is the opposite of education.

Having a huge digital surveillance system isn't the same as being modern.

You can't respect women by calling them goddesses and treating them like chattel.

You can't terrorise and kill people over cows and expect the world to admire your traditions.

You can't be pious by being hateful.

You can't enforce respect, it has to be earned.

The problem with being too serious is that you can't see when you've tipped over into absurdity.

It's just silly to puff up your chest quite so much when we're all going to end up as small piles of ashes and dust.

But you can expect everyone else to laugh until their sides hurt, because laughter is a natural response to absurdity.

I'll probably still be laughing well into the alleged afterlife -- probably downstairs, khi-khi-khi.
In yet another incident of communal flare-up in Bihar, scores of vehicles were on Friday vandalised and a hotel was set ablaze in Nawada district, where members of two communities clashed following reports of desecration of an idol, an official said.

Trouble erupted in Godapur village under the Town police station area, where an idol was found vandalised, following which the members of two communities indulged in heavy stone-pelting, District Magistrate Kaushal Kumar said.

He added that an enraged mob also went on a rampage on National Highway 31, hurling stones at the vehicles and leaving scores of them damaged. The mob also set a hotel on fire, the DM said.

The police fired 10 rounds in the air to quell the mob that also allegedly manhandled a number of local journalists, who had gone to the spot to cover the incident.

The situation was brought under control, though tension prevailed in the area, the DM said, adding that a heavy deployment of police was in place.

No arrest was made in this connection so far, he added.

Nawada is located at a distance of around 70 km from state capital Patna.

Bihar has witnessed a spurt in communal clashes in the recent past. On March 17, violence broke out in Bhagalpur, where a religious procession was being led by Arijit Shashwat, the son of Union minister Ashwini Kumar Choubey.

On Sunday last, the members of two communities had clashed in Aurangabad over a Ram Navami procession. Similar incidents were reported from Sitamarhi, Nalanda, Sheikhpura and Munger districts over the next few days.

The Bharatiya Janata Party and the opposition Rashtriya Janata Dal have been trading charges over the issue, blaming each other for the sudden rise in such incidents.

Leader of Opposition in the state Assembly, Tejashwi Yadav (RJD) has alleged that those associated with the Sangh Parivar are fomenting communal passion in the state and that they were 'trained' to do so by Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat during his week-long tour of Bihar last month.

The BJP has hit back, with its state unit spokesman Rajib Ranjan issuing a statement, squarely blaming the opposition party for 'spreading communal frenzy' and accusing it of trying to 'defame' the National Democratic Allinace government in the state.

Meanwhile, Congress Legislature Party leader Sadanand Singh urged Chief Minister and Janata Dal-United chief Nitish Kumar to 'reconsider' his party's tie-up with the BJP.

In a statement, he said, "Chief Minister Nitish Kumar must give a serious thought to the revival of the Grand Alliance in Bihar. Political compulsions are preventing him from effectively cracking down on the rioters."

"The state cannot prosper in such an environment. Moreover, the recent incidents have given the government a bad name. The chief minister should reconsider his decision," Singh said, referring to Kumar's exit last year from the 'Mahagathbandhan', comprising the JD-U, the RJD and the Congress, after which he rejoined the BJP-led NDA.

Image only for representation.
IMAGE: BJP president Amit Shah visits the home of a BJP worker late Raju at Kyathamaranahalli in Mysuru on Friday. Photograph: PTI Photo



Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah on Friday said his party, if voted to power, would make efforts to hunt down the killers of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and BJP workers in Karnataka, and hand out severest of punishment to them.

"I would like to tell the people of the state that Siddaramaiah's time has come to an end. Soon after BJP forms the next government under Yeddyurappa's leadership, it will make all efforts to hunt down killers (of RSS and BJP workers) from any corner of the world," he said.

Shah was speaking to reporters after meeting the family members of BJP worker Raju, who was hacked to death in March 2016.

"They will be sent to jail and handed out stringent punishment," he added.

Shah said Siddaramaiah was mistaken if he and his government thought they could stall saffron ideology from spreading by unleashing violence against BJP and RSS workers.

"In politics, there is no room for violence. If Siddaramaiah and his government think they can stall our ideology from spreading, then he is mistaken," he said.

Shah alleged that police were not initiating any action against those who killed as many as 22 BJP and RSS workers across Karnataka.

He alleged that the Siddaramaiah government has been releasing jailed killers and they have been given opportunity once again to kill people.

Shah said he expected Siddaramaiah and the Janata Dal-Secular to get the biggest shock of their lives from the old Mysuru region in the May 12 assembly polls, though his party was a bit weak there.

"It is said that the BJP is a bit weak here (Old Mysuru region), but after seeing the work of the party workers, I expect Siddaramaiahji and the JD-S to get the biggest shock of their lives from this (Old) Mysuru region," he said while addressing the party's Nava Shakti Samavesha rally in Mysuru.

IMAGE: Shah visits the pontiff of Suttur Mutt, ahead of Karnataka assembly elections, in Mysuru on Friday. Also seen are BJP Karnataka state president B S Yeddyurappa and Union Minister Ananth Kumar. Photograph: PTI Photo

Shah began his tour of the old Mysuru region on Friday, where the BJP had not won even a single seat in the previous election.

He is scheduled to cover Mysuru, Chamarajanagara, Mandya and Ramanagara districts during his two-day trip.

Of the 26 assembly seats in the four districts, considered a Vokkaliga heartland, the BJP had not won even a single one in the 2013 Karnataka Assembly polls.

Moreover, the region is the home turf of Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, who hails from Mysuru.

The contest in old Mysuru is mainly between the Congress and the JD-S, led by former prime minister H D Deve Gowda.

Shah said it was the BJP, and not the JD-S, which had the ability to throw out the Siddaramaiah-led Congress government as Deve Gowda's party would only secure a very few seats here and there.

"The Congress cannot take Karnataka on the path of development any further because its image has been soiled with corruption and the JD(S) does not have the ability to overthrow the Congress, because it can only win a few seats here and there," he said.

Shah asked the people of Mysuru to make a choice between a commission government and a government which would take Karnataka on the path of development.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had, at a recent rally, described the Siddaramaiah government as a 10 per cent commission government.

Shah said his party did not only want to replace Siddaramaiah with Yeddyurappa as the chief minister, but also bring in change to take Karnataka on the path of development for the youth, women, Dalits and adivasis.

Referring to his gaffe at Davangere earlier this week, Shah said though he had committed a mistake in his speech while referring to Siddaramaiah's corruption, the people of the state would not do the same because they knew Siddaramaiah's rule well.

"Siddaramaiah and Rahul Gandhi were very happy over my gaffe while speaking about Siddaramaiah's corruption. I had made a mistake, but the people of Karnataka will not make it, because they have understood Siddaramaiah's government very well," he said.

In a slip of the tongue at a press conference at Davangere while attacking the Siddaramaiah dispensation as the most corrupt one, Shah had said the Yeddyurappa government would get the number one award in corruption.

He had, however, corrected himself after being prompted by BJP MP Prahlad Joshi, who was seated next to him.

Shah also accused Siddaramaiah of playing with Karnataka's pride by not celebrating the jayanti of noted Kannada poet Kuvempu or renowned engineer Sir M Vishveswaraiah.

Siddaramaiah only remembers to celebrate the jayanti of Tipu Sultan (the 18th-century ruler of Mysore) to get votes," he said.

Shah also met the Wadiyar royal family of Mysuru on Friday.

Shah met the erstwhile royal family at their private palace in Mysuru, triggering speculations about their supporting or joining the BJP.

IMAGE: Shah with Maharaja-Yaduveer Krishnadatta Chamaraja Wadiyar. Photograph: Kind courtesy @AmitShah/Twitter



According to sources, during the closed door meeting with the scion of royal family or the present titular Maharaja-Yaduveer Krishnadatta Chamaraja Wadiyar and Rajamata Pramoda Devi Wadiyar, Shah reportedly discussed various issues, including politics.

He is also said to have expressed his admiration for the progressive and pro-people work by the royal family and the erstwhile Maharajas during their rule in the past.

State BJP Chief B S Yedyurappa, Union Minister Ananth Kumar and Member of Parliament from Mysuru Pratap Simha were present along with Shah during the meeting.

Had a wonderful meeting with Maharaja Yaduveer Krishnadatta Chamaraja Wadiyar, Rajamatha Pramoda Devi Wadiyar and Maharani Trishika Kumari Devi of the Royal Family of Mysuru, Shah said in a tweet after the meeting with pictures.

It was nice to see Yuvraj Adyaveer Narasimha Wadiyar too! he said in another tweet, sharing a picture of him along with Yaduveer and the infant prince.

Amidst speculations in the media, Yaduveer, the 27th King of the Wadiyar dynasty, had recently ruled out his political entry.

I have told several times that I'm not interested in politics. There is no chance at all about me joining any party. I'm not interested in politics. Through social work we will continue our relationship with the public, he said.

Continuing BJP's bid to reach out to the prominent Lingayat community, Shah also paid a visit to the community prominent pontiff at Suttur Mutt in Mysuru.

Took blessings of Sri Shivarathri Deshikendra Mahaswamiji of Sri Suttur Math in Mysuru, Shah tweeted after his meeting with the seer, who, he noted, had made significant efforts towards spreading the values of Indian culture and tradition worldwide.

Shah also said he admired the math's role in providing education to the poor in rural Karnataka.

He has already covered parts of coastal and Malnad, north, and central regions of the state.
Good Friday was observed with prayers and hymns across the country by the Christian community.

The day marks the crucifixion of Jesus Christ on Calvary Hill in Jerusalem nearly 2,000 years ago.

Here's a glimpse of how the day was observed.

IMAGE: A devotee re-enacts the crucifixion of Jesus Christ on Good Friday in Ahmedabad. Good Friday is observed before Easter Sunday, as Christians commemorate the suffering and death on the cross of the Lord, Jesus Christ. Photograph: Santosh Hirlekar/PTI Photo



IMAGE: A devotee re-enacts the crucifixion of Lord Jesus Christ on Good Friday in Bengaluru.

Photograph: Shailendra Bhojak/PTI Photo

IMAGE: Christian devotees take part in a holy procession to observe Good Friday at Loyola Ground in Ranchi. Photograph: PTI Photo

IMAGE: A holy procession in Amritsar. Photograph: PTI Photo

IMAGE: A devotee with his child in a holy procession in Chennai. Photograph: PTI Photo

IMAGE: Visuals of a holy procession in Chennai. Photograph: PTI Photo

IMAGE: The crucifixion of Christ is re-enacted in Mumbai. Photograph: PTI Photo

IMAGE: People offer prayers at a church in Allahabad. Photograph: PTI Photo

IMAGE: A holy procession in Bhopal. Photograph: PTI Photo

IMAGE: Visuals of crucifixion being re-enacted in Mumbai. Photograph: PTI Photo
Online portal 'Postcard News' co-founder Mahesh Vikram Hegde has been arrested on the charge of posting 'fake news' aimed at creating communal conflict and bringing a bad name to the state government, the police said on Friday.

Hegde, who was arrested on Thursday, had allegedly posted that a Jain monk was attacked by a Muslim youth, they said.

However, the case pertains to the monk, Munisri Upadyaya Mayank, and his associates getting hit by a two-wheeler near Kavalande village on March 11 while they were returning from the pilgrimage centre of Shravanabelagola in Hassan district.

The two-wheeler rider was allegedly in an inebriated state, they said.

A release by the police said, 'The fake news was aimed at creating conflict between two communities and bringing a bad name to the state government that nobody is safe in this state.'

'Not only thousands of people saw that news, it was also shared on Twitter and Facebook. In this connection, the Cyber Crime police registered a case against the owner of the portal and arrested him,' it said.

Bharatiya Janata Party Lok Sabha MP Prathap Simha on Thursday hit out at the Congress government for the police action against Hegde.

'Today morning Coward Congress Govt (Karnataka) arrested @mvmeet Mahesh Vikram Hegde under unconnected IT act 66, that too by using CCB! Shame on you @INCKarnataka (sic),' he tweeted.

However, All India Congress Committee in-charge communications Randeep Singh Surjewala defended the police for the action, saying, "What happened here, a particular website accused a seer of a minority community being attacked by member of another minority community....they are trying to spread hatred among communities by perpetuating and peddling fake news."

"Why should criminal action not be taken against such people for they disrespect the freedom of press?" he asked.

Photograph: Courtesy @mvmeet/Twitter
'... because he is collecting information through his app.'

'It is his responsibility to understand what data is being collected, who it is being shared with and what it is used for.'

'It is really troublesome that someone in a position of power is misleading people and presumably, citizens of the country to give up data.'

'That is not a part of informed consent.'

Ritu Jha/indica reports from California.

"How come, a prime minister who promotes Digital India, who went to Facebook, Google, (and visited other tech firms in) Silicon Valley doesn't know this much?" asks Sam Pitroda.

The telecom entrepreneur -- who in the 1980s was instrumental in prepping India for the digital age -- is reacting to the controversy over NaMo, Prime Minister Narendra D Modi's personal app.

Earlier this week, a French researcher using the handle 'Elliot Alderson' used Twitter to highlight privacy lapses in the app and alleged that CleverTap, a California-based mobile marketing platform, benefited from the data transfer to a third party server.

CleverTap, a US-based company, has access to data collected without consent from those who download NaMo.

Founded in 2013, CleverTap, a subsidiary of WizRocket Technologies Pvt Ltd, provides a SaaS-based user behaviour and targeting tool.

CleverTap -- which uses Amazon Web Services as its hosting provider -- has stated it does not sell, rent or re-market data.

The Bharatiya Janata Party, which Modi leads, said the app did not share data sharing with the foreign company and all that was collected was analytics to offer users the 'most contextual content'.

Modi, the first Indian prime minister to aggressively use social media, has 41.4 million Twitter followers, and about five million people using his NaMo app, launched in 2015.

Pitroda -- who is also chairman of the Overseas Congress Department of the All India Congress Committee and is an adviser to Congress President Rahul Gandhi -- gives Modi a pass on the most egregious of involvements.

"I don't expect him to have that technical expertise of this type. And it's even unfair to ask the prime minister to have that technical or data analytics expertise," says Pitroda, adding, "But his technical team should know."

Pitroda, however, says it is of concern that data was being sent out of the country, particularly data collected in the prime minister's name.

"Today if I tweet in India, (the tweet) has to first come to America. This is because we have not yet developed our social networks," Pitroda adds.

"TCS, Infosys, Wipro make billions of dollars, but would not spend even 100 million dollars developing our own product because that's risky," Pitroda points out. "They will use a product developed abroad."

"A country of 1.3 billion... has to rely on some company in California," Pitroda says, and argues for indigenously developed social media.

"When you have a market cap close to $600 billion, you can do anything you think," he says. "Social media is going to play a big role in the general election again by spreading lies, changing public opinion and by attacking people unnecessarily."

Hemant Bhargava, an expert in technology management and information technology at UC Davis, California, says the problem is not the fact that data is collected, but how it will be used.

"The Modi app doesn't say the user information is being communicated to any third party, and that is really a problem," says Bhargava.

Professor Bhargava believes such uninhibited collection of data is worrisome.

Other than in undemocratic countries like China and those in the Middle East it is unprecedented for a government to collect that kind of data.

"And here it is the prime minister," Professor Bhargava says.

"What is troublesome about the Modi app is that it doesn't say what is going to be used for," Professor Bhargava says.

"If you look at the Web page, it just says, 'Let's together script the rise of a New India'. What does that mean? There is no boundary being defined."

"Some information is captured by all apps," the professor adds. "But the problem is about consent..."

"When I allow the Uber app access to my location, I provide that permission in order to get a ride and nothing else. That is the intended purpose. But if they misuse the data... it is a problem."

He points out that the US had its own problems, allowing for physical privacy but not data privacy, as in Europe.

Many American firms, he says, were worried about global data privacy regulation because data privacy laws in Europe are much more stringent than in the US -- or in India, where it is even weaker.

"Just because something is not prohibited by law doesn't mean you shouldn't be worried about it," says Professor Bhargava.

He says he has used an app on rural electrification, a project of the Modi government. He says that app had a clear purpose -- to show the status of electrification in India's villages.

Only the use of aggregated data should be permitted, not that of individual users, he says.

Unlike Pitroda, Professor Bhargava feels Modi could not claim ignorance.

"He is still subject to the law because he is collecting information through his app," the professor says.

"It is his responsibility to understand what data is being collected, who it is being shared with and what it is used for," the professor adds.

"Regulation does not tell you what to do. Mostly business ethic governs that. In politics, and especially in a government setting with the ruling party, it is a completely different scenario," explains Professor Bhargava.

"Definitely, it is really troublesome that someone in a position of power is misleading people and presumably, citizens of the country to give up data. That is not a part of informed consent."
Samsung will set up an artificial-intelligence research center in Paris as part of its global push to gain the edge in the burgeoning market.

French President Emmanuel Macron and Samsung Electronics chief strategy officer Young Sohn met at the Elysee Palace on Wednesday and announced the plan, according to the company.

The AI center will initially employ 20 staff and expand the number eventually to some 100. Samsung's aim is to hire talented AI experts in Europe and develop services to target the European and African markets.

Google, Facebook and Naver also have AI research centers in France.

Samsung has set its sights on AI as a new growth engine. It operates 34 research centers around the world and has been aggressively acquiring companies specializing in AI technology and hiring experts in the area.

It already has R&D centers in Seoul, Silicon Valley and Bangalore that focus on voice-recognition, mechanical learning and autonomous driving technologies, employing more than 7,000 researchers, who developed the Bixby voice recognition service and image-translation programs.

Last September, Samsung set up an AI research center at University of Montreal in collaboration with computer-science professor Yoshua Bengio. This year, it will set up more in Toronto, the U.K. and Russia. It has been jointly developing AI speakers and other services with China's biggest tech company Tencent.

All of Samsung's latest acquisitions were AI-specialist companies. Last year it bought Innoetics, a startup out of Greece that has developed text-to-speech and voice-to-speech technology, and Korean startup Fluenty, which specializes in conversational artificial intelligence. Earlier this month it acquired Kngine, an American company that developed an AI-based search program.

The Paris agreement coincides with Samsung chief Lee Jae-yong's first trip to Europe since he was sprung from jail.
Yang Jiechi, China's state councilor for foreign affairs, on Thursday gave national security adviser Chung Eui-yong a detailed briefing on North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's visit to Beijing, according to Cheong Wa Dae.

Yang said Chinese President Xi Jinping exchanged opinions with Kim for a long time. "I think the latest visit can be helpful to solve Korean issues through denuclearization, peace and security of the Korean Peninsula and political negotiations," he added.

Chung said it is important that Kim expressed willingness to denuclearize.

Policy wonks are having a field day with the flurry of North Korea diplomacy. The Xi-Kim summit "demonstrates Xi is moving away from an arm's-length, non-dialogue policy to reconciliation with Kim Jong-un," said Victor Cha and Sue Mi Terry of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in an article on Wednesday.

"This shift is likely motivated by (a) dissatisfaction with the ineffectiveness of their North Korea policy prior to Xi's reinstatement as leader, and (b) the announcement from the South Koreans of a possible summit between Kim and U.S. president Donald Trump."

They warned China "may resume some assistance to the North as it seeks Pyongyang's assurance that it will not undertake any provocative actions."

Meanwhile, Yang and Chung also discussed ways of reducing toxic haze being blown into Korea from China, Cheong Wa Dae said.


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The government announced Thursday that an inter-Korean summit will take place in the border peace village of Panmunjom on April 27, though it did not say what exactly will be on the agenda, which one might have thought was the most important question. Cheong Wa Dae mumbled something about differences in the wording, but some words are big and others are small, and "denuclearization" is the one that matters most.

There is less than a month left to work it out. The upcoming summit takes place under fundamentally different circumstances than the two previous ones. Former presidents Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun focused on aid to North Korea and cross-border exchanges, while turning a blind eye to the North's nuclear weapons program. As a result, South Korea ended up virtually financing North Korea's nuclear weapons and missile tests. Now North Korea purports to be a nuclear-armed power, so there can be nothing more vital on the agenda than that. North Korea must agree to scrap its nuclear weapons, while South Korea must not put cross-border exchanges or support for the North above the most important issue.

In his summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said, "The issue of denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula can be resolved if South Korea and the U.S. respond to our efforts with goodwill, create an atmosphere of peace and stability." He added, this requires "phased and simultaneous steps for peace." That is the same tactic Kim's father used, where he would trade a gradual freezing and scrapping of the North's nuclear weapons for eased sanctions, economic aid and security guarantees and then renege on every one of his pledges. Nobody in their right mind would fall for that ruse again.

Except perhaps Cheong Wa Dae. Just a few days ago, Cheong Wa Dae touted its intention to untie the Gordian knot by proposing a "package deal" involving the scrapping of the North's nuclear weapons program in exchange for a peace treaty. Now it is haring after Kim's latest offer of a "phased" approach. How soon before that becomes doctrine of the week at the presidential office?

International efforts to get rid of North Korea's nuclear weapons will face serious complications if Cheong Wa Dae starts backing Kim's proposal. The U.S. is pushing for a speedy, "Libyan" style solution of "complete, verifiable and irreversible" denuclearization of North Korea. But if Pyongyang has Beijing and Seoul on side, it may just stall by offering to get rid of its long-range missiles. And since the U.S. holds mid-term elections in November, U.S. President Donald Trump may feel he can accept such a deal and sell it as a massive diplomatic success.

This is precisely the moment when Cheong Wa Dae should focus on denuclearization. Everything else can be discussed later. If Kim meets with Trump and agrees to dismantle his nuclear weapons and the U.S. offers a security guarantee, Kim will have plenty of time to discuss inter-Korean exchanges on other occasions.

President Moon Jae-in said in a meeting with lawmakers earlier this month that Seoul has no intention of easing sanctions against North Korea and will not accept a nuclear-armed North. Kim is rushing to the dialogue table because his regime is collapsing under the pressure of intense international sanctions. If the sanctions continue, North Korea knows it will start to see fissures developing in its system. That is why they are the only way to resolve the nuclear standoff. If Cheong Wa Dae weakens and agrees to a gradual tit-for-tat, it will not only open a major loophole in international pressure against North Korea, it will also give China an excuse to follow suit. The results would be catastrophic.


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48 fuel violating boats caught last year

From:Shine | 2018-03-30 02:29

THE Shanghai Maritime Bureau said it caught 48 shipping vessels last year using sulfur fuel that was over the limit at city ports, adding it would focus on inland river vessels this year.

Vessels reaching Shanghai ports are required to use oil with a sulfur volume of less than 0.5 percent. Before the regulation came into effect two years ago, ships would use cheap oil with a sulfur content of over 3 percent, which was blamed for air pollution.

The bureau said yesterday that it had carried out 541 fuel inspections in 2017, out of which 48 failed to meet the standard. Nineteen of the rule-violating vessels were found discharging black smoke.

From January 1, 2019, all vessels entering or berthing in Shanghai ports will have to use low-sulfur fuel, said Xu Min, chief of the bureaus risk management and anti-pollution department. Currently, vessels are required to change into low-sulfur fuel after arriving in Shanghai.

Xu said the bureau will strengthen law enforcement against boats in inland waters.

Our enforcement team is equipped with 15 sets of new devices which can detect the amount of sulfur in fuel in just about two minutes. Previously, it would take us three days.

We will also try drones and online tail gas monitoring system this year.

Xu said availability of low-sulfur fuel was not a problem in Shanghai with imported oil easily available.

It takes time to upgrade and renovate the existing production line. Compared to other countries, China lags behind in popularizing low-sulfur fuel. What we can assure now is abundant supply of low-sulfur fuel, said Xu.

Apart from inspecting fuel, the bureaus other major tasks this year is to raise the efficiency of deep-water fairways at the Yangtze River Estuary.

The bureau also said there were 23 major water traffic accidents in 2017  eight more than the previous year.
NHS senior Lily Trodson (left) recently put on a production of Dr. Seuss Oh, the Places Youll Go! for a Narragansett Elementary School kindergarten class. As part of her senior project, Trodson enlisted a UNIFIED theater group with students of all abilities for the enactment. She is pictured here with her senior project mentor and NHS transition life skills teacher, Krystal Cagnon.
Jewelry business finds success in Chongqing Updated: 2018-03-28 chinadaily.com.cn

Zou Mingshan, a post-90s girl from Chongqing, started her own jewelry business in Liangjiang New Area and realized her childhood dream back in April 2017.

Her company, named "ChoW", currently has an average monthly turnover of around 200,000 yuan ($31,600) and turnover can reach 500,000 yuan during peak season.

ChoW, a company set up by Zou Mingshan. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

At the beginning of 2015, she quit her job in a financial institution against the advice of her parents  and went to the United States to study jewelry design.

While studying, she devoted herself to her work and was exposed to new ways of thinking about the industry. She eventually earned a jewelry appraiser's certificate, allowing her to work in the jewelry appraisal industry in more than 100 countries.

Zou Mingshans certificate. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

On her return to China, Zou set up her own studio and hired her own team of designers.

"Building a startup is hard. From the design of the studio, to the recruitment of staff, expansion of the market and developing a branding strategy  I have quickly grown up, through trial and error," Zou said.

Through careful management and market research, she gradually built up a list of regular clients and business began to pick up.

"There are jewelry stores everywhere in the shopping mall, but custom-made jewelry is still a niche market," Zou said.

But thanks to her careful study of the market she knew the direction to take.

"It's not merely a status symbol or about wealth, it's more about sentimental value, about the story behind it. A piece of jewelry is something to be cherished forever," she said.

A selection of Zou Mingshans designs. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

"Liangjiang New Area is a suitable area for startups. It has distinct advantages in terms of location, environment and policies. It offers great opportunities for entrepreneurs," Zou added.
Kathmandu, March 30

Nepal Police on Thursday arrested a suspect of a bank robbery that took place in Chennai of India on Monday.

A team deployed from the Interpols National Central Bureau for Nepal arrested the security guard at the bank, identified as Sabilal from his home country on the charge of stealing money from the Indian Overseas Bank*.

Earlier, Interpols National Central Bureau in Mumbai had requested Kathmandus NCB to find him suspecting Shahi flew to his home after the crime.

Meanwhile, Indian media have reported that Nepal Police refused to hand him over to the Chennai police as they have to follow various norms to extradite him from Nepal to India, as per the treaty signed between the two countries in 1963.

In another case, a suspect of a theft at a departmental store in Mumbai of India has been arrested from Surkhet of mid-western Nepal.

Shahi is a resident of Barahatal Rural Municipality in Surkhet.

SP Uma Prasad Chaturbedi at the Surkhet District Police Office says police are interrogating him at the DPO. In his statement, Shahi confessed to his crime in cahoots with others, according to a source.

It has been learned that two other Nepalis have been arrested in India in connection with the case.

*Corrected and updated
Home  Just In  Fake doctor allegedly rapes woman in Kathmandu promising assistance to her moms treatment

Kathmandu, March 29

A 23-year-old woman, who was in Kathmandu during the course of medical treatment of her mother, has been raped by a youth, who claimed himself as a doctor of Bansbari-based Shahid Gangalal National Heart Centre.

Police say 27-year-old Arjun Koirala from Tansen-11 of Palpa, currently residing in Kathmandu Metropolitan City-26, raped the woman.

He had presented himself as Dr Santosh Ghale and assured that he would support the victims mothers treatment.

According to a complaint registered by the victim, he had taken her to a guesthouse in Mitra Nagar, Gongabu, to commit the crime.

An investigation launched by the Metropolitan Police Circle in Maharajgunj has found that Koirala was a Nepali Army soldier, but was fired on a rape charge.

The suspect has already confessed to his crime, according to police.

Meanwhile, the Kathmandu District Court remanded him to custody for five days for further investigation.
All major broadsheet dailies published from Kathmandu, Nepali and English alike, have covered the address of President Bidya Devi Bhandari to a joint meeting of the House of Representatives and the National Assembly on their front page though the address in itself did not contain anything of political significance. Other issues that have been featured on the cover are also related to politics or economy of the country. Very few social issues have been given priority by the newspapers today.

Important

Presidents hopeful speech in Parliament

President Bidya Devi Bhandari expressed her hopes for stability, peace and prosperity as she addressed a joint meeting of both houses of the Federal Parliament on Thursday. Newspaper reports say the head of the state highlighted achievements made by the country so far and called on political parties to work hard for better future of the country.

Gorkhapatra says the President stated that democracy would turn meaningless if it could not change peoples quality of life financially and socially; hence democracy should be felt by people practically.

The President also called on political parties to rise above their petty interests to build the prosperous country, according to Kantipur.

Meanwhile, Republica says the Presidents motorcade wreaks havoc on traffic management in the capital on Thursday afternoon. Vehicular movement in Kathmandu was thrown into disarray as the carcade of over two dozen vehicles made its way from Sheetal Niwas in Maharajgunj to the Parliament building in Naya Baneshwor.

Local officials ordered not to meet diplomats without MoFA nod

Kantipur and The Kathmandu Post have reported that the Ministry of Federal Affairs and General Administration has directed officials of local government not to meet foreign diplomats and representatives of development agencies without the approval of Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The Ministry recently wrote to officials of 77 district coordination committees and 753 local governmental units, directing them to compulsorily seek the approval for diplomatic dealings, according to the report.

Ignored

UN doing survey in Nepal without govt approval

Nagarik and Republica lead stories claim that the United Nations has been conducting a survey among Nepali citizens without informing and receiving any approval from the government, that too on sensitive political issues including contents of the new constitution.

The reports say the Prospective Political Scenario Analysis Exercise in Nepal also deals with issues like federalism, identity and ethnicity. Questionnaires prepared for the study contain questions such as whether they feel satisfied with the constitution, whether they like the political leaders, which political party they prefer and if they are satisfied with the current demarcation of provincial boundaries, according to Republica.

Forums new precondition for joining govt

The Upendra Yadav-led Federal Socialist Forum-Nepal has put one more demand as a precondition for joining incumbent KP Sharma Oli-led government, according to The Himalayan Times.

Now, the party says it will not join the government until the government does not sign a deal for constitution amendment, the report says. Meanwhile, Yadav has claimed that the government has not sent employees to Province 2 and this points to a conspiracy to foil federalism.

Private schools hike fees up to 30 per cent

Republica reports that many private schools in the country have hiked their fees up to 30 per cent as the new academic year is about to begin after two weeks. Guardians and their organisations have claimed that the decision to hike the fees have flouted government rules.

The report informs that there are nearly 6,000 private schools in the country and about five times as many public schools, according to private school organisations.

Govt to issue white paper on economic situations today

The government is preparing to issue a white paper so as to reflect economic situations of the country and incorporating possible next steps for improvement, reports Karobar in its lead story for the day. It is expected that Finance Minister Yubaraj Khatiwada will outline plans and programmes that he will carry out in next five years.

Wildfire incidents on the rise across country

Rajdhani says incidents of wildfire are increasing in the country due to various reasons including high temperature, longstanding drought and storms. Total 10 persons have already lost their lives while trying to control fire this year, the report says.

Most of the incidents are reported from the month of February to June and forests in Chure, Terai and mid-hill districts are most affected due to the disaster, according to the report.

Interesting

School students will not face textbook crunch this year

Karobar and Gorkhapatra report that students of government schools across the country are unlikely to face textbook crunch as in previous years this time. The government has allocated Rs 2.22 billion grant to ensure timely printing of the textbooks for grades 1 to 10, according to the reports.

Students of government schools are entitled free textbooks every year owing to the government policy for free education.
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Home  Just In  Kathmandu-bound NAC aircraft landed in Delhi after passenger misbehaves with crew

Kathmandu, March 30

The Nepal Airlines Corporation says its aircraft which left Doha for Kathmandu this morning was forced to land at the Indira Ghandhi International Airport in New Delhi of India after a passenger misbehaved with its crew and some other passengers.

Later, the NAC handed over the person to Indian police before the aeroplane flew to Kathmandu, according to NAC spokesperson Rabindra Shrestha.

The aircraft was set to land in Kathmandu at 10:30 am today.

Shrestha says the NAC is investigating into the case and the identity of the passenger.
Kathmandu, March 30

Three student unions affiliated to three major political parties on Thursday have announced an indefinite educational strike beginning Sunday.

The CPN-UML-aligned All Nepal National Free Students Union (ANNFSU), Nepali Congress-affiliated Nepal Students Union (NSU) and CPN-Maoist Centre-affiliated All Nepal National Independent Students Union-Revolutionary (ANNNISU-R) have announced the strike demanding that the provision of 75 per cent reservation to temporary teachers in examinations of the Teachers Service Commission that the ninth amendment to the Education Act incorporated be removed with a new amendment.

They have also said the TSCs examination scheduled for next week Friday should be postponed until their demand was met.

Meanwhile, organisations representing private school operators have requested the student unions to postpone the strike for now as their protest will affect ongoing Secondary Education Examinations (SEE).

PABSON General Secretary Rajendra Baniya says the unions should consider likely impacts of their strike on the mindset of SEE candidates.
Home  Business  Minister plans to buy six new Twin Otter craft for NAC in next three months

Kathmandu, March 30

Minister for Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation Rabindra Adhikari on Friday unveiled his ambitious plan for first 100 days of his office, stressing that he will focus improving the business of national flag carrier, Nepal Airlines Corporation (NAC).

The Minister says six new Twin Otter aeroplanes will be purchased in next three months in a bid to expand its coverage in the domestic aviation market.

Of total eight craft that the national flag carrier currently possesses, six are fit for domestic flights; and they will be utilised at the most, according to him.

Adhikari says another priority is improvement in the condition of Nepals only international airport, Tribhuvan International Airport.

He claims he will minimise problems related to air traffic control and ensure the operation of flights upto 21 hours every day.

According to the Minister, preparations are also underway to study the possibility of shifting the TIA domestic terminal to Thulichaur of Kavre or any other place.
Namib Desert Diamonds (Namdia) said it will export its annual 15 percent entitlement of diamonds produced by Namdeb Holdings in line with the marketing and sales agreement signed between Namibia and De Beers in 2016.

Under the sales agreement the Namibia Diamond Trading Company (NDTC) sells the countrys rough stones, on behalf of Namdeb Holdings, to De Beers for its 85 percent entitlement and the rest to Namdia.

De Beers in turn sells part of its entitlement to sightholders in Namibia and takes the remainder to Gaborone for aggregation.

Our 15 percent, or a minimum of $150 million, was earmarked for international sales and not for the local market, company chief executive Kennedy Hamutenya was quoted as saying by a local newspaper, New Era.

This was a deliberate policy decision by the government in order to make inroads into the international market and reduce our reliance on the middleman in selling our stones. This was done to give us better insights into this very secretive and opaque industry.

He said Namdia does not deal in or handle diamonds mixed with those of other producing nations.

When a client is buying Namdia diamonds they can be guaranteed that they are buying a 100 percent Namibian-mined diamond, said Hamutenya.

This is particularly important for those clients who want to give assurance to their end user client that they know the source of the diamond  that it was not involved in child labour, that it is not tainted as a conflict or blood diamond and that it has no links with money laundering or financing of terrorism.



Mathew Nyaungwa, Editor in Chief of the African Bureau, Rough&Polished




ALROSA received a bank guarantee from VTB worth over 8.5 billion rubles, which is the necessary financial security for a subsidy for the development of the Verkhne-Munskoye diamond deposit.

These funds will be used to build a technological route for the project. The company will receive the first subsidy tranche of 1.3 billion rubles in the coming days.

During the Second Eastern Economic Forum in September 2016, ALROSA and the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation signed an Investment Agreement on the project for the development of the Verkhne-Munskoye deposit. According to its conditions, ALROSA independently builds an infrastructure facility - a temporary technological route from Udachny town to the Verkhne-Munskoye deposit - and later on the government compensates its expenses through subsidies worth over 8.5 billion rubles.

"Construction of the technological route to the Verkhne-Munskoye is nearing completion. At the beginning of the week we signed an agreement with the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation, according to which in the coming days the company will receive the first tranche of a subsidy in the amount of 1.3 billion rubles. By the end of this year, the company will be compensated 3.5 billion rubles spent on the construction of the route. The remaining 5 billion rubles will be paid within the next two years," said ALROSA Deputy General Director Alexei Filippovsky. "One of the conditions for obtaining a subsidy is the financial support in the form of an independent guarantee issued by the bank. We conducted a tender after which we decided that VTB's terms are the most favorable for us."
On March 22, 2018 at about 0554, the Richland County Sheriffs Office received a report of a stolen 1992 Blue Chevrolet K2500 pickup from a resident southwest of Sidney. The caller stated that the vehicle may have been stolen by a male subject that had allowed to stay at their place, and may be on his way to Billings, Montana. At about 0602 hours the same caller reported that she found that a business she manages south of Sidney that is a licensed marijuana distributor had been broken into and items were missing. Upon investigation the burglary it was found that over $8000.00 in Marijuana and related products had been taken and about $1500.00 damage to the business during the burglary.

Richland County Sheriffs Office had entered the vehicle as a stolen vehicle in the National Data base and notified surrounding law enforcement agencies of the stolen vehicle and burglary.

At about 0742 hours, less than two hours from the original report, information was received from the Prairie County Sheriffs Office that the reported stolen vehicle had been stopped by their agency and the driver was being detained. A search warrant was obtained to search the vehicle and items from the reported burglary had been recovered.

Formal charges have been requested for Burglary, Criminal Mischief and Theft with the Richland County Attorney's Office. The name of the subject will be released after warrants have been served. The subject is being held in the Dawson County Detention Center at this time.

The Richland County Sheriffs Office would like to thank area law enforcement agencies for their assistance in this matter. Prairie County Sheriffs Office, Montana Highway Patrol, Dawson County Sheriffs Office and Sidney Police Dept.
American whistle-blower Edward Snowden believes Bitcoin's main drawback is not its ability to scale as many critics allege, but its lack of privacy.

"Everybody is focused on the transaction rate limitations of bitcoin being its central flaw, and that is a major one, but I would argue that the much larger structural flaw, the long-lasting flaw, is its public ledger," according to Snowden.

The former CIA Analyst, who exposed the United States' massive electronic surveillance program in 2013, gave his views on soft currency and the behind it while addressing an audience via webcam at a Blockstack event in Berlin.

"That is simply incompatible with having an enduring mechanism for trade, because you cannot have a lifelong history of everyone's purchases, all of their interactions be available to everyone and have that work out well at scale," Snowden said from his residence in Russia, where he is living under temporary asylum.

Snowden agrees that bitcoin will endure for a long period of time, does not believe bitcoin will last forever.

Related Stories:

Snowden Leak Reveals NSA Tracking Bitcoin Users

Though Bitcoin is the most popular cryptocurrency in the world, it is not Snowden's favourite.

"When we talk about which cryptocurrencies are interesting to me, I've said it before and I'll say it again, zcash for me is the most interesting right now, because the privacy properties of it are truly unique, but we see more and more projects that are trying to emulate this and I think this is a positive thing."

Snowden hinted that he had used Bitcoin in 2013 to conceal his identity while preparing to release classified documents, including some that showed the NSA was actively spying on Bitcoin users.

Snowden was charged with espionage and theft of government property after he stunned the world in 2013 by leaking details of several secret mass electronic surveillance programs run by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA).

Revelations about NSA's internet surveillance programs such as PRISM, XKeyscore and Tempora, as well as the interception of US and European telephone metadata, had put Washington in a tight spot.

Considered a fugitive by American authorities, Snowden fled the country after the news broke, and is currently holed up in Russia under temporary asylum.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business News
(Agencia CMA Latam) - The Brazilian government sold less than half of the offshore oil blocks auctioned earlier today, raising R$ 8.014 billion (US$ 2.41 billion) and drawing an expected investment of R$ 1.222 billion to those areas.

According to official data, 22 out of 49 blocks were sold. It was the first oil area auction held after changes to the auctioning process.

The Santos Basin blocks raised a total of R$ 346.43 million to the government, with expected investments of R$ 83.75 million. A consortium formed by ExxonMobil and QPI Brasil bought the SM-536 block for R$ 165 million and the SM-647 block for R$ 49.5 million. Chevron Brasil, Wintershall Holding, and Repsol, together, bought the S-M764 block for R$ 131.9 million.

Nine blocks in the Campos basin yielded a total signing bonus of R$ 7.5 billion, with a minimum investment of R$ 862.75 million. In this area, the consortium formed by Petrobras, Statoil and ExxonMobil bought the blocks C-M-567 for R$ 2.128 billion and C-M-709 for R$ 1.5 billion. The consortium formed by ExxonMobil, QGI, and Petrobras won the C-M-753 for R$ 330 million.

The Sergipe-Alagoas basin had two blocks sold, totaling a signing bonus of

R$ 7.26 million and an estimated investment of R $ 48 million. The SEAL-M-430

block was sold to the ExxonMobil, Murphy and Queiroz Galveo consortium for R$

3.63 million, which held SEAL-AUP2 for R$ 3.63 million.

The blocks SM-534 and SM-645 were withdrawn by the Federal Audit Court (TCU) under the justification that they could cause losses to the Unions. The Brazilian Ministry of Mines and Energy (MME) said that it assesses the issue and intends to auction both areas later this year.

by Agencia CMA Latam

For comments and feedback: editorial@rttnews.com

Economic News

What parts of the world are seeing the best (and worst) economic performances lately? Click here to check out our Econ Scorecard and find out! See up-to-the-moment rankings for the best and worst performers in GDP, unemployment rate, inflation and much more.
(Agencia CMA Latam) - The Brazilian government failed to receive bids for onshore oil blocks auctioned on Thursday.

The tender included 21 onshore blocks in the Paran? and Parna?ba basins. The absence of demand for those blocks reflects the fact that tendered areas are little known and have technological barriers. In 2017, onshore production accounted for around 8% of Brazil's output.

Earlier, the Brazilian government sold less than half of the offshore oil blocks auctioned, raising R$ 8.014 billion (US$ 2.41 billion) and drawing an expected investment of R$ 1.222 billion to those areas. According to official data, 22 out of 49 blocks were sold. It was the first oil area auction held after changes to the auctioning process.

For the director general of the ANP, D?cio Odone, it was expected that there would be investor interest in the onshore wells, especially in the Parani basin. However, the companies of the sector would be divided between the divestitures of Petrobras and the exploratory risks of the offers.

"Petrobras is divesting into assets that are drawing the attention of companies operating in Brazil, and the result for these areas is due to this," Odone said.

by Agencia CMA Latam

For comments and feedback: editorial@rttnews.com

Economic News

What parts of the world are seeing the best (and worst) economic performances lately? Click here to check out our Econ Scorecard and find out! See up-to-the-moment rankings for the best and worst performers in GDP, unemployment rate, inflation and much more.
Japan's housing starts continued to decline in February, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism showed Friday.

Housing starts decreased 2.6 percent year-on-year in February, but slower than the 13.2 percent decline seen in January. Economists had forecast a bigger decline of 4.2 percent.

Annualized housing starts totaled 926,000 in February versus 856,000 in the previous month and the expected level of 912,000.

Data also showed that construction orders received by big 50 contractors logged a sharp growth of 19.2 percent after gaining 0.9 percent in January.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Economic News

What parts of the world are seeing the best (and worst) economic performances lately? Click here to check out our Econ Scorecard and find out! See up-to-the-moment rankings for the best and worst performers in GDP, unemployment rate, inflation and much more.
By SA Commercial Prop News

Gerald Leissner, Chief Executive Officer of Arrowhead Properties says that the funding will be used to acquire yield enhancing properties soon to be transferred



Property loan stock company Arrowhead Properties, today announced the successful completion of the accelerated book build announced this morning. The book was heavily oversubscribed.

A total of just over 17 million A and B linked units were issued for a combined consideration of R14.60, raising gross proceeds of R250 million. The issue price of the units represents a discount of 3% to the closing price on 05 March 2013.

The equity raise was offered to South African investors at a pricing acceptable to Arrowhead and the proceeds will be used to fund the acquisition of properties in line with Arrowheads strategy.

"We are delighted with the successful book build and the strong support from our shareholders. The funding will be used to acquire yield enhancing properties soon to be transferred" commented, Chief Executive Officer Gerald Leissner

Java Capital and Standard Bank were appointed as joint bookrunners.

Established through an unbundling of a portfolio of 98 properties from Redefine Properties in November 2011, Arrowhead is the only JSE listed property company to pay quarterly distributions.

On 23 January 2013, the company concluded an agreement to acquire Indite Property Fund, a 100% black owned and black managed property fund, as part of their growth and broader Black Economic Empowerment strategies, aligning the company with the SA Property Charter.

Indite Property Funds portfolio consisted of six buildings with a combined gross lettable area of 17000m2 and the properties are located in Gauteng, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal and the North West Province.

The fund intends to increase its portfolio to R10bn by 2016 through the acquisition of secondary properties that offer attractive yields.


The National Research Technological University of Russia - NUST MISIS has a cooperation agreement with Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics in Kolkata, India. They are carrying out their research on developing Nanoparticles that fight against tumors. Apart from that they jointly work with Institute of Technology in Delhi on fundamental research of magnetic properties of new alloys for next decades. Sergey Kaloshkin, Director of the Institute of New Materials and Nanotechnologies of the NUST MISIS discussed various research projects they have been working on tumors, tissue engineering, devise for early diagnosis, and development of new materials for medical use. India and Russia cooperating in the field of health.



The National Research Technological University of Russia - NUST MISIS specifically focuses on integrating science, education, and innovations. Scientists & Researchers of NUST MISIS held a video press conference/interaction in New Delhi.



Sergey Kolashkin explained that The National University of Science and Technology is presently providing Science Education to more than 15 thousand students including 3600 foreign Students from 69 countries. Last year 9 Indian students completed their post-graduation from MISiS.



Alexander Osipov, leading researcher of the Department of Functional Nanosystems and High-Temperature Materials of the NUST MISIS said that the motto of NUST MISIS is to invent the technologies to make diagnose easily so that diseases could be detected in earlier stages.



Emphasizing joint work of NUST MISIS & Indian Scientist Dr. Senapati Dulal from Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics in Kolkata, Alexander Osipov, leading researcher of the Department Functional Nanosystems and High Temperature Materials of the NUST MISIS said that Dulals work in the sphere of Gold Nanoflowers and Nanospheres was highly appreciated and is funded by Russian Ministry of Education & Science and Department of Biotechnology India.




Former All Black star, Leaupepe Victor Vito has sent out a final message of good luck to Lupesoliai Joseph Parker ahead of his heavyweight unification fight with unbeaten Brit Anthony Joshua.

Leaupepe arrived at Parkers Cardiff hotel to pass on a good luck message to the undefeated Samoan heavyweight as the clock ticks towards the hugely anticipated showdown at the Welsh capitals Principality Stadium.

And, speaking exclusively to the Samoa Observer in Cardiff, Vito, who has Samoan ancestors, revealed his confidence in Parkers ability and mental state.

He said: After seeing him, I think its looking pretty promising for our boy here. He looks really relaxed and Im backing him to win.

If he focuses on himself and everything he has been working on, training wise and putting the plan together, I think the outcome of Samoans and everyone back home being happy will come to fruition.

He knows the enormity of the spectacle and the fight, but I dont think hell worry about that too much. Hell concentrate on himself and putting in his own plan.

Vito knows Parker through fellow All Black Israel Dagg and another mutual connection. The flanker currently plys his trade at French outfit La Rochelle and has made the trip over to Cardiff for the fight.

Parker weighed in at 16st 12lbs with rival Joshua at 17st 4lbs at the fight weigh-in at a raucous Motorpoint Arena on Friday.

Parkers WBO belt and Joshuas IBF, WBA and IBO titles will be on the line when the giants face-off tomorrow night in the first heavyweight unification bout to take place in the United Kingdom.

But Vito, with 33 New Zealand rugby caps, revealed his own personal feelings after witnessing the weigh-in, just over 24 hours until the main event.

Anthony Joshua is a unit, we saw that today (Friday) at the weigh-in, he commented. But Joseph has put in a lot of work as well. They have both shed weight and they are looking on par.

Im backing Joseph, I reckon he can do it. Im excited for the fight and Im probably more nervous than he is, so itll be interesting to see!
The U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, Walter Douglas, visited Samoa this week.

During a reception at the U.S. Embassy Compound in Vailima on Tuesday, he expressed how impressed he was with the Samoan hospitality.

This is my first visit. It is really pleasure what you got here and all that you have accomplished.

He acknowledged the new Country Director, Gini Wilderson, who was among the crowd.

The Peace Corp is the largest contribution the United States has in Samoa and it just celebrated its 50th anniversary and its quite an accomplishment and you dont get that in many places around the world.

And right now there are volunteers spread out all over the world, he said.

He said Samoa is part of the Asia Pacific region that the United States Government contributes and commits to.

The President has taken an unprecedented 13-day trip through the Asia Pacific region and I think its been for many decades that a President has spent so long away from Washington and he really enjoyed it.

He is very interested in the region.

I can tell you from back in Washington that people say you the East Asia Pacific Bureau that you are the lucky girl because there is so much interest from the White House, he said.

We are delighted to continue our relationship with Samoa and for as long as it goes on.

Mr. Douglas said they are also a contributing member to the Pacific community. For the environmental programme they support, its important to manage and protect the oceans and fisheries resources.

Most importantly to combat unreported and unregulated illegal fishing for countries like Samoa, it is vital they have the resources.

The U.S. and Samoa have a mutually beneficial trade relationship and it is something very important to our President.

This includes American Samoa, where Mr. Douglas says U.S. is American Samoas second largest trading partner and third largest sources of remittances.

Trade expanding where Samoa beverages are now exporting to Hawaii and the West Coast and in the organic farming area, you are making valuable contributions in coconut oil, cocoa, turmeric and other products and its ending that it really something that is supporting farming here, said Mr. Douglas.

According to a statement released by the U.S. Embassy Samoa, Mr. Douglas is the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs and Public Diplomacy and for Regional and Security Policy in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C. Mr. Douglas was previously the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Media Engagement in the Bureau of Public Affairs.

Before that, he served overseas as minister counselor for public affairs at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi. Earlier, Mr. Douglas was a senior visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (C.S.I.S.) in Washington, D.C.

His report Engaging the Muslim World: Public Diplomacy after 9/11 in the Arab Middle East, Afghanistan, and Pakistan was published in 2013.

Until October, 2011, Mr. Douglas was based in Islamabad as the director of communications for the U.S. mission in Pakistan.

Before that, he served in Washington as executive assistant to the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs and as the director of the office of press and public diplomacy in the Near Eastern Affairs bureau.

This followed a tour as public affairs officer at the U.S. embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Mr. Douglas also served as a public affairs officer at U.S. diplomatic missions in Turkey, Cyprus, and Iceland.

He was deputy to the spokesman at the U.S. mission to the United Nations when Madeleine Albright was ambassador. Earlier, he served at the U.S. missions in South Korea and Cote dIvoire.

Prior to joining the Foreign Service, Mr. Douglas worked as an advertising executive in New York and as a legislative assistant to a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Mr. Douglas graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a B.A. in history.
The Samoa Blind Persons Association (S.B.P.A.) received two Braille Eye Slates from the University of the South Pacifics Faculty of Science, Technology and Environment yesterday.

Held at the Nuanua o le Alofa office in Apia, the donation was presented by Senior Lecturer, Dr. Utkal Mehta and U.S.P. Suva Campus Engineering Masters student, Nikhil Singh.

The Braille Eye Slate is tactile systems used by people who are blind or visually impaired to tell them the letters they have pressed.

The devices were invented by Mr. Singh and Vinaal Prakash, third year students at the School of Engineering and Physics. They were guided by Senior Lecturer, Dr. Utkal Mehta.

The students developed the devices with the aim of having a device touted for low cost solutions to teach braille language to visually impaired students.

During the handover ceremony, Dr. Mehta said the eye slate is a simple, but very effective device which can be used by young children.

It will allow them to learn braille from a young age, enabling them to start their education on the right footing, he said.

Existing braille machines can be very difficult for young children to use, and usually children become disinterested and can even give up on learning if its too challenging.

U.S.P. has already donated eye slates to other Pacific nations such as the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu as well as local organisations in Fiji.

He said their aim is to enable people with visual impairments to learn braille as soon as possible.

This will help them to read and write, he said.

We are happy that today (yesterday), we are able to gift these devices to the S.B.P.A. in the hope that the younger generation will benefit.

He explained the device is a light weight hand held with 29 buttons.

Each button has a single braille letter superimposed on the surface, he said.

By pressing a button, an internal speaker sounds out the letter which is audible to the user.

There is also a setting which will allow the user to hear numerals instead.

Mr. Singh said one of the issues he and his colleague discovered was the lack of technology access for braille learners in the Pacific region.

So we at the School of Engineering and Physics came up with the solution, making sure it was a simple, portable, durable and cost-effective device to teach braille to our visually impaired children, he said.

My vision as an inventor was to make the device in a totally Pacific way and there is more scope in our vision for similar innovations.

The engineering team at U.S.P. hopes that we will impact the lives of our people with visual impairments and develop more technologies to elevate the standard of living of our people and community as a whole.

President of S.B.P.A, Mataafa Faatino Utumapu, acknowledge the kind donation.

This is a simple indication of how S.B.P.A. is one of the leading agencies for inclusive education, she said. I hope this device will provide our young generation with good opportunities to develop and learn at an equal level to students without disabilities.

The future of students without disabilities is no different than of those who are blind and have visual impairments, as long as the opportunities are there.

I trust that these devices are a significant addition to our tool box at S.B.P.A, as we teach our youngsters. We are working to ensure that no child, who is blind or has visual impairments, is left behind.

This braille eye slate is the result of a research conducted in mid-2016, to gauge the level of braille illiteracy in children in the Pacific Island countries and also after it gained recognition in its top ranking in the I.E.E.E. Young Engineers Humanitarian Challenge in the world.
Dear Editor,

A family member comments.

We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed, perplexed, but not in despair, persecuted but not abandoned, struck down, but not destroyed (2 Corinthians 4: 8, 9)

My village Sogi is the place my brothers, sisters and I call Home. It is a place where we were born, raised, worked, where we found God and found ourselves and where for all of us it is the place where our hearts will be always.

It is the place our family have lived at for close to a hundred years. It is where the last remnant of what was once a vibrant and fully-fledged village community, is now holed up in a tight corner on the edge of the swamp.

It is the place where we have been living under siege and constantly under the threat of eviction and expulsion for decades. This treatment is a constant reminder that we are perceived as a pack of faceless, non-entities of persona non grata status, that we are dispensable transients, poverty stricken squatters, an inconvenience, an eyesore and a plight on the landscape of Samoan society.

Yet for us, Sogi is a special place. It is a small field sowed with tears, love fortitude and reaped with thanksgiving. It is the place where we feel most secure and gives us a deep sense of belonging and connectedness to Samoa. To us, Sogi the village, is Gods little acre. It is a hallowed bit of dirt on the edge of the mangrove swamp that provided for our basic livelihood. It is the wellspring of life for us. It is where our hearts are always. It is the place where we as a family of Samoan-Melanesian descent stand tall as free citizens of the world proud of our Samoan heritage.

Sogi is our home. We are always drawn to it no matter where we are. Although some of us have left Sogi and live elsewhere, this village a much maligned and misunderstood place, for most times has had its share of sadness and pain. This Sogi we carry within us always.

There are many happy precious memories born of tough and challenging times, with a hand to mouth existence and a subsistence way of life lived on the edge, which has developed physical, mental and spiritual fortitude in us. The love, understanding and the honesty of ordinary poor people, struggling to make a living in the most trying and ardent circumstances are the experiences that nurture, fortify and define us. They help keep our feet firmly on the ground. We also carry within us the hurt, pain and feeling of hopelessness and loss, due to the abuse, neglect and exploitation of our family and alienation of other families of Samoan-Melanesian descent that we have endured for years.

The ignorance, the patronising and hypocritical attitude, the betrayal by various administrations, governments, bureaucrats, officials, politicians, the church and some sectors of Samoa society over the decades have culminated in the present sad state of affairs regarding the future of Sogi, my village, my home. The authorities past and present have exhibited total disregard and disrespect for our human rights that we have with regard to the land that our family (Tokuma-Leiataua) has claimed from the swap land and the sea and has occupied continuously and uninterrupted for close to 100 years.

It was never gifted or given to us on a silver plate, neither by the New Zealand Government nor by the Samoan Government. It is regrettable and profoundly sad that after all these many years, we the faceless Sogi Village recalcitrant and defiant family are again being swept under the carpet by authorities who live in denial of the Melanesian indentured labourers part of Samoas history and who keep pretending that we, the product of that history never existed.

As the prophet Jeremiah cried out in despair, Is there no balm (for Gods people) in Gilead? I too cry out, is there no healing or justice in this country (founded on God!) for us?

The authorities have issued eviction notices over the years for my family to leave what we regard as our land by reclamation and occupation. They want us to move out to nowhere, they said we have disobeyed them and that we have had many years to vacate their so-called government land. We are saying our Melanesian forbearers, our parents, ourselves have invested a thousand lifetimes in this place. This place is our land and our home. This is where we want to be always. Please let it be.

Leiataua Malo Tokoma (Tokuma)
Re: M.P. rejects land plan

There needs to be a market for leases.

If the lease is nearly up, the value of the lease would be lower than if there is still a long time for the lease.

Basically, once the lease is up, the bank needs to hand the lease back to the owners of the land or renew the lease.

The bank is stuck with it and should pursue the investor through the courts in other ways.

It is this risk for the bank, which will make mortgages on leases quite hard to get in my opinion. The investor would probably need to have huge business assets to also secure the mortgage on.

On another matter, that is how it works in overseas countries.

You are thinking about how it applies to overseas jurisdictions with your overseas palagi head.

However, if you put your Samoan head back on, it cannot happen like that in Samoa because it is unconstitutional to permanently alienate customary land. That is why the Banks in Samoa do not take mortgages out on customary land since forever. That is why most of Samoa is poor. They cannot get loans out on their land and 80% of Samoa is customary land.

The tangibles are the business assets and the lease. Yes, it is a relatively new thing for leases to be a security in itself in Samoa but it isnt a completely new concept. It happens overseas as well.

P.S. Jeffrey
Dear Editor,

Regarding your editorial Have they forgotten O Samoa ua uma ona tofi. Who really had divided Samoa? Do you know?

I have asked as it had been so many yonks of ages ago that catchphrase was said but for sure it was akin to my dear lovely Samoa culture not to a Westminster elected democratic government. And am proud to say, I also know who said it.

Life had been muddled too much in Samoa today misinterpreting the Westminster democracy and bringing the Samoa culture into disrepute.

That surely is causing a mayhem recently when some lowlife scumbags from the slum of Luatuanuu had interfered with the government road that is running into the village, the culture was exploited to defuse the situation (when the law passed in the Westminster democracy was compromised).

The power of the mind, the physical strength, the love of the heart, and the belief of the soul are enough weapons to control the whole human body. And when angers prevail, the human is weak and a had become a coward.

When the democratic law is broken the police had to act in a way to protect themselves at what ever cost. The safety of the police is paramount and utmost imperative.

The police have the right to go to work and return home to loved ones at the end of their shift. No stupid idiot fool is allowed to lay hand on the police. Samoa culture has no place when the law is broken.

That road maybe in Luatuanuu but the land that road is situated does not belong to Luatuanuu none or whatsoever. It is definitely belonging to every citizen of Samoa to freely use. The same in all the villages in Samoa; the public road belongs to every one.

Mr. Editor, what the H.R.P.P. government is doing right now is premise to the decorum the Constitution had afford unto them to help develop the modern Samoa.

Laws are passed and annul and thats normal. And so as any Constitutions in the world. Amendments are required to conform with the time or else a country would operate with laws that are outdated.

The ancient revered district salutations you mentioned had been very long ago become obsolete and dud when the might of the Matavanu volcano had ruined Saleaula causing some residents to seek relocation as they are now in Leauvaa and Salamumus circumstances.

The electoral new boundaries perhaps are to be changed, but the cultural salutations would still remain the very same no one can change that.

In Samoa, changes are needed otherwise the rest of the world would move forward and we are still using coconut lamps to light up the dark night and cooking with the outside fire.

But should there be some people who do not need a progressive life for a developed Samoa, I am sure Namua Nuulua and Nuutele are inhabited.

Respectfully yours,

Tofaeono Misatauveve Iosefo Joseph Hollywood Palisi
Samoa Airways is looking at other aircrafts pending the end of their current wet lease.

Not only that, the national airline also expects to have a full Samoan flight crew by 2019.

These are some of the plans revealed by Samoa Airways Chief Executive Officer, Seiuli Alvin Tuala, during an interview with the Samoa Observer.

Graduating from a wet lease to a dry lease will see a drop in expenditure for Samoa Airways by not having to rely on cabin and pilot crews from other airlines to operate the aircraft.

Tuala said phase one of flight crew training is almost complete.

Now they are turning their attention to finding an aircraft to suit the next level of operation for Samoa Airways.

Everything is going to plan and the aircraft works fine, he said. Weve had no issues but leases dont last that long, they have to move on and do other things and we have to get a replacement."

Training cabin crew and pilots is not easy and not cheap so we went with the wet lease to start the operations and slowly were moving into the dry lease."

At this time, we are on a damp lease where the cabin crew is all Samoan but the technical crew is still foreigners.

The Italian crew has been great, they are so helpful. They have been the most helpful people Ive come across in terms of assisting us with everything.

They have worked very closely with our team here in Samoa, but as we move to dry lease, our pilots are training so that we start to slot them in and we are about to hire pilots from overseas.

Asked whether they are seeing an increase in flight numbers and how does a startup airline deal with low flying numbers, the C.E.O responded: When loadings are low, you combine so that youre not wasting your money operating a flight.

Recently, we moved people from the Wednesday flight to the Tuesday and Thursday and made good use of the time to do some maintenance work on the aircraft.

Thats normal in any commercial airline. There are airlines that are much bigger that cancel flights at the drop of a hat. Its not worth flying with low numbers instead we moved them and transferred them to another flight and did whatever we needed to do to accommodate them.

The C.E.O. pointed out that quite simply the Samoa Airways is relying on the support of its people not merely to survive, but to thrive among other international carriers.

Our people need to come and support the airline because without their support, the airlines are not going anywhere, Seiuli said.

With their support, we can achieve a lot of different things. We can ensure that airfares remain affordable because they werent affordable six months ago, they were really expensive.

Weve been operating since November 2017 and flight numbers are starting to increase, but we would like to see more of our people travelling with us.

Weve got a good product, we have a full on board service and of course the airline will look at other ways to improve.
The Government has moved to assure that there is nothing to worry about in terms of Attorney General Lemalu Hermann Retzlaffs health.

The assurance was made in a statement issued by the Press Secretary yesterday, responding to speculations about Lemalus health condition.

One concerned Samoan wrote to the Samoa Observer from Auckland.

He (Lemalu) was seen at a West Auckland clinic in NZ Friday last week not looking well. He's limping and his skin has marks on it. He's lost weight fast and he looks pale, Manu Felelei wrote.

But I noticed that he's still very polite and friendly at the clinic. He helped an elderly lady there with her bags.

But the Government confirmed that Lemalu is on leave for routine medical checks with the Prime Ministers blessing.

"This has been a constructive and timely period in NZ for organising links for the work we need to undertake for the remainder of the year," Lemalu is quoted as saying.

He reports it is nothing serious or ongoing and he is looking forward to being back in the office and performing his duties as the A.G. after the Easter break.

He has also taken the time to make contact with counsel assisting the A.G.'s office from Crown Law in Auckland.
The Chief Executive Officer of the Ministry of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Agafili Shem Leo, has assured that overstayers from Bangladesh and Greece will be deported in accordance with immigration laws.

Agafili was asked for an explanation after the Samoa Observer obtained a letter he wrote to the Parole Board where he highlights concerns about the immigration status of one Mohammad Saifal, 24, of Bangladesh and Nicolas Gianno, 37, of Greece.

Saifal entered Samoa on a resident permit for employment issued on January 1, 2015, to work in Samoa as a sewing machine operator for Landlord Appeals (Samoa-Bangladesh) Ltd, the letter reads.

The work permit expired on May 8, 2016. He committed an indecent act on a 14-year-old girl and was sentenced on January 25, 2016 and to date he remains in jail without a valid permit.

Regarding Gianno, he came to Samoa as a visitor and stayed with his fiance at Leulumoega. He was supposed to depart Samoa, however he was refused departure due to an order issued by the Court and to date he is in Samoa without a valid permit.

Agafili explained there is an immigration process in place regarding the two individuals who have been convicted and are currently serving term in prison.

In these cases, the Samoa Immigration work collaboratively with the Prisons Parole Board when considering granting of deportation orders as required under the Immigration Act."

This is to make sure that the authority of the Court that imposed the sentence is respectfully upheld."

What that means is that if the Parole Board decides to grant these individuals parole, we will immediately issue them deportation orders.

The C.E.O. told the Samoa Observer they have worked closely with organisational partners to facilitate deportation of these foreign nationals.

In terms of over stayers, those who are captured on our Border Management System (B.M.S.) are dual citizens who have foreign passports but were born in Samoa."

We have been tracking them on the B.M.S. and follow up on their locations and remove them from the system when they leave the country."

Many of them have overstayed the 60 days (now 90 days) required for entry permit."

For foreign nationals who have been issued permits to reside and work in Samoa, the Samoa Immigration continues to follow up with their sponsors on the conditions of their permits particularly when the permits are about to expire."

There are also spot checks that the Ministry conducts from time to time on the individuals' residences and work places as required under the Immigration Act."

The sponsors and the foreign nationals are informed by the immigration by letter on the conditions of their permits, and many have reapplied for extension."

Those found to have breached the conditions of their permits have been issued deportation orders and removed from the country."

The sponsors are required to pay for their return tickets. We have been doing that until to date.
The flagship drug of San Diegos MediciNova failed a midstage clinical trial for methamphetamine dependency, casting doubt on prospects for a product it has placed great hopes in.

The drug, ibudilast, didnt help meth users improve abstinence, as compared to a placebo. Ibudilast is being tested for other addictions, as well as multiple sclerosis.

The company said it was disappointed with the results in the trial, conducted at UCLA. If the drug proves broadly effective in substance abuse disorders, it would address a large market in great need of better therapies.

MediciNova fell nearly 15 percent Thursday after the announcement. Shares closed at $10.22, down $1.74 for the day. Exchanges were closed Friday in observance of Good Friday.

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Ibudilast is also being tested as a treatment for dependence on opioids and alcohol. All of this testing is being funded through the National Institute on Drug Abuse, part of the National Institutes of Health.

Moreover, ibudilast has showed evidence of efficacy in progressive MS, which continues to get worse without remissions.

To fund further testing, MediciNova recently raised $40 million in a stock offering.

The disappointment contrasted with favorable results from earlier studies. In January of last year, ibudilast showed preliminary signs of potential efficacy in meth dependence in another UCLA study released at that time.

That same month, another study found ibudilast significantly reduced cravings for alcohol.

In the new trial for meth, the drug was found to be safe, MediciNova said in a statement. The double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial was designed to detect any change in abstinence from meth, as confirmed by urine samples.

But without demonstrating efficacy, the trial represents a setback for ibudilast.

It is disappointing that the study could not achieve the primary endpoint with this study design and setting, study leader Keith Heinzerling, MD, said in the statement.

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MediciNova plans to meet with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration after data is released from another study of the drug for meth use, said Yuichi Iwaki, MD, MediciNova president and CEO. That trial is being conducted at Oregon Health & Science University.

For more information on the drugs clinical trials, go to clinicaltrials.gov and search for ibudilast.

Related reading

MediciNova raises $40 million in stock offering

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Meth brain harm cut by MediciNova drug

MediciNova meth-addiction drug gets boost

UBS buys back $9.5M in MediciNova securities

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Science Playlist  On Now In a first, scientists rid human embryos of a potentially fatal gene mutation by editing their DNA On Now Space station flyovers visible from San Diego this week 0:55 On Now UCSD's 'ghost drivers' begin testing people's reaction seemingly empty cars 1:29 On Now 10 interesting facts about Mars On Now Kids can add years to your life On Now LA 90: SpaceX launches recycled rocket On Now Big passions, big giving: Malin Burnham 2:30 On Now Big passions, big giving: Darlene Shiley 2:40 On Now Big passions, big giving: Joan and Irwin Jacobs 2:45 On Now Ocean temperatures warming at rapid rate, study finds

bradley.fikes@sduniontribune.com

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General Dynamics-NASSCO said Friday its looking to hire 800 to 1,000 workers to help the San Diego shipyard build a lengthy list of huge Navy support ships and container vessels that are collectively worth more than $4 billion.

NASSCO also needs more workers to repair Navy warships, an aspect of its business that could grow if the Trump administration carries through with plans to spend more on ship maintenance.

The company  which is the last major shipbuilder on the West Coast  could see total employment rise to 4,100, which would be one of the highest figures the yard has ever posted.

The contracts we have should carry us through 2024, said Dennis DuBard, NASSCOs chief spokesman. This is the longest list of steady work that weve head in awhile.

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NASSCO is looking for everyone from welders to electricians to shipfitters, and a lot of so-called green workers, or those whove yet to develop specific skills.

Well look at people who were working at McDonalds last week, DuBard said, underscoring the companys need for help.

The yards workforce slipped to 3,100 from more than 3,600 over the past year or so as it finished building 10 commercial vessels. But the Navy chose NASSCO to build six next-generation fleet oiler ships, work thats worth about $3.4 billion when engineering is factored in.

The company is scheduled to begin building the first of those vessels later this year. It could be the start of one of the biggest building programs in NASSCOs history.

The Navy says it wants to add a total of 20 new oilers, and it often turns to NASSCO for such work because the yard specializes in large support vessels. Twenty oilers would likely cost more than $11 billion.

The Navy also tapped NASSCO to build a fifth Expeditionary Sea Base ship, a vessel thats used essentially as a pier-at-sea. The vessel, which is now under construction, will cost about $550 million, and it appears that the Navy will choose NASSCO to build one or two more of the ships over the next two to three years.

NASSCO also has obtained contracts to build two large commercial container ships for Matson. The price of the vessels hasnt been disclosed, but the figure likely exceeds $400 million.

The shipyard might not find it easy to hire all of the workers it wants. San Diegos unemployment rate was 3.4 percent in February, the lowest it has been since 2000. And NASSCO has to compete with BAE Systems San Diego ship repair yard, which has announced that its trying to add about 100 employees to its workforce, which now stands at 1,250. The yards are located next to each other in Barrio Logan.

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The demand for workers could rise even higher in the coming months. The Navy has announced that it is going to shift the 840-foot amphibious assault ship Bonhomme Richard from Japan to San Diego, where the vessel would undergo tens of millions of dollars in repairs and upgrades.

The upturn in NASSCOs fortunes is very good news for San Diego, said Lynn Reaser, an economist at Point Loma Nazarene University.

The steady stream of contracts will support a sizable number of good paying jobs. The company also engages in much employee training. A whole network of smaller firms in San Diego in the pipeline will also benefit, resulting in even more jobs.
After nearly three years of banishment, the sight of $4 per gallon gasoline is making a comeback at an increasing number of San Diego County gas stations.

I have noticed that its been going up, said Brian Howard of San Diego as he filled up his BMW at the Shell station on the corner of Tenth Avenue and A Street. But what are you going to do? You have to drive.

At the next stall, Harry Brobst of Escondido put exactly $20 of fuel priced at $3.85 a gallon into his Toyota Camry. Of course it hurts, he said. There isnt that much you can do about it.

The end of July 2015 marked the last time the average price of regular topped $4 a gallon in San Diego, according to the Automobile Club of Southern California.

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As of Monday, the average price for the area was $3.53 a gallon. Thats well below $4 but as every motorist knows, the price range at individual stations is broad and its not hard to find places charging that much.

AAAs numbers show prices in San Diego increased 4 cents per gallon in the past week and 12 cents a gallon compared to one month ago.

Go back one year and the numbers are even more dramatic. At the end of March 2017, the average price of regular in San Diego was $3.001 cents a gallon.

Whats going on? A combination of things:

Refinery maintenance

This is the time of year refineries in the state perform their turnarounds  the maintenance operations to shift into the summertime driving months.

That, AAA spokeswoman Marie Montgomery said, caused investors on the gasoline spot market to get anxious.

There was a draw-down in inventory in the last week and that shot wholesale prices up and were continuing to feel that upward pressure that we usually feel in the spring, Montgomery said.

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Crude on the rise

On the macro level, the price of crude oil has been on a steady uptick.

Thats the main driver, said David Hackett, president of Stillwater Associates, a transportation energy consulting company in Irvine. Its what you have to pay for the raw materials for gasoline and thats represented by crude oil prices.

West Texas Intermediate  the benchmark for domestically-produced oil  has increased $4 since since Feb. 9 to $63.01 a barrel.

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And its being felt across the country.

The average price of regular at gas stations across the nation have risen 12 cents a gallon in the past month.

The national average is $2.66, which seems like a bargain for Californians, who are paying 85 cents more per gallon.

California blues

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Gasoline is more expensive in the Golden State due to higher taxes and the states special blending requirements for fuel in order to reduce air pollution.

But another factor came from a 12 cents per gallon increase in state gasoline taxes that went into effect last November.

Money from the Road Repair and Accountability Act is earmarked to fix the states highways, bridges and transportation infrastructure.

A second iteration of the tax goes into effect in 2019 and will increase the price per gallon an additional 5.6 cents.

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Former San Diego City Council member Carl DeMaio is leading an effort to repeal the tax and is trying to gather 585,407 signatures from registered voters to put the initiative on the November ballot.

Gasoline prices can resemble roller coasters and just a few years ago the story was very different.

Prices started to fall after a November 2014 meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) when the cartels ministers decided to not restrict output.

OPEC production, combined with dramatic growth from U.S. oil producers in areas such as Permian Basin, led to a supply glut that crashed prices across the globe. Brent crude  the generally accepted international oil price  fell below $30 a barrel by February 2016.

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But since then, oil supplies have tightened after OPEC reversed itself and global inventories were drawn down.

We had two years of relatively great gas prices in California, Montgomery said. Now were sort of going a little bit back to a  quote, end quote  normal, again.

But will gasoline prices jump another 50 cents  on average  to push California back to the $4 level?

Something would have to go wrong for us to see that happen, Montgomery said. But 25 cents (to $3.75 a gallon) is definitely within the realm of possibility.

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Hackett said with crude oil prices in the mid-$60s, U.S. drillers are well within a profitable range to continue pumping and adding to supply.

American drillers are going to crank it up, Hackett said. That will act as a damper to higher crude oil prices.

In the meantime, drivers can stay on the lookout for the lowest prices. Organizations such as AAA and GasBuddy offer smartphone apps that direct motorists to stations offering the lowest prices in their respective areas.

San Diego Gasoline Prices

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Average price, regular

April 2 $3.528

Week Ago $3.479

Month Ago $3.396

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Year Ago $3.001

Source: Auto Club of Southern California

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rob.nikolewski@sduniontribune.com

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Oceanside became the first city in North County to approve the commercial cultivation of medical marijuana this week with a compromise that delays the opening of any dispensaries.

An ordinance approved Wednesday will allow the cultivation, testing, manufacture and distribution of medical marijuana in certain areas of the city east of Interstate 5 by individuals or businesses that qualify for licenses and permits, and pay the yet-to-be determined fees.

Weve got the ball rolling, Councilman Jerry Kern said after the 4-1 vote, with Councilman Jack Feller opposed.

Dispensaries were the stickiest point in the proposal, Kern said, with disagreements over where they should go and whether there should be two, four or more. In a compromise proposed by Mayor Peter Weiss, the council agreed to delay the licensing of any dispensaries until the Police Department can look further into the issues involved.

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Kern and Councilman Chuck Lowery served almost a year on an ad hoc committee with residents appointed by the Oceanside City Council to explore ways to license and regulate cannabis businesses.

People asked us to shine a light on this business and keep it honest, Lowery said Wednesday.

The ad hoc committee held a series of eight public meetings with residents and industry representatives, took field trips and worked with city staffers to prepare the proposed ordinance.

More than 60 speakers addressed the council on the issue Wednesday, each limited to two minutes or less, and about two-thirds of the speakers favored legalization.

Many of the opponents were students, parents and representatives of nonprofits such as the North Coastal Prevention Coalition, who said any legalization would contribute to the normalization of marijuana and make it easier for young people to obtain.

Supporters of legalization repeatedly made the argument that cannabis is a medicine that helps many people, especially the elderly, cancer patients, and veterans and others suffering post-traumatic stress disorder.

Medical marijuana has honestly saved my life and my marriage, said a retired Marine master sergeant, who was discharged with a 100 percent disability and became addicted to opiates.

Several speakers said cannabis helped them stop using opiates and get their lives back in order.

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Oceansides ordinance will return to the City Council for a routine second reading at the April 11 meeting, and will become effective 30 days after that.

No licenses or permits will be issued until the city has established a fee structure to cover the costs of the service. That is expected to take 120 to 180 days, said Assistant City Manager Deanna Lorson.

Any local tax on marijuana or related products would have to be approved by the citys voters, Lorson said, and the earliest that could go on the ballot is November 2020.

The ordinance was approved over the objections of the citys police chief and fire chief, who submitted letters expressing their concerns about enforcement difficulties, the potential for increased crime, and health and public safety hazards.

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Oceanside farmers, especially in the rural Morro Hills area, have been among the leading advocates for legalized cultivation. They say cannabis could be the cash crop they need to replace traditional agricultural products such as tomatoes and avocados that are being pushed out by the high costs of water, labor and land.

San Diego County Farm Bureau Executive Director Eric Larson commended the city for its action, but said the ordinance is too restrictive. He said the city should reduce the 1,000-foot buffer zone required between cannabis greenhouses, and increase the maximum percentage of a growers property that the crop can cover.

The ordinance first presented to the council Wednesday would have allowed two dispensaries. However, the council agreed to wait until the Police Department can study how other dispensaries operate and present some recommendations for ways Oceanside should do it.

Asked how long that would take, Police Chief Frank McCoy said hed like a year, and Kern said 90 days should be enough, but no time frame was established.

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McCoy said after the meeting that his department has looked at some dispensaries, primarily in Colorado, where voters approved medical marijuana in 2000 and recreational marijuana in 2012. However, more time is needed to study how dispensaries work in California.

Our whole purpose will be to bring some meaningful recommendations to the council, McCoy said. This whole thing is new to everybody.

Oceansides council voted two years ago to allow deliveries of medical marijuana purchased legally outside the city to its residents, and has approved licenses for two distributors. That service will continue.

The ad hoc committees recommendation originally included recreational marijuana in the proposed ordinance. However, all support for the recreational element was removed at a meeting in December to get the support of Councilman Jack Feller and break a 2-2 tie vote, with former Mayor Jim Wood absent. Wood retired Jan. 1, and Weiss later was appointed to fill the vacant seat.

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Despite Fellers vote in December, he cast the only nay Wednesday. He said he continues to believe legalization will harm children and I cant do this in any good conscience.

Councilwoman Esther Sanchez, who opposed the measure in December, voted for the modified ordinance Wednesday.

The San Diego City Council voted 6-3 in September to legalize cultivation, testing, the manufacture of products such as edibles, and retail sales in storefront dispensaries for recreational and medical marijuana.

The only other cities in the county that allow dispensaries are La Mesa and Lemon Grove.

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San Diego County has licensed several dispensaries including at least one that is also a commercial grower, the Outliers Collective, which opened in 2014 near Gillespie Field outside El Cajon. The collective has an indoor growing operation that produced about 1,000 pounds of marijuana last year, and is on track to double that amount or more this year.

The Vista City Council voted this month to place a marijuana initiative on the ballot in November that, if approved by voters, would allow a limited number of marijuana retailers, and delivery, testing and cultivation services.

The citys ballot initiative will compete with a separate measure placed on the ballot by the group Vistans for Safe Community Access. It would allow more dispensaries and lesser penalties for violators than the citys measure.

Most other North County cities have passed local ordinances to supersede state laws and prohibit the commercial cultivation and sale of medical and recreational marijuana.

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Despite the evolving regulations, law enforcement officials often shut down illicit cannabis sales operations across North County and arrest the people involved.

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philip.diehl@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @phildiehl
Ann Peckham Keenan has agreed to put a permanent conservation easement on 684 acres near Warner Springs.

She will continue to own the property, which she and her late husband bought in the late 1990s, but the pristine land will be managed by the Humane Society Wildlife Land Trust as a wildlife sanctuary.

Hunting and trapping will be prohibited on the property and there will be no public trails. It will be a place for animals, and animals alone.

Hunting is permitted on lands around it; this gives wildlife a place to come to get away from that pressure, said Ben Callison, president of the land trust, a private, national organization that manages 20,000 acres of wildlife sanctuaries in the United States and Canada.

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It is the only national land conservation organization that bans hunting and trapping on the lands it protects.

Peckham Keenan, who splits her time between homes in La Mesa and Borrego Springs, said shes spent the 13 years since her husband died trying to find the best way to protect the property.

What you see going on all over the world, the human population is just devastating the planet and everything else that lives on it, she said.

I just think that as much land as possible that can be put into a sanctuary situation for wildlife should be done.

The conservation easement is permanent and will follow the property forever, Callison said.

Keenan Peckham and the trust dont want the exact location of the land to be revealed. Callison said poachers, if they know where a sanctuary is located, will often go there because they know the hunting will be easy.

Were very protective of our locations, he said. Animals know where to go where theyre not under the pressure of hunting. We dont want to put a target on their back by putting a dot on a map showing where they are.

Keenan Peckham said only that her property is between Borrego Springs and Warner Springs. In a press release from the trust, it says the land, which includes steep, mountainous terrain and rolling hills, is located on the eastern slopes of the Volcan Mountains and is almost completely surrounded by publicly protected lands, including the San Felipe Valley Wildlife Area, which adjoins Anza-Borrego Desert State Park.

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The trust is so diligent about keeping people out that it has at times gone to pretty high-tech extremes.

No Trespassing signs are posted along the boundaries of all their sanctuaries, Callison said, and the trust uses various methods to ensure their lands are free of humans.

We are out there continually monitoring the property for any evidence of hunting or trapping, he said.

If hunting is suspected, they will donate robotic wildlife decoys to local law enforcement.

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The faux deer, or whatever animal is being poached, looks real from a distance. The head moves, the tail swishes and when a poacher shoots it law enforcement steps in immediately and makes an arrest, which is so critical. We take this very seriously, Callison said.

It was Peckham Keenan who approached the land trust.

We are very thankful to her, as is the wildlife, Callison said.

This is another wonderful property added to our protected property list, he said. Southern California is one of the top areas for critical habitat.

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The wildlife land trust is like a marriage made in heaven for me, Peckham Keenan said.

She said she doesnt trust government agencies to do the right thing.

(The trust) is a private organization so I know it will stay the way I want it to be in perpetuity.

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jharry.jones@sduniontribune.com; 760/529-4931; Twitter: @jharryjones
Dockless bike companies are building a virtual fence around Coronado to avoid having their bikes impounded.

City staff impounded 26 bicycles since the city began tagging bikes parked in public streets last week, said Lea Corbin of the Coronado Police Department.

The city can impound the bikes because of a municipal code against using the public right-of-way for business without a permit. Because dockless bike companies dont have permits, the city can take away their bikes.

For now, Coronado is charging companies a $45 fee to claim their bikes. Ofo picked up three of their yellow bicycles earlier this week. Coronados Department of Public Services building had dozens on LimeBikes and at least one Mobike Thursday morning.

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If bicycles from these companies continue to be left in Coronado, the city may issue citations of $100, $200 or $500, according to a staff report.

The freestanding bikes can be rented using a smartphone app for as little as $1 and dont have to be returned to a store or docking station. Instead, they lock in place when they arent in use.

LimeBike, Mobike, and Ofo said they are working with city officials to be responsible neighbors. Each app uses a map and GPS technology to let users know where the nearest available bikes and scooters are. Each company is building a warning into its app.

LimeBike installed a red fence around Coronado in its map. A notice warns users that they could be fined or suspended from the app if they repeatedly leave bicycles in Coronado.

Mobike also has geofencing technology that lets staff know when their bikes leave certain areas. When someone leaves a bike outside the geofence, users get a text message asking them to return the bike to an appropriate area, a company spokesperson said.

Ofo is working on similar in-app guidelines for parking but has not released details.

The impounding is likely to continue. Thursday morning, Coronado police officers tagged four bicycles. Staff from the Public Services Department were scheduled to pick them up before the end of the day, Corbin said.

Dockless bikes have been popular in Imperial Beach and San Diego, where people use them to go to school, work or just ride around town. But they have received pushback.

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In San Diego, the Little Italy Association asked the city to temporarily ban dockless bikes. When the city declined, the association ordered maintenance crews to remove the bikes from the neighborhoods commercial corridor.

In North County, Del Mar, Solana Beach and Encinitas have agreed to partner and create a regional bike share program.

Contact Gustavo Solis via Email or Twitter
A long-planned campaign of nonviolent protests in the Gaza Strip along its border with Israel degenerated into mayhem and bloodshed almost from the start on Friday, with the Palestinian health ministry reporting 15 dead and hundreds wounded in clashes with the Israeli army.

Fridays protests marked Land Day, when Palestinians observe the date in 1976 that six unarmed Arab citizens from Israel were killed in a wave of protests against state expropriations of land.

It launched six weeks of protests that are planned to culminate in a march on Israels border in mid-May, around the date commemorating the 70th anniversary of Israels founding and, this year, the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Palestinians in the Gaza Strip began the protest to demand the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes in what is now Israel.

Israeli and Palestinian sources reported there were around 20,000 protesters, many of whom were bused into the area along Israels border fence.

Land Day demonstrations east of Gaza City turned violent with more than a dozen Palestinians reported killed in clashes with Israeli forces. Mahmud Hams / AFP/Getty Images; Said Khatib / AFP/Getty Images; Alaa Badarneh / EPA-Shutterstock

The Israeli military said rioting was taking place in five locations along the fence, with burning tires rolled toward Israeli soldiers, and firebombs and rocks hurled beyond the fence.

In a statement, the Israeli army said it was responding with riot dispersal means and firing towards main instigators.

Israeli forces reportedly used live ammunition, rubber bullets and tear gas.

The head of Israels Southern Command, Maj. Gen. Eyal Zamir, warned that militants were using the cover of riots to plant explosives for terror attacks along the border fence.

In preparation for the unrest, Israel more than doubled the usual number of troops stationed along the border, deploying drones, sharpshooters and elite army units. Israeli officials repeatedly warned they would prevent any breach of the border or violation of Israels sovereignty.

The entire area surrounding the Gaza Strip was declared a closed military zone.

Los Angeles Times

The series of protests was planned by Hamas  the Palestinian Islamist militia ruling Gaza, which is considered a terror group by the United States, Europe and Israel  to mark the rare confluence of Land Day and several other events.

In six weeks, Palestinians mark the Nakba, or catastrophe, as Israels establishment is referred to by Palestinians, and the move of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, scheduled for that date, that was announced as part of President Trumps December declaration of U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israels capital, without mention of Palestinian claims to the eastern half of the city.

Fridays demonstration is also protest against Israels more than decade-long blockade of Gaza, an enclave of 2 million people locked between Israel, Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea, that curtails the movement of people and goods. Israel has claimed the siege is necessary to guarantee its own safety since Hamas wrested control of the territory from the Palestinian Authority in a 2007 coup.

The protest, dubbed the March of Return, was framed as a Palestinian demand for the right of return to the area that became Israel 70 years ago.

A majority of Gazans are the descendants of refugees of the 1948 war that erupted at Israels creation.

A protester waves the Palestinian flag during clashes marking Land Day in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Alaa Badarneh / EPA-Shutterstock

Members of Hamas top leadership milled about among the demonstrators, encouraging the protests and, at least implicitly, flaunting the rallys success to the Palestinian Authority, the internationally recognized governing body based in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Ahmed Helles, a member of Fatah Central Committee, the ruling party that attempted to reunite with Hamas last October in an effort that has since stalled, said, The Fatah movement is here like other factions, and this is a national day with distinction and all colors today mixed with the color of the Palestinian flag.

This march confirms that the right of return is the essence of the struggle of our people since the occupation of Palestine, he said. Today, the people affirm that this principle and goal is in place and all the challenges facing our people will only increase our determination to uphold the right of return.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, addressing demonstrators, said, Today's march is the beginning to return to the land of historic Palestine, and our people say to Trump: No concession of Jerusalem or Palestine and no solution without the right of refugees to return to their towns and villages. No recognition of Israel or the occupation rights in any inch on our land.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas declared Saturday a day of national mourning in honor of the Palestinians who died in the clashes.

Near a small gray tent erected east of Jabaliya in northern Gaza, Khalil Abu Qammar, 68, a retired U.N. schoolteacher, stood waving a Palestinian flag alongside his two sons and five grandsons. Around them, not far from the Israel border, young children sang the national anthem.

Im from Jaffa, he said. My father, mother and grandfather were born there. I still have the key for my family home in Jaffa, and whoever is living there will have to pack up his bag and leave. I won't accept any solution that does not grant me my rights to return to my fathers hometown.

Beside the tents Hamas asked Gazans to set up at the border  a symbol of their intention not to move until their demands are met  families wrote down the names of the villages and towns their families were from, villages now inside Israel.

Khadrah Zaqout, 76, was busy baking a fresh, homemade loaf of bread in a mud oven that provides for her family of nine. She said she intends to remain all day in the tent to demand her right to return to her home city, which was abandoned in 1948 when the state of Israel was established.

I am from the city of Majdal [Ashkelon], where I was born and lived the most beautiful days of my life, she said. I still remember our beautiful house, the olive tree and the chicken coop.

I brought my grandsons with me to the protest to show them the way to their historical homeland, the land of Palestine," she said.

Special correspondents Tarnopolsky reported from Jerusalem and Abu Alouf from Gaza City.

UPDATES:

1:10 p.m.: This article was updated with comments from Palestinians camped in tents near the border and a revised death toll of 15 in Gaza.

7:20 a.m.: This article was updated throughout with staff reporting, including a revised death toll of nine in Gaza.

6:05 a.m.: This article was updated with a revised death toll of six in Gaza.

This article was originally published at 5:05 a.m.
French judges have ordered former President Nicolas Sarkozy, long the subject of multiple criminal investigations, to stand trial on charges of corruption and influence peddling.

The case centers on claims that Sarkozy attempted to obtain inside information from a senior judge in 2014 about a fraud investigation involving him. The judges order Thursday comes just a week after Sarkozy was detained and questioned in connection with a separate corruption scandal involving the late Libyan dictator Moammar Kadafi.

For the record: An earlier version of this article stated that Sarkozy was ordered to stand trial on accusations that he took illegal campaign financing from then-Libyan dictator Moammar Kadafi. The order came in a separate case. Also, an earlier version of this article suggested that Sarkozy approached a judge to obtain information about an investigation. Prosecutors allege that Sarkozy and his attorney discussed making a job offer to the judge in return for information.

In the case concerning the judge, prosecutors say Sarkozy offered to pull strings to get the judge a privileged post in Monaco, the tiny but rich sovereign principality on the French Riviera. In return, it is alleged, the judge was supposed to provide confidential details about the inquiry into alleged irregularities in the funding of his successful 2007 election campaign.

Police were investigating allegations that Sarkozy had illegally accepted campaign donations from the late LOreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt, Frances richest woman at the time, without declaring them.

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As part of the so-called Bettencourt affair, investigators put wiretaps on several cellphones used by Sarkozy, who used the alias Paul Bismuth to obtain a second cellphone, and his entourage. Although the Bettencourt case was later dropped, prosecutors say police wiretaps picked up a conversation between Sarkozy and his lawyer Thierry Herzog in which they discussed making the job offer to a senior judge, Gilbert Azibert, in return for information.

Sarkozys defense team argued the tapes were illegal, broke lawyer-client confidentiality and were inadmissible in legal proceedings, but judges rejected that argument in 2016.

Prosecutors decided there was enough evidence to put Sarkozy on trial on corruption and influence peddling charges in another case with yet another nickname, the Bismuth affair. The case dates to 2015 and has been repeatedly delayed by defense appeals. Sarkozys lawyers issued a statement saying they would also appeal Thursdays decision to send this case to court.

Sarkozy, Herzog and Azibert are being sent to trial on the corruption and influence peddling charges; all three deny the allegations.

Thursdays development came days after Sarkozy was officially put under investigation in a case involving claims he received millions in illegal campaign funds from Kadafi for his 2007 election.

Sarkozy is also being investigated over the funding of his unsuccessful reelection bid in 2012; this case, known as the Bygmalion affair, involves claims he fraudulently hid campaign costs after they exceeded the legal limit using an established communications company called Bygmalion as a front. The public prosecutor has called for this case to also go to trial.

Sarkozy has vigorously denied all the accusations in all the cases against him. Last week he went on prime-time television to say the Kadafi claims were crazy and monstrous.

Sarkozy, a conservative, served just one term from 2007 to 2012, when he lost to socialist Francois Holland.

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UPDATES:

3:30 p.m.: This article was updated with staff reporting throughout.

This article was originally published at 10:30 am.
A Los Angeles jury deadlocked on nearly all the counts in the case of three suspected Mara Salvatrucha gang members charged in the 2001 rape, kidnapping and killing of a teenage runaway from Whittier.

Despite deliberating for nearly two weeks, the panel on Thursday told a judge they hadnt reached a unanimous verdict regarding Melvin Sandoval, 38, and Santos Grimaldi, 35, who each faced one count of special circumstance murder along with one count of kidnapping in the killing of 13-year-old Jacqueline Piazza. The teenager ran away from home in May 2001 and ended up in the Westlake area of Los Angeles.

A third defendant, Rogelio Contreras, 40, was acquitted of a kidnapping charge, but jurors deadlocked on his murder count.

The judge asked jurors  who sat through a five-month trial  whether there was anything he could do to help them reach a verdict. He offered, for example, to let prosecutors and defense attorneys make further arguments.

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The answer is no, we dont believe theres anything else that can be done, the foreman said, telling the judge that on most of the counts, the panel was split either 8-4 or 9-3.

As the judge declared a mistrial on all remaining counts, the defendants stared ahead with little expression. A family member of the victim dabbed at her nose with a tissue.

The judge then turned to Deputy Dist. Atty. Dayan Mathai, asking if the district attorneys office planned to retry the case.

Yes, the prosecutor said, nodding.

On June 27, 2001, a drug dealer for the MS-13 street gang, Jorge Palacios, along with his common-law wife, beat Jacqueline near West 8th Street and Magnolia Avenue, then directed others, including Sandoval, Grimaldi, and Contreras, to get rid of the girl, whom for reasons unknown he perceived as a threat, prosecutors said.

That night, prosecutors alleged, Sandoval, Grimaldi and Contreras, along with two others, drove Jacqueline to Elysian Park. She was put in the trunk so she couldnt be seen.

The teenager was taken to a remote area, where prosecutors said that two men  Sandoval and Grimaldi  sexually assaulted the girl. Investigators found DNA matching Grimaldi and Sandoval on the victim, according to testimony.

After the assault, the girl, who was seated on the ground nude, holding her hands up in protest, was shot in the head twice, prosecutors said.

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In closing arguments, Mathai said the brutal crime defies logic.

But on that day and on that time, there was a motive, there was logic, he said. They took her there for the purpose that no one would witness the dastardly deeds that they were going to do.

They took her there so you would never hear what happened, he said.

The investigation into the girls killing stalled until a member of MS-13 who was working as an informant told authorities what she knew about the crime. The woman took investigators to the area in Elysian Park where the killing occurred and described the events.

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You heard from an eyewitness  because somebody broke free, Mathai said.

Another gang member also later told authorities that Sandoval and Contreras each told him separately about the crime, and corroborated other evidence, including the people involved and the vehicle that was used. The man also said that Sandoval and Grimaldi wanted a piece of the victim.

According to court testimony, Contreras told that gang member years later that he could still see her ghost in my car.

Defense attorneys questioned the reliability of the two main witnesses, particularly the female gang member. Victor Salerno, Sandovals attorney, told jurors that the woman had been in a relationship with Sandoval and was jealous of the teenager.

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Salerno argued that Sandoval had consensual sex with the teenager in the days before the killing. Salerno pointed to the lengthy criminal record of the female gang member and said she shouldnt be trusted.

Rick LaPan, Contreras attorney, said his client was not a gang member and was in the area on the day of the killing for a church event. During the trial, friends and family testified to Contreras character, LaPan said.

Hes a good father to his three kids, he said.

In closing arguments, LaPan suggested the prosecutions two main witnesses might be framing Contreras.

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Mr. Contreras is telling the truth. Hes a victim. He has been sitting here for six years because of these lies, he said. LaPan also said that no testimony pinned Contreras as a gang member named Whisper until 2004, three years after the killing.

Robin Yanes, Grimaldis attorney, also questioned the veracity of the female gang member, asserting she changed her story after speaking with investigators.

But Mathai told jurors the DNA evidence is powerful and cant be denied, adding that the killing only made sense in the eyes of the gang.

All of these things work together, he said, to do a bad thing to a young girl.

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On March 2, a jury convicted Palacios, 39, of special circumstance murder and one count of kidnapping to commit another crime. Palacios, who is scheduled to be sentenced April 11, faces life in prison without the possibility of parole.

nicole.santacruz@latimes.com

marisa.gerber@latimes.com

For more crime news, follow @nicolesantacruz on Twitter.
March 30, 1981 Evening Tribune

The San Diego Union-Tribune will mark its 150th anniversary in 2018 by presenting a significant front page from the archives each day throughout the year.

Monday, March 30, 1981

John Hinckley Jr. shot and wounded President Ronald Reagan, press secretary James Brady and two others on March 30, 1981 as the president was leaving a Washington hotel. The Tribune that day included two pages on the shooting.

Here are the first few paragraphs of the story:

REAGAN SHOT!

President undergoes surgery

AIDE ALSO INJURED; SUSPECT CAPTURED

Two Guards among those hit by gunfire

From TRIBUNE Wire Services

WASHINGTON  President Reagan was shot in the chest by a young gunman this afternoon as he left a Washington hotel. The president underwent emergency surgery at George Washington University Hospital and was reported in good condition.

The suspect was wrestled to the ground and arrested. The Secret Service identified him as John Warnock Hinkley Jr., 22, of Evergreen, Colo.

Jame Brady, Reagans pres secretary, a Secret Service agent and a District of Columbia policeman were also wounded as the gunman emptied his .22-caliber pistol at the presidential party.

Said a White House aide of Bradys wound: It doesnt look good. One report said Brady was in critical condition, apparently with a head wound.

Secretary of State Alexander Haig told newsmen one bullet had punctured Reagans left lung, but that the president was conscious when wheeled into the operating room.

Hinkley, 22, was immediately tackled and pinned to the pavement by police officers and Secret Service. He was whisked away by squad car to a nearby precinct, reportedly uninjured in the incident.

Vice President George Bush was summoned back from Texas, where he was en route to Austin to address the legislature. There was no indication the reins of government would be turned over to Bush.

Nancy Reagan, who was not with Reagan for his speech at the Washington Hilton, rushed to George Washington University Hospital to be with her husband.

Presidential adviser Lyn Nofziger said Reagan who was wounded in the left chest walked into the hospital and was chatting with aides throughout.

The highest-ranking members of Reagans Cabinet including Haig and Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, sped to the White House to await developments.

Reagans closest staff members, among them James Baker and Edwin Meese, went immediately to the hospital.

The wounded Secret Service officer was identified as Timothy J. McCarthy.

View anniversary front pages online at sandiegouniontribune.com/150-years. For more from the Union-Tribune digital archives, go to newslibrary.com/sites/sdub. Searching is free, with registration. A fee is required to view full stories.
Starbucks and other coffee purveyors probably will have to use warning labels on coffee after a Los Angeles judge ruled that they failed to prove they should be exempt from a California law on carcinogens and toxic chemicals.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Elihu M. Berle wrote in a tentative decision this week that the coffee companies did not meet their burden to prove that there was a safe level of consumer exposure to a chemical compound created in roasting coffee.

The long-running lawsuit, first filed in 2010, concerns whether coffee drinkers should be warned about acrylamide, which is among the more than 850 confirmed or suspected carcinogens listed under Californias Proposition 65.

The law, enacted as part of the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986, requires businesses with 10 or more employees to warn people of exposure to the listed substances.

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Acrylamide is created when coffee is roasted and also is found in fried potatoes and burnt toast. It has been found to increase cancer risk in rodents. Its effect on humans remains inconclusive.

More than 90 coffee roasters, retailers and distributors, including Whole Foods, Kraft and Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, stand to be affected by the decision.

Berle said scientists who testified on behalf of the coffee companies failed to prove that there was an acceptable level of acrylamide. Earlier in the trial, he also ruled that the coffee companies failed to show the chemical was not a significant risk or that requiring them to include the warnings would violate the 1st Amendment.

While Plaintiff offered evidence that consumption of coffee increases the risk of harm to the fetus, to infants, to children and to adults, Defendants medical and epidemiology experts testified that they had no opinion on causation, he wrote.

The coffee industry has contended that it is impossible to eliminate acrylamide without affecting flavor, and that the exposure is harmless to consumers.

Raphael Metzger, the attorney for the nonprofit Council for Education and Research on Toxics, the plaintiff in the case, said he hoped the judges decision would push the companies to agree to reduce acrylamide levels in coffee.

I would very much prefer that, when my addiction compels me to drink coffee, I can drink acrylamide-free coffee, he said. They just dont want to change. They want to keep doing business the way they have been doing.

Berle will issue a final decision after giving each side an opportunity to object. The next phase of the trial will determine the civil penalties to be levied on the defendants. The law allows for as little as a cent and up to $2,500 for each time a consumer was exposed to the chemical without being warned, Metzger said.

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victoria.kim@latimes.com

Follow me on Twitter @vicjkim

UPDATES:

6:55 p.m.: This article has been updated with staff reporting.

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This article was originally published at 2:40 p.m.
Judge Stephen Reinhardt, the liberal face of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, died Thursday afternoon, a court spokesman said. He was 87.

The spokesman said Reinhardt died of a heart attack during a visit to a dermatologist in Los Angeles.

All of us here at the 9th Circuit are shocked and deeply saddened by Judge Reinhardts death, 9th Circuit Chief Judge Sidney R. Thomas said. We have lost a wonderful colleague and friend.

Thomas called Reinhardt deeply principled, fiercely passionate about the law and fearless in his decisions.

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He will be remembered as one of the giants of the federal bench. He had a great life that ended much too soon, Thomas said.

Reinhardt, an appointee of former President Carter, was dubbed the liberal lion of the federal circuit courts.

His rulings in favor of criminal defendants, minorities and immigrants were often overturned by the more conservative U.S. Supreme Court.

Many lawyers have joked that Reinhardts name on a ruling was probably enough to get the attention of the conservatives on the Supreme Court. In 1996, after Reinhardt was reversed several times by the Supreme Court, The Times asked him if he was upset.

Not in the slightest! he boomed. If they want to take away rights, thats their privilege. But Im not going to help them do it.

No matter how many reversals he endured, Reinhardt used the bench to try to help the underdog. Just a few months ago, he called The Times to read a reporter a letter from a woman who had just been released from prison and who wanted to thank him for ruling in her favor.

He was a giant not just on the 9th Circuit but within the law, UC Berkeley law school Dean Erwin Chemerinsky said. He also was a judge with a particular vision of the law, based on enforcing the Constitution to protect people.

Reinhardt joined another judge in ruling that the words under God in the Pledge of Allegiance were unconstitutional, a decision that was later overturned.

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He wrote a ruling that said laws prohibiting physician-assisted suicide were unconstitutional and another that overturned Californias previous ban on same-sex marriage.

Reinhardt also lamented Supreme Court rulings that limited judges ability to overturn convictions and sentences on habeas corpus and complained about the flaws in death penalty cases.

He was among the federal judges who decided that overcrowding in Californias prison system was unconstitutional.

His view was to decide cases as he believed the law required, not to predict what the Supreme Court would do, Chemerinsky said. He was unapologetic about that.

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Conservatives often railed against Reinhardt, calling him lawless. They accused him of never voting to uphold a death sentence. Reinhardt, asked about that, said he was not sure.

He was particularly close to former 9th Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski, considered a conservative with libertarian views. They were dubbed the odd couple.

When Kozinski retired under pressure in December in response to sexual harassment allegations, Reinhardt bemoaned the departure. He said he kept a photograph of Kozinski planting a kiss on his cheek in his chambers.

Reinhardt was a trial lawyer and Democratic activist when Carter chose him in 1980 for the 9th Circuit. For years thereafter, Reinhardt clashed with then-Supreme Court Justice William H. Rehnquist, a conservative elevated to chief justice by President Reagan in 1986.

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Rehnquist often traveled to California during the summers to speak at the 9th Circuits annual conference, where he gibed the West Coast judges about their liberal record.

He told one gathering that the 9th Circuit seemed to have a hard time saying no to any litigant with a hard-luck story.

Reinhardt was offended.

Many of us feel an obligation to uphold the rights of the citizens against the government, he replied. Thats what the Constitution is there for.

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Born March 27, 1931, in New York as Stephen Shapiro, Reinhardt changed his name after his mother divorced his father and married Gottfried Reinhardt, a screenwriter, director and producer whose films included The Red Badge of Courage. His grandfather, Max Reinhardt, was a theater legend who fled Nazi Germany and gained acclaim in the U.S. for his production of A Midsummer Nights Dream at the Hollywood Bowl.

The judge said in 1996 that the horrors of the Nazis helped shape his conviction about the need to be vigilant in upholding human rights.

In a speech that year to a graduating law class, Reinhardt exhorted the graduates to remember at all times that you have a particular responsibility to see that fairness and justice are done, and that equal treatment under the law prevails.

Thomas A. Saenz, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund who once clerked for Reinhardt, called the judge a powerful force for what is good and righteous in a court system that too often strays from the path of justice.

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His place in historys judicial firmament is secure, and his legacy in cases, ideas and people has been and will be deep and long-lasting, Saenz said.

Hector Villagra, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and another former Reinhardt clerk, called the news of Reinhardts death devastating.

He recalled the judge working in his chambers at 11 p.m. on a Saturday writing a dissent because the full 9th Circuit had decided not to reconsider a death penalty decision.

He knew it was totally pointless, Villagra said. It wasnt going to affect the outcome. But it was the right thing to do, and thats what mattered. He wanted his voice and his objections heard.

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He said Reinhardt regularly worked seven days a week.

Reinhardt is survived by his wife, Ramona Ripston, who for decades headed the ACLU of Southern California; three adult children, Mark Reinhardt, 57, a professor of political science at Williams College; Justin Reinhardt, 52, a musician; and Dana Reinhardt, 47, a novelist; and seven grandchildren.

The family asked that in lieu of flowers, donations in Reinhardts memory be made to the ACLU.

maura.dolan@latimes.com

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Twitter: @mauradolan

UPDATES:

7:25 p.m.: This article was updated with survivor information and additional reaction.

6:40 p.m.: This article was updated with additional reaction and background.

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5:55 p.m.: This article was updated with reaction and additional details.

This article was originally published at 5:20 p.m.
A Mexican businesswoman whose drug smuggling conviction was overturned by a federal appeals court is not going to take chances at a new trial and on Thursday pleaded guilty to participating in a conspiracy to import methamphetamine.

Angelica Urias Espinoza had claimed in her initial case that she was a blind mule unwittingly carrying 24 pounds of pure meth across the U.S.-Mexico border. But a San Diego federal jury didnt believe her and convicted her in 2015. She has been serving a 7-year sentence.

In January, the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals overturned her conviction, ruling that the San Diego judge should have allowed her to introduce evidence that may have implicated her next-door neighbor as a suspect who planted drugs secretly in her SUV. The appeals court said the trial judge used the wrong legal standard in determining that the evidence should not have come in.

Urias had a chance at a second trial, but she has decided to plead guilty.

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In her plea, Urias admitted that she used her cell phone to coordinate drug smuggling activities. She also admitted she agreed to have her vehicle modified with a secret compartment to stash the drugs, and when she entered the U.S. she knew that drugs were in the car.

Urias was arrested on April 22, 2015, at the Otay Mesa Port of Entry. A U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer said he noticed a bulge in the backseat upholstery and stabbed the cushion with a screwdriver, finding signs of drugs. He said Urias had no visible reaction when he stabbed the seat, continuing to stare forward with both her hands on the steering wheel  an unusual reaction if she were truly innocent.

Prosecutors pointed to evidence that suggested she was communicating with men about the smuggling event over WhatsApp, including discussing getting a SENTRI pass and the delivery of product. Urias said the messages were regarding clothing for her Tijuana clothing boutique, not drugs.

Uris had wanted to put into evidence at trial information that implied her neighbor had planted the drugs, including that he was a self-described former street dealer in Los Angeles and had a prior drug-smuggling conviction.

U.S. District Larry Burns ruled that the evidence was entirely speculative and there was nothing to tie the neighbor to the crime. The appeals court ruled, however, that the evidence should have come in for the jury to decide.

Urias faces a maximum sentence of four years in prison.

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kristina.davis@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @kristinadavis
Many of the jurors looked distinctly uncomfortable, shifting in their seats, as the 41-minute video played on a courtroom screen Thursday.

The cellphone video showed a man knocking repeatedly, urgently, on a set of French doors into a house. Eventually a woman in a long plaid shirt and no pants let him in.

Within moments she screamed, No! Stop! Spike, stop! At times she cried. Its not what I want! she yelled.

Later, a neighbors voice was heard, threatening to shoot if the man inside the house comes out. The man walked out the back door in undershorts, pulled on his pants, put the cellphone in his shirt pocket and ran.

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San Diego police caught up to him a short time later when he fell and broke his leg.

The man in the video was Navy Cmdr. John Neuhart II, now on trial in San Diego Superior Court, accused of trying to rape a junior officer at her home in the Valencia Park neighborhood in 2016.

The 41-year-old, suspended from his command, is being retried in the case after jurors in December deadlocked 11-1 in favor of convicting Neuhart.

He faces life in prison if convicted of the most serious charge, assault with intent to commit rape during a residential burglary. Other charges are assault with intent to commit rape, attempted forcible rape, burglary and resisting police.

He has denied the charges and testified in his first trial that he believed the hugging, kissing and rough play with the woman was consensual, if bizarre. He said she told him that if she said no to him, she meant yes.

A new jury of 11 men and one woman was seated Wednesday.

On Thursday they heard opening statements from the attorneys and testimony from the woman in the video, who gave only her first name and the initial of her last name.

The San Diego Union-Tribune is not using her name to protect her identity as the alleged victim of a sex crime.

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She testified that while she was assigned to a helicopter squadron as a pilot in Guam, Neuhart became her squad executive officer, then its commanding officer. She transferred to North Island on Coronado as a helicopter instructor pilot, with the rank of lieutenant, around August 2016.

The eight-year Navy veteran said Neuhart was given a call sign nickname of Spike, which stood for sweaty palms I know everything. She was not asked to elaborate one why he was given that call sign.

Deputy District Attorney Jennifer Tag told jurors that after the pilot transferred to North Island, she next met Neuhart a month later when he came to San Diego for a conference.

The woman went to a country music concert with friends in Chula Vista on Sept. 11, then went to the Manchester Grand Hyatt Hotel to meet some of her former Guam squadron colleagues who were in town for training.

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She drank heavily through the evening and sat with Neuhart. Hotel security video played for jurors showed them at the bar, apparently hugging and kissing until after midnight.

Around 2 a.m., they got into a hired SUV and headed for the womans house. The prosecutor said the SUV driver will testify that they hugged and kissed in a back seat, but the woman also yelled Stop! several times to Neuhart.

The woman alleges that once inside the house, Neuhart pulled off her jeans and tried repeatedly to rape her. He testified previously that she took off her own pants, and that he never touched her private parts.

Defense attorney Kerry Armstrong told jurors Neuhart became confused, even frightened, because the woman would yell at him to stop, then continue kissing him. She ordered him out of the house, then let him back in after he knocked on the back kitchen doors.

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Neuhart said he set up his cellphone on the back deck to video the encounter to protect himself, in case the woman claimed rape.

He has denied deliberately running from police, saying he ran because the neighbor threatened to shoot him, and he didnt know officers were after him.

The trial is to resume Monday after a Friday court holiday.

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pauline.repard@sduniontribune

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Adnan Syed, known to many as a subject of the popular podcast Serial, has been granted a new trial almost 20 years after he was convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend and sentenced to a life in prison.

Syed received the initial sentence in 2000 for the murder of his Woodlawn High School classmate Hae Min Lee, whose body was found in nearby Leakin Park. A Baltimore Circuit Court vacated that conviction in 2016, citing the ineffective assistance of Syeds former attorney. On Thursday, the Maryland Court of Appeals upheld the ruling granting him a new trial.

Serial devoted its first season to the crime and the conviction, as host Sarah Koenig and her producers interviewed a number of Syeds friends and family members, sparking a national debate over whether he was innocent or guilty.

Rabia Chaudry, an attorney who has fought to prove Syeds innocence for years, was one of the interviewees and celebrated the opinion on Twitter Thursday with the hashtag #FreeAdnan.

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Syeds new lawyer, Justin Brown, also shared the hashtag on Twitter with a similar message: WE WON THE APPEAL. Brown held a press conference from his Baltimore office Thursday afternoon and said he had spoken with Syed after the opinion came out.

He asked me to convey his deep gratitude and thanks from the bottom of his heart [to] all those people who have supported him this long and all those people who have believed in him, Brown said.

After a reporter asked if Brown felt Serial had supported Syeds case, the lawyer credited Koenig and her team with helping him locate alibi witness Asia McClain, a key player in the podcast.

 Serial has also helped build this groundswell of support for us and for Adnan and for the case, and that has really fueled these efforts and allowed us to keep fighting on the way that we have, Brown said. Just emotionally, this has gone on for so long now that without all the support of all these people, it would have been very hard to maintain this high level of intensity and keep fighting on like we have.
When Michael Murphy was appointed chief executive officer of Sharp HealthCare in 1996, he faced a budget deficit, a divided medical staff and the possible defection of Sharp Grossmont Hospital in La Mesa.

Twenty-two years later, as the executive announces his retirement, all those problems are in the past, and Sharp has maintained the largest share of the regions health care market.

Murphy announced Thursday he will retire on Feb. 28, 2019, and will spend the next 11 months working with Daniel Gross, Sharps executive vice president of hospital operations, to find and hire the health systems next CEO.

While Gross would seem a shoe-in for the top job  he and Murphy have been working closely together for many years  the executive said he intends to retire in 2020 after marking his 41st year with the organization.

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During their tenure, the pair have presided over Sharps rapid growth, adding hospital towers and other physical improvements at Sharp Memorial Medical Center in Serra Mesa, Grossmont and Sharp Chula Vista Medical Center. In 2001, they created The Sharp Experience, a program designed to create a universal culture among more than 18,000 health care workers the organization employs.

Murphy, 60, said working for and with those thousands of people has been his greatest accomplishment but added that the Sharp Experience has gone a long way toward helping everyone at the organization see the big picture beyond their individual jobs.

Daniel Gross, executive vice president of hospital operations, Sharp HealthCare. (John R. McCutchen )

It has helped them see that, in every encounter, we have a great responsibility and we make a great difference, Murphy said.

The news of Murphys retirement got an immediate reaction from his peers.

Patty Maysent, chief executive officer of UC San Diego Health, reached out with no prompting to make it clear that Murphys presence will be missed in San Diego. Though he has never really sought the limelight, Maysent said, Murphy is known to be personally present at all levels of the company.

To his employee base and to his physician base, hes very, very visible and very engaged, Maysent said.

She added that, under Murphys leadership, Sharp has built a national reputation for being innovative. It is the only local enterprise to offer its own health insurance product through Covered California, the states health insurance exchange, and was among the first in the United States to sign up for a Medicare experiment that tied reimbursement to the quality of services provided to patients.

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It wouldnt be hard to find people across the nation who recognize and admire what Mikes achieved, Maysent said.

Duane Dauner, past president and chief executive of the California Hospital Association, rearranged his schedule Thursday afternoon so that he would have an opportunity to talk about Murphy, who he said he has known for 30 years.

He highlighted Murphys reputation as a collaborator.

The guy has certainly been respected for his ability to listen, Dauner said. Hes not one of those people who always wants to be in the limelight. I have found him to be a genuine individual in every sense of the word.

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Murphy is not terribly interested in listing his own accomplishments, though he is very proud of the prestigious Malcom Baldrige National Quality Award that Sharp won in 2007 and the Magnet designations that the National Nurses Credentialing Center bestowed in 2006, 2008 and 2011.

In California, where state law prevents hospitals from directly employing doctors, a large part of a chief executives job is getting physicians to buy into new initiatives. If doctors wont participate, then a system made up of hospitals and outpatient clinics wont function very well.

Murphy said he has tried to use his ears rather than his mouth to get doctors on board and keep them engaged.

Its listening first to make sure youre understanding and then working with them to build the right system, Murphy said. A lot of it is about the execution after the idea.

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Though he said there is not yet a grand retirement trip on the horizon, he and his wife, Sandy, are ready to adopt a less frenetic pace.

The plan is to spend more time together, have less work time, Murphy said.

Sharps board will take the next eight to 10 months to hire Murphys successor, appointing a search committee led by Chairman Richard Freeman.

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paul.sisson@sduniontribune.com

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Twitter: @paulsisson
Hector Barajas, who became the face and voice of deported veterans after his own deportation, will be allowed to return to the place he considers home and become a U.S. citizen.

Barajas burst into joyous tears seated on a couch Thursday afternoon in front of a large American flag as he read a document informing him that he would be sworn in as a citizen on April 13 in San Diego.

Fourteen years, man, Hector said, his voice cracking. Oh my God, this is great. Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

Im coming home, mom! he added.

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Nathan Fletcher, a candidate for county supervisor who has championed the deported veterans cause, sat beside Barajas on the couch, his hand rubbing Barajass shoulder in congratulations. Norma Chavez-Peterson, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in San Diego, sat on the other side of Barajas, telling him that an ACLU attorney had already arranged how he would get back home.

Barajas was honorably discharged from the Army in 2001 but struggled readjusting to civilian life. He took a plea deal for a charge of shooting at an occupied car in 2002. Because of that conviction, the government took away his green card, and he was deported in 2004 after he finished a prison sentence.

I made bad decisions, Barajas-Varela told the Union-Tribune last year about that time in his life. I put myself in that situation... I wouldnt put myself in that situation again.

Barajas founded the Deported Veterans Support House, known to many as the Bunker, in 2013 to support deportees in Tijuana. He became a leader in a push for legislative changes to help U.S. military veterans who had not become citizens avoid deportation and to bring back those who were already removed.

He was born in Mexico but raised in Los Angeles from age seven. Since he had a green card, he was able to serve in the Army and was part of the 82nd Airborne Division from 1995 to 2001. At the time, he thought hed automatically become a citizen, but that was not the case.

Members of the military are allowed to apply for citizenship with no waiting period. They still have to fill out the paperwork and pass the tests.

Noncitizens who serve in the military are still at risk for deportation if they commit crimes that can cause the U.S. to revoke their green cards.

Advocates have argued that conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder and other challenges that veterans face when they leave the military can make it more likely that they commit such crimes. They say that the veterans should be expected to serve whatever sentences theyre given for the criminal convictions but that deportation goes too far. The ACLU has documented at least 239 cases of deported veterans living in 34 countries.

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Critics of the deported veterans movement say that a green card is a contract and any violation should result in deportation, regardless of military service.

In April 2017, Gov. Jerry Brown pardoned him, along with two other deported veterans, saying Barajas has shown that since his release from custody, he has lived an honest and upright life, exhibited good moral character and conducted himself as a law-abiding citizen.

Barajas hoped that might eventually allow him to return to the U.S., but he knew it was no guarantee. He applied for citizenship before receiving the pardon.

Marco Chavez Medina, a deported Marine whom Brown also pardoned, crossed back into the U.S. in December after his green card was reinstated. Barajas and several other deported veterans escorted him to the San Ysidro port of entry.

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Barajas has a middle-school-age daughter named Liliana who lives in Los Angeles. He has dreamed of reuniting with her while he waited to find out if the U.S. would let him back in.

Finally, after years of fighting for the rights of deported veterans to return to the U.S., Hector will be able to return home as an American citizen, said Jennie Pasquarella, director of immigrants rights for the ACLU of California and one of Barajass attorneys. Hector, like a true soldier, has fought day in and day out since his deportation on behalf of deported veterans across the globe. He never gave up hope that he would one day return to his home and be reunited with his family.

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Immigration Videos On Now New developments in family separation case 9:53 On Now A San Diego woman volunteered as a medic in Texas helping migrant families 2:35 On Now Immigration policy protests in Carlsbad nearly cancelled after permit issue 1:38 On Now When children are separated from their parents at the border, here is where they go next On Now Prospects of a deal for 'Dreamers' may hinge on separating Trump from hard-liners on his staff On Now What is DACA? On Now Border wall prototype contractors selected On Now Video: Ukrainian boxer wins asylum in U.S. On Now 30 apprehended after Border Patrol agents discover tunnel On Now Video: Kurdish diaspora prepare to vote on independence

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kate.morrissey@sduniontribune.com, @bgirledukate on Twitter
Pregnant women who have cases in immigration court are more likely to be detained following a policy change announced Thursday by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Under the old policy, unless there were extraordinary circumstances or a mandatory detention requirement, pregnant women would generally not be held in custody. Now, pregnant immigrants will be treated like any other person in ICE custody. Under the Trump administration, that means they are likely to be detained.

To better align with the Presidents executive order, ICE has ended the presumption of release for all pregnant detainees, said Lauren Mack, spokeswoman for ICE. Instead, as with all detainees except those in cases of mandatory detention, ICE will complete a case-by-case custody determination taking any special factors into account.

This does not mean that all pregnant aliens will be detained; only those whose detention is necessary to effectuate removal, as well as those deemed a flight risk or danger to the community she said. Generally, absent extraordinary circumstances, ICE will not detain a pregnant alien during the third trimester of pregnancy.

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President Donald Trumps executive order, which Mack cited, says, We cannot faithfully execute the immigration laws of the United States if we exempt classes or categories of removable aliens from potential enforcement.

ICE has the authority to release people from custody, called parole, and can require those immigrants to wear ankle monitors or follow other tracking programs to make sure they show up to court. Under the Trump administration, ICE has generally declined to let people out of detention until and unless immigration judges decide to release them during bond hearings.

Human rights advocates and immigration attorneys criticized the new policy.

Annaluisa Padilla, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, called the new policy an egregious human rights offense.

This is concerning given the current administrations exceptionally narrow view of discretion when it comes to immigrants, Padilla said. Detention creates serious health risks, and many women have medical needs that cannot typically be addressed in a detention setting.

In an FAQ created to address the policy change on ICEs website, ICE responded to human rights concerns.

ICE exercises its civil detention authority consistent with the law, and all detainees receive necessary and appropriate health services, food, and care, the website said. ICE detention facilities will continue to provide onsite prenatal care and education, as well as remote access to specialists for pregnant women who remain in custody.

Nationwide, 35 pregnant women were in ICE custody as of March 20, according to Danielle Bennett, another ICE spokeswoman.

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In San Diego, immigration attorneys observed this policy change in practice before it was officially announced.

Last year, several pregnant women held at Otay Mesa Detention Center came forward to express concerns over care provided while they were in custody and questioned why they hadnt yet been released per the policy in place at the time.

Maria Solis, who had lived with her family in Oceanside for years, was pregnant with her fourth child when she was arrested by ICE on her way to work. She had a history of difficult pregnancies and worried that being in the detention facility would cause her to miscarry.

She said a facility doctor told her, If you have a miscarriage here, its not our fault, and theres nothing we can do about it.

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Solis agreed to give up an asylum claim in immigration court because she didnt want to subject her unborn child to detention conditions any longer. She anticipated that ICE would deport her to Mexico.

In a surprise move by immigration officials, Solis was then released on an order of supervision. She has a pending U-visa application, which provides green cards to crime victims who cooperate with police.

Because of her case, other pregnant women began to speak out, and several advocacy groups filed a complaint with the Department of Homeland Security about the treatment of pregnant women in detention.

Sandra Mejia Galicias, a 23-year-old asylum seeker from El Salvador, was one of the women inspired by Solis to speak out. She also said the facility didnt give adequate care to pregnant women.

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If I had a headache or felt like I was having a heart attack, they would say, Drink more water,  Mejia Galicias told the Union-Tribune last fall. She was released in November around the beginning of her third trimester.

When asked about the womens claims, ICE has responded that they received timely and appropriate medical care and said that Otay Mesa Detention Center, which is operated by the for-profit CoreCivic, has passed inspections for detention standards.

The new policy still requires detention facilities to notify ICE if staff find out a woman in custody is pregnant. If a facility is unable to provide adequate medical care for the womans condition, ICE will transfer her to another facility.

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Immigration Videos On Now New developments in family separation case 9:53 On Now A San Diego woman volunteered as a medic in Texas helping migrant families 2:35 On Now Immigration policy protests in Carlsbad nearly cancelled after permit issue 1:38 On Now When children are separated from their parents at the border, here is where they go next On Now Prospects of a deal for 'Dreamers' may hinge on separating Trump from hard-liners on his staff On Now What is DACA? On Now Border wall prototype contractors selected On Now Video: Ukrainian boxer wins asylum in U.S. On Now 30 apprehended after Border Patrol agents discover tunnel On Now Video: Kurdish diaspora prepare to vote on independence

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kate.morrissey@sduniontribune.com, @bgirledukate on Twitter
With Sri Lanka under a state of emergency after a spasm of anti-Muslim bloodshed, lawyer Jeevanee Kariyawasam went on Facebook to complain. The company hadnt blocked users inciting violence, she wrote, and the government hadnt arrested those sending out the offending posts.

Facebooks response was swift: It suspended Kariyawasams account.

The company restored her account within 24 hours, but the incident this month highlighted how Facebook has become a powerful vehicle for hate speech worldwide, and how the Silicon Valley giants efforts to police incendiary rhetoric in distant countries have often fallen short.

As Facebook confronts a scandal over data privacy in the United States and Britain, it faces widening criticism in Asia for stoking discord in countries with few legal protections for religious, ethnic and political minorities.

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When a Sri Lankan Facebook user complained this month of a post that said, Kill all Muslims, dont let even one child of the dogs escape, it took the company six days to respond. Then it said the post did not meet its definition of hate speech.

In Myanmar, United Nations investigators said this month that Facebook had turned into a beast by propelling racism and calls to violence against Rohingya Muslims. In Cambodia and the Philippines, authoritarian leaders have used Facebook to disseminate propaganda and whip up animosity toward journalists and political opponents.

In Sri Lanka the government accused Facebook of failing to take down posts and videos that encouraged the violence in Kandy in early March. As extremists from the island nations Buddhist majority torched Muslim-owned houses and businesses, authorities directed internet providers to block Facebook and its two popular apps, WhatsApp and Instagram, along with other social media platforms.

The ban was lifted a week later, after officials from Facebooks regional office in India flew down to meet with government representatives in Colombo, Sri Lankas capital. Over a two-hour meeting at the seafront presidential offices, company officials pledged to act more swiftly to remove hate speech in Sri Lankas native languages.

We wanted them to be concerned about the fact that if you go on like this, you will create bloodshed unnecessarily, said Austin Fernando, a senior aide to Sri Lankas president.

A computer screen showing a blocked Facebook window is seen in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on March 7, 2018. (Eranga Jayawardena / Associated Press )

Facebook has been shaken by the criticism across Asia, the companys fastest growing regional market with half a billion daily users, nearly three times the number in the United States. In emerging economies where internet access is expanding and space for public expression is often limited, Facebooks popularity has grown faster than its ability to monitor what its users are saying.

Company officials say they have invested heavily in technology to more quickly identify and remove content that violates its community standards barring racist and discriminatory posts. Over the last year, Facebook says, it has also doubled its number of content monitors, with about 14,000 people now checking posts and reviewing complaints in more than 40 languages.

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But that is less than half of the more than 100 languages Facebook supports.

In Sri Lanka  with an estimated 6 million users  Facebook said it increased its capacity to monitor posts in Sinhala, the language spoken by the Buddhist majority, and ran notices atop users news feeds about how to report hate speech.

It took down some accounts, including one belonging to Amith Weerasinghe, a Buddhist radical with more than 150,000 followers, who was seen on a video prodding Sinhalese to attack Muslims in Kandy. Weerasinghe and several suspected associates were arrested, among dozens jailed in connection with the violence.

We have clear rules against such content and will remove it when were made aware of it, Facebook said in a statement. We have been working with the government and nongovernment organizations in Sri Lanka to identify and remove hate speech.

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Still, the company has privately acknowledged mistakes.

During the violence in Kandy, which left three people dead and caused millions of dollars in damage, Kariyawasam emerged as one of the most prolific online activists reporting accounts with names such as Sinhala Racist, which claimed that Sri Lanka was the exclusive domain of the Sinhalese race. But Facebook chose to not block that and many other accounts, she said, while hers was peppered with death threats.

It makes you think that Facebook is either under capacity to monitor whats happening in Sinhala, or that some of their Sinhala-speaking monitors share the same biases as the people that are being reported, said Yudhanjaya Wijeratne, an author and internet researcher in Colombo.

For decades, Sri Lanka has been riven by violence between Sinhalese Buddhists, who make up about 70% of the countrys 21 million people, and minorities including Muslims and Tamil-speaking Hindus. Since a long civil war against Tamil rebels ended a decade ago, Buddhist extremists have periodically led attacks against Muslims, who account for about 10% of the population.

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Under then-President Mahinda Rajapaksas authoritarian, Buddhist nationalist government, hard-line monks enjoyed virtual impunity, stoking fears of terrorism and forced conversions to Islam. The Muslim Council of Sri Lanka has documented several hundred incidents of violence and intimidation, nearly all at the hands of Buddhist groups.

People were searching for another other, and Muslims were an easy target, said Mario Gomez, director of the International Center for Ethnic Studies, a Colombo think tank. There was always some animosity, but not this level of venom. The manipulation of social media enabled a lot of myths to spread.

In 2014, the independent Center for Policy Alternatives produced a lengthy study of anti-Muslim hate speech on 20 Sri Lankan Facebook groups. Coauthor Sanjana Hattotuwa said the posts, which clearly violated Facebook standards, remained online for months because the company had zero capacity to monitor Sinhala.

In Myanmar, Facebook has acknowledged the long-term challenge of determining when certain words  such as kalar, a slur for Rohingya Muslims that the company said had benign roots  are being used to encourage violence. The posts that Hattotuwa studied were so vile, he recalled, that he advised his coauthor to seek counseling.

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It didnt require a nuanced understanding of language, Hattotuwa said, adding, It was blatant. If you translate it directly into German or French, it would still be obnoxious.

In January 2015 elections, minority voters, including Muslims, helped unseat Rajapaksa. But his successor, Maithripala Sirisena, has sought to accommodate Buddhist hard-liners.

Days after the violence in Kandy, Sirisena made an official visit to Japan, where he addressed a group of saffron-robed monks. Among them was Galagodatte Gnanasara, founder of an extremist group called Bodu Bala Sena, or Buddhist Power Force, who has been charged with inciting pogroms in 2014 that left four people dead.

The group has used Facebook to spread false information about Muslims  including that one Muslim-owned shop was selling candy that would turn Buddhist women infertile.

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Buddhist monk Galagodatte Gnanasara arrives at a court in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in June 2017. (Ishara S. Kodikara / AFP/Getty Images )

Sirisenas office denied that Gnanasara  who is free on bail and reportedly visited Kandy the day the attacks broke out  was part of the government delegation. But officials acknowledged that a top aide to the notorious monk had traveled with the president.

A government that we expected to protect us has totally failed, said Hilmy Ahamed, vice president of the Muslim Council of Sri Lanka.

Ahamed said the group has collected examples of hate speech and incendiary videos, and last year provided a DVD to the governments cybercrimes unit. Officers there directed them to another police agency, which took the disc but never acted on it, Ahamed said.

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If the government wants to stop this hate they can do it within weeks, Ahamed said. But we as a community do not get justice when it comes to communal issues.

Critics said the Sri Lankan government has used Facebook as a scapegoat for its inability to rein in hard-liners. Its policies were further questioned when Sirisena and top officials continued to post on Facebook throughout the ban, using proxy networks.

The government has proposed a new law targeting online hate speech, but Rohan Samarajiva, chairman of LIRNEasia, a telecommunications policy think tank, said existing laws are tough enough. In March, prosecutors charged three Buddhist teenagers from Colombo with spreading hate messages on WhatsApp. They could face up to 10 years in prison, Samarajiva said.

The most important thing the government can do is punish these people and send a message, he said.

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Some activists see a connection to the widening scandal involving Cambridge Analytica, the British company that harvested the personal information of 50 million Facebook users and used it to target U.S. voters. In a documentary by Britains Channel 4 that exposed the practice, reporters approached Cambridge Analytica representatives posing as potential clients: a wealthy family with political connections from Sri Lanka.

Its very revealing if CA thinks Sri Lanka is good enough for them to engage with, Hattotuwa said. It means that the landscape and nature of politics as its conducted online here is ripe for weaponization or manipulation. This is a very interesting insight  and a worrying one.

shashank.bengali@latimes.com

Shashank Bengali is the South Asia correspondent for The Times. Follow him on Twitter at @SBengali
A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit against Rep. Susan Davis, D-San Diego, and three other house Democrats.

The plaintiff, Chris Sevier, said that homosexuality is a part of a religion and the defendants violated the constitutions separation of church and state by displaying rainbow flags outside their offices.

The judge said common sense shows that homosexuality is not religious.

Four representatives in Congress have prevailed in court after they were sued for displaying rainbow flags outside of their offices in an unusual case where the plaintiff  a man who wants to marry his laptop computer  asserted that homosexuality is a part of a religion.

On Monday Judge Randolph Moss in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, ordered plaintiff Chris Seviers lawsuit dismissed. Sevier sued Rep. Susan Davis, D-San Diego, and three other House Democrats, in July over the multicolored gay pride flags outside their offices.

The rainbow flag is a symbol of commitment to full equality, freedom, and love and I will continue to display it outside my D.C. and San Diego offices, Davis said in a statement. Its clear this misguided lawsuit was completely without merit and the court has said as much with this dismissal.

Davis has displayed the flag outside the entrance to her Washington D.C. office since March 2015 alongside the California and the United States flags.

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The rainbow gay pride flag is displayed outside Rep. Susan Davis (D-San Diego) Washington D.C. office alongside the United States and Californias flags. (Photo courtesy of the office of Rep. Susan Davis )

In addition, Rep. Alan Lowenthal, D-Long Beach, Don Beyer, D-Virginia, and Earl Blumenauer, D-Oregon, were also sued. The members of Congress were all represented by government lawyers.

I will continue to fly it outside my office (and inside my district offices in California) as a symbol of love, peace, equality, and humanity to every visitor to Capitol Hill. I will never give in to intolerance, even when cloaked in the guise of legality, Lowenthal said in a statement on Facebook.

Sevier said he disagrees with the judges ruling and that hell appeal.

Homosexuality is a series of unproven faith-based assumptions that are at the very least implicitly religious, if not completely absurd, he wrote in an email When someone says that they are born gay, born with gay genes, that they came out of invisible closet and were baptized gay those are naked assertions that cannot be proven and can only be taken on faith. They are insurmountably religious in nature and unworthy of civil rights protections.

The case was one of a series Sevier has waged around the country as a part of a campaign against same-sex relationships and marriage, an effort that also included an unsuccessful legal effort to marry his laptop computer.

Sevier, an attorney and lobbyist who represented himself, argued that homosexuality is a religion and the rainbow flags are a symbol of faith. As such, the four members of Congress violated the 1st Amendments Establishment Clause, a provision that prevents the government from establishing a religion. He wanted the court to declare homosexuality a religion and to order the flags removed. He also sought $1 in damages.

The judge didnt buy Seviers reasoning.

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To be sure, the governing case law does not precisely define the contours of what constitutes religion, Moss wrote in the opinion. But that does not mean that there are no easy cases. To the contrary, courts are well-equipped to weed out spurious Establishment Clause religions on grounds of common sense.

Representatives asked in September that the case be dismissed, arguing that the lawsuit was frivolous and that Sevier lacked standing to sue because he was not actually harmed.

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Twitter: @jptstewart

joshua.stewart@sduniontribune.com

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Two weeks ago, I tossed out a betting line on the realistic contenders for Rep. Darrell Issas well-worn seat.

Seven candidates in the 49th Congressional District, four Democrats and three Republicans, made my early cut.

Today, Im adding an OC Republican to the field of conceivable double-digit finishers in the June jungle primary.

On my updated tip sheet, Brian Maryott, a first-term San Juan Capistrano councilman, has a punchers chance, a 20 percent likelihood of winning a ticket to the general election in November.

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Maryott, Ive learned, has a clear-eyed strategy to shine in a primary where the two top performers of any (or no) party advance.

Maryott, 55, recently retired from an evidently lucrative career as a financial planner. When Issa threw in the towel, Maryotts second career opened up in front of him.The twist of Maryotts longshot candidacy is that President Trump, a damning association for Issa, is the trump card Maryott hopes to play against the circumspect Republican candidates -- Assemblyman Rocky Chavez, Board of Equalization member Diane Harkey and Supervisor Kristin Gaspar.

For obvious reasons, GOP candidates in swing districts keep a wary distance from the president.

Maryott, on the other hand, pumps up Trump without apology.

I dont intend to be bashful about our president, Maryott told me.

To win or place in June, Maryott is looking to appeal to Trump loyalists as well as nervous conservatives who want to like Trump and want to get comfortable. Theyre struggling to feel good about him.

Maryotts goal is to put these voters from Dana Point to Del Mar into the Trumpian comfort zone as they enter the polling station.

Maryott, a married father of three, concedes Trumps crass edges. (Not my cup of tea, he says.) But the picture that matters, he says, is the big one, not what you see in the media.

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Ive never seen a president have to battle daily with the propaganda-driven press, he says.

That Foxy analysis is sure to elicit groans among Democrats and independents, but Maryott is grilling red meat, not processed messages for the mass of voters.

There will be seven more years for President Trump, Maryott predicts. I dont think hell be impeached. I believe well continue to see good results, both economically and in foreign relations.

As for mothers milk, Maryott has invested $300,000 to jump-start his campaign. He has two offices, one in San Juan Cap, the other in Carlsbad. Radio ads have run on KOGO and KFMB; TV spots on -- where else? -- Fox stations. He tells me hes prepared to spend 300 grand in addition to individual contributions. Other candidates will burn through more, but Maryott, who got his political feet wet in the Massachusetts Legislature as a young man, promises he wont be outworked on the stump.

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I contacted the campaigns of the three GOP favorites -- Chavez, Harkey and Gaspar -- and asked them to summarize their views of Trump.

Chavez relayed that he would support the president when he agreed with him, oppose him when he didnt. Harkeys campaign spokesman dodged, saying the candidate would focus on her constituents, not the president. Gaspar did not respond to requests for comment on the ticklish subject.

No surprise there. California is at war with the Trump administration over sanctuary, the wall, tax reform, the census, climate change.

To careful Republicans, aligning with Trump, especially as he faces multiple legal assaults and the possibility of impeachment (or worse), poses long-term risks.

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To Maryott, thats the risk he relishes, the daring that sets him apart.

Of course, if he were to make the general election, Maryott would have to pivot to the center where, as it happens, hes staked out some ground.

He says, for example, that he favors an improved private health-care system alongside a government-run single-payer system.

For the next two months, however, Maryotts big-picture message is that, thanks to the president, America, and by extension California, is getting really great again.

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Hes riding Trumps flaming coattails as far as theyll take him.

Logan Jenkins is a freelance columnist. He can be reached at lbjenkins5437@gmail.com.
A woman was killed and her 4-year-old child was critically injured in a collision in Mira Mesa early Friday, San Diego police said.

The name of the 27-year-old mother was not released.

She was coming out of a driveway on Calle Cristobal, east of Camino Santa Fe, about 7:10 a.m. Her white Acura Legend collided with a westbound gray Honda Accord, driven by a 26-year-old man, police Officer Tony Martinez said.

He said the Acura driver suffered fatal injuries. The 4-year-old, in a child seat, suffered a fractured skull and broken ribs, pelvis and right knee. The child was hospitalized with what were believed to be life-threatening injuries.

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The Accord driver complained of pain to his back after the collision, Martinez said.

Authorities issued a traffic alert for the area.

teri.figueroa@sduniontribune.com

(760) 529-4945

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Twitter: @TeriFigueroaUT
National City police have arrested a man suspected in a Tuesday morning fatal shooting that happened after a fight at a nearby convenience store.

Robert Alan Garduno, 27, was booked early Wednesday on one count of murder, according to county jail records. He is scheduled to be arraigned on Monday.

He is accused of shooting a 26-year-old man on Eta Street, near Highland Avenue, in National City about 11 a.m. Tuesday. The victims name has not been released by authorities.

Police said gunshots were reported and officers found the victims body lying on a grassy strip outside a the fenced property of the Park Villas apartments.

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Investigators said they believe the shooting was connected to a fight that happened half an hour earlier at Mex Mart on South 43rd Street in San Diego. The store is about three blocks from the shooting scene.

Police issued a statement announcing the arrest on Friday. No information was released about a possible motive for the fight or the shooting, or the connection between the two men.

Court records online show that Garduno was charged in two criminal cases in 2009 and 2010. No details on the cases were available Friday, with courts closed for the Cesar Chavez holiday.

pauline.repard@sduniontribune

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Twitter: @pdrepard
A spill that turned out to be pool chemicals was reported on Poinsettia Lane near the northbound Interstate 5 off-ramp Friday morning, according to the authorities.

Just before 8 a.m., Carlsbad police notified the California Highway Patrol that hazardous materials had been spilled in the area, and asked the state police to shut down the off-ramp, according to CHPs online incident log and a CHP spokesman.

Carlsbad also shut down potions of Poinsettia in the area generally from Paseo del Norte west to Avenida Encina.

At first authorities did not know what was inside the handful of containers found on the road, emitting smoke.

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Police called in hazmat officers out af an abundance of caution, Carlsbad police Lt. Christie Calderwood said.

It turned out to be pool chemicals that likely fell from a vehicle.

teri.figueroa@sduniontribune.com

(760) 529-4945

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Twitter: @TeriFigueroaUT

UPDATES:

1:25 p.m.: This story was updated to say that the material was pool chemicals, and all roads had been reopened. It was originally published at 8:25 a.m.
SpaceX is scheduled to launch a set of Iridium satellites from Vandenberg Air Force Base early Friday and the contrail might be visible from San Diego County.

The company says the rocket will leave the pad a few seconds before 7:13 a.m. People in San Diego County should look to the west-northwest for the contrail, which could shine in the morning sunlight.

The National Weather Service says there may be fog along the coast at the time of the launch, especially in San Diego.

If you go a couple of miles from the coast you should be OK, said Mark Moede, a weather service forecaster.
President Trump renewed his call for more spending on Americas infrastructure on Thursday in a meandering speech that, by his frequent departures from the topic, helped explain why he hasnt gotten his party in Congress behind him for an extensive rebuilding of the nations public works.

In remarks at a job training site in Ohio against a backdrop of union workers in hard hats, Trump boasted of the $21 billion for infrastructure in the recently enacted government spending bill  money he had ignored when he grudgingly signed the measure on Friday. He then hopscotched across a host of unrelated issues and set pieces of his campaign speeches, with partisan asides against the Democrats whose votes hed need for any infrastructure legislation.

Were going to get this infrastructure going, Trump said at one point, a passage bracketed by mentions of his proposed border wall, North Korea, ISIS and the gift from heaven of finding so many vacant federal judgeships to fill.

At one point, the president insisted that Democrats so far had blocked his proposed $1.5-trillion infrastructure spending initiative because they didnt want to give him any more wins. Yet in the same sentence, he said further action would have to wait until after the November election, though even Republicans expect that more Democrats will be elected to Congress, not fewer.

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Trumps glancing references did little to suggest that infrastructure ranks high on his list of desired accomplishments, just as his haphazard treatment of the issue in his first year did.

As a candidate, Trump made talk of a bold building program a signature issue, to help him reach blue-collar workers with promises of restoring industries, particularly in Midwestern states like Ohio. He spoke of federal funds for transportation, broadband internet access and water and electrical programs. He varied on how he would pay for it, suggesting a higher gas tax, energy production revenue or savings in the tax plan.

But as president, he has said  and he restated at the Cleveland-area facility  that he advocates minimal federal spending, and offsetting the cost with cuts to existing infrastructure programs. He also is pushing for cash-strapped state and local governments to put up the vast majority of the $1.5-trillion cost, and suggested private businesses would invest. Most analysts consider that impractical.

Trumps appearance in Ohio was his first public event since he reluctantly signed the $1.3-trillion government spending plan at the White House on Friday, a period during which news was dominated by accusations leveled by two women who claim past sexual relationships with him.

While Trump at the Friday event warned Congress that he would never sign another bill like this again, and blamed much of its nonmilitary spending on wasteful Democrats, lawmakers from both parties embraced the infrastructure spending and claimed credit for it. Congress tripled a $500-million program of transportation grants to state and local governments, which Trump had proposed canceling.

Still, Trump administration officials also bragged about the bills total $21 billion for infrastructure in a telephone call Wednesday with reporters, casting it as a down payment on Trumps own proposals.

The reality is that few in either party, or among interest groups, are predicting any big infrastructure push this year.

His plan is going nowhere. I dont think anybody thinks were going to get anything between now and the election, said a person steeped in the infrastructure negotiations, who requested anonymity in order to avoid angering the parties involved.

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Ironically for Trump, a Democratic takeover of the House in Novembers election would boost the odds of more infrastructure funding, the person said  although not necessarily in the ways the president has proposed.

Others suggested that Republicans as well as Democrats recognize the appeal of infrastructure spending, although they disagree on the details. The big problem: Congress and the president in recent months have signed off on adding an estimated $2.8 trillion over 10 years to the already high federal debt, counting the tax cut plan and the fiscal 2018 government spending measure.

The biggest problem right now is theres no money left, said Marcia Hale, president of Building Americas Future, a bipartisan group advocating for infrastructure spending, who once worked in the Clinton administration.

Trumps proposal to shift the costs to local and state governments is seen as unworkable because they already are overwhelmed by day-to-day needs. (The Trump-approved tax plan also provided a disincentive to raising taxes, since sharp limits were placed on how much could be deducted from federal tax returns for residents state and local taxes.)

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Cities and states dont have that money. Its just not there, Hale said. You can talk about it all you want, but until someone figures out how were going to pay for this 

Earlier efforts by the White House to highlight Trumps infrastructure plan have been repeatedly overshadowed, so much so that infrastructure week has become a sardonic punchline for any period in which the administration is convulsed by unrelated chaos.

Over the last year, weeks in which the administration planned to highlight infrastructure have been upended by controversies including Trumps response to the white supremacists protests in Charlottesville, Va., in which he blamed civil rights protesters and neo-Nazis equally for the deadly violence; the Florida school shooting last month; the resignation of an aide accused of marital abuse; and the ongoing Russia investigation.

Trump administration officials maintain a public optimism. A senior administration official, speaking to reporters, said: We never anticipated this was going to be a quick or easy process. And the president just absolutely is in this for the long haul.

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The odds of pieces of Trumps plan passing this year are very, very high, the official added. Will we get the entire bill through this year? That is more of a stretch.

Republican leaders in the Senate, however, are signaling that they dont have any intention of putting an infrastructure bill on the floor this year.

Theres an acknowledgment of the need here, said Jacob Leibenluft, a former Obama administration official. The problem is that the need hasnt been met by any of the policy details that come from the administration or from Congress. It doesnt match up with this big national need.

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For more on politics from Cathleen Decker 

cathleen.decker@latimes.com

Twitter: @cathleendecker

christi.parsons@latimes.com

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Twitter: @cparsons

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Joyce Cutler-Shaw was called many things: curious, courageous, inventive.

But the title of the 2016 documentary about the longtime San Diego artist sums up Ms. Cutler-Shaws work and life: She Is Fierce: The Art of Joyce Cutler-Shaw.

She had such integrity and such drive. She was the real thing as far as being an artist, said photographer Becky Cohen, a longtime friend who wrote and directed the 30-minute documentary for UCSD Television.

As an artist, Ms. Cutler-Shaw was multifaceted and prolific. Her work ranged from drawings and sculptures to calligraphy and photography. The results were equally varied, from small art books to large public installations. Ms. Cutler-Shaw  who had corticobasal degeneration, a rare progressive neurological disorder similar to Parkinsons  died March 18. The La Jolla resident was 85.

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Born in Detroit on June 25, 1932, Ms. Cutler-Shaw was raised in New York and came to San Diego with her husband, Jerome Shaw, in 1958. She was in the first graduating class of UC San Diegos MFA program in visual arts in 1972. Sha also held a bachelors degree in English from New York University in 1953.

For Ms. Cutler-Shaw, art was a language to communicate a message.

I admire her most as a humanitarian, said her son Michael Shaw.

Her interests, he said, included feminism, human rights, science and the environment.

She used art to channel aspects of culture, he said. She was about breaking down differences, geographically and politically. She was extraordinarily intellectual.

Drawing was Ms. Cutler-Shaws main medium. Through drawings, she explored human anatomy and dying and studied birds. Her anatomy drawings earned her an appointment as artist-in-residence at UCSDs School of Medicine, a position she originated and held from 1992 to 2015. In The Anatomy Lesson  one of her most celebrated bodies of work  she explored the body as an extension of the human condition. How we depict the body  and interpret the body  and behave toward the body reveals the way we see and understand ourselves, she wrote.

The project, Cohen said, was a means by which to become fearless in regards to death.

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The far-reaching cultural, scientific and artistic implications of The Anatomy Lesson  a project spawned by her desire to understand death in a clinical setting, she once said  make her work significant, locally, nationally and internationally. So much so that much of her work, both personally and professionally, are in the UC San Diego Librarys Special Collections & Archives, where scholars can pore through her drawings and photographs and more to help further their own research.

Ms. Cutler-Shaw was also fascinated with birds. A bird vertebrae necklace was one of her signatures  a totem of life and death, Cohen said. Ms. Cutler-Shaw created 26 original calligraphy characters based on the drawings of hollow leg bones of a messenger pigeon. The study, Alphabet of Bones, was the basis for many of her artist books, which are now at the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library in La Jolla.

At the Athenaeum, she established Dialogues in Art and Architecture, a lecture series that she underwrote so it would be free to the public. She put important people together, said Erika Torri, executive director of the Athenaeum. She was the most energetic person I have ever met.

After the lectures, the dialogue would continue with dinner at her home, said Cornelia Feye, former director of arts education at Athenaeum. It was her salon.

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She had the desire to be present in the world not only as an artist but also as an engaged citizen, Cohen said.

In 1974, Ms. Cutler-Shaw created her first public installation, The Namewall at the Los Angeles International Airport. The first installation by an individual artist at the L.A. airport, it consisted of 12,500 laminated paper tiles covering ceramic tiles in a passenger tunnel with a name written on each tile to humanize the space.

Other projects included an ice sculpture for the United Nations Plaza that read survival, made with water collected from more than 90 nations and sculptures of leaves that created the effect of trees inside the Mission Valley library.

She was like nails, Michael Shaw said. She was fierce, unrelenting and determined.

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On April 28, the Oceanside Museum of Art is opening an exhibit that explores the artists visualization of language.

Ms. Cutler-Shaw is survived by her husband, Jerome; sons Michael (Sara Warshaw) of Berkeley and Steven of Seattle; daughter Rachael of San Diego; and two grandsons, Alexander and Leo.

A memorial service is planned at the Athenaeum. Donations may be made to the Athenaeum, the California League of Women Voters or the ACLU.

Schimitschek is a freelance writer.
An estimated 4.7 million Americans aged 65 and older have Alzheimers disease, and this number is projected to climb to 13.8 million by 2050. As astounding as these numbers are, the earliest phases of the illness are not captured and are believed to be even more prevalent.

With so many in our community afflicted with Alzheimers disease or caring for someone with dementia, the aggregate suffering is unfathomable.

What can be done to halt this societal scourge? The enormity of the challenge will require an all-hands-on-deck approach, spanning well beyond the scientists investigating the underlying molecular pathology and therapeutic targets, well beyond the entrepreneurs and chemical engineers seeking to design the next breakthrough drug, and well beyond the most innovative, risky, and disruptive ideas.

The endeavor will need to engage society into a volunteerism far broader than it has been, and to be complete, it must extend across the diversity of our community.

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In this most human of diseases, the most critical piece to solving Alzheimers will be a broader engagement of volunteer participants in Alzheimers research. These heroes enable clinical research through the sacrifice of time and comfort to participate in rigorously conducted clinical trials and research studies.

You may recall public engagement in both cancer and AIDS, movements that ultimately resulted in AIDS and cancer patients living longer lives. The early clinical trial participants were the brave men and women who began the process that dramatically reduced AIDS and cancer-related deaths.

Today, we are in sight of a new age of discovery in brain-related research and Alzheimers disease. We are gaining understanding about the underlying genetics and molecular pathways of the disease.

Our hope and conviction is that this new knowledge will give us what we need to develop innovative and effective treatments for Alzheimers.

A major obstacle remains  we need efficient recruitment of volunteer research subjects. Often, we cant find enough qualified people to volunteer, particularly in trials with extended time involvement, lumbar puncture, or commitment to brain autopsy at death, but its even true in simpler trials.

Advancing research will rely on altruistic and, for some of our studies, brave volunteers, so how does one motivate people to step forward and participate in todays more involved and extensive Alzheimers disease clinical research?

We want to engage the 10,000 baby boomers who retire each day, and convince them of the tremendous value they can bring to this fight. Not only boomers; people well into their 70s and 80s  even 90s  can help.

Without human studies, there will be no treatment and prevention. Without treatment and prevention, we can expect Alzheimers to bankrupt the U.S. health system along with an unbearable number of families.

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San Diego is widely recognized as being at the leading edge of Alzheimers disease research on mechanisms, diagnostics and therapies. The environments collaborative confluence of groundbreaking industry, academic, and government programs in neurosciences, genetics and neurodegeneration is unrivaled anywhere else in the world.

Our Alzheimers Disease Cooperative Study at UC San Diego coordinates clinical trials around the country. Early phase clinical trials are of particular importance, as they help us diversify the pipeline of what might eventually become the cure.

A trial taking place at UC San Diego right now, called Discover, is testing a new drug, but perhaps even more exciting is the new approach it employs to examine, in near real-time, whether treatment interrupts the disease process.

In Discover, we are asking patients with memory loss, known as mild cognitive impairment, or early Alzheimers disease to stay a short time in the hospital for multiple tests, including a type of lumbar puncture that allows continuous sampling of spinal fluid. This continuous sampling can measure changes in production of amyloid, one of the important proteins implicated in Alzheimers.

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The study asks a lot of its volunteers, but we feel the fight against Alzheimers requires innovative, bold techniques, always with great attention given to patient safety, including rigorous Institutional Review Board monitoring.

I am convinced of this: Volunteers in trials should be viewed as heroes for a vital cause  regardless of whether the study of their participation produces the cure, these volunteers should be credited with the eventual cure. This disease will be cured through knowledge gained incrementally, and it is almost assured that the first person cured will be a clinical trial participant. What a wonderful day that will be.

For more information on Alzheimers clinical trials, visit www.adcs.org

Brewer, M.D., is director of the Shiley-Marcos Alzheimers Disease Research Center and chair of the department of neurosciences at UC San Diego. The departments website: neurosciences.ucsd.edu
As every utility customer knows, we pay SDG&E each month for service (too much, but thats another story). Many dont know that SDG&E also pays the city of San Diego a substantial sum each year to put its wires and other infrastructure on public property.

Those payments typically exceed $50 million annually and are used for public services, programs and projects. The payments are required under a 50-year monopoly franchise contract between the city and the utility, which was last amended in 2001.

If you dig deep into your utility bill, youll see that SDG&E recoups those franchise payments from us, its customers.

In a fortuitous stroke of timing, the franchise agreement is scheduled to expire in 2020. The expiration comes as San Diego needs to accelerate efforts to meet its legally mandated Climate Action Plan. The plan requires 100 percent renewable generation sources for the citys electricity by 2035.

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The year 2035 isnt far off, as energy planning goes. And its not far off given the opposition of Sempra Energy, SDG&Es parent company, to what could be the citys best vehicle for reaching the 100 percent clean energy target.

That vehicle is community choice energy (CCE). Community choice would allow the city to purchase its own cleanly generated power and deliver it through SDG&Es grid. Studies and experience elsewhere indicate that community choice energy would likely get the city to 100 percent renewable energy by the target date, as well as save money for utility customers.

But given Sempras opposition to community choice energy, the city needs a Plan B  and that alternative should arise through a reworking of the franchise agreement. With that contract set to expire in less than three years, the process for renewing the agreement is beginning.

The City Charter requires an open bidding process for a new agreement but more is needed than an open process. We need fresh thinking.

Lets discard the presumption that because SDG&E has had the exclusive right to distribute gas and electricity over our public rights of way for nearly a century, the utility should get another business-as-usual, long-term extension of this valuable franchise.

A ballot measure setting forth new requirements for a franchise agreement will be reviewed by the City Council Environment Committee in April. This measure recognizes the city has Charter authority to generate electricity for its constituents, and it would require the franchisee, whether its SDG&E or another provider, to transmit the electricity procured or generated by the city to customers.

This option for the city to provide its own clean power and have it delivered to local customers provides a range of alternatives for San Diego to meet the mandated 100 percent clean energy target. The ballot measure also requires that at least half of the citys renewable energy be generated locally to boost our regional economy.

Expansion of rooftop solar, for example, would lead to bill savings for residents, schools and businesses, at the same time it would create local jobs and stimulate new businesses.

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The ballot proposal would also limit the franchise agreement to no more than 10 years, so the city can assess the progress toward 100 percent renewable energy and other climate plan targets. In addition, a shorter term will allow adjustments to rapidly evolving energy technologies, including battery storage and the expected mass adoption of electric vehicles.

These proposals have precedent. Durham, North Carolina, has established similar options for generating its own electricity in a franchise agreement. Consideration of the ballot proposal including a provision for city generated electricity should jump-start the effort to reach a new franchise agreement in San Diego and open the process to input from all stakeholders and communities.

Mayor Kevin Faulconer has said he will bring a recommendation by the end of this year to the City Council on how to achieve the 100 percent renewable energy goal. Regardless of the path chosen by the council, a 21st-century franchise agreement would strengthen the citys ability to achieve a renewable energy future at reasonable cost, while growing the local economy.

If we are going to franchise the use of our streets, sidewalks and parkways for electric service, lets get the best deal for our city, our families, our businesses and future generations. Use of our public right of way is everybodys business.

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Powers is principal of Powers Engineering and chairman of California Local Energy Advancing Renewables; Powell is a member of the citys Sustainable Energy Advisory Board and a former executive director of the City Heights Community Development Corp.; Rose is a journalist and former staff writer for The San Diego Union-Tribune.
The April 19, 1995, bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City by domestic terrorist Timothy McVeigh and co-conspirator Terry Nichols killed 168 people and remains one of the most horrendous crimes in U.S. history. It led to a new resolve among national security and law enforcement officials to monitor extremism within American borders. And it also led Republicans in Congress to draft two sweeping measures  the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act  that made it much easier to deport individuals with troubled histories and sharply limited authorities discretion to make exceptions. Despite warnings from civil libertarians, Democratic President Bill Clinton  then in centrist triangulation/re-election mode  signed the bills into law in 1996.

Twenty-two years later, it is a perverse fact of life that about 3,000 people who put their lives at risk to defend America have been disenfranchised by laws drafted with the rationale of defending Americans. Thats the number of military veterans, many from California, who have been deported, according to a 2017 estimate from the American Civil Liberties Union. These veterans were by and large legal permanent residents who became automatically eligible for U.S. citizenship after completing their military service  but committed crimes before they finished paperwork that would make them citizens, leading to their automatic deportation.

This week, Hector Barajas  the former Los Angeles resident who served six years with the U.S. Armys 82nd Airborne Division and who became a symbol of deported veterans  got the fantastic news that he would be welcomed back to the U.S. and sworn in as a citizen on April 13 in San Diego. Barajas cause was helped by former San Diego Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher; the ACLU; Gov. Jerry Brown, who pardoned him last April for his conviction of shooting at an occupied vehicle; and many others. Barajas exemplary personal history likely made the decision easier for federal authorities. In 2013, he founded the Deported Veterans Support House in Tijuana, a selfless attempt to help deported veterans facing similar circumstances.

But even if they made profound mistakes, as Barajas did, all the men and women who served in the U.S. military deserve better than deportation. Fletchers wife  Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, D-San Diego  got it right when she told CALmatters last year that these are people who made a compact with the federal government  they were willing to give their life and fight for their country  and in exchange our military service said you will be granted citizenship. And for whatever reason that didnt happen. ... To me, whatever crime they committed is irrelevant because we dont deport people who commit crimes, we deport people who arent U.S. citizens.

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A House bill that would welcome these veterans home has stalled in Congress despite having 62 co-sponsors, including San Diego Democratic Reps. Juan Vargas and Scott Peters. This cant be squared with our nations commitment to taking care of its veterans. If that commitment is honored, then giving citizenship to Hector Barajas would be the accepted norm  and not an unusual matter of note. When that happens, America will be a better place.

Twitter: @sdutIdeas

Facebook: San Diego Union-Tribune Ideas & Opinion
Political scientists and historians like to push back at the idea that, circa 2018, debates among Americans are unusually polarized. In a nation that went through a civil war and the chaos of 1968, this is hard to question. But for those who dont take the long view, the present polarization feels like its extreme and getting worse. Its not just that there are no longer liberal Republicans like New York Sen. Jacob Javits or conservative Democrats like Georgia Sen. Sam Nunn to make cross-party alliances more likely. Theres also an increasing sense from partisans on both sides that not only are they never wrong on policy and legal questions, theyre also morally superior to their opponents  and they should stick it to their foes when they can.

A case can be made that this is just whats on display with immigration. On Monday, Democrats reacted with fury to the U.S. Commerce Departments announcement that  with the alleged goal of helping enforcement of the Voting Rights Act  the 2020 census survey will include a question to recipients about their immigration status for the first time since the decennial survey in 1950. Since the census is used not just to allocate federal funds but to divvy up seats in the House of Representatives and votes in the Electoral College, Democrats depicted this as a naked, obviously illegal attempt to promote an undercount of unauthorized immigrants, particularly Latinos. This in theory would hurt blue states like California and help red states that are often more white and homogenized.

Republicans barely tried to make a substantial case that their rushed move is really about the Voting Rights Act. But when GOP leaders mock the idea that a census practice that once went unchallenged is clearly against the law, their tone is dismissive  but its not an argument that can be readily dismissed.

Meanwhile, the reverse dynamic is on display in reaction to Californias efforts to protect unauthorized immigrants from a crackdown launched by Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the Trump administration. Republicans have reacted with fury to three state laws that limit how much government officials and private employers can help federal immigration agents and that assert California has some oversight authority over federal immigration-detention facilities. Since it was just 2012 when the U.S. Supreme Court threw out Arizonas far-reaching immigration legislation on the grounds that a state may not pursue policies that undermine federal law, Republicans see these laws as a naked, obviously illegal attempt for California to pick and choose which constitutional obligations it has to honor.

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Democrats like to say the 10th Amendment gives states the right to go their own way on immigration, overlooking the 2012 high court ruling about Arizonas legislation. But when they point out that police chiefs across the U.S. support what Republicans deride as sanctuary policies on the grounds that theyre a big boost to public safety, its not an argument that can be readily dismissed.

Unfortunately, on some issues, the very idea that the other side might have reasonable arguments isnt something that anyone wants to hear. It was less than five years ago that senators on a bipartisan 68-32 vote agreed to sensible immigration reforms. Fourteen Republicans voted with every Democratic senator to let millions of unauthorized workers get a chance at citizenship and get unprecedented border-security measures in a sweeping bill.

The legislation, of course, never surfaced in the Republican-led House, a symbol of the growing partisan divide that has riven this issue and this country.

This bill has generated a level of support that we believe will be impossible for the House to ignore, New York Sen. Chuck Schumer said at the time.

If it wasnt obvious then, it certainly is now: The concept of conversation, let alone collaboration, on immigration issues is what seems impossible.

Twitter: @sdutIdeas

Facebook: San Diego Union-Tribune Ideas & Opinion

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Census citizenship question is debated

Re California files suit over 2020 census (March 28): In an ideal world, asking about citizenship on a census would be OK, but this is not an ideal world.

Current punitive policies oriented around citizenship make it toxic to ask about citizenship. Since the primary purpose of the census does not revolve around citizenship, it is both foolish and wrong to ask such a question.

The state of California is not wrong to file suit, since this idea actually goes against the purpose of the census as stated in the Constitution (which specifically says persons, not citizens).

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If I get a census questionnaire that asks me such a question, I, like many others (each for our different reasons), will not answer it. If census officials expect this question to provide an accurate response, they are ignorant of basic surveying principles.

And finally, in the larger scheme of things, this would do far more harm than good due to how the data is used in the real world, since bad census data ends up harming us all.

Robert Benson

Mission Valley

Why would any immigrant into this country feel the least bit concerned about answering the census wanting to know every residents citizenship  unless that immigrant has jumped the line and arrived in this country by dishonest means?

Im sure every American family would like to know exactly who is part of the family  or who is freeloading.

Jack Wormer

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Where do bad souls go to get punished?

Days before Easter, that question temporarily dominated Christian debate and world headlines when Pope Francis  the head of the Roman Catholic church  was quoted in an Italian newspaper  and then in a series of reports elsewhere  as saying that hell does not exist.

On Friday, the Vatican refuted that report saying that the pope was misquoted.

What is reported by the author in todays article is the fruit of his reconstruction, in which the precise words uttered by the pope are not cited, the Vatican said in a statement. No quotations in the aforementioned article, then, should be considered as a faithful transcription of the words of the Holy Father.

How this misunderstanding or fruit of the authors reconstruction spread worldwide so quickly is still something that the internet was trying to sort out on Good Friday as Holy Week, in Christianity the week before Easter, wound down. Hopefully this can help clear things up:

Who said what?

Pope Francis invited Eugenio Scalfari, the 93-year-old co-founder and former editor of Italian newspaper La Repubblica, for a private meeting on Tuesday, several outlets including the National Catholic Reporter said. In that conversation, Scalfari  an atheist  said he asked the pope where bad souls go in the afterlife.

Scalfari, according to the National Catholic Reporter, wrote that the pope told him that souls are not punished and that those who repent "receive the forgiveness of God and go among the line of souls who contemplate him, the souls of those who are unrepentant, and thus cannot be forgiven, disappear."

What does the Catholic church say about hell?

This is what the Catechism of the Catholic Church says about hell:

The teaching of the Church affirms the existence of hell and its eternity. Immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into hell, where they suffer the punishments of hell, eternal fire. The chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God, in whom alone man can possess the life and happiness for which he was created and for which he longs.

Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the most senior Catholic leader in the United Kingdom, told the BBC News that theres nowhere in Catholic teaching that actually says any one person is in hell and that the pope was probably exploring the imagery of hell  fire and brimstone and all of that.

Is Scalfari to be believed?

Scalfaris account of his conversation with Pope Francis is being second-guessed.

The Vatican says the conversation between Scalfari and the Pope was not an interview, and the Italian journalist has acknowledged that he never takes notes or records his conversations with the pope, according to National Catholic Reporter.

The Catholic news outlet says Scalfari also has a history of misquoting or reconstructing things the pope did not say. This was apparently Scalfaris fifth meeting with the pope, per the Catholic News Agency, and the journalist writes recollections of unrecorded and unnoted meetings, the National Catholic Reporter reported.

Whats been the reaction to this story?

Whenever the pope speaks, the world listens. And this case was no different given the subject matter.

The reactions, at first, were wide and ranging  from seriously confused to light-hearted. Some people chimed in with their takes on the whole debate under the hashtag #HellGate.

Despite Catholic leadership casting doubt on Scalfaris account of the interview given his history of using his memory  again he is 93  to quote the pope without relying on notes or recorded audio, some journalists noted that the Vatican did not deny the story as false.

Bottom line: no one knows.

What do you think  do you believe hell exists? Do you believe Pope Francis was merely misquoted?

Email: luis.gomez@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @RunGomez

Read The Conversation on Flipboard.
Reports that officials in the Trump administration are preparing to scrap fuel efficiency standards aimed at making cars burn less gas in The Washington Post and other outlets have prompted yet another warning shot from California leaders who say they will fight it.

On Twitter, state Attorney General Xavier Becerra said he is prepared to take whatever action or otherwise, that we must protect our economy, our environment, and the public health of people of California.

Details of how the Environmental Protection Agency under President Donald Trump will roll back the Obama-era emission standards are expected to be revealed in the coming days, The New York Times reported.

EPA secretary Scott Pruitt is a known climate change skeptic and has publicly questioned the science showing that greenhouse gases contribute to global warming.

But the threat of rolling back those emission standards  federal efforts to fight climate change by making automakers manufacture more fuel-efficient cars  has displeased environmental groups and even automakers like Ford Motors.

Heres why it is such a big deal and why this could spell yet another battle between California and the Trump administration:

How will the EPA roll back fuel emission standards?

Details of these plans have not yet been made public, but sources have told The Post and The Times that the EPA is convinced that the fuel-efficiency standards are too high to be met.

Under the Obama-era standards, The Post reports, carmakers must produce cars and light trucks that can average more than 50 miles per gallon by 2025. Currently, 2018 models average 38.3 miles per gallon, the paper noted.

Why is California so concerned about this?

Over the years, a special waiver in the 1970 Clean Air Act has allowed California to set aggressive fuel-emission standards for carmakers and for other states to adopt them. At least 12 other states have borrowed Californias standards, per the Los Angeles Times. Automakers have also folded these standards into their production lines nationwide so as to avoid conflicting standards from one state to another.

The EPAs action could result in a courtroom clash that may force California to roll back its standards or even neutralize Californias ability to set its own standards. Becerra, the states attorney general, told The New York Times in an interview that California would not give up its approach without a legal fight.

Were going to defend first and foremost existing federal greenhouse gas standards, he said. Were defending them because theyre good for the entire nation. No one should think its easy to undo something thats been not just good for the country, but good for the planet.

What would the local impact be?

Cities like San Diego have built federal and California greenhouse gas emission goals into their own climate programs.

San Diegos Climate Action Plan, adopted in 2016, is a set of policies that aims to cut greenhouse emissions in half and make all electricity used in the city come from renewable sources by 2035. The success of the plan, however, relies heavily on the implementation of federal and state standards.

Without those federal and state standards, cities like San Diego could be left scrambling to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, as explained by two local journalists on Twitter.

One UCLA environmental law professor, Ann Carlson, told the Los Angeles Times that the federal standards are a critical factor in encouraging carmakers to embrace a future with less emissions. If the EPA scraps those standards, California is vowing to fight. And Carlson said this is going to be a big legal battle.

Email: luis.gomez@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @RunGomez

Read The Conversation on Flipboard.
Top EDM and DJ shows coming to San Diego this month include What So Not, Brody Jenner, Steve Aoki and TJR.

4.6: Borgore

Israeli DJ, Buygore Records boss and serious workaholic Borgore (aka Asaf Borger) has already released five singles this year  Coco Puffs, Svddengore with Svdden Death, Freak (feat. Watson) with Gentlemens Club, B.Y.D. with Benda, and Reasons (feat. GG Magree) with Axel Boy.

@ OMNIA, omniaclubs.com/san-diego

4.6: Umek

Slovenian composer and techno DJ Umek (aka Uros Umek) has remixed Parov Stelar and was named Best Tech/House Artist at the International Dance Music Awards in 2014. This year, Umek has already released a pair of two-song singles, Quest Chain and Certain Trace.

@ Spin Nightclub, spinnightclub.com

Umek (Luka Kase)

4.7: What So Not

Once a duo with EDM superstar Flume, What So Not is now the solo project of Australian producer Emoh Instead (aka Chris Emerson). What So Not released his 12-song, full-length debut, Not All The Beautiful Things, last month. It features collaborations with Skrillex, Toto, San Holo, SLUMBERJACK, and more.

@ Observatory North Park, observatorysd.com

What So Not. (Luke Eblen)

4.7: Coast Club

Making noise under the moniker WeAreTreo for years, Trevor Shawn, Ace Future and Spencer Regan remixed Drakes Fake Love and Twenty One Pilots Ride as self-proclaimed surfers by day, DJs by night. But with Regan out, Shawn and Future are taking the L.A.-based duo to the next level as Coast Club.

@ OMNIA, omniaclubs.com/san-diego

Coast Club. (Courtesy photo)

4.7: Brody Jenner

Former step-brother to the four Kardashian children, and half-brother to Kendall and Kylie Jenner, reality TV star Brody Jenner also likes to DJ. After appearing on, and producing, shows like The Hills, The Princes of Malibu, Keeping Up with the Kardashians, Sex with Brody, and Bromance, the 34-year-old occasionally likes to get behind the decks. See how you can win a hotel package and VIP table to his show here.

@ Sunburn / Hard Rock, sunburnpool.com

Brody Jenner. (Courtesy photo)

4.12: 2manydjs

Many know the Dewaele Brothers (David and Stephen) as Soulwax  a Belgian band that at one time also included Stefaan Van Leuven. And while Soulwax released their first album in over a decade last year, the sibling pair more often get behind the decks to perform as 2manydjs.

@ Bang Bang, bangbangsd.com

4.13: Walshy Fire

Walshy Fire, aka Jamaican DJ and MC Leighton Walsh, is best known as part of the Diplo-led group Major Lazer. In collaboration with L.A.-based reggae troupe The Expanders, Walsh released the 8-song collection Top Shelf Riddim last month.

@ Parq, parqsd.com

Walshy Fire. (Courtesy photo)

4.13: Bingo Players

Dutch DJ/producer Maarten Hoogstraten continues on under the moniker he once shared with collaborator/co-founder of Hysteria Records, Paul Baumer. Since Baumers death in 2013, Hoogstraten has released a handful of singles and remixed the likes of Gorgon City and Hardwell. He appears as part of the duos 10th Anniversary tour.

@ OMNIA, omniaclubs.com/san-diego

4.20: Dubloadz

Dubloadz, aka DJ/producer Dave Nardolilli, released his debut full length, Dubloadz and the 9000 Ghosts, last year. It features collaborations with Sullivan King, Virtual Riot, Anuka, and more. New single, Salt, is out now.

@ Bassmnt, bassmntsd.com

Dubloadz. (Courtesy photo)

4.21: Rich The Kid

Hes been releasing mixtapes since 2013, but Queens rapper Rich The Kid (aka Dimitri Roger) didnt sign with Interscope Records until last year. So far in 2018, the 25-year-old producer and songwriter has already guested on 10 singles and just released his debut studio album, The World Is Yours. It features guest appearances from Kendrick Lamar, Rick Ross, Khalid, Lil Wayne, and more.

@ Bassmnt, bassmntsd.com

Rich The Kid. (Courtesy photo)

4.21: Chris Liebing

German techno-house DJ Chris Liebing is also a radio host and the founder of the CLR record label. Liebing regularly posts new music to his SoundCloud page.

@ Bang Bang, bangbangsd.com

Chris Liebing. (Courtesy photo)

4.27: MUST DIE! x LAXX

Texas-born, Seattle based DJ and producer MUST DIE! (aka Lee Bates) has remixed fellow colleagues from Datsik and Borgore to Habstrakt and Flux Pavilion, as well as releasing 16 EPs and albums of his own. He shares the stage with Oxford-grad LAXX (aka James Churchill) who released his 13-song Fake Friends album in February.

@ Bassmnt, bassmntsd.com

MUST DIE! x LAXX. (Courtesy photo)

4.27: Steve Aoki

Last in San Diego to play outdoors at the Del Mar Racetrack, Dim Maks fearless leader returns to the familiar confines of Omnia. The Grammy-nominated DJ/producer spent 2017 collaborating with everyone from Gucci Mane, Migos and 2 Chainz, to Yellow Claw, DVBBS and One Directions Louis Tomlinson. This year, Aoki has released two singles  Azukita with Daddy Yankee, Paly-N-Skillz and Elvis Crespo, as well as Plur Genocide (feat. Lockdown) with Carnage.

@ OMNIA, omniaclubs.com/san-diego

Steve Aoki. (Courtesy photo)

4.28: TJR

TJR, aka DJ/producer Thomas Joseph Rozdilsky, has worked with the likes of Dillion Francis, Pitbull, Cardi B, GTA, and Savage, and remixed Armand van Helden, Jason Derulo, DJ Snake and others. He also released three singles last year  Time To Jack, Rollin and Higher State with Chris Bushnell.

@ Parq, parqsd.com
Performances taking the stage this April in San Diego include The Great Gatsby, My Heart in a Suitcase, An Evening With Groucho and South Pacific.

4.3-22: Soul Doctor

The Broadway musical about a real-life folk-singin rabbi tunes up for the launch of an international tour here.

Lyceum Theatre, 79 Horton Plaza, downtown, 619.544.1000, lyceumevents.org

4.6-5.6: The Wanderers

The connections between two very different couples  one a duo of young Orthodox Jews, the other a pair of high-powered celebrities  drive Anna Zieglers world-premiere play.

Old Globe, Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre, Balboa Park, 619.234.5623, theoldglobe.org

4.6-5.20: Noises Off

Its game on as Lambs Players stages Michael Frayns whirlwind of a comedy  a piece that may be the ultimate backstage farce.

Lambs Players Theatre, 1142 Orange Ave., Coronado, 619.437.6000, lambsplayers.org

4.6-8: The Great Gatsby

Septime Webres ballet adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgeralds classic novel of the 1920s returns for an encore performance.

California Ballet at the Civic Theatre, 1100 Third Ave., downtown, 619.570.1100, californiaballet.org

4.10: My Heart in a Suitcase

Set in 1938 Germany, the educational touring play looks at one familys wrenching decision as the Nazi menace looms.

California Center for the Arts, Escondido, 340 N. Escondido Blvd., Escondido, 800.988.4253, artcenter.org

My Heart in a Suitcase. (ArtsPower National Touring Theat / )

4.11-5.6: How the Other Half Loves

That Brit wit Alan Ayckbourn weaves together a breathless comedy of three married couples navigating misunderstandings, infidelity and (much) more.

North Coast Rep, 987 Lomas Santa Fe Drive, Solana Beach, 858.481.1055, northcoastrep.org

How the Other Half Loves. (Aaron Rumley / )

4.23: Living Will: The Legacy of William Shakespeare

Author and language ace Richard Lederer delves into Shakespeares plays and sonnets in a celebration of the Bards birthday.

New Village Arts Theatre, 2787 State St., Carlsbad, 760.433.3245, newvillagearts.org

4.23-24: An Evening With Groucho

The man, the music, the mustache: Frank Ferrante steps into Groucho Marxs shoes for storytelling, jokes and even some singing.

North Coast Rep, 987 Lomas Santa Fe Drive, Solana Beach, 858.481.1055, northcoastrep.org

4.27-5-27: South Pacific

Its a fresh go-round for the Rodgers & Hammerstein classic, which introduced such standards as Bali Hai and Some Enchanted Evening.

San Diego Musical Theatre, Horton Grand Theatre, 444 Fourth Ave., downtown, 858.560.5740, sdmt.org

4.28: Dance Gallery

San Diego Ballet artistic chief Javier Velasco directs a mix of works from emerging choreographers in this spring showcase.

San Diego Ballet, White Box Live Arts, 2590 Truxtun Road, No. 205, Liberty Station, 619.294.7378, sandiegoballet.org
Say hello to a new brew in town.

Know: In mid-April, San Diegos newest brewery moves into one of the citys oldest brewing locations. The brick Mission Revival-style building, built for Mission Brewery (1913-1918), was recently occupied by Acoustic Ales (2013-2018).

So?: Latchkey aims to satisfy fans of quality easy-drinkers. Our beer sweet spot is 4 to 7 percent, in terms of alcohol by volume, said co-founder Matt West. Expect lagers, a kolsch, pale ales, an IPA and a porter.

Hey, bro: West is partnering with a brother-in-law, Gerald Dollente, a homebrewer and former Ballast Point employee.

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Oh, no: While a stately landmark, Latchkeys new home has old building issues: narrow passages, an awkward loading dock, a two-story layout. We definitely know what we are getting into it, West said. Its very quirky.

Latchkey Brewing, 1795 Hancock St., Mission Hills, latchkeybrew.com

Burning Beard Brewing Company in El Cajon. (Rick Nocon / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Thirst quenching

A local beer to spend some time with

Beer: Normcore Pils

From: Burning Beard Brewing Company

Why: On a bright April day, whats better than a bright pilsner? Normcore may be the regions best Czech-style pils  clean, light-bodied and refreshing.

Geeking out: 5.5% ABV; 35 international bittering units; German malts; Czech hops.

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Burning Beard Brewing Company, 785 Vernon Way, El Cajon

619.456.9185, burningbeardbrewing.com
General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) Central Committee Nguyen Phu Trong meets Esteban Lazo Hernandez, President of the National Assembly of the People's Power of Cuba on March 29 CPV General Secretary of Nguyen Phu Trong is paying a State visit to Cuba from March 28 to 31 Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong visits a computer lab of Vo Thi Thang Elementary School in Havana on March 29. The lab, his gift to the school, is equipped with 30 computer sets. Founded in 1968, the school was named after the Vietnamese heroine in the anti-war campaign Party chief Nguyen Phu Trong delivers a remark before teachers and students at Vo Thi Thang Elementary School in Havana on March 29 Party chief Nguyen Phu Trong is greeted by students of Vo Thi Thang Elementary School in Havana on March 29 Party chief Nguyen Phu Trong is greeted by students of Vo Thi Thang Elementary School in Havana on March 29

Party chief Nguyen Phu Trong visits Vo Thi Thang Elementary School in Havana on March 29



Party chief Nguyen Phu Trong visits the University of Havana on March 29



Rector of the University of Havana Gustavo Cobreiro Suarez awards Party chief Nguyen Phu Trong with the Doctor Honoris Causa title in political science

Party chief Nguyen Phu Trong visits the University of Havana on March 29



Party chief delivers a speech at the University of Havana on March 29



Party chief Nguyen Phu Trong attends the closing ceremony of a meeting between young Vietnamese and Cuban people. At this event, and presents the Friendship Order to former Cuban military experts


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Theresa Helburn, of the prestigious Theatre Guild group, was seeking just $35,000 more to stage a musical version of Lynn Riggss Green Grow the Lilacs in 1942, but it was difficult to convince investors to fund the project. More than 50 people turned her down, possibly because of the groups failed production of the straight play in 1931. Helburn and her partner Lawrence Langner drummed up the necessary support, however, and opened the musical Away We Go for previews in New Haven, Connecticut.

After some changes to Away We Go  songs were shuffled and unruly onstage pigeons were nixed  the musical in its final form, Oklahoma!, opened 75 years ago on Broadway. The naysayers of the New York theater crowd didnt just underestimate the shows potential; they passed up the opportunity to take part in the first Broadway musical smash hit.

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Public interest in the show grew exponentially after its Broadway premiere, leading one radio announcer to quip, Look at that play Oklahoma! A man died last week and left his place in line to his wife. If she dies before she gets her tickets, her place in line goes to an uncle in Baltimore. Reportedly, the $4.80 tickets were going for as much as $50 on the street.

The folksy musical was the first collaboration between composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II. It was also among the first ever musicals, as we typically know them today. Oklahoma! told an ambitious story coherently using lyrics, dance, dialogue, and music  a form considered a book musical.

Rodgers and Hammerstein would go on to rule Broadway in the postwar years with their saccharine portrayals of romance and morality like South Pacific, The King and I, and The Sound of Music. Stephen Holden wrote of the duo, in The New York Times: The America of Rodgers and Hammerstein  where the good guys won, love conquered all and progress was taken for granted  was itself a dream, a golden bubble of postwar hope and confidence that evaporated more than it burst. Before it dissipated, however, the Rodgers and Hammerstein machine altered musical theater, and perhaps all music, for good.
Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/29/2018 -- Africa Small Hydropower Market: Overview



Small hydropower (<10 MW) as compared to hydropower in Africa is an increasingly attractive solution in the countries of Africa. Renewable energy is developing at a rapid pace and hydropower remains the most explored and primary source of clean energy. Small hydropower converts the energy of the flowing water into electricity by using a turbine coupled to a generator. It has high capacity utilization and plant availability factor which results in maximum availability of plant for generation. Majorly, the run of river and already existing water infrastructure are considered which contributes to the generation of small hydro plants. Hydroelectric energy is the cleanest form of renewable generation as it does not releases any harmful gases, carbon dioxide and other pollutant which directly or indirectly affects the environment. The plants are generally off grid and is widely used in rural areas where there is no electricity supply. It has no fuel cost and low operational and maintenance cost makes it one of the cheapest source of energy. Small hydro plants has the efficiency over 90% which makes it most efficient and favorable energy among the other renewable sources.



The lifespan of small hydropower plants are more as compared to larger hydropower plants. Generally the life span is up-to 50 years and this make it a reliable and economical source of energy conversion. Small hydro has high capacity utilization factor up to 50% which results in higher output as compared to wind and solar power which accounts for 25% and 20% respectively. Small hydro plant can be operated continuously at any temperature and wind condition which makes it economical and flexible.



Request for sample copy of report: https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/979329



Africa Small Hydropower Market: Scope of the Study



In order to compile the research report, we conducted in-depth interviews and discussions with a number of key industry participants and opinion leaders. Combination of top down and bottom up approach has been used to estimate market size. Some of the underlying estimation factors such as the number of small hydro plants, potential sites, and capacities (installed and potential) have also been measured. Impact of increasing installation of renewable energy capacity was also considered while drawing trends and forecasts for each regional market. Primary research represented the bulk of research efforts, supplemented by extensive secondary research. We reviewed key players' product literature, annual reports, press releases, and relevant documents for competitive analysis and market understanding. Secondary research includes a search of recent trade, technical writing, Internet sources, and statistical data from government websites, trade associations and agencies. This has proven to be the most reliable, effective, and successful approach for obtaining precise market data, capturing industry participants' insights, and recognizing business opportunities.



Secondary research sources that are typically referred to include, but are not limited to company websites, annual reports, financial reports, broker reports, investor presentations, SEC filings, Smallhydroworld.org, hydroworld.com, small-hydro.com, World Bank Reports and International Energy Agency (IEA), World Small Hydropower Development, United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), Industrial Center on Small Hydropower Plants (ICSHP), Ministry of Water Resources (MWR), China and regulatory databases such as ICIS, Hoover's, oneSOURCE, Factiva and Bloomberg, national government documents, statistical databases, market reports, news articles, press releases and webcasts specific to companies operating in the small hydropower market.



Africa Small Hydropower Market: Competitive Analysis



We conduct primary interviews on an ongoing basis with industry participants and commentators to validate data and analysis. These help validate and strengthen secondary research findings. These also help develop the analysis team's expertise and market understanding.



Request for TOC of this report: https://www.marketresearchreports.biz/reports/979329/small-hydropower-africa-industry-market-research-reports/toc



The report comprises profiles of major companies operating in the African Small Hydropower Market. Key players in the Small Hydropower Market are and not limited to Mecamidi, Africa Infrastructure Investment Managers (AIIM), Eco Power Holdings, Artelia, Lesotho Electricity Company, Agder Energi AS, Ontario Power Generation, Inc., Voith GmbH, Alstom SA, Andritz, Siemens AG, Eskom Holdings, BC Hydro and Power Authority, StatKraft AS, RusHydro PJSC, Fortum OYJ, ZESCO Ltd., Mozambique Electricity Company. Market players have been profiled in terms of attributes such as company overview, financial overview, business strategies, and recent developments.



The Small Hydropower Market for Africa has been segmented as follows:



Africa Small Hydropower Market: Country Analysis



Ghana

Nigeria

Tanzania

South Africa

Morocco

Zambia

Rest of Africa
Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/29/2018 -- Global Chillers Market: Overview



Chillers are refrigeration devices used to cool equipment, raw materials, or fluid streams in industrial applications, as well as food and beverages in residential and commercial applications. The most important attributes of chillers are their durability, efficiency, and low environmental impact. The global market for chillers has been driven in recent years by the rapid spread of industrialization across the world and the booming chemicals and food and beverage industries.



The report examines the global chillers market and presents forecasts regarding its development from 2016 to 2024. The historical trajectory exhibited by the chillers market before 2016 has also been scrutinized in the report in order to provide concrete context to the analysis of the market's drivers and restraints. The key segments of the global chillers market are examined in the report to provide a granular overview of the market, and major companies operating in the market have been profiled to shed light on the competitive dynamics of the market. The comprehensive market study will allow market participants to formulate winning strategies in the coming years.



Download PDF Brochure @ https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=11942



The major product types in the global chillers market are screw, scroll, reciprocating, absorption, and centrifugal chillers. Major applications of chillers include but are not limited to chemicals, plastics, petrochemicals, food and beverage, rubber, and medical.



Global Chillers Market: Drivers and Restraints



The increasing need for cooling equipment in industrial units is a prime driver of the global chillers market. The industrial sector in developing countries such as China, India, Indonesia, South Korea, Thailand, Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico has shown an exemplary rate of growth in the last few decades, expanding in line with the growing GDP of these countries. This has driven the demand for various ancillary industries, including the chillers industry.



Another major driver for the global chillers market is the increasing consumption of frozen food. In contrast to the traditional way of cooking elaborate meals, the modern consumer is eager to cut down the time required to prepare a meal. As a result, demand for frozen food has grown at strong rates in various parts of the world thus driving the global chillers market. The increasing number of women in the corporate and industrial sectors has also complemented this phenomenon, since women have traditionally held the role of the homemaker.



Read Report Overview @ https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/chillers-market.html



The increasingly stringent environmental regulations in various parts of the world are driving innovation in the global chillers market. Several chemicals used in the refrigeration process have the potential to damage the environment, the result of which has been a spate of new, ecologically viable chillers from major players around the world.



On the other hand, the major restraint on the global chillers market is the increase in the production cost brought about by increasing raw material prices.



Global Chillers Market: Geographical Overview



Asia Pacific is the largest regional market for chillers. The demand for chillers in this region is driven by the increasing demand from the plastics and petrochemicals industries. The expanding industrial sector in developing Southeast Asian countries is likely to add to the demand for chillers in the coming years.



China is already a major petrochemicals industry hub, while both India and China have flourishing manufacturing sectors that receive strong support from the respective governments. This is likely to boost the demand for chillers in Asia Pacific in the coming years. The Middle East and Africa is another developing region likely to offer a strong sales outlet for the global chillers market in the coming years.



The major players in the global chillers market are Johnson Controls, Carrier Corporation, Daikin Industries, Smardt Chiller Group, Climaveneta S.p.A., Trane Inc., and Thermax Inc.
Etna, OH -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/30/2018 -- Floormat.com has announced that it will now be calculating all shipping charges using a new weight based matrix. According to the company's website, the shipping charges will now be dependent on the weight of the product and the level of chosen service.



The Ohio mat manufacturer and vendor Floormat.com will now be using a new weight based matrix to calculate all shipping charges. According to information shared in the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) section on the company's website, the new algorithm will only be using the weight of the purchased product and the level or type of service chosen to calculate the shipping or freight charges. But packages weighing over 150 lbs. and/or over 108" in length and/or over 165" combined size (L X W X H) must be shipped using a freight carrier. The cost of freight to use a freight carrier will be incurred by the customer and paid directly to Floormat.com.



Matting customers shopping from Ohio-based matting company Floormat.com will now incur fair charges thanks to the firm's newly adopted weight based matrix. The company has announced that all charges will now be dependent on only the weight of the item and the level of chosen service. Currently, the matting firm is offering free shipping for all orders over $99 to shipping addresses located within the United States. This excludes Hawaii, Alaska, US territories and principalities, and all foreign countries. According to the free shipping terms & conditions, purchases may be combined with multiple products to reach the $99.00, but must be placed at the same time as one order. However, all bulky purchases that require shipping using a freight carrier are exempted from this offer. All orders $99.99 and under will be charged a flat freight rate of $14.95.



Further company details can be found at https://plus.google.com/u/0/109739922304473426835.



About Floormat.com

Floormat.com is a mat manufacturer and supplier from Etna, Ohio. The company was established almost seven decades ago in 1951. The company produces its own matting products and it also resells matting solutions from first-rate brands like Web Trax, Grip Rock, Super G, Classic Impressions, Waterhog, Legacy, Glo Brite, Brite Trac, Wayfarer, and Hog Heaven, among many others. According to its Testimonials webpage, Floormat.com has handled the matting accounts of many established firms and organizations including the Pet Wellness Clinic/The Pet Hotel; the Parks and Recreation department, City of Tallmadge; Westfield Montgomery; Housekeeping, Renaissance, Marriott International; L. R. Development Company of Chicago, Illinois; the Anatomic Pathology department; The Cleveland Clinic; and the Great Lakes Mall among many others.



The floor matting company's reviews may be perused at https://www.google.com/maps/place/Floormat.com/@39.9625489,-82.7779399,12z/data=!4m17!1m11!4m10!1m3!2m2!1d-82.7092754!2d39.9674169!1m5!1m1!1s0x88386f0c0254bca9:0xfb4775168abb8a76!2m2!1d-82.7079!2d39.96257!3m4!1s0x88386f0c0254bca9:0xfb4775168abb8a76!8m2!3d39.96257!4d-82.7079.



Contact:

Nino Cervi

Company: Floormat.com

Address: 101 Progressive Drive, Etna, Ohio 43062

Phone: 800-876-1312

Fax: 440-951-1315

Email: info@floormat.com

Website: https://www.floormat.com
Deerfield Beach, FL -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/30/2018 -- An up-to-date research has been disclosed by QY Research Group highlighting the Global and United States Medical Irrigators segment. The report deep dives into the dynamics of Global and United States Medical Irrigators providing useful and unique insights. The information is shared in a precise and structured manner, giving executives and leaders an accurate picture of the upcoming market movement. The document utilizes a number of monographs, pie charts and bar-graphs to provide data which can be used to derive the latest trends in the industry. The report is also divided according to usage wherever applicable, including (but not limited to) FnB, FMCG, Minerals, Electronics, Pharma, Polymers etc. All these details are available for all major countries and associations  APCA, EMEA, United States. Other locations can be included in the report on demand.



The document includes present industry magnitude of Global and United States Medical Irrigators and the movement since past 5-10 years. Moreover, the list of major companies/competitors is also present including Medela, WEINMANN Emergency Medical Technology, AliMed, DeVilbiss Healthcare, Invacare, Precision Medical, BPR Swiss, 4tek, BGS GENERAL . The competition data allows users to gauge their current position against the market and take corrective measures to increase or maintain their share holds. Furthermore, details regarding the supply chain, manufacturers, distributors are also included in the report.



Get FREE Sample Copy of Report Here: https://www.qyresearchgroup.com/market-analysis/global-and-united-states-medical-irrigators-market-2017.html#request-sample



Research Focused on Global and United States Medical Irrigators Market 2018



The document contains a comprehensive description of all the firms in question. The necessary details for the companies in Global and United States Medical Irrigators , such as revenue, % share, supplier information, images of products are provided as well. Some of the known key players in the market are Medela, WEINMANN Emergency Medical Technology, AliMed, DeVilbiss Healthcare, Invacare, Precision Medical, BPR Swiss, 4tek, BGS GENERAL . It is expected that the industry will continue to develop in a swift manner with new competition trying to capture the share of the pie. Given the industry regulations, international government policies, state-of-the-art innovations  the competition would be fierce for all the participants.



The fragmentation is provided on the basis of Coordinate Measuring Machine (CMM) , Optical Digitizer and Scanner (ODS) , Video Measuring Machine (VMM) . Additionally, the application wise division provides the data according to



,,. Anticipated industry growth details are provided along with the CAGR where applicable.



Get customization & check discount @ https://www.qyresearchgroup.com/market-analysis/global-and-united-states-medical-irrigators-market-2017.html#inquiry-for-buying



The report also demonstrates region wise data



Key points of the Global and United States Medical Irrigators Market report:

Proper market environment investigation

Concrete valuation market projection

Multi-level Industry subdivision

Upcoming technological advancements in market

Evolving local segments and regional markets

Past, current, and future magnitude of the market according to net worth and total capacity

Market shares of key competitors

Expert advice for executives to make an impact in the industry



Following queries are addressed in the document  Global and United States Medical Irrigators Market 2018

What is the expected industry size of Global and United States Medical Irrigators Market in 2022?

Expected rate of growth to reach the potential?

What are the major market trends?

Major drivers for Global and United States Medical Irrigators Market?

Prominent distributors/suppliers in Global and United States Medical Irrigators Market?

Upcoming challenges for Global and United States Medical Irrigators Market?



And More....



About QYResearch :

QYResearch Group is a single destination for all the industry, company and country reports. QYResearch Group also carries the capability to assist you with your customized market research requirements including in-depth market surveys, primary interviews, competitive landscaping, and company profiles. We feature large repository of latest industry reports, leading and niche company profiles, and market statistics. QYResearch Group is the comprehensive collection of market intelligence products and services available on air.



Contact US:

Joel John

3422 SW 15 Street, Suit #8138,

Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442,

United States

Tel: +1-386-310-3803

Web: http://www.qyresearchgroup.com

Email: sales@qyresearchgroup.com
Deerfield Beach, FL -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/30/2018 -- An up-to-date research has been disclosed by QY Research Group highlighting the Global and United States Non-vascular Stents segment. The report deep dives into the dynamics of Global and United States Non-vascular Stents providing useful and unique insights. The information is shared in a precise and structured manner, giving executives and leaders an accurate picture of the upcoming market movement. The document utilizes a number of monographs, pie charts and bar-graphs to provide data which can be used to derive the latest trends in the industry. The report is also divided according to usage wherever applicable, including (but not limited to) FnB, FMCG, Minerals, Electronics, Pharma, Polymers etc. All these details are available for all major countries and associations  APCA, EMEA, United States. Other locations can be included in the report on demand.



The document includes present industry magnitude of Global and United States Non-vascular Stents and the movement since past 5-10 years. Moreover, the list of major companies/competitors is also present including Boston Scientific Corporation, Cook Group Incorporated, C.R. Bard Inc., Abbott Laboratories, Olympus Corporation, CONMED Corporation . The competition data allows users to gauge their current position against the market and take corrective measures to increase or maintain their share holds. Furthermore, details regarding the supply chain, manufacturers, distributors are also included in the report.



Get FREE Sample Copy of Report Here: https://www.qyresearchgroup.com/market-analysis/global-and-united-states-non-vascular-stents-market.html#request-sample



Research Focused on Global and United States Non-vascular Stents Market 2018



The document contains a comprehensive description of all the firms in question. The necessary details for the companies in Global and United States Non-vascular Stents , such as revenue, % share, supplier information, images of products are provided as well. Some of the known key players in the market are Boston Scientific Corporation, Cook Group Incorporated, C.R. Bard Inc., Abbott Laboratories, Olympus Corporation, CONMED Corporation . It is expected that the industry will continue to develop in a swift manner with new competition trying to capture the share of the pie. Given the industry regulations, international government policies, state-of-the-art innovations  the competition would be fierce for all the participants.



The fragmentation is provided on the basis of Coordinate Measuring Machine (CMM) , Optical Digitizer and Scanner (ODS) , Video Measuring Machine (VMM) . Additionally, the application wise division provides the data according to



,,. Anticipated industry growth details are provided along with the CAGR where applicable.



Get customization & check discount @ https://www.qyresearchgroup.com/market-analysis/global-and-united-states-non-vascular-stents-market.html#inquiry-for-buying



The report also demonstrates region wise data



Key points of the Global and United States Non-vascular Stents Market report:

Proper market environment investigation

Concrete valuation market projection

Multi-level Industry subdivision

Upcoming technological advancements in market

Evolving local segments and regional markets

Past, current, and future magnitude of the market according to net worth and total capacity

Market shares of key competitors

Expert advice for executives to make an impact in the industry



Following queries are addressed in the document  Global and United States Non-vascular Stents Market 2018

What is the expected industry size of Global and United States Non-vascular Stents Market in 2022?

Expected rate of growth to reach the potential?

What are the major market trends?

Major drivers for Global and United States Non-vascular Stents Market?

Prominent distributors/suppliers in Global and United States Non-vascular Stents Market?

Upcoming challenges for Global and United States Non-vascular Stents Market?



And More....



About QYResearch :

QYResearch Group is a single destination for all the industry, company and country reports. QYResearch Group also carries the capability to assist you with your customized market research requirements including in-depth market surveys, primary interviews, competitive landscaping, and company profiles. We feature large repository of latest industry reports, leading and niche company profiles, and market statistics. QYResearch Group is the comprehensive collection of market intelligence products and services available on air.



Contact US:

Joel John

3422 SW 15 Street, Suit #8138,

Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442,

United States

Tel: +1-386-310-3803

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Vietnam, Cuba issue joint statement

Vietnam and Cuba have issued a joint statement on the occasion of the State visit to Cuba by General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) Central Committee Nguyen Phu Trong from March 28-31.









The talks between General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam Central Committee Nguyen Phu Trong and First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) Central Committee and President of the Council of State and the Council of Ministers of Cuba General Raul Castro Ruz







The visit is made at the invitation of First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) Central Committee and President of the Council of State and the Council of Ministers of Cuba General Raul Castro Ruz, the joint statement said.



During his stay in Cuba, Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong held talks with First Secretary of the PCC Central Committee and President of the Council of State and the Council of Ministers of Cuba General Raul Castro Ruz. He met with Second Secretary of the PCC Central Committee Jose Ramon Machado Ventura, Politburo member and President of the Cuban National Assembly Esteban Lazo Hernandez, and Politburo member and First Vice President of the Cuban Council of State and the Council of Ministers Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez.



Vietnamese and Cuban leaders shared their views that the special friendship and solidarity between Vietnam and Cuba is a symbol of era and an invaluable asset of the Parties and people of the two countries.



They affirmed their resolve to carry forward the bilateral friendship which was fostered by President Ho Chi Minh and Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro.



The leaders agreed on the need to expand and deepen the friendship and comprehensive cooperation between the two countries, thus actively contributing to their national construction and defence, and to maintaining peace, stability, and development in the region and the world.



During the talks, they expressed their joy at the flourishing bilateral relations between the two nations, and affirmed their determination to turn the special relations into a new development period, on the basis of political trust.



They stressed that the two sides should work closely to improve the efficiency of bilateral economic, trade and investment cooperation, while comparing their notes on international and regional issues of common concern.



The Vietnamese Party Chief congratulated Cuba on its recent successful local and national assembly elections, expressing his belief that Cuba will continue implementing successfully the process of updating the socialism economic model, opening a new development stage of the process to build a sovereign, independent, socialist, democratic, prosperous and sustainable state.



He reiterated Vietnams consistent stance on supporting Cubas struggle for immediate and unconditional removal of economic, trade and financial sanctions against the country, and efforts to normalise the Cuba-US relations on the basis of equality, and respect for sovereignty, independence and political institutions of each country.



Vietnam appreciated the prestige and role of Cuba in the Latin American and Caribbean regions, and in the international arena as well, he stated.



First Secretary of the PCC Central Committee and President of the Councils of State and the Council of Ministers of Cuba Raul Castro congratulated Vietnam on its prominent achievements in its Doi moi (renewal) process initiated by the CPV.



He spoke highly of Vietnams peaceful foreign policy and international prestige; its efforts to protect independence and sovereignty, and to promote international integration; and the countrys contributions to peace, stability, cooperation and development in the Southeast Asia and Asia-Pacific regions, and in the world, affirming that Cuba supports and believes that Vietnam will continue obtaining greater achievements in the coming time.



The two leaders agreed that the two sides should maintain regularly meetings at all levels, as well as those to discuss and share experience related to state leadership, socio-economic management, and Party building.



The two sides stressed the importance of bilateral cooperation mechanisms like the exchange and cooperation agreement between the CPV and the PCC, the two Parties theoretical workshops, the Inter-governmental Committee on economic, scientific and technical cooperation, and the political consultation between the two foreign ministries. They expressed their resolve to enhance the effectiveness of these mechanisms.



General Secretary Trong and President Raul Castro emphasised the significance of enhancing economic partnership. They highly valued the two sides finalisation of the negotiation on a new trade agreement, considering this a basis for them to continue expanding economic and trade ties. Cuba also supports the increase of Vietnams investment in the country.



The two sides will consider their potential to boost cooperation in priority fields such as energy, telecommunication, tourism, construction, healthcare services, industry, agriculture, pharmaceutical, biotechnology, transport, and other spheres.



Raul Castro thanked the Vietnamese Party, State and Government for freeing the Cuban Government from its debt to the Vietnamese Government, describing this as an illustration of the two countries special relations.



The two leaders expressed their delight at the complete similarities in the countries stance on many international issues. They stressed that international disputes need to be resolved by peaceful means on the basis on international law and the UN Charter. They also underlined the necessity to respect the principles of independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity and the right to self-determination of countries, non-interference in other countries internal affairs, and no use of force or threat to use force.



They share the view that the increasingly tightened bilateral links will help expand Vietnams cooperation with Latin American and Caribbean nations and Cubas cooperation with Asian-Pacific countries.



They re-affirmed the validity of the fundamental principles of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), stressing that the targets and principles of NAM need to be thoroughly respected. They also applauded NAMs contributions to the protection of the principles of international law.



Both sides renewed the commitment to promoting international peace and security and disarmament, especially nuclear disarmament. They expressed their delight at the two countries signing of and participation in the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.



They also agreed to effectively implement the Sustainable Development Goals and the 2030 Agenda, continue actively contributing to climate change response efforts.



The two leaders agreed that their countries will continue supporting each other at international organisations and multilateral forums, especially at the UN. They will foster cooperation and mutual support within the framework of the International Meeting of Communist and Workers Parties, the Sao Paulo Forum, and other political and social forums.



In the statement, the two sides highly valued the success of the State visit to Cuba by General Secretary Trong, considering it a special event amid the 45th anniversary of the first visit to Vietnam by Fidel Castro Ruz, the only foreign leader visiting the newly liberated area in the 17th Parallel in Quang Tri province of Vietnam.



General Secretary Trong invited First Secretary and President Raul Castro to pay an official visit to Vietnam. The Cuban leader thanked and accepted the invitation with pleasure.-VNA
Valley Cottage, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/29/2018 -- Future Market Insights (FMI) recently announced the release of its report titled "Residential Water Treatment Devices: Middle East Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2015-2025." According to the report, the middle east residential water treatment devices market was valued at US$ 414.1 Mn in 2014 and is anticipated to reach US$ 855.3 Mn by 2025, expanding at a CAGR of 6.8% throughout the forecast period.



Total population of Middle East & Africa stood at approximately 346 million in 2015 and is expected to grow at the rate of 2% per annum. The Middle East & Africa is also witnessing mass migration of people to urban centers, thereby leading to increased demand for water purifiers in these centers. Economies of North Africa, on the other hand, have also been registering healthy growth rates over the last few years, which in turn is expected to fuel growth of the residential water treatment devices market in the overall MEA region. Due to large scale industrialization, quality of water in the GCC and Levant countries has deteriorated during the recent years. Water availability in these regions is estimated to be merely 1,200 m3/person/year, which is substantially lower than the global average of 7,000 m3/person/year. These factors are also prompting urban masses in Middle East countries to opt for water purifiers. Furthermore, the GCC region is witnessing entry of globally established water purifier brands, which has resulted into increased competition in the market. Increased competition, in turn, ensures marginal decline in prices of residential water treatment devices in the retail market in these regions. However, price decline has been largely reported on the reverse osmosis-based water purification devices only, the sales of which have witnessed an upsurge in recent years.



Request For Report Sample@ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/REP-EU-1299



Browse Full "Residential Water Treatment Devices: Middle East Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2015-2025"



Around 44% of the Middle East & Africa population lives in rural area and is not aware about the necessity and techniques to purify and filter water. Penetrating these markets may be a challenging task for the concerned market participants as most of the vendors would have to begin by creating awareness regarding water purifier and filters and the importance of these products.



Combination water purification system employs two different treatment technologies in one system. Players such as AquaPro and Kent have started offering RO+UV-based combination water purifiers in the GCC and Levant countries.



Geography-wise, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia dominated the GCC residential water treatment devices market in terms of value in 2014, accounting for more than one-third value share of the GCC residential water treatment devices market. On the other hand, Turkey dominated the Levant residential water treatment devices market in 2014, accounting for more than 40% value share of the overall market in the region. Furthermore, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is foreseen to expand at a relatively high CAGR during the forecast period and is expected to maintain its revenue share dominance till 2025 end. The governments in the Levant and GCC regions are investing and opening up to Foreign Direct Investments (FDIs) and promoting industrialization, which has been leading to an increase in the per capita income of the residing population in countries such as Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Countries such as the UAE, Qatar, Egypt and Jordan are expected to register significant Y-o-Y growth during the forecast period. Besides, these countries are projected to bestow more focus on their non-oil and manufacturing sectors in the coming years, which in turn is expected to encourage the water purifier and water filter manufacturers in these countries to go in for domestic production and enhance sales. Countries such as Bahrain, Iraq, Palestine and Syria are currently witnessing moderate growth in demand for residential water treatment devices, and the trend is expected to continue during the forecast period as well.



On the basis of filtration devices, the filtration faucet segment dominated the Middle East residential water treatment devices market in 2014 in terms of revenue, and is foreseen to expand at a significant CAGR during the forecast period. In terms of volume, the water tap faucet segment dominated the Middle East residential water treatment devices market in 2014, accounting for more than half volume share of the overall market.



Visit For TOC@ https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/askus/rep-eu-1299



On the basis of purification devices, the reverse osmosis segment dominated the Middle East residential water treatment devices market in 2014 in terms of revenue, and is foreseen to expand at a relatively high CAGR during the forecast period. In terms of volume, the gravity segment purification devices dominated the Middle East residential water treatment devices market in 2014, accounting for more than 40% volume share of the overall market.



Key market players covered in the report include KENT RO Systems Ltd., Eureka Forbes, Britannic Water Treatment Company W.L.L., Panasonic Corporation, LG Electronics, Pure It LLC, Waterlife, Coolpex Pure Water System, Ultra Tec Water Treatment LLC and AQUA PRO UAE. Most players in the market are engaged in various activities, such as mergers and acquisitions, increasing investments in technological and product developments, geographical expansion and brand building via strong marketing strategies, in order to sustain their position in the competitive market.
Pune, India -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/30/2018 -- Specialty Oxidants has grown considerably in the past year due to its wide usage of a bleaching agent. Market Research Future, a firm which specializes in market reports related to the Chemicals and Materials sector among others, recently published a report on this market. The industry is expected to demonstrate a high growth rate in terms of CAGR rate and will achieve high levels of revenue in the forecast period.



Their application in the electronics, paper industry and healthcare industry has led to the development of the Specialty Oxidants sector radically. Increase in level of personal consumer products demand has also prompted the growth of the sector. Higher level of disposable income availability has been a key factor in the development of this industry. Low costs of setting up manufacturing facilities has attracted increased consumer interest in the sector.



Industry Segments:

The industry for Global Specialty Oxidants Market is divided on the basis of type, application, end use industries, and regions. The types present in the industry are sodium chlorate, hydrogen peroxide, and others. The applications are segmented into defoliant, bleaching, propulsion, cleaning & extraction, and others. The bleaching based segment is the biggest segment as compared to other applications. The end use industries in the market are categorized into healthcare & personal care, wastewater & water treatment, food processing, pulp & paper, textile, and others. The regions for the industry is divided into Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America, North America, and the Middle East & Africa.



Get Sample of Report @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/4155



Detailed Regional Analysis:

Among the regions covered in the report, Asia Pacific market is projected to develop at a maximum CAGR during the forecast period owing to the escalating demand from end use industries which are pulp & paper, textile, among others. The demand for sector is expected to surge in developing nations such as India, Japan, China, and Bangladesh due to rising food processing and water treatment sector. Moreover, increasing demand for eco-friendly specialty oxidant such as hydrogen peroxide along with the increasing production volume of paper & packaging caused the growth of pulp & paper market and has further driven the demand for specialty oxidants in near future. Asia Pacific has considerably developed as the largest market for specialty oxidant followed by Europe and North America. European countries like Italy, Germany, and UK have established themselves as a prominent consumer market and are forecasted to witness steady growth over the forecast period.



Rising consumer spending and purchasing power with the expansion of paper & packaging in the European region is expected to raise the demand for specialty oxidant. Latin American countries such as Brazil, Chile, and Colombia are also anticipated to observe moderate growth with the introduction of new technologies and new business models. In the Middle East & Africa, the industry is expected to grow significantly due to an increasing number of water treatment projects including desalination plants in countries such as United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. Moreover, major players are exploring the Middle East market due to the amplified demand from wastewater & water treatment industry.



Global Competitive Analysis:

Businesses are aiming to seize a substantial share of the market segment as quick as possible. Experimentation with various advantage points is being seriously considered and implemented. The industry players in the segment are effectively utilizing their primary resources to initiate long lasting growth changes. A trend of volume-driven growth has been observed in the market of late with the development of different varieties of product types. The sector is undergoing considerable transformation which has accelerated the growth pace of the sector. The top longstanding growth opportunities for this sector can be harnessed by ensuring continuous process improvements and sustaining financial flexibility to invest in the optimal strategies.



Access Complete Report @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/specialty-oxidants-market-4155



The prominent players are Akzo Nobel N.V (the Netherlands), Aditya Birla Chemicals (India), Gujarat Alkalies and Chemicals Ltd (India), Evonik (Germany), Arkema Group (France) and Solvay (Belgium) among others in the specialty oxidant market.



Industry Updates:

Jan 2018 Dutch chemicals company AkzoNobel NV is holding talks with multiple parties over the potential sale of their specialty chemicals business. The consultations are part of the group's strategy, which were announced in April last year to separate their specialty chemicals operations as a new entity and focus on its paints and coatings business with "fit-for-purpose" structure and processes. The company is following a dual-track process for the spinoff, private sale or legal demerger.
Press Release

March 29, 2018 De Lima proposes clear guidelines on plea bargaining Opposition Senator Leila M. de Lima has filed a measure seeking to provide clear guidelines on plea bargaining agreement in criminal cases to avoid abuse of the process by the accused and ensure that it is done in the interest of' justice and of the public. In filing Senate Bill No. 1677, to be known as the Plea Bargaining Act of 2018, De Lima stressed the urgent need for the development of a formal policy to establish concrete guideposts in the implementation of plea bargaining. "Imbued with public interest, plea bargaining is ideally intended to primarily serve the best interest of justice, of the State and of its people, without unduly transgressing on the right of the accused to due process," she said. However, she added, "our own history proves witness to the unfortunate misuse and abuse of the process, often to the great disadvantage of the Filipino people." Section 2, Rule 116 of the Revised Rules of Criminal Procedure lays down the basis for plea bargaining as "a process whereby the accused and the prosecution enter into a reciprocally satisfactory disposition of the case subject to Court approval." De Lima cited 2017 reports where the camp of pork barrel scam mastermind Janet Lim-Napoles admitted that they were studying the possibility of filing a motion for plea bargain deal to lower Napoles' cases from plunder to a bailable offense. "Coupled with the present administration's softening stance on this principal accused, it will be a travesty of justice if a sweetheart deal is eventually reached which may lead to the weakening of the cases pending before the courts," she noted. De Lima, a lawyer by profession, explained that the setting of guidelines, including the imposition of sanction and violation on plea bargaining "ensures that the process does not become a mere vehicle for diluting the gravity of the offense charged against the accused... and/or for creating opportunities for graft and corrupt practices." Under SB 1677, De Lima noted that plea bargaining should be in accordance with several principles, such as its initial consideration and final terms should both primarily contribute to the benefit of the public, and shall not be pursued when it will only serve to tone down the seriousness of the offense charged against the accused. The Senator's measure likewise proposed that in all cases, the penalty for the lesser offense to which the accused may be allowed to plead guilty shall not be more than two degrees lower than the imposable penalty for the offense charged. De Lima also laid down rules when it comes to the time of availment of plea bargaining. She suggested that at arraignment, the accused may be allowed to plead guilty to a lesser offense with the consent of the offended party, the prosecutor, and any additional party should be deemed necessary. The accused may also be allowed to plead guilty to a lesser offense after withdrawing a plea of not guilty to the original offense charged during the course of trial and before the presentation of evidence of the defense, according to the former justice secretary. De Lima also proposed under SB No. 1677 that the prosecution may enter into plea bargaining with the accused during or after the presentation of the evidence of the prosecution, but before the presentation of the evidence of the defense, provided that the evidence of the prosecution is insufficient to prove the offense charged. She added that the prosecution may also enter into plea bargaining during the course of trial in cases involving the recovery by the offended party of property in crimes against property and those committed by public officers in relation to public funds and in cases of conspiracy where the accused cooperates by documentary object and testimonial evidence, among others. Under SB No. 1677, De Lima recommended that the plea bargaining agreement shall first be approved by required authorities listed in the measure if the penalty imposable for the offense charged is prision mayor, or six years and one day imprisonment, or higher, or a fine exceeding 1,200,000.00 pesos.
Press Release

March 30, 2018 Legarda Supports Resumption of Peace Talks Senator Loren Legarda today expressed her support for the resumption of the peace negotiations between the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP). Legarda made the statement in support of House Resolution No. 1803 authored by 61 congressmen urging President Rodrigo Duterte to resume the peace talks with the NDFP. "I support the resumption of the peace talks. Stalling the negotiations could only lead to more deaths and suffering and neither the government nor the NDFP will win," she stressed. "As someone who has been involved in facilitating releases of captives by the New People's Army (NPA) when I was a neophyte senator, I have seen the sincerity of all sides to this conflict and have witnessed the intense desire for peace," said Legarda, who actively participated in the safe releases of General Victor Obillo, Captain Eduardo Montealto, Sergeant Alpio Lozada, Major Roberto Bernal and then Major Noel Buan, among other military and police officials who were held captive by the NPA. The Senator said that both sides want to address issues affecting Filipinos such as poverty, landlessness, lack of employment and livelihood opportunities, underemployment, lack of access to housing services, affordable health care, education and other social services, corruption, environmental degradation, among many others. "We should resume the peace talks and continue discussions on the Comprehensive Agreement on Social and Economic Reforms (CASER), which is considered the 'heart and soul' of the peace talks," said Legarda. "We all desire a just and lasting peace. We may have different views on how to pursue national development, but I believe we can find our common ground," she added. Legarda, who chairs the Senate Committee on Finance, also assured that the national budget would support the NDFP's socio-economic reform agenda. "Many of the items in the NDFP's socio-economic reform agenda can already be addressed through existing laws and programs. In fact, the 2018 national budget has provided funding for free public tertiary education and additional funding for our state universities and colleges, free health care services in government hospitals, free irrigation services for small farmers, more budget for social welfare programs, and increased funding to support rural livelihoods and micro, small and medium enterprises. Our laws on environmental protection are already in place and, as author of most of these laws, I am glad that we are gradually seeing stricter enforcement," Legarda explained. "The Philippine Government and the NDFP should resume peace talks to come up with agreements that are acceptable to both parties and beneficial to the Filipino people. Our people have a huge stake in the peace negotiations, the success of which is a step towards a brighter future for generations to come, " Legarda concluded.
#coronavirus S. Korea to begin inoculating pregnant women, younger children next month South Korea is poised to begin administering COVID-19 vaccines to pregnant women and younger children starting next month as part of its inoculation campaign. The Korea Disease ...

#BTS Moon says BTS helped spread awareness of climate change, other global issues South Korean President Moon Jae-in thanked and praised South Korean superband BTS for using their powerful influence in encouraging people to act on various global issues such as c...
Vishal, the President of Tamil Film Producers Council has opened up on the five majors demands to call off the ongoing strike. The Thupparivaalan actor says that TFPC wants a sunset clause for digital service providers which means there shouldn't be any VPF for E Cinema (projectors) from April 2019 and D Cinema from April 2020. Until then, producers and theater owners will share VPF on 50:50 basis.





TFPC is also firm in the decision to bring computerized ticketing system in theaters. Theater owners association have promised that they will complete the computerized ticketing process before June 1.





TFPC wants to reduce the existing online ticket booking fee. To bring all kinds of audience, theaters should be divided into three sections (A, B and C) to help middle class and poor people.





Producers will not encourage individuals who control 80% theaters and not maintaining proper accounts.





Once theater owners agree to these five major demands, new films will start hitting the screens. Vishal also revealed that they have given NOC to four films including Kaala to release after the TFPC strike.





Meanwhile, FEFSI President RK Selvamani requested Tamil Nadu Governments intervention to solve this issue.
























































































Mark Zuckerberg has never had a more hunted look than he does now. As the cameras line up for him, and various committees issue summons for him to appear and testify against the Facebook data breach by Cambridge Analytica, Zuckerberg has gone in a week from writing a sanctimonious post to taking out full-page ads in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times and six British newspapers to apologise for Facebooks laxity.

The latest scandal to hit Facebook broke on March 16, when The New York Times and The Guardian published reports that the political strategising and data mining firm Cambridge Analytica improperly obtained access to more than 50 million Facebook accounts. In a real-life imitation of a subplot from House of Cards, it appears the internet data was used to tailor US President Donald Trumps election campaign by individually targeting American voters through their psychographic profiles, as gleaned from Facebook activity.

The fallout of the scandal is almost amusing. Media reports call it misuse of data from unwitting Facebook users. And though all of us are used to our browsers constantly snooping on us, showing us ads for hotels and cheap flights to cities which we happen to look up for some reason, we pretend we are shocked, horrified, and betrayed.

Was Facebook obliged to protect our data?

The Facebook chiefs, Zuckerberg and his Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, have been making a mantra of, We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we cant then we dont deserve to serve you.

For years now, Facebook has been gradually reducing our control over our accounts. We can no longer control who can add us, who can see us, or who can like and react to our public posts, even if we disable the Follow option.

Facebook has faced flak before, once for selling our data to targeted advertising and once for the spreading of fake news ahead of the US election.

This particular breach was a little different, because it was orchestrated by a third party app.

Cambridge researcher Aleksandr Kogan created an app called thisisyourdigitallife in 2014, which was downloaded by nearly 300,000 people on Facebook. They gave the app access to their information, and because of Facebooks lax rules for developers, access to the information on their friends profiles too. He then sold this data to Cambridge Analytics.

The whistleblower and Cambridge Analytics employee, Christopher Wylie, spoke of a strategy that sounds quite obvious  the company mined likes and other publicly available information to gauge the personalities of users and target them for electioneering. We dont know how useful this information was to them.

And yet, the entire world is baying for a blood sacrifice.

Facebook is being investigated by various high-level committees, along with Cambridge Analytica. After refusing to appear before a UK Parliamentary Committee, Zuckerberg has now agreed to testify before the US Congress, and has also been asked to appear before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. In addition, he will probably testify before a Senate Judiciary Committee.

But how do the people who surrendered their data to take quizzes, on how they will die and what their tombstones will say and which celebrity they look like and which animal they were in their past lives and which of their friends they will marry and who visits their profile the most often, explain their stupidity? In a world where nothing is free, and on a platform which has previously made private messages temporarily public, how did they possibly assume their data was safe?

When we put our pictures out there for the world to see, allow various apps access to our phone contacts and text messages and photographs, why do we delude ourselves into thinking we are not open to scrutiny?

The most bizarre response of all has been the deletion spree. A hashtag calling for people to delete their Facebook accounts emerged last week, and it appears a lot of users have, years after giving away their information to everyone who saw fit to pay for it.

And here, in India, where most people have already linked their biometric details to their bank accounts, telephone numbers, cooking gas connections, vehicle purchases, and PAN cards, there is a tussle between the Congress and BJP over who may be misusing the data of their fans.

Newly-crowned Congress chief Rahul Gandhi referred to Prime Minister Narendra Modi as Bigg Boss, spying on those who downloaded the NaMo app. In response, Information and Broadcasting Minister Smriti Irani suggested the cartoon character Chhota Bheem was better-informed than Rahul Gandhi. The BJP went on to accuse the Congress of sending the data of users who had downloaded the WithINC app to Singapore-based firms. Irani took time off her purportedly busy schedule to stalk the app and gloat that it had been deleted.

Funnily enough, Obamas campaign team designed an app in 2012 to figure out their vote banks interests and cater their electioneering to it. Whatever the Congress and BJP did with their apps, they likely had to explicitly seek consent from the users and were within the law. And yet, even developers are getting jittery after the Facebook scandal.

At a time when our entire lives are open books to Google, do we really think our data is in any way protected?

Why does corporal punishment still exist?

The bizarreness of modern-day feminism
: It seems the Bharatiya Janata Party's campaign in the election-bound Karnataka is making headlines for all the wrong reasons.

The party's president Amit Shah was caught in a fix today, thanks to a translator who twisted the BJP chief's words.

While Shah was addressing a BJP rally in Challkere of Karnataka's Devanagiri district where, according to the translator Prahlad Joshi's version, he said, "PM Narendra Modi will not do anything for Dalits, poor and the backward classes. He will damage the nation. Please vote for him."
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- It was the stuff of movies.

After firing up acetylene blowtorches, three burglars, aided by a Staten Islander, cut their way from the roof into the top of vaults in banks in Brooklyn and Queens two years ago, federal prosecutors said.

Once inside, they broke open customers' safe-deposit boxes and snatched cash from the vaults of an HSBC Bank branch in Brooklyn and a Maspeth Federal Savings bank branch in Queens.

The thieves made off handsomely, grabbing more than $600,000 in cash and $4.3 million in valuables, said Manhattan federal prosecutors.

But their larceny came with a heavy price.

On Friday, the Staten Islander, Christopher Kerrigan, 41, was sentenced to 90 months behind bars and three' years' post-release supervision for his role in the scheme.

In December, Kerrigan pleaded guilty in Manhattan federal court to one count of bank burglary and one count of conspiracy to commit bank burglary and bank theft.

Also pleading guilty then were his accomplices, Brooklyn residents Michael Mazzara, then 45; Anthony Mascuzzio, then 38, and Charles Kerrigan, then 42. The Kerrigans are brothers.

Mazzara, Mascuzzio and Charles Kerrigan are scheduled to be sentenced in the upcoming weeks.

Prosecutors said Mazzara, Mascuzzio and Charles Kerrigan, assisted by Christopher Kerrigan, burglarized the HSBC branch between April 8 and 10, 2016.

They struck again at the Maspeth Federal Savings branch just over a month later, between May 19 and 22.

The defendants went to great pains to conceal their actions at that bank by constructing a plywood shed on the roof, said authorities.

According to an indictment, Christopher Kerrigan drove from Staten Island to the Maspeth branch and helped Mascuzzio load booty into his car before driving back to the borough.

Public records indicated Kerrigan lives in Dongan Hills.

"Christopher Kerrigan was the least culpable of the four defendants," his lawyer, Joseph R. Benfante said when reached by phone. "He made an awful mistake, which he's going to pay for, and, hopefully, he'll be a better person when he comes out and will never repeat such a bad decision."

"He's truly sorry for having hurt the innocent depositors who had their possessions taken from the safe-deposit boxes," Benfante said.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y.-- Mother Mousse, a bakery with locations in Travis and another in Grant City, also specializes in making extravagant cakes.

Resident cake chef Keri Sheheen, daughter of co-owner Joan Sheheen, who opened the business in 1983 with her best friend Teri Rutigliano, has won national competitions with her intricate designs.

Her sculpted cakes can take over six hours to make, depending on size and level of detail needed to create the masterpieces. On a recent visit to the location in Travis, Keri was making a fireman's jacket cake for a 50th birthday celebration for a fireman from Pennsylvania.

Check out the video above to see the artistry that goes into making these cakes, as well as other pieces including a Louis Vuitton handbag design, and a MTA bus almost too realistic to eat!
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- We're on the hunt for Staten Island's Best Subcontinental eats.

Confused? Let me explain: Definitions of the extent of the Indian subcontinent differ but it usually includes the core lands of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh; Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, and the Maldives are often included as well.

The region also is called by a number of other names including South Asia, a name that is increasingly popular in academia and the U.S.

Readers, commenters, Staten Island foodies; This is where you come in. For years, we've been taking your suggestions to nominate restaurants, bars and local businesses to participate in our #BestofSI Awards polls.

Get involved: Share your picks in the comments or by emailing bailey@siadvance.com with "Global Eats" in the subject line. Deadline for nominations: Midnight April 2.

Need a little food inspo? Keep scrolling.

DISCOVER LAKRUWANA: Staten Island has the largest population of Sri Lankans outside of Sri Lanka -- and foodie tourists travel from around the country to sample "Little Sri Lanka's" (yeah, that's us) restaurants. Here's a taste of Lakruwana. (BTW: If you visit this eatery at 668 Bay St. in Stapleton, make sure to check out the gorgeous art museum downstairs.)

Photos courtesy Al-Humza

PAKISTANI PLATES IN PARK HILL: Al-Humza Hala Meat & Restaurant on Richmond Road is a hub of Clifton's Park Hill community.

From a recent review on EatTheWorldNYC.com: "Around the corner from the restaurant, the modern spotless masjid un noor lives in a two story pale pink building and sees a steady stream of mostly Pakistani men and women with a few neighborhood Africans as well. Along with this house of worship, the other hub of the community seems to be Al-Humza, which offers both a halal meat counter and grocery store as well as full service restaurant."

The non-descript restaurant is easy to overlook (a large awning once touting its specialties is gone), but serious food tourists report the nihari and paya, lamb and goat-hoof stew, respectively, should not be missed with the house naan.

HOW THEY DO CHILI LAMB AT TASTE OF INDIA II: If spicy, tender marinated lamb sounds delicious to you, then head over to Taste of India II in New Dorp -- where chef Kamal Uddin will work his magic for you in the kitchen.

In 2012, proprietors Raman Kumar and Baldev Malhotra overhauled the cozy restaurant, adding a bar section with a more clubby vibe. The kitchen is known for its remarkably consistent curries and sauces. Service, too, puts it among Staten Island's best overall restaurants.

After more than two decades in business, Taste of India has outlasted several other subcontinent eateries and continues to thrive with its catering and Island-wide delivery.

Have more suggestions for us? Shout them out! (or, ya know, comment them below.) We'll tally your noms and post the resulting #BestofSI poll next week on SILive.com.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- These two were really rotten tomatoes, authorities allege.

A Staten Island man and his Bronx buddy ripped off nearly $1 million from produce growers and brokers by posing as independent businessmen in the industry to obtain goods and shipping services on credit, and not paying the bills, federal prosecutors allege.

The Staten Islander, Rodin Diaz, 53, and co-defendant, Robert Guiliano, 40, were busted Wednesday, said Geoffrey S. Berman, the Manhattan-based U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.

According to a criminal complaint, the defendants carried out the scheme from February 2013 through the present.

They used fictitious names and also legally formed a number of corporations to carry out the scam, said authorities.

Diaz was listed as chief executive officer of one business, K & A Produce Inc., filed with the New York Department of State, online records show.

Several of the companies failed to obtain the required produce wholesaler's license under the federal Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act (PACA), said the complaint, prepared by a special agent of the federal Department of Agriculture.

K & A was licensed starting in July 2013; however, its license was terminated in April 2016 for alleged failure to pay five growers nearly $119,000 for produce purchased, said the complaint.

Afterward, Diaz was prohibited from working for or being affiliated with any PACA licensee without prior Agriculture Department approval, the complaint said.

He never received such approval, allege authorities.

Meanwhile, complaints against Guiliano dating to 2015 for failing to pay three produce growers are pending with the Agriculture Department.

In all, the defendants bilked at least eight victims of $973,000, authorities allege.

Victims included produce growers in North Carolina, Idaho, Florida and California, a produce wholesaler in the Bronx, a shipping service in North Carolina and a produce broker in Florida, the complaint said.

"As alleged, Robert Guiliano and Rodin Diaz engaged in a long-term fraud, stealing nearly $1 million in sweet potatoes, peppers, and other goods and services from small farms and businesses located across the United States," said Berman in a statement.

Daniel D. Brownell, head of the city Business Integrity Commission, said the defendants' alleged actions "undermine the integrity of New York City's wholesale markets."

Diaz and Guiliano were charged with one count each of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

Each charge carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.

Public records indicate recent addresses in New Dorp and Bay Terrace for Diaz.

Diaz could not immediately be reached for comment; his lawyer's name wasn't immediately available.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Mayor Bill de Blasio and mayors from Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Boston and 44 other cities and counties filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court Friday to support Hawaii's suit against President Donald Trump's latest travel ban on several Muslim-majority countries.

"Trump's travel ban is a racist abdication of American values," de Blasio said in a statement. "Here, in New York City, we have shown how embracing immigrant communities makes us stronger and safer. We are proud to link arms with cities and municipalities across the nation and stand firm against the travel ban."

In late September, President Trump issued a proclamation which placed new travel restrictions on citizens from Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen.

The amicus brief argues that the president's proclamation constitutes, "unlawful discrimination based on national origin and religion," and that applying the restriction against individuals from two non-Muslim countries is "just window dressing."

The Trump administration's most recent travel ban follows two attempts made by the president last year to restrict travel from six or seven majority-Muslim countries, including five still on the list.

The initial travel ban issued last January created chaos across major international airports around the country virtually overnight, and left many people stranded for hours in airport interrogation rooms.

The Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments on the president's travel ban on April 25.
TATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- "[We're] in disbelief," said residents of a quiet cul de sac in Graniteville, about an arrest of one of their neighbors.

"This is such a quiet street,'' said one neighbor, adjacent to the house. "It's always been this way for as long as I can remember. I can't remember a time we've seen such police activity.''

The NYPD executed a warrant and arrested Richard Zeifert, 30, on Wednesday, at his home, where, over an 11-month span in 2016 and 2017, two people have died from suspected overdoses.

Police couldn't provide details about the incident, however, Zeifert was charged by police with various drug-related charges after the bust at the home at 63 Willowbrook Court, according to a spokesman for the NYPD.

"There's so many nice people living on this street, some are like family,'' another neighbor said. "I didn't know the family all too well, but it's a shame what happened there. I guess it's true, when it really comes down to it, you don't know who you live next to."

Another pair of neighbors, who said they knew the Zeifert family only in passing, said they knew something was not right, but never pointed fingers.

"You see a lot of strange things in today's world, but no one puts their air conditioner on in the dead of winter," the male neighbor said. "Thinking back now, it makes sense."

The home, which is located on a cul de sac at the end of the street filled with single and semi-attached homes, is located a couple of blocks from Markham Intermediate School, which raised the eyebrows of many neighbors.

"There's kids that live around here, kids go to school just a few blocks away," the female neighbor said. "We [Staten Island] have a big drug epidemic going on, where we see it all over the news that kids are dying left and right from experimenting with drugs. That could easily be one of them. That's the thing -- this is something you see happening all over, and to think, on your own block? It's sickening. I'm in disbelief."

The arrest and charges come after two men died at the home within 11 months of one another in suspected overdoses, including one whose death was central in the historic "Operation Final Kut" North Shore drug bust, according to law enforcement sources.

Authorities allege that Richard Zeifert, 52, bought the fentanyl that killed him two days before Christmas in 2016 from Stephen Cummings, who was charged in "Operation Final Kut."

Police could not say if the two men were related Wednesday night.

Tragedy struck again in the residence about 11 months later, on Nov. 5, when Antonio Fuentes, 34, also died of a suspected overdose, sources told the Advance.

He was seated in a chair with his head tilted back and a spoon and an empty glassine envelope near his body, according to a source with knowledge of the investigation.

It was unknown if Ziefert was arraigned as of Thursday night.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- More than halfway through what was supposed to be a $3.3 million effort to control the Island's deer population using vasectomies, the program has run more than $300,000 over budget and officials can't provide an updated deer count from nearly a year ago.

Year two of the program wrapped up earlier this month, as reports of deer being stranded in Staten Islander's backyards for days and deer vehicle collisions have been on the rise.

Since the vasectomy program launched in September 2016, the city has performed vasectomies on 1,154 of Staten Island's male deer population to date, according to the city's Parks Department.

Last year, the city's contractor performing the vasectomies estimated Staten Island's deer population between 1,918 and 2,188 deer, about four times the city's last count and a 9,000 percent increase in the herd since 2008.

But the city says it is not yet ready to release the new population count because it is still analyzing the data. The Parks Department also would not authorize the Advance to speak to the contractor about the latest count and progress of the program for this story.

"The count is a very scientific process, we're setting up cameras and analyzing the camera data and you have to take a lot of different factors into account and verify all of it," Parks Department spokeswoman Kelly Krause, said. "So, it's not just like literally counting deer, it's a scientific process and it takes a while."

$300,000 OVER BUDGET AND COUNTING

When the city awarded a contract to the company White Buffalo to perform the vasectomies, the contract was not supposed to exceed $3.3 million over the three-year research study.

Yet $2,354,000 was spent on the first year of the program, according to the Parks Department. After the first year estimate, White Buffalo realized there were more deer on Staten Island than anticipated, including more bucks in need of vasectomies, so the contractor asked for an additional $334,770 for year two, which was originally budgeted for $634,650.

The Parks Department said more than $969,000 was spent on year two of the program which ended earlier this month, meaning that the city has already maxed the budget of its contract in just the second year of the vasectomy program.

Some $314,000 was originally budgeted for year three, a figure that the Parks Department says is also likely to increase once the contractor resumes vasectomies this summer.

"Time on the ground showed that there was a need to basically double the work from project year one, there were just more males than were anticipated," the Parks Department's Wildlife Unit Director Richard Simon, said. "So, we do have an early assumption that there's going to be a request for some more funding for the third project year."

At more than $3.3 million spent on the program thus far, it means the city has spent roughly $2,879 on each deer it has performed vasectomies on.

Vasectomies on human males cost anywhere from $0 to $1,000, depending on where it's performed and whether or not they have health insurance, according to Planned Parenthood.

QUALITY OVER QUANTITY APPROACH NEEDED, UPSTATE DEER EXPERT SAYS

The Parks Department says it is measuring the success of the program by the number of vasectomies it performs.

The city's goal is to perform vasectomies on 98 percent of the male deer population by the end of the program. So far, the Parks Department says the contractor has performed vasectomies on about 94 percent of Island bucks.

"From the beginning we've always said that the study's going to take a while to take effect on the population," Krause said. "If you vasectomize deer, it will take awhile for the population to go down, so our focus is sterilizing as many male deer as possible, that's how we're viewing success right now."

But an upstate deer management expert says sometimes a quality-focused approach is better than focusing simply on quantity.

"[Sterilizing many deer is] one measure, but I wouldn't say it's the best measure," Paul Curtis, a Cornell University professor and 30-year expert on deer management, said. "It would be better to have both data and impact, they started this project for a reason, either there were too many deer-vehicle accidents, too much plant damage ... there were drivers that started this whole thing. So They should be measuring those impact indicators, whatever they are."

Curtis, who has worked with several upstate communities in managing its deer population, says he often tells communities to plan for a 10-year deer management program to see success.

With only two years worth of vasectomies, Curtis said it is unlikely there has been any significant drop in the Island's deer population because deer are so long-lived.

"Definitely [the program] will have to extend. Three years, that's barely enough time to change the population momentum in a deer herd," Curtis said, adding that an ongoing budget for maintaining the population will be needed well into the future if Staten Island wants to see any significant decrease in its deer population.

YEAR THREE, ONGOING MAINTENANCE, NO MONEY IN SIGHT

White Buffalo is set to begin year three of the vasectomy program sometime this summer. The Parks Department said the contractor will likely have to come back again next winter to complete year three.

Once the vasectomy program is complete, Simon said ongoing maintenance and monitoring of the Island's deer population will be needed.

But costs related to future maintenance have not yet been worked out, and the city has not yet set aside an ongoing budget for those efforts, Simon said

"The goal is to get 98 percent of the males sterilized," Simon said. "The program's not an eradication program, there will continue to be some males from the environment and those could be from either whatever stragglers are missed through the final project year, or any potential immigration from New Jersey, so there will continue to be some need for maintenance moving forward."
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Richmond University Medical Center (RUMC) and insurance giant Aetna are in active negotiations to renew a services contract before it expires in a few weeks.

The contract between RUMC and Aetna will expire May 1, according to a letter the insurance carrier sent to people who had been treated at the hospital in the past year.

In the letter, Aetna notified policy holders that inpatient, outpatient and clinic services at the West Brighton hospital will expire at the beginning of May.

"Both parties are working in good faith and with a concerted effort to reach a fair and reasonable agreement," said Shelly Bendit, a spokeswoman for Aetna.

If an agreement isn't reached, patients will have to pay more money to use the facility or seek treatment elsewhere.

"We seek an agreement that takes into account the financial impact on employers and employees in Staten Island; and one that makes the health care system both affordable and accessible for our members," Bendit said.

Patients can continue to receive care at RUMC until the expiration date.

William Smith, a spokesman for RUMC, said these types of negotiations are routine in the healthcare industry. He said the hospital is not seeking charity or special treatment in the negotiations, but only to be compensated on par with comparable health systems.

"We will continue to negotiate in good faith and provide exemplary care to Aetna policy holders as we move toward the May 1st deadline," Smith said.

If the contract is not renewed and your insurance plan allows you to go to any hospital outside its network, you could still go to RUMC for covered services -- but you would have to pay more money out of pocket.

Aetna said policy holders would save money by choosing a new hospital that is in its network.

If your plan doesn't have out-of-network benefits, you could only go to RUMC for emergency services.

For more information or if you have any questions, you can call Aetna Member Services at the telephone number on your Aetna ID card for personalized service, or send a secure email through the Aetna Navigator website.

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STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- A New Brighton man who prosecutors said helped his brother stick up a St. George deli two years ago, and who illegally possessed a gun in December, will be sentenced to 42 months behind bars under a plea agreement.

Abraham Tarr, 24, pleaded guilty Wednesday in state Supreme Court, St. George, to attempted first-degree robbery and to second-degree criminal weapon possession to satisfy all charges against him in two indictments.

According to a criminal complaint, Tarr acted as lookout on Aug. 30, 2016, when his brother, Obediah Tarr, then 20, pulled out what appeared to be a gun at the Fort Place Deli at about 5:40 p.m.

The younger Tarr ordered one person to "get on the ground," and told a worker to remove cash from the register, said the complaint.

From his post outside the front door, Abraham Tarr, who was armed, attempted to prevent the first person from leaving, the complaint said.

Obediah Tarr has been indicted on robbery and other charges and denies the allegations.

His case is pending in state Supreme Court, St. George.

Abraham Tarr's gun case arises from an incident that occurred two days after Christmas.

While free on $35,000 bond, authorities said he illegally possessed a loaded gun on the 400 block of Richmond Terrace.

In exchange for his pleas, Tarr will be sentenced April 24 to concurrent prison terms of three and a half years as well as five years' post-release supervision. He is being held without bail.

The defendant has a criminal record.

He was previously convicted in April 2016 of a misdemeanor count of attempted criminal possession of a controlled substance, court documents show.

He was sentenced to time served, and his driver's license was suspended for six months.

Attorney Christina Paliogiannis represents Tarr.

Assistant District Attorney Michael Tannousis is prosecuting the cases.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Saying it appears he has turned his life around while in jail, a judge on Thursday gave a second chance to a Stapleton teen accused of three muggings last year.

Justice Mario F. Mattei sentenced Demetri Jewell, 17, to six months behind bars -- time he's already served -- for his previous plea to attempted first-degree robbery to satisfy all charges against him.

Perhaps more importantly, Mattei sentenced Jewell as a youthful offender, which means the conviction won't go on his record, and his court file will be sealed.

"It's my opinion the interests of justice would be served by giving him youthful offender [status]," said Mattei. "I'm not condoning what you did at all, but hopefully, you've changed."

The judge warned Jewell, "I'll be very disappointed if I see you again here under these circumstances."

The judge said the defendant had already spent almost a year behind bars.

"I think that's sufficient time," he said.

Mattei said he based his decision on a review of the defendant's family history, which includes incidents of homelessness, domestic violence and an episode when Jewell was 15 in which he was shot while trying to protect a young woman.

Mattei also said he received good reports from service agencies, and the defendant was awarded several merit certificates for pursuing his education while in jail awaiting the cases' dispositions.

Jewell has also taken an SAT prep course, which demonstrates his intent to go to college, said defense lawyer Kevin McKernan.

"This is a young man who, since he's been in jail, has dramatically improved," said McKernan. "He's a changed person. ... Mr. Jewell wants to get to a better life. He's accepted responsibility for three days of mayhem. He's extremely remorseful. There is a plan, and he's made strides toward that."

A tall, thin youth garbed in a white T-shirt and brown pants, Jewell simply said, "I'm sorry," when Mattei asked if he wanted to address the court.

Assistant District Attorney Michael Tannousis opposed youthful offender status, citing "the nature of the case."

Prosecutors sought a sentence of four years in prison and five years' post-release supervision.

Two weeks ago, Jewell pleaded guilty in state Supreme Court, St. George, to attempted first-degree robbery.

The defendant admitted to forcibly trying to steal cash from a victim in Great Kills on June 1, 2017, while armed with dangerous instrument, namely, a sharp metal object.

Jewell had also been charged with snatching a victim's iPhone on Amboy Road and Huguenot Avenue in Huguenot on June 2, and of previously stealing cash from another victim on May 30, while threatening to use a sharp metal object.

Mattei said he expected Jewell would be released later in the day.
More than 100 faculty, staff, students, Skidmore retirees and community members attended Skidmore's inaugural Humanistic Inquiry Symposium, "Metamorphosis," held March 2324, 2018, at the Tang Teaching Museum.



Michael Arnush, professor of classics, and Barbara Black, professor of English, co-founded the symposium and are working with faculty to develop an ongoing forum at Skidmore for humanistic inquiry. The mission is to pursue and share the intellectual work of the Skidmore community and to allow faculty to connect across departments and disciplines.



The inaugural event featured keynote speaker Martin Puchner, the Byron and Anita Wien Professor of Drama and of English and Comparative Literature at Harvard University and founding director of the university's Mellon School of Theater and Performance Research.



Puchner's presentation, "Storytelling from the Tablet to the Internet," was a synopsis of his recently published book, The Written World, which explores his interests in the intersection of literature, history and geography, and describes the transformational history of literature and the written word from the invention of writing to the Internet.



A variety of Skidmore faculty performances followed Puchner's keynote: Joel Brown, distinguished artist-in-residence in music, and Brett Grigsby, lecturer in music, performed Edward Flower's arrangements of Barbara Allen and The Cherry Tree Carol; April Bernard, professor of English, performed a brief poetry reading of "Elizabethan Ghosts"; Robert ParkeHarrison and Shana ParkeHarrison exhibited "Constructed Realities" photographs; Will Bond, senior artist-in-residence in theater, performed Ovid Metamorphoses 10: Pygmalion; and Debra Fernandez, professor of dance, and Emily Gunter '19 presented Hybrid, choreographed by Fernandez. Eliza Kent, professor of religious studies, and Gordon Thompson, professor of music, also presented, followed by a reception and book signing by Puchner.





Throughout the day on Saturday, faculty presentations further explored the concept of metamorphosis and transformation through a variety of themes including the future of humans and nonhumans, evolution and mutation, engaging with and departing from conceptions of the self, the future of the planet, new media, changes in network culture, new technologies, identities and intersectionalities, stories of shape-shifting, journeys, global warming, hybridization, innovation, migrations and changing populations, adaptations of myth, the transformation of the mundane, growth and aging, life transitions and the evolution of the liberal arts.



Saturday's presentations highlighted the scholarship and research of Dan Curley, classics; Sarah Goodwin, English; Ryan Overbey, religious studies; Bina Gogineni, English; Crystal Dea Moore, social work; Sara Lagalwar, neuroscience; Ian Berry and Rachel Seligman, Tang Museum; Heather Hurst, anthropology; Edwin Roman-Ramirez, anthropology; Jeff Segrave, health and human physiological sciences; Catherine White Berheide, sociology; and Joseph Cermatori, English.



To a capacity crowd on Saturday morning at the Tang Museum, Crystal Dea Moore, professor of social work and interim dean of the faculty and vice president for academic affairs, said, "I'm so pleased to spend time with all of you today. We don't often have an opportunity to celebrate our own work and passions. Thank you, Michael [Arnush] and Barbara [Black], for the selfless gift you have provided by coordinating this opportunity."



Moore's moving presentation, titled "The Presence of Absence," explored the pain of absence due to death, addiction, mental illness and abduction. "Pain times resistance equals suffering. The more we push away from the pain, the more we are likely to suffer," Moore said.



"Our key goals of this event were to showcase the work of Skidmore's humanists, to share our work with one another, and to build a sense of intellectual and creative community around a topic of consequence, selected by the faculty," Black said.



Did the event serve to achieve the goals set by co-founders Black and Arnush?



"More than we could have imagined," said Arnush. "We brought together a sizeable community of faculty, staff, students and retirees to interrogate and celebrate the meaning of humanism against the backdrop of metamorphosis. We heard from faculty across many departments and created a synergistic symphony of scholarship and artistic creativity. We brought a scholarly conference back to our campus, and a conference that welcomed all of us."



Puchner was impressed with Skidmore's inaugural event. "Two things particularly struck me," he said. "The first was the combination of art-making and scholarship. The symposium was a perfect model because it turned out that the poetry readings and performances had as much to say about the topic of metamorphosis as the scholarly contribution. Perhaps the fact that the symposium took place in a museum helped (and the tour of the museum contributed as well). So the curation of the event was really great.



"Second, I was struck by the enthusiasm of the participants, the eagerness with which they encounter each other's work. The symposium really provided an opportunity for colleagues who might only meet at committee meetings to exchange work."



In closing remarks on Saturday evening, Puchner took time to reflect on pedagogy and teaching as a number of faculty participants shared their educational experiences, their training and thoughts about their own teachers, and reflected upon their intellectual and artistic formation.



The second day of the symposium coincidentally took place on the same day of the national March for Our Lives movement, in which students across the United States marched against gun violence.



Puchner concluded the symposium with a reflection on today's generation of students and the active role they are taking in their education and lives. Another fitting, and timely, example of metamorphosis: A generation of brave students navigating a new, ever-changing world.



For more information about humanistic inquiry at Skidmore, please visit www.skidmore.edu/hi. To view a recording of the event, visit https://livestream.com/SkidmoreCollege/symposium.




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PHILIPSBURG:---The cases against suspects in the Emerald investigation conducted by the anti-corruption unit: Team Bestrijding Ondermijning (TBO) continued in court on Sint Maarten this week.

The cases against C.E. and S.D. resumed on Tuesday, March 27th, 2018, while A.K.L. and S.W. were heard for the first time in court. The case against Member of Parliament C.B. resumed on Thursday, March 29th, 2018.

In the Emerald investigation 7 sole proprietors were accused of income and turnover tax evasion in a corruption ring at the Sint Maarten Port between 2013-2016.The companies altogether deprived country Sint Maarten of over 6 million guilders in tax revenue.

The Public Prosecutor demanded an unconditional prison sentence of 15 months, two-year probation and a NAF 250.000 fine for suspects C.E., S.D., S.W., and A.K.L.

For suspect C.B. the Public Prosecutor demanded an unconditional prison sentence of 18 months, two-year probation and a NAF 250.000 fine. The Public Prosecutor has demanded a sterner sentence for C.B. because as a Member of Parliament the Public Prosecutor feels he was in the position to set a better example.

The 5 sole proprietors own construction-related companies and were hired to carry out work in and around the Sint Maarten Port. The Public Prosecutor has demanded such firm sentences in an attempt to send a clear message that corruption cannot be tolerated, as well to prevent further corruption in the construction industry on Sint Maarten, particularly in light of the 550
GREAT BAY (DCOMM):--- The Collective Prevention Services (CPS), a department of the Ministry of Public Health, Social Development and Labour, is calling on the community to practice hand hygiene and cough etiquette in order to prevent the spread of influenza.

Keeping hands clean through improved hand hygiene and cough etiquette which are two of the most important steps one can take to avoid getting sick and spreading germs to others. Washing your hands should take 40 to 60 seconds.

Hand hygiene is a simple and effective solution to reduce both the spread of infection and multi-resistant germs, and to protect the community.

Flu viruses also may spread when people touch something with the flu virus on it and then through their mouth, eyes, or nose. Many other viruses spread these ways too.

Symptoms of the flu include sudden onset of fever, cough (usually dry), headache, muscle and joint pain, sore throat and a runny nose. A cough can be severe and can last two or more weeks. Most people recover from fever and other symptoms within a week.

However, influenza can cause severe illness or death in high-risk groups such as pregnant women at any stage of pregnancy; children younger than five-years; people older than 65-years; people with chronic medical conditions such as HIV/AIDS, asthma, heart and lung diseases and diabetes; people with increased risk of exposure to influenza, which includes healthcare workers.

Many diseases and conditions are spread by not washing hands with soap and clean, running water. If clean, running water is not accessible, as is common in many parts of the world, use soap and available water. You can also use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer that contains at least 60 percent alcohol to clean hands.

Your hands should be washed before, during, and after preparing food; before eating food; after using the toilet; after blowing your nose, coughing, or sneezing.

Flu viruses are thought to spread mainly from person to person through the coughing, sneezing, or talking to someone with the flu.

People infected with the flu may be able to infect others beginning from day one before symptoms develop and up to five to seven days after becoming sick. That means you may be able to spread the flu to someone else before you know you are sick.

Preventive actions entail: try to avoid close contact with sick people; cover your nose and mouth with a tissue when you cough or sneeze (cough etiquette); throw the tissue in the trash after you use it; clean and disinfect surfaces and objects that may be contaminated with germs like the flu.

For more information call CPS at 542-1122, 542-1222, 542-1322 or 542-1570.
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US on track to meet climate targets despite Trump: UN chief



United Nations, United States, March 29 (AFP) Mar 29, 2018



The United States is on track to meet the targets of the Paris climate agreement despite President Donald Trump's plan to withdraw from the accord, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Thursday.

Guterres said emissions-cutting plans put in motion by American businesses, regional governments and cities meant that the goals set by the former US administration which signed the deal in 2016 were within reach.

"We have seen in the cities, and we have seen in many states, a very strong commitment to the Paris agreement, to the extent that some indicators are moving even better than in the recent past," Guterres told reporters at UN headquarters in New York.

"There are expectations that, independently of the position of the administration, the US might be able to meet the commitments made in Paris as a country."

Under the deal, the administration of former president Barack Obama pledged to cut domestic greenhouse gas emissions 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.

Nearly 200 countries and parties have signed the landmark agreement after intense negotiations in Paris, where all nations made voluntary carbon-cutting pledges running to 2030.

The agreement is aimed at limiting global warming to within two degrees Celsius, but Guterres warned that more action was needed by 2020 to reach that goal.

Trump faced condemnation when he announced in June 2017 that the United States was pulling out, painting the accord as a "bad deal" for the US economy.

Under the agreement, the United States can formally give notice that it plans to withdraw in 2019, three years after the accord came into force, and the withdrawal would become effective in 2020.

Describing climate change as "the most systemic threat to humankind," Guterres said recent data on extreme weather events showed that "2017 was filled with climate chaos."

"2018 has already brought more of the same," he said.

"Food security, health, stability itself all hang in the balance."

Guterres is planning to host a major summit next year to take stock of progress in implementing the climate deal, but it remains unlikely that Trump would attend.
Regulation and apathy hit bitcoin market



London, March 30 (AFP) Mar 30, 2018



Wild fluctuations within the bitcoin market have once again sparked debate between investors who believe it is merely undergoing a "correction" and those who see it as a costly fad.

After a buying fever at the end of 2017 that sent the price of a token to nearly $20,000 and a spectacular fall at the beginning of the year, bitcoin's price made a modest recovery before falling sharply again this month.

"This is a healthy correction after an exuberant 2017," said Kyle Salmani, founder of crypto-currency fund Multicoin Capital, which manages $50 million (41 million euros) of private cash.

Despite his optimism for the sector, Salmani's fund is not betting on a rise in bitcoin prices, instead focussing on competitors with more a impressive recent track record and more innovative technologies.

"Certainly the halcyon days of performance gains from 2017 seem long gone," added Jordan Hiscott, investment manager at the Ayondo Markets online platform.



- The bubble bursts -



Bitcoin now makes up only 40 percent of the volume of crypto-currency transactions, having accounted for 80 percent of the market just a few months ago, according to coinmarketcap.com data.

The weekly number of Google searches containing the term bitcoin is five times lower than at its peak, in the week of December 17 to 23.

Bitcoin now trades at around $8,000, compared with $19,511 at the end of December, according to Bloomberg figures.

Morgan Stanley analysts stressed in a note published in early March that bitcoin was behaving much like the stock market did in the dot-com crash of the 2000s, only at "15 times the speed".

However, the cryptocurrency has already lost about 90 percent of its value on two occasions since its 2009 launch -- in 2011 and 2015 -- before recovering.

"I wouldn't be surprised to see prices fall to $5,000 from here or go back above $10,000," said Craig Erlam, an analyst online currency trading platform Oanda.

But he believes that the levels reached in December will not be seen again any time soon.

"The incentives for holding bitcoin is simply the belief that it will become more adopted and widespread," he said, explaining why many were still holding onto their bitcoin wallets.



- Welcome regulations? -



The market's volatility has tended to defy expert analysis, but some link the recent fall to stricter regulations.

Those policing the largest bitcoin markets, the FSA in Japan and the SEC in the United States, have increased warnings and action against suspect trading platforms.

In addition, social networks Facebook and Twitter as well as the search engine Google have all announced a ban on advertising for ICOs -- fundraising campaigns carried out in cryptocurrency.

"In the short term, it's bad news," acknowledged David Drake, who manages the LDJ Capital investment fund.

"But we need regulations," he told AFP.

Others put the volatility down to sell-offs by historical players in the bitcoin market who carved out huge positions when it was in its infancy.

A Tokyo attorney and bankruptcy trustee for the now-defunct cryptocurrency exchange Mt. Gox revealed that he had liquidated $400 million of bitcoin tokens on behalf of creditors, depressing the market.

The lawyer, nicknamed "Tokyo Whale", said he had sold the tokens between December and February, and did not rule out resuming the sell-off, with $1.9 billion still to be offloaded.

"With this kind of volume yet to surface, in my view, prices on bitcoin will remain depressed until this situation has been resolved," warned Hiscott.

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Trump says US withdrawing from Syria 'very soon'



Richfield, United States, March 29 (AFP) Mar 29, 2018



US President Donald Trump insisted Thursday that US forces would pull out of Syria "very soon" and lamented what he said was Washington's waste of $7 trillion in Middle East wars.

In a populist address to industrial workers in Ohio, Trump said US forces were close to securing all of the territory that the Islamic State jihadist group once claimed.

"We'll be coming out of Syria, like, very soon. Let the other people take care of it now," he promised, to applause.

Trump did not say who the others were who might take care of Syria, but Russia and Iran have sizable forces in the country to support Bashar al-Assad's regime.

"Very soon -- very soon we're coming out. We're going to have 100 percent of the caliphate, as they call it -- sometimes referred to as 'land' -- taking it all back quickly, quickly," he said.

"But we're going to be coming out of there real soon. Going to get back to our country, where we belong, where we want to be."

The United States has more than 2,000 military personnel in eastern Syria, working with local militia groups to defeat the extremist Islamic State group while trying to keep out of Syria's broader civil war.

Trump's eagerness to quit the conflict flies in the face of a new US Syria strategy announced in January by then secretary of state Rex Tillerson -- who has since been sacked.

Tillerson argued that US forces must remain engaged in Syria to prevent IS and Al-Qaeda from returning and to deny Iran a chance "to further strengthen its position in Syria."

In a speech at Stanford University, he also warned that "a total withdrawal of American personnel at this time would restore Assad and continue his brutal treatment against his own people."

But Tillerson has gone after being dismissed in a tweet and Trump, who increasingly makes foreign policy announcements without seeking the advice of US generals or diplomats, wants out.

"We spent $7 trillion in the Middle East. And you know what we have for it? Nothing," Trump declared, promising to focus future US spending on building jobs and infrastructure at home.
Greece demands 'clear answers' from Turkey on detained soldiers: official



Athens, March 30 (AFP) Mar 30, 2018



Greece on Friday demanded "clear answers" from Turkey on the exact charges faced by two soldiers held in a Turkish prison after they illegally crossed the border earlier this month.

"We demand clear answers as to why, a month after the two soldiers were arrested, we do not know what they are charged with," government spokesman Dimitris Tzanakopoulos told reporters.

"This is a stance of obstruction that gives the impression that Turkey is trying to exploit the issue in order to exert political and diplomatic pressure. We do not consider this legitimate," Tzanakopoulos said.

Turkish media have reported that the pair, arrested on March 2 for entering a military zone in the northern Turkish province of Edirne, have been charged with espionage.

But Athens contends that Turkish authorities have not given adequate detail of the charges and on what evidence they are based.

On Tuesday, the Edirne court rejected a fresh appeal by the soldiers' Turkish lawyers for their conditional release, the private Dogan news agency reported, without providing any details.

The judgement was announced after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan came under pressure from EU chiefs at a meeting in Bulgaria on Monday to release the pair.

European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker said the bloc's 28 member states had confidence in the Turkish side "to solve that (the issue of the soldiers) in the best way".

An EU meeting in Brussels last week condemned Turkey over the soldiers' arrest in a show of firm support for Athens.

The soldiers told prosecutors shortly after their arrest that they mistakenly crossed the border after getting lost in the fog.

But according to Turkey's state-run Anadolu news agency, they have been charged with "attempted military espionage" by prosecutors as well as entering a forbidden military zone.

It said the pair testified they entered the Turkish side by tracking footsteps in the snow and filmed images on their mobile phones to send to higher ranking officials.

The arrest of the soldiers have strained ties between Ankara and Athens, who are already at loggerheads over the exploration of gas reserves in the eastern Mediterranean.

The long-standing foes have also clashed over Turkish demands that Greece extradite eight Turkish troops wanted over the July 2016 attempted coup aimed at unseating Erdogan.

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On guns and more, dialogue of the deaf in America



Washington, March 30 (AFP) Mar 30, 2018



Most Americans favor tougher gun control laws as they repeatedly endure the tragedy of school shootings, one massacre after another, and other random gun violence.

So why doesn't Congress do something?

The paradox enrages gun control activists, who accuse lawmakers of inertia and hypocrisy.

But this seeming no-brainer is not limited to gun violence, and it stems from many, many decades of how Americans do politics.



- Imperfect representation -



With the way Congressional districts are carved up, and a two-chamber system in which the Senate holds as much weight as the House of Representatives, Congress is far from being an exact representation of the US population.

Winning a majority of the votes does not necessarily mean you achieve a majority in Congress. And this is even more true for the office of president, which is elected indirectly, through the Electoral College.

"The founders intended the system to work in a way that would guard against policy changing with the whims and passions of the citizenry," Gregory Wawro, a political science professor at Columbia University, told AFP.

"But that comes at a cost of making it difficult to change policy, even when there is significant demand for it," he added.



- What's a majority, anyway? -



On any given issue, there are different kinds of majorities.

Take the issue of immigration: polls show that Americans back the idea of "secure borders" -- but they don't want a wall built along the frontier with Mexico, as President Donald Trump plans to do.

Americans want to see young undocumented immigrants who came to the country as kids get some kind of legal status, but they also want to cut the number of legal immigrants who are coming in now.

Democrats and Republicans alike say they represent the majority, and struggle to reach a legislative compromise that reconciles all these competing demands, which are sometimes contradictory.

On the issue of guns, 97 percent of Americans favor universal background checks on people wishing to buy a firearm, according to a Quinnipiac survey.

But that percentage goes down depending when other gun control measures are put up for debate: 83 percent back a waiting period after a gun purchase, and 67 percent favor banning assault-style rifles like those often used in mass shootings.

When lawmakers try to calibrate any kind of reform package, they hit a wall.



- Not a priority for Congress -



Supporting a policy does not mean voters make it a top priority when they go to the polls.

"Elections are very imperfect mechanisms for holding elected people accountable," said Jennifer Nicoll Victor, a professor of political science at George Mason University.

Voters often have only two ways to answer a bunch of different questions -- when you factor in their mood on Election Day, and what is churning through the rapid-fire news cycle at that moment, results may not accurately reflect voters' beliefs.

This probably explains why, for instance, many Americans remain loyal to Trump while not believing him when he denies having had relationships with porn star Stormy Daniels, Playboy models and other women who say they had extra-marital sex with him. They feel this scandals are not enough to dump Trump altogether.



- Behold the mighty lobbyists -



As far as firearms go, the National Rifle Association plays a pivotal role in how the debate has become so intractable.

The NRA is not just a powerful lobbying organization, says Nicoll Victor. Rather, it has "built a culture of gun interests and gun rights and gun manufacturers and gun enthusiasts."

Republicans in Congress are part of this culture and balk at the idea of questioning it, even slightly, out of fear of being cut off from the group and its deep pockets when it comes to campaign contributions.

But the anti-gun movement has been slower to build a major grassroots wave.

Massacres at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999 and Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in 2012 gave rise to activist organizations.

But it was not until the Valentine's Day massacre at the school in Parkland, Florida that the gun control movement really started to gain momentum, with hundreds of thousands of students and others protesting in Washington last weekend.



- Polarized political parties -



In 1986, then president Ronald Reagan, a Republican, signed a bill granting legal status to 2.7 million undocumented immigrants. In 1996, Democrat Bill Clinton enacted a law making it harder for poor people to access welfare benefits.

In both cases, the president had to cross the political aisle: Reagan dealt with a House controlled by the Democrats, and Clinton reached agreement with a Republican majority on Capitol Hill.

John Hudak, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, recalls also that many Republican lawmakers backed a ban on assault rifles in 1994. That measure expired in 2004.

"This was a time when gun control was a less partisan issue," Hudak said.

"You could never imagine a Republican member of Congress, no matter a president, being supportive of something like that today," he added.

That's because the two parties have each become more ideologically uniform, and the gap between them is wider than ever.

But it is at least conceivable that Trump might be more amenable to reform if the Democrats retake Congress in November's midterm elections.
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Sarkozy and his former chief of staff, Claude Gueant, are being investigated for secretly accepting at least fifty million Euros from Khadaffi for his 2007 electoral campaign.





by Eric S. Margolis





( March 30, 2018, Toronto, Sri Lanka Guardian) There was something refreshing about watching former French president Nicholas Sarkozy being interrogated in a French jail. Particularly since he may soon be accused of conspiracy in the murder of my old friend, Col. Muammar Khadaffi of Libya.





Sarkozy and his former chief of staff, Claude Gueant, are being investigated for secretly accepting at least fifty million Euros from Khadaffi for his 2007 electoral campaign. Such a payment violated Frances maximum permissible limit for political donation, not to mention a ban on foreign financing of candidates and failure to report the payments. Sarko also faces investigation over secret payments from the Gulf oil states.





French political candidates often have to wade through the sewers to finance their campaigns because spending limits were set relatively low to prevent big money from buying the elections, as in the United States.





These charges against Khadaffi and Gueant have been percolating for years with only a muted response. Sarkozy also got into hot water after he was accused of bilking large sums of cash from a senile heiress to Frances LOreal cosmetics company.





But three years ago, a French-Lebanese businessman told the French investigative site Mediapart that he had given suitcases with 5 million Euros (US $6.2 million) to Gueant. The former chief of staff would later claim the cash was payment for a painting he had sold to the shady Lebanese. Of course it was!





In 2007, Sarkozy became president of France. At the time, he and Khadaffi appeared to be best of friends. The Libyan leader made a gala visit to Paris, pitched his Bedouin tent on the grounds of the presidential palace and received the lavish official welcome that the French do so well.





France was interested in Libyas high quality oil and using Libya as a beachhead for expanding Paris former influence in North Africa. France and Libya secretly colluded to fight Islamist rebels in the region who were battling French-installed puppet rulers in West and Central Africa.





But then Sarkozy turned sharply against the Khadaffi regime and joined US and British efforts to overthrow it. This was not the first time. Former French president, Francois Mitterrand, ordered his intelligence chief, Count de Marenches, to destroy Khadaffis personal jet with an altitude-fused bomb. Marenches told me the bomb was secreted aboard the plane, then removed when relations with Tripoli improved.





British intelligence, MI6, also tried to assassinate Khadaffi by means of a car bomb in Benghazi, Libya, but failed, though many civilians were killed.





Sarkozy eventually heeded demands from Hillary Clinton, then US Secretary of State, to launch a war against ostensible ally, Khadaffi, and seize his oil riches.





Warplanes and special forces from the US, France and Britain joined in a sustained attack on Libya, which was cynically misrepresented as a humanitarian rescue mission. French aircraft strafed Khadaffis convoy. French special forces and Libyan mercenaries caught Khadaffi, tortured him with a knife, then shot him dead.





Khadaffi had made the fatal mistake of telling his eldest son, Saif al-Islam, and senior officials about his secret payment to Sarkozy. When word leaked out from Saif, Sarkozy quickly ordered the attack on Libya. Dead men tell no tales. French intelligence is very skilled at rubbing out foes and nuisances.





My surmise is that French justice will find some tenuous link between Sarkozy and Khadaffis murder, but no hard proof Sarko was directly involved. If George W. Bush and Dick Cheney could get away Scott free after killing over one million Iraqi civilians in a trumped-up war, why prosecute Sarko for this minor contretemps?
Students saw a choice of goods that were produced in the U.S. but tasted differently abroad.





by Michael Czinkota





( March 28, 2018, Washington DC, Sri Lanka Guardian) This spring, I wanted Michael Czinkotas students to remember their Marketing Across Borders class while they traveled to azure beaches and Caribbean getaways. They were to connect their break experiences to some of the themes we have explored in class. Their responses offered an interesting  and illuminating  glimpse into how international marketing shapes the decisions of young travelers.





As digital natives, most of my students performed the research and planning for their trips online. Whether scoring cheaper flights or finding top restaurants, these young travelers turned to social media platforms and travel websites like AirBnb and TripAdvisor, to find affordable, and often all-inclusive, deals for hotels and flights. Students noted the power of word of mouth, which they far preferred over mass-market pamphlets, in guiding travel decisions. Much trust was placed in the reviews of peer travelers.





Much international travel was to Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and Germany.





But even when my students ventured outside their comfort zones, they still encountered elements of the familiar. They noted the prevalence of Japanese manufactured cars, such as Toyota, in countries like Mexico and Jamaica. For food, they found a preponderance of American brands  like McDonalds and Starbucks  that were almost identical to those in Cincinnati, Ohio.





A student, involved in a social justice immersion trip to Jamaica, found international marketing to be an important tool in business development. She found billboards with emotional global brand messages: Kakoo loves Pepsi!; Jamaica, land we love; Honda, car we love. Many messages were targeted toward tourists and rendered in English rather than local languages.





In terms of favorite topics, many of my students broached food. There was a fascination with the globalization of food products. Students were delighted to taste the delicious meals of the world. Food trends from around the world had penetrated the Costa Rican market: Breakfast places were serving cold brewed ice coffee, kombucha, acai bowls, avocado toast, and homemade vegan bread. Australians own the best taco joint in Tamarindo. A woman from Minnesota was the chef at a local breakfast cafe. Markets served poke bowls (sushi bowls from Hawaii), arepas (shredded beef sandwiches from Venezuela), and traditional French pastries.





Students saw a choice of goods that were produced in the U.S. but tasted differently abroad. In the Dominican Republic, there were different taste versions of Coca Cola. Snacks of choice, such as Doritos, were sold at two different prices depending on whether they were sold in American or Mexican packaging. In Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, the point of sale changed in supermarkets. Oreos were sold alongside American cereals rather than in the cookie section!





All these observations contribute to a wider understanding of international marketing forces that shape tourism for young travelers today. Travel can be good  it gives more perspective, more context and more variety. Surely, there will be more alternatives and new experiences, which make life more meaningful, spicy and more interesting.









Michael Czinkota teaches international business and trade at Georgetown Universitys McDonough School of Business and the University of Kent. His key book (with Ilkka Ronkainen) is International Marketing (10th ed., CENGAGE).





Georgetown University students, Dina El-Saharty and Lisa Burgoa, contributed to this report.












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Neovacs PROVIDES CORPORATE UPDATE AND REPORTS FULL-YEAR 2017 FINANCIAL RESULTS

PRESS RELEASE  PRESS RELEASE  PRESS RELEASE

NEOVACS PROVIDES CORPORATE UPDATE AND REPORTS FULL-YEAR 2017 FINANCIAL RESULTS

COMPLETED PATIENT ENROLLMENT IN PHASE IIb CLINICAL STUDY OF IFNalpha KINOID FOR TREATMENT OF LUPUS



RECEIVED U.S. FDA APPROVAL TO EXPAND ITS PHASE I/IIa CLINICAL STUDY WITH IFNalpha KINOID FOR TREATMENT OF DERMATOMYOSITIS



STRENGTHENED BALANCE SHEET THROUGH TWO TRANSACTIONS RESULTING IN APPROXIMATELY 11MILLION



LAUNCH OF A REDEEMABLE STOCK WARRANT (BSAR) FREE ALLOCATION PLAN FOR THE BENEFIT OF ITS SHAREHOLDERS

Paris, March 30, 2018, 7:30 am CEST - NEOVACS (Euronext Growth Paris: ALNEV), a leader in active immunotherapies for the treatment of autoimmune diseases, provided today a corporate update and reported its financial results for the 12-months ended December 31, 2017, as approved by the Company's Board of Directors on March 29, 2018.

Miguel Sieler, CEO of Neovacs, said: "2017 was a year of significant progress for Neovacs, during which the Company completed patient enrollment of its Phase IIb study of IFNalpha Kinoid in lupus, strengthened its intellectual property, entered into new partnerships, and prudently managed its finances. Most importantly, our clinical and preclinical pipeline programs continued to advance as planned. Looking ahead, we look forward to reporting the results of our phase IIb clinical trial in lupus, - our most advanced program, in mid-2018. We are confident that Neovacs has laid a strong foundation to create significant shareholder value in 2018 and beyond."

KEY 2017 ACCOMPLISHMENTS





- Completed patient enrollment in phase the IIb clinical study of IFNalpha Kinoid in lupus. 185 patients have been enrolled in this trial, and top-line results are currently expected end of June 2018.

- Concluded third positive data review by iDSMB following completion of patient recruitment in phase IIb lupus trial. There were no safety concerns identified following this review of the cumulative safety data by the independent data safety monitoring board (iDSMB), and the board recommended the continuation of the study without modification.

- Received U.S. FDA approval to conduct a Phase I/IIa study of IFNalpha Kinoid in dermatomyositis (DM) in the United States. . This Phase IIa clinical trial is a multicenter study currently being conducted in Europe (France, Italy, Germany, and Switzerland) in 30 adult patients. The objective of the study is to evaluate the immunogenicity, tolerability, and biological and clinical efficacy of IFNalpha Kinoid in this orphan indication.

- Signed a license agreement with Centurion pharma to market IFN-Kinoid for the treatment of lupus and DM in Turkey. Pending the successful outcome of Neovacs' Phase IIb clinical trial in lupus, Centurion will pursue authorization with local health authorities in Turkey to commercialize IFNalpha Kinoid in lupus through a "Named Patient" program.

- Strengthened balance sheet during the second half of 2017 through a private placement of 6 million with U.S. biotechnology-focused institutional investors, and a convertible bond issuance for  5.15 million subscribed by European institutional investors.

- Initiated redeemable stock warrant free allocation plan for the benefit of its shareholders. Each Neovacs shareholder received a free redeemable stock warrant for each share held. Holders of the warrants will be able to exercise them and obtain Neovacs shares as of the issue date of the warrants and for a period of 8 months (i.e. until 31 July 2018).

-Reported first positive immunogenicity results for IFNalpha Kinoid in an animal model of type-1 diabetes. Neovacs confirmed a high level of neutralizing anti-IFNalpha antibodies in NOD mice immunized with IFNalpha Kinoid, to observe a twice higher preservation of Langerhans islets in mice treated with IFNalpha Kinoid compared to the control groups, and notable delay in the onset of Type 1 Diabetes in relation to the persistence of anti-IFNalpha neutralizing antibodies. This study was conducted by Neovacs in collaboration with Dr. Agnes Lehuen and Professor Christian Boitard from the department of Immunology of Diabetes at the Hospital Cochin in Paris.

EXPECTED 2018 MILESTONES

In mid-2018, Neovacs expects to announce the results of the Phase IIb clinical study in lupus. The IFNalpha Kinoid Phase IIb trial in lupus is now fully enrolled with 185 patients randomized, and is being conducted in approximately 20 countries across the U.S., Europe, Latin America, Asia, and North Africa. The objective of the study is to evaluate the biological and clinical efficacy of IFNalpha Kinoid in patients with moderate to severe lupus.

Based on a positive outcome of this study, Neovacs intends to begin executing on its action plan for 2018, including:

Continue global partnership discussions for IFNalpha Kinoid in lupus and DM.



Validated with healthcare authorities globally the registration strategy to conduct the lupus Phase III clinical program.



File for orphan drug designation in South Korea with our partner, CKD.

Neovacs is eligible to receive milestone payments in H2 2018 from its three international partners, CKD pharm (South Korea), Biosense Global (China) and Centurion pharma (Turkey), pending positive results of the IFNalpha Kinoid phase IIb clinical trial in lupus.

Neovacs reported positive results from its proof-of-concept study of IFNalpha Kinoid for the treatment of type 1 diabetes at the end of 2017. Following these encouraging results, the Company intends to further advance its development efforts in this indication in 2018 through the design of the appropriate protocol for an initial clinical study in type 1 diabetes, which represents a significant market opportunity.

Neovacs intends to continue advancing its pipeline in 2018 by strengthning its preclinical programs, and acceleRating patient enrolment in its phase IIa study in DM with IFNalpha Kinoid.

Neovacs, together with Stellar Biotechnologies, is progressing the development of Neostell, a state-of-the-art production subsidiary for its Kinoids vaccines, which is largely supported by a 5 million grant from BPI as part of the "PIAVE" program. The project is expected to start in H2 2018 and be completed in 2023.

FULL-YEAR 2017 FINANCIAL RESULTS

Summary financial information

In K December 31, 2017 December 31, 2016 Revenues 834 394 Operating costs 19, 163 17, 655 of which, R&D 16, 475 14, 658 Operating profit/loss (18, 329) (17, 261) Financial Results -636 -99 Pretax profit/loss -18, 965 - 17, 361 Exceptional items 105 34 Research tax credit -4, 022 -3, 394 Net profit /loss -14, 838 -13, 932

KEY FULL-YEAR 2017 FINANCIAL RESULTS

For the year ended December 31, 2017, Neovacs reported an operating loss of  18.3 million, compared to  17.3 million in 2016.

A contained loss of -6% compared to 2016 due to a 2017 operating income higher than 2016, primarily related to the initial payments ( 0.8 million) in connection with its IFNalpha Kinoid license option contracts with Biosense Global LLC (China) and Centurion (Turkey), with a total value of  65 million and  6 million, respectively.

In parallel, the Company maintained its strict cost control policy, which led to a reduction in SG&A of nearly 10% (2.7 million versus 3 million in 2016). The vast majority of operating expenses (86%) were allocated to R&D costs (16.5 million), of which nearly 9.5 million was related to conducting clinical trials, 1.5 million was utilized to execute preclinical studies, and 1.5 million was used for development and industrialization activities for IFNalpha Kinoid (excluding employee costs).

The financial result for the 2017 financial year consists mainly of interest on the single bond issue ( 0.4 million) and the amortization expense of the redemption premium of the single bond issue (0.2 million euros).

The net loss for the year was 14.8 million compared to 13.9 million in 2016, and was partially offset by the increase in the research tax credit (+ 18%) compared to December 31, 2016.

CASH BALANCE

At December 31, 2017, Neovacs had cash and cash equivalents of 5.1 million, compared to 3.9 million at December 31, 2016. This increase was primarily attributable to net proceeds of 6 million from the private placement with US institutional investors in July 2017,  5.1 million in principal from the convertible bond issue in November 2017, and  3.7 million drawn from the equity line financing.

During the first half of 2018, the financial structure of the Company was further strengthened through the following operations:

Issuance of convertible bonds with a principal amount of  3.8 million, subscribed by three European investors, maturing on February 26, 2020

Capital increase of  1 million subscribed by two French institutional investors as part of a private placement

Additional payment by a securitization mutual fund of the balance of CIR 2017 for an amount of 1.5 M 

Use of the equity financing line with Kepler Cheuvreux (Tranche 2) for  0.3 million

About Neovacs

Listed on Euronext Growth Paris since 2010, Neovacs is today a leading biotechnology company focused on an active immunotherapy technology platform (Kinoids) with applications in autoimmune and/or inflammatory diseases. On the basis of the company's proprietary technology for inducing a polyclonal immune response (covered by four patent families that potentially run until 2032) Neovacs is focusing its clinical development efforts on IFNalpha Kinoid, an immunotherapy being developed for the indication of lupus and dermatomyositis. Neovacs is also conducting preclinical development works on other therapeutic vaccines in the fields of auto-immune diseases, oncology, allergies and Type 1 diabetes. The goal of the Kinoid approach is to enable patients to have access to safe treatments with efficacy that is sustained in these life-long diseases. www.neovacs.fr

Contacts

NEOVACS - Corporate Communication & Investor Relations

Charlene Masson

+33 (0)1 53 10 93 00

cmasson@neovacs.com

NEWCAP- Press relations

Annie-Florence Loyer

+33 1 44 71 00 12 / + 33 6 88 20 35 59

afloyer@newcap.fr

Lea Jacquin

+33 1 44 71 20 41 / +33 6 58 14 84 66

ljacquin@newcap.fr

LIFESCI ADVISORS- Investor Relations / Financial Communications

Chris Maggos

+41 79 367 6254

chris@lifesciadvisors.com



Langerhans islets or pancreatic islets: cells capable of producing insulin

This announcement is distributed by Nasdaq Corporate Solutions on behalf of Nasdaq Corporate Solutions clients.

The issuer of this announcement warrants that they are solely responsible for the content, accuracy and originality of the information contained therein.

Source: NEOVACS via Globenewswire


As we have since July 2006, each Friday well post our sampling of cigar news and other items of interest from the week. Below is our latest, which is the 572nd in the series.

1) On the heels of the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) announcing its intent to seek comments about reconsidering existing regulations of premium cigars, several health groups on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against the agency for delaying certain rules for cigars and electronic cigarettes. The lawsuit is challenging an agency decision last summer to grant lengthy deadline extensions to manufacturers seeking FDA approval for their products, reports the Washington Post. Originally, the companies were required to submit such product-review applications by this August for any item that went on the market after February 2007. The revised timeline changed that to August 2021 for cigars and August 2022 for e-cigarettes. The organizations suing the FDA include the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, American Heart Association, American Lung Association, and Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids. The lawsuit contends that the FDA, in delaying product reviews of e-cigarettes and cigars, is exceeding its authority under the [Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act of 2009] and violating the Administrative Procedures Act because it did not give the public an opportunity to comment.

2) Libertarian magazine Reason has a profile (subscription required) of FDA chief Scott Gottlieb entitled Scott Gottlieb is Not a Free Market Firebrand. The piece, which was written prior to the agencys recent tobacco actions and focuses more on his work related to the drug approval process, concludes that Gottlieb has a mixed, moderate record [that] has surprised both his champions and his critics.

3) Tampas Ybor City is still impacted by its cigar heritage, even as its days as a center of cigar production have waned. Case in point is the soon-to-open, 38-unit Angel Oliva Sr. Apartments, being renovated from a historic wooden cigar factory. The structure, originally built in the late 1800s, was used more or less continuously for cigar production until 1999, including most recently by leading cigar tobacco supplier Oliva Tobacco Company.

4) Inside the Industry: Cigar retailer Famous Smoke Shop has unveiled a ring gauge and wrapper color guide to help consumers understand cigar length, smoking duration, girth, and wrapper color. The free tool is available here. Last year, the Pennsylvania-based retailer released a flavor wheel. Both resources are a product of Famous-owned Cigar Advisor.

5) From the Archives: Want to learn more about Ybor City? Read a book. For example: The Immigrant World of Ybor City, which was reviewed here.

6) Deal of the Week: StogieGuys.com recommends Bespoke Post, a monthly collection of awesome items (think fine bar accessories, shaving kits, workout gear, and more) delivered for just $45. Of note is the Churchill box, which features four cigars, an ashtray made of reclaimed wood, an odor-eating candle, cedar spills, and a cutter. Once you are signed up, there is no obligation; you can skip or purchase each month. Sign up now to be eligible for the April box.

The Stogie Guys

photo credit: Stogie Guys
COMMUNITY organisations in the Stratford area have received a slice of 6.7million in National Lottery funding.

The money is being distributed by the Big Lottery Fund, the largest funder of community activity in the UK. In total, 198 community projects in the region are receiving a share.

Projects set to receive money to support their work include an outdoor play park and fitness facilities including a skate park with shelter for the Ettington Youth Council Community Project, which will get 10,000.

The main part of the project will include a wheeled play or skate park for roller skates, scooters or skateboards with a youth shelter and fitness facility to come later.

Ettington parish councillor, Rich Smith, said: The lottery money simply helps to boost what were able to achieve.

The funds will be combined with other money the Youth Council hopes to get from the new Spitfire housing development, along with some help from the council.

Cllr Smith, who serves on the Youth Council, added: Were hoping to make it all part of a major overhaul of our current facilities. Its all going to be in the green space at the Ettington Community Centre. The more people it brings in the more it brings the community together.

Lottery funding of 9,468 was awarded to the Wilmcote Village Hall for the refurbishment of the toilet facilities making the hall more accessible and safe for people with different physical needs.

Another lottery grant of 5,350 was awarded to the Little Compton Village Hall to fund a new heating system for the village hall.

The Warwickshire Pride charity group also received a grant for 4,437, which will go towards funding its annual Pride festival. Some 87,144 went to the operation of a new rehab facility in Southam for ESH Works (Experience, Strength and Hope), a drug and alcohol rehab non-profit organisation.

The money will fund the first two years of operation for the new 11-bed facility, which will provide support for people across Warwickshire on a referral basis.
Top 20 Streaming Technologies of the Last 20 Years

Standards are important, but sometimes standards bodies move slower than the pace of innovation. The streaming industry can respond to this in one of two ways: Wait until a standard is ratified, or use a technology that solves a short-term problem, hoping the technology itself becomes adopted widely enough to become a de facto standard.

We asked survey respondents to rank the top 20 technologies from a list of more than 30. The following technologies rose to the top of overall responses when judged in terms of their impact on the streaming media industry.

The Top of the Top 20

The following technologies received voting at a threshold above 50% of the overall vote. Unless otherwise indicated, the definitions come from the Streaming Media Glossary.

FFmpeg

Percentage vote: 100%

Definition. FFmpegs website calls it a complete, cross-platform solution to record, convert, and stream audio and video, which pretty much sums it up. The intent of FFmpeg is to provide encoding, transcoding, and decoding of a variety of media content in various codecs. The original FFmpeg also included a server version, ffserver, but it was dropped when it was deemed too hard for users to deploy and run due to reliability issues, lack of knowledgeable people to help and confusing configuration file syntax, according to developers.

Why it matters. The success of FFmpeg cannot be understated, and FFmpeg was the only technology to receive a unanimous vote. As more and more codecs are integrated into FFmpeg, the entire digital media industry moves closer to an open-source encoding and transcoding solution that is robust and universally accepted. For instance, version 3.3 Hilbert includes the Apple Pixlet decoder and NewTek SpeedHQ decoder, two proprietary codecs that had been kept at arms length from the industry as part of the proprietary push by each company to own its portion of the video production ecosystem, and version 3.4 Cantor includes a NewTek NDI interface connector and spec compliant VP9 muxing support in MP4.

QuickTime (QT) and QT Player

Percentage vote: 86%

Definition. A proprietary media technology developed by Apple, including both a container format (.MOV) and a multi-codec player that could play a number of the key codecs and container formats of the day. Apple developed the QuickTime Player to play back content encoded with QuickTime-compliant codecs, and the QuickTime Player was the first to introduce native H.264 support.

Why it matters. Well before streaming started, Apple was championing progressive downloads. Given the large number of codecs in the industry, though, Apple needed a way to approve the various codecs that are approved for use in encoding and decoding. Multimedia content authors knew they could confidently choose any of the codecs supported by QuickTime for a variety of reasons (e.g., animation, full-motion video, talking heads, etc.). QuickTime expanded to provide interactive elements and became the basis of both the ISO Base Media File Format (MP4) and the MPEG-4 System standard. In recent years, Apple has de-emphasized QuickTime Player in favor of the embedded player found in iOS devices, with recent work on QuickTime Player for Mac OSX leveraging lessons from the iOS media player.

Flash (Macromedia Shockwave)

Percentage vote: 71%

Definition. A vector-based animation and interaction format released by Macromedia, often used for narrative productions on the web, but also includes the ability to embed data structures, including video. Once called Shockwave, Flash is now developed by Adobe as a result of the company acquiring Macromedia.

Why it matters. While the MPEG-4 System faltered, Flash offered a robust authoring solution that had interactivity at its core. As such, it was easier to disengage Flash from Macromedia Directorused for interactive learning kiosks as well as CD/DVD authoringwhen the lure of web-based interactivity began to rear its head.

Media Servers

Percentage vote: 71%

Definition. A computer designated as a server is located between the network core and a user's edge device, often referred to as a client device. The server is tasked with delivering content to clients through the use of specialized software, ranging from printing and file storage to streaming media delivery.

Why it matters. For the streaming industry, media servers handle a variety of tasks: transcoding (re-encoding for a different codec), transrating (changing the data rate and/or resolution), and repackaging (reformatting for delivery to mobile, desktop, and other devices). Those tasks used to require servers that manipulated streaming-specific protocols (e.g., RTSP, RTMP). With the advent of longer-latency, HTTP-based, small-segment streaming deliverymuch of which is served from a standard HTTP serverthe primary reasons for using a streaming media server often center on lower latencies.

Flash Player (Shockwave Player)

Percentage vote: 71%

Definition. Flash Player is an Adobe plugin that allows Flash content and Flash Video to be played within a compatible mobile or desktop web browser. Flash Player capabilities are also included in AIR, the Adobe Integrated Runtime.

Why it matters. Shockwave Player, originally used by Macromedia to allow simple interactive games online, was key to Adobes online video growth. The renamed Flash Player added support for several video codecs, including H.264 (aka Advanced Video Coding or MPEG-4 Part 10), even though Flash Player still required proprietary extensions such as F4V and FMV. Flash Player, as a plugin for various web browsers, has had a much longer run than almost anyone anticipated, but as Steve Jobs famously stated, when choosing not to include native Flash Player support in the iOS devices, it was time for Adobe to focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.

Digital Rights Management (DRM)

Percentage vote: 57%

Definition. Almost everyone agrees with a portion of this simplified definition found at TechTarget: Digital rights management (DRM) is a systematic approach to copyright protection for digital media. But even that is up for debate, depending on how libertarian your views on copyright are, turning this technology into a highly politicized group of access controls designed to prevent copying, to limit content access to a particular time period, or to limit consumption to a particular number of devices. On one hand, theres a feeling that [t]he purpose of DRM is to prevent unauthorized redistribution of digital media and restrict the ways consumers can copy content they've purchased, noted TechTarget. On the other hand, theres the feeling that, as the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) writes, DRM technologies attempt to control what you can and can't do with the media and hardware you've purchased.

Why it matters. If youre a copyright owner, it matters because youre more likely to agree with TechTarget that DRM products were developed in response to the rapid increase in online piracy of commercially marketed material, which proliferated through the widespread use of peer-to-peer file exchange programs. On the other hand, the more libertarian consumer of DRM-protected media might side with the EFFs assessment that Corporations claim that DRM is necessary to fight copyright infringement online and keep consumers safe from viruses. But there's no evidence that DRM helps fight either of those.  Fans shouldn't be treated like criminals, and companies shouldn't get an automatic veto over user choice and innovation.

Windows Media codecs (WMA, WMV)

Percentage vote: 57%

Definition. Windows Media is Microsoft's proprietary legacy media format that housed audio, video, and metadata. Windows Media Player (WMP) is a multi-format video player that was initially developed by Microsoft for use with Microsoft-specific formats (e.g., WMA, WMV, WAV). WMP houses both a media player and a media library application.

Why it matters. The most recent versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system, Windows 8 and Windows 10, have a version of WMP, but the embedded version of Windows 8 (Windows RT) does not use WMP. Microsoft has deprecated the Windows Media Server in favor of integrating the services into its standard Windows Server, with Microsoft IIS Media Services 4.0 (released in 2011) following the lifecycle of Windows Server 2008, but support for legacy formats will continue for the foreseeable future. Microsoft has also deprecated its proprietary encoders, such as the Windows Media Encoder 9 series, in favor of H.264 encoding, but even the Expression series of encoders is also being deprecated with the end of support of Microsoft Silverlight.

Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3)

Percentage vote: 57%

Definition. According to the Amazon S3 website, Amazon Simple Storage Service is storage for the Internet.  S3 has a simple web services interface that you can use to store and retrieve any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web. It gives any developer access to the same highly scalable, reliable, fast, inexpensive data storage infrastructure that Amazon uses to run its own global network of web sites. The service aims to maximize benefits of scale and to pass those benefits on to developers.

Why it matters. Amazon S3 allows traditional web interfacing for file storage, including files that can be streamed using HTTP-based segmented file streaming. But S3 also allows more innovative peer-to-peer distribution using BitTorrent clients. The costs of client/server distribution increase linearly as the number of users downloading objects increases, [which] can make it expensive to distribute popular objects, says the S3 website. BitTorrent addresses this problem by recruiting the very clients that are downloading the object as distributors themselves: Each client downloads some pieces of the object from Amazon S3 and some from other clients, while simultaneously uploading pieces of the same object to other interested peers. The benefit for publishers is that for large, popular files the amount of data actually supplied by Amazon S3 can be substantially lower than what it would have been serving the same clients via client/server download.

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20 Years of Streaming Media: Looking Back and Looking Ahead Streaming Media launched during the dot-com bubble, and while some of the early players faded away when their funding ran out, others helped chart the future of the industry.

Companies and Suppliers Mentioned
Shayla Schilz and Jasmine Deeds talk with Charlotta Young, while Aspen Schilz interviews Jim Young as the young people closed out a unit where they met and learned about adults and their lives compared to their own experiences. The project ended last week with a multi-generational "prom".

Raiders Reaching Out, an extension of Sidney High School's human development class, closed out a special project Friday with a multi-generational prom that capped a months-long project where class members got to know people from a few years to decades older.

Senior citizens from extended care facilities, one of the target audiences for the Raiders Reaching Out, were unable to attend, but those in attendance were impressed by the students' enthusiasm and energy as they conducted interviews, visited and danced to the tunes familiar from their own youth.

For the students, they closed a project that was "eye opening," and "surprising" as they learned about their elders' lives.

There was also some enjoyment and surprise on the part of the prom's honored guests. They found themselves enjoying familiar tunes like "Boggey Woogey Bugle Boy of Company B," "Sweet Home Alabama," and "Dancing Queen." But also, to their amazement and surprise they watched students sing along with old favorites that pre-dated their lives by up to 50 years.

Students finished up the project with interviews of the adults attending the event, asking them how they felt life differed from today, what their greatest life's accomplishment was, what advise they had to offer, and also visited with their guests throughout the evening.

For the students' part, the project made an impact in their lives, in many cases much more than expected.

Sophomore Josie Dowse said she made many connections, particularly at a Lexington nursing home, where at the end "they were sad to see us go."

Classmate Rayne Daily said one of the biggest thing she got from the project was "to always enjoy my life and not take things for granted."

During the dance portion of the prom, attendees had the chance to learn a few steps, with the assistance of Jim and Charlotta Young of Kimball. The pair showed dance steps several times during the night, and by the time the evening was over, all in attendance had taken a whirl on the dance floor at the Elks Club.

The prom closed out the current unit for the students, but will be part of a review at the end of the class.
All Toys R Us stores are closing, and everything must go.

The company confirmed in an email to customers Thursday that all Toys R Us and Babies R Us locations will close, though some locations may eventually be sold off. Shoppers will see "deep discounts and promotions," but coupons will no longer be accepted.

Liquidation sales began at most locations this past week. Some stores previously set to close began discounts earlier this year.

Experts warn that the most popular toys, including "Star Wars," LEGO and Barbie dolls, will likely be first to go even before the biggest markdowns. Inventory is limited to stock on hand.

Cheaper prices will be available in the coming weeks, but it may be a while before customers see 50 percent off or more. Currently, Toys R Us markdowns are "up to 30 percent off" regular prices; shoppers say most items are marked 10 or 20 percent off.

As of Thursday, Toys R Us and Babies R Us are no longer accepting online orders.

"We have shut down the website or any purchases but our brick and mortar stores are open and holding going out of business sales," a message said. "Thank you for your business and support over the years."

Toys R Us announced earlier this month that it was closing all of its remaining 740 U.S. stores in the coming months, affecting more than 30,000 employees and toy manufacturers worldwide. The company, which has seen declining sales due to competition from online shopping and mobile games, is also shuttering its UK operations.

Upstate New York stores that were already set to close or have closed include shops in Amherst, Greece, Glens Falls, Henrietta and Kingston. Locations in Albany, Clay, Clifton Park, Hamburg, New Hartford, Johnson City and Rochester will soon join them.

According to North Jersey News, all stores will be closed for good by June, but some locations may shutter sooner.

An employee in Clay said on the phone that they did not know an exact closing date yet. The store, near Great Northern Mall, is the Syracuse area's sole remaining location.

For those planning to take advantage of going-out-of-business sales, here are some FAQ (frequently asked questions):

Can I still use Toys R Us gift cards? Yes, until April 21. Gift cards cannot be exchanged for cash.

Can I still use coupons? No.

Can I still use rewards? You can no longer use your loyalty rewards coupons toward purchases, according to CNN.

Can I still return items? All going-out-of-business sales are final and cannot be returned and exchanged. CNN reports some items bought online or before liquidation sales began can be returned until April 21.

Can I still use my Toys R Us credit card? The company says its credit cards can be used throughout the liquidation sales until stores close, but cardholders will not be eligible for rewrads or discounts.

Can I still use a Babies R Us gift registry? BabiesRUs.com is also no longer accepting online orders. Expecting parents may still be able to access their registry for a limited time, but the company is recommending shoppers save or write down items on their list.

What about layaway? Layaway customers are being notified that they have 21 days to pay the remaining balance and claim their purchase, or to request a refund of their deposit. According to northjersey.com, any layaway merchandise that isn't claimed within the three-week period can be sold by the liquidators.

For more information, visit goodbuytoysrus.com.
SMITHFIELD, N.Y. -- Madison County Sheriff's deputies charged four people after discovering a methamphetamine lab in the town of Smithfield.

Deputies responded to 5370 Peterboro Road to assist medical personnel with a report of a man who was bleeding. After arrival, investigators saw items used to manufacture methamphetamine and a methamphetamine lab, deputies said.

The sheriff's office and the New York State Contaminated Crime Scene Emergency Response Team executed a search warrant and located finished methamphetamine product and several other items that were used to manufacture the methamphetamine, deputies said.

The following people were charged:

Donald J. Ciani, 40, of 5370 Peterboro Road, Oneida

Mark J. Morey Jr., 34, 6460 State Route 5, Vernon

Harold F. Ortman Jr., 35, of 5370 Peterboro Road, Oneida

Connie A. Thurston, 37, of 5370 Peterboro Road, Oneida

The four were charged with third-degree manufacturing methamphetamine, a felony; fifth-degree conspiracy, a misdemeanor; and seventh-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance, a misdemeanor, deputies said.

All subjects were arraigned at the Smithfield Town Court. Ciani, Morey and Ortman were all remanded to the Madison County Jail. Thurston was released on her own recognizance, deputies said.
What's in a name? A concert venue by any other name would rock as hard.

The Lakeview Amphitheater will officially be renamed the St. Joseph's Health Amphitheater at Lakeview, the Onondaga County legislature's meeting agenda revealed Friday.

St. Joseph's Health, the Syracuse-based healthcare system, has agreed to buy the naming rights to Onondaga County's amphitheater. County legislators are expected to approve the name change when they meet Tuesday.

Plans to sell the naming rights have been in the works for years, but the 17,500-capacity venue has been known as the "Lakeview Amphitheater" since it opened three years ago. That raises the question: Will you call the amphitheater by its new name?

Many venues in Upstate New York are better known by nicknames, such as SPAC (Saratoga Performing Arts Center) and CMAC (Constellation Brands-Marvin Sands Performing Arts Center). Others have changed identities due to naming rights, such as the KeyBank Center in Buffalo (previously known as HSBC Arena and First Niagara Center), or for rebranding, such as the Darien Lake Amphitheater (formerly Darien Lake Performing Arts Center).

It can also be tough to break the habit of calling places by their familiar names. The New York State Fair's Chevy Court was previously Cole Muffler Court, Destiny USA was Carousel Center for more than two decades, and it remains to be seen whether the new Tappan Zee Bridge will be recognized by the public as the Gov. Mario M. Cuomo Bridge, its official name.

And even if the St. Joseph's Health Amphitheater at Lakeview name sticks, there's also the possibility of nicknames becoming more popular: St. Joe's Amphitheater? St. Joe's Lakeview Amphitheater? St. Joe's Amp?

The first step will be replacing the signage at Lakeview Amphitheater. Revenue from the deal will be set aside to pay for maintenance and capital improvements at the amphitheater, including signs at the venue and the surrounding area.

St. Joseph's naming rights contract will be with Live Nation, the concert promoter for the amphitheater. Live Nation will receive an undisclosed payment for the title rights, while the county -- which owns the venue -- will receive $750,000 over the five-year term for the agreement.

The amphitheater is heading into its third full season of concerts since opening 2015. More than 20 shows are scheduled this summer.

The Lakeview Amphitheater is pictured in Geddes, N.Y., Saturday, June 24, 2016.

Lakeview Amphitheater 2018 lineup:
SYRACUSE, N.Y. - Just like the cookie itself, Central New York is divided on half-moon cookies.

We asked for your help in finding the best half-moon cookies the region has to offer. You responded with nearly 2,000 nominations--by far the most we've ever received in our Best of CNY series-- for 90 different bakeries and shops across Onondaga, Oneida, Oswego, Cayuga, Seneca, Cortland, Tompkins and Madison counties.

The six places that received the most nominations have advanced to the finals.

The final poll is open until 11:59 p.m. on Thursday, April 5. You can select only one place and can only vote once, so choose wisely.

Our judges will visit the six finalists and taste the best they have to offer. Be sure to follow along on Twitter with the hashtag #BestOfCNY as the judges travel the region. You can also follow the judges' tour on Instagram at username syracusedotcom.

On April 6, once all the cookies have been tasted, we'll announce two winners--the judges' choice and readers' choice.

Vote in our poll to decide the winner!

Note: Only votes originating from the United States will be counted.
Syracuse, N.Y. -- Al-amin Muhammad is still looking for a new location for his "Sandwich Saturday" effort. He said the group's switch for Lincoln Middle School in Syracuse last week was temporary.

Every Saturday, Muhammad and volunteers make sandwiches and bring them to Syracuse's Near Westside to pass them out. The effort has outgrown the space in Muhammad's Oak Street office. Some Saturdays, more than 150 people have come to help out.

He's looking for a space that can accommodate 200 volunteers and has a kitchen.

Muhammad, once homeless himself, was surprised by Syracuse's homelessness and poverty, and wanted to help when he moved here from Georgia.

His journey from homelessness to helping the homeless was chronicled in a recent Syracuse.com story, and then featured on CBS News.

Earlier this month, Mayor Ben Walsh declared March 19, 2018, "Al-amin Muhammad Day."

The next Sandwich Saturday is this Saturday at 10 a.m. at Muhammad's current office: 404 Oak St, Syracuse, New York 13203.

Marnie Eisenstadt writes about people, life and culture in Central New York. Have an idea or question? Contact her anytime: email | twitter | Facebook | 315-470-2246
To the Editor:



OnTECH Charter High School is a proposed charter school in Syracuse based around the agricultural sciences and skill-based academics. The school specifically targets refugee and immigrant youth. It is set to open in the fall of 2018.



We who are refugees, who work with refugees, or are in the education field do not approve of this school targeting refugee and immigrant students, for a couple of reasons:



1. Lack of community outreach. The OnTECH Board of Trustees has published only three letters of endorsement from the many Syracuse refugee communities, and has done poor outreach with others. In recent meetings, the board does not seem to care if it makes contact with the communities or not. The board also claims to have circulated a petition among the refugee communities, and uses this to cite support among refugee and immigrants in the city. It has been explained that this petition was circulated as "Sign this to support a new community school!" Of course, if this is how it was explained to anyone, the vast majority of people would add their signature. In response to these accusations, the board said it would release these petitions, but has yet to do so. We find this outrageous and concerning.



2. Not meeting the concerns of the refugee community. OnTECH's Board of Trustees has been faced by a variety of individuals from a variety of communities, given requests for translators, holding Board of Trustee meetings in areas accessible for refugees and immigrants primarily on the city's Northside. Whether it was a letter to the editor ("Agriculture charter school targets refugees who want more from life," May 31, 2017) or refugee community leaders and educators pleading with the OnTECH Board of Trustees to meet the concerns of its constituents, they have failed to do so. In fact, Ellen Kimatian Eagen, the charter school's founder, has stated before that OnTECH is "not a refugee school" in a Board of Trustee meeting though the OnTECH presentation to the New York State Board of Regents specifically states: "to provide meaningful instruction for at-risk students including the refugee and New American populations." Multiple Syracuse.com articles have also referred to OnTECH as a refugee school, and Eagen's husband has even referred to OnTECH as a "school for new American immigrants and refugees" on Facebook.



We do not want this charter school to target refugee and immigrant youth in the city of Syracuse, due to its lack of compassion and willingness to be inclusive to the multiple refugee communities in the city. We also hope that newly elected Mayor Ben Walsh will stand with us in opposition to a charter school that is so widely denounced by its target population. We publicly ask that OnTECH's Board of Trustees leaves the refugee communities completely out of their future endeavors.



Dale Johnson, President, Tillie's Touch

Matthew Johnson, Vice President, Tillie's Touch

Jan-Juba Arway, Community Representative, South Sudanese Community of Syracuse

Murishi Etienne, President, Burundi Community of Syracuse

Maishara Salum, Member, Burundi Community of Syracuse

Praja Shapkota, 1st Ph.D. candidate at SUNY ESF from the Bhutanese Community of Syracuse

Richard Beal, Assistant Dean and Director of the Office of Experiental Learning and Outreach and Adjunct Associate Professor at SUNY ESF

Megan Root, President, Syracuse Teachers Association

Kevin Dorsey, Unit One Director, Syracuse Teachers Association

Nicole Capsello, 1st Vice President, Syracuse Teachers Association

Greg Bickett, Treasurer, Syracuse Teachers Association

Keshab Bhattarai, Mechanical Engineering Student at Rochester Institute of Technology, and member of the Bhutanese Community of Syracuse

Mookpolo Wait, Mechanical Engineering Student at Rochester Institute of Technology, and member of the Karen Community of Syracuse

Joyce Suslovic, Educator, Syracuse City School District
V.Narayan Distinguished - BHPian

Join Date: Aug 2014 Location: Delhi-NCR Posts: 2,984 Thanked: 34,909 Times

Air India Divestment Plan Air India disinvestment: Government likely to push out EoI shortly; ready to give up majority control

https://www.firstpost.com/business/a...l-4408039.html

March 28th, 2018

Quote: The government is likely to release an expression of interest (EoI) document shortly that will kick-off the disinvestment process at the troubled Air India group. The Narendra Modi regime is likely to sell a 76 percent stake in Air India, a 76 percent state in Air India Express and a 50 percent stake in cargo joint venture AISATS, according to media reports.The EoI is expected to impose a minimum net worth condition on bidders, speculated to be Rs 5,000 crore.It could also include a clause that will force the winning bidder to retain all Air India employees for at least one year.The government is planning to retain a 24 percent stake in the ailing carrier. Air India divestment

The government has cleared the runway for Air India's divestment - the government has given its 'in-principle' nod to sell 76 percent stake in national carrier Air India.

https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/bu...a-2538915.html



Quote: The government has cleared the runway for Air India's divestment - the government has given its 'in-principle' nod to sell 76 percent stake in national carrier Air India. CNBC-TV18's Shereen Bhan caught up with MoS, Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha to discuss the nuances of the decision.



Below is the transcript of the interview.



Shereen: Why would the government want to retain any stake at all in Air India? Why not 100 percent disinvestment? The government has decided to retain stake, you are only offloading 76 percent, what was the rationale behind that decision?



A: One of the things we do want to be able to do is to participate in the value creation that will happen once Air India is with new owners who will of course take it to great heights and make it into a great global airline. There will be tremendous value creation.



In fact if you look at what has happened to Maruti, Maruti today has a market cap of Rs 2.7 lakh crore, it has become a very valuable company under private ownership. We think that Air India will also do exceedingly well. We will in fact be absorbing some of the debt of Air India in the asset holding company that we are creating and because we want to pay down that debt and we want to be able to fulfill all the obligations that government has, we would like to be able to maintain a certain residual stake in Air India, so that we can participate in the value creation. I would like to point out that we are giving full management control to the new owners. So, full management control will vest with the full owner, the government will participate so that we can be able to unlock some of the value that is in Air India.



There is another important point to note, which is that the ESOP that we will create, the stock ownership pool that we will create for employees will come out of the government's stake of 24 percent. So, government's stake will probably even fall below 20 percent once we create the ESOP pool for employees as well. So, we want to really make sure that the value creation is fully shared by employees and of course by the people of India as Air India progresses and does much better going forward.



Shereen: You talked about value creation but you also talked about the other big concern and that is with respect to debt. Let me ask you for clarification because as per the memorandum, you basically say that liabilities - which is, current liabilities as well as net liabilities aggregating to a total of about Rs 33000 crore will remain with Air India and Air India Express (AIXL) and balance debt shall be allocated to Air India Asset Holding. So the bidder will have to take on Rs 33000 crore odd in terms of debt and how much would be the balance that would then move to Air India Asset Holding?



A: That is wrong, let me be crystal clear about it, there is Rs 24576 crore of interest bearing debt that will be transferred to the new Air India. If you look at our annual reports that we put out for fiscal year 2016-17, you will see that the total amount of interest bearing debt that we have right now is almost about Rs 50000 crore. So we will be transferring Rs 24576 crore of that to the new Air India. The remainder which is about Rs 25000 crore will stay with the asset holding company. The additional Rs 8800 crore of current liabilities that will go with the new Air India really represent net working capital, they are not interest bearing debt, but for the sake of accuracy we have said that interest bearing debt plus current liabilities will amount to Rs 33392 crore. There is interest bearing debt of Rs 24576 crore that will go with the new Air India, the rest will be current liabilities.



Shereen: I also wanted to ask about some of the eligibility criteria that you have listed as per the memorandum, you say companies with net worth of Rs 5000 crore will be allowed to bid for government's stake in Air India, you also say that the company will need to be PAT positive in at least 3 of the preceding 5 years from the expression of interest deadline. Hypothetically, because you are also allowing consortium's for the Air India disinvestment, so will every party have to comply with this? For example Vistara would not comply with the profitability criteria. So will that then be disqualified or will it still be eligible as part of a consortium?



A: Profitability requirement does not apply to domestic airlines, it applies to non-domestic airlines. So the 3 out of 5 years does not apply to domestic airlines. We have a large number of domestic airlines that have low net worth or negative net worth, if you have negative net worth, we will make it zero and we have restricted their ownership of the consortium to 51 percent. Because they have negative net worth their contribution to the net worth of the consortium will of course be zero. Nonetheless, we will enable them to own upto 51 percent of the consortium. In aggregate the consortium will have to have Rs 5000 crore in net worth. So, we made that also very clear. It is in aggregate that the consortium will have to have a net worth of Rs 5000 crore.

Air India 747 in its earlier livery. Is the divestment exercise finally coming home? Will the airline that was the world's first all-jet fleet regain its earlier glory and reputation for customer service. March 28th, 2018Air India 747 in its earlier livery. Is the divestment exercise finally coming home? Will the airline that was the world's first all-jet fleet regain its earlier glory and reputation for customer service. Last edited by V.Narayan : 29th March 2018 at 08:27 .
The OnePlus 6 notch is a real thing, confirming rumors that the latest model of the so-called flagship killer will copy one of the most polarizing features of the iPhone X.

The OnePlus 6, however, will not be copying everything about the iPhone X though. At least it will keep the headphone jack, which Apple has long dropped from its iPhones.

OnePlus 6 Notch Confirmed

At the recently held Mobile World Congress, several Android smartphones that were revealed to adopt the iPhone X notch were met with a chorus of disapproval from users.

OnePlus, to try to make its case on why the notch is a good thing, reached out to The Verge's Vlad Savov, providing the first image of the OnePlus 6 notch to one of the more vocal critics of the feature.

"How big a notch is always depends on your choices as a company," said OnePlus cofounder Carl Pei to Savov in a meeting in London last week. This is a knock against the Essential Phone, the first smartphone with a notch, as Pei claims that it is impossible to make the notch so small without compromising several features.

"What you are essentially doing is moving the entire notification bar up, giving users more content on their screen," Pei added, claiming that the size of the OnePlus 6 notch is in between the Essential Phone and the iPhone X.

Pei also said that OnePlus is also adapting the software of the OnePlus 6 to work well with the notch, instead of simply slapping the feature on the smartphone and worrying later about compatibility with apps.

OnePlus 6 Headphone Jack Confirmed

Pei admitted that Apple "accelerates the adoption of things within the industry," but only "where it makes sense."

This may be a subtle dig against Apple's decision to drop the headphone jack. While iPhone owners have mostly grown accustomed to the change, the headphone jack is still one of the most requested features on Android smartphones.

Fortunately, the OnePlus 6 will not be a full-on iPhone X copy, as reliable leaker Evan Blass tweeted an image of the OnePlus 6 that shows the smartphone will have a headphone jack.

Notch On Android Smartphones

The iPhone X is not the first smartphone to launch with a notch in its display, but many people saw the feature first on the device. This is a bad thing for Android, as it now appears that Android smartphone makers are simply copying the feature to make iPhone X wannabes.

Google, however, is actually supporting the display design change with the upcoming Android P. Meanwhile, examples of Android smartphones that are adopting the notch include the LG G7 Neo and the Xiaomi Mi 7.

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Sudden infant death syndrome has recently been linked to a genetic mutation which disrupts the normal function of respiratory muscles.

In a new study, researchers examined the genomes of 278 babies who died from the strange phenomenon and then compared them to samples obtained from 729 adults in the United Kingdom who've never been diagnosed of any cardiovascular, respiratory, or neurological disease.

Discovering SCN4A In Children Who Died Of SIDS

Out of the 278 samples from SIDS victims, the team discovered four genomes containing a rare mutation known as SCN4A. They tried searching for it among the controls but failed to identify even just a single case.

This is no coincidence, according to Stephen Cannon, a neurologist, and professor at the University of California, Los Angeles's David Geffen School of Medicine who was not part of the study. He explained that though four may seem too small a number, this is only normal in rare medical disorders.

In particular, the SCN4A gene controls a sodium channel that maintains the flow of electric current to stimulate the function of the skeletal muscles, such as those used for breathing.

Nonetheless, it's important to note that only 1.4 percent of the American babies had the mutation. The rest of them died due to various factors which are, fortunately, preventable.

How To Prevent Sudden Infant Death Syndrome

Ensuring the safety of a child's sleep environment significantly reduces the risk of SIDS and other causes of sleep-related infant death.

The National Institutes of Health recommends using a firm mattress that's covered only by a fitted sheet. Pillows, blankets, crib bumpers, stuffed toys, and similar materials must never be kept inside the crib.

Parents are advised to always place babies on their backs to sleep, not only at night but also during naps throughout the day. Co-sleeping in an adult bed or a couch is also highly discouraged.

Although some medication claims to help in preventing SIDS, the NIH warns against their usage. Instead, the federal health agency promotes breastfeeding which has been found to reduce a baby's risk of crib death by up to 50 percent.

Cardiology Testing For Prevention Of SIDS

In a similar study, researchers in Denmark studied almost 2.5 million infants in a period of 38 years to search for new information on SIDS.

Based on the shocking results of their investigation, the other team urges parents to have younger siblings of SIDS victims undergo cardiology tests as their chance of dying a crib death is actually four times greater than their deceased sibling.

"All parents should follow public health advice on how to prevent SIDS," says Charlotte Glinge, a physician at University Hospital's Heart Centre in Copenhagen and author of the study.

She added that by screening the immediate relatives of SIDS victims, doctors will be able to prevent the potential death of a younger sibling.

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
A vaccine-like cure for cancer successfully removes 97 percent of tumors in mice, although its translation to human pathology still has a long way to go.

Researchers from Stanford University tested a promising cure for cancer in mice by stimulating the immune system to attack cancer cells. The mice were found to have lymphoma, breast, and colon cancer, and these cancer cells have eventually spread throughout their bodies.

Eighty-seven out of 90 mice have been cured of their cancers, yielding a 97 percent success rate.

Despite its promising results, the researchers said that it cannot be compared to the lasting effect of vaccines that causes immunity against certain diseases. However, targeting immune system in the process called immunotherapy has been an effective alternative to chemotherapy and radiation among cancer patients.

Human Trials

Dr. Alice Police, regional director of breast surgery at Northwell Health Cancer Institute in Westchester, New York, said that these findings mark an "exciting" development in the field of cancer research. However, she emphasized that animal results may not necessarily yield the same in humans.

She added that cancer in mice has long been treated for years now, which is why it is imperative that the next step would be human clinical trials.

Dr. Ronald Levy, a professor at Stanford University, said that 35 patients diagnosed with lymphoma were selected to participate in two trials to be conducted later this year.

Researchers also noted that since the impending human trials will involve only lymphoma patients, its results will not necessarily apply to breast or colon cancer patients.

Immunotherapy Versus Chemotherapy, CAR-T

The American Society of Clinical Oncology has recommended the development of a cancer vaccine that will prevent cancer cells from reoccurring and at the same time, destroy all malignant cells in the body.

This new treatment, published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, is a type of immunotherapy. By injecting the cure to the body, two special agents will begin reactivating the T cells to recognize abnormal cancer cells. Once the T cells recognized unhealthy cells, it will begin to attack and infiltrate cancer cells until none of it is left.

"Getting the immune system to fight cancer is one of the most recent developments in cancer. People need to know that this is in its early days and we are still looking for safety and looking to make this as good as it can be," Levy said.

Dr. Michelle Hermiston, director of pediatric immunotherapy program at UCSF, said that immunotherapy is currently the most preferred method of treating cancer compared to other invasive therapies like chemotherapy. Immunotherapy is also preferred than CAR-T, which requires millions of dollars and intensive labor.

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Apple has rolled out iOS 11.3, with the Battery Health menu arguably being the most important addition in the latest update to the mobile operating system.

The Battery Health feature of Apple is the first of its kind in the smartphone industry, and it will look to address one of the biggest iPhone issues in recent memory.

Apple Launches iOS 11.3

The third major version of iOS 11, iOS 11.3, has finally arrived. Owners of all compatible iPhone and iPad models will now be able to download the over-the-air update, as long as they have a stable Wi-Fi connection and enough charge on their battery.

The iOS 11.3 update brings with it a host of updates and new features. The operating system upgrade improves the augmented reality functions of iPhones, and related to that, adds the lion, dragon, bear, and skull Animoji. The update also introduces Health Records, which is a portal that will allow patients to access their medical records from their iPhone from over 40 health systems.

The Importance Of The Battery Health Feature

The Battery Health menu, however, may be the most important addition in iOS 11.3. It can be found under the Battery option of the iPhone's Settings.

The menu offers two kinds of information: Maximum Capacity, which shows how much of the original charge the battery is still able to hold, and Peak Performance Capacity, which tells users if their iPhone's performance is being throttled due to its aging battery.

The Battery Health menu is the result of the massive criticism that Apple faced after users discovered that the iOS purposely throttles iPhone performance as their batteries age, supposedly to prevent unexpected crashes. Apple has also launched a $29 iPhone battery replacement program as part of its response to the backlash, and now stands to lose iPhone sales worth $10 billion.

How To Disable iPhone Battery Throttling

On iPhones with weaker batteries, not only will the Maximum Capacity display a lower percentage, but the Peak Performance Capability will also display a message that says performance management is being applied on the iPhone to prevent unexpected shutdowns.

For users who would prefer their iPhones to keep working at peak performance despite the aging battery, a Disable option will stop the iPhone throttling.

The ability to turn off battery throttling is currently only available on the iPhone SE, iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6S, iPhone 6S Plus, iPhone 7, and iPhone 7 Plus. This may be because newer smartphones are generally expected to still have good battery performances.

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
A recent study explains that insomnia is not simply sleeplessness, but rather the inability of the brain to inhibit function during limbo.

A normal person's brain shuts off neural activity as it prepares to sleep, but an insomniac person's brain would have a hard time inhibiting its activities that are necessary for sleep.

Daniel Kay, a Brigham Young University professor of psychology, published a study suggesting that an abnormality in the brain's inhibition process is what makes insomniacs have a hard time sleeping.

"Previous studies found that patients with insomnia appear to be asleep, their eyes are closed and their brain is in a characteristic sleep pattern, but you wake them up and guess what they are more likely to tell you? 'I was awake,'" Kay explained.

Kay also debunked an earlier theory called sleep misperception, where some sleep scientists categorized sleep into being asleep and being awake. Kay emphasized that being asleep does not necessarily mean that the person has lost his state of consciousness.

Reinforcing Sleep

To better understand Kay's theory, study participants were asked to undergo polysomnography, the current gold standard for measuring sleep. Basically, the test was to determine the length of time the participants were in the states of being asleep and awake.

The polysomnography suggested that the participants were awake longer than what the machine measured as shown by the greater brain activities in the regions associated with a conscious state.

Similar results also appeared in normal sleepers, where brain activities recorded greater at the time the polysomnography reported the participants said they slept longer.

Kay concluded that people with insomnia may be able to benefit from mindfulness meditation to reduce impairment in the cognitive processes that inhibit consciousness.

How To Sleep Better

Sleep deprivation can lead to a number of serious complications including migraines and hypertension. Sleep experts said that getting a healthy amount of sleep can prevent mood swings and irritability.

Having a sleep routine trains the body and the brain to be in a state of consciousness or a state of sleep. It means that a person should set schedules for daily activities, and allot allowance in which the body can relax prior to snoozing.

Distractions like gadgets and television can also hinder sleep. The brain is a continuous process as long as there are stimuli that attract it. Experts suggest to keep away mobile phones, turn off TV screens, and instead, read a book.

People who have a hard time sleeping should reduce their caffeine intake, as it alerts the nerves and consequently be awake. Breathing exercises like meditation should also help relax the body because it allows oxygen to flow in the body.

Kay said that his research is just a precursor to potential future studies on treatments for insomnia.

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
The world is watching the Chinese space station Tiangong-1 as it continues to fall to Earth, and we now have a more specific estimate on when and where it will crash.

At the start of the year, the date and location for the reentry of Tiangong-1 into Earth were still mostly unknown. We now have more information on these details, which should give people living in potentially affected areas time to prepare in case they see debris from Tiangong-1.

When And Where Will The Chinese Space Station Crash?

According to experts, Tiangong-1 may crash to Earth on early Easter Sunday. The estimated time is 10 am EDT on April 1, according to Aerospace Corp., which is one of the organizations that are tracking the fall of the Chinese space station.

The location where the debris from the Tiangong-1 may land, however, is more difficult to predict. This is because the space station is tumbling as it falls, making it hard to predict how the Earth's atmosphere will affect its path.

However, Aerospace Corp. predicts that the 8.5-ton space station may land along a strip within the United States that stretches from northern California to Pennsylvania. This area includes the lower peninsula of Michigan, pushing Gov. Rick Snyder to activate the state's Emergency Operations Center to monitor the fall of Tiangong-1.

What To Do When You See Chinese Space Station Debris

One of the major concerns about the uncontrolled descent of Tiangong-1 is that the Chinese space station would crash into populated areas. Experts, however, claim that the chances of actually being hit with space debris are very, very slim. According to Aerospace Corp., people have 1 million times better odds of winning the Powerball jackpot than Tiangong-1 debris striking a person.

Nevertheless, should you come across what you suspect is debris from the Chinese space station, stay at least 150 feet away from it. The debris may contain hydrazine, which is highly toxic and corrosive, so you should instead call 911 and report the incident.

The Legacy Of Tiangong-1

Tiangong-1 achieved many impressive accomplishments in its time in space, including providing data during global disasters and helping China with its plans of launching a bigger space station. It completed 1,630 days of service before it lost contact with the China Manned Space Engineering Office, when it was only supposed to last two years.

People should also remember these things about Tiangong-1, not just as the Chinese space station that came crashing back to Earth.

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
There are now 22 cases of severe bleeding in Illinois, mostly in the Chicago area, over synthetic marijuana, officials say. Reports of the symptom began March 10, the Illinois Department of Public Health confirms.

State and local health officials issued a warning Thursday, March 29, about multiple cases of patients bleeding from the eyes and ears after using a synthetic cannabinoid product. While such products have long been considered hazardous, severe bleeding is not a known side effect, tells Melissa Millewich of the Advocate Good Samaritan Hospital in Downers Grove.

Illinois bans synthetic marijuana, but some manufacturers have been able to bypass strict laws by making slight modifications to the product to sell them legally. They are sold on the street, according to state department spokesperson Melaney Arnold, and most of the patients report having acquired their products from friends, dealers, or convenience stores.

No deaths have been reported so far, and the situation is still being investigated, said Arnold.

Severe Bleeding

A new modification in the formula may be responsible for the severe bleeding, according to Millewich. However, health officials are largely oblivious to the exact makeup of synthetic marijuana products, so they remain uncertain as to what's causing severe bleeding among the reported cases.

Synthetic Pot

Synthetic cannabinoids are commonly referred to as "K2," "Spice," or "Black Mamba." They are mind-altering chemicals made up of hundreds of elements that aim to emulate the effect of true marijuana. They are commonly sprayed on dry plants to be smoked or sold as liquids to be vaporized. The effects are unpredictable and are life-threatening.

"They are not safe and may affect the brain much more powerfully than marijuana," according to the Illinois Department of Public Health, which encouraged people not to use synthetic marijuana products that were bought over the past month.

"Despite the perception that synthetic cannabinoids are safe and a legal alternative to marijuana, many are illegal and can cause severe illness."

Other symptoms of using synthetic marijuana include kidney failure, heart attack, and death, per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They can also cause a person to exhibit violent behavior, agitation, confusion, and other forms of distress.

"Synthetic cannabinoid products can be toxic. As a result, people who smoke these products can react with rapid heart rate, vomiting, agitation, confusion, and hallucinations. Some have to get help from emergency medical services or in hospital emergency departments or intensive care units," according to CDC.

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Findings of a new study have suggested that syncing class schedules to students' natural body clock could have a positive effect on their academic performance.

Out Of Sync Circadian Rhythm And Class Times

In a study published in the journal Scientific reports on March 29, researchers sorted about 15,000 college students into "night owls," "daytime finches," and "morning larks" based on their activities on days when there are no classes.

The researchers also compared the students' class schedules to their academic performance. They found that the students whose circadian rhythms were not in sync with the class times, such as night owls attending early classes, tend to have lower grades.

They said that this is due to the so-called social jet lag when there is a discrepancy between when a person's body needs to sleep and when he actually goes to sleep. It occurs when a person goes to bed and wakes up later on weekends than during the week.

Night Owls Most Vulnerable To Effects Of Social Jet Lag

The researchers found that students of all categories have class-induced jet lag but the night owls were particularly vulnerable to the effects. Many night owls were not capable of performing optimally at any time of the day because of chronic jet lag.

"Because owls are later and classes tend to be earlier, this mismatch hits owls the hardest," said study researcher Benjamin Smarr, from the University of California at Berkeley.

Study researcher Aaron Schirmer, from Northeastern Illinois University, said that the findings of the study suggest that if a student can structure a consistent schedule wherein class days resemble non-class days, he or she may have improved chances for academic success.

"The benefits to individuals and societies stemming from enhancing education by enabling individuals to take advantage of their own biological rhythms are surely substantial," the researchers wrote in their study.

Other Effects Of Social Jet Lag

Earlier studies have already shown other unwanted effects of jet lag. In a 2016 study, researchers from Baylor College of Medicine found that jet lag may result in obesity and liver diseases.

Social jet lag has also been associated with increased cardiometabolic risks that can contribute to cardiovascular diseases and type 2 diabetes.

Sleep disruption and sleep deprivation, which are closely linked to jet lags, are also known to cause mood swings and depression. Drowsiness due to lack of quality sleep can also increase the risk of car accidents and injuries.

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
In this undated file photo provided by Cathy Mardis, Jeremy Mardis poses for a photograph in Louisiana. (Cathy Mardis via AP)
Baton Rouge police released graphic new video Friday of the Alton Sterling shooting, including officer-worn body camera footage that offered a more complete account of the deadly encounter that ignited national protests two summers ago.

The recordings, at times grainy, show a disturbing struggle in which Officers Blane Salamoni and Howie Lake II sought to subdue Sterling outside the Triple S Food Mart. The officers had been responding to a 911 call that a man matching Sterling's description had threatened someone with a gun.

Alton Sterling shooting: follow live as BRPD chief's disciplinary decision for officers revealed Baton Rouge Police Chief Murphy Paul will release his discipline decision for Blane Salamoni and Howie Lake II, the officers in the Alton Ster

The new materials also included surveillance video from the convenience store, which showed Salamoni quickly becoming physical with Sterling  placing him in a headlock within seconds of arriving on the scene and drawing his service weapon almost immediately after.

Police Chief Murphy Paul described the newly released footage as "shocking to the conscience," even though it does not "tell the whole story of the investigation." The chief fired Salamoni on Friday, saying the officer disregarded the department's "training and organizational standards." Paul suspended Lake for three days.

On his body camera video, Salamoni can be heard shouting profanities at Sterling from the beginning of the encounter, threatening to shoot Sterling in the head if he fails to place his hands on the hood of a vehicle. Sterling seems confused at times throughout the encounter  asking the officers, "What I did, sir?" and, seconds later, telling them they are hurting his arm.

"Don't f****** move or I'll shoot your f****** ass, bitch!" Salamoni screams. "Put your f****** hands on the car! Put your hands on the car or I'll shoot you in your f****** head, you understand me? Don't you f****** move, you hear me?"

After the shooting, a breathless Salamoni curses at Sterling, repeatedly calling him a "stupid motherf*****" and several other profanities as Sterling lies motionless on the ground.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The video below contains highly graphic footage and extreme language recorded on the body camera worn by Salamoni while the shooting occurred. Can't see video? Click here.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The video below contains highly graphic footage and extreme language recorded on the body camera worn by Lake while the shooting occurred. Can't see video? Click here.

State and federal prosecutors reviewed all of the recordings before ruling out charges against both officers, but they declined to release the footage even after announcing they had insufficient evidence to bring a criminal case.

Before Friday, the only publicly available images of the shooting had been the cellphone videos that went viral on social media in the hours following the shooting on July 5, 2016. Those snippets prompted national demonstrations, including one in Dallas during which five police officers were fatally shot. Less than two weeks after Sterling's death, a veteran from Kansas City, Missouri, traveled to Baton Rouge and killed three lawmen and wounded three others here.

Use-of-force experts hired by the U.S. Justice Department said they found Sterling's shooting death to be justifiable under the circumstances  pointing to the officers' belief that Sterling had been reaching for his gun as he resisted arrest. But the experts also found fault with the officers' tactics, saying they could amount to policy violations.

Paul, the police chief, agreed with that assessment, finding Salamoni ran afoul of the department's use-of-force policy and that Lake violated the department's rules regarding "command of temper."

W. Lloyd Grafton, a use-of-force expert in Ruston, said Salamoni "escalated everything" when he approached Sterling.

"He's saying things that would inflame anybody," said Grafton, who reviewed the new footage for The Advocate. "At no time does (Sterling) strike, push or kick at anybody. He's asking questions."

Nevertheless, Grafton said, he understands why criminal charges weren't brought against the officers. But he added that the shooting underscored the need for better training for police officers. "When I watch this video, I know we can do better," he said.

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A second use-of-force expert, Ken E. Williams, a former homicide detective in Massachusetts, said Salamoni's language is disturbing but ultimately has little bearing on whether the shooting was justified.

"The police perceived they had stopped the right person," Williams said. "It's unfortunate Mr. Sterling didn't say to the officer, 'Hey, I got a gun in my back pocket.' That might have de-escalated matters."

+12 Alton Sterling shooting report: Experts fault officers' approach, but deem shooting reasonable Two use of force experts hired by the U.S. Justice Department criticized the actions taken by Baton Rouge police officers Blane Salamoni and H

On the night of the shooting, Salamoni and Lake responded to a 911 call about a black man in a red T-shirt selling CDs who allegedly threatened another man with a gun outside the convenience store on North Foster Drive. The caller, later identified as John Young, told dispatchers a man meeting Sterling's description still had the weapon in his pocket.

The ensuing encounter between Sterling and the two officers lasted less than 90 seconds. Lake arrived first, with Salamoni arriving just seconds later.

The footage shows Lake walking up to Sterling and saying, "Could you please put your hands on that car right quick?" Sterling doesn't comply and instead tries to walk toward the store and away from the vehicle.

Lake puts his hand on Sterling's chest and pushes him back toward the car. At that point, Sterling puts his hands on the hood, but the two start tussling and Lake's body camera falls off, continuing to record audio of the encounter.

"What'd I do?" Sterling asks the officer.

Salamoni arrives then and almost immediately grabs Sterling around his head. "Don't f****** move or I'll shoot your f******" ass," Salamoni says, unholstering his weapon.

+9 Officers in Alton Sterling case won't be charged, Louisiana AG Jeff Landry says Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry on Tuesday declined any criminal charges against the two white Baton Rouge police officers involved in 

A struggle ensues and Salamoni tells Lake to "Tase his ass." Seconds later, he says, "Pop him again, Howie."

Sterling falls to the ground, and the officers begin wrestling with him. One of the officers can be heard shouting, "He's got a gun!"

Salamoni opens fire two seconds later, striking Sterling three times in the chest almost immediately after realizing Sterling had a gun. He shoots the man again three times in the back after Sterling apparently tries to get up.

Lake reports shots fired over his radio, then walks a short distance to a marked BRPD unit and opens the driver's side, appearing to deposit something inside the car. The store surveillance video shows Lake removing what the officers said was a loaded .38-caliber handgun from Sterling's pocket.

Meanwhile, Salamoni searches Sterling's pockets with his gun still drawn. As cash falls from Sterling's pockets, the officer can be heard repeatedly calling Sterling a "stupid motherf*****."

Salamoni then asks Lake, "Where's the gun, Howie."

"It's in my car," Lake responds. "I got it."

About 90 seconds after the shooting, Lake says he's going to get some gloves and walks back to his car then back to Sterling. "I don't want to handcuff the dude," Lake says as he returns to Sterling.

Salamoni agrees: "F*** it. Just let him be."

At the end of Salamoni's body-camera footage, an unidentified officer is seen approaching him. Salamoni suggests his work at the scene is not yet complete.

"You're done," the officer says before the footage cuts out.
After nearly two years of investigations and a public outcry over the fatal police shooting of Alton Sterling, Baton Rouge Police Chief Murphy Paul on Friday fired one officer and suspended another as he pleaded with the community to heal the wounds and look forward.

Officer Blane Salamonis interactions with Sterling in July 2016 violated departmental policies that warranted his dismissal, Paul said. Salamoni was the officer who fired the fatal shots. The second officer involved, Howie Lake II, handled the situation more appropriately, Paul said, even de-escalating the situation. Lake was given a 3-day suspension for some of his actions that night.

"We had two officers involved in one incident, the same incident with two different responses," Paul said. He said his decision was not based on politics or emotion, but on "the facts of the case.

The two officers, both white, were attempting to arrest Sterling, a 37-year-old black man, after a 911 call came in about a man selling CDs outside a north Baton Rouge convenience store who had threatened someone with a gun. Sterling matched the description and, after a brief struggle with the officers that lasted less than 90 seconds, he was shot. Officers found a loaded handgun in Sterling's pocket.

Paul said based on the department's internal affairs investigation, Salamoni violated policies on use of force and command of temper. He said Lake did not violate their use of force policy, but was in violation of command of temper. Salamoni's termination as a Baton Rouge Police officer became effective Friday, Paul said.

"These actions were not minor deviations from policy, as they contributed to the outcome that resulted in the death of another human being," Paul said.

The police department's use of force policy states: "Every member of the department shall use only the force necessary to effect an arrest or maintain the custody of a suspect."

The command of temper policy directs officers to "exercise emotional control" and says they should not "use rude or derogatory language, racist terminology, or attempt to deride, offend, or insult anyone."

Salamoni's lawyer, John McLindon, said they will appeal the decision to the Municipal Police and Fire Civil Service Board. McLindon said Friday night that he didn't think Salamoni violated either policy and said he should have gotten a punishment similar to Lake's.

McLindon said Salamoni has recently realized he can never return to being a police officer in the city of Baton Rouge, but filing an appeal is a "matter of pride," hoping for an acknowledgement that his actions in the shooting were appropriate.

Kyle Kershaw, Lake's lawyer, said he and his client have not decided if they will appeal the suspension. However, he said he believes Lake acted in a way that should not have warranted any sanction.

"He didn't do anything wrong," Kershaw said, but noted that Lake is ready to get this behind him and return to work next week. "He wants to get back to his job," Kershaw said.

Paul's administrative decision came as the department also released the officers' body camera videos and store surveillance footage, which captured the graphic shooting from start to finish. Only portions of the shooting from two cell phone videos had been seen previously. Those videos, which were shared widely on social media, sparked days-long protests in July 2016.

The attorneys for Sterlings five children said they applauded Pauls decision to fire Salamoni, calling it courageous, but said they would have also liked to see Lake fired.

"They sat there and cussed over him and called him names as he sat there bleeding and dying and not once did they ever become the guardian that Chief Paul just said his police officers should be, said Brandon Decuir, an attorney for Sterling's children. "Blane Salamoni was no longer a guardian for the citizens of Baton Rouge and Howie Lake was complicit sitting there.  His actions are still egregious."

Before announcing the decision about the officer's discipline, Paul called on the community to "please stop resisting... stop running." He asked for community support and said that, in exchange, officers will act professionally and in accordance with policy. If they do not, Paul said, residents should file official complaints so the issue can be handled.

But Paul also pledged his support to his police force  an agency that he's been at the helm of for less than three months  and called on local leaders to "pay our officers" what he said they deserve.

Paul also noted that during a Thursday night disciplinary hearing, which precedes any disciplinary decision, that Salamoni, on the advice of his attorney, had declined to answer questions. McLindon said Salamoni had given two statements during the investigation, and "they had everything they needed." Paul said Lake did respond to questions during his disciplinary hearing.

In the statements that Salamoni did give to internal affairs investigators shortly after the shooting, he said Sterling "became very violent and began pulling away from the officers," according to internal police records released Friday. Salamoni added that he and Lake knew that it was a high probability that Sterling had a weapon in his pants, so they were scared."

Salamoni stated that Officer Lake was trying to be nice and as calm as possible while speaking to Sterling, the records state. Salamoni said he used repeated profanities during the encounter hoping that Sterling would realize that the police are here and we are not playing.

The videos released Friday did not clearly show that Sterling became immediately violent with the officers. In the initial moments, Sterling asks, "What I do?" and uses the word "sir" to address the officers.

Earlier this week, Attorney General Jeff Landry announced he would not pursue criminal charges against officers Salamoni and Lake, based on their investigation of the incident.

New Alton Sterling shooting videos show deadly, heated scene at Triple S Baton Rouge police released graphic new video Friday of the Alton Sterling shooting, including officer-worn body camera footage that offered a

Police department leadership delayed their internal disciplinary decision until the end of the criminal investigations into the officers' actions, which they called protocol to ensure due process.

The Louisiana Attorney General's Office began their review of the incident after the U.S. Department of Justice announced in May they would not bring federal civil rights charges against the officers. Those two subsequent investigations took nearly 20 months to complete.

Paul, who was hired by East Baton Rouge Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome, had faced mounting political pressure to discipline the officers involved in the shooting.

Broome previously called for sanctions against the officers, including the termination of Salamoni, who fired the shots that killed Sterling. Following Landry's announcement Tuesday that he would not pursue criminal charges against the officers, Broome said she had "supreme confidence" in Paul to complete the disciplinary process.

Community activists, the Sterling family and their attorneys had called repeatedly for the police department to fire the officers.

In closed door meetings with federal attorneys last May, attorneys said they they were disturbed to hear how Salamoni approached Sterling, holding a gun to the man's head while shouting a profanity-filled threat to shoot him if he didn't obey their commands.

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+9 Officers in Alton Sterling case won't be charged, Louisiana AG Jeff Landry says Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry on Tuesday declined any criminal charges against the two white Baton Rouge police officers involved in 

Salamoni and Lake have been on paid administrative leave since the incident. The city-parish government has spent more than $130,000 paying the officers' salaries since they have been off the job, according to payroll records. Paul said the department will not attempt to get reimbursed for any of those payments to Salamoni.

The brief encounter between the officers and Sterling on July 5, 2016, outside the Triple S Food Mart Mart on North Foster Drive lasted less than 90 seconds and ended with Salamoni shooting Sterling six times.

Both federal investigators and Landry described how, in the beginning of the interaction, Salamoni pulled his service weapon on Sterling while threatening to shoot him. Landry's report details that Salamoni told Sterling, Dont f****** move or Ill shoot you in your f****** head.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The video below contains highly graphic footage and extreme language recorded on the body camera worn by Salamoni while the shooting occurred. Can't see video? Click here.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The video below contains highly graphic footage and extreme language recorded on the body camera worn by Lake while the shooting occurred. Can't see video? Click here.

Salamoni and Lake then attempted, unsuccessfully, to subdue Sterling with a stun gun. Salamoni later tackled Sterling and wrestled with him on the ground.

Landry said both officers worked together to try to control Sterling's two arms while Sterling "actively resists."

+2 In Alton Sterling case, disciplinary hearing could pit politics against civil service law When the U.S. Justice Department announced last year it would not pursue civil-rights charges in the death of Alton Sterling, East Baton Rouge

While struggling on the ground, Landry said Salamoni drew his weapon and said, 'If you move I swear to God,' and then Salamoni "can be heard excitedly saying, 'He's got a gun.'" He fired six shots, killing Sterling.

Salamoni, who had been an officer for four years before the Sterling shooting, is a third-generation law enforcement agent. The 30-year-old had previously worked in construction.

His mother, Melissa Salamoni, served 32 years as a Baton Rouge police officer, rising to the rank of captain and becoming the organizations first female chief of staff. Blane Salamonis father, Capt. Noel Salamoni, still works in the department and is a former leader of the city police union. At least one of Blane Salamonis grandparents also was a Baton Rouge police officer, Advocate archives show.

According to departmental records, Blane Salamoni had only one complaint sustained against him in his four-year career, for which he received a letter of caution involving an automobile crash that happened in June 2012. The sustained complaint was later marked expunged.

In July 2015, while responding to a report of a man being pushed out of a moving vehicle, Salamoni was accused of chasing the automobile into a retaining wall, causing injuries.

And in August 2015, the Catholic High School graduate admitted to striking a man in the head, causing a wound that needed stitches. He said he struck the blow because it was the only way to subdue the man, who was trying to grab the officers stun gun.

The latter two incidents were both found to have been not sustained, records show.

Salamoni said that he graduated first in his academy class in August 2011, according to an Advocate article. He joined the departments Special Response Team, colloquially known as SWAT, in 2015.

As an officer, Salamoni has received numerous commendations, including a lifesaver award in 2014 for saving an unconscious man from an overheated house, records show.

Salamoni graduated in 2010 from Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond with a criminal justice degree, according to records from the department.

Lake, 30, had a use-of-force complaint lodged against him in April 2014 on allegations he injured a 15-year-old boy while trying to arrest him.

In a separate incident in December of that year, Lake was accused of again using force after responding to an incident in which another officer fired at an armed man, striking him. Later, the man, Kevin Knight, pointed a revolver at a different officer, and several lawmen, including Lake, fired several rounds at Knight but didnt kill him, according to a shooting review report of the incident.

Records show Lake was exonerated of both complaints.

Lake also had also been a part of BRPD's Special Response Team, or SWAT, according to payroll records.
Baton Rouge Police Chief Murphy Paul will release his discipline decision for Blane Salamoni and Howie Lake II, the officers in the Alton Sterling case, at a news conference at 5 p.m. Friday.

+5 Alton Sterling shooting: Audio, video, BRPD findings to be released at 4 p.m. Friday, State Police told Louisiana State Police are preparing for Baton Rouge Police Chief Murphy Paul to release his discipline decisions about the fate of two BRPD o

An agency email said State Police had been told that Paul would announce his findings and then release video and audio of the Sterling shooting at 4 p.m.

Paul's decision comes after Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry ruled out criminal charges against Salamoni and Lake on Tuesday, nearly 11 months after the U.S. Justice Department announced that it would not pursue federal civil rights charges in Sterling's July 2016 death.

Can't see live updates? Click here.

See the full story here.

+9 Officers in Alton Sterling case won't be charged, Louisiana AG Jeff Landry says Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry on Tuesday declined any criminal charges against the two white Baton Rouge police officers involved in 

How can Chief Paul discipline Salamoni, Lake?

Paul can choose whether Salamoni and Lake lose their jobs, face lesser punishment, or are not disciplined at all.

Paul has declined to comment on which policy violations he will consider at this week's disciplinary hearing. He could consider a range of infractions, but the department's own guidelines  which are nonbinding  dictate that the violation should be egregious to warrant termination.

Paul could sustain a so-called "violation of law" complaint against one or both of the officers, even though they were not criminally charged.

John McLindon, Salamoni's attorney, believes the decision has already been made, saying Tuesday that Murphy will fire his client "no matter what." McLindon also said it is "grossly unfair" that Paul plans to hold a hearing less than a week after the end of a criminal investigation of Sterling's death.

Lake's attorney, Kyle Kershaw, also said the department is "rushing things." He said it would make more sense for the chief to give himself more time to review all the new evidence they received Tuesday.

Kershaw also said he believes if Lake is fired, it would stem from "external influences."

Both McLindon and Kershaw vowed to appeal if their clients are fired. See the full story here.

+4 BRPD: Alton Sterling video, audio to be released; attorney expects officer to be fired Baton Rouge police Chief Murphy Paul plans to hold closed disciplinary hearings this week with the two officers involved in the July 2016 kill

What factors can determine Paul's decision?

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Politics aside, civil service law requires that Paul show cause in firing any officer  and that he justify that decision with specific policy infractions.

Some law enforcement officials said that Baton Rouge Mayor Sharon Weston Broome may have put the proverbial cart before the horse when advocating for Salamoni's firing, and some attorneys familiar with civil service law said her public comments could be invoked if the officers are disciplined and decide to appeal.

Shortly after taking office last year, Broome ushered in a series of changes to the Police Department's use of force policy, seeking to "close the gap" between law enforcement and the community. Among other changes, officers now are required to give verbal warning and "deescalate situations" before using deadly force.

Those standards will not be applicable in the Sterling case because they were implemented several months after the fatal shooting, said Sgt. Don Coppola Jr., a BRPD spokesman. The old policy says officers may use only "the amount of force necessary" during a legal arrest to "overcome any resistance or threatened resistance."

+2 In Alton Sterling case, disciplinary hearing could pit politics against civil service law When the U.S. Justice Department announced last year it would not pursue civil-rights charges in the death of Alton Sterling, East Baton Rouge

Two use of force experts hired by the Justice Department found Sterling's shooting to be justified, but both highlighted actions taken by the officers that they found "problematic" or warranted discipline.

Even if Paul decides not to fire the two officers, the question remains if Salamoni and Lake can effectively serve the Baton Rouge community after the events that have unfolded.

"That's not only a decision for the chief but a determination the officers have to make themselves," said Pat Englade, a former Baton Rouge police chief. "Can I effectively serve as a police officer in this community, or will I always be looking over my shoulder?" See the full story here.

After Sterling shooting, can officers involved effectively return to Baton Rouge force? The unrest that followed the Alton Sterling shooting drove Blane Salamoni and Howie Lake II into hiding as protesters clashed with Baton Rouge

What footage is Paul releasing?

Paul is expected to release long-awaited audio and video evidence in the killing of Sterling, including footage sources have previously described as graphic and eye-opening.

The footage is expected to be 911 recordings and store surveillance footage that have yet to be widely distributed beyond investigators.

In May 2017, Advocate reporter Bryn Stole pieced together a chronicle of the deadly encounter from law enforcement sources, attorneys for Sterling's family and others who had access to details not seen by the public.

Among those details is an eye-opening account of the interaction between Sterling and officers Blane Salamoni and Howie Lake II.

CLICK HERE to read that story: Sources reveal specific, graphic details of fatal encounter

After Sterling shooting, can officers involved effectively return to Baton Rouge force? The unrest that followed the Alton Sterling shooting drove Blane Salamoni and Howie Lake II into hiding as protesters clashed with Baton Rouge

How to follow along

The Advocate will have live updates of the Baton Rouge Police chief's decision rolling before, during and after the announcement Friday afternoon. Be sure to check here for more updates, and follow along below.
A spike in fatal car crashes involving trains has officials with the Louisiana Highway Safety Commission re-emphasizing the need for drivers to make smarter decisions at railroad crossings. Put simply, they say, drivers should always stop for approaching trains.

"Its just not worth the risk to try and beat a train," said Lisa Freeman, executive director for the LHSC. "Your life is worth so much more than a few saved minutes."

The Highway Safety Research Group at LSU reported there were seven fatal crashes involving trains in Louisiana in 2016 and 32 more involving injuries. The year before, in 2015, Louisiana reported two crashes that involved fatalities and 28 injury crashes, according to the research group's data.

While up sharply in 2016, the number of fatal crashes fluctuates from year-to-year. There were five crashes involving fatalities in 2013 and four in 2014.

Three fatal crashes were reported for 2017 but Corey Hutchinson, director of the Highway Safety Research Group, said complete data for the year won't be in until the summer so that number could change.

"We don't get the full data until the end of the summer for the previous year," Hutchinson said.

What's happening in Louisiana appears to be following the same trend as the rest of the country.

Although railroad-crossing crashes have been on the decline for the past decade other data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration suggests a spike nationally between 2015 and 2016.

The NHTSA says the number of people killed in railroad crossing accidents in 2016 was up 16 percent from a year earlier.

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The national traffic administration claims most of the deaths could have been prevented had drivers not participated in risky behavior and made poor decisions.

"What that means is many drivers appear to be ignoring the controls and putting themselves and passengers in danger," Freeman said. "People dont realize, perhaps, the laws of physics. A freight train that is traveling 55 mph needs at least a mile to come to a complete stop with an emergency break."

+9 Officials: Amtrak video should show what happened before fatal New Iberia crash at 'horrible' intersection NEW IBERIA  The Amtrak train that slammed into a car last week, killing two adults and three children and critically injuring another child, 

Safety experts identified a rail crossing in New Iberia as one of the state's most dangerous after five people were killed in crash there in December 2015. The vehicle they were in got stopped on the tracks as an Amtrak passenger train was approaching, with traffic stopped in front of and behind it.

The crossing, located along La. 88, was only outfitted with a stop sign and a sign that warned drivers against stopping on the tracks.

More recently, in September 2017, an 82-year-old man was killed in Slidell when he drove around crossing arms and onto the tracks as an Amtrak passenger train was approaching.

And two siblings died in June 2016 at a railroad crossing at La. 1 and Dorcy Road in White Castle when their vehicle was struck by a train. But that crossing was not outfitted with warning signs or crossing guards.

+2 Two Baton Rouge siblings on way to funeral in White Castle die after train slams into their SUV WHITE CASTLE  Investigators with the Iberville Parish Sheriffs Office are hoping footage captured by the cameras installed at the front of t

"You do not walk away unscathed from a train collision," Freeman said. "All these errors and miscalculations equal a real fatal consequence potentially."
GULFPORT -- Mississippi Senator Thad Cochran had a parting gift for the Gulf Coast before he retires from the U.S. Senate on Sunday, one that could restore passenger trains from New Orleans to Mobile.

Tucked in the $1.3 trillion omnibus legislation passed by Congress to keep the federal government operating through September are grants to restore passenger rail service, particularly to areas like the Gulf Coast that once had trains but lost service.

"We have a unique opportunity Sen. Cochran and Sen. (Roger) Wicker put together for us," said Knox Ross, vice chairman of the Southern Rail Commission.

For the original version of this story from The (Biloxi) Sun Herald, click here.

The Republican senators from Mississippi have worked to get passenger train service restored. Two years ago, Wicker rode aboard the first Amtrak train to travel across the Coast since the service was discontinued before Hurricane Katrina.

This latest plan is for two trains a day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, in each direction from Gulfport. That would let people from South Mississippi ride the train to New Orleans for a day of shopping, go to the museums in Mobile or take a train rather than a car to one of the local festivals. And residents and visitors from New Orleans and Mobile could ride to South Mississippi to visit the casinos, the aquarium or watch a Biloxi Shuckers game, said Ross.

While the plan is still to one day provide passenger trains from New Orleans to Orlando, Ross said this shorter route has advantages for several areas of the Gulf Coast. The two-year, $20 million grant comes with the requirement of a 50 percent match. Ross said it would cost Mississippi $20 million and could be spread out over four years. The funds possibly could come from Restore Act money directed to the Coast from the BP oil spill fine.

Gulf Coast leaders push to restore passenger train service with two New Orleans routes BILOXI, Miss. (AP)  A group of Gulf Coast leaders has recommended that Amtrak restore a passenger train route that goes through the Gulf Coast.

The track and bridges are ready to go  "You could run a train right now," he said  but a second matching grant will pay for infrastructure needs for the track from New Orleans to South Mississippi.

"If we apply for it, more than likely we're going to get it," a confident Ross told the Gulf Coast Business Council on Tuesday.

"This brings the people you need to you," he told business owners, and said it also will help change perception of the area as a whole.

Few places in the country have this kind of service, he said, such as the Amtrak Downeaster that runs between Boston and Portland, Maine. The base price for that trip is $58 for a round-trip ticket for the full route that is 2.5-hour trip each way, with 50 percent-off deals for seniors and children, multiride packages for frequent riders and other specials. The trains are wheelchair accessible and have free WiFi and a cafe.

Ross said he sees prices on a Gulf Coast line being competitive and a savings compared to the cost of gas and parking in New Orleans.
The New Orleans Police Department's homicide investigators will soon have a new commander, about three months after a workplace harassment complaint apparently forced his predecessor out of the unit.

Lt. Ryan Lubrano will assume command of the NOPD's homicide division on Sunday, according to an announcement sent this week. The move suggests the prior commander, Lt. Jimmie Turner, will not be returning to lead the division  at least not any time soon.

Lubrano has been the assistant commander of the expansive 7th Police District, which includes New Orleans East. Before that, from 2012 to 2015, he was the sergeant overseeing the Multi Agency Gang Unit, a key component to the NOLA for Life murder-reduction campaign that Mayor Mitch Landrieu's administration launched.

During Lubrano's time there, the MAG Unit oversaw state investigations into street gangs such as the 110ers, 3NG and 6th Ward Wild Side, who were blamed for numerous murders.

The unit also helped secure federal indictments against members of the equally notorious groups known as the Young Melph Mafia and Frenchmen and Derbigny. And it was deeply involved in efforts to catch the killers of 11-year-old Arabian Gayles, who was gunned down in her home during what authorities portrayed as a botched robbery attempt.

While Thursday's announcement didn't mention Turner by name, it portrayed Lubrano as someone who collaborates well with the rest of the NOPD and its various partner agencies  something that critics said the division's former leader failed to do.

Turner had led the homicide unit since NOPD Superintendent Michael Harrison appointed him to the post in July 2015.

But the department's brass transferred him to the 7th District late in December after Homicide Sgt. Peter Hansche, who is white, filed a complaint accusing Turner, who is black, of a pattern of inappropriate sexual and racial comments and unwelcome touching directed at male detectives in the unit.

The status of Hansche's complaint is unclear.

NOPD homicide squad commander under investigation, accused of workplace harassment The commander of the New Orleans Police Department's homicide squad has been sidelined following an internal complaint accusing him of unwelco

NOPD Criminal Investigations Division Cmdr. Doug Eckert, Turner's boss, had been supervising the department's homicide detectives since Turner was moved out.

Beginning Sunday, Turner will be reassigned to the 2nd District, which patrols Uptown, according to the NOPD.

Hansche's complaint came at the end of a difficult year for the homicide unit, which spearheads New Orleans' fight against a murder rate that constantly ranks among the country's worst.

A steady drumbeat of killings left the homicide unit drowning in new cases during the first half of 2017. As a result, the clearance rate  the percentage of cases that police consider solved through an arrest or a special circumstance such as a suspect's death  dropped even more after two years of declines.

The detectives improved the unit's performance after the number of killings eased in the second half of the year, and Turner received his share of the credit.

However, before the improvement, a feud between Turner and some of Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro's top lieutenants erupted in public, with one high-ranking prosecutor writing to Harrison that Turner was "dismantling ... cooperation and collaboration" between the two agencies.

Some rank-and-file homicide detectives also complained to the media about low morale and shaky leadership in the unit at the time.

Lubrano will inherit a division grappling with a homicide rate that has rebounded to about where it was this time last year.

Prior to his work with the MAG Unit, he was in charge of NOPD's vice squad.
The Army Corps of Engineers closed the final bays of the Bonnet Carre Spillway on Friday after the Mississippi River receded to a safe level.

For 21 days, the structure redirected water from the Mississippi into Lake Pontchartrain to keep the river 3 feet below the top of the levees at the Carrollton gauge in New Orleans.

The river fell quickly, making this month's opening the second-shortest in the spillway's 87-year history.

The Corps will continue to monitor the river's level. All restrictions related to levees and excavations near the river remain in effect.
Legal watchdog group files FOIA lawsuit for documents related to political activities of Alt-Left George Soros foundation

Slowly but surely the world is closing in on billionaire George Soros and his Alt-Left empire of Marxist interference in the political processes of one country after another.

And nowhere is there a more dogged pursuer of Soros truth than conservative legal watchdog Judicial Watch, which recently filed Freedom of Information Act lawsuits in order to find out how much meddling the Soros-funded Open Society Foundation has done in the electoral processes of Colombia and Romania  in part with U.S. tax dollars.

From the organizations website:

Judicial Watch announced today that it filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits against the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) for records relating to their funding of the political activities of the Soros Open Society Foundations of Romania (Judicial Watch v. U.S. State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (No. 1:18-cv-00667)) and the Soros Open Society Foundations of Colombia (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:18-cv-00668)).

The suit against the Romania chapter was filed after the State Department and USAID declined to respond to an Oct. 16, 2017, FOIA request from Judicial Watch for the following documents, among others:

 Any records pertaining to grants, contracts or other allocations/disbursements of money by the State Department to the Open Society Foundation  Romania and/or its personnel and/or any OSFR subsidiary or affiliate;

 Every assessment, report, evaluation or similar records tied to the work of the Romanian chapter and/or its affiliates and subsidiaries.

The suit against the Colombian chapter seeks virtually the same documentation and State Department/USAID disbursements of funds to include these entities: Fundacion Ideas para la Paz; La Silla Vacia; DeJusticia; Corporacion Nuevo Arco Iris; Paz y Reconciliacion; Global Drug Policy Program; and news portal Las Dos Orillas.

Several Soros-funded entities and projects in Romania, as in other parts of the world, are also funded by American taxpayers. For instance, Judicial Watch reported, the Romanian Center for Independent Journalism  supported by the Open Society Institute in New York  received $17,000 recently from the State Department.

And about a year ago, in February 2017, Laura Silver of Open Society Foundations was reported to have condemned illiberal governments in the Balkans  Macedonia, Albania and Romania  for working against Soros-funded NGOs.

Attacks by illiberal governments on George Soros are an attempt to deflect attention from their own failure to address unemployment, corruption and poor economic prospects, Open Society Foundations chief communications officer Silber said, adding: Civil society plays an important role in holding governments accountable and making democracies stronger; we are proud to support organizations who work to improve peoples lives. (Related: Michael Savage RAGES at George Soros but gives POTUS Trump some GREAT adviceif he takes it.)

Civil society. Thats a joke, right? Because even in his home country of Hungary (Soros does have U.S. citizenship), his meddling is being called out and investigated. The Daily Caller reported in July 2017:

After a two-year battle to keep migrants out of the country, Hungary has directed its full attention toward one of its own: billionaire investor George Soros.

In Hungarian public life there is a single important element which is not transparent: Soross mafia-style network and its agent organizations, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbans spokesman, Zoltan Kovacs, said then.

Judicial Watch noted further that in 2016, Soros various Open Society Foundation chapters gave some $3.3 million to groups that were operating in Colombia. Several of the same groups have also been funded by the United States.

That means State was funding the same Alt-Left political causes that Soros funds.

It is time for Americans to be allowed to see State Department documentation regarding the public funding of Soros Open Society Foundations, said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. The billionaire George Soros needs zero assistance from taxpayers to promote his far-left agenda abroad.

See more at Soros.news.

J.D. Heyes is a senior writer for NaturalNews.com and NewsTarget.com, as well as editor of The National Sentinel.

Sources include:

JudicialWatch.org

TheNationalSentinel.com
A museum dedicated to the dachshund, Germany's short-legged, long-bodied "sausage dog", opens next week in the southern city of Passau, and will show more than 2,000 exhibits from dog-shaped bread to a giant golden statuette.

Two proud sausage dog owners and former florists gave up their jobs to open the museum in Bavaria, which they say is the world's first devoted to the "dackel" and built it up from nothing in just three months.

"The world needs a sausage dog museum... No other dog in the world enjoys the same kind of recognition or popularity as the symbol of Bavaria, the sausage dog," said founder Seppi Kueblbeck.

The exhibits in the more than 80 square-metre museum cater for all tastes. Visitors will see canine stamps, artistic prints with sausagedog motifs, handmade puppets and porcelain figurines.

"We wanted to give this dog a home where people can come and share their joy. Its popularity is increasing because the sausage dog, with its so-called sausage dog look, has conquered the hearts of many people," said Kueblbeck.

Prominent dackel fans include artist Pablo Picasso, actor Marlon Brando, former U.S. President John F. Kennedy, scientist Albert Einstein and even Napoleon.

One of Germany's oldest breeds, the dachshund can be long-, short- or wire-haired and is one of the country's most popular dogs.

Read also: Want to live longer? Get a dog

Bred for hunting since the Middle Ages, dachshund translates literally as 'badger dog' and their long snouts allow them to burrow into holes to catch small animals.

Kueblbeck and his museum partner Oliver Storz said they have a further 2,000 sausage dog exhibits at home.

The owners have diligently collected pieces over the years and can call a substantial amount of the dackel paraphernalia their own. However, their breakthrough came with the lucrative purchase of a Belgian punk rocker's extensive collection.

The museum opens its doors on Monday.
Designer Haider Ackermann parted ways with Berluti Friday, the French brand said, in the latest twist in the frenetic game of musical chairs at the top of men's fashion.

The Colombian had led the label for only 18 months, and his surprise departure sparked speculation he will be replaced by Kris Van Assche, the Belgian designer who left Dior Homme last week after 11 years at the helm.

Ackermann, 46, who is best known for his richly-coloured bohemian designs for women, created only three collections for Berluti, but was already giving it a softer, more feminine feel.

Van Assche is known for a harder tailored edge and more street-influenced styling.

Berluti boss Antoine Arnault praised Ackermann's "feel for materials, colours, and his wonderful shows will always be linked to the history of the house."

Arnault, the son of French luxury goods tycoon Bernard Arnault, has overseen Berluti's transformation from an elite cobbler which once counted artist Andy Warhol and European royalty among its loyal clients, to a luxury lifestyle label for men.

He said Ackermann's successor would be announced shortly.

The men's arm of the LVMH group to which Berluti belongs has seen dramatic change in recent weeks with Hedi Slimane arriving as artistic director of Celine and British designer Kim Jones leaving Louis Vuitton for Dior Homme and being replaced by DJ, designer and Off-White founder Virgil Abloh.

Ackermann, who has his own highly-rated women's label, said he was "immensely proud to have been able to put my creativity at the service of this house."

Read also: At Men's Fashion Week, a collection was out of this world

A product of the famous Antwerp fashion school in Belgium alongside Dries Van Noten and Anne Demeulemeester, he replaced Alexandro Sartori in September 2016.
Wine connoisseurs are already familiar with VIN+ for a glass or two of chardonnay on warmer days, merlot and cabernet sauvignon on cool evenings, or other wines for different occasions. One thing that wine lovers and foodies should remember more often about the establishment, however, is its food as some kind of a secret weapon.

The wine spot is gaining popularity as a place for good food as well, not to mention with their executive chefs who always come up with appetizing food to go with the wine.

VIN+ recently showcased the talents of its executive chefs, namely chef Deni Sugiarto of VIN+ Kemang and chef Djoko Sarwono of VIN+ Arcadia. The chefs were joined by guest chef Ronald Tokilov of Chefs Room Espresso & Kitchen, Glaze Grill, and Bali Cardamon in Bali.

The chef collaboration dinner was titled Tasty Synergy, presenting a six-course set menu inspired by Indonesian food. Despite it being the first time for the Jakarta-based chefs to meet their Bali-based fellow, collaboration went smoothly and the dinner had been promising from the start.

We have to put our ego aside, answered Djoko when The Jakarta Post asked about their secret to a smooth collaboration.

The three chefs sat together with the Post, red wines in the hands of Deni and Ronald, as we talked about each memorable course on the menu. There were pan-seared scallops with slow-cooked baby squid, served with asinan (pickled fruits or vegetables with vinegar-based sauce) salad and prawn curry. That particular menu, a creation of Denis, was paired with Casillero del Diablo Chardonnay, bursting with freshness and preparing diners to indulge further into the dinner.

Oxtail ravioli blacknut juice, filled with mixed vegetable and served with salted quail egg was a contemporary version of Indonesias rawon beef soup by Djoko. The strong original taste of the soup had been modified to be able to match well with its wine pair, also the chardonnay.

Read also: New tariffs proposed by Beijing have California wine exporters worried

Deni, Djoko, and Ronald agreed that in order for Indonesian food to pair well with wines, the original flavors from the herbs and spices must be made lighter. The food cannot be too spicy or too strong, while hints of those herbs and spices are still present.

Ronald Tokilov (left) Deni Sugiarto (center), Djoko Sarwono (VIN+/File)

Many different elements are presented with the main course, black cod fish infused with roasted coriander citrus juice. Created by Ronald the guest chef, this food is inspired by spices commonly found in Padang food. The tomato confit in this dish stole attention, and Ronald pointed out that it is local.

The tomatoes are commonly found in traditional markets. Just look for TW tomatoes. Add salt and herbs, and leave it to bake in the oven, said Ronald.

Other elements that stole the limelight from two other main courses were the mushroom pepes (mushroom wrapped in banana leaves and then steamed) from the kampong chicken roll dish, and the grilled full-blood wagyu spice herb from the three eyes beef wagyu. These two dishes were the result of the chefs collaboration.

We decided together every element for the dish, split focus for each element, and taste each others works, explained Ronald about their work distribution.

Ronald Tokilov's chocolate curry mousse served with sticky 'dodol' Singaraja, 'sagon' crumble klappertaart, cointreau green peppercorn sauce (VIN+/File)

Chocolate curry mousse for dessert was a bold ending by Ronald. The chef took a risk by adding green pepper corn sauce, infused in Cointreau and orange. Peppercorn seeds appeared on the plate, to be savored one by one after each spoonful of the chocolate mousse, coconut tart vanilla ice cream, and sticky dodol (sweet toffee-like palm sugar-based confection) from Singaraja, Bali.
Next time you gorge on a packet of chocolate cookies or potato chips from the vending machine, perhaps it wouldnt hurt to consider if what you really need is processed empty calories or a sense of purpose, as well as a new perspective. Artists Elizabeth Commandeur and Mark Starmachs brainchild, Intangible Goods, may just help you there.

Intangible Goods is a vending machine filled with conveniently-packaged consumables for the mind, and is currently a part of a lineup of installation artworks for Art & About Sydney, held in Sydney, Australias central business district.

Instead of protein bars and energy drinks, however, bars and packets of reassurance, friendship, belonging and purpose are available for consumption. Perhaps you need a dose of reassurance before heading to your next meeting? A sense of belongingness when going to a family reunion for the first time in years, or even a taste of friendship?

Read also: Debunking myths about mental health

The packets themselves dont contain food, but instead consists of sundries like pencils, written notes and prompts, maps, even origami works  all for the purpose of leveling up ones emotional and mental health.

Intangible Goods was developed in collaboration with mental health professionals and presented by Art & About Sydney; each good is designed to momentarily satisfy a need higher up on Maslows hierarchy than, say, chocolate and crinkle-cut chips.

Its an art project that seems ostensibly quirky, but actually goes deeper into the surface to bring mental health advocacy to the fore. As the Intangible Goods installation runs from March 26 to April 8 in Sydney, all of its profits will be donated to beyondblue, the Mental Health Association NSW (WayAhead), as well as the Schizophrenia Research Institute at NeuRA.
The local branch office and a car of the Pemuda Pancasila youth organization were set on fire by unknown assailants on Wednesday in Pondok Gede, Bekasi.

Pemuda Pancasilas Bekasi branch head, Ariyes Budiman, said the incident had occurred after midnight.

Around 30 people riding 15 motorcycles arrived at the location, which intimidated two of our members who happened to be passing by, Ariyes said.

The two Pemuda Pancasila members later returned to find the office and its Daihatsu Feroza car on fire, with no sign of the individual or individuals who had started the fire, although immediate suspicion fell on the motorcycle group.

The police have yet to release an official statement on the incident.

The previous week, a group of youths claiming to be Pemuda Pancasila members assaulted a member of the Indonesian Air Force for refusing to give the...
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Linkedin Viriya P. Singgih (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, March 30, 2018 16:24 1274 2c798a31c212039f000dc5df9cc2ffe6 2 Business oil-and-gas,upstream-sector,cost-recovery,audit,task-force Free

Oil and gas players have welcomed the governments decision to simplify the audit of upstream oil and gas activities under the cost-recovery scheme, saying that it will lead to higher efficiency and subsequently improve the business climate.

The Finance Ministry announced on Wednesday that the audit of exploration and exploitation activities under the scheme, in which the government reimburses contractors for their costs, would be carried out by one task force comprising the ministrys tax office, the Development Finance Comptroller (BPKP) and the Upstream Oil and Gas Regulatory Special Task Force (SKKMigas).

At present, the three institutions carry out a different audit alternately.

Indonesian Petroleum Association (IPA) executive director Marjolijn Wajong appreciated the move, which she acknowledged would facilitate an easier audit process.

This is a very positive thing because the collaboration between the different institutions will make the audit process simpler, she said Thursday.

Sammy Hamzah, the head of energy and mineral resources division at the Indonesian Employers Association (Apindo), also concurred with Marjolijn, saying the new audit policy would minimize the risk of disputes arising from different findings from the three institutions.

SKKMigas spokesperson Wisnu Prabawa Taher also expected the one-stop audit policy to lead to improved efficiency, whether in terms of time and cost.

The target is certainly to reduce costs and increase profitability in upstream oil and gas activities, Wisnu said, adding that the structure of the new task force would later be stipulated in a finance ministerial decree. (lnd)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, March 30, 2018 15:34 1274 2c798a31c212039f000dc5df9cc2fb29 1 City traffic,engineers,police,toll-road Free

State-owned toll road operator Jasa Marga, with the help of police, applied a contraflow system on Friday to alleviate traffic congestion on the Jakarta-Cikampek toll road over the long weekend, which coincides with Easter.

Jasa Marga spokesperson Dwimawan Heru said the contraflow system had been applied from the 33-kilometer point to the 44-km point at from 8:35 a.m. on Friday. Starting from 9:05 a.m., the system had been expanded from the 29-km point.

Traffic [from Jakarta] to Cikampek is heavy, while traffic from Cikampek to Jakarta has been flowing smoothly Dwimawan said as quoted by tempo.co.

National Police Traffic Corps chief Brig. Gen. Royke Lumowa said separately that tens of thousands of vehicles had begun leaving Jakarta on Thursday evening. In total, about 70,000 vehicles are leaving Jakarta, Royke said, adding that traffic density on the Jakarta-Cikampek toll road had increased by up to 21 percent that night.

However, as of 2 p.m., the contraflow system has been stopped. (vny)
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Linkedin Fachrul Sidiq (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, March 30, 2018 10:58 1275 2c798a31c212039f000dc5df9cc297eb 1 City firearms,murder-case,PremeditatedMurder,jakarta,trial Free

Ryan Helmi, a medical practitioner, who is on trial for allegedly murdering his wife last year, committed premeditated murder, which carries a maximum penalty of death, a court heard on Thursday.

Helmi, 42, is charged under articles 340 and 338 of the Criminal Code on premeditated murder and murder, respectively.

"The defendant is also charged with violating Emergency Law No. 12/1951 on illegal firearms possession," prosecutor Felix Kasdi said as he read out the indictment in East Jakarta District Court.

The first hearing of the case was presided over by judge Puji Harian.

Helmi allegedly killed his wife Letty Sultri, who was also a doctor, in a marital dispute. He was reportedly angered after Letty filed a divorce petition on the grounds of Helmis violent abuse.
As most of you already know, people often do not buy a premade PC, they create their own configuration. Pre-made still sells though, some people just dont want to go through all that trouble and simply ask for an opinion on what is in store,
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, March 30, 2018 15:01 1274 2c798a31c212039f000dc5df9cc2e9f4 1 City #traffic,police,street,jakarta Free

The police have arrested a driver suspected of road rage after the suspect pointed a replica revolver at other drivers.

Jakarta Police mobile unit chief Comr. Malvino said the incident happened at 3 p.m. on Thursday when the suspect, identified as Teza Irawan, was driving on the inner city toll road heading for Cawang.

At the time, a black Toyota Fortuner SUV was seen driving erratically with its strobe lights flashing, said Malvino as quoted by Kompas.com.

As the car passed in front of Dharmais General Hospital, West Jakarta, the driver stopped and stuck what appeared to be a gun out of the window as a way to intimidate other drivers into letting him cut the toll booth queue.

A highway patrol officer tailed the driver from behind and stopped the car as it entered the Kuningan toll booth, said Malvino, adding that officers had confiscated an airsoft gun, two 3.8 mm bullets, six airsoft pellets, a holster, as well as the car along with its registration papers.

According to Malvino, the suspect has been charged under Article 1 of Law 12/1951, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in jail. (jlm)
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Linkedin Agnes Anya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, March 30, 2018 11:12 1275 2c798a31c212039f000dc5df9cc2a32d 1 World Jokowi,Joko-Widodo,ASEAN,Vietnam,Vietnamese-Prime-Minister,Luhut-Binsar-Pandjaitan,coordinating-maritime-affairs-minister Free

President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo has officially delivered his invitation to Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc to attend the ASEAN Leaders' Gathering (ALG) in October.

The invitation was delivered by Coordinating Maritime Affairs Minister Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, who on Wednesday made an official visit to the prime minister's office in Vietnam, the ministry said in a press release received by The Jakarta Post on Thursday.

Indonesia is set to host annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund - World Bank Group (2018 AM IMF-WBG) on Oct. 10.

The Indonesian government has initiated the ALG, which will be held on the sidelines of the event, as an attempt to improve cooperation and collaboration among ASEAN, the UN, the IMF and World Bank.

Luhut, as the chairman of the 2018 AM IMF-WBG organizing committee, said the ALG was aimed at showing to the world the success of ASEAN countries in escaping from the economic crisis in 1998.

Through this forum, Indonesia also wants to demonstrate ASEAN solidarity to the 189 countries that will attend the 2018 AM IMF-WBG, Luhut said as quoted by the statement.

The ALG will be a good opportunity for Vietnam to share the success stories in its economic development, the minister added.

It was further said Nguyen welcomed the invitation. He also sent an invitation to Jokowi to attend the ASEAN World Economic Forum (WEF) in Hanoi from Sept. 11 to Sept. 13 and to make an official state visit to the country. (ebf)
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Linkedin Viriya P. Singgih (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, March 30, 2018 15:28 1274 2c798a31c212039f000dc5df9cc2efc7 2 Business PLN,geothermal-plant,renewable-energy Free

State-owned electricity firm PLN seeks to boost its geothermal power business through the establishment of a new subsidiary, PLN GG, to handle its geothermal projects.

As its first task, the entity will develop eight geothermal working areas assigned previously by the government. They are estimated to generate 300 megawatts (MW) of electricity.

PLN corporate planning director Syofvi Felienty Roekman recently said the subsidiary, which would also work on gas projects, had been established because PLN expected to focus on renewable energy development in the future.

PLN GG will be the one developing those eight areas, she said, while adding that power generation from other types of renewable sources, such as solar and wind, would be handled by other subsidiaries of PLN.

Read also: PLN to sign agreements with nine renewable power producers

The government is reviewing PLNs proposal to develop another three geothermal working areas.

In its electricity procurement business plan (RUPTL) for the 2018-2027 period, PLN envisions the development of renewable power plants with a total capacity of 14,911-MW within the next decade. Of the figure, 4,583-MW will come from geothermal power facilities.

Indonesia aims to increase the installed capacity of its geothermal power plants from 1,838.5- MW last year to 2,058.5-MW in 2018 and 7,200-MW in 2025. (lnd)
ASITA (the Association of Indonesian Tour and Travel Agencies) of Bali has prepared packages in tourist villages for International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank delegations in their 2018 annual meeting.

Our members are offering something new and different, including adventure tourism, said Ketut Ardana, head of ASITA, in Kuta on Thursday.

Antara reported that the tourist villages included Penglipuran in Bangli subdistrict, Pinge in Tabanan regency and Bongkasa in Badung regency.

Ardana said tour and travel agents in Bali have communicated with the tourist villages' organizers. In Bali, there are more than 100 villages spread in nine regencies.

Aside from tourist villages, other destinations in tour packages include the popular Tanah Lot, Uluwatu and Ubud.

Read also: Monthly destination: Bali

With 15,000 delegations from 189 countries expected to come for the meeting, the opportunity is viewed as momentum to increase the agents income.

Ardana predicted that there will be a 20 percent increase from normal transactions, in terms of activity and profit.

Tourism Minister Arief Yahya has stated that Indonesia offers 60 tourist packages for the delegates. They include seven tourist destinations, namely Bali, Lombok, Banyuwangi, Labuan Bajo, Yogyakarta, Toraja and Lake Toba.

Out of 60 packages, 33 of them are routinely offered to visitors in Bali.

Arief stated that the government has confirmed the other destinations were well prepared to welcome the delegations. (wng)
The North Sulawesi administration is currently preparing to propose kolintang (Minahasa traditional musical instrument) as world cultural heritage to UNESCO, according to Antara.

"After [the recognition of] batik and angklung [traditional bamboo-based musical instrument] by UNESCO, now Indonesia will [propose] its signature culture of kolintang as world cultural heritage," said North Sulawesi Regional Culture Agency acting head Fery RJ Sangian in Manado on Thursday.

Read also: Tempeh to be proposed as UNESCO cultural heritage

As part of the efforts to preserve the Minahasan traditional music instrument, Fery said the administration has sent the proposal letter to the Directorate General of Culture's cultural heritage and diplomacy director, as well as created a supporting team of 12 members consisting of North Sulawesi provincial administration and National Kolintang Enthusiast Association.

"The team has also conducted coordination meetings to discuss the technical and administrative requirements to support the effort to preserve kolintang," he added. (kes)
The FDNY said goodbye yesterday to fire marshal and U.S Air Force Major Christopher Tripp Zanetis, who died in Iraq earlier this month. Zanetis was assigned to Engine Company 28, Ladder 11 on East Second Street before he was promoted in 2013.

A Celebration of Life began at the firehouse and continued to Washington Square Park. Zanetis, 37, was on leave from the fire department to attend law school. He joined the Air National Guard in 2008. He was one of seven people killed in Iraq March 15 when their military helicopter hit a power line and crashed.

Zanetis came from Indiana to New York and was living three blocks from the World Trade Center when the 9/11 arracks happened in 2001. He worked as a volunteer, and then joined the FDNY three years later.

During yesterdays ceremony, Mayor de Blasio said of Zanetis, He loved New York, but I can say this with assurance: New York loved him right back. New York saw greatness in him. Its almost hard to put into words the amount of bravery, courage, belief and faith that made up this man.

EV Grieve has photos from yesterdays procession on East Second Street.
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It's been 30 years since Beetlejuice, which is not only one of Tim Burtons best works but also one of the most renowned movies of all time. Its aesthetic and its very original story make it a truly unique piece, and one which stolen the hearts of many audiences since its release in 1988.

Despite its fame, gathered here are nine things you most likely didn't know about this Tim Burton's masterpiece!





1. The film's title is taken from the name of a star in the Orion constellation, Betelgeuse.

It is a red supergiant, the ninth brightest in in the sky. They only got the name from it, as the star has nothing to do with the film.

2. The original script had a much darker tone.

Although the film ended up being a comedy, the original script was much more violent and gruesome. For example, Beetlejuice did not intend to marry Lydia, but to rape her. But an early screening for test viewers made the producers change their minds and turn it into the fun film we know today.

3. Tim Burton was greatly influenced by German Expressionism.

The style is a clear influence in this film, as well as in many others of Burton's works. It can be seen in the decoration of the sets, the clothes, the aura of the film... its essence is everywhere!

4. Sammy Davis Jr. was almost cast as Beetlejuice.

Burton wanted the Rat Pack member to star in the film. It was actually David Geffen, the producer, who suggested Michael Keaton for the role.

5. The film won an Academy Award.

Ve Neill, Steve LaPorte and Robert Short won an Oscar for Best Makeup in 1989.





6. You can actually see Beetlejuice in the flesh at Universal Studios.

Beetlejuices Rock and Roll Graveyard Revue can still be seen in Universal Studios Japan. It used to also be located in Hollywood and Florida, but they have now been replaced by other live shows.

7. There was an animated series inspired in the movies.

Produced by Tim Burton himself, it was about the adventures of Beetlejuice and Lydia in the Neitherworld. It ran for 94 episodes, from 1989 to 1991.

8. You can get all kinds of merchandise inspired by Beetlejuice.

From t-shirts to the actual Handbook for the Recently Deceased, the possibilities are endless. Dont miss the chance to get a pair of Sand Worm earrings, a phone case or even a Beetlejuice costume for Halloween!

9. A sequel might still happen.

Beetlejuice was one of the highest grossing films of 1988. At the time, there was the idea of making a sequel titled Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian, for which both Michael Keaton and Winona Rider signed on to reprise their roles. Unfortunately it was never done, but Warner Bros. has recently signaled interest in making it happen.
The Neighborhood Business News brings you Plymouth business announcements as part of a new online business news venture. Our company looks to provide interesting business information and announcements in and around Plymouth.

The business announcements that we make include Plymouth businesses as well as other Southwest company new stories that may or may not be associated with Plymouth specifically. However, Plymouth is part of the Devon and Southwest region, and as a result we focus primarily on Plymouth but include and reach out wider and further than the city of Plymouth.

Here are the latest high profile business announcements that we want highlight on our main page: 

Large Maritime Technology Company Announces Its Move To set up at Plymouths Oceansgate Freeport

14th April 2021

The 14.3 million Oceansgate development in Plymouth has now become the home of , a large maritime tech company. The Oceansgate development in Plymouth is now part of the citys Freeport area.

In recent months, Plymouth has been awarded a Freeport status. This means that there are major tax incentives for trade for Plymouth. As a result, there is huge strategic business reasons for businesses to relocate to such areas. Jet Engineering Systems is one of those companies that has moved to its new officers at Endeavor House in the Plymouth Freezone.

This is a major move for the company to deploy its maritime 5G mash connectivity across the Southwest and the South Coast.

James Thomas, the chief executive at Jet engineering systems said We are delighted to be making Plymouth our next hub for developing the partnerships with other high-technology marine organisations where together we will accelerate the roll out of maritime 5G connectivity and the associated applications,

The strategic move could mean big things for the company. Mr. Thomas went on to say There is no doubt that Plymouth is driving future national and international maritime technology outcomes in areas such as autonomy and smart ports when organisations like the Marine Business Technology Centre (MBTC) and Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML) provide such effective support to ambitious companies like us. We look forward to making a positive impact and bringing more jobs to the South West.

Plymouth City Council made an announcement saying that it was a pleasure to welcome the company to Plymouth.

Jet Engineering Systems deploys a range of 5G enabled buoys that in itself form a product line that are part of the government-funded 5G Dorset initiative for 2021. The company is making major steps forward in maritime technology, and they are also taken advantage of the governments initiative to enable the United Kingdom to be at the forefront of technology as a world leader in its class.

CO-WORKING SPACE SET TO OPEN AT WATERSIDE LOCATION IN PLYMOUTH

Major opportunity for business as the new co-working space is going to open at Plymouths waterside location

7th April 2021

Royal William yard that is situated in Plymouth is undergoing a vast scheme that will offer co-working space as well as private office accommodation for businesses that want to work in this amazing location. The premises will also include a cafe.

The new accommodation is called Block. Block is a business brand that is owned and parts of The Cheriton Group that is based just behind Pynes Hill business center in Exeter. As soon as the new Block business center has opened as part of the first phase, future phases are planned to follow. These include fitness and events facilities.

The construction of this project has been designed by award-winning RIBA architect firm, Gillespie Yunnie Architects. The initiative and project is a first of its kind for Plymouth according to commercial director of Urban Splash, Emily Handslip. She said in a recent announcement, Plymouth has nothing like this and we are delighted to bring such an incredible new space to Royal William Yard. BLOCK completes the picture; from hot-desking and coworking, right through to individual premises and large corporate HQs, we now offer space for every type of business at Royal William Yard.

Standing proud at the centre of the Yard, Melville is an incredible building and we have always had a clear vision and high hopes for it. We have now exchanged on over 55 percent of commercial space available in Melville and expect to have some more exciting announcements to follow soon.

This whole enterprise is an exciting prospect for Plymouth, and the businesses that take up this opportunity will have an enviable location for business as well as the facilities that will be available right within the location and its surroundings.

Ronseal closes Plymouth Based factory

6th October 2020

Ronseal, makers of wood stain and would vanish are set to close its Plymouth based factory.

The company that has become famous for the slogan it does what it says on the tin, is moving lock stock and barrel to a new headquarters that is based at Thorncliffe Park, Chapeltown in Sheffield.

Ronseal is owned by Sherwin-Williams Diversified Brands Ltd. It announced that the company needed to become more efficient and profitable due to its loss last year of around 1.9 million.

Julie S. Young, global corporate communications vice president said This decision was not easily made and in no way reflects the dedication or performance of the employees at the Plymouth facility.

Sherwin-Williams Diversified Brands Ltd is part of the Sherwin-Williams Company whose headquarters is in Cleveland, Ohio. The company has announced its turnover in 2019 to be an impressive $17.9 billion.

In 1997, the Corporation purchased Ronseal. In 2018, the company made a profit. However, the companys turnover dropped in 2019 as a result of bad weather.

The company had done a number of strategic moves during the challenging period, however, it had to consider its loss in recent months and address the issue. As a result, the company is moving to Sheffield to strengthen its position in a competitive market and to streamline efficiency and profitability.

All this is a blow for Plymouth, but a great promise for Sheffield and the north as the company is committed to its success and profitability within this market.
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A small plot wrapped up around coated with nostalgia and sprinkled with that Spielberg touch.

Ready Player One is a modern-day Hook. You're either going to love it for the absurdity of nostalgia it throws at you or loathe it for how flimsy it is. It also means this isn't the greatest Steven Spielberg movie (that belongs to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Yeah.. that's my favorite Spielberg movie. FIGHT ME!) The plot points you can see coming easily. The predictability is so easy that well, it isn't hard to see what happens next. I mean literally, the plot is damn predictable and it should piss me off.

Yet.. YET... Like Hook, I love this goddamn film. It helps when the movie knows what the viewer loves and hits that nostalgic button. Be it a comic book, movie, video game, or whatever geek-related element this movie has. It'll have something that hits the very core of you and will make you love it.

A movie that ironically made in the 80s that this reminds me greatly of is Who Framed Roger Rabbit. It has that same nostalgia and exactly like that uses the many icons we see sparingly. Though when we do see them they are the films great highlights. Yes, Roger Rabbit still a better movie (with a better more memorable lead characters), but this weaves its nostalgia just like that.

It also helps the performances all around aren't bad at all. You have Ben Mendelsohn (god he has perfected the slimy cowardly bastard), T.J. Miller, and Hannah John-Kamen doing a good job playing slimy scene-chewing villains you just want to get their comeuppance. That's really their only point to this.

Likewise, the leads in this Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Lena Waithe (out of all of them is probably the MVP of the cast), Philip Zhao, Win Morisaki, Philip Zhao, and Simon Pegg all turn in good entertaining stuff (though Waithe will be the one you'll remember thanks to how she reacts to the Shining).

But yeah I enjoyed the movie and dammit it got me. It got me hard. Oh sure it got me to rage as well (WHY THE FUCK DID THEY PUT THE MICHAEL BAY TMNTs IN THERE? WHY!? FUCK THAT MOVIE! FUCK THAT VERSION! WHY MUST WE BE REMINDED OF IT?!! ARGH!). But there are five minutes of this film that are just cinematic gold to me. To hear Alan Silvestri use one of the greatest movie themes of all time. One that I truly enjoy. On a big screen in this era for all to hear with shit hitting the wall? Fuck this movie got me hard. It even got me thinking when the scene happened and I was like, "You know what this battle is missing? Warners is on good terms with them. Why don't they.. oh. Oh. OOOOOOOOOOOH GOD YES! YES! YES YES! FUCK YES!" Yes, that

Also even though I don't enjoy the film it paid homage too, hell I enjoyed very much the fact worked an entire love letter to freaking Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of the Shining by Stephen King. The love is so damn genuine. Same with the above mentioned moment. That is damn heart to have. Then again that shouldn't be surprising given Spielberg did do A.I.

Yes, the plot is meh. Yes, you can literally see where this is going. But you know what? Fuck it. The movie got me. It hit my geek button. It knew my weakness and exploited it for me to up the damn score to perfection.

That said, this probably won't be in my top ten (Black Panther is still better than this). But hell I probably will see this movie again to see whatever references I missed. That and to see the scenes that got me. Until then where's the damn score by Silverstri?! I have to wait a week for it? DAMMIT!

So yeah, those worried that this hits you over the head. They don't. This movie will hit that nostalgia button whatever it maybe. Cause it got me. It'll get you. Just enjoy the ride for what it is.

Fucking Chucky man...

3 5 out of 5*

*Because it deserves perfect score for those five minutes alone and the love it has for the various eras it pays homage too.
President Donald Trump

Since March 1991, certain Liberian nationals and persons without nationality who last habitually resided in Liberia (collectively, Liberians) have been eligible for either Temporary Protected Status (TPS) or Deferred Enforced Departure (DED), allowing them to remain in the United States when they would otherwise be removable. In 1999, President Clinton first authorized DED for Liberians, for a 1year period, after a civil war had recently ended. At the end of that year, President Clinton found that the political and economic conditions in Liberia remained fragile and he reauthorized DED for Liberians. President Bush and President Obama repeatedly extended DED for Liberians. Most recently, in 2016, President Obama extended DED for Liberians for 18 months. That grant expires by its own terms on March 31, 2018.



Through consultation with appropriate executive departments and agencies and my advisors, I have been informed that conditions in Liberia have improved. Liberia is no longer experiencing armed conflict and has made significant progress in restoring stability and democratic governance. Liberia has also concluded reconstruction from prior conflicts, which has contributed significantly to an environment that is able to handle adequately the return of its nationals. The 2014 outbreak of Ebola Virus Disease caused a tragic loss of life and economic damage to the country, but Liberia has made tremendous progress in its ability to diagnose and contain future outbreaks of the disease.



Accordingly, I find that conditions in Liberia no longer warrant a further extension of DED, but that the foreign policy interests of the United States warrant affording an orderly transition (wind-down) period to Liberian DED beneficiaries. In consultation with my advisors, I have concluded that a 12month winddown period is appropriate in order to provide Liberias government with time to reintegrate its returning citizens and to allow DED beneficiaries who are not eligible for other forms of immigration relief to make necessary arrangements and to depart the United States.



Pursuant to my constitutional authority to conduct the foreign relations of the United States, I hereby direct the Secretary of Homeland Security to take appropriate measures to accomplish the following:

(1) The termination of DED for all Liberian beneficiaries effective March 31, 2019;

(2) A 12month winddown period, beginning on March 31, 2018, during which current Liberian DED beneficiaries who satisfy the description below may remain in the United States; and

(3) As part of that wind-down, continued authorization for employment for 12 months, from March 31, 2018, for current Liberian DED beneficiaries who satisfy the description below.

The 12month wind-down period and 12month continued authorization for employment shall apply to any current Liberian DED beneficiary who has continuously resided in the United States since October 1, 2002, but shall not apply to Liberians in the following categories:

(1) Individuals who are ineligible for TPS for reasons set forth in section 244(c)(2)(B) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1254a(c)(2)(B));

(2) Individuals whose removal the Secretary of Homeland Security determines to be in the interest of the United States;

(3) Individuals whose presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable grounds to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States;

(4) Individuals who have voluntarily returned to Liberia or their country of last habitual residence outside the United States;

(5) Individuals who were deported, excluded, or removed before the date of this memorandum; or

(6) Individuals who are subject to extradition.



DONALD J. TRUMP
The Liberian Government should investigate Exxons US$120 million oil deal and ensure the independence of the Liberia Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative.

Read the entire report h e r e .

March 29, 2018, Washington, DC  A new Global W itness investigation released today shows Exxons 2013 purchase of Liberias Block 13 oil license likely enriched former government officials who may have illegally owned the block The state oil agency NOCAL also made unusual, large payments to senior government officials who authorized the 2013 deal.

Global Witness calls on the Liberian Government to investigate those involved in Exxons

2013 oil deal for corruption or wrongdoing.

Block 13 was originally awarded by NOCAL in 2005 to Liberian-Anglo company Broadway Consolidated/Peppercoast (BCP). In 2007, the block was ratified by the Liberian legislature through bribery.

But Global Witness evidence shows that the company was likely part-owned by former Mining Minister Jonathan Mason and former Deputy Minister Mulbah Willie. Mason and Willie are suspected of granting the oil block to a company in which they held interests while they were also ministers in 2005, which was illegal under Liberian law.

Exxon knew that Block 13 was originally awarded through bribery and that its purchase of the oil block could enrich former officials who might have been behind BCP.

In a PowerPoint presentation obtained by Global Witness, Exxon wrote that it was interested in purchasing the oil block despite its concern over issues regarding US anti-corruption laws.

Undeterred by the corruption red flags, Exxon went ahead with the deal anyway. Global

Witness evidence shows that it structured the transaction in a way to skirt US anti-corruption laws by using a Canadian company  Canadian Overseas Petroleum Limited (COPL)  as a go-between to buy the block.

Its appalling that an oil giant like Exxon would buy up an oil block they knew was tainted by corruption, said Jonathan Gant, Senior Campaigner at Global Witness. This kind of morally dubious corporate behavior is particularly shocking in a country like Liberia where endemic corruption continues to rob people of opportunities.


Coteau Community Market offers local, organic, minimal waste foods

The Coteau Community Market is a co-op that will connect local growers, producers and consumers to their foods and their community.
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Job Title: Insurance Liaison Officer

Organization: Mengo Hospital

Duty Station: Kampala, Uganda

Reports to: Accountant  Operations

About US:

Mengo Hospital was founded in 1897 in Kampala, and is the oldest

hospital in Uganda. It currently serves as an urban community hospital that

provides modern medical care. Mengo Hospital provides comprehensive care

including radiology, obstetrics, dentistry, orthopedics, and surgery.

Additionally, Mengo Hospital provides critical training and education to health

professionals through its various programs in midwifery and nursing, health

sciences, and laboratory technology. Mengo Hospital also has a dedicated

research and development team that works to find new solutions to health issues

in Uganda.

Job Summary: The Insurance

Liaison Officer will be actively contributing to the success of the following

key business outcomes; Client Satisfaction, Client Retention and Effective

Claims Management.

Key Duties and Responsibilities:

Ensure authentic identification of insured

and corporate clients prior to accessing care.

Attend to clients queries and complaints

ensuring that they are resolved in a timely manner and make record of any

related upcoming cases.

Initiate and follow through the entire

Pre-authorization process prior to admission to point of discharge of

patient, and in the case of an emergency within 24 Hrs of admission.

Follow up all Inpatient cases, ensure all

the required documentation has been done and properly recorded.

Follow up all the Pre- authorization cases

and provide timely feedback to Clients on limits/denied services as

stipulated by the respective Credit Clients MOUs.

Follow up the medical care given to

Insurance clients and ensure that it is in line with authorized services.

Provide timely feedback to Insurance

liaison officers on all admission cases and produce reports to that

effect.

Validation and verification of client

membership and entitlements (Benefits and Exclusions) prior to service

access and ensuring that all the Clients lists are available and updated.

Ensure that all the Claim forms that are

released are accurately filled by the Doctor, received, vetted and

properly recorded prior to the patient leaving MH premises; all these Claim

forms should be submitted to the Accounts Assistant- Client relations with

an accompanying Claim forms report.

Update all the Client Companies on all the

price list changes as and when they occur and negotiate with same

companies when Claims are disputed because of price discrepancies, track

and keep record of all the disputed/rejected Claims, until the rejections

are fully resolved and settled











Experience: Qualifications, Skills andExperience:

The ideal candidate should hold a

Bachelors Degree in Business Administration, Health Care Administration,

Bachelors of Science in Nursing or any other related field

At least five years experience in similar

role preferably in hospital setting

Knowledge of group insurance (medical,

dental, vision, life and disability products) desired

Understanding of self-funded arrangement

and large group benefits

Professionalism, Clinical and analytical

evaluation of information

Ability to be resourceful when following

up regulatory issues

Have ability to work under pressure and

independently

Ability to establish and maintain good

client relationships, both internally and externally at all levels

Excellent teamwork, organization and

communication skills

How to Apply:

All suitably qualified and interested candidates with relevant qualifications

and experience should submit their application letters, detailed Curriculum

vitae, copies of academic certificates, practicing licenses where applicable

and valid contacts/email addresses of three (3) referees electronically at the

link below.



2018 by 5.00pm Deadline: Tuesday 10th April2018 by 5.00pm
(By Rabbi Yair Hoffman for the Five Towns Jewish Times)

Did you ever wonder what really goes on in Shmurah Matzah bakeries? What follows is a halachic analysis of much of what really goes on. Some places are careful regarding all of it. Others kind of gloss over some of the rest.

THE SCIENCE OF CHOMETZ

The world is filled with micro-organisms called yeasts that surround us. They are found everywhere  on the ground, on plants and trees, on human beings and even in the very air that we breathe. These airborne yeasts enter everywhere. They even enter into Matzoh dough, and feed upon the starches that are in the flour. The yeasts produce carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide expands the gluten proteins in the flour. This is how dough eventually becomes Chometz.

The Gluten protein is the composite of two other chemical gliadin and glutenin. These gluten proteins are elastic. When the yeast break down the starches into alcohol and carbon dioxide, the dough begins to expand and to rise. The elements that help in the expansion of the gluten proteins are warmth, water and time. The yeasts produce more efficiently when there is warmth.

Another factor that is not so well known is atmospheric pressure. The higher the elevation, the lower the surrounding pressure and the more the carbon dioxide will expand.

THE WHEAT ON THE GROUND

Weather patterns in Eretz Yisroel and near Egypt are very different from that of Europe and the United States. In Eretz Yisroel there are only two rainy seasons. There are no rains otherwise. In Europe and in America it rains constantly.

Because wheat that has ripened fully can become Chometz while yet attached to the ground, one should cut the wheat while it is still green (See SA 467:5 and MB 453:22). This halacha is applicable in Europe and the United where it rains regularly. In Eretz Yisroel, however, the custom is to cut it later.

MATZOS MITZVAH AND SHMIRAH

There are two type of Matzos: Matzos Mitzvah and regular Matzoh. Matzos Mitzvah are those Matzos that are two be used on the nights of the Seder in fulfillment of the Mitzvah, In the evening you shall eat Matzos..

Matzos Mitzvah can technically be baked from wheat, barley, oats, spelt, and rye. However, it is ideal, a Mitzvah min haMuvchar, to bake them from only wheat (Ramah 453:1 and MB 453:1).

The posuk states UShmartem es HaMatzos (Shmos 12:17)  which literally means, and you shall guard the Matzos. Our sages extrapolated from this posuk that these Matzos require a special supervision that it not become subject Chometz. In other words, it is not enough to just assume that nothing happened to them. Rather, ideally, the wheat of which a person wishes to make Matzos Mitzvah must be guarded to ensure that there is no concern of them becoming Chometz. This guarding is called Shmurah.

NOT JUST A HECHSHER MITZVAH

It is interesting to that obtaining Matzos for Pesach is not just a hechsher Mitzvah  a preparation for a Mitzvah. It actually involves this Mitzvah in and of itself  that of ushmartem es haMatzos  guarding the Matzos. This is indicative in the language of the Shulchan Aruch (OC 460:2).

The Mogain Avrohom (460:1)writes that it is ideal to bake the Matzos oneself because of the notion of Mitzvah bo yoser mibshlucho  it is a greater Mitzvah to do something oneself than through a messenger. The Avnei Naizer (OC 472) decries the prevalent custom of people no longer baking Matzos themselves. The Mishna Brurah cites the view of the Arizal that one who works up a sweat through baking Matzos receives enormous merit.

Although it can be done through an appointed messenger or shliach, just buying the Matzos off the supermarket shelves is not the best way to fulfill this Mitzvah.

There are thus three methods in how people obtain Matzah.

They either are deeply involved in the baking.

They appoint a messenger to bake it for them (which can be accomplished through an order sheet).

They buy it off the shelf (not the best way).

There is, however, a workaround for the off-the-shelf purchaser. If time is spent examining whether there are folds or bubbles in the Matzah that would render the Matzah unfit, then one does fulfill the special Mitzvah of guarding the Matzos.

The Matzos must be made for the sake of the Mitzvah. If the Matzah is made without the proper intentions, there is a debate among halachic authorities whether one can fulfill the Mitzvah with that Matzah[1].

If there is a halachic doubt concerning either the flour or the Matzos, even though they would be permitted through the principle of Rov that they are from a majority which would permit them or through the principle of Sfek Sfaikah a double-doubt,  they should not be used for Matzos Mitzvah  the Matzos on the seder night. This is the ruling of the Bais Meir which is cited authoritatively (MB 467:17).

GUARDING THE MATZAH

A THREE WAY DEBATE

There is a three-way debate among the Poskim as to when it should be guarded. Should it be guarded from the time of the harvesting of the wheat, the grinding of the wheat, or from the time of the kneading of the Matzah itself?

Ideally, we rule that the guarding for the Matzah that we use during the Seder should be done from the time the wheat is harvested, but at least from the time that it is ground. If one is hard pressed, then one may rely upon the more lenient view of the time that it is kneaded (See Shulchan Aruch 453:4).

According to the letter of the law, the Matzah that is eaten during non-seder nights does not need to be watched. However, Israel is a Holy nation, and they have taken upon themselves the custom that even these other Matzos should be watched (See Beer Heitev 453:8 and MB 453:25).

Those that are especially careful in the Mitzvah make sure to only eat Matzah that was guarded from the time of harvest for the entire duration of Pesach. This was the custom of the Vilna Gaon (See Biur Halacha 453 Tov LShomram).

One should examine the wheat kernels before they are ground to ensure that they are not infested with worms.

Even when guarding the Matzos it is necessary to do with the correct intention, for the sake of the Mitzvah (MB 453:21).

THE HARVESTING

There is a debate as to whether the harvesting may be done by gentiles or whether the watching has to be performed with the proper intention but the harvesting itself may be done by gentiles with a Jew overlooking the process. The custom is to be lenient in accordance with the opinion of the TaZ (see BH 460: Ain.)

However, it is the opinion of the Bach and the Eliyahu Rabbah (and also perhaps the Vilna Gaon) that it should be done by a Jew. The PMG also questions the view of the TaZ and recommends that the process be done by a Jew when possible.

The use of a machine known as a combine to harvest the wheat is considered Lishma (see Chazon Ish 36:2). There are, however, individuals that harvest the wheat by hand. It is thus preferable that the combine be driven by a Jew who has the proper intentions.

If the grains have either sprouted or split, then effort must be made to remove them one by one (See MB 467:19). One should make sure that they comprise less than 1/60th of the total yield. This is only in regard to making sure that the Matzah is kosher. However, Matzah made from such wheat may not be used for the nights of the seder.

When the grains are transported they should be placed in new bags (See MB 453:32). They should also be accompanied by a Jew and not merely transported by train (or truck) without supervision (BH), even if there is no concern that they will be switched or can get wet.

When storage facilities must be completely dry and free of bugs and rodents. The key or combination should be exclusively held by an observant Jew. Flour with a high moisture content does not store well. The industry standard for moisture content is 12%. Anything above 14.5% is considered a high moisture content.

GRINDING THE WHEAT

Pious people observe the grinding of the wheat themselves carefully to ensure that there is no concern of the wheat becoming Chometz during the grinding process (Ramah citing the Mordechai 453:8). At a minimum, a G-d fearing individual with some knowledge of the halachos should be performing it. A child or someone without such knowledge should not be the one performing the grinding (MB 453:41 citing the PMG).

The wording of the Ramah seems to differ from that of the Pri Magadim. Are the pious people watching it or doing it? Is it sufficient merely to ensure that the grains are ground properly or does the very act of grinding itself need to be done with the proper intentions?

INTENT REGARDING GRINDING

Just as there is a debate regarding the nature of proper intent regarding harvesting, there exists a debate about the proper intent regarding the grinding of the grains as well. Ideally, one should follow the stricter view requiring that the flour be ground with the proper intent.

Therefore, the grinding should be done by hand rather than by machine. This is more of a serious issue than having the harvesting done by machine. More Poskim hold that grinding is not an action attributed to the operator of the machine as much as the harvesting would be. When the term hand-ground is used, it refers to manpower rather than power by machine. Therefore, grinding done by a bicycle would also be permitted.

We find that the stringencies in regard to the grinding of the Matzah have been practiced for thousands of years. Indeed, the Talmud Yerushalmi (Psachim 20) relates that Rabbi Yossi the son of Rabbi Abun did not wish to use a grinder who had been grounding wheat not destined for Matzoh because he was afraid that the grinders clothing may have had other wheat on it that was not designated for Matzoh use[2].

The machine used for grinding should be for exclusive Passover use. The reason is that other grinding machinery processes grains that were washed. The liquid from this water can gather in the machines and cause the flour to become Chometz.

GRINDER AND ROOM MUST BE CLEAN AND DRY

To be sure, the flour also has moisture content, and if the stones of the grinder are not cleaned from this moisture, the stones may also cause the flour to become Chometz. Many G-d-fearing individuals replace the stones of Passover grinders each year, on this account.

If moist grains were ground in the room, the walls and ceilings must be cleaned in order to grind flour for Pesach, as the flour particles can fall and mix into the Passover flour.

When the grinding takes place in the rainy season, care must be taken to make sure that water is not tracked in with raincoats, wet boots and umbrellas. The workers should make sure that their clothing is clean and that their hands and beards are clean and dry as well. The concern is that a particle of flour will have mixed with the Pesach flour. Although it will be nullified by the more than sixty times the amount of kosher flour, during the holiday of Pesach itself it is reinstated. (MB 467:16)

ALLOWING THE FLOUR TO COOL

The grinding itself causes the flour to be warm. Therefore, a dough that is made on the day that the flour is actually ground is more susceptible to becoming Chometz on account of the additional heat in the flour. Therefore, one should not knead the flour on the day that the flour was ground  one should wait at least a day or two. Ideally, it should be two days later.

At a minimum one should allow the flour to cool overnight (SA 453:9 and MB 453:42). If, however, it was done sooner than that, the dough is not forbidden. Rather, one should take extra precautions and handle the dough even more often so that it not be given a chance to rise.

When dealing with high speed grinders and a large volume of grain, the machinery can get very hot. The BaDatz Yerushalayim issued guidelines that the machine be slwed down so that the grinder temperature not reach more than 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit), and certainly never above 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit).

When grinding the wheat by hand, however, the flour does not warm up to any significant degree, and technically, one does not have to wait. However, it is good to be stringent in this matter (Beer Heitev 453:20).

THE FORMULA RECITED

When grinding the wheat one should recite the formula, LeShaim Matzos Mitzvah for the sake of the Mitzvah of Matzoh. (extension of Beer Heitev 456:4 regarding drawing of the water).

THE FLOUR BAGS

Ideally, one should be careful not to place the bags of flour one on top of the other. One should also avoid sitting on top of the bags because the additional warmth can cause them to become Chometz faster (See Ramah 453:7). If a person did place the bags on top of each other for a significant amount of time, they should be separated and the kneading should not begin until 24 hours have elapsed (MB 453:35).

It is permitted to place them next to each other even if they are touching, because in this manner they do not warm up to any significant degree. Likewise, it is permitted to stack the bags of wheat before they have been ground, because until they are ground they will cool.

It is also worthwhile to keep the bags of wheat elevated above the ground in case of a water leak or flood.

SIFTING THE FLOUR

Before the flour is kneaded it should be sifted. The sifter should either be new or one used exclusively for Pesach. One may not kosherize a sifter and use it for Pesach.

If a new sifter is not available, it is preferable not to sift according to the Mishna Brurah.

Preferably a 40 mesh sifter should be used for hand-ground flour and a 60 mesh sifter should be used for machine ground flour.

Nowadays most facilities use electric sifters.

When sifting the flour, one should avoid speaking because saliva may come out of his mouth and ruin the flour (See Ritva Psachim 35a).

After the flour is sifted it is important not to force down the flour into the bags. Forced flour does not knead well (Ramah 456:1).

DOUGH SIZE

The Shulchan Aruch rules that one should not make a dough that is too large at one time, i.e. larger than the shiur of Challah without a bracha. This size is 1200 grams according to the Chazon Ish and 1250 grams according to Rav Chaim Noeh. Chazal felt that a person would not be able to adequately work the dough from all sides on account of its large size (SA 456:1). If one had done so, however, it does not cause the dough to be forbidden (SA 456:2).

Some hold that the size restrictions are specific to when one individual was making the Matzos, and the ovens were small ovens. Nowadays, however, the production of Matzos involves numerous people and the ovens are much larger. Therefore, nowadays a larger dough could be made without a concern that it be too large to handle. Nonetheless, G-d fearing individuals are still strict, like the first opinion.

TWO SEPARATE ROOMS FOR DOUGH MIXING

One person should be appointed to place the flour into the mixing bowl, and a different person should be appointed to place the water in (See MB 459:45). One person should not perform both tasks because the water can drip onto the flour and cause it to become Chometz. On account of this, it is worthwhile to have two separate rooms for this, where the person pours in the water through a portal.

When the flour is placed in the bowl one should recite the formula, Leshaim Matzas Mitzvah. (SA 456:1)

THE BOWL

One should make sure that there are no cracks or lines on the bowl in which one kneads the Matzah dough, as it will not be possible to clean it effectively afterward. It does not matter whether the crack is in the middle of the bowl or on the outer lip, there is a chance that some dough will enter the crack and become Chometz and will contaminate a later dough (Ramah 459:4). One should also be careful in this matter regarding the other means of production, such as the table, etc. (MB 459:39).

THE WATER REQUIREMENTS

One may only knead Matzos with water that is called Mayim Shelanu (SA 455:1). This is a Rabbinic requirement because regular water is warmed in the underground spring. Mayim shelanu is water that has been drawn before sunset from a spring, and allowed to have rested in pitchers for a full night. These waters have been cooled and will not cause the dough to become Chometz.

One may not place ones hand in the mayim shelanu, because it will warm up the water.

In a very pressing situation, as long as the water was drawn before midnight, and twelve hours have elapsed since the drawing, the water may be used (MB 455:4).

When it is difficult to draw the water, it is preferable to draw it before twilight than after Tzais HaKochavim  when the stars emerge (MB 455:5).

Before the water is drawn, one should recite the formula LeShaim Mitzvas Matzah. (Beer Heitev 456:4).

If there is not enough Mayim Shelanu, then it is permitted to add a smaller amount of regular water to the Mayim Shelanu to increase its volume. There is a debate as to whether one may add up to 33% (opinion of Bais Yoseph) or up to 49%. The Mishna Brurah rules leniently and permits up to 49%. (MB 455:38) It must be done before the kneading process and may not be done during the kneading process.

One may draw the water once for a number of days of baking. One should just take care that the water be kept in a cool location (SA 455:1).

The water should not be drawn by a gentile or by a child for perhaps they may not be so careful regarding Chometz. This is true whether it is for regular Matzah or for the Matzos that will be used on the Seder night. If it was drawn by them, the water is not forbidden to be used (Ramah 455:1 and MB 455:21).

One should filter the Mayim Shelanu. Some therefore place a cloth over the spigot of the container where the water is kept.

One should measure the amount of water that one will put in the dough. In Israel, for every half kilo one uses 250 grams of water. However, this changes based upon the flour and the climate.

One may also use rainwater instead of Mayim Shelanu (MB 455:28). The reason is that the sun does not heat up water when it is in the air[3]. Tap water, however, is forbidden because chemicals are added into the water suplly for various reasons.

Before one pours the water onto the flour one should recite the formula, LeShaim Mitzvas Matzah. (Beer Heitev 456:4).

THE PREP AREA

One must cover up the windows in the area where one is baking. This is true even on a day when there is no sun. The concern is that it may be cloudy and the sun will emerge without one noticing.

Nowadays, when the oven heat is quite strong, one should ensure that there is an air conditioning unit where the workers are for two reasons: So that the dough not get excessively warm and so that the workers will not be unduly stressed by the heat.

It is a custom in Klal Yisroel to appoint a supervisor Mashgiach to oversee the process of baking (MB 459:33). He should oversee that every worker has clean hands and has his nails cut short.

The tables where the Matzoh dough is worked are covered with paper that is replaced every eighteen minutes. This paper should be stored in an elevated area rather than on the ground. One can make a tacit assumption that the floor of a bakery is considered Chometz.

THE FLOUR MAN

The person who handles the flour should not be the same person who puts the water in the flour. The reason is that he is filled with the flour dust and there is a chance that some of the flour could enter the mixture and become Chometz (MB 459:45).

THE WATER MAN

The water man should carefully measure the amount of water that he puts in the flour.

THE FARNEMER (THE MEGABEL)

This is the person who does the initial mix of the water and flour. The initial mix is central to the smooth flow of the rest of the process. The goal is to spread the water as evenly as possible throughout the mixture. Experience demonstrates that the key is not to use the palm of ones hand to do the initial mix, but rather to utilize the fingers.

If he uses the palms of his hand what ends up happening is that some of the dough becomes soft and some of it becomes hard, making the job of the subsequent workers much harder.

He should also try to gather all the spread out particles of flour and push them toward the middle.

The process works best when the Farnemer digs a pit in the flour. He then spreads the water as evenly as possible.

It is also best if the Farnemer wears a pair of Kosher for Pesach latex gloves.

THE FINNER (LOSH)

This is the person who does the actual mixing. He must continue working with the dough until it is handed to the people who will form the raw Matzos. He must pound the dough with either his hand or with a device. After he is done with it he should continue to handle it. Just touching it is not sufficient to prevent the dough from becoming Chometz.

THE WORKERS

The workers must be adults and must have the capability of performing the activities of Matzah making with the correct intentions  Lishma. Someone who is not religious does have the capability of performing the acts of Matzah baking Lishma  with the correct intentions. However, there is the additional factor of making sure that the activities are performed with meticulous adherence to Halacha. The Pri Magadim (AA 460:1) rules that someone who does not observe the commandments is suspected of not adhering to halacha meticulously in regard to Matzah baking. Therefore, one should only consume Matzah produced by non-religious Jews if there was someone strictly observing them at all times.

Similarly, if the worker is not knowledgeable in halacha, there is also a concern. In such a situation there must be someone strictly observing the workers at all times.

THE KNEADING

The author of the Shulchan Aruch (459:2) writes that ideally, one should not leave the dough to remain without activity even for one moment. He goes on to explain that one it is touched by hand, if one leaves it without activity it becomes chometz, immediately. The term immediately needs to be defined

Matzah that was needed by a gentile or a deaf-mute, a child or someone who is mentally ill is invalid for use for the Seder itself. The same is true if it is baked by one of them (MB 460:3).

When a Jew stands over a gentile or a deaf-mute, child, or one who is mentally ill and tells them to have in in mind for the Mitzvah it is a debate as to whether it is kosher  even post facto. Some are lenient relying upon the daas of the adult Jew. If there is a choice between the gentile or the latter, one should opt for the latter.

One should not knead the dough in a sunny place, but should only do it in the shade. The reason is that the sun warms the dough and can make it Chometz.

THE EIGHTEEN MINUTE CLEAN UP

The manager should set a special clock or timer to indicate when the 18 minutes will elapse after the initial mixing of the water and flour.

THE WOODS TRANSPORTING THE MATZAH

After the Matzos are scored they are placed on poles to transport them to the oven. These poles are covered with a disposable paper. Even though the poles are covered, the woods are scraped afterward.

The woods that transport the Matzos to the oven each time must be different woods for each round of Matzos baked, as they get hot and could cause the other Matzos to become Chometz (Ramah 459:4 and MB 459:32).

THE OVEN

The Chayei Adam (128:27) writes that the oven should be kosherized since there is a concern that the previous bakers may not have been so careful in the baking.

THE BAKING

How long should the Matzah bake? If the Matzah were to be cut or broken and there are no strings of dough that could be pulled out it does not become Chometz after this point (SA 461:3). This sign, however, only works when the Matzah is still warm, but if it cooled down, the dough hardens and it is no longer an effective means of determining (MB 461:13) whether it was indeed fully baked.

The person baking the Matzah should be careful not to remove the Matzos prematurely  it should be baked to completion. If he did remove it early, he should not place it back into the oven, as it may have become Chometz in the interim (Ramah 461:3). If it was taken out and put back in by accident, the Matzah is not forbidden (MB 461:16).

Matzah that became folded and or stuck in a manner that the fire cannot reach the place where it became stuck is forbidden. If it was during Pesach, the entire Matzah is forbidden. If it was before Pesach one must remove Kdei Netilah 2.4 centimeters from the surrounding area where it was stuck (Ramah 461:5. Note: Rav Chaim Noeh requires only 2 centimeters, and Rav Moshe Feinstein requires 2.2 centimeters).

One must be careful that the Matzos in the oven not touch each other before they are fully baked. If they do touch each other and they are not immediately separated  they have the halachic status of folded Matzos. If it is before Pesach the amount of Kdei Netilah must be removed from both of them. If it happened on Pesach itself both Matzos are forbidden. If the person baking them separated them immediately and it was before they were inserted in the oven, it is permitted (Ramah 461:5).

A SWOLLEN MATZAH

A Matzoh that has become swollen in the middle of it, and the height of the swelling is above that of an Etzbah, the entire Matzoh is forbidden (Ramah 461 and MB).

One should not place the Matzoh at the very edge of the oven, because the front of the oven is not as hot, and Matzos placed there are not baked sufficiently with this heat. There is therefore a likelihood of it becoming Chometz. All Matzos that have become invalid, either on account of swelling, or folding or for some other reason should be completely removed from the work area so that the other Matzos not come in contact with them.

The author can be reached at [email protected]

[1] See Biur Halacha 460 Ain. The PMG rules that one does not fulfill the Mitzvah. The Ritvah rules that in regarding to kneading and baking one can assume that there is the proper intent when done without thinking. This is not the case, however, with harvesting and grinding.

[2] Mitzvas Chaburah 3:7

[3] This point is actually a debate in the Poskim. This Hilchos Ketanos cited by the Beer Heitev holds that the sun does heat such water. The Shaar haTziyun disagrees with this view.
Jordan has accepted Israels choice of a new ambassador for the kingdom, another sign of improving ties after a months-long crisis.

Government spokesman Mohammed Momani said Thursday that the envoy, Amir Weissbrod, can start his mission any time now.

The posting of a new Israeli ambassador would end one of the tensest episodes since the two countries signed a peace treaty in 1994.

It began last summer when a security guard at the Israeli embassy in Jordan shot and killed two Jordanians, alleging one attacked him with a screw driver. The Israeli guard and Israels then-ambassador were given a heros welcome by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, infuriating Jordan.

Earlier this year, the two sides said they found a way to overcome the crisis, including appointing a new Israeli ambassador.

(AP)
A 15-day administrative closure order signed by Jerusalem Police Chief Yoram Halevy was given to the owner of a Bar Ilan pizza shop at 6 Bar-Ilan Street in Jerusalem for the employment of illegal PA (Palestinian Authority) residents.

Closing orders given to businesses and companies that employ illegal residents constitute an important and central part of the polices determined struggle against the entry of illegal aliens, complainants and employers, as well as against any entity that assists in reaching and staying illegal aliens in the territory of the State of Israel. Illegal entry of illegal aliens into Israeli territory may serve as a platform for criminal activity and/or terrorists activity.

On 10 Nissan, two illegal aliens were caught by the activity of the police. According to the suspicion, they worked for the store in question. On Thursday, 13 Nissan, police handed over to the owner of the pizza shop at an administrative closure order signed by the commander of the Jerusalem district.

The order orders the closure of the business immediately for 15 days after it was established he employs the two illegals, which is a violation of the law and poses a threat to the area.

(YWN Israel Desk  Jerusalem)
Hamas issued a uncharacteristic request of Gaza residents that they refrain from violence during the planned large scale protest march that is being organized by Hamas, in which residents of Gaza are expected to march on the Gaza-Israel border fence en masse.

The organizers of the protest march issued a statement that said: Friday the 30th of March will be just the beginning, and the public protest will not end with sundown. Rather, it will continue with civilian disobedience in a peaceful protest which will only end with the return of Palestinians to their rightful lands.

Hamas issued orders that no one should jeopardize the message of the protest and damage its success.

Hamass message came after the IDF sent messages to Gaza residents stating that crossing the border into Israel will be seen as an aggressive act and any response may be employed to prevent such an entry. The IDF included airstrikes against Hamas targets as a possible response in the message.

Israel told Gazan bus companies that should they be involved in bringing Gaza residents to the border fence on Friday, that all benefits offered by Israel to these companies would be revoked. Anyone who approaches the fence, does so at the risk of their lives, said a statement issued by Major General Yoav Mordechai the Chief Officer of COGAT.

The IDF has been conducting training drills all week for thousands of soldiers in preparation for the protest as well as a result of the numerous infiltrations from Gaza into Israel that took place this week.

(YWN Israel Desk  Jerusalem)
The Easter holiday brought forward by several days the deadline for shareholders to decide the fate of GKN.

The outcome, which leaves Melrose in the cockpit, is profoundly troubling. GKN may have brought trouble upon itself by slack management. But the cure in trusting the future to the Melrose City boys Chris Miller, Simon Peckham, David Roper and Geoff Martin is far worse than the illness.

Business Secretary Greg Clark came to the party far too late, with hedge funds and get-rich-quick merchants driving events by grabbing holdings of 25 per cent in GKN. Even now, as Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson seeks a full probe on national security grounds, supine Clark is still cavilling.

Out of touch: Business Secretary Greg Clark came to the party far too late

All he needs to do is go to the GKN website to understand that there is barely a civilian or military aircraft in the world which does not use its advanced technology.

This may put the firm among the top Ministry of Defence contractors, but try selling the Typhoon Eurofighter to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states without the advanced-tech canopies which protect air crews.

Much of GKNs aerospace technology is developed in co-operation with Lockheed Martin and other US defence contractors for the Pentagon. The F-35 Lightning fighters, destined for the RAF and Britains new carrier forces, are festooned with GKN technology. That is why the robust Committee on Foreign Investment in the US will take a look. It would be feeble if the Americans intervene where the UK fears to tread.

The political and financial fallout from this contested bid battle will not go away quickly. In an age when so many big institutional shareholders have signed up to better stewardship of companies, including less extravagant pay and incentives, the Melrose assault rightly plays right into the hands of critics.

Melrose, with the help of the financial buccaneers, has been allowed to buy GKN on the cheap. The 8billion valuation of the firm was way below where it should have been.

GKN is a victim of the undervaluation of FTSE 100 companies, a misreading of the value of an engineering conglomerate and the fact that it is the last UK quoted automotive firm.

Broken up into its component parts, the company, with its 58,000 workforce in 30 different territories, could be worth one-third more than what has been paid for it.

During a period of what has become known as austerity (everything is relative) no one can applaud the sight of City advisers  investment banks, lawyers and communications whizzes  walking off with fees of 160m for less than 60 days work.

That is simply obscene, and put in the shade only by the 285m which the Melrose tycoons stand to collect  not to mention the quick profits generated by the hedge funds riding the wave.

It is argued that GKN is only getting what it deserves because longer-term shareholders were willing to sell a lousy company to the opportunists. This is balderdash.

Surrender: Melrose, with the help of the financial buccaneers, has been allowed to buy GKN on the cheap

By any standards, Sky is one of Britains greatest technology and creative success stories. Yet as bids from 21st Century Fox, Disney and Comcast are mulled, the hedgies, including ubiquitous Elliott, have together built up a 13 per cent stake and rising. They see another killing in the making, despite Skys obvious success.

Among the reasons why City boys such as Melrose and the hedge funds are able to get away with company assassinations is a failure of accountability among big battalion investors.

Millions of ordinary investors are disenfranchised because holdings are kept on platforms such as Hargreaves Lansdown or through pension funds. Asset managers should be required to publicly reveal their voting intentions and reasoning in all bids.

We may not have appreciated the way in which Aviva Investors voted, but at least it had the decency to go public. There is simply too little transparency, making a mockery of democracy. The Takeover Panel needs to seize the high ground.

Freedom festivals

The Prince of Wales wisely tells us that Easter 2018 is a time to focus on the fate of persecuted Christians and minorities around the world.

As the festival of Passover also begins, it is also a moment when Jews reflect on trials of the past and hard-won economic and political freedoms. The message is particularly poignant this year as Labour struggles to drive out its anti-Semitic demons.

Happy holidays.
Few could have predicted the impact that online estate agent Purplebricks has made in such a short space of time.

In just four years, it has gone from an unknown agent doing things a little bit differently to one of the sectors slickest and most recognisable brands.

But as it targets huge expansion in the US and Australia, there are emerging signs that its meteoric rise is running out of steam.

Meteoric rise: In just four years, Purplebricks has gone from an unknown agent to one of the sectors most recognisable brands

The early hype around Purplebricks caught the imaginations of investors and its shares soared by more than 450 per cent between its December 2015 float and August last year. In 2017 alone they were up 170 per cent. But analysts are beginning to question whether there is any substance behind the glossy marketing and bold ambition.

A key concern is that it is pushing into overseas markets before the UK model is proven. Purplebricks shares are down more than 38 per cent from their peak, indicating investors are beginning to waver, too.

When Purplebricks launched, it painted itself as a fresh, online alternative to its stuffy, traditional rivals. Customers could search for properties and arrange viewings online rather than peering through the shop window of an agent on a run-down High Street.

But the most revolutionary aspect of its proposition was its fees: rather than pay commission of up to 3 per cent, sellers pay a flat fee of 849, or 1,199 in London  a saving of almost 7,000 on a 250,000 home.

Another difference, though, is that you only pay a traditional agent when your home sells; with Purplebricks, you pay either way.

The key measure is whether Purplebricks is any better at selling your home  and thats exactly where analysts are beginning to probe.

In a radio interview in October 2016, chief executive Michael Bruce claimed it sold 88 per cent of the homes it took to market within ten months. But investment bank Jefferies believes this is wrong, having carried out its own study.

In a note to investors in February, Jefferies found that Purplebricks sold just 51.6 per cent of the homes on its site in November 2016 within ten months.

If true, that makes its ability to sell homes bog-standard.

The note knocked a fifth off the value of Purplebricks shares in just three days.

Purplebricks refuted Jefferies research. It argued that Jeffries did not account for properties that were in the process of being uploaded to the Land Registry, which can take months, and therefore sales data was incomplete.

However, Purplebricks refuses to reveal its actual sales figures, making it difficult to know how many homes it really sells.

And although it recently secured 150million of investment to grow in the US, actual figures on how well it is doing overseas are hard to find. Purplebricks own rhetoric is that growth has been twice as fast as it planned.

The one clue to how it is doing is revenue figures.

Sales are expected to rise from 46.7million last year to 93million this year  a 99 per cent rise.

To fund expansion, Purplebricks sold 11.5 per cent of its shares for 125million to German publisher Axel Springer, the owner of Bild and Die Welt newspapers. Analysts at Peel Hunt say that the move will help push revenues up to 193.9million next year and 311million the year after.

But others have queried whether the time is right for a US expansion when question marks hang over its ability to flog properties here and in Australia.

Sales figures for its American enterprise  which began in four districts in California  remain as much of a mystery as its UK division.

One thing is clear. The US homes market differs dramatically to the UK in that Americans typically strike up personal relationships with their realtors, who also hold open days to encourage buyers to see homes.

Purplebrick chief executive Michael Bruce

The advice from investment experts is that Purplebricks is a long-term bet  but only for those with a stomach for sharp rises and falls along the way.

Anthony Codling, of Jefferies, said: Our concern is that the group has expanded quickly across three continents before the model has been proven, and therefore the shares are priced for perfection.

Russ Mould, of broker AJ Bell, said: Purplebricks is probably best suited to patient, long-term but risk-tolerant investors who believe in the potential of the company to disrupt the estate agency market, not just in the UK but over the pond and Down Under as well.

Anyone who has their doubts or prefers something where the story is a little less jam tomorrow may not be quite so bullish on the shares.

A spokesman for Purplebricks said it was the only listed estate agent offering substantial sales growth, and pointed to upbeat analyst consensus and company guidance taken from Bloomberg that estimated 100 per cent revenue growth for 2018.

They added: This is compared to consensus for the likes of [rivals estate agents] Countrywide, Foxtons and LSL, where revenue is flat or falling. Purplebricks has around 76 per cent of the online market share and, while marginally impacted in the first quarter by the Beast from the East and market softness as a whole, has reported that it is realising record instruction rates.
HSBC has agreed to pay 71m to end a US lawsuit accusing it of conspiring to manipulate Libor rates, becoming the fourth major bank to settle in the case.

The agreement is with over-the-counter investors, who dealt with banks on a panel to determine Libor, a rate used to calculate how much banks charge each other for loans.

Agreement: HSBC denied wrongdoing, but settled to avoid the risks, costs and distraction of litigation, court papers show

It was disclosed in filings on Thursday at the US District Court in Manhattan, and will need court approval. Settlements with the OTC investors total 420m so far, and include 85m with Barclays, 93m with Citigroup and 171m with Deutsche Bank.

HSBC denied wrongdoing, but settled to avoid the risks, costs and distraction of litigation, court papers show.

Investors, including Yale University in Connecticut, accused 16 banks of conspiring to manipulate Libor, starting the case in 2011. Banks have paid roughly 6.4bn to settle Libor-rigging probes worldwide.

In July, the head of City watchdog the Financial Conduct Authority said it would phase out Libor by the end of 2021.
Praise: The New York Times hailed Chrissie Rucker as the UKs answer to Martha Stewart

Britain has produced its fair share of glamorous power couples. Liz Taylor and Richard Burton; David and Victoria Beckham; Chas and Dave.

To that heady mix we can also add the names of entrepreneurial husband and wife, Chrissie Rucker and Nicholas Wheeler.

She is the founder of soft furnishings firm The White Company, hes the man behind affordable haberdasher, Charles Tyrwhitt.

Together they have amassed a combined fortune of 400million and now enjoy a roost inside the top 25 wealthiest couples in the Sunday Times Rich List.

But it is Ruckers success story which is the more intriguing. While her husbands business career was forged via Eton, Bristol University and a solid grounding in management consultancy, she left school aged 16 not knowing one end of a spreadsheet from the other.

Since launching as a mail-order firm in 1994, The White Company now has more than 50 shops in the UK, with profits at 17.6million.

When she opened her first American outlet on Manhattans Fifth Avenue last year, the New York Times hailed her as the UKs answer to Martha Stewart.

The premise of the business is, in many ways, a reflection of its stylish owner. Simple, attractive designs  ranging from bed linen to cashmere jerseys  belying accessible prices. And nearly all of it, of course, in white.

Her father was a commodity broker while her mother was obsessed with horses, a passion now shared by Ruckers three daughters. After finishing her O levels, young Rucker enrolled at Lucie Clayton finishing school, studying dressmaking, and generally lived the life of an Alice-banded Sloane Ranger.

In 1987 she was a debutante at the Berkeley Square Ball alongside socialite Plum Sykes. Designer Jean Muir was on the judging panel, and Rucker, showing an aptitude for self-advancement, convinced her to give her work experience.

A succession of jobs on glossy magazines followed  Vogue then Tatler. After undertaking an ill-fated journalism course (a complete waste of time) she became a PR girl at cosmetics firm Clarins before moving to Harpers & Queen in 1991 as a beauty writer.

And then she met Wheeler. Handsome as her new beau was, his taste in interiors left much to be desired. Spotting a chance to show what perfect wife material she was, Rucker took it upon herself to kit out his flat, but noticed how difficult it was to buy plain white sheets on the High Street. The germ of an idea was sown.

Chrissie Rucker after she received the MBE for services to the retail industry from Queen Elizabeth II at Windsor Castle in February 2010

Rucker began meticulously researching her market, even posing as a journalist so she could quiz department stores on how much white linen they sold. Armed with 6,000 she had inherited from her grandmother, and a 5,000 investment from Wheeler (in return for 25 per cent of the business), she produced her first catalogue on a computer in her attic, delivering initial orders in her sisters Mini Metro.

The firm took off, turning over 258,000 in its first year.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Somehow, inbetween the gruelling 16-hour days she worked to begin with, shes had time for four children. Meanwhile, she and Wheeler enjoy a bulging portfolio of properties, including a 12.5million 17th century manor house in Buckinghamshire and a beautiful schloss in the Swiss Alps.

It is a measure of her lack of ego that she happily admits she could never have done it all without her hubbys expertise. He helped write her first business plan and expand in the US, having already launched a number of shops in the States.

The path of love, however, has not always run smoothly.

A year after the firm launched, Wheeler failed to propose to her during a trip to Thailand. An irate Rucker stormed into his office, handed back his investment, and told him it was over. When they married, as a wedding gift she gave Wheeler back a stake, but this time just 1 per cent. Chrissie Rucker is a wife, mother and designer  but a businesswoman to the core.
A City boss was accused of posing as one of his female employees on the internet in order to win deals.

Richard Ashton, 54, was said to have used trader Ekaterina Korshunovas computer to make trades when she was out at lunch  even pretending to be her in online conversations. She claims that she was later fired from trading firm Eiger Securities for criticising Ashtons behaviour.

A London employment tribunal threw out a claim that Korshunova, 28, had been unfairly dismissed.

However, it awarded her nearly 6,500 because of the way she was treated.

Judge George Foxwell said: We are satisfied by the claimants evidence that she felt humiliated in front of others.

Unlawful: Richard Ashton used trader Ekaterina Korshunovas computer to make trades when she was out at lunch

Korshunova was sacked for gross misconduct in 2014, after she had fallen out with managing director Ashton.

Eiger claimed that she had performed poorly and failed to follow instructions. It also criticised her for changing her work password after she was initially suspended.

The cash  paid out for injury to Korshunovas feelings  was far less than the 16,800 she had asked for.

Eiger had unsuccessfully tried to claim that she had only suffered minor upset because of what happened.

Korshunova was awarded damages of 6,498.08 and, at the hearing, Foxwell suggested rounding this up to 6,500.

But in a sign of the animosity between the two sides, Eiger rejected this as unacceptable and the amount was unchanged  denying her a bonus of 1.92.
Foreign car hire firms which prey on British tourists face an unprecedented crackdown following a surge in complaints and a Daily Mail investigation.

The competition watchdog is taking its first direct action against firms outside the UK, it announced yesterday.

The Competition and Markets Authority said the move follows extensive complaints from customers hit by hidden costs when collecting their car at the airport.

Action was now being taken against businesses based overseas but selling directly to UK customers online, the CMA said. Pictured: cars in traffic near Dartford

Although the CMA is not yet allowed to name and shame the foreign firms involved, it paid tribute to Money Mails campaign against car hire rip-offs, saying: Complaints from Mail readers... (help us) go a long way to improving the (car hire) sector.

Common grievances include sneaky charges for fuel, huge excess charges for damaged cars, and hidden insurance costs.

The crackdown follows a major review of price comparison websites used by millions to rent a car abroad. This found many sites reel in customers with cheap quotes, then sting them with hidden charges later. The CMA says this leaves them paying more than expected, and not having the full information required under consumer protection law about what they were paying for.

Data collected by the UK European Consumer Centre between last March and this February showed a 35.6 per cent increase in complaints and inquiries from UK consumers compared with the previous year.

Initial quotes for the firms will have to include mandatory charges including fuel surcharges, young driver fees and out-of-hours pick-up charges if applicable

The main causes of complaint from those hiring cars abroad included disputed insurance claims, overpriced or unrequested excess waiver policies, shock charges for damaging the car, and hidden charges for fuel.

Michael Grenfell, CMA executive director for enforcement, said: The CMA received a high number of complaints and evidence from members of the public, including those supplied by Daily Mail readers. The results go a long way to improving the sector.

He added: This move sends a clear message: Just because a business is not on UK soil doesnt mean the law doesnt apply when it sells in the UK.

Prices must be transparent and include all compulsory costs so that people can find the deal thats best for them.

Money Mail and consumer groups have repeatedly exposed the tactics used by car hire firms to squeeze more money out of holidaymakers when they arrive at the airport. Often tired after a long journey, or with young children in tow, they are seen as easy targets by some foreign car hire firms.

Alex Neill, from consumer group Which? said: Its good to see the CMA take action. However, the industry still has more work to do to prevent customers being ripped off.

In another move, against the UK-based car hire industry, the CMA revealed three comparison websites had been forced to make their costs more transparent following enforcement action.

Online travel agent P&P Associates and two comparison sites, Affordable Car Hire Ltd and Flexiblecarhire.com, have made legally binding commitments to include all compulsory charges in their car quotes.
[March 29, 2018] Patent Portfolio Sale Completed in 10 Days on Ocean Tomo Bid-Ask Market

Seven Figure Patent Sale on Ocean Tomo Bid-Ask Market Provides Price Transparency CHICAGO,Illinois, March 30, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Ocean Tomo and Sinofaith IP Group, co-creators of the Ocean Tomo Bid-Ask Market (OTBA), announced today the closing of Lot 64, entitled Document Processing System, to an undisclosed buyer. This lot is comprised of four issued U.S. patents, four non-provisional patent applications and software code. "The Ocean Tomo Bid-Ask Market is a remarkable platform for the sale of IP and other assets," said Jack Caven, CEO, InfoTech International, LLC, the seller of Lot 64. "We had an IP portfolio of patents, pending applications, and associated software source code that we no longer used in our products and decided to sell the lot. After exploring ways to monetize this myself, I realized that I had neither the time nor the expertie. So, I engaged the professionals at Ocean Tomo. The lot was listed and the OTBA team closed a buyer for the portfolio in less than 10 days. An added bonus to this efficient process is the fact that OTBA found a buyer for whom the value was seven figures. I remain very impressed with the OTBA team and they are now my go-to firm for other IP deals," Caven explains.



Dean Becker, who oversees the Ocean Tomo Bid-Ask Market added that "Jack's mindful and measured approach to setting the asking price for this portfolio helped facilitate the rapid closing, adding one more completed transaction data point and further building the transparency enabled by the Ocean Tomo Bid-Ask Market." Ocean Tomo Transactions, LLC posts the sale price for any publicly known patent transactions using the Ocean Tomo Bid-Ask Market platform. Submit public patent transaction data to the market here.

Visit the Ocean Tomo Bid-Ask Market to view the patents included in lots for sale and license across a wide variety of technology areas including: Lot 46  Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communication

Lot 52  Emergency Communications

Lot 56  Self Service Debt Collection

Lot 57  Digital Content Access

Lot 61  Digital Rights Blockchain

Lot 66  Industrial Internet Security and Inspection

Lot 74 - Data Processing

Among others! About the Ocean Tomo Bid-Ask Market The Ocean Tomo Bid-Ask Market is an open on-line platform to buy and sell patents. This market is an important step forward, both as a simplified solution for patent transactions as well as a source of information on patent pricing. The Ocean Tomo Bid-Ask Market uniquely combines the efficiency of an online platform with an experienced team of brokers fluent in both English and Mandarin. The market uses standard transaction documents and is open, transparent and free to view. CONTACT: Kristi L. Stathis

Chief Marketing Officer

Ocean Tomo, LLC

kstathis@oceantomo.com

+1 773 294 4360 Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/660699/Ocean_Tomo_Bid_Ask.jpg SOURCE Ocean Tomo LLC

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[March 29, 2018] Healthy Pets raises $500K investment following Dragons' Den Appearance

First Canadian video telemedicine service for pets launches with support from Arlene Dickinson TORONTO, March 29, 2018 /CNW/ - Today Healthy Pets, the only telemedicine service in Canada to offer on-demand video consultations with veterinarians, officially launched and announced $500,000 CAD in seed funding from District Ventures Capital, a VC fund led by Arlene Dickinson. Dickinson will also be joining Healthy Pets as a board member. The announcement followed a Dragons' Den appearance by Healthy Pets' Founder and CEO, Emma Harris, who accepted an offer from Dickinson of $125K on an episode airing tonight on CBC but was later settled at $500K. Healthy Pets will use the funding to scale its operations and expand its network of veterinarians, offering services to more pets and pet parents across Ontario and Canada. "Nearly 63 per cent of Canadian millennials own pets, and as the parent of a pet that has experienced health issues, I understand the stress that comes with trying to recognize when it is or isn't time to visit the clinic. It's those first-hand experiences that inspired me to start Healthy Pets," said Emma Harris, Founder and CEO of Healthy Pets. "Appearing on Dragons' Den gave me an incredible opportunity to connect more Canadians with vets through telemedicine and I couldn't be more excited to work with Arlene and the team at District Ventures Capital." "I was extremely impressed with Emma's idea ad her passion in the Den. Her entrepreneurial spirit is infectious," said Arlene Dickinson, CEO of District Ventures Capital and star on CBC's Dragons' Den. "Healthy Pets' innovative approach to pet care and the growing pet services industry in Canada made it an ideal business for my fund, District Ventures Capital, to invest in and partner with. We are very much looking forward to seeing the growth of this business and to working closely with Emma."



Healthy Pets transforms access to veterinary care by leveraging technology to connect pet owners and certified veterinarians for a consultation via on-demand video, voice or instant messaging. Pet parents can register online by creating a profile for themselves, along with a profile for their pet. From there, they can schedule an appointment with a registered veterinarian from within the platform. Users can opt for a single 15-minute session, costing $40, or choose an annual subscription for $10 per month, which includes access to four consultations annually. After the four consultations have been used, each subsequent appointment is offered at a discounted rate of $25 per appointment. The platform also allows veterinarians to access new patients and offer petcare in a new way. Vets pay $50 per month to offer their services on the Healthy Pets platform and earn $20 per consultation, but also have access to a free three-month trial to test the product. Through the online consultations, vets can triage symptoms to determine whether pet parents should monitor the situation or visit a clinic.

"Healthy Pets is a valuable tool to reach patients in a new way," said Dr. Sarah Hansford, DVM of Medical Director for Healthy Pets. "The platform allows vets to expand their practice and implement a flexible working schedule outside of regular clinic hours." Named 2017's Most Promising Startup in Canada by TELUS, Healthy Pets is currently partnered with 20 veterinary clinics in Ontario, with plans to expand and reach more pet parents in the future. Through a series of community partnerships, Healthy Pets also acts as an alternative method of veterinary care for organizations like The Burlington Humane Society, Toronto Cat Rescue and Family Pet Services. To learn more about Healthy Pets, visit healthypets.io. Social media links: Facebook: facebook.com/healthypetsio

Twitter: twitter.com/healthypetsio

Instagram: instagram.com/healthypetsio

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/16182100 About Healthy Pets Healthy Pets is the only telemedicine service in Canada to offer on-demand video consultations with a veterinarian. The company was founded in 2017 with the mission to simplify pet parenthood by providing pet parents with the right information regarding their pet's health at all times. For a fraction of the cost of traditional, in-clinic appointments, pet parents can now source trustworthy pet health and wellness information from the comfort of home. Healthy Pets is committed to leveraging the best technology so pet owners and certified veterinarians can reliably consult over video, voice or instant messaging. SOURCE Healthy Pets

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[March 29, 2018] /NOTICE TO DISREGARD - ProphetStor Data Services, Inc./

MILPITAS, Calif., March 29, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- We are advised b ProphetStor Data Services, Inc. that journalists and other readers should disregard the news release "DELL EMC Achieves Strategic Partnership with ProphetStor" issued March 21, 2018 over GlobeNewswire.





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American Legion Invites Veterans to Share VA Experiences at Durham, North Carolina Town Hall Meeting

The American Legion invites all Durham area veterans and their family members to a town hall meeting to discuss their VA care.

The meeting will be held on April 2 at 7 p.m., at American Legion Post 7, 406 E. Trinity Ave, Durham, NC 27701.

The town hall is one of many events that The American Legion will conduct around the United States this year. The American Legion hosts these events to hear feedback from veterans about the quality of health care they receive at their local VA healthcare facility.

Staff from The American Legion National Headquarters in Washington, D.C., American Legion Department of North Carolina and representatives from VA and members of the North Carolia congressional delegation will be in attendance.







Veterans who may not be able to attend the American Legion town hall meeting may leave their comments about the Durham VAMC by submitting an email to NC.TownHall@legion.org. The mailbox is not staffed and you will not receive a response. Your comments will be compiled to evaluate veteran's perceptions of the health care and services provided by the Durham VAMC.

If you have an immediate concern, please call the Department of Veterans Affairs 24-hour complaint hotline at (855) 948-2311.

About The American Legion

With a current membership of over 2 million wartime veterans, The American Legion was founded in 1919 on the four pillars of a strong national security, veteran's affairs, Americanism, and youth programs. Legionnaires work for the betterment of their communities through more than 13,000 posts across the nation.

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A judge sentenced Nicquan Midgyett to life in prison, without the possibility of parole for 25 years, plus an additional 48 months, for his role in the homicide at She's a Pistol. Jon Bieker was killed at the She's A Pistol gun store in Shawnee, Kansas on January 9, 2015.
UPDATE: House rejects bill letting agencies refuse adoptions on religious grounds The Kansas House has rejected a bill that would have allowed adoption and foster care organizations to refuse placements to gay and lesbian couples based on religious beliefs. Senators approved the bill 28-12 Thursday after an intense debate the previous day over whether the legislation is discriminatory. The vote was 28-12.

A right-wing setback in Topeka today ensures that the Sunflower State follows the law of the land . . . Like it or not. Read more:
Co-defendant found guilty in murder of Louis Scherzer A second Kansas City, KS man has been found guilty for murder of Louis M. Scherzer. Efrain Gonzalez, 19, was found guilty of first-degree murder on Thursday by a jury in Wyandotte County. He will be sentenced on May 4, 2018. On Nov.

The second conviction in this case of murder during a police chase and an innocent dude who stepped outside of a bar for a minute and was blasted. Read more:
Legal challenge over the federal government's carbon tax will come in next few weeks, says Scott Moe

CBC News



March 28, 2018



Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe said Wednesday that the province will go to court over the federal government's carbon tax.



Moe told reporters that in the coming weeks, the province will file a case against the federal government with the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal over carbon pricing.



"The reason we'll be doing that is a carbon tax just simply does not work," he said.



The province's reference case would establish whether or not the federal government has the jurisdiction to impose a carbon tax, he said, noting other provinces will be watching the case closely.



"I think it's also important for us to recognize  that Saskatchewan is making every effort into reducing its emissions," said Moe.



The Saskatchewan government has a plan in place to reduce emissions from electrical generation and the energy industry, while investments in agricultural operations could see that traditional source of emissions transform into an "great and unrecognized carbon sink," he said.



Climate change about bigger picture: Moe

But Moe said the fight against climate change goes beyond the province's borders.



"If we want to address what is a global challenge  in climate change, we need to start talking about carbon emissions on a global basis."



Canada currently imports oil from foreign countries that do not have carbon pricing, with emissions that exceed those of provinces like Saskatchewan, he said, and the focus of the federal government should be pushing for pipelines and getting oil to tidewater.



Carbon pricing included in 556-page bill

Moe attacked the federal government's decision to put carbon pricing into its budget implementation bill, a bill tabled on Feb. 27 that spanned 556 pages.



"They wouldn't let this bill stand on its own, they want to lump it in with a budget bill so that they will be able to pass it with other budgetary measures," he said.



"If they were confident in their position, their position on infringing on provincial jurisdiction, they would let the bill stand on its own."



In response to Moe's comments, the press secretary to Canada's environment minister said that carbon pricing "was clearly indicated in Budget 2018," and its introduction should not come as a surprise to anyone.



"Pricing carbon pollution is a key part of any serious plan to address climate change," wrote Caroline Theriault, adding that carbon pricing would drive innovation in the country.



"We believe provinces and territories are best placed to design a pricing system that works for them, as long as it meets the national standard."



Federal government refusing 'no' for an answer on carbon pricing in Sask.

Revenues from carbon pricing are meant to stay within the provinces, while provinces with their own plans get to decide how to use the revenue, with no strings attached.



When asked if he was concerned about the possibility the federal government would impose carbon pricing and dictate how the revenue was distributed, Moe said the government is "very confident" in its case and the legal advice it has received on fighting the carbon tax.



Saskatchewan is the only province that has refused to join the federal climate change plan. If that holdout continues, the province may also forgo its share of money  $62.05 million available over five years  from Ottawa's $1.4-billion Low Carbon Economy Leadership Fund, which typically helps finance clean energy programs.
Sharon Sanders Brooks: "African-American VOTERS will NO longer allow the Democratic party to Pimp The Black VOTE. Treating US like Side Pieces, sliding into the Black community once a year and on Election Years give us a peck on the cheek and a pat on the head and then you're gone. Where is the year round Constituent Engagement ? Your local staff is doing you a great disservice."





"This trend of last minute notification to the African American Community that you will be in OUR Community to meet with us is NOT acceptable. Notice the paltry turnout at your events in the Black community?"

She's a former State Rep, KCMO Council Lady and one of the strongest voices for Kansas City's 3rd District. Check her out on social media presence because she regularly shares a wealth of information about the community.Today, as Midterm 2018 election season is upon us, her word of warning for the Democratic Party is prescient, should encourage Conservatives looking to compete for urban core votes and speaks to. . .Developing . . .
Former President Obama will appear at a campaign event in May for Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO). President Trump, meanwhile, has already showed his support for Josh Hawley, the Republican challenging her seat.
Events in Greece for the end of WWI and the centenary of the signing of the Treaty of Mudros (1918-2018)

On the occasion of the completion of the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I and in particular from the signing of the Treaty of Moudros, in 2018 there will be celebrations on the island of Lemnos.

These events are of great importance, not only for the local community of Lemnos and the Region of North Aegean, but also for Greece, which will be highlighted, as all actions have an international character.

"Treaty of Moudros (October 30th 1918) Memorandum"

On October 30th, 1918 the Ottoman Empire signed in Moudros of Lemnos a truce for the strength of the Entente. The truce was essentially going to end hostilities between the Ottoman empire and the British forces along with their allies at midnight the next day. The truce was signed on a British war ship called the "HMS Agamemnon" which had the most power to close the Dardanelles straits from 1916 to 1918, by the naval commander for the Ottoman empire Rauf Bey and the British naval commander Somerset Arthur Gough-Calthorpe.

After the successful attack of the British and French along the Macedonian side on September 15th and successfully breaking through that Macedonian side on September 18th since developments had been accelerating. The French, the Serbs, and the Greeks increased speed towards Belgrade while the British and the Greeks did the same thing towards Constantinople. Bulgaria came up with the truce and stopped hostilities on September 29th in Thessaloniki. The Ottoman empire found itself in a difficult position and started the negotiations for the surrender on October 27th which were accepted on October 30th .

During the treaty, the Entente forces gained the right to enter the Straits and occupy every territory of the Ottoman Empire that threatened their security. On November 12th , French troops entered Constantinople and the following day came the British, the Italians and the Greeks. A brilliant page was written in the history of the island on that day.

Lemnos has always been a strategically important army landmark for Greece because it is a natural border that Europe shares with Asia. In previous years, it became wider known for its role as a ?brute force? of the Allies in WWI and similarly in Gallipoli?s campaign. This important factor in combination with the use of Moudros to sign the treaty where Turkey surrendered to the British in 1918, was the start of our country making world history in the more recent years.

So 100 years later, the Ministry of Hellenic National Defense in cooperation with the "Lemnos? Friends of Anzac" Association, undertook to shape the national planning of events of particular - global - but also of Greek importance for our country and set for 2018, a central Greek event of national and global importance, the "Centenary of the signing of the Treaty of Moudros". He invites through our Association as Culture Organization, the Region of North Aegean and the Municipality of Lemnos, to welcome and carry out the relevant planning, taking "under their umbrella" a series of events that will gradually lead to the central event that will take place in Lemnos on 31 October 2018.

Read more here.

RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report

Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons Copyright: sLicense: CC-BY-SA

Photo Source:pixabay.com
Transportation Research Board > Blurbs > 2018 European Road Congress: Corridors for Shared Prosperity and Sustainable Mobility*





2018 European Road Congress: Corridors for Shared Prosperity and Sustainable Mobility*



The TRB Standing Committees on Signing and Marking Materials (AHD55), Visibility (AND40), and Traffic Control Devices (AHB50) are co-organizing a one-day workshop titled Traffic Signs and Pavement Markings: International State of the Art on Policies and Research on the opening day of the 2018 European Road Conference. The purpose of the workshop is to foster international consensus on promising practices in driver information systems and lay the scientific groundwork for future interactions with connected and autonomous vehicles. Topics addressed will include the role of markings and signs in a changing societal and technological environment, good maintenance practices, and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications.





E-Newsletter Type: E-Newsletter Type: TRB News



This Summary Last Modified On: 5/3/2018 TRB is cosponsoring the 2018 European Road Congress on October 22-24, 2018, in Dubrovnik, Croatia. This conference will focus on Corridors for Shared Prosperity and Sustainable Mobility. The conference aims to deepen the understanding of connectivity challenges, achieve consensus on key policy and investment issues, and share the state of the practice. Registration is now open The TRB Standing Committees on Signing and Marking Materials (AHD55), Visibility (AND40), and Traffic Control Devices (AHB50) are co-organizing a one-day workshop titled Traffic Signs and Pavement Markings: International State of the Art on Policies and Research on the opening day of the 2018 European Road Conference. The purpose of the workshop is to foster international consensus on promising practices in driver information systems and lay the scientific groundwork for future interactions with connected and autonomous vehicles. Topics addressed will include the role of markings and signs in a changing societal and technological environment, good maintenance practices, and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications. Submit abstracts by May 31, 2018. Text Size:
editorial@tribune.com

Vijay C Roy

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, March 30

Punjab and Haryana boast of many locally produced unique goods by artisans. However, both the states are unable to reap the benefits due to low awareness about Geographical Indication (GI) tags. Of the expansive list of over 300 products that have been granted GI status in India, only one product i.e phulkari  Punjabs traditional embroidery  carries the GI tag. Phulkari, made across Punjab and two districts in Haryana, namely Ambala and Hisar, carries the GI tag. In agriculture category, basmati from Punjab and Haryana carries GI tag along with Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir and western Uttar Pradesh.

It is beyond doubt that awareness is low. More eligible products like Panipat furnishing, Punjabi jutti, Patiala salwar can be filed for GI tags. But at the same time, utmost care should be taken to educate the artisans to reap the benefits. The real purpose is preserving the art and at the same time the rural artisans should harvest the premium price associated with it, said TK Rout, Deputy Director (market research), Textile Committee, Ministry of Textiles.

Taking a step in this direction and in order to increase the awareness, the Ministry of Textiles organised a one-day capacity-building here recently with a theme IPR Protection through Geographical Indication (GI), Act and Post GI initiatives.

The workshop was aimed at equipping the implementing agencies of the Central government like handlooms, handicrafts and Department of Handlooms and Textiles of the state governments with the knowhow on the Geographical Indications Act, 1999 and Post GI initiatives for safeguarding the interests of the grassroots level stakeholders associated with the unique handloom and handicraft products of the country.

As of date, 301 unique products of the country have been registered under the GI Act, 1999, out of which 151 belong to textiles and handicrafts. However, more eligible products may require such protection under the said Act, so as to contain the infringement and support the original stakeholders to harvest the premium price associated with it.

Dr Jatinder Kaur Arora, executive director, Punjab State Council for Science & Technology, said, Since we have Indias first Technology & Innovation Support Centre set up by World Intellectual Property Organisation of United Nations here, we will help the agencies in GI filing and facilitating awareness workshops.
KV Prasad

KV Prasad

In about a year from now, if not earlier, people of India will be asked to exercise their franchise and elect a national government. Frontloading the general election is a gambit only the government of the day can set into motion while the rest of the contestants can, at best, read straws in the wind and interpret such a possibility.

Politics is all about getting the timing right and seasoned leaders across the spectrum began making initial moves to explore how parties, which are opposed to the Bharatiya Janata Party can mount a formidable challenge to Prime Minister Narendra Modis robust bid to retain power at the Centre.

At least four strands are emerging on the national political landscape. West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress (TMC) chief, Mamata Banerjees exploratory steps; Congress president Rahul Gandhis earnest efforts in a networking exercise; the Communist Party of India (Marxist) struggling to come up with a formulation to remain relevant; and, forays of regional chiefs like Mayawati, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Lalu Prasad, N Chandrababu Naidu, the Abdullahs, tribal leaders of Jharkand in Sorens or Marandis.

Having interacted with a cross-section of leaders, including the three sulking BJP veterans Yashwant Sinha, Shatrughan Sinha and Arun Shourie  during her Delhi sojourn, the TMC chief reconnected with former Congress president Sonia Gandhi, who has a soft corner for the West Bengal leader. Mamata Banerjee sent a clear message that an anti-BJP coalition of political parties without the Congress will be less than equal to the humungous task at hand.

In doing so, Mamata Banerjee also sought to check any move by her main political opponent, the CPI (M) to revisit the strident No-truck with the Congress stand when the party firms up its political-tactical line at the Hyderabad Party Congress in April.

Standing alongside her in this endeavour is the Telangana Chhief Minister and Telangana Rashtra Samiti chief K Chandrashekhar Rao, whose ambitions to be a catalyst like his neighbour N Chandrababu Naidu was in the 1990s, drives him in the direction. The sub-script is that KCR, as the Telangana leader is known, wants a smooth transition of power at home to his son KT Rama Rao while taking a leap forward in his long political journey.

Congress under Sonia Gandhi was different. She built an excellent and enduring set of relations with leaders of various political parties that transcended personal and/or political differences. The ability to stitch a neat working arrangement with the Nationalist Congress Party of Sharad Pawar, remains a classic instance where both leaders set aside the genesis that led to the creation of the NCP on Sonia Gandhis foreign origin.

Re-energising it, recently she organised a couple of meetings that included a well-attended dinner and had the presence of the CPI (M) whose representative later insisted such events do not necessarily translate into any actionable political front.

Rahul Gandhi does not enjoy the same degree of comfort with the senior leaders, both within the party and the others. Then the shrinking political space for the Congress that manifests into a less than respectable presence in Parliament and Legislatures, restricts the new party presidents standing to negotiate from a position of strength.

Making up for these handicaps, the new Congress president started doing the rounds calling on leaders of eminence in other parties while making subtle moves to usher in a generational change within the Grand Old Party (GOP). Rahul Gandhi will need to muster best negotiating skills and imagination to carve out an agreeable coalition that while retaining primacy of the GOP for its ordinary karyakartas to carry forward any arrangement with dignity is seen accommodating the pan-parties obligations and mould it into a coherent and purposeful political alternative.

Of the two Communist parties, the parent CPI is not averse to be seen in the company of the Congress while the purists in the Marxist mould have a pathological aversion to the Congress and its neo-liberal economic policies. The recent interpretation of a change of heart by former general secretary Prakash Karat is a misnomer. The hardline faction he represents always insisted of supporting secular parties only where the CPI (M) has little or no base.

The others like Andhra Chief Minister Naidu, a past master in managing contradictions in coalitions on either side of the political divide, is still smarting under the snub from the BJP and is lying low like a wounded tiger waiting to go for the kill. The new-found bonhomie between sworn rivals Mayawatis Bahujan Samaj Party and Mulayam Singh Yadav and son Akhileshs Samajwadi Party, came unstuck faster than before for reasons still unclear. The Abdullahs, both Farooq and son Omar,have a fine equation with the Congress leaders with the younger Abdullah and Rahul Gandhi being part of a mutual admiration team.

Collectively or otherwise, the Opposition has a long distance to travel. The possibility of having a united Opposition that Mamata Banerjee advocates is both a steep and an uphill climb. Even if there is more than one strand, alternative coalitions will need to convince the people how these formations are not offering more of the same.

The perception of a less-than-efficient government and a sense of pessimism that gripped the country during the second-term of the UPA government, acknowledged even by Rahul Gandhi, will need a strong counter. Along with it there has to be an equally solid narrative of what is not going right under the current regime. A liberal democracy requires a healthy discussion on issues and ideas, which can be contested dispassionately unlike the shrill debates sometimes bordering on cacophony that viewers are served night after night at primetime by television news networks.

Interestingly, the social media platforms that propelled the BJP campaign in 2014 have more than one side to them. As the netizens know, it has elements that can be classified as, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. Easy access to all is good. That everyone enjoys similar equality is bad for opponents, while incidents and comments, intended or otherwise, spinning out of control causing damage is the ugly side.

The stakes are high for all. Even though contours of a united Opposition appear blurred, PM Modi and BJP president Amit Shah are conscious that serious efforts are underway to bring together different parties with differing ideologies. The objective will deny them from writing a new chapter in Indias political history  the only BJP PM to be voted back after completing a full term. So far, the two poll battle-inoculated warriors have demonstrated that in elections, there is little room for concesions. It is up to the Opposition to reset the battle lines.
Sukhdeep Brar

Sukhdeep Brar

Former IAS officer, retired from the World Bank

Over the last two years, I have driven extensively across three districts of Punjab - Sri Muktsar Sahib, Fazilka, and Ferozepur - apart from Chandigarh, dealing closely with the bureaucracy and the judiciary. I have waited outside offices, as well as interacted with officials ranging from patwari to deputy commissioner, and SHO to SSP. It has been an opportunity to reconnect with my land. It rekindled the emotional link that was never lost, only interrupted by work and associated travels. It has been a coming back to the roots, opening of old wounds, and absorption of the disillusionment with the present state of affairs.

Everything that is right with Punjab is juxtaposed with all that is wrong. On the surface, there is a serenity of the lush green landscape that is synonymous with Punjab's prosperity. But beneath the surface, something is seriously wrong. Chaos is everywhere; governance has crumbled.

The problem in Punjab is not that governance has collapsed, but the pervasive perception that nothing works without the deadly combination of politics and money. Defend the Indian bureaucracy as we might, signs of its decay are everywhere. Most of Punjab's problems are rooted in the feudal agrarian society that is unable and unprepared to adapt to the changed social and economic norms. With poor quality of education, poor employment prospects, and little expendable cash, the average Punjabi youth looks to a life abroad to achieve his aspirations.

Last year, Punjab voted in a new government, after a decade, on the promise of improved governance. There was euphoria and hope of 'good things' to come. A young officer optimistically told me that he will now have the time to 'think' and possibly even 'read'. The instructions from the CM that elected officials will not interfere in affairs of the state had an effect - for a while. But governance in Punjab continues to be in disarray. The distinction between right and wrong has almost disappeared - action is taken only on basis of political expedience, personal clout, or 'sifarish'. It matters who you are, who you know, who your relatives and acquaintances in turn know. Mention an official's name and, immediately, you will be told where he is from, the family he is married into, who his extended relatives or close friends are, who he listens to, who he is beholden to, and who should best be approached to influence his decision making. And the vital role hard cash may play in decision-making. Obtaining justice is a monumental task.

Honest officials are frustrated and demoralised. Those who wield power, whatsoever their level of authority, are abusing it with impunity. I am repeatedly told by junior officials, that they fear retribution for displeasing the powerful. I know of interference and threats at the behest of officers within the police force. I have experienced the corruption and collusion within the revenue administration, interference by vigilance officers, and the unwillingness of the police to take action against serious threats and intimidation.

Good governance has become a shallow catchphrase that somehow promises magical solutions to persistent systemic problems associated with the way institutions of government function. It is perceived more as a management and planning function. In fact, governance is the way policies, programmes, and services are delivered to the public and the transparency, accountability, adherence to and respect for the rule of law, equity, fairness, and responsiveness are inherent in the processes and procedures of government. The challenge is how does one bring about such a sweeping cultural and environmental change in a decadent and feudal work culture? Often, those who should be bringing about this change are the ones with the highest vested interest in maintaining the status quo.

Setting up the Revenue Commission is a step in the right direction, we can only keep our fingers crossed that this opportunity will be used to rid Punjab of the burden of archaic laws that have strangled agriculture and kept investment away from it. Reforms to land ceiling laws must go hand in hand with reforms to land leasing laws. Good governance is impossible without drastic changes to governance of the agriculture sector.

Addressing public dissatisfaction with the prevailing state of governance requires perceptible action. In a cash-strapped environment, this can be achieved by going after the low-hanging fruit. By now, each department should have been asked to undertake an exercise toidentify both need and redundancy of employees, waste and leakage of financial and human resources, and areas to eliminatethe proverbial 'red tape'. Employee attrition should be addressed by hiring where necessary to deliver services efficiently and by not filling vacancies created by retirement where people are not needed. There is colossal waste of human resources - official and unofficial - of employees being deputed at the residences of officers - retired and serving. Such lavish lifestyles at the expense of the taxpayer, on whom the Finance Minister has announced additional taxes, is scandalous and a hangover of the feudal mindsets still dominating Punjab. Additional taxation without cutting wasteful expenditure, and improving efficiency of resources being spent is like pouring water into a bucket with large holes. Instead, savings should be effected by abolishing schemes designed to be nothing more than vote catching gimmicks that do nothing but extend a corrupt and inefficient bureaucracy, and by phasing out subsidies that everyone knows to be harmful - such as the power subsidy to the farmers. Focus resources instead on improving quality of education and health service, and to enforce law and order. These are the foundations on which societies prosper.

There is no reason why the Officers on Special Duty, tasked with addressing the concerns of the constituents, should be headquartered in Chandigarh. On any given day, the offices of these OSDs are flooded with petitioners and petty power brokers. The inconvenience to the poor who must travel to Chandigarh, often bearing expenses for the touts as well, is absolutely unnecessary. The concept of the Suvidha Kendras should have been reviewed and made more responsive rather than abolished. A single window service delivery system is a necessity at the local tehsil and the district level for services that fall under their jurisdictions. A grievance redress system should be in place at the decentralized level and every DC and SSP should be answerable for non-redress of complaints. Swift action should be taken against officials who are guilty of injustice, harassment, and delayed delivery of services.

All this requires, among other things, an attitudinal change in the bureaucracy. Is the bureaucracy up to the challenge? Bureaucrats are often perceived to be hurdles to reform but they are also notoriously compliant. Besides, there are brilliant, dedicated, honest officials who, given half a chance by the political powers, would be willing to stick their necks out and change the system. That half a chance promised during the elections needs to be converted into a full-blown opportunity.
vermaajay1968@gmail.com

During her last stint in the Union Government, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee was mocked as the Railway Minister for Bengal for her long absences from Delhi. Ensconced now in West Bengals power centre, the Writers Building in Kolkata, she has set her sights on Delhi. That is a completely legitimate preoccupation for any politician as the churn for the 2019 elections has begun. But it was unconscionable for her to engage in alternative pursuits while the state under her charge smouldered in the aftermath of mass frenzy on Ramnavmi. She can hardly lay claim to being blindsided by the sheer pace of events. If a social welfare body, the State Child Rights Council, could raise the flag against press-ganging of sword-wielding children in rehearsals for Ramnavmi processions, surely the states intelligence apparatus must have smelt the build-up to the denouement.

Mamata Banerjee cannot claim to have been caught on the wrong foot. Ramnavmi was being assiduously whipped into Bengals consciousness for quite some time. An astute leader, and Mamata Banerjee is indisputably one, would have taken the cue from last years spillover of tensions in large parts of Bengal during Ramnavmi celebrations. That the Bengal CM, nevertheless, opted to keep her date in New Delhi suggests either willful negligence or misplaced priorities of political management and governance.

Bengal is currently in a pincer grip of competing political forces where the culture of civility has been a casualty. As the political primus pares in Kolkata, it devolves on Mamata Banerjee to end the pursuit of political totalisation and domination. Bengals unique social composition has withstood several tempests. But the current challenge to its morphology may be the severest. The TMCs political monopoly gave it complete ownership over the spoils of power. Ironically, now that the chips are down, this advantage has turned to political isolation. She needs to not just cobble alternative arrangements in Delhi, but also reach out to her political adversaries in her home state to set benchmarks for politically acceptable behaviour. The state has burnt in the cauldron of communal hate during Partition and cannot afford a repeat.
Punjab CM Charanjit Channi to meet Governor at 12.30 pm today; new ministers likely to take oath on Monday

Channi had been summoned to Delhi on Friday by the party hig...
editorial@tribune.com

Parveen Arora

Tribune News Service

Karnal, March 30

Sarpanches and gram sachivs on Friday criticised the Haryana Government for suspending nine gram sachivs, even as Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar justified the decision.

The nine gram sachivs were suspended for being part of a delegation that met Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar at his Chandigarh residence on Wednesday. One of their demands is the withdrawal of the e-panchayat system.

During his visit to the city on Friday, the Chief Minister said: Sarpanches are public representatives, but gram sachivs are government employees. They should have not opposed the Centres e-panchayat system.

A delegation came to meet me two days ago to highlight their demands, but it was a matter of concern that gram sachivs were part of it. Gram sachivs, being government employees, should promote government schemes. The government respects the sarpanches; they can raise their voice, but we will not allow any person to provoke others to oppose any government scheme, Khattar said at Panchayat Bhawan.

Instead opposing the e-panchayat scheme, the gram sachivs should have promoted it, he added.

Meanwhile, sarpanches and gram sachivs, who assembled here for a state-level meeting, termed the suspension an unfortunate development.

More than 125 sarpanches and gram sachivs assembled for the meeting that decided the future course of action. They said block-level dharnas started on Friday, while dharnas at the CMs camp office here and at the residence of Panchayat Minister OP Dhankar in Jhajjar would start on Saturday.

The dharnas would not be lifted till their demands are accepted, including revoking the suspension of gram sachivs, a survey of BPL families and removing technical hurdles in the e-panchayat system, they said.

The sarpanches further said they were not against the e-panchayat system, but snags in it. Because of technical faults, the commencement of projects gets delayed, said Narvir Nehra, a spokesperson for the Sarpanch-Gram Sachiv Sangharsh Samiti.
editorial@tribune.com

Tribune News Service

Dharamsala, March 30

Minister for Food and Civil Supplies Kishan Kapoor on Friday alleged that the former Congress minister Sudhir Sharma had damaged the local tourism industry.

Kishan Kapoor, who represents the Dharamsala Assembly constituency, alleged at a press conference that tourism was the main industry of the area that provided direct and indirect employment to a large numbers of people. However, in the last five years, policies were designed to shift tourism from Dharamsala to the Bir area.

He alleged that hoteliers in Dharamsala were encouraged by the former minister, who held the Town and Country Planning Department, to raise illegal constructions on the assurance that these would be regularised under the retention policy. However, now most of the hoteliers, who raised illegal buildings, have lost their power and water connections.

In order to provide relief to the affected hoteliers and protect the tourism industry in the area the present government has brought a policy that only the illegal portions of the hotels would be sealed rather than the whole building, Kapoor said.

The miniser further said the people running small home stays in upper areas of Dharamsala were set to lose their power and water connections due to the policies of the previous government. In order to provide relief to them, the present government was trying to register the home stays under bread and butter scheme of the Government of India.

Kapoor alleged that in the past five years during the peak tourist season, one or the other roads remained closed due to construction work in Dharamsala. This was done deliberately so that the tourists coming here were harassed and forced to divert to Bir that was being promoted by former Congress minister.

The management of famous trekking summit of the Dharamsala region was handed over to a group of youth from Baijnath. Most of the employees hired through outsourcing in the Dharamsala corporation were from Baijnath, the paternal area of Sudhir Sharma, whereas youth of Dharamsala were ignored, Kapoor alleged.

He also said that the Summer Festival that was an annual event in Dharamsala was not held in the past five years. Instead, the events were shifted to Bir and Baijnath areas.

Kapoor said the Congress had no right to take up the issue of Central University Himachal Pradesh as they party had not transferred land for the institution during its five-year tenure. The present government would transfer land for CUHP in April and it would lay the foundation stone for the project both at Dharamsala and Dehra.
vermaajay1968@gmail.com

Srinagar, March 30

Set free from house arrest, hardline Hurriyat Conference chairman Syed Ali Geelani offered Friday prayers at a mosque near his home in Hyderpora here  the first time in years. Geelani said separatist leaders would discuss among themselves the terms put forth by the government for their release.

Media reports had quoted the J&K police chief as saying that the separatists had been barred from making anti-national speeches. As Geelani ended his speech, locals held a protest and raised slogans in favour of Pakistan and azadi. They briefly clashed with the police.

Yasin Malik and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, who have faced detention from time to time, were set free too. Mirwaiz alleged a sustained attempt to discredit the Hurriyat. Be it the NIA smear campaign or the protection propaganda, these wont keep me away from the people, he said, asking for police cover withdrawal.  TNS
pardeepdhull@gmail.com

Srinagar, March 30

Hardline Hurriyat Conference chairman Syed Ali Shah Geelani was on Friday allowed to offer Friday prayers at a mosque after a gap of nearly eight years.

Geelani, who has spent most of the past eight years under house arrest particularly on Fridays, offered the congregation prayers at a local mosque near his residence in Hyderpora area of the city, a Hurriyat spokesman said.

The separatist leader addressed the people who had gathered for the prayers.

Slogan-shouting supporters of the Hurriyat hawk accompanied him to his residence after the prayers, officials said.

They said a group of youth indulged in stone-pelting on security forces but were chased away by the law-enforcing personnel. No one was hurt in the brief clashes. PTI
editorial@tribune.com

Samaan Lateef

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, March 30

Hours after the release of separatists by the J&K Government, the Centres representative for Kashmir, Dineshwar Sharma, on Friday said the situation in the Valley was improving and peace would be restored soon.

It (peace process) is not a month or 15-day process of handling the situation. We have to go a long way and I see things moving in the positive direction, Sharma told The Tribune after concluding his four-day visit to Kashmir.

He said separatists had been allowed to move freely because of improvement in the situation in Kashmir. I am hopeful that complete peace will get restored soon, he said.

Sharma termed the release of separatists as a good development but refused to take credit for it. There is nothing like the contribution of one person or the other, he said before flying back to New Delhi on Friday afternoon. After being appointed the interlocutor by the Centre in October last year, Sharma was on his seventh visit to the state.

As Sharma was talking peace with few delegations in Srinagar on Friday morning, the state government set free the octogenarian separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani after eight years of house confinement. Geelani was also allowed to offer Friday prayers in a mosque in Hydepora locality in Srinagar. In addition to Geelani, the state government also released two top separatists Yasin Malik and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq.

Officials say the government has decided to allow the separatists to carry out their political and social activities.

However, they have been asked to refrain from making anti-national speeches and creating any law and order problem.
editorial@tribune.com

Suhail A Shah

Anantnag, March 30

Following the shootout between militants and Army men in Shopian district on Thursday evening, an injured militant was on Friday morning traced to the Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences in Srinagar, where he is undergoing treatment.

The injured militant, identified as Asif Ashraf Malik of Shopian district, was part of the Shopian shootout. He had joined the Hizbul Mujahideen in October 2017.

The shootout took place in Ahgam village of Shopian on Thursday evening when militants travelling in a car opened fire at an Army patrol which signalled to the militants to stop. The militants had abandoned the car and escaped.

We searched for the militants for the better part of the night but they could not be traced, said a senior police officer.

In the wee hours of Friday, the police received inputs regarding admission of an injured individual at the Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences in the Soura area of Srinagar.

The matter was investigated and it was found that the injured individual is a Hizb militant and was injured in the Ahgam shootout, said Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP), Shopian, Sri Ram Dinkar. The SSP said the police were monitoring him and his medical condition at the hospital.

He has been shot in the abdomen. For now, given his medical condition, he cannot be arrested but he is being continuously monitored, Dinkar said.

Sources in the police said the injured militant might have been shifted to the hospital by locals.

The pictures of the militant being cradled by three other armed militants and then in a hospital bed have gone viral.

Meanwhile, sources said a seasonal hut of the Armys 44 Rashtriya Rifles was set ablaze by miscreants in the Dobjan area of Shopian district on Thursday evening. The Doubjan area is located along the Mughal road and the Army occupies the hut during summer (April to November).

The hut was empty when it was set ablaze. The flames were brought under control by fire tenders.

Defence spokesman Col Rajesh Kalia said he was ascertaining the details. Will let you know when I get the details, the defence spokesman said.
editorial@tribune.com

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, March 30

The J&K Police have arrested the administrator of a WhatsApp group in central Kashmirs Ganderbal district for sharing a picture of a businessman on the social media and branding him a new militant recruit.

The police said that on March 28, Farooq Ahmad Mir of Beehama in Ganderbal approached the police with a complaint that the photograph of his son Aqib Farooq Mir, a businessman, was being circulated on the social media branding him a militant. A case was later registered. During investigation, the police found that the picture was first shared by a WhatsApp group and was later uploaded on other social media forums.

After preliminary investigation, Manzoor Ahmad Ganie, a resident of Masjid Pora, Tulmulla, who is a rumour-monger and the administrator of WhatsApp groups  Shariyat Ya Shahadat and Fiza Telecom  was arrested, a police spokesman said. The police said more arrests were expected in the case.

Meanwhile, an overground worker of the Hizbul Mujahideen was arrested during a cordon and search operation in Ganderbal district. The police identified the overground worker as Nazir Ahmad Malik of Lobar Mohallah, Shalbug. A huge quantity of incriminating material was recovered from his possession which was used by him to assist militants, said Senior Superintendent of Police, Ganderbal, Fayaz Ahmad Lone.
editorial@tribune.com

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, March 30

India on Friday received its first LNG (liquefied natural gas) cargo from the US under a long-term supply deal.

US Minister Counselor for Commercial Affairs Patrick Santillo and Consul General to Kolkata Craig Hall joined Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan in welcoming the shipment.

According to a US Embassy statement, GAIL has signed two 20-year LNG supply agreements, potentially worth $32 billion, for LNG exports from the Dominion Cove Point project in Maryland and the Sabine Pass project in Louisiana.

The eagerly awaited shipment arrived at GAILs Dabhol terminal on Friday, less than a month after it set out from Louisiana.

The US continues to partner with India across the broad range of energy collaboration whether through traditional energy sources like oilthe first crude oil shipment from the United States to India arrived in October 2017 in Odishaor LNGor through other sources like coal and renewable energy, said Minister Counselor for Commercial Affairs Patrick Santillo.

Our Ambassador to India, Kenneth Juster, has observed that the US is uniquely positioned to offer India a comprehensive energy partnership, and energy exports are emerging as a promising new means of addressing the bilateral trade deficit while promoting Indias energy security, said Santillo.

This shipment really sets the stage for the upcoming April visit to India of US Secretary of Energy Rick Perry for the US-India Strategic Partnership, he added.

The statement said under the leadership of President Trump, the US Government continues to work to promote free, fair and reciprocal trade with all trading partners, including India. Bilateral trade between the US and India increased by $11 billion in 2017 to $125.6 billion.

Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said the government was working towards making India a gas-based economy. He added that the arrival of the first LNG cargo from the US was a significant milestone in the direction of realising adequate availability of natural gas through imports from diversified sources.
rchopra@tribunemail.com

New Delhi, March 30

Students and Congress youth leaders on Friday held protests in several parts of the national capital against CBSE board papers being leaked, accusing the board of negligence and demanding immediate action against the guilty.

While some students gathered at Parliament Street in the heart of the city, members of the Congresss National Students Union of India (NSUI) began marching towards Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekars residence but were stopped.

Student groups and the Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee (DPCC) also demonstrated outside the CBSE headquarters in east Delhis Preet Vihar, raising various demands, including an independent investigation.

The leaks have exposed the capture of the highest academic institutions by the exam mafia under the watch of the Modi government as well as the abdication of authority by the HRD minister and the CBSE chairperson, NSUI leader Neeraj Mishra said.

He added that they would demand the resignation of Javadekar and CBSE chairperson Anita Karwal.

The NSUIs list of demands includes announcement of the retest of the Class 10 maths and the Class 12 economics papers as early as possible. They are also demanding that students should not be forced to take the retest.

Though the NSUI march was stopped at the Udyog Bhawan metro station, a short distance from Javadekars Kushak Road residence, NSUI president Fairoz Khan and DUSU vice president Kunal Sehrawat were taken by Delhi Police to meet the minister.

Javadekar assured them that a decision on the issues raised by them would be taken by the end of the day, Sehrawat told PTI.

The Congresss Delhi wing, DPCC, shouted slogans outside the CBSE headquarters, demanding an independent investigation into the issue.

As protests escalated, Delhi Police imposed Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code a provision that prohibits gathering of peopleoutside Union Human Resource Development Minister Prakash Javadekar's Kushak Road residence.

Earlier in the day, scores of students also demonstrated outside the CBSE headquarters, asking for an early resolution to their problems.

The CBSE announced a retest of the two papers earlier this week following reports that the papers were leaked.

Email

Delhi Police's Crime Branch asked Google for its response on an e-mail that was sent to the CBSE chairperson Anita Karwal in connection with the paper leak case.

The email sent from a Gmail ID contained images of handwritten questions papers.

The crime branch has also identified over 10 WhatsApp groups, each having 50-60 members in connection with the leak.

The papers of the economics exam of Class 12, held on March 26, and mathematics exam of Class 10, held on March 28 were leaked on social media hours before the examination.

Soon after this, CBSE announced re-examination and police investigation into the leak. Police have questioned 30 people so far, including students and teachers of private coaching centres. Agencies
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Syed Ali Ahmed

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, March 30

Amid nationwide outrage over paper leak, the government on Friday announced re-examination on April 25 for Class XII economics and limited retest for Class X mathematics students in Delhi-NCR and Haryana, possibly in July, Education Secretary Anil Swarup announced.

Ruling out a nationwide re-test for CBSE Class X maths, the HRD Ministry said a final decision on the re-exam for Delhi-NCR and Haryana would be taken in 15 days after a detailed inquiry. There will be no re-exam outside the country.

EDIT: CBSE paper leak

In a related development, the All-India Parents Association said it would move a petition in the Delhi High Court, seeking a court-monitored probe into the paper leak.

Parents association president Ashok Agarwal said the body would seek a direction from the court to the CBSE for liberal marking. Since differently-abled students would be greatly impacted, the association would seek special consideration for them.

With anger against the paper leak spreading across the country, the Opposition stepped up attack on the government. Taking a swipe at the PM, Congress president Rahul Gandhi remarked the PM would now write a sequel to his book Exam Warriors to teach students and parents stress relief, once their lives are destroyed due to leaked exam papers. Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray asked the students to boycott the re-exam.

The Crime Branch, meanwhile, has obtained details of the exam centres, superintendents and bank vaults where the papers were kept for safety, questioning 10 more persons and detaining six in Jharkhand. Also, it has written to Google for details of the e-mail address used to warn CBSE chairperson Anita Karwal about the Class X paper leak.

Facing flak over the paper leak, HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar turned to students to find a solution, saying: I am facing one problem in the country. It is a problem of paper leak. So, how to solve it is also a challenge. I am throwing this challenge to students. (With PTI inputs)
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Ajay Banerjee

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, March 29

Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is headed to Moscow in the first week of April with a high-level industry delegation in tow. The S-400 missiles and the Kamov 226T helicopters are expected to be her two top priorities.

Both deals had been announced in October 2016 after a bilateral meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Vladimir Putin.

If agreed, the missile  a state of the art air defence system  could be a 'game changer' in protecting India's borders, besides it will further cement the five-decade-old ties between the two nations.

Set to cost Rs 39,000 crore, 'S-400 Triumf' air defence missiles are mounted on road mobile launchers and carried by specialised trucks. The missile system includes multi-layered radars capable of tracking 300 targets such as missiles, planes, drones, helicopters and shoot down around three dozen simultaneously. It can hit incoming airborne targets between 20 km and 400 km - a rarity to have such vast range mated in a single missile system. It can also hit target at an altitude of 55 km. With inter-continental missiles (having more than 5,500 km range) travelling at 70-80 km altitude, this can come in handy for the defence forces. Russia deployed the missile system during its campaign against the Islamic State in Syria.

The Kamov 226T helicopter will allow pilots to fly to the Siachen glacier or similar altitudes across the Himalayas much safely and with greater load carrying capacities. At least 200 of the twin-engine Kamov - a light utility helicopter - will be produced. These will cost $1 billion (Rs 6,800 crore).

The two sides will be discussing the purchase of four Admiral Grigorovich-class (Project 11356) stealth frigates will replace the three Godavari-class frigates that the Navy has. However, the much-awaited joint production of the fifth generation fighter aircraft may not set through.
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New Delhi, March 30

After three weeks of severe strain in ties and drama on issues of harassment of each others diplomats in respective missions, India and Pakistan on Friday decided to de-escalate tension.

In statements released by the foreign ministries almost simultaneously, the two sides said, India and Pakistan have mutually agreed to resolve matters related to the treatment of diplomats and diplomatic premises, in line with the 1992 Code of Conduct for treatment of diplomatic/consular personnel.

Amid bloodshed along the LoC and International Border, bilateral relations soured further when Pakistan lodged formal complaints about intimidation of its diplomats and children in Delhi by alleged security agents. High Commissioner Sohail Mahmood met Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale first on March 8, while the High Commission circulated videos to cite as proof. Later, Mahmood was called to Islamabad, where, a senior Pakistani official said, he was advised to help normalise the situation as the Pakistani forces were focused on Afghanistan border.

After Pakistan upped the ante, India went public with its protests, calling harassment of the Indian High Commissioner and diplomatic staff in Islamabad a new normal. The MEA sent more than a dozen note verbales.  TNS
vermaajay1968@gmail.com

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, March 30

Families of Indian construction workers, who were abducted in Iraq in June 2014 and were finally declared dead by the Narendra Modi government this month, can perhaps find some closure. The mortal remains of the men will be flown back on Monday for last rites.

Minister of State for External Affairs General VK Singh (retd) will fly to Baghdad on Sunday to bring back the bodies of the men killed by Islamic State (IS) in Mosul and exhumed from a mound near Badush to the north-west of Mosul, after the Iraqi forces recaptured the city in July 2017.

The identity certification and documentation process are being cleared by the Indian embassy with support from humanitarian assistance group Martyrs Foundation, that works with the Iraqi Department of Graves and the International Red Crescent.

Sources said that as of now, forensic examination results are awaited for the 39th victim, Raju Yadav from Patna, whose parents are not alive. Initially, the DNA sample of a relative was sent that matched only 70 per cent.

Martyrs Foundation ascertains the identity only after at least 98 per cent DNA match. So, the government provided the sample of Yadavs brother living in Siwan for a second DNA match.

VK Singh at the moment is expected to fly back 38 bodies. First, he will land at Amritsar, where he will hand over the remains of 27 men who belonged to Punjab and four from Himachal.

The minister will fly in an Indian Air Force Boeing C17 that can lift up to 70 tonnes, said Defence Ministry sources.

The aircraft had also been used for evacuation of Indians from strife-torn Yemen in April 2015, an operation that VK Singh oversaw from the ground.
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Shiv Kumar

Tribune News Service

Mumbai, March 30

The Maharashtra Government has decided to go slow on acquiring land for several infrastructure projects, including the Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train and Mumbai-Nagpur Expressway following protests by farmers earlier this month.

The state government sources say officials have been asked to stop acquiring farmland under the Land Acquisition Act in case farmers refused to give up their property to the authorities.

People are refusing to part with their land even where the state is offering to pay four times the ready reckoner rate, says an official from the revenue department.

Land for the Mumbai-Nagpur Expressway has been purchased at many places by district collectors directly from farmers after paying them four to five times the ready reckoner rates.

However, farmers in Virar, Thane district, and Palghar, on the outskirts of Mumbai, where the Mumbai-Ahmedbad bullet train has to pass, have refused to give up their land.

Local officials say farmers are holding protests daily at taluka headquarters and opposition parties are mobilising land owners against the move to acquire their land.

We will not be able to start work on these two prestigious projects till 80 per cent of the land is acquired, says a state government official.

The Mumbai-Ahmedabad High Speed Corridor, as the bullet train project is called, requires 353 hectares of land to be acquired from 108 villages in Palghar and Thane.

So far we have issued notices for purchase of land only in 17 villages as we have been asked to go slow on this, a state government official said.

In the absence of any amendment to the Land Acquisition Act, all of the land will have to be acquired only with the consent of the owners, say sources.

Acquiring land for the bullet train in Maharashtra is proving to be difficult as parties such as the Shiv Sena and Raj Thackerays Maharashtra Navnirman Sena are portraying it as a project that would benefit Gujaratis more than Maharashtrians.






editorial@tribune.com

Smita Sharma

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, March 30

In a bid to reset strained ties, Prime Minister of Nepal KP Sharma Oli will be on a state visit to India from April 6 to 8. Accompanied by his wife Radhika Shakya, this will be Olis first overseas visit since he returned to power in Nepal as the Prime Minister after a communist victory in historic federal and provincial elections last year.

During the visit, Oli will call on President Kovind, Vice-President Naidu and hold formal talks with Prime Minister Modi. Oli will also visit the GB Pant University of Agriculture and Technology at Pantnagar in Uttarakhand.

India and Nepal enjoy age-old special ties of friendship and cooperation. The upcoming visit will provide an opportunity to the two sides to review wide-ranging cooperative partnership, and to progress it further for the benefit of the two peoples, said the Ministry of External Affairs announcing the visit.

Oli who was unceremoniously dethroned after nine months of prime ministership in his last stint resigned a day before he was to face a no-confidence motion in Parliament in 2016. India was blamed for the toppling.

Modi in a telephonic conversation had congratulated Oli after his election victory. While Oli through a congratulatory letter to Modi on Indias 69th Republic Day hoped to work together for peace and stability.
gspannu7@gmail.com

New Delhi, March 30

Nepal Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli will make his maiden foreign trip after assuming office to India from April 6 to 8 during which he will hold talks with the top leadership here to strengthen the partnership between the two countries.

The upcoming visit will provide an opportunity to the two sides to review the wide-ranging cooperative partnership, and to progress it further for the benefit of the two peoples, a Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) statement said.

Oli will hold talks with his Indian counterpart and call on President Ram Nath Kovind and Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu during his trip.

A high-level delegation will accompany Oli on his state visit to India, the MEA said.

The Nepalese premier, who will also be accompanied by his wife Radhika Shakya Oli, will visit the G.B. Pant University of Agriculture and Technology in Pantnagar, Uttarakhand, during the visit.

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and other ministers will call on the Nepalese Prime Minister, the MEA said.

India and Nepal enjoy age-old and special ties of friendship and cooperation, it said.

Olis visit is in line with the tradition of a Nepalese premier visiting India on his first overseas trip.

Swaraj had visited Nepal before Oli took office to congratulate him for the historic victory of the Left Alliance in the Parliamentary and Provincial elections.

She was the first senior Indian minister to visit Nepal after the conclusion of elections to local bodies, provincial assemblies and federal Parliament.

While congratulating Oli over phone upon his appointment to the top executive post last month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had extended an invitation to him for a visit to India.  TNS/PTI
pardeepdhull@gmail.com

New Delhi, March 30

The re-examination of CBSEs Class 12 economics paper will be held on April 25, while the Class 10 mathematics re-test, if required, would be conducted only for Delhi-NCR and Haryana in July, the government said on Friday amid widespread outrage over the paper leak issue.

Ruling out a nationwide re-tests for Class 10 mathematics, the HRD Ministry said that a final decision on the re-examination for Delhi-NCR and Haryana would be taken in the next 15 days following a detailed inquiry.

The details of the re-test were announced by the HRD Ministry amid continuing widespread outrage over the paper leak issue, with the Opposition blaming the government for causing agony to the students and their parents.

The outrage over the paper leaks spread across the country. In Delhi, students and Congress youth leaders held protests on the issue, accusing the CBSE of negligence and demanding immediate action against the guilty.

Meanwhile, six students were detained in Chatra district of Jharkhand in connection with the leak, while in the national capital, the Delhi police wrote to Google for details of the e-mail address from where the CBSE chairperson was sent an email on the Class 10 mathematics paper being leaked.

The police also questioned 10 more people and interacted with the CBSE controller of examinations over the leak.

HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar, in a series of tweets, said, In the larger interest of academics & students the sensitive govt has taken a decision not to have nationwide retest in Maths for class 10th.

The test will be held in Delhi, Haryana after final inputs from police and that too if needed it will be held in July. In the interest of students of 12th class, so that they will not be hampered in their future career, their economic retest will happen on 25th April. So now no confusion .All the best, he said.

Education Secretary Anil Swarup, while answering a barrage of questions from reporters on the leaks issue, said a preliminary enquiry has revealed that the leak of the Class 10 mathematics paper was restricted only to Delhi and Haryana.

He asserted that there has been no leak outside India, and therefore no re-examination will be held abroad.

The question papers are different for students appearing for the CBSE examinations outside India.

Swarup said the class 12 examinations are very important in the context of the future of the student and the date for the economics re-examination has been fixed for April 25.

As far as Class 10 examination is concerned, the preliminary enquiry (shows) that the leak was restricted to Delhi and Haryana and further details are being found out. Hence, a decision has been taken that if at all a re-examination has to happen, it will happen only in Delhi-NCR and Haryana.

A decision to this effect, will be taken in next 15 days when more details become available and if at all this examination (Class 10 mathematics) has to be held consequently to the detailed inquiry, it shall be held in month of July, so their schedules are not upset, he said. PTI
vinaymishra188@gmail.com

New Delhi: In an apparent effort to ward off criticism of opaqueness, the Supreme Court collegium has broken tradition by interacting with 12 lawyers and trial court judges recommended for appointment as permanent judges in the Calcutta and Madhya Pradesh High Courts. The SC collegium, comprising CJI Dipak Misra and seniormost judges J Chelameswar and Ranjan Gogoi, created history of sorts by conducting an informal interview of the persons shortlisted by the respective High Court collegiums.

The collegium also recommended Justice Ramendra Jain, additional judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, to be appointed as a permanent judge in the same court.  PTI
vinaymishra188@gmail.com

Satya Prakash

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, March 29

Accusing the government of interfering in judicial appointments, Justice J Chelameswar, the seniormost judge of the Supreme Court, has demanded a Full Court on the judicial side to deal with it.

This matter is now ripe for the consideration of the Full Court on the judicial side, if this institution really is to be any more relevant in the scheme of the Constitution, Justice Chelameswar wrote in his letter dated March 21 addressed to Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra.

Justice Chelameswar, who is to retire on June 22, cited the inquiry initiated by Karnataka High Court Chief Justice Dinesh Maheswari against Belagavi District and Sessions Judge at the behest of the government after his name was cleared for elevation to the High Court.

Someone from Bangalore has already beaten us in the race to the bottom. The Chief Justice has been more than willing to do the executive bidding, behind our back, he wrote.

The inquiry against Judge Bhatt has reportedly been dropped after Justice Chelameswars letter.

If the government had any reservations or misgivings about (Bhatts) nomination, it could have sent back the recommendation for our reconsideration  a well-established though long-forgotten practice. Instead, it sat tight on the file. In other words, our recommendation still retained its validity and legitimacy, Justice Chelameswar wrote.

For some time, our unhappy experience has been that the governments accepting our recommendations is an exception and sitting on them is the norm. Inconvenient but able judges or judges to be are being bypassed through this route, wrote the judge  who had on January 12 rebelled against the CJI along with three other members of the collegium and held a press conference complaining against the style of functioning of Justice Misra.

Let us also not forget that the bonhomie between the judiciary and the government in any state sounds the death knell to democracy. We both are mutual watchdogs, so to say, not mutual admirers, much less constitutional cohorts, Justice Chelameswar wrote.
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New Delhi, March 30

Prisoners cannot be kept in jail like animals, a shocked Supreme Court said after it was informed that many of the over 1,300 prisons across the country were overcrowded, even to the extent of more than 600 per cent.

Whats the point in talking about prison reforms when we cannot keep them in jail. We should release them, if you cannot keep them properly, the top court said, lambasting state governments and union territories (UTs) for complete lack of commitment to fix this extremely unfortunate situation.

A Bench of Justices MB Lokur and Deepak Gupta also warned the Directors General of Police (Prisons) of all states and UTs of contempt notice for non-compliance of its earlier orders with regard to submitting a plan of action to deal with issue of overcrowding prisons.

It is unfortunate that the prisons are overcrowded. Prisoners also have human rights and they cannot be kept in jails like animals, it said.

The court said it was informed by amicus curiae that there were a large number of jails where overcrowding is well above 150 per cent and in one case it is as high as 609 per cent.

This is extremely unfortunate and clearly suggests the complete lack of commitment of the state governments and the union territories to the human rights of prisoners and also indicates the failure of the Under Trial Review Committees to take their responsibilities seriously, it said.

While some jail inmates have got bail but cannot be released as they cannot furnish sureties, some others were imprisoned for petty offences under which they should have got bail long ago, the apex court said.

Voicing concern over the extremely dismal performance of the Under Trial Review Committees (UTRCs), the Bench said this was quite apparent from the fact that unrestricted overcrowding in jails continues and in some instances, it has escalated.

The committee, set up in every district, deliberates and recommends the release of undertrial prisoners and convicts who have undergone their sentences or are entitled to be released from jail on bail or remission granted to them.

It directed the states and UTs to give their comments in two weeks on Standard Operating Procedures for the UTRCs, prepared in consultation with National Legal Service Authority (NALSA), so that they can work effectively and efficiently.

If the comments of states and UTAs are not received in two weeks, then it will be assumed that they have nothing to offer and SOPs will be finalised and circulated for compliance.

The apex court had, through orders of May 6, 2016, and October 3, 2016, directed preparation of a plan of action by states and UTs to deal with the issue of overcrowding in prisons and the proposal was directed to be submitted by March 31, 2017, but not even one of them gave it.

We give a direction to all the state governments and UTs to comply with our orders dated May 6, 2016 and October 3, 2016 within a period of two weeks, failing which we may have to issue notice of contempt against the Director General of Police (Prisons) of the State Governments/UTs, which unfortunate step we would like to avoid. But if the information is not provided within two weeks we will be compelled to issue such notices, it said.

The apex court after perusing the status report of NALSA also voiced its concern over vacancies in the prison staff and directed the DGPs (Prisons) to specify clearly and unequivocally the steps taken to fill up the vacancies and progress made in two weeks.

The combined sanctioned strength of prisons staff in all the prisons in the country is 77,230, out of which there are 24,588 vacancies as on December 31, 2017. Therefore, it is quite clear that there is slightly more than 30 per cent vacancies in the prisons staff, it said.

With regard to open jails, the apex court was informed that the draft Administration of Open Jails Act and Rules will be finalised by April 30, 2018.

Semi-open prisons or open prisons allow convicts to work outside the jail premises and earn a livelihood and return in the evening. The concept was brought in to assimilate the convicts with the society and reduce their psychological pressure as they faced lack of confidence in leading normal lives outside.

The Bench posted the matter for further hearing on May 8.

The apex court had on February 21 asked the NALSA to look into the issue of overcrowding of prisons and furnish figures before it regarding the population in the jails where occupancy was over 150 per cent as on December 31, last year.

The top court is hearing a matter relating to inhuman conditions prevailing in 1,382 prisons across the country.  PTI
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Mumbai, March 30

Bollywood diva Sridevi was accorded a state funeral on the directions from Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnaviss office, as per the reply to a query under the Right to Information Act.

Anil Galgali, a city-based RTI activist, had sought to know from the states General Administration Department (GAD) the details of the state funeral accorded to Sridevi, and who is authorised to permit this honour.

The GAD said the power to grant state funeral for a person lies with the chief minister.

Regarding Sridevis funeral, a verbal order was received from the Chief Ministers Office on February 25, and it was conveyed to the Mumbai suburban collector and Mumbai police commissioner by a government order on February 26, said the GADs reply.

In the last six years, 41 persons were granted state funeral in the state, it said.

They included former chief ministers Vilasrao Deshmukh and AR Antulay, Shiv Sena founder Bal Thackeray, Vipassana Guru Satyanarayan Goenka and Dawoodi Bohra communitys spiritual head Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin.

Brijesh Singh, Director General of DGIPR, the state governments publicity wing, said there are rules as to who should get a state funeral, and the chief minister can use his discretion in the matter.

Some persons get state funeral upon death by virtue of the post or the political/administrative office they have held.

The rules also give a discretion to the CM regarding granting the honour of state funerals to certain dignitaries not in this list. Padma awardees are concerned to be dignitaries who may be accorded state funeral at the discretion of the CM, Singh told PTI.

Sridevi was a Padma Shri recipient.

The actor died in her room at a Dubai hotel due to accidental drowning on February 24, and was given a state funeral in suburban Vile Parle here on February 28.

Maharashtra Navnirman Sena leader Raj Thackeray, at a rally earlier this month, had questioned the decision to give Sridevi a state funeral.

She was a great actor, but what she had done for the country so that her body was wrapped in the Tricolour, Thackeray asked, while criticising the BJP-led governments in the state and the Centre on many issues.  PTI
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New Delhi, March 29

India and Japan on Thursday held the ninth round of Foreign Ministers Strategic Dialogue in Tokyo.

Co-Chaired by Sushma Swaraj and Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono, the talks focused on increasing cooperation on bilateral and multilateral forums. Our special strategic and global partnership has acquired a broader significance in the current global context. Our growing convergence on economic and strategic issues is important for peace, stability and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region, Sushma Swaraj said.

Kono called India the most important partner for Japan in its free and open Indo-Pacific strategy.

The respective envoys signed and exchanged notes concerning the provisions for four Yen-loan projects.

The Japanese Overseas Development Assistance for the projects includes loans to build Mumbai Metro Line 3, develop a seawater desalination plant in Chennai, plant trees in Himachal Pradesh to maintain its ecosystem and install intelligent transport systems in Chennai. 
rchopra@tribunemail.com

Tokyo, March 30

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Friday met Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the two leaders discussed ways to strengthen the bilateral ties.

Swaraj, who was here on a three-day visit, also conveyed the greetings of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Abe.

EAM @SushmaSwaraj called on Japanese Prime Minister @AbeShinzo today morning in Tokyo. EAM conveyed the greetings of PM @narendramodi to PM Abe, Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said in a tweet.

During the meeting, Abe told Swaraj that the traditional friendship between India and Japan was characterised by heart-to-heart bonds and blessed with a huge potential for growth.

PM Abe said that India-Japan traditional friendship is characterised by heart-to-heart bonds and blessed with a huge potential for growth, Kumar tweeted.

Swaraj, who was on her first visit to Japan in the capacity of the External Affairs Minister, had reached Tokyo on Wednesday to attend the ninth India-Japan Strategic Dialogue.

She met her counterpart Taro Kano on Thursday and the two leaders reviewed the entire gamut of bilateral ties.

Describing the meeting as very productive, Swaraj said her trip had laid a sound foundation for Modis visit to Japan for the next bilateral Annual Summit later this year.

Hours after meeting Abe, Swaraj departed from Tokyo, concluding her first official trip to Japan.

Sayonara! EAM @SushmaSwaraj departs from Tokyo after her first official visit to Japan for the 9th #IndiaJapan Strategic Dialogue, Indian Embassy in Tokyo tweeted.

Earlier on Thursday, Swaraj met Chairman of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party Policy Research Council and former Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida.

Swaraj also addressed a gathering of Indian diaspora at the Vivekanand Cultural Centre in Tokyo.

According to official figures, Japanese FDI in India during 2016-17 was USD 4.7 billion, an increase of 80 per cent over the last year. PTI
uttara@tribuneindia.com

Chennai, March 29

Tamil Nadu government is likely to file a contempt petition in the Supreme Court over the Cauvery waters dispute, the state's chief minister has hinted, as the central government continues to drag its feet over setting up a Cauvery Water Management Board, leaving the southern state seething.

"The Centre has failed to implement the Supreme Court order on the constitution of the CMB. We want the Centre to implement it. And we will take legal steps in this regard," Palaniswamy said on Friday, adding that his government was friendly with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government at the Centre only as much as development projects were concerned.

His party, the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazagham, announced a state-wide hunger strike against the central government's indecision.

Reports said that the state government was likely to approach court on Saturday.

Rival Dravida Munnetra Kazagham has demanded cabinet meeting to pass a resolution condemning the central government and Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the Cauvery issue.

DMK leader M.K. Stalin also said after a meeting of the party's executive council that the state government should file a contempt of court petition in the Supreme Court against the Modi government for not setting up the CMB.

Political parties in Tamil Nadu are planning protests including hoisting black flags in condemnation. Karnataka and Tamil Nadu are currently locked in a decades-old dispute over sharing of Cauvery Waters.

In its order on February 16, the Supreme Court ordered the central government to set up the Cauvery Water Management Board. The court's six-week deadline to have the board set up passed on Thursday without any action on the central government's part.

Karnataka, which is scheduled to hold assembly elections on May 12, opposes the board. The AIADMK state government has increasingly come under fire for not pressing for the board. Agencies
uttara@tribuneindia.com

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, March 30

Minister of State (MoS) for External Affairs (MEA) VK Singh will visit Iraq on April 1 to bring back bodies of the 39 Indians killed in Mosul, sources in the ministry said on Friday.

Singh will fly the bodies back in a special aircraft of the Indian Air Forcefirst to Amritsar on April 2, and later to Patna and Kolkata.

On March 20, External Affairs Minister (EAM) Sushma Swaraj informed the Rajya Sabha members in the Parliament that 39 Indians who went missing in Mosul in 2014 were killed by the Islamic State (IS) militants.

The Indiansmost of who were from Punjabwere working on projects near Mosul when they were kidnapped. With ANI
editorial@tribune.com

Tribune News Service

Muktsar, March 30

Panic gripped residents of some villages located along the twin Sirhind and Rajasthan feeder canals after a major breach in the Sirhind feeder canal on Friday evening near Samagh village in Gidderbaha subdivision.

Though the exact cause of the nearly 400-ft breach is unknown, some locals blamed it on weak embankments and huge wild growth in the canals.

After the breach, the water from the Sirhind feeder had started flowing into the parallel Rajasthan feeder canal.

The breach developed around 5.30 pm but the water level has not fallen even two hours later. Villagers are in panic. Some bridges made on these twin canals are also in danger, said local residents.

A team led by the Gidderbaha Sub-Divisional Magistrate (SDM) and Executive Engineer (Irrigation Department) visited the site to take stock of the situation.

SDM Narinder Singh Dhaliwal said, We are trying our best to plug the breach. Tractor-trailer operators have been requested to throw sand to plug it.

Unaware of the reason of the breach, officials of the Irrigation Department said the canal was carrying water at normal capacity on Friday.

Notably, the relining work of these two canals has been pending for a long time. Even a team of the Planning Commission had suggested the relining at the earliest due to waterlogging in the area.
editorial@tribune.com

GS Paul

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, March 30

The SGPC on Friday passed Rs 1,159.67-crore budget for 2018-19, with an aim to promote Sikhism and education, besides helping the deprived section of the community.

SGPC president Gobind Singh Longowal increased the discretionary fund of members from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 3 lakh each.

The budget was presented by SGPC general secretary Gurbachan Singh Karmuwal and was unanimously accepted by 110 of the 175 members.

The Sikh premier body has kept aside Rs 688 crore for gurdwaras to preach the religion and conduct gurmat programmes. The Dharam Parchar committee has been given Rs 56 crore separately.

The SGPC runs 53 schools and 37 colleges for which Rs 36.50 crore has been reserved. For education and infrastructure, Rs 228 crore has been allocated. Sikh education made compulsory in its primary-level schools. Around Rs 78 lakh have been kept for organising gurmat and Khalsai games for them.

Other provisions are:Rs 1 lakh each for Sikh students, who excel in sports, agriculture, science etc; Rs 1.5 crore for deserving postgraduate and PhD students of religious studies; Rs 1 lakh for Sikhs who qualify for IAS/IPS and Rs 75 lakh for PCS; Rs 51,000 each for students who grab first 20 positions in board exams; and Rs 1.89 crore for underprivileged students.

On GST, Longowal said: We have paid around Rs 4 crore GSTso far.

Resolutions passed

The SGPC passed resolutions to seek help from the Union Government for getting back rare manuscripts and documents that were taken by the Army during Operation Bluestar, punishing those responsible for 1984 anti-Sikh riots, promoting Punjabi language, opening Gurdwara Kartarpur corridor, abolition of the GST on all gurdwara purchases, SGPC representation in the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), implementation of Anand Marriage Act, 2016, decongestion of passages leading to the Golden Temple and the release of Sikh political prisoners.

In figures

Rs 688 crore for gurdwaras to preach Sikhism and conduct programmes

Rs 228 crore for raising the standard of education and infrastructure

Rs 9.5 crore to help cancer patients

Rs 61 lakh for victims of natural disasters

Rs 80 lakh to bring Siklighar Sikh community to the mainstream

Rs 6 crore for Miri Piri Medical Sciences and Research College, Shahbad, Haryana
rchopra@tribunemail.com

Amritsar, March 30

The security forces on Thursday nabbed a spy, working for Pakistans intelligence agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

The State Special Operations Cell (SSOC) in a joint operation with Military Intelligence arrested the spy.

The spy identified as Ravi Kumar was arrested from Amritsar.

The police also recovered photographs of Army vehicles, handmade maps of restricted areas and copies of restricted training manuals of Army from his procession.

He was recruited by the ISI seven months ago through Facebook to provide all vital inputs on Army.

The spy used to receive money routed via Dubai through money transfers. He has been booked under the Official Secrets Act and other relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). ANI
rajivbhatia82@gmail.com

Washington, March 30

NASA is all set to send the first-ever mission dedicated to exploring the deep interior of Mars, the US space agency said on Friday.

Scheduled to launch on May 5, InSight - a stationary lander - will also be the first NASA mission since the Apollo moon landings to place a seismometer, a device that measures quakes, on the soil of another planet.

"In some ways, InSight is like a scientific time machine that will bring back information about the earliest stages of Mars' formation 4.5 billion years ago," said Bruce Banerdt, principal investigator for InSight.

"It will help us learn how rocky bodies form, including Earth, its moon, and even planets in other solar systems," said Banerdt.

InSight or the Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport mission, carries a suite of sensitive instruments to gather data.

Unlike a rover mission, these instruments require a stationary lander from which they can carefully be placed on and below the martian surface, NASA said.

Mars is the exoplanet next door - a nearby example of how gas, dust and heat combine and arrange themselves into a planet.

Looking deep into Mars will let scientists understand how different its crust, mantle and core are from Earth, the US space agency said.

NASA is not the only agency excited about the mission. Several European partners contributed instruments or instrument components to the InSight mission.

France's Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales led a multinational team that built an ultra-sensitive seismometer for detecting marsquakes.

The German Aerospace Center (DLR) developed a thermal probe that can bury itself up to five metres underground and measure heat flowing from inside the planet.

"InSight is a truly international space mission," said Tom Hoffman, project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

"Our partners have delivered incredibly capable instruments that will make it possible to gather unique science after we land," Hoffman said.

InSight currently is at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California undergoing final preparation before launch, NASA said.

This week, it completed what is known as a spin test: the entire spacecraft is rotated at high speeds to confirm its centre of gravity.

That is critical for its entry, descent and landing on Mars in November, Hoffman said.  PTI.
vermaajay1968@gmail.com

IT being impossible in India for a handful of farsighted statesmen to frame and promulgate an imperial edict, removing the disabilities of the untouchables, His Highness rightly says that we must rather appeal to the slow processes of education and public enlightenment. This is also the method on which we shall have to rely when self-government is conceded to India. Self-governing India, with all its freedom and power of initiative, will still differ from Imperial Japan. Autocracy has always this advantage over a democracy that it can do by a stroke of the pen what the latter can effect only through the slow working of education and enlightenment. But the advantage is illusory. Democracy, if somewhat slower than the wise and benevolent autocrat, is always steadier. Social reform can never be either so healthy or so stable as when it is based on the one hand upon the conviction of the privileged is wrong and injurious and on the other on the strong demand on the part of the so-called lower orders themselves for equality.
editorial@tribune.com

Ravi Sinha

Singles living in or looking for rented properties across the country feel that they are discriminated against in the rental market. For this bias most of the lifestyle-driven singles blame society in general and the housing market in particularfor bring regressive.

Being single is a lifestyle statement. It is not a crime by any stretch of imagination. But then my liberal thought was constantly challenged when I left Kolkata and came to Gurugram for my job. It suddenly seemed to me that my choice of living a single life was a crime that debarred me to get an apartment on rent, says Ramneit Mukherjee, a copywriter.

Ramneit is not the only one having this perception. Singles across the major cities of India, find it challenging to explain to the landlords why have they preferred to be single. Many suspect them of leading an indecent life and hence they are not considered to be good tenants.

No less than 82 per cent single professionals have found it challenging in one way or the other to get a house on rent, as Track2Realty survey finds. This is not the reality of small towns only, even in the top 10 cities of India known to have metropolitan culture and lifestyle; singles are finding it hard to get an apartment on rent.

Many of the housing societies, in North India have the worst track record as these have a special by-law forbidding owners from renting out to singles. In one such society when this bylaw was challenged, the society maintained that the policy was meant to stop apartments from being converted into hostels.

We have framed this by-law for restricting the apartment owners from running PGs and hostels. These students often create ruckus for other apartment owners. Moreover, even the payment of apartment owners is at risk because these students with limited possessions can leave the society anytime without even paying the rent, says the RWA President of a housing society in Noida.

The situation is even worse for single women. They are more often than not turned away and many landlords even bluntly ask them why they need to take an independent apartment on rent instead of staying in a working womens hostel?

I had to struggle a lot and finally I gave in and am now staying with a family friend as a paying guest. The problem with me was magnified as I was not only a single woman but also a journalist. All these tags are a big No No for landlords. But I am still looking for an independent apartment so that I can have the privacy to write my novel and lead life my own way, says Priya Varshney who lives in Gurugram. Legal opinion on the subject is quite clear but is hardly being followed because the denial to singles is never on the record. Madhurendra Sharma, a consumer rights advocate clearly says that the law of the land does not allow any landlord to discriminate on the basis of his/her being single. But then there is a grey zone that makes them stigmatise the singles while renting out the property.

The problem is that no law can force a landlord to rent out the property to singles, unless one has in writing denied the tenant on the said basis. A landlord always has the first right of refusal; and one can exercise it without clearly mentioning that the single status of the tenant was the reason of refusal. A single can not challenge and prove it in the court of law. The mindset of society is at fault here, says Sharma.

The Indian cities, in spite of their cosmopolitan outlook are still not inclusive and the idea of a sinlge person living on rent next door is not a very happy one. Frivolous excuses to stringent regulations, and no BF/GF to restricting the entry of only one BF/GF registered with the society, the life of a single tenant only indicates that the Indian cities are yet to grow up.

 The writer is CEO, Track2Realty
sanjiv@tribunemail.com

Tribune News Service

Dehradun, March 30

Former Chief Minister Harish Rawat has expressed opposition to the proposed handing over of Srinagar Medical College in Pauri Garhwal district to the Indian Army. Addressing a press conference, Rawat said there was no point in giving the medical college to the Army that had come up solely with their efforts.

How can we give our medical college to the Army? If the Army wants a medical college in Uttarakhand, it should come up with it at its own expenses at an appropriate place, Rawat said.

He also termed the recent lathicharge on students in the state as undemocratic. The students have been agitating for jobs. He said despite tall promises, the state and the Central governments had failed to provide jobs to the youths. He said no new recruitment was taking place in the state government departments and even posts that were lying vacant were not being filled.

Referring to the recent Budget session at Gairsain, Rawat said the state government had forgotten Gairsain. Saying that Gairsain had been ignored in the Budget, Rawat reminded his governments initiative to allocate Rs 57 crore for the construction of a secretariat at Gairsain.
rajivbhatia82@gmail.com

Bangkok [Thailand], March 30

At least 21 people were charred to death on Friday after a chartered bus carrying workers from Myanmar crashed and burned on a highway in western Thailand, near the capital Bangkok.

According to the police officials, there were 48 Myanmar workers in the bus, including the driver and his wife.

As per Bangkok Post, the accident occurred at Kilometre 60 on Highway 12, at the Taksin Maharat National Park in Tambon Mae Thor in Tak province.

The remaining 27 passengers were injured in the accident and taken to the hospital. However, their condition is yet to be ascertained.

According to reports, the bus was coming from Mae Sot province to Nava Nakorn Industrial Zone in Pathum Thani, after the workers had successfully completed the registration of their work permits by the Thai labour ministry.

Initial reports had said that the engine of the bus had caught fire, which spread quickly through the vehicle.

Last week, 18 people were killed and 28 others injured when a tourist bus skidded suddenly and crashed into a tree in Nakhon Ratchasima province in north-eastern Thailand.  ANI.
sanjiv@tribunemail.com

Moscow, March 30

Russia expelled 59 diplomats from 23 countries on Friday and said it reserved the right to take action against four other nations in a worsening standoff with the West over the poisoning of a former Russian spy and his daughter in Britain.

Russia said it was responding to what it called the baseless demands for scores of its own diplomats to leave a slew of mostly Western countries that have joined London and Washington in censuring Moscow over the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.

During the course of Friday, the Russian Foreign Ministry summoned senior embassy officials from Australia, Albania, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, the Netherlands, Croatia, Ukraine, Denmark, Ireland, Spain, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Romania, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Canada and the Czech Republic.

All were seen arriving in their official cars at the Foreign Ministry's gothic building in Moscow.

They (the diplomats) were handed protest notes and told that in response to the unwarranted demands of the relevant states on expelling Russian diplomats... that the Russian side declares the corresponding number of staff working in those countries embassies in the Russian Federation persona non grata, the ministry said.

Four other countries -- Belgium, Hungary, Georgia and Montenegro -- had only "at the last moment" announced that they too were expelling Russian diplomats over the Skripal affair, and Moscow reserved the right to take retaliatory action against them too, it said.

A day earlier, Moscow ordered the expulsion of 60 US diplomats and the closing of the US consulate in St Petersburg, Russias second city, in retaliation for the biggest ejection of diplomats since the Cold War.

Preparations appeared to be under way on Friday to close the St Petersburg mission down, with a removals truck making repeated journeys to and from the consulate which took delivery of a large pizza order for its staff.

Russia has already retaliated in kind against Britain for ejecting 23 diplomats over the first known use of a military-grade nerve agent on European soil since World War II.

British ambassador Laurie Bristow was summoned again on Friday. The Russian Foreign Ministry said Bristow had been told London had just one month to cut its diplomatic contingent in Russia to the same size as the Russian mission in Britain. A spokeswoman for the British Foreign Office did not say how many British diplomats would be affected, but said Russias response was regrettable and Moscow was in flagrant breach of international law.  Reuters
pardeepdhull@gmail.com

United Nations, March 30

UN chief has said that he is really very concerned to the world heading to a time reminiscent of the Cold war era in the wake of the tensions between US and Russia and called for putting precautions in place to guarantee effective communication and prevent escalation.

His comments came after the Trump administration this week ordered the expulsion of 60 Russians from the US over the alleged poisoning of ex-double agent Sergei Skripal in the UK on March 4.

Of the 60 expelled, 12 are intelligence operatives from the Russian Mission to the UN who have been accused of abusing their privilege of residence in the United States.

I am really very concerned. I think we are coming to a situation that is similar, to a large extent, to what we lived during the Cold War but with two very important differences, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in response to questions by reporters on the US announcement to expel Russian UN diplomats and could a new Cold War be developing.

Guterres said in the Cold War, there were clearly two superpowers with a complete control of the situation of two areas in the world.

Now, we have many other actors that are relatively independent and with an important role in many of the conflicts that we are witnessing, with risks of escalation that are well known, he said.

He pointed out that during the Cold War, there were mechanisms of communication and control in place to avoid the escalation of incidents and to make sure that things would not get out of control when tensions would rise.

But with those mechanisms now dismantlement, it is time for precautions of this sort, guaranteeing effective communication, guaranteeing capacity to prevent escalation. I do believe that mechanisms of this sort are necessary again.

On how optimistic is he over the summit between South Korea and North Korea, the Secretary-General said he is very encouraged by the announcement of the inter-Korean summit.

He said he is very happy that it was possible in the visit to North Korea by Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs Jeffrey Feltman for the UN to make very clearly the case that a resumption of dialogues between the North and the South of the Peninsula was needed to reach the peaceful denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula.

The UN chief had met in Pyeongchang both the North Korean delegation and as well as South Korean President Moon Jae-In and had encouraged them as much as possible to move in these two directions.

I was extremely encouraged by the recent visit of the leader of the North Korea to China, and I think China is, of course, a very important contributor to a solution in this region, he said referring to the surprise visit by Kim Jong-un to Beijing this week.

I believe that, in this world where, unfortunately, so many problems seem not to have a solution, I think there is here an opportunity for a peaceful solution to something that, a few months ago, was haunting us as the biggest danger we were facing, he said, a reference to the escalation of tensions over North Koreas nuclear programme. PTI
pardeepdhull@gmail.com

Rome, March 30

Russia on Friday gave two Italian diplomats a week to leave the country, Italys Foreign Ministry said in a statement, amid an increasingly bitter standoff over a nerve attack against a former Russian spy living in England.

On Monday, Italy expelled two Russian diplomats in an expression of solidarity with NATO and European Union ally Britain.

Earlier on Friday, the Russian Foreign Ministry summoned a slew of senior Western diplomats to set out the retaliatory measures it was taking with the West after numerous countries had expelled Russian diplomats. Reuters
gspannu7@gmail.com

Mingora, March 30

A Pakistani womens activist says Malala Yousafzai, who is back in Pakistan for the first time since the Taliban shot her in 2012, is hoping to visit her Swat Valley hometown but that the trip depends on security clearances from the government.

Security was visibly beefed up today in Mingora, Yousafzais hometown, but authorities wouldnt confirm whether the Nobel Peace Prize laureate would be arriving there.

Activist Adnan Tabassum, also from Swat, says she met with Yousafzai yesterday in Islamabad and that Malala told her she wants to travel to Swat to see her former schools friends and relatives.

According to Tabassum, 20-year-old Malala has asked authorities to allow her to go to Shangla village in Swat, where a school has been built by the Malala Fund.  AP
gspannu7@gmail.com

Orlando, March 30

An Orlando jury on Friday cleared the widow of the Pulse nightclub gunman of all charges in the massacre that killed 49 people, finding her not guilty of federal counts that she tried to mislead investigators and aided her husband in the attack.

Noor Salman, 31, could have faced up to life in prison had she been convicted of federal charges of obstruction of justice and aiding Mateen in providing support to the Islamic State militant group.

Instead the jury in US District Court acquitted Salman after roughly 12 hours of deliberation since Wednesday.

Mateen died in an exchange of gunfire with police at Pulse, a gay nightspot. At the time, Salman was home with the couples then 3-year-old son.

We knew from day one she was innocent, Salmans aunt Susan Adieh told reporters just after the verdict.

The acquittal is likely to be an emotional blow for the survivors and families of those killed at Pulse.

At the time of the massacre on June 12, 2016, it was the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history. It has since been surpassed by the Las Vegas attack in which a shooter opened fire on an outdoor concert from his hotel room last year, killing 58.

Salman broke down in tears after the verdict and hugged her defense lawyers when US District Judge Paul Byron announced the not-guilty verdict, CNN reported.

Lead defense attorney Charles Swift bolted with joy and Salmans relatives were heard crying, according to reporters inside the courtroom.

Defense attorney Linda Moreno was seen leaving court with her hand on her heart. Salmans immediate whereabouts were unknown.

I dont know how were going to make up for the last two years, Salmans uncle Al Salman told reporters.

I told you, and I can tell you now, that shes innocent. Mateen, 29, opened fire shortly after 2 am during the clubs popular Latin night. He shot patrons on the dance floor and sprayed bullets at others cowering in bathroom stalls.

Holding hostages during his standoff with police, Mateen claimed allegiance to a leader of the Islamic State militant group. He was killed in an exchange of gunfire with authorities.

Prosecutors said Salman cased possible attack sites with her husband and did nothing to stop his plans. They claimed she initially told investigators her husband acted without her knowledge but later said she knew he was watching Islamic State recruitment videos, had purchased an assault rifle, and examined three possible attack locations.

Defense attorneys said Salman was a simple woman who loved children and did not know of her husbands intentions.

Moreno told jurors the FBI did not record its interrogation and coerced Salman into making statements that favored the prosecution.

The defense said prosecutors could not show any direct links between Mateen and Islamic State and provided no evidence that Salman aided her husband.  Reuters
Member States support essential for an effective UN: Feltman

United Nations, Mar 30 (UNI) After nearly six years as the United Nations political chief, Jeffrey Feltman has spoken to the press for the last time as the Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, spotlighting the importance of multilateralism and the support of UN Member countries for the Organisations vital work.

The list of complex challenges that Member States face today is enormous, said Mr Feltman, noting that these challenges are addressed much more effectively through a multilateral system.

The support of the world bodys 193 Member States is essential, for the multilateral system, for the institution and for the Organisation itself.
Published: March 30, 2018

UT to Host Panel Discussion on Free Speech and Academic Freedom April 6

On Friday, April 6, The University of Tampa will host a panel discussion on free speech and academic freedom. The presentation begins at 2 p.m. in the Sykes Chapel and Center for Faith and Values, and is free and open to all UT students, faculty and staff, and the public.



Panelists include Amy M. Hass, general counsel for the University of Florida, and Howard Simon, executive director of ACLU of Florida, who will speak on controversial speakers on campus; M. Elizabeth Thorpe, assistant professor at The College at Brockport, who will discuss extramural speech; and Donald Downs, professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who will touch on freedom in the classroom.



The event is organized by the UT Workgroup on Free Speech and Academic Freedom, and is sponsored by the Office of the Provost and Faculty Senate. The presentation is part of a series of forums and events meant to cover the principles of free speech and academic freedom for the benefit of the entire University community.



For more information, contact Marcus Arvan, UT assistant professor of philosophy and chair of the UT Workgroup on Free Speech and Academic Freedom, at marvan@ut.edu.
(March 30, 2018)  The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) President Taylor Eighmy today announced new reporting lines for the units responsible for the universitys community engagement efforts.

As of today, the following units have moved under new areas:

The Institute of Economic Development will report to Interim Vice President for Research, Economic Development and Knowledge Enterprise Bernard Arulanandam .





will report to Interim Vice President for Research, Economic Development and Knowledge Enterprise . The Institute of Texan Cultures and Office of Extended Education will report to Interim Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Mauli Agrawal .





and will report to Interim Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs . The Institute for P-20 Initiatives will report to Interim Vice President for Strategic Enrollment Lisa Blazer .





will report to Interim Vice President for Strategic Enrollment . The Downtown Campus Special Events office will report to Vice President for Student Affairs Sam Gonzales .





office will report to Vice President for Student Affairs . The Center for Civic Engagement will report to Interim Vice Provost and Dean of University College Heather Shipley .





will report to Interim Vice Provost and Dean of University College . The Mexico Center will report to Dean of the College of Liberal and Fine Arts Dan Gelo.

UTSA must be fully woven into the very fabric of our city, applying the talents of our people and our research prowess to help solve San Antonios grand challenges, said Eighmy in an email sent to faculty and staff this morning.

I believe that the best way to achieve this synergy is by integrating our community services functions within our academic, student development and research enterprises, he continued. Realigning our community engagement efforts into our core as a student-centric university will realize benefits on all fronts  fueling transformational student experiences as well as enhanced opportunities for all our community partners.

The reorganization does not involve any staffing changes, only new reporting lines to the vice presidential and decanal levels. Employees within the affected units were apprised of these changes last evening, and their respective vice presidents and deans will be working with them on integration plans in the weeks to come.

The reorganization follows the announcement made earlier this month that Vice President for Community Services Jude Valdez will retire this summer after nearly 40 years of service to UTSA. As a cost saving measure, UTSA will not refill the position of Vice President for Community Services.
Catholics of St. Anthony's Chruch in Lahore, Pakistan, began Holy Week with Palm Sunday on March 25. (AFP or licensors)

Suneel Saleem was allegedly killed by doctors and security guards of a government hospital in the city of Lahore.

The spirit of Holy Week, the most solemn period in the Christian calendar that culiminates into Easter, was dampened in Pakistan after a 34-year-old Pakistani Catholic man was allegedly beaten to death by doctors and security guards in a government hospital in Lahore.

Suneel Saleem, the father of four succumbed to his injuries on March 26 following the brutal beating he sustained during a quarrel after he objected to a female doctor slapping his heavily pregnant sister.

The sanitary worker later died in Services Hospital where the incident occurred, UCANEWS reported.

Assault on family members

"About 20 security guards and 14 doctors punched and attacked my brothers and cousins with batons, chairs and belts," said Aneel Saleem, a brother of the deceased who was also attacked. He said Suneels ribs and legs were fractured. He fainted and later died in the same hospital," Aneel said.

A complaint registered with the police on March 27, said the nine month pregnant sister was slapped by a female doctor. Local police have registered a murder case against five doctors and several security guards of the hospital.

Funeral

Father Qaiser Feroz, executive secretary of the Pakistani bishops' social communications commission, conducted Suneel's funeral also on March 27.

"This is a first of its kind tragedy. People visit hospitals for treatment and doctors are supposed to save lives," sad Father Feroz.

Hospital complains against family

The administrators of Services Hospital have also filed an application with the police against the Catholic family for creating a 'lawless' situation. Local media Dawn reported that a medical superintendent said: "The fighting began when hospital guards forced relatives of a patient to stop making a video of the ward with a mobile phone."

Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif has offered his sympathy to Suneel's family and ordered an inquiry into the incident.

Protest

Suneels family joined about 300 angry protestors who blocked roads in front of Lahore press club on March 28 for 2 hours to demand action against hospital staff. "We want justice," cried Suneel's mother at the event.

Solidarity with family

Christian True Spirit, an NGO that aids victims of persecution, said they will offer free legal aid and financial support to the victims family for six months. The youngest of Suneel's children is his 4-month-old daughter.

The Center for Legal Aid, Assistance and Settlement (CLAAS), an interdenominational organization working for discriminted and persecuted Christians in the country, has condemned the murder. "The brutality against Sunil is not justifiable in any way. Too many continue to abuse the law, to take justice in their own hands and to kill innocent people with impunity,  CLAAS director, Nasir Saeed told the Vaticans Fides news agency.

When a dispute involves a Christian, Muslims feel entitled to carry out intolerable violence, knowing that they will not be punished. This is not justice, he said. Saeed lamented the failure of the Pakistani government in protecting the countries minorites. He said that intolerance against religious minorities in Pakistan has reached a dangerous level and there is an urgent need to stop these atrocities".

The Lahore incident took place just a month after an initiative organized in Rome, Syria and Iraq attempted to draw attention to the suffering Christians around the world.

On February 24, Romes most famous landmark, the Colosseum, as well as two churches in Aleppo and Mosul were lit up in red, symbolizing the blood of martyrs.

The initiative was organized by Aid to the Church in Need, the Pontifical Foundation that provides pastoral and humanitarian assistance to persecuted Christians in over 140 countries around the world.

Among two families invited to the Rome event, was the husband and youngest daughter of Asia Bibi, the Pakistani Christian woman, who has received a death sentence in 2010 for alleged blasphemy.

Ahead of the Reome event, Pope Francis met the two families and prayed for victims of religious persecution across the world.
Vertex Ventures

According to Carmen Yuen, partner at Vertex Ventures, Grab will not become the only player in Vietnams booming market for ride-hailing services, even after it merged with Uber, its major competitor in Southeast Asia.

The investor told VIR that a newcomer will soon break into the scene and challenge Grabs dominant position in the region, including Vietnam.

I am sure some wealthy investors will back another company and compete with Grab, said Yuen during the Invest ASEAN 2018 conference held by Maybank Kim Eng in Singapore this week.

Vertex Ventures was the only investor in Grab, formerly GrabTaxi, during a Series A fund-raising round in 2014.

The merger between Grab and Uber has sparked fears over a potential monopoly and rate hikes

The investor pointed out a similar case in China: Ubers operations in the country were acquired by major rival Didi Chuxing in 2016 as part of a massive $35-billion deal.

The merger has sparked concerns over the latter acquiring a monopoly over the domestic ride-hailing market. However, in early 2018, the leading consumer buying retail website Meituan has announced its venture into this market, facing off with Didi Chuxing.

According to Carmen Yuen, it is natural for newcomers to want a share in such a fast-growing market like Southeast Asia, especially Vietnam. Just recently, Indonesias tech giant Go-jek has announced its expansion into the Philippines and Vietnam, five years after it came to dominate the Indonesian market in a wide range of services, from ride-hailing to delivery and laundry bookings.

The battle between Grab and Go-jek will be an interesting one, as both startups are flush with capital from eager investors in the region. Grab recently partnered with Hyundai Motor after raising $2 billion from Didi Chuxing and SoftBank last year, while Go-jek collected $1.2 billion last month from a dozen investors, including Google and BlackRock.

This week, Grab announced its merger with Ubers ride-hailing and food delivery business in Southeast Asia. In return, Uber will own a 27.5 per cent stake in Grab and its CEO will become a member of Grabs board. The merger is still subject to regulations, and Singapores competition watchdog said that it will keep an eye on Grab.

The merger, which has been talked about for months, sparked fears of monopoly and fare hikes in Southeast Asia. Ubers employees, including drivers, are concerned that they may lose their jobs following the acquisition.

In interviews and news releases following the merger, Grab said that it will ensure that rates remain affordable and arrange new positions for Uber's staff members.

Uber exit threatens Grab monopoly in Southeast Asia On April 8, US-headquartered ride-hailing juggernaut Uber will officially transfer its operations in Vietnam and seven other ASEAN countries, including Thailand, Indonesia, and Singapore to its long-time ...

Uber drivers to be transferred to Grab on April 8 Every Uber driver, taxi and motorbike drivers alike, will be transferred to Grab from April 8, the date when Uber officially withdraws from Southeast Asia.
Hanoi to host international piano festival

The 2018 Hanoi International Piano Festival will be held from August 11  18.

The festival is for professional pianists of all nationalities and ages from Vietnam and around the world.

Head of the organising board of the festival will be Assoc. Prof, Dr. Le Anh Tuan  Director of the Vietnam National Academy of Music, while Professor and Peoples Artist Dang Thai Son will be Art Director of the event.

The council of international professors include: Prof. Susumu Aoyagi from Japan, Prof. Tai-Cheng Chen (the US-Chinese Taipei), Prof. Tran Thu Ha (Vietnam), Prof. Katarzyna Popowa-Zydron (Poland), and Prof. Dang Thai Son (Vietnam  Canada).

The deadline for registration is June 30 and the list of selected candidates will be announced on July 10.

Prof. Dang Thai Son will present ten scholarships worth US$300 each to ten outstanding competitors, along with a number of other awards.
Both corporations' IPOs were successful

$22.97 million from Protrade Corp. IPO

On March 28, Protrade, the third largest state-owned firm in the southern province of Binh Duong, offered 30 million shares for sale, equalling 10 per cent of its stakes, at its IPO with the initial price of VND12,000 ($0.53).

As a result, 63 investors joined the auction, four of whom won with the highest bid of VND21,000 and the lowest bid of VND16,600. The average selling price was VND17,474, which was 46 per cent higher than the initial price.

Being the third largest state-owned firm in Binh Duong, Protrade currently owns a series of industrial parks, including Protrade International Tech Park, VSIP II Open Industrial Zone, as well as Song Than 3 and Dat Cuoc IZs.

After the IPO, the states holding in Protrade decreased to 50 per cent, equalling 150 million shares. Besides, Protrade Corp. will put 119.7 million shares, equalling 39.91 per cent of the stakes, on sale to strategic investors.

Previously, Protrade Corp. also published the following criteria for strategic investors:

Interested investors, either domestic or foreign firms, have to be operating for at least ten years in one of the following sectors: garments and textile, wood processing or real estate. Besides, interested investors must have the financial potential to promote the development of Protrade.

Furthermore, after the deal ends, the strategic investor will not be permitted to transfer the bought stake for at least five years after Protrade receives the business registration certificate.

The offering price to strategic investors will be equal to the minimum successful bidding price.

So far, three firms applied to become the strategic investor of Protrade, including SACOM Investment and Development JSC applying to buy 13 per cent stake, U&I Investment Corporation (6 per cent), and Development Limited Company (20.91 per cent).

Hapros success despite poor performance

This morning, Hapro put 75.93 million shares or 34.51 per cent of its charter capital on auction with the initial price of VND12,800 ($0.56). It expected to acquire at least VND971 billion ($42.78 million) from the IPO.

The entire volume of shares on offer was sold for a total VND980 billion ($42.96 million), nearly VND10 billion ($438,440) higher than previous expectations.

The average winning bid was VND12,908 ($0.57), while the highest bid was VND20,000 ($0.88) and the lowest VND12,800 ($0.56).

Almost all of the shares were acquired by individual investors.

A range of Hapro subsidiaries hold further valuable land parcels, for instance Hapro Holdings, which owns eight real estate projects in Vietnam, or Long Bien Trade Investment JSC with its 11 office buildings, and Trang Thi Trade & Service Company with 42 land plots for lease.

After the IPO, the firm will prepare dossiers to list its shares on the Unlisted Public Company Market (UpCOM).

Despite operating in the retail and import-export sectors and owning numerous golden land plots, in reality, Hapro is not a coveted asset for numerous reasons.

Notably, the corporation reported poor results in key business segments, including retail and export-import. The management capacity of the Board of Directors is still weak, which has been shown via consecutive decreases in revenue and profit.

Notably, in 2016, the revenue from trading and services decreased by VND500 billion ($21.92 million) against 2015 and VND1 trillion ($43.84 million) against 2014. In the past five years, the companys highest profit reached VND40 billion ($1.75 million) per year. In 2017 alone, the figure was VND13.42 billion ($588,386) only.

Regarding Hapros golden land plots, almost all of them are relatively small, ranging between 500 and 1,624sq.m. Thus, it is difficult for the board of management and its strategic investors to develop large-scale real estate projects in the upcoming time.

It is expected that in the future, the success of Hapro will depend on the cooperation with Vietnam N.A Motor Co., Ltd. (N.A Motor), which was approved to become the strategic investor of Hapro.
We know that a helipad is good for emergency rescue, however, in order to build a helipad on a building, there are many procedures and conditions for developers to meet which will pose a great deal of difficulties, a source from a real estate company in Ho Chi Minh City told VIR.

Ho Chi Minh City would equip every building higher than 20 storeys with helipads

In principle, the construction of any type of landing space for aircrafts, even helipads, must be approved by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) with consultation from the Ministry of Construction, the Ministry of Transport, and the provincial administration, according to experts.

Moreover, the detailed design of the project is to be approved by the Chief of Staff of the Peoples Army of Vietnam (PAV). After construction is finished, the developer must submit the relevant documents to the General Staff of PAV for helicopters to be allowed to land and take off from the helipad.

The Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam and MoD are also required to provide consultation on such projects.

After the recent fire at the Carina Plaza residential building, which brought death to 13 and injured nearly 100, this requirement reappeared in a directive to increase awareness and activities of both buildings developers and residents on fire prevention.

This is not the first time that Ho Chi Minh City authorities have tabled this requirement. However after the recent fire at the Carina Plaza residential building, which brought death to 13 and injured nearly 100, this requirement reappeared in a directive to increase awareness and activities of both buildings developers and residents on fire prevention.

In the beginning of 2017, the city authorities had examined several buildings higher than 20 storeys to see if any of them could accommodate a helipad. While hundreds of buildings in the city satisfy the height requirement, not all are designed to withstand helicopters.

In Ho Chi Minh City, there are 10 helipads located on the top of a building, including Diamond Plaza, Times Square, and Bitexco Tower. However none of them have been used yet.

According to Circular 06 put into force on January 1, 2016 released by the Ministry of Public Security, major cities and the National Emergency Centre for Fire Prevention and Disaster will be equipped with a maximum of two helicopters for fire prevention and rescue and two more planes for fire rescue, including facilities and human staff. These plans, however, have not been implemented for various reasons.
US President-elect Donald Trump. (Photo: AFP)

Trump offered no explanation for the apparent threat, which came just a day after he hailed the US-Korea Free Trade Agreement (KORUS) as a victory for his get-tough stance on commerce.

"I may hold it up until after a deal is made with North Korea, does everybody understand that? You know why? Because it's a very strong card," Trump said in a speech in Ohio.

"South Korea has been wonderful, but we'll probably hold that deal up for a little while, see how it plays out."

On Wednesday, Trump had seemed to be firmly behind the renegotiated trade deal, which should now give US carmakers greater access to South Korean markets.

"@USTradeRep just announced an agreement in principle with South Korea on KORUS!" he said.

"A great deal for American and Korean workers. Let's now focus on our important security relationship."

But the president's remarks in his Ohio speech appeared to suggest he is seeking to hold the deal as leverage over Washington's ally South Korea ahead of the nuclear talks.

North Korea and South Korea plan to hold a summit on April 27.

Trump is then due to meet North Korea's Kim Jong Un before the end of May for talks on Pyongyang's denuclearization.
TTC Land will build resorts and industrial zones across the country

Accordingly, along with the housing segment, TTC Land will expand its operations into resort, commercial-rental, and industrial zone (IZ) real estate.

Notably, TTC Land will accelerate the construction of two commercial-rental real estate projects, namely TTC Plaza Binh Thanh in Ho Chi Minh City and TTC Plaza Duc Trong in Lam Dong province, in order to take them into operation soon. Besides, this year, the company will develop two more projects, namely TTC Plaza Danang and TTC Plaza Haiphong.

Besides, it will implement the construction of a 305-hectare resort complex in Phu Quoc.

Additionally, TTC Land will develop other IZ projects after the acquisition of the 1,002-hectare Thanh Thanh Cong IZ in Tay Ninh province and the 53-hectare Tan Kim IZ in 2017. Both of these IZ are located in the southern key economic zone and have an occupancy rate of 60 per cent.

Furthermore, TTC Land plans to develop projects across the country, instead of focusing on the south.

Once the restructuring ends, TTC Land will have total assets of VND17 trillion ($745.86 million) and own 2,000 hectares of land to develop real estate projects within the next ten years.

In 2010, the firm listed its shares on the Hanoi Stock Exchange. At the time, its charter capital reached VND1 trillion ($43.87 million). Thus, after more than eight years of operation, its charter capital increased to more than 90 per cent.

Sacomreal's 217 million shares move to HOSE HCM Stock Exchange approved the listing of more than 217 million shares of Sai Gon Thuong Tin Real Estate (Sacomreal) JSC (SCR) on the bourse.

Banks to guarantee Sacomreal property projects Saigon Thuong Tin Real Estate Co. (Sacomreal) signed agreements with OCB, ACB and HDB banks on Sunday to guarantee its property projects, following Article 56 ...

Sacomreal unveils social housing project Sacomreal launched on Sunday its Jamona Apartment social housing project in HCM City's District 7, which is eligible for support from the Government's VND30 trillion ...
Vietnam joins an exclusive clique to discuss energy security with the US

The US State Department and the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT) participated in the inaugural energy security dialogue this morning in Hanoi.

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Energy Diplomacy Sandra Oudkird and Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Hoang Quoc Vuong led the discussions.

During the dialogue, the US and Vietnamese representatives exchanged views on securing critical infrastructure and resources, strategic energy supply diversification, energy tariffs and pricing, technical assistance, renewable energy technology, regional interconnectivity, and held a commercial session.

In addition, the two sides discussed opportunities for US businesses in the Vietnamese energy sector. US companies have shown a strong interest in partnering with Vietnam on a wide array of energy initiatives.

Meeting with energy technology experts on March 29 preceded this dialogue. The visit with technical experts on March 29 also provided an opportunity to exchange views and information about US technologies and best practices for evaluating the feasibility of individual energy projects within an overall national framework.

US firms interested in expansion in Vietnam Although US President Donald Trump wants US firms to focus on domestic business, they still pay attention to investment in Vietnam and want to further ...
Relatives cry after learning their loved ones died in a fast-moving fire a day prior that swept through a police station where prisoners were being kept in crowded cells in Valencia, Venezuela, on Thursday.
OAKLAND, Calif., March 30, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Merritt Community Capital, a leading provider of Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) equity capital for affordable housing in California, announced today that they have engaged Candeur Group to underwrite, acquire and close LIHTC investments and provide Fund investment structuring for its next LIHTC fund, Merritt Community Capital Fund XX. Candeur Group has been hired to provide a seamless transition of services when Merritts longtime Director of Acquisitions, Karen Smyda, retires on March 31.



Candeur Group, led by industry veterans Greg Judge and Catherine Talbot, has over 75 years of combined experience in the LIHTC industry covering varying economic cycles, industry crises, and full lifecycle activity on over $6 billion of LIHTC investments.

Greg Judge, Managing Partner of Candeur Group, states, We are excited to help Merritt continue its mission of providing LIHTC equity to low-income communities and developers throughout California. We look forward to working with Merritts developer clients and investors and helping Merritt further their mission of providing affordable housing to low-income Californians.

Lisa Castillo, President and CEO of Merritt Community Capital Corporation said, Merritt is committed to continue its legacy of mission-driven work in affordable housing. To that end, we found it critical to make sure we could provide the same quality of acquisition originations and underwriting that weve come to enjoy with the senior industry expertise of Karen Smyda. We are delighted to work with Candeur Group, tapping their specific expertise in analytics and underwriting while also adding creativity to our extremely competitive industry.

Merritt is currently marketing its next multi-investor LIHTC fund, Merritt Community Capital Fund XX. Merritt expects to raise $70,000,000 for Fund XX, anticipates a fund closing in September 2018, and, per Merritts mission, will invest only in California-based LIHTC properties.

About Merritt Community Capital Corporation

Merritt Community Capital Corporation provides equity capital for affordable housing throughout California, revitalizing neighborhoods through construction, rehabilitation, and long-term asset management. Since 1989, the company has invested more than $765 million in 20 separate funds to build 8,485 affordable homes. Merritt is the West Coast member of the National Association of State and Local Equity Funds (NASLEF) and continues to offer exceptional service to investors, developers and consultants of LIHTC affordable housing properties. For more information, visit www.merrittcap.org.

About Candeur Group, LLC

Candeur Group is an investment banking firm for the affordable housing industry providing syndication as well as advisory services to affordable housing developers, syndicators and investors. Since its inception in 2013, Candeur Group has invested more than $330M through LIHTC syndication funds and their US Treasury-certified Community Development Financial Institution fund. For more information, visit www.candeurgroup.com.

Sabrina Moreno-Dolan

Director of Operations

Merritt Community Capital Corporation

510.444.7870 x 302

Fax 510.444.7874

smoreno@merrittcap.org

www.merrittcap.org
President Sheikh Hassan Rohani and Sadeq Laridjani (head of the judicial branch of power) had Hamid Baghaie arrested. The latter was the Vice President of the Islamic Republic of Iran from 2011 to 2013 (i.e. during the final term of the former president Mahmud Ahmadineyad). At the end of a secret trial, the former vice president was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

The press is referring to this being a trial for corruption but we are unaware of any of the accusations that have been brought against this man, reputed for his integrity.

Hamid Baghaie had tried to stand for the 2017 Presidential Elections. He had the backing of the former president Ahmadinejad. However to facilitate Sheikh Hassan Rohani, the current president being elected again, the Guardians of the Council of the Constitution rejected both his candidature and Mahmoud Ahmadinejads. The basis for the rejection was that the two men that had put themselves forward, are not good Muslims.

Former President Ahmadinejad and his followers are believers, however, they believe that the Iranian institutions must be converted into secular institutions.
On 28 March 2018, the European Commission presented its plan for the creation of a Military Schengen [1].

Although the reference to Schengen free movement agreements suggests the contrary, this military Schengen is not a European project but something Nato wanted. The aim of this Military Schengen is not to give the armies of EU member states a free pass to roam about EU territory without red tape being put in their way, but to extend this privilege to all NATO armies (including US, Turkish armies or Canadian armies).

This plan must not be interpreted as being some way connected to the Skripal matter, which everyone is talking about today. Nato conceived this plan two years ago. It was already mentioned in a report by the European Parliament in October 2016. According to internal Nato documents, it could be implemented in two hypos: first, in the event of a war against Russia and second, in the case of a popular rising in a Nato member state. Between the lines is perhaps a third hypo: to enabling US armies to carry out a fireman role and extinguish riots in the popular suburbs of Europes big cities.

25 of the 28 Member states have received instructions to hand over detailed maps of all their communication routes and to specify the necessary works that would be carried out on their roads, tunnels and bridges to make them fit for Natos purpose. These countries have also been requested to reach an agreement for granting the necessary exemptions to the laws and regulations in force that prohibit the transport of arms and military materials on their territory.
Photo: DOMINICK REUTER/AFP/Getty Images

During pretrial hearings for the Bill Cosby trial today at the Montgomery County Courthouse outside of Philadelphia, prosecutors and the defense went head to head over whether testimony from last years felony sex-assault trial will be permitted into evidence during the comedians new trial next month.

DA Kevin Steele would like Cosbys admitted quaalude use, a major component of the first trial that ended in a hung jury last year, included in evidence. Assistant DA Stewart Ryan argued today that Cosbys deposition over using quaaludes in the past proves that the comedian understood the effects the drugs have on women, thus pointing to intent.

The defense argued that introducing testimony about drug use is outweighed by the unfair prejudice, confusion and issues and misleading of the jury.

The 80-year-old comedian faces three charges of felony sexual assault for accusations that he drugged and sexually assaulted Andrea Constand, a former Temple University employee, in his suburban Philadelphia home. In a deposition, the former TV dad claimed that the relationship with Constand was consensual and limited to heavy petting, and that he gave her over-the-counter Benadryl.

Judge Steven ONeill, who just this week refused to step down from the trial after the defense called into question his wifes work with sexual-assault victims, must also rule on whether the defense will be able to introduce what could be very damaging testimony for Constand. The defense claims that Constand told one of her former co-workers that Cosby did not drug and assault her, but that she hoped to receive money from the entertainer. Cosbys legal team would like to call the co-worker to the stand to help paint Constand as untrustworthy, someone seeking money and fame.

Before breaking to weigh in on these motions, the judge admonished lawyers on both sides on the aisle, asking them in no uncertain terms to stop using judgmental, conclusory language that could influence potential jurors. He said it has no place in the law.

This follows ONeill ripping the defense just yesterday over accusations of bias. He got choked up, according to CNN, saying, Its a difficult thing when parties include to bring the families of a jurist into the court. He added, The premise that the defense built, the assumption that this court could not be impartial, is faulty, plain and simple.

ONeill said as of now, the trial is expected to start on April 9 at the earliest. Jury selection is to begin on Monday, April 2, when 187 residents from Montgomery County are summoned to the courthouse. It may take several days for the jury and alternates to be selected in this closely watched case. The jury will be sequestered for the duration of the trial, which is expected to last at least a month.
According to The Hollywood Reporter Jake Paul, also known as the one who didnt film the suicide victim in Japan (that was Logan), will host a new show on YouTube Red. The show will have the feel of a late-night variety show, though itll be on YouTube Red so you can just watch it whenever. This could be interesting, as the notorious vlogger is best known for antics that have terrorized his neighbors. However, the 21-year-old internet celebrity has shown signs of trying to rehabilitate his image after a rough year.

In addition to losing his role on Disney Channels Bizaardvark, Jake was accused of both bullying and being, shall we say, racially insensitive? But recently opening up on Good Morning America he told Michael Strahan he sees himself as an imperfect role model. He then traveled to Florida in the wake of the Parkland shooting to try and end guns or something. So it will be interesting to see which side of Paul is featured on the show, which YouTube seems quick to assure us is still just a pilot: Last year, we engaged in early development deals with a handful of YouTube creators as part of our normal process to evaluate new creative ideas, a spokesperson told THR. There is no series order currently in place.
HOPKINSVILLE, Ky. (AP) - A man suspected of fatally shooting an off-duty police officer in a small Kentucky city has been killed by law enforcement officials in Tennessee.

Kentucky State Police Trooper Rob Austin says in a statement Friday that 34-year-old James K. Decoursey of Hopkinsville "had a brief encounter with law enforcement" officials in Clarksville, Tennessee, where he "was shot and died from his injuries."

Kentucky State police say Decoursey shot and killed 38-year-old Hopkinsville officer Phillip Meacham Thursday afternoon, then fled on foot then before taking off in a pickup truck.

Meacham, who was married and had two school-age children, had been with the Hopkinsville department since May 2017. Before that worked for about 14 years with the Christian County Sheriff's Department.

Hopkinsville is about 73 miles (117.48 kilometers) northwest of Nashville, Tennessee.

____

1:03 a.m.

The manhunt continues for a man suspected of fatally shooting an off-duty police officer in a small Kentucky city, then fleeing in a stolen truck.

Kentucky State police say 38-year-old Hopkinsville officer Phillip Meacham was shot Thursday afternoon.

Police identified the suspect as 34-year-old James K. Decoursey of Hopkinsville. They say he fled on foot then took off in a 1997 white Chevrolet pickup truck with license plate 2070GH. Police say Decoursey should be treated as armed and dangerous. A Tennessee Highway Patrol helicopter was aiding the search.

Meacham, who was married and had two school-age children, had been with the Hopkinsville department since May 2017. Before that worked for about 14 years with the Christian County Sheriff's Department.

Hopkinsville is about 73 miles (117.48 kilometers) northwest of Nashville, Tennessee.

(Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)
OTTAWA, March 30, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Almas Jiwani Foundation, represented by CEO, Almas Jiwani, had been a key participant in the Discovering the Catalyst event organized by the Carleton University Women in Business Association, and held on the 3rd of March, 2018. Ms. Jiwani delivered a keynote address which touched on challenges faced by women, worldwide and in Canada, in both private and public work spaces, and commented on current social movements which have brought the question of womens rights back to the forefront of public discourse. Keynote addresses and panel discussions at the event were geared towards addressing and mitigating prevalent issues of gender inequality in modern day workplaces.



One of the things that stops us from seeing ourselves as agents of change is the idea that the power of one has no impact. Gloria Steinem, world-renowned feminist, journalist and activist once explained: 'The story of women's struggle for equality belongs to no single feminist nor to any one organization, but to the collective efforts of all who care about human rights,' said Ms. Jiwani.

Ms. Jiwani has been the assertive voice of women at the INSEAD Middle East Campus 7th annual forum Inspire Impact Impower, held on the 7th of March, 2018, and featuring women leaders in the Middle East who have made significant contributions to the region. Ms. Jiwani made special remarks touching on various themes of the forum.

We had a meaningful, constructive discussion and debate that we need to continue having about gender constructs, norms and equality and what we need on an ongoing basis to drive the change we want to see around the world, said Almas Jiwani. 2018 is one of those pivotal years and the momentum we can build on will be paramount to achieving gender parity in the coming years.

Finally, Ms. Jiwani capped a busy month of celebrations of womens achievements at the 2018 Middle East Blockchain & Fintech Conference, held on the 13th and 14th of March, 2018, in the Dead Sea, Jordan. Ms. Jiwani delivered a keynote address titled Women in Blockchain & Fintech in which she highlighted the opportunities presented by emerging blockchain technologies to women globally, in general, and the Middle East, in specific, and the interplay of the technologies applications in various industries and womens economic and social empowerment.

"We live in an era where knowledge and education are the keys to a successful and sustainable society. Studies have shown that women in management and leadership positions propel companies and governments to new heights. It is with this fact that we look at this emerging technology. This means we must ensure women are a major player in the field," said Ms. Jiwani.

About the Almas Jiwani Foundation

The vision of the Almas Jiwani Foundation is to empower women, girls and marginalized communities through focused projects that directly address disparities in equality, education, entrepreneurship and energy rights. The Foundation aims to bridge inequalities through the fostering of relationships among the various actors and stakeholders in global issues, and to provide a platform for discourse and action.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Almas Jiwani Foundation

Basel Ismaiel, Director of Strategy

(613) 234-8252

basel@almasjiwanifoundation.org

Myriam Amato, Vice President, Outreach

info@almasjijwanifoundation.org

www.almasjiwanifoundation.org

Photos accompanying this announcement are available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/4eb84441-f875-4016-98b3-afc5e1bd6abc

http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/09f4a3ba-8fda-43a4-8c65-77e76ee706d8

http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/83d1bfa9-f796-4879-b67e-1dc1b072ca0e


China as Seen from a Glass House



Stephen S. Roach







NEW HAVEN  The removal from the Chinese constitution of the provision limiting presidents to two five-year terms came as a shock to many. For China, the institutionalization of leadership succession was one of Deng Xiaopings most important legacies, signaling an end to the wrenching instability of the chaotic leadership cult of Mao Zedong. For the West, the term limit was an ideological bridge that led to a path of engagement. Could its abolition be the tipping point for an already precarious Sino-American relationship?



Start with China and what the move means for its future. To figure out what will change under a different framework for leadership succession, it is important to cut through the authorities opaque rhetoric  the moderately well-off society transitioning into the new era  and stress-test their basic development strategy.



While anything is possible, and there is always a risk of mistakes, my bet is that China stays its current course. Succession or not, there can be no turning back from a transition that has brought a large, poor developing country to the brink of prosperity as a modern, high-income economy.



Initially, Chinas leadership  responding to former Premier Wen Jiabaos surprising 2007 critique of a Chinese economy that had become increasingly unstable, unbalanced, uncoordinated, and unsustainable  made its case from an analytical perspective. Last October, in a speech to the 19th Party Congress, President Xi Jinping made the same point from an ideological perspective, reframing the so-called Marxian principal contradiction around the pitfalls of unbalanced and inadequate development.



Significantly, these two perspectives  analytical and ideological  take China to the same destination: a prosperous economy and society with a thriving middle class. To get there, China must go through a transformative rebalancing, from manufacturing to services, from export dependence to domestic consumption, from state-owned to private, and from rural to urban.



By now, all of this is well understood. The current debate in China is less about strategy design and more about implementation. This, in fact, was Xis highest priority on assuming office in late 2012, and it formed the rationale behind an unprecedented anti-corruption campaign aimed at dislodging deeply entrenched power blocs that have stymied the transition.



But now, five years later, the Chinese leadership is poised to tackle the next phase of the implementation challenge. There is a palpable sense of urgency to this task. Behind the public facade of a confident leader, Xi has owned up to the possibility of failure. From an analytical perspective, this has been expressed in terms of a Japanese-like stagnation if China mismanages its economy. From an ideological perspective, an endgame of chaos and revolution looms if the principal contradiction is not resolved.



Given these mounting concerns, implementation risks are now being presented in a different light. At the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, Liu He, Chinas new vice premier for economic policy, hinted that upcoming reforms would be carried out with surprising speed. In a recent signed commentary published in Peoples Daily, he also noted that, Strengthening the partys overall leadership is the core issue.



These views do not come out of thin air. Liu, a master tactician, seems to be underscoring the link between leadership power and the pace of reforms. The perceived need for greater leadership power  reflected in the elimination of the presidential term limit  has become a key element of the authorities implementation efforts. Consistent with Xis early instincts, this may well be the only way for China to avoid the blind alley of which Deng warned in 1992.



Yes, viewed from the perspective of liberal democracies, Chinas constitutional revision is a disappointing governance setback. From Chinas perspective, however, it may well be the only option to address its daunting implementation imperatives head-on. And the recent experience of other countries, particularly the United States, certainly cautions against the Western tendency to conflate succession and leadership quality.



Americas leadership deficit is, in fact, pushing the US and China to the brink of a trade war.



The plight of the US middle class has been framed as a blame game, with China and its alleged unfair trading practices singled out as the culprit. Yet the evidence points elsewhere: to a dramatic shortfall of domestic saving that leaves America dependent on surplus saving from abroad to fill the gap. The result is a multilateral trade deficit, with China and 101 other countries, required to provide the foreign capital needed for the balance of payments.



In other words, China is actually an important part of Americas solution to its saving-short growth problem. Yet US leaders find it expedient to make China a scapegoat. And the situation is going from bad to worse. The large tax cut enacted at the end of 2017 will expand the US federal budget deficit by $1.5 trillion over the next decade, pushing domestic saving even lower  an outcome that will lead to even wider trade deficits.



As if thats not bad enough, a protectionist Trump administration has elevated anti-China tariffs to a central role in its international policy agenda. Yet protectionism in the face of widening trade deficits spells nothing but trouble for frothy financial markets and a saving-short US economy. And it risks the most serious rupture in the Sino-American relationship since 1989.



No one knows how long Xi will remain in office. If China stays the course, the succession question is inconsequential  at least for the time being. If China slips, the verdict will be very different. While the US has a very different political feedback loop, accountability also matters.



In the end, the quality of leadership is what matters most for both countries. Sadly, those living in glass houses always find it easiest to throw stones.





Stephen S. Roach, former Chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia and the firm's chief economist, is a senior fellow at Yale University's Jackson Institute of Global Affairs and a senior lecturer at Yale's School of Management. He is the author of Unbalanced: The Codependency of America and China.
Mr Wetton contacted AGL to notify them of the error when he received the first estimated bill. He said AGL told him it was his fault he received an estimate, as they couldn't find his meter box. But Mr Wetton said the meter was so visible that it could be seen on Google Street View. Its not behind a fence and were open 24 hours a day. Despite his protestations, successive bills also contained estimates. "The next month it was $1900, he said. "I sent them an email straight away, I said 'My wife is panicking, we need to know what's going on, can someone let us know?." The "stress" and "anguish" increased with each monthly bill, he said, to the point where AGL threatened them with disconnection unless they paid the outstanding estimated bills.

Paying the estimated bills would have seen them go "belly up". Stephen Wetton's first monthly bill from AGL was almost double what he was previously charged quarterly. "That's the point. If we paid it, it would close us down. We were facing bankruptcy, we put the house down on the business." In the midst of it all, his wife miscarried. Mr Wetton had had enough. "After that I said 'I'm no longer paying any more estimates, ever'."

He contacted Queensland's Energy and Water Ombudsman, which provides a free, independent dispute resolution service to energy customers. The ombudsman's office received an explanation from AGL which included an admission that it had sent estimated bills even though it had access to Mr Wetton's usage history. "Despite the fact that AGL have historical consumption available to use as a basis of estimation, (AGL's billing system) disregarded this data," AGL wrote to the Ombudsman in December 2016 in reference to Mr Wetton's account. A recent demand from AGL for immediate payment of what it says is overdue on Stephen Wetton's account. Mr Wetton said he believed the estimates were based on an average for commercial premises in his neighbourhood. One of his closest neighbours is a Nestle plant, where the company makes instant coffee.

"I've got the Nestle refinery just 100 metres up the road from me ... that refinery's on our grid. It's enormous. Theyve got 200 staff up there." After the ombudsman's intervention, AGL "reconciled billing to actual read data" for Mr Wetton's account for much of 2016 and offered him a $400 "customer service gesture". AGL proposed that he repay the $2,115 he owed, based on the revised bills, and in future submit his own meter readings by the 13th of each month to avoid receiving estimated bills. However, Mr Wetton said that each time he tried to submit a meter reading, AGL's website did not recognise his meter details. Mr Wetton estimates he now owes AGL around $7000 based on actual usage, and recently set up a payment plan, agreed upon by AGL, under which he pays $1000 a month.

Yet AGL is still sending bills based on estimates rather than actual meter readings, and keeps threatening to cut off his electricity supply. "Now theyre saying we owe over $20,000," he said. "They keep on sending me more estimate bills, which are $1500, $2000 a month and I keep on tearing them up. Mr Wetton expresses his frustration with AGL via the sign out front of his business, which faces the busy Bruce Highway. Credit: Gabi Harris "After making three fortnightly repayments plus the monthly bill, I get a call from an overseas call centre ... A woman says 'I'm ringing to let you know that we're giving you notice that we will cut your supply if [you] don't pay'.

"I said I discussed this six weeks ago ... The left hand doesn't know what the right is doing." Last week he received a text message from AGL threatening to cut off his power if he did not pay the full amount it says is owed. Despite the anguish the situation has caused, Mr Wetton has not lost his sense of humour. He channels it into a sign outside his car wash, which faces the busy Bruce Highway. He changes the message on it regularly and occasionally uses it to have a dig at AGL. "I give it to them that way."

Asked about Mr Wetton's case, an AGL spokesman said it sent him monthly bills at his request, even though the local distributor only reads the meter once every three months, as required by the Australian Energy Market Operator. "This means two in every three bills he receives are estimated because he does not have a digital meter. Any estimated bills are adjusted when an actual meter reading is taken." Mr Wettons estimated bills had been based on historical data since March 2016, the spokesman said. The spokesman said AGL's letters demanding overdue payment were "based on actual reads". AGL had a range of initiatives to help customers who had difficulty paying bills, he said, and disconnection was a last resort after all other options had been exhausted.
The Turnbull government was on Friday bracing for an imminent declaration that two Australian diplomats will be forced out of Moscow in retaliation for Canberra's condemnation of a Russian-linked nerve agent assassination attempt in Britain.

Fairfax Media understands it is regarded only as a matter of time before Moscow tells the Australian government that two of its diplomats are being branded personae non gratae in Russia. Australia has 10 diplomatic staff in Moscow.

It follows the announcement by the Russias Foreign Ministry that it was expelling 60 US diplomats and closing Washingtons consulate in St Petersburg, Russias second-largest city.

Foreshadowing further action, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said: As for the rest of the countries, everything is also mirrored in terms of the number of people who will leave the Russian Federation from the diplomatic missions.
Social media giants already under siege over privacy concerns would face stiff financial penalties and tougher legal requirements to remove abusive material under the recommendations of a parliamentary inquiry into cyber bullying.

The inquiry into the adequacy of existing criminal laws around cyber bullying by the Senate's legal and constitutional affairs committee was triggered late last year by the suicide of Adelaide schoolgirl Libby Bell after an alleged bullying campaign that took place in person and on Facebook, Instragram and Snapchat.

The Labor and crossbench-dominated committee has recommended the government "place and maintain regulatory pressure on social media platforms to both prevent and quickly respond to cyber bullying material on their platform, including through the use of significant financial penalties where insufficient progress is achieved".

It also said the companies should have a legal duty of care for their users - giving people a right to seek compensation in the case of a breach - and be compelled to publish data on cyber bullying complaints they have received and acted on.

But DIGI, the industry body representing Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and other tech companies in Australia, resisted the push for tougher regulations saying the current laws were adequate.
As St Patrick's Day is for Irish pubs, so Good Friday is to the nation's fish and chip shops  the one day of the year when people will wait for hours to get their hands on your number one product.

But while the tradition of eating seafood on Good Friday will once again have deep fryers bubbling away from dawn until well after dusk, many will instead turn to the Christian holiday's long-time culinary taboo: red meat.

Meat being aged at Butchers Diner in the Melbourne CBD. Credit:Eddie Jim

The grills, skillets and smokers at many of Melbourne's steakhouses, barbecue joints and meat restaurants will fire up as normal this Good Friday, as the decline in religion means fewer diners forgoing flesh.

"When I was a boy we used to camp at Nagambie, we weren't even allowed to eat Chicken Crimpy flavoured Shapes," said James Mayne, general manager at Prahran steakhouse Angus and Bon.
The mother, step-father and a family friend of an eight-year old girl have been arrested and charged over a suspected child porn ring operating in Perth and regional WA in a case that has been described by police as "absolutely devastating".

The case has been described as absolutely devastating. Credit:WA Police

Police claim a number of adults drugged children before sexually abusing them and recording the acts on video.

Police superintendent Sharon Leonhard said the case would "shock the community".

A special taskforce was set up by police to investigate the suspected child sex abuse of at least five children, most of whom were under the age of 10 at the time.
Jamie Brown's friends have been putting up posters to help his search for a bone marrow donor.

He had begun feeling a bit sick during his final ATAR exam but did not suspect what was to come when he went to have a fun time with friends after finishing high school.

Celebrating finishing Year 12 at Bunbury Cathedral Grammar School, he called for his mother to come get him.

Jamie was flown by the Royal Flying Doctor Service to Fiona Stanley Hospital and started chemotherapy straight away.

Currently in hospital having another round of the treatment, after the first did not manage to get rid of the cancer, Jamie is hoping to find a bone marrow match that will save his life.

"The diagnosis of leukaemia in December came as a total shock to me, up until then my health wasn't something I thought much about," he said.

"Now, I am amazed by how much we all take our bodies for granted - and how hard our white cells constantly work to fight off infection.

"I would like to encourage and also thank everyone who donates blood and has joined the bone marrow registry which gives so many people lifesaving treatment and hope for a normal life."
Valencia: It began as a jailhouse party. It ended in carnage.

Relatives carry the coffin containing the remains of Daniel Marquez, a victim of the catastrophic blaze that swept through a police station jail a in Valencia, Venezuela. Credit:AP

On Thursday, grieving families collected their dead after one of the worst prison fires in the country's history claimed the lives of 68 people. The relatives searched for answers, but also offered a chilling account of what they had learned so far: The fire began after gangs running a party in an overcrowded jail fought with the guards. A hostage was taken; a fire broke out.

Dozens perished in the smoke and flames, screaming for help.

Yet the pain didn't end there. Witnesses said that grieving relatives who had come were sprayed with tear gas by security forces who tried to disperse them.
London: Intensifying Russia's clash with Europe and the United States, the Kremlin on Thursday announced that it would expel 150 Western diplomats and close the US consulate in St Petersburg.

The action was in retaliation for the expulsion of more than 150 Russian officials from other countries  which was itself a reaction to a nerve-agent attack on British soil that Britain and its allies have blamed on Moscow.

The US ambassador to Russia, Jon M. Huntsman Jr., was summoned to the Foreign Ministry, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced. Sixty US diplomats will be expelled from Russia  the same as the number of Russian diplomats whom Washington is expelling. The Americans were given until April 5 to leave the country.

The crisis over the poisoning of a former Russian double agent and his daughter has driven tensions between the Kremlin and the West to their highest pitch in decades. The tit-for-tat responses raise the prospect of further, more serious escalations, either public or clandestine.
At the invitation of the Director General of Kuwait Customs, Mr. Jamal Al-Jalawi, WCO Secretary General Kunio Mikuriya visited Kuwait on 29 March 2018 to observe and support the country's Customs modernization process.

During the meeting with of Kuweit's Minister of Finance, Dr. Nayef al-Hajra, Dr. Mikuriya welcomed Kuwaits recent move in adopting WCO standards including its accession to the Revised Kyoto Convention and Istanbul Convention last year. He agreed with the Minister on the importance of improving the business environment in Kuwait and on the continued need for investment in human resources. Secretary General Mikuriya reiterated the WCOs support through sharing best practices and providing assistance.

Secretary General Mikuriya also had a meeting with Director General Al-Jalawi and his management team on Kuwait's ongoing Customs reform. He appreciated the progress with Single Window implementation, which would provide enhanced transparency and predictability to facilitate the cross-border movement of goods in collaboration with other government agencies and the private sector.

Dr. Mikuriya also noted that Kuwait Customs considered the Golden Sector Companies as a trusted trader system and this could be the first step towards the implementation of an Authorized Economic Operator Programme. The meeting further discussed the introduction of the Cargo Targeting System to protect society from security threats, as well as the realization of the Time Release Study to strengthen coordinated efforts towards trade facilitation, for which the WCO could provide the requisite assistance.

Both sides agreed to enhance cooperation to improve Kuwait Customs' risk management capabilities, in view of planned developments in the local maritime and air transport infrastructure.
"It's a language in itself; it gives kids the ability to speak when words don't always have the opportunity."

Buckhannon native Seth Blake was first introduced to music in elementary school. Then, he joined his middle school band program and continued playing in the band through high school and college.

"Music was a good tool for me to work through some tough situations and I think every kid needs an ability to do that," he said.

In September, while still finishing up classes at West Virginia Wesleyan College, the 23-year-old became a full-time music teacher at Midland Elementary in Elkins.

"He's very warm, caring, kind, considerate. He's just a very good role model for our students," said the Midland Elementary Principal, Teena Wallace.

As music and art continue to disappear from schools across the country, Blake argues that it's important to invest in these programs.

"Investing in a music program isn't just about financially, it's about investing time, passion, and investing in teachers who see their art as valid and important," said Blake.

"In our area, we're limited in the things our kids are exposed to, so it was really important for us to have a good music program," Wallace said.

In many curriculums, test scores are the main focus but, Blake says music education can actually boost those scores.

"Music helps unlock areas of the brain that don't oftentimes get unlocked," he said.

With 700 teacher vacancies in West Virginia, many are looking to young teachers like Blake to fill the gaps and create a brighter future for the state.

"Having a young group of teachers come in and bring new ideas to the table is hugely important," Blake said.

Although he's just getting started, Blake has already experienced the reward of watching his students learn.

"As soon as they get it, the smile that comes across their faces is priceless and whenever they're able to utilize it, you definitely know that you've made an impact on them."
Bartleman: Commissioners Can't Remove Jailer Ray

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By West Kentucky Star Staff

Mar. 30, 2018 | PADUCAH, KY

By West Kentucky Star Staff Mar. 30, 2018 | 10:40 AM | PADUCAH, KY

Some McCracken County leaders have expressed concern about Jailer Tonya Ray's ability to continue serving in her position amid a felony perjury indictment, budgetary concerns, and the recent death of a jail inmate. McCracken County Commissioner Bill Bartleman tells West Kentucky Star that even if commissioners wanted to, there isn't much they can do legally to remove Ray from her position.



"Under state law there is nothing we can do to remove her," Bartleman said. "She's in an elected position. Even though she was appointed to that position she has the same rights as if she was elected to it. There's nothing that we can do to suspend her or remove her from office. She can do what she wants. She doesn't have to listen to any advice that we give her."



Bartleman said the fact that Ray is under indictment may have an impact on her ability to run the jail.



"It's a little disconcerting to me that we have a person running the jail who's under indictment when the jail is full of people who have felonies, and that could affect some of the attitudes of the inmates." He said. He added that the jail's 40 percent turnover rate has been much higher than what the normal rate is, which also concerns him.



Bartleman also raised concerns about the death of 33-year-old Joshua Fuson, an inmate at the jail who died Tuesday after being found unresponsive. "There's a death investigation underway and a lot of questions about that. One of [Ray's] employees has gone to Facebook to say that technically the person who died was not a jail inmate, but that person signed documents calling this person in inmate." He said.



One thing commissioners do control is salary increases for jail employees, and Bartleman said he isn't likely to approve any increases in the near future. "She can't get salary increases unless we approve those. There's some debate on that, but to me the law is pretty clear that we can do that. If she wants to give some employees raises who are part of her senior staff, who may be responsible for some of the issues going on over there, I'm inclined not to approve that." He said.



Bartleman said he would like for Ray to come before the Commission so their concerns can be voiced to her personally.



"She needs to bring her top people in, come before the Fiscal Court, and we'll have a professional discussion about what's going on there," Bartleman said. "She needs to understand what our concerns are about the operation of the jail. I think she probably already knows that, but we need to have that face to face discussion, and we need her to respond to some of those."



Efforts to reach Ray for comment have not been returned.
Drug Investigation Nets Two Arrests

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By West Kentucky Star Staff

Mar. 29, 2018 | MCCRACKEN COUNTY, KY

By West Kentucky Star Staff Mar. 29, 2018 | 10:40 PM | MCCRACKEN COUNTY, KY

A drug investigation in McCracken County resulted in two men being arrested.



On Thursday, McCracken County Sheriff's detectives went to a home on Clinton Road in McCracken County to investigate tips of illegal drug activity. While there, they located several individuals inside and conducted a search. Detectives seized marijuana, drug paraphernalia, $790.00 in cash, believed to be the proceeds of illegal drug sales, and a handgun.



Twenty-five-year-old Mark Wring of Paducah was charged with trafficking marijuana less than 8 ounces, firearm enhanced, possession of a hand gun by a convicted felon, receiving stolen property, and possession of drug paraphernalia.



Detectives then learned the hand gun was reported stolen from Massac County in February. As the investigation continued, detectives learned that 29-year-old Christopher A. Jones, of Grantsburg, IL, was a suspect in the theft of the hand gun. Jones was present at the residence on Clinton Road at the same time detectives arrived, and they believe that Jones traded the handgun to Wring in exchange for marijuana. Jones was charged with receiving stolen property, (firearm), possession of marijuana, and possession of drug paraphernalia.



At the time of the offense, Jones was out on bond for two counts of receiving stolen property, (firearm). Both Wring and Jones were placed under arrest and lodged in the McCracken County Regional Jail.
One dead after shooting on Louisville highway
By The Associated Press Mar. 29, 2018 | 08:09 PM | HOPKINSVILLE, KY

A man wanted in the fatal shooting an off-duty police officer in Hopkinsville was found and killed early Friday morning by police in Tennessee.The suspect, 35-year-old James K. Decoursey of Hopkinsville, was shot and killed after a brief encounter with law enforcement in Clarksville, Tennessee, according to Kentucky State Police. Troopers say Decoursey fled to Tennessee in a stolen pickup after he fatally shot 38-year-old Hopkinsville officer Phillip Meacham on Thursday.According to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, officers located the stolen truck in the parking lot of a restaurant. At about the same time, authorities received a tip from a hotel across the street that a man matching Decourseys description was there asking for a cigarette.Montgomery County sheriffs deputies and a U.S. marshal confronted Decoursey as he walked back toward the restaurant. The TBI said Decoursey appeared to have ignored repeated commands and the situation escalated, resulting in the law enforcement officers firing upon Decoursey, killing him. No law enforcement officers were injured.Authorities havent described Decourseys motive. Initial reports said Decoursey had posed as a police officer and pulled Meacham over.Hopkinsville Police Chief Clayton said DeCoursey had a prior arrest record, was known to police, and that while he wasnt positive the two men knew each other personally, considering theyre both from here, its very likely.Meacham was married with two school-age children. He had been with the Hopkinsville department since last May. Meacham had more than 14 years of experience of law enforcement in Christian County.Gov. Matt Bevin announced the officers death on Twitter.In Frankfort, lawmakers in the House stood for a moment of silence after Rep. Walker Wood Thomas of Hopkinsville announced that an officer had been shot.
By West Kentucky Star Staff Mar. 29, 2018 | 07:18 PM | GRAVES COUNTY, KY

A head-on collision in Graves County Thursday afternoon left one person dead and two others injured.

According to the Graves County Sheriff's Office, the crash happened around 1:40 pm on KY 303 near Moreland Road. Deputies said a southbound minivan driven by 84-year-old Nell Blalock, of Mayfield, collided head on with a northbound car driven by 32-year-old Ashley Delisi, of Pilot Oak.

Deputies said Blalock was killed on impact and pronounced dead by the Graves County Coroner's Office. Delisi had to be extricated from her vehicle by the Mayfield Fire Department.

Delisi and a two-year-old child in her vehicle were flown to separate Nashville area hospitals by Air Evac for treatment of their injuries. KY 303 was shut down for approximately three hours while the scene was reconstructed.

Deputies said Blalock and Delisi were wearing their seat belts and the child was restrained in a child safety seat.
By Kentucky News Network Mar. 30, 2018 | 03:06 PM | FRANKFORT, KY





Kentucky Attorney General Andy Beshear tweeted a video Thursday night, saying he was "outraged" over the passage of a pension bill by legislators. He says it violates a contract the state made with teachers."Last night we saw government at it's worst when the leadership of the House and Senate, in the dark of night, amended what was supposed to be a sewage bill into what they claim is pension reform," Beshear said. "If and when the Governor's office signs that bill into law, your Attorney General's office will file suit seeking to overturn as much, if not all, of this terrible bill as we can."Angry teachers returned to the capitol rotunda Friday morning, chanting "We've had enough."It's not spring break yet, so teachers were supposed to be in class, but several school districts across the state, including those in Jefferson and Fayette Counties, were forced to close Friday because so many teachers called in sick to protest the pension bill.The Senate voted 22-15 Thursday to approve the bill that preserves most pension benefits for current workers, including their full cost of living raises. And it wouldn't change how long current teachers must work before being eligible for full retirement benefits. Most of the changes would impact new hires.The Kentucky House of Representatives voted 49-46 to approve the bill earlier in the day.
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By: Paige Cline The hills are still green for the most part, but a little[Read More]
TASHKENT (Reuters) - Uzbekistan offered on Tuesday to host peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban, a move that could make Tashkent a player in settling the decades-long conflict in the neighboring country.





The former Soviet republic is seeking to raise its international profile as part of President Shavkat Mirziyoyevs campaign to open up the nation of 32 million and attract foreign investment after decades of isolation and economic stagnation.





We stand ready to create all necessary conditions, at any stage of the peace process, to arrange on the territory of Uzbekistan direct talks between the government of Afghanistan and the Taliban movement, Mirziyoyev told a conference in Tashkent attended by Afghan President Ashraf Ghani.




Bless our families and our children,

and choose from our homes those who you desire for this holy work.

Heavenly Father,your divine Son taught usto pray to the Lord of the harvestto send laborers into His vineyard.We earnestly beg youto bless our Diocese and our worldwith many priests and religiouswho will love you fervently and gladlyand courageously spend their livesin service to your Son's Church,especially the poor and the needy.Teach them to respond generouslyand keep them ever faithfulin following your Son Jesus Christ,that under the guidance of the HolySpiritand with the inspiration ofSaint Damien and Blessed Mariannethe Good News of redemptionmay be brought to all.We ask this through Christ our Lord.
As protests continue to erupt in the streets of Kenosha, Wisconsin, and across the world in outrage against the horrific shooting of Jacob Bla Read more
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The man accused of killing an off-duty Hopkinsville police officer was shot and killed during an encounter with law enforcement officers early Friday morning.

According to the TBI, James Kennith Decoursey refused to obey commands from officers, which is when the situation escalated and the officers opened fire on Wilma Rudolph Boulevard in Clarksville just after midnight.

Authorities said the officers first found the vehicle Decoursey had stolen in a parking lot at Exit 4 off Interstate 24. After receiving a call from the hotel across the street reporting that a man who matched Decoursey's description was there asking for a cigarette, the officers found Decoursey crossing Wilma Rudolph Boulevard.

"Decoursey appears to have ignored repeated commands and the situation escalated, resulting in the law enforcement officers firing upon Decoursey, killing him," said the TBI in a statement.

Two Montgomery County deputies and a U.S. Marshal opened fire on Decoursey. None of the officers were injured in the incident. Their names have not been released by authorities.

The TBI joined the investigation into the shooting of Decoursey at the request of 19th District Attorney General John Carney. The agency will hand over their findings to the district attorney general, who will decide on the legality of the officers' actions.

According to Kentucky State Police, Decoursey was impersonating a police officer when he pulled over off-duty Hopkinsville Officer Phillip Meacham at 5:10 p.m. Thursday on Paulette Court in Hopkinsville, KY.

During the incident, 38-year-old Meacham was shot and killed.

After the shooting, Decoursey reportedly fled the scene and stole a white Chevrolet pickup truck.

MORE ABOUT THE SUSPECT

Decoursey, 35, has a history of arrests in Kentucky. News4 found that Decoursey has charges dating back to a burglary charge in 2002. He was also charged with fraudulent use of credit cards in 2007.

Decoursey has been arrested five times for possession of methamphetamine. On one occasion, Decoursey appealed on the basis his home was searched illegally. A judge found the search was justified.

BACKGROUND OF OFFICER MEACHAM

Meacham had worked with the Hopkinsville Police Department since May 2017. He previously worked for 12 years with the Christian County Sheriff's Office. Meacham has two school-aged children.

Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin tweeted about the officer's death, saying, "There is no greater sacrifice than that of a person willing to lay down their life for another."

The Associated Press reported the lawmakers in the House stood for a moment of silence after Rep. Walker Wood Thomas of Hopkinsville announced that an officer had been shot.

On Friday morning, police officers will be escorting Meacham's body from the Medical Examiner's Office in Madisonville through downtown Hopkinsville to Lamb's Funeral Home on Lafayette Road. The procession will exit the Pennyrile Parkway on to the bypass, to North Main, to Country Club, then Lafayette Road and then to the funeral home. The intersections along this route will be blocked off during this time.

A fund has been set up to raise money for Meacham's family. Click here for more information about how to donate.

The Hopkinsville Police Department has released this statement:

"Our hearts are heavy this morning as we mourn the loss of our brother and friend, Officer Phillip Meacham. We have placed his patrol vehicle in front of the Police Department for citizens to bring flowers, cards or anything else they may want to place on it. We will also be holding a candlelight vigil in the days to follow and will let everyone know when this will be. We ask in the meantime that you continue praying for the Meacham family and all those that are hurting from this loss."
NEW HARTFORD  The Food Bank of Central New York and Townsquare Media teamed up Thursday night to host the first celebrity bartending challenge.

At Tom Cavallos Restaurant in New Hartford, local celebrities put their bartending skills to the test. All tips collected will benefit the Food Bank of CNY and 10 percent of Cavallos sales were also donated to help feed those in need.

Organizers of the event say they hope the event will continue.

They really wanted to do something to support the Food Bank, and not only to raise money, but to raise awareness about the work that were doing here in Oneida County, said Lynn Hy, chief development officer for the Food Bank of CNY. We were throwing out ideas and this idea came about and everyone seems to be having a great time, so were hoping that this is going to be the first of several annual celebrity bartending events.

The final total raised Thursday night was $945.
MADISON, N.Y.--The last time United States Marine Corps. sergeant Robert Hughes was home, it was two-and-half years ago. He's been deployed in Okinawa, Japan for the last five, and has missed a large portion of his younger brother's life.

"He was like, five years old the last time I saw him," Hughes said. "Unfortunately, I wasn't here for a lot of it, but now I'm home again. I'm going to stay home for a little bit, just to be with him."

9-year-old Wyatt Sitts had no idea his brother came home when he filed into the Madison Central School gymnasium.

Neither did his extended family.

In fact, Wyatt was at the center of a white lie to bring the community together for his brother's homecoming.

"We thought we were down here to see a 9-year-old get an award for student of the month," Louise Sitts, Wyatt and Robert's grandmother said.

Shortly before the assembly began, the school's principal asked several students to sit in the middle of the gym. When asked if anyone knew someone serving in the military, Wyatt's hand shot up in the air. After telling the auditorium his brother was coming home Sunday for Easter, he turned around and saw Hughes approaching him, several days early.

"To see the reaction on Wyatt's face and to look at my family, yeah it was worth it," Amy Sitts, Wyatt and Robert's mother said.

"I thought it was awesome to see him after two and a half years," Wyatt said.

"[We're] a lot closer than you would think," Hughes said. "I changed his diapers."

" When you come home and everything's the same, it's just how you remember it for the most part, it's a pretty good feeling," Hughes said. "It's what makes home, home."
The Oneida County Sheriffs Office has announced the dates for this years New York State Boater Safety Courses, which will be held in various locations throughout Oneida County.

The following classes will be offered:

- April 14 at the Oneida County Department of Public Works conference room, 5999 Judd Road in Oriskany.

- April 28 at the Oneida County Department of Public Works conference room, 5999 Judd Road in Oriskany.

- June 9 at the Lake Delta Yacht Club located at 6487 Karlen Road in Rome

- June 23 (hosted by the Kayuta Lake Improvement Association) at the Forestport Town Hall located on Woodhull Road in Forestport.

All classes will begin at 9 a.m., and the classes are eight hours long. Its recommended that attendees bring snacks or a lunch.

Classes are limited to 30 students, and additional classes will be offered if needed.

You can sign up for the free classes by calling the Oneida County Sheriffs Office at 315-765-2222, and ask to speak with Sue Goding.
By Eric Levenson, Nicole Chavez and Daniel Shepherd, CNN

(CNN) -- [Breaking news update, posted at 10:37 a.m. ET]

Noor Salman, the widow of the Pulse nightclub gunman, on Friday was found not guilty of providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization and not guilty of obstruction of justice. Federal jurors in Orlando weighed the charges in connection with her husband's 2016 killing spree.

[Previous story, posted at 9:49 a.m. ET]

A verdict has been reached in the trial of Noor Salman, the widow of the Pulse nightclub gunman, who is accused of providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization and obstruction of justice related to the 2016 Orlando massacre.

Jurors began deliberating the federal case Wednesday afternoon.

Salman, 31, was arrested in January 2017, months after her husband, Omar Mateen, killed 49 people and injured more than 50 others when he opened fire the prior June at Pulse nightclub. Mateen was killed by police who responded to the attack.

Prosecutors said Salman aided Mateen ahead of his killing spree, then lied to the FBI in an attempt to thwart the investigation.

"This case is about what she knew and what she did," Assistant US Attorney Sara Sweeney said. "The defendant didn't pull the trigger that night, but she did serve as a green light for her husband."

Salman's attorneys argued that their client was not an accomplice but a simple-minded victim of her husband's infidelity and lies.

"She doesn't go to the mosque, she searches for Hello Kitty on her website," defense attorney Charles Swift said in his closing argument. "We're supposed to believe she had long conversations with Omar Mateen about jihads?"

Salman did not testify during the trial. If she is convicted on the terror charge, she could face life in prison.

'I wish I had been more truthful'

During 10 days of testimony, jurors watched surveillance video showing Mateen buying weapons prior to the shooting and also opening fire inside the nightclub.

Security cameras also recorded Mateen going with Salman on a shopping spree for clothing, toys and jewelry at several stores in central Florida at least a week before the shooting.

After Salman's arrest, she said in a statement to the FBI that she knew in advance that her husband was going to do something violent.

"I wish I had done the right thing, but my fear held me back. I wish I had been more truthful," she wrote in the statement, which was shown in court.

FBI special agent Ricardo Enriquez testified that Salman said in several statements to the FBI that Mateen watched jihadi beheading videos, purchased a rifle and ammunition and went to a gun range to practice.

'She's not calculating'

Defense attorneys cast Salman as a mother and a victim of Mateen's abuse and infidelity, as well as of the FBI's coercive investigators.

"Omar Mateen is a monster. Noor Salman is a mother, not a monster. Her only sin is she married a monster," defense attorney Linda Moreno told jurors.

Since the defense launched its case Monday, Mateen's family and friends described her as a peaceful person and a good mother. They said Salman is not capable of being "calculating," "deceptive" or "able to connect the dots."

"Nothing harmful would come out of her," a friend of Salman's who was identified only as Ms. Ahmed told jurors, according to CNN affiliate WKGM.

Bruce Frumkin, a forensic clinical psychologist, testified Tuesday, saying lack of sleep, mental issues, low IQ scores and lengthy interrogations contribute to false confessions.

Salman was interviewed by authorities for 11 hours and her IQ score is 84, which makes her "below average in intelligence," Frumkin said.

Gunman's father was FBI informant

Defense attorneys filed a motion for dismissal last weekend after prosecutors informed them that the shooter's father was an FBI informant who is under criminal investigation.

The revelation threatened to upend the case against Salman, but the judge denied the motion, saying it was not relevant to the case against her.

Seddique Mateen was a confidential FBI source at various points in time between January 2005 and June 2016, a motion filed by the defense states, citing an email from Sweeney.

The email also states that Seddique Mateen is being investigated for money transfers to Turkey and Afghanistan after documents were found in his home on June 12, 2016, the day of the Pulse attack. The dates of the money transfers were between March 16, 2016, and June 5, 2016, according to the email.

Defense attorneys argued that if they had known about Seddique Mateen's FBI status, they may have argued other theories during the trial, including that the Mateens, rather than Salman, conspired to support ISIS, according to the motion.

Seddique Mateen had been on the prosecution's witness list but was not called to testify in the trial.

(The-CNN-Wire &  2018 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.)
On Thursday, the New York State Police arrested Cody A. Madonia, age 26, of Rome, NY following a multi-agency investigation into numerous complaints throughout the United States where the defendant failed to provide purchased equipment to the victims from his business 'Proforce Excavation and Equipment' located at Turin Road in the City of Rome.

Madonia is alleged to have failed to provide these pieces of equipment upon receiving payment of over $90,000 from the victims. These complaints were received following Madonias previous arrest for a Grand Larceny in the third degree on January 15, 2018, where Madonia was arrested in regards to an internet (eBay) sale of a Bobcat skid-steer from his business and failed to provide the Bobcat upon payment of $17,500.

Madonia is currently been charged with Grand Larceny 2nd degree (C- felony), Scheme to Defraud 1st degree and Falsify Business Records 1st degree, both of which are a class E" Felony. Madonia is being held at the Oneida County Jail for centralized arraignment.

The New York State Police were assisted in this investigation by the Pennsylvania State Police, Elkhart County Sheriffs Department in Indiana, and the Monroe County Sheriffs Department in Tennessee.
NEW HARTFORD - The YWCA held an event Thursday evening to announce its annual honorees.





The "Salute to Outstanding Woman" is held each year to honor local women who do outstanding work in their career fields and in the community.

The YWCA celebrated 30 years of shining a light on women's achievements in the Mohawk Valley. They honored nine women who they say demonstrate excellence and leadership.

"Its an opportunity for us at the Y to welcome these women in to our, sort of our network," YWCA CEO Dianne Stancatto said. "They bring so much diversity to our mission, and that's how I feel about it anyway. And it's always a fun time to get to know them."

At the reception at Valentino's, previous honorees were able to welcome the incoming group.

Organizers with the YWCA say two new categories were added - One for entrepreneurs and one to honor a young scholar in the community.

"I feel very honored to be the youngest but also very nervous because Ive never received an award like this before," said 15-year-old Dah Eh, the Outstanding Youth Honoree. "So it's very humbling and a very proud moment for me, and my familys very proud of me as well."

YWCA is an organization dedicated to empowering women, eliminating racism, and promoting peace. It is their mission to bring awareness to issues affecting women in local communities.

The Salute to Outstanding Women' is one of the organization's biggest events of the year. The awards dinner will be held on May 17.
TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (AP)  The state of Indiana will soon dedicate a new historical marker in Terre Haute commemorating Syrian immigrants who flocked to the area in the early 20th Century.

An unveiling ceremony at Indiana State University's Foundation Office will be held on April 19, celebrating the community known as "Little Syria on the Wabash."

The marker will later be installed near the office.

According to the Indiana Historical Bureau, Arabic-speaking Christian Syrians migrated to the area in the early 1900s.

State historical markers are used to recognize significant people, organization, places and events in Indiana history. More than 630 historical markers have been installed throughout the state.
TIPPECANOE COUNTY, Ind.  Incumbent Prosecutor Patrick Harrington said he's sticking to a positive message based on his record in office but his opponent, Earl McCoy released a video on Facebook claiming otherwise.

For months, Earl McCoy has released several campaign videos attacking Prosecutor Patrick Harrington's record. But a recent one takes a different approach.



"I have been informed that my opponent plans to launch a personal attack against my character," said McCoy in the video. "In fact, he has already launched a smear campaign thinly disguised as a poll."

Harrington denies those claims. He said McCoy's video is nothing more than a political bait-and-switch tactic.

"This is a well organized negative campaign out there that's based upon deception and lies," said Harrington.

Harrington said he never planned to release anything negative about his opponent. That poll McCoy was referring to was a phone survey of 250 people in Tippecanoe County. Harrington said it contained both positive and negative information about both candidates but it found voters here don't like negative campaigns.

"When someone doesn't have their own message and vision and own accomplishments to talk about, they go negative," said Harrington.

That's why Harrington said he's focusing his campaign on his own record. But in the video, McCoy said Harrington is planning to embarrass him about his criminal history.

"I am not proud of the fact that I have been convicted of misdemeanors," said McCoy in the video. "I am, however, very proud of the way I learned from my mistakes and I turned my life around."

McCoy doesn't say what he did in 1989 but we found it online. Court records show when McCoy was 20 years old, he was charged with a C Felony but pleaded guilty to Operating a Vehicle While Intoxicated While having a prior conviction for Operating a Vehicle While Intoxicated, which is an A Misdemeanor.

"Some political advisors said I should expunge my criminal history to hide it from the public," said McCoy in the video. "I deliberately chose not to, I've not tried to hide anything."

McCoy also came clean about tax concerns, claiming Harrington was planning to bring those to light as well.

"It is true that I have had some tax issues that arose as a result of my law practice going from a sole proprietorship to a partnership and then back to a sole proprietorship. As a result of two separate employer tax identification numbers being on record, I was being taxed twice," explained McCoy in the video.

According to public tax records, McCoy has had repetitive issues in federal, state, and county taxes for the past decade. His most recent tax warrant was paid off Wednesday for $6,461.05.

"I do not owe any back taxes," said McCoy in the recording. "My accountants have issued a statement reaffirming that these issues have been resolved and that these issues have absolutely no bearing on my legal ability or fitness for office."

McCoy said he was unable to meet with News 18 on camera Wednesday or Thursday.

When and if he does agree to go on camera, we plan to ask McCoy about his taxes to try and confirm some conflicting data in public records.

We hope to bring you that story in the coming weeks.

Correction Posted April 6, 2018: McCoy was charged with a Class D Felony, not a Class C Felony as this original story states. Online public records show the charge was a Class C Felony, however, that is a mistake. According to Tippecanoe County Clerk Christa Coffey, in the 1980s, criminal charges were classified as C-F cases. In the transition from paper documents to online documents, the charge carried through as a C Felony because of that classification. However, the original probable cause confirms McCoy's charge was a Class D Felony.
A young man wanted to make a point about racism in the United States, but his plan backfired when he was exposed for a liar by police. 20-year-old Khalil Cavil of Texas was working at the Saltgrass Steak House in Odessa when he claimed he was discriminated against because of his Muslim name. Cavil took
A New York judge is on the wrong side of the law and he is facing charges of burglary.

The Long Island judge was arrested after police said he broke into a neighbors house and stole underwear belonging to their daughter.

The 23-year-old woman called police around 9:00 a.m. to report that there was a thief in her parents house. The woman was home alone at the time. The man was startled and escaped when he realized she was at home.

The woman gave police a description of the suspect and officers located him two blocks away.

Police identified the suspect as 49-year-old Suffolk County District Judge Robert Cicale, who is a married father of 3 children.

Police said that the judge was in possession of the 23-year-old womans soiled panties. Cicale was charged with second-degree burglary.

Cicale will be brought before a Nassau County judge for the arraignment.
Monday, April 2, 2018

AUGUSTA, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) -- 41-year-old Fritz Wedgeworth faced a judge Monday afternoon, but no bond was set.

The judge decided to defer bond for Wedgeworth until his case is taken to superior court.

Thursday, March 29, 2018

News 12 @ 6 O'clock / NBC 26 at 7

AUGUSTA, Ga. (WRDW/WAGT) -- Convicted sex offender Fritz Wedgeworth is walking back into jail less than 24 hours after investigators say he took off with a 15-year-old girl.

Community center cameras catch the 15-year-old walking out of Butler High School in the middle of the school day to the community center, where a community center worker says she asked to use his smartphone to make a call.

I thought I could help her call a parent I don't know and let her use my phone, said Kendrick Dixon.

A short time later Kendrick Dixon says a man pulled up on a motorcycle and rode off with the teen.

I noticed the female ran out of the bushes and greeted the guy with a hug. They spoke for a few seconds, he passed a helmet to her, she grabbed her book bag from out the bushes and hopped on the motorcycle," said Dixon.

Burke County say they found the 41-year-old and teen in a camper lot off River Rd. near Plant Vogtle. Investigators say the camper reeked of marijuana.

We asked if she needed any medical attention, immediate medical attention, she didn't so we were going to bring her to the office so she could be reunited with her mom, said Chief Lewis Blanchard, BCSO.

We dug deeper and found not only is Wedgeworth a convicted sex offender for a sexual battery charge he racked up in California in 2001. But he's also indicted for a rape that allegedly happened two years ago in Richmond County.

In an incident report, he's accused of having sex with a woman while she was unconscious.

We found Senior Judge Albert Pickett granted Wedgeworth a $50,000 bond for the charge back in 2016.

Any time you have a situation like this you want to close it as quickly as possible and thank goodness we had proactive deputies were able to help make sure that took place," said Cheif Blanchard.

We spoke to the teens mother who was really thankful to everyone who shared the picture and information so quickly, but she says it's time for her daughter to heal and figure out whats best for her right now.

We asked Richmond County how this student was able to leave school we are waiting for a response.
Brutal police violence is a feature of daily life in America. This year has seen a rise in protests against police violence as part of the resurgence of class struggle, particularly in the wake of the murder of Stephon Clark in Sacramento earlier this month and the announcement that the officers involved in the murder of Alton Sterling will not face charges. So far this year, the police have killed more than 308 people of every race, ethnicity, gender and age. What follows is just a sampling of those killed in the last two weeks.

Unarmed man with pants down fatally shot by deputy in Houston, Texas

Last Thursday, Danny Ray Thomas, a 34-year-old man, was shot and killed by a Harris County deputy in Houston, Texas.

According to the Houston Chronicle, witnesses said Thomas was walking in the middle of the intersection of Imperial Valley and Greens Road with his pants around his ankles, talking to himself and hitting vehicles as they passed by.

One of the drivers of the vehicles then exited their vehicle and confronted Thomas, starting a verbal and physical altercation. A Harris County deputy witnessed the incident and stopped his car to get out and intervene.

Thomas reportedly did not respond to the officers commands and approached the officer, who then shot him once. Thomas died later that day at the hospital.

The Harris County deputy who shot Thomas said he did so fearing for his safety despite the fact that Thomas had his pants around his ankles. The deputy also claimed Thomas had some object in his hands, despite no weapon or objects having been found on the scene.

Thomass family members confirmed that he was the father of two children who had died in 2016 when their mother allegedly drowned them in a bathtub. Marketa Thomas, Danny Ray Thomass sister, said that she had relied on her brother for support as they both suffered from depression. So far this year, there have been two people killed by police in Harris County.

Columbus, Ohio police fatally shoot woman during SWAT standoff

Police say they responded to a report of gunshots early Saturday morning before 4:30 a.m. in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio.

Officers arrived at the residence to find 25-year-old Kaitlin Marie Demeo, who had barricaded herself inside the house with a rifle alone.

The police then called the SWAT and Negotiation Team, who arrived on the scene and attempted to negotiate with Demeo, but were unsuccessful. Nearly four hours later, Demeo reportedly fired at the officers from inside and was killed by two SWAT officers who returned fire. Police identified the two officers as Glenn Thivener and Keith Kise, both veterans of the police for over 20 years.

Demeos killing was the fourth police shooting in Columbus so far this year.

Phoenix, Arizona police shoot and kill man after tasing him 3 times

Police in west Phoenix received a report of a vehicle break-in last Friday around 11 a.m. When they arrived on the scene, they found 23-year-old Kevin Robles, holding a knife and acting agitated. They initially deployed a Taser, shocking Robles three times. However, police say it had no noticeable effect, which is when police say that Robles attacked them with the knife.

Police then shot Robles, who was later pronounced dead at a local hospital.

Polk County, Florida deputies shoot and kill man with a history of mental health issues

On Tuesday, March 20, 20-year-old Chance Haegele was killed after he was shot 17 times by police in Winter Haven, Florida.

Police arrived at his home after his mother, Christina Haegele, made an emergency call to prevent her son from committing suicide.

When they arrived he allegedly pointed an unloaded shotgun at the officers, who then opened fire, shooting Haegele 17 times. Prior to the barrage of bullets, Haegeles mother had told the officers that the shotgun was not loaded and that he was not a threat.

Haegele had been admitted to the hospital seven times under the Baker Act in Florida, which allows for certain individuals to be examined or admitted to hospitals involuntarily if deemed necessary by judges, doctors, lawyers or other professionals.

He had attended Florida State University pursuing a degree in business finance, earning a 3.7 grade point average. Haegele suffered from depression, which had reportedly intensified after his father discontinued financial support for Chance while he attended college.
The Russian government on Thursday ordered the closure of the American consulate in St. Petersburg and the expulsion of 60 US intelligence agents operating under diplomatic cover, in direct response to the anti-Russian campaign spearheaded by Britain and the United States.

The move came three days after the Trump administration ordered the closing of the Russian consulate in Seattle, Washington and expulsion of 60 Russian officials, most of them working out of the embassy in Washington.

The mutual expulsions and closures mean there are only two Russian consulates in the entire United States, in Washington and New York City, and only two American consulates in Russia, in Moscow and Vladivostok.

US Ambassador Jon Huntsman was summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry and asked by Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov to explain his suggestion that the US government would look into seizing Russian state assets within the United States, in a further escalation of the anti-Russian campaign launched earlier this month by Britain and the US.

According to the Foreign Ministry, Ryabkov told Huntsman that such a move would have the gravest consequences for global stability. The ministry statement continued: It was recommended to the US authorities, who are encouraging and fanning a campaign of slander against our country, to come to their senses and put a stop to reckless actions that are destroying bilateral relations.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said his government would expel representatives of all 27 governments that have ordered Russian diplomats to leave, matching the number expelled in each case tit for tat. In addition to 23 British diplomats already kicked out and 60 from the US, this will mean 13 from Ukraine, four from Germany, one from Georgia and so on, up to a total of 153.

The US-UK campaign against Russia began with British claims, unsupported by any publicly revealed evidence, that the Russian government was responsible for poisoning Sergei Skripal, a former British spy, and his daughter Yulia. The two collapsed on a park bench in Salisbury, England March 4 and have been hospitalized in critical condition since then.

On March 15, the US, Britain, France and Germany issued a joint statement declaring Russia responsible for the supposed nerve gas attack on the Skripals. This was followed by similar statements from the European Union and NATO, and then the US expulsions, announced Monday, March 26, the most sweeping diplomatic sanctions since the Cold War.

The EU statement covered up considerable division within the bloc. Greece, Hungary and Cyprus have opposed the campaign, and nine other countries--Belgium, Bulgaria, Ireland, Luxemburg, Malta, Austria, Portugal, Slovakia and Slovenia--declined to join in the expulsion of diplomats.

There are also divisions within the major European powers, particularly Germany, where prominent leaders of the Social Democratic Party and Left Party have rejected taking action against Moscow in the absence of any proof of Russian responsibility for the Skripal poisoning.

The deputy leader of the SPD, Ralf Stegner, criticized the expulsions in an interview with the Suddeutsche Zeitung newspaper, saying he feared an escalation which can still hurt us very much. Referring to the lack of evidence, he said: Appearances and plausibility are not enough to convict.

The refusal to supply any evidence to back up the charges against Russia is the clearest demonstration that the campaign by London and Washington is a planned and deliberate provocation. The British government has not even submitted samples of the alleged nerve gas poison to the Office for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the UN agency which, based on international treaties to which Britain is a party, has oversight in such cases.

OPCW technicians arrived in Salisbury this week to begin their own tests, with results expected sometime in April. Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov reiterated his governments demand that the OPCW meet as early as Monday to discuss the Skripal case and the British government claims.

Lavrov criticized UK Prime Minister Theresa May, saying her government was forcing everyone to follow an anti-Russian course, leaving the Russian government no alternative but to respond to absolutely unacceptable actions that are taken against us under very harsh pressure from the United States and Britain under the pretext of the so-called Skripal case.

A number of chemical weapons experts have called into question the official British account, since it does not square with the known facts about nerve gas weapons similar to novichok, the material allegedly used against the Skripals.

The latest account from London does not help matters. Dean Haydon, the chief of Britains counter-terrorism police, said the Skripals had come into contact with the nerve agent from the front door of their home. A Russian security official, Major-General Alexander Mikhailov, pointed out that if a nerve gas poisoning had taken place on the doorstep, the Skripals would have died immediately.

Instead, the father and daughter went out to lunch, finished their meal and moved to a bench in a nearby park, where they collapsed. Moreover, British government sources said Thursday that Yulia Skripal was no longer in critical condition and was expected to survive, a result that appeared to rule out an attack by a poison as lethal as novichok.

Nor does the Russian government have a plausible motive for seeking the death of Sergei Skripal, who was jailed rather than executed when uncovered as a double agent in 2004. Skripal was released in a spy swap in 2010, and his daughter Yulia, a Russian citizen, was allowed to leave the country with him.

From the standpoint of motive, the Skripal affair benefits only the military-intelligence agencies in Britain and the United States, which have been seeking every possible pretext for intensifying conflict with Russia. Tensions have been steadily building up over the US-backed right-wing coup in Ukraine, the civil war in Syria, where the US is seeking to oust the Russian-backed regime of Bashar al-Assad, and, more generally, the NATO mobilization in Eastern Europe and the Baltic states, clearly aimed at preparing war with Russia.

Washington and London are particularly concerned about the emergence of foreign policy differences with the European Union, which has its own interests in Russia and the Middle East, at odds with those of the United States. The Pentagon is seeking an agreement at the upcoming NATO summit in July on what is being called the 30-30-30 proposal, a commitment to have 30 troop battalions, 30 naval ships and 30 fighter squadrons ready to deploy in the event of a conflict with Russia.

The provocations against Russia also have a powerful domestic motive. The development of a state of quasi-war with Russia provides a pretext for attacks on internal political opposition, both in the United States and Britain, where any significant social struggle can now be branded as Russian-inspired or the result of fake news spread by Russian trolls and bots on the Internet.

Since the New Year, working class struggles have increased in both countries and other parts of Europe in what is emerging as a generalized upsurge of social unrest. The turn to domestic repression and dictatorial methods, including censorship of the Internet, is the response of the ruling classes in all of the major capitalist states. A major aim in demonizing Russia is to stoke up a war fever at home in order to justify repressive measures against social and political opposition from the working class.

Efforts are continuing in the American corporate media to escalate the anti-Russia campaign. NBC News broadcast a report Thursday night claiming--on the basis of a single interview with a Russian defector and former double agent--that the Putin regime has drawn up a hit list of eight individuals targeted for assassination.

The list supposedly includes the defector himself, Skripal and Christopher Steele, the former British secret agent who compiled a dossier of anti-Trump material gathered from his contacts within Russia and supplied it to the FBI, the Democratic Party and Senator John McCain.
Around the world, capitalist governments are working with Facebook, Google and other giant companies to censor the internet and block the spread of socialism.

In late April 2017, Google announced the implementation of new search algorithms which heavily censored access to the World Socialist Web Site and other left wing, anti-war and progressive websites. Similar measures have since been introduced by Facebook and Twitter. The WSWS has taken the lead in exposing this conspiracy to censor the Internet.
TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (WTHI) - A Greencastle man will be sentenced in April after pleading guilty to a charge of attempted murder. Jeffrey Hunter, 50, will be sentenced on April 12th in Putnam Circuit Court.

According to on-line court records, Hunter signed a plea agreement where he agreed to plead guilty to attempted murder. His other charges of theft, resisting law enforcement, battery by means of a deadly weapon, and aggravated battery were dismissed. Attempted murder is a Level One felony under Indiana law.

Jeffrey Hunter Jeffrey Hunter

The charges stem from a shooting incident that happened in December of 2016. Police in Putnam County were looking for Hunter, who was suspected of stealing from a Greencastle tractor supply company. Officer Luke Brown of the Cloverdale Police Department was among the officers who confronted Hunter at his home on East County Road 375 South.

It's during that confrontation police say Hunter shot Brown in his bulletproof vest, which may have saved Brown's life. This allowed Brown to return fire, striking Hunter in the chest. Brown's mother told News 10 her son then administered first aid on Hunter while paramedics were en route.
TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (WTHI) - The community came together on Thursday night to write the next chapter.

It was part of the Big Read Program through the Vigo County Public Library.

The wrap up for this year's program was celebrated with a party.

This year's Big Read book was "When the Emperor Was Devine."

It's about a family's experience in a Japanese internment camp.

Program leaders say this year's book has started important conversations.

"We're kind of looking at the progress we've made...and also making sure we're getting1 to know our neighbors and appreciate diversity in the Wabash Valley and make sure things like that don't happen again," Sarah Trover, the Program and Event Manager at the Vigo County Public Library said.

This year's event was a major success.

Library workers told us they've had a great turnout at events.

They're excited about similar programs in the future.
CBS News - The accounts of about 150 million users of nutrition-tracking app MyFitnessPal were breached last month, Under Armour (UAA) said Thursday, adding its name to the list of corporations targeted by hackers.

Hackers gained access to personal data included usernames, emails and encrypted passwords, the sportswear apparel maker said in a news release. The affected data did not include Social Security numbers and driver's license numbers.

Under Armour is investigating the data breach.

The company on Tuesday learned that an unauthorized party had acquired data associated with MyFitnessPal user accounts in late February. Under Armour said it would notify anyone whose information was exposed in the cybertheft.

Users of the tracking app will be required to change their passwords, Under Armour said.

Word of the hack comes a day after Boeing (BA) reported being hit, with malware affecting a "small number" of systems, and in a week in which Atlanta is contending with a "ransomware" attack that crippled the city's computer network. Two days ago, online travel site Orbitz said data on as many as 880,000 customers may have been compromised.

To start off the month, Equifax added 2.4 million Americans to the original 145.5 million impacted by a data breach last year.

"Ugh, I'm already fodder in the Equifax saga," Janet Terrell, a user of the MyFitnessPal app, replied when told of Under Armour's announcement.

 2018 CBS Interactive Inc.. All Rights Reserved.
Fifty years ago this April, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. His tragic death has made King a saintly figure, but there's one place where his everyday life gets as much due as his big protests and dramatic speeches -- Bimini.

Bimini is the closest island of the Bahamas to the United States; it's accessible via a two-hour ferry from Miami or a puddle-jumper flight from Fort Lauderdale. The wreck of the ship the Sapona, a few miles offshore, is a stunning diving and snorkeling spot, and the iron hull was a popular place for rum runners like Joe Kennedy to stash their alcohol during Prohibition

In search of a mentor

King chose Bimini because it was where politician and civil rights reformer Adam Clayton Powell, Jr had a home. Powell was living in Bimini because of controversies back home in New York City.

After referring to a woman named Esther James as a "bag woman" (as in, someone who takes money illegally), she sued him for defamation and won a six-figure settlement. Rather than pay her, Powell ignored subpoenas, was found guilty of contempt of court, skipped town and headed to the Bahamas.

Because coming back to the US meant potential arrest for Powell, King came to him instead, and, like many before him, was immediately charmed by Bimini. King considered Powell the most influential black man in America, a kingmaker who could help King and his work to get international attention.

Island life

When he was in town, King often stayed at the Big Game Club and Resort, a members' club that doubled as a hotel. His room, number 303, has since been remodeled (meaning you can't say you are sleeping in the same bed or using the same telephone as him), but people will still ask specifically for King's former room.

While King spent much of his time on the island relaxing, writing and socializing with Powell, he did have certain traditions every time he visited -- namely, a lunch of conch fritters and ginger ale, a combination most locals hadn't seen before.

Artist Tommy Saunders, who lives in a home facing Radio Beach and makes crafts out of shells and driftwood he finds in the sand, worked as a personal assistant for King and was often the one who hand-delivered this lunch every day.

Meanwhile, Tommy's older brother Ansil, a boat builder and champion bonefisher, became King's guide and friend, taking the reverend out to secluded parts of the island where he could be alone with his thoughts. Like King, Ansil Saunders is a deeply religious man, and the two quickly bonded over their faith.

"He was so gentle," Saunders recalls. "His voice was a voice of love. It caused you to be like brothers and sisters, you'd see people in a different light." But he told CNN Travel that King could also be quite funny and playful, joking around with his friends over a drink.

It was on one of those days that Saunders and King spent out on a boat in the red mangroves that King wrote notes for his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, which he gave in Oslo in 1964. The trip out to the island had made him think about the mechanics of travel, and of how many people work together behind the scenes in order to bring passengers to their destinations.

"Every time I take a flight, I am always mindful of the many people who make a successful journey possible -- the known pilots and the unknown ground crew. So you honor the dedicated pilots of our struggle who have sat at the controls as the freedom movement soared into orbit," King wrote.

"You honor the ground crew without whose labor and sacrifices the jet flights to freedom could never have left the earth."

The legacy lives on

Biminites are proud of their connection to America's foremost civil rights leader. Unlike so many who only saw King speaking in front of crowds, at his most charismatic and thundering, the people of Bimini got to meet him as a regular man.

Adding to his mythology is the fact that King was killed not long after returning from the Bimini trip where he wrote his famous speech to the sanitation workers on strike in Memphis, often called the "I've been to the mountaintop" speech for its legendary refrain.

"He brought so much to this last speech that they had to help him back to his seat," says Saunders. "In a week, he was dead."

Later, King's widow Coretta Scott King sent Saunders a signed copy of her book "My Life With Martin Luther King, Jr," which he still counts among his most prized possessions. Though she had never been to Bimini herself, she knew how much the island and its people had meant to her husband.

When King died, the people of Bimini had a service to remember him. Now, there are two busts of King on the island -- one in front of the Straw Market in the center of Alice Town and one among the very mangroves where King spent so many peaceful afternoons.

Both depict King inside a seashell, an homage to the island and a way of keeping him safe. Saunders takes visitors out to the bust in his boat, hoping that they too will feel moved by the same spirit that the great man did, and says he has witnessed several religious conversions at the site.

The small but lovingly maintained Bimini Museum, across the street from the Straw Market, has photographs and memorabilia from King's visits to the island, as well as information about the island's history and famous native sons and daughters. There's also a plaque honoring King at the airport.

And King's legacy lived on in other ways. Inspired by his civil rights activism in the US, black Bahamians pushed back against the rule of the Bay Street Boys, a group of wealthy whites who controlled the government through illegal gerrymandering despite being a small minority of the population, eventually causing the party to dissolve in the early 1970s.

Powell, too, lives on as a local hero. When he died in 1972, he asked that his ashed be spread over Bimini.

But at the end of the day, King's legend endures on Bimini -- both as a civil rights hero and as a guy everybody could say hi to on the street. "I'd like somebody to be able to mention that Martin Luther King, Jr. tried to give his life serving others," says Saunders.
BLUE MOUNTAIN, Miss. (WTVA) - Blue Mountain police are asking the public for help identifying two people accused of identity theft.

On March 25, sometime near 8 p.m, two men went into the Blue Mtn. Dollar General and used another person's personal and banking information from Pennsylvania to purchase a Visa gift card in the amount of $955.77.

Police say the two men later went back to the store to try another purchase in the amount of $962.51, but they were declined.

Anyone who can identify these men is urged to contact the Blue Mtn. Police Department at 662-685-4721.

You can see surveillance in the video above.
GADSDEN COUNTY, Fla. (WTXL) - The Gadsden County Sheriff's Office has announced the capture of two people wanted for injuring a person with a rifle round fired into a Dollar General Store in Georgia.

The Georgia fugitives are Alana Kirkpatrick and Jesus M. Rodriguez, both wanted on felony warrants, according to a news release.

Authorities said a bullet from an AK-47 rifle struck a person in the store.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigations contacted the Gadsden County Sheriffs Office for assistance in finding the suspects.

Captain Collins, Special Operations commander for GCSO, deployed a 15-man SWAT team on a manhunt for the suspects.

The team arrested both suspects at 98 Sarges Lane in Quincy about 11 p.m. Thursday.

Both suspects have an extensive criminal history, including weapons charges, the news release said.
LEON COUNTY, Fla. (WTXL) - Leon County and the City of Tallahassee kicked of the 2018 Neighborhood Recognition Program Thursday.

The program highlights neighborhoods doing great things in both the city and county.

The meeting was held right in the 2017 Tallahassee Neighborhood of the Year, Levy Park.

Residents of Levy Park and the Bond Community addressed attendees as well as Leon Commissioner at Large Nick Maddox, Mayor Pro Temp Curtis Richardson, and the Executive Director of Sustainable Tallahassee about how crucial it is to continue to uplift neighborhoods throughout.

"It's so important that we recognize these communities that are doing amazing things," said Maddox. "If you are a neighborhood or a neighbor doing great things, put your name in the hat and I think you'll be very happy about what you get from being neighbor or neighborhood of the year. "

And there's a new honor this year, Sustainable Neighborhood of the Year. To apply, visit talgov.com or www.leoncountyfl.gov/.
THOMASVILLE, Ga. (WALB) - Indictments handed down last July claim Favor Christian Academy Director, Linda Mclean, assaulted eight students from August 2016 to May 2017.

Now, that case is at a virtual standstill.

While looking through the latest court documents in the McLean case, she is currently living in Atlanta, out on a 50,000 dollar bond, but there is no date set for her trial.

McLean was indicted in July on 15 charges: eight counts of cruelty to children in the first degree, four counts of aggravated assault, one count of battery, one count simple battery and one count simple assault.

The indictment claims that McLean forced one child to lie across a chair with their pants down.

Then she made bigger students pin him down so she could whip him.

It also says she threw workbooks at children and choked them.

She is charged with grabbing a child by head, twisting their neck and forcing their head onto the table repeatedly.

In September, just two months after the indictment, McLean's attorney Converse Bright withdrew from the case.

According to a modified bond that was presented recently, McLean moved just south of Atlanta.

The court document mentioned the possible sale of Favor Christian Academy, allowing McLean to be involved in that process.

She is not allowed to open another school daycare or anything involving children until this case is settled.

The modified bond has strict rules as to not contacting staff, parents, or students of Favor Christian Academy.

Several motions have been filed by McLean's new attorney Chinwe' Foster, all but one have been denied.

We reached out to Assistant District Attorney Catherine Smith Thursday.

She said, "We are involved in meetings to review evidence with all the attorneys involved. No trial date has been set."

McLean still owns the school off North Broad Street. Another administrator has been brought in to oversee the school.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (WTXL) - The brother of the suspected Florida high school gunman has been released from jail after pleading no contest to a trespassing charge.

Zachary Cruz was released from the Broward County jail hours after being sentenced to time served and six months of probation for skateboarding on the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School campus.

Cruz has been ordered to enroll in therapy, wear an ankle monitor and cannot possess firearms or ammunition. He also can't come within a mile of the school.

The 18-year-old had been held on $500,000 bail since his arrest on March 19.
QUINCY, Fla. (WTXL) - Exciting changes are coming to Quincy, starting with plans to renovate the historic Stevens High School which burned down a year ago.

WTXL ABC 27 was at the groundbreaking ceremony to see how this will benefit the Quincy community.

Dozens of locals, some who were even students at Stevens High School, came out to the ceremony to cheer on the news that plans have been approved for construction to start.

On March 26, a fire erupted in the historic Stevens School, destroying the school locals have been attending since the 1920s.

Residents say it was the only school for African-Americans in Gadsden County before integration, adding, they lost a part of Quincys history when it burned down.

The $470,000 project wont just rebuild the school, it will also add a community center with an incubator, health services and food.

Some of the finest educators that have ever come out of Gadsden county came from the old Stevens school," said Commissioner Sherrie Taylor. "What we are getting ready to embark upon is services that mirror this community. They need health education programs from the people who live right around here.

Commissioner Sherrie Taylor adds it will bring new job opportunities and education programs to the community, something all the locals say they are thrilled to have in walking distance from their homes.

All of the money for the project is coming from the insurance money from the fire.

The Gadsden County commissioners have approved plans to start construction in the next 3 to 6 months.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - The old Florida Capitol threw a party to celebrate the 40-year anniversary of a group of Floridians fighting, and saving, the Historic Capitol building from demolition.

WTXL ABC 27's Valerie Mills spoke to a local who was on the Capitol steps 40 years ago.

Ron Fahs is one of around 2,000 people who helped keep the iconic Florida Capitol building where it is today.

State leaders wanted to bulldoze what locals called "the grand old southern lady on the hill."

Fahs says at the time he didn't realize the impact he was making fighting to save the Captiol building.

At Thursday night's anniversary party, he and 300 others reminisced about the hard-fought campaign that stopped politicians from destroyed the building.

The Florida Historic Captiol Museum displayed remakes of original petitions signed 40 years ago by people like Fahs.

The building is now considered an icon in the heart of Florida's capital city.

The Florida Historic Captiol Museum continues to celebrate the 40th anniversary of saving the building with a new exhibit, which will open in July.
BROOKS COUNTY, Ga. (WTXL) - A Valdosta man dies from injuries sustained during a car accident in Brooks County.

Thomas Eason, 65, of Valdosta died at Tallahassee Memorial Hospital on March 29.

On March 27, around 5:05 p.m. Georgia State Patrol was called to a crash with injuries on North Webster Street.

According to GSP, a Chevrolet Silverado was traveling north on North Webster Street approaching GA 333 and a Ford Ranger was traveling south on GA 333.

The Silverado failed to yield at the intersection of North Webster Street which caused the Ranger to hit the front of the Silverado.

The driver of the Silverado suffered minor injuries to his legs.

The driver of the Ford Ranger is currently at Tallahassee Memorial Hospital in critical condition.

The passenger in the Ford Ranger, Eason, was flown from the scene via Life Flight to Tallahassee Memorial Hospital with critical injuries.

GSP says Eason and the driver of the Silverado were not wearing their seat-belts at the time of the accident.

On March 29, Eason succumbed to his injuries and died at Tallahassee Memorial Hospital.

Troopers do not suspect drugs or alcohol to be a contributing factor in this accident.

Charges are pending in the accident.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-29 18:47:42|Editor: Yamei

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Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang (Photo source: fmprc.gov.cn)

BEIJING, March 29 (Xinhua) -- China on Thursday applauded the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the Republic of Korea (ROK) for fixing the date of their first summit in more than a decade, expressing the hope that the momentum of dialogue can continue.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang said at a daily press briefing that China appreciated the efforts made by both the DPRK and the ROK.

As a close neighbor of the Korean Peninsula, China has always been glad to see the DPRK and the ROK hold dialogues, improve relations and promote reconciliation and cooperation, as these are conducive to peace and stability in the region, Lu said.

"We hope the momentum of dialogue can continue and peace can last," he said.

The DPRK and the ROK on Thursday agreed to hold a summit on April 27 in the truce village of Panmunjom, the first meeting between the leaders of the two sides in 11 years.

The agreement was reached during a high-level dialogue between the two sides, which were held earlier in the day at Tongilgak, a DPRK building in Panmunjom.

Positive changes have taken place on the Korean Peninsula this year, said Lu.

He called on all parties concerned to support the improvement of inter-Korean ties and make concrete efforts to facilitate peace talks so as to promote the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and a political solution to the Korean Peninsula issue to bring peace, stability, development and prosperity to the region.
TIRANA, March 29 (Xinhua) -- Albanian and Italian police launched Wednesday a joint project aimed at enhancing cooperating against cannabis cultivation and trafficking, Albanian General State Directory said in a statement.

In a meeting with a visiting delegation from Italian state police, General Director of Albania's State Police Ardi Veliu expressed his appreciation and gratitude for the project "Support to the Anti-cannabis Strategy -- Air Surveillance".

Veliu said for 2018 the Albanian State Police was committed to not only keeping the results achieved during 2017 against the Cannabis cultivation phenomenon, but to eradicating this phenomenon.

The aim of this project called "SANCAS" between Albanian and Italian police will be to monitor the territory through the air for preventing and hitting the cultivation of narcotics.

"For 2018, State Police will come up with an efficient police strategy and increase flight hours 30 percent more than in 2017," said Veliu.

He added that the Albanian State Police had drafted a detailed plan for territorial control, on identifying and hitting the seed security phenomenon, cultivating seedlings and narcotics Cannabis Sativa in abandoned tunnels, former state reserves and any other possible environment, for use by criminal groups.

"A very valuable component of the project is the assistance it provides in the field of technology, orienting and supporting the State Police in expanding its database," Veliu highlighted.

Furthermore, he said that the establishment of a research lab was a powerful foundation for Albania's police, adding that what was of interest to this project was encouraging citizens to report drug offenses.

Speaking about the joint cooperation, the Director of the Italian International Police Cooperation Service, Brigadier General CC Paolo D' Ambolo, said he was convinced of the positive results of this project.

"We are confident because we know our colleagues, our Albanian friends who are capable and have yielded results as far as cannabis warfare is concerned," he noted at a statement.

"SANCAS" project is funded by the European Union. Last March, the Albanian government approved a national action plan to combat cultivation and trafficking of cannabis for 2017-2020.
LISBON, March 29 (Xinhua) -- The Portuguese government defended the National Civil Protection Authority (ANPC) on Thursday after a team of Russian mechanics were expelled from an airbase.

"The most important thing is the defense of the public interest and the national interest," Minister of Internal Administration Eduardo Cabrita told journalists in Lisbon. "The ANPC safeguards national interests in matters of operational defense and contractual relations with private entities."

The ANPC shut down a hangar where the Russians were performing maintenance work on three Kamov helicopters. According to the ANPC, Heliavionic, the private company in charge of maintenance, had been moving equipment around without identification or authorization.

Ricardo Dias, the president of Everjets, which subcontracted the maintenance work to Heliavionic, who employed the Russians, told TSF radio that the mechanics "were furious and promptly left the country."

All parties were quick to deny that the ANPC's actions were related to the spate of Russian diplomatic expulsions seen in much of Europe these past few days, though not in Portugal. The ANPC has claimed a contractual dispute, while Dias said the mechanics were upset at insinuations of theft.

The incident occurred at the Ponte de Sor aerodrome in Portoalegre, a town 225 km northeast of Lisbon.

The Russians were working on the helicopters to try and have them ready to combat forest fires over the summer.

Cabrita sought to assuage fears that the dispute would hamper Portugal's firefighting capabilities.

"This year we will have the best air-based defensive unit the country has ever seen," he said.

The Kamov helicopters have been a source of continuous controversy since six of them were purchased by the Portuguese government in 2006.

After huge delays in their delivery, they eventually arrived unoperational. It took a further three years to get them airborne. A series of crashes and mechanical failures since then has meant they've spent more time grounded than fighting wildfires.
WASHINGTON, March 29 (Xinhua) -- The White House said on Thursday that Russia's expulsion of U.S. diplomats marks the "further deterioration" in bilateral relationship, warning further retaliation.

In an announcement, the White House said that Russia's move was "not unanticipated," adding the United States "will deal with it."

It added that the expulsion of "undeclared Russian intelligence officers" by the United States and more than two dozen partner nations and NATO allies earlier this week was an "appropriate" response to the poison attack of an ex Russian intelligence officer and his daughter in Britain.

The Russian Foreign Ministry announced earlier on Thursday to expel 60 U.S. diplomats and close U.S. consulate in St. Petersburg in tit-for-tat retaliation for Washington's moves against Moscow over an alleged ex-spy poisoning incident. The 60 diplomats must leave Russia by April 5.

The move came on the heels of President Trump's order on Monday to expel 60 Russian diplomats and intelligence officials in the United States and the United Nations, and close the nation's consulate in Seattle, which aimed to protest and counter Russia's accused involvement of the poisoning attack of former Russian double agent Skripal and his daughter in Britain's southwestern city of Salisbury on March 4.

Russia has denied involvement in poisoning of the former spy and his daughter and vowed further retaliation if U.S. moves forward with sanctions.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-30 08:36:35|Editor: Liangyu

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ISLAMABAD, March 30 (Xinhua) -- The bilateral trade volume between Pakistan and the Chinese province of Zhejiang has hit 4 billion U.S. dollars threshold, Li Yang, vice director of the Division of Foreign Trade Development from the Department of Commerce of Zhejiang Province said here on Thursday.

Talking exclusively with Xinhua, Li Yang said that out of the total of 4 billion U.S. dollars, the amount of export from China's Zhejiang province to Pakistan is 3.8 billion U.S. dollars.

Li Yang was speaking on the sidelines of the 19th Textile Asia 2018 International Exhibition, which concluded at the Karachi Expo Center in Pakistan's southeastern port city of Karachi on Thursday.

She stated that the Department of Commerce of Zhejiang held the Zhejiang Export Fair during the 19th Textile and CFT Asia in Karachi, which was a step in the direction to seek the "Made in Zhejiang" breakthrough of foreign trade in the South Asian market. The event helped the Zhejiang-based enterprises to further expand their access to the international market through Pakistan, she added.

The Zhejiang Export Fair also helped Pakistani entrepreneurs to know more about the textile and apparel industry of the Chinese province, which would help in promoting the bilateral business and investment in coming years.

Li Yang said "At the 19th Textile Fair in Karachi, we installed a total of 150 standard booths for 58 enterprises, whose products contained textile fabrics, home textile, textile machinery, garments, and accessories besides highlighting the Zhejiang province's textile manufacturing level."

She said "We hope to build a business communication platform for companies of both the countries through this exhibition. Also, we would like to help both sides of entrepreneurs to carry out practical and long-lasting cooperation in various levels and domains to share the benefits brought by the respective economic development."

The trade fair in Karachi hosted more than 2,000 foreign delegates as well as 65,000 visitors from trade and corporate sector. The focus of the trade fair was value addition in textiles industry to increase the South Asian country's exports of value-added textile and garments products to various parts of the world.

The three-day trade fair is regarded as South Asia's biggest B2B textile, garment, embroidery, digital printing machinery and chemical and allied services fair. More than 1,000 international brands displayed their products in over 800 booths from 27 countries mainly from Austria, China, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, South Korea, Japan, Turkey, Britain and the United States.
ISLAMABAD, March 30 (Xinhua) -- Pakistan on Thursday conducted a successful test fire of indigenously developed Submarine Launched Cruise Missile(SLCM ) having a range of 450 km, the military said.

The Babur missile was fired from an underwater dynamic platform, which successfully engaged its target with precise accuracy, meeting all the flight parameters, an army statement said.

The SLCM Babur is capable of delivering various types of payloads and incorporates state of the art technologies including underwater controlled propulsion, advanced guidance and navigation features, the army said.

The missile provides Pakistan credible second strike capability, augmenting the existing deterrence regime.

"Development of this capability also reflects Pakistan's response to provocative nuclear strategies and posture being pursued in the neighborhood through induction of nuclear submarines and ship-borne nuclear missiles, leading to nuclearization of Indian Ocean Region," the army statement said.

Pakistan eyes this landmark development as a step towards reinforcing the policy of Credible Minimum Deterrence through indigenization and self-reliance.

The test was witnessed by senior officials from the Strategic Plans Division (SPD), which deals with the missile program, Commander Naval Strategic Force Command (NSFC), scientists and engineers from strategic scientific organizations.

President Mamnoon Hussain and Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi have also conveyed their greetings to the scientists, engineers and NSFC personnel involved in the efforts.
SEOUL, March 30 (Xinhua) -- South Korea on Friday denounced Japan for adopting a guideline for high school student textbooks that distort wartime history by claiming sovereignty over disputed islets, called Dokdo here and Takeshima in Japan.

Seoul's foreign ministry said in a statement that despite the South Korean government's repeated warnings, the Japanese government eventually adopted the guideline for high school textbooks that lay an undue territorial claim over the Dokdo islets that are an inherent territory of South Korea.

The statement strongly condemned the adoption, urging Tokyo to immediately scrap it.

Dokdo is a couple of rocky outcroppings lying halfway between South Korea and Japan, which were forcibly incorporated into Japan during its 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.

South Korea restored its sovereignty over the islets after its liberation in 1945 from the colonization. Seoul has since maintained a small police detachment there.

South Korean people regards Japan's territorial claim over the islets as its denial of the wartime history. Hundreds of thousands of Korean people were forced, kidnapped or duped into sexual servitude for Japan's military brothels or forced labor for Japan's arms manufacturers during the Pacific War.

The Seoul ministry said Dokdo was the first South Korean territory that was forcibly occupied by the Imperial Japan in the process of its Korean Peninsula pillaging.

Despite the historical fact, the Japanese government attempted to insert a wrong perception of history into future generations, and it was an attempt to deny the Imperial Japan's invasion into the peninsula, the statement said.

The denial will make Japan lose an opportunity to learn lessons from the past history and move forward into the future, the statement said, adding that Dokdo is an indigenous territory of South Korea historically, geographically and in accordance with the international law.
TRIPOLI, March 30 (Xinhua) -- A car bomb explosion on Thursday evening hit a security check point in the eastern Libyan city of Ajdabiya, some 120 km west of Benghazi, killing five people and injuring more than ten others, according to security sources.

"A car bomb hit Salama security check point in the eastern suburb of Ajdabiya," Mustafa Bofujra, spokesman of Ajdabiya security directorate, told Xinhua, confirming that the dead and the wounded had been taken to a local hospital.

A source of the army's operation chamber of Ajdabiya told Xinhua that the bombing "killed five people and injured more than ten others, including civilians and soldiers."

"Available information says that the car bomb was parked near the Salama security check point. It was detonated remotely," the source added.

Ajdabiya is controlled by the eastern-based army led by General Khalifa Haftar, which is allied with the eastern authorities not recognized by the international community.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack yet. However, IS affiliates have claimed responsibility for previous similar attacks. In October 2017, IS claimed responsibility for an attack on the same check point, which killed two soldiers and injured three others.
TOKYO, March 30 (Xinhua) -- Japan's unemployment rate increased in February, the government said in a report on Friday.

According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, the unemployment rate rose to 2.5 percent in the recording month, marking the first rise in nine months.

Separately, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare said that job availability in Japan stood at 1.58, dropping from 1.59 in January.

This translates to there being 158 job openings for every 100 workers.

The latest job availability figure marks the first decline since September 2012, the ministry's data showed.

Amid a tight labor market, the jobless rate in the recording month was at its lowest level since April 1993, with the rate for men up 0.1 percentage point from January to 2.6 percent and that for females up 0.1 point to 2.3 percent, the government's data showed.

On a seasonally adjusted basis, the number of unemployed people rose by 90,000 to 1.69 million in Japan, with people leaving their jobs of their own volition contributing significantly to this number, the ministry also said.
European Council President Donald Tusk (L, Front) talks with British Prime Minister Theresa May (C) and Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa (R, Front) during the European Union (EU)'s spring summit at the EU headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, March 22, 2018. (Xinhua/Thierry Monass)

by Xinhua writer Deng Xianlai

BEIJING, March 29 (Xinhua) -- Though Britain will formally leave the European Union (EU) in exactly one year's time, it still remains deeply divided on Brexit, a decision adopted following a narrowly-won "Leave" vote in a chaotic 2016 referendum.

Ahead of her consensus-building tour across the island starting on Thursday, Prime Minister Theresa May promised compatriots a "bright future" outside the bloc that has defined Britons' identities and influenced their way of life since 1972.

British Prime Minister Theresa May arrives at the EU headquarters for an EU Summit in Brussels, Belgium, Dec. 14, 2017. (Xinhua/Ye Pingfan)

"I am determined that our future will be a bright one," May said. "It's a future in which we trade freely with friends and partners across Europe and beyond. Having regained control of our laws, our borders and our money, and seized the opportunities provided by Brexit, the UK will thrive as a strong and united country that works for everyone, no matter whether you voted Leave or Remain."

But whether the prime minister's post-Brexit vision will cater to the aspirations of all citizens remains hugely doubtful amid the deep division domestically.

The Brexit referendum on June 23, 2016 saw Brexiteers edge out Remainers by a slim margin of 4 percentage points. The result not only surprised the world but also created an aftershock that has lingered on for almost two years.

While England and Wales voted to withdraw from the EU, Scotland and Northern Ireland sought status quo.

People arrive at a polling station to vote to stay in or leave the European Union (EU) in Harpenden, Britain, June 23, 2016. (Xinhua/Richard Washbrooke)

Given that reactions remain starkly opposite -- between those excited about Britain regaining freedom in decision-making and those disillusioned by the parting from a union that has raised Britain's international stature -- May, who became PM after a snap election following the referendum, still has a long way to go to bridge the rift.

IRISH BORDER ISSUE

May has been under pressure to hammer out a satisfactory arrangement with Brussels for delineating Northern Ireland's border with EU member Ireland.

The Irish border issue, one of the thorniest in the Brexit talks, remained a sticking point during the EU summit that concluded last Friday.

May has promised that no new barriers will be created within the common domestic market but didn't elaborate how the border issue would be resolved.

British Prime Minister Theresa May (L) and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker attend a press conference after their meeting on Brexit at EU headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, Dec. 4, 2017. (Xinhua/Ye Pingfan)

In an attempt to avoid a hard border with customs and checkpoints between Ireland and Northern Ireland after Brexit, the EU issued a draft resolution in February. It proposes that Northern Ireland set trade rules in line with the EU's single market and customs union if no better alternatives can be found.

Although both Dublin and London say the border should be "as seamless and frictionless as possible," a virtually invisible border will however lead to trade barriers between Northern Ireland and the rest of Britain as May has already decided Britain will leave the single market and customs union.

Maria Demertzis, deputy director of the Brussels-based think tank Bruegel, said, "Unless the Northern Ireland issue is resolved ... it's very difficult to see what type of trade agreement we will have." She said Britain remains vague, which makes the whole issue very difficult.

Photo taken on June 24, 2016 shows then British Prime Minister David Cameron (L) leaving with his wife Samantha after his speech at 10 Downing Street in London, Britain. Cameron announced his intention to step down after his country has voted to leave the European Union (EU). (Xinhua/Han Yan)

Iain Begg, a research fellow at the European Institute of London School of Economics and Political Science, called it a "trilemma."

Begg said although the ongoing bargaining would create "some kind of fudge", it would still mean breaking the Belfast Agreement reached in the 1990s.

The agreement set the basis for Northern Ireland's current system of devolved government under Britain and restored peace in the region after decades of political turmoil.

"What they have done is to kick the can down the road, but at some stage they have to go down that road and find a solution. Things cannot be fudged for ever," Begg said about May and her ministers' talks with the EU.

FUTURE TRADE FRAMEWORK

What could be considered a victory for May at the EU summit is Brussels agreeing in principle to grant Britain a transition period until 2020 -- 21 months after Britain's exit from the bloc. During this time London will effectively stay in the bloc but have no voting power.

While May said the transition period "gives certainty to people and businesses" and "gives them the clarity to plan for their future," the win came at the expense of Britain having to agree to the proposed Irish border solution that would see Northern Ireland subject to Brussels' rules.

British Ambassador to the EU Tim Barrow (L) hands the Brexit letter to European Council President Donald Tusk in Brussels, Belgium, March 29, 2017. (Xinhua/European Union)

French President Emmanuel Macron has said that the EU won't allow London to "cherry-pick" from the "four freedoms" -- free movement of capital, labor, goods and services, both a privilege and obligation for EU members.

"There is not a choice of which sectors you sign up to. Once you are outside the single market, you're outside of it entirely," Macron said during the summit.

What is at the center of the grand bargaining is the future of Britain's financial services sector, the country's economic engine.

Britain wants to take advantage of the single market to benefit its financial service sector but also wants to restrict the movement of labor so as not to be affected by immigrant influx.

"The EU has been advocating that if you want to access the single market, you are going to necessarily accept the four freedoms," Demertzis said.

As regards the whole process of Brexit negotiations, the sequence set by the EU resembles a marital breakdown: first comes the divorce, which involves citizens' rights, money transactions and the Irish border, and then the new relationship, which touches on aspects such as foreign policy, financial sector and judicial cooperation.

But Britain wants to talk about future relationship, including trade, in parallel with the negotiation on the divorce deal.

According to the timetable, Brussels and London will agree on the divorce deal, the transition and the future relationship framework by October and ratify it on March 29, 2019, when Britain formally exits the EU.

(Xinhua reporters Tian Dongdong in Brussels, Gui Tao in London also contributed to the story)
by Farid Behbud

Kabul, March 30 (Xinhua) -- Uzbekistan's offer to host peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban outfit has been welcomed by experts here as a move towards bolstering regional cooperation towards ending the endemic conflict and achieving lasting peace in Afghanistan.

Delegations of 23 countries and organizations, including the European Union and the United Nations participated in a regional conference in Uzbekistan's capital city of Tashkent earlier this week to discuss possible solutions to the prolonged and devastating conflict in Afghanistan.

Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev during his speech at the conference said that his country was ready to create all necessary conditions to arrange for Uzbekistan to host direct peace talks between the government of Afghanistan and the Taliban group.

"Delegates at the Tashkent peace conference supported Afghanistan's peace initiative and that is a step forward for reaching peace. The move could help Afghans reach a negotiated political settlement and I believe the move is welcomed by most Afghans," Amin Ahmadi, a political analyst, told Xinhua.

It is for the interest of countries in the region to take action and do their best to stop the conflicts in Afghanistan, the analyst said, warning the conflict could spread to neighboring countries and eventually destabilize the entire region.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani unveiled his latest peace strategy late last month, offering recognition of the Taliban as a political party and allowing them to open an office in Kabul, issue passports to their members and remove the names of senior commanders from UN blacklists.

"Uzbekistan is our neighbor and a good neighbor is better than a far cousin. It can play a vital role in helping Afghans to reach peace talks," the expert said.

"The international community, especially important organizations like the UN and EU's cooperation is vital for boosting the peace process," Nabi Sawary, a political science professor at the private Ibn-e-Sina University in Kabul, told Xinhua.

"Since regional powers, especially Afghanistan's immediate neighbors, have influence over the Taliban, they can convince the Taliban leaders to sit down with the government of Afghanistan to reach an agreement on ending the war in their country," the expert observed.

Sayyed Ehsan Tahiri, spokesperson for Afghanistan's High Peace Council, told local media recently that there will be more pressure after the Tashkent conference on the Taliban to accept the peace offer as there have been no more pretexts for them to continue the war.

Now, there is extensive support for the peace process after the consensus was reached at the Tashkent meeting, Tahiri maintained.

"I welcome this conference, which gives appropriate prominence to Afghanistan's neighbors and partners, as well as countries who have also supported the post-2001 political order and reconstruction effort," Tadamichi Yamamoto, UN special envoy and head of the UN mission in Afghanistan, told the participants at the conference on Tuesday.

The UN diplomat also stated that the five countries of Central Asia and Afghanistan are united by a shared history, culture and geography. They have an enormous potential for jointly tackling regional threats, increasing trade and connectivity.

"There is still much to be done. First, we must continue to build on the regional consensus for peace. This means two things. It means that those countries who have contacts with the Taliban should use those contacts to urge them to accept the Afghan government's peace offer."

"It also means that the countries of the region should acknowledge the Afghan-owned nature of the peace process and commit to accepting the agreement reached between the Taliban and the government," Tadamichi added.

Currently around 16,000 foreign troops remain in Afghanistan to train and assist local security forces in their fight against the insurgents.

The Taliban militants who have repeatedly rejected the Afghan government's offer for talks over the past decade have yet to respond to president Ghani's recent offer for peace-based dialogue.
WASHINGTON, March 29 (Xinhua) -- U.S. State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said on Thursday that the just-announced meeting plan between South Korea and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) would move Pyongyang's meeting with Washington closer.

Seoul and Pyongyang on Thursday agreed to hold a summit on April 27 in the truce village of Panmunjom, the first meeting between the leaders of the two sides in 11 years.

Nauert said in a press briefing that the meeting "moves us closer to the point where the United States can sit down with North Korea and have a meeting."

"We are being realistic too about this meeting," she said. "But that doesn't mean that we won't go ahead and plan a meeting to have these conversations about the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula."

She said the U.S. State Department is planning for the meeting and pushing it ahead in "full faith and good faith."

"We've had lots of conversations with the Republic of Korea about the contents of that meeting and the contents of their discussion," she added.

Earlier this month, U.S. President Donald Trump and the DPRK's top leader Kim Jong Un agreed to meet, yet the timing and place of the high-profile gathering has not been announced yet.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-30 11:12:06|Editor: Liangyu

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KATHMANDU, March 30 (Xinhua) -- Dongfang Electric International Corporation (DEC International), a Chinese company based in Sichuan, has agreed to finance a Nepal's private sector-led Hydropower Project under Engineering, Procurement, Construction and Financing (EPCF) modality.

The Chinese company agreed to finance the 75MW Trishuli Galchhi Hydroelectric Project located at the border between Nuwakot and Dhading districts in province 3, said Siddhakali Power Limited (SPL), the developer of the project.

The DEC International signed the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with SPL on Wednesday evening. Under the EPCF modality, the Chinese company will coordinate all design, procurement, construction work and finance.

The SPL is the second private sector company of Nepal that signed the MoU with the Chinese company to develop the hydropower project under EPCF modality.

Recently, Chongqing Water Turbine Works Co., Ltd, another Chinese company based in Chongqing, signed agreement with Nepal's People's Energy Limited to develop 48.8 MW Khimti-2 Hydropower Project located at the border of Ramechhap and Dolakha districts in province 3.

As per MoU signed between DEC International and SPL, the Chinese company will finance 94 million U.S. dollars for the project. This is the amount equivalent to loans secured by the developer --SPL from a consortium of Nepali banks.

"As the estimated project cost is 150 million U.S. dollar, the rest of the amount will be injected by the promoters," Guru Prasad Neupane, chairman of SPL, told Xinhua on Thursday.

He said that the EPCF modality, which is a new concept in Nepal, could be idle solution for developing the hydropower projects in Nepal in time.

Both sides have agreed to sign a formal agreement before the end of April as per the MoU. The construction of the project is expected to start from September 1 and complete within 42 months from the start of construction date.

After the project comes into commercial operation, the SPL has agreed to repay to the Chinese company from the loans it had secured from the Nepali banks within a year.

Neupane said that the SPL would repay to the Nepali banks after the Chinese company recoups its investment along with profit.
TRIPOLI, March 30 (Xinhua) -- Mayor of the Libyan capital Tripoli, Abdrraouf Baitelmal, was freed after being kidnapped from his house, Tripoli municipality announced Thursday.

"Abdrraouf Baitelmal arrived at the headquarters of Tripoli Municipality at 22:00 (2000 GMT) after being forcibly absent since last night," the municipality said.

The municipality appreciated "all those who exerted efforts to achieve this, especially the Presidential Council of the Government of National Accord."

An unknown armed group earlier on Thursday kidnapped Baitelmal after storming his house, the municipality said, suspending its work to protest the kidnapping.

However, the municipality did not provide further details about the kidnappers and Baitelmal's release.

The UN Support Mission in Libya condemned the kidnapping of the mayor, warning against the increased kidnappings in the city and calling on stakeholders to "take a clear stance denouncing this disturbing trend in Tripoli and elsewhere in Libya."

Frank Baker, the British ambassador to Libya, tweeted earlier on Thursday, saying he was "very concerned about the kidnapping of Tripoli Mayor, Mr. Abdrraouf Baitelmal. Hope he's freed safely soon. Organized crime is a big threat to Libyan people's safety."

Libya has been suffering insecurity and political division since the 2011 uprising that toppled the late leader Muammar Gaddafi's regime.
BRUSSELS, March 29 (Xinhua) -- A majority of young people, aged between 16 and 29, in more than half of the 21 European countries plus Israel identify themselves as non-religious, a British expert said in a recent report.

The report titled Europe's Young Adults and Religion was authored by Stephen Bullivant, professor of Theology and the Sociology of Religion at London-based Saint Mary's University, citing statistics from European Social Survey (2014-16).

In Britain, 70 percent of young people say they have no religious faith; in France the figure is 64 percent and in Germany 45 percent, according to the report, which found the Czech Republic the least religious nation with 91 percent of the youth there saying they have no religion.

Estonia, Sweden, the Netherlands followed the Czech Republic in the percentage of least religious youth. Other countries with a majority of youth identifying with no faith include Hungary, Belgium, Finland, Denmark, Norway and Spain.

In other words, in 12 out of the 22 countries, over half of young adults claim not to identify with any particular religion.

"It may seem odd to begin a study on European youths' religiosity on this note," the report said, adding that "the high percentage of young adults affirming no religion in many countries ... is arguably the most significant fact here of all."

The European Social Survey also asked the respondents about the frequency to attend religious services except special occasions such as weddings and funerals.

Among the 22 countries, a majority of young people in seven countries said "never," with the percentages in Britain, France and Germany being 59 percent, 56 percent and 42 percent, respectively.

Meanwhile, 80 percent of Czech youth and around 70 percent of Swedish, Danish, Estonian, Dutch, French and Norwegian ones never pray.

In only four countries, about 10 percent of the interviewees said they attend religious services on at least a weekly basis, according to the report.

Over the past decades, European countries have experienced a decline in the number of people professing a religious belief. For example, in Britain, its 2001 census revealed that over 70 percent of the population regarded themselves as Christians, while its 2011 census showed a dramatic reduction to less than 60 percent of people self-identifying as Christians.

The most dramatic shift in this regard occurred in the Czech Republic,where the share of the self-identified Catholics dropped from 44 percent in 1991 to 21 percent in 2016, according to another survey conducted by U.S.-based fact tank Pew Research Center.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-30 12:17:14|Editor: Chengcheng

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LANZHOU, March 30 (Xinhua) -- A court in northwest China's Gansu Province Friday handed down a death penalty on a man for crimes of murder, robbery, rape and insulting bodies.

Gao Chengyong confessed at the people's intermediate court of Baiyin City and said he would not file an appeal.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-30 12:22:15|Editor: Zhou Xin

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The site of a bus blaze is seen in the northwestern Thai province of Tak, March 30, 2018. At least 20 Myanmar migrant workers were killed and three others wounded in a blaze on a bus in the northwestern Thai province of Tak in the wee hours on Friday, Thailand's Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation said. (Xinhua)

BANGKOK, March 30 (Xinhua) -- At least 20 Myanmar migrant workers were killed and three others wounded in a blaze onboard a bus in the northwestern Thai province of Tak in the wee hours on Friday, Thailand's Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation said.

The fire occurred at about 01:25 a.m. local time in the cargo bay of the bus, which was carrying a total of 47 Myanmar migrant workers.

The driver of the bus, cited by police, said he opened all doors of the bus when the fir occurred, yet still some 20 passengers did not make it out.

The 27 other migrant workers and the Thai bus driver and his wife managed to get off the burning bus, the police said.

The police are investigating the cause of the fatal incident.

The chartered bus had left Thailand's border district of Mae Sot at about 10:00 p.m. local time on Thursday and headed for Nava Nakorn industrial estate on the northern outskirts of Bangkok where the migrant workers have been employed.
MEXICO CITY, March 29 (Xinhua) -- The government of Mexico City, one of the most polluted cities in the world, unveiled on Thursday its prototype for a "hybrid taxi," which will soon take to the streets and produce 50 percent less emissions than regular cabs.

During the presentation, mayor Miguel Angel Mancera said 50 of these new models would be rolled out in April as part of the first phase.

The city government is planning to replace all conventional taxis with these environmentally friendlier options, which will also save up to 60 percent on fuel.

The government will install electric recharge stations in different neighborhoods as the program is progressively rolled out across the megacity.

Mexico City, with almost 22 million residents, has faced almost 100 environmental alerts due to high ozone levels in the past two years.

Since 2016, a new federal norm has tightened the limits for gas emissions on vehicles inside Mexico City and 18 surrounding towns.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-30 13:17:22|Editor: Yamei

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U.S. President Donald Trump (L) poses with outgoing White House Communications Director Hope Hicks on the West Wing Colonnade before departing from the White House in Washington D.C., the United States, on March 29, 2018. (Xinhua/Ting Shen)

WASHINGTON, March 29 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump bid farewell on Thursday to one of his closest and longest-serving aides, Communications Director Hope Hicks.

The president appeared alongside Hicks in front of cameras outside the Oval Office on her last day at the White House. After waving to the cameras, Trump gave Hicks a handshake and a kiss on the cheek.

Hicks announced her resignation in late February after the White House was consumed by controversy over allegations of domestic violence by then-Staff Secretary Rob Porter from two ex-wives.

Porter, who has denied those allegations, was at that time romantically involved with Hicks who helped draft the administration's initial statements to support Porter, according to U.S. news network CNN.

Ultimately, Porter left his job, while both Hicks and the White House were caught in a communications storm. But senior officials disputed that Hick's decision to leave the West Wing was related to the incident.

In addition, investigators have sought to determine what Hicks knew about Trump's decision to fire Director of Federal Bureau of Investigation James Comey and the alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 general elections.

Testifying before a closed session of the House Intelligence Committee weeks after Porter's resignation, Hicks said her job sometimes requires her to tell "white lies" on behalf of the president, New York Times daily reported.

Hicks had worked with Trump before he announced his candidacy, through the campaign and into the second year of the administration.

Her role evolved from what was initially considered to be an unconventional press and communications aide to formally being announced the White House communications director in the summer of 2017.

"She is as smart and thoughtful as they come, a truly great person," Trump said in a statement accepting Hicks' resignation, and "I will miss having her by my side."

There is no immediate successor to Hicks' post. White House officials did not rule out the possibility of Hicks returning to the administration at some point in the future.
BATU GAJAH, Malaysia, March 30 (Xinhua) -- When he was a child, Vijayakumar Sundar often built trains and railways with his toy bricks. But it was almost impossible for him to imagine that one day his train-driven dreams would come true with a Chinese company, building trains running across Malaysia.

Forty-year-old Vijayakumar, known as "Vija" to his Chinese colleagues, oversees a state-of-the-art workshop of the rolling stock center of Chinese rail transit equipment manufacturer CRRC, in the quiet Malaysian town of Batu Gajah, some 200 km from the capital of Kuala Lumpur.

Vija hails from the nearby city of Ipoh. As an Indian-Malaysian, he learnt about train travel in India from his family and became obsessed with them. "I have loved trains since I was a kid and I was always thrilled to see them," he said.

So it was natural for him to choose CRRC's rolling stock center over a local company nearly four years ago. "I decided to join the Chinese company because it was the first in Malaysia, so this is was a great chance for me to launch my career in train manufacturing," he said.

Vija joined CRRC as the first batch of local recruits in Malaysia. He received training in China during his first overseas trip and became a technician. When for the first time he saw the train that he built hit the track, he was very proud.

"I could tell my family, my relatives and my friends that this train was built by our local staff as well as the staff from China," he said.

With his talent and hardworking spirit, Vija was promoted to team leader and subsequently section chief, before being appointed as workshop chief recently. The promotion was no surprise to Vija, but the level exceeded his expectation.

"I must arrange my staff to finish their tasks on the day and by the deadline, I must be responsible for everything that happens in the workshop. I am also responsible for staff welfare," he said.

Under Vija's watch, more than 100 Malaysian and Chinese staff and technicians are building trains for Malaysia's Electric Train Service. "We are a family, we work together, we achieve together," he said.

Vija inspects the workshop and talks to his staff frequently, taking up the work himself when necessary even though he's in a management position. It is his leadership style to mingle with the staff, he explained, but also due to his love of the job.

"I love this company, that's why I am here. I worked for many companies before, but CRRC has given me the greatest opportunities in my life," he said, "This company has elevated me to another level, the highest level in my life."

Although the rolling stock center is invested by a Chinese company, there's no doubt that it will increasingly localize its manufacturing, production and management, said Jiang Zhengguang, general manager of the CRRC rolling stock center.

Becoming fully operational in 2015, CRRC rolling stock center can now manufacture up to 200 carriages a year. Some 84 percent of its total staff and 92 percent of the technicians at the production line are locally recruited.

"After several years, we must say that the Malaysian employees are very hardworking and diligent while taking their work seriously. They have also become increasingly approving of our corporate culture," said Jiang.

"As their work years increase and their knowledge on how to build trains deepens, they will take up more work and there will be fewer workers from China. The local employees have a bright future here," he added.

With his childhood dream coming true, Vija now has a higher target. During his trips to China, Vija was impressed by the high-speed trains, and he is looking forward to seeing them in Malaysia.

"I went to China three times, I took the high-speed trains and found that they were of a very high level of quality. There was almost no sound when the train was moving," he said. "We must implement these kinds of high-speed trains in Malaysia."

"I am sure there will be many projects coming in the future," he said, "Here, there's a future for everyone."
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-30 13:32:24|Editor: Lifang

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HAVANA, Mar. 29 (Xinhua) -- Cuban President Raul Castro on Thursday received Vietnam's highest order "Golden Star" from visiting Secretary General of the nation's Communist Party Nguyen Phu Trong.

In a ceremony held at the presidential palace, Phu Trong awarded Castro with the medal for his "constant struggles for the island's sovereignty and socialism," and for being one of the founders of the "deep links" between Hanoi and Havana.

"The intimate friendship between Cuba and Vietnam has passed the test of time. I proudly receive this recognition in the name of the Cuban people and our historic ties," said Castro after receiving the order.

The Cuban president highlighted the common history both nations share to develop a socialist society and remembered founding leaders Fidel Castro and Ho Chi Minh.

Minutes before, Castro and Phu Trong witnessed the signing ceremony of nine cooperation agreements, which include strengthening links between both Communist parties, a mutual legal assistance pact and the termination of the island's debt with the Asian nation for an undisclosed amount.

In the context of the visit, a joint business forum took place, in which three agreements were signed concerning the administration and management of two hotels in Havana and the development of an industrial park in the Mariel Special Development Zone.

Before ending his official three-day visit to the Caribbean nation on Friday, Phu Trong will travel to the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba and pay tribute at the Santa Ifigenia cemetery to former Cuban president Fidel Castro.
WASHINGTON, March 29 (Xinhua) -- The United States has decided to transfer its current immigrant visa processing business for Cuban nationals to the U.S. embassy in Georgetown, Guyana, the U.S. State Department said on Thursday.

In an announcement, the department said that the processing business included visa applications and scheduling of immigrant visa interviews.

Immigrant visa interview appointments for Cuban nationals have been scheduled at the U.S. embassy in Bogota since January due to a drawdown in staffing in Cuba, it said.

Guyana will be the primary site for processing immigrant visa applications for Cubans since April 1 and no applicants should make travel plans until they have a scheduled visa interview appointment.

The first interviews will take place in June, said the State Department.

Cubans do not need a visa to travel to Guyana. As before, Cuban applicants for routine non-immigrant visas may apply at any U.S. embassy or consulate outside Cuba, it said.

Explaining the picking of Guyana, the department said it has considered a number of factors including availability of flights, visa requirements, space to accommodate additional applicant files and availability of staff.

The department said on March 2 that the U.S. embassy in the Cuban capital Havana is to operate with the minimum personnel permanently, due to the reported health attacks against U.S. employees.

However, it admitted that it still did "not have definitive answers on the source or cause of the attacks, and an investigation into the attacks is ongoing."

Although the United States has not formally accused Cuba of carrying out the attacks, the unexplained physical afflictions suffered by 24 U.S. embassy personnel in Cuba led to a partial closure of the embassy and suspension of granting visas to the Cubans.

Cuba denied the accusations, saying the investigation to resolve the matter was still in progress and "effective cooperation" of the U.S. authorities was essential.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-30 14:02:32|Editor: Liangyu

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RIO DE JANEIRO, March 29 (Xinhua) -- Chinese automaker Chery is betting on Brazil's economic recovery to gain a larger share of Latin America's biggest auto market.

As part of the plan, the company this week unveiled Tiggo 2, the first vehicle jointly manufactured with Brazil's Caoa Group to cater to the Brazilian market.

In an interview with Xinhua during the presentation of the new SUV, Chery's General Manager Chen Anning said the company "is taking a long-term view of the Brazilian market, with long-term investments."

Latin America's biggest economy is bound to bounce back from recent sluggish growth and the Chinese-Brazilian joint venture Caoa Chery will be ready, he said.

"The economic crisis in Brazil will not last very long," said Chen.

"What's more, in the few months of partnership with Caoa, the Brazilian economy has begun to recover and already borne fruit, such as the birth of Tiggo 2," Chen said.

In addition, Chery's strategy of partnering with the local firm has built-in security, he said.

"By joining forces, whether the market is good or bad, we will see positive results," said Chen.

Chery wanted to partner with "a local force to help get the operation up and going faster and have a greater presence in each market," he said.

"The partnership between Caoa and Chery is complementary with each other's qualities. Chery can develop, produce and manufacture a quality product, and Caoa has ample knowledge and experience in commercial marketing and services in the Brazilian market," said Chen.

Caoa specializes in the manufacturing, sale and distribution of automobiles nationally.

Tiggo 2, manufactured at Chery's plant in Jacarei, Sao Paulo, is the first model rolled out by Caoa Chery since the two companies announced their joint venture in November.

Its production is "a great step" for the partnership, which is poised to expand as "Brazil is the continent's biggest market," said Chen.

Mauro Correia, president of Grupo Caoa, said the partnership with China's leading automobile assembler and exporter "will bring great benefits" to both firms.

The joint venture will also benefit Brazil, because it allows it "to have a Brazilian brand, a national company, that has an agreement with a company from the country with the world's biggest market for automobiles, such as China," said Correia.

The potential cultural differences are not an issue since Caoa has prior experience of working with foreign automakers, including Japanese, Korean and American firms, he said, adding "our relationship is guided by transparency and trust."

The partnership is working "very well, we succeeded in undertaking very important developments in very short periods of time, like adapting the product and changing the production line ... all at a very fast pace that allowed us to bring a new product to market in a very short time, from the signing of the agreement to the vehicle's market entry," said Correia.

China's technological strength provides the partnership with added confidence, he said.

"In five years, China has built 10,000 km of high-speed rail, all made in the country, with national technology. Its engineering is highly competitive, they make planes, they have aerospace equipment, electronic technology .... If you go to China, you see the quality of Chinese products," said Correia.

Caoa Chery aims to create "a very competitive portfolio with which to capture 5 percent of the Brazilian market," he added.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-30 14:07:34|Editor: Liangyu

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BEIJING, March 30 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Minister of Justice Fu Zhenghua told lawyers to safeguard the authority of the Constitution and follow the Party's leadership, according to the People's Daily published Friday.

Fu told lawyers at a meeting held Thursday to "be firm guardians, loyal followers and active advocates of the socialist rule of law," said the newspaper.

The All China Lawyers Association has asked its local branches to organize lawyers who also serve as deputies to the National People's Congress (NPC) or political advisors to promote and raise awareness of the Constitution.

The Constitution was revised at the annual NPC session earlier this month.
HANOI, March 30 (Xinhua) -- Over 2,000 senior officials and entrepreneurs from the six countries of the Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS) and GMS development partners gathered here Friday to discuss business outlook, new economic drivers and a private sector development action plan.

The six-member GMS, which have comparative advantages in agriculture and tourism, can become "the kitchen of the world" and a new manufacturing hub of the world due to its inexpensive labor and young population, Vu Tien Loc, president of the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said at the GMS Business Summit, held for the first time as an initiative by host Vietnam.

"The GMS economic drivers in the coming years will be entrepreneurship, micro, small and medium enterprises, and women-led enterprises," he said.

However, the biggest challenge of the GMS economies is institutional quality and business competitiveness to meet international standards and to connect to global supply and demand chains, according to officials attending the meeting.

At the summit, Cambodia introduced its initiative on establishing the GMS Young Entrepreneurs' Network, and Vietnam proposed the formation of the GMS Women Entrepreneurs' Network, and the GMS Start-up Network.

Vietnam also proposed further consideration to implement the connectivity program through super highway cables, abolishment of mobile phone roaming fees, and establishment of an association to address cyber-security among the GMS countries.

Meanwhile, Oudet Souvannavong, president of the Lao National Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said the GMS is entering its third decade of collaboration with a stronger commitment to its shared objectives in connectivity, community and competitiveness.

"The GMS has recently adopted a new action plan, the Hanoi Action Plan 2018 (HAP), that calls for an expansion of economic corridors to boost connectivity between the countries. The GMS governments also endorsed the GMS Regional Investment Framework to support the HAP through a pipeline of 227 investment and technical assistance projects valued at 66 billion U.S. dollars," said the Lao delegate.

During the summit, the officials and entrepreneurs centered their discussions on business outlook, new economic drivers, and the GMS Private Sector Development Strategic Plan for 2018-2020, infrastructure development and financing, agriculture business and technology, and GMS and global trade.

According to the delegates, infrastructure development is critical for economic growth and progress in social development, agriculture continues to be a key driver of economic growth and the engine for sustainable development of GMS countries, and the countries should continue to take full advantage of globalization and the cross-border flow of goods and services, as well as the huge Chinese market.

The Greater Mekong Sub-region covers the Mekong River basin in Southeastern Asia, bringing together the six countries of Cambodia, China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam.

From Friday to Saturday, leaders of the six countries are attending in Hanoi the 6th GMS summit themed "Leveraging 25 years of Cooperation, Building an Integrated, Sustainable and Prosperous GMS". They are also expected to discuss new strategies to boost regional transport, agriculture, tourism and environment.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-30 14:25:23|Editor: Mengjie

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New couples walk into the peach forest at a wedding ceremony in Yangshanfan Village of Hengcun Township in Tonglu County, east China's Zhejiang Province, March 29, 2018. Many new couples held wedding ceremonies at the 3,000 mu (200 hectare) peach forest here Thursday. (Xinhua/Tan Jin)
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-30 14:27:39|Editor: Mengjie

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A model of China's Fuxing bullet train is seen during the Rail Asia Expo & RISE Symposium 2018 in Bangkok, Thailand, on March 29, 2018. Models of China's Fuxing bullet train and other trains were showcased in the Rail Asia Expo & RISE Symposium 2018 which was held from Wednesday to Thursday as Chinese companies were seeking opportunities in Thailand. (Xinhua/Yang Zhou)

BANGKOK, March 30 (Xinhua) -- Models of China's Fuxing bullet train and other trains were showcased in the Rail Asia Expo & RISE Symposium 2018 which was held from Wednesday to Thursday as Chinese companies were seeking opportunities in Thailand.

In the exhibition booth of China's CRRC Corporation Limited, models of different trains developed by the company were on display, including Fuxing (Rejuvenation) bullet train, suspended monorail, low-floor tram, among others.

CRRC also showcased models of Bangkok's BTS train and Thailand's most advanced passenger carriage produced by the company.

Besides, CRRC also brought systems inside Fuxing bullet train to the booth.

"As the first phase of China-Thailand cooperation project on high speed rail, or the high speed rail between Bangkok and Nakhon Ratchasima is already under construction, so we bring Fuxing bullet train and its system here," said Li Jie, general representative of CRRC Qingdao Sifang Co. Ltd. to Thailand.

Officials from Thailand are very interested in Fuxing bullet train, suspended monorail and others, he added.

This year, CRRC brought six subsidiaries to attend the Rail Asia Expo & RISE Symposium 2018.

Some 10 other Chinese companies in the rail industry also attended the expo.

"We have high-speed rail project with Chinese; they are willing to come to work with us ... if Chinese company can teach us fishing by ourselves, I think it'll be very impressive to work together in terms of railway in Thailand," Chayakorn Piyabunditkul, senior analyst of Thailand's National Railway Technology Development Institute told Xinhua during the expo.
17 killed in minibus accident in eastern Turkey Source: Xinhua 2018-03-30 15:12:44 ANKARA, March 30 (Xinhua) -- Some 17 undocumented migrants were killed and 36 injured when their minibus crashed into a light pole late Thursday in Turkey's eastern Igdir province, according to Daily Sabah. Editor: Jiaxin
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-30 16:32:59|Editor: Lu Hui

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Photo taken on March 26, 2018 shows the gate of Embassy of Russia in Washington D.C., the United States. U.S. President Donald Trump has ordered the expulsion of 60 Russian diplomats and intelligence officials, and the closure of the Russian Consulate in Seattle in response to the poisoning of a Russian ex-spy in Britain earlier this month. (Xinhua/Yang Chenglin)

WASHINGTON, March 29 (Xinhua) -- The United States lashed out Thursday at Russia's expulsion of U.S. diplomats and warned further "retaliation," triggering worries that the escalating diplomatic confrontation between the West and Russia may slide out of control.

RECIPROCAL EXPULSION

The Russian Foreign Ministry announced Thursday the expulsion of 60 U.S. diplomats and shut U.S. consulate in St. Petersburg in retaliation for Washington's moves against Moscow over an ex-spy poisoning incident, urging U.S. authorities to rethink and stop "reckless" actions that hurt bilateral relations.

The move came on the heels of U.S. President Donald Trump's order on Monday to expel 60 Russian diplomats and intelligence officials in the United States to protest and counter Russia's accused involvement in the poisoning attack.

Former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found unconscious on a bench at a shopping center in the British city of Salisbury on March 4.

Claiming the pair was exposed to a nerve agent, Britain, the United States and many of their allies hold Russia responsible, while Moscow has denied any involvement in it and demanded solid evidence.

U.S. CRITICISM

In an announcement issued later Thursday, the White House said Russia's expulsion "marks a further deterioration" in the U.S.-Russia relationship.

"Russia's response was not unanticipated, and the United States will deal with it," said the White House.

The U.S. State Department noted that Russia's decision was "regrettable" and "unwarranted."

There is "no justification" for Russia's expulsion decision, and by doing this Moscow will further isolate itself economically and diplomatically, said State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert in a press release.

She added that the United States is reviewing the details of the Russian action and reserves the right to respond "accordingly."

Nauert said 28 countries and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization have joined the United States to expel 153 Russian officials in total.

DOOR OPEN

The Trump administration's attitude on the poisoning attack has been ambiguous, as Trump has so far kept from launching direct verbal attack against Moscow. Last week, he made a call to Russian President Vladimir Putin to congratulate him on his re-election and offered to meet in the near future, despite strong opposition of senior national security advisors.

What also stood in stark contrast to the administration's scathing statements and mounting sanctions were the White House's repeated calls to engage with Russia on key international issues, ignoring calls from across the Atlantic Ocean to speak and act more harshly after the poison attack.

On Thursday morning, senior administration officials, on condition of anonymity, told the media before Russia's announcement that the "door is open" for the United States to accept Russian diplomats after the expulsion.

"Here in the United States, from the president on down, we've all expressed a hope for better relations between our countries," the officials said.

"TURNING POINT"

Experts said that underneath the moves were the West's deep-seated mistrust with Moscow, which was further escalated by Russia's alleged intervention in the 2016 U.S. elections, its moves in Ukraine and Crimea and the spy poisoning incident.

Dan Mahaffee, senior vice president and director of policy at the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, told Xinhua that the U.S. moves "are far more than symbolic."

William Courtney, adjunct senior fellow of global policy think tank Rand Corporation, said the West-Russia relations will become more strained, but the West is willing to run this risk.

"Channels for Western dialogue with Russia may exist, but are of little value unless progress can be made on key issues," he said.

Given the fact that the odds are high that Russia will not change course to reapproach the West, the U.S. administration officials said the poisoning incident "may very well represent a turning point in how we view Russian activities" in the West.

After the U.S. expulsion of Russian officials, U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis in a press briefing on Tuesday said the previous cooperation mechanism between the two militaries have been frozen.

(Matthew Rusling from Washington also contributed to the story.)
CHICAGO, March 29 (Xinhua) -- U.S. protectionist measures of unilaterally imposing steep tariffs will not solve trade problem but risk opening a Pandora's box to backfire on its own economy, said U.S. experts.

"The recent action by U.S. President (Donald) Trump to slap tariffs on China outside of the established WTO rules ... is troubling," Tom Watkins, an advisor to Michigan-China Innovation Center, told Xinhua in a recent interview.

"While it has some short term political benefit to President Trump's political base of disenfranchised voters, it is unlikely to have any significant long-term economic benefit to working class people in America, nor address real issue of free and fair trade imbalances," Watkins said.

Many U.S. scholars echoed Watkins' view, as Trump signed a memorandum last week that could impose tariffs on up to 60 billion U.S. dollars of imports from China and place restrictions on Chinese investments in the United States.

China's Ministry of Commerce issued a warning the following day and also announced a plan for reciprocal tariffs on imported U.S. products worth about 3 billion dollars, targeting 128 categories of U.S. products including pork, wine and seamless steel tubes.

"Tariffs are not going to correct the trade deficit with China," said Khairy Tourk, a professor with the Stuart School of Business of the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. "The reality is that the tariff burden will fall on the silent majority, the consumers. This would be difficult for the middle class and it could backfire on those responsible for the price increases."

Tourk said China's measured response shows that Beijing is not eager to start a trade war. "Obviously, if the situation is to escalate, the global economy will suffer," the expert added.

"A trade war only disadvantages our already disadvantaged populations," said William J. Carroll, president emeritus of the Benedictine University.

U.S. National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) posted a statement on its website the same day when Trump signed the memorandum, in which NPPC President Jim Heimerl said higher tariffs on imports from China will in turn harm U.S. producers and undermine the rural economy.

"No one wins in these tit-for-tat trade disputes, least of all the farmers and the consumers," said Heimerl.

U.S. pork industry exported 1.1 billion dollars of products to China in 2017. "China is a very important market for U.S. pork producers. In 2017, China was the second largest U.S. pork export market by volume and the third largest export market by value," Jim Monroe, NPPC senior communications director, told Xinhua.

Scholars said U.S. trade deficit is a problem, but not in the way Trump's administration thinks. "The deficit reflects lack of savings," said Tourk. It in fact reflects a deeper problem of imbalance in the flow of international investment.

"The best policy to increase American exports is to increase productivity," the professor said, adding this will require years to accomplish.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-30 16:53:04|Editor: Zhou Xin

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GAZA, March 30 (Xinhua) -- Thousands of Palestinians began to flock on Friday to sit-in near the fence of the border between eastern Gaza Strip and Israel, amid deep Israeli fear and readiness to counter any attempts of infiltration through the border.

The Israeli army declared a status of alert and sent forces to the borderline area, including dozens of snipers, to prevent infiltration.

The demonstrators would stay 700 meters away from the border with Israel from northern to southern Gaza Strip, said the organizers.

The march is peaceful and aims at sending a message to the world that the Palestinians have legitimate rights, mainly the right of return, the organizers added.

On Friday, buses took thousands of demonstrators to six different areas along the border between eastern Gaza Strip and Israel. Dozens of white tents were erected and participants waved Palestinian flags.

The organizers prepared the six places with facilities of water, bathrooms, internet and food to encourage the populations, mainly the Palestinian refugees, to carry on with their sit-in until May 15.

The preparation for the "Great March of Return" started a few weeks ago by a joint Palestinian coordination committee that comprises Palestinian factions, including Islamic Hamas movement and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah Party, as well as rights groups, women and children organizations.

The first day of the rally marks the "Land Day" for the Palestinians when the Israeli authorities announced the confiscation of land in Galilee and Negev in 1976, leading to massive demonstrations among Palestinians inside Israel.

The "March of the Return" account on Facebook said the event will be launched from Gaza, the West Bank, Jerusalem, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Egypt, and toward the lands from which Palestinians were displaced in 1948.

The organizers said the goal of the rally is to implement the right of return of the Palestinian people to their land, in accordance with UN resolutions on the return of Palestinian refugees.

Friday prayers will be held inside the tents with the participation of leading Palestinian factions that have urged the largest popular and peaceful participation.

The Israeli army announced a state of alert and pushed up reinforcements near the Gaza Strip border fence, declaring its intention to counter any attempt to infiltrate demonstrators from the Gaza Strip.

The army said it would use the unit for trained dogs to counter any infiltration attempts.

Shortly before the march, a 27-year-old Palestinian farmer was killed by an Israeli tank shell early on Friday, said Palestinian medics. Another farmer was moderately injured.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-30 16:58:05|Editor: Mengjie

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BEIJING, March 30 (Xinhua) -- China will set up a state financing guarantee fund of no less than 60 billion yuan (9.52 billion U.S. dollars) to further bolster small businesses and the agricultural sector.

The fund will be created by the Ministry of Finance (MOF) and other departments with the aim of clearing financial hurdles for small and micro businesses in order to serve the real economy.

The move mirrors global precedents in countries such as France, the Republic of Korea, and Japan where state funds play a key role while not seeking profit, according to a statement released by the MOF released on Friday.

The fund is being created at a time when the country's financing guarantee sector remains small, dispersed, and weak with high transaction costs.

It will work through re-guarantees and equity investments to provide financial support for financing guarantee projects backed by local governments.

The MOF estimated that the fund will help around 500,000 small and micro businesses in the next three years, adding about 500 billion yuan of guarantee loans, or one-quarter of the nation's total financing guarantee businesses.
OTTAWA, March 30 (Xinhua) -- Scientists have discovered human footprints left 13,000 years ago on the west coast of Canada, according to a new study published Wednesday in the journal PLOS One.

The researchers determined the year by performing radiocarbon dating on the samples, which were collected across the shoreline of Calvert Island, British Columbia. That would make them the oldest preserved human footprints in North America.

The team also suggested that the 29 human footprints were left by two adults and a child.

Researchers first found the footprints beneath the beach surface in 2014, and discovered several more on subsequent trips in 2015 and 2016, according to the study.

Lead author Duncan McLaren said in a press releases that the people who left the footprints were seafarers who inhabited the area during the tail end of the last major Ice Age.

"It is possible that the coast was one of the means by which people entered the Americas at that time," McLaren, who is an anthropologist from the Hakai Institute at the University of Victoria, was quoted by the New York Times as saying.

This study supports the idea that early Americans traveled south along the west coast, following the migration over a land bridge from Asia to Alaska, a theory that was concluded by previous studies.
KATHMANDU, March 30 (Xinhua) -- Nepal's central bank has paved the way for domestic commercial banks to borrow from foreign banks and financial institutions to address the liquidity crunch in banking system for the last few months, a senior official of the Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB) said.

It is for the first time that Nepali banks have been allowed to borrow from abroad. Other firms however can borrow from abroad.

"A meeting of the board of directors of the central bank on Thursday endorsed a proposal on allowing domestic commercial banks to borrow from foreign banks and financial institutions," Rajendra Pandit, assistant spokesperson of NRB, told Xinhua on Friday.

According to him, domestic banks could borrow loans up to 25 percent of their core capital.

"The banks can borrow loans for the period from one year to five years to finance only in the productive sector such as agriculture, tourism, hydropower and outer infrastructure projects," said Pandit. "Borrowed loans from abroad cannot be used to lend to the real estate, share market and imports."
A picture taken on March 30, 2018 from the southern Israeli kibbutz of Nahal Oz across the border from the Gaza strip shows Palestinians participating in a tent city protest commemorating Land Day, with Israeli soldiers seen below in the foreground. (AFP photo)

GAZA, March 30 (Xinhua) -- Thousands of Palestinians began to flock on Friday to sit-in near the fence of the border between eastern Gaza Strip and Israel, amid deep Israeli fear and readiness to counter any attempts of infiltration through the border.

The Israeli army declared a status of alert and sent forces to the borderline area, including dozens of snipers, to prevent infiltration.

The demonstrators would stay 700 meters away from the border with Israel from northern to southern Gaza Strip, said the organizers.

The march is peaceful and aims at sending a message to the world that the Palestinians have legitimate rights, mainly the right of return, the organizers added.

On Friday, buses took thousands of demonstrators to six different areas along the border between eastern Gaza Strip and Israel. Dozens of white tents were erected and participants waved Palestinian flags.

The organizers prepared the six places with facilities of water, bathrooms, internet and food to encourage the populations, mainly the Palestinian refugees, to carry on with their sit-in until May 15.

The preparation for the "Great March of Return" started a few weeks ago by a joint Palestinian coordination committee that comprises Palestinian factions, including Islamic Hamas movement and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah Party, as well as rights groups, women and children organizations.

The first day of the rally marks the "Land Day" for the Palestinians when the Israeli authorities announced the confiscation of land in Galilee and Negev in 1976, leading to massive demonstrations among Palestinians inside Israel.

The "March of the Return" account on Facebook said the event will be launched from Gaza, the West Bank, Jerusalem, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Egypt, and toward the lands from which Palestinians were displaced in 1948.

The organizers said the goal of the rally is to implement the right of return of the Palestinian people to their land, in accordance with UN resolutions on the return of Palestinian refugees.

Friday prayers will be held inside the tents with the participation of leading Palestinian factions that have urged the largest popular and peaceful participation.

The Israeli army announced a state of alert and pushed up reinforcements near the Gaza Strip border fence, declaring its intention to counter any attempt to infiltrate demonstrators from the Gaza Strip.

The army said it would use the unit for trained dogs to counter any infiltration attempts.

Shortly before the march, a 27-year-old Palestinian farmer was killed by an Israeli tank shell early on Friday, said Palestinian medics. Another farmer was moderately injured.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-30 17:08:08|Editor: Jiaxin

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ULAN BATOR, March 30 (Xinhua) -- Mongolian capital Ulan Bator will expand cooperation with Belarus in a wide range of areas, including public transportation, intensive farming and urban landscaping, the mayor's press office said Friday.

An agreement was reached during the meeting between Ulan Bator Mayor Sundui Batbold and visiting Belarusian Minister of Industry Vitaly Vovk earlier in the day.

During the meeting, the Belarusian side also proposed to build an elevator factory in Ulan Bator, where elevators in apartment buildings are mostly ancient. Currently, Mongolia imports elevators from China.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-30 17:18:11|Editor: Jiaxin

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BEIJING, March 30 (Xinhua) -- Nearly 610,000 Chinese students attended schools and colleges overseas in 2017, an increase of 11.7 percent, said the Ministry of Education Friday.

China remains the world's largest supplier of international students, the ministry said in a press release.

A majority of the students went to European and North American countries. Countries included in the Belt and Road Initiative (B&R) became new destinations, with student numbers rising by 15.7 percent to 66,000 in 2017, the statement said.

At the same time, about 480,000 graduates returned to China, up 11.2 percent, including nearly 230,000 with master's degrees or higher.

Since 1978, about 5.2 million Chinese have studied abroad and among those who graduated about 83.7 percent returned to China.

Meanwhile, a total of 490,000 foreigners from 204 countries and regions studied in China in 2017, the largest amount in Asia. Students from the Republic of Korea, Thailand and Pakistan were the most numerous, while the United States ranked fourth.

Students from B&R countries accounted for 64.9 percent of the total.

About 59,000 international students in China were supported by Chinese government scholarships.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-30 17:23:11|Editor: Zhou Xin

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Participants attend a meeting hosted by the Department of Forest Inspection (DOFI) under the Lao Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF) to enhance the local Chinese community's understanding and observance of the law and regulations on wildlife protection and against illegal wildlife trade in Vientiane, Laos, on March 30, 2018. The Chinese embassy and Chinese community in Laos pledged their support on Friday to work with the Lao government to combat illegal wildlife trade in Laos. (Xinhua/Liu Ailun)

VIENTIANE, March 30 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese embassy and Chinese community in Laos pledged their support on Friday to work with the Lao government to combat illegal wildlife trade in Laos.

A meeting, hosted by the Department of Forest Inspection (DOFI) under the Lao Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF), was to enhance the local Chinese community's understanding and observance of the law and regulations on wildlife protection and against illegal wildlife trade.

It was also to build cooperation among the law enforcement authorities in Laos, the Chinese embassy and the Chinese community, to take action against illegal wildlife trade, said a press release of the meeting.

"We all play an active role in combating illegal wildlife trade. Illegal wildlife trade is a serious concern and will be penalized accordingly under Lao laws and regulations," said Lao Deputy DOFI Director General Thongphanh Rattanalungsy.

Li Nengbin from the Chinese embassy in Laos said:" The Chinese government highly values the efforts to protect wildlife, and commits itself to effectively combating wildlife trafficking."

Towards the end of the meeting, representatives from the Chinese community, which includes the China General Chamber of Commerce, Guangdong, Fujian, Zhejiang, Sichuan and Hunan Chambers of Commerce in Laos as well as the China Southern Airlines, expressed their support to the commitment and efforts by both the Lao and Chinese governments in stopping illegal wildlife trade.

They vowed to work and cooperate with Lao and Chinese authorities in preventing and reporting these illegal activities, and refraining from participating and engaging in activities that contribute to illegal wildlife trade.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-30 17:28:12|Editor: Jiaxin

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HOHHOT, March 30 (Xinhua) -- Three suspects have been arrested for poisoning and hunting 4,484 wild birds in Xilingol League in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, local forest police said Friday.

On Jan. 16, police found 870 dead larks on a grassland in East Ujimqin Banner, according to Zhang Jie, forest police chief in the banner.

Larks are under national-level protection in China.

After 10 days of investigations, police caught a suspect surnamed Wang on Jan. 31 when he returned to the same area to hunt more birds.

Another two suspects were caught in Songyuan in the northeast China's Jilin Province on Feb. 3.

Police found 3,614 more dead birds near the grassland in March. They believe the birds had been hidden under snow.

The suspects used poisoned bait to hunt the birds and planned to sell them to restaurants, according Zhang.

The case is under further investigation.

According to China's wildlife protection law, those who hunt, sell, purchase or transport wild animals that are under special state protection will be punished.
ADDIS ABABA, March 30 (Xinhua) -- Ethiopia said on Friday it had sold 56 million U.S. dollars' worth of bond to its diaspora population to finance a 6,450 megawatts dam being built on Blue Nile river.

Speaking to journalists, Meles Alem, Spokesperson, Ethiopia Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA), said Ethiopia aims to include the diaspora in nation building exercise with the bond sale.

The bond sale to Ethiopia's diaspora estimated to number more than 2 million covers a period close to seven years, ever since the construction of the 6,450 MW dam was started on April 1, 2011.

Ethiopia has already collected several hundred million dollars from the public at home to finance the construction of the dam which is expected to need 4.7 billion dollars to complete.

Alem further said the Ethiopian government has helped form an association, Ethiopian International Professional Support for Abay (EIPSA), bringing economists, engineers and water experts of Ethiopian origin to give technical expertise to the Ethiopian government on the hydro dam.

Named Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) and located in western Ethiopia, 40 km from Ethiopia's border with Sudan, it is the largest hydro project in Africa.

Expected to be completed with entirely domestic funds, GERD has been billed as a landmark project signaling Ethiopia's renaissance.

Already a high voltage electric transmission line built by State Grid of China Electric Power Equipment and Technology Co. Ltd (SGCC) at a cost of 1 billion dollars has been inaugurated, waiting for GERD's total commissioning to be operational.
by Xinhua writers Mao Pengfei, Nguon Sovan

PHNOM PENH, March 30 (Xinhua) -- China plays a big role in solving the Korean Peninsula issue and promoting peace and development in the world, said Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister Hor Namhong in an exclusive interview with Xinhua on Thursday.

The recent trip of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK)'s top leader Kim Jong Un to China is "very, very important, showing the very good relations between China and the DPRK," he said.

This shows the vision of Chinese President Xi Jinping for a peaceful solution to the Korean Peninsula issue, said the official, adding that Xi has always appealed for a peaceful settlement of all the problems on the peninsula, even when there were tensions between the United States and the DPRK.

"President Xi Jinping always, up to now, always recommended peaceful settlement," he said.

Kim's visit signifies that China is a great power in Northeast Asia and in Asia in general and shows that China should always be included in any settlement of problems regarding the Korean Peninsula, the deputy prime minister said.

This year marks the 60th anniversary of diplomatic ties between China and Cambodia. Speaking of bilateral relations, he said, under the comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership, the two countries' cooperation is "in every field ... not one, two or three sectors, but every field." The two countries have frequent top-level exchanges, for example in terms of people, trade and investment.

"I expect that the relations, under the framework of the comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership, will be deepened from day to day," he said, adding that the bilateral relationship could even be called "fraternal."

Although China and Cambodia have different political and social systems, Cambodia can learn from China when it comes to developing the economy and improving people's living standards, he said, adding he has a copy of Xi's book on the governance of China -- "Xi Jinping: The Governance of China."

Cambodia can learn from the Chinese experiences in reform, not only in the government sector, but also in the party, he said. "Reform can bring prosperity for the people, can reduce poverty, can also fight against corruption. ... Without good governance, we cannot have progress," he said.

He also spoke highly of China's role in driving the regional development, especially via the Belt and Road Initiative.

More than 2000 km of roads and seven large bridges in Cambodia have been constructed with China's aid. The new Siem Reap airport and the highway to connect Phnom Penh to Sihavoukville will also demonstrate the initiative's importance to Cambodia, said the deputy prime minister.

The initiatives will contribute to the national strategic plan of Cambodia, he said.

In the energy sector, thanks to China's investment in hydropower, the electricity prices in Cambodia are now decreasing, which is very helpful to developing industries, he said.

In addition to facilitating industrial development, investment in the hydropower field is also improving the living standard of the Cambodian people. "By the year 2020, we plan to have electricity throughout Cambodia, in the remote areas, in every village, thanks to the investment of China," the official said.

"The BRI (Belt and Road Initiative) will bring prosperity and infrastructure, exchanges of people, trade and investment, exchanges of youths, not only between China and Cambodia, not only between China and the Asian region, but also between Europe and Africa. The BRI will promote exchanges, I am sure, promote peace and cooperation among people worldwide," he said.

A community with a shared future for humanity and the Belt and Road Initiative are "two very fundamental visions of President Xi Jinping. They will promote peace around the world, will promote better understanding among people, will promote cooperation in every field among people, among countries on the basis of win-win solution," the deputy prime minister said.
MOGADISHU, March 30 (Xinhua) -- A cholera outbreak in four regions of Somalia has left at least nine people dead with 1,613 cases counted since December 2017, the UN health agency said on Friday.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said the outbreak started in Beletweyne, Hiraan Region then it spread to Banadir Region in early January and later to Lower Juba and Middle Shabelle in early February.

"WHO recommends improving access to safe water and sanitation to prevent cholera transmission. Reinforcing surveillance, particularly at the community level, is advised," said the UN health agency said in its latest report.

Cholera is a potentially fatal water-borne disease transmitted through contaminated water and/or food. It causes watery diarrhea and vomiting that can rapidly lead to death through severe dehydration.

Generally the cholera bacteria spreads in places with poor hygiene, where people do not use latrines to dispose off excreta, or do not wash their hands with soap or ash after defecation.

WHO advised that access to appropriate case management should be improved in the affected areas to decrease mortality, noting that the use of oral cholera vaccine (OCV) to limit the spread should also be considered.

WHO said that despite the control and prevention measures implemented during the last large cholera outbreak in 2017, the risk of the current outbreak is considered high at the national level because only 16 percent of the at-risk population was vaccinated during last year's OCV campaign, which is too low to provide population-level immunity.

The Horn of Africa nation has no public health system after nearly three decades of continuous conflict.

WHO said cholera is endemic in Somalia and continuous transmission was reported in the last few years. The last outbreak, which occurred in 2017, was one of the largest cholera epidemics the country has experienced with 78,000 cases, including 1,159 deaths were reported from 16 regions.

The outbreak reached its peak in April 2017 and gradually declined from June until August 2017, and only few sporadic suspected cases were recorded between October and November 2017.

WHO, however, said it does not recommend any restrictions on travel or trade to Somalia based on the information available.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-30 18:23:25|Editor: Zhou Xin

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People look at Chinese products at a booth during the China-ASEAN Expo-Cambodia exhibition in Phnom Penh, Cambodia on March 30, 2018. The China-ASEAN Expo-Cambodia exhibition kicked off here Friday, aiming to further promote trade and investment ties between Cambodia and China, organizers and officials said. (Xinhua/Phearum)

PHNOM PENH, March 30 (Xinhua) -- The China-ASEAN Expo-Cambodia exhibition kicked off here Friday, aiming to further promote trade and investment ties between Cambodia and China, organizers and officials said.

Held at the Diamond Island Exhibition Center, the 3-day event brought together some 290 companies displaying products and services in 440 booths.

Wang Lei, secretary-general of the China-ASEAN Expo Secretariat, said 2018 marked the 15th anniversaries of the China-ASEAN strategic partnership, and it was also the year that China and Cambodia celebrated the 60th anniversary of their diplomatic relations.

"It is the very first time for the China-ASEAN Expo Secretariat to organize an exhibition in Cambodia, which aims to serve the implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative, and to strengthen practical cooperation between China and Cambodia," he said during the opening ceremony of the exhibition.

"It is the largest exhibition organized by the China-ASEAN Expo Secretariat in ASEAN countries," he added.

Apart from the exhibition, a series of business matching events would be held to help Chinese and Cambodian enterprises explore each other's markets, and particularly, to facilitate Cambodia to bring in more Chinese investment.

Chinese Ambassador to Cambodia Xiong Bo said the exhibition, along with trade and investment forums, would give an opportunity to business people of the two countries to explore new opportunities for business and investment.

Cambodian Commerce Ministry Secretary of State Chhuon Dara highly spoke of the excellent ties between Cambodia and China in all fields, especially in trade, investment and tourism.

"The exhibition is vital for the two countries to further enhance trade and investment relations," he said in a speech during the opening ceremony.

Pung Kheav Se, chairman of the Khmer-Chinese Association in Cambodia, said the exhibition would greatly boost bilateral business cooperation between Cambodia and China.

"The Cambodian government led by Prime Minister Samdech Techo Hun Sen highly values Cambodia's cooperation with China in various areas," said Pung Kheav Se, who is also an economic advisor to the prime minister.
Suicide bombing kills 3 in E. Afghan province Source: Xinhua 2018-03-30 18:38:30 ASADABAD, Afghanistan, March 30 (Xinhua) -- An Afghan provincial council member, together with a local pro-government leader and an assailant, was killed when the assailant blew himself up in the eastern province of Kunar on Friday, a provincial government spokesman said. Editor: Zhou Xin
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-30 18:43:31|Editor: Lu Hui

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BEIJING, March 30 (Xinhua) -- As the U.S. administration has taken an increasingly hawkish turn on China, economists agree that the U.S. high tariffs plan on Chinese imports will backfire.

"U.S. consumers will bear the costs of the Trump administration's tariffs on Chinese imports," said Justin Yifu Lin, dean of the Institute for New Structural Economics of Peking University, in a written article.

As U.S. consumer demand for daily necessities will not change simply by raising the costs of imported products, the United States will either continue to import from China or it will import from Vietnam, India and Africa where goods prices are higher, and the result will be the same: the U.S. consumers would pay more for the same products, Lin explains.

Thus, "the politically motivated imposition of high U.S. tariffs on imports from China would fly in the face of reciprocity, contradict the win-win principle of trade, and jeopardize the interests of U.S. voters," said Lin.

Last Thursday, U.S. President Donald Trump signed a memorandum that could impose tariffs on up to 60 billion U.S. dollars of imports from China and restrictions on Chinese investment in the United States.

In response to the U.S. tariff proposals, China's Ministry of Commerce announced last week that it was considering suspending tariff concessions on 128 categories of U.S. products worth 3 billion dollars, including pork, wine and seamless steel tubes.

"Whereas the U.S. imports tens of thousands of Chinese products, China imports a narrow range of products from the U.S., such as soybeans, corn, computer chips, and aircraft. China's imposition of higher tariffs on imports from the U.S. would thus have a bigger impact on U.S. producers than vice versa," Lin said.

Zhu Min, head of the National Institute of Financial Research at Tsinghua University, echoed, noting that a trade war between China and the U.S. will have potential repercussions on the global industrial chain and let the U.S. enterprises and consumers shoulder higher prices.

Once a trade war starts, the cost, price and flow of commodities will all change, affecting an estimated 400 billion dollars or more of the global industrial chain, according to Zhu.

"Now, with the U.S. abandoning free trade, China can take up the mantle of promoting it, thereby improving its image as a major power and demonstrating its commitment to global governance and development," Lin said.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-30 18:48:32|Editor: Lu Hui

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BEIJING, March 30 (Xinhua) -- China announced plans to introduce tax exemptions and reductions for chip producers on Friday.

Businesses established after Jan. 1 to manufacture integrated circuits (ICs) with lines thinner than 130 nanometers (nm) will be exempted from the income tax for the first two years, according to a statement from the Ministry of Finance.

The tax rates will be 12.5 percent from the third year, half of the statutory level.

The exemption period will be five years if the IC lines are thinner than 65 nm or the investment totaled more than 15 billion yuan (2.39 billion U.S. dollars).

Businesses established before 2018 producing 0.25- and 0.8-micron chips can also enjoy similar favorable policies after they make profits, according to the statement.

The tax breaks came as the country's latest effort to stimulate the manufacturing of high-performance ICs, which has been dubbed an emerging sector of strategic importance.

A robust IC sector will facilitate technological and industrial revolutions and help foster new economic growth engines, analysts said. The sector maintained a 20-percent annual growth rate during the past five years.

Miao Wei, minister of industry and information technology, has said China will provide more opportunities for foreign companies to invest in IC and other manufacturing sectors.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-30 19:03:34|Editor: Zhou Xin

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GAZA, March 30 (Xinhua) -- A Palestinian young man was shot dead Friday by Israeli army soldiers as thousands staged massive rallies along the border fence between Gaza and Israel, Palestinian medical sources said.

The sources identified the man as Mohammed al-Najjar, a 25-year-old Palestinian, adding that he was shot in the head during a protest in the northern Gaza Strip town of Jabaliya.

Earlier in the day, a Palestinian farmer was killed and another one was injured by an Israeli tank shell on Khan Younis.

Eyewitnesses said an Israeli tank opened fire at the two farmers who approached their farm to collect parsley.

Since early Friday hours, thousands of Palestinians flocked to sit-in near the border fence between eastern Gaza Strip and Israel, amid Israeli readiness to foil any border infiltration attempts.

The Israeli army declared a status of alert and deployed large forces along the borderline area.

The Palestinian rally, dubbed the "Great March of Return," will last until May 15, which coincides with Israel's Independence Day and the Palestinian Day of "the Nakba," or the catastrophe, when thousands of Palestinians were expelled from their towns and cities that became later Israeli territories.

The demonstrators would stay 700 meters away from the border with Israel from northern to southern Gaza Strip, said the rally organizers.

They stressed that the march is peaceful and aims at sending a message to the world that the Palestinians have legitimate rights, mainly the right of return for Palestinian refugees.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees are expected to participate in the rally to demand their return to their home they were forced to leave during the Arab-Israeli war in 1948.
ASADABAD, Afghanistan, March 30 (Xinhua) -- An Afghan provincial council member, together with a local pro-government leader and an assailant, was killed when the assailant blew himself up in eastern province of Kunar on Friday, a provincial government spokesman said.

The incident occurred roughly at midday in Sheengam village, Wata Pour district, in northern countryside of provincial capital Asadabad city, spokesman Ghani Musamim told Xinhua.

The explosion took place soon after the arrival of Shah Wali Hemat, a provincial council member, to attend a local funeral ceremony, he said. A local tribesman named Abdul Rahman also lost his life on the spot.

A security guard was injured in the explosion, the latest targeted attack in the country against government officials and local leaders, the spokesman said.

More details would be made public later as investigation is underway to find more facts about the incident, he added.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack yet. Taliban and Islamic State (IS) militants are active in the province and target the government interest from time to time.

On Wednesday, a district police chief and a civilian were killed and four civilians wounded after gunmen fired during a funeral ceremony in neighboring Nangarhar province.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-30 19:23:38|Editor: Mengjie

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BEIJING, March 30 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. decision to impose high tariffs on Chinese imports to reduce its trade deficit with China will backfire, according to former World Bank chief economist Justin Yifu Lin.

Lin drew the conclusion in an online article released by Project Syndicate on Wednesday, where he reviews trade relations between the world's top two economies as well as the history of U.S. trade deficit growth, particularly since the mid-1980s.

On March 22, U.S. President Donald Trump signed a memorandum that would impose high tariffs on up to 600 billion U.S. dollars of Chinese products. The move has led to widespread comments and a strong opposition from China.

The U.S. trade deficit growth since mid-1980s, Lin said, mainly "reflects the monetary expansion by the Federal Reserve, which has inflated real estate and stock prices," leading to increased consumption and declined savings at home.

He also blamed it on the dramatic increase in the U.S. fiscal deficit due to the cost of U.S. military intervention in the Middle East and elsewhere.

"The increase in China's trade surplus with the U.S. since 1985 has been driven primarily by the evolution of the East Asian economy," Lin said, noting that East Asia is the major source of imported labor-intensive consumer goods for the United States.

Lin cited the fact that China's share in the U.S. total trade deficit rose from 0.3 percent in 1985 to 44 percent in 2016, or 347 billion dollars, while East Asia's contribution has dropped to about 50 percent from more than 100 percent in the early 1990s.

"East Asia, including China, is not the main cause of the rapid expansion of the U.S. trade deficit," he said.

Besides, Lin also pointed out that China's trade surplus with the U.S. has been "systematically overstated" because the capital-intensive components of its manufacturing products are primarily imported.

According to him, U.S. consumers will bear the costs of the Trump administration's tariffs on Chinese imports, having to pay more for the same products from other countries. "Meanwhile, higher prices of those countries' products will lead to an increase in the U.S. trade deficits with them," he said.

Lin called the U.S. move to impose high tariffs against China "politically motivated", which will "fly in the face of reciprocity, contradict the win-win principle of trade, and jeopardize the interests of U.S. voters."

Finally, while the United States imports "tens of thousands of Chinese products", China imports a narrow range of products from the United States. If China imposes higher tariffs on U.S. products, it "would thus have a bigger impact on U.S. producers than vice versa," he said.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-30 20:08:47|Editor: Mengjie

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BEIJING, March 30 (Xinhua) -- Xiangyanghong 01, China's elite scientific research ship, docked at the Papeete port in French Polynesia on Friday after completing its first maritime research mission in the southeast Pacific Ocean.

During the 41-day mission, the ship helped collect samples of deep-sea sediment, seawater and microplastics and data in seabed topography, geophysics, hydrology, meteorology and biochemistry.

"This was the first time a Chinese research vessel has acquired an all-depth oceanographic observation profile in this region, paving the way for future regional and global oceanic studies," said Shi Xuefa, chief scientist of the research mission.

The vessel successfully conducted a 25-hour nonstop observation and assessment of oceanic turbulence, which will shed light on ocean and climate change research.

"Studies on seabed sediments will help us understand the evolution of ancient oceanic environment and climate and acquire information about seabed resources," Shi said.

The research team also used video plankton recorders for the first time to observe underwater organisms and found the research region was rich in plankton 30-100 meters below.

The southeast Pacific Ocean mission was the fifth stage of Xiangyanghong's journey around the world, China's first maritime research expedition that integrates oceanic and polar research.

Departing from east China's Qingdao last August, Xiangyanghong 01 will cover around 35,000 nautical miles on its 260-day expedition, and is scheduled to return to Qingdao on May 15.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-30 20:13:47|Editor: Zhou Xin

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DAMASCUS, March 30 (Xinhua) -- A deal for the evacuation of the Islam Army rebels from the Douma district in the capital Damascus' Eastern Ghouta countryside could be concluded soon, state news agency SANA reported on Friday.

While SANA has yet to give more details, negotiations between the Islam Army and the government through the mediation of the Russians have been ongoing for days to reach an agreement similar to other deals reached with other rebel groups in areas of Eastern Ghouta.

However, the negotiations are thorny as the Islam Army hasn't shown the same leniency as other rebel groups, due to its status, as it's more powerful than the other rebel groups which have been evacuating Eastern Ghouta in droves recently.

Also, Douma is the largest district in Eastern Ghouta and the most densely-populated among all.

Meanwhile, and as the reports started emerging about the deal, the Islam Army renewed on its official Twitter account its stance that no deal has yet been concluded.

It also renewed what it described as the forceful displacement of the people of Douma, citing the mass evacuation of rebels and civilians as well from Eastern Ghouta.

In other areas of Eastern Ghouta, as many as 143,000 civilians have evacuated their towns toward government-run shelters on the outskirts of Eastern Ghouta since mid-March.

Also, the rebels and their families have also been evacuating their areas in the central part of Eastern Ghouta since last Saturday, with the latest batch of 7,000 rebels and their families leaving on Thursday evening toward rebel-held areas in the northwestern province of Idlib.

Eastern Ghouta, a 105-square-km agricultural region consisting of several towns and farmlands, poses the last threat to the capital due to its proximity to government-controlled neighborhoods east of Damascus and ongoing mortar attacks that target residential areas in the capital, pushing people over the edge.

Four major rebel groups are currently positioned inside Eastern Ghouta, namely the Islam Army, Failaq al-Rahman, Ahrar al-Sham, and the Levant Liberation Committee, known as the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-30 20:28:49|Editor: Mengjie

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BEIJING, March 30 (Xinhua) -- China's securities regulator approved three new IPO applications Friday, which will raise up to 1.6 billion yuan (254.4 million U.S. dollars) in the A-share market.

One of the three companies will be listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, while the other two will be listed on Shenzhen's ChiNext start-up board, according to the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC).

The firms and their underwriters will confirm dates and publish prospectuses following discussions with the exchanges.

The CSRC has introduced rigorous approval procedures for IPOs since a new review committee came into office in October, rejecting or suspending more than half of applications.

China has sought to normalize IPOs to improve financing efficiency and direct more money into the real economy since it suspended IPOs between July and November 2015.

The regulator is seeking a balance between easing the IPO backlog and improving the quality of listed companies.
ARUSHA, Tanzania, March 30 (Xinhua) -- At least eight people were killed and 65 injured in a road accident that involved two passenger buses in north-western Tanzania's region of Kagera, police said on Friday.

Augustino Ollomi, Kagera Regional Police Commander said that the accident occurred on Thursday evening at around 6 pm local time in north-western Tanzania's district of Ngara involving two passenger buses, which were carrying Burundian refugees, who were returning to their home country from Tanzania.

Ollomi said that the refugees were travelling to Burundi from Nduta refugee camp in the western region of Kigoma through Kagera Region.

He said five people died on the spot and three others died soon after reaching the nearby hospital in north-western Tanzania's district.

The regional police chief cited speed as one cause of the accident as one bus hit a bicycle cyclist and lost control before the second bus rammed into another bus and overturned.

The Burundian refugees were those who decided to voluntarily leave the refugee camps to their home country, according to Ollomi.

The accident happened barely few days when another accident killed 26 people were killed and 10 injured in a deadly road accident in eastern Tanzania's district of Mkuranga.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-30 20:58:57|Editor: Mengjie

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Chinese Premier Li Keqiang meets with Namibian President Hage Geingob at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 30, 2018. (Xinhua/Liu Weibing)

BEIJING, March 30 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and China's top legislator Li Zhanshu met with Namibian President Hage Geingob in Beijing Friday, vowing to boost bilateral relations.

Calling Namibia China's important cooperation partner in Africa, Premier Li said China expected to consolidate political trust with Namibia, enhance win-win cooperation and coordination in regional and global affairs to jointly build a brighter future for bilateral ties.

Hailing the progress and broad prospects of China-Namibia substantial cooperation, Premier Li said China hoped to synergize development strategies with Namibia, and deepen cooperation in such key areas as agriculture and agricultural technology, infrastructure, production capacity and tourism.

The premier vowed joint efforts with Namibia to support economic globalization as well as trade and investment liberalization and facilitation, take a clear stand to oppose trade protectionism, and promote common development and mutual benefits.

Hailing the traditional friendship between the two countries, Geingob said that the two sides had agreed to update their relations to a comprehensive strategic partnership, and signed a series of important cooperation documents.

"This will further boost bilateral exchanges and cooperation in the areas of politics, economy and strategy," he said.

Geingob said Namibia expected to deepen cooperation with China in various areas and boost stronger ties.

In his meeting with Geingob, Li Zhanshu, chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), said the NPC was willing to work with the Namibian side to implement the consensus reached by their heads of state, and boost closer friendly exchanges.

He called on the two sides to firmly support win-win China-Africa cooperation under the framework of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, as well as the Belt and Road Initiative.

Li Zhanshu asked the two sides to offer a better investment environment and legal protection for each other's investors, consolidate the foundation of social and public opinion for China-Namibia friendship, and boost greater development of bilateral ties in the new era.

Geingob spoke highly of China's policy to Africa, adding his country hoped to strengthen pragmatic cooperation with China in various areas and support more legislative exchanges between the two countries.

On Friday afternoon, Geingob also laid a wreath at the Monument to the People's Heroes in downtown Beijing.
MOSCOW, March 30 (Xinhua) -- Russian Foreign Ministry on Friday summoned a number of foreign ambassadors to inform them of retaliatory measures in response to the hostile actions by their countries against Moscow over its ex-spy dispute with Britain.

The ambassadors will be handed notes of protest and informed of Russia's measures, the ministry said in a statement.

According to Russian news agencies, the ambassadors of Australia, Canada, Denmark, Poland, Italy, Greece, Croatia, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, France and Germany, as well as representatives of the Ukrainian and Czech diplomatic missions were among the list.

On Thursday, Russia declared its decision to expel 60 U.S. diplomats and shut the U.S. consulate general in St. Petersburg in retaliation for Washington's recent moves against Moscow.
LAGOS, March 30 (Xinhua) -- Thirty two villagers were killed by bandits in northwest Nigeria's Zamfara, authorities said on Friday.

Mustapha Gado, Chairman of Anka Local Government, who confirmed the incident, said 32 persons were buried on Thursday, including a woman and her child who died at a hospital in Gusau, the state capital.

Gado said more bodies were still being searched for in the bushes and that security measures had been stepped up in the area, but that the villagers had all ran away out of fear that the bandits might return.

Security sources said the bandits attacked Bawan Daji village on Tuesday after some members of the community held a meeting to discuss measures to be taken against the bandits during the 2018 farming season.

The bandits had earlier threatened that there would be no farming activities in the area in this year's rainy season, the source added.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-30 21:09:01|Editor: Zhou Xin

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A wounded Palestinian is evacuated during clashes with Israeli troops near the Gaza-Israel border in the southern Gaza Strip City of Khan Younis, on March 30, 2018. At least seven Palestinians were killed and 500 wounded Friday in the ongoing violent clashes between hundreds of Palestinians and the Israeli soldiers during a popular march close to the border between Gaza Strip and Israel, medics said. (Xinhua/Khaled Omar)

GAZA, March 30 (Xinhua) -- At least seven Palestinians were killed and 500 wounded Friday in the ongoing violent clashes between hundreds of Palestinians and the Israeli soldiers during a popular march close to the border between Gaza Strip and Israel, medics said.

Ashraf al-Qedra, Gaza health ministry spokesman told reporters that early on Friday, Israeli soldiers targeted two farmers close to the border with the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis, killing a 27-year-old farmer and wounding another.

Later on Friday, six other Palestinian demonstrators were shot dead and around 500 injured by Israeli troops' gunfire near the border between eastern Gaza Strip and Israel during heavy violent confrontations, according to al-Qedra.

The confrontations broke out Friday morning when Israeli soldiers stationed at the border fired tear gas to disperse hundreds of Palestinians from approaching the fence. Young demonstrators threw stones at the soldiers, according to witnesses.

Al-Qedra said that six Palestinians were shot dead by Israeli troops' gunfire during the clashes in eastern Gaza.

The eyewitnesses said the Israeli army sent more forces, including armored vehicles, snipers, sniffing dogs and soldiers equipped with tear gas, rubber bullets and live ammunition to prevent Palestinians from reaching the fence of the borders.

Thousands of Palestinians, including women and children, arrived by buses at six different areas in the eastern part of the Gaza Strip, close to the border with Israel to join the "Great March of Return."

The march, which began Friday on the occasion of the Land Day, is scheduled to end on May 15, which coincides with 70 years of the Palestinian Day of "the Nakba," or the catastrophe, when the state of Israel was born in 1948.
SOFIA, March 30 (Xinhua) -- Bulgaria wanted more evidence on the Skripal case and would not expel Russian diplomats for now, the country's Prime Minister Boyko Borissov said here on Friday after a meeting of the governmental Security Council.

Bulgaria expected more evidence, if any, of Russia's role claimed by Britain in the poisoning of the former Russian spy and British double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the British city of Salisbury on March 4, Borissov said.

"At this time, we do not think we should expel diplomats or technical staff from the embassy of the Russian Federation," Borissov said.

He said Bulgaria has already shown its solidarity with Britain by supporting European Council and NATO decisions on the Skripal case, and by summoning its ambassador to Moscow for consultations.

Meanwhile, as the country that is holding the rotating presidency of the council of the European Union, Bulgaria should remain as a channel of communication to Russia, Borissov said.

Bulgarian ambassador would return to Moscow on April 8, he added.

On Wednesday, when answering a reporter's question, Bulgarian President Rumen Radev said that "solidarity is an important principle, but it should not be blind."

"In such serious cases, irrefutable evidence is needed," Radev said.

Also on Wednesday, Kristian Vigenin, secretary of the parliamentary group of the opposition Bulgarian Socialist Party and former Bulgaria's foreign minister, said that "to date, we have not seen convincing evidence, not to say any evidence that Russia was directly involved in the Scripal case."
NAIROBI, March 30 (Xinhua) -- More than 100 Kenyans, Somalis and South Sudanese who were deported from the United States arrived in Nairobi on Friday, officials said.

Police and Immigration officials at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport said 20 Kenyans were among those who landed at the airport early Friday.

"The deportees arrived aboard an Omni International Airlines, a private airline. It landed at JKIA shortly after 10 a.m. on Friday and was received by police and immigration officials," said a police officer who declined to be named.

The officials said the deportations had been anticipated given the ongoing operations in the U.S. targeting illegal immigrants.

The police officer said the Kenyans were allowed to proceed to their homes, 70 Somalis remained in the plane before it took off to Mogadishu while the 24 South Sudanese nationals left in a Juba airline.

This is the latest batch of immigrants to be deported from the U.S. in two years under President Donald Trump.

Over 100 Kenyans have so far been deported from the United States in 2017, which was a sharp increase during Trump's first year as president.

The rise in the number of Kenyans removed from the U.S. from 63 in 2016 to 103 last year reflects an overall increase in deportations.

According to officials, U.S. authorities expelled a total of 2,134 individuals from sub-Saharan countries in the past fiscal year, which ended on September 30, 2017.

That was more than double the 920 removed from the U.S. in the same period in 2016.

The deportations came after President Donald Trump signed executive orders that include a temporary ban on most refugees and a suspension of visas for citizens of Syria and six other Middle Eastern and African countries.
A picture taken on March 30, 2018 shows a Palestinian youth injured during a demonstration near the border with Israel east of Jabalia in the Gaza Strip commemorating Land Day. (AFP photo)

GAZA, March 30 (Xinhua) -- At least seven Palestinians were killed and 500 wounded Friday in the ongoing violent clashes between hundreds of Palestinians and the Israeli soldiers during a popular march close to the border between Gaza Strip and Israel, medics said.

Ashraf al-Qedra, Gaza health ministry spokesman told reporters that early on Friday, Israeli soldiers targeted two farmers close to the border with the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis, killing a 27-year-old farmer and wounding another.

Later on Friday, six other Palestinian demonstrators were shot dead and around 500 injured by Israeli troops' gunfire near the border between eastern Gaza Strip and Israel during heavy violent confrontations, according to al-Qedra.

The confrontations broke out Friday morning when Israeli soldiers stationed at the border fired tear gas to disperse hundreds of Palestinians from approaching the fence. Young demonstrators threw stones at the soldiers, according to witnesses.

Al-Qedra said that six Palestinians were shot dead by Israeli troops' gunfire during the clashes in eastern Gaza.

The eyewitnesses said the Israeli army sent more forces, including armored vehicles, snipers, sniffing dogs and soldiers equipped with tear gas, rubber bullets and live ammunition to prevent Palestinians from reaching the fence of the borders.

Thousands of Palestinians, including women and children, arrived by buses at six different areas in the eastern part of the Gaza Strip, close to the border with Israel to join the "Great March of Return."
KIEV, March 30 (Xinhua) -- The 4th Generation (4G) mobile service has been officially launched in major cities across Ukraine, the country's President Petro Poroshenko announced on Friday.

"Mobile carriers have launched 4G mobile services in more than 20 cities," Poroshenko wrote on Facebook.

The Lifecell telecom provider said on its website it is now offering 4G service in 24 cities, while the Vodafone-Ukraine operator said it has launched the service in five cities.

Kyivstar, another Ukrainian telecom operator, said it plans to launch the 4G service by April 10.

Kyivstar, Vodafone-Ukraine and Lifecell won the rights to provide the 4G services at two separate auctions on Jan. 31 and March 6 this year.

In the next four years, all cities in Ukraine are set to gain access to 4G services.
MOGADISHU, March 30 (Xinhua) -- The African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) said on Friday that it has started the biometric registration of the Darwish militia in Jubbaland state, preceding their integration into the regional State's security forces.

Martin Abili, the AMISOM Police Coordinator in Kismayo said more than 5,000 members of the militia group will be registered in Gedo, Lower Juba and Middle Juba regions.

"This is in line with AMISOM and UN program aimed at developing the force into a police force in Jubbaland that will be mandated to keep law, order and security in the state," Abili said in a statement issued in Mogadishu.

He said the biometric registration entails collection of key personal data including photographs and fingerprints of each member of the group.

Abili said the militia will be integrated either into the Jubbaland state's police force, the paramilitary or the Somali National Army (SNA).

The AU mission said the exercise, which supports the development and strengthening of the country's national security institutions, is part of the security sector reform, which is viewed as a central priority for the Somali government and its partners, as set out in the landmark political agreement by Somali leaders on the National Security Architecture in April 2017.

The Jubbaland Force Commander Brigadier General Adan Mohamud Ibrahim described the exercise as "critical" for the region. "We are ready to avail all the troops everywhere, so that they will be registered," he stated.
A local employee works at the sleeper and beam factory at the sixth section of Kenya's Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) project, near Mtito Andei, Kenya, on Sept. 2, 2015. (Xinhua/Pan Siwei)

NAIROBI, March 30 (Xinhua) -- Kenya has strengthened its investments and legal framework in order to attract more Chinese investments especially in areas of industrialization as it seeks to attain a newly industrialized country status by the year of 2030, a senior official has said.

"Chinese private investors should take up opportunities presented in the Special Economic Zones that are now operational," Henry Rotich, Kenya's Cabinet Secretary for the National Treasury said in a recent interview in the capital of Nairobi.

"We have also finished reforming our Private Public Partnership laws, so we have now the institutional capacity. We are therefore accepting proposals in all sectors of the economy," he said.

"We are very optimistic that the government-to-government relations we have had with China will be strengthened but at the same time we want more Chinese investors to come and set up manufacturing hubs in the country," he added.

Kenya is seeking to increase the contribution of its manufacturing sector to its annual economic output from the current 9 percent to 15 percent in the next five years, the official said.

"Part of this will be actualized through investments in special economic zones. It is also seeking Chinese technology to enable it to set up agriculture produce manufacturing hubs in the rural areas to meet its annual food needs and become a net food exporter," he added.

Kenya has been investing heavily in building its infrastructure, especially roads, railway and electricity generating capacity to facilitate manufacturing and smooth supply of raw materials from the rural areas.

According to the Treasury, more than 2,000 kilometers of roads have been upgraded into bitumen standards over the last five years. The 480-km Standard Gauge Railway from Mombasa to Nairobi is now providing efficiency in rail transport and being extended a further 80 kilometers as part of its extension to the neighboring Uganda.

As part of attracting more Chinese private investors, Kenya hosted China-Africa Industrial Capacity Cooperation Exposition in December last year where private investors from the two countries exchanged contacts.

Kenya also hosted representatives of Chinese companies from Shenzhen city in July 2017 to explore opportunities in energy, trade, finance and agriculture sectors.
MOSCOW, March 30 (Xinhua) -- Russian Foreign Ministry on Friday asked Britain to downsize its diplomats stationed in Russia to the same level as Russia has in Britain within a month in retaliation to measures imposed following the poison attack in Britain.

The ministry summoned British Ambassador to Russia Laurie Bristow to be presented with a strong protest over "provocative and unjustified actions of the British side," according to a statement published by the ministry.

"The ambassador was informed that, in response, the British side should, within a month, by appropriate reductions of its personnel, bring the total number of employees of the British Embassy in Moscow and the British Consulate General in Russia into line with the number of Russian diplomats and administrative and technical staff on long-term missions in the UK," the statement said.

The move was part of retaliatory measures against Britain after it expelled 23 Russian diplomats over the poisoning of a former Russian double agent in the British city of Salisbury earlier in March.

More than two dozens countries announced the expulsion of Russian diplomats in the wake of the UK's move, including the United States.

According to Russian media, the ambassadors of Australia, Canada, Denmark, Poland, Italy, Greece, Croatia, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, France and Germany, as well as representatives of the Ukrainian and Czech diplomatic missions were also summoned by the ministry to be informed of retaliatory measures.
YANGON, March 30 (Xinhua) -- Myanmar's new president reshuffled the cabinet on Friday.

According to an announcement of the President's Office, the 27-member cabinet was reformed with U Win Myint himself as president, U Myint Swe and U Henry Van Thio as two vice-presidents.

Aung San Suu Kyi was appointed as Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lt. Gen. Kyaw Swe as Minister of Home Affairs, Lt. Gen. Sein Win as Minister of Defense and Lt. Gen. Ye Aung as Minister for Border Affairs.

New President U Win Myint, former speaker of the House of Representatives, won the presidential election on Wednesday.
SpaceX Launches 10 Satellites for IRIDIUM on Used Rocket Source: Xinhua 2018-03-30 22:29:20 LOS ANGELES, March 30 (Xinhua) -- U.S. private spaceflight company SpaceX on Friday morning launched 10 communications satellites into orbit for Iridium Communications on a used Falcon 9 rocket from California. Editor: Zhou Xin
Photo taken on Aug. 26, 2014 shows the Sandwich Harbour view on the west coast of Namibia. (Xinhua/Gao Lei)

WINDHOEK, March 30 (Xinhua) -- Namibia has abandoned the winter time switch in favor of summer time all year round, following the gazetting of the Namibia Time Act 2017, the information ministry said on Thursday.

Namibia will now have one standard time throughout the year in line with major trading partner South Africa.

Businesses in support of repealing the old Namibian Time Act of 1994 had argued that Namibia loses a lot of business as it operates outside normal business hours with the rest of the region, especially South Africa, an important trading partner.

The Namibian Employers' Federation (NEF) argued that about 80 percent of the companies it engaged showed that workers were in favor of returning to GMT +2 hours all year round in line with South Africa and other countries in the region.

The impact of the winter time change is said to be an estimated loss of four business hours daily, according to findings from public consultations.

The old Namibian Time Act of 1994 states that during the summer period the time be set two hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time, and then be shifted one hour ahead for the winter period.
ROME, March 30 (Xinhua) -- A 19-year-old Moroccan man was arrested for incitement to terrorism, Italian police said Friday.

The suspect, a legal resident named as Ilyass Hadouz, was picked up in the town of Fossano near the northwestern city of Cuneo after surveillance showed he engaged in "intense jihadi propaganda" on social media, ANSA news agency reported.

National anti-mafia and anti-terrorism prosecutor Federico Cafiero de Raho told Il Mattino newspaper that the biggest threat in Italy is likely to come from so-called "home-grown terrorists" -- kids born in Italy of immigrant parents, who become sympathizers of extremists.

"We need to keep monitoring socially marginalized second-generation immigrants, who are the likely breeding ground for terrorist radicalization," Cafiero de Raho explained.

Such home-grown terrorists pose a greater threat to Italy than returning foreign fighters -- Europeans who went to fight in the ranks of so-called Islamic State (IS) in Syria and Iraq.

Cafiero De Raho estimated there are no more than 50 such returning foreign fighters in Italy, which is "considered more as a place of transit" to other European countries after the military defeat of IS in Syria and Iraq, Cafiero de Raho said.

Friday's operation follows on the arrest Thursday of five men with links to Anis Amri, the Tunisian terrorist who drove a hijacked lorry into a Christmas market in Berlin in December 2016, killing 12 people.

On Wednesday in the northern city of Turin, police arrested a 23-year-old Moroccan-Italian man who was allegedly plotting a truck bomb attack in the name of IS. On Tuesday, a 59-year-old Egyptian man was arrested for indoctrinating children with extremist ideology at an Islamic center in the southern city of Foggia, also in the name of IS.

Italy is on high security alert for the Easter holiday.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-30 22:54:23|Editor: Xiang Bo

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Chinese President Xi Jinping's special representative Yang Jiechi (L) meets with South Korean President Moon Jae-in at the Blue House in Seoul, South Korea, March 30, 2018. Yang, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the head of the General Office of the Central Committee for Foreign Affairs, held talks with South Korean President Moon Jae-in at the Blue House in Seoul on Friday. (Xinhua/Wang Jingqiang)

SEOUL, March 30 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping's special representative Yang Jiechi held talks with South Korean President Moon Jae-in at the Blue House in Seoul on Friday, with both sides pledging to promote a political settlement of the Korean Peninsula issue.

Yang, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the head of the General Office of the Central Committee for Foreign Affairs, extended Xi's greetings to Moon.

He said the aim of his trip is to implement the consensus reached between the two heads of state and enhance bilateral relations and strategic cooperation.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the establishment of the China-South Korea strategic cooperative partnership, Yang said, adding that China is willing to work together with South Korea to bring forward a healthy and stable development of bilateral relations.

Yang expressed the hope for continued leading and guiding role of the summits of the heads of state of both countries, strengthened political communications, solidified mutual strategic trust, deepened mutually beneficial cooperation as well as accelerated cooperation and more alignment concerning the Belt and Road Initiative.

Yang informed Moon about the visit of the top leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) Kim Jong Un to China, saying that China has long supported the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. He added that China supports maintaining peace on the peninsula and settling conflict through dialogue.

Stressing that the Korean Peninsula is at a critical point, Yang said tensions are easing and the overall situation could turn around for good. He urged all parties involved to promote smooth talks between the South Korean and DPRK leaders as well as the DPRK and U.S. leaders in order to reach a political settlement on the Peninsula.

China is willing to work with South Korea on achieving denuclearization, and maintaining peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula, Yang said.

Moon asked Yang to convey his congratulations to Xi on his election as Chinese president.

He said the South Korea-China strategic cooperative partnership has maintained a good momentum, adding that he expects bilateral relations to advance this year.

South Korea speaks highly of China's successful hosting of Kim, Moon said. He added that South Korea lauds China's constructive role in resolving the Korean Peninsula issue, and appreciates the country's contributions to de-escalating tensions on the peninsula in recent years.

The president said South Korea is willing to enhance coordination with China and together safeguard peace and stability on the Peninsula and that only dialogue can resolve any outstanding issues.

Yang also met with Chung Eui-yong, top security adviser for the South Korean president and South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha during his visit to Seoul.
OTTAWA, March 30 (Xinhua) -- A police officer was wounded and a fleeing suspect was killed in an exchange of gunfire Thursday night in Evansburg in western Canada, according to CTV on Friday.

The police officer spotted the suspect who was wanted on a Canada-wide warrant and a chase began after he failed to stop the suspect's vehicle.

The police officer was injured during the exchange of gunfire and then airlifted to a hospital in Edmonton, the capital city of the province of Alberta.

More than 15 police units were involved in stopping the suspect's vehicle.
HO CHI MINH CITY, March 30 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh City licensed 180 foreign direct investment (FDI) projects with total registered capital of over 215 million U.S. dollars in the first quarter of this year, posting a year-on-year surge of 52.8 percent in value, the provincial Planning and Investment Department said Friday.

Meanwhile, 297 operational FDI projects in the city raised their capital by a total of over 113.5 million dollars, and 530 foreign investors spent more than 951 million dollars purchasing stakes in Vietnamese companies.

Of the 951 million dollars, 46.6 percent were involved in real estates, 19 percent in science and technology, and 8.5 percent on travel services.

Between January and March, Vietnam licensed 618 FDI projects with total registered capital of over 2.1 billion U.S. dollars, down 27.3 percent, and saw 199 operational FDI projects raise their capital by roughly 1.8 billion dollars in total, down 54.6 percent.

In the same period, foreign investors spent nearly 1.9 billion dollars buying stocks of, or contributing capital to operational Vietnamese companies, up 121.6 percent, said the country's Foreign Investment Agency.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-30 23:09:26|Editor: Chengcheng

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Palestinians take part in a protest along the Israel border with Gaza, demanding the right to return to their homeland, on the 42nd Anniversary of the Palestinian Land Day, in Gaza City, on March 30, 2018. (Xinhua/Wissam Nassar)

RAMALLAH, March 30 (Xinhua) -- Hundreds of Palestinians took part in popular mass marches in Ramallah and other West Bank towns Friday, marking the 42nd national Land Day protesting the Israeli land grab policy and its attack against Palestinians.

Dozens were injured as the Israeli forces threw gas bombs and fired rubber-coated bullets and live bullets towards Palestinian demonstrators.

Demonstrators said they will continue to organize protest activities in the coming weeks, in rejection of the U.S. position towards Jerusalem, especially that it intends to move its embassy to the city on the eve of Israel's Independence Day, which Palestinians mark as Nakba, meaning catastrophe, where two thirds of the Palestinian people were forcibly displaced from their hometowns.

Member of Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Executive Committee Mustafa Barghouti told Xinhua that this day highlights Palestinian people's commitment to peaceful resistance, adding that the Israeli forces reaction towards demonstrators is "dangerous."

He added that Palestinians are unified in one struggle, "but more than that, it's a glorious day for non-violent popular resistance."

Israeli military forces opened fire including live ammunition and rubber coated bullets towards demonstrators, according to medics.

Barghouti accused Israeli forces of carrying out a war crime against Palestinians, saying "they're using military force against popular non-violent peaceful resistance against peaceful demonstrators."

On March 30, 1976, Israeli soldiers killed six unarmed Palestinians during demonstrations in protest of an Israeli decision to confiscate thousands of acres of lands in the Galilee and the Negev areas.

Since then, Palestinians have designated this day to mark the sacrifices of the Palestinian people's lives in defending their lands, through planting trees and various activities that highlight their respect for their lands.

The last round of U.S. sponsored negotiations between Palestine and Israel was ended after nine months of talks without achieving any breakthrough.

On Dec. 6, 2017, Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital and ordered the U.S. state department to move embassy from Tel Aviv to the city.

As a result, Palestinians disqualified the United States from being the sole sponsor of the peace negotiations with Israel and called for an international multilateral peace mechanism.

On Feb. 20, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas presented a peace initiative in a speech before the UN Security Council, proposing to hold an International peace conference mid-2018 to jumpstart final status negotiation based on two state solution and international legitimacy resolutions.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-30 23:29:29|Editor: yan

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LOS ANGELES, March 30 (Xinhua) -- U.S. private spaceflight company SpaceX launched on Friday morning 10 communications satellites into orbit for Iridium Communications on a used Falcon 9 rocket from California.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Space Launch Complex 4E (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Air Force Base at 07:13 a.m. PDT (1413 GMT), carrying 10 satellites for Iridium Communications, as part of the company's Iridium Next constellation.

About 2.37 minutes later, the first and second stages separated.

"Second stage and @IridiumComm NEXT satellites now in coast phase," the company tweeted.
ULAN BATOR, March 30 (Xinhua) -- Mongolia and Kazakhstan signed a Memorandum of Understanding Friday to boost cooperation in geology, mining and civil aviation.

The document was inked during the 7th meeting of the Intergovernmental Commission between Mongolia and Kazakhstan on Trade, Economic, Scientific and Technical Cooperation, which was held on March 29-30 in Astana, Kazakhstan, Mongolian Foreign Ministry said.

On mining industry cooperaiton, the two sides agreed to share information, experience and technology, and train professionals together.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-31 00:04:35|Editor: yan

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WASHINGTON, March 30 (Xinhua) -- German scientists have identified the physical mechanism that enables a widespread bacterial pathogen to adhere tightly to the tissues of its human host, laying foundation for developing novel therapies for its infections.

The study, published in the latest released journal Science, has shown that bacterial pathogens have evolved highly effective strategies that enable them to adhere to target cells and niches in the tissues of their host organisms, even making use of relatively unfamiliar physical principles.

Researchers with Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich have uncovered the mechanism that permits the bacterium Staphyloccus epidermidis to bind so tenaciously to host tissues.

Utilizing atomic force microscopy, Lukas Milles, Hermann Gaub and their colleagues measured the binding force between a staphylococcal adhesion protein and its cognate ligand at the single-molecule level in vitro, and calculated the contributions of all of the atoms involved in the interaction on an supercomputer at the University of Illinois.

"The mechanical binding force that keeps the components of a single complex together amounts to more than 2 nanonewtons (nN). This is an extraordinary value for a non-covalent interaction, comparable to the strength of the covalent bonds between atoms, which are the most stable molecular bonds we know of," said Gaub.

According to Gaub, thanks to the geometry of the interaction, the adhesion protein forms a dense network of non-covalent hydrogen bonds with its ligand.

Moreover, this network is mediated by the peptide bonds that make up the repeating backbone of the protein, rather than by the variable side-chains that differentiate its amino-acid subunits, leading to a stiffening of each hydrogen bond.

"This kind of structure can withstand extreme stresses, because all of the individual bonds must be broken at once in order to separate the complex," said Milles.

Milles said the mechanism is analogous to the interaction between the many tiny hooks and loops on two Velcro strips, which are extremely difficult to separate when pulled from opposite ends.

The mechanism based on the peptide backbones of the interacting molecules is common to all proteins, so this level of stability can be achieved in interactions with a broad spectrum of targets.

In other words, the extremely high mechanical strength of the interaction is largely independent of both the amino-acid sequence of the adhesion protein and the biochemical properties of the target peptide.

Staphylococci are responsible for a wide range of infections in animals and in humans.

"In the search for ways to block invasive infections, a better understanding of the physical principles involved is vital," said Hermann Gaub.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-31 00:09:36|Editor: yan

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LOS ANGELES, March 30 (Xinhua) -- U.S. private spaceflight company SpaceX launched 10 communications satellites into orbit for Iridium Communications on a used Falcon 9 rocket from California on Friday.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Space Launch Complex 4E (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Air Force Base at 07:13 a.m. PDT, carrying 10 satellites for Iridium Communications, as part of the company's Iridium Next constellation.

About 2.37 minutes later, first and second stages separated.

"Second stage and @IridiumComm NEXT satellites now in coast phase," the company tweeted.

Falcon 9's first stage for the Iridium-5 mission previously supported the Iridium-3 mission from SLC-4E in October 2017. SpaceX didn't attempt to recover Falcon 9's first stage after launch.

Friday's mission, called Iridium-5, is the fifth set of 10 satellites in a series of 75 total satellites that SpaceX will launch for Iridium's next generation global satellite constellation, Iridium NEXT.

When complete, the constellation will consist of 66 operational satellites and nine spares in orbit. SpaceX has launched the first four missions, totaling 40 satellites, in 2017.
(File photo)Turkish-backed Syrian Arab fighters walk in the streets after seizing control of the northwestern Syrian city of Afrin from the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) on March 18, 2018. (AFP photo)

ANKARA, March 30 (Xinhua) -- Turkey has started preparations for further operations to clear northern Syrian regions, as well as Iraq's Sinjar, from Syrian Kurdish militants towards the Iraqi border, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday.

"We have started necessary preparation to clear northern Syrian areas towards the Iraqi border," Erdogan said during the ruling Justice and Development Party meeting in Ankara, as he mentioned the Syrian cities of Ayn al-Arab, Tel Abyad and Rasulayn.

"Turkish forces also could launch operation in northern Iraq's Sinjar suddenly," he added.

Turkey has no intention of harming soldiers of allied nations positioned in the region, but that it could not allow the People's Protection Units (YPG) to roam free, Erdogan said.

The Turkish troops and Free Syrian Army fighters took complete control of the Afrin region on March 24 after an eight-week offensive to drive YPG militants from the region.

President Erdogan vowed to extend the military operation along the Syrian border, adding that Turkey would not take a step back in its anti-terror operations.

Turkey repeatedly urged U.S. and the U.S.-backed YPG to retreat from Syria's Manbij where 2,000 American troops are stationed.

Washington has voiced concerns about the safety of U.S. troops in Manbij amid Turkey's ongoing military operation against the Syrian Kurdish militants.

Turkey launched Operation Olive Branch on Jan. 20 to clear the YPG, which Ankara considers a terror group affiliated to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), from northwestern Syria.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-31 00:24:38|Editor: yan

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LOS ANGELES, March 30 (Xinhua) -- U.S. private spaceflight company SpaceX launched 10 communications satellites into orbit for Iridium Communications on a used Falcon 9 rocket from California on Friday.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Space Launch Complex 4E (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at 7:13 a.m. PDT, carrying 10 satellites for Iridium Communications, as part of the company's Iridium Next constellation.

A successful deployment of all 10 satellites was confirmed about one hour and 12 minutes after the liftoff.

"Successful deployment of all 10 @IridiumComm NEXT satellites to low-Earth orbit confirmed," the California-based company tweeted.

Falcon 9's first stage for the Iridium-5 mission previously supported the Iridium-3 mission from SLC-4E in October 2017. SpaceX didn't attempt to recover Falcon 9's first stage after launch.

Friday's mission, called Iridium-5, is the fifth set of 10 satellites in a series of 75 total satellites that SpaceX will launch for Iridium's next generation global satellite constellation, Iridium NEXT.

When completed, the constellation will consist of 66 operational satellites and nine spares in orbit. SpaceX launched the first four missions, totaling 40 satellites, in 2017.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-31 00:59:42|Editor: yan

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A police officer stands guard at the U.S. consulate general in St. Petersburg, Russia, March 30, 2018. Russia will expel 60 U.S. diplomats and shut the U.S. consulate general in St. Petersburg in tit-for-tat retaliation for Washington's moves against Moscow over an ex-spy incident, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Thursday. (Xinhua/Lu Jinbo)

MOSCOW, March 30 (Xinhua) -- The Russian Foreign Ministry on Friday informed ambassadors of 23 countries of its decision to expel employees of their diplomatic missions in Russia in a tit-for-tat response to the recent hostile actions by their countries against Moscow.

The ambassadors were handed notes of protest and told that a corresponding number of diplomats of their countries working in Russia were declared "personae non gratae" in response to their unjustified expulsion of Russian diplomatic personnel based on Britain's unproven accusations against Russia related to the so-called "Skripal case", the ministry said in a statement.

Earlier this month, more than two dozens of countries announced the expulsion of around 150 Russian diplomats over the poisoning of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the British city of Salisbury on March 4.

According to the statement, the countries involved in Russia's decision include Australia, Albania, Germany, Denmark, Ireland, Spain, Italy, Canada, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Ukraine, Finland, France, Croatia, Czech Republic, Sweden and Estonia.

The ministry added that taking into account the fact that Belgium, Hungary, Georgia and Montenegro decided to join the listed countries at the last moment, Russia "reserves the right to respond" to these countries.

In a separate statement, the foreign ministry said it also summoned the British ambassador and informed him that Britain has to downsize its diplomats stationed in Russia to the same level as Russia has in Britain within a month.

In addition, Russia announced its decision on Thursday to expel 60 U.S. diplomats and shut the U.S. consulate general in St. Petersburg in retaliation for Washington's same move against Moscow earlier this week.

Tensions between Russia and western countries have exacerbated over the ongoing exchange of diplomatic sanctions.

Earlier on Friday, the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that despite being forced to take retaliatory measures, Russia "remains open to building good-natured relations" with other countries.
VILNIUS, March 30 (Xinhua) -- Lithuania will voice its view on free trade, geopolitical and security issues as well as strategic partnership at the upcoming Baltic Summit with U.S. President Donald Trump, President Dalia Grybauskaite said on Friday.

"It is the first time that we are invited to participate in the so called Baltic summit, it will be the first meeting based on such format with President Trump," Grybauskaite said in an interview with local news agency Elta.

On April 3, Lithuania's head of state together with the presidents of Latvia and Estonia will attend a summit of the Baltic countries and the U.S. at the White House.

"Transatlantic relations between the U.S. and Europe will be on the table, particularly as regards recent tensions in the area of international trade. We will try to discuss and explain our position in order to maintain free trade principles among the main partners," Grybauskaite said.

She also mentioned that certain disagreements are more visible between the U.S. and its bigger partners from Europe, while the U.S. relationship with smaller countries such as the Baltic or Nordic states remain "quite good".

The Baltic-U.S. summit is held at the initiative of President Trump to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Baltic States' independence and to reaffirm the strategic partnership between the U.S. and Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, Lithuania's presidency said in a statement.

In Washington, the four presidents will adopt a joint political declaration setting out the guidelines for future cooperation.

Regional security and ways of ensuring it, preparations for the upcoming NATO summit in Brussels, NATO's defense reform will be discussed at the meeting, according to the statement.

The Baltic presidents will also open the Lithuania-Latvia-Estonia-U.S. Business Forum, which is expected to gather representatives from more than 200 Baltic and American companies.
British flag flies in front of the British embassy building in Moscow, Russia, March 15, 2018. (REUTERS PHOTO)

MOSCOW, March 30 (Xinhua) -- Russian Foreign Ministry on Friday asked Britain to downsize its diplomats stationed in Russia to the same level as Russia has in Britain within a month in retaliation to measures imposed following the poison attack in Britain.

The ministry summoned British Ambassador to Russia Laurie Bristow to be presented with a strong protest over "provocative and unjustified actions of the British side," according to a statement published by the ministry.

"The ambassador was informed that, in response, the British side should, within a month, by appropriate reductions of its personnel, bring the total number of employees of the British Embassy in Moscow and the British Consulate General in Russia into line with the number of Russian diplomats and administrative and technical staff on long-term missions in the UK," the statement said.

The move was part of retaliatory measures against Britain after it expelled 23 Russian diplomats over the poisoning of a former Russian double agent in the British city of Salisbury earlier in March.

More than two dozens countries announced the expulsion of Russian diplomats in the wake of the UK's move, including the United States.

On Thursday, Russia announced its decision to expel 60 U.S. diplomats and shut the U.S. consulate general in St. Petersburg in retaliation for Washington's similar moves.
DUBLIN, March 30 (Xinhua) -- A spokesman of the Irish Foreign Ministry on Friday confirmed the expulsion of an Irish diplomat in Russia and described the decision as "regrettable".

Local media RTE quoted the spokesman as saying that there was no justification for the expulsion as the Irish diplomat instructed to leave Russia did not engage in activities which were incompatible with his diplomatic status.

Earlier on Tuesday, the Irish government announced expulsion of a Russian diplomat in Dublin in solidarity with Britain and other European Union member states over a so-called military-grade nerve toxin attack on a former Russian agent and his daughter in Britain's southern city of Salisbury on March 4.

The Russian Ambassador to Ireland, Yuri Filatov, said immediately after the Irish government's announcement that the decision to expel the Russian diplomat would "not go unanswered."

The Irish government's decision to expel a Russian diplomat was criticized by some opposition parties in the country, which all described the decision as a bad violation of the country's neutrality.

Opposition party Labour Party leader Brendan Howlin said that "we have never expelled diplomats in solidarity with somebody else, unless Ireland or Irish citizens were directly affected."

Earlier in March, the British government accused Russia of involvement in a nerve toxin attack on the ex-Russian double spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, which left both of them critically ill, but the Russian authorities have denied the accusation.

Latest reports said that the daughter of Skripal is getting better after spending three weeks in a critical condition at hospital due to the nerve toxin attack, but her father still remains in a critical but stable condition.
PARIS, March 30 (Xinhua) -- France was not planning any military offensive outside the international coalition in northern Syria which is controlled by Kurdish-dominated forces that Turkey has been fighting since months ago, the French foreign ministry said on Friday in a statement.

In a daily online briefing, ministry's spokesperson, Agnes von der Muhll, said France remained engaged in the joint fight against Islamic State (IS) fighters in northern Syria.

France "does not plan a new operation ... apart from that it leads in the international coalition against Daesh (IS)", the spokesperson said.

Paris, which joined the U.S.-led coalition against IS in Syria in 2015, "is working to stabilize the liberated areas from Daesh in northern Syria and promote the establishment of an inclusive and representative governance of all the populations", she added.

On Thursday, French President Emmanuel Macron met with Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) at the presidential Elysee Palace.

Macron offered "France's support for the stabilization of the security zone in the northeast of Syria, within the framework of an inclusive and balanced governance, to prevent any resurgence of Islamic State", according to the French government.

Macron, a critic to Turkey's offensive to eradicate Kurdish insurgents in the northern Syrian town of Afrin near Turkish borders, also said the SDF had "no operational link" with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), adding that a dialogue could be established between the SDF and Turkey with the assistance of France and the international community.

The meeting angered Turkey since Ankara regards the SDF as the Syrian branch of PKK, which is listed as a terrorist organization by Ankara, the United States, and the EU.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu slammed such high-level meeting with of a terrorist organization, which demonstrated France's "double standard".
ULAN BATOR, March 30 (Xinhua) -- The Mongolian Commodity Exchange (MCE) announced on Friday its intention to carry out cross-border trade with China's Bohai Commodity Exchange (BOCE) starting in mid-April to help Mongolian agricultural products enter the Chinese market.

"Big manufacturers expressed their willingness to buy wool and cashmere through the Chinese commodity exchange. We are aiming to export cashmere and wool not only to China, but also to other countries, including Italy and Japan. Also we hope that we will be able to export directly to Europe in the future," MCE Chief Executive Kh. Baatar told a press conference on Friday.

"Thanks to direct contact for commodity exchange, pastoralists can sell their products to end users at higher prices. Initially, we plan to sell cashmere," he added.

The cross-border trade through commodity exchanges of the two countries will be conducted online five times a week.

In 2017, 7,000 tons of washed cashmere was sold on the MCE with a total value of 521 billion MNT (217.99 million U.S. dollars).

The major suppliers of world cashmere raw materials are Mongolia, China, India, Iran, Afghanistan and Russia. Mongolia is the supplier of about 40 percent of the world's raw cashmere.

It is estimated that Mongolia has a total of 27 million goats, and an annual cashmere production capacity of 9,400 tons.
LONDON, March 30 (Xinhua) -- A British soldier was killed on Thursday in a roadside bomb blast in Syria, the British Ministry of Defense (MOD) confirmed on Friday.

A MOD spokesperson said: "It is with regret that we must confirm that a member of the UK Armed Forces was killed by an improvised explosive device in Syria yesterday."

"The individual was embedded with U.S. forces on a counter-Daesh operation when the incident occurred," the spokesperson said, referring to the Islamic State.

"The family has been notified and our thoughts are with them at this difficult time," the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson gave no information about the relevant service branch, unit or gender. "We cannot confirm any further details at this stage," the spokesperson added.

The roadside bomb killed two coalition personnel, the other being an American, and wounded five others, it was reported.

Britain joined the U.S.-led coalition in Syria in 2014, in the name of defeating the Islamic State.
BAKU, March 30 (Xinhua) -- More than 1,000 oil workers of SOCAR's "Azneft" Production Union have been evacuated from Azerbaijan's Caspian offshore platforms due to the severe weather conditions in the country, state news agency AZERTAC said Friday.

Phone messages were sent to all sites of offshore oil and gas production departments in connection with meteorological forecasts, "Azneft" spokesman Ibrahim Ahmadov said.

He said that only the required number of duty officers remained at offshore oil and gas production facilities.

"Measures have been taken to evacuate over 1,000 workers from offshore platforms by air and sea transport. The situation is under constant control," he said.

A strong storm has been forecast to hit Azerbaijan's part of the Caspian sea on March 30. Strong windy weather will continue until March 31 morning with north-west wind speeds of 32-35 m/s in some parts of the Absheron peninsula, according to the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources.

SOCAR's "Azneft" Production Union is developing 34 oil and gas fields, 20 of which are onshore and 14 located in Azerbaijan's sector of the Caspian Sea.

On Dec. 4, 2015, a deadly fire broke out in the northern part of platform at the western section of Azerbaijan's Gunashli oilfield operated by SOCAR. The fire started when a high-pressure subsea gas pipeline was damaged in a heavy storm. As a result of the fire, the platform, which had been in service since 1984, partially collapsed. At the time of the accident, 63 workers were on the platform. Ten workers were confirmed killed, 20 missing, 33 were rescued and nine were hospitalized.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-31 01:54:53|Editor: Yamei

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Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi (L) meets with Cambodian Prime Minister Samdech Techo Hun Sen in Hanoi, Vietnam, on March 30, 2018. During their meeting on the sidelines of the sixth summit of the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) Economic Cooperation, Wang said China and Cambodia are a community of common destiny which is of strategic importance and the two countries have been supporting, trusting and helping each other. (Xinhua/Wang Shen)

HANOI, March 30 (Xinhua) -- Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi met here Friday with Cambodian Prime Minister Samdech Techo Hun Sen on bilateral ties.



During their meeting on the sidelines of the sixth summit of the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) Economic Cooperation, Wang said China and Cambodia are a community of common destiny which is of strategic importance and the two countries have been supporting, trusting and helping each other.

China will as always support Cambodia for choosing its own development path that meets the national conditions and support Cambodia in safeguarding sovereignty and national interests, Wang said.

He said China is willing to continue deepening and expanding the friendly cooperation as well as strengthen communication and coordination in regional affairs between the two sides.

Wang believed that Cambodia will continue to play an active role in pushing forward the healthy development of relations between China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

For his part, Hun Sen said China has firmly supported Cambodia in safeguarding sovereignty, independence and dignity and expressed gratitude for China's strong support.

The Cambodian prime minister said his country is willing to continue making its contribution to pushing forward the cooperation between China and the ASEAN.
TUNIS, March 30 (Xinhua) -- The annual meeting of the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) Group, the largest development organization in the Muslim world, will be held in the first week of April in the Tunisian capital, Tunis.

Fifty-seven ministers of economy and finance of member countries and about one thousand experts, economists and financiers from Tunisia and other countries will attend the meeting, which will be held between April 1 and April 5, said Tunisian Ministry of Development, Investment and Cooperation Friday.

A signing ceremony of financial partnership agreements between the IDB Group and some member states, including Tunisia, will be held, the ministry said.

The IDB Group formally opened in 1975, and currently has 57 member states. Its headquarters is in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, with the mission of supporting the economic and social development of the member states.

Since its creation, the IDB has financed 8,195 development projects in various member countries, worth 125 billion U.S. dollars, covering many vital sectors, particularly infrastructures.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-31 02:44:58|Editor: Xiang Bo

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Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi (1st R) delivers a speech at the business summit of the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) Economic Cooperation in Hanoi, Vietnam, March 30, 2018. (Xinhua/Wang Shen)

HANOI, March 30 (Xinhua) -- Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Friday that Mekong River countries can become major partners in the joint development of the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative.

Wang made the comments here at the business summit of the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) Economic Cooperation while responding to a question concerning opportunities brought to the GMS countries by the initiative.

Wang is in Vietnam to attend the sixth summit of the GMS Economic Cooperation and to pay an official visit to the country from Friday to Monday.

The Belt and Road Initiative is not only a public good China has offered to the world, but also a sunshine initiative aimed at promoting win-win cooperation, Wang said, adding that from the very beginning, it has followed the principles of extensive consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits.

Therefor, Belt and Road cooperation bears the striking characteristics of equality, openness and inclusiveness, he noted.

Proposed by China in 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative refers to the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, aiming at building a trade and infrastructure network connecting Asia with Europe and Africa along the ancient trade routes of Silk Road.

Pointing out that the GMS was historically the convergence area of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, Wang said that today in the 21st century, the GMS countries can become major partners in the joint development of the initiative.

Five Mekong River Subregion countries -- Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam have all signed cooperation agreements with China on the joint development of the Belt and Road Initiative, and they also attended the first Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation which was held last May in Beijing, Wang said.

At present, such major projects as China-Laos railway, China-Thailand railway and China-Myanmar land and water coordinated transport are also making progress, he added.

The Mekong River Subregion countries are the earliest participants of the Belt and Road Initiative and also they are the earliest beneficiaries of the initiative, Wang stressed.

According to Wang, China has been preparing for the second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation. With concerted efforts, the Belt and Road Initiative is bound to be able to become the largest and the most popular platform for international cooperation in the world, Wang said.
HANOI, March 30 (Xinhua) -- China's development has entered a new era and will continue to provide strong impetus and more opportunities to the development of countries in the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) and beyond, Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said here Friday.

Wang is in Vietnam to attend the sixth summit of the GMS Economic Cooperation and to pay an official visit to the country from Friday to Monday.

Addressing the GMS Business Summit, Wang said guided by the innovative, coordinated, green, open and inclusive approach to development, China will focus on supply-side structural reform and advance strategic adjustment and upgrading of its economy.

"China's economic development will be more stable, coordinated and sustainable, and shift to high-quality development at a faster pace."

The door of China's opening-up will not be closed but will open even wider, Wang said, adding in pursuing opening-up on all fronts, China will adopt policies to promote high-level trade and investment liberalization and facilitation, significantly ease market access, further open up the service sector and the financial sector in particular, protect the legitimate rights and interests of foreign investors, protect intellectual property rights and create a world-class business environment.

"China opens up to all parts of the world, but first of all, to our neighbors. You will be the first to hear the steps of China's opening and share its dividents."

Wang stressed that China will remain committed to pursuing common development of the GMS countries.

With geographical proximity, cultural affinity and interconnected interests, the six GMS countries, namely Cambodia, China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam, are in a strong position for cooperation, Wang said.

"As a member of the GMS, China sees its own development and future closely linked with those of the other sub-regional countries."

"The Chinese often say that it is better to have a close neighbor than a distant relative. Indeed, the neighborhood has been so important to China's development."

Neighboring countries have also been the first to benefit from China's development, and China will keep the policy of amity, sincerity, mutual benefit and inclusiveness to pursue partnership and friendship with the other GMS countries, Wang noted.

In a spirit of partnership, China is ready to deepen mutual political trust and practical cooperation with other GMS countries to advance regional development and the people's well-being, he said.

"Taking other GMS countries as good neighbors, partners and friends, China welcomes you to be the priority passengers on the express train of China's development," Wang added.
Ambassadors' cars with Lithuanian, Croatian and Swedish flags are parked near the Russian Foreign Ministry in Moscow, Russia March 30, 2018. (REUTERS PHOTO)

MOSCOW, March 30 (Xinhua) -- The Russian Foreign Ministry on Friday informed heads of diplomatic missions from 23 countries of its decision to expel employees of their diplomatic missions in Russia in a tit-for-tat response to the recent hostile actions by their countries against Moscow.

The diplomats were handed notes of protest and told that a corresponding number of diplomats of their countries working in Russia were declared "personae non gratae" in response to their unjustified expulsion of Russian diplomatic personnel based on Britain's unproven accusations against Russia related to the so-called "Skripal case", the ministry said in a statement.

Earlier this month, more than two dozens of countries announced the expulsion of around 150 Russian diplomats over the poisoning of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the British city of Salisbury on March 4.

Russian Ambassador to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzia (Front) addresses a Security Council emergency meeting regarding accusations of the use of a nerve agent in the United Kingdom at the United Nations headquarters in New York, on March 14, 2018. (Xinhua/Li Muzi)

According to the statement, the countries involved in Russia's decision include Australia, Albania, Germany, Denmark, Ireland, Spain, Italy, Canada, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Ukraine, Finland, France, Croatia, Czech Republic, Sweden and Estonia.

The ministry added that taking into account the fact that Belgium, Hungary, Georgia and Montenegro decided to join the listed countries at the last moment, Russia "reserves the right to respond" to these countries.

British ambassador to Russia Laurie Bristow leaves the Russian Foreign Ministry headquarters in Moscow on March 30, 2018. (AFP PHOTO)

In a separate statement, the foreign ministry said it also summoned the British ambassador and informed him that Britain has to downsize its diplomats stationed in Russia to the same level as Russia has in Britain within a month.

In addition, Russia announced its decision on Thursday to expel 60 U.S. diplomats and shut the U.S. consulate general in St. Petersburg in retaliation for Washington's same move against Moscow earlier this week.

The flag of the U.S. flies outside the U.S. consulate in St. Petersburg, Russia, July 31, 2017. (Xinhua/REUTERS)

Tensions between Russia and western countries have exacerbated over the ongoing exchange of diplomatic sanctions.

Earlier on Friday, the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that despite being forced to take retaliatory measures, Russia "remains open to building good-natured relations" with other countries.
ORAN, Algeria, March 30 (Xinhua) -- Chinese oil and gas enterprises show great interest in investing in Algeria at the just-concluded North Africa Petroleum Exhibition & Conference (NAPEC).

As many as 40 Chinese companies took part in this year's event, said Zoe Zuo, general manager of Beijing CEW International Fair as well as director of the China pavilion in NAPEC.

The exhibition conference was held in Oran, 400 km west of Algiers, from March 25 to 28.

The organizer of the event, Yacini Jaafar, told Xinhua:"Our Chinese partner CEW brought 37 Chinese companies. The Chinese presence is the largest after France, and more Chinese companies show great interest in investing in Algeria."

Yacini said "Algeria is an attractive country, and Chinese companies have started to understand how things work here."

In addition, "Chinese firms are competitive in the oil and gas field, and enjoy some experience in Algeria," Yacini added.

Xinmi Wanli Industry Development, a Chinese company specializing in petrochemical products, participated in NAPEC for the first time this year.

Its Middle East and North Africa regional manager, Jacky Zheng, said the company has made several contacts with other exhibitors and wishes to get final contracts.

"You know, in the oil and gas field, it takes a lot of patience. We have established contacts and we hope to achieve good business in the future in this north African country," Zheng told Xinhua.

"Algeria is committed to voicing the unconventional and Xinmi Wanli is ready to offer its expertise," he said.

The pipelines manufacturing firm Fengbao Industry, the third largest of its kind in China, has already established trade ties with Algerian energy group Sonatrach, its business manager Sunny Zhou told Xinhua.

NAPEC is the largest international Oil and Gas Exhibition and Conference in Africa, dedicated to hydrocarbon and energy professionals including technology and service providers.

This year's event was attended by 170 foreign companies from 40 countries, including energy giants such as Total, Repsol, Statoil, Cepsa, Anadarko, Schlumberger, Etap and Noc.
KIEV, March 30 (Xinhua) -- The Ukrainian association of Belt and Road cooperation "Silk Link" on Friday presented a mediation platform "Newtend" to Chinese business people.

Representatives of about 40 Chinese state-owned and private companies took part in the presentation.

Newtend, which is part of Ukraine's state electronic procurement system ProZorro, provides online services for Chinese businesses to buy and sell their products and services in Ukraine.

Iryna Nikorak, a secretary of Ukraine's parliamentary group on the development of relations with China, said the need to create the platform has arisen with the sharp increase of business cooperation between China and Ukraine.

"About 15 Chinese companies have already won tenders for infrastructure projects in Ukraine," said Nikorak, who is also the executive director of the Silk Link.

She emphasized that Newtend will further promote the development of Chinese business in the Eastern European country.

Meanwhile, Taras Holub, project manager with the Silk Link, noted the platform will serve the interests of Chinese companies, which are working in Ukraine or planning to enter the Ukrainian market.

By using Newtend, Chinese companies may purchase goods in Ukraine and participate in the tenders conducted by the Ukrainian government, Holub said.

"On this platform, Chinese business people may place orders for Ukrainian goods and search Ukrainian partners that are interested in exporting such goods," Holub said.

For those Chinese companies which have won tenders on projects in Ukraine, the Newtend offers an option of searching local partners for supplying goods and services needed for implementing such projects, he added.

Currently, the Newtend platform provides access to about 50,000 projects with an estimated overall value of 33.1 billion U.S. dollars.
TRIPOLI, March 30 (Xinhua) -- The Libyan eastern-based army on Friday said that its fighter jets have launched airstrikes on Chadian armed groups in southern Libya for the second time in less than two weeks.

"As part of the operations to secure the south, air force fighters targeted a site of Chadian gangs linked to al-Qaida southwest of the Harug Mountains, causing human and material losses," the army said in a statement.

"After reconnaissance operations, the air force fighters launched a second raid on a convoy of 11 vehicles moving south of the Harug without prior permission, destroying six of them and damaging two others. The gangs were penetrating Libyan territory and active in smuggling and terrorism," the statement added.

On March 19, the army's air force targeted Chadian armed groups in southern Libya, after the army's deadline for African migrants to leave the south.

On March 9, the army set March 17 deadline for nationals from neighboring African countries to leave southern Libya in order to curb the erupting violence there, warning they would be removed by force.

The city of Sabha, located some 800 km southwest of capital Tripoli, has recently been witnessing violent clashes between rival tribes that killed and injured dozens of civilians and forced hundreds of families to flee their homes.

People from Chad, Niger and Sudan have been accused of involvement in the conflicts in Sabha. Hamed Al-Khiali, head of the municipal council of Sabha, said last month that the local airport was occupied by "an armed group that has nothing to do with Libya," carrying flags of other African countries.

Recently in Tripoli, the UN-backed government announced measures to support its forces in Sabha to fight the so-called "mercenaries."
PRAGUE, March 30 (Xinhua) -- Russian citizen Yevgeniy Nikulin accused of hacking into American social networks like LinkedIn, Dropbox and others has been finally extradited to the United States by special board of the U.S. Justice Department, Czech Justice Minister Robert Pelikan confirmed on Friday.

Pelikan added that the move took place on Thursday night.

The 30-year-old Nikulin, who had been detained in Prague's prison under the international arrest warrant from Washington since 2016, is accused by the court of the state of California in organizing hacker attacks in 2012 and 2013 on American social network websites and other facilities.

Russia also issued an arrest warrant for Nikulin's online theft of finances in 2009. The Russian side officially asked the Czech Justice Ministry for Nikulin's extradition with a request issued on November 16, 2016, and based on an arrest warrant from November 10, 2016.

Later on Friday, Pelikan said that the U.S. request seemed to him more reasonable, so it was "an easy decision made long ago".

Czech President Milos Zeman's spokesman Jiri Ovcacek, described the move as "offbeat".

Zeman, as Pelican said in February 2018, had also asked the minister to send Nikulin to Russia.

Nikulin has denied the allegation that he is a hacker, arguing that it is only based on the claims of U.S. Federal Bureau of Intelligence agents.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-31 05:15:18|Editor: Chengcheng

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A Palestinian protester throws back a tear gas canister at Israeli troops during clashes following a protest to mark the Land Day, in the village of Qusra, near the West Bank City of Nablus, on March 30, 2018. (Xinhua/Nidal Eshtayeh)

RAMALLAH, March 30 (Xinhua) -- Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday held Israel fully responsible for killing civilians in the Gaza Strip, while calling for international protection of the Palestinians.

"I hold the Israeli occupation authorities for killing innocent civilians," Abbas said in a televised speech on the state-run Palestinian television commenting on the day-long violent clashes along the Israeli border with Gaza.

On Friday, thousands of Palestinians started the first day of the Great March of Return organized by various Palestinian factions and political powers including the Islamic Hamas movement, which rules Gaza, and Abbas' Fatah Party.

The demonstration is expected to last until May to protest the U.S. move to relocate its embassy to Israel from Tel Aviv to the disputed holy city of Jerusalem.

"The demonstrations were peaceful and popular which commemorated the anniversary of the Land Day," Abbas said, adding that it is the right of the Palestinian people to seek self-determination like other nations in the world.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health said that the Israeli army opened fire at the Palestinian demonstrators, killing 16 of them and wounding 1,416 others.

"Having this high number of casualties in popular and peaceful demonstrations make it very urgent for the international community intervention to ensure an international protection to our Palestinian people," said Abbas.

He demanded the United Nations work immediately to protect the unarmed Palestinian people who face a escalated aggression.

Abbas unveiled that he instructed the Palestinian ambassador to the UN to make immediate contacts with the members of the UN Security Council and the UN General Assembly to seek possible measures for protecting the Palestinians.
Source: Xinhua| 2018-03-31 05:25:19|Editor: yan

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UNTIED NATIONS, March 30 (Xinhua) -- The UN Security Council will hold emergency consultations on the situation in Gaza after Israeli soldiers reportedly killed 15 Palestinian protesters along the border fence.

"At the request of #Kuwait, the @UN Security Council will meet at 6:30 p.m. (EST) in informal consultations ... to discuss the latest developments in #Gaza," the Kuwaiti mission to the United Nations tweeted on Friday, which is a UN holiday.

Delegations of two other Security Council members -- France and the Netherlands -- also tweeted the news.

The official UN alert to journalists says it will be a closed-door meeting.
TRIPOLI, March 30 (Xinhua) -- The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) have provided assistance to more than 8,000 displaced women in Libya.

"In order to respond to the growing needs of vulnerable displaced women across Libya, UNHCR and UNFPA, with the support of German funding, are currently distributing 8,517 dignity and hygiene kits in 16 different locations in the areas of Tripoli, Misrata, Sabha, Nafusa Mountains, Bani Walid, Janzour, Ubari and Murzaq," the UN Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL) said in a statement on Friday.

"Displaced women and girls represent one of the most vulnerable groups in Libya, where an estimated number of 500,000 persons are either internally displaced or have returned home following a period of displacement," the statement added.

The mission said that the agencies will "continue to support the empowerment and protection of displaced women and girls in Libya, fostering their participation in civil society dialogues and ensuring their voices are heard."

Earlier this year, the UN mission launched a humanitarian response program in Libya, which seeks to raise 313 million U.S. dollars to help more than one million Libyans.
A wounded Palestinian is evacuated during clashes with Israeli troops near the Gaza-Israel border in the southern Gaza Strip City of Khan Younis, on March 30, 2018. (Xinhua/Khaled Omar)

UNTIED NATIONS, March 30 (Xinhua) -- The UN Security Council will hold emergency consultations on the situation in Gaza after Israeli soldiers reportedly killed 15 Palestinian protesters along the border fence.

"At the request of #Kuwait, the @UN Security Council will meet at 6:30 p.m. (EST) in informal consultations ... to discuss the latest developments in #Gaza," the Kuwaiti mission to the United Nations tweeted on Friday, which is a UN holiday.

Israeli soldiers take position along the barrier between Gaza Strip and Israel in Nahal Oz, on March 30, 2018. (Xinhua/JINI)

Delegations of two other Security Council members -- France and the Netherlands -- also tweeted the news.

The official UN alert to journalists says it will be a closed-door meeting.
CHICAGO, March 30 (Xinhua) -- A farm lobbying group called Farmers for Free Trade released a national television advertisement, to warn the Trump administration the impact of retaliatory tariffs on U.S. agricultural products.

U.S. President Donald Trump signed a memorandum last week that could impose tariffs on up to 60 billion U.S. dollars of imports from China and place restrictions on Chinese investments in the United States.

China's Ministry of Commerce has announced a plan for reciprocal tariffs on imported U.S. products worth about 3 billion dollars.

The advertisement features Indiana soy and corn farmer Brent Bible whose soy operation, like similar producers, relies heavily on exports to China.

"Today, we farm about 5000 acres (20.23 sq km) and raise primarily corn and soybeans," Bible said in the 30 seconds spot. "I'm supportive of the Trump administration, but I have a lot of concerns about current actions that have been taken on trade and tariffs."

"The fact that China is our number one soybean customer makes us very vulnerable. Our farm and many others like ours will be one of the first casualties of a trade war," Bible said in the ad.

At the end of the ad, it reads: "President Trump. Keep our economy strong. Protect free trade."

The message to the president will run for the next two weeks on cable news channels including Fox, CNN, and MSNBC. It will run in the D.C. and Florida markets. The ad will also run online and in agricultural publications across the country.
ALGIERS, March 30 (Xinhua) -- Algeria and China are set to sign a draft partnership agreement to include Algeria in the Belt and Road Initiative, Chinese Ambassador to Algeria Yang Guangyu said Friday.

"Algeria is not part of One Belt and One Road Initiative, but as I've said, this is a project open to all countries, and we, therefore, proposed a draft agreement to our Algerian friends to establish a partnership in this regard," Yang said in a speech to celebrate the Chinese Day at the Higher Institute for Algerian Affairs (ESAA).

The event was held to mark the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the diplomatic relations between Algiers and Beijing.

Yang said the draft agreement is being studied and examined by Algeria, adding that "we hope to sign it in the forthcoming weeks, at most within 2 or 3 months."

The Belt and Road Initiative, proposed by China in 2013, aims to build a trade and infrastructure network to connect Asia with Europe and Africa along the ancient trade routes.

As many as 100 countries and global organizations have joined the initiative, while 50 billion U.S. dollars have been invested, according to the ambassador.

Through this initiative, China wants to tell the world that it supports multilateralism and dialogue, instead of unilateralism, protectionism and trade war, through offering feasible proposals, he said.

The strength of a country will not be measured by its military power, but rather by its ability to create, build and provide development opportunities, Yang noted.

As the world is profoundly changing, "China wants to be a builder of peace in the world," he said.

The Chinese Day was an opportunity for Algerian students to get in touch with the Chinese culture, including Chinese calligraphy and language, sets and board games, as well as music and culinary arts.
Palestinian protestors run for cover from tear gas fired by Israeli security forces during clashes following a demonstration commemorating Land Day, near the border with Israel, east of Gaza City, on March 30, 2018. (AFP photo)

RAMALLAH, March 30 (Xinhua) -- Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday held Israel fully responsible for killing civilians in the Gaza Strip, while calling for international protection of the Palestinians.

"I hold the Israeli occupation authorities for killing innocent civilians," Abbas said in a televised speech on the state-run Palestinian television commenting on the day-long violent clashes along the Israeli border with Gaza.

On Friday, thousands of Palestinians started the first day of the Great March of Return organized by various Palestinian factions and political powers including the Islamic Hamas movement, which rules Gaza, and Abbas' Fatah Party.

The demonstration is expected to last until May to protest the U.S. move to relocate its embassy to Israel from Tel Aviv to the disputed holy city of Jerusalem.

"The demonstrations were peaceful and popular which commemorated the anniversary of the Land Day," Abbas said, adding that it is the right of the Palestinian people to seek self-determination like other nations in the world.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health said that the Israeli army opened fire at the Palestinian demonstrators, killing 16 of them and wounding 1,416 others.

"Having this high number of casualties in popular and peaceful demonstrations make it very urgent for the international community intervention to ensure an international protection to our Palestinian people," said Abbas.

He demanded the United Nations work immediately to protect the unarmed Palestinian people who face a escalated aggression.

Abbas unveiled that he instructed the Palestinian ambassador to the UN to make immediate contacts with the members of the UN Security Council and the UN General Assembly to seek possible measures for protecting the Palestinians.
THE MICHIGAN State Police shield on the side of a patrol car. The MSP made four arrests in Gogebic County for operating while intoxicated over the March 17-18 St. Patrick's Day holiday this year.

By IAN MINIELLY

imi[email protected]

Wakefield - St. Patrick's Day provides many adults an excuse they do not need, to drink, followed by driving while intoxicated.

Michigan State Police statistics do not break down arrests by date, but other locations have truncated their data fields to specific days and holidays for better statistical consumption related to holiday arrests.

The MSP made four arrests locally of drivers suspected of being behind the wheel while intoxicated over the St. Patrick's Day holiday.

-A 50-year-old Ironwood male was arrested for operating while intoxicated at 6:10 p.m., near the intersection of U.S. 2 and Marshalek, in Bessemer on March 17.

-A 55-year-old female from Eau Claire, Wis., was arrested for OWI at the intersection of U.S. 2 and Country Club Road at 10:33 p.m., on March 17 in Ironwood Township.

-Just past midnight, a 46-year-old female from Gladstone, Wis., was arrested at the intersection of U.S. 2 and Balsam Avenue for OWI in Bessemer,

-At 2:25 a.m., a 38-year-old man from Hazelhurst, Wis., was arrested for OWI at the intersection of U.S. 2 and Douglas Boulevard in Ironwood.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), on average more than 10,000 people die in alcohol- related accidents every year. On St. Patrick's Day alone, 32 percent of motor vehicle fatalities were connected to drunk driving, according to the NHTSA.

New Year's Eve and July Fourth are the worst days for drunk driving, but Super Bowl Sunday and just about every holiday and three or four-day weekend provides people an excuse to start drinking earlier than normal and then get behind the wheel.

New Year's Eve is recognized as the holiday with the most arrests for suspected drinking and driving, while the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says the Fourth of July is the deadliest with regards to driving under the influence and dying.

According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, in 2012 over Labor Day's four-day weekend, which is a double whammy with a holiday and four-day weekend combined, 440 driving under the influence arrests were made just in Pennsylvania. For the 2017-'18 New Year's in Pennsylvania by comparison, 284 people were caught behind the wheel intoxicated, which was down from the 2016-'17 holiday number of 328.

Looking at the consumer advisory alerts provided by the NHTSA. drunk driving campaigns over the last five years, it is clear the focus is on intoxicated holiday driving for the many reasons:

-The "Drive Sober or Get Pulled Over" campaign focuses on Labor Day and the November-December holiday season.

-The "Something to Think About, Play It Safe, and Fans Don't Let Fans Drive Drunk" campaigns spring to life around the Super Bowl.

-July Fourth has the "Celebrate America...Safe and Sober as well as the Drive Sober" theme.

-Halloween received the "Buzzed Driving is Drunk Driving effort."
GOGEBIC COMMUNITY College President James Lorenson, right, sits at a table at the college with U.S. Rep. Jack Bergman, R-Watersmeet, on Oct. 20, 2017 Lorenson announced on Thursday that he is retiring.

IRONWOOD - Gogebic Community College President James Lorenson announced his intention to retire Thursday.

Lorenson stated in a letter, "After careful consideration, I have determined that it is time I step down from the Presidency of Gogebic Community College."

Lorenson has served as the President of the College since 2007 and has been employed with GCC for 31 years in various administrative positions.

Accomplishments during Lorenson's tenure include fiscal responsibility and clean audit opinions.

Lorenson was influential in establishing a new college brand identity, stabilizing enrollmen...
News

Douglas, Arizona - Douglas Station Border Patrol agents arrested a Mexican national Tuesday afternoon wanted by the Ramsey County Sheriffs Office in Minnesota for criminal sexual misconduct.

Agents arrested Jose Perez-Manriquez, 35, east of Douglas for entering the U.S. illegally. While conducting a records check, agents discovered an active warrant had been issued for his arrest in St. Paul in September 2017.

Perez is being processed for immigration violations and will be extradited to Ramsey County to face prosecution for criminal sexual conduct in the fourth degree.

All persons apprehended by the Border Patrol undergo criminal history checks using biometrics to ensure illegal immigrants with criminal histories are positively identified.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials welcome assistance from the community. Citizens can report suspicious activity to the Border Patrol and remain anonymous by calling 1-877-872-7435 toll free.
News

Ajo, Arizona - Border Patrol agents from Tucson Sectors Mobile Response Team responded to a 9-1-1 call originating from a remote area northwest of Ajo on Sunday afternoon and found three undocumented aliens; one severely dehydrated.

MRT agents certified as emergency medical technicians located two men from Mexico and one from Honduras north of the Growler Mountains. After evaluating all three subjects, agents determined a 29-year-old man needed fluids introduced intravenously.

After treatment, agents transported the men to the Ajo Station to be processed for immigration violations.

In the Tucson Sectors harsh desert environment, Border Patrol security missions can quickly turn into humanitarian rescue operations. Border Patrol officials encourage anyone in distress, or witnessing others in distress, to call 9-1-1 or activate a rescue beacon.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials welcome assistance from the community. Citizens can report suspicious activity to the Border Patrol and remain anonymous by calling 1-877-872-7435 toll free.
Arizona News

Whetstone, Arizona - U.S. Border Patrol agents working at the State Route 90 Immigration Checkpoint in Whetstone arrested a 49-year-old Hereford man after finding 10 Mexican nationals hidden inside a locked trailer he was towing Monday evening.

An agent working the primary inspection lane referred the driver of a Chevy Suburban for secondary inspection after a Border Patrol canine alerted to an odor it is trained to detect emitting from the trailer in tow.

In the secondary inspection area, agents observed individuals hiding inside the trailers makeshift enclosure through gaps in the plywood. Agents immediately began removing the straps to open the compartment, free the occupants, and ensure their safety.

Agents had to remove a large bag of cans at the back of the trailer in order to reach the nine men and one woman packed among appliances being hauled in the locked enclosure. The occupants were removed from the compartment, assessed, and provided water by agents.

The driver, a U.S. citizen, was arrested for human smuggling and his vehicle and trailer were seized. The Mexican nationals, ages 18 to 38, were transported to the Willcox Border Patrol Station to be processed for immigration violations.

Federal law allows agents to charge individuals by complaint, a method that allows the filing of charges for criminal activity without inferring guilt. An individual is presumed innocent unless and until competent evidence is presented to a jury that establishes guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

As Arizonas temperatures rise, people hiding in vehicle trunks or trailers are at a greater risk of suffering from heat injury, physical injury, and death.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials welcome assistance from the community. Citizens can report suspicious activity to the Border Patrol and remain anonymous by calling 1-877-872-7435 toll free.
Border News

Nogales, Arizona - Nogales Station Border Patrol agents arrested two Phoenix women after finding undocumented aliens concealed in the trunk of their car at the Interstate 19 Immigration Checkpoint March 23.

Agents referred the 18-year-old driver, traveling with her infant son, and a 38-year-old female passenger, for a secondary inspection. During the inspection, agents discovered two male Mexican nationals hiding in the vehicles trunk.

Agents arrested the driver and passenger, both U.S. citizens, for human smuggling. The two men, ages 20 and 40, were arrested for immigration violations. Arizona Department of Child Safety officials were contacted and took custody of the infant.

Federal law allows agents to charge individuals by complaint, a method that allows the filing of charges for criminal activity without inferring guilt. An individual is presumed innocent unless and until competent evidence is presented to a jury that establishes guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials welcome assistance from the community. Citizens can report suspicious activity to the Border Patrol and remain anonymous by calling 1-877-872-7435 toll free. Contacting the Border Patrol to report illicit activity could result in saving someones life.
Yuma News

Yuma, Arizona - Yuma Station Border Patrol agents arrested a previously deported Mexican national with multiple felony convictions late Tuesday.

At approximately 9:30 p.m., agents arrested Jose Arajo-Dominguez, a 50-year-old Mexican national, after he illegally entered the United States west of Yuma near the Morelos Dam and Levee Road.

During processing, agents discovered that Arajo-Dominguez had multiple felony convictions out of Hood River, Oregon, to include first-degree rape and first-degree burglary. Additional record checks revealed convictions for vehicle theft and criminal trespassing. Arajo-Dominguez was last deported from El Paso, Texas nine days ago. He admitted that he was attempting to travel to Colorado to take up residence.

Arajo-Dominguez is being prosecuted for re-entry after deportation as an aggravated felon.

Federal law allows agents to charge individuals by complaint, a method that allows for the filing of criminal activity charges without inferring guilt. An individual is presumed innocent unless or until competent evidence is presented to a jury that establishes guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

Yuma Sector Border Patrol agents effectively combat smuggling organizations attempting to illegally transport people and contraband through southwestern Arizona and California. Citizens can help the Border Patrol and U.S. Customs and Border Protection by calling 1-866-999-8727 toll-free to report suspicious activity. Callers can remain anonymous.
Tokyo: Toyota Motor Corp and Suzuki Motor Corp on Thursday announced a basic agreement to produce cars for each other in India as Toyota aims to increase its market share in the fast-growing country dominated by its smaller rival.

The automakers said in a statement that the agreement would cover vehicles including gasoline hybrids. Suzuki will supply its Baleno hatchback and Vitara Brezza compact SUV to Toyota, while Toyota will produce the Corolla sedan for Suzuki.

Toyota and Suzuki will produce the models for each other as original equipment manufacturers, and these will be included into each others` branded offerings, the companies said.

The agreement deepens a partnership announced by the two Japanese automakers a year ago, under which they will share expertise on new technologies and parts supply. In November, Toyota and Suzuki said they would cooperate in selling electric cars in India from around 2020.
This is the age of decibel and drama. Gone are the days when the eloquence of oratory and the cogency of arguments were lauded in Parliament.

Parliamentary dysfunction in India is not new; it has been happening for quite some time. Each time it happens, the media reports it, commentators express indignation at the state of affairs, politicians utter homilies - but do nothing to check the morass. While the factors contributing to the logjam are many and varied, the most important ones pertain to the declining importance of meaningful political debate in the country, resulting in the excessive dumbing-down of public discourse.

What is unfortunate is that there is no serious, genuine attempts to even address the issue. Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah said at a rally of party booth unit chiefs in Guwahati on March 24, "The Opposition is not able to digest our victory in state after state post-2014. That is why they are not allowing even a single minute of work in Parliament for the last 20 days."

On its part, the Congress blames the BJP for parliamentary disruptions during the second half of the Budget Session. Party president Rahul Gandhi said at a public rally in Karnataka on March 25, "In Parliament, a no-confidence motion against the Modi government has been moved. For the past 10 days it has been stalled because the government is afraid."

It is the typical blame game - and not unprecedented. When the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) was in office (2004-14) and when there was a deadlock, similar arguments were made by both sides-with the difference being that BJP leaders used to say what Congress luminaries say now and vice-versa. Paraphrasing what James Bond said in Golden Eye, we can say today that governments and oppositions change but their lies stay the same.

The Left-liberal narrative is typical and predictable: Prime Minister Narendra Modi is an authoritarian, and the marginalization of Parliament is his way of killing dialogue and debate in the world's largest democracy. Hence the logjam. QED.

Such partisan approach does nothing to strengthen our democracy. Running Parliament for one minute costs the taxpayer Rs 2.5 lakh, according to a September 2012 estimate. Another calculation has put the cost of one-day washout at Rs 9 crore. Far more damaging and insidious is the absence of discussion in the most hallowed platform for the purpose. Even the Union Budget was passed without any debate over the subject.

There is hardly any consequential discussion because our politicians have convinced themselves that what matters are caste configurations, communal equations, smart slogans, spin-doctoring, loud rhetoric, and grand spectacles. To a large extent, that is also true. From a politician's perspective, it is much easier and more rewarding to get, say, the right caste calculus than persuading the voter about the party's ideology and programme. This is also the reason that, over the years, party manifestoes have become a formality rather than a policy document. Usually, the manifestoes are a hodgepodge of homilies, cliches, and platitudes.

Since principles, ideologies, and policies matter little and have less impact on voting patterns, eye-catching and even questionable tactics acquire considerable importance among lawmakers. Tactics like incessant sloganeering and screaming in the House despite the chair's admonitions and pleas, rushing to the well and carrying placards - in essence, reducing parliamentary proceedings to unsavoury spectacles. Gone are the days when the eloquence of oratory and the cogency of arguments were lauded in Parliament; now, decibels and drama carry the day.

We, the people of India, have become so accustomed to the boisterous behaviour of our legislators that we have lost sight of certain truths. First, if something doesn't work, it loses relevance. In our context, legislative stalemates mean that within the political class more and more power is concentrated in the hands of party bosses, whether those of the treasury or the Opposition.

Second, the parliamentary form of democracy transforms into the presidential form, as the legislature fails or refuses to be check on the executive.

Finally, and most importantly, democracy degenerates. The essence of democracy is letting others express their opinions, however offensive we may find the opinions. But such is the ubiquity and intensity of self-righteousness that shouting down and disrupting the opponent, be it a minister or an Opposition leader, have become regular features. This is how our politicians have been taking baby-steps towards fascism. I don't want to sound alarmist, but suppressing the views of others is indeed the essence of fascism, and this is what the leaders of all parties are doing. If not fascism, it is indubitable that illiberal tendencies are gaining ground in India.

The point is that Indian democracy is suffering from the boiling frog syndrome. The term comes from a couple of experiments. In one, a frog is brought near a pot of boiling water; it immediately moves away from the pot. In the second, it is put in a pot of cold water which is slowly boiled. In the beginning, the frog is not uncomfortable, making no effort to get out. By the time it finds the heating water unbearable, it is unable to get out and dies.

Parliamentary dysfunction, thus, is symptomatic of the slow decline of democratic ethic.

(Ravi Shanker Kapoor is a journalist and author. He has spent around 25 years in the media. As a freelance journalist, Kapoor has written for a number of leading publications. He has written four books on Indian politics and its associated institutions.)

(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed above are the personal views of the author and do not reflect the views of ZMCL.)
New Delhi: Following the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica privacy breach fiasco, Mahindra and Mahindra Chairman Anand Mahindra has expressed his desire to explore an alternative social media platform rivaling Facebook.

Mahindra earlier this week called upon India`s tech entrepreneurs to come up with an own social networking company" that has better regulation.

Mahindra has even offered seed funding to startups who can come up with such idea. He tweeted:

Beginning to wonder if its time to consider having our own social networking company that is very widely owned&professionally managed&willingly regulated.Any relevant Indian start-ups out there?If any young teams have such plans Id like to see if I can assist with seed capital pic.twitter.com/nBSkQk0hCp  anand mahindra (@anandmahindra) March 26, 2018

Mahindra's invitation was quickly absorbed by the Twiteratis and a response even came from his own chief digital officer Jaspreet Bindra. Bindra tweeted:

Absolutely, @anandmahindra. Look forward to work with you and selected teams to build a next gen #social3.0 network, out of India.  Jaspreet Bindra (@j_bindra) March 27, 2018

Mahindra later followed with another tweet, saying:

Thank you all for the flood of responses, suggestions & proposals. Please copy your tweets to my colleague @j_bindra who will work with me on this exploration. If nothing else, it should be fun... https://t.co/U0DfzPlLEH  anand mahindra (@anandmahindra) March 27, 2018

Data mining firm Cambridge Analytica has been accused of harvesting personal information of over 50 million Facebook users illegally to influence polls in several countries.

Facebook's data breach scandal also sparked a furore in India with IT Minster Ravi Shankar Prasad warning the firm of "stringent" action for any attempt to influence polls through data theft and threatening to summon Zuckerberg, if needed.

The government has also issued notice to Cambridge Analytica, seeking its immediate response on whether it was involved in misuse of data to profile Indians and influence their voting behaviour. Facebook has already issued an apology with Zuckerberg assuring stringent steps to secure user data.
New Delhi: Several banks have written letter to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), urging it to look into the problems being faced by the industry following the abrupt ban on Letters of Undertaking (LoUs).

Reserve Bank of India this month banned issuance of LoUs and Letters of Comfort (LoC), used extensively for trade finance, following the unearthing of Nirav Modi fraud case.

Nirav Modi and associates in connivance with some officials of Punjab National Bank (PNB) used LoUs to defrauded the lender of over Rs 13,000 crore.

Asking the RBI to provide some breathing space to them, banks have highlighted that the apex banking uthority should give an alternate option. Banks feel that the sudden banning of LoUs has caused some disruption, which has hit small and medium enterprises.

Banks said that the cost for trade finance has also gone up because of shift to letters of credit. These instruments involve a commission fee along with a so called acceptance charge which is not the case with LoUs as they only involve a guarantee fee.

The Banks said that importers used to seek credit against LoUs at 2.5 percent to 3 percent offshore. However, pots the discontinuation of LoUs, the rate would go upto 11 percent because importers will then have to borrow from local bank branches in India.

Earlier this month, RBI barred banks from issuing guarantees in the form of letters of undertaking (LoU) as it clamped down on the import financing route used by fugitive jeweller Nirav Modi and his uncle Mehul Choksi for allegedly committing India's biggest bank fraud.

RBI also banned with immediate effect issuance of LoCs which, like LoUs, are used by importers to fund their overseas purchases.

However, letters of credit and bank guarantees will continue upon meeting certain conditions.
New Delhi: In a bid to safeguard consumer rights in view of current challenges posed by e-commerce companies the government will frame new guidelines.

As per Zee Media sources, the new set of guidelines will be made next month by the Consumer Affairs ministry. As per new rules, the e-commerce sites will have to provide all the details of products to the customers. These details include mandatory declaration of the MRP of the product, where it was made and the discounted price.

The online websites will also have to provide with a consumer complaint number and declare the stipulated time to resolve issues.



It may be recalled that government introduced a new Consumer Protection Bill the Lok Sabha in January. The Consumer Protection Bill, 2018 seeks to repeal the 30-year-old Consumer Protection Act, 1986.

The Bill has strong provisions to check adulteration and misleading ads and also provides for fine up to Rs 50 lakh and jail up to 5 years for manufacturers and service providers for false and misleading ads. Against adulteration, the Bill has provisions for fine up to Rs 10 lakh and life term imprisonment.

The objective of the Bill is to "provide for protection of interest of consumers and for the said purpose to establish authorities for timely and effective administration and settlement of consumer disputes..."

The Bill aims to set up an executive agency 'Central Consumer Protection Authority' (CCPA) to make intervention when necessary to prevent consumer detriment arising from unfair trade practice and to initiate class action including enforcing recall, refund and return of products.

Besides setting up an authority, the Bill has provisions for product liability action on account of harm caused to consumers due to a defective product and deficiency in services. It also has provisions for 'mediation' as an alternative dispute redressal mechanism.

The emergence of global supply chain, rise in global trade and rapid development of e-commerce have led to a new delivery system for goods and services and also provided new options and opportunities for consumers.

Misleading ads, tele-marketing, multi-level marketing, direct selling and e-commerce pose new challenges to consumer protection and will require appropriate and swift executive intervention to prevent consumer detriment," the Bill said.

The Bill has several provisions aimed at simplifying the consumer dispute adjudication process of the consumer dispute redressal agencies, besides enabling consumers to file complaints electronically.

With PTI Inputs
New Delhi: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Friday postponed his hunger strike over the ongoing sealing drive in the national capital.

The AAP convenor had earlier this month announced that he would begin a hunger strike if sealing was not stopped in the city by March 31.

According to reports, the decision to suspend the hunger strike was taken since the matter is now sub-judice and the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear the sealing matter from April 2 on a day-to-day basis.

Delhi's ruling AAP government has also appointed two advocates in the case.

The decision was announced by Saurabh Bharadwaj, the chief spokesperson of AAP's Delhi unit.

Bharadwaj said that the Chief Minister took the decision to defer his hunger strike after he was appealed by several trader associations and lawyers that his fast could "annoy" the court, which could adversely impact outcome.

Addressing traders in Amar Colony on March 9, Kejriwal had said that he would go on a hunger strike if the issue of the ongoing sealing drive against commercial establishments in Delhi is not resolved by the end of this month.

"The Chief Minister has been appealed by several trader associations and also advised by some lawyers that when the matter is in the court and the court is going to hear it on a day-to-day basis, CM's fast could annoy the court, which could adversely impact outcome. They urged CM to postpone his decision," the AAP spokesperson was quoted as saying by IANS.

The Chief Minister will closely monitor the situation and keep an eye on all developments in this regard, he said.

The ruling AAP government in Delhi has strongly opposed the sealing drive against commercial establishments for allegedly violating civic norms. The move began following the directions of the Supreme Court-appointed Monitoring Committee since December last year.

Earlier this month, the chief minister had called an all party-meeting with the Monitoring Committee to find out a solution to sealing drive.

Another all party-meeting called at Kejriwal's residence was boycotted by the BJP
New Delhi: Maths is widely considered as one of the most dreaded subjects for students around the world. Appearing for one Maths examination can be a nerve-wracking experience. But imagine writing the same exam twice - with a new set of questions? That is exactly what over 16 lakh Class X students will have to go through as their Maths - and the Economics paper for Class XII - has been scrapped following a question-paper leak.

Whose crime and who pays

Most CBSE students were left fuming when CBSE announced earlier this week that the exams for Class X Maths and Class XII Ecomics will have to be taken once again. Admitting that the two papers were leaked on WhatsApp, CBSE said a new date will be announced shortly.

Ticking off each subject after its exam is over brings about a special joy for students across the country in the otherwise tense month of March. The ticks were unticked. The books were brought back. Lost time was, well, lost.

Even as authorities face an uphill task to apprehend the culprits behind the paper leak, the task ahead for students appear even more steep.

Pen mightier than sword. Placard mightiest of all?

Protests across the country erupted shortly after CBSE announced its decision to conduct re-examinations. Online and out on the streets, students expressed anger at a time when they should have been expressing a strong determination to get good marks.

In one such protest at Delhi's Jantar Mantar, students braved the summer sun to show exactly what they thought of CBSE and its decision.

"CBSE should have put every single measure in place to ensure that papers do not leak. If the leak happened, it is not our fault, why should we write the papers again," asked Priti Rajput, a Class XII student. Agreed Ajith Kurup, a Class XII student in the science stream. "My engineering examinations are round the corner and I was putting finishng touches to my preparations. Now, I have to put it on hold and revise for an exam I have already appeared for. What is my crime?," he asked.

Other protestors in locations across Delhi and elsewhere echoed similar sentiments.

Strength in numbers?

Over 28 lakh candidates registered for the CBSE examinations this year. Of these 16,38,428 candidates are appearing for Class X and all of them will now have to write the Maths paper again. Another 11,86,306 students are appearing for Class XII exams. Of these, more than 3 lakh students wrote the Economics paper and will now have to write it once again.

The sheer scale of conducting CBSE exams is astounding. That two of these exams have to be conducted once again is, therefore, appalling. "I understand the despair of students. I am a parent myself and even I have had sleepless nights," HRD minister Prakash Javadekar said recently.

Delhi: Section 144 imposed near Prakash Javadekar's residence on Kushak Road #CBSEPaperLeak pic.twitter.com/4m0HynasjT  ANI (@ANI) March 30, 2018

It will, however, indeed take sleepless nights for students to ensure they appear for the re-examinations with confidence even if their faith in the Board conducting the exam remains forever shaken.
New Delhi: Congress on Friday decided to remove senior leader Ashok Gehlot as general secretary in-charge for the state of Gujarat. The decision comes on the back of the recent appointment of Amit Chavda as president of Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee.

Looking to infuse young blood in the party, Congress removed Gehlot from his post - one the veteran politician and former Rajasthan Chief Minister has held since April of 2017. At the time, Congress had pinned hopes on Gehlot's appointment in helping the party put up a stiff fight in elections in Narendra Modi's home state. Eventually, the party did fare better than what many expected but could not upstage BJP.

Now, with Gehlot removed from his post, many expect a power struggle to once again erupt in the state. Interestingly, it is suspected that the man Gehlot had replaced last year - Gurudas Kamat - was also removed because he had internal problems with the party.

Ironically, Gehlot himself had said that Congress President Rahul Gandhi was well within his rights to choose his own team. "
Gorakhpur: A defamation case has been registered against Congress chief Rahul Gandhi for allegedly making derogatory remarks against Prime Minister Narendra Modi during Congress party's National Conclave which was held in New Delhi recently.

The case against the Gandhi scion was filed by BJP leader Shalabh Mani Tripathi.

BJP spokesperson Shalabh Mani Tripathi filed the defamation complaint at the Deoria district fast-track court under IPC sections 499 and 500 (defamation).

Giving more details, Tripathi's counsel said the matter will come up for hearing on April 5.

"During the Congress party national conclave in Delhi, Rahul Gandhi tried to draw similarities between PM Modi, Nirav Modi (tainted diamond businessman) and Lalit Modi (former IPL commissioner)," Tripathi was later quoted as saying by the PTI.

Tripathi further stated that Rahul, during his speech at the Congress Conclave, also said the name Modi had become synonymous to corruption.

The BJP leader said that Rahul Gandhi's remark has hurt the sentiments of saffron party workers and countrymen and that's why he decided to file a defamation case against him in Deoria court.

However, reacting to the development, the Congress said it would keep raising voice against government's policies and its "failure" to check corruption.

"It is our duty to raise issues related to the people of the country and we will continue to do so," Congress district general secretary Anwar Hussain told PTI.

"We are ready to face court cases and even jail for the country," he added.

Rahul Gandhi had compared PM Modi with Nirav Modi and Lalit Modi, both accused of fleeing the country after massive fraud, while addressing the three-day Congress national conclave in Delhi which began from March 16.

Congress president has been regularly attacking the Narendra Modi government over various issues like 39 Indians' murder in Iraq, CBSE papers leak, GST, notes ban and India-China standoff over Doklam etc.

Referring to a poll conducted by him on Twitter, the Congress chief recently said that thousands took part in it and voted on how PM Modi would deal with any future Doklam-like situation with China.

Taking a jibe at PM Modi, the Gandhi scion had tweeted, Last week thousands took my Twitter poll. 63% felt Modi Ji would use hugplomacy, blame RM and cry in public to deal with the Doklam issue! For Indias sake, I hope you were wrong and our 56-inch strongman has a plan.

(With PTI inputs)
New Delhi: Yogi Adityanath inaugurated Hindon Elevated Road project - the country's longest elevated road - on Friday, promising to make the commute from Delhi to Meerut and beyond more convenient than ever before.

Built at a whopping cost of Rs 1147 crore, the main advantage of the road lies in the fact that motorists can now avoid the perennial traffic snarls on the Delhi-Ghaziabad border - cutting travel time to not just near-by destinations like Meerut but also scenic tourist spots in Uttarakhand.

Here is all you need to know about the Hindon Elevated Road project:

* The road was one an initiative of the previous Akhilesh Yadav-led government. Both SP and the ruling BJP have since tried to take credit for it.

* SP has said that 90 per cent of the road was completed during Akhilesh's term as CM. They say BJP delayed the project since it came to power in the state, in a bid to take credit.

* Construction was supposed to finish in 2017. The total cost of the project stands at Rs 1147 crore.

* The road is 10.3 kilometre long and promises non-stop vehicular movement - to and fro - for commuters looking to avoid entering Ghaziabad city.

* It extends from UP Gate at Delhi-Ghaziabad border to Rajnagar Extension.

* Commuters travelling to Meerut, Hapur and beyond can benefit from a clear passage courtesy the elevated road.
BENGALURU: Close on the heels of BJP chief Amit Shah's faux pas over BS Yeddyurappa during the Karnataka campaign, yet another embarrassing gaffe was highlighted on the social media.

This time, the blunder was made BJP MP Prahlad Joshi who incorrectly translated Shah's speech in Hindi to Kannada and as reported by an English news channel, said, "Narendra Modi sarkara badavaru mattu Dalitarige enu madala (Narendra Modi will not do anything for the poor and Dalits)."

This comes three days after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief was caught on camera saying that 'Yeddyurappa ran the most corrupt government ever'.

Joshi, who was sitting next to Shah at the time, looked scandalised and quickly pointed out the blunder. The entire party, including state chief Yeddyurappa, were also present at the event.

The latest gaffe has once again left the party red-faced. Videos of both the gaffes were shared on social media by Congress supporters.

Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah wrote on Twitter, BJP MP Prahlad Joshi says "Narendra Modi will not do anything for the poor and Dalits". I am surprised that all BJP leaders have started speaking the truth.

BJP MP Prahlad Joshi says "Narendra Modi will not do anything for the poor and Dalits". I am surprised that all BJP leaders have started speaking the truth. https://t.co/HM1goggfv9  Siddaramaiah (@siddaramaiah) March 29, 2018

Earlier, Congress chief Rahul Gandhi took to Twitter to say, Now that the BJP IT cell has announced Karnataka elections, time for a sneak preview of our top secret campaign video! Gifted to us by the BJP President, our campaign in Karnataka is off to a fabulous start. He says Yeddyurappa ran the most corrupt Govt ever...True.

Now that the BJP IT cell has announced Karnataka elections, time for a sneak preview of our top secret campaign video! Gifted to us by the BJP President, our campaign in Karnataka is off to a fabulous start. He says Yeddyurappa ran the most corrupt Govt ever... True. pic.twitter.com/UYqGDZuKyR  Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) March 27, 2018

The Election Commission on Tuesday announced the dates for the Karnataka Assembly elections. The polls will be held in a single phase with voting on May 12 and counting on May 15.

Ahead of the Assembly polls in Karnataka, BJP chief Amit Shah on Friday met erstwhile royals of Mysuru at the Mysuru Palace.
As the extended weekend began, the Indira Gandhi International Airport in the national capital witnessed a surge in rush on Thursday evening. The situation got worsened with a failure in the baggage handling system as thousands of bags reportedly went missing, leading to a chaotic situation.

The airport administration, however, blamed increased level of dangerous goods, particularly power banks and lighters, in customer checked-in luggage for the chaos. Releasing an official statement, the airport administration claimed that there were 30 per cent more such instances than on an average day.

"With onset of holiday weekend, Delhi Airport experienced increased level of dangerous goods, particularly power banks and lighters in luggage. Incident rate was 30 percent higher than average. It impacted baggage handling due to the manual reconciliation of the suspect baggage," the statement said.

It further reminded the passengers to not pack such prohibited items in their checked-in luggage. In the statement, the airport authorities further said, This has reduced the instances of passengers sending their baggage with prohibited items on the baggage handling system and hence the issue is now under control.

Statement on Baggage Handling System. pic.twitter.com/nAYASqqBFn  Delhi Airport (@DelhiAirport) March 29, 2018

Heres the full statement released by Delhi Airport:

With the holiday weekend, Delhi Airport today experienced an increased level of dangerous goods, particularly power banks and lighters, in customer checked-in luggage. The incident rate today was 30% higher than an average day. This impacted the baggage handling processing due to the manual reconciliation of the suspect baggage with the passenger and removal of the prohibited item. Passengers are being reminded, not to pack these items in their checked-luggage to avoid inconvenience. This has reduced the instances of passengers sending their baggage with prohibited items on the baggage handling system and hence the issue is now under control.

Air Vistara also released a statement in this regard, notifying the passengers about the inconvenience. The airline said, "Please be advised that Delhi Airport has been facing challenges with the baggage handling system post check-in. All airlines and hundreds of bags have been impacted, not being loaded on to flights. The airlines have taken this up with Delhi Airport officials, and they are working on a solution."

(With ANI inputs)
A day after calling Narendra Modi a weak chowkidar, Congress president Rahul Gandhi hit out at the Prime Minister again on Friday over the leak of class 10 and class 12 board examination question papers of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE). Taking to microblogging site Twitter, the Congress chief targeted PM Modi over the latters book for students  Exam Warriors.

Taking a dig at the Prime Minister, the Gandhi scion said that while the first edition of Exam Warriors taught students about stress relief during exams, the second edition of the book would teach students and their parents stress relief once their lives are destroyed due to leaked exam papers.

He tweeted, PM wrote Exam Warriors, a book to teach students stress relief during exams. Next up: Exam Warriors 2, a book to teach students & parents stress relief, once their lives are destroyed due to leaked exam papers.

PM wrote Exam Warriors, a book to teach students stress relief during exams. Next up: Exam Warriors 2, a book to teach students & parents stress relief, once their lives are destroyed due to leaked exam papers. pic.twitter.com/YmSiY0w46b  Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) March 30, 2018

The Gandhi scion has consistently been attacking Narendra Modi-led NDA government at the Centre over the leak of CBSE examination paper, following which the board announced on its official website cbse.nic.in that examinations of class 10 Mathematics and class 12 Economics papers would be re-conducted.

The exam leaks destroy the hopes and futures of millions of students. The Congress always protected our institutions. This is what happens when institutions are destroyed by the RSS/BJP. Believe me when I say, this is only the beginning.  Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) March 29, 2018

He had on Thursday tweeted that the exam leaks destroy the hopes and futures of millions of students. He claimed that while the Congress always protected institutions, they have been destroyed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Believe me when I say, this is only the beginning, he added.

This comes even as several students staged protest over the paper leak, blaming the board for their woes. Demonstrations were also held at Jantar Mantar in the national capital.

"CBSE should have put every single measure in place to ensure that papers do not leak. If the leak happened, it is not our fault, why should we write the papers again," asked Priti Rajput, a Class XII student. Agreed Ajith Kurup, a Class XII student in the science stream. "My engineering examinations are around the corner and I was putting finishng touches to my preparations. Now, I have to put it on hold and revise for an exam I have already appeared for. What is my crime?" he asked.
New Delhi: In what was the first operation of its kind in Jharkhand's Raipur, a snake was operated upon for 45 minutes after it was beaten with sticks in a residential complex.

The snake was discovered in a house in New Raipur and panic-stricken residents quickly smashed it with sticks - breaking its backbone. It would have died a very painful death had social workers Manjit Kaur Bal and Balwant Kaur not taken pity. The two rushed the snake to a veterinarian - Dr. Padam Jain - who decided to operate. The 45-minute procedure was declared successful and the snake is now on the recovery track.

Being fed eggs and glucose, the health of the 'patient' will be monitored for seven days before it is set free in a place far from human habitation.

In a country where certain snakes are worshipped, there is also rampant misconception about the reptiles in India. Although killing a snake is a punishable offense under the Wildlife Act, thousands of snakes are killed each year - most because they stray into human habitations. Snake killing humans too has become a real problem in several areas but wildlife experts maintain that since very few species are poisonous, an increased awareness can ensure but snakes and humans can co-exist.
Indore: The Centre has decided to file a review petition in the Supreme Court over the recent ruling on SC/ST Act. Taking to Twitter, Union Minister Thawar Chand Gehlot wrote that the Government of India is committed to the welfare of scheduled castes and tribes. In relation to the Supreme Court's decision on the Atrocity Act, the Central Government has decided to file a review petition in the Supreme Court.

                                           

1/1  Dr. Thawarchand Gehlot (@TCGEHLOT) March 30, 2018

Earlier, Gehlot had said that the top court's ruling could lead to a rise in atrocities against members of oppressed classes.

A delegation of Dalit ministers and MPs led by Union Minister Ram Vilas Paswan met Prime Minister Narendra Modi over dilution of some stringent provisions of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act on Wednesday.

"The Supreme Court's decision would affect the justice delivery system," Gehlot, who was part of the delegation, said here, in reply to a question.

It would lead to delay in police action and arrest, and as a result, atrocities against the oppressed classes would rise, the BJP leader said.

"My ministry, after holding serious discussions, had requested the law ministry that there is a need to file a review petition against the Supreme Court order," Gehlot said.

Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has accepted the request.

On March 20, the Supreme Court, noting the rampant misuse of the SC-ST Act against government servants, ruled that a public servant can be arrested only after approval of the appointing authority. A non-public servant can be arrested after approval by the Senior Superintendent of Police, it said.

With agency inputs
Lucknow: Union Minister and chief of NDA ally RPI (A) Ramdas Athawale said on Friday that the SP-BSP tie-up in Uttar Pradesh might cost the BJP and its partners 25 to 30 Lok Sabha seats in next year's general elections, but asserted that "no one can challenge Prime Minister Narendra Modi".

Uttar Pradesh has 80 Lok Sabha seats, of which the BJP and its allies had won 73 in the 2014 parliamentary elections. The Congress had won Amethi and Rae Bareli, while the Samajwadi Party (SP) bagged five seats. After the recent bypolls, SP's tally in the Lok Sabha went up to seven.

"The SP-BSP may damage the BJP and its allies by winning some 25-30 (Lok Sabha) seats. But, the BJP will get more than 50 seats. However, this will not prevent the BJP-led NDA from returning to power at the Centre after the 2019 Lok Sabha polls," he told a press conference here.

In the same breath, the Republican Party of India (A) leader said, "No one can challenge Prime Minister Narendra Modi -- neither Congress president Rahul Gandhi, nor SP chief Akhilesh Yadav, nor BSP supremo Mayawati."

The SP wrested the prestigious Gorakhpur and Phulpur Lok Sabha seats from the BJP in the recent bye-elections after reaching an understanding with the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).

A consolidation of OBC, Dalit and Muslim votes powered the Samajwadi Party candidates to victory in Gorakhpur, a seat represented by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath for five successive terms, and Phulpur, from where his deputy Keshav Prasad Maurya was elected in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

Amid Mayawati's ongoing efforts to cobble together non-BJP parties for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the RPI (A) president asked the BSP supremo to join the NDA if her concern for Dalits was genuine.

Seeking to drive a wedge into the new-found bonhomie between the SP and the BSP, Athawale claimed that the BSP candidate lost the Rajya Sabha election in Uttar Pradesh as the Akhilesh Yadav-led party had "betrayed" Mayawati's nominee by not backing him in return for her support during the Lok Sabha bypolls.

Atrocities were still being committed on Dalits, but the BJP-led government at the Centre was not responsible for it, the Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment said, adding there was need to give more teeth to the law to protect the Dalits.

Athawale welcomed the Uttar Pradesh chief minister's announcement of exploring the possibility of reservation to the most backwards communities and Mahadalits (most deprived) and that a committee in this regard will be set up to look into the issue which will submit a report soon.

The announcement made by the chief minister on the floor of the state Assembly was being viewed as an attempt to counter the changed caste equations which have emerged following new-found SP-BSP closeness and its debilitating effect for the BJP in 2019 Lok Sabha election.

The Union minister also hailed the decision of the Yogi Adityanath government to introduce B R Ambedkar's middle name "Ramji" in all references to him in official correspondence and records, and said there should be no politics over such issues.

The government order did not go down well with the opposition ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, with the BSP and the SP seeing vote-bank politics behind it.

Hours after the decision, Mayawati had said, "The state government's move to change the name of Ambedkar is a drama aimed at getting cheap popularity... The BJP and its government has been taking the name of Babasaheb these days for the selfish motive of gaining the votes of Dalits and indulging in all kind of dramas."

The government's decision also drew flak from the SP and the Congress.

As the matter got embroiled in political hullabaloo, UP Cabinet Minister Swami Prasad Maurya had said there was no politics in the government decision and no motive should be attached to the order.

Another senior state minister and spokesperson of the Uttar Pradesh government Sidharth Nath Singh said the BJP has only seen to it that the name of Baba Saheb is written correctly.

On Friday, Athawale, who is from Maharashtra, said in his state, father's name is mentioned in the middle of the son's name.

In December last year, a campaign to write Ambedkar's name "correctly" was initiated by Uttar Pradesh Governor Ram Naik, citing the manner in which Ambedkar signed on the pages of the Constitution.

The spelling of Ambedkar in English will remain unchanged, but in Hindi it will be spelt as 'Aambedkar'.

The governor had written to the prime minister, the chief minister and also to Babasahib Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar Mahasabha, expressing concerns over the prevalent "incorrect spelling" of Ambedkar.
New Delhi/Islamabad: Days after Islamabad recalled its envoy over alleged mistreatment, both India and Pakistan on Friday announced to hold talks to amicably resolve all issues regarding the treatment of their diplomats.

According to PTI, the two countries agreed to resolve all issues regarding treatment of their diplomats in line with 1992 'Code of Conduct' for treatment of Diplomatic/Consular personnel in India and Pakistan.

The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) also issued a statement to confirm the development.

"India and Pakistan have mutually agreed to resolve matters related to the treatment of diplomats and diplomatic premises, in line with the 1992 'Code of Conduct' for treatment of Diplomatic/Consular personnel in India and Pakistan," the MEA said in the statement.

The Pakistan Foreign Office also reciprocated by issuing a similar statement.

Pakistan Foreign Office spokesman Mohammad Faisal, in a brief statement, said that the issue will be addressed under the mechanism of 1992 related to the treatment of diplomats.

During a press briefing on Thursday, Faisal had said that the two sides would address the issue of harassment of diplomats through talks.

The two sides reached a truce after days of making claims and counter-claims about harassment of each other's diplomats.

The Code provides for "smooth and unhindered functioning" of the diplomatic and consular officials of the two countries in conformity with the international laws without violating their privileges and immunities.

The Code also says that the two countries should not resort to intrusive and aggressive surveillance and actions such as verbal and physical harassment, disconnection of phone lines, etc.

The Government of India had earlier in March asked Pakistan to ensure safety and security of its officials working at the Indian mission in Islamabad.

The government alleged that the Indian officials were being "harassment" and "threatened" in Pakistan.

In its 16th 'Note Verbale' to the Pakistan Foreign Ministry on March 22, the Indian High Commission specifically mentioned three incidents of harassment of senior officials.

Rejecting India's charge, Pakistan claimed that there had been as many as 26 instances of harassment and intimidation of its diplomats since March 7.

Islamabad later recalled its high commissioner Sohail Mahmood for discussions on the issue.

Sohail Mahmood, however, returned to New Delhi on March 22.

However, there is no clarity yet as to how two sides agreed to resolve the current tension over the treatment of diplomats.

(With PTI inputs)
NEW DELHI: Minister of State (MoS) for External Affairs VK Singh, who is set to leave for war-torn Iraq on April 1, has once again reiterated that the Narendra Modi Government made sincere efforts to bring 39 Indians who were kidnapped and killed by the terrorist group ISIS, home alive.

Speaking exclusively to Vishal Pandey of Zee Media, ex-Army chief said that the BJP government left no stone unturned to trace all 39 Indian nationals who went missing from Iraq's Mosul city in 2014.

While confirming that he will leave for Iraq on April 1 to bring the mortal remains of 39 Indians, Singh regretted that despite all efforts they could not be brought back alive.

MoS said that the Indian government was honest in its search for the missing Indians and did not hesitate to take the help of the Government in Iraq.

He informed that so far 38 dead bodies have been identified, and the nearly 70% of the DNA test has been conducted on the body of one Raju Yadav who hailed from Bihar.

Replying to a question on Congress party moving a privilege motion against External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, Singh said, ''why they did not visit Iraq in 2014. Who stopped them from doing so.

The Congress-led Opposition has alleged that EAM Swaraj and Singh "deliberately misled" nation and the families of the 39 Indians.

Singh also made an appeal to the respective state governments to provide all possible help to the kith and kin of those killed in Iraq.

Making a statement on the issue in Lok Sabha recently, Sushma Swaraj had hailed the role of VK Singh in ascertaining the identity of the Indians who got killed in Iraq.

She had made a special mention of him while addressing Parliament.

Out of the 40, who were kidnapped, one person managed to escape, while others were confirmed dead after DNA samples of their relatives matched from the bodies exhumed from a mound, Sushma had said.

"Mortal remains were sent to Baghdad. For verification of bodies, the DNA samples of their relatives were sent there and four state governments - Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, West Bengal and Bihar - were involved in this," she had further said.

Sushma Swaraj had also told the House that when VK Singh would return from Iraq with the mortal remains, the plane would first go to Amritsar, then to Patna and then to Kolkata.

A group of Indian labourers, mostly from Punjab, Bihar and Himachal, was taken hostage by ISIS when it overran Iraq's second largest city Mosul in 2014.

The workers were trying to leave Mosul when they were intercepted and taken hostage by the ISIS fighters.

One of the captured Indians, Harjit Masih from Gurdaspur, had managed to escape and claimed to have witnessed the massacre of the others.

The Government of India (GoI) rejected his claim and maintained that all efforts were on to find the missing Indians and, without any credible information, the workers would be considered alive.

The GoI had even asked Iraq for help in locating the missing Indians after Iraqi forces recaptured Mosul from ISIS.

The government in Iraq too had earlier expressed its inability to confirm if Indians taken hostage by the ISIS in Mosul three years ago were alive or dead.

(With additional agency inputs)
Minister of State for External Affairs VK Singh will leave for war-torn Iraq on Sunday, April 1, to bring back the mortal remains of 39 Indians who were killed by terrorist group ISIS in Mosul. This comes even as the Congress party has moved a privilege motion against External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Singh saying they "deliberately misled" the families of the 39 Indians.

Making a statement on the issue in Lok Sabha recently, Sushma Swaraj had hailed the role of VK Singh in ascertaining the identity of the Indians who got killed in Iraq. She had made a special mention of him while addressing Parliament.

Out of the 40, who were kidnapped, one person managed to escape, while others were confirmed dead after DNA samples of their relatives matched from the bodies exhumed from a mound, Sushma had said.

"Mortal remains were sent to Baghdad. For verification of bodies, the DNA samples of their relatives were sent there and four state governments - Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, West Bengal and Bihar - were involved in this," she had further said.

Sushma Swaraj had also told the House that when VK Singh would return from Iraq with the mortal remains, the plane would first go to Amritsar, then to Patna and then to Kolkata.

A group of Indian labourers, mostly from Punjab, Bihar and Himachal, was taken hostage by ISIS when it overran Iraq's second largest city Mosul in 2014.

The workers were trying to leave Mosul when they were intercepted and taken hostage by the ISIS fighters.

One of the captured Indians, Harjit Masih from Gurdaspur, had managed to escape and claimed to have witnessed the massacre of the others.

The Government of India (GoI) rejected his claim and maintained that all efforts were on to find the missing Indians and, without any credible information, the workers would be considered alive.

The GoI had even asked Iraq for help in locating the missing Indians after Iraqi forces recaptured Mosul from ISIS.

The government in Iraq too had earlier expressed its inability to confirm if Indians taken hostage by the ISIS in Mosul three years ago were alive or dead.

(With agency inputs)
New Delhi: Chinese handset maker Xiaomi is hosting another flash sale for its popular Redmi smartphone series Redmi 5, Redmi 5A and Redmi Note 5.

The flash sale of Redmi Note 5 will be held on both Flipkart and Mi.com; Redmi 5 will be available only on Amazon India and Redmi 5A only at Mi..

All the three are Redmi phones are scheduled for sale at 12pm. The Redmi Note 5 Pro however will not be sold today.

Redmi Note 5

Redmi Note 5 -- a successor to the highly-acclaimed Redmi Note 4 -- has been priced at Rs 9,999 for the 3GB RAM and 32GB storage variant and Rs 11,999 for the 4GB RAM and 64GB variant.

The device comes with 18:9 Full HD+ display, 4,000mAh battery and Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 processor.

Redmi 5

Redmi 5 has 7.7-mm metal body which makes it the slimmest smartphone in the Redmi series and has a 5.7-inch screen. The base variant of the phone with 2GB RAM and 16GB internal storage will come at Rs 7,999. The phone's 3GB and 32GB storage variant has been priced at Rs 8,999 while the 4GB with 64GB internal memory variants will cost Rs 10,999.

The device is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 Octa-core processor with 14nm "FINFET" technology.

There is a 12MP rear camera and a 5MP front camera with LED selfie-light. A 3,300mAh battery fuels the device.

Redmi 5A

The Redmi 5A comes with a metallic matte finish, and will be available in three colours Dark grey, Gold and Rose gold.

The device is a successor to the hugely-popular Redmi 4A. 2GB RAM + 16GB storage is available at Rs 5,999 while 3GB RAM + 32GB storage is riced at Rs 6,999.

Redmi 5A has a 5-inch fully-laminated HD display. Powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 425 quad-core processor, the phone comes with a 2+1 card slot that supports simultaneous use of two 4G nano SIM cards and a microSD card up to 128GB.

It comes equipped with a 13MP rear camera with Phase Detection Autofocus (PDAF) for fast focusing and an f/2.2 aperture. It also has a 5MP front selfie camera with f/2.0 aperture and smart & pro beautify mode.

Redmi 5A boasts a 3000mAh mammoth battery, offering up to 8 days of standby time.

The phone also comes with an IR blaster. You can use this to operate your AC, TV, Set-top box and many more devices.
New Delhi: Bollywood heartthrob Ranbir Kapoor and Pakistan sensation Mahira Khan are back in the news after reports of the duo secretly meeting each other in London have surfaced again.

According to SpotboyE, Ranbir, along with the entire cast and crew of 'Brahmastra' was in Bulgaria where he was shooting for the film. While the rest of the cast and crew flew back to Mumbai, Ranbir decided to stop by in London, apparently, to meet Mahira Khan, who was also there for a promotional shoot, said the report.

However, as of now, there is no picture proof of the duo catching up after a long gap.

The SpotboyE report added that after their brief meet, Mahira left back to Pakistan where she attended a wedding ceremony of her close friend. Ranbir, on the other hand, extended his stay in London to prepare for his film 'Brahmastra'.

On Friday, the 35-year-old actor was spotted at Mumbai looking uber cool in black tee and denim.

Last year, Ranbir and Mahira had taken the internet by storm after they were snapped smoking cigarettes on the streets of the United States. Clad in a white halter dress, Mahira looked comfortable in the company of the Kapoor lad, thus sparking rumours that the two are in a relationship.
New Delhi: While presenting the Union Budget 2018, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had announced a slew of changes in the tax band that will come into effect from April 1, 2018.

Here are the key tax changes that will come into effect from April 1

Re-introduction of standard deduction

Giving a relief to salaried class, finance minister Arun Jaitley proposed to re-introduce standard deduction. He announced standard deduction of Rs 40,000 in lieu of transport allowance and medical reimbursement. The standard deduction, which is provided to salary earners, was discontinued from the assessment year 2006-07. The total number of salaried employees and pensioners who will benefit from this decision is around 2.5 crores. Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has clarified standard deduction can be claimed straightaway, implying that that tax payers will not be required to submit any proofs or bills to avail it.

Transport and Medical Allowance may be taxable

The introduction of standard deduction of Rs 40,000 p.a. for salaried individuals will however increase the tax burden of individual tax payer. Eaerlier these tax payers would tax-free limit for medical expense reimbursement of 15,000 p.a. and transport allowance exemption of Rs 1,600 p.m.

Cess hiked to 4 percent

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley proposed to replace existing 3 percent education cess on personal income tax and corporation tax with a 4 percent 'Health and Education Cess'. At present, a 3 per cent cess, consisting of 2 per cent cess for primary education and 1 per cent cess for secondary and higher education, is levied on personal income tax and corporation tax.

Long-term capital gains Tax

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in his Budget for 2018-19 announced levying long-term capital gains tax on profits made from share sales. The proposed long-term capital gains tax on equity holdings will apply on profits made from sale of shares on or after April 1, 2018. While the tax will kick in on shares sold on or after April 1, the acquisition cost for the purpose of computing the capital gains will be the higher of the actual purchase price or the maximum traded price on January 31.

Tax exemption for Senior Citizen

Finance Minister Jaitley announced exemption of interest income on deposits with banks and post offices. Interest income will be increased from Rs 10,000 to Rs 50,000 for senior citizens.

TDS for Senior Citizen

TDS will also be not required to be deducted under section 194A. The benefit will be available for interest from all fixed deposit schemes and recurring deposit schemes

Medical expenses for Senior Citizen

The finance minister also hiked in deduction limit for health insurance premium and/ or medical expenditure from Rs 30,000 to Rs 50,000 under section 80D. Additionally an increase in deduction limit for medical expenditure for certain critical illness from Rs 60,000 (in case of senior citizens) and from Rs 80,000 (in case of very senior citizens) to Rs 1 lakh for all senior citizens, under section 80DDB has also been announced.

Dividend Distribution Tax on equity mutual funds

Finance minister Arun Jaitley in his Budget 2018 speech proposed to introduce dividend distribution tax (DDT) on equity mutual funds at the rate of 10 percent, to provide a level field across growth-oriented and dividend distributing schemes.

Pradhan Mantri Vaya Vandana Yojana for Senior Citizen

Jaitley proposed to extend Pradhan Mantri Vaya Vandana Yojana up to March 2020. The Current investment limit will be increased to Rs 15 lakh from the existing limit of Rs 7.5 lakh per senior citizen.

National pension scheme for non-employee subscriber

Finance Minister proposed 40 percent exemption of the total amount payable to the National pension scheme for non-employee subscribers.
Amritsar: An Indian man, working for Pakistan intelligence agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), has been arrested during joint operations of intelligence agencies and police on Thursday.

Ravi Kumar, was recruited by ISI nearly seven months ago via social media platform Facebook.

The State Special Operations Cell (SSOC) conducted a joint operation with millitary intelligence.

Kumar has been booked under Official Secrets Act and some sections of the Indian Penal Code or IPC.

On the basis of specific information, a team of SSOC led by Inspector Gurinderpal Singh arrested Kumar from the Chatiwind police station area in Amritsar district, the Punjab Police said.

Kumar shared crucial information related to the movement of "Army units, construction of new bunkers on the Indian side of the border, photographs of Army vehicles and their formation signs, exercises and trainings and activity/construction", a statement from police read.

Photographs of vital installations, hand-made maps of restricted areas, photocopies of restricted training manuals of the Army and information regarding Army attack formations were recovered from him, according to a Punjab Police release.

Kumar's ISI handlers sponsored his visit to Dubai from February 20 to 24 where he was briefed regarding tasks, the Punjab Police said.

Investigations have revealed that Kumar was in regular touch with Pakistani intelligence officers through mobile phones and Internet and was provided funds routed through Dubai.

The release read: "It has also come to light that Pakistan-based agencies operate a large number of fake Facebook accounts in the name of young girls who actively try to befriend with unemployed young people and retired/serving officials in the armed force and subsequently try to allure them into espionage activities."

Investigations are being conducted to identify and track such fake accounts. Defence establishments are also being appraised regarding this new threat for necessary action at their end, it said.

With agency inputs
Washington: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is all set to go on a journey to Mars to study the deep interior of the Red Planet and find traces of how it was formed.

NASA's Interior Exploration is scheduled to launch on May 5, using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) -- a stationary lander -- will be dedicated to explore the Red Planet's deep interior.

The US space agency on Friday said in a statement that it also will be the first NASA mission since the Apollo moon landings to place a seismometer, a device that measures quakes, on the soil of another planet.

Bruce Banerdt is the principal investigator for InSight at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

Banerdt said,"In some ways, InSight is like a scientific time machine that will bring back information about the earliest stages of Mars' formation 4.5 billion years ago." He added, "It will help us learn how rocky bodies form, including Earth, its moon, and even planets in other solar systems."

InSight carries a suite of sensitive instruments to gather data and, unlike a rover mission, these instruments require a stationary lander from which they can carefully be placed on and below the Martian surface.

Looking deep into Mars will let scientists understand how different its crust, mantle and core are from Earth.

Several European partners have contributed instruments and key components to the InSight mission.

France's Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales led a multinational team that built an ultra-sensitive seismometer for detecting marsquakes.

The German Aerospace Centre (DLR) developed a thermal probe that can bury itself up to 16 feet underground and measure heat flowing from inside the planet.

"InSight is a truly international space mission," said Tom Hoffman, project manager at JPL.

He added,"Our partners have delivered incredibly capable instruments that will make it possible to gather unique science after we land."

InSight currently is at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California undergoing final preparation before launch.

In April, the spacecraft will be mounted to its rocket, connections between them will be checked and the launch team will go through a final training.

"This next month will be exciting," Banerdt said. "We've got some final work to do, but we're almost ready to go to Mars."

(With IANS inputs)
LUCKNOW: A stray dog was spotted carrying a human foetus in its mouth in Uttar Pradesh's Saharanpur district on Friday. The dog was spotted moving with the human foetus near railway station which falls under the Deoband Police Station. The unpleasant sight of a dog carrying the human foetus triggered panic among the local residents who then reported the incident to the nearby police station and the railway officials.

In order to disperse the crowd gathered to witness the incident, the railway station superintendent called the GRP officials posted there.

After some efforts, the GRP personnel took the foetus in their possession and sent it for post-mortem. Is believed that the dog must have fetched the dead foetus from a private nursing, which is located very near to the railway station.

In past too, several incidents of stray dogs carrying a human foetus in their mouth and roaming freely in the area were reported.

The Haryana Police and the Saharanpur district administration had also carried out raids at various private nursing homes to detect cases illegal abortion.

The local police is also believed to be carrying out an investigation to find out who dumped the human foetus in the garbage dump from where it was fetched by the dog.
Washington: US President Donald Trump today said that he may "hold" the recently agreed trade deal with South Korea in an effort to gain leverage over his scheduled meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

"I may hold it up till after a deal is made with North Korea," he said in his address on infrastructure in Ohio.

This week, Trump said, his administration "secured a wonderful (trade) deal" with South Korea.

"We were in a deal that was a horror show. It was going to produce 2,00,000 jobs. And it did -- for them," he said amid laughter from the audience. "That was a Hillary Clinton special, I hate to say. 'This will produce 2,00,000 jobs'. She was right. But it was for them, it wasn't for us," Trump said.

The new trade deal agreed upon is "going to level the playing field on steel and cars and trucks coming into this country", said the US President as he told the audience that he might hold it till he has a deal with North Korea.

"Does everybody understand that? You know why, right? You know why? Because it's a very strong card. And I want to make sure everyone is treated fairly. And were moving along very nicely with North Korea. We'll see what happens," he said. "Certainly, the rhetoric has calmed down just a little bit, wouldn't you say?" Trump asked the audience referring to the sudden stopping of rhetoric from North Korea.

Trump has accepted an invitation from North Korean leader Kim Jong-un for a meeting in May.

"We'll see how it all turns out. Maybe it'll be good and maybe it won't. And if it's no good, we're walking. And if it's good, we will embrace it. But it's going to be very interesting over the next period of time. And South Korea has been wonderful. But we'll probably hold that deal up for a little while, see how it all plays out," Trump said.
Since small hours of Friday, Russian militants violated the Easter ceasefire twice - in spite of the recommendation of the Minsk talks group. Oleg Sushynsky, the speaker of the HQ of counter-terrorism operation reported that in his commentary for 112 Ukraine TV channel.

The enemy opened fire near Avdiivka and Opytne, both in Donetsk region. No firefights were observed in Luhansk region.

The Ukrainian military suffered no casualties.

Previously, The Trilateral Contact Group (TCG) on settlement of the situation in Donbas has agreed on a complete ceasefire on the line of demarcation in the conflict zone for the time of Easter holidays starting on March 30. This was stated by the TCG on the OSCE website.

The Trilateral Contact Group, with the participation of the representatives of certain areas of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, acknowledging the positive impact of the recommitment to ceasefire re-affirm their full commitment to a comprehensive, sustainable and unlimited ceasefire, starting from 30 March 2018 at 00 hrs. 01 min. (Kyiv time)," the statement said.
The militants look for 104-109 people in Ukraine, while Ukrainian side knows about 37 hostages in Donbas

Open source

The formula 104-109 detained in Ukraine for 37 Ukrainian hostages detained by the pro-Russian militants is considered for the next exchange. Viktor Medvedchuk, the Ukrainian envoy in the humanitarian subdivision of Minsk group claimed this as BBC reported.

For today, 104-109 people are identified among those searched at the Ukrainian territory by the self-proclaimed republics. 37 people are identified among those searched by Ukraine at the uncontrolled territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions. It is the numbers that are the issue of the negotiations that are not stopped even for a minute, Medvedchuk claimed.

As we reported earlier, the last big exchange of prisoners took place in Donbas on Dec. 27. Then, 73 Ukrainians were released in exchange for 233 militants. The parties discussed the possibility of the next one and submitted the lists of individuals on Jan. 18 in Minsk.

Also, on March 2, Bohdan Martson and Igor Dziubak, the employees of the State Border Service kidnapped by the Russian special services in October 2017, were returned to Ukraine. In its turn, Ukraine transferred Vladimir Kuznetsov and Askar Kuluba, the soldiers of FSB Border Guard Service detained in 2017 in Kherson region to the Russian side.
The President stressed the importance of medical and psycholigical help for the wounded.

Open source

Since the start of the military conflict in Donbas, over 13 thousand of Ukrainian servicemen have been wonded. Such was the data announced by the President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko at a meeting with Ukrainian paralympians, which was broadcast live by 112-Ukraine.

More than 13 thousand of Ukrainian soldiers have been wounded over the course of this horrific war. All of them need medical aid, as well as the attention of our society. But what they need most is psychological help, - Poroshenko said.

Ukrainian troops have been involved in the military conflict in parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

According to the information of the General Staff, between the start of the military operation and October 2017, activeduty casualties reached 10,710 servicemen, with 2,378 of them dead. 242 children have died since the beginning of the Anti-terrorist operation in the east of the country.
Open source

Representatives of Ukrainian towns that are part of the Covenant of Mayors Demonstration Projects program funded by the European Union and members of the Association of Energy Efficient Towns of Ukraine have visited Poland on a study tour, UNIAN reports.

They visited four towns in Poland that have implemented energy efficient measures including the thermal insulation of public buildings and have switched to renewable energy. They also learnedthe towns experience of implementing environmentally friendsly transportation solutions, as well as attracting funds for energy efficient projects for municipalities. The study visit was organized as part of the Polish-Norwegian aid for improving energy effciency in Ukraine project, according to EU Neighbours.

Covenant of Mayors-Demonstration Projects (CoM-DeP) are part of the EU4Energy initiative, which covers the entire European Union to improve energy supply, security and connectivity, as well as to promote energy efficiency and the use of renewable sources of energy in the countries of the Eastern Partnership (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine). The project funds programs aimed at helping to reform energy markets and reducing national energy dependence and consumption.

In the long run, this makes energy supply more reliable, transparent and affordable, therefore, reducing energy poverty and energy bills for both households and corporations.
It offers up to five times faster download speed, up to 10 times faster upload speed, as well as instant reaction of websites and applications, compared to the 3G technology.

Open source

The Ukrainian mobile service provider lifecell has started to provide 4G (LTE) communication services in 22 regional centers across the nation, as well as Kramatorsk and Severodonetsk. At the same time, 3G+ and 4.5G traffic will be charged the same way, the carrier said on Friday, Interfax-Ukraine reports.

In one-third of the cities, particularly in Mykolaiv, Chernihiv, Zhytomyr, Rivne, Cherkasy, Vinnytsya, Severodonetsk and Kramatorsk, lifecell is the only carrier that provides 4G communication services, the company said in a press release.

According to lifecell, 49% of smartphones in the lifecell network support the LTE technology. 4G mobile services will be provided using the LTE Advanced Pro (4.5G) technology, which offers up to five times faster download speed, up to 10 times faster upload speed, as well as the instant reaction of websites and applications, compared to the 3G technology.

In order to use the next generation connection, a subscriber is required to have a SIM card with support for the 4G/LTE standard (USIM-card) and a smartphone supporting at least 4G/LTE.

The USIM card not only supports the 4G (LTE) standard, but it also has other advantages: higher security and extra options. The main difference is the larger memory, and the USIM address book can store up to 500 contacts with extended data: several contact phone numbers and an e-mail address, the press service of the operator wrote.

The carrier also pointed out that the company does not intend to introduce a separate tariff for 4G traffic.

3G+ and 4.5G traffic will be charged the same way. Subscribers shall be free to choose which technology to use, the press release reads.

The second wave of 4.5G deployments from lifecell in the 1800 MHz band is expected in July 2018.
Trade between Ukraine and India reached a total turnover of $2.8 billion, indicating an 18.8% expansion over the year. The Indian Ambassador to Ukraine Kumar Bharti Manoj said at a press conference in Kyiv on Tuesday, Interfax-Ukraine reports.

Two important aspects should be pointed out in this respect. India has become the fifth destination for Ukrainian exports. Also, India is the second country, which Ukraine has a trade surplus with. Only Ukraine and Egypt have the larger trade surplus - $1.75 billion, whereas it currently stands at $1.65 billion, he said.

The ambassador also said that these figures facilitate confidence in the notion that the trade between the two nations in the period of 2018-2019 could expand by 20% and 25% respectively. According to the ambassador, India was the primary destination for the exported sunflower oil from Ukraine. In 2017, India imported close to $2 billion worth of sunflower oil from Ukraine. Additionally, India imported a lot of Ukrainian beans in 2017.

Another point worth mentioning is the fact the largest share of the total number of foreign students in Ukrainian universities was made up of Indian nationals, a figure reached for the first time in 15 years, the Indian ambassador noted. According to him, over 10,800 Indian students are now studying in Ukraine, which is 80% more than in 2015. He also said that India intends to increase the number of its nationals receiving education in Ukraine to 40,000 within the next few years, which would generate close to $200 million annually in revenue for Ukraine.

The ambassador also noted the positive impact of the visa liberalization process has had on the tourist flow between the two nations. A total of over 29,400 Indian nationals visited Ukraine last year, showing a 50% increase. Manoj also spoke of possible Indian investments in the Ukrainian pharmaceutical industry.

The Head of the Representative Office of Dia Pharma Limited Ukraine Mr. Pandian Thamarai said that currently, Indian preparations account for 3% of the Ukrainian pharmaceutical market (4.5% in money terms).
The price of Ukrainian corn has increased back to above $200/mt, as Chinese buyers resurfaced on demand for ethanol production, while buyers from Egypt were looking to build stocks ahead of Ramadan, according to sources, UNIAN reports.

The price on Ukrainian corn grew to $200.5 per megaton on Tuesday, up $2.75 in day-to-day terms, S&P Global Platts data revealed. It hit a 20-month high at $209 per megaton on 12 March.

According to the sources, two Panamax port FOB Handysize trades were said to have been done this week for April or the second half of that month  loading at $196 per megaton and $199.5 per megaton.

Before that, trading outside of term agreements was last done on 14 March for May at $210 per megaton. High quality corn in Ukraine becomes difficult to source in late April and May, when exporters reach the end of the exporting campaign and focus on new crop sowings.

With China, Egypt and Iran all expected to buy more before the end of the campaign and drought still lingering in Argentina, corn producers in Ukraine could see further upside. Originations with lower values such as Argentina and the United States had become less competitive on bullish data and the reappearance of prompt length in Ukraine.




Read the original text at 112.ua.

Open source

Ukraines Minister of Foreign Affairs Pavlo Klimkin stated: "In a friendly conversation, historian and journalist from Poland Ziemowit Szczerek asked why Ukraine would not introduce the Latin alphabet along with the Cyrillic one. Our goal is the formation of the Ukrainian political nation, so we must work for what unites us, not divides us. On the other hand, why dont we just discuss it?" Smiley.

On the one hand, the issue is surprising itself. It is hard to imagine the Chinese foreign minister, to whom the Polish journalist proposes to switch to the Latin alphabet and forget about thousands of incomprehensible hieroglyphs. Well, it would be so convenient: foreign journalists could read the Chinese newspapers, without understanding the text though. I think, even given the traditional Chinese politeness, a minister from the Middle Kingdom could not tolerate such an obvious "attack".

Although these allusions seem to be distant. Let us imagine that a similar question is posed to the minister of the country member of NATO and the EU, for example, Bulgaria. Naive Bulgarians think that the traditional inscription at the airports terminal " ," written in Cyrillic, is somehow understandable to Poles. I mean, naive in their sincere delusions. Because if you write it Dobre dochliy, it will not make sense anyway. Undoubtedly, this would change much in terms of Bulgaria's investment attractiveness. Although it seems that the Bulgarian minister would simply say that he is proud of his ancient alphabet, which is a unique achievement of the Slavic civilization and the basis for the development of national identity.

Actually, the desire of our politicians to think globally provokes sincere respect. These are people of a revivalistic scale, unique encyclopedists, against whose background the humble fame of Leonardo and Diderot fades away. And it is good that the military did not bother with questions of the Latin alphabet in terms of transferring the document circulation to NATO standards. The discussion, initiated by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, presupposes a certain light version. Ukrainians are invited to enter both alphabets, Cyrillic and Latin ones, in parallel. A very peculiar model would appear: the future generation of Ukrainians are offered either to study twelve years at school and almost six at the university and as a result competently write in Ukrainian in Cyrillic and English in Latin, or to neglect all that rules and science and write illiterately, mixing the languages mentioned above, plus Russian (using Latin hybrid with special diacritical marks).

The rejection of old Russian letter '' in revolutionary Russia caused more than one heart attack among the representatives of the Petersburg and Moscow intelligentsia. But the power of the workers and peasants demanded to simplify the "complex" alphabet. Perhaps, someone perceives the rejection of the Cyrillic alphabet in Ukraine as a kind of rejection from the shackles of the "Russian world". If they believe so, then this undertaking looks very curious: Cyrillic letters came to Kyiv from Bulgaria, and only then were transferred to the far north-eastern provinces of the then Kyivan Rus. So the rejection of the Cyrillic alphabet will be equivalent to the rejection of the Kiev-Russian historical heritage. We will have to forget the first book printed in Ukraine - the "Apostle" by Ivan Fedorov, published in Lviv in 1574.

As for the proposal to introduce two parallel alphabets, this will only lead to the next artificial split of our country, this time on the basis of the alphabet. After all, if in the western regions and Transcarpathia the Latin alphabet could have taken root partly, then in the rest of Ukraine it is unlikely.

Not being professionally prepared for deep phonetic and linguistic discussion, let us try to look at this problem from the point of view of economic expediency. Ukraine is not the first state to restore its independence after the dissolution of the USSR, which initiated this discourse. The most striking is Kazakhstan. The transition of this country from Cyrillic to Latin is one of those epoch-making events, which will be further remembered by the incumbent President Nursultan Nazarbayev. In 2017, he issued a decree, and the transition period to the new alphabet should be completed by 2025. The project is implemented within the framework of the strategic program "modernization of public consciousness." Some authors of this idea are absolutely sincerely confident that "the Kazakh language will receive an incentive to write in Kazakh on any device without switching the languages." But even now the transition to the Latin alphabet has caused a wide discussion in the society, which is not always positive.

According to the estimates of the Ministry of Education and Science of Kazakhstan, the transition to the Latin alphabet will require a one-time cost of $ 300 million. This concerns one-off investments related to the correction of documents, the printing of the new textbooks, the rewriting of software. In addition, according to the estimations of "KazPotrudnadzor", another $ 110 million is needed for retraining the population and labor resources in particular. Taking into account that the transition period can range from three to five years, the cost will total from 330 to 550 million dollars, and taking into account a one-time investment - 600-800 million dollars in total. But these are preliminary estimates, which are always underestimated. The total cost of carrying out the "alphabetical" reform can reach one billion, while it should be borne in mind that the population of Kazakhstan is half that in Ukraine, so for us, this amount can quite double.

On the other hand, the authorities have a unique tool to shift the attention of the electorate from the real common problems of the country's development to the fictitious personal problems of developing the Latin alphabet. After all, many can voluntarily deprive themselves of the right to criticize the authorities until they learn to write "in a new way."

Of course, we can be persuaded that this would be a "light" reform, and in practice both alphabets will be used: the Cyrillic alphabet and the Latin alphabet, but there is justifiable suspicion that in reality, this will lead only to total illiteracy and a drop in the general educational qualification of the population.

Many Turkish contemporary writers say that Turkey practically lost its literary language as a result of the introduction of a new alphabet in the twenties of the last century. A new generation cannot perceive what is written with another alphabet, and all of the past cultural heritage passes away.

Let us not be so pessimistic. The "main inquisitor" of the Russian world Volodymyr Vyatrovich hurries to promote the Cyrillic alphabet, stating that "Cyrillic alphabet is a fundamental element of our millennial culture and identity."

And on the other hand, the situation might be much grittier, maybe, the keyboard of the minister lags, and he cannot switch the languages quickly? Perhaps such an unfortunate misunderstanding has inspired him to initiate a sharp alphabetical discussion. There are a lot of problems, which require these billion dollars more than the Latinization of Ukrainian alphabet does.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or 112.International and its owners.
Isabelle Dumont, French ambassador ambafrance-ua.org

French companies, which work in Ukraine, suffer corrupt practices in this country - even raider attacks. Isabelle Dumont, the French ambassador in Ukraine said this in an interview with one of Ukrainian channels.

'There are cases when our companies face manifestations of bribery, and that causes concerns; they report such cases to the Embassy and the business ombudsman. This is the issue that we address every day, along with members of the Ukrainian government,' she said.

'I can't say that the Ukrainian government does not help us in this at all. There are people there who clearly understand the problem and try to assist us, because they realize that there will be no investment without the trust,' Dumont added.

According to the ambassador, some French companies suffer raider attacks.

'The Ukrainian government is aware of such facts; it does not even deny them. So whenever such raid takes place, and the judge sides with the raiders - do you understand the consequences in terms of trust of foreign investors to Ukraine?', Dumont concluded.
The editor-in-chief of Russia Today Margarita Simonyan has claimed that the TV-channel was thrown out of the broadcasting network due to its foreign agent status.

Open source

Beginning on 1 April, the Russian propaganda TV-channel Russia Today will no longer broadcast in Washington, D.C. Bloomberg wrote about this on 29 March, 112.ua reports.

American retranslators WNVT and WNVC in March 2017 sold their frequencies for a total of $182 million. This means they will no longer be cooperating with MHZ Network that spreads the content produced by RT, Deutsche Welle, France24 and other foreign television companies. The aforementioned broadcasters signal will also be no longer accessible via cable television.

The editor-in-chief of Russia Today Margarita Simonyan has argued that it is linked to the companys foreign agent status.

We have been thrown off the broadcasting network in Washington. This is to all of those who have been passionately assuring us that the foreign agent status would not affect the RTs work in the States, - a message on the TV-channel website reads.

Russia Today consists of four full-time information television channels that broadcast from Moscow to over 100 nations of the world in English, Arabic, Spanish and French, the RT America and RT UK television channels that broadcast from their own studios in Washington, D.C. and London respectively, the RTD documentary channel, and the global news video agency Ruptly that offers exclusive video material to other channels.

In Novemebr 2017, the U.S. Department of Justice forced RT America to register as a foreign agent in the United States. The TV-channel has changed its procedure of financial reporting, while the programs it produces started to get marked as propaganda of a foreign government.

The Russian Ministry of Justice, in its turn, included nine media outlets in its list of foreign agents.

The editor-in-chief of Russia Today Margarita Simonyan said that he TV-channel has been thrown off the broadcasting network in the US capital due to its foreign agent status.
Open source

Russia officially broke the bilateral agreement on military supplies with Ukraine. The respective message appeared on Russian official web portal of legal information.

According to this document, the agreement, signed in 1995, stipulated conditions of supplies of military vehicles, weaponry and equipment. Due to the said document, it ceased to act on March 28, 2018.

Previously, Ukraine's deputy foreign minister Olena Zerkal said that the bilateral Friendship and Partnership Treaty may be broken. 'We should define our position here by October this year, whether we will extend the duration of this document or not. As far as we can see, this treaty is ignored; so, given our current relations with Russia, we should be working on a new treaty that would settle the legal tools of settling disputes between the countries', Zerkal said.
The expulsion of 13 Ukrainian diplomats from Russia will not affect Ukraines opportunity to protect its citizens abroad. Mariana Betsa, the Spokesperson of Ukraines Foreign Ministry, stated as EU Pravda reported.

We have a sufficient amount of consulate officers. Therefore, fortunately, we can claim that the decision to expel the diplomats will not influence our chances to protect the interests of Ukraines citizens in Moscow and in the consular district, she said.

She also stated that Russia demanded Ukrainian diplomats to leave the country in 48 hours, which is not common for the diplomatic practice and the current expulsion wave. The diplomats from other states had from 6 to 14 days to leave the country.

Betsa did not name the precise amount of Ukrainian diplomats in Russia. There are 29 surnames on the official website of the Foreign Ministry, yet some of the diplomats are not named due to their security.

Related video:
The representatives of the Ministry stated, that Amosova was absent at the Presidents report presenting, which was her second absence

Open source

The Commission of the Ministry of Health declared the work of Kateryna Amosova, the President of the Bogomolets National Medical University, unsatisfying and recommended to cancel the contract with her. This was reported on the Ministry's Facebook page.

The unanimous decision made by the Commission of the Ministry of Health is the following: to declare the work of Kateryna Amosova in 2017 unsatisfying; to recommend Ukraines Ministry of Health to cancel the contract with her before expiry date due to the non-compliance with the contract conditions in 2017, the message says.

The representatives of the Ministry added, that Amosova was absent at the Presidents report presenting, that was her second absence.

This time Kateryna Amosova without any reasonable excuse avoided the presenting of her public activity as the President of the University. Therefore, the Commission of the Ministry of Health has publicly condemned the work of Amosova in 2017 without her being present, they informed.

Earlier, the Administrative Court reinstated Amosova as the President of Bogomolets National Medical University on March 2. The University started a strike to support Amosova on February 26.

Ulana Suprun, acting Minister of Health, said that this was not a strike, but an intentional removal of the students from studying and threatened the Universitys administration to bring them to responsibility for the sabotage of classes.

A strike committee of the Bogomolets National Medical University reported about the end of the strike. The members of the committee claimed that the strike reached the aim and the Parliament Committee on Health headed by Olha Bogomolets supported the demands announced by the protesters.

Yet, the Ministry of Health of Ukraine suspended Kateryna Amosova from the duty on March 6.

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Armed conflict in Donbas, Fire in Russia's Kemerovo, Expulsion of Russian diplomats over Skripal case, Savchenko in a court of appeal, etc - the weekly news on one page

Donbas conflict in Ukraine

Savchenko appeals to the court

Fire in Russia's Kemerovo

Expulsion of Russian diplomats over Skripal case

Donbas conflict in Ukraine

This week, the overall intensity of military actions in Donbas increased again. The average daily number of attacks went up, and Ukraines military took new casualties. One of this weeks victims became Andriy, the 19-year-old fighter of the Volunteer Ukrainian Corps of the Right Sector, call sign Dilly. This was reported on Facebook by the Back and Alive fund, which assists the Ukrainian army. The defender of Volunteer Ukrainian Corps of the Right Sector Andriy with the call sign Dilly has died at the frontline. He will remain forever 19-year-old boy. The bullet of enemy sniper has taken the life of Dilly on March 27. Andriy was born in Konotop. The town announced three days of mourning for him, the message says.

Despite the fact that the OSCE offered a ceasefire so that the civilians could celebrate Easter in peace and silence, Russian militants of the self-styled peoples republics continue to attack Ukrainian positions. For example, since small hours of Friday, Russian militants violated the Easter ceasefire twice - in spite of the recommendation of the Minsk talks group. Oleg Sushynsky, the speaker of the HQ of counter-terrorism operation reported that in his commentary for 112 Ukraine TV channel. The enemy opened fire near Avdiivka and Opytne, both in Donetsk region. No firefights were observed in Luhansk region. The Ukrainian military suffered no casualties.

On Wednesday, the Ukrainian military reported another case of the use of banned equipment in combat; a serviceman of Ukraines state border guard suffered a retinal burn due to the use of the forbidden laser weapon. A few days ago, one of the border guards was blinded by the laser during the performing of the service at the checkpoint Mariinka and performing the observing of the territory through the optical instruments. It was used from the side of the temporarily occupied territory, the press service of the State Border Guard said.

On Friday, the OSCE special monitoring mission said it planned to open more forward patrol bases in the towns in the occupied area of Donetsk region, including those lying near the Ukraine-Russia state border. Alexander Hug, the first deputy head of OSCE SMM in Ukraine reported this at a briefing in Kyiv on Friday. 'We intend to open new forward patrol bases in the two areas near the engagement line - for instance, in Dokuchaivsk, where the armed units assist us. But we also plan to open these in Novoazovsk and Amvrosiivka, not far from the non-controlled sections of the border with Russia,' Hug said.

The OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) to Ukraine intends to use the long-range unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) to increase its monitoring activities and to overcome the obstacles to monitoring the situation in Donbas conflict zone. This was reported on the OSCE website. On Wednesday, "the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) to Ukraine will reintroduce the use of long-range unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) to augment and complement its monitoring activities and to overcome impediments to monitoring in eastern Ukraine," the message says.

Savchenko appeals to the court

The defense of Nadiya Savchenko appealed against her arrest, which was rejected by the Appeal Court on March 29. During the court hearing, Savhcenko tried to challenge a prosecutor, stating that Klymovych let himself shameful statement in the comparison of her and former GRU officers, however, the court also rejected the claim. Thus Savchenko is to stay in custody until May 20.

MP Nadia Savchenko went on a hunger strike after the arrest on March 23. According to her lawyers, Nadiya lost weight but she is alive.

The case of MP Nadia Savchenko, suspected in the planning of the coup detat in Ukraine and the terrorist attack in the government quarter, will be passed to the court in two-three months, according to Yury Lutsenko, the Prosecutor General of Ukraine.

Fire in Russia's Kemerovo

As the Russian society mourns over the victims of the fire in Kemerovo, some new details appeared in this tragic story. On Monday, representative of Department of Consular Service of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry Vasyl Kyrylych said that there were no Ukrainians among the victims. On Wednesday, President Poroshenko expressed his condolences to relatives of those who deceased in the deadly fire.

On March 27, Kyiv city hall announced that strict fire safety checks would take place in all shopping malls across the capital city.

On Wednesday, the Russian Investigation Committee claimed that Ukrainian pranker Yevhen Volnov spread the information about 300 fatalities, while the official number of victims made 64. A criminal investigation was opened, and the court even decided to arrest Volnov in absentia. It is worth mentioning that the Ukrainian government does not give out its citizens, which is stipulated by the law.

Expulsion of Russian diplomats over Skripal case

This week the expulsion of the Russian diplomats all over the world continued. On March 26, Petro Poroshenko, the President of Ukraine claimed that 13 workers of the Russian diplomatic service will be sent out of Ukraine. Later, Ukraines Foreign Ministry confirmed this information and specified that those diplomats are the representative of Russian special services.

On March 27, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) banned 23 Russian citizens from entering this country; they are the same diplomats who had been ousted from the United Kingdom because of the high-profile case of Sergei Skripal.

Later, the Foreign Ministry of Ukraine claimed that the expulsion of the Russian diplomats from Ukraine can influence the process of the release of the Ukrainian political prisoners if Kremlin responds to it.

Also, Russia officially recognized the presence of its intelligence officers among expelled diplomats.

In total, about 30 countries of the world and announced the expulsion of more than 150 workers of the Russian diplomatic missions in the response to the chemical attack in Salisbury.
The Head of Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutors Office claimed that he is not going to escape

Nazar Kholodnytsky, the Head of Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutors Office of Ukraine (SAP) claimed that he will come for the questioning to the Investigation of High Priority Cases in Economy Sphere Department of Prosecutor Generals Office at 10:00 am on April 3 as112 Ukraine broadcasted.

This department holds the investigation; I am called for the questioning to this department on April 3 at 10:00 am, I will come there and testify. I said that I am not hiding from anybody and I am not going to escape. But this department, with the help of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau as I understand, set the wire, he said.

Earlier, the General Prosecutors Office and the National Anti-Corruption Bureau sent a complaint against Nazar Kholodnytsky, the Head of the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutors Office, to the Disciplinary Commission.

Besides, Andriy Lysenko, the Spokesperson of the General Prosecutors Office, said that Nazar Kholodnytsky was invited to be questioned as a witness to the Department of Major Investigation in the Economic Sphere today at 10:00. However, he did not come.

As we reported Yuriy Lutsenko, Ukraines Prosecutor General, initiated Kholodnytskys resignation today, on March 30. Lutsenko appealed to the Qualifications and Disciplinary Commission of Public Prosecutors concerning Nazar Kholodnytsky, his Deputy and the Head of the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutors Office.
Sytnyk said that the tapes prove the existing pressure on the court to force it to make an illegal decision. The court is being under pressure to make it refuse to consider the request of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau investigators on carrying out a search of Kholodnytskys friend

The investigation on the case of Nazar Kholodnytsky, the Head of Ukraine's Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAP) was started after the information that the SAP impeded the investigation of the case on Hennady Trukhanov, the Mayor of Odesa. Artem Sytnyk, the Head of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau, said it, as ZN.UA reports.

According to him, the investigators of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau received the information about some weird and unexplainable actions of Nazar Kholodnytsky and other prosecutors.

His behavior had a negative influence on our investigations and the further judicial perspective of several cases.  The harder we conducted the investigation, the more red flags we received, Sytnyk said.

He noted, that the National Anti-Corruption Bureau did not have any evidence against Kholodnytsky for a long time, but they managed to get a specific information on one of the cases, which proved the worst suspicion.

Concerning the case on the embezzlement in Odesa Mayors Office. We received the information and realized that we shouldnt neglect the situation, Sytnyk said.

According to him, within the criminal proceeding against Kholodnytsky we gathered the evidence of the law violation. Besides, this information was taken from the wiretaps, which was set in Kholodnytskys office.

The data was handed over to the General Prosecutors Office investigation team to determine the sufficiency of evidence for the notice of suspicion. First of all, this is about the leaking of the information about the intended search to the people, who were to be searched, Sytnyk stated.

Secondly, Sytnyk reported on the existing evidence of the pressure on the number of civil servants to force them to make a specific decision.

There are prosecutors, who want to work decent, but the individuals, who occupy administrative positions in the SAP, do not allow them to do so. The Prosecutor brings the suspicion cases upstairs, but instead of the consideration he gets a scolding and the case is being slowed down, Sytnyk said.

We also should mention the pressure on the court.

The tapes prove the existing pressure on the court to force it to make an illegal decision. The court is being under pressure to make it refuse to consider the request of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau investigators on carrying out a search of Kholodnytskys friend.

Besides, Sytnyk reported on the evidence of a witness being instigated to commit perjury.

Sytnyk specified, that it was about the cases on the embezzlement committed by the Mayors Office civil servants, about the case on Ulana Supruns, acting Health Minister, claim that she was offered a bribe, about the case on Gold Mandarin company, which is connected with Logvynskyi, peoples deputy, about the investigation related to the e-declaration for civil servants and the investigation on the business interest of the owner of a big agricultural holding.

Earlier, the General Prosecutors Office and the National Anti-Corruption Bureau sent a complaint against Nazar Kholodnytsky, the Head of the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutors Office, to the Disciplinary Commission.

Besides, Andriy Lysenko, the Spokesperson of the General Prosecutors Office, said that Nazar Kholodnytsky was invited to be questioned as a witness to the Department of Major Investigation in the Economic Sphere today at 10:00. However, he did not come.

Yuriy Lutsenko, Ukraines Prosecutor General, initiated Kholodnytskys resignation today, on March 30. Lutsenko appealed to the Qualifications and Disciplinary Commission of Public Prosecutors concerning Nazar Kholodnytsky, his Deputy and the Head of the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutors Office.

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Open source

Yuriy Lutsenko, Ukraines Prosecutor General, appealed to the Qualifications and Disciplinary Commission of Public Prosecutors concerning Nazar Kholodnytsky, his Deputy and the Head of the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutors Office. Lutsenko asked the Commission to consider Holodnytskyis resignation. He wrote it on his Facebook page.

With my proposal, I ask the Qualifications and Disciplinary Commission of Public Prosecutors to consider Kholodnytsky's demotion, Lutsenko stated.

Earlier, the General Prosecutors Office and the National Anti-Corruption Bureau sent a complaint against Nazar Kholodnytsky, the Head of the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutors Office, to the Disciplinary Commission.

Besides, Andriy Lysenko, the Spokesperson of the General Prosecutors Office, said that Nazar Kholodnytsky was invited to be questioned as a witness to the Department of Major Investigation in the Economic Sphere today at 10:00. However, he did not come.

Related video:
Around two million guests are expected to visit Kyiv in 2018. In comparison, 1.5 million people visited Ukraines capital in 2017

Several new tourist attractions will be opened in Kyiv in 2018. Vitali Klitschko stated this, as the press-office reported.

The Mayor reported that due to the Champions League Final tens of thousands of tourists will come to Kyiv in May.

Our task it that every tourist has something to tell about a wonderful city of Kyiv at home, Klitschko said.

Around two million guests are expected to visit Kyiv in 2018. In comparison, 1.5 million people visited Ukraines capital in 2017.

Due to this, the Mayor intends to develop the tourist potential of the city. Every tourist spends around $150 on the average per day, therefore, the increase of tourist attractiveness is a direct investment in the citys economy.

Saint Volodymyr Hill, the Artist Alley, and the Landscape Alley will be restored. We will open very nice ladders from the Landscape Alley to the Honchary-Kozhemyaki area around the St. Andrews Church, Klitschko promised.

Besides the Champion League, a lot of tourists are expected to come in autumn, when Kyiv will be hosting the 56th WBC Congress.

This is another great opportunity to attract more guests to the capital, to present our city. And my mission, as the Mayor of Kiev, is to do my best to host more and more guests, Klitschko stated.

Related video:

Ukraine news on 112.international
Vitaly Serdyuk and Ihor Fedorenko, the advocates of Viktor Yanukovych, the former president of Ukraine filed the official appeal on the necessity to renew the mandate of the EU Council monitoring mission in the investigation of the crimes in Maida to the office of Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the President of Germany who was the guarantor of the Agreement on the peaceful setting of the political crisis in Ukraine dated February 21, 2014. Vitaly Serdyuk wrote this on Facebook as Ukrainian News reported.

Serdyuk published the copies of the documents. The presidents office accepted the proper appeal of the lawyers of Yanukovych on March 29. According to the advocate, it is expected that the lawmakers of Bundestag and human rights organizations will file an official appeal to the European Parliament and the OSCE. The decision to appeal to Steinmeier was made after the number of the meetings and negotiations, which were held by the lawyers in Berlin with the lawmakers of the European Parliament, Bundestag, different German politician and human rights activists.

The persecution of the advocates in Ukraine for their activity, the refusal in the access to the justice and putting pressure on the judges, the blocking of the mass media that actively cover the human rights activities is the expression of the blatant disregard of the European values that will be properly responded. This situation is the consequence of the primacy of the political feasibility over the human rights in the high-profile case, particularly Maidan case, in Ukraine, Serdyuk explained.

The renewal of the Monitoring mission created by the European Council for the implementation of the Agreement on the peaceful setting of the political crisis in Ukraine dated February 21, 2014, can hinder all this.

Yanukovychs lawyer reminded that the report on the absence of the investigations results and obstruction of it by the law enforcement bodies controlled by the authority was made in 2015 on the results of the monitoring by this mission. However, the mandate of this monitoring group was not extended for some reason, despite the fact that the investigation still is not finished.

Exactly the absence of the external monitoring, personal interest of the number of the Ukrainian politicians and the leadership of the Prosecutor Generals Office in the concealing of the truth about the shootings in Maida lead to the violation of the basic human rights and use of the criminal methods of fight against the advocates, Serdyuk added.

On March 27, the break in the court hearing on the case of the state treason of Yanukovych was announced until April 4 due to the absence of the lawyers as they made business trips to Germany, Russia and Simferopol.
PLEASE NOTE!

Due to the March 23, 2020 NM DOH Public Health Order, These Event Listings Are Not Accurate!

All non-essential businesses are closed, public gatherings are prohibited!

(One day some of these events will be rescheduled or will resume, but they are not happening now!)
Sample from nine different chefs to see who makes the best vegan taco. Additional vendors and musical guests are also there for this is a family friendly event.

Join us for the first Vegan Taco Takeover in ABQ! Come sample from nine different chefs to see who can make the best vegan taco! Thats right! With so many options to try, you just can't miss it!

Competitors:

Guard Your Grill - Chipotle Barbacoa Jackfruit Taco w/ Pineapple Mango Salsa

Shay Ramos - Mama Shay's EspecTACOulosos Tacos

Paul Roybal - Paul's Papi-Tacos

Damian Herrera (Juicy Foods Santa Fe) + Mariela Rodriguez - Carribbean Jerk Kung Fu Tacos

Audrey Chavez - Cheezy Vegan Tacos

Casa Taco - Casa Taco's Vegan Black Bean Tacos

Joy Maes + Noel Reid-Matthes - The VBQ Taco

El Cotorro Taqueria - Underground Roasted Root Taquito

El Cotorro Taqueria - Sexy, Suave, Hongos and Nopale Tacos

Blue Agave Republic - Tacos Al Pastor

There will be other vendors with free samples, information and merchandise! This is a family friendly event. Children under 3 are free. Everyone is invited! There are a limited amount of tickets available. DJ Seitan will be playing music! Don't be left outside while everyone is inside enjoying amazing food! Get your pre-sale tickets as soon as possible!

Our special guest Grey the vegan rapper and creative activist, will be present to perform and will also have his Plant Based Drippin' merchandise available for purchase. Visit https://facebook.com/GreyPMODB and www.plantbaseddrippin.com for more details!
How to Attract Native Bees into Your Yard

PLEASE NOTE!

Due to the March 23, 2020 NM DOH Public Health Order, These Event Listings Are Not Accurate!

All non-essential businesses are closed, public gatherings are prohibited!

(One day some of these events will be rescheduled or will resume, but they are not happening now!)
A grand reopening to celebrate a new mission of pottery-powered charity. Stock up on pottery, photography and ceramic art to support nonprofits.

Paseo Pottery is throwing 

a grand reopening bash to celebrate their new mission as a pottery-powered charity. The gala will be lubricated with intoxicants hand-crafted by Tumbleroot, Santa Fes first brewery AND distillery soon to open its doors. Attendees will get to cast a vote for their favorite local charity, and at nights end the chosen non-profit will be announced and will receive Paseo Potterys net profits for 2018. Come visit artists at work in the studio and stock up on pottery, photography, and one-of-a-kind pieces of ceramic art knowing that your dollars will go to a great cause.

Though Paseo Pottery has been in business for nearly thirty years, its quite possible that youve never stopped in. We wont judge you for it; its not easy to find. Its housed inside a rustic little adobe built in the early 1900s tucked behind Sage Bakehouse near the plaza in Santa Fe. The space includes both a working ceramics studio and a retail gallery. In the studio, youll find member artists feverishly designing and creating. (Think muddy mayhem: whirling wheels, fiery kilns, and sundry clay-coated potting paraphernalia.) In the gallery, finished pieces are displayed beneath the soft glow of farmhouse chandeliers in the hip new showroom that member artists have just finished remodeling in reclaimed barn wood and rebar.

Paseo Pottery was founded in 1993 as an artists co-op of sorts by three of Santa Fes most renowned ceramic artists: Janet Williams, Mike Walsh, and Ginny Zipperer. The work of these founding potters will be on display at the grand reopening celebration, along with pieces by current member artists, Douglas Hough and Angela Smith Kirkman.

Douglas Hough is a graduate of Pratt Institute School of Art in New York City where he majored in painting and paid his way through school by working for a production potter. He relocated to the land of entrapment in the 90s and has been on the Santa Fe art scene ever since. You may have seen his sculptures around town, perhaps even sipped an espresso from one of his hand-carved mugs at Vinaigrette.

Angela Smith Kirkman is the latest addition in the group of artists, and her work is influenced by years spent traveling around the world. She specializes in rustic ceramic dinnerware and photography mounted on dumpster-diving booty. Shes eager to be taking over the management of Paseo Pottery and to launch its new charitable mission.

Paseo Pottery is joining the rank of a growing number of businesses with a fairly non-traditional business plan and experimenting with a radical form of conscious capitalism: cover costs, then donate rest in a way that will improve society. Going forward, Paseo Pottery will donate 100% of net profits to local charities. (Not the artists profitsmind youbut rather the profits made by the business itself by renting studio space, offering classes, etc.) One lucky local charity will be selected by party-goers on opening night and will receive all of Paseo Potterys profits in 2018.

Angela Smith Kirkmans husband, Jason Kirkman, is the master brewer, distiller, and co-founder of Tumbleroot Brewery and Distillery, and her pottery will be featured in Tumbleroots new tap room, which will be opening this spring in the old Club Alegria. (Surely you remember the old Club Alegria? The hottest Latin Club Santa Fe has ever known? That rocking Wilco show back in the day? When they were still a country band? Public Enemy? Ozomatli? The Tragically Hip? And who can forget the Santa Famous salsa priest Father Pretto?) Lucky for us, Tumbleroot is currently brewing up a batch of Angelas favorite beer, to be unveiled at Paseo Potterys grand opening.

Take home message: DONT MISS THIS SHINDIG! Talk about a match made in heaven. Suds + Mud. Come for the pottery, come to support your favorite local charity, or just come for a sneak peek of whats brewing at Tumbleroot.

Paseo Pottery. 1424 Paseo de Peralta, Santa Fe. Friday, March 30th, 5-9 PM. www.paseopottery.com
Affordable dining tables, coffee tables and benches made from rescued New Mexico woods plus jewelry and mezuzahs from found branches, made by Hershel Mutka Weiss. Runs through 4/9.

Opening Reception and Sale

Affordable dining tables, coffee tables and benches made from rescued New Mexico woods plus jewelry and mezuzahs from found branches. Made by long time Albuquerque Furnituremaker Hershel Mutka Weiss.

The tables and benches are made from land being cleared to create firebreaks near Weed, New Mexico. Planks sawn three inches thick were the starting point for this new furniture.

The work is a departure for Weiss, who is known for his finely crafted work. The tables are made with simple and direct joinery and retain their natural edges and in some cases the bark as well. Weiss also experimented with bark inlay in several pieces, creating a combination of rustic and refined.

Also shown in this exhibit Weiss's first in six years are his first attempts at jewelry, made from found branches, as well as the Jewish ritual objects known as mezuzahs, carved from found branches as well.
Under the terms of the preliminary agreement, global port operator Gulftainer Group would lease the Port of Wilmington for 50 years and invest more than $580 million in the port over the next nine years, most of which would be for a new container facility.



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YEREVAN, MARCH 30, ARMENPRESS. Russia will respond to the shutdown of RT broadcast in Washington D.C., Andrey Klimov, head of the state sovereignty protection commission of the Federation Council, the upper house of the Russian parliament, said.

Weve said numerously that our means will be a response, that is  if there is a practical implementation of threats from that side, then similar responses will be followed from our side also, he said.

RT and Sputnik Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan has confirmed that RTs provider company that broadcasts shows in the Washington, DC, metropolitan area will cease doing so.

"The provider company that aired our broadcast in Washington threw us out of the broadcast network," Simonyan said via Twitter on Thursday. "Yes, because of our foreign agent' status."

"RT will continue broadcasting in Washington on other platforms," Simonyan said. RT's final program in Washington will air March 31.

English translator/editor: Stepan Kocharyan
YEREVAN, MARCH 30, ARMENPRESS. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogans initiative to provoke protests in Germany on the occasion of the adoption of the Armenian Genocide recognition resolution by Bundestag is totally unacceptable, Evrim Sommer  member of the Left group in the German Bundestag, lawmaker of Kurdish origin, told ARMENPRESS.

The Bundestag lawmaker said interest-guided influence of foreign governments on domestic political decisions of the Federal Republic of Germany must be rejected in general. She stated that the Osmanen Germania Rocker apparently acts as an extension of the Turkish government in Germany.

As far as the media reports are showing, it was attempted to stir up a protest mood among the people of Turkish origin living here, against the passing of the Bundestag-resolution on the recognition of the Genocide of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in 1915/16. The Genocide of the Armenians is a historically well-researched historical fact which shouldnt be denied anymore. Historical facts must be recognized, even if they question state founding myths. The state denial policy preserves an ideological life lie, on which the Turkish Republic was built and is still based, the MP said.

Evrim Sommer emphasized that it is totally unacceptable to try to impose the Turkish historical doctrine with its denial of mass public crimes immediately before and during the nation-state foundation of modern Turkey in Germany.

The lawmaker said the Turkish state and politics in Turkey still didnt break with this past, which is why many of the social problems that raised during this period, such as state-imposed nationalism, continue to this day and continue their disastrous work.

Earlier the German Der Spiegel newspaper reported that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan personally ordered to organize protests in Germany in connection with the adoption of the Armenian Genocide recognition resolution by the Bundestag in June 2016.

A phone call recorded by the German Police reveals how Erdogan calls ruling Justice and Development Partys lawmaker Metin Kulunk on June 1 (day before the adoption of the Bundestag resolution), who was in Berlin at that time and was engaged in organization of protests.

Interview by Araks Kasyan

English translator/editor: Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, MARCH 30, ARMENPRESS. Saudi Arabias crown prince called on the international community to squeeze Iran economically and politically to avoid a direct military confrontation in the region, Wall Street Journal reports.

Sanctions will create more pressure on the regime, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told The Wall Street Journal.

We have to succeed so as to avoid military conflict, said Prince Mohammed, who is Saudi Arabias day-to-day ruler. If we dont succeed in what we are trying to do, we will likely have war with Iran in 10-15 years.

King Salman, appointed him as heir to the throne in June last year, consolidating his position as Saudi Arabias de facto ruler.

Iran is allegedly supplying Yemeni rebels with weaponry used against Saudi Arabia in a three-year war.

Iran denies giving weapons to Yemeni rebels and says Saudi Arabia is the one playing a destabilizing role in the region.

English translator/editor: Stepan Kocharyan
YEREVAN, MARCH 30, ARMENPRESS. US President Donald Trump made a surprise announcement during an infrastructure speech Thursday in Ohio, saying the United States would soon withdraw from Syria, Washington Post reports.

By the way, we're knocking the hell out of ISIS, Trump said. We're coming out of Syria, like, very soon. Let the other people take care of it now. Very soon  very soon we're coming out.

Earlier in December the Pentagon said it had about 2,000 troops deployed in Syria. That same month, Defense Secretary James Mattis told reporters that he expected the U.S. would start sending more diplomats and civilian personnel to the country as ISIS loses territory.

"What we will be doing is shifting from what I would call an offensive, shifting from an offensive terrain-seizing approach to a stabilizing ... you'll see more U.S. diplomats on the ground," Mattis told reporters.

But Trumps statement contradicts earlier statements of the White House, which said the US will be consistent in its presence in Syria.

English translator/editor: Stepan Kocharyan
YEREVAN, MARCH 30, ARMENPRESS. The Russian Defense Ministry has published a video that shows the second launch test of the new heavy intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) Sarmat. The ministry says the test was a success, RT reports.

The test took place at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Russia's northwest. The Sarmat, a recently-unveiled heavy missile set to replace the Soviet-era Voevoda (NATO reporting name Satan), has had its performance confirmed during pre-flight and early-flight stages, the Defense Ministry said in accompanying press release. The video shows the missile, painted in black and white checkers for easier speed measurement, being propelled out of an underground silo, then starting its own engine and going on up.

The Sarmat is part of Russia's new arsenal unveiled by Vladimir Putin in late February. An ICBM touted to have virtually no range limit, it is projected to be able to carry massive payloads across the North or the South pole to anywhere on the planet.

English translator/editor: Stepan Kocharyan
YEREVAN, MARCH 30, ARMENPRESS. A Gaza farmer was killed and a second man was wounded by an Israeli tank shell on Friday, a Gaza health ministry spokesman said, on a day of heightened tensions ahead of planned protests by Palestinians along the border with Israel, Reuters reports.

An Israeli military spokesman confirmed the incident.

Overnight two suspects approached the security fence and began operating suspiciously and the tank fired toward them, the spokesman said.

The Gaza health ministry spokesman said the farmer was killed and another was wounded near the town of Khan Younis. Residents there said he was gathering crops to sell later.

English translator/editor: Stepan Kocharyan
YEREVAN, MARCH 30, ARMENPRESS. Armenian foreign minister Edward Nalbandian on March 30 met with national defense minister of Greece Panos Kammenos in Yerevan, the foreign ministry told Armenpress.

Welcoming the guest in Armenia, minister Nalbandian said the two countries are linked with numerous historical and cultural ties, and Armenia attaches importance to further deepening and expansion of relations with centuries-old friend Greece.

The Greek national defense minister said his country highly values the Armenian-Greek inter-state relations based on mutual trust, adding that Greece has the warmest feelings towards Armenia and its people and wants to further develop the comprehensive mutual partnership.

The Armenian FM expressed satisfaction over the Armenian-Greek expanding partnership in the field of defense.

At the meeting the ministers also touched upon the Armenia-EU mutual partnership, as well as the further intensification of cooperation at multilateral platforms.

Minister Nalbandian introduced the Greek defense minister on the efforts of Armenia and the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs aimed at settling the Nagorno Karabakh conflict.

During the meeting the officials also exchanged views on a number of international and regional issues and their solutions.

The Greek minister presented his countrys approaches on the Middle-East events and the Baltic developments.

English translator/editor: Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, MARCH 30, ARMENPRESS. Armenian Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan visited SoftConstruct Yerevan Office on March 30, the government told Armenpress.

During the tour the PM was introduced on the IT companys activity which deals with software creation, supply and service.

Founded in UK the company opened offices in 14 countries of the world and has more than 500 partners. The number of employees of SoftConstruct and its affiliated companies reaches 2500.

In addition to game programs, SoftConstruct created many other programs, including the Ucraft  quick and simple platform for website creation, the CRM aimed at ensuring link with customers, MegaFeed service and etc. It was stated that the MegaFeed system of programs and apps developed by SoftConstruct enables to transfer information from any part of the world to customers at a speed of up to 0.5 seconds which is significantly faster than any type of TV broadcasting. The companys FCBanking program is designed for credit companies.

The company executives said they plan to expand SoftConstructs activity every year and increase the number of jobs.

PM Karapetyan welcomed the companys activity, as well as steps and programs aimed at creating new jobs in the IT field.

English translator/editor: Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, MARCH 30, ARMENPRESS. Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne - Minister of State to the Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs of France, underscores that Armenia and France have always had developing relations and that now they are trying to advance these relations even more.

Speaking to reporters in the Tsitsernakaberd Armenian Genocide Memorial in Yerevan, the minister of state said that French President Emmanuel Macron will bring a Francophone business delegation with him for the upcoming La Francophonie Summit, which is due in October in Yerevan.

Economic dimension is important for us. During the Francophonie summit, when president Macron will conduct a state visit to Armenia, a Francophone business delegation will arrive with him. One of the goals of my visit is to prepare also this visit, he said.

He also added that he arrived to Armenia to discuss issues related to the Francophonie with Armenias minister of foreign affairs Edward Nalbandian, namely in terms on educational and cultural projects.

Minister of State Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne arrived in Armenia on a two-day visit.

President Serzh Sargsyan will have a meeting with Lemoyne.

The French Minister of State will also have talks with Armenian FM Edward Nalbandian on March 30.

English translator/editor: Stepan Kocharyan
YEREVAN, MARCH 30, ARMENPRESS. The visits to the Taj Mahal, one of the most famous landmarks of India, will be limited, CNN reports.

There are plans to place a three-hour cap on visits to avoid overcrowding at the popular tourist location.

The enormous white marble tomb, listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, can attract at least 50,000 visitors a day on the weekend, according to a spokesman for the Archaeological Survey of India, which oversees the Taj Mahal.

"Sometimes people end up spending a whole day at the Taj. This creates a situation where there are too many people. It is being implemented so that the movement of visitors can be regulated. Day by day, the number of visitors are increasing. This is to ensure no untoward incidents or accidents occur, the spokesman D N Dimri told CNN.

The decision to place a three-hour cap on visits will come into force from April 1 and will apply to both local and foreign visitors.

English translator/editor: Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, MARCH 30, ARMENPRESS. A citizen of Azerbaijan has been shot dead Thursday outside a restaurant in Kharkov, Ukraine, APA reported.

Ukrainian law enforcement said a group of restaurant patrons exited the venue when they were approached by unidentified individuals who opened gunfire. 1 Azerbaijani citizen was killed in the shooting, and 1 Georgian citizen was wounded, local police said.

An investigation has been launched into the shooting.

English translator/editor: Stepan Kocharyan
YEREVAN, MARCH 30, ARMENPRESS. The French delegation led by Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne - minister of state attached to the minister for Europe and foreign affairs, paid tribute to the memory of the Armenian Genocide victims in Yerevans Tsitsernakaberd Memorial, Armenpress reports.

The French official laid flowers at the Eternal Flame and then toured the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute, got acquainted with the materials about the Genocide.

Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne also left a note in the Museums Honorary Guest Book: This remarkable work of remembrance strengthening deserves admiration. We need such work related to history. France and the French people are linked with this history of the Armenian people, people who paid with blood. Based on the strong lessons of the history lets together write the new history of our friendship between Armenia and France, he wrote.

Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne told reporters that the Armenian Genocide Memorial is a very influential, emotional place where the trace of history and tragedy is felt. Such memorials are very important so that each generation will know what happened in 1915. France remembered and enshrined it by law, but the events show that the work on this path never ends. The President of the Republic touched upon the issue of the denial of the Genocide during the annual dinner of the Coordination Council of the Armenian Organizations of France and stated that its necessary to work on a proposal according to which an Armenian Genocide remembrance day will be marked on the Republics calendar, the French minister of state said.

English translator/editor: Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, MARCH 30, ARMENPRESS. The Armenian-made Galaxy system is one of the important tools of the countrys air defense system.

The radar is capable of screening the airspace of not only Armenia but also neighboring countries.

The information provided by this system is given to all air defense bases, a military official told ARMENPRESS.

The official says all aircraft are mostly passenger planes, training airplanes  the route of which is known. But if an aircraft were to approach violating the airspace, then all air defense units are brought to high alert  a standard protocol.

According to Sargis Hayrapetyan, the developer of Galaxy, the system is on 24/7 service.

Galaxy is displayed at ArmHiTec-2018, an international defense technology exhibition in Yerevan. The fair will run through March 29 -31.

English translator/editor: Stepan Kocharyan
YEREVAN, MARCH 30, ARMENPRESS. Georgias Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili denied the media reports on his possible resignation, stating that he has no plans to leave the post for several years, RIA Novosti reports.

Earlier Rustavi 2 TV reported about Kvirikashvilis possible resignation.

This topic is being actively discussed after the release of an open letter by the Georgian PM addressed to the Russian leadership in which he called on to normalize the bilateral relations. But according to Rustavi 2, not all members of the PMs team supported his position.

English translator/editor: Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, MARCH 30, ARMENPRESS. Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan on March 30 received Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Russia to Armenia Ivan Volynkin on the occasion of completion of his diplomatic mission, the government told Armenpress.

At the beginning of the meeting the Armenian PM extended condolences over the recent tragedy in Kemerovo.

The PM thanked the Ambassador for the cooperation and productive work and said Ivan Volynkins personal contributions and efforts aimed at developing the bilateral ties are appreciated.

Today we must state that we have unique relations with Russia. But this doesnt mean that we should stop, especially when we have a great field of work, and in general constant actions are needed for maintaining and strengthening any kind of friendship. I wish you good luck and I am confident that you will not forget us. We will always be happy to see you in Armenia, the PM said.

In his turn the Russian Ambassador said it as a great honor for him to work in friendly Armenia and have his contribution to the development of the Armenian-Russian friendly ties. I want to express my gratitude for the cooperation and warm relations. I leave Armenia with mixed feelings as I felt myself here like in homeland. I am sure by leaving Yerevan I will not stop my ties with Armenia, the Ambassador noted.

English translator/editor: Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, MARCH 30, ARMENPRESS. From now on the French International School in Armenia, which operates for already 10 years, is named after renowned French writer, Nobel Prize winner Anatole France, reports Armenpress.

The opening ceremony of the panel named after Anatole France was carried out by Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne - minister of state attached to the minister for Europe and foreign affairs of France, and Armenias minister of education and science Levon Mkrtchyan.

The ceremony was also attended by French Ambassador to Armenia Jonathan Lacote, as well as school children and staff.

The French minister of state Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne said Anatole France was the loud voice during Armenians difficult times. We know what a great influence he had on supporting the Armenian cause, he said.

Minister Levon Mkrtchyan said the most important feature of the Armenian-French relations is that both are linked not only with current interests, but also with common worldview.

Naming this school after Anatole France is the evidence of this: we can say with gratitude that during the difficult times of our people the French intellectuals also supported Armenians. This is the continuation of the joint path launched in the 10th century, and the upcoming Francophonie summit, which will be held in Armenia, is the assessment of this period, the minister said.

English translator/editor: Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, MARCH 30, ARMENPRESS. Aram Mkrtchyan, one of the two HALO Trust de-miners who were wounded in the accidental detonation of an anti-tank landmine in Ghazanchi area of Artsakh, is in a serious but stable condition. The 44 year old survivor of the blast had internal bleeding and sustained a ruptured spleen, which was surgically removed in the Republican Medical Center of Artsakh.

The healthcare ministry of Artsakh told ARMENPRESS that the other survivor, Garik Ghahriyan, 31, is in a critical condition. Doctors were forced to amputate the lower limbs of the de-miner. Additional examinations revealed multiple fractions throughout his body.

The incident happened in the morning of March 29, when the vehicle of HALO Trust exploded on a landmine in Artsakh.

Three HALO Trust staff members were killed in what the organization called an accidental detonation. The victims have been identified as Pavel Akopov, Samson Avanessian and Marat Petrossian.

James Cowan, HALOs CEO said: Every day around the world, more than 8,000 HALO staff go to work in places where no one else can tread and this tragic incident throws into stark relief the dangers that they face and the importance of our work. Our colleagues were killed while working to make the land safe for the people of Nagorno Karabakh.

English translator/editor: Stepan Kocharyan
YEREVAN, MARCH 30, ARMENPRESS. Armenias foreign minister Edward Nalbandian on March 30 received the French delegation led by Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne - minister of state attached to the minister for Europe and foreign affairs, the Armenian MFA told Armenpress.

The meeting launched with a private talk, than was followed by an extended format talk with the participation of delegations.

Welcoming the guest the Armenian FM warmly remembered the meeting with Mr. Lemoyne in Paris last year in December.

The French minister of state thanked for the warm reception and said he is happy to be in friendly Armenia, noting that his delegations visit agenda is quite full.

During the meeting the sides thoroughly discussed issues relating to the preparation works of the upcoming Francophonie summit to be held in Yerevan on October 7-12, the foreign ministers conference, permanent council and other events, touched upon the documents to be adopted on the sidelines of the summit, as well as the expected events and discussions. In this context minister Nalbandian said the preparation works of the 17th Francophonie summit are normally moving on in accordance with the timeframe in close cooperation with all state concerned agencies of Armenia and the OIF Secretariat.

The meeting agenda also covered a number of issues relating to the Armenian-French relations agenda. The officials noted with satisfaction that the Armenian-French bilateral cooperation constantly and comprehensively develops.

The sides also discussed the cooperation opportunities at bilateral and multilateral formats on the sidelines of the Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement signed with the EU.

The Armenian FM introduced the guests on the recent developments of the peaceful settlement of the Karabakh conflict highly appreciating the efforts with France, as well as the remaining OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chair countries  Russia and the US, aimed at peacefully solving the conflict.

During the meeting a number of other urgent international and regional issues were also discussed.

English translator/editor: Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, MARCH 30, ARMENPRESS. President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan held a meeting Friday with executives of the Young Scientists Support Program.

Minister of education and science Levon Mkrtchyan, a counselor for the program, was in attendance, the Presidents Office said. The program is implemented under the auspices of personally the president.

The young scientists briefed the president on their 2017 activities, summed up the results of a 5-year action plan and addressed future tasks.

Executives of the program pointed out five main directions of activities  financial assistance to young scientists for attending international scientific events, financial assistance for organizing conferences, schools and seminars of young scientists, providing scientific grants, financial assistance for publishing research articles of young scientists in influential newspapers and financial assistance for the Productive Young Scientist contest.

The young scientists thanked the president for continuous support since the very first day of the program.

President Serzh Sargsyan said that proceeding from the importance and productivity of the program, it will continue, and called on the young scientists to continue actively working and developing the project with new ideas and initiatives.

English translator/editor: Stepan Kocharyan
YEREVAN, MARCH 30, ARMENPRESS. Minister of transport, communication and information technologies Vahan Martirosyan received Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Russia to Armenia Ivan Volynkin who completes his diplomatic mission, the ministry told Armenpress.

Minister Martirosyan extended condolences to the Ambassador on the recent tragedy in Kemerovo. He said its necessary to make right conclusions from the incident in order to prevent such tragedies.

During the meeting the officials touched upon the productive cooperation formed between the two countries in the fields of transport and communication. The Armenian minister in particular highlighted the interests of the Russian company towards the ongoing road construction programs in the country.

The Ambassador attached importance to the development of transportation and road infrastructures in the countrys economy, and said this not only contributes to increase in cargo and passenger transportation volumes, but also to tourism development.

Minister Martirosyan thanked Ambassador Volynkin for the joint work and wished success in his future activities.

English translator/editor: Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, MARCH 30, ARMENPRESS. Armenian Ambassador to the Czech Republic Tigran Seiranian on March 27 met with Miluse Horska  First Vice-President of the Czech Senate (upper house of the parliament), the Armenian foreign ministry told Armenpress.

During the meeting a number of issues of mutual interest, in particular, the necessity to strengthen inter-parliamentary cooperation, as well as bilateral ties in the fields of culture, education and science were discussed. A preliminary agreement was reached to organize a cultural manual dedicated to the 100th anniversaries of the first Republic of Armenia and the Czech Republic under the auspices of Miluse Horska.

The officials also touched upon the possibility to organize mutual visits, as well as issues relating to formation of their agenda and the ratification process of the Armenia-EU Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement.

Ambassador Seiranian informed Miluse Horska about the cancellation of the Armenian-Turkish protocols due to Turkeys unconstructive stances, the Azerbaijani leaders recent unprecedented militaristic statements on territorial claims towards Armenia.

English translator/editor: Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, 30 MARCH, ARMENPRESS. The Central Bank of Armenia informs Armenpress that today, 30 March, USD exchange rate down by 0.16 drams to 480.06 drams. EUR exchange rate up by 0.57 drams to 591.72 drams. Russian Ruble exchange rate up by 0.03 drams to 8.36 drams. GBP exchange rate down by 0.80 drams to 674.39 drams.

The Central Bank has set the following prices for precious metals.

Gold price down by 139.59 drams to 20432.68 drams. Silver price down by 2.79 drams to 251.27 drams. Platinum price down by 51.13 drams to 14446.49 drams.
YEREVAN, MARCH 30, ARMENPRESS. The Armenia Artsakh Fund (AAF) delivered over $6.8 million of humanitarian assistance to Armenia and Artsakh during the first quarter of 2018, ARMENPRESS was informed from the Fund.

The AAF itself collected $6.7 million of medicines and other supplies donated by AmeriCares ($4 million) including special donations of Canvas shoes from TOMS shoes; MAP International ($1.7 million); Direct Relief ($747,000) and Fawn Grove Compassion Center ($119,000).

Other organizations which contributed valuable goods during this period were: Agape Project ($83,000) and Mr. Sergey Sarkisov ($15,500).

The medicines and medical supplies donated during this period were sent to the Health Ministry of Armenia, Artsakh Health Ministry, AGBU Glaudia Nazarian Medical Center, Arabkir United Childrens Foundation, Muratsan Childrens Endocrinology Center, National Oncology Center and St. Grigor Lusavorich Medical Center.

In the past 29 years, including its shipments under its predecessor, the United Armenian Fund, the AAF has delivered to Armenia and Artsakh a grand total of $783 million worth of relief supplies on board 158 airlifts and 2,392 sea containers.

The Armenia Artsakh Fund is regularly offered free of charge millions of dollars worth of life-saving medicines and medical supplies. All we have to do is pay for the shipping expenses. We would welcome your generous donations to be able to continue delivering this valuable assistance to all medical centers in Armenia and Artsakh," Harut Sassounian, the President of AAF stated.

English translator/editor: Tigran Sirekanyan
YEREVAN, MARCH 30, ARMENPRESS. Congressional Caucus on Armenian Issues Co-Chairs Rep. Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ), Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA), and Rep. David Valadao (R-CA), House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member and Armenian Caucus Co-Vice Chair Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), and Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) issued statements and paid tribute after hearing the tragic news that some The HALO Trust employees were killed and seriously injured while clearing landmines in Artsakh, reported the Armenian Assembly of America (Assembly).

Armenian Caucus Co-Chair Rep. Pallone said: While there is always a danger associated with removing unexploded ordnances, I am deeply saddened to hear the news of this terrible accident and offer my condolences to the families of these individuals. I hope investigators in Artsakh are able to quickly get to the bottom of what happened, and I hope these awful circumstances help to shed an international light on the vital work organizations like HALO Trust do around the world. I will continue to work with my colleagues in Congress to ensure demining activities are able to continue unimpeded and as safely as possible.

Rep. Pallone visited Artsakh for the first time twenty years ago as part of an Armenian Assembly of America-sponsored delegation. The Congressman has returned to Artsakh a few times since his initial visit, where he learned firsthand about mine clearance in the region.

I was deeply saddened to hear of the deaths of three HALO Trust workers, and injuries to two of their colleagues, while working to clear the Artsakh region of landmines. My heart goes out to the victims and their families and colleagues, all of whom are in my prayers. The people of Artsakh continue to suffer the devastating effects of war with the highest per capita incidence of landmine accidents in the world  a third of which involve children. The courage and sacrifice of these ultimate Samaritans should serve as a reminder to us all that we have much more to do to make this region safe, and I pledge to continue my support of the HALO Trust and the Artsakh region in honor of their memory, Armenian Caucus Co-Chair Rep. Speier added.

Armenian Caucus Co-Chair Rep. Valadao stated: My heart goes out to those killed and injured by the explosion in Nagorno-Karabakh. These individuals have dedicated their work to ensuring the safety of others and their sacrifice will never be forgotten. This tragedy serves as a stark reminder of the ever present danger in the region. We must continue our work to restore these communities so they may live without fear of mine-related accidents.

Last September, Rep. Valadao traveled to Artsakh as part of a Congressional Delegation, where he met with The HALO Trust staff to learn more about mine clearance along the borders. Earlier that month, Rep. Valadao spearheaded a bipartisan amendment along with House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA), Rep. Pallone, Rep. Speier, and Rep. Schiff, to ensure continued funding for de-mining projects in Artsakh. This amendment was adopted as part of consideration of H.R. 3354, which consolidated numerous Fiscal Year 2018 appropriations bills.

Rep. Schiff stated: Im deeply saddened by the death of three employees of the HALO Trust who were performing demining work in Nagorno Karabakh. I am proud of the support the United States has provided in removing minefields from civilian areas in Artsakh, and this tragedy shows once again why that work is both so dangerous and yet such an important humanitarian undertaking.

I extend my deepest condolences to the victims families and the entire HALO Trust community. Todays events highlight the need for robust support of demining efforts in Artsakh, so that these deadly explosives do not take additional lives. We thank the victims for their contributions to this important cause, Rep. Sherman said.

HALO Trust issues the following statement following the deadly explosion, It is with profound sadness that we report that three of our staff were killed and two injured, by the accidental detonation of an anti-tank landmine in the Ghazanchi area of Nagorno Karabakh on the morning of 29th March. The staff members were in a vehicle conducting minefield survey duties at the time.

The injured are currently being treated in Stepanakert Hospital and HALO is contacting the families in Nagorno Karabakh of all those involved. We are working closely with the local police and authorities and have called in external investigators to report on the full facts of the incident.

Every day around the world, more than 8,000 HALO staff go to work in places where no one else can tread and this tragic incident throws into stark relief the dangers that they face and the importance of our work. Our colleagues were killed while working to make the land safe for the people of Nagorno Karabak.

Aram Mkrtchayns (1974) health is assessed as serious but stable with minor positive dynamics.

Garik Ghahriyans (1987) health is assessed as critical with minor posited tendency.

English translator/editor: Tigran Sirekanyan
LOS ANGELESNina Elle stars in the latest from Wicked Pictures, Cheaters.

Its always a pleasure to work for Wicked, said Nina. I know its going to be a great experience, and the scene is always going to turn out amazing! The entire crew at Wicked is awesome, and Marcus was such a great partner. My fans are really going to like this scene.

Released this past Wednesday and directed by David Lord, Cheaters features Nina as an unhappily married woman who meets Marcus London in a bar. Marcus can relate to Nina, as he is unhappy in his marriage as well. Nina and Marcus discuss their options and decide that a bathroom romp is what they both need. Nina bends over the sink while Marcus pounds away. Nina finally gets what shes been desiring for so long, and leaves extremely satisfied.

The stacked bombshell was also recently featured in Mike Quasars Big Boob Orgy 6 (Third Degree). Nina, along with her equally endowed friends, share themselves and each other with their male partners in over an hour and a half of hot action. And, people cant stop talking about Ninas scene with Bill Bailey in Anal MILF Maids (Burning Angel), released on DVD last week. Now you can watch Nina dressed like a sexy French maid who performs all types of services for her boss, Bill, including intense anal sex.

Nina is represented by ATMLA and is available for BG, GG, IR, anal, and more. Directors and producers can contact ATMLA via their website for bookings. To book Nina for feature performances at your club, contact The Lee Network.

Follow Nina on Twitter and Instagram.
MONTREALQwebec Expo organizer Michael P. announced new plans for the upcoming 15th edition of the show.

Celebrating it's 15th edition from July 31 to Aug. 2, Qwebec Expo is making a lot of changes, starting with a new formula on weekdays (Tuesday to Friday), doubling the exhibition floor while creating a new lounge area, new sponsorships, a welcome back offer to bring back people who used to attend the show but missed the last year.

This year again, Qwebec Expo is happening in a cozier hotel, providing more networking opportunities. Totally Renovated, the Novotel Montreal is a 4-star hotel located downtown Montreal in the center of all the action. Being the only event in the official circuit held on French Speaking territory, the show format is moving closer to what is usually seen at European events.

Qwebec Expo is a medium-sized event with a very high concentration of CEOs, VPs and industry superstars and decision makers. It provides opportunities to have quality time with industry leaders.

This year again, Qwebec Expo is happy to offer free badges for affiliates, cams studios and female models. A special afternoon for prospective female cam models is also planned for them to come meet cams companies in a safe and business friendly environment.

Held in Montreal, Canada, this annual B2B event acts as an international crossroads for U.S., Canadian and European members of the industry. It provides website owners, operators, and webmasters with the information and resources they need to build, maintain, promote, market and grow a successful internet business, in the $15 billion plus-per-year market.

For additional information on exhibiting, sponsoring, or attending the show, contact Michael Plant, CEO of Qwebec Expo, at [email protected] or visit Qwebec.com.
Now that it is fully apparent, to all who have the ability to pay some modicum of attention, that Imposter President Biden has extreme cognitive issues, in addition to being an inveterate liar: Can OUR Republic continue with this Executive Office that has completely failed, so many times, on far too many issues here at this early date in this abysmal presidency?

No, Joseph R. Biden is completely unqualified, morally and cognitively, to represent real Americans, and lead this Republic of disparate peoples.

Yes, Joseph R. Biden has started whispering again, even softer now than before; so, I know he still cares, plus, OUR media will soon stop reporting on Afghanistan in favor of OUR Socialist ideals.
America has always been a country on the move. Across the ocean, across the continent, and, for decades after the frontier officially closed, Americans have moved away from (and often with) family in search of a better life. Immigrants would arrive in New York or California but would just as soon be in Detroit, Lincoln, Dallas or Las Vegas. Blacks left Jim Crow laws in the South to find extralegal racism in Northern cities. Early Mormons pulled up stakes as an entire community twice before gaining a firm foothold in Utah.Something happened about a generation ago, however, that ended America's wanderlust. The New York Times reports that once-booming suburbs now have flat or shrinking populations as deaths outpace births and companies seek proximity instead of seclusion. Young people have delayed family formation due to lingering uncertainty from the 2007-09 recession and the uneven, but slow, recovery in the decade since. That phenomenon can be less visible in North Carolina, however, which continues to attract immigrants from other states and countries.Harvard economist Edward Glaeser has chronicled changes in population and local economies for years. Glaeser, former Secretary of the Treasury Lawrence Summers, and Benjamin Austin detail this change in a new paper they presented in early March at the Brookings Institution.Growth and incomes in the past would converge as young people moved to cities and manufacturers would add facilities in places with cheaper land and labor. Land-use regulations have inflated the cost of housing in the most dynamic cities, and technological changes have reduced the number of jobs that can be created.Increased geographic sorting by skill probably reflects a combination of restrictions that stymie the construction of affordable housing and workplace complementarities among educated employees. The innovation of the skilled appears to increasingly employ other skilled workers. Henry Ford's automated assembly lines depended on tens of thousands of less skilled workers, and, hence, it strongly complemented less skilled labor. Bill Gates' innovations primarily employed highly skilled software programmers.Their suggested response is not to introduce a universal basic income regardless of work. Studies continue to find there is a dignity to work. People without work are two-to-three times more likely to report lower levels of life satisfaction or poor mental health than people with a job, regardless of what the job pays. In short,Instead of new ways to ease the pain of not working, the federal government should experiment with subsidies and other policies to increase employment in places that have not produced jobs. They emphasize, "We are notably not calling for local control. ... Purely local control over social welfare policy could lead to a race to the bottom where states dismantled their safety nets to get rid of their poorer residents." In contrast, National Affairs editor Yuval Levin emphasizes a federal government policy of subsidiarity with local governments and non-governmental institutions playing their parts.Even with central control, the federal government could experiment with policies such as one of targeted subsidies to create jobs in places with more people out of work. These places tend to have a lower cost of living and fewer competing job opportunities to bid wages higher. Glaeser et al. suggest a consistent dollar amount, instead of a percent of income, that would keep the policy's focus on poor areas. One option would be to make the earned income tax credit (EITC) a monthly payment administered by employers. An experiment would help identify possible sources of fraud and ways to combat it.Another suggestion would move government facilities to areas with high levels of nonwork, though the authors think these would need to be military facilities based on the number and skills needed for the jobs. Community colleges could benefit from additional funds, particularly if aimed at counseling and employability. The authors also consider experimenting with reduced regulations in entrepreneurship districts to see its effects on business creation and expansion.North Carolina policymakers could learn from these experiments and adapt some to local conditions east of I-95, in the Sandhills, and in the western mountains. Population growth has slowed in North Carolina, and more communities are shrinking, even as our overall growth continues. State and community institutions will continue to seek possible solutions and experiment with changes that can spur growth and restore dignity to people and places.
Data suggest very large and very small districts don't work, but many studies are dated, lacking relevant information for comparison

Whether the size of a school district has any effect on academic performance or cost efficiency is unclear, because the research isn't conclusive, UNC-Chapel Hill representatives told a legislative committee.Too little information exists for anyone to claim victory, said Rep. Bill Brawley, R-Mecklenburg, co-chairman of the Joint Legislative Study Committee on the Division of Local School Administrative Units.Brawley said in a meeting Wednesday, March 28.The committee is tasked with studying the pros and cons of breaking up large school districts and identifying challenges resulting from a deconsolidation.The Charlotte-Mecklenburg and Wake County school districts are the two largest districts in the state, each serving more than 100,000 students. The average number of students in districts statewide is about 12,000.Kevin Bastian and Eric Houck shared their findings with the committee.Bastian is senior research associate and associate director of Education Policy Initiative at Carolina, UNC-Chapel Hill. Houck is associate professor of Education Leadership and Policy at UNC-Chapel Hill.Bastian and Houck told the committee more research is needed to determine what effects, if any, school district size has on performance. This is in part because deconsolidation is a fairly new and uncommon occurrence.Available research is mixed.Houck said.Houck said some research shows districts are inefficient when they are very small or very large. A 2002 study published in the Economics of Education Review suggests the U curve starts at 4,000 students and ends about 15,000.Houck said robust literature on the size of schools indicates smaller schools are sometimes better for student learning, but little attention has been paid to the size of schools within smaller and larger districts.Houck said.If larger districts are deconsolidated but school size remains unchanged, breaking up those districts may have little to no impact.In terms of student achievement, Bastian said there's no real consensus on the impact of school district size, but several studies how that smaller districts are associated with more desired outcomes. A few other studies, including one from Denmark, suggest larger school districts have a positive impact on student outcomes.Bastian said some studies found the socioeconomic status of a district determined whether the district's size would have a negative or positive effect. As the socioeconomic status increased, the effect of a school district's size goes from negative to positive.Bastian and Houck cautioned lawmakers about some limitations of the studies they cited. A lot of the data comes from the 1980s and 1990s and doesn't control for other variables.Bastian said.Furthermore, most of the studies don't look at student-level data or performance growth. Few districts have deconsolidated, making it hard to find case studies.Bastian said.At the next meeting, the committee will hear about innovative programs in various schools, such as Sugar Creek Charter School and Project Lift of Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools.
The title of this article alludes to Joan Didion's famous essay about "love and death in the golden land," a cautionary tale about the wreckage left behind when dreams collide with reality.Historically, California has always attracted dreamers and today one of the state's biggest dreamers is Governor Jerry Brown, who once said, "A politician can do anything he wants so long as he manipulates the right symbols." More likely, a new education initiative of his is about to collide with reality.A critic of Brown once said that he often acts like someone "who feels thinking about something is the same as doing it."Unfortunately, at the moment, Brown is thinking about higher education; specifically, he is thinking about reinventing California's vast community college system as a high-powered engine for economic transformation and social uplift. The first step is what he calls "the California Online College" (COC) for "overlooked Californians," but his plan includes assumptions that are ominous for all of higher education.In his 2018 budget proposal, Brown asked for $120 million to create a "competency-based," "high-touch," online community college offering courses leading to "sub-associate degree" certificates and badges for California's 2.5 million underemployed, "stranded" workers without college degrees. Like many politicians, Brown assumes that it is the lack of college credentials that holds back all these people. He wants his new program to launch this fall.What could go wrong? Plenty. The plan is ill-considered with a sketchy, back-of-the-envelope feel to it. For one thing, most of the 114 California community colleges (CCCs) already offer online courses. According to Brown's own COC white paper Those CCCs are rightly worried about the plan's potential to siphon off their online revenue streams. And if those "stranded" workers are not making use of existing educational programs that could benefit them, it is hard to see why a new layer of educational offerings will suddenly motivate them to get the training they supposedly need.Second, half of the demographic Brown is really talking about comes from Spanish-speaking homes. Many of these individuals are not competent in English; many of them are not competent in Spanish either. Studying in either language is not something they are prepared to do. How will these people fare in a hurry-up online environment? My experience of 46 years of college teaching suggests not well. I have seen many educational quick fixes over the decades and none of them worked with ill-prepared and poorly motivated students. Online courses may work with well-organized and self-directed students, but very few of the target students for Brown's plan are.And how does an incorporeal college become "high-touch" (whatever that means) in cyberspace? The CCC Chancellor's Office, hoping to snare some of the new spending, suggests 24 hour-a-day online tutoring-but by whom? Meanwhile, Brown looks forward to counseling and advising with artificial intelligence. These conceptions are truly dream-like. Advising students who are lost require living, dedicated, knowledgeable people, and the state cannot will them into existence.Currently, over 1 million of the 2.1 million CCC students neither complete any program nor transfer. (Many are shadow students who enrolled just to harvest financial aid.)To address these dreary numbers, students already are being marched into an accelerated and diluted scheme called "Guided Pathways." Professor Joshua Converse of Hartnell College declared at a faculty meeting (and shared with me in an email), "It is outrageous to me that lawmakers have suggested we should move students through less coursework with fewer offerings at a faster pace, and confer degrees that are held equivalent to previous credentials." Now Governor Brown suggests bringing in another 2.5 million even less-prepared students and jamming them through an automated sub-college training regimen, guided by robots, in which they may never encounter a live human being. Brown is confident that once his apps and programs are in place and students can go to college on their cell phones, retention and completion will improve.Dream on, Governor.The only way to improve retention and completion in such a scheme is to bury academic standards for good. But then, what will those COC certificates and badges mean? Employers already look askance at educational credentials that they suspect do not represent much learning. COC certificates and badges are not likely to elicit much enthusiasm.Finally, the governance of these new community colleges would be entirely through the state government, whereas the old community colleges were governed by local boards with community ties. Completely centralized governance is likely to lead to mistakes that will not be detected by distant authorities.The drawbacks are damning, but $120 million of new funding has a nice ring to it. Unsurprisingly, supporters are lining up for a piece of that pie.said Dr. Martha Esquivel, presidenta of Mujeres Extraordinaires. And Gustavo Herrera, western regional director of Young Invincibles, declared,Such groups hope to collect some of the spending as partners and collaborators in curriculum development and assessment schemes.Other supporters have offered their blessings in impenetrable edu-speak. Ryan J. Smith of Education Trust-West declared that "Reaching students where they are at-coupled with high expectations and the supports they need to be successful-is a hallmark of an equitable approach to education." The problem is that what education leaders call "equitable" is far from education that actually works for students. That $120 million was the carrot, and here is the stick: Brown plans to improve things byThat is right. The students will not be responsible for their own success or failure-the college (read "teachers") will.Brown's dream continues,In California educationese, "success" means "completion." So henceforth, funding will be tied to completion and under-represented students, starting with the COC, but no doubt in the works system-wide.What are the consequences of that scheme? Teachers and colleges being held responsible for students' completion sounds the death knell for any sort of academic rigor. Students will be given passing grades whether they have learned anything or not just to maximize funding and protect jobs. Additionally, teachers will fight each other for the classes with strong students, while no one will want to teach remedial students and get blamed when they fail. Despite the initiative's high-sounding concern for the underemployed, in California colleges, the majority of the teaching already is done by untenured, disposable, underpaid, and underemployed adjuncts.Ironically, the COC for the working poor will be staffed by...the working poor (who have proper educational credentials, of course). California will not be revived by throwing money into this new system of pretend education.Many Americans have heard about Governor Brown's ludicrously expensive high-speed rail plan that nobody thinks will ever serve more than a tiny number of riders. (If not, here is an instructive editorial .) His COC plan is the educational equivalent. So typical of "progressive" politicians, his solution to a perceived problem is a prodigiously expensive new state program.
Mrs. Eleanor Rodman May of Washington, NC, died peacefully at home on Thursday, March 29th, 2018. Mrs. May was born in Washington, NC on May 23rd, 1944.A graveside service will be held 11:00 AM Saturday March 31, 2018 at Oakdale Cemetery and will be officiated by Father Jim Reed.She was the daughter of the late Archie Clark Rodman and Meredith Mills Rodman. She was also predeceased by a sister, Camilla Rodman Moore.Mrs. May was a 1962 graduate of Washington High School and a 1966 graduate of East Carolina University with a degree in Spanish and Foreign Language. In the summer of 1962, she spent time living in Mexico, attending Saltillo Interamericana. In the summer/fall of 1963, she was presented to The Terpsichorean Club at the NC Debutante Ball. She spent the summer of 1965 working as concierge at the Coral Bay Club where she met her future husband Louis Garris May of Greenville, NC. They were married May 20th, 1966. They shared a love together of 47 years. He predeceased her in death on April 9, 2013.Mrs. May is also survived by a daughter Camilla Rodman May of Raleigh, NC. In addition to her daughter, she is survived by her nephews, Rodman Clark Moore and wife, Michele of Germany and Thomas Jordan Moore and wife Susan of Rocky Mount, NC. She is also survived by her nieces, Marilyn Brown Gibson and husband Jeff of Greenville, NC and Catherine Brown Cox and husband Mike of Greenville, NC. Mrs. May is also survived by a sister-in-law Mary May Brown and husband Lester Zeno Brown of Greenville, NC.Mrs. May was a gifted poet having written her first poem at 9 years old. She published throughout her life in certain literary works as The Crucible, Tar River Poetry, Rehearsals For Second Endings, Unlisted Numbers and Tug Boat Review.In the late 1960's and early 70's, Louis and Eleanor embarked on a journey in getting to know and accept Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior. Eleanor loved the Lord with all her heart, mind and soul. She was a devout Christian and had a very special relationship with her precious Savior in Christ.Special thanks go to Dr. Richard Young and his wife Judy, to whom she enjoyed having over for wine and good conversation on various occasions. Special thanks also go to Melvin and Verna Smith and Tonia and Bernard Cox for being such devoted and loyal friends and caretakers for the May family these past 16 years. We are eternally grateful to all of the above for their guidance and assistance in helping make Mr. and Mrs. May's daily lives as normal as possible.The family will receive friends from 4-6 pm on Friday, March 30th, 2018, located at the home 705 Shorewood Drive, Washington Park.Condolences may be addressed to the family online by visiting www.paulfuneralhome.com Paul Funeral Home & Crematory of Washington is honored to serve the May family.
People are always shocked to hear that nursing homes, responsible for the care and safety of 1.3 million Americans, are not always required to carry liability insurance. When a loved is injured as a result of negligence or abusive actions on the part of nursing home staff, a lack of insurance often deters them from pursuing a lawsuit, even when the injuries result in death.



Expensive Policies Deter Nursing Homes Focused on Financial Bottom Line

In Illinois, there is no law requiring a facility to carry nursing home liability insurance. Among other factors, insurance rates are based off of Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) inspection reports, specifically in areas relating to neglect.

An insurance industry veteran with 34 years experience as a high level executive underwriting liability insurance policies for nursing homes spoke with Levin & Perconti this week to share insight on the current climate of the nursing home liability insurance market. The expert told our attorneys that insurers are aware that no nursing home will leave an inspection with zero violations, but that the per bed rate relies heavily on consistently low violations in areas of resident neglect and safety. Insurers are also interested in the number of past lawsuits against a nursing home, as well as the money spent to settle or try these cases. Even employee turnover and legislation affecting nursing home lawsuits in the state in which they are located are factored into a decision to insure a nursing home and how much to charge them for a policy. In short, it is in the nursing homes best financial interests to maintain a safe environment dedicated to resident care. As we know from nearly 30 years in elder abuse law, nursing homes have a hard time meeting this standard.

The downside to such a strict review of a nursing homes safety history is that if the nursing home is even granted a policy, those that have questionable pasts are quoted higher per bed rates, as well as higher deductibles per claim received. With Illinois allowing nursing homes to avoid carrying liability insurance, plenty of them have chosen to do so. Nursing homes without insurance can essentially shrug their shoulders and escape responsibility for abhorrent actions by saying they do not have the money to pay for damages arising from a lawsuit. Families are left with no choice but to walk away, sometimes without as much as an apology.



Our Nursing Home Abuse and Neglect Attorneys Can Help

As nursing home abuse and neglect attorneys since 1992, we have worked with far too many families who have been discouraged when a nursing home whom has caused harm to a loved one tells them they are uninsured and therefore unable to do anything. We can help. When a lawsuit is filed, Levin & Perconti is able to obtain records regarding financial dealings and work our way through a nursing homes hidden corporate network, often discovering that behind a seemingly stand alone nursing home is a web of companies and a trail of money. Do not let being told your loved ones nursing home doesnt have insurance deter you from pursuing legal action. Let our experience successfully fighting nursing homes work for you. Our services are free unless we recover money for you. Call us now at 312-332-2872 to speak to an attorney or fill out our online case evaluation form.
Georgia is a hub for cybersecurity research, with leading university computer science and security programs and a new $35m state cybersecurity research center underway; but the Georgia state legislature just passed SB315, the most onerous prohibition on computer security research ever passed in the USA.



SB315 creates a new crime of "unauthorized access" to computers, which will allow companies to seek criminal retribution against security researchers who conduct good faith research into vulnerabilities in systems that Georgians  and the world  relies on.

Computer scientists, security researchers and activists are calling on the governor to veto the bill.



"Basically, if you're looking for vulnerabilities in a non-destructive way, even if you're ethically reporting themespecially if you're ethically reporting themsuddenly you're a criminal if this bill passes into law," EF Georgia's Scott Jones told us in February. Andy Green, a lecturer in information security and assurance at Kennesaw State University concurred. "I'm putting research on hold with college undergrad students because it may open them up to criminal penalties," Green told the Parallax. "It's definitely giving me pause right now."



Georgia Passes Anti-Infosec Legislation

[Dave Maass/EFF]
The National Coffee Association failed to demonstrate that a known-carcinogen produced during the coffee brewing process is not harmful. A judge in the Bear Republic ruled coffee cups need to carry a warning.

Via the NYT:

The ruling stems from a lawsuit filed in 2010 by the Council for Education and Research on Toxics, a nonprofit group based in Long Beach. The group charged that Starbucks and other companies  a group that eventually included 91 defendants  did not warn consumers that ingesting coffee would expose them to acrylamide, a chemical formed when coffee beans are roasted.

California keeps a list of chemicals it considers to cause cancer or reproductive harm, and acrylamide has been included since 1990. The state's Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act, known as Proposition 65 after it was passed in 1986, requires businesses to provide warning labels when exposing consumers to any of the hundreds of chemicals listed.

Judge Elihu M. Berle, in Los Angeles County Superior Court, wrote in a proposed decision on Wednesday that the companies failed to show that acrylamide does not pose a significant risk when produced during the coffee roasting process.

"Since defendants failed to prove that coffee confers any human health benefits, defendants have failed to satisfy their burden of proving that sound considerations of public health support an alternate risk level for acrylamide in coffee," the judge wrote.


In 2007, the Guardian's Victor Keegan published "Will MySpace ever lose its monopoly?" in which he enumerated the unbridgeable moats and unscalable walls that "Rupert Murdoch's Myspace" had erected around itself, evaluating all the contenders to replace Myspace and finding them wanting.



(Facebook didn't even make the list of promising companies to watch)

As we #deletefacebook, it may seem like a meaningless gesture. Our friends will never jump ship in sufficient number, so, inevitably, we'll be lured back into the strangling embrace of the zuckerpus's tentacles.





But as big and powerful as Facebook is, it's not immortal. Everything ends. Facebook's primary value is in helping you find people to talk with (for example, finding other people with rare diseases), but it makes its living by making the experience of talking with other people as shitty as possible, with "engagement maximization" and invasive, manipulative advertising. It is supremely vulnerable to a competitor that was willing to accept a lower degree of profitability in exchange for a business-model more closely aligned with the value of providing a forum where affinity-based groups can form and organize.

Facebook, meanwhile, will struggle to make such a transition, as doing so would mean enraging its shareholders as its market cap plummeted, and would face mass-scale internal sabotage from the baronets other turf-defending execs inside its buildings whose livelihood depends on the continuation of a Facebook built on surveillance capitalism.



If it were a country, MySpace would be the seventh biggest, ahead of Russia and Bangladesh, though not all users are active. It had 153,339,321 users when I started writing this article and 153,523,640 when I had finished. What does this growth bode for the future? For the first time a like-minded media generation will grow up interacting instantaneously: globalisation personified. Maybe we won't need CVs any more as our lives will be there online. But will commercialisation kill the culture that spawned MySpace? The $900m (450m) three-year deal Google did to put its adverts on MySpace is, reportedly, being renegotiated. Upwards. When I visited the site this week I was met by offputting flashing adverts. Logging on I was then greeted with a loud video advert there was no obvious way of turning off. Good job I was not in a library. That doesn't bother MySpacers and they don't seem bothered by other matters. User-generated content, for instance. MySpace is a huge generator of it, maybe the biggest, but users don't get paid. But why not? Google, the owner of YouTube, the vast site that hosts video clips, is under siege from corporations, doubtless including Murdoch's Fox empire, to get royalty income from those clips. Yet MySpace creams off all the advertising income associated with user content without which MySpace's goldmine would vaporise. The difference is that YouTube's predators are large corporations, whereas consumer power is diffused among over 150m individuals on MySpace. Maybe they should form a virtual trade union.



Will MySpace ever lose its monopoly? [Victor Keegan/The Guardian]

(via Kottke)
For more than a century, the Canadian government was responsible for perpetuating horrendous abuses against native peoples who were unfortunate enough to be living in an area where a imperial colonialist power decided to set up shop. It was government policy for Indigenous children to be separated from their families, the without the permission of their parents or tribal elders, and them into what were known as residential schools: institutions predominantly run by the Catholic Church, along with a small handful of schools that were handled by Anglican, Presbyterian and United Church interests.

Once the kids were secured into these boarding schools, they were taught the 'right' way to liveright being in accordance to western culture. Were the incarcerated children to dare to speak their own language or act according to cultural norms outside of what their white caretakers felt was 'civilized,' they were met with severe corporal punishment. Mortality rates at the schools were high. So were instances of physical and emotional abuse. Children were often buried in unmarked graves or simply disappeared. Even after the last residential school closed in 1998, its legacy of hate and abuse remains.

In 2015, Canada finally confessed to its part in this long-running crime. The nation's Truth and Reconciliation Commission looked to the crimes of the residential school system, saying that they amounted to cultural genocide. The commission made 94 recommendations that it felt would go along ways towards righting the wrongs of the past. One those recommendations was that the Pope step forward and apologize for his church's role in the residential school system. It makes sense: the bulk of the schools were operated by the Catholic Church. There's precedent for it, too: in the past, Popes have apologized for other shitty things that the church has done.

Last May, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made a personal appeal to Pope Francis, asking him for an apology, on behalf of all Canadians. The pope's response?

Nope.

From the New York Times:

"The Holy Father is aware of the findings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which he takes seriously," Bishop Lionel Gendron, who is president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, wrote in an open letter to Canada's Indigenous people released on Tuesday. "After carefully considering the request and extensive dialogue with the Bishops of Canada, he felt that he could not personally respond."

It wouldn't have been the first time that a pope's apologized for the church's bullshit. As the New York Times points out, Pope Benedict XVI apologized for the decades of sexual abuse that many Catholic priests heaped on members of their flock in Ireland, back in 2010. More recently, Pope Francis asked for forgiveness for the church's role in the Rwandan genocide. Thousands were killed during that one. Maybe the problem with apologizing for what went on in the residential schools is that around 80,000 people who were forced to attend them are still alive. Admitting culpability through apology could open the doors to one hell of a class action lawsuit against the Church.

The Pope's got a trip to Canada planned in the near future. Apparently, meeting with native politicians and tribal elders will be a priority. I guess we'll see what happens.

Image via Wikipedia Commons
News / National

by Staff reporter

HUMAN rights lawyers and civil society organisations have commended President Emmerson Mnangagwa for ratifying the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Good Governance during his recent visit to Rwanda.The organisations urged government to quickly move on to ratify, domesticate and implement its provisions ahead of the 2018 elections.President Mnangagwa signed the charter during the African Union Extraordinary Session of Heads of State and Government held in Kigali, Rwanda recently.The African Charter on Democracy Elections and Governance, which came into force in February 2012, seeks to promote adherence by African states to the universal values and principles of democracy and respect for human rights premised upon the supremacy of the constitution and respect for the rule of law.In a statement yesterday, the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) and the Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN)  a network of 30 non-governmental organisations  said they welcome the decision by President Mnangagwa to sign the charter.They urged the government to quickly ratify, domesticate and implement its provisions ahead of the 2018 elections."ZLHR and ZESN laud President Mnangagwa for signing the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Good Governance, which is one of the key instruments that will advance democracy, peace and security in Zimbabwe, the region, and the continent as a whole.Considering Zimbabwe's well documented history of electoral irregularities such as hate language, violence and intimidation of voters amongst others, the decision to sign the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance, is a progressive step to take to promote democracy in Zimbabwe," read the statement."As organisations that are deeply committed to fostering a culture of human rights and promoting democratic elections in Zimbabwe, ZESN and ZLHR urge the government to move beyond just signing the African Charter on Democracy Elections and Governance but to ratify and domesticate its provisions."The organisations said the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance can only be meaningful in the running of elections in Zimbabwe if the government ratifies and domesticates it as the country prepares for elections.The ZHLR and the ZESN urged Government to create a conducive electoral environment that guarantees the respect and enjoyment of fundamental freedoms ahead of elections."We urge the government to prioritise the alignment of electoral related laws particularly the Electoral Act with the Constitution and ensure adherence to principles of constitutionalism, put in place mechanisms and legal reforms to address issues of voter intimidation, violence and ensure that political party candidates and supporters campaign and participate in all electoral processes freely," read the statement.They urged Government to ensure that the right to vote for all citizens is upheld as guaranteed in Section 67 of the Constitution and several regional instruments of which it is a state party.Soon after ratifying the Charter, President Mnangagwa said Zimbabwe was now a progressive member of the AU."Beyond that as Zimbabwe we have signed the AU Charter on the conduct of democratic elections and guidelines and lastly, we signed another protocol relating to the Pan African Parliament  most member states of the AU have done so and for some reason Zimbabwe had not done so. So we have put those things behind us and we are now a progressive member of the AU," he said.
News / National

by Staff reporter

Two rival camps of the MDC led by Nelson Chamisa and Thokozani Khupe have clashed over ownership of the party name and symbols.MDC acting chairperson Morgen Komichi, told the Daily News yesterday that they will drag Khupe to court if she continues using the name MDC-T."MDC-T is our name and is our own property. We have past experience on this issue, some tried to do it previously and you know what happened. We are going to approach the courts when the right time comes," Komichi said.But Khupe's camp is not bothered.The faction's spokesperson, Obert Gutu, yesterday rubbished Komichi's threats, saying Khupe remains the MDC's rightful leader."Acting president  Khupe is the rightful, lawful, legitimate and indeed, constitutional acting president of the MDC-T until such a time that an extraordinary congress is held to elect a new substantive president of the party," said Gutu."That is the correct legal and factual position and indeed, all relevant political and electoral stakeholders have since been accordingly informed. No one is going to stop us from using the name MDC-T. We are not at all worried by uninformed and angry shrill voices crying from certain desperate corners. We are on a roll. We are not looking back. There is absolutely neither retreat nor surrender."Chamisa recently severed ties with Khupe and her faction after the expiry of a seven-day ultimatum that she had been given by the MDC national council.The council, which is the MDC's highest decision-making body in-between congresses, had ordered Khupe to reach out and make peace with Chamisa, whom it elected to lead the party following the death of Morgan Tsvangirai last month.Since the long illness and subsequent death on February 14 of the MDC's founding father, there has been a vicious power struggle in the opposition movement to succeed him.Although Chamisa was elected to lead the opposition movement by the party's national council last month, Khupe and her allies have pooh-poohed the whole process as they also laid claim to the throne left vacant following the death of Tsvangirai from colon cancer.She has openly refused to recognise Chamisa as the party's presidential candidate, insisting that constitutionally, she was the party leader until congress elects Tsvangirai's successor.This comes as Khupe is forming new structures across the country with the epicentre of the political changes being Bulawayo.The new Bulawayo provincial structure for the Khupe-led MDC is led by Nomvula Mguni who will be deputised by Mathias Moyo.Other members of the Bulawayo executive are, Kholwani Ngwenya (secretary), Pauline Boni (deputy secretary), Seti Ndlovu (treasurer), Siplicious Moyo (deputy treasurer), Alick Gumede (organising secretary), Sheila Musonda (deputy organising secretary), Dennis Sithole (information and publicity secretary) and Getrude Ncube (deputy information and publicity secretary).Khupe's gripe with the goings-on in the MDC started long before Chamisa's ascendancy to the hot seat.In January, Khupe, national organising secretary Abednico Bhebhe and the MDC's former national chairperson Lovemore Moyo were at the centre of resisting Tsvangirai's spirited attempts to ensure that the country's fragmented opposition parties face Zanu-PF at the elections as a united force.Last year, Khupe and her allies were assaulted by some MDC youths who accused them of disrespecting Tsvangirai after they boycotted the launch of the MDC Alliance in Harare.They were reportedly meeting party structures from the southern region to articulate their position on why they missed the MDC Alliance launch on August 5, 2017.Allegations were also made that Tsvangirai had hired the thugs who attacked the three MDC officials at the party's headquarters in Bulawayo.The quartet was unhappy with Tsvangirai's alleged dictatorial tendencies after he unilaterally formed the MDC Alliance without consulting the MDC leadership.During Tsvangirai's burial at his rural home at Humanikwa Village in Buhera, Khupe, Bhebhe and Gutu had to seek refuge in a hut at the late former prime minister's homestead after some youths charged at and assaulted them.Only recently, Khupe's vehicle was vandalised while her personal assistant Witness Dube was badly injured after violent scenes broke out at the party's provincial offices in Bulawayo last month.According to insiders, Khupe had called the meeting - which was attended by Gutu and Bhebhe - to endorse her as the acting MDC president despite the fact that the party had long settled for Chamisa.Violence broke out immediately after the meeting began as youths allegedly aligned to Chamisa violently disrupted the event, resulting in the skirmishes that left almost a dozen injured.The ructions in the country's largest opposition party mark the third split of the original MDC, formed in 1999.The MDC initially split in 2005 with Welshman Ncube walking away from the then Tsvangirai-led party.In 2014 the opposition movement split again with Tendai Biti at the front of the rebellion.Both Biti and Ncube are now back in the MDC Alliance led by Chamisa.
News / National

by Staff reporter

Opposition parties have savaged President Emmerson Mnangagwa for ruling out electoral reforms after the United States of America gave him and his administration conditions that if met, will see Donald Trump's administration completely removing the current sanctions and re-establishing wholesome relations with Harare.US Senators Jeff Flake and Chris Coons, who are both members of Washington's Senate Foreign Relations Committee, introduced the Bill in Congress last week which clearly lays out the framework for future American relations with Zimbabwe.Mnangagwa claimed at a CEO forum in Abidjan that the two senators were misled."Fortunately, ... Flake and  Coons are coming to Zimbabwe."They are going to realise that the distance between Harare and Washington is very wide. This is why they are saying what doesn't exist in Zimbabwe."They only produced an agenda of the opposition which they were given last December by members of the opposition but when they come we shall say members of the opposition are here, can you go to them and find where the military is participating in the elections," Mnangagwa said."They will find zero and they will be able now to talk to the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (Zec) and they will get concrete answers, the Electoral Act is there."When looking at what they are saying, you realise that they are not well informed, they are just reading the text of the opposition who are afraid of elections."MDC Alliance president Nelson Chamisa's spokesperson Luke Tamborinyoka said his boss told the US-based Carter Centre pre-election observer team that there is no political will to implement political reforms.He told the mission that government was still to align key pieces of legislation to the new Constitution.Among the laws still to be aligned to the Constitution are the Electoral Act, the Public Order Security Act and the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act.Chamisa raised alarm over political violence, the militarisation of villages, and the abuse of traditional leaders, impartial coverage and unequal access to the media as well as the independence of Zec, whose secretariat consists serving and or retired members of the military.He also bemoaned the partisan distribution of food, particularly in the rural areas where food continued to be used as a political weapon to hold the rural populace captive to Zanu-PF."The MDC Alliance presidential candidate said the party wanted all stakeholders to agree on the identity of the company that would print the ballot papers, as well as auditing the voters' roll that will be used in the plebiscite."The people's president said it was important to audit the quality of the ballot paper as well as all other voting materials that will be used in the plebiscite," Tamborinyoka said.Spokesperson of Thokozani Khupe-led MDC Obert Gutu said electoral reforms have not yet been implemented in Zimbabwe."For instance, the ruling Zanu-PF party still dominates and virtually monopolises both the State-owned print and electronic media, contrary to the constitutional requirement that clearly stipulates that the State-owned media should give unfettered and equal coverage to all political parties. Traditional leaders are still acting as de facto Zanu-PF political commissars in their respective areas of jurisdiction."Villagers are being commandeered and coerced to attend Zanu-PF political rallies and other functions. No less than 5 000 soldiers in civilian attire have since been deployed into rural Zimbabwe to clandestinely campaign for the ruling party."In these circumstances, therefore, anyone who claims that the 2018 harmonised elections will be free and fair is totally out of their mind. I have done my own undercover investigations and I was reliably informed that ED has already been given at least 58 percent of the presidential vote by the relevant electoral authorities and other powerful forces behind the scenes. This election is already being rigged in a very smart way," Gutu said.People's Democratic Party (PDP) spokesperson Jacob Mafume said the electoral playing field was skewed in favour of Zanu-PF."On the political front, nothing has changed."The media (State) is not covering opposition rallies. The broadcasting licences are being given to regime companies and friends."The army is in the villages, serving army generals and officers are part of Zanu-PF commissariat."To hold elections 8 months after a coup where the architects of the coup are contesting is not an election but a coronation," Mafume said.National People's Party (NPP) spokesperson Jeffrayson Chitando said Mnangagwa as the president had a duty to assure the nation that the electoral playing field will be level."Mnangagwa is insincere on electoral reforms. He must act on the traditional leaders. He must assure the nation that soldiers must not intervene in elections."Zanu-PF must not use food to buy votes. If he does all this, we then say we are going to have free and fair elections."
News / National

by Staff reporter

Flashy "businessman" Wicknell Chivayo who is under attack for failing to provide justification of payment and use of the money he received for a government project, has remained defiant, flaunting a box of money, pictured, on Instagram.Among other things, Chivayo is being accused of diverting part of the $5 million he got for the construction of a 100MW solar plant in Gwanda to fund his lifestyle.Top of the list Chivayo gloats about are designer shoes and watches and just parading cash.In this instance, Chivayo posted a box with about 16 bricks of R100 notes stacked in a box.The businessman did not say anything but showed his hand touching the money, to prove that the picture is just not an Internet download.He went on to post more unopened boxes.Sir Wicknell, as he calls himself, seems to have accelerated his flossing rate even bragging that as long as you are in Zanu-PF, you have the chance to access funds.Earlier on, he was claiming on the same Instagram platform that he has a new pair of shoes every day.Chivayo recently appeared before the parliamentary portfolio committee on Mines chaired by Norton legislator Temba Mliswa, that quizzed him over the controversial $5 million payment.A follow-up visit to the site revealed that there had not been any substantive progress on the land, save for two shacks several months after the payment.After the visit he, however, started taking action, clearing the land to make way for the project.But with all the criticism and attacks, Chivayo has remained unapologetic, posting highly priced shoes that he would have purchased.In one of his posts, he said Zimbabweans were just a jealous bunch, which is why he secured American citizenship for his son .In another story on Instagram, the flashy businessman showed off his son John Chenjera Chivayo's American passport after he had landed in Zimbabwe after being born in the United States.Chivayo was forced to prove the paternity of his son John Chenjera, following allegations from social media that the child was not his.
News / National

by Staff reporter

War veterans have recommended the readmission of Rugare Gumbo, Didymus Mutasa, Jabulani Sibanda and other veterans of the armed struggle who were either suspended or expelled before the new political dispensation ushered in last year in November.Briefing the media after a meeting attended by provincial leaders of the association in Harare today, Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association Secretary General, Victor Matemadanda said the resolution to re-admit expelled members will be forwarded to the ruling Zanu PF party for ratification."We had a resolution of asking the party to readmit all expelled war veterans especially the likes of Jabulani Sibanda, Didymus Mutasa, Rugare Gumbo and others back into the party because we feel the party becomes stronger and stronger when people are working together," said Matemadanda.Gumbo is former Zanu PF spokesperson, Mutasa former Zanu PF Secretary for Administration and Sibanda former war veterans chairperson.Matemadanda also noted that war veterans are greatly concerned by some members who are disrespecting the new political dispensation under the leadership of President Emmerson Mnangagwa.He said they want to work with true liberation war fighters who support President Mnangagwa in the forthcoming harmonised elections, adding that all corrupt elements in the party should be exposed.The association's Spokesperson, Douglas Mahiya said there is need to beef up the Zanu PF national political commissariat to strengthen the party.Provincial leaders at the meeting endorsed the removal of John Guta as Harare Provincial Chairperson and the appointment of Hoyini Bhila as Acting Chairperson.They also raised concern on the organisation's Mashonaland West provincial leadership which they said is supporting remnants of the G40 cabal.
Opinion / Columnist

The payment of bride price is a common phenomenon that is practiced in most of Africa and some parts of Asia. It is a way of showing appreciation to the parents of the bride for conceiving her as well as for the upkeep. Although it seems as if it's a form of payment in exchange of the bride it is in actual fact, meant as a form of appreciation.Many of the grooms have a misapprehension of this fact as they treat their brides as if they are some form of property that they own and can do with befittingly.Most women have been victimized by their husbands as a result of the possession factor. Their whereabouts, body, money and other factors that involve them are supposedly to be under the jurisdiction of man. In line with this, there are numerous men who believe that whenever and however they demand sex from their spouse they should be given simply because they paid the bride price.Little do they know that sex is something which is consensual be it in a marriage or not as everyone has a right to their body.Non-consensual sex is rape, be it in a marriage or not and man should be weary of this factor. In most of the African countries sex is regarded as a conjugal right which one acquires upon the payment of bride price hence, the spouse has to be submissive regardless of the fact that she wants to indulge in sex or not.The terminology for non-consensual sex in a marriage is regarded as marital rape or spousal rape. Women tend to succumb more to marital rape than men in Africa.As a result of culture and tradition many women tend to keep quiet about this abusive manner as ethos prohibits them to seek legal action.With regards to Zimbabwe, thousands of women succumb to marital rape on a daily basis but because of culture they tend to keep quiet. The judicial system in much of Africa and its view towards marital rape is almost the same as any form of rape is accompanied by not less than ten years of imprisonment.Feminist activists such as Dr. Rebecca Chisamba, Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie have all commented on the issue of marital rape in which they argue that women are afraid of speaking out as a result of safeguarding their marriages and lack of information about the issue of marital rape.Many countries throughout Africa have enacted an Act which criminalizes marital rape which makes it crystal clear that there is nothing called a conjugal right.It should be a wakeup call for man, as the payment of bride price is not equivalent to purchasing a television set as women have a right to their bodies.
Opinion / Interviews

Former President Robert Mugabe has opened on several high profile secrets Zimbabweans have always had questions on.In a wide ranging interview with The Independent newspaper, Mugabe takes a swipe at his successor President Emmerson Mnangagwa accusing him of murders in the Gukurahundi atrocities of the eighties.Below is an extract of the interview:Q: What role have you played in the formation of the National Patriotic Front, the new opposition party led by Retired Brigadier-General Ambrose Mutinhiri? Are you a member? Is the former first lady a member?A: I've had quite a number of groups coming here (Blue Roof) and seeking my views. I had Mai (Joice) Mujuru earlier on introduced by Father (Fidelis) Mukonori. She came to discuss the past and then she made reference to the fact that all that was happening against her during her time with us when she was vice-president was meant to create a place for Mnangagwa, and she knew that is was coming to this, now that he is at the top. I said to her, well, if you stand for that which is right, proper, legal and constitutional, go out, find some of our young men and young women who stand for it, enrol them, there is nothing wrong about it. When she left here, she was stoned in Glen Norah and Glen View. She sustained a bruised cheek after being hit with a stone. That's very bad.Q: Who else has come to see you?A: I've also had the likes of (Walter) Mzembi and (Makhosini) Hlongwane and they came and I think they had come through the (government) system and they had informed the system that they were coming to discuss with me. They thought what should happen is an internal dialogue. I said 'fine, what internal dialogue?' They said, 'well, internal dialogue with the President, with ED. I said 'just that?' They said, 'well, yes'.Q: Tell us about Mutinhiri's visit.A: Then I also had Ambrose Mutinhiri who said he thinks the solution is establishing a new party. I said 'on what principle?' He said 'first, to correct what has happened'. I said fine. To put paid to all falsehoods and hypocrisies that have emerged, people saying they are correcting the wrong that is surrounding the legacy of the president and at the same time they are taking action to do down that president. That evil contradiction must go. If we are supporting the president, let us say so in word and deed and not pretend to be doing so in order to cover our illicit activities against the president.Q: Are you saying Mutinhiri came just to consult?A: Yes, to consult, and I said fine, if you're along those lines as you describe them I'll support you.Q: Is it correct to say you're a member of the National Patriotic Front?A: No.Q: If Mutinhiri and others get to launch the party and invite you to be a guest at the function, would you attend the event?A: I would have to think twice before I can go because there may be others who may come and perhaps (in that case) I think I better not go.Q: Is the former first lady a member of the National Patriotic Party?A: No, she's not.Q: In that connection, we also want to know this: a statement issued by Jealousy Mawarire indicated that the idea of the formation of the party emerged in the middle of the November coup. There is also the insinuation that the people who have formed the new party were consulting you in the middle of the coup. Is that true?A: In the middle of the coup? No.Q: At what point, during the coup, did you get to know as commander-in-chief that the military was in the streets and yet you had not deployed it?A: I went for a graduation (ceremony) and the boys (intelligence) came and surrounded me and said we (the Central Intelligence Organisation) are being beaten up. I said ah all is well, I've gone to the university and I haven't seen anything. All the cars had been removed from the road and it was absolutely quiet. That's when the boys (CIO) told me, that everything was being taken away from them. And that they had been beaten up.Q: So the CIO were being intimidated even before the coup?A: Yes, before. To clear the way.Q: On that Monday when General Chiwenga made a statement, what did you think about it? Did you take it as seriously as the public did?A: I thought at least Chiwenga would have informed me that they (the military) were having such and such a problem.Q: So you thought Chiwenga would inform you?A: Yes, to inform me what dissatisfaction they had. And at that point I said, well, we're prepared to discuss.Q: You thought on that Monday Chiwenga would have discussed matters with you, and then on Tuesday you went to cabinet and tanks were already moving and the public was taking pictures and posting them on social media. Were you briefed by your security apparatus what exactly was happening at that point?A: They said that the tanks are moving to another destination, to Manicaland somewhere.Q: The then South African president Jacob Zuma told the world, as the situation unfolded, that 'I have spoken to president Mugabe, he is fine but is restricted'. Those were Zuma's words. At that point, did you ask for help from president Zuma?A: No.Q: When the South African delegation, comprising ministers, came to Harare, did you have an opportunity to meet them separately?A: No. We met them together with the commanders.Q: South Africa is a neighbouring country and you were under siege. Why didn't you seek help from president Zuma?A: They (South Africans) had spoken to the commanders and they had promised that they wouldn't stage a coup.Q: But did any regional leaders show concern about the coup that was unfolding? What was the attitude of the regional leaders, were they saying you should solve the matter internally or were they willing to come in? Do you feel betrayed by your regional peers?A: In a sense, yes. But when you look at their conditions, except for South Africa, they haven't got the capacity to intervene, but South Africa could have done much more. It did not have to send an army, but just to engage. You see this group that came here, the (South African) ministers, they gave a false impression that all was okay (and that) they had spoken not just to us but also to the soldiers. If they had spoken to the soldiers, and then gave out that there was no need for intervention because they had been assured by both sides, then the other countries just sat on their laurels and they said ah well South Africa says there's no need (to intervene).Q: You read a televised statement and most people assumed you would tender your resignation that night. It's now called the "Asante sana" statement. You did not resign at that stage. Was there an intention to resign at that point?A: No.Q: Were you toppled through a military coup?A: Yes. What you didn't know, Father (Fidelis) Mukonori knelt on his knees, and moved on his knees towards me, begging me to resign.Q: Did Mukonori say who had sent him?A: No, he was just intervening.Q: How many people were killed during the coup?Q: In the aftermath of what has happened and in view of your complaints, how do you think the situation can be corrected?A: It is quite clear. Those who have created it have the responsibility to reverse it. If they don't want to reverse it, it means they want the situation to continue, which I think is the case. They would want us perhaps to get to the national election when the environment is still very congested with fear, some people still hiding, displaced. But I don't see the environment of campaigning being favourable to everybody.Q: In that case, do you think the nation is ready for elections?A: No. We are not.Q: Do you feel betrayed by Mnangagwa whom you worked with for over 50 years?A: Oh yes it's a great betrayal. Worse than that of Brutus (Shakespearean character in the play Julius Caesar.Q: But you're the one who had appointed him vice-president.A: Yes, sure.Q: People will ask why you appointed him if you didn't trust him.A: Some developments occur after a person has been put in place. You know, even in our culture, when someone who's ordinary is made a chief, and once he gets into position ah ah, many people start quarrelling 'he's taking out cattle, he's taking our wives'. Then you begin to wonder: but this is the man who was very honest and whom the people chose to be their chief. So those things happen. People get the taste of power and the taste of power then destroys an individual. You think that you now have some glory that you never had before.Q: When you say Mnangagwa rose to power unconstitutionally, what exactly are you referring to?A: He was not elected. It's quite clear. There has not been any election and we don't like it that way.Q: When it comes to elections, you and your government were repeatedly accused of stealing elections.A: As for stealing elections, no. The losers, the opposition, will never ever accept the defeat. It doesn't matter, in Africa it's now accepted that when the opposition loses, it never accepts defeat. It's not like Europe, no. We must always find some reason. Ah, we were cheated here, ah. It's like that, right throughout.Q: But people say the MDC actually won the 2008 election and that Morgan Tsvangirai had won outright but was cheated by you.A: The 2008 election? Yes, yes, he won. We didn't dispute that. He won but the constitution says if you are contestants who are more than two, you must win by 50 plus one.Q: Are you saying the opposition's claim that Tsvangirai garnered much more than the required 50 plus one is untrue?A: Ah no. Ah no. It was 47% to 43%. We admit we had been defeated.Q: There was a story which revealed that after the first round of the 2008 presidential election when you had been outpolled by Tsvangirai you actually said you were ready to retire. In fact, your former intelligence minister Didymus Mutasa told journalists that you had conceded defeat but were blocked by the military from stepping down. How true is this?A: Ah no. Ah no. Mutasa is lying. We all in the party (Zanu PF) said there's got to be a repeat in accordance with the constitution.Q: If Tsvangirai had won 50 plus one, would you have conceded defeat?A: Of course.Q: But a lot of opposition supporters were killed in the run-off.A: In the run-off? No. In the run-off Tsvangirai withdrew.Q: Tsvangirai said he withdrew because terrible violence was unleashed on his supporters, people were killed.A: No, he knew we would be better. Do you know why we lost 2008 (the first round)? Again, a disease amongst us: bhora musango. The likes of (General) Mujuru were fed up with me, they said I was preventing them from benefitting from companies, so they said 'let's get rid of Mugabe'. Our supporters were told 'ah, you don't have to vote for the president.Q: Which brings us to General Solomon Mujuru's death. People think it had something to do with Zanu PF succession issues.A: It was just a case of someone dying. He just died. And what is fortunate for the party is that it happened away, on his farm.Q: So you think his death was an accident?A: Some say some Israeli (business associates) who had issues with him.Q: Oxford researcher Miles Tendi says General Mujuru was killed by military intelligence.A: No. Ah, he was a terrible guy. Very selfish. And a smoker. A smoker, I think this is what killed him. In Geneva (Switzerland), we burnt down a hotel and it was Mujuru again. Well, we managed to avoid trial, but it was his smoking that almost got us killed in a hotel. He was a careless smoker. An investigation established that the fire started in his room. But we denied it and said no no.Q: Thousands of people were killed during Gukurahundi. You have come out and said it was a moment of madness. How did the atrocities come about and what can the nation do to move forward?A: But that one, if we are to tell the truth, it's the Ndebeles and Zapu and Zipra who should bear the blame. We had that election, in 1980, the first one, and we won, we had 57 seats and Zapu had 20. (Joshua) Nkomo actually wept dearly. They had operated in Angola - remember they had gone to Angola - they said let's do in Zimbabwe what the MPLA has done; if we lose we will have Zero Hour. And they lost. So what happened? There was a ship of arms received by (the then Tanzanian president Julius) Nyerere in Dar es Salaam port, it came on Tazara (Tanzania-Zambia Railway). Because KK (the then Zambian president Kenneth Kaunda) preferred Nkomo to me, so KK passed on the arms, from the Soviet Union, to Zapu. But now after independence! So at Hwange Dumiso (Zipra intelligence supremo Dabengwa) had made arrangements underground to hide the arms. When the second shipment came, Nyerere then called me and said 'Robert, what's this?' This is a second ship. Then he said 'ask KK'. I asked Kaunda, you know Kaunda is a very soft man. He said 'ah, my brother, if I wronged you I did so because the arms addressed to Zapu were always going to Zapu from the Soviet Union. I said 'but KK, we are now independent'. He said 'yes I'm sorry and I won't do it again'. But the ship came and it was received by Dumiso and once again the arms were hidden in Hwange. Zipra had pledged 12 000 war veterans to join the integrated army. They left out some of their experts and in their place, because they had promised 12 000, they put mujibhas (wartime runners) to fill in those places in the army. The mujibhas were trained and they started putting on uniforms and they started earning as trained soldiers. Nothing was happening to the well-trained ones who had been left out. And they saw the mujibhas take their place for a long time and they said 'ah no we can't continue like this'. So some amongst them came to us, came to ED and reported that this is the arrangements we had, we put mujibhas in our place and we were left out. (They said) 'we had arms, we hid arms here and there in Hwange'. So ED and (CIO director David) Stannard went and discovered these guns. That's why Dumiso was arrested, that's why he went to prison, that is why Dumiso and ED will never work together. So Dumiso was arrested. But they had already given a few weapons to some individuals who now said 'ah is this what has happened, we have been discovered'. They started shooting in Matabeleland South and then we said okay we had a Fifth Brigade trained by North Koreans. So we said, fine, face them, you go into Matabeleland South.Q: Did you give the Fifth Brigade carte blanche to kill people?A: Ah no, of course you never give. You know soldiers will always be soldiers, the violence will always happen.Q: But do you regret the situation, with the benefit of hindsight?A: Naturally the innocent people, yes. But what I don't accept is that we are totally to blame. Ah ah.Q: Do you think the state has an obligation to those who lost their families and suffered loss during Gukurahundi? Does the state have an obligation to them?A: The innocent ones. Even if they lost their lives during (Rhodesian prime minister Ian) Smith's time, we have an obligation, yes.Q: What can be done to prevent such atrocities from recurring?A: We have long said let them (the victims) be known. We asked Sekeramayi to organise so that those who have been affected, those whose lives and children have beenwe get to know. But that has not been done.Q: But you commissioned an official inquiry into Gukurahundi. Why was the report never made public? The Chihambakwe Commission report. It was never published and people out there say it's because it had evidence that atrocities were committed. Secondly, Mnangagwa says he was not to blame for Gukurahundi because he was not prime minister, he was not the minister of defence, and that he was not carrying a gun. He's basically saying it's your issue, not my issue.A: Ah, but you know he was the minister of intelligence, he's the one with Stannard, the two of them, who led that and who even led Gukurahundi. I know one of the vehicles, Dabengwa's vehicle, which they blasted, they said he's carrying arms.Q: You were not to blame for Gukurahundi?A: Ah but yes, of course, they got instructions from us. But we can't now say the fault is with so and so and so. The fault is with the government and those it employed.Q: Do you feel that victims and their families should be compensated?A: Getting victims is a process which must be done thoroughly because many would come and claim.Q: Do you acknowledge that 20 000 people were killed during Gukurahundi?A: Ah no. I doubt the number. I doubt the number definitely, because it (the Fifth Brigade) was now pursuing just individuals who had guns. But it could be, because you do get some people with guns just being reckless, and we are seeing it now.Reckless, they get to a place and they say what are you people saying and they start shooting there.Q: People say you brought the military into politics and what has happened to you is a logical culmination of that. What is your view on this?A: Ah, we never said they should come into politics. We always said the gun should be led by politics. They've come into politics now.Q: If you saw the military meddling in politics, why didn't you take decisive action to thwart them? Did you see the coup coming?A: No I never saw it. With the education we had given them. This was the work of two people, of General Chiwenga and ED. And they've actually forced other people into it.Q: People expected you to go and console Tsvangirai's family upon his passing but you did not.A: Well, we have not been moving. But we wrote a letter of condolence. I worked with Tsvangirai, he was prime minister then.We were good friends and even as he was in hospital we gave him some money for his cure. We mentioned it in the letter.Q: The state media says you want to receive your pension in cash through CBZ Bank. Do you have an account there and is that the correct position?A: I want to correct one thing: that we demanded it to be in dollars. CBZ is our banker and when Dr (Mariyawanda) Nzuwah (the then head of the Civil Service Commission) came and we did the benefits according to the constitution, he said 'do you prefer your package in cash or we can deposit it into your account?' We said in cash. We didn't demand. We would never demand.Q: Some people are saying you should be like Zuma who has expressed support for his successor President Cyril Ramaphosa. In other words, they say you must support Mnangagwa.A: I said, well, if she (Grace) agrees, I can get another six (wives) and have seven like Zuma. Then I have my Indian friends in Dubai, they can come and be my Guptas. Laughs. But in truth, I can be like Zuma if ED is like Ramaphosa. Laughs. And he (ED) can't be like Ramaphosa as things are now. I suppose by reverse he can because Ramaphosa was elected and we saw the election. And we saw it was quite tight with Mama Zuma, the lead was only 200 (votes). But what was our lead? Laughs.Q: Do you have 21 farms? This would be hypocritical for a man who always spoke about 'one man one farm'.A: Where are the farms? I don't have them. I got a farm in Norton, Highfield Farm. I bought it, it's sandy but it has one virtue, it's close to the dam. But during a season like this one, you get nothing because it's just water flowing on it. I built Alpha Omega dairy (in Mazowe), that is all.Q: So you don't have other farms?A: That is all I have. The others belong to my children and relatives. She (Grace) has, naturally, some land around the children's home, but as for me that is all I have.Q: You have been accused of failing to take action against corrupt ministers and government officials during your time in office.A: But you know, proving corruption is a difficult process. You've got to try people, and to find them guilty is not very easy. It's not just ministers, even in the private sector, it's rife.Q: Lastly, why did you prefer to stay long in power?A: I always listened to the people. The people still wanted me. And one other thing is I also looked at my circumstances. Nkomo is no more, (Simon) Muzenda, (Joseph) Msika, they are all gone. If I go, who would keep the party intact?
Opinion / Letters

Dear President ChamisaWe as the youths in the generational change we congratulate you for assuming the helm of our visionary party. All work is almost done now and we are ready to work hard together with you and win these elections.We would like to put our weight behind Felix Magalela Mafa Sibanda as your Vice President because we believe that he got the qualities , qualifications and will serve you and serve the MDCT family faithfully. We trust him. And we believe he has the right experience needed to be by your side as we walk towards economic freedom.He was a teacher in Harare, headed the NCA with Professor Madhuku to revamp the new Zimbabwe constitution, led the 181 000 civil servants against Mr Mugabe and founded Zimbabwe Teachers Union. He is a solid trade unionist who should be allowed to help and guide in making us win against ZANU PF.Felix Magalela Mafa Sibanda is a hard worker and a man of the people who has been a teacher to many young minds. He is filled with love and inspiration.He has stood up against Gukurahundi, Murambatsvina and prisoner abuse. He is a human rights activist. Many youths have worked or have been touched by his work and we believe he is the right matured man for the alliance and the MDC T portfolio and the rest of the team must support the movement of the people.Zimbabwe Northern Youths Coalition Builders. led by Taonashe ChinguruveTendai Mazaiwana-Manicaland ProvinceEvelyn's Mudzuri - Mashonaland EastTrivia Kwangwari - Mashonaland CentralViolet Masendeke - Mashonaland CentralLynette Mzenda - Goto- MasvingoGift Chimanikire - Harare Midlands Dimitri Musanhu
Canadian investors are searching for ways to get exposure to global growth opportunities without taking on some of the country-specific risks that come with buying foreign stocks.

One way to benefit from global growth without worrying about currency fluctuations or political unrest hammering your portfolio is to own top Canadian companies that have significant operations in emerging markets.

Lets take a look at Bank of Nova Scotia (TSX:BNS)(NYSE:BNS) and Nutrien (TSX:NTR)(NYSE:NTR) to see why they might be interesting picks.

Bank of Nova Scotia

Bank of Nova Scotia has invested heavily in its international business, with a specific focus on Mexico, Peru, Chile, and Colombia. The four countries represent the heart of the Pacific Alliance, which is a trade bloc set up to enable the free movement of capital and goods among the member states. The combined market is home to more than 200 million consumers.

As the middle class expands, demand for loans and investment products should increase, and Bank of Nova Scotia stands to benefit. In addition, companies are expanding their reach into the other partner countries, and that requires a wide array of cash management services. Bank of Nova Scotias large presence in the four markets gives it an opportunity to help businesses of all sizes meet their objectives as they enter the other regions.

The international operations already account for close to 30% of Bank of Nova Scotias net income, and that could increase in the coming years.

Bank of Nova Scotia has a strong track record of dividend growth. The current payout provides a yield of 4%.

Nutrien

Nutrien in the product of the recent merger of Agrium Inc. and Potash Corporation of Sakskatchewan.

The two companies were already major players in the global fertilizer sector and marketed their potash products through Canpotex, a jointly owned business, which negotiates wholesale potash deals with global governments. Mosaic is the other Canpotex partner.

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Nutrien is arguably a much more attractive company for investors that Agrium and Potash Corp. were separately. Agrium added an important global retail business to complement Potash Corp.s strong wholesale operations. In addition, both companies had already completed major capital programs before the merger took place, so Nutrien is ready to compete in the global market and meet expected demand increases in the coming years.

Fertilizer prices appear to have stabilized or are moving higher after a multi-year rout. Some supply concerns remain in the market but the long-term outlook for the sector should be positive.

Global population growth is expected to continue at a steady pace until at least 2100, and available farmland is shrinking due to urban sprawl.

Is one more attractive?

Both stocks should be solid-buy-and-hold bets for investors looking to get global exposure through rock-solid Canadian companies. At this point, I would probably split a new investment between the two names.

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Fool contributor Andrew Walker owns shares of Nutrien. Nutrien is a recommendation of Stock Advisor Canada.
Oil rallied solidly in recent days to see the North American benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) break through the US$65-per-barrel mark, only to sharply retreat, as conflicting data causes energy markets to swing wildly. This is making it increasingly difficult for pundits to predict the direction of oil, but one factor that indicates that weaker oil could be on its way is the failure of energy stocks to rally on the back of firmer oil.

While WTI has gained almost 6% since the start of 2018, SPDR S&P Oil & Gas Exploration & Production ETF (NYSE:XOP) has dropped by over 10% in value. That highlights that the outlook for crude might not be as positive as some pundits would have investors believe.

Now what?

The good news that drove the latest rally in oil was a statement from the Saudi energy minister that the OPEC production caps will likely remain in place into 2019, and that the Kingdom was seeking to map out a deal for long-term cooperation with the worlds largest oil producer, Russia. That pushed WTI to over US$65 per barrel  its highest point since late January 2018.

Nonetheless, WTI has retreated sharply in recent days, mainly because of a surprise inventory build on Tuesday when data from the American Petroleum Institute (API) showed a 5.3-million-barrel build in U.S. oil stocks.

The optimism surrounding the outlook for crude continues to wane, as a range of fundamentals indicate that global oil production, notably from the U.S., is poised to swamp to higher demand growth. The U.S. rig count last week came in at 995 active rigs is at its highest level since April 2015.

Meanwhile, U.S. production continues to rise at a rapid clip, reaching almost 10.5 million barrels daily  its highest level since the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) started providing data. Investment in the U.S. energy patch continues to climb, as energy majors such as Exxon Mobil Corporation (NYSE:XOM) and Chevron Corporation (NYSE:CVX) pivot their upstream operations to make shale oil an ever-greater proportion of their portfolios.

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In fact, the EIA expects U.S. production to top 11 million barrels daily by the end of 2019, seeing it overtake Saudi Arabia and Russia to become the worlds top oil-producing nation. Then there is additional production to come online from non-OPEC producers such as Brazil, Colombia, and Argentina, which are all focused on boosting investment in their respective energy patches and in oil production. This indicates that global oil output will overtake demand growth regardless of the sharp deterioration in Venezuelas production and the growing likelihood that Trump will end the nuclear deal with Iran.

So what?

While the outlook for crude may not be as optimistic as some pundits would have us believe, it wont collapse any time soon. It appears likely that it will remain range bound, with WTI between US$55 and US$65 per barrel for the foreseeable future. That may not be the ideal scenario for energy stocks.

Nevertheless, many stocks, like Baytex Energy Corp. (TSX:BTE)(NYSE:BTE), Pengrowth Energy Corp. (TSX:PGF)(NYSE:PGH), and Crescent Point Energy Corp. (TSX:CPG)(NYSE:CPG) are free cash flow positive with WTI at US$55 per barrel, despite the differentials applied to Canadian crude blends. That makes it likely that, once WTI demonstrates it has settled in this range, their stocks will appreciate.

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Fool contributor Matt Smith has no position in any stocks mentioned.
SOFIA/PARIS (Reuters) - Renowned Bulgarian psychoanalyst and philosopher Julia Kristeva, who has lived in France since 1965, worked as an agent for the Balkan countrys secret service in the communist era, a state commission said, but she denied the accusation. Kristeva, who is the author of more than 30 books and worked alongside other leading French intellectuals such as Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan and Roland Barthes, said the claim constituted "an attack on my honour and reputation". The Bulgarian commission which identifies people who worked for the communist-era secret services said Kristeva had worked, under the code name "Sabina", as a collaborator for the first department of the State Security agency. The department oversaw intelligence in the area of the arts and mass media. It said she began working for the State Security organisation on June 19, 1971. She had moved to Paris in 1965 on a French government scholarship. The document did not say how long she worked for State Security or whether she received any payment. The commission said it based its conclusions on two volumes of declassified files. "The report that I may have been a member of the Bulgarian secret services under the name of Sabina is not only untrue and grotesque. It damages my honour and reputation and is damaging for my work as well," the Paris-based Kristeva told Reuters in an emailed statement. Kristeva, now 76, said she had instructed her lawyer to take action against publications that spread the allegation. "SOMEONE WANTS TO HARM ME" In separate comments to French online weekly L'Obs, Kristeva said: "Someone wants to harm me. We dont know what is in our files." She told L'Obs that the file came out because she had wanted to work for a Bulgarian newspaper and under some rules of the archives, they must publish information on the background of all journalists. In its heyday Bulgaria's State Security, working closely with the Soviet KGB, operated a network of some 100,000 agents and informers. It was dissolved in 1989 following the collapse of the communist regime. The issue of access to, and publication of, its files has continued to raise powerful emotions in Bulgaria during its difficult transition to democracy. Foreign Policy magazine has ranked Kristeva as one of the 100 greatest thinkers of the 20th century. As well as books on psychoanalysis and philosophy, she has written extensively on cultural and feminist issues and is also a novelist. She is an emeritus professor at the University Paris Diderot and a visiting professor at Columbia University in New York. (Reporting by Angel Krasimirov and Alissa De Carbonnel in Sofia and Brian Love in Paris; Editing by Gareth Jones)
First Nations, Metis want more from Alberta for renewable energy projects

First Nations and Metis governments across Alberta are presenting a united front to the provincial government, asking for a greater commitment to ensuring Indigenous communities are involved in renewable energy projects.

About 70 leaders from Treaty 6, 7 and 8 , the Metis Settlements General Council and the Metis Nation of Alberta met at an Edmonton hotel this week to develop an Indigenous-led framework under the government's Indigenous Climate Leadership Initiative.

They want to be active and equal participants in efforts to avoid the environmental degradation that's happened on traditional lands as a result of past energy projects.

They said it's the first time in more than 35 years that such a large group of First Nations and Metis leaders have come together on an issue.

"It's the protection of the environment for the future generations," said Crystal Lameman, environment and climate policy analyst for the Confederacy of Treaty Six First Nations.

"The discussions that are happening here are policy-related, but those policies, regardless of if they are energy-related or not, if they're economics-related or not, the protection and preservation of the environment needs to be at the forefront."

Investment questioned

The Alberta government has announced $151 million  about 2.8 per cent  of projected carbon levy revenues will be allocated to Indigenous communities over the next three years. Indigenous Relations Minister Richard Feehan said groups will be free to decide what works best when putting the grant money to use.

The government is also requiring Indigenous equity investment from proponents in its second round of bids to build renewable energy projects. Each bid will have a minimum Indigenous equity component, which can include an ownership stake in the project or a land-use agreement between the company and the community.

Though the size of the equity component isn't yet determined, it's recommended to be 15 to 25 per cent, according to an official with the Alberta Electric System Operator.

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The province is targeting projects producing 300 megawatts of electricity in a program designed to boost the economy and training of Indigenous people.

Leaders agreed Wednesday that 2.8 per cent of carbon levy revenue won't be sufficient for Indigenous communities to take part. They also pointed out that the share of revenue doesn't measure up to the proportion of Indigenous people in Alberta. Census figures show Indigenous people make up about 6.5 per cent of Alberta's population.

"How do you make anything with that? There's not enough money to do anything," said Darren Calliou, vice-president of the Metis Settlements General Council.

"So now your projects are two megawatts, one megawatt, 10 megawatts," Calliou said, noting he knows some communities that could be ready for 200 megawatts of renewable electricity, but none that could handle more.

Protecting the environment

The province plans to announce the winning bidders for the second and third rounds of the renewable energy program by the end of 2018.

"Nobody's ready," Calliou said.

Indigenous leaders are concerned they could once again be left out of developments in the energy sector..

"The plants and stuff for our medicines, where we know where they are, we have to try to keep industry out of there as much as possible," Calliou said.

"We only have so much land set aside for us," he said. "When industry comes in and they're spilling oil everywhere and brine water, it doesn't help our environment in our communities."

That Feehan attended the conference Thursday gave some a sense of optimism.

"As Indigenous peoples, this is brand new for us, to have a government that wants to work with us," Lameman said.

"I'm optimistic because we have to be. We have no other choice," she said.

Feehan declined an interview with CBC News, but in a statement said he looks forward to hearing the results of the summit.

roberta.bell@cbc.ca

@roberta__bell
A freezing rain warning for parts of northern New Brunswick has now been lifted.

Environment Canada issued the warning Friday morning for the Acadian Peninsula, the Bathurst and Chaleur regions, Campbellton and eastern Restigouche County, calling for freezing rain turning to rain near noon.

The warning was lifted shortly after noon.

There are currently no weather warnings or statements in New Brunswick.
By Cheikh Amadou Diouara BAMAKO (Reuters) - Unidentified gunmen killed one person and wounded at least two others late on Wednesday in an attack on a hotel in the central Mali town of Bandiagara regularly frequented by United Nations staff and humanitarian workers, witnesses said. Just two days ago, Prime Minister Soumeylou Boubeye Maiga visited Bandiagara and gave a speech in which he promised to defeat the Islamist insurgents who have plunged Mali's central and northern regions into chaos. Five men approached the entrance to Bandiagara's Hotel la Falaise on foot at around 9.30 p.m. (2130 GMT), removed rifles from beneath their flowing traditional robes and opened fire, several witnesses said. "They were walking calmly and seemed normal," said Bocar Karambe, a driver who was across the street from the hotel when the attack began. "Once they arrived in front of the gate, we heard the gunfire. When I turned around I saw they were shooting point blank at the people in front of the hotel," he said. At least three people, a soldier guarding the entrance and two hotel workers, were struck by bullets. The soldier later succumbed to his injuries, Karambe and a second witness said. One attacker was also killed. "I saw the body of one of the attackers lying on the ground. He had been shot by that same soldier before he was himself gunned down by the other assailants," said Barema Kassogue, who sells antiques near the hotel. The Hotel la Falaise was once popular with tourists visiting the Dogon people, who inhabit the cliffs of Mali's central plateau. However, the area's tourism industry dried up after Islamist groups, some with links to al Qaeda, seized Mali's desert north in 2012. They were driven back by a French-led military intervention a year later, but attacks remain frequent. The hotel now mainly caters to humanitarian aid workers responding to the consequences of the violence. Prime Minister Maiga and eight of his ministers began a nine-stop national tour last week aimed at shoring up support for the government of President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita ahead of national elections planned for July 29. The trip included stops in several areas senior government officials rarely visit because of security concerns. Central Mali's once peaceful Mopti region, which includes Bandiagara, has become a new flashpoint for violence over the past year as marginalized Fulani herdsmen have joined forces with al Qaeda-allied Islamists based farther north. (Reporting by Cheikh Amadou Diouara; Writing by Joe Bavier; editing by Grant McCool)
The provincial government announced major changes to its Waterford Hospital replacement plan, opting for a new mental health facility attached to the Health Sciences Centre in St. John's as well as other "community beds" across the Newfoundland and Labrador.

Government unveiled the redesigned replacement plan at the Health Sciences Centre Thursday.

"This is the first mental health facility to be built in Newfoundland and Labrador since Canada became a nation," said Premier Dwight Ball at the announcement.

Planning is underway for the new facility at the hospital, with site work to begin next year. The 100-bed hostel currently on site will be replaced by 94 beds in a mental health and addictions hospital, and a new hostel will be built at a cost of between $20 million to $25 million.

Construction of the new facility is expected to take three to four years. The current Waterford Hospital will stay open while the new facility is being built.

The redesigned facility is projected to cost $200 million, $130 million less than the standalone Waterford Hospital replacement that had been planned until today.

"This is not just an announcement that will sit on a shelf," Premier Ball said at the announcement. "This is a day of action."

Paula Corcoran-Jacobs, the executive director of Consumers Health Awareness Network Newfoundland and Labrador (CHANNAL), said the new plan is a gigantic step in the right direction.

"The announcement today has moved our cautious optimism to a place of hope and anticipation," she said. "This plan clearly illustrates a system change that is recovery-focused, responsive and inclusive."

CHANNAL runs the Warm Line  a place people can call for help with their mental health when they are in a pre-crisis stage. Corcoran-Jacobs also lives with mental illness herself.

For decades, the Waterford has been a place the public wanted to avoid at all costs, she said, like an ancient and scary building.

Story continues

"We fear the asylum and what we know about it. As people with mental illnesses, this building is often our only place to get help. Because of the fear, the shame, the stigma, we often won't seek the help that we need."

Corcoran-Jacobs credited the many people who work in mental health and addictions in the province who have lived through real life experiences with the province's health care system.

"Look at what we've done," she said, looking around the room at other advocates and counsellors. "We have made change happen."

More beds, more places

The province's previous plan was for 140 beds, while the new one will have 182 new "community beds" across the province, including the 94 in the new facility.

A new six-bed mental health unit will be established in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, including two new nursing positions.

A new parking garage will also be built at the Health Sciences Centre in St. John's to accommodate demand.

While the end date is still several years away, Corcoran-Jacobs urged people to see this announcement in a positive light.

"There may be some understandable cynicism amongst us, as promises sometimes don't always come to fruition," she said. "But as a person with mental illness, I must have hope that change is possible."
Pope's decision to not issue apology 'a slap in the face,' residential school survivor says

The decision by Pope Francis not to issue an apology for the Catholic Church's role in abuses committed in residential schools amounts to "a slap in the face," according to one survivor.

A letter released Tuesday by the president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops says Pope Francis has not shied away from recognizing injustices faced by Indigenous peoples around the world, but that he can't personally apologize for residential schools.

Peter Yellowquill was sent to a Catholic residential school in Brandon as a child and he says the Pope's refusal to apologize strikes a blow to reconciliation efforts in Canada.

"It's kind of stunning, really," he said in an interview on CBC's Up to Speed. "In the very real sense, [this] confirms for some of our people ...Then all this talk about reconciliation can't be real. I think for a lot of people, the work has to go on, reconciliation has to go on. It just can't stop, it won't."

Yellowquill, who identifies as Christian, also said the decision is disappointing to believers in Indigenous communities.

"To me it's a stab in the eye and as a Christian, I find it extremely disappointing. It's really a slap in the face to those who are making the effort to reconcile, truly reconcile."

An apology from the Catholic church is one of the 94 calls to action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Winnipeg Archbishop Richard Gagnon said the decision by Pope Francis doesn't preclude a possible future visit to Canada, in which a meeting with Indigenous people would be a high priority.

"Indigenous people need to be involved in such an eventuality, so that it's not just a matter of ticking off a particular call to action, so to speak," he said in an interview with CBC's Power and Politics.

Gagnon said the Pope is aware of the TRC and its recommendations, and has expressed sorrow for injustices suffered by Indigenous people around the world. Gagnon also pointed out that Pope Benedict XVI expressed sorrow for the treatment of Canada's Indigenous people in a meeting with former Assembly of First Nations National Chief Phil Fontaine.

Story continues

Senator Murray Sinclair, who led the TRC, said that expression of sorrow was not enough.

"It's like the driver of a car saying, 'I'm sorry that you got hurt when I ran you down, but I'm not responsible for the fact that the car ran you down," he said.

There is no excuse for not apologizing, Sinclair said, adding he suspects their reluctance to do so might be because of ongoing litigation in Canada and elsewhere.

"Also I believe there is a strong element within the church leadership that residential school survivors are not telling the truth," he said.

Many survivors have said that they need an apology in order to heal, Sinclair said, and refusing to issue one threatens to widen schisms within Indigenous communities between Christian and non-Christian people.

About 72 per cent of residential schools included in the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement were Catholic schools, Sinclair said.

"The Anglican Church has apologized, the United Church has issued an apology, the Presbyterians have issued an apology. But we've heard nothing of that sort from the Catholics," he said.

Sinclair's son Niigaan, a native studies professor at the University of Manitoba, described the church's decision as "remarkably short-sighted and disrespectful."

Reconciliation cannot happen in Canada without an apology from the Catholic Church, he added.

"Before we can have any reconciliation we have to have truth," Niigaan Sinclair said, adding that an apology would "be a recognition by the church that they participated in genocide."

Liberal MP Robert-Falcon Ouellette, who has Cree and Metis heritage, said he believes the Church will eventually apologize  a day he said may come during a future papal visit to Canada.

"If one man could simply snap his fingers, things would have been done a long time ago, but unfortunately that doesn't happen in large institutions," said Ouellette, who said he attends a Catholic church.
TORONTO (Reuters) - A majority of 98 percent of workers at the Iron Ore Company of Canada's railway and port operations in Sept Iles, Quebec have rejected the miner's latest contract offer, the United Steelworkers said on Thursday, after negotiations stumbled on monetary issues. The 305 unionized employees are unhappy with amounts proposed in the defined-benefit pension plan, the union said. Earlier this month, they voted 99.2 percent in favor of a strike mandate, but will not have the right to strike before April 10. On Tuesday, some 1,300 workers walked off the job at IOC's Labrador City mine, after rejecting the company's final contract offer on Monday. IOC has initiated a short-term contingency plan, using staff employees to shut down operations and protect assets. Labrador Iron Ore Royalty Corp said the strike is expected to adversely affect its revenue, which depends entirely on IOC's sale of iron ore productions. The IOC, majority-owned by Rio Tinto with Mitsubishi holding a 26-percent stake, said on March 8 that the 305 workers had rejected their requests for concessions and a two-tier retirement program. (Reporting by Susan Taylor)
By Jan Lopatka and Jonathan Stempel PRAGUE/NEW YORK (Reuters) - A Russian man on Friday pleaded not guilty to charges he hacked three U.S. technology companies, potentially compromising personal details of more than 100 million users, including on LinkedIn, after being extradited from the Czech Republic. Yevgeniy Nikulin, 30, of Moscow, entered his plea in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, after having fought his extradition following his 2016 arrest in Prague. His case had turned into a battle over whether he should be sent to the United States or Russia, where a Moscow court had in November 2016 issued an arrest warrant for his alleged theft seven years earlier of $3,450 via a site called Webmoney. The U.S. Department of Justice accused Nikulin of illegally accessing computers belonging to U.S.-based social media firms LinkedIn, Dropbox and Formspring in 2012, including by using the credentials of LinkedIn and Formspring employees. LinkedIn, now owned by Microsoft Corp, has said the case was related to a breach that might have compromised information of at least 100 million users. Computer hacking is not just a crime, it is a direct threat to the security and privacy of Americans," U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement. "This is deeply troubling behavior once again emanating from Russia," he continued. "We will not tolerate criminal cyber-attacks and will make it a priority to investigate and prosecute these crimes, regardless of the country where they originate." Nikulin faces nine criminal counts, including causing damage to a protected computer and aggravated identity theft. A federal public defender representing him did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Nikulin has denied wrongdoing in comments to Czech media. The decision by Czech Justice Minister Robert Pelikan to extradite Nikulin defied Russia, which had also sought his extradition. Courts in the Czech Republic, a U.S. ally and part of the European Union, had said extradition to both countries was permissible, and the decision was up to Pelikan. Prime Minister Andrej Babis has said he favored extradition to the United States, but Pelikan said President Milos Zeman, who often takes a pro-Russian stance, had urged extradition to Russia. "It was apparent that the United States requested extradition for a suspicion of very serious criminal activity, which was not the case of the Russian request," Pelikan told Reuters in a phone interview. The decision was closely watched because Babis needs Zeman's support for a new government, after his minority cabinet lost a vote of confidence last month. Zeman has promised Babis another try at installing a government. (Reporting by Jan Lopatka in Prague and Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Richard Balmforth/Mark Heinrich/Susan Thomas)
By Tanisha Heiberg and Nqobile Dludla JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa's Gold Fields will buy a near 50 percent share of Asanko Gold Inc's Ghana subsidiary and take a stake in the Canadian miner in a $202.6 million deal, it said on Thursday. The deal fits with Gold Fields' strategy of buying cash generative, working mines rather than embarking on costly greenfield explorations but some investors were not convinced, sending the company's shares tumbling as much as six percent. "We are buying into an operation with cash flowing today so we expect this to have a strong impact on the overall cash flows over the next year or two," Gold Fields Chief Executive Nick Holland told Reuters. The bullion miner plans to acquire half of Asanko Gold Ghana's 90 percent interest in the Asanko Gold Mine. Its Ghana subsidiary will also acquire associated properties and exploration rights in the west African country. The deal includes an upfront payment of $165 million on closure of the transaction and a deferred payment of $20 million. Gold Fields will also take a 9.9 percent stake in Toronto-listed Asanko for $17.6 million in a share placement. Gold Fields, whose net debt stood at $1.3 billion at the end of its last financial year, said it could fund the joint venture and the share subscription through cash and existing debt facilities. The company has $400 million in cash and another $1 billion in credit facility. Asanko, which is expected to produce 253,000 ounces of gold annually from 2019 to 2023 with a life-of-mine of at least 15 years, also has the potential to make further discoveries, Gold Fields said. However, investors were cautious about the deal with shares in Gold Fields falling more than the broader bullion sector - which was down 1.17 percent. They tumbled more that 6 percent before paring losses to weaken 3.39 percent to 47.24 rand by 1216 GMT. "This is a low return (asset) and I think investors are hungry for returns in the form of dividends," said portfolio manager at Gryphon Asset Management Casparus Treurnicht. "Unless Gold Fields have some plan to materially increase returns from the Asanko operation I do not see this as a breakthrough transaction." But Gold Fields said the transaction would exceed its requirement of a 15 percent return at a gold price of $1,300 per ounce, with a payback period of five years. (Editing by Keith Weir)
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New York, March 28, 2018Sudanese authorities should stop harassing journalists and allow them to report on matters of public interest without fear of government reprisal, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

The Press and Publications Court sentenced two journalists for false news on March 22 and two on defamation charges in a separate trial on March 15, according to the Sudanese Journalist Network and news reports.

Instead of dialing back their campaign against independent reporting, Sudanese authorities are casting around for new instruments to wield against the press, including false news charges, CPJ Middle East and North Africa Program Coordinator Sherif Mansour said from Washington D.C. Sudanese authorities must stop manufacturing excuses to silence actual news reporting.

CPJ did not immediately receive a response from the Sudanese Embassy in Washington D.C. or the Sudanese Justice Ministry in Khartoum to emailed requests for comment.

On March 22, the court sentenced Zeinelabdin Mohamed Ali, the editor-in-chief of the privately owned daily al-Mustagila, and Rida Baou, the papers news department head, to either pay a fine of 15,000 Sudanese pounds (US$825) or serve one month in prison for false news, according to the independent news website AllAfrica and the Sudanese Journalists Network. The charges relate to a critical article Ali and Baou published in 2015 about Sudans water supply, All Africa reported.

According to the Khartoum-based freelance journalist Abdelgadir Mohammed Abdelgadir, authorities began prosecuting Ali and Baou in 2016. Abdelgadir told CPJ that al-Mustagila shuttered in 2017 for financial reasons.

At the sentencing, Ali told the court that both journalists would go to jail rather than pay the fine; authorities transferred Ali and Baou to prison that day, according to al-Sudan al-Youm and the Sudan Tribune. Baou has since been released while Ali is still in jail, Abdelgadir told CPJ. He said it was not immediately clear why only Baou was released, or if either journalist was planning to appeal the sentence.

Separately, the same court on March 15 sentenced Ashraf Abdelaziz, editor-in-chief of the privately owned daily al-Jarida, and Hassan Warrag, a reporter at the paper, to either pay a fine of 17,000 Sudanese pounds (US$936) or spend a month in prison, according to the independent broadcaster Radio Dabanga and the Sudanese Journalists Network.

The court found the journalists guilty of defamation relating to an article al-Jarida published alleging corrupt practices in a local land deal, according to the reports. According to Abdelgadir, the column was printed in 2015.

Both journalists went to jail rather than pay the fine. Authorities released Abdelaziz and Warrag after they spent five days in Omdurman Prison near Khartoum when a public campaign raised money to pay the fine on their behalf, Warrag wrote in an op-ed for the Sudan Times after his release.

A lawyer for the journalists, Ahmad El Shukri, told Radio Dabanga that they will both appeal their convictions.

The sentences come as Sudanese authorities finalize a new law regulating the press, which Abdelgadir told CPJ will allow the government to increase control over online media.

Sudanese authorities have been cracking down on critical media since the beginning of the year, making multiple arrests and seizing newspapers before they can be distributed, according to CPJ research.
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The Committee to Protect Journalists, along with 40 civil society organizations, yesterday sent a joint letter to Ethiopias prime minister-designate, Abiy Ahmed, urging him to ensure the immediate and unconditional release of recently arrested journalists, and human rights defenders.

All were detained without charge under Ethiopias latest state of emergency declared on February 16. Those arrested include journalists Eskinder Nega and Temesghen Desalegn, Zone 9 bloggers Mahlet Fantahun and Befekadu Hailu, blogger Zelalem Workagegnehu, and blogger and academic Seyoum Teshome.

The full letter can be read here.
Beijing, Mar 30 (PTI) -- A court in northwest China today gave the death penalty to a serial killer, dubbed "Jack the Ripper", for killing 11 female victims, including an eight-year-old girl, between May 1988 and February 2002.





Gao Chengyong, 53, was found to have robbed, raped and mutilated his victims, according to a report in state-run Xinhua news agency.





The youngest of the victims was an eight-year-old girl.





The Peoples Intermediate Court of Baiyin City said in its verdict that the crimes happened in the northwest Gansu Province and neighbouring Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.





The court found he killed his victims to cover up robbery or rape in Baiyin, Gansu and Baotou, Inner Mongolia.





Gao confessed his crimes in the court and said he would not file an appeal.





He was arrested in August 2016 after a DNA test of one of his relatives for an unrelated crime suggested he could be linked to the serial killings.





The "Ripper" was being hunted by the police for 28 years.





Before his arrest, Gao, who targeted his victims wearing red, had terrified young women, often following them to their home, state media reports have said.





The original Jack the Ripper was a serial killer active in east London in the late Victorian era. The cases he was believed to have been involved in have not been solved yet.

'Vicious' Killer of 11 Women Gets Death Penalty in China

30 years after Gao Chengyong embarked on a succession of 11 rape-murders of women in northwest China, a court sentenced him to death on Friday, following an investigation that involved sifting through 230,000 fingerprints.





The sentence by a court in Baiyin, a small city in Gansu Province, was not unexpected in China, which executes more prisoners than any other. But the verdict against Mr. Gao, 53, a farmer, itinerant worker and shopkeeper, was widely reported, and applauded, in China, where the killings drew intense attention.





"The motives for the defendant Gao Chengyong's crimes were utterly despicable, the means were utterly vicious, the nature of the crimes utterly vile," the court's verdict stated, according to the China News Service, an official agency.





The court found that Mr. Gao had killed 11 women, whom he usually followed to their homes. He murdered all but one around Baiyin; another woman was killed in Baotou, a city in the north Chinese region of Inner Mongolia. In many cases, he molested the women and dismembered their bodies. Besides homicide, he also was found guilty of rape and of defiling corpses. He stood trial last July.





When Mr. Gao was arrested in 2016, the last murder had taken place 14 years earlier, and the police needed advanced forensic technology, as well as an element of chance, to link him to the crimes.





Zhang Enwei, a forensic detective who helped solve the murders, said he had checked 230,000 sets of fingerprints trying to identify a suspect, Beijing News, a newspaper, reported on Friday. But Mr. Gao was one of hundreds of millions of rural migrants who move around, often slipping past city data checks, and he was not caught in the dragnet for fingerprints in Baiyin.





But by 2011, the detectives in Baiyin had acquired technology to trace DNA clues, and 5 years later a relative of Mr. Gao had his DNA sample taken after he was suspected of giving kickbacks. Their shared traits led the investigators to Mr. Gao, who was then running a small store in a school in Baiyin with his wife.





Mr. Zhang said Mr. Gao was very calm when he was shown the evidence, according to the Beijing News. "Basically he did not offer too much of a defense," Mr. Zhang said. "He knew that this day would come."





Mr. Gao said he would not appeal the sentence. In an interview last year, his defense lawyer, Zhu Aijun, denied reports that Mr. Gao had chosen as his victims only women and girls with long hair and dressed in red.





Mr. Gao said he had "chosen his targets for crimes at random," Mr. Zhu told a Chinese news website. "That was one of the reasons that it was so hard to crack the case for a long time."





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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,

but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde

PTI, March 30, 2018: New York Times, March 30, 2018
AI & Analytics

Needed: U.S. machine intelligence strategy

The rise of machine intelligence, variously referred to as AI and deep learning, and the accompanying angst over its future applications are prompting calls for a national strategy for simultaneously advancing and harnessing the technology.

A report released earlier this month by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and underwritten by Booz Allen Hamilton makes the case for a comprehensive U.S. framework for maintaining leadership while ensuring responsible development of machine intelligence. CSIS also stresses the hard power implications of robotics and other forms of automation, particularly as the Defense Department and the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army recognize that the next generation of military technologies will be driven by machine intelligence.

One of the reports authors said the U.S. roadmap is needed because the most recent AI R&D strategy has been overtaken by events, including a growing list of national strategies unveiled over the last year. Most notably, China released an AI development strategy in August 2017. That was followed weeks later by a pronouncement from Russian President Vladimir Putin that the whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will be the ruler of the world."

The current U.S. framework, released by the Obama administration in October 2016, has kind of gone stale, said Josh Elliot, co-author of the report and Booz Allens director of machine intelligence and data science solutions. Meanwhile, China continues to pour billions into AI research while U.S. and Chinese companies compete for top computer science talent.

The report also seeks to address the often-heated rhetoric about the promise and pitfalls of AI. Elliot said it focuses on the overarching concept of machine intelligence, defined as machines augmenting humans to accomplish a specific task. AI often connotes 'killer robots,' Elliot explained in an interview, adding that the report seeks to tamp down the hyperbole around the technology.

Among CSIS' recommendations is a federal role in establishing ethical and safety frameworks for implementing machine intelligence.

The report also focuses on the impact of machine intelligence on national security, both in terms of economic competitiveness and how the technology could transform the battlefield. Among the predicted outcomes are a seismic shift from todays information warfare strategy to what experts call algorithmic warfare.

A case in point is Project Maven, the moniker for a fast-tracked Defense Department effort called Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Functional Team.

Project Maven was launched in April 2017 to accelerate DODs integration of big data and machine learning into its intelligence operations. The first computer vision algorithms focused on parsing full-motion video were released at the end of last year, and can be updated almost daily, according to Graham Gilmer of Booz Allens machine intelligence team.

We have analysts looking at full-motion video, staring at screens [6 to 11] hours at a time, Lt. Gen. John Shanahan, DODs director of defense intelligence, told an industry conference last November Theyre doing the same thing photographic interpreters were doing in World War II.

Project Maven aims to let the machines do what machines do well, and let humans do what only humans can do -- the cognitive analytical portion of video interpretation, Shanahan added.

Gilmer noted that this early indications and warnings application of machine learning means efforts like Project Maven are not even close to pulling the trigger, a reference to autonomous weapons that some AI critics fear. We need to be testing, we need to be prototyping, he added.

As DOD rolls out algorithms for testing, the CSIS report noted that the rise of algorithmic warfare nevertheless has implications for future weapons while creating new military capabilities. Among them are the integration of machine intelligence into current C4ISR systems.

Perhaps the most transformative applications of military machine intelligence are in command and control (C2), the report notes. MI-enabled C2 could develop entirely novel strategies, anticipate enemy tactics, accelerate intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, and help coordinate activities of large numbers of dispersed units acting in tandem.

As a greater share of decision-making on the battlefield happens at machine speed, human thinkers may be unable to keep up, the report predicts.

Indeed, a number of machine learning and analytics startups advised by retired military officers are beginning to explore new approaches that extend beyond current predictive analytics. One approach, dubbed abductive reasoning, is touted as helping battlefield commanders understand enemy intentions, distinguishing a bluff, for example, from an actual attack.

Approaches like abductive reasoning and scenario-based war-gaming are among the collaborative technologies embraced in the CSIS report. Elliot, the co-author, said military applications should for now focus on narrow, often tedious, analytical tasks rather than true autonomy.

Along with developing ethics and safety standards (Booz Allen expects to shortly release a paper on machine intelligence ethics), Elliot said a broader federal role in both promoting and managing machine intelligence should take the long view. That includes familiar recommendations like funding high-risk, high-payoff research, promoting workforce skills and other market mechanisms like lowering barriers to entry for technology startups. The effort could also expand recent open-source efforts designed to make government data more accessible, he said.

Funding for a government-industry research consortium could be funneled through the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental and, for university-based research, the National Science Foundation, Elliot said.

Congress is also weighing in on the need for a national machine intelligence strategy. The House Oversight Committee's information technology subcommittee is holding a series of hearings on how government agencies can adopt game changing AI technologies. DARPA and other agency officials echoed calls for R&D investments, broader access to government data and boosting the AI workforce through computer science and STEM education.

A subcommittee hearing in April will focus on establishing guidelines for promoting machine intelligence development while ensuring were using it in the right way, said Rep. Will Hurd (R-Texas), chairman of the IT panel.

As the pace of development quickens, a consensus is building that the U.S. must lead from the front. Machine learning has the potential to be transformative, Elliot stressed. Its important that [the U.S.] not fall behind.

Note: This article was updated on April 2 to correct the name of co-author Josh Elliot.
Ukraine's property fund to sell almost 660 small-scale privatization facilities

In total, the government plans to sell more than 900 state-owned companies.

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Naftogaz to start recovery of US$2.6 bln debt from Russia's Gazprom in April

Naftogaz plans to appeal to European courts to obtain an appropriate order to recover Gazprom's property located in Europe.

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There is a shrinking window for Ukraine to pass IMF-backed reforms ahead of presidential and parliamentary elections that will take place in 2019 at the latest.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) told Reuters on Friday Ukraine should allow the market to determine gas prices as promised under a $17.5 billion loan program, after the government extended a below-market level pricing system for households.

The IMF representative to Ukraine, Goesta Ljungman, said in emailed comments that low prices for households amounted to subsidies that were regressive and helped the largest users the most, Reuters said.

Read alsoUkraine's Cabinet postpones gas prices rise for households

"We believe that it is important to let gas prices  including tariffs for households  be determined by the market, in line with the reforms that were implemented in 2016, and which were one of the major achievements of the reform process in Ukraine in recent years," he said.

The cabinet has now extended the pricing policy for another two months in a formal resolution published on Friday.

Ljungman did not comment on how the government's decision affected the outlook for the next loan tranche, but the Fund has previously made clear that adjusting gas prices is a key requirement for further funding.

In 2016, Ukraine agreed to adjust gas prices to be in line with external market rates, but the government's failure to implement the decision means the IMF held back disbursing further loans since it approved a tranche last April.

There is a shrinking window for Ukraine to pass IMF-backed reforms ahead of presidential and parliamentary elections that will take place in 2019 at the latest. The current IMF program also expires in March next year.

The Ukrainian central bank has repeatedly warned that Ukraine's economic recovery could be jeopardized if it does not receive further financing under the program.

Ukraine has received $8.4 billion so far from the Fund, helping it recover from a two-year recession following the 2014 annexation of Crimea by Russia and the outbreak of Russian aggression in its industrial east.
Russia officially announces termination of arms supplies deal with Ukraine

The agreement came into force on February 8, 1995.

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Ukrainian government has earlier implemented a national ban on vessels and seafarers with records of making port calls in Crimea.

Ukrainian border forces on Sunday detained the Russian-flagged, Crimean-registered fishing vessel Nord in the Sea of Azov, along with her crew of 10 fishermen, charging the Nord of illegally crossing Ukraine's maritime borders.

In response to the arrest, Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) said Wednesday that Ukraine's State Border Guard Service had "hijacked" the Nord. The shipowner, a collective named "First of May," has appealed directly to the Russian Foreign Ministry for diplomatic intervention, according to maritime-executive.com.

"The actions of the Border Guard Service of Ukraine are illegal and dangerous for the life and safety of the citizens of the Russian Federation and we ask that they take prompt measures to return the vessel . . . and its crew to the port of Kerch," the collective wrote.

According to the Ukrainian border guard service, the Nord was detained off the Obytichna peninsula, a spit extending into the northern end of the Sea of Azov. The service said that the Nord had papers showing that she was registered in Kerch, Crimea, and its crew possessed Crimean-issued passports identifying them as Russian citizens.

Read alsoRussian troops in Donbas reportedly use blinding laser weapons  border guardsRussia illegally annexed the Crimean peninsula in 2014, now considering it Russian territory. Ukraine and the international community stress that Crimea is still part of Ukraine. The Ukrainian government has implemented a national ban on vessels and seafarers with records of making port calls in Crimea, and it asserts that these ports are legally closed under Ukrainian law.

The Nord has been taken to Berdaynsk, a small Ukrainian port near Mariupol. The shipowner said that the crew had been interrogated by Ukrainian authorities and were forbidden to leave the vessel. They face charges of "illegally crossing the border," and the Nord's master has been charged with a "violation of the order of entry into the occupied territory of Ukraine," meaning Crimea.

If convicted, the crew of the Nord could face up to 15 days of administrative arrest. The master could be imprisoned for up to three years.
Gazprom appeals Stockholm Arbitration award

The company says they disagree with the award in a dispute with Naftogaz of Ukraine.

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State Opioid Taxes Would Needlessly Harm Patients

Ross Marchand, E21

In for a Penny, In for Impound (subs.)

Kimberley Strassel, Wall Street Journal

Socially Responsible Investing Can Be a Money Pit

Vitaly Katsenelson, MarketWatch

Abenomics Looks Like Reaganomics

Noah Smith, Bloomberg View
BRUSSELS/PARIS, March 29 (Reuters)

France, Britain and Germany are struggling to persuade their EU partners to back new sanctions on Iran to preserve its nuclear deal, diplomats said, with Italy doubting whether the measures can stop the United States pulling out in May.

At a closed-door meeting of EU ambassadors in Brussels on Wednesday, London, Paris and Berlin sought EU support for formal approval of the new sanctions in April, after proposing them in mid-March, according to a document seen by Reuters.

But Italy, with support from Spain and Austria, resisted plans to impose travel bans and asset freezes on around 15 Iranians, companies and groups, linked to Iran's ballistic missile program and role in Syria's war.

Rome said they would not be enough to persuade U.S. President Donald Trump not to withdraw from the nuclear deal and would endanger burgeoning business ties with Iran. Spain was also wary of the knock-on effects.

Under EU rules, economic sanctions need unanimous support.

"Italy said dialogue was the preferred option and that sanctions could weaken our position while not convincing the United States," the diplomat said. "Spain asked the three to consider the implications of such a move."

Trump has given the European signatories a May 12 deadline to "fix the terrible flaws" of the 2015 nuclear accord, agreed under his predecessor Barack Obama, or he will refuse to extend a suspension of U.S. sanctions on Iran.

Trump's choices in recent weeks of two officials publicly opposed to the Iran accord, John Bolton as national security adviser, and Mike Pompeo as secretary of state, has dramatically raised the probability of a U.S. pullout, the diplomats said.

Rome and Tehran in January signed a framework credit agreement to fund investments worth up to 5 billion euros ($6 billion) in Iran.

"COMMANDO APPROACH"

In Brussels, other countries including Sweden were upset that the three European powers were trying to push things through the EU's diplomatic approval process so quickly.

"There was a commando approach, but it failed," a second EU diplomat said.

"The difference here is that everyone thinks Trump will pull out (of the Iran deal) and so some consider this pointless."

The three countries are in talks with the U.S. administration to see what could encourage Trump to issue new waivers on U.S. sanctions.

The 2015 pact between Iran and six major powers - Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States - lifted sanctions that had crippled Iran's oil-based economy, in return for restrictions on its nuclear activities.

The new measures proposed by London, Paris and Berlin could target members of Iran's most powerful security force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), as well as commanders of the Iran-backed Shi'ite group Hezbollah.

Discussions are expected to continue in early April but at a lower level than ambassadors, to try for a compromise at EU foreign ministers' meeting in Luxembourg on April 16, the last formal gathering on the EU agenda before Trump's May deadline.

Iran insists its nuclear work has been non-military and missile programme purely defensive.
The Iranian year that ended on March 20 was marked by the escalation of public dissent, unprecedented street protests in many cities, and bolder demands from labor unions.

The unrest took new forms and was more radical than in years past. Iranians openly undermined social norms and courageously called for regime change. The social crisis reached such a magnitude that state officials could not avoid discussing it, and were forced to confront the governments inefficiency and the prospect of a collapse.

Turning A Corner

This past years upheaval came after years of civil stagnation. The defeat in 2009 of the Green Revolution, which brought millions to the streets, was a hard blow to civil rights activists and provided an excuse for the regime to suppress civil society.

The ensuing crackdown by the government and its intelligence and security forces brought all independent civil organizations to heel.

The intelligence and security forces ideal society is one without any organization, except of course for gatherings...which they view as a referendum in their favor. Any other mass gatherings or demonstrations are always illegal, thus suppressing all NGOs, independent political parties, and trade unions.

During the 1990s and 2000s, the government largely saw civil society organizations as threats against Islamic rule. They view civic engagement as something negative to be dealt with rather than encouraged.

The intelligence and security forces ideal society is one without any organization, except of course for gatherings like the one held earlier this year for the 39th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, which they view as a referendum in their favor. Any other mass gatherings or demonstrations are always illegal, thus suppressing all NGOs, independent political parties, and trade unions.

The government directly intervenes in unions elections and views smaller local organizations, for example those formed to support children or the environment, with suspicion. The government also does not like the emergence of influential figures within these organizations.

This explains the harassment of civil and human rights activists such as Nargess Mohammadi and Nasrin Sotudeh. Instead the government promotes individuals such as General Qasem Soleimani, who blindly obey the system.

Fighting A Losing Battle Against Free Media

The Iranian people triumphed over the government in the area of media activity this past year. Despite the Islamic Republics severely restricted media environment and censorship regime controlled by extremist elements within the ruling system, most Iranians do not trust state media and turn instead to alternative sources of information from inside and outside the country.

In recent years, technology has brought about new modes of communications which are largely free from government censorship. Social media is so widespread that most government officials have also joined these networks, which lend the leaders some added legitimacy.

On the threshold of its 40th anniversary, the Islamic Revolution does not have much to be proud of. It has failed in the main areas of governance.

The rise of the influence of social media as the main platform for news and information last year prompted some state officials to embrace it, while others insist it should be banned.

An Existential Crisis

The series of crises seen last year has seriously undermined the Islamic Republics legitimacy.

On the threshold of its 40th anniversary, the Islamic Revolution does not have much to be proud of. It has failed in the main areas of governance. Poverty, recession, underdevelopment, economic crisis, constant tensions in international relations, widespread corruption, social and environmental vulnerabilities, and public dissent have fractured Iranian society.

The Islamic Republics track record is shocking even in the areas of ethics and religiosity. It has brought ethical decline and religious hypocrisy. The current widespread financial corruption is only one of the manifestations of the bankruptcy of an Islamic Republic devoid of spirituality and religious values.

If the regime stays in control in the face of all this, it is merely because of the weakness of the opposition and civil organizations.

Systematic suppression has left no outlet for critical dialogue, leading civil activists to look for new ways of voicing their dissent. Angry and frustrated social groups seize every opportunity to take to the streets and undermine social norms.

Women take off their headscarfs to protest the compulsory hijab, the youth protest poverty, discrimination, and social injustice, and workers go on strike to protest their economic hardships. People have lost their confidence in the government and are signaling revolt.

If the regime stays in control in the face of all this, it is merely because of the weakness of the opposition and civil organizations.

Those in power have ignored the message of dissent and its social and political meaning. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameneis statements against the anti-hijab protesters and his analysis of last years events in his New Year speech in Mashhad reveal a vast chasm between an unhappy public and the leaders who have lost contact with the realities on the ground.

For the regime, the precariousness and uncertainty of a society on the verge of revolt is neither a good end for the Iranian year 1396, nor a promising beginning for 1397.

This is the English version of an analysis published by Radio Farda's Persian website. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of Radio Farda.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khameneis military adviser Hossein Dehghan has likened defiant former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the door of a mosque, which may not be burnt or thrown away, an allusion to the fact that Ahmadinjad is part and parcel of the Islamic regime in Iran regardless of his harsh criticism of Khamenei and his government.

Speaking to the conservative weekly magazine Mosallas, Dehghan used the ironic Persian proverb, stressing that Ahmadinejad has always been the same during his two terms in office as President from 2005 to 2013.

Dehghan, who was Ahmadinejads defense minister in his second term, used another metaphor, adding Some people said at the time that Ahmadinejad was like a fireball in your hand. You could toss it from hand to hand, but you could not let it fall down.

It is not clear whether this metaphor was used by others in the regime, including Khamenei and Dehghan was just repeating it. Still, Dehghans words could be a warning to Ahmadinejads critics that Khamenei is not going to get rid of him so easily.

The statement by Dehghan was published shortly before the Iranian year started on March 21. By then Ahmadnejad had already published at least three critical letters to Khamenei, in which he had harshly criticized him and demanded drastic changes in the political system and Khameneis own office.

Ahmadinejad was a local governor in Maku and Khoy, small towns in northeastern Iran, during the 1980s. He became governor general of Ardabil province in the 1990s, was Tehrans mayor from 2003 to 2005 and was twice elected as Irans President in 2005 and 2009.

The disputed 2009 election which brought millions of protesters to streets and ignited the reformist Green Movement, as well as his controversial actions and statements made him world famous.

In 2011, when his intelligence minister resigned under his pressure, Khamenei overturned his decision and the two characters fell out.

The gap between the two became increasingly wider ever since and other Iranian conservatives close to Khamenei distanced themselves from Ahmadinejad.

Ahmadinejad started writing and publicizing his critical letters to Khamenei after his disqualification to run for President in May 2017 and as the Iranian Judiciary increased its pressures on Ahmadinejads aides. His criticisms mainly targeted Judiciary Chief Sadeq Amoli Larijani and his brother parliament speaker Ali Larijani.

Recently, as his criticism also targeted Khamenei and his office and demanded major structural reforms in Irans political system, Khamenei indirectly accused him of doing the enemys job, and playing the part of the opposition although he was in control of the country for eight years.

Khamenei said most recently that Some people are being unfair. They use the freedom existing in the country to say that there is no freedom. And foreign media reflect their statements. This was clearly a direct response to Ahmadinejad who had written to him that No trace of freedom has remained in the country after four decades of rule by Islamic Republic.

Dehghans statement could reflect the Khameneis difficult position in dealing with the defiant and outspoken former president; a situation that has evolved to become yet another deadlock in a political system already plagued with paralyzing economic, political and cultural bottlenecks.
Saudi Arabias Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman has once again urged the international community to squeeze Iran economically and politically, The Wall Street Journal reported on March 29.

The Saudi crown prince told the WSJ that sanctions will create more pressure on the regime. Meanwhile Prince Mohammad insisted that Riyadh was trying to avoid military conflict with Tehran.

If we do not succeed in what we are trying to do, we will likely have war with Iran in 10-15 years, he stated.

The 32-year-old Saudi crown prince was appointed as the heir to the throne by his father less than a year ago.

Saudi Arabia has witnessed a comprehensive reform campaign under the prince since his ascension to power.

The power struggle with Iran has been the main political challenge before the prince who famously threatened the Islamic Republic with war inside Iran.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 30

Trend:

Over the past 24 hours, Armenias armed forces have 95 times violated the ceasefire along the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said March 30.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.
Details added (first version posted on March 29, 15:07)

Baku, Azerbaijan, March 29

Trend:

President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has received a delegation led by President of the International Union of Architects Thomas Vonier.

The president of the International Union of Architects said they are deeply impressed by the development and beauty of Baku, and thanked and congratulated President Aliyev for his successful patronage of the architecture of the capital.

Thomas Vonier noted that the main goal of the visit is to attend a Bureau meeting of the International Union of Architects in Baku.

He noted that the International Union of Architects choosing Azerbaijans capital Baku from among the 134 member states as the host city of the event is indicative of the great importance the organization attaches to Azerbaijan.

Saying that Baku is a very beautiful city, Vonier underlined that it is the first visit of his colleagues to the city and that they are amazed at what they saw here.

Hailing the Baku Boulevard and especially the lighting in the city, he stressed that all these development processes spark great interest in terms of sharing experience.

Underlining that Baku is an ancient city with a great number of historical monuments, the head of state pointed out that all of them are part of the national wealth.

President Ilham Aliyev said that Icheri Sheher, which is on the UNESCO World Heritage List, has a great architectural value from this point of view, adding that the main purpose was to preserve this historical heritage and to ensure harmony of the modern buildings with the historical part of the city.

Noting that this goal has almost been achieved, President Aliyev also emphasized the importance of providing better living conditions and recreation for the urban population.

The head of state noted that great work was done to create public zones in Baku. Touching upon the development of the Baku Boulevard, President Aliyev said the length of this historical architectural landmark was 3.5km, when it was built 100 years ago.

The head of state said the boulevard was extended to reach 16km in length and turned into one of the most favorite places of local residents and guests of the city.

Stressing the importance of the visit of the delegation of the International Union of Architects to Azerbaijan, President Aliyev described the trip as a good opportunity for the guests to familiarize themselves with Azerbaijan and also a chance to learn the guests opinion on the development of Baku.

Vonier hailed the ongoing development processes in Baku under the direct patronage of the President of Azerbaijan as exemplary. Expressing hope that architects from member states of the organization will learn a lot during their visit to Baku, Vonier said that Azerbaijans capital is a favorable place from this point of view.

He further said underlined that Baku is a good example of harmony of the historical heritage with modernity. Vonier added that the organization of the International Union of Architects international forum on the impact of tourism on cities with architectural landmarks and cultural heritage in Baku in 2019 will be important from this point of view.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 30

Trend:

The Non-Aligned Movement Mid-Term Ministerial Conference will be held in Baku on April 5-6 under the theme of Promoting international peace and security for sustainable development, Azerbaijani Foreign Ministrys Spokesman Hikmat Hajiyev told Trend March 30.

Senior Officials meeting will be held on April 3-4 as a part of the preparation process for the Ministerial Conference, he said.

NAM participating states, representatives of observer states and international organizations, countries and institutions invited as special guests will take part in the Mid-Term Ministerial Conference.



NAM includes 120 states. Seventeen states and 10 international organizations have an observer status in NAM.

NAM Mid-Term Ministerial Conference, to be held in Baku, is expected to be attended by 800 participants. More than 150 representatives of local and foreign media have been registered to cover the event.

Azerbaijan is committed to the spirit and principles of the Non-Aligned Movement, Hajiyev said. The country pursues a foreign policy course aimed at developing partnerships with all states and pursues a balanced policy without joining any military bloc. Therefore, in 2011, the country decided to become a full-fledged member of the Non-Aligned Movement, where it had an observer status.

In 2019, the Republic of Azerbaijan will host the 18th Summit of the NAM and will be chairing NAM in 2019-2022, he said.

The 18th Summit of the NAM, to be held in Baku in 2019, has a great symbolic significance as well, he noted. Thus, 30 years after the Belgrade summit in 1989, the European continent will have an opportunity to again receive the heads of state and government of the countries participating in the NAM.

Hajiyev noted that the processes taking place on the European continent bring the importance of promoting the principles, goals and intentions of the NAM to the agenda in Europe as well.

The NAM established to prevent involvement of a number of states in the confrontation between the two military-political poles during the Cold War has now become one of the important multilateral mechanisms for regulating international relations, he added. Since its creation, the NAM has played a vital role in strengthening international peace and security. The NAM, the main goal of which is the maintenance of peace, security and development on the basis of respect for international law, is becoming increasingly relevant and the position agreed upon in the Movement itself plays a significant role in terms of influencing decision-making within the UN General Assembly.

Many of the most important achievements of the 20th century, such as the elimination of colonialism and the creation of a global social development agenda, are on a par with several important contributions to the world made by the NAM, Hajiyev said.

The role of the forum of cooperation among the NAM members is one of the main principles of the Movements creation and activities, he noted. Azerbaijans holding the NAM Mid-Term Ministerial Conference April 3-6 this year and the Baku summit in 2019, as well as the countrys chairmanship in the NAM in 2019-2022, will make significant contribution to the promotion of the goals and intentions of the NAM, strengthening of international peace, security and cooperation.
Headline changed, details added (first version posted on 10:00)

Baku, Azerbaijan, March 30

Trend:

President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has received head of the Election Observation Mission of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (OSCE/ODIHR) Corien Jonker.

During the conversation, an exchange of views took place on issues related to the upcoming presidential election in Azerbaijan.

President Aliyev expressed confidence that the election will be held in a democratic, fair and transparent atmosphere, in line with the electoral legislation, and reflect the will of the Azerbaijani people.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 30

By Elchin Mehdiyev  Trend:

The hostile policy of Armenian chauvinists and their supportive forces against the Azerbaijani people has continued for about 200 years, Azerbaijani Parliamentary Speaker Ogtay Asadov said in Baku.

He made the remarks at a special session of the Parliament held on March 30 to mark the 100th anniversary of the 31 March  the Day of Genocide of Azerbaijanis.

Asadov said that the Tsarist Russia has moved about one million Armenians from Iran and the Ottoman Empire to the Azerbaijani territories purposefully to boost its stronghold in the Caucasus.

He reminded that over one million Armenians were relocated to Azerbaijan in the early 20th century. The speaker noted that during certain periods of the history the great powers skillfully used the Armenian factor to implement their geopolitical plans.

"The "Great Armenia" illusion of Armenian nationalists, using the secret and open patronage of these countries, has led to the fact that the South Caucasus population faced big fatalities. Armenian chauvinists have carried out genocide and terrorist acts in Eastern Anatolia and South Caucasus at different times with a view to carry out ethnic cleansing in the areas they wanted to seize. Two million people were killed as a result of their acts. The March 1918 genocide was the highest peak of these crimes. More than 12,000 civilians have been killed only in Baku during three days of March. The hostility policy towards our people continued during the Soviet period. One of the main reasons we have been subjected to genocides throughout the history is that we have not been able to act as an organized force before the enemy," Asadov said.

The speaker further noted that the Azerbaijani state is getting stronger and stronger day by day.

"All these are the best guarantees that no new genocide will be committed against our people. I am sure that Azerbaijan will liberate the occupied territories. A decent response will be given to those, who pursue hostility towards our people. President Ilham Aliyev has repeatedly said that Zangezur, Irevan and other territories are the ancient lands of Azerbaijan. The modern Armenia was created on the territory of Western Azerbaijan. This is a historical fact. I am sure that the history will give everyone the value they deserve. And sooner or later the justice will win," he concluded.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 30

By Elchin Mehdiyev  Trend:

The Parliament of Azerbaijan has adopted a statement on the 100th anniversary of the Genocide of Azerbaijanis.

Vice-Speaker of Azerbaijan's Parliament Bahar Muradova read out the statement at a special session held on March 30 to mark the 100th anniversary of the 31 March  the Day of Genocide of Azerbaijanis.

The statement notes that 100 years have passed since genocide crimes committed with special cruelty against the Azerbaijani people by the Dashnak-Bolshevik armed groups operating under the mandate of the Baku Council in March-April 1918.

Then, tens of thousands of civilians were killed precisely due to ethnic and religious affiliation, settlements, cultural monuments, mosques and cemeteries were demolished and destroyed in Baku, as well as in other cities and districts belonging to the Baku province. This is one of the bloody pages of the ethnic cleansing policy gradually carried out by Armenian chauvinists against Azerbaijani people for the sake of "Great Armenia" illusion.

Mass murders launched in the Baku province were continued in Karabakh, Zangezur, Nakhchivan, Irevan, Goycha and other parts of Azerbaijan. Hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis become victims of Armenian chauvinists.

In the statement, the Parliament appeals to international organizations, world countries and their parliaments to recognize the genocide committed by Armenian chauvinists and their patrons against the Azerbaijani people, to help solve the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in the framework of the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan and the principles of international law to prevent genocides in the future.

The document was put up for vote and adopted.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 30

By Elchin Mehdiyev  Trend:

Azerbaijans Central Election Commission has registered 1,285 observers to monitor the April 11 presidential election, Chairman of Azerbaijan's Central Election Commission (CEC) Mazahir Panahov said at a meeting on March 30.

He noted that the Commission has registered 545 international observers and documents of several international observers are being viewed at the Commission and their number may increase.

Panahov noted that the election process will be observed by representatives of 51 international organizations.

The CEC chairman added that the international observers coming to Azerbaijan represent 52 countries.

As for local observers, the CEC chairman said 53,900 observers have been registered.
Details added (first version posted on 11:28)

Baku, Azerbaijan, March 30

Trend:

The Non-Aligned Movement Mid-Term Ministerial Conference will be held in Baku on April 5-6 under the theme of Promoting international peace and security for sustainable development, Azerbaijani Foreign Ministrys Spokesman Hikmat Hajiyev told Trend March 30.

Senior Officials meeting will be held on April 3-4 as a part of the preparation process for the Ministerial Conference, he said.

NAM participating states, representatives of observer states and international organizations, countries and institutions invited as special guests will take part in the Mid-Term Ministerial Conference.



NAM includes 120 states. Seventeen states and 10 international organizations have an observer status in NAM.

NAM Mid-Term Ministerial Conference, to be held in Baku, is expected to be attended by 800 participants. More than 150 representatives of local and foreign media have been registered to cover the event.

Azerbaijan is committed to the spirit and principles of the Non-Aligned Movement, Hajiyev said. The country pursues a foreign policy course aimed at developing partnerships with all states and pursues a balanced policy without joining any military bloc. Therefore, in 2011, the country decided to become a full-fledged member of the Non-Aligned Movement, where it had an observer status.

In 2019, the Republic of Azerbaijan will host the 18th Summit of the NAM and will be chairing NAM in 2019-2022, he said.

The 18th Summit of the NAM, to be held in Baku in 2019, has a great symbolic significance as well, he noted. Thus, 30 years after the Belgrade summit in 1989, the European continent will have an opportunity to again receive the heads of state and government of the countries participating in the NAM.

Hajiyev noted that the processes taking place on the European continent bring the importance of promoting the principles, goals and intentions of the NAM to the agenda in Europe as well.

The NAM established to prevent involvement of a number of states in the confrontation between the two military-political poles during the Cold War has now become one of the important multilateral mechanisms for regulating international relations, he added. Since its creation, the NAM has played a vital role in strengthening international peace and security. The NAM, the main goal of which is the maintenance of peace, security and development on the basis of respect for international law, is becoming increasingly relevant and the position agreed upon in the Movement itself plays a significant role in terms of influencing decision-making within the UN General Assembly.

Many of the most important achievements of the 20th century, such as the elimination of colonialism and the creation of a global social development agenda, are on a par with several important contributions to the world made by the NAM, Hajiyev said.

The role of the forum of cooperation among the NAM members is one of the main principles of the Movements creation and activities, he noted. Azerbaijans holding the NAM Mid-Term Ministerial Conference April 3-6 this year and the Baku summit in 2019, as well as the countrys chairmanship in the NAM in 2019-2022, will make significant contribution to the promotion of the goals and intentions of the NAM, strengthening of international peace, security and cooperation.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 31

Trend:

Azerbaijan today marks the centenary of the March 1918 Genocide of Azerbaijanis.

After the Republic of Azerbaijan regained its independence, it has become possible to renew the objective picture of the past history of Azerbaijani people. The truth, which for many years was kept back, is getting disclosed and misinterpreted events are getting their real assessment.

Numerous acts of genocide committed against Azerbaijani people, which for many years did not receive their deserved political and legal assessment, are one of the lesser known pages of the country's history.

The Gulustan and Turkmenchay agreements signed in 1813 and 1828 provided the legal ground for the partition of the nation of Azerbaijan and division of its historical lands. The occupation of the lands continued the national tragedy of Azerbaijan people. Within a short period of time, mass settlement of Armenians began on Azerbaijan's territories. The occupation of Azerbaijani territories became an integral part of the genocide.

Armenians moved to Irevan, Nakhchivan and Karabakh khanates and achieved establishing their administrative territorial unit of "Armenian region", despite their minority as compared to Azerbaijanis residing in the same area. This artificial separation provided political reasons for removal and annihilation of Azerbaijanis in their native lands.

This was followed by propaganda of the establishment of the "Greater Armenia".

In order to ensure the exculpation of the idea to establish this fictitious state in the territory of Azerbaijan, a wide-scale program, aimed at the falsification of the national history of Armenians, was started. The distortion of Azerbaijan's history and the whole Caucasus formed an integral part of this program.

Inspired by the idea of the establishment of "Greater Armenia", Armenian invaders, in 1905-1907, started to openly conduct hostile actions against the nation of Azerbaijan on a mass scale.

Armenians started their atrocious acts in Baku and further spread them through the rest of Azerbaijan and Azerbaijani settlements in the current territory of Armenia. Hundreds of settlements were razed to the ground and thousands of Azerbaijanis were savagely killed. The organizers of this savagery were creating an unfavorable image of Azerbaijani people, to hide the truth and prevent these happenings from correct political and legal evaluation.

Armenians got use of the World War I, Russian revolutions in February and October of 1917, and managed to accomplish their ideas under the plea of the Bolshevism.

The implementation of a cruel plan of cleansing the population of Azerbaijani provinces started with the Baku commune under the plea of fighting against counter-revolutionary elements in March of 1918.

Armenian crimes have secured themselves an everlasting place in the memory of Azerbaijani people. Thousands of civilians were murdered for the only reason of being Azerbaijanis.

Armenians destroyed dwelling houses and burnt people alive. Most of Baku was turned into ruins with national architectural sights, schools, hospitals, mosques and other monuments destroyed.

The genocide of Azerbaijanis was particularly cruel in Baku, Shamakhi, Guba, Karabakh, Zangazur, Nakhchivan, Lankaran and other regions. Many civilians in those areas were killed, the villages were burned to ashes and national monuments were razed to the ground.

After the establishment of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (ADR), the closest attention was paid to the March 1918 events. The Council of Ministers issued a decree on July 15, 1918, to establish an extraordinary committee for the investigation of those tragic events. The committee investigated the first stage of the March 1918 genocide; the brutal acts in Shamakhi and the cruel crimes in Irevan province.

A special department was established under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to notify the community about the truth. The ADR declared March 31 a mourning day twice - in 1919 and 1920. It was the first attempt in the history to give a political assessment to genocide against the people of Azerbaijan and to the occupation of the country's lands, which went on for over a century.

But the fall of the ADR did not allow this process to end.

In 1920, Armenians got use of the coming of the Soviet power into the South Caucasus, and declared the annexation of Zangazur and other regions of Azerbaijan to the Armenian Soviet Republic.

Armenians later started to utilize newer means to strengthen their policy, aimed at the deportation of Azerbaijani people from these territories. For this purpose, Armenians used the December 23, 1947 decree of the Soviet Council of Ministers "On removal of collective farmers and other Azerbaijani population from the Armenian Soviet Republic to the Kura-Araz lowlands of the Azerbaijan Soviet Republic". During 1948-1953, they finally achieved the purpose of mass deportation of Azerbaijani people from their historical lands, at the state level.

In early 1950s, Armenian nationalists with the help of their defenders began to conduct a cruel aggressive campaign against the nation of Azerbaijan.

In regular published books, magazines and newspapers in former Soviet Union, the attempts were made to prove that Azerbaijani national culture, classic heritage and architectural monuments belong to Armenians.

At the same time, Armenians strengthened their efforts to create a negative image about Azerbaijani people worldwide. In order to create the image of "a long-suffering oppressed Armenian nation", the Armenians deliberately distorted the events which took part in this region in the beginning of the 20th century. They called themselves the victims of the genocide, which they in reality conducted against Azerbaijani people.

Persecution of Azerbaijanis in Irevan, where the main population consisted of Azerbaijanis and from the other parts of Armenian SSR, led to their mass proscription.

Armenians violated the rights of Azerbaijani people, created the obstacles to get the education in native language and exerted a strong pressure upon them. The historical names of Azerbaijani villages were changed within a previously unforeseen process in the history of toponymy, when ancient names were replaced with the modern ones.

The trumped-up Armenian history was raised at the state political level in order to bring up younger generations of Armenians in the spirit of chauvinism.

Brought up in the manner of Azerbaijani literature and culture, which served to great humanism ideals, the young generation of Azerbaijanis was persecuted by the followers of Armenia's extremist ideology.

The claims against the Azerbaijani national spirit, honor and dignity, created an ideological platform for the political and military aggression. Azerbaijani genocide, which was not given a correct political and legal evaluation, led to distortion of historical facts in the Soviet media and misleading of the communities by Armenians. The leadership of Azerbaijan did not pay the sufficient attention to anti-Azerbaijani propaganda, which raised and intensified among the Soviet regime in mid-80s.

The deportation of hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis from their historical lands at the first stage of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in 1988, also did not receive a correct political assessment in Azerbaijan.

Nagorno-Karabakh was taken from Azerbaijan's control and annexed to the Armenian SSR at the basis of an unconstitutional decree of Armenian Republic and under assistance of the Moscow-led Special Administration Committee. This fact caused a serious dissatisfaction in Azerbaijan and forced it to begin important political activities. Even though the aggressive policy aimed at the occupation of the territories of Azerbaijan, was strongly criticized at numerous rallies held in Azerbaijan, the political leadership still did not give up its passive and contemplative position.

In January, 1990 the Soviet troops were brought to Baku in order to prevent further development of the national liberation movement. Hundreds of Azerbaijani people were killed and injured, as the result.

In February, 1992 Armenians accomplished unforeseen brutalities in Azerbaijan's small town of Khojaly. The Khojaly genocide saw thousands of Azerbaijanis murdered and taken as war prisoners. Khojaly itself was razed to the ground.

The adventurous policy of Armenian nationalists and separatists in Nagorno-Karabakh, forced over one million of Azerbaijani nationals from their homelands. Today, they live in tent camps. Roughly 20 percent of Azerbaijani territories were occupied by Armenian armed forces, and thousands of Azerbaijani citizens got injured and became martyrs.

The tragedies, which took place in Azerbaijan in the 19th-20th centuries and resulted in occupation of Azerbaijani lands, formed the consecutive stages of Armenia's purposeful policy against the Azerbaijani people. Efforts were made to give a political assessment to only one of those events - the March 1918 massacre. The successor of the ADR  the Republic of Azerbaijan - considers it a historical duty to ensure a logical continuation to unfulfilled political decrees and political evaluation to the genocide.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 30

Trend:

President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev has signed an order on the construction of a carpet weaving workshop in Kurdamir district.

Under the presidential order, two million manats were allocated from the 2018 state budget to Azerkhalcha Open Joint Stock Company.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 30

Trend:

March 31, commemorated in Azerbaijan as the Day of Genocide of Azerbaijanis, reflects the memory of the victims of the bloody massacre committed by Armenians against Azerbaijanis in March 1918, reads a statement issued by the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry on the Day of Genocide of Azerbaijanis.



"After the October Revolution in Russia in 1917, the Bolsheviks seized power in Baku and viewed the Armenian nationalist party of Dashnaksutyun as an ally to capitalize the situation on the ground," the statement reads. "Leader of the Russian Bolsheviks Vladimir Lenin appointed ethnic Armenian Stephan Shaumyan as Extraordinary Commissar of the Caucasus."



The statement notes that at the beginning of tragic March events, the Baku Soviet and Dashnaksutyun Party, under the pretext of combating counter-revolutionary elements, set about a plan to liquidate Azerbaijanis throughout the Baku Province.

"By the acknowledgements of Stephan Shaumyan, 6,000 armed soldiers of the Baku Soviet and 4,000 armed men from Dashnaksutyun Party took part in the massacre of Azerbaijani civilians. On March 30, Armenian-Bolshevik units subjected Baku to volley fire from ships. Then, armed Dashnaks attacked the homes of Azerbaijanis and carried out their merciless slaughter only because of their ethnicity. In this period, Armenian-Bolshevik units wiped out more than 20,000 Azerbaijani civilians in Baku," according to the statement.



"Genocide of the Azerbaijanis by the Dashnaks was not limited to Baku. Within a short period of time, Armenians committed massacres in Shamakhi, Guba, Irevan, Zangezur, Karabakh, Nakhchivan and Kars. As a result, more than 16,000 people were killed with utmost barbarity in the Guba province in the first five months of 1918; a total of 167 villages were destroyed, 35 of which do not exist to this day. Armenian forces also slaughtered local Jews in Guba," the statement reads.



The statement said the massacre of March 1918 was well prepared and ruthlessly implemented against Azerbaijanis based on deliberate policy of racial discrimination and ethnic cleansing.



"The March events of 1918 became the focus of attention following the proclamation of Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (ADR). The Extraordinary Investigation Commission (EIC) was established by the ADR on July 15, 1918 in order to investigate the violence against Azerbaijani population. An important trait of this commission was that it was comprised of the best lawyers of that time representing different nationalities  Russians, Jewish, Polish, Georgians and even Armenians. Based on this evidence, the EIC prepared 128 reports and drafts to file lawsuits against 194 persons accused of different crimes against a peaceful population. Thus, by mid-August, 24 people in Baku and about 100 people in Shamakhi were arrested. This was the first attempt to conduct a political and legal assessment of the policy of genocide perpetrated against the Azerbaijanis. However, the demise of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic made it impossible to complete this work," the statement reads.



The statement notes that after restoring its independence in 1991, Azerbaijan resumed political assessment of genocide of March 1918 and is committed to complete ADRs unfinished attempts to bring about justice. On the eve of the 80th anniversary of the tragedy, the then President Heydar Aliyev issued a Decree to announce March 31 as a national day of mourning. The Decree has become a key document for conducting a political and legal assessment of the genocidal acts committed against Azerbaijanis in the beginning of the 20th century.



The commemoration of the Day of Genocide of Azerbaijanis raises the awareness of the world community to the facts of massacre and ethnic cleansing of Azerbaijanis in the past and present, according to the statement.



"Since late 1980s, unleashing a war against Azerbaijan and occupying its territories, Armenia continued the policy reminiscent of March Massacre by carrying out ethnic cleansing of more than one million Azerbaijanis in Armenia and in the seized lands of Azerbaijan, committing numerous war crimes, crimes against humanity, and acts of genocide, including Khojaly Genocide of February 1992."



"While commemorating the 100th anniversary of March Massacre and remembering the innocent victims, we strongly condemn the deliberate and continued policy of genocide, crimes against humanity, racial discrimination and ethnic cleansing by Armenia against the people of Azerbaijan, and reiterate the importance of ceasing impunity of Armenia to prevent occurrence of such inhumane crimes," the statement reads.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 30

Trend:

Azerbaijans defense minister, Colonel General Zakir Hasanov has left for Turkeys Giresun to attend the trilateral meeting of defense ministers of Azerbaijan, Turkey and Georgia, Azerbaijans Defense Ministry told Trend.

The meeting of the defense ministers will take place on March 31.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 30

By Maksim Tsurkov  Trend:

Azerbaijan Caspian Shipping CJSC has suspended the traffic of vessels in the Caspian Sea due to storm warning, the companys Public Relations Officer Mehman Mehdiyev told Trend March 30.

According to Azerbaijans Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources, the weather will be unstable in Baku and Absheron peninsula and a strong (dangerous) north-west wind will blow. The wind speed will be 18-23 m/s, with gusts up to 25-30 m/s, and in some places it will reach 32-35 m/s.

Azerbaijan Caspian Shipping CJSC has taken a number of preventive measures in connection with a storm warning, Mehdiyev added.

The company temporarily suspended the traffic of vessels in order to ensure the safety. They are in shelters at anchor and are in standby mode. The traffic will be restored after improvement of weather condition, he said.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 30

By Maksim Tsurkov  Trend:

The Heydar Aliyev International Airport continues to operate in a regular mode despite strong winds in Baku and Absheron Peninsula, spokesman for Azerbaijan Airlines (AZAL) Pasha Kesamanski told Trend on March 30.

"No changes have been made in the timetable. We are observing the situation, and if something changes, it will be announced additionally. Presently, the work runs on schedule," Kesamanski said.

According to Azerbaijans Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources, the weather will be unstable in Baku and Absheron Peninsula, accompanied by strong (dangerous) northwest winds on March 30-31. The wind speed will be 18-23 m/s, with gusts up to 25-30 m/s, and in some places it will reach 32-35 m/s.
Details added (first version posted on 17:24)

Baku, Azerbaijan, March 30

Trend:

There is no journalist named Rahim Namazov, said Aflatun Amashov, chairman of the Press Council of Azerbaijan.

He was commenting on reports about Rahim Namazov, also known as Rahim Shakinskiy, who allegedly was a journalist shot by a gunman in Toulouse, France.

In the disseminated information, as well as in the French TV channel's report the issue is put in such a way that an Azerbaijani journalist was shot. As chairman of the Press Council and a man who has worked in the media for a long time, I declare that there is no journalist named Rahim Namazov. This name does not form any idea in the media community of the country. There are dozens of people who have received a journalist certificate in various ways for the purpose of obtaining asylum abroad. Apparently, Rahim Namazov is one of them. Therefore, I can say that an armed attack on this person in France cannot be connected with journalism activity, Amashov noted.

If the issue is investigated in a different aspect, then we will reach a more objective result. I ask media representatives, in particular, internet information resources, to take this into account, the chairman noted.

A gunman shot and gravely wounded Rahim Namazov and killed his wife near the southern French city of Toulouse on Friday.

Reportedly, Namazov has been living in Toulouse since 2010.

OSCE has also reacted to this incident and called for taking measures to identify and bring to justice the perpetrators and the sponsors of this heinous crime.
Baku Higher Oil School (BHOS) hold a special event dedicated to the Day of Genocide of Azerbaijanis, which is commemorated on March 31. It gathered the Higher School management, administration, teachers and students.

At the beginning, a moment of silence was observed to honor the memory of the victims of the tragic events in Azerbaijan in 1918.

Speaking at the meeting, BHOS Vice rector for Training and Science Ramiz Humbatov told about importance of raising the world communitys awareness of the 1918 March Genocide committed by Armenian nationalists. He reminded that these tragic events received a proper legal and political assessment and drew attention of the international community only after the national leader Heydar Aliyev signed the Decree On the genocide of Azerbaijanis on March 26, 1998.

PhD in History, associate professor of the Higher School Alemdar Shahverdiyev made a brief report about the genocide in March 1918. Then he gave the floor to BHOS students. Third-year Petroleum Engineering student Gurban Hasanov delivered a presentation entitled Causes and consequences of March Genocide. He told about crimes committed by Armenian armed forces led by Shaumyan, the leader of the Baku Commune, against thousands of Azerbaijani civilians in Baku and the suburbs. On 31 March and in the first days of April, Armenian-Dashnak units numbering 10,000 gunmen killed 12,000 Azerbaijani civilians many of whom were women and children, burned dwelling houses and destroyed historical monuments.

During his presentation entitled 1918 March Genocide and Historical Truth, fourth-year Petroleum Engineering student Rufat Abdullayev spoke about genocide of Azerbaijanis committed not only in Baku, but also in Shamakhi, Guba, Khachmaz, Lankaran, Hajiqabul, Salyan, Garabagh, Nakhchivan and other regions. During those bloody events, thousands of Azerbaijanis were tortured with unparalleled cruelty and brutally murdered in their homes, while hundreds of settlements were destroyed and burned.

At the end of the meeting, a video clip highlighting genocide of Azerbaijanis in March 1918 was shown.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 30

By Anvar Mammadov - Trend:

In the future, Azerbaijans PASHA Bank plans to render most of banking services to its individual customers online, a source in the bank told Trend.

Today, when the range of services offered in Azerbaijani banks is almost the same, the main emphasis is put on the quality of service provided, according to the source.

"We concentrated our efforts on optimizing and simplifying various procedures for our clients, which allows them to save time and visit bank branches as rarely as possible," the source said. "For example, if earlier, customers, who wanted to apply for a credit card, had to visit a financial institution several times (for filing an application, signing documents for a loan, getting a card), today PASHA Bank offers its clients to visit its branch only once to fill in several documents where the clients personal presence is determined by the regulators requirements."

This year, PASHA Bank has also started issuing ASAN Imza e-certificates in the "Individual Banking Service" branch and works on further integration of this service into the PASHA Bank mobile application, the source noted.

"In total, about 25 percent of the banks individual customers are active users of its mobile application," the source added. "In general, expansion of the functions of the PASHA Bank mobile application, in addition to convenience for customers, will allow us to concentrate on deeper digitalization of our services and increasing their quality, as defined by our Development Strategy for 2018-2020. In this regard, we constantly analyze the requests and appeals of our customers and monitor the quality of services."

The work on the new design of the PASHA Bank mobile application is also underway, according to the source.

"Taking into account the feedback of our customers, we decided to optimize the applications interface, make it intuitively more understandable and convenient from the perspective of the end users view," the source said. "In the near future, the updated application will be available to our customers."

The bank provides a wide range of services to individual customers who are holders of PASHA Banks payroll cards.

PASHA Bank has been operating in Azerbaijan since 2007.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 30

Trend:

The Ministry of Investment and Development of Kazakhstan will present the country's export strategy in April 2018, Kazakh news agency Kazinform reported.

"In April 2018, we plan to organize several events with participation of the diplomatic corps. One of them is the "Economic Diplomacy of Kazakhstan: from the East to the West" forum with participation of Prime Minister of Kazakhstan Bakytzhan Sagintayev and a briefing in conjunction with the Ministry of Investment and Development of Kazakhstan, JSC "NC" Kazakh Export "NPP RK" Atameken" for the presentation of the export strategy with the participation of a diplomatic business club that unites the leading business structures and businessmen of the country with the ambassadors of foreign countries," Kazakh Foreign Minister Kairat Abdrakhmanov said at a meeting of the Foreign Ministry's collegium.

He also noted that the Foreign Ministry is a traditional platform for meetings with foreign diplomatic corps accredited in the country and foreign business community.

"Their goal is briefings, exchange of opinions and practical recommendations on current issues and areas of development of Kazakhstan," he added.

The session of the board of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Kazakhstan was held in Astana on March 29, chaired by the head of the department.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 30

By Fikret Dolukhanov  Trend:

International universal exhibition Tajikistan-2018 was opened in Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan, on March 29, the press-center of the Tajik Chamber of Commerce and Industry stated.

According to the statement, the exhibition is held in the Kokhi Borbad state exhibition complex with participation of more than 55 enterprises and companies from the Russian Federation, Belarus, Uzbekistan, China, Pakistan, Afghanistan, South Korea, Indonesia and Tajikistan.

The exhibition event was organized by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Tajikistan with the support of the government of the republic.

The exhibition covers the priority areas of the country's development such as energy, transportation, road construction equipment, electrical equipment, food and light industry, building materials, engineering, medicine and pharmaceutics, agricultural machinery, jewelry production, tourism, handicrafts.

---

Twitter: @FDolukhanov
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 30

By Fikret Dolukhanov  Trend:

Uzbekistan is holding a discussion of the 2020 tax reform draft concept, the local media outlets reported.

The reports said Nika Gilauri, a member of Mikhail Saakashvilis economic team and former Prime Minister of Georgia, is also taking part in the discussion.

According to Gilauri, reforms in the tax sphere in Uzbekistan are extremely necessary, because their absence hinders development of the private sector and the whole economy.

Such tax reforms, which are now being offered in Uzbekistan, are some of the most advanced options I've ever seen. I believe there will be a very good effect for the country, for the economy, for private business, Gilauri said during a public discussion of the tax reform concept in Tashkent.

He went on to say that the number of taxes was reduced from 21 to 6 in Georgia after a similar reform. Tax collections grew tenfold and the economy quadrupled for eight years.

Uzbekistan considers the 2020 tax reform concept, which involves a radical transformation of the entire system of fiscal bodies. It should be submitted to the president and the government for review by April 1, 2018.

A new tax code is also planned to be drafted until July 1, 2018.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 30

By Anvar Mammadov  Trend:

The relations between Azerbaijan and Iran are reaching a qualitatively new level, Azerbaijani MP, Doctor of Economic Sciences Rufat Guliyev told Trend March 30.

Commenting on the visit of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to Azerbaijan, the MP stressed that both economic and political relations between the two countries continue to develop successfully.

"I would like to stress that the meetings between the two presidents have been held often over the past few years, he said. This, as well as other facts testify that the relations between Azerbaijan and Iran are developing."

"The two presidents recent meeting, business forum, held in Baku, as well as the documents signed between the two countries testify to the strengthening of both political and economic relations between our countries," Guliyev said.

Both sides are currently interested in further development of economic relations, Guliyev added.

"Although Azerbaijan is a small country, it is a more self-sufficient country financially and economically, he said. Today Azerbaijan invests in Iran to develop transport corridors, which is a very important factor."

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani paid a two-day official visit to Azerbaijan on March 28. A number of documents on cooperation were signed during the visit. President Rouhani also took part in the opening ceremony of an automobile plant in the Neftchala industrial zone.

At the end of 2017, the trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Iran amounted to $257 million, which is 16 percent more than in 2016. In January-February 2018, the trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Iran amounted to about $43 million.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 30

By Anvar Mammadova  Trend:

Azerbaijan plays a role of a peculiar bridge for Iran's access to the world financial markets, Azerbaijani MP Rufat Guliyev told Trend on March 30.

Presently, Iran is experiencing certain difficulties with entering the world financial markets and using international payment systems, he said.

"Iran had big financial and banking problems due to sanctions imposed particularly by the US and European countries. Just recently the country began to connect to international payment systems, but problems still exist," Guliyev said.

"Given Iran's problems related to connecting to international payment systems and entering the world financial markets, as well as the growth of trade between the two countries, Iran's interest in developing financial and banking relations with Azerbaijan, voiced by President Hassan Rouhani during his speech at the Azerbaijani-Iranian forum in Baku on March 29, is quite natural," Guliyev said.

The MP believes that Azerbaijan can significantly support Iran in entering the world financial markets.

"Azerbaijan has a big authority in the global financial market. We have already integrated into the world financial system, while Iran only has to do it. Therefore Azerbaijan plays a role of a bridge for Iran's access to international financial markets," Guliyev said.

In August 2016, Hassan Rouhani visited Baku, where the parties reached an agreement to expand financial cooperation and signed a number of treaties, including a Memorandum of Understanding stipulating the opening of mutual accounts.

The integration of card systems is also envisaged under the Memorandum of Understanding, that is, opportunities will be created for citizens of one country to use their bank cards in another country.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 30

By Azad Hasanli  Trend:

Participants of the Azerbaijani microfinance market expect to gain access to the loans of the Central Bank of Azerbaijan (CBA) in 2019-2020, representatives of the Azerbaijani non-bank credit organizations (NBCO) told Trend.

The non-bank credit organizations launched negotiations to gain access to the CBA loans two years ago.

During this period, some meetings were held, but so far no concrete solution has been achieved, representatives of the Azerbaijani NBCOs said.

The lack of progress in the negotiations is related to the CBA monetary policy which envisages the targeting of the money supply. Before the February devaluation of 2015, the money supply was 10.551 billion manats. However, later the money supply began to narrow and at the end of 2015 it reached 6,901.8 million manats. Over the subsequent two years, its volumes changed, alternately increased and decreased. But, ultimately, by the end of February 2018, the money supply reached 9,180.6 million manats.

"The CBA gradually weakened the policy of narrowing the money supply, a source in the Azerbaijan Micro-Finance Association (AMFA), which initiated these negotiations two years ago, told Trend. Earlier, the CBA did not want to give loans to non-bank credit organizations, because additional amounts of lending could prevent sterilization of the money supply.

But today it is planned to move from money supply targeting to inflation targeting, AMFA said. The CBA intends to move from money supply targeting to inflation targeting in the medium-term period. Afterwards, there will be no emphasis on narrowing of money supply. We will get hope for successful completion of the negotiations."

At the same time, even in case of success, NBCOs will be unable to receive the CBA funds directly.

One of sources in a big NBCO told Trend that non-bank credit organizations cannot open an account at the CBA to receive loans through it. Therefore, market participants offer the CBA to allocate loans to the banks, from which non-bank credit organizations will be able to acquire these loans at a symbolic margin.

"A new source of financing would help the NBCOs expand lending, especially in the regions, one of the market participants told Trend. Most of our clients are rural residents. Nevertheless, the negotiations with the CBA are not the only alternative for us. The market participants and AMFA constantly hold negotiations with potential investors both inside the country and abroad."

After two devaluations, problems with search for lending funds arose in the Azerbaijani microfinance market. On the one hand, the share of bad loans increased and NBCOs could not repay the loans in the same amount to issue new loans.

On the other hand, attraction of funds from foreign investors proved to be unprofitable for NBCOs due to the changes in the exchange rate of the manat against the dollar. At the same time, the microfinance market participants could purchase limited loans from the banks because of the high interest rate on them.

As a result, market participants are actively searching for new sources of financing. Besides the negotiations with the CBA, AMFA held various negotiations with potential foreign investors. Some market participants discussed the possibility of creating new funds to expand lending. At the same time, negotiations were conducted with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and other international financial organizations.

(1.7 manats = $1 on March 30)
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, March 30

By Huseyn Hasanov  Trend:

South Korean Prime Minister Lee Nak-yeon has met with Turkmen Deputy Prime Minister Rashid Meredov and discussed ways to strengthen economic and other relations between the two countries, Lees office said, the South Korean media reported.

The sides agreed that South Korea and Turkmenistan are good economic partners because their economies supplement each other, with South Korea being rich in technology and economic development experiences, and Turkmenistan rich in energy and resources.

Meredov said that South Korean companies operating in Turkmenistan contribute to the countrys economic development. He also expressed hope that cooperation between the two countries will expand beyond the energy and resources sector to other areas.

Lee said he hopes to see more South Korean firms in Turkmenistan so that they can contribute to the countrys economic development, job creation and business-to-business cooperation between the two countries.

It was earlier reported that Seoul hopes for partnership with Turkmenistan in such areas as development of gas fields, creation of petrochemical and gas infrastructure.

Meanwhile, Ashgabat and Seoul pay special attention to the transport sector in the context of development of transit and logistics infrastructure along the East-West and North-South routes, giving access to European and Middle Eastern markets.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 30

By Azad Hasanli - Trend:

Shareholders of Azerbaijans Unibank will discuss the appointment of chairman and members of the board May 24, said a message posted on the ESID (Electronic System for Information Disclosure) portal.

The shareholders will also discuss the appointment of the chairperson of the banks supervisory board and the deputies.

At the meeting, the shareholders will also consider approval of the banks financial report for 2017, election of members of the banks management bodies, election of the chairman and members of the audit committee, appointment of an external auditor for 2018 and approval of transactions of special significance.

Unibank has been operating in Azerbaijan since 2002. The bank was founded following the merger of two private commercial banks  MBANK and PROMTEXBANK.

Following the merger, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the German Investment and Development Corporation (DEG) became shareholders of Unibank with 18.5 and 25.99 percent, respectively.

Chairman of supervisory board Eldar Garibov holds 41.9 percent of shares, other natural and legal entities  3.8 and 7.6 percent, respectively.

The banks authorized capital last year amounted to 125.686 million manats and the total capital - 67.488 million manats.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 30

By Ilkin Shafiyev - Trend:

A commission on coordination of activity of business incubators will be established in Azerbaijan, Deputy Economy Minister Sahib Mammadov told reporters in Baku March 30.

He said that expanding the coverage of activity of the business incubators will serve the development of small and medium-sized enterprises in Azerbaijan.

On March 30, 18 Azerbaijani business incubators signed a memorandum of cooperation.

The signing of the document will contribute to the growth of the number of business incubators in Azerbaijan, expansion of the geography of their activities and the development of start-up projects, Mammadov said. This is one of the measures aimed at the development of small and medium-sized enterprises, increasing its role in Azerbaijans economy.

There are 20 business incubators in Azerbaijan.
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Baku, Azerbaijan, March 30

By Ali Mustafayev  Trend:

Representatives of KTZ Express JSC - a subsidiary of Kazakhstan Railways JSC participated in a seminar entitled "Doing business with India" in Almaty, the press service of Kazakhstan Railways said in a message.

The Vice-President of KTZ Express JSC Nurlan Igembayev informed about the possibilities of transport and logistics infrastructure of Kazakhstan, during the seminar.

According to Igembayev, a network of logistics centers for the consolidation and distribution of cargo flows develops favorable conditions for the implementation of investment projects involving the private sector.

Regular container services currently develop between the largest trade poles with the use of multimodal solutions and a comprehensive package of logistics services that ensure predictability and speed of delivery of goods.

"The creation and development of new promising corridors will give impetus to the development of logistics infrastructure and increase of trade turnover between Kazakhstan and India," Igembayev said.

The participants of the event also stressed the growing demand for North-South transport and the need to stimulate these cargo flows by improving the procedures for customs control and export-import operations. In their view, the experience of the China-Europe-China transit route can be applied in the development of the North-South corridor.

The seminar was organized by the Kazakh-Indian Business Council and the Association of the Indian Community in Kazakhstan (INCHAM) with the support of the Indian Embassy in Kazakhstan.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 30

By Rufiz Hafizoglu  Trend:

In February 2018, 145,349 citizens of the Central Asian countries, namely, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, visited Turkey, according to the report of the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

According to the report, 24,876 Kazakh citizens visited Turkey in February 2018, which is 6,499 people more compared to February 2017.

In February 2018, 0.83 percent accounted for the share of Kazakh citizens in a total number of foreign citizens who visited Turkey.

"According to the report, in February 2018, 31,883 Turkmen citizens visited Turkey, which is 5,572 people more compared to February 2017, the report said. In February 2018, 1.07 percent accounted for the share of Turkmen citizens in a total number of foreign citizens who visited Turkey."

In February 2018, 33,888 Uzbek citizens visited Turkey, which is 13,353 people more compared to February 2017. In February 2018, 1.13 percent accounted for the share of Uzbek citizens in a total number of foreign citizens who visited Turkey.

According to the report, in February 2018, 16,925 Kyrgyz citizens visited Turkey, which is 4,401 people more compared to February 2017. In February 2018, 0.57 percent accounted for the share of Kyrgyz citizens in a total number of foreign citizens who visited Turkey.

"In February 2018, 5,894 Tajik citizens visited Turkey, which is 2,097 people more compared to February 2017, the report said. In February 2018, 0.2 percent accounted for the share of Tajik citizens in a total number of foreign citizens who visited Turkey."

According to the report, in February 2018, 1.527 million foreign tourists visited Turkey.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 30

By Leman Zeynalova  Trend:

The work on construction of the Trans Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) to Eskisehir in Turkey is 99 percent complete.

The announcement was made during the general meeting of TANAP Management Board in Ankara, said a message from Azerbaijans state oil company SOCAR.

The work on TANAPs section from Eskisehir to the Greek border is 80 percent complete.

In general the project is more than 93 percent complete. Currently, all the work is carried out in accordance with the schedule with high accuracy and quality, said the message.

TANAP Board head, president of SOCAR Rovnag Abdullayev said during the meeting that six billion cubic meters of gas per year will start to be exported to Turkey via TANAP in the second half of 2018.

TANAP project envisages transportation of gas from Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz field to the western borders of Turkey. The gas will be delivered to Turkey in 2018 and after completion of the Trans Adriatic Pipeline's construction the gas will be delivered to Europe in early 2020.

The length of TANAP is 1,850 kilometers with an initial capacity of 16 billion cubic meters of gas. Around six billion cubic meters of this gas is meant to be delivered to Turkey, with the remaining volume to be supplied to Europe.

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Baku, Azerbaijan, March 30

By Leman Zeynalova  Trend:

There is a potential for increased engagement of the US in Azerbaijans energy sector, said the US Ambassador to Azerbaijan Robert Cekuta in an interview with the Voice of America.

He noted that there are US companies that are involved in the energy sector.

I think the important point, and this has been a basic feature of our engagement with Azerbaijan for over two decades, has been seeing Azerbaijans potential as an energy supplier, and also recognizing the geostrategic and geopolitical realities as well as the geopolitical realities so that oil and gas can move out of Azerbaijan in such a way that those supplies will not be inhibited by other powers, said the envoy.

Cekuta pointed out that Azerbaijans ability to produce oil and gas and to move it out securely to world markets is a very important contribution to European and global energy security, as well as to overall global security.

He highlighted the renewal of the production sharing agreement (PSA) for development of Azerbaijans Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli field, which involves US companies as well.

Moreover, Cekuta noted that great progress being realized on the Southern Gas Corridor, which envisages transportation of Azerbaijani gas to Europe.

Further, he noted that the completion of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars Railroad has also had a huge impact in terms of opening up Central Asia, in terms of access to places like Afghanistan and increasing, again, the connections between the two countries.

I also keep seeing the potential for increased engagement in the energy sector, particularly bringing in new US technologies to help boost Azerbaijans oil and gas production, added Cekuta.

The ambassador said he believes that from the economic aspect the relationship between US and Azerbaijan is good.

Weve seen, and this is very important for the US government, weve seen over $3 billion in Boeing sales. Weve seen the sale of a second Azercosmos satellite with over $200 million in US input. All of these things are important. They bring the two countries together, he added.

The Southern Gas Corridor is one of the priority projects for the EU and provides for the transportation of 10 billion cubic meters of Azerbaijani gas from the Caspian region through Georgia and Turkey to Europe.

At an initial stage, the gas to be produced as part of the Stage 2 of development of Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz field is considered as the main source for the Southern Gas Corridor projects. Other sources can also connect to this project at a later stage.

As part of the Shah Deniz Stage 2, the gas will be exported to Turkey and European markets by expanding the South Caucasus Pipeline and the construction of Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) and Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP).

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Follow the author on Twitter: @Lyaman_Zeyn
Details added (first version posted on 12:13)

Baku, Azerbaijan, March 30

By Maksim Tsurkov  Trend:

Azneft Production Union of Azerbaijans state oil company SOCAR has evacuated more than 1,000 workers from offshore facilities in the Caspian Sea due to a storm warning, Ibrahim Ahmadov, SOCAR Public Relations Officer, told Trend March 30.

He said Azneft sent messages to all offshore fields with the aim of strengthening security measures due to a strong wind expected on March 30 and 31, the speed of which in the open sea will sometimes exceed 30 m/s.

Awareness-raising activities were carried out at all sites, work in the open air and movement of transport and staff on trestles and platforms were limited as much as possible, instructions were given to bring buildings and installations into a safe state, and duty schedule was organized, Ahmadov said.

Only the required number of duty officers was left at offshore oil and gas production facilities. More than 1,000 workers were evacuated from offshore platforms by ships and helicopters. Meanwhile, as a response to possible emergencies, work is carried out with other organizations and structures, and the situation is under constant control, he added.

According to Azerbaijans Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources, weather will be unstable in Baku and Absheron Peninsula, accompanied by strong (dangerous) north-west winds. The wind speed will be 18-23 m/s, with gusts up to 25-30 m/s, and in some places it will reach 32-35 m/s.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 30

By Ilkin Shafiyev  Trend:

The memorandum of understanding between Azerbaijan and Iran on the joint development of relevant blocks in the Caspian Sea will allow the countries to greatly expand cooperation in the oil and gas sector, Azerbaijani Deputy Minister of Economy Sahil Babayev told Trend.

He added that the document opens new prospects for joint development of fields.

The National Iranian Oil Company has a 10-percent-share in Shah Deniz project. Up till now, Iran has invested about $3 billion in Azerbaijans oil and gas sector. The signed memorandum will allow working on the development of new fields," Babayev said.

The memorandum of understanding on the joint development of relevant blocks in the Caspian Sea was signed during Iranian President Hassan Rouhanis visit to Azerbaijan.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 30

By Huseyn Valiyev  Trend:

A single test center has been created at the Azerbaijan State Oil and Industry University with the support of Microsoft Azerbaijan and assistance of the Education Ministry for students of Azerbaijan's educational institutions, Microsoft Azerbaijan told Trend.

In the test center, students of technical faculties of various universities will be able to take IT exams at favorable conditions and prices, the company said. That is, they wont have to pay huge amount of money for the exams, only about $10-$15.

Earlier, the company said that Microsoft Imagine Academy will be opened in all other universities of Azerbaijan, where there are technical faculties. Via the Microsoft Imagine Academy, universities will be sending their students to the exams in the test center.

Presently, Microsoft Imagine Academy operates in many universities of Azerbaijan. Microsoft provides up-to-date curricula and resources to train and certify students and educators on Microsoft products and technologies. Students gain valuable skills for college and career that will help them succeed in an increasingly digital global economy.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @h_veliyev
Bakcell, the First Mobile Operator and Leading Mobile Internet Provider of Azerbaijan became the official supporter of the weekly Global Goals programme, produced by the ASAN Radio and the United Nations Office in Azerbaijan.

The main purpose of this radio-programme is to increase the awareness about the Sustainable Development Goals, provide information about the implemented projects to achieve the 2030 Agenda, as well as on duties and responsibilities of the various institutions and citizens with regard to ensuring the sustainability.

World leaders adopted the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in September 2015 mobilizing efforts to end all forms of poverty, fight inequalities and tackle climate change, while ensuring that no one is left behind.

Within the frames of this cooperation, ASAN Radio (100 FM) will broadcast four programmes with support of Bakcell during the month of April.

The next radio programme dedicated to the Sustainable Development Goals will be aired on ASAN Radio at 18:20, 02 April 2018. In the course of this broadcast, Arzu Jafarli, Communications and External Relations Analyst for UNDP in Azerbaijan, Mushfiq Alasgarli, deputy chairman of the Press Council and journalist Ulkar Gurbanzade, training coordinator of Internews Azerbaijan Public Union, will discuss the role of media in promoting the sustainable development goals.

The shows reruns will be aired on 4th and 6th of April at 11:05 and 14:05 respectively.

It should also be noted that UNDP for the first time in Azerbaijan had conducted a training course on Journalism and Sustainable Development Goals. The purpose of the event was to develop journalistic storytelling skills and capacities among local writers, bloggers, videographers and people engaged in other creative occupations to boost the media exposure and coverage of the SDGs.

Being one of the largest investors of the non-oil sector of Azerbaijan, Bakcell contributes largely to the sustainable development of various spheres by means of own Corporate Social Responsibility program, socially important and innovative projects. In line with this activity Bakcell has supported the Global Goals programme, dedicated to promotion of the Sustainable Development Goals.

About Bakcell

Bakcell, The First Mobile Operator and the Leading Mobile Internet Provider of Azerbaijan, offers a variety of products for modern mobile communications customers. Bakcell provides class leading 3G and 4G mobile internet experience in the country under the Su[email protected] brand name.

As one of the largest national non-oil investors, Bakcell today continues making large investments in the economy of Azerbaijan through its investments in state-of-the-art telecommunication technology and its people who service our customers.

For more information about Bakcell products and services, please visit www.bakcell.com or call 555. For press releases please see www.bakcell.com/az/news (or www.bakcell.com/en/news for press releases in English).

If you are not a Bakcell subscriber, but wish to find out about Bakcell and its services, please call 012 498 89 89
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 30

Trend:

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev signed an order approving the draft program of economic cooperation between the governments of Russia and Kyrgyzstan in 2018-2021, Kyrgyz news agency Kabar reported on March 30.

The relevant document was published on the Russian government's website on Friday.

"The Russian side approved the draft program of 2018-2021 economic cooperation between the governments of the Russian Federation and the Kyrgyz Republic," the order's explanatory note said.

The draft program determines main goals and tasks for development of economic cooperation between the countries and mechanism for their implementation, Russian news agency TASS reported.

The order was submitted by the Ministry of Economic Development of Russia following the 19th meeting of the Intergovernmental Russian-Kyrgyz Commission for Trade, Economic, Scientific, Technical and Humanitarian Cooperation, held on Feb. 17, 2017.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 30

By Ali Mustafayev  Trend:

President of Kyrgyzstan Sooronbai Jeenbekov received credentials from the ambassadors of Germany, Turkey and Kazakhstan, press service of the Kyrgyz president said in a message.

Ambassadors of Germany Monica Iversen, Turkey engiz Kamil Firat, and Kazakhstan Karim Kokrekbayev assured the president of their readiness to contribute to deepening friendly relations between their countries and Kyrgyzstan.

"After gaining independence, Kyrgyzstan moved from a planned economy to a market economy. The years of independence were not easy, but our friends came to our aid. During these years, Germany has provided invaluable assistance to Kyrgyzstan. I hope the relations between our countries will move to a new level of cooperation," Jeenbekov told Monica Iversen.

Kyrgyz president added that he will visit Turkey in near future, which is expected to give impetus to bilateral cooperation between the countries.

"During my official visit to Turkey, I will meet with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and we will discuss cooperation issues on the agenda. I hope the relations between our countries will be further strengthened," Jeenbekov stressed.

In the course of the conversation with Kazakhstan's ambassador Karim Kokrekbaev, Jeenbekov recalled that he briefly visited Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, on an official visit.

"During these visits, we signed important documents, discussed topical issues. I am very pleased with your appointment as ambassador in Kyrgyzstan. I am sure that our relations will only deepen in the future, because there are no closer peoples than the Kyrgyz and the Kazakhs," the Kyrgyz president said.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 30

Trend:

The law of the Republic of Tajikistan "On the Safety of Hydraulic Structures" is being amended, Tajik media reported citing the press service of the Tajik parliament on March 30.

The Council of Majlisi Namoyandagon (lower house of parliament) of Tajikistan will consider new amendments at the next meeting, which will be held on April 2, 2018 in Dushanbe.

According to the information, the agenda of the meeting of the Council includes three issues.

All issues are related to introduction of changes in a number of laws and codes of Tajikistan.

In particular, the members of parliament are to consider amendments to the law "On the Safety of Hydraulic Structures", the Code of Administrative Offenses and the Processual Code of Administrative Offenses.
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, March 30

By Huseyn Hasanov  Trend:

The work of credit institutions in Turkmenistan isnt properly organized, President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov said at a government meeting, the Neutral Turkmenistan newspaper reported March 30.

For the shortcomings he reprimanded Meylisgeldi Hajyev, chairman of the state commercial bank Turkmenistan, and Myrat Arabov, chairman of the Halk Bank state commercial bank.

All Turkmen commercial banks are credit and financial institutions. In particular, Halk Bank provides credit services as part of state projects for development of small and medium-sized enterprises.
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, March 30

By Huseyn Hasanov  Trend:

Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, addressing a government meeting, said that a meeting of the National Council should be held on the eve of Independence Day, marked on Sept. 27, the Turkmenistan TV channel reported.

In early October 2017, a decision was made to transform and rename the Council of Elders into the National Council.

The Council of Elders was serving exclusively as an advisory body. From 1992 to 2008, it was the highest representative body of Turkmenistan.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 30

By Fikret Dolukhanov  Trend:

Foreign minister of Uzbekistan Abdulaziz Kamilov and Head of the United Nations Regional Center for Preventive Diplomacy for Central Asia (UNRCCA) Natalia Gherman discussed solution of transborder water issues in Central Asia, as well as UNRCCA convention projects on use of water resources of Amudarya and Syrdarya rivers, the press office of the Uzbek Foreign Ministry said in its statement on March 30.

According to the statement, the discussion was held within the framework of meeting between Kamilov and Gherman in Tashkent on March 30, 2018.

Natalia Gherman, who earlier participated in the UNs delegation to the Tashkent international conference on Afghanistan Peace Process, Security Cooperation and Regional Interaction, underlined the importance of the Tashkent forum for the whole region.

She said that unanimous adoption of the final declaration of the conference reflects support for Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyevs initiative on Afghan settlement aimed at the long perspective.

During the meeting the sides exchanged views on actual topics of cooperation between Uzbekistan and UNRCCA.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 30

By Gazenfer Hamidov  Trend:

While Iran's industry ministry has earlier announced that the countyr's mineral exports increased by 60 percent, Trade Promotion Organization of Iran (TPOI) put the figure at 18 percent.

Iran exported 25 million tons of minerals, worth $1.449 billion during the first 11 months of the last fiscal year (March 20, 2017-Feb. 20, 2018), the TPOI said in its latest monthly report.

The mineral sector exports registered a rise by 18 percent in terms of value and a fall by 7 percent in terms of volume, year-on-year, according to TPOI.

Meanwhile the industry ministrys report says that Iran exported $1.937 billion worth of mineral products during the 11-month period, registering a 60.3 percent increase year-on-year. However, the volume of the exports (26.021 million tons) was 0.7 percent less compared to the 11-month period of the preceding year, according to the ministry.

Mineral sector exports isn't the only field, where the two official bodies have published contradictory figures.

The TPOI put the agriculture sector exports at 3.814 million tons, $3.546 billion, 10 and 4 percent less in terms of volume and value respectively, year-on-year.

In industry ministry report agricultural products stood at 3.802 million tons, 7.3 percent less in comparison to the 11-month period of the preceding year.

The value of Irans agricultural exports accounted to $2.973 billion or 3.8 percent less, year on year, according to the ministry data.

Iran exported 15.796 million tons of gas condensate, worth $6.33 billion in the 11-month period, which, compared to the same period last year, indicates a 7.4 percent decrease in volume and 5.4 percent in value.

The Islamic Republic also exported $421 million worth of hand-made carpets and handicrafts in the 11-month period, 19 percent more year-on-year, according to TPOI.

Meanwhile according to the industry ministry data, Iran exported $406 million worth of hand-made carpets and handicrafts in the period (17.2 percent increase).

The industry sector products maintained their largest share among Irans non-oil exports during the first 11 months of the last fiscal year.

The country exported $15.7 billion worth of industrial products during the period, 21 percent more year-on-year.

The Islamic Republic exported 37.85 million tons of industrial products, indicating a rise by 23 percent compared to the same period of the preceding year.

The petrochemical products ranked second among Irans non-oil exports in the period. During the 11-month period, the value of Irans petrochemical exports decreased by 4.02 percent to $14.222 billion.

Meanwhile the volume of petrochemical exports registered a fall by 6.4 percent to 35.448 million tons in the same span of time, according to the TPOI.

In the 11-month period, Irans total non-oil exports, which include gas condensate and natural gas as well, stood at $41.69 billion, which indicates a 5 percent rise.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 30

By Farhad Daneshvar  Trend:

An ATA Airlines plane was forced to make an emergency landing on Thursday evening at an airport in the northwestern city of Tabriz after one of its tires blew during takeoff from Kish Island in southern Iran, authorities said.

The pilot managed to hit the ground safely after the airport officials in Tabriz City took the required measures, local media reported.

According to the authorities, the incident left no injuries as the travelers deplaned safely following the emergency landing.

A single runway was closed off for an hour and a half due to the incident, but no other airport operations were affected, the airport officials said.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 30

By Fikret Dolukhanov  Trend:

Yerevan and Zangazur are truly historical Azerbaijani lands, like Samtskhe-Javakheti is a Georgian land, the Georgian online newspaper Kavkaz Plus said in comments on newly-appointed Armenian Ambassador to Georgia Ruben Sadoyan's visit to the Samtskhe-Javakheti region, where he made absolutely undiplomatic and offensive statements regarding historical facts, of which the Azerbaijani president has earlier reminded.

"The lands of modern Armenia were a part of such historical states as the Azerbaijani Irevan Khanate, the Nakhchivan Khanate and the Karabakh Khanate. The far north of the present-day Armenia was first a part of the unified Georgia, and then the Georgian Kartli Kingdom," according to the online newspaper.

Kavkaz Plus reminds that Armenians began to migrate to the regions of Samtskhe-Javakheti, Irevan and Zangazur several centuries ago, and eventually began to declare these lands, as well as cultural monuments located there as "primordially Armenian".

"Later Armenians appeared in Georgian Abkhazia. And today they, expelling the indigenous Georgian population, have turned into a major ethnic group in this separatist territory and exceed the number of Abkhazians there," it says.

It turns out that the Armenian nationalists profess aggressive insanity against Georgia, and the Georgian state suffers from this, Kavkaz Plus added.

Georgia, says the report, faced the problem of accommodating more than 300,000 refugees expelled by Armenians from Abkhazia, just as Azerbaijan faced the problem of more than one million refugees from the Armenian-occupied Karabakh and over 200,000 Azerbaijanis from the territories of the Armenian SSR, including Yerevan and Zangazur.

Armenia not only does not sympathize with the Georgian refugees from Abkhazia, it regularly votes at the UN General Assembly against their return to their homes. Moreover, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan invited representatives of the Sukhumi separatist regime and met with them in the Azerbaijani territories occupied by Armenia, the report says.

Kavkaz Plus reminds that Armenians, appropriating all the Georgian churches and monasteries in the north of Armenia to themselves without exception, claim for other 465 churches in the territory of Georgia, and this despite the fact that Armenians barbarously destroyed all the monuments of Azerbaijani culture in the historical Azerbaijani lands  Yerevan and Zangazur.

"Isn't it too much for Ambassador Ruben Sadoyan, who acts in Georgias territory as a "master" and, in fact, provokes separatist sentiments among the Armenians living in Georgia by his trips and speeches?" asks Kavkaz Plus.

Georgias Samtskhe-Javakheti region turned into a stumbling block between Armenia and Georgia long ago. Attention is not paid to the Javakheti issue only thanks to Georgias balanced foreign policy and Armenias fear to lose Georgia as a country through which it has access to Russia.

However, Armenia has territorial claims to virtually all its neighbors. Armenians of Samtskhe-Javakheti region like to talk about the "policy of repression", "ancient Armenian origin" of the toponym and demand autonomy. All these sentiments are still to a certain extent restrained by Armenia's reluctance to spoil relations with Georgia.

However, the Javakheti issue has never completely disappeared. In the minds of many Armenians and pro-Armenian circles it is associated and closely intertwined with the Karabakh issue. So, the issue of allocating financial assistance to Armenia, the separatist regime in Nagorno-Karabakh and the Armenians in Samtskhe-Javakheti has been discussed at the recent hearings in the US Congress.

This may seem strange to a person not familiar with the situation, because USAID covers each of the countries of the South Caucasus region separately. Samtskhe-Javakheti is a part of Georgia, and not even an autonomous entity. Why would the legislature of a third country consider this region as taken separately from the country it belongs to?

But the recent promiscuous stance of the US Congress regarding the opinions voiced there has been shocking. This is while some members of the Congress have actually turned into emissaries of foreign states, in this case of Armenia. Naturally, the call for assistance to Samtskhe-Javakheti is not an initiative of the US congressmen, but of their sponsors and inspirers.

Raising such a topic in the US Congress is an attempt by Armenia and the Armenian diaspora using unscrupulous congressmen to lay the foundation for Washington's position favoring the Armenian interests.

It turns out that Armenia, while trying not to escalate the Samtskhe-Javakheti issue, still doesnt forget about it, and constantly, in one way or another, keeps its relevance. The Karabakh issue has been simmering for years in the same way, in order to break out at the first opportunity in the form of undisguised aggressive separatism.

It is not so hard to guess why Armenia constantly reminds about the Samtskhe-Javakheti issue, and Georgia should think about it first of all. In Azerbaijan, the Samtskhe-Javakheti issue seems painfully familiar to many people.
The Mufti of Lebanon, Sheikh Abdul Latif Fayez Durian, asserted his condemnation of the Houthi missile attacks on the villages and cities of Saudi Arabia, Al Arabia reported.

"We are committed to support security in Saudi Arabia, and we condemn the Houthi terrorist missile attacks that have sought to harm the cities, towns and villages of Saudi Arabia," he said.

The Mufti stressed that "the security of Saudi Arabia means the security for every Arab and every Muslim."

"Muslims in Lebanon have no other choice but to be with Saudi Arabia," he said.

The Security Council on Wednesday strongly condemned Houthi missile attacks on Saudi Arabia.

The Security Council affirmed that the ballistic missiles launched by the Houthi militias threaten the security of the region and expressed the concern that the militias announced their intention to target Saudi Arabia and other countries.

It urged that all member States implement fully the arms embargo as required by Security Council resolutions, including resolution 2216.

The security Council members expressed their deep concern over the violation of the embargo.

Saudi Arabia's air defense forces blocked 104 ballistic missiles fired by the Iran-backed Houthi militias against the kingdom since the dawn of June 6, 2015 when a Scud missile was destroyed by the Saudi Patriot defense system, in addition to seven ballistic missiles which were launched this week on a number of Saudi cities.

The missiles were monitored and intercepted while in air.
President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday instructed the Permanent Observer of Palestine to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, to take the necessary immediate procedures to request international protection to the people of Palestine, WAFA reports.

Mansour told WAFA that at the instructions of President Abbas, Palestines permanent mission to the UN approached the UN Security Council to uphold its responsibilities and provide protection to the Palestinian people in the face of the Israeli army brutality.

Over 15 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces and more than 1,500 others injured on the Great March of Return on Friday at many locations on Gaza-Israel border.
Chinas finance ministry said on Friday it has introduced new tax breaks and exemptions for firms making semiconductors, seeking to limit dependence on foreign chips amid trade tensions with the United States over technology transfers, Reuters reports.

The move comes as the United States is considering imposing tariffs on $50 billion worth of Chinese exports, citing discriminatory trade practices in high-tech sectors, including semiconductors.

Chipmakers will be exempt from corporate taxes for two to five years followed by partial deductions, the ministry said in a notice posted on its website on Friday.

The exemptions cover a range of products, from very basic to cutting-edge chips.

The new rules are effective from Jan. 1, 2018.

China relies heavily on foreign semiconductors, which make up one of its largest import categories by value. It is seeking to overtake foreign rivals and become a top semiconductor producer by 2030, according to its own roadmap.

Chinas ambitions have riled overseas regulators however, who have blocked several acquisition attempts by Chinese firms looking to speed up development through technology transfers.

U.S. President Donald Trumps administration is requesting China purchase more semiconductors from the United States as part of a plan to avoid proposed tariffs and a potential trade war, Reuters reported on Tuesday.

According to Fridays notice, companies producing high-end chips using 65 nanometer technology or smaller with an investment of over 15 billion yuan ($2.39 billion) will be exempt from corporate taxes for five years. Companies producing chips using 130 nanometer technology or smaller will be tax exempt for two years.
Russias Tecmash Research and Production Group has continued the experimental design work jointly with China to develop a reconnaissance drone launched inside a projectile of the Smerch multiple launch rocket system, Tecmash Deputy CEO Alexander Kochkin said at the ArmHiTec-2018 exhibition on Friday, TASS reported.

As the Splav Research and Production Association (part of Tecmash) reported in February 2017, the company had developed a project on its own initiative to create an unmanned aerial vehicle launched inside a projectile of the Smerch MLRS. The drone is designed to reconnoiter targets and can hover at an altitude of 500 m for 20 minutes. Splav said at the time it expected a prospective customer to show interest in the project soon.

While Russias Defense Ministry showed no interest in the project so far, China got interested in it, Kochkin said.

"Joint experimental design work with the Chinese side is underway," he said.
The Council of Europe (CoE) Congress of Local and Regional Authorities has released a report on the municipal elections in Georgia held on October 21, 2017, Agenda reports.

The Congress was overall satisfied with the calm, uneventful and well-administered Election Day in most of the polling stations visited by the delegation, following a competitive campaign where democratic values were respected by and large.

"The vote followed a mainly peaceful and competitive electoral campaign during which democratic values and freedoms were generally respected and candidates were able to campaign freely. An increasingly professional media environment fostered a more vivid political debate, the report reads.

It further says "while, in general, there is a legal framework conducive to conducting elections in line with international standards there is room for progress with regard to more coherent regulations of party and campaign financing and a genuine system of electoral dispute resolution.

From the Congress perspective, there are some issues that need to be improved, including:

Voters lists: Only those who are permanently residing in a specific municipality to cast a ballot in local elections.

Independent candidates should have an increased timeline for collecting signatures. Currently parties have 60 days, while independent candidates - only 10.

Misuse of administrative resources;

Grassroots democracy: Georgia should strengthen the capacities of local authorities and to continue decentralisation also in terms of financial devolution.

Presenting the report at the 34th biannual session of the Congress in Strasbourg, France yesterday, the United Kingdoms Stewart Dickson said the Congress is ready to help and assist its Georgian colleagues.

"And we thank them for the constructive way in which they have engaged through us at all times, he said hoping the recommendations would be useful to improve future elections in Georgia.

Upon invitation by the Georgian authorities, the Congress deployed a high-level Electoral Assessment Mission in order to evaluate the municipal elections.

Georgia conducted municipal elections for 2017 on October 21, where the country elected hundreds of local authorities, including city mayors and members of city councils.

The run-off elections were followed as in six election districts where none of the candidates could receive more than 50 percent of mandatory votes in the October 21 municipal elections.
The Czech authorities made a decision to extradite to the United States Russian national Yevgeny Nikulin, arrested in Prague in 2016 upon the request from Washington, TASS with reference to the Czech weekly Respekt announced on Friday.

According to the weekly, the extradition of the Russian citizen took place on Thursday night.

Reports on the Czech radio stations confirmed that Nikulin was sent to the United States on Thursday night and added that the Russian was flown on a specially provided aircraft from the US Department of Justice.

The press service of the Czech Foreign Ministry neither confirmed nor denied as of yet the reports on the extradition of the Russian national to the United States.

The Czech Republics authorities arrested Yevgeny Nikulin in the countrys capital on October 5, 2016 in cooperation with the US Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI). A court in the US state of California charges Nikulin with hacking a number of US-based web sources.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 30

By Rufiz Hafizoglu  Trend:

France has lost its objectivity on the Syrian issue, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said, Turkish media reported on March 30.

He was commenting on the French presidents statement that Paris may act as a mediator between Ankara and militants of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) in Syria.

Cavusoglu added that France is also not informed about the developments.

The Turkish foreign minister stressed that Turkey does not negotiate and not intends to negotiate with terrorists.

On Jan. 20, the Turkish Armed Forces, together with the Free Syrian Army, launched the Operation Olive Branch in Afrin, Syria.

On Aug. 24, 2016, Turkish Armed Forces, with the support of the Syrian opposition, launched the Euphrates Shield Operation against the IS militants and liberated the city of Jarabulus as well as the city of Al-Bab in northern Syria.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
A British soldier has been killed in a bomb blast in Syria, the Ministry of Defence has confirmed, Sky News reports.

The soldier is understood to be a member of the Special Forces.

A MOD spokesperson said: "It is with regret that we must confirm that a member of the UK Armed Forces was killed by an improvised explosive device in Syria yesterday.

"The individual was embedded with US forces on a counter-Daesh operation when the incident occurred.

"The family has been notified and our thoughts are with them at this difficult time.

"We cannot confirm any further details at this stage."

The roadside bomb in northern Syria killed two coalition personnel, including an American, and wounded five others.

The US military did not confirm the location of the blast, but it came soon after one was reported in Manbij by a Syrian official.
The price cut comes less than a month after the company raised its prices in Israel, Globes reports.

One month after Philip Morris notified retailers that it was raising the prices of its cigarettes and rolling tobacco, the company has reversed its decision.

The result will be a cut in tobacco prices. Marlboro rolling tobacco will cost NIS 7 less, after the price rose by NIS 2 a month ago. ML and Next cigarettes will cost NIS 1 less (the price was not raised in the previous list), while the price of L&M Loft will now fall by NIS 2, after being raised by NIS 1 a month ago.

Early this month, retailers were notified that prices of the company's cigarettes would be increased immediately. Philip Morris cited "commercial considerations," which is also the explanation provided for the current price cuts after such a short time: "Lowering the prices of some of the brands was due to the company's commercial considerations."

The current price of a pack of Marlboro Gold and Marlboro Red cigarettes is NIS 35-36 (according to the MySupermarket website), and a packet of 10 packs costs NIS 350. A pack of Parliament cigarettes costs NIS 38.50, as of now, and Next rolling tobacco costs NIS 42.50.

Philip Morris owns 58% of tobacco brands activity in Israel, followed by Globrands with 31.5%, and Dubek with 10.4%. As of 2017, the market in Israel was estimated at 5.8 billion cigarettes ("sticks").

The rolling tobacco market (a category that has been gaining ground) presents a different picture. Dubek has a 39% share of this market, followed by Philip Morris (33%) and Globrands (27.5%). The market was estimated at 760 tons as of 2017.

Revenue from the excise tax on cigarettes totals NIS 6 billion a year. Over 80% of the prices of cigarettes consists of taxes paid to the state: 65.5% excise tax and 17% VAT.

Advertisements of tobacco products and cigarettes were banned last December.
The Finance Ministry says Israel's economic achievements have been despite the Bank of Israel. Karnit Flug says the Ministry did not read their report properly, Globes reports.

The Bank of Israel yesterday published its annual report about the Israeli economy and although it depicted economic performance in a very positive light matters quickly degenerated into an exchange of insults between the Ministry of Finance and the Bank of Israel.

The Ministry of Finance responded to the report by saying that Israel's economic achievements are "despite the Bank of Israel's obstacles" The Ministry of Finance added, "The Ministry succeeded in lowering housing prices after 12 years, the reduce taxes, and grow the Israeli economy despite the difficulties and obstacles that the Bank of Israel maneuvered about."

The Ministry of Finance statement continued, "To our great regret the Bank of Israel the Baqnk of Israel continues to lead policies that mainly serve interested parties. The Israeli economy is in the best shape that it has been for decades due to three years of hard work and courageous measures led by the Ministry of Finance headed by Minister of Finance Moshe Kahlon for the citizens of Israel and despite the conduct of the Bank of Israel."

Bank of Israel Governor Dr. Karnit Flug said, "I don't understand the response of the Ministry of Finance. I have a feeling that whoever wrote this response did not read the details of the report and was maybe swayed by reading headlines here and there."

The Bank of Israel's annual report itself focused on the economic achievements and the strengths of the economy and downplayed the weaknesses and criticism.

The report outlined how the economy is growing, salaries are continuing to rise, the public's assets portfolio is growing, and even the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange is recovering after years of sluggishness. Prices in Israel are not rising, public debt continues to grow but not at a worrying pace and growth in the high-tech sector is on a global scale and even housing prices have stopped rising.

Was there criticism? The report did say that cutting taxes could create a problem for future governments, a growing lack of engineers was threatening high-tech, which employs too few people in the periphery, and that the umbrella housing construction agreements might endanger local authorities.

The more sensitive issues such as low productivity, the halt in previously growing participation in the workforce of Arabs and ultra-Orthodox Jews, the failures in the education system and the massive cost of the homebuyers price program (mechir lemishtaken) will have to wait, maybe, for the next report.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 30

By Maksim Tsurkov - Trend:

Toulouse Prosecutors Office has refused to investigate an armed attack on Azerbaijani native Rahim Namazov, French media reported citing Prosecutor of Toulouse Pierre-Yves Couilleau.

He said the attacker had an accomplice who helped him escape in a car.

A man of about 50 years old, accompanied by an accomplice, waited in a car parked nearby, and then shot several times at a car where Namazov was with his wife, the prosecutor said. After the shooting, the assailant disappeared, probably with the help of his accomplice.

The prosecutor also noted that shortly before that, Namazov had appealed to the police because he was receiving death threats by phone from unknown persons.

Pierre-Yves Couilleau also said the prosecutors office in Toulouse refused from further investigation.

At this stage, it is planned to conduct an investigation in several directions, but, considering that this incident is of organized nature, in consultation with the Bordeaux prosecutors office, the Toulouse prosecutors office has refused from further investigation in favor of the Specialized Interregional Jurisdiction, the prosecutor said.

The incident occurred March 30 at around 9:00 (GMT +2) in the municipality of Colomiers not far from Toulouse.

The man was badly injured in the back, his wife was shot in the head, and they were both taken to a hospital where the woman later died, France3 TV channel reported citing own sources.

Rahim Namazov has lived in Toulouse since 2010.
More than 100 Central American migrants, including dozens of minors, were found crowded inside a sweltering truck without food or water in Mexico en route to the United States, authorities said on Friday, Reuters reports.

The 136 migrants, from Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua, were rescued in the violent southeastern state of Veracruz after 24 hours in temperatures above 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 Celsius), Mexico's migration institute INM said.

Tens of thousands of Central Americans fleeing violence and poverty in their homelands aim to pass through Mexico to the United States every year, often transported by human traffickers who subject them to perilous conditions.
Russian police on Friday arrested an executive with the firm that owns a shopping mall where a fire last weekend killed 64 people, most of them children, Reuters reports.

Russias Investigative Committee, the state body that investigates major crimes, said in a statement the executive, Yulia Bogdanova, had failed to address shortcomings in fire safety at the shopping mall.

Bogdanova is the general director of a firm called  Kemerovo Confectionary Combine, the owner of the Winter Cherry mall in the Siberian city of Kemerovo where the fire broke out on Sunday.

At the time, the top floor of the complex, where the fire started, was packed with families visiting a cinema and a childrens play area. Investigators said fire exits were blocked and the fire alarm system failed to function.

The investigation established that Bogdanova, as the person responsible for fire safety, was repeatedly informed by subordinates about shortcomings in the buildings fire safety system. It said Bogdanova did not deal with the shortcomings.

A lawyer who has acted for Bogdanovas employer agreed to pass on to her Reuters questions about her management of the mall, but there was no reply. A woman who answered a phone number listed for Bogdanova said it was a wrong number.
Russias consulate in Seattle, which is due to be shut down late on Friday, will provide services for Russians until the last minute, consul-adviser Halit Aisin told TASS.

"All the rest time we will try to meet on consular issues with the biggest possible number of Russian citizens," Aisin noted. "Now the documents are handed out which have been already prepared. Upon the US authorities demand the consulate general is due to halt its activity by 5 p.m. local time on March 30 (3 a.m. Moscow Time on March 31)."

Those Russians who will have to obtain passports, citizenship or notarial documents will have to apply to the consular department of the Russian Embassy in Washington and consulates general in New York or Houston, he said.

The consulate in Seattle was responsible for handling requests from people in Alaska, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, Oregon, North Dakota, South Dakota, Washington, Wyoming, Utah, and also the Guam Island, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands.

On March 26, the United States announced its decision to expel 60 Russian diplomats and close the Russian Consulate General in Seattle. Twenty-four European countries, Canada, Georgia and Australia also decided to expel a total of 63 Russian diplomats. NATO reduced the number of staff members of the Russian mission from 30 to 20. The EU recalled its ambassador for consultations, and Bulgaria, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal and Slovakia followed suit.

The UK earlier expelled 23 Russian diplomats and Moscow announced a tit-for-tat move.

This concerted action came amid the poisoning of former Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, in Salisbury, the UK, on March 4. London immediately accused Russia of being involved, but failed to provide any evidence. Moscow has rejected the allegations and vowed to respond to the unfriendly steps against it.

Russia has declared 58 employees of the US Embassy in Moscow and two staff members of the Consulate General in Yekaterinburg personae non gratae, they will have to leave the country by April 5, Russias Foreign Ministry said on Thursday after the US Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman was summoned there. Besides, Moscow has revoked its consent to the opening and operations of the US Consulate General in St. Petersburg.
Russia is expelling two Italian diplomats as a tit-for-tat response to Romes expulsion of Russian diplomats, the Italian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Friday, TASS reports.

According to the statement, the Russian Foreign Ministry summoned the Italian embassys charge d'affaires earlier on Friday to announce the expulsion of two diplomatic workers who will have to leave Russia within a week.

Russia has also notified Finland of its decision to expel one diplomat from the Finnish embassy in Moscow, the Finnish Foreign Ministry said.

"Mikko Hautala, Ambassador of Finland to Russia, was notified of the matter by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation on 30 March in Moscow," the ministry said, adding that the diplomat must leave Russia in two weeks.

Three Lithuanian diplomats are expelled from Russia in Moscows retaliatory move, Lithuanian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Rasa Jakilaitene told the media.

"Russia has declared the expulsion of three diplomats from the embassy in Moscow," she said. The decision was handed to the ambassador in Russia, Remigijus Motuzas.

Russia is also expelling four Polish diplomats as a tit-for-tat response to Warsaws expulsion of Russian diplomats, Polands Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

According to the statement, earlier on Friday, Russian Foreign Ministry summoned Polish Ambassador to Moscow Wlodzimierz Marciniak to notify him that four Polish diplomas had been declared personae non grata and must leave Russia before April 7, 2018.

One Latvian diplomat has also been expelled from Russia in response to the decision to eject Russian diplomats, Latvian news agency LETA reported, quoting Press Secretary of the Latvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Gints Jegermanis.

"Our temporary authorized secretary was summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry on Friday, where he was informed that one Latvian diplomat will have to leave Russia before the evening of April 6," he said. The press secretary did not specify the diplomats name and position, but affirmed that it is not ambassador Maris Riekstins.

Russia has also expelled Estonias military attache as a tit-for-tat measure to the expulsion of Russian diplomats, Delfi news portal said.

In late March, a number of countries announced a coordinated decision to expel Russian diplomats expressing solidarity with Great Britain in connection with the poisoning of former Russian military intelligence (GRU) Colonel Sergei Skripal.

The Russian Foreign Ministry earlier on Friday summoned the ambassadors of the countries, which expelled Russian diplomats to express solidarity with the United Kingdom in connection with the poisoning of former Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal in Salisbury.

On Thursday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that tit-for-tat measures would be taken against all the countries that had expelled Russian diplomats.
Two suspects attempting to sell historical religious icons have been caught red-handed in Istanbul, reports said yesterday, according Daily Sabah.

According to reports, the suspects were captured after the Customs and Trade Ministry was warned about the illegal transaction and found out that the icons would be sold at a shop in Istanbul's Besiktas district.

After examining the icons, experts found that two of them were from the 19th century and depicted St. Nicholas and St. George.

One of the icons was reportedly fake, Haberturk daily reported.

The suspect identified as E.I. claimed that she owned the icons and did not intend to sell them. She reportedly said that she was planning to entrust the icons to her friend so that they would not be damaged as she moved house.

The culture ministry's approval is necessary for the possession, transfer or sale of historical artifacts under the scope of the Code of Protection of Cultural and Natural Properties.

The artifacts were reportedly handed to the Hagia Sophia Museum Directorate for protection.

Thousands of anti-smuggling operations are carried out across Turkey every year to prevent the illegal sale of historical objects and to protect the country's rich cultural heritage.
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 30

By Rufiz Hafizoglu  Trend:

Thirty-four members of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) were detained within the anti-terrorist operations carried out in six Turkish provinces, the Turkish media reported March 30.

Reportedly, all detainees are Turkish citizens and five of them are women.

Other details of the operation have not been reported.

The conflict between Turkey and the PKK, which demands the creation of an independent Kurdish state, has continued for more than 30 years and has claimed more than 40,000 lives.

The UN and the European Union list the PKK as a terrorist organization.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 30

By Rufiz Hafizoglu  Trend:

As a result of the attack by militants of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) on the military unit in Turkeys south-eastern Siirt province, according to the preliminary data, five servicemen were dead and seven - wounded, the Turkish media reported March 30.

Following the incident in the province, the Turkish Armed Forces launched operations to eliminate terrorists.

Six servicemen of the Turkish Armed Forces have been recently wounded as a car convoy came under fire by PKK terrorists in Turkeys south-eastern Diyarbakir province.

The conflict between Turkey and the PKK, which demands the creation of an independent Kurdish state, has continued for more than 30 years and has claimed more than 40,000 lives.

The UN and the European Union list the PKK as a terrorist organization.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 30

By Rufiz Hafizoglu  Trend:

Turkey does not intend to negotiate with terrorists in Syria, Turkish presidential spokesperson Ibrahim Kalin said.

He was commenting on the French presidents statement that Paris could act as a mediator between Ankara and PYD militants in Syria, the Turkish media reported March 30.

The spokesperson noted that Turkeys position on the attitude towards terrorists in Syria is very clear.

On March 18, Turkish Armed Forces and the Free Syrian Army liberated Afrin city from PYD/YPG terrorists.

On Jan. 20, the Turkish Armed Forces, together with the Free Syrian Army, launched the Operation Olive Branch in Afrin, Syria.

On Aug. 24, 2016, Turkish Armed Forces, with the support of the Syrian opposition, launched the Euphrates Shield Operation against the IS militants and liberated the city of Jarabulus as well as the city of Al-Bab in northern Syria.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 30

By Rufiz Hafizoglu  Trend:

The statement by the French president that Paris is ready to act as a mediator between Turkey and PYD militants in Syria is nothing more than an attempt to legalize terrorists, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag said, the Turkish media reported March 30.

Bozdag noted that such a statement of the French president is unacceptable for Turkey.

The deputy prime minister said that Turkey does not negotiate and does not intend to negotiate with terrorists.

On March 18, Turkish Armed Forces and the Free Syrian Army liberated Afrin city from PYD/YPG terrorists.

On Jan. 20, the Turkish Armed Forces, together with the Free Syrian Army, launched the Operation Olive Branch in Afrin, Syria.

On Aug. 24, 2016, Turkish Armed Forces, with the support of the Syrian opposition, launched the Euphrates Shield Operation against the IS militants and liberated the city of Jarabulus as well as the city of Al-Bab in northern Syria.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 30

By Rufiz Hafizoglu  Trend:

Turkey plans to conduct military operations in other districts of Syria as part of the fight against terrorist groups, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, Turkish media reported March 30.

Erdogan said the Operation Olive Branch is also underway in Syrias Manbij district.

The US promised Turkey that the PYD/YPG terrorists would leave Manbij, but Washington didnt keep its word, Erdogan said.

He noted that Turkey is determined to fight PYD, YPG and PKK terrorists.

Turkey is also ready to conduct a military operation in Iraqs Sinjar district and the Turkish Armed Forces may enter the Sinjar city at any time, Erdogan said.

On March 18, Turkish Armed Forces and the Free Syrian Army liberated Afrin city from PYD/YPG terrorists.

On Jan. 20, the Turkish Armed Forces, together with the Free Syrian Army, launched the Operation Olive Branch in Afrin, Syria.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
Baku, Azerbaijan, March 30

By Rufiz Hafizoglu  Trend:

Paris, rather than Ankara, may hold the negotiations with terrorists, the Turkish media cited the countrys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as saying March 30.

President Erdogan was commenting on the French presidents statement that Paris may act as a mediator between Ankara and militants of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) in Syria.

He added that Turkey already had a "dialogue" with terrorists in Syrias Afrin district.

"France's position over the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) and the Peoples Protection Units (YPG) terrorist organizations is unacceptable and the fact that France promised to support YPG is open hostility towards Turkey," President Erdogan said.

On Jan. 20, the Turkish Armed Forces, together with the Free Syrian Army, launched the Operation Olive Branch in Afrin, Syria.

On Aug. 24, 2016, Turkish Armed Forces, with the support of the Syrian opposition, launched the Euphrates Shield Operation against the IS militants and liberated the city of Jarabulus as well as the city of Al-Bab in northern Syria.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday he may hold up a trade agreement reached this week with South Korea until after a deal is reached with North Korea on denuclearization, Reuters reports.

I may hold it up until after a deal is made with North Korea, Trump said in a speech. You know why? Because its a very strong card. And I want to make sure everyone is treated fairly, he added.

Senior U.S. officials have expressed concerns privately that Seoul is the weak link in the U.S.-Japan-South Korean alliance and could be too quick to seal a deal with North Korea.

Trump agreed this month to accept an invitation to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. South Korean officials have said the meeting would take place by the end of May, after a North-South summit in April.Were moving along very nicely with North Korea. Well see what happens. Certainly the rhetoric has calmed down just a little bit, Trump told construction workers in Ohio.

The United States and South Korea earlier this week agreed to revise their six-year-old free trade agreement with a side deal to deter competitive currency devaluation by Seoul and more access for U.S. automakers and drug makers to the South Korean market.The deal also lifts the threat of a 25 percent U.S. tariff on imports of steel from South Korea in exchange for quotas that will effectively cut U.S. imports of Korean steel by about 30 percent. Without the agreement in place, the tariffs would take effect May 1.

A statement by U.S. Trade Minister Robert Lighthizer and South Korean Trade Minister Hyun Chong Kim described steel terms as being agreed, with the KORUS free-trade deal changes as an agreement in principle on the general terms while details are still being finalized.

The U.S. Treasury and the South Korean Ministry of Strategy and Finance are finalizing the currency terms, they said.

The trade deal changes, which preserve the U.S.-South Korean trading relationship at a critical time for Seoul, do not need congressional approval but are subject to a 60-day consultation period with Seoul.

The White House said the two sides had reached a great new KORUS agreement in principle and it was up to Trump to decide when to finalize it.

The president, taking into account all relevant considerations - including negotiations with North Korea - will determine the best time to sign a finalized agreement on behalf of the United States, Principal Deputy Press Secretary Raj Shah said.

South Koreas Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy Paik Un-kyu said on the sidelines of a news conference in Seoul that the ministry was trying to figure out the real intent of Trumps remarks, a trade ministry spokeswoman said.

The ministry had made a request to the U.S. side, said a senior ministry official who declined to identified due to the sensitivity of the matter.

In terms of the negotiation schedule, we would have to review terms legally and finalize a draft ... Both South Korea and the United States have their own domestic procedures, so were not at a signing stage because those procedures take time, the official said.
The Pentagon said on Thursday that a U.S. military strike in Yemen killed four al Qaeda militants, the seventh such strike in the country this month, Reuters reports.

In a statement, the Pentagon said the strike against Yemens al Qaeda branch, known as Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), was carried out near al-Bayda.

No civilians were present and therefore none were injured or killed as a result of the strike, the statement said.
The Texas man who carried out a three-week bombing spree made a 25-minute video confession on his phone, which was recovered after he blew himself up on Wednesday as police were closing in to make an arrest, police said Al Arabiya reported

Officials identified the bomber as Mark Conditt, 23, an unemployed man from the Austin suburb of Pflugerville, who had been charged on Tuesday night with unlawful possession and transfer of a destructive device.

He does not at all mention anything about terrorism, nor does he mention anything about hate, but instead it is the outcry of a very challenged young man, talking about challenges in his personal life, Austin Police Chief Brian Manley told reporters.

Experts also removed explosive device components on Wednesday from Conditts home.

Hours earlier, police had tracked Conditt to a hotel about 20 miles north of Austin. They were following his

vehicle when he pulled to the side of the road and detonated a device, killing himself, Manley told reporters near the scene.

Police cautioned that he may have planted or mailed other bombs, asking the public to remain vigilant, but his death came as a relief to Austin, a fast-growing city of 1 million people. In addition to killing two people in the area, the bombings that had begun on March 2 injured at least five others.

Bomb parts

Experts from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) discovered bomb parts similar to those used in the attacks at Conditts home.

I wouldnt call it a bomb-making factory, but theres definitely components consistent with what weve seen in all these other devices, Fred Milanowski, special agent in charge of the ATFs Houston field division, told reporters.

Investigators detained two of Conditts roommates who lived at the home, the Austin Police Department said. One was questioned and released and the other was still being questioned. Police said their names would not be released because they were not under arrest.

During his three-week campaign, the bomber left three parcels on doorsteps, activated another by trip wire, and sent at least two via FedEx, one of which blew up on a conveyer belt in a sorting facility on Tuesday. The other was recovered before it exploded.

FedEx said it had supplied investigators with extensive evidence, though officials have yet to publicly detail how or when they identified Conditt as the suspect. The criminal charge and arrest warrant were filed on Tuesday night.
By William Hollingworth, KYODO NEWS - Mar 30, 2018 - 11:09 | Arts, All

A new play based on the abduction of Japanese citizens to North Korea has been captivating and educating audiences at the National Theatre in London.

"The Great Wave", which tells the fictional story of one family's fight to find out what happened to their missing daughter, has received rave reviews in newspapers and sheds light on a little-known story in Britain.

The playwright Francis Turnly, who is half Japanese and Northern Irish, told Kyodo News, "I wanted to tell the story of a family caught up in a political situation. I think it's the first play about the abductions in English."

(Mark Douet)

The play, based on true accounts of alleged North Korean abductions of Japanese citizens, is set in 1979 when 17-year-old Hanako Tanaka goes missing from a beach on a stormy night. Her mother, Etsuko, and sister, Reiko, live in hope that she will one day return.

However, Hanako has been abducted to North Korea where she teaches would-be agents Japanese culture and language.

While the play portrays the brutal side of the regime, it also shows the bonds of friendship and humanity that develop between Hanako and North Korean citizens. Later, she marries a North Korean and has a daughter, Hana.

After years of fighting for the truth from the Japanese government, officials admit the abductions took place and in very poignant scenes, Etsuko and Reiko send a video message to Hanako in the hope she will be returned.

(Mark Douet)

Hanako is last seen watching the recording and says she wants to return. But she is not among the abductees who return to Japan and her family is told she died in a landslide.

The play has a bitter-sweet ending when Hanako's daughter, Hana, emerges from an aircraft and ends up living with the family in Japan.

Turnly, 43, said, "It's been on my mind to write about the abductions for quite a while because my mother is Japanese and she told me about it some years ago, but getting a play on this size was quite difficult to do."

He was able to write the play after winning a bursary in 2015 and becoming writer-in-residence at London's Tricycle Theatre.

He said, "I drew from several of the abductees' and relatives' accounts and from articles, but I didn't want to base the play on one particular individual's story. I wanted my own characters. Because it is such a sensitive matter in Japan I didn't want to be seen wading in and taking people's private stories."

(Mark Douet)

"I also didn't want to show the North Koreans as the cliched villains...the more we stay with the North Koreans in the play, the more we realize they are human beings, just like Hanako."

Turnly is pleased the compelling story of the abductions is reaching a wider audience.

He said, "I think the play will raise awareness about the (Japanese) abductions in the U.K. Speaking to audience members they said they were really affected and never knew that this took place. They said they would have found it far-fetched if it hadn't been based on true events."

Asked whether the play might be staged in Japan, he said, "Because it's such a sensitive matter, we have to be quite diplomatic in our approach. But it's out of my hands, I think."

Turnly decided to name the play after Hokusai's famous woodblock print as the title reflects the emotional rollercoaster the characters endure throughout the performance.

"The Great Wave" is part of Turnly's "Japanese Schoolgirls" trilogy which also includes a play about the cosplay industry, "Harajuku Girls", and "Neko", a supernatural story about a mixed race girl who turns into a cat.

Critics have praised the performance which is directed by Indhu Rubasingham and co-produced by the National Theatre and Tricycle Theatre.

Rebecca Tebbett, one of the spectators, said, "I found the story captivating and was hooked. We didn't know if this was a true story. We haven't heard about the abductions before. I'm going to go home now and research this issue."

Her friend, Eduard Buhac, added, "I didn't expect it to be such an odyssey. The actors really pulled it off. It's great that there are plays like this and with an all-Asian cast. It was very powerful. The stage design and music were all very immersive and captivating."

The play runs until April 14 at the National Theatre in London.
KYODO NEWS - Mar 30, 2018 - 19:40 | World, All

Japan and China are finalizing plans for Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi to visit Japan around April 15 to lay the groundwork for a trilateral summit with South Korea, Japanese government sources said Friday.

Wang is expected to hold talks with Japanese counterpart Taro Kono and national security adviser Shotaro Yachi, as well as possibly with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the sources said.

Japan is planning to host the long-delayed trilateral talks between Abe, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and South Korean President Moon Jae In in early May.

Wang, who also holds the position of state councilor, may also use his trip to brief Japanese officials on the results of a summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un earlier this week, the sources said.
Sudheeran quit the PAC, the highest decision making body of the party's state unit, apparently due to differences of opinion with the new leadership headed by PCC chief K Sudhakaran and Leader of the Opposition V D Satheesan.
After a great mass extinction shook the world about 252 million years ago, animal life outside of the ocean began to take hold. The earliest mammals entered the scene, and reptiles -- including early dinosaurs -- lived on Pangea, the name given to the giant landmass in which all of the world's continents were joined as one.

A project spanning countries, years and institutions has attempted to reconstruct what the southern end of this world looked like during this period, known as the Triassic (252 to 199 million years ago). Led by paleontologists and geologists at the University of Washington, the team has uncovered new fossils in Zambia and Tanzania, examined previously collected fossils and analyzed specimens in museums around the world in an attempt to understand life in the Triassic across different geographic areas.

Findings from the past decade of fieldwork and analysis are reported in a publication of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, appearing online March 28. In total, 13 research papers detailing new fossils, geologic discoveries and ecological findings in the Triassic make up the society's 2018 special-edition volume, published once a year in a competitive submission process.

"Most of what we know about the major mass extinction is from the South African Karoo Basin. I was always interested in understanding, do we see the exact same pattern around the world, or do we not?" said co-editor Christian Sidor, a UW biology professor and curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture.

"The fossil record can be great to understand timing and sequence, but not always great at looking at things in a geographic context."

Since 2007, Sidor and his team of students, postdoctoral researchers, paleontologists and geologists have visited the Ruhuhu Basin of Tanzania five times and the Luangwa and mid-Zambezi basins of Zambia four times. They lived there for about a month at a time, often hiking for miles to find fossil sites and camping in villages and national parks. Once, they were even awakened by the stomping and calls of elephants only feet from their camp.

Each site in Tanzania and Zambia contains its own collection of fossils from the Triassic and other periods, but the goal of this decade-long project was to look across locations hundreds and thousands of miles apart to find similarities in the fossil records. Two papers describe the regional patterns and similarities across much of what used to be Pangea.

"These papers highlight what a regional perspective we now have -- we have the same fossils from Tanzania, Antarctica, Namibia and more," Sidor said. "We're getting a much better Southern Hemisphere perspective of what's going on in the Triassic."

Most of the papers in the special edition discuss new fossil findings from the paleontological digs. One explains the discovery of a new species of lizard-like reptile called a procolophonid. Another details Teleocrater, an early dinosaur relative that walked on four crocodile-like legs. This finding was reported in Nature last year, but the new paper describes the animal's anatomy in fuller detail.

Most of the remaining papers describe other animals that were present in the Triassic besides the early dinosaurs.

"This was a time when dinosaurs were just stepping onto the stage, and they were not very big and not very remarkable animals then," Sidor said. "These papers really round out what dinosaurs were competing with before they became the dominant reptiles on land."

In addition to the 13 papers that make up the special edition, the team has published 24 peer-reviewed papers as part of this project in the past decade.

More than 2,200 fossils were collected across Tanzania and Zambia over the last decade of fieldwork. Of the special edition's 27 authors, many participated in fieldwork with Sidor since 2007, including co-editor Sterling Nesbitt, a former postdoctoral researcher at the UW and now an assistant professor at Virginia Tech.

Fossil hunting is an experience every member of Sidor's lab can have, from undergraduates through postdoctoral researchers. Sidor and a team are going again this August.

"This has been what my lab has done, and all of my students have been involved in some way," he said. Four of Sidor's students and two postdoctoral researchers are co-authors of papers in the new special edition.

###

Other co-authors are from The Field Museum; London's Natural History Museum; University of Birmingham; Virginia Tech; Royal Ontario Museum; California Academy of Sciences; Southern Methodist University; Petrified Forest National Park; Iziko: South African Museum; Museum national d'Histoire naturelle (Paris); University of Chicago; University of the Witwatersrand; National Museum (Bloemfontein); Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales; Rowan University; and North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.

Fieldwork in Tanzania and Zambia was supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Geographic Society, The Grainger Foundation and The Field Museum/IDP Foundation, Inc., African Partners Program. Additional support for analysis and museum research are noted in the individual papers.

For more information, contact Sidor at casidor@uw.edu.

Images available for download: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1IguAX2X2tFS5oC3Rnq7nv4mR6hupPQa7?usp=sharing
requiring extensive and costly treatment after they return to the United States, reports a study in the April issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, the official medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS).

The costs of treating complications due to medical tourism often fall on the patient's public health insurance coverage, according to the report by ASPS Member Surgeon Dennis Orgill, MD, PhD, and colleagues of Brigham and Women's Hospital-Harvard Medical School. Added to previous reports, their experience suggests that complications resulting from plastic surgery procedures performed in other countries poses "a substantial public health problem in the US."

Complications from Medical Tourism - Plastic Surgeons Share Their Experience

The researchers analyzed their department's experience in treating patients with complications related to plastic surgery in a developing country. From 2010 to 2017, the department treated a total of 78 such patients. Almost all were women; the average age was 53 years. The most common plastic surgery procedures were abdominoplasty ("tummy tuck") and breast augmentation.

The most common complications were pain, surgical site infections, and wound healing problems. Twelve patients required hospitalization. Others required long-term wound care or repeated visits to treat infections or wound-related issues.

Three patients still had surgical drains in place, which they were instructed to remove themselves when ready. Three patients had hernias following abdominoplasty. Four patients had received breast implants that they did not consent to, including one patient who was unaware that she had breast implants. Other patients had more typical complications, such as contracture (hardening) of the tissues around breast implants, implant rupture, scarring problems, and dissatisfaction with cosmetic results.

Fifty-nine percent of the patients traveled to the Dominican Republic to have their plastic surgery. That reflects the high Dominican population of Boston; most patients who traveled to the Dominican Republic reported their ethnicity as Dominican. The researchers write: "Many think of medical tourism as wealthy patients traveling to receive care at higher quality medical institutions abroad, whereas we see a group who return to their home countries to undergo elective plastic surgery procedures at a lower price."

On assessment of financial coverage, 62 percent of patients were insured under the Massachusetts Medicaid program and another 10 percent by Medicare. Dr. Orgill comments, "Cosmetic surgery done in developing countries can carry substantial risks of complications, causing a burden on patients, surgeons, and the US healthcare system."

The authors point out some limitations of their relatively small single-center study, including the fact that it included only patients who saw a doctor in the plastic surgery department.

"We hope that this study will bring attention to this emerging issue and encourage others to report any results related to medical tourism treatment and patterns," Dr. Orgill and coauthors conclude. "We hope that the global plastic surgery community will promote better solutions to these complex issues."

###

Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery is published by Wolters Kluwer.

Click here to read "Plastic Surgery Complications from Medical Tourism Treated in a U.S. Academic Medical Center."

DOI: 10.1097/PRS.0000000000004214

About Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery

For more than 70 years, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery (http://www.prsjournal.com/) has been the one consistently excellent reference for every specialist who uses plastic surgery techniques or works in conjunction with a plastic surgeon. The official journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery brings subscribers up-to-the-minute reports on the latest techniques and follow-up for all areas of plastic and reconstructive surgery, including breast reconstruction, experimental studies, maxillofacial reconstruction, hand and microsurgery, burn repair and cosmetic surgery, as well as news on medico-legal issues.

About ASPS

The American Society of Plastic Surgeons is the largest organization of board-certified plastic surgeons in the world. Representing more than 7,000 physician members, the society is recognized as a leading authority and information source on cosmetic and reconstructive plastic surgery. ASPS comprises more than 94 percent of all board-certified plastic surgeons in the United States. Founded in 1931, the society represents physicians certified by The American Board of Plastic Surgery or The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada.

About Wolters Kluwer

Wolters Kluwer is a global leader in professional information, software solutions, and services for the health, tax & accounting, finance, risk & compliance, and legal sectors. We help our customers make critical decisions every day by providing expert solutions that combine deep domain knowledge with specialized technology and services.

Wolters Kluwer, headquartered in the Netherlands, reported 2017 annual revenues of 4.4 billion. The company serves customers in over 180 countries, maintains operations in over 40 countries, and employs approximately 19,000 people worldwide.

Wolters Kluwer Health is a leading global provider of trusted clinical technology and evidence-based solutions that engage clinicians, patients, researchers and students with advanced clinical decision support, learning and research and clinical intelligence. For more information about our solutions, visit http://healthclarity.wolterskluwer.com and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter @WKHealth.
Description

T-Bar Steak and Lounge is the popular spot for diners looking for an Easter or Passover dinner with outstanding cuisine in a casual yet elegant space. The restaurants charm is accented by a stylish, dark-wood accented dining room, frosted glass details and subtle back lighting.

This Easter, under the watchful eye of Restaurateur Tony Fortuna, T-Bar will offer its regular a la carte menu, which features its signature prime beef steaks along with a melange of grilled fish, chopped salads and pastas. A long list of perfectly-prepared side dishes, like the Sauteed Haricot Verts with garlic, or the Roasted Brussel Sprouts with bacon, complement each entree on the menu. Swoon over the decadent desert menu crafted by Executive Chef Ben Zwicker, which includes the famous Banana Parfait Mille Feuilles with coconut and caramel sauce.

T-Bar will offer Passover specials on Friday, March 30, 2018, including a Slow Roasted Beef Brisket, Vegetable Matzah Lasagna, and Grilled Lamb Chops with Potato Cakes. Pair your meal with one of the restaurants specialty cocktails, expertly crafted and presented, or a glass of wine from T-Bars extensive and thoughtful wine selection.
Workforce

Why IT modernization needs more women

Federal CIO Suzette Kent at an event for women in federal IT at USDA. (Photo courtesy: GSA)

IT modernization and workforce transformation are key pillars of the recently released President's Management Agenda. Federal CIO Suzette Kent thinks success on both fronts is far more likely if more women are in the driver's seat.

"Why are women so important in that journey?" Kent asked at the Federal CIO Council's March 29 event focused on women in federal IT and cybersecurity.

"We're embarking on the largest transformation in the world.  Women are more effective collaborators, and what you deliver is actually better."

Joanne Collins Smee, the General Services Administration's acting director of the Technology Transformation Services, made a similar argument. "The issues we have in the government are not technology issues," she said. "They require collaboration and persistence to be able to make the technical changes."

The March 29 event was part celebration of women already in tech, and part recruiting effort to bring more females into the field. And while the speakers -- which also included deputy federal CIO Margie Graves and a half-dozen agency CIOs -- discussed the importance of flexible hiring authorizes and better recruiting efforts, much of the discussion focused on the individual efforts and attitudes needed to help talented women advance in tech.

"Let's be honest," NASA CIO Renee Wynn said. "I have an economics degree and a bachelor of arts. No science, no nothing. But  I certainly know how to persevere."

Small Business Administration CIO Maria Roat, Interior Department CIO Sylvia Burns and Health and Human Services Department CIO Beth Killoran all echoed Wynn's point. Each noted that her career was a series of zig-zags and opportunities seized, not some well-planned STEM advancement path.

And Graves -- who does have a hard-science background -- stressed that it's important for leaders to encourage women to seize those opportunities even if they feel they're not perfectly qualified. Research studies have shown that men are far more likely to apply for jobs where they lack some of the stated qualifications, while women may hesitate even when they meet all the criteria.

Graves recalled a former employee at the Department of Homeland Security, where she was deputy CIO before moving to her governmentwide role. "She did not think of herself of a data scientist," Graves said, but everything about her job was essentially data science. And when a chief data officer position came open in another agency, the employee did not want to apply.

"I'm not a data scientist, I don't have a degree, they're not going to consider me," Graves said of the woman's objections. "I said, 'No, you go and you tell them what you've been doing.' And she's there at HHS today."

In a discussion with reporters after the event, Kent and Killoran agreed that such mentoring and give-it-a-try attitudes are critical, but also acknowledged that the government's human capital needs demand what Kent called "industrialized" efforts to support the individual commitments.

"The administration is going to be working across OMB and [the Office of Personnel Management] to figure out how we make some of those process and policy changes internally," Killoran said. CIOs are probably "not doing as much as we can" with existing hiring authorities, she added.

Kent promised to make the event an annual affair, and predicted there would be significant process to share at the 2019 edition. Conversations are already underway, she said, with a particular emphasis on hiring authorities and emerging tech roles that agencies will need to fill.

"We are looking at what we can do with special authorities," Kent said, "and working with OPM on ways that we can be more creative."
VA

With Shulkin out at VA, what happens to the Cerner deal?

When the omnibus funding bill was signed into law on March 23, it included $782 million for the Department of Veterans Affairs to get moving on its long-awaited electronic health record modernization project.

Estimated at $16 billion, the 10-year project involves the retirement of the VA's homegrown Vista health record system and includes the $10 billion acquisition of a commercial health record platform offered by Cerner.

As secretary, David Shulkin used his authority to announce a sole-source deal with Cerner in June 2017, arguing a compelling national interest in using the same system as the Department of Defense and the need to move quickly, avoiding the two-plus year competition process used by DOD for its health record modernization effort.

Despite the reported need for speed, the deal was held up for a variety of reasons. First, the VA needed to move money between budget accounts -- a request that was stalled by the House and Senate Appropriations committees. Then, Shulkin put a freeze on the deal while a team at MITRE probed the extent to which the Cerner system would be interoperable with the systems of community care providers. The MITRE report, while never made public, generated 51 recommendations that were baked into the performance requirements in the VA's health record modernization in a March 15 update.

Then, on March 28, President Donald Trump fired Shulkin and announced his intention to nominate Adm. Ronny Jackson, the White House physician, to the post.

Shulkin exited with some harsh words for his political opponents in a New York Times essay, but without signing the Cerner deal.

And according to two former VA IT executives with current ties to the agency, there's a decent chance the deal now might not get done at all.

Opinions in the VA project management office in charge of the health record modernization project are split. The optimists think the Cerner deal could get signed under the incoming secretary, assuming Jackson is confirmed by the Senate. Others think that the scope of the project will be revisited as officials explore privatizing some of VA's health care delivery.

The optimists say that the White House is ready for the Cerner deal "to be a win," explained one former VA official. "They're not ready for it to be Shulkin's win."

Another former IT executive said that the political schedule will play a role. Assuming the vetting of Jackson goes well and a confirmation hearing is quickly scheduled in the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, it will still be at least six to eight weeks before Jackson can be confirmed. This source said that if the Cerner deal isn't signed within the first 30 days of the next secretary's term, "the deal is dead."

That sentiment was echoed by former VA CIO Roger Baker, who is advising Cerner on the health record modernization. He said that Shulkin had to get buy-in from multiple constituencies in VA, on Capitol Hill and among veterans groups to go ahead with the plan to retire Vista and go commercial.

"Unless a new person comes in and says 'I'm signing the deal right now,' they're going to have to go back and rebuild all that."

Congress will also have something to say about it. The omnibus spending bill appropriates $782 million for the down payment on the new system. The money is good for three years, but it can't be spent on anything other than the electronic health record modernization.

Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), chairman of the Senate VA committee, backed the Cerner deal when it was first announced in June 2017 and, according to a spokesperson, still wants to see a "fully interoperable health record" between DOD and VA. Isakson intends to talk to nominee Jackson about the health record modernization plan when they meet ahead of the confirmation hearing, the spokesperson said.

It remains to be seen whether appropriators who funded the plan or other members of Congress with oversight stakes in VA and government technology will press VA to go ahead with the plan.
London, March 28 (Reuters) - Britain's foreign minister, Boris Johnson, said on Wednesday Russia had underestimated the international response to the nerve agent attack on a Russian spy in England which London blames on Moscow.

Johnson told an audience of ambassadors in London that 27 countries had now moved to expel Russian diplomats over Moscow's suspected involvement - which Russia denies.

"These expulsions represent a moment when a feeling has suddenly crystallised, when years of vexation and provocation have worn the collective patience to breaking point, and when across the world  across three continents  there are countries who are willing to say enough is enough," Johnson said.

"If they (Russia) believed that we had become so morally weakened, so dependent on hydrocarbons, so chronically risk averse and so fearful of Russia that we would not dare to respond, then this is their answer," he added.

Russia denies any involvement in the attack on Sergei Skripal and his daughter, who have been in a critical condition in hospital since they were found unconscious on March 4 on a bench in the southern English city of Salisbury. (Reporting by Andrew MacAskill Writing by Andrew Heavens Editing by Richard Balmforth)
Improvement in profitability and outperformance against the industry can be important characteristics in a stock for some investors. Below, I will assess Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerces (TSX:CM) track record on a high level, to give you some insight into how the company has been performing against its historical trend and its industry peers. Check out our latest analysis for Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce

Was CMs recent earnings decline indicative of a tough track record?

For the most up-to-date info, I use data from the most recent 12 months, which annualizes the most recent half-year data, or in some cases, the latest annual report is already the most recent financial year data. This blend allows me to examine different companies on a similar basis, using the latest information. For Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, its most recent earnings (trailing twelve month) is CA$4.56B, which, against the previous years level, has dropped by -2.21%. Since these values are fairly nearsighted, Ive created an annualized five-year value for Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerces earnings, which stands at CA$3.48B This shows that even though earnings declined against last year, over the long run, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerces profits have been growing on average.

TSX:CM Income Statement Mar 30th 18

How has it been able to do this? Well, lets take a look at if it is only a result of an industry uplift, or if Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce has experienced some company-specific growth. In the last few years, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce increased its bottom line faster than revenue by successfully controlling its costs. This has led to a margin expansion and profitability over time. Looking at growth from a sector-level, the Canadian banks industry has been growing, albeit, at a subdued single-digit rate of 6.67% over the past twelve months, and 8.46% over the past five. This shows that whatever tailwind the industry is enjoying, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce has not been able to realize the gains unlike its industry peers.

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What does this mean?

While past data is useful, it doesnt tell the whole story. Companies that are profitable, but have volatile earnings, can have many factors affecting its business. I recommend you continue to research Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce to get a better picture of the stock by looking at:

1. Future Outlook : What are well-informed industry analysts predicting for CMs future growth? Take a look at our free research report of analyst consensus for CMs outlook.

2. Financial Health : Is CMs operations financially sustainable? Balance sheets can be hard to analyze, which is why weve done it for you. Check out our financial health checks here.

3. Other High-Performing Stocks: Are there other stocks that provide better prospects with proven track records? Explore our free list of these great stocks here.

NB: Figures in this article are calculated using data from the trailing twelve months from 31 January 2018. This may not be consistent with full year annual report figures.

To help readers see pass the short term volatility of the financial market, we aim to bring you a long-term focused research analysis purely driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis does not factor in the latest price sensitive company announcements.



The author is an independent contributor and at the time of publication had no position in the stocks mentioned.
A central issue in the trade war between the U.S. and China is the Chinese practice of demanding that U.S. and other foreign companies transfer technology to Chinese partners as a condition of doing business in China. By doing so, China's state-backed firms get the benefits of foreign research and development without contributing to it, while eroding the lead of American industry.

Even many critics of the Trump administration's tariffs on Chinese imports agree that this is a serious problem. But it is important to recognize that America's own antitrust policies perversely encourage the loss of technological leadership to rival nations.

Today it is often claimed that large firms stifle innovation--and the cure is antitrust regulation. Charles Duhigg summed up the growing view in a recent New York Times Magazine article about Google: "If you love technology ... then perhaps you ought to cheer on antitrust prosecutors."

One outcome of federal antitrust prosecutions can be to break up firms. But even if firms are not pulverized, the Justice Department can order them to share technology they have developed with others.

Today's antitrust advocates look back with nostalgia to the post-World War II era, when the Justice Department brought scores of antitrust cases against some of the largest tech firms in America. As Barry Lynn and Phil Longman have written, "Antitrust enforcers weren't content simply to prevent giant firms from closing off markets. In dozens of cases between 1945 and 1981, antitrust officials forced large companies like , RCA, , , and to make available, for free, the technologies they had developed in-house or gathered through acquisition." For Lynn, this was "the greatest dissemination of industrial knowledge in human history."

To be sure, forcing companies to give their technology to competitors spurred some innovation in the receiving firms; how could it not when thousands of companies received a windfall of valuable intellectual property? But here's where it gets tricky--in the real world, not merely firms but also nations compete.

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In their zeal to limit market power, U.S. antitrust enforcers in the past inadvertently inflicted real damage on a number of American advanced technology firms, while at the same time giving foreign competitors the intellectual crown jewels. In so doing, they seriously set back the U.S. economy, the effects of which continue to be felt to this day.

The AT&T case is illustrative. After inventing the transistor at its Bell Labs facility, the company faced pressure from antitrust regulators to make the technology widely available at a low price. And so, in 1952, AT&T licensed the technology for just $25,000 to 35 companies. On one level, that spurred innovation in some emerging companies, such as and Fairchild Semiconductor, the predecessor of . But because the fee was so low, a small, struggling company in Japan was able to afford the license. This turned out to be the key leg up Sony needed to eventually propel itself to global leadership, taking market share from the leading U.S. consumer electronics firms.

The RCA case was even more damaging. Indeed, as historian John Steele Gordon has written, "Perhaps the best example of the harm antitrust has sometimes done to our economy is RCA." RCA was the and Intel of its day--all rolled into one. Formed in 1919 under pressure by the U.S. Navy (because the dominant radio firm, American Marconi, was foreign-owned), RCA became the leader first in radio innovation, and then in television. Because it had a dominant share in the emerging color television industry, achieved by its own superior internal R&D, the Justice Department required RCA to provide its valuable patent portfolio to U.S. competitors at no cost. However, RCA was allowed to license the patents to foreign companies for the usual royalty arrangement.

Because RCA had long relied on licensing revenue, it now was essentially forced to license its technology to foreign firms--in this case predominantly Japanese firms--that had been seeking to break into the color TV market with little success. As James Abegglen, a leading technology historian, has written, "RCA licenses made Japanese color television possible." Armed with this valuable technology--produced through years of research and engineering that cost RCA billions of dollars--Japanese TV manufacturers, which were protected from foreign competition by the Japanese government, soon took over the U.S. market, and an industry invented in America was destroyed. And what had been the real cost to consumers of this RCA "monopoly"? One study found that it only raised the price of televisions by 2.26%.

Unfortunately, this kind of reverse industrial policy in the name of antitrust continues. In 2016, the Federal Trade Commission required that the semiconductor maker NXP divest its RF (radio frequency) power business as a condition for its $11.8 billion acquisition of U.S.-based Freescale Semiconductor Ltd. While this was done with a focus on the consumer, it opened up the business for acquisition by the Chinese investment company Jianguang Asset Management Co. Ltd., which has financial backing from the Chinese government. Just like that, thanks to an action undertaken by the U.S. government, critical U.S. technology capabilities went to China.

The lesson from this tale of unintended consequences for current antitrust enforcement is clear: It is time to stop ignoring potential adverse consequences of U.S. antitrust policy for America's international competitiveness. Antitrust policies may be justified in terms of limiting anti-competitive behavior that hurts other firms in the U.S. economy. But when antitrust judgments weaken U.S. firms, allowing foreign firms and nations to free-ride on American R&D in order to catch up with and sometimes eliminate entire U.S. firms and industries, the result is to enrich other countries at America's expense.

Maintaining American technological primacy in key industries should be a key consideration of U.S. antitrust policy--not just reducing concentration ratios in particular industries. The Justice Department and FTC appear to have little interest or capacity to consider the effects of their actions on U.S. international competitiveness. Going forward, when they decide to take action affecting a leading U.S. innovation-based firm, experts on the broader national interest in maintaining global competitiveness should have a seat at the table.

It is time for antitrust policy regarding firms in advanced technology industries to be carried out in coordination with the Commerce Department. The alternative is to allow antitrust actions, which are supposed to benefit all Americans, to backfire by helping foreign rivals bring American firms and industries down.

Robert D. Atkinson is the president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. Michael Lind is a visiting professor at the University of Texas Johnson School of Public Affairs. They are co-authors of the new book Big Is Beautiful: Debunking the Myth of Small Business.

See original article on Fortune.com

More from Fortune.com
Danske Bank cryptocurrencies

Danske Bank, based in Copenhagen, Denmark, has advised customers against investing in cryptocurrencies, the company announced on its website. The bank, which has branches in Trondheim, Norway, and Vilnius, Lithuania, does not presently permit cryptocurrency transactions on its website.

Cryptocurrencies are not backed by a central bank; hence, the bank claims they lack the investor and consumer protection typically connected with traditional currencies and investments.

Secondly, cryptocurrencies have been highly volatile, and the price formation is non-transparent, the notice stated. Because of this, investors have very limited insight into how the market is developing and what factors drive the price.

Most Important: Lack Of Transparency

The bank cites the lack of transparency and regulatory control as the most important reasons for not investing in cryptocurrencies. These factors have made cryptocurrencies a target for criminal purposes such as money laundering and extortion.

Danske Bank claims a financial institution has an obligation to assist in the fight against money laundering and other financial crimes.

Cryptocurrencies at present do not provide a sufficient level of transparency for the bank to meet anti-money laundering (AML) obligations, the notice stated.

An excerpt read:

For these reasons, it is not possible to trade cryptocurrencies on the banks trading platforms. However, the bank does monitor the market closely, and if the cryptocurrency market becomes more transparent and mature, the bank might reconsider this position.

We do not in any way want to support the investment environment surrounding cryptocurrencies, the notice added. It has phased out the possibility of purchasing financial instruments directly related to the prices of cryptocurrencies.

Such instruments can include exchange trade notes that mirror the price of cryptocurrency, the bank noted. Such securities, it claimed, are characterized by high risk and volatility.

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Also read: Nordea bank bans employees from owning bitcoin, unions consider legal action

Bank Will Accept Certain Deposits

If a customer seeks to deposit funds originating from cryptocurrency investments, the bank said it would treat it in the same way as deposits stemming from other types of investments. The bank may accept the deposit if it complies with current regulations and AML procedures.

Danske Bank does not block the use of its bank-issued credit card in connection with trading cryptocurrencies. But, as with all credit card transactions, customers are advised to comply with existing AML anti- procedures and regulations.

Featured image from Shutterstock.



The post Denmarks Biggest Bank Warns Customers Against Cryptocurrencies, Blocks Trading appeared first on CCN.


FILE PHOTO - The logo of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is pictured behind a traffic sign at its headquarters in Vienna, Austria September 21, 2017. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger

By Apeksha Nair

(Reuters) - Oil prices are likely to rise this year thanks to supply disruptions and an OPEC-led deal to limit production, but doubts over the future of compliance with the multilateral agreement and rising U.S. production could stem the upward momentum, a Reuters poll showed on Thursday.

A survey of 31 economists and analysts polled by Reuters showed Brent crude (LCOc1) would average nearly $64 a barrel in 2018, versus $63 forecast in the February survey, but below the $67.18 average for the benchmark so far in 2018.

Brent prices have risen 4 percent this year, supported by a deal between the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and non-OPEC producers led by Russia to curb output by about 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd) through 2018.

The price briefly rose above $70 a barrel this week, supported by tension in the Middle East and declining output in Venezuela, one of the group's largest producers, where economic crisis has cut production to its lowest in nearly 30 years.

A sustained drawdown in U.S. inventories also helped push the price up towards $70, a peak last seen in December 2014.

"We view it rather unlikely that OPEC will exit already by mid-year. However, talking about a possible extension of the deal beyond 2018, we are rather sceptical," Hannes Loacker of Raiffeisen Capital Management said.

"We see a big challenge in bringing in Russia once more. Without Russian participation, the will of some other OPEC members may also be abating somewhat."

Saudi Arabia and Russia are working on a long-term pact that could extend controls over world crude supplies by major exporters for many years.

"Even if OPEC compliance with pledged supply remains elevated through the balance of 2018, the explosive growth in U.S. shale oil supply accompanied by growth in crude oil export capacity will likely tip the balance towards lower oil prices in the second half," BNP Paribas analyst Harry Tchilinguirian said.

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Analysts expect U.S. production to grow by at least 1 million bpd this year. U.S. output now stands at nearly 10.4 million bpd (C-OUT-T-EIA), taking it past top exporter Saudi Arabia and within reach of biggest producer Russia.

"The balance between strong production growth in the U.S., on the one hand, and continued restraint by OPEC and Russia, on the other, remains the key factor on the supply side," said Cailin Birch, an analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit.

"On the demand side, emerging Asia will remain the key region for new demand growth."

The International Energy Agency said this month that global oil demand would increase by 6.9 million bpd by 2023 to 104.7 million bpd, boosted by economic growth in Asia and a resurgent U.S. petrochemicals industry.

Analysts said oil prices could also be pushed up by fears of renewed sanctions on Iranian oil exports after the United States threatened to withdraw from a nuclear deal.

U.S. light crude (CLc1) will average $59.85 a barrel in 2018, the poll found, up from $58.88 forecast in February.

Elsewhere, the recent launch of China's yuan-denominated oil futures, which many expect to become a third global price benchmark alongside Brent and WTI, made a roaring start as Western players and Chinese majors eagerly traded the world's newest financial oil instrument.

(Reporting by Apeksha Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Amanda Cooper and Dale Hudson)
In a move that sent Amazons shares reeling, President Donald Trump complained on Twitter Thursday that the online retail giant pays little or no taxes to state & local governments.

But his attack on the company, ostensibly in defense of brick-and-mortar retailers, was misleading.

Although Amazon had once collected sales tax in only a few statesthose in which it had warehouses or officesit now collects those taxes in all 45 states that have a sales tax.

I have stated my concerns with Amazon long before the Election. Unlike others, they pay little or no taxes to state & local governments, use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy (causing tremendous loss to the U.S.), and are putting many thousands of retailers out of business!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 29, 2018

Where Trump is correct: Amazon doesnt collect taxes on behalf of third-party vendors, and it still may not collect some local taxes, giving it an advantage over some traditional retailers, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a think tank.

According to an analysis from the ITEP, the gap between the tax rate that some local tax jurisdictions impose and what Amazon collects can be as much as 7.5 percentage points in Homer, AK., for example.

This analysis reveals that in seven states (Alabama, Alaska, Idaho, Iowa, Mississippi, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania), Amazon is either not collecting local taxes or is charging a lower tax rate than local retailers, the ITEP found by entering dozens of shipping addresses into Amazons website. Some localities, however, are not collecting tax from out-of-state or even out-of-town businesses because of problematic restrictions in state or local law.

Though according to the ITEP, localities and states may have an easier time collecting those taxes after next month, when the Supreme Court is expected to revisit a precedent set by the 1992 Quill vs. Wayfair ruling. That ruling said that retailers must collect sales taxes only in states in which they have a physical presence.

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Early Thursday, Deputy Press Secretary Raj Shah added to the Presidents tweet during a segment on Fox News Fox and Friends.

Right now there is no internet sales tax, said Shah, adding his own misdirection about Amazons tax collecting. And as a result companies like Amazon can buy and sell goods without having to pay basic retail taxes that your stores and your convenience stores and all the folks aroundwhen you walk out of the studio over there and grab something, you have to pay. And that puts brick-and-mortar retail stores at a disadvantage.

Shares of the company fell as much as 6% in trading Thursday, though rebounded by about 1% by the days end.

Trumps interest in Amazon may also be linked to his displeasure with Amazon founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos, who owns of the Washington Post. Unhappy with its reporting, Trump has accused the newspaper of being phony and fake news.

Amazon is getting away with murder, tax-wise. (Bezos is) using the Washington Post for power, Trump said in a May 2016 interview with conservative talk show host Sean Hannity. So that the politicians in Washington dont tax Amazon like they should be taxed.

This isnt the first time that Amazons been in the crosshairs over its tax practices. European governments, in particular, have gone after the e-commerce giant over its corporate incomes taxes. Amazon, for instance, settled a tax dispute with French authorities in early February. While the amount of settlement was not disclosed, France had been seeking nearly 200 million euros, or $250 million. Additionally, the European Union also ordered Amazon to pay $294 million, 250 million euros, to Luxembourg over an illegal tax advantage. Italy has also reportedly made similar allegations.
(Corrects spelling of U.S. ambassador Jon Huntsman's first name in paragraph 6)

* Russia responds in kind to Western expulsions

* Response suggests Moscow not seeking escalation

* Other Western diplomats also to be thrown out

* Victim Yulia Skripal feeling better: medics

By Vladimir Soldatkin and Christian Lowe

MOSCOW, March 29 (Reuters) - Russia expelled 60 U.S. diplomats on Thursday and announced it would eject scores from other countries that have joined London and Washington in censuring Moscow over the poisoning of a spy.

The U.S. ambassador was also ordered to shut the consulate in St Petersburg, in Russia's retaliation for the biggest expulsion of diplomats since the Cold War.

However, the response, which precisely mirrored steps taken by Western governments against Russian diplomats, appeared to show Moscow was not seeking to escalate the standoff over the nerve agent poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in an English city.

Britain has blamed Russia for the poisoning, and has been backed up by dozens of Western countries which have ordered Russian diplomats to leave. Moscow denies involvement.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, facing a stuttering economy and an unusual show of Western unity that included even states traditionally friendly towards Moscow, appeared to have stuck to the diplomatic playbook with the symmetrical response.

Ambassador Jon Hunstman was summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry, a gothic skyscraper built under Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, and told that 60 diplomats from U.S. missions had a week to leave Russia, as Washington had expelled 60 Russians.

At a meeting with Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, Huntsman was also told that the U.S. consulate in St Petersburg would be closed -- a like-for-like retaliation for the U.S. closure of Russia's consulate in the U.S. city of Seattle.

"As for the other countries, everything will also be symmetrical in terms of the number of people from their diplomatic missions who will be leaving Russia, and for now that's pretty much it," said Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

Story continues

That approach will mean that, among other countries affected, France, Germany and Poland would each have four of their diplomats in Moscow sent home, Ukraine would forfeit 13 diplomats, and Denmark, Albania and Spain would each have two of their embassy staff expelled.

Russia has already retaliated in kind after Britain initially expelled 23 diplomats.

DAUGHTER BETTER

Skripal, 66, a double agent who was swapped in a spy exchange deal in 2010 and went to live in England, and his daughter Yulia Skripal, 33, were found unconscious on a public bench in a shopping centre in Salisbury on March 4.

Former Russian military intelligence officer Skripal remains in a critical condition but his daughter is getting better, the hospital where they are being treated said on Thursday.

British authorities say a Soviet-era nerve toxin called Novichok was used in an attempt to murder the pair.

British Prime Minister Theresa May said that Russia was culpable for the attack and urged allies to join in condemning Moscow for the first known offensive use of a chemical weapon on European soil since World War Two.

Russia says Britain has failed to produce any persuasive evidence of Russia's guilt. Officials in Moscow accused London and Washington of pressuring other nations to sign up to an international campaign of "Russophobia" which, they said, could drag the world into a new Cold War.

Announcing the expulsions of Western diplomats on Thursday, Lavrov said the Skripal poisoning was being exploited by an "Anglo-Saxon axis forcing everyone to follow an anti-Russian path."

British counter-terrorism police said they believed the military-grade nerve agent that poisoned the Skripals had been left on the front door of Sergei Skripal's home, on a quiet street in Salisbury, southern England.

"Specialists have identified the highest concentration of the nerve agent, to date, as being on the front door of the address," Scotland Yard said in a statement.

Police said they had placed a cordon around a childrens play area near the Skripals' house as a precaution.

Christine Blanshard, Medical Director for Salisbury District Hospital, where the two victims are being treated, said in a statement that Yulia Skripal's condition had improved after three week in a critical condition.

"She has responded well to treatment but continues to receive expert clinical care 24 hours a day," said Blanshard. (Editing by Peter Graff)
Riyadh and Moscow have been engaged in supply cuts over the past year in order to try to clear a global supply overhang and keep prices in check.

Yet, in an effort to further their influence over world crude supplies, the two countries are now reportedly working on a deal to actively manage markets for potentially the next 20 years.

At the start of the week, Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince, Mohammad Bin Salman, told Reuters: "We are working to shift from a year-to-year agreement to a 10-20 year agreement."

Saudi Arabia and Russia are ironing out the details on an unprecedented pact to extend controls over major exporters for decades to come.

Riyadh and Moscow have been engaged in supply cuts over the past year in order to try to clear a global supply overhang and keep prices in check . Yet, in an effort to further their influence over world crude supplies, the two countries are now reportedly working on a deal to actively manage markets for potentially the next 20 years.

OPEC is working on a "very long-term" deal to try to extend its alliance with other oil producers, Secretary General Mohammad Barkindo said at an energy conference in Baghdad, Iraq on Wednesday.

Barkindo's comments followed news at the start of the week in which Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince, Mohammad Bin Salman, told Reuters : "We are working to shift from a year-to-year agreement to a 10-20 year agreement."

OPEC would like pact with Russia 'very much'

OPEC and Russia were thought to be turning their production-cutting deal into a longer-term relationship in a bid to help fend off the next downturn and make the oil market less volatile. However, a 10 to 20-year pact would be an unprecedented move.

"I think it's certainly something that OPEC would like very much  And I think the agreement that they struck  that is with OPEC and non-OPEC members  actually took them quite a large step towards that," Colin Smith, oil analyst at Panmure Gordon, told CNBC Wednesday.

Story continues

"I think getting to a fully-fledged agreement in which Russia becomes a de facto member is a bit of a push at the moment," he added.

The current agreement between OPEC and allied non-OPEC producers to reduce oil output by 1.8 million barrels a day is set to extend through the end of the year.

No end in sight to Saudi-Russia relationship

Meanwhile, in recent months, multiple energy ministers have endorsed retaining a relationship that could help prevent another destabilizing collapse in oil prices, like the one in 2015 and 2016.

Prices have since recovered to above $60 per barrel after crashing down to about $30 at the start of 2016, and OPEC's Barkindo has since described the agreement  which will be reviewed in June  to be "as solid as the Rock of Gibraltar."



The deal will then be reviewed again in December.

"While we wait to see if an unparalleled decades-long agreement between so many producers can be achieved, one thing seems certain  there is no expire date in sight for the Saudi-Russia romance," Stephen Brennock, oil analyst at PVM oil associates, said in an email on Wednesday.

 CNBC's Patti Domm contributed to this report.





More From CNBC


March 29 (Reuters) - New York City on Thursday unveiled plans to provide free cyber security tools to the public, a week after Atlanta was hit with a ransomware attack that knocked some municipal systems offline and prevented city workers from using their computers.

The program, dubbed NYC Secure, will launch a free smartphone protection app this summer that will warn users when suspicious activity is detected on their devices, according to a city statement.

The program also calls for city agencies to beef up security protection on public Wi-Fi networks by the end of the year to protect residents, workers and visitors, the statement said.

"New Yorkers arent safe online. We cant wait around for other levels of government to do something about it or the private sector," New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said at a news conference. "We have to act now."

Atlanta officials worked alongside federal law enforcement and technicians from private security firms on Thursday to investigate the cause of the attack that encrypted data on computers.

Atlanta City Council President Felicia Moore said she was waiting to hear more about how the hackers breached city networks, the scope of the attack and when city services would be fully operational.

"Everybody in the public wants to know. I want to know, too," Moore said at a news conference. But I do think that we need to give them an opportunity to get the information."

Atlanta on Thursday reactivated a website that allows residents to make requests for trash pickup, report traffic signal outages and ask for other public works-related services.

Municipal court services remained offline on Thursday and City Hall employees told Reuters their work computers were still unusable a week after the hack was detected. (Reporting by Jim Finkle in Toronto and Laila Kearney in Atlanta; editing by Grant McCool)
A senior U.S. State Department official has arrived in Islamabad to discuss bilateral ties and Pakistan's fight against terrorism, the State Department said in a statement.

The senior bureau official for the bureau of South and Central Asian affairs, Ambassador Alice Wells, who arrived in the Pakistani capital on March 28, will meet with several senior Pakistani government officials, international organization leaders, and members of the private sector, the statement said.

She will discuss Washington's South Asia strategy and Pakistan's stated commitment to eliminate all terrorist groups present in the country, it added.

The talks with Pakistani officials will also focus on the "shared interest in building economic and commercial ties that benefit both nations," the statement said.

Wells is also scheduled to travel to the port city of Karachi to meet with senior government officials and the local business community. She will discuss the ongoing efforts to build strong economic and people-to-people ties, the statement said.

In January, the State Department said it was suspending at least $900 million in security assistance to Pakistan, after President Donald Trump criticized Islamabad for not doing enough to combat terrorism.
NASHVILLE, Tenn., March 01, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Four attorneys known for their extensive transactional experience have joined Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis, LLP, the law firm announced today. Roddy Bailey, Pat Murphy, Jimar Sanders and Nathan Hertzog focus on middle market transactions involving private equity sponsors, venture capital investments and mezzanine financing. The team, which will work out of both Chattanooga and Nashville, also advises sponsors on the formation and structuring of private equity, venture capital and hedge funds, as well as investors in such funds.



Roddy, Pat, Jimar and Nathan are skilled and innovative deal lawyers who complement our existing M&A and commercial finance practices and expand the legal services we provide private equity and venture capital clients on fund work, transactional matters, and mezzanine financing, said Waller chairman Matt Burnstein. They are a sophisticated team that brings energy and an impressive track record delivering results to their clients.

Roddy Bailey is a trusted advisor in the private equity space, where he leads and advises on private equity transactions, mergers and acquisitions and growth equity financings, as well as general corporate law. Bailey routinely represents both investors and portfolio companies in venture capital investment transactions, including early stage and growth equity transactions. He also advises clients on the formation of investment funds  including private equity, venture capital and hedge funds  as well as institutional and individual investors in those funds. Bailey earned his J.D. in 1996 from the Syracuse University College of Law. He earned his B.S. in 1993 from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Pat Murphy has structured sophisticated mezzanine funding deals for scores of middle market transactions. Issuers, investors and financial sponsors rely on Murphy for counsel on complex mezzanine structures including extensive subordination and intercreditor arrangements. Additionally, he represents finance companies, lending institutions, investment funds and private equity funds across the country with a focus on transactions involving senior and subordinated debt components. Murphy earned his J.D., with honors, in 1988 from the University of Tennessee College of Law. He earned his B.S., magna cum laude, in 1983 from the University of Tennessee.

Jimar Sanders focuses on the intersection of commercial lending and real estate. He represents a number of private mezzanine and subordinate debt investment funds in connection with investment and lending transactions throughout the United States. Sanders also works extensively with financial institutions and borrowers in commercial real estate, construction and land development financing transactions. His experience spans the purchase, sale, leasing, financing and development of office, industrial, retail, commercial, mixed-use and multi-family residential projects and properties. Sanders earned his J.D., with honors, in 2007 from the University of Georgia School of Law. He earned his B.S., summa cum laude, in 2004 from South Carolina State University.

Nathan Hertzog is a critical asset in a wide range of private equity transactions including fund formations, mergers and acquisitions, leveraged buyouts, venture capital investments and institutional investments in private and public funds. Hertzog also assists start-up and emerging companies with angel and growth stage fundraising and provides general corporate and business advice. Hertzog earned his J.D., cum laude, in 2013 from Boston University School of Law. He earned his A.B./M.P.A., magna cum laude, in 2009 from the University of Georgia.

About Waller

With more than 230 attorneys in Austin, Birmingham, Chattanooga, Memphis and Nashville, Waller assists clients in complex transactional, regulatory and litigation matters. The firm has built a national reputation for its work in healthcare, financial services, retail, hospitality, and other industries. For more information, please visit www.wallerlaw.com.

Media contact:

Sarah Brawner

615-610-0323

Sarah.brawner@dvlseigenthaler.com
LODI, Calif., March 26, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Farmers & Merchants Bancorp (OTCQX:FMCB), a bank holding company headquartered in Lodi, California, and Bank of Rio Vista, a California banking company headquartered in Rio Vista, California, today announced that a definitive agreement has been signed by both parties for the acquisition of Bank of Rio Vista by Farmers & Merchants Bancorp. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals and Bank of Rio Vistas shareholder approval. The Boards of Directors of both Farmers & Merchants Bancorp and Bank of Rio Vista have unanimously approved the transaction, which is expected to close in the third quarter of 2018.



In this transaction, the shareholders of Bank of Rio Vista owning 2,414 shares, or 60.35% of the outstanding common shares, will receive $28.7 million in cash subject to certain adjustments defined in the definitive agreement. Over the past year, Farmers & Merchants Bancorp acquired 1,586, or 39.65%, of the outstanding common shares of Bank of Rio Vista for $12.0 million. As a result, the total price paid for all common shares of Bank of Rio Vista is $40.7 million or 1.42 times the minimum book value that must be delivered at close. Farmers & Merchants Bancorp expects the acquisition to be accretive to earnings in 2019, the first full year of combined operations.

As a result of the transaction, Bank of Rio Vista, with three full service branches (Rio Vista, Walnut Grove and Lodi) and one loan production office (West Sacramento) will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Farmers & Merchants Bancorp. Farmers & Merchants Bank of Central California will also continue to operate as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Farmers & Merchants Bancorp.

Farmers & Merchants Bancorps Board of Directors and the Farmers & Merchants Bank of Central California Executive Management team, led by Kent Steinwert, Chairman, President and CEO, will continue to lead the combined team of professional bankers. Dave Greiner, Chairman, CEO and Director of Bank of Rio Vista, will work with Farmers & Merchants Bancorp as an advisor through the integration process. It is anticipated that one member of the Board of Directors of Bank of Rio Vista will join the Board of Farmers & Merchants Bank of Central California, and that an Advisory Board, comprised of certain existing Bank of Rio Vista Directors, will be established for the Rio Vista, Delta and River communities in Central California.

As of December 31, 2017, Farmers & Merchants Bancorp on a pro forma consolidated basis with Bank of Rio Vista would have had approximately $3.3 billion in total assets, with 32 locations serving Californias Central Valley and San Francisco East Bay Area regions.

Farmers & Merchants Bancorps Chairman, President and CEO Kent Steinwert said, It is a tremendous honor to join these two century-old institutions, both with strong ties to their communities and a long history of reinvesting back into their markets to improve the quality of life for all residents. Both banks share a similar culture and have earned outstanding reputations for conducting business the right way. Maintaining these foundations of trust will remain a priority. Bank of Rio Vista customers will enjoy the higher lending authorities and broader array of products available at F&M Bank, as well as the increased convenience of the expanded 32 branch network. Continued employment for Bank of Rio Vista employees is also a key objective. F&M Bank has maintained an Outstanding rating from the FDIC for community reinvestment and will focus on enhancing support for the Rio Vista, Delta and River communities. On behalf of our Board of Directors and Executive Management team, I extend a warm welcome to the Bank of Rio Vista customers and employees.

Mr. Steinwert continued, F&M Bank has been involved in agriculture since its founding in 1916 and today we are the 20th largest agricultural lender in the United States and the largest community bank lender to agribusiness in California. We look forward to continuing Bank of Rio Vistas commitment to serving the needs of farmers in the Rio Vista, Delta and River communities.

Dave Greiner, Chairman, CEO and Director of Bank of Rio Vista stated, Farmers & Merchants Bancorp is the right fit to continue the commitment made by Bank of Rio Vista for the past 113 years in our communities. Our customers will have access to many more products and services, together with the additional benefit of a larger lending limit, enabling us to meet all of the needs of our customers and our community. Additionally, our employees will become part of an organization that has been one of the strongest and most profitable banks in California for many years.

Advisors

Farmers & Merchants Bancorp was advised in the transaction by Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman as legal counsel. Bank of Rio Vista was advised in the transaction by D.A. Davidson & Co. as financial advisor and by Weintraub Tobin as legal counsel.

About Bank of Rio Vista

Bank of Rio Vista is a community bank established in 1904, serving the needs of consumers and businesses through four locations in Rio Vista, Walnut Grove, Lodi and West Sacramento. As of December 31, 2017, the Bank had approximately $218 million in total assets.

About Farmers & Merchants Bancorp

Farmers & Merchants Bancorp, traded on the OTCQX under the symbol FMCB, is the parent company of Farmers & Merchants Bank of Central California, also known as F&M Bank. Founded in 1916, F&M Bank is a locally owned and operated community bank, which proudly serves California through 28 convenient locations. In 2013, the Bank began an expansion into the San Francisco Bay Area with new full-service branches in Walnut Creek and Concord. In early 2018, a loan production office opened in Napa with a full-service branch in process. The Bank offers a full complement of loan, deposit, equipment leasing and treasury management products to businesses, as well as a full suite of consumer banking products. The FDIC awarded F&M Bank the highest possible rating of "Outstanding" in their CRA evaluation. For more information about Farmers & Merchants Bancorp and F&M Bank, visit fmbonline.com .

Forward-Looking Statements

Statements in this press release or on other public statements or filings concerning the benefits of the transaction involving Farmers & Merchants Bancorp and Bank of Rio Vista, including future financial and operating results, the combined companys plans, objectives, expectations and intentions and other statements that are not historical facts, including future performance, developments or events, expectations for growth and income forecasts, and any other guidance on future periods, constitute forward-looking statements that are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from stated expectations. The following factors, among others, could cause actual results to differ from those set forth in the forward-looking statements: the possibility that the transaction does not close when expected or at all because of regulatory, shareholder or other approvals and other conditions to closing are not received or satisfied on a timely basis or at all; the risk that the benefits from the transaction may not be fully realized or may take longer to realize than expected; the reaction to the transaction of the companies customers, employees and counterparties; diversion of management time on merger-related issues; and other risks that are described in Farmers & Merchants Bancorps public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Additional information on these and other factors that could affect our financial results are included in our Securities and Exchange Commission filings, including Farmers & Merchants Bancorps Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and other filings with the SEC. We disclaim any obligation to update any such factors or to publicly announce the results of any revisions to any forward-looking statements contained herein or in our other public statements or filings to reflect future events or developments.

Contact

Farmers & Merchants Bancorp

Stephen W. Haley, 209-367-2411

Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

shaley@fmbonline.com








English Lithuanian

AB Utenos Trikotazas (hereinafter  the Company) will not allocate funds to pay dividends to shareholders for 2017. This proposal by the Companys board, which must still be approved by the participants of an ordinary general meeting of shareholders that is being convened, takes into consideration the need to finance the rapid growth of business that company enjoys recently.

In the light of current growth dynamics, we forecast that we will maintain double-digit growth of sales of goods and services in 2018 that will require additional funds for working capital. The sales of the company for the first quarter of 2018 are estimated at EUR 7.0 million, which is approx. 40 percent above than the same quarter last year. Such level of quarterly sales has not been seen since 2008. In addition, in 2018 we continue investing to expand production capacity and acquire new technological equipment. The investments expected to exceed last years level and reach approx. EUR 1.0 million. Upon shareholders approval, we believe this decision will make it possible to successfully realize growth opportunities that will add value for shareholders, says Algirdas Sabunas, the Managing Director of the AB Utenos Trikotazas group.

Note that the ordinary general meeting of the shareholders of AB Utenos Trikotazas, registered address J. Basanaviciaus g. 122, LT-28214 Utena, company code 183709468, which is being convened at the initiative of the board of the Company and by the boards decision No. 18-02 of 29 March 2018, will take place on 24 April 2018 at 11:00 a.m. at J. Basanaviciaus g. 122, Utena (in the conference room). Registration of shareholders will start at 10:00 a.m.

For more information please contact Mr. Algirdas Sabunas, Managing Director of AB Utenos trikotazas, tel. No. 370 389 51445.

Managing Director AB Utenos trikotazas Algirdas Sabunas

About Utenos Trikotazas AB:

Utenos Trikotazas AB is the largest and most modern textile group in Central and Eastern Europe and part of the SBA concern. Companies in the Group include Satrija, Gotija and Mrija (Ukraine). The company Utenos Trikotazas itself owns two retail brands  UTENOS and ABOUT. In 2017, Utenos Trikotazas AB was the first in Lithuania to join Greenpeaces Detox project for fashion without pollution and commit by 2020 to eliminate from its production chain any chemical substances that adversely affect people or the environment.




In a release issued yesterday by Affinor Growers, please note that the headline should read "Affinor Growers to Receive 10% of Vertical Designs Colombia", not "Affinor Growers to Receive 10% of Vertical Designs" as previously stated. The corrected release follows:



Affinor Growers to Receive 10% of Vertical Designs Colombia

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, March 30, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Vertical Designs Ltd. (Vertical Designs) is a privately held Agriculture Design Firm based in Abbotsford BC.



Affinor Growers is pleased to announce the incorporation process by Vertical Designs Ltd in the country of Colombia. The company will be incorporated under the name Vertical Designs Colombia and will be used to mass produce fruits, vegetables and cannabis for export into federally legal countries competing on global stage as well as create new markets for compound patents in the pharma industry utilizing the replication data available for research from the Affinor Growers Technology.

As per the Exclusive Caribbean license released Feb 21, 2018, Affinor Growers the patent holders of the Vertical Farming Technology will receive a 10% voting shares ownership in Vertical Designs Colombia and will receive 1 seat on the board in exchange for the exclusive license to mass produce fruits, vegetables and cannabis, Affinor Growers will appoint Mr. Nick Brusatore to help ensure all Governance and Protocol is met for the rapidly growing development in Colombia.

About Affinor Growers

Affinor Growers is a publicly traded company on the Canadian Securities Exchange under the symbol ("AFI"). Affinor is focused on growing high quality crops such as romaine lettuce, spinach, strawberries and Cannabis using its vertical farming techniques. Affinor is committed to becoming a pre-eminent supplier and grower, using exclusive vertical farming techniques.

Neither Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

This news release may contain assumptions, estimates, and other forward-looking statements regarding future events. Such forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties and are subject to factors, many of which are beyond the Company's control that may cause actual results or performance to differ materially from those currently anticipated in such statements.

AFFINOR GROWERS INC.

"Nicholas Brusatore"

The positioning of Affinor Growers in the Cannabis Industry continues to get stronger as our plan to utilize better suited atmospheres in other countries expands utilizing our technology.

For More Information, please contact:

Nicholas Brusatore, CEO

contact@affinorgrowers.com
My name is Brian McElroy, founder of McElroy Tutoring ( http://www.mcelroytutoring.com ). I'm a 41 year-old Providence, RI native, and I live with my wife, our three daughters, and our two dogs in beautiful Colorado Springs, Colorado. Ever since graduating from Harvard with honors in the spring of 2002, Ive worked as a private test-prep tutor, essay editor, author, and admissions consultant.



Ive taken the real GMAT 6 timesincluding the GMAT onlineand have scored in the 700s each time, with personal bests of 770/800 composite, Quant 50/51, Verbal 48/51, IR 8 (2 times) and AWA 6 (4 times), with 3 consecutive 99% scores on Verbal. More importantly, however, Ive coached hundreds of aspiring business school students to significantly better GMAT scores over the last two decades, including scores as high as 720 (94%), 740 (97%), 760 (99%), 770, 780, and even the elusive perfect 800, with an average score improvement of over 120 points.



I've also scored a verified perfect 340 on the GRE, as well as 179 (99%) on the LSAT. Signature Read More

The short answer: Yes, the GMAT Paper Tests are helpful, but they are very old (pre-2000s), from a time when the ETS administered and authored the test, instead of Pearson Vue / ACT, and the GMAT was a somewhat easier exam (though essentially the same test, other than the extra issue essay and lack of an IR section). Perhaps most importantly, the questions from the GMAT Paper Tests overlap significantly with other official sources of questions, such as the OGs. Hence they are close to the bottom rung of the official GMAT materials ladder. And to state the obvious, don't take them as full "practice tests": a non-adaptive paper test isn't going to do a very good job of predicting your scores on an adaptive computer exam. Instead, break them into parts and try one question at a time.That being said, they are still better than nearly any non-official sources of imitation GMAT questions, and still very useful for practice!A quick ranking of Official GMAT question sources:1) Question Pack 1 (my personal favorite due to the ability to create your own customized sets of questions easily, "Study Mode," which allows you to check your answers right away, and the included answer explanations)2) Official Guides (OGs) - both paper and Wiley online versions (if you can get it to work--it's buggy). I'm a bit old-school, so I prefer paper when it comes to the OGs.3) Default Exam Pack (contains 1,500 free questions !), Exam Pack 1, Exam Pack 24) The Mobile App (" for GMAT Review 2017" by gWhiz LLC on the App Store--not sure why there isn't a 2018 version yet.)5) The GMAT Paper Tests6) Old GMAT PowerPrep softwarePlease see the following similar thread for more help with this issue. https://gmatclub.com/forum/are-the-gmat-paper-tests-any-good-79589.html -Brian_________________
maas wrote:

This shouldn't even be up for discussion! MIT brand wins in brand hands down. Sloan will always be one of those business schools that no matter the ranking it will still be in people's desired list. (More people apply to Sloan than Booth, and that says a lot since Booth has the highest acceptance rate of the M7 and Sloan one of the lowest).

Sloan is one of those b-schools that is always mentioned as "MIT Sloan", and not simply because it wants to take advantage of the MIT name, it is because Sloan is REALLY a part of the broader university and MIT lifestyle. Other bschools are a lot more separated from the parent university (pros and cons from that). So if you are a Sloanie, you really are a part of MIT.

If anything, the fact that MIT must always be mentioned before Sloan suggests that people might not immediately know what Sloan is unless you mention the parent institution. Regardless, it's certainly up for discussion given Booth is higher ranked in all of the MBA rankings, and this post is focused on MBA brand - not overall university brand, which I would agree goes to MIT. For that reason, MIT has the edge internationally, but I don't think it's clear cut in the US, especially among people in the know.
orange

have to know a great deal more than now about the social and economic

have to know

now

economic

have to know

they do now

economical

would have to know

they do now

economical

would have to know

they do now

economic

would have to know

now

economic

1. have to know / would have to know

2. now / they do now

3. economic / economical

Let's start with #3 on our list: economic vs. economical.

economic

economical

the economy

we can eliminate options B & C because they use the word "economical," which isn't the correct word for this sentence.

Let's move up to #2 on the list: now vs. they do now.

have to know

more than now

INCORRECT

This

(This is also wrong because "have to know" isn't how to write a conditional statement. "Would have to know" is a condition, which would make this a conditional statement.)

would have to know

more than they do now

CORRECT

more than now

INCORRECT

This

There you have it - option D is the correct choice!

Hello Everyone!Let's tackle this question, one issue at a time, and come up with the correct choice! First, let's take a quick look at the original question, and highlight any major differences between the options inTo develop more accurate population forecasts, demographersdeterminants of fertility.(A)a great deal more thanabout the social and(B)a great deal more thanabout the social and(C)a great deal more thanabout the social and(D)a great deal more thanabout the social and(E)a great deal more thanabout the social andAfter a quick glance over the options, we see a few places we can focus on:This is an easy way to eliminate 2-3 options because it's a common mistake we see on the GMAT:= dealing with the economy= inexpensive, cheap, thrifty, etc.Since the sentence is talking aboutThat was quick, right?Here are the remaining sentences with the non-underlined parts added in to better catch any problems:(A) To develop more accurate population forecasts, demographersa great dealabout the social and economic determinants of fertility.This isbecause it creates a non-parallel comparison. We are supposed to compare what demographers would have to know (knowledge) to what demographers know now (knowledge).is comparing what demographers would have to know (knowledge) to now (time), which isn't parallel!(D) To develop more accurate population forecasts, demographersa great dealabout the social and economic determinants of fertility.This is! It compares what demographers would have to know (knowledge) to what they know now (knowledge), which is parallel! It's also best to use "would have to know" to indicate this is a conditional statement, and it does that correctly!(E) To develop more accurate population forecasts, demographers would have to know a great dealabout the social and economic determinants of fertility.This isbecause it creates a non-parallel comparison. We are supposed to compare what demographers would have to know (knowledge) to what demographers know now (knowledge).is comparing what demographers would have to know (knowledge) to now (time), which isn't parallel!Even if you weren't confident on how to deal with conditional statements and verb tenses, you could still answer this question by focusing on parallel comparisons and proper word usage!Don't study for the GMAT. Train for it._________________
MBA20ZM wrote:

Hi guys!



I am deciding between Wharton/Lauder with $ and Kellogg with full tuition scholarship. I prefer Wharton overall but love Kellogg's culture too...and the extra 100k+.



I am an entrepreneur, who just sold his small business to fund my MBA. Post-MBA, I plan to move to Asia for personal reasons and have a fresh start career wise. I have no career path preference, but I am a CFA and have some markets background.



Also, putting money aside, I wondered whether the reputation of Wharton with small fellowship outweighs that of Kellogg with full scholarship in front of recruiters. I know people in Asia are quite big on brands and awards etc.



I'd really appreciate your thoughts and thank you very much for your help.







P.s. I have also received decent scholarships from LBS, Duke and Oxford, but I thought Wharton and Kellogg are more natural choices. I'd appreciate any comments if disagree, reflecting on my post MBA goal. Thanks.



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I will keep my reply terse. I would completely discount European MBAs over Wharton and Kellogg after having interned in VC over the past 6 months and seen the trend of a good sizable chunk of entrepreneurs seeking out investors in US to build a good credibility and legitimacy. European schools have a very niche alumni base and brand name and hence again, Wharton and Kellogg win hands down here. I do note that you want to go back to China post MBA but you just never know where you will be in 10-15 years post MBA. This is where Wharton's /Kellogg's huge alumni base will be of great importance.With European schools out of the way and including the fact that the total scholarship from Wharton would be 50-60k compared to 100k from Kellogg, I would lean towards Wharton as its MBA/Lauder program is a huge sell the world over. Wharton's brand name / value alone would cover for the 40-50k in difference between the 2 scholarship amounts. Add to it the alumni base at Wharton would provide you a great boost if you want to stick to entrepreneurial work you have been doing. I was in SF over the past 3 months and it was amazing to see both, Wharton and Kellogg alumni helping students out but with Wharton's alumni a bit more stronger and robust than Kellogg's (on account of Wharton's SF MBA location opening in early 2000s).Finally, given your CFA and markets background, Wharton's finance or entrepreneurship programs will only help you create those meaningful connections.Make no mistake, Kellogg is coming in a close second here to Wharton and hence you wouldnt make a mistake choosing either. I vote for Wharton because of the reasons above.Hope this helps. Keep us posted on which one you choose as you make your decision. I am more than happy to speak over phone to discuss Kellogg in further detail._________________
Amazon is the 2018 recipient of the Luxembourg-American Business Award that will be celebrated on May 15th, 2018 during a ceremony organized by the Luxembourg American Chamber of Commerce (LACC) that was founded in 1991 to stimulate and promote economic development, trade and investment, between North America and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. The award ceremony will take place in New York in the presence of Their Royal Highnesses Crown Prince Guillaume and Crown Princess Stephanie, and the Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of the Economy, Etienne Schneider.

The biennial Luxembourg-American Business Award recognizes American companies established in the Grand Duchy for their important role in and their lasting contribution to the Luxembourg economy. Amazon is a global player in e-commerce and cloud computing with European headquarters in Luxembourg employing over 1,500 people. Amazon is the first service provider and non-manufacturer to receive the honor since the awards inception in 1999. Past honorees include the Goodyear Rubber & Tire Company, DuPont, Guardian Industries, Avery Dennison Corporation, Husky Injection Molding Systems, Delphi Corp., Airtech Advanced Materials Group and Ampacet Corporation.

To celebrate the long-standing engagement and the 50th anniversary of its presence in Luxembourg, the Miami University (Ohio) is receiving an Honorary Business Award for its proven excellence in creating ties between the US and the Grand Duchy in academia as well as in the economic sphere. Since 1968, Miami University has a learning center in Luxembourg  the Miami University John E. Dolibois European Center (MUDEC)  that offers students the opportunity to enroll in Miami classes taught by Europe- and Ohio-based Miami faculty and thus fostering academic, economic and institutional collaborations between the US and Luxembourg.

Press release by the Ministry of the Economy
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Ankara, Mar 30 (IBNS): At least 17 people were killed as the vehicle in which they traveling crashed into a light pole in eastern Turkey on Thursday, media reports said on Friday.

The incident left 36 others injured, reports said.

"The minibus caught fire after hitting the pole on the Igdir-Kars highway in Igdir province," Anadolu Agency of Turkey reported.

The report said all the people, who were involved in the crash, entered Turkey illegally from the Iranian border.

Speaking to Anadolu Agency, deputy provincial health director, Taner Basaran said that 50 people were in the vehicle, of which the passenger capacity is only 14.

The injured people were rushed to Igdir State Hospital for treatment.
Jerusalem, Mar 30 (IBNS): At least five Palestinians have been killed in Israeli gunfire near the latter's border, reports said on Friday.

The incident unfolded after thousands of Palestinians marched to the Israel border, starting a six-week-long protest.

Conforming the death toll, the Palestinian health ministry said over 300 people have been injured.

The protest has been dubbed as the Great March of Return.

Tweeting about the incident, the Israeli Defence Force said, "Update from the Gaza Strip: Thousands of Palestinians are rioting in 6 locations in the Gaza Strip, rolling burning tires and hurling stones at the security fence and at IDF troops, who are responding with riot dispersal means and firing towards main instigators."

"The IDF has enforced a closed military zone in the area surrounding the Gaza Strip in accordance with situation assessments.

"The IDF is prepared to respond to the violent riots planned throughout the Gaza Strip. The IDF views with great severity any breach of Israeli sovereignty or damage to the security fence," it said.

IDF also accused the Hamas, a Palestinian Sunni-Islamic fundamentalist organization, of instigating the riot.

"The Hamas terror organization endangers the lives of Gaza civilians and uses them for the purpose of terror. Hamas is responsible for the violent riots and all aggression from the Gaza Strip," it said.

According to Palestinian health officials, one among the five deceased is a 16-year-old boy, who was killed before Friday's protest started.

According to a BBC report, Hamas senior political leader Ismail Haniyeh urged protesters not to concede a single inch of the land of Palestine.

"There is no alternative to Palestine and no solution except to return," he was quoted as saying by the network.

Responding to Palestinian accusations, that Israeli soldiers fired upon a helpless farmer, an Israeli military spokesman said that "two suspects approached the security fence and began operating suspiciously and the tank fired towards them".

Reacting strongly against the agitation, the Israeli foreign ministry said that it was a deliberate attempt to provoke a confrontation with Israel and that "responsibility for any clashes lies solely with Hamas and other participating Palestinian organisations."




New York, Mar 30 (JEN): With relief agencies in Bangladesh struggling to assist more than a million vulnerable Rohingya refugees crowded into makeshift camps along the countrys south-east coast, the World Health Organization (WHO) on Thursday appealed for international support to help the cash strapped health sector scale up its response.

This is one of the biggest humanitarian crises in recent times, Dr. Poonam Khetrapal Singh, the WHO South-East Asia Regional Director told a partners meeting in Dhaka, Bangladeshs capital.

No single agency or the Government of Bangladesh alone can meet the massive health needs of such a large population group, she said.

The Rohingya population has settled in an area prone to cyclones, and on terrain that will flood as soon as rains begin. The risk of outbreak of life threatening water and vector borne diseases under such conditions is huge, she explained.

Since August 2017, nearly 700,000 minority Muslim Rohingyas have fled violence in Myanmar across the border into Bangaldeshs Coxs Bazar, joining several hundred thousand more that were already settled there in overcrowded camps.

Coordinating the work of over 100 partners on the ground, along with the Ministry of Health, WHO has facilitated a contingency plan for the rainy season.

To minimize the risk of diseases and deaths, the plan aims to continue health services during rains and floods. Additionally, all 207 health facilities in the area have been assessed for vulnerability during rains, with 25 per cent of them slated for relocation.

Since the start of the Rohingya crisis, 900,000 doses of cholera vaccine were administered to the refugees and their host communities, in addition to two vaccination campaigns for measles and three for diphtheria, which concluded earlier this week with WHO support.

However, Dr. Khetrapal Singh warned much of the health sectors capacity to respond depends on availability of resources.

Moreover, the vulnerable population will need continued services for reproductive, maternal and child health, communicable and non-communicable diseases, as well as psychosocial support, the WHO Regional Director added.

WHO has appealed to partners for $16.5 million for continued support in 2018, which is part of the $113.1 million being sought by all health partners under the Joint Response Plan for the Rohingya crisis.

UNICEF/Brown




In January, US President Donald Trump renewed the sanctions waivers put into place by the JCPOA but said that he would not do so when those waivers were next due for renewal in mid-May unless Congress and the European signatories addressed his concerns over what he has described as the worst deal ever negotiated. The Europeans view the existing agreement more favorably but have also conceded to a number of Trumps points, including his insistence on restricting Irans ballistic missile activities, which were left out of the JCPOA.

To the extent that the European tone has become more assertive with regard to Iran, it has presumably been in response to the persistence of Irans confrontational and destabilizing activities, as well as the White House campaign to focus attention upon those activities. The issue of Irans escalating ballistic missile capabilities was kept in the spotlight late last year by a press conference in which US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley showcased evidenced for the Iranian origin of ballistic missiles that had been fired into Saudi Arabia by the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.

In addition to insisting that these activities be reined in, Trump has insisted upon extending the JCPOAs restrictions on Irans nuclear activities so as to make them indefinite and prevent them from beginning to expire after 10 years. He has also demanded that current levels of access to the country be expanded for international nuclear inspectors. Presently, Iran has 28 days to respond to requests for access to new areas, and critics object that this gives the regime time to conceal evidence of nuclear-related activities. Furthermore, various Iranian officials have insisted that military sites will simply remain off-limits, and this declaration has yet to be tested by way of an international request.

By most accounts, the European signatories to the nuclear deal have proven less responsive to these demands, the fulfillment of which could be seen as directly undermining the JCPOA. Consequently, their efforts to press for new sanctions on Wednesday appeared to focus only on the tangential issues of ballistic missile development, terrorist support, and regional interference. London, Paris, and Berlin have reportedly presented the EU with a list of 15 names that could be targeted for travel bans and asset freezes. These are said to be individuals with ties to the ballistic missile program and Tehrans activities in the Syrian Civil War, and some of them are evidently members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Insofar as the proposed sanctions do not directly address all of the White Houses demands, it leaves questions open regarding whether European efforts will satisfy the president and prevent him from withholding sanctions waivers in May. These questions are further strengthened by the fact that, according to Reuters and other outlets, the EU leadership has already begun to push back against the joint British-French-German proposal.

Nevertheless, the proposal itself highlights the willingness of at least some EU member states to strengthen their approach to Iran policy. At the same time, the resulting European discord goes to show that Trumps ultimatum and the broader war of words between Washington and Tehran is forcing various nations of the world into a choice between one side and the other.

For the time being, nations that are stuck in the middle are still striving to maintain the status quo with both the US and Iran, as evidenced by the European signatories efforts to simultaneously appease the Trump administration and reaffirm their support for the JCPOA.

This sort of fence-sitting tactic is not unique to Europe. The Algemeiner reported on Wednesday that Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi had publicly expressed his desire to maintain a balance between Iranian and American influence over his country. Im keeping away from it, he said of the conflict between the two longstanding adversaries. But as crises persist across the Middle East, this balancing act appears increasingly untenable.

With the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant all but defeated, there have been various suggestions that the main American objective in Iraq is shifting toward countering Iranian influence there. At the same time, Tehran is promoting its own entrenchment, particularly by opposing the disbandment of Shiite militias, over the objection of various Iraqi politicians who would like to see military power given back to a centralized Iraqi government. While the militias are increasingly integrated into Iraqs regular armed forces, some are also known to swear allegiance to the Iranian supreme leader over and above the government of their own country.

At the same time that the diminishing role of ISIL has allowed those militias to revise their missions and potentially focus on undermining Western influences in the region, it has also reportedly provided Iran with an opening to expand its relations with other Islamic terrorist groups. MSN published a report on Wednesday which illustrated this phenomenon by quoting Musa Abu Marzouk, a senior Hamas official, as saying that Tehran and the Palestinian Sunni terrorist group are closer now than they have been since 2011 and the start of the Syrian Civil War.

Although Sunni forces were more natural allies of Hamas, they have largely been defeated and this has left the organization looking for a lifeline. Tehran has evidently been happy to provide that lifeline, hosting several Hamas delegations in recent months. Qassem Suleimani, the head of the Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guard, has similarly reached out to Palestines Islamic Jihad, according to the MSN report. Ordinarily, the Shiite Islamic Republic would be at odds with Sunni organizations, but Tehran has a demonstrated track record of overlooking sectarian differences in order to facilitate conflict with mutual enemies of Shiite and Sunni militants, chiefly the US and Israel.

As the trend of Iranian outreach to such groups continues along its present course, it may further complicate the decision-making process for nations in the Middle East, Europe, and elsewhere who find themselves pulled in opposite directions by Tehran and Washington. The European Union may be willing to defy American ultimatums if doing so puts it on the side of an Islamic Republic that is apparently complying with the nuclear deal. But it may be less willing to do so if that also puts it on the side of a still-growing roster of terrorists.

It is perhaps with this in mind that some of Irans adversaries are stepping up their efforts to highlight Irans past and ongoing misbehavior, including not just ballistic missile tests and support for the Assad regime in Syria, but also political assassinations and bombings that have been attributed either directly to Iranian operatives or to their proxies across the Middle East.

Iranian.com reported upon an example of this trend on Wednesday, noting that Saudi Prince Khalid Bin Salman Bin Abdul Aziz had made a series of tweets calling attention to past instances of Iran-backed terrorism and declaring that the Iranian regime continues to violate all international laws in a test of the international communitys will.

His statements coincided with a visit to the United States by Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, who is next in line for the Saudi throne. Salman has notably used that visit to similarly highlight Iranian misbehavior and to urge American leaders toward more confrontational policies. That pressure may ultimately have a knock-on effect upon Europe, as negotiations continue among the US, Britain, France, and Germany in the run-up to the May 12 deadline for an agreement on the future of the nuclear deal.
These almost daily articles actually reveal that the Iranian Regime must be feeling weak if they are lashing out in such a way, but lets get one thing straight: Bolton is not a warmonger.

He simply seeks rational discussions on strike first policies if Iran obtains nuclear weapons, a position which has bipartisan support in Congress. Also, its beyond hypocritical to accuse him of that when Iran is behind some of the biggest and most ongoing conflicts in the Middle East (i.e. Syria and Yemen).

It would be more apt to call Bolton a realist as he recognises that the Wests appeasement policy has done nothing to reign in Irans malign behaviour. This appeasement policy, which includes the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal, has merely enriched the mullahs at the expense of their people and allowed Irans malign behaviour to grow.

The nuclear deal lifted sanctions against the mullahs and released $150 billion of frozen assets into the hands of terrorists who used it to fund war and sectarian violence across the Middle East. None of this money went to the Iranian people, it was instead used to fund the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and Quds Force, both of which are listed terrorist organizations in the West, as well as the Bashar Assad Regime in Syria, Shiia militias in Iraq, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, and the terrorist Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Another reason that Bolton has come under attack from the Iran lobby is his open support for the democratic opposition movement, the Peoples Mojahedin of Iran (PMOI or MEK).

Bolton frequently advocates for the MEK and speaks at MEK events, including the 2017 Free Iran rally in Paris where he promised 100,000 attendees that the Iranian Regime would fall before its 40th birthday.

Bolton sees that the Iranian Regime is the most repressive government in the Middle East, with its mass executions, media censorship, bans on education, misogynistic laws, and constant attempts at indoctrination. Thats why he supports regime change as the only answer to the problems caused by Iran.

More importantly, the Iranian people support it too, as evidenced by their recent uprisings in which they explicitly called for regime change. In response to this, the mullahs arrested over 8,000 people and have tortured at least 14 of those to death.

Thats why its so important that the Trump administration not only vocally supported the protests, but also appointed more people willing to bring change to Iran.

Former MEP Struan Stevenson, who is the coordinator of Campaign for Iran Change, wrote: Bolton has been advocating a firm policy with Tehran for the past two decades He should now be supported in his efforts to adopt a resolute policy with Iran to prevent more wars and bloodshed in the regionThere is only one way to stop the current wars and conflicts in the region: adopting a firm line with the Iranian regime and supporting the popular uprising for a democratic change in Iran.
The activists from West Azerbaijan, Kurdistan, Kermanshah, and Ilam  all in Western Iran  include Ejlal Ghavami, the spokesman for the Human Rights Organization of Kurdistan, and Kurdish civil rights activist Dana Seyed-Abbasi, as well as dozens of others.

Three sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity as they feared reprisals from the Iranian Regime, provided information about those arrested and what they have been charged with.

One source said: Ghavami was summoned to the FATA office in Sanandaj [capital of Kurdistan Province] to answer questions about the protests in early January 2018 and anti-state posts on Telegram channels.

On March 25, Ghavami was charged with having ties to and working with forces opposed to the Regime, as well as decimating false and illegal material, based on a complaint from Basij-e Rasaneh, the media arm of Irans Basij militia.

The source continued: [This is] despite the fact that he and Dana Seyed-Abbasi work in the open and publish their criticisms and objections under their own name and have no ties to the alleged channels of Telegram.

Others who have been summoned include Sabah Hassani, Hashem Hesami, Hiva Yousefi, Soleiman Abdi, Mohammad Abedi, Ali Hosseini, Mozaffar Ebrahimpour, Hassan Mahmoudi, Ata Rahmanzadeh, Loghman Ghoreishi, Hajir Sharifi, Jiar Vahidi, Yaser Ahmadi, Mahmoud Jabbari, Hamdollah Karsaz, Amin Jedari and Habib Majidi.

The source continued: Some of them were accused of having ties with opposition channels. Others were summoned to the Intelligence Ministry offices and greatly pressured to avoid any activities and plans during Nowruz [Persian New Year] holidays [in March 2018]. Every year, civil rights workers hold Nowruz ceremonies in various cities but none of them were allowed to do it this year. The authorities designated their own places for holding ceremonies approved by the state. Weve never had this problem before. This was the first time. Its an unlawful precedent.

hey even banned us from organizing Nowruz events in the villages.

One civil rights activist who was summoned by the Intelligence Ministry in Ilam, said he was even told that Nowruz events were un-Islamic and that the Regime would take strong action against those celebrating.

While a civil rights activist who was summoned by FATA in Kermanshah has denied any ties to anti-state social media networks.

He said: I have never had any connection with Kurdish or non-Kurdish Telegram channels opposed to the state but the authorities paid no attention to my explanations and said they would file a case against me after the New Year [March 20].
Although the protests have been limited to towns around Isfahan, they highlight the unrest fomenting in rural areas that were traditionally considered conservative.

There were only a few farmers chanting the tongue-in-cheek slogan Death to farmers, long live oppressors! in online videos early in March, but a week later the protests escalated. Farmers faced down riot police on motorcycles in the town of Varzaneh, according to another video. Allegedly, tear gas was fired.

Police in the city of Isfahan were not available for comment.

A journalist in Varzaneh, who wished to remain anonymous, said, Whats called drought is more often the mismanagement of water, and this lack of water has disrupted peoples income.

Analysts say that during the nationwide protests in December and January, the people were angry over high prices and perceived corruption, however, in rural areas, lack of access to water was also a major issue. The drought is a particularly sensitive matter, when one realizes that this was one of the problems that led to the Syrian civil war.

According to the Islamic Republic of Iran Meteorological Organization, approximately 97 percent of the country is experiencing drought to some degree, and rights groups say it has driven many people from their homes.

In fact, Hadi Ghaemi, the executive director for the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI), a New York-based advocacy group said, Towns and villages around Isfahan have been hit so hard by drought and water diversion that they have emptied out and people who lived there have moved. Nobody pays any attention to them. And people close to Rouhani told me the government didnt even know such a situation existed and there were so many grievances.

Last week, in their speech commemorating Nowruz, the Iranian new year, President Rouhani and Irans Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei mentioned drought as a problem that needs to be addressed, while condemning lawlessness and violence.

Recently, state TV ran an advertisement encouraging Iranian citizens to conserve water. It shows a man sitting in a chair in the middle of a desert with the slogan, Drought is closer than you think.

Water shortages are acute; agricultural livelihoods no longer sufficient. With few other options, many people have left, choosing uncertain futures as migrants in search of work, noted a United Nations report, last year.

Locals said water rights were the main grievance. in the town of Qahderijan, in early January, where protests quickly turned violent as security forces opened fire on crowds, killing at least five people, according to activists. Protesters chanting outside a police station and throwing Molotov cocktails at the building  one of the most violent incidents documented during the nationwide protests  were documented by videos on social media.

A parliamentarian from Isfahan, Hassan Kamran, publicly accused energy minister Reza Ardakanian of not properly implementing a water distribution law. He told a parliamentary session,The security and intelligence forces shouldnt investigate our farmers. The water rights are theirs.

While Rouhani repeatedly claims that the government will do what it can to address grievances, deeply rooted environmental issues like drought, will prove difficult to fix. These are local grievances but the solutions are with the national government, said Tara Sepehri Far, Iran researcher for Human Rights Watch, adding that the government had limited power and widespread corruption.

Rouhanis office was also unavailable to comment.

In a speech in late February, Yahya Rahim Safavi, a senior Revolutionary Guards commander, noted that water will play a key role for both the Islamic Republics national and regional security.

Now, environmentalists find themselves in danger. Kavous Seyed-Emami, the director of the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation, and six other environmentalists were arrested in late January. Later, authorities claimed that after confessing to being a spy for the United States and Israel, Seyed-Emami committed suicide in jail, two weeks later. His family has denied the allegation.

State TV reported that Seyed-Emami and his colleagues were telling Irans enemies that the country needed to import food because it could no longer maintain domestic agriculture production because of a water shortage.

In late February, three additional environmentalists were arrested, and according to family memebers, Seyed-Emamis wife was prevented from leaving Iran and three weeks ago.

Public opinion has become sensitized to environmental issues, so the government may see the organizations and institutions who work on environmental issues as problematic, said Tehran-based economist and political analyst Saeed Leylaz.
Such calls to action have presumably intensified the clerical regimes paranoia about public gatherings and expressions of dissent. And while organized protests may be at a lower level compared to December and January, the regimes repression against activist movements and potential organizers is ongoing. This was evident on Thursday from reports that 43 people were being newly indicted in the western province of Kermanshah for their participation in the January uprising.

In addition to reporting upon the judiciarys announcement, Radio Farda indicated that Iranian officials had used the occasion to reiterate their propagandist claims regarding the nature of the recent demonstrations. Public prosecutor Mohammad Hossein Sadeghi boasted that the indictments represented only a small minority of the arrests. The other arrestees, he insisted, had only participated in the demonstrations out of ignorance and had consequently been released.

Of those who were being indicted, Sadeghi said they had acted under the influence of cyberspace. Such remarks are no doubt intended to rekindle debates over the future of the internet and social media in Irans heavily censored media landscape. Facebook and Twitter are already banned across the country, although tech-savvy Iranians routinely gain access to them via technical work-arounds. While the December and January protests were at their height, the extremely popular messaging app Telegram was alternately banned and heavily filtered, and there was reportedly some disagreement about whether these measures would be made permanent.

Even now, Iranian hardliners are pushing for a permanent ban on Telegram, with some framing it in terms of the move toward a National Information Network or halalnet that would only allow government-approved content to be accessed through servers in the Islamic Republic.

The mentality behind this push for more comprehensive censorship was highlighted in another Radio Farda report on Wednesday, this one dealing with the dangerous environment for journalists inside Iran. The report quoted Reza Moeinei, the head of the Iran desk at Reporters Without Borders (RSF), as saying, The problem with the Islamic Republics authorities is their security approach toward journalism and media. They do not recognize independent journalism and want to eliminate it. They want all reporters at the governments command.

This mentality has secured Irans status as one of the nations with the least press freedom. According to the latest RSF report, during the previous year Iran was one of the 15 most dangerous countries for journalists, and one of the five largest prisons for journalists in the world. But the rapid growth of the recent anti-government demonstrations, along with the subsequent public awareness about them, demonstrates that the growing availability of the internet and social media threatens to undermine the effects of this media repression.

This point was underscored on Wednesday by an editorial written by the Iranian-born activist Masih Alinejad and published in the Washington Post. It described vivid death threats she had received from a leading figure in Irans basij militia, in response to her ongoing campaigns against the laws which make the hijab mandatory for all women in Iran. Those campaigns have effectively utilized social media, as by encouraging women to post pictures of themselves without their head covering. The My Stealthy Freedom movement later gave rise to White Wednesdays, with the color white representing solidarity in opposition to sexist laws.

In late December, around the time of the nationwide protests, an image of one Iranian woman holding her white hijab at the end of a stick went viral, spurring another movement called Girls of Revolution Street. Approximately 30 people have since been arrested for participating in the movement. And as reported by the Womens Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, a one-year sentence was handed down this week for one of those participants, Maryam Shariatmadari, who was also injured by an arresting officer at the time of her protest. She is at least the second Girl of Revolution Street to be confined to prison for encouraging corruption by removing her veil.

The regimes backlash against this and other peaceful protest movements led Alinejad to conclude in her editorial, As far as Iran is concerned, the biggest threat comes not from the United States, but from unveiled women like me who fight for their rights. But of course there are a number of other marginalized groups in the Islamic Republic, whose activism could pose a similar threat. Many of these were out in force during the January uprising, which the NCRI described as being free of ethnic slogans and thus representative of an anti-government sentiment that spans most demographics.

Marginalized groups include both ethnic and religious minorities, as well as entire rural communities that have been harmed by government corruption and mismanagement. On Thursday, Reuters pointed to ongoing protests over water rights as evidence that the mismanagement of natural resources was one motivating factor behind the recent uprising. The report also noted that environmental activists have been a particular target of the regimes repression in recent weeks, with Kavous Seyed-Emami of the Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation having died in custody following a mass arrest of such activists.

Reuters reported that the regimes crackdown on protests by farmers and neglected victims of water scarcity is ongoing. The same is true of crackdowns on minority groups, as evidenced by other recent reports.

The CHRI noted that property belonging to a once-prominent Iranian Christian church was in the process of being confiscated by an organization under the control of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The closure of that church was justified in large part by a 2010 speech in which Khamenei declared that Persian-language churches were gateways to foreign infiltration. But as with the accusations of foreign influence in the recent protests, these claims are widely viewed as efforts to undermine domestic threats to the regimes hardline Islamist identity.

Also on Thursday, Amnesty International issued an urgent call to action over the situation facing members of another Iranian religious minority, the Gonabadi dervishes. Thousands of its members protested outside of the home of their leader in February, out of fear that he would be arrested in the midst of the post-uprising crackdown. And as with that broader crackdown, the consequences of those protests continue to the present day.

According to Amnesty, eleven female members of the Sufi sect have been arbitrarily transferred to Shahr-e Rey Prison, a disused chicken farm that holds hundreds of women convicted of violent offences in conditions falling far below the UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners. The report also notes that some of those women, who have been detained without charge since the February protests, are in need of medical care but have not been allowed to receive it.

This refers to a tactic of repression that is currently being used against dozens of political prisoners, according to a report on the practice published on Wednesday by the CHRI. The article highlights three specific cases, one involving an inmate who has lost 57 pounds, one who has suffered a seizure and recurring heart problems, and one who is suffering from injuries incurred at the hands of the prison guards as they exert pressure on him in an effort to compel his brother to present himself for arrest.

The CHRI report notes that the cellmates of one of these individuals have said that if he dies from his condition, they are willing to testify that the state killed him. But the regimes ongoing repression often extends beyond causing detainees deaths in an indirect fashion. On Thursday, the NCRI reported that Ali Savari, an Arab detainee at Shayban Prison had apparently been tortured to death.

At least 14 other detainees have died under similar circumstances since the end of 2017, and in many cases their families have been warned against speaking about the incident or pursuing independent autopsies. In the case of Mr. Savari, an impromptu demonstration by relatives and friends outside the prison led to 30 more arrests on Wednesday, following what the NCRI described as yet another brutal attack on a peaceful gathering.
At one of the demonstrations in early March, farmers mockingly chanted Death to farmers, long live oppressors! in reference to the lack of help the Iranian Regime was providing to those desperate for more water. The original protest in Varzaneh, near Isfahan, was fairly small, but it soon grew.

At the later, larger protests, dozens of police on motorcycles turned up to use tear gas on the protesters in an attempt to make them disperse. This is a common tactic for the Regime at any protest.

At drought protests in January, the police opened fire on protesters, killing at least five.

Around 97% of Iran is now affected in some way by the drought, according to Irans Meteorological Organization. In some areas, this is so bad that people are forced to relocate.

Credible sources from inside Iran stress: Towns and villages around Isfahan have been hit so hard by drought and water diversion that they have emptied out and people who lived there have moved.

This is something that the United Nations mentioned in a 2017 report. It read: Water shortages are acute; agricultural livelihoods no longer sufficient. With few other options, many people have left, choosing uncertain futures as migrants in search of work.

However, this drought is not merely a natural disaster. It has been exacerbated by the corruption and the incompetence of the Iranian Regime as cited by Seth Siegel in The New York Times and Nik Kowsar in the Tower; both published in 2017.

Kowsar wrote in The Slow Destruction of Irans Water Supply that he was ostracized and forced to flee for criticizing the Regime for ruining the countrys water supply, while one local journalist, who declined to be identified, said: Whats called drought is more often the mismanagement of water.

The Regime should be worried about these protests, after all, drought was one of the main triggers for the Syrian protests in 2011, which led to the ongoing Syrian Civil War.

These protests are part of a larger anti-regime protest movement that has sprung up across Iran, encompassing all sectors of Iranian society. The people have different trigger causes (i.e. drought, unemployment, human rights) but they are all calling for the same solution: regime change.
Starting in 1971, the MEK was arrested on masse by the Shahs secret police, SAVAK. This had already happened to many other political groups opposed to the monarchy, but the MEK had only just begun to launch their crusade against the monarchy after being founded in 1965 and flying under the radar while they formulated their plans for the removal of the Shah.

The MEK believed that they would continue the work of the revolutions from the earlier part of the 20th Century, like the 1906 Constitutional Revolution and the 1950 Mossadeq national movement, and bring freedom and democracy to Iran with the removal of the monarchy.

Executions and imprisonments

Around 150 members of the MEK, including all of the central leadership and founders, had been arrested by SAVAK by September 1971. Sixty-nine of those MEK members were given military tribunals and charged with attempting to overthrow the monarchy, alongside other offences.

The media were originally allowed to cover these trials, which brought the MEK into the hearts and minds of the Iranian people as figures for the Resistance, but after the MEK members revealed that they had been tortured by SAVAK, the media were banned from the courts.

Every member of the MEK membership was executed, except for one. Massoud Rajavi was sentenced to death, but his brother Dr. Kazen Rajavi organised an international campaign from his home in Geneva, gaining the support of many top French diplomats, and Massoud Rajavis sentence was commuted to life in prison.

Unfortunately, due to the loss of its leaders, the MEK was usurped by communists, which wrongly led to the MEK being labelled a communist organisation even after the communists were removed from the party, and the low-level MEK members were forced to choose between supporting the new leaders or being expelled. Some of those who left the group, were murdered by the usurpers.

Revolution is here

The Iranian Revolution, which had been brewing for over 70 years, was about to come to a boil, thanks to the hard work of groups like the MEK, who wanted to bring freedom and democracy to Iran.

The Shah fled Iran on January 16, 1979, and just four days later Massoud Rajavi was released from prison after serving seven years. He was in the last group of political prisoners to be freed.

Shortly after his release, Massoud Rajavi gave a speech at Tehran University about the MEKs history, its goals, and how Iran would soon be free. This event, which was attended by thousands of people marked the new beginning of the Mojahedin National Movement.

In the next piece, we will explain how the mullahs stole the revolution from the people and formed their own regime that the MEK had to fight against.
An award winning design and manufacturer of decorative lightings for 5 stars Hotels is looking for an outstanding Team member in a key position. Established in Bangkok on 14 February 2012.

We are looking for : Junior Accountant.

This position reports to the Office Manager and liaison with the outsourced Accounting Team.

Thai national only.

The scope of work includes :-

1. Receivable.

2. Payable.

3. Costing.

4. Banking and pay out slip.

This position is hands on and the candidate preferably should possess a basic knowledge of English, able to perform under stress and a Team player with positive attitude.

Computer literate is a must.

Please send your application letter, recent photo, CV & expected salary to :

mgt@lightsculptures.co.th

LIGHTSCULPTURES CO., LTD

11th Fl., 1103, Bangkok Business Center Building, 29 Sukhumvit 63 (Ekamai) Rd., Klongton Nua,Wattana, Bangkok, Thailand 10110 Tel. 02 391 1628

Website: www.lightsculptures.co.th Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lightsculpturesmurano
DeVos Gets Pushback on Attempt to Preempt State Consumer Protection

Beginning with a controversial nomination that ended in a tie-breaking Senate confirmation vote and continuing throughout her tenure as Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos has faced unceasing criticism. While Administration officials would be inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt, many across the country would argue that she is not serving the publics interests.

A recent interview on CBS 60 Minutes, provided an opportunity to address the nonstop criticism before a national audience. Instead, it prompted a new wave of critiques from viewers and news outlets alike.

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More important than these recent headlines, however, is the Departments attempt to stop states from holding student loan servicers and collectors accountable. Claiming that state consumer protection laws undermine federal regulator requirements, a non-binding memo is yet another assault on the 44 million Americans who together struggle with a still-growing $1.5 trillion in student debt.

It was about this time last year that Secretary DeVos withdrew three memos that would have required loan servicers, in their renegotiated contracts, to provide more intensive high touch servicing for borrowers threatened with default. Then late in the summer of 2017, she withdrew inter-agency working agreements between the Department and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) commonly known as Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs). Prior to her joining the Education Department, these same MOUs led to a series of major enforcement actions against for-profit colleges like Corinthian and ITT Tech, as well as the nations largest student loan servicer, Navient.

With rollbacks in oversight and enforcement, the Education Secretary must think the department is doing a great job serving student loan borrowers that states should just butt out. A new departmental memo claims as much.

In response, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Healey, who filed a lawsuit earlier this month that alleged overcharges to students by the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency was just as direct as she was quick to speak up.

Secretary DeVos can write as many love letters to the loan servicing industry as she wants, I wont be shutting down my investigations or stand by while these companies rip off students and families, Healey said in a statement to The Intercept. The last thing we need is to give this industry a free pass while a million students a year are defaulting on federal loans.

Thank goodness for state AGs like Healey. Federal enforcement of consumer protection is currently at a real low.

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When Mick Mulvaney was named Acting CFPB Director, a change of direction from consumer enforcement to education and information was promptly announced with a series of more changes. In Mulvaneys view, CFPB would no longer use aggressive enforcement to hold financial service providers accountable. On his watch, consumers have basically been told not to expect much from CFPB, while businesses have been catered to and even asked to advise Mulvaney and company of what appropriate regulation looks like.

So, if the Department of Education is not going to work with CFPB to resolve complaints and CFPB is not interested in consumer enforcement, why try to tie the hands of states who only seek to protect their own residents?

Whitney Barkley-Denney, a policy counsel with the Center for Responsible Lending, addressed the impacts to consumers of color. Due to racial disparities in income and wealth, the consumers hardest hit by these debts are consumers of color. While the federal government continues to find ways to placate these companies, states are ready and willing to serve the best interests of borrowers and taxpayers.

The National Governors Association(NGA) agrees with Barkley-Denney.

In a related statement, the NGA said, Last weeks declaration on student loan servicing from the U.S. Department of Education seeks to preempt bipartisan state laws, regulations and borrower bills of rights currently in place and under consideration in more than 15 states. States have stepped up to fill the void left, we believe, by the absence of federal protections for student loan borrowers, from potential abusive practices by companies servicing student loans.

Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers was even more candid.

With this move, she [Secretary DeVos] has castrated any state legislators and attorneys general from providing meaningful oversight of student loan services, yet she continues to fail to do so herself, said Weingarten.

In 2017, a CFPB report showed that during the past five years, more than 50,000 student loan complaints were filed. Additionally, more than 10,000 other related debt collection complaints were filed on both private and federal student loans.

Where these complaints originate is equally eye-opening. In just one year, from 2016 to 2017, the growth in the number of student loan complaints exceeded 100 percent in 11 states: Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington State and West Virginia.

Its enough to make one wonder, Who is our federal government actually serving?

Charlene Crowell is the Center for Responsible Lendings Deputy Communications Director. She can be reached at [email protected]
REVISITING MICHELLE ALEXANDERS THE NEW JIM CROW

Michelle Alexanders seminal effort, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, (2010) captured the nations attention. Continuing media coverage and public discourse beyond prison walls, particularly in the Black community, attested to the books wide appeal and Alexander is hailed, like no other, for illuminating the devastating impact of mass incarceration. The book has become a primer for better understanding and challenging mass incarceration as The New Jim Crow. But, will the alluring appeal be sustainable and help bring about desperately needed systemic change?

Weekly meetings with ex-gang members and ex-felons, now peace-making violence interventionists, sharpened my knowledge and disdain for the Prison Industrial Complex. It is a massive, non-inmate- centered entanglement that exacerbates rather than alleviates criminal behavior. To further emphasize the danger and complexity of mass incarceration, todays column revisits previous ones.

Alexander presents a penetrating analysis of the implications of mass incarceration, arguing Americas prison industrial complex is the New Jim Crow because it institutionalizes segregation as the nations proven method of control. Her book also provides a framework for grappling with the far-reaching economic and political implications of mass incarceration. She also contends that imprisonment, the principal method of social policy directed mostly to poor, uneducated Black men, frequently reflects race-biased public policies that extend well beyond prison walls.

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The following are excerpts from the book. It is a provocative conceptualization of racialized imprisonment that Blacks, especially, experience often but appear reluctant or unable to challenge. Hopefully, Michelle Alexanders perspective and analysis has, at somewhat, opened the nations eyes by generating broad conversation on the implications of todays prison industry.

Mass incarceration in the U.S. is a comprehensive and well-disguised system of racialized social control. Alexander distinguishes between dismantle and reform, arguing the latter is essentially ineffective. Mass incarceration operates through criminal justice systems, but functions more like a caste system than one of crime control. The book is intended to stimulate conversation leading to greater protest of the role of the criminal justice system in creating and perpetuating a racial hierarchy, i.e., a caste system in the U.S. (Caste denotes a stigmatized racial group locked into an inferior status. Racial caste systems do not require racial hostility or overt bigotry to thrive, they need only racial indifference.)

Alexander insists the notion that the New Jim Crow can ever be dismantled through traditional litigation and policy reform strategies that are wholly disconnected from a major social movement is fundamentally misguided. Such a movement is impossible if those most committed to abolishing racial hierarchy continue to behave as if a state-sponsored racial caste system no longer exists.

In each generation, new tactics have been used for achieving the same goals as the founding fathers denying African American citizenship which was deemed essential to the formation of the original union. Hundreds of years later, America is still not an egalitarian democracy. The arguments and rationalizations that abound in support of racial exclusion and discrimination have changed and evolved, but the outcome is largely the same. An extraordinary percentage of Black men in the United States are barred from voting today, just as they have been through most of American history. They are also subject to legalized discrimination in employment, housing, education and public benefits. What has changed since the collapse of Jim Crow has less to do with the basic structure of our society than with the language used to justify it.

In an era of so-called colorblindness, it is no longer socially permissible to use race explicitly as a justification for discrimination, exclusion and social contempt. Rather, we use our criminal justice system to label Blacks and other people of color as criminals and then engage in all the practices we supposedly left behind. Today, it is perfectly legal to discriminate against criminals in nearly all the ways that it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans. Once you are labeled a felon, the old forms of discrimination are suddenly legal. We have not ended racial caste in America, it has merely been redesigned.

Michelle Alexander reached the conclusions presented in her book reluctantly. Ten years before, she says she would have argued strenuously against the books central claimthat something akin to a racial caste system currently exists in the United States. And, had Barack Obama been elected president then, she would have argued his election marked the nations triumph over racial caste, the final nail in Jim Crows coffin.

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Later, as an experienced civil rights lawyer, she came to suspect she was wrong about the criminal justice system; it was not just another institution infected with racial bias, but an entirely different beast. No one imagined the prison population would more than quadruple in their lifetime, and despite the unprecedented levels of incarceration in the African American community, the civil rights community and Blacks themselves are oddly quiet. One in three young Black men is currently under the control of the criminal justice systemin prison, in jail, on probation or parole. Yet, mass incarceration is categorized as a criminal justice issue, not a racial justice issue.

The enormous implications of The New Jim Crow and mass incarceration require a different social consensus be forged about race and its role in defining the basic structure of American society. Making this happen requires transformative thinking, commitment and public policy. Are we up to the task?

[email protected]
Fifteen Palestinians were killed and more than 750 were wounded by Israeli troops Friday during a march to the border of Israel and the Palestinian territory of Gaza.

It was the deadliest day Gaza has seen since the 2014 cross-border war between Israel and Hamas.

Friday marked the first day of what Hamas organizers have said will be six weeks of daily protests against Israels border blockade.

Protest organizers say they aim to bring attention to Palestinian demands for a right of return to what is now Israel. A large majority of Gazas 2 million people are descendants of Palestinians who fled or were driven from their homes in the 1948 Mideast war over Israels creation.

The right of return demands that relatives of refugees who lost their homes in 1948 be able to regain their property.

The Israeli military accused Palestinian militants of using the cover of protests to carry out attacks. It said thousands of Palestinians threw rocks and rolled burning tires toward Israeli soldiers on the other side of the border fence. It also said that in one incident, Palestinian gunmen fired towards Israeli soldiers.

The large turnout of flag-waving marchers in the dangerous border zone demonstrates Hamas organizing skills. But it also demonstrates Gaza residents growing dissatisfaction after a decade-old border closure. Life in Gaza has worsened in recent months, with rising unemployment, poverty and daily electrical shortages.

Im Phil Dierking.

This story was originally written by Fares Akram and Karin Laub for for the Associated Press. Phil Dierking adapted this story for VOA Learning English. Ashley Thompson was the editor.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section or on our Facebook page. _____________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

descendant - n. someone who is related to a person or group of people who lived in the past

tire - n. a rubber ring that usually contains air and that fits around the wheel of a car, bicycle, etc.

decade - n. a period of 10 years
Sing Sing Correctional Facility is a high-security prison about an hour by car north of New York City.

Sing Sing holds 1,600 prisoners.

As the men serve their sentences, prison officials are planning for the time those detainees will be released.

One of those officials is Leslie Malin, the deputy superintendent for program services at Sing Sing. Malin says the prison offers technical training and educational classes.

It also has a music program, which works in partnership with New York Citys Carnegie Hall fine arts center.

Making musical connections

Two times a month, artists from New York go to Sing Sing and spend a day working with the 30 detainees involved in its Musical Connections program. The program is nine years old. Before that, Sing Sing had just a music room.

A man identified only as Rob is a former prisoner. New Yorks Department of Corrections asked that VOA not give any last names of prisoners.

Rob remembers there were often fights over who could use the music room. But he said it was hard to hate the other men when they are helping each other with music and performing songs.

Rob has been on parole for the past year-and-a-half, after spending seven years in Sing Sing. He says he performed just two times before he went to prison.

A man called Joe had even less experience. "I didn't know what an A flat was," he admits. "I've heard these terms. I couldn't have explained them to you. I didn't know what they sounded like. I didn't know what they meant."

Joe spent four years in the Musical Connections program. He studied music theory during that time. Now, Joe is writing an operatic work. He said he became interested in classical music after working with opera star Joyce DiDonato. "She definitely opened my eyes to something that I didn't even know I had within myself," he added.

Kenyatta, who has been in prison for 23 years, calls the music program "the most transformative thing I have ever experienced."

Kenyatta earned a master's degree after completing a higher education program in religious studies. He has been a speaker in a TED talk video from Sing Sing.

Kenyatta has been a part of the music program since it started. He says music has helped him open up to others. "I can be a little less alone, he says, because I know you understand some part of me, at least, and you can be a little less alone because you know that I understand some part of you.

Increasing musical skills

The Musical Connections program is under the direction of Carnegie Hall's Manuel Bagorro. He leads similar programs in homeless shelters and community centers.

Bagorro says all the programs have similar goals. He says People have come together. They play together. They negotiate artistic decisions. They sort out problems

And those are all skills that prisoners can use when they are out of jail. Danny was released from Sing Sing three-and-a-half years ago, after seven years in the prison system. He learned to play the violin in the Musical Connections program and started writing music.

Danny said that after his release, he was able to take the same energy and effort required to learn an instrument, and put it into other areas of his life.

One of the teaching artists, Sarah Elizabeth Charles, says she has seen both personal and musical growth in the prisoners over the years.

"I just think the sky's the limit for so many of the men in this workshop. They're professional. They're working. Many of them are working on the level of a professional musician.Yes. Sky's the limit," she says.

Music training

Carnegie Hall holds a monthly gathering for the programs members who have been released from Sing Sing. Rob says that at these meetings, the men do more than play music, they also talk about what's going on in their lives.

He told VOA "It showed me that everybody was struggling trying to find a job, trying to stay employed, trying to find some time to practiceI knew I wasn't alone in any of these things."

Im Phil Dierking.

Jeff Lunden reported this story for VOANews.com. Phil Dierking adapted the report for Learning English. George Grow was the editor.

What are other types of programs that could be used with prisoners? We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section or on our Facebook page. ______________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

A flat - n. a note a semitone below an A note

operatic - adj. relating to or characteristic of opera.

parole - n. permission given to a prisoner to leave prison before the end of a sentence usually as a reward for behaving well

transformative - adj. causing or able to cause a change

classical music - n. serious or conventional music following long-established principles rather than a folk, jazz, or popular tradition.

violin - n. a musical instrument that has four strings and that you usually hold against your shoulder under your chin and play with a bow

masters degree - n. a degree that is given to a student by a college or university usually after one or two years of additional study following a bachelor's degree

professional - adj. relating to a job that requires special education, training, or skill

workshop - n. a class or series of classes in which a small group of people learn the methods and skills used in doing something

practice - v. to do something again and again in order to become better at it
Russia ordered new cuts Friday to the number of British diplomats in the country. The move has worsened the clash between Russia and several European countries and the United States over the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain.

On Thursday, Russias Foreign Ministry announced the removal of 60 American diplomats, in answer to the United States expulsion of the same number of Russian diplomats earlier this week.

The increased removal of diplomats on both sides has reached a level unseen even during the height of the Cold War.

More than 20 countries and NATO have ordered the expulsion of over 150 Russian diplomats. The actions were meant as a show of support for Britain over the March 4 poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, in the British city of Salisbury. Britain blamed the poisoning attack on Russia.

Russia has strongly denied involvement in the poisoning. It also announced it would expel the same number of diplomats from each nation.

Russias Foreign Ministry intensified the dispute Friday, saying it has ordered Britain to reduce its diplomats in Moscow to the number that Russia now has in London. The ministry has given Britain one month to take action.

In answer, a representative of the British Foreign Office said Russias move was regrettable but expected, based on its earlier actions.

A hospital treating the Skripals said Thursday that the daughters condition was improving quickly. Her father, however, remains in critical condition.

Dmitry Peskov, press secretary to Russian President Vladimir Putin, spoke with reporters on Friday. He said that Russia didnt start any diplomatic wars, and remains open for developing good ties.

He also said Russia has called a meeting with the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons next week to push for an objective investigation.

Russia has accused Britain of failing to support its claims with evidence and refusing to share materials from its investigation. The Russian Foreign Ministry said it told the British ambassador on Friday that Moscow is ready to cooperate in the investigation.

I'm Alice Bryant.

The Associated Press reported this story. Alice Bryant adapted it for Learning English. Ashley Thompson was the editor.

_______________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

critical  adj. relating to or involving a great danger of death

prohibition  n. the act of not allowing something to be used or done

objective  adj. based on facts rather than feelings or opinions


From VOA Learning English, this is American Stories.

Our story is called "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky." It was written by Stephen Crane. We will listen to the story in two parts. Today we will hear the first part of the story.

The great train was rushing forward such steady dignity of motion that a glance from the window seemed simply to prove that the flatlands of Texas were pouring toward the east.

A newly married pair had come on this train at San Antonio. The mans face was reddened from many days in the wind and sun. His roughened hands were continually moving over his new black clothes in a most nervous manner.

From time to time he looked down respectfully at his suit. He sat with a hand on each knee, like a man waiting in a shop for a haircut. The glances he gave to other passengers were few and quick.

The bride was not pretty, nor was she very young. She wore a dress of blue with many buttons. She continually turned her head to regard some part or other of her dress. It made her feel strange.

One could tell that she had cooked and that she expected to cook, dutifully.

The searching glances of some of the passengers as she had entered the car had brought the blood rushing to her face. Her uncomfortable expression was strange to see upon this plain face, which was usually calm and almost emotionless.

They were evidently very happy.

Ever been in a train like this before? he asked, smiling with delight.

No, she answered, I never was. Its fine, isnt it?

Great! After a while well go forward to the dining car and get a big dinner. Finest meal in the world. Costs a dollar.

Oh, it does? cried the bride. A dollar? Oh, thats too much for us, isnt it, Jack?

Not on this trip, at least, he answered bravely. Were going to enjoy ourselves.

Later he explained to her about the trains.

You see, its a thousand miles from one end of Texas to the other. The train runs straight across it, and only stops four times.

He had the pride of an owner. He pointed out to her the beauty of the car they were riding in. And in truth her eyes opened wider as she observed the rich, sea-green cloth covering the seats, the shining silver and glass, the wood that shone darkly like the surface of a pool of oil.

To the minds of the pair, their surroundings repeated the glory of their wedding that morning in San Antonio. This was the spirit of their new life, and the mans face in particular shone with a joy that made him appear foolish to certain passengers. In the minds of some, there was supposed to be something hugely funny in the pairs situation.

We are due in Yellow Sky at 3:42, he said, looking tenderly into her eyes.

Oh, are we? she said, as if she had not been aware of it. To show surprise at her husbands remark was part of her wifely duty.

She took from a pocket a little silver watch. As she held it before her, and stared at it with a look of attention, the new husbands face shone.

I bought it in San Antonio from a friend of mine, he told her proudly.

Its 17 minutes past 12, she said, looking up at him with a happy expression which, nevertheless, showed a lack of experience in conversing with men. A passenger, observing her small nervousness, laughed to himself.

At last they went to the dining car. The man serving their table happened to take pleasure in directing them through their meal. He viewed them with the manner of a fatherly guide, his face shining with kindness. But they did not understand his attentions. As they returned to their seats, they showed in their faces a sense of escape.

It was evident that, as the distance from Yellow Sky grew shorter, the husband became more nervous. His red hands were even more noticeable. He was rather absent-minded and faraway when the bride leaned forward and spoke to him.

As a matter of truth, Jack Potter was beginning to find his deed weighing upon him like a great stone. He, the town policeman of Yellow Sky, was a man known, liked, and feared in his community. He, an important person, had gone to San Antonio to meet a girl he believed he loved. And there he had actually married her without discussing any part of the matter with Yellow Sky. He was now bringing his bride to a sure-to-be-surprised town.

Of course, people in Yellow Sky married as it pleased them. But Potters thoughts of his duty to his friends, or of their idea of his duty, made him feel he was sinful. He was guilty of a great and unusual crime.

Face to face with this girl in San Antonio, he had leaped over all the social fences. At San Antonio he was like a man hidden in the dark. A knife to cut any friendly duty was easy to take in his hand in that distant city. But the hour of Yellow Sky, the hour of daylight, was approaching.

He knew very well that his wedding was an important thing to the town. It could only be equaled by the burning of the new hotel. His friends could not forgive him, he felt. And now the train was hurrying him toward a scene of surprise, merriment, and blame. He glanced out of the window again.

Yellow Sky had a kind of band, which played its horns and drums painfully, to the delight of the people. He laughed without heart as he thought of it. If the citizens could dream of his arrival with his bride, they would march the band at the station and accompany them, among cheers and laughter, to his house.

He decided that he would use all methods of speed and cleverness in making the journey from the station to his house. Once safely at home, he would announce the news. Then he would not go among the citizens until theyd had time to master their emotions.

The bride looked anxiously at him. Whats worrying you, Jack?

He laughed. Im not worrying, girl. Im only thinking of Yellow Sky.

She understood, and her face turned red again.

They shared a sense of slight guilt that developed a finer tenderness. They looked at each other with eyes softly glowing. But Potter often laughed the same nervous laugh. The deep red color upon the brides face did not lessen.

Were nearly there, he said.

As the train began to slow, they moved forward in the car. The long line of cars moved into the station of Yellow Sky.

The train has to get water here, said Potter, from a tight throat and face, as one announcing death. Before the train stopped, his eye had searched the station, and he was glad and surprised to see there was no one there except the station master.

Come on, girl, said Potter with a thick voice. As he helped her down, they each laughed in a strained manner. He took her bag and told his wife to hold his arm.

As they hurried away he saw that the station master had turned and was running toward them, waving his arms. Potter laughed, and sighed as he laughed, when he realized the first effect of his wedding upon Yellow Sky. He grasped his wifes arm firmly to his side and they hurried away.

The California train was due at Yellow Sky in 21 minutes. There were six men in the Weary Gentleman Saloon. One was a salesman who talked a great deal and rapidly; three were Texans who did not care to talk at that time; and two were Mexican sheep farmers who did not usually talk in the saloon.

The saloon-keepers dog lay in front of the door. His head was resting on his feet, and he glanced sleepily here and there with the ready watchfulness of a dog that is sometimes kicked.

Across the sandy street were some bright green, grass spots, so wonderful in appearance next to burning sands in the hot sun. At the cooler side of the railroad station, a man without a coat sat in a chair leaned back against the building. He smoked his pipe. The waters of the Rio Grande river circled near the town, and beyond it could be seen great flatlands.

Except for the busy salesman and his companions in the saloon, Yellow Sky was sleeping. The salesman leaned easily upon a table and told many tales with the confidence of a story teller who has found new listeners.

He was interrupted by a young man who suddenly appeared in the open door. He cried, Scratchy Wilsons drunk, and has started to make trouble.

The two Mexicans at once put down their glasses and disappeared through the rear door of the saloon. The salesman, not understanding the importance of the warning, jokingly answered, All right, old man. Suppose he has? Come in and have a drink anyhow.

But the information had made such an apparent impression upon everyone in the room that the salesman was forced to see its importance. All had become instantly serious.

Well, he said, filled with mystery, what is this? His three companions started to tell him, but the young man at the door stopped them.

It means, my friend, he answered as he came into the saloon, that for the next two hours this town wont be very healthy.

The saloon-keeper went to the door and locked it. Reaching out of the window, he pulled in heavy wooden boards, which covered the windows and locked there. The salesman was looking from one to another.

What is this, anyhow? he cried. You dont mean there is going to be a gun-fight?

Come back to American Stories next week for the second half of "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky" by Stephen Crane.

Now it's your turn to use the words in this story. Do you enjoy movies about cowboys? Can you imagine a town like Yellow Sky? How do you think the people in Yellow Sky feel about Jack Potter? Write to us in the Comments Section or on our Facebook page.

Teachers, view the lesson plan here.

Try the listening quiz to see how well you understand Part One of the story.

Quiz - The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky, Part One Start the Quiz to find out Start Quiz



________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

aware - adj. knowing that something (such as a situation, condition, or problem) exists

bride - n. a woman who has just married or is about to be married

dignity - n. the quality of being worthy of honor or respect

grasp - v. to take and hold (something) with your fingers, hands, etc.

merriment - n. laughter and enjoyment

saloon - n. a business where alcoholic drinks are served

Teachers, here is a lesson plan for Part One of this story.
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Rolls-Royce Holdings plc operates as an industrial technology company in the United Kingdom and internationally. The company operates in four segments: Civil Aerospace, Power Systems, Defence, and ITP Aero. The Civil Aerospace segment develops, manufactures, and sells aero engines for large commercial aircraft, regional jet, and business aviation markets, as well as provides aftermarket services. The Power Systems segment provides high-speed and medium-speed reciprocating engines, and propulsion and power generation systems for the marine, defense, power generation, and industrial markets. The Defence segment offers aero engines for military transport and patrol aircraft applications; and naval engines and submarine nuclear power plants, as well as aftermarket services. The ITP Aero segment engages in the design, research and development, manufacture and casting, assembly, and testing of aeronautical engines and gas turbines. It also provides maintenance, repair, and overhaul services for regional airlines, as well as business aviation, industrial, and defense applications. Rolls-Royce Holdings plc was founded in 1884 and is headquartered in London, the United Kingdom.

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Carnival loses $2.8 billion but sees solid 2022 bookings

Carnival Corp. lost $2.8 billion in the third quarter, but shares rose Friday after the cruise line operator said bookings for the second half of next year are running ahead of 2019 levels. Cruising investors are looking for any glimmer of hope for an industry that has been battered by the pandemic. Still, the short-term outlook remains grim.

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Wall Street analysts have given iShares MSCI Peru ETF a "N/A" rating, but there may be better buying opportunities in the stock market. Some of MarketBeat's past winning trading ideas have resulted in 5-15% weekly gains. MarketBeat just released five new stock ideas, but iShares MSCI Peru ETF wasn't one of them. MarketBeat thinks these five companies may be even better buys.

View MarketBeat's top stock picks here.
Fortis Inc. operates as an electric and gas utility company in Canada, the United States, and the Caribbean countries. It generates, transmits, and distributes electricity to approximately 433,000 retail customers in southeastern Arizona; and 98,000 retail customers in Arizona's Mohave and Santa Cruz counties with an aggregate capacity of 3,233 megawatts (MW), including 59 MW of solar capacity. The company also sells wholesale electricity to other entities in the western United States; owns gas-fired and hydroelectric generating capacity totaling 65 MW; and distributes natural gas to approximately 1,048,000 residential, commercial, and industrial customers in British Columbia, Canada. In addition, it owns and operates the electricity distribution system that serves approximately 572,000 customers in southern and central Alberta; owns 4 hydroelectric generating facilities with a combined capacity of 225 MW; and provides operation, maintenance, and management services to five hydroelectric generating facilities. Further, the company distributes electricity in the island portion of Newfoundland and Labrador with an installed generating capacity of 143 MW; and on Prince Edward Island with a generating capacity of 130 MW. Additionally, it provides integrated electric utility service to approximately 67,000 customers in Ontario; approximately 270,000 customers in Newfoundland and Labrador; approximately 31,000 customers on Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands; and approximately 15,000 customers on certain islands in Turks and Caicos. The company also holds long-term contracted generation assets in Belize consisting of 3 hydroelectric generating facilities with a combined capacity of 51 MW; and the Aitken Creek natural gas storage facility. It also owns and operates approximately 91,000 circuit Kilometers (km) of distribution lines; and approximately 49,500 km of natural gas pipelines. Fortis Inc. was founded in 1885 and is headquartered in St. John's, Canada.

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Ormat Technologies, Inc. operates as a holding company. The firm engages in the provision of geothermal and recovered energy power business. It operates through the following segments: Electricity, Product and Energy Storage. The Electricity segment focuses in the sale of electricity from the company's power plants pursuant to PPAs. The Product segment involves in the manufacture, including design and development, of turbines and power units for the supply of electrical energy and in the associated construction of power plants utilizing the power units manufactured by the company to supply energy from geothermal fields and other alternative energy sources. The Energy Storage segment consists of battery energy storage systems as a service and management of curtailable customer loads under contracts with U.S. retail energy providers and directly with large commercial and industrial customers. The company was founded in 1965 and is headquartered in Reno, NV.

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Varian Medical Systems, Inc. designs, manufactures, sells, and services medical devices and software products for treating cancer and other medical conditions worldwide. It operates through Oncology Systems and Proton Solutions segments. The Oncology Systems segment offers hardware and software products for treating cancer with radiotherapy, fixed field intensity-modulated radiation therapy, image-guided radiation therapy, volumetric modulated arc therapy, stereotactic radiosurgery, stereotactic body radiotherapy, artificial intelligence based adaptive radiotherapy, and brachytherapy, as well as quality assurance equipment. Its products include linear accelerators, brachytherapy afterloaders, treatment accessories, and quality assurance software; and information management, treatment planning, image processing, clinical knowledge exchange, patient care management, decision-making support, and practice management software. This segment serves university research and community hospitals, private and governmental institutions, healthcare agencies, physicians' offices, medical oncology practices, radiotherapy centers, and cancer care clinics. The Proton Solutions segment designs, develops, manufactures, sells, and services products and systems for delivering proton therapy for the treatment of cancer. The company has a strategic agreement with McKesson Corp. to supply treatment delivery systems and planning, services, and radiotherapy information system solutions to its U.S. Oncology Network and Vantage Oncology affiliated sites of care; and a strategic partnership with Siemens AG to represent Siemens diagnostic imaging products to radiation oncology clinics in the United States and other select markets. Varian Medical Systems, Inc. was formerly known as Varian Associates, Inc. and changed its name to Varian Medical Systems, Inc. in April 1999. The company was founded in 1948 and is headquartered in Palo Alto, California.

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Reports: Israel Flies F-35 Fighters Over Iran

Two Israeli F-35 fighter jets entered Iranian airspace over the past several weeks, according to the Jerusalem Post.

The two stealth fighters flew over Syrian and Iraqi airspace to reach Iran and targeted locations in the Iranian cities of Bandar Abbas, Esfahan, and Shiraz, according to the newspaper, quoting a Kuwaiti report for its information. Neither Israel or Iran have publicly commented on the report.

Israel, which is currently operating seven F-35 planes, has admitted to carrying out about 100 airstrikes in Syria over the past five years or so, mainly targeting Lebanon-based Hezbollah terrorists, weapons, and infrastructure.

The Posts report said that the two F-35s circled in the sky over sites believed to be connected to Irans nuclear program. The two jets also went undetected by radar, including Russias radar system in Syria. A source said that its not clear if the Israeli operation was carried out along with the United States.

The source also said that the Israeli fighters have done a number of missions in Syria and along the border of Lebanon and Syria.

On Feb. 10, 2018, an Israeli F-16 was shot down by the Syrian regime after carrying out an air raid, wounding two pilots.

Israel at the time stated that it was the biggest and most significant attack the air force has conducted against Syrian air defenses since the 1982 Lebanon War, according to Haaretz. It was the first time Israel lost a jet to an enemy combatant since the 1982 conflict.

On March 20, Israel also confirmed for the first time that it bombed a Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007, ending a decade of speculation and secrecy.

#Israel: Two Israeli F-35 fighter jets entered #Iranian airspace over the past month, Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida reported on Thursday. https://t.co/T5xoR4eED0  Global: MilitaryInfo (@bowden_jayden) March 29, 2018

The Israeli government, the Israel Defense Forces and the Mossad prevented Syria from developing nuclear capability, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, according to Reuters. Israels policy was and remains consistentto prevent our enemies from arming themselves with nuclear weapons.

Intelligence minister, Israel Katz, wrote on Twitter: The (2007) operation and its success made clear that Israel will never allow nuclear weaponry to be in the hands of those who threaten its existence  Syria then, and Iran today.

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Barclays Plc agreed to pay USD2 billion in civil penalties to settle a U.S. investigation into its marketing of residential mortgage-

backed securities between 2005 and 2007.

The investigation targeted 36 RMBS deals involving $31 billion worth of loans, more than half of which defaulted, the Justice Department said in a statement yesterday. In addition, two former executives at the bank  Paul Menefee and John Carroll  agreed to pay $2 million to resolve claims against them without admitting wrongdoing.

In general, the borrowers whose loans backed these deals were significantly less credit-worthy than Barclays represented, the Justice Department said in a statement.

The London-based bank was said in 2016 to press to keep any settlement to $2 billion. The Justice Department balked and sued that December. It was a rare move as big banks typically negotiate a settlement before it reaches that point rather than risk a public trial.

Barclays Chief Executive Officer Jes Staley welcomed the deal in a statement and called it a fair and proportionate settlement. Staley said the bank remained committed to paying a 6.5 pence dividend for 2018. The bank will recognize the fine in its first quarter earnings.

Menefee, who was the head banker on Barclayss subprime RMBS securitizations, has always maintained that the governments FIRREA lawsuit against him was baseless, his lawyers said in a statement, referring to the statute under which the case was brought. Solely to put this matter behind him, Mr. Menefee has agreed to a settlement in which he has not admitted any wrongdoing. Bloomberg
Macau Bishop Stephen Lee issued an Easter message urging all pastoral groups and institutions in the Diocese to work towards a culture of mercy, reconciliation and communion of youth and family. Noting that there can be no healthy marriage or healthy family without the exercise of forgiveness in the family, the Macau Bishop centered his Easter message on the concept of forgiveness. One who does not forgive sickens physically, emotionally and spiritually, Lee wrote.

Edmund Ho meets with Suu Kyi

Vice Chairman of the Chinese Peoples Political Consultative Conference and Former Chief Executive of Macau, Edmund Ho Hau Wah, met yesterday with Myanmars State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi at the presidential residence in Naypyitaw, Myanmar. A delegation led by Edmund Ho Hau Wah arrived in Nay Pyi Taw on Wednesday evening. They were welcomed by Union Minister for International Cooperation, U Kyaw Tin, and the Chinese Ambassador to Myanmar, Hong Liang, at the Nay Pyi Taw International Airport.

Accreditation scheme calls for applications

The Macau Government Tourism Office (MGTO) held two promotional seminars yesterday at the Convention Center of Macau Science Center to call for new applications from catering and travel agency sectors for the Quality Tourism Services Accreditation Scheme, which has been carried out for the fifth year. Interested merchants who meet the necessary criteria for the Scheme may submit applications and supporting documents to MGTO from April 3 to 30. Acting director Cheng Wai Tong of MGTO and representatives from a number of supporting entities were present at the seminars, which introduced the application procedures and assessment criteria of the Quality Tourism Services Accreditation Scheme.
The 2017 financial statements and annual report of Companhia de Electricidade de Macau (CEM) were approved by the board of the company at the annual general meeting on Wednesday, with the final net profit settled at MOP793 million.

In 2017, the peak demand of power consumption in Macau rose by 7.7 percent to 1,004 MW, while the total electricity consumption reached 5,377 GWh, up 2.3 percent year-on-year.

The cost of local electricity generation remained competitive last year compared with that imported from mainland China, according to a statement from CEM.

Local power generation increased by 60 percent to 1,260 GWh compared to 2016, accounting for 23.4 percent of the total power consumption in Macau. Electricity imported from Mainland China declined by 8.2 percent year- on-year to 3,952 GWh, taking up 73.5 percent of the total power consumption, while the remaining 3.1 percent was purchased from Macau Refused Incineration Plant.

The CEM statement said that the company continued to invest in local critical infrastructure facilities last year, with the aim of strengthening supply reliability and meeting the ever-increasing power demand.

Accordingly, CEMs capital expenditure in 2017 was MOP1.52 billion, with the majority invested in the power transmission and distribution networks and other, specific projects, such as primary substations in the Hospital Conde S. Januario as well as the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge Artificial Island.

Regarding the impact caused by Typhoon Hato in August last year  which temporarily plunged the city into darkness  CEM said that the power supply was restored in the shortest possible time. It said that the company was making efforts to improve local power infrastructure, without specifying the details.

The annual general meeting also saw several individuals appointed to the companys supervisory board. They are Paul Tse representing the Macau SAR, Wong Su Cheong representing Sino-French Energy Development Co. Ltd., Jose da Guia Rodrigues dos Santos representing Energy Asia Consultancy Ltd., and Cheong Sio Tong.
A Vietnamese court sentenced a former Communist Party Politburo member to 18 years in prison yesterday after finding him guilty of mismanagement at a state oil giant that cost millions of dollars.

The former chairman of PetroVietnam, Dinh La Thang, had already been sentenced to 13 years in prison in January on other charges.

The Hanoi court convicted Thang of deliberately violating economic management regulations by investing USD35 million in Ocean Commercial Joint Stock Bank without approval from the board of directors. The investment was lost when the bank was acquired by a state bank at no cost.

Six other defendants who were former senior executives of PetroVietnam received from 15 months of probation to 23 years in jail at the end of the weeklong trial yesterday.

The court also ordered Thang to pay 600 billion dong ($26.5 million) in compensation to PetroVietnam and the six others to pay the remaining 200 billion dong ($8.5 million).

This is a particularly serious case that [] affected the peoples trust and caused especially large losses to the state, the state-run online newspaper VnExpress quoted the verdict as saying.

Thang, 57, was once a rising political star but was dismissed from the all-

powerful Politburo in May and was subsequently fired as Communist Party secretary of the southern commercial hub of Ho Chi Minh City. He was arrested on Dec. 8.

Phan Trung Hoai, one of Thangs defense lawyers, told The Associated Press that we were very shocked at the sentences. Foreign press did not have access to the trial. During the court proceedings, Thang denied the charges and maintained that what he did was in line with the law.

The state-run online newspaper Dan Tri quoted the verdict as saying Thang held the companys highest position and must bear the main responsibility for the losses.

After committing the crime, the defendant did not really express remorse, but instead used tricks to conceal the crime and avoid responsibility and the consequences that it caused, the newspaper quoted the verdict as saying.

PetroVietnam and the banking sector have been at the center of an unprecedented crackdown on corruption, with scores of current or former senior executives on trial. AP
The Macau International Airport Company (CAM) still has an eye to developing long-haul flights to Europe and South America, but that will depend on securing the right partnerships.

Speaking at the companys annual general assembly meeting yesterday, Chairman of the General Assembly Charles Lo said that CAM was still working toward developing more mid- and long-haul charter flights.

Of course, I am talking about [routes to] Europe and South America, he said in response to a media enquiry. A lot of people go to Hong Kong [for intercontinental flights]. In the future, we want them to fly from Macau. [] Our target is regional cooperation, and then we will look at international cooperation, and then bring in larger planes. [In] the very near future, we are going to have charter flights to other parts of the world, other than Southeast Asia, Asia or Asia Pacific.

The goal has long been on CAMs agenda, but the company says airline operators are unwilling to open the routes, perhaps in part due to the MSARs proximity to the bigger and more international airport in Hong Kong.

In September last year, a representative of the company told the Times that CAM was interested in exploring potential airlines to operate direct long-haul routes to Macau, and that CAM has been trying all [manner of] ways to introduce new airlines to MIA, [ but] an airline of a foreign country may have many considerations before entering into a new market.

The comments came just a few months after Beijing Capital Airlines inaugurated its Lisbon-Beijing-Macau flight, marking the first semi-direct connection to the European capital since TAP Air Portugals short-lived experiment in the 1990s.

However, on the sidelines on the inauguration, the president of the Civil Aviation Authority of Macau, Simon Chan, suggested that that it might not be realistic for Macau to open many direct long-distance flights in a short time on account of what he described as the characteristics of the market.

Certainly, the Macau International Airport is to remain mostly regional in its scope for the years ahead. The airport currently connects the city to a total of 47 destinations, but the vast majority of passengers travel to and from mainland China (36 percent), Taiwan (22 percent) and Southeast Asia (42 percent).

In the medium term, CAM will not shy away from tapping into the considerably larger market residing within the Greater Bay Area, the company said yesterday, though this would only play out over the course of the next 10 to 15 years.

The opening of the Hong Kong-

Zhuhai-Macau Bridge will make it easier for people to travel, provide more travel mode choices for passengers and bring [a] greater market to the civil aviation industry in the bay area, a statement from the company read.

Asked whether increased demand from the Greater Bay Area would test the capacity of the local airport  even with the extension of the passenger terminal building  Lo declined to say if the company has made any forecasts in this respect and whether its current infrastructure will suffice.

The south extension of the passenger terminal building will add to the increased capacity following from the opening of the north extension earlier this year. Together they are expected to facilitate the travel of between nine and 10 million passengers per year, according to previous estimates from the company.

CAM said yesterday that the south extension of the passenger terminal building will be ready for public bidding in the second quarter of this year.

Cam board approves 2017 annual report

THE MACAU International Airport Company held its annual general assembly meeting yesterday, where the board gave its approval for the resolution of the 2017 annual report.

The Macau International Airport achieved a total income of MOP4.95 billion, marking an increase of 9.6 percent year-on-year;

The total income of CAM reached MOP1.4 billion, an increase of 5.5 percent compared with 2016;

The final net profit of CAM will be MOP354 million after tax and preferred dividends;

CAM has proposed new business targets for 2018, including 7.38 million in passenger traffic, 60,000 flight movements and 39,000 tons of cargo;

Starting from next month, CAM will complete the integration of its subsidiary, Administration of Airports Ltd., into its new airport operations department. All subordinate units, departments and staff of Administration of Airports will be absorbed by CAM.
Renault SA and Nissan Motor Co. are in talks to merge, seeking to solidify their two-decade-old alliance under a single stock as an unprecedented shift toward electric and shared cars transforms the industry, people with knowledge of the matter said.

A deal would end the current alliance between the companies and marry them as one corporation, said the people, who asked not to be identified as the details arent public. Renault currently owns 43 percent of Nissan while the Japanese carmaker has a 15 percent stake in its French counterpart. Carlos Ghosn, the chairman of both companies, is driving the negotiations and would run the combined entity, the people said.

A merged giant would be a more formidable rival for Volkswagen AG and Toyota Motor Corp., allowing the partners to better pool resources as the industry shifts toward new-energy vehicles, autonomous driving and car-sharing services. While the alliance of Renault and Nissan has brought savings, the fragmented ownership structure has prevented the companies from reaping full benefits from their union.

Size matters in the auto industry, said Janet Lewis, an analyst at Macquarie in Tokyo. The concern has always primarily been the French government, and somewhat Japan, because both France and Japan like to keep their national champions.

The parties are discussing a transaction in which Nissan would essentially give Renault shareholders stock in the new company, the people said. Nissan shareholders would also receive shares in the new company in exchange for their holdings, they said. The automaker may maintain headquarters in both Japan and France.

Getting a deal done could prove very difficult, the people said. The French government owns 15 percent of Renault and may be reluctant to relinquish control over its stake or have its position watered down. Both the French and Japanese governments would also have to approve a deal and may have strong opinions on where the combined company is domiciled, the people said.

One possibility would be to base the company in London or the Netherlands, where cross-Atlantic carmaker Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV has its corporate charter. Fiat Chrysler maintains headquarters in both Italy and the U.S.

No final decisions have been made and the talks, which have been ongoing for several months, may not result in a deal, they said. A spokesman for the Renault-Nissan alliance said the group doesnt comment on rumors and speculation, while a spokesman for the French finance ministry declined to comment. Representatives for Yokohama, Japan-based Nissan and Renault also declined to comment.

Reuters reported earlier this month that Nissan was in talks to buy the bulk of the French governments stake in Renault, citing unidentified people. The Renault-Nissan alliance said at the time any discussion about a share transaction involving the parties was pure speculation.

Ghosn has pledged to cement Renaults partnership with Nissan, saying in February that the companies would devise a plan to make the alliance irreversible. The 64-year-old relinquished the chief executive officer role at Nissan last year to focus on the partnership.

The companies are seeking to double synergies to 10 billion euros by 2022 from 2016. In April, Mitsubishi Motors Corp.  in which Nissan is the largest shareholder  will further integrate with the alliance by joining a shared parts- purchasing organization.

The alliance forecasts unit sales of 14 million units by 2022, compared with 10.6 million last year. Volkswagen, the worlds largest carmaker, sold 10.7 million vehicles last year, while Toyota sold 10.4 million.

To compete against the Toyotas, Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi very much has to do it as one big group, Macquaries Lewis said. Bloomberg
Writer-director Aaron Katzs Gemini  is a very stylishly executed and well-cast attempt at a Lynchian neo-noir that doesnt really work. Glum and meandering, the Los Angeles-set mystery about a Hollywood starlet and her assistant starts off promising enough but trudges along aimlessly to a deeply silly and maddening end.

Heather Anderson is the name of the starlet/actress/whatever in question played with otherworldly coolness by the otherworldly cool Zoe Kravitz. We never see her acting, just sort of existing in the moody milieu of L.A.s middle section, the 1920s- style apartment buildings and strip mall parking lots of Koreatown and the tonier hills to the north. She and her assistant Jill LeBeau (Lola Kirke) may as well be in their own little world, connected to the outside through cell phones and text messages and one stray paparazzi, Stan (James Ransone), who follows them around.

We meet Jill fielding a phone call from Heathers aggrieved recent ex-boyfriend Devin, who casually threatens to kill Heather for what shes done to him. Heather arrives shortly after, wonders who it was and kind of rolls her eyes when the message is relayed. Her mind is elsewhere, namely on the project shes about to bail on. Only shes not actually going to break the news to the director, Greg (Nelson Franklin). Shes going to make Jill do it.

And like a good, underpaid assistant, Jill tells Greg that the deal is off, which he takes poorly and leaves. Pretty shortly after they get another call from her agent who also threatens to kill Heather for what shes done. And a grade-A creep of a fan lingers a little longer than anyone is comfortable with. Showbiz, right?

We dont get much context about how famous Heather is. Her presence is enough to get a movie made, and her absence is enough for it to be called off. She has at least one Instagram superfan and theres that one paparazzi. But for someone who appears to be extremely wealthy and well-known who is scared all the time and has just had two people express their desire to kill her, its unclear why she wouldnt at this point just hire some personal security or even, say call the police. This is a mystery this film is not interested in solving.

Its much more dramatic and odd, I guess, to ask your assistant for her gun and then go get drunk with her and your secret (pop star?) girlfriend, Tracy (Greta Lee) at a Neon-soaked club and drive home to your empty house and continue telling your assistant that youre scared but not do anything about it beyond that.

In the morning, Jill leaves to do another meeting on Heathers behalf and returns to Heathers home to find the gun out and a dead body on the ground. In shock, Jill starts calling Heathers friends to tell them shes dead. The detective, Edward (John Cho), who speaks only in folksy vagaries, thinks Jill did it, so naturally Jill goes on the run across L.A. in a silly disguise and bad blonde wig (which I believe were supposed to think is her hair) to try to prove her own innocence.

Kirke is always watchable and a good presence on screen, but so much about Gemini is so contrived that here she looks a little lost in the story at times. There also isnt much urgency or tension created as she bops around between fancy L.A. bars and homes collecting clues and trying to evade the detective.

The pieces of a good film all seem to be there, and Katz and his regular cinematographer Andrew Reed clearly have a sharp eye for great shots, but its unfortunately missing a binding and compelling story that would bring it home. Lindsey Bahr, AP Film Writer

Gemini, a Neon release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America for pervasive language, and a violent image. Running time: 92 minutes.
Visitors to Macau on package tours totaled 597,000 in February 2018, according to the latest data provided by the Statistics and Census Bureau. This figure is up by 8.8 percent year-on-year but down by 25.6 percent month-to-month. Meanwhile, in the first two months of 2018, visitors on package tours totaled almost 1.4 million, a surge of 29.3 percent year- on-year.

Package tour visitors from mainland China (450,000) and Taiwan (56,000) rose by 11.6 percent and 55.3 percent respectively year-on-year in February, while those from South Korea (46,000) dropped by 6.1 percent.

Attributable to the long Lunar New Year holidays, outbound residents using services of travel agencies increased by 15.9 percent year-on-year to 131,000. Among them, residents travelling on package tours grew by 12.4 percent to 53,000, with those going to mainland China (37,000) rising by 10.5 percent.

In the first two months of 2018, outbound residents using services of travel agencies totaled 249,000, up by 9.8 percent year-on- year.

There were 115 hotels and guesthouses operating at the end of February 2018, an increase of seven year-on- year. The number of guest rooms rose by 6.4 percent year-on-year to 39,000, with 5-star hotel rooms rising by 8.5 percent to 24,000, accounting for 61.2 percent of the total.

In the first two months of 2018, guests of hotels and guesthouses totaled 2.21 million, up by 9.8 percent year-on-year. The average occupancy rate rose by 5.9 percentage points to 89.8 percent, while the average length of stay of guests increased by 0.1 nights year- on-year to 1.5 nights.
Chinas Commerce Ministry urged Washington yesterday to discard planned tariffs it warned might set off a chain reaction that could disrupt global trade and said Beijing will fight to the end.

A ministry spokesman, Gao Feng, gave no details of how Beijing might respond to U.S. President Donald Trumps proposed tariff hike on USD60 billion of Chinese goods in a dispute over technology policy. But Gao repeated warnings China will take all appropriate measures to defend its commercial interests.

Trumps plans are a flagrant violation of World Trade Organization rules and may trigger a chain reaction of import controls by other governments and harm global economic growth, Gao said at a regular news briefing. He used unusually forceful language even for the latest acrimonious dispute.

We hope the United States can rein in its horse before the edge of the cliff, or else we will fight to the end, said Gao.

Gao insisted Beijing has abided by WTO rules, despite complaints by Washington, the European Union and foreign business groups that Chinese regulators hinder market access and shield local companies from competition.

The possible tariffs approved last week by Trump are in response to complaints Beijing steals or pressures foreign companies to hand over technology.

Last week, Beijing responded to an earlier U.S. tariff hike on steel and aluminum imports by releasing a $3 billion list of American goods including pork and steel pipes that might be targeted for retaliation.

Gao repeated earlier Chinese statements that Beijing is open to negotiating a settlement, though he did not confirm a news report that talks already have started. The Wall Street Journal said U.S. officials have submitted a list of market-opening requests covering autos, finance and semiconductors.
CF Industries Holdings, Inc. engages in the manufacture and distribution of nitrogen fertilizer. The firm owns and operates nitrogen plants and serves agricultural and industrial customers through its distribution system. It operates through following segments: Ammonia, Granular Urea, UAN, AN, and Other. The Ammonia segment produces anhydrous ammonia, which is company's most concentrated nitrogen fertilizer product as it contains 82% nitrogen. The Granular Urea segment produces granular urea, which contains 46% nitrogen. The UAN segment produces urea ammonium nitrate solution, which is a liquid fertilizer product with a nitrogen content from 28% to 32%, is produced by combining urea and ammonium nitrate. The AN segment produces ammonium nitrate, which is a nitrogen-based product with a nitrogen content between 29% and 35%. The Other segment includes diesel exhaust fluid, nitric acid, urea liquor and aqua ammonia. The company was founded in 1946 and is headquartered in Deerfield, IL.

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March 30, 2018 17:49

Weight-loss surgery may turn your love life upside down, new research suggests.

In one of two new Swedish studies, major weight loss after bariatric surgery was associated with more divorces.

In the other study, singles were more likely to form new relationships or marry after a weight-loss operation.

"Those of us who take care of bariatric surgery patients notice that many patients experience a pretty profound change in their lives," said Dr. Luke Funk, an assistant professor of surgery at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

One woman's journey to wellness.

"Their significant weight loss and improvements in other health problems -- like high blood pressure and diabetes -- cause changes in both their physical and mental well-being," added Funk, co-author of an editorial published with the study.

"They often take up new hobbies, become much more physically active, and feel much more confident about themselves. They also tend to have an improved self-image. I think this leads many to re-examine their relationships with others," said Funk.

Weight-loss surgery is an effective treatment for severely obese patients who want to control related health issues, the study authors noted. Its popularity is growing, with nearly 470,000 bariatric procedures performed globally in 2013.

But researchers have found a mixed bag of effects in terms of behavior, ranging from improved quality of life on the one hand to increased risk of substance abuse on the other.

One of the new studies tracked the relationship histories of nearly 2,000 obese Swedes who underwent weight-loss surgery over 10 years. The investigators compared the patients with about 1,900 obese adults who did not have surgery.

The other study looked at about three years' worth of post-surgical data on about 29,000 patients who underwent gastric bypass surgery. Those patients were compared with over 280,000 individuals in the general public.

The study authors found that bariatric surgery was tied to increased odds for divorce or separation for those in a prior relationship, especially for those who lost the most weight.

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Modern neuroscience, for all its complexity, can trace its roots directly to a series of pen-and-paper sketches rendered by Nobel laureate Santiago Ramon y Cajal in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

His observations and drawings exposed the previously hidden composition of the brain, revealing neuronal cell bodies and delicate projections that connect individual neurons together into intricate networks.

As he explored the nervous systems of various organisms under his microscope, a natural question arose: What makes a human brain different from the brain of any other species?

At least part of the answer, Ramon y Cajal hypothesized, lay in a specific class of neuronone found in a dazzling variety of shapes and patterns of connectivity, and present in higher proportions in the human brain than in the brains of other species. He dubbed them the "butterflies of the soul."

Known as interneurons, these cells play critical roles in transmitting information between sensory and motor neurons, and, when defective, have been linked to diseases such as schizophrenia, autism and intellectual disability. Despite more than a century of study, however, it remains unclear why interneurons are so diverse and what specific functions the different subtypes carry out.

Now, in a study published in the March 22 issue of Nature, researchers from Harvard Medical School, New York Genome Center, New York University and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard have detailed for the first time how interneurons emerge and diversify in the brain.

Using single-cell analysisa technology that allows scientists to track cellular behavior one cell at a timethe team traced the lineage of interneurons from their earliest precursor states to their mature forms in mice. The researchers identified key genetic programs that determine the fate of developing interneurons, as well as when these programs are switched on or off.

The findings serve as a guide for efforts to shed light on interneuron function and may help inform new treatment strategies for disorders involving their dysfunction, the authors said.

"We knew more than 100 years ago that this huge diversity of morphologically interesting cells existed in the brain, but their specific individual roles in brain function are still largely unclear," said co-senior author Gordon Fishell, HMS professor of neurobiology and a faculty member at the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad.

"Our study provides a road map for understanding how and when distinct interneuron subtypes develop, giving us unprecedented insight into the biology of these cells," he said. "We can now investigate interneuron properties as they emerge, unlock how these important cells function and perhaps even intervene when they fail to develop correctly in neuropsychiatric disease."

Origin to Fate

In collaboration with co-senior author Rahul Satija, core faculty member of the New York Genome Center, Fishell and colleagues analyzed brain regions in developing mice known to contain precursor cells that give rise to interneurons.

Using Drop-seq, a single-cell sequencing technique created by researchers at HMS and the Broad, the team profiled gene expression in thousands of individual cells at multiple time points. This approach overcomes a major limitation in past research, which could analyze only the average activity of mixtures of many different cells.

In the current study, the team found that the precursor state of all interneurons had similar gene expression patterns despite originating in three separate brain regions and giving rise to 14 or more interneuron subtypes alonea number still under debate as researchers learn more about these cells.

"Mature interneurons exhibit incredible diversity. Their morphology and patterns of connectivity and activity are so different from each other, but our results show that the first steps in their maturation are remarkably similar," said Satija, who is also an assistant professor of biology at New York University.

"They share a common developmental trajectory at the earliest stages, but the seeds of what will cause them to diverge latera handful of genesare present from the beginning," Satija said.

As they profiled cells at later stages in development, the team observed the initial emergence of four interneuron "cardinal" classes, which give rise to distinct fates. Cells were committed to these fates even in the early embryo. By developing a novel computational strategy to link precursors with adult subtypes, the researchers identified individual genes that were switched on and off when cells began to diversify.

For example, they found that the gene Mef2cmutations of which are linked to Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia and neurodevelopmental disorders in humansis an early embryonic marker for a specific interneuron subtype known as Pvalb neurons. When they deleted Mef2c in animal models, Pvalb neurons failed to develop.

These early genes likely orchestrate the execution of subsequent genetic subroutines, such as ones that guide interneuron subtypes as they migrate to different locations in the brain and ones that help form unique connection patterns with other neural cell types, the authors said.

The identification of these genes and their temporal activity now provide researchers with specific targets to investigate the precise functions of interneurons, as well as how neurons diversify in general, according to the authors.

"One of the goals of this project was to address an incredibly fascinating developmental biology question, which is how individual progenitor cells decide between different neuronal fates," Satija said. "In addition to these early markers of interneuron divergence, we found numerous additional genes that increase in expression, many dramatically, at later time points."

The association of some of these genes with neuropsychiatric diseases promises to provide a better understanding of these disorders and the development of therapeutic strategies to treat them, a particularly important notion given the paucity of new neuropsychiatric treatments, the authors said.

Over the past 50 years, there have been no fundamentally new classes of neuropsychiatric drugs, only newer versions of old drugs, the researchers pointed out.

"Our repertoire is no better than it was in the 1970s," Fishell said.

"Neuropsychiatric diseases likely reflect the dysfunction of very specific cell types. Our study puts forward a clear picture of what cells to look at as we work to shed light on the mechanisms that underlie these disorders," Fishell said. "What we will find remains to be seen, but we have new, strong hypotheses that we can now test."

As a resource for the research community, the study data and software are open-source and freely accessible online.

A gallery of the drawings of Santiago Ramon y Cajal is currently on display in New York City, and will open at the MIT Museum in Boston in May 2018.

Explore further The quest for neuronal origins

More information: Christian Mayer et al, Developmental diversification of cortical inhibitory interneurons, Nature (2018). Journal information: Nature Christian Mayer et al, Developmental diversification of cortical inhibitory interneurons,(2018). DOI: 10.1038/nature25999
Research shows that the rate of death by suicide is more than four times higher for mothers whose children were placed in care. Credit: Shutterstock

Mothers whose children are placed in foster care are at much higher risk of dying young, particularly due to avoidable causes like suicide.

When a child is placed in foster care, most of the resources are focused on the child, with little to no support for the mothers who are left behind.

I have been working with colleagues at the University of Manitoba to look at what happens to mothers after their children are placed in care.

The focus of two recent studies has been to look at mortality among this group of mothers.

Deaths by suicide and heart disease

The first study, published in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, looked at suicide attempts and suicide completions among mothers whose children were placed in care.

In this study, we compared rates of suicide attempts and suicides between 1,872 mothers who had a child placed in care with sisters whose children were not placed in care.

We found that the rate of suicide attempts was 2.82 times higher, and the rate of death by suicide was more than four times higher for mothers whose children were not in their custody.

In the second study, just published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, we compared the rates of death from avoidable and unavoidable causes between 1,974 mothers who had a child placed in care, and their sisters whose children remained with them.

We found that mothers whose children were placed in care were 3.5 times more likely to die from avoidable causes (e.g. unintentional injury and suicide), and 2.9 times more likely to die from unavoidable causes (e.g. car accidents and heart disease).

Losing a child is traumatic

So why is this happening?

Mothers whose children are taken into care often have underlying health conditions, such as mental illness and substance use. In both studies, we took pre-existing health conditions into account, so that was not the reason for the higher mortality rates we found.

In a recent study, I found that when a child goes into foster care, their mother's physical and mental health gets much worse. Losing custody of a child can be very traumatic, and can make life feel meaningless.

Most legislation pertaining to child protection services indicates that families should be supported, but the guidelines around what is expected of the child welfare system when it comes to the biological mothers are not clear.

The main role of social workers is to ensure that the child is doing well. Social workers are already so busy, so it is often hard for them to justify spending their limited time to help mothers resolve challenges and work with them to address their mental and physical health needs.

Children end up motherless

The lack of supports for mothers when their children go into care means that many of them die premature deaths.

While this is a tragedy in its own right, this also means that many children in foster care end up motherless.

A study in Sweden found that by age 18, more than 16 per cent of children who had been in foster care had lost at least one parent (compared to three per cent of children who had not been in foster care).

By age 25, one in four former foster children had lost at least one parent (compared to one in 14 in the general population). This means that many children in foster care don't get the chance to be reunited with their families.

A humanitarian crisis

Canada has one of the highest rates of children in care and within the Canadian child welfare system, Indigenous children are over-represented.

Recently, Jane Philpott, minister of Indigenous services, referred to the Indigenous child-welfare system as a humanitarian crisis.

Providing adequate preventative supports would reduce the number of children in care, which would reduce the number of mothers who go through the trauma of being separated from their children.

Specific guidelines need to be put in place to make sure that mothers are supported when their child is taken into care. This would improve the chances of reunification.

And, by virtue of being a human worthy of treatment with dignity, mothers deserve support, even if it does not directly relate to how she interacts with her child(ren).

Explore further Foster care damages the health of mothers

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
(HealthDay)The latest tally of Americans adults affected by diabetes finds more than 23 million struggle with the blood sugar disease.

Of those, the vast majority21 million cases are caused by type 2 diabetes, which is often linked to overweight or obesity, according to the report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Another 1.3 million cases are attributed to type 1 diabetes, an autoimmune disorder where the body fails to produce enough of the blood sugar hormone insulin.

The number of diabetes patients is now "nearly 10 percent of the entire [adult] population," noted Dr. Robert Courgi, a diabetes specialist at Northwell Health's Southside Hospital in Bay Shore, N.Y.

"As expected, the overwhelming majority is type 2 diabetesusually caused by obesity and treated with pills," added Courgi, who was not involved with the new report.

On the other hand, "type 1 diabetes results in a destruction of the pancreas, is difficult to diagnose and must be treated with insulin," Courgi said. "Type 1 must be recognized quickly and treated appropriately."

The new CDC numbers were based on 2016 data on more than 33,000 adults from the federal government's National Interview Survey. The researchers noted that the 2016 survey was the first to add "supplemental questions to help distinguish diabetes [by] type."

According to the team, led by CDC investigator Kai McKeever Bullard, certain populations seem to be hit harder by either type 1 or type 2 diabetes. For example, the researchers said "white adults had a higher prevalence of diagnosed type 1 diabetes than did Hispanic adults," while "blacks had the highest prevalence of diagnosed type 2 diabetes."

While type 2 diabetes affected about 8 percent of white adults, that number rose to 9 percent of Hispanics and 11.5 percent of blacks, the report found.

Overall, diabetes prevalence rose with advancing age but fell as levels of education and income improved.

There were also about 800,000 cases of other forms of diabetes, such as a "latent" form of autoimmune diabetes that only emerges in adults, according to the study.

Dr. Caroline Messer is an endocrinologist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. She said the new report is valuable because it helps "delineate the prevalence of type 1 versus type 2 diabetes in adults in the United States."

Messer said that research funding for the type 1 form of the disease has been somewhat neglected, since so many more people suffer from type 2.

But the release of these new numbers might help change that.

"While therapies for type 2 diabetes are entering the marketplace at a rapid-fire pace, hopefully this report will reinforce the importance of continued research into [type 1] autoimmune diabetes treatments," Messer said.

The findings were published March 30 in the CDC journal Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Explore further Study identifies shortcomings when young patients with type 2 diabetes transition from pediatric to adult care

More information: Robert Courgi, M.D., endocrinologist, Northwell Health's Southside Hospital, Bay Shore, N.Y.; Caroline Messer, M.D., endocrinologist, Lenox Hill Hospital, New York City; March 30, 2018, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report Robert Courgi, M.D., endocrinologist, Northwell Health's Southside Hospital, Bay Shore, N.Y.; Caroline Messer, M.D., endocrinologist, Lenox Hill Hospital, New York City; March 30, 2018, Find out about the warning signs of diabetes at the American Diabetes Association. Journal information: Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report

Copyright  2018 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
Mayme Audra Lefurgey, a graduate student in Westerns collaborative program between Womens Studies and Feminist Research and the Centre for Transitional Justice and Post-Conflict Reconstruction, recently spent three months in Colombia, interviewing a Colombian non-profit organization on how it is using yoga to help victims of the countrys civil war. Credit: Paul Mayne/Western News

Dunna, a Colombian non-profit organization, is healing its country  one yoga class at a time.

For the past 10 years, the organization has taught yoga to victims of the Colombian Conflict  a 60-year civil war that ended only two years ago  to help them cope with traumatic experiences, regain trust in one another and, in the process, rebuild Colombia.

It's working. Recently, the Colombian government officially became one of its biggest sponsors.

Mayme Audra Lefurgey, a graduate student in Western's collaborative program between Women's Studies and Feminist Research and the Centre for Transitional Justice and Post-Conflict Reconstruction, recently spent three months in Colombia, interviewing Dunna's staff and participants, as well as other non-governmental organizations for her doctoral research.

She hopes to document the group's groundbreaking work and identify reasons for its success.

Her thesis will be a critical reference for governments exploring alternative ways to help vulnerable populations deal with grief, trauma and pain. She sees opportunities for her work to benefit, for example, Indigenous Peoples and incarcerated populations in Canada, Syrian refugees in Canada, Germany and Turkey, and victims of rape and sexual violence in Rwanda and Sierra Leone.

"Psychological help, even when offered, is often limited," Lefurgey said. "The conflicts and traumas faced by victims are very complex and expressing it verbally isn't always the most effective way."

As Lefurgey found out in her interviews, victims of the Colombian Conflict sometimes cope with pain and trauma by stretching, breathing and letting go.

The Colombian Conflict began in the 1960s with a brutal power struggle between the Colombian government and paramilitary groups. Approximately 220,000 people, including 45,000 children, were killed. Two years ago, the government and Colombia's largest insurgent group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (known by its Spanish acronym, FARC), signed a peace accord and officially ended the conflict.

Governments, non-governmental organizations and volunteer groups continue to launch mental-health initiatives and counselling services throughout the conflicting regions until the present day.

These are meant to provide emotional and mental support to generations of Colombians scarred by six decades of violence, drug trafficking, rape, kidnappings and extortion.

For some of these victims, talking about their experience with doctors is crippling.

Yoga gives them an alternative way to revisit their pain, without having to directly confront it.

Dunna's instructors follow trauma-sensitive yoga protocols with their participants. For example, they allow participants to decide if they are ready for certain postures, like lying and relaxing on the ground, closing their eyes, or particular breathing exercises, all of which can potentially trigger traumatic flashbacks. They also use circular layouts for yoga mats to prevent abused persons from feeling observed by someone practicing behind them.

Unlike typical yoga classes that are usually 45 minutes to one hour and primarily focus on poses, Dunna's classes last for 90 minutes  only 30 minutes of which focus on poses. The rest consist of deep relaxation, guided meditation and specialized breathing techniques.

"These victims have experienced intense trauma and many are always on edge," Lefurgey said. "Before Dunna, they didn't know what it was to be relaxed and the experience of yoga has been revolutionary for them in their healing processes."

The group faced resistance from the government when it first introduced yoga as an alternative option to help the conflict's traumatized victims in 2010.

"Dunna had to justify its request for funding a solution whose benefits were not scientifically proven," Lefurgey says.

Since, Dunna has partnered with psychologists and neuroscientists to validate the effects of yoga. For example, in one recent research paper, psychologists showed yoga lowers the rates of PTSD in Dunna's participants. "They do the work, but continue to prove why it is so useful," she said.

For participants, who range from former FARC members, to young offenders, to parents who lost their children in the conflict, yoga helps them decompress, feel safe and trust each other again.

"These participants realize they can have differences and still learn to co-exist with theirs partners at home, their children and their community," Lefurgey said. "Eventually, this translates to how the country processes conflict and political situations in a broader sense."

Explore further Yoga in the workplace can reduce back pain and sickness absence
Credit: Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers

mRNA drugs offer a promising new approach to deliver therapeutic replacement proteins, and novel strategies designed to engineer more stable and active proteins are further enhancing the potential of mRNA therapies. Specific examples of sequence engineering that led to improved expression, duration, and enzymatic activity of target proteins are reported in a study published in Nucleic Acid Therapeutics.

The article entitled "Leveraging Rational Protein Engineering to Improve mRNA Therapeutics" is coauthored by Romesh Subramanian, Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Cambridge, MA and colleagues from Alexion, New Haven, CT. The researchers described the methods they used to engineer specific protein sequences and demonstrated the positive effects this had on protein expression in mice. Sequence engineering was also able to improve the thermostability and activity of the therapeutic enzymes.

"Developing protein variants with improved stability and activity should reduce necessary dosing frequency, and hence improve patient compliance" says Executive Editor Graham C. Parker, PhD, The Carman and Ann Adams Department of Pediatrics, Wayne State University School of Medicine, Children's Hospital of Michigan, Detroit, MI.

Explore further New options for targeting gene mutation in FA described in nucleic acid therapeutics

More information: Jeremiah D. Farelli et al, Leveraging Rational Protein Engineering to Improve mRNA Therapeutics, Nucleic Acid Therapeutics (2018). Jeremiah D. Farelli et al, Leveraging Rational Protein Engineering to Improve mRNA Therapeutics,(2018). DOI: 10.1089/nat.2017.0697
(HealthDay)Children presenting with head injury with isolated vomiting rarely have clinically important traumatic brain injury (ci-TBI) or traumatic brain injury on computed tomography (TBI-CT), according to a study published online March 29 in Pediatrics.

Meredith L. Borland, M.B.B.S., from the Princess Margaret Hospital for Children in Perth, Australia, and colleagues examined the prevalence of traumatic brain injuries in children who vomit after head injury. The characteristics of vomiting were assessed and correlated with clinical decision rule predictors and the presence of ci-TBI or TBI-CT.

The researchers found that 17.0 percent of the 19,920 children enrolled had any vomiting, with 72.2 percent aged older than 2 years. Overall, 44.2 percent of the 172 patients with ci-TBI and 43.2 percent of the 285 with TBI-CT had vomiting. With isolated vomiting, only one and two had ci-TBI and TBI-CT, respectively (0.3 and 0.6 percent, respectively). Using multivariate regression, predictors of increased ci-TBI risk with vomiting included signs of skull fracture, altered mental status, headache, and acting abnormally (odds ratios, 80.1, 2.4, 2.3, and 1.86, respectively). Additional features that predicted TBI-CT included skull fracture, nonaccidental injury concern, headache, and acting abnormally (odds ratios, 112.96, 6.75, 2.55, and 1.83, respectively).

"TBI-CT and ci-TBI are uncommon in children presenting with head injury with isolated vomiting, and a management strategy of observation without immediate computed tomography appears appropriate," the authors write.

Explore further Hearing difficulty may up risk of accidental injury

Copyright  2018 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
(HealthDay)Hay fever sufferers often choose the wrong medication for their seasonal sniffles, new research suggests.

With flowers, trees and grasses springing back to life, folks with allergies will start to complain of sneezing, runny noses, and watery, itchy eyes.

More often than not, though, they'll head to the allergy aisle of their nearest drug store without advice from a doctor or pharmacist, the new study found.

Only 63 percent of people who visit their community pharmacy to purchase treatment for their hay fever have a doctor diagnosis, said study senior author Sinthia Bosnic-Anticevich.

"This is despite the fact that a vast majority of them are experiencing moderate to severe hay fever symptoms, which impact on their day-to-day living," she added.

Moreover, 70 percent select their own hay fever medication without consulting the pharmacist. And of those who reported wheezing, only 6 percent chose the correct medication, the study found.

"Only 17 percent [choose allergy drugs] appropriately," added Bosnic-Anticevich, a professor at the University of Sydney in Australia, who specializes in the use of respiratory medicines.

It's estimated that hay fever affects 30 percent of the world's population, the researchers pointed out. Although this study was done in Australia, Bosnic-Anticevich said she has heard anecdotally from U.S. colleagues that the results would likely be similar if it had been done with American allergy sufferers.

So what is the optimal medication to quell those seasonal sniffles?

If symptoms stem from a true allergy, many people reach first for oral antihistamines, such as Zyrtec (cetirizine), Xyzal (levocetirizine), Claritin (loratadine) or Allegra (fexofenadine). While these medications are helpful, they may cause side effects, and allergy doctors generally recommend trying nasal steroid sprays first.

Dr. Marcella Aquino is an allergist at NYU Winthrop Hospital in Mineola, N.Y. She said, "Nasal corticosteroids are the best for treating congestion, runny nose and sneezing."

Nasal steroid sprays can help symptoms caused by allergies (rhinitis) and a similar condition called nonallergic rhinitis, she noted. Nonallergic rhinitis also causes runny nose and sneezing, but these symptoms aren't caused by an immune system response as allergies are, according to the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology.

Bosnic-Anticevich said it can be difficult to tell the difference between the two conditions, but if your symptoms are triggered by things such as pollen, dust mites, mold or animal dander, it's likely you have allergies. But if your symptoms are caused by changes in temperatures, chemical sprays or perfumes, it's likely nonallergic rhinitis. And, she added, some people have both conditions.

It's possible that nasal steroids alone may not completely control your allergies. At that point, Dr. Punita Ponda, an allergist with Northwell Health in Great Neck, N.Y., recommends adding an over-the-counter oral antihistamine.

Bosnic-Anticevich noted that nasal antihistamines can be helpful, too.

Ponda also suggested that "if someone has known allergies, they should try to avoid the allergen so they may not need to take medicine."

If you've tried various over-the-counter medications and they haven't helped, or aren't completely controlling your symptoms, all three experts recommended getting evaluated by a doctor.

Aquino advised that people shouldn't use "nasal decongestants, such as Afrin, for more than a week, because these have a rebound effect. You keep needing more and more if you take them long-term. And people with high blood pressure or heart disease should avoid oral decongestants."

Bosnic-Anticevich stressed that hay fever that's not treated properly can have a significant impact on day-to-day living. "Sometimes people trivialize this. Please seek assistance. It really can make a difference," she said.

The study included nearly 300 people who had been approached while shopping in community pharmacies in Sydney. Two-thirds were women and nearly 60 percent were over 40 years old.

Many chose antihistamine pills first. People with mild symptoms were slightly more likely to choose the optimal medication compared to those with moderate to severe symptoms, the study findings showed.

The results were published March 29 in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice.

Explore further Now's the time to tackle springtime allergies

More information: Sinthia Bosnic-Anticevich, Ph.D., professor, quality use of respiratory medicines, University of Sydney, Australia; Marcella Aquino, M.D., allergist-immunologist, NYU Winthrop Hospital, Mineola, N.Y., and associate professor, clinical medicine, State University of New York, Stony Brook; Punita Ponda, M.D., associate division chief, allergy and immunology, Northwell Health, Great Neck, N.Y.; March 29, 2018, Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice Sinthia Bosnic-Anticevich, Ph.D., professor, quality use of respiratory medicines, University of Sydney, Australia; Marcella Aquino, M.D., allergist-immunologist, NYU Winthrop Hospital, Mineola, N.Y., and associate professor, clinical medicine, State University of New York, Stony Brook; Punita Ponda, M.D., associate division chief, allergy and immunology, Northwell Health, Great Neck, N.Y.; March 29, 2018, Learn more about seasonal allergies and medications to treat them from the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology.

Copyright  2018 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
Warnings became dishonest in the alarmist direction



A Californian judge had enough power to decide that all coffee sold in California has to carry a warning: coffee causes cancer. Starbucks restaurants are among those where you probably encounter the warning everywhere now.







I think it's virtually certain that this regulation will cause much more harm than good  especially because the people get terrified. On top of that, there are serious doubts whether the warning is true in any meaningful sense.



Geoffrey Kabat [Jacket in Czech] works in the Albert Einstein Institute of Medicine  a good enough name for this blog  and he explained some basic facts about coffee and cancer.









The justification of "coffee causes cancer" is based on the fact that 1) roasting creates trace amounts acrylamide, some compound, and 2) in animal experiments, animals served a much larger amount of this compound developed some kinds of cancer.



There exists no evidence based on the observation of the people that would imply that coffee increases the overall cancer risk. In some types of cancer, a weak positive (harmful) signal may exist in the literature. In other types of cancer, coffee was found to reduce the cancer. In both cases, the effects seem weak enough to matter for a pragmatic person.









This must be expected. Everything we do affects us in some ways. Every compound we consume increases the chances of some diseases and decreases the chances of others. It's a very complicated thing because the number of causal mechanisms is so large and complex. The mere existence of "some effect" shouldn't be a justification for a terrifying warning  simply because one would have to be warned about everything because it causes one-half of everything else to arise and one-half of everything else to disappear. ;-)



The consumers react to the warning. Their reaction is in between two extremes. One extreme is that they're terrified and they almost stop drinking coffee  or something else. The other extreme is that they basically ignore the warning. The first option is an overreaction. But the second option is equally bad because people become indifferent to warnings. And there could be warnings that are actually important for the general health, unlike the coffee warning. When the authorities cry wolf too many times, they may lose the ability to warn the people when it matters. The real situation has some amount of the bad effects of the first kind, some amount of the bad effects of the second kind. Does it really have substantial good effects that would make the policy a net benefit?



Cigarettes became a template for these warnings. I am sure that the life expectancy of strong enough smokers is shortened by several years. I am a bit uncertain about the life expectancy of the second-hand smokers  whether it's shortened at all and whether the difference is large enough to be detectable. I quit smoking when I was 5 years old  I tried to inhale once and it was really disgusting. I am no fanatical non-smoker, however: two months ago, I inhaled from a cigarette once again. That's enough for 40 years. ;-) As a kid, I was an avid second-hand smoker, due to my mother. When I returned from school, I often tried not to breath for two minutes and quickly open the windows.



But I think that the cigarette bans are over the edge. And the disgusting pictures that have to be added to packages of cigarettes are disgusting, too. I believe that kids and others should be protected from this kind of ugly visual smog.



A cigarette shortens one's life. The whole process is unpredictable and stochastic but the expectation value is some 11 minutes. That's how much one cigarette subtracts from your life. Some medicine experts who tried to do "the same thing", more or less, that I would be doing ended up with that answer. What does it mean? It means that when you smoke, and it may take those 11 minutes per cigarette as well, your speed of marching towards death doubles. Do you enjoy the life twice as much during those times? I am pretty sure that most smokers will say "yes". A cigarette is often something that dramatically improves their whole afternoon, not just those 10 minutes. When they stop smoking, the march towards death returns to the usual slower rate.



Instead of the "infinitely terrifying" warnings everywhere, I think that the "fairest possible" warnings should be placed there instead. For example, a cigarette package would say:



Because it helps to ignite serious diseases, one cigarette shortens the average smoker's life by 11 minutes.



One cup of coffee may shorten the life by 0-3 minutes by helping some kinds of cancers, but it may prolong the life by 0-2 minutes by reducing other kinds of cancers.



He ruled in an earlier phase of trial that companies hadnt shown the threat from the chemical was insignificant.



The case of the coffee is much less understood so the warning should be correspondingly fuzzier:The true impartial experts similar to Dr Kabat should design "the most honest" summary of this kind and this is what should be written on the coffee cups. Similar comments could be written on many other things related to the public health and safety  safety helmets, air bags, be my guest.These warnings should simply become more quantitative and honest because a terrifying warning without any numbers may exaggerate the threat much more than no warning understates the threat. In this sense, the alarmist warnings make the market less honest than it was previously.It may be hard to make such a reform. One reason is that most judges and even lawmakers are scientifically illiterate. In the USA Today news, we read:Note that presumption of guilt, instead of innocence  also known as the precautionary principle  is used here. But if you evaluate the literature rationally, you will conclude that the threat is insignificant. What the literature doesn't show is that the threat is zero. Well, it's because no threat is zero. And with these insanely ambitious standards, you can't prove the harmlessness of anything. I am sure that water also causes some kinds of cancer, in some amounts and under certain circumstances. So far, these activist judges "only" attack coffee (and things like carbon dioxide). But they may attack water or the air or at least the meat, sugar, bread, or vegetables in the future, too.
Armenian athlete Arsen Khachatryan was at the shopping mall in Kemerovo, Russia, with his wife and small children, when the large fire had broken out there.

Khachatryan, who lives in Kemerovo, told Armenian News-NEWS.am that they had decided to go to the movies at the shopping mall.

[But] people began to run, he recalled. At first, it seemed to me that they were late to the movie. () then I saw smoke coming out. There were two small children in front of us; they had lost their parents. We quickly took those two children in our arms, too, and we all went down.

I took everyone out, I came back, took out the car. There were other children; I brought them, too, out of the building with me. I wanted to go back again; [but] everything was already full of smoke; I couldnt go in.

In his words, the fire had started instantly at the childrens playground and it had spread.

Two childrena sister and a brotherfrom our Karate federation were in that room, Arsen Khachatryan added. Sadly, they died.

The fire at this four-story shopping center had occurred on March 25. According to official information, it claimed the lives of 64 people, including 41 children.
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Opposition Armenia faction of National Assembly of Armenia to hold consultation

Saakashvili promises to return to Georgia soon

Digest: Russian and French FMs discuss Karabakh situation, more on COVID-19 situation in Armenia

Erdogan says improvement of Turkey-US relations is necessary

Nakhchivan's ex-internal affairs minister sentenced to 11 years in prison

Armenia parliament approves several amendments and supplements to existing laws

Armenian political party leader: Aliyev accused Armenia of everything that Azerbaijan needs to be accused of

Opposition "Armenia" faction MP: Azerbaijan is preparing to implement agreements reached behind our backs

Armenian deputy parliamentary speaker: There are confidential ties and talks between Armenia and Turkey

Karabakh Investigative Committee accepts for proceedings case of Azerbaijani soldiers who fired at harvesters

First autumn snow falls on Armenias Mount Aragats (VIDEO)

Armenia parliament holding special session for the second time today

Azerbaijan hands over one fallen soldiers remains to Armenian side, in Artsakhs Shushi

Armenia PM: We intend to fully implement Police reforms

Armenia minister: Enlargement of communities will entail job cuts

Asian Development Bank forecasts GDP growth of 5.2% in Armenia for 2021, 3.5% for 2022

Opposition MP: 110,000 people already left Armenia this year

Armenia State Revenue Committee chairman meets with Eurasian Economic Commission minister

Armenia seasoned diplomat dies

Dollar still losing value in Armenia

Armenia Central Bank chief attends 22nd session of Monetary Policy Advisory Council

China Ambassador to Armenia meets with students of Chinese-Armenian Friendship School (PHOTOS)

Armenia Ombudsman receives US ex-Ambassador, presents Azerbaijan's violations of borderline residents' rights

Newly appointed Ambassador of Nigeria presents Letters of Credence to Armenia President

Armenia Parliament Speaker receives UAE Charge d'Affaires

Armenian and Iranian FMs meet, Armenia's Goris-Kapan road also discussed

Defense minister receives head of Red Cross delegation in Armenia

Armenia Security Council secretary: We raise Goris-Kapan road issue in discussions with Russia colleagues, Azerbaijan

Aliyev: Putin asked me not to humiliate Pashinyan in our presence during signing of November 9 statement

Armenia Security Council chief: We need to normalize relations with Turkey

Armenia parliament passes, in 1st reading, controversial changes to law on community enlargement

FM, Jordan deputy PM confer on Armenian POWs, Azerbaijan provocations

Azerbaijan files lawsuit against Armenia with International Court of Justice

Minute of silence to be observed, church requiem services to be offered in Artsakh on September 27

Armenia PM on COVID-19 situation: We definitely have to do it if we sense there is need to get vaccinated again

Russia and France express mutual commitment to further work to stabilize Nagorno-Karabakh situation

Health minister on coronavirus situation in Armenia: About 85% of our bed capacity already used

Pashinyan: Vaccine protects against COVID-19 by 97.5%

906 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia

Opposition factions boycott Armenia legislature special session

Armenia FM lauds Cyprus principled position on Karabakh issue

Azerbaijan submits new bids to buy weapons from Russia

Armenia FM, UN Commissioner discuss issues of displaced Artsakh Armenians

Azerbaijans Aliyev offers Armenia peace in exchange for Zangezur corridor

Nearly 20 EU countries propose to re-elect Ghebreyesus as WHO chief

Newspaper: Artsakh President targeted

Trump leads in terms of voter support

Newspaper: Armenia government members to come to parliament

Scientists warn of magnetic storms on Earth this week

Schoolchildren and parents get into massive brawl on Kyrgyzstan-Tajikistan border

Deputy PM: No corridor issue being discussed, any passage through Armenia's sovereign territory will imply transit

Armenia FM at UN General Assembly: We call on increasing pressure on Azerbaijan

Armenia Deputy PM: It's rather difficult to say when Amulsar gold mine will be opened

Armenia FM meets with Finnish counterpart

Armenia Deputy PM: Pashinyan-Erdogan meeting is not planned

Turkey's Erdogan: We are receiving positive messages from Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan

Armenia 1st President hosts Kyrgyzstan's ex-president

Armenia FM meets with Council of Europe Secretary General

Armenia PM sends congratulatory message to Catholicos Patriarch of Armenian Catholic Church

Armenia Emergency Situations Ministry: Iranians didn't participate in putting out fire near park

Armenia PM orders to ensure enforcement of order for COVID-19 vaccination or PCR test starting October 1

Armenian lawyer: I won't force my employees to get PCR test for COVID-19 and will protect their rights in court

Armenia PM sacks Public Council Secretariat chief

Armenian man charged under organizing of illegal migration in Russia shows up to Armenia police station
Man, 32, found dead at Yerevan building courtyard

OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs meet with Armenia, Azerbaijan FMs, statement issued

Sri Lanka shaman pledges to beat coronavirus with blessed water but dies of virus

Newspaper: Armenia authorities find key to getting rid of unwanted community leaders

Newspaper: How much spent from Armenia state budget for 30th Independence Day anniversary event?

Armenia analyst: Aliyev tried to soften accusations of not going until the end, allowing Russia troops deployment

Armenia human rights activist: Authorities might blame ex-chief of army's General Staff for defeat in war

UN: Over 350,000 people have died in Syria over the past decade

Armenia opposition MP not allowed to leave for Strasbourg to attend PACE session, fellow deputy doesn't attend

Russia Federal Security Service blocks large network of illicit traffic in narcotic drugs coordinated by Turkey

Thousand-man demonstrations taking place in Berlin ahead of elections

Brazil President's son tests positive for COVID-19 after trip to New York

Armenia PM: Karabakh conflict can't be considered resolved through the use of force

Karabakh Ombudsman: Azerbaijan's raging battle against state emblems of Artsakh is manifestation of Armenophobia

Armenia MP: All cases of Special Investigation Service will be transferred to Corruption Prevention Commission

Armenia MOD receives UK Ambassador

Opposition Armenia faction of National Assembly of Armenia to hold consultation

Saakashvili promises to return to Georgia soon

Digest: Russian and French FMs discuss Karabakh situation, more on COVID-19 situation in Armenia

Erdogan says improvement of Turkey-US relations is necessary

Nakhchivan's ex-internal affairs minister sentenced to 11 years in prison

Armenia parliament approves several amendments and supplements to existing laws

Armenian political party leader: Aliyev accused Armenia of everything that Azerbaijan needs to be accused of

Opposition "Armenia" faction MP: Azerbaijan is preparing to implement agreements reached behind our backs

Armenian deputy parliamentary speaker: There are confidential ties and talks between Armenia and Turkey

Karabakh Investigative Committee accepts for proceedings case of Azerbaijani soldiers who fired at harvesters

First autumn snow falls on Armenias Mount Aragats (VIDEO)

Armenia parliament holding special session for the second time today

Azerbaijan hands over one fallen soldiers remains to Armenian side, in Artsakhs Shushi

Armenia PM: We intend to fully implement Police reforms

Armenia minister: Enlargement of communities will entail job cuts

Asian Development Bank forecasts GDP growth of 5.2% in Armenia for 2021, 3.5% for 2022

Opposition MP: 110,000 people already left Armenia this year

Armenia State Revenue Committee chairman meets with Eurasian Economic Commission minister

Armenia seasoned diplomat dies

Dollar still losing value in Armenia

Armenia Central Bank chief attends 22nd session of Monetary Policy Advisory Council

China Ambassador to Armenia meets with students of Chinese-Armenian Friendship School (PHOTOS)

Armenia Ombudsman receives US ex-Ambassador, presents Azerbaijan's violations of borderline residents' rights

Newly appointed Ambassador of Nigeria presents Letters of Credence to Armenia President

Armenia Parliament Speaker receives UAE Charge d'Affaires

Armenian and Iranian FMs meet, Armenia's Goris-Kapan road also discussed

Defense minister receives head of Red Cross delegation in Armenia

Armenia Security Council secretary: We raise Goris-Kapan road issue in discussions with Russia colleagues, Azerbaijan

Aliyev: Putin asked me not to humiliate Pashinyan in our presence during signing of November 9 statement

Armenia Security Council chief: We need to normalize relations with Turkey

Armenia parliament passes, in 1st reading, controversial changes to law on community enlargement

FM, Jordan deputy PM confer on Armenian POWs, Azerbaijan provocations

Azerbaijan files lawsuit against Armenia with International Court of Justice

Minute of silence to be observed, church requiem services to be offered in Artsakh on September 27

Armenia PM on COVID-19 situation: We definitely have to do it if we sense there is need to get vaccinated again

Russia and France express mutual commitment to further work to stabilize Nagorno-Karabakh situation

Health minister on coronavirus situation in Armenia: About 85% of our bed capacity already used

Pashinyan: Vaccine protects against COVID-19 by 97.5%

906 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia

Opposition factions boycott Armenia legislature special session

Armenia FM lauds Cyprus principled position on Karabakh issue

Azerbaijan submits new bids to buy weapons from Russia

Armenia FM, UN Commissioner discuss issues of displaced Artsakh Armenians

Azerbaijans Aliyev offers Armenia peace in exchange for Zangezur corridor

Nearly 20 EU countries propose to re-elect Ghebreyesus as WHO chief

Newspaper: Artsakh President targeted

Trump leads in terms of voter support

Newspaper: Armenia government members to come to parliament

Scientists warn of magnetic storms on Earth this week

Schoolchildren and parents get into massive brawl on Kyrgyzstan-Tajikistan border

Deputy PM: No corridor issue being discussed, any passage through Armenia's sovereign territory will imply transit

Armenia FM at UN General Assembly: We call on increasing pressure on Azerbaijan

Armenia Deputy PM: It's rather difficult to say when Amulsar gold mine will be opened

Armenia FM meets with Finnish counterpart

Armenia Deputy PM: Pashinyan-Erdogan meeting is not planned

Turkey's Erdogan: We are receiving positive messages from Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan

Armenia 1st President hosts Kyrgyzstan's ex-president

Armenia FM meets with Council of Europe Secretary General

Armenia PM sends congratulatory message to Catholicos Patriarch of Armenian Catholic Church

Armenia Emergency Situations Ministry: Iranians didn't participate in putting out fire near park

Armenia PM orders to ensure enforcement of order for COVID-19 vaccination or PCR test starting October 1

Armenian lawyer: I won't force my employees to get PCR test for COVID-19 and will protect their rights in court

Armenia PM sacks Public Council Secretariat chief

Armenian man charged under organizing of illegal migration in Russia shows up to Armenia police station

France FM to meet with US counterpart

Armenia justice minister introduces newly appointed head of Penitentiary Service

Digest: US Congress demands Armenian POWs release in Baku, more on COVID-19 vaccination in Armenia

Armenian, Russian and Azerbaijani Prosecutors General meet in Kazakhstan

Russia ambassador to Armenia underscores continued development of multipolar cooperation bridges

Armenia peacekeepers in Kosovo mark Independence Day anniversary

US Under Secretary of State: We look forward to progress, including via OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chair mechanism

Azerbaijan FM declares country's willingness to normalize relations with Armenia

US, Russia start talks over sustainable development at level of business

Mirziyoyev: Uzbekistan-Armenia cooperation will continue to consistently develop

Tehran says Georgia border guards' conduct against Iran citizens is unacceptable

Karabakh emergency service: Remains of another fallen soldier found

Iranian president invites Turkish counterpart to Iran for official visit

Dollar continues dropping in Armenia

21st Catholicos Patriarch of Catholic Armenians elected

Biden plans to attend G20 summit in Rome

4 new cases of coronavirus reported in Artsakh

Baku fires at Iranian helicopter

Armenia Ombudsman assesses observation of Russian State Duma elections

Armenia health minister: There is differentiated attitude towards COVID-19 vaccines
WASHINGTON, D.C.  Members of the U.S. Congress issued statements in connection with the mine explosion in Karabakh that claimed the lives of three HALO Trust workers.

Congressional Caucus on Armenian Issues Co-Chairs Rep. Frank Pallone, Jr. Rep. Jackie Speier, and Rep. David Valadao, House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member and Armenian Caucus Co-Vice Chair Rep. Adam Schiff, and Rep. Brad Sherman issued statements and paid tribute after hearing the tragic news that some The HALO Trust employees were killed and seriously injured while clearing landmines in Artsakh, reported the Armenian Assembly of America (Assembly).

Armenian Caucus Co-Chair Rep. Pallone said: While there is always a danger associated with removing unexploded ordnances, I am deeply saddened to hear the news of this terrible accident and offer my condolences to the families of these individuals. I hope investigators in Artsakh are able to quickly get to the bottom of what happened, and I hope these awful circumstances help to shed an international light on the vital work organizations like HALO Trust do around the world. I will continue to work with my colleagues in Congress to ensure demining activities are able to continue unimpeded and as safely as possible.

Rep. Pallone visited Artsakh for the first time twenty years ago as part of an Armenian Assembly of America-sponsored delegation. The Congressman has returned to Artsakh a few times since his initial visit, where he learned firsthand about mine clearance in the region.

I was deeply saddened to hear of the deaths of three HALO Trust workers, and injuries to two of their colleagues, while working to clear the Artsakh region of landmines. My heart goes out to the victims and their families and colleagues, all of whom are in my prayers. The people of Artsakh continue to suffer the devastating effects of war with the highest per capita incidence of landmine accidents in the world  a third of which involve children. The courage and sacrifice of these ultimate Samaritans should serve as a reminder to us all that we have much more to do to make this region safe, and I pledge to continue my support of the HALO Trust and the Artsakh region in honor of their memory, Armenian Caucus Co-Chair Rep. Speier added.

Armenian Caucus Co-Chair Rep. Valadao stated: My heart goes out to those killed and injured by the explosion in Nagorno-Karabakh. These individuals have dedicated their work to ensuring the safety of others and their sacrifice will never be forgotten. This tragedy serves as a stark reminder of the ever present danger in the region. We must continue our work to restore these communities so they may live without fear of mine-related accidents.

Last September, Rep. Valadao traveled to Artsakh as part of a Congressional Delegation, where he met with The HALO Trust staff to learn more about mine clearance along the borders. Earlier that month, Rep. Valadao spearheaded a bipartisan amendment along with House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA), Rep. Pallone, Rep. Speier, and Rep. Schiff, to ensure continued funding for de-mining projects in Artsakh. This amendment was adopted as part of consideration of H.R. 3354, which consolidated numerous Fiscal Year 2018 appropriations bills.

Rep. Schiff stated: Im deeply saddened by the death of three employees of the HALO Trust who were performing demining work in Nagorno Karabakh. I am proud of the support the United States has provided in removing minefields from civilian areas in Artsakh, and this tragedy shows once again why that work is both so dangerous and yet such an important humanitarian undertaking.

I extend my deepest condolences to the victims families and the entire HALO Trust community. Todays events highlight the need for robust support of demining efforts in Artsakh, so that these deadly explosives do not take additional lives. We thank the victims for their contributions to this important cause, Rep. Sherman said.
Srinagar: Hurriyat Chairman and senior resistance leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani on Friday, offered prayers at Jamia Masjid, Hyderpora after being house arrested by the government for eight years. He was accompanied by Hurriyat activists, including his recently announced successor of Tehreek-e-Hurriyat, Mohammad Ashraf Sehrai.

Geelani spoke after regular Friday sermon by the Khateeb were finished. Addressing the people he said, I appeal to everyone, particularly to the youth of Jammu and Kashmir, to follow the teachings of Quraan and Sunnat. I also advice them to take teachings from Iqbals poetry. I also request them not to lose hope and stay dedicated to the cause.

He also reiterated that Jammu and Kashmir is a disputed territory and the issue was taken to the United Nations by India, after which the people of the state were promised the chance of deciding their future.

After the news spread that Geelani would be speaking at Jamia Masjid, scores of people reached the place, and

those who couldnt make it inside the mosque, stayed in the Eid-Gah ground to listen to Geelani.

Commenting on Police Chief, S P Vaids statement that all three Joint Resistance leaders are free, Geelani said, Joint Resistance Leadership will respond to the statement within the coming three days. Meanwhile people should maintain calm and be patient, as Allah is with you.

After finishing the prayers, youth raised Pro-Freedom and Pro-Pakistan slogans outside the mosque. The names of Junaid Sehrai, Ashraf Sehrais son, and Zakir Musa, were also used in slogans.

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An announcement from the mosque had to be made for people to maintain calm and control their emotions, following which, Geelani moved while waving to the youth who formed a human chain around him.

At the Tehreek e Hurriyat office at Hyderpora, newly appointed Chairman Ashraf Sehrai while talking to the media thanked the youth for the love and affection shown by them.

Answering a question about his son Junaid, joining the militancy Sehrai said, Why should I ask my son to return home and give up militancy. He is an educated and a matured man, who has chosen his way. My son is no special than others who have chosen this way.

With inputs from Free Press Kashmir
Assembly calls for giving name to Province 5

Province 5 assembly members have called for giving a name to the province. Speaking at the zero hour of the Province Assembly meeting on Thursday, most of the assembly members raised the issues of various national importance, among them naming the province.
Home | News | General | Abia monarchs at war over tenure elongation

By Anayo Okoli

UMUAHIACRISIS is brewing in the leadership of Abia State Council of Traditional Rulers, ASCTR, over tenure elongation by the current leadership headed by Eze Eberechi Dick, whose tenure was said to have expired over two years ago.

The act establishing the council provided for a 3-year non-renewable tenure and the Eberechi Dick leadership, according to the aggrieved monarchs has been in office for five years now. Also, the chairmanship of the council is rotated among the three senatorial zones of the state.

However, Vanguard reliably learned that the tenure of Eze Dick and his committee members ended October 2017, meaning that they have stayed six months beyond their tenure.

Signs that all is not well with the monarchs came to the open Tuesday, during a seminar organized by a non-governmental organisation, NGO, Women Aid Collective, WACOL, for traditional rulers in Abia Central Senatorial District when a prominent traditional ruler from the zone, Eze Nzenwata Mbakwe raised the issue.

Accusing Governor Okezie Ikpeazu of meting injustice on the people of Abia Central whose turn it is to produce the next chairman of the council, Eze Mbakwe wondered why the governor has not deemed it necessary to dissolve the councils executive committee and appoint a new chairman from the zone that is due to produce the chairman.

Already, many other monarchs from the Abia North and Abia Central have been grumbling that Eze Eberechi Dick who is from the South has taken part of their tenure.

Eze Nzenwata Mbakwe, the traditional ruler of Okaiuga Nkwoegwu Autonomous Community in Umuahia North Council therefore called on the governor to dissolve the leadership and appoint a new one to reflect equity and justice.

Registering the grievance of monarchs over the issue, Eze Mbakwe said: I know some people will not be happy with me over what I am going to say but it wont stop me from saying it. Why has the government failed to dissolve the Traditional Rulers Council? Nobody has done two tenures and the tenure of any chairman cannot be extended for one day.

Is it because the governor is from the same Obingwa with the incumbent chairman whose tenure has since expired? He has been in office for five years. He should be removed and another person appointed by the governor in the spirit of equity.

Eberechi Dick was appointed by Senator T. A. Orji when he was governor and he did not deny Abia South their turn. Why is it now that it is the turn of Abia Central to produce the chairman that government is reluctant to dissolve the expired council.

His position was applauded by many of the monarchs at the workshop. A source from the Ministry of Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs confirmed to Vanguard that Dicks tenure has since expired.

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A federal high court sitting in Abuja on Thursday ruled that Azibaola Robert, a cousin of ex-President Goodluck Jonathan, has to face at two-count charge.

Nnamdi Dimgba, the presiding judge, sustained two of the 9-count amended charge of money laundering and criminal conspiracy preferred against Azibaola by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

Azibaola was charged alongside his wife, Stella Azibaola and their company, One Plus Holdings Nigeria Limited for the alleged diversion of $40 million meant for the supply of tactical communication kits for special forces.

The money was allegedly transferred from the account of the office of Sambo Dasuki, former National Security Adviser (NSA)with the Central Bank of Nigeria to the domiciliary account of their company

The anti-graft agency had called ten witnesses and tendered 27 documents before the court, after which it closed its case on January 23.

Chris Uche, counsel to Azibaola, then filed a no-case submission to dismiss the charge against his clients.

Uche said the prosecution had failed to establish a nexus between the defendant and the alleged offence.

According to him, the evidence presented by the prosecution showed no nexus with the defendants.

However, Francis Jirbo, counsel to the EFCC, argued that the prosecution had established a prima facie case to the effect that there was a document which talked about a contract for the supply of communication kits for special forces and there was nothing to show that the kits were provided or supplied.

Dimgba ruled in favour of the prosecutor, holding that the no-case submission succeeded in part and also failed in part.

He held that a prima facie case had been established against the 1st and 3rd defendants  Robert Azibaola and his company respectively- on counts 2 and 3, while upholding the no case submission on counts 1,4,5,6,7,8 and 9, but acquitted Stella on all counts.

He, consequently, ordered the 1st and 3rd defendant to enter their defence as a prima facie case has been established against them on counts 2 and 3.
Bus crash kills 2 and injures 45

A bus accident killed two people and left 45 injured in Dakshinkali on Thursday.The passenger bus, registration number Ba 1 Kha 999, crashed at Bhanjyang-3 at 9am, 13 km south of Balkhu, after the front-left tyre came out while the bus was in motion, police said.
Bola Tinubu, national leader of the All Progressives Congress, APC, on Tuesday said President Muhammadu Buhari was on a journey of redirecting Nigeria to the path of greatness.

The former Governor of Lagos State made the disclosure during the colloquium in commemoration of his 66th birthday.

He said though the APC met several challenges on assumption of power, the Buhari-led government was on the voyage of retooling Nigeria, re-inventing Nigeria and re-directing Nigeria.

He, however, noted that Its not an easy course to embark upon.

Tinubu also cautioned Nigerians against accepting PDPs apology.

The APC chieftain further berated former President, Olusegun Obasanjo over his letter criticising the Buhari-led Federal Government.

Tinubu described Obasanjo as a bad belle letter writer.

The full text of Tinubus speech below:

Your Excellency, President Muhammadu Buhari, the Vice President and my co-conspirator, Yemi Osinbajo and his wife, Dolapo; our dear governor of Lagos State, Governor Akinwunmi Ambode. I have personally witnessed your good work in the last three years that has brought tremendous progress and development to the state.

Your Excellencies, the various governors, all of the governors from across the country. All the deputy governors, particularly Idiat Onabule (Lagos Deputy Governor) for her friendship and collaboration with our governor. I thank you my dear wife, Oluremi Tinubu. Thank you for tolerating me, as if you have a choice; the Speaker Lagos State House of Assembly. I can see some of my very faithful friends and compatriots over the years like Governor Rochas Okorocha, my friend Aliko Dangote, Jim Ovia and Oba Otudeko. Im just lost for words.

We have to put our heads together, believing in ourselves that we are going to do it. We can give our people the best through the competent hands that we have.

I have a prepared speech, but I am not going to dwell on that. Life is not without challenges. Our logo is broom, we come together, you have a Nigeria focusing against terrorism, against corruption and to promote economic revival of the country.

We have faced challenges in the last three years. We came in with a lot of hope and enthusiasm as APC leaders. We gave our people hope; we believed in Nigeria and in ourselves, thinking we can change Nigeria for good and we are still going to do it. Life is nothing without challenges. Our logo is broom bound together. This symbolizes a united Nigeria against terrorism, corruption and revival of the economy.

I can see what the government is doing with the little resources at its disposal. This has been demonstrated in practical terms.

Whats the lesson to all Nigerians: forget those parties; they wont come back. We did not envisage that there would be so much challenges. So, we would report back to Nigerians about what we found on ground. We did not say that there would be no challenges, because even America is facing challenges. They have wasted our resources.

Thank you Nigerians for being patient with us! But there is a clear understanding here; that the difference between us and them is like day and night. My grandmother used to ask me to write letters to her. Somebody is writing letters now, letter of politics these days. As if they have not been there before. Bad belle letters!

Im happy the President can change the course of the ship wreckage. The ship of this country that is headed in the wrong direction. To steer the ship back or anchor before redirecting it, which of course is necessary. And we started this journey. The voyage is on. The voyage of hope, the voyage that we are reclaiming Nigeria, that we are retooling Nigeria, re-inventing Nigeria and re-directing Nigeria. Its not an easy course to embark upon

For 16 years they looted the country and they say we shouldnt talk about it, as if we should just go ahead and run our government. On our part, we have good leaders to salvage the situation and we have hope that we can do it. We must put all that is necessary in place, to stimulate the economy.

Dont take their apologies; they lied, they falsified, they changed figures, they made fake promises and they say we shouldnt talk about them.

We have a nation to rescue; we have a good leader to emulate and we have hope. We have reduced the propensity for corruption. We must strengthen the pension plank to stimulate growth. I will submit a proposal on how we can stimulate the economy. We dont have to pay for a house of N10 million in one dayand with cash; we need mortgage. This would discourage corruption.

We must articulate a programme and promise Nigerians once again that we have the audacity of hope to put Nigeria on the path of prosperity and banish poverty in the country.
Home | News | General | Islam is part of our history, present, future - European Union

In a bid to seek further engagement with Muslim communities in Europe, the European Union (EU) held a roundtable discussion on Wednesday, March 28 with ten European imams and scholars.

The meeting was organised to further deepen the much needed conversation, bringing in new voices and perspectives.

Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) reports that the meeting was chaired by European Commission First Vice-President Frans Timmermans.

READ ALSO: You cannot install APGA governor - Okorocha dares Imo Archbishop

NAIJ.com gathered from Commissions statement on Tuesday, March 27, that the Imams and scholars were selected from six EU member states - Belgium, Bulgaria, Germany, France, Italy and The Netherlands, representing various sects.

Prior to the meeting, Timmermans said: The Muslim community, in all its diversity, has an important role to play in Europe's future.

"Muslims will find a loyal friend in the European Commission that will support everyone's right to practice their faith and traditions in peace."

Timmermans was further quoted to have said in a press statement after the meeting: The Commission is strongly committed to promoting diversity in Europe. Islam is part of our history, Islam is part of our present and Islam will be part of our future.

The way we help our citizens - whatever their background may be - to embrace the diversity that is a reality in European societies is going to determine much of our collective future.

The EUs executive body holds high-level meetings with religious and non-confessional organisations, as part of the regular dialogue with churches, religions and philosophical organisations foreseen by the EUs Lisbon Treaty.

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In September 2017, Timmermans reportedly hosted a seminar with Muslim university students from across Europe, together with European Parliament Vice-President Mairead McGuinness.

NAIJ.com previously reported that a foremost Nigerian Muslim group, The Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC), listed six demands that should be considered for restructuring by the All Progressives Congress (APC) restructuring committee.

The group in its demand signed by Professor Ishaq Akintola on Monday, October 9, noted that Muslims have not been treated as equal in the country and called for change.

The group tabled six demands to be considered for restructuring especially in making Friday a work-free day like Sunday.

Ex Bishop David Abioye's driver quits Living Faith Church, converts to Islam - on NAIJ.com TV

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Source: Naija.ng

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China backs Nepals foreign policy

Two days after Prime Minister KP Olis briefing to the international community, China on Thursday said that it appreciates the Nepal governments pursuit of an independent foreign policy.
Home | News | General | FG tasked on early commencement, completion of N20Bn Ikorodu-Sagamu road rehab

By Olasunkanmi Akoni

Following the approval of N20 Billion by the Federal Government for the rehabilitation of the IkoroduSagamu Express way, Senator.

Gbenga Ashafa has urged government to ensure immediate commencement and early completion of the project on the interest of the public.

Gbenga Bareehu Ashafa

Ashafa, representing Lagos East Senatorial District and the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Land Transport, however, commended President Muhammadu Buhari and the Minister for Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Raji Fashola SAN, for the approval.

According to a statement by Ashafa, On behalf of the good and hardworking people of Lagos East Senatorial District in general and the good people of Ikorodu in particular, I seize this opportunity to commend President Buhari and Minister for Power, Works and Housing, Fashola on the recent approval of the sum of N20 Billion for the rehabilitation of the Ikorodu  Shagamu road. We called and you answered.

I also thank His Excellency, Governor Akinwunmi Ambode our dear Governor for the role he has played at the executive level in ensuring the approval of the funding for the construction/rehabilitation of this project.

I am deeply excited because, the completion of this project would greatly improve the quality of life of our constituents, by easing the stress they currently face commuting that route while also easing the stress on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, by serving as a viable alternative to commuters. I am confident that work would commence in earnest towards the speedy completion of this important infrastructural project soonest.

Having observed the perennial strain and discomfort that the above stated road project has caused our teeming constituents, I led the clamour of other legislators from the Lagos East Senatorial District via my letter dated 24th July, 2017 in urging the Hon. Minister for Power, Works and Housing to prioritize the award of the said project.

The minister graciously directed the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry to respond vie a letter dated 18th October, 2017 with Reference Number: DDHMS/CR/62/NASS/111/409 confirming that the said project has been prioritized and that the procurement process for the project had indeed commenced. Approval of funding by the Federal Executive Council therefore marks the end of the award process.

Ashafa therefore, expressed his excitement with regards to the positive effect of the road construction on the people of Ikorodu as well as his confidence in the Federal Government to ensure the speedy completion of the project.

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Home | News | General | Buhari greets Christians, commits to security, progress

President Muhammadu Buhari has sent a felicitation message to Christians on Easter celebrations and with the assurance of his commitment to security, peace, unity and development.

In pursuit of security, he assured the nation of his commitment to rescue all girls abducted by Boko Haram, including the remaining Chibok schoolgirls.

I am very optimistic that all others, including the Chibok girls who are still in captivity will be safely released unconditionally to their families, Buhari said in the message.

President Buhari

While urging Christians to to continue to pray for the safe return of the girls, he said that he had given clear instructions to security agencies to prioritise safety in schools.

Security, he said, would be extended also to areas where the humanitarian and security situation are still dire, in addition to ensuring adequate protection of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs).

He also appealed to politicians and other acltors to resist any act that could mar the integrity of the electoral system as the nation march to another election year in 2019.

I am optimistic that with God on our side, the dark days of Nigerias elections being manipulated by violence and rigging by corrupt politicians and their agents are over.

They are confined to the dustbin of history where they rightly belong. I remain committed to bequeathing a legacy of supremacy of the peoples will through the ballot box.

Expressing his delighted to join Christians to commemorate the Easter celebrations, he said it was time to show love, forgiveness, compassion and renewed hope in the Grace of God.

The Holy Scripture affirms that happiness and fulfilment in life do not flow from acquiring the best things in life, but in being richer in a relationship with God and fellow human beings.

Let us use the opportunity of this special season to deeply reflect on how every one of us can imbibe the profound teachings of Jesus Christ with renewed vigour.

In so doing and by placing the joy, comfort and happiness of others above ours, we will make a statement that vices such as, hate speech, bigotry, corruption, banditry and terrorism have no place in our nation.

He advised Nigerians to do all it takes to love their neighbours and display increased spirit of tolerance and accommodation.

While enjoining law-abiding fellow compatriots to work for peace and social justice, he said: Let there be no doubt of our resolve to firmly resist others who may want to make cheap political capital out of current national security challenges.

He said that the programme of the government in the last three years have resulted in bringing down the prices of staple crops; gradual improvement of road, rail and electricity infrastructure; and making Nigeria the preferred destination for investors.

More than ever before, we are ready to consolidate on these gains and ensure that we improve the lot of our communities in the years ahead.

May this years Easter celebrations bring us renewed hope and confidence as a great nation.

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Fed units to get law blueprints in 15 days, says AG

The government is working on a set of model laws to be provided to the provincial and local governments, Attorney General Agni Kharel said on Thursday.
Home | News | General | Agency distributes relief items to IDP camp fire victims in Borno

The Borno State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA) said it had distributed food and other relief materials to victims of fire disaster at the Ajiri Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camp.

The Chairperson of the agency, Hajiya Yabawa Kolo, made the disclosure in an interview with newsmen in Maiduguri on Friday.

Newsmen recalled that a mysterious fire razed over 300 tents at Ajiri camp in Mafa local government area of Borno on March 6.

Though there were no casualties; hundreds of persons displaced by the Boko Haram insurgency taking shelter in the camp lost their property to the inferno.

Kolo disclosed that food items, cooking utensils, mats, blankets and clothing materials were distributed to the victims.

She explained that the state government provided the items for distribution to the victims sequel to the assessment exercise conducted by the agency.

Kolo listed the items to include 400 bags of rice; 400 bags of granulated grain, 100 cartons of pasta, 50 kg of cooking oil, 500 bundles of clothing materials for adult and two bundles of children wears.

Other items include 9, 000 pieces of kitchen utensils; 400 buckets, 1, 200 pieces of mats and 3, 000 blankets.

The chairperson added that the gesture was to assist the victims and assuage their sufferings.

According to her, the agency had also conducted an assessment exercise at the Rann IDPs camp following similar fire incident in the area.

The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) confirmed that six displaced persons were killed and 20 others sustained injuries in the fire outbreak at the camp on March 27.

NAN

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Govt to table HPE ordinance in Parliament today

The government is all set to table the much awaited Health Profession Education (HPE) ordinance in the Parliament on Friday.
Home | News | General | Breaking: 70-year-old Arnold Schwarzenegger undergoes emergency open-heart surgery

- Arnold Schwarzenegger has undergone an emergency open-heart surgery for a catheter valve replacement at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles

- The actor and former governor of California was said to have had a surgery in 1997

- Though the famous actor is said to be in a stable condition but the open-heart surgery reportedly lasted hours

Veteran actor, Arnold Schwarzenegger has undergone an emergency open-heart surgery after a failed valve replacement procedure, TMZ Reports.

The news outlet reports that sources connected to the 70-year-old actor claimed he went to Cedars-Sinai on Thursday, March 29, for a catheter valve replacement.

"We're told the surgery is somewhat experimental and he developed complications. Doctors were prepared in case the catheter valve replacement failed ... and quickly decided Arnold needed emergency open-heart surgery, which we're told lasted several hours," TMZ reports.

READ ALSO: FG releases names of alleged looters

It was reported that the recent surgery was not the first time the veteran actor would undergo heart surgery. He was said to have had an aortic valve replaced in 1997, though doctors didn't feel the procedure was urgently needed at that time, but the actor decided to do it while he was still young, the report claims further.

As at the time of filing this report, Arnold is said to be in a stable condition.

It should however be recalled that earlier this week, he spoke to CNN about the changes in the Republican party.

Since then the party has decreased and now has only a 26 percent popularity overall and so it is dying and I see it like the Titanic. The only thing is that we dont have to go under completely. We dont have to wait for that moment. Lets change and lets go and be more open and go back to this kind of like big tent idea of Ronald Reagan, he said.

Meanwhile, NAIJ.com reported that American actor, Sylvester Stallone, tweeted to clear the air about the circulating rumors related to his death.

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He urged his fans to disregard the rumour. "Please ignore the stupidity, alive and well and happy and healthyStill punching," he tweeted.

Anytime anybody is against this government, something bad happens to him on NAIJ.com TV.

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Home | News | General | Easter: Stella Oduah felicitates with Christians, says with love Nigeria can surmount all its challenges

- Senator Stella Oduah has joined Christians around the world in celebrating Easter

- The senator called on all Nigerians to emulate the virtues of love and sacrifice which Jesus Christ exhibited by dying on the cross

- She noted that with love, Nigeria can surmount all its challenges

Senator Stella Oduah has called on all Nigerians to emulate the virtues of love and sacrifice which Jesus Christ exhibited by dying on the cross.

In an Easter message sent to NAIJ.com, the senator who represents Anambra North Senatorial District, said that with love Nigeria can surmount all its challenges.

Stella Oduah admonished Christians to love and sacrifice like Christ.

READ ALSO: 6 facts about Easter you didn't know

We must learn to love like Christ loved and we must sacrifice in the was Christ has exemplified for us.

If we love one another, the wanton killing, clashes, kidnapping theft and all other vices that bedevil our society would not exist.

With love and sacrifice there in empathy, understanding, tolerance and coexistence. We would indeed be united if we love one another.

Just as Christ taught us and as it is taught in Islam and many other religion, love is a virtue which conquers all, where there is love all other good virtues go along with it, part of the statement read.

Senator Oduah said that Nigerians must also learn to give in helping the poor and the needy around them not just to indulge in lavish celebrations which their neighbours go hungry

She insisted that Easter was a good time for sober reflection, a time for moral reevaluation and a time to retrace ones steps.

We must see the Easter as not just a time to celebrate the resurrection of Christ but a time to soberly reflect on the significance of his suffering death and resurrection and how well we are emulating the virtues he taught.

For parents, it is a time to reflect on how well you have brought up your children. The family still holds the key to bringing up good Nigerians and therefore parents must raise their children up in the right way so that we can have good Nigerians.

I therefore wish every Nigerian Christian and friends a wonderful Easter celebration, she concluded.

Meanwhile, Benue state governor, Samuel Ortom has assured the people of the state that his administration will continue to place priority on the security of lives, property and their general welfare.

In a statement to mark the Easter celebration sent to NAIJ.com by his chief press secretary, Terver Akase, the governor said the death and resurrection of Jesus which is the meaning of Easter is a period when Christians should draw closer to God so they can appreciate His abundant grace and mercy upon their lives in the face of adversities.

READ ALSO: Easter: Secondus calls for prayer for democracy to survive in Nigeria

Market Survey - Easter special on NAIJ.com TV

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Home | News | General | Easter: Secondus calls for prayer for democracy to survive in Nigeria

- Prince Uche Secondus, national chairman of PDP, has called on Nigerians to pray for the survival of the country's democracy

- Secondus said that the nations democracy since 1999 had been under heavy stress and needed all hands to be on the deck to survive

- He urged leaders to stand up for the truth and save the country from deteriorating

The national chairman of PDP, Prince Uche Secondus, has urged Nigerians to use the period of Easter to reflect on the situation in the country and pray for the survival of Nigerias democracy.

Secondus made the call in an Easter message issued by his special assistant on Media, Ike Abonyi, on Friday, March 30, in Abuja.

He said that the nations democracy since 1999 had been under heavy stress and needed all hands to be on the deck to survive.

READ ALSO: Naomi Campbell visits Nigeria, meets President Buhari

The chairman said Nigerias democracy required only truth and sincerity of purpose from critical stakeholders to survive.

He urged leaders to stand up for the truth and save the country from deteriorating.

Secondus commended former President Olusegun Obasanjo, former Military Head of State Ibrahim Babangida and former Minister of Defence General Theophilus Danjuma for saying the truth about the state of the nation.

Indicators are apparent that the country is under siege and Nigerians should use this solemn period of Easter to pray for God to intervene and raise good leaders for the country, he said.

Secondus advised the APC-led federal government to imbibe the spirit of tolerance and shun all undemocratic tendencies that might heighten tension in the land.

He urged Christians to see the Easter festivity as ample period to exhibit positive attitudes toward one another.

The chairman assured Nigerians that the new PDP that would emerge after reformation would take the country to the next level having been equipped with the requisite experience.

He admonished Nigerian leaders to absorb the lessons of Easter and allow it influence their conducts, especially as it concerned less privileged persons in the society.

Secondus wished all Nigerians a very happy Easter celebration and urged them to live in peace with one another.

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Meanwhile, NAIJ.com had reported that the federal government on Friday, March 30, and through Lai Mohammed, released a list of some of those who have been accused of looting the nations treasury under the administration of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

Mohammed, the information minister, released the list during a press conference in Lagos, adding that the individuals include officials in the past government.

Jonathan replies to Buhari's allegations on NAIJ.com TV.

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Home | News | General | VAIDs: Buhari under pressure to extend tax amnesty period

As the tax amnesty under the Voluntary Assets and Income Declaration Scheme (VAIDs) ends on Saturday, some private sector players are said to be lobbying President Muhammadu Buhari to extend the amnesty period.

An official at the Presidency, who craved for anonymity, told newsmen on Friday that governors and company owners had called the President and Vice President to push for the extension of the programme.

President Buhari

We are expecting Mr President to make an announcement on the tax amnesty deadline by this weekend.

To be frank and honest, nobody knows whether the President will decide to extend it or not, but there has been calls by state governors and key private sector players calling for the extension.

However, it still remains unclear if the President will take the recommendation to extend it by another three months, since he had been advised otherwise by the Minister of Finance and Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) chairman, the source said.

Meanwhile, the Adamawa state Commissioner for Finance, Mr Mahmoud Yunusa, told NAN that many of the states were in support of extending the tax amnesty past the March 31 deadline.

It should be extended because people are just beginning to buy into the programme. We see people coming up willingly to declare their assets and it shouldnt end soon.

Nigerians deserve more time and I believe that some of them are still collating their assets to know their worth before doing so.

Also, some havent declared because they operate businesses without any formal documentation so it will take time before they get their books in order.

So its my opinion that extending it for another six months would ensure better success, he said.

Yunusa lauded the programme, saying that in Adamawa State, it had helped the state to improve its Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) by more than 200 per cent despite still recovering from insurgency and recession.

Also, Mr Tunde Dare, an economist, held the view that the VAIDs programme should be extended.

Even though I think the programme should be extended, I think the government went about this business of tax amnesty the wrong way.

I think the scheme should be aimed at capturing more people into the scheme without asking them to pay backlog of taxes, he said.

Meanwhile, on Thursday, which was the last working day before the expiration of the programme, many accountants and lawyers stormed the offices of the FIRS to submit applications of their clients.

NAN gathered that many tax defaulters, who had thought that the amnesty programme would be extended, were making last minute efforts to key into the scheme.

The VAIDs programme was launched on July 1, 2017 and was expected to last for nine months.

The government threatened to prosecute tax evaders that do not take advantage of the scheme thereby risking imprisonment of up to five years.

According to the Minister of Finance, Mrs Kemi Adeosun, the Federal Government had the political will as well as the means to gather evidence that will enable it to prosecute tax evaders.

She once said that using Project Lighthouse, a data mining agency, the government had been gathering information from different sources to enable it to identify and properly prosecute tax evaders after the expiration of the deadline.

She said information had so far been gathered from Bank Verification Number records, engagement with foreign private investigation firms on a retainership to trace assets of Nigerians abroad.

Also, the Federal Government plans to use the Nigeria Financial Intelligence Unit records and land ownership records in locations like Maitama, Asokoro, Garki, Wuse, Banana Island, Magodo, Lekki, Ikoyi, and Victoria Island.

The government further plans to beam its searchlights on people that over the years have received major payments from it or foreign exchange allocation and also people with private jets.

Also, the Federal Government have agreements with many foreign governments like the United Arab Emirates and United Kingdom to get records of Nigerians with property there.

The government also threatened to go after Nigerians who frequent tax havens as mentioned in the panama paper leaks.

NAN

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Home | News | General | Ikubeshe hosts congress of young intellectuals

The Presidential Aspirant of the National Conscience Party, Dr Thomas-Wilson Ikubese played host to about fifty youths from the Congress of Young Intellectuals (CYI) yesterday in his campaign secretariat in Akure.

The youths who cut across various fields of human endeavour were led by the Ondo State Coordinator-General Mr Victor Fapetu, a lecturer at the Rufus Giwa Polytechic Owo.

In his opening remark, Mr Fapetu thanked Dr Ikubese for being the first Nigerian young person to declare to run for the office of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria on 24th July 2017. He described him as a trail blazer in youth advocacy and good governance in Nigeria as his wake up call on Nigerian youths to get involved in the political process is beginning to yield fruits.

He therefore appealed to Dr Ikubese to join the Congress of Young Intellectuals and be a major stakeholder therein for the betterment of the nation.

On his part, the student-wing leader of CYI in Ondo State, Mr Ijanusi Olawale who showered accolades on Dr Ikubese for being a blessing to the Nigerian state pledged that the CYI will mobilise support from the student constituency across all the tertiary institutions in Nigeria for the realisation of the 2019 Presidential aspiration of Dr Ikubese, because according to him, therein lies the salvation of the nation.

The Ondo state Secretary of CYI, Mrs Yemi Owei in her speech thanked Dr Ikubese for coming up with solutions to Nigerias problems in his manifesto and giving women a place of pride in the Nigerian polity.

She said Nigerian youths are no longer ready to be leaders of tomorrow that may never come, but are now ready to be leaders of today.

Responding, Dr Ikubese thanked the delegation for finding him worthy of their confidence and accepted the membership of CYI, pledging to work with the organisation to birth a new functional Nigerian state.

According to him, Nigeria is about the most blessed nation on the surface of the earth, both in human and natural resources. The major problem weve had over the years is that of leadership. If we can get our leadership compass right, this nation will be the pride of the black race.

He promised to provide that missing link in 2019 when voted into power.

According to Ikubese, within six months of the inauguration of my government, this nation shall begin to enjoy uninterrupted power supply. Its an insult for a nation of over 180 million people to depend on Kainji Dam which was built in 1964. Rather, we shall encourage each state to generate its own power using gas turbines and empower them to distribute same without passing it through the National Grid.

Ikubese said government is not rocket science. According to him, all that is needed to turn Nigeria around is to vote in selfless, visionary young leaders across board.

The Congress of Young Intellectuals in made up of youths from all works of life and has chapters in the 36 states of the federation and Abuja.

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Hetauda students stage rally

Students organisations took out a demonstration in Hetauda, Makwanpur, on Thursday, demanding the town should be designated the capital of Province 3.
Home | News | General | List of looters, PDP reacts, makes allegations against APC

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has, on Friday, March 30, dismissed the list of alleged "looters" published by the Federal Government as hollow and laughable.

The party said the list is an extension of federal government media trial and challenged it to come up names of its members against whom the federal government had secured convictions.

The party said the list put forward by the federal government as "purported looters amounts to a cheap blackmail as none of those listed have been indicted or convicted by any court of competent jurisdiction or any panel of enquiry in our country."

PDP National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, in a statement on Friday, said the list issued by the minister of information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, only goes to show that the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Presidency have no prove of corruption against the PDP.

READ ALSO: Police rearrest 5 suspected assassins allegedly linked to Dino Melaye who escaped from jail

The statement read: "The party said in its frenzy and desperation, the federal government even included names of individuals who are not standing trial or under investigation for any act of corruption, as well as those who are not even PDP members.

"The Buhari-led federal government has manifested its frenzy by going after matters that are in court and in which none of the persons have been convicted, thus betraying their wickedness and desperation to mislead the public, the court and divert attention from the heavy looting involving their members.

"We are not in doubt that the individuals he has mentioned will take their legitimate stride and pursue appropriate action in the court.

"However, attacks on individuals, who are members of our party, does not in anyway detract from the fact that the PDP, as a political platform, is not a party of corruption.

"It is unfortunate that the APC and its government under whose watch horrendous sleazes are happening on daily basis and a government that has failed to fulfill the littlest of its campaign promises, can spend a wholesome three years searching for flimsy allegations to discredit our party and its members.

"This is a government that is yet to account for $26 billion (N9 trillion) stolen through corrupt oil contracts in the NNPC, N1.1 trillion worth of crude diverted to service APC interests, N18 billion Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) intervention fund stolen by APC officials, including their former Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Babachir Lawal, the N10 billion National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) for which members of the Buhari cabal were indicted as well as the Mainagate, where the APC government recalled and reinstated an individual indicted for scam running into billions of naira.

"This is in addition to cover provided for serving ministers indicted for corrupt enrichment, among whom is a prominent former APC governor from the southsouth, who was indicted by his state for stealing billions of naira to fund President Buharis campaign in 2015.

"We emphatically say that the PDP is on a rebound and such flimsy allegations by the APC and its horde of looters, who stole humongous wealth from their respective states of the federation to sponsor an incompetent candidate in 2015, cannot stop us from challenging the Federal Government to fulfill its campaign promises.

"Since, the APC has decided to draw this attack, we will no longer hold back but appropriately commence a serialization of all looters hiding in APC and the presidency."

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NAIJ.com had earlier reported that the federal government on Friday, March 30, and through Lai Mohammed, released a list of some of those who have been accused of looting the nations treasury under the administration of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

Aliko Dangote invites IT billionaire Bill Gates to Nigeria on Naij.com TV.

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Improving ECD classrooms

The history of Nepali Montessori education, which focuses on Early Childhood Development (ECD), traces back to 1949 meaning it started concomitantly with modern schooling in the country.
65-year-old woman criminally charged by Swedish officials for saying immigrants have lower IQs is that a CRIME?

In Sweden, a 65-year-old woman has been criminally charged for hate against a group of people after taking to social media to argue that her countrys IQ levels will start to decline as more and more immigrants come into the country.

If this continues, the intelligence in Sweden will be at goldfish level, she wrote on a Facebook page called Stop Abuse Power. Notably, she also made several comments that were critical of Muslims.

As Chamber prosecutor Lisa Hedberg explained during an interview with Sverige Radio, the number of investigations into hate speech has been steadily on the rise ever since the Network Examiner has started to systematically search for and report controversial posts made on the Internet, particularly by older Swedes.

Now, this 65-year-old woman is being brought to the district court, where she stands trial for being suspected of perpetuating hate speech towards a particular group of people  in this case, immigrants. Despite these accusations, the woman is denying the crimes and fighting back. (Related: Politically correct language control is a danger to society that has led to the genocide of millions.)

But while the leftists in Sweden may have been triggered by this womans assertion that the massive influx of immigrants will lower the overall IQ of the country, is there any truth to it? According to a recent study that was conducted by intelligence researcher James Flynn, there might be.

As Sputnik News reports, since the mid-1990s, Norway, Denmark and Finland have all experienced an average loss of 0.23 IQ points per year, which, although seemingly insignificant per se, nevertheless suggests a powerful long-term effect. Although Sweden lacks data for recent years, Flynn believes it is following its neighbors footsteps due to similar development patterns.

In an interview with the Swedish magazine Forskning & Framsteg (Research & Progress), James Flynn said, It is clear that all Scandinavian countries have had a declining trend since 1995. It seems that the factors that caused the IQ boost have lost the power.

So this 65-year-old woman was correct in that the overall IQ of her country is likely beginning to decline, and in her opinion, this decline could be attributed to the influx of immigrants. Even if immigration had absolutely nothing to do with it, should she really be criminally charged for hate speech? Are legitimate opinions that are based on logic and reason now banned in Sweden, and if so, how can Sweden expect to debate ideas and progress as a nation?

Here in America, those on the political left are just as hostile  if not more hostile  to speech that they fundamentally disagree with. Just a few weeks ago, for instance, a religious studies major at Indiana University of Pennsylvania was banned from attending class for arguing that, contrary to the liberal narrative, there are only two genders.

My professor is violating my First Amendment rights because of the fact that my views and ideology is different from hers, the student, whose name is Lake Ingie, told Fox News. So she took it on herself to silence and embarrass me  bully me  for speaking up in class. (Related: 24 states are now pursuing free speech bills to protect conservative speakers from left wing bullies.)

This political correctness and the censorship of voices that dont align with the progressive ideology is spreading like a plague not just throughout the United States, but across the globe. It really is a dark path that will inevitably continue to shrink the circle of liberty that exists around each and every one of us, unless of course we make a stand and break free from the ideological cage that the political left is trying to throw us in.

Sources include:

InformationLiberation.com

SputnikNews.com

FoxNews.com
Binance and Bitfinex, two of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the global digital currency market, may completely move out of Asia this year, due to impractical policies.

Binance and Malta

Last week, Binance, easily the biggest digital currency trading platform with a $1.4 billion daily trading volume, moved out of Asia and relocated to Malta, a country within the European Union. In its official statement, the Binance team and its CEO Changpeng Zhao, better known to the community simple as CZ, stated that they agree on the government of Maltas long-term aim to evolve the country into The Blockchain Island.

CZ stated:

After meeting with Parliamentary Secretary, Mr Silvio Schembri, we were impressed by the logical, clear and forward thinking nature of Maltas leadership. After reviewing a proposal bill, we are convinced that Malta will be the next hotbed for innovative blockchain companies, and a centre of the blockchain ecosystem in Europe. Binance is committed to lending our expertise to help shape a healthy regulatory framework as well as providing funds for other blockchain startups to grow the industry further in Malta.

For awhile, Binance has clarified its stance towards cryptocurrency-to-fiat trading, and firmly told its investors and users that plans to integrate cryptocurrency-to-fiat pairs are not on the horizon. But, its relocation to Malta and potential establishment of new banking partners could allow Binance to add cryptocurrency-to-fiat pairs with ease, without regulatory uncertainty and conflict with banking service providers.

Already, Binance has revealed its plans to launch a decentralized digital asset exchange called Binance Chain. Although the entire concept of a decentralized exchange defeats the purpose and renders the existence of centralized exchanges unnecessary, the Binance teams aim from the beginning has been to provide every service that can be accommodated to a wide of users.

Hence, given the roadmap of Binances development, it is only logical for the company to move from cryptocurrency-only trading, to decentralized exchange, to cryptocurrency-to-fiat trading.

Story continues

Bitfinex to Switzerland

Another major cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex, a Taiwan and Hong Kong-based trading platform that processes cryptocurrency-to-US dollar trades, has been eyeing permanent relocation to Switzerland, as CCN previously reported.

For many years, Switzerland and Zug in particular, have been known as the blockchain capital of the world, primarily because of its friendly regulations towards initial coin offering (ICO) projects and cryptocurrency businesses.

Most notably, EOS, the sixth largest cryptocurrency in the world with a $4.5 billion market valuation, is based in Switzerland.

Bitfinex CEO Jean-Louis van der Velde emphasized that the company has had constructive talks with Swiss authorities, and is carefully considering its move from Asia to Switzerland.

We are looking for a new permanent home for Bitfinex and the parent company iFinex, where we want to merge the operations previously spread over several locations, said Velde.

The relocation of Bitfinex from Taiwan to Switzerland would lead to two of the worlds biggest cryptocurrency exchanges leaving Asia to Europe within a single month. If leading cryptocurrency businesses continue to move out of Asia due to impractical regulations to Europe, it could lead to Japan, South Korea, and Hong Kong losing their dominance over the global market, and could trigger competition amongst global economies to house cryptocurrency businesses.

Featured image from Shutterstock.



The post Two Largest Cryptocurrency Exchanges Look to Exit Asia Due to Impractical Policies appeared first on CCN.


MoFA nod must to host diplomats

The Ministry of Federal Affairs and General Administration has formally directed local level authorities to channel meetings with representatives from diplomatic missions through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA).
'View From Top' Actress Gwenyth Paltrow is going global expanding her lifestyle brand to Europe. Europeans can now enjoy Paltrow's tid bits about her privileged life and which vagina steamer the actress recommends. Paltrow expanded Goop to the Canadian market back in December 2017 and the 150-employee company reportedly has a post-money valuation of $250 million. Goop ran into controversy when they sold $66 vaginal jade eggs that could potentially lead the consumer to infections or toxic shock syndrome. Paltrow is very hands on with the company and her acting career took a backseat. While cultivating ideas on what her audience can put in their pussies, she managed to beef with Martha Stewart.source= https://twitter.com/Variety/status/979457088857534464
its what she deserves

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honestly watching these kids gives me hope for the education system here in florida

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This is true. Both my siblings graduated from there, and they got excellent educations. I went to Dillard and Deerfield Beach high schools, and if it wasn't for the honors/AP classes, my education would have been subpar at best.



That all said, MSD is an excellent school, as are several around that area. Worth trying to get your kids there. :)

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It still blows my mind that people actually consider Fox News as legitimate. Its so disgusting. Going after children like this? And mocking his grades? Fuck off.



I love how resilient these kids are and dgaf. She is vile.

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She only apologized because she was losing money. What a B.S. comment and faux apology on her part. Good on David and the rest of these kids speaking out.

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I thought 4.0 was the highest you can get? Are California schools harder to get into? It's been a very long time since I've applied to colleges.

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you can get higher when weighted with ap classes and stuff

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You can take AP classes in the States that weigh more than 4 points. And UCLA is a hard school to get in, Im assuming the other schools were Ivy Leagues, MIT, and Stanford

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no, the other schools were uc san diego, uc irvine, and uc santa barbara iirc. san diego, irvine and santa barbara aren't super hard to get into, buttttt i think that's mostly if you're a high school student in California since UCs give preference to in-state residents. so someone from florida is gonna have a hard time. plus it looks like his sat score might not have been the best.



idek why he'd want to attend a school like irvine anyway. schools like san diego and santa barbara at least have location going for them. i always figured that irvine was only on the radar for california kids. decent school but there are other similarly decent schools where you're not stuck in irvine lol (although i guess you can travel to neighboring socal cities, so nvm).



Edited at 2018-03-30 02:01 pm (UTC)

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jesus they're really out there comparing him to Hitler??? these kids are so strong. I'm glad he didn't accept her fake apology.

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Alex Jones is a fucking nutcase https://www.salon.com/2018/03/28/alex-jones-depicts-parkland-survivors-david-hogg-emma-gonzalez-as-nazis/

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I wonder if these people have looked in a mirror or looked at their prez, but it doesn't surprise me they're trying to deflect from their own nazisim. Dear Salon, theres a reason I use adblock lmao, I think I was able to read one sentence before my entire page turned into a huge ass Air Emirates ad!I wonder if these people have looked in a mirror or looked at their prez, but it doesn't surprise me they're trying to deflect from their own nazisim.

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They're also comparing Emma Gonzalez to Fidel Castro.



What amazes me is how quickly the Right-Wing shift the narrative on the Parkland shooting to attack their 'enemies'.



In the first few days following the tragedy, conservative pundits and other right-wingers leapt upon the FBI, blaming the bureau for the massacre, accusing them of being too obsessed with Trump and ignoring the obvious danger of Nicholas Cruz. The talked at length, wondering how the FBI could possibly miss so many red-flags, given Cruz's history of instability and violence.



But then the Parkland survivors started to protest, demanding more effective gun-laws. Suddenly, the violent, unstable lunatic became a poor, helpless little boy (despite being twenty), who simply snapped from years of abuse and ostracism by malicious bullies who just so coincidentally happen to be all the kids speaking out about it.

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its all over twitter. they have his face imposed on hitlers face. it's BEYOND.



america is a garbage place.

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a local NYC politician's staffer posted something on facebook comparing the parkland kids to the hitler youth. apparently that is becoming common alt-right drivel.

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I do like that these teens have so many of the deplorables shook. Grown ass adults are throwing every insult and accusation their way, and Hogg especially stays cool and immediately focuses hitting them in their pockets. I just wish there were consequences to conservative hypocrisy.



All these assholes whining about Nutrish and Hulu, lmao. I sadly don't have a dog anymore but next time at the store I'll try and buy some of their dog food to donate to the shelter. I've also been meaning to restart my Hulu subscription.



It wasn't until I was in college that I realized some schools went above 4.0 for GPAs. I don't care for that, tbh.

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These kids have way more poise than I would. I would've already cursed these motherfuckers out. I'd get kicked off tv for calling everyone out. Although, David Hogg shouldn't be asking Laura Ingraham to cover inner city violence, like please, we don't need that racist nonsense, David.



You can say dumbass on CNN?

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MTE on that "inner city violence" WTF. We don't need that white dog whistles, thank you very much.He sounds like one of those whites kids who's recently discovered that racism really does exist and is trying to sound woke and like he cares.



IDK, I'm always pleased to see the Parkland teens punch back, but I'm gonna stay bitter America decides to halfway care about gun violence when rich white teens, along with a token or two are the victims.



I'm also beyond sick of people dropping the phrase "on both sides" in weak attempts to appear objective. In the era of Trump, it's actually journalistic responsibility to realize that sometimes there is only one correct point of view, and it's not the side of the Nazis.

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Hes 17. Let him learn.

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But these kids have also acknowledged their white privilege and have called out the fact that they were shot at one day in their lives but that others deal with it on a daily basis.

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"He sounds like one of those whites kids who's recently discovered that racism really does exist and is trying to sound woke and like he cares."



wow... have you been following these people or not?

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he's 17, jesus

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Something about this post seems uncomfortably self righteous. These are kids who endured a traumatic experience, we don't need to pick on them when they're trying to learn.



Edited at 2018-03-30 03:30 pm (UTC)

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Fuck her. And in the spirit of Holy Week?! WTF. The way these kids are being treated is absolutely disgusting.

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She also started attacking him during Holy Week, so... we can all see how much Holy Week really means to her. She's the worst, and FoxNews is a hate speech platform. It's what they do.

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None of these adults take a second to wonder what the fuck they're doing, attacking teenagers that survived a school shooting.

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I can't believe she claimed this was an accident, like how do you accidentally do this!?

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right. she knew what she was doing.

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srsly

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That is insane.

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the FUCK

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What the HELL, please tell me this has been manipulated and is not actually real. How is THIS ok, but when the Obamas fist bumped it was a terrorist fist jab?

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umm

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...what the FUCK?????????????????????????????

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I fucking knew it was her.

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Oh, this was her?

Yeah, go kick rocks, lady.

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this is not a normal motion/thing you do with your arms and I can't believe anyone thought otherwise lol

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Oh my god. What the fuck

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disgusting

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fucking yikes lol

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before we even opened our security guard was trash talking david hogg and i never know how to handle those situations bc he's a co worker and i don't really want to get into it at work. but...U G H



these kids are an inspiration.

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Sometimes the best reaction is none. It just makes things awkward for the person that's spewing that kind of garbage. It sucks that having to work makes things hard to impossible wrt confronting people.

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yeah i just ignored him. i ignore him a lot lol

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I get this at my work occasionally, and because it's retail/customer service, I can't say shit unless it goes off into profanity or blatant crazy. I've found what works for me is to listen and give no reaction except to lift an eyebrow. When they've wound down, they tend to awkwardly shuffle away because I'm just staring at them and not really responding to their "Don't you agree?" bullshit.



Then I go in the back room and punch a box.

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I just look them in the eye while they're spewing, shake my head, then ignore them permanently after that. It's the same look I used to give my kid when he was being especially disappointing/shitty. It's surprising how well it works, even on strangers. It sucks that you have to work with that person, though.

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Look them dead in the eye, say "you must be fun at parties", and walk away.

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So if it wasn't Holy Week, she wouldn't have apologized?

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I just think its kinda funny that out of all of the horrible, disgusting, racist, sexist and homophobic shit shes said over the years, THIS is what made her advertisers pull out... mkay

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it's sad it took this long or even like a month ago when she was being racist af regarding LeBron

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Yet the owner of the Cavs apparently still advertises with her (he owns Quicken Loans/Rocket Mortgage).

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Yupp

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I can't with all things Owen anymore. He needs to go!



So here for Scott Speedman though. His character was so likable and should become a series regular.

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IA! I liked how cute he and Meredith were. It's nice to have some fresh blood.

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I liked the character and his talks with Mer were cute but he looks like he doesn't have teeth! His lips are so weird I had to force myself to not look at them. I like that Mer is having feelings similar to those she had for Derek but gd I hope it isn't with this guy.





Saying all that I really did like his character and hope he comes back.



Edited at 2018-03-30 10:18 pm (UTC)

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he looks like he doesn't have teeth! His lips are so weird



omg yes, it bothered me SO much

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How much of this show makes sense? Whenever they talk about groundbreaking work or doing something thats never been done before, it always makes me wonder how true it is to life.

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Why do they fuck up Alex character? He had his aggressions in the past but he put everything behind him to become a great doctor and now this.

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We had the perfect opportunity to get rid of Owen but no... Why do the writers keep him around??



That said, Teddy deserves better than him...



I liked the new guy, I think he's coming back. I liked the throwback to the pilot in the last scene.



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He directs episodes now. So I guess out of respect for that, they keep his character on. Such a waste of screen time to be honest. So glad Teddi kicked him out, although I do love Kim Raver.

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i watched this episode for saul rubinek and my god, owen remains the worst. i loathe him.



sarah drew was amazing but i still don't like april lol. i just hope the cagney & lacey show is picked up, so i can watch both her and michelle hurd being amazing together.

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sarah drew was amazing



I'm sorry your meds aren't working :(

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ngl i always thought she was a very good actress even though i have never liked a single character she has ever played. that's gotta mean something.

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seriously!!! He better come back, he is the original white canadian bae tbh.

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I agree and I felt the same way about Scott Foley when he was on a few years back!

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yesss!!!



i LOVE teddy and all I could think for most of that episode was that the wrong person was writing her scenes bc they def were making her act mad generic. but there was a total comeback when she called owen out for being afraid lmao



Teddy is an AMAZING character who has an amazing dichotomy of feminine and badass, plus nobility and grace. When she called out Jackson during that college shooting episode is my fav moment of hers

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Is Scott Speedman going to be back?

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April is the worst. I ended up ff-ing through the rest of her scenes because I cant with her acting like she's been through so much shit. Particularly on this show, with the plane crashes and mass shooters and ferry boat crashes and drownings and cancer and bus hits.



I wish Bailey would have straight up fired her. She's the fucking CHIEF. WHat happened to Bailey that she didn't straight up fire her on the spot? Lord.

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Because that would be the third time April has been fired. You'd think she'd remember that when ranting about people making mistakes.

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Right?? I was like bitch you killed a woman because you were careless! Like she's the last person to be lecturing Bailey lol. I can't wait for her last episode, I hope she dies and I hope she takes Owen with her.

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I've stopped watching this show a long time ago so I completely believe you that April has become extremely annoying, but are you really implying that she actually has not gone through bad shit when she lost a child? Yeah, it was not a plane crash or cancer but still very traumatic?

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Amelia can keep ive cheated but I am not a cheater Owen! They can be the worst together



My bb Yang deserved a hell of a lot better

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Tbh I've been re-watching S2 and 3, her and Burke were way better than her and Owen, at least Burke had the sense to walk away from her cause he didn't wanna turn her into something she wasn't, lol rant but I've got lots of Queen Yang "feels" lol.

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TEDDY WAS AMAZING THIS EP. u deserve so much better girl. when will owen fucking die.

the thing with owen is that he has been on the show for 9 years and i still don't know shit about him other than he is a cheater, a terrible husband, and was in the army. it's like. why am i supposed to care about anything he does? ugh.



meredith and the cute guy <3 she deserves something nice. i loved that christina was in her dream life.

im gonna miss april :(

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Scott Speedman is very charismatic



Can April just die the now please? She's a terrible character and doctor, I mean the way she spoke to Bailey, I would have FIRED her arse.

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please let Owen move to Germany

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Owen and April please GFTO



I neeeed Scott Speedman to join the show as a regular and i can relive my Felicity days...

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Japanese TV is wild af lol.

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Da fuck happened to her honestly... She used to be funny back when she had dark hair...

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I think probably you just grew up....and she didn't.

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Lmao maybe, but i remember she was funny on ellen, wasn't this tryhard

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The hair seriously ruined her whole image

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I'll start believing the world is flat if the state of her career ever recovers from this.

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I feel like I usually wouldnt find this that funny but Im at work, having to be quiet, and that gif is making me cry laughing right now.



Thinking about her career makes me sad sometimes. I dont even remember the name of her last album.

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imma need her to grow her hair out a lil and dye it dark again

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Mte. She Keri Russelled her career.

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Wat did keri russell do? Idgi

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lol damn

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lmaoo

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LOL

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Everytime I see her lately all I can see is how terrible her hair looks.

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She's been selling out internationally, how is her career over? Maybe in the US bc I forget Americans only think that success is relevant here.



Edited at 2018-03-30 08:55 pm (UTC)

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no tea no shade sis, but arent you from a country thats known for stanning anyone and everyone?





Katy is a FLOP

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I've been heavily down the Japanese tv and game show rabbit hole for a few months now and I love it. My ass is still addicted to Terrace House

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I'm almost done Boys and Girls in the city! I binged hard last weekend. I've seen the first ep of Opening New Doors and I can't wait to jump into it.

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omg terrace house sucked me in so bad. I was watching the first season and the new one as it comes out lol. I was shook when Seina came back haha

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Is her makeup supposed to be like that pink makeup that makes you look like you're crying?

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lmao oof

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lol omg

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LMAO 

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Lol gurl u r on fire here

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nnnnnnn

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drunk and probs, bc japan yknow lol

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Act My Age is oddly fitting for all of this.



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girl really does suffer from arrested development. likely cuz she was sheltered for so long.

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it was a great track

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she was never a full album artist, her albums sucked but i liked roulette, bigger than me and bon apetite as well as swish swish were hits around the world.

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suits this weird, uncomfortable era

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lmao her look of regret

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She's truly is the Jlaw of the music industry... but way more obnoxious

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i like that they don't take themselves seriously but i hate the fact that jlaw admits that she's an asshole to fans or anyone who bothers her off set.

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Jlaw is joking when she says that lol.

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j law is still respected in her field tho

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"For reasons that remain unclear to all of us (including Perry, it seems), she leaps on the nuggets, shoving as many in her mouth as she can at once. What follows is the face journey of a woman who has tasted in the nuggets that life is, indeed, nasty, brutish, and short."



Well damn, go in.

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Edited at 2018-03-30 09:00 pm (UTC) the media went in on ha this time last year

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omg it looks like the person next to her is trying to stop her

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Doing some kickboxing hooks

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sad that this could easily be kristin wiig doing a parody

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honestly, the book of henry was such a ridiculous disaster as a movie, i want colin to direct everything ever. it was so asinine i want it to be remembered like the room.

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Wow, if The Book of Henry didn't kill Colin's career I guess nothing will.

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nothing can kill a white dudes career

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more jurassic park movies? how many more times can they go make the same movie ffs

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well I mean...look at the marvel franchise.

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no thank you

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White men get to fail up no matter what, huh? No white woman or poc of either gender could get fired from Star Wars and still get a huge tent pole movie.

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not to mention no poc or women would get the opportunity in the first place, especially not with just a single completed narrative feature under their belt

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this douche was handed Jurassic Park 4 after only having 1 indie feature credit because Spielberg "saw himself in him".



women and men of colour have no fucking shot

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Spielberg is the gd worst :')

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Fired from Star Wars? Is this Max Landis friend?

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No thanks.

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Throwback to when men were angry that I said this and now Trevorrow returns to another blockbuster franchise.#WhyAreYouBooingMeImRight https://t.co/U1YvwnilL0   Morgan (@screendomcome) March 30, 2018





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i want to come back in my next life as a white man. it'd be such an easy life full of unearned confidence and nothing to lose

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Fucking why. WHY.



Book of Henry was so bad it violated the Geneva Conventions.

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Learn more about LiveJournal Ratings in Hello! Your entry got to top-25 of the most popular entries in LiveJournal!Learn more about LiveJournal Ratings in FAQ

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his face in that picture is how i feel about this news



oh to be a mediocre white man, i'd have also directed three big budget franchise installments by now if i made eye contact with a studio exec and the cheeto crumbs in my beard reminded him of himself at that age



Edited at 2018-03-30 11:38 pm (UTC)

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Yay secure that bag white mediocrity!

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Red Wing Unveils Wall of Honor

The company welcomes submissions for the 2019 Wall of Honor at the website.

Red Wing Shoe Company on March 12 is unveiling its Wall of Honor, a monument featuring stories about skilled laborers who handled tough jobs while wearing the company's boots.

The company asked for customers' stories last summer and, after receiving nearly 500 submissions, selected 32 of them to highlight, along with their boots, on a permanent Wall of Honor at its flagship store in Red Wing, Minn. The online version is available at www.redwingamericaworking.com along with the wearers' stories of surviving job site accidents, repairing public services during dangerous storms, and more; the stories are in the honorees' own words.

"We receive thousands of notes every year from workers sharing their Red Wing stories - and oftentimes their boots. The Wall of Honor was created to honor these customers," said Dave Schneider, chief marketing officer at the company and the person who conceived the Wall of Honor. "Our customers tell us their Red Wing boots are like tools in their tool belt. We are touched by the amount of love our brand receives, and it felt right to provide a space where their stories can live forever, paying respect to our customers' boots and the remarkable work they have accomplished in their communities."

The company welcomes submissions for the 2019 Wall of Honor at the website.
Marylands First Stabilization Center to Open in Baltimore

According to city officials, the center will be a safe place for people under the influence of drugs and alcohol to sober up and receive short-term medical and social interventions, medical screening and monitoring, and referrals to behavioral health and social services.

City officials announced Wednesday plans for a stabilization center in Baltimore, Maryland, as part of the citys efforts to combat the opioid crisis. The stabilization center would be the first in the state and would serve as a safe place for drug users to receive basic first aid, withdrawal management, and screening and referral to treatment on-site for those with a substance use disorder.

According to city officials, the center will be a safe place for people under the influence of drugs and alcohol to sober up and receive short-term medical and social interventions, medical screening and monitoring, and referrals to behavioral health and social services. Patients who need it may also be introduced to buprenorphine, an alternative drug used to treat opioid addiction.

We are in the middle of a national epidemic for opioid addiction and overdose and yet we are still treating people with the disease of addiction different than anyone with any other disease, Baltimore Health Commissioner Dr. Leana S. Wen said. The stabilization center is one step in the direction of on-demand, evidence-based and compassionate treatment for people with the disease of addiction.

Patients will have to be brought by ambulance to the center, where emergency medical technicians will decide who fits the criteria for the centers services, Wen said. The center will not take walk-ins.

According to the Maryland Department of Health, the state experienced 1,501 opioid-related deaths between January and September last year, included 1,173 deaths related to fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 50 to 100 times more potent than heroin. The largest number of deaths were in Baltimore.

The Baltimore City Health Department and Behavioral Health System Baltimore secured $3.6 million in capital funds in the state budget to build the center, and Marylands Department of health is providing $2.6 million for operating expenses.

Officials said the center will open next spring, though a pilot center will open on Monday.
Without raw material for her fashion designs, Idania del Rio had to find a creative solution, resorting to using hand-me-down shirts, cutting them up and re-styling them to create her own clothing outlet. She is part of Cuba's new generation of entrepreneurs, who have to use ingenuity to get to the marketplace, and are counting on the imminent changes at the top of the communist-ruled island's hierarchy to bring about a business boom. Raul Castro started reforms to modernize an economy still modeled on the Soviet Union after he succeeded his brother Fidel as president in 2008, and entrepreneurs known as "Cuentapropistas" (literally, the self-employed) have emerged. Restaurants, barbershops and workshops of all kinds have flourished, and a decade on, small private businesses account for 12 percent of the country's workforce, or 580,000 people. "We wanted to achieve something different in terms of design because it did not exist in Cuba," said del Rio, 36, who started her Clandestina clothing outlet with her Spanish partner Leire Fernandez three years ago. Their "Vintrash" remodeled and printed T-shirts go for $20 each in their store in Old Havana's Villegas Street. "We have this passion for recycled things. But the main reason is because there was no alternative," she said. "When we were looking for what we could work on, we found little in the local market. But there was plenty to find second-hand." Cuba imports the majority of what it consumes and remains heavily affected by the Cold War-era US trade embargo. Del Rio was able to circumvent the embargo by launching an online store and having her creations produced and sold in the United States, benefiting from a scheme introduced by the administration of Barack Obama to allow the export of Cuban creative products. Obama personally praised her undertaking during his historic visit in 2016, when he said Cuba's economic future depended on government action to spur growth in the private sector. - Young and old - In Cienfuegos, 230 kilometers (145 miles) southeast of Havana, Asley Alfonso Gil gives a second or third life to bicycle wheels in his small workshop in the city center. "A lot of bicycle parts break and we have no way to find new ones, so we have to repair them," said the 29-year-old. Castro is due to step down as president on April 19. His most likely replacement is First Vice President Miguel Diaz-Canel, 57. The looming change has given rise to fresh hope among small business owners. "The role of the young people who start a business is important -- what should happen is that the Cuban state improves something and gives us the possibility of buying spare parts, because at the moment we are fixing and mending," Gil said. "We are hoping for openings in every sense of the term," del Rio added. Armando Reyes, who at 73 props up his pension by selling produce from a cart in the streets of Havana, believes the new self-employed have been a force for good. "There are coffee shops and bars that did not exist before, and good quality restaurants," Reyes says. - Uncertainty and optimism - Last August, however, the government abruptly put the squeeze on the sector and suspended the granting of new licenses for dozens of cash-generating businesses, particularly restaurants. The goal was to fight fraud and tighten loopholes for a sector that some of the country's leaders see as an affront to communism. In a country where the average monthly state salary is $30, a waiter in a private restaurant can earn as much as $200. At its most recent meeting in March, however, the Central Committee of the Communist Party recognized the important role played by entrepreneurs and the need to "continue updating the economic model." For Cuban economist Pavel Vidal, from Colombia's Javeriana University, the new rules should bring a greater level of control over taxation and a greater degree of interaction with banks. "It is very important that the private sector contributes to the treasury in proportion to its profits, something that cannot be guaranteed if its operations are not registered in the banks," he said. "A progressive and effective tax system is a net dividend for all." Bicycle repair man Gil hopes that everything will run as smoothly as a newly renovated bike -- despite the demise of old certainties. "Sometimes I'm a little bit afraid, because with Fidel and Raul, we felt more secure," he said. "We need a change for the benefit of the people, that they continue to award licenses, that businesses continue to open, so that the economy of the country keeps flowing."
NC leader Khadka no more

Nepali Congress (NC) leader Khum Bahadur Khadka passed away while undergoing treatment in Indian Capital New Delhi on Friday, NC Spokesperson Bishwa Prakash Sharma confirmed. He was 67.
Clashes erupted as tens of thousands of Gazans marched near the Israeli border in a major protest, with 16 Palestinians killed and hundreds more wounded in the conflict's worst single day of violence since the 2014 Gaza war. Israel's military targeted three Hamas sites in the Gaza Strip with tank fire and an air strike after what it said was an attempted shooting attack against soldiers along the border that caused no injuries. Protesters, including women and children, gathered at multiple sites throughout the blockaded territory, which is flanked by Israel along its eastern and northern borders. Smaller numbers approached within a few hundred metres (yards) of the heavily fortified border fence, with Israeli troops using tear gas and live fire to force them back. Israeli security forces used a drone to fire tear gas toward those along the border, in one of the first uses of the device, a police spokesman said. The health ministry in Gaza said 16 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces. More than 1,400 were injured, including 758 by live fire, with the remainder hurt by rubber bullets and tear gas inhalation, it said. Palestinians accused Israel of using disproportionate force, as did Turkey. The UN Security Council held emergency talks Friday to discuss the risks of further escalation in Israeli-Palestinian violence in the Gaza Strip, but failed to agree a joint statement on the deadly clashes. "There is fear that the situation might deteriorate in the coming days," said assistant UN secretary general for political affairs, Taye-Brook Zerihoun, urging maximum restraint. Israel's military alleged that the main protests were being used as cover by militants to either break through the border or carry out attacks. "It is not a peaceful demonstration," an Israeli military official told journalists. The army said it estimated some 30,000 demonstrators were taking part in the protests. "Rioters are rolling burning tyres and hurling firebombs and rocks at the security fence and at (Israeli) troops, who are responding with riot dispersal means and firing towards main instigators," it said. - 'Playing with your life' - Protesters were demanding hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees who fled or were expelled during the war surrounding Israel's creation in 1948 be allowed to return. Hamas leader Ismail Haniya attended the protest, believed to be the first time he has gone so close to the border in years. Hamas and Israel have fought three wars since 2008, the most recent of which in 2014 ended with a fragile truce. The demonstration is planned to last six weeks, until the inauguration of the new US embassy in Jerusalem around May 14. The upcoming embassy move has added to tensions surrounding the march. US President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital in December has infuriated Palestinians, who claim its annexed eastern sector as the capital of their future state. The protest also began as Jewish Israelis were to mark the Passover holiday. Israel announced a "closed military zone in the area surrounding the Gaza Strip," accusing its Islamist rulers Hamas of using the lives of civilians "for the purpose of terror". Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman said in a tweet directed to Gazans in both Hebrew and Arabic that "Hamas's leadership is playing with your life". - Rare family protest - Protests along the border are common but the "March of Return" protest is different because it is intended to include families with women and children camping near the border for weeks. Protester Saeed Juniya erected a small tent a few hundred metres from the border fence east of Gaza City, where he was accompanied by his wife and children. "We are determined and not scared as we are not doing something wrong. The people are demanding their land and to return to their country," he said. Organisers say the camps will remain in place until May 15 when Palestinians commemorate the Nakba, or "catastrophe", of the 1948 creation of Israel with the exodus of more than 700,000 Palestinians. According to the United Nations, some 1.3 million of Gaza's two million residents are refugees and the protest is calling for them to be allowed to return to land that is now Israel. Washington's plans to launch its new embassy to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the foundation of the Israeli state, further stoking Palestinian anger. "We are deeply saddened by loss of life in #Gaza today," State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert wrote on Twitter. "Int'l community is focused on taking steps that will improve the lives of the Palestinians and is working on a plan for peace. Violence furthers neither of those goals." The launch of the protests comes as Palestinians mark Land Day, commemorating the killing of six unarmed Arab protesters in Israel in 1976.
The UN Security Council on Friday blacklisted 27 ships, 21 companies and a businessman for helping North Korea circumvent sanctions, as the United States keeps up pressure on Pyongyang despite its recent overtures toward talks, diplomats said. Acting on a request from the United States, it was the largest-ever package of sanctions designations on North Korea approved by a council committee, diplomats said. The move is part of a global crackdown on the smuggling of North Korean commodities in violation of UN sanctions resolutions, which were adopted in response to Pyongyang's nuclear and ballistic missile tests. The sanctions were approved as the United States moves to open talks with North Korea on its nuclear drive, with a summit possible between President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un by the end of May. Despite the diplomatic opening, the United States has made clear they will keep the pressure on Pyongyang to shift course by pressing on with sanctions. Trump's ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, on Friday welcomed the "historic" sanctions package," calling it "a clear sign that the international community is united in our efforts to keep up maximum pressure on the North Korean regime." "We want to thank the members of the Security Council, as well as Japan and South Korea, for working with us to keep up the pressure and for their commitment to implementing UN Security Council resolutions and holding violators accountable," Haley added. A total of 13 North Korean oil tankers and cargo vessels were banned from ports worldwide along with 12 other ships for helping Pyongyang smuggle banned commodities or supplying oil and fuel shipments, according to a UN document obtained by AFP. Two other North Korean vessels were hit with a global assets freeze, but are not banned from port entry. Twenty-one shipping and trading firms were hit by an assets freeze. Three of them are based in Hong Kong including Huaxin Shipping, which delivered shipments of North Korean coal to Vietnam in October. - North Korea flouts sanctions - Twelve North Korean firms were blacklisted for running ships involved in illegal transfers of oil and fuel, according to the document. Two other companies -- Shanghai Dongfeng Shipping and Weihai World Shipping Freight, also based in China -- were blacklisted for carrying North Korean coal on their vessels. The remaining firms are in based Singapore, Samoa, the Marshall Islands and Panama. A businessman identified as Tsang Yung Yuan was hit by a global travel ban and assets freeze for organizing illegal shipments of North Korean coal with a North Korean broker in Russia. Last year, the Security Council adopted a series of resolutions to ban North Korean exports of commodities in a bid to cut off revenue to the nuclear-armed state's military programs. The measures severely restrict deliveries of oil and refined petroleum products to North Korea, but sanctions monitors have reported that Pyongyang has used vessels to dodge those restrictions. North Korea earned $200 million in revenue last year from exports of coal, iron, steel and other banned commodities, according to a recent report. Only eight North Korean vessels had so far been banned from ports for sanctions-busting -- so the inclusion of 13 other ships on Friday was expected to significantly cripple North Korea's maritime network. The United States had initially asked the United Nations to ban 33 ships and 27 firms over smuggling, but China put a hold on that request to review the list. Earlier this month, the White House said Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping agreed in a phone conversation to keep up the sanctions pressure on North Korea until Pyongyang takes concrete steps toward denuclearization.
A zebra longwing butterfly rests on a branch at the National Butterfly Center in Mission, Texas, which is located in a part of Hidalgo County where new border barriers could be erected soon. Credit: Alejandro Santillana, University of Texas at Austin Insects Unlocked Project

In the latest peer-reviewed publication on the potential impacts of a border wall on plants and animals, conservation biologists, led by a pair of scientists from The University of Texas at Austin, say that border walls threaten to harm endangered Texas plants and animals and cause trouble for the region's growing ecotourism industry.

In a letter publishing Monday in Frontiers of Ecology and the Environment, Norma Fowler and Tim Keitt, both professors in the Department of Integrative Biology, examine what would happen if more of Texas' roughly 1,200 miles of border with Mexico were to be walled off, contributing to habitat destruction, habitat fragmentation and ecosystem damage. Other states have shorter borders than Texas has and more barriers already in place; in Texas, there are walls along only about 100 miles of the border with Mexico. Congress just exempted the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge from the new fencing project, but many miles of new barriers are set to be built on other federal lands, most of which are part of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge.

"Up to now, the wall has either gone through cities or deserts. This is the Rio Grande we're talking about here. It's totally different," Fowler said. "We have high biodiversity because of the river and because Texas extends so far south. I and other Texas biologists are very concerned about the impact this will have on our rich natural heritage."

Based on a scientific literature review of 14 other publications, including some that looked at effects of existing walls and fences on the border, the authors outlined several concerns about the proposed wall, including habitat destruction and degradation caused by the construction of the wall and the roads on either side of the wall. Of particular concern is damage to Tamaulipan thornscrub, a once abundant and now increasingly rare ecosystem in South Texas. Many South Texas organisms depend on this ecosystem, but it's slowly disappearing as cities, farms and ranches displace the thornscrub. The living things that depend on it would lose access to some of the last remaining patches in Texas if the wall were built, Fowler said.

Tropical birds like the green jay attract ecotourists to the Rio Grande Valley. Credit: Andrew Morffew

A wall would also affect other species. The endangered wildflower Zapata bladderpod grows exactly where the barriers are proposed to be built, as does the threatened whiskerbush cactus. The ocelot, a small native wildcat listed as an endangered species, has already suffered from severe habitat loss; the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department estimates there are no more than 120 left in Texas, and scientists worry that the wall would further deplete their numbers. With habitat fragmentation, the wall could cut off ocelot, as well as black bear, populations in Texas and Mexico from other members of their species, leaving some populations too small to persist. There would be further damage to plants if the pollinators and seed-dispersing animals that plants depend on could not cross the barrier.

Scientists also expressed concern about another aspect of the project. Because the wall will probably not be built in the flood plain of the Rio Grande, it will have to be set back from the river, sometimes by more than a mile. This has the potential to damage the valuable riparian forest ecosystem along the river, cutting off organisms that need to get to the river and preventing people from accessing several wildlife refuges along the river used for ecotourism.

"Even small segments of new wall on federal lands will devastate habitats and local recreation and ecotourism," said Keitt, also a professor of integrative biology.

The Lower Rio Grande River Valley is currently a top destination for birdwatchers because rare tropical birds such as the green jay and the Altamira oriole are among those that frequent the area. A 2011 study from Texas A&M University estimated that ecotourism, mostly from birdwatchers, generated more than $344 million in economic activity in the Lower Rio Grande Valley alone.

"If ecotourism declines significantly because access to preserves has been impeded, there may be negative economic impacts on the region," the letter states. "On the other hand, if the barriers are not far enough from the river, they may trap wildlife escaping from floods, and may even act as levees, which tend to increase downstream flooding."

Scientists also expressed concern about the project being exempt from environmental review requirements.

"Negative impacts could be lessened by limiting the extent of physical barriers and associated roads, designing barriers to permit animal passage and substituting less biologically harmful methods, such as electronic sensors, for physical barriers," the letter states.

Olivia Schmidt, also of UT Austin, Martin Terry of Sul Ross State University and Keeper Trout of the Cactus Conservation Institute are also authors of the letter.

Explore further Researchers study Texas' first federally endangered mussel species

More information: Frontiers of Ecology and the Environment, DOI: 10.1002/fee.1785
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

In 1996, when a computer won a match against reigning world chess champion Garry Kasparov, it was nothing short of a sensation. After this breakthrough in the world of chess, the board game Go was long considered to be a bastion reserved for human players due to its complexity. But the world's best players cannot compete with the AlphaGo software. The recipe for the success of this computer program is made possible through a combination of the so-called Monte Carlo Tree Search and deep neural networks based on machine learning and artificial intelligence. A team of researchers from the University of Muenster in Germany has now demonstrated that this combination is extremely well suited to planning chemical synthesesso-called retrosyntheseswith unprecedented efficiency. The study has been published in the current issue of Nature.

Marwin Segler, the lead author of the study, says, "Retrosynthesis is the ultimate discipline in organic chemistry. Chemists need years to master itjust like with chess or Go. In addition to straightforward expertise, you also need a goodly portion of intuition and creativity for it. So far, everyone assumed that computers couldn't keep up without experts programming in tens of thousands of rules by hand. What we have shown is that the machine can, by itself, learn the rules and their applications from the literature available."

Retrosynthesis is the standard method for designing the production of chemical compounds. Going backwards mentally, the principle is that the compound is broken down into ever smaller components until the basic components have been obtained. This analysis provides the recipe, which is then used for working "forwards" in the laboratory to produce the target molecule, proceeding from the starting materials. Although easy in theory, the process presents difficulties in practice. "Just like in chess, in every step or move, you've got variety of possibilities to choose from," says Segler. "In chemistry, however, there are orders of magnitude more possible moves than in chess, and the problem is much more complex."

This is where the new method comes into play, linking up the deep neural networks with the Monte Carlo Tree Searcha constellation so promising that a large number of researchers from a variety of disciplines are working on it. The Monte Carlo Tree Search is a method for assessing moves in a game. At every move, the computer simulates numerous variants, for example, how a game of chess might end. The most promising move is then selected.

In a similar way, the computer now looks for the best possible "moves" for chemical synthesis. It is also able to learn by using deep neural networks. To this end, the computer draws on all the chemical literature ever published, which describes almost 12 million chemical reactions. Mike Preuss, an information systems specialist and co-author of the study, says, "The deep neural networks are used for predicting which reactions are possible with a certain molecule. Using the Monte Carlo Tree Search, the computer can test whether the reactions predicted really do lead to the target molecule."

The idea of using computers to plan syntheses isn't new. "The idea is actually about 60 years old." says Segler. "People thought it would be enough, as in the case of chess, to enter a large number of rules into the computer. But that didn't work. Chemistry is very complex, and in contrast to chess or Go, it can't be grasped purely logically using simple rules. Added to this is the fact that the number of publications with new reactions doubles every 10 years or so. Neither chemists nor programmers can keep up with that. We need the help of an intelligent computer." The new method is about 30 times faster than conventional programs for planning syntheses and it finds potential synthesis routes for twice as many molecules.

In a double-blind AB test, the Muenster researchers found that chemists consider these computer-generated synthesis routes to be just as good as existing tried-and-tested ones. "We hope that, using our method, chemists will not have to try out so much in the lab," Segler adds, "and that as a result, and using fewer resources, they will be able to produce the compounds which make our high standard of living possible."

Explore further AlphaZero just wants to play

More information: Marwin H. S. Segler et al, Planning chemical syntheses with deep neural networks and symbolic AI, Nature (2018). Journal information: Nature Marwin H. S. Segler et al, Planning chemical syntheses with deep neural networks and symbolic AI,(2018). DOI: 10.1038/nature25978

Provided by University of Munster
Artists concept of the Stardust spacecraft flying by Comet 81P/Wild. Credit: NASA/JPL

More samples of comets are urgently required to better understand the early history of the solar system, say researchers analyzing comet dust brought back to Earth by NASA's Stardust mission in 2006.

The dust particles are from Comet 81P/Wild (also known as Wild 2) and date to the beginning of the solar system, containing clues about its earliest history.

"The future of Stardust science", which is a paper published in June 2017 in the journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science, summarizes the roughly 150 scientific publications based on Stardust science. It makes an important point about the limits of our knowledge of the early protosolar disk of gas and dust from which the solar system formed. That is, Wild 2 and other Kuiper Belt comets  those originating from beyond the orbit of Neptune  are poorly represented in our samples of extraterrestrial material.

In contrast, asteroids are represented in our collections by meteorites and have been well documented for over a century, while the Moon's material has been collected and brought to scientists for analysis by the Apollo astronauts.

Andrew Westphal, a senior member of the Stardust team and an astrophysicist at the University of California, Berkeley, urged investigators to seek out more Kuiper Belt material to study on Earth because of its unique origins.

A view of Stardusts sample-return capsule after it successfully touched back down on Earth, under parachute, in 2006. Credit: NASA

"As you sample farther and farther out in the solar system, you sample material that is more and more primitive," says Westphal, the lead author of the paper. "Particularly when you get a sample from a comet, you get a sample [that has been] in deep freeze for 4.6 billion years."

Approximately 10 percent of a typical Kuiper Belt comet is unaltered interstellar material. Some of this material consists of pre-solar grains  circumstellar dust grains condensed in the outflows (emissions) of other stars long before the solar system formed. Most of the interstellar material, however, probably formed in the interstellar medium.

Little information on water

Determining whether liquid water was ever present within Wild 2 is also an important goal of comet investigators. Astronomical evidence shows that cometary water may have variable deuterium to hydrogen (D to H) ratios, and that the average ratio differs from that of water on Earth. A famous example of this is Comet 67P/ChuryumovGerasimenko, which was studied up close by the European Space Agency's Rosetta mission from 2014 to 2016. Other cometary D to H ratios have been measured by ground-based telescopes.

If comets have different D to H ratios in their water than Earth's water, this likely means that comets did not deliver the majority of water to Earth's surface. Instead, investigators speculate it was asteroids that brought the water, but more study is needed of both asteroids and comets to help confirm the hypothesis.

A potential interstellar dust track (circled) in Stardusts aerogel collector. Credit: UC Berkeley/Andrew Westphal

Unfortunately for Stardust investigators, no "volatiles"  which are molecules with low boiling points, such as water  survived slamming into the spacecraft's aerogel and aluminum foil collector at 6.1 kilometers per second (3.8 miles per second, or 13,680 miles per hour). That situation has made it challenging to advance the science on cometary D to H ratios.

"The rocks survived, but no water was preserved," says Westphal. "Some rare organics, however, did preserve their D/H ratios."

The investigators also looked for phyllosilicates, which are clays that preserve water inside of them, but to date studies of particles collected by Stardust has not yielded any phyllosilicates.

There may be another opportunity to study the material from a comet. NASA's proposed Comet Rendezvous, Sample Acquisition, Investigation, and Return (CORSAIR) mission is designed to collect materials, including organics, from Comet 88P/Howell, which could offer more implications for astrobiology. If the mission is approved, those samples would return to Earth in the 2030s.

Explore further Researchers present list of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko ingredients

More information: A. J. Westphal et al. The future of Stardust science, Meteoritics & Planetary Science (2017). A. J. Westphal et al. The future of Stardust science,(2017). DOI: 10.1111/maps.12893

This story is republished courtesy of NASA's Astrobiology Magazine. Explore the Earth and beyond at www.astrobio.net .
The Czech Republic extradited a Russian man to the U.S. to face charges of hacking computers at LinkedIn, Dropbox and other American companies, an official said Friday.

Yevgeniy Nikulin was flown to the U.S. overnight, Justice Ministry spokeswoman Tereza Schejbalova said.

Nikulin denies he's a hacker. His defense attorney claimed his case is politically motivated in the U.S.

The decision by Justice Minister Robert Pelikan was announced just minutes after the country's Constitutional Court released a statement that it rejected a last-minute appeal from the Nikulin as "groundless."

No further details were immediately available about the decision in a case that pitted the U.S. against Russia.

The Czechs arrested Nikulin in Prague in cooperation with the FBI in October 2016. He is accused by U.S. prosecutors of penetrating computers at Silicon Valley firms in 2012 and they want him extradited to face trial.

Russia also wanted him extradited on a separate charge of internet theft in 2009.

Both countries submitted their extradition requests on the same date.

The Russian authorities previously had said they would do all they could to prevent Nikulin's extradition to the U.S.

Czech courts previously ruled both extradition requests meet the necessary legal conditions, leaving the decision to the justice minister.

But after a last-ditch complaint filed by Nikulin with the country's Constitutional Court, the minister had to hold off on a decision until the court ruled.

Earlier this week, U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan said in Prague that under Czech extradition law "we have every reason to believe and expect that Mr. Nikulin will be extradited to America."

But the Czech Republic's pro-Russia president, Milos Zeman, repeatedly asked Pelikan to allow Nikulin's extradition to Russia, the minister said. Zeman has no official say in cases like this one.

Pelikan's decision will likely further strain relations between the Czech Republic and Russia after the Czechs expelled three Russian diplomats in solidarity with Britain over a nerve agent attack on an ex-spy.

In a statement published by Russia's Tass news agency, the Russian Embassy in Prague called the step "deeply disappointing."

"Prague once again preferred the notorious allied solidarity without taking into account all the factors and circumstances of this case," Alexei Kolmakov, the embassy's press secretary, was quoted as saying.

Explore further Alleged Russia hacker appeals extradition to Russia

 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
The picture shows the typical arrangement of cations in a kesterite type structure. In the background the crystal structure is shown, a unit cell is highlighted. Credit: HZB

Specific changes in the composition of kesterite-type semiconductors make it possible to improve their suitability as absorber layers in solar cells. As a team at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin showed, this is particularly true for kesterites in which tin was replaced by germanium. The scientists examined the samples using neutron diffraction at BER II and other methods. The work was selected for the cover of the journal CrystEngComm.

Kesterites are semiconductor compounds made of the elements copper, tin, zinc, and selenium. These semiconductors can be used as an optical absorber material in solar cells, but so far have only achieved a maximum efficiency of 12.6 per cent, while solar cells made of copper-indium-gallium-selenide (CIGS) already attain efficiencies of over 20 percent. Nevertheless, kesterites are considered interesting alternatives to CIGS solar cells because they consist of common elements, so that no supply bottlenecks are to be expected. A team led by Professor Susan Schorr at the HZB has now investigated a series of non-stoichiometric kesterite samples and shed light on the relationship between composition and the opto-electronic properties. During the synthesis of the samples at the HZB, the tin atoms were replaced with germanium.

Neutron diffraction at BER II

The researchers then investigated these samples using neutron diffraction at BER II. Copper, zinc, and germanium can be distinguished from each other particularly well with this method, and their positions can be located in the crystal lattice. The result: kesterites with a slightly copper-poor and zinc-rich composition found in solar cells with the highest efficiencies also have the lowest concentration of point defects as well as the lowest disorder of copper-zinc. The more the composition was enriched with copper, the higher the concentration was of other point defects considered to be detrimental to the performance of solar cells. Further investigations showed how the energy band gap, as it is known, depends on the composition of the kesterite powder samples.

The effects of Germanium

"This band gap is a characteristic of semiconductors and determines which frequencies of light release charge carriers within the material," explains Rene Gunder, first author of the work. "We now know that germanium increases the optical band gap, allowing the material to convert a greater proportion of sunlight into electrical energy."

Kesterites: Candidate for solar cells and photocatalysts

"We are convinced that these kinds of kesterites are not only suitable for solar cells, but can also be considered for other applications. Kesterites acting as photocatalysts might be able to split water into hydrogen and oxygen using sunlight, and to store solar energy in the form of chemical energy," explains Schorr.

Explore further Tiny crystals to boost solar

More information: R. Gunder et al, Structural characterization of off-stoichiometric kesterite-type Cu2ZnGeSe4 compound semiconductors: from cation distribution to intrinsic point defect density, CrystEngComm (2018). R. Gunder et al, Structural characterization of off-stoichiometric kesterite-type Cu2ZnGeSe4 compound semiconductors: from cation distribution to intrinsic point defect density,(2018). DOI: 10.1039/c7ce02090b
A composite image of the planet Venus as seen by the Japanese probe Akatsuki. The clouds of Venus could have environmental conditions conducive to microbial life. Credit: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency

In the search for extraterrestrial life, scientists have turned over all sorts of rocks.

Mars, for example, has geological features that suggest it once hadand still hassubsurface liquid water, an almost sure prerequisite for life. Scientists have also eyed Saturn's moons Titan and Enceladus as well as Jupiter's moons Europa, Ganymede and Callisto as possible havens for life in the oceans under their icy crusts.

Now, however, scientists are dusting off an old idea that promises a new vista in the hunt for life beyond Earth: the clouds of Venus.

In a paper published online today (March 30, 2018) in the journal Astrobiology, an international team of researchers led by planetary scientist Sanjay Limaye of the University of WisconsinMadison's Space Science and Engineering Center lays out a case for the atmosphere of Venus as a possible niche for extraterrestrial microbial life.

"Venus has had plenty of time to evolve life on its own," explains Limaye, noting that some models suggest Venus once had a habitable climate with liquid water on its surface for as long as 2 billion years. "That's much longer than is believed to have occurred on Mars."

On Earth, terrestrial microorganismsmostly bacteriaare capable of being swept into the atmosphere, where they have been found alive at altitudes as high as 41 kilometers (25 miles) by scientists using specially equipped balloons, according to study co-author David J. Smith of NASA's Ames Research Center.

There is also a growing catalog of microbes known to inhabit incredibly harsh environments on our planet, including the hot springs of Yellowstone, deep ocean hydrothermal vents, the toxic sludge of polluted areas, and in acidic lakes worldwide.

"On Earth, we know that life can thrive in very acidic conditions, can feed on carbon dioxide, and produce sulfuric acid," says Rakesh Mogul, a professor of biological chemistry at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, and a co-author on the new paper. He notes that the cloudy, highly reflective and acidic atmosphere of Venus is composed mostly of carbon dioxide and water droplets containing sulfuric acid.

The habitability of Venus' clouds was first raised in 1967 by noted biophysicist Harold Morowitz and famed astronomer Carl Sagan. Decades later, the planetary scientists David Grinspoon, Mark Bullock and their colleagues expanded on the idea.

Supporting the notion that Venus' atmosphere could be a plausible niche for life, a series of space probes to the planet launched between 1962 and 1978 showed that the temperature and pressure conditions in the lower and middle portions of the Venusian atmospherealtitudes between 40 and 60 kilometers (2527 miles)would not preclude microbial life. The surface conditions on the planet, however, are known to be inhospitable, with temperatures soaring above 450 degrees Celsius (860 degrees Fahrenheit).

Limaye, who conducts his research as a NASA participating scientist in the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Akatsuki mission to Venus, was eager to revisit the idea of exploring the planet's atmosphere after a chance meeting at a teachers' workshop with paper co-author Grzegorz Sowik of Poland's University of Zielona Gora. Slowik made him aware of bacteria on Earth with light-absorbing properties similar to those of unidentified particles that make up unexplained dark patches observed in the clouds of Venus. Spectroscopic observations, particularly in the ultraviolet, show that the dark patches are composed of concentrated sulfuric acid and other unknown light-absorbing particles.

A Venus Atmospheric Maneuverable Platform, or VAMP. The aircraft, which would fly like a plane and float like a blimp, could help explore the atmosphere of Venus, which has temperature and pressure conditions that do not preclude the possibility of microbial life. Credit: Northrop Grumman

Those dark patches have been a mystery since they were first observed by ground-based telescopes nearly a century ago, says Limaye. They were studied in more detail by subsequent probes to the planet.

"Venus shows some episodic dark, sulfuric rich patches, with contrasts up to 3040 percent in the ultraviolet, and muted in longer wavelengths. These patches persist for days, changing their shape and contrasts continuously and appear to be scale dependent," says Limaye.

The particles that make up the dark patches have almost the same dimensions as some bacteria on Earth, although the instruments that have sampled Venus' atmosphere to date are incapable of distinguishing between materials of an organic or inorganic nature.

The patches could be something akin to the algae blooms that occur routinely in the lakes and oceans of Earth, according to Limaye and Mogulonly these would need to be sustained in the Venusian atmosphere.

Limaye, who has spent his career studying planetary atmospheres, was further inspired to revisit the idea of microbial life in the clouds of Venus by a visit to Tso Kar, a high-altitude salt lake in northern India where he observed the powdery residue of sulfur-fixing bacteria concentrated on decaying grass at the edge of the lake being wafted into the atmosphere.

Limaye notes, however, that a part of the equation that isn't known is when Venus' liquid water evaporatedextensive lava flows in the last billion years likely have either destroyed or covered up the planet's earlier terrestrial history.

In the hunt for extraterrestrial life, planetary atmospheres other than Earth's remain largely unexplored.

One possibility for sampling the clouds of Venus, says Limaye, is on the drawing board: VAMP, or Venus Atmospheric Maneuverable Platform, a craft that flies like a plane but floats like a blimp and could stay aloft in the planet's cloud layer for up to a year gathering data and samples.

Such a platform could include instruments like Raman Lidar, meteorological and chemical sensors, and spectrometers, says Limaye. It could also carry a type of microscope capable of identifying living microorganisms.

"To really know, we need to go there and sample the clouds," says Mogul. "Venus could be an exciting new chapter in astrobiology exploration."

The Wisconsin scientist and his colleagues remain hopeful that such a chapter can be opened as there are ongoing discussions about possible NASA participation in Russia's Roscosmos Venera-D mission, now slated for the late 2020s. Current plans for Venera-D might include an orbiter, a lander and a NASA-contributed surface station and maneuverable aerial platform.

More information: Sanjay S. Limaye et al. Venus' Spectral Signatures and the Potential for Life in the Clouds, Astrobiology (2018). Journal information: Astrobiology Sanjay S. Limaye et al. Venus' Spectral Signatures and the Potential for Life in the Clouds,(2018). DOI: 10.1089/ast.2017.1783
'Point Nemo' is a watery graveyard for titanium fuel tanks and other high-tech space debris

One place China's Earth-bound and out-of-control spacelab, Tiangong-1, will probably not hit on Sunday is the forlorn spot in the southern Pacific Ocean where it was supposed to crash.

Officially called an "ocean point of inaccessibility," this watery graveyard for titanium fuel tanks and other high-tech space debris is better known to space junkies as Point Nemo, in honour of Jules Verne's fictional submarine captain.

Point Nemo is further from land than any other dot on the globe: 2,688 kilometres (about 1,450 miles) from the Pitcairn Islands to the north, one of the Easter Islands to the northwest, and Maher Islandpart of Antarcticato the South.

"Its most attractive feature for controlled re-entries is that nobody is living there," said Stijn Lemmens, a space debris expert at the European Space Agency in Darmstadt, Germany.

"Coincidentally, it is also biologically not very diverse. So it gets used as a dumping ground'space graveyard' would be a more polite termmainly for cargo spacecraft," he told AFP.

Some 250 to 300 spacecraftwhich have mostly burned up as they carved a path through Earth's atmospherehave been laid to rest there, he said.

By far the largest object descending from the heavens to splash down at Point Nemo, in 2001, was Russia's MIR space lab, which weighed 120 tonnes.

"It is routinely used nowadays by the (Russian) Progress capsules, which go back-and-forth to the International Space Station (ISS)," said Lemmens.

The massive, 420-tonne ISS also has a rendezvous with destiny at Point Nemo, in 2024.

In future, most spacecraft will be "designed for demise" with materials that melt at lower temperatures, making them far less likely to survive re-entry and hit Earth's surface.

Both NASA and the ESA, for example, are switching from titanium to alumium in the manufacture of fuel tanks.

China hoisted Tiangong-1, it's first manned space lab, into space in 2011. It was slated for a controlled re-entry but ground engineers lost control in March 2016 of the eight-tonne craft in March 2016, which is when it began its descent toward a fiery end.

The chances of anyone getting hit by debris from Tiangong-1 are vanishingly small, less than one in 12 trillion, according to the ESA.

"Nemo," by the way, means "no one" in Latin.

Explore further Earth-bound Chinese spacelab plunging to fiery end

 2018 AFP
Top  left: molecular structure of a plastomer synthesized in this work; right: supramolecular structure formed by the assembly of identical plastomers. Bottom  left: stress-strain curves for plastomers (M300-2 and M300-3) that mimic the mechanical behavior of pig skin samples (porcine, in transversal or longitudinal cross-section); right: image showing the iridescent color of the plastomers. The edges are less blue because they receive the light at a different angle. Credit:  D.A. Ivanov and S.S. Sheiko

Biological tissues have complex mechanical properties  soft-yet-strong, tough-yet-flexible  that are difficult to reproduce using synthetic materials. An international team has managed to produce a biocompatible synthetic material that replicates tissue mechanics and alters color when it changes shape, like chameleon skin. These results, to which researchers from CNRS, Universite de Haute-Alsace and ESRF, the European Synchrotron, have contributed with colleagues in the US (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of Akron), are published on March 30, 2018 in Science. They promise new materials for biomedical devices.

To produce a medical implant, we need to select materials with similar mechanical properties to those in biological tissues, so as to mitigate inflammation or necrosis. A number of tissues including the skin, the intestinal wall, and heart muscle, have the characteristic of being soft yet stiffening when they are stretched. Until now, it has been impossible to reproduce this behavior with synthetic materials.

The researchers have attempted to achieve this with a unique triblock copolymer. They have synthesized a physically cross-linked elastomer composed of a central block onto which side chains are grafted (like a bottle brush) and with linear terminal blocks at each end (See figure). The researchers have found that by carefully selecting the polymer's structural parameters, the material followed the same strain curve as a biological tissue, in this case pig skin. It is also biocompatible, since it does not require additives, e.g. solvent, and remains stable in the presence of biological fluids.

Another property of the material appeared during the experimentsit changes color upon deformation. As the scientists have shown, this is a purely physical phenomenon caused by light scattering from the polymer structure. Atomic force microscopy and X-ray diffraction experiments have shown that the terminal blocks of these polymers assemble in nanometer spheres distributed in a brush-polymer matrix. Light interferes with this microphase-separated structure to produce color according to the distance between the spheres; so when the material is stretched, it changes color. It is the same mechanism that explains how chameleons change color.

A video demonstrating how the color and mechanical properties of this new material depend on plastomer morphology. Credit: M. Vatankhah-Varnosfaderani et al., Science (2018)

The researchers have therefore succeeded in encoding in a unique synthetic polymer with both mechanical properties (flexibility, strain profile) and optical properties. This has never previously been achieved. By adjusting the length or density of the brush's various side chains, these properties can be modulated. This discovery could lead to medical implants or more personalized prostheses (vascular implants, intraocular implants, replacement of intervertebral discs), and also to materials with completely new strain profiles, and applications that have not yet been imagined.

When the material is stretched, its color changes. Credit: S.S. Sheiko

Explore further Code for fine-tuning elastomers to mimic biological materials

More information: Chameleon-like elastomers with molecularly encoded strain-adaptive stiffening and coloration. M. Vatankhah-Varnosfaderani, A.N. Keith, Y. Cong, H. Liang, M. Rosenthal, M. Sztucki, C. Clair, S. Magonov, D.A. Ivanov, A.V. Dobrynin, S.S. Sheiko. Science, 30 March 2018. Journal information: Science Chameleon-like elastomers with molecularly encoded strain-adaptive stiffening and coloration. M. Vatankhah-Varnosfaderani, A.N. Keith, Y. Cong, H. Liang, M. Rosenthal, M. Sztucki, C. Clair, S. Magonov, D.A. Ivanov, A.V. Dobrynin, S.S. Sheiko., 30 March 2018. DOI: 10.1126/science.aar5308
Need of long term solution

Every year, with private schools flouting the governments ceiling, the admission season sees an uprising in dispute over school fees. Student unions hold demonstrations to bring attention to this issue,
Stephanie Seguino, a professor of Economics at the University of Vermont. Researchers have conducted new analysis and confirmed their 2017 findings: that Black and Hispanic drivers in Vermont were more likely to be stopped and searched than White drivers, though they are less likely to be caught with contraband. Credit: Ian Thomas Jansen-Lonnquist

A 2017 study showing that Black and Hispanic drivers in Vermont were more likely than White drivers to be stopped and searched by state and local police, and less likely to be found with contraband, was welcomed by many in the state's law enforcement community for providing valuable feedback that could be put to good use in training programs.

But questions were also raised about the study's methodology and the reliability of its data.

In response, the authors conducted a new analysis, "A Deeper Dive into Racial Disparities in Policing in Vermont," just released, that uses more sophisticated statistical analysis to answer critiques about methodology and addresses data concerns.

The new study confirms the earlier findings, said Stephanie Seguino, a professor of Economics at the University of Vermont and the lead author of both studies.

It also contains analysis of new contraband data from the Vermont State Police suggesting that racial stereotypes about potential drug traffickers, at least as identified in traffic policing in the state, are inaccurate.

"The goal of this work," said Seguino, "is to provide a service both to law enforcement and the community on ways to use data to answer questions about the role of race in policing. Given its importance, we wanted to make sure our 2017 findings held, even with more sophisticated analytical techniques. The new study confirms the earlier conclusions." Nancy Brooks, a visiting associate professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning at Cornell, was co-author of both studies.

Context did not affect results

A chief criticism of the earlier study was that it did not take into account the context of the traffic stops, Seguino said.

"There was a legitimate concern that the stops and searches could have been prompted by other factors  age, time of day, gender, for example  rather than the race of the driver," she said. "That was something we wanted to investigate."

After controlling for the contextual factors, using a statistical technique called logistical regression analysis, the study came to virtually the same conclusions, Seguino said.

Blacks were 2.7 to 3.9 times more likely to be stopped (depending on how many of the additional factors were used in the analysis) compared with 3.9 in the earlier study.

Hispanics were 2.5 to 3 times more likely to be stopped compared with 2.9 times in the earlier study.

"The more complex statistical analysis demonstrated that our original results hold," Seguino said.

The earlier study also found that Black and Hispanic drivers, though more likely to be stopped and searched, were less likely to be caught with contraband.

After controlling for the other factors, the new analysis came to a similar conclusion: Blacks and Hispanics who were stopped and searched were about half as likely to be found with contraband compared to White drivers.

"Adding controls for a variety of contextual factors had little effect not only on racial disparities in the probability of being searched but also of contraband being found during a search," Seguino said.

Black and Hispanic drivers: No hard drugs found

The earlier study's findings prompted the researchers to ask an additional question in the new study: How did the contraband that was found compare between Black and Brown drivers and their White counterparts?

Publicly available information on traffic stops and searches indicates only that contraband was found without specifying its type. At the researchers' request, the Vermont State Police provided this additional data for traffic stop searches in 2016.

Marijuana was the contraband mostly commonly found, according to the new analysis  making up 71.5 percent of the total.

Heroin, cocaine and opioids combined were found in 10 percent of all searches yielding contraband, but their racial distribution in traffic stops and searches was revealing.

During 2016, these hard drugs were found only in the cars of White drivers with none found during searches of Black and Hispanic drivers.

"With samples sizes so small," (White drivers were stopped and searched by state police a total of 398 times, Blacks and Hispanics a total of 38 times) "we can't make statistical inferences about this data," Seguino said. "But the data are at the very least illustrative, suggesting that the stereotype that searches of drivers of color are more likely to result in contraband of heroin, cocaine, and opioids than found on White drivers is inaccurate, at least for 2016 for Vermont State Police. More data would be helpful to see if this holds true for other agencies and over time."

Data flaws also examined

The new study also addressed concerns that the 2017 paper's conclusions may be unreliable because they were based on flawed and inconsistent data provided by the state police and municipal police departments.

"Every data set in every study has flaws," said Nancy Brooks, co-author and Visiting Associate Professor at Cornell University. "With that said, we did not find any evidence of serious miscoding or overt efforts to manipulate the data in the dataset law enforcement agencies provided."

The earlier study  which brought to light some inconsistencies in data gathering and coding  has had a positive impact on police departments statewide, spurring them to bring consistency to the collection and coding processes and to implement training on how to gather and record data accurately.

"In sum," Seguino said, "the use of more rigorous statistical techniques does not in any meaningful way change the nature of our 2017 study. They simply reinforce the racial differences we reported earlier."

Explore further Anaylsis of traffic stops and outcomes in Vermont shows racial disparities
Appearance of the Siamophryne troglodytes frog and its tadpoles. The images of the tadpoles were published in the article. Credit: Nikolay Poyarkov

A team of scientists from MSU and their foreign colleagues have discovered a previously unknown species and genus of batrachians Siamophryne troglodytes. These frogs live in the only one place on Eartha limestone cave in Thailand. The location of the cave is undisclosed to protect the animals. The results of the study will lead to the reconsideration of the evolutionary history of these amphibia and are valuable for systematics and conservation. The results have been published in the open-access PeerJ.

Studies over the last two decades have illuminated the diversity of frogs, snakes and lizards, and in particular, the richness of herpetofauna in South and Southeast Asia. Many species of these animals are difficult to find, and some of them are often almost impossible to differentiate from each other. The recent progress in molecular and genetic methods in taxonomy allows the scientists to discover new species every yearthis has become a sort of routine. However, the discovery of a new genus is rare and unexpected.

The wonderful story of the discovery of Siamophryne troglodytes began in 2016, when a Thai researcher, Jitthep Tunprasert, was working in a karstic region of Sai Yok District in western Thailand. In one of the caves, he found a small, strange frog with big eyes and fingertips enlarged to wide disks. He took a picture of the frog and shared it with his colleagues. It became clear that this species of amphibia was absolutely new and unknown to the scientific world. Judging by many morphological characteristics, the frog was included into a large and diverse family of Microhylidae. However, it was unclear which group within the family it fell into.

"Thai colleagues contacted me because I'm interested in this family of amphibia. Together, we conducted extensive work, collected specimens, analyzed the DNA and morphology of both adult animals and tadpoles," says biologist Nikolay Poyarkov at MSU.

The distribution range of the subfamily Asterophryinae. The locality where Siamophryne troglodytes was found is marked with green. Red and blue stand for the places of discovery of other representatives of the subfamily. The image was published in the original article. Credit: Nikolay Poyarkov

An international team of scientists including herpetologists from MSU took several trips to the cave. Phylogenetic analysis showed that the frogs belong to the subfamily Asterophryinae, the representatives of which live mainly on Northern Australia and Papua New Guinea. These results allowed the scientists to reconsider the story of the origin of this group. The fact that the close relatives of Australian and Papua New Guinean frogs were found deep on the Asian continent confirms that their ancestors moved to Asia from the ancient continent of Gondwana and then subsequently moved further east to New Guinea and Australia. Therefore, they did not come to Australia via Antarctica, as it was previously believed. Several other species of amphibians and reptiles took the same route.

Based on the results of phylogenetic analysis, the scientists described a new species and genus of frogs. The specific name "troglodytes" is of Greek origin and is translated as "cave-dweller." The genus name "Siamophryne" can be translated as "Siamese toad," reflecting biological, taxonomic, and geographical peculiarities of this animal. Skeletal structures of the species were studied using X-ray computed microtomography.

Interestingly, all members of the subfamily Asterophryinae known to date develop directly from the egg via so-called "direct development," with no larval stage. Young Siamophryne troglodytes have flat, white guitar-shaped bodies and were found in limestone crevices filled with water. This fact confirms that the frogs did not get into the caves by chance, but live and procreate there permanently.

"The importance of our discovery is manifold. First of all, we've found an animal so different from all others that it is considered to be a separate genus. Things like that do not happen every day. Secondly, the phylogenetic position of the new genus sheds light on the evolutionary history of a respective subfamily of microhylids. Finally, this discovery is important in scope of protection and conservation of Southeast Asian herpetofauna. Today we know about only one population of these frogs, and all our search attempts, however intensive, were not successful. Therefore, to protect the animals, we do not disclose the location of the cave," says Nikolay Poyarkov.

More information: Chatmongkon Suwannapoom et al, A striking new genus and species of cave-dwelling frog (Amphibia: Anura: Microhylidae: Asterophryinae) from Thailand, PeerJ (2018). Journal information: PeerJ Chatmongkon Suwannapoom et al, A striking new genus and species of cave-dwelling frog (Amphibia: Anura: Microhylidae: Asterophryinae) from Thailand,(2018). DOI: 10.7717/peerj.4422
Crystal structure of the host enzyme, Acyloxyacyl Hydrolase (AOAH), in complex with lipopolysaccharide (LPS) shown in grey sticks, which is a potent bacterial toxin. The figure shows one of the six fatty acid chains of LPS swung out and positioned in AOAH active site ready to be clipped off, rending LPS immunologically inert. This enzymatic function of AOAH is crucial for recovering from immune tolerance which generally follows gram-negative bacterial infection. Credit: Bhushan Nagar

Biochemists from McGill University are getting a good look at just how a specific enzyme that is part of the human immune system interacts with a certain group of bacteria that are described as gram-negative.

Researchers around the world "have been studying the enzyme, known as AOAH, for more than 30 years. This is the first time anyone has been able to see exactly what it looks like," according to Bhushan Nagar, an associate professor of biochemistry at McGill University in Montreal.

More than that, the 3-D images captured a moment in time which shows just how AOAH inactivates a toxic molecule that is commonly part of various gram-negative bacteria. The research was conducted at the Canadian Light Source.

Numerous types of gram-negative bacteria exist throughout the environment. While some are harmless, many cause a variety of human illnesses, says Nagar. For example, several species such as E. coli and Salmonella, cause food borne illness. Others cause infections such as pneumonia, meningitis, bloodstream infections or gonorrhea.

Some types of gram-negative bacterial infections are demonstrating drug resistance and are increasingly difficult to treat, making understanding how the human immune system interacts with them even more important.

When an infection develops, it generally triggers inflammation through a toxic component of the outer shell of gram-negative bacteria, called lipopolysaccharide (LPS)  also commonly referred to as an endotoxin.

"Inflammation is a protective response by the immune system when fighting infections," says Nagar.

It's what causes fever, aches, swelling and sometimes redness on the skin. But there is a fine balance. Too much inflammation can cause a person to become sicker and even die, while too little won't help kill off the bacteria causing the infection. The immune system controls this problem by dampening inflammation after the initial acute response. That way, the inflammation doesn't cause excessive damage.

After the infection is cleared, the system needs to reset itself so it will be prepared to fight new infections. This job falls into the hands of the AOAH enzyme. With the gram-negative bacterium, it was found that the AOAH targets, binds to, and removes two specific regions on LPS, rendering it ineffective and causing the system to reset.

The researchers were able to see the images by using a crystallized sample of AOAH bound to a portion of the LPS. The results allowed for a detailed look at the molecular structure of AOAH and clearly showed which parts of its surface interacted with the toxin.

"We could actually see the molecular mechanism the enzyme uses to clip off parts of LPS to inactivate it," says Nagar.

The findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences earlier this year.

The images provide a map to the AOAH enzyme and opens the door to other directions of research. Some forms of AOAH are associated with certain diseases such as asthma and chronic sinusitis. Knowing its full structure will help researchers better understand what its disease-causing variations are like and could provide details needed to develop new treatments for infections or approaches to prevent them.

More information: Alexei Gorelik et al. Crystal structure of the mammalian lipopolysaccharide detoxifier, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2018). Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Alexei Gorelik et al. Crystal structure of the mammalian lipopolysaccharide detoxifier,(2018). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1719834115
New cellphone app to update city air quality

A new application will give Nepali cellphone users hourly updates on the quality of air prevailing in different areas of the city.
March 30, 2018 in Utility (E)

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MacXDVD Software is a division of Digiarty Software Company, owns a professional multimedia software development team, providing a range of products for Macintosh Computer users, including MacX Video Converter, MacX DVD Ripper, DVD Author, DVD backup tools, etc, series of apps for Apple video player, and iPhone, iPad 2D and 3D video games. Copyright (C) 2018 MacXDVD Software. All Rights Reserved. Apple, the Apple logo and Macintosh are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries.

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Despite attempts to lure investors, Nepal remains one of the least attractive countries
Any number of historic moments in the civil-rights struggle have been used to identify Martin Luther King, Jr.  prime mover of the Montgomery bus boycott, keynote speaker at the March on Washington, youngest Nobel Peace Prize laureate. But in retrospect, single events are less important than the fact that King, and his policy of nonviolent protest, was the dominant force in the civil-rights movement during its decade of greatest achievement, from 1957 to 1968.

King was born Michael Luther King in Atlanta on Jan. 15, 1929  one of the three children of Martin Luther King Sr., pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, and Alberta (Williams) King, a former schoolteacher. (He was renamed "Martin" when he was about 6 years old.)

After going to local grammar and high schools, King enrolled in Morehouse College in Atlanta in 1944. He wasn't planning to enter the ministry, but then he met Dr. Benjamin Mays, a scholar whose manner and bearing convinced him that a religious career could be intellectually satisfying as well. After receiving his bachelor's degree in 1948, King attended Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pa., winning the Plafker Award as the outstanding student of the graduating class, and the J. Lewis Crozer Fellowship as well. King completed the coursework for his doctorate in 1953, and was granted the degree two years later upon completion of his dissertation.

Married by then, King returned South to become pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Ala. There, he made his first mark on the civil-rights movement, by mobilizing the black community during a 382-day boycott of the city's bus lines. King overcame arrest and other violent harassment, including the bombing of his home. Ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court declared bus segregation unconstitutional.

A national hero and a civil-rights figure of growing importance, King summoned together a number of black leaders in 1957 and laid the groundwork for the organization now known as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). King was elected its president, and he soon began helping other communities organize their own protests against discrimination.

After finishing his first book and making a trip to India, King returned to the United States in 1960 to become co-pastor, with his father, of Ebenezer Baptist Church.

Three years later, King's nonviolent tactics were put to their most severe test in Birmingham, during a mass protest for fair hiring practices and the desegregation of department-store facilities. Police brutality used against the marchers dramatized the plight of blacks to the nation at large, with enormous impact. King was arrested, but his voice was not silenced: He wrote "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" to refute his critics.

Later that year King was a principal speaker at the historic March on Washington, where he delivered one of the most passionate addresses of his career. Time magazine designated him as its Person of the Year for 1963. A few months later he was named recipient of the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize. When he returned from Norway, where he had gone to accept the award, King took on new challenges. In Selma, Ala., he led a voter-registration campaign that ended in the Selma-to-Montgomery Freedom March. King next brought his crusade to Chicago, where he launched programs to rehabilitate the slums and provide housing.

In the North, however, King soon discovered that young and angry blacks cared little for his preaching and even less for his pleas for peaceful protest. Their disenchantment was one of the reasons he rallied behind a new cause: the war in Vietnam.

Although he was trying to create a new coalition based on equal support for peace and civil rights, it caused an immediate rift. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) saw King's shift of emphasis as "a serious tactical mistake." The Urban League warned that the "limited resources" of the civil-rights movement would be spread too thin.

But from the vantage point of history, King's timing was superb. Students, professors, intellectuals, clergymen and reformers rushed into the movement. Then, King turned his attention to the domestic issue that he felt was directly related to the Vietnam struggle: poverty. He called for a guaranteed family income, he threatened national boycotts, and he spoke of disrupting entire cities by nonviolent "camp-ins." With this in mind, he began to plan a massive march of the poor on Washington, D.C., envisioning a demonstration of such intensity and size that Congress would have to recognize and deal with the huge number of desperate and downtrodden Americans.

King interrupted these plans to lend his support to the Memphis sanitation men's strike. He wanted to discourage violence, and he wanted to focus national attention on the plight of the poor, unorganized workers of the city. The men were bargaining for basic union representation and long-overdue raises.

But he never got back to his poverty plans. Death came for King on April 4, 1968, on the balcony of the black-owned Lorraine Hotel just off Beale Street in Memphis. While standing outside with Jesse Jackson and Ralph Abernathy, King was shot in the neck by a rifle bullet. His death caused a wave of violence in major cities across the country.

However, King's legacy has lived on. In 1969, his widow, Coretta Scott King, organized the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Non-Violent Social Change. Today it stands next to his beloved Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. His birthday, Jan. 15, is a national holiday, celebrated each year with educational programs, artistic displays, and concerts throughout the United States. The Lorraine Hotel where he was shot is now the National Civil Rights Museum.
thyssenkrupp AG operates in the areas of automotive technology, industrial components, plant technology, marine systems, steel, and materials services in Germany, the United States, China, and internationally. The company's Automotive Technology segment develops and manufactures components and systems and automated production systems for the automotive industry. Its Industrial Components segment manufactures and sells forged components and system solutions for the resource, construction, and mobility sectors; and slewing rings, antifriction bearings, and seamless rolled rings for the wind energy and construction machinery sectors. The company's Plant Technology segment builds plants for the chemical, cement, and mining industries. Its Marine Systems segment provides systems in the submarine and surface ship building, as well as in the field of maritime electronics and security technology. The company's Materials Services segment distributes materials and offers technical services for the production and manufacturing sectors. Its Steel Europe segment provides flat carbon steel products, intelligent material solutions, and finished parts. thyssenkrupp AG was founded in 1811 and is headquartered in Essen, Germany.

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" " In 2015, a volcano near Colima, Mexico shot huge plumes of dark ash into the air and created dramatic bolts of lightning. The volcano is one of the most active in Central America. Marc Szeglat/Barcroft Media/Barcroft Media via Getty Images

Lightning dazzles us and volcanic plumes can be mesmerizing. So a volcano in mid-eruption flanked by zigzags of lightning has got to be one of the coolest spectacles in nature. And it is. People have been watching this display unfold for thousands of years. When Pliny the Younger saw the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE, he noticed a "blaze of lightning" brighten up the sky as volcanic ash spewed forth.

That these two things were happening at once may not have been a coincidence. Today it's a known fact that billowing plumes of volcanic ash are able to generate lightning. Now for the first time ever, you can listen to the thunderclaps. Earlier this month, the world learned that a team led by USGS geologist Matt Haney managed to isolate and record the sound of volcano-produced thunder. Such a thing had never been done before  and the achievement could pave the way for life-saving insights.

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The Physics of (Normal) Lightning

Regardless of its trajectory, every bolt of lightning is produced by charge separation. A storm cloud is like a huge, floating battery. The base is negatively charged while the upper portion has a positive charge. During thunderstorms, the ground itself also becomes positively charged. All this means is there's a whole lot of polarization going on.

Opposite charges naturally attract and try to balance each other out. Lightning is a rapid electrical discharge that can appear between a positively-charged area and a negatively-charged one. By sending electrons towards one of these poles, lightning temporarily neutralizes the charge of the space in between them.

How do storm clouds get electrified in the first place? It's thought that air currents push cool water droplets and small ice particles upward at an accelerated rate. As these bodies travel higher and higher, they collide with heavier particles called graupel (or "soft hail"), which hang out in the cloud's lower half. The collisions theoretically give those climbing particles a positive charge while the graupel gets negatively charged. Keep that in mind because it'll help us understand how volcanic lightning can form.

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Ice, Ash and Eruptions

The manner in which a volcano erupts depends on many things. One important factor is the temperature of the magma lying beneath the surface. If this material is hot  say, in the ballpark of 1,200 degrees Celsius (2,192 degrees Fahrenheit)  and it's runny, you'll get an effusive eruption. In such outpourings, lava gently flows down the sides of the volcano. But if the magma is cooler and more viscous, that means the gasses inside the volcano will have a harder time escaping. Then you'll get a lot of internal pressure culminating in a so-called explosive eruption, with lava and ash plumes shooting skyward.

"Any volcano that produces explosive eruptions and ash plumes could generate lightning," Matthew Haney, Ph.D., a geophysicist with the USGS and Alaska Volcano Observatory in Anchorage, says in an email. "Volcanoes that ooze out lava in an effusive eruption, instead of an explosive one, wouldn't be likely to produce lightning."

The lightning itself is created in one of two ways; both involve ash plumes. Sometimes when there's a cloud of volcanic ash hovering over the ground, the individual ash particles rub together. That produces static electricity, with some particles becoming positively charged and others going negative. The result is a perfect environment for lightning.

"The other way is for ash to become coated in ice at high altitudes in the volcanic plume and for the ice-coated ash particles to collide with each other," Haney says. "This second way is similar to how regular lightning is produced high up in a thundercloud."

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Recording Thunder

Thunder itself occurs after the heat from a lightning bolt rapidly warms up some of the surrounding air particles while pushing others away. Following the strike, the air cools down and contracts at a high speed. The activity emits a cracking noise which can be 10 times louder than the sound of a pneumatic jackhammer. And yet in a volcanic eruption, it's easy for the boom of thunder to get drowned out by long range roars and cracks, which are even more deafening.

That's why the new recordings are so groundbreaking. In December 2016, Haney and five other geologists set up microphones on one of Alaska's Aleutian Islands. The landmass in question was located near Bogoslof volcano, a 6,000-foot (1,828-meter) behemoth anchored on the ocean floor with a summit that's barely above sea level.

Over an eight-month period, Bogoslof erupted more than 60 times over. Haney's team was there to record it all. He said they hit pay dirt in March and June 2017 "by analyzing eruptions at Bogoslof that abruptly quieted down." Once the deafening eruptions faded, their instruments were able to pick up the booms of volcano-generated thunder.

"We showed the thunder signals came from a different direction than the volcanic vent," Haney says. Throughout the study, lightning sensors were used to pinpoint the exact location of bolts within Bogoslof's ash plumes. Haney says his team "showed that the pattern of the thunder in time matched the pattern of lightning." In other words, there was a definite correlation between the two.

The scientists' results were published in Geological Research Letters on March 13, 2018. Now that somebody has finally figured out a way to record the sound of volcanic thunder, future researchers will no doubt try to listen for it. By monitoring these noises, we may be able to do a better job of calculating how big or widespread a given ash plume is. That could help us keep airplanes out of harm's way  and organize post-eruption evacuations.

Now That's Interesting When the volcanic island of Krakatoa blew its top in 1883, the eruption was loud. Ridiculously loud. A British sea captain who was 40 miles (64 kilometers) away at the time reported that more than half of his crew was deafened by the noise. People living 3,000 miles (4,828 kilometers) from the eruption site heard what one witness compared to "the distant roar of heavy guns." And altogether, some of Krakatoa's atmospheric reverberations traveled all the way around the globe three or four times. Yeesh.
Argentina's President Mauricio Macri on Friday backed his under-fire energy minister who admitted keeping his millions outside Argentina because he lacked faith in the economy. Macri said Juan Jose Aranguren had made financial sacrifices to take on the job of minister in his center-right government in 2015. Aranguren had resigned as president of Anglo-Dutch oil company Shell in Argentina, "where he was doing very well, to take charge of the biggest mess that the Kirchnerists left behind -- that was a country without energy" and with daily power blackouts, Macri told Cadena 3 radio. The president was responding to questions about his minister's public acknowledgement on Thursday that he kept most of his $88 million fortune deposited abroad. "This has to do with the confidence we have lost in Argentina," Aranguren said on Radio con Vos. He said most of the investments and savings he held abroad came from "a bonus I received from my former employer (Shell) in shares of that company that were obviously abroad." At a time when Argentina was enforcing exchange restrictions under Cristina Kirchner's leftist government, "Why am I going to bring it in?" he asked. "We are working for an Argentina where that does not happen anymore," said the minister. When his interviewer said he kept his own money in the country, Aranguren replied: "You have more confidence in Argentina than I do, I leave you with that virtue. "I want to work so that everyone in Argentina can recover that confidence." Treasury Minister Nicolas Dujovne, the head of the Federal Intelligence Agency Gustavo Arribas and Central Bank chief Federico Sturzenegger also said they kept most of their money outside the country.
Ani

New Delhi, Sep 24 (ANI):President Ram Nath Kovind conferred the National Service Scheme (NSS) Awards for 2019-20 from Rashtrapati Bhavanin a virtual mode. Union Minister for Youth Affairs and Sports, Anurag Thakur and Minister of State for Sports NisithPramanik also attended the ceremony at Sushma Swaraj Bhavan in New Delhi."The ideological orientation of the NSS is inspired by the ideals of Mahatma Gandhi. A society that provides opportunities to women in every walks of life as per their wishes and capabilities is called a progressive society," said President Ram Nath Kovind President Kovind said that India is called a young country. "I congratulate all the awardees. With the primary objective of developing the personality and character of students through voluntary community service, NSS (central sector) was launched in 1969.Gandhi's life is a unique example of human service," he added.
The surveillance cameras pointing at the entrance of the humble three-storey building in eastern China are not enough to stop daily masses from being held at Father Matthews home.

The priest, who spent decades in jail on account of his faith, has no assistants and uses a dining table in lieu of a proper altar.

A picture of Jesus wearing the crown of thorns hangs on the wall, along with other religious paintings and statues, overlooking the congregation of 40  mainly elderly  people.

They sit on stools and kneel on mats to pray and receive communion just as they have done for the last 30 years.

But soon this will all come to an end.

Father Matthew (not his real name) is planning to retire in silence after the unorthodox news broke in January that two underground bishops Zhuang Jianjian and Guo Xijin, both appointed by the Vatican, had been ordered by the Roman Catholic Church to make way for two bishops supported by the Communist authorities in defiance of the Churchs own long-standing teachings.

The arrangement is part of a series of quiet negotiations between the Vatican and Beijing with the aim of reaching a formal agreement on how bishops will be appointed in China in future.

On Wednesday Bishop Guo Jincai, secretary-general of the Beijing-sanctioned Bishops Conference, told state-owned tabloid Global Times that the negotiations had reached their final stages.

If everything goes right, the deal could be signed as early as the end of this month, he said. The timing depends on details of the deal or technical issues.

But Father Chang Sang-loy, a Hong-Kong-based priest with knowledge of the talks, warned that if things could not be finalised by Easter, we might need to wait until June to see if a deal can be reached.

The groundbreaking deal would represent a historic development after decades of hostility between the two sides.

The agreement is expected to highlight Beijings willingness to accept the Pope having a final say over candidates for bishoprics, according to Chang  something that is widely seen as the first priority before ties can be normalised.

Story continues

Observers are watching closely to see whether the deal will promote mutual respect and understanding and improve the situation of the 30 or so underground bishops and enhance the religious freedoms of the mainlands estimated 10 million Catholics.

Earlier this month Fang Jianping, deputy chief of the bishops conference from the state-approved Catholic Church, told reporters on the sidelines of the National Peoples Congress that he welcomed the historic breakthrough in the history of China and the Vatican.

There shouldnt be any obstacles now. Talks and dialogue must be continued to dissolve conflicts and build consensus, Fang said.

Vatican and Beijing near deal on appointment of bishops, Hong Kong cardinal says

But the Vaticans shift in policy has been fiercely criticised. One of the most outspoken opponents of the move was Hong Kong-based Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun who called it a suicide deal and accused the Church of selling out the underground worshippers who had endured years of oppression for staying loyal to the Pope after Beijing cut ties with the Vatican in 1951.

Earlier this week human rights groups said Guo, one of the underground bishops, had been detained for around 24 hours.

Today, about 60 per cent of mainland Catholics worship in state-sanctioned churches but many, especially the younger ones, are oblivious to the rift between Beijing and Rome.

Pope prefers to avoid support for dissident clergymen says former Hong Kong cardinal after Vatican asks Chinese bishops to stand down

Others have been left confused by recent developments and think reconciliation between the Church and an atheist government that has a long history of closing down churches and prosecuting priests is a bad move.

According to Father Pedro, who leads a state-approved church, the latest U-turn from the Vatican came as a huge shock to mainland Catholics.

Quite a number of underground parishioners who would never walk into an official church approached us recently asking if the Vatican is really giving up on legitimate underground bishops for illicit ones. No one can wrap their head around the Vaticans rationale, he said.

But some Chinese Catholics say making a bad move is better than no move at all and there are those who will submit to the Popes commands even though they cannot understand the Vaticans thinking.

We might fail to see the rationale for now but we must trust that the Holy Father has divine guidance, said a 56-year-old Catholics from an underground church in Shanghai.

However, for people like Father Matthew, the detente is too much to take.

The veteran priest is built of stern stuff after spending three decades in jail, but the latest news truly broke his heart.

Not a moment was regrettable since Ive pledged my life to the Virgin Mary  but if [former] Pope Benedict XVI had not retired, none of this would have happened, he said.

The priest and other family members have between them spent over 150 years in Chinese jails for standing by their faith.

Im disappointed but nothing else can be done. I plan to just retreat quietly, he said.

Anne, a middle-aged nun who served in a rural church was extremely saddened by the Holy Sees decision, which she said was abandoning the interests of underground churches just to make friends with a totalitarian regime.

This is no difference to a father giving up his own children to strangers who set out to harm them. Why is the Pope adding new pain to unhealed injuries? she said.

Many underground priests I know want to retire for they no longer see the point of holding on to faith-based principles that are already compromised by the Holy See.

The truth needs to get out, the Vatican has no idea how we suffer here. There is no prospect of caving in to a totalitarian regime. I would much rather things remain unchanged, she said.

Father Pedro also warned there was a risk of widening the divisions between Chinas Catholics.

The Vatican should work with Beijing to unify Catholics in China

This may further shake up Chinese Catholic churches and eventually give rise to heterodoxy and even heresy. More might want to do things their own ways, deserting both state-controlled churches and the Pope,  he said.

One example is Father Paul Dong Guanhua from Hebei province who broke away from both the underground and state churches in 2016 and declared himself to be the Bishop of Zhengdian and claimed the right to ordain his own bishops, defying both the government and the Vatican.

A senior priest who has advised government officials told the South China Morning Post that one must seize any opportunity available as freedom to worship has been increasingly restricted.

He added: Its better to get dialogue going and have some doors opened while we still can.

No one can benefit from complete stagnation. If we allow this to drag on, who knows what shape and form Chinese Catholic churches will take in the future? he said.

The state wants religious activities to be consistent with the official socialist ideology.

Under an amended Religious Affairs Regulation that took effect in February, officially sanctioned religious bodies will face more scrutiny while unauthorised gatherings face harsher penalties.

State-sanctioned churches are supervised by the State Administration for Religious Affairs.

But it was recently absorbed by the United Front Work Department  which manages the Communist Partys relations with non-party bodies inside and outside the mainland  and the move has prompted concerns that the party will seek to tighten its grip over religious groups.

In 1957, the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association was established to make sure priests and bishops toed the Communist Party line. Chinas Bishop Conference selects and independently appoints bishops  sometimes without the Popes approval.

China detains underground Catholic bishop: sources

The northern province of Hebei remains one of the strongest centres of underground Catholicism despite extensive monitoring from the authorities.

In one particular village that could not be named for safety reasons, most of its 3,000-plus residents are underground Catholics who attend unauthorised gatherings.

This is probably one of the most closely monitored rural areas in China, where countless surveillance cameras and plainclothes religious officials have been dispatched to turn outsiders away.

Their morning mass usually starts at 5.30am and evening mass is often held late in the evening either in abandoned yards or in open fields.

Crackdowns are part of our everyday life but we would rather endure the cold weather and scorching sun outdoors than compromise the integrity of our faith to enter into a fancy cathedral, the villages priest said.

But despite the hardships, the priest said he was willing to accept an accord between Beijing and the Vatican.

We understand the Pope and his advisers are doing everything they can to reunify the church. The final goal is to have all bishops in China submitting to his authority and eliminating the Patriotic Association, he said.

This article Betrayed and abandoned: why Chinas underground Catholics feel like Jesus on Good Friday first appeared on South China Morning Post

For the latest news from the South China Morning Post download our mobile app. Copyright 2018.

More from South China Morning Post:
Northern border points will be opened: Karnali Province CM

Karnali Province Chief Minister Mahendra Bahadur Shahi has said that his government will prioritise opening up border points connected with China in the northern parts of the province.
By Nelson Acosta

HAVANA (Reuters) - The head of Vietnam's Communist Party advocated for the importance of market-oriented economic reforms on a two-day visit to old ally Cuba, which is struggling to liberalize its poorly Soviet-style command economy.

Vietnam and Cuba are among the last Communist-run countries in the world but Hanoi set about opening up its centralized economy in the 1980s, two decades before Havana started to do so in earnest under President Raul Castro.

Castro leaves office on April 19 after two consecutive five-year mandates without yet having been able to unleash in Cuba the same kind of rapid economic growth as that experienced by Vietnam. He remains head of the Cuban Communist Party (PCC) until 2021.

"The market economy of its own cannot destroy socialism," Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong said in a lecture at Havana University.

"But to build socialism with success it is necessary to develop a market economy in an adequate and correct way."

Hanoi had managed to lift around 30 million Vietnamese out of poverty over 20 years, Trong said.

The PCC this week admitted a slowdown in its market reforms it attributed to the complexity of the process, low engagement of the bureaucracy and mistakes in oversight.

The number of self-employed workers in the Caribbean island nation of 11.2 million residents has more than tripled to around 580,000 workers since the start of the reforms.

But the government last year froze the issuance of licenses for certain activities amid fears of rising inequality and a loss of state control. It has also backtracked on some reforms in recent years, particularly in the agricultural sector.

Trong said it was clear Cuba, like Vietnam, wanted to avoid shock therapy.

"With the clear vision of the PCC ... (Cuba) will surely reach great achievements and successfully reach a prosperous and sustainable socialism," Trong said.

Cubans complain their economy suffers two types of blockades, the internal one, namely stifling state controls, and the external one: the U.S. trade embargo.

Story continues

Vietnam also suffered U.S. sanctions but Washington lifted them more than two decades ago. Analysts say it is unlikely it will do the same for Cuba any time soon.

U.S. President Donald Trump has shifted back to hostile Cold War rhetoric and partially rolled back the detente forged with Havana by his predecessor Barack Obama.

(Reporting by Nelson Acosta; Additional Reporting by Sarah Marsh; editing by Grant McCool)
French President Emmanuel Macron met Thursday with a delegation of the Syrian Democratic Forces made up of Kurdish and Arab fighters and promised them support from France, the presidency said in a statement. Macron acknowledged the "role of the SDF in the fight against Daesh", another acronym for the Islamic State jihadist group in Syria and Iraq. The French leader reaffirmed the priority of this battle against "the terrorist threat" and assured the SDF of France's support, in particular in stabilising the security zone in northeast Syria "to prevent the resurgence of Daesh while awaiting a political solution to the Syrian conflict," the Elysee said. The backbone of the SDF is the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) militia which has been driven out of its stronghold Afrin by a Turkish offensive in Syria. The offensive began in January against the YPG, which Turkey says is allied with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) which has been waging an insurgency in its country since 1984 and Ankara considers as a terrorist organisation. Macron expressed the hope that "a dialogue can be established between the SDF and Turkey with help from France and the international community", the statement said. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has put the number who have fled Afrin at 250,000, and says dozens of civilians have been killed in the fighting, in addition to around 1,500 Kurdish fighters.
Peru's former president Alberto Fujimori feels better after being hospitalized earlier this week, but a feud between his politically ambitious children is not helping the recovery, his doctor said Thursday. "There is an improvement," said the disgraced Fujimori's personal doctor, Alejandro Aguinaga, who expects the ex-president to remain another day in hospital. Fujimori, 79, was hospitalized with a stomach infection and dehydration on Wednesday in the Centenario Japanese-Peruvian clinic. However the former president -- who was forced to step down in 2000 after a decade in power marked by corruption and a bloody human rights record -- is not feeling so good about the power struggle between his daughter Keiko and son Kenji. Their battle for the Fujimori family political mantle has seen them exchange hair-raising accusations of corruption. The row even ended up helping to bring down president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, who finally resigned last week after being accused of taking bribes from Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht. The elder Fujimori -- who was serving a 25-year sentence for his role in government death squads until Kuczynski pardoned him in December -- is not enjoying the high-stakes soap opera. "It's clear that a situation of this nature bothers him a lot," Aguinaga said. "We've always said that Alberto Fujimori is not made of iron. He has affections, feelings." - Dueling corruption accusations - Keiko Fujimori, 42, has run twice for president, losing by a hair in 2016 to Kuczynski, and heads the main opposition Popular Force party. But Kenji, 37, has risen to the point where he threatens to overshadow his big sister. A congressman, he is seen as aiming for the presidency in 2021. Kenji split from the Popular Force and his sister in March in protest at allegations that her 2011 presidential campaign had been funded in part by Odebrecht, a vast company that until recently made a habit of bribing politicians everywhere it does business. However, Keiko's Popular Force embarrassed Kenji -- and helped destroy Kuczynski's presidency -- by releasing video that purportedly shows Kenji trying to buy a lawmaker's vote to prevent Kuczynski from being impeached back in December. Those videos seemed to prove what everyone already suspected -- that Kenji engineered Kuczynski's survival during that impeachment vote, in return for a controversial presidential pardon for his father. Prosecutors are looking into both siblings' cases and Kenji has said he will testify on April 6 about "who is corrupt" regarding the alleged Odebrecht funds for his sister Keiko's campaign. Kuczynski resigned March 21 on the eve of when he would have faced a second impeachment vote. He was replaced by his vice president, Martin Vizcarra.
Indonesia's Speaker of the House Setya Novanto, identified as a suspect in a corruption case, arrives at the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) building in Jakarta, Indonesia November 19, 2017 in this photo taken by Antara Foto. Picture taken November 19, 2017. Antara Foto/ Rosa Panggabean/via REUTERS

By Fergus Jensen

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesian prosecutors on Thursday sought a jail term of at least 16 years for former parliament speaker Setya Novanto if found guilty in a graft scandal and demanded that he also repay more than $7 million he is suspected of plundering.

The Corruption Eradication Commission, known locally as the KPK, demanded that judges presiding over Novanto's trial find him "legally and convincingly proven guilty of jointly committing corruption", prosecutor Abdul Basir told the court.

Novanto, who was taken into custody in November, is accused of orchestrating a scheme to plunder $173 million from a government contract to introduce a national electronic identity card - almost 40 percent of the project's entire budget.

He denies wrongdoing in a case that has shocked Indonesians already used to large corruption scandals..

Should Novanto fail to repay the $7.4 million the commission alleges he received from the scheme within a month of a court ruling, his assets should be seized and auctioned off, Basir added. If that didn't cover the alleged losses, Novanto should serve an additional three years in prison, Basir said.

Prosecutors, who have questioned 80 witnesses in the case, also demanded Novanto pay an additional 1 billion rupiah ($72,670) fine or serve an additional six months in prison.

Novanto had stayed in power through several previous corruption cases and repeatedly missed summonses for questioning by the anti-graft agency in connection with this case, saying he needed heart surgery.

The next hearing is scheduled for April 13.

($1 = 13,760 rupiah)

(Editing by Nick Macfie)
The name chosen by the small European country of Macedonia at its independence 27 years ago has ever since been rejected by Greece, provoking an impassioned dispute. For Greece the name is part of its own cultural heritage, a source of pride as that of an ancient province that was the core of Alexander the Great's empire more than 2,000 years ago. The bitter row has stalled the efforts of the new nation to take its place in the European Union and other international institutions. As the Greek and Macedonian foreign ministers meet in Vienna on Friday amid a new push for a solution, here is some background. - Rejected from the start - Macedonia proclaims its independence from Yugoslavia in 1991 but its international recognition is immediately blocked by Greece because of the name. Besides claiming it as part of its heritage, Greece also has a province bordering the new country that has the same name and fears Skopje may be harbouring territorial ambitions. In 1992 more than a million Greeks join a rally in the northern city of Thessaloniki, once the most important city in ancient Macedonia, to proclaim "Macedonia is Greek". - A country called FYROM - It is only with the adoption of a provisional name -- the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) -- that the country is finally admitted into the United Nations in 1993. Most other nations, including Russia and the United States, later recognise its constitutional title, the Republic of Macedonia. - Greece clamps down - In 1994 Greece pushes its point by imposing an economic embargo on Macedonia, including preventing it from using the port at Thessaloniki, its main trading post. Greece also demands Macedonia drops from its flag the rayed sun of Vergina, which it claims is an ancient Greek symbol, as well as certain articles from its constitution. - A thaw - In September 1995 the neighbours sign in New York an accord opening the way for a normalisation of their trade and political ties, but leave hanging the name dispute. The following month they open liaison offices in their respective capitals and a new Macedonian flag -- with the controversial sun replaced -- is raised for the first time at the United Nations. - Greek vetoes - Macedonia becomes a candidate for membership of the European Union in 2005 but Greece blocks the start of negotiations, which must be agreed unanimously. In 2008 Macedonia presents itself as a candidate for membership of the NATO military alliance, under the provisional name, but is again met with a Greek veto. Relations sink with the erection in Skopje in 2011 of a huge statue of Alexander the Great. Athens sees this as an attempt to appropriate one of its greatest military heroes. - 'A solution is feasible' - Soon after his election in June 2017, Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev promises a new push to settle the dispute and relaunch the drive for EU and NATO membership. There is optimism after mediation talks at the UN headquarters in January. But tens of thousands of people demonstrate in Thessaloniki later that month to insist "Macedonia is Greek and this is not negotiable". Zaev announces his country will drop Alexander the Great's name from that of its main international airport and a key highway. Early February he says Macedonia will also include a geographic designation in a future name. Suggestions that circulate include Upper Macedonia, Northern Macedonia, Vardar Macedonia and Macedonia-Skopje.
After a German court fined her 6,000 euros ($7,400) for spelling out on her practice's website that she performs abortions, gynaecologist Kristina Haenel vowed that "it can't go on like this". Likewise, her Kassel-based colleague Nora Szasz, who is facing a similar threat under a Nazi-era law, said she would not give in. "We are not afraid," Haenel told AFP, vowing she is ready to take the battle to Germany's highest court against a 1933 law that bans medical practitioners from advertising that they carry out terminations of pregnancies. Germany, despite being a leading voice for women's rights in the 1970s, imposes tight restrictions on abortion. The procedure is permitted but only under strictly regulated circumstances. It is left out of universities' course books for student doctors and kept unavailable in swathes of the country. Haenel and Szasz have fallen foul of the law because they stated on the website of their medical practice that they perform abortions. "That's just a mention among 12 other types of surgical procedures that I carry out as a gynaecologist," said Szasz, who was recently charged for flouting article 219a of the penal code. With the cases of Haenel and Szasz in the media spotlight, the issue has sparked a political debate, with some among the opposition calling for article 219a to be scrapped and for women to be given access to the critical information. Noting that article 219a dated back to May 1933, shortly after Adolf Hitler assumed full powers of Nazi Germany, Verena Osgyan, a local MP for the Greens in the Bavarian regional parliament, told AFP that it was an "unbelievable anachronism". More than 80 years on, abortion remains a taboo, said Berlin gynaecologist Christiane Tennhardt. "In Germany, legislation remains very complex and contradictory," said Jutta Pliefke, of Pro Familia, which counsels women on pregnancies and sexuality and receives public funding. - Doctors not taught abortions - Germany records an average of 100,000 abortions for 790,000 births, while in France, there are 210,000-220,000 terminations for 800,000 births. A woman who wants to abort within the first trimester is required to attend a consultation at a registered centre. The aim of the interview is to "incite the woman to continue the pregnancy," according to the rules, even if in the end, she has the final say. A three-day waiting period is then imposed for the woman to reconsider her options. Excluding special circumstances such as a pregnancy that threatens the life of the mother, or one arising from rape, abortion -- which can cost hundreds of euros -- is not a procedure that is reimbursable by health insurance. In some regions, including in the predominantly Catholic state of Bavaria, it may be necessary to travel 100 kilometres (about 60 miles) to find a doctor who performs the procedure. In parts of the rich southern region, no public hospital offers such terminations. "Many of the doctors who do it are long past their retirement age," said Osgyan. Some patients choose to turn to Austria. And the situation looks far from improving, as doctors are not taught the procedure in universities. Because of the penal code restriction, no research grant is provided and neither are medical congresses held on the subject, said Pro Familia. - 'Constant death threats' - Blocking any reform of the current legislation, Health Minister Jens Spahn has spoken out for the protection of "human life at birth". "When it comes to the life of animals, those who now want to promote abortions are uncompromising," charged the openly gay minister, taking aim at liberals calling for greater openness about terminations. Spahn, 37, a critic of Merkel within her Christian Democrats, has not been known to shy away from controversy. In 2012, he drew fire for opposing a bid to turn the contraceptive pill from a prescription medicine to an over-the-counter drug, as he remarked that "pills are not Smarties". For the Greens, Spahn "propagates an image of women that dates to the 1950s". But the "pro-life" lobby backs Spahn, as they charge that blood tests to detect Down's syndrome could contribute to a rise in the number of abortions. Anti-abortion activist Klaus Guenter Annen, who filed the legal claim against Szasz, has compared abortion to the Nazi-run Auschwitz death camp. Recounting the fierce opposition she faces over the procedure, Haenel said she "constantly receives death threats". For fear of flouting the law, doctors who perform the procedure prefer to keep their names off any lists provided by counsellors to women seeking the information. "That's the real scandal that no one talks about," said Haenel, noting that the irony is that the only websites carrying lists of doctors who carry out terminations are anti-abortion sites. Pro Familia's Pliefke noted that feminists have largely forgotten the battle for the right to choose. "It is urgent to reappropriate the theme" to fight "reactionary forces that are particularly powerful," she added.
A petition launched by a group of students from the University of Hong Kong, urging Manila to reconsider its decision to recall the citys labour attache, Jalilo Dela Torre, has already gathered hundreds of supporters.

The rare recall of one of the most important officials in the consulate was received with shock by a community that includes more than 203,600 Filipino domestic workers.

Many have connected the decision of Philippine President Rodrigo Dutertes administration with Dela Torres denunciation of human traffickers and rogue employment agencies.

We want to further pressurise the Philippine government to reconsider this decision, said Rachelle Lau, 21, a Hong Kong business and law student and a member of the group that launched the petition. [Dela Torre] is really hardworking. He has helped the community a lot and he has taken steps to punish the agencies and combat human trafficking, the student noted.

Dela Torre has taken steps to punish the agencies and combat human trafficking

HKU student Rachelle Lau

As of Thursday, the petition started by Students Against Fees and Exploitation, or SAFE  a group that has investigated the abuse of domestic workers in Hong Kong  had more than 870 signatures.

He has stopped human traffickers, stamped out illegal black market recruitment agencies and vigorously advocated for the plight of overseas Filipino workers. Jalilo has the respect and support of the entire Filipino community and deserves an award not a recall, the petition read.

Meanwhile, 92 organisations and nine individuals issued a statement also criticising Manilas move.

Dela Torre received an email from Philippine Secretary of Labour and Employment Silvestre Bello last Friday saying he had been recalled to the home office in the Philippines, effective immediately, but no justification was given. He might leave the city in early April, after serving two years of his three-year term.

His recall comes just a few weeks before Duterte is expected to visit the city, on April 12.

Story continues

The declaration highlighted some of Dela Torres achievements in the city. Under his leadership, the labour office opened its doors to our compatriots in need of its help even beyond the regular working hours.

They also noted that the diplomat fought for a ban on window cleaning in high-rises as part of domestic workers chores and that he has worked to put in place a more stringent accreditation system for employment agencies.

This week, Dela Torre said in a post on his Facebook page that there was a silver lining in the controversy.

I have seen the overwhelming support of the community in Hong Kong and in other posts [Israel, Saudi Arabia and Australia] I have served, and heard [testimony] of what I have done in the past two years  and it is really something I will cherish to my grave.

For the first time, the community has joined hands, regardless of affiliations and orientations, for a common cause. My family and I thank you from the bottom of our hearts, he said.

Soon after receiving the news about his recall, Dela Torre told the Post : Whatever the outcome is, I will continue to fight human traffickers and rogue agencies wherever I am.

This article Petition against Philippines recall of Hong Kong labour attache gathers numbers as many recognise Jalilo Dela Torres achievements first appeared on South China Morning Post

For the latest news from the South China Morning Post download our mobile app. Copyright 2018.
Before you book your beach holiday in Southeast Asia, be warned that some of the region's most popular beaches will close for the summer.

After Thailand, the Philippines is looking at closing one of its crown jewels, Boracay Island, for up to six months starting at the end of April.

During a visit to the once paradisiacal island last month, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte famously called Boracay a "cesspool" after seeing the sewage and environmental damage.

It's a steep fall from grace for the island, which regularly tops "best islands" and "best beaches" lists for Asia: its powdery white beaches saw it named the world's best island in CN Traveler's Readers' Choice Awards.

Government officials have recommended closing the beach off for up to six months, beginning at the end of April.

The Thai beach most famous for its starring role in the 2000 film "The Beach," Maya Bay, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, is also set to close for four months to due the effects of over-tourism.
Binod Ghimire covers parliamentary affairs and human rights for The Kathmandu Post. Since joining the Post in 2010, he has reported primarily on social issues, focusing on education and transitional justice.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Thursday said Syrian forces had "nearly wiped out the terrorists" in the rebel-held enclave of Western Ghouta. Backed by the Russian military since 2015, the Syrian regime in February launched a massive offensive against rebels in the Damascus suburb, killing more that 1,600 civilians. "As a result of this anti-terrorism operation in Western Ghouta, terrorist elements have nearly been wiped out of this suburb of the Syrian capital," Lavrov said at press conference in Moscow after meeting UN Syrian envoy Staffan de Mistura. "Civilian life is going to be re-established there," Lavrov said, adding that "the majority of the rebels have been evacuated". Syrian troops have recaptured more than 90 percent of Ghouta, and are draining the last opposition pockets with negotiated pull-outs mediated by Russia. Moscow has secured two such deals already and has been pressing Jaish al-Islam, the rebel faction in control of the third and final part of the enclave near Damascus, to leave too. Russia's deputy foreign minister Mikhail Bogdanov said Thursday negotiations with Jaish al-Islam were continuing. "There are working group contacts. They contact us, they write letters, they talk on the phone, we meet," he was quoted as saying by the Ria Novosti agency. "There exists" some chance that the negotiations could progress, he added. De Mistura also met with Russian Defence Minister Sergei Choigu who said over the next few days "we are going to begin to bring the people back to their homes in Western Ghouta, and they will be able to lead a normal life". He added that "more than 130,000 refugees and more than 11,000 armed fighters" had fled Ghouta via humanitarian corridors.
A hooded man holds a laptop computer as cyber code is projected on him in this illustration picture taken on May 13, 2017. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel/Illustration/Files

PRAGUE (Reuters) - The Czech Republic has extradited Russian citizen Yevgeniy Nikulin to the United States where he is accused of hacking social networks including LinkedIn, the Czech Justice Ministry said on Friday.

The decision by Minister Robert Pelikan defied Russia, which had also asked for his extradition after Nikulin was arrested in Prague in cooperation with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation in 2016.

"We confirm extradition to the United States," a Justice Ministry spokeswoman said in a text message after earlier reports. "He has already flown out."

A U.S. federal grand jury in California indicted the 29-year-old Nikulin in 2016 on suspicion of hacking into the U.S.-based social media companies LinkedIn, Dropbox and Formspring in 2012.

LinkedIn has said the case was related to a 2012 breach at the social networking company that it previously said may have compromised the credentials of 100 million users, prompting it to launch a massive password reset operation.

Nikulin has in the past denied any wrongdoing in comments to Czech media. Reuters could not immediately reach his attorney on Friday.

After Nikulin's arrest in Prague, Russia also asked for his extradition. A Moscow court issued a warrant for his arrest in November 2016 for the alleged theft of $3,450 via Webmoney in 2009, the Czech Justice Ministry said then.

Czech courts have ruled extradition to both countries was permissible, and the decision was up to Pelikan.

Prime Minister Andrej Babis has said he was in favour of extradition to the United States but Pelikan said President Milos Zeman, who often takes a pro-Russian stance, had urged extradition to Russia.

Pelikan refused in 2016 to extradite two Lebanese citizens charged in the United States with an attempt to sell ground-to-air missiles, cocaine trafficking and other crimes.

Another Czech cabinet minister said at the time that this decision was connected with the return of five Czechs from a presumed kidnapping in Lebanon.

Babis needs Zeman's support as he tries to build a new government after his minority cabinet lost a confidence vote last month. Zeman has the right to appoint prime ministers and has promised Babis another try at installing a government.

(Reporting by Jan Lopatka; Editing by Richard Balmforth/Mark Heinrich)
Turkey on Friday rejected a French offer to mediate with the Syrian Democratic Forces which is dominated by a Kurdish militia blacklisted by Ankara, condemning Paris' "wrong stance". French President Emmanuel Macron offered late on Thursday to facilitate dialogue between the two sides after he met a delegation of Kurdish and Arab fighters. Macron said he hoped this could be set up with help from Paris and the international community. Turkey dismissed it out of hand in a move likely to further fuel tension with France, which has expressed clear concerns over an ongoing Turkish military operation in northern Syria. Macron's comments were not well received by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who said he was "extremely saddened by France's... wrong stance". "We have no need for mediation... Since when has Turkey had an issue of sitting down at the table with terror organisation?" Erdogan thundered during a speech in Ankara. Presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said on Twitter that Turkey rejected "any efforts to promote 'dialogue', 'contact' or 'mediation' between Ankara and those terrorist organisations". "It is not possible to say a country which welcomes the YPG at the Elysee is unbiased. You are already on the side of terrorists," Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said. The backbone of the SDF is the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), a militia group which has been driven out of its Afrin stronghold by the Turkish offensive. The YPG is the military wing of the main Syrian Kurdish political movement, the Democratic Union Party (PYD). The Turkish military launched its offensive against the YPG in January, targeting the group over its ties with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) which has waged an insurgency inside Turkey since 1984 and which Ankara blacklists as a terror group. - France 'cooperating with terror' - "Turkey's position on PKK/PYD/YPG, which seeks to legitimise itself as SDF, is perfectly clear," Kalin said, warning Paris against taking any steps which could be construed as legitimising terror groups. "The countries we consider friends and allies must take a clear stand against all forms of terrorism," he said. "The various names and disguises cannot hide the true identity of the terrorist organisation." Both France and the United States have worked closely with YPG fighters in the battle against Islamic State jihadists in Syria. During Thursday's talks, Macron acknowledged the "role of the SDF in the fight against Daesh", the Elysee said using an Arabic acronym for IS. Macron and Erdogan have spoken several times on the phone since Turkey's operation began on January 20. But the Turkish president said that Macron had made "strange remarks" in a call about Syria last week. "I was forced to point it out to him, even if the tone was a bit raised," he said, without giving details. Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag took a much tougher line, lashing out at France and warning that any country cooperating with "terrorists" would be on Turkey's radar. "France's assurance of support for PYD/YPG/YPJ terror organisations is clear cooperation and solidarity with terror groups attacking Turkey," wrote Bozdag on Twitter. YPJ is the women's force within the YPG. - A sharp warning - Kurdish official Asya Abdullah told reporters after the meeting with Macron that France was planning on sending "new French troops to Manbij" -- an area east of Afrin where Turkey has threatened to expand its campaign. "The cooperation will be reinforced," she said. But Macron's office on Friday said it was not planning any new military operation on the ground in northern Syria outside the international coalition against IS. Before the statement, Bozdag warned that those working with terror groups would become Turkey's target and hoped France would not take such an "irrational step". "Those who cooperate with terror groups against Turkey ... and attack Turkey alongside terrorists will get the same treatment that we inflict upon those terrorists," said Bozdag, who is also the government spokesman. About 10 days into the Turkish operation in Syria, Macron had incensed Turkish officials by saying France would have a "real problem" if the campaign turned out to be an "invasion operation". The comments drew a sharp response from Turkish authorities, saying that Turkey has never been "colonialist" in its history, urging Paris to look at its own past. On March 18, Turkish forces and their rebel allies took full control of Afrin, with the YPG largely withdrawing without a fight. burs-raz/bp
This post is part of Outward, Slates home for coverage of LGBTQ life, thought, and culture. Read more here.

Im straight thin, but Im gay fat.

Its a throwaway joke in an old episode of American Dad, one that made me laugh ruefully when I first heard it, and thats lodged itself in my memory since. At age 42, I can still enumerate everything I dont like about my own body, and which mirrors in my home are better or worse for my self-esteem, despite a regimen of (mostly) healthy eating and regular running. I am all too familiar with the unrealistic expectations gay men can place on ourselves when it comes to how we look.

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The joke is funny because its true. But for many LGBTQ people, there isnt a lot of humor there.

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Earlier this year, a survey conducted jointly by the Trevor Project, the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA), and Reasons Eating Disorder Center reported a shockingly high rate of eating disorders among LGBTQ youth. Of the 1,034 respondents to the survey, all LGBTQ-identifying people between 1324 years old, 54 percent had been diagnosed with an eating disorder, and an additional 21 percent suspected they may have one despite lacking a formal diagnosis. While these results arent perfectly representative, they call much-needed attention to a serious problem within our community.

Cisgender female LGBTQ respondents had the highest rate of eating disorders among gendersmost commonly bulimiafollowed by trans and gender-nonconforming males, then cis males and trans females. Trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming youth respondents who identify as straight reported the highest percentage of eating disorder diagnosis, at a staggering 71 percent. Bisexual youth had the next highest rate, though gay and lesbian youth werent far behind. Tallying all gender and sexual identities surveyed together, some form of overly restricted caloric intake or another was the most common pattern of disordered eating.

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These results complement other data reported by the National Eating Disorders Association indicating that 42 percent of men with eating disorders identify as gaya substantially higher proportion than the percentage we comprise in the general population. NEDA reports significantly higher rates of binging and purging among gay males compared to heterosexual peers, as well as about twice the rate of regular binge eating among non-heterosexual women.

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Viewed together, these findings indicate that risk of disordered eating is something that permeates all segments of the LGBTQ community.

The release of the surveys results joins a couple of other recent developments that brought attention to the problem of eating disorders among gender and sexual minorities. Adam Rippon, breakout star of this years Winter Olympics, was as frank about his history of disordered eating as he was about being a gay man, though it was framed by the New York Times more within the context of figure skating. (Two of the three other male figure skaters quoted by the Times, Brian Boitano and Johnny Weir, are also openly gay men, and Weir reportedly still eats only one meal per day.) Season 9 of RuPauls Drag Race included a conversation between a few of the queens about their own past and current struggles with eating disorders. Its encouraging to see these frank discussions crop up in popular media.

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Nonetheless, the elements of LGBTQ culture that may perpetuate risk of eating disorders within our community are pervasive and durable. Unattainable standards of physical attractiveness didnt establish themselves overnight.

I began to feel like I needed to conform to what I was seeing in magazines and movies. I wanted that slim body to catch the eyes of the guys, a gay man, who asked to be identified only as Travis, told me. As I lost weight, I started receiving more positive attention from everyone. It made me feel good. After a month or so, I felt like I wasnt losing enough weight and I started upping the exercise and lowering my caloric intake by only eating protein bars. Sometimes I would even binge on food, but I never swallowed it. I would purchase a dozen doughnuts and chew them all and spit it out before swallowing any of it.

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Unattainable standards of physical attractiveness didnt establish themselves overnight.

My eating disorder stemmed from being LGBTQ, he continued. I felt like I had to conform to the societal expectations of being that slim runner-type guy you see at the gym.

Sam Miller had a similar experience. Miller is the author of The Art of Starving, a searing young adult novel written from the perspective of a gay teenage boy with an eating disorder, drawn from the authors own experiences.

My eating disorder definitely came from being gay, he told me, in the sense that homophobia and toxic masculinity made it impossible for me to see how magnificent I really was. Being the constant target of bullying, and not having any positive out role models in my life, and not feeling desired by any of the boys that I desired, filled me up with self-loathing, and made me feel awful about the body I saw in the mirror.

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Other health issues that have hit the gay community with particular force have also had a ripple effect on the pressure to look a certain way.

Prior to HIV, gay men did not view their bodies in the same way that they do now. To be thin was not seen as problematic, Sharon Nesselle, a mental health clinician at the Los Angeles LGBT Center, told me. Nesselle has been on the staff there for 24 years. However, once HIV arrived in full force, being very thin began to be equated with being positive. I saw a significant shift in those that started to work out at the gym and pay greater attention to their bodies.

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When meth entered the scene, it provided a means by which to address long-standing gay shame, Nessell continued, often shame not known consciously to those that struggled with it. It gave men the opportunity to keep their weight down until the substance use got out of control, and then being too thin became gaunt, and that was seen as connected to addiction. One of the most difficult things for men to deal with in recovery from meth use is how to re-establish a relationship with their sexuality that doesnt include crystal meth, and also how to deal with gaining weight. The weight gain often causes them to feel bad about themselves again, and can be a factor in relapse if they fear they will no longer be seen as attractive to other men.

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Of course, its not only societal pressure to look sexually attractive or healthy that can put LGBTQ people at risk for eating disorders.

My eating disorder had everything to do with being trans. I wore mens clothing in high school and college, but when I graduated I believed I needed to present in a more feminine way to enter adulthood, I was told by a trans man, who asked that I call him Isaac. The restricting started within months of starting to wear womens clothes, maybe even within weeks. I never connected the two then, but looking back, its unmissable. My fear of gaining weight was entirely about not wanting larger breasts and hips, and those parts filling out were what would trigger my relapses.

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As LGBTQ people gain greater visibility and acceptance in American society, the sense of shame and isolation that Miller identifies as triggers for his own eating disorder may be lessened for younger gender and sexual minorities. But he sees other harmful attitudes holding on.

Understand, I am approximately 600 years old, and when I came out we didnt have the internet, or television shows with gay characters, and in health class we were told that gay sex would lead to immediate painful horrible death from AIDS, Miller said. (Hes 39.) But thats not to say that in our own more enlightened times, things are perfect. Gay men are exposed to the same whitewashed buff unrealistic representation of male hotness as the rest of America.

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Social media helps to promulgate these images of physical perfection. Instagram users are surely familiar with Instagays, those impossibly gorgeous men who share immaculately staged photos of their impeccable bodies for maximum appreciation. (It is a pop culture irony that Netflix selected Antoni Porowski, apotheosis of Instagay perfection, as the food and wine expert in the Queer Eye reboot. Porowski is such a flawless specimen I found myself wondering how regimented he keeps his intake of both his putative specialties.)

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I hear from so many, mostly men, that social media plays a significant role in how they view themselves, Nesselle said. They often use what they are able to post on Facebook or Instagram, or what they see on these sites, as weathervanes as to where they stand.

No one factor can tidily explain why a community as diverse as the LGBTQ population would be at risk of eating disorders. Some social pressures may be more tractable than others. But these new survey results draw attention to a problem too little discussed. Those of us who provide medical or mental health care to gender and sexual minorities should take care to screen our patients for these problems. And all LGBTQ people should consider re-examining what we expect of each other and ourselves.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions informed Republican lawmakers Thursday he does not intend to appoint a second special counsel to investigate the FBI, something Republicans in Congress have been eager to do in response to what they feel have been investigative missteps and political bias at the bureau that resulted in unfair treatment of President Trump and his campaign. In a letter to GOP lawmakers, Sessions did not foreclose the possibility of a second special counsel, in addition to Robert Muellers investigation into Russian election meddling, but that decision will run through the U.S. attorney in Utah, John Huber, who Sessions said he has appointed to undertake a review of Republican complaints and allegationsnamely, that the FBI abused its power in its effort to conduct surveillance on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

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Sessions, in the letter, noted Justice Department regulations call for [special counsel] appointments only in extraordinary circumstances and that he would need to conclude the public interest would be served by removing a large degree of responsibility for the matter from the Department of Justice, the Washington Post reports. Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz announced this week his office would open an investigation into the Page affair and how a FISA warrant was obtained to monitor him. In addition, Huber will investigate aspects of the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and several matters related to Hillary Clinton and her familys foundation, according to the Post.

I am confident that Mr. Hubers review will include a full, complete and objective evaluation of these matters in a manner that is consistent with the law and facts, Sessions wrote. I receive regular updates from Mr. Huber and upon the conclusion of his review, will receive his recommendations as to whether any matters not currently under investigation should be opened, whether any matters currently under investigation require further resources, or whether any matters merit the appointment of a special counsel.
PM set to visit India next Friday

Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli is paying a state visit to India from April 6-8 at the invitation of his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi, Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed on Friday.
Judge Stephen Reinhardt, who served on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, died on Thursday at the age of 87, BuzzFeeds Chris Geidner reports. President Jimmy Carter appointed Reinhardt in 1980; from the start, he championed the legacy of Chief Justice Earl Warren and the civil rights revolution his court oversaw. Reinhardt remained a liberal lion for nearly 40 years, unapologetically defending LGBTQ equality, abortion access, womens rights, immigrants rights, and free expression while opposing capital punishment, mass incarceration, and police brutality. He may have been the most liberal judge in America.

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Reinhardt emphatically rejected originalism, the theory that the Constitutions meaning was fixed at the time of its ratification. Instead, he applied the Constitutions broad principles of liberty and equality to bring justice to those whom society despised or disregarded. Though Reinhardt had an unabashedly bleeding heart, he was also a cynic and a pragmatist. Brilliant yet unpretentious, idealistic yet hard-bitten, he was adored by his clerks and colleagues, including some with whom he sparred regularly.

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The classic Reinhardt opinions involve political and jurisprudential lightning rods. He ruled that terminally ill patients have a constitutional right to end their own lives, though the Supreme Court disagreed. He insisted, in dissent, that the insertion of the phrase under God into the Pledge of Allegiance violated the separation of church and state. He held that a federal ban on a common second-trimester abortion procedure unduly infringed on womens right to choose. (Once again, the Supreme Court reversed his decision.) And he ruled that the Second Amendment does not guarantee an individual right to bear arms six years before the Supreme Court concluded that it did.

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Obviously, many of Reinhardts watershed decisions fared poorly on appeal. His conservative critics frequently cite this fact as evidence that he was, essentially, a renegade judge. But Reinhardt always followed binding precedent and statutory commands; he simply tried to push the law to the left when he could. When he couldnt, he did not try to conceal his dissatisfaction. In his last great opinion, issued in May 2017, Reinhardt acknowledged that he could not delay the deportation of Andres Magana Ortiz, an undocumented immigrant who had lived in America for 28 years and had a wife and children who are U.S. citizens. Yet he bemoaned the gratuitous cruelty of the Trump administrations actions, as well as the judiciarys complicity in its immigration crackdown:

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We are unable to prevent Magana Ortizs removal, yet it is contrary to the values of this nation and its legal system. Indeed, the governments decision to remove Magana Ortiz diminishes not only our country but our courts, which are supposedly dedicated to the pursuit of justice. Magana Ortiz and his family are in truth not the only victims. Among the others are judges who, forced to participate in such inhumane acts, suffer a loss of dignity and humanity as well. I concur as a judge, but as a citizen I do not.

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While Reinhardt could not always achieve the outcome he desired, his legacy is secure in those areas of the law to which he did make lasting contributions. In 2014, Reinhardt struck down same-sex marriage bans in Idaho and Nevada, ruling that they violated the 14th Amendment. He wrote both the majority opinion and a concurring opinion to add a few extra thoughts. And he used the occasion to summarize his judicial philosophy in a few sentences:

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We, as judges, deal so often with laws that confine and constrain. Yet our core legal instrument comprehends the rights of all people, regardless of sexual orientation, to love and to marry the individuals they choose. It demands not merely toleration; when a state is in the business of marriage, it must affirm the love and commitment of same-sex couples in equal measure. Recognizing that right dignifies them; in so doing, we dignify our Constitution.

Eight months later, the Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution does, indeed, protect same-sex couples right to marry. Much of the courts opinion sounded remarkably similar to Reinhardts earlier concurrence. The judge saw many of his finest rulings reversed. But on this, he was entirely vindicated.
The Kremlin announced it will expel 60 American diplomats and close the American Consulate in St. Petersburg as part of a widely anticipated diplomatic reprisal for the expulsion of Russian diplomats from two dozen Western countries in response to the poisoning of a former Russian spy in the United Kingdom earlier this month. The Russian government denies it was behind the March 4 poison attack in Salisbury, England, that has left Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia Skripal, in the hospital.

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As for the other countries, everything will also be symmetrical in terms of the number of people from their diplomatic missions who will be leaving Russia, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said. The U.S. expelled 60 Russian diplomats and closed the countrys Seattle consulate earlier this week. The message that is being sent is you cannot use a military-grade nerve agent on the streets of Salisbury against a British citizen and his daughter without a response, U.S. Ambassador Jon Huntsman said.

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With its regrettable, unwarranted decision today, it is clear that #Russia is not interested in dialogue about issues that matter to our two countries. #Russia is further isolating itself following the brazen chemical attack in the United Kingdom. - @statedeptspox pic.twitter.com/w4eA0I7Yvr  Department of State (@StateDept) March 29, 2018

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This latest diplomatic squabble with Moscow began with British Prime Minister Theresa Mays expulsion of 23 Russian diplomats believed to be intelligence agents in response to the poisoning on British soil that the U.K. has pinned on Russia. Russia has flooded the field with alternate theories to deflect blame, including conjuring the run-up to the Iraq war and American and British intelligence failures as evidence that the British evidence fingering Russia cant be trusted. Nobody asked for some additional material on weapons of mass destruction, which Saddam Hussein was accused of having and using, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said. Nobody asked for more evidence. They just trusted the U.S. and Great Britain, and they were betrayed. The British government says the substance used in the attack was one of a group of nerve agents developed by the Soviet Union called Novichok. More than 20 countries followed the U.K.s lead, sending more than 150 Russian officials back home. Russia has already matched U.K.s expulsions, ordering 23 British officials to leave the country; Lavrov said Russia plans to mirror this coordinated diplomatic action and will send a similar number of foreign diplomats packing.
On Thursday, the Census Bureau sent Congress a complete list of the questions it plans to ask on the 2020 decennial census. The preview included the bureaus new citizenship question, which may suppress the response rate in immigrant communities and provide states with data that could allow for a novel and insidious form of gerrymandering. But the question has another flaw: It leaves out an entire category of Americans.

As currently framed, the citizenship question allows for five possible answers. Respondents can say theyre citizens born in the U.S. or citizens born abroad to American parents. (With some exceptions, children born to at least one American parent receive U.S. citizenship.) They can also say theyre citizens by naturalization or that theyre not U.S. citizens at all. Finally, respondents can note that they are citizens born in one of Americas four territories with birthright citizenship: Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Island, or the Northern Mariana Islands.

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New: Here is what the citizenship question will look like on the 2020 census pic.twitter.com/eRpTgnK2mr  Sam Levine (@srl) March 29, 2018

Douglas Mack, author of the excellent book The Not-Quite-States of America, points out that there are two problems here. First, the question implies that the territories are not part of the United States, which is obviously untrue. Second, it entirely excludes U.S. citizens born in American Samoa. This category comprises thousands of people, including Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii. It seems they will simply have no correct box to check.

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Some background: Individuals born in American Samoa, a U.S. territory, are not given birthright citizenship. Instead, they are considered U.S. nationals. But, again, U.S. citizens can generally pass along citizenship to their children no matter where theyre born. So when a citizen has a child in American Samoa, that child can immediately acquire citizenship.

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What box should these people check on the 2020 census? Not born in the United States, since the question excludes those territories from the U.S. But they werent born abroad, either, nor were they naturalized. Instead, they were born in a territory of the U.S. that the census drafters appear to have forgotten about. Unless the question is modified, they will go unrepresented.

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Its also disconcerting that the question includes no option for American Samoan nationals. Presumably, these people would have to signify that are not U.S. citizens. But that doesnt seem quite right, because they are still Americans: They hold American passportswith a stamp identifying them as nationalsand join the U.S. army; indeed, American Samoa has the highest rate of military service per capita in the entire United States. They also elect a non-voting delegate to the House of Representatives. American Samoans are different from all other non-citizens, including lawful permanent residents. The best description of their status is probably second-class citizenship.

Its unsurprising to the see the Trump administration ignore everyone born in American Samoa; the Justice Department has already taken an aggressive stance against the voting rights of territorial residents. But the administration will soon have to settle on a coherent defense of American Samoans legal status: On Tuesday, Equally American, a territorial rights nonprofit, filed a federal lawsuit challenging the federal governments refusal to extend birthright citizenship to those born in the territory. The 14th Amendment extends citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and in 1898, the Supreme Court held that Congress cannot limit this guarantee by statute. The Amendment, in clear words and in manifest intent, includes the children born, within the territory of the United States, the court explained.

In the early 1900s, however, the Supreme Court issued a series of racist decisions called the Insular Cases that limit the rights of territorial residents. The government has relied on these cases to justify its deprivation of birthright citizenship to American Samoans. While the Supreme Court has long ducked the opportunity to overturn these cases, theyre in serious tension with modern precedent. The Census Bureaus total exclusion of American Samoans provides a pertinent reminder that, until the courts step in, the federal government will continue to treat these Americans with startling indifference.
Last week, the popular blog The Rideshare Guy published a post from contributor Will Preston, who speculated that Uber had been charging customers more if they frequently use the service. Preston identified himself as a high frequency user who regularly hails rides to and from the San Diego airport, and noticed that he was being charged 10 to 30 percent more than the local mile per minute rate. He further noted that his wife, a less frequent user, often had cheaper fares for the same trip, and that there was no sign of surge pricing inflating the cost when he checked his Uber driver app. Plus, he had been riding during non-peak hours with little traffic.

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Even though this is an anecdotal case, Preston says his experience leads him to believe that Uber is in fact charging habitual users higher rates. I dont know how they could explain that consistently my price was higher than my wifes without them tracking this data per user, he told Slate.

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Prestons account would challenge what the company has said about its price system in the past. In May, Uber announced that it would start using route-based pricing, a method that uses machine learning software to guess how much customers are willing to pay for a certain route. If passengers request a trip from an affluent neighborhood to a luxury shopping district, for example, their fare might be pricier.

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In a statement, Uber denied Prestons claims: We do not charge people more based on how frequently they ride with Uber.

If Uber is tailoring its fares based on estimates of a users wealth, then it wouldnt have been a stretch to think they could also take frequency of use into account as well. Yet, head of product Daniel Graf told Business Insider, [Route-based pricing] is not personalized. This has nothing to do with the individual. Instead, he said Ubers AI programs only look at the route itself. If a route is in high demand and ferries people from one ritzy place to another, thus suggesting richer people are requesting that specific trip, then Uber will raise the price. According to Graf, Uber is guessing how much people are willing to pay for a certain route, rather than how much a certain person is willing to pay for the service. Such a system could in effect target people who are wealthier or frequently use the service for in-demand routes, even if that isnt the explicit purpose. We also dont know what factors Uber takes into account when it prices these routes.

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Of course, this doesnt explain why Preston saw his fares rise as he started using Uber more or why his wife had consistently lower quoted fares than he did. Whatever the case may be, Preston writes that he eventually found a workaround for the price hikes. By changing his destination mid-ride, the app reverted back to charging him solely on time and distance rates.

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Uber has long struggled with setting prices that are low enough to entice people to use the service while still making the business sustainable. Initially, Uber neglected to make a profit and undercharged riders in order to grow its customer base. Co-founder and former CEO Travis Kalanick had said these low fares were temporary, and that the company would raise them after it had dominated the market in major cities. Yet, nine years after its founding, Uber still isnt profitable and most customers continue to pay unsustainably low fares. Theres an ever-present danger that if Uber gets rid of its ride subsidies, then itll lose a huge swath of customers.

Charging more for certain trips is likely a safer and more gradual way to start raising prices, though targeting frequent users would be a risky move, particularly if Uber wasnt disclosing the practice. If youve got a high-value user and you can get them to pay more money, thats good for your business, said Brent Goldfarb, an associate professor of management and entrepreneurship at the University of Maryland. But the risk is the reputation concerns. Uber is already having a lot of difficulty anyway with that.
Last week, President Trump traveled to Manchester, New Hampshirea designated ground zero of the opioid epidemicand announced a number of national initiatives to combat the crisis. One proposal was a call to cut by one-third the number of opioid prescriptions over the next three years.

Details were fuzzy. But such a plan demands clarity, lest the policies designed to achieve it end up doing more harm than good. In particular, it seems worth asking what problem the one-third by three years plan is trying to fix, and whether or not reducing prescriptions by a set amount will achieve this goal.

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Addiction is one target, but its not entirely clear that limiting the number of pills prescribed will meaningfully affect addiction rates. People who are given a few days of opioid-pain reliever such as Percocet or Vicodin rarely develop addiction. Yes, a subset is at risk; it includes people with past or current histories of addiction and those struggling with psychiatric conditions, and caution is particularly important with young adults. Its wise to discuss if opioids are really needed (as they often arent), to prescribe as few pills as possible, and to enlist a family member to manage them for a young adult.

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Addiction in chronic pain patients is a somewhat different story. Estimates for new onset addiction resulting from opioids prescribed to manage chronic pain run the gamut, but the CDC guideline on prescribing opioids cites a range of 0.7 percent at low dose to 6.1 percent at higher doses from one study, though lower and higher estimates can be found.

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The presidents call is likely aimed at curtailing overdoses as well. The undeniable reality is that prescription pills (often mixed with other drugs) do produce fatalities, sometimes in patients who receive them as part of medical care. Nonetheless, about three-quarters of the roughly 42,000 opioid-related overdose deaths in 2016 were caused by heroin and illicit fentanyl. Deaths associated with commonly prescribed opioids (in cases where there is no heroin and fentanyl present) have fallen only slightly since 2011 (from 10,346 to 9,688 in 2016, a figure that includes typical pain medications but not methadone), despite a 48 percent reduction in high-dose opioid prescriptions since that time. These realities challenge the assumption that prescription control will have a big impact on the overall toll of opioid deaths. Meanwhile, anyone with a conscience has to ask what will happen to patients whose medications for pain are reduced in order to meet a presidential mandate of one-third by three years.

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This brings us to a worrisome plan proposed this February by the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services as part of its annual policy-update process. That agency will decide in early April if Medicare will continue to pay for an opioid prescription if a patients total dose is at 90 morphine milligram equivalents (MME) per day or higher. (A 10-milligram tablet of oxycodone is equivalent to about 15 mg of morphine or 15 MME.) The overwhelming majority of people who receive opioids never take the equivalent of 90 MME. However, the CMS asserts that 1.6 million Medicare patients received such a dose for at least one day in 2016. Another report found half a million received more than 120 MME for at least 3 months. (An estimate for 90 MME was not offered.)

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The CMS plan would upend the lives of people like Anne Fuqua, a 37-year-old nurse from Birmingham, Alabama. Anne worked in hospice care but has not been able to take care of patients for the past 14 years, she told us. In her late teens, she was diagnosed with primary generalized dystonia, a neurological disorder marked by involuntary movements and painful muscle spasms.

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In Annes case, the spasms pulled her body to the side, making it difficult to sit up straight, and her fingers were clenched so tightly that she could not use utensils to cut food. Unable to tolerate the usual medications prescribed for dystonia, Anne and her doctor found that opioids dramatically reduced the rigidity.

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Fuqua is among millions suffering from afflictions such as rheumatoid arthritis, neurological illness, and inflammatory conditions, who receive opioids, sometimes at high doses. Without these drugs, many of them cant get out of bed or hold a job. That doesnt mean that all such patients should have been treated with high-dose opioids (surely some decisions to initiate the medication by their doctors were ill-advised), but what happens to these patients after the fact should not be based on cookie-cutter logic.

The CMS proposal will likely accelerate a nationwide pattern of nonconsensual opioid dose reductions.

Fuqua, who has Medicare Advantage, receives more than 1000 MME daily. Her regimen includes oxycodone and fentanyl, and it allowed her to shop for a bridesmaid dress with her goddaughter on spring break two weeks ago. She is scared for herself. Im not sure how I would manage to continue paying for my opioids if I were forced to pay out of pocket. Anne told us. And she worries about others, Patients with limited means will forego heat, air conditioning, and possibly food just to get relief if doing so will allow them to save sufficient funds to pay for their medication.

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To be fair, the CMS asserts that a doctors attestation that the higher dose is medically necessary should suffice, provided the doctor submits proper notification, either by phone, computer, and even hard-copy forms. But private market insurers, which frequently manage medication plans for Medicare Part D, have often shown themselves unwilling to accept such attestations, at least not without a fight. In any case, it is not likely that physicians will voluntarily assume so much unpaid bureaucratic labor on behalf of several hundred thousand Medicare beneficiaries at or above 90 MME per day over the long term.

The CMS proposal will likely accelerate a nationwide pattern of nonconsensual opioid dose reductions. The CDCs own 2016 Guideline on Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain avoids calling for these reductions but instead urges that dose decisions be based on careful appraisal of harms and benefits. But that wise counsel has been set aside by many health regulators, as they devise quality metrics, payment policies, and even thresholds for criminal investigation based heavily if not exclusively on dose.

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While a strong case can be made for carefully reducing doses in voluntary patients, no data support nonconsensual or forcible dose reductions or curtailment in otherwise stable patients. There is also anecdotal evidence of harm (emotional trauma, medical or psychiatric deterioration, and suicide).

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Another troubling issue, separate from the harm that the CMS proposal is likely to cause, is it relies on a simplistic inference about prescription doses that is increasingly at odds with scientific data. Analyses of data from the Veterans Health Administration found that at least half the deaths from opioids occurred when the prescribed dose was less than 60 MME. Parallel VHA analyses suggest that characteristics such as mental illness, addiction, and major medical problems are more powerful predictors of risk than opioid dosage. Researchers from Kaiser Permanente and the Denver Health Medical Center in Colorado found that prescription dose didnt predict overdose risk at all, once mental health and other factors were considered.

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These data do not exclude the possibility that there remains a dose-related risk. But they hint at something more plausible: that overdose with prescriptions involves a collision of several factors. The opioids doctors prescribe are part of a chaotic situation including other sedatives, alcohol, and emotional distress. If this is the case, then forced dose reduction may not stop the chaos.

For some, the implementation of dose reduction will actually worsen their health. As we have heard from patients across the country, forcible dose reductions often result in rupture of the care relationships as pain patients find themselves without anyone who can continue medicines that they rely on. These patients now have an official title: opioid refugees. Experts willing to care for them are few and far between. Media reports, online suicide tabulations, and a burgeoning academic literature chart their despair and, sometimes, their demise.

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The less troubling aspect of the CMS proposal is its second prong, an imposition of a seven-day limit on opioid prescribing for acute pain from, for example, when a patient breaks a bone or has an operation. If the agency goes through with this element of the plan, it will basically be joining half of all states that restrict duration of opioid analgesia to somewhere from three to 10 days, depending upon the state. Some pharmacy benefit managers, the pharmaceutical industry, some insurers, and the American Dental Association have enacted or demanded prescribing limits as well.

Duration limits, we caution, are not proven to prevent addiction. However, restricting pain relievers to a few days or to a week will generally suffice. (Often, no opioids are needed.) And, critically, handing out smaller prescriptions for short-term pain instead of a 30-day supplya bad dispensing habit that many doctors have not yet brokenwould help keep unused pills from falling into the wrong hands. It is possible to reduce the number of opioids prescribed for Americans in a responsible manner. As a matter of reflex, doctors need to pause and consider whether to prescribe opioid pain relievers in the first place, and if they deem it necessary, they should limit the number of extra pills authorized. But prudent limits are a far cry from a blanket attempt to lower pill numbers. Too many health care providers have started to see their fierce commitment to dose reductions as a badge of good citizenship, without any effort to measure the human outcomes of their own policies.

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We hope that when the president called for reducing prescribing, he did not have something like the CMS proposal in mind. Data already show that reducing pills is not the same as saving lives. The agency should reconsider its plan and let this proposal die a painless death.

Disclaimer: Stefan Kerteszs views are his own and do not represent positions of the Department of Veterans Affairs. He reports past ownership of stock in Merck and Abbott, amounting to less than 3 percent of assets and sold in December 2017, but no other involvement or interest in the pharmaceutical industry.
Ask any marketing professional for their No. 1 social media tip, and their answer will likely tie back to consistency. A successful social media presence in the modern age means having not only a consistent posting schedule, but consistent post quality and branding across all channels you use. We polled Young Entrepreneur Council to gather their best advice for keeping all your social media accounts on-brand.

Branding across channels can be difficult. How do you keep your social media on brand? 

Social Media Branding Tips

Heres what YEC community members had to say:

1. Establish and Share Brand Guidelines

To keep the brand identity consistent across channels, its important to have clear brand guidelines that get shared with every vendor, content creator and team. These brand guidelines should contain very specific instructions, including what fonts to be used, the specific colors used by the brand, etc. Upload the fonts, logo and any other brand assets to a folder that others can access. ~ Marcela De Vivo, Mulligan Funding

2. Create a Strategy and System for It

Create a strategy for the majority of your posts and schedule them out. This allows you to think about the content youll deliver, and makes it easier to make sure that all content, across all platforms, shows consistency and can be recognized on any channel. A strong brand can be identified on any form of marketing because of the strategy behind the brand. ~ Daniel Griggs, ATX Web Designs, LLC

3. Stick with Platforms That Are Right for Your Brand.

One way that businesses lose sight of their branding strategy is when they spread themselves too thin and try to have a presence everywhere. Its hard to have a consistent branding approach if youre publishing on 20 different sites every day. Focus on the sites that are a good match for your customers. Then develop a look and style that you can implement across channels. ~ Kalin Kassabov, ProTexting

4. Make Your Visual Campaigns Consistent with Each Other

Every brand should not only have a consistent look and feel but have a consistent level of quality. Without well-made, custom visual assets, your brand runs the risk of sending the message that quality isnt important to you. Marketers need to reimagine every campaign as a visual campaign, then plan all assets around a common goal, repurposing assets as needed to optimize them for each channel. ~ Amy Balliett, Killer Infographics

5. Make Your Content Appropriate for Everyone

Consider a straightforward E for Everyone guideline approach. Having your brand and team abide by this means the content  including what is shared on social media  should be acceptable (grandma wouldnt blush at the tone or use of language), accessible (anyone should be able to understand what were saying) and inclusive (consider all points of view and avoid offending a customer group). ~ David Ciccarelli, Voices.com

6. Avoid Marketing Gimmicks

Many marketers are quick to publish witty social media posts they believe may go viral. Of course, the attention they gain is almost always short-lived yet the potential damage they cause their brand may be permanent. Entrepreneurs can keep their social media efforts on-brand by restricting staff from posting gimmicky content. Encourage your team to take a long-view with their marketing efforts. ~ Firas Kittaneh, Amerisleep

7. Create Video Content

Approximately 80% of people are more likely to watch a video than reading content and more than 60% will probably buy a product or service based on what they saw. Using video content just makes senses. It allows my company to establish a visual brand among viewers keeping us relevant on all social media platforms. ~ Patrick Barnhill, Specialist ID, Inc.

8. Understand the Psychology of Each Channel and Adjust as Needed

Most companies using social media assume that each channel is just another place to post the same message. Each channel has a different psychology and is used differently by its users and your strategy needs to fit what works on that channel. To keep your branding consistent and effective, study what works for other successful companies on each channel and adjust your content as needed to fit in. ~ Justin Faerman, Conscious Lifestyle Magazine

9. Tell Real Stories

Ive never been a big believer in corporate branding. The most effective type of branding is doing it through people. Every social media platform I create and publish content for has my voice in it. As long as were human and were telling real stories, thats on brand enough. ~ Alex Berman, Experiment 27

10. Stay Authentic

Develop brand guidelines so that you only endorse and publish material that aligns with your brands mission. Going beyond this though, its key to stay authentic to your brand and its message. If your brand is lighthearted and humorous, like a healthy snacks company, dont be political. If youre a research firm, dont go for humor, go for authority. Stay true to your values and yourselves. ~ Kristopher Jones, LSEO.com
Robert Gilpin, R.I.P. - The Washington Post : His greatest book was written in 1981, but the main theory in it is perhaps more trenchant now...
Have you ever been inside of a dam?

The public entered inside Nosicka dam.

Production of electricity, holding flood water, and retaining water to supply the former Povazske strojarne were the main reasons to build the water dam Nosice. It has been in operation for 60 years. The public recently had the unique chance to see inside the dam.

The dam Nosice prevented floods two years after starting operation, according to dam worker Milan Durcik.

It was a great test for Nosice. Inflow to the dam was 3,000 cubic metres per second. The surface rose one meter in an hour. The dam held almost 1,000 cubic metres of water per second, Durcik explained for the TASR newswire, adding that the largest flood on the Vah river was in 1813 when inflow was almost 4,000 cubic metres per second.

The capacity of the basin was 36 million cubic metres after construction, but over 60 years capacity has decreased by one third because of sediment. The deepest point measures 18 metres.

The wall of the dam is 36 metres high and more than 500 metres long. Village Okrut on its right side and part of the villages Nosice and Milochov were flooded when they dammed the Vah.

More than 55,000 volunteers participated in construction works. Construction was slowed down due to finding mineral streams; carbon water was destroying the concrete so the construction technology had to change.

Finding the mineral stream led to establishing the Nimnica baths on the right riverbank of the Vah.

Inflow of the water through the dam wall is secured by upper flaps and lower segment. They are operated electronically either from the controlling centre or from the engine room. In case of malfunction, there is an emergency plan of opening the flaps and segments manually by the army.

Opening the lower segments via electrical device takes about 21 minutes, soldiers would need more than 16 hours to open it. Electrical tilting of the upper flap takes about 23 minutes, soldiers would tilt it in 56 hours, added Durcik for TASR.

30. Mar 2018 at 7:25 | Compiled by Spectator staff
Thirty days that shook Slovakia

The Visegrad Group, the US, and even the EU will no longer provide a support for liberal democracy. We're on our own.

Samuel Abraham is Rector of the Bratislava International School of Liberal Arts (BISLA). This article was originally published in Slovak daily Dennik N, March 29, 2018. English version prepared by Eurozine.com.

The president retreated under pressure from Smer, the senior governing party, by agreeing to appoint its nominees as prime minister and interior minister. The organizers called off the most recent For a Decent Slovakia protest in Bratislavas central SNP Square  but not in other towns, and a silent march was organized by students in Bratislava.

For the younger generation, this has been a month of accelerated history and instruction in politics, a subject which many of them had hitherto neglected. These were lessons in politics, but so strangely Slovak  with the great hopes of civic society marred by the cynicism of the powers that be! Where does Slovak society stand? Robert Fico and Robert Kalinak  the former prime minister and interior minister, respectively  are gone, but their departure seems only for show. They wont give up easily and without a struggle.

Does Slovak society have the energy and stamina to proceed with this tragic-heroic struggle? Let us survey the field.

The president

The president's actions are presented as deliberate and necessary decisions intended to prevent a constitutional crisis and not create a precedent. Andrej Kiska deserves credit for his actions during the crisis, but his steps in nominating a new government seem premature. He could have pushed for a list of ministers that meant the changes were real, not just cosmetic: not a single member of the new government reflects change or responds to what people asked for in their hundreds of thousands in public squares across Slovakia. It is possible that the president, by his concession, has confirmed what he has been talking about for some time: that he will not stand for re-election next year. If he had insisted on substantive change or even early elections, he would have had to continue in office.

The interior minister

After the new government's first candidate for interior minister (a former night club owner with no political track record) was rejected, the president demanded that, among other qualities, the interior minister needed to be someone who would pursue criminal proceedings against oligarchs and organized crime associated with political leaders.

The leadership of Smer, however, interpreted this as a requirement for anyone who was not a party member  and concluded that if it cannot be a friend of Robert Kalinak, let it be someone who has no qualification for the position. The top candidate for the interior minister should instead be a man like former police chief Jaroslav Spisiak or lawyer Peter Vacok  both tested and honest investigators. When the new interior minister, Tomas Drucker, as he says, familiarizes himself with his new ministry, he will have the chance to appoint one of these men or someone of their calibre as the new head of the police. He will then be able to watch how a real investigation of political fraud and criminality should be conducted. It will not involve just a few Italians resident in Slovakia, but also those Slovaks who have stolen, deceived and murdered. Mr Drucker will need courage and a conscience: both are necessary not to remain a puppet in the hands of oligarchs, fraudsters and his predecessor. We keep our fingers crossed he that will find such courage  he wants to give the impression that he will.

Parliament

The main argument against presidential intervention in the appointment of government ministers is the claim that Slovakia is a parliamentary rather than a presidential democracy. However, interference with the choice of ministers is not interference with the executive power. It is necessary to repeat again and again that the current electoral system, in which Slovakia is a single, five-million-strong electoral district, produces MPs who are accountable only to their party leaders and not to any specific region. So all 150 MPs can vote in anonymity, ignoring the needs of voters. That is why 79 MPs agreed so quickly, and 81 subsequently voted for, the new government. These MPs do not have to consult voters because there is no defined group to whom they are accountable. They are in parliament because their position on the electoral list was decided by a party boss, not because they had to convince voters in their region of their moral character and professional abilities. This is why they have their offices around Bratislava Castle and not in their home districts.

As a result, MPs, instead of acting according to their own consciences, as they are supposed to according to the constitution, vote as directed by their party bosses. This applies to all parties in parliament. If our parliamentary system is not reformed to create geographical constituencies we will not be able to count on the impartiality and independence of MPs, whatever is written in the constitution. Hence, Slovakia is a parliamentary democracy, but with a flaw, and thus there is no reason to venerate parliament vis-a-vis the president, who draws his legitimacy from being directly elected.

Murder and motives

In the case of Jan Kuciak and Martina Kusnirova, the first priority is to investigate the murders themselves and, second, to investigate the reasons why they happened. These are diametrically different investigations: the first is for investigators; the second is for politicians and law enforcement authorities. It should be stressed that the chance of finding the actual murderer(s) and those who directed them is minimal, irrespective of the skill and determination of our own or foreign investigators.

The unresolved case of Daphne Caruana Galizia, the journalist murdered in Malta in October last year, is a reminder of this. Contract killers do not generally make mistakes; those that hire them can pay without leaving a trace. Only detectives can investigate: no one else should know the details, including members of our government who have repeatedly intervened in investigations in the past. Investigators need a free hand and a guarantee of zero political pressure.

By contrast, and most importantly, the new government, headed by Peter Pellegrini, is responsible for investigating what Jan Kuciak and other journalists have written about: the mafia of the political environment. This is what society expects today from the new government and investigators, prosecutors and courts. There can be no blurred lines: it would mean freedom for thieves and murderers.

The new prime minister

The president, while naming the government, asked for the murder to be investigated but also insisted that the reasons for the murder be examined. So what did we hear from the new prime minister upon taking office? Peter Pellegrini declared that he and his government will do everything in order for this act to be investigated and its perpetrators to be fairly punished.

Not a word about the investigation of the causes. Not a word about those who inserted him into office, nor about those on his side who are suspected of having information about, or even having collaborated with, organized crime. For that matter, we might ask, why did former interior minister Robert Kalinak and former premier Robert Fico actually resign? Neither Mr. Pellegrini, nor anyone in the new government, mentions this subject. Calming the volatile situation is a very silly and inadequate reason for resignation. According to this inverted logic, Viliam Jasan and Maria Troskova [former government advisers with nebulous roles, one of whom is a businessman and political fixer and the other a former topless model; they both stood down soon after the murders] can return to their posts. We deserve an explanation of why they were in their positions in the first place, why they left, and whether they are coming back or not.

The opposition

The only good news about the current opposition is that it played little role in the public protests, and cannot claim that it forced Fico and Kalinak's fall. The performance of the four opposition leaders comprised of populists, Eurosceptics and fascists shows that at this point in time early elections would be a disaster for Slovakia. Fico's twelve years in power has generated political opponents who resemble him, albeit in cartoonish form. Over the next two years, new, honest politicians must emerge to reflect the events in the public squares, and who perceive politics not as a way of facilitating crime, but as a service to society and a means of repaying voters confidence in them. We also need politicians who will help create the moral environment that is so necessary for the upbringing and education of the young generation.

The young generation

The Slovak composer Egon Krak recently premiered his work Message at the Slovak Philharmonic. In a commentary he wrote: We admire the wisdom and genius of the giants of science and arts, and at the same time marvel at the unprecedented rise of narrow-mindedness and idiocy. The world races ahead with shocking discoveries that enrich our lives, but also astounds us with its poverty and backwardness. "

So welcome, young generation, to this Janus-faced world where politics has not been so radicalized since the Second World War. You have overcome fear and kept the high moral ground. Remember though, your continuous struggle is the path to a decent Slovakia for your generation. We have experienced normalization [the period of communist retrenchment in the 1970s following the Soviet invasion and occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968] as well as Meciarism [a period of quasi-authoritarianism under Prime Minister Vladimir Meciar in the 1990s]  both inflicted much suffering but eventually collapsed. We hope and believe that, with the unprecedented energy of civil society and young protest organizers, the Fico era will be shorter than either of the two. Beware of the backlash as the media oligarchs and mafia allies in political circles try to convince us that Ficos rule is what we need again and that his Slovakia is a success story. Together with fascists and Russian trolls they will spread conspiracy theories and fake news, about how we are being sacrificed to foreign values, to Soros, to gays and to western liberalism. This battle is not just being fought in Slovakia  witness Russia and the United States  but with the world at a crossroads, Slovakia is suddenly in the forefront of the struggle for the future of democracy.

We are alone

If this month brought something new, it was the emergence or awakening of a third apolitical-political power in society. In addition to the ruling coalition and the opposition, this is a strong civil society, a brave young generation and independent media. There have been times when civil society seemed inactive, as it did in the long era of Robert Ficos governments. The recent massive protests seemed to reawaken a dormant energy and the people who turned out are no longer willing to accept hollow promises or to be afraid of politicians threats. That gives us real hope after thirty dramatic days that shook Slovakia.

A return to the status quo ante, before the murders of Jan Kuciak and Martina Kusnirova, is impossible. Yet what direction Slovakia picks next is not clear at all. The Visegrad Group, the United States, and even the EU will no longer provide a support for liberal democracy as they did in the past. We're on our own. This makes the future unpredictable, but for the decent people of Slovakia, their commitment and stamina will be that much more binding and meaningful.

30. Mar 2018 at 16:09 | Samuel Abraham
Prez concerned over unexplained Dasdhunga incident

President Bidya Devi Bhandari has said it is sad that the reason behind the Dasdhunga incident has not been established yet. She said CPN-UML General Secretary Madan Bhandari, the leader of prosperous Nepal, died an untimely death in a car accident at Dasdhunga, Chitwan on May 16, 1993.
The Toronto-Dominion Bank, together with its subsidiaries, provides various personal and commercial banking products and services in Canada and the United States. It operates through three segments: Canadian Retail, U.S. Retail, and Wholesale Banking. The company offers personal deposits, such as chequing, savings, and investment products; financing, investment, cash management, international trade, and day-to-day banking services to businesses; and financing options to customers at point of sale for automotive and recreational vehicle purchases through auto dealer network. It also provides credit cards; real estate secured lending; auto finance; consumer lending; point-of-sale payment solutions for large and small businesses; wealth and asset management products, private banking, investment advisory, and trust services to retail and institutional clients; and property and casualty insurance, as well as life and health insurance products. The company also provides capital markets, and corporate and investment banking services, including underwriting and distribution of new debt and equity issues; advice on strategic acquisitions and divestitures; and trading, funding, and investment services to companies, governments, and institutions. It offers its products and services under the TD Bank and America's Most Convenient Bank brand names. The company operates through a network of 1,085 branches, 3,440 automated teller machines, and 1,223 stores, as well as offers telephone, digital, and mobile banking services. The Toronto-Dominion Bank was founded in 1855 and is headquartered in Toronto, Canada.

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BCE Inc., a telecommunications and media company, provides wireless, wireline, Internet, and television (TV) services to residential, business, and wholesale customers in Canada. It operates through three segments: Bell Wireless, Bell Wireline, and Bell Media. The Bell Wireless segment offers wireless voice and data communications products and services. The Bell Wireline segment provides data, including Internet access and Internet protocol television; and local telephone, long distance, satellite TV service, and connectivity, as well as other communications services and products. This segment also buys and sells local telephone, long distance, data, and other services from or to resellers, and other carriers. The Bell Media segment provides conventional TV, specialty TV, pay TV, and streaming services; and digital media, radio broadcasting, out-of-home advertising services. It owns and operates approximately 35 conventional TV stations; 27 specialty and four Pay TV channels; 3 direct-to-consumer streaming services; 109 licensed radio stations; and websites. The company was formerly known as Bell Canada Enterprises Inc. BCE Inc. was founded in 1880 and is headquartered in Verdun, Canada.

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HSBC Holdings plc provides banking and financial products and services worldwide. The company operates through Wealth and Personal Banking, Commercial Banking, and Global Banking and Markets segments. The Wealth and Personal Banking segment offers retail banking products and services, such as current and savings accounts, mortgages and personal loans, credit and debit cards, and local and international payment services for ultra high net worth individuals; and wealth management services, including insurance and investment products, global asset management services, investment management, and private wealth solutions. The Commercial Banking segment provides credit and lending, treasury management, payment, cash management, commercial insurance, and investment services, as well as commercial cards, and international trade and receivables finance services; and foreign exchange products, and capital raising and advisory services to small and medium sized enterprises, mid-market enterprises, and corporates. The Global Banking and Markets segment is involved in the provision of financing, advisory, and transaction services, including credit, rates, foreign exchange, equities, money markets, and securities services, as well as principal investment activities to government, corporate and institutional clients, and private investors. The Global Private Banking segment provides a range of services to high net worth individuals and families with complex and international needs. HSBC Holdings plc was founded in 1865 and is headquartered in London, the United Kingdom.

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Few Vietnamese enterprises are strong enough to weather the constant curveballs thrown by evolving domestic and global markets, but even fewer are able to resist the sweet temptation of acquisition by large international firms.

The speed at which established and popular Vietnamese brands are hopping on the new ownership is showing no signs of slowing down.

High profile merger and acquisition (M&A) deals involving local companies being absorbed by foreign conglomerates are taking place on an almost monthly basis, according to market experts.

Vietnams attractiveness as an M&A destination is highlighted by the US$16 billion in purchase deals made with local companies in both 2016 and 2017.

What raises concerns among analysts, however, is the trend of Vietnamese companies selling themselves to foreign investors, despite years-long efforts spent on building and nourishing brand identities.

Prime examples

Children born before 2014 may very well be the last generation of Vietnamese kids to grow up with the Kinh Do brand candy being their top choice for a sugary snack.

Founded in 1993, Kinh Do spent 21 years cementing a foothold in the Vietnamese sweets and candy industry, before selling 80 percent of its confectionery business to Singapores Mondelez International in late 2014.

In August 2016, Kinh Do, rebranded as Kido Group, sold off its remaining 20 percent stake to Mondelez, officially turning the much loved Vietnamese brand into a 100 percent foreign-owned business.

The same sentiments were provoked when local consumers learned that Duc Viet, once Vietnams largest fresh sausage producer, was acquired by South Korean food processing company Daesang Corp for $32 million in March 2017.

In June the same year, Cau Tre, a frozen food producer with a 34-year history, was rebranded as CJ Cau Tre after its majority shareholder, South Koreas CJ CheilJedang, increased its holding in the Vietnamese firm from 51.6 percent to 71.6 percent.

Meanwhile, the countrys leading brewer, Sabeco, sold more than 53 percent of its stake to a Thai owner earlier this month.

The production line at Saigon Beer. Photo: Tuoi Tre

Look outside the food and beverage sector and the examples are even more aplenty.

Noteworthy acquisitions within the retail and manufacturing industries are slowly eating away at Vietnams homegrown heavy-hitters and paving the way for foreign companies to steadily accumulate corporate market shares.

Japanese retail giant AEON gained its foothold in Vietnam by acquiring local chains Fivimart and Citimart.

Vietnam's top plastic makers Binh Minh and Tien Phong were both acquired by Thai-owned Siam Cement Group, and Fan Vietnam JSC had a 65 percent stake purchased by Frances SEB.

Tough decision

V.C., the CEO of a heavy industry firm who built his company from scratch, made it no secret that the countrys business environment was the main reason for him to sell 40 percent of [his] flesh and bone.

I was involved in a myriad of challenges at the time, he said.

While the heavy industry sector requires huge initial costs, it promises nothing but risks."

More importantly, he shared, are the unstable policies toward businesses, which are usually adjusted in ways that create more difficulties for 100 percent Vietnamese-owned firms than for joint ventures between domestic and foreign investors.

V.C.s decision to sell part of his company was steeped in his belief that a foreign holding would allow him to avoid red tape and petty corruption related to Vietnams administrative procedures and formalities.

Had it not been for my disappointment with the bureaucratic paperwork and policies that hindered domestic companies at that time, I would have never sold my company, even if I was in severe financial trouble, he underlined.

In the end, V.C. said it was a tough, but correct decision to make.

Ill never regret this, he said.

Employees of Binh Minh Plastics, which sold 29.51 percent of its stakes to Thailand's NawaPlastic Industry, are seen at the company's factory. Photo: Tuoi Tre

Stop relying on foreign forces

From an expert perspective, Professor Tran Van Tho, a member of an economic consulting panel for Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc, finds the trend quite worrying.

Tho said the phenomenon, whereby Vietnamese companies are willing to sell themselves to foreign investors after achieving a certain level of growth and development, needs to be carefully studied.

Right on their home soil, Vietnamese companies still hold a much weaker competitive edge than their foreign rivals, Tho told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper in an interview.

The foreign sector currently accounts for 50 percent of Vietnams industrial output and 70 percent of the countrys export value.

If more Vietnamese companies are sold to international owners, the countrys reliance on the foreign sector will only become bigger, Tho warned.

As Vietnam speeds up its privatization plan for state-run companies, Tho said the foreign factor should be taken into serious consideration.

While privatization of state enterprises is a must, we should be cautious [with foreign stakeholders], he said, suggesting that domestic businesses be given the opportunity to join this effort.

By doing so, state-run companies will remain Vietnamese-owned following their privatization, he said.

Why should we rely so much on foreign forces for our own development when we have a population of nearly 100 million? This will leave a strong impact on our national pride and confidence.
Authorities in Ho Chi Minh City do not encourage the offering of any additional drinking services along a downtown pedestrian street amid complaints of its deterioration into a giant booze hub.

Local officials envision Bui Vien Walking Street in District 1 to be more of a tourism destination hospitable to both expats and foreign tourists.

But the pedestrian zone has attracted much infamy in recent times, with alcoholic-serving restaurants and bars crowding up the sidewalks and street fights having escalated into a daily occurrence here.

A fight erupted at Bui Vien when a Vietnamese actor brawled with a security guard on June 11, 2017.

On March 18, 2018, another scuffle broke out between a foreigner and a waiter at a roadside bar.

All this has thus unnerved residents and officials alike.

We do not approve of any more beer and alcohol places along Bui Vien but we need more souvenir shops and convenience stores, Tran The Thuan, chairman of the Peoples Committee of District 1, said at a meeting on Thursday.

Thuan said that local authorities have started taking ample measures to address the drinking-related problem on the street, including sudden checks on restaurants and bars, compelling their relevant owners and employees to take part in workshops and training sessions, and putting a cap on beverage consumption along the pedestrian street.

Two more police forces will be stationed along the street to reinforce order, the chairman said, adding that this is only deemed a precaution, as there have merely been two petty thieveries there in recent times, both of which were quickly dealt with.

Bui Vien is a famous street in Pham Ngu Lao Ward, District 1, where there is a vibrant community of expats and foreigners.

On April 30, 2017, the street was officially turned into a pedestrian zone, seen as an alluring and must-go tourist attraction.
The U.S. handed off a significant military package, including six brand-new fast-response Metal Shark patrol boats, to the Vietnam Coast Guard during a ceremony on Phu Quoc Island off southern Vietnam on Thursday.

The transfer formed part of the innaugral visit made by Vice Admiral Fred M. Midgette, Commander of the U.S. Coast Guard Pacific Area, to the Southeast Asian country, the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi said in a press release.

Vice Admiral Midgette is responsible for all U.S. Coast Guard missions within the half of the world that ranges from the waterways within the Rocky Mountains in North America to the waters off the East Coast of Africa.

Aside from the patrol boats, the package was comprised of US$20 million worth of infrastructure and equipment, including a training center, maintenance facility, boat lift, vehicles, and a navigation simulator.

The fast-response Metal Shark boats the U.S. handed over to Vietnam are seen on Phu Quoc Island, off southern Vietnam. Photo: U.S. Embassy in Hanoi

Vice Admiral Midgette and several other U.S. officials oversaw the handover at Vietnams Coast Guard Region 4 station on Phu Quoc, the farthest southwestern territory of Vietnam.

The transfer marks another significant milestone in the bolstering partnership between the U.S. and Vietnam, and demonstrates U.S. support for a strong, prosperous, and independent Vietnam that contributes to international security and the rule of law.

This fall, we plan to break ground on the Region 3 facility in Vung Tau, U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam Dan Kritenbrink remarked, hailing that this is a truly exciting moment in the fruitful U.S.Vietnam partnership.

U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam Daniel Kritenbrink (fourth from right) poses for a photo with Vietnamese coast guard officers. Photo: U.S. Embassy in Hanoi

Smuggling, illicit trafficking, piracy and armed robbery on the high seas, illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing, and environmental degradation are just a few of the maritime-related global challenges currently facing Vietnam.

The Metal Shark boats, capable of reaching up to 50 knots (92.6 kph), are a much needed tool to aide the country in mitigating some of these threats.

The transfer is another prime example of the escalating bilateral partnership between the United States and Vietnam  following on the heels of back-to-back U.S. presidential visits to the Southeast Asian country from President Obama in 2016 and President Trump in 2017.

U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis also held several meetings in the country in January 2018 and a historic visit from U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson took place at the beginning of this month.
Check out the news you should not miss today, March 30:

Politics

-- At a Thursday reception for visiting Belarusian Deputy Prime Minister Vladimir Semashko in Hanoi, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc expressed his wish that Vietnam and Belarus will roll out measures to raise their trade over the current threshold of US$100 million as there is still huge cooperation potential.

-- The U.S. has handed over support facilities and equipment worth $20 million to Vietnam, including six brand-new fast-response Metal Shark boats which are capable of reaching up to 50 knots. The boats are said to deter bad actors from committing crimes against or near Vietnam.

Society

-- A Mandarin Airlines flight from Ho Chi Minh City to Taiwan on Thursday had to change its schedule as its captain suddenly died right before the plane departed from Tan Son Nhat International Airport.

-- Authorities in the northern city of Hai Phong on Thursday evening had to mobilize tens of firefighters and many fire trucks to put out a blaze breaking out around 6:00 pm at a wooden and plastic pallet factory in Hai An District. No casualties have been recorded.

-- Many people on Thursday night gathered to burn incense and pray for victims of a fire that killed 13 at the Carina Plaza apartment buildings in District 8 on Friday last week.

-- Chairman of Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee Nguyen Thanh Phong has signed a direction on implementing fire protection methods for apartment buildings in the city, including naming and shaming buildings which fail to meet fire safety requirements.

-- The Forest Protection Department in the central province of Quang Nam detected two serious deforestation instances in late March, with 33 trees being cut down in Dong Giang District.

Education

-- The Ho Chi Minh City Department of Science and Technology has announced its Istar Awards to honor outstanding individuals and organizations in start-up ecosystems.

Lifestyle

-- K-pop star Seohyun, member of the girl group SNSD, is creating a sensation in Vietnam after a video capturing her wearing the Vietnamese non la (conical hat) and promoting the countrys famous pho (beef noodle soup) was spread over the Internet.
Police smashed an online gambling ring worth hundreds of billions of dong (VND100 billion = US$4.4 million) in Ho Chi Minh City on Thursday.

According to VnExpress, at least five suspects involved in the gambling ring have been arrested.

Several residences across the city have been raided during this operation.

Police officers seized various items including computers, memory sticks, and written documents in three houses located in the alley at 84 Ton That Hiep Street, District 11.

A male suspect named Nguyen Van Thong, 41, was arrested at one of the three houses in the alley.

Authorities said that this large online gambling ring was organized from overseas with gamblers being Vietnamese.

All the transactions were conducted through virtual coins which could be traded for real cash by the gamblers afterward.

The investigation is ongoing.

At the beginning of March, a different large online gambling ring worth over VND1 trillion ($44 million) was cracked down in northern Vietnam.

In this headline-grabbing case, Major General Nguyen Thanh Hoa, former head of the high-tech division under the Ministry of Public Security, was arrested for being allegedly involved in running the gambling ring.

A probe into this particularly serious case is also underway, involving individuals in numerous localities and sectors across Vietnam, including members of the police force.

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Dwellers in a number of apartment buildings in major Vietnamese cities have been plagued by worries about fire prevention problems, especially in the aftermath of a fire inside the Carina Plaza apartment complex which killed 13 tenants this month.

Seventeen apartment buildings in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City were found with fire safety violations presenting serious hazards for residents.

Defective fire alarm systems surfaced as a central hazard.

In the Carina Plaza apartment complex in Ho Chi Minh City, the automatic fire warning system was operated by faulty programs, many segments of its cables broke, alarm bells failed to ring, and several electric water pumps used in the fire emergency died, according to a check by a fire prevention company in January.

The BMM apartment complex in Hanoi is also known for its notorious track record of a lax attitude toward fire danger.

Residents had lived here for nearly two years since 2014 without knowing that the building was not following fire safety regulations.

In June 2016, the buildings investors were required by the government to correct the situation, along with being handed a VND80 million (US$3,505) fine after refusing to deliver on their promise in December 2016.

Local authorities have latterly halted the complexs operation for one month to force its investors to correct the problem.

The punishment was also imposed on the SDU apartment building in Ha Dong District, Hanoi, which had been listed amongst residential high-rises as unfit for human habitation due to fire hazards.

Malfunctioning fire warning systems exist even in luxurious condominiums, resulting in complaints from multiple unit owners.

Alarm bells were once ringing loudly late into the night while there wasnt any fire or anyone turning them on, said Nguyen Sy Nam, a resident of the luxurious TNR Gold Silk Complex in Ha Dong District, Hanoi.

The technicians who checked the system blamed people walking along the apartment corridor, claiming dust from their walking gathered in the alarm device and prompted the false signal.

Many of the 400 residents in the Golden West apartment building in Hanois Thanh Xuan District gathered for a public protest to expose the unfinished fire system at this building on Tuesday.

They also pointed out that its fire hydrants contained no water, and the electric water pumps failed to work.

Flammable objects are piled up untidily at an apartment complex on Ton That Dam Street in downtown Ho Chi Minh City. Photo: Tuoi Tre

Danger also lurks when one attempts to escape from a high rise in case of an urgent incident.

The stairs of the emergency exit on several floors at the apartment building located at 283 Le Quang Dinh Street in Ho Chi Minh City have no tiles, leaving bare iron wires protruding from the surface; whilst the exit door of the top story is locked.

The apartment complex at 14 Nguyen Thi Nghia Street in the metropolis has one stairs-based emergency exit route, but enjoys a spider web of overhanging electric wires.

A small-scale fire caused by the contact of damaged electric wires occurred on the facade of the building, said Nguyen Thi Huong, one of the tenants.

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Privacy invasion and cyberbullying are on the rise in Vietnam, according to an expert speaking at the Digital Economy and Cybersecurity Policy in Vietnam workshop held in Hanoi on Thursday.

Jointly organized by the American Chamber of Commerce and the Vietnam Digital Communications Association, the workshop addressed various issues relating to the digital economy, national security, information security, and data sovereignty.

According to statistics released at Internet Day 2017 in Hanoi last November, Vietnam was ranked 6th in Asia and 12th in the world in terms of Internet users, boasting around 64 million people.

Despite its massive Internet using population, the protection of its users' privacy and personal information has been widely neglected by both citizens and the government, an issue unanimously cited as a serious problem by those in attendance.

Nguyen Quang Dong, an expert at the Institute for Policy Studies and Media Development, said that Vietnam is experiencing a fast developing digital economy but also creating a breeding ground for various cybersecurity risks.

Besides the long-realized risks of cyberattacks and cybercrime, new problems related to the invasion of privacy and the illegal exploitation of personal information for commercial and non-commercial purposes are running rampant, the expert said.

Dong also indicated that there is an increasing number of fake news being published online alongside an increase in cyberbullying aimed at businesses and individuals.

Though e-commerce has its upsides, it also carries several inherent risks, the expert explained.

Dong illustrated his point by citing a situation involving airlines leaking their customers' personal information to taxi companies.

Nguyen Minh Hong, Vice-Minister of Information and Telecommunications and President of the Vietnam Digital Communications Association, pointed out six cyber vulnerabilities that Vietnamese Internet users face  harm from social networking sites, data encryption, cloud computing, big data, Internet of Things, and personal devices.

Nguyen Minh Hong, Vietnamese Vice-Minister of Information and Telecommunications, speaks at the workshop on March 29, 2018 in Hanoi. Photo: Tuoi Tre

Lessons from other countries

Ambassador of Canada to Vietnam Ping Kitnikone was proud to share that her countrys government is among the very first pioneers to implement measures and policies aimed at bolstering cybersecurity.

A statistic provided by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce indicated that 71 percent of cyberattacks within the past two years targeted businesses.

We understand clearly that digital economies and cyberspace are being exploited by criminals, Ping Kitnikone said.

The ambassador also suggested that Vietnam optimize its resources to promote the digital economy but also remain focused on issues relating to cybersecurity.

The country needs to adopt a more thorough approach to cybersecurity in order to cope with such a complex problem, many Vietnamese experts stated at Thursdays event.

Some experts recommended that the country develop clear measures to deal with cases regarding the invasion of privacy and the piracy of digital data.

Nathaniel J. Gleicher, head of cybersecurity policy at Facebook and the keynote speaker at the event, said that cyberspace presents both opportunities and challenges, so to ensure cybersecurity, there needs to be cooperation among users, businesses, and the government.

There are billions of computers connected with one another through the Internet, so users need to place a personal focus on ensuring their cybersecurity, he emphasized.

Nathaniel J. Gleicher, head of cybersecurity policy at Facebook speaks at the workshop on March 29, 2018 in Hanoi. Photo: Tuoi Tre

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A Taiwanese pilot died on Thursday in the cockpit of a Mandarin Airlines plane preparing for take-off at Tan Son Nhat International Airport in Ho Chi Minh City.

An airport official who confirmed the incident to Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper said the pilot died from health issues.

The 35-year-old Taiwanese national was about to captain a flight bound for Taichung City, Taiwan from Ho Chi Minh City when his first officer found him passing out inside the cockpit of the Boeing 737-800 at 11:26 am.

All 162 passengers had already boarded the flight and the plane was being readied to taxi onto the runway for take-off.

The co-pilot immediately called on the crew and airport authorities to provide medical support for the unconscious captain.

He was rushed to a military hospital less than two kilometers away where doctors pronounced him dead that same day.

Passengers on the Mandarin Airlines flight were ushered back to the airport terminal and placed on a new flight later that same day.

The deceased pilot held a pilots license valid through February 2020 and a medical certificate valid through October 31 this year, according to an airport official.

The Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Ho Chi Minh City was notified of the death of its citizen, the official said.

Mandarin Airlines is an airline based in Taipei, Taiwan, under the China Airlines umbrella.

The Taiwanese carrier operates domestic and regional international flights, including weekly flights to Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.

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Police in Ho Chi Minh City are chalking up another win in their fight against illegal weapons with the capture of a leader of a social media-based illicit arms trading ring.

To Quoc Toan was apprehended during a police raid on his house on Thich Quang Duc Street in Phu Nhuan District, Ho Chi Minh City on Wednesday.

Toan, 26, is considered by police to have been the ring leader, primarily abetted by Vu Thach Vy, 18, who was arrested earlier that day while delivering weapons to a customer at Toans request.

To Quoc Toan in custody at a police station in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Photo: Tuoi Tre

Vu Thach Vy in custody at a police station in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Photo: Tuoi Tre

Toan was charged with illegal possession and trading of weapons, including collapsible batons, swords, machetes, guns, and handcuffs.

His service also provided customers with on-demand orders for weapons he did not normally stock.

The rings weapon sales were made primarily through Facebook, though posts were uploaded only occasionally and cautiously, handicapping police investigation efforts.

Toan admitted to his crimes and claimed that the weapons, which he sold for profit, had been purchased from another person.

Police said this is Toans second weapons-related offense, following an arrest on similar charges in 2017.

Authorities are still hunting for others who may have played a role in the shady business.

A police officer stands next to the weapons found in To Quoc Toans house in Phu Nhuan District, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Photo: Tuoi Tre

To Quoc Toans weapons at a police station in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Photo: Tuoi Tre

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Two Vietnamese boat captains detained by Indonesia for allegedly fishing in the countrys waters desired to have the positions at which they were caught revealed but are presented with long-winded procedural problems if their request is granted.

On April 13, 2017, armed guards from Indonesia chased the boats of Luu Van Ly and Le Thanh Thua, before arresting the men on charges that they were fishing illegally in the countrys exclusive economic zone  an area where the owner enjoys special rights in exploring and using marine resources.

Ly and Thua, who skippered the boats licensed by authorities in Vietnams Kien Giang Province, made appeals against the accusation.

They stood trial for the second time on Thursday in Ranai, the capital city of the Natuna Regency archipelago in Indonesia.

They demanded that the court determine their retrospective locations of supposed illegal fishing thanks to the GPS device installed on their boats.

I want to switch on the GPS device to show you that I was caught in the waters of Vietnam, rather than of Indonesia, unlike what was written in the Indonesian document I was forced to sign out of death threats, Ly said.

He added that he had prepared necessary equipment for operating the GPS device.

Fahri, a judge at the hearing, said he understood Lys requirement but the stage where the tool was expected to be used had passed.

This means that all the results from the proceedings and investigation into his case over the past one year must be annulled and the entire process has to be repeated if he persistently wants to have recourse to the device, according to Fahri.

Do you agree? the judge asked him about the scenario. Ly remained silent.

Luu Van Ly (front) sits inside a courtroom in Ranai, Indonesia March 29, 2018. Photo: Tuoi Tre

Christoper, Lys lawyer, reiterated that his client was innocent, underscoring Ly was fishing in Vietnams waters.

A representative from the Vietnamese Embassy in Indonesia who promised to be present at the court failed to arrive.

Ive on many occasions asked to have the attendance of a representative from the Vietnamese Embassy to guarantee the rights of Vietnamese citizens, but that person didnt come, Ly said.

At the end of the hearing, Ly wished to go to jail early so that he could have a chance to soon join his family and work again to support them.

The other captain, Le Thanh Thua, also encountered the same picturing from the judge and wanted to have early imprisonment.

The two men will receive their verdict on April 17.

Luu Van Ly (wearing glasses, a cap and a striped shirt) and Le Thanh Thua (in a red shirt) are seen outside the court building in Ranai, Indonesia March 29, 2018. Video: Tuoi Tre

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The Chinese space station Tiangong-1 is on its way down to the Earths surface after plummeting from orbit, and experts are saying that it could crash in a big fireball at some point during this coming Easter weekend  some say as early as Saturday. One of the nicknames of the space station is Heavenly Palace, which is ironic, since its now a ball of flames hurtling rapidly towards the Earth, so perhaps Hellish Palace would be a more apt name for it.

Tiangong-1 is one of the biggest space projects ever launched by China. The space station is 40 feet long and its expected to re-enter the Earths atmosphere over the next couple of days.

Thats according to the European Space Agency, who have been following this space station crash closely since it started to fall from the sky. Their current guess is that it will land between the 31st of March and the 1st of April, while the China Manned Space Engineering Office are estimating it a bit later, at either the 1st of April and the 2nd of April.

The earliest estimates were placing the crash-landing of Tiangong-1 as late as the 4th of April. But are we going to get hit by debris? A whole space station is falling from the sky  what are the chances that a little bit of debris will hit one of seven billion people who populate the Earth in the head? Well, its not all that likely, scientists are saying.

Since the space station is expected to burn up as it re-enters the atmosphere, the odds of getting hit by falling debris are one in one trillion, so dont worry.

The odds of getting hit by falling debris are one in a trillion, scientists claim

The China Manned Space Engineering Office published a report via the media outlets owned and operated by the Chinese government to assure people that there is no need to panic about the debris that will fall when the Tiangong-1 space station returns to Earth.

They put an end to the fears of any sci-fi movie scenarios like Armageddon or Deep Impact, by which there would be a huge, explosive, deadly collision with the Earth. Apparently, it will look more like a shower of meteors than a Hollywood science fiction blockbuster disaster movie.

So, in other words, China say relax (thats a t-shirt reference).

Tiangong-1 was launched back in 2011 as a forerunner to the permanent space station that the countrys leaders want to have up there in outer space by about 2022. The one that is now hurtling towards the Earth was more or less just a prototype for that one. The Chinese government announced to the UN last May that the Tiangong-1 space lab had ceased functioning way back in March 2016, but they didnt elaborate on how or why it had stopped functioning.

Tiangong-2 has already been launched

Tiangong-2, the latest prototype of Chinas planned permanent space station  kind of like the sequel to this one thats now crashing down back into our atmosphere  has already been launched. It was sent into orbit successfully back in September 2016, so this was all going on before China had even told anyone that the first one had stopped working.

The sequel, if you will, was launched into orbit from a Chinese launch centre in the Gobi Desert.

As for the crashing of Tiangong-1, it wont be anything too spectacular, but if youre lucky enough to bear witness to it, scientists say that you may see a series of fireballs when it comes down to the Earths surface. According to Markus Dolensky, who is the technical director at the International Center for Radio Astronomy Research in Australia, witnesses will only get to see these fireballs shooting across the sky if there are no pesky clouds in the way.
The Anglo American logo is seen in Rusternburg October 5, 2015. Picture taken October 5, 2015. REUTERS/Siphiwe Sibeko/File Photo

By Marta Nogueira

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Brazilian environmental regulators ordered miner Anglo American Plc <AAL.L> to halt operations in the country following a pipeline leak.

Anglo American had previously suspended mining operations in its Minas-Rio system in Brazil, which transports iron ore from the company's mine and processing facility in the state of Minas Gerais to a port in the state of Rio de Janeiro, between March 12 and March 27 following a previous leak.

"The event led the company to paralyse the process of resuming iron ore transportation," Anglo American said in a statement. "The company will also put employees on paid leave."

The pipeline carries a mixture of iron ore concentrate and water. The statement did not give any further information on the accident nor say when operations were expected to resume.

A document by Brazilian environmental watchdog Ibama seen by Reuters said Anglo American would only be allowed to resume operations once it demonstrates the pipeline's security.

(Reporting by Marta Nogueira; Writing by Bruno Federowski; Editing by Bill Trott and Jonathan Oatis)
Boris Johnson campaigning in favour of Brexit (Getty)

Britain is going to lose sovereignty when it leaves the EU in exactly a years time, according to a political expert.

The result of the EU referendum will be put into effect on March 29, 2019 when the UK formally leaves the Brussels bloc 39 years after joining.

Prime Minister Theresa May is marking the 365-day countdown to the historic day with a day-long tour of the UK.

In reality though little will change until a 21-month transition period ends at midnight on New Years Eve 2020.

And Pieter Cleppe, head of the Open Europe think tank in Brussels, says the terms of the transition period means Britain wont take back control next year  but give it up.

In an interview with Yahoo UK, the respected lawyer and political analyst said Jacob Rees-Moggs claim that Britain will become a vassal state next year is legally correct and highly ironic.

Jacob Rees-Mogg said the transition period would leave Britain as a vassal state (Getty)

Britain voted for more sovereignty and the first thing they get is a step back in terms of sovereignty, he explained.

Britain will have to copy and paste all the EU rules without being able to vote on it and they will not be at the table when the EU is negotiating trade deals with other countries.

Trade deals that, if they are implemented during that two-year period, would have to be binding on Britain.

Its very ironic that its being accepted.

But he said the UK Government have taken a calculated risk to take one step backwards in order to take two forward after the transition.

Mr Cleppe added: Theyre afraid that the whole thing would unwind if it happens in a chaotic way.

So in order to avoid that theyre saying: Lets just accept the bad transition deal, its only a limited period and its not as if the EU is going to manage to impose all the rules on us.

Story continues

Legally you can say the UK is a vassal state. In practice thats not going to be the case.

Even if the EU now tries to impose rules on EU member states they often drag their feet.

So I think its a very reasonable consideration from the Brexiteers to allow thisIt proves that the people backing Brexit are also open to compromises.

Mr Cleppe said there was a clear consensus that the EU had gained most from Brexit negotiations so far, despite Britain securing some concessions  such as the right to begin signing trade deals from next year.

He expects negotiations to become more ideological as Britains exit from the EU approaches, with posturing from both sides on issues like fishing rights and Gibraltar.

Nigel Farage dumps dead fish into the Thames in protest over EU fishing vessels retaining rights in British waters (Getty)

If theres not going to be a good deal it will be because of this posturing on both sides, he warned.

But he said he believes the EU will be forced into some climbdowns of its own in the coming months in order to strike a good deal that protects trade and jobs in Europe.

Rationality dictates both sides provide as much access to each other, as possible Mr Cleppe concluded.

If its a good deal for the UK  if a lot of trade remains open  then it will also be a good deal for the EU.

The European Commission is always blamed, even when its innocent, so certainly if it actively created unnecessary barriers to trade between Britain and the EU and this then destroys some jobs you can be sure the EU and the popularity of the EU will take a hit.

If you want to make your club appealing then you shouldnt punish those leaving  you should make it more appealing.




DUBLIN, March 30 (Reuters) - Russia has expelled one Irish diplomat, Ireland (Other OTC: IRLD - news) 's foreign ministry said on Friday, following Dublin's decision to expel a Russian diplomat over a nerve agent attack in England that the British government has blamed on Russia.

"There is no justification for this expulsion. Our staff do not engage in activities which are incompatible with their diplomatic status," a spokesman for the Irish foreign ministry said. (Reporting by Conor Humphries Editing by Gareth Jones)
SpaceX founder Elon Musk speaks at a press conference following the first launch of a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S., February 6, 2018. REUTERS/Joe Skipper

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top U.S. telecommunications regulator on Thursday gave formal approval to a plan by Elon Musk's SpaceX to build a global broadband network using satellites.

"This is the first approval of a U.S.-licensed satellite constellation to provide broadband services using a new generation of low-Earth orbit satellite technologies," the Federal Communications Commission said in a statement.

The system proposed by privately held SpaceX, as Space Exploration Holdings is known, will use 4,425 satellites, the FCC said.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai in February had endorsed the SpaceX effort, saying: "Satellite technology can help reach Americans who live in rural or hard-to-serve places where fibre optic cables and cell towers do not reach."

The Federal Aviation Administration said on Wednesday that SpaceX plans to launch a Falcon 9 rocket on April 2 at Cape Canaveral, Florida. "The rocket will carry a communications satellite," the FAA said.

The FCC said SpaceX has been granted authority to use frequencies in the Ka (20/30 GHz) and Ku (11/14 GHz) bands.

Musk, who is also the founder and chief executive of electric automaker Tesla Inc, said in 2015 that SpaceX planned to launch a satellite-internet business that would help fund a future city on Mars.

SpaceX wanted to create a "global communications system" that Musk compared to "rebuilding the internet in space." It would be faster than traditional internet connections, he said.

"This is an important step towards SpaceX building a next-generation satellite network that can link the globe with reliable and affordable broadband service, especially reaching those who are not yet connected, SpaceX Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell said.

Over the past year, the FCC has approved requests by OneWeb, Space Norway and Telesat to access the U.S. market to provide broadband services using satellite technology that the FCC said "holds promise to expand internet access in remote and rural areas across the country."

Story continues

About 14 million rural Americans and 1.2 million Americans on tribal lands lack mobile broadband even at relatively slow speeds.

FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democrat, said on Thursday that the agency needs "to prepare for the proliferation of satellites in our higher altitudes."

She highlighted the issue of orbital debris and said the FCC "must coordinate more closely with other federal actors to figure out what our national policies are for this jumble of new space activity."

(This version of the story corrects to attribute SpaceX comment to its COO in the ninth paragraph)

(Reporting by Eric Walsh and David Shepardson; Additional reporting by Munsif Vengattil and Ankit Ajmera in Bengaluru; Editing by Mohammad Zargham, Leslie Adler and Andrea Ricci)
A British soldier has been killed in a bomb blast in Syria, the Ministry of Defence has confirmed.

The soldier is understood to be a member of the Special Forces.

A MOD spokesperson said: "It is with regret that we must confirm that a member of the UK Armed Forces was killed by an improvised explosive device in Syria yesterday.

"The individual was embedded with US forces on a counter-Daesh operation when the incident occurred.

"The family has been notified and our thoughts are with them at this difficult time.

"We cannot confirm any further details at this stage."

The roadside bomb in northern Syria killed two coalition personnel, including an American, and wounded five others.

The US military did not confirm the location of the blast, but it came soon after one was reported in Manbij by a Syrian official.

Manbij, an Arab-Kurdish mixed town close to the border with Turkey, is at risk of Turkish military operation.

A US Department of Defence spokesman confirmed the American death.

The American was the fourth member of their military to have died in Syria since the US started attacking IS militants in September 2014.

US military spokesman Colonel Ryan Dillon said: "There is an investigation under way to identify who they could possibly be. We have our initial assessment and thoughts on that but we won't provide until the investigation is complete."

President Donald Trump said the US would be coming out of Syria "very soon" during a speech in Ohio on Thursday.

He said: "Let the other people take care of it now. Very soon, very soon, we're coming out."
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - More than 100 Central American migrants, including dozens of minors, were found crowded inside a sweltering truck without food or water in Mexico en route to the United States, authorities said on Friday.

The 136 migrants, from Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua, were rescued in the violent southeastern state of Veracruz after 24 hours in temperatures above 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 Celsius), Mexico's migration institute INM said.

Tens of thousands of Central Americans fleeing violence and poverty in their homelands aim to pass through Mexico to the United States every year, often transported by human traffickers who subject them to perilous conditions.

More than 800 Central American migrants have been found in truck trailers or safe houses in Mexico so far this year, according to a government document seen by Reuters.

Border apprehensions fell when U.S. President Donald Trump took office last year and vowed to stamp out illegal immigration, suggesting fewer crossing attempts, but have picked up in recent months.

The migrants in Veracruz were discovered by federal police and migration agents who heard cries for help from within the truck, which had been abandoned near a freeway.

Authorities said they counted 49 minors among the group, 13 of whom were travelling alone and will receive aid to apply for refugee status in Mexico. The adults, as well as the accompanied children, will be sent back to their home countries.

Last month, 103 Central Americans, including 36 minors, were rescued from an abandoned truck in the violent northern state of Tamaulipas, where migrants often attempt illegal border crossings.

In July, 10 people died after a truck stuffed with more than 100 Guatemalan and Mexican migrants was abandoned in a Texas parking lot.

(Reporting by Daina Beth Solomon; Editing by Bill Trott)
Alex Crawford, Special Correspondent

As pressure from the international community grows on Democratic Republic of Congo's Joseph Kabila to hold elections, Sky's Alex Crawford looks at the deepening humanitarian crisis and unrest taking hold of the country.

Warning: Some readers may find photos below distressing.

A baby with nothing, not even a name lies in a hospital cot in DRC's central hospital in Bunia, fighting to live. His tiny skeletal chest heaves up and down as he battles for every breath with under-developed lungs.

His translucent hands are about the same size as the thumb of the doctor examining him. He has no clothes, no home, not even the cot to himself. He's sharing it with the hospital's latest arrival - another baby born earlier in the day, who looks equally fragile.

The two of them hover between life and death. It's too early to say which will be their fate. But should it be life, their futures look decidedly bleak in this, one of the world's richest countries in terms of natural resources.

The babies are two of the Democratic Republic of Congo's "internally displaced", basically a fancy name for refugees in their own country.

There are 4.5 million others according to the United Nations, making them the largest number of internally displaced people in the whole of Africa. They're people who've fled violence, left their homes and run trying to find safety anywhere.

Many are severely under-nourished. Some 7.7 million people are classified as severely hungry. They're all desperately poor, prone to sickness and now living in the direst of conditions in huge squalid camps with little sanitation and where disease festers.

The statistics are shocking. Some 13.1 million Congolese need humanitarian aid. That's the same number as in Syria.

Looking at the little baby with no name battling for every gulp of air, struggling to hang on to this thread of a chance he's been given, I thought of what lay ahead for him, should he win this, the first of a lifetime of challenges.

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The dismal numbers scream out his life will be fraught with problems. Firstly, his 26-year-old mother, Lutove has to survive herself. She is also in the central hospital - but laying in a male ward because of lack of beds, weak through hunger and now ill with tuberculosis.

When we saw her, she couldn't haul herself upright and couldn't walk, she was that weak. The doctor measured her upper arms using a tape meant for babies from three months to three years.

She gave birth three weeks ago after running away from machete-wielding men who attacked her village for the second time. She was 28 weeks pregnant at the time.

The stress and panic triggered the birth of her baby some 14 weeks early. With little food throughout her pregnancy, she was under-weight and under-nourished and her baby son was born weighing less than half a bag of sugar.

Three weeks of hospital care had helped but when we saw him, he was still only 750 grammes with ribs which stuck out so you could count each and every one of them.

The central hospital paediatric wing is filled and overflowing into tents outside with mothers and babies lining the pavement and corridors.

Inside, there are frequently two babies to a bed. All of them are the children of the "internally displaced" - hungry, vulnerable to disease which is easily spread in the poor living conditions they now find themselves.

It is a miserable lot - and many believe this is man-made tragedy - caused by decades of ethnic conflict, multiple militias controlling and fighting for territory, rampant corruption and a president whose term expired last year but who's still clinging to power whilst most of his country cling to life.

DRC should be one of Africa's rich countries. It's Africa's largest copper producer and has more than half of the world's supply of cobalt laying beneath its soil. But it ranks very low on the UN Human Development Index.

President Joseph Kabila is now under pressure from the international community to hold elections as soon as possible as parts of his country descend deeper into chaos.

The baby with no name hardly has the strength to cry - but the cries around his country are growing louder and stronger for a new leader who may give fresh hope to the world's most complex and longest standing humanitarian crises.
The earthquake took place off the coast of Papa New Guinea: US Geological Survey

An earthquake has struck off the coast of Papua New Guinea, it has been reported.

It was measured at a magnitude of 6.9 on the Richter scale.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre (PTWC) issued a warning and forecast hazardous waves from the coast.

"Government agencies responsible for threatened coastal areas should take action to inform and instruct any coastal populations at risk," the PTWC said in its alert.

"Persons located in threatened coastal areas should stay alert for information."

The quake, which was very shallow below the seabed and close to the coast, struck at 07:25 am on Friday (21:25 GMT on Thursday) and was centred 100 miles southwest of Rabaul, a township in East New Britain province.

Australian authorities said there was no threat to their coastline from the quake, which was initially reported as a magnitude 7.2.

Papua New Guinea lies within the complex zone of collision between the Australian Plate and the Pacific Plate.

It is one of the world's poorest countries and is still reeling a month after a magnitude 7.5 quake which killed at least 100 people as landslides buried villages
FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump takes part in a forum called Generation Next at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, U.S., March 22, 2018. REUTERS/Leah Millis/File Photo

Thomson Reuters

By Jarrett Renshaw

NEW YORK (Reuters) - President Donald Trump's advisers have urged him to let Congress take the lead in efforts to lower the cost of the nation's biofuels policy for refining companies, and to use executive action only if lawmakers fail to make progress, according to three sources familiar with the discussions.

The recommendation underscores the difficulties the White House has faced in attempting to tweak the Renewable Fuel Standard, a decade-old law intended to help farmers and reduce fuel imports that has for years divided the corn and oil industries. The RFS requires refiners to cover the price of blending biofuels like corn-based ethanol into the fuel supply, creating a lucrative market for growers but a headache for refiners who say it costs them a fortune.

Trump's White House has hosted a series of meetings in recent months between the key political constituencies aimed at finding executive- or administrative-level changes acceptable to both sides - including potentially capping the price of blending credits that refiners must acquire to prove compliance.

But the efforts exposed gaping divisions between the corn and oil lobbies, along with disagreements between integrated refiners like BP and ExxonMobil and merchant refiners like PBF Energy, over solutions.

That means any action by the White House will upset at least one faction of Trump's base, according to the sources, who asked not to be named as they were discussing a confidential matter.

Two of the sources said that Trump had agreed to heed his advisers' recommendation to leave the issue to Congress, while leaving open the option to act if Congress balks. The third source said it was not yet clear what Trump would do.

White House spokeswoman Kelly Love did not respond to a request for comment. Officials at the Environmental Protection Agency - which administers the RFS - and the U.S. Department of Agriculture also did not respond to requests for comment.

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EPA head Scott Pruitt and Agricultural Secretary Sonny Perdue have been compiling a list of executive and administrative level options for Trump to consider to tweak the RFS, the sources said. The list would likely include caps on compliance credits and lifting summertime restrictions on the use of higher-ethanol blends of gasoline.

Shifting the issue to lawmakers would put the spotlight on Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn, who has been leading legislative efforts to reform the RFS. Cornyn's office says it has been trying to win support from the corn and oil industries for a comprehensive reform bill that is still being drafted.

Underscoring the stakes, merchant refiner Philadelphia Energy Solutions filed bankruptcy in January, blaming the cost of compliance for their financial woes.

Reuters reported that other factors may also have played a role in the bankruptcy, including the withdrawal of more than $590 million in dividend-style payments from the company by its investor owners.

(Reporting By Jarrett Renshaw; Editing by Richard Valdmanis and Bernadette Baum)

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A fire broke out on a Delta Air Lines flight after a mechanical problem forced it to return to Atlanta International Airport shortly after takeoff on Thursday, March 29.

Ronnie Fernando, who was travelling in a nearby aircraft, took video showing smoke billowing from the Delta plane at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.

The plane was travelling to Ecuador when a mechanical issue forced it to return to Atlanta, the landing gear caught fire after landing, CBS News reported. The flames were quickly extinguished before the passengers were taken to a replacement aircraft to continue their journey, the report said. Credit: Ronnie Fernando via Storyful
FILE PHOTO - Cyprus' President Nicos Anastasiades delivers a speech during an investiture ceremony at the House of Representatives in Nicosia FILE PHOTO - Cyprus' President Nicos Anastasiades delivers a speech during an investiture ceremony at the House of Representatives in Nicosia, Cyprus February 28, 2018. REUTERS/Yiannis Kourtoglou

ATHENS (Reuters) - Leaders of Cyprus's two ethnically split communities have agreed to an informal meeting on April 16, the United Nations mission on the island said on Friday.

The meeting between Greek Cypriot leader Nicos Anastasiades and Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci will be the first since U.N.-led peace talks collapsed in acrimony in Switzerland in July 2017.

The two sides had then disagreed on the future role Turkey could play in a post-settlement Cyprus, split in a Turkish invasion in 1974 after a brief Greek-inspired coup engineered by the military which was then ruling Greece.

The evening meeting on April 16 does not herald the start of a new round of peace talks, but would clarify where the sides stand on the issue.

The perils of a deadlocked process have come into sharper focus after a public spat between Cyprus's internationally-recognised Greek Cypriot government and Turkey in overlapping claims of jurisdiction for offshore oil and gas research.

A vessel charted by Italy's state-controlled Eni was unable to reach an area Cyprus licensed for drilling because of Turkish military manoeuvres in a two-week standoff in February.

Turkey has vowed to prevent what it sees as a unilateral move by Greek Cypriots to claim offshore resources as its own, but EU member Cyprus has shown no signs of backing down.

Brussels has urged Turkey to avoid threats and refrain from actions that could damage relations with the bloc. Last week EU leaders condemned what they described as 'continued illegal actions' by Turkey in the Eastern Mediterranean.

The encounter between Akinci and Anastasiades will take place at the residence of the U.N. envoy on the island, Elizabeth Spehar, in a 'buffer zone' compound used by peacekeepers straddling the two sides in Nicosia, the divided capital.

A U.N. mission has been on the island since the early 1960s, when a power-sharing administration between Greek and Turkish Cypriots crumbled amid violence just three years after independence from Britain.

(Writing By Michele Kambas; Editing by Richard Balmforth)
By Brendan Pierson

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Iranian chairman of a Maltese bank on Wednesday pleaded not guilty to U.S. charges that he took part in a scheme to evade U.S. sanctions against Iran by funneling more than $115 million from a Venezuelan company to an Iranian company through the U.S. financial system under a construction contract.

Ali Sadr Hashemi Nejad, chairman of Maltese-registered Pilatus Bank, entered his plea at a court hearing before U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Moses in Manhattan. Moses denied Sadr's request to be released on bail, saying his wealth and connections around the world pointed to a high risk that he would flee.

Andrew Bauer, Sadr's lawyer, argued during the hearing that his client was unlikely to flee in part because he has ties to the United States, saying he was married to a U.S. citizen and is a legal resident of the country. He said Sadr's wife and children were living in London while their residence in Washington, D.C., was being renovated.

Sadr, 38, was arrested last week on charges including conspiracy to violate U.S. sanctions and money laundering.

Prosecutors said Sadr helped hide the fact that a Venezuelan state-owned energy company was paying his family's Iran-based Stratus Group conglomerate in U.S. dollars through the U.S. financial system under a 2006 construction contract, violating sanctions. They said Sadr used Swiss and Turkish entities to conceal the Iranian connection to the funds.

Prosecutors said that under the contract, the Venezuelan company had agreed to pay a Stratus Group affiliate $476 million to build 7,000 housing units in Venezuela, of which more than $115 million was actually paid. They said the deal arose from agreements between the governments of Iran and Venezuela to cooperate on building housing in the South American country.

Bauer said at Wednesday's court hearing that the payments were not made for the benefit of Iran's government, and that Sadr's father, who founded Stratus Group, was at one point imprisoned in Iran for opposing the government.

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Pilatus Bank's assets were frozen by the Malta Financial Service Authority following Sadr's arrest. Six members of the European Parliament this week called for the European Central Bank to reconsider Pilatus' banking license and screen the Maltese banking sector for more financial crime.

Malta's police have said the suspected sanctions busting did not involve Maltese citizens or institutions and that no transactions passed through Malta.

Pilatus has not responded to requests for comment.

(Reporting by Brendan Pierson in New York; Editing by Leslie Adler)

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TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's defence chief welcomed on Friday the planned resumption of U.S.-South Korean joint military exercises, saying the annual drill set to start on Sunday would add pressure on North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons programme.

"It's our understanding that the exercises will be of a similar scale to past years. In order to make North Korea respond properly, they play an important role," Japan's Minister of Defence Itsunori Onodera said at a regular news briefing.

The one-month Foal Eagle field exercise is scheduled to begin on Sunday, with the computer-simulated Key Resolve drill to be held for two weeks starting in mid-April. Around 24,000 U.S. troops and 300,000 South Korean personnel will take part in the exercises, according to the Pentagon.

The resumption of the joint training comes after Seoul and Washington said in January they would delay the exercises because of the Winter Olympics held in South Korea in February.

(Reporting by Nobuhiro Kubo; Writing by Tim Kelly; Editing by Paul Tait)
PRISTINA (Reuters) - Kosovo police said on Thursday they had arrested six Turkish nationals linked to schools financed by the Fethullah Gulen movement, which Ankara has blamed for the failed coup in Turkey in 2016.

A police statement said raids connected with the arrests were continuing but did not say why the six Turks were taken into custody or provide further information for the time being.

Nazi Ulus, principal of one of the schools, told Reuters that one of the arrested Turks, Mustafa Erdem, was the director of all Gulen schools in Kosovo. He had no further information.

Some Balkan countries have faced pressure from Ankara to close private schools linked with Gulen, a U.S.-based Muslim cleric accused by Ankara of orchestrating the July 15 coup attempt. He denies any connection with the would-be coup.

But Kosovo, whose population is mainly Muslim, had said it had no plans to close down Gulen schools.

Turkey is a major supporter of impoverished Kosovo, which declared independence from Serbia in 2008, and Turkish firms run the tiny Balkan country's sole airport and electricity network, and are building two highways worth around $2 billion.

At its peak, the Gulen movement operated schools in 160 countries, from Afghanistan to the United States. Since Ankara declared the movement a terrorist organization two years ago, it has pressured allies to shut down Gulen-run establishments.

In Turkey earlier on Thursday, the broadcaster CNN Turk said prosecutors ordered the detention of 70 serving army officers over alleged links to Gulen.

(Reporting by Fatos Bytyci with additional reporting by Dominic Evans in Istanbul Writing by Ivana Sekularac; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

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The Brooklyn Museum on Monday named a white woman as the incoming curator of African art, promptly sparking criticism from people who said the position should have gone to a person of color.

Kristen Windmuller-Luna is slated to take over managing the museum's African art collection in April, the museum said in a press release. It also announced Drew Sawyer, who is also white, was appointed as the new photography curator.

We are thrilled to welcome Drew and Kristen to our fantastic curatorial team during this period of great momentum as we expand exhibitions, public programs, and educational reach, said Anne Pasternak, the museum's director.

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"Windmuller-Luna will assess and rethink the Brooklyn Museums extensive holdings of African art, which is comprised of more than 6,000 objects, and organize an innovative, freshly conceived temporary installation showcasing the breadth and depth of the collection," the statement continued.

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Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Windmuller-Luna earned her Ph.D. and M.A. in art and archaeology from Princeton University and her B.A. in the history of art from Yale University. She is currently a lecturer in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University and specializes in the early modern period and Christian Ethiopia.

But it's not her bona fides that many critics took umbrage with.

"Were the majority of African Americans privy to this.job [sic] opening? I'm not questioning their credentials," tweeted SpinsterExtraoinair. "I'm questioning @brooklynmuseum process in making their choice."

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Some critics, like art historian and Cornell University professor Ananda Cohen-Aponte, pointed to parallels between the new hires and a scene out of the smash-hit movie "Black Panther," in which a white curator approaches a black man in a museum and offers a history lesson on the artifacts on display. The visitor then asks the woman how she thinks her ancestors came by the objects: By paying a "fair price" or pillaging them "like they took everything else."

"This by no means discredits the achievements & qualifications of these curators," Cohen-Aponte tweeted, "but saw this story making the rounds on my FB & can't help thinking how tropes of museum curators as gatekeepers (eg, #BlackPanther) draw on real world examples #POCarthistory."

A 2015 report on the demographic makeup of art museum staff by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation found that just four percent of art curators, conservators, educators and senior museum staff are African-American.

"For folks joining the conversation around @brooklynmuseum's recent hire," Cohen-Aponte tweeted, "check out the growing #POCarthistory thread of art historians of color on Twitter, where many are discussing the larger structural forces behind inequities in the field beyond one individual & institution."

"My aim is to bring greater representation to art history as a whole," she added. "This is not about 'counting grains of pepper in the salt shaker.' As it stands, scholars of color are severely underrepresented as a wholein the museum, the gallery, the university."

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Not all in the art world, however, were outraged over the hires.

"The outrage around Brooklyn revolves around public misconceptions[...] that African art scholars and curators are largely people of color," Steven Nelson, an African and African American art history professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, told Newsweek. "Yet the field of African art history in the U.S. is largely white and female. I am one of a small handful of African Americans who specialize in African art history."

Nelson said he's known Windmuller-Luna since she was a graduate student at Princeton. "She is richly deserving of the Brooklyn position," he said. "It's also noteworthy that Brooklyn, even with these hires, has one of the most diverse curatorial staffs of any major American museum.

Nelson also pointed to the lack of controversy surrounding Sawyer, the incoming photography curator, and said the whole controversy is enigmatic of a larger problem in the art world.

"The frustration is based on larger systems of exclusion in the art world," he said. "Its a larger problem in art history and curatorial fields that weve done a very poor job of attracting people of color not only to African art but art history in general."

"Why aren't you all equally upset that Brooklyn hired a white curator for photography?" Nelson tweeted. "It's because of your misconceptions that those who study African art are black and those who study other things aren't. You all need to check your assumptions."

This article was first written by Newsweek

More from Newsweek
Under the leadership of former secretary of state Rex Tillerson, oil giant Exxon Mobile signed a $120 million deal for an oil block in Liberia that company officials knew was rife with corruption, according to a new investigation by the transparency organization Global Witness.

The deal between Exxon and the Liberian company Broadwar Consolidated/Peppercoast (BCP) was signed in 2013 despite Exxons concerns that the deal could violate U.S. anti-corruption laws. The investigation by Global Witness showed that Exxon executives were aware that the oil block they purchased was part-owned by former politicians who had taken ownership of the block through illegal means.

Exxon knew its purchase might enrich these former politicians. The company also knew the oil block had originally been awarded to BCP after Liberias oil agency paid bribes, the report read.

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Despite these corruption red flags, Exxon didnt walk away from the deal. Instead, it engineered a plan to skirt U.S. legal exposure, using the Calgary-based Canadian Overseas Petroleum as a go-between to purchase the block, the report continued.

The six Liberian officials who approved Exxons purchase were also simultaneously awarded suspicious payments of over $200,000 each by Liberias oil agency, according to the report. One of the officials was Robert Sirleaf, the son of Liberias then-president Ellen Sirleaf.

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The payments were probably made from the same bank account into which Exxon had just deposited $5 million for Block 13, although there is no evidence that Exxon itself directed or knew about payments to officials, according to the report.

At the same time the deal was moving forward, company representatives, including Tillerson, lobbied the U.S. government to strike down a section of the Dodd-Frank Act that requires resource extraction companies like Exxon disclose payments made to foreign governments for the commercial development of natural resources. Tillerson had reportedly argued to members of congress that oil companies should not be required to disclose these payments.

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The rule, known as Section 1504, has never come into force because Congress struck down its implementing rule around the same time Tillerson became secretary of state.

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"The law requires companies report their project level payments to governments. It's been law since 2010, but it hasn't had an implementing rule," Stefanie Ostfeld, deputy head of Global Witness in the U.S., told Newsweek. "They overturned the rule in 2017, the same day Tillerson was sworn in as Secretary of State...So the law is still in tact, but it doesn't have an implementing rule so companies don't have to report."

International development groups have argued that striking down Section 1504 would create an environment in which corruption could flourish. Meanwhile, the anti-corruption group Transparency International has noted that corruption is a systemic problem in Liberia.

Liberia has a protracted history of corruption and bad governance, which have consistently undermined sustainable development and effectiveness and efficiency in public service, Anderson Miamen, the organizations executive director for Liberia, said in a statement in January.

Exxon did not respond to requests for comment from Newsweek or Global Witness in time for publication. The Canadian company used as an intermediary told Global Witness it was aware of the concerns about the oil blocks minority shareholders, but that the companys own due diligence did not reveal anything problematic about the deal.

This article was first written by Newsweek

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With Easter Sunday just days away, children across the country will be on the hunt for eggschocolate and chicken. Researchers, on the other hand, have been hunting for the secrets behind eggshells. These shellsdelicate but strongcould help scientists create new kinds of tiny structures.

So, what makes the humble egg crack?

Scientists from the United States, Canada, Germany and Spain have been working to solve the mystery. They discovered a particular protein is key to understanding, and reproducing, eggshells, according to research published this week in Science Advances.

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3_29_Eggs

Eduard Korniyenko/Reuters

Eggs, it turns out, are pretty special.

"The shell is remarkably strong and tough to serve its function," Marc McKee, a professor of mineralized tissue cell biology at McGill University, Quebec, told Newsweek.

Yet, over time, the shell becomes thinner and weaker, making it easier for chicks to crack their way out.

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The structures are also remarkable for their rapid formation.

A laying hen forms a 0.2-oz eggshell in about 17 hours almost every day, said McKee, who is one of the study authors. That makes them one of the fastest known mineral systems produced by a living organism. McKee has been studying the incredible vessels for well over a decade.

Advances in imaging have allowed McKee and his team to uncover their secrets. Researchers cut a very thin slice of eggshell and imaged its internal structure. They used a powerful microscope to look all the way down to the atomic crystal planes of the eggshell's mineral nanostructure, McKee said.

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3_29_Monkeys Eggs

Toby Melville/Reuters

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The team found different amounts of a protein called osteopontin in different layers of the shell. The harder the layer, the higher the concentration of osteopontin. This protein, they thought, might be behind an eggshells changing strength.

To test this theory, the researchers grew these same mineral crystals in the presence of osteopontin. Again, they found that higher osteopontin concentrations led to harder shells. The protein, it seems, is critically important for an eggshell's structure.

Related: An extraordinary egg has been found that has left experts baffled

The researchers think their work could impact numerous industries. Lightweight but strong nanomaterials like their recreated eggshell are revolutionizing everything from electronics to healthcare.

Learning more about the shell's structure, McKee said, could even improve eggs themselves. Weaknesses and holes can leave eggs open to contamination. Working out what makes them crackor notcan help the food industry breed more of those hens that produce the strongest eggs.

This article was first written by Newsweek

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The now defunct Chinese space station Tiangong-1 is en route to crash into Earth  completing its atmospheric reentry phase. While experts have been aware that this would happen for more than a year, there has been huge uncertainty around the exact timing. As the stations orbital altitude has decreased, however, this uncertainty has gradually reduced and it is now possible to determine that it will deorbit within a few days.

Most of the 8.5-tonne station will burn up and disintegrate as it passes through the atmosphere, though some debris may hit Earth. And although we have the capability to precisely control a spacecraft such as Rosetta  which orbited a few km away from comet 67P while being 405m km away from Earth and travelling at 55,000km per hour  we cannot actually predict the time and place of Tiangong-1s potential impact on Earth, despite it being only 200km above us.

But why is it so difficult, and will science one day help us nail such predictions?

Newtons laws tell us that satellites orbit the Earth in perfectly circular or elliptical orbits, repeating their path again and again (assuming that gravity is the only force acting on them). However, this is not true at low altitudes, say below 1,000km, because the satellite is then moving through the Earths atmosphere. This causes aerodynamic drag (air resistance)  a force that opposes the satellites velocity, which effectively turns the orbit into a downward spiral towards the Earths surface.

Michael P. Kleiman, 377th Air Base Wing Public Affairs , CC BY

In theory, we can calculate drag perfectly to predict the path of a satellite. This can be done using an equation that depends on the velocity of the satellite (v), the density of the atmosphere (), a numerical coefficient that depends on the shape of the satellite and its orientation with respect to the airflow (C), and the objects area (A). For those who are interested, the equation is: D =   C    A  v. But you dont have to understand the equation to grasp why it is so hard to calculate drag.

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The spacecrafts velocity is easy to measure fairly accurately using observations. However, the other parameters are highly uncertain  making it difficult to determine Tiangong-1s path. For vehicles such as cars and aircraft, C can be estimated theoretically or with computational fluid dynamics and measured experimentally in a wind tunnel. The main problem here is that Tiangong-1s shape is complex, and the object is uncontrolled and tumbling chaotically, resulting in a constantly changing C.

The other unknown is the density of the atmosphere, which decreases with altitude. However, particularly at high altitudes, this varies due to a number of unpredictable factors  the most important of which is solar activity.

The solar magnetic activity follows an 11-year cycle, which results in a periodic increase and decrease of the amount of radiation and charged particles emitted. These interact with a part of the Earths atmosphere called the ionosphere, changing its density. A good indicator of solar activity is the number of observed sunspots. But while the solar cycle can be monitored, the level of activity also changes unpredictably, leading to unpredictable changes in the density of the atmosphere.

Another important factor is that the satellite will disintegrate and burn during the final phases of reentry, adding further uncertainty to all terms of the drag formula.

ESA/ESOC

This explains why it is near impossible to predict an impact point (or region) along the satellite path. That said, you can get a rough idea of the area of probable impact, based on the inclination of the spacecrafts orbit. We know that Tiangong-1s orbit only enables it to reenter between the latitudes of -43 (north) and +43 (south) degrees around the equator. As you can see in the map above, this leads to an extended band of probable impact, mainly south of the equator.

Technological improvements

To prevent accumulation of debris in orbit around the Earth, which can pose a threat to spacecraft and satellites, it is now recommended that satellites in low Earth orbit are commanded to reenter Earths atmosphere within 25 years of mission completion.

It is therefore of growing importance to be able to avoid threats to population and objects on Earth as these spacecraft crash. Models and experimental data for atmospheric drag are continuously being improved, but it is unlikely that they will ever reach the required accuracy to allow us to predict exact impact points.

Instead, future satellites need to be designed with reentry as a crucial part of the mission. Active and controlled reentry  for example, by using drag sails or thrusters  could reduce uncertainties and ensure that the satellite burns completely in the atmosphere while following a trajectory carefully calculated in advance.

Satellites should also be designed and tested such that, during reentry, they fragment in a desired way and not cause a threat to Earth. This concept, analogous to controlled deformations in cars to protect the passengers in an accident, is known as design for demise. This is not something that is enforced today.

There can always be improvements in safety. But even though the spacecrafts reentry isnt controlled or predictable, we neednt worry about being struck by it. The odds of you being hit are next to zero, while the chances of it striking anyone at all are about one in 3,200.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The Conversation

Matteo Ceriotti receives funding from the European Office of Aerospace Research and Development.
In a rambling speech billed as a curtain raiser for his $1.5 trillion plan to rebuild the nations crumbling infrastructure, President Trump veered off topic numerous times, at one point mocking his predecessor for leaving him a high number of court vacancies.

You know when I got in, we had over 100 federal judges that werent appointed, Trump told a small crowd Thursday at an Ohio factory. I dont know why Obama left that. It was like a big beautiful present to all of us. Why the hell did he leave that? Maybe he got complacent.

Trump did indeed inherit 103 judicial vacancies from President Obama, though the explanation has nothing to do with complacency. When Republicans took control of the U.S. Senate in 2015, they made sure to bring the process of confirming judges appointed by Obama to a near halt.

President Donald Trump walks on stage before speaking at Local 18 Richfield Training Site, Thursday, March 29, 2018, in Richfield, Ohio. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

As the Washington Post reported, 25 of Obamas court nominees had been approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee, but were not given final Senate votes before the chamber broke for the holidays at the end of 2016.

This was part of a strategy concocted by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to thwart Obamas agenda, which he also employed to keep a Supreme Court seat open. The nomination of Obamas choice, Merrick Garland, expired without a vote, and Trump got to appoint Neal Gorsuch instead.

Ive never said this before, it was like the gift from heaven. We were left judges. Theyre the ones that judge on your disputes, Trump said. They judge on whats fair on the environment and whats not fair, where theyre going to take your farms and factories away and where theyre not.  Amazing. It was the gift. Thank you very much, President Obama, we all appreciate it.

Read more from Yahoo News:
By Allison Lampert

MONTREAL (Reuters) - The United Nations' aviation agency is trying to facilitate talks between Qatar and its neighbors to defuse recent tensions over alleged airspace violations, but won't intervene politically in the dispute, two sources familiar with the matter said this week.

The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) is working to organize a regional meeting for Gulf civil aviation and air traffic authorities in the next few weeks, as part of broader efforts to improve communication, one of the sources said.

Earlier this week, the United Arab Emirates accused Qatari fighter jets of flying dangerously close to two of its civilian aircraft in Bahraini airspace, in the latest of several incidents raising tension in the region.

"Sometimes if you're having a feud with your neighbor you need someone to facilitate the conversation," the source said. "I would hope that Qatar will express its needs in a way that's workable."

Montreal-based ICAO cannot impose binding rules on governments, but wields clout through its safety and security standards which are approved by its 191-member countries.

ICAO spokesman Anthony Philbin said by email that the agency is "presently monitoring these incidents and working with all of the countries concerned to help keep the skies in this part of the world open, safe, and secure for international operations."

The council, however, is not planning to intervene in these latest disputes over airspace infringement, said the second source.

Improving communication is key because Qatar has limited airspace and is part of Bahrain's Flight Information Region, the first source said.

Both aviation industry sources spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks are confidential. Bahraini, Qatari, and UAE officials could not be reached for comment.

Since January, the Gulf states have traded accusations over infringements of their respective airspace. In June 2017, the UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Egypt launched a blockade against Qatar, accusing it of supporting Islamist extremists. Qatar has denied the accusations.

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ICAO last year helped Qatar Airways access contingency routes over international waters, after the country's neighbors refused to allow the carrier to use their airspace.

In June, ICAO's governing council is expected to hear arguments by the Gulf states over the blockade, which Qatar is challenging, said the second source.

(Reporting By Allison Lampert; Additional reporting by Alexander Cornwell in Dubai; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

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Britain's ambassador to Russia has been summoned to the country's foreign ministry for talks, amid the ongoing diplomatic fallout after the Salisbury spy poisoning.

Laurie Bristow did not give details about his talks with ministers as he left the government building on Friday.

However, the foreign ministry confirmed the UK had been given one month to cut its diplomatic mission to Russia to the same size as the Russian mission to Britain.

Mr Bristow told reporters: "I have just had a further discussion with the foreign ministry in Moscow about measures both sides have taken after events in Salisbury.

"I am not going to go into details... but we will study what we have been told and make our decisions accordingly."

He added: "It is important to remember why this crisis has arisen in the first place.

"It's the use of a chemical weapon on the streets of the United Kingdom that has threatened the lives of a number of people in my country. We asked certain questions of the Russian state and have not received adequate answers.

"What you have seen in recent days, the action taken by a couple of dozen countries, is the depth of concern about the damage this has caused to international security."

It comes as Russia faces mass expulsions of its diplomatic staff around the world, with more than 150 sent back from 25 countries, and NATO.

Ambassadors from Germany, Italy, Poland and France were also summoned to the ministry on Friday for talks.

The ministry said it was summoning the envoys of countries which had taken "unfriendly steps" since the attack on Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.

Retaliatory measures were announced to ambassadors, with Germany losing four, Italy told it would lose two diplomats, and Finland to lose one. Four members of the French embassy in Russia have been expelled.

The accreditation of a member of staff with diplomatic status in the Embassy of Ireland in Moscow is also to be terminated. Ireland responded, saying: "There is no justification for the expulsion of an Irish diplomat from Russia."

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Other countries are expected to find out throughout the day how their own diplomatic missions will be affected.

The German ambassador said they were open for dialogue with Russia, but said the country "must respond" to allegations about the Skripal poisoning.

Russia has said it will respond by expelling the same number of diplomats from each country.

The US Consulate in St Petersberg will also close and 60 diplomats have been expelled.

Ms Skripal is understood to be conscious and talking having been poisoned with novichok while visiting her father in Salisbury.

Police are treating the attack as attempted murder.

Mr Skripal, a former Russian spy, has been in a critical condition since 4 March.
London stocks were set for a positive open on Wednesday, tracking upbeat sessions in the US and Asia as investors shrugged off concerns about North Korea.

The FTSE 100 was expected to open 26 points higher at 7,363.

CMC Markets analyst Michael Hewson said: "It is true that flare ups on the Korean peninsula are nothing new and previous instances have always resulted in a winding back of tension, and it would appear that US investors have decided that recent events are likely to go the same way, as the markets muscle memory of selling the panic and then buying the dip kicked in.

"In ordinary circumstances this might seem sensible, however the events of the last few weeks can hardly be described as ordinary, which suggests that markets could be being rather naive that current events can be contained."

On the data front, net lending to individuals, consumer credit, mortgage approvals and money supply are due at 0830 BST.

Hewson said: "Well get to see the latest lending data for the UK economy for July, against a backdrop of an overextended consumer. We have seen some anecdotal evidence of a bit of a slowdown in spending patterns, however its not been particularly evident in recent data with net lending still expected to be near its highest levels this year, above 5bn.

"Mortgage approvals are also expected to come in at 66k, despite July being a historically slow month in the UK housing market."

In corporate news, international specialised technical products group Diploma said it had continued to trade well in the second half of the year and remained on track to post full year results in line with expectations.

Full year reported group revenues are expected to increase by around 17% including a 9% lift from the collapse in the pound and 2% from acquisitions. On an underlying basis, after adjusting for the impact of acquisitions and currency effects, group revenues for the year are expected to increase by 6%, Diploma said in a trading statement.

WH Smith said results for the year to the end of August should hit target and that it continues to see further opportunities for international growth in via the airport market.

The Travel division, which operates outlets in train stations and airports, delivered a strong performance for the year and saw the first three Italian stores opened in Rome's Fiumicino and Ciampino airports, and one in Turin.

UK and continental Europe-focussed industrial property investor Hansteen Holdings announced the sale of Carvers Trading Estate in Ringwood, north east of Bournemouth for 7.06m, reflecting a net initial yield of 4.93% and a capital value per square foot of 137.

The company said the multi-let property comprises 51,346 square feet, benefitting from a prominent location in the centre of Ringwood and let to a variety of tenants including Topps Tiles, Screwfix, ATS Euromaster and Howdens.

Carvers Trading Estate was sold to a client of CBRE Global Investors.
Northeast Georgia Health System (NGHS) has reached a conditional agreement with the owner of Chestatee Regional Hospital (CRH)  DL Investment Holdings, LLC  to purchase the hospital property and some equipment. The agreement is contingent upon the results of a due diligence period.

Following NGHS' acquisition and reorganization of the operation, the University of North Georgia (UNG) would have the opportunity to purchase the Dahlonega, Georgia, property to help meet the university's growing educational needs, according to UNG President Bonita Jacobs.

"UNG has been exploring opportunities to add academic space for the Dahlonega Campus, and this acquisition will have a transformative impact across multiple academic programs," Jacobs said. "The healthcare sector is a broad-reaching, high-demand career area, and the facility could serve as a catalyst for interdisciplinary opportunities and collaborations to support workforce development needs, such as advanced technologies, informatics, and analytics."

State legislators have earmarked dollars in the state's 2019 fiscal year budget for the University System of Georgia Board of Regents to purchase the current CRH property from NGHS for use by UNG in the future. Acquisition of the property would require final approval by the Board of Regents later this year. If approved, the Board of Regents initially would lease the property to NGHS, which plans to conduct an assessment of the communitys healthcare needs, including evaluating the possibility of a new facility in Lumpkin County, just south of the intersection of Georgia Highways 400 and 60.

While UNG would not occupy the space for the next couple of years, Jacobs said the facility could potentially house nursing, physical therapy, and counseling education programs, as well as two existing, outreach clinics from the counseling and physical therapy departments that are designed to serve specialized health needs of the community.

"We are very grateful to Gov. Nathan Deal, Sen. Steve Gooch and the Board of Regents for their leadership in facilitating this purchase that will ensure healthcare for this rural community long-term, while also improving healthcare education opportunities," Jacobs said.

Relocating some of UNG's academic programs also could help alleviate parking and congestion on the Dahlonega Campus by shifting approximately 200 student, faculty and staff vehicles off campus on a daily basis, along with clients for the existing physical therapy and counseling clinics.

NGHS and CHR announced the deal on Friday, March 30.

"Chestatee Regional Hospital has been a vital resource for Lumpkin County and an integral part of healthcare in the region for more than 40 years," said Carol Burrell, president and CEO of NGHS. "We look forward to working with the community to better understand what care it needs and collaborating to create a plan to meet those needs in the future."

State Sen. Steve Gooch, who represents Lumpkin County in the Georgia General Assembly and also serves as executive director of Lumpkin County's Development Authority, said the deal would both stabilize the future of healthcare for Northeast Georgia and allow UNG expanded academic space.

Under the terms of the agreement, CRH is required to notify federal regulators of plans to close the hospital later this year  which would help assure existing liabilities are not tied to future owners or operators. A specific date will be set for the hospital closing during due diligence.

"Our immediate goal is to assess what is needed to re-establish high-quality healthcare services in Lumpkin County after the hospital closes," Louis Smith, president of Acute and Post-Acute Operations for NGHS, said. "Given what information we've received about existing resources, we estimate it may take as many as 12 months to complete that assessment."

During the interim, Lumpkin County officials will work with NGHS and other area healthcare providers to help ensure residents have access to emergency care. NGHS already provides healthcare services in Lumpkin County through an Urgent Care Center on Longbranch Road. The center cared for more than 8,500 people this past year and is projected to treat more than 16,000 people in 2018.
Attractions in Orlando, nightlife in South Beach, incredible sunsets in Siesta Key- we get it. Florida has some amazing places to visit.

I've been to all of them and yes, they're great. But have you ever heard of Delray Beach? I hadn't. 25-years-old and given the good fortune of traveling all over the world but I had never heard of this beachfront city. Until now.

If you're my age, you'll love it. If you're my parents' age- you'll love it. If you have little kids guess what - you'll love it.

I spent a few days in this East Coast Paradise. Here are some of the best it has to offer.

1. The beach

If you're from anywhere north of the state of Georgia, I probably don't need to say anything more, but I will. One minute you're walking along the famous A1A roadway and the next- you're crossing through draping trees only to spit out to, voila! The ocean! I have truly never been a fan of the Atlantic Coast of Florida. Call me crazy, but I grew up preferring the Gulf. I did a quick 180 on that as soon as I put my towel down on the soft and welcoming sand in Delray.

2. The people

Is it the warm weather? The sunshine? The fact that an incredible beach (see Number 1) is an arm's length away? I don't know, but whatever Delray residents are drinking, I'd like a glass. Actually, make that two.

I'm from Upstate New York and yes, I know, we've earned ourselves the reputation of less than welcoming. But how is it possible that people in this Florida city are that much friendlier? The Delray Beach Marriott staff, area restaurant servers, and bartenders were incredible all around. I felt like a new friend was around every corner.

The last time I felt that way in New York was, well, never?

3. The nightlife

So, you've taken that first step on to East Atlantic Avenue? You can probably stop reading here. Oh, you're holed up in a frigid New York apartment waiting for spring? Let me indulge you from afar, then. Light-covered trees line the strip. All but about two feet of sidewalk is taken over by outdoor diners and drinkers, and every single bar and restaurant is packed.

If you can find a barstool to take over- and don't hesitate. Seriously, not even for a second because I promise there are at least 30 other people waiting to pounce.

The first night my brain was thinking hmm, $3 draft beer or smoked old-fashioned made by a well-trained mixologist? Delray Beach was like how about both? You can find anything. The best part? For this sunshine-deprived girl, it's that seemingly every single spot has some outdoor element. It kind of makes sense that the entire downtown area feels like one giant party. Ah! That's why there are friends around every corner, they're all drinking that special Delray juice I mentioned! Where's my glass again?

4. The food

Let me say it again.

The food. A two-hour wait for sushi? Sign me up. Breakfast in what looks like an alleyway? Why the heck not. An afternoon waffle with fresh fruit from Luna Rusa and a view of the beach? Ugh, if I have to. Do I regret any of these choices? Not even a little. Everywhere I turned there was a restaurant I hadn't noticed before but was suddenly dying to try, and each one was just as good - if not better - than the last. If you're heading to Delray for three or four months have no fear! You might be able to try out every spot. If you're like me and only had a couple of days then may the odds be ever in your favor.

Any time you can spend in this captivating city is better than nothing. I promise you wont regret it.

As for me, I think a move south is in my future.
Joy-Anna Duggar Forsyth just gave birth to her first child and fans wondered if she was going to do a home birth or have the baby at the hospital. Her sisters have attempted home births. Now a blog called Keeping Up With Fundies is sharing pictures that show that the little boy was born in the hospital. These pictures were actually posted by a friend of Austin's and not by the Duggar family.

Details about the birth

Blasting News already shared about the birth of Joy-Anna Duggar and Austin Forsyth's new baby. The little boy weighed 10 lbs., 3 oz., which could have made it where she might have had complications or at least might have decided she wanted medication.

So far, the Duggars aren't sharing anything about the birth and the fans would love to know. It could end up airing on an upcoming episode of "Counting On."

The new season just started and shared all about their honeymoon. It isn't even to the point of her pregnancy yet, so it will be awhile before they talk about the birth on an upcoming episode of "Counting On."

Pictures show the hospital

The pictures on this blog show baby Gideon Forsyth being held at the hospital. Andrew Patton posted these pictures on Instagram and they show the baby and you can see the hospital in the background. Austin is also there in one of the pictures. The baby looks healthy but you can see the hospital in the background of it.

In the post, Andrew talks about how close he is to Austin Forsyth and that he can call him his brother. He also posted a picture of his wife holding the baby and mentioned that they have one on the way as well. In the pictures, the baby isn't connected to any tubes or anything so it looks like everything went well with his birth.

This is causing some speculation that Joy-Anna might have ended up having a c-section, but if so, they haven't shared that news with fans yet.

On the recent episode of "Counting On," Joy and Austin talked about having children and said they will have as many as God wants them to have. It wouldn't be surprising at all if they end up with several children just like her parents.

They seem really excited about being parents. It wouldn't be surprising if they have another baby soon.

Are you shocked to hear that Joy-Anna Duggar Forsyth looks like she had her baby at the hospital? Do you think this was a choice or from complications? Sound off in the comments below on your thoughts, and don't miss new episodes of "Counting On" when they air on Monday nights on TLC.
While it would be easy to understand why fans might feel excited about the Alaskan Bush People returning to live off the land, many fans, instead, ripped into the Browns for the facade presented on reality television. The Browns actually never survived solely off the land, according to several fans mentioned in an In Touch Weekly article on March 28.

Fans called out Rain and Gabe Brown on Instagram. Rain posted a video of herself appearing to split wood with an ax on March 2  not wearing safety glasses and not striking the wood in the same spot more than once or twice.

In Touch Weekly highlighted fans reactions, saying that it was obvious that the youngest member of the reality show family had never chopped wood previously.

Even though her older brother Gabe posted in defense of his younger sister, trying to deflect from viewers negative comments and observations, his reply only engendered more remarks. One person asked why members of the family have YouTube channels for promoting Billys (the family patriarchs) book. The same person noted on Instagram that the family traveled the U.S. in an RV while also peddling Billys book.

Bush People fans, turned off by lack of authentic living and location, could turn off the show

The unkind comments seemed to outweigh supportive social media comments, now that many viewers believe the fakeness of the family was exposed, according to In Touch.

Some fans suspect that the Discovery Channel will not have as many viewers for the Alaskan Bush People since so many people are put off by the lack of authenticity.

When the program was initially broadcast in 2014, viewers held a very different impression. Many thought that the Browns were pretty much survivalists, who managed to build a life and rather rudimentary housing for themselves by sheer know-how, trial-and-error, skill, and ingenuity  coupled with sourcing or bartering materials.

After learning that the Browns have stayed in a lodge and had accommodation that facilitated having modern technology, such as cell phones and laptops, some fans felt misled or deceived. The viewers trust was broken.

Other fans stated that they will continue watching but would have preferred if the tapings had been more honest, as well as portraying the family living naturally and without the layer of pretense.

The Brown familys togetherness is one facet that attracts that faction of viewers.

Additionally, it was pointed out by some astute photo viewers that the surroundings that the images depict are Washington state, not Alaska, and that the family is not returning to Alaska. That is something that is a distraction for fans.

Fans support Ami through cancer battle but not show fakeness

Regardless of viewers thoughts about the Browns and their actual location, is the reality that Brown matriarch, Ami, was diagnosed with lung cancer and underwent intensive treatment. Again, reality rears its ugly head. Cancer is nothing to make light of, which fans recognize. Viewers have been supportive of the Browns during Amis valiant struggle against the disease that they want her to beat.

The problem that surfaces is where the family stayed during Amis treatment: A California mansion. Again, a reminder that the familys survival is not strictly tied to their ingenuity or skillful, rustic lifestyle.

When episodes with the Browns return to Discovery, the numbers will reflect whether the creative license applied to their bush living will help sustain the show  if it does. Some fans think that the Alaskan Bush People reality show has a limited lifespan now that viewers know reality isnt all that has been presented by Discovery.

Will you watch Alaskan Bush People living in Washington state? Do you care where the show is taped?

Be sure to follow Blasting News for the latest information.
"With all the speculation surrounding the question of whether Australia's first season of "Bachelor in Paradise" would live up to the standard set by the long-running American show, I was excited to watch the first two episodes. Did they live up to the hype? It's early days yet, but I'd say we're in for some captivating drama.

Didn't have time to watch the episode or want to relive the storyline before the next episode? Read on for the highlights of episodes 1 and 2 of this new Australian Reality TV series, as well as insight into how viewers feel about the drama that unfolded before their eyes.

Set in a luxurious villa in the tropical island of Fiji, "Bachelor" and "Bachelorette" fans would have been as happy to see the familiar series' host, Osher Gunsberg, as the contestants who arrived, one by one.

FYI Id been hiding behind those frangipanis for some time. #BachelorInParadiseAU  Osher Gunsberg (@oshergunsberg) March 25, 2018

He really did appear to have appeared from behind the tree on command.

We've missed you, Osh!

I wont lie, its pretty strange seeing people again for the first time since breaking their hearts on tv. #BachelorInParadiseAU  Osher Gunsberg (@oshergunsberg) March 25, 2018

The first to enter the villa was Tara, who, in true Aussie fashion, promptly headed straight to the bar and made friends with the bartender, Wise.

It remains to be seen as to whether Wise will feature more prominently on the show, like his American counterpart.

Aside from watching the contestants getting to know each other and enjoy some sun (perhaps a bit too much in some cases), it was interesting to see how early some of the contestants began strategizing and pairing up.

With the females in the villa having the power to give out roses in the first ever rose ceremony, some of the boys evidently felt under pressure to make a connection, fast.

The love triangle/square

Almost as soon as he entered the villa, for example, Davey took Leah aside to try and win her loyalty, only to drop her when Florence appeared on the scene.

Apparently, Florence and Davey had been messaging each other on social media for some time but had never actually met until Paradise. After Davey took Florence away for a one-on-one chat, it was evident they were both keen on seeing where life in the villa could lead their relationship.

But then Davey's good friend Jake (who had dated Florence "on the outside" previously) also arrived in the villa, and Davey was torn. Which of course, is why he got the first date card of the series.

While he obviously wanted to take Florence on the date, he chose Leah instead. Why?

According to Davey, he chose Leah out of respect for Jake (in a demonstration of his "bros before ho's" mentality. But pretty much everyone in the villa (Florence included), could see that it was because he was trying to be strategic.

Because of their prior relationship, Davey was obviously concerned that Florence would give her rose to Jake.

The most frustrating thing about Davey's decision was that moment before he was given the date card, Davey was begging Flo for a date and to (ultimately) give him her rose.

I think it's fair to say that the date between Leah and Davey was as awkward and uncomfortable to watch as when you have to sit through the rejection of the runner-up at the end of "The Bachelor" and "The Bachelorette" - but without the slightly-masochist enjoyment. They kissed, but it was obvious to Leah that Davey really wasn't interested, and once they got back to the villa, it was fairly clear neither of them wanted to pursue a relationship with each other.

Meanwhile, while Davey and Leah were on their date, Florence confronted Jake about the rumor Tara told her about his reputation. Apparently, "every girl" on the Gold Coast (where Jake is from) has "a Jake story." It's unclear why the relationship between Jake and Flo had before "Bachelor in Paradise" ended, but in light of this storyline, it may have been the case that he was seeing other people.

The next day, Davey began verbally backtracking on his decision to take Leah on a date, telling anyone who would listen that he should have taken Flo. And then Jake was given the next date card, and promptly asked Flo. This infuriated Davey because he felt Jake should have prioritized their friendship over Florence, as he had apparently done.

While Jake and Flo's date was fairly romantic and they ended up kissing, it was clear there was still some underlying tension remaining from their heated conversation the night before.

Brett already has a girlfriend!

In episode 1, Tara casually mentioned she was happy to see Brett. She knew him, apparently, because he was dating her friend (Stephanie Boulton, also from Matty J's season of "The Bachelor") "on the outside." She said it so innocently, but this revelation caused a lot of confusion and unease amongst the other contestants.

And rightly so. Why exactly would you go on a reality TV show about finding love when you are already happily coupled? It became apparent that Tara wanted to keep Brett in the villa, not just because he was her friend, but because he was hoping his girlfriend would arrive in the villa at a later date, so they could have "their love story.

"

A lot of the other girls in the villa were obviously not particularly keen on this plan because they were there to meet potential partners, as this is the entire purpose of the show. When the girls communicated this to Tara, she became visibly upset because she evidently felt caught in the middle.

As it turns out, Tara was under the impression that everyone, including the "Bachelor in Paradise" production team, knew Brett was in a relationship with someone on the outside. Considering the premise of the show, I have no idea why she thought that would be allowed.

But in any case, she then began to question Brett, as did Production, breaking the "fourth wall." While Brett tried to deflect, saying he was dating someone but they weren't "Facebook official," it soon became evident that both Brett and his girlfriend had lied to Production to get on the show.

When Brett says you have to be Facebook official to be in a relationship... #BachelorInParadiseAU pic.twitter.com/5GW6hbn8UU  BachelorInParadiseAU (@BachParadiseAU) March 26, 2018

Why they didn't think they could have their "love story" outside of the villa and the "Bachelor in Paradise" bubble is beyond me.

Although actually, it's not. Obviously, they wanted the publicity.

Did no one tell Brett and Steph that they can probably buy tickets to Fiji for like $100 return? Like dudes, just go on a holiday. You are clearly not smart enough to pull a con like this off. #BachelorInParadiseAU  Dash Jayasuriya (@gameonmoll) March 26, 2018

During the conversation with Production and Brett, Tara eventually realized that two of her good friends had lied to her.

Controversy surrounding Blake

I'm not going to lie: there are a lot of people, myself included, who are very confused and angry about the fact that Blake is in the villa and on the show after pleading guilty to physical assault charges two years ago.

Several news sites reported that Blake was involved in a street fight in Perth in 2015 that left another man unconscious and bleeding from the head. Blake was convicted of the charges and ordered to pay compensation to the man he violently attacked.

Blake also had a short-lived relationship with ex "Bachelor" contestant Jen Hawke, which resulted in Jen filing an AVO against Blake and claims he was trying to sell naked images of her.

Blake = 50% douche, 50% arrogant, 100% shouldn't be given any time on a national television show #BachelorInParadiseAU  Tahlia Pritchard (@Tahls) March 25, 2018

I don't think I'd be the only one to be taken aback by Laurina's decision to give her date card to Blake.

Considering her long list of requirements in a partner, it's difficult to see how she'd ever think Blake was worth her time.

anyone else feeling weird about watching Bachelor in Paradise and just overlooking the fact that Blake Colman has a history of violence and shouldnt be anywhere near a dating show  Kristen Daly (@kristendaly) March 25, 2018

The rose ceremony

By the time of the first rose ceremony, there were already a number of un-official couples, including Lisa and Luke and Nina and Eden. This is who each of the female contestants chose to gift with their rose:

Leah gave her rose to Mack (surprising no one that she didn't pick Davey).

gave her rose to Mack (surprising no one that she didn't pick Davey). Lisa gave her rose to Luke.

gave her rose to Luke. Keira gave her rose to Sam (two late-comers).

gave her rose to Sam (two late-comers). Laurina gave her rose to Blake (!).

gave her rose to Blake (!). Nina gave her rose to Eden.

gave her rose to Eden. Tara gave her rose to Michael (considering the drama with Brett, good on you Tara!).

gave her rose to Michael (considering the drama with Brett, good on you Tara!). Florence was then forced to choose between new love interest, Davey, and old flame Jake. She chose Jake, sending both Davey and Brett home.

Next week, Ali and Jarrod arrive at the villa and things are set to spice up, with another love triangle in sight, between Jarrod, Ali, and Keira. Stay tuned for the recap of episode 3, and for more insight into how viewers are reacting to the latest drama as it unfolds.
Roseanne Barr is back and she is clearly better than ever. The new Roseanne, which premiered on Tuesday, March 27, and had a considerable amount of hype surrounding the revival, smashed it out of the park with how many viewers it brought in. The original series, which premiered in October of 1988, was a classic TV sitcom, beloved by millions and they were all sad to see it go. The first "Roseanne" came to an end nearly a decade after its premiere, finishing its run in 1997. However, no one has to watch those old reruns anymore. Roseanne is back and better than ever.

People love her more now then they did back then and the number of viewers shows it. So a lot like fine wine, Roseanne has aged well. A report by Market Watch provided a lot of the details used in this article.

'Roseanne' didnt just do well, it did great

Showing in ABCs 8 PM slot, "Roseannes" return to the sitcom throne saw her appear to an audience of just over 18 million viewers. Those 18 million viewers who tuned in to watch the return of Roseanne outnumber those who watched her leave all those years ago, so you know for a fact she was sorely missed. Not only that, but the number of viewers Roseanne managed to garner even attracted the attention of the POTUS himself. Roseanne Barr earned a personal phone call from the Oval Office that congratulated her on her return to ABC.

Roseanne Barr then tweeted out that this isnt the first time she was contacted by a president but instead the fifth time.

it was a thrill to get a congratulatory phone call from The President of The United States of America. POTUS is the Fifth President I have received support from! what a life!  Roseanne Barr (@therealroseanne) March 29, 2018

What do people think of 'Roseanne?'

The overall reaction to the new Roseanne is overwhelmingly positive, with many people thinking it marks the start of a new wave of nostalgia to sweep television and bring back other sitcoms in the same vein as "Roseanne." That trend definitely seems viable considering Netflixs revival of Full House and Gilmore Girls, renamed as Fuller House and Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life respectively, which happened in 2016.

Network TV could and should be taking a note out of Netflixs playbook and working that 90s era nostalgia angle hard. If ABC decides to revive any other of their old but not forgotten sitcoms, it is simply too early to tell. However, Roseanne has got the ball rolling, so it might be in the ABCs interest to strike while Roseanne rules the screens and the iron is hot.

Still, despite all of the success of the revival, not everyone is stoked with its return. Some cite that Roseanne Barr has had a controversial comedic career and aren't happy to see her return to prominence. Accompanying the presidential phone call also came some polarizing backlash to Roseanne Barr herself and the first family. However, time will tell if the sitcom star's controversial past and supporters will haunt the future of her show.
Coming up on The Young and the Restless, Jack Abbott (Peter Bergman) is arrested for assaulting Victor Newman (Eric Braeden). Of course, viewers know that J.T. (Thad Luckinbill) is the one who did it to Victor, shoving him down the stairs and putting him in a coma. But proving his innocence could be just one of the many things Jack has to deal with in the coming weeks.

Jack confronts Kyle

Jacks prodigal son, Kyle Abbott (Michael Mealor), is finally back in town. Kyle visits Victor at the hospital because he has to see it for himself that Victor is indeed in critical condition.

He pities that he is lying down there and says he should wake up, otherwise, he misses all the fun, according to Soaps.com.

Kyle then arrives at the reunion event at the Walnut Grove. When his father sees him, Jack immediately confronts Kyle about communicating with Victor. Kyle is betraying him and the Abbott family by working with Victor, an enemy. Kyle tries to avoid Jack, but his father is persistent. Their confrontation is interrupted when Paul (Doug Davidson) arrives at the scene and arrests Jack. Paul is taking Jack into custody for assaulting Victor.

Jabot faces a crisis

Meanwhile, more trouble is about to come to Jack. The Young and the Restless spoilers tease that Jacks world will be rocked, and Jabot will face a crisis.

Being arrested for a crime he did not do is just one of his concerns. He does not know yet that his paternity is already in question.

Ashley (Eileen Davidson) and Abby (Melissa Ordway) are collecting samples of his DNA to test. They want to know the truth after Dina (Marla Adams) spilled a shocking secret that Jack is not Johns son.

With her Alzheimers disease, it could be just a trick of her mind, but it could be the truth as well. The Young and the Restless spoilers tease that Ashley will wrestle with a painful secret in the coming weeks. If Jack is not an Abbott, his claim as the heir of Jabot will surely be at risk.

Epic drama, family scandals, and MAJOR bombshells. Whos ready for more #YR45 this week? pic.twitter.com/V9BqRiF2EG  Young and Restless (@YandR_CBS) March 28, 2018

Victor wakes up

Meanwhile, Victor wakes up from a coma at the hospital after Ashley asked him to give her a sign that Jack is innocent.

Will he reveal that it was not Jack who shoved him off the stairs? Or would he even remember what happened to him? He is scheming with Kyle, so he might take this opportunity to make Jack look guilty and deal with J.T. in another manner. Now that Kyle is back in Genoa City, he sure has some tricks up his sleeves against his father.

Watch the drama unfold on The Young and the Restless Mondays to Fridays at 12:30 p.m. on CBS.
As the city of Atlantas computer systems are still being held hostage by ransomware hackers, expert David Raymond explains how attacks like this could be merely the tip of the iceberg unless cities proactively seek network security.

Ransomware attacks on city governments, hospitals and other critical infrastructure have become very popular over the last few years as its proven to be profitable since many cities generally lack overarching security networks, Raymond said.

Another data breach affecting the city of Baltimores 911 emergency dispatch system occurred the morning of Saturday, March 24.

Background

Online systems within the Atlanta city government were breached and their data were encrypted on the morning of Thursday, March 22. The hackers are demanding $51,000 in the form of bitcoin in exchange for the return of citys the network information. City officials have not revealed a great amount of information on the breach to the public since gaining knowledge of its origin.

Quoting Raymond

Future cyberattacks on city governments such as the one on Atlanta will continue to happen as long as hackers can make a profit from their efforts.

An organization can survive a ransomware attack if they have their data backed up. The dilemma of a ransomware attack is presented if rebuilding systems from backed up data is more expensive than paying the hackers or if the breached data isnt backed up at all. Additionally, a conflict of interest exists in that there might be a policy, written or unwritten, to not pay off criminals. If Atlanta does pay its hackers, it could encourage other hackers to engage in this type of cyberattack as it would deem successful and profitable for the perpetrators in this scenario.

Its not surprising that cities haven't been proactive in establishing secure data networks because of the copious other areas of concern which cities are responsible for. They often dont consider the negative implications of lacking sufficient data security until something bad happens."

About Raymond

David Raymond currently serves as Director of the Virginia Cyber Range and Deputy Director of Virginia Techs IT Security Lab. Some of his areas of focus include cyber operations, information assurance, secure wireless protocols, and online privacy. View his full bio here.

Expertise featured in The Wall Street Journal.

Schedule an interview

To secure an interview, contact Ceci Leonard in the media relations office at ceciliae@vt.edu or 540-357-2500.

Our studio

Virginia Tech's television and radio studio can broadcast live HD audio and video to networks, news agencies, and affiliates interviewing Virginia Tech faculty, students, and staff. The university does not charge for use of its studio. Video is transmitted by LTN Global Communications, and fees may apply. Broadcast quality audio for radio is transmitted via ISDN.

Written by Justin McCloskey
Michael Madigan has been appointed as a professor in the Grado Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, part of the College of Engineering. He is one of 27 new faculty members hired by the college for the 2017-18 academic year.

Madigan's research interests include: occupational biomechanics and ergonomics, slip/trips/falls, work-related musculoskeletal disorders, and understanding the biomechanical and functional consequences of aging and obesity. Madigan's recent work focuses on fall prevention in the workplace and among older adults.

Madigan returned to Virginia Tech after having spent three years at Texas A&M University as a professor in their department of biomedical engineering. During his previous tenure at Virginia Tech he was a faculty member in the Department of Engineering Science and Mechanics, now known as the Department of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanics, beginning in 2001 as an assistant professor and then full professor. Madigan also served as an affiliate faculty member for other departments, including industrial and systems engineering, mechanical engineering, and the Center for Gerontology. Additionally, Madigan was a core member of the Virginia Tech-Wake Forest School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences.

I am thrilled to call ISE my professional home," said Madigan. "From the people in the shop, the computer systems staff, the extended staff in the departmental office, and the faculty, the industrial and systems engineering department is a welcoming, friendly, and inspiring place to work. I have already had the opportunity to meet the advisory board and make additional industry connections, thanks to the outstanding reputation of the department.

Two of Madigan's students from Texas A&M, Leigh Allin and Jessica Aviles, have followed Madigan to Virginia Tech to finish their Ph.D. degree programs. Both Allin and Aviles have degrees from Virginia Tech. Their current research interests focus on understanding factors that contribute to slips, trips, and falls, and developing practical interventions for fall prevention.

Madigan received his bachelor's and master's degrees in bioengineering from Texas A&M in 1994 and 1996, respectively, and a doctoral in biomedical engineering from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2001.

Written by Akiko Nakata and Rhonda Hawley
In autumn 2017, the U.S. Agency for International Development Mission in Egypt presented a team of Virginia Tech researchers with an urgent challenge  determine if the fall armyworm, a pest native to the tropics of North and South America that is currently devastating crops across sub-Saharan Africa, could spread into Egypt and beyond.

The U.S. and Egyptian governments concern about the fall armyworm is based on its devastating track record on the rest of the African continent since its 2016 arrival in Nigeria. The Virginia Tech-led Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Integrated Pest Management has monitored the pests rapid movement into more than 28 African countries since its emergence and is working to find potential solutions to stop it.

The worms cause defoliation, leaving behind stalks. The pest threatens to wreak an estimated $3 billion worth of damage to the continents corn crop along with 80 others, including rice, sorghum, wheat, and millet, making it vital for policymakers and farmers to know if the pest could spread into southwest Asia and Europe through Egypt.

When the request came to predict the pests potential path in Egypt, entomologist and Innovation Lab Director Muni Muniappan contacted Virginia Techs Biocomplexity Institute, where researchers helped create an accurate predictive model. Muniappan had worked with Abhijin Adiga, a research faculty member at the institutes Network Dynamics and Simulation Science Laboratory, to create models of how Tuta absoluta, also a devastating pest, could spread over road and trade networks in Nepal.

To study Egypt, the IPM Innovation Lab developed a comprehensive risk analysis of that countrys vulnerability to fall armyworm. Using sophisticated models of weather and human movement patterns, the analysis predicts the worm's entry later this year, accomplished either by its independent migration or as it hitches rides along trade routes.

Once in Egypt, the modeling shows, the pest will likely spread along the Nile River Valley, home to many plant varieties the worm seeks. Once established in the Nile Delta region, it will travel naturally to western Asia within three to four months, according to the models.

The analysis also evaluates potential crop losses and ways to reduce the adverse effects of toxic pesticides. As farmers learn to use integrated pest management tools to contain the pest, they may release local natural parasites and predators to attack the worm. The Innovation Lab has identified several species in Africa that could be effective.

According to Muniappan, this work shows the transdisciplinary approach Virginia Tech can bring to bear on complex and time-sensitive problems.

We at the Innovation Lab have expertise in entomology, plant pathology, agricultural economics, plant health, and other aspects of integrated pest management, he explained. The Biocomplexity Institute can perform sophisticated modeling that is really cutting-edge. Having them together on one campus makes us a unique team.

Agricultural officials and farmer groups in Egypt are already using the reports analysis to formulate plans to contain the pest.

The Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Integrated Pest Management is managed by the Center for International Research, Education, and Development at Virginia Tech, part of Outreach and International Affairs.

Written by Dana Cruikshank
MOBILE

FirstNet, Verizon announce core public safety networks

NOTE: This article first appeared on GCN.com

FirstNet, the nationwide public safety broadband network, on March 27 announced the launch of the evolved packet core network that will deliver mission-critical network services and enhanced data services to the first-responder community.

Until now, FirstNet's early users had been accessing the public-safety features over AT&T's commercial network. With the launch of the core, the First Responder Network Authority has laid the foundation for the delivery of advanced public safety features.

"The FirstNet core serves as the brain and nervous system of the nationwide network," FirstNet CTO and Operations Director Jeff Bratcher wrote in a blog post. Built on dedicated hardware, the core separates public safety traffic from commercial traffic and supports:

Priority and preemption capabilities, giving responders three priority levels they can use depending on their command structure or shifting needs.

End-to-end encryption, allowing responders to transmit encrypted data securely across LTE-enabled devices.

Around-the-clock security monitoring at an operations center that is scheduled to go live at the end of March.

An incident management portal that public safety officials can use to adjust users' access to network resources in near-real time.

FirstNet-ready devices, such as the recently introduced Samsung Galaxy S9/S9+.

The FirstNet core will also support future mission-critical services such as push-to-talk and z-axis location-based services to help responders pinpoint their location in high-rise buildings.

While FirstNet and AT&T complete testing of the network core, some customers will start moving to the new network as part of a controlled introduction. Testing will evaluate the functionality of the public safety features, network redundancy and overall performance of network components. Once the network is fully tested and validated -- expected in the April/May timeframe -- more users will move to the core.

The launch of the core network follows FirstNet's task order to AT&T for Band 14 deployment across statewide radio access networks.

Also on March 27, AT&T rival Verizon also announced general availability of its own public safety core network. Verizon's dedicated network offers public safety customers traffic segmentation, priority and preemption, improved security as well as enhanced service management and control, according to a company statement. Verizon's core network is built out of its commercial 4G LTE network, which it says covers 2.4 million square miles of the U.S.

Because of the size of its network, Verizon has called itself the largest provider of public safety communications in the country. In January, the company said it was working on an interconnection agreement with FirstNet and AT&T that would bring interoperability between the networks, a claim AT&T said was not true.
CONTRACT AWARD

Raytheon's BBN arm tapped for Transportation Command simulation tool

Raytheon's BBN Technologies subsidiary has received a 54-month, $44.5 million contract to develop a system for Transportation Command to assess the movement of military-related cargo and personnel.

BBN was the lone bidder for the Analysis of Mobility Platform contract and will receive funding for it through task orders, the Defense Department said in its Thursday contracts digest.

Transcom envisions the AMP system as a modeling, simulation, and optimization environment used to analyze and assess the movement of military-related cargo and personnel within the Defense Transportation System.

AMP is intended to represent all deployment and distribution that includes movement by all transportation modes within the continental U.S., inter-theater, within theater and any combination of those three.

Work will take place between April 1, 2018 and Sept. 30, 2022.
Northern State looking to buck trend against USF in Ag Bowl

University of Sioux Falls (2-1) holds the same record as Northern State so far this season, but boasts a 4-0 record against the Wolves since 2013.
Theres an abundance of work in hitting a 20-year milestone.

Its with that hard work that MasterWorks of New Mexico gets to celebrate its second decade.

The annual event began with a unique vision  one that would combine the talents and experience of existing fine arts organizations.

Lohbeck says the event began with the New Mexico Watercolor Society, the Pastel Society of New Mexico and the Miniaturists through Bardean Gallery, which she used to own.

She says the Rio Grande Art Association came under the MasterWorks umbrella in 2000 to sponsor the oil/acrylic division.

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During the MasterWorks show, there are six jurors and two judges who review all entries and then award ribbons in four divisions  miniature, water media, pastel and oil/acrylic.

Because it is a collaborative effort among the four arts groups, we have a formidable Steering Committee which meets monthly throughout the year, says founder Barbara Lohbeck. It has been important for us to communicate continuously, earning respect for each of our organizations and for MasterWorks itself. We are proud to remain loyal to New Mexico artists and invite new artists to join our efforts throughout the year. Everyone has a job within our operation and goes about doing it routinely.

Lohbeck says MasterWorks also reaches out to students.

Our mentoring event involves high school art students working one-on-one with MasterWorks artists during our Open House, she says. We also have a class for elementary-age students that same day, taught by a guest artist.

Lohbeck says the judges and jurors have been extremely qualified over the years and have given time and expertise to an exemplary show of New Mexicos best.

This years judge is Frank McCulloch, supported by a jury consisting of Jeanne Hyland, Richard Alan Nichols and Dinah Worman.

Twenty years is a long time to remain passionate about this endeavor, but it has flown by with the continued support of the New Mexico Watercolor Society, the Pastel Society of New Mexico, the group of Miniaturists in New Mexico, and the Rio Grande Art Association, which was formed under the MasterWorks umbrella years ago, Lohbeck says. Hopefully, we will continue to promote New Mexico Fine Art with a venue it deserves.

There will be an open house/artist paint-in on April 8 and numerous other scheduled events throughout the month, including workshops in most media, artist demonstrations, educational events and other presentations.

To see a complete schedule, visit masterworksnm.org.

MasterWorks of New Mexico

WHEN: Opening reception 5-8 tonight; 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday through April 21. Closed on Easter

WHERE: Hispanic Arts Building, Expo New Mexico, 300 San Pedro NE

HOW MUCH: Free, but $5 parking fee by Expo New Mexico
Chris Eyre knows how to capture a story.

On his latest project, he was taken back in time  and he enjoyed it.

Eyre recently directed the film Memories of Miss OKeeffe.

The film shares intimate reflections from generations of the Lopez family, who worked for the legendary artist in northern New Mexico during Georgia OKeeffes later years.

It shares the humanity behind an icon, the rare beauty of the American West, and connections that withstand the passage of time.

It will air at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 5, on New Mexico PBS, Channel 5.1.

Eyre got the idea for the film after talking with Georgia OKeeffe Museum Director Robert A. Kret.

I wanted to tell stories that people hadnt seen or heard before, Eyre says on the set of the NBC show Chicago Fire. This was to delve into her life a little bit more through the stories of the Lopez family, who worked for Georgia.

Eyre was able to find some OKeeffe recordings.

I brought her voice into the house, and the Lopez familys mouths hit the floor, he says. The voice recordings were the genesis behind the documentary.

Eyre says being able to listen to OKeeffes own words was inspiring.

They are very real and capture her personality, he says. I felt it was a point of view that hasnt been really dealt with. It took about a year to complete. Robert was able to give us the time and the resources to get the documentary completed.

Eyre is known for his work on the acclaimed films Smoke Signals and Skinwalkers.

When hes up for a project, he wants it to challenge him  and OKeeffe intrigues him.

She was not only an extraordinary artist, but a very strong woman, he says. Being able to hear first-person accounts from her was an amazing thing. There are times we wish we could be a fly on the wall and just listen. The recordings helped me get there.

ART AND MUSIC: COLORES! is a weekly art series with stories devoted to the creative spirit. In this weeks episode, renowned Santa Fe santera Arlene Cisneros Sena honors her heritage and reveals a feminine perspective, and Albuquerques Christy Cook and David Bashwiner of Goat White perform and share their love for music.

The episode airs at 4 p.m. Saturday, March 31, on NMPBS, Channel 5.1. It will be rebroadcast at 8 p.m. April 6.

SEND ME YOUR TIPS: If you know of a movie filming in the state, or are curious about one, email film@ABQjournal.com. Follow me on Twitter @agomezART.
Steven Soderbergh, who briefly retired from Hollywood after lamenting its timid small-mindedness, has shot his second post-hiatus film entirely on an iPhone.

Unsane, a pulpy psychological thriller, is an exercise in both genre and technology. Its a B-movie iMovie. And its 98 minutes of proof that the laborious apparatus of filmmaking can be not only light on its feet, but fit snuggly inside your pocket.

Of course, not everyone has an Unsane on his smartphone. Some of us just have Words With Friends and some cute kid pictures. But Soderbergh (Out of Sight, The Knick), who serves as his own cinematographer under the pseudonym Peter Andrews, is a restless, protean filmmaker prone to experimentation and live-wire immediacy in his movies. He likes to cut out the middleman, even if the middleman is a camera.

Unsane, made secretly over two weeks last June, is also unusually timely. In the script by Jonathan Bernstein and James Greer, Claire Foy, the breakout star of The Crown, plays a data analyst named Sawyer Valentini who has relocated from Boston to Pennsylvania to flee a stalker.

Foy, proving every bit as good in a low-budget, on-the-fly indie as in a sumptuous period drama, plays Sawyer with deep inner trauma masked by tough, guarded exterior. When her married boss calls her into his office to, wink wink, suggest they travel together to a weekend conference, she immediately senses the danger and briskly returns to work. But when Sawyer attempts a one-night-stand with a Tinder date  she assures the guy the night will go exactly like you want it to go, so long as he never contacts her again  she violently withdraws from him at their first embrace and locks herself in the bathroom.

Seeking the advice of a therapist, she speaks to someone at an anonymous behavioral center named Highland Creek. The meeting goes well, Sawyer thinks, but as shes departing shes asked to wait in the lobby. Later, a curt attendee comes to lead her down a drab, darkened hall, ushers her into a room, locks the door, and asks Sawyer to empty her bag, hand over her phone and disrobe. Procedure, she says.

A growing sense of nightmare takes hold, but its not elevated by the usual shrieking score or stylish flourishes of a horror film. Sawyer eventually learns that her offhand acknowledgment of occasional suicidal thoughts has gotten her admitted for 24 hours, and that shes unwittingly signed away her rights for that time. Her fury quickly leads to scrums that extend her stay and increase her dosages, dispensed in little paper cups. Her mother (Amy Irving) can do little to free her.

Inside, the atmosphere is only a shade tamer than One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest or Shock Corridor. But while Unsane initially feels reminiscent of past insane asylum horrors, the terror of Soderberghs film is more of a waking nightmare. Through the unfiltered, plain lens of an iPhone, Sawyers predicament is frightfully ordinary. The hospital isnt a shadowy gothic trap. Its a realistic suburban bureaucracy. They got beds. You got insurance, explains a fellow inmate played by a terrific Jay Pharoah (Saturday Night Live).

Unsane, though, severely heightens things with a twist. Sawyer believes her stalker (Joshua Leonard) has infiltrated the hospital and is working there as an orderly. She has said she sees him everywhere. Is this a delusion? Is Sawyer, in fact, unstable? Or is this another case of a womans accusations against a sexual harasser being ignored and explained away? Even Sawyer isnt sure which it is, at times.

Unsane keeps those seesawing possibilities alive for a good while but eventually settles definitively  disappointingly, because it saps the mystery  on one side. A movie predicated on realism teeters toward preposterousness. But although Soderbergh made the film shortly before the Harvey Weinstein accusations unspooled, Unsane captures much of the pain, confusion and self-doubt that can follow sexual abuse  and the potentially dire consequences of not heeding a victims warnings.

Think of your cellphone as your enemy, Sawyer is told by a stalker adviser, played by an uncredited Matt Damon, who instructs her on the perils of social media exposure. But Soderberghs movie is a testament to the power of ones phone, and not just because it was shot with one. In Unsane, nothing portends that something terrible will befall someone more than when they, against their better judgment, give up their phone.
Albuquerque police Detective Joshua Brown said hed had Chase Smotherman over for dinner a few times. They had gone dove hunting near Socorro, fossil hunting near Tijeras, fishing in the Jemez. His wife was in Smothermans wedding party.

And when Smotherman became a suspect in the August 2017 kidnapping of Matthew Tressler, Brown agreed to help fellow Albuquerque Police Department homicide detectives interrogate him.

During a hearing on Wednesday, Brown described his relationship with Smotherman, who he said had been his close friend at one point.

Second Judicial District Judge Briana Zamora found that a portion of the statements Smotherman gave to detectives, including the entirety of Browns interview, cannot be used at his trial on kidnapping charges, which is set to begin Monday. In announcing her decision, Zamora cited Browns personal relationship along with the fact that Smotherman, by the time of that interview, had been in custody for questioning for about 16 hours, and appeared to have only slept in between interviews. Zamora said she did not think the detectives questioning constituted misconduct.

Its just everything collectively, Zamora said.

Smotherman is also charged in the death of John Soyka, who was found buried near the Rio Puerco. According to police, Tressler was kidnapped, beaten, and shown images of Soykas mutilated body. Investigators say Smotherman believed Soyka took around $2,000 worth of marijuana from him, and he thought Tressler knew about it.

Raymond Maestas, who is representing Smotherman, said that Brown made repeated references to his friendship with Smotherman during that interview, which he argued was coercive.

Have I ever done you wrong in the five years Ive known you? Brown said at one point during the recorded interview.

During Wednesdays hearing, Brown said he knew Smotherman through Legacy Church, where Smothermans uncle is the pastor, and where Brown headed the security team.

Prosecutor Jonathan Gardner argued that although Brown appealed to their friendship, he never made any inappropriate promises or threats. He said Smotherman wanted to speak to Brown and did so voluntarily.

Viewed in its totality theres no inappropriate conduct by Detective Brown that causes the defendant to make a statement against his will, Gardner said.

Albuquerque police did not respond to Journal questions about whether detectives are required to recuse themselves from certain investigations.

Zamora is still considering whether more of Smothermans police interviews should be suppressed. Maestas argued that detectives continued to question his client after he requested a lawyer, while Gardner held that Smotherman did not unequivocally make that request.
I have two words for Donald Trump: David Barrett. He was appointed an independent counsel to investigate payments made by Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Henry Cisneros to a former mistress. That was in 1995. Barrett finished up only 11 years later, by which time almost no one could remember what the investigation was about or, even, who Cisneros was. A special counsel, like the shark in Jaws or the Pinkerton agents in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, just keeps on coming.

Trump seems not to realize that. He is consistent in always loving the face in the mirror, but on other matters he is mercurial and chaotic. Just last week, his lead lawyer, John Dowd, resigned, purportedly because Trump will not take his advice. Trump wants to sit down with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and work his charm on the man. Dowd, being an experienced criminal lawyer, looked upon such a meeting with appropriate apprehension  the president, after all, having possibly last told the truth when he stated his name at his inauguration. After that, the record is spotty.

Dowd was just the latest of several lawyers who have bailed on Trump. His longtime lawyer, Marc Kasowitz, was early on board and early to abandon ship  although he might yet come back. He, too, favored an aggressive strategy that, to Dowd and others, was sheer foolishness. At the moment, Trumps team is led by Jay Sekulow, who has argued many times before the Supreme Court but has never tried a criminal case in his life. Typical for a Trump aide, he has often been on Fox News. This, though, is not the same as courtroom experience.

Last week, Trump came up with two new names. He announced that Joseph diGenova, another Fox fixture, would join his legal team. DiGenova practices with his wife, Victoria Toensing, in a boutique firm, but one of their clients gave them a conflict and they had to withdraw as Trumps counsel. Twas a pity. They would have been good fun. They are both enamored of conspiracy theories, some of them having to do with the consummate evil of Hillary Clinton and the murder of Americans she supposedly arranged or permitted  or something!  at Benghazi in Libya.

More recently, diGenova discovered a government conspiracy to do in Trump. There was a brazen plot to illegally exonerate Hillary Clinton and, if she didnt win the election, to then frame Donald Trump with a falsely created crime, he said on Fox News. Where else? And who was doing all this? The FBI, of course.

Trumps problems with lawyers are reminiscent of an organization that spins out of control because everyones a cokehead. The chaos is extreme, acute and should worry us all. It evinces a presidency that cannot function. Here, after all, is a president who could stand in considerable legal jeopardy. Yet Trump sort of wings it. He must feel he is up against some widow who wont make way for his Atlantic City casino or some woman who mistakes a spot of sex with Trump for a payday. According to USA Today, Trumps been involved in 4,095 lawsuits. Most of the time, he goes on the offensive and countersues. He learned contempt for the law from a master, Roy Cohn, who was eventually disbarred.

This time, though, Trump has met his match. Mueller is seen always in the same film clip, leaving a government building. He shuns the spotlight. He never smiles. He is a central-casting evocation of the old WASP establishment figure  St. Pauls School, Princeton, University of Virginia Law School and combat in Vietnam as a Marine. He thought his country was owed his service. He was a citizen. He had certain obligations. In combat, he was brave, winning a Bronze Star. Trump, in contrast, ducked the draft five times, the last for a bone spur in one foot or the other. He cant remember.

This is a fight between the old America, upright and conscientious, and the new America of easy lies, shirking of duty and alleged extramarital cuddles with porn actresses. It is as if the America of Norman Rockwell illustrations ripped itself off the cover of the old Saturday Evening Post and is coming right at Trump, pitchfork in hand. Trump, a brat in bespoke suits, is in more trouble than he imagines. Now both time and money will work against him. The special counsel never runs out of either. Ask Henry Cisneros.

E-mail: cohenr@washpost.com. Copyright, Washington Post Writers Group.
Hey, Hector! Or more formally, Attorney General Balderas.

You might want to have one of your criminal investigators check eBay for that missing cable.

A report released by State Auditor Wayne Johnson on Tuesday raises serious questions of possible criminal conduct in the implementation of a $10.5 million federally funded project to take high-speed broadband services to about 75 anchor institutions like schools, hospitals and government agencies in northern New Mexico.

According to an audit commissioned in 2016 by Johnsons predecessor, Tim Keller, and performed by an outside firm, nearly 10 percent of the money cant be accounted for and 12 miles of fiber optic cable valued at $200,000 is missing.

As in  gone.

Rep. Jim Trujillo, D-Santa Fe, and president of a local economic development district that received the grant, disputes the audit and says things must be just fine, because, after all, the feds signed off on what was submitted to them.

Among those who dont appear comforted by that is David Trujillo, the Rio Arriba deputy county manager and vice chairman of the REDI NET board that took over the project. He says the findings are very serious and confirm many of the concerns the REDI NET board has raised.

This is one of those tales that could find its way into New Mexico political folklore  especially given the fiber optic cable twist. But it shouldnt be under the category of another one who got away.

There is plenty here to pique the interest of Attorney General Hector Balderas.

This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.
Bernalillo County has approved a purchase agreement for a sculpture recognizing Asian-American culture and marking a landmark court case in history.

The County Commission on Tuesday voted 4-0 to allow the county manager to carry out the agreement with artists Cheryll Leo-Gwin and Stewart Wong, creators of the Asian American Monument sculpture, View from Gold Mountain, to be located on the west side of the 2nd Judicial District Courthouse in Downtown Albuquerque.

A county news release says Dr. Siu Wong initiated the monument project and raised $275,000  $100,000 through legislative appropriations in 2015; $155,000 in 2016; and $20,000 from the city.

From a national call for artists by the Asian American Monument Committee of New Mexico, the design by Leo-Gwin and Wong was chosen.

The project uses symbols and metaphors that refer to not only Chinese culture and honor the Territory of New Mexico v. Yee Shun case but are also universally understood by cultures around the globe, the county said.

The landmark civil rights ruling from Territory of New Mexico v. Yee Shun (1882) granted Chinese Americans the right to testify in court and have their testimony accepted, a county summary detailing the art project says.
St. Francis is the patron saint of Santa Fe. So it should come as no surprise that the city recently earned recognition for its compassion toward animals.

Best Friends Animal Society, which describes itself on its website as a national animal welfare organization dedicated to ending the killing of dogs and cats in Americas shelters, has designated Santa Fe a No-Kill City, meaning more than 90 percent of homeless animals brought into the Santa Fe Animal Shelter are saved.

Santa Fe, which registered a 94.2 percent save rate based on a 2017 impact report, is one of just three cities in New Mexico  Corrales and Raton are the others  to earn no-kill community status from BFAS.

Mayor Alan Webber said the designation is a reflection of the citys values.

How we treat our pets is a measure of how we will treat our people, he said. Santa Fes no-kill status matches up with our values as a place that loves and cares for all creatures, large and small. Were proud of the work our entire community did to come together and reach this milestone.

Jennifer Steketee, the shelters executive director, credited the Santa Fe community, including volunteers who collectively contributed more than 15,000 hours of their time, for the achievement.

For an entire city to achieve no-kill status means we as a community are addressing the root causes of animal homelessness, she said, adding that the shelter takes in every animal regardless of their health status and tries to find them a good home. The Santa Fe Animal Shelter has always led the way in supporting animals, saving lives and spreading compassion, and we are thrilled our shelter is now leading the way for the rest of the country.

Not every animal is saved. About 1 in 20 are put down because they cannot be cured. For those that are suffering, euthanasia is the humane thing to do, the shelter says.

But the shelter does not turn away or put down healthy or treatable animals to make room for new arrivals.

The impact report shows that 2,877 animals found new homes through the shelter in 2017, and another 1,140 were returned to their owners or rescuer. Nearly 900 received foster care.

In addition, 179 animals were transferred to partner shelters, while the Santa Fe shelter took in more than 1,000 animals from the other shelters.

The Santa Fe Animal Shelter is a nonprofit organization that does not receive direct support from the city, state or federal government. Its funding comes from the medical services it provides, sales at its retail store, contracts, grants, fundraising drives and donations. Eighty percent of its expenses are directed toward programing, according to the shelter. The rest is split between administrative costs and fundraising efforts.
This call to build a movement is directed to those who pledge non-violent resistance in the spirit of Cesar Chavez, Ghandi and Martin Luther King, who prayed and acted upon the belief that society, institutions and governments could be transformed and improved by human effort and involvement.

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights states the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. These universal rights entail equality, freedom from discrimination, the right to due process within a fair and impartial judicial system when detained and accused of a crime, and the right to live and work in peace without fear of government reprisal. From the Magna Carta to the U.S. Constitution, these rights have been struggled for by people trying to create a more decent and human society, yet Trumps 2017 speech attacking Mexicans as criminals rings as hollow as Hitlers 1920 Why Are We Anti-Semite speech. Their objectives  to isolate, demonize and de-humanize an entire population  were the same.

The focus of the country is on the fate of the 800,000 DACA youth, who through no actions of their own were brought to this country as children, attend schools, pledge allegiance to the U.S. flag daily, learn the English language and consider themselves more American than anything else. More than 12 million honest, hardworking people are also in danger of being deported. Under the guise of ridding the country of gangs and criminals, federal agents (ICE/Migra) have been conducting raids on peoples homes, workplaces, hospitals and even churches.

The reality of warrantless SWAT-like raids on Hispanic communities shows that equality is selective, due process absent, and domestic tranquility illusory and empty. ICE is the biggest threat to democracy we face today. These are the civil and human rights issues of our millennium. Current sanctuary efforts are under assault by the federal government. In a blatant effort to coerce and intimidate, Jeff Sessions and the Dept. of Justice is threatening to jail and prosecute elected leaders, as well as cut law enforcement funding to local and state governments who refuse to do ICEs dirty work. In response, California Gov. Jerry Brown has denounced ICEs Gestapo tactics and promised to resist in the courts.

Acting proactively, Oaklands Mayor Libby Schaaf warned her constituents about impending ICE raids. While these brave efforts should be applauded, the takeover of the courts, Congress and the Trump administration by a racist, xenophobic mentality necessitates creating a broad and deep non-violent resistance movement of men and women of conscience.

Now is the time to resist! We should think of creating a modern day Underground Railroad to save innocent people from being torn from their families. The brave people who spirited slaves to safety came from different walks of life, but all shared a commitment to oppose injustice and take action to create a more human society. Providing safehouses and transportation, and gathering information continue to be fundamental tasks, and now we can be assisted by social media and technology to facilitate the ability of small local groups to operate effectively and anonymously.

Now is the time for brave and committed people to step forward and take action. Gov. Brown was right in describing ICE actions as Gestapo tactics and in that vein we should promote and sponsor construction of dwellings within dwellings a la Ann Frank to hide families while the ICE danger passes. Longer term strategies should emphasize creating safe zones where people can live and work in peace with early alert systems to warn of impending raids.

We must resist accepting raids on homes and workplaces, the dragging of honest, hardworking people and mass deportation of workers without due process as normal in a democracy. We must work to abolish ICE, whose function is terrorizing American communities, ruining thousands of lives, and creating a fearful and divided nation. Now is the time to resist!

Juan Montes is a retired educator (UNM-Taos and Northern New Mexico Community College) and advocate who lives in Questa.
It will be up to the New Mexico National Guard Museum in Santa Fe to tell the story of the Hispanic hero of the Civil War.

A bronze plaque commemorating Manuel A. Chaves for his role in turning back the Confederate invasion of New Mexico in 1862 was recently cast with the intention of placing it between existing monuments to Texas and Colorado soldiers who participated in the Battle of Glorieta Pass.

But the Pecos National Historical Park declined to put up the plaque because of its focus on a single individual. So it will go instead to the military museum on Old Pecos Trail, along with the remaining $47,000 of the $50,000 appropriated by the state Legislature for the marker, according to state Rep. Jim Trujillo, D-Santa Fe.

We try to match the monuments that were already out there, said park superintendent Karl Cordova. We want to keep it generic and not make it specific to any one person, but to highlight the volunteers.

No individual is cited on the monument to the Texas soldiers who died at Glorieta Pass, dedicated in 1939 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, or the one to the Colorado Volunteers, dedicated in 1993 by the Colorado General Assembly, the Museum of New Mexico and others. A vertical slab of flagstone was recently erected between the Texas and Colorado monuments along N.M. 50 near the Pecos National Historical Park.

Pecos National Historical Park, in a February news release, said the plaque that would be attached to the slab  and that was to be unveiled at a March 24 Civil War encampment at the park  would specifically commemorate Chaves by name, as well as more generally the New Mexico Volunteers who fought on the Union side in the crucial battle.

But that changed before last weekends event. The plaque itself was there and on display, but it wont go up in the spot prepared between the Texas and Colorado memorials.

The February news was based on information from the Friends of Pecos National Historical Park, said park spokeswoman Beck Latanich. She said a plaque more in keeping with the two existing ones, without naming individuals, is going up instead.

Andres Romero, vice president of the Friends of the Pecos National Historical Park, which pushed for the plaque and wrote its inscription, believes the U.S. Park Services reluctance to commemorate Chaves is now connected to his reputation as an Indian fighter.

They dont want to draw demonstrations, he said. But you cant revise history. There were atrocities on both sides. Its not fair to take potshots from 2018.

He was an Indian fighter, Trujillo said of Chaves. But who wasnt in those days?

He said the state appropriation for the Pecos plaque went through about three years ago and much of it also was to be used for a parking lot near the N.M. 50 Civil War memorials.

Trujillo said the state money was also used for the replacement plaque honoring the New Mexico Volunteers without naming Chaves, but he intends to reauthorize whats left for the National Guard Museum.

Governors veto

Gov. Susana Martinez recently vetoed another $50,000 appropriation sponsored by Trujillo for a bust of Chaves, saying only that the money would be better spent on schools and law enforcement.

Romero said the governor was influenced by a recent Associated Press article on Chaves that quoted New Mexico Highlands University history professor Peter Linder on Chaves slave-taking raids into Navajo country.

Marc Simmons 1973 biography, The Little Lion of the Southwest: A Life of Manuel Antonio Chaves, says raiding Native American settlements for slaves was common in New Mexico in the 1820s when Chaves family moved to Cebolleta in todays Cibola County.

Since this activity was strictly forbidden by Spanish law, the colonists carefully avoided designating their captives as slaves and referred to them euphemistically as criados or servants, Simmons wrote. In fairness, it should be noted that hostile Navajo, Ute, and Apache in a like manner seized Spanish captives for their own use.

Chaves went on to become a professional soldier under the Mexican government, also pitting him against various Native American tribes.

He was a skilled warrior, despite his small stature, about 5 feet 7 inches and 140 pounds, Simmons said.

After the United States seized New Mexico and much of the Southwest in 1846, Chaves joined the U.S. Army and rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel.

But it was his trailblazing skills and his knowledge of the terrain, rather than military prowess, that made him the hero at the Battle of Glorieta Pass.

While the Confederates and Union squared off in late March 1862 at Glorieta Pass, about 15 miles southeast of Santa Fe, Chaves led Union soldiers through the mountains around enemy lines to attack the rebels lightly guarded supply wagons.

They set them on fire and killed or scattered the mules, so that, even though the battle was a virtual draw, the unsupplied Confederates were forced to retreat down the Rio Grande to Texas, ending their hope of capturing gold mines in Colorado and Pacific ports in California, and extending the Confederacy into Mexico.

Maj. John Chivington, a Methodist minister from Denver and the leader of the Colorado Volunteers at Glorieta Pass, is sometimes credited with the flanking action that defeated the Confederates.

But Simmons makes it clear that Chivington did not know the area or Spanish and relied on Chaves to negotiate with locals and lead the soldiers on trails through the mountains.

Upon reaching a point on a mesa above the wagons, Chaves announced to Chivington, You are right on top of them, major.

Unveiled but not installed

Last Saturday, Chaves supporters gathered in a tent set up on the Pecos National Historical Parks portion of the old Forked Lightning Ranch during a commemoration of the 156th anniversary of the Battle of Glorieta Pass to unveil the plaque, even though it wont be displayed there.

Chaves descendants Eileen Chave Yarborough from Grants and Phillip Marquez from San Mateo on the north slopes of Mount Taylor mingled with Romero and other New Mexico history buffs.

Trujillo said his intention is to make Chaves so well known that he will draw tourists to New Mexico.

I dont care what they say about it, it was very important battle  and we dont get any credit, he said later in the week.

Joseph Vigil, chief spokesman for the New Mexico National Guard, which runs the military museum at 1050 Old Pecos Trail, said the museum is an appropriate home for the Chaves plaque, since the New Mexico Volunteers were the origins of the state guard.

Andrew Leo Lovato, an associate professor at Santa Fe Community College and Santa Fe city historian for 2018, told the group at the park Saturday that New Mexico might have been a different place if it were not for Chaves.

History is not always the result of what is recorded, but what is interpreted, he said. Why his name is not more recognizable nationally is something we will never understand.
Copyright  2018 Albuquerque Journal

A prominent libertarian think tank is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to use a lawsuit over a fatal shooting by a New Mexico State Police officer to roll back the qualified immunity that protects police from liability.

The Cato Institute, based in Washington, D.C., and with high profiles in both the news media and policy circles, has filed a friend-of-the-court, or amicus, brief in the long-running litigation over the 2011 shooting of Samuel Pauly, 34, at his house in Glorieta, east of Santa Fe.

This brief will be the first of many in an ongoing campaign to demonstrate to the courts that this doctrine (qualified immunity) lacks any legal basis, vitiates the power of individuals to vindicate their constitutional rights, and contributes to a culture of near-zero accountability for law enforcement and other public officials, says an essay on Catos website.

Lee Hunt, the Santa Fe attorney representing the Pauly family, said Catos participation matters because it means that the Pauly familys wrongful death suit is bigger than a New Mexico case.

The outcome affects anyone who files a lawsuit against the police, said Hunt. I think Catos involvement speaks to the point that this is a national issue.

The Supreme Court has already made one ruling in the case, when it decided in January 2017 that State Police Officer Ray White was entitled to qualified immunity from civil liability when he fired the shot that killed Pauly. White did not violate any clearly established federal law, the high court said.

The shooting took place after Paulys brother David had been involved in a late-night road-rage incident on Interstate 25 in which no one was hurt. Officers used a license plate number to find where the Paulys lived in Glorieta, just off the interstate.

As officers approached the house, David fired a couple of warning shots out the back of the house. He told police later he had no idea the people outside their home were officers and instead believed they could be intruders related to the earlier incident on I-25. White shot Samuel Pauly through a window.

The Supreme Court, in the January 2017 decision, didnt take a position on whether two other officers also at the shooting scene had immunity. The high court also left open the possibility that a case could still be made against White, based on how factual disputes about his role in the shooting played out. The case was returned to the federal appeals court in Denver for more consideration.

In November, a panel of the appeals court found that, upon further review, the case record in fact supports the claim that Officer White may have recklessly participated in the events leading to Samuel Paulys death and that a reasonable jury could conclude that Officer White acted recklessly by precipitating the need to use a deadly weapon.

But the panel still found that White was entitled to immunity because there was no precedent in federal case law that was close enough on point to clearly establish that what White did was against law.

And since Whites actions were protected, qualified immunity also extended to the other two officers on the scene, Kevin Truesdale and Michael Marsical, the appeals court held.

Hunt, representing the Pauly family, had argued that the conduct of Truesdale and Mariscal led to the shooting of Samuel Pauly by White. He has filed a petition asking the Supreme Court to consider and reverse the appeals courts latest ruling.

We do think that qualified immunity has gotten out of hand and has almost become complete immunity, and prevents folks like the Paulys from letting a jury decide if what happened is okay, Hunt said this week.

The Supreme Court has not decided if it will grant certiorari and consider the appeal. The Cato Institutes brief is in support of Hunts petition. Attorneys for the New Mexico officers have not filed a response.

The shooting

Pauly was shot about 11 p.m. on a rainy Oct. 4 in 2011. White arrived at the rural Glorieta scene a couple of minutes after Truesdale and Mariscal.

The other officers shouted to Pauly and his brother, Daniel, who were both inside, that they had the house surrounded after the brothers had called out, Who are you? and What do you want?

Truesdale has said he also yelled State Police, open the door, but Daniel Pauly has maintained that the brothers had no way of knowing who was outside.

Daniel Pauly said he fired the two warning shots out the back of the house and yelled, We have guns, which White is said to have heard as he approached the house. The Santa Fe District Attorneys Office has said evidence shows that Samuel Pauly also fired a shot, this one toward officers. He was killed by a gunshot fired by White, who had taken cover behind a stone wall. No charges were filed against the officers.

Catos brief to the Supreme Court starts with a summary that says the contemporary doctrine of qualified immunity is unmoored from any lawful justification  and in serious need of correction. The Pauly case, the brief adds, presents an ideal vehicle for the Court to consider and address the maturing contention that the doctrine itself if unfounded.

The brief then presents a long history of how qualified immunity came to be over decades and was brought to full flower by court rulings in the late 20th Century.

Catos online essay on the case summarizes the institutes argument this way:

The doctrine, invented by the (Supreme) Court out of whole cloth, immunizes public officials even when they commit illegal misconduct, unless they violated clearly established law. That standard is incredibly difficult for civil rights plaintiffs to overcome, because the courts have required not just a clear legal rule, but a prior case on the books with functionally identical facts.

The Denver appeals courts decision in the Pauly case is erroneous even under existing precedent, but it also throws into sharp relief the shaky legal rationale for qualified immunity in general, the essay says.

The Cato Supreme Court brief says the Denver appeals courts holding that officers Marsical and Truesdale could not possibly be liable  even if they recklessly caused the violation of Mr. Paulys constitutional rights  is  at odds with plain meaning of the governing federal statute.

Sound textual analysis, informed legal history, judicial prudence, and simple justice all weigh in favor of reconsidering qualified immunity, the brief concludes.
The annual Holy Week pilgrimage to the Santuario de Chimayo will reach its peak today, Good Friday, when thousands of walkers will make their way to the Roman Catholic shrine north of Santa Fe.

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Many pilgrims have already been walking along roads headed to Chimayo. On Thursday, the Stations of the Cross were enacted on the church grounds, with a vivid re-enactment of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

Walkers coming from the south this year will pass another kind of shrine  the home in Nambe just off N.M. 503 where 13-year-old Jeremiah Valencia was tortured and beaten to death, allegedly by his mothers boyfriend, in November. The death came to light in January and Jeremiahs buried remains were found nearby. The house has become a makeshift shrine decorated with teddy bears and toys.
Copyright  2018 Albuquerque Journal

A former coordinator for volunteers and foster care at the Albuquerque Animal Welfare Department has filed a lawsuit alleging she was fired last fall in retaliation for blowing the whistle on a top agency officials practice of sending highly adoptable dogs to unlicensed, illegal shelters in Colorado for a profit.

The lawsuit filed by Joan Bet Lotosky comes at a time when the city is preparing to settle a whistleblower case filed six months ago by two other top Animal Welfare officials.

The 140-employee department, which is under new management with the election of Mayor Tim Keller, has endured several years of controversy over top managers decisions on whether to adopt potentially dangerous dogs to the public and other practices.

More recently, the actions of the agencys assistant director have come under scrutiny. Deb Brinkley was placed on administrative leave after revelations surfaced that she cherry-picked adoptable dogs, including puppies, from the city shelters for transfer to her private animal rescue. The rescue sold puppies for $250 when the city of Albuquerque was charging $80.

In the whistleblower lawsuit filed last September, Animal Welfare operations manager Joel Craig and Sarah Wharton, an animal behaviorist, alleged that they were demoted and their salaries and job responsibilities reduced after they filed complaints about mismanagement and abuse of authority with the citys Office of Inspector General.

Lotoskys attorney, Michael Cadigan, represents all three plaintiffs. He told the Journal on Thursday that the earlier lawsuit is close to being settled.

City officials in that case have denied the whistleblower allegations in court records, saying that there were legitimate business reasons for the actions taken involving Craig and Wharton. Theres been no response from the city yet in Lotoskys case, which was filed March 20.

Lotoskys lawsuit alleges that she made reports over a span of several months to the OIG and other executives of then-Mayor Richard Berrys administration about then-director Paul Caster and assistant director Brinkley.

Specifically, Lotosky said she complained about the transfers of highly adoptable dogs.

Once Caster and Brinkley learned she had made reports that they were engaging in conduct that was unlawful and constituted malfeasance in public office, Lotosky was put on unpaid suspension, her lawsuit states.

When her attorney threatened to bring a civil action against the city, the department rescinded the financial portion of the suspension, the lawsuit stated. And Lotosky, the lawsuit states, continued her participation in the citys investigation of the illegal activities.

Caster meanwhile imposed unreasonable scrutiny on her work and made unreasonable demands of her, her lawsuit alleges.

But just as Keller was preparing to take office, Caster fired Lotosky on Nov. 17. Caster himself left on Nov. 30. Neither Caster nor Brinkley could be reached for comment Thursday.

An investigative report released by the citys Inspector General in late February found that Brinkley abused her position by circumventing department processes and had a conflict of interest.

Brinkley, hired in late 2016, was placed on paid administrative leave on Jan. 29 amid a separate investigation by the city. Her attorney has said she did nothing wrong and the transfers were above board.

The report of the investigation by Inspector General David Harper confirmed allegations that Brinkley inappropriately took puppies and transferred them to her own rescue operation and failed to comply with Colorado and Valencia County law.

Harper reported that 29 dogs were transferred to DMK Rehoming in Aurora, Colo., during Brinkleys tenure at the city  half of which were puppies  and a few were already in the process of going to citizens who had requested the dogs.

Without naming Lotosky, the OIG report stated that an employee who oversaw the fostering process was interviewed for the investigation and reported that Brinkley did not follow procedures when she pulled dogs out.

The employee said Brinkley never communicated which animals she was interested in fostering or filled out appropriate paperwork before taking several puppies that ultimately ended up at Brinkleys rescue operation.

The OIG did not determine whether Brinkley was making a profit off the transferred animals, but Brinkley said in an interview with OIG that all income went toward the rescue operation.

In 2016, the city paid more than $15,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by Animal Welfare program analyst Jim Ludwick, after the city failed to provide him the findings of an internal investigation into allegations that the city was permitting aggressive and potentially dangerous dogs to be adopted from its shelters.

Ludwick and animal behavior specialist Carolyn Hildalgo, who has since left the agency, helped trigger an internal city investigation after he complained to the citys Office of Inspector General in March 2015 that he believed public safety was at risk due to the shelters practices of adopting out dogs known to have failed aggression tests or either attacked humans or killed other family pets.
SACRAMENTO, Calif.  Sacramento police shot Stephon Clark seven times from behind, according to autopsy results released Friday by a pathologist hired by Clarks family, a finding that calls into question the departments assertion the 22-year-old black man was facing officers and moving toward them when he was killed.

Dr. Bennet Omalu also determined Clark took three to 10 minutes to die. Police waited about five minutes before rendering medical aid.

The proposition that has been presented that he was assailing the officers, meaning he was facing the officers, is inconsistent with the prevailing forensic evidence, Omalu said at a news conference with family attorney Benjamin Crump.

He said it was not clear if Clark would have survived had he gotten immediate medical attention.

Sacramento police responded with a brief statement that said the department had not yet received an official autopsy report from the Sacramento County coroners office. It said the coroners death investigation is independent from the investigation being conducted by police and the state Department of Justice.

A day after the March 18 shooting, police distributed a press release that said the officers who shot Clark saw the suspect facing them, advance forward with his arms extended, and holding an object in his hands.

Police video of the shooting doesnt clearly capture all that happened after Clark ran into his grandmothers backyard. He initially moved toward the officers, who are peeking out from behind a corner of the house, but its not clear hes facing them or that he knows they are there when they open fire after shouting gun, gun, gun.

After 20 shots, officers call to him, apparently believing he might still be alive and armed. They eventually approach and find no gun, just a cellphone.

The shooting has produced almost daily angry but peaceful protests in the downtown area of Californias capital city.

About 200 protesters gathered Friday night at City Hall. They shouted Hands up, Dont Shoot! and Stand Up, Fight Back.

They also chanted the names of young black men who have been killed by police around the country.

Earlier, several hundred black residents gathered at a South Sacramento church for a community meeting focused on supporting black youth in the city.

Clarks death was highlighted, however, with Sacramento Kings player Garrett Temple telling the crowd that Clark could have been any of us.

Teammate Vice Carter and former Kings player Doug Christie also attended.

Gov. Jerry Brown issued his first statement on the situation earlier Friday, calling it a tragic death that raises a number of very serious questions and I support the California Attorney Generals independent oversight of the investigation.

Police were called to the South Sacramento neighborhood on March 18 after a neighbor reported someone was breaking car windows. A police helicopter identified a suspect, who ran as police on the ground gave chase.

The helicopter video shows the two officers at the corner of Clarks grandmothers house and Clark on the backyard patio. He moves toward the officers position as they peer around the corner and open fire.

Clark staggers sideways and falls on his stomach as officers continue shooting.

Omalu, whose study of a degenerative brain condition in football players prompted the NFL to adopt new safety rules designed to prevent concussions, said any of the six bullets that hit Clark in the back and one in the neck could have been the fatal shot. An eighth bullet went into Clarks thigh.

The autopsy was released a day after an emotional funeral service. The Rev. Al Sharpton delivered the eulogy and praised demonstrators for their restraint and urged them to follow the lead of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and his advocacy of nonviolent protest.

Later in the day, police in riot gear stood waiting outside the Golden 1 Center as fans wove through barricades and fencing to enter a Sacramento Kings-Indiana Pacers game. Twice since the shooting, demonstrators had blocked thousands of fans from entering the area.

But protesters never came to the arena Thursday night, heeding calls from Clarks brother, Stevante Clark, and Black Lives Matter organizers to avoid the arena.

Instead, they blocked rush hour traffic on nearby downtown streets.

The Kings and their owner have supported the family.

___

Associated Press reporters Kathleen Ronayne and Haven Daley in Sacramento and John Antczak and Brian Melley in Los Angeles contributed.
SAN PEDRO CUTUD, Philippines  Seven Filipino Roman Catholic devotees, including a woman, were nailed to wooden crosses in a Good Friday reenactment of Jesus Christs suffering that was watched by thousands of spectators but frowned upon by church leaders.

Three devotees wearing crowns of twigs were nailed to crosses by villagers dressed as Roman centurions on a dusty hill in San Pedro Cutud village, and four others were nailed to crosses in nearby farming villages in San Fernando city north of Manila, tourism officer Ching Pangilinan said.

The spectacle reflects a unique brand of Catholicism that merges church traditions with folk superstitions. Many of the mostly impoverished penitents undergo the ritual to atone for sins, pray for the sick or for a better life, or give thanks for what they believe were God-given miracles.

The Lenten rituals are frowned upon by church leaders in the Philippines, Asias largest Roman Catholic nation, especially if the events are used to boost tourism and business. The reenactments of the crucifixion, however, have persisted and become a tourist attraction in the largely unknown villages in Pampanga province, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of the capital.

While the crucifixions have become a tradition for villagers, they still leave many foreign tourists bewildered.

Its terrible, said Luke Henkel from Florida. You wanna stop it.

Mayor Edwin Santiago of San Fernando, where San Pedro Cutud lies, said more than 400 police officers were deployed and first-aid stations set up to look after the huge crowds.

We provide assistance because we cant stop the influx of tourists, Pangilinan said. We dont promote it as a festival but its rather a show of respect to a local tradition.

Villagers used the crowd-drawing events to peddle food, water, fans, umbrellas and souvenirs and rent out parking slots and toilets. A leading cellphone company provided tents for shade with its name embossed on them.

Archbishop Socrates Villegas said its best for Catholics to mark Lent with prayers and acts of love and charity.

Instead of spilling your blood on the streets, why not walk into a Red Cross office and donate blood? Choose to share life. Share your blood, Villegas said in remarks posted on a Catholic church website.

Fridays reenactment of Christs crucifixion was the 32nd for Ruben Enaje, a 57-year-old sign painter who began his yearly rite after surviving a fall from a building. He plans to stop when he turns 60.

Maryjane Sazon, a 39-year-old beauty salon worker, said she joined the reenactments seven years ago in the hope of being cured of severe headaches and a nervous breakdown. Her act Friday was dedicated to her sick sister.

Prior to the cross nailings, dozens of male penitents walked several kilometers (miles) along village streets while beating their bare backs with sharp bamboo sticks and pieces of wood. Some had their backs cut to keep them bloody.

Foreigners have been banned from taking part since an Australian comic was nailed to a cross under a false name a few years ago near Pampanga. Authorities also believe that a Japanese man was nailed to cross as part of a porn film in 1996.

___

Associated Press writer Jim Gomez in Manila contributed to this report.
TEMPE, Ariz.  Authorities say a Tempe man has been arrested on suspicion of 10 counts of sexual exploitation of a minor.

Investigators with the Phoenix Police Internet Crimes Against Children Detail received information that 55-year-old Hernan Alberto Aristizabal allegedly was involved in the possession of a large amount of child pornography.

Authorities developed probable cause to search Aristizabals home.

Tempe and Phoenix police investigators reported seizing numerous electronic devices that contained child porn.

They also seized a large cache of weapons locked in gun safes and say many of the weapons are illegally manufactured firearms.

Authorities say the misconduct with weapons and possession of illegal firearms investigation is ongoing.

Aristizabal was taken into custody Wednesday and is jailed on a $150,000 bond. It was unclear Thursday if he has a lawyer yet.
YUMA, Ariz.  The Border Patrol says it has arrested a previously deported man with multiple felony convictions in the U.S.

The Yuma Station Border Patrol reported Thursday that 50-year-old Jose Arajo-Dominguez was arrested about 9:30 p.m. Tuesday as he tried to illegally re-enter the United States west of Yuma close to the Arizona-California border by the Morelos Dam. Arajo-Dominguez is a Mexican national.

Agents investigating Arajo-Dominguezs criminal history discovered he had several felony convictions out of Hood River, Oregon, including first-degree rape and first-degree burglary. Additional record checks revealed convictions for vehicle theft and criminal trespassing.

The agency says Arajo-Dominguez was last deported earlier this month from El Paso, Texas. He allegedly told agents he was trying to travel to Colorado, where he hoped to live.
SANTA FE  Gov. Susana Martinez spent $58,268 last year from an unaudited fund for social obligations, mostly on food and drinks.

In response to a public records request, the state Department of Finance and Administration on Thursday provided a summary of spending in 2017 from the so-called contingency fund.

Martinez this month signed legislation to provide greater scrutiny of expenditures from the governors fund  starting next year after she leaves office. The second-term Republican cannot run for another consecutive term.

Food and beverages accounted for about $33,400 of contingency fund spending in 2017, while miscellaneous spending on dignitary visits and gestures of gratitude or condolences accounted for $14,500.

Individual events or gifts were not listed. Supplies cost roughly $3,900, contractual services cost $3,100, and subscriptions were $3,360.

The Department of Finance and Administration provided the account summary and had no further information from the governors office.

Martinez has defended her handling of the fund, noting that her office publishes quarterly account summaries when only an annual summary is required and has generally spent less money than under Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson, who left office at the end of 2010.

Richardson reported spending nearly $139,000 from the contingency fund in 2008, including more than $60,600 on food and drinks. During his eight-year tenure, the governors mansion north of Santa Fe played host to events involving film stars such as Tommy Lee Jones, foreign dignitaries including former Polish President Lech Walesa as well as community groups and non-profits.

Martinez spokesman Michael Lonergan declined a request to provide greater details on spending in 2017 or any examples of events and individuals who attended them.

He said in an email that the fund is used for dinners and receptions for business leaders, educators, and dignitaries, as well as subscriptions to publications, official state gifts for protocol meetings, and things like cards or flowers to express condolences or congratulations when necessary.

The governor also hosts a few receptions each year and occasional staff appreciation events.

Future governors will have to submit an itemized list of expenditures each month to a legislative committee and the Department of Finance and Administration. Starting next year, the fund also will fall under state auditing procedures.

New Mexico governor spends social fund mainly on food, drink
MOSCOW  The crisis between Russia and the West over the poisoning of a former double agent in Britain heightened Friday as Russia ordered new cuts to the number of British envoys in the country.

Russia also summoned 23 foreign ambassadors to inform them that some of their diplomats would be expelled, a day after ordering 60 U.S. diplomats to leave and demanding that Washingtons consulate in St. Petersburg close on short notice.

The massive expulsion of diplomats on both sides has reached a scale unseen even at the height of the Cold War.

Two dozen countries, along with NATO, ordered out more than 150 Russian diplomats this week in a show of solidarity with Britain over the nerve-agent poisoning of Russian ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Britain that London blamed on Russia.

Moscow has vehemently denied involvement in the March 4 nerve agent attack in the English city of Salisbury and announced the expulsion of the same number of diplomats from each nation.

The ministry escalated its response Friday, saying it has ordered Britain to reduce the number of its diplomats in Moscow to the level that Russia has in London. The exact number wasnt immediately clear, but state news agency RIA Novosti agency quoted an unidentified Russian diplomat as saying the number of British diplomatic personnel in Russia exceeds the number of Russian envoys in Britain by more than 50 people.

The ministry said it summoned the British ambassador to hand him a protest over the provocative and unsubstantiated actions by Britain, which instigated the expulsion of Russian diplomats from various nations for no reason. It gave London one month to reduce its diplomatic personnel in Russia.

Adding to the tensions, the ministry late Friday said a plane belonging to Russian state airline Aeroflot was being searched by police in London. Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said there was no explanation given for the search, which she called the latest provocation. The plane left Londons Heathrow Airport for Moscow about three hours behind schedule.

Commenting on the Russian move to expel more U.K. diplomats, a spokeswoman for the British Foreign Office said its regrettable but in light of Russias previous behavior, we anticipated a response.

However, this doesnt change the facts of the matter: the attempted assassination of two people on British soil, for which there is no alternative conclusion other than that the Russian state was culpable, she said. Russia is in flagrant breach of international law and the Chemical Weapons Convention and actions by countries around the world have demonstrated the depth of international concern.

The expulsions affect not only the diplomats but their families as well, forcing them to take their children out of school in the middle of the year.

A hospital treating the Skripals said Thursday that the 33-year-old daughter Yulia was improving rapidly and was now in stable condition but her 66-year-old father remained in critical condition.

Speaking to reporters Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov insisted that Russia didnt start any diplomatic wars, and remains open for developing good ties.

He added that Russia has called a meeting of the international chemical weapons watchdog next week to press for an unbiased and objective investigation.

Russia has accused Britain of failing to back up its accusations with evidence and refusing to share materials from the probe. The Foreign Ministry said it told the British ambassador on Friday that Moscow is ready to cooperate in the investigation.

Earlier this week, the Russian Foreign Ministry alleged that British special services could have been involved in the poisoning and claimed that Britain, the U.S., the Czech Republic and Sweden all have researched the class of nerve agent that London said was used to poison Skripal.

Britain and its allies have rejected the Russian nerve agent claims.

The countries informed Friday by Russia of diplomat expulsions were Australia, Albania, Germany, Denmark, Ireland, Spain, Italy, Canada, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Ukraine, Finland, France, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Sweden and Estonia.

The Foreign Ministry added that it would also consider mirror expulsions of diplomats from Belgium, Hungary, Georgia and Montenegro.

Bulgaria announced it would not expel any Russian diplomats. The country is heavily dependent on Russian gas supplies and tourists.

In response to the U.S. move earlier this week to close the Russian Consulate in Seattle, Moscow also shut the U.S. Consulate in St. Petersburg, giving it until Saturday to vacate the premises.

An Associated Press reporter on Friday saw U.S. consulate staff carrying boxes from the building in St. Petersburg and loading them into a van. Several mini-vans drove out of the consulate while security also detained a man who threw a Starbucks cup at the building.

Some passers-by near the U.S. Consulate cheered the expulsions.

Let them get out of here, said 61-year-old retiree Viktor Fedin. You wont put Russia on its knees.

Others were more cautious, worried that the closures would affect visa processing for Russians.

The Russian government has to respond to the hostile actions against Russia, said 32-year-old researcher Yelena Bogomazova. But the escalation is bad. The closure of the consulate will make it difficult for people to get U.S. visas. They will have to go to Moscow.

After Russia expelled several dozen U.S. diplomats, the waiting list for U.S. visa applications in Russia has increased to weeks, if not months. The U.S. Embassy said it was unable to process visa applications faster because of the staff shortage.

Russia also warned that the expulsions of its diplomats could slow down issuing visas.

In a statement that reflects the soaring tensions, Moscow also accused Washington of trying to recruit the Russian diplomats it has expelled as spies.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said the U.S. special services have engaged in frantic efforts to make cooperation offers to the expelled Russian diplomats. The ministry described the alleged U.S. overtures as cynical and disgusting, adding that they have failed.

___

Gregory Katz reported from London. Irina Titova in St. Petersburg, Jim Heintz and Nataliya Vasilyeva in Moscow contributed to this report.
With the recent launch of one of the leading luxury car brands, Mercedes Benz S-Class, in India, the brand was looking to spread the news to its potential customers. Airports represent a key venue for Mercedes Benz as Business Class as well as International travelers, form a major part of Mercedes Benzs TG. Thereby, to endorse the S-Class as the latest premium offering from the brand and make the campaign catch the eye of the customers in an impactful, yet subtle way, keeping in line with the brand image, Mercedes Benz took airport media as a part of their OOH advertising plan.

Two airports were selected post an in-depth analysis of passenger traffic in India in order to educate potential customers about the newly launched S Class- Mumbai and Delhi airports. High visibility media were taken at both the airports in high traffic areas. The entry points to the Multi-Level Car Park at both these airports offer 100% visibility to all domestic as well as international passengers.

At Mumbai Airport, the DRLs within the headlamps in the car creative was lined with LED lights. This impressive innovation immediately drew ones attention to the hoarding and then to the iconic as well as easily recognizable headlights of the Mercedes Benz.

A 21-day PAN India campaign across multiple cities was carefully strategized to reach out to its TG, out of which Mumbai and Delhi were identified as the key touchpoints.

Times OOH executed the outdoor campaign through its Airport media in association with Kinetic WW who managed the mainline media and outdoor media planning.

To Read More Visit Here.
Dentsu Webchutney, the digital arm of Dentsu Aegis Network, and KAEdu- an educational consultancy company, have introduced the Progressive Report Card: a triumphant redesign of the linear school report card, that calls for a paradigm shift in the perception of school level education in India today.

The agencys strategic think tanks used human centered design thinking to first identify the inherent biases in the structure of the report card as we know it - reflecting a societal preference and pre-occupation with mainstream subjects like languages, mathematics and science-based subjects - that have traditionally been considered true markers of a childs intelligence, employability, and life-long success.

Dentsu Webchutneys research teams found that as our knowledge about childhood development has expanded, the need of the hour is to prepare todays scholar base for an emerging world in which they will hold a host of jobs that dont even exist as yet. Research has further indicated that success in these areas will require a preparedness that goes much beyond traditional academic preparation, to that which hinges on a healthy emotional, psychological and social development of the child. More and more educational institutions are seeing the need and merit for a curriculum which supports all rounded development with every subject stream becoming equally important.

The creative development of the Progressive Report Card stems from this fundamental insight.

Introducing the concept, P.G. Aditya, Senior Creative Director at Dentsu Webchutney, said, Design, for all its disruptive qualities, has not been applied to schools beyond the inclusion of interactive boards. Weve gone one step further to apply it to the heart of the most important success parameter of a student: the report card. No parent, teacher, or school administrator is going to see a report card the same way again.

In partnership with KA EduAssociates, the Progressive Report card shares a rich design story. The circular design of the report card nudges parents to distribute their attention equally to all subjects. The circle symbolizes unity and equality, and draws from a well-established theory of perception.

Ashwin Palkar, Creative Director, Design at Dentsu Webchutney added, Were fortunate to work in an industry where diversity and creativity is valued. Our goal is to reach education boards to drive mass adoption. We want to reduce any friction that exists between bright, independent futures of children and dogmatic beliefs around academics of their parents.

The team has also released a website- www.theprogressivereportcard.com, through which interested parents and schools can sign up to be part of the initiative. The idea also has an open-source side to it: schools that wish to customize the Progressive Report to their curriculum, will receive an instructional design kit which helps them achieve the same.

So far, The Progressive Report Card has been piloted across schools in eight states & aims to replace the traditional report card in at least one school in every Indian state, during the academic year 2018-19.
Colors show, Bepannah, has found traction with the viewers, garnering 5,896 (000s) Impressions in its first week itself and is the fifth most watched show on Hindi GECs in Urban [BARC Wk 12, HSM (Urban) : NCCS All : Prime Time (1800 - 2330 hrs) : 2+ Individuals].

The show, which went on air on Monday, March 19, 2018, centres around the theme of infidelity. Described as a romantic thriller, with a large slice of mystery, Bepannah traces the lives of two couples  Zoya and Yash Arora, and Aditya and Pooja Hooda  and how the two collide in the most unexpected and tragic way.

Zoya (Jennifer Winget) and Yash (Sehban Azim) married against their parents wishes and live in Mussoorie. Yash frequently travels to Mumbai for business.

Aditya (Harshad Chopra) and Pooja (Namita Dubey) have known each other since childhood and later get married. Aditya, a pilot, has a strained relationship with his father who is a renowned judge, due to the latters extramarital affair.

The first few episodes set the family dynamics and we get to know the interpersonal relationships of the various characters. They two respective couples are shown to have a happy married life  one in Musoorie and the other in Mumbai.

Zoya wants to give the perfect gift to Yash on their 6 wedding anniversary, while Aditya is looking to make amends for having forgotten Poojas birthday. Aditya, on duty, is scheduled to fly out to Kathmandu, but bad weather sees him stranded in Musoorie. Zoya and Adityas paths collide at a gift shop, where both of them select the same gift for their respective spouses  a gramophone. What follows is a witty banter between the two, when both receive phone calls about an accident involving their partners.

It is from here that the story really picks up and sets the tone for a lot of mystery and speculations. When Zoya and Aditya reach the scene of mishap they are in for a shocking revelation  Yash and Pooja have been having a secret affair. Both die in the accident and are found holding hands at the time of their death.

Zoya and Aditya react differently to this tragic event. While Zoya is heartbroken and doesn;t want to believe that her husband had been cheating on her, Aditya is filled with anger at his wifes infidelity. He remembers his hatred for his father for his extramarital affair. Adityas anger is also directed towards Zoya, as he also blames her husband for taking away his wife.

Zoya, on the other hand, tells him that they were probably destined to meet as fate had brought them in each others paths again and again.

But where do they move from here on? Were Yash and Pooja really having an affair? Will Zoya and Aditya get together in the future against all odds? Was the accident that killed Yash and Pooja staged? These and many other questions will hopefully be answered in the coming episodes.

Jennifer Winget had earned a lot of praise for her performance in her last show, Beyhadh, for essaying a character which had shades of grey. The popular actress is looking to garner the same admiration from TV viewers for Bepanah as well.

To Read More Visit Here.
In 2016, New Yorker writer Masha Gessen and photographer Misha Friedman traveled to Russia looking, as they put it in a new book, for Stalins Gulags in Putins Russia. The book, called Never Remember, comes as Joseph Stalins image is being burnishedto the point that he now consistently tops polls asking Russians to choose the greatest man who ever lived, notes Gessen. We wanted to document memoryor the lack of memory, she writes. Whats missing, she says, is a reckoning, an attempt to comprehend the incomprehensible.
This month, the last male northern white rhino died.

The animal, known as Sudan, was 45 and had been suffering from two age-related infections. He had been living at Kenyas Ol Pejeta Conservancy, surrounded by armed guards in the days leading up to his death to protect him from poachers, noted CNN.

Researchers were able to save some of Sudan's genetic material in the hopes of successfully artificially inseminating one of the two females northern white rhinos still living. So there is some hope, however slim, for the species.

As noted on Monday, photographer Ami Vitale traveled to Kenya to photograph Sudan one last time and to say goodbye to him: She first met the rhino nine years ago, while working on a project about the decline of the species. Sudan, she says, changed the trajectory of my work.

At the time, there were only eight northern white rhinos left, all living in captivity. In a last-ditch effort to save the species, four of the rhinos were airlifted from the Dvr Kralove Zoo in the Czech Republic to Kenya. Vitale documented the project.

I remember so clearly when Sudan first set foot on the African soil, Vitale writes at her website. The skies darkened and torrential rains came moments after we arrived. He put his head in the air to smell the rains and immediately rolled around on the ground. It was his first mud bath since he left the continent, taken from Sudan, the country with which he shares his name.

He looked ancient, part of a species that has lived on this planet for millions of years, yet could not survive mankind, she writes.

If there is meaning in Sudans passing, writes Vitale, its that all hope is not lost. This can be our wake-up call, she states. In a world of more than 7 billion people, we must see ourselves as part of the landscape. Our fate is linked to the fate of animals.

Vitale is now launching a print sale with a choice of two images, one of the final moments of Sudan and an image of Fatu, Sudans granddaughter and one of the last two surviving female northern white rhino on the savannah. "I am donating 100 percent of the profits to support Ol Pejeta so that they can continue on their mission of protecting and fighting for some of the world's most vulnerable creatures," she says.

Each archival print is available for $225 plus shipping. Please go here for more information

Here are some of the other photo stories we spotlighted this week:

__________



1. Syrian Photographer Wins $120K HIPA Grand Prize



Syrian photographer Mohamed Alragheb has won the $120,000 Grand Prize in the seventh annual Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum International Photography Awards (HIPA) for his image of fellow photojournalist Abd Alkader Habak carrying an injured child away from a car bomb explosion. The events that led to the photograph unfolded April 2017, in the Rashideen neighborhood in Western Aleppo, noted PDN. Habak received the prize on behalf of Alragheb, who remains in Syria.





2. How Matthew Rolston Redefined Hollywood Glamour in the 80s



Classic Hollywood glamour photography  luminous faces spotlighted against deep shadows  emerged in the 1930s, but by the 1960s it had gone out of style. Then, in the 1970s and '80s it was resurrected with postmodern irony by Andy Warhol and photographer Matthew Rolston, whose work, we noted, is on view through April 21 at Los Angeles's Fahey/Klein Gallery in the exhibition "Hollywood Royale: Out of the School of Los Angeles.





3. Step Back in Time at a Bolivian Mennonite Community



Photographer Jordi Busque, a native of Barcelona, Spain, had never heard of Mennonites until some 12 years ago, when he encountered a group while waiting for a bus in the eastern lowlands of Bolivia. Over the course of the decade, he traveled with his camera to 20 Mennonite colonies in Bolivia. Photography is forbidden in nearly all coloniesBusque compares initial reactions to him taking out his camera out as if he were taking out a gunso it took patience and dedication to earn their trust, noted National Geographic.





4. Two Photographers Confront Life After Brexit



Will love survive after Brexit? That question, we noted on Tuesday, is pondered by two different photographers as the U.K. struggles toward an uncertain future in the wake of the 2016 referendum in which the nation voted to leave the European Union. A series by photographer Laura Pannack (one image from which is seen here) explores the angst and uncertainly on a human level. Meanwhile, photographer Max Kandhola confronts racism in post-Brexit Britain.





5. Photographer Fools Instagram with a Digital "Supermodel"



Mashable recently reported that British fashion photographer Cameron-James Wilson was thrilled when Rhianna's Fenty Beauty line "regrammed" his photo of a model named Shudu, alongside the caption "in living color." But "living" wasn't exactly accurate, noted the website: Shudu is actually the world's first "digital supermodel," an image created using 3D image rendering software programme DAZ3D. Wilson cleared things up at Harpers Bazaar.
U.S. Deputy Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette toured the Savannah River Site on Wednesday and Thursday.

It was Brouillette's first visit to the Site.

According to a DOE spokesperson, Brouillette's time at SRS was meant for him to get acquainted with the Site's facilities and workforce.

DOE documents: SRS plutonium complex could undergo expansion The U.S. Department of Energy is jostling to expand its plutonium processing and riddance abilities at the Savannah River Site in the years to come.

The deputy secretary arrived Wednesday afternoon and toured K-Area, an interim plutonium storage facility. There, according to posts on social media, Brouillette was given a demonstration on downblending, the mixing of plutonium with inert material for final disposal elsewhere.

U.S. Department of Energy fiscal year 2019 budget request documents lay out nearly $60 million for a bolstered downblending campaign at K-Area.

On Thursday, Brouillette visited the Savannah River National Laboratory.

On his tour of the national lab, Brouillette had the chance to check out the FBI's Radiological Evidence Examination Facility, according to another post on social media.

The deputy secretary also made stops at several SRS waste management facilities: the Saltstone Disposal Units and the Defense Waste Processing Facility, specifically.

Brouillette's two-day tour marks the fourth high-profile SRS visit in roughly two months.

At the beginning of February, U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry toured SRS. His tour included time at the embattled Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility, an under-construction plutonium processing complex that has fallen out of favor with the secretary.

Perry capped his two-day visit with an onsite town-hall-type meeting, during which he told employees SRS has a "very bright" future.

U.S. Reps. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., and Rick Allen, R-Ga., as well as U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., accompanied Perry on his visit.

At the beginning of March, DOE Under Secretary for Science Paul Dabbar visited SRS, specifically spending time at the national lab.

About a week-and-a-half later, Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, the National Nuclear Security Administration leader, toured SRS.

The NNSA is a semiautonomous DOE agency in charge of the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile and nonproliferation activities.
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GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip  Quds Press International News Agency reported March 20 that Salah al-Bardawil, a member of Hamas political bureau, said his movement is ready to engage in a dialogue with the US administration to achieve the aspirations of the Palestinian people in obtaining their rights, establishing a Palestinian state and lifting the siege on Gaza. This has angered the leaders of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Fatah, who consider Hamas willingness to introduce itself to the US administration as a substitute for the PLO.

Al-Monitor contacted several Hamas officials, but they all refused to comment on this issue. They noted that Bardawils statements reflect the movements official position, but they also stressed that they were neither contacted by the US administration for dialogue nor invited to attend the donor conference held at the White House mid-March. On the contrary, Hamas criticized the conference, which it described as a US attempt to absolve Israel of Gaza's humanitarian and economic problems caused by the Israeli blockade imposed on Gaza since 2007.

Bardawil said, We do not mind sitting with any party that wants to lift the siege imposed on us and help us recover our stolen rights, provided that this party does not serve as an entry point for concessions on the rights of the Palestinian people, as the PLO did in the early 1990s by signing the Oslo Accord, he meant. Bardawil denied the presence of any channels of communication between his movement and Washington at the moment.

Hamas believes that the United States is the first supporter of Israel and is convinced that Washington is the only party in the world capable of pushing for progress in the Palestinian cause via talks.

Bardawil pointed out that Hamas is interested in any international political effort to help Palestinians obtain their rights, adding, We are ready to meet with any rational party in the world that wants to pressure the occupation to leave our land and our skies, so long as it is not the occupation itself."

Speaking to Al-Monitor, Fatah leader Yahya Rabah accused Hamas of promoting itself as an alternative to the PLO and the PA before the world, particularly the United States. He pointed out that Hamas is making big efforts to remove the PA and Fatah from the leadership of the Palestinian people.

Unfortunately, in light of the worlds and the PAs tendency to confront US President Donald Trumps administration and its plan to quash the Palestinian cause, some Hamas leaders are calling for a dialogue with the US administration, Rabah said. Hamas will obtain nothing but deception and illusion, after all of its attempts.

He pointed out that Hamas' willingness to hold dialogue with the US administration followed President Mahmoud Abbas' March 19 speech, before Fatahs Central Committee, in which he leveled direct accusations against Hamas of being behind the blast targeting Prime Minister Rami Hamdallahs convoy in the Gaza Strip, and absolutely rejected the US administration's plans to liquidate the Palestinian cause.

Article 37 of Hamas' political document, published in May 2017, states: Hamas believes in cooperating with all states that support the rights of the Palestinian people.  Hamas adopts the policy of opening up to different states in the world, especially the Arab and Islamic states. It endeavors to establish balanced relations on the basis of combining the requirements of the Palestinian cause and the Palestinian peoples interests on the one hand with the interests of the Islamic nation, its renaissance and its security on the other.

Wasel Abu Youssef, secretary-general of the Palestine Liberation Front and a member of the PLOs Executive Committee, told Al-Monitor that no one can fill the PLOs shoes as representative of the Palestinian people in international forums and around the world or assume its political role.

He pointed out that the international community, the United States included, considers the PLO the representative of the Palestinian people, and all attempts by Hamas or other Palestinian factions to embark on a dialogue with the US administration at this time raises many doubts, especially in light of the recent US attempts to implement the Deal of the Century, which first began with recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and halting aid to Palestinians, most recently by virtue of the March 23 decision by the US Congress.

The successive US administrations have set conditions for Hamas before starting any dialogue. First and foremost among these is to answer the demands of the Quartet on the Middle East, which include recognizing Israel, renouncing violence and recognizing the agreements signed between Israel and the Palestinians.

Ibrahim al-Madhoun, a political analyst close to Hamas and deputy head of the Youth Media Center in the Gaza Strip, told Al-Monitor, Hamas does not mind opening a dialogue with any country in the world, except for Israel. He added that Hamas sees any dialogue with the United States, without being forced to give up its weapons or recognize Israel, as a gain for the Palestinian people.

He anticipated that Hamas would positively respond to any back channel or public channel of communication with the United States, noting that political dialogue with different countries was stipulated in Hamas May 2017 charter. The problem remains with the United States, he said, which sets conditions for dialogue with Hamas, notably abiding by the conditions set by the Quartet and letting go of fighting Israel.

Madhoun attributed the PAs anger toward Hamas' willingness to talk to the US administration to the fact that it does not want Hamas to be a substitute for it and compete with it in terms of international relations. The PA would rather keep Hamas in political isolation, he noted, adding that Hamas victory in the 2006 legislative elections and the military power it has in Gaza qualify it to negotiate with many Western countries to achieve the rights of the Palestinian people.

Hamas believes that its victory in the legislative elections qualifies the movement to hold dialogue with different countries, including the United States.

Talal Okal, a writer for the Palestinian Al-Ayyam daily, told Al-Monitor that Hamas political goals, as any party's in the world, consist of being the one in power and in charge of communication with other countries.

He explained that the timing of Hamas announcing its readiness to hold dialogue with the United States is designed to pressure the PA, following Abbas recent speech, which the movement sharply criticized.

He ruled out, however, the possibility that Hamas would engage in a dialogue with the United States in the near future, particularly since US Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt conveyed the US administrations criticism of Hamas on Feb. 19. Hamas hides improvised explosive devices to attack Israeli soldiers and is shooting rockets at Israel again. Such cowardly acts will only escalate violence, not build the prosperous society the people of Gaza deserve, Greenblatt posted on his official Twitter page.

Meanwhile, Okal warned that any US-Hamas rapprochement in light of the current global balance of power may result in the movement losing much of its popularity. He pointed out that all Palestinian popular segments believe that the US bias is the reason why they have lost their rights, in reference to the US political support to Israel reflected in the repeated vetoes of the UN Security Council resolutions on the Palestinian cause.
ALEPPO  Opposition forces have succeeded in imposing greater security in Afrin, said Lt. Col. Mohammad Hamadin, official spokesman for the Syrian National Army (SNA), the Turkey-allied militias of the Free Syrian Army. Hamadin, who took part in Turkey's Operation Olive Branch in Afrin, told Al-Monitor that theft and looting by opposition forces had been quelled in the city. The Turkish army and its allies in the armed Syrian opposition captured Afrin from Kurdish forces on March 18.

Following the end of the fighting, Afrin experienced a wave of assaults and taafish, the colloquial term for looting committed by military members. The looters and thieves, who belonged to the armed opposition, took cars, motorcycles, tractors, furniture, household appliances and other private property and robbed shops.

The Ministry of Defense of the opposition Syrian Interim Government had formed the Military Police on Feb. 20 under the command of Mohammed Sheikhli. The force's main headquarters is in the city of al-Bab. The opposition forces are relying on the police to control security in the city. A number of opposition members accused of theft have been arrested.

After the Turkish and opposition forces seized control of Afrin, Hamadin said, the SNA erected dozens of checkpoints at the citys entrances and exits and arrested scores of looters and perpetrators of other abuses against locals, including theft and vandalism, for investigation by the military. Large quantities of looted items have been secured and stored in warehouses for return to their owners.

We have dealt firmly with all the abuses against the people of Afrin that have occurred since the liberation of the city, Hamadin asserted. The perpetrators have been pursued and arrested, and the security campaign will not cease until the looted property has been returned to its owners and the thieves held to account. We can say that we have succeeded to a large extent in ending a state of chaos and have begun to restore security in the city, with locals returning smoothly to their homes.

Various factions within the SNA as well as civil and social opposition groups had demanded that the looting in Afrin be brought to a halt and the perpetrators held accountable. On March 19, the 3rd SNA Corps announced its decision to disband a number of its battalions because of their involvement in robberies. On the same day, the Ministry of Defense of the Syrian Interim Government issued directives to the SNA, urging it to maintain public security and safety and protect citizens' property.

Images of robbing and looting in Afrin spread by activists on social media sparked widespread anger among the opposition generally. Activists seeking accountability also launched a counter-looting campaign.

Opposition activists wrote slogans on the walls of the city decrying and condemning these actions, reminding members of the armed opposition that the revolution was meant to defend Syrians, not steal from them. Activists also spoke to Afrin residents and listened to their problems and grievances. On March 22, the military police opened a complaints office in Afrin and urged all opposition factions to cooperate.

Saleh Sheikho, an Afrin resident whose car was stolen from outside his house by an armed group, told Al-Monitor, I came out of my house a day after Afrin fell into the hands of the SNA on March 19, and I didnt find my car there. It had been stolen. I didnt hear the sound of the engine, so maybe the thieves loaded it onto a crane and took it somewhere far away. Even if I had heard it and seen the thieves with my own eyes, I could not have done anything about it or stopped them. I filed a complaint with the office opened by the SNA in Afrin, and I hope to get my car back. There are many people like me in Afrin who lost property in the days following the entry of forces from the SNA. Some locals lost everything they owned at the hands of thieves.

Lt. Col. Zuhair Estambuli, commander of the SNA's Sultan Muhammad al-Fatah Brigade, explained to Al-Monitor, We opened the complaints office in Afrin for people who have lost private property. We also tightened security on roads leading into and out of the city to assist the SNA Military Police. Forces from the SNA have been prevented from leaving and entering the city unless they are on an official mission. Extensive inspections are carried out on all military vehicles upon entry and exit.

Col. Moataz Raslan, commander of the Nokhba Army, a militia in the SNA, asserted to Al-Monitor, More than 90% of the groups who were carrying out abuses and theft in Afrin have been arrested and referred to SNA military courts. Most of the abuses have ended, and we will now begin a campaign to return civilians to their homes and restore whatever property the SNA is able to recover. We promise the people of Afrin to return all the property stolen during this period, and we apologize on behalf of the opposition. The groups that carried out these thefts do not represent the SNA or its principles.

Raslan explained that efforts are underway to try to recover looted property and make the situation secure for residents. After the situation stabilizes in the city, we will think of a way to compensate the people who did not regain their property. Compensation could be allocated, but not now, of course. We are preoccupied with bringing the city back to life and forming civil entities to provide services to the people and facilitate their return.

Hisham Darbala, commander of the Azaz Military Police station, told Al-Monitor, The Military Police played a major role in enforcing security in Afrin. It issued circulars of suspects, whose photos were distributed, who appeared in videos showing them stealing residents properties in Afrin.

Darbala further stated, Checkpoints were also erected in areas surrounding Afrin. Large quantities of the looted goods were seized and dozens of perpetrators arrested. The Military Police in cooperation with the various commanders from the SNA deployed security checkpoints and barriers in the vicinity and requested that locals inform us of the stolen properties and their description.

For the SNA, the looting in Afrin by some of the armed groups affiliated with it represents blight on its name. The opposition forces have a lot to prove to gain local residents' trust and respect.
Would press freedom in Turkey be impacted negatively when the countrys largest media group is sold from a company that reluctantly supports the government to a company that eagerly supports the government? read the headline of Zaytung, Turkeys satirical news site, on March 22. It was the day that the Dogan Holding announced talks for the sale of Dogan media, which owns the top-selling daily Hurriyet and broadcaster CNN-Turk, to Demiroren Holding. "Unconfirmed rumors indicate that the government plans to unite all Turkish newspapers, TV channels and news websites under its e-state portal," noted the article, referring to the government's online service portal where Turkish citizens can access official documents, check their tax debts or research their genealogy.

This headline is precisely why I'd rather follow the news from Zaytung than from any other paper, Tugba, a post-graduate student of media studies at a public university in Izmir, told Al-Monitor. I saw this headline in Zaytung barely hours after the first media bulletins on the sale, while other newspapers were probably pondering on the angle they'd use. Zaytung says what other papers dare not say, but in a funny, catchy way.

The online satirical paper has 5.4 million followers on Twitter and more than 600,000 on Facebook. It has created copycats and parodies. Sounds like Zaytung has become a common expression used by politicians, columnists and laymen to refer to absurd news and calls have been made to the Turkish Language Institution's online dictionary to include the word. Still, for a Turkish audience accustomed to fake or biased news, Zaytung is "more honest" than most other outlets.

When I go out and talk to young people, they say that they follow Turkeys agenda from Zaytung, said Hakan Bilginer, an electronics engineer who founded the site in 2009, modeling it after The Onion, an American satirical news site. The name is the Turkish pronunciation of Zeitung, German for newspaper. The portal's symbol is the crow and its slogan is honest, objective and unethical news, a reference to the websites lack of affiliation to any other media group and its recognition of no sacred cows exempt from satire.

Zaytung's editorial board, consisting of Bilginer and five others, chooses among articles submitted by contributors, whom Bilginer describes as people of all ages and a variety of backgrounds. The final article, once edited, is presented in a classic news style that sometimes gets mistaken as real. In 2012, during Zaytung's early days, the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) denied a Zaytung report on an atheist imam in a village in southwestern Turkey who was asked to step down but refused to do so. We checked and discovered that there is no such village and no imam by that name, Diyanet members acknowledged on diyanethaber.com.

We keep our nose close to the daily agenda of Turkey, but we approach it with humor and irony. Our articles tackle controversial issues head-on, but our tone and sense of humor provide a release for people who feel the tension of everyday reality, Bilginer told Al-Monitor.

Zaytungs 2016-2017 almanac, which came out earlier this month, gives a satirical account of a rough and controversial period in Turkeys history: Islamic State attacks, the referendum for a presidential system, the coup attempt, large-scale arrests under the guise of a cleanup operation after the coup, and diplomatic crises with many European countries.

Zaytung took them all in stride: The 25th kilometer of Yozgat-Kayseri highway, the only place where there was no security issue in Turkey, was declared a cultural site, read one article, referring to one of the least-visited parts of Central Anatolia after bombs exploded in Turkeys cities throughout 2016. The same mocking tone dominated its coverage of the military coup attempt on July 15, 2016, in which 200 people were killed: IS announces withdrawal from Turkey, declaring the country self-sufficient in violence and terrorism. The article quoted an IS spokesman as saying that trying to destabilize Turkey was a waste of time and effort for a foreign terrorist group, when Turkey had its own military means, such as tanks and jets, that different local groups can use against each other.

Unsurprisingly, most of the headlines take aim at President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. WhatsApp users in panic after Erdogan pops up in some groups came in response to rumors of wiretapping and text and voice messages sent by the president on July 15, 2017, congratulating the patriotic citizens of Turkey for averting the coup a year ago. When Erdogan was criticized for the extravagance of the presidential palace's annual electricity bill of a million liras ($2.2 million), he replied in a written statement that no cost was too high for maintaining a countrys image. Zaytung hit back with the headline, Heinous attack in Ankara: A group of traitors tries to tarnish Turkeys reputation by putting energy-efficient light bulbs in presidential palace.

Surprisingly, Bilginer said the publication has never been sued. Cartoonists, writers and ordinary citizens who mock Erdogan can find themselves in court, facing hefty fines or a jail sentence in cases brought either by the presidents huge legal team or public prosecutors who evoke Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code, which makes insults to the head of state a crime. One of Turkeys top cartoon magazines, Penguen, has been sued by the president so many times that it took to publishing blank covers several times as protest. The magazine finally went out of business in spring 2017.

The iron-fisted president tones down his wrath now and then: After the coup, he announced that he was dropping all insult charges against him in a gesture of national reconciliation. He also ignored a rude limerick written by Boris Johnson before he became the British foreign secretary about Erdogan having sex with a goat, and gave him a warm reception when he made an official visit to Turkey.

Our articles are anonymous, said Bilginer. Our board is also careful to be on the right side of law, too. We do not insult anyone; we simply publish good, funny, relevant jokes. Everybody knows that they are not real news.

The last statement may not be strictly true, as many keyboard-happy politicians have retweeted Zaytung news as real. Melih Gokcek, the ex-mayor of Ankara and a prolific social media user, mistook for real a bulletin that claimed plans for an atomic bomb were found among the marginal groups that participated in Gezi Park protests of 2013  the largest protests against the government in recent Turkish history.

Well miss Gokcek, he was great material for satire  a figure like the villains of Gotham City, Bilginer said with a laugh. When Gokcek stepped down at Erdogan's request, Zaytung ran an image of Gokceks framed portrait at the garbage bin, with the caption, The new administration pays respect to Ankaras legendary mayor.

Zaytungs popularity has increased as the pressure on the press has silenced satirical voices in the mainstream media and political cartoons faded from front pages. Given the lack of humor in politics, Zaytung provides a brave and funny counter-voice, Idil Gungor, a former journalist who presently heads the communication team of a private publishing group, told Al-Monitor. It has become a brand.

Bilginers future plans include adding an English-language section. I think some of the news is local, but some can interest an international audience, he said.
Poland is home to 33 of Europes 50 most polluted cities and a Dutch artist has come up with an innovative solution.

Krakow, Poland  On an early March afternoon, people in masks filled Krakow.

A grey haze shrouded the city and a pungent smell of smoke hung heavily in the air  typical scenery of the citys late winter gloom.

Krakow, Polands main tourist destination with a scenic old town and atmospheric cafes, has long been losing the battle against air pollution.

But in the middle of the citys Jordan Park, one can take a deep breath.

A newly erected seven-metre-high Smog Free Tower, designed by the Dutch artist, innovator and the founder of Studio Roosegaarde social design lab, Daan Roosegaarde, is visible from afar, gleaming in the faint rays of the sun.

The Smog Free Tower in Krakows Jordans Park [Jaap Arriens/Al Jazeera]

Made of oblong pieces of aluminium, the tower works as a vast air-purifying hoover, giving local residents a place of respite.

In February, the Smog Free Tower began the Polish stage of its world tour.

Poland is home to 33 of Europes 50 most polluted cities, according to the World Health Organization.

Close to 50,000 people a year nationwide die prematurely of pollution-related diseases.

People in Krakow, Poland, wear pollution masks to protect their health [Jaap Arriens/Al Jazeera]

The dream of a clean world

Making public places human-friendly again has been at the core of Daan Roosegaardes mission.

The idea to start a project that would use design and technology to fight air pollution came to his mind in Beijing.

I was in my room, looking outside my window at the city covered by pollution. I thought to myself that we should not accept this. The city has become a machine that is killing us, Roosegaarde told Al Jazeera.

Soon after, with the help of a team of designers and engineers, Studio Roosegaarde developed the idea of the Smog Free Tower, the worlds first air hoover. Using positive ionization technology, the tower clears 30,000 cubic metres of air an hour, using no more energy than a water boiler.

We should design and engineer our way out of it and improve the world we live in. We have created the mess we are in. Daan Roosegaarde, Dutch artist

In the process, the tower collects smog particles, which are then turned into jewellery  smog-free rings and cufflinks, sold by the studio. Each of them provides the city with 1,000 cubic metres of clean air.

Smog Free Towers previously appeared in the Netherlands and China, where the project began its world tour.

According to professor Bert Blocken, civic engineer from Eindhoven University of Technology and KU Leuven, the project has proved successful.

A sign advertising pollution masks is seen in Krakow [Jaap Arriens/Al Jazeera]

Both the technology and the Smog Free Tower itself have been successfully evaluated with both field measurements and numerical simulations with Computational Fluid Dynamics, Blocken said. The results confirm that the tower captures and removes up to 70 percent of the ingested PM10 and up to 50 percent of the ingested PM2.5.

As Roosegaarde believes, bad design has been one of the reasons for the worlds pollution problem.

We should design and engineer our way out of it and improve the world we live in. We have created the mess we are in, he said.

Polands dirty reality

In February, the European Court of Justice ruled that between 2007 and 2015, Poland regularly failed to comply with EU air quality standards. If the country does not address the problem, it will pay a fine ranging from 5,066 euros ($6,224) to 373,460 euros for each day of infringement, ClientEarth environmental groups estimates reveal.

The main sources of pollution are exhaust gas of automotive industries, power stations and households. In Krakow, air quality is further compromised by the citys unfortunate landform. Located in a hollow, with little air circulation and infrequent winds, in winter time, the city often reminds of an apocalyptic industrial zone.

Nikoletta Tyka moved to Krakow several years ago from nearby Tarnow. Ever since, she has been experiencing the effects of pollution.

In Krakow, the air smells. In winter time, I am constantly ill, I cough and have problems with sinuses, she told Al Jazeera.

When I go home, the problems disappear. I consulted several doctors and they all said my problems are most likely related to air pollution.

Poland is home to 33 of Europes 55 most polluted cities [Jaap Arriens/Al Jazeera]

Ewa Lutomska from Krakows Smog Alert citizen initiative explains that heating-related pollution is the biggest problem in the city. Until recently, there were around 30,000 stoves and coal furnaces, often very old, which did not meet emission standards, Lutomska told Al Jazeera.

The coal used is often low quality, therefore, during winter time, we see an increase in pollution levels, including atmospheric particulates and carcinogenic benzo(a)pyrene.

Into a clean future

In January 2017, the Polish government launched the Clean Air programme, which, if implemented, may contribute to tackling air pollution. As part of the package, the government proposed introducing emission standards for furnaces, coal quality norms and thermo-modernisation programmes for the poorest households.

In addition, in February this year, the government launched Stop Smog initiative, which aims to support the exchange of stoves and thermo-modernisation of households in 23 out of 33 most polluted Polish cities from the WHO list. It remains to be seen if the governments efforts make a difference.

Many local governments have also taken on the task to fight pollution.

For the last several years, Krakow has committed to eliminating coal furnaces and replacing them with ecological ones, Lutomska says. Such exchange is encouraged with subsidies, but also direct financial support for the poorest residents to pay for their heating bills.

Sometimes, I look at the world and I don't understand it any more. The traffic jams, air pollution - it's a brutal place. I want to design things to make the world more understandable. And a bit more human. Daan Roosegaarde, artist

The Smog Free Project may give inspiration to countries such as Poland to look into local solutions bypassing top-down government initiatives.

After successfully completing its China tour, the Smog Free Tower project will be implemented on a large scale by a local partner. Next, it will tour Mexico and Colombia.

In the coming months, Studio Roosegarde, in cooperation with ofo  one of the largest Chinese bike-sharing initiatives, and TEZGIN design platform, will bring to life Smog Free Bicycles. Based on 2017 technology, the bicycles absorb polluted air, clean it and release to the atmosphere.

Sometimes, I look at the world and I dont understand it anymore. The traffic jams, air pollution  its a brutal place, Roosegaarde says. I want to design things to make the world more understandable. And a bit more human.
Israeli forces have killed at least 15 Palestinians and wounded more than 1,000 others during a mass protest near the Gaza Strips eastern border.

Thousands attended Fridays protest, dubbed the Great March of Return, which was organised by several Palestinian civil society organisations and backed by all of political factions.

The protest marked the 42nd anniversary of Land Day  on March 30, 1976, six unarmed Palestinian citizens of Israel were killed by Israeli forces during protests against the Israeli governments decision to expropriate massive tracts of Palestinian land.

Protesters said the main message of the march was to call for the right of return for Palestinian refugees.

Tents were also set up on five different points along the border, a move kicking off six weeks of a sit-in demonstration leading up to the 70th anniversary of the Nakba on May 15.
The media has been quick to associate Qatars decision to withdraw its peacekeeping forces from the disputed Djibouti-Eritrea border with the Gulf crisis. This connection was most likely made because Qatars decision came only days after both Djibouti and Eritrea announced that they are siding with Saudi Arabia in the diplomatic rift and downgraded their diplomatic relations with Qatar.





The withdrawal of troops, if understood as a knee-jerk reaction, contrasts markedly with how Qatar has been operating since the start of the crisis. Qatar has not reciprocated the harsh, punitive moves of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia in a tit-for-tat spiral of vindictiveness. Nor has it reacted to countries which have reduced diplomatic relations, such as Jordan, by taking retaliatory measures against its thousands of nationals working in Qatar.

While Qatar Airways offices have been sealed off in Abu Dhabi and its senior staff harassed, no such measures have been taken by Doha. Furthermore, while food supplies through Saudi Arabia and the UAE were cut, Qatar continues to supply the latter with around 57 million cubic metres of gas daily. This shows that Qatar continues to play the long game by taking the moral high ground  a strategy that looks to have paid off given the number of international diplomatic capitals that have refused to cave into the intense lobbying of Saudi Arabia and the UAE to vilify Qatar.

READ MORE: Africa and the Gulf crisis: the peril of picking sides

Given what we know about how Qatar has operated during the crisis, the explanation that the troop withdrawal is purely a knee-jerk reaction to the downgrading of diplomatic ties does not add up. Doubtlessly, with downgraded relations, Qatar finds itself in a difficult position as a mediator and peacekeeper between the two nations. No mediator can operate effectively with reduced representation, both on a practical and reputational level. Nevertheless, it is unlikely that the decision has been made in a retaliatory manner. Rather, there are three less evident reasons for why the decision to withdraw has been on the cards for some time and why it is now impossible for anyone in Qatar to advocate for maintaining the peacekeeping force.

The potential fallout of the crisis could have ripple waves spiralling out of the border dispute to the much larger Eritrea-Ethiopia conflict and the rest of the Horn of Africa at a time when the sub-region is facing a massive humanitarian crisis.

First of all, a fundamental principle of conflict mediation is that any third party must maintain a credible threat to walk away if the conflicting parties are not committed to reaching a negotiated settlement. Qatari troops have, for the past seven years, been stationed in the dusty uninhabited border region between the two East African countries to monitor the implementation of the terms of a ceasefire agreement brokered by Qatar in June 2010.

Despite consistent attempts to turn the ceasefire into a peace agreement, little progress has been made. A minor breakthrough was achieved in March 2016 when, in a deal mediated by Qatar, Eritrea released four prisoners from Djiboutis armed forces who were captured in June 2008 during border clashes. However, in the past year, the Eritrean negotiating team has disengaged from the mediation process despite the United Nations Security Council mandated-arms embargo on Eritrea being re-approved in November 2016, demanding that Eritrea release all missing prisoners and allow UN monitors to enter the country.

The two states, particularly Eritrea, have not heeded calls for border demarcation and have gone into denial by refusing to refer to the border conflict as a serious issue. The presence of the Qatari peacekeepers had allowed both parties to grow accustomed to the status quo of a mutually beneficial stalemate.

Second, Djibouti and Eritrea consistently engage in a geostrategic game of shifting alliances. When Qatar entered the fray, the Djibouti-Eritrea border dispute was a minor conflict with very few international actors showing an appetite for mediation. Since then Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti has expanded to become the largest US military base in the region, China has also entered Djibouti, while, in April 2015, Saudi Arabia and Eritrea signed a security cooperation agreement and the UAE is currently completing the construction of a military base north of the port city of Assab in Eritrea from where its armed forces have been operating in the military campaign in Yemen. This particular corner of the Horn of Africa is by now far too crowded for a small nation like Qatar to justify its military presence as a buffer.

READ MORE: Qatar-Gulf crisis: All the latest updates

Third, maintaining the 500-strong presence of Qatari troops in a remote area is a costly and largely thankless endeavour. While the withdrawal was doubtlessly hastened by the changes in diplomatic relations with Eritrea and Djibouti, this has more to do with the infiltration of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia into Eritrea. This military presence clearly renders Qatari troops stationed thousands of miles away in an isolated area a soft target for direct or indirect retaliation. Moreover, 500 troops represent a significant investment of military manpower for an armed forces of around 12,000 during the most urgent crisis the country has faced in its history.

With Eritrea moving its forces into the contested Dumeira Mountain and Dumeira Islands, the temperature of the conflict has been increased and the situation is now more explosive than ever before, for all actors involved. The rapid development of the situation demonstrates the important stabilising role that Qatar had played under the radar for many years.

Moreover, the potential fallout of the crisis could have ripple waves spiralling out of the border dispute to the much larger Eritrea-Ethiopia conflict and the rest of the Horn of Africa at a time when the sub-region is facing a massive humanitarian crisis. This should serve as a cautionary note for the potential of escalation in other places where Qatari assistance has been keeping the lid on conflict, in particular, the Gaza Strip, where as a result of the increased isolation of Qatar by its Gulf neighbours we may see the end of the single most important donor to the reconstruction of the besieged territory to date. This should focus the minds of world leaders on the need to resolve the Gulf crisis amicably as soon as possible.

Professor Sultan Barakat is the director of the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies and professor in the Department of Politics at the University of York.

Dr Sansom Milton is a senior research fellow at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
Earlier this week, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un traveled to Beijing to meet Chinese leader Xi Jinping, making his first trip outside of country since he assumed power in late 2011. During the secretly guarded visit, Kim reportedly expressed his commitment to the denuclearisation on the Korean Peninsula if the conditions are right.

According to Chinas state-run news agency Xinhua, Kim expressed that; the issue of denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula can be resolved, if South Korea and the United States respond to our efforts with goodwill, create an atmosphere of peace and stability while taking progressive and synchronous measures for the realisation of peace. Meanwhile Xi extolled the importance of historic bond between China and North Korea and accepted Kims invitation to visit Pyongyang in the coming months.

Kims visit to China is the latest in the rapid succession of recent developments on the Korean Peninsula which has been dizzying. First, there were the series of diplomatic exchanges between South and North Korea during and after the Winter Olympic Games in Pyeongchang. These steps culminated in an historic meeting between senior South Korean officials in Pyongyang with Kim Jong-un in early March. During that meeting, the two sides agreed to an inter-Koreas summit  now scheduled for late April. At the visit of South Korea envoys to Pyongyang, Kim also reportedly indicated his desire to meet directly with US President Donald Trump and floated an apparent willingness to discuss the denuclearisation of the Norths nuclear weapons programme. The proposal was quickly accepted by Trump, despite the council of allies and White House advisers for a more cautious approach, and there are now tentative plans to host a summit between Trump and Kim sometime before the end of May.

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Amidst this backdrop, Kims visit to China adds an important wrinkle to a complex and fluid situation on the Korean Peninsula. There are several important takeaways from the visit. First, the move is a diplomatic coup for both sides in different ways. For North Korea, the visit signifies a mending of ties with China  its historic partner and ally  after years of strained relations due to Pyongyangs persistent development of its nuclear weapons programme. After years of struggling to secure a meeting with Chinas top leadership, Kim has now elevated his image to the status of equal with his warm and extended welcome in Beijing (which was just short of an official state visit status).

But perhaps more importantly, Pyongyang has now secured itself an important insurance card by shoring up its relations with Beijing. The move both increases leverage for Kim ahead of his upcoming summit with South Korean President Moon Jae-in and his potential meeting subsequently with Trump. This move is especially important for Kim in light of the recent flurry of changes to Trumps national security team, with the replacement of US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and National Security Adviser HR McMaster with Mike Pompeo and John Bolton respectively. These moves likely signal a more hawkish national security posture moving forward for the Trump administration and reportedly fueled concerns in Pyongyang that the US may be working towards a military strike of the North. By re-establishing high-level ties with Beijing, Kim has solidified relations with his countrys only real security guarantor.

But while the visit provides benefits going forward for Pyongyang, the big winner here is China. Amidst the flurry of diplomatic activity over the past month  Beijing was at risk of being sidelined as the Moon administration in South Korea appeared to be given a freehand at brokering summitry. Chinas acceptance of Kim  despite the sustained imperfection in the Sino-North Korean relationship  has turned this formula upside down in some respects. Indeed, the bold move by China was largely precipitated by the fast-moving variables on the Korean Peninsula and Beijings dissatisfaction with potentially being largely an observer of the upcoming summits. The recent National Peoples Congress meeting  marked by Xis further consolidation of power  provided the political space for this change of tact on North Korea and more pointed foreign policy.

The Xi-Kim summit also clearly signifies that China continues to be the most important player  outside of the US  in working towards a resolution of tensions on the Korean Peninsula. Beijing is often described as Pyongyangs lifeline and has been resistant to turn its back on the Kim regime despite its frustrations with the rise in provocations and growth of its nuclear and missile programs. While characterisations of North Korea as a client state of China are unhelpful and dont reflect the complexities of the relationship between Beijing and Pyongyang  there is no question that China (which represents 90 percent of North Koreas trade) is an existential relationship for Kim. From Beijings view, this is more a marriage of geostrategic necessity rather than an alliance of shared values and goals for the region. Beijings prime goal will be to leverage its renewed influence on the Korean Peninsula to press for a quid pro quo: resolution to tensions for concessions that would weaken the US alliance system in the region, such as an eroded US-South Korea force posture and defanged trilateral cooperation between the US, South Korea and Japan.

This sets up a high-stakes game of summitry over the coming weeks which demands preparation and coordination between Seoul, Washington and also Tokyo. While it appears that North Korea is committed towards a meeting with the US, it is significantly less likely that it is interested in giving up its nuclear weapons programme without crippling concessions, such as the dismemberment of US-South Korea alliance and the removal of the US nuclear umbrella over the Korean Peninsula.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial stance.
As more countries move away from drug prohibition, Indonesia is about to step up its efforts to defend it. Proposed revisions to the countrys criminal code promote harsh penalties for the use and possession of narcotics  including societys ultimate sanction, the death penalty  instead of a health-oriented approach. Rather than enabling a safer, healthier future for the worlds fourth largest population, the changes guarantee a surge in prison overcrowding, inflated public health costs, decreased access to health care, and increased drug trafficking, availability, and misuse.

The current criminal code (KUHP) is nearly identical to the penal code issued by the Dutch colonial authorities in 1918, which was retained when Indonesia gained independence in 1945. Its long-overdue revamp, which is in the final stages of deliberation in the House of Representatives, contains a new set of alarming provisions, including some that criminalise homosexuality, extramarital sex, and criticism of the president.

The latest draft revisions have been widely condemned by rights organisations. The United Nations human rights chief deemed the proposed amendments inherently discriminatory, arguing that their sanctions fall disproportionately on the most marginalised segments of society. Last month, activists from the so-called Civil Society Alliance to Reject the Draft Criminal Code organised several protests rejecting the parliaments proposals. Indonesias National Commission on Human Rights warned against the rushed adoption of the current criminal code revisions, calling for more input from the public.

Yet while the media and public have focused on the wider set of KUHP amendments, the inclusion of strict penalties for non-violent drug users has nearly slipped in unnoticed. The draft bill contains 22 articles on the use, possession, couriering, and smuggling of narcotics, all of which are treated as criminal offenses punishable with jail time, or in severe cases, death by firing squad.

A selective copy and paste job

Stiff repercussions for the use and supply of drugs are not a new development in this Muslim-majority, archipelago nation. Indonesia was rendered infamous by its harrowing execution of 14 prisoners in 2015, and more recently, by encouraging on-the-spot shootings of suspected drug dealers without due process.

Drug use and supply have been strictly regulated in Indonesia since 1976 (law no. 9), with subsequent amendments introduced in 2009 (law no. 35). The nations current drug policy incarnation  which akin to the criminal code, is coincidentally under government review  endorses jail time and civil rights sanctions for those caught using psychotropic substances.

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Despite favouring a punitive slant, 2009 amendments to the drug law are tempered by provisions aimed at steering drug users away from the criminal justice system and into rehabilitation. For instance, in cases involving drug use the law provides judges with wide discretion to impose drug treatment as an alternative to imprisonment. Despite ongoing challenges in terms of implementation, the formal recognition of substance use as a complex medical issue requiring health measures offers a lifeline to millions of drug users.

The draft version of the Criminal Code that we consulted (from February 2, 2018) reproduces the provisions on the punishment of drug use from Indonesias current drug law nearly verbatim, but excludes others focused on health.

One of the most problematic proposals is the lack of distinction between those who use drugs recreationally with those who traffic drugs. In what is arguably one of the broadest, most elusive provisions, draft article 701 lumps together the ownership, possession, storage, purchase, or cultivation of narcotics, even in cases where the narcotics are for their own use. In this way, the revised criminal code blanket criminalizes vastly different infractions, while failing to recognize drug dependence as a health concern.

Criminalisation of drug use produces added harms

After decades of fighting a brutal war on drugs, the Indonesian government has not been able to offer any convincing evidence that prison time, brutal crackdowns, or executions have curbed drug crime and reduced recreational use.

Counter to the governments claims that the death penalty has a deterrent effect, in practice drug crimes in Indonesia increased in the months after the 2015 executions. At the same time, law enforcement-heavy crackdowns have had no documented effect on drug use rates. Levels of illicit drug consumption in Indonesia have remained relatively stable since the early 2000s, and are much lower than rates found in the United States and many countries in Europe.

The uneven implementation of Indonesias current drug law means that many drug users, especially those who cannot afford to pay bribes, continue to be thrown in jail. According to the Ministry of Law and Human Rights, Indonesian prisons are up to 273 percent over capacity, with drugs being the chief reason people end up in prison. As of February 2018, 84 percent of all prisoners across the archipelago, amounting to 82,467 men and women, were incarcerated on narcotics-related offences. Among prisoners held on narcotics-related charges, 32 percent were non-violent drug users.

Evidence from several countries with harsh approaches shows that criminalisation results in a domino effect of public health problems, too. Penalisation of drug use increases societal stigma and discrimination against recreational drug users, which can drive them away from seeking health care and fuel HIV and AIDS epidemics. Should the proposed criminal code bill become law next month, the outcomes will be more of the same.

Shedding colonial legacies?

Rather than doing away with remnants of Dutch colonial legacy, rights lawyers argue that the proposed codification of a strictly punitive approach to drugs in the criminal code is far more regressive than its colonial predecessor.

The Netherlands  a country with a relatively permissive approach to drugs  has managed to maintain stable cannabis rates among youth, low rates of HIV among hard drug users, and low levels of drug crime. These health and social benefits were achieved not with the heavy fist of law enforcement, but with pragmatic policies that placed narcotics interventions in the hands of public health authorities.

Faced with explosive heroin-fueled HIV epidemics in the 1980s and a failing, costly war on drugs in many of its European neighbours, the Netherlands adopted a set of policies now known as the Dutch model. These included substantial investments in comprehensive health and social services like needle syringe programs and safe consumptions rooms where users could access clean drug injection equipment and seek counselling and treatment. These measures are credited with sparing the Netherlands many of the public health and criminal justice system costs incurred by countries with tougher approaches. By comparison, Indonesias proposed RKUHP changes  which introduce new forms of discrimination focused solely on crime and punishment  would send the country backwards several decades.

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Legal advocates have argued that narcotics should remain within the scope of the current drug law. Although in the eyes of many it is far from just, it retains the possibility of improvement. As a living document responsive to societal changes, the existing drug law is dynamic and amenable to reform. By contrast, the formal legal processes involved in amending the criminal code are cumbersome, inflexible, and lengthy. Discussions on the revisions started in the 1960s. It has taken until 2018 for criminal code revision to become a legislative priority.

At a time when much of the world is starting to understand the disastrous effects of prohibition, Indonesia should learn from its own drug war history, and move forward rather than backwards. There may not be another chance for reform for another 50 years.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial stance.
Amal Clooney asserts the innocence of Reuters journalists on trial for reporting Rohingya massacre in Rakhine state.

Human rights lawyer Amal Clooney has said she would represent two Reuters journalists on trial in Myanmar for reporting the massacre of the Rohingya people in western Rakhine state.

Wa Lone, 31, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 27, were arrested last December, and have been charged under the Official Secrets Act, which could see them jailed up to 14 years.

Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo are being prosecuted simply because they reported the news. I have reviewed the case file, and it is clear beyond doubt that the two journalists are innocent and should be released immediately, Amal Clooney said in a statement released by her office on Thursday.

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The outcome of this case will tell us a lot about Myanmars commitment to the rule of law and freedom of speech, said Clooney.

Gail Gove, chief counsel of Reuters, said retaining Clooney would strengthen the companys international legal expertise and broaden efforts to secure the release of the reporters.

Human rights activists and media watchdogs have spoken against the case, which they say is an effort to intimidate the press, especially its coverage of the sensitive situation in Rakhine state where the military is accused of massive human rights abuses against the mostly-Muslim Rohingya minority.

Zaw Htay, spokesman for Myanmars civilian government, declined to comment after he was reached out by Reuters.

Innocent civilians killed

Myanmars ambassador to the United Nations, Hau Do Suan, said last month that the Reuters journalists were not arrested for reporting a story, but were accused of illegally possessing confidential government documents.

More than 600,000 Rohingya have been forced to flee to neighbouring Bangladesh after the military launched a brutal crackdown in the wake of a series of attack on army camps in late August.

Swaths of Rohingya villages have been burned down, and hundreds of women have been raped and thousands of innocent civilians killed in the clearance operation launched by the military.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called for the release of journalists, who have been in prison in Yangon since their arrest on December 12.

The pair have told relatives they were arrested almost immediately after being handed some rolled up papers at a restaurant in northern Yangon by two policemen they had not met before, having been invited to meet the officers for dinner.

The district court in northern Yangon will hear arguments from prosecutors and defence lawyers on the motion to dismiss the case on April 4.
More than 55 percent of former FARC rebels have left the 26 reincorporation zones set up under the 2016 peace agreement.

El Estrecho, Colombia  For more than 35 years, Blanca Ducuara Gomez lived in Colombias mountains, patrolling the countryside as a member of the countrys largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

But today she lives in a FARC disarmament camp (also known as reintegration areas) in the southern state of Cauca, where she has a perfect view of the lush valley and the surrounding mountains from her small, wooden balcony that she now calls home.

The FARC sprung up as a peasant movement in the 1960s, fighting corruption and huge inequality in the country, especially in rural areas. What resulted was a civil war that lasted more than 50 years and saw over 220,000 people killed and seven million displaced.

One year ago, Gomez finally put down her weapons after a landmark peace deal was signed, and entered a demobilisation camp created to help the rebels transition into citizen life.

However, like many of the other, former combatants, Gomez has become disillusioned by the peace process, saying the government isnt following through on its commitments to reintegration. This includes everything from housing to medical services and work opportunities, all of which were promised in the peace agreement.

At the moment, its hard for us, and a lot of people feel it, said Gomez, from her camp in El Estrecho, in the southern state of Cauca where the FARC once had a major stronghold. Many people have left because the government hasnt complied [with its agreements].

According to Gomez, people in the camps were initially optimistic about the future of peace in Colombia. They even nicknamed her son el hijo de la paz, or the son of peace, since he was born on November 24, 2016  the same day the landmark agreement was signed.

But today, there are less than 50 former rebels living in the El Estrecho camp, out of the 315 who originally demobilised in this area last year.

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The figures are similar in camps across the country. The UN recently calculated that more than 55 percent of all the FARC members have left the 26 reincorporation zones.

Many of them have left to join their families back home, find jobs in other regions, or are even suspected of joining dissident factions or other armed groups.

But the reasons for leaving are often the same; there is not enough motivation to stay in the camps.

Lacks running water, proper homes

Of all the 26 reincorporation zones, El Estrecho is an extreme example of underdevelopment. The camp lacks running water, the former combatants all share one toilet, and people are still living in makeshift tarpaulin tents made of plastic.

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But El Estrecho is also a new zone. The former combatants relocated here in December last year from their previous location of Policarpa, Narino, saying the government failed to comply with any of its development promises, including basic housing, which was meant to be finished before they even laid down their arms last January.

Officials say the lack of development in Policarpa was due to its complicated and remote location, a common problem for most of the reincorporation camps.

The [demobilisation] areas where the FARC built are areas that are very difficult to access, said Luis Hernando Moreno, regional coordinator of the Office of the High Commissioner for Peace (OACP), the main liaising body between the FARC and the government.

Policarpa was so far out there, even the guerrillas couldnt get there, Hernando continued.

The El Estrecho camp, located just nine kilometres from the highway, is still under construction [Kimberley Brown/Al Jazeera]

But this highlights an important reality for Colombia, where more than 40 percent of the rural population lives in poverty, according to the World Bank, and where state investment in public infrastructure, particularly roads, schools or hospitals is rare.

In many rural areas, like Policarpa, roads either dont exist or were made by the communities themselves. This is one of the major, structural reasons the war began in the first place. A lingering and important issue, rural reform is the first point in the peace agreements.

The local FARC leaders expect things to be different in El Estrecho, which is only nine kilometres from the Pan-American highway. They say officials have no excuse for resources not getting to the camp.

Things are moving too slow

Apart from the basics of housing and water, the biggest concern for the former combatants here is receiving help to develop their own economic projects.

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This includes land for agricultural use and funding for entrepreneurial or cooperative projects, two of the main demands across all of the camps.

According to Leovigildo Moreno Zambrano, a member of the FARCs pedagogy unit, now in El Estrecho, things are moving very slow. Too slow.

What is lacking is real political will on the part of the state, he told Al Jazeera.

Most of the former fighters do have bank accounts and identification cards and are receiving a small monthly stipend of roughly $230.

These are just three points in the peace deal the government has complied with so far, directed at the former rebels individually.

But without productive projects, or education and work training, the former rebels struggle to fill their days.

People in El Estrecho spend a lot of time on Facebook or chatting with family on Whatsapp to fill their days [Kimberley Brown/Al Jazeera]

According to Moreno, the FARC is playing politics by focusing on what the government is not doing, rather than providing solutions.

The politics of the FARC right now are to show the defects of the other, instead of transforming, he told Al Jazeera. You have to blame the state, because in some way that helps to delegitimise the state and legitimise your discourse.

There are no laws forcing the former rebels to stay in their territories, but the outflow of people is raising alarm bells among international monitors.

In November, the UN warned the exodus was a troubling sign that may be increasing the number of FARC dissident groups, and told the Colombian government that it must substantially accelerate its reintegration effort.

The former FARC combatants are also a prime recruitment target for other armed groups that continue to exist in Colombias rural areas.

These include paramilitary groups, narcotraffickers, the National Liberation Army (ELN), and other, smaller groups.

According to the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), which has long worked with war victims in Colombias countryside, the only way out of this cycle is to give the demobilised rebels alternative opportunities to avoid recruitment.

The NRC has implemented high-school education programmes in several of the FARC camps for this very reason, after an evaluation of the former rebel fighters showed that more than 80 percent had not finished high school.

The fact that some have left without receiving a process of reincorporation, yes we see it as a big risk, said Christian Visnes, the NRCs Country Director in Colombia.

We offer education so that these people can reincorporate into civil life; thats the first step to ending the war, he said.

Its very frustrating

In November, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos admitted that the government has made mistakes in the process, but told the country to be patient.

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But since Colombia is in an election year, many citizens are already looking forward to what a new government will bring, rather than expecting new commitments from Santos, who will not be up for re-election, nor does he have a direct successor.

According to the latest polls, left-wing candidate Gustavo Petro is in the lead, but Ivan Duque, a member of the far-right Democratic Centre (Centro Democratico) party and vocal adversary of the peace agreement, is not far behind.

On March 11, Colombians held congressional elections, where the Democratic Centre party and other right-wing candidates won most of the seats. But, the number of Green Party and other alternative party seats also doubled  including the 10 spaces saved for members of the FARC, as agreed in the peace agreements

Back in El Estrecho, Blanca Gomez says being patient for politicians to implement change isnt always easy, especially when people continue to lack resources in the camp and they consistently hear about violence increasing in certain areas in the country, including the assassinations of some of their own colleagues.

We have to wait to see what solution the government is going to give, said Blanca. But us here without arms or anything. Its very frustrating.
More than 1,400 others wounded by Israeli forces during march calling for return of Palestinian refugees to their lands.

The Palestinian Authority has declared Saturday a day of national mourning after 17 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces as thousands marched near Gazas border with Israel in a major demonstration marking the 42nd anniversary of Land Day.

Schools, universities, as well as all government institutions, across the country will be off on Saturday, as per President Mahmoud Abbas decision to declare a day of national mourning for the souls of the martyrs, a statement issued on Friday said.

More than 1,400 others were wounded after Israeli forces fired live ammunition at protesters and used tear gas to push them back from a heavily fortified fence, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

Fridays demonstration commemorated Land Day, which took place on March 30, 1976, when six unarmed Palestinian citizens of Israel were killed by Israeli forces during protests against the Israeli governments decision to expropriate massive tracts of Palestinian-owned land.

Organisers of Fridays march, dubbed the Great Return March, said the main message of the demonstration was to call for the right of return for Palestinian refugees.

Some 70 percent of Gazas two million population are descendants of Palestinians who were driven from their homes in the territories taken over by Israel during the 1948 war, known to Arabs as the Nakba.

Protesters in Gaza gathered in five different spots along the border, originally positioned about 700 metres away from the fence.

According to the ministry, the majority were injured by live fire, rubber-coated steel bullets and tear gas inhalation.

Violation of international law

Mohammed Najjar, 25, was shot in the stomach in a clash east of Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip, while Mahmoud Muammar, 38, and Mohammed Abu Omar, 22, were both shot dead in Rafah, the Palestinian health ministry said in a statement on Friday.

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Among the other victims were Ahmed Odeh, 19, Jihad Freneh, 33, Mahmoud Saadi Rahmi, 33, Abdelfattah Abdelnabi, 19, Ibrahim Abu Shaar, 20, Abdelqader al-Hawajiri, Sari Abu Odeh, Hamdan Abu Amsheh, Jihad Abu Jamous, Bader al-Sabbagh and Naji Abu Hjair, whose ages remain unknown.

Earlier on Friday, Omar Waheed Abu Samour, a farmer from Gaza, was also killed by Israeli artillery fire while standing in his land near Khan Younis, just hours before the demonstrations.

There has been no confirmation from the Israeli army of the attack that killed Samour.





Adalah, a legal centre for Palestinian rights in Israel, condemned the Israeli armys use of force, calling it a violation of international law.

Live gunfire on unarmed civilians constitutes a brutal violation of the international legal obligation to distinguish between civilians and combatants, the group said in a statement.

It also said that it would launch an investigation to demand that those found responsible for the killings be brought to justice.

Land Day

According to Israeli media, Israels army deployed more than 100 snipers on the other side of the border with permission to fire.

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The march was called for by all political factions and several Palestinian civil society organisations in the besieged enclave.

Speaking to the protesters, Hamas leader Ismail Haniya said: The Palestinian people have proved time after time that they can take the initiative and do great things. This march is the beginning of the return to all of Palestine.

Fridays protest also kicked off a six-week sit-in demonstration along the border leading up to the commemoration of the Nakba on May 15.

It is expected that the United States will be transferring its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem around the same time, following President Donald Trumps declaration of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in December 2017.

International reaction

At Kuwaits request, the UN Security Council held an emergency meeting late on Friday, but failed to agree on a joint statement.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for an independent and transparent investigation and reaffirmed the readiness of the world body to revitalise peace efforts.

However, Mansour al-Otaibi, Kuwaits Ambassador to the UN, issued a statement criticising the Security Councils for failing to take action against Israel.

People in occupied Palestine are disappointed that the Security Council met, but did not take action yet to stop this massacre and to hold those responsible to account.

The Jordanian government also issued a statement laying responsibility on Israel for the deaths of the Palestinian protesters.

Mohammad al-Momani, spokesperson for the Jordanian government, said: As an occupying power, Israel bears responsibility for what happened in Gaza today, as a result of the Israeli violation of the Palestinian right to protest peacefully and the use of excessive force against them.

The Turkish and Qatari governments released similar statements, condemning Israels use of force.
The use of representational picture on the T-shirts has further outraged Kashmiris who termed it selling the pain.

Srinagar, Indian-administered Kashmir  Glamorising the use of human shields by the army in Indian-administered Kashmir, a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) official in India is selling T-shirts online showing the infamous scene of an Indian army jeep with a human shield tied to the front that has created outrage in the region.

The online shopping site run by Delhi BJP spokesman Tajinder Pal Singh Baggas company, Bagga Fashions, is selling the T-shirts with caption Indian army  saving your a** whether you like it or not.

The T-Shirts are being sold for 495 rupees ($8).

The image used on the T-shirts is of 27-year-old Farooq Ahmad Dar, a resident of Chill Village in Budgam area of central Kashmir. Dar was tied to the front of an army jeep by Major Nitin Leetul Gogoi on April 9 last year.

Thuggish BJP leader Bagga sells Kashmir Human Shield T-Shirt saying it's wearing patriotism on chest. Court found Army Major act of tying man to jeep unconstitutional. Celebrating the flouting of Constitutional values isn't 'patriotic'! https://t.co/CZDmMWVOr9 via @thewire_in  Kavita Krishnan (@kavita_krishnan) March 28, 2018

Dars family says he is traumatised and has had to stop working.

His life changed completely since the incident. Sometimes he leaves home without informing anyone. His condition has worried us, Dars brother, Ghulam Qadir told Al Jazeera.

He used to weave shawls to earn livelihood, but now he doesnt work any more. He doesnt do anything normal now. He is very depressed.

The incident took place during by-elections, in which Dar had also voted.

The by-election was marred by violent clashes between security forces and stone-throwing young men that left at least eight people killed and more than 200 wounded.

Selling the pain

Justifying the use of human shield picture on the T-shirts, Bagga told Al Jazeera that it is a tribute to the army officers heroic act.

We are selling the T-shirts from last six months, and we have sold thousands of them. I dont think we are doing anything wrong. That day, the stone pelters were trying to attack polling booths and army with stones and petrol bombs, he told Al Jazeera.

If tomorrow they walk with the pictures of Kashmir's dead pasted on their clothes, it won't surprise us Shabir Ahmad, a Srinagar resident

It was his quick thinking that he tied the person to jeep instead of opening fire, he could have also opened fire in self-defence. He did it to save lives, Bagga said adding that people supported the act.

Except few leftists, everyone supports it.

Soon after the incident, the Indian army commended the officer, who was awarded the Chief of Army Staffs Commendation Card for his sustained efforts in counterinsurgency operations.

Video footage showing Dar bound to the jeep was widely shared and caused a public outcry in the restive Himalayan region, where people and human rights groups termed the incident a war crime.

The use of the picture on T-shirts has further outraged the residents who termed it selling the pain.

If tomorrow they walk with the pictures of Kashmirs dead pasted on their clothes, it wont surprise us, says 43-year-old Shabir Ahmad, a Srinagar resident. There is no humanity left in India, how can one celebrate the pain of others. They are telling us we dont belong to them.

Serious human rights violations

People have also expressed their resentment on the social media.

Kavita Krishnan, a womans rights activist based in New Delhi, criticised Bagga on Twitter, saying Celebrating the flouting of Constitutional values isnt patriotic!

Noted Kashmiri human rights defender, Khurram Parvez, said it is nothing new.

This is what sells in India; they want to boost the morale of army towards impunity which they are already enjoying in Kashmir. The BJP government wants to sell the armys military might which is getting support from its people.

Human Rights Watch had also criticised the rewarding of the officer and said it included serious human rights violations.

The state-run Human Rights Commission in the region last year termed the act illegal and recommended that the victim be paid $15,000 as compensation for humiliation physical and psychological torture.

However, the state government, a coalition between Peoples Democratic Party and the BJP, rejected the recommendation.

Critics say Prime Minister Narendra Modis hardline policy was not working in Kashmir, which has seen a rise in violence amid stalled talks between India and Pakistan.

Rebel groups in Indian-administered Kashmir have for decades battled against troops and police, demanding independence or a merger of the Himalayan territory with Pakistan.

Tens of thousands of civilians and security force personnel have been killed since the rebellion began nearly 25 years ago.
Noor Salman found not guilty of obstruction of justice and providing material support to her husband in 2016 attack.

The widow of Omar Mateen, the gunman who killed 49 people at a gay nightclub in the US state of Florida, has been acquitted of two charges related to the June 2016 attack.

Jurors at the court in Orlando on Friday found Noor Salman not guilty of obstruction of justice, and for providing material support to Mateen before the mass shooting, one of the deadliest in modern US history.





Federal prosecutors said Salman, 31, had advance knowledge of the crime, and then aided and abetted her husband in providing material support and resources to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS).

A guilty verdict would have meant a lifetime behind bars for Salman.

The Orlando Sentinel news website described her to be in tears following the verdict.

The 12-member jury reportedly delivered its verdict after deliberating for 12 hours.

Under the US jury system, a judge oversees the selection of a group of civilian individuals, who will then unanimously decide the culpability of an accused person.

The attacker killed 49 people in one of the deadliest mass shootings in modern US history [File: AFP]

During the June 12, 2016, attack at Pulse nightclub, Mateen was reported to have pledged allegiance to ISIL in a call to an emergency police hotline.

Mateen was killed in a gun battle with Orlando police during the attack. Aside from the 49 deaths, another 53 people were also injured.

At the time of the incident, Mateen and Salman lived in a coastal city south of Orlando.

In an interview with the New York Times months after the deadly shooting, Salman had said that she knew her husband watched ISIL-related videos but added that she was unaware of everything about his intent to kill people at the nightclub.

She also claimed that she was physically abused by Mateen.

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During the trial, Linda Moreno, one of Salmans lawyers, told reporters that her client had no foreknowledge, nor could she predict what Omar Mateen intended to do that tragic night.

The Orlando Sentinel quoted Sara Sweeney, one of the prosecutors, as saying they were disappointed in the jurys verdict but respect it.

The shooting sparked a debate about gun safety, an issue that has attracted new attention in the US following the killing of 17 people last month in a mass shooting at a high school in another part of Florida.
Move is in retaliation for wave of ejections of Russian officials after alleged poisoning on ex-spy and daughter.

Russia has expelled 59 diplomats from 23 countries as the dispute over the poisoning of a former spy and his daughter in Britain worsens.

The move on Friday was in retaliation for the wave of ejections of Russian officials after what the UK and its allies alleged was a nerve agent attack on Sergei and Yulia Skripal in the southern English city of Salisbury.

It came a day after Moscow ordered the expulsion of 60 US diplomats in response to a similar move by Washington earlier this week.

Russia on Thursday also revoked the permit for the US consulate in St Petersburg  meaning it must shut down  and issued a protest note to the US Ambassador to Moscow, Jon Huntsman, regarding what it called outrageous and unwarranted diplomatic action against Russia.

Russia has already retaliated in kind against the UK for expelling 23 diplomats over the first known use of a military-grade nerve agent in Europe since World War II.

Over the past few days, 25 European countries  along with the US, Canada, and Australia  expelled more than 120 Russian diplomats in a show of solidarity with the UK after the alleged attack.

NATO also announced seven officials working in the Russian mission to the alliance will have to leave.

On Friday, senior envoys from most of the countries that have expelled Russian diplomats were summoned to the Russian foreign ministry, Al Jazeeras Rory Challands, reporting from Moscow, said.

One after another, black ambassadorial cars have been pulling up here outside the Russian foreign ministry and the ambassadors have been walking in to essentially get a dressing-down from the foreign ministry staff and be told how many of their personnel has to be packing their bags to leave, he said.

What we are seeing here is the worsening of diplomatic relations, a tit-for-tat response, added Challands, describing the crisis as severe.

Its catalyst has been the Skripal affair but, of course, there is so much else behind all this, so much thats gone on over the last few years  with the Russian campaign in Syria, with whats been going in Crimea and Ukraine, that has worsened relations between the West and Russia.

UK Prime Minister Theresa May has said she has evidence of Russian involvement in the poisoning case.

Yulia is no longer in a critical condition and is improving rapidly, doctors said on Thursday. Sergei remains in critical but stable condition.

Britains government says the nerve agent used in the attack, Novichok, was developed in Russia. Moscow has denied accusations that it was involved in the assassination attempt.
Representatives of Russia and the Taliban scoffed at the US allegations during their conversations, says Russian envoy.

Representatives from Russia and the Taliban laughed at US claims that Moscow has been arming the group, according to Russias envoy to Afghanistan.

Zamir Kabulov said on Thursday that in their talks with the Taliban, the groups representatives said they buy all their weapons illegally from the Afghan government and police, and asked for financial support for that.

In that request, the Russian representatives replied, Sorry, we have no money, Kabulov told a press conference in Moscow.

We laughed with Taliban representatives about it, and Ill tell you why, he said of the US allegations.

They [Taliban] say they wouldnt mind if we gave them weapons, but they dont need weapons. They say give us money, were buying weapons from the stocks of the Afghan army and police, Kabulov was quoted as saying by The Associated Press news agency.

They laughed at the rumours that they receive ammunition from Pakistan. It was in the Soviet times  as they say  the Mujahideen was delivered weapons, and now they buy everything they need in Afghanistan, he added.

Attempt to shift blame

After more than 15 years of war, US generals say the Afghanistan conflict is stuck in a stalemate, with the Taliban continuing to carry broad regional influence and NATO-backed Afghan security forces struggling to make progress.

US claims that Russia was arming the Taliban reflected an attempt to shift blame, according to Kabulov, for what he described as US failure in Afghanistan.

Kabulov further said that Russias contacts with the Taliban are to ensure the safety and security of Russians in Afghanistan and to encourage the Taliban to join peace talks.

We established the contacts a few years ago when we became seriously worried about possible terror threats for the Russian mission and Russian citizens in Afghanistan, he said.

It was important for us to clarify the Talibans plans regarding our citizens.

Kabulov in 2015 said that Russia was exchanging information with the Taliban and saw shared interest with them when it came to fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group.

Russia considers the Taliban a terrorist group, along with ISIL.

The Taliban refused to comment on Kabulovs statements.

Curtis Scaparrotti, the top US general in Europe, said on March 22 that he had witnessed Russias influence grow in many regions, including Afghanistan.

In a statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Scaparrotti, who is NATOs Supreme Allied Commander, said Moscow was perhaps supplying the Taliban in fighting against US and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

Russias foreign ministry dismissed the allegations as fabrications.

The US supplied Afghan mujahideen fighters with hi-tech weapons as they battled the Soviet Red Army in the 1980s.
Grieving protesters call for justice after funeral of 22-year-old black father of two who was shot dead by police.

Civil rights activists vowed to keep the pressure up on the US government to deal with police misconduct as they attended the funeral of Stephon Clark, 22, father of two, and the most recent victim of a string of fatal shootings of black men by police.

Were going to make [US President] Donald Trump and the whole world deal with the issue of police misconduct, the Reverend Al Sharpton, veteran civil rights leader, told a congregation of hundreds at the funeral in Sacramento, California on Thursday.

Clark was shot dead on March 18 outside his grandmothers backyard in Sacramento by police responding to a report that someone was breaking windows.

Police said the officers who shot at Clark 20 times feared he was holding a firearm, but it was revealed later that the young father was only holding a mobile phone.

Imam Zaid Shakir called the killing part of a systemic problem.

At some point you ask yourself, If a system keeps on making these fatal mistakes, at what point is the system disqualified? At what point is the system evil? So were not here to pacify. Were here to amplify [Clarks] voice, Shakir told those in attendance of Clarks funeral.

NOW: Funeral services for #StephonClark are happening now in Sacramento. We're on the ground. https://t.co/p8WWEy1Ubs  AJ+ (@ajplus) March 29, 2018

More than a week of protests

More than 100 protesters gathered in central Sacramento after the funeral for the latest rally in more than a week of demonstrations, which sometimes blocked the traffic, according to LA Times.

I have three young sons and I want to make sure they see change in their lifetime, Aisha Pride, a 31 year old protester, was quoted as saying. If we keep being quiet, nothing is going to change.

Police who shot Clark 20 times mistook a mobile phone he was holding for a firearm [Getty Images/AFP]

The shooting was not surprising, but rather common and expected, Lena Williams, a mother of three who went to Clarks funeral to demonstrate against police brutality outside the church with her children, the LA Times reported.

The killing of Clark has reignited the call to end what activists say is institutionalised racism among US police forces.

According the Washington Posts Fatal Force database, more than 980 people were killed by police in 2017. The Guardian identified more than 1,090 police killings the previous year.

Nearly a quarter of those killed in 2016 were African Americans although the group accounts for roughly 12 percent of the total US population.

According to a watchdog group The Sentencing Project, African American men are six times more likely to be arrested than white men.

People of colour make up around 67 percent of the 2.2 million people in US prisons and jails.

These disparities, particularly the killing of African Americans by police, has prompted the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, a popular civil rights movement aimed at ending police violence and dismantling structural racism.

On Tuesday, a prosecutor in the US state of Louisana ruled out criminal charges for two white police officers in the 2016 killed of African American Alton Sterling.

In the wake of Clarks death, protests have been held from Sacramento to New York City, calling for reform across the country.

Many online have also expressed outrage.

https://twitter.com/SymoneDSanders/status/979175068810010624?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

I still cant, and will never understand how people will ALWAYS try to justify the shooting of unarmed POC. Oh he was smashing windows. Ooh he was this. He was that.

No. The simple truth is that if the person were white, they would most likely still be ALIVE. #stephonclark  dario in blue (@d_yafai) March 30, 2018
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has rejected a French offer to mediate between Turkey and Kurdish fighters in Syria that have been blacklisted by Ankara.

His comments on Friday came a day after French President Emmanuel Macron hosted a delegation of Kurdish fighters in Paris and offered to mediate between the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)  an umbrella group of fighters dominated by the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG)  and the Turkish government.

Who are you to mediate between Turkey and a terror group? Erdogan said at a meeting of the ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party in the capital, Ankara.

Those who host at the highest level the members of a terrorist organisation, which has been freely carrying out its activities in their countries, should be aware that this is nothing but an expression of hostility against Turkey, he said.

Turkey considers the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), active in Syria, and its armed wing the YPG to be terrorist groups with ties to the banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a bloody armed rebellion for decades.

France does not have the right to complain about the actions of any armed group on its soil after meeting with the representatives of the PYD and the YPG, the Turkish leader said.

Those who get into bed with terrorists and even welcome them at their palaces will sooner or later see the mistake they have made.

We hope they will not dare to seek our help when France is filled with terrorists fleeing from Syria and Iraq after being encouraged by French policies, Erdogan added.

Terror corridor

The YPG has been Washingtons main ally against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group in Syria, in a partnership that has infuriated Turkey.

Al Jazeeras Sinem Koseoglu, reporting from Istanbul, said Ankara does not see everything eye-to-eye with international coalition members when it comes to the fight against ISIL in Syria.





Especially cooperating with SDF, that is something critical, a taboo for Turkey, she said.

Koseoglu added that Turkish officials see such mediation efforts as an attempt to legitimise the PKK and YPG under the name of SDF in terms of fighting against ISIL.

Erdogans comments on Friday came less than two weeks after Turkish forces and Free Syrian Army rebels drove YPG fighters from Afrin city in northern Syria.

Also at the AK Party meeting, Erdogan said Turkey had begun preparations to clear parts of northern Syria from militants, adding it could also make incursions into northwestern Iraq.

He said Ankara would expand its military operations to Ayn al-Arab, Tal Abyad, Rasulayn and Hasakah, a stretch of northern Syria under Kurdish control, which has been described as a terror corridor.

Erdogan added that Turkish forces could even enter Iraqs Sinjar province all of a sudden and deal with the terrorists there.
The move comes after several banks cut ties with money exchange houses due to concerns about illicit financial flows.

Money exchange houses in the United Arab Emirates have been ordered by the central bank to raise their standards, after several banks cut ties with them due to concerns about the risk of illicit financial flows.

The UAEs huge expatriate workforce and growing business and tourism sectors have made it a global centre for exchanging foreign currencies and transferring money to and from the Middle East, Asia, Africa and parts of Europe.

But some of the roughly 125 exchange houses in operation have struggled in recent years as a growing number of US dollar correspondent banks, relied upon to clear dollar trade, and local lenders cut ties with them.

The banks have often cited the prohibitive compliance costs they must have in place to ensure they are not doing business with exchange houses laundering money or financing terror.

In an effort to improve the industrys fortunes, the central bank earlier this month published a 150-page document laying out standards that exchange houses must comply with by January 2019 or risk fines and, in the most extreme case, having their licences revoked.





The rules include requiring exchange houses to appoint a compliance officer and to check and record the identification of the senders and receivers of all money transfers, said sources familiar with the matter.

Stringent regulatory environment

Currently, exchange houses are only required to do so on transactions of more than 2,000 dirhams ($545).

Money transfers between exchange houses in the UAE will also have to be made via the central banks electronic transfer system, rather than in cash, the sources said.

Exchange houses have also been told to avoid cash for trade-related transactions and only to conduct transactions for charities and other societies which have permission from the government to collect donations and transfer funds abroad, the sources said.

The central bank did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Implementing such issues will require a lot of costs, said Osama al Rahma, chairman of the Foreign Exchange and Remittance Group (FERG), an industry body, and chief executive of Alfardan Exchange.

Large exchange houses will be able to comply  and many already are. But for medium and small ones the option will be either to consolidate or find a way of enhancing capital requirements.

Exchange houses have already faced an increasingly stringent regulatory environment in recent years. At the start of 2016, new guidelines for minimum capital came into effect, with companies required to hold at least 5 million dirhams if they offer remittance services, up from a previous 2 million. Firms handling wage payments must hold at least 10 million dirhams.

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To improve the industrys reputation, FERG in January published an anti-money laundering manual to give exchange firms guidance on best practices.

We are trying to create an awareness of what we are doing, said Rajiv Raipancholia, treasurer of FERG and chief executive of Orient Exchange.

We are continuously speaking with US correspondent banks and local banks and requesting them to look at individual exchange houses before deciding to cut ties, as correspondent banking is very important for these firms.

The UAE central bank revoked the licence of one exchange house in 2016 because of breaches of anti money-laundering rules and took the same action against another two in 2013 for breaking financial regulations.
Washington to pay $63m annually to lease base which houses conventional and special forces, as well as aerial drones.

The United States has secured a ten-year lease for a key military base in Djibouti that it relies on to launch counter-terrorism missions, including drone strikes, in Yemen and the Horn of Africa.

US President Barack Obama and his Djibouti counterpart Ismail Omar Guelleh announced the renewed lease on Camp Lemonnier on Monday as they met at the White House, pledging to counter al-Qaeda and al-Shabab fighters in the region.

Under the agreement, the Washington would pay $63m annually for a ten-year lease, with an option to extend the arrangement for another decade, administration officials said.

The new deal represents a major increase in rent, as the US reportedly pays $38m a year under the current lease.

Camp Lemonnier is extraordinarily important to our work throughout the Horn of Africa but also throughout the region. We very much appreciate the hospitality that Djiboutians provide, Obama said.

Overall, this is a critical facility that we maintain in Djibouti, we could not do it without the presidents co-operation, were grateful for him agreeing for a long-term presence there.

Djibouti, a tiny nation of less than one million people, has become essential to US operations in Africa and the Middle East.

Camp Lemonnier houses conventional forces, as well as special forces and aerial drones flown over Yemen and Somalia.

Strategic partnership

Guelleh said his East African country and the US were linked in a strategic partnership to deal with the fight against terrorism, piracy and human trafficking in our region.

Obama also promised more US assistance and equipment for Djiboutis forces, including for troops deploying to the African Union mission in Somalia.

More US development aid for Djiboutis economy, including help improving the countrys electricity network, was also pledged.

After al-Qaedas attacks on US soil on September 11, 2001, the US presence has steadily increased.

US officials, anxious to maintain a low-profile for its military in Africa, tend to disclose few details about operations at the base.

The Pentagon reportedly has informed Congress of plans for a dramatic expansion of its facilities in Djibouti, proposing more than $1bn in construction projects.


There is much reason to believe the Palestinian elections scheduled for later this year will neither be free nor fair.
America Not to Blame for Mexico's Problems

Regarding the current border crisis and problems in Mexico, if you ask many Latinos who come over to the U.S., and those who advocate on their behalf, they will tell you with a straight face that their country was ruined by the Mexican-American War of 1846-48, and that it was American Imperialism that destroyed Mexico and its economy. While we know that this is an excuse, the fact is, they believe the propaganda and both Mexicans and now Americans are now taught this propaganda. But facts are stubborn things, and history is on our side. These lies are being taught in our universities and we need to combat them with the truth. While the truth is not pretty, it justifies the Polk Adminstration in going to war with Mexico in 1846. When Mexico received its independence from Spain in 1821, they planned on having a nation very similar to the U.S., with a system of independent semiautonomous states similar (if not quite the same) to what the United States originally were. The northernmost state of Tejas, was underpopulated, and by decree, the Mexican government made it open to anyone from the USA wanting to settle there. Cheap land doesn't grow on trees, so Americans came there by the thousands. It worked very well, probably too well, and in the mid-1830s the Mexican government set aside this decree and called the northern border of Tejas secure  making it a crime for Americans to settle there. But by that time, it was too late, and more and more white Americans were coming to what is now the United State of Texas.

In the early 1830s, a military despot named Santa Anna came to power, and shortly afterwards, abandoned the Mexican state system, concentrating most of the power into the capital city. Several of the Mexican states, including Yucatan and Tejas, rebelled against this naked power grab. Only the Mexican state of Tejas was successful, and after the battle of San Jacinto, won its independence from Mexico and became the Republic of Texas. Santa Anna signed the Treaty of Velasco giving Texas its independence, and was then tossed from power for the first of several times. A series of military dictatorships were in power from the 1830s through 1850, virtually a new one every two years. But for a brief time in 1845-1846, Mexico had civil rule. It was during this time that the U.S. allowed Texas to join as a new state, something that the Mexican army saw as an act of war. Then President James Polk sent Louisiana congressman John Slidell to see the Mexican president with an offer to purchase Alta California and New Mexico (the present-day states of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, and part of Colorado), similar to what Jefferson did with Napoleon and the Louisiana Purchase. Mexican President Jose Joaquin de Herrera, a pragmatist who was not opposed to at least talking to the Americans, was denounced as a traitor by the supporters of Santa Anna, and was forced by the Mexican Parliament to go to war -- something Herrera knew would end up with a Mexican defeat. Herrera knew that Mexico was too poor to either inhabit or defend the northern states and preferred to take the pragmatic step of getting money for land that Mexico had no use for at the time, a very prudent step diplomatically, but one which was very unpopular politically. If the U.S. had not wanted California, our rival at the time Great Britain surely did, to stop Americans from populating the Western U.S. and giving them a warm-water port on the west coast. There was no way that Mexico could hold onto Alta California or New Mexico. But the idea of receiving millions of dollars for land they could not possibly protect or inhabit may have sounded good to de Herrera. The nation was in near bankruptcy after gaining its independence, and the idea of $30 million coming in (much more than Jefferson paid for the Louisiana territory) would have helped set Mexico back into financial stability. But the friends of Santa Anna (at that time in exile in Cuba) labeled anyone who would consider negotiating with the Americans a traitor, so de Herrera was overthrown and a more nationalistic government under General Mariano y Arrillaga came into power. The Mexican army then shot at U.S. troops on U.S. territory (something the Mexicans dispute, since they had decided not to honor the Treaty of Velasco) and the war came. And while I will grant that Polk handled the negotiations in an oafish way (sending the U.S. military to feign an invasion in a bizarre attempt to force the Mexicans to the bargaining table), the fact remains that the Mexican military wanted this war and never would have allowed President de Herrera to sell a sliver of Mexican territory even if Mexico was to go bankrupt without that cash. The end result was predictable. Santa Anna returned to power by lying to both the Americans and to the Mexican people and led the Mexican army to a glorious defeat and was overthrown yet again. The Mexican people were completely humiliated by allowing themselves to be goaded into a military showdown they had no chance of winning. Santa Anna showed that he was one of the most incapable battle commanders in human history (Google the Mexican battle plan at either Cerro Gordo or Buena Vista), and gave U.S. soldiers practical battle experience for our next war, the American Civil War. We Americans like to think that we only go to war for noble causes (such as the Revolution, the Civil War, or WWII) and the reasons for going to war with Mexico don't always jibe with our view of ourselves. But what if Great Britain had taken over California? The U.S. would have been under constant worry of invasion. Or what if the Russians had taken California? Where would the U.S. be then? We'd have Vladimir Putin in our backyard. Perhaps the Mexican War was not a "noble cause" but the alternatives were too ghastly to consider. At least President Polk offered the Mexicans a hefty sum for what the U.S. needed to secure its western border, something that neither Great Britain nor Russia would have given the Mexicans. Polk went to war in the name of reality, not in the name of conquest. Current illegal immigrant sympathizers like to call the American settlers in Tejas "illegal immigrants" but this is a fallacy. The Mexican government originally invited American settlers into Texas and then tried to ban further immigration in the early 1830s (The Mexican government was afraid of too many white people in Mexican territory). Santa Anna tore up the constitution of 1821 and took away rights that both Americans and Mexicans had gotten used to, and somehow White Anglo-Saxon Protestants became illegal immigrants. The Mexicans provoked the next confrontation by reneging on the Treaty of Velasco and then opening fire on U.S. troops on U.S. soil. The Americans tried to figure out a way for both nations to live together peacefully and offered the Mexicans a large windfall for land that was of no use to Mexico. A Mexican president tried to negotiate and was tossed from office, and somehow the U.S. is a bad actor. Mexico may be in trouble, but it was a failed state long before the loss of Texas and the Mexican-American war. As in the early 1800, Mexico remains a failed state because it does not have any tradition of democracy or republican rule, and because it has been ruled by despots throughout its history. When they actually get a man who can see the big picture (i.e. de Herrera) they call him a traitor, boot him from office, and then go to war, only to have a piece of their anatomy handed to them, and then blame others for their own stupidity. Mexican "historians" such as Jesus Velasco Marquez have done their countrymen no favors by perpetuating these lies (see the 52-minute mark.) Drawing lessons from our own mistakes is one of the hardest things to learn. This is something that Mexican sympathizers can't seem to do. The U.S. and a war as far back as the 1840s are not to blame for Mexico's problems. Mexico, and Mexico alone, is to blame. And the sooner that the Mexican people learn this, the sooner the intelligentsia of both countries stops enabling Mexican pathologies the sooner Mexico will start to improve as a nation and cease being a failed state. But that would require growing up as a nation, something that many in academia do not want anyone to do. John Massoud is the head of the Shenandoah County Virginia GOP Freedom Caucus, a Magisterial District GOP chair in Shenandoah County, and an occasional contributor to the American Thinker.
Justice Stevens Unholsters a Dopey Idea

Retired Supreme Court justice John Paul Stevens has proposed repealing the Second Amendment. If we needed more proof of the pathetic stupidity of most jurists these days, Stevens's dopey idea is a prime example. State governments already have wide discretion in controlling the sale of guns, and if there were a co-relationship between gun control and violent crime, then the degree to which state governments limited gun sales should show a correspondingly low violent crime rate. But that just is not so. Slate has a table in which it rates how tight gun control laws are by giving each state a grade, with the highest grade being an "A-." Six states  California, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York  received that highest grade. Yet four of those six states  California, Maryland, Massachusetts, and New York  were in the top twenty-five states in terms of violent crime.

Among the ten safest states  Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Virginia, Connecticut, Idaho, Kentucky, Rhode Island, Minnesota, and Utah  Maine, Vermont, Idaho, Kentucky, and Utah received a grade of "F," the lowest possible score. This does not mean there is a positive correlation between relaxed state gun control laws and violent crime, but it does mean that there is no meaningful correlation at all regarding state gun control laws and violent crime. What can be said with absolute assurance is that repealing the Second Amendment will diminish individual liberty. Is diminishing individual liberty by amending the Constitution justified if the purpose is to reduce violent crime? Surely, there are more useful abridgements of liberty through constitutional amendment if our purpose is to reduce violent crime. Any veteran prosecutor or policeman can tell you that Supreme Court interpretations of the Bill of Rights created a monstrous problem in convicting savvy criminals. Really bad and dangerous people are turned loose and have been turned loose over the last fifty years because the Supreme Court elevated individual liberty, even for the patently guilty and nasty criminal, to higher importance than protecting the public against violent crime. Justice Stevens, during his tenure on the Supreme Court, routinely voted to protect and even expand the rights of criminals at the expense of public safety. Indeed, if a positive correlation between violent crime and public policy needs to be found, the best indicator is the doubling of the violent crime rate from 1965 to the present. This did not seem to bother Justice Stevens at all when he was on the Supreme Court. What makes this particularly galling is that the Supreme Court decisions from the mid-1960s through the next decade let manifestly guilty monsters go free, because their individual liberties under the Constitution were considered, by Justice Stevens and his ilk, to trump the safety of the public. No conservatives are arguing that violent criminals should be allowed to buy handguns. Indeed, violent criminals are not dissuaded at all by gun control laws, which inhibit only innocent citizens trying to protect themselves. The curtailment of other constitutional rights might also produce a much lower crime rate. The breakup of families, as this Heritage Foundation report shows, contributes more than any other factor in causing violent crime. Should we amend the Constitution to reduce the rights of parents to divorce and to allow states to take children born out of wedlock away from unwed mothers? Those constitutional changes might well reduce crime rates dramatically, but they would limit the liberty of those who wish to raise children in single-parent homes. Moreover, even in nations with strict gun control laws, like the United Kingdom, the breakup of the nuclear family is closely related to criminal behavior. A study in Britain shows that children of broken homes are nine times more likely to engage in criminal behavior than children from stable homes. What this means is that the left is utterly hypocritical when it comes to protecting constitutional liberties and protecting public safety. Although there is no real evidence that tougher gun control and public safety are positively correlated with each other, this is the first reflexive response of the left to any discussion of crime  and the left's plans control only the law-abiding citizen. On the other hand, any efforts to reduce the individual liberties of clearly guilty criminals or promiscuous unwed mothers, both of which contribute significantly to the breakdown in public safety, are either ignored by the left or attacked when conservatives raise the subject. The bottom line? The left does not care a whit about public safety. It cares about limiting the liberties of law-abiding citizens. Image: Paul Swansen via Flickr.
Passover and the American Zion

The Passover narrative is a political treatise on liberty and a theological reflection upon the sanctity of freedom. The Hebrews are commanded to worship God as free men. Further, the Law that was revealed by God to Israel required that the Hebrews emancipate themselves prior to receiving it. It is mans moral obligation to become free. For truth be told, man is born into bondage to impulse and ignorance. Freedom cannot be demanded. It can only be earned. It begins first in the human soul. Experiments in freedom often have turned into tyranny because people misconstrued freedom as doing whatever one feels like. But, liberty actually begins in mutual obligation. Freedom can decompensate into chaos. In a true democracy, the Greek historian Polybius argued, the whole crowd of citizens is not free to do whatever they wish. Therefore, freedom must be tempered by order. Ultimately, it is not the order imposed by others that assures freedom and equality. An external order can become oppressive. Only the order that man perceives as transcendent, as deriving from our perception and understanding of God that guarantees human rights and liberty. It is the order derived from a fundamental acknowledgement that one must love thy neighbor as thyself. This obligation, its author understood, insures that a healthy self-interest would not be allowed to deteriorate into narcissism; the poisonous seed of all pathology.

The Hebrews were not revolutionaries. They did not attempt to change Egypt. They only sought to transform themselves. They were circumspect in not confusing tolerance and liberty. They had come to Egypt on their own for economic gain and lived well for some time, but a new regime changed the rules. Therefore, only by accepting the burden of liberty would the Hebrews be able to live their lives as they believed to be proper. Passover is also an American narrative. Puritan settlers of Massachusetts thought of themselves as reenacting the exodus of the Hebrews from bondage in ancient Egypt. When William Bradford stepped off the Mayflower in 1620, he quoted Jeremiah: "Come let us declare in Zion the word of God." Years later, Cotton Mather spoke of the colonies as "an instrument" of the Almighty in establishing Israel in America." Beyond the temporal political and security concerns that bind America and Israel, both nations share a similar interpretation of their history. And both nations employ the Passover in order to explain themselves. While the Founding Fathers often referenced Montesquieu, Rousseau, Hobbs and Locke, they intuitively identified with Israel. Theology, as Ann Ulanov wrote, is an unconscious process. It mediates between intuition and reason. It is an attempt at explaining the ineffable. Thus, we would take seriously, Benjamin Franklins suggestion that the Great Seal should be the image of Moses leading the Hebrews across the Red Sea. Franklin and his colleagues were not risking their lives over a tax dispute. They were prepared to die because they apprehended the transcendent value of liberty. The Exodus became a spiritual paradigm of colonial rebellion. Both nations saw in their historic efforts a Divine will; an imperative to be free. The Hebrews chiseled liberty into the Ten Commandments; describing God as their Liberator. The Founding Fathers listed these ultimate values as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Accepting oppression constitutes a grave transgression. And there are times when the rabbinic sages argued that a man must prepare to die rather than to transgress. Two thousand years ago, a small Jewish garrison held out against three Roman legions for three years atop Massada. Knowing that their capture by Romans was imminent, Elazar ben Yair, argued for death rather than slavery. Patrick Henry agreed. Both the Hebrews and the Americans were prepared to fight for and, if need be, die in the service of this conviction. Moses instructed his people to remember that freedom is in reality never bestowed upon us. Moses and Aaron convened secret meetings with the Hebrews and reviewed their grievances. Slavery or alienated labor was an economic grievance which would make sense to the average person. But they also had a deeper spiritual purpose in mind. The Hebrews did not escape from Egypt. They left Egypt in military formation (Exodus 12:51). They were armed and trained. Freedom cannot be granted. It must, by its own inner logic, be assumed. Theology helps us to understand that history is not about what was; it is about the present. Accordingly, the Exodus and its vicissitudes did not happen only then. The Exodus continues for un-freedom threatens all of us. Liberation is an ongoing struggle which Isaiah pointed out was primarily the effort to rid ourselves of the idols of delusion. Liberty demands that we face the truth. It begins in the mind. It is an effort that begins in our own spirit as we try to resist the power of unconscious forces. It is social and political as we contend with the oppressive consequences of political correctness. Freedom is forever in danger. Moses instruction to his people as to the manner in which they were to celebrate the Passover indicates his comprehension of liberty as an eternal struggle. The matzah was to be eaten while we are standing with our shoes on our feet, in battle dress (Hebrew: hagor), with staff in hand ready to move as if we were actually participating in the ancient journey ourselves (Exodus 12:11). Later, the spiritual leaders of America would speak of the price of liberty as eternal vigilance. Speaking to members of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society Wendell Phillips said: Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; power is ever stealing from the many to the few. The manna of popular liberty must be gathered each day or it is rotten. Only by continued oversight can the democrat in office be prevented from hardening into a despot; only by un-intermitted agitation can a people be sufficiently awake to principle not to let liberty be smothered in material prosperity. These ideas resurfaced a century after the Civil War and as the abolitionist movement became an indigenous emancipation movement, church choirs throughout the South chanted Moses down in Egypt land say to Pharaoh let my People go. Passover became the context of countless freedom seders as Americans understood what the German poet Heine meant when he said since the Exodus liberty has been spoken in a Hebrew accent. It is the American Passover that signifies the spiritual bond between two nations, speaking different languages and worshipping in different forms. Israel is proof that the American understanding of freedom is correct. Nations are not made free and slaves cannot really be emancipated. For the emancipator can once again become the master. Un-freedom surrounds us all. That is why the sine qua non of liberty is courage. No one else can make you free. But, more significantly Israel demonstrates that freedom is not simply political; it is moral and intellectual. During two thousand years in Exile, Jews practiced freedom. At every Passover Seder we symbolically enacted the great drama. Gamliel taught that in each and every generation we should see ourselves as if we personally left Egypt. We practiced freedom until the day came when we were able to reclaim it.
Rethinking the NATO-Russia-Ukraine Relationship on the Eve of Brussels Summit

Ten years after the NATO Summit in Bucharest, when Ukraine and Georgia were promised entry into NATO "in the future," NATO yet again incorporated Ukraine into its aspirant country list. The definition regarding the list has been changed just recently, since in the past, Ukraine declared that it was not formally pursuing membership. Indeed, in 2010, Ukraine, under Moscow's pressure, passed a law on its non-aligned status but dropped it in 2014, after the infamous "Revolution of Dignity," which brought to power pro-Western authorities. In that same year, Russia annexed Crimea and invaded Eastern regions of Ukraine, waging a proxy war and supporting a pro-Russia separatist movement with eventual establishment of Moscow's puppet regimes in rebellious regions. Facing an escalating armed conflict in a geographical hub of Europe, NATO countries have supported Kiev with military and humanitarian aid, but there were no further talks on a possibility for Ukraine to join the Alliance.

Even though the newly obtained status of "aspirant country" only confirms Kiev's political willingness, or aspiration, to join NATO and is only a transitional step on this long journey, the change of definition on NATO's official website has expectedly caused the Kremlin to nervously overreact, calling it the "West's final betrayal of Russia." Indeed, NATO's pointless flirtation with Ukraine on the eve of the Brussels Summit on 11-12 June is antagonizing Russia, which has proven to be bold enough to take military action when it feels challenged or perceives a geopolitical loss (Ukrainian territory is obviously a pivotal geostrategic space for Russian security). Tension between the NATO countries and Russia has recently been fueled by Russian interference in American elections, differences over the Syrian war, and use of chemical weapons in Salisbury (Great Britain) followed by the mutual expulsion of diplomats. This tension gravely undermines the stability and security of the whole Euro-Atlantic region, including Russia itself. Improving relationships requires counterparts to change their vision and strategy toward each other, which is in everyone's best interest. Russia: Dropping Victimhood Narratives When rationalizing its anti-Western views and policies, the Russian political establishment utilizes a narrative of the West's broken promise" not to expand NATO eastward, since former Soviet republics and satellite countries of the Warsaw Pact were viewed by Russia as its traditional sphere of influence. True, there were many verbal commitments given to Soviet officials by their Western counterparts, but none of them was concluded as a political or legal pact that would prohibit NATO's expansion beyond the borders of a reunited Germany. Nevertheless, Russia sees itself as a victim of Western betrayal and thus "justifies" its rogue international actions. Moreover, for Vladimir Putin's regime, this narrative constitutes an image of Russia as a besieged castle. Having deep roots in the Russian mass consciousness, the image of an endangered Motherland allows the regime to achieve such goals as to legitimize of personalized and hyper-centralized power of a president, to distract the public's attention from domestic issues to external threats (whether real or imagined), to transfer responsibility for the regime's failures in economic, social, and other domestic policies onto the "enemy's" plan, to mobilize the electorate, and to fight political opposition by simply labeling their leaders "foreign agents." But instead of engaging the Russians in a witch hunt and a muscle-flexing contest, there is just one and, perhaps, the most important question that Vladimir Putin needs to answer honestly: why do former Soviet republics and countries of Central and Eastern Europe that once were either part of USSR or its closes allies now seek to orient themselves toward the West and not Russia? Maybe it is because Putin's Russia cannot offer them a positive integrational idea that would inspire international cooperation. And maybe it is because the Kremlin failed to create an attractive image of a prosperous country that cherishes and respects human dignity and human rights, freedom, democracy, and the rule of law. The Kremlin needs to stop blaming the West for its failures and crimes and to concentrate on rebuilding its positive image through domestic reforms  primarily in the economic and social sectors. NATO: Understanding the Kremlin Although NATO claims that its ongoing enlargement process poses no threat to any country, we must view it realistically. Just a quick glance at the map of NATO military bases in Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and the Baltic States and anti-missile defense systems deployed in Turkey, Romania, Poland, and Germany, as well as Aegis-equipped U.S. warships in the Mediterranean Sea combined with regular military training of NATO troops in Ukraine and the Black Sea region, allows us to understand rightful Russian concerns. On top of that, Washington has just recognized Russia as a threat in the recently published National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy, calling it a "revisionist power." Naturally, it makes Russia feel threatened, just as the U.S. would be if Russians had their military bases deployed in Mexico and Canada and warships cruising along American coasts. As we noted before, given Putin's readiness to violently react against NATO's advances in Eastern Europe, NATO leaders should concentrate on securing a natural strategic boundary of the Alliance in Europe by completing a logical process of integration of all the states of former Yugoslavia (Bosnia, Macedonia, Kosovo, and Serbia), strategically securing the Balkan peninsula. And then the alliance's enlargement must be at least temporarily put on hold. As the West seeks to deter Russia, the most effective tool to do so is found in economic sanctions that have already proven their efficiency. After all, military and political strength are rooted in a strong economy. Unfortunately for Russia, President Putin has not contributed much to its economic development during the past 17 years. On the contrary  he has built crony capitalism with a mono-economy of natural gas and oil, exports of which keeps the weakening Russian economy afloat. As for strategy toward Ukraine, NATO should continue its support through consultations, training, and limited military aid aimed to secure Ukraine's eastern border. Ukraine: Lowering Expectations As much as Ukraine is important for building of common Euro-Atlantic security, Kiev must accept that the country will not be accepted as a member of the alliance in the near future due to major obstacles. For instance, NATO rarely accepts countries with unresolved territorial issues. To be fair, some countries' strategic importance made NATO turn a blind eye to that kind of dispute, as happened in 1951, when Turkey and Greece were invited to join. But it is not going to happen to a Ukraine that is unfortunate enough to have a nuclear-armed Russia as its adversary. Bringing Ukraine into the alliance with its simmering conflict in the Eastern regions and an annexed Crimea would factually mean NATO declaring war against Russia, under its obligations according to an Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty. Clearly, no one is ready for this scenario. Thus, Kiev must manage its expectations and not fan them among Ukrainians. Instead, it must concentrate on the strengthening of its democratic institutions and fighting a decisive war on corruption that slows down the country's development and damages its credibility. All in all, there is no doubt that the mutual strategy in the triangle NATO-Russia-Ukraine must change to prevent any further escalation of tension in Europe. It is not an easy task, and even if NATO slows down its pace of enlargement, as is highly probable that it will, there is no guarantee that this would pacify Russia. Luckily, NATO countries possess an arsenal of economic and diplomatic measures to deter Russia's unpredictable reactions.
The United States Must Leave the UN Human Rights Council

By now, it is clear that the U.N. Human Rights Council, created in 2006 with noble intentions on the basis of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is one of the international organizations that has little interest in the real violations of human rights in the world. The majority of the 47 members of the UNHRC have shown little concern for their mandate: to be responsible for strengthening the promotion and protection of human rights around the globe, for addressing situations of human rights violations, and ro making recommendations on them. How sanguine could one be about a group that includes Cuba, Congo, Burundi, Angola, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Venezuela, China, and Pakistan? Moreover, the geographical distribution of membership is weighted in favor of Africa and Asia: African states 13, Asia and Pacific 13, Latin America and Caribbean 8, Western Europe and others 7, and Eastern Europe 6. Membership can also be evaluated in the light of the Global Gender Gap report of the World Economic Forum that lists the gap in144 countries: almost at the bottom are Pakistan, Qatar, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, members of the UNHRC.

It is not too strong to argue that UNHRC has been perverted to such a degree that it is a useless and worthless organization, hypocritical and skilled in its formulation of double standards for different countries. Those double standards mostly relate to the disproportionate amount of time and number of critical resolutions relating to the State of Israel. As of 2017, Israel was condemned 78 times, compared with peace-loving Syria 29 times, friendly North Korea 9, times and Iran 6 times. Most non-democratic states, such as Saudi Arabia, Russia, and China, have never been condemned. Every observer recognizes that the agenda of the council is biased against Israel, virtually transforming it into an international anti-Israeli platform. Only one country is permanently on the UNHRC agenda: Israel. Every March, the UNHRC spends two sessions debating human rights violations in the countries of the world, with one whole session devoted just to Israel. What is most disappointing in the operation of the UNHRC is that the democratic states have been reluctant to end the anti-Israeli bias but have acquiesced in it, often by abstaining. The continuation and the extent of the bias was fully displayed by the meeting of the 37th session of the UNHRC on March 23, 2018, which approved eight critical resolutions, one each on the peace-loving countries North Korea, Iran, and Syria, which evidently have not troubled the world, and five on Israel, which the council apparently considers a menace to the world. It is worth looking at the five specific anti-Israeli resolutions, to see the extent of the hypocrisy and bias of the UNHRC. Details have been drawn from the analysis of Hillel Neuer, executive director of U.N. Watch. The first is a resolution drafted by Syria and submitted by the Islamic group. The UNHRC is deeply concerned at the suffering of the Syrian citizens in the occupied Syrian Golan due to the systematic and continuous violation of their fundamental and human rights by Israel since the Israeli occupation of 1967. The resolution was accepted, 25-14, with 7 abstentions. A second resolution called on all states to ensure their obligations of non-recognition, non-aid, and non-assistance with regard to the serious breaches of "peremptory norms of international law" by Israel. In particular, it referred to the acquisition of territory by force and called for cooperation to reverse Israel's illegal policies and practices. This was passed by 43 to 2 (Australia and the U.S.), with 1 abstention. Besides the U.S., Australia, a new member of the UNHRC, was the only country that voted against this and all the other anti-Israeli resolutions. The third resolution expressed grave concern at the continuing violation of international humanitarian law and the systematic violation of the human rights of the Palestinian people by Israel, the occupying power. This was agreed to by 41 countries to 3 disagreements (Australia, Togo, the U.S.). The fourth called on all states not to provide any assistance to be used specifically in connection with the settlements in the territories occupied since 1967. This included financial transactions, investments, purchases, procurements, provision of services, and other economic and financial activities benefiting Israeli settlements. It passed 34 to 4 (Australia, Hungary, Togo, the U.S.), with 8 abstentions. The fifth resolution, somewhat incoherent, called on everybody to implement the recommendations in three reports: the independent commission of inquiry on the 2014 Gaza conflict (written by William Schabas); the independent international mission on the implications of Israeli settlements for the civil, political, economic, and cultural rights of the Palestinian people; and the U.N. Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict (the Goldstone report). Most important was non-involvement in the provision of arms to Israel. It passed, 27-4-15, and the majority included Belgium. Interestingly regarding this resolution, left unsaid were two factors. One was that Schabas had worked as a legal consultant of the PLO, and his report cannot be considered neutral. The other was that the report by Judge Richard Goldstone was critical, but in April 2010, he retracted many of the charges he made in it. Australia and the U.S., by voting against all the five resolutions, demonstrated political sanity in this theater of the absurd. Surprisingly, Germany voted in favor of three and the UK in favor of two resolutions. The UNHRC has been obsessed with the question of Israel and disputed or occupied territory and Israeli settlements. In September 2014, it approved, by 32 votes and 15 abstentions, a database of companies doing business in areas under Israeli "occupation" including East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. In February 2018, it reported on 206 companies with ties to settlements, in effect a backlist of Israeli and multinational companies active in disputed territory, and really advocacy of BDS. The biased resolutions of the UNHRC are not simply obstacles to any hopes for progress for negotiations to end the Israel-Palestinian conflict and thus counter-productive. They are also an obstacle to any real discussion of violations of human rights in the world and are therefore a defeat for anyone interested in ending these violations. The UNHRC resolutions have no enforcement mechanism, but they are a disgrace to impartial analysis and do not reflect any perspective for a just and lasting solution of the conflict. U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley has been strongly critical of the UNHRC, has said U.S. patience with it is not unlimited, and has threatened to leave. The time to leave is now. President Donald Trump, disappointed with international organizations, has already quit UNESCO and cut U.N. funding. He should now withdraw the U.S. from the UNHRC. Image: Cory Doctorow via Flickr.
A swamp creature speaks out

This is both a plea and a warning to angry reform-minded voters from someone working in Washington, D.C. Many of you are frustrated and angered at President Trump and the omnibus bill, believing that momentum for improving the system has stalled, and some have declared they will vote for the Democratic Party as a punishment against Trump. That is your choice, but I ask you to consider some observations from someone who is, however lowly, part of the current federal system. If you "punish" Trump in the midterms by voting for the very party that wrote the omnibus bill, you will accomplish nothing. Although disappointed, I am not completely shocked about Trump and the omnibus bill. The problem is that the legislative process is designed from the outset to be slow, compromising, and inflexible, with the intent of preventing corruption and abuse of power from gaining a foothold in the government. Unfortunately, once that corruption takes hold, the very process designed to impede such corruption will now protect it due to its lumbering statutory procedures.

The presidency is only one branch and cannot legally do most of the necessary structural reforms without statutory changes. Whether the border wall is part of that statutory requirement is a separate debate. Congress must want to reform as well, but it doesn't want to reform. Right now, it is the main nest of vipers poisoning the blood of the federal system; this branch has no incentive to change. Embedded politicians with large networks of funding, lobbying, and activism that fuel these political machines will not willingly cede power. Old ways of punishing legislatures will not work. Sitting out the election or voting for the opposition simply as a protest vote is part of the current system; it only plays into lobbyist and establishment political hands. Legislative politicians rely on a big weakness of the voting public that has kept the status quo going for decades. Most of the voters want to fix the system, but not if it directly affects themselves. Instead of following the idiom of "Throw the bums out!," many voters embrace "Throw all the bums out except my bum." Too many politicians survive with buying their constituents federal goodies and then blame all the national problems on their political peers. All politicians play the same game, and few are held accountable in the next election. That is why protest votes usually work when the electorate wants to get rid of a specific politician, not a corrupted branch of government exploited by all political parties. If there is no real effort to change the congressional behavior as a body, no real reforms can happen. Punish Trump in 2020 if you want, but you cannot let the disappointment of Trump's actions allow the politicians in Congress avoid accountability! Politicians in general crave power even at the cost of the greater good, but these politicians will also rationalize that their actions are good. If a traditional protest vote happens, and the Congress switches parties, the political class will rationalize it, saying Trump's efforts to reform are unpopular and the statist policies are legitimate to pursue. The current system of lobbyists and special interests are indifferent to the political parties; they have shills in all of them, and the politicians who have been there the longest typically are the ones most corrupted. So switching one set of puppets with another is hardly productive. Frankly, yes, getting rid of RINOs, cowards, and charlatans will help, but it is a minor fix, because it relies on the idea that the new politicians will not become corrupted. Instead, voters must be prepared to bite the bullet and endure some pain by punishing the cowardly legislatures who also provide the constituents' pork barrels. Some pundits suggest a states convention to put term limits into the Constitution, like the one linked here. Perhaps later even repealing the 17th Amendment to bring greater accountability to senators could be another effort. Whether these efforts succeed or not, "draining the swamp" will happen only when Congress is co-opted away from the current leadership. Vote your conscience, but think about the consequences of your actions in cold, hard logical terms. Aaron Hirschi served in the U.S. Army and formerly worked in the Pentagon. He now works in a nondescript federal building somewhere in Washington, D.C.
Protesters in Chicago staged a "die-in" at city hall demanding an end to funding a $95 million police and fire training academy with the money going instead to "marginalized communities."

Rahm supports schools and resources for cops, not for Black and Brown kids, their mission reads. We demand a redirecting of this $95 million into Chicagos most marginalized communities instead. Real community safety comes from fully-funded schools and mental health centers, robust after-school and job-training programs, and social and economic justice. We want investment in our communities, not expanded resources for police.

This sort of racial extortion is not new to Chicago. Jesse Jackson's Operation PUSH were masters at wringing money from the city and private corporations by threatening boycotts - or worse.

Today, members of the #NoCopAcademy  a movement led by Black youth in Chicago but fueled and organized by a group of multiracial youth took over Chicagos City Hall, 121 N. LaSalle Dr., to demand that the mayor invests in black and brown communities and resources for the youth. The young protestors first disrupted the Chicago City Council meeting and then staged a die-in in the City Hall lobby. The group set up cardboard tombstones with the names of people killed in police shootings, like Laquan McDonald, an unarmed Black teen fatallyshot by Chicago cop Jason Van Dyke. The tombstones also had the names of schools, mental health facilities, and social service institutions that have been shut down by the city due to lack of funding.

This sort of disconnect from reality is not uncommon on the left. Better trained police mean fewer police shootings. Better firefighters means more lives saved. It's similar to global warming hysterics going to climate change conferences in private jets or demonstrators against a nuclear power plant driving to the protest in a gasoline powered car. The irony and hypocrisy of activists would be astonishing if they didn't justify it by claiming the moral high ground.

Maria Mora, described as a lead organizer and canvasser with #NoCopAcademy spoke before City Council and said that the group had surveyed 500 residents of West Garfield Park and communities nearby about the project. 88% are opposed, she said. Mora added that the majority agreed that building a police academy was not the best deal for a $95 million investment in the neighborhood, and 7% need more information.

No biased questions in that survey, eh?

Yes, Chicago has a police problem. Every big city has a police problem, but there are too many shooting incidents involving innocents and too much corrpution in the department to ignore.

But the question is; should there be less training or more training to prepare officers for the most violent streets in America? Should the police get less money or more money to stop the epidemic of gang related violence?

These are no brainer questions that the activists haven't bothered to ask themselves. No doubt the rest of Chicago's residents feel a lot differently about the issue.
There is a "contra" or "counter resistance" movement in California over sanctuary cities. The latest to join the contras is Orange County, near Los Angeles. This is from Fox :

Back in the 1980s, we heard about the "contras" of Nicaragua, or rebels fighting the leftist government. For some of us Cubans, "contras" was also a reference to "contra revolucionarios" or what they used call us in Cuba  i.e., opposition to the state.

Officials in California's Orange County voted Tuesday to join a lawsuit from the Trump administration fighting the state's "sanctuary city" laws, hours after the county sheriff's department anounced its own methods of pushing back against the legislation aimed at protecting illegal immigrants. Meanwhile, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra would not rule out taking action of his own against officials who fight the laws, including the sheriff. "State law is state law. Its my job to enforce state law and I will do so. We want to make sure that every jurisdiction, including Orange County, understands what state law requires of the people and the subdivisions of the state of California," Becerra said at a news conference. When asked if that meant an arrest or lawsuit against the sheriff, Becerra responded, "I think I just answered that."

Let me add this:

First, this is so refreshing, especially for so many of us who were starting to think that California was lost to the left.

Second, wouldn't it be nice if A.G. Sessions warned A.G. Becerra not to arrest someone for respecting federal law? A.G. Sessions should warn A.G. Becerra that he will arrest him for promoting the violation of federal law.

Beyond left and right, California is imploding, from homelessness to cracking infrastructure to a bullet train that will never get to its destination to a public pension crisis around the corner. At some point, one has to think California's Democrats will realize that they are not being well served by the people they voted for.

Most of all, California is waking up, and that's wonderful.

PS: You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter.
A Democratic candidate for the vacating seat of Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in the Miami area had this to say of the people whose votes she is seeking in her race for a seat in Congress"

Theres a perception that this is a very wealthy district. Out of the 740,000 people, only about 190,000 have college degrees, 90,000 have graduate degrees, said Kristen Rosen Gonzalez. But the vast majority of people in this district are uneducated.

Yep, all the little kids, the people who fled Castroite communism, the plumbers and electricians, what an 'uneducated' lot. What would they know about anything without a graduate degree like she has?

And of course, she wasn't too happy when the Miami Herald accurately tweeted her remark:

Its disappointing when the Miami Herald pulls a truly thoughtful and empirical observation out of context. My only intention is to improve and serve our community and the person who tweeted that knows that, she said. Shame on that person.

Ummm, no. The person who should be ashamed is herself.

The Miami Herald reported that what she claimed wasn't even accurate. Census figures from 2016 show that the district  a vast swath of Miami-Dade that includes most of the countys coastal communities and a bulk of the urban core south of the Dolphin Expressway  has a population of 747,000. Two-thirds of that population are 25 or older, and of that group 37.5 percent hold a bachelors degree or higher, a number slightly above the national average. So all along, she's been looking at her potential voters as "uneducated" when the reality is, they are more educated than average. But even if it were true, what kind of politician judges her voters solely by the number of college degrees? Miami Cubans may not all be educated the way she would approve of, but they sure as heck know what communism is, while she, a cossetted academic in real life, most likely doesn't.

What we have here is typical Democratic Party elitism, the kind that is rooted in academic arrogance (she is an academic), the kind that knows better than you what's best for you. Democrats think they have a right to rule you and make all your decisions because only they know best. What's more, such remarks (and they keep slipping out) show nothing but contempt for anything voters might have to say about it. To Democrats, voters are just these ignorant knuckle-dragging hillbillies who benefit from contact with their wisdom. It's elitism such as this that makes Democrats claim that military service is for the stupid (which occurs repeatedly, starting with John Kerry), global warming is "settled science" and Hillary Clinton can write off half the electorate as 'deplorables' with a special little cold spot for women who voted for her opponent, claiming they only did it to please their husbands.

Any questions as to why voters are repelled by Democrats? Democrats think you're stupid. and they want your vote.

IThe Miami Herald managed to find a way to disgrace itself in all this by pulling its very accurately reported tweet from Twitter, solely due to people on social media noticing.

[The Miami Herald's] Ancrum said Thursday afternoon that the tweet was pulled from the Editorial Boards Twitter account when we saw the words being skewed on social media, and thought that the quote was incomplete. However, she said, the quote is accurate and factual.

Can't have people noticing, see. This actually is the first time I've ever seen a press organ back down from accurate reporting, due to its impact on social media. Obviously, we know who they are rooting for.
Rutgers has a history of shelling out considerably more that $25,000 to notable speakers. Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison made $30,000 in 2011. Bill Moyers received $35,000 to speak in 2015. And  wait for it  Nicole Snooki Polizzi was given $32,000 for a Rutgers appearance that offered the sage advice, Study hard, but party harder.

Hillary Clinton wont or cant stop giving speeches, even though her price has fallen from well into six figures to less than Snooki received at the same campus. Sporting a cast on her arm from reportedly falling in her bathtub in India after stumbling down a staircase in public there, the twice-failed presidential candidate received $25,000 for addressing an audience at Rutgers University yesterday. NJ.com reports that this sum, that Nancy Pelosi would probably call cumbs, was just over 2/3 the sum paid by Rutgers to partake of the wisdom of Snooki:

But at her bargain priced speech, there were plenty of takers:

keep in mind that Hillary's speech had to be moved to a larger venue in response to initial demand, that the 6,500 available tickets were snapped up in 30 minutes, and that  at the time of the speech's start time  more than 3,000 people were on a waitlist hoping they might get in.

I hope that this encourages her to keep talking, and going out in public where her stumbles and falls can be recorded for all to see. It is not clear whether this pattern is due to an undisclosed illness, alcoholism (one of the danger signs of a secret alcoholic is repeated unexplained injuries from falls), or something else. While her fans support her utterances denigrating those who didnt vote for her, and find her self-pity a spark to their own compassion, I dont think she is winning new converts with self-pitying comments like these yesterday:

Clinton said she's heard this one a lot: "I'd vote for a woman, but just not that woman." Then she joked, "since I'm often that woman ... " before she trailed off to laughs from the audience. Clinton talked about some of the double standards between men and women in politics. When would you accuse a man attacking an opponent of being shrill? she asked. (snip) The 2016 election and Trump won, so why is Clinton still making public appearances and talking to crowds? Or, Mandel put it to Clinton, why still talk when "people say get off the stage and shut up"? Her response was direct: "They never said that to any man who was not elected."

Actually, Hillary has forgotten that until Al Gore withdrew his concession and started his global warming con, the custom was for losing candidates to gracefully withdraw, at least for a period of years, from public life. Hubert Humphrey was a good example. And plenty of people criticized Gore, who is widely believed to be a man.
A presidential line-item veto requires an amendment to the Constitution, which Congress will never propose. Passing such a law would take a two-thirds vote in both House and Senate, and its far beyond reach. What is within reach is proposing a line-item veto amendment through the constitutional alternative -- through the states, using Article V of the Constitution.

President Trump has been criticized for passing a larded-up budget, but it's not that simple to get a balanced budget. One way is with the line-item veto, but to achieve this will take some careful strategizing. Here is how it works:

Twenty-eight states have passed resolutions calling for an Amendment Convention to propose a balanced budget amendment. The line-item veto is simply one method of achieving it. All 28 resolutions specifically authorize that the amendment may include  appropriate fiscal restraints as a means of balancing the budget. A line-item veto fits perfectly within this description.

There are currently six Republican-controlled state legislatures, which have not passed a resolution calling for an Amendment Convention -- Idaho, Montana, Minnesota, Kentucky, South Carolina and Virginia. Fear of a runaway convention has prevented passage in these states. But if all they are asked to authorize is a line-item veto -- one specific means of getting to a balanced budget -- their fears can be overcome. It narrows the scope of the call. And President Trump can personally guarantee that no runaway convention will occur on his watch.

The Amendment Convention which would draft the actual language of the proposed amendment will be controlled by the conservative Republican legislative leaders of the thirty-plus red states. This is the most pro-Trump group of politicians in the country. No amendment can be ratified without Trumps support, effectively giving him a veto. To a large extent, the amendment will be what Trump wants, and nothing more.

Veto // Illustration by artist DonkeyHotey / Creative Commons Share 2.0

The line-item veto is politically more attractive than a generic balanced budget amendment. It is definite, not vague, and simple, not complex. Its familiar to the voters, since its now used by the governors of 44 states. It does not prevent spending in a national emergency. And with former presidents Clinton and Obama supporting it, it is bipartisan. As such, it could easily be ratified by 38 states through the state convention process, which was used to ratify the 20st Amendment

Simply requiring Congress to balance the budget is inadequate. How is such a requirement to be enforced? Congress routinely circumvents or ignores constitutional restraints on its power. But if the president is given the enforcement authority of a line-item veto, the budget can realistically be brought under control, and eventually balanced. Simply requiring Congress to balance the budget is inadequate. How is such a requirement to be enforced? Congress routinely circumvents or ignores constitutional restraints on its power. But if the president is given the enforcement authority of a line-item veto, the budget can realistically be brought under control, and eventually balanced.
The suit claims that DACA protections should be maintained for DREAMers because the decision to end it was "racially motivated." The judge said that was impossible to prove but said Trump statements as a candidate and as president that reveal, in his opinion, a racial bias, could be used.

A lawsuit brought by several states against the Trump administration's effort to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) can go foward, a federal judge ruled yesterday.

The Hill:

U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis ruled in New York that the lawsuit could move forward, but narrowed the scope of the legal action, Bloomberg News reported. He said the plaintiffs  which include New York State, the District of Columbia and 15 state attorneys general  could proceed with a claim that Trump's decision to rescind the Obama-era program was racially motivated and was intended to unlawfully target Latinos. Garaufis, an appointee of former President Clinton, previously issued an injunction barring the Trump administration from moving forward with deportations of immigrants brought to the country illegally as children, known as "Dreamers," who were offered protections under DACA. The Trump administration argued, however, that the lawsuit  particularly the claim that the president's actions were racially motivated  should be thrown out, because there was no evidence to prove it. The plaintiffs maintained that Trump's statements about Mexicans on the campaign trail and in the White House amount to proof that he acted with hostility toward minority groups. "Although the use of racial slurs, epithets, or other racially charged language does not violate equal protection, it can be evidence that official action was motivated by unlawful discriminatory purposes," Garaufis wrote in his ruling, according to Bloomberg. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (D) quickly praised the ruling Thursday. "We look forward to continuing our litigation to protect Dreamers, along with the businesses and institutions they contribute to every day in New York and across the country," he tweeted.

There is no standard legal definition for what constitutes a "racial slur" or "racially charged language - whatever the hell that means. But the judge is going to allow the plaintiffs to make their case anyway.

Do you sense that the deck is kind of stacked against the government in this case?

The bottom line issue is who gets to decide which illegal aliens can stay and which should go? President Obama believed he could decide the issue for millions of illegal alien children based on executive branch powers of selective prosecution. He would simply choose not to prosecute millions DREAMers even though they are breaking the law by being here.

Ideally, Congress should decide the issue. Trump gave Congress 6 months to come up with a solution and they failed. Hence, Trump wants to enforce his own idea of selective prosecution and deport the children of illegal aliens who are in the country illegally.

When you figure out why it's legal for one president to selectively enforce the law regarding one group of law breakers while another president is not granted the same power. let me know.
That's why some numbskull judge ruled that now all coffee must carry warning labels, same as dreaded, dangerous, cigarettes, warning everyone of cancer and attempting to get at least some people to stop. Can you say: 'judiciary out of control?'

People have been enjoying and drinking coffee for thousands of years and recent health studies suggest it's rather good for you, but now, all of a sudden, the State of California claims it has "science" to support the notion that coffee causes cancer.

Associated Press reports:

A Los Angeles judge has determined that coffee companies must carry an ominous cancer warning label because of a chemical produced in the roasting process. Superior Court Judge Elihu Berle said Wednesday that Starbucks and other companies failed to show that benefits from drinking coffee outweighed any risks. He ruled in an earlier phase of trial that companies hadnt shown the threat from the chemical was insignificant. The Council for Education and Research on Toxics, a nonprofit group, sued Starbucks and 90 other companies under a state law that requires warnings on a wide range of chemicals that can cause cancer. One is acrylamide, a carcinogen present in coffee.

What this activist suit and consequent judicial overreach represent is a sort of medicalization of food, nanny-state-style, as if food itself were some sort of toxic medicine, full of side effects, instead of a combination of risks and rewards, all ameliorated by moderation of use. And this judicial order to label coffee as cancerous is hideously disproportionate - the same sorts of carcinogens criticized in the coffee roasting process found in minute quantities can also be found in roasted peppers and bacon, too. Now coffee joins the ranks of all the other things that can possibly cause cancer, along with air pollution and BPA water bottles and building materials, many of which also carrry warnings yet change no behavior and improve no one's quality of life. Now coffee needs to carry the explicit warning label, as if we would all like to buy a product full of as many warnings of side effects as an advertised prescription medicine on television, and as if those labels actually give any useful context or probability of cancer. It's nonsense, because people who do get cancer rarely ever know what actually causes it. What's more, as oncologists will tell you, none of these risk factors, not one, have anything like the predictive power of getting cancer as genetics do.

Yet some judge, working with some activist groups, has somehow teamed together to force companies to label coffee as cancer-causing. More so than the medicalization of food, this amounts to the politicization of food. The most dangerous widely used food, after all, is not coffee, but probably sugar, as Gary Taubes points out in his new book. But since the sugar lobby has lots of power in political circles, you'll never see any judicial warnings on that particular product.

It not only makes our food supply less appetizing, it also amounts to a shakedown, as this passage in the AP story shows:

The lawsuit was brought under the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act, passed by voters in 1986. It allows private citizens, advocacy groups and attorneys to sue on behalf of the state and collect a portion of civil penalties. The law has been credited with reducing chemicals that cause cancer and birth defects, such as lead in hair dyes, mercury in nasal sprays and arsenic in bottled water. But its also been widely criticized for abuses by lawyers shaking down businesses for quick settlements.

What I'd like to know is how this activist group that launched the lawsuit got so much clout in political circles, and who is financing them. Of course the shadowy group doesn't have a website, so one must rely on other research. One lawyer argues that these activists have considerable conflicts of interest in one of their other cases. Once we know who is financing them, we will know why poor old Starbucks got targeted as a threat to some other product's rice bowl.
Nikolas Cruz and David Hogg: Not as different as you'd think

Nikolas Cruz and David Hogg are both members of Generation Z  the most spiritually destitute generation in American history. In their public educations and cultural indoctrination, they have been deprived of learning the lasting peace of self-transcending love. Their educations have robbed them of love of God and of seeing God's presence in everyone, which alone grants equal and universal human worth regardless of race, sex, or any material condition. They know only the conditional love of the world, which today means despising Judeo-Christian morality and the humility it teaches, while scapegoating the new despicables  white people, men, the traditionally moral, et al. They have not been taught to love America and her constitution, which is the principal mechanism to actualize God-given freedom. Nikolas Cruz and David Hogg have both been weaponized against America and against their own lives. Cruz and Hogg were both taught that it is acceptable to rage and curse and attack when things don't go their way. That is the key to the violence of this generation. Its members have been subject to mass medication and ubiquitous violent mental stimulation. But fundamentally, the left-wing great destruction needs children who hate. The left wing feeds on children who hate America and each other. Gen Z has been taught that if someone hurts you, rejects you, if he doesn't honor your diversity or even just disagrees with you, it is intolerable, and you have a right to boundless heroic hate. The left needs youths who are easy to "teach" and easy to control by appeal to irrational and addictive hate.

Gen Z is the most completely indoctrinated to a belief system that scapegoats "the other"  the mythical white racist, toxic manhood, conservatives, the American Founding, gun-owners, "homophobes," "transphobes." Any label, fashionable and mindless, will suffice. Every few years, another category of deplorables is added like logs into the fireplace to keep the hate burning. Right now, any smidgen of rationality and open-mindedness has been lost to an epic hatred of the current president. Cruz was clearly mentally disturbed and avowedly violent. But in Obama's America, it was blame whiteness for everything. It was not politically correct or economically advantageous to Superintendent Runcie and his Obamaite system that Nikolas Cruz be charged for his offenses or be held responsible for his extensive history of threats and violence against himself and others. Charging him would have been bad for the stats. But an involuntary commitment would have made him legally unable to purchase guns. The great vulnerability of adolescents, which enables their danger to themselves and others, arises from the fact that they have the functional capacity to plan and commit terrible crimes but lack the maturity to laugh at themselves or know that "this too shall pass." The monstrous crime committed in Parkland was the worst possible intersection of those two psychological conditions. David Hogg, who initially flubbed the speeches his FBI swampist father had apparently provided, is a brainwashed child of the left-wing Deep State. Hogg seems to view the NRA as the New Jew, the all-purpose scapegoat that can be blamed for everything. His speeches are Hitleresque; thoughtful listeners feel the senseless hate in them. Hogg's lack of humility led him to snub the president, which is also a way to disrespect the people who elected him. Gen Z's arrogance is also a cover for their lack of rational competence. Many rage-muffins avoid rational debate because they haven't been taught how to have one. The right to bear arms is far more important to freedom than the public education system. In fact, the education system has become public enemy number one to the ideals of free citizenry. The Second Amendment will be the last one standing, because it does not pertain to man-made rights; rather, it exists to uphold the unalienable right to life. Image: garlandcannon via Flickr.
The stealth jets, among the most advanced in the world, are Lockeed-Martin F-35 Adirs, bought under license by the Israeli government. The planes became operational last December and this may have been one of the first combat tests of the aircraft.

A report in the Jerusalem Post quoting Arab media says that two Israeli stealth jets flew over Iran in the past month, targeting the Iranian cities Bandar Abbas, Esfahan and Shiraz.

The report states that the two fighter jets, among the most advanced in the world, circled at high altitude above Persian Gulf sites suspected of being associated with the Iranian nuclear program.



It also states that the two jets went undetected by radar, including by the Russian radar system located in Syria. The source refused to confirm if the operation was undertaken in coordination with the US army, which has recently conducted joint exercises with the IDF.



The source added that the seven F-35 fighters in active service in the IAF have conducted a number of missions in Syria and on the Lebanese-Syrian border. He underlined that the fighter jets can travel from Israel to Iran twice without refueling. Israel has admitted to launching about 100 air strikes on Syria over the past five years, targeting Hezbollah terrorists, weapons convoys and infrastructure, and it is believed to be behind dozens more.

Some are questioning the report, but it was only a matter of time before the Israelis tested the new, Russian made, state of the art air defense that Iran purchased after the nuclear deal gave them the cash to do so. The planes appeared to pass the test with flying colors.

Israel is not known for sending subtle messages. When Hamas sends a couple of homemade rockets into Israel, the IDF responds with overwhelming force. Last month, an Iranian drone crashed on Israeli land and the IDF immediately launched a strike hitting a dozen Iranian and Hezb'allah targets along the Lebanese border.

This secret war between Iran and Israel could escalate into a full scale conflict, but only if Iran continues to build up its forces in Syria and Lebanon. There may come a point where the Iranian build up has gone too far and Israel feels the necessity to attack.

If that happens, expect those F-35s to play a prominent role in taking out Iranian air defenses.
Major fail from DOJ! AG Sessions writes he tasked a lawyer to investigate whether to investigate the Clinton/Obama abuses! No wonder @RealDonaldTrump is frustrated. https://t.co/p7N2YdCfZP

Mark Meadows, Chairman of the Freedom Caucus, was no less upset:

So the Obama DOJ can open a legally questionable investigation into the Trump campaignallegedly based on a campaign volunteer mouthing off at a London barbut this DOJ cant appoint a second special counsel after all the troubling documents weve seen?



Disappointing  Mark Meadows (@RepMarkMeadows) March 29, 2018

But, for the moment, at least, I see good reason for Sessions to take this position. In the letter, Sessions noted that he has asked the DOJs Inspector General Horowitz to investigate these matters, and, in a new disclosure, tasked US Attorney John W. Huber to investigate. Huber serves in Utah, far from the beltway, and was first appointed US Attorney by President Obama, and reappointed by Trump.

First of all, while the IG cannot convene a grand jury and subpoena witnesses outside the DOJs employees, Huber can. And the IG can and does make criminal referrals. There is tremendous inside expertise on the DOJ resident in the IGs organization, meaning that there is no start-up delay and no learning curve in getting to work on abuses. So, with the IG digging up information, and referring it to Huber, further steps, including subpoenas to former DOJ and FBI employees, such as Andrew McCabe and James Comey, can be taken before a grand jury in Utah. Any indictments issued by that grand jury presumably could be tried before a federal jury in Utah, whereas a special counsel would most likely work with courts in the District of Columbia, Virginia, or Maryland, beltway strongholds. Which jury pool would you prefer? The District of Columbia or Utah?

Even more importantly, there is reason to believe that a lot of work already is underway by Huber and his staff. Scott Bixby in The Daily Beast:

Asked when exactly Huber had begun evaluating issues raised by the committees addressed in the letter, Department of Justice spokesperson Sarah Isgur Flores told The Daily Beast only that Huber started in advance of the Nov. 13th letter. In that November letter, sent by Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd to the House Judiciary Committee, congressional leaders were told that senior prosecutors reporting directly to Sessions will make recommendations as to whether any matters not currently under investigation should be opened.

Speaking this morning on Fox & Friends, Sara Carter said that IG has already made criminal referrals on FISA abuses, according to her DOJ sources. These presumably would have been referred to Huber.

In other words, knowledgeable and experienced IG investigators are working with an experienced and unimpeachable (Obama-appointed) US Attorney to go after suspected abuses. Appointing a special counsel would necessitate starting all over again, beginning with recruiting staff, and then taking a lot of time to familiarize themselves with the evidence developed to date, and learning about the procedures and rules of the FBI and DOJ.

How many extra months would be required? How much expertise would be lost?

Of course, if worries about the inability of the DOJ to investigate itself prove valid, a special counsel always can be appointed. But lets wait a little and see what develops out of Salt Lake City. Grand jury testimony is secret, but alert eyes might spot people like Comey, McCabe, Strzok, Page, and others entering the Scott M. Matheson Federal Courthouse in Salt Lake City one of these days.
5G, in and of itself, is a not an answer to carrier growth slowdown, according to a new forecast from the data analytics firm, Strategy Analytics, This, in some respects, goes against the general notion that 5G is going to open the doors in a way never seen before. While Strategy Analytics actually agrees with this point at the data connection level, it foresees carrier growth to not directly correlate to the data connections level. In other words, carriers globally will not benefit  in terms of revenue  from 5G in the coming years quite as much as some might expect.

The data firm pads out this forecast by stating that it expects the number of user-linked mobile 5G connections to reach 577 million in 2023. This is compared to the 5 million mobile 5G connections expected in 2019. A figure which the company states does not take into consideration fixed wireless applications and/or industrial IoT. So with those two highly-potent use cases removed from the equation, Strategy Analytics still expect massive growth at the connection level. However, the firm predicts this influx of 5G connections will, by 2023, only account for 10-percent of revenue. To highlight the point further, Strategy Analytics explains the total wireless service revenue in 2021 will hit $881 billion. Although this is a large enough number, it equates to only a 3-percent increase compared to the expected wireless service revenue in 2018. Whats more, the firm argues the 2021 figure will be when wireless service revenue peaks. This also happens to be the year when Strategy Analytics expects 5G smartphone sales to really start to have an impact at the market level.

Another way of looking at this is Strategy Analytics forecasts that by 2023 there will be a total 9 billion wireless services subscriptions (user-linked). This compares to the 7.7 billion today. So although there will be more 5G connections the actual room for carriers to generate growth is limited simply due to the sheer growth of user subscriptions that have been created up until now. Something the company suggests is directly related to wireless service providers doing all they can to generate as much revenue from 4G data as possible. Below highlights how the company expects 5G to impact on subscription numbers between now and 2023, compared to how 4G has impacted subscriptions over the past few years.
Samsungs Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9 Plus may currently be touted as the best smartphones of the year, so far, but there does seem to be a problem with some of the devices built-in FM radio. Namely, the unlocked U.S. variant of Samsungs flagship devices  which feature Qualcomms Snapdragon 845 SoC instead of Samsungs in-house Exynos SoC  wont play FM stations at all. Although the problem had been initially been reported by various sources as something that was still unconfirmed, that has now changed. In fact, according to an image captured on the support page for the popular live and local FM streaming app called NextRadio, its been confirmed by Samsung. That also means it is not a problem with whatever app a user is trying to listen through, but a problem with the devices in question.

Of course, as of this writing, no solid details have been released with regard to what the problem actually is. However, thankfully, it doesnt appear to be a hardware issue since the company has said that the next system update will fix the problem. Moreover, NextRadios choice of words in the matter, indicating that the devices were supposed to arrive FM-enabled, seems to confirm that it is simply a setting that was toggled incorrectly upon configuration. Having said that, the company has not actually provided a date or even a range of dates for when users can expect the next update to arrive. Given that everything points to this being a fairly straightforward issue to rectify, thats not likely to make users who enjoy FM radio very happy. Thats especially true since Samsung has not always been the fastest company to push updates, let alone the most regular.

In the meantime, its a very good thing that this isnt a hardware issue in either Qualcomms chipset or in more proprietary parts. That means that, at very least, Samsung probably wont need to issue a recall or refunds in order to set things right. Better still, with any luck, the problem will provide Samsung with a sense of urgency to get the software updated. For Galaxy S9 users, that could mean that the next update will ship more quickly than it might otherwise have been sent out.
OPPO is one of the largest smartphone makers out there, consistently in the worlds top five, so it knows a thing or two about manufacturing massive volumes of smartphones and testing those handsets to make sure theres nothing wrong with them before they hit flow production. OPPO has invited us out to Shenzhen, where the company is headquartered, to check out its factory and see how it manufactures and tests its smartphones, ahead of the OPPO R15 global launch. Some other companies do tours like this for the media, but they are usually not as in-depth, so its cool to see what OPPO does to make each smartphone that bears its logo.

Manufacturing OPPO Smartphones

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As is the case with any smartphone, OPPO starts with a PCB and then builds out the motherboard from there. The motherboard, like a computer or laptop, houses the RAM, processor, storage, and just about everything else. So needless to say, its a pretty important part of the smartphone. Once it is manufactured, OPPO inspects each component to make sure it is up to its standards  the company did not go into great detail about what its standards are, but basically, making sure it works properly and is of high quality.

Speaking of motherboards, OPPO actually has a very nice display of the motherboards used in each smartphone that it has made (the R15 was not yet on display when we visited). It shows how much smaller these motherboards have gotten over the years, which is actually a result of other components getting smaller and smaller. For instance, above, you can see the motherboard from the companys first smartphone, the Find 7, and the companys latest smartphone, the R11. Theres a pretty big difference in size of these motherboards, as to be expected. Which makes manufacturing these products a bit more meticulous.

OPPO does use quite a few robots through the assembly process of each smartphone, but these robots are still closely monitored by humans, to make sure everything is running properly. This shows just how much goes into creating each individual smartphone that is made. It takes quite a bit of time to manufacture each one, and even then, the process is not complete. Since the company also needs to do some quality testing to make sure its products are top notch.

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Testing Quality Assurance

Once the phone is made, it needs to be tested to make sure its a good one to be sold. Now OPPO does not test every single smartphone that is manufactured in its factory, but randomly picks a few out of every batch for quality assurance testing. If one does not meet the criteria needed, then that whole batch will be scraped and manufacturing halted until it can figure out why it didnt pass the test and fix it. This helps keep smartphones from going out with flaws like being easily bendable, or breaking easily when dropped from a short height.

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OPPO has over 130 different tests that are done on these smartphones, which include simulating everyday things like dropping your phone from waist height (simulating dropping it when taking it out of your pocket), and so forth. The drop testing phase isnt just one drop and its over, instead it drops from a height of seven centimeters, about 2800 times. Then a worker will inspect the device to make sure its still perfect. OPPO also has a tumbler machine that tumbles the devices about 150 times as well. Not to mention another station where it tests out its waterproofing and water resistance, by spraying them and then checking to see if the device still works. After that, the device will sit around and wait three days to make sure all the water has evaporated. So this test is definitely not a quick one, but it is necessary.

There is another test that OPPO does, which is for environmental resilience; OPPO will test its devices in a hotter room that is also very humid. Were talking 55 degrees Celsius and 95-percent humidity, which is extremely hot. While most people wont experience anything close to such temperatures, OPPO wants to be sure that its phones can survive if it does get that hot and humid. This is important because when the temperature of the environment rises, that of the phone does as well. And it could get hot enough to be dangerous to use, or even explode. But OPPO tests to make sure that it doesnt get too warm, that way its still safe to use.

In its QA lab, OPPO has a ton of employees that spend their day inspecting smartphones that have gone through different tests. It is likely a pretty boring job, but it is something that needs to be done before OPPO can ship off these handsets to be sold in stores and online. Otherwise, you could end up with some smartphones not performing well, and giving OPPO a bad name. Its always interesting to see what kind of tests these go through before they end up in your hand.

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Wrap Up

Theres a lot of work that goes into manufacturing and testing smartphones before they are shipped to your home, or even to a store where customers will inevitably buy them. Its a pretty interesting process, and also a fairly time-consuming one. However, these tests all need to be done to make sure that these phones can withstand normal everyday use. Of course, these tests do change over time, based on what needs OPPO and its customers need. For instance, after Apples bendgate fiasco, many smartphone makers began adding bend tests to their quality assurance practices, including OPPO. This is all in an effort to supply its customers with the best smartphone possible  which also gives its customers a great experience and makes them more likely to become repeat buyers.
HTC has appointed Dave Haynes as the new director of its Vive X business unit in Europe, the Taiwanese consumer electronics company announced. Mr. Haynes previously worked at TheWaveVR, where he was responsible for the business development and partnership aspects beginning in July last year prior to joining Vive X. Previously, he was a member of the investment team at Seedcamp, a London-based early-stage seed fund which invests a capital of between 75,000 to 200,000 in pre-seed and seed stage companies including Transferwise, TheWaveVR, Property Partner, SplashVR, and GrabCAD.

Mr. Haynes also held various roles earlier in his career, including as head of growth at London-based startup studio, Makeshift, where he was responsible for customer development, growth, sales and revenue, business development and external partnerships. Before that, he served as vice president of business development at SoundCloud from August 2008 until February 2014. Mr. Haynes also worked for Broad Street Digital as a senior licensing manager, German digital music and content distributor finetunes as head of the U.K. business, and ClickGroove as the founder. He also co-founded Inspirit Music and Music Hack Day. Haynes appointment at Vive X comes amid HTCs effort to grow its global accelerator program for virtual reality and augmented reality across Europe. The program aims to provide startups with access to various resources, planning methods, professional expertise and networking opportunities across the industry. Most recently, HTC announced that it plans to open a Vive X branch in London, which will be the sixth location for Vive X in addition to the already open locations based in Tel Aviv, Beijing, San Francisco, Shenzhen, and Taipei. Across these six sites, various companies are participating as firms who are eligible to receive the investment. HTC also seeks to expand the accelerator program to Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, and Helsinki, where it hopes to find candidates for the program.

While HTC is yet to announce any partners for the London location yet, the company is gearing up for a new round of partner submission. HTC is also inviting any interested company to apply for a slot in the program for the next round. In November last year, 26 more startup companies from across the world joined HTCs Vive X accelerator program.
Huawei has no plans to exit the stateside market and will continue operating in the United States even after Washington effectively blocked all of its major growth opportunities in the country, according to Richard Yu, Chief Executive Officer of the companys electronics division. In a recent email to CNET, Mr. Yu said the tech giant remains committed to earning the trust of U.S. consumers, having added that it would never compromise that trust. The comments come shortly after Huawei disclosed its consolidated financial report for the last fiscal year, revealing record profits but also a decline in the performance of its North and South America operations.

While the company largely attributed that trend to a decrease in network spending in Latin America, the fact that it was essentially blocked from doing large-scale business in the U.S. may have also resulted in the decline of its North America results, many industry watchers believe. The Shenzhen-based original equipment manufacturer was previously said to have been negotiating smartphone retail partnerships with AT&T and Verizon but both ended up dropping that idea following pressure from Washington, according to previous reports. AT&Ts exit is understood to have been a particularly large blow to the companys stateside ambitions as a deal with the second largest wireless carrier in the country was already agreed and was supposed to be announced at Las Vegas-based CES approximately 24 hours after the company canceled the tie-up, insiders said several months back.

Earlier this week, Huawei announced the P20 and P20 Pro, its most powerful Android flagships to date that some industry watchers already claim boast the best mobile cameras ever created. Neither device will be sold in the U.S. and the same lack of stateside availability also applies to the newly unveiled Porsche Design Mate RS, Huawei confirmed. Multiple U.S. regulators and intelligence chiefs previously accused the company of posing a security risk due to its close ties to Beijing, with Huawei repeatedly dismissing those allegations. Mr. Yu also called such accusations groundless in his Friday email to CNET, having asserted the entire situation is quite frankly unfair and called for an open debate on the matter based on facts.
Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools, Facebook Vice President Andrew Bosworth wrote in an internal memo titled The Ugly that was circulated within the company in 2016, BuzzFeed reports. The executive thats been with the company since 2006 when he made a switch from Microsoft wrote that Facebooks mission of connecting people is something thats so paramount that anything that allows it to continue growing is *de facto* good, having said that quest for growth is a crucial aspect of the social media giants identity and represents its imperative that cannot be changed or abandoned.

Connecting more people more frequently can be bad if they make it negative, the official wrote, without clarifying who they are but presumably referring to users. Besides acknowledging Facebooks tools could be misused to coordinate a terrorist attack, Mr. Bosworth also mentioned the possibility that the platform leads to the loss of more lives by exposing someone to bullies, likely referring to suicide. The incessant pursuit of growth is justified even if it allows some to do true, even catastrophic, harm to others, the memo reads, adding that the goal of that approach isnt selfish or aimed at creating shareholder value but is literally just what we [Facebook] do. We connect people. Period.

The leak already prompted massive online controversy, having been harshly criticized by countless users on various forums and social media networks, Facebook included. Mr. Bosworth took to Twitter on Thursday to claim the memo cannot be understood outside of context, having said he doesnt agree with its contents now and didnt even agree with it when he wrote it. Instead, the executive said the newly emerged memo and many others he authored and circulated within the firm in the past were meant to promote discussion that allows the company to identify and debate all ideas, even those that are bad, if only to end up eliminating them. The comment implies thats what Facebook did with the stances outlined in the controversial memo and currently isnt pursuing growth at all costs.

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The document also suggests Facebook still hasnt given up on the possibility of relaunching its service in China where it was blocked in 2009. The contents of the memo are more controversial given recent issues surrounding Facebooks privacy scandal that revealed political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica harvested personal data of some 50 million Facebook users in an improper manner three and a half years back. The matter is now being investigated by authorities in multiple countries, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly being set to testify about the incident in front of U.S. Congress next month. The ordeal could lead to heavier regulations being imposed on the worlds largest social media network, many industry watchers speculate.
A new Huawei patent has cropped up on the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) website that appears to describe a new method for detecting whether or not a wearable is being worn or taken off. Oddly enough, there arent really any drawings or images associated with the patent  filed internationally under publication number WO/2018/053677. There are, however, descriptions of how the method works and a general idea of what it is intended to do. Primarily, the patented idea pertains to a sensor array comprised of two sensors that detect whether or not a wearable is currently being worn by anybody. The patent was initially filed back in 2016 before finally being published today.

Delving a bit deeper into the WIPO patents contents reveals that Huaweis method utilizes two separate capacitive touch sensors. For clarity, those appear to be the same kind of technology ordinarily embedded underneath the glass in a smartphone or tablets display. However, these are intended to work in tandem rather than separately. Moreover, they wont necessarily be detecting a single touch point. Instead, the patent describes a process by which a measurement value can be taken from the first sensor and then compared to the same from the second sensor. By determining whether or not one value is higher than the other, the wearable can decide whether or not the wearable is currently being worn. Beyond that, the patent effectively only says that utilizing the method will reduce power consumption of the wearable in question.

Adding to the mystery of the patent, and bearing in mind the fact that getting a patent approved doesnt mean it will be used, theres no indication whatsoever as to what kind of device this would be used for. Since its used for detecting a state of being worn or otherwise, this could easily be used in any of the current wearable technologies on the market. So this could be for something as mundane or common as a VR or AR headset, or for something like a smartwatch or fitness band. The possibilities are seemingly endless. Suffice it to say, this will likely remain unclear until Huawei decides to make some form of an official announcement about it  if it ever does at all.
Samsung Group vice chairman and heir apparent Lee Jae-yong (Jay Y. Lee) is set to resume his duties at the company next month, Yonhap News reported Friday, citing industry insiders familiar with the plan. The development comes nearly two months after Mr. Lee was released from detention following a nearly year-long period of incarceration based on charges of corruption and bribery. While initially sentenced to five years in prison over his alleged role in the 2015 consolidation of Samsung subsidiaries Cheil Industries and Samsung C&T that was approved following a series of indirect bribes aimed at supporting Choi Soon-sil, a close associate of former South Korean President Park Geun-hye, Mr. Lee ended up being acquitted of all charges in early February after the Seoul Higher Court disagreed with the original verdict and concluded theres no firm evidence of such collusion.

The grandson of Samsung founder Lee Byung-chul is presently abroad and plans to return from his business trips next month. He left the Far Eastern country last Thursday, March 22, according to recent reports. The scion is said to be touring Europe and may even visit North America and select Asian countries before returning, one insider claims. Its unclear whether Mr. Lees schedule included a stop in France where President Emmanuel Macron announced a major AI investment on Samsungs part earlier this week. The de facto chip of South Koreas largest chaebol is understood to be meeting executives of the largest technology companies on the planet and is essentially brainstorming by discussing growth opportunities and recent global economy shifts, insiders believe.

Executive sources from the Seoul-based OEM said Mr. Lee doesnt intend to make any public appearances in the near future and is instead focusing on keeping a low public profile while overseeing the company. Hes understood to have been involved in running Samsungs business even from jail, at least to a degree. Mr. Lees return is expected to resume Samsungs aggressive investments in a broad range of industries, with the latest such bet being made before his incarceration in late 2016 when the conglomerate announced its largest foreign acquisition to date, having confirmed the $8 billion purchase of Stamford, Connecticut-based Harman International Industries.
Xiaomi is expanding its Mi TV 4C series with a new TV model set to complement the existing 43-inch and 55-inch variants which were originally launched in late 2017. Not to be confused with the Xiaomi Mi TV Box 4C, the latest product is a full-fledged TV set featuring a 50-inch display with a 4K resolution and HDR capabilities, as well as integrated voice controls powered by AI. The new TV model is now available for pre-orders in China until April 2 and prospective buyers looking to acquire the unit at launch should be able to do so a day later.

The latest 50-inch Xiaomi Mi TV 4C has a modern design with very thin bezels and a Piano Black finish, all while boasting a variety of smart features that leverage a 64-bit quad-core processor clocked at up to 1.5GHz, coupled with the Mali-450 graphics chip operating at a frequency of up to 750MHz. This includes a smart UI designed by Xiaomi to sit on top of the Android platform, voice recognition capabilities provided by the TVs Bluetooth remote, and AI features which allow the TV to act as a digital hub and give users the ability to control other connected IoT devices in their home, including air conditioning equipment and Xiaomis own vacuum cleaners. The aforementioned CPU is coupled with 2GB of RAM and 8GB of on-board memory, and in terms of ports, the TV offers an AV input, 3 HDMI ports, 2 full-sized USB ports, as well as an Ethernet connector, all of which reside on the back panel. Meanwhile, the 50-inch HDR-enabled display accommodates 3840 by 2160 pixels, has a refresh rate of 50Hz with a dynamic response of 9.5 milliseconds, and provides a 178-degree viewing angle. On the audio front, the new TV model incorporates a couple of stereo speakers which take advantage of DTS-HD and Dolby Audio.

Xiaomis latest entry in the Mi TV 4C series will launch in China for the price of 2,199 yuan ($350) which is unsurprising considering that the smaller 43-inch variant costs 1,849 yuan ($295) while the larger 55-inch model has a price tag of 2,649 yuan ($422). Availability in other regions beyond China is still an unknown but the product is likely to soon be carried by international resellers such as GearBest.
In this issue of ASEAN Briefing magazine, we analyze the various market entry options available for investors interested in expanding to Thailand. We also...
Since the first generation appeared in 1993, the Altima was a formidable contender in the mid-size segment, especially since the carmaker made it technologically advanced. For instance, the first Altima featured a head-up display, which was unheard of for most cars. The second generation, launched in 1998, featured a keyless entry system. The innovations continued on the following generations, and Nissan sold 5.6 million Altimas in 25 years.



For the 2018 model, the carmaker introduced the new design language from the Vmotion 2.0 Concept car. Its chromed, broad, chromed V-shaped trim on the grille and the swept-back angular headlights were more on the sporty side of the segment than on the same page with its main competitors, Honda Accord and Toyota Camry. Its muscular profile with a raised beltline in front of the sloped C-pillar, and black trim, induced the idea of a floating roof, while the short decklid that sported a lip spoiler confirmed the sporty car's character.



Inside, the Altima featured a broad dashboard with a silver, V-shaped trim that ran across the front side of the panel. The carmaker installed a touch-screen display for the infotainment unit placed above the center stack. It supported the Android Auto and Apple CarPlay connectivity, while the center console with a minimalist design. A piano-black trim adorned it.



Another significant change was under the skin, where Nissan introduced an all-wheel-drive version for the first time on an Altima. The carmaker offered the mid-size sedan with a choice of two engines: a 2.5-liter naturally aspirated and 2.0-liter turbocharged unit.
In production since June 2017, the XV70 Camry is the best one yet. The eighth-generation model is manufactured in the United States at the Georgetown plant in Kentucky, but as it happens, certain vehicles need to have their engines replaced.
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The VW crossover has been given the full treatment, so, unlike in the case of models such as the BMW X6 or the Mercedes-Benz GLE, the machine has lost its rear doors while being fitted with a sportier roofline.This would make the third-generation Touareg a budget alternative to the Range Rover SV Coupe - the British automaker decided to return to the roots of the RR, turning the current car into a coupe after years for such projects being delivered by tuners.And while the new Touareg has moved upmarket, it obviously doesn't match the lavish aura of the Range Rover. Even so, the Coupe take seems to fit the German, even if one would have to live with the obvious practicality downsides of such a proposal.The platform sharing inside the VW Group, which means the Touareg shares its underpinnings with models like the Audi Q7, the Bentley Bentayga, the Porsche Cayenne and the Lamborghini Urus, offers countless possibilities. Nevertheless, we're not expecting Wolfsburg to come up with such a derivative.Returning to the transformation we have here, we're dealing with a Photoshop job, one that is detailed in the video below. It's interesting to see how the more sophisticated design of the 2019 Touareg didn't require too many changes, as Laurent Schmidt, the pixel master behind the stunt, only made a few touches in his quest to gift the world with a new Volkswagen halo SUV.
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As the result of the public voting, Italdesign has been named the winner of a contract that will see it create two minicars, one electric car, and a regular combustion engine vehicle, according to Autonews . By winning the contract, Italdesign would be joining Pininfarina , who has already been selected to draw up anand a sedan for VinFast.Being chosen as a winner for all the four design proposals we made for Vinfast makes us proud, said according to CarBodyDesign Filippo Perini, Italdesign head of design.If we think that was the people over the internet to choose us, thats a confirmation of how Italdesign is able to make proposals that go along every Countrys taste and feeling.The numerous cars to be manufactured by VinFast will be assembled at a new facility currently being constructed in Vietnam. The company says as many as 200,000 cars will be manufactured there each year, starting 2025.The first road-ready version of the new cars are likely to be shown this fall, at the 2018 Paris Auto Show, and then head for the Vietnam Motorshow in the last month of the year.Both Pininfarina and Italdesign have been selected publicly to design the Vietnamese cars. This is a model through which the newcomer to the automotive market hopes to attract the minds and hearts of potential customers.But whereas the look of the models was subject of public debate, it is unlikely the same will be done for what underpins them, technically speaking. VinFast has released no information about the technologies to be used in the planned cars.
The presentation to be made next week is the first step in the creation of the airplane, after the agency secured a contract for the preliminary design of its LBFD concept back in February. NASA says plans for the development and building of the aircraft will be detailed as well.The final goal of the research is the creation of the QueSST X-Plane, or Quiet Supersonic Transport. The resulting machine would be able to avoid FAA restrictions preventing planes from going supersonic above land.Should the plane come into existence, it may herald a new era of air transportation. At the speeds announced by NASA, travel time between London and New York would be cut down to a little over three hours.A flight from New York to Hawaii (a better part of it overland, where currently no supersonic speeds are allowed) could be cut to 4.5 hours.But NASA has to test the technology first. With the LBFD NASA plans to go supersonic over inhabited areas, in an attempt to gather relevant information from civilians about the perceived noise level. It will do so in a scaled-down version of the plane.An extensive look at how NASA plans to design the new aircraft can be found at the following link NASA is not the only agency working on a supersonic plane design. Back in February, the Chinese Academy of Sciences presented the concept of a hypersonic airplane , capable of reaching speeds of 3,700 mph (6,000 km/h), or nearly six times the speed of sound.Should the plane ever enter production, it would cut the normal travel time between Beijing and New York from 13 and a half hours to under two hours.
After Mitsubishi Motors was saved from bankruptcy by Nissan , the three-strong alliance managed to sell one in nine cars in 2017 on a worldwide scale, moving 10,608,366 units. But theres a change brewing inside the alliance, with Renault and Nissan expected to merge as one and trade as a single entity on the stock exchange.According to Bloomberg , the two companies are in talks to merge, seeking to solidify their two-decade-old alliance. Citing people with knowledge of the matter, the report puts chairman Carlos Ghosn as the mastermind of the merger.What do Renault and Nissan have to gain from merging? Size matters when youre in the business of making automobiles, and the Volkswagen Group serves as the perfect case in point. Turning the fragmented ownership into one cohesive structure would allow the two automakers to pool their resources more efficiently than ever.But theres a little problem with that, and that is the French governments 15-percent stake in Renault. For the deal to go through, the President of France has to give the thumbs up, but thats just the tip of the iceberg. Japans government has to give its approval as well, and then theres the matter of incorporating the company.One possibility would be to base the company in London or the Netherlands, where cross-Atlantic carmaker Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV has its corporate charter. Compared France and Japan, the Netherlands is a tax haven.To put it as simply as possible, incoming royalties are next to untaxed, with corporations paying low royalty costs to tax shelter companies. Artificially lowering the profit is whats what. The Rolling Stones has an office there, and a lot of special vehicle purposes of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. can be traced back to the Netherlands.Where does this leave Mitsubishi, you ask? In the first instance, the third member of the alliance will join a shared parts-purchasing organization. From there on in, rumor has it Mitsubishi will be merged as well at a later date.
A pilot who was fired after complaining about the rest time allotted by his employer has been reinstated by the U.S. Department of Labors Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The pilot, whose name has not been released, reasonably believed a new scheduling policy initiated by Boston MedFlight might not provide pilots with the rest time required by the FAA, OSHA said. While stationed at Hanscom Air Force Base in Bedford, Massachusetts, in December 2015, the pilot told his employers about his apprehension about whether a new scheduling policy would provide pilots with required FAA rest time. In January 2016, he contacted the FAA to register his concerns. He was terminated in March 2016 after he declined two flight assignments because he believed he had not been given the time to rest mandated by regulation. This pilot should be commended  not penalized  for raising legitimate safety concerns that can affect him, his co-workers, and the general public, said Galen Blanton, regional administrator for OSHA in the Boston area.

OSHAs investigation concluded the pilot was terminated for reporting safety concerns, a protected activity under federal law. In addition to reinstating the employee, and clearing his personnel file of any reference to the issues involved in the investigation, OSHA also ordered the employers to pay the pilot $133,616.09 in back wages and interest, $100,000 in compensatory damages and reasonable attorney fees, and to refrain from retaliating against the employee. The employers must also post a notice informing all employees of their whistleblower protections under the law. The employers told BusinessInsurance.com they will appeal OSHAs decision. The individual was not an employee of ours, a spokesman for Boston MedFlight said in an email. We contest and disagree with facts stated in the decision. We address any safety concern raised with the greatest sense of urgency.
More than 15 people have been killed and hundreds wounded in clashes between protesters and Israeli security forces at the Gaza-Israel border, Reuters reports, citing the Palestinian health ministry. The fatality count has varied between publications, with the N.Y. Times citing 16 and others 17.

The backdrop: 17,000 Palestinians have kicked off a 6-week protest called the Great March of Return, demanding that refugees be allowed to return to homes on the Israeli side of the border. The Israeli Defense Forces say troops fired on "the main instigators" of riots that included "rolling burning tires and hurling stones."
The U.S. military says an "improvised explosive device" killed two members of the U.S.-led coalition in Syria, one of whom was an American, and injured five others on Friday, according to the New York Times. Military officials did not specify further details regarding those killed or wounded.

Why it matters: The rare attack took place hours after a roadside bomb exploded in a tense area in the Arab-Kurdish town, Manbij, near the Turkish border, reports the AP, mciting a Syrian official. The targeting of the U.S.-led coalition, which includes 30 countries, could spark another moment of escalation in the Kurdish-Turkey conflict.
Over the past 5 days, a growing caravan of hundreds of Central Americans, almost 80% from crime-ridden Honduras, have been making their way through Mexico unprohibited to the U.S., Buzzfeed News reports.

Why it matters: The caravan was organized by a group called Pueblos Sin Fronteras as a way to help migrants safely reach the U.S., avoiding dangerous cartels and immigration law enforcement. Most hope to skirt U.S. immigration enforcement when they arrive or be granted asylum. The caravan has grown substantially with more than 1,000 men, women and children and Mexican immigration authorities have given up on trying to stop them.
Meituan-Dianping, which bills itself as Chinas largest provider of on-demand online services like group buying, food ordering and ride hailing, has selected the investment banks to take it public in Hong Kong later this year, per DealStreetAsia.

Why it matters: Bloomberg believes the expected valuation could be as high as $60 billion. China may have the most competitive and well-funded internet market in the world, in spite of the increasing Communist Party controls.

Founder and CEO Wang Xing recently spoke with The Information. Among the highlights in the article:
Foreign Policy published Thursday an explosive story, "The Disappeared," examining the mysterious vanishing of Chinese citizens over the last several years. Some of the cases are well-known, like those of financier Xiao Jinhua and bookseller Gui Minhai, who were both taken from Hong Kong.

Yes, but: The article claims the efforts extend to Australia and increasingly America, though according to FP, the known American cases so far appear to involve pressure instead of outright kidnapping. FP spoke to a senior former U.S. intelligence official who insists there's no evidence that the American cases are not "true" renditions, like the kidnappings now seen in Australia. Per FP:

"Theres a big difference between kidnapping and pressure," the former official said, "[between] kicking in a door and taking a guy forcefully away and saying, Come with us or well kill your family in Inner Mongolia.

"It would be a 'huge leap' for Chinese intelligence to shift from employing extreme pressure tactics to performing actual hands-on kidnappings in the United States," the official said.

ICYMI: One recent high-profile case in the U.S. involved the unauthorized visit of two PRC security officials to meet with fugitive businessman Guo Wengui. As the Wall Street Journal reported last year in a story that reads like a spy thriller, the FBI detained the two officials but the agency was prevented from formally arresting them and so allowed them to return to China.

Why it matters: Expect these cases to only increase as Chinas global power and influence increases  and as the Communist Party expands its efforts to influence the overseas Chinese diaspora.

More: Read these pieces from The Economist and the WSJ.
Facebook's mission of "connecting people" justifies aggressive "growth tactics" and even collateral deaths, Facebook vice president Andrew Boz Bosworth wrote in a 2016 memo, BuzzFeed reports.

Key quote: "So we connect more people. That can be bad if they make it negative. Maybe it costs a life by exposing someone to bullies. Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools. And still we connect people."

Bosworth's memo was titled "The Ugly" and posted the day after a user broadcast the shooting of a Chicago man on Facebook Live. Bosworth said on Twitter the message was "intended to be provocative" and that he "didn't agree with it" when he wrote it.

Mark Zuckerberg's statement: "Boz is a talented leader who says many provocative things. This was one that most people at Facebook including myself disagreed with strongly. We've never believed the ends justify the means."

Go deeper: Read the whole memo.
North Korea leader Kim Jong-uns journey to Beijing this week appears to have come as a surprise to the Trump administration but the White House seems to be spinning it as a positive development.

What's happening: Per the Washington Post, administration officials, who were thrown off balance when China announced it had held its own summit with Kim, debated the implications of the meeting but ultimately decided to declare it a positive result of its maximum pressure campaign against North Korea.

Big questions: Why Kim made the trip now  and what will he get from China in return  are among the key questions surrounding the visit. According to data released Friday, China may have been squeezing North Korea even harder than required under the current UN sanctions regime. The Financial Times reports that several Chinese exports to North Korea showed recent significant drops:

The monthly average of refined petroleum exports in January and February was 175.2 tons  1.3% of the monthly average of 13,552.6 tons shipped in the first half of 2017.

Coal exports were cut to zero in the 3 months ending Feb. 28  after running a monthly average of 8,627 tons the first half of 2017.

Steel exports ran at an monthly average of 257 tons in the first 2 months of this year  down from a monthly average of 15,110 tons in the first half of 2017.

Why it matters: China has reminded everyone that it still has significant influence over North Korea, and that all roads to a solution will have to run through Beijing. Now that Kim has paid proper tribute to China President Xi Jinping, will China back off on some of the pressure?

Go deeper: Former State official P.J. Crowley writes for Axios' Expert Voices that Kim's diplomatic offensive upends U.S. policy. The Korean Central TV has a documentary with English voiceover on the visit, now on YouTube, and it's a fascinating look at an alternate, fraternal Socialist universe.

Be smart: Some skepticism may be needed about the upcoming U.S.-North Korea meetings. North Korea has talked about denuclearizing before, but always with conditions that effectively include removal of U.S. troops from South Korea and the destruction of the U.S. alliance system in Asia.

And, don't forget  in 2009, NYT reported that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said he was tired of buying the same horse twice in reference to another deal with the DPRK.

Separately, Russias RIA news agency reports via Reuters that Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is to visit Russia on April 4 and 5  and I am now hearing a rumor that Kim will visit Russia soon after.
A major fire in northern Venezuela on Wednesday killed at least 68 people  almost all of them male detainees  who were in "overcrowded holding cells inside a police station," ABC reports.

The details: The cause of the fire is currently unknown, and four prosecutors are investigating. Two of the people who died were "women who were visiting overnight." Per ABC, it reflects a larger issue in Venezuela of overcrowding in jails, and scarce resources for the prisoners. Victims' families will be receiving "comprehensive social assistance" from the local government, such as "funeral services and psychological care."
Attorney General Jeff Sessions has told Congress he will not be naming a special counsel to investigate accusations of misconduct at the FBI, CNN reports.

The details: Sessions revealed on Thursday that federal prosecutor John Huber is investigating "Republican-driven accusations" against the FBI's surveillance of Carter Page and "Hillary Clinton's ties to a Russian nuclear energy agency." The AG said in a letter to Congress that he will wait for Huber to recommend if a second counsel is needed. President Trump's legal team has supported the idea, along with House Republicans.
Greek Defense Minister Panos Kammenos spoke of common security challenges and threats facing Greece and Armenia as he began a two-day visit to Yerevan on Thursday.

Greece and Armenia have always stood and will always stand together, Kammenos said after talks with his Armenian counterpart Vigen Sargsian. We share common values, a common history, common victims of genocides of the Armenian and Greek peoples and continue to have problems with the same friends and allies.

Armenia and Greece are confronting common security challenges and threats, which require from the two countries a common approach and mutual understanding as well as a strong political will to act effectively, he told a joint news conference.

The remarks were a clear reference at Turkey with which Greece and Armenia share a long history of mutual animosity that cements a warm rapport between the two Christian nations.

Greeces Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras cited their history of suffering and persecution when he met with Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian in Athens two years ago. Tsipras said that both peoples were victims of genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Turks during World War One. Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos echoed that remark.

Turkey condemned those statements. Solidarity between Greece and Armenia is built upon a joint hostility and slander language directed against the Turkish identity, a Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman charged in March 2016. Official Yerevan dismissed the Turkish criticism.

Kammenos on Thursday accused Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of dreaming about restoring the Ottoman Empire. That policy, he said, is pushing Turkey away from Europe, the international community and international law.

Sargsian said that relations with Turkey were among the issues on the agenda of his talks with Kammenos. He said they both rejected Ankaras policy of threats and preconditions towards neighbors. They also reaffirmed common approaches to international and regional security issues, added the Armenian defense minister.

Sargsian also praised Greek-Armenian military ties, saying that they are being expanded year after year. He thanked Athens for its military assistance to Yerevan and, in particular, the fact that around 170 officers serving in the Armenian army have studied in Greek military academies.

Bilateral cooperation also has a military-technical component, Sargsian went on, using a euphemism for mutual supplies of weapons and other military equipment. He did not go into details.

Kammenos was also scheduled to meet with President Sarkisian. According to the Armenian Defense Ministry, his itinerary also includes a visit to the Yerablur military cemetery in Yerevan where hundreds of Armenians killed in the war with Azerbaijan were laid to rest. The ministry emphasized that Kammenos will become the first foreign defense minister to lay flowers there.
The ruling Republican Party of Armenia (HHK) has said that street demonstrations planned by opposition groups cannot deter it from helping President Serzh Sarkisian stay in power after his final presidential term ends on April 9.

Opposition leader Nikol Pashinian confirmed on Thursday his Civil Contract party will hold rallies in Yerevan in an attempt to prevent Armenias HHK-controlled parliament from electing Sarkisian prime minister later in April. Pashinian did not rule out non-violent actions aimed at disrupting sessions of the National Assembly. His party is due to present a more detailed plan of actions on Saturday.

Commenting on Pashinians plans, HHK spokesman Eduard Sharmazanov said late on Thursday: Nobody has the right to  impede our constitutional right to freely perform our duty to vote [for prime minister] in the parliament.

If the [opposition] Yelk alliance had a majority [in the parliament] and someone tried to limit its voting rights or its right to decide who must be prime minister, how would they react? Our people voted for us [in the April 2017 elections] and we  will execute their political order, Sharmazanov told reporters.

Yelk is the countrys third largest parliamentary force that consists of Civil Contract and two other opposition parties. The latter have refused to join Pashinians campaign, saying that it is unlikely to attract large crowds.

Sarkisian has not yet officially confirmed his plans to become prime minister in time for Armenias transition to a parliamentary system of government. But some of his political allies have described this as a forgone conclusion.

Sarkisian stated in 2014 that he will not aspire to the post of prime minister if Armenia is transformed into a parliamentary republic. His political opponents now accuse him of reneging on that pledge.

Also planning anti-Sarkisian street protests is a coalition of smaller and more radical opposition groups called For the Armenian State. Pashinian has been reluctant to join forces with it so far, saying that it must speak out against violent methods of political struggle.
By Rashid Shirinov

Azerbaijanis historical inheritance right to Irevan and the lands around it must be restored, Director of the Institute of History of the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences (ANAS) Yagub Mahmudov said on March 29.

He made the remarks at a conference in Baku entitled Threats to the Multicultural Environment in Azerbaijan: Armenian Vandalism and the Policy of Genocide for the Last 100 Years, which was jointly organized by the State Committee for Work with Religious Organizations and ANAS.

The main purpose of the event was to analyze the history of the Armenian aggression against Azerbaijan and the current situation, discuss the threats to the multicultural environment in Azerbaijan, as well as the tasks in this sphere.

Mahmudov noted that the main documents related to the genocide Armenians committed against Azerbaijanis in March 1918 were collected during the period of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic.

The government created by 26 Baku Commissars [in 1918] in fact was a government of the Armenian Dashnaks, and the letter Stepan Shaumian sent to Lenin after the March genocide testifies to this once again, he said.

In his letter, Shaumian wrote about the involvement of 4,000 Armenian Dashnaks and added that if not these events, Baku would have become the capital of a state created by Azerbaijanis, Mahmudov noted.

The documents confirm that the Armenian side assumed several obligations in exchange for obtaining Irevan and the Azerbaijani lands around it, based on the negotiations and treaties in Batumi, he said, adding that the Armenians were refusing territorial claims against Azerbaijan on the basis of the agreement reached in Batumi.

Those obligations included mobilization of all forces for withdrawal of the Armenian governments armed forces from Baku, as well as cessation of the mass bloodshed committed by Armenian armed groups against Muslims in Azerbaijan, Mahmudov noted.

But after achieving their goals, the Armenians unilaterally violated all their obligations and continued the policy of occupation, he added. Therefore, both the obligations under the agreement reached in Batumi and the decision of the National Council of the Azerbaijani Democratic Republic, dated May 29, 1918, lost their legal force.

Mahmudov noted that therefore, it is necessary to reconsider the decision of the National Council of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, this decision should be abolished and the Azerbaijanis historical inheritance right to Irevan and the territories around it must be restored.

He added that a 9,000-square-kilometer territory was transferred to the Armenians so that they would no longer put forward territorial claims against Azerbaijan.

The founders of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic after two months understood the mistake of transferring a 9,000-square-kilometer land to the Armenians, Mahmudov noted.

Russian historian Oleg Kuznetsov, in turn, said it is necessary to give a legal assessment to the genocide committed in Baku and other regions of Azerbaijan in 1918.

The bloodshed, committed by Armenians in March-April 1918, was carried out with a particular cruelty, the historian said.

He noted that Azerbaijani national leader Heydar Aliyevs announcing March 31 as the Day of Genocide of Azerbaijanis was a right decision and has a legal basis.

In 1918, the Armenian gangs committed acts of genocide against the civilian population throughout the territory of Azerbaijan. More than 50,000 Azerbaijanis became victims of Armenian fascism during five months.

Azerbaijanis were exposed to genocide in Baku, Guba, Shamakhi, Gusar, Irevan, Nakhchivan, Zangezur, Karabakh, Lankaran and practically on all Azerbaijani lands.

Kemal Cicek, director of New Turkey Strategic Research Center, said at the conference that peace cannot be restored in the Caucasus because of the aggression and genocide policy of Armenians.

He noted that Armenians committed ethnic cleansing only with a view to create a state where only Armenians would live.

All countries of the region are multinational. Armenians, Russians, Iranians and representatives of other nations live in Azerbaijan. However, no one except Armenians lives in Armenia. A state consisting of only Armenians was created there, said Cicek.

He noted that after Armenians occupied the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan, they did not leave a single Azerbaijani or a Muslim there.

This shows that the policy of genocide, which Armenians have been pursuing from time immemorial, continues today. What happened in Khojaly is also the continuation of the genocide policy pursued by Armenians. Azerbaijanis were killed there only because they were Azerbaijanis, Cicek said.

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

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By Mark Leonard

Until the terrorist attack at a market in southern France on March 23, French President Emmanuel Macron had been planning to launch a new European-level political campaign. Though the official rollout has now been postponed, Macrons latest project remains central to his presidency and to his conception of power.

Macrons La Grande Marche pour lEurope will mimic the program that toppled Frances dominant political parties and transformed his La Republique En Marche ! movement into a political force in 2017. Over the course of six weeks, he will dispatch ten ministers and 200 parliamentarians to survey the French peoples views on Europe and European issues. The results will then be considered in developing a platform that can beat populist and Euroskeptic parties in the 2019 European Parliament election.

Macron has persuaded all other EU member states (with the exception of Hungary and the United Kingdom) to conduct similar public consultations, which he hopes will lay the groundwork for the EU-level reforms he proposed in major speeches in Athens and at the Sorbonne last year.

To understand the full scope of Macrons ambitions, we should consider the principles that underpin his worldview and guide his approach to politics. Few are better acquainted with Macrons thinking than French historian and philosopher Francois Dosse. Dosse not only taught Macron at Sciences Po in the late 1990s, but also introduced him to his intellectual mentor, French philosopher Paul Ricoeur, for whom Macron worked as a research assistant for two years.

Dosse recently published a book about Macron and Ricoeur titled Le Philosophe et le President. A few weeks ago, I met with him in his Paris apartment to discuss his latest work, and he explained Macrons approach to European reform as a combination of two fundamental Ricoeurian concepts.

The first is consensus dissensuel. This may sound like a highfalutin version of having ones cake and eating it. But, according to Dosse, it is really about drawing strength from the opposition between two conflicting viewpoints, unlike a Hegelian approach, which seeks synthesis between two poles. Macrons embrace of the Ricoeurian model is evident in his frequent use of the phrase en meme temps (at the same time) when describing parallel domestic-reform proposals.

Similarly, Macrons vision for Europe seems to reconcile the irreconcilable: his plan is both to preserve member states sovereignty and deepen EU integration. Institutionally, this means supporting supranational bodies while also allowing for more flexibility in areas where national governments, rather than Brussels, are better positioned to solve problems.

On defense policy, Macron wants to work within existing EU treaties, and he supports proposals for a Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) agreement and a European Defense Fund. But he also hopes to move beyond the current EU and even NATO frameworks to establish a European Intervention Initiative (EII), which would operate alongside British, US, and other allied expeditionary forces.

On migration, Macron wants both to secure Europes external borders and ensure that the burden of taking in refugees is shared across the EU. In the short term, he is pushing for an agreement among member states on refugee quotas. But, in the long run, he supports greater harmonization of asylum systems, or even the creation of a central EU asylum agency.

Macron also hopes to reconcile opposite ideas with respect to the euro. While pushing for reforms within France that will reduce the risks of financial contagion, he is also calling for a common eurozone budget and finance ministry to make the monetary union more resilient to future shocks.

Beyond these areas, Macron wants to boost innovation in the digital sphere, by establishing a European version of the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). At the same time, he wants to protect national sovereignty in the digital age through regulations and a common fiscal approach.

The second Ricoeurian concept underpinning Macrons worldview is the idea of a European refoundation. Whereas the first wave of European integration was largely limited to economics, Macron now wants to focus on politics and culture, starting with the European Parliament election next year.

When Macron looks at the EU political stage, he sees stale cartel parties that are just as ripe for disruption as Frances mainstream parties were in 2017. For example, he has mocked the center-right European Peoples Party (EPP), asking how any parliamentary group can call itself Christian Democratic when it includes the parties of former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

Macron also recognizes that the decline of the center left in Europe  along with the impending post-Brexit exodus of UK Labour Party MPs  has left a large void that needs to be filled. To that end, he has considered creating a Europe-wide En Marche ! movement that could nominate its own Spitzenkandidat to the European Commission presidency. In fact, there has already been some talk of positioning European Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager for that role.

Initially, the Macronistes had planned to recruit defectors from other party groups, and then ally with the left-leaning Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe. But the creation of a European En Marche ! could mean that they will try to edge out the ALDE, too. At any rate, German Chancellor Angela Merkel will insist on a conservative candidate for the Commission presidency, so Macron might try to use that as a bargaining chip for concessions on other issues.

Much remains to be seen, but it is already clear that Macron has brought a new kind of thinking to European politics. In his view, sovereignty in Europe can really be exercised only at the level of the EU. He is taking France from the Fifth Republic to a Sixth Republic that is no longer strictly franco-francaise, but truly European.

Copyright: Project Syndicate: Macron takes aim at European politics

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By Rashid Shirinov

Iran and Azerbaijan plan to accelerate the work on the establishment of a joint pharmaceutical enterprise in the industrial park in Baku, Iranian Deputy Minister of Health Iraj Harirchi told Trend on March 30.

He said this issue will be discussed during the visit of the Iranian Health Minister Hassan Ghazizadeh Hashemi to Azerbaijan on April 19.

The decision to create a joint pharmaceutical enterprise was again confirmed during the recent visit [March 28-29] of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to Azerbaijan, Harirchi noted.

He added that the parties agreed to expand cooperation in the creation of the joint venture for medicine production, as well as in the medical field and in establishing links between the medical universities of the two countries.

Azerbaijan and Iran signed the memorandum of understanding on the construction of a joint pharmaceutical plant on April 21, 2016. The groundbreaking ceremony of the joint plant Caspian Pharmed was held in the Pirallahi district of Baku in January 2017.

The cost of the plant is $20.6 million, and the Iranian side will invest some $11 million in its construction. The project shareholders are Irans Tamin Pharmaceutical Investment Company (49 percent), Azersun Holding (26 percent) and Azerbaijan Investment Company (25 percent).

The project will consist of three stages. In the first phase there will be production of pills and capsules, ampoules and vial - in the second stage, and production of antibiotic drugs will be in the third stage.

The major part of drugs is planned to be sold in Azerbaijans domestic market, while a certain part will be exported to Russia, Kazakhstan, Georgia and other countries.

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

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By Kamila Aliyeva

Carpet-weaving is one of the most significant and ancient forms of Azerbaijani crafts representing the history, culture and traditions, which were carefully preserved and passed on from generation to generation.

The territory of Azerbaijan has seen different states, religions and tribal cultures coming and going with all these processes being reflected in carpet making. In general, there are several schools of carpet weaving in Azerbaijan, each with its own specific style.

There are different patterns and color palette of several schools, including Guba, Baku, Shirvan, Ganja, Gazakh, Karabakh and Tabriz. Some of these schools are known for their inherently complex geometric patterns that represent conceptual bodies of men and animals, while others are characteristic of diverse floral decorations with abundant variations reflecting flower-shaped motifs.

About 600 kinds of designs decorate Azerbaijani carpets. The most-used design in the national carpets is Buta, which has 72 kinds of shape and three main meanings including fire, water and cypress.

Karabakh School

The most enchanting and vivid carpets were created by Karabakh school. Presumably, carpets in the territory of Karabakh have been woven since the 15th and 16th centuries while carpet making itself appeared in Azerbaijan much earlier - approximately in the 10th-11th centuries.

Karabakh carpets are regionally divided into three groups including the Aran group, the Shusha group and the Jabrayil group. In the 18th century, Karabakh carpet weaving was concentrated in the city of Shusha. In those days, Karabakh has already been famous for its carpets. Favorable geographical position, sheep breeding and abundance of wool, as well as great demand for woolen hand carpets were the main reasons for involving the population of Karabakh in carpet weaving.

Karabakh carpets fascinate with their colors and geometric patterns. The main motifs found on these carpets are divided into five groups: buta, kataba, ana gul, gol and khoncha, gubba.

Buta is one of the most widely used patterns both on lint-free and pile carpets. A kataba or kartush was used as a filling element. Various inscriptions, plot scenes or individual patterns were woven on the oblong kartush. Ana Gul is another important element while Gol and khoncha (large and small medallions) are also often woven in Karabakh carpets. Gubba is a suspension placed on the ends of the central medallions.

There are 33 compositions of Karabakh carpets, which stand out for their colorfulness and brightness. According to the traits of local sheep wool Karabakh carpets have long tight and mild pile.

Aran, Bagchadaguller, Balg, Buynuz, Barda, Bahmanli, Garabag, Goja, Gasmushag, Lambaran, Mugan, Talsh, Lampa, Malbayli, Khangarvand, Khanlg, Khantirma, Chalabi, and Shabaldbuta represent the classical patterns of Karabakh carpet-weaving school.

Karabakh carpets have the richest color palette, which reflects the subtlest shades of the colors of the region's nature. Traditionally, the background in the intermediate sections of the Azerbaijani carpets are filled with red paint. Geometrized forms of plant motifs and a colorful gamut of color combinations make the Karabakh carpets original.

The motifs of the Karabakh carpets have no equal in their artistic value and originality of the image. If earlier, in addition to beautiful images, the hunting plot was the basis for these carpets, later a clear decrease in the interest to the hunting plot can be observed. In the first quarter of the 20th century, hunting completely disappears as a theme, giving way to images of animals.

At the end of the 19th century atli-itli (horse-dog), itli-pisikli(dog-cat), maralli-jeyranli(deer-gazelle) and other fleecy carpets were weaved. In composition terms, these carpets depict horizontally arranged images of animals.

A number of carpets devoted to Rustam from Firdovsis Shahname, famous with their composition principles and national spirit, were created by Karabakh school of carpet-weaving.

Azerbaijani carpet - ancient, magical, full of symbols and secrets - may be studied for years, but still remain unfamiliar, revealing more and more new riddles.

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Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva

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By Laman Ismayilova

Easter Charity Bazaar opened at the Russian Information and Cultural Center in Baku on On March 29-30.

The event was organized by the Rossotrudnichestvo office in Azerbaijan and Baku-Azerbaijan Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church.

The guests and participants of the charitable bazaar were greeted by the head of the Rossotrudnichestvo representation in Azerbaijan Valentin Denisov and Bishop Alexander of Baku and Azerbaijan.

"Charity is very important in modern times, especially for children. We are worried about what happened in Russia, Kemerovo. Many children are among the victims ... We pray for their souls and the recovery of the victims ...", said Vladyka Alexander.

During the traditional Bazaar, participants had a chance to buy handicrafts, including, artistic embroidery, jewelry, ceramics, and wood carving. Visitors enjoyed delicious Easter cakes and other sweets.

An exhibition of art works by representatives of the Cossack community, famous Azerbaijani artists was held as part of the celebration.

A special place here is occupied by the works and artifacts of the orphanage No. 3 in Baku.

They were introduced by the eighth grade student Khanum Sotiyeva. Notably, she is the author of the exclusive card of the Russian Federation made with beads, which five years ago was donated by the children's home to the Russian Information and Cultural Center in Baku.

Valentin Denisov presented letters of appreciation from the Rossotrudnichestvo Representative Office and all participants of the Easter Bazaar.

All funds raised from the Easter Bazaar will be spent for charity.

Easter is a Christian festival which celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ. According to the New Testament, Jesus died on the cross on Good Friday, and came back to life three days later.

His resurrection is celebrated on Easter Sunday, which also marks the end of Lent, the 40-day period of fasting which begins on Ash Wednesday.

Maundy Thursday is the Thursday before Good Friday and commemorates the Maundy and Last Supper of Jesus Christ with the Apostles. Many churches hold special services on Easter Sunday.

Easter traditions throughout the world differ from country to country. In many central and eastern European countries decorating eggs in beautiful patterns is especially popular.

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Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova

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By Rashid Shirinov

Armenian Foreign Ministry's statement about the UN's alleged publication of the statement of the separatist regime of Nagorno-Karabakh regarding the Sumgayit events is another fiction, Azerbaijani Foreign Ministrys Spokesman Hikmat Hajiyev told Trend on March 29.

He noted that the Armenian side, resorting to illegal and provocative actions, added the papers submitted by the separatist regime to the letter disseminated by the permanent mission of Armenia to the UN as additional attachments.

"The Armenian side took these ridiculous and unserious steps in response to the statements that Azerbaijans Foreign Ministry and the General Prosecutor's Office presented to the international community, said Hajiyev, adding that the statements of the Azerbaijani side are based on incontrovertible facts.

The spokesman added that the permanent mission of Azerbaijan to the UN continuously exposes the lies of the Armenian side and presents to the UN General Assembly and Security Council weighty documents confirming from the standpoint of international law Armenias aggression and occupation policy against Azerbaijan.

The Sumgayit unrest of 1988 was a provocation against Azerbaijan by the intelligence services of Armenia and the State Security Committee of the USSR. Armenian ideologists and their supporters in high political leadership of the USSR, understanding the illegality of separation of Nagorno-Karabakh from Azerbaijan based on Soviet Constitution, resorted to such provocation with the aim of justifying the idea of impossibility of further coexistence of Armenians together with Azerbaijanis, providing complete ethnic cleansing of Azerbaijani population in Armenia and discrediting Azerbaijan.

Meanwhile, Armenia broke out a lengthy war against Azerbaijan by laying territorial claims on the country. Since a war in the early 1990s, Armenian armed forces have occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and over 1 million were displaced as a result of the large-scale hostilities.

To this day, Armenia has not implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding regions.

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov



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By Trend

Azerbaijan has been strengthening its status as a bridge between the West and the East for many years, Ambassador of Mexico to Azerbaijan Rodrigo Labardini told Trend on March 29.

"This is also confirmed by the fact that the country, through constructing the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railroad, has become the shortest transit route from China to Europe. Azerbaijan reduced the cargo transportation time from China to Europe to 12 days, and this can not but positively affect the economic situation of all Eurasian continent," Labardini said.

He noted that the regional and global projects, on which Azerbaijan is currently working, cause admiration not only in the region, but also beyond its borders.

"As for the domestic economy of Azerbaijan, we are glad to see its strengthening and development, and the actions the country's government takes for the continuous development and movement of the country forward," the ambassador said.

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By Trend

The holding of 11 meetings by the presidents of Azerbaijan and Iran within four years testifies to the relations strengthening between the two countries, Azerbaijani MP Tahir Karimli told Trend March 29.

Karimli was commenting on Iranian President Hassan Rouhanis visit to Azerbaijan.

"Important documents were signed during the visit, he said. The most important documents are a memorandum of understanding on joint development of oil blocks in the Caspian Sea and an agreement on financing the construction of the Astara-Rasht railway section."

Other documents covering the spheres of ecology, sports, culture and health care were also signed during the visit, he said. This means that Iran and Azerbaijan are getting closer. Along with bilateral meetings between Azerbaijan and Iran, meetings are held in trilateral and quadrilateral formats, which contribute to the preservation of peace in the region. I think that the trade turnover between Azerbaijan and Iran will continue to grow.

Karimli added that the Iranian public, supporting this cooperation, is also interested in the development of relations with Azerbaijan.

"The number of Iranian citizens arriving in Azerbaijan has recently increased, Karimli said.

In conclusion, he said that during the visit, the Iranian president said that he supports Azerbaijans territorial integrity.

"President Rouhani expressed support for Azerbaijans territorial integrity and a political solution to the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict," Karimli said.

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By Trend

Azerbaijan's Prosecutor General Zakir Garalov met with Corien Jonker, the head of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), in Baku on March 29.

Garalov informed Jonker about holding elections in Azerbaijan under conditions of democracy and transparency, the work done to ensure voters' free expression of will, and gave detailed information about forthcoming tasks of the Prosecutor General's Office in connection with possible violation of the electoral legislation.

He informed about creation of a Working Group with the aim of ensuring prompt investigation of information on law violation during the election, which will be submitted to the Prosecutor General's Office.

Expressing appreciation for the warm welcome, Jonker briefed on the activities and objectives of the observation mission.

She said that during the upcoming election, the observation mission will pay attention to cooperation with the Working Group of the Prosecutor General's Office.

The sides also exchanged views on other issues of mutual interest.

Eight candidates were registered to participate in the April 11 presidential election in Azerbaijan.

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By Kamila Aliyeva

Italy supports expansion of Azerbaijan's cooperation with the European Union.

This was stated by Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of Italy Angelino Alfano at a meeting with Azerbaijan's Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov, who is paying a visit to Rome upon invitation of his Italian counterpart.

During the meeting, the ministers expressed satisfaction with the high level of bilateral relations and friendship between Azerbaijan and Italy.

They noted that the cooperation in economic, commerce, energy and cultural spheres is successfully developing between the two countries and Italy is the main trade partner of Azerbaijan within the European Union.

The ministers drew attention to the importance of the Southern Gas Corridor and special emphasize was made to TANAP and TAP projects as its important components. In this regard, they praised the cooperation between the two countries.

The sides further mulled the role of Italy as the OSCE Chairman-in-Office.

The Italian foreign minister underlined that his country supports the settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict by diplomatic means through the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs on the basis of the norms and principles of international law and the Helsinki Final Act.

Mammadyarov thanked Italy for its fair position regarding the settlement of the conflict.

Informing about the negotiation process on the settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the Azerbaijani minister underlined that Armenia has not yet implemented the demands of the UN Security Council Resolutions on immediate, complete and unconditional withdrawal of the occupying forces from the occupied territories of Azerbaijan.

He added that the attempts to change the internationally recognized borders of states by use of force is unacceptable and the conflict should be resolved on the basis of territorial integrity and sovereignty within the internationally recognized borders of Azerbaijan, as it is reaffirmed by the relevant UN Security Council resolutions.

During the meeting, the sides also exchanged views on cooperation within international organizations, as well as regional issues of mutual interest.

Bilateral relations between the two states continue to grow and expand in a number of directions. Accompanied by a solid consolidation of the political dialogue, bilateral economic relations have further strengthened following the signing of a Joint Declaration for the establishment of an Italian-Azerbaijani Council for Economic, Industrial and Financial in 2004.

Baku and Rome are strategic partners in the energy sector. Italy, whose scanty natural resources traditionally make the country dependent on import has been a key partner for Baku. Since 1999, Italy has begun to receive a large part of Azerbaijani oil exported through the Baku - Supsa pipeline and then through the Baku - Jeyhan. This made Italy the number one partner for Azerbaijan and this position is maintained until today.

The priority target of Italian investments in Azerbaijan is construction sector. The Italian presence is strengthening in the interior design industry, the hotel infrastructure, the agro-wine division and the banking sector.

Currently, about 45 Italian companies are operating in Azerbaijan in insurance, banking, trade, and other areas. Azerbaijan remains an extremely interesting market for Italian businessmen.

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Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva

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By Rashid Shirinov

An interim ministerial conference of foreign ministers entitled Promoting International Peace and Security for Sustainable Development will be held within the Non-Aligned Movement in Baku on April 5-6, Azerbaijani Foreign Ministrys Spokesman Hikmat Hajiyev told Trend on March 30.

A meeting at the level of high-ranking officials will be held on April 3-4 to prepare for the ministerial conference, Hajiyev said.

More than 800 participants, including member countries of the Non-Aligned Movement, representatives of states and international organizations having an observer status at the Movement, as well as representatives of countries and organizations invited as guests, will attend the conference in Baku.

Azerbaijan is committed to the spirit and principles of the Non-Aligned Movement, Hajiyev said, adding that the country will host the 18th summit of the Movement and will chair the organization in 2019-2022.

Non-Alignment Movement is an international organization uniting 120 countries on the principles of non-participation in military blocs. Moreover, 17 countries and 10 international organizations have an observer status in the organization.

The Movement was formally established by 25 states at the Belgrade Conference in September 1961. Azerbaijan became a full member of the organization in 2011.

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

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By Trend

The Parliament of Azerbaijan has adopted a statement on the 100th anniversary of the Genocide of Azerbaijanis.

Vice-Speaker of Azerbaijan's Parliament Bahar Muradova read out the statement at a special session held on March 30 to mark the 100th anniversary of the 31 March  the Day of Genocide of Azerbaijanis.

The statement notes that 100 years have passed since genocide crimes committed with special cruelty against the Azerbaijani people by the Dashnak-Bolshevik armed groups operating under the mandate of the Baku Council in March-April 1918.

Then, tens of thousands of civilians were killed precisely due to ethnic and religious affiliation, settlements, cultural monuments, mosques and cemeteries were demolished and destroyed in Baku, as well as in other cities and districts belonging to the Baku province. This is one of the bloody pages of the ethnic cleansing policy gradually carried out by Armenian chauvinists against Azerbaijani people for the sake of "Great Armenia" illusion.

Mass murders launched in the Baku province were continued in Karabakh, Zangezur, Nakhchivan, Irevan, Goycha and other parts of Azerbaijan. Hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis become victims of Armenian chauvinists.

In the statement, the Parliament appeals to international organizations, world countries and their parliaments to recognize the genocide committed by Armenian chauvinists and their patrons against the Azerbaijani people, to help solve the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in the framework of the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan and the principles of international law to prevent genocides in the future.

The document was put up for vote and adopted.

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By Trend

The hostile policy of Armenian chauvinists and their supportive forces against the Azerbaijani people has continued for about 200 years, Azerbaijani Parliamentary Speaker Ogtay Asadov said in Baku.

He made the remarks at a special session of the Parliament held on March 30 to mark the 100th anniversary of the 31 March  the Day of Genocide of Azerbaijanis.

Asadov said that the Tsarist Russia has moved about one million Armenians from Iran and the Ottoman Empire to the Azerbaijani territories purposefully to boost its stronghold in the Caucasus.

He reminded that over one million Armenians were relocated to Azerbaijan in the early 20th century. The speaker noted that during certain periods of the history the great powers skillfully used the Armenian factor to implement their geopolitical plans.

"The "Great Armenia" illusion of Armenian nationalists, using the secret and open patronage of these countries, has led to the fact that the South Caucasus population faced big fatalities. Armenian chauvinists have carried out genocide and terrorist acts in Eastern Anatolia and South Caucasus at different times with a view to carry out ethnic cleansing in the areas they wanted to seize. Two million people were killed as a result of their acts. The March 1918 genocide was the highest peak of these crimes. More than 12,000 civilians have been killed only in Baku during three days of March. The hostility policy towards our people continued during the Soviet period. One of the main reasons we have been subjected to genocides throughout the history is that we have not been able to act as an organized force before the enemy," Asadov said.

The speaker further noted that the Azerbaijani state is getting stronger and stronger day by day.

"All these are the best guarantees that no new genocide will be committed against our people. I am sure that Azerbaijan will liberate the occupied territories. A decent response will be given to those, who pursue hostility towards our people. President Ilham Aliyev has repeatedly said that Zangezur, Irevan and other territories are the ancient lands of Azerbaijan. The modern Armenia was created on the territory of Western Azerbaijan. This is a historical fact. I am sure that the history will give everyone the value they deserve. And sooner or later the justice will win," he concluded.

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By Trend

Kazakhstan Foreign Minister Kairat Abdrakhmanov welcomed politico-economic cooperation between Tehran and Astana, Irna reported.

Abdrakhmanov made the remarks in a Thursday's meeting with Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Political Affairs Abbas Araqchi held on the sidelines of Afghanistan's peace conference in Uzbekistan.

Both countries have good economic projects on the agenda, he said.

He also referred to regional and international cooperation between Iran and Kazakhstan as regard maintaining peace and security in Syria.

The Kazakh foreign minister appreciated Irans presence in Astana talks, adding it added to the Syria peace talks.

Elsewhere in his remarks, Abdrakhmanov supported Iran nuclear deal also known as Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and emphasized the importance of complying with the accord by all sides.

Araqchi, for his part, praised Kazakhstans stance regarding JCPOA and its cooperation to establish peace and stability in the region.

He called for bilateral cooperation with Kazakhstan in regional and international issues.

The Afghanistan's peace conference opened on Monday, and foreign ministers or their deputies from 23 countries, as well as representatives of the United Nations, US, European Union, India and Pakistan attended the conference, according to Shah Hussain Mortazavi, a spokesperson for the Afghan president.

The previous peace conference for Afghanistan was held in February 2017 in Kabul, attended by representatives of more than 20 countries and international organizations.

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By Trend

American diplomats declared personae non gratae have to leave Russia by April 5, the step Moscow made in response to the greatest ever expulsion of Russian diplomats from the US over Skripal's poisoning, groundlessly blamed on Russia, Sputnik reports.

On Reciprocal Diplomats' Expulsion

Moscow will expel the same number of American diplomats as Washington and will shut down the US General Consulate in Saint Petersburg, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced.

"The measures would be reciprocal They include expulsion of the equivalent number of diplomats and they include our decision to withdraw our agreement to allow the United States' general consulate to operate in St. Petersburg," Lavrov told a briefing.

The minster specified that 58 diplomatic employers will be removed from the US embassy in Moscow and two staff will have to leave the General Consulate in Ekaterinburg by April 5. As for St. Petersburg's consulate, Americans have to vacate the premises in two days.

The top diplomat went on saying that Russia will not only provide a mirror response to West's steps in the wake of Skripal's poisoning, which was blamed on Moscow, but even "more than that." As he explained, Russia's counter-measures will affect all countries that made a decision to expel diplomats.

The minister noted that Russia will convene an emergency meeting of the Organisation for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in a bid to start a dialogue and establish the truth.

On Threats to Seize Russian Assets in US

US Ambassador Jon Huntsman has been summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry to hear a report on a batch of counter-measures Russia is going to take. Leaving the ministry, the envoy refused to answer any reporters' questions.

Moscow demanded clarifications of Huntsman's earlier remarks about a possible seizure of Russian state assets in the US. According to Lavrov, in case Washington continues its hostile actions towards the Russian diplomatic mission, additional measures from the Russian side will follow.

Earlier the US ambassador admitted that the seizure of Russian assets was possible.

"I dont know what the future holds, I hope that we will be able to stabilize the relationship But of course its possible," Huntsman told the RBC broadcaster.

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By Kamila Aliyeva

As many as 2.4 trillion tenge ($7.5 billion) were granted to citizens in the form of unsecured consumer loans in Kazakhstan.

This was stated in the response of Kazakh Prime Minister Bakytzhan Sagintayev to the request of the MPs of the Majilis of the Parliament, Central Asian media outlets reported.

Currently, there is a significant growth in the issuance of unsecured consumer loans in the retail lending market, according to the official.

Thus, the increase in the issuance of unsecured consumer loans for 2017 amounted to 909.7 billion tenge ($2.83 billion) from 1.5 trillion tenge ($ 4.66 billion) in 2016 to 2.4 trillion tenge in 2017, Sagintayev said.

Volume of corporate loans in comparison with 2016 decreased by 55 billion tenge ($ 170.81 million) from 7.61 trillion tenge ($ 2.36 billion) in 2016 to 7.56 trillion tenge ($ 2.34 billion) in 2017, according to the prime minister.

The head of government went on to say that consumer loans, especially unsecured loans, as compared to corporate loans, are characterized by high turnover.

At the same time, the share of issuing unsecured loans from the total volume of loans to individuals over a long period is stable and amounts to about 70 percent. The share of unsecured loans in the loan portfolio of banks also remains at the level of 13-15 percent. In addition, the share of loans with arrears in the portfolio of unsecured consumer loans is decreasing and at the end of 2017 was 6 percent, the document said.

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Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva

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By Kamila Aliyeva

As a result of prospecting and evaluation works new ore objects were discovered in Kazakhstan.

Chairman of the Committee of Geology and Subsoil Use of the Ministry for Investment and Development Akbatyr Nadyrbaev and Chairman of the Board of Kazgeology JSC Galym Nurzhanov told about the work carried out in 2017 on geological study of mineral resources during a briefing at the ministry.

The forecasted gold resources may amount to 1,500 tons, copper - 28.2 million tons, and polymetals - 22.6 million tons.

As a result of the geological study of the methane content of the Karaganda coal basin, it is recommended to carry out prospecting works on seven promising areas for methane of coal seams. Estimated methane resources have been calculated in the amount of 14 billion cubic meters.

Given the current trends in the world market and the increasing demand for rare and rare-earth metals, especially lithium, special attention is paid to the exploration of this raw material.

In 2015-2017 years, at the expense of the republican budget, prospecting and appraisal work was carried out on rare metals on the Akhmirovsky site in the East Kazakhstan region.

Based on the results of the work, the resources of tin and lithium were estimated. According to technical and economic considerations, Novo-Akhmirovsky ore occurrence is the most promising.

Nurzhanov informed that in 2018 the geography of geological exploration carried out by Kazgeology expanded, exploration work began on the sites in Kostanay, North Kazakhstan, East Kazakhstan, Aktyubinsk and Atyrau regions.

This year, the company completes all field work and a report will be compiled with the definition of the forecast resources and recommendations on the areas of geological exploration for 16 major rare-earth ore provinces in Kazakhstan.

This year, Kazgeology plans to carry out geological exploration works on 14 objects, according to the state task, for a total of 1.1 billion tenge. Also, geological exploration will continue at 4 sites.

Kazgeology is engaged in the exploration of solid minerals, uranium, hydrocarbon crude, and underground water. The company was founded in 2011 and is based in Astana, Kazakhstan.

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Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva

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In addition, coal mining and production account for a significant number of jobs in Chinamaking the shutdown of such operations politically unpalatable. Finally, absent significant government intervention, gas will not be a viable substitute for coal in China. We estimate that Chinese domestic gas prices would need to hit $4.2 to $5.3 per million British thermal units (mmbtu) for natural gas to displace coal. Such prices would be possible only if China could tap into natural gas reserves at cost levels nearly as low as those in the USa possibility that is not realistic in the near term.

In this environment, the steep cost of eliminating coal in China makes such a move difficult. The best option is to replace coal with a mix of renewables and gas. But such a mix is still more expensive than coal. As a result, we estimate the full net-present-value cost of substituting coal-fired power with renewables and gas in China to be $1.3 trillionor 0.55% of Chinas cumulative GDP through 2030including about $750 billion in stranded assets.

Growing Coal Demand in Developing Countries. Amid energy-intensive economic growth, coal remains a primary power source in most developing markets. Even after multiple project cancellations in countries such as India, roughly 100 gigawatts in coal-fired generation capacity is under construction. The bulk of the capacity is being constructed in India, Indonesia, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and South Africa. And even more is on the drawing board.

The growing appetite for coal is unlikely to diminish any time soon. For one thing, natural gas cannot displace coal in these markets. Thats because these countries lack their own major cheap and accessible gas reserves and therefore would need to import liquefied natural gas (LNG). But the costs associated with LNG, including liquefaction, transport, and the construction of infrastructure to move gas inland, make it noncompetitive with coal in most cases. In fact, assuming there is no global scheme for putting a price on CO2 emissions, US gas prices would need to fall below $2 per mmbtu for LNG to be a viable option in most of these countries. That price level is about 25% below the average US Henry Hub spot price over the past five years.

In addition, while renewable energy sources are growing quickly in these markets, the increasing demand for power swamps that additional capacity. India, for example, has taken decisive steps to support renewable energy development, including eliminating both import duties on critical solar parts and interstate transmission charges on the export of solar power. The governments goal: to reach 175 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity by 2022, up from 60 gigawatts currently. But that will represent just one-third of the countrys total power generation capacityand coal is still projected to account for more than 50% of that capacity.

Renewable energy sources are growing quickly in developing countries, but the increasing demand for power swamps the additional capacity.

In this environment, the costs of shifting rapidly away from coal are steep. BCG estimates that substituting coal-fired power generation with higher-cost renewables in developing countries, including balancing intermittent renewable power generation with gas, would have a net-present-value cost of more than $700 billion. This amounts to nearly 0.25% of the cumulative GDP for these countries through 2030although some countries bear a higher share of these costs than others. This estimate includes roughly $350 billion in stranded assets, many of which would be relatively young coal-fired power plants, but does not include the sizable economic hit to these countries from closing coal mines.

Even if such high costs could be addressed with a global emissions reduction plan, countries would confront major execution challenges in shifting away from coal. These would include rapidly building new low-carbon power generation and storage capacity and upgrading the power grid.

Adjusting to the New Realities

For decades, utilities and other energy-related businesses have been accustomed to predictable, steady demand growth, a stable technology landscape, and a relatively slow pace of regulatory change. But this stable environment is morphing into something more dynamic and less predictable. (See Preparing for an Uncertain Energy Future.)

Preparing for an Uncertain Energy Future Participants across the energy industry are struggling to find their footing in a rapidly evolving landscape. The pace of change, and the disruption it brings, is set to accelerate before we reach a new equilibrium. And no one knows precisely what that will look like. For decades, the industry had familiar contours: energy sources and markets operated in virtual silos, investment horizons were long, and technological development was steady but not disruptive. The uninterrupted growth of global demand for all sourceswhether coal, oil, or natural gaswas taken as a given. Now, all that is in flux. Rapid structural changes in energy marketsat times initiated by regulation but fundamentally driven by technological innovationhave intensified competition among both traditional and renewable sources. Disruptions that were unimaginable not long agosuch as the emergence of environmentally friendly electric vehicles and the substantial use of wind and solar energy in power generationare now realities. The myriad potential combinations of these disruptive factors and others would lead to very different outcomes for energy companies, regardless of sector, and for countries. But whatever the outcome, industry players will need to adapt. Companies must minimize the risk of stranded assets, manage complex resource exposures, and stay on the right side of upcoming regulations. Governments must ensure that the transition to cleaner energy is not overly costly for citizens and industry, and promote long-term technologies without generating windfall profits for a few. Industry players and governments also face a higher-order challenge: given an uncertain world, they must develop the capability to examine the assumptions behind differing scenarios and projections, assess the impact of various disruptions, individually and in combination, and prepare for the range of possible outcomes in the energy market. Companies and national authorities need to navigate strategic energy decisions and engage in a dialogue with stakeholders about solutions. In this way, they can successfully navigate the changes in the energy landscape while also addressing environmental challenges.

This new reality is particularly challenging for companies linked to the coal sector. It has major implications for companies that consume large amounts of energy, mining companies, coal-fired power generators, and investors.

Industrial Coal Users. The risk posed by new, strict coal regulations is very real for companies that rely on coal-fired power. Tougher regulations will increase the cost of coal use. Meanwhile, the potential upside from declining coal demandlower coal pricesis limited given the fuels flat cost curve. Thats one reason industrial coal users need to regularly evaluate the option to switch to gas or renewables.

Mining Companies. Mining operators have long-cycle investments, often putting sizable amounts of capital to work over many years to gain access to resources and develop production and export infrastructure. Faced with a less certain demand outlook, coal-mining companies will need to find ways to reduce the risk of stranded assets. This will require a review of their investment plans with a more conservative approach to new developments. This approach should include a focus on projects that will yield lower-cost and higher-quality (lower ash content) resources, are located close to or within existing operational sites, or have existing export agreements. At the same time, these operators should take a hard look at options for diversifying away from coal.

Vertically Integrated Utilities with Coal-Fired Power Plants. While mining companies can ship their product to regions where coal is still in demand, coal-fired plant operators do not have that luxury. In addition, profitability for coal-fired plants will continue to decline as increasingly competitive renewables drive overall market power prices lower and mounting regulatory constraints push coal-fired generation costs higher.

As a result, vertically integrated utilities with coal-fired plants have a decision to make. They must either improve the efficiency of their operations or sell their coal assets while a market remains for them. For those that retain coal assets, the risk of stranded assets is high. As a result, they should explore putting those coal assets into a separate entity.

For vertically integrated utilities that retain coal-fired plants, the risk of stranded assets is high.

Walling off the coal business in a separate unit will make it easier to pursue a strategy that is appropriate for those assets. That strategy has three primary components. First and foremost, companies must relentlessly reduce costs and improve flexibilitythe ability to rapidly ramp energy production up and down. Second, coal-fired plant owners must find ways to limit their downside, such as by charging customers for energy capacity rather than actual consumption. Third, operators must make careful decisions about maintenance and investments, including limiting investments in new assets to those with a short payback period. In addition, investment decisions should always take into account a market price for CO2, even in regions where carbon is not yet taxed.

Investors. Focused investors, including infrastructure funds and private equity firms, can find significant opportunities in distressed coal assets. To make this investment play work, however, they need to carefully manage the risks and focus on cost efficiency, flexibility, and maintenance and investment optimization, as described above.

Despite the fact that a global exit from coal is unlikely, the risk of a major negative regulatory event in any one market is real. As a result, investors should build a diversified portfolio of assets. In fact, the declining profitability of coal plants is already driving consolidation. Larger and more focused players in coal-fired and other conventional power plants can realize significant economies of scale, including through better pricing in procurement and the ability to spread overhead costs over a larger base. And as they acquire more assets, these consolidators can invest in plants with the best potential and shut down those with weaker prospects.

At the end of the day, investors need to be ready to make decisions swiftly. Market conditions and regulations are likely to change rapidly. It will be critical to assess those changes quickly and be agile in responding.



The evidence is clear that coal is likely to remain a significant component of the global power sector for the foreseeable future. Certainly, weak global economic growth or new renewable breakthroughs could limit coal demand growth. And a global regulatory backlash is always possible. However, global action to curtail or eliminate coal use would need to include a mechanism for compensating emerging economies, which simply cannot afford such action on their own. Such a development, while feasible, is not likely in the near term.

Still, even if coal demand holds steady, risksparticularly those related to stranded assetsare rising for participants in the market. While coals 200-year run is far from over, the rules are changing.

The BCG Henderson Institute is Boston Consulting Groups strategy think tank, dedicated to exploring and developing valuable new insights from business, technology, and science by embracing the powerful technology of ideas. The Institute engages leaders in provocative discussion and experimentation to expand the boundaries of business theory and practice and to translate innovative ideas from within and beyond business. For more ideas and inspiration from the Institute, please visit Featured Insights.
Southeast Texas will ask the federal government for millions of dollars to help it disaster-proof against the next major storm, including raising homes and public buildings, improving roads and building warehouses for emergency supplies.

Orange and Jefferson County's Commissioners Courts each met last week to discuss what they'll ask to fund using Hazard Mitigation Grants from FEMA, listing ways they hope to reduce damage and improve their response to future crises.

The limited-use "Section 404" money, which will be funneled from FEMA through the Texas Department of Emergency Management, can foot the bill for projects that cut down recovery costs after the next storm.

The list brought to Orange County Commissioners last week included building boat ramps to improve access to some parts of the county in a flood, moving some low-lying buildings and offices to higher ground and adding storage space at the Orange County Airport, where they received

and kept supplies during Tropical Storm Harvey.

The money can't be used to repair damages from Harvey, Jefferson County Judge Jeff Branick said.

FEMA will pay 75 percent of the cost for the approved projects, leaving the county or city to cover the rest. The remaining quarter could be left to homeowners whose houses are raised our bought out.

Local governments are preparing notices of intent outlining their requests, which need to be sent to the state before formal applications. The money is still likely at least a year away.

Orange County officials said the "silver lining" of disaster recovery is that the funds could make it possible to take on larger projects than the county normally can handle, such as fixing drainage problems throughout a neighborhood instead of taking a patchwork approach to one issue at a time.

Branick said Jefferson County will hold public meetings to measure interest in raising homes, which could be one use for the money. Other projects will likely focus more on public infrastructure, like the Sub-Courthouse in Port Arthur.

Elevations are also on the table in Orange County. There are 77 houses on a list that flooded more than once before Harvey that could be raised, and more than 300 homes in the 100-year floodplain.

Orange County is proposing establishing "disaster recovery warehouses," to eliminate using churches or other private locations, which officials said slowed their response to Tropical Storm Harvey.

Big-ticket items could include a "master plan" for improving drainage and studies for a levy system, which would involve county and city officials and drainage districts.

Southeast Texas will be competing with cities and counties across Texas for the money, including those that weren't declared disaster areas, though Harvey-hit counties will be a higher priority.

Houston and Harris County officials have also recently discussed possible projects that could be funded by the same money, including a massive tunnel system to improve drainage, the creation of new detention basins and the addition of floodgates, the Houston Chronicle reported.

Jefferson and Orange County officials are expected to discuss their requests again at meetings next week.

LTeitz@BeaumontEnterprise.comTwitter.com/LizTeitz
Newton County Judge Paul Price has declared a disaster in the county and issued a voluntary evacuation order for low-lying areas near the Sabine River.

The order covers low-lying areas in zip codes 75966, 75932, 75933, 75928 and 77614.

Price said Friday afternoon that more flooding is possible this weekend as the Sabine River continues to rise.

All 11 spillway gates at Toledo Bend are open four feet each to lower the reservoir level, the Sabine River Authority said Thursday night. The dam is releasing water at a rate of 44,000 cubic feet per second, four times as much water as it was on Wednesday.

The National Weather Service is forecasting some flooding along Southeast Texas rivers through Tuesday after heavy rain this week.

Gore Store Road in Hardin County is closed from FM 92 to U.S. 69, and FM 363 in Newton County is closed from Texas 87 to U.S. 190 due to water over the road.

As of 12:20 p.m. Friday, FM 418 is closed at Village Creek in between Silsbee and Kountze.

Hardin County roads closed Friday afternoon include FM 787 from FM 1293 to FM 770, and FM 478 from FM 1122 to US 69.

The Toledo Bend reservoir was at 173.28 feet at 5 p.m. Friday, according to the NWS. Spillway gates are opened when Toledo Bend reaches 172.5 feet.

The Sabine River was about five feet above flood stage at Bon Wier at 8 a.m. Friday, and is forecast to rise another foot by Sunday morning, reaching "major flood stage."

Flooding is expected to be moderate near Deweyville, where the river was about 1 foot above flood stage Friday morning. It is expected to rise another two feet by Monday night.

The Sabine is not yet at flood stage near Burkeville or Orange.

The Neches River is expected to rise about 3 feet through Tuesday night, the NWS predicted, reaching minor flood stage near Evadale and moderate flood stage near Beaumont. Flooding is not expected on Pine Island Bayou near Sour Lake.
A federal jury convicted a Houston physician and pain management clinic owner of running a "pill mill" scheme involving millions of doses of opioids and other controlled substances.

Here are six things to know.

1. Shane Faithful, owner of the Houston-based Gulfton Community Health Center, and physician Gazelle Craig, DO, were found guilty of operating an illegal pill mill out of the pain management clinic from March 2015 through July 2017.

2. Dr. Craig wrote approximately 18,252 prescriptions for more than 2.1 million doses of hydrocodone and approximately 15,649 prescriptions for more than 1.3 million doses of carisoprodol.

3. Hydrocodone is a Schedule 2 controlled substance, and carisoprodol is a Schedule 4 controlled substance. The combination of the two drugs is dangerous and has no proven medical benefit, according to trial evidence.

4. Dr. Craig illegally prescribed controlled substances for up to 60 patients a day. Mr. Faithful and Dr. Craig charged patients about $300 in cash for each prescription, often bringing in proceeds upwards of $15K each day. They divided the proceeds.

5. Mr. Faithful and Dr. Craig attempted to prevent investigations by banning bags and the use of electronic devices in the clinic. Four armed security guards patrolled Gulfton to control crowds, which included addicts and "crew leaders" who brought patients to Gulfton for the unlawful prescriptions.

6. "The consequences have been devastating. In this case, tens of thousands of pills flooded our streets because of the defendants' actions. We will never know for certain the scale of the damage done," said Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who announced the conviction.
CMS reversed its decision on Philadelphia-based Wills Eye Institute, agreeing to reclassify the facility as a hospital, the Philadelphia Business Journal reports.

Here's what you should know.

1. Wills Eye has been embroiled in several legal battles since 2006, when CMS reclassified the center as an ASC after it sold its inpatient business..

2. After a lengthy hearing and appeals process, CMS changed the designation on the grounds of new federal guidelines issued in 2017. The guidelines supersede previous requirements that forced hospitals to meet a certain inpatient-to-outpatient ratio.

3. Because Wills Eye sold its inpatient beds in 2006, it could not meet that ratio and thus, CMS designated it as an ASC.

4. As a result of the new hospital designation, Wills Eye Institute will be able to perform more complex procedures and receive a higher reimbursement rate.

5. In a statement, the facility said, "We are pleased to learn of the CMS decision. We very much appreciate the tireless efforts of our senators and the Pennsylvania congressional delegation to advocate for the patients of Wills Eye Hospital. We are grateful to CMS to have the opportunity to move forward, and we remain committed to providing the highest-level hospital care to our patients."
Oxford-based Gastroenterology Associates of North Mississippi opened a new clinic in New Albany, Miss., the Daily Journal reports.

Here's what you should know.

1. The practice joined the Multi-Specialty Clinic at Baptist Memorial Hospital  Union County (Miss.) in early March.

2. Ernest Williams, MD, David Bridgers, MD, and John Webb, MD, as well as nurse practitioner Carah Walker will see patients two times a month at the clinic.

3. In addition to its new office, Gastroenterology Associates of North Mississippi has an extension office in Grenada, Miss.
A jury awarded $20 million to the family of a patient who died hours after being discharged from Laser Spine Institute, The Legal Intelligencer reports.

Here are eight insights.

1. Anesthesiologist Glenn Rubenstein, MD, treated Sharon Kimble at the Tampa, Fla.-based Laser Spine Institute's Philadelphia center in January 2014.

2. The surgery center allegedly discharged Ms. Kimble while she still had a significant amount of Dilaudid in her system and instructed her to take additional pain medication.

3. The plaintiff's pretrial memo said medical staff discharged Ms. Kimble two hours after the procedure.

4. Ms. Kimble, who was 50 years old at the time, underwent the procedure for chronic back pain that she'd been treating with narcotic pain medication for seven years.

5. Ms. Kimble received a dosage of Dilaudid that was six times higher than the amount originally ordered. Dr. Rubenstein said the dosage was necessary due to the patient's high tolerance to pain medication. Ms. Kimble later died while recovering from the procedure in a nearby hotel.

6. Laser Spine Institute's defense argued that Ms. Kimble's husband was partially at fault for failing to pay close attention to his wife after surgery.

7. Anesthesiology expert James Noone, MD, testified that Ms. Kimble's husband failed to follow the discharge instructions he had signed. Dr. Noone said if Mr. Kimble had properly monitored his wife, he would have noticed her gradually increasing drowsiness, diminishing breathing rate and decreasing responsiveness.

The death likely could have prevented if Mr. Kimble had recognized these signs  and ensured Ms. Kimble was lying on her back, as opposed to the face-down position in which she was discovered  and called emergency services, according to Dr. Noone.

8. The jury found Laser Spine Institute 65 percent liable and Dr. Rubenstein 35 percent liable after less than 90 minutes of deliberation.
President Donald Trump attacked Amazon in a tweet March 29, a day after an Axios report said he wants to "go after" the company for alleged antitrust violations, according to CNBC.

Here are four things to know.

1. Amazon's stock dipped following the Axios report on March 28. Amazon shares began to recover and were up as much as 1.6 percent in premarket March 29 before the president's tweet.

2. "I have stated my concerns with Amazon long before the election," Trump wrote on Twitter. "Unlike others, they pay little or no taxes to state & local governments, use our postal system as their delivery boy (causing tremendous loss to the U.S.), and are putting many thousands of retailers out of business!"

3. Amazon shares fell 2.6 percent after the market opened March 29, according to CNBC.

4. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters March 28 there were "no announcements and no specific policies or actions that we're currently pushing forward" regarding Amazon, according to the report.

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U.S. cities and states are falling victim to ransomware and other attacks, which typically target businesses and other organizations, Fox News reports.

Here are three U.S. cities recently affected by cyberattacks.

1. Atlanta. A cyberattack on the city of Atlanta's computer network March 22 encrypted city data  including shutting down its online bill-pay system  that attackers are demanding $51,000 ransom to unlock. The hacking group is believed to have used SamSam, a ransomware variant that generally targets entities with weak security. It took Atlanta officials more than six days to recover only parts of its network, and an investigation is ongoing.

2. Baltimore. Hackers broke into Baltimore's computer-assisted dispatch system, which supports the city's 911 and other emergency calls, March 25. The cyberattack lead to a 17-hour shutdown of the emergency dispatching system, in which officials reverted to manual processes.

3. Denver. Key websites  including denvergov.org and pocketgov.org  stopped working March 28 in what city officials believe to be a software bug. Denver lost access to numerous government computers and phone systems, as well as the text-to-911 system. Similarly, over the last month, the Colorado Department of Transportation was targeted with SamSam ransomware twice.

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The Advisory Board of New Lenox, Ill.-based Silver Cross Hospital donated $48,985 to the facility, according to The Herald-News.

The donation is the last piece of the group's three-year $105,000 pledge. The $105,000 will go toward buying various items and equipment, according to the report, which cites a hospital news release. Money will also go toward an instrument tray that will be used for robotic-assisted surgery.

According to the report, funds were raised via a resale shop, called the Encore Shop, which is operated by the Advisory Board.

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Flu-related hospital visits have proved financially beneficial for Charleston (W. Va.) Area Medical Center Health System, according to a MetroNews report.

Healthcare organizations across the nation have seen an influx of patients during this particularly busy flu season, and CAMC is no exception.

CAMC CFO Jeff Sandene said the hospital's revenue rose over the last few months due to the increased number of flu-related visits.

"I think we're out of the flu. It dissipated over the last several months, but we're definitely very busy with the flu, unfortunately," Mr. Sandene said, according to the report.

CAMC's busy flu season comes as the system works to improve its finances. As part of these efforts, the system revealed last July plans to eliminate approximately 300 jobs.

Mr. Sandene cited other efforts in the report as well, such as hiring about 40 more physicians.

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The Department of Veterans Affairs' EHR contract with Cerner could be in jeopardy now that the agency's Secretary David Shulkin, MD, has been fired from his post, according to Nextgov.

The VA has been in the process of drafting an EHR overhaul contract with Cerner since Dr. Shulkin announced his intention to replace the agency's legacy system, VistA, with the North Kansas City, Mo.-based vendor in June 2017. No contract has been finalized yet  primarily due to concerns over the interoperability of the VA's EHR with the Department of Defense's  but it's estimated to cost nearly $16 billion.

Roughly $782 million has already been allocated to the effort for the coming fiscal year. However, with Dr. Shulkin out, some analysts are speculating the VA's deal with Cerner may be up in the air.

"This disruption in leadership at the VA puts in doubt the timing (and potentially the certainty) of [Cerner] signing a long-awaited $10+ billion deal to modernize the VA infrastructure for medical records," Wells Fargo analysts said in a note published March 29 and obtained by Politico Morning eHealth newsletter.

Cerner deferred Becker's Hospital Review's request for comments to the VA, which said it does not typically comment on ongoing contract negotiations.

President Donald Trump nominated White House physician Rear Adm. Ronny L. Jackson, MD, to take over for Dr. Shulkin, but many have raised questions over his lack of experience leading a large organization. Until Dr. Jackson is confirmed, DOD Undersecretary for Personnel and Readiness Robert Wilkie will serve as acting VA secretary.

Wells Fargo analysts believe the VA is unlikely to sign the contract until the agency's leadership gaps are filled, but they don't think the VA will select a different vendor. Instead, they believe it may just take more time to reach an agreement.

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Jessica Long, CEO of CHI Memorial Hospital Georgia in Fort Oglethorpe, is resigning, effective April 6.

Here are four things to know:

1. Ms. Long is leaving to take on the CEO and general counsel roles at Raleigh, N.C.-based Well Care Health.

2. She served as CEO of CHI Memorial Hospital Georgia for three years.

3. During her tenure, the hospital developed a new brand, mission, vision and values as well as implemented an EHR.

4. Angie Hullander will step in to serve as administrator and special operations leader at CHI Memorial Hospital Georgia.
More than 45 members attended an Audubon County Memorial Hospital board meeting March 27 to voice their dissent or support of the Audubon, Iowa-based hospital's decision to fire one of its physicians in January, according to the Atlantic News Telegraph.

The hospital fired Christopher Stubbs, MD, Jan. 23, for failing to be credentialed with Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield, and for a lack of productivity and absences from work, according to the report.

WBCBS reportedly denied Dr. Stubbs' membership with the insurer in 2016, citing his failure to complete his residency training, according to the report. Last November, the Iowa Board of Medicine announced charges and a settlement against Dr. Stubbs, claiming he had engaged in unethical or unprofessional behavior by failing to disclose information about his medical training. The board issued him a warning and a $5,000 civil penalty, and suspended his medical license for 10 days.

Dr. Stubbs is, and will remain, on probation with the medical board for three years.

Hospital Board President Paul Schultz said during the March 27 meeting the board stands by its decision to fire Dr. Stubbs.

"Each and every decision we make is based on what is best for our patients and our community," he said.

To access the full report, click here.
New York Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo called on the New York State Department of Labor to investigate complaints of threatening and coercive behavior at Albany (N.Y.) Medical Center, according to the timesunion.

Here are six things to know about the situation.

1. Approximately 2,100 nurses will vote in an election April 12 and 13 on whether to join the New York State Nurses Association, which represents an estimated 40,000 nurses statewide.

2. Efforts to unionize began more than one year ago. However, several nurses have filed complaints with the state labor department, claiming hospital administrators have engaged in escalating "coercive and intimidating" behavior to dissuade the nurses from unionizing, the report states.

3. According to the complaints, hospital officials' behavior included threatening Filipina nurses on work visas by telling them unionizing may affect their immigration status, writing up nurses who discussed the union on nonwork time, tearing down informational flyers posted in the hospital and holding one-on-one "captive audience" meetings to discourage nurses from unionizing, among other behaviors, the report states.

4. Mr. Cuomo issued a statement on the issue March 29, stating, "I am deeply disturbed by recent allegations of threatening and coercive behavior against nurses at Albany Medical Center. New York state is a union state and we believe in the fundamental right to organize.  I stand shoulder to shoulder with our union brothers and sisters and those seeking to organize, especially the men and women who serve our sick and elderly at hospitals across the state. The right to organize is paramount, and New York state will not stand for any attempts to intimidate, illegally prevent or dissuade workers from unionizing."

5. A hospital spokesperson issued a statement to the timesunion stating the institution respects its nurses, and is closely following laws and regulations to ensure nurses have the right to make a "free and informed choice" regarding attempts to unionize.

"Unfortunately, we have received numerous reports of our nurses who intend to vote no being subjected to intimidation and bullying by union supporters," the statement said. "This is a situation we cannot tolerate. We join with the governor in calling for an end to anything other than honest and respectful dialogue."

6. Albany Medical Center nurses attempted to unionize at least three times between 2001 and 2003, with each attempt failing by a narrow margin, according to the report.

To access the full report, click here.
The National Labor Relations Board has scheduled a hearing with respect to a union's allegations that Rochester, Minn.-based Mayo Clinic violated federal labor law when it banned workers from returning to work following a one-day strike in Albert Lea, according to a notice from the NLRB.

At issue is a work stoppage that occurred after 79 Service Employees International Union Healthcare Minnesota members, including certified nursing assistants, housekeepers, sterile processing technicians and utilities and materials workers, went on strike Dec. 19 at Mayo's Albert Lea Campus. The day after the strike, union members unsuccessfully tried to return to work.

Mayo previously said it repeatedly told SEIU leaders and members it would bring in replacement workers if a strike took place. Since a seven-day employment commitment is required for those replacement workers, the striking Mayo employees were told they could not return to their jobs until Dec. 26.

SEIU filed a complaint against Mayo alleging the work stoppage violated federal labor law, and that Mayo refused to provide information, and refused to negotiate in good faith on issues related to health and safety, according to a Star Tribune report.

Mayo told Becker's Hospital Review via email the NLRB hearing does not mean the labor board will make any judgment about the system's handling of the strike. Rather, both sides will present their case in front of an administrative law judge.

The NLRB is slated to hear both sides of the case July 30 in Minneapolis.

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Renton, Wash.-based Providence Health & Services and Seattle-based Swedish Health Services will pay $1.4 million to resolve a complaint alleging the health systems used an out-of-network laboratory for pathology testing, which increased costs for patients, according to a Seattle Times report.

Here are seven things to know.

1. The Washington Attorney General's Office filed the complaint in King County Superior Court, alleging the health systems violated the state's consumer protection laws.

2. Both health systems allegedly used laboratory CellNetix  which is not in network for many patients  for pathology testing for more than a year, according to the report. They are accused of not notifying patients of the company's out-of-network status.

3. More specifically, the AG's office alleges Mountlake Terrace, Wash.-based insurer Premera Blue Cross notified Providence and Swedish about CellNetix's out-of-network status in 2015, according to the report. However, the systems allegedly failed to let patients know for more than a year.

4. The AG, in the complaint cited by the Seattle Times, said Providence and Swedish officials received internal warnings as well as notification of the issue from Premera. Additionally, other warnings reportedly occurred, including one from a hospital employee.

5. Still, the healthcare providers continued to contract with CellNetix, and patients were charged out of network, according to the report.

6. While Providence and Swedish have agreed to pay $1.4 million, the systems did not admit liability as part of the consent decree resolving the complaint. The settlement includes $385,101 in restitution for as many as 6,400 affected patients.

7. Providence and Swedish provided the following statement to the Seattle Times. "We know that this experience frustrated our patients who received these unexpected bills and we have taken steps to prevent this issue from arising again."

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The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, the umbrella company of 36 BCBS plans nationwide, adopted a directive stating opioids should not be used as the first or second option to treat pain.

The standard aligns with CDC guidelines and garnered unanimous support among BCBS' National Council of Physician and Pharmacist Executives at its March meeting.



"Due to the lack of evidence combined with significant potential for harm, we believe professional standards require that BCBS members are given alternative options to opioids in most clinical situations," said Trent Haywood, MD, CMO for BCBSA. "We will work with medical professionals to ensure BCBS members are routinely provided alternatives to opioids through a mutual decision made inside the doctor's office."



BCBS' new standard comes after the insurer found 21 percent of its commercially insured members filled at least one opioid prescription in 2015. The report also found members suffering from opioid use disorder soared 493 percent during the seven-year study period.



BCBS will encourage physicians treating its 106 million members to first prescribe nonopioid prescription painkillers and over-the-counter pain medications before turning to opioids.
Five spine surgeons discuss the biggest technology trends on the horizon for 2018.

D. Greg Anderson. Rothman Institute (Philadelphia): "There is a continued trend toward cost containment and complication prevention in the field. Technologies that support this are slated to win out over traditional techniques. Therefore, minimally invasive approaches, pre-packaged sterile products and disease-based procedural solutions are expected to gain ground in 2018."

William Tally, MD. Athens (Ga.) Orthopedic Clinic: "I think two things are going to continue to happen. I think true minimally invasive surgeries, not marketed MIS surgery but actually less invasive approaches, will continue to grow. I think ASC-based surgery will continue to grow as well, and I think this year we are seeing the beginning of the commercially viable spine robots being used. It will still need a few years before robotics is ready for prime time, but I do think it will become more common for surgeons to perform their minimally invasive procedures successfully and comfortably."

Jocelyn Idema, DO. Advanced Orthopaedics & Rehabilitation (Pittsburgh and Washington, Pa.): "Navigation seems to be the newest trend. [It's] costly for community hospitals and ASCs, easier to afford in teaching hospitals, but both robotic and computerized navigation seems to ensure less malpositioned hardware, although this number is fairly small with the utilization of fluoroscopy and neuromonitoring; its cost/benefit ratio may be upside down."

Kern Singh, MD. Minimally Invasive Spine Institute at Rush (Chicago): "3-D titanium printing with customizable implants that are particularly important for tumor surgery in the pelvis."

Christian Zimmerman, MD. Saint Alphonsus Medical Group (Boise, Idaho): "Anterior cervical plate systems with "stand-alone" graft technology seem to follow the bundling schedules for cervical surgery reimbursements. The interchangeable plug (Sea-Spine) allows for certain variance in size of plug placement to the plating system and the different arrays of screw insertion offer significant options dependent on vertebral body surface area."
Here are seven spine and neurosurgeons making headlines.

Virginia Beach, Va.-based neurosurgeon Parker Babington, MD, successfully performed the first implantation of Spinal Resource's Swedge Pedicle Screw System.

John Stevenson, MD, of North Florida Regional Medical Center in Gainesville, reported the highest discharge volume for all Florida-based spine surgeons between 2013 and 2016.

Orthopedic spine surgeon Joshua Li, MD, PhD, is developing patches to treat back pain without the potential for opioid addiction.

Neurosurgeons James Arthur, MD, and Justin Dowdy, MD, joined CHI St. Vincent in Hot Springs, Ark.

Dror Paley, MD, expanded Paley Orthopedic & Spine Institute team at St. Mary's Medical Center in West Palm Beach, Fla.

The International Association of HealthCare welcomed Horace Mitchell, MD.

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The company, based on James Street in Belfast, was founded by James Hunter in 2012

A Northern Ireland technology company with nine members of staff has been acquired by a Scottish firm for an undisclosed sum.

JAR Technologies has been sold to Calnex, which is based in Linlithgow.

Technology developed by the Belfast firm is used in mobile, data centre and military/security settings. JAR clients include Thales, Toshbia and Siemens.

The company, based on James Street in Belfast, was founded by James Hunter in 2012.

JAR said its mission is to help businesses and organisations improve online.

"Our testing products enable businesses to get predictable infrastructure and software performance," it added.

Ryan McAnlis, chief executive of JAR Technologies, said: "The Calnex acquisition of JAR Technologies enables the JAR-Emulate product line to reach a much broader range of customers and applications."

It's the second Northern Ireland firm to be sold on this week after Belfast-based Camperco Group was bought by Australian motorhome firm Apollo for 4.5m.

The Camperco group consists of rental brand Bunk Campers, a manufacturing facility converting Volkswagen campervans for rent, and a motorhome sales and an online shop.

A family business, Bunk Campers is headquartered in Belfast and was inspired by a tour of Australia and New Zealand in a campervan by founders Keith Charlton and Louise Corken.
Three men armed with a hammer, a pick axe and an electric saw have robbed a shop in north Belfast.

Shortly after 11pm on Thursday three masked men entered the shop on the Ardoyne Road brandishing weapons.

All of the staff were forced back into the store and one of the suspected attacked the ATM, however he was unable to open it.

The men took a sum of cash from a till and made off in a dark-coloured saloon car.

There were two members of staff and one customer in the store at the time of this incident. They were not injured, however they were all left extremely shaken by their ordeal.

Police have appealed for anyone with information to contact Detectives at Musgrave on 101 1643 29/03/18.
A representative of Belfast Islamic Centre has said that the local Muslim community have been concerned after Punish a Muslim Day posts were circulated online.

The letters have been posted to Muslims across England but it is not thought that they have been mailed to anyone in Northern Ireland.

However a number of local people have expressed concern after seeing the posts online.

In the letters and online posts April 3 is listed as a day to carry out attacks on Muslims ranging from verbal abuse to violence against Muslims and the burning of Mosques.

The posts encourage people to carry out attacks against Muslims as They have hurt you, they have made your loved ones suffer. They have caused you pain and heartache.

Earlier this month the United Kingdoms National Police Chiefs Association said that the letters had led to a counter-terrorism investigation.

A spokesperson for the Belfast Islamic Centre said that many local Muslims had become concerned after seeing the letters go viral on social media.

As many of you are aware despicable Punish a Muslim Day letters have been mailed to Muslims across England by hate filled individuals in an attempt to spread fear and division in society, the spokesperson said.

No letters have been received in Northern Ireland however we understand images of the letters have gone viral and have been shared on social media causing considerable alarm within the community and many of you have been in touch seeking reassurance.

Belfast Islamic Centre staff regularly liaise with police and politicians on issues affecting the Muslim community and particularly in recent months in tackling hate crime and potential safety issues.

The spokesperson said they did not believe there was an increased threat as a result of the letters.

The letters are being investigated by police and they, along with other regional police forces are aware and monitoring the situation, the spokesperson said.

There is currently no indication of any credible increased threat.

Our advice is to go about your everyday business as usual, remain vigilant and alert but not alarmed.

The spokesperson urged anyone concerned they may be at risk to contact the PSNI.

If you feel threatened or unsafe contact the PSNI on 999 in an emergency. In a non-emergency you can also contact police by dialling 101 or use their Minicom number: 028 9090 1246, the spokesperson said.

A PSNI spokesperson said that they carry out a range of work to target hate crimes.

"The Police Service of Northern Ireland continues to make it clear that hate crime, in any form, will not be tolerated," the spokesperson said.

"We work with our partners across the public, private and voluntary sectors to provide reassurance and support to victims and promote tolerance and respect for all cultures and identities.

"You can find out more about what constitutes a hate crime and more importantly how to report it on the PSNI website."
Two radio stations serving the LGBT and Christian communities have been awarded licences to operate in the Belfast area.

BE FM and Juice will be Northern Ireland's first radio stations to serve and focus on Christian and LGBT audiences respectively.

They will join 13 community radio stations already operating in Northern Ireland, which are among more than 250 across the UK.

BE FM is a cross-community and non-denominational Christian radio station for listeners in the greater Belfast area.

Station co-ordinator Neil Curran said: "There's a lot of Christian people in the area and we are going across the denominations and will not be specific to any one denominations.

"It will include everybody. Whether you are Methodist, Presbyterian or Roman Catholic, it will not focus on differences but on the similarities.

"It will have feel-good Christian music and messages.

"We are excited about this as I have been wanting to do this for a couple of years. This is something very new to the radio scene and will include 42 hours of live output per week."

Community radio services are provided on a not-for-profit basis, focusing on the delivery of specific social benefits to a particular area or community of interest.

Juice is a first of its kind radio station for Northern Ireland and will serve the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community in the greater Belfast area on FM. It will be able to be heard outside the city through the station's website JuiceBelfast.com.

The station said it will have a target community of up to 33,000 people.

A spokesman said: "LGBT people come from all walks of life and it is our aim to serve as many of our community as possible through an outgoing and inclusive presentation style, mixed with speech content tailored for our audience, and a unique music mix.

"Juice will play a mixture of dance and gay classics, music to stir the heart and move the hips.

"Our speech content will be specifically tailored for the LGBT community, including LGBT news bulletins and a local magazine style show which will showcase and discuss the aspirations, concerns, successes and issues affecting our target audience.

"The station is currently streaming a sample service online through JuiceBelfast.com and has up to two years to get on-air."

A date has yet to be confirmed as to when the stations will go live on air.
The importance of family is one of the key themes in an Easter message from two of Northern Ireland's church leaders.

In a joint statement, the Church of Ireland Primate, Archbishop Richard Clarke, and the Catholic Primate, Archbishop Eamon Martin, said the need for a family's care and love became greater with each passing day, and stressed that modern families were under threat from a range of pressures.

"Some of these are material, others are societal or spiritual, and sadly there are many people who, for whatever reason, can only dream and wish for the warmth and care of family," their statement read.

They also referred to the World Meeting of Families in Dublin in August, which Pope Francis will attend.

"This summer Christians of different traditions will share the joy of thousands who will gather in Dublin from around the world to celebrate the good news of family as 'Joy for the world'," the statement said. "The accounts of the Easter Church that grew from the resurrection of Jesus remind us that the hospitality and generosity of the human family is a hallmark of Christian belonging."

The Presbyterian Moderator, the Rt Reverend Noble McNeely, said Easter was a time of celebration for Christian believers.

"Easter assures me that we will triumphantly go to be with God, and will rise victoriously with Jesus when He comes again," he added. "Death is real, but grief is transformed, because for us death is not the end; there will always be more to come as we have put our hope in Christ.

"Sadly, many people consider Easter simply as a holiday, and there will be many who will not be considering Christ's death and resurrection.

"There are also many people who attend church at Easter who are neglecting what happens to them when their earthly life comes to an end.

"We need to tell them of the eternal hope that is to be had in Jesus Christ."

Peter Lynas, of the Evangelical Alliance, said people were living in uncertain times.

"There is deep concern about the impact of Brexit on relations across Ireland," he stressed.

"There is uncertainty about the future of Stormont, and politics globally is becoming more fractious.

"The Easter story reminds us that governments come and go. The Romans thought that they had killed off Jesus, unaware that His kingdom would far outlast theirs.

"Today, more people worship Jesus than ever before."
Prominent loyalist Dee Stitt has said that his house was hit by the PSNI "with a vengeance" yesterday as officers from the Paramilitary Crime Task Force carried out raids across Co Down.

Three searches took place under the Misuse of Drugs Act at residential properties in Bangor and at a nearby commercial property in the operation.

A man was cautioned at the scene, while a second man will be interviewed by police at a later date.

Officers seized a number of items including class B drugs, a computer hard drive, mobile phones and Taser.

In a tweet last night, Stitt (47) said: "PSNI task force hit my house today with a vengence - we're here for five hours.

"Got nothing only my families' mobiles and kids iPads. No drugs or guns found here.

"Trial by media continues. I stand to defend my name and family. I can do no other."

A PSNI Detective Inspector described the operation as "directed against the North Down UDA".

"A small amount of class B drugs, a computer hard drive, mobile phones and a Taser stun gun have been recovered," he added.

"An adult male will be interviewed at a later date with another male cautioned at the scene, with a report to the PPS to follow."

The Paramilitary Crime Task Force is a joint group that includes police, HM Revenue & Customs and National Crime Agency officers.

It aims to tackle criminality linked to paramilitarism as part of the former Executive's action plan on Tackling Paramilitary Activity, Criminality, and Organised Crime.

Stitt, a convicted UDA armed robber, has previously said that his paramilitary days are behind him. He served a five-year prison term in the 1990s.

He is now chief executive of the Government-funded Charter NI group in east Belfast.

He was recently in the news after Sinn Fein MLA Mairtin O Muilleoir repeated claims initially made in 1988 that loyalist killer Michael Stone was assisted by the RUC when he launched his deadly attack on mourners at the funeral of the Gibraltar Three on March 16 of that year.

Stitt said Stone - who he served four years in jail with - had no help, and in fact got the bus into Belfast before mingling with mourners on the walk to the cemetery.

"There was no collusion, he was a lone guy, he did it himself," he claimed.
Paddy Jackson and co have been acquitted of rape, and all other charges. But what resonates disturbingly in many peoples minds, now that the trial is over, is the grim glimpses into the hidden world occupied by the rugby players and their friends, revealed through the exchange of those now-notorious online messages.

These were interactions that were never intended for public view, let alone to become the subject of courtroom scrutiny.

But its for precisely that reason that they provide such a chilling insight.

We are seeing the unvarnished reality here: the way these nice, polite, affluent and well-spoken young men talk about women when they think that nobodys looking.

In the text and WhatsApp exchanges between this coterie of close friends, we witness a world of swaggering male entitlement, privilege and bravado.

Women are referred to as sluts and brasses. The absence of any kind of respect, empathy or even human fellow-feeling for these girls is startling. It is as though their only function is to provide easy and available carnal encounters, or to act as props for the male ego.

Theres no sense of connection, of mutual pleasure, even of gratitude towards the women. They are merely there to provide a service, then to be treated with contempt  or at least thats the stark impression you get from reading the messages.

Blane McIlroy, in particular, seemed especially fond of boasting about his prowess and sexual conquests. He posted a photograph of the three girls at a party sitting on his knee. The caption? Love Belfast Sluts.

On another occasion, he shared the following boast with his Whatsapp friends: Pumped a girl with Jacko on Monday. Roasted her. Then another on Tuesday night.

Most people with any kind of character will find this sort of attitude to women revolting. But from a parents perspective, particularly if you happen to be the parent of teenage girls or young women, the picture is especially troubling.

Are these the kind of people that our daughters are likely to encounter on a night out?

It might also make you wonder just how common these porn-inflected attitudes to women are among this generation of young men. Because the fantasy world of online pornography is where this mentality  and the ugly language of spit-roasting, threesomes and pumping that goes with it  actually originates.

In this distorted alternative reality, women are not human beings with ideas, needs, desires and beliefs of their own. They are merely tools and receptacles for male sexual pleasure, to be used and then discarded.

An entire generation is growing up that believes that what you see in hardcore pornography is the way that you have sex: thats the view of Cindy Gallop, an American advertising executive who has frequently spoken out about this still largely hidden issue.

Because the porn industry is driven by men, funded by men, managed by men, directed by men and targeted at men, porn tends to present one world view: that this is the way it is.

We know the classic defence of message exchanges like the ones between the rugby players and their friends: banter. Its true that people, maybe men in particular, enjoy the freedom to say absurd, provocative, offensive and ridiculous things to each other in private  things that they would never say in public, or perhaps not even in front of their wives and girlfriends.

Thats fair enough. I dont think we should be in the business of trying to police peoples private interactions, trying to make them conform to some sort of social or moral code.

You might also protest that if all participants are adults, and the sex is consensual, then what they get up to together is nobody elses business.

I would generally be a subscriber to that view.

But the blatant misogyny that has been revealed in these particular online exchanges goes way beyond harmless banter. And its impossible to ignore the overwhelming impression that they convey: that women are far from equal partners in the encounters described. Like prostitutes, they are there to provide a specific service  facilitating the pornographic fantasies of these privileged young men, the legends.

For what its worth, I do not believe that such a contemptuous  and contemptible  attitude towards women is representative of most young men in todays society.

The exchanges smack of arrogance, affluence, privilege and entitlement.

They sound especially spoilt and immature.

But if there is one thing weve learned from this trial, its that parents have a special responsibility to teach their sons and daughters about mutual respect and the meaning of consent.

Schools must play their part too.

Sex education is too important to be left in the hands of the online porn-merchants.
Vladimir Putin at his campaign headquarters in Moscow (Sergei Chirikov/Pool photo via AP)

Russia is set to expel an Irish diplomat in retaliation for the Irish government's "act of solidarity" following the poisoning of former Russian agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.

Earlier this week, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar announced Ireland would expel one Russian diplomat over the incident, joining more than 20 countries across the EU and internationally.

Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney said he had met with the Russian ambassador and informed him the accreditation of one of his members of staff with diplomatic status would be terminated.

Sergei Skripal was poisoned with a nerve agent in Salisbury, England on March 4.

RTE reports Russia has informed the Irish Department for Foreign Affairs one diplomat has been instructed to leave the country.

Mr Coveney said the decision was regrettable.
DUP councillor Drew Thompson said that the decision was ridiculous and insulting and that unionist schools would not adhere to the council advice

Derry City and Strabane District Council has given the green light to a motion urging schools within its bondaries to ban the Armed Forces from holding recruitment drives on their premises.

A furious row erupted after a motion was put forward by independent councillor Gary Donnelly, who said the army turned young people from disadvantaged areas into "robotic mindless killers".

The motion put forward at last night's meeting in the Guildhall read: "Given the history of British imperialism in Ireland, this council calls on local educational facilities for children and young people to refuse British Armed Forces access to children/pupils as part of their attempt to glamourise/recruit for their imperialist ventures."

Twenty-four councillors, including Sinn Fein and the independents, voted in favour of the motion. The nine unionist councillors voted against and the SDLP abstained from the vote.

After the motion was carried, Mr Donnelly said he brought the issue to the council after the army ran recruitment stalls at a number of schools in Belfast recently.

"The British army has a policy of recruiting child soldiers," he said. "I brought this motion to council to send a very clear message to them that we don't want them preying on children here.

"I am very happy that the motion was carried but I'm very disappointed with the attitude of the SDLP who refused to support it because I think it's common sense that no child should be recruited into a military organisation and I can't understand why the SDLP had a problem with that. It is a very clear call from civic leaders, from councillors from this city that what they are doing is wrong. We are joining a growing band of people, particularly in Wales where there is growing support for the banning of the recruiting of child soldiers.

"The age should be 18, when they are an adult, when they can make informed decisions but not to recruit children at the age of 16, strip them down mentally and turn them into trained killers. Something that they may regret later in live as they become adults."

DUP councillor Drew Thompson said that the decision was ridiculous and insulting and that unionist schools would not adhere to the council advice.

"It is an insult to unionist families," he said. "There are vast numbers of families whose grandparents and parents were all members of the armed forces. Some of the young people might want to follow in the footsteps of their relatives and peers.

"I think what happened here is wrong. But council can only put forward that motion - it's up to the schools to take that decision.

"This motion means very, very little as far as I would be concerned. I know that a number of the parents in unionist schools will say Derry City Council can pass whatever they want, it's our school and we want those things to happen in our school.

"Schools in the unionist community probably will not adhere to the decision taken today by the council. I think it's ridiculous that we are now discriminating against, again, a section of the community. We talk about human rights and people having the opportunity of being able to do what they want to do and then we have republican members of this council saying we can't have that."
The trial of Paddy Jackson and Stuart Olding may be over, but there was a bigger crowd outside Laganside courts in Belfast yesterday than there had been in the 42 days the case ran.

On Wednesday, the two Ireland and Ulster players were unanimously acquitted of rape by a jury.

But up to 1,000 people yesterday protested over the handling of the high-profile trial. The demonstration was peaceful and powerful, but also laced with anger.

They had turned out, they said, in support of the young woman at the centre of the case, with many attaching posters and yellow roses to the metal security railings at the court.

Others carried the flowers, in a nod to the Suffragette movement, and said they felt compelled to be there to stand in solidarity with all victims of sexual violence and domestic abuse.

Organised by Reclaim the Night Belfast, which campaigns against gender-based violence and harassment, the rally was one of six across Ireland.

The trials conclusion was met with a torrent of online responses expressing dissatisfaction.

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Banners bearing slogans such as Justice for Women Now and Rape Trial Reform Now were held aloft at the demonstration.

There was also strong criticism from the event organisers of the justice system and the treatment of people who claim they have been raped.

When Green Party MLA Clare Bailey took to the podium, she praised so many who had turned out at such short notice and said they were all there in anger at a judicial system that has failed so many.

We want to send a clear message to those victims and survivors who have been impacted by recent events, and in those that have yet to come, that rape is never a victims fault, she told the crowd to rapturous applause.

Here, today, were standing because we need to be heard because over the past nine weeks so many victims and so many survivors have been retraumatised.

Too often, our experiences as women go unaddressed by a system that continues to fail us. So, today, let me remind everyone that rape, sexual violence, domestic violence and all gender-based violence is not about sex, drugs, drink or what you wear  it is about power, it is about control.

On Wednesday, Mr Jackson and Mr Olding were found not guilty of raping the same woman in Belfast in June 2016. Mr Jackson was also found not guilty of sexual assault.

Their friend, Blane McIlroy, was acquitted of exposure, and another friend, Rory Harrison, was cleared of perverting the course of justice and withholding information.

The nine-week trial sparked heated debate about the operation of the criminal justice system, media reporting of rape trials and social media reaction to live court cases.

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Employment advisor Shannon Shivers (24), from Castledawson, brought her two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Mollie, to yesterdays demonstration because its important for her to see me stand in solidarity.

She expressed concern over the impact of social media in the rugby rape case and said it was an issue that would continue to play a significant role in future court cases.

I have a massive issue with the part social media played in this particular case. Its something that should be considered in the event of judicial reform, she said.

Events like this are an important way in which we can show our general support for all rape survivors and all victims of sexual abuse. They shouldnt suffer alone.

Post-graduate student Kyrialos Kareklas (30), who is originally from Cyprus but lives in Belfast, said he believed there should be a review of how the criminal justice system handles alleged sexual crimes.

There definitely needs to be changes in how rape cases are dealt with in Northern Ireland courts, he said. It seems that there can be a huge burden on victims to prove their innocence, with them almost having to relive their experiences.

Compared to other types of crime, more attention tends to fall on the actions and comments of complainants, and the correct mechanisms need to be in place to deal with that.

Phillip McCrilly (29), a curator from Belfast who was at the rally to show solidarity with all sexual assault victims, said he was concerned over the publicity in the case.

Its an awful thing that the complainant was named (online) in this case, he added.

There have been abusive comments and death threats on social media. These are serious issues that need to be addressed for future cases.

Students Robyn Livingstone (20), cousin Aoife Livingstone (21) and Jane Doran (20) focused their criticism on the treatment of complainants.

The criminal justice treatment and media reporting of this trial will deter victims from coming forward and reporting in the future, Aoife said.

Robyn added: I dont think the criminal justice system is fit for purpose when it comes to dealing with sexual crimes.

And Jane said: If I was a victim of rape, Im not sure Id have the confidence to take it through the courts.
80.7% of patients were seen by a breast cancer specialist for a first assessment following an urgent referral for suspect breast cancer within 14 days. This target fell compared to same period in 2016 (stock photo)

A third of patients with suspected cancer are being forced to wait too long for treatment as waiting times continue to deteriorate.

The latest waiting time figures show that only 66.7% of patients with an urgent referral for suspected cancer started treatment within 62 days during October until December last year.

All of Northern Ireland's health trusts missed the waiting time target of 95% for the last quarter in 2017.

Cancer Research UK described it as "extremely disappointing" and said patients are being "let down".

The latest figures show that in December 2017, 348 patients commenced first treatment for cancer following an urgent referral for suspect cancer.

Of these, 66.4% - 231 patients - started first treatment within 62 days.

This compares with 66.0% - 280 out of 424 patients - in November 2017.

The figures also show that 80.7% of patients in December were first seen within 14 days following an urgent referral for suspect breast cancer.

This is a decrease from 81.5% seen within 14 days in October 2017 and compared with 91.4% of patients seen in December 2016.

In December 2017, 1,408 new referrals for suspect breast cancer were received; this compares to 1,933 in November 2017 and 2,015 in October 2017.

Of those new referrals for suspect breast cancer in December 2017, 1,011 were classified as urgent.

Compared to 12 months ago, the two key targets which cancer services are measured against have both worsened.

Cancer Research UK said that the 95% target set in 2009 has never been met across Northern Ireland.

Margaret Carr, Cancer Research UK's public affairs manager for Northern Ireland, said: "Once again we have the extremely disappointing news that these targets have not been met. In fact, they've never been met in over eight years, and the delays are getting worse. Patients are being let down.

"Some people are waiting too long to find out whether they have cancer and for treatment to begin which is a distressing time for them and their families.

"Health staff are working in a difficult environment and doing their best for patients, but the lack of an Assembly and Executive means there's no current cancer strategy or plan of action to transform Northern Ireland's cancer services.

"Some of this year's recently announced additional funding for health transformation should be set aside to improve cancer services.

"It's crucial we see progress on this as soon as possible."

Ulster Unionist MLA Roy Beggs said the latest cancer waiting times illustrates the "human tragedy" that grips the local health service.

He said: "Cancer is a disease that thrives in a vacuum, so the sooner it is detected and treatment can begin, the better the chance a patient has of a successful outcome.

"It is deeply disheartening therefore to learn that the latest cancer waiting times have suffered a further major deterioration.

"The situation is especially bad in relation to breast cancer services in parts of Northern Ireland. The supposedly rigid government-set target is that every single urgent breast cancer referral should be seen within 14 days.

"In spite of this, across the Southern Trust area which covers th e area around Dungannon, Craigavon and Newry, the average across the last three months in 2017 was shockingly less than 37%."
Calls have been made for Northern Ireland to change its alcohol licensing laws, as put anticipate taking a financial hit over the Easter weekend. (Rui Vieira/PA)

Calls have been made for Northern Ireland to change its alcohol licensing laws, with the hospitality sector expecting to take a financial hit over the Easter weekend.

Ulster Unionist MLA Andy Allen has called for a change in legislation, and criticised Northern Ireland's collapsed Executive for failing to update the law over the past decade.

This year will be the first pubs, restaurants and off licences in the Republic of Ireland are permitted to sell alcohol - with new legislation passed through the Dail in January of this year scrapping the 90-year-old rule.

In Northern Ireland licensed premises are prohibited from selling alcohol after midnight on Easter Thursday and Sunday, and can only serve between 5pm and 11pm on Good Friday.

Off licenses are allowed to sell alcohol from 8am in the morning on Good Friday.

On Easter Saturday licensed premises are permitted to sell alcohol from 11.30am until 11pm and those with a late license are allowed to sell until midnight, while off-licences are allowed to sell alcohol from 8am until 11pm.

"Whilst issues around alcohol licensing laws are not just restricted to Easter opening hours, it is at this time of year when Northern Irelands archaic rules are most evident," Mr Allen said.

"Just as the Assembly collapsed in January 2017, an important Bill  the Licensing and Registration of Clubs (Amendment) Bill  was making its way through the legislative process and was just about to be further amended and improved by the Communities Committee.

"The last 15 months, and the subsequent policy and legislative vacuum at Stormont, however have instead simply represented yet another lost opportunity for our local tourism and hospitality sectors."

Speaking to the Belfast Telegraph, Colin Neill from Hospitality Ulster said most hospitality businesses operate on a 20% profit margin - with lost trade over the Easter weekend wiping this out for the month.

"This isn't about religion verse alcohol," he said.

"Its an anomaly in the licensing laws. On Good Friday I can go and buy a carry out in a supermarket at 8am in the morning and go to an unlicensed restaurant or cafe, and sit in the window and drink wine all day looking across the road at the place that can't sell you alcohol."

He estimates that the drop in trade across the Easter weekend works out at a loss of around 20m across the hospitality industry.

What do you think?
The PM is shown around Fairview Farm by Susanne Jackson and daughters Hannah, Abbie and Emily

The Prime Minister yesterday made a fresh call for the restoration of power-sharing at Stormont to ensure Northern Ireland's voice is heard in the Brexit negotiations.

Theresa May said she wanted to see devolution return as she visited a farm on the outskirts of Bangor, exactly a year before the UK officially leaves the European Union.

She received a tour of Fairview Farm from owners Stephen Jackson, his wife Susanne and young daughters Hannah, Abbie and Emily, before having lunch with farmers, including representatives from the Ulsters Farmers' Union (UFU).

The UFU used the meeting to stress that farmers were committed to continuing to play a major role in the economy as the foundation of the UK's 112 billion food and drink industry and the 3.9 million jobs it involves.

In response to a question from the Belfast Telegraph about whether Northern Ireland had a voice in the Brexit negotiations, the Prime Minister said Stormont should be operating to ensure that voice.

However, there have been no signs of movement over the political stalemate since multi-party talks collapsed last month.

Mrs May described her visit - part of a whistlestop tour of all four nations of the UK - as an opportunity to hear from people here about some of the "day-to-day practicalities" around the border.

"In the absence of a Northern Ireland Executive, that becomes even more important," she said.

"We will, and I have been, discussing with the parties in Northern Ireland how we can continue to ensure we are talking to them and bringing their views into account.

"I'd like to see a Northern Ireland Executive formed because then the devolved administration can be the voice of Northern Ireland."

In response to criticism she had not visited the border area, as EU chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier did last year, Mrs May declined to say if she would do so before the UK officially leaves the EU on March 29, 2019.

"My diary over the next year hasn't yet been set, but all I am saying is that I understand," the Prime Minister said.

"I think it's not a question of just whether I actually go and stand on the border, it's a question of, do I understand the impact that has for people?

"What I am doing here today is actually listening to farmers here in Northern Ireland, listening to representatives of the agri-food industry, hearing what they want to see coming out of Brexit and what the opportunities are for Northern Ireland in the future - that's what I have been doing."

Speaking after their lunch meeting, UFU president Barclay Bell said he had warned the Prime Minister that farmers and growers needed more than hints over the future of trading relationships.

"The Government has been hinting that it will do the right things, but farming is a long-term industry that has to plan," he insisted.

"Not knowing what trade arrangements will be in place or how they will be supported makes that impossible."

Mrs May started her tour of the UK yesterday morning in Ayrshire in Scotland before heading to Newcastle in England and then travelling to Northern Ireland.

She later headed to the Vale of Glamorgan in Wales, and finished her day-long tour in west London.

See Page 24
UUP leader David Trimble and SDLP chief John Hume with U2 frontman Bono at a 1998 concert in Belfast to promote Good Friday Agreement

SDLP deputy leader Nichola Mallon has queried the coverage given to John Hume's role in the Good Friday Agreement during a video package on BBC's The View programme.

Mrs Mallon said she was stunned contributions of John Hume and former deputy First Minister Seamus Mallon during the segment were reduced to a "two second shot" in the lengthy package.

The video package was aired during a piece looking at an art exhibition from Raymond Watson at the University of Liverpool which examines the 20th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement.

"We're approaching the 20th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement and it's a time when we should all be reflecting on the contributions that that were made by many people in overcoming that very difficult dark time in our history," Mrs Mallon said.

"I don't think anyone can underestimate the contribution of John Hume and Seamus Mallon.

"When the BBC ran a very lengthy package I was taken aback that there was absolutely no mention of that contribution apart from a two second clip."

The North Belfast MLA said the issue was about correctly marking history and not promoting the SDLP.

"There was no mention of them when other people who made contributions seemed to get much more coverage, it's not about giving the SDLP a privileged position it's about reflecting their honest contribution in that very historic moment in our politics," she said.

"I think when we move away from a moment in time there is always things that get forgotten and others attempt to rewrite history or take ownership of it.

"When you come to a poignant moment like an anniversary that is when you stop and make an honest analysis and reflection of what happened and I think the coverage doesn't give an honest reflect of people's contribution."

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Ms Mallon said that everyone who contributed should be remembered as part of the 20th anniversary.

"When you have an anniversary of this magnitude we need to reflect on the contributions made. As history progresses people forget and others have very different versions of it," she said.

"It's important that on the 20th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement there is recognition to the contributions made by a range of people and that's very true of the contribution made by Hume and Mallon."

SDLP leader Colum Eastwood appeared on the show to discuss abortion and the failure of talks at Stormont with host Mark Carruthers.

Mr Eastwood revealed that the party was planning a special conference to discuss the abortion issue.

The Belfast Telegraph contacted the BBC but they declined to comment.

Stunned that @bbctheview apart from a 2 second shot, makes absolutely no mention of John Hume & Seamus Mallons contribution in a lengthy package on the Good Friday Agreement.  Nichola Mallon (@NicholaMallon) March 29, 2018
The SDLP will hold a special conference to review the partys position on abortion ahead of the Irish referendum on the controversial issue.

However, SDLP leader Colum Eastwood has said there are no plans to change the partys pro-life stance.

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Mr Eastwood, speaking on BBC Northern Irelands The View programme, said: We are not talking about changing the fundamental position, the party position is pro-life but the party membership set out our policies.

What we are talking about and what is up for discussion is the issue around conscience.

Can we allow people to have that option of a moral conscience? That is the discussion across every political party in Ireland - so it would be strange for us not to have that discussion.

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The SDLP conference will take place ahead of the referendum on abortion laws in the Republic on May 25.

Northern Irelands abortion laws are more strict that the rest of the United Kingdom.

Abortions are only allowed if a womans life is in danger or if there is a serious risk to her mental health.

Abortions are not allowed in cases of rape, incest and fatal foetal abnormalities.
A Co Antrim schoolgirl has become one of the first members of the public from Northern Ireland to receive an invitation to the royal wedding.

Daniella Timperley from Randalstown is one of 600 people across the UK to be selected. It is in recognition of her contribution to her local community.

The 18-year-old will see Prince Harry wed his American actress fiancee Meghan Markle in St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle on May 19 and also attend a lunchtime reception at St George's Hall given by the Queen.

The 'public' invitations were reported to have been posted last week.

The news was announced by Daniella's school, St Louis Grammar in Ballymena, on its Twitter feed this week in a post also referencing an all-Ireland youth volunteer of the year accolade she won at the Pramerica Spirit of Community Awards.

It said: "What a week it has been for Daniella! Not only was she named Top Youth Volunteer 2018, she has also received an invitation to the royal wedding of Prince Harry & Meghan Markle as a result of her extensive charity work!"

Daniella has an impressive CV of volunteer work, including involvement with Women's Aid, which she represented on the BBC Children in Need Youth Panel in 2015, helping to co-ordinate fundraising efforts and voicing the needs of those helped by the organisation.

She has also volunteered in care homes, completed intergenerational projects with the elderly, helped at a homework club in Ballymena with younger children and at the Antrim summer scheme, where she completed OCN accreditations in mental health, domestic violence, understanding risks and self-esteem. This spring looks like being a busy one for the sixth former, who as well as travelling to London in May, will next month travel on an all-expenses paid trip to Washington DC to meet with youth volunteers from across America and participate in the Prudential Spirit of Community Awards ceremony.

An estimated 100,000 people are expected to visit Windsor in May for the wedding, amid a security operation described yesterday as "among the largest in Thames Valley Police's history".

Millions of viewers across the world are expected to tune in to watch the television coverage of the royal nuptials.
As she left Belfast Crown Court, the complainant in the Ulster rugby rape case will surely have felt like the loneliest woman in the world.

The police told us she was "upset and disappointed with the outcome". That's likely a massive under-statement. The 42-day trial will have been the most emotionally challenging time of this young woman's life. Let us remember she is just 21-years-old.

She will have felt defeated and deflated with the verdict. Paddy Jackson and his legal team spoke to media at the front of the courthouse - surrounded by family, friends and supporters. She left almost unnoticed via a side entrance.

But however overwhelming those feelings of despondency and isolation may have been in the immediate aftermath of the verdict, yesterday will have given her reasons for hope.

On both sides of the border, thousands of women and men joined protests against the handling of the case.

In Belfast, they tied yellow roses - the symbol of the Suffragettes - to the Laganside court railings.

Homemade placards expressed solidarity with the complainant and called for changes in how the criminal justice system deals with sexual violence allegations. "Stand up for the Ulster woman," one declared. "Break the silence" and "I believe her" others read.

Young schoolgirls sat high on their fathers' shoulders so they could see proceedings. The mood at the gathering was about delivering change for the next generation of women.

Hundreds attended the Belfast rally. To rapturous applause, Green Party MLA Clare Bailey said they were sending out "a clear message to those victims and survivors who have been impacted by recent events". In Dublin, over 1,000 people gathered at the GPO, blocking O'Connell Street. Crowds also assembled in Cork, Waterford, Galway, Limerick and Londonderry. It was an impressive turnout across the island of Ireland for protests that had been called at a few hours' notice.

Social media has been relentlessly criticised following this trial. But it is wrong to argue that the role it has played has been entirely negative.

Through Twitter and Facebook, ordinary folk have been able to offer support and solidarity to a young woman they have never met but with whom they strongly empathise.

The voices of the plain people are just as legitimate and valuable as those of any lawyer, judge or journalist. They have a right to be heard.

The men charged were unanimously found not guilty by the jury. Yet, contrary to what some may believe, that doesn't mean the young woman did anything wrong.

On Thursday evening, dozens of new tweets supporting her appeared every minute. The power of this case extends far beyond the bedroom or the courtroom. It has struck a chord with the next generation of women who are raising their voices to challenge sexism.

Paddy Jackson, Stuart Olding, and Blane McIlroy were completely cleared of the charges they faced. But that doesn't make the messages they exchanged on social media acceptable. If they spoke about black people or Catholics in the derogatory way they referred to women, would society tolerate it? Would they represent their province or country again?

'Spit roasting' is a term which should be used only in connection with cooking a dead animal. It should never be employed in conversation about a living, breathing female human being.

For me, this young woman showed remarkable spirit and bravery during the trial. Early in proceedings, she broke down in tears after being shown footage of her police interview recorded two days after the party. But, as the trial continued, she found huge reservoirs of strength. Being cross-examined by four defence barristers over eight days will have been exhausting. Her sheer courage will hopefully allow her to rebuild her life. And may she take comfort from yesterday's protests. She is not alone.
Anyone hoping to put on their Easter bonnet and go on parade would do well to carry an umbrella and take their big coat too as temperatures across Northern Ireland will be well below average this weekend.

The Met Office report that while today will begin with a mixture of sunny spells it won't be too long before Co Down, Armagh and even parts of Antrim experience occasional showers which will turn wintry on higher ground.

Across all of Northern Ireland temperatures will not get above seven degrees, but even this will feel nearer four degrees so anyone planning outside activities such as the Dockside Festival in Belfast should wrap up warm.

The Met Office predicts Sunday will have the least chance of seeing rain so this is expected to be the best day to get outside although the traditional Easter weekend visit to any of Northern Ireland beaches will only be for the most hardy souls.

The forecast predicts: "Saturday will have bright spells with one or two isolated showers, followed by a chilly night, still with the chance of the odd shower.

"A mostly dry and bright day to come on Sunday with spells of sunshine, then turning breezy and chilly overnight.

"Easter Monday is likely to be cloudy, breezy and cold with a risk of some rain and snow at times."

Snow and sleet are forecast for higher ground across the whole of Northern Ireland. The north west is likely to have the least rain but it will not escape it entirely.

Easter Monday is likely to be cloudy, breezy and cold with a risk of some rain and wet snow at times.

However, while temperatures are below average for this time of year, people in Northern Ireland will be spared the possibility of a "white Easter" that could be hitting some other parts of the UK.

Forecasters are now warning that 10 inches of snow for some places with temperatures as low as minus 10 degrees in the Scottish highlands.
Unionists have slammed a motion put forward by a former dissident republican seeking to ban the British Army from recruiting in schools.

Gary Donnelly, who is now a councillor on Derry City and Strabane District Council, put forward a motion calling on educational facilities in the area to refuse British Armed Forces access to pupils.

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The motion passed with 24 councillors, including Sinn Fein and the independents, voting in favour.

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DUP MLA Gary Middleton said the vote is the latest example of an extremely divisive agenda" being promoted in the council.

Firstly it should be noted that the council has absolutely no power to enforce this or tell local schools what to do, the Foyle MLA said.

It is clear however that some councillors wish to intimidate schools from doing nothing more than providing young people with the information about pursuing a career in the Armed Forces should they wish to do so.

It was proposed by Gary Donnelly and the irony of his comments on violence will not be lost on many given his refusal to condemn attacks on police officers.

"All those who supported the motion are aligning themselves with an extreme agenda which is being promoted within the council. Over recent months the Mayor of this city has worn the Mayoral chain whilst supporting a dissident terrorist and has snubbed Royalty whilst visiting.

There is no evidence of respect or equality on display through motions or actions such as these. Not content with increasing tensions within the Council there are now attempts to damage wider community relations through motions such as this.

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UUP MLA Doug Beattie, who is a former soldier, said: Yet again the Sinn Fein respect, equality and integrity agenda is in tatters.

"It is perfectly clear that their call for equality is as warped as their commitment to human rights. Both are only to be delivered on their terms, viewed through a prism of a rabid and pathological bias against anything or anyone who links themselves to the British state or British military.

For Sinn Fein to back a motion - no matter how ludicrous - to prevent anyone considering a career in the British military receiving career advice while at school sets a clear sectarian agenda.

He added: Does Sinn Fein want equality? Do they promote respect? Are they truly advocates of integrity? The actions of their councillors in backing this motion sends a clear message to what they ironically call their unionist brothers and sisters.

"That is  you are not welcome now and you are not welcome in the future and you will never be welcome in any United Ireland in which we have any influence.

Sinn Fein has been approached for comment.
The PSNI has joined forces with Belfast City Council in a crackdown on anti-social behaviour across Belfast.

It comes in the wake of a number of violent incidents across the city.

On Saturday night, a north Belfast teenager was viciously attacked by a gang armed with bats and hammers.

Earlier in the week, police were attacked by youths throwing bricks and a paint bomb after a crowd of around 20 children went on a rampage in the New Lodge.

There have also been scenes of violence in Poleglass and the Waterworks in north Belfast.

The PSNI said officers and partner agencies have responded to multiple calls from the public concerned about the behaviour of some young people in parks and public places.

Superintendent Robert Murdie said: "In one incident, a young teenager was the victim of a serious assault. Police officers responding to calls have been attacked. One officer has been injured, a number of our vehicles have been damaged and there have been multiple incidents of vandalism and bins set on fire.

"The disgraceful and dangerous actions of a small minority of young people must stop. Police, together with our Belfast City Council colleagues, local representatives and youth workers are all working together to address this issue, but parents and guardians really need to step up.

"Young people have every right to enjoy each other's company, but parents and guardians must ensure they know where their young people are and what they are doing."

Superintendent Murdie warned that the behaviour could have a lasting impact on their future.

He added: "Police, Belfast City Council, local representatives, community and youth workers are all working closely together to have dedicated resources available into the Easter period.

"We are also visiting licensed premises across the city to ensure they are carrying out the necessary checks to prevent young people from purchasing alcohol."

NI Railways will also be increasing security on its trains and carrying out spot checks at railway stations with police.

Hilton Parr, Head of Rail Customer Services said: "We view anti-social behaviour as completely unacceptable.

"We will be working closely with the PSNI to clamp down on anti-social behaviour at our stations and halts and on board our trains up to and over Easter.

Mr Parr added: "As the evenings get brighter, we would also remind people they can face prosecution for gathering at stations and halts unless they are travelling on our trains and people should never cross the tracks."
Hundreds of people gather outside the GPO in Dublin in solidarity with the woman at the centre of the Belfast rape case trial. Dublin.Picture credit; Damien Eagers 29/3/2018

Thousands of people attended rallies across the Republic yesterday, expressing solidarity with the woman at the centre of the Ulster Rugby rape trial.

Details of the events had been circulated widely on social media beforehand.

A large crowd of around 1,000 people gathered at The Spire in Dublin at 12.30pm.

Many at the rally wanted to express solidarity not only with the woman at the centre of the case, but also others who have been affected by the issues raised during the distressing trial.

The demonstration lasted just over an hour, and a heavy shower did not deter the attendees.

Anna Duke (22), from Blessington, Co Wicklow, said she wanted to show support to the woman in the case and all women affected by it.

"It's time a change was made. I think the turn-out is amazing," she said.

Also at the rally was Ken McCue (63), from Smithfield in Dublin, who said he would like to see human rights courses for primary school kids from age 12 upwards.

He explained he taught cultural planning, human rights and ethics, and said he believed that children would benefit from such courses.

"It should continue right through their schooling, especially the ones involved in sport," Mr McCue added.

Dubliner Iseult Deane (21) said she thought the turnout was great.

"I think it's good to see so many young people out here. I think it's really powerful and good," she said.

Also in attendance was Jack Popeley (22), from Wexford, who said: "The turnout gives me a little bit of hope that there is change coming."

A number of similar events were held across Ireland.
Carol Vorderman has said it is beyond an honour to co-host a gala which will begin the celebrations marking the centenary of the Royal Air Force.

It was 100 years ago on April 1 1918 that the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service merged to created the RAF  the worlds first independent air service.

On the eve of the anniversary Vorderman and Dan Snow will host a gala at the Royal Albert Hall featuring music, ceremonial drill, recollections of those who have served and video footage.

Really looking forward to co-hosting the RAF100 launch celebrations at the Royal Albert Hall on Sat March 31 with Dan Snow @thehistoryguy A few tickets still left at https://t.co/NLft7kCzwI Grab them now. Line up includes Mick Hucknall, @TheBandBlake and many more..@rafinconcert pic.twitter.com/TMZ3LxFqwm  Carol Vorderman (@carolvorders) March 22, 2018

Ahead of the event, when asked about how she felt to be beginning the national celebrations, Vorderman told the Press Association: I could not have dreamt of it.

It is beyond an honour for me.

Describing the gala, the 57-year-old said there would be a wonderful mix of elements as they celebrated the anniversary and told the story of the RAF.

When pressed on what the RAF of 1918 would make of the current service, the former Countdown presenter, herself a trained pilot, said they would be fascinated by the history.

They would have been astonished as to the scale of the technology, which has driven a lot of other technologies forward as well at a faster pace, she said.

I think they would have been hopping up and down with glee, because those people who were involved in the early days were obviously pioneers themselves.

And other than balloonists, nobody had got into the air before  you didnt have that view of the world before, and it was dangerous and it still is, but it particularly was then.

They were all brave, courageous adventurers as much as they were military aviators in my view. They would have been astonished at what has come out of it.

Mother-of-two Vorderman revealed there was no one on her Welsh side of the family who had any links to aviation, but discovered when she met her father in her 40s that she had cousins in the Dutch Air Force.

An honorary Group Captain in the RAF, when asked what her favourite RAF aircraft was, Vorderman described herself as utterly predictable as she named the British-designed Harrier Jump Jet.

They are just extraordinary, what they do is extraordinary, you just think oh my god it is going up, and then they rotate the engine and it is off, she said.

It is magical, totally magical, and she looks beautiful.

Asked whether she would take the opportunity to fly one if she could, Vorderman joked: I would be beating people off with a stick to try and get to the top of the queue, definitely.

Describing the RAF as a unique organisation, Bristol-based Vorderman said those employed by the service were very clever and very well qualified.

But also it is like a meritocracy  everyone in it has a passion for aviation, and the banter is amazing, she added.

You cant be involved with aviation unless you feel it within you.

An ambassador for the RAF Air Cadets since 2014, Vorderman said the cadets was something that was terrifically important to the RAF because so many go on to full-time service.

Just as you have this amazing camaraderie in the adult Royal Air Force, you have that in the air cadet organisation as well, she said.

And they get involved in these amazing things that otherwise they wouldnt be able to get involved in, and these are young people from normal backgrounds.

They absolutely adore it, there are 60,000 altogether including our amazing adult staff volunteers who have full time jobs and they give so much time, free.

Describing how there is a palpable love for the air cadet organisation within the RAF, Vorderman added: I would encourage every single young person and their parents to get their children involved, they will never regret it.
Holidaymakers travelling through the port of Dover are facing delays (Gareth Fuller/PA)

Holidaymakers are facing hours of delays at the port of Dover due to heightened French security checks.

As the Easter bank holiday weekend getaway began, P&O Ferries warned of two-hour hold-ups in the early hours of Friday morning.

Highways England said there were queues on the A20 and A2 heading into the port, and urged people to plan ahead before travelling.

There are delays this morning on the A20 and A2 tourist routes towards the Port of Dover due to enhanced French border controls.



If heading towards Dover + the port please plan ahead before travelling. Please check your ferry operator for the latest info. https://t.co/PXyD3nUqZB  National Highways: South-East (@HighwaysSEAST) March 29, 2018

Ferries were being held open for as long as possible to get people on board.

It comes as the Easter weekend looks set to be one of the busiest in years for travellers.

The Association of British Travel Agents (Abta) has estimated that 2.1 million British holidaymakers will head abroad.

We are sorry to say that the queues at French Border Control are still taking 2 hours followed by 20-30 minutes at check-in. The next sailing is the 01:00 due to leave at 01:20, followed by the 02:05 due to leave at 02:30  P&O Ferries Updates (@POferriesupdate) March 29, 2018

Train stations, roads and airports in the UK are also expected to be extremely busy.

The RAC said drivers were expected to take nearly 19 million separate leisure journeys over Easter, with hot spots set to include the M25 between Gatwick Airport and the M1, the M3 south west of London, the A303 near Stonehenge, the M55 between Preston and Blackpool, and the M53 between Liverpool and Chester.

At the major airports, half a million people will fly out from Heathrow, 260,000 from Gatwick and 160,000 from Manchester.

Heading abroad for the Easter bank holiday? ABTA estimates 2.1 million holidaymakers are heading overseas so make sure you leave plenty of time getting to the airport. https://t.co/0Bgxh3AAuS

#Easterholiday pic.twitter.com/tyXSK1wykQ  ABTA (@ABTAtravel) March 29, 2018

The Eurostar service from St Pancras will take 70,000 passengers under the Channel and into mainland Europe this weekend, with many headed to the French capital Paris.

In July 2016, hundreds of motorists heading off on their summer holidays were stranded in 12-hour traffic jams at the Port of Dover, with delays blamed on staff shortages at the French border as well as enhanced security controls.
In the wake of the not guilty verdicts that were handed down in Belfast Crown Court this week, there is a real danger that victims of sexual violence will opt not to report those crimes.

According to Women's Aid Northern Ireland, it has already had numerous calls from victims of rape "who have stated that they will not report to police or engage with the criminal justice and court system because of what they have seen the woman be put through during the course of the trial".

Those who have followed the case over its gruelling nine weeks have seen the complainant's right to anonymity be attacked; learned of voyeurs turning up to court in the hopes of hearing salacious details of that infamous night in June 2016 first-hand; and heard details of a seven-day cross-examination in which four senior counsel robustly tested the complainant's evidence.

"What other woman would ever put herself through that?" is an alarmingly ubiquitous reaction, now that the four accused men have walked free from court.

However, there is a danger, given the saturation coverage of this trial in the media, that the legal process in Northern Ireland and the Republic will become conflated - with women too fearful to come forward.

For a start, in the Republic, those accused of rape are not named in advance of a conviction - and are only named afterwards when their victims agree to renounce their anonymity.

Further, members of the public are not allowed to turn up and enjoy a day out in the court, sitting in the public gallery and listening to the prurient details of sexual offences, because trials are held in private.

These two differences alone would have hugely impacted the coverage of this case, as the celebrity status of the accused rugby stars would never have been revealed and the complainant's right to anonymity would have been better protected.

That said, as a society we must do more to support those women who take the brave step of coming forward and reporting sexual crime. Because rates of prosecution, and conviction, are incredibly low.

In an article in 2010, Mr Justice Peter Charleton and Stephen Byrne examined Irish law, and criminal procedure, when it came to sexual offences.

In an analysis of all of the rape and attempted rape cases that had come before the Central Criminal Court between 2003 and 2008, they found that a prosecution only went forward in less than 20% of cases that were reported to gardai.

Even more worrying was the fact that the chance of obtaining a conviction, when the accused contested the charges, was consistently below 20%. In 2008, just 10.8% of cases in which an accused had pleaded not guilty resulted in a conviction.

Mr Justice Charleton and Mr Byrne also pointed to the impossibly exacting standards that are expected of, often traumatised, victims who come forward to testify in rape trials, where there is an expectation that they will give confident testimony and remain entirely consistent in their account of the alleged crime.

"Witnesses who have been sexually attacked are rarely completely consistent, few witnesses are. A mugging or a bank robbery is upsetting, but is it upsetting in the same way as a violent sexual attack?

"If any of us were called upon to speak of the details of our sexual conduct into a microphone, in front of about 30 strangers, we might possibly exhibit the kind of hesitancy and nervousness that could be taken as the mark of a liar," they wrote.

While more should be done to support vulnerable complainants in court, these extremely low rates of convictions cannot just be a consequence of the law and of criminal procedure.

They point to something more fundamental at play, about the way victims of sexual crime are viewed in society.

Depressingly, attitudes to women alleging rape don't seem to have advanced very much since Lord Hall examined the issue in 1678. Back then, he outlined what the 'ideal victim' should look like and how she should behave in the wake of an attack. "If the witness be of good fame, if she presently discovered the offence and made pursuit after the offender, showed circumstances and signs of injuryif the place wherein the fact was done was remote from people  if the offender fled, these and the like are concurring evidences to give greater probability to her testimony".

In short, Lord Hall was only prepared to give credence to those women who were violently attacked by strangers, and that is a pernicious view that has stubbornly persisted in the intervening 340 years.

In a Eurobarometer poll in 2016, 21% of Irish respondents thought that having sex without consent was acceptable in certain situations, 11% thought being drunk or on drugs justified sex without consent, while 7% thought that walking alone at night justified an attack.

While Paddy Jackson, Stuart Olding, Blane McIlroy and Rory Harrison have now been acquitted of the charges against them, a verdict which must be respected, their boorish attitude to women was revealed in the text messages they exchanged after the alleged assault.

Perhaps the most revealing of these was not a message that related to the complainant at all, but rather the caption Blane McIlroy attached to a picture of three other women who had been at the party on the night of the alleged rape.

"Love Belfast sluts" was how he referred to the young women - who had simply gone back to the home of Paddy Jackson to have a few drinks before getting a taxi home - in a WhatsApp message to his friends.

This denigration of women, or what Donald Trump would call "locker room talk", is indicative of a culture of entitlement - where men have come to view women as sex objects, which exist for their gratification.

Some young men, who are growing up in an era when women can be ordered online like a takeaway meal by swiping right on dating apps, and who are exposed to extreme pornography from an early age, seem incapable of empathising with women.

This demeaning attitude to women is something that is, regrettably, going to be much harder to reform than our adversarial legal system.

Colette Browne is a columnist for the Irish Independent
The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, traditionally believed by many Christians to be the site of the crucifixion and burial of Jesus Christ, in Jerusalem (Mahmoud Illean/AP)

Israeli authorities have said they will block most of Gazas small Christian community from entering Israel for Easter celebrations, over security concerns.

Israel maintains a blockade over the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip and restricts entry from the territory.

But it often eases the restrictions during religious holidays to allow Gazas residents to visit holy sites in Jerusalem or to visit relatives in Israel or the West Bank.

Cogat, the defence body that oversees Palestinian civilian affairs, said it would let only Christians aged 55 and older and children under the age of 16 enter Israel for Easter, which is celebrated by Catholics on Sunday and Orthodox Christians the following week.

It said the restrictions were needed after previous cases in which Gazan visitors overstayed their permitted time in Israel.

A Christian leader in Gaza said the restrictions meant that only about one-third of the communitys 1,100 members would be allowed into Israel to celebrate.

He said he was disappointed because his children would not be able to see their aunts in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Wadie Abunassar, a Catholic Church official, called the restrictions very sad because Easter is a family holiday.

He said it was not reasonable to allow a mother and father to enter Israel, while leaving their children back in Gaza and urged Israel to reconsider.

If people want to leave, they dont want to leave for a honeymoon, he said. It is for a family trip.
A long-time Aung San Suu Kyi loyalist has vowed to prioritise the rule of law, peace and reconciliation after being sworn in as the countrys new president.

Win Myint will continue his predecessors deference to Ms Suu Kyi as the de facto national leader.

The 66-year-old, who is the former lower house speaker, took his oath of office during a joint session of parliament, pledging loyalty to the people and the republic of the Union of Burma.

First vice president Myint Swe, a military nominee and second vice president Henry Van Tio, an upper house parliament nominee, took oaths alongside him.

Ms Suu Kyi and powerful army chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing watched the swearing-in.

For many years a political prisoner under the military that then ruled Burma, Ms Suu Kyi cannot become president because the junta-drafted 2008 constitution bars those with foreign family, which directly aimed to bar Ms Suu Kyi from becoming head of state. Her two sons are British.

Burmas military ruled with an iron fist before handing power to a civilian government led by Ms Suu Kyi in 2016.

The military still holds considerable power, with control of national security and other government functions and a quarter of the seats in Parliament.

Ms Suu Kyi said when her government took office that she would be above the president. She led the government in that manner during the presidency of her close friend, Htin Kyaw, who retired last week because of ill health.

In his inaugural speech, Win Myint vowed to work on amending the constitution.

As part of the priorities of the union government, amending the constitution is the most fundamental to build the federal democratic government, he said. I will prioritise to implement the rule of law, for the improvement of peoples life, national reconciliation and internal peace.

Burmas civilian government has come under international pressure for its handling of a crisis in northern Rakhine state, where security forces have been accused of ethnic cleansing and serious human rights violations that have caused about 700,000 Rohingya Muslims to flee to neighbouring Bangladesh.

We are facing pressure, criticisms and misunderstandings at the international fronts and our country and our people are facing many challenges, Win Myint said in his speech. Though everything will not be solved easily, I will try my best to solve the problems and prioritise them.
The fervent hope of the priests and lay faithful in the diocese of Dromore will be that yesterday's formal arrival of retired bishop Dr Philip Boyce to take temporary charge of the troubled diocese on the explicit orders of the Pope, and the celebration of the Mass of Chrism in Newry Cathedral, will bring some semblance of order after a month of confusion and disarray.

That said, few doubt that Dromore - one of the smallest dioceses in Ireland with just 22 parishes and fewer than 30 priests - remains in a state of crisis, maybe even an existential crisis. The crisis has been triggered by revelations about the sex crimes of a deceased priest who was also a diocesan college headmaster and how they were hushed up for decades, first by the late Bishop Francis Brooks and then by Bishop John McAreavey, who was forced to tender his resignation on March 2.

Well-placed sources in Dromore diocese told me this week that the viability of such a small diocese has been an issue in the background for many years in the context of the shortage of priests.

The Pope took just 24 days to accept the resignation of Bishop McAreavey. That is fast by Vatican standards.

There are four diocesan vacancies in Ireland because of "normal" resignations (when the bishop submits his resignation having reached 75) and, after up to four years, the bishops concerned are still waiting to be told to hand over the reins to new blood and take things easy. Spare a thought for John Kirby in Clonfert in Galway, who will be 80 in October.

But John McAreavey's resignation was far from normal. Just gone 69, he would have been expected to remain in charge until 2025.

Monday's announcement signifies that Rome concurs with the observation of one very senior local cleric who said: "Dromore is dysfunctional, it is in a mess."

The appointment of Dr Boyce (78), former Bishop of Raphoe, as apostolic administrator (ie the Pope's own man to govern the diocese on a temporary basis) with virtually all the powers and duties of a diocesan bishop means that there is recognition in Rome at the highest level that the diocese of Dromore needs sorting after Dr McAreavey's sudden decision.

One well-informed Church source said: "That precipitate decision by Bishop McAreavey will not have pleased Rome. He jumped the gun." Others point out that Dr McAreavey had little option once he had lost the trust of so many of his flock. The clue to Pope Francis's recognition that Dromore diocese is in crisis and needs special attention comes in the notes for editors in the statement announcing the pontiff's decision, issued by the Catholic Communications Office in Maynooth. It said: "An apostolic administrator is appointed to temporarily govern a diocese when special, or serious, circumstances warrant such an appointment. He governs in the name of the Holy Father."

Those special circumstances are obvious. The diocese has been reeling since BBC Northern Ireland's Spotlight programme revealed details of the Fr Malachy Finnegan clerical sex abuse scandal six weeks ago, which eventually forced Dr McAreavey to write his resignation letter. Finnegan was spiritual director, teacher and then president of St Colman's College in Newry from 1967 to 1987, during which time he subjected some pupils to sexual and other abuse before his appointment as parish priest in Hilltown, where he sexually assaulted an altar boy over a five-year period. He died in 2002.

Last week one of the most important events in any diocesan calendar, the Chrism Mass, which normally takes place on Holy Thursday, was cancelled, sparking anger from some priests and laity. This is when the local bishop blesses the sacred oils that are used in sacraments such as baptism, confirmation and the anointing of the sick. But the Chrism Mass went ahead yesterday, celebrated by Bishop Boyce and diocesan priests.

The decision to impose an apostolic administrator means Rome has no confidence in a diocesan administrator, a local priest, who would normally be elected by senior local priests, the canons of the diocese, within eight days of the acceptance of a resignation and the formal declaration by the Pope that the See is vacant ('sede vacante' in Latin).

It also means that Canon Liam Stevenson, the vicar general who had taken over day-to-day running of the diocese at Dr McAreavey' s request, also steps down from that role. Canon Stevenson taught under Finnegan in St Colman's. His failure in recent weeks to answer questions from the media about what he knew or didn't know about Finnegan's abuse has dismayed many in the diocese, according to sources.

One senior cleric said: "Rome was likely advised that virtually all those senior priests in the diocese who taught under Finnegan in St Colman's are, in a sense, compromised by the revelations. We need a new broom to lead Dromore."

It is also thought the Vatican wanted to be seen to get a grip on Dromore well before the Pope's Dublin visit in August.

Bishop Boyce is considered a surprise, even controversial, choice. His critics point out that he was criticised for his handling of a clerical sex abuse case in Raphoe by the National Board for the Safeguarding of Children in a report in 2011 (he apologised for his failings).

One retired priest, who worked in England for years and is now reportedly living in the Dromore diocese, told the Nolan Show that he was "disgusted" by the appointment. However, others say that Dr Boyce should be given a chance.

They point to "a safe pair of hands" who may reassure local priests and faithful that he will not do anything too radical, like recommending the dissolution of Dromore, one of the smallest dioceses in Ireland, and its transfer into the dioceses of Armagh and Down and Connor in roughly equal parts.

However, such a course cannot be ruled out and it may be significant that the Vatican did not explicitly say that Dr Boyce would hold the reins until a new bishop is appointed.

However, opponents of dissolution - and there will be many in the diocese - would see it as deeply unfair if the dissolution of the ancient diocese, which may happen some time in the future in any event, was forever linked to a clerical sex abuse scandal.

One of Bishop Boyce's tasks will be to ensure that the diocese fully co-operates with the PSNI investigation that was announced earlier this week and any possible subsequent independent inquiry.

Bishop Boyce's appointment will, for now at least, help fill the vacuum following Dr McAreavey's departure.

But the spotlight will remain on Dromore - and hardly for the best of reasons - for some time to come.

Martin O'Brien is a journalist, communications consultant and award-winning former BBC producer
Bangladeshi school girls learn about potential perils of the digital world during a kickoff program hosted by UNICEF and Facebook in Dhaka, March 30, 2018.

UNICEF and social media giant Facebook launched a year-long program Friday aimed at reaching 25 million Bangladeshi children and strengthening awareness among parents and educators about protecting them from the perils of the digital world.

More than 10,000 students from at least 100 schools joined teachers, parents, policy makers and internet industry leaders, along with 2 million online visitors, in the kickoff event at a theater in Dhaka, the United Nations Childrens Fund (UNICEF) announced in a news release.

The internet was designed for adults, but it is increasingly used by children and young people  and digital technology often affects their lives and futures. So, digital policies, practices, and products should better reflect childrens needs, perspectives and voices, UNICEF Bangladesh Representative Edouard Beigbeder said at the kickoff event.

In response, the chairman of Bangladeshs Telecommunication Regulatory Commission, Shahjahan Mahmood, said the commission was considering limiting childrens access to the internet in order to shield them from its potential dangers.

This [social media] is an addiction like opium. We have been discussing the possibility of limiting the use of social media, especially by children. This is at the planning stage now, Mahmood told BenarNews.

He said technology would allow adults to monitor sites visited by children.

Those watching unproductive and bad sites can be charged more. This can be one strategy, he said.

Telecom Minister Mustafa Jabbar, on the other hand, said he wanted to use the internet for the educational benefit of boys and girls.

We have been trying to expand education through use of social media and different tools of information technology, Jabbar told BenarNews. I do not think Facebook and other social media hamper education.

Our duty is to make people aware of the dangers. Blocking [internet access] is not the solution, he said. The government must not do anything relating to social media that may harm education, he said.

Keeping children safe online

A lack of adequate knowledge about proper internet use increases vulnerability to risks, including misuse of their private information, access to harmful content and cyberbullying, according to UNICEFs State of the Worlds Children 2017: Children in a Digital World report, released in December.

People between the ages of 15 and 24 are the most-connected age group in the world with 71 percent having an online presence, compared to 48 percent of the total population, the report showed. In addition, children younger than 18 account for one in three internet users around the world.

Smartphones are fueling a bedroom culture, with online access for many children becoming more personal, more private and less supervised, the report stated.

On Friday, UNICEF and Facebook announced that the program would focus on promoting more effective policy making and more responsible business practices aimed at Bangladeshi children.

Their goals include providing all children with affordable access to high-quality online resources, protecting children from online harm while safeguarding privacy and teaching digital literacy to keep children informed, engaged and safe online.

Children are increasingly spending more time online at younger and younger ages and its important to teach them to how protect themselves online and remain safe. Online safety, today, is a critical and important conversation and between parents and kids, teachers and students, said Ritesh Mehta, Facebooks head of programs in India and South Asia.

With this partnership we want to encourage conversations about safety and technology early and often, in the same way we talk about being safe in public places or while playing or at school.

A parents view

Mosharraf Hossain, the father of a secondary school student, welcomed the joint effort by UNICEF and Facebook in his country.

This is a very good initiative for us. Safe internet has been demanded by everybody, he told BenarNews.

Many schools assign online class work, and children in affluent and even lower middle-class families have unhindered internet access, he said.

So, the children can easily go online. This is really very difficult to monitor what they have been surfing, Hossain said, adding that children use smart phones to access the internet.

We have come to know from media that many meritorious students have been involved in militancy and are being radicalized online. Pornography is another threat, he added. We cannot keep our children away from internet. So, internet use must be safe.
Firefighters spray water on a double-decker bus that caught fire and killed at least people in Tak province, western Thailand, March 30, 2018.

At least 20 people died when a double-decker bus carrying dozens of migrant workers from Myanmar caught fire Friday in western Thailand, authorities said.

The bus was transporting 47 people in Tak province, along the border with Myanmar, when it caught fire while heading to a factory in an industrial zone near Bangkok, police said.

The incident occurred just eight days after 19 people were killed when a bus traveling in another part of the country veered off the road and smashed into a tree.

Late on Friday, investigators said they were trying to determine what caused the double-decker to erupt in flames.

The bodies were sent to Taksin Hospital for identification, while officials need to interview all survivors, police Col. Krissanok Danudom told BenarNews. Officials need time to gather all evidence before they can specify the cause of this tragic accident.

Bus driver Bantoon Vitoon, 48, told investigators the fire erupted in the lower deck, which was packed with luggage and passengers belongings.

Upon seeing the fire, he said, he immediately stopped the bus and tried to wake his passengers.

Most of the victims were burned beyond recognition, making identification difficult, according to Col. Krissana Pattanacharoen, a spokesman for the Royal Thai Police.

Officials from Myawaddy town in southeastern Myanmar arrived in Tak province late Friday to meet the governor and police officials.

Thai government agencies will help workers who still want to travel to their destinations in Bangkok, while officials need to do DNA tests on the bodies, Tak Governor Charoenrit Sa-nguansat told reporters.

Ye Min, a member of the Aid Alliance Committee for Myanmar Workers (ACC), a Bangkok-based group that advocates for the rights of migrant workers, confirmed that the bus was carrying 47 people.

These workers were coming into Thailand through Mae Sot [district] with a chartered bus, Ye Min told the Myanmar Service of Radio Free Asia which is affiliated with BenarNews.

Thailand has the second highest road traffic fatality rate in the world after Libya, at 36 per 100,000 with an annual estimate of more than 24,000 or 66 deaths every day, according to the World Health Organization.

Thailand also is a popular destination for migrant workers from across the Greater Mekong Delta region, as well other parts of Asia. After its economy grew at an average annual rate of 7.5 percent in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the country created millions of jobs that helped pull people out of poverty, according to the World Bank.

Thailand has about 2.7 million registered migrant workers, mainly from Myanmar and Cambodia, according to the Thai Labor Ministry.
In cancer care, Tata Trusts objectives include early detection and prevention to bring about a significant improvement in survival outcomes and decrease in health expenditure

Tata Trusts and search engine Google are exploring options to use the tech giants latest solutions to access primary health and cancer care for the poor in India.

Tata Trusts chairman Ratan Tata met Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin along with chief executive Sundar Pichai at their headquarters in California to discuss the future collaboration.

Pichai led his senior colleagues to give Tata an overview of how their latest technology developments can impact society.

Among the topics discussed included trends in machine learning and increasing access to the Internet in India.

In cancer care, Tata Trusts objectives include early detection and prevention to bring about a significant improvement in survival outcomes and decrease in health expenditure.

Tata Trusts is partnering with state governments to set up cancer hospitals so that patients, particularly the economically challenged, do not have to travel to the handful existing ones, suffering unbearable expenses.
Joint partnership between Apollo, RCR and HEE to help up-skill Indian radiologists through exposure to the NHS system in the UK.

The Apollo Hospitals Group announced its collaboration with the Royal College of Radiologists (RCR), UK to help address the shortage of skilled radiologists in the NHS and the Indian health system. Through the partnership, Apollo Radiology International (ARI), a specialty division of the Group, will provide opportunities to Indian radiologists to work for fixed terms in the UK. These jobs will help in providing experience and exposure to contemporary clinical developments in the field of radiology. The partnership envisages to help address the shortage of skilled radiologists in the UK NHS system.

As part of the collaboration, eligible Indian radiologists will work and train in the NHS partner hospitals for a three year period. The jobs will involve providing a general radiology service to the UK hospital and at the same time getting subspecialty training in their area of interest. At the end of the three year period the Radiologists will come back to India and exercise their enhanced skills for the benefit of Indian patients and improve the quality and delivery of health services.

The leadership of the Royal College of Radiologists and Health Education England (HEE), which provides national leadership and coordination for the education and training for the health workforce in the UK, agreed the collaboration with the Apollo Group during their visit to India.

Speaking on the collaboration, Ms. Sangita Reddy, Joint Managing Director, Apollo Hospitals Group said, We are delighted to have partnered with the Royal College of Radiologists and Health Education England to enhance multifold the availability of trained radiologists in the NHS and Indian health system. The need rapidly to up-skill and train radiologists is of immense importance, given the need for the specialty in the prevention and management of diseases, quaternary care and surgical interventions. This partnership builds on the legacy of collaboration between Apollo and the NHS, and we are confident that this engagement will help address the critical shortage of a skilled radiology workforce in India and the UK.

Dr. Nicola Strickland, President of the Royal College of Radiologists said, This partnership will ensure that Indian radiologists get an opportunity to enhance their skills through exposure to the NHS system. Not only will this be beneficial to help address the shortages in the NHS, it will also strengthen the Indian health delivery system, when these trained radiologists return to work in India after their three year engagement. We look forward to strengthening this partnership in the years ahead.
Pornhub Offers Premium Access To Cities That Sound Dirty! Pulse oi-Syeda Farah

The world's most popular adult website - Pornhub is always known for its tongue-in-cheek sense of humour. The site is not only famous for its content, but for also for its marketing stunts, which can gain anybody's attention!

Currently, Pornhub is running an offer in which it is requesting people from across the world to come forward and register their place's name if the city has a double meaning to it!

Find out more details about the same below.

The Valentine's Day Offer Pornhub has always been known for its cheeky offers, as they come up with some of the best marketing stunts. On Valentine's day, the great adult site offered all users free access to its premium section for the entire day. These types of offers keep changing, event and occasion wise. They Decided To Play The Saviour Since they helped out the singletons on the Valentine's day, they decided to play saviour to another unfortunate group, which is none other than the residents of towns which had unintentionally double-meaning names to it. There Are So Many Such Places! The site is all set to offer the residents of these towns FREE access to its premium section for life. When they ran the campaign, they realised there are so many such cities and towns that have unintentional double meaning names to their credit. There Is An Indian Town As Well! Though there have been numerous cities that have registered themselves, the site on its end has shortlisted 50 locations from across the world for this offer. The 50 cities include exactly one Indian city. The Indian City Is The proud city of India is none other than "Cumbum" in Tamil Nadu. There is another city with the same name in Andhra Pradesh, but then Pornhub selected the one in Tamil Nadu. So, people out there can go ahead and chill with the new offer around the world, especially if their city has a double-meaning name to it.

GET THE BEST BOLDSKY STORIES! Allow Notifications

Story first published: Friday, March 30, 2018, 16:19 [IST]
Traditions and Customs on Good Friday Faith Mysticism lekhaka-Shabana Kachhi

Its a Friday, a day which most of us look forward to. But this Friday is very different from the rest as it holds a special significance, especially to the Christian community.

Today is traditionally celebrated as Good Friday, the day when Jesus Christ was crucified on the cross on the account of the sins committed by the people. It is usually observed during the holy week of the Paschal Triduum, the three holy days for the Christians. All members of the Christian community such as the Anglican, Catholic, Orthodox and reformed are strict observers of the Good Friday.

This is a very important day for the Christians as their beloved Jesus suffered greatly for all the mankind. It is a day of fasting and penance, a tradition which is carried on from 2th century AD. Christians gather together in churches to mourn the death of Gods Son.



The story behind Jesus crucifixion-

According to accounts in the Gospel, Jesus was in the radar of the Jews and the romans alike but due to lack of evidence and witnesses, Jesus could not be arrested and punished. One of Jesus disciples, Judas betrayed Jesus Christ, which led to his arrest by the roman soldiers. When asked to testify himself, Jesus said nothing. He had predicted this all along and knew all this was the plan of God. The soldiers arrested Jesus and hanged him on the cross, where he was beaten and left to bleed to death. This was the most painful form of death any one could imagine but Jesus Christ suffered to pay for the sins of the mankind. His last words to God were to forgive his sinners for they werent aware of whom they were killing.



Why is it called Good Friday?

Many people assume that this day is a day of great celebration for the Christians due to its name. But it is indeed a day of mourning. This day was when Jesus Christ sacrificed himself and paid for the sins committed by the people. But it is called Good Friday as it signifies the end of Evil over Good. Jesus agreed to sacrifice himself to pay for the sins of the mankind.

Other sources reveal that it was originally called Gods Friday but later changed into Good Friday. Other languages refer to this day as holy Friday.



Different Customs and Traditions of Good Friday-

This day of Mourning is celebrated very soberly by the Christians. There are some customs and traditions celebrated on this day-



1) Fasting-

It is a very important tradition of Good Friday. Christians are observes fasting as a sign of mourning and the loss of their beloved Son of God. People take only one meal on this day.



2) Attending the Church service-

Christians should attend the church service of three hours on Good Friday. The church is especially made ready for the service with the pulpit and the alter left bare and no candles lit everywhere. The last seven words spoken by Jesus are included in the service. The three hours Jesus was on cross, from mid noon to 3 pm, is the time which is very sacred to the Christian. This time is spent by reciting hymns and doing meditation.



3) Wearing black-

Black is the colour of mourning and Christians wear black on this day. Everyone from the Priest to the deacons wear black to the service. The cross at the church, pictures and statues are also covered with black to signify mourning.



4) Eating Hot cross buns-

These buns have a special significance for this day as they are covered with a cross on top. Stalls outside churches serve freshly made hot cross buns to people after the service.



5) Read bible and do good deeds-

We should always remember that Jesus was crucified for the sins of the mankind. This should be remembered and taught to the kids too. Doing good deeds on this day will go on to show that his sacrifice was worthy and that humankind is refraining from committing sins.


By Geoff Percival

A wealth management firm which inherited a number of assets and clients of collapsed investment company Custom House Capital has been fined 220,000 by the Central Bank for regulatory breaches relating to the management of client assets.

Dublin-based BCWM has acted, since 2011, as manager of a portfolio of properties owned by former clients of Custom House Capital, which collapsed after the discovery of the misuse of over 66m of client funds seven years ago.

The liquidator of Custom House Capital, KPMGs Kieran Wallace, appointed BCWM as manager of these properties, effectively making it the new investment manager to the former clients of Custom House Capital. The new fine relates to all client funds and not necessarily those inherited from Custom House Capital.

However, the Central Bank said it identified failures by BCWM which has admitted to the breaches regarding necessary arrangements for opening client asset accounts.

These breaches included BCWMs failure to clearly distinguish accounts as ones holding client assets; and a failure to get necessary confirmation letters from banks and custodians when opening client accounts.

One of the principal objectives of any client asset regime is to ensure there is clear and unambiguous ownership of client assets, which allows for the efficient and cost-effective return of those assets in the event of the insolvency of a regulated firm. While there was no evidence of a loss of client assets in this case, BCWM breached key provisions of the client asset requirements relating to certainty of ownership of client assets, said the Central Banks director of enforcement and anti-money laundering Seana Cunningham.

In this case, the firms non-compliance with fundamental obligations ... could have resulted in a delay in returning clients assets in the event of the firms insolvency, she said. BCWMs is the 188th fine handed out by the Central Bank since 2006, with the combined value over that time amounting to just over 61.7m.

Last year saw over 7.2m in fines with AIB, Bank of Ireland, KBC and Ulster Bank among those fined over 1m each.
Police in the North are investigating online comments by one of the jurors in the Belfast rape trial.

The comments on Broadsheet.ie on Wednesday afternoon refer to the acquittals of two rugby players and their friends.

Just seven hours after the jury cleared Paddy Jackson, Stuart Olding, Blane McIlroy and Rory Harrison of all charges relating to a teenage girl, one of its members went online to talk about the case.

The Irish Times says the first comment appeared at 8.26pm.

The posts explained the reasons the jury had come to its unanimous verdict, why deliberations took less than four hours and he answered questions from other users.

The paper claims it has spoken to the juror who feared he was about to be arrested.

The incident has been referred to the Lord Chief Justice, the North's most senior judge, and the comments have been taken down.

The juror last night told The Irish Times that none of their comments were connected to jury deliberations, and so claimed that they did not breach the judges order.

However, the juror also said they had been ordered to remove the comments by the Lord Chief Justices office, after which the juror contacted the website, which took them down.

The juror also told the Irish Times: Im in big trouble, after they were asked by the Lord Chief Justices office whether they had a solicitor.

The juror said: Im sitting here in the kitchen waiting for the cops to arrive, two PSNI constables to arrive and Im going to be handcuffed away and all Ive done is just, I made a posting about, this is why there was a return of not guilty.

When we were all discharged, the 11 of us, the only thing the judge said was, Do you know what, go about your everyday life, whatever, business as usual, but dont reveal discussions within the jury room, and none of that was like part of anything I have said.
The Master of the National Maternity Hospital says the Eighth Amendment creates an unacceptable risk.

It is eight weeks today until polling day in the abortion referendum.

Both sides have launched their campaigns and are preparing for the debate to kick start.

Dr Rhona Mahony says some of the cases she has come across in the past made her mind up for her.

Dr Mahony said: "She was approximately 14 weeks gestation, but somatic function was maintained because she was pregnant in order to incubate her baby in what was described as a macabre experiment.

"And this was a direct consequence of the Eighth Amendment because what you had here was the conflict between, if you like, the actual clinical situation and the risk, and this balance of rights."

Meanwhile, TDs and Senators have been warned by RTE not to wear badges, emblems or clothing supporting either side of the abortion debate if they appear on the broadcaster talking about other issues.

In a letter sent to Oireachtas members, politicians were told they can wear items expressing a view if they are being interviewed about abortion.

However, in the interest of fair and impartial broadcasting, they should not do so if being interviewed on other subjects.

The broadcaster asked politicians to respect producers and staff if asked to remove badges or emblems before a broadcast.
The PSNI have questioned two people for allegedly revealing the identity of the complainant in the Belfast rape trial online.

Detective Chief Superintendent Paula Hillman had said on Wednesday the complainant in the trial of Paddy Jackson and Stuart Olding was illegally named by some people on social media.

This is against the law as complainants in rape trials in Ireland and the UK are entitled to anonymity.

A spokesperson for the PSNI said two people had been interviewed in relation to an offence under section five of the UK's Sexual Offences Amendment Act 1992, which prohibits the publication of the name or images of a rape complainant.

The spokesperson said two files have been sent to the North's Public Prosecution Service and their investigation is ongoing.

The high-profile trial, which ran for 42 days, generated an unprecedented level of public attention and prompted calls from Jackson's defence solicitor for a crackdown on social media comment during criminal proceedings.

It has also renewed the debate on whether defendants in rape trials should also be entitled to anonymity, with their names only being revealed if they are convicted.

In another post-trial development, a number of media outlets are challenging reporting restrictions still placed on the case.

Restrictions preventing reporting on legal exchanges that take place in the absence of the jury usually fall away once the case is over, as the issue of prejudicing jurors is no longer relevant.

A number of outlets that covered the marathon trial are now seeking to get ongoing restrictions imposed by Judge Patricia Smyth lifted.

While the issue has been listed for a mention hearing before the judge on April 25, lawyers for press and broadcasters are endeavouring to have the matter dealt with next week.

On the day of Paddy Jackson's acquittal, DCS Hillman had said on Wednesday: "She was named on social media sites contrary to the trial, contrary to her legal entitlement.

"Any breach of this entitlement is and will be investigated."

Also on Wednesday, Paddy Jackson'ss solicitor Joe McVeigh QC said: "Vile commentary expressed on social media, going well beyond fair comment, has polluted the sphere of public discourse and raised real concerns about the integrity of the trial process.

"Several days of this trial were lost due to problems thrown up by the intrusive infection of the process by social media.

"All the lawyers were distracted by having to man the barriers against the flood of misinformed, misconceived and malicious content on the internet, particularly during the last phase of this trial, and worryingly even at the hands of public servants who should have known better.

"There is no reason to believe that this problem will not worsen."
Update 5.45pm: Russia has retaliated over the expulsion of one of its Ireland-based diplomats by expelling by an Irish one from Moscow.

Confirming the anticipated move by the Kremlin, the Government branded it unjustified and regrettable.

Earlier this week, Ireland ordered a Russian diplomat to leave the embassy in Rathgar, Dublin.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said Ireland was showing solidarity with the UK in the wake of the Salisbury chemical attack on former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Tanaiste Simon Coveney.

On Friday, Tanaiste and foreign affairs minister Simon Coveney confirmed Russia had reacted in kind.

A spokesman for Mr Coveney said: "There is no justification for this expulsion.

"Our staff do not engage in activities which are incompatible with their diplomatic status. This decision to expel an Irish diplomat is regrettable."

After taking action against Russia, Mr Varadkar insisted he had not undermined Ireland's neutrality.

Sergei and Yulia Skripal.

Some opposition parties in the Dail, including Sinn Fein, heavily criticised the diplomatic sanction imposed by the Taoiseach.

Russia's ambassador to Ireland, Yury Filatov, also criticised the expulsion of one of his country's diplomats.

"This kind of decision is totally unwarranted, uncalled for, senseless and regrettable," he said.

Earlier: Irish diplomat instructed to leave Russia

One Irish diplomat has been instructed to leave Russia the Department of Foreign Affairs has confirmed.

The Kremlin is responding after a group of western countries, including Ireland, supported Britain in the wake of the Salisbury spy poisoning.

A spokesperson for the Tanaiste says there's no justification for the "regrettable" decision as Irish staff do not engage in activities which are incompatible with their diplomatic status.

Meanwhile, it is understood the condition of Yulia Skripal is improving dramatically, and she is now eating and drinking.
Update - 1.47pm: A pro-choice group campaigning for a yes vote in the upcoming referendum on the Eighth Amendment have said that they are "disheartened and frustrated" that pro-life protesters displayed posters claiming to show graphic images of aborted babies at their event in Co. Waterford on Wednesday.

The group, called Parents Together for Yes, held their coffee morning at their local GAA centre in Tramore when pro-life protesters displayed the posters while taking photos of parents and children attending.

Tramore mother, Jac Sinnott, a member of Parents Together for Yes, said: These coffee mornings are family events where we can bring our children, so we as parents can talk and inform ourselves about why were voting yes.

"We were shaken to find a small group of pro-life protesters at the GAA centre, targeting us together with our children.

"There was no consideration at all for the fact that some of our children were very upset by these graphic, inaccurate images. They were taking photos of us and our children which felt very intrusive."

Spokesperson for Parents Together for Yes, Sinead Redmond, said the actions will not stop the group from continuing their work.

Ms Redmond said: One in two women who need abortion care are already mothers - we wont be forced out of this debate.

"We campaign because we want a more caring and compassionate Ireland for ourselves and for our children.

Having our event for families targeted with upsetting, inaccurate images feels intimidating and silencing. Open discussion is a cornerstone of democracy.

9.45am:

By Daniel Keating

Anti-abortion posters claiming to show graphic images of aborted babies that were displayed in Waterford city have been described as distressing.

The images are being used as part of protests by Pro-Life campaigners.

Speaking on WLRFM's 'Deise Today', parent Martina Collender told Eamon Keane, parents for choice were having a coffee morning in Tramore, Co. Waterford, which was designed for parents to bring their small children to talk about the abortion issue.

According to Ms Collender, these distressing images were displayed at the front gate as little children were brought in, and as a result, the young children became very upset.

The large posters claiming to show images of aborted babies were also later displayed outside University Hospital Waterford (UHW).

Ms Collender said: I have seen these images without warning popping up all over the city and its very difficult to believe these are allowed.

These are very gruesome images of unborn children, they're incredibly graphic and very upsetting.

According to a number of attendees at the event, it is alleged that a number of Pro-Life protestors were taking pictures and videos of parents arriving at the coffee morning with their children.

Ms Collender believes that these groups can make their point without resorting to these graphic images.

People Before Profit member and campaigner Una Dunphy, who also attended the coffee morning, said: I saw them [pro-life protestors] setting up outside and was pretty much aware of what they do and how their tactics play out.

According to Ms Dunphy, one parent was so upset that her children were being photographed that she made sure organisers got in touch with Gardai.

Waterford City and County Councillor Jason Murphy said that he could only imagine the distress that these images have caused.

I wouldnt engage in shock tactics because I dont think there is any need to engage in shock tactics, lets make the argument in a very reasoned and measured way. said Cllr Murphy.
A businesswoman from Mullingar in Co Westmeath is celebrating the 40th anniversary of her life-saving kidney transplant along with her donor mother.

It is 40 years since the establishment of the Irish Kidney Association and kidney donor card in 1978, the same year an nine-year-old girl called Edel O'Brien underwent the kidney transplant.

Her mother Moira had given birth to her fifth child, a 12lb baby boy, four months before donating her kidney.

She was deemed to be a more suitable donor match for her ailing daughter than her husband Patrick.

Thanks to the transplant Edel, now 49, is a busy businesswoman and mother of four children ranging in age from 15 to 29 years.

Moira, who lives in Tyrrellspass, is now 76 years old and along with her husband, Patrick, is a proud grandparent of 13.

Edel said she was gravely ill before her transplant and spent "a year in hospital surrounded by elderly patients" as she was the only child there before undergoing her transplant.

Edel in hospital around the time of her transplant.

At the time dialysis treatment had only begun in only three places in the country. There are now 23 locations around the country where you can get treatment.

She spent her time "being spoilt by staff" in Jervis Street and St Mary's at the Phoenix Park, as she was the only child.

Edel said: "I used to play dress up when my cousin from Dublin came to visit and the hospital photographer was always there to take photos of us, including one of us dressing up as nurses."

Edel dressed up as a nurse with her cousin from Dublin when a patient at St. Mary's.

The transplant took place on December 15, 1978, and on St Stephen's Day President Hillary came to visit her in hospital as the transplant story made the headlines.

They are sharing their story in support of Organ Donor Awareness Week which takes place from March 31 to April 7.

Mark Murphy, Chief Executive of the Irish Kidney Association, said: 2017 was a record year for organ transplantation for Ireland with a total of 327 organs being transplanted into 321 patients including a total of 23 children/paediatric transplants.

"It is thanks to the gift of organ donation that almost 3,500 transplanted people in Ireland are enjoying extended life."

At the end of 2017, he said, there were 524 people active on the various transplant-waiting pools for heart, liver, kidney, lung and pancreas.

Mr Murphy said: The selfless and profound generosity of the families of 99 deceased donors in Ireland resulted in a total of 260 deceased donor transplants taking place in 2017.

"The 260 deceased donor organ transplants comprised 141 kidneys, 62 Liver, 16 Heart, 36 Lungs and five pancreas transplants.

A record of 51 living donor kidney transplants were also carried out by the Beaumont Hospital transplant team. Last year the record 311 transplants were carried out at Irelands three transplanting hospitals.

Of these 311 transplants, Beaumont carried out 12 paediatric kidney transplants in Temple Street Hospital from both living and deceased donors.

Mr Murphy said: We are aware that an additional 15 Irish patients underwent 16 HSE-funded transplants in the UK comprising of eight paediatric liver transplants, two paediatric lung transplants and a paediatric heart transplant.

"There were 11 paediatric organ transplants in total, three paired exchange kidney transplants (kidney swap) and a combined heart and lung transplant.

For the first time in 39 years, transplantation is keeping up with dialysis, with 2,074 people on dialysis. This is one less person on dialysis than in the previous year 2016.

Edel at a rugby match with her brothers recently.

Free information fact files can be obtained from the Irish Kidney Association and are available nationwide from pharmacies, GP surgeries and Citizen Information Offices.

You can apply for Organ Donor Cards by phoning the Irish Kidney Association on 01-6205306 or Free text the word DONOR to 50050.

For more information visit www.ika.ie.
Chinas defunct and reportedly out-of-control Tiangong 1 space station is expected to re-enter Earths atmosphere sometime this weekend.

It poses only a slight risk to people and property on the ground, since most of the bus-size, 8.5-ton vehicle is expected to burn up on re-entry, although space agencies dont know exactly when or where that will happen.

Below are some questions and answers about the station, its re-entry and the past and future of Chinas ambitious space program.

WHAT WILL HAPPEN AND HOW GREAT IS THE DANGER?

The European Space Agency predicts the station will re-enter the atmosphere between Saturday morning and Sunday afternoon  an estimate it calls highly variable, likely because the ever-changing shape of the upper atmosphere affects the speed of objects falling into it.

The Chinese space agencys latest estimate puts re-entry between Saturday and Wednesday.

Western space experts say they believe China has lost control of the station. Chinas chief space laboratory designer Zhu Zongpeng has denied Tiangong was out of control, but hasnt provided specifics on what, if anything, China is doing to guide the crafts re-entry.

Based on Tiangong 1s orbit, it will come to Earth somewhere between latitudes of 43 degrees north and 43 degrees south, or roughly somewhere over most of the United States, China, Africa, southern Europe, Australia and South America. Out of range are Russia, Canada and northern Europe.

Based on its size, only about 10 percent of the spacecraft will likely survive being burned up on re-entry, mainly its heavier components such as its engines. The chances of anyone person on Earth being hit by debris is considered less than one in a trillion.

Ren Guoqiang, Chinas defense ministry spokesman, told reporters Thursday that Beijing has been briefing the United Nations and the international community about Tiangong 1s re-entry through multiple channels.

___

HOW COMMON IS MAN-MADE SPACE DEBRIS?

Debris from satellites, space launches and the International Space Station enters the atmosphere every few months, but only one person is known to have been hit by any of it: American woman Lottie Williams, who was struck but not injured by a falling piece of a U.S. Delta II rocket while exercising in an Oklahoma park in 1997.

Most famously, Americas 77-ton Skylab crashed through the atmosphere in 1979, spreading pieces of wreckage near the southwestern Australia city of Perth, which fined the U.S. $400 for littering.

The breakup on re-entry of the Columbia space shuttle in 2003 killed all seven astronauts and sent more than 80,000 pieces of debris raining down on a large swath of the Southern United States. No one on the ground was injured.

In 2011, NASAs Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite was considered to pose a slight risk to the public when it came down to Earth 20 years after its launching. Debris from the 6-ton satellite ended up falling into the Pacific Ocean, causing no damage.

Chinas own space program raised major concerns after it used a missile to destroy an out-of-service Chinese satellite in 2007, creating a large and potentially dangerous cloud of debris.

WHAT IS TIANGONG 1 AND WHAT WAS IT USED FOR?

Launched in 2011, Tiangong 1 was Chinas first space station, serving as an experimental platform for bigger projects such as the Tiangong 2 launched in September 2016 and a future permanent Chinese space station.

The station, whose name translates as Heavenly Palace, played host to two crewed missions that included Chinas first female astronauts and served as a test platform for perfecting docking procedures and other operations. Its last crew departed in 2013 and contact with it was cut in 2016. Since then it has been orbiting gradually closer and closer to Earth on its own while being monitored.

The station had two modules, one for its solar panels and engines, and one for a pair of astronauts to live in and conduct experiments. A third astronaut slept in the Shenzhou spaceships that docked with the station, which also contained facilities for personal hygiene and food preparation.
Suburban co-working firm Waterman Business Centres has opened its third flexible office space in Melbourne's outer eastern suburbs.

The Waterman Group has taken a whole 7500 square metre building on the Spooner family's Caribbean Park estate in Scoresby, 29 kilometres from CBD, which it has leased for 10 years.

The move demonstrates how the growing flexible office trend has spread into the outer suburbs far from its inner city origins in refurbished industrial and ageing office buildings.

Waterman's co-working space at Caribbean Park

Waterman already has 5000 square metres of space in one of two towers at Vicinitys Chadstone Shopping Centre and another office at the Casey Business Centre in Narre Warren, in the Fountain Gate shopping complex grounds.
The transformation of Martin Place is well underway with an array of new tenants in both office and retail.

Maquarie Bank and Investa are developing two new office towers, while Dexus and Cbus are adding to the retail mix.

The City of Sydney is also engaged, pledging to create a pedestrian palazzo-style ambience.

Today Martin Place is home to a vast range of technology and high-end retailers, including Rolex, Brooks Brothers, Omega, Tesla, Giorgio Armani, Rimowa, COS, Farage and, most recently, Suitsupply.
I was conscious of John keeping a protective eye out for me. At our boarding schools in southern Africa, when I'd broken some rule, he should have, as a prefect, reported it to the headmaster, but instead he imposed the perfectly agreeable punishment of requiring me to learn some pages of a book on Greek mythology by heart.

One of my earliest memories of John is him very reluctantly taking me to the cinema on his bicycle. I was about four and it was the first time I had been to the cinema. I was taken into this huge room full of noisy kids and suddenly it went dark. I never liked the dark, then this vast face appeared on the screen. I started to scream and John kept saying, "Shut up" but I just screamed and screamed until he had to take me home. He was so cross about missing that movie.

ANTHONY: John and I grew up in Northern Rhodesia [now Zambia] and Malawi. John is five years older than me and that's a big gap in childhood. We didn't become the good friends that we are now until I was in my 40s.

London-based philosopher Anthony (A.C.) Grayling , 68, and his brother, retired brewer John, 73, grew up in Africa, where their family life was thrown into turmoil by the murder of their sister. They are each others best friend.

I moved to England at age 18 to study humanities at Sussex University. When I was 19, our sister Jennifer was murdered in Johannesburg. [Jennifer was stabbed 20 times and her body found six weeks later in a river.] A few weeks later our mother died of a heart attack from the shock. My mother was very remote. I can't recall ever walking hand in hand with her, having a kiss from her or being hugged by her.

My father and John were living in South Africa and I flew there from England to be with them. We got through my mother and sister's deaths in this rather numb, shocked state without saying much. The men in our family did not speak about emotional things. In hindsight, that tragedy brought John and me closer.

When John was in his early 30s, he came to stay with me in Oxford, where I'd gone to do my doctorate in philosophy. It was the late 1970s and his first marriage had broken down. He asked me to go driving with him around Europe but my own marriage was breaking down at the time so I couldn't get away. I've always regretted not going; I feel that I let him down.

In 1986 there was a turning point in our relationship when I visited him at his home in Swaziland. Before that I had always thought he disapproved of me for being a bit reckless, and this was the first time I didn't feel that way. We were very easy together. Our father died shortly after, then my desire to keep in touch with John and make something of our relationship started to kick in. I realised there was just the two of us left and that really woke me up.

After he moved to Australia in 1996, I didn't see that much of him. Then in 2009 I started coming here regularly to speak at writers' festivals. It's a great delight to see him here and I look forward to it immensely. He travels with me when I'm here and he's taken to the roadshow tremendously. When people are lining up to have my books signed, he patrols the queue and says, "I'm his brother, I taught him everything he knows!"
Daniel Sloss isnt afraid of being controversial, offensive or crude.

When we meet for our interview, it was he who began with a question.

The line of questioning is probably not fit for print, (although you can read about it on twitter if you are intrigued) but it does really prepare one for the kind of comedian and the kind of person he is.

The 27-year-old Scot is back for his third appearance at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival to follow up from his acclaimed appearance last year where his show So? alternated between revelling in the relationships that had broken up in the wake of his performance and riffing on the death of his sister.

It wasnt an easy watch, but it was hilarious and earned him rave reviews.
Colour is the defining element of Impressionism. Early on some referred to the group as the Colourists; driven by a desire to paint what they saw, their obsessions were colour and light.

A new exhibition, Colours of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musee d'Orsay, examines the story of modern art's most significant movement through this prism. Curated by Marine Kisiel and Paul Perrin, of the Musee d'Orsay, for the National Gallery Singapore and Art Gallery of South Australia, the show features 65 works by the likes of Manet, Renoir, Pissarro and Morisot.

Berthe Morisot, France, 1841-1895, L'hortensia (The hydrangea), 1894, oil on canvas, 73.1 x 60.4 cm, Musee d'Orsay, Paris, France. Credit:Patrice Schmidt

Originally the term 'Impressionists' was used as an insult, to scoff at this radical new way of depicting the world. The insinuation was that their work amounted to mere impressions of reality and had little substance. What they were trying to do, in fact, was depict modern life. The world had changed and they were determined to reflect their reality. At a certain point they took on the mantle of Impressionists with pride.

Perrin says the lightening of the palette was first and foremost a consequence of rejecting the typical subjects of history painting, as well as academic conventions. "This art was to be resolutely realistic, concerned with representing the beauty of the visible world and based on direct observation of the subject."
The 12-episode series featured Sarah Koenig, a former producer with the weekly public radio program This American Life, telling the story of the killing, investigation and trial in a conversational narrative with interviews. It was downloaded more than 175 million times and won a Peabody Award.

Syed's new lawyer, Justin Brown, said he had been unable to locate the witness, Asia McClain, until the Serial team began investigating Syed's story. He said the podcast had been "enormously helpful" in pursuing justice for his client.

"Serial kind of shook the trees, and that enabled us to get in contact with Asia McClain and bring her to Baltimore for the post conviction hearing two years ago," Brown said at a news conference Thursday. "Serial has also helped build this groundswell of support for us and for Adnan and for the case, and that has fueled these efforts and helped us to fight on as we have."

McClain sent Syed two letters after he was arrested in 1999 stating that she had seen him at Woodlawn Public Library at the time that Lee was killed. Syed asked his lawyer, Maria Cristina Gutierrez, to contact McClain. She said she had "and nothing had come of it," the panel said.

After Syed was convicted, it was determined that Gutierrez had not in fact contacted McClain.
A major health risk.

A builder was talking to me at a party, telling me about all the health and safety hazards of the house-construction business - he was going on and on about it like he had the toughest job in the world, so I thought stuff it, and I started telling him about all the health and safety hazards of the sentence-construction business. I didnt want to play the whole whos got the more dangerous job one-upping game but he kind of forced my hand. My mangled typing hand, with its bruised thumb-webbing from slammed-down laptop-lids.

The builder had just finished telling me about the time he drilled a hole through his finger while putting down roof sheets. I shrugged and said, Oh yeah. Thats pretty bad, I guess. But I once inserted a generic non-compatible ink-cartridge into a printer and black ink squirted all over my brand new white shirt. From Industrie! A non-sale item! The ink washed out eventually but it did take three goes, scrubbing with Velvet soap! Theres still a tiny stain on the pocket. I dont care. I wear it as a badge of honour!

The builder stared blankly, then he told me about the time he fell off a scaffold and got a permanently fractured vertebrae. I said, Yeah OK, I suppose that would be kind of painful. But let me tell you, years of hunching over a computer has taken a terrible toll on my body. Ive got Rounded-Shoulder Syndrome! Thats right! I have to wear special strapping designed for people with poor posture and also pubescent girls who are having trouble with their developing breasts. And its held on with velcro so every time I walk anywhere, I make a khhhhhh-khhhhhh noise like corduroy pants with extra grip. My family laugh when they hear me coming. Laugh with their cruel mouths! Every day is agony, but I endure it with dignity.
ACT crime fighters are using coercive hearings to interrogate Canberra criminals in a bid to disrupt and target organised crime in the capital.

Plans to expand the "star chambers" are already under way, with police currently training more authorised investigators to bolster their ability to conduct the inquisitions.

ACT Policing confirmed it had held the secretive hearings in December and intend to conduct more in the coming months.

ACT Policing criminal investigations response officer in charge Rachel Batterham said the coercive hearings would be used to target criminals' hip pockets and hit crime syndicates where it hurts  their profits.

Coercive powers were introduced in the ACT in 2003 as part of the Confiscation of Criminal Assets Act, but have been largely unused.
For more than two decades, Rebbecca Swansborough and her family have run their auction house at the old Causeway Hall in Kingston. On its wooden floors, children from the neighbourhood would often come and play as some of the capital's rare finds and antiques were carried out the doors.

But on Saturday, C&G Auctions will hold their final bidding after Ms Swansborough received a "shock" eviction notice from the ACT government late last year.

Rebbecca Swansborough says her small family business (C&G Auctions) will likely go under after they are forced to pack up and leave the heritage-listed Causeway Hall over the weekend. Credit:karleen minney

"It was completely out of the blue. They accused me of squatting even though I had a sub-lease and threatened to lock me out," she said.

"It's been a nightmare. I have until Easter Sunday to get out and I have no where else to go."
Just half of Canberrans' attempts to contact youth mental health service Kids Helpline were successful last year as demand grows for time and resource-intensive online counselling.

The organisation's annual Insights Report found ACT response rates had dropped from 61 per cent in 2015 to 51 per cent in 2017.

The Kids Helpline annual Insights Report has been released. Credit:Robert Rough RNR

Demand increased 27 per cent in the same period.

Yourtown strategy and research head John Dalgleish said resourcing issues contributed to the Kids Helpline response rates, with 70 per cent of the service's funding linked to its own fundraising efforts.
The rest is history and Ive been there ever since, Mr Pampling said. "Busking gave me a reason to get up every morning and go to work. "It was just the sheer fact I enjoyed music and it was something I could do. Its not very interesting watching grass grow, especially when youre blind. "There were some days when the remuneration would be better than others, some days I could get $5, other days I could get $10. "But many people came up and told me how they appreciated the music, especially older people who said the music reminded them of when they were young and used to dance to similar tunes."

Mr Pampling has become a local icon after busking six days per week for the past 30 years, with business owners and strangers in Queen Street Mall helping him whenever they could. "I feel the people of Brisbane and Queensland that Ive met have been so generous and friendly and helpful," he said. "Im sitting in there playing music and I only have to say 'could you get me some dinner or lunch please?' and I always get a 'yes, what would you like?' in return." "I ring Oasis Juice Bar just about every day and order a Hamilton Heaven smoothie, which they (the staff) bring over to me. "The owners of the Myer Centre Carvery and Seafood shop send up fish and chips to me at least once per week.

"FantAsia also took a picture of me and put it in their store because they said I had won a competition. "They gave me a book of vouchers, which allowed me to get one free meal per week and all I needed to do was call and they would bring it up to me. "It ended up being closer to three free meals per week for more than 12 months - theyve been absolutely fabulous to me." Mr Pampling said some days the mall can be busy, but there won't be many "throwers" so he won't be given much money. Other days, the mall can be quiet, but there will be plenty of throwers. When he's not busking, Mr Pampling has been working with vision-impaired schoolchildren, teaching them how to use special computers which can talk and tell them what is on the screen.

The program, run through Link Vision, has grown from nine students to 72 and evolved into a computer club for vision-impaired children. After going into hospital for a hip replacement recently, Mr Pampling had to end his involvement with the Link Vision program. A GoFundMe campaign was also set up to support him because he was "having trouble with finances and buying food", according to the campaign creator Benjamin Webb. It was also established to raise awareness that this year was Mr Pampling's 30th year of busking in Brisbane. More than 400 people raised in excess of $12,000, just one day after the page went live. I feel so humbled," Mr Pampling said.

"This has never happened to me, every cent I've ever received in my life, Ive worked for. "I've never gone into Queen Street Mall with a certain amount of money I needed to get, I've just picked up whatever was thrown at me. "When Ben called me yesterday and told me the crowdfunding website he had set up was already up to $500, I was speechless. Its been better than generous." Mr Pampling said he was "blown away" when told on Friday that the campaign had surpassed $10,000. "Im moving into a retirement village at Taigum soon," he said.
Bumper-to-bumper traffic greeted thousands of motorists on the Bruce Highway and M1, as Brisbane residents tried to head to the Gold and Sunshine coasts for the Easter long weekend.

Almost 30 kilometres of congestion had built up on the two major coastal routes by early afternoon, meaning a frustrating start for those hoping to escape to the south-east's beaches.

More than 15 kilometres of congestion had formed on the Bruce Highway, with traffic cameras showing heavy delays through Burpengary. Credit:Department of Transport and Main Roads

Australian Traffic Network reporter Adam Smith said it was slow-going in southbound lanes on the M1, with heavy traffic stretching about 10 kilometres from Robina to Palm Beach about 1pm.

Meanwhile, almost 20 kilometres of congestion had formed on the Bruce Highway heading north, with traffic at a standstill from Dakabin to Caboolture as of 1pm, according to Mr Smith.
A man is fighting for life in hospital after being hit several times in the head during a fight in a tavern carpark north of Brisbane overnight, according to police.

It will be alleged two men began arguing inside the Narangba Valley Tavern about 11.30pm before their disagreement moved outside.

One man is in a critical condition after a fight outside the Narangba Valley Tavern.

Police said one of the men hit the other man several times in the head as their argument turned physical in the carpark.

The alleged victim, a 22-year-old local man, fell down and suffered serious head injuries before being rushed to the Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital in a critical condition.
RSPCA Queensland believes it has tracked down a man caught on camera hurling a cat over a fence and into the window of the house next door.

The video, which shows a man laughing after throwing the animal, sparked outrage on Thursday when the RSPCA appealed for help to track the man down.

A still from a video "that shows a man hurling a cat into a wall".

On Friday, RSPCA Queensland spokesman Michael Beatty said the man had now been found and thanked the public for their support.

"We are finalising the investigation and charges are expected to be laid next week," he said.
The 16-year-old boy accused of fatally stabbing a father of four in a carjacking was turned on by his friends for using a knife, according to court documents.

Five youths  Taisi Bartley, 20, Damian Siilata, 18, and three teens who cannot be named, aged 19, 17 and 16  will stand trial for murder over the death of Paul Costa in Brunswick West on July 2 last year.

The youths denied the charges during a three-day committal hearing before Peter Reardon in the Melbourne Magistrates Court this week.

Paul Costa was found dead in Dunstan Reserve, Brunswick West last year.

Prosecutors allege Mr Costa was seated in his red Nissan Patrol in Peacock Street about 9.50pm when the group jumped into his vehicle and dragged him out of the driver's seat and into the back.
More than 200 firefighters are still battling peat fires that have been burning in south-west Victoria for weeks, creating a carbon monoxide poisoning risk for local residents.

Peat in a Cobrico swamp continues to burn. Credit:John Martin

Specialist compressed air foam trucks were due to arrive in the region on Friday to help minimise smoke and carbon monoxide around the main fire near Cobrico, east of Warrnambool.

That blaze now covers 58 hectares and is seven metres deep. It is burning in a similar fashion to briquettes, releasing large quantities of smoke.

The fires, which started on St Patrick's Day, continued to burn as thousands of people were set to descend on Warrnambool and surrounding towns for the Easter Sprintcar Trail at Sungold Stadium.
Jakarta: Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak's decision to introduce a new law banning "fake news" has been lambasted by the opposition, the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia and civil society groups as a crackdown on free speech.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak in Parliament on Wednesday. Credit:AP

The government compromised a little this week by reducing the maximum proposed prison sentence from ten years to six, but the draconian law will be legislated just before Najib announces the date of general elections, due in a matter of weeks.

Singapore, too, is looking at how it can crack down on so-called fake news and in Indonesia, the recently passed "MD3 law" can allow an MP to press charges against someone who criticises the Parliament, or a member of the Parliament. MD3 is already being challenged by civil society groups.

Fake news, a term popularised by US President Donald Trump, is increasingly used by politicians around the world to discredit stories they simply don't like.
Seoul: North and South Korea will hold their first summit in more than a decade on April 27, South Korean officials say.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Credit:AP

It comes after North Korean leader Kim Jong-un pledged his commitment to denuclearisation as tensions ease between the old foes.

South Korean officials, who announced the date after high-level talks with North Korean counterparts at the border on Thursday, said the agenda would largely be denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula and improving inter-Korean relations.

The two Koreas had agreed to hold the summit at the border truce village of Panmunjom when South Korean President Moon Jae-in sent a delegation to Pyongyang this month to meet North Korean leader.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un made a surprise visit to Beijing on Wednesday, marking the young despot's first trip overseas since he came to power in 2011. A readout from China's Xinhua news agency of his exchanges with Chinese President Xi Jinping indicated that the ground was being prepared for Kim and US President Donald Trump to hold talks over Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program.

"The issue of denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula can be resolved," Kim said, according to Xinhua, "if South Korea and the United States respond to our efforts with goodwill, create an atmosphere of peace and stability while taking progressive and synchronous measures for the realisation of peace." (Tellingly, though, not a single North Korean account had Kim invoking "denuclearisation", the White House's stated goal for the Korean Peninsula.)

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing. Credit:AP

The Trump administration greeted the news from Beijing as a positive sign for further diplomacy. Trump indicated that he was looking forward to dialogue with Pyongyang - a marked reversal from last year's "fire and fury" bluster - and congratulated himself for applying the "maximum sanctions and pressure" that supposedly brought Kim closer to the table.

US State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert tweeted that Kim's visit "was an unprecedented, historic step in the right direction" and proof that Trump's "maximum pressure campaign is working". That may be the case, but it still remains profoundly unclear what concessions, if any, Trump may win in putative talks with North Korea. Here are three major questions that loom over the proceedings, should they take place.
Moscow: Russia has ordered new cuts to the number of Western envoys in the country, including Australian officials, escalating a dispute with the West over the poisoning of an ex-spy in Britain.

The massive expulsion of diplomats on both sides has reached a scale unseen even at the height of the Cold War.

Earlier this week, two dozen countries, including the United States, Australia and many EU nations, expelled more than 150 Russian diplomats in a show of solidarity with Britain over the poisoning of Russian ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Britain. Foreign Minister Julie Bishop gave two Russian spies six days to leave Australia.

Moscow has vehemently denied involvement in the March 4 nerve agent attack in the English city of Salisbury and announced the expulsion of the same number of diplomats from Britain and the US.
Tel Aviv: A mass protest of thousands of Palestinians along Gaza's border with Israel, billed as peaceful by its Hamas organisers, erupted in violence overnight, with at least 15 Palestinians killed and several hundred wounded in clashes with Israeli soldiers.

Friday marked the beginning of six weeks of protests Hamas had planned against Israel and the Palestinian displacement surrounding its 1948 creation. The demonstrations began with tent camps set up 800 metres from Gaza's 40-kilometre frontier with Israel; the climax is to come in mid-May with a mass march to the border that Israel fears will become an attempt to breach its territory.

Palestinian protesters evacuate a wounded youth during clashes with Israeli troops along the Gaza Strip border with Israel, on Friday. Credit:AP

Hamas leaders presented the initiative as a peaceful effort, though they readily conceded it might get out of hand. It did just that within hours, as demonstrators threw rocks and firebombs and rolled burning tires at Israeli soldiers, who responded with tear gas, rubber bullets and live ammunition.
Why read about Greece in a textbook when you can go there and see it for yourself?

Students at A. Fantis Parochial School of Sts. Constantine and Helen Cathedral did just that. Proving that learning is more effective when it is active rather than passive, eighth graders traveled to Athens, Greece, on Feb. 22 as part of a newly established cultural exchange program.

We call our new strategic vision, Classroom NYC & Beyond,  says Theodore Tasoulas, the principal of A. Fantis. We are seeking ways to make learning more meaningful and enriching by having students learn in authentic environments.

The week-long trip brought to life what many of the students have been studying at A. Fantis since kindergarten; Greek language, history and, arts. The trip gave students the opportunity to meet with students from the Greek private school Moralitis, and students from Public School 4 of New Iraklion. They learned about Hellenic culture and history, while establishing relationships with students at those schools. They continue to keep in touch via Skype.

While in Greece, the Brooklyn students gave a PowerPoint presentation on life in New York City and on Greek-American schools in the United States. They participated in a lively question and answer session, tackling subjects like where American kids go after school, their favorite music, sports, and school subjects. The eighth graders also performed Greek dances with their new friends, and introduced the Greek middle schoolers to American line dancing.

Of course, site-seeing was part of the agenda. The students managed to conduct research on ancient Greece by visiting different archaeological sites in Athens, Delphi, Cap Sounio, and Mycenae.

Their visit to the Cycladic Museum of Athens will serve as the impetus for another project about the lifestyle of ancient Greece, says Tasoulas.

Next month the students of Moralitis School will travel to Brooklyn to visit A. Fantis, and they will work together on a project that compares the two educational systems. The results will be presented at A. Fantis School.

The launch of the cultural exchange has given the eighth graders of A. Fantis a deeper comprehension and appreciation of Greece, says Tasoulas. It is the schools hope that they will find sponsorship to underwrite costs, and support the schools mission to foster cooperation between A. Fantis and its Athenian counterparts.

The trip was organized by Ioanna Glava, chairperson of the Greek Department, and Peter Vlitas, a school board member. The students were accompanied by parents and faculty members that included Amy Linden, chair of the A. Fantis English Department.

Locally, the A. Fantis students take learning outside the classroom by participating in projects like the Billion Oyster Project, where they cultivate and monitor oysters in the East River. They spend weekends at the Greenkill Environmental Center in upstate New York, engaging in science and adventure activities.

Once upon a time students had pen pals in other countries. Today its a whole different experience.

We are preparing our students to become 21st-century learners by taking learning outside the classroom, and utilizing critical thinking skills, says the principal.

A. Fantis is a diverse community open to children baptized in all Christian traditions for pre-kindergarten to eighth-grade students. Established 55 years ago, it continues to carry the name of the benefactor.
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Now hes the one in trouble.

Ethics watchdogs slapped Brooklyns embattled former top prosecutor with the highest fine ever dealt by the city for illegal campaign-related activities, after he admitted to abusing his government e-mail during a contentious 2013 re-election bid he ultimately lost.

Former District Attorney Charles Hynes, a Flatbush native who ran the office from 1990 to 2014, sent more than 5,000 electronic missives to newspapers, campaign managers, political consultants, donors, allies, employees and a New York State Supreme Court judge from his municipal account in an attempt to defeat opponent Ken Thompson  who won the race, but died from cancer just two years into his term in 2016.

And last Friday, members of the citys Conflict of Interest Board delivered the $40,000 fine to Hynes after investigating hundreds of his e-mails  the panels biggest penalty of its kind, according to the board.

The largest fine delivered by the watchdog group, for $84,000, was issued to former New York City sheriff Kerry Katsorhis in 1998, after he stood trial for ethics violations, records show.

The Conflict of Interest Board also slapped four of Hynes then employees in the district attorneys office  one of whom still works as a prosecutor under District Attorney Eric Gonzalez  with fines for $6,000, $4,500, $3,000, and $1,000.

One of the staffers fessed up to knowingly using her government e-mail to fire off the campaigns responses to a Village Voice report alleging Hynes received donations that influenced the prosecution of a case, and to criticism of the former district attorneys relationship with the disgraced former Assemblyman Vito Lopez, who died in 2015.

Another  who received the stiffest of the fines dealt to Hynes employees  claimed at the time that he didnt know using his municipal account for campaign business was wrong.

Hynes  who the Feds also investigated in 2014 for possibly misusing public funds to run his failed 2013 re-election bid, before dropping the probe  took full responsibility for violating the citys ethics codes, and apologized to those underlings who bore the brunt of his wrongdoing.

In the midst of a feverishly contested primary race, I made the mistake of using my city e-mail for campaign-related matters, he said a statement. If anyone is to blame for this, it should be me and me alone.

But Hynes hefty penalty is a small price to pay compared to the millions of dollars taxpayers forked over in settlements the city made with people wrongfully convicted under his more than two-decade tenure.

A conviction-review unit Thompson established in 2014 has since exonerated 24 individuals  about half of whom were convicted before Hynes was first elected  and those decisions resulted in a whopping $101,903,125 in reparations to wrongful-conviction victims, according to records this newspaper obtained from Comptroller Scott Stringers office through a Freedom of Information Law request.
Campus News

Final push for Haiti humanitarian trip

Molli Warunek, clinical assistant professor, has done previous humanitarian work in Haiti. She is helping lead the trip.

By MARCENE ROBINSON

More than half of the people in Haiti live in absolute poverty  earning less than $2 a day.

To make a difference in the lives of as many Haitians as possible, students and faculty from the UB School of Nursing will travel to Haiti for the first time to deliver much-needed health care.

A group of 10 students, in partnership with community organization Servants in Fellowship, plan to treat nearly 800 individuals through a mobile medical clinic in Galette, Haiti, a rural settlement where access to care is difficult. The students will also provide hygiene education that is sustainable in Haitian culture to help prevent future illness.

The mission trip, supported by a successful crowdfunding campaign, is seeking to raise $7,500, most of which will go toward purchasing medical supplies and hiring translators.

However, the campaign is not over yet. Only a small portion of the funds will support student travel expenses, which are roughly $1,000 per person.

To further support the School of Nursings work in the Haitian community, donate at crowdfunding.buffalo.edu. The crowdfunding campaign was scheduled to close Saturday, March 31; however it has been extended to April 3 at 8 a.m.

The mission trip, led by Molli Warunek, clinical assistant professor, and Linda Paine Hughes, clinical assistant professor, both in the School in Nursing, is scheduled for April 22-29. The group will also be accompanied by physicians and pharmacists from community partners.
The private sector employees have something to rejoice before the current fiscal comes to a close as government has notified doubling the limit of tax-free gratuity for them to Rs 20 lakh to Rs 10 lakh, said a PTI report. The notification has come in the wake of amendment in the Payment of Gratuity Act which had empowered the government to fix the limit of the through an executive order. The ceiling of tax-free gratuity for central government employees had already been revised to Rs 20 lakh with the implementation the 7th Pay Commission. The employee unions have been demanding for inclusion of the change in accordance to the pay panel recommendations in the Payment of Gratuity Act.

The Payment of Gratuity Act, 1972, was enacted to provide for gratuity payment to employees engaged in factories, mines, oilfields, plantations, ports, railway companies, shops or other establishments. Till now, private sector workers with five or more years of service were eligible for Rs 10 lakh tax-free gratuity after leaving job or at time of superannuation. The Act encompassed employees who have completed at least five years of continuous service in an establishment that employs 10 or more persons.

By virtue of the amendment bill approved by Parliament earlier this month, government could also fix the period of maternity leave. The change with respect to maternity leaves comes against the backdrop of the Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act, 2017, enhancing the maximum maternity leave period to 26 weeks.

Railway staff gets LTC for first time

As per a Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) order, railway employees could now avail Leave Travel Concession (LTC) for the first time ever. The 7th Pay Commission had recommended that they be awarded the benefits of travel concession awarded to other government servants. The existing LTC instructions stated that Indian Railway staff and their spouses are not entitled to LTC as they already have the facility of free pass available to them.

"The matter has been considered in this department in consultation with Ministry of Railways. It has been decided that Railway employees may be allowed to avail all-India LTC once in a block of four years... The 'All-India LTC' will be purely optional for railway employees," PTI quoted a DoPT circular.

However, railway employees will continue to be governed by the Railway Servants (Pass) Rules and availing of the "All India LTC" under the CCS (LTC) Rules by them will be facilitated through a special order under the relevant provision of the said Pass Rules, it said.

The DoPT circular also clarifies that railway employees will not be eligible for "Home Town LTC". Also they will have to surrender the Privilege Passes (concessional or free tickets) admissible to them in the calendar year in which they intend to avail the leave travel allowance, the ministry said. They would continue to be eligible for other kinds of passes, though, such as the duty pass, school pass and special passes on medical grounds, as admissible under the pass rules, the order stated.

If the railway employee has already availed of a Privilege Pass, then LTC will not be allowed in that year, it said. The railway employees on deputation to any other organisation, including railway PSUs, would also continue to be eligible for optional LTC in lieu of Privilege Pass entitlement, the DoPT circular said.
02 Apr 2018, 10:34 AM

Toyota, Suzuki to produce cars for each other in India

Toyota Motor Corp and Suzuki Motor Corp have agreed to produce cars for each other in India as Toyota aims to increase its market share in the world's fifth-largest passenger car market. The agreement follows an R&D tie-up announced by the two Japanese automakers a year ago, and will see Toyota, one of the world's biggest automakers, secure production from its much smaller rival, which dominates India with its line-up of affordable compact cars. Suzuki will supply gasoline and mild-gasoline hybrid versions of its Baleno hatchback, along with the Vitara Brezza compact SUV to Toyota while the latter will produce gasoline and gasoline-hybrid Corolla sedans for Suzuki, the automakers said.

Indian Railways receives 2.5 crore applications for 90,000 jobs

More than 2.5 crore people, a number greater than Australia's population, have applied for about 90,000 positions in India Railways, underlining the challenge Prime Minister Narendra Modi faces in providing millions of jobs ahead of an election in 2019. The Railway Recruitment Board advertised for the positions last month and since then 2.5 crore people have filed online applications from around the country.

ICICI Bank CEO Chanda kochhar under fire on Rs 3,250 crore loan to Videocon Group

Once lauded for her role in shaping the retail banking sector in the country and establishing ICICI Bank during the 1990s, Chanda Kochhar seems to be caught in a swirl of nepotism and conflict of interest charges in the Rs 3,250 Videocon Group loan controversy . Chanda Kochhar sat on the bank's credit committee that sanctioned a loan of Rs 3,250 crore to the Videocon Group in 2012, the private lender's chairman MK Sharma said as reported by the Economic Times. ICICI has denied any wrongdoing on its part and on the part of Chanda Kochhar

Govt tries to reduce liability of future owners of Air India

The government is trying to reduce the liability of Air India's future owners. It may take over the cost of medical facilities and flight ticket entitlements of retired employees fully or partially, a senior aviation ministry official said.The government is likely to declare this in the Request for Proposal (RFP), the official said. It is expected to put out the RFP in a couple of months' time, inviting bidders for a majority stake in the state-owned airline, as reported by Economic Times. The government has already decided to pay Rs 1,300 crore of salary arrears to employees related to the Dharmadhikari committee proposals

Flipkart to refocus on selling books

Flipkart is revisiting its roots and hopes to revive its books business. The e-tailer said over the past six months the books category grew by about 70% on the back of its efforts to strengthen it. This seems to be its latest strategy in getting back lost share from Amazon. According to reports, Amazon India currently enjoys a 60 per cent share of the online book market. Flipkart might re-enter the e-books business soon too.
Toyota Motor Corp and Suzuki Motor Corp agreed on Thursday to produce cars for each other in India as Toyota aims to increase its market share in the world's fifth-largest passenger car market.

The agreement follows an R&D tie-up announced by the two Japanese automakers a year ago, and will see Toyota, one of the world's biggest automakers, secure production from its much smaller rival, which dominates India with its line-up of affordable compact cars.

Suzuki will supply gasoline and mild-gasoline hybrid versions of its Baleno hatchback, along with the Vitara Brezza compact SUV to Toyota while the latter will produce gasoline and gasoline-hybrid Corolla sedans for Suzuki, the automakers said.

Analysts said the arrangement would help Toyota expand its presence in India, where it has struggled to grow sales due to lean demand for its lower-cost models.

"India is a big blemish on Toyota's otherwise strong track record for breaking into emerging markets," said Janet Lewis, head of Asia transportation research at Macquarie Securities.

"By selling rebadged and slightly changed Balenos and Vitaras, Toyota can bolster its distribution network and move more towards expanding its market share."

Manufacturing will begin by mid-2019. Under the deal, vehicles made by Suzuki will be rebranded and renamed as Toyota cars, while the Toyota vehicles will sport the Suzuki badge.

A Toyota spokeswoman declined to give details on production figures, while the Nikkei business daily reported that Toyota would supply around 10,000 vehicles to Suzuki, while Suzuki would produce up to 50,000 units annually for Toyota.

The deepening partnership between the two automakers will enable Suzuki to tap into Toyota's R&D firepower to develop lower-emission vehicles and self-driving cars - areas which Suzuki has admitted it is struggling to keep up with.

The two companies plan to introduce electric cars in India around 2020.

Suzuki has dominated the Indian automobile market through a majority stake in Maruti Suzuki India Ltd, the country's largest automaker, which sold roughly 1.6 million vehicles last year, accounting for every other car sold in the country. Producing 50,000 vehicles for Toyota would represent just a sliver of what Suzuki sold in India in 2017.

Toyota lags far behind with a roughly 5 percent market share. An additional 50,000 units could push Toyota's annual sales above those of Honda Motor and Tata Motors, but it will still lag far behind the top three manufacturers - Suzuki, Hyundai Motor Co and Mahindra & Mahindra.

Last year, Toyota sold roughly 140,000 cars in India, leaving its two plants in the country to operate at about half their capacity of manufacturing more than 300,000 vehicles a year.

Toyota has produced cars specifically for the Indian market for 20 years, but sales have been dented by poor demand of its last two no-frills models made specifically for India, the Etios sedan and the Liva hatchback, which were criticised for compromising on quality and finish to keep costs low.

The supply from Suzuki would alleviate pressure on Toyota to develop its own low-cost models for the country under its Daihatsu compact car brand, which has made limited progress in developing affordable, appealing models for emerging markets.

In the past, Toyota had looked to Daihatsu for help to develop affordable, competitive cars in India. But its engineers and parts purchasing managers have told Reuters that establishing supply chains from scratch which can compete with Suzuki's would be highly time-consuming.
The Central Bureau of Investigation has registered three fresh cases to probe an alleged loan fraud of Rs 743 crore committed by availing Kisan Credit Card and pisciculture loans from IDBI Bank. A total of 44 accused have been named in the three separate FIRs. There are three accused --B K Sahoo, retired DGM of the bank R Damodaran and the then DGM Battu Rama Rao--who are common in all three FIRs.

This week on Tuesday, IDBI Bank disclosed that fraudulent loans of over Rs 743 crore were issued from five of its branches in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. It said that some of the loans, which were issued during FY 2009-2013 for fish farming businesses, were obtained against fake lease documents of non-existent fish ponds and by inflating the value of collateral.

The Bank had found lapses in processing and disbursing the loans by two of its officials. It dismissed one of the officials, while the other official had already retired.

It is alleged that as per procedure laid down for sanctioning loans for fish farming business, the maximum limit with regard to operation of primary activity or fish tank activity is 50 kms from the branch location, however, Damodaran and Rao instructed the branch officials to ignore the condition.

Damodaran and Rao allegedly abused their official position breached the sanction limit of Rs 25 lakh for KCC loan and bypassed agri-processing centre and directed for the issuance of loans on the basis of intentionally overvalued collateral properties and furnished inflated net worth certificates in respect of borrowers, the FIR said.

With inputs from PTI
Before the end of the current fiscal, the Punjab National Bank (PNB) has paid back Rs 6,600 crore to eight banks defrauded in the Rs 13,700 crore LoU fraud involving fugitive diamantaires Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi.

Information available with IndiaToday.in identifies these eight banks as Canara Bank, State Bank of India (SBI), Allahabad Bank, Bank of India, Union Bank of India (UBI), UCO Bank, Axis Bank, and Italian lender Intesa Sanpaolo.

Below are the details of payments PNB has made to these eight banks:

Earlier this week, the PNB board had agreed to settle Letters of Understanding (LoUs) and Foreign Letters of Credit (FLC) issued by seven banks worth Rs 6500 crore, which mature on or before March 31. "The bank would honour all subsequent maturing LoUs and FLCs, as and when they are due," PNB has said in an official statement.

By the time the PNB Fraud was exposed, almost 30 banks had provided buyers' credit in favour of overseas suppliers to Modi and Chokshi's firms against unauthorized bank guarantees. Since these loans were credited to PNB's Nostro accounts, the state-owned lender is now liable to repay these banks.

At least four public sector banks - State Bank of India, UBI, UCO Bank and Allahabad Bank - had quoted exposures in the range of $212 million to $412 million in the PNB fraud. PNB had earlier maintained that these LoUs are fraudulent and the bank has no liabilities towards them. It was on the directions of Finance Ministry and Reserve Bank of India (RBI) that PNB agreed to pay back all bonafide commitments under LoUs and FLCs before March 31. Failing to do so would have led to the bank being included in the list of defaulters.
The Reserve Bank of India has raised serious concerns over the financial health of state-run IDBI bank, the Economic Times today reported. The observation came after the central bank noticed several shortcomings in the way the IDBI recognised its non-performing assets. According to the report, the RBI wrote to the Finance Ministry about the situation and asked it to take appropriate action.

"It was found out during our inspection that the bank's mechanism for identifying bad loans is also deficient," the ET quoted the RBI as saying in its letter. The central bank thinks that IDBI's non-performing assets could be higher than what's been reported.

Last year in May, the RBI put IDBI Bank under a prompt corrective action or PCA for its high non-performing assets and negative return on assets. The move came after the bank's NPAs shot up by 80 per cent to Rs 35,245 crore and it booked a loss Rs 2,255 crore for the December quarter of FY 2016-17. Its return on assets also declined to (-)2.32 at the end of the third quarter of 2016-17.

A bank is placed under PCA framework based on the audited annual financial results and RBI's supervisory assessment. A month before putting IDBI under PCA, the Central bank had made it clear that the banks' capital, asset quality and profitability would be the basis of the PCA framework on which the banks would be monitored.

The bank had said that the action would be taken when a bank breaches the risk threshold that includes restriction on dividend payment/remittance of profits, restriction on branch expansion, higher provisions, restriction on management compensation and director's fees.

"The PCA framework would apply without exception to all banks operating in India including small banks and foreign banks operating through branches or subsidiaries based on breach of risk thresholds of identified indicators," the RBI had said.

At the end of December 2017, the IDBI reported its gross NPAs Rs 50,621 crore. Among the banks who are placed under RBI's PCA framework are: Dena Bank, Central Bank of India, Bank of Maharashtra, UCO Bank, IDBI Bank, Oriental Bank of Commerce, Indian Overseas Bank, Corporation Bank, Bank of India, Allahabad Bank and United Bank of India.
Indian banks, once admired for their sound and safe conduct, are now increasingly getting caught breaking the rules. This week, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), has slapped a hefty fine of Rs 58.9 crore on the country's second large private bank, ICICI Bank Ltd, for the failure to follow the maturity guidelines for securities portfolio. Imagine a new bank, Airtel Payments Bank, just starting its operations, has been caught for violating the Know Your Customer (KYC) guidelines, which is the most basic requirement in the banking industry.

In less than a year, the private banks, which are perceived to be well-managed, have often received the wrath of the banking regulator. Some of the banks fined, recently, were IDFC Bank, Yes Bank and IndusInd Bank.

Why are banks falling by the wayside on the most critical compliance issues? The compliance is one issue, which creates confidence amongst depositors, investors and also the government. Banks are like public and privileged institutions that are allowed to accept public deposits. And there are reputational risk issues. So is there a lack of focus as most resources are chasing growth or just a casual attitude towards compliance?

"It could probably be with the knowledge of the top management," speculates a retired banker.

But the issue is very serious. There has to be some deterrent that forces banks to deploy more bodies for compliance.

Many say the responsibility lies in the top management and the board. In fact, the board should take these compliance violation issues seriously. It actually cost Shashi Arora, CEO of Airtel Payments Bank, his job when the KYC norms violation came out in the open.

The amount of fine imposed by RBI in the past shows that it won't tolerate compliance violations. In fact, the focus on compliance has accelerated, globally, after the global financial meltdown. There are risks that are known and there are risks that are unknown. Regulators don't want another 2008-like crisis in the banking industry.

According to an estimate, the banking regulators in US and Europe have levied a cumulative fines of over $340 billion, since, the global financial meltdown for various violations of banking guidelines. However, what is alarming is the estimate about these fines, which can go up to $400 billion by 2020.

Back home, Indian banks have their own share of non-compliance. In the last decade, banks have been found to be violating guidelines relating to KYC, anti-money laundering, selling complex derivatives product etc. The risks for banks are only increasing day by day with technology and digitization. While banks are moving at a fast pace in terms of innovation and also tying up with third-party vendors, the regulators are watching their every step for any slip-up. Clearly, the cost of non-compliance would be heavy.
Apple has released iOS 11.3 for iPhones and iPads, which was previewed by the company earlier in January this year. Said to be a major update, it brings in some new features including new AR experiences, Animoji, health records and the much awaited battery health beta.

Apple has been in the past accused of slowing down older iPhones, which the company claimed was a move aimed at extending the battery life of the phones, and later led to the battery replacement program. Now, the company has released the Battery Health Beta in the iOS 11.3, that give a glimpse of the overall battery health and whether the battery needs to be serviced or not.

Additionally, users can now see whether the power management feature that dynamically manages maximum performance to prevent unexpected shutdowns, first introduced in iOS 10.2.1, is on and can choose to turn it off. The Battery Health beta is available for older iPhone models including iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone SE, iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus, iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus. Users can access this data under Settings > Battery > Battery Health (beta).

With privacy being one of the biggest concerns, iOS 11.3 introduces an updated data and privacy information, making it easier for a user to understand how their personal data may be used. A new privacy icon and detailed privacy information will appear whenever Apple asks for access to personal information to enable features, secure Apple services or personalize an iOS experience.

The iPhone X exclusive feature, Animoji that uses the A11 Bionic chip and the TrueDepth camera, gets four new expressions with this update - lion, bear, dragon or skull.

Apple has been focusing on augmented reality experience and introduced ARKit with iOS 11. With this new update, apps can now deliver AR experiences that use vertical surfaces like walls and doors, in addition to horizontal surfaces like tables and chairs, and also map to irregularly shaped surfaces like circular tables.

Even the view of the real world through the camera now has 50 per cent greater resolution and supports auto-focus for an even sharper perspective.

Apple has also introduced a Business Chat (beta) in US and Canada, which is a new messaging feature that will provide users with a new way to communicate directly with businesses, reach a live person to ask a question or make a purchase using Apple Pay, on the go or at home.

The new Health Records feature available in the US helps patients of more than 40 health systems including Duke, NYU Langone, Stanford and Yale view their medical records from multiple institutions right from their iPhone. Health Records data is encrypted and protected with a passcode.

Other features include Apple Music streaming music videos uninterrupted by ads and support for Advanced Mobile Location (AML) to automatically send a user's current location, when making a call to emergency services in countries, where AML is supported.

iPhones and iPads eligible for iOS11.3 update will receive a notification in the company days. Users can simply update their devices by accessing Software Update under General tab under Settings.
In a significant first step into offshore wind generation, ESB has announced that it has acquired a 12.5% shareholding in the 353MW Galloper Wind Farm from Macquarie Capital.

The Galloper project is a 353MW development located in the Outer Thames estuary, 30km off the coast of Suffolk, England. Supported under the UK renewable support scheme, the wind farm comprises 56 Siemens-Gamesa wind turbines and is capable of powering 380,000 homes.

Commenting on the acquisition, ESB Chief Executive Pat ODoherty said: This investment represents a significant first step for ESB into offshore wind generation. Renewable electricity is a key enabler in the transition to a low carbon economy, and ESB expects offshore wind to play a pivotal role in this transition.

Mr ODoherty concluded: Our investment in the Galloper wind farm underscores ESBs commitment to further involvement in the development and construction of wind farms off the coast of Ireland and Britain, as part of the transition to a brighter, low carbon future. 

Source: www.businessworld.ie
Our Promise: Welcome to Care2, the world's largest community for good. Here, you'll find over 45 million like-minded people working towards progress, kindness, and lasting impact.

Care2 Stands Against: bigots, racists, bullies, science deniers, misogynists, gun lobbyists, xenophobes, the willfully ignorant, animal abusers, frackers, and other mean people. If you find yourself aligning with any of those folks, you can move along, nothing to see here.

Care2 Stands With: humanitarians, animal lovers, feminists, rabble-rousers, nature-buffs, creatives, the naturally curious, and people who really love to do the right thing.

You are our people. You Care. We Care2.
Step 1

Log on to the Cantonment Board official website.

Step 2

Click Career option on the home page.

Step 3

Click on the link that reads, Recruitment for various post at Office of Principal Director, Defence Estates, Southern Command, Pune Cantt.-411040

Step 4

Read the detailed advertisement carefully.

Step 5

Scroll down to the bottom of the page to find the application form.

Step 6

Print the application form, fill it and send it to the Cantonment Board.
1. Stick To Your Schedule

Due to time constraints, you have to meet every target of your study plan. Before going to bed, assess whether you achieved the target or not. You also need to prepare the plan for the following day.

2. Avoid Ambiguity

Due to panic or some other reason, we usually miss some important information while preparing for the exam. One should know everything about the examination such as exam pattern, syllabus and important dates.

3. Identify Where You Fall Behind

For any competitive examination, one has to evaluate their own strengths. After careful assessment, you'll understand that you're falling behind in a few topics. Though your favourite concepts attract you, control your temptation and master the weak areas prior to your favourite ones.

4. Solve Previous Years' Question Papers

By solving the previous years' question papers, one can develop the right mindset for the test. This will also make you familiar with the exam pattern besides improving your time-management skills. You can also find out where you need to improve.

5. Start With Subjects You Are Confident With

Students should know how to save time and attempt the question paper tactfully. Start attempting the question paper with the subject that you're most confident with. This will give enough time for you to concentrate on other subjects later.

6. Take Advantage Of Chemistry

This is the easiest section compared to the other two. If you are confident with the basic concepts in chemistry, you can score well in this section. You can also save time in this section.

7. Attempt Mock Tests

With only one month left for the preparations, students are advised to take at least three full-length mock tests. This will ease the exam tension and help you understand where you stand in the competition.

8. Last Week For Revisions

Never ignore revisions though you have started the preparation late. In the last week, try to master the topics you are most confident in rather than focusing on new topics.

9. Keep Yourself Healthy

It is extremely important for everyone to stay healthy while preparing for the competitive examinations. Devote at least 30 minutes, depending on your convenience, for the physical exercise. Stay away from junk foods and opt for fresh leafy vegetables and fruits.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: In Atlanta: Rennie Sloan, rennie.sloan@cartercenter.org

In Monrovia, Liberia: Janice Cooper, janice.cooper@cartercenter.org and

Wilfred Gwaikolo, Wilfred.gwaikolo@cartercenter.org

249 clinicians are now trained in mental health, with 83 specializing in the needs of children and adolescents

ATLANTANineteen clinicians specializing in child and adolescent mental health graduated today in Monrovia, Liberia, from a training developed by the Carter Centers Mental Health Program in partnership with the Liberia Ministry of Health, Ministry of Education, and Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection. These graduates, the fourth cohort of clinicians focused on children and youth will provide mental health and psychosocial care in schools, clinics, and other child and youth-centered settings.

These graduates bring the total number of professionals trained to 249 through a collaboration between The Carter Center Mental Health Program in Liberia and the Liberian government to improve access to mental health services in Liberia. Those clinicians now work in primary care facilities, hospitals, daycare centers and schools, across all 15 counties to provide much needed care as the country seeks to strengthen its mental health services. This group of 19 Liberian nurses, and registered midwives completed a free, six-month, Child and Adolescent Post-Basic Mental Health Training Program at Kakata Rural Teacher Training Institute in Margibi County, Liberia. Almost 60 percent of the graduates come from hard-to-reach areas like Grand Kru, Maryland and Rivergee in the Southeast, and Gbarpolu, Cape Mount and Bomi in Central and Western Liberia, respectively.

"Liberia is making a brighter future for all of its citizens by investing in the mental health of adults, children, and adolescents," said former U.S. First Lady and Carter Center Co-founder Rosalynn Carter.

Liberia is on course to reach its goal of expanding access to mental health care to 70 percent of the population within the next few years. In addition to the clinicians, this nation with a current population of 4.6 million has three psychiatrists to meet the needs of at least 300,000 Liberians suffering from mental illnesses.

Graduates of The Carter Center program passed a credentialing exam earlier this month administered by the Liberian Board of Nursing and Midwifery and the Liberia National Physician Assistants Association to practice as licensed mental health clinicians. This allows them to return to their counties of practice as child and adolescent mental health specialists and to practice in primary care settings that focus on children and adolescents, or to begin working in school-based clinics. These graduates also are critical to Liberia's post-Ebola and post-war recovery.

Attendees at the graduation program received congratulatory messages from many Liberian government officials: the acting deputy minister of health of Liberia; Minister of Health Dr. Wilhemina Jallah; the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Honorable Bofhal Chambers; and Honorable Jewel Howard-Taylor, Liberias vice president. Dr. Najeera Chowdhury, a psychiatrist in the Child and Adolescent Mental section of the WHOs Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse in Geneva, also sent a congratulatory message.

Since 2010, mental health clinicians trained by The Carter Center have made a lasting impact in their communities by establishing new services at the ground level. Clinicians have opened 14 clinical practices in prison systems, treated refugees from the Ivory Coast conflict, supported the nation's first mental health consumer organization, worked in Ebola Treatment Units (ETUs), and provided psychosocial supports to individuals and families affected by the Ebola virus. In addition, midwives have been trained to screen for maternal depression. This new cohort of child and adolescent mental health clinicians is assisting in these efforts by providing specialized care to Liberian youth. Over 20 schools now have clinicians in their clinics or have regular visits by mental health clinicians.

"With every group of clinicians trained, there is enthusiasm around how they will contribute to filling gaps in the emerging mental health system. As someone who has worked in child and adolescent mental health for many years, it is personally fulfilling to have child and adolescent health mental health providers in our workforce. We are proud to add to this group that can support children and adolescents all over the country," said Dr. Janice Cooper, a native Liberian and project lead for the Carter Center's mental health initiative in Liberia.

The training is part of a three-year initiative to address the psychological effects of Liberia's Ebola crisis and to promote psychosocial health in the country. The project, Supporting Psychosocial Health and Resilience in Liberia, is funded by the Japan Social Development Fund, a trust fund administered by the World Bank. Through collaborative efforts with the county health teams, the project has supported access to mental health services for over 19,000 beneficiaries in Montserrado (including Monrovia) and Margibi counties.

In addition to promoting long-term health and resilience through the newly credentialed child and adolescent mental health clinicians, the project provided support to respond to the intermediate psychosocial impact of Ebola. The Carter Center, in collaboration with Liberian stakeholders, trained Ebola first responders in self-care, facilitated community healing dialogues for Ebola-affected families, and trained health and social workers to provide community-based mental health care and family psycho-education. These and other efforts through this project offer support and capacity-building for individuals and communities, but especially those affected by Ebola. Six school-based health centers have also been established, with one more currently under construction.

The psychological impact of more than a decade of civil conflict, which ended in 2003, has contributed to a mental health crisis in Liberia that has been intensified by: misconceptions, stigma, and the resulting discrimination surrounding mental illnesses; lack of mental health care training for health professionals; and inadequate supplies of necessary medications. The Ebola crisis exacerbated these needs.

While every Liberian county now has at least three mental health clinicians, there remains a need to build up services in places with immense treatment gaps. The largest concentration of Carter Center-trained clinicians, 81, serves a population of more than 1 million in Montserrado County, where the capital, Monrovia, is located. Remote areas in some counties like Sinoe, Grand Gedeh, Lofa, Maryland and Grand Kru have mental health clinicians leading and shaping mental health services.

The Carter Center's Mental Health Program in Liberia is supported by contributions from individuals, governments, multilaterals, corporations, and foundations such as the UBS Optimus Foundation and the John P. Hussmann Foundation.

###

"Waging Peace. Fighting Disease. Building Hope."

A not-for-profit, nongovernmental organization, The Carter Center has helped to improve life for people in over 80 countries by resolving conflicts; advancing democracy, human rights, and economic opportunity; preventing diseases; and improving mental health care. The Carter Center was founded in 1982 by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, in partnership with Emory University, to advance peace and health worldwide.
Philippine imports pass quality tests

30 March 2018

The Philippine government has confirmed that all of the countrys cement imports have passed quality tests after the implementation of an administrative order by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI).

"In the review of implementation of the revised DTI Department Administrative Order 17-06:2017, governing the procedure in testing the standard compliance of all imported cement, we found 100 percent compliance where all shipments of imported cement passed the post shipment tests conducted by the Bureau of Product Standard-accredited testing laboratories," said Trade Secretary Ramon Lopez.

The DTI issued the order after a President Duterte mandate to protect consumers interests and ensure cement imports are of a high quality, according to The Manila Times.

"This (order) is also in support of the aggressive infrastructure program that the Duterte administration is pushing for, where [the] supply of quality cement will also be assuredto stabilize cement prices," said Mr Lopez.



Since the order was issued in November last year, there have been 167 inbound cement shipments totalling 1.934Mt. Of these, 24 underwent pre-shipment tests in its source country through accredited laboratories and subsequently passed post-shipment tests in the Philippines.

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Annual VDMA Building Material Plants Day held in Frankfurt

30 March 2018

The annual VDMA Building Material Plants Day highlights the efforts made by plant manufacturers who supply the cement industry and many others. "We anticipate that incoming orders will once again grow in the double-digit range this year," said Hermann Weckenmann, Chairman of the VDMA Building Material Plants Group. Mr Weckenmann noted the increase in demand anticipated from emerging countries and China, according to a press release.

In particular, German building material plant manufacturers operating in China need to lay groundwork to ensure that they can compete in the market after 2020. After this time period the Chinese building materials sector is expected to cooldown, according to Bjorn Conrad, Sinolytics. Mr Conrads presentation was delivered at the annual VDMA Building Material Plants Day in Frankfurt, and explored the challenges the industry will face in the coming years.

Mr Conrad considered the possibility of foreign manufacturers being pushed out of the Chinese market following the conclusion of the current five-year plan in 2020. Opportunities for German companies lies in its potential as a technology leader in the precast concrete industry, with 20 per cent of construction services expected to consist of precast elements in the near future.

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Since Donald Trump became president, weve seen an influx in people being interested in politics (especially women, children, and minorities). These are the states that have historically cared the most about politics.

1. North Dakota

The Daily Beast names North Dakota one of the most politically active states because of the number of citizens who are registered, turnout, and the amount of individual donations. 75.6% of adult citizens are registered to vote, and 55.7% actually vote. Individual donations in 2010 was $4,935,486.

Next: A key swing state

2. Colorado

Colorado is consistently one of the most political sates in America. This could partially be because its considered a key swing state. Not only does it rank high in voter turnout, Coloradans are also very generous. According to Smart Asset, Colorado citizens donated the 5th most in the 2012 presidential election.

Next: The home of our nations capital.

3. Washington, D.C.

The home of our nations capital, of course, makes the list. Not only is over 80% of the population registered to vote, but D.C. has the highest voter turnout of any state or district, according to Nerd Wallet. Additionally, D.C. is a hub of protests and political events. Its tough to live in D.C if you dont love being immersed in politics.

Next: The Bay state

4. Massachusetts

Based on how the state votes for presidents, one would assume Massachusetts is a liberal state. However, the state typically has a Republican governor. The Bay State came into national focus when former Republican Gov. Mitt Romney ran for president in 2012 and he was forced to step back from the liberal-leaning health care reforms he helped put into place. That year 70% of the states voters turned up at polls, says Smart Asset.

Next: This state has one of the highest counts of registered voters.

5. Mississippi

Mississippi has one of the highest amounts of registered voters compared to other states. Over 84 percent of citizens in Mississippi were registered to vote, though 10 percent of registered citizens didnt make it to the polls, leaving a voter rate of 74.5 percent, says Nerd Wallet.

Next: This state has a high rate of political donations.

6. Oregon

Oregons always been a politically engaged state. Oregons citizens believe in voting with their wallets, and arent afraid to donate to the candidates and causes they care about. Many states saw a large drop in donations from 2008 to 2012. Not Oregon. Oregon residents gave an estimated $2.61 per capita in 2008 and that figure only decline 12 cents to $2.49 in 2012, says Smart Asset. Compare that to New Mexico, where donations per capita was $7.06 in 2008 and dropped all the way to $2.82 in 2012.

Next: Famous for its cheese  and political activity

7. Wisconsin

Wisconsin is another politically active state. In 2012, 78% of its citizens were registered to vote, and 73% actually got out and voted, meaning only 5% of the states citizens were registered but did not vote, according to Nerd Wallet.

Next: In this state, 74% of adults are registered to vote.

8. Vermont

The Daily Beast also named Vermont as one of the most politically active states in America. In Vermont, 74% of adult citizens are registered to vote, and 55% of those citizens actually vote. The average donation per adult citizen is $7.06.

Next: The average donation per citizen in this state is $7.36.

9. Washington

With 72% of its adults registered to vote, and a 58.1% turnout rate, Washington is also considered one of the most politically active states. According to The Daily Beast, the average donation per adult citizen is $7.36. One thing to note, though, is that the state doesnt get as big a boost in turnout during presidential election years as other states do.

Next: Another giving state in the donations department

10. Connecticut

Connecticut makes the list because its citizens are extremely giving in the political donations department. The Constitution State ranked in the top 5 for donations in both years we analyzed the data, said Smart Asset. Where the state lacks, though, is voting attendance. In 2010 and 2014, Connecticut didnt even reach 50% voter turnout.

Next: The average donation per adult in this state is $8.76.

11. South Dakota

Also named one of the most politically active states in America by The Daily Beast, South Dakota has a pretty high number of registered citizens. 69% of adult citizens are registered to vote and 54.9% of citizens actually vote. The average donation per adult citizen is $8.76.

Next: This state doesnt spend much in donations, but it does show up to the polls.

12. Minnesota

Though Minnesotans arent the biggest spenders when it comes to politics, they do pretty well in voter turnout. In 2010, 2012, and 2014, Minnesota was no lower than 6th in voter turnout. Nerd Wallet lists the state as one of the most politically engaged because in 2012 79% of citizens were registered to vote, and 73.2% of citizens voted.

Next: A state thats active in protests and political demonstrations.

13. California

About 73% of adults are registered to vote in California, according to the Public Policy Institute of California, and that number tends to stay pretty consistent. California makes the list, though, due to their involvement in political protest and demonstrations. In the past few years, California has been home to some of the biggest protests in the nation, including the Womens March and March for Our Lives (sister marches of those taking place in Washington).

Next: Though this state has a high rate of registered voters, they lack in one big area 

14. Maryland

Maryland, though still considered one of the more politically active states, doesnt always show up to vote. Though the states amount of registered voters is impressive, the number of people who actually get out and vote dips significantly. Maryland had the 3rd highest level of registered voters in 2014, with 72% of citizens registered to vote but only 48% of citizens actually went to the polls, says Smart Asset

Next: This state is particularly interested in local politics.

15. Maine

Maine is considered one of the most politically charged states, ranking first in voter turnout in both 2014 and 2010. Although, for presidential elections, Maine citizens sometimes dont participate as much as they do for local politics. In 2012, Maine had a voter turnout of 68%  only good enough to rank 9th in the country that year, says Smart Assets.

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For Subscribers Beulah United Methodist Church celebrates 150 years of history

The Beulah United Methodist Church is celebrating its 150-year-history with a service on Sept. 26.
home World Catholic charity pledges $1 million to aid Middle East Christians

The Knights of Columbus has announced that it will be donating more than $1 million this Holy Week to help rebuild the homes of persecuted Christians in Iraq and Syria.

According to Catholic News Agency, about $500,000 of the donation will be used to fund the food program run by the Chaldean Archeparchy of Erbil, while 300,000 will be sent to the Syriac Catholic Patriarchate of Antioch, which provides nearly 3,000 families from Iraq and Syria with food, clothes, shelter, medical care and education.

An additional $250,000 will go to a project that aims to rebuild the Iraqi town of Karemlesh in the Nineveh plains. Locals have been committed to rebuilding the town since it was recaptured from the Islamic State.

"As we recall the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus, it is particularly timely for us to remember and support our brothers and sisters in Christ who have, in places like Iraq and Syria, endured so much persecution for their faith," said Knights of Columbus CEO in a March 27 statement, as reported by CNS News.

"Having faced suffering and even death at the hands of ISIS, we hope that our assistance will help these communities to rise up again and rebuild for the future," he added.

Chaldean Archbishop of Erbil Bashar Warda stressed that the Knights have contributed significantly to help maintain the presence of Christians in the region.

"Our people know that without the direct support from the Knights of Columbus to Christians in the region, and without assistance in making our case to the United States government, Christianity might already have been driven out of Iraq completely," he said.

Since 2014, the Catholic fraternal organization has contributed a total of $19 million to support Christians and other minorities in the Middle East.

Last year, the Knights donated over $million-worth of food supplies during Christmas season to ensure that 15,000 displaced families will not go hungry.

The Catholic organization donated another $2 million to help rebuild the town of Karemlesh. According to Karemlesh priest Thabet Habib, the efforts to recapture the town from the Islamic State has destroyed hundreds of homes in the town, which was once home to around 850 Christian families. The donation from the Knights has since been used to help resettle 80 to 90 Shabak families.

A 300-page report released by the Knights regarding the violence committed by ISIS against Christians and other minorities has been partly responsible for the decision of the U.S. State Department to officially declare the terror group's actions as "genocide" in 2016.
The Holy Father started by stating that churches are not an end in itself but God's plan since calling Abraham was to "create a people blessed by his love to bring his blessing to all the nations of the earth."

He explained that the Church was not just made up of priests, bishops and the Vatican, but that it needed to be like a family, open to all humanity.

Speaking of the growing number of refugees around the world, Pope Francis called on the church to be "their neighbours, share their fears and uncertainty about the future, and take concrete steps to reduce their suffering."

"Millions of families, millions of them, refugees from many countries and different faiths, experience in their stories tragedies and wounds that will not likely be healed. May the Lord support the people and institutions that work with generosity and hospitality to provide refugees with shelter and dignity, and give them reasons to hope," he said in St. Peter's Square.

Pope Francis makes his appeal ahead of World Refugee Day, June 20, an annual event organised by the United Nations General Assembly dedicated to raising awareness of the situation of refugees throughout the world.

"Jesus was a refugee. He had to flee to save his life. He was a refugee," he affirmed.

The session concluded with a reminder that the Church grows not by skill or merit, but through experiencing the love of God daily.

"This makes us feel that we are truly his, in his hands, making us grow in communion with Him and with one another."

"Through their lives, Christians must always bless, bless God and bless all of us as well. We Christians are people who bless, who know how to bless. This is [a] beautiful vocation!"

Source: AsiaNews.it
Alice Cooper says his Christian faith made it easy for him to accept role as Herod in Jesus Christ Superstar

"Jesus Christ Superstar" is a controversial rock opera that is loosely based on the Gospel's account of Jesus' last week on Earth, so some Christians prefer not to watch it or much less take part in the musical.

However, rock star Alice Cooper, known for songs such as "School's Out" and "Poison," does not think that way. Personally, Cooper found it "really, really well written and well done." In fact, when he was offered the villainous role of King Herod, he accepted it with gusto.

"In the back of my brain, there are times when I get really mad when I read the 'Passion Play' on how Jesus was treated, and it really angers you. Then at the same time, you go, 'Oh, wait a minute, I'm playing the part of one of the guys that does this.' I look at it purely as a piece of art, and it's directly out of the Bible," he told the Rolling Stone. "I might have a harder time playing Judas than I would playing Herod. It would be hard to play the guy that stabs him in the back."

Cooper already played Herod in 1996 when he recorded a version of "King Herod's Song," which is a song from the villain's point of view that seeks to undermine the powers of Jesus. He performed it during a London cast recording of the production, but did not get the chance to act it onstage.

Cooper is one of the musicians who was saved by their faith. In his younger days, he used to keep up with his peers such as Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix by drinking non-stop, but they all died in their 20s. Cooper decided then that death is not the only road for him, so he changed his life and reclaimed the faith of his childhood.

"My wife and I are both Christian," he told Confidential. "My father was a pastor, my grandfather was an evangelist. I grew up in the church, went as far away as I could from it - almost died - and then came back to the church."
Hillsong pastor Brian Houston tells Fox News Christians shouldn't fear attacks on their faith

Pastor Brian Houston of the Hillsong Church has urged Christians to remain true to their beliefs despite recent public attacks on their faith. In an interview with "Fox & Friends," the pastor shared his sentiments on the most appropriate response to recent controversies that have received media mileage because they involve famous people.

"Fox & Friends" asked Houston on what he had to say about Joy Behar's mockery of Vice President Mike Pence's faith, for which she apologized, and Jim Carrey's portrait resembling White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders posted alongside comments bashing an unnamed "monstrous" Christian. Both incidents triggered public debate for weeks.

"I think Christians are an easy target sometimes," the Hillsong pastor said in the interview. "I think that Christianity's always been attacked."

Houston, however, said that he's not affected by people targeting Christians as he believes the attacks are not a reflection of Christianity but rather show what's really inside the person's heart.

"Jesus taught to turn the other cheek, which is a little different than others," Houston further said. "The message of Jesus is stronger, so I don't feel we have a lot to fear. The Church is strong, it's resilient and it's going forward."

In February, Behar suggested on "The View" that the Vice President might need to get checked for mental illness after he said that Jesus Christ talks to him daily. Thousands of viewers called ABC to complain about Behar's mockery of his Christian faith and as a result of the furor, Behar personally called Pence to apologize.

On the other hand, Carrey painted an unflattering photo of a "so-called Christian" that looked like the White House press secretary and posted the portrait to Twitter alongside disparaging comments. Sanders' father, Gov. Mike Huckabee, called out Carrey on Twitter and said that he was a "bigot" and "Christaphobe" for mocking his daughter's Christian faith. Carrey has not responded to the criticisms nor made an apology.

Hillsong Church as considerably grown around the world since its beginnings in a suburb in Sydney, Australia in 1983. Together with his wife, Houston established the ministry worldwide with its annual conferences and TV evangelism. The Hillsong Church choir also became a top-selling gospel music act with its album releases spanning 20 years.
Prince of Wales 'deeply moved' by persecuted Christians: the suffering are 'not forgotten'

The Prince of Wales has delivered an Easter message of emphatic support for persecuted Christians across the world. Those suffering for their faith are 'not forgotten', he said, as he described being 'deeply moved' by their 'capacity for forgiveness'.

'My heart goes out to all who this day, whatever their beliefs, are being persecuted on religious grounds,' Prince Charles said in a message recorded earlier this month and released on Good Friday.

'And at this time of Easter, when our minds are recalled to the suffering of Our Lord two thousand years ago, we think especially of those Christians who are suffering for their faith in many places around the world. I want to assure them that they are not forgotten and that they are in our prayers.

'Over the years, I have met many who have had to flee for their faith and for their life  or have somehow endured the terrifying consequences of remaining in their country  and I have been so deeply moved, and humbled, by their truly remarkable courage and by their selfless capacity for forgiveness, despite all that they have suffered.'

His Royal Highness  increasingly known as an advocate for the plight of persecuted believers  has recently met with Christian church leaders from the Middle East including the Coptic Pope, the Chaldean Archbishop of Erbil, and the Melkite Archbishop of Zahle and Forzol. The video message, recorded by Associated Press, can be watched here.

He added: 'I have also heard that in the darkness there are small shafts of light, signs of Resurrection and of hope that, slowly but surely, Christians who have had to flee from their homelands are beginning to return and to rebuild their shattered homes.'

The Prince, who has previously dubbed himself as 'Defender of Faith', rather than 'Defender of the Faith'(referring exclusively to Christianity), highlighted examples of diverse religious communities working together.

'For centuries, in many countries, the three great Abrahamic faiths have lived side by side as neighbours and as friends,' he said. 'I have heard how, in Lebanon, Muslims join with Christians at the Shrine of our Lady of Lebanon to honour her together. I know, too, of senior Muftis who believe in the essential importance of the Christian faith to maintaining the balance of the Middle East.'

He pointed to the figure of Mary, the mother of Jesus, and the 'torment and grief she endured' at Easter. He noted that she occupies 'a unique and elevated position in both Christianity and Islam', and that intolerant oppression is experienced by several religious groups.

'All three Abrahamic faiths have known and continue to know the bitterness of persecution when religion has fallen into the barbaric grip of those who distort and misrepresent faith,' he said.

'This Easter I want to salute the fortitude of all those who, whatever their faith, are persecuted for remaining faithful to the true essence of their beliefs. I admire, and greatly respect, all those of you who find it in your hearts to pray for those who persecute you and, following the example of Christ, seek forgiveness for your enemies.

'Jesus summarises the Ten Commandments into two requirements  that we should love God and love our neighbour as ourselves. It is, therefore, my special prayer this Eastertide that they will be your guide and your inspiration.'
Turkish government denies targeting ancient Christian site in airstrikes in Syria

The Turkish government has denied reports that an ancient Christian site near the Syrian city of Afrin has been damaged by its airstrikes.

Syria's antiquities department recently reported that the Turkish air raids near Afrin had damaged the Julianus church and the Brad Monastery in the archaeological site of Brad.

"Turkish regime planes bombed the archaeological site of Brad, 15 kilometres (about nine miles) south of Afrin city," the Directorate-General of Antiquities and Museums said in a statement.

The department went on to note that Brad, which also contains tombs dating back to the Roman period, has been on UNESCO's world heritage list since 2011.

Syrian antiquities chief Mahmoud Hamoud claimed that the air raids had destroyed many archaeological buildings such as the tomb of Saint Maron of the Maronite community as well as "the Julianus Church, which includes the mausoleum and is one of the oldest Christian churches in the world, built at the end of the 4th century."

Turkish Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hami Aksoy disputed the claims in a written statement, saying the reports were "completely untrue."

"No airstrike targeting the Brad [ancient] site, Julianus Church and Brad monastery has been carried out by the Turkish Armed Forces so far," he said, according to Hurriyet Daily News.

Aksoy maintained that there has been proof that Julianus Church was destroyed by armed groups in 2013.

"Contrary to the claims, every kind of measure has been taken not to damage regional and cultural structures, historical artifacts and archeological sites since the start of the operation," he added.

The airstrikes were part of Turkey's "Operation Olive Branch," which was launched on Jan. 20 to clear People's Protection Units (YPG) militants from Afrin. The YPG has been considered by the Turkish government to be an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has been waging an insurgency against Turkey since 1984.

In January, Turkey was accused of damaging the 3,000-year-old iron age neo-Hittite temple of Ain Dara as it moved forward with its bombardment of the Afrin region.

The Turkish military, however, insisted that "religious and cultural buildings, historical sites, archaeological ruins and public facilities are absolutely not among the targets" of the operation.

That same month, Syria's former antiquities chief Maamoun Abdulkarim expressed concern about a group of 40 ancient villages in the Afrin region, which has been included by UNESCO on its world heritage list and described as "Ancient Villages of Northern Syria."

The Turkish armed forces and the Free Syrian Army (FSA) have declared full control of Afrin on March 18. The seven-year civil war in Syria has ravaged its archaeological heritage and has killed more than 340,000 people and displaced millions.
Blue notes: A guide to Chinese blue-and-white porcelain

As Chinese Ceramics specialist Joan Ho explains, when it comes to porcelain, not all blues are the same

The colour blue gained special significance in the history of Chinese ceramics during the Tang dynasty (618-907). The distinctive colour in blue-glazed pottery and porcelain comes from cobalt ores imported from Persia, which were a scarce ingredient at the time and used in only limited quantities. In the Yuan (1279-1368), Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties in particular, different types of cobalt ore and methods of application determined the distinctive feature of the shades of blue that appeared on blue-and-white porcelain ware.

Two blue-and-white Hundred Antiques' vases, Kangxi Period (1662-1722). 10 in (26.4 cm) high, wood stands. This lot was offered in Pavilion Online: Chinese Art, 4-12 April 2018, and sold for HKD 400,000

It is believed that cobalt ores had been widely exploited in West Asia for use as pigments since as early as 2000 B.C. In China, they were first used for glassmaking during the Warring States (475-221 B.C.) period.

The flourishing of the Silk Road trade route saw imported cobalt introduced to China and its application, with other lead-based glazes, on low-fired earthenware, leading to the rapid development of three-coloured sancai wares.

A blue-and-white 'Peacock and Peony' dish, Ming Dynasty, 15th-16th century. 11 in (31.5 cm) diameter. This lot was offered in Pavilion Online: Chinese Art, 4-12 April 2018, and sold for HKD 32,500

Imported cobalt The Song dynasty (960-1279) marked a high point in the production of monochrome wares, but artisans of this period regarded the use of cobalt blue as an impossibility. It was not until the Mongol-ruled Yuan dynasty that the manufacture of blue-and-white porcelain came to maturity, which resulted in richer and more complex subject matter. In part, this development had a religious component: the Mongols counted as their mythical ancestors the hazy blue wolf and the white fallow doe. Blue-and-white porcelain was reserved for special occasions or used for diplomatic gifts.

A pair of blue-and-white and iron-red decorated 'Dragon' dishes. Jingwei Tang Zhi hall marks in underglaze blue within a double square, Qing Dynasty, 18th century. 6 in (17.5 cm) diameter. This lot was offered in Pavilion Online: Chinese Art, 4-12 April 2018, and sold for HKD 350,000



The Samarra Blue (sumali qing) or Sumatra Blue (suboni qing) cobalt used for Yuan wares was rich in iron, which yielded a glaze with darker blue spots. This so-called heaped and piled effect was caused by the accumulation of iron oxide in the cobalt pigment in certain areas of the surface. Blue-and-white wares were used by local dignitaries and widely exported as diplomatic gifts and merchandise.

A Powder-Blue glazed bowl, Kangxi Period (1662-1722). 7 in (19 cm) diameter. This lot was offered in Pavilion Online: Chinese Art, 4-12 April 2018, and sold for HKD 60,000

During the reigns of Yongle (1403-1425) and Xuande (1426-1435) in the early Ming period (1368-1644), smalt cobalt, brought by the returning fleets of Zheng Hes (1371-1433) maritime expeditions, was still the main source for blue-and-white porcelain. Subsequently, more rigorous firing processes resulted in subtle displays of heap and pile characteristics, with varying tones of rich and brilliant cobalt blue visible in the glazed surface.

A small blue-and-white Landscape Rouleau vase, Kangxi Period (1662-1722). 8 in (21 cm) high. This lot was offered in Pavilion Online: Chinese Art, 4-12 April 2018, and sold for HKD 60,000

Local cobalt In the Hongwu period (1368-1398), the supply of imported cobalt was briefly disrupted by several foreign trade restrictions. Locally mined cobalt, which is distinguished by a high proportion of manganese, came to play an increasingly dominant role after the Xuande period (1426-1435). From the Chenghua (1465-1487) to the Zhengde (1506-1521) periods, the local cobalt yielded a softer, pale blue colour.

A pair of blue-and-white Shou-Character dishes. Qianlong six-character seal marks in underglaze blue and of the period (1736-1795), 6 in (15.3 cm) diameter. This lot was offered in Pavilion Online: Chinese Art, 4-12 April 2018, and sold for HKD 137,500



The mixture of imported and local cobalts Another kind of local cobalt, called Mineral Blue (shi qing or shizi qing), was sourced from Jiangxi province. Characterised by a dull leaden-blue colour, it was commonly used for minyao (folk kiln) blue-and-white. However, when mixed with Muslim Blue (huiqing), the most precious type of Mineral Blue from Central Asia, Xinjiang and Yunnan provinces, it generated a distinctive purplish-blue tone. The vividness of the glaze, ranging from violet blue to silvery blue, depended on the amount of Mineral Blue included. The desirability of various tones largely depended on the taste of different emperors. For example, the Xuande Emperor favoured a purplish blue colour with heaping and piling effect, while the Chenghua Emperor preferred the washy tone.











A pair of blue-glazed dishes. Guangxu six-character marks in underglaze blue and of the period (1875-1908). 8 in (20.8 cm) diameter. This lot was offered in Pavilion Online: Chinese Art, 4-12 April 2018, and sold for HKD 52,500
Apple is revamping privacy controls for its devices and cloud services to comply with strict new European rules as Facebook faces a user privacy backlash.

The iPhone maker said it will update its web page for managing Apple IDs in coming months to let users download a copy of all their data stored with the company. The site will also let customers correct personal information, temporarily deactivate their account, and completely delete it. The new privacy controls are designed to comply with the European Unions General Data Protection Regulation, which kicks in May 25, the Cupertino, Calif.-based company said.

Apple also updated operating systems for iPhones and iPads, Macs and Apple TVs on Thursday. The new versions have a splash screen detailing Apples privacy stance and how data is used in individual applications.

The iOS 11.3 update for phones and tablets also includes a toggle to disable a controversial feature that slowed down iPhones with older batteries to avoid random shutdowns. It also offers the ability to view health records, and new animated emojis for iPhone X users.

While Apple first previewed the software changes in January, the new privacy features come as Facebook faces criticism over unauthorized use of its customers data. Users, regulators and investors are raising more questions about what large technology companies know about their customers.

Apple regularly promotes the privacy of its devices. It makes money by selling hardware, while internet companies like Facebook and Google rely on detailed user data for their advertising businesses.

Apple CEO Tim Cook called for user privacy regulation at a recent summit in China.

This certain situation is so dire and has become so large that probably some well-crafted regulation is necessary, Cook said after being asked if the use of data should be restricted in light of the Facebook incident. The ability of anyone to know what youve been browsing about for years, who your contacts are, who their contacts are, things you like and dislike and every intimate detail of your life  from my own point of view it shouldnt exist.

Apples new web-based privacy options will be released for users in Europe in early May, while the features will come to other countries later. Previously, users could download their data, correct their information, and delete accounts by contacting Apple directly. This is the first time the company is offering these capabilities in a single location online.

The web page will let users download data stored across individual apps and services. For instance, they will be able to download all information stored in Apples Contacts, Calendar and Contacts apps and media like photos, but also preferences like songs they stream via Apple Music.
A man accused of appearing in a video showing sexual assault of a child on Facebook has been arrested in Alabama.

Germaine Moore, 44, turned himself into the Millbrook Police Department at 2:30 a.m. on Tuesday, according to Central Alabama Crime Stoppers. Moore faces 11 felony charges in Alabama for a criminal sexual conduct investigation involving a person younger than 13.
Christine Ha, who calls herself "the blind cook," is joining the culinary lineup at the upcoming Bravery Chef Hall downtown.

Houston-based Ha, the first-ever blind contestant and Season 3 winner of "MasterChef," will open the Blind Goat, one of the collection of chef-led concepts in the food hall set to open later this year. The Blind Goat will be Ha's first restaurant.

When the hall opens the Blind Goat will join other chef vendors previously announced, including Cherry Block from Felix Flores, Nuna from David Guerrero, BOH Pasta from Ben McPherson and one more concept currently under negotiations with the project's partners Anh Mai and Lian Pham, owners of Conservatory food hall, and restaurateur Shepard Ross.

The Blind Goat will serve a menu focused on Nhau cuisine, also known as Vietnamese drinking food, according to the hall's partners.

"I am very excited to be opening my first food concept since winning 'MasterChef.' Everyone has been waiting to taste my dishes, and after doing pop-ups all over the world, I am finally ready to turn my dream into a reality," Ha said. "It will be awesome to be part of the budding local food hall movement, and I'm so pleased to be able to do it right here in my beloved hometown of Houston."

Ha attended Alief Elsik High School and has a Bachelor of Business Administration from the University of Texas as well as a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Houston. At 19 she lost her vision to a rare autoimmune disease called Neuromyelitis optica.

In 2012 she won the third season of Fox's "MasterChef" competition for amateur cooks. Following that she released her first cookbook, "Recipes From My Home Kitchen: Asian and American Comfort Food." Since "MasterChef" it has been her goal to open a restaurant.
The prominent pastor of a Houston megachurch Friday vehemently denied charges that he intended to "cheat" investors by selling millions of dollars in historic Chinese bonds, saying he also invested in the bonds in hopes of helping his ministry.

As members of the black faith community rallied around him, Kirbyjon Caldwell, the 64-year-old senior pastor at Windsor Village United Methodist Church, said he would fight the federal fraud charges filed Thursday against him and a Shreveport financial planner.

"These bonds are legitimate," Caldwell said. "The process is legitimate. I fully maintain that the accusation is baseless, and I hold evidence in my hand to the authenticity and the legitimacy of the bonds."

His attorney, Dan Cogdell of Houston, said Caldwell will surrender to authorities in the next 10 days and post bond in Shreveport.

"Reverend Caldwell has been a spiritual force in this city, in this state, in this country, for 30 years," his attorney, Dan Cogdell, said. "These charges are false. If any person deserves the presumption of innocence, it's that man right there."

Caldwell spoke up Friday as a group of black pastors said they are supporting Caldwell, a community leader who served as a spiritual advisor to President George W. Bush.

"On behalf of African-American churches ... we stand with our own," the Rev. Terry K. Anderson of Lilly Grove Missionary Baptist Church said to applause during a Good Friday service. "He has our full support."

READ ALSO: Pair of Houston residents convicted for 'pill mill' that sold 30,000 illegal prescriptions

Caldwell and Gregory Alan Smith, 55, have been charged with 13 counts of conspiracy, wire fraud and money laundering in a scheme that allegedly duped elderly and vulnerable investors out of nearly $3.5 million, according to an indictment filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The indictment says Caldwell used his position in the church to help lure investors into buying the historic bonds, which are not recognized by the Chinese government. He and Smith told investors they could see returns as high as 15 times their initial investment, according to the indictment.

The charges accuse Caldwell and Smith of cheating 29 investors between April 2013 and August 2014. The bonds are described in the indictment as "mere collectible memorabilia" with no investment value.

Caldwell and his Wyoming-based company, LDT, have been accused of keeping nearly $2 million of the investments. Smith received $1 million and "offshore third parties, at least one in Mexico" received most of the rest, according to the indictment.

Smith is the operator and manager of Smith Financial Group in Shreveport. In 2010, he was permanently barred from having any association with Financial Industry Regulatory Authority members after he was caught misappropriating investor funds, according to the indictment.

Caldwell said none of the investors was a church member. He said he met Smith through a colleague, but declined to answer questions on whether he might have been misled by his partner.

Caldwell and Cogdell said Friday the pastor has returned almost $1 million to investors who were apparently "dissatisfied" with the time taken to get returns. None of the investors got the money they'd been promised, according to the indictment.

READ ALSO: Acevedo vows gang crackdown after 11 kids have been slain in 16 months

The allegations against Caldwell have stunned community leaders and members of Windsor Village United Methodist Church, who have described their senior pastor as a "pillar" and a man of upstanding character. Caldwell is known not only locally, but nationally for being a friend and spiritual adviser of former presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

A Houston native, Caldwell developed a friendship with Bush when he was governor, and he offered the benediction for his 2011 inauguration as president. Caldwell is also a limited partner in the Houston Texans. Officials there declined to comment about the allegations.

Caldwell also serves on the board of trustees of Baylor College of Medicine and is an independent director of NRG Energy.

Under Caldwell's leadership starting in 1982, Windsor Village church grew from 25 members to more than 16,000, and is one of the largest protestant churches in the nation, according to the church website.

Ray Bady, director of youth ministry at Windsor Village, said that church members "all know who (Caldwell) is" and that they can attest to his positive work in the community, especially during Hurricane Harvey. Bady said he doesn't believe a word of the allegations.

"It's absolutely out of nowhere," Bady said. "Our responsibility in this is just to pray, to continue to pray. Our bible teaches us that the prayers of the righteous prevail."

U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston, said Caldwell is "charged and not convicted."

"I think it is important that we separate the two," she said. "With the kind of integrity and honesty I have seen in Reverend Caldwell over the years, and his astute business knowledge, I am going to assert that he is innocent until proven guilty. ... Let the facts be the definer and not the rumors."

While Caldwell's church was closed Friday, the news conference was filled with Caldwell's friends and supporters, who shouted out choruses of "amens" at each denial of the accusations.

Family friend Ronique Bastine-Robinson said after the press briefing that while the allegations were a surprise, everyone should wait to cast judgment until all of the facts of the case come to light.

"They were shocking, but they weren't not enough to make me doubt his innocence," Bastine-Robinson said. "I'm in support of waiting until the whole story is out."

Pastors also spoke in support at the combined Good Friday service between the Lilly Grove church and Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church. Anderson said and Wheeler's pastor, the Rev. Marcus D. Cosby, decided to stand in solidarity with Caldwell.

"A brother does not need you when he's up; he needs you when he's down," Anderson told several hundred people gathered for the service. "And brothers and sisters, hear me: If they do it to Kirbyjon Caldwell, don't think you are ... exempt from them coming after one of us."

Cogdell said expects the case to go to trial in federal court.

"He is absolutely, 100 percent not guilty," Cogdell said. "I plan on beating this case like a rented mule."

If convicted, the men could face up to 20 years in prison for conspiracy to commit wire fraud count and for the wire fraud counts, and up to 10 years in prison for conspiracy to commit money laundering and the money laundering.

They also could each face $1 million in fines.
To the editor:

On this day March 29, 2018, the generators for the Montgomery County Hospital District have been on since 2:30 this morning, and I have been up since then. I know most don't care because you don't live close enough for them to affect you and that is fine.

I believe the city ordinance states a noise that is irritating to a citizen is unlawful, but then we are talking about the uncontrollable Montgomery County Hospital District and the do-nothing City of Conroe.

James L Jones

Conroe

Responding to Duckworth's list of questions

To the editor:

To the Oracle in the Woods, Your Letter March 22, 2018

I would like to respond to Dr. Duckworth's letter he worked so hard to create.

1. Yes. It now appears the American public has an administration which is the most corrupted in modern U.S. history and it's being called out for it. I consider myself one of the 60-65 percent of Americans who disapprove of the Trump presidency: his racism, his bigotry, his stupidity and especially his continued deference for a dictator of a nation, the philosophy of which is to destroy democracies. Do I need to state his name?

2. This question is an insult to most American citizens. We are not anarchists, "teenagers" or illegal immigrants. All member of the government of the United States, Republicans & Democrats are Americans! Do you dispute that statement:

As for your reference to teenagers, I assume the oracle is speaking against the students standing and speaking out about gun violence and the lack of gun regulatory laws; I can only say where are the adults in the room.

3. Yes. So far it appears to be Trump's lawyers and friends. That money is called cover-up money for his misdeeds. The oracle should consider 10 years ago when Trump was married to his third wife. I would hope the oracle watches 60 Minutes Sunday, March 25. Then we'll all find out who's paying these women. But alas, 60 Minutes is surely "fake news."

4. A definite and positive yes. So do the majority of American citizens; check your "fake news." Mueller is doing an outstanding job. So far, numerous Trump associates have pleaded guilty to various criminal charges. You can't call that "fake news." The oracle should broaden his reading material and learn something about Paul Manifold's past and current history. Does the oracle believe in the rule of law, the foundation of the U.S. Constitution?

5. Yes. I have voted and will vote in November. Looking at current and past Trump cabinet secretaries and others Trump appointees forced out of office because of corruption charges, the swamp is not being drained but turned into an ocean. Thank God for "fake news." I find it interesting that the biggest pathological liar calls everyone else a liar when he is challenged or called out for his wrong doings.

6. Yes. I would love for the oracle to tell me what informative news media he reads to get his facts. Are they tea leaves?

7. Jeff Sessions, if Trump doesn't fire him, is part of the swamp.

8. Yes. Your question is stupid and un-American. I truly believe you have no faith in the greatness of the United States, the U.S. Constitution and ALL 27 of its amendments. They protect ALL Americans.

9. Would the oracle please indicate where he got the Jeffersonian quote. I would love to read the full version, not just a cherry-picked quotation. I would like to know if Jefferson ever made such a statement. Would oracle please state this source?

The oracle comes forth every so often with his bile from on high and really says nothing of importance. The oracle is a rabble rouser.

Laurence Schmidt

Conroe

Control by taking way freedoms

To the editor:

"This year will go down in history for the first time a civilized nation has full gun registration! Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future."

Passing of German Weapons Act

Adolph Hitler 1935

The best way to take control over a people and control them utterly is to take a little of their freedom at a time , to erode rights by a thousand tiny, and almost imperceptible reductions. In this way, the people will not see those rights and freedoms being removed until past the point at which these changes cannot be reversed.

Adolph Hitler

Linda Anderson

The Woodlands
Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center held a blood drive Thursday in Atascocita to help save lives in partnership with the Health Source Chiropractic.

People were also allowed to donate their double red blood cells, platelets and plasma. Each donation can help save about three lives, according to Gulf Coast Regional's website.

Some were first time donors others have donated on several occasions, according to participants.

People who donated received a free t-shirt from Gulf Coast and a goody bag from Health Source.

Cameron Palmer, Gulf Coast's media promotions coordinator said the next blood drive they plan to have is in November. People who were not able to make it to Thursday's blood drive who would like to donate can also stop by at the Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center.

"We have to get as many donations as we can because need about 1,000 donations every day and every donation can help save up to three lives," Palmer said. "That is what we drive to do, plan anything that can boost donations, boos people to come out here."

To look for donation spots, visit www.giveblood.org.
Houston's CenterPoint Energy asked state regulators on Thursday to grant a gas utility rate increase for customers in Houston, the company's third request in three years to raise rates for more than 1 million natural gas customers.

CenterPoint has proposed increasing the base rate that all customers pay, regardless of usage to 16.45 a month, up 70 cents from $15.75. The rate would go into effect on May 28, if approved by regulators and if it faces no objections from lawyers that represent the city of Houston in rate cases.
Authorities say a man suffering gunshot wounds approached a Cleveland police officer around 4 a.m. Friday to ask for help.

The victim, 23-year-old Dallas Schwartz of New Caney, reportedly told the officer, who was investigating an unrelated incident at Cleveland Walmart, that he had been shot at a convenience store outside of Cleveland on US 59.

Because the scene was thought to be outside of the city and in the jurisdiction of the Liberty County Sheriff's Office, deputies were called to the scene to work with Cleveland PD and determine where the shooting took place.

"It's been a weird one. We don't have a lot of information at the time," said LCSO Sgt. Investigator Josh Cummins. "He told police it happened at a Shell gas station, a big red building. We sent deputies to all the possible locations but haven't been able to find a crime scene."

According to Cummins, law enforcement has received "zero cooperation" from the shooting victim and it could be a couple of days before the victim can be questioned further.

Schwartz is currently undergoing medical procedures at Memorial Hermann Hospital in Houston.

"We plan to talk to him over the weekend or the early part of next week," Cummins said. "Hopefully we will give us more information then."

From witnesses on the scene at Walmart, authorities reportedly were directed to persons in the Splendora area.

"We are talking with Montgomery County Sheriff's Office about the case. It's possible that this shooting didn't even take place in Liberty County but in Montgomery County."

Schwartz's vehicle was towed to the sheriff's office where it is being held as evidence.
Like an evangelist spreading the word, Wesley Wells of Lee College is telling everyone he meets that Lee can provide families an advantage when it comes to learning and class offerings.

Not only are they the only college facility in the Liberty County area, they are becoming the most active in offering a variety of programs to satisfy the curiosity of anyone at any age.

"We want to help our Liberty community to understand we service the entire population from kids at college programs to senior's travel programs to our dual credit institute to our traditional college-age students," Wells told members of the Liberty-Dayton Chamber of Commerce at their monthly luncheon last week.

Wells also emphasized that regardless of age, there was something to benefit residents in Liberty County.

"As long as our students are college-prepared or ready for our programs, they can take our courses," he said.

The days of journeymen programs being taught or administered at the local plants or refineries are long gone. Now, those same industries require a more uniform education, usually two years, in a local community college where the students can receive hands-on training before moving out to the plant and learning skills particular to that facility.

"On our campus, our technical programs include electrical technology, process technology, and our computer-aided programs (CAD)," he said, "and those are offered to our high school students and to our community partners."

Wells said those three programs are the fastest growing in the area.

"Whether you want to work in the oil and gas industry or in the public sector as an electrician, or through design, they will be able to work through our programs," he said.

When most students finish those programs, they are almost guaranteed a job in the industry upon graduation. The need is great.

Many of the leaders at the area oil and gas facilities know they will be facing shortages in the near future because of early retirement or retirement of their current workforce. Numbers range from as low as 15 percent of the current workforce to as much as 55 percent by retirement in the next decade.

"We want to position our residents for economic growth and success in life," he said.

Currently, Liberty County has a large population between 25-40 that is underpaid and undereducated.

The Lee College campus offers associates degrees and certificates in certain programs.

"We have also partnered with the Harris County Department of Education to bring GED and English as a Second Language (ESL) programs to the community for free," he said.

This summer, the college will also sponsor their first U. S. Citizenship course.

In the last two years, campus enrollment has been more than 500 students.

Dozens of those have already graduated with some type of associates degree or certifications in a technical area.

"Those are students who typically might not have attended a college and received a degree, but now they are gainfully employed or moved on to a major college or university," he said.

Wells reminded chamber members that the common core classes can be taken at the Liberty Center and at a much cheaper price than if their student took them at one of the major universities.

"That cost is $125 for a high school student who takes an English class, for example, at Lee in our dual-credit course and not have to pay as much as $900 or more for the same class at a university," he said. The cost savings for parents is tremendous.

Wells also said students who do go off to college, can come home and take classes in the summer time that will transfer.

"They will pay around $600 for the five-to-ten week class at our campus versus $1,300 at a major university," he explained.

One of the newest course offerings at the college is the electrical course for burgeoning electricians.

"This is one of those programs that has the certifications built into our course, and their NCCR certification and are ready to go to work on Day 1 after graduation as an electrician," he said.

Wells said they have seen a resurgence of students who leave the college with their degrees or certifications, go out into the public workforce and do well, and then return to Lee to teach students the same profession.

"Programs like CAD and engineering programs are rapidly being populated with women as well," he said.

"And with our degrees, you don't necessarily have to work in the oil and gas industry," he added.

It all sounds good until it comes to filling out the forms, but Lee College brings their financial aid and admissions to Liberty to sit down with parents and students to help them navigate through the weeds of getting into college.

"Come by and see us," he invited everyone.

They are sponsoring local summer camps in arts and crafts, robotics, and much more.

On Saturday, April 7, the Lee College Education Center  South Liberty County will host an open house from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. at 1715 Highway 146 in Liberty.
A Mexican national accused of impregnating his preteen daughter more than two decades ago was arrested along with his wife Thursday in Montgomery County.

A Montgomery County Precinct 4 Constable's deputy pulled over 55-year-old Alicia Vazquez-Carrizales and her husband Heraclio Gamez-Nava, 64, for a routine traffic violation near U.S. 59 and FM 1314 in Porter. When questioned, Vazquez-Carrizales told officers her husband's last name was Rosalez.
Once upon a time in the mid-aughts, when Shake Shack was just a New York City cult burger rather than a rampaging international brand, I visited the location in Madison Square Park. I stood in the very, very, very long line. I loved the park setting, but as for the food, I remember being underwhelmed.

The regulation cheeseburger struck me as just OK despite its photogenic qualities and its fresher-than-average ingredients. I thought the frozen crinkle-cut fries were a waste of calories. I came back to Houston wondering what all the fuss was about.

Now that Shake Shack has opened two Houston outposts, with a third to come on Westheimer in Montrose, I thought it was time to return and reassess. Heres how my visit to the month-old location in Rice Village went:

PRICE: $5.49 for the basic single-patty Shack Burger with cheese; $2.99 for basic waffle fries: $4.59 for a special-edition frozen concrete with mint-chocolate marshmallow add-ins from local pastry chef Rebecca Masson of Fluff Bake Bar. Triple-filtered water was free from a cooler on the condiment bar. Meal total with tax was $14.53.

ORDERING: Self-serve. Line up inside the railings that organize the queue, which is liable to be considerable at prime times. Consult the wall menu, and order from a staffer, who will hand you a buzzer. Find a table indoors or outside on the terrace, or a perch at one of the high community tables. Visit the condiment station to acquire napkins, plastic utensils, straws and the like. Fetch your food from up front when your buzzer goes off. (In my case, just before the lunch rush started in earnest, that took about 5 minutes.)

ARCHITECTURE: Salad stuff on top. On a toasted potato bun goes a ground beef patty thats about a third of an inch thick; a slice of American cheese; twin slices of ripe Roma tomato; and a bright green frill of leaf lettuce. A swipe of pinkish, mayo-based Shack Sauce goes on the top bun. Snugged in its white paper wrapper so that the red, green and gold elements all peek out enticingly, with the cheese melting in rivulets, its an exceptionally photogenic package.

QUALITY: The best thing about the cheeseburger was the good quality, texture and cooking of the ground Angus beef patty. The grind was loose enough so that the meat didnt compact on the grill, and the beef flavor was full and satisfying. The interior of the thin patty remained nicely rose-pink beneath its dark sear, so that the overall burger effect was succulent rather than dry and deprivational.

The cheese had a good, sticky melt to it; Ive always felt the charms of American cheese on a burger were more textural than flavor-based, and the Shake Shack burger bore this out. I appreciated the ripeness and give of the tomato slices, but the leaf lettuce, for all its visual appeal, got pretty much lost in context.

More Information Shake Shack has two standalone locations in the Galleria (5015 Westheimer) and Rice Village (6205 Kirby). There's also a kiosk at Minute Maid Park; shakeshack.com. See More Collapse

What I missed, overall, was the degree of condiment oomph that we Texans prize in our burgers. The Shack Sauce is pretty bland, I am sorry to say. No mustard, no pickles, no onion are part of the standard Shake Shack package. You take these burgers as they come, no customization offered. You can add mustard from the condiment station, if you like. And I smiled to see a whole fleet of Cajun hot sauce bottles at the ready  next time I go, Ill add a few jolts to perk things up.

Still, I realized as I ate that the lack of condiment action allowed the beefiness of the burger experience to shine through, even in a single-patty situation. I have a friend who swears one must always order a double-patty burger at Shake Shack, lest the bun-to-meat ratio skew too far breadward. I didnt find that to be true. The yellow potato buns squished down nicely  but not too far  as I ate.

OOZE RATING: Fair, mostly thanks to melted cheese and mayo sauce. The patty itself was juicy but not at all drippy.

GRADE: Solid B-plus. I definitely liked this burger more than my Madison Square Park original. More than a decade of honing the concept may have had a salutary effect on the product, although its hard to say from just two samples. The main difference was that my latest sample actually left me wanting more. The original did not.

BONUS POINTS: The physical setup is handsome, with its airy space and grid of woods and metals. The special Masson concrete was fun stuff, the frozen chocolate custard looped with soft marshmallow threads and big hunks of mint chocolate.

MINUS POINTS: Staffers on the line seemed a bit brusque and impervious to eye contact. Although they do bark Welcome to Shake Shack! quite a bit.

Im still not a fan of frozen fries, but much care (and scientific manipulation, one supposes) has gone into creating a preternaturally long-lasting crunch to the rippled exteriors of these particular specimens. They were good for what they were. Rather famously, the Shake Shack brain trust once tried to swap out better fries for the frozen crinkle-cuts and were faced by a customer rebellion. So there ya go.
Ladies are knitting and crocheting together all for a good cause in Cypress.

Helping Hands Ladies of Cypress, a nonprofit organization, knit and crochet hats for the homeless, chemo patients, newborns, troops, and first responders. The group also makes scarves and baby blankets and quilts for those in hospice and the homeless.

"I think it is a good way for people to get involved with helping their neighbors," said Cathy Travland, vice president of projects for the Helping Hands Ladies of Cypress. "I think it makes people feel that they are making a difference and making thigs better in the place that they live. I think people want the community to improve and this is a way for them to give back."

Pam Zwecker, the co-founder of Helping Hands Ladies of Cypress, helped to create the organization after her mother felt inspired from another group of women. Helping Hands Ladies of Cypress began to organize after Zwecker's mother read an article about a group of ladies who saved plastic grocery bags, made plastic yarn, then created sleeping mats for the homeless out of the material.

Zwecker knits and her mother quilts, so the two started the Helping Hands Ladies of Cypress. The group has been active since 2016 and has grown through outreach done through various social media platforms such as Facebook and the Nextdoor app.

"It's phenomenal to have this organization in the community, and the feeling you can't describe it. It's almost like we have created this village of people who have pulled together and your heart swells," Zwecker said. "It's hard to believe that everyone wants to do as much as they can. We have people that find out about us and want to drop off yarn or fabric. It's uplifting and wonderful."

After seeing help from first responders during Hurricane Harvey, the group created Project Hero Hats to hand hats to those in communities who helped others during the natural disaster.

Last year, more than 190 quilts were given out to community members and hundreds of hats to various organizations.

The group, which includes 25 active members, makes hats and quilts for organizations such as hospice centers, memory care centers, the Ronald McDonald House, Boys and Girls Country, the Shaken Baby Syndrome Campaign, and the American Heart Association.

This year 200 red baby hats were donated to the American Heart Association for babies born with congenital heart conditions. Nearly 400 hats have been given to four different homeless shelters in the Houston area.

Hats have also been sent out after the shooting in Las Vegas, which occurred at the Route 91 Harvest music festival, to firefighters in California who have battled fires and mudslides, and to people in Florida after natural disasters such as hurricanes.

There are ambassadors for the organization in other states that gift heroes in other cities hats. Plans to have start branches in other states with former Cypress members are underway as well.

Helping Hands Ladies of Cypress have a goal to reach more people this year and some of those goals include to distribute 1,000 hero hats, 500 homeless hats, 300 baby blankets, and 100 Scarves for Operation Gratitude for deployed troops. Amongst gifting various organizations with hats and blankets, the group is aiming to distribute 300 quilts and 100 pillowcases as well.

The organization, which meets every second and fourth Saturday, welcomes community members to donate supplies, funds, or time.

"It's not a Christian organization; it's a God organization," Zwecker said. "People have a conviction from whatever they believe in, and it makes them strive to be a better person and do better things for humanity."

Helping Hands Ladies of Cypress

https://helpinghandsladiesofcypress.com/

P.O. Box 878, Cypress, TX

77410-0878

281-236-7816

HelpingHandsLadiesOfCypress@gmail.com
Former Houston City Councilman Larry Green died of an overdose of methamphetamine and chloroethane, medical examiners have determined.

The 52-year-old's March 6 death is classified as an accident, the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences reported on its website Friday morning. The Houston Police Department's case remains open, but police do not suspect foul play.

Methamphetamine is a common and powerful illegal stimulant. Chloroethane, also known as ethyl chloride, is used as a solvent, refrigerant and local anesthetic, the IFS said in a statement. The chemical also is sold under names such as "Black Max" or "Maximum Impact" and used as a recreational inhalant to create a "sense of drunkenness and relaxation," IFS said.

Green, who represented southwest Houston for more than six years, remains the only person elected to lead District K, one of two seats added after the 2010 Census led the council to grow from nine to 11 districts, plus five at-large seats.

The councilman was remembered as a fierce advocate for the communities he represented, bringing street repairs, a new police station and an economic development zone to his district.

Mayor Sylvester Turner echoed others at City Hall Friday in saying he was unaware of any substance abuse issues Green may have confronted away from the office. He added that the councilman served his district honorably and effectively.

"That is how I will choose to remember him. More than anything, I ask people to continue to pray for his family, who must deal with his death every single day," Turner said in a statement. "The autopsy results do not diminish the great work he did for the people of District K. However, it does remind us that our actions have consequences.

"I hope everyone will continue to celebrate his life instead of focusing on his death," the mayor continued.

Green's family, meanwhile, asked for privacy.

"While learning the information we have about the circumstances of his passing is painful, it does not change the fact that Larry was a wonderful, caring person and a dedicated public servant for the people of Houston," it said in a statement. "Our family is grateful for the outpouring of love and support we have received, and we ask for privacy during this difficult time."

Donald Perkins, the District K chief of staff who worked for Green throughout his tenure, said Friday morning that he did not know nor want to know the county's determination, preferring instead to address residents' calls about missed trash pickups and broken water lines.

"I love the fact that he's at peace and I focus on the fact that he left a legacy in the district," Perkins said. "I just want everybody to know that the District K office is going to continue to be very professional, very responsive, and we're going to continue to move the spirit and the legacy of what Councilman Green wanted for us moving forward."

District B Councilman Jerry Davis, who often shared a chuckle with Green during long meetings from their adjacent chairs at the council horseshoe, said it would be inappropriate to discuss the county's findings in Green's absence.

"His work speaks for itself," Davis said. "The work that he's been doing, it's been proven the last two weeks in the outpouring of support from people in the community, colleagues, even the media displaying everything he's done, the wonderful things he's done in the city for the last six years and two months."

District C Councilwoman Ellen Cohen felt similarly.

"I'm sorry to learn of the results of the autopsy, but it doesn't take away from the fact that he was a good man and did great things for his district. And a good friend," she said. "Our offices are next to each other, and so I had a chance to see the relationship he had with his constituents, and it doesn't change what he did for his district."

Councilman Mike Laster joined the council at the same time as Green, representing newly created District J, which shares a border with District K in the southwest.

"I continue to grieve the loss of my brother Larry Green," Laster said. "I choose to remember the man he was, the good he did, and the legacy he leaves. I trust in the sure and certain hope that he rests in the eternal arms of a loving and gracious God."

Civic leaders praised Green's work ethic, marveled at the number of events and community meetings he attended, and said the councilman was known to answer texts after midnight. Green took builders on tours around his district, pitching its numerous vacant tracts for development. He organized an aggressive tree-planting program and was a champion for a program that hires artists to beautify electrical boxes at intersections.

"He gave himself to this district," Turner said at Green's funeral service two weeks ago. "The district loved him. He loved them back. And Larry was hands-on, and he wanted better because if you've lived in districts and neighborhoods that have been under-served, what brings you satisfaction is to make it better."

Green practiced law for two decades, served as district director for U.S. Rep Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston, and ran the job training nonprofit HoustonWorks USA for four years, leaving that post a few months after winning his council seat. As a councilman, he chaired the transportation, technology and infrastructure committee and also held leadership posts with the National League of Cities.

Nine candidates have filed for a May 5 special election to fill his seat.

Green is survived by a brother, two nieces, two nephews and numerous family members in Texas and Louisiana.
A mother concerned over at least two recent alleged gun threats made by students is calling on the Conroe Independent School District to take action.

Heather Carrier, a mother with two children enrolled in Conroe ISD schools, addressed the district's board of trustees on March 20 demanding action in reference to two different rumors involving gun threats made by two separate children the week before spring break.

Carrier told the trustees she was terrified after hearing about an Irons Junior High School rumor regarding her oldest son's classmate threatening to bring a gun to school to "shoot people."

"I immediately got on the phone with the school the next morning in an attempt to verify what my 13-year-old had told me," Carrier told the board on March 20. "Initially, I was told that the school had only learned about the event that morning and in fact had detained the student. This was confusing because my son had heard it at school, the day before. It was later clarified to be two different instances with two different children only a few days apart."

Carrier said she did not begin to feel at ease until Jeff Fuller, the principal at Irons Junior High School, spoke with her for more than 30 minutes on a "personal level." But the conversation, she said, was only partially reassuring.

"Unfortunately, this has left me with even greater questions about continued security of not only my son's school but every school in this district," she said. "The children in question were searched on the days of the event and no gun was found. But what happens in the future, if they change their minds and decide to act on the threats. Is the staff going to search them every time in school until they graduate, until they are no longer a risk?"

RUMOR VERSUS REAL THREAT

Conroe ISD spokeswoman Sarah Blakelock responded to the two rumors Carrier told the trustees, both of which occurred at Irons Junior High School in early March. One student was arrested but no weapons were found in either case, Blakelock said.

In one instance, on March 7, a student used the social media app Snapchat to post a threat regarding an incident that occurred during lunchtime, Blakelock said, adding that rumors are always circulating but that the district investigates each one in order to separate between rumor and "real threats."

"First of all, if there is a real threat to campus safety, we are going to respond," Blakelock said, adding the district uses its police department to determine the impact of every rumor to a campus.

Blakelock said parents were notified via email and social media regarding the Snapchat incident.

Fuller sent a letter to parents about the incident.

"Campus administrators have identified the student and, in working with Conroe ISD Police, have determined the threat to be false and not viable," Fuller stated in the letter to parents on March 7. "There are no weapons. This matter, in addition to any other rumor or threat, are all investigated and addressed in accordance with the Student Code of Conduct."

The student was not arrested in the previous case. But just days before, another student was arrested after making a threat at the same school, Blakelock said, noting she was restricted from giving out too many details regarding the incidents due to student privacy laws.

Carrier said she was not aware of the two incidents at Irons Junior High School until she started making telephone calls to officials herself.

Blakelock said the district will notify parents if an unfounded rumor evolves into misinformation, where it could have a serious impact on a campus, or if it is a real threat.

"The Conroe ISD Police Department along with district and campus administrators take these situations very seriously and do everything possible to make sure students and staff are safe, including meeting with parents and making home visits," Blakelock said. "If there is determined to be any validity to any rumor or impact to the campus, parents are notified."

Just three days after Carrier addressed the board, another rumor about weapons on campus began to circulate at another school in the Conroe ISD. Just 2 miles down the road at Oak Ridge High School on March 23, the district police department began conducting classroom sweeps with K-9 units.

While the rumors at Oak Ridge High School ultimately turned out to be false and no weapons were found, according to the district, parents were in a frenzy to pull their children out of school. One parent confirmed to the Villager her son had texted her about the rumors, but later she received a district message stating the campus was safe.

Oak Ridge High School Principal Tommy Johnson denied the rumors and in an emailed letter to parents on March 23 assured them that classroom sweeps with district police K-9 units were random and not in response to any real threat. There were no weapons found during the screenings, he added.

'A LAYERED APPROACH TO CAMPUS SAFETY'

Datren L. Williams, vice president of the CISD Board of Trustees, who has three children of his own in the district, said he became aware of the Irons Junior High School gun threats on the day Carrier came to address the board.

"Please keep in mind that we have over 60 campuses and over 60,000 students in CISD," Williams said, adding that he believes the administration has done an exceptional job in addressing safety incidents. "I am not aware of all the facts of this particular incident, specifically who knew what, when and what actions took place as a result. I do trust that the school district takes the safety of every student as the utmost priority."

According to Blakelock, the Conroe ISD has spent millions of dollars on "a layered approach to campus safety including the installation of secure entrances and vestibules along with adding security cameras throughout our schools."

At the most recent Board of Trustees meeting-the same day Carrier addressed the board-members voted to approve a $3.7 million district-wide safety and security upgrades project, which included security barricades, new strobe lights and fire alarms, surveillance cameras, as well as thousands of dollars' worth of other improvements to existing security systems in schools.

Since 2010, the district has reported 43 incidents involving weapons brought to campuses, including intermediate, junior high and high schools, according to data from the Conroe ISD. These incidents, which are reported to the state, include firearm possession, illegal knife possessions and incidents involving other prohibited weapons, according to compiled campus incident reports from the district.

"The district is continuously working on safety measures to ensure the safety of our kids," Williams said. "These measures include increasing vestibule security, key pads, speakers at the entrances used prior to letting visitors in, increased police presence, more robust communication systems for our officersetcetera."

ACTIVE SHOOTER TRAINING

Blakelock said officials on district campuses "regularly review safety procedures, and periodically conduct safety drills which include lockdown drills."

With the third largest police department in Montgomery County, the district "regularly provides active shooter training to our officers as well as other local law enforcement agencies to better prepare our law enforcement community for an integrated response," she said.

In an interview with Conroe ISD police Chief Bill Harness last year, Harness said his officers patrol all campuses within the district day and night and can handle student incidents, as well as civilian incidents, in the areas they patrol.

The district board late last year approved an application for a state grant for assistance in purchasing rifle-resistant body armor that would help keep police officers safe during an emergency, such as an active shooter on campus.

Carrier said that recent events such as the Parkland, Fla., shooting where a former student is accused of killing 17 people with an AR-15 assault rifle, have left her with a feeling of dread in spite of increased police presence.

"All I can say to that is those exact measures did not stop 17 people from being murdered in Parkland, Fla., on Feb. 14," she told the board. "How many of our children and teachers have to die before we start to implement more formidable security measures in our schools?"

It's a feeling of concern that Williams said he understands.

"The concern I share goes beyond school shootings. It is a concern that I am not physically there to protect my kids," Williams said. "No matter the level of security the school provides or the county sheriff's department provides for the community, I will always have a concern for my kids' safety when I am not there to protect them."

Conroe ISD Board President Melanie Bush said she believes the multi-layered security measures and having such a robust police force are key to protecting schools.

"As a parent, I am grateful for every person who reports any potential threat," Bush said. "I appreciate that our administration takes every issue very seriously and investigates it fully."
The city of Oak Ridge North will soon be home to a brand new 6,016-square foot swim school designed specifically for young children between the ages of 6 months and 9 years.

The April opening of the Emler Swim School in Oak Ridge North, located at Wood Ridge Plaza off Interstate 45 North, makes it the fifth location to move into the greater Houston area since 2017, joining its sister schools in Meyerland, Clear Lake, Vintage Park and Spring.

Emler Swim School currently has plans to open three to four additional locations in the Houston area, according to a news release from the school.

In the city of Oak Ridge North, the Emler Swim School, which is joining about a handful of other private swim schools in the area, nearly lost its chance to be a part of the vibrant Woodlands-area community due to some concerns regarding the use of the space which was originally slated for a retail business.

Emler CEO Greg Laird, who grew up in Houston and went to Klein High School, said while getting the approval from the Oak Ridge North City Council to open the school "was a process," he and his staff's experience with city officials has been overall positive.

"Each one of them were super courteous and while they asked some tough questions, I think all of their questions were in the spirit of the community for the vision of what they think best serves that community," Laird said. "And so it made me respect them. But also (made me) want to be in the community even more if they thought we were a fit because that's just great leadership. I don't mind the tough questions at all."

At a special joint meeting of the City Council last year, the city council voted 4-1 to approve the lease agreement and to allow Emler Swim School to install an indoor swimming pool and provide swimming lessons to young children

After a lengthy discussion between members of the city council and Mayor Jim Kuykendall weighing the benefits of allowing a school to take up a space intended for retail-a decision that could impact future sales tax revenue-the council ultimately decided to allow Emler to lease the space.

Council Member Frances Planchard was the only no vote.

"I voted against Elmer Swim School putting their business in Wood Ridge Plaza because I did not think that particular business was the best use for freeway frontage in the city because it would not generate sales tax revenue for the city," Planchard told The Villager.

For the Fiscal Year 2017 -18, the city fell short from its projected sales tax revenue of more than $2 million. Instead, the city reached about $1.8 million in sales tax revenue. For next year, the city anticipates about $2 million in sales tax revenue.

In an email, Oak Ridge North City Manager Vicky Rudy said the city welcomes the new school despite the fact it will generate sales tax revenue.

"While a swim program doesn't generate sales tax, it does draw families to our city, and our shopping center, where they can eat and shop," Rudy said. "Also, Elmer is filling a long vacant space. Having a vibrant program like Elmer can stimulate activity in the center."

Planchard agreed with Rudy's assessment.

"I am glad the business decided to come to (Oak Ridge North). Hopefully when families utilize this facility they will patronize some of the local merchants that do generate sales tax revenue," Planchard said.

Heather Neeley, Oak Ridge North's economic development director, said the city has already seen an increase of sales tax revenue this quarter over the same period last year. In January, the city saw an 11.62 percent increase in sales tax over the same month last year, Neeley added.

"These increases can be attributed to retail and the manufacturing industry holding strong and recovering from any fallout due to the low price of oil and lingering effects from Hurricane Harvey," Neeley said.

For Laird, opening the school is like a homecoming.

"I'm kind of nervous and a very excited to be home," he said with a laugh. "I think what the community can look forward to is a really, really nurturing 100 percent effective safety and learning experience that's worked for 43 years. I think they are going to love it. I hope they do. I hope that comes through.
Michael Minasi/Staff Photographer

The Oak Ridge North City Council on Monday, March 26, took one step closer to paving the way for future developments and road improvements after voting to approve a master thoroughfare plan.

The MTP designates Robinson and Hanna roads as thoroughfares in the city that will in the future be widened from two lanes to four lanes to accommodate higher levels of traffic. A pedestrian pathway plan, which would include sidewalks and a bicycle lane is also planned for the two roads.
The city of Oak Ridge North in April will annex 7.81 acres of land it recently acquired for $500,000 through litigation with a private investor.

At the Monday, March 26 City Council meeting, Public Works Director Joe Sherwin addressed residents during a public hearing regarding the annexation of the land, about 3.5 acres of which is a drainage ditch operated by Montgomery County Drainage District No. 6. The remaining portion is unimproved property that is inaccessible.

City Manager Vicky Rudy told The Villager the land, located on the east side of the Union Pacific Railroad tracks, near Hanna Road and adjacent to the Oak Ridge North Business Park, was acquired by the city through condemnation proceedings with Vaught Investments in 2015 after the city could not reach a purchase agreement with Vaught.

The city constructed a water line across the property line from the Oak Ridge North Business Park to a main line on Hanna Road as part of the planned improvements, Rudy said. The city is also planning future public works developments including a pump station, a public works facility and water wells.

When asked by a resident why the city would purchase a tract of land that is inaccessible for $500,000, Chris Nichols, Oak Ridge North city attorney, said that out of the potential sites for future public works developments, the 7.81 acres was the property that would be the least expensive.

"That was the property that would cost the city the least to acquire because once the city acquires the property, the city has the right to obtain access to the property because it's a governmental entity," Nichols said.

The city will convey the drainage ditch portion of land to MCDD No. 6 because the district maintains it and because of an interlocal agreement, the entity will reimburse Oak Ridge North a portion of the cost of acquiring the land, Sherwin told residents. It is unclear how much that reimbursement will be.

Kenneth Vaught, Jr., who owns Vaught Investments, could not be reached for comment.

The city will begin annexation proceedings to extend the boundary of Oak Ridge North by adding the 7.81 acres on April 23.
A prominent Houston pastor and spiritual adviser to President George W. Bush has been indicted on federal charges that he sold millions of dollars in worthless Chinese bonds to elderly and vulnerable investors, according to federal authorities.

Kirbyjon H. Caldwell, 64, and Shreveport financial planner Gregory Alan Smith, 55, were charged with 13 counts of conspiracy, wire fraud and money laundering.

Caldwell is accused of using his position as the senior pastor of the Windsor Village United Methodist Church to help lure nearly $3.5 million in investments into historic Chinese bonds that are not recognized by the Chinese government. He and Smith told investors they could see returns as high as 15 times their initial investment, according to the indictment.

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The charges, filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission, accuses the men of cheating 29 investors between April 2013 and August 2014 for the bonds, which are described in the indictment as mere collectible memorabilia.

These bonds were issued by the former Republic of China prior to losing power to the communist government in 1949, U.S. Attorney Alexander c. Van Hook in Shreveport said in a press release. They are not recognized by Chinas current government and have no investment value.

Attempts to reach Caldwell Thursday were unsuccessful, and no lawyer was listed for him in federal court records. Church officials did not respond to a request for comment.

Friday morning, Caldwell's attorney, Dan Cogdell, released a statement saying the "accusations against him are simply false."

"At no time did Reverend Caldwell conspire with anyone," the statement reads. "His dealings in these transactions were always in good faith and in an absolute belief that the investors would positively benefit."

Well-connected

A Houston native, Caldwell developed a friendship with then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush that continued into Bushs presidency. He offered the benediction for Bushs 2001 inauguration as president, and performed the wedding for Bushs daughter, Jenna, in Crawford in Central Texas.

Caldwell is a limited partner of the Houston Texans and has been an independent director of NRG Energy since 2009. He also serves on the board of trustees of Baylor College of Medicine, and formerly was a director of Reliant Energy and Continental Holdings. He is a former board member of Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

Under Caldwells leadership starting in 1982, the Windsor Village church expanded its membership from 25 to more than 16,000, making it one of the largest protestant churches in the country, according to the church website. He worked to create the so-called Power Center to offer community services.

Caldwell co-authored a 1999 book, The Gospel of Good Success. His work is credited with helping create the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives under Bush.

Smith is the operator and manager of Smith Financial Group in Shreveport, prosecutors say. In 2010, he was permanently barred from having any association with Financial Industry Regulatory Authority members after he was caught misappropriating investor funds, according to the indictment.

Lulling emails

Caldwell and his Wyoming-based company, LDT are accused of pocketing nearly $2 million in the Chinese bond scheme. Smith received $1 million and offshore third parties, at least one in Mexico received most of the rest, according to the indictment.

Caldwell sometimes used the alias Turner Hines when communicating with investors, and told one person who invested about $800,000 that the bonds were backed by gold or silver, according to the indictment.

The two men continued to promise investors theyd be paid, the indictment says, sending lulling emails throughout 2014 in which they said the bonds had not been sold because of currency exchanges or problems with the International Monetary Fund or World Bank.

Although these sounded plausible to some investors, they had no basis in fact, the indictment says.

None of the investors got the money theyd been promised, and most did not recover even the value of their investments, according to the indictment.

If convicted, the men could face up to 20 years in prison for conspiracy to commit wire fraud count and for the wire fraud counts, and up to 10 years in prison for conspiracy to commit money laundering and the money laundering.

They also could each face $1 million in fines.
LIBERTY  Communities trying to recover from Hurricane Harvey were bracing for another round of potential flooding from a heavy storm system that moved over southeast Texas Thursday.

In this town northeast of Houston, Warren Croft made sure his vehicle was gassed and tuned. He's used to the flooding and knows how to prepare. He modified his Jeep to drive through water. He uses it to get himself and his neighbors to the grocery store when the streets are flooded. But the constant flooding has taken its toll.

Im moving  Im out, he said. When youre not fighting Mother Nature you can achieve a lot more.

As the Trinity River swelled and began to flood due to water releases at Lake Livingston Dam, other Liberty County residents indicated they were unruffled by a forecast for major flooding and flash floods.

Wednesdays heavy rainfall across Texas had Liberty County Emergency Management officials on edge as runoff from watersheds to the north began flowing into Lake Livingston. And the Trinity River Authority began releasing that extra water into the river, causing it to rise.

The San Jacinto River, for the second time since Harvey, rose out of its banks in Kingwood on Thursday, inundating streets and parks and contributing to residents conviction that the sand-clogged river makes them more vulnerable.

Bob Rehak, a retired advertising executive who is active in efforts to protect Lake Houston-area communities from future flooding, spent much of the day driving around Kingwood neighborhoods and taking photographs. The water continued to rise throughout the day, Rehak said.

Rehak said he was grateful that city officials had reduced the level of Lake Houston this week in anticipation of heavy rains.

If they hadnt done that, it would have been much worse, Rehak said.

Flooding in communities around Lake Houston has attracted the attention of top state officials in recent weeks. Gov. Greg Abbott and Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush visited Kingwood this month, and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick plans a visit April 3.

The Coastal Water Authority, which manages Lake Houstons level for the city, reduced it from 42.5 to 40 feet by releasing water downstream from two gates at the spillway. By Thursday afternoon, with water rushing in from upstream, the level was above 42 feet and was expected to be back to its normal level of 42.5 feet by Friday or Saturday, said city public works department spokeswoman Alanna Reed.

Future releases of water will only occur in the imminent threat of severe weather and to the 41-foot level, Reed said. Lake Houston is a major source of drinking water for Houston area communities.

On the Trinity River, slight to moderate flooding was expected to begin by late Thursday, with its banks projected to overflow by the weekend, cresting at 29.9 feet on Saturday.

That is when weather officials say major lowland flooding could occur. But the forecasts showed the river falling short of its peak during Hurricane Harvey. During the hurricane, the river topped 35 feet.

Water usually goes into homes when the river crests at about 30 feet, said Tom Branch, Liberty County emergency management coordinator.

Branch said that nearly a dozen small subdivisions along the river could flood, although most of the homes are elevated. But the level of flooding could depend on how much the Trinity River Authority releases from the dams.

Releases at Lake Livingston, as well as high amounts of rainfall this week above and below the reservoir, will contribute to high water levels in the river, National Weather Service hydrologist Katie Landry-Guyton said.

Rainfall totaled about 7 inches in Livingston, according to the weather service.

Were sort of at the mercy of the release of the Livingston dam, Branch said. If they dont increase it, were fine.

At 8 a.m. Thursday, water at Lake Livingston was being discharged at 73,500 cubic feet per second, according to the river authority. As of 6 p.m. the discharges had not increased. But flooding in Liberty County, which is cut in half by the zigzagging Trinity, is not rare for this time of year.

This is fairly common, Branch said. The only time it doesnt flood is when were in a drought.

So for most residents, it was business as usual. Many residents along the river live on properties that stand on stilts above the countys flood zone.

Residents chatted on their porches while children rode their bikes in neighborhood streets, despite the threat of flash floods.

But since Harvey, many residents have taken steps to protect themselves against future flooding events.

For Brian Randolph, 48, that meant moving out of his flooded home, where black mold has taken over, to a section of his neighborhood where the homes sit higher.

I said, enough, the longtime Liberty resident said. We had never seen water that high, and I dont want it to happen again.

But in spite of the clear skies, meteorologists are still urging residents to be prepare. Even though the homes may not flood, the roads will be impassable.

The river will remain above flood stage for at least a week, or until discharge rates at the dam decrease, Branch said.

These anticipated levels are similar to what we saw in the May 2015 flood event, and it should be noted the levels are well below Hurricane Harvey levels by as much as 2 feet, Branch said in an email.

More than 800 homes in Liberty County were already dealing with major damage or were destroyed during Hurricane Harvey in August. More than 60 homes in Liberty had major damage.

While the severe weather has moved out of southeast Texas, some lowland flooding is projected to continue in much of the northern Houston area.

Photographer Godofredo Vasquez contributed to this report.
Angered by the gun deaths of 11 children in the last 16 months, Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo on Thursday vowed to crack down on city gang members and team up with prosecutors to aggressively pursue gun violators.

Tristian Hutchins, 8, died Wednesday after being caught in the crossfire of a March 1 shooting in the Third Ward. He was one of the 11 children who have died in indiscriminate gunfire in Houston since December 2016, Acevedo said at a Thursday press conference.

Many of the cases remain unsolved, prompting Acevedo to plead that the Houston community find the collective courage to stand up and put an end to the violence.

We have people being shot in gas stations that are innocent bystanders, in apartments that are innocent bystanders, and in our streets that are innocent bystanders, he said.

This community needs to be outraged, the chief said. Although it wasnt your child that was shot, injured or killed, your child could be the next.

The chief also said his department will aggressively focus on criminals who are caught with firearms, and that hed work with officials  including Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg  to strengthen laws he said have been way too easy on such offenders. Among the ideas floated by Acevedo are revoking bonds or parole for felons caught with guns, thus sending them to jail or prison.

If youre on parole for a felony and we catch you with a firearm, you should be going right back to prison, Acevedo said. There will be no more slaps on the wrists.

He also called on lawmakers to close loopholes through which such criminals can purchase weapons at gun shows, or by giving money to others to buy the guns legally. Some of the semi-automatic pistols and high-capacity rifles used in shootings that have wounded or killed children have been stolen, Acevedo said.

The chiefs announcement comes just days after more than one million people marched in support of stronger gun laws in cities across the nation. Among the marchers was Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, who announced Saturday that the city would establish a taskforce to combat local gun violence.

Acevedo, meanwhile, has been an outspoken advocate of strengthening gun laws since he took over the department in December 2016, shifting its focus to investigating violent crimes like assaults and deploying more officers during night time hours, when gang and gun violence more often occur. Those changes are partially responsible for the 11 percent drop in city homicides between 2016 and 2017, he said.

But Hutchins death appeared to be an inflection point for Acevedo, who was visibly upset as he read a list of other, young people killed in Houston in the last two years, including multiple whose funerals he and other officers have attended.

Theres no excuse - theres no justification - for these children to be taken from us, he said.

He then pleaded for help from Houston residents.

These may just be names to (some people), Acevdo said. But thats somebodys child. A mother carried these children.

Robert Downen covers crime for the Houston Chronicle. Follow him on Twitter or email him at robert.downen@chron.com.
Houston police are searching for three men who robbed a Little Caesars pizzeria on Dec. 6 in the 3600 block of Old Spanish Trail.

The Houston Police Department released surveillance video that shows patrons sprinting for the door as soon as the masked men enter. Afterward, one of the suspects is seen guarding the door while the other two men steal money from the shop. The video shows one man stealing straight from the cash register and kicking the money trays onto the floor.
A Harris County sheriff's deputy was unscathed after his patrol vehicle became the target of a drive-by shooting Thursday night.

The deputy was in the 3000 block of Cedar Hill, near Little York and Aldine Westfield, investigating reports of gunfire when a suspect drove past the deputy's vehicle and opened fire. The deputy was not struck, according to Harris County Sheriff's Office, but the rear window of the patrol vehicle was shot out.
A man was shot inside a northeast Harris County gated community Friday afternoon, and authorities are searching for the shooter.

Deputies with the Harris County Sheriff's Office were called out to a shooting in the 5700 block of Easthampton Drive, inside the Pine Village North community, around 2:45 p.m. and found a man had been shot in the leg. He was rushed to Lyndon B. Johnson General Hospital in unknown condition.

Police are still searching for the shooter and have little information about any suspects.

CAUSE OF DEATH: Houston councilman died of accidental drug overdose, ME rules

No other information was available. Check back for updates on this developing story as they come in.

Jay R. Jordan is a breaking news reporter at Chron.com. Follow him on Twitter at @JayRJordan.
Roel Smart/Getty Images

Two Houston residents were convicted Thursday for running a "pill mill" that illegally sold more than 30,000 prescriptions for opioids.

Gazelle Craig, 49, and Shane Faithful, 48, were found guilty after a nine-day trial, according to a statement from U.S. Attorney for the Southern District Ryan K. Patrick.
When some people leave a job, the only thing they want to take with them from their office is their dignity, and maybe some family photos. Others leave with contact lists, project plans, marketing collateral, code snippets and other work-related files from their computers. Still other employees take the opportunity to loot the supply cabinet for notebooks, pens, flash drives and other items that they don't want to buy from Staples.

If a layoff is in your future, or if youre moving on to another opportunity, you may be tempted sneak off with sensitive corporate information or company assets such as laptops after being handed a pink slip  but what can you legally take with you, and what will land you in legal trouble?

Jon Heimerl, formerly director of strategic security for Solutionary, a provider of information security services, and now manager of the threat intelligence team at NTT security, says departing employees can get in big trouble if they take corporate information or physical assets without their employer's permission. Depending on what the employee takes, an employer could sue the employee or press formal theft charges with the police.

"I know a company that laid off an employee who then walked into a competitor's office with proprietary information about a big R&D project," says Heimerl. "The company sent a letter to the competitor from a lawyer that said, 'We know you hired this employee. We have proof that he took proprietary information with him, and we are going to sue you and the employee.' The competitor withdrew its employment offer, and it took the ex-employee twelve months to find another job," Heimerl says.

Thats a pretty extreme case, but there are still some gray areas when it comes to what you can take with you and what you shouldnt.

What you can take

Employees can take any personal items that they brought into their offices from home, like photos, diplomas, coffee mugs and personal electronic devices (e.g. cell phone, iPad), upon leaving an employer, says Chas Rampenthal, general counsel for LegalZoom.

There are two categories of items you can take with you when you leave: the first category is things that were absolutely yours when you started  I brought my coffee mug and my iPod, Im going to leave with those things, Rampenthal says. The second category is things youve gotten permission to take. For example, if youve written a beautifully crafted legal brief that you want to show to potential future employers, then you can ask if, with certain modifications, you can take that. I would advise that if youre ever unsure, its better in these situations to ask for permission, not for forgiveness! he says.

Employees often also take along work that they created or helped create for the company, such as contact lists, project plans, code snippets or marketing collateral, so that they have examples of their work, says Heimerl.

"In and of itself, there's nothing really wrong with that," says Heimerl, unless the documents contain client information or internal information such as strategic plans or product pricing. In those cases, Rampenthal says, the employee should ask the employer for permission to take such documents or samples of work, adds Heimerl. The employer may very well give permission to do so, provided that the employee removes proprietary information from the document.

If an employee takes such documents without the employer's permission, having previously signed an employment contract or severance agreement that specified that any documents or code developed for the company is company property, the employer could sue the employee for breach of contract, says Heimerl.

The employer could also withhold the employee's severance pay or require that the employee return severance pay already disbursed, if the severance pay came with a condition related to taking any corporate information upon leaving the company.

Employees can also leave with items that they bought for work but that they didn't get reimbursed for, says Heimerl, such as an ergonomic keyboard.

The only exception that might prevent employees from leaving with their own loot is if an employer has a clear policy stating that employees cannot bring any personal property into the office, says Heimerl, which some employers prohibit to limit their liability in the event someones personal property is damaged or stolen. If an employee had ignored that policy and brought in trinkets from home anyway, the employer could claim those items as corporate property, but Heimerl doesn't see many companies going that far.

What you cant take

Some employees, especially those who have been caught in a layoff, might feel emboldened to take whatever they can from an employer. But pilfering corporate property is stealing.

"If you take an asset, even a mouse, without company permission, that is theft," says Heimerl. "If you take a $3,000 laptop loaded with software, that's grand larceny."

Theft and larceny are punishable in a number of ways. A company can file a complaint with the police saying it wants the ex-employee prosecuted for theft. Usually a sheriff or police officer goes to the thief's house or sends a registered letter saying a charge has been filed, and the individual has a certain number of days to respond, says Heimerl. Or, an arrest warrant could be served for theft of property. If the police don't handcuff the individual and bring him or her to jail, the individual will get a summons to appear in court, he adds.

"In every case I know of," says Heimerl, "the employee has given back the laptop or paid restitution."

Instead of calling the cops, other companies will tally the value of the stolen property and will report that value to the IRS as taxable income that the company paid to the employee. The employee will then be obligated to pay taxes on that stolen property, says Heimerl. For a fully loaded laptop valued at $4,000, an employee can expect to pay in the neighborhood of $1500 in taxes, he adds.

If an employee stole a computer that contained sensitive customer financial data or healthcare information, Heimerl says, there's a good chance the employee could be charged in a federal court for violating federal privacy and information security laws.

When personal property and corporate information collide

There are times when what employees can and can't take from their employers isn't clear-cut  such as when they used their personal smartphone or home computer for work and they have business contacts, files or applications on those personal devices.

A lot of companies will prohibit the use of personal devices for work purposes, but in real life, thats so hard to enforce, says Rampenthal. And sometimes, there are BYOD policies that allow employees to use their own devices; it comes down to understanding what those policies are and remaining in compliance with them, he says.

When a departing employee has work-related information on a personal smartphone, all work-related information must be removed from the phone, especially if the company had a policy prohibiting the use of personal devices for work, says Heimerl. But the employer cannot seize the employee's personal smartphone to inspect or keep.

"The company has no recourse other than to ask me [the employee] if I deleted the information," he adds.

But what does an employee do when, for example, his work computer kicks the bucket and he has to work on his home computer for several weeks while the IT department procures a new computer? During that time, the employee no doubt has amassed a significant amount of corporate information on his home computer. What are the employee's rights and responsibilities vis-a-vis his computer and the corporate information stored on it if he leaves his employer?

"In most jurisdictions, the company has no good claim to any of that information and no claim at all on the personal property (the computer)," says Heimerl. "The employer can demand that the employee remove all of the corporate information from the personal computer, but they cannot actually make the employee take any extraordinary efforts to find all the files, including temp files and stray copies, and delete everything in a secure manner  unless, of course, the employee agreed to do so at the beginning of all this."

If an employee had customer credit card information, healthcare information or other highly sensitive information on a personal computer she used for work, the employer may want to wipe those files from the employee's home computer and then perform a secure overwrite to ensure that those files can't be recovered, says Heimerl, but the employer can't force an employee to do that on the employee's own personal property. The employer could, however, have another employee perform the secure overwrite or hire a contractor to do it.

The bottom line: in all likelihood, the employee will retain at least some corporate information on her home computer, says Heimerl.

"Without the employee signing an agreement stating that they will not use any information that they retain access to or gain access to in the future, the employer has little ground to stand on," he says.

Preparing to leave

One thing to keep in mind to make your exit easier: if you know youre planning to leave, proactively remove any personal items from your workplace and/or any personal photos, documents or other paperwork from company-owned computers, smartphones or other electronic devices before you give your notice, says Rampenthal.

Give yourself time to stealthily  not illegally, mind you  remove any personal information from your laptop, work-provided smartphone or from your desk, he says. You can also give your IT department the heads-up that youre doing that, so they dont get suspicious if they see youre downloading files onto a thumb drive. Most people dont want to think about it, but there are occasions where folks give notice and are immediately escorted off the property without the chance to get their stuff at all, he says. But a little planning and preparation goes a long way.
Name a female tech founder. Go ahead, give it a shot. Its by no means a trick question, but if you couldnt come up with any, youre not alone. A recent survey from AI messaging, bots and branding platform LivePerson shows that when you ask most people to name a female tech luminary, many of the answers you get are Alexa and Siri.

Serena Schuler wants to change that, and shes creating a television comedy to do it.

Makeshift Society is a TV series pilot, currently in the early creative and funding stages, that centers on Alex, a former UX designer. Alex is booted from her Silicon Valley job after refusing the predatory advances of the CEO. She discovers a co-working space filled with creative entrepreneurs and decides to take a chance and build her own startup.

Serena Schuler, creator of Makeshift Society

While the characters and the events in the series are fictional, theyre inspired by many women Schuler has met in the tech industry, whose stories deserve a wider audience.

These stories from Silicon Valley are dramatic and fascinating  and they havent been told before. Female founders arent household names, and they should be. Jennifer Hyman, Stephanie Lampkin, Reshma Saujani  I think everyone should know who they are and how theyre changing the world. Thats why we have to tell this story, Schuler says.

Anyone paying attention knows why  the technology industry is a (straight, white, cisgender) boys club and only now addressing the lack of diversity and inclusion in the industry. But Makeshift Society aims to bring a womans story front and center. Schulers background in tech and film makes her the perfect person to bring them to life.

Schuler is an award-winning comedy writer, director, and series creator whose work has screened at U.S. and international film festivals. Her work won the Audience Award at the Washington Jewish Film Festival, she was an Audience Award Runner-Up at the Women in Comedy Festival, and she was a finalist in the Rachel Bloom Comedy Short Challenge. A previous series, Cake Walk, is streaming exclusively on Elizabeth Banks's women in comedy site WhoHaha.

The power of TV and film

The genre is also appropriate, she says; television and film have the power to tell underrepresented stories.

The idea being if you see it, you can become it, she says. Comedy opens our perspectives. Television comedy is the perfect genre for this because we can bring these issues to light  you get that kind of funny cause its true approach that gets the message across, Schuler says.

TV and film have the power to shape the culture. Look at Modern Family, and our countrys inclusion of LGBTQ+ rights. When the show premiered in 2010, the Defense of Marriage Act was still law. But just three years later, attitudes had really shifted, and along with a lot of activism, DOMA was struck down. I definitely think we have the power to change things through this medium, she says.

Its also timely, as the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements are bringing more attention to sexism, discrimination, and bias in Hollywood and rippling out to other industries.

Theres more information about the series here, as well as a link where you can help fund the series. I cant wait to watch it!
Insane Consequences: How the Mental Health Industry Fails the Mentally Ill, by DJ Jaffe (Prometheus Books, 363 pp., $25)

We heard it after Sandy Hook. You heard it after Aurora. You heard it after Arizona. You heard it after Parkland. That these mass shootings are the result of somebody suffering with mental illness and the only thing we can do is address this as a mental illness problem. So lets get the facts straight right away. So begins a video spot by Congressman Joe Kennedy III, produced by NowThis for Facebook and watched by millions of viewers, that discounts the relationship between mental illness and mass violence. The voices of American liberalism have long refused to acknowledge the slightest connection between the two.

The attempt to turn the question of gun violence into a question of mental health is obscene, writes Adam Gopnik in The New Yorker. Yet in his next sentence, Gopnik concedes: Of course, people who kill children en masse are crazy. Thats the given.

Such atrocities should warrant an examination of root causes and their implications. And, yes, such shooters are often crazy. Kennedy states that only 22 percent of mass shootings were conducted by somebody suffering from mental illness. The actual numbers may be much higher. The shooters in at least three of the four examples that Kennedy cites displayed symptoms of mental illness. But shouldnt even a rate of 22 percent suggest further review? And shouldnt the call for further gun control go hand-in-hand with a reevaluation of our treatment of the mentally ill?

But, in fact, a culture of denial has long surrounded the half-century-long breakdown of Americas treatment of its mentally ill. As it happens, the Kennedys themselves have long been at the center of this rollback in care for those suffering from extreme mental illness due. In 1941, 23-year-old Rosemary Kennedy, Congressman Kennedys great aunt, underwent what was then a widely used treatmentthe transorbital, or ice-pick, lobotomy. Rosemarys father, Joseph Kennedy, Sr., the autocratic family scion, believed that the procedure would calm her mood swings, which had become a family embarrassment. Unfortunately, the botched procedure left Rosemary severely mentally disabled. Partly as a consequence, the Kennedy family has embarked on a multi-generational crusade against institutionalization and invasive treatment. In 1963, President John F. Kennedy proposed replacing dedicated institutions for the mentally ill with decentralized Community Mental Health Centers (CMHCs). As I described for City Journal in A New Moral Treatment, the result not only led to the shuttering of the asylums but also to a near-ban on committing patients for treatment against their will and to prevent them from harming themselves and others.

The madness of this present system of care is the subject of Insane Consequences: How the Mental Health Industry Fails the Mentally Ill, DJ Jaffes harrowing, personal, and all-too-timely account of how a system that now prioritizes mental health does little to treat true mental illness. Like many advocates for the severely mentally ill, Jaffe, a self-described aging hippie and the founder of the Mental Illness Policy Org, came to his cause through personal experience. In the 1980s, his wifes sister, Lynn, developed schizophrenia. The diagnosis was bad enough, but the mental health systems inability to help her, and to help her family help her, proved disastrous. Doctors refused to share findings about her condition. Lynn returned home to us, writes Jaffe, and stopped taking the antipsychotic medications we didnt even know shed been prescribed. Jaffe (an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute) came to realize that the law prevents parents from helping psychotic or delusional loved ones who refuse treatment until after they become a danger. As ludicrous as it sounds, rather than preventing violence, the law requires it. That realization led me on a thirty-year journey to try to find out what is wrong with the mental health system and what can be done to fix it.

As Jaffe makes clear, the headline-making cases involving gun violence and mass murder are only the most atrocious symptoms of a much greater systemic failure, one that leads to the expense of billions a year on mental health yet leaves hundreds of thousands of mentally ill Americans to the cruelties of the streets, the trans-institutionalization of the prisons, and the life-threatening dangers of their own diseases.

One problem is anosognosia, the clinical term for the lack of understanding of ones own mental fitness. Anosognosia is present in up to 50 percent of those with untreated schizophrenia and 40 percent of those with untreated bipolar disorder, writes Jaffe. In a system that relies on patients serving as their own health-care agents and that no longer permits consultation on treatment with parents or loved ones, the consequences of anosognosia mean that the severely mentally ill often go untreated or undertreated. The result: there are ten times more people with mental illness incarcerated as hospitalized. Those are just the ones who make it to jail. Thousands die each year by their own hand or are shot by police committing crimes that shouldnt have happened.

We should move away from a system that requires tragedy before treatment to one that offers treatment before tragedy, writes Jaffe. Insane Consequences details the catch and release attitude of todays mental health system and the Kafkaesque trials that concerned family members often endure to protect their loved ones from themselves.

The implications extend far beyond gun violence, to harm of any kind. Consider the subway pusher Andrew Goldstein, whose lack of treatment for schizophrenia led to the death of Kendra Webdale in 1999; a law written in her name now permits at least limited involuntary treatment of the mentally ill. Or Richard Rojas, a driver high on PCP with known psychological issues who rammed his car into pedestrians in Times Square in 2017, injuring 20 and killing 18-year-old Alyssa Elsman.

Jaffe could go further in advancing the argument for new institutions for those mentally ill who pose such a danger to themselves or others that they should not be integrated into societya measure with real relevance to the gun debate, for example. Federal law already bans the sale of firearms to people who have been involuntarily committed. Written into existing policy, institutionalization therefore remains a proven path to reducing gun deaths, if only such intervention were still readily available to the severely mentally ill.

A lot of kids threw jokes around like that, saying that hes the one to shoot up the school, said Eddie Bonilla, a former classmate of Nikolas Cruz, the Parkland shooter. But it turns out everyone predicted it. Its crazy.

Crazy, it is.

Photo: Rachel_Web_Design
I was the clerk who had gone bad, U.S. Ninth Circuit Judge Stephen Reinhardt used to say to me (and probably say about me as well). I had clerked for him from 1985 to 1986, right out of Stanford law school, when my default politics were more in line with his own strong liberalism. I gradually changed my worldview, and he was not uninhibited about pointing out the many ways in which I was now profoundly misguided. But he always did so with a mischievous chuckle and affectionate sidelong glance, as if testing to see if he had gone too far.

Reinhardt, who died on Thursday of a heart attack at 87, represented old-school liberalism in his ability to tolerate different points of view. Several years ago, I wrote an article critical of his decision to put the California prison system under his and two fellow jurists judicial control. I assume that he saw it; I had been in contact with another of his prior clerks about the issue. He never brought it up.

That tolerance contrasts sharply with a Stanford law professor, once a friend and mentor, who treated my invitation to get together for lunch last summer with as much enthusiasm as one would greet a shipment of the Ebola virus. Meanwhile, I was regularly going up to Union Station in Los Angeles from Irvine to meet Judge Reinhardt for lunch, where he would greet me with a huge bear hug and proceed to berate me for not understanding the persistence of systemic racism. We figured out a way to disagree amicably, something my former professor has apparently never learned.

Judge Reinhardts commitment to linguistic precision helped clean up my own prose, which had been encumbered by the fetid stew of High Theory that I had imbibed in college and law school. We would comb through drafts of his opinions in the kitchen of his sylvan home in Los Angeless Pacific Palisades as evening fell. He scrutinized each word, marking the deletions and additions in his tight-penciled script. He insisted on the traditional impersonal he in the face of my knee-jerk demand for the feminist he/she usagea battle he continued to wage, he told me, in the face of equally determined clerks thereafter.

At recent lunches, knowing my love of classical music, he would regale me with tales of his familys estate in Salzburg, the product of his family connection by marriage to early twentieth-century theater director Max Reinhardt. And we would sometimes discuss the fallacies of radical feminism. One of the things no one wants to talk about, he said, is the difference between the male and female libido. The whole structure of society once recognized that males are more sexually aggressive than females.

Reinhardts legendary friendship with fellow Ninth Circuit judge and libertarian Alex Kozinski was an even stronger example of his ability to transcend political difference. Kozinski used to call Reinhardts chambers and ask to speak to the worlds greatest jurist. The #MeToo scourging that led to Kozinskis early retirement from the bench pained Reinhardt deeply. Judges are so goddamned stuffy today, he said; the unbuttoned Kozinski was a breath of fresh air, and one of the best, most decent, and smartest people he knew.

Reinhardt scrutinized every appeal by a criminal defendant with extra care, holding the government to the highest standard of due process. If the government rarely met that standard, Reinhardt would say that the fault lay with the criminal justice system. He inspired all those who worked for him to try to avoid the same judgment.

Photo: David Sucsy/iStock
Scott Rosenberg touched off a minor firestorm in the media-sphere with a post at Axios this week, in which the veteran technology writer argues that at least some of the enthusiasm with which media companies are covering Facebooks trials and tribulations stems from their resentment over how the company has stolen their readers and advertising revenue. Heres his argument in a nutshell:

Outrage over Facebooks misuse of user data and failure to rein in election fraud is real. But the zeal that media outlets bring to their Facebook coverage is personal, too. Its turbocharged because journalists, individually and collectively, blame Facebook  along with other tech giants, like Google, and the internet itself  for seducing their readers, impoverishing their employers, and killing off their jobs. This blame war is the latest phase of a decades-long grudge match between traditional media companies and new technology giants.

This theory sparked a raft of responses from journalists of all stripes, including everything from a brief LOLsorry, but this is BS from USA Today reporter Jessica Guynn to a full-throated denial by Eric Levitz in New York magazine, who argued that even if Facebook and Google have crippled the media industry, that doesnt mean coverage of their power and influence is motivated by anything other than a desire to expose that power and influence, and to question its impact on a civil society (including journalism).

ICYMI: Tensions rise at the Wall Street Journal

It would be one thing if Axios presented a litany of libelous errors that journalists had made in the course of covering Silicon Valley with a vengeance. But if this alleged resentment isnt producing misinformation, then what is the point of insinuating that critical coverage of Facebook is rooted in personal grievance? Who is served by such unsubstantiated insinuations?

Others noted that BuzzFeed has been relentless in exposing the details of various stories involving Facebook, despite the fact that it owes more of its livelihood to the social network than just about any other media entity, and therefore might be assumed to be more favorably inclined towards it rather than less. And some pointed out that in the early days of Facebook, a case could be made that coverage of the company was overly positive, making the current critical approach more of a return to normal than an outlier.

Counterpoint: Facebook's one of the largest companies in the U.S. and were treated with kid gloves for years, in part because the tech journalism ecosystem relied entirely on access, and because FB's firehose drove traffic. It's now covered appropriately.https://t.co/FSBps6Cf4D Sign up for CJR 's daily email  Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) March 29, 2018

Some saw the Axios piece as primarily a piece of marketinga way of indicating that Axios is sympathetic to the tech giants and their complaints about overly critical coverage. And a few noted that the media startup, which is run by former Politico founder Jim VandeHei, had a partnership with Facebook that involved a series of exclusive interviews with senior executives.

One of the other implications in Rosenbergs piece is that Facebook and Google didnt just steal audience and revenue from publishers because they had natural advantages, but because media executives failed to adapt quickly enough to the internet, and then in a desperate attempt to catch up, handed over too much of their business to Facebook and Google. Whether anyone in the traditional media industry wants to admit it, that point has more than a little truth to it.

1990s: Craigslist & eBay stole our classifieds

2000s: Google stole our discovery

2010s: Facebook stole our audience Media stands to gain now BUT much of this theft is egg on their face: for decades media cos have been bad at investing in the future. https://t.co/uSbw4EhlDX  JD (@jarroddicker) March 29, 2018

ICYMI: CNN frustrates viewers with gun comment controversy

Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today

Mathew Ingram is CJRs chief digital writer. Previously, he was a senior writer with Fortune magazine. He has written about the intersection between media and technology since the earliest days of the commercial internet. His writing has been published in the Washington Post and the Financial Times as well as by Reuters and Bloomberg.
IN 1846, FIVE DAILY NEWSPAPERS in New York came together to create the Associated Press. At the time, their aim was to share the cost of covering the Mexican-American War. It has since become one of journalisms longest-standing and most productive collaborations.

The concept behind journalistic collaboration has always been to generate a sum or quality of content that is greater than what one individual or organization could do on its own. That hasnt changed. What has changed over the years, with the advent of digital and the 24-hour news cycle, are the traits that make a collaboration successful.

New research from the Tow Center for Digital Journalism by Carlos Martinez de la Serna looks back over the last three decades at the changing nature of journalistic cooperation in the digital era, finding that not only does the current DNA of the most effective collaborations look very different from the past, but one of its key byproducts is the creation of an open-access digital infrastructure for informationwhich the report calls a new journalism commons.

Collaboration facilitated by the internet means that, along with traditional news organizations, technologists, software designers, public database architects, research institutions, and citizen activists cooperatesometimes without formal agreements or agendasto create new tools and information resources that set the conditions for how news is produced and circulated. Those include, according to the research, a range of technologies. From the introduction of email, and the launch of the Apache web server and open-source Linux operating system in the 1990s, to more modern developments like Slack, each are now core components of the new infrastructure for journalism.

Newsrooms are also collaborating for different reasons than they did in the past. Media outlets are looking for ways to increase their production, in many cases because of depleted staff or because theyre startups seeking wider audiences and models for sustainability. Jim Brady, the past president of ONA and head of Philadelphia news outlet Billy Penn, told the Pew Research Center in a 2014 report about news collaboration: This is a time when journalists need to huddle together for warmth. His advice remains relevant. Take, for instance, recent initiatives such as the SF Homelessness Project, a partnership of 80 news organizations looking for answers to the problem of homelessness in the Bay Area, and smaller partnerships like one in Charlottesville, VA, between hyperlocal website Charlottesville Tomorrow and the community newspaper The Daily Progress.

But since partnerships among news organizations can often fall prey to incompatible, top-down workflows and digital content management systems that dont work together, writes de la Serna, the future of successful collaborations will increasingly capitalize on open-access digital networks created by a number of players. One of the first collaborative efforts to really take advantage of this was the Independent Media Center (Indymedia), established in 1999. A collective that grew out of the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle, Indymedia built a set of open-source content management systems to involve on-the-ground observers in its news production. The interweaving of political activism, new technology, and a distributed structure broke the mold of hierarchical news production that relied on editors assigning stories to reporters alone.

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What WikiLeaks did differently when it stormed the scene in 2006 was to combine a similar decentralized, open culture of participation with cooperation from legacy news outlets. Not only could established media partners help sift through the massive database of documents, they could also spread the news far and wide. Mainstream media offered WikiLeaks a major pathway to getting an important subject to the public, an effect that was amplified by the orchestrated publication of the reporting by legacy newspapers, notes de la Serna.

WikiLeaks published several leaks of critical importance for the understanding of current events and international diplomacystarting with the release of a leaked video on the 2007 U.S. Baghdad airstrike, and followed by the Afghan War Logs, and the Iraq War Logs. But it was the coordinated release of US cables in collaboration with five traditional media organizations in the United States and Europe, and later with many others around the world, that was most influential in setting the stage for collaboration with global impact.

The most successful journalistic collaborations today, it seems, often rely and build on shared resources that are independent of ownershipwhether they be public databases, open-source technology, or networked communities. They dont all have to be dramatic whistleblowing initiatives either. Great current examples include the Stanford Open Policing Project, a public repository of national data on police misconduct, supported by an interdisciplinary team of researchers and journalists at Stanford University; and MuckRock, a nonprofit site that convenes journalists, researchers, activists, and individuals who request, analyze, and share government documents. Some of the most crucial collaborations are even among unnamed partners or contributors building digital tools or unearthing news of public importance for others to use.

But what results in an emerging commons is more complicated than our usual image of a public park or open square. As de la Serna defines it, the new journalism commons is made up of complex global information systems with many intricate dependencies and no clear boundaries. Like physical commons, though, it will require careful management and maintenance from its community of users.

The issues at play, the new research suggests, are the equity, accessibility, and safety of shared digital knowledge. Just as in the mid-1990s the Library of Congress began to designate certain books, images, and footage under the commons, theres an argument to be made for thinking about the emerging collective infrastructure for newsgathering under this model. Classifying it in such a way could mean that we dont fail to think about its long-term preservation. It could also put collaboration at the forefront of the future of news.

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Abigail Hartstone is the interim publications and web editor at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism. She oversees research reports and edits the Tow vertical on CJR.




Executive Summary

The history of journalism includes many and varied forms of cooperation, as far back as landmark events such as the creation of the Associated Press by five New York newspapers in 1846 to share costs related to the coverage of the Mexican-American War. What sets the current phase of collaboration apart from previous ones is the wide diffusion of networked forms of organization and production, and the transformative impact of these cooperative practices in reshaping the new media world and its underlying social and technological infrastructure as public utilities.

This report explores the gradual development of this phenomenon and the related development of a new commons for journalism, or a collection of shared resources and communities reconfiguring the material and cultural conditions of newswork as a social practice subject to dilemmas that require cooperation. The journalism commons, often going unrecognized in the academic and public discourse on the future of media, offers a framework to make sense of the new schemes of human relations, production, and governance.

Key findings:

Network collaboration: The media world emerging from the transformations that occurred in the last decades of the twentieth centurysome of them predating the internet and still unfoldinghas gradually incorporated a wide array of collaboration powered by digital networks as an essential, pervasive component of the fabric of news. The term network collaboration encompasses current and previous practices developed in the last three decades that rely on digital networks to enable the production and sharing of technologies, information, services, and practices through cooperative modes, regardless of their form, as they apply to journalism.This broad definition aims to cover collaborations role in the creation of a new shared infrastructure for journalism, and the variety of cooperative practices and processes developed around the material conditions of news production and dissemination.

The media world emerging from the transformations that occurred in the last decades of the twentieth centurysome of them predating the internet and still unfoldinghas gradually incorporated a wide array of collaboration powered by digital networks as an essential, pervasive component of the fabric of news. The term network collaboration encompasses current and previous practices developed in the last three decades that rely on digital networks to enable the production and sharing of technologies, information, services, and practices through cooperative modes, regardless of their form, as they apply to journalism.This broad definition aims to cover collaborations role in the creation of a new shared infrastructure for journalism, and the variety of cooperative practices and processes developed around the material conditions of news production and dissemination. The gradual diffusion of the phenomenon: Four main developments underlie the gradual diffusion of networked forms of collaboration in journalism: 1) the digitization of news media beginning in the mid-1990s and the development of new modes of news production; 2) the wide array of collaborative practices, both internal and with others including the public, adopted by traditional media organizations in the aftermath of the dot-com bubble and through the 2000s; 3) the development near the end of the 2000s of a new model for watchdog journalism that served as a template for a renewed collaborative ethos among different organizations and individuals for investigative reporting; and 4) the ongoing consolidation of a set of partnership strategies in a new era thats still unfolding.

Four main developments underlie the gradual diffusion of networked forms of collaboration in journalism: 1) the digitization of news media beginning in the mid-1990s and the development of new modes of news production; 2) the wide array of collaborative practices, both internal and with others including the public, adopted by traditional media organizations in the aftermath of the dot-com bubble and through the 2000s; 3) the development near the end of the 2000s of a new model for watchdog journalism that served as a template for a renewed collaborative ethos among different organizations and individuals for investigative reporting; and 4) the ongoing consolidation of a set of partnership strategies in a new era thats still unfolding. The collaborative age: The distinct feature of the ongoing phase of collaboration, often labeled as collaborative journalism, is the development and open embrace of cooperative production arrangements between news organizations and others, including journalism schools and the public, to generate content that is greater than what any individual journalist, newsroom, or organization could produce on its own. Several reports, as well as individual accounts, have provided snapshots of this phenomenon, but theres no definitive assessment of its diffusion and impact. Considering the limitations of the data currently available, focused on explicit forms of collaboration between organizations, three core themes emerge: Collaboration as a field repair: A core function of cooperative practices since the late 2000s, collaboration fills the vacuum left by the industrial decline of media and the constant erosion of the conditions for journalism. Shared resources for journalism: The promise of collaboration in the networked era is likely showing its fullest impact in revitalizing investigative reporting through local, national, and international partnerships. These collaborations rely and build on shared resourcespublic databases, open source technology, networked communitiesto fulfill journalisms core mission. This byproduct of collaboration is increasingly taking on characteristics of a commons, or a shared resource subject to social dilemmas. The expanding role of journalism schools, nonprofit organizations, and other players: A key difference between the current phase of collaboration and the convergence years is the existence of diverse players beyond news organizations that are having a prominent role in fostering, funding, and sustaining partnerships, led by journalism schools and established nonprofit organizations that fully incorporate network collaboration as a structural element.

The distinct feature of the ongoing phase of collaboration, often labeled as collaborative journalism, is the development and open embrace of cooperative production arrangements between news organizations and others, including journalism schools and the public, to generate content that is greater than what any individual journalist, newsroom, or organization could produce on its own. Several reports, as well as individual accounts, have provided snapshots of this phenomenon, but theres no definitive assessment of its diffusion and impact. Considering the limitations of the data currently available, focused on explicit forms of collaboration between organizations, three core themes emerge: The creation of a new commons: The rise of collaborative practices applied to journalism have led to the development of the journalism commons, an intricate resource system functioning under an open access scheme and hosting critical technological and social components pertaining to journalism. This commons works as a supporting infrastructure for newswork. It is structurally dependent of network collaboration.

The rise of collaborative practices applied to journalism have led to the development of the journalism commons, an intricate resource system functioning under an open access scheme and hosting critical technological and social components pertaining to journalism. This commons works as a supporting infrastructure for newswork. It is structurally dependent of network collaboration. A preliminary characterization of the journalism commons: Based on the description of other information resources such as the internet and the understanding of media systems as a layered structure, the journalism commons can be characterized as a resource system made of three distinct and intertwined layers technological, social, and content-basedthat contain other resources, or a commons of commons. This commons builds and take on characteristics of the internet as a founding structural element.The building blocks of this system are facilities, the evolving technologies that make digital distributed information possible, including its physical components; artifacts, specific, nameable representations of an idea or set of ideas, stored in facilities; and ideas, non-physical units, not protected by copyright, contained in an artifact. Just as the layered structure description provides an overview of the journalism commons and how it works, this low-level framework enables a careful examination of its building blockswhat individuals or organizations ultimately appropriate or useand the relations among them.

This preliminary characterization of the journalism commons as a resource system allows us to further conceptualize some of the most pressing issues affecting journalism as social dilemmas, and identify structural vulnerabilities.

Based on the description of other information resources such as the internet and the understanding of media systems as a layered structure, the journalism commons can be characterized as a resource system made of three distinct and intertwined layers technological, social, and content-basedthat contain other resources, or a commons of commons. This commons builds and take on characteristics of the internet as a founding structural element.The building blocks of this system are facilities, the evolving technologies that make digital distributed information possible, including its physical components; artifacts, specific, nameable representations of an idea or set of ideas, stored in facilities; and ideas, non-physical units, not protected by copyright, contained in an artifact. Just as the layered structure description provides an overview of the journalism commons and how it works, this low-level framework enables a careful examination of its building blockswhat individuals or organizations ultimately appropriate or useand the relations among them. This preliminary characterization of the journalism commons as a resource system allows us to further conceptualize some of the most pressing issues affecting journalism as social dilemmas, and identify structural vulnerabilities. The commons as a framework: Connecting news media to the vocabulary of the commons provides a rich framework to analyze the impact of networked forms of collaboration in reshaping the infrastructure for journalism, and think about its future possibilities as social dilemmas that require cooperation. It also helps connect apparently independent phenomena, and devise new collaborative approaches to address structural vulnerabilities limiting the development of the new media world from net neutrality to systemic market failure and the development of social capital and collective action. Much work is required to further the understanding and the importance of the commons in the new media world, a topic mostly neglected in academic and public discourse.





Introduction

In the 1990s, scholars noticed how networks were taking on new life beyond their traditional realm. Networks, defined as a pattern of interconnections among a set of things,1 had a prominent role long before the internet in sectors like crafts, where the work tends to be project-based and an assembly line-like workflow is poorly suited compared to a flexible arrangement involving groups with different skills and resources.2 The critical change that researchers recognized was the expanded reach of information networks into new domains powered by the internet.3 Paired with digital technologies, networks departed from their traditional, local nature and became apt for managing large and complex structuresan attribute especially befitting in times of relentless change and technological disruption thanks to their resilience and adaptability.

In the last decades of the twentieth century, there was an upsurge in research on the growing role of networks in enabling phenomena as diverse as migration, entrepreneurship, international trade, and the emergence of a new type of enterprise built around business projects resulting from the cooperation between different components of different firms.4 In a broader context of change, networks became the basis of a new social arrangement described by sociologist Manuel Castells as the network society, enabled by digital information and communications technologies.5

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The popularization of the internet introduced new conditions for formal and informal collaboration within newsrooms, between organizations, and with the public. In the last three decades, the news media has gradually incorporated a wide array of networked forms of collaboration as an intrinsic component of the peer-production practices that have driven the development of a new technological infrastructure, enabled new forms of editorial work,6 and reformulated how news organizations function and concentrate attention in the digital age.

The diffusion of collaboration is related to another transformative phenomenon: the creation of a new commons for journalism, or a collection of intricate, shared resources reshaping the material and cultural conditions of newswork as a social practice subject to vulnerabilities that require collaboration. The commons offers a framework to make sense of the new schemes of human relations, production, and governance emerging in the post-industrial new media world.7

Collaboration is not a new phenomenon in news media. The history of journalism includes varied forms of cooperation embedded in the daily production routines and between news organizations, including landmark events such as the creation of the Associated Press by five dailies in New York in 1846 to share costs and resources related to the coverage of the Mexican-American War. But the novel conditions created by digital technologies to develop new forms of organization and production based on networked forms of collaboration kick-started a new phase. The diffusion of networked forms of collaboration and the related development of the journalism commons is the subject of this report.

Previous research has covered the growing role of collaborative practices in journalism since the late 2000s. This work aims to complement it by providing an overview of the gradual evolution of collaboration since the early days of digital journalism, and its structural role in developing new social and technological conditions for newswork.

In the following sections, I describe how the adoption of the internet introduced novel forms of collaboration and contributed to reshaping the media ecosystem; the main dynamics around this process; and how a broad set of collaborative practices drives the development of the journalism commons. The main motivation for this research is to focus on collaboration as an evolving and pervasive component of digital journalism, and to widen the conversation about its fundamental role in the creation of a sustainable news world.

In the first part, The Rise of Networked Collaboration, I summarize how the current form of collaboration, usually described as collaborative journalism, came into being in American media. To do so, I reviewed academic research, essays, and reports on the social, technological, economic, and cultural transformations since the mid-1990s as they relate to the rising new conditions for formal and informal modes of cooperation in news media.

In the second part of the report, Developing the Journalism Commons, I examine the impact of networked forms of collaboration through the creation of a new social and technological infrastructure for news. This part builds on the groundbreaking work by the late Elinor Ostrom and the research developed since the 1990s on knowledge and information as resource systems.8

The citations chapter includes the full bibliography collected on the range of topics covered in this researchfrom the early days of digital journalism to the consolidations of new material and cultural conditions for newswork. Hopefully, this bibliography will be useful for others interested in expanding the role of the commons as a framework for thinking about the current challenges and opportunities for journalism.





The Rise of Network Collaboration

The profound transformations that occurred in the last decades of the twentieth century have reconfigured different aspects of human life, including journalism. 9 These transformations ranged from critical developments in the social and economic conditions around newswork, including the social network revolution10 and opportunities to develop new models of organization,11 to media-specific developments such as the derogation of the Fairness Doctrine (19471987) and the ushering in of the cable news era. The post-industrial media world emerging from this vast ecology of changes, some of them predating the internet and still unfolding, has gradually incorporated a wide array of collaborative forms powered by digital networks as an essential and transformative component of the fabric of news.

Collaboration has enjoyed different lives in the context of digital media. In the latest of its several evolutions, it is generally used to describe a cooperative arrangement (formal or informal) between two or more news and information organizations, which aims to supplement each organizations resource and maximize the impact of the content produced.12 Ill use the term network collaboration throughout this report as a generic concept that encompasses this form as well as previous ones that use digital networks to enable the production and sharing of technologies, information, services, and practices through cooperative modes, regardless of their form, as they apply to journalism.

Following Lisa Gitelmans model of media as a system operating on two levelsthe technology as a medium that enables communication, and the social and cultural practices developed around that technologythis broad definition aims to cover collaborations role in the creation of a new technological infrastructure for journalism, and the variety of cooperative practices and processes developed around the material conditions of news production and dissemination.13

Collaboration might be present in one-off and long-term partnerships between different media organizations; in intricate patterns of production within the same organization; in peer production facilitated by the technical infrastructure of the web; in meetups involving journalists and software developers; in radical decentralized modes that facilitate sifting through databases and documents; in arrangements involving nonprofit, public, and commercial media as well as other players such as journalism schools, advocacy groups, and technological platforms; in formal partnerships within large media networks; and in informal ventures loosely coordinated. The term network collaboration aims to capture the full extent of this phenomenonall types of collaborative practices developed around digital journalism inside the newsroom, between organizations, with the public and individualsto make it sustainable. 14

The rise of network collaboration in journalism might seem, with hindsight, expected in the context of the network society, defined as an era of intrinsic collaboration.15 An essential condition of network relationships is that one part is dependent on resources controlled by another, and that there are gains to be had by pooling resources, sharing and collaborating.16 But it took a gradual and often troubled evolution for these practices to play a substantial role in the assembly of news. As media researcher W.C. Anderson argues in his analysis of the Philadelphia news ecosystems struggles to adapt to the digital age, collaboration involving different organizations between 2007 and 2010 was rare and the result of lengthy bureaucratic negotiations, contrary to the expectations built for the network society.

This pattern seems to fit into the irregular diffusion of networks,17 with different degrees of penetration across the same system, and the expected development of the network enterprise as a gradual process that starts with the adoption of horizontal structures, followed by the cooperation between small and medium businesses pulling their resources to reach a critical mass, and finally the strategic alliance and partnerships between large corporations and their ancillary networks.18 This process was far from completion when Anderson did his research, and is arguably still ongoing in an irregular fashion across the news ecosystem. This reactive context for the adoption of novel forms of collaboration could also be seen as a sign of a larger problem: the difficult transition to digital media.19

Four main developments can describe the gradual diffusion of networked forms of collaboration in journalism:

The digitization of news media beginning in the mid-1990s and the development of novel modes for news production; The wide array of practices of collaboration, both internal and with others, adopted by traditional media organizations in the aftermath of the dot-com bubble and through the 2000s; The development of a new model for the watchdog function by the end of the 2000s that served as a template for a renewed collaborative ethos in investigative reporting based on the alliance of different organizations and individuals; The ongoing consolidation of a set of partnership strategies into a new era of collaboration currently unfolding.

Digitizing the news

The early days of digital journalism were a time of feverish activity.20 In 1993, the first graphical web browser (Mosaic, later Netscape) was released to the public, followed a year later by Microsoft Internet Explorer. By 1996 most news outlets, print and broadcast, had a web presence.21 In a context for traditional media marked by reactive, defensive and pragmatic traits,22 news sites featured content that was usually limited to shovelwaretext, video, or audio repurposed for web publication from its original format without changing substance, a practice that already required significant organizational change.

Experimentation developed on the fringes, and new offerings for the web grew steadily. By the end of the 1990s, U.S. online newspapers exhibited a range of products, a technical infrastructure and organizational patterns that clearly departed from its print counterparts.23 Journalisms initial foray into the web introduced a culture, tools, and cooperative modes of production that set the baseline for network collaboration to develop. 24

In traditional newsrooms, the diffusion of network collaboration generally occurred within established structures. The industrial, assembly line-like news workflow was dominant and served as a model to explore the unique opportunities offered by the internet: multimedia storytelling combining text, video, and audio; layered information connected through links and tools to navigate it; the opportunity to foster a dialogue with the public and involve it in the news process; and novel narratives and formats such as blogs. Email was adopted as the main form of communication. New routines and intricate patterns of production tested centralized, hierarchical practices, and they gained more relevance in the coming years as the ability to collaborate internally and externally increased dramatically.25

The idea of exploring creative arrangements with other organizations or with the public was in an early stage or not even on the horizon for most legacy media, with notable exceptions such as the legacy tradition of partnerships in local media: projects building on early efforts such as The Whole Earth Lectronic Link26normally shortened to The WELLlaunched in 1985 that reimagined computer-mediated communication as virtual communities;27 and the work of organizations outside the mainstream media such as California Media, later New American Media, relying on partnerships with other organizations as a way to combine the strengths of ethnic media and the intimate knowledge of diverse communities with those of mainstream journalism.28

Media researcher Pablo Bockzowskis studies on the early days of The New York Timess first digital-only section, Cybertimes, a project launched in 1996 to experiment with online narratives, illustrates these early developments through the diffusion of new organizational routines and horizontal structures on the sides of legacy, top-down workflows.29 Bockzowski also documents the Houston Chronicles 1995 multimedia efforts, a series of projects combining text, video, animation, and 360-degree photography that exhibit some of the transformations in communication, technology, and organization that were beginning to unfold. The analysis by the same author of New Jersey Onlines Community Connection advances the deep organizational changes and different notions of journalism emerging from projects that considered the public not only a consumer but a potential producer of valuable information, too. These early examples of digital journalism attest to the changes happening on the edges of legacy news organizations in their initial explorations of the webs potential, and fit into Manuel Castells description of the first steps in the evolution of an organization into a network enterprise.30

That being said, the most successful collaborative journalism often requires a departure from past practices and mindsets.31 Perhaps the most illustrative and well-known project of this kind was the Independent Media Center (Indymedia), a collective that grew out of the 1999 World Trade Organization protests in Seattle. This network was built around a set of tools and a decentralized structure to empower on-the-ground observers and give voice to the voiceless. It used its own servers and open source content management systems. Local chapters negotiated their own editorial line and code. The interweaving of political activism, a new technological infrastructure, cooperative production, and a decentralized structure represented a radical alternative to the legacy, hierarchy-based production of news.

But the rise of peer production wasnt a phenomenon limited to organizations outside of mainstream media. This system of collaboration facilitated by the internet had enabled large groups of individuals to cooperate effectively in the creation of new tools, technologies, and social practices that were gradually adopted for newswork, including the internet as a platform for news and flagship developments that became core components of the new infrastructure for journalism such as the Apache web server or the Linux operating system.32 This phenomenon, responding to a new economic logic not relying on market or public incentives, is a pervasive, often overlooked component of the new media world in spite of its profound implications in reshaping the infrastructure for news, and its powerful role in reinventing its social and cultural conditions.

Through the next decade, the diffusion of network collaboration in journalism followed three main paths: technological, as a core component of the commons-based infrastructure for newswork; experimental, through the development of decentralized, cooperative modes of production involving participatory communities, individuals, and others; and corporate, or the organizational and partnership strategies that shaped the role of collaboration in traditional media and contributed to the overall networking of the emerging media world. Often these paths would collide, and they would eventually consolidate into a new model for watchdog reporting combining different forms of collaboration as a structural feature.

The convergence years

The assumption in the 1990s was that we were in the midst of the digital revolution. As Nicholas Negroponte and others put it, the internet would flatten organizations, globalize society, decentralize control, and help harmonize people.33 But to use Pablo Bockzkowskis expression, the past survived in the future.34 The networking of an emerging media ecosystem combining both traditional and new components was gradual, multi-layered and non-linear.35 The burst of the dot-com bubble that occurred between 1997 and 2001 opened a new phase for network collaboration driven by the convergence of old and new media, and the deployment of a more explicit role for cooperative practices in traditional media.

Technologies of Freedom, written by Ithiel de Sola Pool, was probably the first book to lay out the concept of media convergence.36 In it, de Sola Pool argues that a single physical meansbe it wires, cables, or airwavesmay carry services that in the past were provided in separate ways. Conversely, a service that was provided in the past by any one mediumbe it broadcasting, the press, or telephonycan now be provided in several different physical ways. So the one-to-one relationship that used to exist between a medium and its use is eroding.37 de Sola Pool anticipated a long period of media transition during which different media systems, combining both legacy and novel elements, would compete and collaborate.

By 2000, when the internet service American Online (AOL) and the media company Time announced the largest merger in corporate history, the logic of the convergence became a dominant theme in the conversation about the future of journalism and news organizations. Four years later, Pew Research Centers first annual report on the State of the News Media, published regularly since then, listed convergence as one of the main eight trends shaping the new media world among others such as the existence of diverse journalism standards inside a single news organization, and the shrinking of audiences in some markets.38

Digitization set the conditions for old and new media to collide, a development that required significant organizational change and propelled the diffusion of novel collaborative forms.39 Convergence practices were adopted through five main modes that could be seen as a precedent of todays dominant forms of collaborative journalism:40

Ownership convergence : Refers to partnerships within large media companies for cross-promotion and content sharing. This arrangement can be traced back to the mid-1980s. It didnt imply shared editorial decisions or other collaborative practices. Media resources (print, television, digital) were usually owned by the same company.

: Refers to partnerships within large media companies for cross-promotion and content sharing. This arrangement can be traced back to the mid-1980s. It didnt imply shared editorial decisions or other collaborative practices. Media resources (print, television, digital) were usually owned by the same company. Tactical convergence : Partnerships between media properties usually under separate ownership on content, marketing, and revenue strategies. An example would be efforts to sell advertising packages across platforms owned and operated by different companies. The most common model of this partnership was between a TV station and a newspaper in the same local market, a practice that initially characterized the convergence years. Media researcher Rich Gordon traces the adoption of this strategy to the last 1990s. 41

: Partnerships between media properties usually under separate ownership on content, marketing, and revenue strategies. An example would be efforts to sell advertising packages across platforms owned and operated by different companies. The most common model of this partnership was between a TV station and a newspaper in the same local market, a practice that initially characterized the convergence years. Media researcher Rich Gordon traces the adoption of this strategy to the last 1990s. Structural convergence : Practices within the same media company to reorganize the newsroom and introduce new positions. These are changes with a significant impact on internal workflows and production patterns. They continued in the next decade, sometimes in an erratic development as both national and local news organizations seeked new strategies to adapt to the ongoing consolidation of the news market, the shrinking of newsrooms, the rise of social media platforms, novel distribution models and media consumption patterns, and the progressive decline of industrial models.

: Practices within the same media company to reorganize the newsroom and introduce new positions. These are changes with a significant impact on internal workflows and production patterns. They continued in the next decade, sometimes in an erratic development as both national and local news organizations seeked new strategies to adapt to the ongoing consolidation of the news market, the shrinking of newsrooms, the rise of social media platforms, novel distribution models and media consumption patterns, and the progressive decline of industrial models. Information gathering , or the use of several devices to capture information such as audio or video recorders by an on-the-ground journalist: This idea of the backpack or multimedia journalist was highly controversial in the early 2000s as it was seen as a practice having a negative impact on the quality of journalism and responding to layoffs. This practice continued to evolve with the emergence of social media, a new generation of digital journalists, and new user-friendly devices to easily capture, collaborate, and share information.

, or the use of several devices to capture information such as audio or video recorders by an on-the-ground journalist: This idea of the backpack or multimedia journalist was highly controversial in the early 2000s as it was seen as a practice having a negative impact on the quality of journalism and responding to layoffs. This practice continued to evolve with the emergence of social media, a new generation of digital journalists, and new user-friendly devices to easily capture, collaborate, and share information. Presentation convergence: Referring to storytelling practices involving different media formats such as audio, video, and 360-degree photograph to convey a news story.

Because of the wide array of practices included under these modes, data about its diffusion might be misleading.42 One of the earliest attempts to track it, completed in 2002, found that nearly eighty-nine percent of the respondentsmembers of an association of news directors of radio and televisionconsidered their organizations engaged in some mode of convergence. The most common behavior (seventy percent of respondents) was republishing already existing content on the web. Also, thirty percent of the participants said their radio or television stations produced content for newspapers.

Another work from the early 2000s surveying one newspaper and TV station in each of the U.S.s top media markets found that eighty-three percent of responding stations and ninety-five percent of newspapers practiced convergence. These figures again included organizations that repurposed content from print or broadcast. Seventy percent of the newspapers and forty-one percent of the TV stations included in the survey reported a partnership with another medium.43

Andersons account of the Philadelphia news ecosystems struggles in the digital age, referenced earlier, offers an example of how some of these practices unfolded within a large newspaper chain.44 With the collapse of the online economy in the early 2000s and the demands from shareholders to increase profits in the still highly profitable news industry,45 media publisher Knight-Ridder centralized all local services, including its online properties covering Philadelphia. Overall, thirty-three newspaper sites were reduced to thirteen within a year, operated by a few editorial teams using the same ad platform and publishing system. The primary forces behind these changes were managerial and economic over technological or journalistic. Anderson didnt find the spontaneous, networked work practices envisioned as the future of digital media production on the web, but a formal approach following a lengthy organization and planning.46 Most of the changes implemented under these strategies for convergence didnt last long. Other media firms with multiple news holdings went down a similar path, moving to single publishing platforms to share news and publish ads across nationwide networks.

By the end of 2000s, most of the early practices of convergence were fading,47 though some of themsuch as structural convergence, or the reorganization of newsrooms to adapt to new digital workflows and productscontinue to be part of the toolkit for adapting to the digital age. The print-TV partnerships trend from the beginning of the 2000s fell into oblivion under new circumstances dominated by the decline in print newspaper readers and ad revenue, and wide cuts in newsrooms. The context for journalism by the end of the 2000s was one of severe economic crisis. The Project for Excellence in Journalism reports 11,000 lost jobs in journalism just in 2008 and 2009, while other estimates are higher.

Radio and television, which had enjoyed profit levels similar or higher to their print counterparts, began pursuing similar staff cuts, with an estimated 1,600 jobs lost in local television between 2008 and 2009. This trend continued in the next years, with the total number of news workers within the industry dropping by around forty percent over the decade, growing drops in circulation and ad revenue, and the systematic erosion of the journalism ecosystem, with entire regions going mostly uncovered.48

Collaboration during the convergence years could be described as one piece of a larger corporate roadmap initially focused on the cooperation between print and broadcast media, and later dominated by ever-increasing financial pressures and organizational struggles. In spite of the limitations of these strategies, shaped by short-term goals and a poor understanding of the emerging news world, these practices had a significant impact in conceptualizing the role of network collaboration in traditional media.

On the organizational side, novel tools and technologies that made some of these strategies possible such as content management systems that standardized the editing process and production workflows became central in blurring the lines between novel and traditional routines and consolidated the importance of digital tools in fostering or hindering collaborative practices in the newsroom. Likewise, the business logic that generally drove the diffusion of these strategies only gained more importance after the 2008 economic crisis, though increasingly with a journalistic purpose, and helped define the role of collaboration as a field repair, a concept that will be further explored later in this report.49

A new model for the watchdog function

The convergence paradigm has a deeper meaning beyond the tactical one often capturing the journalism discourse through the 2000s. It refers to new structural conditions for media where different forms of what constitutes journalism and the idea of the public collide, where grassroots and corporate media intersect, where the power of the media producer and the power of the media consumer interact in unpredictable ways, as Henry Jenkins put it in the introduction to Convergence Culture.50

This process, still unfolding, has been critical to the assembly of a new environment for network collaboration within newsrooms, across organizations not limited to news media, and with the public. The partnership between WikiLeaks and other media organizations on the 2010 U.S. embassy cables, as an example, provide us with insights about what this transformation entails.

WikiLeaks, a stateless news organization, was founded in 2006 to harness the speed, interactivity, and global reach of the internet to provide a secure mechanism to anonymously submit information and share it to a global audience.51 Preaching radical transparency for the access to information pertaining to governmental or corporate affairs, the organization stormed into the journalism scene in 2010 with the publication of several leaks of critical importance for the understanding of current events and international diplomacystarting with the release of a leaked video on the 2007 U.S. Baghdad airstrike,52 and followed by the Afghan War Logs,53 the Iraq War Logs,54 and the coordinated release of U.S. cables in collaboration with five traditional media organizations in the United States and Europe, and later with many others around the world.55

As researcher Yochai Benkler wrote in a seminal paper on the importance of these events in signaling the sources of resilience and weakness of the emerging networked fourth estate, the steady flow of confidential materials through an organization that was not part of the familiar responsible press was met by increasing levels of angry vitriol from the Administration, politicians, and media commentators, including prominent voices among its original partners for the distribution and reporting on the US cables.56 These were the days when the leading Republican presidential candidate, Mike Huckabee, called for the execution of WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, and media commentators across the political spectrum declared WikiLeaks a major security threat.57

The study of these events has provided us with a fascinating account of the assembly of news in the networked era. What is critical for this report is how these events contributed to further define creative arrangements combining different forms of collaboration to solve complex journalistic production problems. As it happened earlier with Indymedia, WikiLeaks combined an open, participatory culture with a fully decentralized organization.

The collaboration with the public, who was encouraged to anonymously submit leaked documents that shed light on matters of public interest, was possible through a digital system integrated into a structure that shaped a new role for whistleblowing in the digital age. The cooperation with traditional media was articulated through a set of organizational protocols and digital tools to share documents and sift through them with the required confidentiality. Mainstream media offered WikiLeaks a major pathway to getting an important subject to the public, and effect that was amplified by the orchestrated publication of the reporting by legacy newspapers.

A tradition of collaboration in investigative reporting already existedthe Center for Investigative Reporting in Berkeley had been doing collaborative work since 1977 and the Center for Public Integrity since 1989. But the partnership between WikiLeaks and legacy organizations was of a different nature. As described by the French news site Mediapart, it was a reflection of the new alliance formed by the digital revolution between professionals and amateurs, journalists and activists, news professionals and citizen whistleblowers.58

The Cablegate signals the emergence of a model of the watchdog function neither purely networked nor purely traditional, but an interaction between the two, with collaboration playing a structural role.59 This arrangement combines the strengths of the network with the reporting tradition. It also consolidated the presence of new computer expertise and tools in legacy newsrooms that had been building up since the 1990s, in this case to develop a secure infrastructure to organize, secure, analyze, and share large databases of documentson the WikiLeaks side, also to circumvent the multiple attacks it faced to limit its ability to function.

The collaborative age

The deliberate cooperation of two or more newsrooms, along with other players including the public, to collect, share, and sift through documents and databases, and report on the findings, occurred within a larger trend often described as a new era of collaboration in journalism. By the end of the 2000s, cooperation with the competition was arguably becoming more the rule than the exception.60 The distinct feature of this ongoing phase is the development and open embrace of cooperative arrangements for news production by news organizations, in collaboration with others including journalism schools and technological platforms, to generate content that is greater than what any individual journalist, newsroom, or organization could produce on its own.61 Collaboration in this context has evolved from experiment to common practice.62

Recent initiatives such as the SF Homeless Project, involving more than seventy organizations seeking answers and change to the problem of homelessness in San Francisco;63 the News Integrity Initiative, a global consortium hosted at CUNY Graduate School of Journalism;64 and Electionland,65 a collective effort to monitor the vote on the 2016 election day, are only three major examples of this emerging pattern. Several reports as well as individual accounts have provided with snapshots of this phenomenon, but theres no definitive assessment of its diffusion and impact.

In 2014, Pew Research examined the achievements and challenges of five journalism partnerships taken as a sample to survey the motivations of news outlets to team up together, and the difficulties in sustaining these efforts.66 Economic problems were the main driver for these partnerships. Arrangements usually followed simple, non-bureaucratic terms but were easily derailed for different reasons. Partnerships were (still) not easy to implement between legacy media due to incompatible workflows and tools, such as digital content management systems that couldnt work together. The projects that fueled engagement with the audience and involved important topics seemed more suitable for collaborationor at least received more attention by news managers.

This report anticipates that ad-hoc strategies taking full advantage of the distributed nature of the web would be the next wave in collaboration. The phenomenon was also expected to grow in the coming years as nonprofits become more established and credible and become an increasing asset to traditional news organizations,67 a shift that effectively occurred.

The latest report on the current estate of collaboration, published in 2017 by the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University, provides the most comprehensive analysis to date of the current state of collaborative journalism. This report catalogues forty-four ongoing collaborations in the United States involving more than 500 newsrooms and other information providers, and estimates at least two hundred million dollars spent to foster journalistic collaboration since the 2000s.68 This effort describes six main arrangements based on the length of the project and the level of integration of the participants. The self-explaining modes are:

Temporary and Separate, such as the already mentioned SF Homeless Project, where dozens of organizations report independently on the same subject and collaborate in some dissemination practices to concentrate attention around their coverage. Ongoing and Separate, like the USA Today Network, an organizational effort within the same organization focused on marketing and consumer solutions. Temporary and Co-Creating, such as Documenting Hate, a project led by ProPublica to collect and verify reports on hate crimes and bias incidents, and build a database for others to further investigate these issues. Ongoing and Co-Creating, such as NPRs Collaborative Coverage Project, aiming to transform National Public Radio and member station newsrooms into a journalistic network. Temporary and Integrated, like the award-winning Panama Papers, an international collaboration led by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists to report of a massive leak from the database of one of the worlds biggest offshore law firm. Ongoing and Integrated, such as the arrangement involving seven public radio stations in Alaska operating independently on the editorial side but integrating their business efforts.

Several of the forty-four initiatives considered in this research started as one model but evolved into a different one. There are also projects that fall into various categories. In some cases, the differences between some of the projects included in this catalog are minimal when compared to the so-called convergence modes from the previous decade, a circumstance that suggests the overlapping of old and novel practices as the networking of the new media world continues to unfold.

The Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University also leads the Collaborative Journalism Database initiative,69 an effort aiming to serve as a central repository on collaborative journalism. A first release of data from January 2018 includes one hundred and eleven entries of news collaborations from more than 800 organizations.70 Projects are classified according to the previous categories.

The database also includes other information such as the starting date of the collaboration, a brief description, list of participants, subject, funding sources, tools used to articulate the work, and success metrics. A very preliminary analysis suggests the wide adoption of a simple technological infrastructure for collaboration developed since the mid-2000s (from Google Docs, launched in 2006, to Slack, available since 2013) and a similar number of projects following formal versus informal agreements.

Considering the limitations of the data currently available, focused on explicit forms of collaboration between organizations in detriment of other arrangements, three core themes emerge from the current phase of network collaboration:

Collaboration as a field repair: A core function of cooperative practices since the late 2000s is to fill the vacuum left by the industrial decline of media and the constant erosion of the conditions for journalism. This notion permeates the discourse on the role of collaboration. The expression field repair, mentioned earlier in this report, draws from the sense of field as developed by the French scholar Pierre Bourdieu and others as a way of understanding and explaining the constraints and processes involved in news media production, and is used here to convey the overall function of collaboration in fixing the media ecosystem. 71 Shared resources for journalism: The promise of collaboration in the networked era is probably having its fullest impact in revitalizing investigative reporting through local, national, and international partnerships. The combination of decentralized organizational arrangementspowered by new communication tools such as Slackand new technological capabilities to collaboratively obtain, mine, and share information seems to be one of the most promising developments in digital journalism. These collaborations rely and build shared resourcespublic databases, open source technology, networked communitiesto fulfill journalisms core mission. This byproduct of collaboration is increasingly taking on characteristics of a commons, or a resource shared by a group of people independent of particular property rights, and contributing to transform the underlying infrastructure for news production. This is one of the most impactful and transformative effects of collaboration. The expanding role of journalism schools, nonprofit organizations, and other players: A key differentiator between between the current phase of collaboration and the convergence years is the existence of diverse players beyond news organizations that are having a prominent role in fostering, funding, and sustaining partnerships, led by journalism schools and established nonprofit organizations that fully incorporate network collaboration as a structural element. Major examples of initiatives led by non-traditional organizations include: Electionland and Documenting Hate, 72

Santa Clara Universitys Trust Project, 73

Stanford Open Policing Project, 74

Center for Collaborative Journalism at Mercer University, 75

MuckRock, 76

Brown Institute for Media Innovation, 77

the wide array of collaborative initiatives hosted outside of the traditional news ecosystem to address some of the most pressing issues affecting journalism, such as verification and online propaganda

Foundations have played a critical role in funding, promoting and sustaining these efforts and the overall diffusion of collaborative practices. For example, as quoted in the 2014 Pew Research report already mentioned, the Knight Foundation funded eight pilot collaborations between news outlets and community contributorsthough only one participant remained active when the seed money ran out.78 The future role of these organizations as well as new players (startups, ad-hoc nonprofits, journalism schools, civic organizations at the local and national levels, joint efforts exclusively focused on collaboration) in enabling and further developing network collaboration is expected to grow.

Several questions remain open about the current estate of collaborative journalism. One of them is to what extent the arrangements currently in vogue are an evolution of previous modes in a more mature news media ecosystem, with an array of nonprofits and foundations supporting the diffusion of collaborative practices. A related question is whether the current era of collaboration is fulfilling its promise and producing a substantive, lasting change, and what larger impact these practices will have in journalism, in news media, and in serving the public. Are collaborative partnerships producing broader and deeper news coverage, more easily accessed or discovered?79 Can we prove that in a collaborative project the sum is more than the parties?

All these question deserve further inquiry in light of the importance that collaboration is gaining, the resources devoted to it, and its role in creating more opportunities for news media under pressure from ever-increasing economic and technological challenges. The second part of this report addresses the issue of impact by examining the critical role of network collaboration in creating a new shared infrastructure for journalism.





Developing the Journalism Commons

Public parks, roads, open squares, and the internet are all examples of commons, or shared resources subject to social dilemmas in which non-cooperation between individuals leads to its deterioration and possible collapse. A commons is the resource and the community that uses and manages it. It is easier to grasp the pervasiveness and relevance of these social and economic structures as public utilities that support varied forms of organization and production than fully characterize their distinct structure and vulnerabilities, especially in complex commons with many dimensions such as the internet.

The understanding of this field has changed radically, and its complexity has grown as the focus moved from local, geographically defined natural resources to complex global information commons with many intricate dependencies and no clear boundaries. A full account of this rich discussion is beyond the scope of this report. But it is necessary to briefly introduce the recent intellectual history of this domain in order to fully examine the critical impact of network collaboration in creating and developing a shared, commons-based infrastructure for newswork in the post-industrial media world.80

The once dominant model to conceptualize the commons builds on one of the most cited papers in social science, Garret Hardins The Tragedy of the Commons.81 In 1968, Hardin published his metaphor of a pasture open to all where each herdsman would try to maximize its personal benefit by keeping as many cattle grazing as possible, ultimately leading to the inevitable depletion of the natural resource. The resulting tragedy, used by Hardin to illustrate the perils of overpopulation and the degradation of the environment, is captured in a famous line: Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.

Hardins solution was either socialism or the privatism of the free enterprise,82 excluding the longstanding existence of the notion of public property in the Western world and traditional group-property regimes.83 In reality, this narrative only applies to a narrowed percentage of cases defined as open access commons. But Hardins parable set the terms of the debate for the next two decades, and it has been widely used to rationalize central government control of key resources, to justify privatization of shared resources, and to paint a disempowering, pessimistic vision of human prospect.84

The traditional understanding of the commons has also been influenced by other lines of research. One of them is the prisoners dilemma, a formal approach that turns Hardins tragedy into a set of elements and evaluates their potential combination, showing how in certain circumstances rational individuals might not cooperate, even if it appears it is in their best interest to do so. This model considers three main variables to theorize about the fate of the shared resourcecommunication and cooperation between the participants, and the personal incentives to seek an individual versus a collective benefit.

Other game theory approaches offer more complex alternatives to the same problemas with the prisoners dilemmas, they all serve as mathematical tools to analyze decision-making in situations with social interdependencies. A third narrative builds on the theory of collective action as developed by Mancur Olson in the 1960s on the difficulties faced by any group of individuals working to provide a public good in an efficient manner, and the possibilities of cooperation. This theory is said to heavily influence Hardin, and is usually at play in the current discourse of the commons along other key concepts such as social capital.85

These models have often provided us with the base for policy, sometimes with disastrous effects.86 But the possible solutions around the collective use and management of shared resources, often opaque by memorable metaphors, are much wider. As Elinor Ostrom wrote in the seminal Governing the Commons, communities of individuals have relied on institutions resembling neither the state nor the market to govern some resource systems with reasonable degree of success over long periods of time.87 Empirical research shows how public property and privatization are also subject to failure and in some cases are associated with more degradation than traditional group-property regimes.88

Since the mid-1980s, the combination of disciplines had enabled a deeper understanding of this pervasive phenomenon. Scholars began to untangle the many confusions existing about commons as complex resource systems, and uncover its prominent but often neglected role. Putting it succinctly, the conversation moved from the solution to a commons is x to a more nuanced, empirical approach that considers local lore and ad-hoc arrangements.

In the mid-1990s, the attention turned to new or previously ignored core resources for communication such as the internet, public radio, and digital content. It was in this decade when the Library of Congress began to use commons and natural resources for some books concerned with conservation of natural resources,89 and when scholars and activists called for a new environmentalism for open information in the digital age, threatened by a new enclosure movement that fostered restrictive copyright regimes for information, limiting the development of the networked public sphere.90 Information commons outgrows from the critical role of libraries in safeguarding public knowledge and ensuring wide access to it.

This is the overall context for the rise of the journalism commons in the networked digital age. In spite of its pervasiveness, the potential implications of a shared, commons-based infrastructure for journalism has been mostly neglected in the public discourse on the future of media.

A basic vocabulary on the commons

Through this intellectual journey, covering the last five decades, a technical vocabulary to characterize shared resources has been definedthough different notions still exist as the understanding of this domain continues to evolve.91 In this report I follow the terminology building on Elinor Ostroms work,92 who had a seminal influence in evolving the research on the commons into a multidisciplinary, empirical approach. This is not to assume that the Ostrom school has prevailed and that other points of view are not relevant. But for the sake of simplicity, this vocabulary provides with a comprehensive and accessible framework to think about the impact of collaboration in developing the journalism commons, and can serve as the base for a first attempt to characterize this critical relation.

Researchers make a basic differentiation between commons as a resource system, also called common-pool resources, and as a property rights regime. Common-pool resources, natural or human-produced, have two main characteristics: the exclusion of beneficiaries is especially difficult and costly, and the exploitation by some of the users reduces the availability of the resource for others. Social dilemmas affecting resource systems include overuse, congestion, pollution, and free riding, referring to the use of the resource by some of its beneficiaries without contributing to the costs of providing, maintaining, and regulating it.

A resource systems such as the journalism commons can consist of multiple goodsexcludable and non-excludable, rivalrous and non-rivalrousand still have many characteristics of a commons. A good or service is excludable if it is possible to prevent consumers who have not paid for it from having access to it, and is non-excludable if non-paying consumers cannot be prevented from accessing it. If a good can be used and consumed by many individuals concurrently it is is non-rivalrous.

In the opposite situation, when a good cannot be consumed by many individuals at the same time, is classified as rivalrous. Hardins tragedy considered two possible property rights regimes to prevent the degradation and the inevitable collapse of the pastureprivatization or governmental property. But there are two additional forms neglected by this view. These are open access, such as the pasture in Hardins metaphor or the internet, characterized for the absence of enforced property rights; and group property, when the rights of the resource are held by a group who can exclude others to use it.93

There is a large variation of common-pool resources, patterns of use, and types of users, and no definitive evidence that favors any property right over the others as the best suited.94 What the systematic, empirical research on natural resources has yielded is a set of general principles that are associated with a better performance of shared resources, such as the existence of rules devised and managed by the beneficiaries; simple systems to monitor its compliance and impose sanctions; different institutions to deal and regulate with the resource in all its dimensions, such as local versus regional; and procedures for revising the rules.

Lessons from extensive case studies of local and regional natural common-pool resources are encouraging. Pasturelands, woodlands, fisheries, and other natural resources have long been shared and used in common by local people as a combination of particular environmental characteristics, social conditions, and technological factors.95 In highly complex systems, such as the internet or the journalism commons, it is extremely challenging to devise optimal rules and institutions to monitor them.

The critical role of collaboration

This introduction to the current conceptualization of the commons and its vocabulary serves as the base for a first attempt to characterize the shared infrastructure for journalism and its structural dependence of network collaboration. Based on the description of other information resources such as the internet and the understanding of media systems as a layered structure, the journalism commons can be described as an intricate resource system, functioning under an open access regime, with both local and global dimensions, and hosting all components and social activities pertaining to journalism.96 It is made of three distinct and intertwined layers containing other resourcesor a commons containing other commonsthat build and take on characteristics of the internet as a founding, structural element.

The first layer is the technological commons, the physical infrastructure and the technologies to collect, store, and organize digital information. It includes the code that regulates the cascade of operations involving digital information, the elements required for commercial transactions and services, and the different media technologies used to capture, produce, manipulate, and disseminate digital data, both open source and proprietary. The internet and its related technologies are incorporated in this layer as an essential component of the infrastructure for news, with all its related technologies, components, and dilemmas.

The technological commons is a critical driver of change in the journalism commons. It can transform how elements flowing through the resource are captured and used by the users, the overall rules regulating it, and expand or limit the community of users and how they access and utilize the resource. Critical segments of the technological commons are a result of past and ongoing commons-based practices of production, occurring when there are no exclusive rights to organize the productive effort or capture its value, and cooperation is achieved through social mechanisms other than market or managerial directions.97 This is the case for open web standards, the core internet protocols, unlicensed spectrum, and the wide array of free and open source software (FOSS) used for news production and dissemination.

By the end of the 2000s, FOSS accounted for between sixty-five percent and seventy percent of the web server software market, about eighty percent of server-side scripting languages, and serves as the base for the widely adopted Android operating system and the web browser Firefox.98 The technological commons illustrates the essential role of networked forms of collaboration, through commons-based production, in building the technological infrastructure for journalism. This is the result of the cooperative work of the connected, or those who have built and are building the internet that we have come to know.99

The second layer of the journalism commons is the social commons, created by the use of the resource by individuals and groups. This layer is not always included in models describing media systems. But it seems critical to capture the social nature of journalism, including the relation with the public, intricate workflows and production patterns, and the many cooperative arrangements and forms described in the first part of this report.100 Collaboration is how journalism works. This social nature of the social commons has been defined in the academic literature as the commoning, and is increasingly seen as an essential attribute.

The social commons intersects with the technological commons through social production practices, as the logic that fostered the collaborative creation of critical segments of the digital infrastructure for media that expanded to other activities including the production of specific tools, software and other resources for news production and dissemination, and the development of social practices for editorial work.

The third and final layer is the content commons, or the information hosted in this system. Its possibilities are shaped by the technological and the social layers. Network collaboration enables new ways to cooperatively generate information, sometimes also functioning as a structural resource for others to report and to further investigate public affairs, meeting in this case the function of a technology. This type of hybrid good with several functions illustrates one of the main characteristics of the journalism commonsit hosts components with dual attributes, such as physical and digital, often distributed across different layers and evolving as they flow through different points of the system. Critical dilemmas such as enclosure, erosion, or pollution can emerge in some of these intersections through changes in any of the three layers.

This multi-layered, complex resource system can be characterized in detail using a framework for information resources that classifies its components as facilities, artifacts, or ideas.101 If the layered structure description provides us with an overview of the journalism commons and how it works, these terminology complements it by enabling a careful examination of its building blockswhat individuals or organizations ultimately appropriate or useand the relations among them. This low-level framework allows for further conceptualizing some of the most pressing issues affecting journalism as social dilemmas, identifying structural vulnerabilities, and refining the examination of the impact of network collaboration in the development of a shared, sustainable infrastructure for newswork:102

Facilities are the evolving technologies that make digital distributed information possible, including its physical components. They store artifacts and make them available in the system. The properties and attributes mentioned in the description of the technological layer applies to facilities, including the foundational role of networked practices of collaboration.Examples of facilities are digital repositories such as online newspapers and magazines, and the internet and its underlying technologies and protocols, including its physical infrastructure such as servers, routers, and wires. They can have physical limits, such as being able to host a limited number of concurrent users or the amount of information that can effectively travel through a digital network.There are critical dilemmas associated with these components with important implications for policy regulation, often not receiving enough attention in the journalism discourse. For example, net neutralitythe idea that internet service providers should treat all data that travels over their networks fairly, without improper discrimination in favor of particular apps, sites, or services 103 104

They store artifacts and make them available in the system. The properties and attributes mentioned in the description of the technological layer applies to facilities, including the foundational role of networked practices of collaboration.Examples of facilities are digital repositories such as online newspapers and magazines, and the internet and its underlying technologies and protocols, including its physical infrastructure such as servers, routers, and wires. They can have physical limits, such as being able to host a limited number of concurrent users or the amount of information that can effectively travel through a digital network.There are critical dilemmas associated with these components with important implications for policy regulation, often not receiving enough attention in the journalism discourse. For example, net neutralitythe idea that internet service providers should treat all data that travels over their networks fairly, without improper discrimination in favor of particular apps, sites, or services Artifacts are a specific, nameable representation of an idea or set of ideas. They are stored in facilities and flow through the resource. The description of the content layer applies to artifacts. Their flow through the system is more complex than in natural resources due to the combination of both physical and virtual characteristics. Digital information can be subject to dilemmas such as congestion (pollution), but usually not to erosion (deterioration) in the same way that physical information artifacts. Users can usually be excluded from using them at some point (enclosure), but this process is more complex and less transparent than with natural resources.The use of digital artifactsan article, a movie, an image, a PDF filecan be limited based on the capacity of the facilities hosting them or the logic defined in the system, for example, to prioritize some piece of information over others (the net neutrality problem), or the property rights regime in use. They vary in their durability, and can evolve during their transita trait of the journalism commons already mentioned. In the same way that an excessive amount of artifacts is associated with key information problems such as congestion, resulting in overwhelming the end user and the loss of value for information goods flowing through the system, the opposite problem is also a commons dilemma.The growing problem of news deserts, resulting from local newspapers shutting down its operations across the country, can be conceptualized using this framework as the combination of a lack of market incentives and investment on facilities to guarantee the flow of the system at the local and national levels. This market failure is not foreign to journalism, as noted by media researcher Victor Pickard, the history of American media is in many ways a history of market failure. 105

They are stored in facilities and flow through the resource. The description of the content layer applies to artifacts. Their flow through the system is more complex than in natural resources due to the combination of both physical and virtual characteristics. Digital information can be subject to dilemmas such as congestion (pollution), but usually not to erosion (deterioration) in the same way that physical information artifacts. Users can usually be excluded from using them at some point (enclosure), but this process is more complex and less transparent than with natural resources.The use of digital artifactsan article, a movie, an image, a PDF filecan be limited based on the capacity of the facilities hosting them or the logic defined in the system, for example, to prioritize some piece of information over others (the net neutrality problem), or the property rights regime in use. They vary in their durability, and can evolve during their transita trait of the journalism commons already mentioned. In the same way that an excessive amount of artifacts is associated with key information problems such as congestion, resulting in overwhelming the end user and the loss of value for information goods flowing through the system, the opposite problem is also a commons dilemma.The growing problem of news deserts, resulting from local newspapers shutting down its operations across the country, can be conceptualized using this framework as the combination of a lack of market incentives and investment on facilities to guarantee the flow of the system at the local and national levels. This market failure is not foreign to journalism, as noted by media researcher Victor Pickard, the history of American media is in many ways a history of market failure. Ideas are non-physical units, not protected by copyright, contained in an artifact. An example would be the thesis of an article, or the outcome of a journalistic investigation. The overall functioning of the system has also an impact on the availability of ideas. This is a critical aspect of property rights regimesthe balance between protecting them and guaranteeing the free flow of ideas required for the system to keep functioning and serve as a platform for new ideas. Another problem is the poor quality of information, or the pollution of the system due to new strategies of overwhelming and propaganda, resulting also in the decay of the system.

The discourse of the commons is at once descriptive, because it identifies models of community governance that would otherwise go unexamined, and constitutive, because it gives us a language to build new communities and resources based on principles of the commons.106 Connecting news media to the notion and the vocabulary of shared resources subject to social dilemmas provides with a rich framework to analyze the impact of networked forms of collaboration in reshaping the infrastructure for journalism, and think about its future possibilities. It also helps connect apparently independent phenomena, and devise new collaborative approaches to address structural vulnerabilities limiting the development of the new media worldfrom net neutrality to systemic market failure and the development of social capital and collective action. Much work is required to further the understanding and the importance of the commons in the new media world, a topic mostly neglected in the academic and the public discourse.





Conclusion

The period covered in this reportthe first three decades of digital journalismcould be described as a constitutive moment in the creation of media.107 Sociologist Paul Starr explains this phenomenon as an episodic process that reflects the particular conjuncture of forces and ideas at the moment when a political upheaval takes place, a new technology is introduced, or some other event reopens settled institutional patterns. The profound social, cultural, economic, and political transformations happening in the last decades of the twentieth century is the context for network collaboration to rise and evolve in journalism as a collection of formal and informal, implicit and explicit arrangements. After three decades of gradual, non-linear evolution beginning with the digitization of news media in the mid-nineties, the assumption is that a new era of collaboration in journalism is unfolding.

Traditional news media, nonprofit organizations, journalism schools, and other information producers are taking advantage of opportunities created by the combination of decentralized, networked, and traditional models for news production and dissemination to work together, create shared resources, and advance their work. The cooperation of multiple organizations and individuals to address journalistic challenges is happening at a scale that no single organization could replicate by itself.108

These arrangements are helping to alleviate the impact of the economic crisis, fostering new ways to expand journalisms core mission, and contributing to reconfigure the media ecosystem through the creation of a new commons-based shared infrastructure for newswork. A first attempt to characterize this resulting journalism commonsan open access resource system with a technological, social, and content layers made of facilities, artifacts, and ideasuncovers a social, economic, and cultural form that is unfolding in front of us.109

Looking at the impact of collaboration in creating the journalism commons allows us to connect apparently disconnected resources and phenomena and introduce new questions to media organizations, journalism schools, foundations, and other organizations involved in news production and dissemination, and interested in its long-term sustainability. The issues at play in the journalism commons, as in any commons regardless of its nature, are equity, or issues of equal appropriation contribution, and maintenance of the resource; efficiency or the issues affecting the optimal production, management and use of the resource; and sustainability or the outcome in the long term.110 A model for journalism based on the commons opens new creative ways to think through these long-term issues, and puts collaboration as a structural element of the future of news.





Acknowledgments

A number of people have contributed to this report. Heather Bryant and Tana Oshima edited the first draft and made essential suggestions to improve it. Jon Keegan and Kathy Zhang, from the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University, supported this research through 2017. Abigail Hartstone made a thorough review of the final draft and proposed critical changes to make it more consistent and appealing. Luis Melgar contributed the two graphics. This report builds on the recent research on collaboration from the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University and the American Press Institute, and the seminal work on the commons developed by Elinor Ostrom, Charlotte Hess, Carol M. Rose, Yochai Benkler, Lawrence Lessig, and others. Discussions on independent media in the early days of First Look Media in San Francisco with Debbie Cohen, Dino Anderson, and Lise Woods Fink kick-started the project. Many other colleaguesJohn Temple, Tran Ha, Martin Kotynek, Andrew Losowski, Maria Sanchez, Dan Gillmor, and otherscontributed through informal conversations about journalism. Their opinions have also shaped this report.





Citations

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Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006). Sarah Stonbely, Comparing Models of Collaborative Journalism, Center for Cooperative Media, September 29, 2017, https://centerforcooperativemedia.org/new-research-comparing-models-collaborative-journalism-released-sept-29/. Lisa Gitelman, Always Already New: Media, History, and the Data of Culture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008). Ansgard Heinrich, Network Journalism: Journalistic Practice in Interactive Spheres (New York: Routledge, 2011). Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society. Walter W. Powell, Neither Market, nor Hierarchy: Network Forms of Organization. Laurel Smith-Doerr and Walter W. Powell, The Handbook of Economic Sociology (New York: Princeton University Press, 2005). Manuel Castells, The Internet Galaxy. C.W. Anderson, Rebuilding the News: Metropolitan Journalism in the Digital Age (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2013). Pablo Boczkowski, Digitizing the News: Innovation in Online Newspapers (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004). Mark Deuze, Journalism and the Web: An Analysis of Skills and Standards in an Online Environment, Gazette, no. 5 (1999): 373390, https://doi.org/10.1177/0016549299061005002. Pablo Boczkowski, Digitizing the News: Innovation in Online Newspapers. Ibid. Manuel Castells, The Internet Galaxy. Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody (New York: The Penguin Press, 2008). Howard Rheingold, The Virtual Community (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,1993). Fred Turner, From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, The Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism (Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 2006). Sarah Stonbely, Comparing Models of Collaborative Journalism. Pablo Boczkowski, Digitizing the News: Innovation in Online Newspapers. Manuel Castells, The Internet Galaxy. Martha Hamilton, All Together Now: News Partnerships Increase in Digital Age, American Journalism Review, May 18, 2015, https://ajr.org/2015/05/18/all-together-now-news-partnerships-increase-in-digital-age/. Yochai Benkler and Helen Nissenbaum, Commons-Based Production and Virtue, Journal of Political Philosophy, no. 4 (December 2006): 394419, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9760.2006.00235.x/abstract. Nicholas Negroponte, Being Digital (New York: Knopf, 1995). Pablo Boczkowski, Digitizing the News: Innovation in Online Newspapers. Mark Granovetter, Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness, American Journal of Sociology, no. 3 (November 1985): 481510, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2780199?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents. Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New York: New York University Press, 2006). Ithiel de Sola Pool, Technologies of Freedom (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1983). State of the News Media, Pew Research Center, 2004, https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/reports/2004/03/15/the-state-of-the-news-media-2004. Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. Rich Gordon, Digital Journalism: Emerging Media and the Changing Horizons of Journalism (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2003). Ibid. Leslie-Jean Thornton and Susan M. Keith, From Convergence to Webvergence: Tracking the Evolution of Broadcast-Print Partnerships through the Lens of Change Theory, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, no. 2 (June 2009): 257276, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/107769900908600201. Ibid. C.W. Anderson, Rebuilding the News: Metropolitan Journalism in the Digital Age. Juan Gonzalez and Joseph Torres, News for All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media (New York: Verso, 2011). Pablo J. Boczkowki and C.W. Anderson, Remaking the News: Essays on the Future of Journalism Scholarship in the Digital Age (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,2017). Leslie-Jean Thornton and Susan M. Keith, From Convergence to Webvergence: Tracking the Evolution of Broadcast-Print Partnerships through the Lens of Change Theory. Victor Pickard, The Great Evasion: Confronting Market Failure in American Media Policy, Critical Studies in Media Communication, no. 2 (June 2014):153159, https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2014.919404. Lucas Graves and Magda Konieczna, Sharing the News: Journalistic Collaboration As a Field Repair, International Journal of Communication (January 2015): 19661984, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313750807_Sharing_

the_news_Journalistic_collaboration_as_field_repair. Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. Benedetta Brevini, Arnie Hintz, and Patric McCurdy, eds., Implications for the Future of Communications, Journalism and Society (New York: PalgraveMcMillan, 2013). Collateral Murder, https://collateralmurder.wikileaks.org/. Afghan War Logs, https://wikileaks.org/afg/. Iraq War Logs, https://wikileaks.org/irq/. Public Library of US Diplomacy, https://search.wikileaks.org/plusd/. Yochai Benkler, A Free Irresponsible Press: WikiLeaks and the Battle Overthe Soul of the Networked Fourth Estate, Harvard Civil RightsCivil Liberties Law Review, no. 2 (2011): 311397, https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/10900863. Ibid. Benedetta Brevini, Arnie Hintz, and Patric McCurdy, eds., Implications for the Future of Communications, Journalism and Society. Ibid. Brant Houston, Collaborations Spread Quickly, Giving Stories a Broader Reach, IRE Journal, Spring 2010, https://www.ire.org/publications/ire-journal/search-journal-archives/2029/. Sarah Stonbely, Comparing Models of Collaborative Journalism. Ibid. SF Homeless Project, https://sfhomelessproject.com/. News Integrity Inititive, https://www.journalism.cuny.edu/centers/news-integrity-initiative/. ElectionLand, https://projects.propublica.org/electionland/. Rick Edmonds and Amy Mitchell, Journalism Partnerships: A New Era of Interest, Pew Research Center, December 4, 2014, https://mediaimpactfunders.org/journalism-partnerships-a-new-era-of-interest/. Ibid. Sarah Stonbely, Comparing Models of Collaborative Journalism. Database: Search, Sort and Learn about Collaborative Journalism Projects from around the World, https://collaborativejournalism.org/database-search-sort-learn-collaborative-projects-around-world/. Ibid. Rodney Benson and Erik Neveu, Bourdieu and the Journalistic Field (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2005). Documenting Hate, https://projects.propublica.org/graphics/hatecrimes. The Trust Project, https://thetrustproject.org/. Stanford Open Policy Project, https://openpolicing.stanford.edu/. Center for Collaborative Journalism, https://ccj.mercer.edu/. Muckrock, https://www.muckrock.com/about/. Brown Institute for Media Innovation, https://brown.columbia.edu/. Rick Edmonds and Amy Mitchell, Journalism Partnerships: A New Era of Interest. Ibid. Charlotte Hess and Elinor Ostrom, Ideas, Artifacts and Facilities: Information As a Common-Pool Resource, Law and Contemporary Problems, no. 11(2011): 111145, https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1276&context=lcp. Garret Hardin, The Tragedy of the Commons, Science, no. 3859 (December 1968): 12431248, https://science.sciencemag.org/content/162/3859/1243. Elinor Ostrom, Joanna Burger, Christopher B. Field, Richard B. Norgaard, and David Policansky, Revisiting the Commons: Local Lessons, Global Challenges, Science, no. 5412 (April 1999): 278282, https://science.sciencemag.org/content/284/5412/278.full. Carol M. Rose, The Comedy of the Commons: Commerce, Custom, and Inherently Public Property, University of Chicago Law Review, no. 3 (1986): 711, https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/fss_papers/1828/. Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990). Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971). Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Ibid. Digital Library of the Commons at Indiana University, full database of case studies, https://dlc.dlib.indiana.edu/dlc/. Bonnie J. McCay, The Commons in the New Millennium: Challenges and Adaptation (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003). Lawrence Lessig, The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World (New York: Vintage, 2001). Bonnie J. McCay, The Commons in the New Millennium: Challenges and Adaptation. Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Francesco Parisi, Oxford Handbook of Law and Economics: Private and Commercial Law (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2017). Bonnie J. McCay, The Commons in the New Millennium: Challenges and Adaptation. Joanna Burger, Elinor Ostrom, Richard B. Norgaard, David Policansky, and Bernard D. Goldstein, Protecting the Commons: A Framework for Resource Management in the Americas (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2001). Charlotte Hess, The Virtual CPR: The Internet as a Local and Global Common Pool Resource, Fifth Annual Meeting of the International Association for the Study of the Common Property, Syracuse University, 1995, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/45530367_

The_Virtual_CPR_The_Internet_as_a_Local_and_Global_Common_Pool_Resource. Yochai Benkler, Commons-Based Strategies and the Problems of Patents, Science, no. 5687 (August 2004): 11101111, https://science.sciencemag.org/content/305/5687/1110.full. Francesco Parisi, Oxford Handbook of Law and Economics: Private and Commercial Law. Lawrence Lessig, The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World. Todd Sandler, Collective Action: Theory and Applications (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1992). Charlotte Hess and Elinor Ostrom, Ideas, Artifacts and Facilities: Information as a Common-Pool Resource. Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. Electronic Frontier Foundation, https://www.eff.org/issues/net-neutrality. Pablo J. Boczkowki and C.W. Anderson, Remaking the News: Essays on the Future of Journalism Scholarship in the Digital Age. Ibid. Charlotte Hess and Elinor Ostrom, Understanding Knowledge As a Commons. Paul Starr, The Creation of the Media: Political Origins of Modern Communications (New York: Basic Books, 2004). Yochai Benkler, A Free Irresponsible Press: WikiLeaks and the Battle Over the Soul of the Networked Fourth Estate. Charlotte Hess and Elinor Ostrom, Understanding Knowledge As a Commons. Ibid.

Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today

Carlos Martinez de la Serna is a fellow at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism, and a journalist and researcher based in New York City.
THE CITY CLUB OF CHICAGO recently hosted Exodus from Illinois, a conversation between local journalists about why thousands of residents have left the city and state in recent years. Along with editorial board members from the Tribune and Sun-Times, the panel also included Dan Proft, an influential conservative radio personality and activist who took to Twitter before the March 6 event to critique the mainstream media outlets of his fellow panelists as biased and elitist:

Why are people leaving IL (like it's on fire)? A riddle wrapped inside a conundrum surrounded by the obvious. A question that mystifies only the champagne Socialists and their media handmaidens. @CityClubChicago https://t.co/HitsvEGmxy  Dan Proft (@DanProft) March 6, 2018

Some in the audience may have been surprised by Profts presence on the panel. Proftwho helped launch Local Government Information Services (LGIS), a state network of 11 newspapers and 20 websiteshas helped raise millions for conservative causes, and is connected to the Illinois Policy Institute, a conservative think tank. Both LGIS and the Illinois Policy Institute provide an increasingly vocal counterweight to what they see as their states liberal media bias. Each devotes substantial attention on high taxes and poor government performance, and has the support of a loose network of political dollars.

The makeup of the City Club panel, however, is perhaps as revealing as the substance of the conversation. Among the factors that panelists agreed contributed to an Illinois exodus, severalfrom high taxes to government dysfunction to violenceare pieces of a narrative that a crop of conservative news and information sites in Illinois have drummed up for years, a testament to their efforts to push a statewide political narrative.

ICYMI: An Illinois PAC decides to get into local newsjust in time for the primary

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LGIS, ACCORDING TO ITS SITE, publishes hard-hitting, data-driven exposes that arm our readers with the information they need to hold their local governments accountable. Some LGIS news sites, however, build on that mission statement. The Peoria Standard says it believes in limited government, in the constructive role of the free market and in the rights of citizens to choose the size and scope of their government and the role it should play in their society, and refers to funding by like-minded advocates.

Most of the stories published on LGIS news sites are written by algorithm, co-founder Brian Timpone says in an interview with CJR, using software that analyzes data (school test scores, for instance) and splices it by region to deliver to local publications around the state. (Recent headlines include 25 biggest spenders: What Illinois Counties Rank Highest?; Which school districts in Illinois are in the worst financial shape?; and 65 percent of Evansville Attendance Center students fail annual tests.) When stories are written, their authors are usually freelancers, many of whom report their stories from well beyond the Illinois state line.

A 2017 story in the Chicago Reader noted that many LGIS stories are dry and data-driven and written at a distance, but emphasized that decisions about what stories to publish at all are made locally. And Proft, as he made clear at the get-go, has an agenda. The Reader summed up its take on LGISs coverage: If your community news is slanted, Dan Proft may be to blame.

The Illinois Policy Institute, for its part, considers itself a think tank and not a political news site. Still, the group has a powerful voice, says Mike Fourcher, publisher of the Chicago political news site The Daily Line. The policy institute has around 305,000 followers on Facebook, and its website averaged more than 20,000 pageviews per day in 2017, according to numbers provided by IPI.

I think they do help to define the boundaries of political debate, Fourcher tells CJR in an email. They signal to politicians where major donorswho are really paying for the political siteswant things to go.

[W]hen Gateway or you do a story about the AFL-CIO Sun-Times or the Amazon Post raising the same questions and self-reverential concernsthen Ill take inquiries such as yours more seriously.

THE PRECISE RELATIONSHIP between the Illinois Policy Institute and LGIS can be clear as mud. Last year, Gateway Journalism Review, a publication from the journalism school at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, released a report on the editorial operations and funding of LGIS and other conservative news organizations connected to the free market, anti-tax, anti-union Illinois Policy Institute. The network, according to Gateway, is a formidable conservative force in Illinois politics and, potentially, a model for similar networks across the country. Mike Lawrence, a longtime statehouse reporter who also worked for former Illinois Republican Governor Jim Edgar, says the Gateway report makes clear that there are readers who couldnt tell the difference between the LGIS newspapers and traditional publications.

Proft calls concerns about the publications funding and transparency hypocritical.

[W]hen Gateway or you do a story about the AFL-CIO Sun-Times or the Amazon Post raising the same questions and self-reverential concerns and getting anywhere near the transparency provided by the enterprises with which Im associated, then Ill take inquiries such as yours more seriously, Proft wrote, referring to The Washington Post owner and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and the union owners of the Sun-Times. Until then, I will properly see them as the thinly-veiled political attacks they are by those who dont care to see conservative perspectives and news stories they would never cover make their way into public discussion.

As for the Illinois Policy Institute, CEO John Tillman tells CJR that his think tank is a champion for people who have felt neglected by their elected officials for decades. Tillman was the subject of a February report by ProPublica Illinois and the Chicago Sun-Times which concluded that concluded that Tillman and his associates have moved millions of dollars around five interconnected nonprofits they run, steering money to for-profit ventures in which they have a stake. Tillman responded that the real intent and purpose of this storyfrom a union-owned newspaperis to attack and smear one of the most powerful and compelling threats to the status quo in Illinois.

Im sure IPI has some correspondents who could fill those slots.

ILLINOIS AND ITS VOTERS would seem to be in dire need of illuminating political coverage: The state is mired in debt after its recently ended two-year budget impasse, the electorate faces a barrage of messages tied to upcoming elections, and there are fewer and fewer reporters at the statehouse. Rich Miller, who frenetically keeps up with statehouse news on his blog Capitol Fax and has perhaps benefited most from traditional outlets retrenchment, tells CJR that the Policy Institute is active and often cutthroat on social media, where it effectively pushes for policy changes big and small with a galvanized and outspoken following.

Youve got average everyday people complaining about the House rules committee, says Miller, offering an example of how the Illinois Policy Institute galvanizes its followers through its coverage. But theyre only getting one side of that.

Illinois residents may soon see more coverage from the other side of the partisan line. Ameya Pawar, a Chicago alderman and former Democratic gubernatorial candidate, recently announced plans to start a nonprofit newsroom called One Illinois. I think you fight fire with water, says Pawar. The Illinois Policy Institute want[s] to get you angry, and well be focused on solutions. I think storytelling and documenting whats happening in communities is a good way to do that.

Brian Timpone, who runs the LGIS hyperlocal publications, is critical of nostalgia for local journalisms fatter days. Everyone, he tells CJR, reminisces about the glory days of the statehouse. Two decades ago, Timpone worked as a TV reporter and covered the capitol for WCIA-TV. He was also the co-founder of Journatic, which CJR previously called a local news outsourcing company and which was submerged in scandal following revelations of fake bylines and plagiarism. (Journatic changed its name to LocalLabs in 2014.)

Timpone blames traditional reporters for helping to push the state toward its fiscal crisis today. Its really criminal what happened to Illinois and it all happened at a time when there were a lot more reportersand nobody said a damn thing, Timpone says. All they did was they reported the news of the day like stenographers, and theyre doing the same thing today as they did then.

In a Capitol Fax post from 2017, Miller detailed a number of statehouse reductions in Illinois. Times change, and not always for the better, he wrote. A commenter replied to Millers post, Thats OK Rich, Im sure IPI has some correspondents who could fill those slots.

As politically backed, brazenly ideological news sites pick up the slack left by a diminished statehouse press corps, how should news consumers proceed? Josh Sharp, head of the Illinois Press Association, suggested to the Gateway Journalism Review that readers should look at how a paper presents news. Newspapers not funded by a PAC [political action committee] will have news from both sides. But Sharp also told Gateway that news sites should be transparent about where their support comes from.

The First Amendment protects the right for Dan Proft to say whatever he wants, Sharp told the Gateway Journalism Review. But perhaps Mr. Proft should be more upfront about the funding of his papers.

ICYMI: How one AP veteran exposes corruption in Illinois

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Jeremy Borden is an independent journalist based in Chicago. Follow him on Twitter @Jeremy_Borden.
"Iris Apfel embodies the quintessential role model for Barbie with her singular style vision, entrepreneurial spirit and independence. Her long-spanning career makes her the perfect subject of a one-of-a-kind doll, the highest honor Barbie bestows," Mattel said in a written statement.

Apfel has made her way into mainstream fame too, having been just being made into a one-of-a-kind Barbie which was released in concert with Apfel's book. It is not for sale, but in the fall of 2018, Mattel will release two "Styled By Iris Apfel" Barbies and those will be available for purchase, the toymaker tells CNBC Make It. (Pricing and exact release dates are still being worked out, according to Mattel.)

"An American original in the truest sense, Iris Apfel is one of the most vivacious personalities in the worlds of fashion, textiles, and interior design, and over the past 40 years, she has cultivated a personal style that is both witty and exuberantly idiosyncratic," the Metropolitan Museum of art said about Apfel . "Her originality is typically revealed in her mixing of high and low fashions  Dior haute couture with flea market finds, 19th-century ecclesiastical vestments with Dolce & Gabbana lizard trousers."

Today, Apfel is famous for her eclectic style. She pairs layers of bright colors and oversized glasses and jewelry together with such flair that she was the subject of an exhibit at The Costume Institute in The Metropolitan Museum of Art which ran from September 13, 2005 through January 22, 2006 . Apfel was 84 when the show opened.

After each visit, if Apfel had behaved, her grandmother allowed her to take home six scraps. "Obsessed with texture, color, and pattern, I spent whole evenings entertaining myself this way," writes Apfel. "Looking back, it's very clear playing this way honed by eye and gave me a very deep interest in fabric."

"She opened one bag, and then another, and what I saw made my eyes pop: a gigantic bunch of little fabric remnants in all sorts of colors and patterns  there were scraps of all kinds, of all shapes and sizes," says Apfel, now 96, in her new book, " Iris Apfel: Accidental Icon ," which went on sale in March.

Growing up in Queens, New York, Iris Apfel was an only child, so her parents often brought her to family events where she was the only kid. Many of those were at her paternal grandparents' home in Brooklyn, New York. To entertain Apfel, her grandmother let her play with fabric scraps, which she had in large quantities because her four daughters often sewed for charity.

Also in 2011, Apfel's line debuted on the Home Shopping Network . The line is called "Rara Avis" and includes all manner of large, colorful jewelry .

"My first big job in beauty and fashion came when I was at the tender age of ninety," says Apfel in her book. She developed a limited edition collection of make-up for MAC cosmetics for the winter of 2011. "I'm the oldest living broad that ever graced a major cosmetics campaign," she says.

The Apfels would travel to Europe two times a year to get fabric there they could not get in the U.S. They specialized in fabric reproductions from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries and had a showroom at 115 East 57th Street in Manhattan, New York.

The husband-and-wife duo owned Old World Weavers until 1992, and in that time they did work for nine White House administrations, running from Harry Truman to Bill Clinton. In her time working at the White House, Apfel earned the nickname "First Lady of Fabric" or "Our Lady of the Cloth," she says in her book.

Prior to becoming a "geriatric starlet"  a name Apfel gave herself in describing what the exhibit at the Met had made her  Apfel launched and ran Old World Weavers, an international fabric manufacturing company, in 1950 with her late husband, Carl Apfel. The two were newlyweds at the time, and remained married for 68 years.

Even if you aren't interested in bold, bright fashion, after nearly a century on the plaent, Apfel's words of wisdom about aging, individuality and success are worth reading. Here are 10 secrets to success from Apfel, as outlined in her new book:

1. Don't obsess over your age

"I never think about my age. Maybe that's the ticket. I never think about it  it's a passing thought. It's just a number.  I've found that work is very healthy for me. I love what I do and I put my heart and soul into it," she says.

It's true, "Gettin' old ain't for sissies," Apfel admits. But so what? "You start falling apart, but you just have to buck up and paste yourself together. You may not like getting older, but what's the alternative? You're here. Embrace it. I say put your experience to work, to give something back to other people."

2. Pick a partner who celebrates your successes

"Everyone he ever touched knows he was truly a Gentle Man," Apfel writes of Carl, who died in 2015 at the age of 100. "His humor and generosity were legendary. We did almost everything together. His encouragement and unwavering support made this book possible. He pushed me into the limelight and then basked in my success. He got much more of a kick from the accolades I received than I did. I miss him madly. Sleep well, sweet prince."

3. When something excites you, go for it

"I never expected people to know my name or recognize my face. I never expected to be called a fashion icon. I never expected museums to exhibit my clothing and accessories. I never expected to be a cover girl or the face of a cosmetics company in my nineties...." Apfel writes. "I never expected anything. I just feel things in my gut and I do them. If something sounds exciting and interesting I do it  and then I worry about it later. Doing new things takes a lot of energy and strength. It's very tiring to make things happen, to learn how to master a skill, to push fears aside. Most people would rather just go with the flow; it's much easier. But it's not very interesting."

4. "To stay young, you have to think young"

"When you get older, as I often paraphrase an old family friend, if you have two of anything, chances are one of them is going to hurt when you get up in the morning. But you have to get up and move beyond the pain. If you want to stay young, you have to think young. Having a sense of wonder, a sense of humor, and a sense of curiosity  these are my tonic," she says. "They keep you young, childlike, open to new people and things, ready for another adventure. I never want to be an old fuddy-duddy; I hold the self-proclaimed record for being the World's Oldest Living Teenager and I intend to keep it that way."

5. Care about your own opinion above anyone else's

"I never tried to fit in. It's not that I went out of my way to be a rebel or do things that were not socially acceptable  unfortunately, I did have to learn how to play bridge when I was younger  but I learned early on that I have to be my own person to be content," she says.

"If you have to be all things to all people, you end up being 'nothin' to nobody.' The way I dress may be 'different' or 'eccentric' to some who feel the need to label, but that's of no concern to me. I don't dress to be stared at; I dress for myself. When you don't dress like everyone else, you don't have to think like everyone else."

6. But don't isolate yourself, either

"Here's the critical part: I know I'm not an island, but rather part of the main, to paraphrase [the poet] Mr. John Donne. I fit in, but in my way. I have never been much of a conformist on any front, actually, and it hasn't hurt me yet in my ninety-some years, so I think I've been doing something right...But if you don't try to be part of things, forget it. That's when your originality is going to work against you. Fit in first and then step out. There is a difference between being perceived of as original and being accepted, even loved for it, and being perceived as different and resented for it. You can have your cake and eat it, too."

7. Money doesn't buy success

"If you're happy, have found love, are surrounded by good people, doing what you like and giving back to others, that's success. Selling your soul for a buck is not worth the real price you pay  not to me, anyways," says Apfel.

8. Style is not about spending money

"Style is not about wearing expensive clothes. You can have all kinds of money and have no style at all. You can be dressed in the latest couture, shod in ten-thousand-dollar shoes and be baubled to the nines, and look like a Christmas tree," she writes. "It's not what you wear but how you wear it.

"I'm just as happy to wear bangles that cost me three dollars as I am to wear valuable pieces  and I like to mix high and low, putting things together to wear as the spirit moves me. When you try to hard to have style, you look uncomfortable, like you're wearing a costume, like the clothes are entering the room before you do. If you're uptight, you won't be able to carry off even a seemingly perfect outfit. If that's happening, I say abandon the whole thing. It's better to be happy than well dressed."

9. Start new endeavors with one small step

"You only fail if you do not try," says Apfel.

"I never thought that I couldn't do something because I was a woman. I wanted to start a fabric business, so I just figured out how to do it. If I and thought about opening Old World Weavers too much, I probably wouldn't have pursued my dream. Sometimes you just have to take action, even if it is a small step. In my ninety-some years of walking planet Earth, I have applied this philosophy to living  and dressing  and it has never steered me wrong."

10. Don't pretend you are younger than you are

"There's nothing wrong with wrinkles. When you're older, trying to look years younger is foolish, and you're not fooling anyone. When you're seventy-five and you get a face-lift, nobody is going to think you are thirty," she says.

See also:
Even the most successful people have their limits, including billionaire philanthropist and co-founder of Microsoft Bill Gates.

During a Q&A with his wife Melinda and Lin-Manuel Miranda in New York City last month, one audience member asked Gates about his weaknesses when it came to running Microsoft and now the Gates Foundation.

His biggest weakness has always been "dealing with the hiring issues, the management issues," says Gates. "I always have to get other people to come in and help ... build up the team."

And any area he's not particularly passionate about could be considered a weakness, Gates adds: "Even areas like sales and accounting that weren't as exciting to me as the engineering pieces  if it's not exciting to you, you're probably not going to be as good at it, so we brought a ton of people in on those things."
The Chinese government had talks about possibly financing the world's most ambitious investment project, SoftBank's $100 billion bet on the future of technology known as the Vision Fund.

China's largest sovereign wealth fund, the China Investment Corporation, last year spoke with the Vision Fund about making an investment, according to five people with knowledge of or briefed on the conversations. A contribution from CIC, which has $800 billion to invest, would have been very politically controversial, but it would also supply the Vision Fund, led by CEO Masayoshi Son, with a steady spring of capital for future versions of SoftBank's project.

Sources differ on how serious the talks became, but a contribution has yet to materialize, leading many to believe that the chance of an investment at this point in this fund is unlikely. China could still strike a deal that would allow SoftBank to invest alongside it, these sources say, though SoftBank is said to be discouraged by the political and regulatory risks that would come with accepting Chinese investors into their fund.

SoftBank declined to comment. CIC spokespeople did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

SoftBank's Vision Fund is also serious enough about China that it had been scouting last year for a new local partner to lead its investing in Chinese companies, two people familiar with the conversations tell Recode. The aim was to bolster SoftBank's on-the-ground connections. The fund had deep recruiting conversations with at least one senior China candidate, the people said.

The moves shed light on the challenges for SoftBank in China, as well as China's ambitions outside its borders. A deal would appeal to both sides for a few reasons, at least on paper.

To begin with, SoftBank, for all its riches, has been slow to do a final close on the Vision Fund, which currently stands at $92 billion, short of its $100 billion target. The firm originally said the fund would close by the end of 2017 but now says it will reach its financing target by this June. SoftBank has, of course, been pitching almost all the top sovereign funds as it works to close the fund.

A deal with China would also give Son a powerful ally in Beijing, where he has had at times a rocky relationship, and where he made his name with a landmark bet on Alibaba in 1999.

SoftBank failed to make headway in China when it first entered the market 18 years ago. Son made a play to invest in the country through the creation of a fund focused on early-stage investments there. But ties between SoftBank and the fund weakened as Son grew more interested in later-stage deals; the fund still exists but now has outside investors beyond SoftBank.

More from Recode:

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Snap is laying off around 100 more people, this time in sales

China could still be attractive for future Vision Funds. Saudi Arabia, which, like China, has eagerly sought to diversify its assets and invest overseas, has been expected globally to help finance SoftBank's investments in part through the $1.5 trillion initial public offering of Aramco, the kingdom's state-owned oil company.

But delays of the IPO, plus the general political upheaval in the nation, could mean that the Vision Fund needs to more aggressively court other sources of money.

What would a deal have offered the Chinese? The CIC needs places to park its cash, and there is no bigger repository than the Vision Fund. While the CIC has long been a limited partner in some of Silicon Valley's top growth and private equity funds, the CIC's budget means it does not have time for smaller placements of capital into smaller investment pools, like standard venture capital funds.

China's CIC is also trying to become a big player in U.S. technology. It plans to open an office in San Francisco in order to more easily make direct investments into Silicon Valley. It is also staffing up in New York City.

But its track record in U.S. technology is considered by almost all veteran tech investors to be quite poor, mostly because it cannot get access to the best companies. That means the investments that it does make are generally in less-desirable startups. Decisionmaking within the sovereign wealth fund is also described as slow and bureaucratic.

Putting its money into SoftBank would give it access to the tech players it might not otherwise be able to reach.

Another reason why the CIC may want to work through the Vision Fund  politics. The U.S. government closely scrutinizes Chinese deals in the U.S. through the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). The CIC has criticized the Trump administration for what it sees as a tough, opaque crackdown, and running the deals under a SoftBank banner might solve the regulatory problem.

But the Vision Fund, according a source familiar with the fund, has ratcheted back some of its ambitions in China exactly due to CFIUS considerations. Chinese investment through a fund could still trigger government scrutiny.

The Trump administration, for instance, recently blocked the takeover bid of U.S company Qualcomm by the Singapore-based Broadcom, on national security grounds. Broadcom had already maneuvered to re-domicile in the U.S., potentially making a CFIUS review moot, but that didn't sway the Trump administration from moving to block the deal.

These latest developments now suggest it may be too late for CIC to strike a deal with SoftBank. The Trump Administration's tough stance toward China has scared Chinese investors trying to deploy cash in the U.S., sources say.

There is another option on the table, according to sources with knowledge of the talks. China and SoftBank could enter into what's known as a "co-investing" relationship. Under that kind of understanding  formal or informal  CIC would be introduced to some of the best technology deals outside of China without having to pay management fees to the Vision Fund. And CIC could correspondingly help the Vision Fund hear about the best opportunities in China, where it similarly wants to do more.

CIC is said to be impressed with the prestige of the Vision Fund, according to multiple people who have spoken with the sovereign fund recently, and is attracted to the chance to tie its brand to Son much like the CIC did to Goldman Sachs. Last year, the two entities entered into a partnership for a $5 billion fund to invest in U.S. manufacturing. CIC also recently pulled out of an investment deal with Blackstone.

SoftBank has also been more aggressively chasing deals in China, sources say. The Vision Fund is planning to put money into at least two separate Chinese startups. Both those investments were part of the same funding rounds in which CIC also participated. It's not known which companies received the funding, though the Vision Fund reportedly is considering an investment in Manbang Group.

Those deals drew notice because  with some notable exceptions  the Vision Fund and CIC have not historically invested in the same round of a startup, close observers of the relationship say. Going ahead with the investments is a sign of SoftBank's renewed push into China.
CNBC's Jim Cramer knows that "hot money" is the bane of most long-term investors' existence. On Thursday, the "Mad Money" host noticed one stock where the "hot money," or overly bullish money from investors who couldn't wait to get in, was especially brutal: Micron. Shares of Micron soared ahead of the company's earnings report as analysts cheered on the gains, but when the chipmaker reported a strong quarter, the stock started to drop. "Right now, though, the short-term shareholders [in Micron] are your real enemy," Cramer said. "They are like unruly tenants who scuff up the walls and take down the fixtures on their way out of Micron." Cramer's advice? Wait for the madness in Micron to abate before buying in. "Honestly, nothing is more discouraging for investors than having to deal with hot money and right now hot money is all over the place," the "Mad Money" host said. "Sometimes you just need to let things cool off before you pull the darn trigger."

Cramer's game plan: If you can't take the pain...

Getty Images

As markets recovered on Thursday, Cramer emphasized just how much of a battleground the tape has become in 2018. "I think Amazon defines the modern-day stock market battlefield," the "Mad Money" host said. "Here's a stock that gave up 120 points in two days on rumors and stories about how President Trump hates Amazon." The chaos around the e-commerce giant was only made worse when the White House denied the reports before Trump took to Twitter on Thursday and criticized Amazon for its tax treatment. "But the major point I need to make as we wrap up a largely dispiriting quarter is that if you can't handle the news flow, both fake and real, you need to use this rally to lighten up, maybe even on Monday, [on] the names that have caused you the most fright," Cramer told investors. The "Mad Money" host noted how easily false accusations can decimate stock prices in this environment, arguing that it was time for investors to reassess the risks in the market. "If you want to stick with this market, make sure you can handle these accusations from short-sellers and presidents that often turn out to be false or at least overblown," he said. With that, Cramer turned to his game plan for the week ahead.

Nvidia CEO on crypto craze

Nvidia co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang attends an event during the annual Computex computer exhibition in Taipei, Taiwan May 30, 2017. Tyrone Siu | Reuters

Even though Nvidia's stock has fallen under pressure for the chipmaker's ties to cryptocurrency mining, Nvidia founder, President and CEO Jensen Huang doesn't expect the crypto craze to die down anytime soon. "Cryptocurrency will be here. The ability for the world to have a very low-friction, low-cost way of exchanging value is going to be here for a long time," Huang told CNBC on Thursday in an interview with Cramer. Huang's company is less a chipmaker now than a catch-all computing company producing high-powered graphics processing units, or GPUs. For months, Nvidia rode the wave of cryptocurrency popularity before Wall Street analysts soured on the volatile trend. "Blockchain's going to be here for a long time and it's going to be a fundamental new form of computing," Huang told Cramer. "I expect blockchain, I expect cryptocurrency to be an important driver for GPUs."

Nvidia CEO on fatal self-driving Uber accident

Nvidia founder, President and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang delivers a keynote address at CES 2017 at The Venetian on Jan. 4, 2017 in Las Vegas. Getty Images

The recent fatal accident in which a pedestrian was hit by an Uber-operated self-driving vehicle made Huang realize how important his company's work really is. "It's tragic and we have to make sure that we learn from it," Huang told Cramer. "We now realize the importance of this work, of course, and we're going to continue to do it as carefully and as safely as we can." Reiterating his point that Uber wasn't using Nvidia's self-driving applications in the faulty car, Huang defended his decision to halt Nvidia's autonomous driving tests until the Uber situation was resolved. "The important thing is that Nvidia's technology is an open platform. Uber developed their own sensing and driving applications and software," Huang said. "We want to make sure that we take a moment, wait until they do their investigation and learn what we can learn from them."

Constellation Brands CEO on cannabis investment

Constellation Brands CEO Rob Sands didn't expect his company's strategic investment in Canopy Growth, the world's biggest medical cannabis company, to pay off so well, he told CNBC on Thursday. "We invested in it really for strategic reasons to ultimately develop beverage brands for markets where cannabis becomes recreationally legal, but that said, even though the intent was strategic, the investment itself's been a tremendous investment," Sands told Cramer. Since Constellation took a stake in Canopy, when it was trading at roughly $13 a share, the marijuana stock has had a healthy rise, closing above $33 a share on the Toronto Stock Exchange (Canopy is based in Canada). "So it's a tremendous investment, but the strategic element is the most important," Sands said.

Lightning round: AMD difficulty
A worker assembles parts to make engines at Nissan Motor's plant in Yokohama, Japan.

Japan's industrial production rebounded in February from a large decline in the previous month

and companies forecast further gains in coming months in a sign that factory output is back on the path toward expansion.

Factory output rose 4.1 percent in February from the previous month, less than economists' median estimate of a 5.0 percent increase but recovering from a revised 6.8 percent decline in January, trade ministry data showed on Friday.

The increase was led by higher output of cars, construction equipment, and semiconductors.

Manufacturers surveyed by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) expected output to rise 0.9 percent in March and increase 5.2 percent in April.

Separate data showed labour demand eased slightly and the jobless rate edged higher in February, but the labour market is expected to remain tight due to a shortage of workers.

Gains in industrial output suggest that January's weakness was temporary and the economy remains poised to extend its record growth streak due to solid exports and improving domestic

demand.

Output of cars, engines, and car parts rose 10.3 percent in February, the fastest increase since April last year.

Production of construction equipment and factory machinery rose 3.6 percent in February, while production of semiconductors and electronic parts rose 4.8 percent.

The jobs-to-applicants ratio fell to 1.58 from 1.59 in January, which is the highest in 44 years. The jobless rate rose to 2.5 percent in February from 2.4 percent in the previous

month.

Japan's economy has grown for eight straight quarters, its longest continuous expansion since the 1980s bubble economy, moving Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's revival plan a step closer to vanquishing decades of stagnation.

Consumer spending, exports, and capital expenditure have helped drive growth.

Economists say consumer spending could lose some momentum this year but they expect exports to remain strong thanks to sustained global demand.
The bigger the pool of taxpayer money, the bigger the magnet it is for fraudsters. And there is not much that is bigger than the $2.8 trillion Social Security trust fund. But even by those standards, the $550 million fraud pulled off by Kentucky attorney Eric C. Conn  the largest Social Security fraud in history  is mind-boggling.

"Conn had a brilliant business design," said attorney Ned Pillersdorf, who is working with Conn's victims, in an interview with CNBC's "American Greed." "Set up shop, do a lot of advertising in an area where we have a lot of people who are truly disabled. Bribe the judge, a corrupt judge. He made millions."

Disability insurance is a key feature of the Social Security system. People who have worked and paid into the system long enough can receive benefits. But under strict federal rules, they must show that their disability prevents them from working in any capacity, and is expected to last at least one year.

Operating in Kentucky coal country  where thousands of jobs have been lost, and many people rely on disability payments to get by  Conn advertised himself as "Mr. Social Security." On billboards and in commercials that saturated the local airwaves, he promised he could win disability payments that people could not secure on their own.

Conn seemed to have the track record to prove it. Under federal rules, disability lawyers collect a percentage of the claims that they win, up to $6,000 per case. By 2010, Conn was the third-highest-paid disability lawyer in the country, collecting $3.9 million from the Social Security Administration that year alone.

What Conn was not telling clients  or the Social Security Administration  was that his purported 99 percent success rate was the result of hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal payments to Social Security Administrative Law Judge David Daugherty, who essentially rubber-stamped the claims. When the scam finally came to light, Social Security suspended disability payments to some 1,700 recipients, leaving many in desperate straits.

Widespread damage

Leroy Burchett was a former printing press crewman and delivery truck driver plagued with debilitating pain after two spinal surgeries. He had gone to Conn as a last-ditch effort, according to his wife, Emma. When Leroy got word in 2015 that his disability payments would be cut off as a result of Conn's fraud, Emma says the pressure was too much to bear.

"So my husband's just in complete panic, because, you know, everything's gone," she told "American Greed." "He said, 'I don't know what I'm gonna do. I just, what are we gonna do?'"

Within days, the panic would take a dark turn.

"He got up that morning, and it was like he was a totally different person," Emma Burchett recalled. "He came through the house yelling and cussing at me and cussing at the kids. He was throwing things, and kicking things. He was just crazy. I opened the door and he was sitting on the edge of the bed with a gun. I took that gun away from him. And he said the same words to me again. He said, 'You're not going to stop this. Nothing can fix this.' He stormed back outside. And my kids were standing right there. And he said, 'I just can't take this.' And he pulled another gun out from behind his back, and he shot himself in the chin."

Conn eventually pleaded guilty last year to a two-count federal complaint of stealing from the government and paying illegal gratuities. But he fled while awaiting sentencing, and was sentenced in absentia to 12 years in prison. Finally captured in Honduras in December, Conn is being held without bond pending additional charges related to his escape, to which he has pleaded not guilty. And federal prosecutors, claiming Conn violated his plea agreement, are seeking to try him on an 18-count criminal indictment  including conspiracy, fraud, money laundering and destroying evidence  which Conn has moved to dismiss.

Daugherty, who admitted accepting $609,000 in bribes, pleaded guilty to two felony counts and is serving a four-year prison sentence.

But for hundreds of Conn's clients, the nightmare endures. Pillersdorf is part of a team of attorneys trying to help. He posts regular updates on his Facebook page.

"One of the main reasons I do this has been really No. 1 suicide prevention, No. 2 to let these people know what's going on, and to let people know they're not being abandoned," he said.

Shoring up the system

Meanwhile, the Social Security Administration and the government watchdog agency that oversees it are trying to make certain that nothing like this happens again.

"It's very helpful when we have these large-scale cases," said John Grasso, special agent In charge at the Social Security Administration's Office of Inspector General's New York field office. "It often does lead to changes."

He said Social Security has stiffened penalties for disability fraud, particularly for what he called "facilitators," including doctors, lawyers, and third-party representatives.

The agency is also working more closely with other government agencies  including law enforcement  to analyze claims data that signals potential fraud. In 2015, Congress increased funding for a program known as Cooperative Disability Investigation, enough to put CDI teams in every state.

Grasso said those tools are already bearing fruit. His office helped bust a ring of New York City police and firefighters collecting fraudulent payments for mental disabilities, as well as a disability scam in Puerto Rico involving dozens of doctors.

Still, Grasso is appealing to the public for help. He urges people applying for disability payments to beware of third parties such as attorneys and claim representatives who make grandiose promises. Social Security has strict rules about how those representatives are compensated, so be wary of any requests for payment upfront, and make certain payments are kept in escrow pending the outcome of the claim.

If you suspect fraud, contact the inspector general's toll-free hotline at 1-800-269-0271.

Despite all of that, Grasso says he is "very confident" that people will continue trying to defraud the system, possibly on the scale of Conn.

"I think it's American greed. That's exactly what it is," he said. "If the opportunity is there, people are going to take that opportunity, and until you put that wall up and you show that there's consequences for it, people are going to continue to do it."

Go inside Eric Conn's massive con, and see how he almost got away with it, on an all new episode of CNBC's "American Greed," Monday, April 2, at 10 p.m. ET/PT only on CNBC.
Grammy winner John Legend is a busy man. Aside from the projects you'd expect from the musician, such as starring in the upcoming live TV performance of "Jesus Christ Superstar," he somehow also finds time to throw his own star power behind important social issues. In his latest effort, Legend is doubling down on the work his criminal justice reform initiative FreeAmerica started by partnering with philanthropic venture fund New Profit to launch an accelerator for formerly incarcerated entrepreneurs.

The project, Unlocked Futures, is applying a $500,000 grant from Bank of America to back entrepreneurs who've faced the struggle of finding employment after serving time. The hope is that supporting business owners with firsthand knowledge of the problem will help break down the barriers to finding employment for former inmates. It could also help bring attention to the job struggle former prisoners face, which plays a major role in many landing back in prison. It's a larger problem than it might seem for the U.S., which has the highest incarceration rate in the world with more than 2 million prisoners across the country. For many, prison can become a never-ending cycle. In fact, more than half of all released inmates wind up back in prison after just three years, according to the National Institute of Justice. The first eight entrepreneurs selected by Unlocked Futures sat down with Legend in December and revealed how their own job struggles paint a larger theme.

John Legend helped launch Unlocked Futures, a partnership with New Profit and Bank of America, to support entrepreneurs impacted by the criminal justice system. Free America | YouTube

Will Avila, founder of Clean Decisions, a cleaning service that employs ex-offenders, recalls applying for 22 jobs after he was released. He was rejected 22 times. "I had given up on myself," he tells Legend at a roundtable for the entrepreneurs who were selected. Teresa Hodge, founder of Mission: Launch, a nonprofit that helps former inmates re-enter the workforce, says she struggled as well. When she was filling out a computer form to apply for a job after her release from prison, she arrived at a question that asked about prior convictions, which she answered. "The screen went black, and it said, 'Something you answered disqualified you for this job,'" she says at the roundtable. "That's how blatant the discrimination is that men and women who are coming home from prison face."
President Donald Trump pitched his steel tariffs as a way to save U.S. steel jobs, saying it was a move designed to urge "all companies to buy American."

However, some small businesses, like LOOK Trailers in Indiana, are feeling the heat from Trump's trade move.

LOOK's president, Matt Arnold, said the company has seen steel prices increase 25 percent and aluminum as high as 35 percent. He told CNBC that he's afraid his suppliers' prices have even further to run in the months ahead.

Although the company already uses 75 percent U.S. steel and aluminum, now its competitors are also moving from foreign to domestic steel. That's driving up the demand for steel producers domestically and adding costs to businesses' bottom lines.

Arnold said that the company has managed to honor fixed prices on committed orders, but that means they've been "getting hit and absorbing price increases and then pricing out three months."

He said the net effect has been the same on the whole industry in this area.

"Whether you're public or private the hit has been to your bottom line," Arnold said.

Trump has said he hopes shuttered steel mills will reopen and add new life into the American steel industry. But that process could take more than year, if not longer, leaving some businesses without enough U.S.-made steel and aluminum.

Arnold said another factor affecting his business is rising wages because of a tightening labor market.

"It's a battle every day. It's how to get more out per man hour. While battling rising wages, competitive workforce, and now you add the third one, which is rising raw materials. You have to be right today. There's no margin for error," he said.

The average cost of a trailer from LOOK is about $3500, which is already a 9 percent jump from 2017.

The last time the U.S. slapped major tariffs on steel imports, under President George W. Bush in 2002, companies like LOOK Trailers experienced a 10 to 15 percent hike in prices and a drop in sales. Businesses are hoping this time will be different.
Bitcoin is having a terrible first quarter, in fact the worst its ever seen.



The price of the cryptocurrency has fallen from $13,412.44 on January 1 to $7,266.07 on March 30, marking a more than 45 percent decline, according to data from CoinDesk, a site which tracks the price of different digital coins. The quarter ends on Saturday.

So far this quarter, $114.9 billion of market capitalization or value has been wiped off of bitcoin.

The price decline this quarter is the biggest first quarter decline in bitcoin's history. The previous biggest decline was a near 38 percent fall in the price in the first quarter of 2014, according to data from CoinDesk. It tracks the price of bitcoin back to the middle of 2010.

CNBC looked at bitcoin's price performance in the first quarters of each year beginning in 2011. Bitcoin has recorded a decline in 5 of the 8 first quarters tracked, which includes the current 2018 Q1.

The biggest price rise was a 599 percent surge in the price of bitcoin in the first quarter of 2013.

Bitcoin saw a huge run up in price in 2017 and hit a record high above $19,000 towards the end of last year.

But it has faced tougher regulatory scrutiny in 2018 and some of the air has come out of the market.

At a G-20 meeting this month, Argentina's central bank governor outlined a summer deadline for members to have "specific recommendations on what to do" and said task forces are working to submit proposals by July. Italy's central bank leader told reporters after the meeting in Buenos Aires, Argentina, that cryptocurrencies pose risks but should not be banned, according to Reuters.

- CNBC's Kate Rooney contributed to this article.
Thomas Samson | AFP | Getty Images

Russia's mastery of disinformation

The Russians have keenly recognized that they could subvert the modern dependence on social media as a seemingly trustworthy platform for news and information. They have used Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram and websites as tools to launch overt and covert information warfare campaigns against various nations. The internet is a critical tool for spreading false information  or disinformation in the parlance of information warfare  to either manipulate or demoralize a nation and its people. Since most people now find news stories online, whether through traditional news media or on social media, governments can engage in campaigns of disinformation on the internet. The Internet Research Agency is one of the primary arms of the Russian government's propaganda efforts. It operates a "troll factory" out of St. Petersburg where individuals create and spread false information. The false information is spread through social media posts, comments in news stories and videos posted on traditional journalistic outlets. It's also spread via websites the trolls create. The Internet Research Agency also operates covertly through false online profiles. In some cases, they create entirely false profiles. In others, they have stolen identities in an attempt to seem like a citizen of a specific place and a true believer in a specific ideology. These efforts seek to turn average people against their governments or against their fellow citizens and sow mistrust and discontent. The European Union has been targeted with propaganda efforts by the Internet Research Agency for the last decade, as part of a campaign to destabilize European politics and increase Russian power within the region. There have been repeated attempts to influence the views of Finnish and German voters. The Internet Research Agency has also attempted to whitewash and legitimize the Russian invasion of the Ukraine.

Europe fights back

The current campaign being waged against the U.S. is serious. I believe it merits a response from a trusted source. Though there are fact-checking websites in the U.S. like Snopes, a threat of this magnitude requires more than just citizen-run or private organization-operated programs. A government effort to combat fake news would provide citizens with information about the scope of information warfare. It would also create a clearinghouse about fake news that can inform not only the public, but also government agencies and policy-makers. There is no current effort of this sort in the United States. The EU created a specialized task force in March 2015 to identify the Russian campaign's strategies and expose them to the public. The East StratCom Task Force was formed by the European Council to provide information to the European Union and its member states on the extent of Russian disinformation campaigns. The task force publishes two weekly newsletters. The Disinformation Review is published every Tuesday to show the latest examples and trends in Russian trolling. There's also a Disinformation Review Facebook page and Twitter account that has 35,000 followers. The Disinformation Digest is released every Friday. It features what the pro-government media outlets in Russia are saying and compares that to independent media voices. It also presents trends in Russian social media feeds. In addition, the task force publishes analyses and reports about specific stories that have begun to trend on social media. Those reports appear as close as possible to the time the stories appear. They help illustrate how hashtagging and trending stories may be falsified and why they can both directly and indirectly benefit the Kremlin. For instance, they have published analyses of the manipulation of trending stories on the Salisbury poisoning. That's the incident in which a former Russian spy who was living in England, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter, Yulia, were poisoned by a nerve agent. British Prime Minister Theresa May has accused the Russians of the attack. The task force highlighted Russian disinformation about the incident, including stories that claimed that the "West (was) using it to destroy Russia's reputation as a peacemaker." Lastly, they provide briefings to law enforcement agencies across the EU, as well as lawmakers and the general public. This helps to make the role of Russian propaganda a real, tangible problem that can be understood by anyone. In fact, the U.S. government is already taking steps abroad to combat Russian messaging via a new service operating via Polygraph.info. The site acts as a counterpart to the European task force, though it is not currently directed to U.S. audiences. Instead it operates via the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, which serves international audiences. It seems plausible that the U.S. government could adapt this tool to directly service U.S. citizens, which could be a tremendous step forward to counter Russian messaging. The suggestion that the U.S. engage in efforts to formally counter disinformation campaigns from Russia and elsewhere was recently made in a report by Brookings Institution scholar Alina Polyakova and former State Department official Daniel Fried. It may seem odd to propose that the government run its own campaign to clarify what is real and fake online. But I believe it is necessary in an era where individuals may not be able to fully separate fact from fiction, and legitimate news sources from the disreputable. An effort like this is not government censorship of the news  or even of fake news. It is government fighting false information by providing context, analysis and facts. These EU newsletters provide a way to fact-check stories initially released by social media accounts with no apparent journalistic credentials. Further, their reporting communicates practical insights as to how propaganda campaign messaging fits into broader stories being pushed by the Kremlin that in some way benefit Russia. Creating similar resources within a government organization like the Department of Homeland Security could go a long way to helping the general public separate truth from reality and become more informed of the real threat America faces from the insidious and manipulative practices of information warfare.
Walter M. Shaub Jr., director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, arrives for a scheduled meeting with the leaders of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Monday, Jan. 23, 2017, on Capitol Hill in Washington. J. Scott Applewhite | AP

President Donald Trump Leah Millis | Reuters

Shaub says now that if the administration "had taken our advice, they wouldn't have half the problems they have now." "It just felt like a brush with something very dark and very sinister," Shaub said. "The tone from the top set everything, but they brought in people that thought like him." The White House had no immediate comment on Shaub's remarks. Shaub said that in addition to dealing with that level of friction with the new administration, his staff was inundated with a huge influx of Freedom of Information Act requests and other work. "The staff looked just really fried," Shaub recalled. "The problem is the direct assault on the ethics program which is the thing that every person in that room had committed their lives to, he said. "We were all deeply committed to this ethics program and we're watching its virtual destruction. We were trying to hold on to what pieces of the program could survive this assault." "It just occurred to me that maybe if the boss said 'we're going to take a 10 break ... and it would be completely voluntary, that would be a relief," Shaub said. "You have to have more peace," he said. "Both from the perspective of productivity and harmony in the office." He said "I'd always been interested in meditation, and I'd listened to various tapes" to do that. And he already had the Headspace app on his phone when he broached the idea of using it with his staff. "I just kind of casually introduced it at a staff meeting, and said, 'Some of us are going to start doing this, and you are free to join or not to join,' " Shaub recalled. Shaub said that out of an office of about 70 staffers, there were six core people who always showed up for the daily Headspace meditation session, which began at 3:10 p.m. On any given day, up to another seven or so people would join them. During the 10 minutes the group was together, they would sit silently in a conference room with dimmed lights, their eyes closed and meditate, aided intermittently by the voice of Headspace co-founder Andy Puddicombe as the app played. An Englishman who spent a decade as a Buddhist monk, Puddicombe's words would guide the ethics staffers through a series of meditative exercises, such as focusing on their breath's inhalation and exhalation, or on imagining the image of liquid sunlight passing through their bodies. Puddicombe also at times would tell listeners not to resist any ideas they had  be they of Trump or of anything else  but to let them come and go in their heads, and to recognize them as being just thoughts. "The people in the room thought he was the best thing," Shaub said of Puddicombe's soothing, sometimes wry voice.

Andy Puddicombe, co-founder of HEADspace. Jarrett Bellini | CNBC
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump (2nd L) talks with journalists during a rally against the Iran nuclear deal on the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol September 9, 2015 in Washington, DC.

The Iranian nuclear deal has looked very fragile since the election of Donald Trump in November 2016 but, so far, the U.S. president has been persuaded to leave the agreement alone. That position is not likely to last much longer, according to political consultancy Eurasia Group, which predicted the agreement is very unlikely "to survive President Donald Trump's first term in office." The Iranian nuclear deal, formerly known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), was struck in 2015 between Iran and China, the U.S., U.K., Russia, France and Germany. It was designed to limit Tehran's nuclear program in return for the lifting of economic sanctions. Trump has repeatedly criticized the deal, however, opposing terms that would allow Iran to gradually reinstate its nuclear activities (the so-called "sunset clauses") and accusing Iran of violating the terms of the agreement.

A general view of streets in Tehran, Iran on the first anniversary of nuclear deal between Iran and world powers on January 16, 2017. Fatemah Bahrami | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

In January, Trump demanded that France, Germany, the U.K. and the U.S. Congress "fix" the deal by May 12, by committing to tougher measures against Iran. Eurasia Group's Chairman Cliff Kupchan said in a note Wednesday that the agreement is unlikely "to survive President Donald Trump's first term in office" and that the "re-imposition of U.S. secondary sanctions"  the sanctions that prevent other countries from doing business with Iran  is likely. He said Iran, a country that has got its economy back on its feet thanks to the nuclear deal, would likely react with "rhetorical fury" to such a scenario and could "likely lash out" in the Middle East. He explained this could mean Iran using a more aggressive policy in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen or  most dangerously  toward Saudi Arabia. With no love lost between Trump and Iran, the political consultancy reduced the odds of the nuclear deal's survival from 55 percent to 35 percent as it described the main dangers to the deal. Why the deal is likely to fail The first threat to the Iran nuclear deal comes in the form of the appointment of "Iran hawks" John Bolton as national security advisor (he replaces HR McMaster on April 9) and Mike Pompeo as secretary of state. Kapchan said the combination of Bolton and Pompeo's appointments, coupled with "insufficient progress by the European parties and the U.S. Congress on 'fixing' the nuclear deal, now make it unlikely that the agreement will survive President Donald Trump's first term in office."

Then-candidate for the Republican Presidential nomination Donald Trump speaks during a rally held by the Tea Party at the United States Capitol to speak out against President Obama's nuclear agreement with Iran in Washington, on September 9, 2015. Samuel Corum | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

Both Bolton and Pompeo have expressed strong disapproval of Iran with the former suggesting pre-emptive strikes against Iran and the latter calling the country a "thuggish police state." "The appointment of Bolton does very much enhance the chance the deal goes down," Kupchan said in the note Wednesday. "He abhors the agreement and is on record supporting the use of force against Iran. And this gentleman will as of 9 April be sitting a short walk from the Oval Office," he said. Meanwhile, Pompeo "is also a big strike" against the JCPOA, Eurasia Group's chairman added. Aside from Bolton and Pompeo's appointments, Kapchan said the "deal's going down" because of "insufficient progress" among the U.K., Germany and France and in the U.S. Congress on implementing fixes to what Trump called "disastrous flaws" in the Iranian deal. Trump demands Trump wants an end to clauses in the deal that would allow Iran to enrich uranium beyond the amount usually needed for commercial power production. He also wants a ban on ballistic missile testing and unlimited access for atomic energy inspectors to any military site. If the U.K., Germany and France, alongside Congress, don't fix these issues by May 12, he said, America will withdraw the pact and sanctions will be reinstated  although this would not be done for a number of years.

A reactor building at the Russian-built Bushehr nuclear power plant in Bushehr, Iran. Getty Images
Shanghai September crude oil futures rose 3 percent by the midday break on Friday as investors placed bullish bets following reports that China is mulling steps to purchase crude in

The front-month contract on the exchange was at 418.9 yuan ($66.85) at 11:30 local time after Benchmark Brent and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) gained about 1 percent on Thursday.

"China's tax rebate plan will help support oil demand. Reports that China will pay for oil in yuan will also benefit the crude futures market," Wang Xiao, head of research with Guotai Junan Futures, said in a note on Friday, adding that the gain in Shanghai crude had outpaced the gain in Brent and WTI.
The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket used for the third Iridium NEXT launch, set to be flown again for the fifth Iridium launch.

SpaceX began its launch Friday morning from the central coast of California, in an attempt to send Iridium NEXT satellites into orbit on a previously-flown Falcon 9 rocket.

Elon Musk's rocket company live streamed part of the launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base. The mission is currently still in progress.



The space company will attempt to catch the fairing  the bulbous nose cone on top of the rocket  using a high speed boat known as "Mr. Steven." Musk tweeted after the Feb. 22 launch from Vandenberg that the boat missed catching the fairing "by a few hundreds meters," adding that the fairing slowed down enough to land "intact" in the Pacific Ocean.

Photos of Feb. 22 SpaceX Elon Musk's Instagram.



The boat has a net strung up behind it to capture the fairing and Musk said SpaceX "should be able catch it with slightly bigger chutes to slow down" its descent. SpaceX did not respond to a CNBC request for comment regarding whether Friday's launch attempt would see new fairing recovery technologies deployed.

Musk has noted that the fairing returns to Earth "at about eight times the speed of sound."

"It has onboard thrusters and a guidance system to bring it through the atmosphere intact, then releases a parafoil and our ship with basically a giant catcher's mitt welded on tries to catch it," Musk said, sharing a photo of the boat.



Originally scheduled to launch in December, the Iridium 5 mission had been pushed back multiple times to Thursday. With the launch two days away, Iridium CEO Matt Desch said in a tweet Tuesday the company was "having an issue" with one of the 10 satellites being prepared, pushing the attempt to Saturday.

@IridiumBoss: We are having an issue with 1 of the 10 satellites in prep for #Iridium5. Our supplier and launch team is resetting for NET 3/31, with potential to shift into next week, if not resolved quickly. Launch success is priority #1! Will provide more info as available.

Desch quickly followed up Tuesday evening, saying in a tweet "there has been a technical resolution" to the problem and the launch was now be set for Friday. He clarified in following tweets that it was not an issue with the Falcon 9 rocket or the Iridium satellites but rather "an obscure problem with communication harnesses used for testing on the ground."

"Kudos to combined teams for working round the clock to resolve," Desch said.

SpaceX announced before the launch it would "not attempt to recover" the Falcon 9's first stage, as it did with the Iridium-3 mission the booster previously flew. As SpaceX brings about a new variation of the Falcon 9 booster, known as "Block 5," older models are being discarded through expendable missions. SpaceX is using ocean landings to test more booster recovery options and there were reports before Iridium-5 of a SpaceX boat stationed in the Pacific Ocean, presumably to retrieve data after an ocean landing attempt.
Source: MuleSoft

Christopher Devlin, founder and chief investment officer of Selective Wealth Management, put together the best-performing fund of the first quarter. However, he did not mean it for the fund to be so tech-heavy. "That was not part of the overall plan," said Devlin, who created the fund in January of last year. "As we analyze the investing landscape, we try to look for businesses that can grow earnings over the next five-to-10 years. We found a lot of those companies were in tech." "We weren't trying to ride the tech wave here," Devlin said. The fund's high exposure to tech paid off, nonetheless. The Selective Opportunity Foundation fund (SLCTX) returned 14.39 percent to investors in the first quarter, the highest among funds tracked by Morningstar. It is made up of 10 stocks, eight of which are in the technology sector.

The fund's top five holdings include MuleSoft, Syntel and Google-parent Alphabet Class C as of Jan.31, according to Morningstar. Those three stocks hold a total weight of 34.22 percent in a fund with $45.8 million in assets under management. MuelSoft spiked nearly 90 percent higher in the first quarter after Salesforce agreed to buy the company for $6.5 billion. Devlin's fund was not the only one to benefit from being highly exposed to tech, however. Of the five best-performing funds of the quarter (including SLCTX), four have high exposure to tech. Tech stocks hold a 27.24 percent weight on the five-star rated PrimeCap Odyssey Aggressive Growth Fund (POAGX), while the Virtus KAR Mid-Cap Growth Fund Class I (PICMX) has 33.81 percent of its holdings in tech. The Berkshire Focus fund (BFOCX), meanwhile, has 67.9 percent of its portfolio in technology. The exception is the Copley Fund (COPLX), which does not hold any tech stocks.
John Kelly listens to U.S. President Donald Trump. Kevin Lamarque | Reuters

The president is always in charge at the White House, but the chief of staff is usually known as the one who keeps everything in order. That has changed in President Donald Trump's administration, first with Reince Priebus, whom Trump fired last summer, and now with John Kelly. Kelly, a retired four-star Marine general and the former head of the Homeland Security Department, was supposed to be the one who brought order to Trump's chaotic and leak-ridden White House. Kelly has overseen and commanded thousands of troops and staffers over the years, but working directly for Trump turned out to be a wildly different experience. There were reports of tension with Trump from the beginning  and countless stories that suggested either Kelly would soon quit or Trump would fire him. Recent reports say that Kelly is sticking with the job, even as Trump increasingly asserts himself with greater force. The White House did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment on reports of Kelly's diminished role. Here are some recent developments which suggest that Kelly's power has diminished eight months into his tenure as chief of staff.

Trump and Kelly reach a 'truce'

Chaos at the White House reached a fever pitch two weeks ago. Trump had just named longtime CNBC contributor Larry Kudlow as his top economic advisor after Gary Cohn quit following a dispute over the president's trade policy. Trump also fired his beleaguered secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, over Twitter, and his personal assistant, John McEntee, was booted from the White House reportedly over alleged gambling habits. There were rumors of even more staff turnover. The Washington Post reported that Trump had decided to fire National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, while the White House pushed back on the report. Yet the morning of Friday, March 16, The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump and Kelly had reached "a truce," and everything calmed down for the moment. "Kelly is not going anywhere," press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told the Journal. But the Journal cited officials who cautioned that the president would continue to make changes as he sees fit, an indication that Trump also asserted himself while reaching detente with Kelly.

Kelly on the margins

Since the truce, there have been more indications that Kelly's power has declined in the West Wing. Thursday, Bloomberg News, citing senior aides, reported that Kelly wasn't with Trump during recent big policy and staff decisions. For instance, the chief of staff was not with Trump when the president decided to fire McMaster, according to Bloomberg. Nor was Kelly on the line when Trump congratulated Russian President Vladimir Putin for his recent election victory, the report said. Kelly was more involved in the firing of Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin, Bloomberg said. And various other reports say Kelly was the one to let Shulkin know that he was on the outs. Kelly has also moved to tighten up the White House's security clearance policies, resulting in Trump son-in-law and senior advisor Jared Kushner getting a clearance downgrade. Trump even let Kelly decide whether to weaken Kushner's clearance. But Kelly's piecemeal involvement in the executive decision-making process indicates that Trump sees himself as the ultimate chief of staff.

Does Trump even need Kelly?
A detail of a screen as a journalist shows CCTV footage on a mobile phone believed to show Sergei Skripal, 66 and his duaghter Yulia Skripal, in her 30s.

The daughter of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal is getting better after spending three weeks in critical condition due to a nerve toxin attack at his home in England, the hospital where she is being treated said on Thursday.

After the first known use of a military-grade nerve agent on European soil since World War Two, Britain blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin for the attempted murder, and the West has expelled around 130 Russian diplomats.

Russia has denied using Novichok, a nerve agent first developed by the Soviet military, to attack Skripal. Moscow has said it suspects the British secret services are trying to frame Russia to stoke anti-Russian hysteria.

British counter-terrorism police said they now believe Skripal and his 33-year-old daughter Yulia were poisoned with a nerve toxin that had been left on the front door of their home in the genteel English cathedral city of Salisbury.

"I'm pleased to be able to report an improvement in the condition of Yulia Skripal," Christine Blanshard, Medical Director for Salisbury District Hospital, said in a statement.

"She has responded well to treatment but continues to receive expert clinical care 24 hours a day," she said.

Her father remained in a critical but stable condition, the hospital said. Last week, a British judge said the Skripals might have suffered permanent brain damage as a result of the attack.

Police said on Thursday they had placed a cordon around a children's play area near the Skripal's modest house as a precaution.

Yulia and her 66-year-old father were found slumped on a bench outside a shopping centre in Salisbury on March 4.

Britain has blamed the attempted murder on Russia, and expelled 23 Russians it said were spies working under diplomatic cover in retaliation.

Russia, which denies carrying out the attack, responded by throwing out 23 British diplomats. Moscow has since accused the British secret services of trying to frame Russia to stoke anti-Russian hysteria.
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Brexit: May pledges NHS cash from Brexit

otherwise we would have been sending to the European Union that were going to be able to spend on priorities in the UK, she said.  The Times

Prime Minister pledges that UK will control fishing waters after transition  Daily Telegraph

Tory leader refuses to endorse Johnsons dividend claim  The Guardian

May tours Britain to talk to voters about Brexit fears  The Sun

Prime Minister urges return of Stormont to give Ulster full say on Brexit  Belfast Telegraph

Theresa May has insisted that EU withdrawal will mean more money for the NHS and schools, despite Treasury forecasts of slower growth leading to lower tax revenues after Brexit. As she conducted whistle-stop visits to the four nations of the United Kingdom to mark a year until Brexit day, the prime minister called on Britons to come together to seize the great opportunities she expects as a result of EU withdrawal. She said that additional resources would be available for hospitals and education once Britain stopped sending vast sums annually to Brussels. In a BBC interview she steered clear of repeating Boris Johnsons term Brexit dividend but did appear to say that cash would be freed up by Brexit. Theres going to be money that

Comment:

Nobody should be in any doubt that Brexit will happen  Gisela Stuart, Daily Telegraph

We still dont know how May will square the Border circle  Hilary Benn, Belfast Telegraph

Outside the Remainer bubble, Britain is excited about the future  Iain Martin, The Sun

>Today: Jonathan Clark in Comment: How should we reform our tax system after Brexit?

>Yesterday: Henry Hills Red, White, and Blue column: May stresses absolute responsibility to maintain the Union on Brexit tour

as Davis reveals dramatic weakening of Governments immigration position

David Davis signalled a dramatic weakening of the Governments post-Brexit immigration policy by backing preferential treatment for EU migrants. He said hes not expecting a visa arrangement between ourselves and the European Union as he confirmed that immigration policy would be on the negotiating table in trade talks with Brussels. The move that would significantly weaken hard-fought controls on EU citizens and enrage Ministers pushing for more generous visa schemes for Commonwealth countries. Mr Davis wants to see a system of work permits introduced for Europeans  instead of treating them like migrants from the rest of the world who have to apply for visas.  The Sun

Fox warns that hell resign if transition is extended beyond 2020  The Sun

Comment:

The left must realise that Brexit can be harnessed for good  Faiza Shaheen, The Guardian

>Yesterday: Andrea Leadsom in Comment: Its a year today until Brexit. Lets continue to proclaim that it will be good for Britain.

and questions mount over soft Brexit deadline

Claim that Mosley hired protesters to boost pro-EU rallies  Daily Mail

Ireland boasts of snatching British jobs  Daily Express

Today is Britains last chance to formally confirm it is leaving the single market prompting concerns the UK will be forced into a soft Brexit if the nation does not invoke Article 127 of the European Economic Agreement (EEA). This, like Article 50, will trigger Britains termination of membership of the EEA  the broader single market which includes non-EU countries like Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein. Britains membership of the economic club is technically tied to a separate treaty  the EEA agreement  other than the EU, prompting confusion over whether the Government needs to exit both bodies independently. Although the Government has repeatedly insisted Brexit means the UK is leaving the single market, many argue that without triggering Article 127 Britain will still remain a member. Downing Street has argued Britain will automatically leave the EEA, saying we cannot be a member of the economic pact outside of the EU and EFTA.  Daily Express

Comment:

How we can be a science superpower outside the EU  Sarah Main, Daily Telegraph

Ministers 1) McVey announces u-turn on plans to cut housing benefit

Minsters have today announced they are U-turning on plans to axe housing benefit for young people in an announcement slipped out on the last day of the parliamentary term. The Government had planned to scrap the welfare benefit for 18 to 21 year-olds, but will now keep it following concerns it would be unfair on some. Work and Pensions Secretary Esther McVey said the change will reassure all young people that housing support is in place if they need it. Around 10,000 young people would have been hit by the policy to end automatic entitlement for the housing element of Universal Credit, which was announced by David Cameron and George Osborne in 2014.  Daily Mail

Ministers accused of going soft on young jobless  The Sun

More:

Government wasting 20 million a year on policy consultations  The Times

Ministers 2) Clark suggests Government may halt GKN takeover

authorities and set out in due course.  The Times

Calls for new laws after speculators 172 million payday  Daily Mail

The takeover of GKN, one of Britains largest, oldest and most important engineering companies, could be halted by the government, Greg Clark, the business secretary, has said. GKN fell yesterday to an 8 billion hostile takeover from Melrose, a smaller UK industrial conglomerate, pending government clearance. The deal stunned many in the City, and trade unions and Labour MPs demanded a reform of UK takeover laws. Mr Clark said: During the bid, Melrose made commitments which they are bound to honour, including investment in research and development and maintaining itself as a UK business. Government has a statutory responsibility to consider whether a GKN-Melrose merger in its proposed form gives rise to public interest concerns. An assessment on [this] will be made by the appropriate

Comment:

Politicians must stop pandering to sentiment over takeover bids  Jeremy Warner, Daily Telegraph

Ministers 3) Sacked parole chief says Gauke must share responsibility over Warboys

Pressure was mounting on the Justice Secretary last night for refusing to share blame for failings in the black cab rapist case. The sacked head of the Parole Board said David Gauke should accept responsibility for mistakes which led to John Worboys being approved for release from prison. Nick Hardwick said Ministry of Justice officials omitted crucial details about the sexual predators history from a dossier used in the decision, and the Parole Board was no more at fault than the MoJ. It came as pressure grew on the Justice Secretary amid claims he had made the Parole Board chairman a scapegoat for his own departments mistakes.  Daily Mail

Fear that six other Category A prisoners may be freed by Parole Board failings  The Sun

Bar Association urges strikes over legal aid  FT

Comment:

Culture of secrecy is undermining our police and justice system  Rory Geoghegan, Daily Telegraph

Affair exposes a tangled web of responsibilities  David Walker, The Guardian

Editorial:

Warboys decision is a win for justice, his victims, and the press  The Sun

Cameron attacks anti-fracking groups

Fraser Nelson: May should finish Camerons quest to re-normalise religion in public life

Ex-PM David Cameron last night blasted green groups for the painfully slow fracking revolution in Britain. Speaking in the US to oil execs, he hit out at campaigners for being absolutely obsessed with blocking the extraction of fossil fuels. He compared the tens of thousands of shale gas wells drilled in the US with around 10 in Europe, which he said was pathetic. And he said the painfully slow and incredibly frustrating progress would only increase the dependence on Russian gas. Mr Cameron said: We are going to fall behind if we dont extract the gas that we have that can make us more competitive, more energy-independent, less reliant on Russian gas. The green movements have become absolutely obsessed with the notion that any new form of energy that has any reliance on carbon is a bad thing, so they are just opposed to fracking, come what may.  The Sun

To be Christian in Britain today is to navigate your way through one of the fastest religious changes in the history of these islands. Religious MPs need to work out how to ride the wave of public opinion. Do they go with the rules, or try to change the rules? Perhaps the person best placed to press for change is the Prime Minister. Shes a lifelong churchgoer, yet no one can accuse her of zealotry. If she intends to stay in No 10 for a while, we could do with knowing a bit more about her. If faith is important to her, she could perhaps say why. Cameron spoke about trying to normalise religion in public life, to try and make faith part of the political conversation. Perhaps Mrs May could finish what he started.  Daily Telegraph

SNP MP apologises to Rees-Mogg for Catholic Brexiteer jibe  Daily Telegraph

>Today: ToryDiary: Dr Johnson is an inspiring companion at Easter

Corbyn admits Labour has received hundreds of anti-Semitism allegations

Leader is failing to tackle anti-Semitism, Labour MPs claim  The Times

Fresh fury as Shawcroft set to stay on disciplinary panel despite sacking  Daily Mail

Opposition denies that it is sitting on key measure  The Guardian

Six councillors suspended over anti-Semitism quietly re-admitted  Daily Mail

Activist suspended over Arbeit Macht Frei tweet  Daily Mail

Jeremy Corbyn has revealed that Labour has been inundated with 300 complaints of anti-Semitism since he was elected leader in 2015. The Labour leader made the revelation in a far-reaching interview with Jewish News as he scrambled to try to diffuse the anti-Semitism which has plunged the party into crisis. But he risked igniting fresh fury after he leapt to the defence of a controversial group which claims the accusations against him are a smear. Mr Corbyn said Jewish Voice For Labour, which tried to disrupt Monday nights protest against anti-Semitism outside Parliament by holding a counter demonstration, are good people Dozens of members of the group and its supporters attended the controversial protest, where they angrily argued with those attended the main demonstration.  Daily Mail

Comment:

Corbyn cares more about power than expunging racism  Tom Harris, Daily Telegraph

Labour should stop feuding and focus on the Tories  Polly Toynbee, The Guardian

Editorial:

Labour must confront the painful truth  Daily Telegraph

Shadow minister gave job to husband who abused the elderly

Labours families spokeswoman gave her husband a job in her parliamentary office after he was found to have mistreated elderly people. Emma Lewell-Buck employed Simon Buck as a researcher when he was suspended from his job as a carer and lost his place on a nursing course following the allegations of abuse. Senior members of her constituency party have written to Jeremy Corbyn urging him to suspend Mr Buck because of deep concerns about his permanent, part-time role in the MPs office, for which he was paid between 10,000 and 14,999 last year. The Labour leader appointed Ms Lewell-Buck, 39, as a shadow minister in 2016.  The Times

Gardiner misses international trade questions by starting holiday early  The Times

Phillips apologises for abuse of Tory activist by Labour supporters

Scottish Government mulls introducing electronic voting

A Labour MP has apologised for the social media abuse received by a Conservative supporter who criticised Jeremy Corbyn. Young Conservative Alice Terry, 29, said she regularly receives hateful messages because of her views. But the volume of abuse increased considerably this week, after she tweeted she was genuinely embarrassed that people in her generation supported the Labour leader. The tweet had been retweeted directly more than 350 times and liked more than 1,600 times at 5.30pm on Thursday. Dozens of people posted abusive replies to her tweet publicly and about 20 sent her private messages directly, she said. Among the insults sent to her privately were some that called her a cunt, a slag and Tory scum.  The Guardian

The Scottish Governments consultation on electoral reform closed this week and ministers will soon begin scrutinising responses from across the country. It plans to trial innovative electronic voting which would mean votes could be cast on electronic machines within traditional polling stations  using systems similar to ticket machines at railway stations or supermarket automated checkouts. More boldly, votes could also be cast remotely via home computers or mobile devices. Launching the consultation in December last year, parliamentary business minister Joe Fitzpatrick said: Our voting systems have remained broadly unchanged in over 100 years and now is a good time to think about modernising and innovation.  The Scotsman

MPs claim that fat cat academy salaries are hurting pupils

News in Brief:

Dont doubt Trump, he could easily be re-elected  Lord Ashcroft, Time

Theresa Mays unhelpful Unionism  Alex Massie, CapX

Corbyns association with anti-Semitism is rooted in hatred of the West  Alastair Benn, Reaction

Brexit will give Wales a more powerful voice and help strengthen the United Kingdom  Andrew RT Davies, Brexit Central

Labour cant tackle anti-Semitism under Corbyn  Stephen Daisley, The Spectator

School academies that pay their executives and head teachers fat-cat salaries are depriving the front line of vital funds, MPs say. The lack of accountability is alarming and in most cases pay packages of more than 150,000 have not been adequately explained, a Commons committee has said. Meg Hillier, chairwoman of the public accounts committee, toldthat just as university vice-chancellors were being held to account for their high salaries, so should academy chain executives. It is not clear why these salaries are justified, especially in a time of pay restraint for teachers. Schools are not a business, they are taxpayer-funded and must be transparent and accountable, she said.  The Times
Iain Dale is Presenter of LBC Drive, Managing Director of Biteback Publishing, a columnist and broadcaster and a former Conservative Parliamentary candidate.

Im afraid that David Gaukes weasel excuses for not himself launching a judicial review on the John Worboys case just wont wash.

It should never have been left to two of his victims to have to bring a case, and no amount of wriggling on the part of the Justice Secretary will change that. Sometimes politicians have to lay the law down to their civil servants and advisors, even if political risk is involved.

If the victims could win a judicial review, then Im damned sure that Gauke could have if he and his department had deployed the correct arguments. On the day that the victims launched their crowdfunding appeal, listeners on my show raised a five figure sum. One of the victims messaged me on Wednesday, following the verdict, to say that without us doing so they could never have launched the appeal.

I am proud to have played a part in enabling them to go ahead, but I am ashamed that the system let them down so badly. Its now up to the Justice Secretary to put that right. And quickly.

         

UKIP really does have a deathwish. This week they drew up the rules of their latest leadership election. These make for interesting reading, especially through the prism of ensuring that only candidates unpopular with the electorate will be able to stand.

Each candidate must put down a deposit of a whopping 7,000, and must have either served as an MEP or stood for Parliament, and have continuous party membership of at least five years. Well, that rules out Suzanne Evans and Patrick OFlynn. Which I imagine was the point.

Betway have already closed the betting on the contest, and have made Gerard Batten, the acting leadrer, the favourite. Hes been largely anonymous since taking over the post, possibly because he has had to concentrate on rescuing the partys finances. Its entirely possible that the party could be bankrupt by the time voting closes, since it has to find 170,000 to pay to the High Court over a disastrous libel action brought by one of their MEPs, Jane Collins, against three Labour MPs.

So what happens if Batten wins? To quote the famous song, the only way is up. The party is down to one per cent in the polls, and is likely to lose very single councillor it won back at its high watermark in 2014. If Batten is to make any headwa,y surely he has to do things. First, abandon the anti-Muslim obsessiveness. Second, sack the odious Alan Craig, who was laughably appointed as Education and Family spokesman. The man is a Christian fundamentalist who has a record of religious bigotry and believes in gay cure therapy. I know several people who have left UKIP following his appointment. I hope there are many more who will follow.

         

I cant say that Im, surprised that Mark Zuckerburg has turned down the DDCMS Select Committees invitation to appear before them. If you write a rudely worded letter to someone, dont be surprised if they give you middle finger.

         

I doubt whether there are many people who can deny that Theresa May has had her best fortnight in her time as Prime Minister. In fact, its so good that it wouldnt surprise me if, on her walking holiday in north Wales, she decided to call an election

I jest, of course, but had last years disastrous election not happened, I suspect that there would be a lot of election speculation going on right now. Shes secured Brexit progress that a lot of people predicted could never happen, and shes show real leadership in her reaction against the nerve agent attack in Salisbury. Her diplomatic skills have been on display for all to see. For nearly 30 countries to expel Russian spies is unprecedented, and it is almost entirely due to the way that she has led Britains diplomatic efforts.

The Foreign Office deserve a lot of praise too. Nick Boles tweeted about the fact that in January he went on record criticising the prime minister for a lack of domestic policy agenda and for a lack of grip. On Tuesday, he followed that up by declaring he was now satisfied that a firm grip was on the tiller and domestic policy was firmly back on the agenda. Long may it continue.

         

Alex Salmonds Russia Today show goes from bad to worse. Ive just had a press release which informs me that his star guest this week is Lembit Opik. Need I say more.

The sooner this sorry show is pulled from the RT schedule the better. It will leave Alex time to try to recover his reputation. To take the Kremlin rouble at this time is simply unforgiveable. In other times wed have dubbed him Lord Haw Haw.

I hope any Conservative MP who features on this channel in future will face deselection from their local party. All they achieve is to give succour and support to a rogue state. A state which is fast becoming an enemy state.

         

I was going to write a vicious denunciation of Jeremy Corbyns approach to anti-semitism and explain why hes not fit to be Prime Minister. But why bother? Hes done it so well himself.

         

If you live near Bath, Ill be appearing at the Bath Festival with Jacqui Smith, where were recording a live edition of our For the many podcast. Its at 11am on Sunday 20 May. Do visit the festival website if youd like to come to see us.
Intel is exploring the creation of specialty hardware for mining the popular cryptocurrency Bitcoin, according to a U.S. patent application released Thursday.

The patent, filed on Sept. 23, 2016, describes a Bitcoin mining hardware accelerator that may include a processor core with a hardware accelerator coupled with it.

Bitcoin mining is the process of using powerful computer processors to record Bitcoin transactions on a public ledger, which is done by attempting to solve cryptographic puzzles. If the miner becomes the first to solve the puzzle and record the next transaction, it is rewarded with newly released Bitcoin.

The high energy and equipment costs associated with mining have brought into question whether the activity can be profitable, especially as the price of Bitcoin has nose-dived in the past few months, as noted by Forbes . But that hasn't stopped people from hoarding equipment  one report from Coherent Market Insights pegged the cryptocurrency mining market at $610 million in 2016 and expects it to grow to $38 billion by 2025. The current issues faced by miners also has propelled companies and individuals to find new technologies and methods for making mining more efficient.

That's where Intel comes in. According to its new patent, the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company said it has devised a way to reduce "the space utilized and power consumed by Bitcoin mining hardware."

Intel did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

Randy Copeland, president of Velocity Micro, a Richmond, Va.-based systems builder and Intel partner, told CRN that his company has built cryptocurrency mining rigs for universities, researchers and others interested in learning more about the space, but he doubts mining could be a sustainable business in the U.S. because of high energy costs.

"Once this new Intel technology comes to market, ultimately more people will mine again because it's profitable again, driving down the market value of the coins, and finding a new market balance that will again put locations with lower electricity costs back at the advantage," he said in an email.

On the other hand, Copeland said, he expects blockchain computing  which is the decentralized ledger technology Bitcoin relies on and can be used for high-security data transfers  would likely have more of a future with U.S. customers and hardware vendors.

At least one other solution provider has shown interest in selling cryptocurrency mining rigs.

Maingear, a Kenilworth, N.J.-based systems builder and Intel partner, said in January that the company is releasing a custom-built cryptocurrency mining rig later this year (the company is even accepting a digital currency called UnikoinGold as payment for all sales).

Wallace Santos, CEO of Maingear, did not respond to a request for comment.

For Intel, this isn't the first time the semiconductor company has shown interest in cryptocurrency and blockchain, as noted by CoinTelegraph. Last year, the company unveiled three partnerships in the space, including with Chinese firm Tencent for an Internet of Things blockchain solution.
Cisco Systems released a bundle of almost three dozen patches Thursday, three of which close critical security gaps in the networking software that powers many of its routers and switches.

The most serious vulnerability addressed in Cisco's semi-annual patch release involves an exploit to the IOS and IOS XE software that takes advantage of the Smart Install feature for rapidly deploying the networking operating systems.

That flaw, which won researcher Embedi an award for discovering it at the GeekPWN 2017 Hong-Kong contest, makes it possible for an attacker to shut down switches and routers over the Internet. Embedi, in a quick scan, found 250,000 vulnerable devices, with millions more potentially affected.

[Related: Cisco Hires Former Juniper Exec As New Chief Sales And Marketing Leader]

Cisco's client software improperly validates packet data, allowing a clever attacker to send a Smart Install message that would overflow the buffer, the researcher discovered.

Such a malicious message could force the device to reload, allow execution of malicious code, or cause an indefinite loop triggering a crash, according to the Cisco Security Advisory on the topic.

Customers should immediately patch their network devices since no workarounds are currently available, Cisco said.

Smart Install is essentially a plug-and-play feature for quickly deploying new devices onto networks. It automates configuration and the loading of the operating system.

Any Cisco network equipment with an open TCP 4786 port is vulnerable to attack.

Embedi at first thought the exploit it discovered would only work for a hacker with access to a local network. It quickly realized that wasn't the case by conducting a scan of the Internet.

Cisco also released patches for two more bugs the company found in the IOS XE software. One allows an attacker to use an undocumented user account to remotely connect to devices; the other remote code execution through an IOS subsystem.

Last June, the San Jose, Calif.-based networking leader revamped IOS software "for the digital age," said David Goeckeler, senior vice president and general manager of networking and security, in a statement.

"Our [new IOS] is open, it's API-driven, it's programmable, it's modular, it allows our customers to extend it to interconnect in an API world," Goeckeler said. "This is going to drive intent-driven networking for the next 30 years."
Some 25 business have stated their intention to join the Castellon Cruise Friendly Initiative organized by the Chamber of Commerce of Castellon, a port in Spain.

The Chamber recently hosted a meeting to outline the advantages of being included in the Castellon Cruise Friendly project.

The plan is to establish a quality certificate that can be applied for by any business whose products or services used by cruise ship passengers who disembark in Castellon, according to a press release.

The meeting was attended by representatives from the Espai Comercial association of Castellon, as well as representatives from the Port of Castellon, the Chamber of Commerce and the Town Council.

Businesses attending the first meeting stated their intention to remain open in the middle of the day when cruise passengers are in town, the press release said.

The principle requirements in order to become a part of the Castellon Cruise Friendly project include being able to speak English, accepting credit cards, and the possibility of offering discounts to passengers as well as free Wi-Fi.

The local town council is also establihsing a welcoming committe which will greet cruise passengers and offer information, as well as guide visitors.
The indictment of the nine Iranian hackers having pillaged a wide swath of academia and industry should have sent a chill through the spines of every research and manufacture entity outside of Iran.

Perhaps the mindset exists that one does not have to protect ones research because knowledge is meant to be shared. If so, then this is a non-event for you.

But what of everyone else? Was it a matter of not seeing others being affected by cyber theft of intellectual property or thinking it could not happen to you? Were any entities truly surprised? Will any make a course correction?

Whichever camp you fall in, rest assured that as long as sanctions and restrictions on Iran remain, Iran will take steps to circumvent those restrictions in order to affect a technological transfer. And if they need it, your intellectual property is fair game.

How is it that one can be so assured? Because the road before us is littered with examples of Iranian sanction busting.

The past leads us to the future

If we choose to go back, say approximately 30 years, from 1990-1993, six patents were issued to citizens of Iran by the United States Patent Office. Yet the Iranian Interests Section in Washington, D.C., managed to legally copy and preserve the entire corpus of the U.S. patent office. When sanctions are in place, technology research is conducted in a semi-vacuum, and Iran used the patent office as a library of technology.

Slide forward to just one to eight years ago, and the noise factor was quite high when it came to Iran stealing intellectual property. Some examples that shoot off the page at us are:

In 2010, The Australian tells us how the ASIO blocked multiple shipments of military supplies and industrial pumps that could be used with the Iranian nuclear program.

In 2014, Wired published a story about how Iranians were posing as reporters so as to purloin embargoed technologies under the guise of an interview or query. Their social engineering skills were well honed, and their reach was well beyond the United States.

In 2016, the Department of Justice (DOJ) indicted seven Iranian government hackers from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard (IRGC). They were accused of penetrating a U.S. infrastructure provider, as well as U.S. banking entities.

The recent DOJ indictments of 9 Iranians

Now look at last weeks DOJ indictment of nine Iranians.

These nine provided Iran a return on investment that would make any intelligence chief smile with pride: 144 U.S. universities, 176 universities across 21 different countries, 47 domestic and foreign private sector companies, the U.S. Department of Labor, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the State of Hawaii, the State of Indiana, the United Nations, and the United Nations Childrens Fund.

By any measure, they made mincemeat of the infosec protocols of academia, as well as companies large and small, and they found their greatest success with the trusted insider. The DOJ notes how targeted phishing emails were sent to insiders, whose access was compromised. That is to say, 8,000 individual email accounts were compromised via the socially engineered phishing campaign.

What we can expect from Iran in the future

If we open the 2018 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace study on Irans Cyber Threat, espionage, sabotage and revenge, we see an entire section dedicated to Irans external targets. The targeting includes not only to support the efforts of those engaged in intellectual property theft, but also to silence dissidents and to effectively execute disruptive and destructive cyber attacks.

We can expect that the recent indictments will not be the last, and the thought of Iran not engaging in intellectual property theft to be somewhere between slim and none.
DANBURY  City cops forcibly took an emotionally disturbed person into custody Thursday morning after the person attempted to strike officers with a large knife and a wooden club, police said.

Around 10:30 a.m., an ambulance was dispatched to a residence on Great Plain Road on a report of a man attempting suicide. When ambulance personnel made contact with the man, he became verbally and physically aggressive toward them, police said.

The man  who police did not identify  swung a wooden club at the ambulance personnel and refused to let them into his house. They retreated and called police for assistance.

When members of the police department arrived they were met with the same aggressive behavior, police said. This time, in addition to swinging the wooden club, the EDP told the officers that he would kill them if they entered his home.

After the threat of serious harm, police said, the officers backed off and called in the emergency services unit.

The man was contained to his house at that time and crisis negotiations were on scene, trying to convince the man to surrender and get treatment when, police said, he abruptly exited the rear of his home holding a large knife and a large wooden club.

The man confronted two negotiators that had, just minutes before, been talking with the man through an open window.

After yelling that he wanted to die, the EDP threw the large knife at the officers and attempted to strike them with the wooden club, police said.

In response to the mans behavior, police said, Tasers and physical force were used to restrain him. During this, the man received an eye injury.

The man was taken to Danbury Hospital for treatment and mental evaluation, police said. He was subsequently admitted to to the hospital.

No charges had been filed as of Thursday evening. But, that doesnt mean the man might not face charges in the future.

Further police action is yet to be determined, police said.
U.S. Rep Elizabeth Esty, under fire for ignoring a toxic workplace environment, says she wont resign.

But if she stays in office, Esty is bound to have a much tougher time seeking re-election to a fourth term in Congress.

While Esty took 26 of the 41 towns and cities in northwestern Connecticuts 5th District in 2016, beating Republican Clay Cope by nearly 38,600 votes, it could get much more competitive this year. In the era of #MeToo, she admitted to failing to provide a safe work environment while her chief of staff, Tony Baker, allegedly struck, harassed and threatened to kill a female employee  and others  in what she called a pattern of abuse before he was finally fired in the summer of 2016.

First and foremost, let me say to this survivor that I am so sorry, said Esty in a news release Friday. She did not answer the door of her Cheshire home Friday afternoon.

I am sorry that this incident in my office hurt her, her friends and family, and many of my present and former staffers, the statement said.

Esty said she was inspired by the courage of Anna Kain, the now 29-year-old alleged victim, to speak up.

I want to support her and other survivors, because these people will continue to drive the conversation forward and ensure we implement the changes necessary both in Congress and, more broadly, to prevent this from happening again, Esty wrote. I must do better. We all must do better.

Because of Estys high staff turnover rate, a recent survey by Legi-Slate rated her office one of the worst for which to work.

A rating downgrade

Geoffrey Skelley, a political analyst at the University of Virginias Center for Politics, said that when the news of the office scandal emerged Thursday, they immediately moved the rating on Estys re-election from a safe Democratic seat, to likely Democrat after the fall election.

Its not like Esty herself is accused of perpetrating something, he said in a Friday phone interview. With the current mood on the left and #MeToo movement, we have to consider the chance that the race could be shaken up. Its not impossible to imagine she might not run for re-election. Then again, she may run for re-election and be fine.

Esty crushed Cope in the cities of Danbury, Meriden, New Britain, Waterbury and Torrington.

Skelley said that its unlikely national Republicans, embattled in so many seats currently held by members of their party, will have the resources to help Manny Santos, of Meriden, who appears to have the support to win endorsement at the May state GOP convention. Nationally, he said Democrats are poised to make big gains in the midterm elections.

It has been 10 years since Connecticut had a Republican in Congress: Chris Shays of the 4th District. It has been 11 years since a Republican represented the 5th District.

But Santos, who was nearly unknown outside his district and home in Meriden, has gained name recognition as the Esty scandal emerged.

There are two people that share the blame in this tragedy: Tony Baker, the abuser, and Elizabeth Esty, the boss, Santos said. The buck stops with Congresswoman Esty. More shocking is her decision to remain silent on the matter, even recommending Baker for another job, possibly subjecting others to similar abuse.

Esty met with domestic-violence professional

On Monday, Esty sought advice from Karen Jarmoc, president and CEO of the Connecticut Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

As Hearst Connecticut Media and the Washington Post were preparing stories about alleged abuse by Tony Baker, her former chief of staff who was even entrusted with a key to her apartment, Esty laid out the basics of an alleged abuse scandal that by Thursday would rock the U.S. Capitol and reverberate back home to Connecticut.

She basically told me what happened and she expressed that she really wishes she had done things differently, said Jarmoc, a former Democratic member of the state House of Representatives.

During a phone interview on Friday, Jarmoc said she was alarmed that while Congress sets rules for institutions including colleges and universities, each member of Congress creates their own policies on workplace harassment.

They vote on funding and policy and regulations, but they themselves have none, Jarmoc said. Thats the broader issue. And the commitment I got from Congresswoman Esty was that I would work with her on that.

Esty had her staff sign non-disclosure agreements, which can sometimes provide protections for victims like Kain, who made the charges against Baker, including a claim that he punched her in the back, screamed and threatened her with death in 2016. In this case, the agreement protected Baker, who went on to a job in Ohio for Sandy Hook Promise, from which he apparently was fired this week.

Victims need options, and to take away their options can be very damaging, Jarmoc said in defense of non-disclosure agreements, which have been criticized as a way to cover up abuse. They should be able to lead the outcome.

Republicans call

for resignation

Meanwhile, Republicans on Friday called for Estys resignation.

Elizabeth Esty orchestrated one of the most disturbing Washington cover-ups in recent memory, said National Republican Congressional Campaign spokesman Chris Martin. There is no place for someone who protects abusers in Congress, and she should resign immediately.

I think these are very serious accusations, said state House Minority Leader Themis Klarides, R-Derby. The more information that comes out, the more disturbing it is. From my perspective, there is a lot of hypocrisy. There was a woman who needed help and didnt get it, but Elizabeth Esty claims to have a big platform for victims rights. Thats wonderful, but you cant have it both ways.

Most Democrats seemed to be circling the wagons on Friday, hoping to withstand the immediate political fallout.

But Gov. Dannel P. Malloy, who early in his eight-year tenure appointed Estys husband Dan to head the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, said Esty was right to say she should have handled the issue differently.

There is absolutely no place for sexual harassment or abusive behavior in the workplace  whether that be the halls of Congress, state houses or the White House, Malloy said in a Friday afternoon statement.

Nobody working in a congressional office or any other setting should feel afraid to come to work, said U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, who also lives in Cheshire. Protecting victims of workplace harassment needs to come first, and the rules of Congress need to change to ensure that happens.

On Friday, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal said he was deeply disappointed by the news reports.

I am just learning the facts and I need to know more, he said. This story is a reminder about the need to support and encourage survivors and victims who come forward.

Asked whether Esty should consider resigning, Blumenthal said its not up to him.

She needs to talk with her constituents.
BRIDGEPORT -Eight days after he was arrested on gun charges for a second time - in two states-Christopher Barlow has been released from custody.

The former Easton EMT, who police said was found hiding a cache of bomb-making materials in the towns emergency services building while he was under investigation for allegedly taking semi-nude photos of a female accident victim in the back of an ambulance, posted $25,000 bond.

He was let out on bond here, confirmed Easton Police Chief Timothy Shaw. But I was told he was going back up to Massachusetts where he has a number of restrictions.

Last month Plymouth County Massachusetts District Attorney Timothy Cruz put out a warning to the 27 police chiefs in his county when Barlow, who was charged there with impersonating a Homeland Security agent and stockpiling firearms and explosives made bail.

Let me be clear again, Barlow has made no direct threats to public safety, Cruz said at a subsequent press conference. But he acknowledged at the press conference that Barlow had visited a school in the area in violation of his release conditions.

In the Easton case, Barlow, 21, is charged with two counts of stealing a firearm, voyeurism, making a false statement and illegal alteration of records.

He is scheduled to be arraigned in Superior Court here on April 5.

In November 2015, Barlow, then a student at Sacred Heart University, was accepted into the live-in EMT program in Easton. As a member of the program Barlow attended classes in the morning and assisted on EMS calls during the evenings and early mornings.

While in the program Easton EMS officials received numerous complaints against Barlow but all the complaints were determined to be unfounded, according to the arrest affidavit.

Police said during an investigation of Barlow they uncovered several photographs and videos he had secretly taken.

They said some of the photos showed Barlow in the back of an ambulance removing the clothing of a woman who had suffered a head injury to reveal her naked chest, the affidavit states.

Police said Barlow also installed a hidden video camera in the mens bathroom at Easton EMS and recorded his colleagues in various stages of undress without their permission.

On May 30, 2017, police said Easton EMS officials opened a locked cabinet Barlow had been using in the centers garage and found more than six pounds of chemical powders and other materials to make a thermite bomb.

In Barlows bedroom in the center, police said they found an empty gun box, 9mm ammunition, the missing keys to a police vehicle, a stolen EMT badge and a Velcro badge reading, Maritime Law Enforcement U.S. Coast Guard.

Police said EMS officials later intercepted a package addressed to Barlow that contained three pistol bullet magazines.

Barlow was arrested at his Massachusetts home on June 26, 2017 on charges there. Police said Barlow had two handguns that had previously been reported stolen from an Oxford resident who had formerly worked at the Easton EMS center along with more chemicals and various badges including one from the Easton Police Department.
ANSONIA  It was a true changing of the guard in the citys Republican Town Committee.

Nineteen-year-old David Papcin became the youngest town committee chairman in state history, according to J.R. Romano, the state Republican chairman, and Mayor David Cassetti.

Joining Papcin on the panel are Domenico Filippone, 23, a 3rd Ward alderman, as clerk/secretary, and Anna Andretta, 29, as treasurer. All three helped create the Naugatuck Valley Young Republicans earlier this year.

I think this shatters the stereotype that Connecticut Republicans are old, wealthy, country club people, said Romano, who is from Derby. I think this sends a tremendous message and can only help grow the Republican party in Ansonia, the Valley and the state.

Papcin, who became involved in party politics after attending a forum on the state budget in 2017 at Ansonia High School, was nominated by Cassetti to run against Irving Reed, the 75-year-old, two-term chairman. Papcins 27-17 margin of victory broke down mostly along the two factions  the pro-Cassetti and the pro-Alderman Phil Tripp groups.

Moments after the vote, Lorie Vaccaro, the Board of Aldermen president, defeated Janet Vitarius Waugh for vice chairman. The opposition did not challenge Filippone or Andretta.

Romano said Papcin, Filippone and Andretta will be tremendous assets because of their ages.

They are adept at using social media and social networking to grow the party base, the state chairman said.

Cassetti agreed.

The millennials are the future of our party in the city, this state and this country, Cassetti said. They are energetic. They bring new ideas.

At some point the torch has to be passed, said Cassetti, who is the citys only three-term Republican mayor in the last century.

Reed said he was not entirely surprised that hed be challenged, despite heading a party that won the last two elections by landslides.

I kept getting conflicting reports as to who would run against me, he said. Im surprised they chose someone so young. He wasnt even a member of the town committee until recently.

Reed stopped short of offering Papcin advice, except to encourage him to bring the two sides together.

This is the latest hat to be worn by Papcin, who works on Shelton Mayor Mark Laurettis gubernatorial campaign, sits on the Ansonia Board of Apportionment and Taxation and is a full-time sophomore nursing student at Quinnipiac University.

I think we have a good balance of youth and seniority, Papcin said following his election. Chicago Rivers, a 5th Ward alderman, was appointed sergeant-at-arms and Corporation Counsel John Marini was made the committee parliamentarian.

Papcin said his goal is to raise $50,000 over the next two years for the party, which has $432 in its treasury.

Although Papcin admits that might be a lofty goal, he sad he can reach it by bringing in new people and conducting more fundraisers.

I see my town committee as being more vocal in raising awareness, involvement and money, Papcin said. I think my election sends a message to others who think they are too young get involved. Im a 19-year-old who came out of nowhere and now Im heading the party that re-energized Ansonia.
Coastal Connecticut can expect to see some fog late Thursday evening, according to the National Weather Service.

Around 9 p.m., the NWS issued a special weather report for coastal Connecticut and Long Island.
WESTPORT  In an effort to buttress school security, school officials have decided they are open to the idea of adding an armed school resource officer to Staples High School.

The Board of Education voted five to two in favor of the concept of adding an SRO, which was first broached last fall at the urging of Superintendent of Schools Colleen Palmer and has gained traction recently after the school massacre at Parkland, Fla., and after a student allegedly had thoughts of conducting a mass shooting at Staples in late February.

Still, the proposal was controversial, and the board, and members of the public, weighed in for nearly two hours Monday.

Sanctioning guns in our schools is not the answer, said Staples senior Lydia Donovan, referring to SROs as armed guards and citing statistics from the nonprofit Everytown for Gun Safety that out of 168 school shootings, one in five were unintentional and one in six started as a confrontation that escalated because of the presence of a gun.

An armed guard is not the answer. An extra gun is never the answer, Donovan said.

Donovan was one of several members of the public who voiced concerns, but many others felt it was an important enhancement to school safety.

I have found that the role of the SROs have been vital to supporting a safe environment within our schools, Palmer said, citing her prior experience as an administrator in Wilton working with SROs.

John Horrigan, president of the Westport Education Association, questioned how the SROs would be paid for in a tight budget year, with the Board of Finance already looking to the Board of Education to make cuts. Palmer said after the meeting that the SRO, or SROs, would likely be funded out of the police budget. The Board of Education is expected to vote at its April 23 meeting on how many SROs it would like to add to the schools.

Westport schools are the only schols in their district resource group without an SRO. According to Palmer, the job would not just include law enforcement and safety, but would involve being a role model, mentor and educator in the classroom. She shared SRO job descriptions with the board from surrounding districts.

Weve talked about this for well over a year- and-a-half now. Im fully in support of this. I think its the logical step in our security plan, said Chief of Police Foti Koskinas, noting extra benefits, like stronger student-police relationships SROs could facilitate.

Board of Education member Karen Kleine said prior to a recent visit to Ridgefield public schools to meet with administrators and SROs, she likely would have opposed the concept, but was heartened by the success of the system in the nearby town. Chairman Michael Gordon, too, said he likely would have been opposed in the past, but given recent events had reconsidered his stance.

Board members Mark Mathias and Vik Muktavaram were the two dissenters.

Mathias questioned whether he was comfortable having guns in schools every day, calling the decision really hard, and questioning the necessity of SROs.

The fundamental question Im struggling with, for me, is whatre we giving up? Muktavaram said. Philosophically, Im opposed to having guns inside the school. Obviously some situations demand it. But having guns inside the schools on an ongoing basis  I dont like that notion.

Muktavaram warned against Westport joining the arms race by putting guns in schools. He pointed out that for every Maryland that is a success, referencing the SRO that engaged a student shooter last week, there is a Parkland that is not, and urged the board to re-frame the discussion as more of a health issue than a security issue.

Wouldnt it be better to prevent the root cause than to react? Muktavaram asked.
Friday night, Jews around the world will sit down to a Passover Seder - a ritual that involves, among other things, retelling the story of the Israelite Exodus from Egypt described in the Torah, drinking a lot of wine and eating a big meal with symbolically significant foods. It's one of the most religiously important and widely observed Jewish holidays, with 70 percent of Jews reporting in a 2014 Pew survey that they had attended a Seder in the previous year. Given the importance and complexity of Passover (which lasts eight days in the Diaspora), it's not surprising that there are plenty of misunderstandings about both its history and its practice.

- Myth No. 1: the Seder tells the historical story of the Israelites leaving Egypt.

A lot of literalist religious perspectives, both Jewish and Christian, presume that the Exodus story is a faithful recording of historical fact. For example, like many Jewish literalists, Rabbi Yirmiyahu Ullman of the Ohr Somayach Orthodox outreach network bases his claim on the story of revelation at Sinai: "Since the entire religion is predicated on this mass-revelation, no one could ever convince an entire nation to accept the religion based on a purported experience that no one ever had."

But the historical accuracy of the Exodus is hotly debated among scholars. Archeologists and Egyptologists have never found evidence that could be directly connected to Israelites' enslavement or departure, or of a large group of people - 600,000 men, plus women and children - wandering the Sinai Peninsula for 40 years. Some scholars argue that the locations of the Exodus route - Pitom, Sukkot, Kadesh Barnea - are anachronistic to the date of the story and note the Exodus's absence from key sources like the Book of Chronicles. Some suggest that the Exodus may have been developed by scribes in the 8th through 6th centuries B.C. to give hope to a conquered, exiled people living under Assyrian and then Babylonian rule. The story also resembles other famous Near Eastern tales, like that of the Mesopotamian Sargon the Great, said to have been set in a basket in a river as a baby, as Moses was in the Torah.

Some scholars wonder if the Exodus might be connected to the Hyksos, a Semitic population that ruled Lower Egypt from 1630 to 1523 B.C., when they were defeated and expelled. Others say there may have been an Israelite Exodus, but smaller in number than the Torah relates; scholar Richard Elliott Friedman, for example, uses literary analysis to suggest that the Exodus may have involved only Levites who moved into, and influenced, the Israelites living in Canaan.

Regardless, some truths are deeper than history: The story of enslavement and liberation is a deep, indelible facet of Jewish theology. And a mature faith can hold an expansive understanding of God and holy texts that embraces the ways this story - no matter whether it happened historically - helps us see who we are and the nature of our obligations to those oppressed today.

MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP/Getty Images

- Myth No. 2: The Seder is a purely Jewish tradition.

The Torah tells us to clear out leaven for the week of Passover and eat unleavened bread, to slaughter the paschal lamb and eat it with matzah and bitter herbs, and to teach the story to our children. Many more of the elements of today's Seder are found in the Mishnah and the Talmud, and the evolution of the holiday meal is usually seen as a natural and purely Jewish process.

In fact, many scholars today argue that the Seder is based on the Greco-Roman model of the symposium, which involved, among other things that may sound familiar to anyone celebrating Passover, a banquet framed by specific appetizers, eating in a reclining position, drinking a predetermined number of cups of wine, songs of praise, easily accessible questions, and deep discussion of philosophical matters that lasted sometimes all night.

Of course, the real power of the Seder is in how it sacralized and transformed the symposium model. Praise was sung not to the emperor but to God; questions were not about the nature of food or pleasure, but rather an invitation to discuss essential themes of bondage and freedom. The cups of wine alluded to the four actions taken by God in redeeming the Israelites or to the four stages of liberation. Children and women were included. The Seder may have been adapted from the wider culture, but it was imbued with enduring meaning.

UniversalImagesGroup/Getty Images

- Myth No. 3: Jesus' Last Supper was a Passover Seder.

The Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke assert that the Last Supper took place on the first night of Passover. As such, some Christians are attracted to contemporary observance; some churches even hold "Christian Seders" in an attempt to practice the religion of Jesus.

However, it's pretty unlikely that Jesus participated in a Seder. When the Second Temple in Jerusalem stood, the first night of Passover usually involved just eating the paschal sacrifice, a lamb that had been slaughtered at the temple and then roasted and served at home. The temple was destroyed several decades after Jesus' death. There are no descriptions of the Seder or the Haggadah - the text that guides the Seder ritual now - from major historical authors or works detailing Passover observance during the time of the Second Temple, such as Philo of Alexandria, Josephus, the Book of Jubilees or the Elephantine "Passover Papyrus." We first see mention of them in early Rabbinic texts like the Mishnah and the Tosefta, which can be tricky to date, as they originated as oral traditions.

Parts of the Seder might have begun to take root during Jesus' lifetime, but there's no evidence that they were widespread or developed enough that he would have participated in them.

Brian A. Pounds / Hearst Connecticut Media

Myth No. 4: The Seder centers on asking and answering four questions.

Many Jews learned the Four Questions when we were kids - to recite them by heart, to a familiar tune. The questions formally kick off the retelling of the story of the Exodus; they are often considered the heart of the service.

But if you look carefully at the Haggadah, there's actually only one question: "Why is this night different from all other nights?" Following this are four observations about the foods and practices that distinguish the evening from others. In the Haggadah, only two of the observations - about eating matzah and bitter herbs - are addressed directly, and not until much later in the Seder. Rather, the frame of the questioning is intended to point us to the discursive nature of the Haggadah: It's not meant to be recited rote but rather engaged as part of a dynamic discussion, with the people at the table fleshing out what the text leaves unsaid and with multiple "right" answers to every question out there.

The fact that a child is asking helps us to fulfill the commandment of teaching the story to our children - but if we want more questions, we need to generate them ourselves.

- Myth No. 5: There's a standard list of foods Jews avoid during Passover.

Many people know that Jewish law prohibits eating chametz at Passover - food made from or including wheat, barley, rye, oats or spelt that has fermented or risen. This is a mainstay in "Passover 101" articles. What's often left out (I myself didn't realize it until becoming more religiously observant in my 20s) is the extent of chametz in everyday products - not just bread, pasta, cookies, cakes and beer, but also soy sauce with wheat, wheat-based vinegars or processed foods with an impressive range of additives. Many Jews are strict in their engagement with this practice, but less traditionally engaged Jews might be less so.

In addition to not eating chametz, many Jews with ties to the traditions of Germany or Eastern Europe abstain from eating kitniyot, a complicated Passover-specific category of food that includes rice, beans, lentils, corn, peas and soy. The reason for the practice, which dates to the Middle Ages, is unclear; it probably related to making sure legumes were not confused with or contaminated by forbidden chametz. Lately, more Jews are moving away from this practice: The Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist movements have recently allowed for consumption of kitniyot, though many still don't do eat such foods.

Most Jews with roots elsewhere in the world do eat kitniyot, but even then, it's not necessarily straightforward. During Passover, many Moroccan Jews eat kitniyot except for rice and chickpeas, though some abstain from legumes that have been dried or processed. Many Persian Jews eat rice but not legumes. Ethiopian Jews avoid fermented dairy. Some groups of Hungarian Hasidic Jews don't eat carrots. The bottom line: If you want to feed a Jewish friend next week, don't make assumptions. And if you're ever invited to a Seder, the safest gift for your hosts might be flowers.

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Ruttenberg is rabbi-in-residence at Avodah and author of "Nurture the Wow: Finding Spirituality in the Frustration, Boredom, Tears, Poop, Desperation, Wonder, and Radical Amazement of Parenting."
GREENWICH  Greenwich police are advising residents to take extra precautions with their property when they attend funerals.

Police said area burglars are using death notices printed in the newspaper, or online, to target homes for break-ins.
A federal judge on Thursday struck down two sections of the NCUAs new field-of-membership rule, saying that the sections violate the Federal Credit Union Act.

But in a mixed ruling in the suit filed by the American Bankers Association, U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich said that the remainder of the rule conforms to federal law.

Friedrich struck down sections of the rule that:

Automatically qualified a Combined Statistical Area or a contiguous portion of it with fewer than 2.5 million people to be a local community.

Increases to one million people the population limit for rural districts.

The remainder of the rule, dealing with Core-Based Statistical Areas and adjacent areas, do not violate the credit union act.
Science is supposed to be fun, and the science of saving will be full of awesome fun for young savers during National Credit Union Youth Month, supported by Fiserv, in April. With the theme The Science of Saving, Americas youth are encouraged to picture themselves in the future to make saving easier.

Credit unions and their members are encouraged to use #CUYouthMonth on Twitter to highlight their efforts throughout the month.

Credit unions will once again inspire Americas youth to reach financial freedom, said CUNA President/CEO Jim Nussle. April is the month in which we can showcase our effort to our youngest members and help them begin a journey of lifelong financial education.

The Science of Saving theme is featured throughout youth months free promotional materials and merchandise. New this year, credit unions can download a Science of Saving Snapchat filter to add to the celebration.
Connor Yoder accounts for 4 TD's, North Star mauls Meyersdale

North Star got back in the win column with a drubbing of Meyersdale. Connor Yoder, Ethan Yoder and Carter Weible shined in the victory.
By Samuel Ssebuliba.

Parliament has authorized government to borrow nearly 27 million dollars from the Africa Development Bank for completion of the Kampala Sanitation Program that has stalled for nine years.

In 2009, government secured funding from the African Development Bank to improve the living conditions for the 1.4 million people living in Kampala, but the funds were not sufficient for completion of the whole project.

Speaking before parliament yesterday, finance minister Matia Kasaijja said the last phase is targeting Nakivubo Channel, Bugolobi sewage line as well Makerere.

Meanwhile the Leader of Opposition Winnie Kiiza asked the minister not to borrow for Kampala alone but for other towns whose infrastructure is also in ruins.
For a much-anticipated list that makes or breaks restaurants, the newest Asia's 50 Best, released last night amid the usual grandeur in Macau, has been completely without any spark of excitement. At least for me.

The interiors of Indian Accent, New York. Photo courtesy: India Today Spice

As Indians, we have a good reason to celebrate  Indian Accent has risen 11 notches since last year, landing at 19th position, compared with 30th in 2017. As flag-bearers of Indian Cuisine, we must also raise a toast to Gaggan Anand for the fourth year in a row, for his eponymous restaurant in Bangkok is Asia's top, yet again. India gets another place on the list (barely!)  Wasabi by Morimoto at the Taj Mahal Palace in Mumbai is at number 49; the larger Indian sub-continent gets two more  Dharshan Munidasa's two Colombo restaurants, Ministry of Crab (25) and Nihonbashi (45), which seem to have established squatter's rights on the list, in the same manner as Gaggan, Indian Accent and Wasabi by Morimoto.

Infusion of New York's local produce with signature Indian dishes at Indian Accent. Photo courtesy: India Today Spice

Compare this with nine restaurants each in Tokyo, Bangkok and Hong Kong, seven in Singapore, three each in Seoul and Taipei, two each in Osaka and Shanghai, and one each in Fukuoka, Macau and Bali. Japan is the clear leader with 12 restaurants on the Asia's 50 Best list. And in the gastronomical world as determined by the jury of Asia's 50 Best, restaurants outside the crescent stretching from Japan to Indonesia may as well not exist.

Wasabi by Morimoto at the Taj Mahal Palace in Mumbai is at number 49

What surprises me is that the jury has not found any restaurant worth its attention in the whole of Mainland China (I guess I shouldn't be complaining about India's fate!), and places such as Dubai and the Gulf Cooperation Council states seem to have melted away from the edible globe. There clearly is an East Asian/South-East Asian bias at work.

As an Indian who understands Indian Cuisine and can contextualise it against the best offerings of the world's trendiest cities, I am affronted by the limited presence of Indian restaurants. Off the cuff, I can list six restaurants (lined up in order of preference)  Masque (Mumbai), The Bombay Canteen (Mumbai), Toast & Tonic (Bangalore), Masala Library (New Delhi), Bomra's (Goa) and Artusi (New Delhi)  that deserve to be on Asia's 50 Best. The purpose of such lists is to discover new landmark restaurants and not to be like a stock market index, juggling the same names up and down the totem pole. I didn't come across any such revelation in the list, and I don't expect anything better next year.

Also read: The man behind Ministry of Crab
The following companies are subsidiares of Bristol-Myers Squibb: 1096271 B.C. ULC, 345 Park LLC, A.G. Medical Services P.A., AHI Investment LLC, AbVitro LLC, Abraxis BioScience Australia Pty Ltd., Abraxis BioScience Inc., Abraxis BioScience International Holding Company Inc., Abraxis BioScience LLC, Abraxis BioScience Puerto Rico LLC, Acetylon Pharmaceuticals Inc., Adnexus, Adnexus a Bristol-Myers Squibb R&D Company, Allard Labs Acquisition G.P., Amira Pharmaceuticals, Amira Pharmaceuticals Inc., Amylin Pharmaceuticals, Apothecon LLC, B-MS Generx Unlimited Company, BMS Benelux Holdings B.V., BMS Bermuda Nominees L.L.C., BMS Data Acquisition Company LLC, BMS Forex Company, BMS Holdings Sarl, BMS Holdings Spain S.L., BMS International Insurance Designated Activity Company, BMS Investco SAS, BMS Korea Holdings L.L.C., BMS Latin American Nominees L.L.C., BMS Luxembourg Partners L.L.C., BMS Omega Bermuda Holdings Finance Ltd., BMS Pharmaceutical Korea Limited, BMS Pharmaceuticals Germany Holdings B.V., BMS Pharmaceuticals International Holdings Netherlands B.V., BMS Pharmaceuticals Korea Holdings B.V., BMS Pharmaceuticals Mexico Holdings B.V., BMS Pharmaceuticals Netherlands Holdings B.V., BMS Real Estate LLC, BMS Spain Investments LLC, BMS Strategic Portfolio Investments Holdings Inc., Blisa Acquisition G.P., Bristol (Iran) S.A., Bristol Iran Private Company Limited, Bristol Laboratories Inc., Bristol Laboratories International S.A., Bristol Laboratories Medical Information Systems Inc., Bristol-Myers (Andes) L.L.C., Bristol-Myers (Private) Limited, Bristol-Myers Middle East S.A.L., Bristol-Myers Overseas Corporation, Bristol-Myers Squibb (China) Investment Co. Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb (China) Pharmaceuticals Co. Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb (Israel) Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb (NZ) Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb (Proprietary) Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb (Shanghai) Trading Co. Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb (Singapore) Pte. Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb (Taiwan) Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb (West Indies) Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb A.E., Bristol-Myers Squibb Aktiebolag, Bristol-Myers Squibb Argentina S. R. L., Bristol-Myers Squibb Australia Pty. Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb Axia Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb B.V., Bristol-Myers Squibb Belgium S.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb Business Services Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Canada Co., Bristol-Myers Squibb Canada International Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Delta Company Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Denmark Filial of Bristol-Myers Squibb AB, Bristol-Myers Squibb EMEA Sarl, Bristol-Myers Squibb Egypt LLC, Bristol-Myers Squibb Epsilon Holdings Unlimited Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Farmaceutica Ltda., Bristol-Myers Squibb Farmaceutica Portuguesa S.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb GesmbH, Bristol-Myers Squibb GmbH & Co. KGaA, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holding Germany GmbH & Co. KG, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holdings 2002 Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holdings Germany Verwaltungs GmbH, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holdings Ireland Unlimited Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holdings Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Holdings Pharma Ltd. Liability Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Ilaclari Inc., Bristol-Myers Squibb India Pvt. Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb International Company Unlimited Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb International Corporation, Bristol-Myers Squibb Investco L.L.C., Bristol-Myers Squibb K.K., Bristol-Myers Squibb Kft., Bristol-Myers Squibb Luxembourg International S.C.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Bristol-Myers Squibb MEA GmbH, Bristol-Myers Squibb Manufacturing Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Marketing Services S.R.L., Bristol-Myers Squibb Middle East & Africa FZ-LLC, Bristol-Myers Squibb Norway Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb Nutricionales de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Bristol-Myers Squibb Peru S.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma (HK) Ltd, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma (Thailand) Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma EEIG, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma Holding Company LLC, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharma Ventures Corporation, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceuticals Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceuticals Unlimited Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Polska Sp. z o.o., Bristol-Myers Squibb Products SA, Bristol-Myers Squibb Puerto Rico Inc., Bristol-Myers Squibb Puerto Rico/Sanofi Pharmaceutical Partnership Puerto Rico, Bristol-Myers Squibb Romania S.R.L., Bristol-Myers Squibb S.A.U., Bristol-Myers Squibb S.r.l., Bristol-Myers Squibb SA, Bristol-Myers Squibb Sanofi Pharmaceuticals Holding Partnership, Bristol-Myers Squibb Sarl, Bristol-Myers Squibb Service Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb Services Sp. z o.o., Bristol-Myers Squibb Spol. s r.o., Bristol-Myers Squibb Theta Finance Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb Trustees Limited, Bristol-Myers Squibb Verwaltungs GmbH, Bristol-Myers Squibb de Colombia S.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb de Costa Rica Sociedad Anonima, Bristol-Myers Squibb de Guatemala S.A., Bristol-Myers Squibb de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Bristol-Myers Squibb/Astrazeneca EEIG, Bristol-Myers Squibb/Pfizer EEIG, Bristol-Myers Squibb/Sanofi Pharmaceuticals Partnership, Bristol-Myers de Venezuela S.C.A., CHT I LLC, CHT II LLC, CHT III LLC, CHT IV LLC, CR Finance Company LLC, Cardioxyl Pharmaceuticals, Cardioxyl Pharmaceuticals Inc., Celem LLC, Celem Ltd., Celgene, Celgene A.B., Celgene AS, Celgene Ab (Finland), Celgene Alpine Investment Co. II LLC, Celgene Alpine Investment Co. III LLC, Celgene Alpine Investment Co. LLC, Celgene ApS, Celgene B.V., Celgene BVBA, Celgene Brasil Produtos Farmaceuticos Ltda., Celgene CAR LLC, Celgene CAR Ltd., Celgene Chemicals Sarl, Celgene China Holdings LLC, Celgene Co., Celgene Corporation, Celgene Distribution B.V., Celgene EngMab GmbH, Celgene Europe B.V., Celgene Europe Limited, Celgene European Investment Company LLC, Celgene Financing Company LLC, Celgene Global Holdings Sarl, Celgene GmbH [Austria], Celgene GmbH [Germany], Celgene GmbH [Switzerland], Celgene Holdings East Corporation, Celgene Holdings II Sarl, Celgene Holdings III Sarl, Celgene Ilac Pazarlama ve Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Celgene Inc., Celgene International Holdings Corporation, Celgene International II Sarl, Celgene International III Sarl, Celgene International Inc., Celgene International Sarl, Celgene K.K., Celgene Kft., Celgene Limited [Hong Kong], Celgene Limited [Ireland], Celgene Limited [New Zealand], Celgene Limited [Taiwan], Celgene Limited [UK], Celgene Logistics Sarl, Celgene Ltd, Celgene Luxembourg Sarl, Celgene Management Sarl, Celgene NJ Investment Co, Celgene Netherlands B.V., Celgene Netherlands Investment B.V., Celgene Pharmaceutical (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Celgene Pte. Ltd., Celgene Pty Ltd, Celgene Puerto Rico Distribution LLC, Celgene Quanticel Research Inc, Celgene R&D Sarl, Celgene RIVOT LLC, Celgene RIVOT Ltd., Celgene RIVOT SRL, Celgene Receptos Limited, Celgene Receptos Sarl, Celgene Research Incubator At Summit West LLC, Celgene Research S.L.U., Celgene Research and Development Company LLC, Celgene Research and Development I ULC, Celgene Research and Development II LLC, Celgene Research and Investment Company II LLC, Celgene S. de R.L. de C.V., Celgene S.L.U., Celgene S.R.L., Celgene SAS, Celgene Sarl AU, Celgene Sdn Bhd, Celgene Services Sarl, Celgene Sociedade Unipessoal Lda, Celgene Sp. Z.o.o., Celgene Sro [Czech Republic], Celgene Summit Investment Co, Celgene Switzerland Holding Sarl, Celgene Switzerland II LLC, Celgene Switzerland Investment Sarl, Celgene Switzerland LLC, Celgene Switzerland Sarl, Celgene Tri A Holdings Ltd., Celgene Tri Sarl, Celgene UK Distribution Limited, Celgene UK Holdings Limited, Celgene UK Manufacturing II Limited, Celgene UK Manufacturing III Limited, Celgene UK Manufacturing Limited, Celgene d.o.o., Celgene sro [Slovakia], Celmed LLC, Celmed Ltd., ConvaTec Divestiture, Cormorant Pharmaceuticals, Cormorant Pharmaceuticals AB, Crosp Ltd., Delinia Inc., Deuteria Pharmaceuticals Inc., DuPont Pharmaceuticals, E. R. Squibb & Sons Inter-American Corporation, E. R. Squibb & Sons L.L.C., E. R. Squibb & Sons Limited, EWI Corporation, EngMab Sarl, F-star Alpha, FermaVir Pharmaceuticals L.L.C., FermaVir Research L.L.C., Flexus Biosciences, Flexus Biosciences Inc., Forbius, Galecto Biotech, GenPharm International L.L.C., Gloucester Pharmaceuticals LLC, Grove Insurance Company Ltd., Heyden Farmaceutica Portuguesa Limitada, IFM Therapeutics, Impact Biomedicines Inc., Inhibitex, Inhibitex L.L.C., Innate Tumor Immunity Inc., JuMP Holdings LLC, Juno Therapeutics GmbH, Juno Therapeutics Inc., Kosan Biosciences, Kosan Biosciences Incorporated, Linson Investments Limited, Mead Johnson (Manufacturing) Jamaica Limited, Mead Johnson Jamaica Ltd., Medarex, Morris Avenue Investment II LLC, Morris Avenue Investment LLC, MyoKardia, O.o.o. Bristol-Myers Squibb, Oy Bristol-Myers Squibb (Finland) AB, Padlock Therapeutics, Padlock Therapeutics Inc., Pharmion LLC, Princeton Pharmaceutical Products Inc., Receptos LLC, Receptos Services LLC, RedoxTherapies Inc., Route 22 Real Estate Holding Corporation, SPV A Holdings ULC, Seamair Insurance DAC, Signal Pharmaceuticals LLC, Sino-American Shanghai Squibb Pharmaceuticals Limited, Societe Francaise de Complements Alimentaires(S.O.F.C.A.), Squibb Middle East S.A., Summit West Celgene LLC, Swords Laboratories, VentiRx Pharmaceuticals Inc., Westwood-Intrafin SA, Westwood-Squibb Pharmaceuticals Inc., X-Body Inc., ZymoGenetics, ZymoGenetics Inc., ZymoGenetics LLC, ZymoGenetics Paymaster LLC, iPierian, and iPierian Inc..
Civitas Solutions, Inc. provides home- and community-based health and human services to must-serve individuals with intellectual, developmental, behavioral, and/or medically complex challenges in the United States. It operates through three segments: Community Support Services (CSS), Specialty Rehabilitation Services (SRS), and Children & Family Services (CFS). The CSS segment offers services to adults and children with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Its services include residential support, day habilitation, vocational, case management, crisis intervention, and hourly support care. The SRS segment delivers services to individuals who have suffered acquired brain injury, spinal injuries, and other catastrophic injuries and illnesses. Its services range from sub-acute healthcare for individuals with intensive medical needs to day treatment programs comprising neurorehabilitation, neurobehavioral rehabilitation, specialized nursing, physical, occupational and speech therapies, supported living, outpatient treatment, and pre-vocational services. The CFS segment offers services to youth with emotional, behavioral, and/or medically complex challenges. Its services include therapeutic foster care, family preservation, adoption services, early intervention, school-based services, and juvenile offender programs. The company also delivers elder services, such as case management, nursing oversight, medication management, nutrition, daily living assistance, therapeutic services, and transportation. It serves state, local, and other government payors and non-public payors. As of September 30, 2018, the company served approximately 12,700 individuals in residential settings and 19,000 individuals in non-residential settings in 36 states. The company was formerly known as NMH Holdings, Inc. The company was founded in 1980 and is based in Boston, Massachusetts. Civitas Solutions, Inc. is a subsidiary of Vestar Capital Partners.

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The following companies are subsidiares of Accenture: 2nd Road, 2nd Road Pty Ltd., ?What If!, ?What If! China Holdings Ltd, ?What If! Holdings Limited, ?What If! Innovation Singapore Holdings Pte, ?What If! Limited, ?What If! Shanghai Co. Ltd, ?What If! USA LLC, ACN Consulting Co Ltd, AD Dialeto Agencia de Publicidade SA, AD.Dialeto (Digital Agency acquired by Accenture), AGS Business and Technology Services Limited, ASM Research Inc., ASM Research LLC, ATAN, Accenture (Beijing) Mobile Technology Co Ltd, Accenture (Botswana) (Proprietary) Limited, Accenture (China) Co Ltd, Accenture (Shenzhen) Technology Co. Ltd., Accenture (South Africa) (Proprietary) Limited, Accenture (South Africa) Pty Limited, Accenture (UK) Ltd, Accenture 2 Business Process Services S.A., Accenture 2 LLC, Accenture A/S, Accenture AB, Accenture AG, Accenture AS, Accenture Africa Pty Ltd, Accenture Australia Holding B.V., Accenture Australia Holdings Pty Ltd, Accenture Australia Pty Ltd, Accenture Azerbaijan Ltd, Accenture BPM Operations Support Services S.A., Accenture BPM S.C.R.L., Accenture BV, Accenture Branch Holdings B.V., Accenture Bulgaria EOOD, Accenture Business Services for Utilities Inc, Accenture Business Services of British Columbia Limited Partnership, Accenture Business and Technology Services LLC, Accenture C.A, Accenture CAS GmbH, Accenture Canada Holdings Inc., Accenture Capital DAC, Accenture Capital Inc, Accenture Central Europe B.V., Accenture Chile Asesorias y Servicios Ltda, Accenture Cloud Services GmbH, Accenture Cloud Software Solutions Ltd, Accenture Cloud Solutions Australia Pty Ltd, Accenture Cloud Solutions LLC, Accenture Cloud Solutions Ltd, Accenture Cloud Solutions Pty Ltd, Accenture Co Ltd, Accenture Co Ltd., Accenture Communications Infrastructure Solutions Ltd, Accenture Company Ltd, Accenture Consulting Services Ltd Tanzania, Accenture Consultores de Gestao S.A., Accenture Consultoria de Industria e Consumo Ltda, Accenture Consultoria de Recursos Naturais Ltda, Accenture Credit Services LLC, Accenture Customer Services Distribution SAS, Accenture Customer Services Limited, Accenture Danismanlik Limited Sirketi, Accenture Defined Benefit Pension Plan Trustees Ltd, Accenture Defined Contribution Pension Plan Trustees Ltd, Accenture Delivery Poland sp. z o.o., Accenture Dienstleistungen GmbH, Accenture Digital France Holdings SA, Accenture Digital Holdings GmbH, Accenture East Africa Limited, Accenture Ecuador S.A., Accenture Egypt LLC, Accenture Enterprise Development (Shanghai) Co Ltd., Accenture Federal Services LLC, Accenture Finance (Gibraltar) III Ltd, Accenture Finance GmbH, Accenture Finance GmbH in liquidation, Accenture Finance II GmbH, Accenture Finance II GmbH in liquidation, Accenture Finance II Ltd, Accenture Finance Limited, Accenture Finance and Accounting BPO Services S.p.A., Accenture Finance and Accounting Services Srl, Accenture Flex LLC, Accenture GP LLC, Accenture Ghana Limited, Accenture Global Holdings Ltd., Accenture Global Services Ltd, Accenture Global Solutions Ltd, Accenture GmbH, Accenture HR Services Ltd, Accenture HR Services S.p.A., Accenture Healthcare Processing Inc., Accenture Holding GmbH, Accenture Holding GmbH & Co. KG, Accenture Holding GmbH in liquidation, Accenture Holdings (Iberia) S.L., Accenture Holdings B.V., Accenture Holdings France SAS, Accenture Holdings plc, Accenture Hungary Holdings Kft, Accenture Inc, Accenture Industrial Software Limited Liability Company (Accenture Endustriyel Yazylym Cozumleri Limited irketi), Accenture Industrial Software Limited Liability Company (Accenture Endustriyel Yazlm Cozumleri Limited Sirketi), Accenture Industrial Software Solutions Kft, Accenture Industrial Software Solutions SA, Accenture Insurance Services LLC, Accenture Insurance Services SAS, Accenture Insurance Services SpA, Accenture International BV, Accenture International Capital SCA, Accenture International LLC, Accenture International Limited, Accenture International Sarl, Accenture Japan Ltd, Accenture Korea BV, Accenture LLC, Accenture LLP, Accenture Lanka (Private) Ltd, Accenture Limited, Accenture Ltd, Accenture Ltda, Accenture Maghreb S.a.r.l., Accenture Managed Services SRL, Accenture Managed Services SpA, Accenture Management GmbH, Accenture Middle East B.V, Accenture Middle East BV, Accenture Minority I BV, Accenture Minority III Ltd, Accenture Mozambique Limitada, Accenture Mzansi (Pty) Ltd, Accenture NV/SA, Accenture NZ Limited, Accenture Newco LLC, Accenture Nova Scotia Unlimited Liability Co., Accenture OOO, Accenture Operations Sp. z o.o., Accenture Outsourcing SRL, Accenture Outsourcing Services, Accenture Outsourcing Services S.A., Accenture Oy, Accenture Panama Inc, Accenture Participations BV, Accenture Participations II Limited, Accenture Peru S.R.L, Accenture Peru S.R.L., Accenture Post Trade Processing SAS, Accenture Post-Trade Processing Limited, Accenture Process Ltd, Accenture Product Lifecycle Services, Accenture Properties, Accenture Pte Ltd, Accenture Puerto Rico LLC, Accenture S.A., Accenture S.C., Accenture S.L., Accenture S.R.L., Accenture SAS, Accenture SG Services Pte Ltd, Accenture SRL, Accenture Saudi Arabia Limited, Accenture Sendirian Berhad, Accenture Service Center SRL, Accenture Services (Mauritius) Ltd, Accenture Services AB, Accenture Services AG, Accenture Services AS, Accenture Services GmbH, Accenture Services Ltd, Accenture Services Morocco SA, Accenture Services Oy, Accenture Services Pty Ltd, Accenture Services S.r.l., Accenture Services SRL, Accenture Services Sp. z o.o., Accenture Services Sp. z.o.o., Accenture Services and Technology Srl, Accenture Services fur Kreditinstitute GmbH, Accenture Services s.r.o., Accenture Servicos Administrativos Ltda, Accenture Servicos de Suporte de Negocios Ltda, Accenture Solutions Co Ltd, Accenture Solutions Private Limited, Accenture Solutions Pte Ltd, Accenture Solutions Pty Ltd, Accenture Solutions Sdn Bhd, Accenture Sp. z o.o., Accenture Sp. z.o.o., Accenture SpA, Accenture State Healthcare Services LLC, Accenture Sub II Inc., Accenture Sub Inc, Accenture Sub LLC, Accenture Systems Integration Limited, Accenture Sarl, Accenture Tanacsado Kolatolt Felelossegu Tarsasag, Accenture Tanacsado Kolatolt Felelossegu Tarsasag KFT, Accenture Technologia, Accenture Technologia Consultoria e Outsourcing S.A., Accenture Technology Infrastructure Services Pty Ltd, Accenture Technology Solutions (Dalian) Co Ltd, Accenture Technology Solutions (HK) Co. Ltd., Accenture Technology Solutions (Thailand) Co. Ltd, Accenture Technology Solutions - Solucoes Informaticas Integradas, Accenture Technology Solutions - Solucoes Informaticas Integradas S.A., Accenture Technology Solutions GmbH, Accenture Technology Solutions Oy, Accenture Technology Solutions Pty Ltd, Accenture Technology Solutions S.A. de C.V., Accenture Technology Solutions SAS, Accenture Technology Solutions SRL, Accenture Technology Solutions Sdn. Bhd., Accenture Technology Solutions Slovakia s.r.o., Accenture Technology Ventures BV, Accenture Technology Ventures S.P.R.L., Accenture Uruguay SRL, Accenture Vietnam Co., Accenture Vietnam Co. LTD, Accenture Zambia Limited, Accenture do Brasil Limitada, Accenture plc, Accenture s.r.o., Acceria, Acquity Customer Insight Limited, Acquity Group, Adaptly LLC, Adaptly UK Limited, AddVal Technology, Adqptly, Advantium Inc., Agave Consultants Limited, Agilex Technologies Inc., Allen International, Allen International Consulting Group Ltd, Alnova Technologies Corporation S.L., AlphaBeta Advisors, Altima, Altima Asia Ltd., Altima SAS, Altitude, Altitude LLC, Analytics 8 LP, Analytics 8 Pty Ltd, Analytics8, Aorui Advertising (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Apis, Appaloosa Technology SAS, Arca, Ariba - BPO, Arismore, Aspiro Solutions (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Avanade, Avanade (Guangzhou) Computer Technology Development Co. Ltd., Avanade (Thailand) Co Ltd, Avanade Asia Pte Ltd, Avanade Australia Pty Ltd, Avanade Belgium SPRL, Avanade Canada Inc., Avanade Denmark A/S, Avanade Denmark ApS, Avanade Deutschland GmbH, Avanade Europe Holdings Ltd, Avanade Europe Services Ltd, Avanade Federal Services LLC, Avanade Finland Oy, Avanade France SAS, Avanade GZ Computer Technology Development Co. Ltd. (SH), Avanade Guangzhou, Avanade Holdings LLC, Avanade Hong Kong Ltd, Avanade International Corporation, Avanade Ireland Limited, Avanade Italy SRL, Avanade KK, Avanade Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Avanade Netherlands BV, Avanade Norway AS, Avanade Poland Sp. z o.o., Avanade Poland Sp. z.o.o., Avanade Schweiz GmbH, Avanade South Africa, Avanade South Africa Pty Ltd, Avanade Spain SL, Avanade Sweden AB, Avanade UK Ltd, Avanade do Brasil Limitada, Avanade Osterreich GmbH, AvantBiz Consulting Limited, Avenai, Axia Ltd., BABCN LLC, BCT Solutions, BCT Solutions Pty Ltd, BPO Servicos Administrativos Ltda, BRIDGE Energy Group, Beacon Consulting Group Inc., Beijing Genesis Interactive Technology Co. Ltd., Boomerang Pharmaceutical Communications, Boomerang Pharmaceuticals Communications Ireland Limited, Bow & Arrow, Brand Learning, Brand Learning Group Limited, Brand Learning LLC, Brand Learning Ltd, Brand Learning Partners Limited, Brand Learning Pte Limited, Bridge Energy Group LLC, Brightstep AB, Byte Prophecy, CAS, CRMWaypoint, CadenceQuest Inc., Capable Marketer Limited, Capgemini - North American health practice, Capital Consultancy Services Inc., Certus Solutions Consulting Services Ltd, Certus Solutions Ltd, ChangeTrack Research Pty Ltd., Chaotic Moon Studios, Chengdu Mensa Advertising Co. Ltd., Cimation, Cimation UK Limited, Cirruseo, Cirruseo SAS, Clarity Insights, Clearhead, Clearhead Group, Clearhead Group LLC, ClientHouse GmbH, Cloud Sherpas, Cloud Sherpas (GA) LLC, Cloud Sherpas (SN) (PTE.) Limited, Cloud Sherpas New Zealand Ltd., Cloud Talent Limited, Cloudsherpas, Cloudsherpas Inc., Cloudworks, Codagenic Pty. Ltd., Computer Research and Telecommunications LLC, Concrete Desenvolvimento de Sistemas Ltda., Concrete Solutions, Concrete Solutions Ltda., Context Information Security, Coritel S.A., Corliant Inc., CreativeDrive, CustomerWorks Europe SL, Cutting Edge Solutions Ltd, D5 Global Holdings LLC, DAZ Systems Inc, DAZ Systems LLC, DAZSI Systems (India) Pvt. Ltd., DMA Solutions Limited, Davies Consulting, DayNine Consulting, DayNine Consulting (Australia) PTY LTD, DayNine Consulting (Deutschland) GmbH, DayNine Consulting (New Zealand) Limited, DayNine Consulting France SAS, DayNine Consulting Japan K.K., DayNine Consulting LLC, Declarative Holdings, Declarative Holdings LLC, Defense Point Security, Deja vu Security, Design Strategy and Research de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Designaffairs LLC, Digiplug S.A.S., Digiplug SAS, Digital Consulting & Software Services LLC, Droga5, Droga5 LLC, Droga5 Studios LLC, Droga5 UK Ltd., Duck Creek Technologies, Duck Creek Technologies LLC, Deja Vu Security LLC, ESR Labs, Elcurator SAS, Enaxis Consulting, Enaxis Consulting L.P., End-to-End Analytics, Energuia Web, Energuia Web S.A., Energy Management Brokers Ltd., Energy Quote Private Ltd., EnergyQuote JHA, EnergyQuote JHA Ltd., EnergyQuote Trading Ltd., Enimbos, Enkitec, Enterprise System Partners, Enterprise System Partners B.V. , Enterprise System Partners Bilisim Danismanlik Ticaret Anonim Sirketi, Enterprise System Partners Global Corporation, Enterprise System Partners Limited, Enterprise System Partners PR LLC, Enterprise System Partners S.A.S., Entropia, Epylon, Evopro Group, Exactside Limited, Fairway Technologies Inc, Fairway Technologies LLC, Filmproduction ApS, First Annapolis Consulting, First Annapolis Consulting Inc., First Annapolis Consulting LLC, First Annapolis International, Fjord, Focus Group Europe, Focus Group Europe Limited, Formicary, Formicary Holdings Limited, Formicary Limited, FusionX, FutureMove Automotive, Gapso Servicos de Informatica Ltda., Genfour, Genfour Limited, George Group Consulting L.P., Gestalt LLC, Gestion Altima Canada Inc., Global Public Firm S.L., GlobalView SAS, GoodFilm GmbH Filmproduktion Stuttgart, H.B. Maynard and Co. Inc., Hagberg Consulting Group, Hangzhou Aiyunzhe Technology Co. Ltd., Happen, Hjaltelin Stahl, Hjaltelin Stahl K/S, Hytracc Consulting AS, Hytracc Consulting Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., Hytracc Consulting UK Limited, Hytracc Holding AS, I-Faber S.p.A., IBB Consulting, IMJ Corp, IMJ Corporation, INCAD, INSITUM, IT One Company Limited, ITBS Servicios Bancarios de Tecnologia de la Informacion SL, Icon Integration, Imagine Broadband (USA) Ltd, Imagine Broadband USA LLC, Imaginea Inc, Industrie&Co, Infoman AG, Infoman Schweiz AG, Informatica de Euskadi S.L., Infusion Development Inc., Infusion Development UK Limited, InfusionDev LLC, Innoveer Solutions India Pvt Ltd, Insitum Consultoria Argentina SRL, Insitum Consultoria Brasil LTDA, Insitum Consultoria Colombia SAS, Insitum Consultoria Europa SL, Insitum Consultoria Peru SAC, Insitum Consultoria S.A. de C.V., Intrepid, Intrigo Systems Inc, Intrigo Systems India Pvt. Limited, Intrigo Systems LLC, Inventor Advertisement (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Inventor Technology Limited, InvestTech, Investtech Systems Consulting LLC, Javelin Group, Javelin Group (Bulgaria) EOOD, Javelin Group Limited (UK), Javelin Group SASU, K Comms Group Limited, KCS.net AG, KCS.net AG West, KCS.net Deutschland GmbH, KCS.net Holding AG, KCS.net Osterreich GmbH, Kaper Communications Limited, Karma Communications Debtco Limited, Karma Communications Group Limited, Karma Communications Holdings Limited, Karmarama, Karmarama Comms Limited, Karmarama Limited, Knowledge Rules Inc., Knowledgent, Knowledgent Group LLC, Kogentix, Kogentix LLC, Kogentix Ltd, Kogentix Singapore Pte. Ltd, Kogentix Technologies Private Limited, Kolle Rebbe, Kolle Rebbe GmbH, Kream Comms Limited, Kunstmaan, Kunstmaan NV, Kurt Salmon, Kurt Salmon Canada LTD, Kurt Salmon UKI, Kurt Salmon UKI Ltd., Kurt Salmon US LLC, LINKBYNET, LabAnswer, LabAnswer Government, LemonXL Limited, Logistics Market Place Limited (UK), Loud & Clear Creative Pty Ltd, MAXIM Systems Inc., MCG US Holdings LLC, Mackevision CG Technology and Service (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Mackevision Corporation, Mackevision Japan Co. Ltd., Mackevision Korea Ltd, Mackevision Medien Design, Mackevision Medien Design GmbH, Mackevision Singapore Pte. Ltd., Mackevision UK Ltd, Maglan, Maglan Information Defense Technologies Research Ltd., Maihiro, Matter, Matter Llc, Maud Corp Pty Limited, Maxamine International, Media Audits Ltd., Media Hive, Mediasenz Pty Ltd., Meredith Specialty LLC, Meredith Xcelerated Marketing, Meredith Xcelerated Marketing Corporation, Meridian Informed Purchasing Ltd., Mindtribe, Mindtribe Product Engineering LLC, MobGen, MobGen Technology S.L, Moonrise NV, Mortgage Cadence, Mortgage Cadence an Accenture Company, Most Champion Ltd, Mudano, N3 LLC, NBS Marketing Inc., NYTEC, Nanjing Demeng Advertising Co. Ltd., Nashco Consulting, NaviSys Inc., NellArmonia, Neo Metrics Analytics S.L., Neo Metrics Chile, Neo Metrics Chile S.A., New Content, New Content Chile SpA, New Content Editora e Produtora Ltda., New Energy Aborda, New Energy Associates Ltd, New Energy Group, New Energy S.r.l., NewsPage, NewsPage (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, NewsPage China Ltd., NewsPage Pte Ltd, Nice Agency Limited, Northstream, Northstream AB, Northstream Holding AB, OCTO Technology, OPS Rules Management Consultants, Octagon Research Solutions Inc., Octo Technology LTDA, Octo Technology Pty Ltd, Octo Technology SA, Octo Technology SPRL, Octoman SAS, Odgaard ApS, Olikka, Openminded, Operaciones Accenture S.A. de C.V., OpusLine, Orbium, Orbium Consulting Ltd, Orbium GmbH, Orbium Holding AG, Orbium Inc., Orbium International AG, Orbium International sp. z o.o., Orbium Licences AG, Orbium Limited, Orbium Pte. Ltd., Orbium Pty Ltd, Orbium Services sp. z o.o., Orbium Sarl, Origin Digital, PCO Innovation, PCO Innovation Canada Inc., PCO Innovation EURL, PIXO PUNCH Limited, PLM Systems S.r.l, POC Holdings, PRION GmbH, PT Accenture, PT Asta Catur Indra, PT Kogentix Teknologi Indonesia, Pach Invest SARL, Pach Invest SAS, PacificLink Group, PacificLink iMedia Ltd., Paja Finanssipalvelut Oy, Parker Fitzgerald Inc, Parker Fitzgerald Inc., Parker Fitzgerald International Limited, Parker Fitzgerald Limited, Parker Fitzgerald PTY Ltd, Parker Fitzgerald Services Limited, Parker Fitzgerald Solutions Limited, Partners Technology Mexico Holdings BV, Pecaso Ltd., Pegasus Production K/S, Perseroan Terbatas. Accenture, Phase One Consulting Group, Pillar Technology, Pollux, Pragsis Bidoop, Pragsis Bidoop UK Ltd, Pragsis Technologies S.L, PrimeQ, PrimeQ Australia Pty Ltd, PrimeQ Ltd, PrimeQ NZ Pty Ltd, Procurian Germany GmbH, Procurian Inc., Procurian International I LLC, Procurian International II LLC, Procurian LLC, Procurian Singapore Pte. Ltd., Procurian Switzerland GmbH, Procurian USA LLC, Proquire LLC, PureApps Ltd., Qi Jie Beijing Information Technologies Co Ltd, Radiant Services, Radiant Services LLC, Random Walk Computing Inc., Reactive Media Limited, Reactive Media Pty Ltd., Real Protect, Realworld OO Systems Ltd., Redcore, Redcore (Asia) Pte Ltd, Redcore (India) Private Limited (India), Redcore (New Zealand) Limited, Redcore Group Holdings Pty Ltd, Redcore Pty Ltd, Renacentis IT Services, Revolutionary Security, RiskControl, Rothco, Rothco Holdings Designated Activity Company, Rothco Unlimited Company, S.C. EnergyQuote S.r.l., S3 TV Technology Limited, S3 TV Technology Ltd., SALT Solutions GmbH, SEC Servizi, SEC Servizi S.p.A., SOPIA Corp., Sagacious Consultants, Sagacious Consultants LLC, Sanchez Capital Services Pvt Ltd, Schlumberger Business Consulting, Seabury Airline Planning Group, Seabury Aviation & Aerospace (UK) Limited, Seabury Aviation & Aerospace Asia (Hong Kong) Limited, Seabury Aviation Consulting LLC, Seabury Cargo Advisory B.V., Seabury Consulting, Seabury Corporate Advisors LLC, Seabury Human Capital LLC, Seabury Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., Seabury Structured Finance LLC, Search Technologies BPO, Search Technologies BPO Inc., Search Technologies GmbH, Search Technologies International LLC, Search Technologies LATAM, Search Technologies LATAM S.A., Search Technologies LLC, Search Technologies Limited, Sente Partners LLC, Sentelis, Servicios Tecnicos de Programacion Accenture S.C., Shackleton, Shackleton Barcelona S.L., Shackleton Chile S.A., Shackleton Madrid S.L., Shackleton S.A., Shanghai Baiyue Advertising Co. Ltd., Shun Zhe Technology Development Co. Ltd., Silveo, Simian Pty Limited, SinnerSchrader AG, SinnerSchrader Commerce GmbH, SinnerSchrader Content GmbH, SinnerSchrader Deutschland GmbH, SinnerSchrader Praha s.r.o., SinnerSchrader Swipe GmbH, Sinnerschrader, Sistemes Consulting S.L., Solutions IQ, Solutions IQ LLC, SolutionsIQ, SolutionsIQ India Consulting Services Private Limited, Storm Digital, Storm Digital B.V., Structure Consulting Group, Structure Consulting Group LLC, Sutter Mills, Systor AG, TQuila Limited (UK), Tadata Creative Unlimited Company, Tara Insurance DAC, Tara Risk DAC, TargetST8, TargetST8 Consulting LLC, Tech - Avanade Portugal Unipessoal Lda, Tecnilogica Ecosistemas S.A., Tecnilogica Ltd., Tecnilogica, The Brand Learning Partners Limited, The Callisto Integration Corporation, The Monkeys, The Monkeys Pty Limited, The Myrtle Group, Total Logistics, Total Logistics Supply Chain Consultants Limited, Tquila, Troop Studios Pty Ltd, VanBerlo, Verax Solutions, Verax Solutions Corporation, Vertical Retail Consulting (Shanghai) Ltd., Vertical Retail Consulting Hong Kong, Vertical Retail Consulting Hong Kong Ltd., Vertical Retail Consulting Ltd., Vivere Brasil Servicos e Solucoes SA, Vivere Brasil Solucoes De Credito Ltda., Wabion GmbH, Weblinc Pty Ltd, Wire Stone, Wire Stone LLC, Wire Stone Sarl, Wolox, Workforce Insight Inc, Yesler, Zag, Zenta, Zenta Global Philippines, Zenta Global Philippines Inc., Zenta Mortgage Services LLC, Zenta Recoveries Inc, Zenta US Holdings Inc., Zielpuls, Zielpuls (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Zielpuls GmbH, avVenta, designaffairs, designaffairs Business Consulting (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., designaffairs GmbH, designaffairs group China Co. Ltd., dgroup, i4C Analytics, iDefense, and solid-serVision.com GmbH.
First American Financial Corp. operates as an insurance company. It provides title insurance and settlement services to the real estate and mortgage industries. The company operates its business through the following segments: Title Insurance & Services and Specialty Insurance. The Title Insurance & Services segment provides title insurance, escrow, closing services and similar or related financial services domestically and internationally in connection with residential and commercial real estate transactions. It also maintains, manages and provides access to title plant records and images and provides banking, trust and investment advisory services. The Specialty Insurance segment issues property & casualty insurance policies and sells home warranty products. It also provides title plant management services, which include title and other real property records and images, valuation products and services, home warranty products, property and casualty insurance and banking, trust and investment advisory services. First American Financial was founded in January, 2008 and is headquartered in Santa Ana, CA.

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The Bank of Nova Scotia provides various banking products and services in Canada, the United States, Mexico, Peru, Chile, Colombia, the Caribbean and Central America, and internationally. It operates through Canadian Banking, International Banking, Global Banking and Markets, and Global Wealth Management segments. The company offers financial advice and solutions, and day-to-day banking products, including debit and credit cards, chequing and saving accounts, investments, mortgages, loans, and insurance to individuals; and business banking solutions comprising lending, deposit, cash management, and trade finance solutions to small businesses and commercial customers, including automotive financing solutions to dealers and their customers. It also provides wealth management advice and solutions, including online brokerage, mobile investment, full-service brokerage, trust, private banking, and private investment counsel services; and retail mutual funds, exchange traded funds, liquid alternative funds, and institutional funds. In addition, the company offers international banking services for retail, corporate, and commercial customers; and lending and transaction, investment banking advisory, and capital markets access services to corporate customers. Further, it provides Internet, mobile, and telephone banking services. The company operates a network of 952 branches and approximately 3,540 automated banking machines in Canada; and approximately 1,400 branches, 5,200 ATMs, and 22 contact centers internationally. The Bank of Nova Scotia was founded in 1832 and is headquartered in Halifax, Canada.

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Jenoptik AG engages in the optics and photonics business in Germany and internationally. The company operates through Light & Optics, Light & Production, and Light & Safety divisions. It offers automation solutions and application products, such as welding and fastening systems, material handling, transfer devices and systems, fixtures, end of arm tooling, and positioners; develops and manufactures metrology solutions comprising dimensional, form, in-process, optical, optical surface inspection, and roughness and contour metrology, as well as laser distance sensors for monitoring and optimizing production processes; microscope and thermographic camera, imaging modules, polymer-based camera modules, and digital imaging platforms; and diode and solid state lasers, laser distance meters, laser machines, and objective lenses and beam expanders for laser perforation, laser cutting, and laser welding applications. The company also provides light detection and ranging sensors; optical systems; optoelectronic systems and components. In addition, it offers traffic safety systems; digital camera technology with license plate recognition; lasers, radar, piezo sensors, and induction loop sensors; back-office software for evaluating traffic monitoring data; and stationary and mobile traffic monitoring. Further, the company provides civil security solutions, such as automatic number plate recognition (ANPR); and TraffiData analysis software, which provides analysis in real time on the incoming data. It serves semiconductor equipment, automotive and suppliers, mechanical engineering, medical technology, traffic, aviation, and security and defense technology companies. Jenoptik AG was founded in 1846 and is headquartered in Jena, Germany.

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The following companies are subsidiares of American Tower: 10 Presidential Way Associates LLC, 3267351 Nova Scotia Company, 3286208 Nova Scotia Company, 3298099 Nova Scotia Company, 52 Eighty LLC, 52 Eighty Partners LLC, 52 Eighty Tower Partners I LLC, ACC Tower Sub LLC, AT Kenya C.V., AT Netherlands C.V., AT Netherlands Cooperatief U.A., AT Sao Paulo C.V., AT Sher Netherlands Cooperatief U.A., AT South America C.V., ATC Africa Holding B.V., ATC Africa Shared Services (Pty) Ltd, ATC Antennas Holding LLC, ATC Antennas LLC, ATC Argentina C.V., ATC Argentina Cooperatief U.A., ATC Argentina Holding LLC, ATC Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., ATC Atlantic C.V., ATC Atlantic II B.V., ATC Atlantic III B.V., ATC Backhaul LLC, ATC Brasil  Servicos de Conectividades Ltda., ATC Brazil Holding LLC, ATC Brazil I LLC, ATC Brazil II LLC, ATC Burkina Faso S.A., ATC CSR Foundation India, ATC Chile Holding LLC, ATC Colombia B.V., ATC Colombia Holding I LLC, ATC Colombia Holding LLC, ATC Colombia I LLC, ATC EH GmbH & Co. KG, ATC Ecuador Holding LLC, ATC Edge LLC, ATC Ethiopia Infrastructure Development Private Limited Company, ATC Europe B.V., ATC Europe LLC, ATC European Holdings Inc., ATC Fibra de Colombia S.A.S., ATC France Cooperatief U.A., ATC France Holding II SAS, ATC France Holding SAS, ATC France Reseaux SAS, ATC France SAS, ATC France Services SAS, ATC GP GmbH, ATC Germany Holdings GmbH, ATC Germany Services GmbH, ATC Ghana ServiceCo Limited, ATC Global Employment B.V., ATC Heston B.V., ATC Holding Fibra Mexico S. de R.L. DE C.V., ATC IP LLC, ATC India Infrastructure Private Limited, ATC Indoor DAS Holding LLC, ATC Indoor DAS LLC, ATC International Cooperatief U.A., ATC International Financing B.V., ATC International Financing II B.V., ATC International Financing II Holding LLC, ATC International Holding Corp., ATC Iris I LLC, ATC Kenya Operations Limited, ATC Kenya Services Limited, ATC Latin America S.A. de C.V. SOFOM E.N.R., ATC MIP III REIT Iron Holdings LLC, ATC Managed Sites Holding LLC, ATC Managed Sites LLC, ATC MexHold LLC, ATC Mexico Holding LLC, ATC Niger Wireless Infrastructure S.A., ATC Nigeria C.V., ATC Nigeria Cooperatief U.A., ATC Nigeria Holding LLC, ATC Nigeria Wireless Infrastructure Limited, ATC On Air + LLC, ATC Operations LLC, ATC Outdoor DAS LLC, ATC Paraguay Holding LLC, ATC Paraguay S.R.L., ATC Peru Holding LLC, ATC Polska sp. z o.o., ATC Ponderosa B-I LLC, ATC Ponderosa B-II LLC, ATC Ponderosa K LLC, ATC Ponderosa K-R LLC, ATC Sequoia LLC, ATC Sitios Infraco S.A.S., ATC Sitios de Chile S.A., ATC Sitios de Colombia S.A.S., ATC Sitios del Peru S.R.L., ATC South Africa Investment Holdings (Proprietary) Limited, ATC South Africa Services Pty Ltd, ATC South Africa Wireless Infrastructure (Pty) Ltd, ATC South Africa Wireless Infrastructure II (Pty) Ltd, ATC South America Holding LLC, ATC South LLC, ATC Spain LLC, ATC TRS I LLC, ATC TRS II LLC, ATC TRS III LLC, ATC TRS IV LLC, ATC Tanzania Holding LLC, ATC Telecom Infrastructure Private Limited, ATC Tower (Ghana) Limited, ATC Tower Services LLC, ATC Uganda Limited, ATC Uganda ServiceCo (SMC) Limited, ATC Watertown LLC, ATC WiFi LLC, ATS-Needham LLC, ActiveX Telebroadband Services Private Limited, Adquisiciones y Proyectos Inalambricos S. de R. L. de C.V., Agile Airband Ohio LLC, Agile Connect LLC, Agile IWG Holdings LLC, Agile Network Builders LLC, Agile Networks Indiana LLC, Agile Networks Site Development LLC, Agile Towers LLC, Alternative Networking LLC, American Tower Asset Sub II LLC, American Tower Asset Sub LLC, American Tower Charitable Foundation Inc., American Tower Delaware Corporation, American Tower Depositor Sub LLC, American Tower Guarantor Sub LLC, American Tower Holding Sub II LLC, American Tower Holding Sub LLC, American Tower International Holding I LLC, American Tower International Holding II LLC, American Tower International Inc., American Tower Investments LLC, American Tower LLC, American Tower Management LLC, American Tower Mauritius, American Tower Servicios Fibra S. de R.L. de C.V., American Tower Tanzania Operations Limited, American Tower do Brasil - Cessao de Infraestruturas Ltda., American Tower do Brasil  Communicacao Multimidia Ltda., American Towers LLC, BR Towers, Blue Sky Towers Pty Ltd, Blue Transfer Sociedad Anonima, Broadcast Towers LLC, CNC2 Associates LLC, California Tower Inc., Cell Site NewCo II LLC, Cell Tower Lease Acquisition LLC, Central States Tower Holdings LLC, Colo ATL LLC, Colo Atl, Communications Properties Inc., Comunicaciones y Consumos S.A., Connectivity Infrastructure Services Limited, DCS Tower Sub LLC, Eaton, Eaton Towers (Lilongwe) Limited, Eaton Towers Ghana (M) Limited, Eaton Towers Ghana Limited, Eaton Towers Holdings Limited, Eaton Towers Kenya Limited, Eaton Towers Limited, Eaton Towers Niger S.A., Eaton Towers Uganda Limited, Essar Telecom Infrastructure, Eure-et-Loir Reseaux Mobiles SAS, GTP Acquisition Partners I LLC, GTP Acquisition Partners II LLC, GTP Acquisition Partners III LLC, GTP Costa Rica Finance LLC, GTP Infrastructure I LLC, GTP Infrastructure II LLC, GTP Infrastructure III LLC, GTP Investments LLC, GTP LATAM Holdings B.V., GTP LatAm Holdings Cooperatieve U.A., GTP Operations CR S.R.L., GTP South Acquisitions II LLC, GTP Structures I LLC, GTP Structures II LLC, GTP TRS I LLC, GTP Torres CR S.R.L., GTP Towers I LLC, GTP Towers II LLC, GTP Towers III LLC, GTP Towers IV LLC, GTP Towers IX LLC, GTP Towers V LLC, GTP Towers VII LLC, GTP Towers VIII LLC, GTPI HoldCo LLC, Ghana Tower InterCo B.V., Global Tower Assets III LLC, Global Tower Assets LLC, Global Tower Holdings LLC, Global Tower LLC, Global Tower Partners, Global Tower Services LLC, Gondola Tower Holdings LLC, Grain HoldCo LLC, Grain HoldCo Parent LLC, GrainComm I LLC, GrainComm II LLC, GrainComm III LLC, GrainComm LLC, GrainComm Marketing LLC, GrainComm V LLC, Haysville Towers LLC, IW Equipment LLC, IWD Equipment LLC, IWG Holdings LLC, IWG II Holdings LLC, IWG II LLC, IWG Miami LLC, IWG Towers Assets I LLC, IWG Towers Assets II LLC, IWG-TLA Australia Pty Ltd., IWG-TLA Canada Corp., IWG-TLA Encanto 1 LLC, IWG-TLA Encanto 2 LLC, IWG-TLA Encanto 3 LLC, IWG-TLA Encanto LLC, IWG-TLA Holdings LLC, IWG-TLA Media 2 LLC, IWG-TLA Media LLC, IWG-TLA Telecom LLC, IWL-TLA Telecom 2 LLC, Idaho Tower Company LLC, InSite (BCEC) LLC, InSite (MBTA) LLC, InSite Borrower LLC, InSite Co-Issuer Corp., InSite Guarantor LLC, InSite Hawaii LLC, InSite Issuer LLC, InSite Licensing LLC, InSite Towers Development 2 LLC, InSite Towers Development LLC, InSite Towers International 2 LLC, InSite Towers International Development LLC, InSite Towers International LLC, InSite Towers LLC, InSite Towers of Puerto Rico LLC, InSite Wireless Development LLC, InSite Wireless Group, InSite Wireless Group LLC, Insite Wireless LLC, Invisible IWG Holdings LLC, Invisible Towers LLC, JT Communications LLC, LAP Inmobiliaria Limitada, LAP Inmobiliaria S.R.L., LL B Sheet 1 LLC, Lap do Brasil Empreendimentos Imobiliarios Ltda, Lease Advisors-AU PTY LTD, Loxel SAS, MATC Digital S. de R.L. de C.V., MATC Infraestructura S. de R.L. de C.V., MATC Servicios S. de R.L. de C.V., MC New Macland Properties LLC, MCSU Properties LLC, MHB Tower Rentals of America LLC, MIP III Iron Holdings LLC, MIP III U.S. Iron LLC, Microwave Inc., Municipal Bay LLC, Municipal-Bay Holdings LLC, New Towers LLC, PCS Structures Towers LLC, R-CAL I LLC, RSA Media Inc., Repeater Communications Group I LLC, Repeater Communications Group II LLC, Repeater Communications Group III LLC, Repeater Communications Group IV LLC, Repeater Communications Group LLC, Repeater Communications Group V LLC, Repeater Communications Group VI LLC, Repeater Communications Group of New York LLC, Repeater IWG Holdings LLC, Richland Towers LLC, Signum/IWG Tower Corp., Southeast Network Access Point LLC, SpectraSite Communications, SpectraSite Communications LLC, SpectraSite LLC, T8 Ulysses Site Management LLC, TLA PR-1 LLC, TLA PR-2 LLC, Telecom Lease Advisors Management 2 LLC, Tower Management Inc., Towers of America L.L.L.P., Transcend Infrastructure Holdings Pte. Ltd., Transcend Towers Infrastructure (Philippines) Inc., Turris Sites Development Corp., Turris Sites IWG Corp, Tysons II DAS LLC, UNIsite, Uganda Tower Interco B.V., Ulysses Asset Sub I LLC, Ulysses Asset Sub II LLC, UniSite LLC, UniSite/Omnipoint FL Tower Venture LLC, UniSite/Omnipoint NE Tower Venture LLC, UniSite/Omnipoint PA Tower Venture LLC, Vangard Wireless LLC, Verus Management One LLC, Viom Networks, and Virdi IWG Holdings LLC.
The following companies are subsidiares of Thermo Fisher Scientific: 236 Perinton Parkway LLC, 27 Forge Parkway LLC, ABR--Affinity BioReagents, ACI Holdings Inc., ARG Services LLC, ASPEX Corporation, Abgene Inc., Abgene Limited, Acoustic Cytometry Systems Inc., AcroMetrix LLC, Acros Organics B.V.B.A., Advanced Biotechnologies Limited, Advanced Scientifics (ASI), Advanced Scientifics Inc., Advanced Scientifics International Inc., Affymetrix Biotech Participacoes Ltda., Affymetrix Biotech Shanghai Ltd, Affymetrix Inc, Affymetrix Japan K.K., Affymetrix Pte Ltd, Affymetrix UK Ltd, Afora S.A.U., Ahura Scientific, Alchematrix Inc., Alchematrix LLC, Alfa Aesar, Alfa Aesar (China) Chemical Co. Ltd., Alfa Aesar (Hong Kong) Limited, Allergon AB, Alphine Mountain Limited, Ambion Inc., Apogent Denmark ApS, Apogent Finance Company, Apogent Holding Company, Apogent Technologies Inc., Apogent Transition Corp., Apogent U.K. Limited, App-Tek International Pty Ltd, Applied Biosystems B.V., Applied Biosystems Finance B.V., Applied Biosystems International Inc., Applied Biosystems LLC, Applied Biosystems Taiwan LLC, Applied Biosystems Trading (Shanghai) Company Ltd., Applied Biosystems de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Applied Scientific Corporation, Avances Cientificos de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Avocado Research Chemicals Limited, B.R.A.H.M.S. Biotech GmbH, B.R.A.H.M.S. GmbH, B.R.A.H.M.S. UK Ltd, BAC BV, BAC IP BV, Barnstead Thermolyne LLC, Beijing Phadia Diagnostics Co Ltd, Bender MedSystems GmbH, BioTrove Corporation, BioTrove International Inc., Bioanalysis Labsystems S.A., Biochemical Sciences LLC, Biolab, BmT GmbH Laborprodukte, Bonsai Tecnologies - Sistemas para Biotecnologia e Industria Unipessoal Lda, Brammer Bio, Bumi-Sans Sendirian Berhad, CAC Limited, CB Diagnostics AB, CB Diagnostics Holding AB, CEPH International Corporation, CHK Holdings Inc., CRS Robotics, CTPS LLC, Capitol Scientific Products Inc., Capitol Vial Inc., Cellomics Inc., CellzDirect Inc., Cenduit GmbH, Cenduit LLC, Cezanne S.A.S., Chase Scientific Glass Inc., Chromacol Limited, Clintrak, Clintrak Clinical Labeling Services LLC, Clintrak Pharmaceutical Services LLC, Cohesive Technologies (UK) Limited, Cohesive Technologies Inc., Columbia Diagnostics Inc., Compendia Bioscience Inc., Comtest Limited, Consolidated Technologies Inc., Consultores Fisher Scientific Chile Ltd, Core Informatics, Core Informatics LLC, Core Informatics UK Ltd., D-finitive Technologies Inc., DCG Systems B.V., DCG Systems C.V., DCG Systems G.K., DCG Systems GmbH, DCG Systems Korea Ltd., DCG Systems LLC, DPI Newco LLC, DSM Pharmaceutical Products Inc., Dharmacon, Diagnostix Ltd., Dionex (China) Analytical Ltd, Dionex (Switzerland) AG, Dionex (UK) Limited, Dionex Austria GmbH, Dionex Benelux B.V., Dionex Brasil Instrumentos Cientificos Ltda, Dionex Canada Ltd., Dionex China Limited, Dionex Corporation, Dionex Denmark A/S, Dionex Holding GmbH, Dionex I LLC, Dionex Pty Ltd., Dionex S.A., Dionex S.p.A., Dionex Singapore Pte Ltd., Dionex Softron GmbH, Dionex Sweden AB, Distribution Solutions International Inc., Doe & Ingalls Investors Inc., Doe & Ingalls Limited, Doe & Ingalls Management LLC, Doe & Ingalls Properties II LLC, Doe & Ingalls Properties LLC, Doe & Ingalls of California Operating LLC, Doe & Ingalls of Florida Operating LLC, Doe & Ingalls of Maryland Operating LLC, Doe & Ingalls of Massachusetts Operating LLC, Doe & Ingalls of North Carolina Operating LLC, Doublecape Holding Limited, Doublecape Limited, Drakeside Real Estate Holding Company LLC, Duke Scientific Corporation, Dynal Biotech Beijing Limited, EGS Gauging Ltd., EGS Gauging Technical Services Company, EP Scientific Products LLC, Ecochem N.V., EnviroEquip Pty Ltd, Epsom Glass Industries Limited, Equibio Limited, Erie Electroverre S.A., Erie Finance Limited, Erie LP Holding LLC, Erie Scientific Company of Puerto Rico, Erie Scientific Hungary Kft, Erie Scientific LLC, Erie U.K. Limited, Erie UK 1 Limited, Erie UK 2 Limited, Erie UK Holding Company, Erie UK Senior Holding Limited, European Laboratory Holdings Limited, Eutech Instruments Europe B.V., Eutech Instruments Pte Ltd., Eutech Instruments Sdn Bhd, Ever Ready Thermometer Co. Inc., FEI Asia Pacific Co. Ltd., FEI Australia Pty Ltd, FEI CPD B.V., FEI Company, FEI Company Japan Ltd., FEI Company of USA (S.E.A.) Pte Ltd., FEI Czech Republic s.r.o., FEI Deutschland GmbH, FEI EFA Inc., FEI EFA International Pte. Ltd., FEI Electron Optics B.V., FEI Electron Optics International B.V., FEI Europe B.V., FEI France SAS, FEI Global Holdings C.V., FEI Hong Kong Company Limited, FEI Houston Inc., FEI Italia Srl, FEI Korea Ltd., FEI Melbourne Pty Ltd., FEI Microscopy Solutions Ltd, FEI Munich GmbH, FEI Norway Holding AS, FEI SAS, FEI Saudi Arabia LLC, FEI Servicos de Nanotecnologia Ltda., FEI Technologies Inc., FEI Technology de Mexico S.A. de C.V., FEI Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., FEI Trondheim AS, FEI UK Ltd., FHP LLC, FRC Holding Inc. V, FS (Barbados) Capital Holdings Ltd., FS Casa Rocas Holdings LLC, FS Mexicana Holdings LLC, FSI Receivables Company LLC, FSII Sweden Holdings AB, FSII Sweden Holdings I AB, FSIR Holdings (UK) Limited, FSIR Holdings (US) Inc., FSUK Holdings Limited, FSWH Company LLC, FSWH II C.V., FSWH International Holdings LLC, Fermentas China Co. Ltd, Fermentas Inc., Fermentas International, Fermentas Sweden AB, Fermentas UK Limited, Fiberlite Centrifuge LLC, Finesse Scientific Equipment (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Finesse Solutions AG, Finesse Solutions Inc., Finnzymes Oy, Fisher Alder S. de R.L. de C.V., Fisher Asia Manufacturing Ventures Inc., Fisher Bermuda Holdings Limited, Fisher BioImage ApS, Fisher BioPharma Services (India) Private Limited, Fisher BioSciences Japan G.K., Fisher BioServices Inc., Fisher Bioblock Holding II SNC, Fisher CLP Holding Limited Partnership, Fisher Canada Holding ULC 1, Fisher Canada Holding ULC 2, Fisher Canada Holding ULC 3, Fisher Canada Limited Partnership, Fisher Chimica BVBA, Fisher Clinical Logistics LLC, Fisher Clinical Services (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Fisher Clinical Services (Bristol) LLC, Fisher Clinical Services (Colombia) LLC, Fisher Clinical Services (Korea) Co. Ltd, Fisher Clinical Services (Mexico) LLC, Fisher Clinical Services (Peru) LLC, Fisher Clinical Services (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., Fisher Clinical Services Colombia S.A.S., Fisher Clinical Services GmbH, Fisher Clinical Services Inc., Fisher Clinical Services Japan K.K., Fisher Clinical Services Latin America S.R.L., Fisher Clinical Services Limited Liability Company, Fisher Clinical Services Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Fisher Clinical Services Peru S.R.L, Fisher Clinical Services Pte Ltd., Fisher Clinical Services U.K. Limited, Fisher Emergo B.V., Fisher Germany Holdings GmbH, Fisher Hamilton China Inc., Fisher Hamilton Mexico LLC, Fisher Holdings ApS, Fisher Internet Minority Holdings L.L.C., Fisher Laboratory Products Manufacturing (Shanghai) Co. Ltd, Fisher Luxembourg Danish Holdings SARL, Fisher Manufacturing (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Fisher Maybridge Holdings Limited, Fisher Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Fisher Scientific (Austria) GmbH, Fisher Scientific (Hong Kong) Limited, Fisher Scientific (M) Sdn Bhd, Fisher Scientific (SEA) Pte. Ltd., Fisher Scientific A/S, Fisher Scientific AG, Fisher Scientific Australia Pty Limited, Fisher Scientific Biotech Line ApS, Fisher Scientific Brazil Inc., Fisher Scientific Central America Inc., Fisher Scientific Chile Inc., Fisher Scientific Colombia Inc., Fisher Scientific Company, Fisher Scientific Company L.L.C., Fisher Scientific Costa Rica Sociedad de Responsabilidad Limitada, Fisher Scientific Europe Holdings B.V., Fisher Scientific GTF AB, Fisher Scientific Germany Beteiligungs GmbH, Fisher Scientific GmbH, Fisher Scientific Holding Company LLC, Fisher Scientific Holding HK Limited, Fisher Scientific Holding U.K. Limited, Fisher Scientific Holdings (M) Sdn Bhd, Fisher Scientific Holdings (S) Pte Ltd, Fisher Scientific International LLC, Fisher Scientific Investments (Cayman) Ltd., Fisher Scientific Ireland Investments Unlimited, Fisher Scientific Ireland Limited, Fisher Scientific Japan Ltd., Fisher Scientific Jersey Island Limited, Fisher Scientific Korea Ltd, Fisher Scientific Latin America Inc., Fisher Scientific Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Fisher Scientific Mexicana S. de R.L. de C.V., Fisher Scientific Mexico Inc., Fisher Scientific Middle East and Africa Inc., Fisher Scientific Norway AS, Fisher Scientific Operating Company, Fisher Scientific Oxoid Holdings Ltd., Fisher Scientific Oy, Fisher Scientific Pte. Ltd., Fisher Scientific S.A.S., Fisher Scientific S.L., Fisher Scientific SPRL, Fisher Scientific The Hague I B.V., Fisher Scientific The Hague II B.V., Fisher Scientific The Hague III B.V., Fisher Scientific The Hague IV B.V., Fisher Scientific The Hague V B.V., Fisher Scientific U.K. Limited, Fisher Scientific UK Holding Company 2, Fisher Scientific UK Holding Company Limited, Fisher Scientific Unipessoal Lda., Fisher Scientific Venezuela Inc., Fisher Scientific Worldwide (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Fisher Scientific Worldwide Holdings I C.V., Fisher Scientific Worldwide Inc., Fisher Scientific de Mexico S.A., Fisher Scientific of the Netherlands B.V., Fisher Scientific spol. S.r.o, Fisher Servicios Clinicos (Chile) LLC, Fisher Servicios Clinicos Chile Ltda, Fisher WWD Holding L.L.C., Fisher Worldwide Distribution SPV, Fisher Worldwide Gene Distribution SPV, Flux Instruments, Fuji Partnership, G & M Procter Limited, G V Instruments Limited, GV Instruments Canada Ltd., GV Instruments Inc, Gatan Inc, General Scientific Company Sdn Bhd (M), Genomed molekularbiologische und diagnostische Produkte GmbH, Gerhard Menzel B.V. & Co. KG, Gold Cattle Standard Testing Labs Inc., Golden West Indemnity Company Limited, Goring Kerr Detection Limited, Greenville Service Company Inc., HENO GmbH i.L., Hangar 215 Inc., Helmet Securities Limited, Henogen, HighChem, HyClone International Trade (Tianjin) Co. Ltd, Hybaid Limited, I.Q. (BIO) Limited, IDnostics AG, ILS Laboratories Scandinavia AB, Inel Inc., Inel SAS, InnaPhase Inc., InnaPhase Limited, IntegenX, Intrinsic BioProbes Inc., Intrinsic Bioprobes Inc., Invitrogen (Shanghai) Investment Co. Ltd., Invitrogen Argentina SA, Invitrogen BioServices India Private Limited, Invitrogen Europe Limited, Invitrogen Finance Corp., Invitrogen Holdings LLC, Invitrogen Holdings Ltd., Invitrogen Hong Kong Limited, Invitrogen IP Holdings Inc., Invitrogen Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Ion Torrent Systems Inc., Ionalytics Corporation, JSC Thermo Fisher Scientific, Jouan LLC, Jouan Limited, Jouan SA, Kendro Containment & Services Limited, Kendro Laboratory Products Ltd, Kettlebrook Insurance Co. ltd., Keystone Scientific, KonTEM GmbH, Kyle Jordan Investments LLC, LIFE TECHNOLOGIES CORPORATION, LTC Tech South Africa PTY Ltd., La-Pha-Pack GmbH, Lab Vision (UK) Limited, Lab Vision Corporation, Lab-Chrom-Pack LLC, Lab-Line Instruments Inc., Labomex MBP S. de R. L. De C.V., Laboratoire Service International - L.S.I, Laboratory Management Systems Inc., Laboratory Specialties Proprietary Ltd., LambTrack Limited, Laser Analytical Systems Inc., Liberty Lane Investment LLC, Liberty Lane Real Estate Holding Company LLC, Life Sciences International (Poland) SP z O.O, Life Sciences International Holdings BV, Life Sciences International LLC, Life Sciences International Limited, Life Technologies AS, Life Technologies Australia PTY Ltd., Life Technologies BPD AB, Life Technologies BPD UK Limited, Life Technologies Brasil Comercio e Industria de Produtos para Biotecnologia Ltda, Life Technologies Chile SpA, Life Technologies Clinical Services Lab Inc., Life Technologies Co. Ltd., Life Technologies Czech Republic s.r.o., Life Technologies DaAn Diagnostic (Guangzhou) Co. Ltd., Life Technologies Europe B.V., Life Technologies Finance Ltd., Life Technologies Finland Oy, Life Technologies GmbH, Life Technologies Holdings PTE Ltd., Life Technologies Inc., Life Technologies International B.V., Life Technologies Japan Ltd., Life Technologies Korea LLC, Life Technologies Limited, Life Technologies Magyarorszag Kft, Life Technologies New Zealand Ltd., Life Technologies Norway Investments US LLC, Life Technologies Polska Sp z.o.o., Life Technologies SA, Life Technologies SAS, Life Technologies s.r.o, Linkage Biosciences Inc., Linkage Biosciences S.a.r.l., Loftus Furnace Company, Lomb Scientific, Lomb Scientific (Aust) Pty Limited, MTI-GlobalStem, Marketbase International Limited, Matrix MicroScience Inc., Matrix MicroScience Ltd., Matrix Technologies Corporation Limited, Matrix Technologies LLC, Maybridge Chemical Company Limited, Maybridge Chemical Holdings Limited, Maybridge Limited, Medical Analysis Systems Inc., Medical Analysis Systems International Inc., Medical Diagnostics Systems Inc., Metavac LLC, Microgenics Corporation, Microgenics Diagnostics Pty Limited, Microgenics GmbH, Microm International GmbH, Microm Laborgerate S.L.U, Molecular BioProducts Inc., Molecular Probes Inc., Molecular Transfer Inc., NAPCO Inc., NERL Diagnostics LLC, NOVODIRECT GmbH Labor- und Industrie- Megerate, Nalge (Europe) Limited, Nalge Nunc International (Monterrey) LLC, Nalge Nunc International Corporation, Nanjing WeiKangLe Trading Industrial Co Ltd, NanoDrop Technologies LLC, National Scientific Company, Navaho Acquisition Corp., Neomarkers Inc., New FS Holdings Inc., NewcoGen PE LLC, Nihon Dynal K.K., Niton Asia Limited, NovaWave Technologies Inc., Nunc A/S, ONIX Systems Inc., OXOID CZ s.r.o., Odyssey Holdings Corporation, Odyssey Luxembourg Holdings S.a r.l., Odyssey Luxembourg IP Holdings 1 S.a r.l., Odyssey Luxembourg IP Holdings 2 S.a r.l., Odyssey Venture Corporation, Omega Data Systems, One Lambda Inc, Onix Holdings Limited, Orme Scientific Limited, Owl Separation Systems LLC, Oxoid (ELY) Limited, Oxoid 2000 Limited, Oxoid AS, Oxoid Australia Pty. Limited, Oxoid Company, Oxoid Deutschland GmbH, Oxoid Holding SAS, Oxoid Holdings Limited, Oxoid Inc., Oxoid International Limited, Oxoid Investments GmbH, Oxoid Limited, Oxoid N.V., Oxoid New Zealand Limited, Oxoid Pension Trustees Limited, Oxoid Senior Holdings Limited, Oxoid UKH LLC, PAX - DSI Acquisition LLC, PE AG, Pacific Rim Far East Industries LLC, Pacific Rim Investment LLC, Panomics L.L.C., Panomics S.R.L., Patheon, Patheon API Inc., Patheon API Manufacturing Inc., Patheon API Services Inc., Patheon Austria GmbH & Co KG, Patheon B.V., Patheon Banner U.S. Holdings Inc., Patheon Biologics (NJ) LLC, Patheon Biologics Australia Pty Ltd, Patheon Biologics B.V., Patheon Biologics LLC, Patheon Calculus Merger LLC, Patheon Cooperatief U.A., Patheon Development Services Inc., Patheon Finance LLC, Patheon France SAS, Patheon Holdings B.V., Patheon Holdings I B.V., Patheon Holdings II B.V., Patheon Holdings SAS, Patheon I B.V., Patheon I Holding GmbH, Patheon Inc., Patheon International AG, Patheon Italia S.p.A., Patheon KK, Patheon Life Science Products International GmbH, Patheon Manufacturing Services LLC, Patheon Pharmaceuticals Inc., Patheon Pharmaceuticals Services Inc., Patheon Puerto Rico Acquisitions Corporation, Patheon Puerto Rico Inc., Patheon Regensburg GmbH, Patheon Softgels B.V., Patheon Softgels Inc., Patheon U.S. Holdings Inc., Patheon U.S. Holdings LLC, Patheon UK Limited, Patheon UK Pension Trustees Limited, Pelican Acquisition Corporation, Perbio Science (Canada) Company, Perbio Science AB, Perbio Science BVBA, Perbio Science France SAS, Perbio Science Inc., Perbio Science International Netherlands B.V., Perbio Science Invest AB, Perbio Science Nederland B.V., Perbio Science Projekt AB, Perbio Science Sweden Holdings AB, Perbio Science Switzerland SA, Perbio Science UK Limited, Phadia AB, Phadia Diagnosticos Ltda, Phadia GmbH, Phadia Holding AB, Phadia International Holdings C.V., Phadia Korea Co. Ltd, Phadia Luxembourg Holdings S.a.r.l., Phadia Malta Holdings Limited, Phadia Oy, Phadia Real Property AB, Phadia Sweden AB, Phadia Taiwan Inc., Phadia US Inc., Phadia s.r.o., Pharmacaps Mexicana SA de CV, Phenom-World B.V., Phenom-World Holding B.V, Phenom-World Innovations B.V., Phinotex, Pierce Biotechnology Inc., Pierce Milwaukee Holding Corp., Pierce Milwaukee Inc., Polychromix, Power Sweden Holdings I AB, Power Sweden Holdings II AB, Power Sweden Holdings III Aktiebolag, Princeton Gamma-Tech Instruments LLC, Princeton Security Technologies, Prionics AG, Prionics Asia Ltd., Prionics Deutschland GmbH, Prionics France SAS, Prionics Italia S.r.l., Prionics Lelystad B.V., Prionics USA Inc., Priority Air Express LLC, Priority Air Express Pte. Ltd., Priority Air Express UK Limited, Priority Air Holdings Corp, Priority Solutions International, Promedica Pty Limited, Proxeon, Proxeon Biosystems ApS, Qiagen, REP GBP I-B Blocker Inc., Raymond A Lamb Limited, Remel Europe Limited, Remel Inc., Richard-Allan Scientific Company, Robbins Scientific LLC, Robocon Labor- und Industrieroboter Gesellschaft m.b.H, Rupprecht and Patashnick, Rupprecht and Patashnick (R&P), Russell pH Limited, S.C.I. du 10 rue Dugay Trouin, SCI Inno 92, STC Bio Manufacturing Inc., Samco Scientific (Monterrey) LLC, Samco Scientific LLC, Saroph Sweden AB, Schantz Road LLC, Seradyn Inc., Shanghai Life Technologies Biotechnology Co. Limited, Shanghai Thermo Fisher (C-I) Trading Co. Ltd, Shanghai Thermo Fisher (S) Trading Co. Ltd, Southern Trials (Pty) Ltd., Specialty (SMI) Inc., Spectra-Physics AB, Spectra-Physics Holdings Limited, Spectra-Physics Holdings USA LLC, Spectronex, Staten Island Cogeneration Corporation, Sterilin Limited, Stokes Bio Ltd., Sweden DIA (Sweden) AB, SwissAnalytic Group GmbH, Systems Manufacturing Corporation, TFLP LLC, TFS Breda B.V., TFS LLC, TFS Singapore HK Limited, TFSL Financing GP LLC, TFSL Senior GP Holdings 2 LLC, TK Partnership, TKA Wasseraufbereitungssysteme, TMOI Inc., TPI Real Estate Holdings LLC, TSP Holdings I LLC, TWX LLC, Technology Design Solutions Pty Ltd, Thermedics Detection de Argentina S.R.L, Thermo Allen Coding Limited, Thermo Asset Management Services Inc., Thermo BioAnalysis LLC, Thermo BioAnalysis Limited, Thermo BioSciences Holdings LLC, Thermo CIDTEC, Thermo CRS Holdings Ltd., Thermo CRS Ltd., Thermo Cambridge Limited, Thermo Cayman Holdings Ltd., Thermo Corporation, Thermo DMA Inc., Thermo Detection de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Thermo Dutch Holdings Limited Partnership, Thermo EGS Gauging LLC, Thermo Eberline Holdings I LLC, Thermo Eberline Holdings II LLC, Thermo Eberline LLC, Thermo Electron (Calgary) Limited, Thermo Electron (Chile) S.p.A., Thermo Electron (Karlsruhe) GmbH, Thermo Electron (Management Services) Limited, Thermo Electron (Proprietary) Limited, Thermo Electron A/S, Thermo Electron Australia Pty Limited, Thermo Electron Export Inc., Thermo Electron Holdings SAS, Thermo Electron Industries, Thermo Electron LED GmbH, Thermo Electron LED S.A.S., Thermo Electron Limited, Thermo Electron Manufacturing Limited, Thermo Electron Metallurgical Services Inc., Thermo Electron North America LLC, Thermo Electron Pension Trust GmbH, Thermo Electron Puerto Rico Inc., Thermo Electron SAS, Thermo Electron Scientific Instruments LLC, Thermo Electron Sweden AB, Thermo Electron Sweden Forvaltning AB, Thermo Electron Weighing & Inspection Limited, Thermo Elemental Limited, Thermo Environmental Instruments LLC, Thermo Fast U.K. Limited, Thermo Finland Holdings LLC, Thermo Finland Holdings MT1 B.V., Thermo Finland Holdings MT2 B.V., Thermo Finnigan LLC, Thermo Finnigan Limited, Thermo Fisher (CN) Luxembourg Holding S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher (CN) Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher (CN) Malta Holdings Limited, Thermo Fisher (CN-I) Luxembourg LLC, Thermo Fisher (CN-II) Luxembourg LLC, Thermo Fisher (Cayman) Holdings I Ltd., Thermo Fisher (Cayman) Holdings II Ltd., Thermo Fisher (Finland Holdings 2) LLC, Thermo Fisher (Finland Holdings) Limited Partnership, Thermo Fisher (Gibraltar) II Limited, Thermo Fisher (Gibraltar) Limited, Thermo Fisher (Heysham) Limited, Thermo Fisher (Kandel) GmbH, Thermo Fisher CHK Holding LLC, Thermo Fisher China Business Trust, Thermo Fisher China Business Trust II, Thermo Fisher Costa Rica Sociedad de Responsabilidad Limitada, Thermo Fisher Cyprus Holdings LLC, Thermo Fisher Detection Mexico LLC, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics (Ireland) Limited, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics AB, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics AG, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics AS, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics Aps, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics Austria GmbH, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics B.V., Thermo Fisher Diagnostics GmbH, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics K.K., Thermo Fisher Diagnostics Limited, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics NV, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics S.L.U., Thermo Fisher Diagnostics S.p.A. , Thermo Fisher Diagnostics SAS, Thermo Fisher Diagnostics Sociedade Unipessoal Lda, Thermo Fisher Eurobonds Ltd., Thermo Fisher Financial Services Inc., Thermo Fisher GP LLC, Thermo Fisher German Holdings LLC, Thermo Fisher Germany B.V., Thermo Fisher India Divestco Private Limited, Thermo Fisher India Holding B.V., Thermo Fisher Insurance Holdings Inc., Thermo Fisher Insurance Holdings LLC, Thermo Fisher Investments (Cayman) Ltd., Thermo Fisher Israel Ltd., Thermo Fisher Production et Services SAS, Thermo Fisher Project Cyprus LLC, Thermo Fisher Re Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Asheville) LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Australia) C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Barbados) Holdings Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Breda) Holding BV, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Bremen) GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific (CN) Limited Partnership, Thermo Fisher Scientific (China) Co. Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific (China) Holding Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific (China-HK) Holding Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific (DE) Holding S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Ecublens) SARL, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Finance I) B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Finance I) S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Finance II) S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Finance III) LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Finance III) S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Fuji) LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Guangzhou) Co. Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Holding II) B.V. & Co. KG, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Hong Kong) Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific (IVGN) B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific (IVGN) Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Johannesburg) (Proprietary) Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Mexico City) LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Milwaukee) LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Mississauga) Inc., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Monterrey) S. De R.L. De C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific (NK) LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific (PN) Austria Holding GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific (PN) UK LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific (PN) UK Limited Partnership, Thermo Fisher Scientific (PN-I) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific (PN-II) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific (PN1) UK Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Panama) B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Panama) Dutch LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Praha) s.r.o., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Real Estate 1) GmbH & Co. KG, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Real Estate 1) S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Schweiz) AG, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Shanghai) Instruments Co. Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Shanghai) Management Co. Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific (Suzhou) Instruments Co. Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific (Thailand) Co. Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific AL-1 LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific AU C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific AU II Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific AU LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific AU Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Africa Proprietary Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific Aquasensors LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Australia Pty Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific B.V.B.A., Thermo Fisher Scientific BHK (I) Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific BHK (II) Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Baltics UAB, Thermo Fisher Scientific Beteiligungsverwaltungs GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific Biosciences Corp., Thermo Fisher Scientific Brahms LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Brasil Instrumentos de Processo Ltda., Thermo Fisher Scientific Brasil Servicos de Logistica Ltda, Thermo Fisher Scientific C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Cayman Investments LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Chemicals Inc., Thermo Fisher Scientific China (C-I) LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific China (S) LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific China Holdings I B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific China Holdings II B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific China Holdings III B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific China Holdings IV B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Chromatography Holdings Aps, Thermo Fisher Scientific Chromatography Holdings S.a r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Cyprus I C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Cyprus I Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific Cyprus II C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Cyprus II Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific Cyprus III C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Cyprus III Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific Cyprus IV C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Cyprus V C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Denmark Senior Holdings ApS, Thermo Fisher Scientific Erie 1 Financing (Barbados) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific Erie Financing (Barbados) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific Erie Financing S.a r.l, Thermo Fisher Scientific Europe GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific FLC B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific FLC Finance C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific FLC II B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific FLC LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific FSIR Financing (Barbados) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific FSIR Financing S.a.r.l, Thermo Fisher Scientific FSUKHCO Financing (Barbados) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific Falcon Senior Holdings Inc., Thermo Fisher Scientific Finance Company BV, Thermo Fisher Scientific GENEART GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific Germany BV & Co. KG, Thermo Fisher Scientific GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific HR Services Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Holdings (Cayman) I, Thermo Fisher Scientific Holdings (Cayman) II , Thermo Fisher Scientific Holdings Europe Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific IT Services GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific India Holding LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific India Pvt Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific Investments (Luxembourg) S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Investments (Malta) Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Investments (Sweden) LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Investments (Sweden) S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Investments Malta (Sweden Financing) Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Invitrogen Financing (Barbados) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific Japan Holdings I B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Japan Holdings II B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Japan Holdings III B.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific K.K., Thermo Fisher Scientific Korea Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific LSI Financing (Barbados) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life CV GP Holdings II LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life CV GP Holdings LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Enterprises C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Enterprises GP LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Financing (Barbados) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Financing (Cayman), Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Financing C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Financing Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Holdings I C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Holdings II C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Holdings III C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Holdings Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life International GP Holdings LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life International Holdings I C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life International Holdings II C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments GP LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments I S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments II S.a r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments III S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments IV S.a.r.l, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments Malta Holding I LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments Malta Holding II LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments Malta I Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments Malta II Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments US Financing I LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Investments US Financing II LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life NL Holdings GP LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Netherlands Holding C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Senior GP Holdings II LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Senior GP Holdings LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Senior Holdings C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Senior Holdings II C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Senior Holdings Inc., Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Switzerland Holdings GP LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Tech Korea Holdings LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Enterprise Holding Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Investment I LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Investment II LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Investment UK I Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Investment UK II Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Investments Holding LP, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Israel Investment I Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Israel Investment II Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Life Technologies Luxembourg Holding LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Luxembourg Enterprise Holdings S.a r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Luxembourg German Holdings S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Luxembourg Life Technologies UK Holding S.a r.l, Thermo Fisher Scientific Luxembourg Sweden Holdings I S.a r.l, Thermo Fisher Scientific Luxembourg Sweden Holdings II S.a r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Luxembourg Venture Holdings I S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Luxembourg Venture Holdings II S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., Thermo Fisher Scientific Malta Holdings LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Messtechnik GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific Mexico City S. de R.L. de C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific Middle East Holdings Inc., Thermo Fisher Scientific Milano Srl, Thermo Fisher Scientific NHK Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific New Zealand Holdings, Thermo Fisher Scientific New Zealand Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Norway Holdings AS, Thermo Fisher Scientific Norway US Investments LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Odyssey Financing (Barbados) SRL, Thermo Fisher Scientific Odyssey Holdings Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Operating Company LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Oy, Thermo Fisher Scientific PN2 C.V, Thermo Fisher Scientific PN2 LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific PRB LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific PRB Malta Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific PRB S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Panama I Cayman Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific Peru S.R.L., Thermo Fisher Scientific Pte. Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific Re Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific SL, Thermo Fisher Scientific Senior Financing LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Senior Holdings Australia LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific South Africa Proprietary Ltd, Thermo Fisher Scientific SpA, Thermo Fisher Scientific Spectra LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Spectra Malta Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Spectra S.a.r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Spectra-Physics Holdings Luxembourg I S.a r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Spectra-Physics Holdings Luxembourg II S.a r.l., Thermo Fisher Scientific Spectra-Physics Investments Malta Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Switzerland Holdings C.V., Thermo Fisher Scientific TR Limited, Thermo Fisher Scientific Taiwan Co. Ltd., Thermo Fisher Scientific Vermogensverwaltungs GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific West Palm Holdings LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Wissenschaftliche Gerate GmbH, Thermo Fisher Scientific Worldwide Investments (Cayman), Thermo Fisher Scientific eCommerce Solutions LLC , Thermo Fisher Senior Canada Holdings LLC, Thermo Foundation Inc., Thermo Gamma-Metrics Holdings Pty Ltd., Thermo Gamma-Metrics LLC, Thermo Gamma-Metrics Pty Ltd, Thermo Holding European Operations LLC, Thermo Hypersil Ltd, Thermo Hypersil-Keystone LLC, Thermo Informatics Asia Pacific Pty Ltd., Thermo Instrument Controls de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Thermo Kevex X-Ray LLC, Thermo Keytek LLC, Thermo LabSystems Inc., Thermo LabSystems S.A., Thermo Life Science International Trading (Tianjin) Co. Ltd., Thermo Life Sciences AB, Thermo Luxembourg Holding S.a.r.l., Thermo Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Thermo MF Physics LLC, Thermo Measurement Ltd, Thermo Measuretech Canada Inc., Thermo Neslab LLC, Thermo Nicolet Limited, Thermo Onix Limited, Thermo Optek (Australia) Pty Ltd., Thermo Optek Limited, Thermo Optek S.A., Thermo Orion Inc., Thermo Portable Holdings LLC, Thermo Power Corporation, Thermo Process Instruments GP LLC, Thermo Process Instruments L.P., Thermo Projects Limited, Thermo Quest S.A., Thermo Radiometrie Limited, Thermo Ramsey Italia S.r.l., Thermo Ramsey LLC, Thermo Ramsey S.A., Thermo Re Ltd., Thermo Scientific Microbiology Pte Ltd., Thermo Scientific Microbiology Sdn Bhd, Thermo Scientific Portable Analytical Instruments Inc., Thermo Scientific Services Inc., Thermo Securities Corporation, Thermo Sentron Canada Inc., Thermo Sentron Limited, Thermo Shandon Inc., Thermo Shandon Limited, Thermo Suomi Holding B.V., Thermo TLH (UK) Limited, Thermo TLH L.P., Thermo Trace Pty Ltd., Thermo-Fisher Biochemical Product (Beijing) Co. Ltd., ThermoLase LLC, ThermoSpectra Limited, Trek Diagnostic Systems LLC, Trek Diagnostic Systems Ltd., Trek Holding Company II Ltd., Trek Holding Company Ltd., Trex Medical Corporation, USB Corporation, Union Lab Supplies Limited, United Diagnostics Inc., VG Systems Limited, Westover Scientific Inc., ZAO PE Biosystems, eBioscience GmbH, eBioscience Ltd, eBioscience SAS, and picoSpin LLC.
Truist Financial Corp. operates as a financial holding company, which engages in the provision of banking services to individuals, businesses and municipalities. The firm offers a variety of loans and lease financing to individuals and entities, including insurance premium financing, permanent commercial real estate financing arrangements, loan servicing for third-party investors, direct consumer finance loans to individuals, credit card lending, automobile financing and equipment financing. It also markets a range of other services, including deposits, life insurance, property and casualty insurance, health Truist Financial Corp. operates as a financial holding company. It engages in the provision of banking services to individuals, businesses and municipalities. The company operates through the following segments: Consumer Banking and Wealth; Corporate and Commercial Banking; and Insurance Holdings. The firm offers a variety of loans and lease financing to individuals and entities, including insurance premium financing, permanent commercial real estate financing arrangements, loan servicing for third-party investors, direct consumer finance loans to individuals, credit card lending, automobile financing and equipment financing. It also markets a range of other services, including deposits, life insurance, property and casualty insurance, health insurance and commercial general liability insurance on an agency basis and through a wholesale insurance brokerage operation, merchant services, trust and retirement services, comprehensive wealth advisory services, asset management and capital markets services. The company was founded on December 6, 2019 and is headquartered in Charlotte, NC. insurance and commercial general liability insurance on an agency basis and through a wholesale insurance brokerage operation, merchant services, trust and retirement services, comprehensive wealth advisory services, asset management and capital markets services. The company was founded on December 6, 2019 and is headquartered in Charlotte, NC.

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Conagra Brands, Inc. engages in the manufacture and sale of processed and packaged foods. It operates through the following segments: Grocery and Snacks; Refrigerated and Frozen; International; and Foodservice. The Grocery and Snacks segment includes branded, shelf stable food products sold in various retail channels in the United States. The Refrigerated and Frozen segment comprises branded, temperature controlled food products sold in various retail channels in the United States. The International segment consists branded food products, in various temperature states, sold in various retail and foodservice channels outside of the United States. The Foodservice segment focuses in the branded and customized food products, including meals, entrees, sauces, and a variety of custom-manufactured culinary products packaged for sale to restaurants and other foodservice establishments in the United States. The company was founded by Alva Kinney and Frank Little in 1919 and is headquartered in Chicago, IL.

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Buckeye Partners, L.P. owns and operates liquid petroleum products pipelines in the United States and internationally. The company operates through three segments: Domestic Pipelines & Terminals, Global Marine Terminals, and Merchant Services. The Domestic Pipelines & Terminals segment transports liquid petroleum products, including gasoline, jet fuel, and various distillates. This segment also provides crude oil services, including train loading/unloading, storage, and throughput; and turn-key operations and maintenance, asset development, and construction services for third-party pipeline, terminal, and energy assets, as well as operates and/or maintains third-party pipelines. It owns and operates approximately 6,000 miles of pipeline located primarily in the northeastern and upper midwestern portions of the United States, and services 100 delivery locations; 110 active terminals that provide bulk storage and throughput services with aggregate storage capacity of 55 million barrels; and 2 underground propane storage caverns. The Global Marine Terminals segment provides marine accessible bulk storage and blending, rail and truck rack loading/unloading, and petroleum processing services located primarily in the East Coast and Gulf Coast regions of the United States, as well as in the Caribbean. This segment owns and operates seven liquid petroleum products and crude oil terminals. The Merchant Services segment is involved in the wholesale distribution of refined petroleum products, including gasoline, natural gas liquids, propane, ethanol, and biodiesel, as well as petroleum distillates, such as heating oil, diesel fuel, kerosene, and fuel oil. This segment also provides fuel oil supply, butane, and distribution services. Buckeye GP LLC serves as the general partner of the company. Buckeye Partners, L.P. was founded in 1886 and is based in Houston, Texas.

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"Over the year some 300 projects worth over USD 10 bln were funded by the EBRD in such priority sectors of Kazakhstan such as economy, finance, infrastructure, energy, small and medium business, agriculture, IT. Following 2021 agreements on realization of joint projects worth $600 million will be signed," Mamin said.
GlaxoSmithKline Plc is a healthcare company, which engages in the research, development, and manufacture of pharmaceutical medicines, vaccines, and consumer healthcare products. It operates through the following segments: Pharmaceuticals; Pharmaceuticals R&D; Vaccines and Consumer Healthcare. The Pharmaceuticals segment focuses on developing medicines in respiratory and infectious diseases, oncology, and immuno-inflammation. The Pharmaceuticals R&D segment focuses on science related to the immune system, the use of human genetics and advanced technologies, and is driven by the multiplier effect of Science x Technology x Culture. The Vaccines segment produces pediatric and adult vaccines to prevent a range of infectious diseases including, hepatitis A and B, diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough, measles, mumps and rubella, polio, typhoid, influenza, and bacterial meningitis. The Consumer Healthcare segment develops and markets brands in the oral health, pain relief, respiratory, nutrition and gastro intestinal, and skin health categories. The company was founded in 1715 and is headquartered in Middlesex, the United Kingdom.

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The following companies are subsidiares of Crown: Adularia Inversiones 2010 S.L., Angleboard Sweden AB, Bates Cargo-Pak ApS, Butimove, CMB Machinery and Technology (Shanghai) Co Ltd, CROWN AP (Thailand) Company Limited, CROWN Aerosols & Promotional Nederland, CROWN Aerosols Italia Srl, CROWN Aerosols Nederland BV, CROWN Aerosols UK Limited, CROWN Americas LLC, CROWN Arabia Can Company Ltd, CROWN Asia Pacific Holdings Pte. Ltd., CROWN Asia Pacific Investments (T) Limited, CROWN Bevcan Espana S.L., CROWN Bevcan France SAS, CROWN Bevcan Slovakia s.r.o., CROWN Bevcan Turkiye Ambalaj Sanayi Ve Ticaret Limited Sirketi, CROWN Bevcan and Closures (Thailand) Company Limited, CROWN Beverage Cans (Cambodia) Limited, CROWN Beverage Cans (Dong Nai) Limited, CROWN Beverage Cans Beijing Limited, CROWN Beverage Cans Changchun Limited, CROWN Beverage Cans Danang Limited, CROWN Beverage Cans Hangzhou Limited, CROWN Beverage Cans Hanoi Limited, CROWN Beverage Cans Heshan Limited, CROWN Beverage Cans Hong Kong Limited, CROWN Beverage Cans Huizhou Limited, CROWN Beverage Cans Malaysia Sdn Bhd, CROWN Beverage Cans Nanning Limited, CROWN Beverage Cans Putian Limited, CROWN Beverage Cans Saigon Limited, CROWN Beverage Cans Shanghai Limited, CROWN Beverage Cans Sihanoukville Limited, CROWN Beverage Cans Singapore Pte. Ltd., CROWN Beverage Cans Ziyang Limited, CROWN Beverage Packaging LLC, CROWN Beverage Packaging Puerto Rico Inc., CROWN Cans Ghana Limited, CROWN China Holdings (Hong Kong) Limited, CROWN Commercial Belgium BVBA, CROWN Commercial France SAS, CROWN Commercial Germany GmbH & Co. KG, CROWN Commercial Hungary Kft, CROWN Commercial Netherlands B.V., CROWN Commercial Vermogensverwaltung GmbH, CROWN Cork & Seal USA Inc., CROWN Embalagens Metalicas da Amazonia S.A., CROWN Emballage France SAS, CROWN Emirates Company Limited, CROWN Envases Mexico S.A. de C.V., CROWN Famosa S.A. de C.V., CROWN Food Packaging (Thailand) Public Company Limited, CROWN Foodcan (Hat Yai) Company Limited, CROWN Foodcan (Nakhon Pathom) Company Limited, CROWN Foodcan Germany GmbH, CROWN Foodcan GmbH, CROWN Imballaggi Italia Srl, CROWN Imgallaggi Italia Srl, CROWN Italy Finance srl, CROWN Khmer Beverage Cans Limited, CROWN Maghreb Can, CROWN Magyarorszag Csomagoloipari KFT, CROWN Metal Packaging Canada Inc., CROWN Metal Packaging Canada LP, CROWN Middle East Can Co. Ltd., CROWN Packaging (Barbados) Limited, CROWN Packaging Holdings LLC, CROWN Packaging Investment (H.K.) Limited, CROWN Packaging Ireland Ltd, CROWN Packaging Jamaica Limited, CROWN Packaging Polska Sp.z.o.o., CROWN Packaging Technology Inc., CROWN Packaging Trinidad Limited, CROWN Packaging UK Limited, CROWN Promotional Packaging UK Ltd, CROWN SIEM, CROWN Senegal, CROWN Societe Malgache d'Emballages Metalliques, CROWN Speciality Packaging BV, CROWN Speciality Packaging Investment Pte. Ltd., CROWN Specialty Packaging UK Ltd, CROWN TCP Beverage Cans Company Limited, CROWN Verpakking Belgie NV, CROWN Verpakking Nederland B.V., Caretex Asia Ltd., CarnaudMetalbox Engineering Ltd, CarnaudMetalbox Food South Africa (Pty) Limited, CarnaudMetalbox Group UK Limited, CarnaudMetalbox Overeseas Limited, CarnaudMetalbox Overseas Limited, Cierres Hermeticos S.A. DE C.V., Constar International, Crown Americas Capital Corp., Crown Americas Capital Corp. II, Crown Americas Capital Corp. III, Crown Americas Capital Corp. IV, Crown Americas Capital Corp. V, Crown Americas Capital Corp. VI, Crown Brasil Holdings Ltda., Crown Canadian Holdings ULC, Crown Closures Spain S.L., Crown Colombiana S.A., Crown Comercial de Envases S.L., Crown Commercial Italy Srl, Crown Commercial Polska Sp. z.o.o., Crown Consultants Inc., Crown Cork & Seal Company (DE) LLC, Crown Cork & Seal Company Inc., Crown Cork & Seal Deutschland Holdings GmbH, Crown Cork & Seal Receivables (DE) Corporation, Crown Cork & Seal de Portugal Embalagens S.A., Crown Cork Kuban, Crown Cork and Seal Receivables II LLC, Crown Developpement SAS, Crown European Holdings, Crown Food Espana S.A.U., Crown Foodcan Turkey Ambalaj Sanayi Ve Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Crown Hellas Can Packaging SA, Crown Heshan Trading Company Limited, Crown Holdings Italia Srl, Crown Holdings Spain S.L., Crown International Holdings B.V., Crown International Holdings Inc., Crown Luxembourg Holdings, Crown Mexican Holdings S. de R.L. de C.V., Crown Overseas Investments B.V., Crown Packaging Commercial UK Limited, Crown Packaging Distribution UK Limited, Crown Packaging European Division GmbH, Crown Packaging European Division Services SAS, Crown Packaging European Holdings GmbH, Crown Packaging Lux I S.a.r.l., Crown Packaging Lux II S.a.r.l., Crown Packaging Lux III S.a.r.l., Crown Packaging Manufacturing UK Limited, Crown Packaging Maroc, Crown Receivables III, Crown Services Iberia, Crown UK Holdings Limited, Crownway Insurance Company, Dacro B.V., EMPAQUE, Fabricas Monterrey S.A. de C.V., Form Koruyucu Ambalaj Sanayi Ve Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Foshan Continental Can Co. Limited, Foshan Crown Easy-Opening End Co. Limited, Glass & Silice S.A. DE C.V., Globoplastt s.r.o., Gunther S.A.S., Haloila Bulgaria EOOD, Interstrap B.V., Josef Kihlberg AB, Kiwiplan GmbH, Kiwiplan Inc, Lachenmeier ApS, Liljendals Bruk AB, Litec France S.A.S., Mezger Heftsysteme GmbH, Mima Films S.a.r.l., Mima Films Sprl, Mima Packaging Systems S.A.S., Mivisa, Nordic S.A.S., Norsk Signode AS, Oy M. Haloila AB, PT CROWN Beverage Cans Indonesia, Package Design and Manufacturing, Prolatamex S.A. DE C.V., Quandel Verpackungs- und Foerdertechnik GmbH, SMB Schwede Maschinenbau GmbH, SMP Schwede Maschinenbau Weischlitz GmbH, SPG Denmark, SPG France Holdings SAS, SPG Germany Service Management GmbH, SPG Industrial Packaging S.a.r.l, SPG Netherlands B.V., SPG Packaging Ireland Limited, SPG Packaging Systems GmbH, SPG Packaging UK Ltd, Scybele S.A.S., Shippers Europe S.p.r.l., Signode BVBA, Signode Brasileira Ltda, Signode Hong Kong Limited, Signode Industrial Group, Signode Industrial Group AB, Signode Industrial Group Colombia S.A.S., Signode Industrial Group GmbH, Signode Industrial Group Holdings Lux S.a.r.l., Signode Industrial Group Holdings US Inc, Signode Industrial Group Lux S.A., Signode Industrial Group Mexico, Signode Industrial Group Sweden AB, Signode International Holdings LLC, Signode International IP Holdings LLC, Signode International Investment LLC, Signode Kabushiki Kaisha, Signode Korea Inc, Signode NZ Limited, Signode Netherlands B.V., Signode Packaging (Qingdao) Co., Signode Packaging (Shanghai) Co., Signode Packaging Espana S.L., Signode Packaging Group (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., Signode Packaging Group Australia Pty Ltd, Signode Packaging Group Canada ULC, Signode Packaging Group NZ, Signode Packaging Systems Limited, Signode Pickling Holding LLC, Signode Polska sp. Z.o.o., Signode Singapore Pte. Ltd., Signode Sweden Holdings AB, Signode System GmbH, Signode System Packaging GmbH & Co. KG, Signode Systems (Thailand) Ltd., Signode US IP Holdings LLC, Silice De Veracruz S.A. DE C. V., Silice Del Istmo S.A. DE C.V., Silices De Veracruz, Societe Civile Immobiliere Rousseau-Ivry, Societe Civile Immobiliere des Baquets, Societe de Participations CarnaudMetalbox, Stopak India Pvt. Ltd, Strapex Austria GmbH, Strapex Embalagem L.d.a., Strapex Holdings Limited, Strapex S.A.S., Strapex Srl, Superior Investments Holdings Pte. Ltd., Superior Multi-Packaging Limited, TopFrame LLC, V.A.C. B.V., Vichisa S.A. de C.V., and Warehouse Automation Iberia S.L..
Anadarko Petroleum Corporation engages in the exploration, development, production, and marketing of oil and gas properties. It operates through three segments: Exploration and Production, WES Midstream, and Other Midstream. The company explores for and produces oil, natural gas, and natural gas liquids (NGLs). It is also involved in gathering, processing, treating, and transporting oil, natural-gas, and NGLs production, as well as the gathering and disposal of produced water. The company's oil and natural gas properties are located in the United States onshore and deepwater Gulf of Mexico; and Algeria, Ghana, Mozambique, Colombia, Peru, and other countries. As of December 31, 2018, it had approximately 1.5 billion barrels of oil equivalent of proved reserves. The company was founded in 1959 and is headquartered in The Woodlands, Texas.

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Morgan Stanley Emerging Markets Fund, Inc. is a closed ended equity mutual fund launched and managed by Morgan Stanley Investment Management Inc. The fund is co-managed by Morgan Stanley Investment Management Limited and Morgan Stanley Investment Management Company. It invests in the public equity markets across the global emerging markets. The fund invests in stocks of companies operating across diversified sectors. It invests in companies across all market capitalizations. The fund benchmarks the performance of its portfolio against the MSCI Emerging Markets Net Index. Morgan Stanley Emerging Markets Fund Inc. was formed on August 27, 1991 and is domiciled in the United States.

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The following companies are subsidiares of BlackRock: Acero Cooperatief U.A., Acero Holdings I B.V., Amethyst Merger Sub LLC, AnalytX Hosting LLC, AnalytX LLC, AnalytX Software LLC, Aperio, Aperio, Aquila Heywood, Asia-Pacific Private Credit Opportunities Fund I (GenPar) Ltd., BAA Holdings LLC, BFM Holdco LLC, BLK (Gallatin) Holdings LLC, BLK SMI LLC, BR Acquisition Mexico S.A. de C.V., BR Jersey International Holdings L.P., Beijing eFront Software Company Limited, BlackRock (Barbados) Finco 1 SRL, BlackRock (Channel Islands) Limited, BlackRock (Luxembourg) S.A., BlackRock (Netherlands) B.V., BlackRock (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., BlackRock (Singapore) Holdco II Pte. Ltd., BlackRock (Singapore) Holdco Pte. Limited, BlackRock (Singapore) Limited, BlackRock AP Investment Holdco LLC, BlackRock Advisors (UK) Limited, BlackRock Advisors LLC, BlackRock Advisors Singapore Pte. Limited, BlackRock Alternative Advisors GP Holdings LLC, BlackRock Alternatives Management LLC, BlackRock Argentina Asesorias Ltda., BlackRock Asset Management Canada Limited, BlackRock Asset Management Deutschland AG, BlackRock Asset Management International Inc., BlackRock Asset Management Investor Services Limited, BlackRock Asset Management Ireland Limited, BlackRock Asset Management North Asia Limited, BlackRock Asset Management Schweiz AG, BlackRock Asset Management UK Limited, BlackRock Australia Holdco Pty. Ltd., BlackRock Brasil Gestora de Investimentos Ltda., BlackRock Cal 1 Investor LLC, BlackRock Canada Holdings LP, BlackRock Canada Holdings ULC, BlackRock Capital Holdings Inc., BlackRock Capital Investment Advisors LLC, BlackRock Capital Management Inc., BlackRock Cayco Limited, BlackRock Cayman 1 LP, BlackRock Cayman Capital Holdings Limited, BlackRock Cayman Finco 2 Limited, BlackRock Cayman Finco 3 Limited, BlackRock Cayman Finco Limited, BlackRock Cayman West Bay Finco Limited, BlackRock Cayman West Bay IV Limited, BlackRock Cayman Z Limited, BlackRock Channel Islands Holdco Limited, BlackRock Chile Asesorias Limitada, BlackRock Colombia Holdco LLC, BlackRock Colombia Infraestructura S.A.S., BlackRock Colombia SAS, BlackRock Company Secretarial Services (UK) Limited, BlackRock Corporation US Inc., BlackRock Delaware Holdings Inc., BlackRock Enterprise Management Services (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., BlackRock Europe Development Management Limited, BlackRock Execution Services, BlackRock Finance Europe Limited, BlackRock Financial Management Inc., BlackRock Finco LLC, BlackRock Finco UK Ltd., BlackRock First Partner Limited, BlackRock France SAS, BlackRock Fund Advisors, BlackRock Fund Management Company S.A., BlackRock Fund Managers Limited, BlackRock Funding International Ltd., BlackRock Funds Services Group LLC, BlackRock Germany GmBH, BlackRock Group Limited, BlackRock HK Holdco Limited, BlackRock Holdco 2 Inc., BlackRock Holdco 3 LLC, BlackRock Holdco 4 LLC, BlackRock Holdco 5 LLC, BlackRock Holdco 6 LLC, BlackRock Hungary Kft, BlackRock Index Services LLC, BlackRock Infrastructure Management I LLC, BlackRock Institutional Services Inc., BlackRock Institutional Trust Company National Association, BlackRock International Holdings Inc., BlackRock International Limited, BlackRock Investment Management (Australia) Limited, BlackRock Investment Management (Dublin) Limited, BlackRock Investment Management (Korea) Limited, BlackRock Investment Management (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., BlackRock Investment Management (Taiwan) Limited, BlackRock Investment Management (UK) Limited, BlackRock Investment Management Ireland Holdings Limited, BlackRock Investment Management LLC, BlackRock Investments LLC, BlackRock Japan Co. Ltd., BlackRock Japan Holdings GK, BlackRock Jersey Finco 2 Limited, BlackRock Latin America Holdco LLC, BlackRock Latin American Holdings B.V., BlackRock Life Limited, BlackRock Lux Finco S.a r.l., BlackRock Luxembourg Holdco S.a r.l., BlackRock Mexican Holdco B.V., BlackRock Mexico Infraestructura I S. de R.L. de C.V., BlackRock Mexico Infraestructura II S. de R.L. de C.V., BlackRock Mexico Infraestructura III S. de R.L. de C.V., BlackRock Mexico Manager II S. de R.L. de C.V., BlackRock Mexico Manager III S. de R.L. de C.V., BlackRock Mexico Manager S de R.L. de C.V., BlackRock Mexico Operadora S.A. de C.V. Sociedad Operadora de Fondos de Inversion, BlackRock Mortgage Ventures LLC, BlackRock Niagara LLC, BlackRock Operations (Luxembourg) S.a r.l., BlackRock Overseas Investment Fund Management (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., BlackRock PC Holdings LLC, BlackRock Pensions Limited, BlackRock Peru Asesorias S.A., BlackRock Property Consulting (Beijing) Co. Ltd., BlackRock Property France S.a.r.l., BlackRock Property Lux S.a.r.l., BlackRock Property Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., BlackRock Realty Advisors Inc., BlackRock Saudi Arabia, BlackRock Scale Holdings LLC, BlackRock Services India Private Limited, BlackRock Singapore III Pte. Ltd., BlackRock Slovakia s.r.o., BlackRock Strategic Investors GP LLC, BlackRock Strategic Investors LP, BlackRock Trident Holding Company Limited, BlackRock UK (Alpha) Limited, BlackRock UK (Beta) Limited, BlackRock UK (Delta) LP, BlackRock UK (Gamma) Limited, BlackRock UK (Sigma) Limited, BlackRock UK 2 LLP, BlackRock UK 3 LLP, BlackRock UK 4 LLP, BlackRock UK A LLP, BlackRock UK Holdco 2 Limited, BlackRock UK Holdco Limited, Blackhawk Investment Holding LLC, CIE Automotive, Cachematrix Holdings, Cachematrix Holdings LLC, Cachematrix Integrations Private Limited, Cachematrix Software Solutions LLC, Cachematrix UK Limited, FutureAdvisor Inc., Glass Mountain Pipeline, Global Energy & Power Infrastructure Advisors LLC, Global Energy & Power Infrastructure II Advisors LLC, Grosvenor Alternate Partner Limited, Grosvenor Ventures Limited, HLX Financial Holdings LLC, MGPA (Bermuda) Limited, MGPA (Exec) Limited, MGPA Limited, Mercury Carry Company Ltd., Mercury Private Equity MUST 3 (Jersey) Limited, Object Capital Technology Inc., Phoenix Acquisition B.V., Phoenix Acquisitions Holdings LLC, Portfolio Administration & Management Ltd., Prestadora de Servicios Integrales BlackRock Mexico S.A. de C.V., SVOF/MM LLC, St. Albans House Nominees (Jersey) Ltd., State Street Research & Management, Tennenbaum Capital Partners LLC, Tennenbaum Capital Partners LLC, Tlali Acero S.A. de C.V. SOFOM ENR, Trident Merger LLC, eFront, eFront, eFront (Jersey) Limited, eFront DMLT Holdings LLC, eFront DMLT Holdings S.R.L, eFront DR S.R.L, eFront Do Brasil Solucoes Informaticas Para Sistemas Financeiros Ltda., eFront FZ-LLC, eFront Financial Solutions Inc., eFront GmbH, eFront Holding II SAS, eFront Holdings SAS, eFront Hong Kong Limited, eFront II SAS, eFront Kabushiki Kaisha, eFront Ltd, eFront SAS, eFront Singapore Pte. Ltd, eFront Software Luxembourg S.a r.l., eFront Solutions Financeieres Inc., eFront d.o.o. Beograd, iShares (DE) I Investmentaktiengesellschaft mit Teilgesellschaftsvermogen, and iShares Delaware Trust Sponsor LLC.
Nevsun Resources Ltd. engages in the mining and development of mineral properties in Europe, Africa, and North America. It explores for gold, copper, zinc, and silver deposits. The company's principal assets include Timok project, a copper-gold development project in Serbia; and Bisha copper- zinc mine in Eritrea. It also holds exploration licenses and permits in Serbia and Macedonia, as well as in the Bisha mining district. The company was incorporated in 1965 and is headquartered in Vancouver, Canada. As of January 7, 2019, Nevsun Resources Ltd. operates as a subsidiary of Zijin Mining Group Company Limited.

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Everest Re Group Ltd. is a holding company, which engages in the provision of reinsurance and insurance services. It operates through the following segments: U.S. Reinsurance, International, Bermuda, and Insurance. The U.S. Reinsurance segment writes property and casualty reinsurance and specialty lines of business, including marine, aviation, surety, and accident and health business, on both a treaty and facultative basis, through reinsurance brokers, as well as directly with ceding companies primarily within the U.S. The International segment offers foreign property and casualty reinsurance through Everest Re's branches in Canada and Singapore and through offices in Brazil, Miami, and New Jersey. The Bermuda segment comprises reinsurance and insurance to worldwide property and casualty markets through brokers and directly with ceding companies from its Bermuda office and reinsurance to the United Kingdom and European markets through its UK branch and Ireland Re. The Insurance segment writes property and casualty insurance directly and through brokers, surplus lines brokers, and general agents within the U.S., Canada, and Europe. The company was founded in 1999 and is headquartere

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Chorus Aviation Inc., through its subsidiaries, provides various aviation support services in the United States and Canada. The company operates through two segments, Regional Aviation Services and Regional Aircraft Leasing. The Regional Aviation Services segment includes all three sectors of the regional aviation, such as contract flying, including ACMI and charter operations; aircraft leasing; and maintenance, repair, and overhaul, as well as part sales and technical services. The Regional Aircraft Leasing segment provides aircraft leasing to third-party air operators. As of February 18, 2021, this segment's portfolio of leased aircraft consisted of 62 aircraft of which 49 aircraft were on lease to airline customers, such as 18 Dash 8-400s, 16 ATR72-600s, four CRJ1000s, four E190s, two E195s, and five A220-300s. The company was formerly known as Jazz Air Income Fund and changed its name to Chorus Aviation Inc. in January 2011. Chorus Aviation Inc. was incorporated in 2010 and is based in Dartmouth, Canada.

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Nasscom President R Chandrashekhar told PTI in an interview that a new generation of users and new economic strata that are entering the digital space for the first time have necessitated focused campaigns, which promote awareness around online behaviour and threats.

New Delhi: There is a need for multi-level campaigns to build awareness around information sharing on social media at a time when breach of user data on a social networking platform has placed data privacy issues in public glare, says IT body Nasscom.

Nasscom President R Chandrashekhar told PTI in an interview that a new generation of users and new economic strata that are entering the digital space for the first time have necessitated focused campaigns, which promote awareness around online behaviour and threats.

"As far as citizens are concerned, there is a need for building awareness on what the threats are, what they need to do especially in India more than other countries because we have a new generation and a new economic strata that is coming into the digital space for the first time," Chandrashekhar said.

The comments came at a time when there is a global backlash over data leak on social networking platform Facebook. Data mining firm, Cambridge Analytica has been accused of harvesting personal information of over 50 million Facebook users illegally to influence polls in several countries.

Chandrashekhar added that an increasing number of users are now going online for financial transactions, and many of them may not be aware of the risks involved. "There is a certain responsibility that government and service providers have, but also a certain responsibility that an individual has. A right is of no use, unless and until you exercise it. At each of these levels, there is a need to build awareness as everybody may not be that well-educated or informed," he said.

The outgoing Nasscom President, whose tenure comes to an end on March 31, 2018, explained that there is a large number of youngsters on social media, and it is therefore important to sensitise them about risks and threats in the online world.

"It is not just about a breach but also about choosing what information you want to put in the public domain online," he added. The advent of cheaper smartphones, faster connectivity and affordable data packs have fuelled mobile internet usage in India, with youth turning out to be the most prolific user of such services.

According to Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), the number of mobile internet users in India is set to touch 478 million by June 2018, against 456 million in December 2017.

Chandrashekhar highlighted that apart from the privacy and economic aspect, pertaining to financial gains from consumer data, there is a technological aspect to be considered too.

"Newer technologies like artificial intelligence are actually being built on data. So, your very ability to evolve new technology arises from your command and control large mountains of data," he pointed out.

The controversy around Facebook's data breach has raised serious questions around whether there is a need for stronger regulatory framework for the online world and steps that should be taken to ensure that citizen data is not misused. Facebook's data scandal has sparked a furore in India, with the government warning the social networking giant of "stringent" action for any attempt to influence polls through data theft and even threatening to summon Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, if needed.

The IT ministry has also shot-off notices to Facebook and Cambridge Analytica on the data breach issue and will decide on action to be taken after receiving their responses.
RBI also banned with immediate effect issuance of LoCs which, like LoUs, are used by importers to fund their overseas purchases.

New Delhi: The finance ministry has asked RBI to look into the problems being faced by industry and banks by the abrupt ban on LoUs, and provide some breathing space to them, sources said.

Reserve Bank of India this month banned issuance of Letters of Undertaking (LoUs) and Letters of Comfort (LoC), used extensively for trade finance, following the unearthing of Nirav Modi fraud case.

Nirav Modi and associates in connivance with some officials of Punjab National Bank (PNB) used LoUs to defrauded the lender of over Rs 13,000 crore.

The sources said the ministry has received representations from various corporates and banks against the abrupt banning of LoUs asking the RBI to provide some breathing space to them.

They feel that the sudden banning of LoUs has caused some disruption, the sources said, adding that the ministry has forwarded those representations to the central bank to take a final call.

According to the representations, the sudden discontinuation of LoUs has hit small and medium enterprises, they said.

So, on their behalf, the ministry has requested RBI to look this issue favourably, the sources added.

The cost for trade finance has also gone up because of shift to letters of credit, as per the representations. These instruments involve a commission fee along with a so called acceptance charge which is not the case with LoUs as they only involve a guarantee fee.

Earlier this month, RBI barred banks from issuing guarantees in the form of letters of undertaking (LoU) as it clamped down on the import financing route used by fugitive jeweller Nirav Modi and his uncle Mehul Choksi for allegedly committing India's biggest bank fraud.

RBI also banned with immediate effect issuance of LoCs which, like LoUs, are used by importers to fund their overseas purchases.

However, letters of credit and bank guarantees will continue upon meeting certain conditions.
New Delhi: While the US and China are trading threats, India is smartly trying to manoeuvre out of any trade war with the US by buying oil and gas from the nation. The first shipment of LNG from the US arrived at the Dabhol terminal of state-run gas major GAIL on Friday.

GAIL has signed two, 20-year LNG supply agreements potentially worth $32 billion for US LNG exports from the Dominion Cove Point project in Maryland and the Sabine Pass project in Louisiana.

US president Donald Trump is keen to promote exports from US and cut countrys trade deficit with other nations. As part of the policy, Mr Trump has been attacking China due to huge trade deficit with the communist nation.

He recently outlined fresh tariffs on $50 billion of Chinese imports and pledged theres more on the way. In response, China unveiled tariffs on $3 billion of US imports.

For India, which is one of worlds largest oil importer, buying oil and gas is easy way to reduce trade deficit with US and prevent a trade war with it. Our Ambassador to India, Kenneth Juster, has observed that the US is uniquely positioned to offer India a comprehensive energy partnership, and energy exports are emerging as a promising new means of addressing the bilateral trade deficit while promoting Indias energy security, said US Minister Counselor for Commercial Affairs Patrick Santillo.

Petroleum minister Dharmendra Pradhan Indias trade with USA is expected to increase owing to large scale imports of LNG and crude oil in coming years.

He pointed out that GAIL alone would be procuring $2 billion worth of LNG per annum from USA from FY19.

The demand for natural gas in India is expected to depict a healthy growth trajectory till 2029-30 as per International Energy Agency (IEA). IEA in its World Energy Outlook for 2016 had projected natural gas demand of 178 million standard cubic metre of gas a day (mmscmd) by 2020, 345 mmscmd by 2030 and 510 mmscmd by 2040," said the oil minister.

Indo-US Trade
New Delhi: Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu has written to Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, complaining about Gujarat government firm GSPC not paying compensation to fishermen affected by its pipeline laying work in KG basin.

Days after his party TDP quit the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) at the Centre, Naidu on March 24 wrote to Pradhan about pending compensation to the affected fishermen.

Gujarat State Petroleum Corp (GSPC), he said, had conducted offshore drilling in its KG basin block in the Bay of Bengal as well as laid pipeline from the drilling site to the shore. The state government had in 2012 laid down norms for identification of affected villages and families due to obstruction caused by laying of the pipeline work.

As many as 16,554 families were identified and Rs 6,750 per month was payable to each affected fisherman till completion of drilling work of GSPC, he said.

"Accordingly, the GSPC has paid an amount of Rs 66.88 crore towards the compensation for 16,514 affected families for a period of six months," Naidu wrote. But, they were not compensated for seven months when the pipeline was laid.

"Further, you are informed that the affected fishermen families have represented that the laying of pipeline work had been carried out for a further period of seven months and the compensation payable towards the additional seven months period @Rs 6,750 per month per family is pending from GSPC since past several years," he said.

Naidu asked Pradhan to take a personal interest in the matter and "consider the request of the downtrodden traditional poor fisher families for payment of the amount payable to them for a period of 7 months as they have lost livelihood due to GSPC".

GSPC, a Gujarat government firm, had drilled six wells and associated production facilities since making a gas discovery on the KG-OSN-2001/3 or Deen Dayal West (DDW) block located in the Krishna-Godavari basin off the coast of Andhra Pradesh in 2005. Natural gas production from the field started in April 2016. Last year, the company sold its 80 per cent interest in the block to state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) for USD 1.2 billion.
Sebi has already issued a discussion paper on the matter seeking public feedback on whether to put restrictions on trading in shares, obligations of resolution professional during the proceedings, reclassification of promoters in the event of their holding comes down and related party transactions.

MUMBAI: Market regulator Sebi will soon come out with new disclosure guidelines for companies undergoing the corporate insolvency resolution process (CIRP). The new guidelines have been necessitated due to fundamental change in the management and governance of a listed entity during and after insolvency process.

Sebi has already issued a discussion paper on the matter seeking public feedback on whether to put restrictions on trading in shares, obligations of resolution professional during the proceedings, reclassification of promoters in the event of their holding comes down and related party transactions.

The proposed guidelines would prescribe the disclosure to be made prior to the resolution process, during the resolution proceedings before the tribunal and post CIRP stage.

During the resolution process, the regulator is considering whether to impose any fetters on the transferability of shares of listed corporate debtor as continued trading would depend on such companies meeting the listing standards of the stock exchanges.

The guidelines also requires a corporate debtor to make disclosures regarding any public announcement ordered by NCLT, invitation of claims by interim resolution professional, confirmation of interim resolution professional by the committee of creditors (CoC) and intimation of meetings of COC among others.

Sebi is also discussing whether to exempt the corporate debtor from seeking shareholders approval for any related party transactions if such transactions are part of the resolution plan approved by NCLT.
Mumbai: Rani Mukerjis Hichki has already tasted success, and now, after exactly a week of its release, the film is ready to be showcased to the President Of India.

The acclaim of Hichki has found a taker in none other than the President of India who will be watching it on Saturday. Hichki has a strong social message, which appeals to audiences across all age groups, a source told DNA.

Producer Maneesh Sharma says, It is an incredible feeling to receive such love from audiences for Hichki. It is a matter of great pride for any filmmaker to have his/her film screened for the President of India. Im extremely humbled that it is spreading such important social messages across the country.

Produced by Maneesh Sharma and directed by Siddharth P Malhotra, Hichki stars Rani in the lead role.
Mumbai: Superstar Shah Rukh Khan today said he is enjoying working on his upcoming film "Zero" as the process is making him feel as if he is "growing up very fast into a child".

The 52-year-old actor took to Twitter to thank the film's director Aanand L Rai and the team for the experience.

"I am loving and living making 'Zero' the film. Thanks @aanandlrai and the whole team for this. Only way to describe it is 'I am growing up very fast into a child... Very fast'," Shah Rukh tweeted.

I am loving & living making Zero the Film. Thx @aanandlrai & the whole team for this. Only way to describe it is  I am growing up very fast into a child...very fast  Shah Rukh Khan (@iamsrk) March 29, 2018

The actor plays a vertically challenged man in the movie, which is slated to be released on December 20.

Shah Rukh reunites with his "Jab Tak Hai Jaan" co-stars, Anushka Sharma and Katrina Kaif in the film.
Mumbai: Shraddha Kapoor played Haseena Parkar, the sister of Dawood Ibrabhim, in a biopic directed by Apoorva Lakhia which released in 2017.

Even though the movie didnt really leave a mark, it now appears that Vidya Balan has been approached for a biopic on a lady gangster.

A source in the know told mid-day, "Set in the murky world of crime, the drama sees the leading lady as a grey character. The role is that of a strong-minded woman who is almost a crime overlord. After Jyoti finished penning the script, Vidya was the first name that came to her mind. Given the kind of author-backed roles that she has done, the actress would be a perfect fit for the character."

The source added, "The actress also has the Indira Gandhi biopic in the pipeline. It all depends on when she starts the biopic. She is also in talks for another project. But if all goes as planned, the crime drama will go on floors later this year."

Ever since she impressed as Silk Smitha in The Dirty Picture, it appears that Vidya has been approached for biopics, since she will reportedly portray Indira Gandhi and Andhra CM NTRs wife and she walked out of playing Meena Kumari on screen.
Mumbai: Sushant Singh Rajput, last seen in Raabta, is currently shooting for SonChiriya with Bhumi Pednekar.

The actor had begun Kedarnath shoot with Sara Ali Khan, but since that project is on halt now, his focus has shifted completely to SonChiriya.

In fact the actor even went on to convince his director Abhishek Chaubey that a song he shot for, did not have much scope for a male lead, and thus, it should be reshot.

A source reveals to Mid-Day, "While going through the footage of the song, Sushant felt that the romance between his character and Bhumi's wasn't coming across. Since this is the only song that throws light on their love story in the otherwise gritty dacoit drama, it was imperative that the romance be established. On seeing the rushes over and over again, they realised that the song focussed on Bhumi's character with little scope for the male lead. When Sushant suggested the changes to Abhishek, he decided to reshoot it with a balanced approach."

"The new version sees Sushant's character professing his love for Bhumi," says the source, adding that the song was redone in time to avoid further issues. "It would have been difficult to redo this later since special permissions were taken for the shoot in Madhya Pradesh," concluded the source.
Ranbir Kapoor is 35 years old and unabashedly a mamas boy. Or so the rumours go. His mom, a popular former star in her heydays, ironically has never approved of any of the actresses her darling son has dated. Strange, considering that Neetu was not exactly to the manner born. So it is hard to understand her inherent disdain for her sons ex-girlfriends be it Deepika Padukone or Katrina Kaif.

When Ranbir was dating Deepika, Neetu constantly made snide references about how her son was not getting enough sleep and his girlfriend was not a good influence on him. The first time he felt involved, I knew the girl was not right for him. I told him dont get serious so soon, the more you see the more you know and learn, so meet many girls, and go out with them, but dont commit yet, was her refrain.

Today that very same Deepika is Indias top female star. And now Neetu Kapoor even sent out a bouquet to the actress, saying proud of you, after watching Padmavaat. What exactly was she proud of?

Official girlfriend number two Katrina Kaif assumed she had managed to get the Kapoor boy into her fold after they opted for a live in arrangement, much to mama Kapoors disappointment. All Neetu could do was talk about being happy for her son even as she plotted Kats exit from Ranbirs life. Who can forget that famous X-Mas lunch at the late Shashi Kapoors house, after which Neetu conveniently cropped out Kat from a group picture. Following that, Neetu and Rishi did not attend the family lunch as they didnt want to bump into Katrina there. This was also a strong message to Ranbir to choose his parents or his girlfriend. The rest is history. Everyone has their own life. I cannot say anything, was Neetus reaction after the news broke out about Ranbir-Kat break-up clearly dissociating herself from the story.

Recently, she posted happy pictures with actress Alia Bhatt, who celebrated her birthday in Bulgaria, where she was shooting with Ranbir. Neetu appears to be fond of Alia. And when Alia posted a picture of her with Ranbir smartly captioning it, And its just the beginning, Neetu replied with heart emoticons on the post.

While there are strong rumours that Alia and Ranbir are dating, insiders insist that its not true. And now with reports out on how Ranbir still nurses a soft spot for Pakistani actress and single mom, Mahira Khan, his mum must be getting serious palpitations. See, Neetu is a caring mother. Ranbir is a soft guy. He never wants to hurt anyone but ends up getting hurt most of the time. Thats the precise reason why Neetu wants him to be careful of the relationships he gets into. For instance, if she like Alia Bhatt and feels that the actress is also the kind of person that Ranbir can be with, she will be fine. Ranbir is a simple guy. Neetu is only scared of a high maintenance bahu in the family, says a source.

In August last year, Ranbir and his mother had gone off to London, apparently to meet a homely girl from a business family. While Mama Kapoor was convinced, Ranbir wanted time off to get a few blockbusters on the big screen before getting married. Guess this time he is having his way. Maybe he is trying hard to break away from her overbearing arms and Mahira maybe a step in that direction!
Rating:

Cast: Tiger Shroff, Disha Patani, Prateik Babbar, Manoj Bajpayee, Randeep Hooda, Deepak Dobriyal, Jacqueline Fernandez

Director: Ahmed Khan

Im not aware if a formal circular was sent out, but it has become mandatory for almost all movies these days to flash their nationalistic credentials upon arrival. Baaghi 2 does it in a way that is loathsome. A copy of the 2016 Telugu film Kshanam (Moment), director Ahmed Khans Baaghi 2 is built around a young box-office heartthrob who has dolle-sholle, mean quads and hamstrings, and zero acting talent. Thus it begins, with such horrifying thrashing of a rather delicate damsel that it made me recoil in disgust, but is designed to make every filmy desh bhakts blood boil. But Neha (Disha Patani), who is hit on the head, beaten ruthlessly and had her face kicked, is up and about two months later. We catch her in a gurdwara with just two red bruises and, for a bit, her arm dangling in a cast. Perhaps, we think, she has come to thank Babaji for her miraculous recovery that only certain film directors have the gumption to pull off. But thats not the case. She wants something. The sweet Granthiji reassures her and her mind and the films crew rush off from Goa to snow-clad Kashmir where a small, lonesome shack is regurgitating men in phirans. Out they tumble, from the windows and the door.

Ranveer Pratap Singh aka Ronnie (Tiger Shroff) is a fauji who doesnt like being slighted, and definitely not by Kashmiris who think stones are more powerful than bullets. This is our ilaaka, one Kashmiri says tauntingly, making Ronnie plan his exit in Major Leetul Gogoi style. As Ronnie rides out in his jeep with a human shield attached to it, the proud poster boy of hyper-nationalism, I felt the urge to grab the popcorn bucket of the child constantly muttering behind me and puke in it. But worse was to follow. Upon being questioned rather mildly about the human rights violation, Ronnie, unfazed, says, Sir, Tiranga nahin jalana chahiye tha. Thats when I thought of our real life, in which Gogoi received a commendation from Indian Army Chief General Bipin Rawat. Bollywood may be craven, but its not lying. It is showing us what we have become. Or, scarily, who we always were, incognito. Back in his tent, Ronnie listens to a message on his phone. His ex, Neha, has left him an SOS. But just as hes getting ready to fill out his leave application, his fauji pal reminds him that its taken him four years to get over her. LOLz.

Its clear that Ronnie has not gotten over Neha because immediately we go where his mind is  back to the days when he and Neha were a lovey-dovey, happy item in their rather posh college. With all this on his mind, Ronnie heads towards Neha while striking a pose  his feet more than hip-distance apart  thats meant to be a warning to all bad guys dwelling wherever. My daughter Shreya, pet name Ria, has been kidnapped, Neha says. And no one is helping me find her. So you must. Ronnie frowns, asks a few questions and then heads to Usman Langdas garage to rent a car. Usman (Deepak Dobriyal) feels instant affinity for Ronnie and utters deep, discerning, dull lines. As Ronnie starts his investigation, neither the school principal, nor the guard, or the neighbours have a clue  not just about the kidnapping Neha talks of, but her daughter Shreya as well. Soon, the cast of characters expands. Theres the top cop, DIG Shergill (Manoj Bajpayee), an old pal of Ronnies boss, who keeps quoting his Bade Bhaiyya to calm down the angry fauji.

Then there is ACP Loha Singh Durg (Randeep Hooda), LSD in short. After making udta Punjab land, I am here to clean up Goa, he says with a chuckle. But his attitude and attire suggest that hes just sauntered in from a smokey joint on Anjuna beach. We also meet Nehas cocaine snorting devar, Sunny (Prateik Babbar). With flashbacks to the past, we are informed about the present where Ronnie, disregarding his Colonels order to report for duty at dawn (thus, baaghi, rebel, Im guessing), has stolen the I-card of a cop to probe Rias disappearance. One set of clues suggest that Neha may well be a raving loony who thinks she has a daughter, but then Neha does something that makes Ronnie pursue the truth to the den of the drug kingpin in true Rambo style. More than the crushing of skulls, cracking of bones and annihilation of people with bad karma, this sequence in the forest shows the middle-finger to all that is logical, scientific and humanly possible. Of the lot, running straight at and jumping upon an automatic firearm that sits in a hovering helicopter firing bullets straight at him has got to be the most Rajini Sir thing that Ronnie does here.

Baaghi 2s plot is simple. Its also a copy. And yet three writers were required to collaborate on its screenplay. Despite that they could not come up with half-decent situations to wedge in two item numbers  one so dull that its best forgotten, and the other so offensive that it must be ridiculed repeatedly. The best dancers in the world cant compete with Madhuri Dixit. And Jacqueline Fernandez, with her gym-toned thighs and pilate abs, is not even in the outer ring of decent dancers. Choreographer Ganesh Acharya and Ms Fernandez turn a lovely, important cinema memory into an ugly gyration that is so boring that for a moment I actually considered standing on my H9 seat to entertain the hall. Jacqueline is not dancing here. She is combining her gym workout with some hectic movements of the pelvis while pouting needlessly. Theres no fluidity, no rhythm here  just a disturbing display of what passes off as Bollywood dancing these days. As they say, nakal karne ke liye bhi akal chahiye.

If acting were a martial art, then Tiger Shroff is truly an excellent actor. When he kicks, bad guys molars pop out like bloody popcorns. Hes cast and set in that mera moonh nahin, mere muscles baatein karte hain mould. Thats why the dialogues written for him require special skills  they are stiff and staccato beyond belief and are delivered either with teeth clenched or a toothy grin. Theres no in between because in routine, normal situations Tiger Shroff looks decidedly depressed, as if upset that the director is wasting his precious gym time by making him talk. But since, between the hero and the heroine here, Shroff is prettier, the film, whenever it can, caresses his ribbed body for us. In one scene, in fact, the camera goes bonkers. It moves up and down, almost licking Shroffs muscled body which is standing tense in very tight, very small chaddies. While Tiger Shroff shows us how dull it is to act, Randeep Hooda and Manoj Bajpayee show us what fun it is to actually be able to act.

Hooda isnt so much a part of this film as he is the star of his own little sub-film within Baaghi 2. He glides in, like a dazzling flotilla, complete with beads, beard and braid, bringing some masti to this one-track tedious affair. He even gets a companion, Bosco, whom we feel even though we dont meet him. Theres a brief scene in Baaghi 2 when Manoj Bajpayees DIG Shergill and Deepak Dobriyals Usman Langda are sitting quietly, face to face. Its a moment that spoke to the audience spontaneously without a word being uttered, and many burst out laughing. The way these two ace actors  trapped in a film so idiotic and bizarre  look at each other, as if sharing a private joke about the kindergarten level of acting they are having to do, is the most honest moment in the film that the camera picked up. PS: I would like to be in on what I presume is a very interesting story behind Prateik Babbars inspired casting here. But I dont think itll be told anytime soon. If and when I get to know, I shall share.
It was named in honor of the Japreria, a disappearing indigenous ethnic group in the Perija in the northwestern Venezuelan state of Zulia. (Photo: AFP)

Caracas: Venezuelan and Colombian scientists have identified a new species of frog in the Perija mountain range shared by both countries that is home to unusual species like this small amphibian.

With multi-colored skin and a distinctive song, the Hyloscirtus japreria was discovered during expeditions over the past decade living in rivers and cascades at altitudes above 1,000 meters (3,280 feet).

It was named in honor of the Japreria, a disappearing indigenous ethnic group in the Perija in the northwestern Venezuelan state of Zulia.

The frog's discovery -- published in February in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Zootaxa -- brings to 37 the number of species identified as belonging to the Hyloscirtus genus.

Small in size, the males measure between 2.8 and 3.2 centimeters (up to 1.25 inches) in length and the females from 3.5 to 3.9 centimeters.

The journey that led to their discovery began in 2008.

"Several years went by before we found enough evidence that it was a new species," biologist Fernando Rojas-Runjaic, the coordinator of the study, told AFP.

Once they determined it was a "stream frog, we had to verify that it wasn't a Hyloscirtus platydactylus, another species found in the Perija in 1994," he added,

The scientists recorded the find with cameras and high-definition sound recorders to capture its distinctive coloring and analyze its song.

The sounds emitted by the frog, which can be heard from 15 meters (yards) away, is one of its most distinctive characteristics, said expedition member Edwin Infante.

The H. japreria is also characterized by a pale yellow dorsal area with tiny dark brown spots and small reddish brown smudges.

It also has whitish stripes in certain parts of its eyes, ears, thighs and feet. The frog's iris is grey with a slender black reticulation.

Working with Rojas-Runjaic, of the Caracas-based La Salle Natural History Museum, were Colombian biologist Fabio Meza-Joya and Venezuelans Infante and Patricia Salerno.

Reaching the frog's habitats required expeditions of several days on foot and mule into the Perija mountains.

Access to the mountain range from Colombia was restricted for decades because of a conflict with leftist guerrillas, "which produced information vacuums," said Meza-Joya, adding that a 2016 peace agreement with the main rebel group should open the way for new discoveries.

"It opened a window to go into areas that were inaccessible. With peace, knowledge about biodiversity increases," he said.

Meza-Joya stressed that amphibians are fundamental to ecosystems, acting as regulators of insect populations that can be vectors of disease.

"Some species show marked vulnerability to environmental change so they are considered excellent indicators of the health of ecosystems," he said.
New Delhi: Looking for destinations for the year 2018?

Here are some reasons to why you should visit world's oldest and most popular natural health resort - the Dead Sea in Israel:

-The Dead Sea is three million years old and the lowest point on earth at 1,388 ft below sea level.

-The lowest point on earth is also home to the lowest road on the planet, Highway 90 located 1,289 ft. below sea level on the Israeli shore.

-One of the saltiest water bodies on the planet, the Dead Sea has 10 times the salt concentration of ocean water creating the bucket list experience of floating on water.

-What if we told you that the Dead Sea isn't a sea at all but actually a hypersaline lake ranked as the world's deepest salt water lake.

-The world's first and most popular health resort, the Dead Sea was a favorite among royalty with the likes of King Herod the Great and Queen Cleopatra.

-The biggest free spa on earth, the Dead Sea region has been attracting visitors from all over the world. The mineral content in the water, mud and salt, the low content of pollen and other allergens along with low solar UV radiation, combined with the atmospheric pressure and the depth, have healing properties for various skin diseases, respiratory ailments and rheumatic pain. A unique occurrence at the Dead Sea is of large amounts of asphalt which rises to the surface of the water. Ancient Egyptians would import the asphalt from the Dead Sea region and used it to embalm mummies.

-Yes, the famous Dead Sea Scrolls were found here; hundreds of well preserved Biblical and non-biblical manuscripts that helped reshape historic views on religion.

-Evidence shows that the Dead Sea may dry up within 50 years so we recommend a quick visit in 2018!
The incident came to light on March 21 after a man was found lying in a pool of blood in a drain in Chander Vihar area, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Outer) MN Tiwari said. (Representational Image)

New Delhi: 30-year-old woman and her brother allegedly stabbed a delivery man multiple times in outer Delhi's Nihal Vihar after he failed to deliver the cell phone they ordered from a shopping portal on time, police said on Thursday.

The accused, who have been arrested, were identified as Kamal Deep, 30, and her brother Jitender Singh, 34, the police said. They have recovered Rs 40,000, a van which was used in committing the crime, a blood stained towel, a knife and shoe laces that were used to strangle the delivery man.

The incident came to light on March 21 after a man was found lying in a pool of blood in a drain in Chander Vihar area, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Outer) MN Tiwari said.

The victim was taken to Sanjay Gandhi Hospital where he is now recovering.

The delivery boy told the police that he had come to deliver a cell phone worth Rs 11,000 to Kamal Deep and called her to confirm her address. She then started calling him about why he was getting delayed.

The woman got into an argument with him after he reached her house. She, along with her brother, then attacked him and strangled him with shoe laces. When he fell down, Kamal Deep allegedly sat on his abdomen and attacked his hands and face with a knife, Tiwari said.

When the man became unconscious, Kaur and Singh robbed Rs 40,000 in cash from him and later dumped him near a drain thinking that he has died, the police said.
HYDERABAD: The charred body of a 24-year-old woman was found abandoned in Medak town on Thursday. Based on the mobile phone and other clues near the body, police identified the deceased as M Hemalatha, a resident of Medak town. Medak SP Chandana Deepthi who visited the scene of offence said that Hemalatha was killed after which her body was set on fire and dumped at the spot.

"She had recently left for her maternal home, after a quarrel with her husband Satish. All angles are being probed and the suspects will be nabbed very soon", she said.

Hemalatha was married to Satish in 2013 and they had a child.

Months after getting married, they got separated from Satish's parents and were living separately. After the recent quarrel with her husband, she left her son with her in-laws and went to her maternal home.

Hemalatha had earlier approached Medak police station complaining against her in-laws by stating that they had deliberately concealed Satish's ill-health before the marriage and had cheated her. She had also lodged a complaint against her in-laws and husband at Begumpet police station.

On Thursday morning, she was found dead. Police booked a murder case and have questioned her parents, husband and in laws about her movements in the recent past. The case is under investigation.
The Maldives will further embrace Chinese investment but is aware it risks getting caught between China and India, Maldives Ambassador to China Mohamed Faisal said. (Photo: AFP)

Beijing/New Delhi: India is a brother, but China is like a long lost cousin found, Maldives Ambassador to China Mohamed Faisal has said, asserting that his country would push ahead with Chinese projects despite New Delhi's concerns.

The Maldives will further embrace Chinese investment but is aware it risks getting caught between China and India, Faisal told the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post.

"China is like a long-lost cousin that we have found, a long-lost cousin who is willing to help us," he said on Thursday after Maldivian President Abdulla Yameen lifted a state of emergency in the troubled South Asian nation after 45 days.

"India is a brother. We are a family, we may quarrel and we may have arguments but in the end, we will sit down and resolve it," the diplomat said.

He claimed that the Maldives has taken a number of projects to India for finance "but we did not receive the necessary finance."

China, which looks at Maldives as a major participant in its 21st century Maritime Silk Road plan in the Indian Ocean, has made heavy investments in the nation of islands which has 26 tropical atolls and 1,000 small islands.

China has put up a staunch defence of Maldives President Abdullah Yameen, stonewalling international pressure and enabling him to stay in power during the current crisis.

The picturesque Indian Ocean archipelago was plunged into chaos early last month when the Supreme Court called for the release of nine imprisoned opposition politicians, ruling that their trials were politically motivated and flawed. The government refused to implement the ruling.

Yameen imposed a state of emergency and arrested apex court judges and former president Maumoon Abdul Gayoom.

Opposition party leaders in Maldives alleged that China is tacitly backing Yameen, which emboldened him to resort to unconstitutional actions like arresting Supreme Court judges.

Former president Mohamed Nasheed who was in exile abroad had called for Indian intervention in Maldives to save the democracy in the island nation. He had alleged that China is indulging in land grabbing, threatening not just the Maldives, but the peace and the stability of the entire region.

Faisal said Maldives will not allow any foreign military establishments. "Our government has made it very clear that we are not going to allow any kind of military establishments or military undertakings in the Maldives. Not for China, not for any other countries," he said.

More than 70 per cent of the Maldives' foreign debt is owed to China, but Faisal said it was not having trouble making payments, adding that the country had taken some concessional loans to pay as its tourism market expanded.

"Right now, it's only seven islands that Chinese have invested in, in the tourism sector. For a country with such capacity as China I think it is a very low number  it should be more than that." China had expressed interest in building a port in the Maldives, Faisal said, but there was no confirmed plan at present.
The accused, Anita Waghle, also a resident of Nallasopara, Palghar district, was arrested on Tuesday night, police said. (Photo: Representational | File)

Palghar: With the arrest of a 22-year-old woman, police on Wednesday claimed to have solved the murder of a girl in the Palghar district of Maharashtra, who was kidnapped and whose body was later found in Gujarat.

Also read: 5-yr-old girl kidnapped from Maharashtra, found dead in Gujarat toilet

The accused, Anita Waghle, also a resident of Nallasopara, Palghar district, was arrested on Tuesday night, police said.

The five-year-old girl was kidnapped from outside her home on March 24 and she was found dead in the ladies' toilet of Navsari railway station in Gujarat, over 250 km from Mumbai, on Sunday, Additional SP Raj Tilak Roshan told reporters.

The Navsari police initially registered a case of accidental death and sent the body for a post-mortem which revealed the death was due to strangulation.

Later, a murder case was filed, police said.

A probe revealed Waghle had taken the girl to Navsari in a train and strangled her to death in the toilet, police said.

A team of cops led by senior inspector Kishore Khairnar zeroed in on the woman on Tuesday night and placed her under arrest, they said and claimed she has confessed to the crime.

The woman was reportedly in a relationship with the victim's father, an autorickshaw driver, and wanted to marry him. However, he kept delaying marriage and this enraged her, they said. The accused then kidnapped and killed his daughter, police added.
The committee members will visit the state and submit a report to BJP chief Amit Shah, a party statement said.

New Delhi: In the wake of violence over Ram Navami processions in West Bengal, BJP chief Amit Shah on Friday constituted a four-member committee comprising senior party leaders, who would visit the state and submit a report to him in this regard.

Shah condemned the violence in Asansol in West Bengal and said "such incidents are unfortunate and painful", the saffron party said in a statement.

The four-member committee the BJP chief formed comprises the party's national vice-president Om Mathur, spokesperson Shahnawaz Hussain and two MPs -- Roopa Ganguly and VD Ram.

The committee members will visit the state and submit a report to Shah, the statement said.

Earlier, the BJP had hit out at West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee over the incidents of violence in the state and accused the Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo of doing politics while the state was burning.

A clash had broken out between two groups over a Ram Navami procession at Raniganj, near Asansol, on Monday. One person was allegedly hacked to death while a deputy commissioner of police had lost a hand after being hit by a bomb.
There will be no re-examination outside India. (Photo: File)

New Delhi: The Union Human Resource Development Ministry on Friday announced the re-examination dates of Class 12 Economics exam.

Addressing the media, Secretary Education Anil Swarup informed that re-examination of Class 12 Economics will be held on April 25.

For Class 10 Maths, the re-exam, if at all it happens, will be held in July in Delhi and Haryana. The exact date for the Class 10 exam will be announced later.

"Regarding Class 10 re-examination, as leak was restricted to Delhi and Haryana, if it at all a re-exam will happen, it will happen only in Delhi and Haryana and a decision will be taken on this in next 15 days. If at all a re-exam is done, it will be in July," Swarup further added.

There will be no re-examination outside India.

Swarup also said, "Our immediate concern of the children who have suffered and this decision is in that context. We will nail the person who did this."

The papers of the Economics exam of class 12 held on March 26 and Maths exam of class 10 held on March 28 were leaked on social media hours before the examination.

Soon after this, CBSE announced re-examination and a police investigation into the matter.
The Imam made the appeal on Thursday when the body of the 16-year-old was laid to rest at a burial ground in Asansol in the presence of about 1,000 people. (Photo: NDTV screengrab)

Asansol: An Imam in West Bengals Asansol, who has lost his son in the violent incidents over Ram Navami celebrations, has urged the people not to make it an issue and restore peace in the area.

"I have lost my son. I have not lodged any police complaint. Do not make it an issue. If you love me, then restore peace," Noorani Masjid Imam Imdatullah Rashid said.

The youngest son of the Imam, Hafiz Sabkatulla, was found dead with injuries on his head and throat at the Asansol district hospital on Wednesday.

The Imam made the appeal on Thursday when the body of the 16-year-old, who had recently appeared in this year's Class 10 board examination conducted by the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education, was laid to rest at a burial ground in Asansol in the presence of about 1,000 people.

Asansol and Raniganj in West Burdwan district of West Bengal had witnessed violent clashes between two groups over Ram Navami processions on Sunday and Monday.

Official sources had said one person was killed and two police officers were injured in the violence.
Fliers arguing with employees of an airline at the Hyderabad airport at 3 am on Thursday morning. (Photo:DC)

Hyderabad: An IndiGo aircraft tyre-burst incident occurred on Wednesday night on the runway of the Hyderabad airport, leaving thousands stranded in different airports across the country as well as causing pandemonium at the Hyderabad Airport.

IndiGo airlines and others had to cancel many of their flights early on Thursday morning due to runway restrictions. Passengers alleged that though the airlines are insured for these kinds of contingencies, they did not provide accommodation for all the stranded passengers, but did so only for frequent flyers.

Additionally, passengers of other flights were not informed either about the incident or the cancellation of flights till after they had already checked-in. The airport appeared very chaotic on late on Wednesday night as angry passengers were seen shouting and yelling at the various airlines staff due to the inconvenience caused.

When passengers demanded to know the status of their flights, they were told that the flights were cancelled due to IndiGos operational reasons. Ive been stuck at the airport since Wednesday night with no information being provided about my substitute flight to Bengaluru. Though Ive asked for a refund I havent received anything so far, said Mr Gautam.

Mr Aditya, another stranded passenger scheduled to fly out from Hyderabad to Mumbai said, I landed in Hyderabad at 8 pm from Visakhapatnam on Wednesday night and my flight was scheduled at 11:45 pm to Mumbai. Only after I arrived at gate one was I told that the flight had been postponed to 12:45 am. Later, it was further pushed to 2 am.

Sunitha Simon, a resident of Hyderabad who was travelling from Delhi said, I was flying from Delhi and my flight was supposed to land at Hyderabad at 10 pm, but due to the tyre-burst incident the flight was diverted to Bengaluru airport instead. We were stranded at Bengaluru till 3 am. We were not allowed to deboard.

When we reached Hyderabad at 4 am it was completely crowded and there were no cabs available. Its strange that because of a single tyre burst thousands were stranded at different airports. Our airports could not even handle one such incident and we talk about digital India.
Test check of records of 320 units of commercial taxes, prohibition and excise, transport, land revenue, stamps and registration among others showed under collection of Rs 1,289 cr in 1,553 cases.

HYDERABAD: Revenue-earning departments of the state government have caused `1,289 crore loss to the state exchequer, observed the CAG report.

Test check of the records of 320 units of commercial taxes, prohibition and excise, transport, land revenue, stamps and registration and other departmental offices conducted in 2016-17 showed under assessment/short levy/ loss of revenue aggregating to `1,289 crore in 1,553 cases.

Test check of 10 offices of the transport department revealed that 20,163 vehicles were plying without fitness certificates due to lack of alerts in the system and failure of the department to ensure renewal of fitness certificates. This posed risk to public safety besides non-realisation of `51.54 lakh.

The state government had not notified the enhanced fee for second and subsequent offences in the schedule of compounding fee. Low compounding fee for repeated offences allow erring drivers to violate traffic rules, posing risk to life and property. Besides, this lead to non-realisation of compounding fee of `6.05 crores.

The owners of the vehicles were not booked in 15,159 offences for allowing unauthorised persons to drive their vehicles. The loss of revenue towards compounding fee worked out to `1.52 crore. According to the CAG report, bilateral tax and penalty of `2.76 crore was not collected from the owners of 1,330 vehicles registered in Maharashtra and Karnataka. High Security Registration Plates (HSRP) in respect of 2,92,843 new vehicles (42 per cent) were not affixed. The HSRP project had not commenced in respect of 18.41 lakh in-use vehicles. Regarding VAT and Central Sales tax, in 24 offices, 28 dealers claimed excess input tax credit (ITC) of `2.72 crore due to adoption of incorrect method of restriction of ITC. In 14 offices, 23 dealers were allowed ITC of `1.55 crore incorrectly on ineligible items. In nine offices, the assessing officials incorrectly allowed ITC of `1.63 crore on work contracts of 11 dealers. Application of incorrect rates of tax resulted in short levy of `35.61 crore. Registration officials collected `10,000 on each document instead of charging 0.5 per cent on the amount secured.

CAG red flags ineffective inspection by GHMC staff

The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India observed four functions of the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) Building permissions, property tax, solid waste management and storm water drains.

With reference to building permission clearance by the GHMC, the CAG found that there was no improvement in pending applications, as 212 applications received during 2016-17 were pending.

The Audit found that GHMC Town Planning wing did not take action on constructions with deviations. The absence of records related to deviations in constructions/unauthorised constructions (detected by the Revenue wing) indicate ineffective field inspections by the Town Planning wing. During 2012-17, deviations were noticed in 30,864 assessments (41 per cent) out of 75,387 Property Tax assessments in test-checked circles. Of these, 10,460 were unauthorised constructions.

91% bizmen work without clearance

Disposing of the TRS governments claims of TS-iPass being a single window approval system, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) said on Thursday that the objective of single point approval was not achieved as the software allowed only selective approvals.

As per TS-iPass Act, an entrepreneur has to submit an application online for clearance with the required fees, for which the online portal interface indicates approvals required from various departments and the respective fees.

The CAG audit found out that the software application did not have options to ensure that entrepreneurs, who want to start business, were applying for all the approvals. Additionally, it also did not provide an option to Apply Later.

According to the CAG, only 9 per cent of entrepreneurs applied for all approvals while 91 per cent applied for selected approvals. Essential approvals, including PCB (Red and Orange category,) Fire Department, Grama Panchayat NOC were ignored. The system did not even insist on securing additional approvals before issuing consolidated approval.

The CAG pointed out a risk of such units starting operations even without all necessary approvals. The CAG highlighted that the entrepreneurs did not apply for as many as 6,924 required number of approvals. Eventually, the value of prescribed fees for these approvals `9.57 crores was not collected from them.

Additionally, the CAG also observed that there is no tracking mechanism to ensure that the 1,764 units which applied for partial approvals had thereafter established units and commenced operations.
A bench of Justices MB Lokur and Deepak Gupta also warned the Directors General of Police (Prisons) of all states and UTs of contempt notice for non-compliance of its earlier orders with regard to submitting a plan of action to deal with issue of overcrowding prisons. (Photo: File)

New Delhi: Prisoners "cannot be kept in jail like animals", a shocked Supreme Court said after it was informed that many of the over 1,300 prisons across the country were overcrowded, even to the extent of more than 600 per cent.

"What's the point in talking about prison reforms when we cannot keep them in jail. We should release them, if you cannot keep them properly," the top court said, lambasting state governments and union territories (UTs) for "complete lack of commitment" to fix this "extremely unfortunate" situation.

A bench of Justices MB Lokur and Deepak Gupta also warned the Directors General of Police (Prisons) of all states and UTs of contempt notice for non-compliance of its earlier orders with regard to submitting a plan of action to deal with issue of overcrowding prisons.

"It is unfortunate that the prisons are overcrowded. Prisoners also have human rights and they cannot be kept in jails like animals," it said.

The court said it was informed by amicus curiae that there were a large number of jails where "overcrowding is well above 150 per cent and in one case it is as high as 609 per cent."

"This is extremely unfortunate and clearly suggests the complete lack of commitment of the State Governments and the Union Territories to the human rights of prisoners and also indicates the failure of the Under Trial Review Committees to take their responsibilities seriously," it said.

While some jail inmates have got bail but cannot be released as they cannot furnish sureties, some others were imprisoned for petty offences under which they should have got bail long ago, the apex court said.

Voicing concern over the "extremely dismal" performance of the Under Trial Review Committees (UTRCs), the bench said this was quite apparent from the fact that "unrestricted overcrowding in jails continues and in some instances, it has escalated". The committee, set up in every district, deliberates and recommends the release of undertrial prisoners and convicts who have undergone their sentences or are entitled to be released from jail on bail or remission granted to them.

It directed the states and UTs to give their comments in two weeks on Standard Operating Procedures for the UTRCs, prepared in consultation with National Legal Service Authority (NALSA), so that they can work "effectively and efficiently".

If the comments of states and UTs are not received in two weeks, then it will be assumed that they have nothing to offer and SOPs will be finalised and circulated for compliance.

The apex court had, through orders of May 6, 2016, and October 3, 2016, directed preparation of a plan of action by states and UTs to deal with the issue of overcrowding in prisons and the proposal was directed to be submitted by March 31, 2017, but not even one of them gave it.

"We give a direction to all the state governments and UTs to comply with our orders dated May 6, 2016 and October 3, 2016 within a period of two weeks, failing which we may have to issue notice of contempt against the Director General of Police (Prisons) of the State Governments/UTs, which unfortunate step we would like to avoid. But if the information is not provided within two weeks we will be compelled to issue such notices," it said.

The apex court after perusing the status report of NALSA also voiced its concern over vacancies in the prison staff and directed the DGPs (Prisons) to specify "clearly and unequivocally" the steps taken to fill up the vacancies and progress made in two weeks.

"The combined sanctioned strength of prisons staff in all the prisons in the country is 77, 230, out of which there are 24, 588 vacancies as on December 31, 2017. Therefore, it is quite clear that there is slightly more than 30 per cent vacancies in the prisons staff," it said.

With regard to open jails, the apex court was informed that the draft "Administration of Open Jails Act and Rules" will be finalised by April 30, 2018.

Semi-open prisons or open prisons allow convicts to work outside the jail premises and earn a livelihood and return in the evening.

The concept was brought in to assimilate the convicts with the society and reduce their psychological pressure as they faced lack of confidence in leading normal lives outside. The bench posted the matter for further hearing on May 8.

The apex court had on February 21 asked the NALSA to look into the issue of overcrowding of prisons and furnish figures before it regarding the population in the jails where occupancy was over 150 per cent as on December 31, 2017.

The top court is hearing a matter relating to inhuman conditions prevailing in 1,382 prisons across the country.
The cases were registered under section 120B, 420, 468, r/w 471 of the IPC and section 13(2) r/w 13(1)(d) of the Prevention of Corruption Act 1988.

Hyderabad: The CBI, Visakhapatnam, registered three cases against 52 persons including top-level officials of the IDBI Bank for a pisciculture loan fraud to the tune of Rs 743 crore.

The FIRs registered by the CBI names chief general manager of IDBI, R. Damodaran and his DGM, Battu Rama Rao, along with 24 aggregators and 26 valuers. The cases were registered under section 120B, 420, 468, r/w 471 of the IPC and section 13(2) r/w 13(1)(d) of the Prevention of Corruption Act 1988.

Soon after the cases were registered, the law enforcement agency officials conducted searches at 18 locations in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh.

According to CBI officials, Damodaran and Rama Rao had allegedly enhanced the Kissan Credit Card loan limit to `5 crore, though the maximum limit of KCC loans is only `25 lakh.

Damodaran and Rama Rao hatched a conspiracy and misused their official position by directing the branch level officers to submit positive reports regarding the 677 borrowers in all the three cases pertaining to the Rajahmundry, Palangi and Bhimavaram IDBI branches, as arranged by the aggregators," officials have quoted.

During the preliminary inspection by the vigilance units of the bank and then again by the CBI, it was found that the whole process was fraudulent as there were no fish ponds.
Hyderabad: After several protests by students and teachers across the country, the Central Board of Secondary Education has decided not to conduct the Class X Math exam across the country, except in Delhi NCR and Haryana.

The Class 12 Economics exam will be conducted for all candidates all over the country except CBSE schools located abroad, on April 25. Both papers were leaked, requiring a re-exam.

The board in a circular released on Friday stated, The board will be conducting the Class 12 Economics paper (Code-030) for all candidates except the students in CBSE schools located abroad. The candidates will appear from the same allotted centres using the same admit card. The date of the said examination will be April 25, 2018.

The circular added that for the Class X Mathematics paper (code-041), initial inquiries have revealed that the leak was restricted to Delhi NCR and Haryana. So re-examination will not be considered for any other state. If after a detailed inquiry it is found necessary to conduct a re-examination, it will be held in July 2018. All the remaining exams would take place as scheduled. Board has also created a mail id examhelp.cbse@gmail.com.'

Narsimha Reddy, principal of Hyderabad Public School said that though Class X students from Telangana are relieved by the CBSE confirmation that the Math examination will only be conducted in Delhi NCR and Haryana, economics students are unhappy as the exam is scheduled for April 25 as most of them have booked tickets for international trips to US, UK etc. Teachers also cant take leave as they have to correct the papers. If at all the Class X exams are conducted in July across the country then it will become really difficult as the new academic year for Class XI starts in June, he added.
New Delhi: In a huge diplomatic breakthrough, both India and Pakistan jointly announced late on Friday that they had agreed to resolve the diplomat harassment row that had been severely affecting bilateral ties.

In identical statements issued at the same time from both New Delhi by the MEA and Islamabad by the Pakistan Foreign Ministry, the two sides said, India and Pakistan have mutually agreed to resolve matters related to the treatment of diplomats and diplomatic premises, in line with the 1992 Code of Conduct for the treatment of diplomatic/consular personnel in India and Pakistan. The resolution comes as a glimmer of hope that the two sides can work at repairing ties that have hit rock-bottom in the past two years.

This also comes in the wake of both countries having alleged recently that their diplomats were being harassed by the other side. The row was also resolved after both sides issued note verbales to each other.

The row had hit the headlines this month on March 11 after Pakistan shared details of the row with the Pakistani media. India declined to go public on the spat but Indian Government sources had subsequently said that Indian diplomats had been facing harassment in Islamabad for more than a year.
Hyderabad: A public interest litigation (PIL) has been moved before the Hyderabad High Court seeking a direction to the Central government to accord the Special Category Status to Andhra Pradesh and implement the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act, 2014.

P. Srinivasa Rao, a resident of Swarna village of Prakasam district, urged the court to direct the Centre to implement the Section 6, 90, 92 and 93 of the AP Reorganisation Act.

He submitted that then Prime Minister Manmo-han Singh has assured the Parliament during the discussion on the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Bill that special category status would be given to the Andhra Pradesh.

He said current Vice-President M. Venkaiah Naidu and Union finance minister Arun Jaitley, who were in the opposition that time, too have responsibility to ensure that the promises made to the people of Andhra Pradesh are fulfilled to protect the decorum and the image of the Parliament.

He complained to the court that the present government at the Centre is not acting on the promises made by the then Prime Minister. He sought to recall Prime Minister Narendra Modis promise to Andhra Pradesh during his election campaign that he would accord the special status to the state, if his party comes to power.

The petitioner alleged that the Election Commission has remained as a mute spectator though the political parties are not implementing their poll promises.

Stating that the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha have failed to transact any business for the past several days in the current Budget Session, he urged the court grant an order stopping the salaries to the members who are obstructing the business in both the Houses.
As many as 3,259 procurement centres have been set up across the state and purchases will commence from first week of April.

Hyderabad: The state government plans to procure 37 lakh metric tonnes of paddy from farmers during the ongoing rabi season.

As many as 3,259 procurement centres have been set up across the state and purchases will commence from first week of April. The civil supplies department has kept ready nine crore gunny bags for the procurement.

Civil supplies commissioner C.V. Anand on Friday said that all arrangements have been made for purchasing paddy from farmers.

About 12.75 lakh tonnes of paddy yield is expected in April, 18.2 lakh tonnes in May, and 5.46 lakh tonnes in June.

He said MSP, which should be mandatorily paid to the farmers, is Rs 1,550 for ordinary paddy, and Rs 1,590 for grade A variety.

In the view of high paddy yield this year, the commissioner has requested Food Corporation of India officials to keep available storage space initially for 15 lakh tonnes of paddy.
Hyderabad: Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao said on Friday that the state is poised to create a record in the country by having a the highest number of sarpanches from tribal community.

This is the result of TRS government enacting the new Panchayat Raj Act to upgrade 2,600 girijan thandas (agency areas) into gram panchayats. Apart from this, 400 more persons from the tribal community will become sarpan-ches due to the reservation for STs in other panchayats, taking total girijan sarpanches in the state to 3,000, Mr Rao remarked.

The CM was addressing the tribals who have come across the state at Pragathi Bhavan to thank him for converting tribal thandas into panchayats and giving them an opportunity to become sarpanches.

Mr Rao said that the poverty in agency areas could be eradicated with the new Act as about Rs 50,000 crore would be released by the state and the Central governmen-ts in the next five years.

Normally, state governments does not give funds to gram panchayats. They get grants directly from the Centre and the Finance Commi-ssion. Since these funds are not sufficient, the Telangana state government for the first time has earmarked Rs 1,200 crore for panchayats. Each panchayat will get Rs 3 lakh to Rs 20 lakh depending on population, Mr Rao added.
Chief Medical Superintendent of the hospital Yogendra Yati denied any medical negligence and said Pandey was given the best treatment. (Photo: ANI/Twitter)

Lucknow: After Jhansi, where a mans severed leg was kept as a pillow under his head earlier this month, another case of similar medical apathy has come to light in Sultanpur district.

The severed foot of a man was kept between his legs at the district hospital in Sultanpur.

The man, Atul Pandey, 48, lost a foot when a train ran over him. The locals rushed him to a nearby district hospital. During the course of treatment, the severed foot was kept between his legs. It was only removed by the doctors when people started clicking pictures of it.

Pandey's condition started deteriorating due to excessive loss of blood and he has now been referred to Lucknow for treatment.

Meanwhile, the chief medical superintendent Dr Yogendra Yati denied the incident and said that immediate treatment was given to the patient.
BENGALURU: As the election fever is picking up in the city, the Election Commission and BBMP have warned political parties to take precautionary measures and not to violate model code of conduct by putting up illegal flex and banners.

It also had meeting with representatives of over 100 flex and digital printing companies and issued strict guidelines to be followed while accepting print orders from political parties.

During the meeting BBMP Commissioner Manjunath Prasad briefed political parties on the crucial guidelines to be followed during model code of conduct and various leaders too got their queries cleared.

In the second session he addressed the representatives of printing units in the city and said, "Every single copy of pamphlet, handouts and brochures etc printed on behalf of political parties by the printers should bear the name of the printer, publishers, total number of copies ordered, serial number and the place of printing."

A copy of the work order along with signature from the person who is placing the order on behalf of the political parties and the cost incurred for the execution of the work should be submitted to the Election Commission along with five sample copies (pamphlet, brochure etc) of each work they get done, Manjunath Prasad said.

He also warned the political parties and printers that any violation could

land them in jail for six months.
Their differences reached a point of no return when Mr Priyank Kharge was inducted into the ministry by Mr Siddaramaiah, overlooking the seniority of Mr Guttedar.

BENGALURU: Former minister and backward classes leader and serial party-hopper, Malikayya Guttedar on Thursday announced his decision to part ways with the ruling Congress and join BJP on grounds that a senior legislator like himself was not accommodated in the cabinet by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah.

Mr Guttedar, who has represented Afzalpur constituency in Kalaburgi district for six terms irrespective of his party affiliation, told the media after a meeting with state BJP president B S Yeddyurappa here that he would quit the Congress as well as his membership of the Assembly, to join the BJP without any riders. He said he spoke to Mr Siddaramaiah about his decision to quit the Congress but could not submit his resignation to Speaker K B Koliwad as the latter was away.

He would join the BJP during party president Amit Shahs tour of Mysuru on March 30 and 31, he added.

A party-hopper, Mr Guttedar had quit the Congress earlier to join Karnataka Congress Party (KCP), an outfit launched by the late Chief Minister S Bangarappa in 1994, but returned in 2013 after a stint as JD (S). legislator. He, however, had run-ins with veteran Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge and his minister-son Priyank Kharge during his latest tenure in Congress. Their differences reached a point of no return when Mr Priyank Kharge was inducted into the ministry by Mr Siddaramaiah, overlooking the seniority of Mr Guttedar.

Sources in Congress said Mr Guttedar got wind of Mr Kharges plans to ensure his defeat him in polls on May 12 and therefore decided to defect to BJP. Initially, Mr Guttedar was keen to return to JD (S) and even put up banners welcoming party patriarch H D Deve Gowda recently. He, however, discovered that JD (S) lacked a strong support base in his constituency and took a decision to join BJP when the party candidate offered to make way for him.
In the background there was a voice whispering When are you going to commit suicide for Cauvery.

Chennai: Suicide fame AIADMK MP A. Navaneedha Krishnan had a harrowing time at the Chennai airport on Thursday with a few passengers tossing embarrassing questions related to Cauvery.

In the background there was a voice whispering When are you going to commit suicide for Cauvery.

The AIADMK Rajya Sabha MP on Wednesday created an uproar saying all party MPs will be driven to extreme step if the centre continues to be delay the formation of Cauvery Management Board, while deputy chairman in the Rajya Sabha P J Kurien expunged the remarks by the MP, the MP called several TV journalists to justify the threat he made in the Rajya Sabha.

Yes I said all AIADMK MPs will commit suicide because that is the situation of our farmers in TN, he told TV channels and this threat went viral causing embarrassing situation for the former advocate general at the city airport, when he was stopped by the journalists to respond on the issue.

The AIADMK leader faced the first sample of the public ire for what many believed to be a mere rhetoric and waste of time. This reflected at the Meenambakkam airport, where co passengers who witnessed the press conference jumped in to the scene and started raising queries on the Cauvery issue. A passenger came forward in the press conference and started throwing a volley of uncomfortable questions to the MP asking him why he was going soft with the Centre. He also asked the MP to sit on a fast at the airport and said that the entire Tamil Nadu will follow him. He also raked up the Neet issue thus doing the job of media.

The visibly embarrassed MP maintained his cool and said that he too was disturbed the same way the public in TN feel and explained the difficulties lying before the state as the Cauvery water dispute and the Neet was on the union list controlled by Centre. The MP however won a few hearts by maintaining stoic silence agreeing with the fellow passengers and later he made an excuse from the charged up audience, who again whispered what can he do, he is just a MP.

On Tuesday, state law minister C. V. Shanmugham also faced a similar situation in which when a scribe pointed that the ruling party maintained similar silence on the Neet issue the senior minister quipped and made a fast exit. AIADMK senior minister D. Jayakumar who regularly meets the press also remained in-door throughout Thursday, avoiding the media limelight, which he usually enjoys.
Hyderabad: Former Union minister Renuka Chowdary, who is retiring as the Congress Rajya Sabha member on April 2, is preparing to contest from the Khammam Lok Sabha constituency in the next general election.

Ms Chowdary was elected twice from Khammam, in 1999 and 2004. The Congress party does not have a sufficient number of MLAs to win even one Rajya Sabha seat in Telangana. Hence Ms Chowdary has decided to move to the lower house of Parliament.

In the 2014 election, YSRC candidate Ponguleti Srinivasa Reddy won the Khammam seat, and later defected to the TRS.

The ruling TRS is much weaker in the erstwhile composite Khamman compared to other districts, and is influenced more by Andhra politics than Telanganas.

In the last Assembly elections, the YSRC won three seats, but all of them defected to the TRS. So at present, the YSRC does not have a strong presence in Khammam district.

In the next Lok Sabha election, it will be a direct fight between the TRS and the Congress.

Speaking to this newspaper about her intention to contest from Khammam, Ms Chowdary said, It is just an interval for me. I will contest from the Khammam LS constituency in the next ele-ctions. In the last five years of being a Rajya Sabha MP, I was never away from the people of Khammam; I was always in touch with Khammam people.

When asked about supporting the Telugu Desams agitation in Parliament, she said, It is not a question of Andhra or Telangana and has nothing to do with politics. Our demand is to implement assurances given at the time of state bifurcation for both states. Our demand is to protect the self-respect of Telugus. And I am from a Telugu state.
Though the interview of MSNBC is scheduled to air on April 6th, the network has released few clips this week, in which Tim Cook bashed against Facebook.

Apples CEO Tim Cook has bashed Facebooks business model and saying detailed profiles of individuals information shouldnt exist on any social media platform.

At the Town hall event in Chicago with MSNBC and the technology website Recode, Cook was asked, what if you are in the shoes of Mark Zuckerberg right now? and how would he handle in the current Cambridge Analytica scenario.

What would I do? I wouldnt be in that situation, Tim Cook replied.

Though the interview of MSNBC is scheduled to air on April 6th, the network has released few clips this week, in which Tim Cook bashed against Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg and his company are facing boycotts and investigations over the ongoing fiasco.

Regarding this fiasco, Tim Cook stated If we monetized our customer, if our customer was our product, we could make a ton of money, Cook said. Weve elected not to do that  Were not going to traffic in your personal life. Privacy to us is a human right, a civil liberty, he said.

Cook also said that it is preceding time to regulate Facebook. I think the best regulation is no regulation, is self-regulation, he said. However, I think were beyond that here.

Last week Tim Cook also stated regarding social media that, I think that this certain situation is so dire and has become so large that probably some well-crafted regulation is necessary.

Tim Cook commenting against Facebook is not new, in 2015, Cook stated, When an online service is free, youre not the customer. Youre the product, he wrote in an open letter to Apple customers in 2014.

Mark Zuckerberg had already apologised against the debacle and in newspaper ads in the UK as well.

You are not our product, Cook declared. You are our customer. You are a jewel, and we care about the user experience, and we're not going to traffic in your personal life, Tim Cook said in Chicagos hall event.

However, Tim Cook is not only the one tech giant bashing Facebook, SpaceXs Elon Musk had also deleted his rocket companys Facebook pages, which had 2.6 million followers, and later tweeted Whats Facebook? on his Twitter account.

(Source)

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Mars is the exoplanet next door  a nearby example of how gas, dust and heat combine and arrange themselves into a planet.

Washington: Nasa is all set to send the first-ever mission dedicated to exploring the deep interior of Mars, the US space agency said on Friday. Scheduled to launch on May 5, InSight  a stationary lander  will also be the first Nasa mission since the Apollo moon landings to place a seismometer, a device that measures quakes, on the soil of another planet.

In some ways, InSight is like a scientific time machine that will bring back information about the earliest stages of Mars formation 4.5 billion years ago, said Bruce Banerdt, principal investigator for InSight.

It will help us learn how rocky bodies form, including Earth, its moon, and even planets in other solar systems, said Banerdt. InSight or the Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport mission, carries a suite of sensitive instruments to gather data.

Unlike a rover mission, these instruments require a stationary lander from which they can carefully be placed on and below the martian surface, Nasa said.

Mars is the exoplanet next door  a nearby example of how gas, dust and heat combine and arrange themselves into a planet.

Looking deep into Mars will let scientists understand how different its crust, mantle and core are from Earth, the US space agency said. Nasa is not the only agency excited about the mission. Several European partners contributed instruments or instrument components to the InSight mission.

Frances Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales led a multinational team that built an ultra-sensitive seismometer for detecting marsquakes. The German Aerospace Center developed a thermal probe that can bury itself up to five metres underground and measure heat flowing from inside the planet.
SALT LAKE CITY  Believe it or not, the local theater scene will have more to offer than just Hamilton this month.

As the megahit musical raps its way onto the Eccles Theater stage April 11-May 6, local theater companies will stage other offerings, including these seven family-friendly options that take audiences into the words of writers from Shakespeare to Jane Austen and to locations from River City, Iowa, to Camelot.

The Tempest

The Utah Shakespeare Festival hits the road each year, taking one of the Bards works to schools, community centers and correctional facilities throughout Utah, Nevada, Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho and Arizona, according to the festivals website.

This year, the festivals touring production is The Tempest  Shakespeares tale of Prospero, whose brother stole his title of duke and left Prospero and his daughter, Miranda, out to sea. USFs production will make a stop at the Utah Cultural Celebration Center for two performances on April 2, which are free and open to the public. The performances will be at 10 a.m. and 7 p.m., 1355 W. 3100 South, West Valley City, free seating is on a first-come, first-served basis (801-965-5100 or culturalcelebration.org).

Tuck Everlasting

Tuck Everlasting the musical debuted on Broadway with a short run in 2016 but was eclipsed by the huge success of Hamilton, according to a recent Deseret News article.

Although Tuck Everlasting may have been lesser known on Broadway, the story is well known in the state of Utah, as its based on Natalie Babbitts 1975 book by the same name, which countless children have read as part of their school curriculum. It tells the story of an 11-year-old girl named Winnie who stumbles upon a young man and his family who have become immortal after drinking from a spring in the woods near Winnies home. She works to protect the familys secret until she must decide whether to join them and live forever.

Hale Centre Theatre will stage the regional premiere of Tuck Everlasting April 2-June 23 (placing the musical up against Hamilton again) in the Jewel Box Theatre, 9900 S. Monroe St., Sandy, dates and times vary, $36-$40 for adults, $18-$20 for children and youths (801-984-9000 or hct.org).

Scheherazade

Fans of both theater and the symphony can enjoy both simultaneously when Enchantment Theatre Company performs with the Utah Symphony on April 14.

The Philadelphia-based theater company combines expressive masks, life-sized puppets, magical illusion, music, movement and pantomime to create a theatrical experience for audiences of all ages, according to the groups website.

Enchantment Theatre Company will perform Scheherazade  centered on the storyteller heroine and her cast of fabulous characters including Sinbad, Kalandar Prince and Aladdin, according to artsaltlake.org  with the Utah Symphony April 14, 11 a.m., Abravanel Hall, 123 W. South Temple, $8-$20 (801-355-2787 or artsaltlake.org).

Camelot

King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table will gallantly make their way from Camelot to Centerville for CenterPoint Legacy Theatres upcoming production of Camelot.

The four-time Tony Award-winning musical by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe  the same team behind My Fair Lady and Brigadoon  brings to life Arthurian legends with songs such as "If Ever I Would Leave You" and I Loved You Once in Silence.

Follow King Arthur as his ideals are tested when his lovely queen, Guenevere, falls in love with the young Knight, Lancelot and the fate of the kingdom hangs in the balance, according to Music Theatre International, April 13-May 12, 525 N. 400 West, Centerville, $19.50-$27 for adults, $17.50- $24.75 for seniors, students and children (801-298-1302 or centerpointtheatre.org).

The Music Man

Theres about to be trouble in Sandy City  yes, I said Trouble with a capital "T" that rhymes with "P" and that stands for pool.

Hale Centre Theatre will also launch a production of Meredith Willsons The Music Man in addition to Tuck Everlasting this month, with Music Man in the companys theater-in-the-round Centre Stage Theatre.

Audiences can get swept away along with the rest of River City, Iowa, when smooth-talking con man Harold Hill struts into town promising to turn the towns ragtag young men into a boys band, complete with 76 trombones and uniforms with a shiny gold braid on the coat and a big red stripe. But his plan hits a snag when local librarian Marian Paroo begins to suspect that Professor Hill isnt all hes cracked up to be.

The big parade will march into the Centre Stage Theatre, 9900 S. Monroe St., Sandy, April 16-June 9, dates and times vary, $40 for adults, $20 for children and youths (801-984-9000 or hct.org).

The Parent Trap

Regardless whether youre a fan of Hayley Mills version or Lindsay Lohans take on The Parent Trap (Mills is the best, just for the record), you can catch the story live onstage at Utah Childrens Theatre starting April 20.

Two young girls with a striking resemblance to one another meet at summer camp and become enemies. After playing several pranks on one another, the two are forced to share a cabin and soon discover they are identical twins who were separated when their parents divorced. The girls then hatch a plan to trade places.

See the high jinks at Utah Childrens Theatre, 3605 S. State, April 20-May 26, dates and times vary, $16 (801-532-6000 or uctheatre.org).

Sense and Sensibility

Money (or the lack thereof), misunderstandings, propriety, strong-willed women and love  all the necessary elements of a good Jane Austen story  are set to come to Hale Center Theater Orem this month with Kate Hamills stage adaptation of Sense and Sensibility.

When Elinor and Marianne Dashwoods father dies and leaves his fortune to their half-brother, the Dashwood sisters are left to face 18th-century British society without an inheritance. Elinor loves a man she discovers is secretly engaged to another woman, and Marianne finds a whirlwind romance that ends as quickly as it began when rumors fly. Will (the sisters) cling to their reputation or follow their hearts? HCTOs website queries.

Watch as the Dashwood sisters navigate love, April 27-June 2, dates and times vary, 225 W. 400 North, Orem, $18-$24 for adults, $14-$18 for children ages 4-11 (801-226-8600 or haletheater.org).
SALT LAKE CITY  Dennis Howland, president of the Utah chapter of Vietnam Veterans of America served as a Marine in the Vietnam War from 1966 to 1967.

When he returned home, he "made promises" to his friends that he would remind the world that "all Vietnam veterans served with integrity and honor."

A replica of the Vietnam Memorial Wall being build in Layton this year by the Vietnam Veterans of America is a fulfillment of one of those promises, he said Thursday.

On National Vietnam War Veterans Day Thursday, Howland organized and hosted a memorial service for war veterans at the state Capitol and announced details about the Vietnam Memorial Wall replica going up on the north end of Layton.

Several weeks ago, construction on the wall began in Layton's Commons Park. It will be dedicated on July 14. A tribute to Bob Hope, who performed in Vietnam for the troops, will be held afterward and will be open to the public.

Howland said the wall going up in Layton is 83 percent of the size of the one in Washington, D.C. It will have eight benches honoring the eight women who lost their lives in Vietnam as nurses on the front.

It was a struggle for Vietnam veterans to win the respect of their nation. The war deeply divided America, and a lot of that bitterness was taken out on the veterans. But the passing years and the Vietnam veterans themselves have changed that, Howland said.

"(But) I think we've moved on to a new war and a new problem and a new generation of chaotic politics," he said.

In 2014, Utah Gov. Gary Herbert signed legislation, HB275, observing March 29 as Vietnam Veterans Recognition Day in Utah, becoming the 21st state to do so. There were 47 states who observed the day in honor of Vietnam veterans by the time President Donald Trump made March 29 a national observance in 2017.

March 29, 1973, was the last day that U.S. troops pulled out of Vietnam.

Rep. Curt Oda, R-Clearfield, was the state representative who Howland asked to sponsor the bill that Gov. Herbert signed in 2014. Oda spoke at the service on Thursday.

Oda told the Deseret News that Vietnam was the "worst war from the standpoint of patriotism" that he had ever seen. He explained that the civilians, because they didn't support the war, took a lot of their frustration out on the troops.

"To me, that's unpatriotic," Oda said, adding that some troops coming back from Vietnam were greeted in many places in the United States by being spit upon and called names.

It was so bad, according to Oda, the veterans were told by the military, "as soon as you land, you will not be wearing a uniform. You will not be carrying any of your military gear. We will send those home. You are going to go off ship wearing civilian clothing, and if you have to, buy a wig."

Oda said he's glad that the majority of the U.S. population today seems to understand that the troops put their lives on the line to serve their country and keep it free. He said if the disdain for our armed servicemen and servicewomen ever gets as bad as it was during the Vietnam era, "those people ought to be chastised right out of this country."

Vyron Dowdle, who lives in Ogden, is a Vietnam veteran from Iowa who is on disability because of the effects of his handling of Agent Orange during the war.

Dowdle said the Ogden chapter of Vietnam Veterans of America, the 1079, secured the funds to build the wall in Layton. The city donated the land. It will be built on a 2-foot high foundation. There will be a kiosk on the side with a list of all the names and where to find them. Dowdle said he has six friends whose names are on the wall in D.C.

When the Vietnam Veterans of America was trying to get the Utah Legislature to pass HB275 in 2014, Dowdle said they were only expecting 250 men. But over 1,000 showed up from all around the western United States.

"We love it," Dowdle said. "We love our brothers and we take care of them the very best that we can."

Howland said he hopes people honor March 29 each year by putting a flag out on their lawn or shaking a veteran's hand.

"One of the greatest things (Utahns) can do for a Vietnam veteran  (is) just walk up and say, 'Hey, thank you and welcome home,'" Howland said. "It was something that took our country 40 years to say to us."

Nearly 28,000 Utahns served in the Vietnam War, and today Utah is home to about 47,000 Vietnam veterans from around the country.
SALT LAKE CITY  Gov. Gary Herbert on Thursday said he formally opposes the ballot initiative campaign seeking to broadly legalize the medical use of marijuana in Utah.

The governor said in a prepared statement that he believes the initiative "will do more harm than good."

"This initiative ... has significant flaws," Herbert said. "It lacks important safeguards regarding its production and utilization and would potentially open the door to recreational use."

He went on to add, "I will actively oppose the medical cannabis initiative."

DJ Schanz, director of the Utah Patients Coalition campaign seeking to put such legalization on the ballot, responded by saying the governor's assertion that the initiative could lead to recreational use "has no basis in truth."

"While we appreciate the governor weighing in on medical cannabis, his comments are another example of what Utahns have grown tired of: politicians standing between patients in their physicians," Schanz said. "Saying the most conservatively drafted initiative in the entire country would 'potentially' open the door for recreational use is a scare tactic that has no basis in truth.

"Neither the Legislature nor the governor should undermine the clear will of voters as demonstrated in over a dozen public polls. Utahns are ready to vote on this and set aside the misguided positions of elected officials who are apparently comfortable with criminalizing sick and suffering Utahns," Schanz said.

Results from a Utah Policy poll, conducted in February and released this week, revealed 77 percent of respondents answered they were in favor when asked whether they supported "legalizing doctor-prescribed use of nonsmoking medical marijuana for certain diseases and pain relief."

However, multiple groups have vocally opposed the ballot initiative, including the Utah Medical Association, which has focused much of its opposition on calls for more research into how doctors should be expected to prescribe to patients.

The Utah Patients Coalition, as well as advocacy organization Together for Responsible Use and Cannabis Education, or TRUCE, have said more than enough research into marijuana's benefits has been conducted worldwide and that delaying patient access in order to ask for more studies is disingenuous.

The Department of Public Safety has previously said on its website that it has "concerns regarding a more broadly defined medical use of marijuana in our state and the negative impact it could have on public safety."

Likewise, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints released a statement last year shortly after the ballot initiative paperwork was filed saying that "legitimate questions regarding the benefits and risks of legalizing a drug that has not gone through the well-established and rigorous process to prove its effectiveness and safety."

Also Thursday, Herbert contrasted his opposition to the initiative with his support of HB197, which instructs the state Department of Agriculture to coordinate with a third party to oversee the growing of full-strength marijuana within the state, among other things.

The measure, which narrowly passed the state House of Representatives on the way to Herbert's desk, was signed into law by the governor earlier this month. Supporters have said it will help speed up and improve research of the drug within Utah.

"(HB197) creates a framework for licensed physicians to recommend cannabis for their patients, paves the way for the establishment of lawful cannabis dispensaries, and allows for the implementation of careful safeguards for the safe use of medical cannabis," Herbert said.

TRUCE testified against HB197 during the legislative session, telling state lawmakers that it was based on outdated scientific ideas about how to grow marijuana.
SALT LAKE CITY  U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Thursday he won't yet appoint a new special counsel to investigate how the FBI and Justice Department have handled high-profile cases. Instead, he has tapped Utah's top federal prosecutor to lead a review.

Last year, Sessions directed U.S. Attorney for Utah John Huber to evaluate "certain issues," including whether a new special counsel is necessary, he said in a letter Thursday to three Republican committee leaders that was short on specifics.

He noted that such outside appointments are reserved only for "extraordinary circumstances," according Justice Department regulations, and that his office can veer from its normal processes in order to avoid conflicts of interest.

Sessions pointed to Huber's chops as a prosecutor and to his location 2,000 miles from Washington.

Huber has not commented on the assignment.

The letter comes a day after the Justice Department's inspector general announced that it would honor Sessions' request to review whether law enforcement officials abused their surveillance powers in seeking permission to monitor the communications of President Donald Trump's former campaign adviser Carter Page.

Huber's review includes that case, Sessions indicated in his letter to the Republican leaders.

The announcement is likely to unnerve Republicans in Congress who have called for a new special counsel to study alleged misconduct in politically charged FBI investigations. They have called for Sessions to appoint a special counsel to review whether Justice Department or FBI employees were biased during their now-closed probe of Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server, and as they began investigating Trump campaign ties to Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

Democrats have said the GOP accusations aim to undermine the separate work of special counsel Robert Mueller as his team's Russia investigation intensifies.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, didn't weigh in on the probes his colleagues have demanded, but he said in a statement that Sessions "has picked the right man for the job."

"Mr. Huber brings decades of experience to his latest, and now very public, assignment. Most importantly, he brings the independent perspective of an accomplished federal prosecutor who has spent his career far removed from the politics of Washington," said Hatch, the senior member and former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Sessions said Huber is no stranger to leadership roles in the attorney general's office. Huber previously led the office's national security section and was the executive assistant attorney general, in addition to prosecuting high-profile violent-crime and terrorism cases in Utah, he said.

"Mr. Huber is conducting his work from outside the Washington, D.C., area," Sessions added.

Sessions' earlier request to the inspector general angered Trump, who said Sessions should have ordered his own investigation. But in his letter to lawmakers, Sessions reminded them that the inspector general's office can and often does refer matters for prosecution.

And he said the Justice Department has proved capable of handling "high-profile, resource-intensive matters" without the rare appointment of a special counsel.

Huber's review is ongoing, and Sessions said he gets regular updates. The attorney general did not indicate any timeline for the review, but said Huber was working in cooperation with Inspector General Michael Horowitz.

Sessions said Huber would recommend whether more resources, other investigations or a special counsel are needed.

Huber, an Obama administration holdover renominated to serve in Utah, will conduct a "full, complete and objective evaluation" of Republican concerns and submit recommendations, Sessions said.

Contributing: Associated Press
SALT LAKE CITY  Faced with a list of underfunded needs  from catching up on road maintenance to funding new police officers  Salt Lake City leaders want to know what taxpayers think about two proposed sales tax increases.

A series of public meetings are scheduled for next few weeks to gauge public appetite for the proposals, which could bring in about $120 million in new city revenue.

That includes an estimated $33 million in annual funds from a 0.5 percent sales tax hike and $87 million in one-time funds through a new bond.

The bond would result in an estimated $5 a year in property taxes for the average Salt Lake City homeowners but would replace two bonds approved by voters 20 years ago. It would need voter approval if city officials decide to place it on the November ballot.

The sales tax increase, which would add up to about 5 cents for ever $10 spent  excluding sales on food and big-ticket items like vehicles  just needs City Council approval thanks to a law passed in 2015 that provided the sales tax option to offset the impact of the relocated state prison.

"The issues that we hope to address with the new revenue are issues we've heard about from Salt Lake City residents for years that need such significant new money that there isn't any possibility of sufficiently addressing them with our regular budget," said City Council Chairwoman Erin Mendenhall on Thursday.

Matthew Rojas, spokesman for Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupski, said the ongoing funds from the sales tax increase could be used to help fund four priority areas that have long been issues identified by residents that need further investment: street repair, affordable housing, transit service and neighborhood safety.

The bond's one-time money could be used to help the city catch up on street and roadway conditions, Rojas said, noting that a recent roadway survey found nearly 2/3 of Salt Lake City's roads are in poor or worse condition. City staff estimates it would need to spend about $20 million per year for the next 10 years to upgrade roadway conditions from failing to improving.

Late last year, the City Council also voted to fund 50 new police officers amid strain from Operation Rio Grande and demand from residents for the city to return cops to neighborhood beats. The city enacted a $5 million adjustment to this year's budget to start the hiring process, but the new officers will require about $12 million in one-time and ongoing costs for new vehicles, equipment and salaries.

Rojas said since Biskuspki took office, she and her team have been working to develop "robust plans" to address pressing issues facing Salt Lake City, including a mass transit plan and the city's first housing plan in years. Now the city is prepared to decide what to do with potential new revenue, he said.

Right now, Rojas said Biskupski's team is in the midst of drafting the mayor's next budget proposal, scheduled for May 1, and is creating two drafts: one with the sales tax increase and one without.

From public feedback the city has received for years, Rojas said city leaders are confident Salt Lake residents want to fund the city needs, but city officials want to get as much opinion as possible on the two tax proposals before deciding to act.

"We want to get more feedback," Rojas said. "What we've heard from residents has led us to believe these are things they want."

A recent survey of 515 Salt Lake City residents found about 65 percent of respondents supported increasing sales taxes to provide ongoing funding for growth-related priorities. The poll, conducted by Strategies 360 for Salt Lake City in January with a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percent points, also found about 66 percent of respondents would support a bond proposal for infrastructure projects.

The city is conducting another survey, at fundingourfutureslc.com, to seek more input. As of Thursday, about 200 residents had taken the survey, Rojas said, but officials hope many more will participate, as well as attend a series of public hearings scheduled in April.

The public meetings include:
PROVO  The Utah State Medical Examiner's Office confirmed Friday what police and family member suspected  that two bodies pulled out of an abandoned mine earlier this week are Brelynne "Breezy" Ottesen and Riley Powell.

The bodies of the young Eureka couple, who had been missing for about three months, were discovered Tuesday about 100 feet down the Tintic Standard No. 2 mine near Mammoth, Juab County. They were recovered on Wednesday.

Jerrod William Baum, 41, was arrested for investigation of two counts of aggravated murder, two counts of aggravated kidnapping and two counts of desecration of a dead body, among other charges.

Baum was allegedly upset that Powell, 18, and Otteson, 17, had visited his girlfriend on Dec. 30 while he wasn't there, according to a police affidavit filed in 4th District Court. Baum is accused of confronting the couple just as they were leaving, tying them up in the back of Powell's Jeep, stabbing them to death, then dumping their bodies in the mine.

Otteson's body was recovered from the mine with her hands tied behind her back and Powell "appeared to have multiple knife wounds as well, and his hands were also bound behind his back," the affidavit states.

"The condition of their bodies strongly suggested that their deaths were not accidental," a Friday press release from the Utah County Sheriff's Office said.

Utah County Sheriff's Sgt. Spencer Cannon said the exact cause of death has not been determined, but the medical examiner noted that both victims suffered multiple injuries, including from stabbing and from being dropped into the mine  any of which could have been fatal. The manner of death for both was listed as homicide.

"Because of the proximity in time (of when the injuries were inflicted) they couldn't say which one did cause the deaths, only that multiple injuries would have been fatal," Cannon said.

The big break for investigators came on Sunday when Baum's girlfriend, Morgan Lewis Henderson, 34, was pulled over in Sanpete County and arrested for investigation of drug and weapons charges. While she was being interviewed at the Sanpete County Sheriff's Office, she told investigators what happened on Dec. 30.

Detectives had talked to Henderson before, but she gave them different stories, Cannon said. Why she decided to allegedly come clean on Sunday was not immediately known.

Baum was already in custody when the bodies were discovered, Cannon said.

In 2004, a federal indictment was filed against Baum on weapons charges. That case, through appeals, probation violations and other factors, was still active as of November.

In November, Baum was convicted on federal drug and weapons charges. He was sentenced to time already served so he was not sent to prison, according to court records. However, he was placed on supervised release.

As part of the conditions of his release, Baum was ordered to "participate in a mental health treatment program under a co-payment plan as directed by the probation office, take any mental health medications as prescribed, and not possess or consume alcohol, nor frequent businesses where alcohol is the primary item of order, during the course of treatment or medication," according to court documents.

Before Baum was booked into the Utah County Jail for investigation of the two killings, he was booked into the Juab County Jail by U.S. marshals for violating the conditions of his federal probation, Cannon said.

He was charged Feb. 13 in state court with being a restricted person in possession of a weapon.

Baum  who has a swastika and "white power" tattooed on his head, according to jail records, as well as other tattoos on his arms and legs such as an "evil demon," a "W," and the words "life by nature power by choice" and "natures finest"  also pleaded guilty to an amended charge of attempted possession of a dangerous weapon in 2003, court records state.

In 1992, when Baum was just 15, he was charged with attempted murder and 10 other charges. He stole a pickup truck from a Provo business and later a van where he found a .38-caliber handgun, and traveled to Heber City, where he stole a Trans Am. He then went to a Burger King in Orem and used the handgun to rob the business, firing at two employees who followed him into the parking lot.

He was first incarcerated with the Utah Department of Corrections in March of 1993.

While incarcerated at the Central Utah Correctional Facility in Gunnison, Baum was one of five inmates charged with more than 30 felonies in connection with a five-hour riot that occurred on Aug. 9, 1994,and caused an estimated $40,000 in damage.

He was granted parole in 2002, but his parole was revoked in 2003 when he was arrested for attempting to purchase a dangerous weapon, according to prison records. Baum was paroled again in 2004 and sent back to prison on another parole violation shortly after. He was discharged in March 2005.

Baum was placed on probation in June for drugs and weapons-related convictions.

As of Friday, Henderson had not been arrested in connection with the deaths but remained in the Sanpete County Jail for her arrest on Sunday.

Cannon said additional arrests in connection with the killings  possibly for obstruction of justice  are "likely."
Odiyan News - Sam To Debut In Malayalam Film Odiyan

It seems that Vikram Vedha fame actor, Sam CS, has been really lucky these days. After his fantastic performances in Tamil cinema, the actor is finally all set to make his debut in the Malayalam film industry with a period drama Odiyan. Notably, the film also includes the popular star, Mohanlal, who will be playing the titular role of a man possessing shape shifting abilities and assuming animal forms.





While talking about how he got the film, Sam shared with Deccan Chronicle, Soon after the release of Vikram Vedha I got many offers including from Bollywood for background score. But I am a staunch believer that I have to offer a wholesome package to a film rather than being confined to a particular zone. But, I couldnt refuse when I was approached for Mohanlal sirs Odiyan. So intriguing was its premise laced with non-linear narration.

Chek Full movie Details - Odiyan

The popular actor further explained about the Kerala instruments he will be using in the film. Sam CS stated that a 6-feet-long bamboo instrument, which is known for casting aesthetic spells, will be used. He also said that after scouting, the team came across just one old lady who knows how to play the ancient instrument and they used her for this film.





Well, this seems quite exciting and fans cant wait long for the period drama to hit the screens. We wish Sam all the luck for his Malayalam debut in Odiyan





Source: cinemaexpress.com
Vishwaroopam 2 May Hit The Theatres Before Kaala

This summer, the industry will see two of the biggest stars films getting released. While actor-turned-politician Kamal Haasan's Vishwroopam 2 is all set to hit the hit the theatres, Rajinikanths Kaala is stuck up with the censorship. Kaala is scheduled to release on April 27.





Earlier, both the films were slated to release at the end of April. However, it seems, Kaala might not release on its scheduled date. Vishwroopam 2 is done with U/A Certification and is ready for a release, whereas, Kaala is waiting for the NOC from Tamil Film Producers Council to apply for CBFC Certification.



If reports are anything to be believed, Kamal might release his film before the scheduled date if Rajini's Kaala is not releasing as planned. Helmed by Ranjith, Kaala is being bankrolled by Dhanush and distributed by Lyca Productions. Reportedly, the audio of Vishwroopam 2 would be launched in a grand manner soon.





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Source: tamil.stage3.in
Suzuki Motors and Toyota Motor have announced a collaboration agreement for its cars in India. Under this agreement, Suzuki and Toyota, both automotive stalwarts based in Japan, will collaborate under their respective India subsidiaries - Maruti Suzuki and Toyota Kirloskar Motor, and manufacture a select range of cars for each other in the Indian market.

The cars mentioned in the collaboration agreement include Maruti Suzukis premium hatchback Baleno and compact crossover Vitara Brezza, and Toyotas mid-size sedan Corolla Altis. The collaboration is aimed at exchanging each others strength areas to target newer segments of the Indian automobile market. Maruti Suzuki is the most popular car brand in India, regularly account for almost 50 percent of all cars sold in the country every month. However, despite the reasonable popularity of the Maruti Suzuki Ciaz, the company has not succeeded in disrupting the mid-size (C-segment) sedan market in India. This particular segment is still ruled by Hondas most popular car in India, the Honda City, and Hyundais mid-size sedan, the Verna.



Expect to see the Toyota Vitara Brezza in 2019

Toyota, meanwhile, presently has significantly lesser market share in comparison to its rivals in India. As part of the deal, the two companies will swap the respective cars and manufacture them under their own factories, and simultaneously sell them under their own badging. The rebadging will also include considerable design changes to give them a distinctly different aesthetic appeal in comparison to what they offer at the moment. Toyota and Suzuki will also undertake joint sourcing of components for these cars, which will translate to lesser cost of manufacturing for each of the companies.

This move will aim to drive up volumes of sales for the two brands. While Toyota will gain a big access to the massively popular hatchback and compact SUV territories in India, Maruti Suzuki will make its first foray into the premium mid-size sedan category - a segment that the company has no presence in despite its massive market share. The pact is a continuation of the agreement that the two signed in February 2017, when they both agreed to collaborate on electric and hybrid powertrains, in-car technologies, safety and advanced driving elements going forward.

What Suzuki gains

As mentioned, despite the Ciaz faring reasonably well in the Indian market, it has failed to disrupt the success that the Honda City and Hyundai Verna continue to enjoy. The mid-size sedan category is enjoying a resurgence of sorts, buoyed by cars offering compelling feature sets, efficient powertrains, an overall premium experience and the willingness of customers to spend a little extra for the premium factors.



This will be Maruti Suzuki's first step into the Altis' segment

With the Toyota Corolla Altis set to be rebadged under Maruti Suzuki, the company will finally foray into this segment. It may then use its market positioning as the highest selling car brand in India to take the competition to Honda and Hyundai, and raise the stakes. Additionally, it will also gain access to more premium in-car technologies from Toyota, like a more advanced infotainment system, better noise-vibration-harshness levels and smoother automatic transmissions. This, in turn, can have a positive impact across Maruti Suzukis entire range.

What Toyota gains

Toyota stands to gain a massive benefit by rebadging the Baleno and the Vitara Brezza under its logo. The two cars have been massively successful in their respective categories, and have played a significant role in developing the premium lifestyle quotient of Maruti Suzuki cars in general. Coupled with Toyotas repertoire of technologies, the two cars may see further improvement in terms of better automatic transmission modules and superior in-car technologies.



Toyota has never enjoyed popularity like the Baleno has, in India

With automatic transmissions steadily growing in popularity across all segments in India, this may be a crucial factor for Toyota to focus on. Furthermore, with more cars getting increasingly sophisticated infotainment systems with connected car infrastructures, Toyota may look to bring in their own technologies and apply them to the two, before they rebadge and put them up for sale. These technologies may include connected car infrastructures and basic ADAS units like collision alert, adaptive cruise control, assisted parking and more.

Toyota would also stand to gain significantly in terms of market volumes. At present, the company has a much lesser market share in India in comparison to brands like Hyundai, Honda and Tata Motors, and will look to turn the tables with these popular offerings. It is not yet clear if after-sales services may also be collaborated on in any way, but Toyota will certainly benefit from Maruti Suzukis reputation of easy and inexpensive after-sales services record.

The agreement with EVs

The Toyota-Suzuki collaboration has already announced intentions to roll out a small EV by 2020. As per a report by The Economic Times, the two will jointly produce a small EV for emerging and fast-growing markets like India, China and elsewhere, and collaborate in terms of the powertrain, efficiency and other factors. While the specifics of the small EV in question are yet to be understood, the two companies may look to use this as an entry into newer markets.



Hybrid powertrains like the Camry's may feature more in this collaboration

At the moment, Toyota sells the hybrid trim of its premium sedan, the Camry, in India. Maruti Suzuki, meanwhile, have variants of many of its cars equipped with its SHVS mild hybrid system. With the new agreement, it is as yet unclear if some form of hybrid powertrains would be introduced with the Baleno, Vitara Brezza and Corolla Altis. That kind of a setup, though, cannot be ruled out of the question.

When do we see it

The magnitude of this collaboration is massive. Toyota is the biggest car company in Japan and has a wide range of markets in which it operates. Suzuki, meanwhile, has one of its strongest markets in India with Maruti Suzuki, and the two companies coming together can potentially disrupt the present flow of the market.

However, you will not see a Toyota Baleno (or a Maruti Suzuki Corolla Altis) until at least 2019. As per reports, component sourcing, terms on volume of supplies from each company and manufacturing of these vehicles under new badges will only begin in 2019. While the Indian market will certainly have more cars in and around these segments and may also have new companies like Kia and MG Motors entering the fray, the Toyota-Suzuki collaboration may prove to be a massive powerhouse in terms of what the two can offer together.
Hyundai has commenced sales of its flagship Fuel Cell EV - the Hyundai Nexo, in Korea. The premium fuel cell-powered SUV is targeted at the top of Hyundai's product portfolio, and the company claims to have received 1,061 pre-orders at the time of launch. The Nexo is powered by a 95kW fuel cell and a 40kW battery, with the electric motors producing total power figures of 161bhp and 395Nm torque. It claims total driving range of an impressive 595km, and aims to improve the presence and outreach of fuel cell vehicles globally. The flagship car includes a bunch of advanced driver assistance systems to lend it semi-autonomous capabilities, and will be launched outside of Korea by the end of 2018.

Read the entire press release below

Seoul, 27 March, 2018  Hyundai Motor Company began sales of its Hyundai NEXO fuel cell electric vehicle today in Korea following very successful pre-orders.

Prior to retail sales commencing, the Hyundai NEXO had been met with wide public interest, with a total of 1,061 vehicles being ordered throughout the pre-order period between March 19-26, 2018. Just on the first day of pre-order availability, Hyundai NEXO recorded order of 733 vehicles.

We are witnessing a historic day as fuel cell technology is being commercialized in large quantities. With this positive beginning, we will continue our efforts in overseas markets to support fostering the newly developing fuel cell vehicle market, said Byung Kwon Rhim, Executive Vice President of Hyundai Motor Company in charge of Global Operations Division.

On the same day, Hyundai delivered the vehicles to both local governments of the city of Ulsan and Gwangju in Korea. The ceremony in Ulsan took place at the hydrogen house, created through joint efforts from Hyundai and Ulsan city, while in Gwangju the ceremony took place at the newly built DongGok hydrogen multi energy station. Both local governments expressed their intention to expand hydrogen refueling infrastructure.

Hyundai Motor also introduced new measures to encourage the further spread of fuel cell electric vehicles. Hyundai announced a 10-year, 160,000km warranty for fuel cell components to reassure customers of the durability and reliability of fuel cell electric vehicles sold in Korea. Furthermore, Hyundai announced it has secured personnel and equipment to service Hyundai NEXO vehicles in all of its 22 service networks in Korea.

The pricing of the fuel cell electric vehicle is set at 68,900,000 KRW for the Modern trim and 72,200,000 KRW for the Premium trim in Korea. The Government subsidy could reach a maximum of 35,000,000 KRW, with a central governments subsidy for fuel cell electric vehicle of 22,500,000 KRW and a regional governments subsidy ranging from 10,000,000~12,500,000 KRW. The final purchase price could be as low as 33,900,000 KRW for the Modern trim and 37,200,000 KRW for the Premium trim.

Pricing of Hyundai NEXO for overseas market will be disclosed at later date close to their market launches.
The yet to be announced Moto Z3 Play has received its certification in the US and has been spotted online on FCCs website. The listing, first spotted by Nashville Chatter, reveals partial specifications of the Moto Z3 Play, starting with its serial number - XT-1929. Going by FCCs website, the Moto Z3 Play could be powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 636 SoC and come in two configurations of 4GB RAM/32GB ROM and 6GB RAM/64GB ROM. It could feature a dual or single SIM configuration, based on the region its shipped for.

The Moto Z3 Play is said to measure 156.23 x 76.7 mm in size and feature a 6.1-inch display. If this is the case, then the upcoming Moto Flagship will support all Moto Mods till now and it also dispels rumours of the company changing the devices body dimensions. In the camera department, the mobile phone is speculated to feature dual 12MP + 8MP sensors on the rear and come with a 5MP front-facing camera. The smartphone is rumoured to cost between $450 and $500 (around Rs 32,500, approx) and go up against the likes of the upcoming OnePlus 6 and others.

Apart from the FCC listing, images of the Moto Z3 case renders were also leaked online. The images hint at a relocated fingerprint scanner, which is now placed on the right edge of the device. The device is again seen with a dual main camera setup and a single camera at the front. The Moto Mods contacts on its rear are also wider, hinting at extended functionality. The power button has been moved to the left edge of the device due to the fingerprint sensor taking up the space where was earlier placed. There is a cutout for a USB Type-C port on the bottom of the device, along with a smaller one at the top, which could be for the noise-canceling mic as it seems tiny for a 3.5mm audio jack.

The companys last device to be launched in India was the Moto Z2 Force, which made its way to the country about a year later after its initial release in the US. It is priced at Rs 27,999 and retains pretty much the same design as its predecessor. The smartphone is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 626 platform and features a 5.5-inch Full HD display. It comes with a 12MP dual-pixel camera on the back with f/1.7 aperture lens and a 5MP front-facing camera with f/2.0 aperture lens and a dual-LED flash. It runs on Android Nougat and is backed with a 3000mAh battery.

The Moto Z2 Force comes with 4GB RAM and 64GB of internal storage, which can be further expanded up to 256GB via a microSD card. The fingerprint sensor is on the front of the device, and it also acts as a navigation key as home and back button. The standard Moto-mod connector is at the rear and the company introduced four new moto mods while showcasing the phone. JBL Soundboost 2, a Turbo Power pack which offers extra 3490mAh battery, Style shells supporting 10w wireless charging, and a Game-pad Moto Mod with a built-in 1000mAh battery. The 4G compatible smartphone comes with a USB type-C charging port, which supports USB 3.1 for faster data transfers.
A judge in Los Angeles has ruled that coffee companies must have a warning label for cancer because of a chemical that is produced during the coffees roasting process.

Elihu Berle a Superior Court Judge said on Wednesday of this week that Starbucks as well as other companies had failed in showing that benefits from coffee drinking outweighed risks. He ruled during an earlier part of a trial that companies did not show the threat in the production of the chemical was not significant.

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Starbucks as well as 90 companies more were sued by the nonprofit group Council for Education and Research on Toxics, under a California law that requires there be warnings on a broad range of different chemicals that could cause cancer. On that list is the carcinogen acrylamide that is present in coffee.

Berle in a proposed ruling wrote that the defendants failed in satisfying the burden they had of proving that the consumption of coffee has a benefit to the health of humans.

Members of the coffee industry have said that chemical present in coffee was at levels that are harmless and should receive an exemption from following under the 1986 law due to resulting naturally from the process of roasting that makes the beans flavorful. The industry argued as well that coffee was good for the human body.

The judges ruling came despite relaxed concerns over recent years of the possible dangers from coffee, with some recent studies actually finding coffee had health benefits. Coffee was taken of the possible carcinogen list of the World Health Organizations cancer agency International Agency for Research on Cancer in 2016.

The California lawsuit came under the 1986 Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act that allows advocacy groups, citizens as well as attorneys to file suit on behalf of California and collect part of any civil penalties.

This law was credited with lowering chemicals that can cause cancer as well as birth defects, like lead contained in hair dye, arsenic found in bottled water and mercury found in nasal sprays.

However, it has been heavily criticized for lawyer abuses such as shaking businesses down for quick out of court settlements.

The National Coffee Association CEO and President William Murray said that over and over again coffee has shown it is a health beverage and argued that the lawsuit does nothing in the way of improving public health.

This suit has been going on for eight years with no finish in site. A third phase for this trial is to determine the civil penalties that could be as high as $2,500 per person exposed daily for eight years.
The former bishop of Raphoe Philip Boyce has pledged to try to bring healing to those who have been hurt in his first address as the interim Bishop of Dromore.

Former Bishop of Dromore John McAreavey stood down in March amid controversy over celebrating Mass with paedophile priest the late Fr Malachy Finegan.

Bishop Boyce, who retired as bishop of Raphoe last June, has announced as the interim replacement.

The address came a day after a retired priest spoke out against his appointment.

Speaking at the annual Chrism Mass in the Cathedral of St Patrick and St Colman in Newry Bishop Boyce said: I am here at this time to serve as your shepherd.

On this significant day for you, I wish to declare wholeheartedly that my presence here today is to serve as your shepherd, shepherd of the people, religious, deacons and priests, of the young and the old, of the sick and the healthy, and most especially a shepherd of those who have been hurt in any way in the past.

Local priest Fr Eamon Murray described the appointment as disgusting.

Criticism

Fr Eamon Murray was referring to criticism of Philip Boyce over his handling of clerical sex abuse allegations when he was Bishop of Raphoe.

Fr Murray who is living in the Diocese of Dromore, said news that Bishop Boyce is to replace John McAreavey "rubs salt on the wound" of an already hurt community.

"I think it is a disgusting appointment. I am really really upset about the appointment of him to Dromore," he told the BBC.

A review into the handling of clerical child sex abuse allegations in the Diocese of Raphoe in 2011 found that a "significant level" of clerical abuse occurred in the diocese.

Cases of abuse

The report said the diocese now had a robust safeguarding policy in place and that Bishop Boyce had been willing to learn the painful lessons of the past. However, they were critical of how successive Bishops of Raphoe had handled serious cases of abuse.

At the time, Bishop Boyce fully accepted the recommendations and apologised for "poor judgements" in managing priests accused of "horrific acts of abuse" against children.

Incensed

Fr Murray said Bishop Boyce's role in the historic case involving paedophile priest Fr Eugene Greene means he is unsuitable to be the apostolic administrator in a diocese that has been hurt by historic clerical abuse.

Eugene Greene was jailed for 12 years in 2000 after pleading guilty to 41 sample charges against 26 victims between 1962 and 1985.

Speaking on the Nolan programme Fr Murray said he was "frightened" for speaking out, but he was "so incensed" with the appointment of Bishop Boyce to Dromore.

"I can't believe this man has been appointed after his tenure in Raphoe," he added.

Acknowledging that Bishop Boyce accepted the findings of the 2011 report, Fr Murray said "words are cheap" and that he believes the community in Dromore "should resist" the appointment.

You may also want to read: The former bishop of Raphoe has been appointed as the administrator of the dioceses of Dromore
Genesis is set to turn its striking Essentia concept into a 21st century version of the Chevrolet Corvette.

Speaking to Australian media at the 2018 New York motor show where the Essentia was unveiled, global head of Genesis, Manfred Fitzgerald, said he wants the electric coupe to inspire the next generation of car lovers, in a similar way to the original Corvette and Ford Mustang.

Unfortunately we lost the emotions, we put the rational ahead of the emotional in the past years as car manufacturers, and its up to us to change that narrative, Fitzgerald said.

He believes putting the Essentia into production with its dramatic styling, electric drivetrain and integrated vehicle-to-infrastructure technology is the kind of car that will garner an emotional reaction with the younger generation.

While officially the Essentia is only a concept, Fitzgerald is optimistic the Hyundai luxury brand will push the electric GT into production.

I think thats one of the goals of this motor show, to test the waters and see how it resonates out there, he said.

"Im a true believer of these types of cars, I think theyre the most emotional cars a designer can wish to do and they do a lot for the brand This is where the emotions of a brand lie. I couldnt be happier if the company decided to go down that road and we get the ok to produce something like that.

When asked about how quickly it could become a reality, Fitzgerald admitted it could be as soon as 2021, the same year the brand begins rolling out its future electric vehicle platforms; one for small-medium size models and one for medium-large vehicles.
Locals will be given the opportunity to give blood when the Irish Blood Transfusion Service's clinic return to the town next month.

Clinics are set to take place at the Crowne Plaza hotel and at the Clan na Gael club rooms on the Ecco Road.

Blood donations will be taken at the Crowne Plaza on Tuesday (April 17th) and Wednesday (April 18th) between 4.30pm and 8pm.

The clinic at Clan na Gael GFC will run on both Thursday (April 19th) and Sunday (April 22nd). It is open from 4.30pm and 8pm on Thursday and between 11.30am and 3pm on the Sunday.

IBTS recommend that donors eat something and have plenty of cold drinks ahead of their visit.

Donors should allow themselves about an hour and a half to complete the process at the clinic from the registration to refreshments.

At the start of the month, blood transfusion clinics had to be cancelled due to the adverse weather conditions - meaning supply levels reached critical levels - urging the IBTS to encourage a much needed increase in donations. It is hoped Dundalk locals - previously very generous in this regard - will turn out in big numbers again.
A Termonfeckin couple have been hailed as heroes after they came to the rescue of a man who was having a heart attack and saved his life.

The Louth couple, Mark McDonnell and Laura Armada Buch, were thanked by the family of the man after he collapsed behind the wheel whilst driving with his wife in a busy carpark.

The couple sprang into action when they spotted the man slumping behind the wheel at 1.30pm last Bank Holiday Monday last week as the family were coming from a kids swimming lesson at the M1 retail park with their sons, Dylan, eight and Izan, four.

Their quick actions stopping the swerving car before it crashed.

Louth woman Laura then performed CPR for ten minutes until the emergency services arrived.

The rescue also led to a video, (posted on Facebook by Dad Mark), which shows the couple's four-year-old son Izan copying the heroic actions of his mum by giving CPR to a hot water bottle.

Speaking to TheMirror.ie, mum Laura who is a fitness instructor at her company Lab Fitness and also has a range of healthy juices, explained:

Mark noticed a car that was making a funny noise coming around the corner. All of a sudden he took off over to the car when he saw the driver fall back in the seat.

As the car swerved, he pulled the handbrake and took the keys from the ignition so it wouldnt crash. I saw him ringing the emergency services and ran to see if I could help.

The mum, who is trained in CPR told how she sprang into action:

The man had turned purple in the face and was struggling to breathe. I was looking for a pulse but couldnt find one.

Other people had come on the scene at that point and I asked some men to lift him out of the car so I could perform CPR.

The emergency services were also telling Mark to keep up CPR until the ambulance arrived.

The mum continued on with the treatment for ten minutes until the paramedics were able to get a pulse and rushed the man to the hospital.

Laura added: It all happened so fast. His wife was also in the car and I think she was in a shocked state. Other people were making sure she was ok. I just remember thinking that he may not make it, but that I was going to give it my best shot to save him.

The man who suffered the heart attack was transferred to a hospital in Dublin where he underwent a triple bypass. He is now said to be recovering well and wants to meet up with the couple once he is able.
Not heading to the pub this Good Friday? An Tain Theatre in Dundalk have The 10 Dark Secrets of the Irish Revolution on from 8-10pm tonight (Friday).

Paddy Cullivan, star of of Callans Kicks and The Late Late Show, brings you this audio-visual spectacular on the hidden history of the Irish Revolution.

The critically-acclaimed one man show combines satire and song with striking imagery. How much do know about Irelands road to revolution? Mr Cullivan is sure to let you in on some enlightening secrets. Tickets are 15 or 12 concession.

Mr Cullivan says he likes performing in Dundalk. This is my first time bringing this show to An Tain, but I have performed in Dundalk before, the writer and comedian reveals. I played the Spirit Store years ago with my band. Jinx Lennon would also be a Dundalk hero of mine.

Mr Cullivan ponders what Kevin OHiggins, the politician who brought in the Intoxicating Liquor Act, which has been lifted for the first time today, would make of the fact alcohol is being sold and pubs are open. I am hoping it wont hurt my audience numbers theres plenty of time to go to the pub afterwards, jokes Mr Cullivan.

The 10 Dark Secrets of the Irish Revolution are told through songs, speeches and videos. Theres about four or five songs, with 10 secrets told, says Mr Cullivan. I would describe it as a live-action documentary with music.

I wanted to tell the history in a way people will understand, explains Mr Cullivan. There are plenty of songs, I open with Tell My Why I Dont Like Easter Mondays, which is a parody of the Boomtown Rats song.

Mr Cullivan also adds that he wanted to tell this story because a lot of history is not being taught in schools anymore. History isnt even a compulsory subject now, he says.

In the lead up to the Easter Rising Centenary celebrations, Mr Cullivan felt that the state coverage of the Rising was quite official. There was a sort of glossing over of events, he says. There was also what I call condescension of hindsight. People were judging those events based on todays circumstances.

History isnt black and white like some people may believe and is sometimes contradictory. Many Irish men fought in World War One in the British army, then returned home to fight in the War of Independence with the IRA. Tom Barry for instance. He fought in Mesopotamia for the British, then later joined the IRA in Cork, Mr Cullivan points out.

In the performance, I deal with the death of Michael Collins, which is shrouded in mystery, and also the fact that 280,000 women were denied a vote on the Treaty in 1922. Before the treaty was voted on, female TDs wanted the voting age of women to be lowered from 30 to 21, says Mr Cullivan. But this never happened, and this skewed and unbalanced the treaty vote, he claims.

When you look at Cumann na mBan, they voted against the treaty overwhelmingly, 419: 63, Mr Cullivan reveals. There was a far stronger anti-treaty sentiment among women compared to men. I dont want to sound sexist, but women dont believe in a job half-done. Compromise was not an option for Republican women. Mr Cullivan wonders if more women had of been given the vote, would there have been a different outcome.

The role of women was then further subsumed after the introduction of the Free State. The Catholic Church essentially took over from Britain as the overlords. Women had been given a more prominent role during the Rising and the War of Independence, Countess Markiewicz was the first female MP, points out Mr Cullivan.

The performer also adds that the conscription crisis was fascinating, as a large majority of the Irish population did not believe conscription should apply to Ireland. Two million people signed an anti-conscription pledge it truly is remarkable when you think about it. Imagine trying to get two million Irish people to agree to anything, Mr Cullivan says. The only way we would get two million peoples agreements on anything would be if Garth Brooks announced 20 concerts in Croke Park, he jokes.

To find out more or to book tickets, visit antain.ie


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Many Facebook members reportedly have shuttered their accounts in the wake of reports that Cambridge Analytica, a voter profiling company working for Donald Trump's presidential campaign, harvested data from 50 million users, unbeknownst to them.

The data firm used the information to develop techniques that formed the basis of its work for Trump's campaign, according to a report published in The New York Times last weekend.

Cambridge Analytica bought the data from a researcher who told Facebook he was collecting it for academic purposes, according to the Times.

Facebook has suspended Cambridge Analytica, as well as one of its founders, Christopher Wylie, and the researcher, Aleksandr Kogan. However, the firm still has the profile data, according to the NYT story.

It's not me. It's you.

Indignation over Facebook's role in the data leak has mushroomed since the appearance of the Times story, and some users have taken to Twitter to announce their liberation from the social network.

i locked down all app access a long time ago..now i'm clearing my posts, unliking and leaving groups. Facebook will be a shell holding just my email address for friends to contact me..and this picture has been around for a while, you were warned!! #DeleteFacebook pic.twitter.com/xI2yWxDohl  iain (@PlasterAndPixel) March 20, 2018

I deleted Facebook New Year's Eve 2014. It was the best decision I've made and I can safely say I do not miss it. Life is so much better without it. #DeleteFacebook  Craig (@CEdwardsEsq) March 20, 2018

Tempted to #DeleteFacebook but because I haven't read a scintilla of small print or terms and conditions since I joined, I'm afraid they'll unplug the fridge or have changed the locks on the house or that it turns out they legally own our children.  Colm O'Regan (@colmoregan) March 19, 2018

Meanwhile, Jarrod Alonge pointed out the irony of users of one social network announcing their divorce from another for selling their data.

Lol @ all these #DeleteFacebook people, as if Twitter didn't also collect and sell your personal data on a massive scale.  Jarrod Alonge (@JarrodAlonge) March 20, 2018

Losing Youth Appeal

Facebook has been in hot water before over allegations of privacy intrusion and misuse of members' data. It weathered those storms, so it remains to be seen if this latest misstep will cause an exodus of users.

However, Facebook appears to be caught up in some disturbing trends. For example, it lost 2.8 million U.S. users under 25 years old last year, eMarketer reported.

"A lot of the younger generation are no longer using Facebook," said Vincent Raynauld, an assistant professor in the department of communication studies at Emerson College.

"They're turning to platforms like Instagram and Snapchat. So this is not only about their current user pool -- It's about their future user pool," he told TechNewsWorld.

"Scandals like this are not going to help Facebook seduce this new generation of users," Raynauld added.

Gray Hair Flight

Since users under the age of 25 have grown up in an age when sharing data has been a fact of life, the Cambridge Analytica affair isn't likely to accelerate their departure from Facebook, suggested Jason Sarfati, an attorney with Joseph Greenwald & Laake, and a member of the International Association of Privacy Professionals.

However, that may not be the case for older users.

"Older users, particularly those that grew up before the advent of social media, are likely to begin abandoning Facebook at higher numbers," Sarfati told TechNewsWorld. "Facebook users hailing from Generation X and earlier have always maintained a stronger sense of personal privacy," he added. "Stories like these only confirm their wariness of social media."

Many Facebook users will choose not to cut the cord.

"Facebook has a big problem, but I don't think users will leave in numbers,"said Elizabeth Lampert, president of Elizabeth Lampert PR.

"Facebook is now a part of the everyday culture of millions. There is a lack of another great platform or superior competition," she told TechNewsWorld.

"Facebook has connected people in such ways," Lampert said, that "it would be hard to replicate the relationships that users have established and keep people connected in the way that it has."

Protect Yourself

For users who do stay on Facebook, there are ways to bolster privacy protection.

Picking your way through Facebook's privacy settings and tightening down what you want to share and protect is a first step, recommended Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT.

Deleting the Facebook app from phones and tablets, and instead signing in through a browser, offers some protection, he told TechNewsWorld.

"It's a hassle, and FB will try to lure you back to the app, but many will find the process worthwhile," King said.

"Many of the users whose information ended up in the hands of Cambridge Analytica had zero restrictions placed on their information, despite having the ability to do so using Facebook's pre-existing security settings," Sarfati pointed out. "These users simply did not take the time to review their settings."

John P. Mello Jr. has been an ECT News Network reporter since 2003. His areas of focus include cybersecurity, IT issues, privacy, e-commerce, social media, artificial intelligence, big data and consumer electronics. He has written and edited for numerous publications, including the Boston Business Journal, the Boston Phoenix, Megapixel.Net and Government Security News. Email John.




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President Trump on Thursday tweeted criticism of Amazon, implying that the administration may be mulling some type of regulatory action.

I have stated my concerns with Amazon long before the Election. Unlike others, they pay little or no taxes to state & local governments, use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy (causing tremendous loss to the U.S.), and are putting many thousands of retailers out of business!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 29, 2018

Amazon's founder, CEO Jeff Bezos, is also the owner of The Washington Post, one of the top newspapers in the United States and a major thorn in the president's side since his administration came to power.

The president recently has been "obsessing" over the company and exploring different regulatory possibilities, Axios reported on Wednesday.

Asked during the White House press briefing on Wednesday whether the president wanted to go after Amazon, Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said the White House had "no announcements and no specific policies or actions" regarding the company.

When asked about Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin's earlier comments regarding the potential for creating an Internet sales tax, Sanders provided some additional context.

"Look, the president has said many times before he's always looking to create a level playing field for all businesses, and this is no different," she said at the briefing. "And he's always going to look at different ways, but there aren't specific policies on the table at this time."

It's more likely that the president's tweet reflects his issues with Bezos over politics than serious concerns about Amazon's business model, Paula Rosenblum, managing partner at RSR Research, told the E-Commerce Times.

Trump's concerns have more to do with politics and The Washington Post than e-commerce, Rick Edmonds, media business analyst at Poynter, also told the E-Commerce Times.

Echoes on Main Street

Concerns over Amazon taking business away from brick-and-mortar retailers have led to efforts in local state legislatures and in Congress to find ways to make sure e-commerce can thrive without breaking the back of local retail operations.

States could gain anywhere from US$8.5 billion to $13.4 billion in additional revenue if they were allowed to mandate sales tax collection from all remote sellers, including B2B and B2C companies, according to a Government Accountability Office study released last fall.

The U.S. Postal Service generated about $19.5 billion in revenue in 2017. Although the amount that Amazon accounted for is unknown, the Postal Regulatory Commission sees Amazon's arrangement with the service as profitable, according to a source familiar with the relationship.

However, "Amazon is continuing to drag its feet rather than collecting taxes on the 'marketplace' portion of its business, where it partners with third-party sellers," said Carl Davis, research director at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

"Amazon has all the information it needs to begin charging those taxes right now, but it is delaying doing so in most states so that it can keep a price advantage over most businesses," he told the E-Commerce Times.

Amazon doesn't have to pay sales taxes in many cities, Davis noted, but that is due to flaws in state and local laws rather than to Amazon flouting tax regulations.

The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule later this year on South Dakota v. Wayfair, which could give local and state governments more authority to mandate sales tax collection by online retailers, Davis said.

"This is essential to leveling the playing field between traditional retailers and Internet retailers," he added. "States are increasingly frustrated that out-of-state businesses are not collecting the same amount of sales taxes that local businesses have been collecting for decades."

Court Precedent

The Wayfair ruling effectively could overturn the 1992 Quill v. North Dakota ruling, which found that only retailers with a physical presence in a state were required to collect sales taxes, observed Joyce Beebe, a fellow in public finance at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy.

At the end of the day, Trump's comments are unlikely to have a major impact on Amazon's bottom line, said Thad Peterson, senior analyst with the Aite Group.

"If there is an economic impact on Amazon.com from Mr. Trump's comments, I don't believe it will have a significant impact on their business," he told the E-Commerce Times. "The value that Amazon delivers is variety and convenience ahead of price."

Ultimately, that proposition won't change, said Peterson, and it's unlikely that Amazon Prime members, who are considered the best and most loyal Amazon customers, will change their buying habits.

As for the e-commerce world at large, even if all online retailers ultimately have to collect the same taxes that local retailers do for physical transactions at the checkout counter, customers are unlikely to balk, he argued, because online commerce in general is more about convenience and variety over price.

David Jones has been an ECT News Network reporter since 2015. His areas of focus include cybersecurity, e-commerce, open source, gaming, artificial intelligence and autonomous vehicles. He has written for numerous media outlets, including Reuters, Bloomberg, Crain's New York Business and The New York Times. Email David.


To some, climate change might feel like a distant problem that does not affect our everyday lives. Some even treat the global phenomenon with downright indifference or label it a "hoax."

Of course, climate change is not a faraway threat. The destructive effects of a warming world are very real and are felt today, especially in the low-lying Pacific island nation of Kiribati.

The island republic could become one of the first countries to disappear from sea level rise, as Director Matthieu Rytz shows in his feature documentary, Anote's Ark, a stunning film EcoWatch is honored to sponsor at the 42nd Cleveland International Film Festival.

Kiribati is made of 33 coral atolls with most of the land only a few feet above sea level. Recently, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration warned that global average sea level rise could reach up to 8.2 feet by 2100.

Scientists predict that Kiribati could be completely swallowed by rising seas and storm surges within decades. Its 100,000 residents have already felt the impacts of climate change, including high tides that inundate their homes, flood their crops and contaminate their drinking water supply.

Rytz's documentary follows former President Anote Tong's mission to keep his country and 4,000 years of rich cultural history above water. Literally.

Tong, who served as president for three successive terms from 2003 to 2016, races to find options, from advocating in international climate negotiations to investigating the possibility of building underwater cities or even floating islands.

Tong has warned that islanders will inevitably have to start leaving Kiribati because of rising waters.

"Relocation, no matter how undesirable, must therefore be the brutal reality of the future of atoll island nations, and part of the solution," he said in 2016.

Former Kiribati President Anote Tong. Anote's Ark

The documentary also follows Sermary Tiare, a young mother of six, who must decide whether to leave her home and migrate to a new life in New Zealand.

Rytz spent four years traveling between his home in Montreal to Kiribati to make the feature-length film.

"I feel honored, and also entrusted with a great responsibility, to tell this small nation's story before it disappears," he said.

"I want this film to give a voice to the people of Kiribati. I want the world to see their commitment to caring for people, their respect for the natural world, and their dignity and grace as they face the loss of their entire country," he added.

"They are leading by example, and we must listen, and learn from them, before their fate becomes our own."

The Cleveland International Film Festival kicks off on April 4. Anote's Ark will be shown on April 10 and 11.
(Screenshot from BBC)Pope Francis delivering his 2017 "urbi et orbi" address on East Sunday, April16, 2017.

Pope Francis reaffirmed his commitment to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process on Christmas Day, 2017, and called for an end to war and injustice everywhere, in the name of Our Lord, "Prince of Peace."

The Pope made his remarks ahead of his "urbi et orbi" benediction  the traditional blessing given "the city and to the world" on Christmas Day and on other special days throughout the year, Vatican News reported.

"We see Jesus in the children of the Middle East who continue to suffer because of growing tensions between Israelis and Palestinians," Francis said in the comments which deal with the state of the world.

"On this festive day, let us ask the Lord for peace for Jerusalem and for all the Holy Land."

Pope Francis also called for resumption of good-faith negotiations and renewed international commitment to peace.

"Let us pray that the will to resume dialogue may prevail between the parties and that a negotiated solution can finally be reached, one that would allow the peaceful coexistence of two States within mutually agreed and internationally recognized borders," he said.

"May the Lord also sustain the efforts of all those in the international community inspired by good will to help that afflicted land to find, despite grave obstacles the harmony, justice and security that it has long awaited."

The Pope also prayed specifically for children suffering the ravages of war and the vagaries of political and economic turmoil in several countries around the world as he spoke to many thousands of faithful gathered in St. Peter's Square.

"Today, as the winds of war are blowing in our world and an outdated model of development continues to produce human, societal and environmental decline, Christmas invites us to focus on the sign of the Child and to recognize him in the faces of little children, especially those for whom, like Jesus, 'there is no place in the inn' (Lk 2:7)."

Among those for whom Francis prayed were children in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, which he called, a "largely forgotten" conflict "with serious humanitarian implications for its people, who suffer from hunger and the spread of diseases."

The Pope was referring to the vicious civil war in Yemen, which drastically disrupted the lives of more than 22 million people, and brought as many as 8 million people to the brink of starvation, most of them women and children.

PRAYERS FOR CHILDREN OF AFRICA

"We see Jesus in the children of Africa," he said, "especially those who are suffering in South Sudan, Somalia, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic and Nigeria."

"We see Jesus in the children worldwide wherever peace and security are threatened by the danger of tensions and new conflicts," Pope Francis continued, making special mention of the situation on the Korean peninsula."

There the communist dictatorship in North Korea continues to seek to expand its nuclear arsenal and the international community struggles to adopt an approach apt to reach a peaceful resolution to the crisis.

"Let us pray that confrontation may be overcome on the Korean peninsula and that mutual trust may increase in the interest of the world as a whole," Pope Francis said.

He also alluded to the ongoing crisis in Venezuela, where political stalemate and economic collapse have stressed Venezuelan society almost to the breaking point.

"To the Baby Jesus we entrust Venezuela," Pope Francis prayed, "that it may resume a serene dialogue among the various elements of society for the benefit of all the beloved Venezuelan people."

UKRAINE CONFLICT

The ongoing violent conflict in Ukraine was also on Pope Francis' mind.

"We see Jesus in children who, together with their families, suffer from the violence of the conflict in Ukraine and its grave humanitarian repercussions," he went on to say. "We pray that the Lord may soon grant peace to this dear country."

The Pope then spoke of "the children of unemployed parents who struggle to offer their children a secure and peaceful future. And in those whose childhood has been robbed and who, from a very young age, have been forced to work or to be enrolled as soldiers by unscrupulous mercenaries."

He prayed for children who are victims of forced migration, saying, "We see Jesus in the many children forced to leave their countries to travel alone in inhuman conditions and who become an easy target for human traffickers.

"Through their eyes we see the drama of all those forced to emigrate and risk their lives to face exhausting journeys that end at times in tragedy."

Francis also spoke of the children he met during his recent visit to Myanmar and Bangladesh.

"The sign of Christmas has also been revealed to us," he said. "'a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes' (Lk 2:12). Like the Virgin Mary and Saint Joseph, like the shepherds of Bethlehem, may we welcome in the Baby Jesus the love of God made man for us.

"And may we commit ourselves, with the help of his grace, to making our world more human and more worthy for the children of today and of the future."
(Photo: REUTERS / Lee Jae-Won)North Korean defectors living in Seoul sing a hymn in chorus during a divine service held to pray for peace and reunification of the divided Korean Peninsula at a church in Seoul April 7, 2013. North Korea, angry about new U.N. sanctions imposed for its third nuclear weapon test in February, has made increasingly strident warnings of an imminent war with South Korea and the United States.

A group of U.S. evangelical leaders and pastors have released a joint call for Christians everywhere to pray for peace on the Korean peninsula.

The joint statement released on March 27 expresses concern for the millions of lives that would be threatened by an escalation of conflict there, according to the statement that was released by the World Council of Churches.

The council released the statement from Evangelicals for Peace.

Their statement came two day before the leaders of North and South Korea have agreed to meet face-to-face on April 27 in the hope of putting an end to diplomatic tensions.

The summit between Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in comes after months of bitter dispute between the neighbouring States over North Korea's refusal to abandon nuclear testing in the face of international sanctions.

"We are heartened by proposals for dialogue between our national leaders at a time when increasing tensions seemed to be marching our countries perilously in the direction of greater conflict, if not war," the statement reads.

"We call on all Christians everywhere to join us in praying for a just and peaceful resolution."

Signatories on the statement include leaders of the National Association of Evangelicals, Faith and Community Empowerment, Evangelicals for Peace, The Kairos Company and Evangelicals for Social Action, along with a politically diverse group of more than 80 evangelical leaders, from former Southern Baptist Convention presidents Ronnie Floyd and Jack Graham to Sojourners founder Jim Wallis.

"We pray for wisdom for our political, diplomatic and military leaders as they work across differences toward a goal of peace, security and freedom," continues the statement.

"We pray that God will bless the efforts of citizens who seek to bridge the vast differences between our countries."

The statement notes that most of the nearly two million Korean-Americans are Christians, and many belong to evangelical churches.

"This community too has contact with North Koreans through humanitarian and family ties," the statement reads. "South Korea is also home to many evangelical churches, including some of the world's largest."

"This statement comes at a pivotal juncture", observed Peter Prove, director of the World Council of Churches Commission on International Affairs.

"After months and years of escalating tensions and threats of war, a new moment of opportunity has arrived, with preparations for a high-level inter-Korean summit and a summit between the US and North Korean leaders now underway."

'NOT OUR ENEMIES'

The evangelical leaders who subscribed to the statement declare that "we do not view the North Korean people as our enemies"

They affirm that "people-to-people contact between North Korea and the United States... have put a human face on those who are sometimes characterized by one another as enemies."

(Korean Peninsula)

According to Prove "it is an encouragement to all political and religious actors who have sought and continue to seek dialogue and the peaceful resolution of tensions and confrontation in the region."

WCC general secretary Rev. Olav Fykse Tveit praised the statement.

"Across the world, may we feel inspired to make peace a shared Christian calling, and a dimension of our call to unity in our witness to Jesus Christ," Tveit said.

Jim Winkler, general secretary of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, said: "The Christian voice for peace on the Korean Peninsula clearly spans theological and ideological divides and offers a rare moment of near consensus at a time of global polarization among our political leaders."
This digest arrives quarterly to inform you about all the Ecwid changes.

Whats inside:

New Selling Tools for Facebook

67% of respondents to our recent blog readership survey (thanks for participating, guys!) use social media to promote their stores, making it the most popular marketing activity for small businesses.

Now you can go beyond likes and shares on social media. Sell on Facebook is our new set of tools for you to:

Sell across devices with a new, mobile-friendly shop section on your FB business page.

shop section on your FB business page. Run automated dynamic ads and many other FB ad formats.

Retarget your store visitors on FB and optimize ads for conversions with the Facebook pixel integration.

Exporting your Ecwid product catalog to Facebook will take one click (literally). You can do it in Control Panel  Sell on Facebook.

As soon as you export your products to Facebook, you can use your Facebook Product Catalog to run dynamic ads. If you want to retarget your store visitors, install the Facebook Pixel by simply copy-pasting the Pixel ID into your control panel.

If you already sell on Facebook with our old Facebook Store app and want to switch to the new, mobile-friendly store that is integrated into many FB ad formats, enable the new integration in Control Panel  Settings  Whats New.

The new Sell on Facebook integration is available on all paid Ecwid plans.

Learn more 

Sell on Amazon

Selling on Amazon is similar to renting a boutique in a large, popular mall  at a lower cost.

Amazon.com alone counts 300 million users. What makes this marketplace such a giant? Well, its polished interface, global reach, reliability, and great features like two-day shipping or rich customer reviews, to name a few reasons.

Selling products from your Ecwid store on Amazon is like having a celeb cousin. You get your piece of the fame pie by simply hanging out with them. Your Amazon products receive traffic, even if your brand name is not a buzzword. As long as you sell good products for reasonable prices, Amazons hungry audience will discover them.

Ecwids new integration with Amazon is powered by Codisto.LINQ, a company that professionally connects e-commerce platforms with marketplaces. It not only allows you to export your products to Amazon, but also to stay synced.

It means:

Protection from overselling: as soon as someone buys your product on Amazon, your Ecwid inventory is updated (and vice versa).

as soon as someone buys your product on Amazon, your Ecwid inventory is updated (and vice versa). No manual work: your product catalog is automatically synced with Amazon, releasing you from spending hours on uploading your products.

your product catalog is automatically synced with Amazon, releasing you from spending hours on uploading your products. Competitive deals on Amazon: set different prices for products on your Amazon listing to compete with other Amazon sellers.

set different prices for products on your Amazon listing to compete with other Amazon sellers. Easily discovered products: customize your product titles and descriptions with keywords that work best on Amazon to help customers find your deals.

Start selling on Amazon in your Control Panel  All Sales Channels  Amazon. (Available on the Business plan and higher. See the Codisto.LINQ pricing).

Learn more 

Sell on eBay

eBay is one of the busiest marketplaces out there. It has very few barriers to entry, making it very easy to start selling. Popular among geeks and DIYers, eBay is a perfect home for handcrafted, unique, or rare products.

Our new eBay integration is also powered by a professional service, Codisto.LINQ. It allows selling on eBay directly from your Ecwid control panel. Keep your inventory synced and customize your products to make them more appealing to eBay shoppers: change prices, titles, descriptions, shipping and return policies, etc.

Start selling on eBay in Control Panel  All Sales Channels  eBay.

Hint: If you have lower volume sales or just want to test new products, theres a free Amazon & eBay integration in Ecwid. Trimpo is an app in the Ecwid App Market that supports listing on those marketplaces (currently in a free beta version). The Ecwid App Market is available on all paid Ecwid plans.

Also read: How to Figure Out Where to Sell Your Products

More Streamlined PayPal Checkout

Ecwids integration with PayPal has now been updated to the latest version  all without extra actions on your side. This update brings in a new, convenient shopping experience to your customers.

Checkout within your website. The enhanced In-Context Checkout gives your customers a simplified checkout experience that keeps them local to your online store.

Before, your customers were redirected to a full-screen page to authorize their payment with PayPal. Now, it happens in a small mobile-friendly pop-up window. It means less distraction for your customers and more completed purchases for you.

Faster checkout flow. Streamlining your checkout process is an essential part of conversion optimization. One Touch Checkout allows your customers to log into their PayPal accounts automatically, skipping the login process and entering their billing info.

Its still the same secure PayPal services, so you dont have to worry about your customer data.

Connect your PayPal account to Ecwid in Control Panel  Payment. Its simple: you will need nothing more than your email address.



Learn more Ecwid has everything you need to start selling online

Weve completely overhauled the control panel so that the full update was worth another blog post (it explains our motives for each improvement). Well keep the long story there  below are the updates that happened afterward:

Dashboard. The info on your Dashboard is sorted more conveniently, from urgent to-dos to less frequently used info. Check out your Dashboard 

The info on your Dashboard is sorted more conveniently, from urgent to less frequently used info. Check out your Dashboard  The All Sales Channels page. Now you have one page that lists all the ways to sell with Ecwid. That is to make sure you dont miss a single opportunity to grow your business. See all sales channels 

Now you have one page that lists all the ways to sell with Ecwid. That is to make sure you dont miss a single opportunity to grow your business. See all sales channels  Marketplaces. In Control Panel  All Sales Channels  Marketplaces , youll find a single page that organizes all the marketplaces that are integrated with Ecwid. Here you can enable your feeds and set up your listings.

In , youll find a single page that organizes all the marketplaces that are integrated with Ecwid. Here you can enable your feeds and set up your listings. Instant Site. Under Control Panel  All Sales Channels  Instant Site, youll see a new, compact, and informative page devoted to setting up your free one-page e-commerce website.

Learn more: Designing Your Free E-Commerce Website From Scratch to the First Sale

New in Ecwid Mobile ontrol Panel

Your staff can use Ecwid Mobile to manage your store

Last year, we added the ability to give your employees, freelancers, or outsourcers administrative access to your store. They can log in to your control panel using their emails and help you to edit your product catalog, update inventory, tweak the design, chat with customers, etc. Your staff cant access your billing info and invite or delete other team members.

Now your team can manage your store on the go using Ecwid Mobile. For example, your team members can sell your products on a street market, and you can stay in-house to run the business.

Learn how to let your staff manage your store via Ecwid Mobile: on iOS, on Android.

More Ecwid Mobile news

Mobile commerce is a hot e-commerce trend in 2018. So, weve retouched our mobile store management app for iOS (and are rolling out these updates to the Android version very soon). The apps functionality is expanding to make it an independent store management tool, so that you dont need to stay next to your computer and could sell anywhere you want.

Create and edit an e-commerce website from your smartphone. You dont have to use your omputer to create a selling website! Download the app, create an Ecwid account (if you havent got one yet), and go to Settings  Account  Edit Instant Site to open the editor. Start building a one-page e-commerce website from anywhere with internet access.

Edit your website (change contact details, business hours, cover image, and texts) whenever you want.

Faster login for Ecwid Mobile and Sell on the Go. Using the Ecwid Mobile Control panel and Sell on the Go apps together has become easier: now you dont have to log in to each app separately. Its enough to log in to one of them to be logged in to the other automatically.

If you sell in person (a brick-and-mortar store, pop-up store, craft show, art fair, etc.), the Sell on the Go application (for iOS only) will allow you to accept credit cards via PayPal Here or Square POS. You can also accept cash via Sell on the Go.

Open your Ecwid Mobile app, go to Settings  Download Sell on the Go.

Automatically identify your customers when they call you:

In your iPhone, go to Settings  Phone  Call Blocking & Identification .

. Switch on providing Caller ID for Ecwid.

Go to your Ecwid Mobile  Settings  Force Data Synchronization. That will add customer names and phone numbers to your address book. When a customer calls you, youll see their name.

Add a Store to Your Website: Ecwid Plugins News

Ecwid e-commerce plugin for RapidWeaver

RapidWeaver is a desktop site builder app for Mac. Its perfect for building classic-structured websites. It has 50+ themes plus the support of third-party add-ons, including our new e-commerce plugin that adds an online store to a RapidWeaver website in seconds.

No need to call for developers  you wont have to interact with code while using the plugin. The following video tutorial explains how to get started.

Get the plugin 

Learn more: Mac Users, Meet Our E-Commerce Plugin for RapidWeaver Websites

Ecwid e-commerce plugin for WordPress

Have you updated your plugin to the latest version (v. 5.8.2)? We regularly add new features to the plugin  here are some of the winter highlights:

Ecwid works more smoothly with more popular WordPress themes (Customizr, Abubize Business, Evolve Plus, Themify themes). Change the look of your website as often as you want  your Ecwid store will work just fine!

Better snippets of your store links (added page title, description, and image) that you share on social media. Rich product previews promise more clicks to your store.

SEO improvements, including compatibility with Yoast premium SEO plugin.

Additional Security at Store Login

If you (or someone else) tries to log in to your store from an unusual location (or a new browser), well warn you by email.

This way, youll be able to reset your store password quickly (by clicking the link in the email) if you cant recognize who has entered your control panel. It can give you additional protection from phishing attacks or other malicious attempts to steal your store data.

Learn more: Online Store Security: 8 Must-Complete Steps Against Web Threats

New Payment Options for Latin America

Ecwid is now integrated with two payment providers that support many payment options popular in Latin America:

Mercado Pago: accept credit cards, cash, wallets in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Venezuela, Peru, and Uruguay. Get all the payments into your Market account and transfer them to your bank account.

PayU Latam: 20+ payment options for Colombia, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Panama, and Peru.



Learn more Ecwid has everything you need to start selling online

Ecwid Payments for Everyone in the UK

If you sell in the US or the UK, accept credit cards quickly with minimal setup using Ecwid Payments:

Lightning-fast setup: connect your bank account without leaving your Ecwid Control panel.

setup: connect your bank account without leaving your Ecwid Control panel. Frictionless synchronization with your Ecwid product catalog.

Partial or full refunds right from your control panel: the faster your refunds, the happier your customers.

Stephanie Corn is using Ecwid Payments in her Ecwid store. Read here how Ecwid Payments contributed to 8X growth of her business.

More payment options

Mollie payments: accept iDeal, credit cards, PayPal, BitCoin, and more with a single setup.

Paytrail: e-payments to all Finnish banks, major credit, and debit card payments.

to all Finnish banks, major credit, and debit card payments. Datatrans payments (beta): credit and debit cards, SEPA, PayPal, E-banking, PaySafeCard, Skrill, and other payment methods for Switzerland.

New Apps in the Ecwid App Market

EU Cookie Banner: add a banner on your store giving consent compliance of the European Cookies Law.

Sales Booster: create up-sell and cross-sell offers that are displayed after your customer adds a product to their cart.

and offers that are displayed after your customer adds a product to their cart. Receipt Print: allow customers to print their receipts from their store account.

eFulfillment: automate the order fulfillment process.

GiftUp!: sell & redeem gift cards on your website with no monthly fee.

Social Login: let customers sign in to your store with their social account.

Free Shipping Bar: inform customers about your free shipping deals and motivate them to reach the threshold.

ShippingEasy: integrate your store with USPS, UPS, and FedEx, manage your shipments, print shipping labels.

Required Login: add a requirement for customers to sign in before they access any page in your storefront.

For Developers

If you are an IT guy or gal, wed love to see your app in the Ecwid App Market. Here are the most notable improvements of the Ecwid API:

We have added coupon and discount values to order items and abandoned carts. Now you get the type and amount of a discount or a discount coupon amount applied to a specific item.

Know how much tax total was applied to a shipping charge, only if the tax is applied to both subtotal and shipping. This is done through the taxOnShipping field to orders, abandoned carts and calculation of order details endpoints in Ecwid REST API.

Now its possible to create custom logic when a certain payment or shipping is enabled or show the list of set up payments and shipping methods in an external system. You could also use it to display payment methods icons for a certain payment option when its enabled at checkout.

A new webhook event which fires when store information gets updated. For example, now you can get notified when a merchant updates their email or company address and you wont have to check it manually.

Get the default storefront price of a product which includes taxes, options, or variations with the defaultDisplayedPrice field from /products endpoint of the Ecwid REST API. Now its easier to show the price from a merchants storefront in a custom storefront solution or in custom widgets for products.

What Do You Think?

We build new features with you in mind  and we want to hear from you! Should you have a question about these updates, or want to share an idea, well be waiting for you in the comments section below.

More big news is coming soon  stay in touch.
Imagine two children in the same school sit down to take their end-of-grade tests on the same day. One childs family just received its Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits (formerly known as Food Stamps), while the other received its benefits three weeks earlier.

In our newly published study, we find that the second child tends to score slightly higher than the first on both reading and math tests. Thats likely because the second child took the test after several weeks of sufficient food at home and decreased family stress. And even a small difference in test performance can matter, because the second child would also be more likely to meet state standards for grade-level proficiency. In several states, meeting such grade-level standards in certain grades is a requirement for children to advance to the next grade.

The Trump administration recently proposed a massive overhaul to the SNAP program. The idea to offer half of payments in the form of a basket of predetermined food items, known as a Harvest Box, got the most attention in the media. However, the presidents budget released last month also proposed a substantial cut to the program25 percent. Now, a pitched battle over of the future of the nutritional program is raging at the center of Congressional negotiations on the farm bill. Our research predicts considerable damage if the SNAP budget is slashed.

SNAP is our largest social safety-net program, currently serving more than 42 million low-income Americans. The average household benefit is $268 per month, which can only be used to purchase food. According to a 2010 U.S. Department of Agriculture report, economists estimate that every dollar provided in SNAP generates $1.70 for the U.S. economy. But recent research, including our own, shows that reduced funding would not only harm the economy today, but would also slow future economic growth as the children of today become the workers of tomorrow.

Our research adds to a growing consensus that SNAP benefits are insufficient for families who rely on them."

Social science research has shown that SNAP improves individuals physical health and families economic well-being. These effects are particularly important for children: The initial rollout of food stamps across the country in the 1960s decreased the incidence of low birth-weight infants, infant mortality, and other health problems.

However, the funding allotted to this nutrition program is already not enough, even before considering possible looming budget cuts. Our research adds to a growing consensus that SNAP benefits are insufficient for families who rely on them. It shows families access to food throughout the benefit month affects how children do in school. We find that students reading and math test scores vary based on the amount of time since students received the benefits.

Why might students test scores vary at different times in the month? SNAP benefits are typically distributed once a month, and the majority of recipients spend their benefits within the first two weeks. In the second half of the month, families consume fewer calories and eat less protein. As the benefits run out, families also report consuming more prepackaged foods and cheap, less-nutritious carbohydrates. And members of recipient households report being more worried about getting enough food and turning to their friends and family to supplement their grocery budgets.

Our study focused only on end-of-grade achievement tests, but the SNAP benefit cycle occurs every month and thus may very well affect childrens performance in everyday school activities across the entire year. During periods every month when families have less access to food, poor children may struggle more in school because their ability to think or pay careful attention may be reduced by hunger or the reverberations of stressful family conditions.

Even if this only happens for parts of each month, the detrimental effects could accumulate throughout the year, contributing to gaps in school achievement between low-income and high-income children. Test scores are highly correlated with later life outcomes, including college attendance, graduation, and earnings. If test scores and grade-level proficiency vary throughout the month, students future education and success in the labor market could be affected.

A prior study from a team of researchers at New York University, the University of Chicago, and the University of North Carolina finds that disciplinary infractions in Chicago public schools are higher toward the end of the month for SNAP recipient students, as compared with non-recipient students. Taken alongside our study, this research suggests that students ability to focus and concentrate in school varies based on time since a family receives their SNAP benefits. Our results, combined with other work on this issue, suggest that increasing SNAP amounts would also improve students academic outcomes.

Reducing SNAP benefits for families might seem like a money saver in the short term. But the long-term effect on a childs ability to learn will shortchange our collective future.
2018-03-30

Maeci

The Farnesina hosted today yet another meeting between the Director General for Italians abroad, Luigi Maria Vignali, and the families of the three Italian citizens who have been missing in Mexico since 31 January.



The Russo and the Cimmino family members were informed about the latest steps taken, and the meetings that have been held with Mexico's high level political, judiciary and police representatives. It was conveyed once more to the Mexican interlocutors that the Italian Government pays priority attention to the event. The urgency to provide the families concerned with detailed information was stressed, thus requesting that local Authorities confirm their full commitment to solve the case as soon as possible.



Today's meeting followed the recent mission of the Undersecretary of State for Foreign Affairs to Mexico, the conversation held on 28 February by Angelino Alfano, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, with his Mexican colleague, and the previous meeting at the Farnesina on 6 March with the families of the missing nationals.
Modern neuroscience, for all its complexity, can trace its roots directly to a series of pen-and-paper sketches rendered by Nobel laureate Santiago Ramon y Cajal in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

His observations and drawings exposed the previously hidden composition of the brain, revealing neuronal cell bodies and delicate projections that connect individual neurons together into intricate networks.

As he explored the nervous systems of various organisms under his microscope, a natural question arose: What makes a human brain different from the brain of any other species?

At least part of the answer, Ramon y Cajal hypothesized, lay in a specific class of neuron--one found in a dazzling variety of shapes and patterns of connectivity, and present in higher proportions in the human brain than in the brains of other species. He dubbed them the "butterflies of the soul."

Known as interneurons, these cells play critical roles in transmitting information between sensory and motor neurons, and, when defective, have been linked to diseases such as schizophrenia, autism and intellectual disability. Despite more than a century of study, however, it remains unclear why interneurons are so diverse and what specific functions the different subtypes carry out.

Now, in a study published in the March 22 issue of Nature, researchers from Harvard Medical School, New York Genome Center, New York University and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard have detailed for the first time how interneurons emerge and diversify in the brain.

Using single-cell analysis--a technology that allows scientists to track cellular behavior one cell at a time--the team traced the lineage of interneurons from their earliest precursor states to their mature forms in mice. The researchers identified key genetic programs that determine the fate of developing interneurons, as well as when these programs are switched on or off.

The findings serve as a guide for efforts to shed light on interneuron function and may help inform new treatment strategies for disorders involving their dysfunction, the authors said.

"We knew more than 100 years ago that this huge diversity of morphologically interesting cells existed in the brain, but their specific individual roles in brain function are still largely unclear," said co-senior author Gordon Fishell, HMS professor of neurobiology and a faculty member at the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad.

"Our study provides a road map for understanding how and when distinct interneuron subtypes develop, giving us unprecedented insight into the biology of these cells," he said. "We can now investigate interneuron properties as they emerge, unlock how these important cells function and perhaps even intervene when they fail to develop correctly in neuropsychiatric disease."

Origin to Fate

In collaboration with co-senior author Rahul Satija, core faculty member of the New York Genome Center, Fishell and colleagues analyzed brain regions in developing mice known to contain precursor cells that give rise to interneurons.

Using Drop-seq, a single-cell sequencing technique created by researchers at HMS and the Broad, the team profiled gene expression in thousands of individual cells at multiple time points. This approach overcomes a major limitation in past research, which could analyze only the average activity of mixtures of many different cells.

In the current study, the team found that the precursor state of all interneurons had similar gene expression patterns despite originating in three separate brain regions and giving rise to 14 or more interneuron subtypes alone--a number still under debate as researchers learn more about these cells.

"Mature interneurons exhibit incredible diversity. Their morphology and patterns of connectivity and activity are so different from each other, but our results show that the first steps in their maturation are remarkably similar," said Satija, who is also an assistant professor of biology at New York University.

"They share a common developmental trajectory at the earliest stages, but the seeds of what will cause them to diverge later--a handful of genes--are present from the beginning," Satija said.

As they profiled cells at later stages in development, the team observed the initial emergence of four interneuron "cardinal" classes, which give rise to distinct fates. Cells were committed to these fates even in the early embryo. By developing a novel computational strategy to link precursors with adult subtypes, the researchers identified individual genes that were switched on and off when cells began to diversify.

For example, they found that the gene Mef2c--mutations of which are linked to Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia and neurodevelopmental disorders in humans--is an early embryonic marker for a specific interneuron subtype known as Pvalb neurons. When they deleted Mef2c in animal models, Pvalb neurons failed to develop.

These early genes likely orchestrate the execution of subsequent genetic subroutines, such as ones that guide interneuron subtypes as they migrate to different locations in the brain and ones that help form unique connection patterns with other neural cell types, the authors said.

The identification of these genes and their temporal activity now provide researchers with specific targets to investigate the precise functions of interneurons, as well as how neurons diversify in general, according to the authors.

"One of the goals of this project was to address an incredibly fascinating developmental biology question, which is how individual progenitor cells decide between different neuronal fates," Satija said. "In addition to these early markers of interneuron divergence, we found numerous additional genes that increase in expression, many dramatically, at later time points."

The association of some of these genes with neuropsychiatric diseases promises to provide a better understanding of these disorders and the development of therapeutic strategies to treat them, a particularly important notion given the paucity of new neuropsychiatric treatments, the authors said.

Over the past 50 years, there have been no fundamentally new classes of neuropsychiatric drugs, only newer versions of old drugs, the researchers pointed out.

"Our repertoire is no better than it was in the 1970s," Fishell said.

"Neuropsychiatric diseases likely reflect the dysfunction of very specific cell types. Our study puts forward a clear picture of what cells to look at as we work to shed light on the mechanisms that underlie these disorders," Fishell said. "What we will find remains to be seen, but we have new, strong hypotheses that we can now test."

As a resource for the research community, the study data and software are open-source and freely accessible online.

A gallery of the drawings of Santiago Ramon y Cajal is currently on display in New York City, and will open at the MIT Museum in Boston in May 2018.

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Christian Mayer, Christoph Hafemeister and Rachel Bandler served as co-lead authors on the study.

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (R01 NS074972, R01 NS081297, MH071679-12, DP2-HG-09623, F30MH114462, T32GM007308, F31NS103398), the European Molecular Biology Organization, the National Science Foundation and the Simons Foundation.

Harvard Medical School

Harvard Medical School has more than 11,000 faculty working in 10 academic departments located at the School's Boston campus or in hospital-based clinical departments at 15 Harvard-affiliated teaching hospitals and research institutes: Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston Children's Hospital, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Cambridge Health Alliance, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute, Hebrew SeniorLife, Joslin Diabetes Center, Judge Baker Children's Center, Massachusetts Eye and Ear/Schepens Eye Research Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital, McLean Hospital, Mount Auburn Hospital, Spaulding Rehabilitation Network and VA Boston Healthcare System.
A new method could help scientists understand how wildlife populations are affected by major natural events, such as hurricanes, severe winters, and tsunamis.

The approach suggests the 2011 tsunami had an unexpectedly limited impact on organisms living in the intertidal zone of the Japanese shoreline.

Conservationists and ecologists need to be able to predict the impacts of extreme natural events on species, and to improve their understandings of how these events influence natural selection.

However, the physical units used to describe natural events--such as wind speed for hurricanes, wave height for storms, and moment magnitude for earthquakes--vary widely, making it impossible to directly compare their intensity. Wildlife populations also normally fluctuate over time, impeding the ability to judge an event's severity by looking at population size changes immediately after an event.

Hokkaido University researchers in Japan came up with an approach that uses a single unit of measurement, called a "return period," that describes how often a particular type of natural event is likely to occur and how long it takes for a species' population to rebound after an extreme event. This allows both metrics to be plotted against each other on a graph, revealing key patterns.

The researchers plotted the return periods of 27 natural events that occurred between 1946 and 2011 against the severity of their impact on 50 species. They found that wildlife populations were not affected by infrequent intense events in the same way they were affected by more frequent but weaker ones. Events that are frequent, relative to the lifespan of an organism, probably exert a strong selection pressure on species to evolve resistance against them, the researchers say in their study published in the journal Scientific Reports.

Their findings suggests the 2011 tsunami had a relatively small impact, comparable to a Pacific storm in 2006, on inhabitants of Japan's rocky tidal shoreline, such as mussels, barnacles, and algae. "This unexpectedly limited impact could be because the tsunami only lasted a few hours. A storm in 2006 off the coast of Tohoku lasting several days has a similar impact on the tidal zone species as the 2011 tsunami. Such storms occur much more frequently than tsunamis," said Takashi Noda of Hokkaido University who led the study.

The team emphasized that long-term censuses of organisms are urgently needed to improve predictions of how natural events will affect them.

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The research is a joint effort by KFU, RUDN University, Russian State University of Physical Education, Sports, Youth and Tourism, Plekhanov Russian University of Economics, and Irkutsk State University.

A poll was conducted among adolescents and young people aged 14-19 which covered secondary schools and tertiary education institutions.

Associate Professor Regina Sakhieva, one of the co-authors of the research, explained, "We can detect adolescents' dependence on social networks, where everyone can feel interesting and needed. Many people become addicted to communication in social networks and replacing real-life relationships with virtual ones. Even you are aware of your addiction, it's not always easy to get rid of it."

The authors found out that the majority of those questioned have predispositions for Internet addiction. This includes weak control over time spent online, over their own activity timelines and priority setting. However, they still can limit their online activities in favor of face-to-face communication with friends and other daily activities, such as studies.

A program of addiction prevention was proposed as a result of questionnaire analysis. The program is aimed at promoting social experience, self-regulation and self-management in the information space, critical thinking with regards to content consumption. The program was tested and proved to be effective.

"We see a solution in prevention measures implemented by all the participants of educational relations. That's why the researchers proposed psychological and pedagogical guidance of prevention policies, including organizational efforts for prevention, special courses for teachers and psychologists, and new forms and methods of prevention work," concluded Dr. Sakhieva.

The program is divided into three parts - motivational and cognitive measures, practice-oriented measures, and reflexive training, and a systemic plan of its implementation for the audience of 14 to 19-year-olds.

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CAMBRIDGE, MASS.--As part of an effort to identify distant planets hospitable to life, NASA has established a crowdsourcing project in which volunteers search telescopic images for evidence of debris disks around stars, which are good indicators of exoplanets.

Using the results of that project, researchers at MIT have now trained a machine-learning system to search for debris disks itself. The scale of the search demands automation: There are nearly 750 million possible light sources in the data accumulated through NASA's Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission alone.

In tests, the machine-learning system agreed with human identifications of debris disks 97 percent of the time. The researchers also trained their system to rate debris disks according to their likelihood of containing detectable exoplanets. In a paper describing the new work in the journal Astronomy and Computing, the MIT researchers report that their system identified 367 previously unexamined celestial objects as particularly promising candidates for further study.

The work represents an unusual approach to machine learning, which has been championed by one of the paper's coauthors, Victor Pankratius, a principal research scientist at MIT's Haystack Observatory. Typically, a machine-learning system will comb through a wealth of training data, looking for consistent correlations between features of the data and some label applied by a human analyst - in this case, stars circled by debris disks.

But Pankratius argues that in the sciences, machine-learning systems would be more useful if they explicitly incorporated a little bit of scientific understanding, to help guide their searches for correlations or identify deviations from the norm that could be of scientific interest.

"The main vision is to go beyond what A.I. is focusing on today," Pankratius says. "Today, we're collecting data, and we're trying to find features in the data. You end up with billions and billions of features. So what are you doing with them? What you want to know as a scientist is not that the computer tells you that certain pixels are certain features. You want to know 'Oh, this is a physically relevant thing, and here are the physics parameters of the thing.'"

Classroom conception

The new paper grew out of an MIT seminar that Pankratius co-taught with Sara Seager, the Class of 1941 Professor of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, who is well-known for her exoplanet research. The seminar, Astroinformatics for Exoplanets, introduced students to data science techniques that could be useful for interpreting the flood of data generated by new astronomical instruments. After mastering the techniques, the students were asked to apply them to outstanding astronomical questions.

For her final project, Tam Nguyen, a graduate student in aeronautics and astronautics, chose the problem of training a machine-learning system to identify debris disks, and the new paper is an outgrowth of that work. Nguyen is first author on the paper, and she's joined by Seager, Pankratius, and Laura Eckman, an undergraduate majoring in electrical engineering and computer science.

From the NASA crowdsourcing project, the researchers had the celestial coordinates of the light sources that human volunteers had identified as featuring debris disks. The disks are recognizable as ellipses of light with slightly brighter ellipses at their centers. The researchers also used the raw astronomical data generated by the WISE mission.

To prepare the data for the machine-learning system, Nguyen carved it up into small chunks, then used standard signal-processing techniques to filter out artifacts caused by the imaging instruments or by ambient light. Next, she identified those chunks with light sources at their centers, and used existing image-segmentation algorithms to remove any additional sources of light. These types of procedures are typical in any computer-vision machine-learning project.

Coded intuitions

But Nguyen used basic principles of physics to prune the data further. For one thing, she looked at the variation in the intensity of the light emitted by the light sources across four different frequency bands. She also used standard metrics to evaluate the position, symmetry, and scale of the light sources, establishing thresholds for inclusion in her data set.

In addition to the tagged debris disks from NASA's crowdsourcing project, the researchers also had a short list of stars that astronomers had identified as probably hosting exoplanets. From that information, their system also inferred characteristics of debris disks that were correlated with the presence of exoplanets, to select the 367 candidates for further study.

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CAMBRIDGE, MASS.--Plastics are excellent insulators, meaning they can efficiently trap heat - a quality that can be an advantage in something like a coffee cup sleeve. But this insulating property is less desirable in products such as plastic casings for laptops and mobile phones, which can overheat, in part because the coverings trap the heat that the devices produce.

Now a team of engineers at MIT has developed a polymer thermal conductor -- a plastic material that, however counterintuitively, works as a heat conductor, dissipating heat rather than insulating it. The new polymers, which are lightweight and flexible, can conduct 10 times as much heat as most commercially used polymers.

"Traditional polymers are both electrically and thermally insulating. The discovery and development of electrically conductive polymers has led to novel electronic applications such as flexible displays and wearable biosensors," says Yanfei Xu, a postdoc in MIT's Department of Mechanical Engineering. "Our polymer can thermally conduct and remove heat much more efficiently. We believe polymers could be made into next-generation heat conductors for advanced thermal management applications, such as a self-cooling alternative to existing electronics casings."

Xu and a team of postdocs, graduate students, and faculty, have published their results today in Science Advances. The team includes Xiaoxue Wang, who contributed equally to the research with Xu, along with Jiawei Zhou, Bai Song, Elizabeth Lee, and Samuel Huberman; Zhang Jiang, physicist at Argonne National Laboratory; Karen Gleason, associate provost of MIT and the Alexander I. Michael Kasser Professor of Chemical Engineering; and Gang Chen, head of MIT's Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Carl Richard Soderberg Professor of Power Engineering.

Stretching spaghetti

If you were to zoom in on the microstructure of an average polymer, it wouldn't be difficult to see why the material traps heat so easily. At the microscopic level, polymers are made from long chains of monomers, or molecular units, linked end to end. These chains are often tangled in a spaghetti-like ball. Heat carriers have a hard time moving through this disorderly mess and tend to get trapped within the polymeric snarls and knots.

And yet, researchers have attempted to turn these natural thermal insulators into conductors. For electronics, polymers would offer a unique combination of properties, as they are lightweight, flexible, and chemically inert. Polymers are also electrically insulating, meaning they do not conduct electricity, and can therefore be used to prevent devices such as laptops and mobile phones from short-circuiting in their users' hands.

Several groups have engineered polymer conductors in recent years, including Chen's group, which in 2010 invented a method to create "ultradrawn nanofibers" from a standard sample of polyethylene. The technique stretched the messy, disordered polymers into ultrathin, ordered chains -- much like untangling a string of holiday lights. Chen found that the resulting chains enabled heat to skip easily along and through the material, and that the polymer conducted 300 times as much heat compared with ordinary plastics.

But the insulator-turned-conductor could only dissipate heat in one direction, along the length of each polymer chain. Heat couldn't travel between polymer chains, due to weak Van der Waals forces -- a phenomenon that essentially attracts two or more molecules close to each other. Xu wondered whether a polymer material could be made to scatter heat away, in all directions.

Xu conceived of the current study as an attempt to engineer polymers with high thermal conductivity, by simultaneously engineering intramolecular and intermolecular forces -- a method that she hoped would enable efficient heat transport along and between polymer chains.

The team ultimately produced a heat-conducting polymer known as polythiophene, a type of conjugated polymer that is commonly used in many electronic devices.

Hints of heat in all directions

Xu, Chen, and members of Chen's lab teamed up with Gleason and her lab members to develop a new way to engineer a polymer conductor using oxidative chemical vapor deposition (oCVD), whereby two vapors are directed into a chamber and onto a substrate, where they interact and form a film. "Our reaction was able to create rigid chains of polymers, rather than the twisted, spaghetti-like strands in normal polymers." Xu says.

In this case, Wang flowed the oxidant into a chamber, along with a vapor of monomers - individual molecular units that, when oxidized, form into the chains known as polymers.

"We grew the polymers on silicon/glass substrates, onto which the oxidant and monomers are adsorbed and reacted, leveraging the unique self-templated growth mechanism of CVD technology," Wang says.

Wang produced relatively large-scale samples, each measuring 2 square centimeters - about the size of a thumbprint.

"Because this sample is used so ubiquitously, as in solar cells, organic field-effect transistors, and organic light-emitting diodes, if this material can be made to be thermally conductive, it can dissipate heat in all organic electronics," Xu says.

The team measured each sample's thermal conductivity using time-domain thermal reflectance -- a technique in which they shoot a laser onto the material to heat up its surface and then monitor the drop in its surface temperature by measuring the material's reflectance as the heat spreads into the material.

"The temporal profile of the decay of surface temperature is related to the speed of heat spreading, from which we were able to compute the thermal conductivity," Zhou says.

On average, the polymer samples were able to conduct heat at about 2 watts per meter per kelvin - about 10 times faster than what conventional polymers can achieve. At Argonne National Laboratory, Jiang and Xu found that polymer samples appeared nearly isotropic, or uniform. This suggests that the material's properties, such as its thermal conductivity, should also be nearly uniform. Following this reasoning, the team predicted that the material should conduct heat equally well in all directions, increasing its heat-dissipating potential.

Going forward, the team will continue exploring the fundamental physics behind polymer conductivity, as well as ways to enable the material to be used in electronics and other products, such as casings for batteries, and films for printed circuit boards.

"We can directly and conformally coat this material onto silicon wafers and different electronic devices" Xu says. "If we can understand how thermal transport [works] in these disordered structures, maybe we can also push for higher thermal conductivity. Then we can help to resolve this widespread overheating problem, and provide better thermal management."

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This research was supported, in part, by the U.S. Department of Energy - Basic Energy Sciences and the MIT Deshpande Center.
Groups of basking sharks ranging from as few as 30 to nearly 1,400 individual animals have been observed aggregating in waters from Nova Scotia to Long Island. While individual sightings are fairly common, seeing large groups is not.

The reason why the animals congregate has not been clearly determined, although it is thought to be related to feeding, socializing, and/or courtship given behaviors in other shark species.

In a recent study reported in the Journal of Fish Biology, researchers analyzed aggregations of basking sharks (Cetorhinus maximus) recorded off the northeastern United States coast to learn more about the phenomenon. Observations of these aggregation events are relatively rare. In almost 40 years of aerial surveys for right whales, ten large basking shark aggregation events were opportunistically recorded and photographed. Comparing this information with that collected in a number of earth-orbiting satellite and oceanographic databases and by the NEFSC's ecosystem monitoring (EcoMon) cruises in the same region, researchers obtained more insight into this behavior.

"Aerial surveys provide a valuable perspective on aggregations and their potential functions, especially when coupled with environmental satellite and ship-based survey data," said Leah Crowe, a protected species researcher at NOAA's Northeast Fisheries Science Center and lead author of the study. The researchers found the aggregations occurred in summer and fall when sea surface temperatures ranged between 55 and 75 degrees F (13 to 24 degrees C). In the largest event, data were available to indicate there was a high concentration of zooplankton prey present.

Largest aggregation sighted had 1,400 animals

Ten large aggregations of basking sharks were identified between June 1980 and November 2013, ranging from 36 to at least 1,398 animals within an 11.5-mile (18.5-kilometer) radius of the central point in the aggregation. Data on breaching, circular swimming movements, and/or apparent feeding behavior were recorded in seven of the ten largest aggregations.

The largest aggregation ever recorded on the aerial survey was at least 1,398 animals photographed on November 5, 2013 in southern New England waters. As luck would have it, the NEFSC's EcoMon survey sampled the same area on November 16 and 17, 2013, providing an estimate of the zooplankton community characteristics in that area at that time of year.

"Photogrammetry, the use of photographs to measure objects, has provided estimated lengths of animals at the surface and allowed us to classify animals in the aggregation as likely juveniles or mature adults," said Crowe, who works at the NEFSC's Woods Hole Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass.

Given the apparent presence of juveniles and an abundance of zooplankton on the continental shelf at the time of the event, the study authors say it is likely foraging played a role in the formation of that aggregation. The study also suggests that the animals may be aggregating to draft off each other for more efficient feeding given the immense drag from having their mouths open.

Basking Sharks are Second Largest Fish

Basking sharks are the world's second largest fish, growing as long as 32 feet and weighing more than five tons. They are highly migratory, slow-moving animals often sighted close to the surface with their large mouths open to filter zooplankton from seawater. They are considered passive and no danger to humans other than that posed by their large size and rough skin. They and the larger whale shark, along with the megamouth shark, are the three shark species that eat plankton.

Sighting surveys and environmental analyses from the study aligned with previous studies that found these large aggregations form in areas of high prey density, often along thermal fronts and in areas with high chlorophyll concentrations, perhaps exploiting spring and fall zooplankton blooms prior to the animals' seasonal migration out of the region. Data also confirm that basking sharks prefer waters between 55 and 68 degrees F (13 to 20 degrees C).

While these aggregations may provide the opportunity for socializing, courtship, and mating, some behaviors suggest they are not solely related to courtship as proposed in previous studies. The reproductive cycle of basking sharks is not well understood, and questions remain about why the animals gather in large groups and how they interact with each other when in them.

"Although the reason for these aggregations remains elusive, our ability to access a variety of survey data though the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium Database and to compare information has provided new insight into the potential biological function of these rare events," Crowe said. "The study also highlights the value of opportunistic data collection."

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A slippery rough surface (SRS) inspired by both pitcher plants and rice leaves outperforms state-of-the-art liquid-repellent surfaces in water harvesting applications, according to a team of researchers at Penn State and the University of Texas at Dallas.

The team reports their work online today (March 30) in Science Advances, an open-access journal.

"With an estimated 4 billion people living in a situation of water scarcity during at least some part of the year, an inexpensive method for harvesting water from water vapor or from fog droplets in air could have enormous practical applications, and will help alleviate the water scarcity issues in many regions of the world," said the project's leader, Tak-Sing Wong, who is the Wormley Family Early Career Professor in Engineering and assistant professor of mechanical engineering, Penn State.

Many water-harvesting technologies are not as efficient, because when water is attracted to a hydrophilic surface, the water tends to form a sheet and clings to the surface, making it hard to remove. But Wong's post-doctoral scholar, Simon Dai, now an assistant professor at UT Dallas, was looking at combining different biological strategies to create a slippery solution for water harvesting.

"With SRS, we combined the slippery interface of a pitcher plant with the surface architecture of a rice leaf, which has micro/nanoscale directional grooves on its surface that allows water to be removed very easily in one direction but not the other," said Dai.

Dai developed a pitcher plant-inspired slippery surface with hydrophilic chemistry. At the same time, he added the directional grooves and gave the new surface a microscale roughness that increased the surface area. The rate of water and fog harvesting are directly proportional to the amount of surface area on which droplets can form. The rice leaf-inspired grooves whisk the water droplets away through capillary action or gravity.

Through experiments carried out at Penn State, the team showed that these surfaces can collect tiny water droplets from air at a rate faster than many state-of-the-art surfaces. Molecular dynamics simulations carried out at UT Dallas by Dai's colleague, Steven Nielson, explained why the hydrophilic surface was particularly good at water harvesting.

"If the SRS material is produced at scale, we estimate that we can collect over 120 liters of water per square meter of the surface per day, and we can further increase the water harvesting rate by optimizing the SRS," said Nan Sun, graduate student in Wong's group and coauthor of the paper, titled "Hydrophilic Directional Rough Surfaces for Water Harvesting."

Wong's team is currently working on optimizing and scaling up the SRS with the goal to create highly efficient water harvesting systems for providing clean water in water scarcity regions.

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Others on the project from Penn State are graduate students Birgitt Boschitsch Stogin and Jing Wang; and former post-doctoral scholar in Wong's lab, Shikuan Yang, now a professor at Zhejiang University. The researchers have filed a U.S. provisional patent for this work.

The National Science Foundation, Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, the Office of Naval Research, Covestro LLC, and the Materials Research Institute at Penn State supported this work.
Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) is pleased to announce the 2018 Class of SIAM Fellows. These distinguished members were nominated for their exemplary research as well as outstanding service to the community. Through their contributions, SIAM Fellows help advance the fields of applied mathematics and computational science. These individuals will be recognized for their achievements during the SIAM Annual Meeting, happening July 9-13 in Portland, OR.

SIAM congratulates these 28 esteemed members of the community, listed below in alphabetical order:

Todd James Arbogast, The University of Texas at Austin

Liliana Borcea, University of Michigan

Luis Angel Caffarelli, The University of Texas at Austin

Ronald A. DeVore, Texas A&M University

Stanley C. Eisenstat, Yale University

Michael Elad, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology

David A. Field, General Motors Corporation

Margot Gerritsen, Stanford University

Michael B. Giles, University of Oxford

Alain Goriely, University of Oxford

Peter Kuchment, Texas A&M University

Madhav V. Marathe, Virginia Tech

Alison Lesley Marsden, Stanford University

Bojan Mohar, Simon Fraser University

Helen Moore, AstraZeneca

Pablo A. Parrilo, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Alex Pothen, Purdue University

Helmut Pottmann, Technische Universitaet Wien

Juan M. Restrepo, Oregon State University

John N. Shadid, Sandia National Laboratories

Arthur S. Sherman, National Institutes of Health

Ralph C. Smith, North Carolina State University

Tamas Terlaky, Lehigh University

Robin Thomas, Georgia Institute of Technology

Kim-Chuan Toh, National University of Singapore

Panayot S. Vassilevski, Portland State University

Homer F. Walker, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Karen E. Willcox, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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Read further details about individual Fellows' accomplishments and citations: https://sinews.siam.org/Details-Page/siam-announces-class-of-2018-fellows

Learn more about the SIAM Fellows Program: http://www.siam.org/prizes/fellows/index.php

About SIAM

The Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is an international society of more than 14,000 individual, academic and corporate members from 85 countries. SIAM helps build cooperation between mathematics and the worlds of science and technology to solve real-world problems through publications, conferences, and communities like chapters, sections and activity groups. Learn more.
[BOSTON, Mass. - March 30, 2018] Leaders from Tufts Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) and The Jackson Laboratory (JAX) today announced a new five-year collaboration to advance translational research, with the goal of helping bring the latest research into medical practice faster and more efficiently to improve patient care.

"Over nearly nine decades The Jackson Laboratory has made fundamental contributions to biomedical research, as a leader in both mammalian genetics and most recently, human genomics," says Graham Jones, PhD, Tufts CTSI Associate Director and Director of Research Collaborations. "Building on existing relationships with the doctoral program in genetics at the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences at Tufts, Tufts CTSI is delighted to welcome JAX as a formal collaborator, where synergies in translational research will be exploited in emerging areas of immunology and oncology, among others."

The JAX/Tufts CTSI collaboration will strengthen and expand research and training programs in clinical and translational science, including:

Research consultations and collaborations with faculty.

Internship/externships and collaborative research ventures for postgraduate fellows and career development scholars.

Development of joint training programs and educational platforms.

Expansion of PhD programs with the Sackler School.

Development and delivery of training modules via the Sackler School in rapidly emerging research areas such as CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing technologies.

Continued cross-registration between the JAX Genetics Program and the Sackler School.

Researchers affiliated with JAX will be able to access Tufts CTSI resources and services including research design and analysis, clinical studies infrastructure, pilot studies funding, and fellowships and trainee support.

"The opportunity to improve patient care by fast-tracking impactful, collaborative research is crucial to enhancing the way we approach medicine today," said Kenneth Fasman, PhD, Vice President for Research at The Jackson Laboratory. "We are thrilled to work toward that goal with Tufts CTSI, whose very mission embodies this work."

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Tufts CTSI, founded in 2008, is a member institution of the national Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) Consortium, funded by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), National Institutes of Health. Its mission is to identify, stimulate, and expedite innovated clinical and translational research, with the goal of improving the public's health.

About Tufts Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI)

Tufts Clinical and Translational Science Institute , established in 2008, supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), is dedicated to stimulating, supporting, and expediting innovative clinical and translational research, with the goal of improving the public's health. Founded by Tufts University and Tufts Medical Center, it also includes other academic institutions (including all the schools of Tufts University, Brandeis University, Northeastern University, and RAND), the hospitals affiliated with Tufts University School of Medicine, community stakeholders, and various members of the health care industry. Tufts CTSI's purpose is to accelerate the translation of laboratory and medical research into clinical use, widespread medical practice, and into improved health care delivery and health policy. It connects people to research resources, consultation, and education, and fosters collaboration with scholars of all disciplines and with community members, with the ultimate goal of improving the health of the public. Tufts CTSI is funded by a Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) from the NIH National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, award number UL1TR001064.

About The Jackson Laboratory

The Jackson Laboratory is an independent, nonprofit biomedical research institution based in Bar Harbor, Maine, with a National Cancer Institute-designated Cancer Center, a facility in Sacramento, California, and a genomic medicine institute in Farmington, Connecticut. It employs 2,000 staff, and its mission is to discover precise genomic solutions for disease and empower the global biomedical community in the shared quest to improve human health.
DALLAS - March 29, 2018 - A first-of-its-kind drug targeting a fused gene found in many types of cancer was effective in 93 percent of pediatric patients tested, researchers at UT Southwestern's Simmons Cancer Center announced.

Most cancer drugs are targeted to specific organs or locations in the body. Larotrectinib is the first cancer drug to receive FDA breakthrough therapy designation for patients with a specific fusion of two genes in the cancer cell, no matter what cancer type. The research appears in The Lancet Oncology.

"In some cancers, a part of the TRK gene has become attached to another gene, which is called a fusion. When this occurs, it leads to the TRK gene being turned on when it's not supposed to be and that causes the cells to grow uncontrollably. What's unique about the drug is it is very selective; it only blocks TRK receptors," said lead author Dr. Ted Laetsch, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics and with the Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center.

More information

Lancet Oncology paper

News release on NEJM paper

Larotrectinib, targets TRK fusions, which can occur in many types of cancer. While the TRK fusions occur in only a small percentage of common adult cancers, they occur frequently in some rare pediatric cancers, such as infantile fibrosarcoma, cellular congenital mesoblastic nephroma, and papillary thyroid cancer, said Dr. Laetsch, who leads the Experimental Therapeutics Program (ETP) in the Pauline Allen Gill Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders at Children's Health in Dallas.

"Every patient with a TRK fusion-positive solid tumor treated on this study had their tumor shrink. The nearly universal response rate seen with larotrectinib is unprecedented," Dr. Laetsch said.

Among them was 13-year-old Briana Ayala of El Paso, who aspires to a career in fashion design. In 2016, Briana was found to have a rare tumor in her abdomen wrapped around her aorta, the largest artery in the body.

Surgeons in her hometown said it would be too dangerous to operate, so her family brought Briana to Children's Health in Dallas, where UT Southwestern Professor of Surgery Dr. Stephen Megison had to remove portions of her aorta while removing most of the tumor.

But the cancer started to grow again and no further treatments were available.

Dr. Laetsch sent her tumor for genetic testing and found that Briana's cancer had the TRK fusion, meaning the new drug might help.

Briana enrolled in the phase 1 clinical trial of larotrectinib and began taking the drug twice a day. Within weeks her pain and the swelling in her abdomen diminished, and scans showed her tumors had shrunk significantly.

Nearly two years later, Briana is back in school and playing with her dog, Goofy, and the family's seven parakeets. She's also been able to pick up her sketch pad and her dreams of a New York City fashion career.

"These are the kind of amazing responses we've seen with larotrectinib," said Dr. Laetsch, "and this is why I'm so excited about it."

The results of the larotrectinib trial in adult patients - a 75 percent response rate - were published last month in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The TRK-fusion mutation can be present in many types of cancers, including lung, colon, thyroid, and breast cancer, as well as certain pediatric tumors. TRK, short for tropomyosin receptor kinase, is a gene that plays a key role in brain and nervous system development and has a limited role in nervous system functions such as regulating pain in later life.

Larotrectinib belongs to a class of molecules known as kinase inhibitors, which work by cutting back on the enzymatic activity of a key cellular reaction. The selectivity of the drug means it does not cause the severe side effects associated with many traditional cancer treatments, and none of the patients with TRK fusions had to quit the study because of a drug-induced side effect.

Equally important, the response was long-lasting for most patients. "For some of the targeted drugs in the past, many patients responded initially, but then resistance developed quickly. To date, the response to this drug seems to be durable in most patients," said Dr. Laetsch, who investigates the use of tumor molecular profiling to guide therapy in UT Southwestern's Pediatric Hematology and Oncology Division.

A next step in the research is a clinical trial involving a similar drug for those patients who developed resistance. Dr. Laetsch will be the national leader for that clinical trial in children.

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The larotrectinib research was supported by Loxo Oncology Inc., the National Institutes of Health, the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, and Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation. Dr. Laetsch is a paid consultant for Loxo Oncology Inc.

The Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center is the only NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center in North Texas and among just 30 U.S. cancer research centers to be designated by the NCI as a National Clinical Trials Network Lead Academic Participating Site. UT Southwestern Medical Center is recognizing its 75th year this year.

About UT Southwestern Medical Center

UT Southwestern, one of the premier academic medical centers in the nation, integrates pioneering biomedical research with exceptional clinical care and education. The institution's faculty has received six Nobel Prizes, and includes 22 members of the National Academy of Sciences, 17 members of the National Academy of Medicine, and 14 Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigators. The faculty of more than 2,700 is responsible for groundbreaking medical advances and is committed to translating science-driven research quickly to new clinical treatments. UT Southwestern physicians provide care in about 80 specialties to more than 100,000 hospitalized patients, 600,000 emergency room cases, and oversee approximately 2.2 million outpatient visits a year.
The recent scandal of Cambridge Analytica using Facebook data to allegedly manipulate elections has given fresh impetus to projects designed to give people control of their private information. One group even plans to launch an initiative to enshrine data protection into the Swiss constitution.

Companies harvesting personal data for commercial use is hardly new. It is the business model of Facebook and other social media while hospitals sell anonymised patient information to pharmaceutical companies. Concerns about invasion of privacy have spawned a range of platforms that allow people to safeguard their data and sell it on their own terms.

Swiss newcomer VALID has recently raised more than $10 million (CHF9.5 million) from the public to set up a non-profit platform exactly for this purpose. It is the brainchild of Daniel Gasteiger, founder of the digital identity firm Procivis.

This is exactly what VALID is all about, making sure this cannot happen in future, Gasteiger told swissinfo.ch in reference to the Cambridge Analytica-Facebook scandal.

Users of the blockchain platform will be able to store their data on digital wallets and then connect with companies via an app that creates a marketplace for selling data. But instead of a third party making money from these transactions, the user will get paid directly.

We are not a Facebook killer, insists Gasteiger. We are about selling private data in a way that benefits the owner. Hopefully we can persuade Facebook and others to change their ways by charging monthly subscriptions or at least being more transparent about the what they do with users data.

Business opposition

VALID is not the only Swiss platform offering such a service. Medical data platforms such as Healthbank also offer ways to allow people to manage their personal health records, and sell them to researchers if they wish.

The trend is being driven by consumer regulation, much of it coming out of the European Union. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Revised Payment Service Directive (PSD2) will give consumers more control over their data by loosening the grip that companies currently have on this information.

Switzerland is not covered by EU laws nor is it immune with so many companies operating in and trading with the EU, its largest trade partner. However, the Swiss Business federation (economiesuisse) does not want Switzerland to go down the same regulatory route as the EU with regards to data protection.

In a recent position paper, the lobby group argued for self-regulation and was against piecemeal rules aimed at individual industries. Data is the innovation driver for innovative business models. Enabling innovation must be proportionate to protecting the privacy of individuals, the paper states.

Gasteiger also wants a balance between private data security and commercial interests, but supports the new EU rules. He argues that they will allow the market to open up to new innovation and business models, such as VALID, that better respect consumer rights.

Data as human right

But another group wants to go further by raising the sanctity of personal data to the level of life and limb in the Swiss constitution. The newly-formed Association for the Recognition of Digital Life is intent on triggering a vote to update article 10 of the constitution, which sanctifies personal liberty, physical and mental integrity, to also recognise digital human rights.

This would in effect criminalise the misuse of personal data, says board member Alexis Roussel, who is also founder of Bity cryptocurrency brokerage and a member of the Pirate Party. We need a clear legal basis to prevent data being manipulated behind peoples backs, he told swissinfo.ch.

The economic market is not a fit vehicle to advance the protection of personal data, Roussel argues. He likens some of the new platforms, which encourage people to sell their own data, to the trade in body parts.

Furthermore, he fears that it is only a matter of time before Swiss elections get some Cambridge Analytica-style treatment. This would not just attack individuals but the whole system. We need systems in place to resist such an attack, he said. But the process towards achieving such a lofty goal will take time, Roussel admits. A case of years rather than months to achieve such a landmark.
There was a smaller increase than usual in the number of students attending Swiss higher education institutes, latest statistics show. On the rise nevertheless: female and foreign students.

There were 248,000 students registered for the autumn semester 2017/8, said the Federal Statistical Office, this was 3,800 more than in the previous year.

This is lower than in past years where the increase in students matriculated ranged from around 5,000 (2015) to 10,000 (2010).

Overall, student numbers in 2017/2018 were still a fifth higher than in 2010/11. The largest boost during this time came in the universities of teacher education (almost 50%). But these institutions account for only 8% of the student population in Switzerland, according to the statistics released on Thursday.

The number of students at universities increased by 15% since 2010/11 to 150,700  making up almost two thirds of students. There were 76,500 people studying at universities of applied sciences (up almost 26% since 2010/2011).

Women and foreigners

The number of women studying has greatly increased over the last decades, the statistics show. Female students now just make up the majority in universities at 51%, are almost three quarters of trainee teachers and account for 47% places at universities of applied sciences.

In 2000/2001 female students accounted for 41.5% of those at regular universities. In 1990/1991 it was 38.8%.

Foreigners make up 30% of students at universities (compared with 20% in 2000/2001), and also take up 19% and 10% of places at universities of applied sciences and teacher education respectively.

Almost a quarter of the 46,000 foreign students come from Germany, with 16% from France, 11% from Italy and 4% from China, the statistics revealed.
More than half of French people believe the government could do more to stop terror attacks, according to a poll published on Thursday, six days after fresh bloodshed in the country.

Fifty-eight percent of respondents said that French President Emmanuel Macron and his administration were not using all the necessary means in the fight against the terrorist threat in France, according to the study by the Elabe polling group.

Among the measures that drew the greatest support were expelling foreign nationals on Frances terror watchlist (backed by 80 percent of respondents) and preventing French jihadists returning from Syria and Iraq (78 percent).

These measures, which experts point out would likely face legal challenges, have been championed by the far-right National Front party which also proposes a crackdown on dual nationals convicted of terrorism offences.

Seven in ten respondents backed proposals to strip any dual national jihadist of their French passport, something proposed in 2015 and then abandoned by Macrons predecessor Francois Hollande.

The survey came after a shooting spree in the towns of Carcassonne and Trebes in southwest France last Friday, which saw four people killed by Moroccan-born Frenchman Radouane Lakdim.

Among other suggestions made since the attack is banning the fundamentalist strain of Islam known as Salafism due to links between attackers and radical imams who preach an ultra-conservative interpretation of the Islamic holy texts.

The government has ruled out taking action on the grounds that it cannot prohibit a religious practice.

The study was carried out online by Elabe for BFMTV on March 27-28 with a sample of 1,005 people aged 18 and over. The margin of error was 1.4-3.1 points.
The father-in-law of Pippa Middleton, whose sister Kate is married to Britain's Prince William, has been charged in France with the rape of a minor, a legal source told AFP on Friday, as a family spokesperson called the allegation "untrue and scandalous".

David Matthews was taken into custody for questioning last Tuesday by investigators with Frances Brigade for the Protection of Minors in a case dating from 1998-99, after a complaint was lodged in 2017, the source said.

A spokesperson for the Matthews family, quoted by Britains Daily Mail online, said: David Matthews categorically denies the allegation and unequivocally contests the untrue and scandalous accusation.

His daughter-in-law Pippa Middleton married financier James Matthews last May, after shooting into the spotlight in 2011 following the wedding of her sister Kate to Prince William, the second-in-line to the throne.

David Matthews was born in Rotherham, England, and began his career selling cars before becoming a professional racing driver.

After a severe crash during a race, he turned to business, building a successful chain of dealerships before selling and becoming a property developer.

Matthews owns the Eden Rock luxury resort on the Caribbean island of St Barths, and the Glen Affric Estate in Scotland.

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The dean of a university in the southern French city of Montpellier was suspended on Thursday after being accused of abetting a violent attack on students protesting education reforms that have sparked demonstrations at campuses around the country.

In the past few weeks, protesters have shut down or severely disrupted classes at several universities over more stringent university entrance requirements introduced by President Emmanuel Macron.

Universities in Paris, Montpellier, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Nantes and Nancy have all been affected to various degrees.

The situation escalated sharply last week in Montpellier, where hooded men armed with bats stormed a lecture theatre to dislodge students staging a sit-in.

Videos shared on Facebook showed several men, their faces concealed, hitting students in the theatre of the law faculty with sticks and bats.

Three people were injured in the skirmish, which has sparked solidarity anti-fascist demonstrations by students at other universities, including in the northern city of Lille.

On Wednesday, the university dean Philippe Petel was arrested along with a professor on Wednesday, on suspicion of abetting or participating in the eviction.

Several students claimed they recognised several professors among the attackers.

Petel, who was suspended by Higher Education Minister Frederique Vidal, denies the allegations.

The attack has sharpened tensions between supporters and opponents of the protests that began in February over a new law that for the first time introduces an element of selection on merit for entrance to university.

In France, students can apply for any university course as long as they pass their Baccalaureate, the final exam of secondary school.

 High dropout rate 

With lecture halls bursting at the seams and over a third of students dropping out in their first year of university, Macrons centrist government has sought to tighten standards.

Starting this year, universities can set basic requirements for admission to three-year degree programmes.

Students who do not meet the criteria will be offered a place on condition that they agree to take extra classes.

Opponents argue that the restrictions are elitist and penalise students from poorer backgrounds.

But their sit-ins have caused frustration on some campuses, with students in Montpellier insisting on their right to study as end-of-year exams loom.

Vidal, the higher education minister, set out two red lines Thursday on French radio: no violence on campus and allowing the university year to end and exams to be held in the best possible conditions.

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Poland is hoping to step into the gap after Britain leaves the European Union, emulating its caution over Russia and defence of national sovereignty, Warsaw's top diplomat has told AFP.

Despite heightened tensions with Brussels over a series of controversial court reforms which could see Poland facing sanctions, Warsaw is determined to drive forward its vision of the blocs future after Britains departure in March 2019.

Whats taking shape is the possibility of us taking Britains place (in terms of) its programme: commitment to free competition and awareness of the Russian threat, as well a defence of its own positions, of its sovereignty, Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz told AFP.

Like Poland, Britain had always had a more realistic view of Russian aggression than Germany or France, he said, pointing to the nerve agent attack on a former Russian spy on British soil, with London pointing the finger at Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Weve always been wary of Putins actions, and we were right, Czaputowicz said, mentioning Russias annexation of Crimea and its action in Syria.

And now the attempted murder of (Sergei) Skripal. We see a continuation of this policy.

Following Britains lead, Poland, France and Germany have each expelled four Russian diplomats in response to poisoning scandal in a united show of strength.

Its an important sign of our unity and a signal to Moscow that its not possible to divide Western countries regarding their stance towards Russia, he said.

 A question of sovereignty 

What does give him pause in Europe, however, is French President Emmanuel Macrons vision of a sovereign Europe.

Its impossible to have sovereignty within sovereignty. In other words, a sovereign Europe calls into question the sovereignty of member states, he said.

The issue could very well come up next month when Czaputowicz, who took over as foreign minister earlier this year, pays his first visit to Paris.

I doubt the French would accept sovereignty passing over to the EU at the expense of French sovereignty, he said.

So its necessary to continue the conversation, even as both sides want a strong Europe.

Czaputowicz also zeroed in on the European Commission, which last year launched unprecedented legal action against Warsaw over the governing conservatives reform of the Polish judiciary.

The question, he said, was about the source of the EUs legitimacy, which Poland sees as stemming from national parliaments.

We defend parliamentary democracy, he said.

The question is about the reinforcement of certain supranational institutions, like the Commission. Its a question of what is their role  if they are legitimate per se or if they are legitimate by virtue of the member states decisions, Czaputowicz said.

 Cosmetic changes 

In December, Brussels triggered Article 7 of the EU treaty over what it sees as systemic threats to the independence of the Polish judiciary  in a move that could lead to an unprecedented round of sanctions.

After turning a deaf ear to the EUs concerns for months, Polands rightwing government said last week it would introduce a draft law to slightly modify the judiciary changes.

Western diplomats welcomed the changes  which notably concern the retirement age of judges and the dismissal procedure of chief justices  as a bid to thaw ties with the EU.

But Polands liberal opposition believes the changes are merely cosmetic.

There is a willingness to compromise on Polands side, said Czaputowicz, who will meet European Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermans in Warsaw on April 9.

But he said that certain changes are out of the question  those that could destroy the system put in place.

Warsaw also wants to revive the so-called Weimar Triangle which grouped Poland, France and Germany but was effectively put on hold by Paris after Warsaw abruptly dropped a multi-billion euro helicopter deal with a French aeronautics firm.

Within the group, Poland could also represent other Central and Eastern European countries with which it has shared interests, shared aspirations within the EU, shared history and the same geopolitical situation, he said.

Poland could thus introduce Central Europes way of thinking and expectations into a common European vision.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday said he was "extremely saddened" by France's position after Paris offered to mediate with the Syrian Democratic Forces dominated by a Kurdish militia deemed a terrorist group by Ankara.

We are extremely saddened by Frances wrong stance on this issue, Erdogan said during a speech in Ankara after French President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday that he hoped a dialogue could be established between Ankara and the SDF.

We have no need for mediation Since when has Turkey had an issue of sitting down at the table with terror organisation?

The majority of the SDF is made up of the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG) militia which Ankara says is a terrorist offshoot of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) waging an insurgency inside Turkey since 1984.

The PKK is blacklisted as a terror group by Ankara and its Western allies.

But the YPG inside the SDF has been working closely with the United States to fight the Islamic State (IS) group in Syria, much to Ankaras anger.

Those who say we guaranteed support to YPG, we can mediate between Turkey and SDF are out of their depth and are surpassing their limit, Erdogan thundered.

You can sit down at the table with terror organisations but Turkey will continue its fight against terror.

During the meeting with a delegation of Syrian and Arab fighters on Thursday, Macron acknowledged the role of the SDF in the fight against Daesh, using another term for IS.

Turkey on January 20 launched an operation against the YPG in its western enclave of Afrin in Syria and on March 18, Turkish troops supporting Syrian rebels drove the YPG out of Afrin city.

Erdogan hit out at France, saying it still had yet to give an account for its dirty and bloody past and that after this stance, it no longer had the right to complain about terror organisations, terrorists and terror attacks.

The Turkish president added that Macron had made strange remarks in a call about Syria last week. I was forced to point it out to him, even if the tone was a bit raised, he said, without giving details.
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Russia's expulsion of 60 US diplomats and shuttering of one of its consulates marks a "further deterioration" in relations between Washington and Moscow, the White House said Thursday.

The US had ordered a similar number of diplomats from Russia to leave and the shuttering of one of its consulates as part of an international effort to isolate the country after an ex-spy and his daughter were poisoned in England in a nerve agent attack blamed on Moscow.

Russias action today to expel American diplomats marks a further deterioration in the United States-Russia relationship, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement.

Russias response was not unanticipated, and the United States will deal with it, she said.

In all, more than 150 Russian diplomats have been ordered out of the US, EU members, NATO countries and other nations in coordinated action against Moscow, which they accuse of poisoning ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in a nerve agent attack in the English city of Salisbury on March 4.

While Sanders criticized the Russian expulsions, she said similar moves by the US and its allies were justified.

The expulsion of undeclared Russian intelligence officers by the United States and more than two dozen partner nations and NATO allies earlier this week was an appropriate response to the Russian attack on the soil of the United Kingdom, Sanders said.

US President Donald Trump has emphasized the need to keep trying to work with Russian President Vladimir Putin despite increasingly tense relations between the two countries, as officials from the intelligence community and the State Department engage in harsher criticism of Moscow.
Russia will expel four Canadian diplomats in retaliation for Ottawa's similar move earlier this week over the poisoning of a former double agent in England, the Canadian government said Friday.

Canada on Monday ordered the expulsion of four Russian diplomats and denied credentials for three others in the spy row.

We can confirm that four Canadian diplomats have been declared person non grata by the Russian government, said Adam Austen, spokesman for Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland.

The Canadian ambassador to Moscow was summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry Friday and notified of the expulsion measures.

In a show of solidarity with Britain, a number of Western countries have expelled Russian diplomats since the nerve agent attack on Sergei Skripal, a former Russian officer who sold secrets to Britain and moved there in a 2010 spy swap, which took place on March 4.

Canada issued a deportation notice against a member of Russians embassy in Ottawa and three employees of the consulate in Montreal, giving them until next Thursday to leave.
The latest shale drilling boom is driving unemployment to the lowest levels in years in many of the areas that encompass the Permian Basin, a 17-county region that spans West Texas and eastern New Mexico, according to data compiled by the Permian Basin Regional Planning Commission, a cross-border coalition geared toward diversifying the regions economy.

Reeves and Ward Counties, in the heart of a Permian sub-basin called the Delaware, are seeing unprecedented growth in oil and gas development; Winkler County, also in the Delaware, has become an active sand mining hub, driven by demand from hydraulic fracturing, which pumps vast amounts of water and sand under high pressure to crack shale rock and release oil and gas.

In February, Permian Basin Regional Planning Commission examined the workforce in the Permian region and found that its unemployment rate is at 2.9 percent, much lower than the Texas rate of 4 percent and national average of 4.1 percent. Unemployment in the region has plunged nearly 2 percentage points over the past year, pushing joblessness to levels not seen the end of 2014, a year when oil soared above $100 barrel. Nearly every county in the region has unemployment rates below the state average.

But there is a downside to the Permians boom, namely acute labor shortages. Nearly all of the workers who want jobs in the Permians 17 counties are employed, according to the Planning Commission. This has been good for workers, who are getting more hours and earning more money. As oil production rises, companies need even more workers, but fewer people are looking for oil industry jobs, according to a survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

As one unnamed company summed it up in the survey, The labor shortage in West Texas is only getting worse.

Some of this labor shortage is coming from a drain of workers and equipment after 2016, when oil prices tanked, companies scaled back operations and many workers in the industry left the boom-and-bust industry for good. As oil prices picked up in December, services companies still reported a shortage of workers for 50-person fracking crews, forcing companies to leave hundreds of wells untapped for months

Unemployment rates in Midland and Odessa, two Texas cities at the heart of the Permian Basin, gauge the how quickly the labor market has tightened. In August, Midland and Odessa had 3.2 percent and 4.3 percent unemployment rates, respectively. Six months later, unemployment in Midland slid to 2.5 percent and Odessas to 3.2 percent

As labor remains in short supply, companies are going further afield to find workers and paying them more, increasing production costs and shrinking profit margins. With oil trading between $60 and $65 a barrel, lower unemployment rates in Midland, Odessa and neighboring communities could mean that output in the Permian will slow.
William Luther /Staff file photo

A federal judge this week dismissed a lawsuit that San Antonios USAA had filed against a Maryland Veterans Affairs lender for copyright and trademark infringement and unfair competition.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Henry Bemporad in San Antonio recommended earlier this month that USAAs case against New Day Financial, which does business as NewDay USA, be dismissed. Bemporad found that USAA failed to show the court had jurisdiction over the case.
AUSTIN  The interim police chief on Thursday for the first time branded 23-year-old Mark Anthony Conditt a domestic terrorist for the series of bombings that killed two people and terrified Texas capital city for weeks.

I actually agree now that he was a domestic terrorist for what he did to us, interim Police Chief Brian Manley said at a community forum on the bombings, after earlier drawing criticism for only labeling the Austin bomber a troubled young man.
A 23-year-old man was sentenced Thursday to life in prison after pleading guilty to fatally shooting a good Samaritan who tried to stop him from beating a woman in the parking lot of a Walmart in 2016.

Teles Mandan Juarez was 21 when he was arrested Nov. 25, 2016, and charged with murder and aggravated assault in the death of Isidro Zarate, 39.

Zarate had attempted to stop Juarez from beating his female companion, whom he had dragged by the hair through the parking lot of a Walmart in the 1600 block of Vance Jackson Road on the Northwest Side.

RELATED: Good Samaritan killed in Walmart shooting was 39-year-old father of 4 who was out shopping

Police said at least two dozen people witnessed the shooting, which occurred on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving.

Zarate and his wife, Lisa Benavides, had decided to do some shopping and arrived at the store about 4 p.m.

I couldnt have taken more than 30 minutes inside the store, Benavides said at the time. Everything changed while she was inside.

A man was grabbing a woman by her hair, so Isidro drove up, rolled down his window and yelled, Take your hands off of her! said Benavides. Isidro was trying to help, but the man just walked up and shot my husband in the neck.

When Benavides walked out, she said she saw a body bag over her husband.

Benavides and Zarate raised four children during the couples 22 years of marriage.

An unidentified woman who tried to call 911 was shot but survived. The woman assaulted by Juarez was able to escape uninjured, police said at the time. Both were taken to University Hospital and treated.

In a court appearance Feb. 12 before state District Judge Sid Harle, Juarez agreed to plead guilty to the full range of punishment on the murder charge, which is five to 99 years or life in prison, and the aggravated assault in the shooting of the woman, which is punishable by two to 20 years.

Thursday morning, Harle sentenced Juarez to the maximum on each charge, which will be served at the same time.

Juarez will have to serve at least 30 years of his sentence before he is eligible for parole.
A governor in Mexico is warning his citizens not to travel to the U.S. through the state of Tamaulipas following a deadly ambush on Mexican marines in Nuevo Laredo that left eight people dead.

The first recommendation that I make to citizens as governor of Nuevo Leon is to not travel to the United States through Reynosa, said Manuel Gonzalez Flores, the interim governor of Nuevo Leon, according to the Mexican newspaper El Universal.

Tamaulipas is also on a U.S. State Department list of Mexican states where travel is not advised due to crime.

Flores specifically advised his citizens against traveling on the Reynosa-McAllen bridge into the United States and to instead use roads from Nuevo Laredo, which have received much better security reports.

Vacationers from Nuevo Leon were also asked to be cautious if they choose to travel to popular beach spots in Tamaulipas, such as Matamoros and Tampico.

Tamaulipas is a state that has many problems right now, he said. What we want is to collaborate with them.  Its recommended to citizens who travel to those destinations to be very cautious.

The warning came a day after gunmen believed to be affiliated with the Northeastern Cartel ambushed marines with the Mexican Navy in Nuevo Laredo. One marine was killed and twelve others were wounded, according to the Associated Press. Authorities said the gunmen were dressed in fake marine uniforms and had fake markings on their vehicles.

The marines were ambushed three separate times. Following the first ambush, another patrol was sent to the fight for support, but they, too, came under fire. A third patrol was ambushed as it left the marine base to respond to the first two attacks.

A helicopter gunship then responded to the battle, according to the Associated Press. Five gunmen were killed in the battle.

A mother and her two children were caught in the crossfire and were killed.

Local media reported marines on the gunship shot the bystanders  Nellely Aide Ruiz Martinez, 28, and daughters Chelsea Abril Rojas Ruiz, 6, and Kenia Azul Rojas Ruiz, 4  but officials from the Mexican navy deny the helicopter unit was responsible.
Federal authorities have charged two Mexican nationals on accusations they helped smuggle 12 immigrants who were detained this week on the South Side.

The group was apparently part of a larger load  one witness reportedly said as many as 90 immigrants may have been transported by tractor-trailer from Laredo to areas south of San Antonio, where they were picked up by various vehicles, according to law enforcement sources.

Neither the rigs driver nor any other alleged members of the smuggling chain has been taken into custody.

Agents with Homeland Security Investigations watched some of the operation unfold and moved in Tuesday evening at a motel on Nogalitos Road, where they detained the 12 immigrants and two suspects, according to a federal affidavit.

The suspects are identified as Alfonso Basaldu Calvo, who has been deported before and served time for immigrant smuggling, and his cousin, Luis Rios Basaldu, who has been living in the Houston area. Both are from Oaxaca in southern Mexico, the affidavit said. Both are charged with transporting undocumented immigrants.

They are at a San Antonio hospital, quarantined on suspicion of having a communicable disease, while the 12 others were transported to a federal immigration jail in LaSalle for deportation processing, according to the affidavit, and courthouse and law enforcement sources. The affidavit said one of the immigrants is from Guatemala, two are from Honduras, two are from El Salvador and the rest are from Mexico.

The affidavit said Basaldu and Rios were watched as they met with other people at the Loves Truck Stop along Interstate 35, south of Loop 410. Then, Basaldu and Rios drove to an area near some brush farther south of the truck stop, where a dozen immigrants ran out of the bushes and into a waiting Honda Pilot driven by Rios and into a Honda Accord driven by Basaldu, the affidavit said.

The activity was monitored by agents on the ground and from aircraft, the affidavit said, and the vehicles were seen going into the Nogalitos Motel in the 3800 block of Nogalitos Road.

Basaldu told agents that his cousin asked him to help transport immigrants, and the pair arrived in the San Antonio area Monday from Houston. Basaldu also told agents he was deported to Mexico in 2013 after serving seven months of a immigrant-smuggling sentence out of Dallas.

Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) special agents continue to interview the 12 apprehended from the scene, the agency said in a statement. HSI confirms all 12 are in violation of federal immigration law for entering the country illegally. This was a HSI initiated enforcement action. No further details are being released as the investigation remains ongoing.
AUSTIN  The General Land Office is paying Alamo CEO Douglass W. McDonald $2,000 a day to oversee the state-owned shrine under a contract that runs through September.

The yearlong agreement limits payment to 14 days a month, meaning McDonalds annual compensation could reach $336,000, more than double what Land Commissioner George P. Bush earned last year.

GLO spokesman Bryan Preston said McDonald puts in far more hours than the contract requires and bills fewer days than he works.

The rate was negotiated based on fair market value for the services he provides to a museum of the importance and prominence of the Alamo, Preston said in a written statement. As a contractor, Mr. McDonald is not paid for vacation (or) benefits of that nature.

Alamo management has become a hot-button issue for Bush, who has faced pressure from state lawmakers and former Republican primary challenges to make operations at the shrine more transparent. Though the historic battlefield falls under the General Land Office, the Alamo and its multiyear master plan are managed by a series of nonprofit entities on which Bush is a board member.

McDonald, a Cincinnati museum consultant, took over as CEO last August after serving as an adviser on the Alamo master plan for several months. Since summer 2017, McDonalds firm NGOgro, LLC has been paid more than $220,000, according to the state comptroller website.

Gene Powell, a board member of the Alamo Endowment, said the state is getting a real bargain.

He is costing us a lot less than if we had gone out and hired a new CEO, based on the prices we have looked at, said Powell, who also chairs the master plan management committee. Were getting outstanding expertise, outstanding work ethic  and were getting it from a guy who doesnt have to be here.

As CEO, McDonald oversees a roughly 100-member staff for the ambitious, multiyear effort to redevelop the historic battlefield and launch a museum to hold hundreds of Alamo artifacts, including those donated by musician Phil Collins.

As president and CEO of the Cincinnati Museum Center for nearly 16 years, McDonald oversaw what officials there called a financial turnaround of the center. He also oversaw the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. Before stepping down from the center in 2014, McDonald was paid more than $378,000 annually, the nonprofits 2013 tax filing shows.

The value is having talented, experienced, museum professional management, McDonald said. If we do the project right, it wont require taxpayer support every year.  The value of that is really, really large and its a lot more than my contract.

A contractor was chosen, versus a permanent CEO, because the Alamo master plan is in its infancy, Powell said. Its not expected to be fully implemented until 2024.

Trying to hire an absolute top-level museum CEO with this plan this unsettled would have been extremely difficult, he said.

The contract was not competitively bid. McDonald was picked because his firm already was enmeshed in the project as a contractor advising on the master plan, Preston said.

We had gotten to know Mr. McDonald, so we turned to him to be the temporary consultant CEO to get us through this transitional period, Preston said. He is also project manager on the master plan interpretive design, and is helping develop a scope for the future management team including a new CEO.

McDonalds initial contract was signed in April 2017 and renewed for a year in September 2017, with the added stipulation that he would serve as the Chief Executive Officer of the Alamo, a copy posted on the agencys website states.

Since the contract started in April, NGOgro has been paid $264,049, Preston said. The agency did not provide a breakdown showing the hours McDonald worked each month, but Preston said McDonald has billed for 128 of the 150 days he has worked so far. Though the contract limits pay to 14 days a month, services can be reduced or expanded by mutual agreement.

Beyond fees, McDonald, whose home is in Ohio, has been reimbursed about $8,050 in travel costs. Though permitted by the contract, he hasnt billed for his accommodations, Preston said.

McDonald said he often works beyond the scope, but doesnt charge.

There is a limit on the number of days for which I am paid, but no limit on my time and personal commitment to the Alamo, McDonald said.

Alamo employment at times has been a point of contention. Some lawmakers have pushed for Alamo staff to be employed directly by the state, instead of through the Alamo Trust, a subsidiary of the nonprofit created to oversee daily shrine operations. McDonalds contract is with the General Land Office and funded by the Alamo Complex Account, which is made up primarily of money generated at the shrine.

It is common for organizations going through a transitional period to contract out for specialized management skills and services on an interim basis, Preston said.

Bush recently pledged to open Alamo Trust meetings to the public and said at the next one, he will step down from the nonprofits board to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest. A meeting has not yet been scheduled.
Republican U.S. Rep. Will Hurd said Thursday hes confident his bill to reform the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program would win out if a little-used rule successfully puts multiple immigration reform proposals, including his own, on the House floor without leadership approval.

But an ultimate solution remains months away, Hurd said. He believes the recent injunction by a California court temporarily preventing President Donald Trump from ending DACA has prompted leadership from both parties to deprioritize the issue.

I would say if were able to get a legislative fix to this, the earliest that it could possibly be would be summer. Thats a big if, Hurd said.

Speaking at La Cantera Resort for a San Antonio Chamber of Commerce luncheon, Hurd repeated his call to strengthen security along the U.S.-Mexico border by ramping up the use of technology there. He invoked his bill, introduced last year with Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, and other House Republicans, that calls for a smart wall using sensors, radar, fiber optics and drones.

Hurds advocacy for technological upgrades in place of a sea-to-sea border wall put him at odds with then-candidate Trump as early as 2015. More recently, the president tweeted his disapproval of a Senate bill that mirrors Hurds own bipartisan DACA proposal with California Democratic Rep. Pete Aguilar.

Trump demanded that any DACA deal includes STRONG border security and the desperately needed WALL. The Hurd-Aguilar proposal authorizes some physical barriers but doesnt fund Trumps wall.

On Thursday, Hurd raised what he called a parliamentary concept, referred to as queen of the hill, that would allow for voting on a range of DACA bills by evading ordinary procedures. The bill that receives the most votes wins, assuming it passes the necessary 218-vote threshold for a majority.

Hurd said many House members are pushing for that scenario. Later, he added in an interview that he and Aguilar are continuing to build support among House members for their bill, titled the USA Act.

Were always looking to colleagues to say, hey, what additional stuff can we add to the USA Act in order to get people to be there? So those of us that care about this issue, were still working, Hurd said.

Hurd spoke for about 30 minutes Thursday with moderator Shaun Kennedy, the chambers board chairman. Their conversation began with Hurd listing several aspects of the recent omnibus bill that he thought would benefit the 23rd District, including additional funding for rural broadband, Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyns provision to toughen the national background check system and federal dollars to combat the opioid crisis.

Hurd also touched on the funding for election security grants included in the omnibus, citing the importance of preventing Russia from again meddling in U.S. elections. That topic has caught much of Hurds attention on the House Intelligence Committee, and on Thursday he urged for a cohesive strategy to harden the infrastructure of our vote-counting machines and combat disinformation ahead of the 2018 midterm elections.

He explained that Russia has resorted to asymmetrical warfare because President Vladimir Putin knows he cannot win a direct military conflict with the United States.

Afterward, Hurd said that although the Homeland Security Department has already devoted funds to combating foreign electoral influence, the private sector  including social media companies  need to pitch in, too.

In November, Hurd is seeking re-election for a third term, and most political observers consider his 23rd Congressional District the most competitive in Texas. Seven months ahead of Election Day, he said his focus remains elsewhere.

Im going to keep doing my thing, crisscrossing the district, listen to people, solving real problems, making sure people have more money in their pockets, Hurd said. Im going to keep focusing on those things, and in the end, when its time for the citizens of the 23rd (District) to grade my paper, Im going to be OK.

Asked whether he would prefer to face Gina Ortiz Jones or Rick Trevino, the two Democrats in a runoff for the nomination to oppose him, Hurd laughed and said, Im ready for whoever.
It was a longshot, but East Side resident Liz Franklin thought she might as well try to get a meeting with City Manager Sheryl Sculley to urge her to put a stop to a controversial apartment complex next to the Hays Street Bridge.

To her surprise, Sculley accepted when Franklin approached her after a City Council meeting. Sculley showed up a few minutes late to their meeting in a City Hall conference room in February, but listened with interest and made thoughtful comments, Franklin said.

The city manager started the meeting with a question: What are you really asking for? Franklin and three other advocates for the bridge told her the city should buy back the proposed site of the complex and turn it into a park.

Two weeks later, Sculley sent Franklin a letter explaining why she wouldnt follow their suggestion. She pointed out that City Council intended for the property to be developed when it voted to sell it in 2012. The sale was integral to the creation of the Alamo Beer brewery, which has helped revitalize the near East Side, she said.

She was big enough to meet with us, and she was big enough to include us in a conversation on a solution, Franklin said.

Sculleys letter provides insight into her startling and unusual decision last week to defy the citys Historic and Design Review Commission and approve the proposed apartment complex  with a long list of stipulations, including that the developer reach an agreement on its design with the Dignowity Hill Neighborhood Association.

The five-story complex, to be built by a partnership between developer Mitch Meyer and Alamo Beer owner Eugene Simor, has become a lightning rod for local concerns over gentrification, the protection of historic monuments and the citys treatment of developers.

Sculley, who declined to be interviewed, hasnt said much to explain her decision, apart from writing in a letter to Meyer that the city supports a viable project on the property that respects the Hays Street Bridge and addresses the HDRCs concerns.

But the decision fits into her longtime policy of encouraging the redevelopment of San Antonios downtown. During her 12 years as city manager, the city has created an incentive program for downtown housing, led the redevelopment of Hemisfair, created a nonprofit to boost downtown businesses, entered into a public-private partnership to build the new Frost Tower and pushed through an $850 million bond package that set aside $42 million to improve the Broadway corridor.

The last time Sculley reversed an HDRC decision  allowing a hotel tower to be built atop the Joskes building in 2013  followed a similar pattern. It was an effort to lay down a compromise that would respect community concerns and still accomplish development, as she told the San Antonio Express-News at the time.

The citys policies to encourage development have created a perception among many residents that the city favors developers over neighborhoods  a charge officials strongly deny.

Sculleys decision to overrule the HDRC is the kind of action that confirms what is so widely understood in San Antonio, and that is that the city government works for developers and will work against the interests of the people, said Amy Kastely, an attorney for the Hays Street Bridge Restoration Group, which is suing the city for selling the site of the proposed complex.

Assistant City Manager Rod Sanchez said in an email that city staff works diligently with the community to create reasonable policies for development and to apply those tools fairly and consistently.

Before Sculleys decision, the HDRC rejected two designs for the five-story complex, known as the Bridge apartments, after hearing hours of impassioned testimony from East Side residents who say it would destroy views of the bridge. Many of them feel the complex represents a betrayal of the citys promise to turn the land into a park.

The HDRC was split 4-4 when it voted earlier this month on the latest design for the complex, before Chairman Michael Guarino reversed his support in a second vote to break the logjam. The city managers decision is a way to provide a path forward for the development, said Shanon Shea Miller, director of the citys Office of Historic Preservation.

It means that there has to be additional public input. The conversation isnt done, she said.

For his part, Meyer isnt sure he can reach an agreement with the neighborhood or satisfy Sculleys stipulations, which range from reducing light pollution to breaking up the complexs facade into smaller parts that match the size of nearby buildings. Previous attempts to meet with the neighborhood have erupted into chaos, he said.

His partnership already has spent more than $500,000 on the development, including $200,000 on designs that now are useless, Meyer said. His most recent proposal featured a computer-generated promotional video so detailed it showed animated pigeons roosting on the Hays Street Bridge.

We are just in a design whirlpool. We cant get out. We do everything were supposed to do, and they ask us to design it again, he said. This is about property rights. I have the right to develop that property.

Rare decision

The city manager has overturned an HDRC recommendation only three times during her 12 years on the job, according to the citys Office of Historic Preservation. The HDRC is an advisory body, and city staff can decide whether to follow its recommendations.

The other two instances were similarly controversial.

In 2013, Sculley reversed a 6-2 vote by the HDRC against a proposed 26-story hotel tower atop the Joskes building that many feared would cast shadows over Alamo Plaza. She approved it with several conditions, including a reduction of the size of the project. She cited the importance of redeveloping downtown while respecting Alamo Plaza in approving the project, which eventually was abandoned. The Joskes later was renovated to become part of the Shops at Rivercenter mall.

Sculley also overruled the HDRCs denial of an addition to a shade canopy in Main Plaza in 2010 in the midst of public debate over the citys plan to rehabilitate the plaza.

Normally, I would say it was not a good idea, Susan Beavin, president of the San Antonio Conservation Society, said about Sculleys interventions. But it was justified for the Hays Street Bridge project because the citys approval process didnt seem capable of reaching a solution, she said.

This is probably, in my opinion, the one exception, she said. Nothing was going forward. You have developers doing their presentations, and then the neighborhood would show up and it would go to HDRC and nothing would happen.

Guarino, the current HDRC chairman, said he accepted Sculleys decision.

Its her privilege, obviously, he said. Her stipulations cover the ground of everything that the commissioners were concerned about, so yes, I think theyre reasonable.

Local reaction

Reactions to Sculleys decision among local residents were mixed. Some East Side residents support the apartment complex. Meyer says hes collected 42 signatures urging its approval.

Others, including Franklin, are open to the possibility of developing the site. But theyre not happy with the developers interaction with the neighborhood. She said she saw the city managers decision as empowering  evidence that community pressure can influence the decisions of city officials.

This is a very positive thing, in my mind. Okay, we didnt take the whole enchilada, but were getting there, she said. She didnt make it easy on the developer.  It gives everybody a reset.

Members of the Hays Street Bridge Restoration Group, which worked for 10 years and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations and services to preserve the bridge, have taken a firmer stance against construction on the property. They want the city to turn it into a park, as they say it promised when it accepted the land in 2007 from its previous owner, beer distributor Budco Inc., under a deal that the restoration group arranged.

The city talks a lot about community engagement, said Kastely, the restoration groups attorney. The feeling of our young people, of which there are many in this coalition, is that they allow community engagement as long as the outcome is what developers and the city want. But if its not, then it means nothing.

Meyer and his representative, Xavier Gonzalez of GRG Architecture, view Sculleys decision as correcting the HDRCs overreach. They say the commission was swayed by factors it wasnt supposed to consider, such as the communitys desire for a park on the property.

She was doing her job, because the HDRC didnt, Meyer said of Sculley. Every once in a while, you get these extreme cases where you need some leadership. She provided that.

Sculley made a point of noting in her decision that the HDRCs purview is limited to making sure the proposed development fits the citys design guide for downtown. But Sanchez denied the HDRC exceeded its bounds.

Lawsuit against city

The site of the proposed apartment complex is the subject of an ongoing lawsuit between the city and the Hays Street Bridge Restoration Group.

Kastely thinks the restoration group has a shot at getting the property returned to the city to be made into a park.

If we can get the land returned to the city, I am confident that City Council would exercise its wise judgment to keep that view of the bridge, she said.

But the city and Meyer say theres no chance of getting the land back.

It will never be a park. I have complete control over that, Meyer said.

The restoration group sued the city in 2012 after the city approved a deal to sell the property to a company owned by Simor, who planned to build a brewery on the site. The city sold the land for $295,000 while providing Simors company with a grant of the same amount to be used for landscaping. He later got $794,000 in development incentives to build the brewery.

The restoration group argues that the sale violated a memorandum of understanding the city signed in 2002 in which it agreed to turn the land into a park. A Bexar County district court jury ruled in the groups favor in 2014, but the 4th Court of Appeals decided last spring that the city had immunity against the lawsuit, Kastely said.

As the litigation dragged on, Simor decided to build his brewery on the other side of the Hays Street Bridge. He sold the land in 2016 to its current owner, a company controlled by Meyer. Simor is a partner in the current development, Meyer said.

The city and the restoration group filed briefs in recent weeks laying out their arguments in the case; it could take anywhere from two weeks to eight months for the Texas Supreme Court to decide how to proceed, Kastely said.

If the court sides with the restoration group, Kastely expects the case would return to district court, which could invalidate the citys sale of the land and order it to be returned to the city.

It seems unlikely the dispute over the property next to the bridge will be resolved anytime soon, but many of those involved said theyre optimistic that some sort of compromise can be worked out, eventually.

Kastely believes the community doesnt have a real opportunity to appeal the city managers decision because the city allows the right of appeal only to those who suffer a financial loss as a result of a development. City Attorney Andy Segovia said in a statement that an aggrieved party affected by the decision can file an appeal to the citys Board of Adjustment within 30 days.

At the same time, the restoration group wants to be part of the next round of discussions, she said. She could live with some development on the property, as long as it doesnt affect the view of the bridge and it leaves room for a park with restroom facilities, information about the bridge and parking for school buses so children can visit.

The city managers stipulations will be tough to fulfill, but Meyer is hopeful something can be worked out. Sanchez said in an email that the city is open to discussion about other ways to address the historic commissions concerns.

For her part, Franklin said shes waiting for Meyer to get back in touch with the neighborhood. The most recent design was a big improvement on the original one, she said.

There are many of us who are in the middle of the pack and want a good project, want development, want to be respectful of the bridge, she said.
Courtesy of The Periwinkle Foundation / Courtesy of The Periwinkle Foundation

STRATFORD  To celebrate World Book Day, April 23, the UNESCO Center for Global Friendship Inc. will hold a book drive in April to collect 3,000 books for its free library programs in Haiti, Nicaragua and Jamaica.

We strongly believe that reading can save lives and broaden our horizons. said Angelucci Manigat Jr., executive director of UCGF. In countries with limited access to electricity and internet services, physical books remain in high demand, adds Manigat.
On March 9, Junior Achievement of Western Connecticut held its 8th Annual High School Business Challenge at Sacred Heart University and both Fairfield high schools came out ahead.

Forty students from the Western Connecticut region spent the day at the university rubbing elbows with elected officials, networking with area professionals and business leaders, along with competing for scholarships using Junior Achievements interactive business simulation program. Students felt the pressure of being in the CEOs seat and were tasked to make important business decisions that could make or break their virtual businesses.

Throughout this rigorous competition, students developed skills in problem-solving, critical thinking and teamwork, while learning about important business concepts like business management, research and development, production, and marketing.

Facing some tough competition, students from Fairfield Ludlowe High School finished in first place, with each student winning a $1,000 scholarship. Fairfield Warde High School placed second, winning $500 each, and students from Seymour High School placed first in the consolation bracket.

The Business Challenge event was more than a business competition; it was also an opportunity to be on a college campus and network with high level experienced professionals. This years event featured a Networking and Business Etiquette session led by Sean Heffron, executive director of Student Success at Sacred Heart University.

Many special guests were in attendance, including Matthew Conway, superintendent of Derby schools, state Sen. Tony Hwang, and Carol Merlone, superintendent of Ansonia schools, among others.

Major sponsors included, Title Sponsor, Odyssey Logistics & Technology, Pitney Bowes, Hubbell Incorporated, Microsoft, Peoples United Bank, Santa Energy Corporation, Webster Bank, and Wells Fargo.

Ohio Wesleyan University honored outstanding members of its Greek community at the 2018 Greek Awards, including Fairfields Allyson Wojnoski.

The March 6 event recognized significant achievements, accomplishments, and leadership among OWUs fraternity and sorority members.

At the event, Wojnoski was inducted into the Order of Omega Greek leadership honor society. Wojnoski is a member of Kappa Kappa Gamma.

Donald E. Gibson has been named dean of Manhattan Colleges OMalley School of Business, effective July 1.

Gibson comes to Manhattan College following leadership roles at Fairfield University as vice provost for academic affairs and dean of Fairfields Dolan School of Business, overseeing the schools expanding and innovative programming, national recognition, top tier rankings, and increased enrollment.

A professor of management, Gibson had taught courses in organizational behavior and leadership at Fairfield since 2001.

Each semester, Bard College at Simons Rock recognizes superior scholarship through the deans list.

Lydia Hammond, of Fairfield, has earned a place on the deans list for the fall semester. To be eligible for this honor, a student must carry 14 or more credits and achieve a grade-point average of 3.5.

Bard College at Simons Rock: The Early College is the only college in the country specifically designed for bright, highly-motivated students ready to enter college early, usually after the 10th or 11th grade.

Michelle Ficalora, a junior majoring in psychology at the University of Rochester, has been named to the deans list for academic achievement for the fall semester.

Ficalora, a resident of Fairfield, is the child of Rick Ficalora and Cindy Ficalora, and a graduate of Fairfield Warde High School.

Cindi Bigelow, president & CEO of Bigelow Tea, will receive the 2018 Caroline House Award for her support over the past decade of programs that benefit low-income women and their families by providing literacy training and life skills.

Founded in 1995 by the School Sisters of Notre Dame, Caroline House has a mission of helping immigrant women and children to reach their full potential through education in the English language and life skills. To date, more than 1,600 women and children have been served by the Bridgeport center.

Caroline House is one of 21 local nonprofit organizations that receive funds raised through the annual Bigelow Tea Community Challenge. Since it began 30 years ago, the Bigelow Community Challenge has raised more than $1.5 million for organizations that provide shelter, food, educational services, counseling, crisis management, after-school tutoring and recreational programs.

Bigelow will be honored at the centers Starry Night Gala on April 6 at the Inn at Longshore in Westport from 6:30 to 11 p.m. The evening will include cocktails, live and silent auctions, dinner, music and dancing. Tickets are $195. For more information, visit thecarolinehouse.org or contact Christine Paine at cpaine@thecarolinehouse.org.

Bigelow is the third-generation president and CEO of family-owned Bigelow Tea, the U.S. market leader of specialty teas that produces more than 2 billion tea bags annually. She holds a Bachelor of Science from Boston College, an MBA from Northwestern Universitys Kellogg School of Management, and honorary doctorates from the University of New Haven and Fairfield University.

Socially- and community-minded, she frequently makes appearances, speaking to students and industry leaders and sharing insights on business ethics and career development. She has received numerous awards for her years of community service.

Do you drive on the Merritt Parkway late at night or early in the morning between Fairfield and Westport? Then be prepared for some delays because of a $56.7 million project that wont be finished until August 2019.

The project will focus on a five-mile stretch of the parkway between the Congress Street bridge in Fairfield to the Newtown Turnpike overpass in Westport.

The project will include new pavement in both the northbound lanes and work on 11 structures related to the historic bridges, built nearly 80 years ago.

Theres also upgrades planned for guiderails, drainage and restoration of the historic bridges. With all this work, lane closures are needed.

Northbound lane closures are planned from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. from Saturday to Wednesday and from 9 p.m. to 8 a.m. on Thursday and Friday.
FAIRFIELD  Professional, amateur, and student photographers from Connecticut, New York, and Massachusetts submit photos to the Fairfield Museum IMAGES photography contest each year.

Last year, Shelton native David Pisciotta won the student prize for Best in Show for his photo Zion Sky. This year, he did it again with his photo Sunset in Mammoth Springs.

While Pisciotta, 20, does not study photography at Housatonic Community College, where he attends school, he pursues his photographic ambitions on long road trips and under the tutelage of two area photographers, including Fairfield-based wedding photographer Nick Benson.

A 2015 graduate of Notre Dame High school in West Haven, Pisciotta goes by his mothers last name Cadavid in his photographic work. Pisciotta primarily photographs landscapes, oftentimes from locations deep in the backcountry.

Pisciotta sat down to talk about how his interest in photography developed, when to know youve snapped a good shot, and why youre only as good as your last photo. You can see Pisciottas award-winning photo, including his honorable mention photos, at the Fairfield Museum, along with other 47 IMAGES selections, until April 15 when the exhibit closes.

Q: How did you become interested in photography?

A: I really liked cars as a kid and would take pictures of cars at car shows around Connecticut.

I never really took it seriously until I took a road trip with my family nine years ago. Usually wed take a big road trip every summer. Every year we ended up somewhere different, Idaho or something Were weird.

I had my sisters camera. She had this Canon Rebel from Walmart. I used it and she wasnt happy about it, said not to use it. For some reason it clicked and I couldnt stop doing it.

Q: How do your IMAGES photos this year compare to the ones you submitted last year?

A: Last year I had really good photos and after that I thought theres no way Im going to have photos as good as this ever again in my life.

On my trip last summer I said I need to outdo myself somehow. I wasnt expecting to do it, but in the back of my head, I always told myself that I dont want my last best photo to be my last best photo. For some reason everything clicked and came together.

Q: Do you automatically know youve got a good shot when you take a photo?

A: Sometimes I do but usually I go through a process where I think yeah, this is going to be awesome, like the Milky Way photo. That one I thought was going to be cool from the beginning. But sometimes, months later, Ill start to edit again just to see if theres any hidden gems in there and thats when I found the photo that won this year. I overlooked it twice.

Q: Who are your photography mentors?

A: One person, Ty Morin I met through Instagram. I saw his pictures on Instagram and thought they were cool and saw he was from Connecticut, (outside Hartford). At the time I didnt know many people from Connecticut who took pictures and did video and I really liked his work and thought his projects were cool. I emailed him saying his stuff was cool and that Id like to work with if he ever needed help. He emailed back saying he needed someone to help and would pay me. Ive been working with him ever since.

He introduced me to Nick Benson, a wedding photographer in Fairfield, who I do work for as well.

Q: What are your career dreams?

A: I want to be doing something really crazy, like being out in the woods for an extended period of time like National Geographic photographers. Its just miserable, but Id probably love it because my favorite thing so far has been truly being out of my comfort zone taking pictures. For example, I did a photo project with the Navy Seal cadets. It was a training mission where they sailed from Long Island to Maine. Doing something where theres a lot of danger involved, I think that would be cool.

Im trying to focus on taking pictures in places you really have to work to get to. Like the Milky Way picture, that one I had to hike into the backcountry of the Grand Tetons to get to. No one else could have that picture. It was really exclusive to just me. Its not like you could just pull off the highway.

Theres this one place called the San Juan Mountains in Colorado that is a small mountain range totally unique to the entire area. Its really cool. Thats my next plan, to go there, spend a few days hiking the mountains and taking pictures.

Q: What advice do you have for people interested in photography?

A: I think people are looking too much on Instagram and copying people too much. I would tell them dont do that and just take a camera and experiment. Dont use art as an excuse, too...I think people often use art as an excuse for not the best work. Keep in mind that theres still an objectiveness to it and you still have to check all the boxes before you can get truly creative and break the rules.
Known to be a Marketing Genius, Aamir Khan is already setting trends on Instagram by using the platform as never before. In a masterstroke, the superstar has changed the face of using Instagram with a brilliant idea.

The actor has given a special character to his Instagram account. With a series of nine posts, the actor's page hosts a collage compilation of a picture and eliminates the feature of archiving.

The complete picture is broken down likes pieces of a puzzle on your timeline which will only get solved on the superstar's account. Each post on the timeline carries the impact of a teaser.

Aamir Khan is not only exploring new markets with his films and setting benchmarks, but the creative maverick is also setting precedents on social media. The actor, who is the most recent to debut on Instagram is doing things differently.

Even if you are remotely digital, you would know Aamir's Instagram page is one of the most talked about social media pages of recent time, with the actor grabbing eyeballs with every post. In fact it is one of the most buzzing accounts.

With a picture series of nine posts, Aamir Khan gives an insight to one unseen visual from his life for his fans.

In less than two weeks since joining Instagram, the actor is using the photo sharing medium rather unconventionally, creating immense buzz and excitement with each post.

Another interesting detail is that Aamir's Instagram page does not archive, each time the actor posts, his previous posts are deleted to host the new image.

With this, Aamir continues to draw audience to himself, be it on the big screen or his social media page. The creative genius sure knows how to deliver unique treats.

Well, whoever cracked this unique idea needs to take a bow! In all possibility it must be genius Aamir himself.

On the work front, the actor will be next seen in Vijay Krishna Acharya's 'Thugs Of Hindostan' co-starring Amitabh Bachchan, Katrina Kaif and Fatima Sana Shaikh.
Gurmeet Choudhary's CRAZY fan Threatening him; Here's why | FilmiBeat

Television actor, Gurmeet Choudhary has been receiving threats from a fan. Either the person (fan) in question wants to commit suicide or kill the actor.

Gurmeet exposed the fan with his picture and messages sent to him. The actor wrote, "Am receiving concerned calls nd msgs from fans all over that some person wants to commit suicide to prove his fandom!! But I request I love you all and care but this kind of behaviour is loathed extremely as well as creates trauma. Apparently this guy in the pic wants to kill me." - (sic)



Actress Munmun Dutta commented on Gurmeet's post, "Wat the heck is going on ? Looks like a classic case of attention seekers. Don't worry about it at all Guru and Debi. Tag Mumbai police incase he acts too smart. Someone 's deranged, lunatic behaviour is NOT ur responsibility. And so called fans shud know where to draw the line." - (sic)

Am receiving concerned calls nd msgs from fans all over that some person wants to commit suicide to prove his fandom!! But I request I love you all and care but this kind of behaviour is loathed extremely as well as creates trauma. Apparently this guy in the pic wants to kill me pic.twitter.com/lYfl3rtZkw  GURMEET CHOUDHARY (@gurruchoudhary) March 29, 2018

His fans too, were concerned about the actor and asked him to stay safe and inform the police.

Recently, the actor decided to sponsor his spot boy (of seven years) wedding, as he got to know that there was shortage of funds. The actor couldn't attend spot boy's wedding in Nashik due to a prior commitment in Indonesia, but he said that he will always be there for him.

The actor was quoted by DNA as saying, "He is family to me. We have been working together for a long time. I'm happy to make this addition to my extended work family. I wish him all the love and I will always be there for him."

Gurmeet got popular with shows like Ramayan, Geet-Hui Sabse Parayi and Punar Vivah. The actor then debuted in Bollywood with the film, Khamoshiyan. He will be seen in the upcoming film, Paltan.

Comedian Siddharth Sagar's MISSING Case: His Parents' Contradictory Statements Leave Us Confused!
A large part of the workforce in Dubai and other Persian Gulf countries comes from Punjab, where they work on hazardous sites and live in poor conditions.

Editor's note: On 20 March, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj told Parliament that 39 Indian workers, most of them from Punjab, were killed by the Islamic State in Iraq last year. Given the state's massive unemployment problem, thousands of marginalised and poor youths continue to ignore the risks and seek prospects in the Middle East. This is the third of a four-part series analysing the plight of Indian workers in the region.

Ludhiana: Satnam Singh, 36, moved to Dubai two years ago to earn enough to educate his two children, a son (11) and daughter (eight). A skilled carpenter, Satnam had been unable to support his family in his home district of Pathankot in Punjab.

He now works on a multistorey residential building in the Al Barsha area of Dubai and lives along with hundreds of other workers in what resembles a squatter's camp nearby. "Three to five people live in a single room. They are workers from Bangladesh, Pakistan, India and other South Asian countries who work for nearly 12-14 hours a day on construction sites," says Satnam over the phone.

He says that the pay is irregular, but a more serious problem is the poor living conditions and lack of sanitation. "When you visit the Gulf nations, high-rise buildings and ultra-modern technology welcome you. But the reality is that workers sometimes sacrifice their lives to construct all this," he adds.

Like Satnam, a large part of the workforce in Dubai and other Persian Gulf countries comes from Punjab. They are poorly educated but are skilled, so most get work on often dangerous construction sites.

According to a report by Human Rights Watch, an international NGO, the Dubai government's claim that 34 construction workers had died on the job in 2004 was a gross underestimate saying, "the number of work-site deaths of Indian workers alone was certainly higher".

As the report notes, "In most other places, a worker faced with hazardous working conditions and unpaid wages in a free market economy that has an extreme shortage of labour would move to a different job. But this is not an option for the migrant construction workers of the UAE who, like all other migrant workers in the country, are contracted to work only for a specific employer. A worker seeking to move to a different employer is eligible to do so only after working for two years for the present employer and obtaining his or her consent for the move."

Arshdeep Singh, 29, who works as a mason in Al Faisaliya city of Saudi Arabia says over the phone that they have to work on high-rise buildings in temperatures as high as even 48 Celsius. "In Punjab, we do not even move out of our homes when the temperature is 42. But here, I have to work even in such high temperatures. It has affected my health, I have developed skin and other problems and am planning to return to India this year," he says.

Gulf-job aspirants in Punjab pay as much as Rs 1.5 lakh to agents for the opportunity and they raise money mostly through loans.

So, even when the job turns out quite different from what was promised, they have no choice but to stick with it till the loan is repaid. In fact, their passports are often confiscated by the contractors so that they do not return before their job contract expires.

The plight of women workers is not much better. Kuldeep Kaur, 46, from Ludhiana sent a video message to her daughter last December complaining that she was trapped in Saudi Arabia and forced to work as a servant. Kaur said her living conditions were miserable and was being forced to work for inhumanly long hours.

In another video, in October last year, a young girl pleaded with Bhagwant Mann, the MP from Sangrur, to rescue her from Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. The girl is seen crying in the video and saying she has been tortured for the past year.

On 21 March, another MP, Dr Kirti P Solanki, said Indian workers in Qatar were being denied wages and asked the minister of external affairs, Sushma Swaraj, what steps were being taken to ensure the safety and protection of rights of Indians working in the gulf.

She said that 162 workers had not received their salaries and were denied an exit permit. "The (Indian embassy) arranged the air tickets from the Indian Community Welfare Fund and repatriated 160 Indian emigrant workers while the remaining two opted to continue working in the company," she said.

As the Human Rights Watch report states, "While UAE law governing issues such as workplace health and safety, workers' compensation, child labour, hours of work and leave time are admirable when taken at face value, there is little evidence of its enforcement in favour of workers' rights. What is also apparent in the cases examined by Human Rights Watch, as well as those documented in news reports, is that recourse to the government or the judiciary is of limited use to workers."

Indian embassies in the Gulf nations provide relief to the workers in distress and as the minister for external affairs explained, "Indian Workers Resource Centres have been set up at Dubai, Sharjah, Riyadh, Jeddah and Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) to provide guidance and counselling on all matters pertaining to overseas Indian workers."

Dharminder Singh, 33, from Dakha village near Ludhiana had returned from Bahrain in 2016 after working there for two years. He says he's planning to go back. "I had returned after I faced many difficulties including harassment by the contractor where I worked as a construction worker. But here in Punjab, there are no opportunities for work. So, I have again applied for a visa through a travel agent for Bahrain," he says.

He has plenty of company. Between 2014 and 2016, the number of Indian workers emigrating to the Gulf countries totalled 17.86 lakh.

Read Part 1: Lack of opportunities makes state's youth ignore life-threatening risks

Read Part 2: Travel agents who sent Indians to work in Iraq under probe

The author is a Ludhiana-based freelance writer and a member of 101Reporters.com, a pan-India network of grassroots reporters. With inputs by Jagjit Dhanju from Kapurthala
India is a brother, but China is like a long lost cousin found, Maldives ambassador to China Mohamed Faisal has said, asserting that his country would push ahead with Chinese projects despite New Delhi's concerns.

Beijin: India is a brother, but China is like a long lost cousin found, Maldives ambassador to China Mohamed Faisal has said, asserting that his country would push ahead with Chinese projects despite New Delhi's concerns.

The Maldives will further embrace Chinese investment but is aware it risks getting caught between China and India, Faisal told the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post.

"China is like a long-lost cousin that we have found, a long-lost cousin who is willing to help us," he said on Thursday after Maldivian president Abdulla Yameen lifted a state of emergency in the troubled South Asian nation after 45 days.

"India is a brother. We are a family, we may quarrel and we may have arguments but in the end, we will sit down and resolve it," the diplomat said.

He claimed that the Maldives has taken a number of projects to India for finance "but we did not receive the necessary finance."

China, which looks at Maldives as a major participant in its 21st century Maritime Silk Road plan in the Indian Ocean, has made heavy investments in the nation of islands which has 26 tropical atolls and 1,000 small islands.

China has put up a staunch defence of Maldives president Abdulla Yameen, stonewalling international pressure and enabling him to stay in power during the current crisis.

The picturesque Indian Ocean archipelago was plunged into chaos early in February when the Supreme Court called for the release of nine imprisoned Opposition politicians, ruling that their trials were politically motivated and flawed.

The government refused to implement the ruling.

Yameen imposed a state of emergency and arrested apex court judges and former president Maumoon Abdul Gayoom.

Opposition party leaders in Maldives alleged that China is tacitly backing Yameen, which emboldened him to resort to unconstitutional actions like arresting Supreme Court judges.

Former president Mohamed Nasheed who was in exile abroad had called for Indian intervention in Maldives to save the democracy in the island nation. He had alleged that China is indulging in land grabbing, threatening not just the Maldives, but the peace and the stability of the entire region.

Faisal said Maldives will not allow any foreign military establishments.

"Our government has made it very clear that we are not going to allow any kind of military establishments or military undertakings in the Maldives. Not for China, not for any other countries," he said.

More than 70 percent of the Maldives' foreign debt is owed to China, but Faisal said it was not having trouble making payments, adding that the country had taken some concessional loans to pay as its tourism market expanded.

"Right now, it's only seven islands that Chinese have invested in, in the tourism sector. For a country with such capacity as China I think it is a very low number  it should be more than that."

China had expressed interest in building a port in the Maldives, Faisal said, but there was no confirmed plan at present.
Malala Yousafzai, once a teenage girl among many struggling to get an education in Pakistan is now a celebrated international rights campaigner

Islamabad, Pakistan: Malala Yousafzai, once a teenage girl among many struggling to get an education in Pakistan is now a celebrated international rights campaigner, Nobel laureate, and student at Oxford University.

The 20-year-old girls' education icon, who arrived in Pakistan on an unannounced visit Thursday for the first time since the desperate dash to a British hospital to save her life in 2012, is no ordinary young woman.

Few can lay claim to a Nobel Prize, or say they spent their 17th birthday lobbying Nigeria's president to do more to free hundreds of girls kidnapped by Islamist militants, or confronted US President Barack Obama in the White House over the drone war in Pakistan.

She had already been in the public eye for years when a Taliban gunman boarded her school bus on 9 October, 2012, asked "Who is Malala?", and shot her in the head.

Her father Ziauddin, a school principal, helped propel the precociously talented girl from the Swat valley in northwest Pakistan into the limelight.

At his encouragement, Malala started writing a blog for the BBC's Urdu service under a pseudonym in 2009, aged just 11, about life under the Taliban in Swat, which the Islamist militants had taken over in 2007.

Opponents were murdered, people were publicly flogged for supposed breaches of sharia law, women were banned from going to market, and girls were stopped from going to school.

Her blog, written anonymously with the clarity and frankness of a child, opened a window on the miseries being perpetrated in Pakistan.

But it was only after the shooting in 2012, and Malala's subsequent near-miraculous recovery in Britain, that she became a truly global figure  a formidable and instantly recognisable force for human rights.

She received a standing ovation for a 2013 address to the United Nations General Assembly in which she vowed never to be silenced.

That year she also won the European Union's prestigious Sakharov human rights prize, and challenged Obama in the White House over drones.

In 2014, at the age of 17, she became the youngest ever recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, sharing the award with Kailash Satyarthi, an Indian children's rights activist.

She has also published an autobiography and been invited to tea with Queen Elizabeth II, achieving a level of fame more akin to a movie star than an education campaigner.

Her autobiography "I am Malala" revealed a more girlish side  she was a fan of Canadian pop sensation Justin Bieber and the "Twilight" series of vampire romance novels. A documentary on her life released in 2015 also showed her soft spot for Brad Pitt.

But her activism has continued. On her 17th birthday in 2014 she was in Abuja, pushing President Goodluck Jonathan to meet with the parents of hundreds of girls who had been kidnapped by the Islamist group Boko Haram.

In 2014 she announced she would donate $50,000 (39,000 euros) to help rebuild United Nations schools in Gaza, then addressed a thousand schoolchildren in her home province via videolink, urging them to fight on for education.

She has also fought for Syrian refugees, declaring at the UN in 2015 that the world had "lost humanity" over their plight. On her 18th birthday she opened a school for Syrian girls in Lebanon.

She has criticised US President Donald Trump for his stance on refugees and Muslims, and fellow Nobel laureate Suu Kyi for her lack of action over the Muslim Rohingya in Myanmar.

Her Nobel win was lauded by Pakistan's leaders, its liberal press and many girls and women in her native Swat who see her as an inspirational figure.

But she remains controversial among some conservatives at home, who view her as a Western agent on a mission to shame their country.

She remains undeterred, saying in 2013 that she hoped to become prime minister to "save" her nation.

In 2015 eight of the 10 men reportedly convicted and jailed for attempting to murder her were cleared and released. At the time, officials said they did not know where the men had gone.

Malala, meanwhile, has begun classes at Oxford University, where she has chosen to study Philosophy, Politics and Economics, a prestigious course that has produced many world leaders including late Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto.

Earlier this month a school she used her Nobel Prize money to construct and fund opened its doors and began taking students in Swat, near where she was shot.
The meeting between Kim Jong-un, leader of nuclear-armed North Korea, and the South's President Moon Jae-in will be only the third of its kind, and will be followed by landmark talks with US president Donald Trump which could come as early as May.

Seoul: The two Koreas set a date for a rare inter-Korean summit, following a high-level meeting that was held days after the nuclear-armed North's leader Kim Jong-un made his international debut with a surprise trip to China.

"According to the will of both leaders, the South and North agreed to hold the '2018 South-North summit' on 27 April at the South's Peace House in Panmunjom," said a joint press statement, read out in turn by both delegations' leaders.

The meeting between Kim Jong-un, leader of nuclear-armed North Korea, and the South's President Moon Jae-in will be only the third of its kind, and will be followed by landmark talks with US president Donald Trump which could come as early as May.

The venue will make Kim the first North Korean leader to set foot in the South since the end of the Korean War: Although according to Pyongyang's official accounts, during the conflict his grandfather and predecessor Kim Il-Sung went several times to Seoul, which twice fell to his forces. Another round of working-level talks next Wednesday will discuss issues including protocol and security.

The meeting was held in the Unification Pavilion on Panmunjom's northern side, where the leader of Pyongyang's delegation Ri Son Gwon said: "Over the past 80 days or so, many events that were unprecedented in inter-Korean relations took place."

Next month's meeting comes after previous inter-Korean summits in 2000 and 2007, since when the North has made extensive progress in its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programmes.

It has been subjected to multiple rounds of sanctions by the UN Security Council, US, South and others as a result, and tensions in the region have soared, with Kim and Trump engaging in a fiery war of words last year.

But a rapid rapprochement on the peninsula was kicked off by the Winter Olympics in the South and events have moved quickly since then, with a flurry of official visits between the two Koreas.

An advance team of Southern performers headed north on Thursday ahead of K-pop concerts in Pyongyang. Also, China's top diplomat, State Councillor Yang Jiechi, was due to travel to Seoul to brief Moon on Kim's secretive visit to Beijing this week to meet Chinese president Xi Jinping for the first time.

It was the North Korean leader's first overseas trip since inheriting power following the death of his father, Kim Jong-Il, in 2011. China has long been the North's key diplomatic defender and provider of trade and aid, but relations have been strained by Pyongyang's weapons programmes, with Beijing showing a new willingness to implement UN sanctions against it.

Even so the two leaders hailed their nations' historic ties, with Xi accepting Kim's invitation to visit Pyongyang, according to the North's official Korean Central News Agency.

"There is no question that my first foreign visit would be to the Chinese capital," it quoted Kim as saying, calling it a "noble obligation". Kim pledged that he was "committed to denuclearisation" on the Korean peninsula, according to China's Xinhua news agency: But added this would depend on South Korea and the US taking what he called "progressive and synchronous measures for the realisation of peace".

Analysts say both sides had reason to hold the meeting: Pyongyang to secure Beijing's backing and support, and China to protect its interests in what it considers its backyard.

Robert Kelly, a professor at Pusan National University in South Korea, said: "Xi would not grant this meeting unless the Chinese were genuinely concerned about the summits to come and wanted some kind of role to play."

The South's JoongAng Daily newspaper said in an editorial Thursday that the meeting "makes the situation more complicated because Xi stepped into the negotiation all of a sudden". "China will not simply look on," it added.
Pakistan prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi was frisked at an airport in the US as he was on a private visit to that country, a US official said here on Thursday.

New Delhi: Pakistan prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi was frisked at an airport in the US as he was on a private visit to that country, a US official said here on Thursday.

"My understanding is that if the head of state chooses to travel privately without diplomatic passport, then they are travelling as a private citizen, then he would have to go through the same security screening that you and I will have to go," Alexander McLaren, deputy spokesperson of the US Embassy, said during a media interaction.

"Obviously, an official visit is a different story," he said.

A video that went viral on social media showed a casually-dressed Abbasi being frisked at the John F Kennedy Airport in New York earlier this week.

He was seen putting on his belt after clearing security, picking up his coat and bag and walking away moments later.

According to Pakistani media reports, Abbasi travelled to the US to visit his ailing sister.
Sotheby's International Realty Brand Expands Presence in Massachusetts

MADISON, N.J. - March 29, 2018 // PRNewswire // - Sotheby's International Realty Affiliates LLC today announced that its independently owned and operated affiliate Harborside Sotheby's International Realty in Massachusetts has merged with Sagan Realtors and will now operate as Sagan Harborside Sotheby's International Realty.

The merger expands the firm's presence across Essex County, serving the luxury residential real estate markets in Swampscott and Marblehead. Sagan Harborside Sotheby's International Realty has approximately 80 independent sales associates.

"The formation of Sagan Harborside Sotheby's International Realty brings together two strong real estate firms powered by our global network," said Philip White, president and chief executive officer of Sotheby's International Realty Affiliates LLC. "Phyllis Sagan and her team have a rich heritage in Swampscott and this merger expands the Sotheby's International Realty brand's footprint in the North Shore, securing Sagan Harborside Sotheby's International Realty's position as one of the area's top firms. We are proud to welcome the Sagan team to our global network."

Phyllis Sagan, former broker/owner of Sagan Realtors, will become President of Sagan Harborside Sotheby's International Realty. Shari Sagan McGuirk and Julie Sagan, formerly of Sagan Realtors, will become Partners at the firm along with Michael Cannuscio, Matt Dolan, and Dick McKinley, former broker/owners of Harborside Sotheby's International Realty.

"We are a local independent office with deep roots in our community," said P. Sagan. "The Sotheby's International Realty brand has a reputation of excellence and this merger grants us greater access to the global real estate market, reaching far and wide to find the most qualified buyers. In addition, the size and scope of the Sotheby's International Realty brand enables independent sales agents to have the most current, ground-breaking, and effective tools to help our clients reach their real estate goals."

With this addition, the Sotheby's International Realty network now has 45 branded offices throughout the state of Massachusetts.

The Sotheby's International Realty network currently has more than 22,000 affiliated independent sales associates located in 950 offices in 69 countries and territories worldwide. In 2017, the brand achieved a record global sales volume of $108 billion USD. Sagan Harborside Sotheby's International Realty listings will be marketed on the sothebysrealty.com global website. In addition to the referral opportunities and widened exposure generated from this source, the firm's brokers and clients will benefit from an association with the Sotheby's auction house and worldwide Sotheby's International Realty marketing programs. Each office is independently owned and operated.

About Sotheby's International Realty Affiliates LLC

Founded in 1976 to provide independent brokerages with a powerful marketing and referral program for luxury listings, the Sotheby's International Realty network was designed to connect the finest independent real estate companies to the most prestigious clientele in the world. Sotheby's International Realty Affiliates LLC is a subsidiary of Realogy Holdings Corp. (NYSE: RLGY), a global leader in real estate franchising and provider of real estate brokerage, relocation and settlement services. In February 2004, Realogy entered into a long-term strategic alliance with Sotheby's, the operator of the auction house. The agreement provided for the licensing of the Sotheby's International Realty name and the development of a full franchise system. Affiliations in the system are granted only to brokerages and individuals meeting strict qualifications. Sotheby's International Realty Affiliates LLC supports its affiliates with a host of operational, marketing, recruiting, educational and business development resources. Franchise affiliates also benefit from an association with the venerable Sotheby's auction house, established in 1744. For more information, visit www.sothebysrealty.com.  2018 Sotheby's International Realty Affiliates LLC. All rights reserved. Sotheby's International Realty and the Sotheby's International Realty Logo are service marks licensed to Sotheby's International Realty Affiliates LLC and used with permission. Sotheby's International Realty Affiliates LLC fully supports the principles of the Fair Housing Act and the Equal Opportunity Act. Each office is independently owned and operated.

Contacts:

Lindsey Scharf

Director, PR & Communications

Sotheby's International Realty Affiliates LLC

(973) 407-5596

Lindsey.Scharf@sothebysrealty.com

Natalie Hernandez

Manager, PR & Communications

Sotheby's International Realty Affiliates LLC

(973) 407-6142

Natalie.Hernandez@sothebysrealty.com

SOURCE Sotheby's International Realty Affiliates LLC

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Wayback Burgers Bill Chemero Appointed a Forbes Business Development Council Contributor

Bill Chemero, Executive Vice President of one of the nations fastest growing burger franchises, featured as business development/sales expert in regular contributed articles.

CHESHIRE, CONN. (PRWEB) March 30, 2018 - A wealth of executive experience helped Bill Chemero, Executive Vice President of Wayback Burgers, Americas favorite hometown burger joint, earn a coveted role on the Forbes Business Development Council. Chemero has spent the last decade transforming Wayback Burgers into one of the nations fastest growing burger franchises while also expanding the companys reach and influence in multiple countries around the globe  a prime reason why he was a perfect candidate for the exclusive council.

Im grateful for this opportunity and Im excited to share my thoughts and insights on a platform as respected and renowned as the Forbes Business Development Council, says Chemero. I have gained invaluable experience throughout my career that has directly contributed to Wayback Burgers global expansion. I am proud to be among an influential and exclusive group of forward-thinking business leaders and hope my perspective helps Forbes readers reach new heights.

The Forbes Business Development Council is a highly selective, quality-over-quantity organization for business development and sales executives. The invitation-only organization provides industry thought leaders a forum to submit expert business articles and short tips related to their industries on Forbes.com.

Chemero recently published his first article titled The Power of Partnerships: How To Develop International Master Franchisee Relationships. The sales expert detailed the importance of protecting the brand name while strategically growing overseas. Chemero outlined the importance of vetting the team you choose to help your franchise expand globally and he added your company must invest the time and money to put your international partners in a position to succeed.

While technology has contributed to making the world much smaller, there are still challenges as you decide to expand your franchise overseas, says Chemero. Its of the utmost importance that you are on one accord with the team you have designated to help lead and guide your expansion. Its been my experience that you dont reinvent the wheel and theres no need to take unnecessary risks. Stick with what you know, and perfect it. My first article submission explains why franchising in international territories is worth the risk, if you plan properly.

To view Chemeros The Power of Partnerships: How to Develop International Master Franchisee Relationships article, please visit https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinessdevelopmentcouncil/2018/02/21/the-power-of-partnerships-how-to-develop-international-master-franchisee-relationships/2/#5c470820f418.

To view Chemeros Forbes profile and track his monthly contributions as theyre published, please visit https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinessdevelopmentcouncil/people/billchemero/#526bc2ffef13.

For anyone interested in learning more about Wayback Burgers franchise opportunities, please visit https://waybackburgers.com/franchising/.

About Wayback Burgers

Founded in 1991 in Newark, DE, Wayback Burgers is a Connecticut-based fast-casual franchise with a reputation for cooked to order burgers and thick, hand-dipped milkshakes, served in an environment that hearkens back to a simpler place and timewhen customer service meant something and everyone felt the warmth of the community.

Wayback Burgers currently operates in 28 states with over 152 locations nationally and internationally in Argentina, Brunei, Morocco, Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia. Through its executed master franchise agreements, Wayback Burgers plans to open in 37 provinces/countries in the Middle East, Northern Africa, South Africa, Argentina, Pakistan, Bangladesh; Alberta, Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan, Canada; and the Netherlands, with pending letters of intent sent out to Ireland, Western Germany and the UK.

For more information about Wayback Burgers, please visit https://waybackburgers.com/.

For franchising information about Wayback Burgers, please visit https://franchise.waybackburgers.com/.

Contacts:

Graham Chapman

Wayback Burgers

+1 919-459-8157

Patrick Conlin

Wayback Burgers

203-649-3387

SOURCE Wayback Burgers

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A unique confluence of life sciences and tech

The talk of the conference was all about the need for partnership and collaboration, because medical research  cancer research in particular  is increasingly driven by data. A treasure-trove of such data is being unearthed at the Hutch and elsewhere as an array of new laboratory technologies are probing the genetic roots of diseases and of the immune system.

Trunnell and Dr. Gary Gilliland, president and director of Fred Hutch, each hosted lunchtime panels during the two-day conference discussing how the medical science and tech communities of the region are increasingly working together.

One of the ways we differentiate ourselves in Seattle from the rest of the planet is the unique congruence of life science capabilities and tech, said Gilliland. He moderated a discussion between Chad Robins, chief executive officer of Hutch spin-off Adaptive Biotechnologies, of Seattle, and Dr. Peter Lee, corporate vice president for artificial intelligence and research at Microsoft, in Redmond, Washington.

The two companies are collaborating to apply Microsofts artificial intelligence technologies in its cloud-computing product, Azure, to help Adaptive develop a kind of digitized map of the human immune system.

Using DNA sequencing, Adaptive scientists are matching receptor molecules, found on the surfaces of disease-fighting blood components such as T cells, with antigens, which are bits of telltale proteins that show up on the surfaces of diseased cells. When a T-cell receptor connects to a matching antigen on a cancer cell, the T cell can wipe out the cancer cell.

Those fateful molecular matches are at the heart of a revolution in cancer involving immunotherapy, the harnessing of the human immune system to fight disease. There are billions of such potential matches, so it takes enormous computing capacity to keep track of them and visualize them in something resembling a map. That is where Microsofts cloud capabilities come into play.
The true extent of the crime wave sweeping the countryside was highlighted this week, with figures showing a sharp increase in the cost of rural thefts.

The UKs largest rural insurer, NFU Mutual, says it cost a staggering 44.5m in 2017, the highest level in five years.

Analysis of the claims data also suggests 2017 saw the highest year-on-year rise since 2010  an increase of 13.4%  with the biggest increases in Wales, the Midlands and south-east England.

See also: News backgrounder  the NFUs manifesto on rural crime

There is widespread concern that more criminals are targeting the countryside and they are going for richer pickings, said Tim Price, NFU Mutual rural affairs specialist.

Were seeing brazen criminals stealing cars, 4x4s, tractors, quad bikes and tools. Were especially concerned that criminals are becoming more sophisticated and are overcoming electronic security to steal expensive tractors and cars.

With police facing huge challenges  including budget cuts and extra workload  forces are finding it hard to resource rural policing and this may be one of the reasons for the rise in thefts we are seeing.

Farmers easy targets

NFU Mutual crunched its data early this year, ahead of its full publication this summer, in a bid to highlight the growing risks to farmers and rural dwellers because of the perception among criminals that there are easy targets in the countryside.

NFU deputy president Guy Smith said: These alarming and profoundly depressing figures will come as no great surprise to farmers who often feel in a state of siege from the criminal fraternity.

Fly-tipping, hare-coursing, burglary and theft impact on members daily lives and businesses in far-reaching and costly ways, he added.

Mr Smith said it was imperative government and police forces adopt a joined-up and consistent approach to policing and prosecution. Police forces will need better resources based on a fairer funding formula so they can properly protect our rural populations from this increasing threat.

Hare coursing a frequent problem

Theft of equipment and tractors, along with hare coursing and poaching, are frequent problems encountered by Inspector Dave Smith of Kent Polices rural task force.

Long gone are the days of likeable rogues taking something for the pot  organised criminal gangs are now driving this, he said. They have no regard for the rural community or wildlife and are doing it all simply for self-gain.

It brings devastation and disruption to rural communities  along with the threats and violence that accompany it.

Julia Mulligan, chair of the National Rural Crime Network, said: There can be no doubt that crime is a real and growing problem for those who live and work in rural communities. From police funding and priorities to government policy, all too often they get a raw deal.
My dream is to visit Georgia one day - Traveler from NY prepares Georgian dinner with friends - GeorgianJournal
Georgian soldier's death in occupied Tskhinvali Region discussed as the main theme at Geneva talks - GeorgianJournal
Google Maps gets support for 39 new languages News oi-Sandeep Sarkar Google has introduced 39 new languages including Afrikaans, Albanian, Amharic, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Burmese, Bosnian, Czech, creation, Danish, Estonian, Filipino, Finnish, Georgian, and others.

Google is constantly releasing updates for its apps, services and devices, now it is being reported that the tech giant has added support for 39 new languages to its navigation software Google Maps. It is being further reported that the new update will have a positive impact on up to 1.25 billion people from all over the world. The list of languages which are added to the support of Google Maps majorly includes European, African and Asian languages. However, there is no new Indian language support added to the Google Maps.

As per some sources from the internet the 39 new languages includes Afrikaans, Albanian, Amharic, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Burmese, Bosnian, Czech, creation, Danish, Estonian, Filipino, Finnish, Georgian, Hebrew, Icelandic, Indonesian, Kazakh, Khmer, Kyrgyz, Lao, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Malay, Mongolian, Norwegian, Persian, Romanian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Swahili, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Uzbek, Vietnamese and Zulu. It would have appreciated if Google also added support for some new Indian languages; however, we can only wait till Google adds support for some Indian languages.

Google Map Features - GIZBOT

Also, in one of our recent articles related to Google, we covered that the tech giant has rolled out a new feature for its social networking platform 'Google+'. Google is working on introducing new 'Highlight' feature which will show the notifications on the social network. Google is aiming to make it easier for its user base to keep a track of everything that is happening without bothering the user by sending continuous notifications. It is being further reported that Google will automatically prioritize the notifications to notify a user. Read the complete story here.

We also covered that the tech giant currently uses DeppMind's text-to-speech engine to power up its AI (Google Assistant) and for Google Maps direction. The technology is one of the best when it comes to the performance metrics. Now some report is surfacing over the web that users might soon be able to see the Text-to-cloud engine on third-party products as Google now has made the engine available for the developers. Read the full story here.

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Apple slapped with class-action lawsuit over slowdown of older iPhones News oi-Chandrika Apple's public acknowledgment of intentionally slowing down older iPhones is clearly backfiring at the company.

It seems like the time is not in Apple's favor. In December last year, the company had published a note admitting that it intentionally slows down older iPhone models with degrading batteries to prevent sudden shut downs. Soon after Apple found itself in hot water over its own statement. In just the course of a few days, many lawsuits were filed against the company for breaching the trust of its customers.

Now, Apple is slapped with one of the largest class-action suits ever filed against the company. A total of 63,767 iPhone users in South Korean have filed a case against the tech firm for making their phone go slow on purpose. A local law firm called Hannuri Law asked for people to join the lawsuit whose iPhones were affected by Apple's policy.

Filed with the Seoul Central District Court, the lawsuit accuses the iPhone maker of violating local legislation which requires companies to share all details of software upgrades. This law ensures that customers have the liberty to choose whether or not they want to receive new updates.

As per the lawsuit, Apple has violated these regulations by forcing iPhones to install new iOS updates that eventually slowed down the devices. As reported by The Korea Herald, the lawsuit asks the company to pay KRW 200,000 ($188) to pay each plaintiff, or KRW 12.75 billion ($12 million) in total.

What's more fascinating is that initially around 400,000 iPhone customers planned to join the legal action, but many failed to necessary documents and proof that authenticate their claim.

Apple, on the other hand, has not made any comments on the lawsuit. We don't even expect the company to release any statement. For those who are not aware, it is facing similar legal disputes in other countries as well. What's worse, the Cupertino-giant is also under watch for alleged violation of consumer rights.

8 Ways To Make Your iPhone Battery Last Longer!

Apple's public acknowledgment of intentionally slowing down older iPhones is clearly backfiring at the company. Now, it remains to be seen how the company tackles with all these problems.

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Nokia 8110 4G feature phone may not launch on April 4 News oi-Chandrika It seems like HMD Global wants to focus more in the mid-range and high-end segment of smartphones.

HMD Global, the brand licensee of Nokia brand, unveiled a total of five handsets at MWC 2018. Out of which, four are smartphones and one is the Nokia 8110 4G feature phone. The phone grabbed eyeballs at the tech conference mainly due to its bright Yellow color and the nostalgic feeling it gives.

Unfortunately, you may not get your hands on the Nokia 8110 4G. According to a Gadgets Now report, HMD may not launch the feature phone in the Indian market on April 4. As some of you may know, the Finnish company has recently sent out media invites for an event slated for April 4 in New Delhi. If the report is legit, we could witness the launch of Nokia 6 (2018), Nokia 7 Plus and the Nokia 8 Sirocco.

HMD has already launched its Nokia 1 Android Go smartphone in India. However, the company may want to focus more in the mid-range and high-end segment. This would explain why the Nokia 8110 4G phone won't reach the Indian market just yet.

HMD's media invite doesn't reveal much, leaving us in confusion. At the moment, we are not sure if only one or multiple phones will be launched at event on April 4.

To recall, the Nokia 6 (2018) is powered by a Snapdragon 630 processor and it runs on Android Oreo OS. The smartphone has two variants; one with 3GB RAM and 32GB storage, and another with 4GB RAM and 64GB storage.

The Nokia 6 (2018) flaunts a Zeiss-branded 16MP rear camera with f/2.0 aperture, and a dual-tone flash. At the front, there is an 8MP selfie snapper with 4K video recording capability. The smartphone is fitted with a 5.5-inch IPS LCD display and it has a standard 3,000mAh battery.

The Nokia 7 Plus, on the other hand, comes with a 6-inch full HD + 18:9 display with Corning Gorilla Glass. It makes use of a Snapdragon 660 processor, clubbed with 4GB of RAM and 64GB internal storage. For software, it runs on Android Oreo OS.

The smartphone flaunts a dual camera setup from Zeiss with a 12MP wide-angle lens and a 13MP telephoto lens. There is a selfie camera of 16MP at the front. A 3,800mAh battery keeps the lights on.

How to Create Multiple Account on your Instagram

Finally, the Nokia 8 Sirocco is fitted with an edge-to-edge curved POLED 5.5" display with Corning Gorilla Glass 5. The smartphone is powered by a Snapdragon 835 processor teamed with 6GB RAM and 128GB inbuilt storage. It also features a dual rear camera setup comprising of a 12MP wide-angle lens and 13MP Telephoto lens. For selfies, there is a 5MP camera at the front.

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OnePlus 6 spotted on Indian certification website News oi-Abhinaya Prabhu OnePlus 6 could be launched in India sooner than expected but there is no word from the company.

Back in 2017, OnePlus indicated that the Indian market is very important for the brand by launching the OnePlus 5, the flagship smartphone back then, just two days after its global announcement. Once again, the brand appears to have confirmed the same. Well, the OnePlus 6 could be launched soon in the country as it has been spotted on BIS, the Indian certification website.

The listing of the OnePlus 6 on BIS has been spotted by Killer Features. The early listing indicates that the OnePlus 6 could arrive earlier than expected in the country. Though the report has also revealed a screenshot of the listing, OnePlus has not confirmed any information about the launch of its upcoming flagship smartphone. Given that there are a lot of rumors and speculations regarding this phone, we can expect the early launch of the device.

Recently, we came across a report wherein the company's co-founder Carl Pei confirmed that the OnePlus 6 will arrive with a display notch. He also revealed the dimensions of the notch and confirmed the same with an image. He had come up with an explanation so as to why OnePlus decided to implement the notch in their flagship smartphone and the components to be housed in it.

OnePlus 6 concept renders with notch are attractive

Prior to this, a leaked image by the reputed tipster Evan Blass showed the OnePlus 6's rear with a wooden textured cover. The image showed the arrangement of the dual cameras at the rear panel, the company logo, the fingerprint sensor's position and the bottom edge of the smartphone. From the same, it is expected that the OnePlus 6 will arrive with a 3.5mm audio jack and a USB Type-C port.

OnePlus 5 vs Honor 8 Pro vs Nubia M2 Which has the best dual-camera setup ! - GIZBOT

The previous reports regarding the OnePlus 6 have tipped that the smartphone would arrive with the powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor. The smartphone is believed to feature 6GB and 8GB RAM and 64GB, 128GB and 256GB of default memory capacity based on the variant. The device is expected to be unveiled with Android 8.1 Oreo topped with OxygenOS out of the box. We can expect the upcoming OnePlus flagship smartphone to be unveiled with features such as Dash Charging as usual and Face Unlock as well.

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Samsung Galaxy Note 9 to be released in July or August News oi-Abhinaya Prabhu Samsung Galaxy Note 9 could be hurried so that the device hits the market well in advance to compete with the 2018 iPhones.

The Galaxy Note 8 was launched in August last year and released in September. But its successor, the Galaxy Note 9 is believed to be hurried up for a July or August release this time. The buzz about the upcoming flagship from Samsung is that the device is expected to be released to the consumers before September when Apple will bring its 2018 lineup of iPhones.

As per a report from South Korea's The Investor, Samsung will start with the production of the OLED panels for the Galaxy Note 9 phablet next month. In comparison with the previous years, the production of the display panels is said to be two months ahead of the schedule. Notably, the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 is believed to arrive with a 6.38-inch OLED display panel, which is relatively larger than the 6.32-inch display on the Galaxy Note 8, which was unveiled last year.

It looks like Samsung is hurrying up its flagship phablet so that the device could compete with the upcoming iPhone Xs. As per the information by Ming-Chi Kuo, the well-known KGI Securities analyst, Apple is believed to release three iPhone models this year - iPhone Xs with a 5.8-inch display, iPhone Xs Plus with a 6.5-inch display and iPhone 9 with a 6.1-inch display.

All the three iPhones to be launched this year are likely to feature an edge-to-edge display, Face ID and TrueDepth Camera. The two iPhone Xs models are said to be equipped with an OLED display and the iPhone 9 might use an LCD panel. The latter is believed to feature a single rear camera and miss out on the 3D Touch feature.

Recently, we came across a report that the Galaxy Note 9 might not feature an in-display fingerprint sensor as it was claimed to earlier. Also, the device is said to make use of the powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 SoC in select markets such as the U.S. and the company's Exynos 9810 in the other markets just like the Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+.

The Samsung Galaxy Note 9 was spotted on the Geekbench benchmarking database yesterday shedding light on some of the key specifications. It was revealed that the device might be unveiled with Android 8.1 Oreo out of the box and feature 6GB of RAM.

Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+ First Impressions

Last year, the Galaxy Note 8 was released a few days before the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus could be made available for the consumers. This year, with the alleged early launch, the company might have a solid two months of time for the Galaxy Note 9 to grab the market before the iPhones for this year are announced.

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Samsung Galaxy Note 9 has an official support page now News oi-Chandrika Does this mean the Galaxy Note 9 will get launched earlier than usual this year?

Samsung may launch the Galaxy Note 9 as early as July or August, a report coming from South Korea has suggested. The company has probably taken this decision to avoid being overshadowed by Apple's 2018 lineup of iPhones. While we are still waiting for an official confirmation, the report may just turn out to be legit.

Samsung has opened the official support page for the Galaxy Note 9. However, you will find the support page only on some country-specific websites of Samsung. Apparently, the Galaxy Note 9 carries the model number SM-N960U. As reported by Androidu.ro, the support page for the flagship phablet has been spotted on Samsung's North Africa and South Africa websites.

The page shows that the Galaxy Note 8 is associated with the SM-N960U model number. For those who are unaware, the U at the end suggests the presence of a Snapdragon 845 processor. If you are wondering, the Exynos-powered variant will come with a different model number.

The official support page doesn't any specifications or features of the Galaxy Note 9. However, it does give a hint that the device may get launched earlier than usual this year.

The Galaxy Note 8 recently visited Geekbench, where some of its key specs are listed. According to the benchmark, the phablet is powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 845 processor. The chipset is paired with the chipset is 6GB RAM, just like the newly launched Galaxy S9+.

The Geekbench listing further showed that the Galaxy Note 9 currently runs on Android 8.1 Oreo operating system. The phablet scored 8806 points in multi-core test and 2190 points in single-core test.

Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+ First Impressions

As far as other specifications are concerned, the Galaxy Note 9 is believed to come with a large 6.38-inch OLED display with 18.5:9 aspect ratio. Initially, it was widely rumored that the phablet would come with an in-display fingerprint scanner. However, known research analyst at KGI Securities, Ming-Chi Kuo thinks that is not going to be the case.

Meanwhile, the 128GB variant of Samsung's Galaxy S9 and Galaxy S9+ have been launched in India.

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Google releases Developer preview for Wear OS News oi-Sandeep Sarkar Google had mentioned that the newly released developer preview is not meant for a regular user rather it is being rolled out for the developers to use.

Google had recently renamed its Android Wear to Wear OS a few days ago. Now Google has something new in the kitty for Wear OS users. After the official rebranding of Android Wear to Wear OS, Google has also released a developer preview for the Wear OS which is based on the Android P platform.

As per some reports from Beebom, Google had mentioned that the newly released developer preview is not meant for a regular user rather it is being rolled out for the developers to use. The report further suggests that the new developer preview brings a set of new changes to Wear OS including a Darker UI theme along with improved battery life and enhanced performance etc.

Top 10 Tips & Tricks for Google Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL

Other major changes include Wi-Fi restriction during the time when the watch is not connected to any Bluetooth device. The new update also features Limited background activity along with Low-power mode. Further, the Developer preview comes with App restriction in which developers will not be able to create apps on other platforms apart from the official SDK. That said about the latest release for the Wear OS, we will keep you updated with the latest reports from Google and other tech-related information.

Also, in our recent articles related to Google, we covered that the tech giant has recently rolled out a new feature for its social networking platform 'Google+'. It was being reported that Google is working on introducing new 'Highlight' feature which will show the notifications on the social network. Google is aiming to make it easier for its user base to keep a track of everything that is happening without bothering the user by sending continuous notifications. You can read the complete story by clicking on this link.

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Xiaomi Mi Band 3 with OLED display to be launched this year News oi-Abhinaya Prabhu Xiaomi could be all set to unveil the third-generation fitness band at an affordable price point later this year.

In 2017, Xiaomi surpassed both Fitbit and Apple and became the wearable market leader. The company out-shadowed the premium wearable brands with its budget-friendly fitness tracker. The company's Mi Band and Mi Band 2 are popular fitness trackers in the budget market segment. There are other such affordable fitness trackers from companies like Lenovo and Huawei, the Xiaomi is dominating the segment.

Given that the second-generation fitness band from Xiaomi, the Mi Band 2 was unveiled in mid-2016 in China, it is time for us to witness the launch of its successor sometime this year. In fact, the Mi Band 2 successor was supposed to arrive in 2017 but the launch did not happen. Now, the company is gearing up for the Mi Band 3's launch this year.

According to a Chinese publication via PhoneRadar, the Mi Band 3 bearing the model number XMSH05HM has received the Bluetooth certification. The device will arrive with the Bluetooth 4.2 LE connectivity to pair with smartphones. Similar to the previous generation models of Mi Band, the upcoming Xiaomi Mi Band 3 is also believed to be compatible with both Android and iOS smartphones.

The report further adds that the Mi Band 3 is expected to arrive with an OLED display to show the time, heart rate, notifications, steps taken and calories burnt. The Mi Band 3 is expected to cost almost the same as its predecessor and incorporate a heart rate sensor too.

Being an affordable fitness tracker, we cannot expect the Xiaomi Mi Band 3 to arrive with premium features such as inbuilt GPS or continuous heart rate tracking. Also, the Mi Band 3 is said to feature two to three weeks of battery life with a capacious battery operating under its hood.

While nothing much is known about the Mi Band 3, we can expect the next-generation Xiaomi fitness band to be unveiled in the coming months and we are yet to see how different it will be from the Mi Band 2. Until then, we need to wait for an official confirmation regarding the Mi Band 3.

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A CONGA line of shiny, expensive and  in several cases  rare Maserati cars is set to wind its way down some of Australias most satisfying driving roads next week in the first Maserati Global Gathering for enthusiasts of the famous Italian brand.



Starting in Melbourne on Tuesday, about 50 Maseratis will head off on a five-day, 1500km jaunt that will take them down the Great Ocean Road from Torquay to Apollo Bay, through Victorias countryside via Castlemaine, Daylesford, Maldon, Bendigo and Beechworth to Albury, up through the Snowy Mountains to Cooma and Canberra, and down through the Macquarie Pass to Sydney, ending at the Sydney Opera House on Monday March 26.



Organised and hosted by the Maserati Owners Club of Australia, the event has attracted about 40 overseas enthusiasts from eight countries, including Italy, Norway, United Kingdom, France, Switzerland, South Africa, New Zealand and United States.



They will join with 60 Australian Maserati club members and Maserati executives on the trip that will include scheduled stopovers along the way so car fans can have a look at the classic machines that include rare models such as a 1964 5000 GT and 1964 Mistral Spyder, as well as a 1974 Quattroporte 2 built for the Aga Khan.



Eight of the cars have been shipped in from overseas for the event, with the rest coming either from Australian owners or  in the case of some of the modern cars  from Maserati Australia which has hired cars to some of the visitors without wheels.



Maserati is using the event to showcase its latest range, including the newly released Levante S SUV with its bi-turbo V6 engine built by Ferrari and similarly-armed Ghibli S sedan.



Maserati Owners Club of Australia president John Gove, who was a driving force behind the event, said the gathering had taken more than two years to put together.



He said he and his wife had travelled to various Maserati rallies in Europe and the US, but no such international event had been held in Australia.



We felt it was time to put back, he said. And besides, I am a proud Aussie.



With Maserati sanctioning such an event for the first time, it was decided to go global, with invitations going out to Maserati clubs across the world  the first time this has happened.



Of the overseas visitors, the biggest contingent is from Britain, followed by Italy, where Maserati was founded in Bologna by the Maserati brothers  Alfieri, Bindo, Carlo, Ettore and Ernesto  in 1914, firstly as a racing outfit and, from 1957, as a road vehicle manufacturer.



The first Maserati road car was the 1957 Maserati 3500 GT, one of which will be out an about at the gathering next week.



Also along for the ride will be a racing Maserati 150S sportscar once raced to victory in Italy by Stirling Moss.



The cars can been seen on display at lunchtime stops between noon and 2pm in Apollo Bay on Wednesday, at Castlemaine Jail on Thursday and at Brown Brothers winery at Milawa on Friday.



Ten of the classic Maseratis will also go on display on the Sydney Opera House forecourt from 6pm to 9pm on Monday, March 26, as the event winds up with a gala.

The Road to Recovery podcast series
New Milford has brought back an additional layer of support and advocacy for economic development.

The New Milford Economic Development Corp. met on Thursday morning for the first time since going dormant for two years under David Gronbachs mayoral tenure. Pete Bass, the citys new mayor, sat among six other board members as the nonprofit organization regrouped at Town Hall.

Were excited about re-establishing this and moving forward on this collaboration, board member Tom Esposito said after the meeting, pointing out potential benefits for local jobs, economic growth and grand list enhancement.

Were looking forward to doing the right thing for our town, added board member Ivan Shiffman. Its a special place.

The New Milford Economic Development Corp. encourages business and industry growth in the town. Board members were excited to continue the corporations facade improvement and microloan programs.

Through the facade improvement program, businesses in downtown can receive a loan of up to $5,000 to improve the appearance of stores exterior. Microloans, designed to help startup companies cover a variety of expenses, may be as high as $15,000.

As a nonprofit organization, it has access to potential funding sources not available to government entities

The corporation was formed about 15 years ago under Mayor Patricia Murphy.

Its all volunteer. Any money we make is for the town, board member Frank Wargo said.

The resurrection of the group comes on the heels of town council approving money to hire a director of economic development. That position was eliminated shortly after Bass took office due to budget constraints. Hiring a director of economic development still needs approval from the board of finance and a public referendum.

Bass said the long-term goal is to have the towns economic director housed within the New Milford Economic Development Corp.

New Milford also has an Economic Development Commission, a government entity comprised of appointed members who are residents of the town. Its mission is to expand and develop new business and industry in town and encourage a healthy business climate.

It is another tool the town can use to create economic vitality, Bass said. Now were on the same playing field as the other towns that have one.

All seven board members present voted to reinstate the corporation at Thursdays meeting. Discussion then turned to increasing board membership, which according to the corporations by-laws, can be between three and 30 people.

There are lots of opportunities within our network, Bass said. The more inclusive we can be the stronger board we will be.

Board members discussed other ways to stimulate economic growth in New Milford, such as forming an incubator to give small businesses and manufacturers a low-cost place to get off the ground.

Treasurer and original board member Mike Nahan stressed that any of the corporations programs should be unique and differentiated from resources already available in the business community.

We dont want to compete with existing local businesses, he said.

Bass said he would invite government officials from Hartford and WestCOG, the Western Connecticut Council of Governments, to future meetings. The corporation will meet monthly at town hall, and will vote on a chairman at its next meeting.
In the minutes after the rejection of Supreme Court Justice Andrew McDonalds bid to become chief justice, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy condemned opposition lawmakers, both Democrats and Republicans, for politicizing the normal process of judicial appointments.

Speaking to reporters, Malloy focused in particular on Sen. Michael A. McLachlan, a fifth-term Republican from Danbury, whom he tagged for homophobic and biased statements while an adviser to Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton over 15 years ago. In point of fact, he is on record as saying to people about a gay man who worked in the mayors office that he, Sen. McLachlan, might go home and beat his wife on a regular basis, but he wouldnt come in an talk about it in the office, Malloy said. Thats what he put akin to being gay. Apparently today he acted on it.
The world has been buzzing ever since Khloe Kardashian announced her pregnancy in late 2017. Khloe, who has been very open about her desire to have a family and the challenges she's had with conceiving, made the announcement on Instagram with a heartfelt post. Fans responded with genuine love and excitement for the mama-to-be and her beau.

And while some mamas-to-be turn down the notch on work to focus on the pregnancy, Khloe has instead ramped it up. Would you expect anything less from a member of the Kardashian empire?

In January, a few short weeks after her announcement post, Khloe shared that her clothing line -- Good American -- will be launching a maternity collection. Similar to the pregnancy announcement, the launch announcement was also shared on Instagram with the hashtag #GoodMama, this time with a sultry image of Khloe in lingerie.

Then, a week before the launch, Khloe dropped another Instagram image with the caption, "@goodamerican #GoodMama Launches Thursday 3.15.2018."

@goodamerican #GoodMama ??Launches Thursday 3.15.2018 A post shared by Khloe (@khloekardashian) on Mar 12, 2018 at 4:39pm PDT

The timing couldn't be any more perfect, as spring is a big time for retailers to make some big bucks. According to the U.S. Census, retail sales hit a record of $5.7 trillion during the spring of 2017. The launch of a new collection is the perfect way to entice consumers to shop at your store.

If you are a product-based business owner, you can learn a lot from Khloe's launch process. Here are five tips for your next product launch that could help with huge sales.

Related: 10 Inspirational Quotes From Women Business Leaders

1. Create a financial plan.

A product launch requires a substantial financial investment. Miscalculating inventory levels or expenses could lead to huge cash-flow problems, so be sure that you take time to create a financial plan. Your plan should include clear sales goals and a comprehensive list of expenses including inventory, marketing and operation-related costs.

2. Plan out your marketing strategy.

Will you be utilizing blog posts or Instagram stories to promote your products? Will you host pop-up events? In today's market, social media has to be a part of your strategy. To avoid getting overwhelmed, choose one platform to focus on and own it. Bri Foster, head of Social Experience for thredUp, recommends using a tool such as Planoly to curate content ahead of time.

Related: These Female Entrepreneurs Created a Fake Male Co-Founder to Work Around Sexism. How Well It Worked Is Incredibly Eye Opening.

3. Set up your accounting system.

Tracking sales is just as important as making sales. Be sure that you have your accounting system set up correctly to track sales, sales tax payments and inventory levels.

4. Generate media coverage and buzz by collaborating with local bloggers and pitching news outlets.

Leslie Wong, the founder of Burgundy Fox, suggests that when pitching brands, "focus on your story more than the product, but be clear about what you're launching. Don't be shy about making a clear call to action. Ask them to share the news and offer suggested text, links and graphics. They might not share, but don't take it personally. When they do share, be sure to thank them and don't stop sharing. You never know who is watching."

Related: How to Succeed as a Female Leader Anywhere In the World

5. Reflect on wins and improvement opportunities for the next launch.

This is where many businesses miss a golden opportunity to grow their business. After your launch, reflect on what went well and review your metrics. This information is invaluable and will help you make wiser decisions for the next launch. One metric you want to be sure to review is your marketing return on investment (ROI).

Kendra James, owner of the Finance Femme, says, "Marketing ROI, is where you calculate the return of the marketing dollars spent on your campaign. This not only helps you understand the success of your current campaign, but you can also compare it to past (and future) campaigns to see what marketing efforts work best for your business.

Related:

5 Launch Lessons From Khloe Kardashian's #GoodMama Fashion Line

This Couple Owns a Label and it's No Way an Ordinary One

How This Fashion E-retail Labelled Its Success Story



Copyright 2018 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved



This article originally appeared on entrepreneur.com


Weve got a general idea of what the phone might look like thanks to the leaked case renders. This includes a relocated fingerprint scanner and a dual camera setup on the back. We also saw a dual camera and a larger display.

The latest Motorola device has just gone through the FCC. First reported by Nashville Chatter Class, the FCC filing reveals a bunch of details about Motorolas flagship line midranger. Starting off, the phones model number is XT1929.

The Moto Z3 Play will be available in 4GB + 32GB and 4GB + 64GB models. The phone packs a 3,000 mAh battery which powers a Qualcomm Snapdragon 636 which should yield great battery life.

Moto Z2 Play (2017)

The front of the phone will have a 6.1-inch display which will fit in the current-generation Moto Z chassis. We knew that the first and second generation Moto Z works with all Moto Mods, but we werent sure if Motorola was going to change the phones body for the Moto Z3.

The dimensions listed match the Moto Z2 Plays so first-generation Moto Mods should work with the Moto Z3 Play and the future Moto Z3 flagship model.

The camera on the Play is a dual-camera system comprised of 12MP + 8MP dual sensors while the first camera gets a 5MP snapper. The SKUs list that the phone will arrive in Verizon, North American, Brazilian, and Latin American markets. There are dual SIM models headed to South America.

Pricing is not included in the FCC report but has been speculated to be priced between $450 and $500. This is definitely going to be Motorolas Premium midrange offering but will anyone many folks be drawn to a mid-ranger in the $450 price range? With handsets with aggressive pricing like the (soon to be released) OnePlus 6 and the Honor View 10, perhaps Motorola should think about pricing aggressively as well.

The Moto Z3 and Z3 Play might be announced as soon as next month as the company's leadership changes. Were not sure if the launch between the Play and flagship models will be staggered like last year but its plausible that Motorola will announced both the Z3 and Z3 Play together.

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Apple announced its latest iPad 9.7 earlier this week. The tablet will be offered in the States by T-Mobile, Verizon and BestBuy starting April 2. Europe, or at least the United Kingdom, is getting the device a bit earlier after Vodafone sent out a press release, announcing the availability of the tablet in stores. Online purchases will be available after Easter.

The new iPad 9.7 with 32 GB storage can be purchased with one of four plans. For 26/month and 20 upfront you get the slate + 500 MB Tablet Plan, while for 5 more per month and 10 less upfront cost the data is 5 GB. There are also 36/month 20 GB and 41/month 50 GB plans, both of them requiring a meager 10 upfront payment.

Apple is also offering the device on its UK website where the price starts from 319 and can go up to 539 with the 99 Apple Pencil not included.

Source
Published on 2018/03/30 | Source

Added episodes 1 and 2 captures for the Korean drama "Switch - Change The World" (2018)

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Directed by Nam Tae-jin

Written by Baek Woon-cheol, Kim Ryoo-hyun

Network : SBS

With Jang Keun-suk, Han Ye-ri, Jung Woong-in, Jo Hee-bong, Shin Do-hyun, Ahn Seung-hwan,...

32 episodes - Wed, Thu 22:00 (2x35min)

Formerly known as "Operation King" (, gong-jak-wang)

Synopsis

A smart con artist impersonates a prosecutor. He passed all the necessary exams, but never managed to get work in the legal profession.

Broadcast starting date in Korea : 2018/03/28

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The Havre Middle School auditorium teemed with seventh- and eighth-grade choir students Monday, as students from middle school choirs throughout the area gathered to take part in the Invitational Choral Festival.

By 8:30 a.m. members of the Havre Middle School choir were in the auditorium standing in clusters engaged in conversation, while students from Chinook. Shelby and Turner arrived.

A cart with bottled water was wheeled in and students flocked over to it, each grabbing a bottle and scrawling their names on them,

For Cianna Mellinger, a seventh-grader from Shelby, this year is her first time taking part in the festival.

"I really like singing and I really like traveling and discovering new things, and it is fun to meet new people," Mellinger said.

Havre Middle School choir director Rhonda Minnick said that every year she reaches out to choir directors from other middle schools within the area and invites them and their students to come and take part in a short evening concert.

The festival, she said, happens each March in observance of Music in Our Schools Month and is a way to highlight the benefits of school music programs.

The public is also welcome to attend the festival free of charge.

Minnick said students who take part in school music programs tend to have higher scores on tests than their peers. As a school choir director, she said, she wants to keep that in the minds of people. especially school administrators.

"Music is really, really important in schools and it is a program we don't ever want to lose," Minnick said. "We think it is highly valued."

Before Minnick became the Havre Middle School choir director six years ago, she taught in Chinook and brought her choir students to the festival.

She said the festival gives students from small schools to get the chance to be part of a larger choral performance.

"It's not every day you get to sing with 150 or 160 people, and I think that is a unique experience," Minnick said.

The choral festival began in the 1970s, Minnick said. She said the program was ended and restarted several times throughout the 1970s and '80s. It has been an annual event since the 1990s she said.

Students from participating schools show up well before the festival begins, and spend the day rehearsing six songs with a guest director.

This year, the festival was scheduled for March 5, but at the last minute was postponed due to snow.

The snow, she said, did cause some disruptions.

The middle school choir at Sunburst was scheduled to attend but because of a scheduling conflict, they were not able to take part on the new date, Minnick said.

Malta School choir director Larry Swingen also was prevented from coming to the festival on the alternate date. Angela Pratt at the last minute was brought on to replace Swingen.

Because of the change in date, Minnick said, she had to find a way to keep the music fresh in the minds of her students without over rehearsing.

Pratt said that she was brought on to be the festival's guest director at the last minute. However, she said she did not feel panicked in preparing for the festival.

"This is what we do, you just get used to it, " Pratt said.

Preparation for the festival is a day-long affair, Minnick said.

Students arrive in the morning and at 9 a.m. join up with the guest director to learn warm-up exercises and rehearse the songs. At 11 a.m. they take a half hour for lunch and then rehearse until 3:15 p.m. Students are then able to go off for 5:45 p.m. when they come back for a short dance or "mixer." The festival than happens at 6:30 p.m.

For Alyssa Oliver, an eighth-grader in the Havre choir, last year the dance was the day's high point.

"We had all the schools in the cafeteria for a dance before the concert, that was real fun," she said.

In all, 140 students took part in the festival this year, with 60 from Havre Middle School, Minnick said. Another 49 came from Shelby, 22 from Chinook and nine from Turner.

Minnick said that when she began taking the reins in organizing the festival six years ago, middle school choirs from as far west as Browning, east as Malta and as far south as Box Elder used to take part in the festival.

Fewer middle schools, though, are taking part in the festival as many music programs at schools with low enrollment have dwindled or been ended altogether.

She said that the Chester-Joplin-Inverness school district has tried to come, but lacks the students to gave a middle school choir.

"Some of these schools don't even have music teachers anymore," Minnick said. "It is hard to find a music teacher, hard to keep them."

The schools, she said, have grown more isolated, especially in remote areas, and said that is all the more reason that the festival needs to continue as a way to bring the district together.

Bailey Scoyen, an eigth-grader from Chinook, said that she loves the chance the festival gives her to meet students from other schools.

"We are such a small school, so you get a choir of 17 or 18 kids and then you come in here and it is a whole bunch of kids and we are just singing all together. so that is really nice," she said.

The show also introduces the students to songs in genres of music they usually are not exposed to.

Oliver said this year one of the songs that will be performed is "Follow the Drinking Gord" a traditional spiritual song that she said was sung by slaves as they fled slavery on the underground railroad.

Other songs this year were "Durme Durme," a Judeo-Spanish lullaby; "Thunder," a song about a wild mustang, "Shoshone Love Song," a Native American poem set to music and the jazz classic "Beyond the Sea."

Students also play bass, drums, a woodblock and a shaker,

Minnick said the Have Middle School choir will perform "Let It Be" from the "Lord of the Rings" soundtrack.

The other school choirs, Minnick said, are welcome to also perform a song, but many opt not to.

Unlike in Havre, she said, the person who is the choir director often plays multiple roles and learning another song in addition to the five others can be time consuming.

Ahead of the concert, some of the choir members do have some worries.

Jordan Gregoire, a seventh-grader from Havre, said he has some mild stage fright, but thinks he will be fine because when he is on stage, other people will be standing alongside him.

The hardest part about the concert is learning the songs that are in foreign languages, he said.

Gregoire said "Durme Durme" is challenging because since the song is not in English he does not know what the words mean.

Pratt said, while the foreign language pieces are a little more challenging, she thinks they are ones that the students can perform.

"They are all things they will have fun with, I think." she said.

A guest director leads the choir at the concert and gives students the opportunity to be directed by someone other than their school's choir director, Minnick said.

When searching for the choir she looks for someone who knows their craft, but also someone who can connect with middle schoolers,

There are different ways of doing that.

Carter Leeds, an eighth-grader from Havre, said that during last year's festival, guest director Thomas Beatty told students a story that was pretty funny.

Ryan Welch/Havre Daily News

Swingen said middle school students are positive and full of energy.

"I take into consideration their attention span and the full day of rehearsal and come up with goals they can achieve quickly on our way to the ones harder to reach," Swingen said.

Along the way he works to hold their attention with jokes, anecdotes, juggling and walking on his hands.

Minnick said that the festival and choir in general offer students something that will stay with them throughout their lives, even if they don't become professional musicians,

"It's one of those lifelong skills that once they leave our programs, they have if for the rest of their lives," she said.
Isaiah 44:24-28

Out our, way we know it is not all fun and games. Though we live in Paradise, the winter has been something short of enjoyable. From October through March, the Alberta Clippers have hit and hit hard. Friends of mine in different parts of the country hear about our winter and ask me, Why do you live there? I respond, Three words: spring, summer and fall. Sometimes I add the real deal clincher  the fourth word: chinooks.

I have lived in other parts of the country and the worst was the Midwest, were the snow came in October or November and stayed until April, and the skies were usually cloudy and gray every day. You may have to move out of the west to understand why the phrase and the skies are not cloudy all day was such an important part of the song. I understood that others dont see buffalo except in the zoo, and while folks everywhere have likely seen the deer, how many places still have antelope playing along the prairies and fields? But the sky is the sky. Andy Rooney once made fun of Montanas license plates saying it was  Big Sky Country, saying they have the same sky as everybody else. But he was wrong.

I think he discovered that for himself, for years later, I noted in one of his books he had deleted the comments about Montana. Seems he came out here one day and learned. In the same way, I went back East to seminary and discovered where the skies are cloudy all day  for weeks at a time. Holy Frijoles! How do you people stand this?

For over 30 years I was out of the Big Open serving the Lord around the country. But always there was the hope that one day I would come home. For many long years it was only a hope and a prayer, but I kept the faith and finally, some 12 years ago, I made it home.

Homesickness is something the Bible speaks about  especially in the writings of the prophets. The 12 Tribes of Israel eventually became the nation of Israel and they finally had a homeland. But over time, they forgot the Lord and the basis of their people. Bit by bit they fell away until only some two tribes of the original 12 remained intact, and they, too, forgot their heritage. Mighty Babylon  modern Iraq  came and destroyed Jerusalem, the Holy Tmple, and took the remaining people into captivity far from home. For 70 years the people were in darkness, sorrowing and weeping for what was gone. But God sent to prophets like Isaiah to tell them that while their darkness was real, the dawn was coming. In time they would return, rebuild the Temple, and then the Messiah would come.

And so it came to pass. After 70 years Babylon fell and the Jews were allowed to come home. The city was rebuilt and then the Temple, and many years later King Herod restored and rebuilt it into an even greater and more glorious structure than before. And in that time the Messiah did come and laid new foundations for the Temple of the Lord, not of marble and gold, but of flesh and blood. The Temple of the Lord, built with the living stones of the Faithful, was no longer limited to Mount Zion, Jerusalem or Judah, but expanded to enfold the entire world. The People of God were not limited to the Jews, but through Christ all people were invited to become the family of God.

It is no coincidence that the Last Supper was the Passover,- when Israel recalled how God had called them out of darkness in the Exodus and led them to the Promised Land to become His people. At the Passover meal in the Upper Room, Jesus is called the Passover Lamb, sacrificing His body and blood for the salvation of His people. And the new Exodus began that following Sunday when Christ arose and like the pillar of the fire and the cloud, the Riesn Christ calls all to follow to the Promised Land  the New Jerusalem  the Kingdom of God.

Sometimes we enter into the winter of our depair, as Shakespeare put it. Like Israel of old the world has turned upside down and it seems hopeless. We cry out to God and the skies seem silent. But then a still small voice  perhaps a friend, a neighbor, even a stranger  comes into our heads. Comfort, comfort ye, My People, and it is the voice of the Lord. This too shall pass and I have not forsaken thee. Now is the time of faith without seeing and hope without proof. Now is the time to discover the depth or shallowness of your love and strength in Me. Use this time to strengthen the faith and grow stronger that when the light does come  and it will- you are ready to stride out into the new day with courage, direction and joy. You shall indeed become the light to others who do not know what you know nor have the reason for faith you have been given. Let your light so shine that the whole world shall see and know the truth at last. To you has been given My Name I am! Now you will tell the world and demonstrate it as My People.

Yup  a dark winter came to Israel,- but the chinook winds of the prophets told them spring was coming, and so it was. In our own dark times, we need to listen for the small, still voice of God speaking through whatever means He chooses  be still and know that He is God.



John Bruington and Doc have spotted real honest to goodness ground and a hint of grass this week. The ice is melting the snow disappearing and the geese are flying. Hear the Word of the Lord being spoken by natures prophets.
It's just another week in weird news.

First, some people really know how to celebrate the holidays, and some people are just a train wreck.

We all know folks who go all out for the Easter holiday with colored eggs and an 8-foot blow-up Easter bunny, or multiple church services or a to-die-for-and-get-resurrected lamb dinner.

But we dont all know Ladonna Hughett, 54, from Ohio who really got into the Easter spirit this year, or should I say the Easter spirits.

Hughett showed up drunk to the Richland Carousel Park in Mansfield, Ohio, and gave the Easter bunny cause to sign up for the #MeToo movement.

Several news agencies are airing the video clip of Hughett in action, but it is unclear if she is trying to sit on the Easter bunnys lap or if she is attempting to give the Easter bunny a lap dance. Either way, shes doing it wrong.

She is supposed to sit still and keep her hands to herself, her feet on the floor and her tray in the upright and locked position, for the first option, or shes supposed to bust out her best freaky-deeky moves and dance the holy spirit right out of the occasion, but absolutely without touching anyone.

Those are pretty simple rules.

Hughett, instead, sat on the Easter bunnys lap, posed lewdly, groped the bunny-costume wearer right where it counts and spouted lewd statements, all in front of families who were recording the scene for evidence. They called the cops.

Mansfield police charged Hughett with public drunkenness, but they made no mention of the assault.

Metro.com reported that Hughett had written on her Facebook page, before the incident, that she can be a handfull but most of the time I am just a idiot. Sing it, sister.

In other Midwest news, Iowan Josh Harms has won the right to continue to bear words against his town of Sibley, Iowa.

Sibley became home to the Iowa Drying and Processing plant in 2013, and in 2015 Sibley started a website complaining that his hometown smelled like rancid dog food because the plant makes a high-protein animal food supplement from pig blood.

Sibley city officials were not amused.

They also threatened to sue Harms, but Thursday, Judge Leonard Strand approved a permanent injunction agreed to by the city and Harms.

Essentially, Harms won the right to continue practicing his First Amendment right to free speech, and the city won the right to pay Harms $6,500 in damages and $20,000 in legal fees, as well as give Harms a written apology and provide First Amendment training for city staff.

The Thursday Associated Press article says that Harms is hoping to improve his hometown, population 2,300, by pointing out the citys problems, but I hope Harms, 28, learns that its hard to better yourself under a barrage of criticism.

Sure, Harms website and his new URL, sibleystinks.com, are funny, but hurtful, too. He needs to point out some of the positive things, as well, things that the town can build on  like their strong, citywide support of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The Associated Press also said Thursday that a nudist camp in Foster, Rhode Island, is looking for a summer life guard.

If anyone is interested the applicants must have excellent communication skills and the ability to work as part of a team, swimsuit is actually optional.

I myself will not be applying for this job  because I possess neither of those skills, but more importantly, I do not wear swimsuits or go naked in public as my personal contribution in the battle to help keep America beautiful.

I do suggest that the nudist colony not hire the likes of Ladonna Hughett because that just seems like a lawsuit in the making. And the gods and a solid workout routine help them if Josh Harms should ever take up residence in their town.



VisitRhodeIsland.com says that the nudist campground is family-oriented. Am I the only one disturbed by this thought at http://www.facebook.com/viewfromthenorth40/.
Durham, NC A new line of human stem cells shows promise for one day advancing treatment for epileptic seizures. As reported in STEM CELLS Translational Medicine (SCTM), the cells are designed to deliver adenosine  which calms down overexcited neurons and protects them from damage  to the central nervous system (CNS). The research was conducted by scientists at the University of Bonn and the Central Institute of Mental Health (CIMH) in Mannheim.

Adenosine is a powerful regulator that helps the body maintain its inner balance. When an injury occurs to the CNS, it releases high levels of adenosine, which calms down the overexcited neurons and alleviates neurological damage caused by stroke, trauma, reduced oxygen, pain and, in particular, epileptic seizures. But attempts to systemically deliver adenosine to needed areas in the CNS during a crisis have been hampered by adenosines fast metabolic breakdown, the inability to sufficiently permeate the blood-brain-barrier and serious side effects of such cardiac suppression, said Philipp Koch, M.D., of the Hector Institute for Translational Brain Research at the CIMH. Dr. Koch headed up the study described in SCTM, which was conducted at the Institute of Reconstructive Neurobiology of the University of Bonn Medical Faculty together with Dr. Oliver Brustle.

Adenosine is mostly metabolized by two enzymes  adenosine deaminase (ADA) and adenosine kinase (ADK), with ADK being the more efficient of the two. This knowledge led to the idea of generating cell populations deficient in ADK that could be used to deliver adenosine  successfully resulting in the creation of cell populations with potent neuroprotective properties. In one experiment on mice, ADK-deficient cells created from mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) led to a 35 percent decrease of epileptic seizures in the animals. However, these were non-neuronal cells, and they showed only limited survival times.

These studies, done by other research teams, prompted Drs. Koch and Brustle to wonder whether neural progenitors derived from ADK-deficient stem cells taken from mice embryos might work better than MSCs in fashioning an adenosine delivery system. They tested their idea and found that, indeed, these cells significantly delayed the development of epilepsy and were superior to the non-neuronal cells (derived from hamster kidneys) they were tested against.

This led the Koch- Brustle research team to the next step, which is outlined in the current SCTM paper. Dr. Daniel Poppe, first author of the study, explained: With the advent of human pluripotent stem cells, such as human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) or induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), human cell populations are now available that can be efficiently differentiated into neural progenitors and their progeny. In this context we described a population of hESC-derived, long-term self-renewing neuroepithelial stem cells (lt-NES). Similar to pluripotent stem cells, this population exhibits strong self-renewal capacity enabling genetic modification, subsequent clonal selection and expansion at a scale sufficient for potential therapy, added Dr. Koch.

Such stable intermediate cell populations are an attractive source for potential future cell-based therapies said Dr. Brustle, adding, Transplanted into the CNS, they show excellent long-term survival and functional integration without the risk of forming tumors.

This is a promising line of research and it will be fascinating to see how it progresses in preclinical studies, said Anthony Atala, MD, Editor-in-Chief of STEM CELLS Translational Medicine and director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine. A cellular therapy for central nervous system disorders would be a huge treatment advance.

###

The full article, Genome editing in neuroepithelial stem cells to generate human neurons with high adenosine-releasing capacity, can be accessed at https://stemcellsjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/sctm.16-0272.

About STEM CELLS Translational Medicine: STEM CELLS Translational Medicine (SCTM), published by AlphaMed Press, is a monthly peer-reviewed publication dedicated to significantly advancing the clinical utilization of stem cell molecular and cellular biology. By bridging stem cell research and clinical trials, SCTM will help move applications of these critical investigations closer to accepted best practices. SCTM is the the official journal partner of Regenerative Medicine Foundation.

About AlphaMed Press: Established in 1983, AlphaMed Press with offices in Durham, NC, San Francisco, CA, and Belfast, Northern Ireland, publishes two other internationally renowned peer-reviewed journals: STEM CELLS (www.StemCells.com), celebrating its 36th year, is the worlds first journal devoted to this fast paced field of research. The Oncologist (www.TheOncologist.com), also a monthly peer-reviewed publication, entering its 23rd year, is devoted to community and hospital-based oncologists and physicians entrusted with cancer patient care. All three journals are premier periodicals with globally recognized editorial boards dedicated to advancing knowledge and education in their focused disciplines.

About Wiley: Wiley, a global company, helps people and organizations develop the skills and knowledge they need to succeed. Our online scientific, technical, medical and scholarly journals, combined with our digital learning, assessment and certification solutions, help universities, learned societies, businesses, governments and individuals increase the academic and professional impact of their work. For more than 200 years, we have delivered consistent performance to our stakeholders. The companys website can be accessed at www.wiley.com.
Researchers at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine have used yeast to gain new understanding of the molecular pathways that allow the cells to build the machinery they need to undergo respiration and aerobic energy production. This knowledge will contribute to a better understanding of the development of mitochondrial diseases and cancer in humans.

Their exploration began with ribosomes  the intracellular macromachines where all proteins are made. Ribosomes are formed by ribosomal RNA and many proteins. These components are distributed in two complex subunits named the large subunit and the small subunit.

Mitochondria, the powerhouse of our cells, contain their own mitochondrial DNA and ribosomes. The mitochondrial ribosomes or mitoribosomes are in charge of the synthesis of a few proteins encoded in the mitochondrial DNA, all of which are essential components of the mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation system responsible for energy production. The composition and the structure of mitochondrial ribosomes are known, but how these components are put together  what we call their assembly or biogenetic pathway  remains largely unknown.

The research team  Antonio Barrientos, Ph.D., professor of neurology, and biochemistry and molecular biology, Rui Zeng, a recently graduated Ph.D. student in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and Erin Smith, an undergraduate student who wrote her honors thesis on her work in Barrientos laboratory  used the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae to decipher the assembly pathway of the mitoribosome large subunit. They engineered and evaluated a collection of 44 gene-deletion yeast strains for mitoribosome assembly and function. Each of these strains was deleted for a gene encoding a protein component of the mitoribosome large subunit.

This analysis revealed the essentiality of most, but not all, mitoribosome proteins, for building a functional mitoribosome large subunit. The researchers were able to determine an assembly pathway based on hierarchical incorporation of protein clusters and modules, and identify the use of the mitochondrial inner membrane as a platform for the assembly of the mitoribosome large subunit.

The biomedical relevance of our findings stems from the fact that mutations in mitoribosome proteins, ribosomal RNAs and translation factors are responsible for a heterogeneous group of human multisystemic OXPHOS disorders, such as Leighs syndrome, sensorineural hearing loss, encephalomyopathy and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, said Barrientos. Furthermore, several clinically useful antibiotics used as frontline therapy against microbial infectious diseases can unintentionally target mitoribosomes, which can result in mild to severe side effects in physiological and pathological conditions. Moreover, mitochondrial ribosomes and their components are emerging as both cancer biomarkers and targets for cancer therapy. For these reasons, understanding mitoribosome biogenesis is timely.

The findings were published in an article)30064-0, Yeast mitoribosome large subunit assembly proceeds by the hierarchical incorporation of protein clusters and modules on the inner membrane, in the journal Cell Metabolism.

Understanding the biogenesis of yeast mitoribosomes will provide invaluable information to understand how the process occurs in human cells. Furthermore, it is expected to provide clues for the identification of therapeutic targets to combat mitochondrial diseases and cancer. Also, because mitochondrial ribosomes and bacterial ribosomes are inhibited by the same set of antibiotics, the data will help to optimize the design of antibiotics in order to minimize side effects on mitoribosomes and, therefore, mitochondrial energy production.

Now that we have obtained an initial yeast mitoribosome large subunit assembly pathway, we plan to use novel sophisticated biochemical approaches to refine it, said Barrientos. We are also using yeast to describe the assembly pathway of the small subunit. Finally, we have started translating our results to the human mitoribosome context, by creating and characterizing human cell lines defective in mitoribosome assembly. As we continue to learn how mitoribosomes are made, it will be exciting to see how new targets emerge that offer promise for therapeutics to combat not only human disorders associated with mitochondrial translation defects but also metastasis and cancer.

Miller School of Medicine
Human tumors appear to have a broken circadian clock, researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center report in the journal PeerJ.

While the link between circadian clock disruption and cancer has been established in animal models, the new study provides the first direct confirmation of such dysregulation in human tumors.

Jacob Hughey, PhD, and colleagues have created a method to infer the ticking of the circadian clock using gene expression data from human tissue samples that lack time of day information. Here they use the new method to characterize circadian clock progression in a range of human cancer types.

We find that the normal daily rhythm that we have in almost every cell in our body is strongly perturbed in tumor tissues, said Hughey, assistant professor of Biomedical Informatics.

Long-term disruption of circadian rhythms, such as that posed by night shift work, increases risk for certain types of cancer. And recently researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have shown that, in mice and in human cells in vitro, drugs that activate the circadian clock kill cancer cells without posing toxicity.

If that finding were to be borne out in clinical testing, our study would suggest restoring normal clock progression could be a broadly applicable anti-tumor strategy, because weve found dysregulation of the circadian clock across the gamut of cancer types, Hughey said.

More broadly, we now have a method that can give us a window into what the circadian clock is doing in other medical conditions even if our data dont have time of day information.

Psychiatric disorders would be among the many opportunities for further study using the new method, he said.

Cells in organs throughout the body exhibit a daily cycle, or circadian rhythm, evidenced in patterns of gene expression, that is, how strongly various genes are turned on or off. A large amount of gene expression data from human tissues is publically available, but nearly all of it has no information about the time of day at which the tissues were acquired.

The question weve asked is can you say anything about the clock anyway, can you make any use of those data even without the time of day information. And cancer is a nice starting point because theres a ton of data available and prior work suggests that circadian disruption and tumor development are intertwined, Hughey said.

He and colleagues turned to public, online gene expression data sets. They focused on 12 genes, shared by mice and humans, whose 24-hour rhythms in gene expression are a marker for circadian clock progression at the cellular level in multiple organs.

With circadian data from mice there are fewer confounding variables than in a human data set, plus we have data from a large number of mouse organs, whereas the availability of time-labeled data from human studies is comparatively limited, Hughey said.

With the mouse data sets as a prospective control, the researchers quantified the correlation in expression among the 12 genes in human data sets, including data sets from circadian studies with time of day information, and cancer patient data sets without time of day information, using both non-tumor and tumor tissue.

Across human organs, the 12-gene circadian co-expression pattern in healthy/non-tumor tissue was more similar to the validated mouse control than was the co-expression pattern in tumor tissue. Statistical significance of the similarity in co-expression was assessed using randomly selected genes and permutation of non-tumor and tumor data.

Based on this study alone, we cant say whether the tumor is breaking the clock or the clock broke and that allowed the tumor to grow. We can just say that clock-gene co-expression is significantly perturbed in tumor samples relative to non-tumor samples, Hughey said.

Joining Hughey in the study were undergraduate student Jarrod Shilts, now studying at Cambridge University as a Churchill Scholar, and, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Guanhua Chen, PhD.

The study was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health (GM124685, D023196, HG009086).

Vanderbilt University
Study finds apparent benefits of addition of adjunctive antidepressants

to mood stabilizers, Tel Aviv University researchers say

Tel Aviv  Bipolar disorder patients, who comprise 1-4 percent of the population, suffer from chronic mood swings that alternate between manic episodes, characterized by inflated energy, self-esteem and risky behavior, and depression, which can take a suicidal turn.

A new Tel Aviv University study finds that antidepressant therapy minimizes the incidence of rehospitalization from bipolar depression.

This study provides hope for bipolar disorder patients by supporting the efficacy and safety of antidepressant therapy use for bipolar depression, which has always been considered a treatment-resistant disabling state, says Dr. Eldar Hochman of TAUs Sackler Faculty of Medicine and Geha Mental Health Center, who led the research for the study. It was published in European Neuropsychopharmacology.

Our study suggests that adding antidepressant therapy to mood stabilizers or atypical antipsychotics after hospitalization for bipolar depression can prevent rehospitalization in the short- and long-term. Adding the antidepressant therapy doesnt increase the risk of manic episodes, Dr. Hochman says.

Our results are immediately relevant to clinical practice and should encourage clinicians to prescribe antidepressant therapy to bipolar disorder depression in patients with adequate mood stabilization.

New scientific evidence to support therapy

Antidepressants are widely used to manage bipolar depression, but there has been little evidence to support their effectiveness until now. Our study supports a positive risk-benefit ratio for the use of antidepressants in treating the depression of real-world bipolar disorder patients, says Dr. Hochman.

In the study, 98 patients with bipolar disorder were retrospectively observed for six-month and one-year rehospitalization rates. They had been hospitalized with a depressive episode between 2005 and 2013 at Geha Mental Health Center in Israel.

We used a retrospective chart review to compare six-month and one-year rehospitalization rates of bipolar disorder patients hospitalized with a depressive episode. They were treated at discharge with mood stabilizers and/or atypical antipsychotics with or without antidepressants, says Dr. Hochman. We wanted to track their treatment at discharge  with or without antidepressants  and used multivariable survival models adjusted for variations known to influence rehospitalization.

The research found that, within one year following discharge, 81.7% of the patients who were treated with antidepressants in addition to mood stabilizers avoided rehospitalization, versus 57.6% of the patients who did not undergo the same combination.

Avoiding antidepressant treatment alone

Antidepressant treatment pursued alone, without an additional mood stabilizing therapy, should be avoided in bipolar depression due to an increased risk for manic episodes, Dr. Hochman says.

The researchers are currently studying the socio-demographic and clinical prognostic factors affecting bipolar disorder course outcomes. We hope that our data will help to develop a disease staging system that will allow individuals to reclaim control of their lives, Dr. Hochman concludes.

Dr. Yahav Shvartzman authored the study together with Dr. Hochman, and Dr. Amir Krivoy, Dr. Avi Valevski, Dr. Shay Gur and Dr. Abraham Weizman, all of TAUs Sackler Faculty of Medicine and Geha Mental Health Center, contributed to the research.

American Friends of Tel Aviv University (AFTAU) supports Israels most influential, comprehensive and sought-after center of higher learning, Tel Aviv University (TAU). TAU is recognized and celebrated internationally for creating an innovative, entrepreneurial culture on campus that generates inventions, startups and economic development in Israel. For three years in a row, TAU ranked 9th in the world, and first in Israel, for alumni going on to become successful entrepreneurs backed by significant venture capital, a ranking that surpassed several Ivy League universities. To date, 2,400 patents have been filed out of the University, making TAU 29th in the world for patents among academic institutions.
Top DOT engineer seeks a path to save projects

Brian Burch, the top NCDOT engineer for southwestern North Carolina, spoke to a homeowner when the agency unveiled N.C. 191 widening plans.

When they got their first look earlier this month at plans for the widening of N.C. 191, many homeowners reacted with anger, bewilderment and a blood vow to do everything in their power to stop the project.

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In other words, it was a typical day in the life of Brian Burch, the top engineer in the southwestern North Carolina for the state Department of Transportation. However negatively they may view the states transportation projects, residents cant fault the Division 14 engineer for evading the public. There was Burch amid the mob again, patiently fielding questions, trying to address concerns and stoically serving as a punching bag for taxpayers who question the validity of the project.

From Flat Rock to Laurel Park to Hendersonville to Mills River, Burch, his subordinates and the consulting engineers who are designing highway construction projects are set upon by dozens  sometimes hundreds  of opponents. Flat Rock Village Councilman John Dockendorf observed recently that as intense as the opposition has been to a Highland Lake Road widening project, four other projects have received even more negative comments. If property owners are the critics, the reviews, it seems, are almost universally negative.

As the chief engineer for the 10-county Division 14, Burch is responsible for 614 NCDOT employees, 4,983 miles of roads, an $89 million maintenance budget and 60 active road contracts ranging from $2 million to $850 million. He lives in his hometown of Hayesville with his wife, Kelly. Their twin daughters Alyson and Emma are juniors at UNC at Chapel Hill and daughter Gracie is a junior at Hayesville High School. In his spare time, he enjoys running, church activities and spending time with his family.

During his day job, Burch is in charge of receiving comments, working with property owners and elected officials and shaping a compromise that keeps a project going forward.

Although roadwork opposition is not unique to Henderson County, Burch acknowledges that its more robust here, in part because so many have reached the construction stage at once.

It is more intense and I think thats because we have these projects that are impacting communities, he says. They are in areas that have a lot of residential housing. Weve not had a tremendous amount of projects in Henderson County in the last several years. These are all new. It seems like were not just hitting one or two areas in Henderson County. Were hitting almost every community. If you look at it, we have more in Henderson County than we do anywhere else. Fortunately, we have a great relationship with local government there and they have been very responsive in their communities and working with us in trying to find solutions.

If the vocal, well-organized and persistent opposition to every one of the NCDOT projects on the drawing table here frustrates him, he does a good job hiding it. City and county officials who have been working with him on the projects praise his communications skills and flexibility. Elected officials in Hendersonville, Flat Rock and the county Board of Commissioners, for instance, applaud his willingness to compromise on the Kanuga Road widening, which became much thinner when he agreed to scrap bike lanes and sidewalks.



Projects start at local level

Burch points out that every project in the pipeline here has come from local government to the NCDOT, not the other way around.

All these projects went through the process of prioritization, he says. These were projects the local government supported and the DOT supported. You want to deliver the local vision. We dont want to deliver a project that the local government says is not close to what we envisioned.

Its possible that the NCDOT will do what opponents have been urging on the Balfour Parkway, Kanuga Road, White Street, U.S. 64 and Highland Lake Road projects  walk away.

Do nothing is always an alternative that we consider in every project, he says. Thats something thats always looked at, and we do realize that if do nothing is selected as the alternative theres typically consequences to that and sometimes congestion does increase and gets worse. Another possibility is (the road) continues to have safety concerns and those for me at least are harder to accept than congestion. I can accept congestion if thats what the peoples desires are but when it comes to safety I have a harder time just saying we can ignore those.

Even with the intensity of opposition, Burch says he and his agency dont feel that theyve exhausted all the potential compromises that would make the projects more acceptable.

There is a possibility that at some point the public and local officials say, DOT, we really dont want these projects, weve changed our minds, and at that point well have some discussions to see if do nothing is an alternative that we can live with, he says. But right now on all these projects were not at that point because I dont think weve adequately considered and addressed the concerns that weve received from the public. Were going to do all we can to accommodate these requests and try to reduce impacts as much as possible.
Michael McCabe claimed he was trying to break up a fight

A man attending a work Christmas party accidentally hit a garda car when he threw a glass bottle at a group of people, a court heard.

Father-of-one Michael McCabe (29) claimed he was trying to break up a fight in which his friend was involved.

He said he reacted badly as he was trying to defend his friend.

Judge Dermot Dempsey ordered McCabe to complete 240 hours of community service in lieu of two months in jail.

The defendant, of Primrose Grove, Darndale, admitted before Swords District Court to threatening and abusive behaviour and possession of cocaine last December 23.

The court was told the def-endant was on New Street, Malahide, at 1.30am when he threw a glass bottle towards a group of about 10 people.

Damage

The bottle fell short but hit the side of a garda car that had arrived in the area. No damage was caused to the vehicle.

When gardai attempted to restrain McCabe, who had 31 previous convictions, a number of males tried to assault him.

"He was threatening and abusive in his behaviour," a garda told the court.

When he was taken to the garda station, McCabe was found in possession of 100 worth of cocaine, which he claimed cost him 50.

His solicitor said a group of 10 to 12 people approached McCabe in a threatening manner.

However, the prosecuting garda said he did not see the group approach the defendant before the bottle was thrown.

The solicitor said McCabe worked as a plumber but was on temporary lay-off.

"He was out at a work party when one colleague ended up in a fight with the group and he attempted to break it up and threw the bottle to defend his friend," the solicitor said.
A private debate about abortion among Fine Gael politicians in Leinster House became heated after a female TD was accused of preaching to her male colleagues.

Party chairman Martin Heydon was forced to intervene after what one minister described as the "setting off of a bomb" by Marcella Corcoran Kennedy.

The Offaly TD had urged male members of the party to trust their female counterparts and support the repeal of the Eighth Amendment.

She told the meeting that women would be the ones having to make hard choices.

Her contribution sparked a flurry of responses from pro-life TDs and some who have yet to declare a position on the referendum.

One TD said Ms Corcoran Kennedy's comments were "arrogant", and she had no idea about the level of upset she had caused in the party.

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"She might as well have been wagging her finger at us," said one person who attended the meeting on Wednesday evening, which was held shortly after the Government confirmed May 25 as polling day.

Another said Ms Corcoran Kennedy's heart was "in the right place" but it "started a row".

Dinosaur

The exchanges took up most of the two-hour meeting, which was also used by Taoiseach Leo Varadkar to brief the party on his decision to expel a Russian diplomat.

It is understood Junior Rural Affairs Minister Sean Kyne spoke up at to say people should not be "preaching" and every view should be respected.

Junior Finance Minister Patrick O'Donovan told the meeting he could not let Ms Corcoran Kennedy's comments go unchallenged.

He said there was an attempt to label those opposed to changes in the law as "Luddites" or part of a "dinosaur brigade".

Senator Michelle Mulherin complained about recent leaks from a previous meeting of female representatives, saying: "Don't talk to me about solidarity among women."

Junior International Development Minister Ciaran Cannon said the party reflected Irish society as a whole, adding that he was deeply respectful of women and knew many who were opposed to repeal.

Unlike Fianna Fail, where major splits on the issue have played out in the Dail chamber, Fine Gael has maintained a largely united front in public on the abortion issue.

As things stand, 23 Fine Gael TDs are supporting abortion up to 12 weeks, 10 say no and 17 are undeclared. However, there have been no significant disputes among the two camps.

Party sources expressed concern that fresh debate had "awoken some sleeping bears".

Yesterday, the campaign against repealing the Eighth Amendment was officially launched at the Gresham Hotel.

Lead speaker Dr John Mona- ghan claimed repeal would not make women safer in pregnancy "but will only change how politicians may legalise abortion".
A quick-thinking couple have been hailed as heroes after they saved the life of a heart attack victim in Drogheda.

Mark McDonnell and Laura Armada Buch, from Termonfeckin, Co Louth, jumped into action when the man collapsed while driving in a packed car park at the M1 Retail Park.

Mark (46) managed to stop the swerving car before it crashed, while Laura then performed CPR on the man for 10 minutes until the emergency services arrived.

Their heroics also led to an adorable video, taken afterwards by Mark who caught their four-year old son Izan copying his mum - by giving CPR to a hot water bottle at home.

Swerved

The drama unfolded when Mark and Laura and their two sons, Dylan (8) and Izan, were walking back from a kids' swimming lesson at the retail park.

Laura (37) said it all happened "in a flash" as she was putting the children in the car.

"Mark noticed a car that was making a funny noise coming around the corner," she said.

"All of a sudden he took off over to the car when he saw the driver fall back in the seat.

"As the car swerved, he pulled on the handbrake and took the keys from the ignition. I saw him ringing the emergency services and ran to see if I could help".

Luckily Laura, a fitness instructor, is trained in first aid.

"The man had turned purple in the face and was struggling to breathe. I was looking for a pulse but couldn't find one," she added.

"Other people had come on the scene at that point and I asked some men to lift him out of the car so I could perform CPR. The emergency services were also telling Mark to keep up CPR until the ambulance arrived."

Laura continued trying to resuscitate the victim for 10 minutes until paramedics got a pulse with a defibrillator and rushed him to hospital.

"It all happened so fast. His wife was also in the car and I think she was in a shocked state," she added. "Other people were making sure she was OK. I just remember thinking that he may not make it, but that I was going to give it my best shot to save him."

The couple were delighted to hear that the man was transferred to a Dublin hospital for a triple bypass and is now recovering well.

"His wife got in touch to thank us and her husband wants to meet up when he's able," said Laura.

The man's wife said he was recovering and that they would like to say a huge thank you to Laura and Mark.

Dylan and Izan had seen the drama unfold and later that evening Mark caught his younger son performing CPR on a hot water bottle.

In the clip, Izan explains to his dad that he saw his mum save a man's life and he would do CPR too until the man started breathing, adding that the hot water bottle unfortunately had no bones.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said the rise in homelessness is "extremely disturbing".

The Government has come under serious pressure over the latest figures that show nearly 10,000 people are in emergency accommodation.

Mr Varadkar accepted the situation is an emergency, but also hit back and was accused of "cheek" for claiming that opposition policies would make the problem worse.

He told the Oireachtas Fin-ance Committee that tackling housing and homelessness is a priority.

Sinn Fein TD Pearse Doherty challenged him on how such a claim could be taken seriously, given the latest figures showing nearly 10,000 homeless people.

Mr Varadkar pointed to the 140m spent on emergency accommodation and plans in Project Ireland 2040 to build 110,000 social homes as proof of the level of government commitment on the issue.

He said it is "very frustrating that we haven't seen sufficient progress to date", but insisted it was not down to lack of prioritisation, funding or effort.

The Taoiseach said the Government will have to look into why its policies are not having the desired effect.

He also claimed that opposition policies such as hard rent caps would reduce housing supply and "would make a bad situation much worse".

Tinkering

Mr Doherty responded to the remarks, saying: "You've some cheek on you on a day under your stewardship that there's 10,000 people in emergency accommodation."

Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy was also challenged on the issue of homelessness in the Dail.

Fianna Fail's outgoing housing spokesman Barry Cowen argued that Fine Gael's app-roach to the housing crisis has "lacked urgency" and is "tinkering" with the problem instead of dealing with it in a comprehensive manner.

He pointed out that the Confidence and Supply deal his party did with Fine Gael included an agreement to "substantially increase the provision of social housing".

He said Mr Murphy had mentioned some examples of individual schemes, but there is no template for how to bring this about nationwide.

Mr Murphy said the Government is focusing on developing affordable housing where it is needed most.

He said 25m was being allocated to local authorities to facilitate the development of infrastructure to develop 4,000 new homes on State-owned land and promised the delivery of rental projects for low-income families.

Mr Murphy said he is looking at practices in major cities such as Vienna and how they can impact on affordability and security for tenants.
Hundreds of protesters attended a rally in Dublin city centre yesterday to express solidarity with the woman at the centre of the Belfast rape trial.

Details of the event had been widely circulated on social media with many using the hashtag #IBelieveHer.

A large crowd gathered at The Spire in Dublin at 12.30pm.

Many demonstrators wanted to express solidarity not only with the woman at the centre of the case, but others too who have been affected by the issues raised during the distressing trial.

The rally lasted just over an hour and a heavy shower did not deter the protesters.

Anna Duke (22), from Blessington, Co Wicklow, told the Herald she wanted to show support for the woman at the centre of the case, and all women affected by it.

"It's time change is made," she said. "I think the turnout is amazing."

Also at the rally was Ken McCue (63), from Smithfield, who said he would like to see ethics and human rights courses for schoolchildren aged 12 upwards.

He teaches cultural planning, human rights and ethics and believes that such courses would help children to learn about respect.

"It should continue right through their schooling, especially the ones involved in sport," he said.

Dubliner Iseult Deane (21) said she thought the turnout was impressive.

"I think it's good to see so many young people out here. I think it's really powerful and good," she added.

A number of similar events were held across the country yesterday.

The four men who were on trial in the high-profile case were acquitted on Wednesday.

Rugby stars Paddy Jackson (26) and Stuart Olding (25) were found not guilty of raping a young student at a house party.

Spotlight

Mr Jackson was also found not guilty of sexually assaulting the then 19-year-old woman.

Blane McIlroy (26) was found not guilty of exposure, while Rory Harrison (25) was acquitted of perverting the course of justice and withholding information.

In the aftermath of the case, the spotlight has fallen on how the legal system deals with people coming forward with allegations of rape.
Across Utah County, there are people waiting for donations, whether it is a needed organ, bone marrow or blood that will save their lives. Others have given these life-saving donations to complete strangers. Gift of Life highlights those involved in the medical donation process.

Timpanogos Regional Hospital is used to seeing moms come in carrying garbage bags full of pumped breast milk. Its a situation becoming more and more common.

I love it when I see them bringing in a big cooler on a kids wagon, said Dixie McClain, the director of the neonatal intensive care unit at the Orem hospital.

There were 35,887 ounces of breast milk donated at the hospital from when it became a breast milk depot in March 2013 to the beginning of this year. There have been 6,519 ounces of breast milk donated this year.

Hospital staff attribute the increase to more awareness about breast milk donations and changing perceptions of breastfeeding.

Back in the day, everyone was, Dont nurse your baby, and now everybody is promoting it and its a great way to go, said Consuelo Romero, a patient care tech at the hospital. Its inexpensive and you know what youre eating so you know what your baby is getting.

Breast milk donations are shipped to the Mothers Milk Bank in Denver, where the milk is processed, pasteurized and redistributed to hospitals.

Donating doesnt mean the hospital gets free milk from the bank, but donations do help the hospital rise on the banks priority list for receiving breast milk.

Donated breast milk provides human milk to babies whose mothers cant supply it themselves. The milk leads to shorter hospital stays for NICU babies and helps prime their immature and fragile intestinal systems to prevent infections.

McClain attributes the use of breast milk to a reason why the hospital has a low rate of necrotizing enterocolitis, a disease that impacts the intestines of premature babies.

The earlier the baby is, the more important it is to have the banked milk, McClain said. It is so much easier on their intestinal system.

Donations come in waves, and the hospital brings up the idea of donation to moms. McClain said most are willing to donate.

An ounce of milk can feed a premature baby for a day.

The hospital is adding a second freezer that will store more donated milk received from the Colorado milk bank. McClain said the donated milk doesnt have as many immunities in it as milk directly from a babys mother, but babies still thrive on it.

A blood draw is required before a mothers milk can be used by a milk bank, although donations can be dropped off before tests are completed. Donors must not be smokers and cant be taking medications on a regular basis.

Across Utah County, there are people waiting for donations, whether it is a needed organ, bone marrow or blood that will save their lives. Others have given these life-saving donations to complete strangers. Gift of Life highlights those involved in the medical donation process.
Friday night highlights: South edges Catoctin in wild finish

After a relatively tame first three quarters, the fourth quarter was anything but as South Hagerstown beat Catoctin at School Stadium.
Sangeeta Rani Sharma | HENB | Mumbai : Hindu families living in the Sindh province of Pakistan, near the border with Rajasthan, flock to India to find a safe haven. However, they become shattered as the CID and administration put an obstacle to their India dreams and they are forced to return. Upon going back, they are forced to convert to Islam in order to save their women and family. If they dont yield, they are subject to severe torture.

The conversion figures are staggering : Over 500 Hindus were to be converted to Islam in the border village of Matali village of Sindh province on March 25. About one thousand Pakistani migrants came to take shelter in Jodhpur and other parts of Rajasthan in the last two years.

They had come here with the intention of settling here but according to data provided by the CID and the administration in the Rajasthan High Court, 968 Hindu citizens from Pakistan were deported in the last two years.

The most hapless among them is the family of Chandu Bhil. Seeing CIDs attempt to send residents to Pakistan forcibly, he had knocked the high court door and despite a holiday, a special bench of the Rajasthan High Court granted stay on his deportation.

But before that, the CID deported Chandu, his wife Dhami, son Bhagwan, daughter-in-law Dharma, grandson Jairam and granddaughter Kavita by the Thar Express from Jodhpur on August 5, 2017. Just before the court order was carried out, Thar Express reached the border. Now, the family is under pressure to accept Islam. So, many families like Thakurs, Hamiras, Bhagwans, Bhuras, Khushals, Dharmarams, and Nagtas, who had come to Jodhpur after facing religious and physical discrimination in Pakistan, were deported. In many villages, the Hindu population has started to disappear.

The news of religious conversion is highlighted in Pakistan media also.Hindu Singh Sodha, president of Seemant Lok Sangathan, who fights for Pak immigrants, said Hindus come with big hope but the CID bundles them back to Pakistan to face torture.

This is happening for a long time in villages which are adjacent to Rajasthan. He added that their visas are never extended. The Centre makes rules for the rehabilitation of displaced Hindus, but they are not followed at the district level.

Affected villages

This is happening for a long time in villages like Matali, Deepla Mithi, Nagar Parkar, Kunri, Umarkot, Samaro, Islampur, Chachro, Klaloi, Pitharo and other villages which are adjacent to Rajasthan.

Political Ploy

Ex President and Military General Pervez Musharrafs All Pakistan Muslim League is behind the scence of such mass conversion of Hindus in Sindh, as reported.

Source : Hindu Existence
For those of us who attempt to understand Pakistan fairly and objectively and not through the lens of Indian prejudice, Husain Haqqanis new book Reimagining Pakistan provides an unrivalled wealth of detailed analysis. His starting point is simple. Seventy years after its birth, Pakistan is a volatile semi-authoritarian, national security state, which has failed to run itself consistently under constitutional order or rule of law. His book is an attempt to answer why this is the case. The answer, he says, might lie in understanding Pakistani nationalism and the sentiment it has generated and sustained.

Perhaps because it broke away from the rest of India, Pakistan has sought to define itself as not India, disowning any similarity or linkage. Thus, as Haqqani says, Islam, hostility to India and the Urdu language were identified as the corner stones of [its] national ideology.

However, this Islam-based ideology has had serious implications for the sort of country Pakistan became. This is because the emphasis on the centrality of Islam not only distinguished Pakistan from Hindu India but also denied other identities in terms of region, language and religious sect. It propelled the country to turn its back on South Asia and seek to identify with the Middle East. It also drove the need to create a false history that would stretch back the origins of Pakistan centuries beyond 1947.

Worse, this deliberately contrived national ideology left no room to answer critical questions that Pakistan faced at independence. How Islamic was this country meant to be? What does an Islamic state in the 20th century actually mean? What should be the balance of power between the central government and the provinces representing different ethnic groups? And must Pakistan be eternally hostile to India? When these unaddressed questions created insecurity, the response was to further push the country into the embrace of its self-defined Islamic ideology.

Not surprisingly, in these circumstances, the military, the only fully functional institution inherited by the country  [at its] founding, soon took centre stage. The armys disciplined and well organised structure, its moral standing above petty politics and its ethnic homogeneity differentiated it from the squabbling politicians and civil servants, who ruled after Jinnahs death. And soon the army defined itself not just as the protector of Pakistans borders but, more critically, as the protector of its ideology.

In turn, the army took further the ideological reliance on Islam. As Gen. Zia, the architect of Islamisation put it, this was Pakistans raison detre. If Islam was not central to the idea of Pakistan we might as well have stayed with India. As a consequence, Haqqani says, Pakistani officers [started to] consider the most regressive clerics patriotic because  they would never make common cause with Pakistans external enemies  liberal and secular thinkers, on the other hand, [became] permanently suspect.

The loss of East Pakistan only further entrenched this Islam-based nationalism. Instead of lessening [the] reliance of religion as a factor in politics  [it] moved Pakistan towards a closer embrace of ideological nation building. The more Pakistan floundered, politically, economically or in terms of its own internal regional conflicts, the more it stressed on Islam to keep the country united.

Haqqani calls this Pakistans long trek of folly. Today, so far has it gone that Pakistani text books carry the following ludicrous sentences:

Pakistan came to be established for the first time when the Arabs under Muhammad bin Qasim occupied Sind and Multan.

By the 13th century Pakistan had spread to include the whole of northern India and Bengal under the Khiljis.

There are even times when the deliberate fashioning of Pakistan as an Islamic state took on comic proportions. Under Gen. Zia, urinals in public bathrooms at airports and train stations were banned on the grounds that urinating while standing is a violation of Islamic norms!

More contemporaneously, the reliance on Islam as its national ideology also explains Pakistans attitude to jihad and terror. And this is unlikely to significantly change until Pakistan redefines itself. For now, as Haqqani puts it, Pakistan has ended up earning for itself the reputation for being home to the worlds angriest Muslims. And his conclusion is blunt: Pakistanis have proven to be their worst enemies.

This is why Haqqani believes the reimagining of Pakistan is necessary. Only then can it find peace with itself and its neighbours and stop being viewed by the rest of the world as a troubled state, a failing state or a crisis state.

The views expressed are personal
If theres a feminist figure from the Bible for the #MeToo era, it could very well be Mary Magdalene. The major character in the life of Jesus was long maligned in the West and portrayed as a reformed former prostitute.

But scholars have adopted a different approach more recently, viewing her as a strong, independent woman who supported Jesus financially and spiritually.

The New Testament tells how Jesus cast demons out of her. She then accompanied Jesus in his ministry around the Galilee, before witnessing his crucifixion, burial and resurrection in Jerusalem, which is being commemorated by Christians this week and next. The Roman Catholic Church and Western Christian churches observe Easter on Sunday, Eastern Orthodox Christians a week later.

A sculpture of Mary Magdalene and Jesus on display at the Magdala center. (AP)

Pope Francis took the biggest step yet to rehabilitate Mary Magdalenes image by declaring a major feast day in her honour on June 22. His 2016 decree put the woman who first proclaimed Jesus resurrection on par with the liturgical celebrations of the male apostles.

By doing this, he established the absolute equality of Mary Magdalene to the apostles, something that has never been done before and is also a point of no return for women in the church, said Lucetta Scarrafia, editor of the Vatican-published Women Church World monthly magazine.

For centuries, Western Christianity depicted Mary Magdalene as a former prostitute, a narrative that began in the sixth century. Pope Gregory the Great conflated Magdalene with an anonymous sinful woman mentioned in the chapter before shes introduced in the Gospel of Luke.

Only in 1969 did the Catholic Church roll back centuries of labelling Mary Magdalene as such, stating she was distinct from the sinful woman mentioned in Luke. Eastern Orthodox Christians never depicted her as a prostitute. Mary Magdalene was from a thriving fishing village on the Sea of Galilee named Magdala, which has been excavated extensively by archaeologists in recent decades.

The site is home to the oldest known synagogue in the Galilee, where a stone bearing the likeness of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem was found, as well as a marketplace, ritual baths and fishing harbour. Marcela Zapata-Meza, the lead archaeologist at the site, has called it the Israeli Pompeii.

Tourists visit the Magdala center, on the Sea of Galilee in Migdal. (AP)

Modern scholars have adopted a different understanding of Mary Magdalene, and regard her as one of Jesus most prominent disciples, who stood by him to the end while his most devoted apostles did not. Historical tradition says she was a prostitute from Magdala, said Jennifer Ristine, director of the Magdalena Institute at Magdala. Reanalysing that reputation that she had we can see she was probably a woman of greater social status, higher social status, a woman of wealth who accompanied Jesus as we see in Luke 8:2, helping Jesus and his disciples with her own resources.

Nonetheless, the image of Mary Magdalene as a licentious, sexualised woman has persisted in Western culture, including in Jesus Christ Superstar and The Da Vinci Code. Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, the Vaticans culture minister, said Mary Magdalenes reputation was sullied by her depiction in art over the centuries.

Art history made her become a prostitute, which is something that is not present in the Gospels, he said, adding that she also has been portrayed as Jesus wife. It is important to find the real face of Mary Magdalene, who is a woman who represents the importance of the female aspect on the side of Christ, he said.

The Gospel of Mary, an early Christian text, depicted her as a visionary who received secret revelations and knowledge from Jesus. Claire Pfann, academic dean at the University of the Holy Land in Jerusalem, said Mary Magdalene must be seen for what she was: An independent woman who has discretionary time and wealth from the city of Magdala, not identified by a father or a husband, whose life was dramatically restored, healed, changed by her encounter with this Jewish itinerant teacher and healer, Jesus of Nazareth. It takes a long time for serious scholarship to trickle down to the popular level, she added.

A new film on the life of Mary Magdalene, starring Rooney Mara in the title role, Joaquin Phoenix as Jesus and Chiwetel Ejiofor as Peter the Apostle, recasts her in that mould. The film has been released in Europe and Australia. A release date for the United States has not been set, following the collapse of its original distributor, the Weinstein Co., after a series of sexual harassment and assault claims against founder Harvey Weinstein. The rash of allegations made against Weinstein spawned the global #MeToo movement.

Ristine said Mary Magdalene plays a critical role in the New Testament and carries an essential pivotal message of Christianity. Why is a woman there, giving testimony to that in a culture where woman are just not paid attention to, or not placed as witnesses? Ristine asked. Well, this speaks very strongly to women today, that the power of their witness, the power of their testimony to speak up for a truth, can have effects that ripple down through the centuries.

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The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has accused Bhopal central jail officers of subjecting suspected operatives of the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) to physical and mental torture after sending two three-member panels to the prison last year to investigate possible human rights violations.

The NHRC teams visited the prison, where 21 alleged SIMI operatives were lodged, in June and December. Surveillance of the prisoners increased significantly after eight of their colleagues escaped under controversial circumstances in October 2016 only to be killed in a police encounter soon afterwards. The rights watchdog sent the teams to the prison to probe complaints of torture and mistreatment levelled by relatives of these inmates.

The teams found that the 21 were being mentally and physically tortured. The reports also noted that repeated calls to attention in the middle of the night prevented the inmates from sleeping properly.

The surveillance on the alleged SIMI operatives increased significantly after eight of their colleagues escaped under controversial circumstances in October 2016, only to be killed in a police encounter soon afterwards. The rights watchdog had deployed the team following complaints of torture and mistreatment levelled by relatives of these inmates.

The NHRC teams further stated that the allegations of assault and tortured levelled by the alleged SIMI operatives against the prison authorities were not unfounded, and they were often made to shout anti-religious slogans against their will.

The jail doctor seems to have helped the jail authorities cover up instances of torture by omitting crucial details from their medical records, the findings further stated.

The initial NHRC report, filed after the first teams visit to the prison in June, offered a bleak picture of the circumstances in which the alleged SIMI operatives were forced to exist. It stated: After the jail break, prison conditions have changed drastically. These inmates are allowed to go to their cells only for 10-15 minutes. They are not allowed to talk to anyone. Their cells are fitted with exhaust fans, but they are not switched on. The injury marks on the prisoners bodies could only have been a result of assaults in jail. The prisoners are required to give khairiyat (a way of showing ones presence in the barracks in response to the sentrys call) every four hours, but in the Bhopal jail, it is done every one-to-two hours  depriving them of necessary sleep.

Another NHRC team that visited the prison in December 2017 didnt find any signs of physical torture, but noted that the inmates were being mentally tortured through solitary confinement.

SIMI prisoners are not permitted to converse with each other. Two prisoners alleged that they were forced to chant anti-religious slogans, and jail staffers often pulled at their beards. They also complained that the guards would verbally abuse them and disrespect the holy book, it observed, adding that the human rights of these inmates were being violated in the name of security.

The first NHRC teams report had asked the state government to constitute a high-level committee to address the grievances of the 21 SIMI operatives lodged in the Bhopal central jail.

However, prison authorities insisted that the rights watchdogs findings do not reflect the whole truth. The NHRC team has submitted a one-sided report of their June visit. We submitted a point-to-point rebuttal of its first report in January 2018. The matter is pending before the NHRC. We were asked to respond to the first report only, said director general (jail department) Sanjay Choudhary.

His denial, however, failed to reassure the prisoners relatives. Our loved ones in the Bhopal jail are suffering from several behavioural disorders, such as anxiety, depression and frustration, due to solitary confinement. Even the jail doctor admitted that conditions like these cause some prisoners to become aggressive and others to descend into depression, said Saira Bano, mother of one of the inmates.

Her concerns were echoed by Madhuri, a social activist. Such shocking treatment of prisoners, especially undertrials, is not only illegal but also unconstitutional and violative of Supreme Court guidelines. It raises serious questions regarding the erosion of our democratic values in recent years. The report was sent to the state government in October, and the fact that no action was taken in this regard indicates its complicity in the matter, she said.

Madhuri also expressed dismay over the NHRC not taking any action in this regard. We urge them to do so at the earliest. The report has been languishing before the commission for the last nine months, she said.

The social activist further said that while the NHRC team wants the constitution of a high-level committee under a secretary-level officer to look into the grievances of these inmates, their relatives are in favour of an independent committee presided by a retired judge.

The NHRC had held full-bench hearings in this regard on January 3 and March 12.

Meanwhile, female family members of the undertrials have alleged that prison officials misbehave with them when they go on visits. During the meeting, we were asked to submit our photographs and Aadhaar card. Some of them even photographed us with their mobile phones after making us remove our veils. We feel harassed every time when we go there, said Amreen Bi, a resident of Maheedpur in Ujjain.

Advocate Syed Sajid Ali said undertrials cannot be kept in solitary confinement under any circumstances. Even with convicted prisoners (even those under death sentence), it can be done only for a fixed number of months, he added.

Another advocate, Sajid Siddiqui, said lawyers were not being allowed to meet their clients in private  thereby affecting their legal defence strategies.
Senior Congress leader Jyotiraditya Scindia on Friday hit out at the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government for failing to act in the Preeti Raghuvanshi suicide case, which is becoming a matter of major embarrassment for the BJP government and party.

Preeti, who claimed to be the wife of Girjesh Pratap Singh, who is the son of state PWD minister Rampal Singh, had committed suicide on March 17 morning as she was not being accepted by Rampals family.

There is simmering rage within the Raghuvanshi community, which claims to be the descendents of lord Ram, over this issue. Efforts are on within the community to unite and act as a pressure group to force the government to act against Rampal and his son.

At Preeti Raghuvanshis single-storied house in Udaipura, which incidentally is barely 50 meters away from Rampal Singhs house, Scindia met the victims family members and assured them of his full support in their fight. I am here to tell you that I will fight till the end to give justice to Preeti, he said and added that if needed he would raise the issue in Parliament.

Talking to the media after meeting Preetis family members at Udaipura in Raisen district, Scindia said, It has been over two weeks and the chief minister who talks about providing security for women at all cost has not issued one statement in this regard and neither has he taken any action.

Scindia said there appeared to be two different rules  one for the common people and one for the big people and ministers of the government.

He said this was not only a political question, but also a question mark on the working of the police, which had failed to even register an FIR in this case.

Without naming anyone, Scindia said, Preetis family members are being threatened and told to change their statement. We are with the family in their fight for justice, he added.

The Congress has been demanding the removal of Ramlal from the cabinet and registration of case against him and his son Girjesh for abetment to suicide.

The Congress also tried to raise this issue in the state assembly during the just concluded budget session, but their efforts were stonewalled by the government. Later, the Congress marched to the governors house and handed over a memorandum on this issue. The party is also planning to hold a Nyay Yatra from Udaipura to Bhopal from April 5.
Actor Ayushmann Khurranas choice of films has always been exciting, beginning from when he started off with Vicky Donor in 2012 playing the role of a sperm donor. He followed this unusual attempt with movies such as Dum Laga Ke Haisha (2015), Bareilly Ki Barfi (2017), and a film dealing with erectile dysfunction, Shubh Mangal Saavdhan (2017).

His next line-up of films includes Badhaai Ho and Shoot the Piano Player (STPP). Explaining how starkly different both the movies are, Ayushmann says, Both are of completely different genres, different scripts, and [have] very different directors. Badhaai Ho is right up my alley, the space I own  quirky, slice-of-life films. Shoot the Piano Player, on the other hand, is heavy on thrills.

Watch: Ayushmann Khurrana wins the Breaking The Mould (Male) at HT Indias Most Stylish

Last day of shoot. #BadhaaiHo A post shared by Ayushmann Khurrana (@ayushmannk) on Mar 21, 2018 at 8:54am PDT

Having never done any stunts in any of his films before, was he a bit apprehensive when he had to do it in STPP? There are some stunts. But more than that, the film is heavy on thrills. Something [new] is happening in every scene of the film. Its not action-oriented, though I did a couple of stunts, like where I jump from the first floor without any harness. The stunt director taught me a trick, and the shot was okayed in one take.

Significant portions of Badhaai Ho were shot in Delhi, with his co-star Sanya Malhotra. Ayushmann is popularly believed to be a Delhi boy though he was born and raised in Chandigarh, Punjab.One reason could be the way he has always picked up the Delhi lingo effortlessly, but he reveals an interesting fact about his character in this film.

Watch: Can you dance like Ayushmann Khurrana, Sanya Malhotra on Tu Cheez Badi Hai? Watch video

He speaks in not one, but three different accents!In this film, I play an interesting character, who is desi, and switches accents when dealing with different kind of people. So he speaks in urban Delhi lingo, in a Meerut accent, the UP type, and Haryanvi. Its a mixture of three accents, says Ayushmann, for whom Delhi is like his second home.

I end up shooting here almost every year! It becomes exciting for me as an actor to cover Delhi every single time. This is my fourth film shot in the Capital. I have been coming here since 2012, and each time discover something new. Its a melting point of different cultures  Uttar Pradesh, Himachal, Bengali, South  its a cosmopolitan city, adds Ayushmann.

Interact with the author on Twitter/ @RishabhSuri02
Iranian filmmaker Majid Majidis, Beyond The Clouds, which is set in India, will release in 34 territories, including Pakistan. The film features Bollywood actor Shahid Kapoors younger brother Ishaan Khatter and Malavika Mohanan. Zee Studios International is taking the film to the foreign shores.

The film will see a 34 territory release including a wide release in Iran as well as over 70 screens in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) regions including Dubai, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, and Qatar, read a statement.

Apart from the GCC region, the film will also open in the US, Canada, UK, Netherlands, Belgium, Maldives, Luxembourg, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, East West and South Africa, Malaysia, Indonesia and Pakistan. Beyond The Clouds narrates a heart-warming tale of a brother and sister, and how they find happiness in separation and turbulent times. The film celebrates the triumph and adoration of life against a Mumbai backdrop.

Read: Baaghi 2 movie review: Goa bears Tiger Shroffs wrath and so do we

Produced by Zee Studios and Namah Pictures, the film will open in UAE and GCC regions on April 19. In North America, UK and Singapore, the film will release on April 20. The release date for Australia, New Zealand and Fiji is yet to be confirmed.

Vibha Chopra, Head - Zee Studios International (Film Marketing, Distribution and Acquisition), said, The popularity of Indian cinema, Hindi as well as other regional films, is rising at rapid pace. Majid Majidis films are those that are awaited by Indians as well as non-diaspora audience worldwide. And that is why the different approach to the film. The film has been marketed keeping in mind both these type of movie-goers. Content is what is key, around the globe. We have tapped 34 territories in the first phase of release for the film and are looking to go wider in phase two.

Read: Hichki movie review: Rani Mukerjis well-intentioned film could have been so much more

In the phase two, the film will open in Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Taiwan, Japan, Korea and Russia. With music by A.R. Rahman, cinematography by Anil Mehta and Hindi dialogues by Vishal Bhardwaj, it will open in India on April 20.
Actor Taapsee Pannu, who has worked in almost three dozen films in three languages in just eight years, reveals that she didnt even want to be an actor, initially, when she signed her first film.

I didnt even plan Bollywood! I did my first film just to experience something new, and not start a career! says Taapsee. I was filming Jhummandi Naadam (2010, Telugu), my debut film, and Aadukalam (2011, Tamil) at the same time. After both released, and when I saw the audience reaction to the first one, which I felt I was really bad in, I thought that if it can turn out like this even without really aiming or planning for it, what if I work on it like a proper career? Thats where it started, she says Taapsee.

Read: Manmarziyan first look: Abhishek Bachchans Sikh look makes dad Amitabh proud

While established in the south Indian film industries, she got noticed in Bollywood only in 2015, as an undercover agent in the Akshay Kumar-starrer Baby. Then, 2016 saw her in Pink, and Taapsee was instantly a big Bollywood star  and also an acclaimed actor. Shell be seen next in Manmarziyan with Abhishek Bachchan and Vicky Kaushal.

Taapsees biggest commercial hit till date is the multi-starrer Judwaa 2, in which she was seen with Varun Dhawan and Jacqueline Fernandez. Her films Chashme Baddoor (2013) and Pink also had ensemble casts, as did the 2017 film Ghazi Attack  in the last one, Taapsee had co-stars who were all her industry seniors and big names in their own space. Does she ever feel apprehensive about being lost in a group? Taapsee says, Working in a hugely, commercially successful film benefits everyone. I got a 10-minute role in Baby, but it landed me a title role [in Naam Shabana, 2017], which a lot of actresses dont get even after working for decades. What matters is how good you are in the screen space you get.

Read: Heres why Taapsee Pannu has gained weight while filming for Mammarziyan

She adds that playing safe isnt an option for her anymore. Agar humein safe play karna hota, toh yahaan pe nahi aate (If I had to play safe, I wouldnt be in this career! says the actor, who went to college to study computer engineering. We have to jump into the competition, and prove ourselves every moment.

Interact with the author on Twitter/ @RishabhSuri02
In most of the films that actor Varun Sharma has been part of  Fukrey (2013), Dilwale (2015), Raabta and Fukrey Returns (2017)  he has been cast in a supporting role. However, hes effortlessly managed to get noticed and garner appreciation, and thats why he isnt complaining.

Asked if he ever felt that the lead hero and supporting cast divide affects the craft, on the whole, Varun shares, I feel its the people who have these things in their heads and they have created such a divide. But, in the past one decade, most films have been aspirational. Jo hum zindagi mein nahi kar sakte, woh hum screen par dekh lete hain (What we cant do in real life, we get to experience that in films). And when the audience connects with this real cinema, it changes the whole ball game.

Read: Govinda teams up with Varun Sharma for Fryday, see poster

The actor, who is shooting for Arjun Patiala that also stars actors Kriti Sanon and Diljit Dosanjh, adds that its this relatable cinema that has made way for more opportunities for actors like him along with budding directors and musicians. If you are good and your character is strong, its there on the poster. Fukrey, for instance, was a story of four boys and all of them were as important as leads. Lines are blurring with better films being made otherwise we wouldnt have a Gangs of Wasseypur or a Pyaar Ka Punchnama or a Jolly LLB, he quips.

Hailing from Jalandhar, Varun admits that he never imagined he would achieve whatever he has so far, in Bollywood. But did he ever wish that he gets cast in a lead role in a film? I never thought that on a Mumbai highway, I would get to see a poster of a film with me on it. It gives me such a high. So, I feel yeh ho gaya na, toh baki cheezen bhi ho jayengi. As for playing a lead role, well, if the content is great and if it requires a particular actor to be a part of that script, no one can take that away from you, he says.

Read: Varun Sharma on being called Chucha from Fukrey: How many actors do you know by their on-screen characters names?

Varun also points that a film has to be looked at in a totality. I dont get bogged down by the length of my character in a film. When a film is made with strong characters, great script and amazing makers, every one will eventually get noticed. Whether its the lead or second lead or whatever, it has to be substantial enough.

Interact with Monika Rawal Kukreja at Twitter/@monikarawal
Reimagining Pakistan, Husain Haqqani, Rs 699, 336pp, Harper Collins.

The transformation of East Pakistan into Bangladesh should have been an opportunity to revise the two-nation theory and the ideology of Pakistan. The Bengalis had proved that ethnicity and demands for a rightful share of the countrys resources was a stronger factor in determining their nationalism than Islam. West Pakistani soldiers, on the other hand, had demonstrated how a shared faith did not prevent them from committing atrocities against fellow citizens whom they considered lesser Muslims or lesser Pakistanis. But instead of lessening reliance of religion as a factor in politics, the loss of East Pakistan only moved Pakistan towards a closer embrace of ideological nation building.

With East Pakistan gone, Pakistan lost the moderating influence of secular Bengali politicians. Punjab that had been the heartland of religious politics now constituted the majority in a new Pakistan. Pakistan was now geographically compact, with a dominant ethnic group (the Punjabis) and a military that sought to avenge its humiliation in Bangladesh. Ethnic Baloch and Pashtun politicians were the last remaining secularists but they could not hope to have any national influence. Bhutto, the consummate politician, decided that he would implement his plan for a socialist economy with a stronger dose of religious fervour. He believed that this was what the people wanted and he was the man to give it to them...

Bhutto portrayed himself, in the words of political scientist Anwar Syed, as a Socialist Servant of Islam. To rebut the argument of his Islamist opponents that socialism was antithetical to God and religion, Bhutto advertised his personal dedication to Islam and insisted that he was a good Muslim. He said, he was proud of being a Muslim; indeed, he was first a Muslim and then a Pakistani.

Bhutto liked to narrate how, as foreign minister during the 1965 war, he had resisted India and chased its foreign minister out of the Security Council, which could only be possible because he was a servant of Islam. He also insisted that Islam is the basis of Pakistan and if a political party did not make Islam the main pillar of its ideology, then that party would not be a Pakistani party. It would be an alien party.

By 1974, Bhutto had gradually phased out the more secular left-wing members of his PPP from power. Socialist intellectuals with middle-class backgrounds made way for traditional landowners who had now joined the party. The PPPs then secretary general, Mubashir Hasan, wrote later that he observed Bhuttos tilt towards an obscurantist interpretation of Islam. The first major manifestation of that inclination in constitutional and legal terms occurred when Islamist groups rioted against the Ahmadi sect. The riots began after a clash in May between Islamist and Ahmadi students at the railway station of Rabwah, the town where the Ahmadi sect has its headquarters.

Islamist demands against the Ahmadis were no different this time around than they had been almost two decades earlier. But in 1953, Prime Minister Nazimuddin had been willing to call in the army to stop the rioters and Justice Munir had written his report pointing out the problem with the state accepting demands to define which sect was or was not Islamic. Now, Bhutto was unwilling to follow in Nazimuddins footsteps and there was no one of Munirs stature to remind the government that it should not allow clerics to dictate legislation.

Indira Gandhi(R) with Pakistani President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (C) and his daughter Benazir Bhutto. (HT Photo)

Even though the Ahmadis had, as a community, backed Bhutto in the 1970 election, Bhutto decided to join the religious parties he had defeated at the polls in amending Pakistans constitution (framed only a year earlier) to define Muslim in a way that specifically excluded Ahmadis from the fold of Islam. The Islamists got their biggest legislative victory since the Objectives Resolution and that too after losing a general election.

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Pakistan went to polls for a second time in 1977, with consequences almost as monumental as the last time. Nine opposition parties, including a unified Muslim League and three religious parties, came together in the Pakistan National Alliance (PNA) to challenge Bhuttos PPP. The alliances rallies drew large crowds, especially in large cities upset with Bhuttos authoritarian streak. Although at least one liberal and one major left-wing party were part of the PNA, its campaign was driven by the Islamists. Bhutto countered that by emphasizing religious issues himself.

The PPP manifesto promised to ensure that Friday is observed as the weekly holiday instead of Sunday, make the teaching of the Holy Quran an integral part of eminence as a centre of community life, establish a federal Ulema academy and other institutions and a variety of other concessions to Islamic sentiment. The closing weeks of the spring campaign found each side asserting its past service to Islam and its promise to bring about an Islamic system of government more quickly or more effectively, observed Leonard Binder. A Pakistani newspaper, in a rare case of dissent from this trend wrote in an editorial, For Gods sake leave Islam alone...

The religiously charged election resulted in a PPP victory, which was immediately contested by the PNA with violent street protests. Most independent observers pointed out that the PPP had padded its victory, not stolen the election. The PNA allegations of election rigging were exaggerated as was the extent of the PPPs electoral victory. But as Marvin Weinbaum noted, whatever the extent or origins of the election irregularities, in just a matter of days the legitimacy of the entire electoral exercise had been irretrievably lost.

The dispute over election results might have been resolved through a political settlement but instead, the PNAs protests ended up demanding Bhuttos resignation and the full enforcement of Nizam-e-Mustafa (The system of the Prophet). Bhutto was accused of being the antithesis of an Islamic leader and protestors demanded a more pious leadership for a more Islamic Pakistan.

A month into the protests, Bhutto announced that Sharia law would be enforced in six months and declared immediate total prohibition on the use of alcohol, complete ban on gambling in all forms and [on] night clubs. His expectation that this would subside the passion of the protestors was not fulfilled. Eventually, the army stepped in and Gen. Zia-ul-Haq seized power in yet another military coup. Although he initially promised free and fair elections within ninety days, Zia went on to rule for eleven years, declaring Islamization as his principal objective. His dictatorship marked the pinnacle of Pakistans embrace of Islam as the national ideology.

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Zia had started Islamizing the army even before he toppled Bhutto and secured absolute power. One of his lieutenants, Lt Gen. Jahan Dad Khan, wrote that Zia was a devout Muslim for whom it was a matter of faith to propagate Islam wherever he could. He changed the Pakistan Armys motto to Iman (Faith), Taqwa (abstinence), Jihad Fi Sabeelillah (war in the way of God). According to Khan, Zia urged all ranks of the army during his visits to troops as well as in written instructions, to offer their prayers, preferably led by the commanders themselves at various levels. Religious education was included in the training programme and mosques and prayer halls were organized in all army units.

If Liaquat, Ayub, Yahya and Bhutto were non-practising Muslims using Islamic symbolism to bind the nation together, Zia was more overtly observant and visibly zealous in making Pakistan an Islamic state. Like all dictators invoking religion in statecraft, power was his goal and there was much hypocrisy in his religiosity. But he wrote laws and created institutions to empower Pakistans clerics in a way that had not been done before. Zias US-backed decision to launch jihad against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan also bred religious militancy, which Pakistan is dealing with to this day.

The most prominent legislation under Zia was perhaps the Hudood Ordinance in 1979, which introduced punishments such as stoning, flogging and amputation for crimes such as adultery (zina), theft and consuming alcohol. Although stoning and amputation were not actually carried out, there were several public floggings in Zias initial years. But keeping draconian laws on the books, even when punishments they specified were not fully carried out, had its own downside. The laws became an instrument of blackmail in a corrupt law enforcement system, adding to the burden of an already underfunded judiciary, which now had to deal with a plethora of cases relating to alleged un-Islamic behaviour.

Rajiv Gandhi(L) and Zia Ul Haq. (Virendra Prabhakar/HT Photo)

The adultery or Zina laws became contentious because they gave a mans testimony double the weight of a womans evidence. This weakened the position of women when they filed charges of rape. Several rape victims ended up being imprisoned for adultery under the law, raising the number of women prisoners nine years after the implementation of the Hudood Ordinance to around 6,000. The numbers dropped somewhat after Zias exit from power. But the stories of individuals wrongfully accused of adultery after being raped continue to fracture the positive image Pakistanis seek for their country abroad.

Other examples of Zias Islamization include the blasphemy laws, creation of shariat courts with powers to strike down and challenge laws that were deemed not Islamic, ordinances forbidding Ahmadis from engaging in any practice that might make them seem Muslims, and introduction of Zakat and Ushr religious taxes. Zia also ordered heads of government departments to organize prayers for their staff every day, creating an excuse for government officials to take time off from work ostensibly for prayer.

The ideology of Pakistan is Islam and only Islam, Zia once thundered, declaring secularism to be a threat to the country. There should be no misunderstanding on this score. We should in all sincerity accept Islam as Pakistans basic ideology, he said, adding that if that was not done Pakistan would be exposed to secular ideologies.

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Zias definition of Pakistans Islamic ideology precluded efforts to reconcile Islam with modern ideas, opposed anything remotely secular and unleashed the debates about who is a Muslim and what does it mean to enforce Islam in the twentieth century that Justice Munir and others had warned about in Pakistans first decade.

The ideology of Pakistan now had a more unambiguously theocratic orientation. It was also more specifically tied to defining Pakistan as a nation distinct from India. We are going back to Islam not by choice but by the force of circumstances, Zia declared, arguing that the raison detre of Pakistan stemmed from our cultural and moral awareness about Islam being our only salvation.

For Zia, explanations of Pakistans genesis in terms of protecting the subcontinents Muslim minority against Hindu domination and enforcement of Islamic laws were interconnected. If Islam was not central to the idea of Pakistan we might as well have stayed with India, he said. Islam was the fundamental factor in the creation of Pakistan. It comes before wheat and rice and everything else. I can grow more wheat; I can import wheat but I cannot import the correct moral values, Zia explained.

Under Zia, Pakistans judiciary and administration were infused with individuals with a decidedly Islamist outlook. The military, and especially the much enlarged Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, also assimilated the harder-line definition of Pakistans ideology. Unilateral amendments to the Constitution made it impossible for politicians and political parties to describe themselves as secular and still participate in the political process. Universities and the media were largely purged of individuals advocating a non-religious world view.

The scope of national debate was narrowed to a choice between various interpretations of Islam instead of being open to the more fundamental question of whether Islam should have such a central role in state policy or not.

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Although Zia was killed in a plane crash in 1988, Pakistan has not recovered from his Islamization. Since then, several civilian governments have been elected and, in between, another military dictatorship, this time led by Gen. Pervez Musharraf, ruled for almost nine years from 1999 to 2008. All of them, with some exceptions, have publicly acknowledged the need for rolling back Islamic militancy and rationalizing Islamic laws such as those relating to blasphemy. But no one has been able to systematically reopen debate on how Pakistan might make policy decisions based on economic and social necessities rather than on the basis of religious affectation.

Meanwhile, demands for further Islamization have not subsided. In 1989, the shariat court and the Supreme Court requested the Qisas and Diyat (Retribution and Compensation) Ordinance, which provided for those convicted of murder or assault to pay blood money to the victims family instead of going to prison. This amounted to putting the choice of prosecuting a murderers fate in the hands of the victims heirs, making it easier for the rich to buy freedom after a violent crime. It also led to a massive increase in honour killingswhere a male family member kills a woman or her lover for bringing dishonour to the family.

In case of honour killings, perpetrators could now act with impunity as they would face no legal consequences. After all, they perpetrate the crime and are also in a position to forgive themselves as the family of the victim. Over the last several years, a thousand or so honour killings are now reported in Pakistan each year. A well-known case is that of Samia Sarwar, whose family hired an assassin to kill her and later forgave the assassin and decided not to pursue any charges under Islamic law.

Author Husain Haqqani (Courtesy HarperCollins)

Even after such legislation, Pakistan is still not Islamic enough for some. During the early 1990s, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharifs government ordered TV actresses to wear veils over their heads, made the death penalty mandatory for individuals convicted of blasphemy or defiling Prophet Muhammads name and debated whether banks should be allowed to charge interest in violation of religious doctrine. A Washington Post report told of how the directors of a television play wrestled with a scene in which a womans head had to be covered with a scarf while her hair was being shampooed. The government also refused during the 1992 Olympics to allow womens swimming events to be shown on television because the swimsuits were considered too immodest for Islamic sensibilities.

More recently, in 2016, the official Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) announced that it was deliberating a model womens protection bill, which allows a husband to lightly beat his wife if needed and prohibits mixing of the genders in schools, hospitals and offices. The CII claimed that its proposed bill would give women all the rights given to them under Sharia, while prohibiting interaction between men and women (except those specifically permitted to meet by Islamic law) at recreational spots and offices. The law also sought to ban dance, music, and sculptures created in the name of art...

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Manufactured Outrage

According to British sociologist, Anthony D. Smith, nationalism often involves Rediscovering in the depths of the communal past a pristine state of true collective individuality, and nationalists strive to identify the spirit and values of some distant Golden Age. The challenge of Pakistani nationalism has always been to determine the countrys relationship with history. If Pakistan represents the revival of the Golden Age of Islam, it must come to terms with the fact that none of the major Islamic empires  from the Umayyads and Abbasids to the Ottomans and Safavids  were centred in todays Pakistan; If Pakistan represents the resurgence of Muslim sultans who ruled the subcontinent, they too ruled from Delhi, not Karachi or Islamabad.

08 December 1970 - Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, then the leader of the East Pakistan Powerful League casting his vote in Dhaka during the countrys first ever general election. The independence of Bangladesh was declared on 26 March 1971. (HT Photo)

Pakistan could always acknowledge the history of the territory that it incorporates as the history of Pakistans various peoples. This would involve recognizing the history of the Sindhis and the Baloch, of the Pashtuns and the Punjabis, as well as the various tribes and communities that inhabit todays Pakistan. The country would then be seen as a federation of diverse communities that became part of Pakistan at the end of British rule as a result of complex politics during the Indian independence struggle. But Pakistans leaders have always dreaded that this might lead to assertion of ethnic nationalism and irredentism, a concern accentuated by the separation of Bangladesh. For them, it is imperative that the creation of Pakistan be attributed, not to the political dynamic that started with the introduction of representative institutions under the Raj, but to an inherent incompatibility between the subcontinents Muslims and non-Muslims.

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The Pakistani version of history denies that a vast majority of Muslims in the subcontinent, including the parts that are now Pakistan, are members of local communities that converted to Islam at some point in time. Thus, Pakistanis view themselves as, simultaneously, the descendants of Arabs and Persians, as well as being related to the Turks and the Mongols. This creates such incongruities as a Punjabi belonging to the Jat tribe (that includes Hindus and Sikhs) lecturing Baloch or Sindhi students about his (and Pakistans) heritage being linked to the Muslims who ruled Cordoba and Granada in Spain. It is almost as if the creation of Pakistan has magically bridged differences of DNA, broken off ties to India and Hindus and linked people from the land of the Indus to wherever Muslims might have achieved greatness at any point of time in the last fifteen centuries.

Accepting that Pakistan is a newly conceived nation state that would create history as it goes forward, rather than historic appropriation or distorting the past, was a realistic alternative that was never given a chance. Pakistan could acknowledge its Indian heritage as well as the Muslim-ness of a majority of its population. It could recognize its diversity and admit that its lands have been ruled by different people at different times. It could even concede that some of its people, notably Punjabis, were later converts to Islam than others and some did not have a track record of self-rule while others did. Instead, successive Pakistani leaders and most of the countrys intelligentsia preferred to build the ideology of Pakistan on the twin pillars of Islam and antagonism towards India.

In recent years, the rise of Hindutva in India has helped Pakistans ideologues advance their case but even before that the fear of the other served as an important element in composing Pakistans nationalism. Envisioning India as a permanent enemy has led to militarism and militancya subject we will examine in detail in a subsequent chapter. But the adoption of Islam as the basis of nationhood, instead of as a system of beliefs designed for individual and collective spirituality or piety, has also contributed to social anarchy, political conflict and sectarian strife.

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Defining Pakistans nationalism through Islam exposed the country to the paradox of setting a national boundary upon a universalist faith. There were, as some scholars have pointed out, a range of civilizational levels as well as the range of Islamic pasts for Pakistanis to choose from, making the unifying faith a source of great contention. As a consequence, Pakistans Islamists, and often the state apparatus, have sought to manipulate religious sentiment to bolster nationalist feeling without intending to establish the Islamic state they constantly talk about.

Islamic ideology not only sets Pakistan apart from India, notwithstanding many commonalities of history, culture and social mores; it also musters a diverse nations energies in pushing back on policy pressures from major international powers. In some ways, it is a weapon amid weakness even if it is a gun held to ones own head. Constant indignation at real or perceived indignities against Islam are a useful device for Pakistans politicians and Islamists. They distract from substantive economic and social issues. Quite often, religious rage is generated through falsehoods and rumours, which are systematically deployed as vehicles of policy.

The periodic outbreaks of protest over insults to Prophet Muhammad and Islam are hardly spontaneous. In each case, the protesters do not react to something they see or become aware of in the ordinary course of life. Most of the objects of complainta remark made in private, a book published in the West or a movie that has not been released in Pakistanare not widely accessible and yet the public is whipped into a fury. The Islamists first introduce the objectionable material to their audience and then instigate outrage by characterizing it as part of a supposed worldwide conspiracy to denigrate Islam.

The emergence of social media and the swiftness of international communications have made it easier to choreograph global campaigns and, in Muslim-majority countries, Islamists tend to be among those who are most effectively organized to take advantage of technology for political ends. But Pakistan has been a centre of campaigns to protect Islam and the Prophets honour, each starting with frenzy and fizzling out without attaining its stated objective.

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Restoring Balance

Nations, like individuals, can sometimes be swayed by emotion in defining their self-interest. In Pakistans case, constructing national identity by means of a national ideology has severely constricted policy options. In its initial years, Pakistans leaders were able to juggle between ideological demands and the practical needs of running a modern nation. Now, however, Pakistan has gone too far down the ideological rabbit hole to be able to embrace pragmatic policies in any number of fields including economics, education and relations with the rest of the world. Pakistans leaders cite public opinion and religious sentiment as the justification for tolerating intolerance and bigotry while they do little to shape public opinion differently. In fact, Pakistans steady drift towards religious extremism is a result of state policies and the tendency of individuals and institutions to gain advantage by arousing emotion. On many occasions, when Pakistani leaders have made rational choices for worldly reasons, they have avoided explaining their reasoning to the general populace. Instead, religious reasons have been evoked constantly to keep Islamic passions alive even while making decisions such as joining Western alliances.

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It is important to note that on at least three occasions in Pakistans history, the determination of its leaders to push back prevailed against the demands of religious activists and clerics. On all three occasions, political and military leaders as well as judges of superior courts came together to prevent illiberal interpretations of religion from becoming the law of the land.

The first of these was the refusal in 1953 of Prime Minister Khawaja Nazimuddin to remove his foreign minister for being an Ahmadi and to declare the Ahmadi community a non-Muslim minority. Although the government was forced to impose martial law in Lahore to quell riots, it successfully made its case to the public that giving in to religious rioters would only lead to further sectarian divisions. The Pakistani military helped the civilian government in putting down the riots while the judiciary helped in the form of the Munir Commission report, which showed the obscurantism and contradictions of the clerics views.

Twenty-one years later, in 1974, the political leadership sought political advantage by appeasing clerics making anti-Ahmadi demands. Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto declared it an achievement that he secured support of all major political parties in amending the constitution to declare Ahmadis non-Muslim under law. A few years later, military ruler Zia legislated restrictions on Ahmadi professions of faith, making it a punishable offence for an Ahmadi to act in a manner that made him or her seem to be a Muslim. The judiciary upheld Zias laws on grounds that by acting like a Muslim or using nomenclature used by Muslims, an Ahmadi offended Muslims and, therefore, deserved the punishment prescribed by Zia. Had Bhutto, Zia and the judges acted like Pakistans leaders did in 1953, Pakistan could have avoided being saddled with a constitutional amendment and laws that are deemed by the rest of the world as violating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharifs decision in 1997 to restore Sunday as the weekly holiday instead of Friday was the second occasion on which the clerics opinion was rejected without much reaction. Pakistan had adopted Friday as the weekly holiday in 1977, in the last days of the elder Bhuttos rule, and had persisted with it for almost two decades. Exporters and traders argued that they lost at least three days a week in their business because while Friday was off in Pakistan, businesses were shut on Saturday and Sunday in countries that were Pakistans major trading partners.

Sharif, a businessman himself, accepted the business communitys argument, legislated the change of weekly holiday and reminded the clerics that there was no specific command in the Quran or Hadith mandating a Friday shutdown. The judiciary rejected pleas calling for reinstatement of the weekly holiday on Friday, settling the matter, which has not been brought up seriously by anyone ever since.

More recently, in 2016, the third instance of the Pakistani states defiance of clerical pressure manifested in the execution of Mumtaz Qadri, the police bodyguard who had killed Salmaan Taseer, governor of Punjab. Taseer was accused by Sunni clerics of supporting blasphemers when he supported amendments to Pakistans blasphemy laws and Qadri killed him to avenge the Prophets honour. Although Qadri admitted the crime, clerics described him as a man of faith acting in defence of Islam and demanded that he not be executed. Pakistans Supreme Court upheld a lower courts verdict against Qadri. Prime Minister Sharif enrolled the support of the army chief, General Raheel Sharif, to carry out the sentence in an effort to convince an otherwise sceptical world that Pakistan was turning away from Islamist extremism.

The ornate tomb of Mumtaz Qadri, who was hanged in February 2016 for murdering Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab, who criticized Pakistan's blasphemy law and defended a Christian woman. The ornate shrine is on the outskirts of Islamabad. (AFP)

Predictions that the decision to execute Qadri would plunge Pakistan into religious disturbances were proved wrong. Pakistans elite supported the execution so that other bodyguards would not, in future, threaten their protectees. Although some fanatics declared Qadri a saint and built a huge mausoleum over his grave, the general public accepted the view that individuals could not be allowed to act as judge, jury and executioner over blasphemy allegations.

These three instances show the potential for rational decision making if Pakistans politicians and the permanent state machinery resolve to ignore or marginalize Islamists. Turning away from the ideological model of state requires willingness to at least question Pakistans self-characterization as a citadel of Islam, and a global centre for Islamic revival. Beginning with Jinnahs 11 August 1947 address to the Constituent Assembly, there is sufficient ground to argue that Pakistan could as easily be envisaged as a modern territorial state as it has been visualized as an Islamic, ideological one.

Read more: Time for Pakistan to stop protecting terrorists, says former ambassador to US Husain Haqqani

A reimagined Pakistan would not necessarily embrace Jacobin secularism wherein the state attempts to restrict or limit the practice of religion. It would simply recognize that the individual can be pious, the society can be religious but the state should be non-confessional if it is to be different from what Pakistan has become. The constant refrain of Islamizing a Muslim-majority country, coupled with the belief that this nation must always be in conflict with its largest neighbour because of religious differences, is in many ways at the heart of most of Pakistans current problems.
Born To Be Hanged: Political Biography of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Syeda Hameed, Rs 500, 270pp, Rupa

Despite having a common history and people of largely the same stock, how did India become a stable democracy while Pakistan did not? No scholar has yet had the final word on this puzzle. But Zia ul Haqs decision to hang Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1979 is often seen as a key point in Pakistans history -- more as a clue to grasp the terrible turn that Pakistan took towards Islamic militancy. If Bhutto had not been hanged and his Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) had been institutionalized under his leadership, perhaps we would have a more positive portrait of Pakistan. Perhaps the story of India-Pakistan relations could have been normal, and Kashmir could indeed have been a paradise! There are such ifs in the history of most nations and this Bhutto puzzle is one such intriguing if of South Asian history.

Full of interesting details, this book, whose author Syeda Hameed seems to want to unburden herself of a question that has lain heavily on her heart for years, presents a portrait of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (ZAB) that is almost as adorable as the one presented in Benazir Bhuttos Daughter of The East (1988).

Here is an interesting insight into Bhuttos mind. On his 21st birth day, he received two gifts: one was a five-set volume of Sloanes biography of Napoleon Bonaparte; the other was a pamphlet inscribed with Karl Marxs famous slogan: Workers of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains. You have a world to win. Bhutto considered Napoleon one of his ideals. How does one make sense of a politician whose ideology combines Marx and Napoleon despite their radically conflicting world views?

What drove Bhutto to politics? In some of his writing, such as If I Am Assassinated, he comes across as a politician whose primary ambition was to grab power; one who was driven more by lust for it than by any urge to transform society. Unsurprisingly, in an interview, he said: You do not get into politics just for fun of it. You go in to take power in your hands and keep it. Anyone who says the opposite is a liar. It is not fair, however, to judge a public figures entire life based on a few interviews as the statements in them could have been in response to a particular context. As a result, sweeping extrapolation could be grossly misleading. Whatever the context, there is little evidence from Bhuttos role that he was a convinced democrat like Nehru.

On one occasion from prison, he wrote to fellow party leaders: Please remember that Islam is the fount of this state. We are progressive Muslims not reactionaries, but we are not communists either. Ever since his childhood, Bhutto had been obsessed with the idea of Pakistan. Like the majority of his generation of Muslims, his fascination for Pakistan was also grounded in a deep mistrust and hatred of India. India was seen as an existential threat. The politics of the 1960s and 1970s clearly bore out such interpretations. War and the arms race was part of the thinking of the elite and Bhutto was integral to the conduct of Pakistan. Yet, Bhutto was able to strike a sympathetic cord with people of the region, even in India. That is partly because he was a lesser evil. The political events of later years confirms that speculation, as does the narrative in this book based on interviews with key figures.

Author Syeda Hameed (Courtesy Rupa)

The chapter entitled The Founding Convention 1967 details the birth of the Pakistan Peoples Party(PPP). Letters from Prison is another fascinating chapter. The author had access to 17 such letters, most of which were written to Mubashir Hasan, a key founding member of the PPP. They present interesting details about how Bhuttos mind was working. The chapter There was a Man also makes for fascinating reading.

Bhutto was undoubtedly the most prominent mass leader in post-Jinnah Pakistan. What was the relationship between Zia Ul Haq and Zulfi Bhutto? According to one anecdotal account, Zia was deeply fearful of Bhutto. According to Mubashir Hasan, a worker once informed him of how, when a few drops of tea fell on Bhuttos shoes, Zia took out his handkerchief and cleaned them. Such anecdotes are interesting in understanding the power struggle. Zia gradually came to enjoy the upper hand. The chapter entitled Judicial Murder reveals how vulnerable institutions are in post-colonial societies. Clearly, Zia was in pursuit of a predetermined verdict, which presumed that his own reign could be firmly established only by ending Bhuttos life. That is precisely what happened, though Benazir put up a spectacular fight during the trial and later, as did hundreds of members of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP).

Read more: Today, Zulfikar Ali Bhuttos Pakistan Peoples Party is as good as dead

It is intriguing that, at the time, world leaders had little influence over President Zia. Global opinion was disregarded, the bigger evil triumphed, and Bhutto was executed. What followed, despite Benazirs return, is a political world whose dark implications will have to be faced for years to come - not just for people of the region but for the whole of humanity.

Born To Be Hanged has quite a few rare photos of different stages of Bhuttos life, that are part of private collections, and a gripping portrait by Ismail Gujlee. Based on materials she alone had access to, author Syeda Hameed has woven together an interesting story about a life. Readers interested in the recent history of Pakistan and South Asia will find this book irresistible.

Shaikh Mujibur Rehman is the editor of Rise of Saffron Power (Routledge 2018). He teaches at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi.
A 28-year-old delivery man was allegedly stabbed multiple times in outer Delhis Nihal Vihar by a woman and her brother for late delivery of a phone they had ordered from a shopping portal, police said .

Keshav, who worked as a delivery man for e-commerce site Flipkart, initially lied to the police about the incident as the siblings had warned they would kill him if he revealed their identities, said an investigator.

Police officials said Keshav was allegedly assaulted, choked with a shoe lace and stabbed over a dozen times in Nihar Vihar on March 21. Delhi Police on Wednesday arrested 30-year-old Kamaldeep Kaur and her 32-year-old brother Jitender Singh for the alleged assault.

The siblings only let Keshav go after he reportedly assured them that he would not name them, or mention the assault to the police.

Read: Flipkart looks to sell movie tickets, expand online groceries business

While Kaur has claimed to be an advocate, her brother is a school van driver. They live together in Chander Vihar of Nihal Vihar. CCTV footage from the neighbourhood established their apparent role in the attack, an investigator said.

Keshav said he had delivered other products to the siblings on two previous occasions in the fortnight preceding the attack, said the investigator.

On March 21, Keshav told the police he went to the same address to deliver a cellphone worth Rs 11,000. But before that delivery, Keshav and the siblings were reportedly involved in a heated exchange on the phone about the timing of the delivery, said the investigator.

Kamaldeep and called her to confirm her address. She then started calling him about why he was getting delayed.

When he reached the house, the siblings attacked him without warning, Keshav alleged. Singh tired to strangle Keshav with a shoe lace. When he collapsed on the floor, the woman sat on his abdomen while her brother repeatedly stabbed him in his face, head and hands, said MN Tiwari, deputy commissioner of police (outer).

Read: How the cops who carried out the Ghaziabad gold loot were netted

Convinced that he would be murdered, Keshav begged the siblings to spare his life and promised them that he wouldnt inform the police about the attack, another investigator said. The siblings warned Keshav that they would kill him if he revealed their identities, said the investigator.

To wipe out evidence, Singh allegedly rode Keshavs motorcycle and dumped it elsewhere in the city. The motorcycle is yet to be recovered. However, a CCTV camera in the neighbourhood caught Singh riding out on Keshavs motorcycle. The camera also caught Keshav entering the siblings building, but not coming out of it.

After dumping the motorcycle, the siblings loaded Keshav in their Eeco van and dumped him along an isolated stretch of road over a kilometre from their home. They also burnt his carry bag near a drain in Uttam Nagar, said the investigator.

When a severely wounded Keshav was found by the police, he initially told officials he had been attacked by three motorcycle-borne men.

Read: OPPO adopts Xiaomis flash sale gambit to grow Indian base

However, the evidence at the spot did not substantiate his claims. The blood on his clothes was dry and there was no blood at the spot he claimed he was attacked, said the investigator.

Police officials had to assure Keshav about his security before he told them about the actual attack. Though the siblings denied their roles initially, the CCTV footage allegedly confirmed their role in the assault, police officials said.
The alleged leopard poaching case in the core area of Rajaji Tiger Reseve (RTR) has taken a curious turn with the forest officials arresting a person, who has remained an informer for both the forest department and the police.

The reserve management has also begun a probe against a senior forest official who had recovered the skin of a leopard and other items buried in earthen pits, incidentally, based on the information provided by the man who has now been arrested.

The RTR management on Friday arrested Amit alias Sonu, a resident of Raiwala, in connection with leopard poaching incident reported on March 22. Sonu, 30, has been booked under various section of The Wildlife Protection Act, 1972. He was produced in a court, which sent him to jail.

The reserve management is now searching for five people, all from Sapera community, who are allegedly involved in the case. A deputy ranger is also under the scanner.

Amit runs a butchers shop and trades mainly in chicken and fish. Officials in RTR, privy to its functioning, said that Sonu also worked as an informer for the reserve management and the police. In January, the reserve management had booked Sonu for illegally catching fish from River Ganga. He, however, secured bail in that case.

During preliminary interrogation after his arrest on Friday, Sonu told officials that former acting deputy ranger of Kansro in RTR, Anup Bhindola, had about a fortnight ago demanded information from him about possible leopard poaching in the reserve area. Sonu told officials that he made Bhindola meet five people of Sapera community living in Haripur Kalan area on March 21. The following day, Bhindola lead a team of foresters and seized a decomposed leopard skin and carcass from four pits in Motichur range. Haripur Kalan is situated adjacent to the location from where the seizures were made.

He (Sonu) has mentioned the name of an officer. We will conduct a transparent investigation in this matter, Digvijay Singh Khati, chief wildlife warden, said.

Bhindola, however, claimed that he is been targeted.

As per Bhindola, who was transferred to forest headquarters in February, the RTR management has arrested Sonu to make him a scapegoat and in efforts to cover up the issue of the vulnerability of wild animals in the protected area.

Poachers have their nexus spread across Rajaji. The officers are not competent enough to safeguard the wild animals. Sonu had worked as an informer and now they have booked him to get rid of the allegations leveled against the officials. Just because I exposed the case, now they are also trying to malign my credibility, Bhindola said.

Along with officers of the reserve, various non government organizations had information about leopard poaching in Motichur range. These people also knew that Sapera community members could be involved. But, it was only after a specific tip off that head of forest force (HoFF), Jai Raj, constituted a team that raided the spot and seized wildlife parts.

The role of Sonu, however, remains dubious. Those close to the matter claimed he always had credible information about poaching in and around the reserve. In many cases, he had taken officials to the exact spot where seizures were made. It is the reason why officials believed that he works with the gangs that are active and informs about the crime depending on situation to safeguard his own interest.

Anyone who is involved (in poaching) will be sent to jail, said Sanatan Sonkar, director, Rajaji, when reached for comments.
Bowing to pressure from students and parents, chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat on Friday prevailed upon private medical colleges in the state to withdraw the hike in their fee structure.

The roll back was announced days after the BJP government had enacted a law in the state assemblys recently concluded Gairsain budget session. The law permits private medical colleges to revise their fee structure.

Earlier, a committee headed by a retired judge of the high court was authorised to finalise the fee revision.

The managements of private medical colleges have withdrawn a hefty hike in fee following the chief ministers intervention, said his media coordinator Darshan Singh Rawat. The chief ministers decision came as a huge relief for the students of private medical colleges as well as their parents.

Students had been agitating since private medical colleges decided to substantially raise the annual fee on Tuesday. The chief ministers statement on Friday that private medical institutions were free to revise their fee structures further added fuel to fire.

They are free to revise their fee structure as the government doesnt invest in that sector, he said referring to private medical colleges.

Students started agitating after the Shri Guru Ram Rai Institute of Medical & Health Sciences decision to revise its fee structure from 4.75 lakh per annum to 20 lakh per annum.

The other two private colleges in the state -- the Himalayan Institute of Medical Sciences in Jolly Grant and the Shridev Suman Shubharti Medical College -- were to increase their fees.

Quick to cash on the issue, the Congress came down heavily on the governments decision. The government is making big statements about cracking the whip on public schools, but it has given private medical colleges the authority to decide their fees. This is such a contradiction! Congress state unit chief Pritam Singh told HT on Thursday.
Delhi revenue minister Kailash Gahlot on Friday alleged that the Lt Governor Anil Baijal had objected to the governments proposed Teerth Yatra scheme for the elderly, prompting chief minister Arvind Kejriwal to accuse the L-G of obstructing every AAP project.

Under the scheme, which was proposed in the 2018-19 Delhi Budget, the Kejriwal government plans to send senior citizens on pilgrimage for free of cost.

The chief minister also asked the BJP not to obstruct his governments work.

I feel v v sad that LG is practically obstructing every scheme and every project of Del Govt. How do we run govt like this? My appeal to BJP - Dont obstruct our work. I challenge your govts in other states to compete with us in work (sic), Kejriwal said on Twitter.

Read: Maharashtra labour minister founded company which didnt repay bank loan: AAP

The Delhi government proposed to set aside Rs 53 crore for the scheme that aims to send 77,000 elderly people, who are bonafide residents of Delhi, on religious trips.

Gahlot alleged that Lt Governor (L-G) Anil Baijal objected to the scheme and said it should be restricted to people in the Below Poverty Line (BPL) category.

Baijal has forgotten that many children do not support their old parents, who will be happy to avail the governments scheme, he said.

Now LG objects to Teerth Yatra Yojana. LG wants it to be restricted to BPL. LG forgets that many children do not support their old parents.

Read: Suspended AAP MP Dharamvira Gandhi floats Punjab Manch

They would be happy to receive govt support. And every govt facility should not be restricted only to BPL (sic), the minister tweeted.

During the Budget presentation last week, deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia had said, But approval of Lt Governor is still awaited. Hopefully, he will approve this important scheme for senior citizens of Delhi at the earliest.
Thousands of outpatients have been affected, with all dispensaries, poly-clinics and out-patient departments in government hospitals remaining shut for two consecutive days (Thursday and Friday) for public holidays.

The clinics will open for just half the day on Saturday (till 1 pm) and be closed on Sunday.

Around 50,000 outpatients are treated across 46 public hospitals in Delhi. Some outpatients travel from other states to be treated at these hospitals.

On Friday, at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), barricades blocked the entrance gates of the out-patient clinic, with three guards on duty asking patients to go away and come back on Monday.

We have had to turn away at least 300 patients since morning and most of them had travelled from outside Delhi from treatment. The number could be higher, we havent kept a count. Patients do not keep track of government holidays, so we have to tell them that there are no doctors on duty, said a guard on condition of anonymity.

Delhi has 33 hospitals run by the state government, seven by municipal corporations, four by the central government and two by the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC). Together, they treat around 50,000 people in their Out Patient Departments every day.

Nitin, 32, who goes by only one name, arrived from his hometown Azamgarh in Uttar Pradesh on Wednesday night and slept on the footpath outside AIIMS to be first at the OPD on Thursday morning. I have been undergoing treatment at AIIMS for five years,  he said.

When I reached here, I was told there is a two day holiday. Even on Saturday, I am not sure that we will be able to see the doctor because the queues will be massive and because its a half day. So I am stuck in Delhi at least till Monday, said Nitin.

Most mohalla (neighbourhood) clinics and all government-run dispensaries and polyclinics were also closed on Thursday and Friday. OPDs will be open for half-day on Saturday, but people coming to weekly special clinics will have to come back following week.

Aman Kumar, 27, who runs a shop in Saket, got his wife to Safdarjung to get her dressing changed on Friday. She had an abdominal surgery last month and the stitches got infected. The doctor asked us to come to the OPD to get a fresh dressing today, but it is a holiday so I will have to close my shop again tomorrow to be back, he said.

With OPDs shut, many patients have started thronging the emergency departments. The emergency attendance has nearly doubled today, said a data entry operator at the AIIMS emergency department.

I came to the emergency department because I was told that there are no doctors in the OPD; it was the same yesterday, and we cannot keep waiting, said Diwakar Kumar, whose diabetic fathers kidneys and eyes have been affected due to the high blood sugar levels. The duo is from Begusarai, Bihar.

Other hospitals have also registered increased footfalls in the emergency. The footfall has definitely gone up in the emergency by 20%-30%, but this happens whenever OPD services are closed. We treat, and give medicines even to those patients who dont need emergency treatment and ask them to come back to the OPD later, said a doctor on duty at Lok Nayak hospitals emergency unit.
A 16-year-old west Delhi school student appearing for his Class 10 board exam was the whistle-blower who informed the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) chairperson about the leak of the Class 10 mathematics board examination paper.

At 1.39 am on March 28, hours before the Class 10 mathematics exam was to be held across India, CBSE chairperson Anita Karwal received a complaint on her official email address that the test paper had been leaked over WhatsApp. The whistle-blower, who used his fathers Gmail account, requested the chairperson to cancel the examination.

Although the exam went ahead as scheduled, the CBSE approached the police the same day. The crime branch registered a first information report at 8 pm on March 28 on the basis of this email forwarded by the CBSE. The special investigation team probing the case wrote to Google seeking help to identify the whistle-blower. HT tracked the man and his teenage son who sent the mail.

The man, who works at an upscale Delhi club ,confirmed that his son is the whistleblower. My son got the mathematics question paper on Whatsapp from a friend. He seemed worried and told me that he would inform CBSE and get the exam cancelled, he said, asking that neither he nor his son be identified. The son attached a copy of the question paper he had received in the e-mail, which was sent to the CBSE chairmans official e-mail address and not seen till the morning of March 28, by which time it was too late to cancel the exam.

We are ready to cooperate with the police but are yet to be approached so far. My son told me he used my phone to send the mail. This must be the reason why my email address is in the FIR (first information report). He had done it in good faith, said the father.

CBSE chairperson Karwal confirmed having received the mail before the exam.  The mail had a question paper attached. We informed police when the attached question paper turned out to be the same. Police then filed a case, she said.

Anil Swarup, secretary, school education in the Union Human Resource Development Ministry, said the mail was sent at 1.39 am but directed to an official email address, so it was checked only at 8.55 that morning. It was sent to controller of examination for cross checking but as per rules the question paper cannot be opened before 9.30 am. By the time we cross-checked, the paper had started and it was not possible to cancel it at that moment, he said,

Meanwhile, the special investigative team, led by two deputy commissioner of police-rank officers, is yet to make a breakthrough in the case. Police have so far questioned around 34 persons, including students and tutors who received the question paper over WhatsApp. Police have also approached CBSEs controller of examination, seeking details of those who had set the question papers, where they were stored and how they were distributed.
Union human resource development minister Prakash Javadekar on Friday asked engineering students to develop a distribution system that could prevent the leak of question papers as outrage mounted over the Central Board of Secondary Educations decision to reconduct Class 10 mathematics and Class 12 economics exams after the tests were circulated on social media.

Javdekar is facing protests by students, who have accused the board of negligence and demanded immediate action against the guilty, and youth leaders from the Congress party. The agitating students said they were suffering because of CBSEs mistakes as they held demonstrations in several parts of Delhi.

The main opposition party has blamed the Centre of doing little to check malpractices in the examination system and demanded Javdekars removal as well as the sacking of boards chairperson Anita Karwal.

In a vast country like ours, where you have to distribute question papers to millions of students, how to do it? The paper is printed at some place. Then it is packed in another place. It is sent to the centres. There are so many places. How to ensure that nobody can breach the security? You have to build this firewall, Javdekar said in New Delhi on Friday .

Javadekar was speaking during the second edition of Smart India Hackathon 2018  claimed to be the worlds largest  in which more than 10,000 engineering students from across India will try to find solutions to around 340 problems faced by various ministries and state governments. The hackathon is being organised jointly by the ministry of HRD, All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), Inter Institutional Inclusive Innovation Centre (i4C) and Persistent System. The two day final is being held across 28 centres in India including the New Delhi Institute of Management (NDIM)

Javadekar said that organisers of exams like GRE and GMAT have question banks and every candidate gets a randomly different question paper.

But, we want a single question paper at all centres simultaneously. This always has possibilities of being leaked. I am throwing this challenge because I am very sure that the new generation, which wants transparency and merit to prevail, will come up with brilliant solutions, the minister said.

I am throwing this challenge to the students. It is an open innovation challenge. After the hackathon is over some people can work and give us suggestions, he said.

The question paper of Class 12 economics exam that was held on March 26 and that of the Class 10 maths exam, conducted on March 28, were leaked on social media hours before the scheduled time.

The board has said all 1.7 million Class 10 students and 500,000 Class 12 students will have to take them again, admitting that the question papers had leaked in advance.

It is likely to announce the dates for the retests on Monday.
When news of her landing a Bollywood film first surfaced in 2017, Banita Sandhu was completely unknown. Chances are youre now familiar with the 20-year-old college student from the UK, who makes her acting debut alongside Varun Dhawan in October. The Shoojit Sircar film releases on April 13, 2018.

Needless to say, with Banita set to appear in one of the biggest films of 2018, she has landed herself a coveted spot as the girl to watch on the Bollywood scene. But with her undeniable x-factor and killer, impactful personal style shes also topping our list as a cool, fiercely unique style star to watch. (Youll understand after one look at this budding stars style, but more on that in a bit.)

A post shared by Varun Dhawan (@varundvn) on Mar 11, 2018 at 6:43am PDT

There are some girls who just exude cool  and Banita is one of them. She doesnt have a go-to signature look (yet), and doesnt shy away from anything when it comes to fashion. Her looks are rife with bold prints, bright colours (red is totally her colour), structured silhouettes, and more  and looking at her comfort-meets-daring Instagram style, she doesnt seem to be slowing down anytime soon.



Like, on Thursday, when the actor shared pictures of her wearing the ultimate spring has sprung outfit  a lilac bodysuit and coordinating striped baby blue and lilac wide-leg trouser, both from Roberto Cavalli. The sexy bodysuit, priced at  850 (Rs 68,000) had a plunging cutout back for Banita to show off her slender figure. To give her casual runway-ready outfit that fashion girl touch, she wore oversize silver hoops and white heels.

A post shared by Banita Sandhu (@banita.sandhu) on Mar 29, 2018 at 8:55am PDT

Banita somehow manages to keep it elegant by opting for classic tailoring, mixing in basic wardrobe essentials, and knowing when black jeans call for a heel instead of sneakers. She also boldly mixes traditional feminine silhouettes with menswear staples, from sporty jackets to summer-y strapless tops and body-hugging dresses.

Below are our 10 favourite looks to date.

1. The LBD (little black dress) gets an even sexier tilt when you add a little lace  just look to Banitas curve-conscious lace dress.

A post shared by Banita Sandhu (@banita.sandhu) on Jan 19, 2018 at 7:50am PST

2. Ready for brunch in a strapless red top and denim bottom. Keeping it young and simple.

A post shared by Banita Sandhu (@banita.sandhu) on Dec 1, 2017 at 7:50am PST

3. Showing off a little skin in a noodle-strap knee-length nude dress. Looking purely elegant and poised.

4. Channelling a modern boho vibe with a white lace-up top and high-waist jeans. Even in a basic jeans- top combo, Banita always looks perfectly pulled-together.

A post shared by Banita Sandhu (@banita.sandhu) on Jan 10, 2018 at 8:04am PST

5. Layering like a pro with an oversize olive dress that is basically a jacket over her black sweatshirt, paired with statement black sunnies and a girly black sling bag.

A post shared by Banita Sandhu (@banita.sandhu) on Nov 14, 2017 at 3:41am PST

6. Banitas attention-getting red design proves that whether youre attending a party, headed out to dinner, or going on date night, you cant go wrong with something red. She looks cool and edgy, but perfectly feminine as well.

A post shared by Banita Sandhu (@banita.sandhu) on Jan 15, 2018 at 9:37am PST

7. Theres nothing boring about this floral LBD with its bold print and pattern, unexpected Chinese collar and midi-length silhouette.

A post shared by Banita Sandhu (@banita.sandhu) on Mar 28, 2018 at 8:06am PDT

8. This is how you make a menswear-inspired look work. Banita mixing proportions with a pair of coffee-hued shorts, a matching jacket and contrasting calf-high blue boots.

A post shared by Banita Sandhu (@banita.sandhu) on Mar 12, 2018 at 11:48am PDT

9. Infusing a little colour into her look by opting to wear a star-print red and white jacket over her flared blue jeans.

A post shared by Banita Sandhu (@banita.sandhu) on Jan 26, 2018 at 9:54am PST

10. Always taking her look to the next level, Banita opted for a camel coat in lieu of a bomber jacket for an effortless winter look. Adding the right amount of black with her skinny jeans, apple cap and ankle boots.

A post shared by Banita Sandhu (@banita.sandhu) on Mar 7, 2018 at 9:19am PST

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Nothing separates Rani Mukerji from her jeans. There is simply no occasion the actor wont try them on for, as weve learned, while tracking her style over the past few weeks. From airports and red carpets to film promotions, the Mardaani star has proven that denim isnt just a sign of a casual look.

On Thursday, for a party in Mumbai to celebrate the success of her just-released film Hichki, Rani so expertly proved that theres no reason you cant wear a classic denim jacket and your favourite skinny jeans together. Just be smart about it  like the Kuch Kuch Hota Hai star.

A post shared by Yash Raj Films Talent (@yashrajfilmstalent) on Mar 29, 2018 at 6:07am PDT

Rani wore her ripped jeans with a fitted stone-washed denim jacket from Philipp Plein, priced at 1,840 (Rs 1,47,000). She accessorised by tucking her jeans right into her high-impact brown boots to dress up the regular blues. Up top, under her snug jacket, she wore a basic white tee. The trick to doubling up on denim is to avoid matching your separates (this isnt a suit, after all) while sticking with similar hues, as demonstrated by Rani: Her pants are just a tad bit lighter than her jacket, but the general shade is the same. Sounds simple, right?



Rani is mostly seen in her skinny jeans and why not? The silhouette is easy to take day to night, its seasonless, and it goes with everything. But she clearly knows how to rock a slouchy fit too. In fact, the stars managed to come up with a handful of ideas for every silhouette in the book. Read on for a few of her most trustworthy lessons:

1. Ranis ripped skinny jeans lend a casual touch to a sophisticated white shirt and black lace stilettos.

A post shared by Yash Raj Films Talent (@yashrajfilmstalent) on Mar 28, 2018 at 4:06am PDT

2. If you like classic, simple styles, a skinny jeans cropped at the ankle looks good with everything, especially a girly white top.

A post shared by Yash Raj Films Talent (@yashrajfilmstalent) on Mar 19, 2018 at 5:49am PDT

3. Rani exhibited unexpected coolness in some relaxed boyfriend jeans styled with an oversize jacket, sneakers and sunnies while leaving the Mumbai airport.

A post shared by Yash Raj Films Talent (@yashrajfilmstalent) on Mar 18, 2018 at 11:28pm PDT

4. The mom jeans trend think superhigh waist, loose crotch, and tapered legs  has been going strong for a few seasons now: Just try pairing them with dad sneakers (think bulky sneakers) and a bright tee, and youll achieve this Rani look in a snap.

A post shared by Yash Raj Films Talent (@yashrajfilmstalent) on Mar 13, 2018 at 11:15am PDT

5. Team your loose jeans featuring rips on the knees with a minimal tee to draw attention to your prized denims. Rani confirmed that something with statement rips is perfect for a slight rock n roll edge.

A post shared by Yash Raj Films Talent (@yashrajfilmstalent) on Mar 13, 2018 at 12:36am PDT

6. Because of its versatility, denim can actually very easily be dressed up, and chances are you already own everything you need to do so: A feminine black top and matching boots. In this look, youll look as sophisticated as you would have in any dress, as seen on Rani.

A post shared by Yash Raj Films Talent (@yashrajfilmstalent) on Mar 12, 2018 at 11:39pm PDT

7. If you want to give your mom jeans a break, try a slim-cut and pair with a tee, boots and jacket.

A post shared by Yash Raj Films Talent (@yashrajfilmstalent) on Mar 7, 2018 at 1:01am PST

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Former Rajasthan chief minister and Congress general secretary Ashok Gehlot says party president Rahul Gandhi will follow his parents and grandmother in ensuring a balance between seniors and young leaders in the organisation . In an interview with Hindustan Times, Gehlot ,however, cautioned the Congress GenNext to wait in the queue and not try to jump it. He also spoke about the Congress prospects in Rajasthan assembly elections due later this year.Edited excerpts:

Congress performed well in the recent by-polls in Rajasthan. Are you confident of repeating the performance in assembly elections later this year?

The agenda has been set. Rahul Gandhis issue-based politics in Gujarat and (the fact that) both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) chief Amit Shah failed to respond and could not achieve the target of 150 seats in their home state -- the entire country saw that. The reverse countdown started with Gujarat and has continued in other states as evident from the outcome of by-elections. In Rajasthan, all Congress leaders fought unitedly and we won with huge margins. The anti-incumbency of both the state government and the Centre worked in our favour. In assembly elections, we will further improve our performance.

In Gujarat, you did not have any chief ministerial face and that proved counter-productive. Dont you think people of Rajasthan would also like to know who the Congress CM face is?

Political situations vary from state to state. What we did in Gujarat was good. Shankersinh Vaghela wanted to leave the party and we decided to keep the option open. The tradition in the Congress has been to fight the elections unitedly and then let the legislators elect their leader. There have been a few exceptions from time to time. If the high command thinks and gets the feedback that the party will benefit by declaring the face, they do it. In Rajasthan too, we should not get into this debate and leave the decision to the Congress high command.

Infighting has hampered the Congress revival in many states and Rajasthan is one of them. How is your equation with state chief Sachin Pilot and other leaders?

The Congress is strong and united in Rajasthan. We all are one team. There have been no statements against each other in the past four years. Infighting is all a media creation. My relations with Pilot, CP Joshi and other leaders are very good.

What will be your main poll plank in Rajasthan?

I havent seen such a situation in Rajasthan in my entire political career. The state has suffered a lot during the past four years. From deteriorating law and order, rampant corruption, unemployment (to) rising incidents of suicides by distressed farmers and mis-governance, the BJP government has given us so many issues. Home minister is powerless and chief minister Vasundhara Raje is clueless. She is an ideal BJP face and best bet for us. She has been exposed and we would want her to complete her term to enable us to win with a huge majority. People will never forgive her and (will) teach her a lesson in elections.

What is the key takeaway of the recent Congress plenary?

The new slogan that emerged from the plenary is ache din aane waale hain, Modiji jaane wale hain (Good days are coming, Modi is going). Rahul Gandhi also gave a message to the youth to work hard, prove their talent and occupy the space that has been left vacant for them. The Congress also gave its solutions to the growing challenges of unemployment, farmers distress and derailed economic growth. He also appealed to the people to shun politics of hate and violence.

But is the old guard nervous after Rahul Gandhis takeover (as Congress chief) ?

I have been witness to the changes in the Congress since the times of Indira Gandhi. The party has always given huge opportunities to young leaders. The present senior leaders are all products of NSUI (National Students Union of India) and Youth Congress. Some of us became chief ministers, general secretaries and office bearers. When Rajiv Gandhi (took over), he promoted several young leaders and they got protection during Sonia Gandhis tenure. This debate is not new. Rahul Gandhi will never relegate the senior leaders and force them to sit at home. He wants the new leadership to emerge but the young leaders should learn to wait in the queue and not try to jump it. Then only, they will become the real leaders. If they try to break the line, they will be finished. Rahul Gandhi has often said he will use the experience of seniors and energy of young leaders in reviving the Congress.

Do you think the opposition parties are coming together because their survival is at stake? Will other parties rally around Rahul Gandhi?

The opposition will have to come together in the national interest and work for the BJPs defeat. The country needs that. Rahul Gandhi has emerged as Modis main challenger and also the leader of the entire opposition block. He will definitely become the Prime Minister in 2019. The UPA (United Progressive Alliance)-3 government is a reality and there should be no doubt about that.

Congress is being accused of playing soft-Hindutva politics to win elections...

Unlike others, Rahul Gandhi does not go to temples for votes or politics. It is a matter of faith for him. He also visits shrines and churches. But the BJP has always used religion for its political and electoral gains.

Will you press for the use of ballot papers in the Rajasthan elections?

In a democracy, there should be no doubt in the minds of the people as otherwise they will not come out to vote. The Election Commission is duty-bound to hold free and fair polls. To clear all doubts about the EVMs (electronic voting machines) and restore the credibility of the poll process is the responsibility of the Election Commission. The Supreme Court has also suggested the use of paper trail machines. Why did it say so? This means that EVMs can be tampered with and manipulated. The reason why Congress took a stand on the EVMs is because all developed countries of the world have gone back to the ballot paper system. But all such institutions have been destroyed in the last four years. RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) has become an extra-constitutional authority in the country (that decides on) who will become a CM, head an institution, and it is also taking other key decisions. This is damaging for Modi. The RSS should not hide behind the veil of a cultural organisation and come forward and openly do politics. BJP and other groups should merge in RSS and politically and electorally fight its opponents.
Assam chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal launched a toll-free helpline number 189 for women in distress in Guwahati on Thursday, amid a spurt in crimes against women in the state.

The toll free helpline will initially work from 9am to 5.30pm, but will soon be a 24x7 service.

Superintendents of police of all the districts have been asked to ensure swift and correct filing of chargesheet in all crimes against women so that justice can be given to the victims, Sonowal said at the inauguration of the helpline, urging women to use it.

The helpline is part of a scheme under the Union ministry of women and child development to provide 24 hours response to women affected by violence.

Earlier, on Wednesday, the Gauhati high court ordered that a fast track court be set up in each district to deal with cases of rape and murder of women and children.

The order came over a request from Sonowal. The chief minister also wrote a letter to the Chief Justice of Gauhati high court and requested for setting up a fast-track court to take up all cases of crimes against women on an urgent basis for strict action against perpetrators of such crimes, Sonowal said on twitter on March 26.

Sonowal had also ordered a new women cell at the director general of polices office in Guwahati to ensure swift action in cases of violence against women.

The steps come on the heels of the recent brutal rape and murder of a class five student in Nagaon. The incident sparked protests across the state.

The 12-year-old was raped by three men including two minors at her house in a village in Nagaon district. After raping her, the accused poured kerosene and set her ablaze. She died on her way to Guwahati Medical College and Hospital.
Life is no cakewalk for those who live in Himalayan villages, but it gets doubly hard for women on five days every month, when they are confined to cow and goat sheds for the duration of their menstrual period.

Women in 94 of the districts 204 panchayats are forced to sleep in wood and stone sheds stained with animal dung and urine during such times because of a belief that menstrual bleeding renders them impure. They are not allowed to enter their homes, temples and even toilets as people think that doing so would bring misfortune upon their families.

The times, however, are changing. On New Years Day, Kullu deputy commissioner Yunus Khan launched the year-long Nari Garima (dignity of woman) campaign to end the practice.

This age-old notion goes against the fundamental right conferred by Article 21 of the Constitution of India on its citizens  the right to life with dignity, said 35-year-old Khan. It is not only regressive but also fatal at times. A woman confined in a cattle shed is exposed to dangerous insects, bacteria and viruses.

The threat of sexual and physical assaults also increases when women are forced to venture into the fields at odd hours to answer natures call.

Kullu district was declared open defecation free in October 2016, which means that every household has a toilet. So Khan, a 2010-cadre IAS officer, was surprised when people from several villages in the region requested the government to build toilets and bathrooms exclusively for women. It was only when I asked panchayat representatives about this that I heard about the practice, he said.

An extensive survey was performed in such panchayats by Anganwadi and Accredited Social Health Activists under the Integrated Child Development Service programme in November 2017. The report showed that indicators of womens health, hygiene and social status were low in places where this custom was being practised, said Khan.

However, when government agents initiated steps to end the practice, they faced hurdles from unexpected quarters. While men approved of the campaign, older women felt there was no reason for their younger counterparts to shrink away from a few days of suffering for the welfare of their families when they willingly shouldered the burden in their youth. Also, as the practice is associated with religion, they did not want to invite the village deitys wrath, said Khan.

The administration countered this by roping in respected women panchayat representatives and youth icons for the cause. Securing the support of religious leaders was the next step in their strategy.

As each village has a deity thats believed to influence the day-to-day lives of local residents, it became necessary to delink religion from the retrograde custom. So, district administration officials met priests associated with two major religious bodies in the region, the Kullu Devi Devta Kardar and Pujari Sangh, and impressed upon them the need to abolish the practice in the interests of women and children.

They saw our point, and soon, several deities came out in support of the campaign, said Khan.

Dot Ram, president of the Kullu Devi Devta Kardar Sangh, said Nari Garima enjoys his complete support. We have even offered to help the district administrative by visiting villages during awareness camps. But the custom is deep-rooted, and ending it will take time, he added. The campaign witnessed a festive launch, complete with songs, folk dances and street plays, at the Jana Panchayat of Naggar block near Manali on January 1. The next event of the kind is planned in remote Lag valley, and all the 92 panchayats will be covered over six months.

I am personally monitoring the campaign. Our activists re-visit a village 15-20 days after an event to get feedback from women and their families, said Khan, who will end the campaign with a survey to study its impact.
The Central Information Commission has directed the home ministry to disclose the list of victims of 1984 anti-Sikh riots who have received the compensation.

On a complaint filed by one Navdeep Gupta, Information Commissioner Yashovardhan Azad issued the orders to disclose details sought by him.

Gupta had sought to know from the ministry complete list of beneficiaries including their names, address, loss in genocide, compensation availed and compensation details.

When he could not get any response from the ministry, Gupta filed a complaint with the commission where the ministry refuted allegations of any malafide intention in not responding to his RTI plea.

The official said it was due to a technical glitch that the information could not be received by him and responded in time.

The Commission directs the PIO to furnish a reply to the Appellant in accordance with law within 2 weeks. The Complainant shall be at liberty to approach the Commission if aggrieved with the reply of PIO. The complaint is disposed of, Azad said.

In a separate application, Gupta had sought to know the definition of genocide in India from the home ministry.

The Commission takes notice of the query as it relates to the definition of Genocide. India has ratified the 1948 UN Genocide Convention, but no specific municipal law has been enacted which deals or defines the term Genocide. The complainant is advised to refer to the aforesaid convention, Azad said.
When Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar deserted the Grand Alliance to hop into the National Democratic Alliance in July 2017, it was seen as a political masterstroke to retain his supremacy over state politics. However, with the BJP surging again and the RJD-Congress combine posing a strong opposition, things dont seem to be moving in a direction of his choice.

The JD(U)s defeat in the bypolls and a series of post-Ram Navami clashes across Bihar have dented Kumars pro-development image in recent times. Interestingly, this was the same man touted as the most befitting candidate to challenge Narendra Modi for the prime ministerial post until a year ago.

Although supremacy of the law was the Nitish governments unique selling point until now, the manner in which communal tension flared up across the state has raised many an eyebrow.

The opposition got much-needed ammunition to accuse the chief minister of aligning with communal forces by citing how Bhagalpur violence accused Arjit Shashwat continues to move freely in Patna despite the issuance of an arrest warrant against him. Shashwat is the son of Union minister Ashwini Choubey. Kumars repeated assertions of not allowing offenders to escape dont seem to be cutting any ice either.

Nitishji and his complete helplessness to act against the people disturbing peace and harmony is a textbook example of what happens when you betray a mandate, said Rajya Sabha MP Manoj Jha.

The RJD parliamentarian said the chief minister wouldnt pay any heed to repeated warnings issued by party leader Tejashwi Yadav. Given the volatile situation in the state and Nitish Kumars reluctance to act against the saffron brigade, he will soon become known as one of the weakest CMs in independent India... somebody who is more concerned about saving his chair, he added.

Voices of dissent have begun emerging from the JD(U)s ranks too. Denouncing Arjits defiance, party national general secretary KC Tyagi said that such incidents would have an adverse impact on the constituents of the NDA.

However, a senior JD(U) leader claimed there was no threat to the government. Those who think Nitish Kumar can be cornered dont know him. Anybody who tries to test his nerves will be in for a surprise, he added on the condition of anonymity.
The first thing that strikes you on meeting Jai Ram Thakur is his disarming modesty. The sixth chief minister of Himachal Pradesh self-effacingly talks about his humble family background and how he as a Class 10 student used to trek 16 km daily to and from his school in Mandi.

Three months after he became the accidental chief minister in a quirky turn of electoral fortunes, Thakur has found his feet and has injected a new energy in governance while steering clear of toxic vendetta that has long vitiated the hill states otherwise tranquil politics. Politically, he is firmly placed but the 52-year-old face of generational shift in Himachal sounded acutely conscious of the uphill tasks before him in the course of a freewheeling chat with Executive Editor Ramesh Vinayak in Shimla on Wednesday. Excerpts:

The chief ministership came your way rather unexpectedly. How have you adapted to this responsibility?

This is definitely a larger responsibility. Starting from the grassroots, I have climbed the political ladder and held positions of state party president and cabinet minister (2007-12). The experience has stood me in good stead. No one, including me, had imagined this (becoming the CM). People now feel this change is for the better. For two decades in Himachal Pradesh, the top job was rotating between two personalities (Virbhadra Singh and Prem Kumar Dhumal). It was a pattern. Im seen as the new man taking new initiatives. After the poll results, some thought, Yeh CM banega nahin, agar ban gaya to chalega nahin. (He wont become the CM and if he does, he wont be able to run the show). I needed time to get into the rhythm. After three months, Ive settled down and set the pace for my government.

What are the key challenges your government faces?

A debt burden of Rs 45,500 crore, creation of jobs, and bringing private investment. A crucial test was the first budget that sent out the right message on our priorities. Despite the resource crunch, we have come up with 30 small but innovative schemes. In 20 years, the budget offered only five to seven new schemes. Mostly, old schemes were recycled under different names.

How seriously does the debt impact the states development?

The quantum of debt is too big a burden for a small state like Himachal Pradesh. Repayment of loans and interest eats up a sizeable chunk of the revenue. This constrains the room for big ticket development. At present, central schemes are the mainstay of our development. The good part is that the Narendra Modi government has bracketed us with the northeastern states in funding central schemes under the 90:10 formula. Thats a big support. Before 2014, the Centre used to fund 60% and the states share was 40%.

How will you fix the states fiscal health?

For additional revenue generation, we are focusing on power, mining and tourism. We will cut wasteful expenditure. The last Congress government, in its second cabinet meeting, sanctioned new cars for all ministers. Each vehicle cost Rs 30-35 lakh. We havent done that. Likewise, the previous government had nine chief parliamentary secretaries. Each CPS costs as much as a minister. We havent appointed a CPS yet. We will examine the court judgment on CPS appointment and will be prudent. We are also doing away with lavish spending. I have spoken to my ministers, MLAs and officers to curtail unnecessary expenses.

You have 44 MLAs in the 68-member House. How will you accommodate their ambitions for a slice in the power cake?

Expectations are there, its natural. But I am trying to make them understand what is possible in the given situation. They understand our compulsions. Even on chairman and vice-chairman of boards and corporations, we have filled only three or four posts.

What initiatives have been unveiled in the first three months of your rule?

Our focus has been two-fold. Thats creating resources for new initiatives and setting targets for their implementation besides addressing the larger issues of investments and jobs. Government jobs are not there. New industries are not coming after the expiry of central tax benefits to Himachal. So, we have a plan on financial assistance/subsidies for self-employment ventures in agriculture and horticulture. Shelters for stray cows is another issue we have tried to address practically. After all, there is a religious reverence for the cow. The budget provision will be met by taking 15% of income of all temple trusts and levying a cow cess of Re 1 per liquor bottle. Managing abandoned cows is a big task but we have taken a step forward.

There are serious shortcomings in delivery of quality education and health.

Thats correct. In 2016-17, 1.75 lakh students dropped out of government schools. Even a poor family in rural Himachal wants good education for its children. Falling standards of school education are a cause of worry. Things have come to this pass because the previous government kept opening new institutions without caring for infrastructure and staffing. The last government, at its fag end, announced new schools and colleges just for political benefits. They were neither required nor viable. Instead of expansion, we will strengthen infrastructure and staffing. We have started a pilot scheme where 10 government schools will be merged into one institution with teachers, infrastructure and hostel. Depending on the response, this model will be replicated to bolster the quality of education. We will regulate the fee of private schools and colleges, and, if need be, do that through a legislation.

We face shortage of 800 doctors. Again, thats because the earlier government was in expansion mode without providing the staff. The number of institutional deliveries in the state is low. To reverse this, we have come up with a scheme that gives a hygiene kit worth Rs 1,500 to mothers delivering at government hospitals.

Your partys golden vision promised to rid the state of mafia raj. Any progress?

We are dealing with this sternly. Himachal is a small state but the sand mafia enjoyed big protection under the last government. In three months, we have stopped 21 illegal crushers. Illegal mining has been checked. This has hurt business and political interests. We are now mulling a mining policy that will get us more resources and end illegal quarrying. The second challenge is the drug mafia that has a nexus, especially in areas bordering Punjab and Haryana. Then, there is a narcotics problem in Kullu. We have taken steps but I dont want to make much noise as that is not good for the states image. Let me assure you there will be a full-hearted and stringent action. Thirdly, we have disrupted the forest mafia and stemmed its brazen run.

Your ministers and MLAs are yet to voluntarily declare their assets as promised in the manifesto?

The Election Commission has left little scope for elected people to hide assets. We have told our people to disclose their assets to the government and Im sure they will do so soon.

The Congress alleges that the RSS is running the show for you.

They are saying it for the sake of it. The RSS plays a limited role. Once in a while, it offers a suggestion. Their members hold consultations with political colleagues. Its more of an advisory role. The government is running on its own. It is true that the RSS is a source of our ideology. It has a right to say things but it doesnt interfere in government processes.

There was uproar over your move to amend Section 118 of the Land Tenancy Act that bars non-agriculturists from buying farm land. Have you dropped the idea?

Section 118 has been amended many a time before. There is need to simplify the Act. The interest of the people of Himachal Pradesh is foremost for us. But to promote tourism and private investment, it is necessary to take a re-look and consider the Act. Notwithstanding the oppositions noise, we will find a way out without tinkering with the spirit of the Act.

Why are major highway projects in Himachal caught up in delays?

Two years ago, the Centre sanctioned an upgrade of 69 state highways to national highways in the state. But the process of detailed project reports has been delayed. The last Congress government cleared tenders for DPRs on only eight projects. We have tenders for another 43 projects. After DPRs, land acquisition will take its own time
Basking in the success of her meetings with leaders in Delhi, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee has chalked out travel plans to reach out to more regional satraps to mop up maximum support for a federal, anti-BJP front for 2019.

With several parties expressing their desire to form a front, the Trinamool Congress also clarified that even as this grouping takes shape, the leadership question will be kept open.

Banerjee is set to travel to Chennai next month to meet Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam patriarch M Karunanidhi and then to Lucknow to meet the Samajwadi Partys Akhilesh Yadav. Banerjee, who shares a good rapport with her Odisha counterpart Naveen Patnaik of the Biju Janata Dal, also plans to connect with the Rashtriya Janata Dal leadership in the next few weeks.

With spontaneity and warmth, Mamata Banerjee met leaders across the political canvas on her pro-constitution, pro-India and pro-people mission to save the nation. She will go to Chennai on April 10 to meet Karunanidhi. More thereafter, said TMCs Rajya Sabha floor leader Derek OBrien.

Read | Mamata calls on Sonia Gandhi, meets Arun Shourie, Yashwant Sinha, Shatrughan

Banerjee, who heads the fourth largest party in Parliament with 46 MPs (34 in the Lok Sabha and the rest in the Rajya Sabha), has emphasised the need to emulate the model of the recent bypolls in Uttar Pradesh where an alliance of the SP and the Bahujan Samaj Party defeated the Bharatiya Janata Party. As it happened in UP, the strongest party in each constituency should be backed by other parties to ensure a one-on-one fight, she said in Delhi.

Banerjee has met leaders such as Sharad Pawar (NCP), Ramgopal Yadav (SP) and Misa Bharti (RJD), and her close confidantes claim that many leaders dont want to commit to the Congress on the question on leadership, even as it is impossible to form a front without the principal Opposition party.

Read | Can Mamata Banerjee unite the anti-BJP Opposition?

The Congress said talks about leadership are premature and the objective should be to oust the present regime. The battle for 2019 will be to preserve the founding vision of India. All people and forces who believe in this inclusive policy and idea of India have to come together and defeat the incumbent government. The objective is not about who will take the leadership position, Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari said.

Sitaram Yechury, general secretary of the largest left party, the CPI(M (the TMCs bitter rival in West Bengal), said in a recent interview to HT that in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the situation would be like 1996  when the Congress supported the Third Front government from outside  or the 2004 when the Congress led the government but was supported (from the outside) by the Left.

Banerjee met United Progressive Alliance chairperson Sonia Gandhi but didnt meet Congress president Rahul Gandhi on her latest trip to the capital  a clear indication that she wants to keep a distance from the Congress chief when talks about federal front have gained momentum. Banerjees confidantes added that she has no political baggage but can reach out to arch rivals of Congress like AAP or BJD.

Everything will depend on the tally of different parties. The leadership will be decided when the situation comes, said a senior Opposition leader who asked not to be identified.

Congresss chief spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala said, Mamataji has been associated with the Congress ideology from her Youth Congress days. The fight today is for preserving the countrys institutions, democracy, social fabric and economy. It is not a fight between parties but for values that represent India and the idea of India. In this fight, all Opposition parties are welcome to join hands with Rahulji, Soniaji and the Congress. We will fight this battle together despite differences of opinion because the nation is bigger than any party.
A family of three and another man from Keralas Kasargode, who had joined terror group IS in Afghanistan, are reported to have been killed in a bomb attack, police said on Friday.

A police intelligence officer in Kasargode told IANS that they have heard the news but there is no official confirmation from the National Investigation Agency (NIA).

What we have come to know is that the dead include Shihaz, his wife and their child besides another man. We are awaiting more details, said the official who did not wish to be identified.

With this, the total number of Keralites, killed after joining IS in Afghanistan, has gone up to eight after the NIA last year confirmed the death of four.

Chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan in 2016 had said that 21 people, including children, were missing -- 17 persons from Kasargode district and four from Palakkad.
The government has taken serious objection to the Supreme Court collegium  a body of top judges that makes appointments to the higher judiciary  not conducting a proper inquiry into charges of sexual harassment made by a Karnataka judicial officer against her superior, a district judge, and persisting with appointing him as a judge in the high court, a top government functionary said on Friday, speaking on condition of anonymity.

No woman judge inquired into the matter. The so-called discreet inquiries are not on record, the functionary added.

The government is of the view that the apex court flouted its own guidelines for inquiring into sexual harassment matters that it had laid down in the Vishakha case. These are guidelines that all organisations are mandated to follow.

The complainant said in her complaint to the Prime Minister that she was not asked any questions on her allegations by any authority from the Karnataka hight court or the Supreme Court.

The lack of an inquiry means due process has not been followed and the government is likely to offer this as a reason and go slow in clearing the appointment, a law ministry official familiar with the matter added, asking not to be identified.

The functionary and the official are referring to the complaint mentioned in Supreme Court judge J Chelameswars letter to Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra and other judges of the top court, contents of which were reported by HT on March 27 and 28.

The SC judge raised the issue of Karnataka chief justice Dinesh Maheshwari starting an inquiry into the complaint against the district judge after receiving a direct reference from the law ministry in December, and without keeping the apex court in the loop. The allegations pertain to the period between December 2013 and May 2015.

The law ministry official defended the ministrys act of directly referring the matter to the Karnataka high court, saying that a fresh complaint was made to both the Prime Minister and the President in December 2017, which was then sent by these offices to the law ministrys department of justice. HT has copies of the identical complaints. The district judge declined comment on the issue. HT is not naming him.

The official said the complaint was sent routinely to the HC Registrar General because all ministries are bound by the Vishaka guidelines which say they must act on each complaint and file a status report on what happened. The ministry had only asked for information on the action taken not insisted on an inquiry, the official added.

Describing the probe against the district judge as uncalled for, Justice Chelameswar pointed out in his letter that the judges name was cleared by the SC collegium after the allegations levelled against him were proved to be incorrect and concocted.

We, the judges of the Supreme Court of India, are being accused of ceding our independence and institutional integrity to the executives incremental encroachment, he wrote.

Listing the sequence of events, the law ministry official said the complainant made her first complaint on June 3, 2016 to the CJI, against the alleged harassment when the district judges name was already under consideration for elevation and soon after cleared by the SC collegium. She also sent her complaint to the law ministry which forwarded it to the collegium , but it was ignored, the official added. The ministry sent back the file recommending the appointment to the collegium, but this it has been returned (to the ministry), the official said.
A 16-year-old girl, who was battling for life after a boy set her ablaze at her house here three days back, succumbed to her injuries at a state-run hospital this afternoon, police said.

The girl, who suffered over 70% burn injuries after the boy, allegedly set her on fire, succumbed to her injuries at 3.30pm on Friday, they said.

Police said the boy, a minor, had been pestering the girl to marry him. He had an argument at her residence on March 27 and in a fit of rage allegedly set her ablaze by dousing kerosene.

The boy, who also suffered burn injuries in the incident, was undergoing treatment, police said.
BJP president Amit Shah said on Friday that he might have made a mistake but the people of Karnataka will not make one, as he wooed voters of the state ahead of next months assembly points.

During a press conference at Davangere earlier this week, Shah had said that the BS Yeddyurappa government was the most corrupt, a mistake he quickly corrected. But the Congress had quickly latched onto it to mock Shah, saying that the BJP president was speaking the truth.

Yeddyurappa is the BJPs chief ministerial candidate for the May 12 polls.

(Chief minister) Siddaramaiah and (Congress president) Rahul Gandhi were very happy over my gaffe while speaking about Siddaramaiahs corruption. I had made a mistake, but the people of Karnataka will not make it, because they have understood Siddaramaiahs government very well, Shah told party workers in Mysuru.

Shah, who is on a two-day tour of the Mysuru region, accused the Congress government of becoming notorious for being corrupt.

The Congress stands for corruption and violence, Shah said.

The JD (S) cannot change the Congress, and cannot hope to form a government. They can at best win a few seats. They cannot uproot the Congress, for that you will have to ensure the BJPs victory and make Yeddyurappa the chief minister, he added.

Earlier in the day, Shah and BJP leaders visited the Suttur Math, a monastery revered by the Lingayats, in the city. He also visited the erstwhile royal family of Mysuru and met the family of a slain Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh worker. A discussion was held with Dalit leaders of the district as well.

If you want to celebrate the birth anniversary of great people why not celebrate the anniversaries of poet Kuvempu (KV Puttappa). You will not remember Sir M Visvesvaraya, in your search for votes you will only remember Tipu Sultan, Shah said, as he mocked the Congress.

The 18th century ruler of Mysuru has been a source of constant friction between the two parties, with the Congress government in the state celebrating him and the BJP alleging that he murdered many Hindus.

Shah said there was only one choice before the people of Mysuru, the home district of Siddaramaiah. It is a choice between a government working for the development of the state or one that is known for corruption, he said.

Mysuru is said to be the weakest region for the BJP. But after studying the organisation here I assure the workers here that this is the region where the Congress will face the biggest setback, Shah said.

Earlier, speaking outside the house of Raju, Shah criticised the Siddaramaiah government over the killings of BJP and RSS workers. There cannot be any space for violence in democracy. If the Siddaramaiah government thinks they can stop us through such violence they are mistaken. Around 24 of our workers have been murdered and the police have not taken any action, he said.

Meanwhile, state Congress working president Dinesh Gundu Rao said the party will complain to the Election Commission against the BJP, alleging that Shah and other leaders promised Rajus family monetary help of Rs 5 lakh.

This is a gross violation of the model code of conduct, Gundu Rao said. We will ask the EC to ban Amit Shah from entering the state for this.

This came hours after Chandramma, Rajus mother, told the media that BJP leaders had promised her monetary compensation of Rs 5 lakh. Yeddyurappa said they will give us a cheque of Rs 5 lakh as compensation, she said.

However, BJP parliamentarian Pratap Simha said the compensation had already been paid.

Dear Channels, @AmitShah ji did not give any money to Rajus family, he only asked how much compensation we gave on behalf of the party n it was 5 lakh, he tweeted.
After weeks of trading charges regarding the harassment of each others diplomats, India and Pakistan announced on Friday that they had agreed to resolve the matter in line with the provisions of a 1992 pact on the treatment of officials posted at diplomatic missions.

India and Pakistan have mutually agreed to resolve matters related to the treatment of diplomats and diplomatic premises in line with the 1992 Code of Conduct for the treatment of diplomatic/consular personnel in India and Pakistan, said a brief statement issued by the external affairs ministry.

A similarly worded statement was issued by the Foreign Office in Islamabad.

The two sides began accusing each other of harassing and ill-treating diplomats early this month, taking bilateral ties to a fresh low and adding to tensions. The allegations came soon after the two countries announced on March 7 that they would work for the speedy release of women, elderly and mentally challenged prisoners from each others jails.

Officials familiar with the latest developments said the agreement on the issue of diplomats had been hammered out following meetings between the envoys of the two countries with the foreign secretaries.

Though Pakistan had recalled its high commissioner Sohail Mahmood for consultations at the height of the spat, his return to New Delhi for the Pakistan Day celebrations on March 23 was an indication that things were moving in the right direction, the officials said. Pakistani officials had indicated to journalists on March 23 that they were hopeful of the matter being resolved within a week.

The 1992 Code of Conduct facilitates the smooth and unhindered functioning of diplomatic and consular officials of the two countries in conformity with international laws and without violating their privileges and immunities.

The Code states that the two sides will not resort to intrusive and aggressive surveillance and actions such as verbal and physical harassment, disconnection of phone lines, threatening phone calls, pursuit in cars and unauthorized entry into residences.

The spat began after Pakistani security agencies reportedly stopped work on a residential compound being built by India for its officials within the diplomatic enclave in Islamabad. This was followed by allegations from both sides of the harassment and tailing of diplomats and military attaches. India submitted more than 15 notes verbale or semi-formal communications to Pakistans Foreign Office regarding the harassment of officials and their families. It also asked Pakistan to ensure the safety and security of officials at the Indian mission in Islamabad, saying were facing intimidation.

Pakistani officials said there had been close to 50 instances of harassment and intimidation of their diplomats since March 7.
From how to interlink rivers to using technology to expediting road construction and cleaning river Ganga, Prime Minister Narendra Modi joined around one lakh students at the grand finale of the Smart India Hackathon, the nations biggest innovation fest, on Saturday to hear about their ideas to make India better.

Speaking at the event Modi also said that he wants to give more autonomy to Indias higher education sector. Work is being done to create institutions of eminence, he said.

Modi spoke of how after the second World War, the nations that emphasised on higher education witnessed greater prosperity. The prime minister called upon the students to not only innovate more but get their discoveries patented, make their production easier and take these to the people. This is what brings prosperity, he said.

I am happy to see young minds thinking about ways to take our nation forward. It is a delight to be among smart innovators of smart India, Modi said.

Talking of his governments focus on participative governance, the prime minister said that the biggest assets of any nation are shram shakti and iccha shakti.

Once the people decide to bring about change, everything is possible. It is essential to know the root of every problem and think about out of the box ways to solve them, he said.

Students from Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar (Gujarat) shared their views on ways to improve road connectivity, especially in the hilly areas in Uttarakhand, while students from Varanasi (Uttar Pradesh) shared ideas on ensuring cleaner rivers. Students are also talking about ideas on clean water supply.
Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah and BJP president Amit Shah were on Friday accused of violating the model code of conduct, regarding which complaints were filed with the Election Commission.

The opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) alleged that Siddaramaiah gave Rs 2,000 to a priest for performing rituals during a visit to a temple in Mysuru on Friday.

BJP state units general secretary Ravi Kumar said in his complaint to the election panel that Siddaramaiah had given a bribe of Rs 2,000 each to two women who welcomed him during a visit in Chamundeshwari Assembly segment in Mysuru on Thursday.

On the other hand, the ruling Congress claimed that Shah gave a cheque of Rs 5 lakh to the mother of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) worker H Raju who was allegedly murdered in 2016 in Mysuru.

During his two-day trip to Mysuru region, Shah on Friday visited Rajus family here along with Union Minister Ananth Kumar and the partys state unit President BS Yeddyurappa.

Shah and other (BJP) leaders handed over a cheque for Rs 5 lakh to the family, which is in gross violation of the model code of conduct, said a complaint filed against Shah by the state unit Congress leaders.

It is safe to presume in the light of the ensuing elections that the money was paid with an intent to woo voters, the leaders said.

The Election Commission on Tuesday announced that Assembly polls would be held on May 12 for 224 seats and the votes will be counted on May 15.
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat on Friday criticised what he said were attempts to divide the Hindu community, in an apparent reference to the Congress-led Karnataka governments move to grant separate religion status to Lingayat and Veerashaiva communities.

Without naming the Congress and Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah, Bhagwat said a section of the people with devil thinking were trying to divide the Hindu community.

We should oppose such designs tooth and nail and ensure that our great religion does not succumb to such designs at any cost, he said.

Read | Minority status for Lingayats: Who they are and how they affect Karnataka elections

Earlier this month, the Siddaramaiah-led Karnataka cabinet approved minority status for the Lingayat and Veerashaiva community, days after accepting the suggestions of the Nagamohan Das committee. The state government subsequently wrote to the Centre recommending the official recognition of the two communities as religious minorities.

Bhagwat was speaking at a valedictory function of the Hindu Dharma Sanskruti Mandir in Nagpur on Thursday evening.

Religion is a path that one follows which should be respected by other faiths too. But dharma is the element that binds humanity in entirety which augurs well for building a strong society, said Bhagwat.

Praising the work of the Hindu Dharma Sanskruti Mandir, he insisted that there is a need to establish such organisations in all states across the country to make people aware about the Dharma and Sanskruti of India.
The Narendra Modi-led BJP government is struggling to change a perception that it is against Muslims and lower-caste people, chief of ally Lok Jan Shakti Ram Vilas Paswan said, adding that it could cost the PM votes in the general elections next year.

Paswan, a central minister, predicted another term for Modi but said the BJP would have to work towards changing its image as a group that caters mainly to upper-caste Hindus.

Whatever the government is doing, it is doing for everyone; even for the minority community, it has done a lot, Paswan said in an interview in his bungalow, seated on a couch under a huge oil painting of himself.

But despite everything, the perception is not changing among the minorities and the scheduled castes (socially backward classes) irrespective of the work being done.

Paswan said the opposition could take advantage of the BJPs pro-upper class Hindu image and it needed to be countered aggressively.

The BJP said Paswans comment was a well-meaning observation from an ally but that the party has foiled repeated attempts of the opposition Congress party to create an impression that the BJP is losing the perception battle.

We need to be cognizant of the fact that opposition parties have been raising a bogey of non-issues, but so far theyve failed, said BJP spokesperson GVL Narasimha Rao.

When Modi won office in 2014, his party or its partners ruled only seven of Indias 29 states. Today, it is in power in 21 of them and has replaced Congress as the party with strongest nationwide presence.

Paswan, whose party enjoys considerable support from the Muslim community in his home state of Bihar in the east, said ending ties with the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) was unthinkable.

This is essentially a government of the BJP, they have an absolute majority. Still Modi has given space to allies like us, said Paswan, a 10-time member of parliament who began his political career in 1969.

Cant even think of leaving the NDA. No one has approached me and I am happy where I am.
A trudge up a hill and a wade across a river is what it took for Dr Yagnadatta Rath to reach tribal woman Sitadadu Raita who went into labour while on the way to hospital on foot in Odishas Kandhamal district on Sunday.

By the time Rath covered more than 1.5km on foot to reach Raita, 23, she had delivered a girl, but her placenta had not come out. She was a first-time mother and Rath did what was required for the safety of the Kutia Kondh tribal and her child.

The young doctors actions have made him a poster boy for Odishas healthcare system, which came in for widespread criticism in 2016, when visuals of tribal farmer Dana Majhi walking with his wifes corpse on his shoulders played endlessly across media platforms.

Rath, 29, works as an ad hoc doctor at Tumudibandha community health centre in Kandhamal, where Maoists have pockets of influence among the tribal populace.

Raitas village, Balam, though only about 7km away from the health centre, is nearly inaccessible. A large part of the route can be covered only on foot through the hill and the meandering river, which has to be crossed seven times.

On Sunday, Raita started walking for the Tumudibandha health centre with her husband and family members, but could not carry on after a point. Her husband left her inside a forest with the relatives and raced to the house of Tumudibandha block development officer (BDO) for help.

When the BDO sounded out the health centre, Rath set out for the forest in an ambulance. The ambulance stopped after covering 4km. The rest of the way had to be covered on foot.

When I reached the spot, the woman had delivered a girl, but her placenta had not come out. Normally, there is a lot of bleeding at this stage. Luckily, nothing of that sort had happened, said Rath. I asked the men to move away a little so that I could give her a little privacy. The baby weighed around 2.1 kg.

Dr Yagnadatta Rath set out for the forest in an ambulance. The ambulance stopped after covering 4km. The rest of the way had to be covered on foot. (HT Photo)

Raita and her baby were taken to the ambulance and then to health centre, where they are under observation. It was her first delivery and she was scared about her childs well-being. Both are safe. They will be discharged on Friday, said Rath.

The young doctor, who did his MBBS from Bhubaneswars Institute of Medical Science and SUM Hospital in 2012, said he was really worried when he heard Raita was travelling all the way from Balam.

I had last been to that village a few years ago with a colleague for immunisation. I was worried how she would cross the river, said Rath, whose wife is also a doctor at Tumudibandha.

His prompt action has come in for praise. Netra Manseth, a social worker in Tumudibandha, said, He is an inspiration for doctors in our district.

The state health and family welfare department commended Rath for his dedication. We are proud of such role models in the department, the department stated in a Facebook post.

Raths actions are the latest in a series of extraordinary services by young doctors reported from across the state.

In October last year, Dr Omkar Hota, working in Maoist violence-affected Malkangiri district, carried a tribal woman who was bleeding after childbirth for 10km on a cot.

Hota walked for three hours through forested terrain to take the woman to hospital. His work prompted the Odisha government to institute an award for doctors and other employees providing selfless service to people.

In November last year, Dr Sankar Ramchandani, another young doctor working at a community health centre in western Odishas Bargarh district, carried a filaria patient lying by the road in his personal vehicle to hospital.

In May last year, three doctors in Nabarangpur district headquarters hospital donated blood to save the life of a tribal woman shortly after she gave birth.
Pakistan has raised objections over the ongoing construction of the two hydroelectric power projects in Jammu and Kashmir, alleging that the projects are in violation of the Indus Water Treaty of 1960.

As per the treaty, the eastern rivers of Beas, Sutlej and Ravi are under Indias control, while Pakistan controls the western rivers of Indus, Chenab and Jhelum. The treaty gives each country the right to use only 20% of the water from the rivers under the two countries respective control.

An official in the ministry of water resources said Pakistan had asked India to share details of the designs of the two dams  the 1,000 megawatt (MW) Pakal Dul dam on the Marusadar river, a tributary of the river Chenab, in Kishtwar; and the 48 MW Lower Kalnai dam on another tributary of the river in Doda district, to verify that the 1960 water treaty was not being violated.

The issue was raised in the Permanent Indus Commission (PIC) meeting, where government officials from India and Pakistan discussed the problems related to the Indus Basin.

The treaty mandates the PIC to meet at least once a year alternately in India and Pakistan.

The meeting which took place in India on March 29 and March 30 was the first this year and may be followed by more such meetings to sort out the issue, according to official cited above.

The issue was first raised in a previous meeting held last year.

The meeting was cordial but Pakistan raised objections about designs of our two hydroelectric power projects  Pakal Dul and Lower Kalnai  saying the designs violated the treaty. We have insisted that there are no violations, the official said, requesting anonymity.

We will try and sort the issue mutually, the official added.

The Indian delegation led by Indus Water Commissioner PK Saxena held meetings with the Pakistani side headed by Syed Muhammad Mehar Ali Shah.
Following violence over Ram Navami celebrations in West Bengal, the police are putting in place elaborate arrangements to avoid any untoward incident during Hanuman Jayanti celebrations in the state on Saturday.

Apart from a ban on armed rallies, additional forces will be deployed in each district and police personnel will be placed outside every religious place.

Elaborate arrangements have been made. Police will be deployed in every corner of the state, we will keep a tab on any suspicious movement. No one will be allowed to take out armed rallies, a senior police officer said.

Besides the deployment of additional forces, mobile police teams would patrol the sensitive areas round-the-clock and special monitoring would be done at the Bangladesh border and the inter-state borders, another police official said.

We have reports that those involved in Sundays violence (in the Asansol and Raniganj areas of West Burdwan district) were outsiders, the official said.

Chief minister Mamata Banerjee held a meeting on Thursday with the state director general of police, ADG (law and order), home secretary and chief secretary.

Apart from taking stock of the prevailing situation in Raniganj and Asansol, the chief minister had directed the police to make strict arrangements in order to avoid any untoward incident.

Three persons were killed in West Burdwan and Purulia districts and several others, including police personnel, were injured during Ram Navami celebrations.
City crime branch police on Thursday arrested Mahesh Vikram Hegde, the founder of news website Postcard News, for spreading alleged fake news through social media posts about a Jain monk being attacked by Muslims.

Confirming the arrest, N Satheesh Kumar, the joint commissioner of police (crime), who heads the CCB, said Hegde was picked up from the central Majestic area of the city. He was produced before a magistrate and sent to police custody for 14 days.

Contrary to the claims by Hegde, the monk had met with a road accident and sustained the injuries, Kumar said.

According to Kumar, the accident took place during monk Mayank Sagars visit to the state for the Mahamastakabhisheka of Gomateshwara at Shravanabelagola in Hassan district.

A complaint was filed against the alleged fake post by one Gaffer Baig on March 21 under Section 66 of the Information Technology Act (dishonest or fraudulent information).

Read | Fake news warriors: Meet the people who debunk fake news, one post at a time

The opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) criticised the development as high handedness of the ruling Congress government.

Pratap Simha, BJP member of Parliament from Mysuru, called the state government cowards. Today morning Coward Congress Govt (Karnataka) arrested @mvmeet Mahesh Vikram Hegde under unconnected IT act 66, that too by using CCB! Shame on you, he tweeted.

Responding to the BJPs allegations, state home minister Ramalinga Reddy said the police was doing its duty. If there is a complaint the police will arrest a person, thats just standard procedure, he said.

What more can be expected from the BJP, he said about the comments on the Congress.
Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Friday appointed young leaders Jitendra Singh and Rajeev Satav as in-charge of the party affairs in Odisha and Gujarat respectively in the key organisational change days after the partys plenary session.

Singh, a former Union minister and a key aide of Gandhi, will replace senior leader and general secretary BK Hariprasad, who offered his resignation soon after the partys drubbing in the panchayat elections in Odisha last year.

The party will try to revive its political fortunes in Odisha, where assembly elections are scheduled to be held next year. The race for 2019 is wide open mainly due to anti-incumbency sentiments against many of chief minister Naveen Patnaik-led Biju Janata Dals 117 MLAs.

Satav, Lok Sabha MP from Hingoli in Maharashtra and a former Youth Congress president, will replace another senior leader Ashok Gehlot in Gujarat. He was one of the four secretaries, including Harshvardhan Sapkal, Varsha Gaikwad and Jeetu Patwari, who assisted Gehlot in the November-December polls in Gujarat.

Former Rajasthan chief minister Gehlot was appointed the general secretary in-charge of Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled Gujarat in April last year ahead of the polls. The Congress failed to oust the saffron party from Gujarat even after 22 years of its rule in the elections.

Gandhi also removed Mahendra Joshi as the chief organiser of the Seva Dal, a frontal organisation of the Congress, and appointed Gujarat leader Lalji Desai in his place.
A person who was arrested on charges of being involved in communal clashes during a Ram Navami procession here earlier this week, has escaped from police custody, a senior police officer said on Friday.

The person who fled from police custody on Thursday has been associated with taking out Ram Navami processions over the years, Superintendent of Police Satya Prakash said.

He was one of the 150 people arrested allegedly for rioting.

A fresh FIR has been lodged against him for escaping from police custody. A warrant has been issued for his arrest which will be pasted on his house. If he does not surrender within the given time, his property will be attached, the SP said.

The Congress criticised the Nitish Kumar government for the incident.

This is yet another incident of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar being helpless in the face of rising dominance of the BJP-RSS over the states administrative machinery, Bihar Pradesh Congress Committee (BPCC) acting president Kaukab Qadri told PTI in Patna.

How is it possible that a person accused of rioting, walked out of police custody and the officials could know it a day later, after it was reported in the media, he asked.

The BJP would continue with its agenda but the chief ministers reputation is at stake now, said Qadri, who had met Governor Satya Pal Mallik earlier this week and submitted a memorandum on the Aurangabad riots.

Communal violence broke out in Aurangabad during Ram Navami celebrations on Sunday after stones were pelted on a religious procession from where provocative slogans were allegedly raised.

Vandalism and arson had taken place thereafter, forcing the administration to clamp prohibitory orders under section 144 of the CrPC in the town.
Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Friday announced raising the retirement age of state government employees to 62 years from the current 60 years.

He made the announcement while speaking to reporters in Bhopal. He, however, did not disclose details of this decision. There are about five lakh regular government employees in Madhya Pradesh.

The opposition Congress, accusing the government of deceiving the states unemployed youth by increasing the retirement age, demanded that such youth be given a berozgari bhatta (unemployment allowance).

Replying to a question on the Supreme Courts order related to the promotion of state government employees. Chouhan said, Several state government employees are not able to get promotion due to the apex courts order in a case related to reservation in promotion pending with the SC. We will not allow any employee to retire without him getting his due promotion. This is why we have decided to increase the retirement age from 60 to 62 years.

The state government had made a provision for reservation for SC/ST employees in promotion, which was set aside by the Madhya Pradesh high court.

The states appeal against the order is pending in the SC with the latter ordering a status quo. This, officials said, has kept on hold promotions of state government employees.

Chouhan expressed hope that SC would take a decision on it within next two years.

Attacking the government, the opposition Congress said the decision was not going to help employees.

This decision is not going to benefit employees. On the contrary, this would deprive younger officials and employees from getting a promotion. The CM should now announce an unemployment allowance of Rs 2,000 per month to jobless educated youth of the state, said Ajay Singh, Leader of Opposition in the Assembly.

He added that the state government should address the problems of contract employees, who are staging protests.

Meanwhile, the Berojgar Sena, an outfit of the educated unemployed, has opposed the governments decision and called it cheating.

Chouhan has deceived 1.5-crore educated unemployed youth of Madhya Pradesh by increasing the retirement age of state government employees. This decision will harm the BJP. We will tour the entire state to apprise the youth about this. We will also take legal recourse, said Akshay Hunka, the outfits chief.
The Tamil Nadu government will move the Supreme Court on the issue of constituting the Cauvery Water Management Board, Chief Minister K Palaniswami said on Friday even as the ruling AIADMK announced that it would observe a fast on April 2 on the matter.

With the Cauvery issue appearing to be snowballing into an embarrassment for the AIADMK which has largely been friendly with the Centre, the party announced a hunger strike on Monday seeking formation of the CWMB and the Cauvery Water Regulatory Committee.

AIADMKs arch rival DMK said it would hold a black flag demonstration against Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his proposed visit to Tamil Nadu on April 15.

DMK, the main opposition party, said it would also hold a meeting of its friendly parties on April 1 and later announce a massive demonstration against the state and central governments, party top leader M K Stalin said.

In New Delhi, AIADMK Rajya Sabha MP S Muthukaruppan said he would resign from the RS on the Cauvery issue.

He said the Prime Minister was not listening to them on the Cauvery issue.

I am going to resign my post, this is a post given to me by Amma (Jayalalithaa), Muthukaruppan told reporters at New Delhi.

Praising late J Jayalalithaa for her steps on the Cauvery issue in the past, the MP said he would like to do something for the people, following in her footsteps.

He made it clear that the decision to resign was his own while he lauded both Chief Minister Palaniswami and Panneerselvam for their efforts on the Cauvery issue.

He said he would submit his resignation to Rajya Sabha Chairman Venkaiah Naidu during the next sitting of Parliament.

Reacting to this, DMK leader Stalin said all ruling party MPs should resign and not Muthukaruppan alone.

Meanwhile, outfits including the pro-Tamil Tamizhaga Vazhvurimai Katchi staged protests against the Centre seeking setting up of the CWMB.

The agitations were held in Chennai and the Cauvery delta town of Tiruvarur.

Farmers leader P R Pandian said demonstrations like the one witnessed seeking approval for Jallikattu (bull taming sport) last year should be held on the Cauvery issue.

He said Central government offices should be picketed.

Speaking to reporters at Madurai, Palaniswami said the kind of petition to be submitted in the apex court was being discussed with legal experts.

Tamil Nadus stand is that the Centre must constitute the CWMB and CWRC.

Underlining his governments commitment towards setting up of CWMB and the CWRC, Palaniswami said his party MPs had vociferously taken up the matter in Parliament leading to proceedings being stalled for over two weeks.

Fisheries Minister D Jayakumar indicated that the apex court would be approached in a couple of days.

In its February 16 judgement, the apex court had raised the 270 tmcft share of Karnataka by 14.75 tmcft and reduced Tamil Nadus share of Cauvery water.

The apex court, which modified the 2007 award of Cauvery Water Dispute Tribunal (CWDT) with respect to Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, retained the share of Kerala at 30 tmcft and Puducherry at 7 tmcft, out of a total of 740 tmcft.

The apex court granted six weeks time to the Centre to formulate a scheme to ensure compliance of its 465-page judgement, which modified the CWDT award.

Following the verdict, Tamil Nadu has been urging the Centre to set up the CWMB and CWRC to ensure it received its due share of water from the inter-state river.

AIADMK coordinator and Deputy Chief Minister O Panneerselvam made the announcement on hunger strike while chairing a mass wedding function organised by the party at Madurai along with Palaniswami, who is also the party co-coordinator.

Pointing out that the six-week deadline given by the apex court had ended yesterday, Panneerselvam said, The people of Tamil Nadu and the farmers are expecting an answer from the Centre on the Cauvery issue.

Stalin, also the leader of opposition in the Assembly, alleged that the AIADMK dispensation was subservient to the Centre.

He blamed the central and state governments for enacting a drama on the issue.

After chairing the partys executive committee meeting on Cauvery, Stalin told reporters that the black flag stir would be part of the next course of action his party would take up over the river water sharing issue.
Two armymen who allegedly stabbed their colleague to death and burnt his body at the Military campus in Vivek Nagar here were arrested on Friday.

Police said Muralikrishna (29) and Dhanaraj (25), both from Srikakulam district in Andhra Pradesh, were arrested on the charge of murdering their colleague Pankaj (26) from Uttar Pradesh.

They said Muralikrishna, who is facing some disciplinary action, was upset that Pankaj was the witness in those cases.

Fearing that he may lose his job, he hatched a conspiracy with Dhanaraj to kill his colleague, police said.

Deputy Commissioner of Police Dr Chandragupta said that on the night of March 23 Pankaj returned to his room after the drill when the duo barged in and bolted the room from inside.

An argument ensued following which Muralikrishna and Dhanraj stabbed Pankaj to death.

Later, they dumped his body in a water tanker, took it to Domlur, a few kilometres away and set it ablaze using waste material there in a vain bid to destroy evidence, he said.

They then brought the half burnt body back to the campus and threw it in a corner, went to the room of Pankaj and cleaned the blood stains.

Army officials found the body in the campus on March 25, following which they alerted police.

The services of sniffer dogs were requisitioned and police zeroed in on the duo and arrested them.

A case of murder, criminal conspiracy and attempt to destroy evidence under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code was registered against them, police said.
The Law Commission of India, the countrys top law advisory body, which is working on a draft Uniform Civil Code (UCC), will steer clear of most personal laws relating to Muslim marriage and divorce so as to avoid a conflict with the Supreme Court, chairman Balbir Singh Singh Chauhan said on Thursday.

The commission firmed up its stand days after the Supreme Court admitted pleas to examine the practices of polygamy, nikah halala, nikah mutta and nikah misyar . The last three are different types of temporary contractual marriages.

How can we touch what is sub judice? The effect of the Supreme Courts decision will be binding upon us, Chauhan, a former judge of the top court, explained. He said the commission would, however, still examine Muslim personal laws relating to adoption and succession.

The commission has till the end of its term in August to submit its report on the UCC while the SC admitted the pleas on March 26.

The commissions decision effectively means that it will not deliberate on the most politically contentious and hotly debated personal laws. The Shah Bano case in 1986, after which the government brought in a law to negate the effect of an SC judgment awarding maintenance to the plaintiff, triggered the debate over the constitutional allowance for different communities to follow their personal laws with regards to marriage, divorce, maintenance, adoption and succession.

Hindu family laws were modified in the 1950s but those for the Christians and Muslims are colonial-era relics.

Activists have long argued that Muslim personal law, which has remained mostly unchanged, contains provisions that are unfair to Muslim women, often victims of polygamy and the triple talaq system.

Senior advocate Kamini Jaiswal described the commissions decision as a setback for making personal laws more equitable for women. The UCC has been a long-standing poll promise and ideological position of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) but many minority groups have opposed it because they see it as an effort to erase their cultural and religious identities.

In June 2016, the law ministry sent a reference to the commission asking it for an in-depth examination of matters in relation to the Uniform Civil Code and whether the time was ripe for bringing it in.

The commission issued an appeal on March 19 asking stakeholders and the public at large to send in their suggestions and comments on the issue of the UCC. The appeal also said that suggestions related to triple talaq should be excluded because a bill to criminalise the practice of Talaq-e-biddat or instant triple talaq is pending in Parliament. The deadline for writing in to the commission ends on April 6.

An official involved in the process who asked not to be identified said a large majority of the responses to a questionnaire circulated by the commission in October 2016 pertained to Muslim marriage and divorce issues. Most political parties opposed to the BJP rejected the commissions exercise to seek responses, calling it a part of the ruling partys political agenda.

HT reported in December that the commission could stay away from coming up with a comprehensive code but instead make recommendations for faith-specific changes in the laws of different communities to usher in reform.
A police team from Barmer left for Kashmir late on Thursday to record the statement of a woman missing since March 16, police said.

Ritu Khandelwal, 18, went missing from her home in Barmer, and when her family registered a missing persons report, the police found that she was in Jammu and Kashmirs Kupwara district.

Police claimed that the girl had converted to Islam in December last year and married a Kashmiri man, keeping her family in the dark.

Barmer superintendent of police (SP) Gagandeep Singla contacted Kashmir police to seek their help in finding out the missing woman. Kupwara SP assured me of all possible help, after which a special team has been sent to Kashmir to record the missing womans statement, Singla said.

Earlier, a Barmer police team, who went to Kashmir to search for the missing woman, returned back. Barmer police received an order from the Jammu and Kashmir high court on March 22 to provide security to the couple so that no harm is caused to them.

The missing womans parents refuted the police claims, alleging that their daughter had been kidnapped from Ahmedabad.

At a press conference held on Wednesday, Ritu Khandelwals father Ganesh Kumar said she had neither converted nor married the Kashmiri man. We fear that shes been brainwashed and her life is in danger, he told reporters.

Ganesh Kumar said Ritu boarded a bus to Surat (Gujarat) on March 16, but she did not reach there. He alleged that the documents produced in the Jammu and Kashmir high court had been forged using his daughters fake signatures.

She took history exam on December 20 at Barmer College and has been at her aunts place in Mumbai from December 26 to January 3, he said, adding that she couldnt have converted on December 27 and married on December 30 when she was in Mumbai.

The documents that the Barmer police received on March 22 showed that she had converted and became Zeenab. Police also received a copy of the marriage registration certificate in which Gulzar Ahmad Khan is mentioned as her husband.

Ritus uncle Kundan, who had gone to Kashmir with Barmer police, claimed that Kashmir police officials had also expressed apprehensions that the documents had been forged. Ritus original documents, he said, are in Barmer.

Reacting to Ritus family members claims, Barmer police said the couple had approached the Jammu and Kashmir high court, seeking security from private respondents; the HC directed the police in Kashmir and Barmer to not act against them.
The imam of a mosque in West Bengals Asansol town has appealed for peace and restraint hours after his 16-year-old son was found dead following the violence that started in the industrial town and other areas in the state after the Ram Navami celebrations last Sunday.

The body of Maulana Imdadul Rashidis son, Sibtulla Rashidi, was found on Wednesday after he went missing following a clash on Tuesday in Asansols Railpar area.

Sibtulla was the younger of the two sons of Rashidi, who has been performing the duties of the imam at Noorani Mosque for about 30 years.

Our first duty is to restore normalcy. A body was found. A case was registered, Asansol Durgapur Police commissioner LN Meena said.

Read: Amit Shah sets up 4-member BJP panel to look into Bengal violence, submit report

Rashidi made an impassioned plea to the people gathered at the Idgah Maidan where his son was buried on Thursday.

My son has died, but I dont want anyone else to lose his child. If you strike back, I shall leave this town, the imam told the crowd.

I only want peace to return here. I have made the same request to the people who gathered on Thursday, he repeated his request on Friday.

Local officials and senior leaders of the ruling Trinamool Congress said Rashidis comments will help the administration in restoring peace and normalcy in the area but questioned the circumstances surrounding his sons death.

It is not yet clear to the administration whether the son of the imam was killed or he died due to some other reason. But we do recognise his exemplary gesture in maintaining peace in the region, Tapas Banerjee, Trinamool Congress MLA of Asansol South, said on Friday morning.

Read: Eye on 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Mamata draws up itinerary to meet regional leaders

If he could utter those words in such a state of shock, disobeying him would amount to dishonouring him, Prabal Roy Chowdhury, the sub-divisional officer of Asansol, said.

Former Trinamool Congress Lok Sabha MP Kabir Suman lauded the cleric and said chief minister Mamata Banerjee should not only organise a public function to honour him, but also recommend the Bharat Ratna for him.

Mamata Banerjee, why arent you saying it out loud that Bharat Ratna should be bestowed on this imam We should all go and touch his feet, Suman said in his Facebook post.

The Vishwa Hindu Praishad (VHP) blamed the police and administration for failing to ensure peace during and after the processions.

VHP organising secretary of Bengal, Bihar, Odisha and Andaman, Sachindra Narayan Sinha claimed it was a VHP-organised Ram Navami rally that was attacked first in Asansol on March 27 when it was passing through a Muslim-dominated area close to the railway station.

This led to sporadic violence in other parts of Asansol. We have nothing to do with the death of the imams son but would like to point out that police silently watched while our men were being attacked. And, this happened barely a day after a man was killed in Raniganj which is barely 20 kilometers away, Sinha said.

Read: Bengal Ram Navami violence: Babul Supriyo prevented from entering Asansol, FIR filed

Sinha admitted that men who took part in the rally were armed with swords and sticks. They came from an akhada where this is a decade-old practice. On March 22, chief minister Mamata Banerjee had herself said that organisations doing so for years were allowed to display traditional weapons. However, despite repeated appeals, police did not provide adequate security for our rallies. They couldnt even protect their own deputy commissioner who was severely injured in a bomb blast, the VHP leader said.

The industrial towns of Raniganj and Asansol hit the headlines after clashes between Hindus and Muslims erupted in West Bengal since Ram Navami celebrations on March 25.

A man was killed and several injured after Ram Navami procession allegedly tried to enter a Muslim-dominated locality in Raniganj on March 25. Three others also lost their lives in related incidents across North 24 Parganas and Purulia districts around that time.

The Mamata Banerjee government rushed three senior Indian Police Service officers to Raniganj and Asansol  they are located 20km apart  to tackle the situation.

There have been no further incidents of violence over the past two days as the state government ensured heavy police presence in the affected areas and suspended internet services.
The Uttar Pradesh government will oppose the entry of jailed lawmakers in Assembly sessions and important legislative events, an official said on Friday.

Principal secretary (Home) Arvind Kumar has issued a notice to the prosecution directorate.

As per the notice, prosecution officers have been asked to oppose the matters in the court related to jailed legislators seeking bail or permission to attend legislative events such as sessions, sources said.

The officers have been asked to take reference to the high court ruling in the matter of the former legislator Shekhar Tiwari, wherein the court had observed that the lawmakers who are in jail have no legal right to attend legislative sessions.

The court had recently barred mafia-don-turned-politician, Mukhtar Ansari of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) to attend the voting for the Rajya Sabha seats. Hari Om Yadav, a legislator of the Samajwadi Party (SP), was also denied permission for attending the biennial polls to cast his vote.

Opposition had alleged that this was done at the behest of the ruling party to prevent their MLAs from casting their votes in the close call elections, but the ruling party had said that the matter was in court and that they had nothing to do with it.
Baaghi 2

Cast: Tiger Shroff, Disha Patani, Manoj Bajpayee, Deepak Dobriyal, Randeep Hooda

Director: Ahmed Khan

Rating: 1/5

Deemag kya hota dahi, dil kya hota sahi.

I am not making this up. This is indeed what a major character in the film says. He must have had an epiphany as we are treated to an endless saga of badly acted, illogical and disjointed scenes in Baaghi 2.

Ranveer Pratap Singh aka Ronnie (Tiger Shroff) and Neha (Disha Patani) were college sweethearts who have been separated for many years. In an obvious reference, Tiger is an army major now who likes to tie up stone-pelters to the bonnet of his jeep. The girl is a woman whose child has been missing for months, and nobody believes her. There is nobody she could turn to, so she decides to call her ex-boyfriend to Goa, which, as you rightly guessed, is a drugs hub.

Read: Hichki movie review: Rani Mukerjis well-intentioned film could have been so much more

The sudden turn of events suggests there might be a conspiracy bigger than how it looked initially. Because it is Goa, youre obligated to meet the Russians, Israelis and Nigerian with an Indian guy calling the shots.

Cliches are not the only problem in Baaghi 2 though. Its a badly planned screenplay that doesnt know what it wants to be. From chasing Rambos trail to taking the baton from Dum Maaro Dum, it tries every trick in the book and manages to make them worse.



There are good enough actors in Baaghi 2. To name a few: Manoj Bajpayee, Randeep Hooda, Deepak Dobriyal and Prateik Babbar. They have been given ample screen time, but all of them go overboard as if they expect the director to change the story or their character even at the last minute.

Sample this: A Hyderabadi middleman Usman Langda (Deepak Dobriyal) meets Tiger Shroff for the first time and mutters under his breath  Life me bahot se cheezo se guzra hai wo (He has gone through a lot in life). Really? Wouldnt astrology be a better career choice for him?

Read: Hate Story 4 movie review: So much hate is injurious to your health. Zero star

Slowly and unwillingly, you adjust to the creepiness of tattooed, powder-snorting eccentric men, but the director Ahmed Khan (who has already announced Baaghi 3) is in no mood to slow down, so he rolls out the carpet for the films surprise package -- an encounter specialist named LSD (Randeep Hooda).

But to this rule-flouting cops credit, his banters with DIG Shergill (Manoj Bajpayee) bring some respite to this dull and expressionless display of Tiger Shroffs physique and over-ambitious combat skills.

In Baaghi 2, people break into a dance in the middle of a sad tale of domestic abuse. If the writers cant come up with any acceptable situation, flashback comes to the rescue.

The song finishes and they get back to their usual business of strangling each other even when the guns are available. Needless to say that even a barrage of bullets doesnt harm our guy, while he breaks four legs in one go. So much for appreciating one good stunt in Baaghi!

Read: Welcome To New York movie review: Diljit Dosanjh, Sonakshi Sinhas extended IIFA promo is a never-ending pain

In Baaghi, Tiger Shroff destroys a multi-storied building full of martial arts specialist. Here, he is dealing with countless men of all ethnicities inside a jungle. There are helicopters blocking his way, but can anybody really stop him? Take that, Vidyut Jammwal!



No character is etched in detail. In fact, there is no focus on carving out any graph as if all we care about is Tiger Shroff jumping through artificial falls and over speeding cars.

Disha Patani is the biggest victim of this apathy. She has been treated like a showpiece whose only purpose in life is to bring Ronnie (who, we are told, is an army in himself) to the den of goons.

Apart from a chase sequence of approximately 20 seconds and a couple of hand-to-hand combat scenes, Baaghi 2 fails to deliver. The background score which worked so well in Baaghi sounds like a noise this time.

Its a mere show-reel for Tiger Shroff.

Read: Avengers Infinity War new trailer: Black Widow delivers a chilling threat, Thor wants epic team up

I still wanted to be generous with Baaghi 2 and rate it 1.5, but then Jacqueline Fernandez took whatever enthusiasm was left in me with her version of Ek, do, teen.

At nearly 150-minute of runtime, Baaghi 2 is a big disappointment, especially for those who were waiting for a new action star to take over Bollywood.

Interact with Rohit Vats at Twitter/@nawabjha

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Less than a month after 1993 Mumbai blasts convict Abu Salem Ansari complained about the usurpation of his ancestral family property in Uttar Pradesh, local authorities have restored the same to his and his familys name in the revenue records.

Salems brother Abu Hakim confirmed that local revenue authorities have restored the names of Salem and other family members in the revenue record of their ancestral properties.

Narendra Pratap Singh, superintendent of police, Azamgarh (rural) said, After we received the letter, we called a meeting with both the parties. The tehsil officials were asked to investigate the matter.

We are not aware about the recent update, as tehsil officials have not yet informed me about the same, said Singh.

Salem has asked for a proper investigation into the case so that the guilty can be booked. Hakim said, We had written to the tehsil office three months ago, informing them about the fraud. But it did not evoke any response from them. We are not in a position to fight them, so we kept quiet. Salem got to know about the issue through a relative and he wrote the letter. The local police station called me to record my statement.

Salem, convicted for his role in the March 1993 Mumbai serial blasts and for the murder of builder Pradeep Jain, had written a letter to Sarai Mir police station in Azamgarh district and the local revenue authorities on March 6. In his letter, he complained that locals had allegedly used forged documents to grab his ancestral property. Salem also claimed he was suffering from sleepless nights at Taloja central prison after he learnt that their family property had been usurped by locals.

The gangster claimed that his brother, Abu Hakim had taken the documents related to the land from the tehsil office on March 30, 2013, and registered the plot in his name along with that of his brothers. However, on November 6, 2017, when Hakim went to the tehsil office, he learnt the land was in the name of locals  Mohammed Nafees, Mohammed Shaukat, Sarwari, Moinuddin, Aklaq, Aklaq Khan and Nadeem Akhtar. Its clear Nafees and others have, with the help of officials from the tehsil office, made fraudulent documents to usurp the property, wrote Salem in his letter to the officials.
In an on-going investigation into purported fake documents, the Mumbai police crime branch (Unit 2) found that the accused had helped open 40 savings and current bank accounts, some of which were used for an export and import business.

The probe began with apprehension of Sunil Chaudhary, who ran a photocopying shop in south Mumbai, and one of his accomplices for making forged government documents like Aadhar cards, pan cards and election cards.

The episode came to light after the unit on February 10 conducted raid at a shop in Masjid Bunder and arrested two suspects, Sunil Chaudhary and his accomplice, Attaullah Malik for making forged government documents. During the search, police also recovered electronic gadgets and rubber stamps used to prepare the documents.

After it became clear that bank accounts had been opened using the forged documents, police registered second a FIR with the Byculla police station against Chaudhary, and he was taken into custody for further investigation. Police verified all the bank accounts and found that some of the account holders were not aware that the accounts were being misused, and few of them were simply asked to sign account opening forms under the guise of opening salary accounts, said a police officer.

Initially, we found 11 current accounts and 20 savings accounts, but now the figures have gone up beyond 40. Several transactions have been made in most of these bank accounts,said the officer. We are verifying the money trail and it appears that some businessman is involved in the scam to run his export-import business using these fraudulent accounts, the officer added.

Police have seized all the bank accounts and also recorded the statements of the account holders, and expect to nab the mastermind of the fraud soon.

Box:

The accused Sunil Rambahadur Chaudhary, a school dropout, came to Mumbai in 2012 from his native Bihar in search of employment. He did odd jobs at several places before renting a shop in Swastik House, situated in Masjid Bander, in 2016. Chaudhary allegedly started making forged government documents at his shop with the help of agents. Malik worked in Chaudharys shop and helped him prepare fake documents.

On February 10, official of the Unit 2 raided Chaudharys shop Sunil Enterprises situated in Swastik house, Musjid Bander and arrested Chaudhary along with his accomplice, Attaullah Malik, 24.

During inquiry in the first case police seized 71 PAN cards, six laminated voter id cards, 10 Aadhaar cards, 234 blank smartcard driving licenses, four blank ATM cards, five Master and Visa cards of different banks, 10 rubber stamps of government departments and fake documents of government offices, said crime branch official adding that they also seized an eye and finger scanner, which were used to make fake Aadhaar cards, three scanner printers and three hard discs from the shop.

The accused used to charge Rs 2,000 to make a fake Aadhar card, Rs800 to 1,000 for a PAN card, Rs10,000 for driving license and Rs1,000 for a voter identity card.

February 24, second FIR was registered in Byculla police station against both the accused.
Taking a stern view of the illegalities in admissions to medical courses, the Bombay high court on Tuesday directed a private medical college to pay Rs20 lakh as compensation to a student, who was denied admission to an MBBS course despite being meritorious.

A bench of Justice TV Nalawade and Justice Sunil Kotwal also asked the state government to initiate action to withdraw recognition and affiliation to Godavari Foundations Dr Ulhas Patil Medical College and Hospital at Jalgaon for committing breaches in admission process.

Apart from refusing to regularise admissions for the MBBS course given to 19 non-meritorious students, the bench also sought names of people on the management board of Godavari Foundation, so as to initiate proceedings for contempt of court against them for flouting directions issued by the top court from time to time.

There was flagrant violation of the procedure laid down by the Apex Court and the objective behind it was of profiteering, said the bench commenting upon conduct of the trust management. The management did everything in flagrant violation of the procedure laid down by PNS (Pravesh Niyantran Samiti) and it was done solely to make money, it said.

The bench was hearing a petition filed by Tejaswini Phad, a resident of Parbhani district. The 24-year-old had approached the Aurangabad bench of HC in 2013, after noticing that the medical college had admitted lesser meritorious students than her.

She contended that the PNS had prescribed a procedure for the admissions but Dr Ulhas Patil Medical College completely breached them.
Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray on Friday appealed to parents of students across the country to not let their children sit for the re-examination, following the leak of the Central Board of Secondary Educations (CBSE) mathematics and economics question papers earlier this week.

Blaming the central government for the fiasco, Thackeray said: The exam paper leak was due to the fault of the government, but instead of acknowledging and fixing the issue, the government seems bent on making the students sit for the exams again. If the government failed to maintain the secrecy of the exam papers, what is the fault of the students? Why should they bear the brunt and sit for re-exams?

The MNS chief said his party has extended its support to parents and asked them to be firm on the issue of their children not sitting for the exams again. I appeal to parents across the country not to make your children sit for re-exams under any circumstance. If the government feels you will relent, it will pressurise you further, he said.

The CBSE paper leak raised a storm across the country. All 1.7 million students of Class 10 who took the maths exam on March 28, and 500,000 students of Class 12 who took the economics exam on March 26, will have to take them again, after the board admitted on Wednesday that the question papers had leaked before the exams.

In 2016, after the Supreme Court ruled that students seeking admission into medical and dental colleges have to appear for the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) and did not permit states to conduct their own admission tests, Thackeray had called up Prime Minister Narendra Modi and cautioned him of student suicides.The apex court ruling had upset aspirants as they all had till then been preparing only for state exams.

Thackeray, who started his political career in the Shiv Sena as head of the partys students wing, Bharatiya Vidyarthi Sena, was responsible for expanding its reach among students.
Garbage was not cleared in areas under the jurisdiction of Panvel City Municipal Corporation (PCMC) for the third consecutive day, on Friday, by the City Industrial Development Corporation (Cidco). Residents have threatened to hold a morcha at the Cidco office on April 3 if the garbage does not get cleared by then.

Garbage has not been cleared in Panvel city and various nodes, including Kharghar, Kamothe, New Panvel, Kalamboli and Taloja.

Kantilal Kadi, president of Panvel Sangharsh Samiti, said: It is really shameful that Cidco has stopped clearing garbage. We are at the receiving end for no fault of ours. Theres garbage strewn across the city since the past two days, which is a health risk. Authorities should fix the problem at the earliest, or they will have to face the consequences.

There is a huge pile of garbage in front of our society that has not been collected for the past two days, and its stinking. There seems to be no solution to the issue so some members of our society will definitely participate in the morcha, said Sachin Chavan, 52, a committee member of Tirupati Icon in sector 18, Kamothe.

The Panvel Sangharsh Samiti also plans to spread word about the protest morcha through social media, asking residents to join the march. We will approach authorities in large numbers and demand immediate action, Kadi said.

The garbage row between Cidco and PCMC has been going on for a while now. Until PCMC came into being on October 1, 2016, Cidco was the planning authority for nodal areas of Panvel. Since then, Cidco has set several deadlines for PCMC to take over various civic responsibilities, which the civic body has refused, citing financial and manpower constraints. Things have come to a head now, and Cidco stopped collecting garbage on March 28, a day after Cidco vice-chairman and managing director Bhushan Gagrani met UD principal secretary Manisha Mhaiskar.
Animal welfare officials rescued a male golden Jackal from Godrej Creekside Colony, a residential complex near the mangroves in Vikhroli (east) on Thursday.

This is the third jackal rescue in the past one year. A protected species (under schedule II of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972), the Golden Jackal is known to frequent mangrove areas in search of crabs and other creatures.

The jackal was spotted sitting under a tree inside the colony by some residents around 2pm. There is no boundary wall between the colony and the adjacent mangroves. The jackal look extremely dehydrated and also had injury marks on its leg, so we informed the Godrej authorities, and they called animal welfare officials, said a resident, who did not wish to be named.

Soon, a team from Resqink Association for Wildlife Welfare (RAWW) reached the spot and called the forest department. We tried placing some water near the jackal for it to drink, but he was in so much pain that he did not even try, said Mahesh Ithape, a RAWW member who was part of the rescue effort. We transported him to a wildlife veterinarian in our ambulance.

Veterinarian Dr Rina Dev, who treated the jackal, said it was around one-and-a-half years old. It was severely dehydrated and had injuries on the right leg, probably due to a fight with a dog or another jackal, she said.

The jackal is now under medical observation, following consultations with the forest officer. We are checking for rabies and other diseases. It will take a minimum of three days to get the reports for which blood dsamples have been collected. Till then, the jackal will be kept under observation with the veterinarian. Based on how his health improves, we will plan his release, said Pawan Sharma, president, RAWW.

Last year, on May 25 , an injured sub-adult male golden jackal was rescued from Godrej staff quarters in Vikhroli (east). The animal had got separated from its pack, and chased by a group of dogs, it had strayed into the residential society that shares boundaries with the mangroves. It was rescued, treated and released safely by officials from RAWW and the Sanjay Gandhi National Park. A similar incident was also reported earlier, in January 2017, too.

Officials from the state mangrove cell estimate there are around 12 jackals that live in the Vikhroli mangroves.
Good news for Khar and Bandra residents who face flooding every monsoon: the civic body is working on a project to stop flooding of low-lying areas around Chamdawadi drain. If all goes well with the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation's (BMC) plan, areas around Jay Bharat Society and Railway Colony will not be underwater this monsoon.

A couple of months ago, the civic body started the Chamdawadi project to widen its culverts and desilt the major storm water drain. In addition, the storm water drain (SWD) department will now be diverting a pipeline under the Western Railway premises as an immediate measure to prevent flooding this year.

Chief engineer (SWD) VH Khandkar said, This particular culvert or box drain is of uneven width. During rains, blockages are created and even the manholes have been buried due it. We plan to clear the culvert and realign it through an open space on railway premises. But the discharge point will be the same. This will ensure faster draining of rainwater. He added that the work had started on Wednesday.

Chamdawadi nullah carries water out from the Western suburbs to the Mithi river through Kalanagar junction. BMC has completed about 20% of the nullah-widening and desilting project, which it started earlier this year.

It will take another two years to complete the Rs53 crore Chamdawadi nullah project, Khandkar said. Kherwadi, Navpada and Ram Mandir road in Bandra (East) are also expected to get relief under the project.

Residents of Jay Bharat CHS in Khar (West), which gets at least four feet of floodwater every year, said they had been trying to get the problem solved since 2005. After monsoon last year, many residents of Jay Bharat CHS said they wanted to move out of the low-lying area after living there for decades.
The Bandra police recently solved a mysterious case wherein a businessman from Bandra had gone missing, after they recovered his body from a well in Solapur. The police believe that the man may have committed suicide. In March, the family of Anwar Shaikh, 50, had approached the police and filed a missing persons report.

Shaikh worked in the export business. As per the complaint, Shaikh had not been located for days and his phone was constantly switched off.

We took the statements of Shaikhs family members, in order to understand the reason that he went missing. His number was switched off throughout. We found out that he had last spoken to a cab driver, who we managed to track down, said a police source.

When we interrogated the driver, he told us that the man did not speak much throughout the journey and got down at Chinchwad in Pune, added the source.

In order to not get identified, the man left his Aadhaar card, pan card, and other documents at home. The police contacted their sources in Chinchwad, but were unable to get any more leads. The Mumbai police then received a call from the Solapur rural police, informing them about the body.

The police were able to identify as they found his voter ID in his pocket. His body was brought back to Mumbai and handed over to the family.

The police, who believe that Shaikh committed suicide, are still investigating what could have led to the act, said the source. None of the family members recorded statements have indicated what could have led to the act.
The Bandra police have found that a woman from Mumbai stayed in a five-star hotel room for four hours using a fake Aadhaar card in the name of Bollywood actress Urvashi Rautela.

Parul Chaudhary, a model, allegedly made the booking and arrived in the same hotel in Bandra for an event on March 27.

Police have issued a notice to Chaudhary for questioning. A source said CCTV cameras have captured the womans movements.

We suspect that Chaudhary stayed in the room for around four hours. She had left before the actress reached the hotel for an event on March 27, said a police officer.

He added that Chaudhary has shared a phone number with the hotel while booking the room online. We have asked for the call data records of the number, he added.

The fraud came to light when Rautela had gone to the five-star hotel for an event. She was approached by a hotel employee, saying that a room has been booked under her name. When her assistant checked, he found out that a fake Aadhaar card with the details of the actress was used to book the room.

A case under section 420 of the Indian Penal Code and relevant sections of the Information and Technology Act has been registered at Bandra police station.

Rautela has acted in films such as Singh Saab The Great, Sanam Re and Kaabil.
The dedicated Metro service between the two international airports -- Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport (CSIA) in Santacruz and proposed Navi Mumbai International Airport (NMIA) -- will have a train every 15 minutes, with five-six stations covering the 40-km distance.

According to officials from the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA), the implementing agency for most Metros in the city, the frequency and the number of stations (which are fewer compared to other suburban Metros) have been decided keeping the speed of the Metro in mind. The airport corridor is likely to run at a speed of 90km an hour, higher compared to the other Metros that are being planned at a speed of 30km an hour. In case of other Metros, a station will come up at a distance of 1-2km.

UPS Madan, metropolitan commissioner, MMRDA, said, The model is based on Delhi Metros airport corridor. People going to the airports wouldnt want to halt at every station. Fewer stations will ensure high speed and faster travel.

The planning authority has estimated a daily ridership of 5 lakh for the corridor, which is much lower than other Metros. The estimated ridership for Metro-4 (Wadala-Thane-Kasarvadavali), connecting south Mumbai to the neighbouring Thane, is 13 lakh a day, according to a presentation by Madan at a recent conference.

Madan said the Delhi airport corridor gets a Metro every 10 minutes, which is lower than the frequency for other Metros (train every two-three minutes).

The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) is preparing the detailed project report for the airport corridor. The DPR is in the final stages and should be ready by April-end, Madan said.

The line-9, as it is being planned, will also be partially underground. The 8-km stretch starting from the Santacruz airport will be underground, and will later come out along the Ghatkopar-Mankhurd link road.

While the financial model of the corridor is yet to be worked out, MMRDAs estimated cost is Rs15,000 crore.

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Senior citizens in Ghansoli have planned to fast, to protest the demolition of a library by the anti-encroachment department of the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC).

They are questioning the alleged selective targeting by the civic officials and plan to get the library back.

The protest has been planned by the president of Jesht Nagrik Sevabhavi Sanstha (JNSS) president Dinkar Pawar and his associates.

The NMMC anti-encroachment department had on Wednesday demolished the library that had been set up in Sector 4 in Ghansoli. The library, which was free for public use had been set up by the JNSS and Sanjay Uncle Sevabhavi Sanstha.

The senior citizens had protested at the time of action, but officials went ahead.

There are illegal hawkers close to the library, but the authorities are ignoring them. The action taken by officials is biased, said Pawar.

He said the library was a place where everyone would come together, read newspapers, magazines, books and spend time.

How could it be a problem to anyone, he said.

Pawar also said they will soon fast and protest the civic bodys actions and demand a library for the senior citizens.

Rohit Thackeray, an anti-encroachment official said, We had received complaints about the library being set up sans any sanction. Hence, action was taken against it.

Dismissing allegations made, he said, We are conducting regular drives against encroachments and illegal hawkers. There is no question of any bias against anyone.
Actor Sridevis funeral received state honours not because she was a Padmashri awardee, but because Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis used his discretionary powers in the matter, states the reply from the protocol department to an application under Right to Information (RTI) Act obtained by activist Anil Galgali.

The protocol department, which comes under General Administration Department, is headed by the CM.

There were speculations that Sridevi was given state honours after her death because she was a Padma awardee, but that isnt the case. Not all Padma recipients get state honour and it is the CM who decides whom the state honour must be conferred upon, said Galgali.

When an eminent personality is given a state funeral ceremony, the body is draped in the tricolour and carried in a gun-carriage with army and police security in a procession. The funeral ceremony also includes a 21-gun salute.

The information adds that the CMs office gave a verbal order regarding the state funeral on February 25, 2018, which was conveyed to the Mumbai Suburban Collector and the Mumbai Police Commissioner by a government order, dated February 26, 2018.

An official confirming the details of RTI said, that though state honours comes under the prerogative of Union government, state government also has the powers to take decisions on it.

Not all Padma awardees get that privilege, it is the CM who decides who gets the state honours. The clause reads  eminent personalities who have done public service, may get a state honour in recognition of their work, said the official.

State funerals are usually reserved only for current or former presidents, prime ministers, union ministers and state chief ministers. However, there have been instances earlier too when the CM has used his discretionary powers to confer state funerals for eminent personalities, such as Shiv Sena founder Balasaheb Thackeray, Vipassana Guru Satyanarayan Goenka, Dawoodi Bohra community religious leader Syedna Mohammad Burhanuddin, noted poet Mangesh Padgaonkar, senior journalist Muzzaffar Hussain and Padamvibhushan Dr BK Goyal, among others.

As per the RTI information, 40 people were conferred with full state honours between June 22, 2012 and March 26, 2018.

Mahatma Gandhi was the first person to have been given a state funeral in independent India.

Sridevi, who died of drowning after falling unconscious in Dubai hotel on February 24, 2018, was laid to rest with full state honours on February 28, wherein around 20,000 people had gathered in and around Andheri and Vile Parle to catch the last glimpse of her.
A lock-in period of nearly 35 years for land notified for industrial use and discretionary use of powers by ministers seems to be at the crux of the controversy and alleged industrial land denotification scam.

The one-man committee led by former bureaucrat KP Bakshi in his report submitted to the state government on March 21 has called for an amendment to rule 30 of the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation Act, 1962, to reduce the lock-in period to 15 years. It has also sought curtailing of use of discretionary powers to decide on such denotifications.

This rule allows government nearly 35 years to decide and even denotify after the land is notified for industrial use. That is too long a period, almost a generation for a farmer, who continues to be uncertain about the status of his land. The report has recommended this be reduced to 15 years after which the land will be deemed to have been denotified, said Bakshi.

The report has also said that the government gazette must mention that land notification will automatically lapse after 15 years.

The Bakshi committee was set up in August 2017 by chief minister Devendra Fadnavis to probe denotification of industrial lands in Maharashtra from 2002 to 2017. The probe committee was set up, following allegations of graft against industries minister Subhash Desai for denotifying industrial land in Igatpuri taluka (Nashik) to favour a private developer.

The report has revealed that nearly 32,000 hectares was denotified in this period over 160 cases by former industries ministers. In more than 95 of these cases, ministers used discretionary powers, often overruling opinion of the department, to denotify the land.

The denotification of industrial land is controversial because it allows opening up of prime land adjoining cities earmarked for industry. While technically this land is supposed to go back to the original user, generally farmers, often the land instead gets bought by private developers. This raises questions over the motivation of denotification of industrial lands.

The rule was amended in 2009 to increase the time period for denotification from 20 years to 35 years. This gives enough leverage and scope for mischief, said a senior official from the industries department.

The report has also pointed out that in a majority of cases a ground-level survey before notifying lands is not carried out with due diligence.

I have recommended that the team (of officials) must go to the site and carry out a plot-wise survey before notifying any land for industrial use. And such an exercise must be followed by chawdi vacchan, where officials read out the entire survey numbers at a village square to avoid harassment of farmers later, added Bakshi. Such an exercise can give farmers clarity and opportunity to challenge the notification at the right time.

Box :

What does the Bakshi report say?

32,000 hectares of land denotified over 15 years through 160 cases

A majority of such cases were carried out by former industries minister Narayan Rane, followed by his successor Subhash Desai

In a majority of the cases, denotification was done using discretionary powers

How are industrial lands notified?

The state government has powers to identify land required for industrial use and notify it. The land thus earmarked through a survey is deemed to be fit for industrial use and the owner has to give possession of this land in exchange for a compensation decided by the government

Once notified, the owner cant transfer or sell his land even if it is not formally acquired by the industries department

The department can denotify land even after 35 years of first notifying it.

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A 63-year-old veteran actress was allegedly raped by businessman Mohammed Sarfaraz Ehsaan, alias Anup Amar Khanna, on the day she supported the allegations of two women who claimed he had duped them.

The actress told the police that she went through the ordeal after her statement was recorded by the Bangur Nagar police on July 27, 2016 in connection with the cheating and forgery case that was filed based on Goregaon resident Pooja Sahanis complaint.

According to the police, the actress told them that she read in the newspaper that Sarfaraz was arrested on February 2, 2016 for cheating a woman named Dipali Patil. After this, the actress began asking the businessman to repay the money he had borrowed from her and showed him the papers of the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (Mhada) flats in Lokhandwala which he had purportedly bought for her two sons by selling her jewellery worth Rs 4.5 crore.

After getting bail, Sarfaraz had given her allotment papers of a Santacruz flat and a letter of the Juhu Tara Road flat that he claimed to have booked in the names of her sons. However, on February 15, 2016, the actress learnt that Sarfaraz was arrested by the Bangur Nagar police for cheating Pooja Sahani. The police said on July 27, 2016 the actress was called to Bangur Nagar police station to record her statement.

Sarfaraz escorted her to the police station. However, while returning, he threatened her as he was angry about the facts that she had revealed to the police, said an officer. On entering her house with the excuse of using the bathroom, he sexually abused her. Pooja Sahani confirmed the accusation and said that not just the actress and her, Sarfaraz had cheated several women and extracted money from them on the promise of marriage.

Sahani, a house wife, told HT that she contacted Sarfaraz in 2016 through a matrimonial website as a match for her daughter. Although Sahanis daughter rejected him, he kept in touch with Sahani. He told me that I was like his mother and then began visiting me. He then gave me an offer to buy a Mhada flat in Lokhandwala Complex. I gave him Rs 25 lakh for the flat, which he said he could get for me at a lower rate, she said.

Sahani said she was approached by Dipali Patil who had filed a case against Sarfaraz in Versova police station claiming he had prepared a fake marriage certificate and cheated her.

Patil who stays in Dubai, sent us the fake certificate and also other proofs of them being married earlier as well to another woman named Suchitra Jain. He also had another wife in Dehradun. Then we approached Bangur Nagar police. We had heard that he was cheating the actress using the same modus operandi, after which the police contacted her, said Sahani.
When students in a district of Chattisgarh learned about the sanitation crisis, 1.38 lakh of them wrote letters to their parents to motivate them to build toilets in their homes, and sanitation coverage in the district increased by 25%. When 85,000 students in the capital of Gujarat came together to rank sanitation levels in their schools and made the list public, communities stepped up effort to build toilets. When 13-year-old Lavanya from Karnataka staged a protest to demand a toilet for every house in her village, the Zilla Panchayat fulfilled her demand. When five students from Tata College in Jharkhand returned home and found sanitation lacking in their blocks, they galvanized support for toilet construction and use, and monitored progress so successfully that soon after, some communities had a toilet in each home.

These inspiring young people saw the world differently from the generations before them. They saw the problems that their communities faced, understood what needed to be done, and took action to galvanize communities into becoming open-defecation free.

Significant progress has been made to reduce levels of open defecation in the South Asian region since 1990, and there is still much work to be done.

In 2014, India was home to 90% of the south Asians who practised open defecation and if nothing was done, many of the 26 million children born every year would have grown up in an unhygienic environment.

The problems caused by open defecation are not as well-known as they should be. When people defecate in the open, instead of in safely-managed toilets, human waste contaminates everyones water and food. This is not just unpleasant but also potentially deadly. Open defecation means that diseases such as cholera, polio, and hepatitis are spread more easily. It means that children are at a higher risk of diarrhoea, which in turn leads to malnutrition..

Each day, 320 children under the age of five die from diarrhoea in India. Thats one child, one daughter or son, every five minutes. Children who survive grow up to be smaller and weaker than they should be, with lower learning capacity. Those who then make it to school may drop out if their school does not have toilets. This is especially the case for adolescent girls, many of whom will leave school when they start menstruating.

These hurdles must be addressed today because these children will be the artists, scientists, lawyers, farmers and dreamers of tomorrow.

They have a right to grow up and fulfil their potential. The solution to poor sanitation is not a new one. It is not simply enough to build a toilet, we must encourage people to use and maintain them. We must focus on convincing adults and children to change a lifetime of habits in order to promote healthier practices being passed down for generations to come.

The Swachh Bharat Mission launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on October 2, 2014, is the worlds largest behaviour change initiative of its kind. It truly recognises that poor sanitation is a generational problem, with parents teaching their long-existing behaviour to children. It has gone one step further by directly engaging and harnessing the potential of children and young people to advocate behaviour change.

Young people know that they deserve better. Like the thousands who wrote respectful yet firm letters to their parents in Chhattisgarh, they have the ability to see problems where adults see the status quo, the vision to see solutions where adults see problems, and the energy to get those solutions working, when adults give up.

Unicef is proud to support the Government of India in mobilising children by providing platforms and popularising key sanitation messages and tools in schools. Unicef has helped develop methodologies that successfully trigger students and teachers into realising the importance of having access to and using safe sanitation facilities, not just in schools, but also within the homes and communities they return to at the end of each day. As the Swachh Bharat Mission continues to unfold, I look forward to hearing more stories from children like those in Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Karnataka and Jharkhand who are leading the fight against poor sanitation, one toilet and one household at a time. With such excellent young leaders, I am confident that the future they are creating will be a healthier and more productive one.

It is our obligation as individuals, communities and governments, to support them and help build a tomorrow in which the sanitation crisis is just a scary story of the past.

(The author is the Unicef Representative in India)
With the arrest of Kali Ram alias Kaluwa, 28, from Khanpur Kalan in Shamli districts Jijhana block in UP., Panchkula police claimed to have solved eight snatching cases.

The crime branch team of Sector 19 here had gone there and arrested him in the second week of March. The accused was sent to judicial custody in Ambala central jail by the district courts here on Thursday.

Inspector Suraj Chawla said with his arrest eight snatching cases committed over the past 9 months were solved. Recovery has been made in half of these cases.

And 12 snatching cases in UT

As per the sources, the accused is also involved in 12 snatching cases in Chandigarh as well. They will soon be seeking his remand through production warrant to interrogate him in order to solve the cases and make recoveries.

Accused belongs to infamous nomadic tribe from UP

The infamous nomadic tribe from Uttar Pradesh is responsible for the spate of snatching incidents here in Panchkula, said police. The accused, said Chawla, belongs to Bawariya community, which is traditionally involved in criminal activities for decades. Nearly 70% people in and around 10 villages in Jijhana have criminal records. Chawla said Bawariyas are widely known for attacking houses and killing people before robberies.

But lately, younger generation has drifted towards crimes such as snatching, which is profitable yet not involving harsher sentence, unlike looting and killing, said Chawla.

Nomadic community of Sansi, which are active in border districts of Haryana and Rajasthan, can be equated with Bawariyas of UP, he added.

Chawla said their probe found three of his accomplices  Laxman, Hazar Singh, Charan Singh  were involved in snatching incidents here. But their homes were found locked during multiple raids. We are regularly in touch with police there in order to arrest them, he said.

The police said Kali was arrested following his identification through CCTV footage at the crime scenes.

Police faced resistance during recoveries

Panchkula police faced a lot of resistance from the locals when they took the accused to his native village to recover gold chains.

Inspector Chawla said they had registered the case against eight people for obstructing the police from doing duty during their recovery visit at Jijhana block.

Many of his known people surrounded police vehicles and did not let them leave with him. But they were handled with the help of the local police, he said.

The solved cases Feb 23, 2018: The victim Ashimas gold chain was snatched outside her home in Sector 7 during evening February 7: Krishna Kumari was injured after her gold chain was snatched from outside her home in Sector 25 January 18: Sarla Devi, 64, a resident of Sector 16, was sitting outside her home when two men on bike stopped near her and snatched her gold chain Dec 28, 2017: Richa Sharmas purse had mobile, 40,000 and was snatched outside her kins house in Sector 4 by two bike-borne youths Oct 4: Chitra Das, an elderly woman, was in Sector-11 market when her gold chain was snatched by two bike-borne youths Sep 4: Sushil Dods, a resident of Sector 16, gold chain was snatched by two bike-borne youths near her home during morning walk July 3: Puja Chaudharys gold chain was snatched when she had gone to temple in Sector 11. June 26: Kamakshi, wife of a retired IAS officer, was watering her lawn in Sector 7 in evening when her gold chain was snatched
The mystery around the death of a 28-year-old CTU employee deepened on Thursday with the WWICS Group, an immigration consultancy, linking the case with the suicide of former Chief Khalsa Diwan (CKD) head Charanjit Chaddas son.

Lt Col Baljit Singh Sandhu (retd), chairman of WWICS Group, and owner of Forest Hill Resort in Nayagaon, is named in the FIR of the CTU workers murder. He remains untraceable.

Baljits son Davinder Sandhu is lodged in the Amritsar jail for allegedly abetting the suicide of Charanjits son Inderpreet Chadha. A Punjab Police special investigation team (SIT), led by Punjab ADGP Parbodh Kumar, is investigating the case.

Addressing a press conference here, Rajiv Bajaj, director of WWICS Estates Pvt Ltd, while speaking on behalf of Baljit and his son, claimed internal rivalry of Punjab Polices officials was behind the murder case.

A local Kharar court on Thursday extended the remand of the three accused by two days.

Claiming that it was a deep-rooted conspiracy to bring down DGP (human resource development) S Chattopadhyaya, Bajaj demanded a CBI probe in the matter.

While Davinder is already behind bars, some influential people are now trying to implicate his father Baljit in the case in which he has no role. While the body was recovered from Haryana, the Mohali Police have named our MD (Baljit) in the murder case in haste, said Bajaj. He also denied that the victim was found dead on the premises of the resort.

The victim, Abhishek Guleria, a Burail resident and native of Himachal Pradesh, had gone missing on March 14. He was found dead on the Pinjore-Baddi road on March 25.

After getting leads, Mohali police named Baljit in the murder FIR on March 27. Besides, they had arrested three employees of the upscale Forest Hill Resort, located 5km from PGIMER, Chandigarh, for allegedly dumping the victim on the Pinjore-Baddi road on March 22.

While the trio is facing a case under Sections 302 (murder), 201 (destruction of evidence) and 120B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code, no charges have been pressed against Baljit.

The accused, liasoning officer Gurdeep Bains, his assistant Tarsem Singh and security in-charge Balwinder Singh, had claimed that they found Gulerias body in the tank of resorts sewage treatment plant, following which they informed Baljit, who asked them to dispose of the body to avoid controversy.

Davinder being forced to implicate HRD DGP

Alleging that Davinder was being tortured in police custody, the WWICS management claimed that the former was being forced by IG (crime) LK Yadav, a member of the SIT probing the Chadda suicide case, to implicate Punjab DGP HRD S Chattopadhyaya by naming his association with Kuljeet Ghuman, a woman accused in the suicide case.

Chattopadhyaya is being implicated only so that he is not considered for Punjab DGPs post that is getting vacant in the next few months. Since he is also heading the SIT formed by Punjab and Haryana high court for investigating Bhola drug racket in which names of many influential people, including high-ranking officials of Punjab Police may also come up, Chattopadhaya is being framed in the Chadda suicide case. Chattopadhyaya has already informed the HC of being deliberately implicated in the case, Bajaj claimed.

He went on to claim that just to overreach the HC-formed SIT headed by Chattopadhaya, the special task force (STF), dealing with investigation of drugs in Punjab, had recently been put under the charge of the DGP, while earlier, it was directly reporting to the Punjab chief minister.

Accuseds remand extended

A local Kharar court on Thursday extended the remand of the three accused by two days. Sources from the district police said more raids were carried out at the WWICS offices in Phase 6, Mohali, and in Chandigarh, to nab Baljeet. But he remained untraceable.
Directing Chitkara International School, Sector 25, Chandigarh, to not compel parents to purchase annual material from the school, the district consumer forum has directed the institute to pay Rs 1.75 lakh to parents of two students.

The forum also asked the school to strictly comply with the State Transportation Policy after one of the parents alleged violation of the policy by the institute.

The directions came on a joint complaint by parents of two students, Ajay Parbhakar and Pinki Swami, both residents of Sector 40, Chandigarh.

The parents claimed that a school circular, dated March 25, 2013, directed students to follow all instructions, else their name would be struck off. They alleged that the school had imposed an annual material fee of Rs 3,000, not allowing students to purchase books and other material from the market, which they termed unfair trade practice.

The school was also told to pay a compensation of Rs 1 lakh, inclusive of punitive damages, for deficiency in service with regards to safety of minor children, mental agony and harassment caused to them; and pay another Rs 25,000 as cost of litigation.

Swamis parents alleged that she had told them about her bus driver driving rashly and negligently. Her bus had also met with an accident on January 11, 2017, and a case for rash and negligent driving was registered. However, no action was taken by the school against the bus driver.

Her father alleged that he wasnt informed about the accident, and the school failed to take care of the children, leaving his daughter traumatised.

The complainants also pointed out that the school violated the State Transport policy of Chandigarh, and even charged fee in flagrant violation of the rules. As such, the state transport commissioner, Chandigarh, had even cancelled the permit of a school bus (CH-01-TA-4360).

Denying allegations, the school in its response to the petition, claimed that they were following all instructions, and providing quality education and facilities for which students parents needed to bear the burden commensurate to the expenditure in providing those facilities.

However, after listening to the arguments, the consumer forum, partly allowed the complaint, and directed the school to pay a compensation of Rs 50,000 to the complainants for its restrictive trade practices. The school was also told to pay a compensation of Rs 1 lakh, inclusive of punitive damages, for deficiency in service with regards to safety of minor children, mental agony and harassment caused to them; and pay another Rs 25,000 as cost of litigation.

The entire compensation of Rs 1.75 lakh will be equally shared by the complainants.
Apple revamps privacy controls in iOS 11.3 to comply with new EU law
Goutam Ghose is a reluctant actor. In fact, ask the national award winning filmmaker about the handful of films in which he has acted, and he is quick to point out, I am not an actor, I make others act. Despite that Ghose has been a part of some impressive projects as an actor  Buddhadeb Dasguptas Grihajuddha and Srijit Mukherjees Baishe Srabon, to name a few, as well as the soon-to-be-released Beyond the Clouds - Iranian director Majid Majidis Indian project.

All the films I have done as an actor have been on request, and Beyond The Clouds was no different, says the 67-year-old director. I got a call towards the end of 2016 from casting director Honey Trehan that Majid Majidi was in Mumbai and making an Indian film and wanted to meet and cast me in the film. But at the time I was busy with a film of my own.

The two directors, however, seem fated to work together. Ghose continues: Soon after I was in Mumbai and since my film had been delayed for a while, I told Honey I was willing to meet Majidi. I had seen some of his films, Baran for example, and liked his work. Ironically Majidi himself had started off as an actor, before turning director and scriptwriter with Baduk in 1992. Over the years Majidis films have received Best Picture awards at the Montreal World Film Festival, been nominated for the European Film Academy award, and been counted among the top films of the year by international magazines. The director has also won the Douglas Sirk Award in 2001, and the Amici Vittorio de Sica Award in 2003.

Anyway, Ghose and Majidi met and the former was persuaded to act in the film. Akshi, the character played by Ghose, is a cameo, but the director says he is a significant part of the plot and responsible for many of the twists and turns in the narrative. Akshi is a poor man from the south who leaves his family and comes to work in the dhobi ghats of Mumbai.

Shooting started in March 2017 and Ghose who shot for 12 days for his role is all praise not just for his director, but also his co-actors and the entire unit. The film has music by AR Rehman and stars Ishaan Khattar and Malavika Mohanan. Acting is no big deal for me. As a director I have worked with all kinds of actors  good actors, bad actors, non-actors- and made them act. Also in the 1970s I had some training in theatre and was taught mime, expressions and voice modulation, which still stands me in good stead.

What he does find difficult at times as an actor is to distance himself from the director in him, he confesses. If I do feel strongly about something though, I make a suggestion to the director. After all, cinema is a collective art. Even when I am directing, I take suggestions from others.

Working in Beyond the Clouds was a different, though, since Ghose says Majidi would himself show him the shots and ask for his opinion. He has not seen Beyond the Clouds yet. But says, Whoever has seen it, says it has come out very well. I hope to see it at the premiere. The film releases in Indian on April 20.

As for Majidi, the shared passion for cinema is an enduring connect between the two, that should continue beyond the sets of their respective films. Majidi is a great Satyajit Ray fan. If he comes to Kolkata for the premiere of Beyond the Clouds I will take him to Rays home. That will be a treat to him, muses Ghose.

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Canadas Alberta province, which has the third largest population of Sikhs after British Columbia and Onatrio, will allow turban-wearing Sikhs to drive motorcycles without a helmet from April 12.

British Columbia and Manitoba already allow Sikhs to drive motorcycles without helmets.

Albertas transportation minister Brian Mason said on Thursday that the exemption was granted at the request of the Sikh community as recognition of their civil rights and religious expression. The exemption applies to drivers and passengers over the age of 18 who are Sikhs.

Our government is committed to these principles, Mason said.

According to an Alberta government spokesperson, a rider wearing a turban, but not a helmet, will have to self-identify to be considered a Sikh. At that point, it would be up to the discretion of the officer. If the officer doesnt believe the rider, a ticket may still be issued. The rider would then have to challenge it in court.

As per the 2011 census, there are 52,335 Sikhs in Alberta.

Baltej Singh Dhillon, who became the first Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officer with a turban, welcomed Albertas decision.

In a statement, he said: The decision by the government of Alberta to allow Sikhs to be able to ride their motorcycles without having to remove their turbans, which is an integral part of the Sikh identity, demonstrates a deep respect for the traditions and customs of the Sikh community.

This exemption is a testament to the government of Albertas continued commitment to respecting diversity and religious rights of all Albertans.

Gurpeet Pandher from the Sikh Motorcycle Club of Edmonton called the announcement a milestone and memorable day in Albertas history.
A serial killer dubbed Chinas Jack the Ripper for the way he mutilated several of his 11 female victims was sentenced to death on Friday, three decades after the first murder.

Gao Chengyong, 53, robbed, raped and ultimately murdered 11 women more than a decade ago, prosecutors from Baiyin City in northwest Gansu province said.

He was found guilty by the Baiyin City Intermediate Peoples Court and handed death sentences for both robbery and intentional homicide, and lesser sentences for rape and dishonouring corpses.

Gao targeted young women wearing red and followed them home, often cutting their throats and mutilating their bodies, according to state media reports. The youngest victim was eight years old.

Some victims had their reproductive organs removed, the Beijing Youth Daily said when Gao was arrested in 2016. The court found Gao guilty of those crimes.

To satisfy his perverted desire to dishonour and sully corpses, many of his female victims corpses were damaged and violated, the court said in a post to its official Weibo social media account.

The motives of the defendants crimes were despicable, his methods extremely cruel, the nature of the acts vile and the details of the crimes serious, the court said. Gao poses a grave threat to society and an urgent danger to others and should be severely punished.

The murders were carried out in Gansu and the neighbouring region of Inner Mongolia from 1988 to 2002.

Police had been hunting Gao for years.

The suspect has a sexual perversion and hates women, police said in 2004 when they linked the crimes for the first time. Hes reclusive and unsociable, but patient, according to police profiling at the time.

A lead in the case came when police collected and tested the DNA of one of Gaos relatives over a separate minor crime, the China Daily said.

Police concluded the killer they had been hunting for 28 years was a relation, and Gaos DNA matched the murderers, it added.

The original Jack the Ripper was a serial killer active in east London in the late Victorian era, who is widely believed to have murdered five women, mutilating several of them. Those killings have never been solved.

Gao was stripped of all of his assets and would not appeal the death sentence, the court said.
The conflict between the UK and Russia over the nerve-agent poisoning of a former spy spread to literature this week, though its Crime and Punishment, not War and Peace, thats the chosen battlefield.

UK foreign secretary Boris Johnson fired the first shot by comparing Russia to Rodion Raskolnikov at the start of Dostoevskys classic work. Were all confident of the culprit  and the only question is whether he will confess or be caught, he said in a speech to the Lord Mayors Easter banquet in London on Wednesday.

Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova threw the book at Johnson in her weekly briefing in Moscow on Thursday, telling him to read more than the beginning of the novel and citing, in English, Dostoevskys fictional detective Porfiry Petrovich that From a hundred rabbits you cant make a horse, a hundred suspicions dont make a proof.

The Russian embassy in the UK also weighed in on Twitter, complimenting Johnson on his good taste in books before adding that Raskolnikov did have a motive, and Porfiry Petrovich had evidence.

While the two nuclear powers engage in a strategy of Mutually Assured Dostoevsky, Moscow has yet to respond to the unprecedented international expulsion of more than 150 Russian diplomats in support of the UK, which blames the Kremlin for the March 4 poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal. Russia denies any involvement.
Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai said she has pined for her home in Pakistans picturesque Swat Valley, even as she recalled two years living in fear under the Talibans harsh interpretation of Islamic law.

Visiting her homeland for the first time since a Taliban gunman shot her in the head over her blog advocating girls education, 20-year-old Yousafzai also contradicted Pakistani critics who accuse her of promoting an ideology at odds with the countrys Islamic values.

I am proud of my religion, and I am proud of my country, she told Reuters in an interview at her hotel on Friday.

Wearing a rose-printed head scarf and flowing tunic and trousers - one of many outfits family and friends brought her from Pakistan to Britain, where she is studying at Oxford University - Yousafzai said she was elated at being home, though she is still waiting for security clearance to visit Swat.

I had never been so excited for anything. Ive never been so happy before, she said.

I miss everything about Pakistan ... right from the rivers, the mountains, to even the dirty streets and the garbage around our house, and my friends and how we used to have gossip and talk about our school life, to how we used to fight with our neighbours.

She said she has wanted to return before but, aside from security concerns, there was the hectic pace of school and her entry exams to Oxford, where she began studying last year for a degree in politics, philosophy and economics.

Nobel prize

Yousafzais journey to becoming the youngest ever Nobel winner began with the local branch of the hardline Taliban movement taking over her hometown in Swat, about 250 km (160 miles) from the capital, Islamabad, in 2007, when she was 9 years old.

The Tehreek e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) banned television, music and girls education, and burned about 200 schools, following the example of the 1990s Taliban government in neighbouring Afghanistan, which forcibly excluded women from nearly every aspect of public life.

I still remember each and every moment, right from the fear while sleeping at night that you might not be alive the next day, Yousafzai said. The fear that if you are going to school, someone might stop you and throw acid in your face.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai (4th-L) and her family members pose for a group photo with Pakistan's Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, in Islamabad, Pakistan. (Reuters photo)

Her father was a teacher in a school that educated girls and managed to stay open until early 2009.

After the Pakistani army drove out the Taliban in mid-2009 she became a symbol for girls education through a blog she wrote for the BBCs Urdu service, which started while the Taliban were still in power, and a documentary Class Dismissed, that profiled her.

It made her a target. In 2012, a masked gunman boarded her school bus, singled her out and shot her. The Taliban later said it had carried out the attack for her promotion of liberalism.

She was flown to Britain for surgery and has remained abroad since, co-writing a best-selling book I Am Malala and starting a foundation advocating girls education worldwide.

In 2014, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, along with an Indian activist.

Polarising figure

Though she is perhaps the worlds best-known Pakistani, Yousafzai - known almost universally as just Malala - is a polarising figure at home, beloved by many but reviled by others.

A group of private schools in Pakistan declared Friday to be I Am Not Malala Day, for what its spokesman described as her anti-Islam and anti-Pakistan ideology.

That description puzzles Malala.

I just dont know anything I have said that makes me anti-Pakistan or anti-Islam, she said. Islam has taught me the importance of peace. Islam has taught me the importance of education. The first word of Islam, or the first word of the Koran, is Iqra which means read.

Government commitment to education was one of the subjects of her meeting on Thursday with Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, whose government, along with the army, helped arrange her trip, including providing security.

We did talk about education and I appreciated what he has done, but I think there is a lot more that needs to be done. The government promised 4% of GDP for education but only so far has increased it to 2.7, she said.

Meetings with the prime minister - as well as other world leaders - might seem a far cry from a schoolgirls life in the Swat Valley, but Malala said some aspects of her life, like attending Oxford, were longtime dreams.

My initial plan was that I would continue my education, I would continue speaking out for the girls who cannot go to school ... and one day once I finish my secondary education, I will apply to Oxford, she said.

So it was in my plan ... I did not know that this attack would happen and I would move to the UK, but I wanted to focus on Pakistan and continue to do as much as I could for girls education.
The summit on April 27 will only be the third time that leaders of the divided Koreas have met in the 65 years since the Korean War ended.

Both sides agreed on Thursday to the meeting between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

The previous summits were held over several years of rapprochement and were followed by a decade of tense and cold relations. A tentative thaw began earlier this year with North Korean participation in the Winter Olympics in South Koreas Pyeongchang.

A look at the inter-Korean summits:

Summit of 2000

The first inter-Korean summit took place between former North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, the late father of Kim Jong Un, and the liberal former president of South Korea, Kim Dae-jung. The three-day meeting in June, which began with a broadly smiling Kim Jong Il tightly grabbing the hands of Kim Dae-jung at the Pyongyang airport, led to an agreement between the Koreas on joint economic projects, which have since stalled. The countries also agreed to resume reunions of families divided between North and South. Kim Dae-jung won the Nobel Peace Prize later in 2000 for his rapprochement policies with the North.

Former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung (left) and former North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. (AP/File Photo)

Summit of 2007

The Koreas held their second summit in October 2007 between Kim Jong Il and Roh Moo-hyun, Kim Dae-jungs liberal successor and the political mentor of current South Korean President Moon. Roh went to Pyongyang after crossing the Demilitarised Zone in a symbolic moment that grabbed international headlines. Kim and Roh agreed to pursue a peace treaty to formally end the Korean War and reached a set of cooperation projects. But most of the accords were shelved after Rohs single five-year term ended months later and he was replaced by a conservative who took a harder line over the Norths nuclear ambitions.

Former South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun (left) and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il . (AP/File Photo)

Summit of 2018

Moon, a liberal who took office last May, and Kim will meet at a border village on April 27. The meeting comes after North Korea sent athletes, musical performers and officials to Februarys Winter Olympics, including Kims sister, who met with Moon to deliver her brothers desire for a summit. On a subsequent visit to the United States, South Korean envoys brokered a potential meeting between Kim and President Donald Trump, who said he would meet the North Korean leader by May.
A US jury on Friday acquitted the widow of the Orlando nightclub shooter of charges of helping her husband carry out the Islamic State-inspired massacre and obstructing justice. The trial had started earlier this month.

The June 2016 massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, by Omar Mateen resulted in the death of 49 people. It is the worst terror attack on US soil since the September 11, 2001 attacks. Mateen had died of injuries suffered during a shootout with law enforcement.

Prosecutors said Noor Salman, who was arrested in January 2017, had known about her husbands plans and had been a willing participant, though she did not accompany him for the attack. They said she had given misleading statements to the FBI.

The prosecutions case hinged on a statement Salman had given the FBI, in which she had written: I am sorry for what happened. I wish Id go back and tell his family and the police what he was going to do.

She had admitted to being aware of the weapons being acquired by Mateen, his obsessive viewing of IS propaganda material online, and that he had considered other venues for the attack, including Disney World, prosecutors disclosed.

However, her defence lawyers contended that the confession was obtained from her after 11 hours of questioning and that she did not have a lawyer present at the time.

She was a suspect, and they wanted to get a confession  except that she was still denying that she knew anything, Charles D Swift said in his closing argument on Wednesday.

The jury deliberated for about 12 hours over two days, and reached a verdict on Friday.

Orlando Police Chief John Mina said in a statement after the verdict: I believe in our criminal justice system and am grateful for the jurys hard work and thoughtful deliberation. Nothing can erase the pain we all feel about the senseless and brutal murders of 49 of our neighbours, friends, family members and loved ones.
Pakistan has conducted a test of its nuclear-capable, submarine-launched cruise missile (SLCM), Babur, which has a range of 450 km, with the countrys military saying the weapon system provides it a credible second strike capability. Pakistan has been working hard on developing this capability -- to carry out a retaliatory nuclear strike even after an enemys nuclear attack destroys or neutralises its land-based nuclear arsenal -- which India already has.

The Pakistan militarys media arm described Thursdays test of the indigenously developed missile as successful. The missile is capable of delivering various types of payloads and incorporates advanced technologies, including underwater controlled propulsion and sophisticated guidance and navigation features.

SLCM Babur provides Pakistan credible second strike capability, augmenting the existing deterrence regime, the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) said in a statement.

There was no official word on the development from Indias defence ministry or the military.

Strategic affairs expert Kapil Kak, a retired air vice marshal, said Pakistan has been determinedly endeavouring to attain this capability with Chinas help. We have to see if their claim is authentic, Kak added.

The first test of the Babur missile in January 2017 only demonstrated ... scientific capability, the Dawn newspaper reported. Later tests confirmed the missiles technical parameters and the militarys claim of a credible second strike capability indicated the Babur had entered into service in the Pakistan Navy as an operational missile system, the report said.

India, which has a no-first use policy for its nuclear arsenal, began working on second strike capability soon after its nuclear tests in 1998. It has completed its nuclear triad and has the capability to launch strategic weapons from land, air and sea.

Without naming India, the Pakistan military also sought to blame New Delhi for disturbing the strategic balance in the region by acquiring nuclear submarines and nuclear-capable missiles.

The development of second strike capability reflects Pakistans response to provocative nuclear strategies and posture being pursued in the neighbourhood through induction of nuclear submarines and ship-borne nuclear missiles, leading to nuclearisation of Indian Ocean region, the statement said.

The Babur missile was fired from an underwater dynamic platform and successfully engaged its target with precise accuracy, meeting all the flight parameters, the statement said.

A brief video posted on the ISPR website showed the red and white missile emerging from water and cruising over the sea before hitting a target on land. At the time of its launch from the underwater platform, the missile was within a capsule which was jettisoned when the Babur rose above the sea surface. The military did not say where the test was conducted.

The test was witnessed by director general of the Strategic Plans Division (SPD), which is responsible for managing Pakistans nuclear arsenal, the commander of the Naval Strategic Force Command, senior officials, and scientists and engineers from strategic scientific organisations.

This is only the second time that Pakistan has announced a test of the submarine launched Babur-III missile, with the first test being conducted in January 2017. During the first test, the Babur-III was launched from an unidentified underwater mobile platform.

The Babur-III is the naval variant of the land-based Babur-II, which was tested in December 2016.
United States President Donald Trump said on Thursday he may hold up a trade agreement reached this week with South Korea until after a deal is reached with North Korea on denuclearisation.

I may hold it up until after a deal is made with North Korea, Trump said in a speech. You know why? Because its a very strong card. And I want to make sure everyone is treated fairly.

Senior US officials have expressed concerns privately that Seoul is the weak link in the US-Japan-South Korean alliance and it could be too quick to seal a deal with North Korea.

Trump agreed this month to accept an invitation to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. South Korean officials have said the meeting would take place by the end of May, after a North-South summit in April.Were moving along very nicely with North Korea. Well see what happens. Certainly the rhetoric has calmed down just a little bit, Trump told construction workers in Ohio.

Earlier this week, the US and South Korea agreed to revise their six-year-old free trade agreement with a side deal to deter competitive currency devaluation by Seoul and more access for US automakers and drug makers to the South Korean market.The deal also lifts the threat of a 25% US tariff on imports of steel from South Korea in exchange for quotas that will effectively cut US imports of Korean steel by about 30 per cent. Without the agreement in place, the tariffs would take effect from May 1.

A statement by US trade minister Robert Lighthizer and his South Korean counterpart Hyun Chong Kim described steel terms as being agreed, with the KORUS free-trade deal changes as an agreement in principle on the general terms while details are still being finalised.

The US Treasury and South Korean Ministry of Strategy and Finance are finalising the currency terms, they said.

The trade deal changes, which preserve the US-South Korean trading relationship at a critical time for Seoul, do not need congressional approval but are subject to a 60-day consultation period with Seoul.

The White House said the two sides had reached a great new KORUS agreement in principle and it was up to Trump to decide when to finalise it.

The president, taking into account all relevant considerations, including negotiations with North Korea, will determine the best time to sign a finalised agreement on behalf of the United States, Principal Deputy Press Secretary Raj Shah said.

South Koreas Minister of Trade, Industry and Energy Paik Un-kyu said on the sidelines of a news conference in Seoul that the ministry was trying to figure out the real intent of Trumps remarks, a trade ministry spokeswoman said.

The ministry had made a request to the US side, said a senior ministry official who declined to identified due to the sensitivity of the matter.

In terms of the negotiation schedule, we would have to review terms legally and finalise a draft... Both South Korea and the United States have their own domestic procedures, so were not at a signing stage because those procedures take time, the official said.
W hen it comes to interiors paint colours, there's been a noticeable shift in the past few years away from light neutrals towards statement colours.

And it's no longer necessarily the done thing to pick out skirting boards, dado rails and doors in a different colour.

With hundreds upon hundreds of paint shades to choose from, where do you start on your quest for cool home colour? And where to look for styling inspiration?

Tracking hashtags on Instagram is a great way to discover colours that are currently popular as well as to see how other people are using them in their own homes.

And when you've finished refreshing your home, you can use the platform to show off the fruits of your labour too.

WHAT PAINT COLOURS ARE HOT IN 2018?

Paint expert Annie Sloan says bolder, strong colours are her most liked shades on Instagram in 2018.

"Deep greens, deep blues and pinks seem to be the most popular colours that Ive been noticing over the last year, and increasingly so this year," she says.

"My Amsterdam Green, Aubusson Blue, Napoleonic Blue and Antoinette are being used on strong and bold pieces to create a statement."

And renters aren't exempt from indulging in a little paint magic either.

"People are really into adding a bold, colourful statement piece into a neutral room, with colourful soft furnishings  its a brilliant way for renters to express their tastes and personalities, when they cant paint walls," she says.

TIME TO EXPLORE YOUR DARK SIDE

Social media users are opting for the dark side with nearly 10,000 Instagram tags for Farrow & Ball's Hague Blue, says Charlotte Cosby, head of creative at Farrow & Ball.

"Our dark blues are extremely popular on our social media channels. Weve seen a rise in popularity for Hague Blue, Stiffkey Blue and Inchyra Blue.

"These blues are fantastic for how they create a timeless feel and always add style and drama to a room."

GET GREEN FINGER  AND SLEEVES

Botanicals aren't going anywhere this spring.

Paint specialists Valspar have revealed 'Fertile Fern', pictured below, is a big seller for customers keen to put their spin on the trend.

"This neutral shade features icy tones, which help to cleanse and calm, and it is the perfect colour to offset greenery.

"Its blue/grey mix helps to create a restful area in the home and is an ideal background to showcase indoor plants."

If you're feeling brave, Chantel Rose Pidduck, Homebase paint, wallpaper and woodcare buyer, suggests clashing colours to embrace the botanical theme.

The long weekend is the perfect time to think about refreshing your living space for spring. Try mixing muted pastels with deep earth tones such as chalk pink and emerald green for an on-trend look.
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Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 ... 11 Mueller is focusing on evidence Trump was a foriegn assett since 2011 spo snouou

Vocem sine nomine audivit!

User ID: 1337

03-30-2018 04:57 AM



Posts: 67,592









Post: #46 RE: Mueller is focusing on evidence Trump was a foriegn assett since 2011

Advertisement LoP Guest Wrote: (03-30-2018 04:40 AM) August 21, 2017 Issue



Trumps Business of Corruption

What secrets will Mueller find when he investigates the Presidents foreign deals?





read more

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/...corruption





posted this myself last year... it is not all that new really

but that it is now part of the focus of the investigation is a step towards fixing the political playing field for upcoming elections around the world.



as much as everyone want to attack others that cause uncomfortable cognitive reactions like anger and focused hate we all have to pull back and realize there has been a concerted effort to destabilize western society everywhere by manipulating our emotional responses to certain inputs and stimuli.. we can't ignore this



not now posted this myself last year... it is not all that new reallybut that it is now part of the focus of the investigation is a step towards fixing the political playing field for upcoming elections around the world.as much as everyone want to attack others that cause uncomfortable cognitive reactions like anger and focused hate we all have to pull back and realize there has been a concerted effort to destabilize western society everywhere by manipulating our emotional responses to certain inputs and stimuli.. we can't ignore thisnot now (This post was last modified: 03-30-2018 04:58 AM by spo snouou .) LoP Guest

lop guest

User ID: 1337

03-30-2018 05:01 AM











Post: #47 RE: Mueller is focusing on evidence Trump was a foriegn assett since 2011

LoP Guest Wrote: (03-30-2018 04:40 AM) What secrets will Mueller find when he investigates the Presidents foreign deals?[/b] He'll find politicians' foreign dealings treasonous. He'll find politicians' foreign dealings treasonous. Damrod

lop guest

User ID: 1337

03-30-2018 05:05 AM











Post: #48 RE: Mueller is focusing on evidence Trump was a foriegn assett since 2011

LoP Guest Wrote: (03-30-2018 05:01 AM) LoP Guest Wrote: (03-30-2018 04:40 AM) What secrets will Mueller find when he investigates the Presidents foreign deals?[/b] He'll find politicians' foreign dealings treasonous.

they will find nothing......





trump was an accident they did not plan for......





thnk this through if you are able.....





I am out..... they will find nothing......trump was an accident they did not plan for......thnk this through if you are able.....I am out..... LoP Guest

lop guest

User ID: 1337

03-30-2018 05:05 AM











Post: #49 RE: Mueller is focusing on evidence Trump was a foriegn assett since 2011

spo snouou Wrote: (03-30-2018 04:57 AM) LoP Guest Wrote: (03-30-2018 04:40 AM) August 21, 2017 Issue



Trumps Business of Corruption

What secrets will Mueller find when he investigates the Presidents foreign deals?





read more

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/...corruption





posted this myself last year... it is not all that new really

but that it is now part of the focus of the investigation is a step towards fixing the political playing field for upcoming elections around the world.



as much as everyone want to attack others that cause uncomfortable cognitive reactions like anger and focused hate we all have to pull back and realize there has been a concerted effort to destabilize western society everywhere by manipulating our emotional responses to certain inputs and stimuli.. we can't ignore this



not now

Yes, I remembered reading it and went looking because it is coming to fruition. Yes, I remembered reading it and went looking because it is coming to fruition. hillbilly

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Post: #50 RE: Mueller is focusing on evidence Trump was a foriegn assett since 2011

The Omega Concern Wrote: (03-30-2018 04:10 AM) hillbilly Wrote: (03-30-2018 04:08 AM) Talk about foreign assets!

The military sees Al Gore as the last...We in Tennessee know they hacked us and 4 other states on that one. Stew Webb, that you? Tel Aviv, that you? Tom Heneghan's a big Al Gore fan, also some guy named LaFayette at Brandywine.

:ttlnbkts:





...and some guys on the USS Liberty.

Tel Aviv, that you? Tom Heneghan's a big Al Gore fan, also some guy named LaFayette at Brandywine.:ttlnbkts:...and some guys on the USS Liberty. (This post was last modified: 03-30-2018 05:50 AM by hillbilly .) spo snouou

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Post: #51 RE: Mueller is focusing on evidence Trump was a foriegn assett since 2011

LoP Guest Wrote: (03-30-2018 05:01 AM) LoP Guest Wrote: (03-30-2018 04:40 AM) What secrets will Mueller find when he investigates the Presidents foreign deals?[/b] He'll find politicians' foreign dealings treasonous.

All politicians left and right that have been party to this must be exposed.



I think Obama should be exposed as knowing he was elected to be an intentional racial divide in these plans for western destabilization... but I believe that became apparent to him only after he was elected.



He should be exposed and subsequently noted for using tact and foresight and enabling the scope of the investigations and pretty much just let it all play out over many years while he himself was in power.



I guess we will see eventually, either that or the whole world world slips into a psychologically compromised zombie march towards annihilation where it just wont matter anyway. All politicians left and right that have been party to this must be exposed.I think Obama should be exposed as knowing he was elected to be an intentional racial divide in these plans for western destabilization... but I believe that became apparent to him only after he was elected.He should be exposed and subsequently noted for using tact and foresight and enabling the scope of the investigations and pretty much just let it all play out over many years while he himself was in power.I guess we will see eventually, either that or the whole world world slips into a psychologically compromised zombie march towards annihilation where it just wont matter anyway. (This post was last modified: 03-30-2018 05:16 AM by spo snouou .) spo snouou

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Post: #52 RE: Mueller is focusing on evidence Trump was a foriegn assett since 2011

LoP Guest Wrote: (03-30-2018 05:05 AM) spo snouou Wrote: (03-30-2018 04:57 AM)



posted this myself last year... it is not all that new really

but that it is now part of the focus of the investigation is a step towards fixing the political playing field for upcoming elections around the world.



as much as everyone want to attack others that cause uncomfortable cognitive reactions like anger and focused hate we all have to pull back and realize there has been a concerted effort to destabilize western society everywhere by manipulating our emotional responses to certain inputs and stimuli.. we can't ignore this



not now

Yes, I remembered reading it and went looking because it is coming to fruition. thanks for finding it, it was good to reread it



thanks for finding it, it was good to reread it hillbilly

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Post: #53 RE: Mueller is focusing on evidence Trump was a foriegn assett since 2011

Damrod Wrote: (03-30-2018 05:05 AM) LoP Guest Wrote: (03-30-2018 05:01 AM) He'll find politicians' foreign dealings treasonous. they will find nothing......

trump was an accident they did not plan for......

thnk this through if you are able.....

I am out..... D.C. is a foreign country, like London, Vatican, and Hong Kong. Or south Florida maybe.

18,000 indictments and counting...thnk for yourself. Sleep sweet. I already sent DrVIP to bed. D.C. is a foreign country, like London, Vatican, and Hong Kong. Or south Florida maybe.18,000 indictments and counting...thnk for yourself. Sleep sweet. I already sent DrVIP to bed. (This post was last modified: 03-30-2018 05:39 AM by hillbilly .) NormalIsSubjective



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Post: #54 RE: Mueller is focusing on evidence Trump was a foriegn assett since 2011

I'd say it's far likelier he's been a CIA asset since his Resorts International days.



At the very least they'd have kept a close eye on his international wheeling and dealing. hillbilly

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Post: #55 RE: Mueller is focusing on evidence Trump was a foriegn assett since 2011

The Omega Concern Wrote: (03-30-2018 04:10 AM) ... Hey Omega, I did a search for you, you like jewlry?

I found that Alex Lifeson's name is Alexandar Zivojinovich. He's a pilot, but probably not a spy. Hey Omega, I did a search for you, you like jewlry?I found that Alex Lifeson's name is Alexandar Zivojinovich. He's a pilot, but probably not a spy. (This post was last modified: 03-30-2018 05:37 AM by hillbilly .) NormalIsSubjective



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Post: #56 RE: Mueller is focusing on evidence Trump was a foriegn assett since 2011

spo snouou Wrote: (03-30-2018 05:15 AM) LoP Guest Wrote: (03-30-2018 05:01 AM) He'll find politicians' foreign dealings treasonous.

All politicians left and right that have been party to this must be exposed.



I think Obama should be exposed as knowing he was elected to be an intentional racial divide in these plans for western destabilization... but I believe that became apparent to him only after he was elected.



He should be exposed and subsequently noted for using tact and foresight and enabling the scope of the investigations and pretty much just let it all play out over many years while he himself was in power.



I guess we will see eventually, either that or the whole world world slips into a psychologically compromised zombie march towards annihilation where it just wont matter anyway.



The racial divide issue was to distract from the fact Obama barely differed from Bush on foreign policy and invasive surveillance/national security issues. The racial divide issue was to distract from the fact Obama barely differed from Bush on foreign policy and invasive surveillance/national security issues. LoP Guest

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Post: #57 RE: Mueller is focusing on evidence Trump was a foriegn assett since 2011

hillbilly Wrote: (03-30-2018 05:05 AM) The Omega Concern Wrote: (03-30-2018 04:10 AM) Stew Webb, that you? Tel Aviv, that you? Tom Heneghan's a big Al Gore fan, also some guy named LaFayette.



:ttlnbkts:





Stew and Tom's assertion of Al Gore needing to be called the winner of the 2000 election fascinates me. I don't know how big a fan Tom is of Algore, but he seems serious about wanting to revoke the laws of the last 18 years not by putting Algore in as President, but declare him the winner to null and void things like the partriot act, etc.



I doubt it'll happen of course, about as likely as the Pope declaring there's no hell. :/ Stew and Tom's assertion of Al Gore needing to be called the winner of the 2000 election fascinates me. I don't know how big a fan Tom is of Algore, but he seems serious about wanting to revoke the laws of the last 18 years not by putting Algore in as President, but declare him the winner to null and void things like the partriot act, etc.I doubt it'll happen of course, about as likely as the Pope declaring there's no hell. :/ The Omega Concern

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Post: #58 RE: Mueller is focusing on evidence Trump was a foriegn assett since 2011

hillbilly Wrote: (03-30-2018 05:35 AM) The Omega Concern Wrote: (03-30-2018 04:10 AM) ... Hey Omega, I did a search for you, you like jewlry?

I found that Alex Lifeson's name is Alexandar Zivojinovich. He's a pilot, but probably not a spy.



her name is Solaris Blue Raven.





that's plenty for now. go!!! her name is Solaris Blue Raven.that's plenty for now. go!!! LoP Guest

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Post: #59 RE: Mueller is focusing on evidence Trump was a foriegn assett since 2011

Accepting intelligence? He didn't pay for it like Hillary did? And Trump didn't have the benefit of it being shared with him like Hillary did. The UK spy and any other intelligence was given to Obama who gave it to Hillary. It's all just opposition research, after all. spo snouou

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Post: #60 RE: Mueller is focusing on evidence Trump was a foriegn assett since 2011

NormalIsSubjective Wrote: (03-30-2018 05:36 AM) spo snouou Wrote: (03-30-2018 05:15 AM) All politicians left and right that have been party to this must be exposed.



I think Obama should be exposed as knowing he was elected to be an intentional racial divide in these plans for western destabilization... but I believe that became apparent to him only after he was elected.



He should be exposed and subsequently noted for using tact and foresight and enabling the scope of the investigations and pretty much just let it all play out over many years while he himself was in power.



I guess we will see eventually, either that or the whole world world slips into a psychologically compromised zombie march towards annihilation where it just wont matter anyway.



The racial divide issue was to distract from the fact Obama barely differed from Bush on foreign policy and invasive surveillance/national security issues.

well considering he had to deal with the aftermath of 2 theaters of operation that were both started by Bush and then Syria to contend with using foreign policy put in place by a succession of administrations.. and your problem with his invasive surveillance/national security issues sounds like alex jones hype for the easily led with ad hom ad absurdity ad nausem psychological character assassination stuff. well considering he had to deal with the aftermath of 2 theaters of operation that were both started by Bush and then Syria to contend with using foreign policy put in place by a succession of administrations.. and your problem with his invasive surveillance/national security issues sounds like alex jones hype for the easily led with ad hom ad absurdity ad nausem psychological character assassination stuff. Advertisement


















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Page: 4 5 6 1 ... 3 7 ... 11 Mueller is focusing on evidence Trump was a foriegn assett since 2011 LoP Guest

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03-30-2018 06:39 AM











Post: #61 RE: Mueller is focusing on evidence Trump was a foriegn assett since 2011

Advertisement Mueller and Podesta in 1993 made the back door to the computers. this is how the alphabets could get into your system. they ignored Apple because they figured the company was not going to survive it appears. LoP Guest

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03-30-2018 06:44 AM











Post: #62 RE: Mueller is focusing on evidence Trump was a foriegn assett since 2011

Damrod Wrote: (03-30-2018 03:34 AM) spo snouou Wrote: (03-30-2018 03:23 AM) If that's all that really matters to you .. have at it

winner.



Seems a lot of people have some very strange concepts about what winning actually entails.





I see no real reason to even bother with discussing what this all means to everyone in the world and not just one narcissistic individual with an axe to grind and chip on it's shoulder a mile wide but then again I should stop just because this one little mommies boy has been having a bad day?



If this news won't wake you up , nothing probably will.

Hillary lost....that is huge win #1



We are out of Olosercare personal mandate...that is huge win #2



we dodged the TPP....that is huge win #3





We got out of the stupid nonsense called the paris accords....that is huge win #4





I don't like how this guy is doing things...but he is doing things that I like.....



am I upset when you find dirt on him?....no, not really.



I did not vote for a saint...I voted for a new york asshole (a lifetime democrat I might add)....and I am getting exactly what I expected to get

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Damrod comes in for the kill shot!!



Anti Trumpers are against a lifelong New York pro worker Democrat, and voted insread for a once-republican goldwater girl, New York (adopted and chosen for political maneuvering) right wing pro NAFTA pro TPP democrat.



Let that sink in. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^Damrod comes in for the kill shot!!Anti Trumpers are against a lifelong New York pro worker Democrat, and voted insread for a once-republican goldwater girl, New York (adopted and chosen for political maneuvering) right wing pro NAFTA pro TPP democrat.Let that sink in. NormalIsSubjective



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Post: #63 RE: Mueller is focusing on evidence Trump was a foriegn assett since 2011

spo snouou Wrote: (03-30-2018 05:59 AM) NormalIsSubjective Wrote: (03-30-2018 05:36 AM) The racial divide issue was to distract from the fact Obama barely differed from Bush on foreign policy and invasive surveillance/national security issues.

well considering he had to deal with the aftermath of 2 theaters of operation that were both started by Bush and then Syria to contend with using foreign policy put in place by a succession of administrations.. and your problem with his invasive surveillance/national security issues sounds like alex jones hype for the easily led with ad hom ad absurdity ad nausem psychological character assassination stuff.

And what did he do with those 2 theaters?



You're still in Iraq and Afghanistan.



He started the Ukraine, Syrian and Libyan sh*t-shows.



Increased The U.S.'s African shenanigans.



I'll credit him somehow dodging invading Iran, but notice that's back in play.



No movement on Palestine beyond more Israeli ass-kissing.



Prosecute more whistle-blowers than any previous president.



Increased drone warfare and legalized assassination of U.S. citizens.



Increased military budgets and nuclear weapons funding.



Did nothing but increase national security/surveillance state excesses.





And that's the short list... And what did he do with those 2 theaters?You're still in Iraq and Afghanistan.He started the Ukraine, Syrian and Libyan sh*t-shows.Increased The U.S.'s African shenanigans.I'll credit him somehow dodging invading Iran, but notice that's back in play.No movement on Palestine beyond more Israeli ass-kissing.Prosecute more whistle-blowers than any previous president.Increased drone warfare and legalized assassination of U.S. citizens.Increased military budgets and nuclear weapons funding.Did nothing but increase national security/surveillance state excesses.And that's the short list... PaidBySoros

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03-30-2018 08:15 AM











Post: #64 RE: Mueller is focusing on evidence Trump was a foriegn assett since 2011

Cut n paste, cut n paste, ad hominem, blah blah, russia, collusion, trump says mean things, blah blah, cut n paste, she woman fists me all night, russia russia, cut n paste, is anybody listening to me yet?, blah blah, russia collusion, so sad that hillery didn't win, blah blah, more threads about trump hurting my feelings, big words make me feel special, blah blah, russia trump, maybe this thread will wake people up, blah blah, my cats love me, russia trump, she woman send me some more CNN trashy tidbits, blah russia blah, which bathroom should I use today, blah blah, russia agenda, cash my paycheck from Soros, I'm going to tell on you, russia collusion, 2016 presidential race wasn't fair, don't wipe back to front like last time, trump collussion, CNN told me so, ad hominem, big words, misogynist nazi, blah blah, feed the cat, wipe front to back, sexting with she woman, take my meds, new thread, blah russia blah, collusion trump, blah blah, Cut n paste, this will show them PaidBySoros

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03-30-2018 08:19 AM











Post: #65 RE: Mueller is focusing on evidence Trump was a foriegn assett since 2011

Cut n paste, ad hominem, blah blah, russia, collusion, trump says mean things, blah blah, cut n paste, she woman fists me all night, russia russia, cut n paste, is anybody listening to me yet?, blah blah, russia collusion, so sad that hillery didn't win, blah blah, more threads about trump hurting my feelings, big words make me feel special, maybe this thread will wake people up, blah blah, my cats love me, russia trump, she woman send me some more CNN trashy tidbits, blah russia blah, which bathroom should I use today, blah blah, russia agenda, cash my paycheck from Soros, I'm going to tell on you, russia collusion, 2016 presidential race wasn't fair, don't wipe back to front like last time, trump collussion, CNN told me so, ad hominem, big words, misogynist nazi, blah blah, feed the cat, take my meds, new thread, blah russia blah, collusion trump, blah blah, Cut n paste, this will show them spo snouou

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03-30-2018 12:42 PM



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Post: #66 RE: Mueller is focusing on evidence Trump was a foriegn assett since 2011

NormalIsSubjective Wrote: (03-30-2018 06:45 AM) spo snouou Wrote: (03-30-2018 05:59 AM)

well considering he had to deal with the aftermath of 2 theaters of operation that were both started by Bush and then Syria to contend with using foreign policy put in place by a succession of administrations.. and your problem with his invasive surveillance/national security issues sounds like alex jones hype for the easily led with ad hom ad absurdity ad nausem psychological character assassination stuff.

And what did he do with those 2 theaters?



You're still in Iraq and Afghanistan.



He started the Ukraine, Syrian and Libyan sh*t-shows.



Increased The U.S.'s African shenanigans.



I'll credit him somehow dodging invading Iran, but notice that's back in play.



No movement on Palestine beyond more Israeli ass-kissing.



Prosecute more whistle-blowers than any previous president.



Increased drone warfare and legalized assassination of U.S. citizens.



Increased military budgets and nuclear weapons funding.



Did nothing but increase national security/surveillance state excesses.





And that's the short list...

I see.. sorry about the delayed response.



sounds like that could be quite a senseless circular argument to debate all of that.. there is a bigger picture to look at like not getting dragged down by senseless circular debates I see.. sorry about the delayed response.sounds like that could be quite a senseless circular argument to debate all of that.. there is a bigger picture to look at like not getting dragged down by senseless circular debates spo snouou

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03-30-2018 12:54 PM



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Post: #67 RE: Mueller is focusing on evidence Trump was a foriegn assett since 2011

LoP Guest Wrote: (03-30-2018 12:46 PM) [ ]RETARDS [/size]



indeed

indeed Donald J Trump

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03-30-2018 12:56 PM



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Post: #68 RE: Mueller is focusing on evidence Trump was a foriegn assett since 2011

LoP Guest Wrote: (03-30-2018 06:44 AM) Damrod Wrote: (03-30-2018 03:34 AM) Hillary lost....that is huge win #1



We are out of Olosercare personal mandate...that is huge win #2



we dodged the TPP....that is huge win #3





We got out of the stupid nonsense called the paris accords....that is huge win #4





I don't like how this guy is doing things...but he is doing things that I like.....



am I upset when you find dirt on him?....no, not really.



I did not vote for a saint...I voted for a new york asshole (a lifetime democrat I might add)....and I am getting exactly what I expected to get

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Damrod comes in for the kill shot!!



Anti Trumpers are against a lifelong New York pro worker Democrat, and voted insread for a once-republican goldwater girl, New York (adopted and chosen for political maneuvering) right wing pro NAFTA pro TPP democrat.



Let that sink in.

That was a really awesome post by Damrod.



That was a really awesome post by Damrod. "Go with the flow, like a twig on the shoulders of a mighty stream" Del Griffith



spo snouou

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Post: #69 RE: Mueller is focusing on evidence Trump was a foriegn assett since 2011





That is good because the dirt is going to keep on coming by the looks of it.



Quote: Muellers team has been asking about a convention-related event attended by both Russias U.S. ambassador and Jeff Sessions, the first U.S. senator to support Trump and now his attorney general, said one source, who requested anonymity due to the ongoing investigation.



Another issue Muellers team has been asking about is how and why Republican Party platform language hostile to Russia was deleted from a section of the document related to Ukraine, said another source who also requested anonymity.



Muellers interest in what happened at the Republican convention in Cleveland, Ohio in July 2016, is an indication that Trump campaign contacts and actions related to Russia remain central to the special counsels investigation.



Trump, who was nominated as the Republican Party candidate for the November 2016 election during the convention, has denied any collusion with Russia during the campaign. Moscow has denied U.S. intelligence agencies findings that it interfered in the campaign to try to tilt the election in Trumps favor.



Investigators have asked detailed questions about conversations that Sessions, then a Trump campaign adviser, had at a convention event attended by then-Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergei Kislyak, said the first source, who was questioned by Mueller about the event.



The same source said Muellers team also has been asking whether Sessions had private discussions with Kislyak on the sidelines of a campaign speech Trump gave at Washingtons Mayflower Hotel in April 2016.



Sessions spokespersons have denied repeatedly that he had any private discussions with Kislyak at the Mayflower. Sessions told lawmakers last year he could not recall any conversations with Russian officials at the hotel but could not rule out that a brief interaction with Kislyak may have occurred there.



Spokespersons for Mueller and Sessions declined to comment on Muellers interest in Sessions activities at the convention and other convention-related events.

more:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-t...SKBN1H52VT





Quote: Quick reminder: Just before the pro-Russia changes were made to RNC platform, Manafort emailed Konstantin Kilimnik and asked him to relay an offer to give "private briefings" on the campaign to Putin ally Oleg Deripaska in exchange for debt repayment/cancellation.





Kilimnik is the same guy who was just confirmed to be a Russian intelligence agent who was in contact with Trump campaign aide/Manafort associate Rick Gates during the campaign.

https://twitter.com/RVAwonk/status/979489039588954112 That is good because the dirt is going to keep on coming by the looks of it.more: (This post was last modified: 03-30-2018 01:06 PM by spo snouou .) Strategos

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03-30-2018 02:16 PM



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Post: #70 RE: Mueller is focusing on evidence Trump was a foriegn assett since 2011

NormalIsSubjective Wrote: (03-30-2018 06:45 AM) spo snouou Wrote: (03-30-2018 05:59 AM)

well considering he had to deal with the aftermath of 2 theaters of operation that were both started by Bush and then Syria to contend with using foreign policy put in place by a succession of administrations.. and your problem with his invasive surveillance/national security issues sounds like alex jones hype for the easily led with ad hom ad absurdity ad nausem psychological character assassination stuff.

And what did he do with those 2 theaters?



You're still in Iraq and Afghanistan.



He started the Ukraine, Syrian and Libyan sh*t-shows.



Increased The U.S.'s African shenanigans.



I'll credit him somehow dodging invading Iran, but notice that's back in play.



No movement on Palestine beyond more Israeli ass-kissing.



Prosecute more whistle-blowers than any previous president.



Increased drone warfare and legalized assassination of U.S. citizens.



Increased military budgets and nuclear weapons funding.



Did nothing but increase national security/surveillance state excesses.





And that's the short list...

Obama was the (white) house slave - doing his master's bidding - his masters were white and Israeli owners of the defense corporations. Obama was the (white) house slave - doing his master's bidding - his masters were white and Israeli owners of the defense corporations. spo snouou

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03-30-2018 02:26 PM



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Post: #71 RE: Mueller is focusing on evidence Trump was a foriegn assett since 2011

Quote: Donald Trump Jr. has a direct, personal connection to the central figure in multiple money laundering cases involving Russia, Latvia, Ukraine, UK, Seychelles Islands, New Zealand, Vanuatu, Kyrgyzstan, Mexico and the United States.



Donald Trump Jr. gave a paid speech to Baltic International Banks annual conference in 2012 and now hes blocking people on Twitter who discuss the trip  and his meeting in Riga with its founder  the controversial Latvian banker and former-British football club executive Valerijs Belokons aka Valeri Belokon.



Baltic International Bank has branches in Moscow, Latvia, Ukraine and London.



Trump Jr.s hyper-active Twitter blocking led me to dig deeper into his contact at Baltic International Bank (BIB), and when the Democratic Coalitions senior advisor Scott Dworkin found a series of #TrumpLeaks photos of Trump Jr. on the banks website we both believed there was more to the story. He said:



Don Jr. is looking for an easy out. He met one on one with the head of a bank that was actively running a scam to launder money for mexican drug lords. When confronted with hard evidence, he didnt deny or clarify, he ran away and hid like a coward.



It turns out that Baltic International Bank has been named as a Mexican cartel money laundering agent, is subject of a criminal inquiry in another former Soviet state Kyrgyzstan, plus Valeri Belokons partners in Blackpool F.C. accuse the banker of pumping dirty cash into their one-time British Premier League football club.



I suppose that is why Donald Trump Jr. blocked me on Twitter as well, after writing this story about his meeting with said Latvian banker.



Belokons Baltic International Bank wrote a money laundering manual, and got caught last year, and fined because of the OOCRPs reporting.

more:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-t...SKBN1H52VT more: Alian2

Registered User

User ID: 1337

03-30-2018 02:36 PM



Posts: 13,250









Post: #72 RE: Mueller is focusing on evidence Trump was a foriegn assett since 2011

Fluke Wrote: (03-30-2018 02:56 AM) Hillary paid for it.

Obama was briefed daily about it.

FBI and DOJ conspired to illegally use FISA court to illegally spy on Donald Trump and many others.

Carter Page had left the Trump Campaign BEFORE the warrant was issued.



Your narrative is false. Carter Page had left the Trump Campaign BEFORE the warrant was issued.Your narrative is false. .

........ .

................ . Alian2

Registered User

User ID: 1337

03-30-2018 02:39 PM



Posts: 13,250









Post: #73 RE: Mueller is focusing on evidence Trump was a foriegn assett since 2011

.

........ .

................ . spo snouou

Vocem sine nomine audivit!

User ID: 1337

03-30-2018 02:44 PM



Posts: 67,592









Post: #74 RE: Mueller is focusing on evidence Trump was a foriegn assett since 2011

Strategos Wrote: (03-30-2018 02:16 PM) NormalIsSubjective Wrote: (03-30-2018 06:45 AM) And what did he do with those 2 theaters?



You're still in Iraq and Afghanistan.



He started the Ukraine, Syrian and Libyan sh*t-shows.



Increased The U.S.'s African shenanigans.



I'll credit him somehow dodging invading Iran, but notice that's back in play.



No movement on Palestine beyond more Israeli ass-kissing.



Prosecute more whistle-blowers than any previous president.



Increased drone warfare and legalized assassination of U.S. citizens.



Increased military budgets and nuclear weapons funding.



Did nothing but increase national security/surveillance state excesses.





And that's the short list...

Obama was the (white) house slave - doing his master's bidding - his masters were white and Israeli owners of the defense corporations.

maybe Obama is like, I am going expose these mofos and give them just enough rope to hang themselves.. which is risky and putting all of us in the public squarely in the cross-hairs of the psychological manipulators.. but seeing we were all there anyway..



maybe Obama is like, I am going expose these mofos and give them just enough rope to hang themselves.. which is risky and putting all of us in the public squarely in the cross-hairs of the psychological manipulators.. but seeing we were all there anyway.. spo snouou

Vocem sine nomine audivit!

User ID: 1337

03-30-2018 02:47 PM



Posts: 67,592









Post: #75 RE: Mueller is focusing on evidence Trump was a foriegn assett since 2011

Michael-AK Wrote: (03-30-2018 02:39 PM)





moral smugness kicks in..





but yeah, the effect is psychological not economic moral smugness kicks in..but yeah, the effect is psychological not economic Advertisement


















Pipeline

30 March 2018

Oakwood Worldwide, wholly owned by Mapletree Investments ("Mapletree"), today announced the upcoming opening of their second property in Ho Chi Minh City, District 7. Set to be operational in April 2018,Oakwood Residence Saigon, the first Oakwood serviced apartment developed by Mapletree in Vietnam is part of the Saigon South Place.

Saigon South Place is a 4.4-hectare integrated mixed-use project master-planned and developed by Mapletree. The development comprises SC VivoCity, a 64,250 sqm shopping mall, Mapletree Business Centre, a 17-story Grade A office tower, OakwoodResidence Saigon and a high-rise residential block RichLane Residences. There are also plans for two more commercial towers in the precinct.

The gateway to the Mekong Delta provinces, Ho Chi Minh City observes the highest tourist numbers in the country, and international arrivals into Vietnam are expected to reach 20 million by 2020. Domestic travel has also seen a 15% increase with expectedcontinued growth.

Preceded by Oakwood Apartments Ho Chi Minh City, which opened in December 2016 in District 3, Oakwood Residence Saigon is located in the city"s fast growing urban center of Phu My Hung in District 7, and adjacent to SC VivoCity and MapletreeBusiness Centre. In the heart of an affluent neighborhood with a prominent expat community, the serviced residence is within close proximity to numerous international schools, a hospital, as well as retail and dining options. Guests at Oakwood ResidenceSaigon can also easily access the Central Business District, industrial zones as well as the Saigon Exhibition and Convention Center (SECC).

Boasting 237 units ranging from studios to three-bedroom apartments, Oakwood Residence Saigon offers guests fully furnished serviced apartments for both short and long stays. An ideal residence for families and groups, facilities include an outdoorswimming pool, fitness center, children"s playground, barbeque pavilion, residents" lounge, car park, an on-site restaurant, as well as versatile multi-function meeting rooms.
Appointment

30 March 2018

Edward Linsley has been appointed Senior General Manager of Four Seasons Resort Seychelles and the new Four Seasons Resort Seychelles at Desroches Island, which opened its doors on March 1, 2018.

Linsley, who arrived in Seychelles as the pre-opening General Manager of Four Seasons Resort Seychelles at Desroches Island in May 2017, takes on the promotion to oversee both resorts following the departure of Adrian Messerli, former General Manager of Four Seasons Resort Seychelles, who departs Seychelles for a new General Manager role at Four Seasons Hotel Shanghai.

A keen sailor who is no stranger to island life, Linsley has circled the globe, touching down on all seven continents, including a recent trip to Antarctica. Linsley's hospitality career also includes a wealth of resort experience acquired in destinations such as Vietnam, Bali and Hawaii.

Linsley originally joined Four Seasons in 1990, and quickly made his mark in progressive management positions in both urban hotels and island resorts over a period of 21 years. Time away from the company included general manager positions in Bali and The Nam Hai in Vietnam (which is now a Four Seasons resort), and prior to returning to Four Seasons in 2017, he was managing director at Rosewood Little Dix Bay in the British Virgin Islands.
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Performance

30 March 2018

HENDERSONVILLE, Tennessee -- The U.S. hotel industry reported positive year-over-year results in the three key performance metrics during the week of 18-24 March 2018, according to data from STR.



In comparison with the week of 19-25 March 2017, the industry recorded the following:

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Occupancy: +1.0 at 69.4%

Average daily rate (ADR): +4.4% to US$133.42

Revenue per available room (RevPAR): +5.4% to US$92.53

STR analysts note that performance in many major markets was boosted by strong group business, which moved out of the week of 25-31 March due to an earlier Easter.

Among the Top 25 Markets, San Francisco/San Mateo, California, reported the highest increase in RevPAR (+29.3% to US$227.95), due primarily to the largest lift in ADR (+20.7% to US$256.94).

New Orleans, Louisiana, experienced the highest increase in occupancy (+8.8% to 84.5%) and a double-digit rise in RevPAR (+19.3% to US$144.29).

Miami/Hialeah Florida, posted the second-largest jump in ADR (+16.1% to US$295.35) and the second-largest increase in RevPAR (+21.4% to US$265.56).

Overall, 20 of the Top 25 Markets reported increases in RevPAR.

Los Angeles/Long Beach, California, experienced the largest decrease in occupancy (-7.3% to 81.0%), resulting in the steepest decline in RevPAR (-7.4% to US$144.24).

Denver, Colorado, reported the largest drop in ADR (-1.4% to US$121.13).

Anaheim/Santa Ana, California, reported the second-largest declines in occupancy (-6.8% to 77.9%) and RevPAR (-5.9% to US$124.18).
Another day, another copyright infringement case pinned against a ubiquitous pop song. This time around, it's Ariana Grande and Nicki Minaj's hit single "Side to Side" off of the former's 2016 album Dangerous Woman. A new lawsuit filed in court recently alleges that the team behind that particular song had copied a similar-sounding track by Christopher R. O'Connor called "J5 (T6)."

O'Connor believes that a record executive at UMG, the label that's home to Grande, got wind of his track and decided to repurpose it for another, more famous artist. He has since brought the case to the record label, who instructed him to send in a demo for assessment. However, the company does not believe that any aspect of the arrangement was appropriated for Grande's advantage.

O'Connor also alleges that UMG had discovered his music online, and has used elements of his compositions to produce singles for other artists including Taylor Swift and Mike Shinoda. He's effectively suing the record label and is asking for royalties from "Side to Side," as well as a songwriting credit.

Listen to O'Connor's demo below and see for yourself whether or not he has a case.
Dallas Mavericks owner and billionaire businessman Mark Cuban is at the center of a new controversy brewing at his team's arena. This past week, Michelle Newsome filed a petition that names Mark Cuban and the Mavericks organization as culprits in covering up a racist occurrence that happened in 2011.

According to USA Today, Newsome filed the petition on Thursday with the Dallas County Court. She hasn't sued yet, but is considering doing so after she discerns how her petition is handled by the organization. Her petition seeks to gain documents from the Mavericks and also to oust Cuban. Newsome is an African-American woman, who was shocked when another employee showed her a picture of a noose that was hidden in an IT closet. The noose was placed there by a contracted employee. The man who found the noose, who is also African American, provided an affidavit verifying the story. Newsome reported the noose, and it was removed by Cuban himself.

There was nothing done and the most disheartening thing was the fact that Mr. Cuban is the one who took down the noose and discarded it," explains Newsome to Today.

"They tried to brush it under the carpet. There was no action taken by him. There was nothing that said, there was no action taken by Mr. Cuban and he didnt say anything like that this is intolerable, that this cant be tolerated. There was nothing at all stated saying this was wrong, this is not allowed, this is not representative of a company culture that I want to have for one of my businesses, she continued.

Newsome was fired in March 2017, which she believes is connected with her constant complaints to HR about racial discrimination, harassment, pay inequality and bullying from her co-workers.
For some reason, the man who killed 17 innocent lives at his high school in Parkland, Florida is getting tons of fan mail while he's facing the death penalty at The Broward County Jail. The Sun Sentinel reports that 17-year-old Nikolas Cruz has been flooded with love notes and money from teen girls in different states.

Some of the letters include sexual photographs, letters of encouragement, greeting cards and more.

In my 40 years as public defender, Ive never seen this many letters to a defendant, Nikolas' public defender Howard Finkelstein explained. Everyone now and then gets a few, but nothing like this. He added: The letters shake me up because they are written by regular, everyday teenage girls from across the nation. That scares me. Its perverted.

The publication got its hands on some of the notes and honestly, it's pretty disturbing.

"Youre in a tough spot, Nik, and that is something I know, because Ive been there myself, one person wrote to him. If you need something, I can mail to you...ask. If you need to talk...Ill listen.

When I saw your picture on the television, something attracted me to you, an 18-year-old woman from Texas wrote. Your eyes are beautiful and the freckles on your face make you so handsome.

Nikolas does not get to see all the letters that have been sent to him. Howard told the publication that they read him the "religious ones that extended wishes for his soul and to come to God."
Q. How do I attract the next generation of workers for my business? I have a couple of longtime employees who are set to retire, and Id like to find younger ones I can train from the ground up and keep for the long haul. Ive heard millennials dont like to stay in one job for too long.

A. While its true that many millennials have already had a variety of jobs, there are reasons for that having nothing to do with them being fickle or disloyal.

For one thing, theres the economy. Post-recession, downsizings and the lack of business growth were a reality that impacted all generations, and its not surprising that many millennials moved from job to job.

Theyre also young. Born between 1981 and 1996, some of them are just now graduating from college and entering the workforce. Except for those with a very specific career path in mind, sampling companies and careers comes with the territory.

In reality, as millennials grow older and take on more traditional responsibilities of home and family, they will tend to stay at jobs longer.

More Information The Generational Divide Summit When: April 24 Where: Hilton Houston Westchase Registration: sbdc.uh.edu/summit See More Collapse

But how do you attract millennial workers in the first place? Jason Dorsey, co-founder and president at the Center for Generational Kinetics in Austin, says millennials expect to be able to apply for a job on a tablet or smartphone, and they typically find jobs online.

But more than the ease of applying, the company and job itself need to appeal. Using findings from a Best Places to Work for Millennials award and other national studies, Dorsey concluded that a businesss brand is key, online employment ratings make a difference, and a prospective employee has to be attracted to  and believe in  the businesss mission and purpose.

Once a millennial employee is on board, according to Dorsey, they are not as different from the baby boomers and Gen Xers as you might think. Who doesnt want interesting and challenging work, a boss and co-workers they like, a sense that they belong, and adequate compensation and benefits?

But there are some key drivers if you want to keep millennials engaged. They tend to want more frequent feedback and would move on if they couldnt see a desirable career path at the company. They can be highly motivated by being included in interaction with leadership, even more so than by a raise or promotion. They want to know that you see them as having talent worth developing.

Dorsey will be in Houston on April 24 as the headliner of The Generational Divide Summit being hosted by the SBDC at the University of Houston C.T. Bauer College of Business. He will share new research and solutions on how to hire, manage, sell to and simply better understand the millennial work force, as well as insight into the upcoming Generation Z.
WASHINGTON  President Donald Trump escalated his attack on Amazon on Thursday, saying that the online behemoth does not pay enough taxes  and strongly suggesting that he may try to rein in the e-commerce business.

The presidents commentary was made in a Twitter post in which he accused Amazon of putting thousands of local retailers out of business and of using the U.S. Postal Service as their Delivery Boy.

I have stated my concerns with Amazon long before the Election, Trump wrote. Unlike others, they pay little or no taxes to state & local governments, use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy (causing tremendous loss to the U.S.), and are putting many thousands of retailers out of business!

Amazon and the companys founder, Jeff Bezos, are among Trumps regular Twitter targets. In December, Trump questioned whether the U.S. Post Office charges Amazon enough for package deliveries. And in August, Trump said Amazon hurts taxpaying businesses.

Amazon, however, does pay taxes  $412 million in 2016, for instance, according to the companys report to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Trump has attacked Amazon on Twitter more than a dozen times since late 2015, months after he had launched his presidential campaign. Many of those tweets seem to have been prompted by critical coverage in the Washington Post, the news organization that Bezos acquired personally in 2013 for $250 million.

Trump has repeatedly accused Bezos of using the Post as a tool to intimidate opponents in Washington into treating Amazon more favorably, although editors at the newspaper say Bezos plays no role in directing its news coverage.

The presidents latest broadside did not mention the Post, instead focusing on a handful of issues he has previously cited to criticize Amazon. While Amazon once widely avoided collecting sales tax in states, it now collects it in every state that has one for goods that it sells from its own inventory.

Some municipalities, however, have complained that Amazon does not collect local taxes under its agreements with states. And in most states Amazon does not collect sales taxes on sales of goods sold by third parties on its platform.

Drew Herdener, an Amazon spokesman, declined to comment.

The media company Axios reported Wednesday that Trump has wondered aloud whether Amazon could be vulnerable to antitrust or competition laws. Amazon shares fell almost 5 percent after the Axios article was published. On Thursday, they were down more than 1 percent.

Raj Shah, a deputy White House press secretary, said that Trump has talked about the need to have tax parity between online retailers and brick-and-mortar retailers.

Shah, speaking Thursday morning on the program, Fox & Friends, said this was something Congress could help facilitate and that the president would support.

In 2015, shortly after Trump started his attacks against the company, Bezos joked on Twitter about sending the candidate into space on a rocket made by Blue Origin, a space exploration startup Bezos owns.

But since Trump became president, Bezos and Amazon have become much quieter about his attacks. The company has refused to comment publicly about them. People who work there say privately that, while they do not enjoy Trumps tweets, they are more likely to prompt eye rolling rather than some form of crisis control.


Exxon Mobil Corp.'s attempt to derail a multistate fraud investigation into the company's public comments about climate change flamed out in a New York court.

U.S. District Judge Valerie Caproni in Manhattan on Thursday dismissed Exxon's lawsuit claiming officials in New York and Massachusetts conspired with environmental groups in planning the securities-fraud probe and made up their minds about its outcome before it started.

In its tactic of suing in federal courts in New York and Texas to stop the state probes, Exxon was "running roughshod over the adage that the best defense is a good offense," Caproni said in her ruling.

The win provides headway for New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and his counterpart in Massachusetts, Maura Healey, to finish their investigations, which have been delayed by legal wrangling. They'll ultimately decide whether there's enough evidence of wrongdoing by Exxon to sue the energy giant and seek damages.

The attorneys general claimed Exxon was improperly attempting to use the federal court system to impinge their state investigatory powers.

The states have been investigating since 2015 whether Exxon misled the public and investors about the reality of climate change, including the ways it could impact the company's finances. They're also examining whether Exxon properly valued its reserves based on what its scientists projected.

Exxon claimed the evidence of political motivation includes meetings the attorneys general had with environmental groups and Schneiderman's claim at the press conference that former President Barack Obama's environmental agenda was being opposed by "morally vacant" forces.

The judge said the company offered "extremely thin allegations and speculative inferences."

"The factual allegations against the AGs boil down to statements made at a single press conference and a collection of meetings with climate-change activists," she wrote. "Some statements made at the press conference were perhaps hyperbolic, but nothing that was said can fairly be read to constitute declaration of a political vendetta against Exxon."

Exxon spokesman Scott Silvestri didn't immediately respond to a message seeking comment on the ruling.

Healey said in a statement that Thursday's ruling is a turning point in an investigation that's been hindered by Exxon's refusal to cooperate.

"Massachusetts customers and investors deserve answers from Exxon about what it has known about the impact of burning fossil fuels on its business and the planet, and whether it hid this information from the public," Healey said.
If Dr. Lori Choi could change the world, she would want every woman to have adequate health care.

Thats why the inaugural Something for Everyone benefit at Ivy and James in Evelyns Park in Bellaire on April 8 is her passion project. The event, which is hosted by her Ill Have What Shes Having organziation, brings together more than 100 female chefs for a trio of events aimed to raise $1 million for womens health care in Texas.

Choi, a Baylor-trained surgeon who is married to Coltivare owner and chef Ryan Pera, has teamed up with veteran chef Monica Pope and emerging chef Erin Smith (Feges BBQ), and a group of other women in the restaurant industry, to lead the charge for bringing awareness, education and funding for womens healthcare.

I truly believe our health-care system is broken, said the forty-something Choi. Texas has the highest number of uninsured women in the nation. Many of the female chefs are working 80-100 hours a week, but cant afford their health insurance. Were focused on the barriers they face from equal pay in the restaurant business to lack of awareness about their own health.

Choi learned early about the need for basic health care. Her father was a general surgeon in the Appalachian region of North Carolina, where she grew up with her three siblings and a stay-at-home mom, who was also trained as a nurse.

More Information "Something For Everyone" Inaugural Benefit When: 4 pm. Sunday, April 8 Where: Ivy and James in Evelyn's Park, 4400 Bellaire Details: Presented by "I'll Have What She's Having," this charity event features three activities - a cocktail event ($99), a picnic in the park ($250) and a three-course dinner and reception ($500). For details, visit www.illhavewhatsheshaving.org. See More Collapse

My father helped the community in so many ways, she said. He did everything from delivering babies and setting broken bones. But clinics like those in our small town  rural and underserved areas  are being closed around the country. Its so easy to close a clinic, but so hard to open one.

Ill Have What Shes Having, which raises community awareness and funds in support of womens health, started in September with fundraising pop-up dinners and donation drives after Hurricane Harvey. According to the groups website, since 2011, more than 80 clinics have closed in the state because of lack of public funding, and the Texas maternal mortality rate doubled in the last two years and is the highest in the developed world.

Choi became immersed in the restaurant business after she and Pera met in New York, where she was in medical school and he worked as a chef. It was love at third sight, she said.

I was too exhausted from medical school on our first date. I never thought Id get married because I didnt want to compromise. He said, You go be a badass surgeon, and Ill be a badass chef. Thats what I needed to hear.

They moved to Houston in 2003 and were married in 2014 in a surprise wedding at the opening of Coltivare.

In the next year, Pera plans to open three to four new restaurants, she said. Each new venture is a chance to spread more awareness about the need for health care in the industry. The food community is amazing, and were trying to find sustainable solutions to the health-care crisis. We have to find solutions for Houston.

Style heroes: Audrey Hepburn, Frida Kahlo and my sister, Caroline.

Favorite designer: Stella McCartney, Chloe Dao

Favorite shoe in your closet: Lucchese cowboy boots. Ive gone from clinic to the operating room to dinner without a footwear change.

One thing in your closet you should ditch: Black dress from college. Its slightly faded and holey, but still stylish.

Best way to de-stress: Running around Rice or Memorial Park, then Pilates at Timberline Fitness with Renee Robinson.

Beauty must-haves: Facial with organic lip treatment and rosemary-infused facial wash both by Sabina Khan at Chrysalis Spa.

Favorite place to vacation: Wherever I havent been, or Mexico or the couch.

Favorite movie: The Martian, Cinema Paradiso, Tampopo Ramen

Favorite color: white

Favorite drink: Artesa cava, champagne or a margarita.

Best gift youve ever received: My parents immigration and hence, my American citizenship.

Best app, service or tech gadget that has changed your life for the better: The New York Times Crossword app.

Whats one thing on your bucket list: Health care for all.

Theme song: Short Skirt Long Jacket by Cake
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Page: 1 2 3 Satan 2' nuclear missile again test-launched by Russia, as Putin brags of 'invuln Sunni Muslimah

Registered User

User ID: kaput

03-30-2018 07:27 PM



Posts: 114









Post: #1 Satan 2' nuclear missile again test-launched by Russia, as Putin brags of 'invuln

Advertisement

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2018/03/30/...senal.html





"That they said (in boast), "We killed Christ Jesus the son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah";- but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them, and those who differ therein are full of doubts, with no (certain) knowledge, but only conjecture to follow, for of a surety they killed him not."



Chapter Name:An-Nisa Verse :157 Satan 2' nuclear missile again test-launched by Russia, as Putin brags of 'invulnerable' arsenalChapter Name:An-Nisa Verse :157 Sunni Muslimah

Registered User

User ID: 1337

03-30-2018 07:27 PM



Posts: 114









Post: #2 RE: Satan 2' nuclear missile again test-launched by Russia, as Putin brags of 'invuln

Putin just released satan # 2 upon earth..... "That they said (in boast), "We killed Christ Jesus the son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah";- but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them, and those who differ therein are full of doubts, with no (certain) knowledge, but only conjecture to follow, for of a surety they killed him not."



Chapter Name:An-Nisa Verse :157 Sunni Muslimah

Registered User

User ID: 1337

03-30-2018 07:32 PM



Posts: 114









Post: #3 RE: Satan 2' nuclear missile again test-launched by Russia, as Putin brags of 'invuln

https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/30/europe/ru...index.html "That they said (in boast), "We killed Christ Jesus the son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah";- but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them, and those who differ therein are full of doubts, with no (certain) knowledge, but only conjecture to follow, for of a surety they killed him not."



Chapter Name:An-Nisa Verse :157 Mark Baas

Caring Karen Cares

User ID: 1337

03-30-2018 07:36 PM



Posts: 45,215









Post: #4 RE: Satan 2' nuclear missile again test-launched by Russia, as Putin brags of 'invuln

The Freemasons sure are pushing it hard. Mark Baas

Caring Karen Cares

User ID: 1337

03-30-2018 07:38 PM



Posts: 45,215









Post: #5 RE: Satan 2' nuclear missile again test-launched by Russia, as Putin brags of 'invuln

Isn't it funny how they usually escape any media attention, the Founding Fathers of the US were also Freemasons, so one could surmise that it's more than simply a charity. Sunni Muslimah

Registered User

User ID: 1337

03-30-2018 07:39 PM



Posts: 114









Post: #6 RE: Satan 2' nuclear missile again test-launched by Russia, as Putin brags of 'invuln

RaXz Wrote: (03-30-2018 07:36 PM) The Freemasons sure are pushing it hard.





They're not hiding it anymore. Everything in the open now because they know the last war on earth is imminent. They're not hiding it anymore. Everything in the open now because they know the last war on earth is imminent. "That they said (in boast), "We killed Christ Jesus the son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah";- but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them, and those who differ therein are full of doubts, with no (certain) knowledge, but only conjecture to follow, for of a surety they killed him not."



Chapter Name:An-Nisa Verse :157 Sunni Muslimah

Registered User

User ID: 1337

03-30-2018 07:45 PM



Posts: 114









Post: #7 RE: Satan 2' nuclear missile again test-launched by Russia, as Putin brags of 'invuln

RaXz Wrote: (03-30-2018 07:38 PM) Isn't it funny how they usually escape any media attention, the Founding Fathers of the US were also Freemasons, so one could surmise that it's more than simply a charity.

They hide their evil works behind the charity organizations so they can wire trillions to their mason brothers across the world to further their world dominance thus helping the one eyed antichrist emerge to our world stage. Antichrist wants to be a leader aka a Shepard but hes a worthless shepard who will lead humanity and earth into wars and destruction. The one eyed man brought destruction to humans and plants DNA, poisoned the air with aluminum dust that we inhale daily, and the our water.





Thirty Pieces of Silver

16"For behold, I am going to raise up a shepherd in the land who will not care for the perishing, seek the scattered, heal the broken, or sustain the one standing, but will devour the flesh of the fat sheep and tear off their hoofs. 17"Woe to the worthless shepherd Who leaves the flock! A sword will be on his arm And on his right eye! His arm will be totally withered And his right eye will be blind."

Zechariah 11:17

He will be one eyed man. They hide their evil works behind the charity organizations so they can wire trillions to their mason brothers across the world to further their world dominance thus helping the one eyed antichrist emerge to our world stage. Antichrist wants to be a leader aka a Shepard but hes a worthless shepard who will lead humanity and earth into wars and destruction. The one eyed man brought destruction to humans and plants DNA, poisoned the air with aluminum dust that we inhale daily, and the our water.Thirty Pieces of Silver16"For behold, I am going to raise up a shepherd in the land who will not care for the perishing, seek the scattered, heal the broken, or sustain the one standing, but will devour the flesh of the fat sheep and tear off their hoofs. 17"Woe to the worthless shepherd Who leaves the flock!Zechariah 11:17He will be one eyed man. "That they said (in boast), "We killed Christ Jesus the son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah";- but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them, and those who differ therein are full of doubts, with no (certain) knowledge, but only conjecture to follow, for of a surety they killed him not."



Chapter Name:An-Nisa Verse :157 Mark Baas

Caring Karen Cares

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03-30-2018 07:53 PM



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Post: #8 RE: Satan 2' nuclear missile again test-launched by Russia, as Putin brags of 'invuln

Keep reading me your lessons.



Yes, you're great. LoP Guest

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Post: #9 RE: Satan 2' nuclear missile again test-launched by Russia, as Putin brags of 'invuln







Mark Baas

Caring Karen Cares

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03-30-2018 09:43 PM



Posts: 45,215









Post: #10 RE: Satan 2' nuclear missile again test-launched by Russia, as Putin brags of 'invuln

This looks like NK all over again, but now with Russia.



Not that it matters, people will gobble up anything as long as it's packaged right.



There's no reason to wonder if there's another Freemason ploy going on, they're just a charity that only have founded the U.S.A., no big deal whatsoever. Roddy's Creed

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03-30-2018 09:45 PM



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Post: #11 RE: Satan 2' nuclear missile again test-launched by Russia, as Putin brags of 'invuln

Hi, Sunni! Long time no see! I do not label myself. What I stand for is based on my own convictions, and I don't care which box - the left one or the right one - they happen to belong. LoP Guest

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03-30-2018 09:49 PM











Post: #12 RE: Satan 2' nuclear missile again test-launched by Russia, as Putin brags of 'invuln

Bye Bye Washington Dc. LoP Guest

lop guest

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03-30-2018 09:50 PM











Post: #13 RE: Satan 2' nuclear missile again test-launched by Russia, as Putin brags of 'invuln

'Satan' isn't the Russian name for the missiles. That's what the Russia demonizing ZOGs and lugenpress call it, on their march trying to foment war on Russia for Zionist total control kver the Earth.



Trump said he was going to make friends with Russia, so far all he's done is further Jewish made war plans, and soeak lies against Russia. LoP Guest

lop guest

User ID: 1337

03-30-2018 09:56 PM











Post: #14 RE: Satan 2' nuclear missile again test-launched by Russia, as Putin brags of 'invuln





I wonder what the asshats in the Pentagon are gonna do about this missile test? If it were north Korea testing an ICBM the paranoid warmongers would be losing their psychopathic minds!



But they can't do shit because they only pick on weak and defenseless nations..





https://youtu.be/8gG7IIF_FfM













I wonder what the asshats in the Pentagon are gonna do about this missile test? If it were north Korea testing an ICBM the paranoid warmongers would be losing their psychopathic minds!But they can't do shit because they only pick on weak and defenseless nations.. LoP Guest

lop guest

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03-30-2018 09:57 PM











Post: #15 RE: Satan 2' nuclear missile again test-launched by Russia, as Putin brags of 'invuln

LoP Guest Wrote: (03-30-2018 09:50 PM) 'Satan' isn't the Russian name for the missiles. That's what the Russia demonizing ZOGs and lugenpress call it, on their march trying to foment war on Russia for Zionist total control kver the Earth.



Trump said he was going to make friends with Russia, so far all he's done is further Jewish made war plans, and soeak lies against Russia.

This...A Psychic predicted the sudden death of the US President if the CentralIntelCompany was not closed by Easter 2018.The DC MSM-Monsanto Gmo US Mil Industrial Complex Zombie Dark Cabal now faces instant Nuclear Annihilation. This...A Psychic predicted the sudden death of the US President if the CentralIntelCompany was not closed by Easter 2018.The DC MSM-Monsanto Gmo US Mil Industrial Complex Zombie Dark Cabal now faces instant Nuclear Annihilation. Advertisement


















WASHINGTON - Robert Redfield, the new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, gave a deeply personal agencywide address Thursday in which he repeatedly underscored the importance of science and data and said CDC's most critical public health mission is to protect Americans "from that which we don't expect."

The 66-year-old Redfield, a longtime AIDS researcher appointed to the job a week ago, was overcome by emotion twice during his brief remarks and a question-and-answer session. The University of Maryland medical professor had sought the top job at CDC and the National Institutes of Health for more than a decade.

About 30 seconds into his address, he choked up and then regained his composure. He spoke of the honor of leading the best "science-based, data-driven agency in the world. I've dreamed of doing this for a long time."

The 45-minute session at CDC's Atlanta headquarters, which employees were able to watch or listen to from locations across the United States and around the world, was well received by employees. Redfield came across as knowledgeable and well-briefed.

"I'm a little nervous, I'm an outsider," he said. "I didn't grow up here in CDC, but I hope you accept me as a member of the family, and accept my wife, because we're here to serve side by side with you."

Several staff members noted his strong embrace of science and said they were especially gratified to hear him say that if CDC has evidence to support a public health intervention, the intervention should be applied.

The Maryland clinician has moved quickly to take the helm of CDC. He was sworn in Monday in Washington by Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, headed to Atlanta and met Wednesday with the directors of CDC's individual centers.

Redfield's main career focus has been chronic human infections, especially HIV/AIDS. He headed clinical care and research at the University of Maryland medical school's Institute of Human Virology. He also oversaw programs caring for 6,000 patients in the Baltimore-Washington region, as well as for more than 1.3 million patients in Africa and the Caribbean as part of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, known as PEPFAR.

His appointment had drawn criticism because of his once-controversial positions on HIV testing during the first decade of the AIDS crisis, his ties to conservative AIDS organizations that supported abstinence-based prevention and his lack of experience with governmental public health organizations.

He takes the agency's helm at a time when scientists and public health experts are concerned about the commitment of CDC and HHS to science- and evidence-based research. Just three months ago, CDC employees were advised to avoid seven words or phrases in narratives in preparing the fiscal 2019 budget. Some "words to avoid" also were spelled out in an HHS style guide, and instruction about others, including "evidence-based" and "science-based," were given verbally by a CDC official. Department officials have provided different accounts of how that verbal guidance took place but said it was not official administration policy.

The agency is "science-based and data-driven, and that's why CDC has the credibility around the world that it has," Redfield said Thursday, before choking up again as he talked about the chance to work there after a 20-year academic career. "Academia does not solve problems. Academia is not a service organization."

Redfield didn't address some of the criticism over policies he supported decades ago, such as mandatory HIV screening, that some AIDS advocates said were not sound public health approaches. But in talking Thursday about ways to end the AIDS epidemic in the United States - which he said could be accomplished within three to seven years - he voiced support for comprehensive prevention strategies.

"I've never been an abstinence-only person," he said. "Just ask my wife," he added, prompting laughter from the audience. "I believe in every measure we have scientific evidence for, including condoms."

He also spoke of the importance of vaccines and recounted how as an Army doctor in the early 1980s, he helped convince military leadership to vaccinate "every individual in the armed forces" against hepatitis B after a young soldier for whom Redfield had cared infected his wife and newborn child. "That's probably the most important thing I did in my life," he said.

Too many people don't understand the importance of vaccination, he continued, mentioning the 130 children who have died this flu season. "We have got to get the American public to understand that vaccination is important and needs to be fully utilized."

Redfield said the opioid epidemic is "the public health crisis of our time," and agreed with Azar that it is a medical, not a moral problem on which CDC will help lead the government's response. He also likened the stigma around addiction to that during the early days of AIDS. Redfield, who has five children and nine grandchildren, has close personal experience with the opioid crisis.

"If any of you have tried to access care for addiction in this nation, I can guarantee you it's complicated," he said. "It needs to not be complicated."

Although his supporters point to his strong background in infectious disease and global health, public health experts inside and outside the agency say one of his biggest challenges will be his limited governmental public health experience, especially involving emergency responses.

Redfield spoke about organizing a relief effort during the 2010 Haiti earthquake and about his experiences working in Africa on the PEPFAR program. But he acknowledged that CDC's most important mission is to protect Americans from emerging health threats, whether they are naturally occurring diseases or bioterrorism threats.

"I pray it doesn't happen on our watch. But I want to make sure we're all prepared, whether it's flu - my biggest fear - or MERS or something else," he said, referring to Middle East respiratory syndrome, an acute viral respiratory illness. "I respect the mission we have, which is to be prepared for what we don't expect."

Redfield said he has gotten a list of 57 items from his wife about what he should do. "No 1, listen. No 2, don't interrupt. No 3, listen."

The job heading the country's foremost public health agency had been vacant since Jan. 31, when former Georgia public health commissioner Brenda Fitzgerald resigned after serving only half a year. She was unable to divest from "complex financial interests" in a "definitive time period," according to an HHS statement. Fitzgerald had also purchased shares in a tobacco company shortly after becoming CDC director. Azar accepted her resignation two days after he was sworn in.
A Houston man is accused of choke-slamming a 14-year-old boy Monday morning outside Yates High School in southeast Houston all because the teenager had some unkind words for the man's younger sister, court documents show.

The altercation started when the teenager and some other students were outside the school before classes Monday playing a game where they would talk about each other, according to court documents.
WASHINGTON, DC  Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee has called for a federal investigation into the shooting death of Danny Ray Thomas by a deputy of the Harris County Sheriff's Department.

Thomas, a 34-year African-American man, was shot last week while approaching an officer with his pants down around his ankles after getting in an altercation with another man in a Greenspoint-area road.

The shooting has thrust Houston into the national debate over police shootings, coming a week after community outrage over the shooting of Stephon Clark in Sacremento, Calif. It also came days before officials in Louisiana declined to charge two Baton Rouge officers for the 2016 shooting of 37-year-old Alton Sterling as they held him on the ground.

"Danny Ray Thomas's killing raises serious questions, to which his family deserves answers as they lay to rest yet another of their loved ones," Jackson Lee said Friday.

She called for the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate whether the federal civil rights of Thomas were violated.

She also said she will hold a community meeting on Monday "to work together to stem the siege of gun violence in our communities."

Thomas was shot and killed by Officer Cameron Brewer of the Harris County Sheriff's Department. "Like too many before him, his killing raises serious questions about the pattern and practices of law enforcement, and the interplay between communities of color and those charged to protect and serve," Jackson Lee said.

Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez also questioned the fatal shooting of an unarmed black man by a deputy, saying department policy typically calls for de-escalation techniques or non-lethal actions such as use of a Taser before lethal force is used.

Expressing his condolences to Thomas' family, Gonzalez said Wednesday that his department's investigation would be conducted "fairly, thoroughly and expeditiously." The Houston Police Department's special investigations unit and the Harris County District Attorney's Office are also investigating the shooting.
In the months after Hurricane Harvey, experts from the Netherlands  pioneers in dealing with flooding  offered one key piece of advice: You have about a year to get things underway before memories begin to fade.

Hurricane Harvey hit Texas on August 25, 2017, and that year of opportunity is drawing closer to a close.

Maybe the torrential storm that tore through the sky on Thursday evening was reminder enough, but just in case you didnt get the message: Houston is still vulnerable to floods.

Harris County Judge Ed Emmett and other members of Commissioners Court should make good on their September pledge and call for an election as soon as possible to issue upward of $1 billion in debt to pay for wide-ranging flood control projects  along with a necessary increase in property taxes to pay for the funds.

EDITORIAL: Don't forget Kingwood in post-Harvey efforts

The timeline will be short, no doubt, and our elected leaders must go out of their way to ensure that Houstonians from the bottom up have a seat at the table rather than relying on the countys traditional closed doors and secretive decision-making. This means making room for not just donors and developers  people who spent decades paving the Katy Prairie and dismissing runoff concerns  but also engaging with groups like the Coalition for Environment, Equity and Resilience.

The need for local dollars is pressing at a multitude of levels. Federal grants for post-Harvey recovery projects have started flowing and require the county to provide a local match.

To take just one example, Commissioners Court is expected to vote on submitting an application to the Federal Emergency Management Agency for $165 million to buy out 1,000 flood-prone homes across the county, as reported by Chronicle reporter Mihir Zaveri.

That grant will require $66 million in matching funds from the Harris County Flood Control District, but the district only has about $60 million to spend each year, outside of maintenance money.

EDITORIAL: Clean out the Addicks and Barker reservoirs

Those bond funds will be necessary if we hope to maximize our share of federal flood control resources and protect Houston from the next big storm.

Unfortunately, our Harris County leaders know they cant rely on Austin to help out with state dollars.

As longtime Precinct 3 Commissioner Steve Radack pointed out this week, the rush to a bond vote  and property tax hike  wouldnt be so pressing if the state simply stepped in to build infrastructure in the unincorporated county.

Here were worried about having to have a bond election for a billion, Radack said. If they would just consider giving us 20 percent of what theyre going to collect this year [in sales taxes], wed be on our way.

More Republican politicians need to join Radack in calling out our governor. Only two months sit between now and the beginning of hurricane season, and Gov. Greg Abbott still hasnt called a special session in response to Harvey.

EDITORIAL: City Hall must approve anti-flood regulations for Houston

The State of Texas is AWOL when it comes to helping Harris County, Radack said.

Maybe Abbott is hoping that well all just forget.

Its our job to prove him wrong.

Every storm, every raindrop that hits our city, should be a reminder of the devastation that Mother Nature can wreak if were not prepared. Because another storm is coming, and the clock is ticking.
I walk by a brown brick church in my neighborhood every day. On Sunday, the aging but still impressive building will be empty on Easter for the first time in a hundred years. And soon, the building will be converted into luxury condos.

While the impact of gentrification on affordable housing in Washington, D.C. and other cities has been a topic of ongoing study and debate, still underappreciated is its impact on a different sort of "housing" - namely, houses of worship. The issue is on my radar because I am the pastor of a church that met in that building until November.

For four years, Grace Meridian Hill was the sole tenant of 3431 13th Street NW, a 100-year-old building formerly owned by Mount Rona Missionary Baptist Church. In 2014, our landlord sold the property to developers. We recently learned the groundbreaking is scheduled for this week.

LEVENSON: Where is Trump's allegiance to the Bible?

Although we grieved the loss of our home, our greater concern and lament is for the neighborhood and city. Numerous church properties within a few blocks have been sold to developers in the past few years, including Southern Bethany Baptist Church, Iglesia Ni Cristo, and Meridian Hill Baptist Church.

Church-to-condo conversions are part of a growing trend nationwide. According to one survey, church redevelopment projects nearly tripled across the United States between 2010 and 2015. In 2014 and 2015, the D.C. Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs received 31 applications to renovate houses of worship for other uses.

Historic church buildings are becoming an endangered species. Sacred spaces are disappearing from our civic landscape. And I believe our city will be worse off.

OPINION: Reflecting on Christianity's most joyful day

A church building exists not simply for its worshipers, but also for the common good. It is a local, identifiable and accessible "sanctuary" for neighbors in need of refuge from the storms of life. It is physical locale in which you can seek God when you feel lost and find a community when you feel lonely. It offers the weak and weary a literal door on which to knock when they need help with their electric bill. It sometimes serves as a polling place and an AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) or ANC (Advisory Neighborhood Commission) meeting place.

In 2009, Ram Cnaan, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, estimated that urban congregations provide an average of $476,663 worth of services to their local communities annually. Of course, that's if the worshiping communities are sacrificially committed to love their neighbors. But the civic value of churches and their buildings extends beyond economic terms. Church buildings are visible emblems of Jesus' street-level proximity and daily accessibility. He has "moved into the neighborhood" (John 1:14, The Message).

Church buildings are public outposts of the presence of God in the city's commons.

So when cities watch passively as sacred spaces slowly disappear and as "third places" where neighbors can gather and true community can be forged are increasingly privatized, the entire community loses out.

What can be done? First, churches need to be convinced that buildings matter. Followers of Jesus need to recover a theology of place, space and parish that promotes the value of the built environment. This season of remembering Christ's bodily resurrection is a perfect time to reclaim the historic Christian belief that God cares about physical stuff - bodies and buildings (see 1 Corinthians 15:12-58).

We need a fresh vision of the gospel that compels us to prioritize our neighbor's well-being. Jesus came not to be served but to serve and give his life for others - and Christians are called to be like him, joyfully and sacrificially devoting our possessions and property toward the benefit of the neighborhood.

Second, the city could create economic incentives for churches to sell their buildings to other churches or community-based nonprofits. Adjustments to zoning regulations could protect historic church buildings (and their wildly attractive footprint) from unfettered redevelopment. Neighbors could advocate for the preservation of houses of worship.

By God's grace, Grace Meridian Hill found a fantastic alternative only several blocks away, and we are flourishing in our new home. The point is that church buildings are slowly disappearing. And because they have great potential to serve the common good, we should all be concerned.

Duke Kwon serves as lead pastor at Grace Meridian Hill.
[Updated to include Apple comment.]

Apple's HomePod smart speaker won kudos from early reviewers who were impressed by the big sound coming from such a small speaker. But one of the contentious aspects of that sound was the HomePod's booming bass.

That's not really a surprise, since Apple owns Beats, the headphone maker known for a bass-heavy audio signature. But some found it a little too overwhelming in the $349 speaker that's great at filling a room with rich, full sound.

Making its mark: Apple's HomePod leaves white marks on some furniture

On Thursday, Apple released the first software update for the HomePod with iOS 11.3. The company didn't provide details about what the update contained, other than "general improvements for stability and quality".

But now, some HomePod owners are complaining that one of those "quality" improvements is a dialing back of the bass setting. AppleInsider found commenters on Reddit's HomePod forum griping about the change.

An example:

You can also see similar complaints in the comments under MacRumor's story on the HomePod update, though some folks there seem to approve of the change.

more techburger Get more tasty tech news at TechBurger. And follow us on Twitter and Facebook. Subscribe to the Chronicle for regular access to TechBurger stories and to be able to comment. See More Collapse

The original EQ setting for the HomePod was way too boomy. Even at just 15% volume, I had to be worried about the bass waking up my roommates or neighbours. With the new EQ settings, I can listen at 20% or 25% volume (loud enough to properly hear the vocals), and not worry about waking anyone up. I can now properly enjoy the HomePod at night. So I am very happy with this change.

I still have the HomePod unit I used to write my review, and it does seem to be me that the bass is less "boomy" - but still prominent. It sounds a little better to me, though I understand there may be some folks who bought the speaker because they liked its emphasis on bass.

But apparently the change is, as the song says, "just my imagination, runnin' away with me".

I confirmed with Apple on Friday morning that there were "no changes to HomePod with iOS 11.3".

The bass, like the song, remains the same.

Dwight Silverman is the technology editor for the Houston Chronicle and the grillmaster for the TechBurger tech news site. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

Get more tasty tech news at TechBurger. And follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Subscribe to the Chronicle for regular access to TechBurger stories and to be able to comment.
It's becoming clearer as the days of Trudeau's Liberals wear on: if elected Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau would turn Canada into a dictatorship.

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This is the man who admitted he "admires China's basic dictatorship." It wasn't just a sarcastic comment - he seriously said that he admires the dictatorship because they can get things done quickly.

And it's becoming clearer that Trudeau not only admires the dictatorship -- he runs the Liberal Party like one too.

How else can one explain the police-enforced acclamation of Andrew Leslie as the Liberal candidate for Orleans? Even with hundreds of Liberals attending the meeting to show their support for another candidate (and former Trudeau leadership rival), it was clear from the beginning that Leslie was Trudeau's hand-picked favourite, and certainly wouldn't be stopped by pesky processes like "democracy."

Just the imagery of Trudeau's chosen candidate being selected with police intervention is scary. It shows that Trudeau doesn't just admire China's dictatorship -- he would practice one if he had the chance.

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The nomination in Orleans is only the latest rigged "open nomination." Despite Trudeau's promises to actually, you know, practice democracy, at least a half dozen Liberal nominations have been rigged or tampered with through the direct intervention of Trudeau's office: mysteriously disqualifying candidates, changing nomination dates, paperwork going "missing," and using dirty "back-room" politics to ensure the leader's candidate is chosen at any cost.

But those are only Liberal candidates; surely Trudeau would loosen his grip on his caucus colleagues once they've been elected, wouldn't he? Unfortunately, no. The Liberal caucus randomly learned one morning early last year that their leader had come up with a new diktat: that all Liberals would be expected, no, required, to vote pro-choice. When Trudeau's pathetic attempted defence (that they were "the party of the Charter," obviously missing those small sections about freedom of conscience and religion) agitated more than a few Liberal MPs, he attempted to invent some weird "grandfathering" rule. But then he went back on that too.

The result is that Liberal MPs who dare question the diktat of Trudeau are being punished. Those who dare disagree have already been punished, resigned, or indicated that they won't seek another term in office -- at least not under the iron fist of Trudeau.

Or we can look to the expulsion of those kinda-sorta-maybe "Senate Liberals," who were unilaterally expelled (but not really) by Trudeau without the slightest consultation with the Senate Liberal leadership.

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The Liberal Party under Justin Trudeau has become a dictatorship. The leader of that party does what he wants, when he wants, and no one dares question him.

Now that we know that Trudeau runs his party like a dictatorship, we must ask ourselves: is there any indication he wouldn't do the same as the leader of Canada?

Would a Prime Minister Trudeau arbitrarily whip the vote and outlaw certain moral questions? Could Prime Minister Trudeau be trusted to make decisions for the good of the country, not just for his personal self-worth? Would Trudeau call in the police to enforce his vision?

Let's hope we never have the opportunity to ask those questions.

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Texas(Aamerican) woman gets 5 years in prison for voting illegally LoP Guest

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03-30-2018 09:38 PM











Post: #1 Texas(Aamerican) woman gets 5 years in prison for voting illegally

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Crystal Mason, who was already a convicted felon for tax fraud, voted while on supervised release, the Dallas Morning News reported. According to Texas law, convicted felons cannot vote until they serve the entirety of their sentence, including supervised release.



The court heard how Mason, 43, was given a provisional ballot at the polling station when she discovered that her name was not on the list of registered voters. After signing an affidavit declaring she was not a felon, Mason cast her vote.



The affidavit, Tarrant County prosecutor Matt Smid said, was a stop sign in front of her face. According to Smid, the judge had the option to sentence Mason to anywhere between two and 20 years in prison or probation.



https://www.rt.com/usa/422815-texas-vote...-sentence/



A woman in Tarrant County, Texas has been sentenced to five years in prison for illegally voting in the 2016 presidential election.Crystal Mason, who was already a convicted felon for tax fraud, voted while on supervised release, the Dallas Morning News reported. According to Texas law, convicted felons cannot vote until they serve the entirety of their sentence, including supervised release.The court heard how Mason, 43, was given a provisional ballot at the polling station when she discovered that her name was not on the list of registered voters. After signing an affidavit declaring she was not a felon, Mason cast her vote.The affidavit, Tarrant County prosecutor Matt Smid said, was a stop sign in front of her face. According to Smid, the judge had the option to sentence Mason to anywhere between two and 20 years in prison or probation. LoP Guest

lop guest

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03-30-2018 09:54 PM











Post: #2 RE: Texas(Aamerican) woman gets 5 years in prison for voting illegally

It's a start. LoP Guest

lop guest

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03-30-2018 09:57 PM











Post: #3 RE: Texas(Aamerican) woman gets 5 years in prison for voting illegally

That stiff sentence ought to make others think twice before voting illegally. Lexar7

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03-30-2018 10:34 PM











Post: #4 RE: Texas(Aamerican) woman gets 5 years in prison for voting illegally

Honestly thats stupid-



felons being the denied the right to vote is dumb to begin with - However, concerning federal elections most States allow felons to vote except a few (I know KY and Tx and maybe a couple others but its small) and felonies these days can really be anything.



Strange someone convicted of tax fraud or armed robbery can vote in most states and yet someone charged with a bit of Cannabis (look at the draconian laws in texas) cannot vote in the very same election for a President. 269346

The Grinch Who Stole LOPmas!

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03-31-2018 10:30 AM



Posts: 7,029









Post: #5 RE: Texas(Aamerican) woman gets 5 years in prison for voting illegally

I dont believe it. A black person and the police didnt kill her? I thought the police murdered all black people they came across and never gave them a fair trial.



Oh well. I guess Hillary didnt win by 3 million votes after all. Only 2,999,999. By the way, no one likes cheaters. Hillary was sure she would win because of massive voter fraud. But even with millions of illegals, felons, and dead people voting, she is still hated do much that she lost. That must be why she is still so upset about losing. 269346

The Grinch Who Stole LOPmas!

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03-31-2018 10:31 AM



Posts: 7,029









Post: #6 RE: Texas(Aamerican) woman gets 5 years in prison for voting illegally

Lexar7 Wrote: (03-30-2018 10:34 PM) Honestly thats stupid-



felons being the denied the right to vote is dumb to begin with - However, concerning federal elections most States allow felons to vote except a few (I know KY and Tx and maybe a couple others but its small) and felonies these days can really be anything.



Strange someone convicted of tax fraud or armed robbery can vote in most states and yet someone charged with a bit of Cannabis (look at the draconian laws in texas) cannot vote in the very same election for a President.

I know. Its strange that most states allow people who are criminals and who add nothing to society to vote. They have no standards. I know. Its strange that most states allow people who are criminals and who add nothing to society to vote. They have no standards. (This post was last modified: 03-31-2018 10:31 AM by 269346 .)
















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Page: 1 2 3 Black Panther Terrorist Threatens to 'Kill Every White Man' in CT HS LoP Guest

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03-31-2018 12:51 AM











Post: #1 Black Panther Terrorist Threatens to 'Kill Every White Man' in CT HS

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http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/...white-man/



A Connecticut high school was put on lockdown when an enraged black school employee wielding a large kitchen knife began yelling that he wanted to kill every white man he could find.



Carl Lemon, an in-school suspension coordinator at Harding High School in Bridgeport, Connecticut, was arrested and charged with second-degree threatening and breach of peace after threatening to go on a racially motivated stabbing spree, the Associated Press said.



The 63-year-old school official was later released after posting a $5,000 bond, court documents reveal.



The arrest came on March 28 after school principal Dane Brown put the school on lockdown after one of Lemons co-workers reported his rants about killing white people.

A police investigation alleged that Lemon was calling for revolution against white people during his in-school rant.



Police say that Lemon exclaimed that he couldnt wait for the Panthers to give the OK and a revolution begins so he could execute every white man he gets his hands on.

Police say that the school employee also trampled on an American flag in front of students and told them this is what I think about it.



According to the Bridgeport Daily Voice, the Principal said she received one note from a student reading: Mr. Lemon talks about shooting whites a lot! He is waiting for the Panthers to tell him to execute. He steps on an American flag and disrespects us. Check his computer. He watches radical stuff during class. I am scared he will do something. He told a teacher that he does not like the principals and he will take them out. He is crazy. This racist Black Supremacist should be fired immediately and have all of his Assault Knives taken away.A Connecticut high school was put on lockdown when an enraged black school employee wielding a large kitchen knife began yelling that he wanted to kill every white man he could find.Carl Lemon, an in-school suspension coordinator at Harding High School in Bridgeport, Connecticut, was arrested and charged with second-degree threatening and breach of peace after threatening to go on a racially motivated stabbing spree, the Associated Press said.The 63-year-old school official was later released after posting a $5,000 bond, court documents reveal.The arrest came on March 28 after school principal Dane Brown put the school on lockdown after one of Lemons co-workers reported his rants about killing white people.A police investigation alleged that Lemon was calling for revolution against white people during his in-school rant.Police say that Lemon exclaimed that he couldnt wait for the Panthers to give the OK and a revolution begins so he could execute every white man he gets his hands on.Police say that the school employee also trampled on an American flag in front of students and told them this is what I think about it.According to the Bridgeport Daily Voice, the Principal said she received one note from a student reading: Mr. Lemon talks about shooting whites a lot! He is waiting for the Panthers to tell him to execute. He steps on an American flag and disrespects us. Check his computer. He watches radical stuff during class. I am scared he will do something. He told a teacher that he does not like the principals and he will take them out. He is crazy. LoP Guest

lop guest

User ID: 1337

03-31-2018 12:53 AM











Post: #2 RE: Black Panther Terrorist Threatens to 'Kill Every White Man' in CT HS

Man how come I miss all the fun. LoP Guest

lop guest

User ID: 1337

03-31-2018 12:54 AM











Post: #3 RE: Black Panther Terrorist Threatens to 'Kill Every White Man' in CT HS

he'll be back " teaching " again . bet Uppity Me

Registered User

User ID: 1337

03-31-2018 01:01 AM



Posts: 36,517









Post: #4 RE: Black Panther Terrorist Threatens to 'Kill Every White Man' in CT HS

What? no gunz? Quote: Les pauvres n'ont-ils des Euros ?

Alors laissez les pauvres 'sh*t' dans les rues LoP Guest

lop guest

User ID: 1337

03-31-2018 01:34 AM











Post: #5 RE: Black Panther Terrorist Threatens to 'Kill Every White Man' in CT HS

Don's Brother got tired of working for all those rich Jews for $12 an hour! LoP Guest

lop guest

User ID: 1337

03-31-2018 01:35 AM











Post: #6 RE: Black Panther Terrorist Threatens to 'Kill Every White Man' in CT HS

Cultural differences is all LoP Guest

lop guest

User ID: 1337

03-31-2018 02:43 AM











Post: #7 RE: Black Panther Terrorist Threatens to 'Kill Every White Man' in CT HS

They should buy him a one way ticket to Wakanda. LoP Guest

lop guest

User ID: 1337

03-31-2018 02:58 AM











Post: #8 RE: Black Panther Terrorist Threatens to 'Kill Every White Man' in CT HS

How is it different from posters on this forum saying their fellow countrymen should be killed, on the grounds they're black? Monk-1

Registered User

User ID: 1337

03-31-2018 02:59 AM



Posts: 5,687









Post: #9 RE: Black Panther Terrorist Threatens to 'Kill Every White Man' in CT HS

LoP Guest Wrote: (03-31-2018 02:58 AM) How is it different from posters on this forum saying their fellow countrymen should be killed, on the grounds they're black?

No one is saying that. Maybe you should be asking the police about that. No one is saying that. Maybe you should be asking the police about that. LoP Guest

lop guest

User ID: 1337

03-31-2018 02:59 AM











Post: #10 RE: Black Panther Terrorist Threatens to 'Kill Every White Man' in CT HS

LoP Guest Wrote: (03-31-2018 02:58 AM) How is it different from posters on this forum saying their fellow countrymen should be killed, on the grounds they're black?

Link? Link? LoP Guest

lop guest

User ID: 1337

03-31-2018 03:06 AM











Post: #11 RE: Black Panther Terrorist Threatens to 'Kill Every White Man' in CT HS

So Mr Lemon is a bit of a sour prick. *%

lop guest

User ID: 1337

03-31-2018 03:29 AM











Post: #12 RE: Black Panther Terrorist Threatens to 'Kill Every White Man' in CT HS

And he didn't get a 357 lobotomy ?? I'm surprised. MAGNETO

lop guest

User ID: 1337

03-31-2018 04:12 AM











Post: #13 RE: Black Panther Terrorist Threatens to 'Kill Every White Man' in CT HS

He Man and anonymous coward said black men cannot be racist, cannot commit hate crimes, and only commit crime to fight the white male patriarchy.



Since they parrot everything they hear from CNN I am inclined to believe this story is more far right nazi fake news. Black men don't behave like that. LoP Guest

lop guest

User ID: 1337

03-31-2018 04:29 AM











Post: #14 RE: Black Panther Terrorist Threatens to 'Kill Every White Man' in CT HS

MAGNETO Wrote: (03-31-2018 04:12 AM) He Man and anonymous coward said black men cannot be racist, cannot commit hate crimes, and only commit crime to fight the white male patriarchy.



Since they parrot everything they hear from CNN I am inclined to believe this story is more far right nazi fake news. Black men don't behave like that.

LoP Guest

lop guest

User ID: 1337

03-31-2018 05:05 AM











Post: #15 RE: Black Panther Terrorist Threatens to 'Kill Every White Man' in CT HS

LoP Guest Wrote: (03-31-2018 12:51 AM) This racist Black Supremacist should be fired immediately and have all of his Assault Knives taken away.



http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/...white-man/



A Connecticut high school was put on lockdown when an enraged black school employee wielding a large kitchen knife began yelling that he wanted to kill every white man he could find.



Carl Lemon, an in-school suspension coordinator at Harding High School in Bridgeport, Connecticut, was arrested and charged with second-degree threatening and breach of peace after threatening to go on a racially motivated stabbing spree, the Associated Press said.



The 63-year-old school official was later released after posting a $5,000 bond, court documents reveal.



The arrest came on March 28 after school principal Dane Brown put the school on lockdown after one of Lemons co-workers reported his rants about killing white people.

A police investigation alleged that Lemon was calling for revolution against white people during his in-school rant.



Police say that Lemon exclaimed that he couldnt wait for the Panthers to give the OK and a revolution begins so he could execute every white man he gets his hands on.

Police say that the school employee also trampled on an American flag in front of students and told them this is what I think about it.



According to the Bridgeport Daily Voice, the Principal said she received one note from a student reading: Mr. Lemon talks about shooting whites a lot! He is waiting for the Panthers to tell him to execute. He steps on an American flag and disrespects us. Check his computer. He watches radical stuff during class. I am scared he will do something. He told a teacher that he does not like the principals and he will take them out. He is crazy. BANG!! OOPS.. BYE BYE... BANG!! OOPS.. BYE BYE... Advertisement


















Surely you've heard news that Facebook is facing extreme scrutiny of its data practices following reports that data firm Cambridge Analytica improperly gained access to the personal data of more than 50 million Facebook users.

This is a serious issue and it has slammed Facebook's stock price, which continues to decline. In fact, Facebook lost over $70 billion in market cap in ten days. Some shareholders have already sued the company for fraud and there could be more fallout as Zuckerberg is set to testify on Capital Hill. The founders of other tech companies are watching this closely, and you should too.

There are a number of lessons that every entrepreneur and business should consider from the events and circumstances around Facebook. I've highlighted three such lessons and hope you consider how to use this event as a learning opportunity.

1. Things are good, until they're not

It's interesting to see how fast things changed at Facebook. One minute they're crushing Snapchat and the next minute people are calling for Zuckerberg to be fired.

As an entrepreneur, I see this and think about how fast things change. I think about how important it is to never let up or rest on your laurels. You need to always question your beliefs, standards and processes. You should never take your customers for granted and you should take every measure possible to protect your customers. This world moves quickly, and you can't afford to sit on the sideline of success for too long.

2. It pays to be paranoid

One of my favorite quotes in business is "only the paranoid survive" from Andrew Grove. It sounds extreme, but I think it's brilliant - and 100% accurate in my experience as an entrepreneur.

In this case, you could consider how an extra degree of paranoia might have helped Facebook see the "worst case scenarios" with their data policies and build contingencies to either safeguard this from happening or mitigate the damage that could be done.

I know it's impossible to prepare for, prevent, or legislate everything, and it's easy to point fingers, yet it's important to push the boundaries in examining what the worst case scenarios might be and to do your best to prepare for them. Everyone makes mistakes, yet when mistakes happen, you want to go to bed at night knowing you did everything you could.

Bad entrepreneurs are scared of this process. They're scared to find vulnerabilities. They're scared to ask the difficult questions. Great entrepreneurs know they're only as strong as their weakest link.

3. Be accountable

Coverage of the scandal was fast and furious, with headlines hitting all major news outlets and coverage has been dominating the news cycles. Yet the one thing absent for days was a comment from CEO Mark Zuckerberg or CFO Sheryl Sandberg.

It's easy to judge others, yet it was disappointing to see many days pass before Zuckerberg made a statement and accepted responsibility. That delay hurt their stock price and likely increased the growing distrust in Facebook.

In the case of Facebook, and since we're the product and it's our data, one could expect that Facebook would show up quickly and be accountable. Even United Airlines quickly owned their latest egregious mistake when a dog died after a flight attended required that the dog be placed in an overhead bin.

Accountability is important. We all make mistakes. The accountability is what helps shift the energy from blame to rebuilding trust and finding solutions.

As of press, it's great to see that Zuckerberg has made a comment and committed to speak in Washington.

Final word
UPDATE: This story has been updated to include an additional, clarifying response from Facebook.

Facebook recently announced it plans to invest $1 billion in programs for small businesses in 2018--an amount nearly equal to its investment in similar initiatives over the past seven years combined. But it's not exactly rolling in the "likes" so far.

While Mark Zuckerberg focuses on damage control following the Cambridge Analytica data scandal, his 14-year-old social network this week kicked off a 30-city tour for a digital skills training program starting in St. Louis. That's on top of a previously announced expansion of its jobs platform, which debuted in the U.S. and Canada a year ago.

"We know there is more Facebook can do to connect people and businesses," says Alex Himel, vice president of local, in a press release announcing the new initiatives. "Since 2011, Facebook has invested more than $1 billion to help local businesses grow and help people find jobs. And in 2018, we plan to invest the same amount in more teams, technology, and new programs. Because when businesses succeed, communities thrive."

Don't get too excited, though. If the company's new jobs tool is any indication, what Facebook has planned for that $1 billion may well underwhelm--particularly if you were hoping for a slick LinkedIn-like platform. And while the tool itself is free, to best use it, you'd better be prepared to open your wallet.

Jobs, in Focus

Facebook began its latest small-business initiative with the wider rollout of its jobs platform. The feature, which will expand into 40 new markets this year, lets businesses post job openings on their respective Facebook pages for free, while users can apply for them directly without leaving the platform. Listings also get posted to Facebook's jobs platform and marketplace, making them visible to those who may not follow a specific company.

"The primary benefit that exists is the ability to target on the basis of interests," says Kai Wright, a lecturer at Columbia University who has built a career advising giant companies in advertising, public relations, and media. "That is by far the differentiator between Facebook offering job services versus LinkedIn. But that 'interest data' is yet to be seen." What's more, he's skeptical that the company could successfully reframe Facebook as a place to find jobs. Typically, Wright notes, the No. 1 thing people do when they're looking for a job is to lock their Facebook profiles. "It's counterintuitive," he adds.

Despite noting three positive reviews of its jobs tool in the press release announcing the expansion, close to a dozen businesses using the service report mixed results. (Facebook declined to say how many businesses are using the tool.) With the exception of three companies, two of which pay to promote their listings, none of the businesses Inc. spoke with mentioned an uptick in job applicants after using the tool. What's more, nearly everyone said that their job postings had a low "reach" number, meaning the number of people who might have seen it, compared with a typical post or considering their pages' follower count.

Not for Pros

"The rumor is that it's working for more mass-market sorts of positions," says Jacque Paige, one of the owners of Smith Hanley, a Southport, Connecticut-based recruitment agency specializing in placing highly skilled workers.

She started testing the service in October, and has been posting frequently since February this year. The company currently has 11 open listings, including data scientist, analyst, and medical positions. With the exception of data-related jobs--which she calls a "hot topic" and get seen by between 73 and 88 people--her other listings typically reach 10 to 20 people, a number she calls low. "We're going to keep trying it," she says. "We assume at some point that Facebook will start charging for it, so while it is free, we want to use it and see if it works for us."

Indeed, Facebook may not be the best place for employers looking to fill specialized positions, says Matt Lozar, a social media marketing adviser at Haley Marketing in New York. "I don't think it works great for those information technology jobs, for the six figure jobs. It works better for more of--not lower-paying--but lower salary jobs," he says. "I think those job candidates are spending more time on Facebook and looking for jobs there."

Facebook, for its part, isn't billing itself as another LinkedIn, which has staked out these professional types for its jobs platform. "We know that one in four people in the U.S. have searched for or found a job using Facebook, so we're focused on helping those who want to work for the local businesses they love," Facebook's Himel tells Inc.

Facebook declined to comment on how its jobs feature works for specialized positions, but Himel adds: "We're always looking for more [feedback] so we can improve our tools."

Not Quite Free

Another area where improvement is needed, say users, is the cost.

Michelle Allen, co-owner of three Edible Arrangement stores in North Carolina, says that the one thing she doesn't like about the tool is that she has to spend money on it. She is referring to the cost of so-called "boosting" a post. A boosted listing works like an ad, which gets distributed across the platform to users who might not follow you but have indicated interest in the same topics as your target audience.

"If you want to boost [a post], they have a minimum of $10 per day," she says. Facebook job listings are live for 30 days, but Allen only boosts her listing one or two days early in the process.

Facebook offers an estimate of how many people could see your job listing if you boost it. For $10, Allen's job listings could reach anywhere between 1,000 and 2,700 people. It's not a guarantee, however. Last December, she spent $18 on a post that reached 3,010 people. A month later, in January, she spent $30 on a different listing that reached just over 1,000 people.

Beckie Orszula also pays to boost her company's listings, but she's not bothered by the cost. After using the tool for a few months, the digital marketing manager for Forge Industrial Staffing says she has seen an increase in applicants. "I would say maybe 60 percent of applicants off of Facebook we were able to hire," she adds. The Grand Rapids, Michigan-based industrial recruiting company typically posts general labor positions, such as machine operators, production workers, and shipping and packing clerks. Orszula declined to comment on the company's budget for boosting its listings.

Facebook declined to comment on the record on why free job listings had lower reach numbers compared with regular posts. It offered, instead, an explanation of how a posting might get seen.

"Job posts are distributed just like any other Page post in News Feed," says Gaurav Dosi, a Facebook product manager for jobs, in an emailed statement. "A business's post can also be found on the businesses' Page, in the Jobs dashboard where people can search all open roles around them, or via Marketplace."

Not Over Yet

To be sure, it's still early days for Facebook's jobs tool. As more companies sign up for it, options should expand--and demand for higher skilled professionals may increase. It's also worth noting that employers generally do need to pay to post a job listing on other platforms. So even if Facebook's offering doesn't end up being free, it still may be very helpful for certain types of businesses.

And Facebook could still have something really helpful for small businesses up its sleeve for 2018. Though, when asked specifically about what's in the works for the $1 billion investment, company spokespeople declined to immediately offer details. Following publication, Facebook tells Inc. the money will be allocated for "technology, Pages, our jobs tool, trainings like Blueprint, and other programs like SheMeansBusiness and Community Boost."
Private space flight company SpaceX has conducted another successful launch, delivering a group of satellites into orbit.

All 10 satellites were deployed into low-earth orbit for the company Iridium Communications, SpaceX said, the latest achievement for a company that hopes to be at the forefront of a burgeoning private space industry.

While the satellite launch was successful, another attempted show of technical wizardry fell short.

SpaceX had hoped to land a nose cone that protects the rocket's payload in a seaborne vessel that SpaceX CEO Elon Musk likened to a giant steel & webbing catchers mitt superstructure on a high-speed ocean ship.

But Mr Musk said a GPS-guided component became twisted, causing the nose cone to plunge into the ocean at high speed. A similar effort failed in February, when Mr Musk said SpaceX missed the plummeting component by a few hundred metres.

The day before the most recent launch, the Federal Communications Commission approved Mr Musk's proposal to build a satellite-based broadband network in what the regulator called the first license for services from a new generation of low-Earth orbit satellite technologies.

Earlier this year, SpaceX launched the worlds most powerful rocket in front of a delirious crowd in Florida.

The successful launch of the Falcon Heavy marked another major milestone for SpaceX. It sent a red Tesla carrying a dummy in a sleek white spacesuit hurtling beyond Earths atmosphere, a playful nod to Mr Musk also serving as the founder of Tesla.

While Mr Musk is trying to carve out a dominant space in the emerging private space flight industry, Donald Trump has vowed to reinvigorate Americas moribund space programme.

SpaceX's journey through the Solar System Show all 6 1 /6 SpaceX's journey through the Solar System SpaceX's journey through the Solar System SpaceX's journey through the Solar System SpaceX's journey through the Solar System SpaceX's journey through the Solar System SpaceX's journey through the Solar System SpaceX's journey through the Solar System

The president last year signed a directive seeking to partner with private entities to return humans to the moon and establish a foundation for reaching Mars, a goal Mr Trump has spoken of repeatedly.

 Trump: 'My new national strategy for space recognizes that space is a warfighting domain, just like the land, air and sea'

Earlier this year, the president mused to a gathering of Marines about launching a Space Force branch of the military.
Academy trusts that pay their bosses unjustifiably high salaries could spend taxpayers money better on improving childrens education, MPs have said.

Too often academy chains are falling short of high standards of governance, accountability and financial management, according to a new Public Accounts Committee report.

MPs said they were concerned about the disregard for financial probity that some academy trustees show when they pay public money to the private businesses of directors, trustees or relatives.

It comes after the failed Wakefield City Academies Trust  which is set to hand over all its 21 schools  paid almost 440,000 to companies owned by its chief executive and his daughter in 2016.

The report says that the Department for Educations (DfE) rules on related-party transactions are not robust enough to prevent abuse and they often only come to light after whistle-blowing.

And it adds: Some academy trusts appear to be using public money to pay excessive salaries.

The MPs are concerned that the DfE is unable to say whether trustees being paid more than 150,000  of which there were 102 in 2015-16  were responsible for the best performing schools.

Academies  which are state schools that are not under local authority control  can set their own pay.

Earlier this year, Dan Moynihan, chief executive of Harris Federation, became the first academy leader in the country to earn more than 500,000.

The group of MPs argue that there is a risk that high wages will become accepted as the norm if left unchallenged  which will pile even more pressure on already squeezed school budgets.

Last November, the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) wrote to 29 single academy trusts where a trustee was paid in excess of 150,000, requesting justification.

While all 29 have responded, in two-thirds of cases ESFA is not yet satisfied with the response.

The report calls for the government to do more to challenge academy trusts that are paying excessive salaries and to take action if they cannot be justified as being good value for money.

It adds that the government needs to get a better grip on when academy chains are at risk of financial difficulty  especially with the growing funding pressures on schools.

A total of 165 of trusts were in deficit in August 2016  but the DfE were not able to tell MPs how many are currently in deficit.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 20 September 2021 Florist Judith Blacklock puts the finishing touches to a floral carousel installation in Halkin Arcade, which she has designed with Neill Strain for the Belgravia in Bloom festival, running from September 20-26, in London PA UK news in pictures 19 September 2021 Bubbles surround Manchester Uniteds Cristiano Ronaldo before the match against West Ham at London Stadium Action Images/Reuters UK news in pictures 18 September 2021 Children take part in the Settrington Cup Pedal Car Race as motoring enthusiasts attend the Goodwood Revival, a three-day historic car racing festival in Goodwood, Chichester, Reuters UK news in pictures 17 September 2021 Hugo, 7, from London rides past a 4x7 metre rainbow arch, made entirely of recycled aluminium cans, which has been installed by recycling initiative 'Every Can Counts', in partnership with The City of London Corporation in front of St Paul's Cathedral in London, to encourage members of the public to recycle their drinks cans ahead of recycling week, which starts on 20 September PA UK news in pictures 16 September 2021 Sheikeh MOhammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, leader of Abu Dhabi, leaves Downing Street after meeting with Boris Johnson PA UK news in pictures 15 September 2021 Children pose by ice sculptures depicting people collecting water by charity Water Aid to show the fragility of water and the threat posed by climate change in London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 14 September 2021 Heavy rain covers the A149 near Kings Lynn in Norfolk PA UK news in pictures 13 September 2021 Luke Jerram's 'Museum of the Moon' at Durham Cathedral PA UK news in pictures 12 September 2021 Inspirational young fundraiser Tobias Weller crosses the finish line, near his home in Sheffield, as he completes his latest epic feat where he swam and triked his way to the end of his awesome year-long Ironman Challenge. This is the third challenge Tobias, who has cerebral palsy and autism, has completed, raising more than 150,000 for his school and Sheffield Children Hospitals charity PA UK news in pictures 11 September 2021 British player Emma Raducanu, holds up the US Open championship trophy winning the women's singles final of the US Open in New York AP UK news in pictures 10 September 2021 People paddle board during a misty morning in Ullswater, the second largest lake in the Lake District, Cumbria PA UK news in pictures 9 September 2021 Troops from Wiltshire based 4 Armoured Close Support Battalion Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers during final inspection at Wellington Barracks in London, ahead of providing troops for the Queens Guard PA UK news in pictures 8 September 2021 Workers cross London Bridge during the morning rush hour in London Reuters UK news in pictures Mixing it up: Painting it up press view in London A gallery employee poses for photographers next to a painting entitled Prairie by British artist, Louise Giovanelli during the exhibition 'Mixing it up: Painting it up' at the Hayward Gallery in London EPA UK news in pictures 6 September 2021 Traders in the Ring at the London Metal Exchange, in the City of London, after open-outcry trading returned for the first time since March 2020, when the Ring was temporarily closed due to the pandemic PA UK news in pictures 5 September 2021 People enjoy the warm weather on Sandbanks beach, Poole PA UK news in pictures 4 September 2021 Demonstrators from Animal Rebellion and Nature Rebellion protest in Trafalgar Square in London. PA UK news in pictures 3 September 2021 South Africa's Ntando Mahlangu (centre) wins the Men's 200 metres T61 Final ahead of second placed Great Britain's Richard Whitehead at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games PA UK news in pictures 2 September 2021 A young common seal on the beach at Horsey Gap in Norfolk, as hundreds of pregnant grey seals come ashore ready for the start of the pupping season. PA UK news in pictures 1 September 2021 Goldfinches fighting over food in a garden in Strensham, Worcestershire PA UK news in pictures 31 August 2021 Gold Medallist Sarah Storey of Britain celebrates on the podium Reuters UK news in pictures 30 August 2021 Extinction Rebellion protesters hold a a tea party on Tower Bridge in London EPA UK news in pictures 29 August 2021 A police office tussles with a demonstrator on Cromwell Road outside the Natural History Museum during a protest by members of Extinction Rebellion in London PA UK news in pictures 28 August 2021 Members of the British armed forces 16 Air Assault Brigade walk to the air terminal after disembarking a Royal Airforce Voyager aircraft at Brize Norton, Oxfordshire POOL/AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 27 August 2021 Fabio Quartararo crashes during a MotoGP practice session at the British Grand Prix, Silverstone Circuit Action Images via Reuters UK news in pictures 26 August 2021 An Extinction Rebellion activist holds a placard in a fountain surrounded by police officers, during a protest next to Buckingham Palace in London Reuters UK news in pictures 25 August 2021 Gold Medallist Great Britains cyclist, Sarah Storey, celebrates after winning the Womens C5 3000m Individual Pursuit Final at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games. It was her 15th Paralympic gold Reuters UK news in pictures 24 August 2021 A demonstrator dressed as bee during a protest by members of Extinction Rebellion on Whitehall, in central London PA UK news in pictures 23 August 2021 Former interpreters for the British forces in Afghanistan demonstrate outside the Home Office in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 22 August 2021 Police officers form a line in front of the entrance to the Guildhall, London, where protesters have climbed onto a ledge above the entrance during an Extinction Rebellion stage a protest PA UK news in pictures 21 August 2021 People take part in a demonstration in solidarity with people of Afghanistan, in London Reuters UK news in pictures 20 August 2021 People zip wire across the sea from Bournemouth pier towards the beach. PA UK news in pictures 19 August 2021 Supporters of Geronimo the alpaca gather outside Shepherds Close Farm in Wooton Under Edge, Gloucestershire PA UK news in pictures 18 August 2021 Former Afghan interpreters and veterans hold a demonstration outside Downing Street, calling for support and protection for Afghan interpreters and their families PA UK news in pictures 17 August 2021 Military personnel board the RAF Airbus A400M at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, where evacuation flights from Afghanistan have been landing Reuters UK news in pictures 16 August 2021 Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer takes part in a minute's silence at Wolverhampton police station for the victims of the Plymouth mass shooting last week PA UK news in pictures 15 August 2021 2Storm, a ten-metre tall puppet of a mythical goddess of the sea created by Edinburgh-based visual theatre company Vision Mechanics, makes its way alongside the seafront at North Berwick, East Lothian, during a performance at the Fringe By The Sea festival PA UK news in pictures 14 August 2021 A woman and two young girls look at floral tributes in Plymouth where six people, including the offender, died of gunshot wounds in a firearms incident PA UK news in pictures 13 August 2021 Forensic officers in the Keyham area of Plymouth where six people, including the shooter, died of gunshot wounds in a firearms incident on Thursday evening PA UK news in pictures 12 August 2021 Children ride horses in the River Eden in Appleby, Cumbria, during the annual gathering of travellers for the Appleby Horse Fair PA UK news in pictures 11 August 2021 Stella Moris (left) reacts after talking to the media outside the High Court in London, following the first hearing in the Julian Assange extradition appeal, n London, following the first hearing in the Julian Assange extradition appeal. The US government has won the latest round in its High Court bid to appeal against the decision not to extradite Julian Assange on espionage charges PA UK news in pictures 10 August 2021 Students react after they receive their A-Level results at the Ark Academy, in London Reuters UK news in pictures 9 August 2021 The final athletes from Great Britain arrive home including Jason Kenny, Laura Kenny and Katie Archibald (front left-right) at Heathrow Airport, London following the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games PA UK news in pictures 8 August 2021 Great Britain's Laura Kenny during the closing ceremony of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games at the Olympic stadium in Japan PA UK news in pictures 7 August 2021 People from the Glasgow Southside community take part in the Govanhill Carnival, an anti-racist celebration of pride, unity and the contributions immigrants have made to the community in Govanhill, at Queen's Park, Glasgow PA UK news in pictures 6 August 2021 Chijindu Ujah of Britain, Zharnel Hughes of Britain, Richard Kilty of Britain and Nethaneel Mitchell-Blake of Britain celebrate winning silver as they pose with Asha Philip of Britain, Imani Lansiquot of Britain, Dina Asher-Smith of Britain and Daryll Neita of Britain after they won bronze in the women's 4 x 100m relay during Olympic Games Day 14 Getty UK news in pictures 5 August 2021 A protester places flowers on a photograph of an executed man during a demonstration organised by supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) to protest against the inauguration of Iran's new president Ebrahim Raisi in central London AFP via Getty UK news in pictures 4 August 2021 England's Joe Root looks on as India's KL Rahul doesn't make it to a catch during day one of Cinch First Test match at Trent Bridge, Nottingham PA UK news in pictures 3 August 2021 Great Britain's Laura Kenny and Jason Kenny with their silver medals for the Women's Team Pursuit and Mens Team Sprint during the Track Cycling at the Izu Velodrome on the eleventh day of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games in Japan PA UK news in pictures 2 August 2021 Great Britains Charlotte Worthington competes during the Womens BMX Freestyle Final at the Tokyo Olympics PA

Academy trusts are educating increasing numbers of children and handling large amounts of public money, the report notes.

It is therefore crucial that they show the highest standards of governance, accountability and financial management, it says. Too often academy trusts are falling short of these standards and the Department for Education is too slow to react.

Meg Hillier, chair of the PAC, said: If parents, parliament and others are to hold [academies] properly to account, it is vital they have timely access to transparent and detailed information.

Academies and the trusts that run them must be judged against the standards expected of other schools funded by the taxpayer.

She added: Excessive trustee salaries deprive the frontline of vital funds and it is alarming that, in two-thirds of cases where government has challenged individual trusts on pay exceeding 150,000, it has not been satisfied by the response.

Hundreds of teachers will come together for the annual teaching union conferences over the Easter break  and the lack of transparency in academy chains is expected to be discussed.

Chris Keates, general secretary of teaching union NASUWT, which is hosting its conference in Birmingham today, said: It is quite scandalous that government has failed to act and has failed to ensure that the money going into schools is spent properly and transparently.

The very high salaries that some academy heads and executives are earning is another example of the lack of accountability and is starving funds from the frontline. The government needs to get a grip to ensure a fair and transparent process for how salaries are set.

Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the National Education Union (NEU), said: Teachers, parents and pupils, need real and meaningful oversight and democratic accountability, not the fractured and unstable landscape that the academy reforms have delivered.

A Department for Education spokesperson said: Thanks to the hard work of teachers and government reforms, academic standards in England have consistently risen since 2010, with 1.9 million more pupils in good or outstanding schools  and 450,000 of those pupils now study in a sponsored academy that was typically previously underperforming.

All academy trusts operate under a strict system of financial accountability and have to publish their audited accounts. To ensure all pupils get the excellent education they deserve we continue to scrutinise the system on an annual basis and take action where necessary, such as recently asking all trusts paying high salaries to justify them.
The first member of the UK's armed forces has been killed in Syria after being hit by an explosion from a suspected Isis mine.

It is the first death of British service personnel since an international coalition launched operations against the terrorist group in 2014.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Defence said: It is with regret that we must confirm that a member of the UK Armed Forces was killed by an improvised explosive device in Syria yesterday.

The individual was embedded with US forces on a counter-Daesh operation when the incident occurred.

The family has been notified and our thoughts are with them at this difficult time.

We cannot confirm any further details at this stage.

US Central Command said the improvised explosive device (IED) detonated at around 9pm GMT on Thursday, also killing an American serviceman and wounding five others.

 UN Security Council unanimously backs ceasefire in Syria

"Wounded personnel received immediate care and are being evacuated for further medical treatment," a spokesperson added.

"Details pertaining to the incident are being withheld pending further investigation."

The explosion is reported to have taken place in the town of Manbij, 60 miles north east of Aleppo and close to the border with Turkey.

Isis has has peppered roads around its remaining strongholds, as well as former territory, with IEDs and mines.

The same technique has been favoured by other insurgent groups including al-Qaeda in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan, where many of the 456 British personnel killed lost their lives to roadside bombs.

Two British volunteers with the Kurdish YPG have already been killed in explosions while clearing devices in Syria.

Oliver Hall and Jac Holmes, both 24, died within weeks of each other in Isis former capital of Raqqa late last year.

They are among eight British anti-Isis volunteers killed, while an unknown proportion of around 800 jihadis who travelled to the so-called Islamic State from the UK have died.

The government's intervention against Isis was initially limited to air strikes, which continue in Syria and Iraq.

Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures Show all 8 1 /8 Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures Syrian Democratic Forces fighters celebrate victory in Raqqa atop of military vehicles REUTERS Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures Fighters of Syrian Democratic Forces march past destroyed buildings as they celebrate victory REUTERS Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures Fighters of Syrian Democratic Forces gesture the "V" sign in Raqqa REUTERS Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures Fighters of Syrian Democratic Forces evacuate a civilian from the stadium REUTERS Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures A civilian prays after she was rescued by fighters of Syrian Democratic Forces from the stadium REUTERS Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures Syrian Democratic Forces fighters ride atop of military vehicles as they celebrate victory in Raqqa REUTERS Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures Syrian Democratic Forces fighters celebrate victory in Raqqa REUTERS Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures A fighter of Syrian Democratic Forces celebrates in Raqqa Reuters

But the mission, codenamed Operation Inherent Resolve, expanded into training and supporting local troops on the ground including the Iraqi army, Kurdish Peshmerga and Syrian Democratic Forces.

Special forces units are known to be on the ground in Syria but officials have refused to comment on their activities.

The American military says Isis has lost 98 per cent of the territory held at the peak of its self-declared caliphate in Iraq and Syria.

Addressing the House of Commons on Thursday, the International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt confirmed that the UK will remain member of international coalition to prevent Daesh remerging elsewhere.

Our work is not yet done, Daesh still holds pockets of territory in Syria, she added. With its loss of territory, it will still pose a threat as an insurgency, they will continue to try to direct and inspire terror attacks around the world.

Isis, which originated as al-Qaeda in Iraq before splitting following an internal power struggle, has expanded into countries including Libya, Afghanistan and Egypt.

With the loss of territory, it has intensified efforts to inspire terror attacks around the world and claimed responsibility for a deadly siege at a supermarket in France this week.

There have been concerns that jihadis will profit from infighting between the forces that once opposed it in northern Syria, where Turkish forces are pushing back US-backed Kurdish groups that drove Isis out of the region last year.
A dying grandfather had his last wish granted when a hospital relaxed its normal infection controls so his dog could be bought to see him one last time.

To stop the possible spread of infection, animals are allowed into hospitals only under very rare circumstances.

But an exception was made when Peter Robsons family told staff at Ninewells Hospital, Dundee, that the 70-year-olds only last wish was to see his dog Shep one last time.

The border collie, bought as a pup eight years ago, had provided companionship and comfort for Mr Robson after the death of his wife.

His granddaughter Ashley Stevens said hospital staff had made a dying man very happy.

Hours after Shep was lifted on to his owners hospital bed so they could say farewell to each other, Mr Robson passed away.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 21 September 2021 Gabriella Diment prepares a monumental bronze patinated fibreglass wall sculpture depicting household cavalry soldiers on horseback which is expected to be sold for 12,000-18,000 when it goes up for auction at Summers Place Auctions in Billinghurst, Kent PA UK news in pictures 20 September 2021 Florist Judith Blacklock puts the finishing touches to a floral carousel installation in Halkin Arcade, which she has designed with Neill Strain for the Belgravia in Bloom festival, running from September 20-26, in London PA UK news in pictures 19 September 2021 Bubbles surround Manchester Uniteds Cristiano Ronaldo before the match against West Ham at London Stadium Action Images/Reuters UK news in pictures 18 September 2021 Children take part in the Settrington Cup Pedal Car Race as motoring enthusiasts attend the Goodwood Revival, a three-day historic car racing festival in Goodwood, Chichester, Reuters UK news in pictures 17 September 2021 Hugo, 7, from London rides past a 4x7 metre rainbow arch, made entirely of recycled aluminium cans, which has been installed by recycling initiative 'Every Can Counts', in partnership with The City of London Corporation in front of St Paul's Cathedral in London, to encourage members of the public to recycle their drinks cans ahead of recycling week, which starts on 20 September PA UK news in pictures 16 September 2021 Sheikeh MOhammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, leader of Abu Dhabi, leaves Downing Street after meeting with Boris Johnson PA UK news in pictures 15 September 2021 Children pose by ice sculptures depicting people collecting water by charity Water Aid to show the fragility of water and the threat posed by climate change in London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 14 September 2021 Heavy rain covers the A149 near Kings Lynn in Norfolk PA UK news in pictures 13 September 2021 Luke Jerram's 'Museum of the Moon' at Durham Cathedral PA UK news in pictures 12 September 2021 Inspirational young fundraiser Tobias Weller crosses the finish line, near his home in Sheffield, as he completes his latest epic feat where he swam and triked his way to the end of his awesome year-long Ironman Challenge. This is the third challenge Tobias, who has cerebral palsy and autism, has completed, raising more than 150,000 for his school and Sheffield Children Hospitals charity PA UK news in pictures 11 September 2021 British player Emma Raducanu, holds up the US Open championship trophy winning the women's singles final of the US Open in New York AP UK news in pictures 10 September 2021 People paddle board during a misty morning in Ullswater, the second largest lake in the Lake District, Cumbria PA UK news in pictures 9 September 2021 Troops from Wiltshire based 4 Armoured Close Support Battalion Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers during final inspection at Wellington Barracks in London, ahead of providing troops for the Queens Guard PA UK news in pictures 8 September 2021 Workers cross London Bridge during the morning rush hour in London Reuters UK news in pictures Mixing it up: Painting it up press view in London A gallery employee poses for photographers next to a painting entitled Prairie by British artist, Louise Giovanelli during the exhibition 'Mixing it up: Painting it up' at the Hayward Gallery in London EPA UK news in pictures 6 September 2021 Traders in the Ring at the London Metal Exchange, in the City of London, after open-outcry trading returned for the first time since March 2020, when the Ring was temporarily closed due to the pandemic PA UK news in pictures 5 September 2021 People enjoy the warm weather on Sandbanks beach, Poole PA UK news in pictures 4 September 2021 Demonstrators from Animal Rebellion and Nature Rebellion protest in Trafalgar Square in London. PA UK news in pictures 3 September 2021 South Africa's Ntando Mahlangu (centre) wins the Men's 200 metres T61 Final ahead of second placed Great Britain's Richard Whitehead at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games PA UK news in pictures 2 September 2021 A young common seal on the beach at Horsey Gap in Norfolk, as hundreds of pregnant grey seals come ashore ready for the start of the pupping season. PA UK news in pictures 1 September 2021 Goldfinches fighting over food in a garden in Strensham, Worcestershire PA UK news in pictures 31 August 2021 Gold Medallist Sarah Storey of Britain celebrates on the podium Reuters UK news in pictures 30 August 2021 Extinction Rebellion protesters hold a a tea party on Tower Bridge in London EPA UK news in pictures 29 August 2021 A police office tussles with a demonstrator on Cromwell Road outside the Natural History Museum during a protest by members of Extinction Rebellion in London PA UK news in pictures 28 August 2021 Members of the British armed forces 16 Air Assault Brigade walk to the air terminal after disembarking a Royal Airforce Voyager aircraft at Brize Norton, Oxfordshire POOL/AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 27 August 2021 Fabio Quartararo crashes during a MotoGP practice session at the British Grand Prix, Silverstone Circuit Action Images via Reuters UK news in pictures 26 August 2021 An Extinction Rebellion activist holds a placard in a fountain surrounded by police officers, during a protest next to Buckingham Palace in London Reuters UK news in pictures 25 August 2021 Gold Medallist Great Britains cyclist, Sarah Storey, celebrates after winning the Womens C5 3000m Individual Pursuit Final at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games. It was her 15th Paralympic gold Reuters UK news in pictures 24 August 2021 A demonstrator dressed as bee during a protest by members of Extinction Rebellion on Whitehall, in central London PA UK news in pictures 23 August 2021 Former interpreters for the British forces in Afghanistan demonstrate outside the Home Office in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 22 August 2021 Police officers form a line in front of the entrance to the Guildhall, London, where protesters have climbed onto a ledge above the entrance during an Extinction Rebellion stage a protest PA UK news in pictures 21 August 2021 People take part in a demonstration in solidarity with people of Afghanistan, in London Reuters UK news in pictures 20 August 2021 People zip wire across the sea from Bournemouth pier towards the beach. PA UK news in pictures 19 August 2021 Supporters of Geronimo the alpaca gather outside Shepherds Close Farm in Wooton Under Edge, Gloucestershire PA UK news in pictures 18 August 2021 Former Afghan interpreters and veterans hold a demonstration outside Downing Street, calling for support and protection for Afghan interpreters and their families PA UK news in pictures 17 August 2021 Military personnel board the RAF Airbus A400M at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, where evacuation flights from Afghanistan have been landing Reuters UK news in pictures 16 August 2021 Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer takes part in a minute's silence at Wolverhampton police station for the victims of the Plymouth mass shooting last week PA UK news in pictures 15 August 2021 2Storm, a ten-metre tall puppet of a mythical goddess of the sea created by Edinburgh-based visual theatre company Vision Mechanics, makes its way alongside the seafront at North Berwick, East Lothian, during a performance at the Fringe By The Sea festival PA UK news in pictures 14 August 2021 A woman and two young girls look at floral tributes in Plymouth where six people, including the offender, died of gunshot wounds in a firearms incident PA UK news in pictures 13 August 2021 Forensic officers in the Keyham area of Plymouth where six people, including the shooter, died of gunshot wounds in a firearms incident on Thursday evening PA UK news in pictures 12 August 2021 Children ride horses in the River Eden in Appleby, Cumbria, during the annual gathering of travellers for the Appleby Horse Fair PA UK news in pictures 11 August 2021 Stella Moris (left) reacts after talking to the media outside the High Court in London, following the first hearing in the Julian Assange extradition appeal, n London, following the first hearing in the Julian Assange extradition appeal. The US government has won the latest round in its High Court bid to appeal against the decision not to extradite Julian Assange on espionage charges PA UK news in pictures 10 August 2021 Students react after they receive their A-Level results at the Ark Academy, in London Reuters UK news in pictures 9 August 2021 The final athletes from Great Britain arrive home including Jason Kenny, Laura Kenny and Katie Archibald (front left-right) at Heathrow Airport, London following the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games PA UK news in pictures 8 August 2021 Great Britain's Laura Kenny during the closing ceremony of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games at the Olympic stadium in Japan PA UK news in pictures 7 August 2021 People from the Glasgow Southside community take part in the Govanhill Carnival, an anti-racist celebration of pride, unity and the contributions immigrants have made to the community in Govanhill, at Queen's Park, Glasgow PA UK news in pictures 6 August 2021 Chijindu Ujah of Britain, Zharnel Hughes of Britain, Richard Kilty of Britain and Nethaneel Mitchell-Blake of Britain celebrate winning silver as they pose with Asha Philip of Britain, Imani Lansiquot of Britain, Dina Asher-Smith of Britain and Daryll Neita of Britain after they won bronze in the women's 4 x 100m relay during Olympic Games Day 14 Getty UK news in pictures 5 August 2021 A protester places flowers on a photograph of an executed man during a demonstration organised by supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) to protest against the inauguration of Iran's new president Ebrahim Raisi in central London AFP via Getty UK news in pictures 4 August 2021 England's Joe Root looks on as India's KL Rahul doesn't make it to a catch during day one of Cinch First Test match at Trent Bridge, Nottingham PA UK news in pictures 3 August 2021 Great Britain's Laura Kenny and Jason Kenny with their silver medals for the Women's Team Pursuit and Mens Team Sprint during the Track Cycling at the Izu Velodrome on the eleventh day of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games in Japan PA

In a Facebook post that has been shared more than 3,000 times, Ms Stevens wrote: Absolutely amazed and touched. Our grandads last and final wish was to see his dog one more time.

Still in shock that the wish was granted and they went above and beyond and made a dying man very happy.

Peter Robson saying goodbye to Shep (Ashley Stevens/Facebook)

Ms Stevens added: Cheryl White, charge nurse of Ward 3, you are an absolute angel and we are all eternally grateful.

You dont know what this meant to our grandad. Thank you NHS.

Everyone needs to know what amazing nurses and staff they have in that hospital.

Ms Stevens later told BBC Scotland: He really thought he would never see Shep again. It was an amazing moment to see the two of them together, and Shep was so excited to see him".

Ward 3s senior charge nurse Fiona McCallum said: The team worked with colleagues in infection control to make this possible, and I can't thank all of them enough for going above and beyond to bring some comfort to Mr Robson and his family."

NHS Tayside chief executive Lesley McLay added: "Our thoughts are with Mr Robson's family as they deal with their loss at this difficult time.

"The ward 3 team has done a wonderful thing. It is often the little things that mean the most to patients and their families and I'm so pleased that the staff were able to grant this wish.
Two surviving members of the Isis cell known as "The Beatles" have accused the government of violating international law by stripping them of British citizenship.

In an interview from the prison where they are being held by UK allies the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), they denied being members of the group headed by the executioner Jihadi John.

El Shafee Elsheikh and Alexanda Kotey told the Associated Press they were the victims of propaganda and would not receive a fair trial.

Asked about the beheadings of hostages including the American journalist James Foley and British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning, Kotey claimed many fellow Isis fighters would have disagreed with the killings in the grounds that there is probably more benefit in them being political prisoners.

As for my position, I didn't see any benefit, he added, blaming governments that refused to pay huge ransoms for their deaths. "It was something that was regrettable.

Their first interview emerged after authorities announced the death of a British soldier in an explosion from an improvised device in Syria.

It was the first time a member of the UK armed forces has been killed since intervention against Isis started in 2014, with eight volunteers who fought the group with the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units killed in the same period.

Both Elsheikh and Kotey were declared specially designated global terrorists last year for their roles in the Beatles, with officials holding the cell responsible for beheading more than 27 hostages and torturing many more.

 Two British ISIS 'Beatles' members will either face trial in Syria or be returned to Turkey

A small number of captives, including French journalist Nicolas Henin, were freed and have told of the British militants brutality.

Speaking to The Independent after the pair were captured in January, Mr Henin described all four Beatles as arrogant, considering themselves as the elite forces of the caliphate, connected to the highest level of the leadership of the group, and regularly brutal.

The US Department of State accused Elsheikh, 29, of carrying out waterboarding, mock executions and crucifixions while serving as a jailer, while fellow guard Kotey was allegedly involved in beheadings and known for administering exceptionally cruel torture methods, including electronic shocks.

The 34-year-old is also accused of acting as an Isis recruiter and being responsible for drawing several other British extremists to join Isis.

The pair denied being members of the Isis Beatles, claiming the accusations were a pretext to kill them in drone strikes, but admitted joining the terrorist group itself.

No fair trial, when I am 'the Beatle' in the media. No fair trial, Elsheikh said.

He claimed the British governments move to strip them of citizenship was illegal and put them at risk of rendition and torture.

The UK has removed British citizenship from some known Isis members using a law allowing the move for the public good, aiming to prevent militants from returning to Britain.

It does not prevent them being put on trial in the UK, even if the offences in question were committed abroad.

Making a person stateless is against several United Nations conventions and judges have previously found the UK in breach of international law when stripping citizenship from terror suspects who are not dual nationals.

Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures Show all 8 1 /8 Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures Syrian Democratic Forces fighters celebrate victory in Raqqa atop of military vehicles REUTERS Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures Fighters of Syrian Democratic Forces march past destroyed buildings as they celebrate victory REUTERS Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures Fighters of Syrian Democratic Forces gesture the "V" sign in Raqqa REUTERS Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures Fighters of Syrian Democratic Forces evacuate a civilian from the stadium REUTERS Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures A civilian prays after she was rescued by fighters of Syrian Democratic Forces from the stadium REUTERS Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures Syrian Democratic Forces fighters ride atop of military vehicles as they celebrate victory in Raqqa REUTERS Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures Syrian Democratic Forces fighters celebrate victory in Raqqa REUTERS Syrian Democratic Forces take Raqqa from Isis  in pictures A fighter of Syrian Democratic Forces celebrates in Raqqa Reuters

When you have these two guys who don't even have any citizenship ... if we just disappear one day, where is my mum going to go and say where is my son, Elsheikh said.

American officials have interrogated the men but there is a stalemate between the UK and US over what should happen next.

Families of their victims and freed hostages have called for them to be jailed for life, but only after a fair trial.

The US has been pressing for the home countries of foreign jihadis captured in retaken Isis territory in Iraq and Syria to take their nationals for trial.

But the government appears to have refused so far, with the defence secretary claiming Kotey and Elsheikh should not be allowed to set foot in the UK again.

The government declined to comment on their claims but said it would work with partners to ensure justice is served.

We continue to work extremely closely with the US government on this issue, sharing our views, as we do on a range of national security issues and in the context of our joint determination to tackle international terrorism and combat violent extremism, a spokesperson for the Foreign Office said.

The US State Department said it was working with nations in the anti-Isis international coalition the disposition of detainees in SDF detention.

Alexanda Kotey (Buzzfeed)

These diplomatic discussions are private and we have no additional information to provide, a representative told The Independent.

The Beatles were all from west London and earned their nickname through their distinctive British accents after joining Isis in Syria.

Their ringleader Jihadi John, whose real name was Mohammed Emwazi, was killed in a 2015 drone strike and the fourth militant in the cell, Aine Davis, has been jailed for terror offences in Turkey.

Born in London, Kotey is half-Ghanaian, half-Greek Cypriot and grew up in Shepherds Bush. He is believed to have converted to Islam in his early twenties and left two young children in Britain.

Elsheikh came to the UK as a child from Sudan, when his family were granted refugee status, and was a mechanic from White City. He had links to local gangs as a teenager, with his older brother jailed for gun possession, and was not known to be religious until he was introduced to a radical preacher.

Elsheikh travelled to Syria in 2012 and joined al-Qaedas regional branch before an internal dispute led to a splinter group becoming Isis.

Additional reporting by AP
A 14-year-old schoolboy died after taking spice with a friend at a sleepover, an inquest has heard.

Luke Pennington suffered a severe reaction immediately after taking the drug at a house in Stockport on 17 March.

Stockport Coroners Court heard Luke and a group of friends had bought the substance earlier that evening.

Luke, from Bramhall, had taken it first, followed by a friend, a senior police officer told the hearing.

Paramedics were called to the house when Luke and his friend fell ill. The pair were rushed to Wythenshawe Hospital.

Rita Wilkinson, a senior police officer at Greater Manchester Police (GMP), told the inquest: Luke was with some friends at a sleepover.

They had purchased some spice and that was taken. Luke had taken it first followed by one of his friends.

Luke had a severe reaction immediately after and paramedics were called.

Luke was later taken to Alder Hey Childrens Hospital in Liverpool, but died at 1.55am on 18 March in the hospitals intensive care unit.

The teenagers death is being treated as "unascertained" until histology and toxicology reports have been completed, the court heard.

Luke, who attended St James Catholic High School in Cheadle Hulme, was described by his teachers as "popular and well-liked".

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 21 September 2021 Gabriella Diment prepares a monumental bronze patinated fibreglass wall sculpture depicting household cavalry soldiers on horseback which is expected to be sold for 12,000-18,000 when it goes up for auction at Summers Place Auctions in Billinghurst, Kent PA UK news in pictures 20 September 2021 Florist Judith Blacklock puts the finishing touches to a floral carousel installation in Halkin Arcade, which she has designed with Neill Strain for the Belgravia in Bloom festival, running from September 20-26, in London PA UK news in pictures 19 September 2021 Bubbles surround Manchester Uniteds Cristiano Ronaldo before the match against West Ham at London Stadium Action Images/Reuters UK news in pictures 18 September 2021 Children take part in the Settrington Cup Pedal Car Race as motoring enthusiasts attend the Goodwood Revival, a three-day historic car racing festival in Goodwood, Chichester, Reuters UK news in pictures 17 September 2021 Hugo, 7, from London rides past a 4x7 metre rainbow arch, made entirely of recycled aluminium cans, which has been installed by recycling initiative 'Every Can Counts', in partnership with The City of London Corporation in front of St Paul's Cathedral in London, to encourage members of the public to recycle their drinks cans ahead of recycling week, which starts on 20 September PA UK news in pictures 16 September 2021 Sheikeh MOhammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, leader of Abu Dhabi, leaves Downing Street after meeting with Boris Johnson PA UK news in pictures 15 September 2021 Children pose by ice sculptures depicting people collecting water by charity Water Aid to show the fragility of water and the threat posed by climate change in London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 14 September 2021 Heavy rain covers the A149 near Kings Lynn in Norfolk PA UK news in pictures 13 September 2021 Luke Jerram's 'Museum of the Moon' at Durham Cathedral PA UK news in pictures 12 September 2021 Inspirational young fundraiser Tobias Weller crosses the finish line, near his home in Sheffield, as he completes his latest epic feat where he swam and triked his way to the end of his awesome year-long Ironman Challenge. This is the third challenge Tobias, who has cerebral palsy and autism, has completed, raising more than 150,000 for his school and Sheffield Children Hospitals charity PA UK news in pictures 11 September 2021 British player Emma Raducanu, holds up the US Open championship trophy winning the women's singles final of the US Open in New York AP UK news in pictures 10 September 2021 People paddle board during a misty morning in Ullswater, the second largest lake in the Lake District, Cumbria PA UK news in pictures 9 September 2021 Troops from Wiltshire based 4 Armoured Close Support Battalion Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers during final inspection at Wellington Barracks in London, ahead of providing troops for the Queens Guard PA UK news in pictures 8 September 2021 Workers cross London Bridge during the morning rush hour in London Reuters UK news in pictures Mixing it up: Painting it up press view in London A gallery employee poses for photographers next to a painting entitled Prairie by British artist, Louise Giovanelli during the exhibition 'Mixing it up: Painting it up' at the Hayward Gallery in London EPA UK news in pictures 6 September 2021 Traders in the Ring at the London Metal Exchange, in the City of London, after open-outcry trading returned for the first time since March 2020, when the Ring was temporarily closed due to the pandemic PA UK news in pictures 5 September 2021 People enjoy the warm weather on Sandbanks beach, Poole PA UK news in pictures 4 September 2021 Demonstrators from Animal Rebellion and Nature Rebellion protest in Trafalgar Square in London. PA UK news in pictures 3 September 2021 South Africa's Ntando Mahlangu (centre) wins the Men's 200 metres T61 Final ahead of second placed Great Britain's Richard Whitehead at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games PA UK news in pictures 2 September 2021 A young common seal on the beach at Horsey Gap in Norfolk, as hundreds of pregnant grey seals come ashore ready for the start of the pupping season. PA UK news in pictures 1 September 2021 Goldfinches fighting over food in a garden in Strensham, Worcestershire PA UK news in pictures 31 August 2021 Gold Medallist Sarah Storey of Britain celebrates on the podium Reuters UK news in pictures 30 August 2021 Extinction Rebellion protesters hold a a tea party on Tower Bridge in London EPA UK news in pictures 29 August 2021 A police office tussles with a demonstrator on Cromwell Road outside the Natural History Museum during a protest by members of Extinction Rebellion in London PA UK news in pictures 28 August 2021 Members of the British armed forces 16 Air Assault Brigade walk to the air terminal after disembarking a Royal Airforce Voyager aircraft at Brize Norton, Oxfordshire POOL/AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 27 August 2021 Fabio Quartararo crashes during a MotoGP practice session at the British Grand Prix, Silverstone Circuit Action Images via Reuters UK news in pictures 26 August 2021 An Extinction Rebellion activist holds a placard in a fountain surrounded by police officers, during a protest next to Buckingham Palace in London Reuters UK news in pictures 25 August 2021 Gold Medallist Great Britains cyclist, Sarah Storey, celebrates after winning the Womens C5 3000m Individual Pursuit Final at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games. It was her 15th Paralympic gold Reuters UK news in pictures 24 August 2021 A demonstrator dressed as bee during a protest by members of Extinction Rebellion on Whitehall, in central London PA UK news in pictures 23 August 2021 Former interpreters for the British forces in Afghanistan demonstrate outside the Home Office in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 22 August 2021 Police officers form a line in front of the entrance to the Guildhall, London, where protesters have climbed onto a ledge above the entrance during an Extinction Rebellion stage a protest PA UK news in pictures 21 August 2021 People take part in a demonstration in solidarity with people of Afghanistan, in London Reuters UK news in pictures 20 August 2021 People zip wire across the sea from Bournemouth pier towards the beach. PA UK news in pictures 19 August 2021 Supporters of Geronimo the alpaca gather outside Shepherds Close Farm in Wooton Under Edge, Gloucestershire PA UK news in pictures 18 August 2021 Former Afghan interpreters and veterans hold a demonstration outside Downing Street, calling for support and protection for Afghan interpreters and their families PA UK news in pictures 17 August 2021 Military personnel board the RAF Airbus A400M at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, where evacuation flights from Afghanistan have been landing Reuters UK news in pictures 16 August 2021 Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer takes part in a minute's silence at Wolverhampton police station for the victims of the Plymouth mass shooting last week PA UK news in pictures 15 August 2021 2Storm, a ten-metre tall puppet of a mythical goddess of the sea created by Edinburgh-based visual theatre company Vision Mechanics, makes its way alongside the seafront at North Berwick, East Lothian, during a performance at the Fringe By The Sea festival PA UK news in pictures 14 August 2021 A woman and two young girls look at floral tributes in Plymouth where six people, including the offender, died of gunshot wounds in a firearms incident PA UK news in pictures 13 August 2021 Forensic officers in the Keyham area of Plymouth where six people, including the shooter, died of gunshot wounds in a firearms incident on Thursday evening PA UK news in pictures 12 August 2021 Children ride horses in the River Eden in Appleby, Cumbria, during the annual gathering of travellers for the Appleby Horse Fair PA UK news in pictures 11 August 2021 Stella Moris (left) reacts after talking to the media outside the High Court in London, following the first hearing in the Julian Assange extradition appeal, n London, following the first hearing in the Julian Assange extradition appeal. The US government has won the latest round in its High Court bid to appeal against the decision not to extradite Julian Assange on espionage charges PA UK news in pictures 10 August 2021 Students react after they receive their A-Level results at the Ark Academy, in London Reuters UK news in pictures 9 August 2021 The final athletes from Great Britain arrive home including Jason Kenny, Laura Kenny and Katie Archibald (front left-right) at Heathrow Airport, London following the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games PA UK news in pictures 8 August 2021 Great Britain's Laura Kenny during the closing ceremony of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games at the Olympic stadium in Japan PA UK news in pictures 7 August 2021 People from the Glasgow Southside community take part in the Govanhill Carnival, an anti-racist celebration of pride, unity and the contributions immigrants have made to the community in Govanhill, at Queen's Park, Glasgow PA UK news in pictures 6 August 2021 Chijindu Ujah of Britain, Zharnel Hughes of Britain, Richard Kilty of Britain and Nethaneel Mitchell-Blake of Britain celebrate winning silver as they pose with Asha Philip of Britain, Imani Lansiquot of Britain, Dina Asher-Smith of Britain and Daryll Neita of Britain after they won bronze in the women's 4 x 100m relay during Olympic Games Day 14 Getty UK news in pictures 5 August 2021 A protester places flowers on a photograph of an executed man during a demonstration organised by supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) to protest against the inauguration of Iran's new president Ebrahim Raisi in central London AFP via Getty UK news in pictures 4 August 2021 England's Joe Root looks on as India's KL Rahul doesn't make it to a catch during day one of Cinch First Test match at Trent Bridge, Nottingham PA UK news in pictures 3 August 2021 Great Britain's Laura Kenny and Jason Kenny with their silver medals for the Women's Team Pursuit and Mens Team Sprint during the Track Cycling at the Izu Velodrome on the eleventh day of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games in Japan PA

St James headteacher Tim Beesley said earlier this month: Our thoughts, prayers and sympathy go out to his family and friends at this very difficult time.

We are offering support for any of our students who have been affected by his death, particularly those who knew him, as he was a very popular and well-liked member of our school community.

GMP arrested a 16-year-old boy on suspicion of possession with intent to supply class A drugs on 21 March. The teen was released on bail pending further enquiries.

Assistant coroner for south Manchester Andrew Bridgman set a date for a full inquest on 3 October.

Spice is a mixture of herbs and manmade chemicals that attempt to simulate the effects of marijuana  but are often much stronger.

In 2016, possession of the former legal high became a criminal offence, with the psychoactive considered a class B substance.
Jeremy Corbyn is facing demands from dozens of Labour MPs and peers to suspend the party's former disciplinary chief after she defended a council candidate accused of Holocaust denial.

Nearly 40 politicians, including several frontbenchers, wrote to the Labour leader calling for his close ally Christine Shawcroft to kicked out of the party and suspended from the National Executive Committee (NEC), the party's ruling body.

It comes amid a swirl of allegations of anti Jewish prejudice within the Labour movement, with Mr Corbyn himself apologising for showing support for an antisemitic mural in 2012.

Ms Shawcroft was forced to resign as chair of Labour's disputes panel on Wednesday when it emerged she had questioned the case of Peterborough candidate Alan Bull, who was suspended from Labour after he was accused of posting an antisemitic article on Facebook.

However critics said it was "highly offensive to the Jewish community" that she remains a member of the NEC.

In an open letter coordinated by Labour MP Siobhain McDonagh, the group said: "We are deeply concerned that Christine Shawcroft remains a member of the National Executive Committee (NEC).

"It is utterly wrong that someone who defends a Labour candidate who has been suspended for Holocaust denial should be a member of Labour's governing body.

"This is highly offensive to the Jewish community and all those of us who wish to see the scourge of antisemitism eradicated."

Other signatories included shadow treasury minister Jonathan Reynolds, Mike Kane, the shadow schools minister, and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, a shadow health minister.

Ms Shawcroft, a senior figure in Momentum, said she was "deeply sorry" for her actions, saying: "I sent this email before being aware of the full information about this case and I had not been shown the image of his abhorrent Facebook post.

"Had I seen this image, I would not have requested that the decision to suspend him be re-considered. I am deeply sorry for having done so."

Mr Corbyn's office has not responded to questions on whether she should resign, but shadow chancellor John McDonnell earlier said it was right that Ms Shawcroft had quit the post but she did not need to also resign from the NEC.

It comes after the Labour leader faced protests outside Parliament and criticism from senior Jewish figures over claims he has failed to root out antisemitism in the party.

The Labour leader insisted he was "not an antisemite in any way" and called prejudice against the Jews "a cancer in our society", as he acknowledged there had been 300 complaints of antisemitism in the party since he took the helm in 2015.

However his efforts to tackle the problem have been met with critcism. Labour peer Lord Winston, a respected scientist who is Jewish, said hostility towards Jews had "infected" the party.

He said: "I feel deeply ashamed of my party. Whether he likes it or not, Jeremy Corbyn has a lot to answer for. He has encouraged anti-Semites and he's endorsed them.

"In the modern world using social media, their conspiracy theories about Jews and statements about hate, spread like a disease and this virus is infecting the Labour Party."

Former prime minister Tony Blair also waded into the row to accuse Mr Corbyn's inner circle of failing to grasp the urgency of the antisemitism crisis, telling the Labour leader the row could have "deep and damaging" consequences.

Mr Corbyn was also criticised by Labour peer Lord Levy for failing to contact him over antisemitic email he received, which he said was shown to Mr Corbyn on Wednesday.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 19 September 2021 Bubbles surround Manchester Uniteds Cristiano Ronaldo before the match against West Ham at London Stadium Action Images/Reuters UK news in pictures 18 September 2021 Children take part in the Settrington Cup Pedal Car Race as motoring enthusiasts attend the Goodwood Revival, a three-day historic car racing festival in Goodwood, Chichester, Reuters UK news in pictures 17 September 2021 Hugo, 7, from London rides past a 4x7 metre rainbow arch, made entirely of recycled aluminium cans, which has been installed by recycling initiative 'Every Can Counts', in partnership with The City of London Corporation in front of St Paul's Cathedral in London, to encourage members of the public to recycle their drinks cans ahead of recycling week, which starts on 20 September PA UK news in pictures 16 September 2021 Sheikeh MOhammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, leader of Abu Dhabi, leaves Downing Street after meeting with Boris Johnson PA UK news in pictures 15 September 2021 Children pose by ice sculptures depicting people collecting water by charity Water Aid to show the fragility of water and the threat posed by climate change in London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 14 September 2021 Heavy rain covers the A149 near Kings Lynn in Norfolk PA UK news in pictures 13 September 2021 Luke Jerram's 'Museum of the Moon' at Durham Cathedral PA UK news in pictures 12 September 2021 Inspirational young fundraiser Tobias Weller crosses the finish line, near his home in Sheffield, as he completes his latest epic feat where he swam and triked his way to the end of his awesome year-long Ironman Challenge. This is the third challenge Tobias, who has cerebral palsy and autism, has completed, raising more than 150,000 for his school and Sheffield Children Hospitals charity PA UK news in pictures 11 September 2021 British player Emma Raducanu, holds up the US Open championship trophy winning the women's singles final of the US Open in New York AP UK news in pictures 10 September 2021 People paddle board during a misty morning in Ullswater, the second largest lake in the Lake District, Cumbria PA UK news in pictures 9 September 2021 Troops from Wiltshire based 4 Armoured Close Support Battalion Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers during final inspection at Wellington Barracks in London, ahead of providing troops for the Queens Guard PA UK news in pictures 8 September 2021 Workers cross London Bridge during the morning rush hour in London Reuters UK news in pictures Mixing it up: Painting it up press view in London A gallery employee poses for photographers next to a painting entitled Prairie by British artist, Louise Giovanelli during the exhibition 'Mixing it up: Painting it up' at the Hayward Gallery in London EPA UK news in pictures 6 September 2021 Traders in the Ring at the London Metal Exchange, in the City of London, after open-outcry trading returned for the first time since March 2020, when the Ring was temporarily closed due to the pandemic PA UK news in pictures 5 September 2021 People enjoy the warm weather on Sandbanks beach, Poole PA UK news in pictures 4 September 2021 Demonstrators from Animal Rebellion and Nature Rebellion protest in Trafalgar Square in London. PA UK news in pictures 3 September 2021 South Africa's Ntando Mahlangu (centre) wins the Men's 200 metres T61 Final ahead of second placed Great Britain's Richard Whitehead at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games PA UK news in pictures 2 September 2021 A young common seal on the beach at Horsey Gap in Norfolk, as hundreds of pregnant grey seals come ashore ready for the start of the pupping season. PA UK news in pictures 1 September 2021 Goldfinches fighting over food in a garden in Strensham, Worcestershire PA UK news in pictures 31 August 2021 Gold Medallist Sarah Storey of Britain celebrates on the podium Reuters UK news in pictures 30 August 2021 Extinction Rebellion protesters hold a a tea party on Tower Bridge in London EPA UK news in pictures 29 August 2021 A police office tussles with a demonstrator on Cromwell Road outside the Natural History Museum during a protest by members of Extinction Rebellion in London PA UK news in pictures 28 August 2021 Members of the British armed forces 16 Air Assault Brigade walk to the air terminal after disembarking a Royal Airforce Voyager aircraft at Brize Norton, Oxfordshire POOL/AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 27 August 2021 Fabio Quartararo crashes during a MotoGP practice session at the British Grand Prix, Silverstone Circuit Action Images via Reuters UK news in pictures 26 August 2021 An Extinction Rebellion activist holds a placard in a fountain surrounded by police officers, during a protest next to Buckingham Palace in London Reuters UK news in pictures 25 August 2021 Gold Medallist Great Britains cyclist, Sarah Storey, celebrates after winning the Womens C5 3000m Individual Pursuit Final at the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games. It was her 15th Paralympic gold Reuters UK news in pictures 24 August 2021 A demonstrator dressed as bee during a protest by members of Extinction Rebellion on Whitehall, in central London PA UK news in pictures 23 August 2021 Former interpreters for the British forces in Afghanistan demonstrate outside the Home Office in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 22 August 2021 Police officers form a line in front of the entrance to the Guildhall, London, where protesters have climbed onto a ledge above the entrance during an Extinction Rebellion stage a protest PA UK news in pictures 21 August 2021 People take part in a demonstration in solidarity with people of Afghanistan, in London Reuters UK news in pictures 20 August 2021 People zip wire across the sea from Bournemouth pier towards the beach. PA UK news in pictures 19 August 2021 Supporters of Geronimo the alpaca gather outside Shepherds Close Farm in Wooton Under Edge, Gloucestershire PA UK news in pictures 18 August 2021 Former Afghan interpreters and veterans hold a demonstration outside Downing Street, calling for support and protection for Afghan interpreters and their families PA UK news in pictures 17 August 2021 Military personnel board the RAF Airbus A400M at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, where evacuation flights from Afghanistan have been landing Reuters UK news in pictures 16 August 2021 Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer takes part in a minute's silence at Wolverhampton police station for the victims of the Plymouth mass shooting last week PA UK news in pictures 15 August 2021 2Storm, a ten-metre tall puppet of a mythical goddess of the sea created by Edinburgh-based visual theatre company Vision Mechanics, makes its way alongside the seafront at North Berwick, East Lothian, during a performance at the Fringe By The Sea festival PA UK news in pictures 14 August 2021 A woman and two young girls look at floral tributes in Plymouth where six people, including the offender, died of gunshot wounds in a firearms incident PA UK news in pictures 13 August 2021 Forensic officers in the Keyham area of Plymouth where six people, including the shooter, died of gunshot wounds in a firearms incident on Thursday evening PA UK news in pictures 12 August 2021 Children ride horses in the River Eden in Appleby, Cumbria, during the annual gathering of travellers for the Appleby Horse Fair PA UK news in pictures 11 August 2021 Stella Moris (left) reacts after talking to the media outside the High Court in London, following the first hearing in the Julian Assange extradition appeal, n London, following the first hearing in the Julian Assange extradition appeal. The US government has won the latest round in its High Court bid to appeal against the decision not to extradite Julian Assange on espionage charges PA UK news in pictures 10 August 2021 Students react after they receive their A-Level results at the Ark Academy, in London Reuters UK news in pictures 9 August 2021 The final athletes from Great Britain arrive home including Jason Kenny, Laura Kenny and Katie Archibald (front left-right) at Heathrow Airport, London following the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games PA UK news in pictures 8 August 2021 Great Britain's Laura Kenny during the closing ceremony of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games at the Olympic stadium in Japan PA UK news in pictures 7 August 2021 People from the Glasgow Southside community take part in the Govanhill Carnival, an anti-racist celebration of pride, unity and the contributions immigrants have made to the community in Govanhill, at Queen's Park, Glasgow PA UK news in pictures 6 August 2021 Chijindu Ujah of Britain, Zharnel Hughes of Britain, Richard Kilty of Britain and Nethaneel Mitchell-Blake of Britain celebrate winning silver as they pose with Asha Philip of Britain, Imani Lansiquot of Britain, Dina Asher-Smith of Britain and Daryll Neita of Britain after they won bronze in the women's 4 x 100m relay during Olympic Games Day 14 Getty UK news in pictures 5 August 2021 A protester places flowers on a photograph of an executed man during a demonstration organised by supporters of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) to protest against the inauguration of Iran's new president Ebrahim Raisi in central London AFP via Getty UK news in pictures 4 August 2021 England's Joe Root looks on as India's KL Rahul doesn't make it to a catch during day one of Cinch First Test match at Trent Bridge, Nottingham PA UK news in pictures 3 August 2021 Great Britain's Laura Kenny and Jason Kenny with their silver medals for the Women's Team Pursuit and Mens Team Sprint during the Track Cycling at the Izu Velodrome on the eleventh day of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games in Japan PA UK news in pictures 2 August 2021 Great Britains Charlotte Worthington competes during the Womens BMX Freestyle Final at the Tokyo Olympics PA UK news in pictures 1 August 2021 EPA

Lord Levy told Newsnight: "There has to be a zero tolerance policy. Enough words. They are just not taking this seriously. I have never received such a disgusting email."

However a Labour source said "Jeremy was shown some text on someone's phone for a matter of seconds when he was on his way to vote.

"Of course, if something so serious had been raised with Jeremy in more than a passing way for a few seconds he would have been able to engage with it, and would, of course, have acted."

Lord Levy said he had reported the email to the police.
A 30m fund to cut the number of people living on the street has been announced by the government, amid intense criticism of the soaring numbers of rough sleepers.

But the sum was immediately dismissed as a pitiful response to a national crisis by Labour, who said it was swamped by cuts to money for low-cost housing.

Housing minister Heather Wheeler has promised to resign if the rough sleeping problem gets worse on her watch.

Recommended Rough sleeping rises by 16 per cent in a single year

And the Government has been sharply criticised as unambitious, after pledging to halve rough sleeping by 2022 and eliminate it only by 2027.

Sajid Javid, the Housing Secretary, also announced a new task force, made up of rough sleeping and homelessness experts with knowledge of housing, mental health and addiction.

"This winter has tragically claimed the lives of a number of people sleeping on the streets. This is completely unacceptable in modern Britain, he said.

No-one should ever have to sleep rough and this government is determined to break the homelessness cycle once and for all.

The plight of England's estimated 4,700 rough sleepers was starkly highlighted by the Beast from the East storm which plunged the country into sub-zero temperatures.

A record number of people were referred to a specialist helpline by members of the public as the icy blast gripped the country.

But John Healey, Labours shadow housing secretary, said: This is a pitiful response to a national crisis that has grown worse every year since 2010.

Ministers ambitions are so feeble that even if they do what they say they will, rough sleeping will still be higher at the end of this Parliament than it was in 2010.

You cant help the homeless if you wont provide the homes, and the money announced here is less than 1% of the Conservatives annual cut to funding for new low-cost housing.

Mr Javid said the 30m would go to local councils with the worst rough sleeping problems, with 100,000 for frontline rough sleeping workers across the country to ensure they have the right skills to deal with the issue.

It comes as new laws come into force next week that will place extra legal duties on councils to ensure rough sleepers are supported in their area.

Official figures show that rough sleeping has risen by 169 per cent since 2010, with the finger pointed at cuts to benefits and for support workers, as well as funds for housing.
An undocumented mother has pledged to stay inside a New York City church until she is granted reprieve from a deportation, in a last-ditch effort to stay in the same country as her two children.

Aura Hernandez, a 37-year-old immigrant from Guatemala, moved into Manhattans Fourth Universalist Society church about two weeks ago. She is hoping to avoid deportation to her home country, which she left in 2005 fleeing an abusive relationship.

According to ICE, Ms Hernandez is a fugitive. According to the members of the Fourth Universalist Society, she is their newest congregation member.

Recommended Trump ends policy excluding pregnant immigrants from detention

We want to teach others about our undocumented population and why their humanity matters, said the churchs pastor, Schuyler Vogel, according to the New York Daily News. Aura may not be an American citizen, but she is someone who believes in our values. I certainly dont like living in a country that thinks its okay to tear children from their mother.

Ms Hernandez now lives on the upper floor of the church with her 15-month-old daughter, Camille. Her 10-year-old son, Daniel, will live with his father  also an undocumented immigrant  in a New York City suburb until he finishes the school year. Both children were born in the US, Ms Hernandez says, and are US citizens.

People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Show all 16 1 /16 People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Demonstrators march during the "Day Without Immigrants" protest in Chicago, Illinois, February 16, 2017. Theopolis Waters/Reuters People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Demonstrators march during the "Day Without Immigrants" protest in Washington, DC, U.S., February 16, 2017. Aaron P. Bernstein/Reuters People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. The crowd, which grew to well over a thousand participants, marched from the Austin City Hall to the Texas State Capital. Across the country hundreds of restaurants and eateries are closing for the day to protest President Trump's immigration policies and to highlight the contributions of immigrants to U.S. business and life. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants AUSTIN, TX - FEBRUARY 16: Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Demonstrators march during the "Day Without Immigrants" protest in Chicago, Illinois, February 16, 2017. Theopolis Waters/Reuters People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Demonstrators march during the "Day Without Immigrants" protest in Chicago, Illinois, February 16, 2017. Aaron P. Bernstein/Reuters People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. The crowd, which grew to well over a thousand participants, marched from the Austin City Hall to the Texas State Capital. Across the country hundreds of restaurants and eateries are closing for the day to protest President Trump's immigration policies and to highlight the contributions of immigrants to U.S. business and life. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. The crowd, which grew to well over a thousand participants marched from the Austin City Hall to the Texas State Capital. Across the country hundreds of restaurants and eateries are closing for the day to protest President Trump's immigration policies and to highlight the contributions of immigrants to U.S. business and life. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants High school student Kathia Suarez holds up a sign as she protests with others outside the Grayson County courthouse in downtown Sherman, Texas, Thursday, Feb. 16, 2017. LM Otero/AP People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants High school senior Vicky Sosa holds a sign outside the Grayson County courthouse in downtown Sherman, Texas, Thursday, Feb. 16, 2017. In an action called "A Day Without Immigrants," immigrants across the country are expected to stay home from school, work and close businesses to show how critical they are to the U.S. economy and way of life. LM Otero/AP

Ms Hernandez was first stopped by border patrol agents in 2005, shortly after she crossed the border into Texas. She later moved to Westchester, New York, and met with ICE regularly from 2013 to 2017, according to the Daily News. But last month, she claims, ICE told her there would be no more check-ins. She would have to go back to Guatemala.

"After both a motion to reopen and an appeal with the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), an immigration judge upheld the original order of removal," ICE spokeswoman Rachael Yong Yow said in a statement. "Hernandez did not report as required and is now considered an ICE fugitive."

The 130 members of the Manhattans Fourth Universalist Society have pledged to care for Ms Hernandez - bringing her food, doing her laundry  for as long as she remains in the sanctuary, according to the New York Times. From the safety of the church, she plans to lobby for the ability to stay permanently.

I dont intend to stand here with my arms crossed, and do nothing, she said, according to the Times. I have to stand up and raise my voice because an injustice is being committed to me and to us. I think Im here for a reason.

Ms Hernandez is one of more than 40 other immigrants who are currently sheltered in houses of worship across US, according to data compiled by the Church World Service. Places of worship are seen as a safe alternative for those avoiding deportation, because they are considered sensitive sites that ICE is supposed to avoid.

Of the 37 people who sought sanctuary in houses of worship in 2017, nine of them were granted some sort of reprieve from deportation, according to the Church World Service.
A British woman who went missing in Brazil has been found safe and well.

Katherine Brewster was on a meditation retreat and was last seen on 25 March when she was apparently walking barefoot into a forest.

The 27-year-old, from Seaford, East Sussex, was told her mother she was amazed that a search had been launched for her.

Dr Diane Brewster told the BBC that her daughter had told her she had returned from some time alone in Santa Catarina, near an eco-village in Rio Grande do Sul in the south of Brazil where she was staying in a couple's home.

She was last seen by villagers on Sunday, walking towards a wooded area en route to the Foz de Chapeco dam, where they said she would often go to meditate.

Ms Brewster, known as Kat, was dressed in only light clothing and left her mobile phone behind when she headed into the rough terrain.

Fire officers had used sniffer dogs to search for Ms Brewster and said their efforts were hampered by rugged terrain.

Her disappearance prompted her sister, Lizzie, to post a plea on Facebook for anyone who had any information to get in touch.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. 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If you happened to talk to Kat in the last few days or know where she might be, please contact me. I am trying to talk to her urgently," she wrote.

Ms Brewster was reported missing after the family she was staying with in Dom Jose village in Alpestre, said she had left the house taking only her passport and credit card with her.

Investigators had found her driving licence and suitcase, full of clothes and other belongings, in the property where she had been staying.
Just 10 per cent of black Americans think the US has achieved all or most of the civil rights movements goals, 50 years after the death of leader Martin Luther King Jr.

A new poll, conducted six weeks before the anniversary of King's assassination, found Americans are still divided by race when it comes to the movement the Baptist minister helped lead.

Thirty-five per cent of whites surveyed by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs said that all or most of the civil rights movements goals have been achieved. Just 8 per cent of blacks agreed.

In fact, sixty-five per cent of blacks said race relations had deteriorated in the past year alone, compared to 45 per cent of whites.

More than half of all whites said a lot of progress has been made on reducing segregation in public life, compared to just under a quarter of blacks. And more than 40 per cent of whites thought there has been a lot of progress on equal representation in the media and in politics, compared to less than 15 per cent of blacks.

In pictures: Martin Luther King Jr's campaign for civil rights Show all 10 1 /10 In pictures: Martin Luther King Jr's campaign for civil rights In pictures: Martin Luther King Jr's campaign for civil rights 4510050.jpg AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Martin Luther King Jr's campaign for civil rights 4608656-low_res-martin-luther-king-and-the-march-on-washington.jpg BBC In pictures: Martin Luther King Jr's campaign for civil rights martin-luther-king-6.jpg Getty Images In pictures: Martin Luther King Jr's campaign for civil rights martin-luther-king-7.jpg Getty Images In pictures: Martin Luther King Jr's campaign for civil rights georgiamlk.jpg In pictures: Martin Luther King Jr's campaign for civil rights malcom-x-and-martin-luther-king.jpg Library of Congress/ Wiki Commons In pictures: Martin Luther King Jr's campaign for civil rights martin-luther-king-8.jpg Getty Images In pictures: Martin Luther King Jr's campaign for civil rights 359983.bin AP In pictures: Martin Luther King Jr's campaign for civil rights 4260367.jpg AP In pictures: Martin Luther King Jr's campaign for civil rights MLKAFP.jpg AFP/Getty Images

"I think [the civil rights movement] absolutely achieved its goals, Grant Jay Walters of New York told the Associated Press. Mr Walters is white.

He added: I do not think the civil rights movement can go in and change the hearts of men. There's still a lot of racism in the communities and I'm not sure how you can ever make that go away."

Stephanie Sutton, a black woman from Maryland, disagreed, saying things are "going on a quick downward spiral.

"Inequality touches everything, from work, police, schools, education, income, houses, she said.

 Martin Luther King Jr.'s last speech before being assassinated, in 1968 in Memphis

Even on the subject of voting rights  an area where the largest number of people thought progress had been made  feelings were divided by race. Sixty-four percent of whites believed a lot of progress had been made on the subject, compared to just 34 per cent of blacks.

Americans agreed most when it came to the criminal justice system, with only 23 per cent of whites and 6 per cent of blacks saying there had been great progress in achieving equal treatment. Similarly, few Americans believed great progress had been made in fair treatment of blacks by police.

King was one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement before he was shot and killed in 1968. Seven years before his death, he emphasised the importance of fighting for equal treatment, through all obstacles.

"Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable, he said in a 1961 speech at New York University. Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals."
A motorcyclist has been struck by lightning during the gruelling Dakar Rally in South America.

Slovakian rider Ivan Jakes managed to finish the 500-mile stage after the bolt shot through his body more than 180 miles from the finish line in Argentinas Salta province.

Jakes was left with pain in his left arm but survived the strike and continued to finish in 15th place.

 Dakar rally crash

The incident happened during the third stage of the annual rally raid  or cross country rally  which started in San Miguel de Tucuman and finished in San Salvador de Jujuy.

Formerly known as the Paris-Dakar Rally, the race was moved to South America in 2009 in response to security concerns about parts of the route through Mauritania.

Jakes was treated in hospital but was said to have asked to continue riding and competed in the following days stage.

"Thank God he didn't put his feet on the ground, because it would have been like a ground wire," Motorsport.com quoted a member of his team as saying.

Loading....

Motorcyclists are more vulnerable to lightning strikes than other drivers as they are not protected by the metal box of a car.

To survive a lightning strike, scientists advise people to limit the amount of contact they have with the ground, as lightning can hit the ground first before travelling up through the feet or body.
Advertisers are abandoning a Fox News programme in droves after host Laura Ingraham mocked a Parkland school shooting survivor over his rejection from college.

A wave of companies announced they were pulling ads from the Ingraham Angle after Ms Ingraham tweeted that shooting survivor David Hogg was dinged by the University of California Los Angeles, where he applied and was rejected.

Totally predictable given acceptance rates, she added.

Recommended Advertisers ditch Fox News show after host mocks shooting survivor

Mr Hogg was one of the students inside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School when a lone gunman opened fire last month, killing 17 students and staff members. He and several of his classmates have become outspoken advocates for gun control in the wake of the shooting.

The teen fired back at Ms Ingraham's missive, tweeting out the names of companies that advertise on her show and asking his nearly 600,000 Twitter followers to call them and complain.

Ms Ingraham eventually apologised, but the damage was done: Within 24 hours of Mr Hoggs tweet, at least six companies had pulled advertising from the show. More companies announced similar plans in the hours following.

Below is a running list of all the companies that have announced plans to stop advertising with Ms Ingraham.

Nutrish

The pet food company was the first to announce it would pull ads from Ms Ingrahams show. The company responded to Mr Hoggs tweet on the matter, writing simply: We are in the process of removing our ads from Laura Ingrahams programme.

The company was one of the show's top advertisers, having run ads five times in the 10 days before Ms Ingraham's tweet, according to an analysis from Media Matters.

Nutrish did not respond to The Independents request for additional comment.

TripAdvisor

The travel review company was second out of the starting gate, saying in a statement that they had "made a decision to stop advertising on [Ms Ingrahams programme].

We believe strongly in the values of our company, especially the one that says, We are better together, the company said. We also believe Americans can disagree while still being agreeable, and that the free exchange of ideas within a community, in a peaceful manner, is the cornerstone of our democracy.

The statement continued: We do not, however, condone the inappropriate comments made by this broadcaster. In our view, these statements focused on a high school student, cross the line of decency.

Fox News 'finest moments' Show all 13 1 /13 Fox News 'finest moments' Fox News 'finest moments' Penis pictures are news Pulling photos straight from Twitter moments before going on-air was a nightmare waiting to happen for any network, as Fox-affiliated KDVR found in spectacular fashion when a penis was spliced into coverage of the Seattle helicopter crash Twitter Fox News 'finest moments' Homosexual impulses lead to serial killings A licensed psychotherapist booked to appear on Foxs Justice With Judge Jeanie programme suggested Santa Barbara shooter Elliot Rodger could have been acting upon homosexual impulses when he targeted his victims Fox News 'finest moments' Single ladies rely on government like a husband Fox News host Jesse Watters coined the phrase Beyonce Voters, who depend on government because theyre not depending on their husbands. Watters was critical of this section of the electorate for needing contraception, health care, and they love to talk about equal pay Getty Images Fox News 'finest moments' Its OK to use racial slurs about China Fox News presenter Bob Beckel claimed Chinamen had been taught how to do computers by Americans in a rant about Chinas threat to the national security of the US Fox/YouTube Fox News 'finest moments' Michelle Obama needs to drop a few pounds Foxs psychiatry contributor, Dr Keith Ablow, claimed that Michelle Obama isnt in a position to campaign for healthier eating because she needs to drop a few herself Fox News 'finest moments' Russell Brand is left-wing commie scum Fox presenter Greg Gutfeld called Brand left-wing commie scum after he condemned the news station for hiring a token black person to come on to lament the riots Getty Fox News 'finest moments' Women in the armed forces are boobs on the ground Presenter Kimberly Guilfoyle asked if the UAEs first female fighter pilots role during Isis air strikes could be considered boobs on the ground in Syria Fox News 'finest moments' Sexism awareness videos should themselves be treated with sexism Bob Beckel again. The Fox host addressed the viral video actress Shoshana B Roberts created highlighting catcalling in New York by saying: She got 100 catcalls, let me add 101. Damn, baby, youre a piece of woman Fox News 'finest moments' Young women shouldnt worry themselves with politics Foxs Guilfoyle said young women shouldnt be able to vote or sit on juries because they dont have the same concerns as their elders. I just think, excuse them so they can go back on Tinder and Match.com, he said Fox News 'finest moments' Ignore CIA torture because the US is awesome Foxs National Security Analyst KT McFarland condemned the release of a damning report into the CIA's use of torture as a political manoeuvre designed to show Americans "how were not awesome" Fox News/YouTube Fox News 'finest moments' The Sydney terror siege justifies CIA use of torture Elizabeth Hasselbeck used the hostage situation in Sydney to defend the CIA after it was widely condemned for enhanced interrogation techniques revealed in the so-called 'torture report' Fox News 'finest moments' Videos should be edited to say what you want Fox apologised after editing a video of protesters to make it sound as if they were chanting "kill a cop" during a demonstration over a grand jury decision not to charge the police officer who put Eric Garner in an illegal chokehold YouTube Fox News 'finest moments' The AirAsia plane crashed because of the metric system Presenter Anna Kooiman linked the use of different measurement systems to the safety of flights abroad

WayFair

The home goods company was the third to announce they would be pulling ads from the programme.

As a company, we support open dialogue and debate on issues, the company said in a statement. However, the decision of an adult to personally criticise a high school student who has lost his classmates in an unspeakable tragedy is not consistent with our values.

Hulu

The popular video streaming service also responded to Mr Hoggs tweet, writing: Wed like to confirm that we are no longer advertising on Laura Ingrahams show and are monitoring all of our ad placements carefully.

Hulu did not respond to a request for additional comment.

Stitch Fix

A spokesperson for Stitch Fix, an online personal shopping service, confirmed that the company would no longer be advertising on Ms Ingraham's show.

Jenny Craig

The weight loss company has decided to take steps to discontinue advertising on [Ms Ingrahams] show, a spokesperson said.

The company was another top advertiser, running advertisements on the show five times in the days before Ms Ingraham's tweet.

 'No more': Watch David Hogg's incredible March For Our Lives Speech in full

Stelara

A spokesperson for Johnson & Johnson, which produces the arthritis treatment drug Stelara, said the company had pulled advertising from Ms Ingrahams show.

Stelara also advertised on the show five times in the 10 days before the tweet.

Nestle

A spokesperson for the international food and drink giant said the company had no plans to buy ads on the show in the future.

Expedia

A representative for the travel company told the New York Times it had recently pulled advertising from the show, but declined to say when. A spokesperson told The Independent the company would not comment on such matters.

The Independent has reached out to dozens of other companies that advertise on Ms Ingraham's programme, including Liberty Mutual, AT&T, and Bayer pharmaceuticals. We will update if they respond.
Eight years after he was last deported to Mexico, a US army veteran is returning to California.

A pardon last year from Governor Jerry Brown cleared the way for Hector Barajas, who was living in Tijuana, to secure citizenship. He received word that his request was granted and is set to be sworn in in San Diego next month, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

Oh my god, this is great, Mr Barajas said in a Facebook video during which he opened a document confirming the decision while wearing a uniform bristling with medals.

Im coming home, mom, he said, fighting back tears.

Born in Mexico but raised in the Los Angeles area, Mr Barajas enlisted in the Army after becoming a legal permanent resident. He mistakenly believed that serving in the Army would automatically grant him citizenship.

He pleaded no contest in 2002 to a charge of shooting at an occupied vehicle and was deported after serving his sentence. He re-entered the US and was deported a second time in 2010 after being pulled over.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. 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In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. 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A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. 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In Tijuana, Mr Barajas founded the organisation Deported Veterans Support House, which sought to help people in situations like his own, and continued working toward achieving citizenship.

He got a crucial assist last year from Mr Brown, who noted Mr Barajas military service and work on behalf of other veterans. The governor also pardoned two other deported veterans, a decision a spokesman described to the Sacramento Bee as a recognition that the individuals served their country and deserve a second chance and a second look.

 Doctor detained by ICE pending deportation despite working for 40 years in US

Supporters of Mr Barajas said they hoped his case could be an example to others.

I am ecstatic for Hector that he can finally return home and be reunited with his family, Mr Barajas attorney James Erselius said in a statement. He absolutely deserves this. His citizenship also gives hope to other veterans like himself who were deported but are still seeking to come home.

Some 70,000 people born outside of America enlisted in the US military in the first decade of this century, according to the most recent available Department of Defence statistics.
Police are hunting for a British woman missing in a Brazilian forest after wandering there barefoot and alone to meditate.

Katherine Brewster, 27, was dressed in only light clothing and left her mobile phone behind when she headed into the rough terrain.

Her sister, Lizzie, from East Sussex, posted a plea on Facebook for anyone who had any information to get in touch.

Ms Brewster, known as Kat, had been staying in a couples home near an eco-village in Rio Grande do Sul in the south of Brazil.

Villagers last saw her on Sunday, walking towards a wooded area en route to the Foz de Chapeco dam, where they said she would often go to meditate.

She was barefoot and wearing Bermuda shorts, according to investigators. But she was carrying her British passport and a credit card, and her card company has been alerted to watch for any spending on it.

Fire officers using sniffer dogs to search said their efforts were hampered by rugged terrain.

The British consulate in Sao Paulo was in contact with her family at home in Seaford, authorities said. Her father is a counsellor and her mother is an academic, according to reports.

Lizzie Brewster posted a Facebook message in Portuguese that said: If you happened to talk to Kat in the last few days or know where she might be, please contact me. I am trying to talk to her urgently.

Detective Ercilio Carletti, in charge of the investigation, said: We were told she went out for a walk on Sunday afternoon and didn't come back.

The witness believes she went into the nearby forest to meditate and to be at one with nature, as this was something she had the habit of doing.

We're working on the possibility that Katherine may have walked deep along the banks of the lake and perhaps got lost. This region is in a gully and very complicated.

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He added that police are also working with the theory she may have left voluntarily as she is believed to speak fluent Portuguese and may have failed to notify others of her destination after taking her passport.

According to investigators, her driving licence and suitcase, full of clothes and other belongings, were found still in the property where she had been staying.

Luiz Vasconcelos, one of her hosts, said: She came here looking to make contact with nature and the plants and went out a lot to meditate.

We know nothing more than what we have told the police. Unexpectedly, Katherine just disappeared in a strange way and we don't want to start guessing her motives or the whereabouts of where she might be.

Hopefully everything will become clear soon with the best possible outcome.

Clairton Silva, coordinator at the eco-village, said: Katherine was not staying with us  she was staying with a couple that live in the village nearby. She arrived about a week ago to visit them. I believe a friend in England had asked her to visit the couple when she came to Brazil because they had been described as 'good people to meet'.

While she was here, I was told by the couple that Katherine would normally go into the forest to meditate so they didn't think anything was strange when she went out last Sunday.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

Officials at the nearest airport, Salgado Filho, are checking all passengers in case she turns up at the international terminal. Ms Brewster did not fly into Brazil, but arrived over the border from a neighbouring South American country more than a month ago, officials said.

Chief of police Loureno Guerra, in Alpestre in Rio Grande do Sul state, said: We are extremely worried about Katherine's whereabouts as she hasn't taken any clothes or other personal items with her apart from her passport and the credit card, and she left barefoot and in light clothes. She didn't even take her cellphone.

We have stepped up the case by calling in the federal police who are taking over the investigation. Agents have been in touch with her mum already and she has warned the credit card company in the UK which is monitoring whether any transactions have occurred since her daughter went missing.

The Federal officers are also keeping the mum up to date on the search for her child.
A judge who asked a woman if she tried to close her legs during an alleged rape has been charged with misconduct.

State Superior Court Judge John Russo made the comment during a 2016 hearing in which a woman was seeking a restraining order against a man she accused of forcing her to have sex.

Do you know how to stop somebody from having intercourse with you? the judge asked, according to a transcript contained in the complaint alleging judicial misconduct.

When the woman said she did, and that one way was to flee, Mr Russo continued: Close your legs? Call the police? Did you do any of those things?

The complaint he mistreated the victim is just one of four violations the New Jersey judge has been charged with by the Supreme Court Advisory Committee on Judicial Conduct.

Another allegation says Mr Russo failed to recuse himself from a case involving a couple he acknowledged knowing personally.

Judge Russo looks forward to a public hearing in which he will be able to respond to the allegations against him, the judges lawyer, David Corrigan, said. We have respect for the process as well as the advisory committee on judicial conduct, and therefore wont comment further.

Mr Corrigan said his client has 20 days to respond to the complaint, but that a hearing was likely to not take place for several months.

Following the hearing, the committee will then advise the state Supreme Court as to what public disciplinary action should be taken, if any.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

Mr Russo has been barred from his judicial duties since April last year over a series of separate allegations, according to Asbury Park Press.

Judge Marlene Lynch Ford revealed she barred her colleague from the bench after his law clerk claimed he threw a file at her and accusations he treated litigants badly.

He also refused to take a mental health evaluation ordered by Ms Ford.
A Colorado man has been arrested after allegedly shooting his neighbour five times in the head because he thought he was beating his dog.

Michael Kourosh Sadeghi, 32, was arrested for allegedly killing his 42-year-old Denver neighbour, Dustin Schmidt, after an incident in which he is said to have walked into his back yard and unloaded five shots into the back of the neighbour's head.

Vicki Branaghan, the victim's fiancee  who said she was in the backyard at the time, told the Denver Post that the gun shots followed after Mr Schmidt swatted his dog for trying to jump over their fence.

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'We were all three standing there. Mike pulled the gun out and shot Dustin in the back of the head five times,' Ms Branaghan said.

'I was just a few feet away. Mike turned around and walked back to his house as though nothing happened.'

Police have noted that they have seen no indication that Mr Schmidt and Mr Sadeghi did not get along before, and this appeared to be an isolated incident of violence between the two of them.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

The two neighbours had had some issues with the dog jumping the fence recently, but Mr Schmidt was reportedly trying to fix the problem.

After the dog began jumping over the fence, Mr Schmidt reportedly installed an electric wiring to deter the animal. But, that approach didn't work.

The incident Tuesday night began when the dog jumped over the fence, but got snagged and was left hanging by its collar. Mr Schmidt reportedly ran to save his dog, and gave it a swat for discipline afterward.

That swat reportedly enraged Mr Sadeghi, who began yelling before shooting his neighbour.
Authorities in New York have indicted a suspected Mexican drug kingpin they say was responsible for trafficking enough fentanyl to kill 10 million people.

Authorities say the arrest of Francisco Quiroz-Zamora provides a window into how the powerful Sinaloa cartel moves drugs from Mexico to the United States.

The 41-year-old, known as Gordo or the Fat One, has been charged with operating as a major trafficker, first-degree sale of a controlled substance and second-degree conspiracy.

Mr Quiroz-Zamora and five co-defendants will be arraigned in New York City on Tuesday.

Officials with New Yorks Special Narcotics Prosecutor indicted Mr Quiroz-Zamora. Officials allege he arranged for 20kg of fentanyl to be shipped to New York  a haul of drugs that had the potential to kill 10 million people. Fentanyl is about 50 times more powerful than heroin and just a few grains can kill.

Fentanyl, which is made in clandestine labs with cheap chemicals, has become a lucrative business for traffickers. It is often cut into heroin or pressed into counterfeit pills made to resemble legitimate prescription drugs, including OxyContin and Xanax.

For a high-level dealer, Mr Quiroz-Zamora was extremely involved in every aspect of the process that gets drugs from creators to users, officials claim. He organised a pipeline that sent drugs from Mexico to Arizona and California through trucks, cars and drug couriers and authorised transactions between customers and dealers, according to authorities.

Mexican trafficking groups are attempting to turn New York into their distribution hub and fentanyl is now their main product. The amount of fentanyl seized by the Special Narcotics Prosecutor in New York rose from 16kg in 2016 to 223kg last year.

The drugs are now managed by inconspicuous dealers. They include a middle-aged couple who authorities said came to New York to broker the sale of 141 pounds of fentanyl seized from a Queens apartment.

Mr Quiroz-Zamora allegedly was planning for a lucrative payday. He negotiated a going rate of between $45,000 (36,500) and $50,000 per kilogram of fentanyl. Officials seized the fentanyl as the result of two undercover sales they said were organised by Mr Quiroz-Zamora.

In one instance, the drugs were stuffed in a duffel bag and placed atop a vending machine at the Umbrella Hotel in the Bronx in June.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

In another, authorities said they found more than five pounds of fentanyl in a $4,000-a-month apartment on Central Park West, along with $12,000 in money and a loaded gun. Thousands of packages of drugs ready for sale with names including Uber and Wild Card were discovered in the apartment. A man who left the apartment in an Uber was arrested along with the driver after heroin was found in the car.

Authorities allege Mr Quiroz-Zamora went to New York in November to collect money he thought he was owed. He was arrested at Penn Station in New York City after arriving in an extremely roundabout way. He allegedly flew from Texas to Connecticut and went to Delaware, where he boarded a train that took him to Penn Station.

The Washington Post
Donald Trumps Environmental Protection Agency is expected to roll back greenhouse gas emissions and fuel economy standards for automobiles, further undercutting his predecessor Barack Obamas aims to battle climate change.

The move could set up a huge legal fight with California, which has promised to stick with the stricter rules even if the federal government weakens standards.

A draft of the plan is currently being reviewed by the White House, EPA spokesperson Liz Bowman told The Independent in a statement.

The draft determination has been sent to OMB [Office of Management and Budget] and is undergoing interagency review, she said. A final determination will be signed by April 1, 2018.

EPA chief Scott Pruitt will likely frame the plan to the public as the elimination of a regulatory burden on automakers that will result in more affordable trucks, vans and sport utility vehicles for buyers, people familiar with the initiative told the New York Times.

Several major car manufacturers are expected to welcome the change, while environmental experts warn that it could lead to greater total gasoline consumption and a large increase in emissions of greenhouse gases.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

Aseem Prakash, the founding director of the University of Washingtons Centre for Environmental Politics, said Mr Trumps argument that Barack Obamas climate policies were making US automakers uncompetitive is a bit untrue. Many consumers are willing to spend more on fuel-efficient vehicles if they calculate that they will spend less money on gas later, Mr Prakash told The Independent.

He said the plan to weaken fuel economy standards for cars was just part of a systematic assault on Obamas climate policy.

Its a carefully orchestrated political plan that appeals to the presidents core supporters, Mr Prakash said.

Mr Trump last year signed an executive order to roll back policies from the Obama administration aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions. He has also withdrawn the US from the Paris climate accord  a global agreement to cut carbon emissions to slow the worst effects of climate change. Mr Trump said partaking in the deal would impose draconian financial and economic burdens on the US.

Right now, California is exempt from having to roll back the climate regulations on automobiles. The state has a special waiver under the 1970 Clean Air Act that empowers it to enforce stronger air pollution standards than those set by the federal government.

If the EPA revokes Californias waiver, the Trump administration could almost assuredly expect a nasty courtroom battle.

Were prepared to do everything we need to defend the process, Xavier Becerra, the attorney general of California, told the Times.

Nives Dolsak, a professor at the University of Washingtons School of Marine and Environmental Affairs, said the Clean Air Act identifies three conditions in which the EPA could deny California its waiver.

None of those conditions seem to apply in this case, she told The Independent. It will be a prolonged legal battle if they do not grant the waiver for California.

Other states that have established stricter air pollution standards than the federal government would also likely join in on the action, she said.

Even if the Trump administration doesnt revoke the waiver, the different standards across the US would create problems for auto companies by dividing the country into at least two distinct markets.
Attorney general Jeff Sessions has rebuffed calls from Republicans to have a new special counsel investigate federal law enforcements alleged bias and surveillance abuses.

In a letter to a trio of top Republicans, Mr Sessions said the Justice Departments inspector general was investigating whether officials had complied with the US Foreign Surveillance Court in seeking permission to eavesdrop.

We understand that the Department is not above criticism and it can never be that the Department conceals errors when they occur, Mr Sessions said.

The attorney general did not completely rule out the possibility of appointing a special counsel, saying US Attorney John Huber was leading an internal investigation and would ultimately recommend whether any matters merit the appointment of a Special Counsel.

Prominent Republican legislators had asked Mr Sessions to appoint a special counsel, warning in a letter of evidence of bias, trending toward animus, among those charged with investigating serious cases at the FBI and the Department of Justice.

They also echoed allegations that federal officials relied on opposition research in seeking authority to surveil Carter Page, a former associate of Donald Trump.

The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Show all 17 1 /17 The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Paul Manafort Mr Manafort is a Republican strategist and former Trump campaign manager. He resigned from that post over questions about his extensive lobbying overseas, including in Ukraine where he represented pro-Russian interests. Mr Manafort turned himself in at FBI headquarters to special counsel Robert Muellers team on Oct 30, 2017, after he was indicted under seal on charges that include conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading US Foreign Agents Registration Act statements, false statements, and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts. Getty The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Rick Gates Mr Gates joined the Trump team in spring 2016, and served as a top aide until he left to work at the Republican National Committee after the departure of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. Mr Gates' had previously worked on several presidential campaigns, on international political campaigns in Europe and Africa, and had 15 years of political or financial experience with multinational firms, according to his bio. Mr Gates was indicted alongside Mr Manafort by special counsel Robert Mueller's team on charges that include conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading US Foreign Agents Registration Act statements, false statements, and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts. AP The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation George Papadopoulos George Papadopoulos was a former foreign policy adviser for the Trump campaign, having joined around March 2016. Mr Papadopoulos plead guilty to federal charges for lying to the FBI as a part of a cooperation agreement with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. Mr Papadopoulos claimed in an interview with the FBI that he had made contacts with Russian sources before joining the Trump campaign, but he actually began working with them after joining the team. Mr Papadopoulos allegedly took a meeting with a professor in London who reportedly told him that Russians had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton. The professor also allegedly introduced Mr Papadopoulos to a Russian who was said to have close ties to officials at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Mr Papadopoulos also allegedly was in contact with a woman whom he incorrectly described in one email to others in the campaign as the "niece" to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Twitter The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Donald Trump Jr The President's eldest son met with a Russian lawyer - Natalia Veselnitskaya - on 9 June 2016 at Trump Tower in New York. He said in an initial statement that the meeting was about Russia halting adoptions of its children by US citizens. Then, he said it was regarding the Magnitsky Act, a US law blacklisting Russian human rights abusers. In a final statement, Mr Trump Jr released a chain of emails that revealed he took the meeting in hopes of getting information Ms Veselnitskaya had about Hillary Clinton's alleged financial ties to Russia. He and the President called it standard "opposition research" in the course of campaigning and that no information came from the meeting. The meeting was set up by an intermediary, Rob Goldstone. Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort were also at the same meeting. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Jared Kushner Mr Kushner is President Donald Trump's son-in-law and a key adviser to the White House. He met with a Russian banker appointed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in December. Mr Kushner has said he did so in his role as an adviser to Mr Trump while the bank says he did so as a private developer. Mr Kushner has also volunteered to testify in the Senate about his role helping to arrange meetings between Trump advisers and Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Rob Goldstone Former tabloid journalist and now music publicist Rob Goldstone is a contact of the Trump family through the previously Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant, which took place in Moscow. In June 2016, he wrote to Donald Trump Jr offering a meeting with a Russian lawyer, Natalya Veselnitskaya, who had information about Hillary Clinton. Mr Goldstone was the intermediary for Russian pop star Emin Agalaraov and his father, real estate magnate Aras, who played a role in putting on the 2013 pageant. In an email chain released by Mr Trump Jr, Mr Goldstone seemed to indicate Russian government's support of Donald Trump's campaign. AP images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Aras and Emin Agalarov Aras Agalarov (R) is a wealthy Moscow-based real estate magnate and son Emin (L) is a pop star. Both played a role in putting on the previously Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. They allegedly had information about Hillary Clinton and offered that information to the Trump campaign through a lawyer with whom they had worked with, Natalia Veselnitskaya, and music publicist Rob Goldstone. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Natalia Veselnitskaya Natalia Veselnitskaya is a Russian lawyer with ties to the Kremlin. She has worked on real estate issues and reportedly counted the FSB as a client in the past. She has ties to a Trump family connection, real estate magnate Aras Agalarov, who had helped set up the Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant which took place in Moscow. Ms Veselnitskaya met with Donald Trump Jr, Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort in Trump Tower on 9 June 2016 but denies the allegation that she went there promising information on Hillary Clinton's alleged financial ties to Russia. She contends that the meeting was about the US adoptions of Russian children being stopped by Moscow as a reaction to the Magnitsky Act, a US law blacklisting Russian human rights abusers. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Mike Flynn Mr Flynn was named as Trump's national security adviser but was forced to resign from his post for inappropriate communication with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. He had misrepresented a conversation he had with Mr Kislyak to Vice President Mike Pence, telling him wrongly that he had not discussed sanctions with the Russian. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Sergey Kislyak Mr Kislyak, the former longtime Russian ambassador to the US, is at the centre of the web said to connect President Donald Trump's campaign with Russia. Reuters The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Roger Stone Mr Stone is a former Trump adviser who worked on the political campaigns of Richard Nixon, George HW Bush, and Ronald Reagan. Mr Stone claimed repeatedly in the final months of the campaign that he had backchannel communications with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and that he knew the group was going to dump damaging documents to the campaign of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton - which did happen. Mr Stone also had contacts with the hacker Guccier 2.0 on Twitter, who claimed to have hacked the DNC and is linked to Russian intelligence services. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Jeff Sessions The US attorney general was forced to recuse himself from the Trump-Russia investigation after it was learned that he had lied about meeting with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Carter Page Mr Page is a former advisor to the Trump campaign and has a background working as an investment banker at Merrill Lynch. Mr Page met with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak during the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Mr Page had invested in oil companies connected to Russia and had admitted that US Russia sanctions had hurt his bottom line. Reuters The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Jeffrey "JD" Gorden Mr Gordon met with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak during the 2016 Republian National Convention to discuss how the US and Russia could work together to combat Islamist extremism should then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump win the election. The meeting came days before a massive leak of DNC emails that has been connected to Russia. Creative Commons The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation James Comey Mr Comey was fired from his post as head of the FBI by President Donald Trump. The timing of Mr Comey's firing raised questions around whether or not the FBI's investigation into the Trump campaign may have played a role in the decision. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Preet Bharara Mr Bahara refused, alongside 46 other US district attorney's across the country, to resign once President Donald Trump took office after previous assurances from Mr Trump that he would keep his job. Mr Bahara had been heading up several investigations including one into one of President Donald Trump's favorite cable television channels Fox News. Several investigations would lead back to that district, too, including those into Mr Trump's campaign ties to Russia, and Mr Trump's assertion that Trump Tower was wiretapped on orders from his predecessor. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Sally Yates Ms Yates, a former Deputy Attorney General, was running the Justice Department while President Donald Trump's pick for attorney general awaited confirmation. Ms Yates was later fired by Mr Trump from her temporary post over her refusal to implement Mr Trump's first travel ban. She had also warned the White House about potential ties former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn to Russia after discovering those ties during the FBI's investigation into the Trump campaign's connections to Russia. Getty Images

Republicans have said the FBI and the Justice Department declined to reveal their application to spy on Mr Page drew on intelligence gathered by Christopher Steele, a former spy funded by the Democratic National Committee and Democrat Hillary Clintons campaign - an assertion that Democrats and law enforcement officials have called inaccurate.

 Donald Trump says Nunes memo is declassified and Congress will "do whatever" with it

That push has come as special counsel Robert Mueller investigates Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and potential coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Donald Trump has blasted the probe as a politically weaponised witch hunt compromised by biased career officials at the Justice Department and the FBI, and he has been adamant that there was no collusion between his campaign and Russia. Mr Mueller has so far indicted multiple former Trump campaign aides.

Earlier this year Mr Trump lashed out at Sessions for leaving the matter of potential surveillance abuse to the inspector general, saying in a tweet that the decision was DISGRACEFUL! Mr Sessions responded with a statement saying As long as I am the Attorney General, I will continue to discharge my duties with integrity and honour.
Donald Trump is said to have told Vladimir Putin that if the US and Russia had an arms race, the US would win.

Mr Trump reportedly made the comments during a congratulatory call with Mr Putin last week after the Russian leader was unsurprisingly reelected as president.

Mr Putins claim that new nuclear-capable weapons could reach the US really got under the presidents skin, an official told NBC News.

Recommended Russia to expel diplomats and close US consulate in St Petersburg

If you want to have an arms race we can do that, but Ill win, Mr Trump reportedly responded, according to NBC.

The official White House readout of the call with Mr Putin didnt mention such tensions.

It simply says the pair discussed the state of bilateral relations.

Mr Trump described the call to reporters as very good and said he planning to meet with Mr Putin in the near future  a remark that is said to have caught his advisers off guard.

Countries join UK expelling Russian diplomats over spy poisoning Show all 24 1 /24 Countries join UK expelling Russian diplomats over spy poisoning Countries join UK expelling Russian diplomats over spy poisoning United States Donald Trump has expelled 60 Russian diplomats from the US and closed the consulate in response to the Sergei Skripal spy poisoning. AFP/Getty Countries join UK expelling Russian diplomats over spy poisoning Great Britain Prime Minister Theresa May confirmed Britain would be expelling 23 Russian diplomats. AFP/Getty Countries join UK expelling Russian diplomats over spy poisoning Ukraine Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko has expelled 13 Russian diplomats. Getty Countries join UK expelling Russian diplomats over spy poisoning Germany Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel has expelled 4 Russian diplomats. AFP/Getty Countries join UK expelling Russian diplomats over spy poisoning France France's President Emmanuel Macron has also expelled 4 Russian diplomats. Reuters Countries join UK expelling Russian diplomats over spy poisoning Poland Poland's President Andrzej Duda has expelled 4 Russian diplomats. AFP/Getty Countries join UK expelling Russian diplomats over spy poisoning Lithuania President of Lithuania Dalia Grybauskaite has expelled 3 Russian diplomats. Getty Countries join UK expelling Russian diplomats over spy poisoning Czech Republic Czech Republic President Milos Zeman has also expelled 3 Russian diplomats. AFP Countries join UK expelling Russian diplomats over spy poisoning Netherlands Netherlands Prime minister Mark Rutte has expelled 2 Russian diplomats. AFP/Getty Countries join UK expelling Russian diplomats over spy poisoning Latvia Prime Minister of Latvia Maris Kucinskis has expelled 1 Russian diplomat. Getty Countries join UK expelling Russian diplomats over spy poisoning Estonia Estonia's Prime Minister Juri Ratas has expelled 1 Russian diplomat. AFP/Getty Countries join UK expelling Russian diplomats over spy poisoning Croatia Croatia President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic has expelled 1 Russian diplomat. AFP/Getty Countries join UK expelling Russian diplomats over spy poisoning Italy Italian President Sergio Mattarella has expelled 2 Russian diplomats. Getty Countries join UK expelling Russian diplomats over spy poisoning Canada Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has expelled 4 Russian diplomats. Getty Countries join UK expelling Russian diplomats over spy poisoning Finland Finland's President Sauli Niinisto has expelled 1 Russian diplomat. Reuters Countries join UK expelling Russian diplomats over spy poisoning Denmark Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen has expelled 2 Russian diplomats. AFP/Getty Countries join UK expelling Russian diplomats over spy poisoning Romania Romania's President Klaus Werner Iohannis has expelled 1 Russian diplomat. AFP/Getty Countries join UK expelling Russian diplomats over spy poisoning Norway Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg has expelled 1 Russian diplomat. REUTERS Countries join UK expelling Russian diplomats over spy poisoning Spain Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has expelled 2 Russian diplomats. Getty Countries join UK expelling Russian diplomats over spy poisoning Sweden Sweden's Prime Minister Stefan Lofven has expelled 1 Russian diplomat. AFP/Getty Countries join UK expelling Russian diplomats over spy poisoning Albania Albanian President Ilir Meta has expelled 2 Russian diplomats. AFP/Getty Countries join UK expelling Russian diplomats over spy poisoning Australia Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has expelled 2 Russian diplomats. Getty Countries join UK expelling Russian diplomats over spy poisoning Macedonia Macedonia President Gjorge Ivanov has expelled 1 Russian diplomat. AFP/Getty Countries join UK expelling Russian diplomats over spy poisoning Hungary President of Hungary Janos Ader has expelled 1 Russian diplomat. AFP/Getty

Russias military on Friday conducted its second test of a new intercontinental ballistic missile that Russian officials say could reach any target in the world, according to the Russian Defence Ministry.

Tensions between Russia and Western countries have been heightened in recent weeks following the poisoning of an ex-Russian spy in Salisbury.

The Kremlin has denied it was behind the attack, but the UK has concluded the poisoning was tied to Russia.

Dozens of Russian diplomats were expelled this week from consulates in the US and Britain  actions that Russia retaliated against with expulsions of Western diplomats and the closing of the US consulate in St Petersburg.

The US State Department said there is no justification for the expulsions from Russia.
A serial killer in China has been sentenced to death for raping and murdering 10 women and an eight year-old girl.

Gao Chengyong, 54, was dubbed China's Jack the Ripper after he mutilated the bodies of his victims over a 14-year period beginning in 1988.

The father-of-two, who ran a grocery store with his wife in the city of Baiyin in China's northwest Gansu province, was finally caught in 2016.

He was identified after his uncle was arrested for a minor offence and scientists found a DNA link to the suspect.

Gao confessed to all 11 murders as well as multiple charges of rape, robbery and mutilation of corpses at a private court hearing in July last year.

He is believed to have targeted many of his victims because they were wearing red.

Gao killed for the first time after following a 23 year-old woman back to her home in Baiyin in May 1988 - the same year his first son was born.

Over the next 14 years he killed eight more victims in Baiyin and two in Baotou in the northern region of Inner Mongolia.

Police said he cut the women's throats and in some cases cut out their reproductive organs.

The body of one woman, Cui Jinping, was found with 22 stab wounds on 30 November 1998. Her hands and other parts of her body were never found.

Gao's attacks caused such fear that many women refused to walk in the streets without being accompanied male friends or relatives.

The crimes were first linked in 2004 when a reward of 200,000 yuan (22,900) was offered for information leading to an arrest.

Police said their then-unknown suspect had a "sexual perversion" and was "reclusive and unsociable but patient".

Following his arrest, Gao was described by acquaintances as a quiet man who rarely spoke of his past or returned to his home town of Qingcheng near Lanzhou.

His oldest son, who only met his father once a year, was quoted as saying he "cannot understand why he did it".

Gao was sentenced to death on Friday following a private hearing at the People's Intermediate court of Baiyin City.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

The original Jack the Ripper - who has never been identified - is thought to have murdered and mutilated at least five women in London in 1888.

Additional reporting by agencies
A Japanese woman has been reunited with a camera she dropped in the ocean two-and-a-half years ago, after schoolchildren in Taiwan found it washed up on a beach and covered in barnacles.

Serina Tsubakihara lost her Canon camera while scuba diving off Okinawa in September 2015 when she went to the aid of a friend, and feared it had been lost forever.

This week schoolchildren on a beach-cleaning trip found what appeared to be a rock, but turned out to be the digital camera safely housed inside a waterproof case  and still perfectly functional.

Once recovered, the device even had enough battery charge remaining to power on and display the last images its owner had taken.

Serina Tsubakihara's Canon G12 camera, released from the waterproof housing that had protected it from the ocean for two-and-a-half years (EPA)

On Tuesday the childrens teacher, Park Lee, posted a number of those photos on Facebook and mere hours later Ms Tsubakihara saw them through friends, and knew her camera had been found.

Mr Lee praised the magical internet in a message announcing the improbable re-discovery.

Ms Tsubakihara, a student at Sophia University in Tokyo, wrote on Facebook: I never thought this would happen. I cant still believe this is happening but the only thing I want to say is thank you so much for every single person who was involved with this!

I am so lucky and happy to have such a wonderful experience to feel the kindness of people.

Mr Lee told the BBC his class had debated what to do with the camera, found more than 150 miles away from where it was originally lost.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

Some children thought we had earned the camera and could keep [it] for ourselves. Others suggested we should try to find the owner, and so we all sat down to think about how to do that, he said.

The group doubted whether viewing the images was the right thing to do but decided it was the only way to track down the photographer, the broadcaster reported.

Ms Tsubakihara plans to travel to Taiwan in June to meet Mr Lee and retrieve her camera.
Air France has cancelled a quarter of its flights due to a day-long strike over pay.

The company said in a statement that 20 per cent of its long-haul flights were cancelled on Friday as well as 30 per cent of its medium-haul flights arriving and departing from Paris-Charles de Gaulle.

Air France recommended that passengers check their flights before going to the airport and has offered to change tickets for free.

The strike aims to put pressure on management to increase salaries by 6 per cent.

It comes amid protests against French president Emmanuel Macrons economic changes. Trains, planes, schools and other public services have been disrupted due to protests against labour reforms, particularly on the railways.

The company said only flights on Air France or Joon aircraft would be affected, not others which it operates like KLM and Delta.

We now offer rebooking options at no extra cost, no matter the fare, the company said.

It was too early to say how or whether more industrial action planned for 3 April would affect services, it added.

Air France said it would operate 76 per cent of its flight schedule on Friday  80 per cent of long- and short-haul trips, and 70 per cent of medium-haul ones.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

On 3 and 4 April, rail workers will stop work in the first of a string of two-day strikes against Mr Macron's reforms, hitting Eurostar and other services.

Last year Mr Macron introduced a plan for sweeping economic changes, including making it easier to hire and fire employees while giving companies a greater say over working conditions.
A French vegan has been handed a suspended prison sentence for saying she had zero sympathy for a butcher killed in last weeks terror attack.

The woman, named locally as Myriam, an animal rights activist, received a seven-month sentence after she posted on Facebook there was some justice in the murder of Christian Medves by Radouane Lakdim last Friday.

Moroccan-born Lakdim killed four people, including Mr Medves and gendarme Arnaud Beltrame, during a rampage centred on a supermarket in the town of Trebes.

Myriam, who lives in the nearby village of Saint Gaudens, subsequently posted: So then, you are shocked that a murderer is killed by a terrorist. Not me. Ive got zero compassion for him, theres some justice in it.

Recommended France pays tribute to hero policeman who swapped places with hostage

Frances butchers federation said it filed a legal complaint following the post, which has since been removed.

Myriam went before a judge on a charge of condoning terrorism, which carries a maximum jail sentence of five years and a fine of 75,000 (66,000) under French law.

Her suspended sentence means she will not serve time in prison unless she re-offends, prosecutors told AFP.

Lt Col Beltrame was hailed a hero after exchanging himself for a female hostage during the siege. He was then stabbed several times while reportedly trying to disarm Lakdim. The terrorist was shot dead by police but Lt Col Beltrames injuries proved fatal.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday led a national tribute to Lt Col Beltrame, who was posthumously awarded Frances highest honour, the Legion dHonneur. A ceremony for the three civilians killed was held on Thursday morning.

In addition to Myriam's prosecution, a left-wing activist and former political candidate received a one-year suspended sentence for celebrating Lt Col Beltrame's killing.

Stephane Poussier, who stood unsuccessfully for the La France insoumise party, had tweeted that the gendarmes death was great, adding that incidentally, it means one less Macron voter.

Every time a police officer was hurt it made him think of a fellow activist who had been killed by a stun grenade during a protest some years earlier, he added, according to French media.

The party said the tweets, since removed along with Poussiers Twitter account, were shameful.

Additional reporting by agencies
Pubs in Ireland are being allowed to sell alcohol on Good Friday for the first time in nearly a century.

In January, the Irish parliament passed new legislation ending a 91 year-long ban on pubs, restaurants and supermarkets selling alcohol on the Friday before Easter Monday  a legacy of the countrys Catholic traditions.

Pubs in Dublin are expected to do a roaring trade, with doors across the Republic opening from 10.30am. Closing time is at 12.30am on Saturday morning.

Traditionally, Good Fridays are a popular time for house parties in Ireland, but pubs will hope to attract revellers keen on skipping the washing up this time around.

The law change is also set to prove good news for tourists and the Irish economy alike.

Unwitting foreigners wandering Dublins streets in futile pursuit of a pint had become a common sight in recent years. Some even resorted to the infamous loophole  the onboard bar  which allowed alcohol to be sold on trains and ferries.

 Alcohol-related hospital admissions hit record high after addiction support services slashed

According to the Vintners Federation of Ireland, a publicans group, the law change could generate up to 35m in sales, and 6m for the exchequer.

"The Good Friday ban is from a different era and is rightfully consigned to history," VFIs chief executive, Padraig Cribben, said. "Like all other businesses who were never subject to a ban, publicans now have a choice to open."

Pubs opening on Good Friday is good news, both for publicans and their customers but also for the many tourists who visit Ireland over the Easter weekend, who in the past would find the pubs closed during a major holiday.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

But not everyone was happy with the new legislation. Pauline Fay, a landlady in County Meath, told Sky News she would not be opening her bar.

I think that family life comes first," she said. "Its a religious day, its one of the most important days in the Catholic Church, and you have to respect that in every way."

I think a lot of people have said, No, were not opening up, we value our traditions," she added.


A Dutch teacher credited with saving some 600 Jewish children from the Nazis during the Second World War has died, aged 107.

While working at a teaching academy in Amsterdam Johan van Hulst used its proximity to a nursery to smuggle babies and children out of the city, under the noses of German troops.

When occupying forces took over the nursery and a theatre near his academy to use as deportation centres, Van Hulst and members of the Dutch resistance trusted by the Nazis to run the system conspired to falsify its records.

By recording that a certain number of children had been brought in, rather than the true figure, some could be spirited away and later taken to safety before the Germans could transport them to concentration camps.

But the act of saving those few, Van Hulst later admitted, was heartwrenching. Everyone understood that if 30 children were brought, we could not save 30 children, he said last year. We had to make a choice anyway, and one of the most horrible things was to make a choice.

The Dutch senate  where Van Hulst was a member for a quarter of a century from 1956  announced his death this week.

Along with Walter Suskind, who ran the deportation centre, and Henriette Pimentel, the head of the creche, and others he helped save several hundred children from almost certain death.

The trio is said to have used passing trams as cover in order to hide their activities from German guards.

In 1972 Israels Yad Vashem Holocaust remembrance centre recognised Van Hulst as righteous among the nations, an honour granted to non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

According to the centre, when the Germans decided to clear out the nursery in 1943, Van Hulst was presented by its principal with scores of its children and asked to shelter some if he could.

It quoted him as saying later: Try to imagine 80, 90, perhaps 70 or 100 children standing there, and you have to decide which children to take with you. That was the most difficult day of my life.

You realise that you cannot possibly take all the children with you. You know for a fact that the children you leave behind are going to die. I took 12 with me. Later on I asked myself, Why not 13?

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu honoured Van Hulst during a visit to the Netherlands in 2012. He said: We say, those who save one life saves a universe. You saved hundreds of universes.

Johan van Hulst died on 22 March 2018.
Pope Francis did not tell a journalist that hell does not exist, the Vatican has insisted.

Italian journalist Eugenio Scalfari published a report of an interview with the pontiff, and said he had asked him where bad souls go upon death, and where they are punished.

The 93-year-old atheist, a co-founder of the La Reppublica newspaper, quoted Francis as saying: They are not punished. Those who repent obtain Gods forgiveness and take their place among the ranks of those who contemplate him, but those who do not repent and cannot be forgiven disappear.

Recommended 10 of the most spiritual places on earth

A hell doesnt exist, the disappearance of sinning souls exists.

The Vatican confirmed what was believed to be the pairs fifth meeting, but insisted the pope had not granted Mr Scalfari an interview.

The article was the fruit of his reconstruction and not a faithful transcription of the Holy Fathers words, a spokesman said.

Mr Scalfari has prided himself on not taking notes and not using tape recorders during his encounters with leaders, and later reconstructing the meetings to create lengthy reports.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

Thursdays rebuttal was at least the third time the Vatican had issued a statement distancing itself from his articles about Francis, including one in 2014 in which the journalist said the pontiff had abolished sin.

Official Catholic doctrine states that immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into hell, where they suffer the punishments of hell, which include eternal fire.

Additional reporting by agencies
The alarming rise in racism, antisemitism and xenophobia in Europe has led a leading international think tank to offer a 1m (900,000) prize in a competition to find effective and innovative ways to counter intolerance.

The growth of right- and left-wing political extremism and the radicalisation of large numbers of young Muslims is now a clear and present threat to liberal and secular values and needs to be urgently confronted, according to the European Council on Tolerance and Reconciliation (ECTR).

Far-right groups are gaining seats in large numbers in parliaments across the continent, with the Freedom Party now part of the Austrian coalition government. At the same time the Brexit campaign and the election of President Donald Trump in America have shown how propaganda and fake news can be weaponised, delegates heard at an ECTR conference in Monaco this month.

Meanwhile in Britain, the Labour Party is mired in bitter accusations and recriminations, with claims that Jeremy Corbyn has turned a blind eye to the spread of antisemitism in the party.

At the launch of the competition, Tony Blair, the ECTR chair, said: It is essential we dont sit back and let extremism and intolerance become an accepted part of our public discourse. In all our societies at the moment, there are forces of radicalisation and extremism and these often serve to promote forms of speech that indicate hatred towards those that are different.

Western liberal democracy has quite rightly always prided itself on its open mind. But if that openness of mind becomes entirely passive, then it can be taken advantage of and turned into something that actually facilitates a closed-minded approach to the world.

Warning of the ideology of Islamist extremism, Mr Blair stated groups like Isis and al-Qaeda are the latest manifestation of a dangerous strain of totalitarian thinking that rejects and subordinates all universal norms and values to a single, violent, all-encompassing dogma. The groups are driven by a transnational religious-political ideology, and a belief in violent jihad to enforce a return to a perceived Islam of the seventh century.

Their threat is based on a perversion of religion, that gives its followers the certainty of being the best believers and justifying violence against the rest  no surprise, then, that they mostly kill other Muslims. Their ambition is the total annihilation of those people, institutions and governments who dont agree with them.

In the UK Mr Blair has accused people around Jeremy Corbyn of failing to confront antisemitism in the party with the necessary urgency. He told The Independent that the leaders close advisers do not really take [the problem] this seriously. The former prime minister added: You need to send a very strong signal that antisemitic behaviour will not be tolerated and people who are engaged in it have no place in the Labour Party and you have got to be very, very clear.

The 1m ECTR prize is intended to reward exceptional achievements in research and advanced thinking on secular tolerance. The entries will be judged by a panel of academic advisers including philosopher John Gray and historian Sir Antony Beevor.

Dr Moshe Kantor, the president of ECTR, said: Today, from Le Pens National Front in France to Jobbik in Hungary, to Golden Dawn in Greece and the Freedom Party in Austria, antisemitism, anti-immigrant and xenophobic parties are on the march, literally and politically. These parties are, in almost every example, rapidly increasing their support nationally and inching ever-disturbingly closer to the hearts of disgruntled supporters who express disdain for the mainstream.

With this in mind, it is incumbent for Europeans to try to find a way to stop the hateful rhetoric of these parties and their leaders, while maintaining the values of our continent. Decades ago, incitement was delivered in city squares and on marches, todays invective is far more likely to be delivered online, ensuring that the message is multiplied and disseminated to untold millions. Hate speech and incitement online has a far more powerful and multiplying effect on social networks. We must act against words that cause violence in ways similar to the way we would act against the violence itself.

Dr Kantor, who is also a member of the European Jewish Congress, also criticised Mr Corbyn over accusations of antisemitism in the Labour Party. It has been abundantly clear for too long that the Labour leadership under Jeremy Corbyn has at best a massive blind spot when in comes to antisemitism and at worst openly encourages hatred and double standards against Jews, he said.

For too long antisemitism has been allowed to eat away at the values for which the Labour Party has historically stood for ... The time has come for decisive action to root out this poison and in doing so, send a powerful message that antisemitism has no place in society and that the Labour Party can still be a party of choice for Britains Jewish community.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

John Gray, emeritus professor of European thought at the London School of Economics, wanted to stress: Throughout much of Europe, centre parties have ceded ground to forces that preach and embody intolerance. In some post-communist countries, the collapse of the centre has been more complete.

Illiberal democracies  regimes that claim to embody popular will while dismantling protections for individuals and minorities  have emerged in Poland and Hungary. The post-Cold War certainty that liberal democracy would spread throughout the world is yielding to an unexpected and disquieting reality.
The Kremlin showed little sign of backing away from confrontation as it outlined its response to international sanctions taken over the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced the expulsion of 60 US diplomats and the closure of the US Consulate in St Petersburg yesterday. Today, it said dozens of European diplomats would be joining them with tit-for-tat marching orders.

There were also new measures taken against the UK, the ringleader of the coordinated international response. The British embassy would be given a month to reduce staff to parity with Russian diplomatic staff in the UK, a statement read. The additional British measures were a response to the provocative and unjustified actions leading to the unjustified expulsion of Russian diplomats from a number of states.

Britain contends that the Kremlin orchestrated a chemical attack on former spy Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, using a substance from the family of novichok nerve agents, first developed in the Soviet Union in the 1970s. It has based these claims on the basis of what it describes as capability, intent and motive.

Earlier this month prime minister Theresa May issued an ultimatum to Moscow: accept it either ordered the attack or had lost control of undeclared chemical weapons stocks. Last week, a story in the independent Novaya Gazeta newspaper suggested the latter scenario was not implausible. The article documented the illegal sale of novichok agents to organised crime groups  and their role in the 1995 murder of banker Ivan Kivelidi. It also suggested the agents would remain toxic for decades. The revelations raised the possibility of non-state (or near-state) actors being involved in an operation.

But the Kremlin has not rushed to embrace such a theory. Instead, it has responded angrily to what it describes as a baseless anti-Russian campaign and offered a number of alternative, often barely credible explanations.

"They have blamed the UK, Ukraine, the Czechs, Kremlin critic Bill Browder, the Portland Down weapons research facility and poisoned pizzas," said Ian Bond, a former British diplomat in Moscow. "They have not suggested they lost control of the stuff, and I find that significant in itself."

According to insiders, Moscow was surprised at the scale of this week's unprecedented Western response. In total, 29 states joined the UK in expelling a total of 150 Russian staff. Even at the height of the Cold War, expulsions were never coordinated, but bilateral in nature.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

So far, the British response has been a model exercise in coalition building, said Mr Bond: The Kremlin will not have anticipated the participation of traditionally reluctant allies such as Italy."

The response of the Trump administration to expel 60 diplomats on Monday was seen as particularly insulting in Moscow. While the US president has toned down pro-Russia rhetoric recently, the Kremlin had entertained hopes of improving relations.

 Russian Ambassador on US expulsion of diplomats: The US is 'ruining what little remains' of relations between the countries

Konstantin Kosachev, chair of the Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs, said that the American response had gone beyond Cold War hostilities between two superpowers. Writing on Facebook, he described the new confrontation as a fight without rules. The US was behaving as a bully  complaining about getting a taste of its own medicine, he added.

UK ambassador Laurie Bristow told the Ria news agency that Britain would study the latest Russian response and take action accordingly.

At home, there are growing demands for greater action against Russian money and influence. Home secretary Amber Rudd signalled a review of investor-grade visas issued to Russians before rules were tightened in 2015. Downing Street has also briefed about the possibility of moving against the sale of Russian sovereign debt in London.

But there are questions as to whether such a move would be possible without broader international agreement. It would also be viewed as a highly provocative gesture in Moscow, with unpredictable consequences.

Sergei Karaganov, a political analyst considered close to the Kremlin, told The Independent that Russia would use any instrument to defend its sovereignty. Russians had come to view the British as bad sports and the West with disdain, he said. This followed from absurd allegations that the Kremlin had poisoned a nonentity [Mr Skripal].

Russia was in the process of challenging the long-term hegemony of Europe  and this was not an easy process.

There will be a new world order in 10-15 years, I hope, said Mr Karaganov. For now, we are grappling with an indecent, rearguard action led by groups who are losing.
Palestinian officials say 15 people have now been killed in a day of protest on the Gaza border, with nine shot dead by Israeli army fire and a farmer killed in a separate incident involving pre-dawn tank fire.

In what was the deadliest day for the ongoing conflict since clashes in Gaza last autumn, the Palestinian health ministry said at least another 1,000 Palestinians were injured by a combination of tear gas, rubber-coated steel pellets and live rounds.

Ahead of the start of a day of protests called by the militant group Hamas, a Palestinian farmer was killed by an Israeli tank shell as he worked in a neighbouring field, the ministry said.

Israel had bolstered its security at the border ahead of the expected mass sit-ins, which mark the anniversary of the Palestinians Land Day, and the start of a month and a half of demonstrations over lost land in Gaza.

The Israeli military said Palestinians rolled burning tyres and threw stones at Israeli forces who then retaliated with tear gas and fire at main instigators.

Ahead of the protests, called for by Gazas militant Hamas rulers, Israels military said it doubled its standard troop level along the border, deploying snipers, special forces and paramilitary border police units, which specialise in riot control.

Hamas had said the activities would be peaceful and the chief Israeli military spokesman, Brigadier General Ronen Manelis, said Israel wanted to avoid violence.

The Israeli military said troops directed tank fire towards two suspects who approached the fence along the southern Gaza Strip and acted suspiciously. It said it would not not tolerate damage to the barrier and that it will hold Hamas responsible.

The sit-ins are seen as a new attempt by Hamas to break a crippling, decade-old Gaza border blockade by Israel and Egypt that has made it increasingly difficult for the Islamic militant group to govern.

Other tactics over the years, including cross-border wars with Israel and attempts to reconcile with political rival Mahmoud Abbas, the West Bank-based Palestinian president, have failed to end Gazas isolation.

In the planned protest, Palestinians are setting up tent camps along the border, the first of a series of actions planned in Gaza in the coming weeks.

The activities are to culminate on 15 May, the 70th anniversary of Israels creation, with a march through the border fence.

Palestinians commemorate the date as the anniversary of their mass displacement and uprooting during the 1948 war in the Middle East over Israels creation. The vast majority of Gaza residents are descendants of Palestinians who fled or were driven from communities in what is now Israel.

Palestinians clash with Israeli troops during mass demonstrations Show all 10 1 /10 Palestinians clash with Israeli troops during mass demonstrations Palestinians clash with Israeli troops during mass demonstrations Palestinian protesters flee from teargas AFP/Getty Palestinians clash with Israeli troops during mass demonstrations Israeli soldiers stand as Palestinian protesters gather on the Israel Gaza border AP Palestinians clash with Israeli troops during mass demonstrations A Palestinian is carried on a stretcher after being injured during the demonstration AFP/Getty Palestinians clash with Israeli troops during mass demonstrations Israeli soldiers take aim as they lie prone over an earth barrier along the border with the Gaza strip in the southern Israeli kibbutz of Nahal Oz as Palestinians demonstrate on the other side commemorating Land Day AFP/Getty Palestinians clash with Israeli troops during mass demonstrations Palestinian paramedics evacuate an injured man on the Gaza side of the Israel-Gaza border Reuters Palestinians clash with Israeli troops during mass demonstrations Palestinians demonstrate with crossed-out posters depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump, during a tent city protest near Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip AFP/Getty Images Palestinians clash with Israeli troops during mass demonstrations Palestinian protesters flee from teargas AFP/Getty Palestinians clash with Israeli troops during mass demonstrations Israeli soldiers shoot tear gas grenades towards the Palestinian tent city protest commemorating Land Day AFP/Getty Palestinians clash with Israeli troops during mass demonstrations Palestinian protesters take cover from Israeli troops AP Palestinians clash with Israeli troops during mass demonstrations Palestinians chant slogans as they attend a demonstration near the Gaza Strip border AP

Eighty-year-old Mansi Nassar walked towards the border with the aid of his cane, ignoring calls to remain 700 metres (2,300 feet) from the barrier.

I was born in Beit Darras inside Palestine and I will accept no less than returning to it, he said, referring to his former home village just south of the modern Israeli city of Ashdod. The village no longer exists.

The farmer killed on Friday was identified as 27-year-old Amr Samour. The Palestinian health ministry said he was killed in the south-eastern corner of Gaza.

Yasser Samour, a relative and fellow farmer, said Mr Samour was harvesting parsley before dawn, in hopes of selling it fresh in the market later in the day.

I was working on the next field, Mr Samour said. We heard shelling landing on the field where Amr works. We ran there and found him hit directly with a shell. We were more than a kilometre away from the border.

Another farmer was wounded in the leg by shrapnel, Mr Samour said.

AP, Reuters
If theres a feminist figure from the Bible for the #MeToo era, it could very well be Mary Magdalene.

The major character in the life of Jesus was long maligned in the West and portrayed as a reformed former prostitute. But scholars have adopted a different approach more recently, viewing her as a strong, independent woman who supported Jesus financially and spiritually.

The New Testament tells how Jesus cast demons out of her. She then accompanied Jesus in his ministry around the Galilee, before witnessing his crucifixion, burial and resurrection in Jerusalem, which is being commemorated by Christians this week and next. The Roman Catholic Church and Western Christian churches observe Easter on Sunday, Eastern Orthodox Christians a week later.

Pope Francis took the biggest step yet to rehabilitate Mary Magdalenes image by declaring a major feast day in her honour on 22 June. His 2016 decree put the woman who first proclaimed Jesus resurrection on par with the liturgical celebrations of the male apostles.

By doing this, he established the absolute equality of Mary Magdalene to the apostles, something that has never been done before and is also a point of no return for women in the church, said Lucetta Scarrafia, editor of the Vatican-published Women Church World monthly magazine.

For centuries, Western Christianity depicted Mary Magdalene as a former prostitute, a narrative that began in the sixth century. Pope Gregory the Great conflated Mary Magdalene with an anonymous sinful woman mentioned in the chapter before shes introduced in the Gospel of Luke.

Historic England's best new listed buildings Show all 34 1 /34 Historic England's best new listed buildings Historic England's best new listed buildings Florence Mine. Egremont, West Cumbria Florence Mine in West Cumbria is one of the best-surviving mining sites of any type nationally and is the best-surviving example of an iron mining pit head in England: it retains a full suite of buildings complete with nearly all of its machinery and equipment. From the mid-19th century, iron mining fundamentally altered Western Cumbria and the Furness peninsular, making a significant contribution to the national economy. However, site clearances following industrial decline in the second half of the 20th century, has left few surviving remains of the industry. Florence Mine is believed to have been the last iron mine to close in Europe and was last worked in 2007. Hematite iron ore from the mine is used for the pigment Egremont Red, still found in some lipsticks today. Listed Grade II Historic England Historic England's best new listed buildings University of York, Campus West designed landscape. Heslington, York The University of York Campus West designed landscape was laid out from 1963-1980 It is a high-quality post-war university landscape that fulfils the architects masterplan vision of creating a town in miniature with a pedestrianised environment. One of the key features of the landscape is the lake, which has two small islands, a courtyard pool and a fountain which form a central focal point at the heart of the campus. Offering bursts of green against the surrounding concrete structures are the lake features, reed beds and lily pads, which were introduced to improve water purity. The landscape is relatively unaltered since it was laid out and the design successfully integrates the new landscape with the historic Heslington Hall gardens. It was designed by distinguished mid-20th century architects Andrew Derbyshire and Maurice Lee of RMJM with Frank Clark, the co-founders of the Garden History Society (now The Garden Trust). Listed Grade II Historic England Historic England's best new listed buildings University of York, Campus West designed landscape. Heslington, York The University of York Campus West designed landscape was laid out from 1963-1980 It is a high-quality post-war university landscape that fulfils the architects masterplan vision of creating a town in miniature with a pedestrianised environment. One of the key features of the landscape is the lake, which has two small islands, a courtyard pool and a fountain which form a central focal point at the heart of the campus. Offering bursts of green against the surrounding concrete structures are the lake features, reed beds and lily pads, which were introduced to improve water purity. The landscape is relatively unaltered since it was laid out and the design successfully integrates the new landscape with the historic Heslington Hall gardens. It was designed by distinguished mid-20th century architects Andrew Derbyshire and Maurice Lee of RMJM with Frank Clark, the co-founders of the Garden History Society (now The Garden Trust). Listed Grade II Historic England Historic England's best new listed buildings 30 Coptic Street and 35 Little Russell Street, London Originally constructed in 1888 for the Dairy Supply Company, 30 Coptic Street and 35 Little Russell Street were once the place of manufacture of the iconic milk churn. It is here that they made 17 gallon galvanised iron containers, designed for transporting milk by rail. The company was heavily associated with George Barnham, who invented the containers and went on to become chair of the British Dairy Farmers Association, Mayor of Hampstead and High Sheriff of Middlesex and was knighted in 1904. The buildings still pay homage to their days as the headquarters of the first major manufacturer of dairy equipment, with its original signage, made of Portland stone, still intact. The exterior features ornate brick decoration which advertised the Dairy Supply Company Limited. Listed Grade II Historic England Historic England's best new listed buildings Old Otterington Railway Station. South Otterington, Northallerton, North Yorkshire Travellers on the East Coast Main Line north of York typically pass the former Otterington Railway Station at over 100 miles per hour. This station building with its signal box was built by the London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) in 1932 as a replacement for the Victorian station that had been cleared away to allow the expansion of the line to four tracks. This was part of LNERs rivalry with the London Midland Scottish Railway in providing ever faster rail services between London and Scotland. Perhaps in deference to more conservative architectural tastes of this part of rural North Yorkshire, the design was carefully moderated with neo-Georgian detailing. The 1930s modernity of Otterington Railway Station however never changed the fact that this was always a sleepy, little-used wayside railway station. It closed to passengers in 1958 and to goods traffic in 1964. It's remarkable survival is owed to its passing into sympathetic private ownership. Listed Grade II Historic England Historic England's best new listed buildings University of York, Central Hall. Heslington, York The University of York was one of seven new universities founded in England between 1958 and 1961. Central Hall is the centrepiece of the Universitys western campus and has a striking and bold design. The exceptionally detailed development plan behind the campus was heralded as the beginning of contemporary university planning in Britain. The building is a concrete structure with a suspended mild steel tubular roof clad in aluminium, with the upper floors, where the auditorium is located, cantilevered out on the lake sides. It continues a historic tradition established by late 19th century and early 20th century red brick universities in featuring a great hall for special events. Central Hall was designed by Andrew Derbyshire and Maurice Lee of RMJM in 1966-1968 with the notable mid-20th century architects, Stirrat Johnson-Marshall and Andrew Derbyshire. Listed Grade II Historic England Historic England's best new listed buildings Pedestrian Subway, Vestibule, Terrace and Stairs beneath Crystal Palace Parade. South London The Crystal Palace subway, vestibule, terrace and stairs provide an elaborate pedestrian passageway, with finely-crafted Byzantine-style vaulting in red and cream brick and chequered floors in alternating stone. The structure dates from 1865 and was built to link a new train station directly to the entrance of the Crystal Palace. Designed by highly-accomplished architect Charles Barry Junior, the quality of construction is excellent. It is an architecturally imaginative solution to the problem of transporting visitors beneath Crystal Palace Parade and providing a dramatic introduction to the palace itself. The subways historic interest is with its association with the Great Exhibition, one of the most important cultural events of the Victorian era. The subway was originally listed at Grade II* in 1972 and was upgraded to Grade II this year. Historic England Historic England's best new listed buildings Pedestrian Subway, Vestibule, Terrace and Stairs beneath Crystal Palace Parade. South London The Crystal Palace subway, vestibule, terrace and stairs provide an elaborate pedestrian passageway, with finely-crafted Byzantine-style vaulting in red and cream brick and chequered floors in alternating stone. The structure dates from 1865 and was built to link a new train station directly to the entrance of the Crystal Palace. Designed by highly-accomplished architect Charles Barry Junior, the quality of construction is excellent. It is an architecturally imaginative solution to the problem of transporting visitors beneath Crystal Palace Parade and providing a dramatic introduction to the palace itself. The subways historic interest is with its association with the Great Exhibition, one of the most important cultural events of the Victorian era. The subway was originally listed at Grade II in 1972 and was upgraded to Grade II* this year. Historic England Historic England's best new listed buildings Memorial Bus Shelter. Osmington, Dorset The thatched memorial bus shelter at Osmington in West Dorset is located on the south side of the A353 and is an important landmark in the village. It dates to around the 1940s and was built by Harry and Ethel Parry-Jones in memory of their son, David, a lieutenant in the 1st Battalion of The Rifle Brigade who died at the age of 20 on 3 August 1944 during the Battle of Normandy. Local materials were used including Purbeck stone and thatch which complements the bus shelters surroundings. Despite its vulnerability as a piece of street furniture, the bus shelter has not been significantly altered since it was first built. It demonstrates that even modest and functional structures can form eloquent and valuable memorials for their local communities. Listed Grade II Historic England Historic England's best new listed buildings The Assembly Rooms. Charlton Although modest in scale, the Assembly Rooms building has great presence with its bright, red brick exterior. This charming community hall boasts an exuberant design with its late-19th century, Jacobean Revival style, terracotta tiles and stone detailing. Since its construction in 1881, and despite being damaged in the Second World War, the hall has only seen minor alterations, with the interior retaining its original plan and stage. Unlike other community halls of around this date, which tend to be built on a tighter budget, the Assembly Rooms at Charlton were funded by the wealthy benefactor, Sir Spencer Maryon-Wilson, who lived in the nearby Grade I listed Charlton House. The rich decoration of the Assembly Rooms features his family Coat of Arms, along with terracotta panels embellished with floral motifs, and is a good example of the impact of Victorian philanthropy on this simple building type. Listed Grade II Historic England Historic England's best new listed buildings The Assembly Rooms. Charlton Although modest in scale, the Assembly Rooms building has great presence with its bright, red brick exterior. This charming community hall boasts an exuberant design with its late-19th century, Jacobean Revival style, terracotta tiles and stone detailing. Since its construction in 1881, and despite being damaged in the Second World War, the hall has only seen minor alterations, with the interior retaining its original plan and stage. Unlike other community halls of around this date, which tend to be built on a tighter budget, the Assembly Rooms at Charlton were funded by the wealthy benefactor, Sir Spencer Maryon-Wilson, who lived in the nearby Grade I listed Charlton House. The rich decoration of the Assembly Rooms features his family Coat of Arms, along with terracotta panels embellished with floral motifs, and is a good example of the impact of Victorian philanthropy on this simple building type. Listed Grade II Historic England Historic England's best new listed buildings St John the Baptist Church, boundary walls, vicarage and school. Pendeen, Cornwall The parish of Pendeen in Cornwall was established in 1846, and its first vicar, Reverend Robert Aitken, was tasked to provide a church for the community. Aitken was renowned for his unusual preaching style and this was deemed to be well-suited to pull people away from the dominance of Methodism in the countys mining communities. Aitken took it upon himself to design the church, the neighbouring vicarage and school, using local materials. Many of the fixtures and fittings were also made by local craftspeople, and Aitken donated his own collection of 16th century and 17th century Flemish and German glass roundels to enhance the windows. From 1850 until 1852, the predominantly-mining community worked to quarry stone from Carn Earnes, the hill above the church, in order to build the church and its boundary walls. Listed Grade II Historic England Historic England's best new listed buildings St John the Baptist Church, boundary walls, vicarage and school. Pendeen, Cornwall The parish of Pendeen in Cornwall was established in 1846, and its first vicar, Reverend Robert Aitken, was tasked to provide a church for the community. Aitken was renowned for his unusual preaching style and this was deemed to be well-suited to pull people away from the dominance of Methodism in the countys mining communities. Aitken took it upon himself to design the church, the neighbouring vicarage and school, using local materials. Many of the fixtures and fittings were also made by local craftspeople, and Aitken donated his own collection of 16th century and 17th century Flemish and German glass roundels to enhance the windows. From 1850 until 1852, the predominantly-mining community worked to quarry stone from Carn Earnes, the hill above the church, in order to build the church and its boundary walls. Listed Grade II Historic England Historic England's best new listed buildings Cricket Pavilion. Uppingham School, Rutland Sir Walter John Tapper, a notable architect with many listed buildings to his name, was commissioned by Uppingham School to follow the tradition of public schools and universities investing in cricket pavilions. Uppingham Schools pavilion has a deep thatched roof which sweeps low over the eaves and together with the stone windows with leaded lights, they combine to create a picturesque and well-proportioned design. Its interior has finely detailed features such as the delicate leaf-like plasterwork on the ceiling and ornate ironmongery on the windows. The principal room of the pavilion is lined with square panelling which is inscribed with the names of cricket players dating back to 1856, some of whom went on to become internationally renowned including Percy Chapman who captained the England cricket team and cricket broadcaster Jonathan Agnew MBE. Listed Grade II Historic England Historic England's best new listed buildings Cricket Pavilion. Uppingham School, Rutland Sir Walter John Tapper, a notable architect with many listed buildings to his name, was commissioned by Uppingham School to follow the tradition of public schools and universities investing in cricket pavilions. Uppingham Schools pavilion has a deep thatched roof which sweeps low over the eaves and together with the stone windows with leaded lights, they combine to create a picturesque and well-proportioned design. Its interior has finely detailed features such as the delicate leaf-like plasterwork on the ceiling and ornate ironmongery on the windows. The principal room of the pavilion is lined with square panelling which is inscribed with the names of cricket players dating back to 1856, some of whom went on to become internationally renowned including Percy Chapman who captained the England cricket team and cricket broadcaster Jonathan Agnew MBE. Listed Grade II Historic England Historic England's best new listed buildings The Cock Sign. Sutton High Street The Cock Sign stands at a prominent location at the junction of Sutton High Street and Carshalton Road. It dates to around 1907 and originates from a pub called The Cock which was located at a junction known as The Cock Cross Roads and owned by Gentleman Jackson (1769-1845), a celebrated English boxer who won the title Champion of England. The Cock is a tall structure which was originally a grand gas lamp-post and pub sign, later converted to electricity and then to a road sign with multiple finger posts. It has been moved a few metres from its original location outside the Cock Hotel which is now demolished. The changes made to the sign over the years contribute to its special interest in helping to tell the story of Sutton High Street and how the town changed during the late 19th century and early 20th century. The sign was produced by the manufacturer Hart, Son, Peard and Co, who supplied some of the leading architects and designers of the day. Listed Grade II Historic England Historic England's best new listed buildings The Cock Sign. Sutton High Street The Cock Sign stands at a prominent location at the junction of Sutton High Street and Carshalton Road. It dates to around 1907 and originates from a pub called The Cock which was located at a junction known as The Cock Cross Roads and owned by Gentleman Jackson (1769-1845), a celebrated English boxer who won the title Champion of England. The Cock is a tall structure which was originally a grand gas lamp-post and pub sign, later converted to electricity and then to a road sign with multiple finger posts. It has been moved a few metres from its original location outside the Cock Hotel which is now demolished. The changes made to the sign over the years contribute to its special interest in helping to tell the story of Sutton High Street and how the town changed during the late 19th century and early 20th century. The sign was produced by the manufacturer Hart, Son, Peard and Co, who supplied some of the leading architects and designers of the day. Listed Grade II Historic England Historic England's best new listed buildings East Mellwaters. County Durham This walled settlement at East Mellwaters is a rare form of late prehistoric settlement. Traditionally, in Northern England, Iron Age and Romano-British native settlements take a variety of forms, with enclosures being defined by a bank and a ditch. Higher status enclosures, however, were formed of stone and have now been reduced to stony earthworks, as at East Mellwaters. The site is adjacent to other prehistoric settlement remains, which are thought to represent a succession of settlement sites established over the centuries. Scheduled Monument Historic England's best new listed buildings Hopkins House. Hampstead Architects Michael and Patty Hopkins built the house as a family home in 1975-1976, which also served as their office until the early 1980s. The couple designed and constructed the house as a study in making use of the maximum, flexible space of the site and were influenced by the Eames Case Study House of 1949. The house is notable for its energy efficiency, which includes the low thermal demands of the house, sparing use of materials and Venetian blinds. The highly elegant and economic lightweight steel frame and glass building made in the High-Tech tradition, is particularly eye-catching amongst the Victorian mansions typical of Hampstead and the Regency villas that make Downshire Hill distinctive from the rest of the village. The house won an RIBA award in 1977 and a Civic Trust Award in 1979. The couple jointly won the RIBA Gold Medal in 1994 and Michael Hopkins went on to receive a knighthood for his achievements in 1995. Listed Grade II Historic England Historic England's best new listed buildings 74 Dyer Street. Cirencester, Gloucestershire The former office of the Wiltshire and Gloucestershire Standard. The Wiltshire and Gloucestershire Standard was founded in Malmesbury in 1837 and its production moved to Cirencester in 1840. It has continued to bring local news to the people of the two counties ever since. In 1904 the papers owner, George Henry Harmer, who had worked his way up through the firm from reporter to proprietor, sought to unite the printing and publishing arms of the paper on the same site for the first time, and commissioned local architect VA Lawson to design a new publishing office on a narrow site in Dyer Street, retaining the existing printing sheds to the rear. The resulting three-storey building has an imposing presence in a street of otherwise modest Cotswold buildings. It is in an Arts and Crafts style, taller than its neighbours, with jetties which project the elaborate timber-framed upper floors out over the street. Listed Grade II Historic England Historic England's best new listed buildings Wing Test Hangars. Rolls-Royce Hucknall, Nottinghamshire In 1934, Rolls Royce leased two hangars at the Hucknall airfield, which was established in 1917, and created a testing programme there for aero engines and equipment. The building is largely intact and features many surviving fixtures dating back to the mid-20th century, including an engine-testing control panel, observation windows, wing spar mount assembly, roller doors, pierced metal sheet lining, as well as fittings and support for a de-tuner. The site saw many world-leading developments such as the Merlin Engine, which was tested, developed and adapted for the American Mustang fighter aircraft there. The worlds first flight of a commercial jet aircraft flew from Hucknall to the Paris Air show in the late 1940s, using Frank Whittles jet engine which had been developed on site. Listed Grade II Historic England Historic England's best new listed buildings Wing Test Hangars. Rolls-Royce Hucknall, Nottinghamshire In 1934, Rolls Royce leased two hangars at the Hucknall airfield, which was established in 1917, and created a testing programme there for aero engines and equipment. The building is largely intact and features many surviving fixtures dating back to the mid-20th century, including an engine-testing control panel, observation windows, wing spar mount assembly, roller doors, pierced metal sheet lining, as well as fittings and support for a de-tuner. The site saw many world-leading developments such as the Merlin Engine, which was tested, developed and adapted for the American Mustang fighter aircraft there. The worlds first flight of a commercial jet aircraft flew from Hucknall to the Paris Air show in the late 1940s, using Frank Whittles jet engine which had been developed on site. Listed Grade II Historic England Historic England's best new listed buildings Lych gate to the east of Church of St John the Evangelist. Newcastle on Clun, Shropshire The lych gate to the east of Church of St John the Evangelist in Newcastle on Clun dates from 1880 and forms a picturesque entrance to St Johns churchyard. The design follows the Arts and Crafts traditions, bringing together joinery, ironmongery and slate work and is inspired by medieval predecessors. The roof mimics that of the lych gate claimed to be the oldest in the country, at the Church of St George in Beckenham, Kent, originally constructed in the 13th century. Within the timber-framed passageway of the lych gate is a revolving gate, which is an unusual feature and one of only a handful in existence in England. Lych derives from the Anglo-Saxon or German word for corpse, and is named after the structures primary function of storing the coffin before burial. Lych gates also serve as a meeting point and shelter for funeral parties before they are met by the priest. Listed Grade II Historic England Historic England's best new listed buildings Tidal Observatory. Newlyn, Cornwall The fishing industry in Newlyn on the south coast of Cornwall expanded in the 1880s, resulting in the construction of a new harbour and two piers. In the early 20th century, the south pier was extended to give better protection to the harbour and a tidal observatory was built at its north end. The observatory was one of three constructed at the request of Ordnance Survey to establish Mean Sea Level. With the observatory being completed in 1914, hourly measurements were taken of the height of the tide between 1915 and 1921, determining that Newlyn was the most stable and therefore the principal place to establish Mean Sea Level for the entire country. Over the next 100 years, the observatory contributed key tidal data to studies in oceanography, geology and climate change. Listed Grade II Historic England Historic England's best new listed buildings Old Lifeboat House. Walton-on-the-Naze, Essex The former lifeboat house, built in 1884, was designed by CH Cooke and represents the crucial role played by the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) in saving lives at sea since the 19th century. Its wide gabled structure and ornamental treatment, made up of fish-scale tiling, decorative moulded brick, and a beautifully incorporated bay window, create a finely detailed and strikingly composed building. The local community played an important part in raising funds for the site, which housed Waltons first lifeboat, a 37ft self-righter Norfolk/ Suffolk class sailing & pulling lifeboat, a design suited to the East coasts shallow waters. Baroness Bolsover launched the boat in a ceremony, held in Walton, on 18 November 1884 outside the new Lifeboat House where the boat had recently arrived by train. Listed Grade II Historic England Historic England's best new listed buildings Cattle Trough and Drinking Fountain. Spaniards Road, Hampstead Cattle troughs were once commonplace in Britain, with the Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association (MDFCTA) responsible for over 1000 of them. Around 500 of these were located in London, however a large number have now been lost. The trough in Spaniards Road was believed to have been erected in 1916, making it a particularly late example of its type. Although the pump and spout mechanism are missing, the cattle trough is an important reminder that horse-drawn transport was commonplace in the early 20th century, despite the increasing use of motorised transport. In providing free drinking water for horses, charities like the MDFCTA also played an important role in raising standards in animal welfare. Listed Grade II Historic England Historic England's best new listed buildings Caynton Manor Gatehouse. Newport, Shropshire This early 17th century gatehouse to the former Caynton Manor is a remarkable survival, previously undiscovered. Originally a formal gateway to a wealthy country house, it has been used for agricultural purposes since the 18th century. While very little is known about the house which the gatehouse served, the quality of the gatehouse signifies a substantial building of high status. It is a well-proportioned building with a red sandstone base, a tiled roof and good quality detailing, characteristic of this building type at the time it was built, around 1635. Of particular interest is the carved detailing around the archways and the elaborate plasterwork in the principal rooms inside the gatehouse. This listing means that it can now be assessed for inclusion on Historic Englands Heritage at Risk Register, which would enable Historic England to offer specialist technical advice to help secure its future. Listed Grade II* Historic England Historic England's best new listed buildings Caynton Manor Gatehouse. Newport, Shropshire This early 17th century gatehouse to the former Caynton Manor is a remarkable survival, previously undiscovered. Originally a formal gateway to a wealthy country house, it has been used for agricultural purposes since the 18th century. While very little is known about the house which the gatehouse served, the quality of the gatehouse signifies a substantial building of high status. It is a well-proportioned building with a red sandstone base, a tiled roof and good quality detailing, characteristic of this building type at the time it was built, around 1635. Of particular interest is the carved detailing around the archways and the elaborate plasterwork in the principal rooms inside the gatehouse. This listing means that it can now be assessed for inclusion on Historic Englands Heritage at Risk Register, which would enable Historic England to offer specialist technical advice to help secure its future. Listed Grade II* Historic England Historic England's best new listed buildings Garden at Kingcombe. Chipping Camden, Gloucestershire The garden at Kingcombe complements Grade II listed Kingcombe House. It is an increasingly rare survival of an Arts and Crafts garden laid out in the 1930s. The pre-war garden is well-preserved and is an impressive and thoughtful design which includes Italian influences in the terraced garden including Italian steps to divide it from the more functional parts of the garden and to provide a vertical link from the top of the terraces to the meadow beyond the garden. Intact gardens dating from the 1930s are rare in England. It was designed initially by Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe and Russell Page with Sir Gordon Russell between 1927 and 1936 with later additions by Sir Gordon Russell from the 1940s through to the 1970s. During the Second World War and the austerity years that followed, few private houses were built so commissions for new gardens were few and far between. Grade II Registered Park and Garden Historic England Historic England's best new listed buildings Garden at Kingcombe. Chipping Camden, Gloucestershire The garden at Kingcombe complements Grade II listed Kingcombe House. It is an increasingly rare survival of an Arts and Crafts garden laid out in the 1930s. The pre-war garden is well-preserved and is an impressive and thoughtful design which includes Italian influences in the terraced garden including Italian steps to divide it from the more functional parts of the garden and to provide a vertical link from the top of the terraces to the meadow beyond the garden. Intact gardens dating from the 1930s are rare in England. It was designed initially by Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe and Russell Page with Sir Gordon Russell between 1927 and 1936 with later additions by Sir Gordon Russell from the 1940s through to the 1970s. During the Second World War and the austerity years that followed, few private houses were built so commissions for new gardens were few and far between. Grade II Registered Park and Garden Historic England Historic England's best new listed buildings Robin Hood and his Merry Men. Castle Place, Nottingham Acclaimed sculptor and Nottingham native, James Arthur Woodford RA OBE was commissioned to craft this imaginative group of sculptures, depicting the legendary characters of Robin Hood and his Merry Men, to commemorate the visit of their Royal Highnesses the Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh for the citys quincentenary celebrations in 1949. Woodford conceived the group of sculptures to occupy the land in the outer ditch of Nottingham Castle, the setting of one of the most popular legendary tales of Robin Hood. The sculptures form a significant group with the Grade I listed Nottingham Castle. Listed Grade II Historic England Historic England's best new listed buildings Robin Hood and his Merry Men. Castle Place, Nottingham Acclaimed sculptor and Nottingham native, James Arthur Woodford RA OBE was commissioned to craft this imaginative group of sculptures, depicting the legendary characters of Robin Hood and his Merry Men, to commemorate the visit of their Royal Highnesses the Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh for the citys quincentenary celebrations in 1949. Woodford conceived the group of sculptures to occupy the land in the outer ditch of Nottingham Castle, the setting of one of the most popular legendary tales of Robin Hood. The sculptures form a significant group with the Grade I listed Nottingham Castle. Listed Grade II Historic England Historic England's best new listed buildings Cappleside Barn. Rathmell, North Yorkshire Cappleside Barn in Ribblesdale, North Yorkshire was built in 1714. It is a large barn with a remarkable ornamental roof structure with carefully shaped timbers that also include carved motifs such as daisy-wheels. At first, Historic England thought that these roof timbers had been reused from a high-status medieval house, but dendrochronology has shown that the timbers came from trees felled shortly before the construction of the barn. The barn, with a cutting-edge design for its time, includes integrated housing for cows which allowed more cattle to be kept over the winter, increasing herd sizes and farming prosperity. To protect this investment, 18th century belief systems saw the use of witches marks or special carved motifs placed near openings to ward off witches and evil spirits. Listed Grade II* Historic England Historic England's best new listed buildings Cappleside Barn. Rathmell, North Yorkshire Cappleside Barn in Ribblesdale, North Yorkshire was built in 1714. It is a large barn with a remarkable ornamental roof structure with carefully shaped timbers that also include carved motifs such as daisy-wheels. At first, Historic England thought that these roof timbers had been reused from a high-status medieval house, but dendrochronology has shown that the timbers came from trees felled shortly before the construction of the barn. The barn, with a cutting-edge design for its time, includes integrated housing for cows which allowed more cattle to be kept over the winter, increasing herd sizes and farming prosperity. To protect this investment, 18th century belief systems saw the use of witches marks or special carved motifs placed near openings to ward off witches and evil spirits. Listed Grade II* Historic England

Only in 1969 did the Catholic Church roll back centuries of labelling Mary Magdalene as such, stating she was distinct from the sinful woman mentioned in the Gospel of Luke. Eastern Orthodox Christians never depicted her as a prostitute.

Mary Magdalene was from a thriving fishing village on the Sea of Galilee named Magdala, which has been excavated extensively by archaeologists in recent decades.

The site is home to the oldest known synagogue in the Galilee, where a stone bearing the likeness of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem was found, as well as a marketplace, ritual baths and fishing harbour. Marcela Zapata-Meza, the lead archaeologist at the site, has called it the Israeli Pompeii.

Modern scholars have adopted a different understanding of Mary Magdalene and regard her as one of Jesus most prominent disciples, who stood by him to the end while his most devoted apostles did not.

Historical tradition says she was a prostitute from Magdala, said Jennifer Ristine, director of the Magdalena Institute at Magdala. Reanalysing that reputation that she had we can see she was probably a woman of greater social status, higher social status, a woman of wealth who accompanied Jesus as we see in Luke 8:2, helping Jesus and his disciples with her own resources.

Nonetheless, the image of Mary Magdalene as a licentious, sexualised woman has persisted in Western culture, including in Jesus Christ Superstar and The Da Vinci Code.

Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, the Vaticans culture minister, said Mary Magdalenes reputation was sullied by her depiction in art over the centuries.

Art history made her become a prostitute, which is something that is not present in the Gospels, he said, adding that she also has been portrayed as Jesus wife.

It is important to find the real face of Mary Magdalene, who is a woman who represents the importance of the female aspect on the side of Christ, he told the Associated Press at the Vatican.

The Gospel of Mary, an early Christian text, depicted her as a visionary who received secret revelations and knowledge from Jesus.

Claire Pfann, academic dean at the University of the Holy Land in Jerusalem, said Mary Magdalene must be seen for what she was: An independent woman who has discretionary time and wealth from the city of Magdala, not identified by a father or a husband, whose life was dramatically restored, healed, changed by her encounter with this Jewish itinerant teacher and healer, Jesus of Nazareth.

It takes a long time for serious scholarship to trickle down to the popular level, she added.

A new film on the life of Mary Magdalene, starring Rooney Mara in the title role, Joaquin Phoenix as Jesus and Chiwetel Ejiofor as Peter the Apostle, recasts her in that mold.

 Mary Magdalene- trailer

The film has been released in Europe and Australia. A release date for the United States has not been set, following the collapse of its original distributor, the Weinstein Company, after a series of sexual harassment and assault claims against founder Harvey Weinstein. The rash of allegations made against Weinstein spawned the global #MeToo movement.

Ms Ristine said Mary Magdalene plays a critical role in the New Testament and carries an essential pivotal message of Christianity.

Why is a woman there, giving testimony to that in a culture where woman are just not paid attention to, or not placed as witnesses? Ms Ristine asked. Well, this speaks very strongly to women today, that the power of their witness, the power of their testimony to speak up for a truth, can have effects that ripple down through the centuries.

AP
One of the joys of travel is encountering the unexpected; drinking red wine with a Transylvanian count who loves bats, say, or realising youre swimming next to the president of Kazakhstan.

I wasnt expecting this kind of experience along the north coast of Scotland, but it just goes to show  places can always surprise you.

Ive driven for half a day north from Ullapool through the blistered landscape of Assynt, where ancient rocks create a wilderness that looks like a combination of Iceland and Patagonia.

I arrive at the village of Durness  90 miles from John OGroats  and pull up outside Cocoa Mountain, the most incongruously placed luxury chocolatier and cafe imaginable. While the scenery beyond the village is stunning, the immediate surroundings are less promising: Cocoa Mountain is housed in a squat building in Balnakeil Craft Village, where former army buildings linked to an early warning system of nuclear attack have been converted into a collection of artist studios and small-scale industries.

Unwrap the outer layer, step inside and its a different story. Cocoa Mountains shelves are stocked with exotic-flavoured truffles: chilli and lemongrass, peanut butter and cranberry, ginger and cinnamon. Pieces of stem ginger are entombed in dark chocolate; shards of white chocolate with pecan dangle temptingly on a ledge. The show-stopper is the hot chocolate, frothing to the brim and oozing with melted white and dark chocolate, a combination so gloriously gloopy you suspect it might retain its shape were you to remove it from the mug. For those in need of a buzz rather than a chocolate-induced coma, the fair-trade Mountain Mocha coffee is a winner.

James and Paul of Cocoa Mountain, and the stunning scenery of the north-west Highlands (Cocoa Mountain)

The cafe is run by Paul Maden and partner James Findlay who opened for business in 2006. The obvious question when I meet Paul is, why here? Why not here? he replies. Chocolate has to come 4,000 miles or so to get to the UK. Getting it the last 400 miles isnt such a big deal.

The challenges tend to be more local. I visit on a Sunday afternoon and the cafe is packed, with all 60 covers occupied and a queue out the door. Theyve run out of milk for the following morning and James has had to drive 70 miles  the best part of two hours  to pick up 60 litres from Ullapool.

Prior to opening, Paul was a bit of an entrepreneur with itchy feet. He was studying for a PhD and lecturing in economics. Friends suggested that he and James should start selling the chocolates they made at home. So many chocolatiers copy the Belgian style and shops; we wanted to do it our own way. We ditched preservatives and decided not to use flavourings. We decided the chocolate had to come first, the business case came second.

Cocoa Mountain produces luxury chocolates in north-west Scotland

Presentation is important. People eat with their eyes. If people hadnt liked it, we would have simply packed up and gone home.

Now, they get mail orders from around the world. Is Paul surprised at how popular the enterprise has become? Im constantly amazed, he says. We have an enormous international customer base. The week before my visit, an American drove directly to Cocoa Mountain after arriving at Heathrow airport.

In fact, Durness, while far from being on the main tourist trail, is not entirely a backwater on the roof of Scotland either. The village has long been a popular summer holiday destination for campers and families. Sango Bay, one of the most northerly beaches in the UK, is a delight, with weathered stacks and rocks that pockmark its soft sands, and theres the nearby wonder of the limestone recesses of Smoo Cave.

Cocoa Mountains chilli and lemongrass truffles (Cocoa Mountain)

Trade has also increased since the coastal routes north of Inverness were rebranded as the North Coast 500  the roads have been there for decades, its just that very few people knew about them.

Durness is simply stunning  I just fell for the place. The kind of people who appreciate what we do are the kind of people who appreciate coming to this area. I think were all on the same wavelength, says Paul.

Cocoa Mountains signature chocolate selection box (Cocoa Mountain)

Even so, he admits the location leaves him feeling not plugged into society.

I keep thinking one day Im going to wake up and nobody will be here, he says. As long as long-distance and weary travellers are in need of a chocolate shot in the arm, thats unlikely to be the case.

Travel essentials

Getting there

Cocoa Mountain is only easily accessible by road. The Cocoa Mountain team recommend travelling via Bonar Bridge and Lairg, taking the A838 from Laxford Bridge, the west coast route via Ullapool, or via Thurso, Bettyhill and Tongue on the north coast for the best scenery.

Staying there

Mackays Rooms (visitdurness.com) is a boutique B&B in Durness with sumptuous interiors. Doubles from 129, B&B.

More information

cocoamountain.co.uk
By first light yesterday Palestinian preparations for the Gaza Return March seemed well underway: tents were being pitched all along the Gaza buffer zone and old men were arriving with banners proclaiming the names of their villages, from which they were expelled as children 70 years ago, never to return.

Palestinian factions in Gaza, including the ruling Hamas, had ordered that the demonstration be peaceful, insisting marchers to keep well back from Israels barrier wall.

With 100 snipers positioned on the barrier, however, Israels preparations were a show of brute force and soon after dawn an Israeli tank shell had killed Omar Samour, a Palestinian farmer with land near the buffer zone  the first Return March martyr but certainly not the last.

Israels ruthless response to the Gazas peaceful Return March should come as no surprise. The Israeli military justified the show of force on the grounds that Hamas might exploit the event in some way with acts of violence. But Israels real fear of the return marchers runs far deeper. Nothing has ever frightened Israel more than the demands of Palestinian refugees for a right to return to their pre-1948 homes. And no group of refugees has a stronger case than those of Gaza who live within a few miles of their former villages.

Palestinians clash with Israeli troops during mass demonstrations Show all 10 1 /10 Palestinians clash with Israeli troops during mass demonstrations Palestinians clash with Israeli troops during mass demonstrations Palestinian protesters flee from teargas AFP/Getty Palestinians clash with Israeli troops during mass demonstrations Israeli soldiers stand as Palestinian protesters gather on the Israel Gaza border AP Palestinians clash with Israeli troops during mass demonstrations A Palestinian is carried on a stretcher after being injured during the demonstration AFP/Getty Palestinians clash with Israeli troops during mass demonstrations Israeli soldiers take aim as they lie prone over an earth barrier along the border with the Gaza strip in the southern Israeli kibbutz of Nahal Oz as Palestinians demonstrate on the other side commemorating Land Day AFP/Getty Palestinians clash with Israeli troops during mass demonstrations Palestinian paramedics evacuate an injured man on the Gaza side of the Israel-Gaza border Reuters Palestinians clash with Israeli troops during mass demonstrations Palestinians demonstrate with crossed-out posters depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump, during a tent city protest near Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip AFP/Getty Images Palestinians clash with Israeli troops during mass demonstrations Palestinian protesters flee from teargas AFP/Getty Palestinians clash with Israeli troops during mass demonstrations Israeli soldiers shoot tear gas grenades towards the Palestinian tent city protest commemorating Land Day AFP/Getty Palestinians clash with Israeli troops during mass demonstrations Palestinian protesters take cover from Israeli troops AP Palestinians clash with Israeli troops during mass demonstrations Palestinians chant slogans as they attend a demonstration near the Gaza Strip border AP

The Arab-Israeli 1948 war, which brought the Jewish state into being, also brought about the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from lands they had lived on for hundreds of years. The Palestinians call this loss of land their Nakba or catastrophe. Of those expelled more than 200,000 fled to Gaza.

These refugees came from villages in the Gaza area, close to what is now the Gaza barrier wall.

In 1948 the United Nations passed Resolution 194 agreeing that the refugees should have a right to return to their villages, but Israel always refused. From the first days any who tried to get back  to harvest their lands or to bring belongings  were shot as infiltrators or locked up as terrorists. As the years passed the refugees claims were set aside as unresolvable and David Ben-Gurion, Israels first prime minister, expressed the hope that the old would die and the young would forget.

The refugees, however, have never forgotten, as the Return March protest demonstrates.

In view of Gazas daily struggles, living under siege, it might seem surprising that they have time to think of the past. Since Hamas took power in Gaza in 2007, the two million people here have lived under economic blockade, imprisoned by a barrier wall. The Palestinians here have also lived through three wars. The last in 2014 killed more than 2,500, destroyed many thousands of homes and crippled infrastructure.

But it is precisely because of the recent wars that memories of 1948 have been revived. Such was the destruction of 2014 that Gazans spoke of a second Nakba. And the deprivations of living under siege have only reminded the people here of what they had as self-sufficient farmers in the villages they inhabited before 1948.

Whether the Return March explodes in more bloodshed, or plays out peacefully as the participants hope, is hard to predict.

As Hamas arranged for buses to take people from the mosques after Friday prayers, the numbers swelled. The intention is to maintain the protest until 15 May  Nakba Day, when the 70th anniversary commemoration will reach a pitch. If Hamas can keep the peace on its side of the buffer zone, the case for the right of return will be heard, perhaps louder and clearer than it has for many years.

The refugees despair is also fuelled by Donald Trumps decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem. This has driven many in Gaza to the belief they now have nothing to lose but rise up and join the march. With no realistic peace deal now on the table, many in Gaza believe the only way to resolve the conflict is to return to the root cause  and that means to address their right of return.
Queues formed outside pubs in Ireland as a 90-year ban on serving alcohol on Good Friday was lifted.

Some punters eager to experience the novelty of ordering a pint on the holy day were lined up outside early opening bars from 7am.

In what was set to be a long and productive day for hostelry owners, many pubs were buzzing throughout Friday morning as revellers reaped the benefits of the law change.

Publican Brian Conlon, of Slatterys Bar on Capel Street in Dublin city centre, was one of the first to pull a legal Good Friday pint at 7am on Friday morning.

It was busier than usual this morning, when I opened up at 7am there were queues at the front door, he said.

I think people were more coming in for the novelty factor that it was the first time in 90-odd years that you could legally have a drink.

He said many of the punters were tourists from places such as England, Spain and Germany who arrived in Dublin and needed to wait until lunch to check-in to hotels.

They are all in having pints, they are all having breakfast  that option wouldnt have been there last year, so I think its a great thing, he said.

Some bars Ive heard dont want to open, but its a choice  you dont have to go drink on Good Friday, but if you want to go drink we are open, we are serving drink and well be here all day.

Expand Close Students Juan Pizarro, from Chile, and Yadira Perez, from Mexico, enjoying a drink (Brian Lawless/PA) / Facebook

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Whatsapp Students Juan Pizarro, from Chile, and Yadira Perez, from Mexico, enjoying a drink (Brian Lawless/PA)

Mr Conlon said his staff were happy to work on what previously had been a day off.

They are all excited to come in and work, they want to be part of history because of us being the first bar to actually serve drink at 7am, he said.

They all wanted to get their picture in the paper.

Slatterys regular Jim Croke welcomed the lifting of the ban.

Its very good, its great for tourism and its good for the country, he said.

Mr Croke said he would have been in Dublins Connolly train station  one of the few places exempt from the prohibition  if the pubs had still been closed on Good Friday.

He said he was delighted to be enjoying a pint in his local instead.

And Ill have another few before the days in, he added.

The Intoxicating Liquor Bill 2017, which was voted through the Dail parliament in January, overturned a ban on Good Friday drinking that had existed since 1927.

The move came after years of campaigning from a hospitality industry infuriated at the annual lost revenue opportunity at the start of the Easter bank holiday weekend.

Some Christian campaigners remain opposed to legislation that won the support of all parties in the Dail.

The Intoxicating Liquor Act of 1927 also banned drinking on St Patricks Day in Ireland  March 17. But that ban was lifted at the outset of the 1960s.

There were some exceptions to the 90-year Good Friday ban  alcohol could be served to hotel residents; those travelling by air, rail or sea; or people attending a theatre show or a sporting event such as greyhound racing.

In 2010 pub owners in Limerick were granted special dispensation to open when the city hosted a high-profile rugby match between Munster and Leinster.

Donall OKeeffe, chief executive of the Licensed Vintners Association (LVA), said the decision to allow pubs to open on Good Friday was long overdue.

The removal of this the ban puts Ireland on par with the rest of our European neighbours, said Mr OKeeffe.

This change is good news, not only for Dublin pubs but also for our wider hospitality and tourism sectors, as people flock to the capital over the Easter weekend expecting the best of Irish hospitality.
Police have seized what they believe could be one of Northern Irelands largest ever hauls of herbal cannabis.

The drugs were found on a shipping pallet located inside an industrial sized fuel tank at a property in Dromore, County Down, on Friday.

Three men and two women were detained at the address and officers carried out searches at other locations.

The estimated street value of the drugs is currently unknown.

Cross-border operation leads to five arrests and what may be NI's largest ever cannabis seizure https://t.co/HVeoNv42hn #keepingpeoplesafe  Police Service NI (@PoliceServiceNI) March 30, 2018

The discovery was the result of a joint operation by the Police Service of Northern Ireland, An Garda Siochana and Irish customs officials under the banner of the Cross Border Joint Agency Task Force.

PSNI Assistant Chief Constable Stephen Martin said: This seizure and the associated searches and arrests demonstrate the effectiveness of the real time intelligence sharing and cross-border collaboration that takes place daily to tackle serious and organised criminality in both jurisdictions.

With the assistance of our colleagues in An Garda Siochana and Revenue Commissioners we have undoubtedly prevented the significant harm that would have resulted from this huge consignment of drugs reaching the streets of both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland today.

Fantastic work between @PoliceServiceNI and @gardainfo through the Joint Agency Task Force - removing harm from drugs on streets across the island and bringing offenders to justice #KeepingPeopleSafe Five arrested after huge drugs haul in Dromore https://t.co/PWNUtfc9yZ  Sir George Hamilton (@SirGHamilton) March 30, 2018

An Garda Siochana Assistant Commissioner Barry OBrien said: I wish to commend all agencies involved in both jurisdictions which resulted in the seizure of a substantial quantity of controlled drugs.

This demonstrates the practical application of the Cross Border Joint Agency Task Force.

ACC Martin added: Our thanks go to all those involved in this operation for their diligence and professionalism.

Their combined hard work and dedication has gone a long way in helping us achieve our shared goal of keeping people safe.
The Galloper wind farm, off the coast of Suffolk, in eastern England, has 56 turbines and is valued at 1.7bn, giving a 228m value to the ESB stake

The ESB has acquired its first stake in a near-operational offshore wind farm, in a deal understood to be worth around 200m (228m).

The commercial semi-State confirmed that it has acquired a 12.5pc sake in the 353MW Galloper wind farm, off the coast of the eastern English county of Suffolk, from Macquarie Capital.

The ESB declined to comment on the value of the deal, but industry publication 'SparkSpread', which first reported the sale, said the 56-turbine Galloper wind farm is valued at 1.5bn (1.7bn) in total - giving a 200m value for the ESB stake.

The project is big enough to power 380,000 homes.

ESB chief executive Pat O'Doherty said the UK deal was significant for the company in its planned shift away from reliance on fossil fuels.

"This investment represents a significant first step for ESB into offshore wind generation," he said.

"Renewable electricity is a key enabler in the transition to a low-carbon economy, and ESB expects offshore wind to play a pivotal role in this transition," he added.

A spokesman for the ESB said that in addition to the financial investment, the acquisition will give the ESB access to technical and engineering insights in relation to offshore wind ahead of a planned push into the area in Ireland, where it is likely to co-develop assets from scratch.

The company has plans for wind farms in the Irish Sea off the coasts of Louth and Wexford.

The only existing Irish offshore wind farm is the 25-turbine Arklow Bank wind farm off the coast of Wicklow.

Last year, the State-owned electricity company put out a tender seeking "the provision of renewable energy marine services related to offshore wind farms".

It says it is planning to develop or acquire the wind farms from this year.

Macquarie Capital launched the sale of minority stakes in Galloper and its 580MW Race Bank UK offshore wind farm last summer, in an auction code-named Project Alexandrite.

In 2016, Macquarie agreed to sell half of its 25pc stake in Galloper to Sumitomo Corp, while Macquarie subsidiary Green Investment Group also owns a quarter stake in Galloper, according to 'SparkSpread'.

Other shareholders are RWE Innogy and Siemens Financial Services.

In January this year, Galloper shareholders, led by Innogy, began sounding out potential financial advisers to assist in refinancing the wind farm's 1.3bn (1.5bn) debt load, which was arranged in 2015.

They are thought to be in talks to appoint BNP Paribas.

Here, individual ESB projects are expected to range between 200MW and 500MW in size, though some could be bigger.

Industry sources put construction cost per megawatt for an offshore wind farm in the region of 2m, having fallen in recent years.

That means a 200MW project would cost around 400m, and a 500MW project would cost around 1bn.
In an earlier version of this story, the headline inadvertently stated that there were concerns over Cavan Mart. This was incorrect and should have stated Castleblaney Mart, as the article detailed. Cavan Mart is fully operational and trading as normal.

Farmers raised worries after the highly-regarded mart closed at short notice on Friday ahead of a planned sale.

Buyers travel from neighbouring counties to the mart that is privately run by the Nugent family and which was set up in 1963 by Edward Paul Nugent.

ICOS

Meanwhile, a delegation from ICOS National Marts has met with Minister of State Michael DArcy T.D. to seek Government intervention on the spiralling cost of insurance for marts.

Chairman of ICOS National Marts Committee Michael Spellman said the cost of insurance for marts has more than doubled in the past 18 months but there hasnt been any parallel increase in incidents or claims from the marts.

Mr. DArcy is Minister of State at the Department of Finance and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform with special responsibility for Financial Services and Insurance.

"The marts have become an unwitting victim of risk profiling by the insurance industry who are seeking to minimise their exposure and spread their costs across multiple sectors of the economy.

"Reducing risk is of course in everyones interests, as one accident or injury is one too many, but we dont see any legitimate basis for the scale of costs now being heaped onto the marts sector.

The delegation shared with the Minister specific details of marts where insurance costs have increased inordinately, in spite of risk reduction measures also being implemented.

This is now having a specifically damaging effect on smaller marts who simply cannot afford any increase in operating costs to the extent that is being levied, said Spellman.

We need the Government to protect the marts sector and SMEs in general from the unsustainable costs that are being demanded.

The ICOS delegation welcomed Minister DArcys assurance that over 30 recommendations in a recently published insurance working group report on Employment Liability Practices would be enacted.

Michael Spellman said, It is very positive and reassuring that the Government is engaging proactively with ICOS on this matter and we are confident that there will cross party support for any legislative proposals and particularly where these safeguard jobs.

"We need to see priority legislation brought forward and implemented by the end of 2018 which will endeavour to bring fairness back into the equation around liability claims in Ireland, and not just for marts but for all SMEs in rural Ireland.

Spellman also noted, The imminent implementation of GDPR regulations by the end of May will ensure that the timescale for reporting an incident will be within 28 days. This is going to greatly change the speed at which claims will be notified as currently there can be a two year period of leeway in which claims can be made.
In an extraordinary intervention in the Dail yesterday, Eamon Scanlon TD for Sligo-Leitrim revealed details of a farmer at his wit's end due to the lack of fodder to feed his stock.

The TD's intervention came in a debate on the issue in the Dail, yesterday where he desperately called on Minister for Agriculture Michael Creed to take action to alleviate an ongoing fodder shortage in parts of the country.

A constituent of mine rang the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine yesterday.

He was put through to a very nice girl who tried to console him.

This man is at his wit's end.

He is not alone but his is the most serious case about which I have heard. He is in such a state. He has no money left.

Expand Close People are under a lot of pressure for feed at the moment / Facebook

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Whatsapp People are under a lot of pressure for feed at the moment

He is on farm assist. He has no credit anywhere.

He has cattle and he told the girl yesterday that he was thinking about shooting his cows and shooting himself.

That was in the Minister's Department yesterday.

The official was very good and kind to this man and told him that she will help him as soon as she can. That is a fact.

Expand Close Fodder arrives in Dowra from Tipperary. Gerry McMorrow loads fodder from Tipperary onto a farmers trailer after it arrived in McMorrow Timber Yard, Dowra, Co Leitrim. Photo Brian Farrell / Facebook

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Whatsapp Fodder arrives in Dowra from Tipperary. Gerry McMorrow loads fodder from Tipperary onto a farmers trailer after it arrived in McMorrow Timber Yard, Dowra, Co Leitrim. Photo Brian Farrell

There are not many people in that state but they are not far off it, the Fianna Fail TD said.

The TD stressed that he is not crying "wolf". He said there is a serious problem in the north west at the moment that people's health is being affected by what is happening.

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Whatsapp Silage stock is reducing. File photo

Farmers are heading into eight months of feeding stock in houses and there is no prospect that these cattle will be able to get out in the very near future.

He also said a subsidised transport scheme introduced by the Government has not worked.

The price of hay has increased to 40 a bale, that of wheaten straw has gone up to 65 a bale and silage costs 40 a bale, he said.

I cannot predict the weather

Responding to the comments Minister for Agriculture, Michael Creed assured TDs in a debate on the issue that his departments officials are actively monitoring this issue on a daily basis.

I am reassured by the willingness of those businesses to partner with the agricultural community at this difficult time and to assist with fodder provision and credit lines. That is a strength and hallmark of the co-operative movement.

The message should go out from here that it is alright for farmers to put their hands up now and say they are having specific individual difficulty.

From the engagement I have had, particularly with the co-operative movement, I am quite satisfied that there will be a meaningful response from the co-ops to help them.

In the context of the specific case mentioned by Deputy Scanlon, and for anybody else in a similar situation, the Department has the capacity to respond to individual cases on welfare grounds to help farmers who are looking at the back of a silage pit wall, who have no other options and who have cattle bellowing in their sheds. That is a very traumatic and challenging situation.

The Department can and will respond, as it has done in the past, in respect of those who find themselves in such circumstances.

I cannot predict the weather. We are tracking daily grass growth on PastureBase. It is significantly below- by a factor of over two - the level that obtained at this time last year.

Minister Creed said Soil temperatures are also below where they need to be but are beginning to recover.

However, he said he is satisfied that there is still a mismatch between where it is located and where it is needed, but substantially adequate quantities of fodder are available.

That is why I say to individual farmers to approach co-ops and agribusinesses where they will find a willing ear. The Department is tracking this daily. I am constantly engaging with the officials on the matter, he said.
The greenway is along a 32km stretch in South Kerry.

The ongoing Compulsory Purchase Order (CPO) process in Kerry with regard to the South Kerry Greenway should be a major cause for concern for landowners everywhere, according to ICSA rural development chairman Seamus Sherlock.

He said ICSA understands that Kerry County Council will initiate court proceedings against affected landowners in mid-April, paving the way for the CPO process to begin.

Mr Sherlock said, the consultation process for both the Galway and Kerry greenways was flawed from the outset.

This was acknowledged by Minister Shane Ross at a meeting with ICSA in January 2017, who then promised a renewed consultation process.

This consultation happened in the summer of 2017 and we await the publication of its findings.

It is laughable that Minister Ross could acknowledge that the process used was flawed, yet he would still choose to continue with that flawed process on these projects, with only a vague ambition to correct the process for future greenways.

ICSA Galway representative Adrian Kelly added, Farmers in Kerry are essentially being used as guinea pigs in this wholly defective project.

The stakes are raising all the time and landowners are now faced with the imminent prospect of having lands swiped from underneath them.

What happens in Kerry will no doubt set a template for what will happen in east Galway and Connemara.

Time is of the essence now and I am calling on Minister Ross to desist from dragging landowners to court until a proper assessment of the consultation findings can be completed.

The Department Transport, Tourism and Sport awarded funding of almost 4m to Kerry County Council in 2014 for the development of a South Kerry Greenway from Glenbeigh to Renard.

Minsiter Shane Ross said recently that he understands that Kerry County Council is continuing to work on planning, design and environmental assessment of the Greenway and expects to be in a position to submit a planning application to An Bord Pleanala in the coming months.

"Given the specific engineering challenges and potential land acquisition and other costs associated with the South Kerry Greenway, the funding currently allocated to the project will not be sufficient to provide for its construction.

"Kerry County Council is preparing a revised business case for this project which, I understand, will shortly be submitted to my Department for consideration," he said.

The Department is currently developing a Strategy for the future development of greenways which the Minister said he aims to publish in Q2 2018.

This Strategy will provide a long term vision and framework upon which Ireland's greenways can be planned in a strategic manner.

"The Strategy will also, among other things, seek to address the issues experienced in delivering the South Kerry Greenway and will provide guidance to all local authorities wishing to avail of funding under future funding calls," he said.
Jockey Robbie Power celebrates as he enters the parade ring after winning the Boylesports Irish Grand National Steeplechase on Our Duke during the Fairyhouse Easter Festival in 2017

Storm Ophelia, Storm Emma and recent heavy snowfalls have been a real headache for Peter Roe in recent months.

As general manager of Fairyhouse Racecourse he keeps a very close eye on the weather forecast but most especially at this time of year as the Easter Racing Festival fast approaches.

With snow still on the ground and further rain forecast for early next week, the Tipperary native says it will be all hands on deck now to ensure the track is in peak condition ahead of what will be an exciting three days of racing between April 1-3.

Boasting a prize-fund of 1.55 million, the highlight of the Festival will undoubtedly be the Boylesports Irish Grand National on Easter Monday. Won last year by the Irish-trained Our Duke, the 2018 renewal is expected to attract another stellar line-up, with the hope also of some high-class overseas rivals making the trip.

Expand Close Fairyhouse Racecourse Manager PETER ROE. Photo HEALY RACING. / Facebook

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Whatsapp Fairyhouse Racecourse Manager PETER ROE. Photo HEALY RACING.

If you consider the year weve had with all the storms and snow falls, it has been particularly tough on racing in Ireland, Mr Roe said.

In recent months some of the other planned race meetings at the Co Meath track had to be postponed or re-scheduled due to bad weather, and Mr Roe strongly hopes that the Easter Festival can survive the next few days.

There was still snow on the track up to the middle of last week, and were expecting more rain again this week but hopefully it wont be significant to affect the ground which is currently heavy.

Storm Ophelia was one of the first to disrupt the 2017/2018 National Hunt season at the track.

We were due to race on October 21, he says. The track was very much race-able but we were told the storm would hit between 12 noon and 1pm so we had no choice but to cancel.

Maintenance

Also hit by the weather was the January 17 meeting which was pushed back a month due to snow fall.

On top of that weve had some serious amount of rain. Since October 1 weve had 17 inches of rain, with four inches of that falling in January.

Over the years, management at the racecourse has invested a lot of time and money into maintenance and this will really come into play next week.

The racecourse itself covers 100 acres and this space allows fresh ground to be used regularly over the course of the three days.

We have a dedicated team here, in particular our track foreman Noel Fanning and assistant James ODonoghue who work tirelessly to keep everything in peak condition.

The grass on the track is usually cut at least once or twice by now but as its been too wet we hope to get it done sometime this week.

The drainage system is also complicated. Too little drainage will result in heavy ground and too much will result in the ground drying out too much which does not suit National Hunt racing.

In recent years the Boylesports Irish Grand National has been won by some of the smaller local trainers and Peter Roe says that this is what racing is really all about. Its great to see the bigger guys win, but when the smaller trainers have success at the meeting, that can keep them going for years.

The Easter Festival of Racing generates some 4m to the local economy, with overall business at Fairyhouse worth over 14.5m during the year.

In addition to Easter Mondays feature race which carries a purse of 500,000, Sundays card includes the Grade 1 Ryanair Gold Cup which boasts a prize-fund of 100,000.

Tuesday, April 3 is Family Day and it will also see the second running of the Ladies Irish National won in 2017 by Aine OConnor on Coldstonesober.
The EU has delayed a decision on whether to impose further restrictions on bee-harming pesticides for two months.

Chemicals known as neonicotinoids already face restrictions within the EU, but the bloc is to clamp down further after new evidence that they pose a risk to wild bees and honeybees.

However, EU experts discussed but did not make a decision at a meeting on Friday.

Another discussion and possible vote is scheduled for the second half of May.

MEPs wrote to Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker ahead of the March 23 meeting, warning him against delaying a vote.

"Further delay in taking the decision will result in continued exposure of bees and other pollinators to toxins that kill them, with severe consequences for food production, particularly honey," said the letter, signed by a cross-party group of parliamentarians.

The European Food Safety Authority, EFSA, said in February that three neonicotinoids - clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam - that there was a "high risk" associated with all outdoor uses of the three substances, and that "overall these neonicotinoids represent a risk to bees".

The three chemicals have been banned for use on selected crops in the EU, such as oilseed rape, since 2013. Last year, the Commission suggested the chemicals be banned everywhere except greenhouses.

'Neonics' act on insects' central nervous systems and have been linked to worldwide declines in honey bee numbers.

The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation says three-quarters of the world's food crops rely on pollination by insects and animals, and is worth between $235-577bn a year to food producers.

EU-funded research shows that bee mortality rates in the bloc have been rising, and are highest in the UK, Sweden, Finland, Poland, France and Germany.

Clothianidin is produced by Germany's Bayer CropScience, whose proposed merger with US agri-chemical giant Monsanto was last week approved by the Commission, subject to conditions.

Thiamethoxam is manufactured by Swiss agri-business firm Syngenta, which recently merged with ChemChina.

The battle over neonicotinoids comes hot on the heels of the long saga on the renewal of glyphosate's EU licence, which has been approved for a further five years.
The hotel sector in Galway is booming and it benefits from the annual Galway International Arts Festival and the annual Galway Races jamboree. Stock image

The success of Galway city's many festivals contributed to pre-tax profits at the largest hotel in the west of Ireland, the Connacht in Galway city, topping 1.282m in 2016.

New accounts lodged by Connacht Hospitality show that the business enjoyed the pre-tax profits after revenues totalled 9.5m for the eight months to the end of December 2016.

The 9.5m in revenues for the eight months compare to 11.48m in revenues for the prior 12-month period and represent a 24pc pro rata increase in revenues for the eight-month period.

The 1.28m in pre-tax profits is a 12pc decline on the 1.45m pre-tax profits for the prior 12 months.

The directors of the business - which contains more than 350 hotel rooms - say that they are satisfied with the results.

The hotel was originally built in 1969, and rebranded as the Connacht Hotel in 2012.

The accounts confirm that since the year end, the hotel building was purchased by the owners of the company.

The hotel sector in Galway is booming and it benefits from the annual Galway International Arts Festival and the annual Galway Races jamboree.

Numbers employed by the firm in 2016 increased from 150 to 173, with staff costs decreasing from 4m to 3.1m.

A breakdown of the numbers employed shows 144 are engaged in catering and house-keeping, with 29 engaged as administration and managers. Pay to directors increased from 247,127 to 257,059, made up of 248,273 in pay and 8,786 in pension payments.
Peter Foley, founder of LetsGetChecked, which now has more than 10,000 customers

LetsGetChecked, a medical health testing platform that allows customers to access regulated laboratory testing and self-test from their home, has raised $12m (9.7m) in Series A funding.

The funding will be used to scale the company globally, fuel development of the technology platform linking customers to laboratories, and grow the clinical support team, LetsGetChecked said.

Funding was led by US-based Optum Ventures, which is part of United Health Group, and Chinese venture capital firm Qiming Venture Partners.

Founded by Peter Foley in 2014, LetsGetChecked has amassed more than 10,000 customers, and recently launched in North America, with offices in New York and Toronto. Since its inception, the company's portfolio of testing options has expanded to include lifestyle testing, sexual health testing, cancer screening, and fertility and hormone testing.

"What we are really aiming to do is go after the chronic disease market," Mr Foley told the Irish Independent.

"With easier access to testing, individuals can change how and when they are diagnosed, leading to better clinical outcomes.

"Our goal is to provide individuals with greater control of their health through accessible technology and to continue partnering with more labs and health systems, to bring more specialised testing direct to consumers," he added.

The company, which in 2016 raised 1.5m in seed funding, operates through enabling customers to order a physician approved lab test.

The test kit is dispatched from a LetsGetChecked ISO accredited facility, and will arrive at the patient's home within days.

The test kits are completely anonymised, containing only a patient identifier to maintain privacy and confidentiality, the company said.

All patient results are then reviewed by a board-certified physician, according to the company.

"Support from investors with proven track records of helping to modernise healthcare like Optum Ventures and Qiming Venture Partners is a true testament to the work we're doing," Mr Foley said.

Commenting on the announcement, Mark McDade, of Qiming Venture Partners, said that Qiming is "dedicated to investing in companies that solve real-life problems and have international scale".
In the #MeToo era increasing attention is starting to be placed on the gender pay gap.

Most recently, producers of Netflix hit 'The Crown' had to apologise after it emerged that the show's star, Claire Foy, was being paid less than her co-star Matt Smith.

However, closer to home and Northern Ireland is bucking the trend.

Not only have women in Northern Ireland achieved parity in pay, they actually earn more than their male counterparts, according to the UK's Office of National Statistics (ONS).

On average, women in Northern Ireland earn 3.4pc more than men, something that has been happening since 2010, making Northern Ireland the only region in the UK where the pay gap has moved in favour of women.

The ONS suggests that the reason women in Northern Ireland are, on average, earning more than their male counterparts, is because it has a higher number of public sector jobs than the rest of the UK, an area that is seen as more open to advancement by female employees.

The UK's highest paid region is also its most unequal. In London, a city dominated by finance jobs, men are being paid an average of 14.6pc more than women.

After Northern Ireland bucking the gender pay gap trend, the lowest gender pay gap in the UK can be found in Wales and Scotland, with the two countries last year reporting gender pay gaps of 6.3pc and 6.6pc respectively.

Putting the gap in monetary terms, the ONS found that the median hourly wage for women in full-time work was around 9.1pc less than the median hourly wage for men, excluding any overtime worked, which works out at 1.32 (1.50) less per hour.

Taking into account part-time work, which is more dominated by women, and the pay gap in the UK rises to 18.4pc or 2.52 (2.88) per hour.

Despite the public sector benefiting women in Northern Ireland, for part-time workers, the gender pay gap in the public sector has in fact widened over the last 20 years.

In 1997, women working part-time in the UK public sector earned 6.1pc per hour less than men, whereas in 2017 they earned just over a fifth less, according to the ONS.

Meanwhile, in the private sector, the opposite is true for part-time employees.

In 1997, women working part-time in the private sector in the UK earned 2.2pc less than men. However, by last year the gap had reversed and women now earn 2.6pc more than men. This particular gap has been in favour of women in the UK since 2010.

While the gender pay gap has traditionally widened with age as women spend time outside the labour marker, the report from the ONS found that this had decreased dramatically for older women working part-time, with pay levels being virtually indistinguishable for older women compared with their younger counterparts.

"This follows a number of UK government and EU policies aimed at encouraging these women back into the labour market and at an equal pay level with men," the ONS said.

In the Republic of Ireland, the most recent data from Eurostat suggest that the gender pay gap is around 14pc, slightly below the EU average of 16.2pc.

Meanwhile, the latest 'Women in Work Index', published by PwC, ranks Ireland 25th out of 33 OECD countries when it comes to the position of women within organisations, where a mere 9pc of women are CEOs.
Good Friday looks likely to live up to its name as pubs prepare to open for business - with some donating takings to charity.

Slattery's in Beggars Bush is just one of the pubs across the country which will open its doors for the first time today following changes to Intoxicating Liquor Act earlier this year.

Although he admitted he'd rather be spending time with his four-year-old daughter, publican Irial Slattery said at least staff would be sacrificing the day off in aid of worthy causes including Our Lady's Hospice in Harold's Cross and Blackrock.

"We were trying to look for an angle to have a bit of fun [at] the fact that it's the end of prohibition," he told. "We thought with it being Good Friday, let's just give the day's takings away.

"There's one part of me that says: 'I hope we're not absolutely jammed because we'll be giving away a lot of money'," joked the owner.

More than nine decades after the ban was first implemented in 1927, pubs, restaurants and supermarkets were preparing for the day of trading.

In the Liberties, up to 350 tourists are expected at Teeling Whiskey Distillery, forcing boss Jack Teeling to rethink the rota. "We're probably overmanned because we're expecting a good few through the doors," he said.

Meanwhile, visitors to the North Meath village of Drumconrath may find it more challenging to get a pint after the only three publicans there made a pact to uphold tradition by remaining shut.

"Rural Ireland is different than Dublin," argued proprietor of Muldoon's Bar Dermot Muldoon. "It's a long weekend. There's Saturday night, Sunday night, Bank Holiday Monday - it's the same pockets you're emptying in a village like this. In Dublin, there are different people every night.

"It's just shutting down for that day like we always did for 30 years."
US packaging giant International Paper has told major shareholders in Smurfit Kappa that it hopes to secure a friendly takeover of the Dublin-based group, but warned there were no obstacles to a hostile approach.

In a series of meetings with Smurfit Kappa investors in London and Paris this week, the Memphis-based company told them it could reduce borrowings needed to fund the deal within two years as it targets 450m of cost synergies.

Because there is relatively little overlap between International Paper and Smurfit Kappa's main markets, the US board doesn't anticipate a big regulatory hurdle to its planned deal. That is understood to mean it sees less of a need for support from the Smurfit Kappa board, emboldening it towards potentially going hostile.

If a merger faces a high bar for competition clearance, in practice joint support from both boards can help win over regulators.

According to investor sources, the Memphis-headquartered group, which received a second rejection for a sweetened bid that valued its quarry at 9.5bn and included a 15pc increase in the cash element of the offer, said it was also considering a secondary listing.

However, it is understood International Paper will pursue that course only if resistance to accepting its US shares as part consideration becomes a stumbling block.

According to David Holohan, chief investment officer with Merrion Capital, a number of investors on the Smurfit Kappa register may be unable to hold US stock and will require a dual listing to support the merger.

Others have expressed doubts about whether the issue is a serious impediment, and point out many stakeholders will exit prior to the deal's close.

A barrage of information that accompanied its revised offer has helped trigger a recovery in International Paper shares after a near 15pc fall following Smurfit Kappa's disclosure of the first bid on March 6, which has pushed the value of the offer closer to the 38-a-share mark.

By contrast Smurfit Kappa's valuation has declined since the board slammed the door on the offer for a second time.

Smurfit chairman Liam O'Mahony said the fresh tilt offered shareholders little "more than compensation for the fall in International Paper's share price since [March 6] and again entirely fails to value the group's true intrinsic business worth and future prospects".

But in its overtures to Smurfit Kappa investors this week, the US giant said it was attracted by possible revenue synergies but that it needs access to the company's books to fully assess how a union would boost earnings.

Smurfit Kappa chief executive Tony Smurfit was this week named Business Person of the Month, by 'Business and Finance Magazine'. Commenting on the revised offer from International Paper, he insisted "his first duty is towards creating shareholder value".
Buyers will be given maximum discounts of less than 8pc off the price of a new home under a controversial scheme where developers receive State funding to help boost housing output.

Details of deals struck between landowners and local authorities reveal more than half of 20,000 homes to be built under the LIHAF (Local Infrastructure Housing Activation Fund) scheme will be social and affordable, with maximum discounts of 20,000 on offer.

However, in some cases, discounts as low as 2,100 will be applied, representing less than 2pc, and landowners have also received more than 2m in funding, despite refusing to provide any discounted affordable homes.

LIHAF involves the State investing 195.7m in roads and other essential services to open up land for development. In return, at least 10pc of all units must be for social housing and landowners were also expected to provide affordable homes.

However, in some cases units will be sold at only a tiny discount from the market price. The cost reductions per unit range from 2,171 in one Dublin City scheme at Belmayne, rising to 20,000 at two projects in Cork, at Glanmire and Midleton. Average discounts range from 1.4pc to 7.7pc.

In all, 30 projects across 14 local authorities on public and private land will benefit. Some 19,979 units are expected to be delivered by 2021, of which 3,274 will be social units to be offered to local authorities and housing bodies while another 7,986 will have an affordable element. The rest will be sold on the open market.

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Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy said that if the 195m had been used to build homes directly, it would have delivered fewer than 800. He said the LIHAF model generated a higher return while also opening up lands for development which would otherwise have remained idle.

"This investment will stimulate much wider investment in developing housing on a large scale and we will see a return on this investment in terms of cost reductions on the new homes, with many homes being made available in the next couple of years that will be targeted and priced for first-time buyers," he said.

But housing experts have raised concerns about some aspects of the deals. Among the projects to benefit include one of 620 homes on Cork's South Docks where all units will be build-to-rent. Some 10pc will be for social housing, and the State allowed to rent 40 affordable units for up to 25 years.

The Department of Housing said the units would be rented at a discount, and the funding would help deliver a potential 8,000 homes over the longer term, and represented a "very good return".

In schemes in Cork, Kildare and Kilkenny, where the projected cost of a three-bed home will range from 286,000 to 300,000, landowners refused to commit to providing any affordable homes but have been given more than 2m in funding.

In a number of other cases, there is no detail on the price to be levied on affordable homes and some councils may decide to build clusters of affordable units instead of applying a discount across the entire scheme.

Dublin Institute of Technology housing lecturer Lorcan Sirr said discounts in some cases were so small they could be "pointless".

"Discounts of 2,500 won't even buy a kitchen and may be regardless as pointless," he said. "It's also surprising the department would agree to release funds when there's no agreement on the affordability elements.

"The guys who own this land would have factored in the infrastructure requirements when they bought it, so this is just the cherry on top."

However, in six schemes all homes to be delivered will be social or affordable. On some sites co-owned by the State and private developers, up to 47pc of homes are social units. There are also commitments in other Dublin sites to sell up to 600 homes for 320,000 or less.

On the discounts, the department said the benefit to the State was not just a matter of securing a lower price, but also to open up public and private sites for development.
DCU president Professor Brian MacCraith has called for regulations to deal with the "escalating and uncontrolled pricing" of the student housing sector.

Students of the Dublin university gathered outside Shanowen Square Student Residences yesterday to protest the 27pc rise in accommodation fees for the next academic year.

Rent at the complex has jumped up to a total cost of 8,695 for the academic year.

Prof MacCraith said: "Recent increases of up to 27pc on student accommodation by private providers are simply unacceptable."

He added: "The issue has the potential to limit the scale of future university investments and will inevitably result in increased rental costs for Irish and international students."

Student Lauren Rossiter said while the price hikes are steep, hard-up students are left with no option but to fork out. She said: "I think the rates are just so crazy.

"But at the same time, the fact is the rooms opened last week and they're all sold out because people just need somewhere to stay.

"So people are being forced to pay these rates.

"People have been talking this week about feeling like they have to drop out, they're commuting five hours a day, it's just taking away people's ability to go to college."

DCUSU Vice President for Welfare and Equality Podge Henry said the Students' Union wants to not only lower the prices of accommodation affecting students, but help enact legislation to prevent such price hikes across the country.

Meanwhile, President of the SCU Students' Union, Niall Behan, said: "It's a complete disgrace and we are going to get out here and show our support to all students affected by the accommodation crisis - it's a national problem.

"Why is it that tenants and the tenancy boards only allow a 4pc increase, but students are expected to fork up an extra 27pc?"

Representatives from Shanowen Square said they did not wish to comment at this time.
A couple of years ago, phones killed off compact cameras.

2018 looks like the year where theyre coming for better standalone cameras.

Weve already seen some new ground broken on handsets from Apple and Samsung.

But Huaweis newly-launched P20 (5.8-inch LCD, 649, 128GB) and P20 Pro (6.1-inch Oled, 899, 128GB) phones look like going even further.

The Chinese company, now number three in the world, has crammed a lot more camera technology under the hood to help produce photos youd barely believe werent from a bigger camera.

As an enthusiastic camera buff that counts photography as a primary hobby, I dont say this lightly. I shoot with DSLRs and mirror-less cameras every week.

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The launch model Im using is the higher end P20 Pro, so this post is really about first impressions of using that. But some of what Im talking about also applies to the lower-end P20, which for a 649 phone, is absolutely loaded with high specifications.

There are two main camera differences that P20 Pro has.

The most obvious of these is that it has three camera lenses on the back of the phone, going one better than the the two on the iPhone X, iPhone 8 Plus and Samsung S9 Plus.

The rearranged lenses boast some insane specifications (for a camera phone). Huawei has placed a 40-megapixel (f1.6) sensor on there, meaning that the amount of detail you get in each shot should be off the scale in relation to what youd normally expect from a phone. The two other lenses on the back of the device are an 8-megapixel (f2.4) telephoto camera and a 20-megapixel monochrome (black and white) lens, for zooming in and adding more detail, respectively.

That telephoto lens has a 3x optical zoom, which brings it beyond the 2x zooms of the iPhone X or the Samsung S9 Plus, which are this phones main competition.

Without wanting to get too technical, the P20 Pro has also somehow managed to put in a larger camera sensor under the hood (1/1.7-inch), meaning that it can outgun any of its rivals for physically letting more light into the camera.

But all of this raw pixel power is one thing. Making it easy to use is always at least a big a challenge.

Our first impression is that Huawei has done a decent job, here. The camera automatically detects what sort of a situation youre in (whether its landscape or people or low light) and adjusts its capabilities to maximise the potential for the shot.

For example, if it detects blue sky, it enhances that (usually making it a deeper blue).

Similarly, it appears to boost dynamic range in low-light shots.

Over the last few days, Ive managed to capture photos from it that Ive had to look twice at because of their quality.

The night setting is most startling. You point and hold the phone at something for a few seconds in dark conditions. If theres any light source at all -- a window, neon sign or street light -- the camera builds on that light. It also appears to take several photos, stacking them into one shot that includes way more detail than youd normally get from even the best phone cameras up to now.

(Ive included some sample shots I took with it in this night mode from over the last few days - they are unedited, right out of the phone.)

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Granted, some can look a little over-processed, depending on your sensibility. But I think thats a trade-off that most people wont mind for the sharp detail and impressive lighting the photos bring.

There are the other expected modes too, ranging from panorama to time lapse to a new, beefed up 960 frames per second slow motion video standard.

And if black and white photos is your thing, one of the three rear lenses is a dedicated monochrome camera.

For those who care, the selfie camera on this phone is 24 megapixels, an unheard-of level for a front-facing camera. Personally, I think this may be overkill: so far, I cant discern much of an advantage to the 24 megapixels over, say, an 8 megapixel or 12 megapixel lens when shooting your own face from such a close range.

Its worth mentioning again that its not all software-related advancements driving the phones camera improvements. As noted before, Huawei has stuck a bigger physical sensor into the device. Its 40-megapixel 1/1.7-inch sensor is around a third bigger than the 1/2.5-inch sensor youll get in Samsung's S9 or Apples iPhone X. You might argue that it needs it, with all those megapixels. But the upshot is that this is a physically superior camera apparatus than any other smartphone out there.

The photography-rating analyst company DXO Mark appears to agree, giving the P20 Plus its top score among phones for still photos, video and as an overall combination cameraphone. (It should be said that DXO isnt accepted by everyone as the ultimate arbiter.)

One thing thats noticeable immediately about the P20 Pro is that resembles the iPhone X more than a bit. This is mostly because it incorporates a notch at the top of the device. (Huawei even boasted at the launch that their notch is more beautiful than the iPhones notch, in a slightly odd bit of the presentation.)

The notch is there ostensibly to facilitate facial recognition. I havent tested this feature enough yet at this point to say whether Huawei has reliably pulled it off, but Im betting it will be a challenge for them without the additional sensors that Apple has in its (larger) notch. My experience with other cameras face recognition features is that theyre very hit and miss. (The iPhone X is the exception, where its fairly flawless.)

The other physical attribute which is worth noting is its top-end Oled screen, which is gorgeous. The difference between Oled and LCD screens is subtle but once youre used to an Oled screen, LCDs looks a little harsh. Its generally better at rendering colours and blacks and is easier on the eye. The 6.1-inch size is a sweet spot, too: big enough to watch videos comfortable but just about compact enough to be relatively ergonomic in your hand.

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Other things Ive noticed on the P20 Pro so far? The battery life is excellent. Huawei has imported the long-lasting 4,000mAh battery from its Mate 10 Pro line and the results blow most other phones out of the water. For comparison, the Samsung S9 Plus (which itself has good battery life) has a 3,500mAh battery and the iPhone X (which has a smaller screen, admittedly) has a battery of under 3,000mAh. This is genuinely an all-day battery experience. For people like me, who snap a lot on their phone, thats pretty important.

The one partial negative I can find at this point is that it doesnt have a headphone jack. Then again, no top-end flagship phone does these days. (Theres a headphone adapter in the box.) So youd better just get used to wearing wireless headphones from here on in.

Ill post further thoughts on this phone as I progress with it. But for now, Huawei appears to have muscled its way onto the top camera phone podium.

The Huawei P20 and P20 Pro are available in Ireland from April 13
Connor McIntyre has been praised for his work on the dramatic Pat Phelan storyline. (Ian West/PA)

Coronation Street actor Connor McIntyre has been praised for his portrayal of villainous Pat Phelan after he bid farewell to the character.

In a dramatic double-episode on Good Friday, Pat was pushed to his death by wife Eileen Grimshaw (Sue Cleaver) after she learned the truth about his crimes.

The shock twist saw Eileen label Pat a murderer and rapist after he had launched into a lengthy monologue in which he called himself the worst thing you can imagine.

Do you really want to know what I am? Im that, Im the darkness and the light, Im a creator and a destroyer, the accuser and the prosecutor, Im the Lord of Hope, Im the layer in wait, Im the worst thing you can imagine, Pat said.

As he went to grab the keys to his boat, he fell through the railings and grabbed onto a rope before Eileen stamped on his hands causing him to fall into the sea below.

His long reign of terror appears to have come to an end and viewers on social media lauded McIntyres portrayal as they bemoaned his departure.

@Jordzlee wrote on Twitter: Oh I love him amazing actor he gets everyone talking doesnt he. Definitely gonna miss him!

@connor9mcintyre What a performance tonight! I am so gutted that you have left and that Pat Phelan is no more but you are an extremely talented actor and have been amazing to watch over the years. All the best for the future xx  Jenny Coldicott (@jenxy500) March 30, 2018

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@Sadielady1959 posted: Oh no!! Ive never been so sad to see the back of a baddie!! #Corrie #Phelan @connor9mcintyre it wont be the same without you.

@connor9mcintyre is just the greatest baddie that ever lived.

I shall miss #Phelan so much xx  ManUtdMrs (@ManUtdMrs) March 30, 2018

@RainyBobs tweeted: Sat on the edge of the sofa watching @itvcorrie fantastic acting from the great @connor9mcintyre & @Sue_Cleaver.

@SarahFromNWales posted: Phenomenal acting from @connor9mcintyre  there will never be a villain as sinister and deeply frightening as #Phelan  I almost hope he will emerge from the sea  incredible suspense.
When sci-fi and Spielberg pop up in the same sentence, it's hard not to get excited. This, after all, is the gent who gave you ET and Close Encounters, films that brought something new and thrilling to a genre particularly susceptible to cliche. But the great man is not infallible: his last science-fiction foray, a 2005 take on HG Wells' War of the Worlds, started bracingly before getting bogged down in dreary plot details, and Ready Player One follows a similar trajectory.

The film is based on a bestselling 2011 novel by Ernest Cline, and is set in a near future where life has become predictably grim. Pollution and climate change have made the Earth such an unpleasant place to be that humans spend most of their time avoiding reality by playing fantasy games in a virtual world called the OASIS. This cartoonish fantasy land was created by a reclusive genius called James Halliday (Mark Rylance), who has recently died.

The OASIS is a hot property, and a sinister rival company, IOI, wants to take it over. But Halliday was a bit of an anarchist, and has left a series of clues or 'Easter eggs' for gamers to chase. Whoever finds them all and solves Halliday's mystery will inherit this lucrative virtual playground.

Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan) reckons he stands as good a chance as anyone. He lives in a tatty high-rise caravan park in Columbus, Ohio with his downtrodden aunt (Susan Lynch), but is more comfortable roaming the hidden recesses of the OASIS under his dashing Wagnerian alias, Parzival.

By donning a special suit and interactive goggles, he can disappear for hours on end into the OASIS, where he's made some friends. Chief among these is Aech, a giant, muscle-bound chap who helps Parzival search for Halliday's Easter eggs. Players have a lot to lose: they carry all their hard-won credits with them, and must start from scratch if something kills them. And something's always trying to kill them, whether it's ruthless competitors, giant King Kongs or a dozen other vicious monsters.

Parzival is hot on the heels of the first clue when he clashes with a daring female avatar called Art3mis, who has huge anime eyes and a punkish taste in fashion. When Parzival falls in love with her, Aech wisely reminds him that for all he knows Art3mis could be some sweaty guy in a string vest in the real world, but the boy is not to be reasoned with. And he'll soon find that she is a girl, though not quite how he imagined her.

Ready Player One revels in the animated special effects its storyline necessitates, and playfully peppers its frantic storyline with references to other movies. At one point, Parzival and friends must tread the brightly lit corridors of the Overlook Hotel from The Shining, and venture into Room 237 in search of clues.

One can imagine the fun Spielberg must have had shooting a gory tribute that would surely have infuriated Stanley Kubrick. But there's something very on the nose and witless about the way this, and most everything else in Ready Player One, is done. The film is full of 1980s cultural references, from songs and music videos to video games, but they're thrown into the mix pointlessly, without purpose or comment.

The film is necessarily derivative, but hardly ever witty, and the keen performances of young actors like Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke and Lena Waithe are swallowed up by a blinding sea of special effects. The only actor who manages to give us a rounded character is the great Mark Rylance, whose Halliday is a shy and defensive computer nerd who realises too late the danger his invention poses. We don't get enough of him, but see too much of Ben Mendelsohn's smug, cartoonish villain.

The most interesting bits of Ready Player One come early on, when a grim future in which people cling to the remnants of comfort in rusty, overgrown cities is memorably created. If only the virtual world had been so interesting, because the film is quickly overwhelmed by it. It's entertaining by and large, but left me wanting less.

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Ready Player One (12A, 140mins) - 3 stars

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Films coming soon...

Love, Simon (Nick Robinson, Josh Duhamel, Jennifer Garner); A Quiet Place (Emily Blunt, John Krasinski); Michael Inside (Dafhyd Flynn, Moe Dunford); Wonderstruck (Julianne Moore, Michelle Williams); 120 BPM (Nahuel Perez Biscayart).
A lower court judge vacated Syed's conviction in 2016 (Barbara Haddock Taylor/The Baltimore Sun via AP)

An appeals court in Maryland, US has upheld a ruling granting a new trial to a man whose conviction in the murder of his high school sweetheart became the subject of the popular podcast Serial.

Adnan Syed was convicted in 2000 of killing Hae Min Lee and burying her body in a shallow grave in a Baltimore park.

Today, Adnan Syeds appeal in his case was affirmed by the Court of Special Appeals of Maryland. https://t.co/kMALyCmTGq  Serial (@serial) March 29, 2018

A three-judge panel on Thursday upheld a lower court ruling granting him new trial.

Syeds story was widely publicised in the 2014 Serial podcast, which cast doubt on his guilt.

The show attracted millions of listeners and shattered podcast records.

Rabia Chaudry, who helped bring Syeds case into the public eye, and Syeds lawyer Justin Brown celebrated the ruling on Twitter.

WE WON WE WON WE WON WE WON!!!!!!!!!#FreeAdnan  rabia O'chaudry (@rabiasquared) March 29, 2018

WE WON THE APPEAL. #FreeAdnan  Justin Brown (@CJBrownLaw) March 29, 2018

A lower court judge vacated Syeds conviction in 2016, citing his attorneys failure to cross-examine a key witness.

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Prosecutors appealed to the Maryland Court of Special Appeals, the states intermediate appeals court.
A Fox News show is being dropped by advertisers after its host mocked a Parkland school shooting survivor.

Four companies have already cut ties with The Ingraham Angle after host Laura Ingraham tweeted about the fact that David Hogg (17) had been rejected from four colleges.

Hogg has been campaigning for tighter gun controls since the shooting on Valentine's Day which killed 17 people.

Home goods company Wayfair released a statement about why they will no longer advertise on the show.

The decision of an adult to personally criticise a high school student who has lost his classmates in an unspeakable tragedy is not consistent with our values, a spokesperson said.

We do not plan to continue advertising on this particular program.

TripAdvisor, Nutrish and Hulu have all followed suit.

In our view, these statements focused on a high school student, cross the line of decency, a spokesperson for TripAdvisor said in a statement. As such, we have made a decision to stop advertising on that program.

Ingraham took to Twitter on Wednesday to share an article by the Daily Caller, Gun Rights Provocateur David Hogg Rejected By Four Colleges To Which He Applied' with the comment, Dinged by UCLA with a 4.1 GPA...totally predictable given acceptance rates."

Hogg in fact had a 4.2 GPA and he responded to the comments by calling attention to them with the show's advertisers, who then took action. Ingraham then responded with an apology, tweeting, On reflection, in the spirit of Holy Week, I apologise for any upset or hurt my tweet caused him or any of the brave victims of Parkland."

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She also said any student "should be proud" of a 4.2 GPA.
Bob Geldof speaks passionately about why he handed back the Freedom of Dublin City on tonight's Late Late Show.

The Boomtown Rats frontman and charity campaigner handed the honour back in protest at the fact that Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi was also a recipient of the award.

The move caused controversy but Dublin City Council subsequently stripped Suu Kyi of her honour while councillors voted in favour of officially rescinding the honour granted to Geldof in 2005 for his humanitarian work.

Geldof refers to Suu Kyi as an "accomplice to rape" and "handmaiden to ethnic cleansing" and speaks about the shocking acts of violence carried out in her name.

Burning people alive, raping women as they held their babies and in front of the women when they finished raping them, they burned the babies alive. That's a fact and it is on film. I don't want to be associated with this pig once, he says.

Regarding the move to hand back the Freedom of the City, Geldof tells host Ryan Tubridy that he did not make the decision lightly and did not want to hand back the honour.

Honestly, I didn't want to, it's a lovely thing... It's on my wall, not many things that I have are on my wall. It was on my wall. I took it off and undid the frame and rolled it up and thought Jaysus we'll do it anyway. I gave it back to the person who gave it to me, who was the Lord Mayor at that time, he says.

I just said it is a gesture, I know it is embarrassing and it is small but I don't want to be part of this. Everyone resorts to the Nazis but if Hitler was on our roll of honour he'd have been long gone, there is no question of it.

He says he felt proud to receive the honour, which is rarely given.

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Tubridy, if you showed up in London they'd give it to you... but in Dublin it is quite precious and I am a Dubliner. My Dad was there, and the kids were there and it was a great day and Ronnie Delaney was getting it on the same day. What is not to like, what's not to be proud of?

"Then I saw Aung San Suu Kyi was on it because she got it on the day that I spoke welcome to her. And I thought that's a disgrace, there shouldn't be, in effect, an accomplice to murder, at least, on this thing. That's a disgrace to that roll of honour, it dishonours it. And as that roll of honour is on behalf of Dubliners and Dublin, I didn't want to make it a big thing, but I thought she should be taken off, no big deal, he says, to applause from the studio audience.

He made the protest to draw attention to the issue so that something would be done about it.

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Fair play, they shouted at me - grandstanding and that and I know it is, and I don't mean it to be, I really don't but I don't know what I can do personally to register my disgust. Not at Dublin, not at the roll of honour, I understood what a great honour it is but I just don't want to be associated with those people in any way and so they did, they took her name off, he says.

Geldof remains without the honour but says he would like to have it back, although it is not in his hands.

Tonight's episode of The Late Late Show on RTE One at 9.35pm will also see Maeve Higgins, Bryan Dobson, Home of the Year judges Hugh Wallace, Deirdre Whelan and Patrick Bradley and Finbar Furey in studio.
Government coffers are benefiting from a 13.5pc VAT levy on condoms - despite a pledge to make contraceptives more affordable to cut down on abortions.

Both Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe and his predecessor Michael Noonan have refused to remove the VAT on condoms.

It pushes up the price of a packet of 12 of the contraceptives to 19, making them an expensive product for many young people.

The added hike in condoms comes against a background of unwanted pregnancies as well as a worrying rise in sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV.

Health Minister Simon Harris, who is supporting the wider availability of abortion, has said better access to contraception will be looked at but it will have to first go to a working group.

The proposal is part of a package of measures put forward in advance of the referendum on the Eighth Amendment.

If it is repealed this will open the way to liberalising abortion law here, putting pressure on the Government to reduce the rate of crisis pregnancy.

When Michael Noonan was finance minister, he resisted pressure to scrap the tax.

He said removing the 13.5pc VAT on condoms would not lower the rate of sexually transmitted infections.

He claimed it would not have a significant impact on sexual behaviour.

It was turned down again last October after a series of pre-Budget submissions.

In 2008, the-then Fianna Fail government reduced VAT on condoms from 21pc, one of the highest in Europe.

Since then various groups including the HSE's Crisis Pregnancy Agency and the Irish Family Planning Association have asked for its complete removal but the request has been ignored.

A VAT reduction would also help charities who distribute free condoms to at-risk groups.

A spokesman for the Revenue Commissioners said it was not possible to provide a figure showing the tax yield from condoms.

Ireland has been recently described as being in the middle of a HIV crisis as the number of those infected by the disease continues to rise.

An average of 10 new diagnoses per week were recorded in 2017 for the second year in a row.

If this trend continues, the country is likely to experience one of the highest numbers of new HIV diagnoses on record.

The Union of Students Ireland has had to team up with the HSE to launch a safer sex campaign.

More than 5,200 people aged between 15 and 24 were diagnosed with either chlamydia, gonorrhoea, or genital herpes last year.

This amounts to an 11pc increase in sexually transmitted infections compared to 2016 figures.

In 2017, there were 5,200 cases of young people diagnosed with these diseases including chlamydia, gonorrhoea and genital herpes.

The high price of condoms and the costs involved in having to see a GP to renew a prescription for other contraceptives have been cited as reasons why young people can end up not taking protection and having an unwanted pregnancy.
A private debate among Fine Gael politicians became heated in Leinster House after a female TD was accused of preaching to her male colleagues.

Party chairman Martin Heydon was forced to intervene after what one minister described as the "setting off of a bomb" by Marcella Corcoran Kennedy.

The Offaly TD had urged male members of the party to trust their female counterparts and support the repeal of the Eighth Amendment.

She added that women will be the ones having to make hard choices in the future.

Her contribution sparked a flurry of responses from TDs considered pro-life or who have yet to declare a position on the abortion referendum.

One TD said Ms Corcoran Kennedy's comments were "arrogant" and she "has no idea the level of upset she has caused in the party".

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"She might as well have been wagging her finger at us," said one person who attended the meeting held on Wednesday evening, shortly after the Government confirmed May 25 as polling day.

Another said Ms Corcoran Kennedy's heart was "in the right place" but it "started a row that existed within the party".

The exchanges took up the majority of a two-hour meeting which was also used by Taoiseach Leo Varadkar to brief the party on his decision to expel a Russian diplomat.

It's understood that Junior Minister Sean Kyne (inset, right) spoke up to say people should not be "preaching" and every view should be respected.

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Junior Finance Minister Patrick O'Donovan said he could not let Ms Corcoran Kennedy's comments go unchallenged.

He said there was an attempt to label those opposed to changes in the current law as "Luddites" or part of a "dinosaur brigade".

Senator Michelle Mulherin complained about recent leaks from a previous meeting of female representatives, saying "don't talk to me about solidarity among women".

And Junior Minister Ciaran Cannon said the party reflected Irish society as a whole, adding that he was deeply respectful of women and knew many who are opposed to repeal.

Unlike Fianna Fail - where major splits on the issue have played out in the Dail chamber - Fine Gael has maintained a largely united front in public.

As things stand, 23 Fine Gael TDs are supporting abortion up to 12 weeks, 10 have declared their opposition and 17 are undeclared.

However, there has been no significant disputes between the two camps in the party.

But sources expressed concern that fresh debate had "awoken some sleeping bears".

Concern was also noted that some TDs feel they will be forced to state a position before they are ready.

Defence Minister Paul Kehoe said people shouldn't be pushed into one side or other of the debate.

Catherine Byrne, Minister for Health Promotion, explained she is still struggling to decide her view. In response, Mr Varadkar said she didn't have to apologise for being unsure.

"He said it was up to everyone to decide what way to vote and the campaign should be respectful and never personalised," a source said.

Mr Varadkar received a round of applause when he added there would be "no repercussions" for anybody in the party whether they voted for or against in the referendum.

The meeting ended on good terms after a "big frenzy".

"By the end of it people were left in no doubt there is a pro-life wing in the party and they can't be overlooked," a source said.
Locals stripped down to their bathing suits in protest over the closure of the Clontarf Baths.

Despite the rain, up to 40 north Dublin residents assembled outside the iconic baths to highlight the facility's continued closure to public swimmers.

Broadcaster and businessman Bobby Kerr was among the crowd and plunged into the cold water, becoming the first person to swim in the baths since their redevelopment.

Mr Kerr was interviewing the owner of the facility, David Cullen, for his Newstalk show 'Down To Business'. While he was there, he decided to take a dip.

"I decided I wanted to have a swim and waived my insurance liability on air as they cannot get anyone to give them insurance," he said.

"The pool has not been chlorinated and it is not yet ready for public use but I said I would take my chances as I occasionally swim in the Forty Foot."

Reports suggest they may be open to swimming clubs by the end of April, but that it will take longer to open them to the public.
An Irish Life dealer has said the size of a stg978m trade with Anglo Irish Bank during the 2008 financial crisis was "very unusual."

Seamus Magner, then-head of trading at Irish Life Investment Managers, told a jury he was called in to an "impromptu meeting" hours before the transactions were carried out and told of the details.

Mr Magner was giving evidence in the fraud trial of Anglo's ex CEO, David Drumm.

Mr Drumm (51) is pleading not guilty to conspiring to defraud Anglo investors by dishonestly creating the impression that the bank's customer deposits were 7.2bn larger than they were.

He is alleged to have conspired with Anglo's former finance director Willie McAteer and head of Capital Markets John Bowe, as well as then-CEO of Irish Life and Permanent, Denis Casey, and others.

The case centres on a series of interbank deposits which circulated between Anglo and ILP in September 2008.

At Dublin Circuit Criminal Court, Mr Magner told Sinead McGrath BL, prosecuting, that he managed the centralised dealing desk for the investment arm of Irish Life Assurance.

On Friday, September 26, he was called to an impromptu meeting where he was told there would be transactions in "three separate tranches" of stg250m, 253m and 475m.

Mr Magner said the sizes of the transactions were "very unusual for us" as "we wouldn't have a sterling book of that magnitude". The trial continues.
Comments about the Belfast rape case made on live radio by Taoiseach Leo Varadkar during the trial have been described as mind-blowing by Labour Party leader Brendan Howlin.

The former minister said politicians should know better than to reference an active trial, especially one so high-profile.

The Irish Independent revealed yesterday how Mr Varadkar sought legal advice after an appearance on Newstalks Pat Kenny Show on March 9.

The presenter was forced to interrupt the Taoiseach on two occasions as he brought up a certain trial happening in Belfast during a discussion on the abortion referendum.

Mr Varadkar was attempting to make the point that introducing rape as a specific ground for abortion would not be workable as it would require some form of process to prove an attack had occurred.

Referencing the Belfast case, he said: Can you imagine putting women through something like that, or anything even vaguely approaching that?

He added that in order to avoid re-victimising a women, the Government would propose to make abortion legal without specific grounds up to 12 weeks.

Mr Howlin told Independent.ies podcast The Floating Voter that it was bad for anybody to make such public commentary during a trial.

For a politician it is doubly bad. For the Taoiseach it is quite mind-blowing that any comment would be made about an ongoing trial. I hadnt heard it before. To say its unfortunate is to put it mildly, he said.

Although the trial was being held in a different jurisdiction, Mr Howlin said: If you say something on any broadcast media, whether its social media or a radio station, you assume its broadcast to the world.

However, the former public expenditure minister revealed that he had to reprimand one of his own senators for a social media post made shortly after the jury acquitted Ireland rugby internationals Paddy Jackson and Stuart Olding.

Aodhan O Riordain tweeted his own views on the outcome, including a reference to smug, well-connected middle-class boys.

The tweet was quickly deleted  but not before it was reposted hundreds of times.

Mr Howlin said he spoke with the senator who put his hands up and admitted it was a mistake. It shouldnt have happened, the party leader said.

Meanwhile, a new Oireachtas report says the dangers posed by the growth in social media platforms can only tackled by a suite of new laws.

Existing legislation dealing with harassment and abuse have been found inadequate.

The identification of the young woman at the centre of the Belfast rape trial on social media was yesterday cited by chair of the Oireachtas Committee on Children and Youth Affairs, Fine Gael TD Alan Farrell, as an example of the challenges that need to be taken on by politicians.
Students in institutes of technology may be facing a cut in lecturing hours from September in a row over workload for academics.

About 4,000 lecturers are currently being balloted on industrial action, and a yes vote could result in disruption in the next academic year.

The Teachers Union of Ireland (TUI) said increasing demands on academic staff is causing significant levels of work-related stress and damaging the service to students.

TUI president Joanne Irwin said a promised review on the use of an extra productivity hour introduced during the financial crisis had not been completed.

She said the deadline set for completion of the review was March 2017, but a year later they were still waiting.

Ms Irwin said the institute of technology sector had suffered devastating cuts to funding, and the time academic staff could provide to students had come under immense pressure.

She said each hour of lecturing requiring a multiple of hours for the associated preparation, reflection, assessment and feedback.

On top of what was already an excessive workload she said lecturers were required to give an additional two lecturing hours, known as flex hours. In 2016, agreement was reached on the use of one of those hours and the second was to be subject to a review.

Two years on, despite the consistent availability of TUI, this review has not been completed and re-designation of the second flex hour has not taken effect, she said.
Uxoa King, 20, Dublin, Jack Popeley, 22, and Anna Duke, from Dublin, outside the GPO in Dublin in solidarity with the woman at the centre of the Belfast rape case trial. Photo: Damien Eagers

Thousands of people attended rallies nationwide expressing solidarity with the woman at the centre of the Belfast rape trial.

Details of the events had been circulated widely on social media with many using the hashtag #IBelieveHer.

A large crowd gathered at the GPO on Dublins OConnell Street at 12.30pm.

Many at the rally wanted to express solidarity not only with the woman at the centre of the case, but others who have been affected by the issues raised during the trial.

The rally lasted just over an hour, and a heavy shower did not deter the attendees.

Anna Duke (22), from Blessington in Co Wicklow, told the Irish Independent she wanted to show support to the woman at the centre of the case, and all women affected by it.

Its time change is made, she said. I think the turnout is amazing.

Also at the rally was Ken McCue (63), from Smithfield in Dublin, who said he would like to see ethics and human rights courses for school children aged around 12 upwards.

He teaches cultural planning, human rights and ethics himself, and believes that children would benefit from ethics courses, in terms of learning about respect.

It should continue right through their schooling, especially the ones involved in sport, he said.

Dubliner Iseult Deane (21) said she thought the turnout at the event was great. I think its good to see so many young people out here. I think its really powerful and good.

Jack Popeley (22), from Wexford said: The turnout gives me a little bit of hope that there is change coming.

A number of similar events were held elsewhere around the country yesterday.

The four men who were on trial in the high-profile case were found not guilty on Wednesday.

Rugby stars Paddy Jackson and Stuart Olding were found not guilty of raping a young student at a house party. Paddy Jackson (26) was also found not guilty of sexually assaulting the then 19-year-old woman.

Blane McIlroy (26) was found not guilty of exposure, while Rory Harrison (25) was acquitted of perverting the course of justice and withholding information.

However, in the aftermath of the case, the spotlight has fallen on how the legal system deals with people coming forward with allegations of rape and sexual assault.

The now-21-year-old woman at the centre of the Belfast case spent eight days on the stand.
The Dublin Rape Crisis Centre said it has received over 25,000 in donations following the Belfast rape trial verdict.

Jordan Campbell, a representative of the DRCC told Independent.ie that over 16,000 donations have been made since Wednesday afternoon.

Ms Campbell said the centre received an influx of activity on Twitter following the trial decision, followed by a massive increase in donations.

News relating to such topics as the Belfast Rape Trial can be triggering for those who have experienced sexual assault or know someone close to them who has, said Ms Campbell.

We are conscious that there has been a lot of upset about the verdict where people are feeling upset about what happened and just wanted to talk, so thats been our focus is promoting our help line and services, said the DRCC representative.

Ms Campbell said the immense amount of support is truly unprecedented and has been a great way to promote the services the centre offers.

A lot of people just dont know where to go after something happens, or a lot of people arent sure about how the way they are reacting is normal, or where they can go for help, so our helpline, its not directive, its confidential, its listening support and we can tell people what their options are, said Ms Campbell.

If you have been affected by this article, you can call the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre's national helpline on 1800 77 88 88.
One Irish diplomat has been instructed to leave Russia.

The Department of Foreign Affairs has confirmed the move to Independent.ie.

A spokesperson for Tanaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs, Simon Coveney has said: There is no justification for this expulsion.

Our staff do not engage in activities which are incompatible with their diplomatic status. This decision to expel an Irish diplomat is regrettable.

The Russian Embassy in Dublin has this evening said it should come as no surprise that an Irish diplomat is to be expelled from Moscow.

A spokesman said that the Russian Foreign Minister has summoned the heads of diplomatic mission to a meeting today.

They were handed notes of protest and told that the Russian Federation declares persona non-grata the relevant number of diplomats from this countries working on diplomatic mission in Russia, he said.

The spokesman said this was in response to the unjustified expulsion of Russian diplomats based on proof free accusations relating to the Skripal poisoning.

Numerous ambassadors from Western countries were summoned to the Russian foreign ministry today.

Ireland is one of several countries to receive the news that their diplomats were being expelled.

It was a tit-for-tat response to the US and other countries sending diplomats home.

One Russian diplomat from the Dublin embassy is due to leave Ireland in the coming days by order of the Irish state.

Earlier this week Russia's ambassador to Ireland Yury Filatov said that the move by Tanaiste Simon Coveney to expel the Russian diplomat in response to the Salisbury nerve agent attack "would not go unanswered".

Russia expelled 60 diplomats from the US yesterday.
Police have seized what they believe could be one of Northern Ireland's largest ever hauls of herbal cannabis.

The drugs were found on a shipping pallet located inside an industrial sized fuel tank at a property in Dromore, County Down, on Friday.

Three men and two women were detained at the address and officers carried out searches at other locations.

The estimated street value of the drugs is currently unknown.

The discovery was the result of a joint operation by the Police Service of Northern Ireland, An Garda Siochana and Irish customs officials under the banner of the Cross Border Joint Agency Task Force.

PSNI Assistant Chief Constable Stephen Martin said: "This seizure and the associated searches and arrests demonstrate the effectiveness of the real time intelligence sharing and cross-border collaboration that takes place daily to tackle serious and organised criminality in both jurisdictions.

"With the assistance of our colleagues in An Garda Siochana and Revenue Commissioners we have undoubtedly prevented the significant harm that would have resulted from this huge consignment of drugs reaching the streets of both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland today."

An Garda Siochana Assistant Commissioner Barry O'Brien said: "I wish to commend all agencies involved in both jurisdictions which resulted in the seizure of a substantial quantity of controlled drugs.

"This demonstrates the practical application of the Cross Border Joint Agency Task Force."

ACC Martin added: "Our thanks go to all those involved in this operation for their diligence and professionalism.

"Their combined hard work and dedication has gone a long way in helping us achieve our shared goal of keeping people safe."
Micheal Martin has made three big changes in the "war zones" where Fianna Fail is just not landing enough punches on Fine Gael.

The party's continued lag in opinion polls has prompted this surprise first front bench re-shuffle in almost two years.

Ireland's housing crisis worsens each month, so out goes Barry Cowen and in comes Darragh O'Brien from Dublin Fingal.

Health sees all-time record numbers of people on trolleys and other long wait-times, so it's move over Billy Kelleher and give Stephen Donnelly a pop at Health Minister Simon Harris.

Stephen Donnelly's move from Brexit sees promotion for first-time TD, Lisa Chambers of Mayo, who will now pursue the party's increasing criticism of the Government's management. The other notable change is the appointment of Dara Calleary as deputy leader and head of policy, but without a specific government minister to mark.

Another switch speaks to the party's continuing struggles in Dublin, as 27-year-old Jack Chambers of Dublin West just makes the first team as defence spokesman. Limerick's Niall Collins moves from enterprise to foreign affairs, while for the rest, it's as you were.

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The last time Micheal Martin reshuffled was shortly after this hybrid minority coalition took office in May 2016. These changes are limited but pose key talking points in a party riven over the abortion referendum.

It has had no deputy leader since Eamon O Cuiv resigned in March 2012 in a dispute over the EU Fiscal Treaty.

Dara Calleary's appointment is a surprise and could be a blunt message to two putative successors to Micheal Martin as leader; Michael McGrath who stays in finance, and Jim O'Callaghan who stays in justice.

It is also a tribute to the effective and likeable Dara Calleary as his assignment to policy development means heavy-lifting on general election preparations. But the loss of responsibility for public spending gives the move a lateral tinge.

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In his terse statement accompanying the team change announcement, Mr Martin said: "We continue to drive forward the argument for action on the country's housing and health crises." There is an aspirational air to that.

There have been rumblings that Barry Cowen, who on paper gets a promotion to police public spending, was not hurting the floundering Housing Minister, Eoghan Murphy, as the story continues to from bad to worse. But will the voluble and assertive Darragh O'Brien do better?

The timing of Billy Kelleher's move from the other conflict zone of health is curious, though he has held that post since spring 2011.

He was a key figure in supporting the abortion referendum, and parallel legislation, and this is now moving into a crucial period with the referendum on May 25. Mr Kelleher's move to enterprise and employment is questionable in an era of effective full employment.

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Stephen Donnelly's move to health from the Brexit portfolio comes just as he was gaining traction, with criticisms of the Government allowing the Border issue drift unresolved right to the tail end of EU-UK divorce talks next October.

Lisa Chambers should do well replacing Donnelly. But it is notable that the only other women on the first team, who have a senior minister to directly mark, are Anne Rabbitte of Galway East and Niamh Smyth of Cavan-Monaghan.

Surely, a missed opportunity to improve the party's image for promoting women.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has admitted that the rise in homelessness is "extremely disturbing" as the government came under major pressure over the latest figures showing almost 10,000 people in emergency accommodation.

He told the Oireachtas Finance Committee that tackling housing and homelessness is a government priority but was challenged by Sinn's Fein's Pearse Doherty on how this remark can be taken seriously given the latest homeless figures.

Mr Varadkar pointed to the 140m spent on emergency accommodation and plans in Project Ireland 2040 to build 110,000 social homes among measures that prove of the level of government commitment.

He said: "What we're not seeing is the kind of results that we'd like to see and that is unbelievably frustrating - of course most of all for people who are affected by homelessness."

He insisted this is not down to lack of funding or effort.

Mr Varadkar said the government will have to look into why policies aren't having the hoped-for effect.

Mr Doherty put it to Mr Varadkar that "the buck stops with you" and that he's "not a commentator",

He said the homeless figures are "astronomical" and activists on the front line say the government's plans are "deeply flawed".

Mr Varadkar said that "political point scoring" won't provide homes for anyone and adding that there's been a huge increase in spending on housing.

But he also claimed that opposition policies like hard rent caps would reduce housing supply and "would make a bad situation much worse".

Mr Doherty responded to the remarks accusing the Taoiseach of "cheek" in the wake of the new homeless figures.

Separately, Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy was also challenged on the issue in the Dail.

Fianna Fail's outgoing housing spokesman Barry Cowen argued that Fine Gael's approach to the housing crisis has "lacked urgency".

He pointed out that the Confidence and Supply deal his party did with Fine Gael included an agreement to "substantially increase the provision of social housing".

He said Mr Murphy had mentioned examples of individual schemes, but there is no template for how to bring this about nationwide.

Mr Murphy said the government is focussing on developing affordable housing where it's needed most.

He said 25m is to be spent to develop infrastructure for 4,000 new homes on state-owned land and promised the delivery of cost rental projects for low income families.
Cot death may be linked to rare genetic mutations associated with impaired breathing, research has shown.

British and US scientists have found the first clear evidence that genetics plays a role in sudden infant death syndrome (Sids).

The study focused on mutations in the SCN4A gene which helps regulate the muscular control of breathing.

Defects in the gene are associated with a range of neuromuscular disorders, some potentially life-threatening, that make breathing or speaking difficult.

Typically SCN4A mutations are very rare, occurring in fewer than five people in every 100,000. But the study uncovered harmful mutant versions of the gene in four of 278 cot death victims.

Having one of the gene variants may leave some children with weaker breathing muscles, said the researchers.

Faced with extra stresses to breathing such as tobacco smoke, getting entangled in bedding, or a minor illness or airway obstruction, they may be less able to correct their breathing, cough or catch their breath.

Professor Michael Hanna, from the Medical Research Council Centre for Neuromuscular Diseases at University College London, said: "Our study is the first to link a genetic cause of weaker breathing muscles with sudden infant death syndrome.

Breathing

"It suggests that genes controlling breathing muscle function could be important in this condition. However, more research will be needed to fully understand this link."

The scientists stressed that faulty genes are probably not the sole cause of cot death, and safe sleeping measures were still essential to ensure a baby's safety.

An estimated 300 cot deaths occur each year in the UK, and 2,400 in the US. Typically, the syndrome strikes infants aged two to four months.

Although the cause of cot death is unknown, it is widely believed to be linked to breathing problems.

For the study, the researchers looked at tissue samples from 278 British and American children whose deaths remained unexplained despite thorough post-mortem investigations.

DNA from the samples was compared with that from 729 healthy adults with no history of heart, lung, or neurological disease. The findings are reported in 'The Lancet'.
I'm thinking of getting solar panels after visiting a house where the owners had them installed.

They were less obtrusive than I had imagined. Would it be very complicated, do I need permission and are there any grants available? Can the neighbours object?

A. There are great benefits to installing solar panels. Firstly, your heating bills can reduce and the SEAI offers grants up to 1,200 toward the cost (see seai.ie) if your house is pre-2006.

There are two types of panels: flat-plate collectors which are rigid box-like structures; they are cheaper but the hot water produced will be at a lower temperature.

Evacuated Tube Collectors are lighter on the roof and are more efficient, but they are more expensive to install.

Planning permission is generally not required for domestic installations under 12 sqm (and less than 50pc of the roof area, which is all the SEAI grant is available for in any event). As such, neighbours cannot lodge an objection to an exempted structure.

Six solar panels would normally be sufficient.

Electric Ireland says that installation is generally completed in a day and the output would result in savings of around 200 pa on energy bills.

Q. My son deals with my finances as I am elderly and have poor eyesight now. He pays my bills and collects the pension for me, and is really very good.

He has said to me that he thinks it's a good idea for us to have a joint bank account to make things easier as he can pay my bills and he also says it would save me a lot of tax if I transfer the house into his name while I continue to live here.

How would this work? I'm planning on leaving the house to him anyway as my daughter is married in Australia.

A. The fact that you contacted me suggests that despite your comfort in having your son nearby and willing to help out with your finances, you have some concerns. I think they are well founded. Although it's great he can help with bills, especially online transactions, there is a fine line between assisting and taking over.

From a tax point of view, there is absolutely no benefit in putting the house in his name now, irrespective of whether you continue to live there or not. Capital Acquisitions Tax (CAT) is payable whether a property is given as a gift (during the owner's lifetime) or left as a bequest in a will. The tax is 33pc on any amount over 310,000, either way. Who you leave it to, is entirely your own business.

I'm not suggesting he is hood-winking you, but it might be wise to ask him for his thinking around this, and perhaps agree to you both visiting a solicitor together to get advice and not least, to make a will if you have not already.

Justin Moran from Age Action Ireland adds: "I think you should be very careful about some of the suggestions, no matter how well-intentioned. Joint bank accounts are also something to be cautious about. It means that your son would be able to spend your money without needing your permission and while your relationship with him is clearly very good, this is your money and it's important to ensure it is being spent appropriately.

"There have been a number of cases of financial elder abuse where older people have lost money and property because they transferred ownership or gave control of their finances to someone else. I'm sure your son will understand why you need to be careful about making decisions like these".

The Ryan Review

Banks operate, quite rightly, under strict mortgage lending rules these days, with the Central Bank overseeing them. Holding firm on Loan-to-Income requirements, for instance, is seen as vital to avoid another financial crisis down the road.

The maximum therefore it is deemed prudent to lend, is no more than 3.5 times income. Applications are scrutinised for ability to pay and rejected if stress testing is not met. This means less than a third of household outlay will be on mortgage payments, in line with the rest of Europe. These rules are enforced by our legislature, and the Government roundly welcomed them when introduced.

So, what are we to make then of the same Government operating state-backed lending for sub-prime applicants rejected by banks for mortgages based on those very sound grounds?

The Rebuilding Ireland Home Loan offers mortgages up to 5.5 times Loan-to-Income, and only to applicants who have failed, at least twice, to persuade an ordinary lender to give them a mortgage. The taxpayer is underwriting it, so when these loans default (as a large proportion of them most assuredly will, given the figures from other sub-prime lenders), it is you and I who will be picking up the tab. The mortgages don't fall under Central Bank rules, nor oversight, nor indeed MARP. In other words, it is a terrible idea, which is against the rules. If the rules applied.

The only saving grace about the scheme is that it won't work. The limits on house values (250,000 - 320,000) are far too tight given the lack of supply. Indeed, the only drawdowns will be on self-builds down the country. Now why would Fine Gael want us to pay for that, eh? And how is the supply shortage addressed by saddling people who should not be given a loan, by giving them an extra large one? Answers on a post card.
Every 1970s Irish childhood had a place for the 1930s Tarzan movies, played endlessly each Saturday morning on terrestrial television.

These starred the pneumatic Olympic gold medallist swimmer-turned-actor Johnny Weissmuller as the vine swinger in chief. His romantic lead Jane was played by Killiney girl Maureen O'Sullivan, who is still best remembered today for the 12-movie jungle franchise.

Born in Boyle in 1911, her father, British army major Charles O'Sullivan later moved the family to the upmarket Saintbury House at Saintbury Avenue in Killiney.

In her teens she was noticed by a Hollywood film director at a dinner-dance who asked the waiter to give her a note: "If you are interested in being in a film, come to my office tomorrow at 11am." He cast her in Song O' My Heart (1930), partly filmed in Ireland before completion in Hollywood where she ended up, aged just 18.

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Always independently minded, O'Sullivan fell out with Hollywood executives for playing her off against other leading ladies.

Her roles got smaller until she landed the hugely popular Tarzan franchise and she married John Farrow, the director of her last Tarzan. O'Sullivan had by then starred in Pride and Prejudice, Anna Karenina, and David Copperfield and in more recent years as her daughter Mia Farrow's screen mother in Hannah and Her Sisters.

But some co-stars it seemed were not complimentary. In the 2009 Man Booker nominated biography Me Cheeta, (aided by James Lever) her Tarzan co-star Cheeta the chimp (then aged 79), wrote: "She couldn't even act affection for animals; although, to be wholly honest and give the harmless old trout her due, it was probably just me she disliked." The chimp who was trained to operate an overhead fan in Tarzan's treehouse just to keep the actress cool, also admitted attempts to "subtly deconstruct" O'Sullivan on set by "imitating her actions".

The antagonism was apparently mutual. O'Sullivan's actress daughter Mia Farrow said her mother described Cheeta as "that b***ard," adding that he kept biting her on the set. The actress remarried in 1983 and died in Arizona in 1998 at the age of 87.

But back to Saintbury House, an unusual castellated period home on a raised site and perfect for a Hollywood princess-to-be.

Constructed in the 1830s before the railway arrived, it is among the oldest in the enclave and noted for its extraordinary lawn terrace views of the sea. It was placed on the market in 2016 and withdrawn since.

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Now it has returned for sale with an asking price of 2.65m through Sherry FitzGerald. Saintbury comes with statement entrance hall and an ornate hand-carved period staircase. The drawing room is double aspect with a period marble fireplace and huge bay windows overlooking the sea. Off this is the study with its varnished pine floor, and a loft storage area. Three of the bedrooms are on this floor, the main with a walk-in dressing room and an ensuite bathroom. The music room, where Count John McCormack often played and sang, still holds a piano downstairs. There's a family room with a designer wood burner and three more bedrooms. A permission has just lapsed for an extension. Renewed, it takes this house up from 4,413 sq ft to 7,780 sq ft.

Saintbury House

Saintbury Avenue Killiney, Co Dublin

Asking price: 2.65m

Agent: Sherry FitzGerald (01) 2751000
On the face of it, the LIHAF (Local Infrastructure Housing Activation Fund) deals struck between local authorities and developers are a good deal for the taxpayer and those hoping to buy a home.

More than half (55pc) of the 19,979 units to be provided will be social or affordable, with cost reductions of up to 20,000 available on some homes. In many cases, more than the required legal minimum 10pc will be social housing.

Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy also insists that the 195m invested in roads and other essential services will help to deliver much-needed housing to tackle the crisis and reduce the record numbers in homelessness.

But delve a little deeper and the picture becomes far less rosy. In three developments, landowners and councils have failed to strike a deal on providing affordable homes but will still receive more than 2m. In effect, these landowners will receive taxpayers' money to allow them build homes, without any State return.

In other cases, there is a commitment to provide affordable homes but no detail on when, or at the price tag which will be attached, despite funding being approved.

And while discounts of up to 20,000 per home will be provided on some projects, in other cases the cost reductions are minuscule to the point of laughable, in some cases below 2pc.

Most worryingly, the Government also appears to be facilitating investor-only development on Cork's South Docks. There, on what the Department of Housing says will be a "mainly build-to-rent" scheme of 620 homes, 15.5m has been allocated.

Some 62 will be social - but remember that local authorities have to buy social units at a price which includes builders' profit. Just 40 will be affordable and the State will only be entitled to lease them for 25 years. The local authority or other agency will have to pay a monthly rent, even if at a discounted rate. At the end of the deal, does the council kick the tenants out?

When details of the successful LIHAF were first announced on March 28 last year, there was scepticism about the State stepping in to help developers, including global players Hines and Lone Star Capital, develop lands they had bought, in some cases at low cost during the depths of the recession.

These companies are quite entitled to secure any funding they can to assist in their development projects, and maximise their returns, but the benefit to the State in some cases is less than what many would have expected.

It's worth remembering that in August 2016, the Department of Housing issued a call for proposals. Among the criteria to qualify was that a "high level of affordability" was provided.

A requirement that at least 40pc of homes be available at a 10pc discount to the market price, including under 300,000 in Dublin, was scrapped a month later.

It's noteworthy that of the 11 projects approved in the capital, just two schemes, in Adamstown and Kilcarbery/Corkagh Grange, will see homes being sold for under 300,000, according to councils.

Landowners are entitled to drive a hard bargain, but the question has to be asked whether the State rolled over and failed to secure the best return for the taxpayer in a desperate bid to boost supply.
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Colette Browne Opinion Every effort must be made to retrieve oral histories of mother and baby home survivors

With three days to go until the Mother and Baby Homes Commission ceases to exist as a legal entity, we are being told that audio recordings of hundreds of witnesses which were deleted may not actually be gone forever. It is another usual twist in a most emotional saga. For decades, survivors of mother and baby homes have been denied a voice and denied autonomy. When they fell pregnant, many through rape and abuse, they were marched to the doors of religious institutions.
As the criminal trial in Belfast of two high-profile rugby players for rape ended, a massive wave of emotion reverberated. The reaction on social media was particularly powerful, with #Ibelieveher trending and myriad opinions being expressed.

While the hashtag has changed, some serious issues that appeared during and after this trial are similar to those that prompted me to bring forth proposals last year around the use of social media posts during criminal court cases.

In that instance, #JobstownNotGuilty was being used persistently during the criminal trial last year of Paul Murphy TD and a number of other individuals were tried for false imprisonment in 2014 of the then-Tanaiste Joan Burton and her adviser Karen OConnell at a water charges protest.

It trended on Twitter in Ireland throughout the trial.

It is completely unacceptable for prejudicial comments like this to be made during the course of a criminal trial. We do not know and cannot know if the social media campaign had undue influence on the jury in that case, but it is apparent that we need to protect jurors from attempts to influence them through social media.

It was clear to me then that there was a pressing need for contempt of court legislation to deal with social media usage during trials.

Although Belfast is in a different jurisdiction, the recent events there have further convinced me that this is an issue that we urgently need to regulate properly.

During and after the trial, repeated threats were made to name the woman who reported the rape case on social media.

Similarly, right throughout the trial, comments were made on a daily basis about the people involved in the case.

This is completely unacceptable and we must act decisively to ensure our laws are an effective deterrent against this kind of damaging online activity.

Under the terms of the legislation that I drafted and put before the Dail last year, social media companies would face unlimited fines if they left up posts that could jeopardise criminal proceedings.

Once enacted, this law  which coincides with the social media companies efforts to tackle fake news  would put Ireland to the forefront of regulating social media.

Central to this move is giving statutory footing to the law of contempt of court. Last year, then-chief justice Susan Denham said that procedures were needed so that contempt of court laws could be used against those who disrupt court proceedings with social media.

My proposals would give judges the power to direct that material which risks prejudicing court proceedings be removed from websites. They would also be able to order that the websites operators take steps that the court deems reasonably necessary to prevent the publication of some posts.

The penalty for individuals found to be in contempt of court after they made posts on social media would be imprisonment or a fine.

The introduction of this type of legislation would in no way curtail legitimate freedom of speech. Rather, it is a recognition that our current laws are outdated in light of modern developments in communications technology.

Our democratic system under the rule of law relies on the integrity of our court system. We must do our utmost to protect it.

Josepha Madigan TD is Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht and is a solicitor and mediator.
The monthly meeting of Louth County Council descended into chaos on Monday when the Chief Executive Ms Joan Martin left the chamber following accusations by Sinn Fein Cllr Tomas Sharkey that the council was 'dysfunctional'.

And the meeting was suspended for around 45 minutes after a heated exchange between Director of Service Frank Pentony and Cllr Sharkey, with the former Dundalk Town Clerk declaring: 'I do not take lightly being assassinated by Sinn Fein at the top table and they are good at that and always were.'

The chamber erupted into bedlam with Cllr Tomas Sharkey accusing him of making an 'absolutely disgusting and disgraceful' comment which defamed all ten Sinn Fein members, and that there could be no working relationship with the officials.

The outburst came after a testy meeting as councillors questioned the Chief Executive who had stated that funding had been found to make up the shortfall in revenue resulting from the suspension of pay-parking in Drogheda, after the by-laws had been challenged.

She explained that a review of the council's finance at the closing of accounts for 2017 had identified a surplus of 250,000 and that further money was due from the Irish Public Bodies.

She refuted claims by Cllr Kevin Callan that she had mislead the council during the budgetary process and also told Cllr Frank Godfrey that it was 'incorrect' that they had collected any money illegally from pay-parking.

She had got legal advice that the by-laws were 'unsatisfactory' but as that legal advice had been sought by her as Chief Executive she was not going to make it available to members.

Cllr Tomas Sharkey argued that the real issue was one of governance and decision making. He questioned the Council's risk management auditing, citing examples, and claimed that the local authority was 'dysfunctional' and it was only a matter of time before they ended up before the Public Accounts Committee.

Ms Martin refuted any suggestion that the council was dysfunctional and asked him to withdraw his statement, which he refused to do.

The meeting was adjourned by chairman Cllr Colm Markey and when it resumed after the tea break, the Chief Executive left the chamber as the debate continued.

Cllr Sharkey refused to withdraw his comments, maintaining his stance that the council was dysfunctional.

It was then that Mr Pentony said: 'I do not take it lightly being assassinated by Sinn Fein at the top table and they are good at that and always were.'

Cllr Sharkey branded the remark 'absolutely disgusting and disgraceful' and a slight on all the Sinn Fein members. He claimed it showed that was Louth County Council was being managed by people with those views. As the chairman asked him to stop speaking, he declared 'We have legal rights not to be called assassins and murderers.'

The meeting was again adjourned and as it resumed some 45 minutes later, Mr Pentony said he wished to withdraw unreservedly the remarks, made in the heat of the moment, and to apologise to anyone he may have offended.

Cllr Sharkey said he believed that each and every Sinn Fein member of the Louth County Council had been defamed as there was an allegation of criminal activity against them and he wouldn't accept the apology. He wanted to hear from the Chief Executive that those remarks were not the view of the officials and would be dealt with through the proper procedures.

He then proposed an emergency motion requesting the Chief Executive to attend the rest of the meeting which was carried even though members heard that they had no authority to make the Chief Executive be in attendance.

Ms Martin didn't attend the remainder of the meeting which continued for another two hours.
A senior Cork County Council official has confirmed the authority is to seek approval for the construction of a roundabout at a junction near Banteer, once branded "one of the most dangerous in the country."

Debate has raged for months over the need to implement new safety measures at the N72 Ballymacquirke Cross junction, with thousands of locals even signing a petition calling for action.

In January Cork County Council delivered a report to councillors saying consultants had investigated the issue and the authority submitted a draft report to Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII) containing three possible solutions.

These were improving sight lines by staggering junctions; building a roundabout; or installing a grade separated junction: in lay man's terms, a flyover along the route of the N72 over the junction.

At the time senior council engineer Jim Moloney said the consultants were in favour of a flyover, which he conceded would be the most expensive of the three options.

"However, it must be stressed that at this stage this is only a draft report," said Mr Moloney.

While councillors congratulated council officials on addressing the issue, Councillor Gerard Murphy said he was concerned that the cost of building a flyover could put the project back indefinitely.

"With that in mind one of the other options may prove to be more viable. I would not want to see a situation arise where the solution to this issue proved to be so costly that it might not happen for a long time," he said.

Cllr Melissa Mullane (SF) agreed, saying that the flyover option sounded "a bit ridiculous". "To be honest, the roundabout option seems more realistic," she said.

After the issue was once again raised at the council's March northern area committee meeting, the authority's Director of Services Tom Stritch confirmed that a roundabout at the junction was now the preferred option.

He said the Council's National Roads Office had prepared a draft Proposed Road Safety Remedial Scheme Report on the junction under the auspices of TII's road safety programme.

Mr Stritch said Council engineers had met with TII officials to review this draft report and that as a result a finalised report would be submitted to TII within the next three weeks.

"The preferred solution being put forward in the report will be for a roundabout at the junction," he confirmed.

The news was welcomed by Cllr Bernard Moynihan (FF), who said he hoped that TII would move swiftly on the issue.

"There is no doubt in my mind but that this is a serious accident waiting to happen and the sooner it is addressed the better," he said.

"To be honest I always felt that a roundabout was the best and most financially viable solution. I can only hope that TII treat this matter with the urgency it warrants, sanction the proposal and come up with the funding needed to put the roundabout in place as soon as possible," he added.
One of the highlights of the 2018 Drogheda St Patrick's Day parade was the replica of the Drogheda Coast Guard helicopter - manufactured in a building on the Ballymakenny Road, thanks to Ken O Heiligh.

Officer in charge Dermot McConnoran and the local members were on hand to accept the best Voluntary and Community entry and were delighted to have been recognised.

'It took two and a half months to construct and this was through the busiest time in the history of our unit. Annually we usually deal with 50 to 60 incidents but during the building of the helicopter we responded to 30 incidents. One minute we would all be working around Ken the next he would be left standing alone wondering where the hell has everyone gone.

'Since the parade we have received several inquiries from different parts of the country to display the helicopter at various events.

'Next year for the first time the Irish Coast Guard have been invited to participate in the St. Patrick's day parade in Dublin so the helicopter might be making its way down the M1.,' he stated.

'I have to thank Ken O Heiligh because without his vision, dedication, determination and workmanship this project would not have happened, and to all the guys in the unit well done. We have been involved in the St. Patrick's Day parade over the years and during that time we have displayed our rescue boats, vehicles and rescue equipment the one thing we couldn't display was one of our biggest assets the Rescue Helicopter.

'As we all woke up on the morning of the 14th March 2017 and learned the terrible news of the tragedy and loss of Rescue 116 and her crew, Dara, Mark, Ciaran and Paul we were all devastated. We hope and pray that Ciaran and Paul's remain will be recovered.

'When building this replica that tragedy was never far from our minds and I hope that in some small way it can be seen as a tribute to the crew.'

Frank's Country Cottage were runners up in the section while Wogan Build won best Commercial with Scholars Hotel, second.

The overall winners were Kid Kast.
A man who participated in the tiger kidnapping of a family with a 10-week-old baby has had his nine year prison sentence increased to 15 following an appeal by prosecutors.

Mark McCarthy (32) of Elm Dale Crescent, Ballyfermot, had pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to the false imprisonment of Warren and Jean Marie Nawn as well as their ten week old baby in Co Louth and Co Dublin between August 1st and 2nd 2011. Some 661,125 was taken from the Post Office in Drogheda, where Mr Nawn worked, none of which has been recovered.

McCarthy was sentenced to nine years imprisonment by Judge Patricia Ryan on May 19, 2017.

His sentence was found to be "unduly lenient" by the Court of Appeal on Friday following an appeal brought by the Director of Public Prosecutions and McCarthy was given a new sentence of 15 years.

Giving judgment in the three-judge court, Mr Justice George Birmingham said "thankfully", there have been few similar cases in Ireland and, as such, few earlier sentences available as comparators. However, he said a sentence in the range of 22 years to life would have to be considered, absent any mitigation.

There was evidence that McCarthy had been acting under duress in relation to a drug debt and that there was a credible threat against his life unless he participated in the kidnapping.

Giving background, Mr Justice Birmingham said the injured parties were in their home on the night in question when the doorbell rang. When Mr Nawn went to answer the door he was met by a man with a scarf covering his face, carrying a pizza box in one hand and a short-barrelled gun in the other.

Ms Nawn had her baby in her arms when she saw the raider entering the sitting room. He was wearing gloves and was carrying a firearm. The raiders tied her hands and legs with duct tape and used duct tape to position the baby on her chest.

Mr Nawn was told that if he didn't cooperate, those involved would "blow his wife's head and the baby's head off" and that they would have to try for a new baby.

McCarthy was nominated as a suspect as his fingerprints were found on a piece of torn pizza box in a bag with ms Nawne's Tesco club card. The bag was found in a suspect vehicle which had been doused with petrol and set on fire but the fire had been extinguished by a quick-thinking passer-by.

He had 125 previous convictions for threats to kill, burglary, possession of knives, assaults, theft and fraud offences, endangerment, public order and road traffic offences.
Sinn Fein in Drogheda will mark the Anniversary of the 1916 rising with its Easter Commemoration to the Republican plot on the Marsh Rd next Sunday 1st April.

The parade will assemble at 12 noon outside St. Peter's Church, West Street.

Speaking in advance of the event Cllr Joanna Byrne (pictured) who will chair the event said, "As in previous years two bands, the Lourdes Brass Band and The Rising Phoenix Republican Flute band will be in attendance and these will be led by a republican colour party made up of members from the three Sinn Fein cumann in the south of the county.

'It is important we pay tribute to all of those brave men and women who gave their lives in the cause of Irish freedom. I want to invite people to attend the commemoration, celebrate 1916 and also ultimately help us achieve Irish unity. I would encourage people to honour Ireland's patriot dead by wearing an Easter lily". The main speaker this year is Sinn Fein MLA John O'Dowd.
Those behind Bellewstown racecourse have moved to attempt to allay fears about the 'common land' in the vicinity of the course after they sought 'possessory title' to build new stables.

Local landowners were surprised to receive letters from the Land Registry Office, outlining the lands in question.

A public meeting was subsequently organised for Bellewstown Hall this week.

Locals took to social media to outline their concerns, stating that the traditional common land around the racecourse housed the likes of a GAA pitch and pitch and putt and an area had been reserved for people to come and sit and enjoy the scenery. They did not want to see that change or fences being erected or any issues with people using the amenity.

Stephen Duggan, on behalf of the Bellewstown Race Committee, said they would like to apologise for any misunderstanding linked to the correspondence that locals received from the land register office.

'In summary, Horse racing Ireland now require all Racecourses to have permanent stables for racing for enhanced hygiene, security and animal welfare reasons. As you may be aware Bellewstown does currently not possess permanent stables and have been dependant on the use of temporary stabling facilities that are erected each summer. Consequently, the racecourse needs to borrow money to build the stables and in order to do this we have to show we have possessory title to the land same as we have for the track itself. As part of this process the property registration office writes to all adjacent land owners as a courtesy to inform them of what is happening.

'Let us reassure you that there are no new fences being erected, no additional restricted access, nothing changes around the race course. This piece of land concerned is in the middle of the racecourse opposite the stands to the east and cannot be accessed from the road.'

They say they welcomed the public meeting to allow them outline their plans and also listen to any concerns people may have.

Bellewstown Racecourse Committee also invite the interested general public to an Open Information Evening taking place this Thursday 29th March from 7pm to 9pm at Bellewstown Racecourse with regard to the regularisation of the racecourse issue with The Land Registry.

For the first time ever, the July Festival at Bellewstown this year will be a 4-day event, beginning on Wednesday, 4th July and ending on Saturday, 7th July.
Local councillor Tom Kelly says he'd love to see the Tara Brooch going on display at a new centre to be built as part of the redevelopment of the beach entrance in the centre of Bettystown.

But Head of Finance Fiona Lawless says that it won't happen. 'There's no way on earth we'll get it,' she stated at the Laytown/Bettystown area council meeting.

She said the Tara Brooch can be incorporated into the new building but 'if we can't get the Book of Kells to Kells, we won't get the Tara Brooch!'

The matter was raised during a discussion on the Draft Beach Management Plan for the area, aimed at improving facilities for locals and visitors.

The brooch was found in August 1850 on the beach at Bettystown by a peasant woman. She sold it to a dealer in Drogheda who then passed it on to Dublin jeweler George Waterhouse.

He made the 7th Century made object world famous. It was renamed 'Tara' to increase its appeal.

It was put on display at The Great Exhibition in London in 1851 and even went to Windsor Castle to allow the Queen see it.

By the mid 1870s, it was part of the Museum of Ireland collection.

While the chances of brooch coming to Bettystown are now slim, the plan to transform the beach area continues, although consultants must now carry out a Natura Impact Assessment of the area in case of issues with birds nesting, etc.

It is expected that the plan will be put out on public display in April.

They are working on securing a tender for a focal point building at the beach entrance, either to incorporate the present buildings - recently purchased by the council - or a totally new look.

Councillor Sharon Tolan made a call for something to be done with the beach entrance at present due to the numbers using it. She said it was blocked by cars recently and vehicles couldn't get down or up.

Eimear Ferguson and Sharon Keogan both asked for the period of the beach warden to be extended until the end of September
Residents in the Deepforde estate on the Dublin Road are being left high and dry by Irish Water - literally! Since the major water breakdown at Staleen last year, the residents have been denied a decent supply with numerous complaints that the water just stops flowing - in mid shower.

One area of the estate has been particularly badly hit, making the situation all the more frustrating. Contact has been made with Irish Water and the residents are keen to see the pressure issue resolved.

Cllr Sharon Tolan raised the issue of the water shortages at the Laytown/Bettystown area council meeting and asked for something to be done about it. Meanwhile, Sinn Fein Councillor Kenneth Flood has slammed Louth County Council following two unannounced water outages on two consecutive days in the Newfoundwell/Termonfeckin Road area.

Councillor Flood said "In the early afternoons of Tuesday 20th and Wednesday 21st of March I was inundated with calls from residents of several estates asking why there was no water in the area. I contacted Irish Water to query this on both days and was told on both days that they had no information."

Councillor Flood then proceeded to contact Louth County Council who informed him they were 'aware of an issue and it would be resolved soon.' Cllr Flood was told on the second day of the water outage "that contractors were stress testing the new water-main for the Newfoundwell/Termonfeckin Road area, but that the water was only supposed to be off for 15 minutes. This was not the case. Residents were without water for up to 5 hours and when supply did eventually return it was murky and undrinkable."

Councillor Flood said "They must be detached from reality not to think of the thousands of residents who were plagued by water outages for years until the North Quay watermain was replaced. Their unannounced testing caused severe stress and concern among residents. I shared the information via social media and then spent hours phoning residents back to tell them what had happened. Again, a lack of information and communication from Louth County Council."

Kenneth Flood had harsh words with Louth County Council about these unannounced water outages and told them "they must take heed that this situation cannot be allowed to occur again.
Residents on the Windmill Road are organising a concerned residents association in a bid to sort out their parking nightmare - once and for all.

The situation has been described as 'hell on earth' by local woman Caroline Gormley, who says the time has come for action.

When there was pay parking, the situation was difficult, but now it's become unbearable!

'We refuse to be treated like this anymore,' Caroline stated. Last week, she visited a number of homes on the street with a petition to sort out the parking situation and was shocked by the stories she heard. 'I was astounded by the anger. Individuals have said they've reported things but now we are going to unite on this. We can't live like this.'

'Now we are going to become organised and bring our case to the council. We should not have to live like this. Not only can we not park outside our homes - despite having a parking permit - but oil can't be delivered as normal, taxis can't pull in, bins can't be put out, people can't park when they come and visit,' she stated.

Large trucks have again taken to using the road and some residents have reported cracks appearing on walls in their homes.

'The houses rattle and shake when they go by,' she explained.

The residents feel there's now a window to state their case before pay parking returns and they are looking at all their options.

That may even turn into street protests.

One suggestion is that one side of the Windmill Road is totally reserved for residents parking.

'At one stage I saw an ambulance having to reverse down the street because it couldn't get through,' Caroline explained.

The fact that the street is cheaper to park on than the nearby hospital car park adds to the frustration.

At last week's Let's Talk Drogheda meeting in the Barbican, organised by Cllr Frank Godfrey, it was stated that residents have had no option but to use the car parks - sometimes at a cost of 12 - so they can go into their own homes!

'I can't use my front room as a bedroom because of the noise,' Caroline contnued.

Cars have also been damaged and anti-social behaviour is apparent, leading to calls for CCTV on the street.

Frank Green (81) has lived on the street since 1966 and says he had to give up driving because of the stress of finding a place to park all the time.

'We have one entrance to our homes and we have to take everything in and out that door. There should be no parking on one side of the street.'

When Irish Water closed off the street for pipe work, they put in slabs in the middle of the road and they are now loose and make a terrific noise and we wake up at night when a car hits it. The council say it's Irish Water, Irish Water say it's the council,' Frank added.
Dunleer businessman Martin Naughton has been awarded the 2018 Oslo Business for Peace Award, in recognition of his efforts to promote the role of the private sector in contributing to peace and environmental sustainability.

The billionaire founder of Glen Dimplex is the first Irish person to be honoured with the Oslo Business for Peace Award, with previous honorees including Tesla's Elon Musk and Virgin's Sir Richard Branson.

He was nominated for the award by Chambers Ireland, supported by the Northern Ireland Chamber of Commerce and Industry, South Dublin Chamber and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

President Michael Higgins commented on the award, stating, 'May I convey my congratulations to Martin Naughton, founder of Glen Dimplex, on being awarded the Business for Peace Award in recognition of his contribution to peace building through business initiatives.

'Martin Naughton's role supporting business development across the island of Ireland, and his efforts to encourage the private sector to focus on its potential impact on peace building and environmental sustainability, are deserving of this global recognition.

'May I, along with Sabina, send my heartfelt congratulations to him, and to Ms. Lori Blaker and Mr. Edgar Montenegro, whose work has also been recognised"

The Oslo Business For Peace Award is given out annually to 'exemplary business leaders who apply their business energy ethically and responsibly, creating economic and societal value".'

Responding to the award Martin Naughton said: 'I am honoured and humbled to have been recognised by Business for Peace for this award.

'Throughout my life in business as founder of Glen Dimplex Group, I have been fortunate to have been able to play my part in effecting positive societal change.

'As we approach the 20th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, I am reminded that we must continue to work to maintain peace on both sides of the Irish border. Similarly, we must redouble our efforts to tackle climate change and promote environmental sustainability.'

Naughton was praised by the Oslo Foundation for his 'exceptional contributions to peacebuilding through business, including creating economic opportunities both sides of the Irish border,'

During the turbulent years of the Northern Ireland conflict, Naughton was lauded for promoting and supporting business on both sides of the border, including negotiating cross-border trade.

Having grown his business from humble roots in Newry, County Down to become the global leader in electric heating, Glen Dimplex now provides employment for more than 10,000 employees worldwide with extensive state of the art research and development facilities based in Dunleer, County Louth.

It has grown to become one of Ireland's largest privately-owned manufacturing businesses, with a turnover of some 1.5 billion, and one of the world's largest manufacturers of domestic appliances.

Martin Naughton is one of three winners will receive their award at a formal ceremony which will take place in Oslo City Hall on May 16th.
Aidan Foley, Project Director, TII, Peter Walsh, Director of the Capital Programme Management, TII, Anne Graham, CEO, NTA and Hugh Creegan, Deputy CEO, NTA pictured at the launch of Metro Link

The 3 billion euro Metrolink project which will connect Swords to the city centre in just 25 minutes, is finally moving forward after years of delays.

Details of the emerging preferred routes have been revealed and an extensive public consultation process will begin next week on the 'high capacity, high-frequency cross-city rail corridor'.

The first takes place today (Tuesday) at Fingal County Council offices in Swords from 2pm to 8pm. On Thursday, March 29, there will be another one in the Crowne Plaza Hotel Northwood from 2pm to 8pm,

Some 4,000 jobs are expected to be created during the construction phase.

Formerly known as Metro North but now renamed Metrolink, the proposal will see a 26km rail line connect Swords to Sandyford, via Dublin Airport, with a total of 25 stops. Provision has been made for a future stop at Dardistown.

The line will travel from Swords to the city centre in 25 minutes and have the ability to cater for 15,000 passengers per direction per hour. It is expected that it will carry 50m passengers per annum.

There will be 30 trains per hour in each direction, effectively a train every two minutes.

The proposal anticipates the creation of 15 new metro stations and passengers can expect services to commence in 2027

A large proportion of the route will be underground, including where it passes under the important city centre area and Dublin Airport.

The rail link will be begin at the Estuary Park and Ride, north of the Fingallians roundabout and close to the M1 intersection. A park and ride facility with capacity to accommodate 3,000 vehicles will be located there.

It will then travel down along the old N1 on an elevated structure which passes over Estuary, Seatown, Malahide and Pinnock Hill roundabouts, with stations located at Seatown and Swords Central.

It will then move underground just north of Dublin Airport. There is also a provision for a stop at Dardistown. It will then travel underground to Northwood before travelling westwards towards Ballymun, and then south again to Collins Avenue, Griffith Park, Glasnevin and the Mater Hospital.

In the city centre, continuing underground, there will be a stop at O'Connell Street, Tara Street and St Stephen's Green and Charlemont on the Luas Green Line South City Area, where the metro will rise up and connect to, and runs southwards on, the existing Luas Green Line, which will be upgraded to metro standard as part of the project.

It is anticipated that he Railway Order application will be made to An Bord Pleanala in quarter three of next year.

It is expected a decision will be forthcoming in 2020, with construction getting underway in 2021 and lasting for approximately six years..

National Transport Authority CEO Anne Graham said: 'There are very significant benefits associated with MetroLink, particularly in terms of the integrated transport system that it will bring about for Dublin.

'For example, thanks to MetroLink, there will finally be a rail link to Dublin Airport, and with easy interchange with other modes including bus, Dart and commuter rail, MetroLink will make it easier than ever to move into and around the capital.

'There will be 25 stations in total, 15 of them brand new, so it will also make sustainable transport a viable option for more and more people in areas like Swords and Ballymun.

Transport Infrastructure Ireland CEO Michael Nolan said: 'Really what today is all about is the launch of the consultation process for MetroLink, because we want to make sure that people at local level have a say.

'Having examined in detail the various alignments and options, the EPR is the one that we feel is the best fit for the project. But we remain open to looking at other proposals, and if people or communities feel there are better ways of doing it, we will of course be happy to consider any alternatives put forward.'
Junior Defence Minister Paul Kehoe is just back from south Lebanon where he met Irish troops serving alongside other UNIFIL peacekeepers.

'My reasons for visiting you here are very straightforward. Firstly, and most importantly I want to thank you for all you are doing to contribute to the peace and security in the region,' Minister Kehoe told the troops in a speech.

'What you do here, day in and day out, culminates in the realisation of our words of commitment to peacekeeping, and also to progress in the region. Your work and your actions fill every Irish person with pride.

'Secondly, I want to see for myself, at first hand, the situation currently facing our troops here in South Lebanon.'

The Minister said Ireland has participated in UNIFIL in various guises since its establishment in 1978. 'Ireland's participation down the years in UNIFIL has illustrated the very positive and practical difference that small countries like Ireland can make in the world's trouble spots.

'The joint participation of Ireland, Finland and Estonia in this mission demonstrates our joint contribution to international peace and security. It also demonstrates the benefits of our mutual cooperation on defence issues within the European Union through the Common Security and Defence Policy and the benefits of our participation in NATO's Partnership for Peace.

Minister Kehoe said that through a common endeavor within the EU and NATO PfP, 'we have enhanced the capacity of our forces from Ireland, Finland and Estonia, to operate together in conflict zones throughout the world.

'Here on the ground in Lebanon we can realise the benefits of those endeavors and deliver peace and security to the people of South Lebanon.'

'I am very aware of the enormous sacrifices you make here,' he told the troops, among them several from his home county.

'I realise how much you all miss your homes, your families and your loved ones. I know the dangers you face and the hardships you endure as part of your mission. I will continue to ensure that Defence Forces personnel serving on overseas missions are equipped with the essential training and equipment they require,' said Minister Kehoe.

'While your presence here is a great source of pride to Ireland, it is the difference between life and death for so many people living here.

'We may be a small nation, but we can stand tall when it comes to helping some of the most beleaguered people on this planet.'
A strategic plan aimed at reducing harm caused by alcohol in Sligo will help 'make Sligo and Ireland a better and safer place to live'.

The support from the number and range of individuals, groups and organisations in the development of this strategy within the Community, Voluntary and Statutory sectors is a reflection of the strong desire to be proactive around an issue that is problematic across the island of Ireland.

Seamus Kilgannon, Cathaoirleach of Sligo County Council, addressed the crowd at the launch of the five year plan and said: "I want to commend you for the professional and thorough way you have prepared this strategy. Key local agencies and the wider public had the opportunity to have their say on one of the most important issues facing our society. The scope of this consultation ensured that the invaluable experience and expertise of these agencies had been incorporated into this strategy. The strategy is about improving the health and well-being of all of us."

Councillor Rosaleen O'Grady, Chairperson of the North West Regional Drugs & Alcohol Task Force said the plan will help the health of the public.

"This five year strategy has been developed to prevent and reduce alcohol related harm in Sligo city. The strategy has been prepared by the Sligo City Alcohol sub-committee in conjunction with the HSE, North West Regional Drug & Alcohol Task Force and a very wide range of organisations and groups within the community, both statutory and voluntary.

"The support that we received is a reflection of the desire of many agencies to be proactive around an issue that is problematic, an issue that is a growing concern across the island of Ireland.

"I believe that any efforts made in reducing consumption will help public health and our society and in doing so will make Sligo and Ireland a better and safer place for us all to live."

Gardai Marita McGowan and Dave McDonagh, both stationed in Sligo Garda Station, said crimes such as public order offences, assaults and homicides, sexual assaults, criminal damage, domestic violence, road traffic offences and crimes involving youths are among the most common committed when someone is under the influence of alcohol.

The launch of the plan also heard that alcohol is a contributing factor in two out of five fatal collisions and 76% of all rape defendants drank alcohol at the time of alleged rape.

The Garda strategy for reducing harm caused by alcohol includes the following:

Increased patrols - prioritised in the policing plan.

Youth education - giving talks to schools, IT Sligo, etc.

Victims of Crime Office - Provide advice and support to victims of crime.

Continuous liaison between Gardai and the community.

Dr. Parvez Butt, Chairperson of Bodywyse, and board member of the region's Rape Crisis Centre first became involved with the issue when his stepson developed a problem with alcohol.

He feels that alcohol is far too accessible to people here in Ireland.

"Every celebration that we have, alcohol is there. We make it acceptable. If alcohol came on the market today we would probably have treated it the same as heroin or cocaine.

"I've travelled a lot of countries, we are the only country, along with the UK, where there is no strict legislation or control for how alcohol is dealt with.

"In most of Europe and Canada, you can only buy alcohol at certain designated premises.

"Our decision makers are negligent. We need to be able to influence our representatives. We have come along way. We still have a long way to go. Please exert yourselves, don't be afraid to say your piece," he said.

The task force was established in 2002. In 2005, a three year strategic plan was launched, with another three year plan launched in 2011.

Sean O'Connor, NW Regional Drug and Alcohol Task Force co-ordinator, said: "The role of the plan is to maintain an overview of the extent of drug use and misuse, to strengthen and support a community based focus on drug and alcohol misuse, and to oversee and monitor effectiveness of projects approved."

He added: "At several meetings people have said 'it's students'. It's not. The 25-44 age group account for half of the crimes caused by alcohol.

"Alcohol is also a bed-blocker in hospitals. It's connected with cancer, obesity, cardiovascular problems, diabetes. Twenty per-cent of beds are blocked up by people with alcohol related illnesses.
Passengers can take a trip back in time on board steam trains belonging to the Railway Preservation Society of Ireland as part of an Easter Monday special.

Some 250 passengers will travel from Dublin and spend a few hours around Wicklow town before returning to Connolly Station.

The first steam train, named the Easter Eggspress, will leave Dublin's Connolly Station at 10.35 a.m. on April 2 and arrive in Wicklow at 12.05 p.m. It doesn't depart from Wicklow back to Dublin until 4.35 p.m.

Tickets cost 20 for an adult and 14 for a child (including an Easter egg) and can be purchased at www.steamtrainsireland. com.

Locals seeking a piece of the action can avail of one of two shuttle services operating on the day.

A Greystones shuttle will leave Wicklow station at 12.40 p.m., arriving at Greystones for 1.05 p.m. This service will head back at 1.35 p.m. to arrive in Wicklow for 1.54 p.m.

An Arklow Shuttle will departing Wicklow at 2.15 p.m. to reach Arklow at 2.50 p.m. before heading again at 3.30 p.m. to arrive in Wicklow at 3.55 p.m.

Tickets for the Arklow and Greystones Shuttles cost 14 for adults and 8 for children and can also be purchased online. A limited number of tickets are available at Track One Music in Wicklow town.

The Railway Preservation Society of Ireland was formed in 1964 to preserve Irish steam locomotives, carriages and rolling stock.
Aron Colgan and Benjamin Holland from New Court School in Bray were both awarded Highly Commended in Mental Health Ireland's art competition. Judges thought that their entries were full of colour and both had very important positive mental health messages.

Over 1,500 Irish students drew and photographed what mental health means to them for the competition.

Anxiety, stress and depression can be difficult for teenagers to talk about. Feedback from teachers and students was this competition opened up a space for the students to think about their own mental health and those around them.

Martin Rogan, CEO of Mental Health Ireland said 'Young people in Ireland have taken a great interest in mental health and this is very obvious from the entries we have received this year. They are not just interested in their own mental health but show interest in supporting others. This competition creates a platform for discussion that provokes and evokes a deeper conversation.

'The standard of work received was at a very high level in both categories and we were delighted to host our exhibition in Dublin City Council to showcase the top 45 entries from all over Ireland.'

The Exhibition and award ceremony took place last week in Dublin City County on Wood Quay with students and their families travelling from all over Ireland to attend. Artist Lisa Butterly helped to selecting the winning entries for Art and Rosaleen Heavin for Photography.
Overall winners Dylan Symes and Sam Ireland of Wild Wicklow Crafts from Colaiste Chraobh Abhann (senior), Ross Byrne of RB Woodcraft from Arklow CBS (junior) and Setanta Ballesty, Ray McHallen and Ollie Morrison of ConsTEALations from North Wicklow Educate Together (intermediate)

Eight young entrepreneurs have been selected to represent County Wicklow at the Student Enterprise Programme National Finals in Croke Park on May 2 after impressing at the Wicklow Final last week.

A record 1,500 students from 17 schools across the county took part in the local final held at Wicklow County Campus, Rathnew, on Tuesday, March 20.

Ross Byrne of CBS Arklow won the junior category with his project RB Woodcrafts. In the Intermediate Category, Ollie Morrison, Rowan Cody, August Cowan, Setanta Ballesty and Ray McHallem from North Wicklow Educate Together Secondary School in Bray were the winners with their business ConsTEAlations

Dylan Symes and Sam Ireland from Colaiste Craobh Amhann in Kilcoole came out on top of the senior category with their enterprise Wild Wicklow Crafts.

Sheelagh Daly from the Local Enterprise Office Wicklow was quick to praise this year's entrants.

'Every year we are blown away by the ideas and the business-savvy that these students have acquired at such a young age. They really are a credit to their teachers and school staff who have helped to nurture this talent.

'We wish today's winners all the very best as they go on to represent their county at the national finals in Croke Park in May.'

Donna Spellacy O'Leary, from Showoff.ie, Frank Curran, Chief Executive of Wicklow County Council, and Robin Bradley, President of Wicklow Town and District Chamber of Commerce were special guests at the county final.

In addition to the main awards, a number of other projects were also singled out for praise.

The winners of the awards for best stand were Handy Helpers from Colaiste Chraobh Abhann (junior) and Brittas Bath Teas from Dominican College Wicklow (senior) while the innovation awards were presented to Pebble Pals from Colaiste Chraobh Abhann (junior) and Baby Bandz from Blessington Community College.

Runners-up in the junior category were Fancy Flames from Colaiste Chraobh Abhann and Sea Chain from North Wicklow Educate Together Secondary School and in the senior category were On Cloud Wine and All Forked Up, both from Colaiste Bhride Carnew.

Bark from Colaiste Chraobh Abhann was the winner of the best report in the junior category.

The award for best presentation went to Team Plum TYI from St Kevin's Community College, Dunlavin.

Senior category awards were presented to Painted Porcelain from Colaiste Bhride Carnew for best product/service; Hibbou Industries of Templecarrig School in Greystones for best market research; and Colaiste Bhride Carnew's Mini Tree for most innovative sales strategy.

Accelleries from Loreto Bray collected the social media award and also received a special commendation in the senior category.
A road accident which resulted in two women being knocked down while crossing the Wexford Road in Arklow resulted in a careless driving conviction for the motorist responsible.

Lynne Hartigan of 13 Glenellen Walk, Swords, Dublin appeared at Arklow District Court last Wednesday to answer the charge of careless driving on June 18, 2016.

Garda Patrick Phelan gave evidence that on the date in question he attended the scene where he met Lynne Hartigan, who admitted driving the car which knocked down Siobhan Bull and her mother Marion Davies, who has since passed away.

Ms Bull gave evidence that she was crossing the road from Kavanagh's shop with her mother as she was waiting for a bus to return to the airport as she and her husband had been visiting for the weekend. She said that they stopped half way across to allow traffic to pass and she then saw Hartigan's vehicle exiting Lidl carpark and driving onto the Wexford Road.

Ms Bull told the court that the driver was driving towards them but looking in the other direction.

'I said: "Oh my God, she's going to hit us." We were both thrown into the air and my mum landed behind me. It was clear my mum had broken her femur as there was a large dent in her leg and she was screaming with pain. Both of us were in shock. It was overwhelming,' she said.

Defence solicitor David Tarrant put it to Ms Bull that if she and her mother had not stopped in the centre of the road, the accident would not have occurred.

'There was no traffic on my side and we were waiting for a suitable gap to finish crossing the road,' the witness said.

In evidence, Hartigan said that she had been shopping in Lidl and, on departure, pulled into the right hand lane to exit.

'I indicated, looked left and right and the road was clear,' she said. 'They came out of nowhere and I made contact with the older lady as I stopped the car. I did exactly what anyone would do pulling out of a junction onto a main road,' she said.

Under cross examination, Inspector Ronan Lalor said: 'People don't come out of nowhere. If you did look right, you might have seen the ladies crossing the road.'

Mr Tarrant was refused a direction when he submitted to the court that there was no evidence his client drove in a careless manner and said that 'she did everything she could'.

Judge David Kennedy said that he would have to convict Hartigan and said that she was focused on the traffic rather than the pedestrians and it was a moment's lapse but 'it was careless'.

A fine of 500 was imposed.
An Arklow bridal boutique owner is giving away 100 bridesmaid dresses to brides affected by the sudden closure of a Dublin-based store last week.

Following the news that Wedding World in Marino closed without notice, Bernie O'Farrell of B Couture in Arklow has offered her stock of sample Dessy bridesmaid gowns to those 200 brides who have been left high and dry.

'I stopped dealing with the Wedding World supplier Dessy three years ago after this shop popped up and was selling the same dresses much cheaper than I could,' said Ms O'Farrell.

'I hate to hear of anyone going out of business but there is no way that anyone could keep going selling at such low prices. The brides have put down big deposits and now have no dresses. I have the dresses sitting in the shop since then so I'd be happy to see them go to good use,' Ms O'Farrell said.

'I have the sample dresses here, approximately 100 of them, and I would love to be able to help some of these brides out. Myself and some other retailers are bringing the dresses to one place so the brides can meet us and we can try and get them sorted,' she said.

Following her appearance on Liveline with Joe Duffy last week, Ms O'Farrell said that she was shocked how her gesture has received such attention.

'I didn't think that it would get such attention at all. People have been so nice and given me such lovely comments, but really it's not about me. I just wanted to help if I could in any way. Anybody would do the same,' she said.

Ms O'Farrell clarified that the dresses are only offered to the brides directly affected by the Wedding World closure as they are at the loss of their deposits and gowns.

A spokesperson for Dessy said that the company is owed 'a significant amount of money' and was critical of Ms O'Farrell's decision to give her old stock away.

Michele O'Neill claimed that the dresses were still owned by Dessy but Ms O'Farrell said that when she tried to return them three years ago, she was told to keep them.

Ms O'Neill also criticised Ms O'Farrell for 'trying to jump on the media bandwagon'.

'I didn't ask for any media attention for this and it wasn't about getting publicity. They came to me. I just wanted to help the brides and if I can do that in some way, then I'm happy,' Ms O'Farrell said.

Ms O'Farrell will be meeting with brides today, from noon to 6 p.m. at the Croke Park Convention Centre in Dublin.
Mia Jamesons granny Kathleen Kinsella, sisters Holly and Kiva and her aunty Caitriona Kinsella watching the final of Irelands Got Talent in Doyles, Rathnew, on Saturday night

Three Rathnew dancers' journey on Ireland's Got Talent came to a glittering end on Saturday night as their dance troupe Xquisite were voted runners-up by members of the public.

While the RDC group was crowned the first ever winner of the series, there is no doubt that Xquisite won the nation's heart as the youngest entrants in the competition.

The ten-member troupe included talented Rathnew dancers Freya Roche (8), Kate Goulding (9) and Mia Jameson (11).

Xquisite received the 'Golden Buzzer' for their audition, sending into last Thursday's semi-final, where they received a standing ovation and won the public vote to gain a spot in Saturday's grand finale.

Emma Goulding, Kate's mother, said the youngsters have plenty to be proud after their fantastic performances on the show.

'They aren't devastated or heartbroken but they are disappointed,' she said.

'Their goal was always to get to the final but, once you get there, you want to win. They are rightly very proud of themselves and they now have phenomenal memories that will live with them forever. RDC had 31 members so it was always going to be difficult to beat them with phone votes.'

The reception the girls have received from the public has been hugely encouraging.

'Everywhere they went people were coming up to them and wishing them well. We went for a meal in the Woodpecker and staff wanted their photograph taken with Kate. Parents from school have been great to them as well. Everyone was talking about them,' said Emma.

Freya, Kate and Mia have also forged a very close bond with the rest of the Xquisite members, who hail from Tallaght.

On Sunday, they gathered in Tallaght to watch their teacher John Nolan compete in the final of Dancing with the Stars alongside Deirdre O'Kane.

'They have become their own real tight-knit family because they are so used to being together now,' said Emma. 'They were all at a party on Sunday to support John and have become so close. They are used to competing against one another so it was a wonderful experience for them to be part of a team.'
Emma Thompson attending the BBC screening of King Lear held at The Soho Hotel, London. Photo: Ian West/PA Wire

Emma Thompson attending the BBC screening of King Lear held at The Soho Hotel, London. Photo: Ian West/PA Wire

British actress and Oscar winner Emma Thompson looked younger than her years at a recent screening of a new BBC adaptation of King Lear.

Thompson (58), who plays Lears ambitious and cruel eldest daughter Goneril in the film, knows how to have fun with her style.

She paired a pinstriped suit with a silky white camisole underneath. Her peroxide blonde hair was slicked back from her face.

And she finished the outfit with her funky silver Stella McCartney shoes, which retail at just over 700.

The star turned heads at the screening, which was also attended by her co-stars Anthony Hopkins and Irish actor Andrew Scott.
Amal Clooney has joined the legal team representing two Reuters reporters jailed by the Myanmar authorities. Photo: Robert Kamau/GC Images

Amal Clooney has joined the legal team representing two Reuters reporters jailed in Myanmar, who are accused of possessing secret government papers.

A court in Yangon - formerly Rangoon - has been holding preliminary hearings to decide whether Wa Lone (31) and Kyaw Soe Oo (28) will be charged under the Officials Secrets Act, which carries a maximum penalty of 14 years in prison.

The journalists had been working on a Reuters investigation into the killing of 10 Rohingya Muslim men in western Burma's Rakhine state during an army crackdown that began in August, which has sent nearly 700,000 people fleeing to Bangladesh.

"Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo are being prosecuted simply because they reported the news. I have reviewed the case file and it is clear beyond doubt that the two journalists are innocent and should be released immediately," said Ms Clooney, a prominent human rights lawyer who is married to Hollywood superstar George Clooney.

"The outcome will tell us a lot about Myanmar's commitment to the rule of law and freedom of speech."

Lawyers have asked for the case to be thrown out, citing insufficient evidence.

Myanmar's UN ambassador, Hau Do Suan, has said the journalists were accused of "illegally possessing confidential government documents".

Gail Gove, legal chief at Reuters, said Ms Clooney would strengthen the company's international legal expertise and broaden efforts to secure the reporters' release.
Blame game: Most of the 9/11 bombers were Saudi Arabians

A US court has rejected Saudi Arabia's request to throw out lawsuits claiming the Middle Eastern nation helped plan the 9/11 terror attacks.

District judge George Daniels said there was "a reasonable basis" to allow legal action seeking billions of dollars in damages for victims.

The Saudi government has long denied involvement in the attacks, which claimed the lives of nearly 3,000 people when hijacked aeroplanes crashed into New York's World Trade Centre, the Pentagon, and a Pennsylvania field.

Lawyers representing the families of those killed and about 25,000 people who were injured, as well as businesses and insurers affected, filed 25 lawsuits against the Saudis in New York last year.

Saudi Arabia argued the plaintiffs in the legal action could not show the kingdom or any affiliated charities were behind the attacks. It also claimed it deserved sovereign immunity and asked for the lawsuits to be dismissed.

But Mr Daniels said the allegations "narrowly articulate a reasonable basis" for him to assert jurisdiction over Saudi Arabia under the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA).

"This is a historic day for the families," said Sean Carter, a lawyer for many plaintiffs.

But Mr Daniels dismissed claims that two Saudi banks and a construction company controlled by the bin Laden family had provided funds for the attacks, saying he lacked jurisdiction.

He also rejected claims against the state-affiliated charity Saudi High Commission for Relief of Bosnia and Herzegovina, saying the plaintiffs' "guilt-by-association" allegations did not overcome its presumption of immunity.

Saudi Arabia had long enjoyed broad immunity from 9/11 lawsuits in the US.

That changed in September 2016, when the US Congress overrode a veto by president Barack Obama and adopted the JASTA, which permits such claims to proceed.

Mr Daniels said the plaintiffs could try to prove that Saudi Arabia was liable for the alleged activities of Fahad al Thumairy, an imam at the King Fahad Mosque in Culver City, California, and Omar al Bayoumi. They were accused of helping two hijackers settle in the US and begin preparing for the attacks.

James Kreindler, a lawyer for families bringing wrongful death claims, said: "The full story can come to light, and expose the Saudi role," he said.

Fifteen of the 19 terrorists in the 9/11 attacks were Saudis. But the 9/11 Commission report found "no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded" the attacks al-Qa'ida masterminded.

But the commission also noted "the likelihood" that Saudi government-sponsored charities did.
A Chinese court sentenced a 54-year-old man dubbed the country's "Jack the Ripper" to death on Friday for the rape and murder of 11 women and girls over the course of 14 years, state television reported.

Gao Chengyong, 54, was tried for multiple counts of homicide, rape, robbery and mutilation of corpses, according to the state television's English channel.

He admitted to killing the 11 people between 1988 and 2002 in northwest China's Baiyin city in Gansu Province and Baotou city in the northern region of Inner Mongolia, the report said. The youngest of the victims was eight years old.

Gao was arrested in August 2016 at his own grocery store following a DNA test stemming from an unrelated crime committed by one of his relatives, state TV said, ending a 28-year search.
The daughter of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal may lead police to her would-be assassins after it was reported she had regained consciousness for the first time since she was struck down in a suspected nerve agent attack in Salisbury.

The BBC reported Yulia Skripal was "conscious and talking". It was claimed she had nerve agent on her left hand, and her father had it on his right hand.

Salisbury Hospital said her condition is improving rapidly and she is now no longer critical, raising hopes that she may recover enough to be able to give the police valuable information about the attack.

Such information could prove invaluable in the hunt for the suspected Kremlin hit-squad which targeted Col Skripal, who was convicted by the Russians for selling information to MI6 and came to Britain in 2010 following a spy swap.

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Whatsapp Sergei Skripals daughter Yulia is said to be improving in hospital after the poisoning

Russia has denied it was behind the attempted murders. On Thursday, it announced the expulsion of more than 150 diplomats, including 60 Americans, in retaliation for the wave of Western expulsions of Russian diplomats over the poisoning.

Ms Skripal's father, who collapsed with her on a bench close the River Avon after leaving Zizzis restaurant, remains in a critical but stable condition.

Dr Christine Blanshard, medical director for Salisbury District Hospital, said: "I'm pleased to be able to report an improvement in the condition of Yulia Skripal.

"She has responded well to treatment but continues to receive expert clinical care 24 hours a day."

It came as police began to search a childrens play area just yards from the Skripals Salisbury home, suggesting they fear it may contain traces of nerve agent - either from the Skripals themselves or by the would-be assassins - who may have left a trail as they made their escape.

NHS officials are also understood to be monitoring several people for signs of health problems after coming into potential contact with the Novichok agent. They are thought to include neighbours, postal staff, the first uniformed officers to arrive at the scene.

Meanwhile, Yulia and Sergeis relatives in Russia had expressed fears that she was close to death and may even have already died.

Her improvement will be welcomed both by her family and detectives, who will hope that she recovers to the extent that she can respond in some way to questions about the hours leading up to the attack.

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Yulia, who lives in Moscow, was in Britain visiting her father and it may be that the 33-year-old can at some stage give an indication of whether they were followed or if she noticed any suspicious activity around her fathers house in Christie Miller Road, where police say the largest concentration of traces of nerve agent was discovered.

David Videcette, a former counter terrorism officer, said: Officers will be hoping Yulia might be able to say something that indicates they were followed or that there was activity at the front of the house.

It emerged this week that Col Skripals mother, Elena Yakovlevna, has not been told of the nerve agent attack on her son and granddaughter.

For more than three weeks since the pair collapsed into a coma following the attack, the 90-year-olds family have managed to keep her away from one of the most widely reported stories in the world, fearful that news of her sons fate would prove fatal to her health.

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Victoria Skripal, a niece of Colonel Skripal, said at the time: Our priority is to protect our grandmother so that she does not hear anything. She will not know until the very last moment. She will know when this situation is somehow resolved, that is, if there is a logical end. If the story ends badly, we will tell her that they fell ill.

Britain has accused Russia of being behind the poisoning, something fiercely denied by the Kremlin.

In turn, Russia has suggested that UK intelligence officers may have been involved in the poisoning.

Moscow is facing increasing global isolation, with at least 26 countries expelling a total of more than 130 of its suspected spies.

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2021]
Sergei Skripals daughter Yulia is said to be improving in hospital after the poisoning

The daughter of Sergei Skripal may lead police to their would-be assassins after it was reported she had regained consciousness for the first time since being struck down in the Salisbury nerve agent attack.

Yulia Skripal was "conscious and talking", according to reports last night, raising hopes that she may recover enough to be able to give the police information about the attack.

Such information could prove invaluable in the hunt for the suspected Russian hit-squad which targeted Col Skripal, who was convicted by the Russians for selling information to MI6 and came to Britain in 2010 following a spy swap.

Her father, who collapsed with her on a bench close to the River Avon in the city after leaving a restaurant, remains in a critical but stable condition.

It is understood doctors may have used a drug called pralidoxime, an antidote to organophosphate pesticides and chemicals, to treat her and her father. Salisbury District Hospital said her condition was "improving rapidly" and she was no longer in a critical condition.

Dr Christine Blanshard, medical director at the hospital, said: "I'm pleased to be able to report an improvement in the condition of Yulia Skripal.

"She has responded well to treatment but continues to receive expert clinical care 24 hours a day." The Skripals' relatives in Russia had expressed fears that she was close to death and may even have already died.

Her improvement will be welcomed both by her family and detectives, who will hope that she recovers to the extent that she can respond in some way to questions about the hours leading up to the attack.

Ms Skripal (33), who lives in Moscow, was in Britain visiting her father and it may be that she can at some stage give an indication of whether they were followed or if she noticed any suspicious activity around her father's house in Christie Miller Road, where police say the largest concentration of traces of nerve agent was discovered.

Detectives earlier said the pair were probably poisoned by a nerve agent being applied to Mr Skripal's front door at his Salisbury home.

It also emerged this week that Elena Yakovlevna, Col Skripal's mother, has not been told of the attack.

Moscow is facing increasing global isolation, with at least 26 countries expelling a total of more than 130 of its suspected spies.

Russia announced the expulsion of more than 150 diplomats, including 60 Americans, yesterday and said it was closing a US consulate in retaliation for the wave of Western expulsions of Russian diplomats in a tit-for-tat response that intensified the Kremlin's rupture with the United States and Europe.
The funeral coffin of Col. Arnaud Beltrame arrives outside the Carcassonne cathedral in Carcassonne, southern France yesterday. Col Beltrame was given a posthumous Legion of Honor for his heroism after swapping himself for a hostage.

Police have arrested a man suspected of trying to ram his car into soldiers jogging near their barracks in southeast France, without causing any injuries.

The arrest came hours after a man hurled abuse in Arabic at a group of soldiers out jogging at around 8am yesterday in Varces-Allieres-et-Risset, near Grenoble, and later tried to run down another group returning from a run, said army spokesman Colonel Benoit Brulon. "The soldiers managed to get up onto the pavement without being hit," Mr Brulon said.

The incident sparked fears of a fresh terrorist attack coming just days after a 25-year-old radicalised gunman killed four people, including a policeman who took the place of a hostage in a supermarket siege.

Yesterday all four victims of the attack in Carcassonne and nearby Trebes were laid to rest in the region.

After an intense manhunt, police announced on Twitter that they had arrested the "owner of the vehicle" used in the apparent attack in Echirolles, around 7.5km to the north of Varces-Allieres-et-Risset, where the incident took place. Earlier they arrested another suspect in Grenoble.

The local state prefect denounced an "odious act" and Grenoble judicial police have launched an investigation.

The apparent attempt to ram the soldiers appeared deliberate because there was a gap of around half-an-hour between the driver shouting at the soldiers and driving back to hit them, Pierre-Yves Sarzaud of the army's public relations unit told BFM TV.

If confirmed, it would not be the first such deliberate act; in August, police shot and arrested a man who rammed his car into soldiers on patrol in an upmarket Paris suburb, injuring six.

According to BFM TV, police were treating the case as serious, but believed it may have been a criminal rather than terrorist act involving a drunk driver. They were reportedly basing this supposition on the fact that a woman had phoned police earlier yesterday to alert them to the fact that she had a row with her inebriated partner, who had driven off in a Peugeot 208.

Over 240 people have been killed in a string of jihadist attacks around France over the past three years.
Palestinian protesters carry a wounded man who was shot by Israeli troops during a demonstration near the Gaza Strip border with Israel (AP Photo/ Khalil Hamra)

Three Palestinian men have died in major clashes with Israeli troops on the border of the Gaza Strip, amid a day of protests called by the militant group Hamas.

Two were shot dead by Israeli gunfire and a third, a Palestinian farmer, was killed by an Israeli tank shell as he worked in a neighbouring field, the Palestinian health ministry said. Israel had bolstered its security at the border ahead of the expected mass sit-ins.

A Gaza official said 365 people had been hurt by tear gas, rubber bullets and live fire. The Israeli military said Palestinians rolled burning tyres and threw stones at Israeli forces who then retaliated with tear gas and fire at "main instigators."

Ahead of the protests, called for by Gazas militant Hamas rulers, Israels military said it doubled its standard troop level along the border, deploying snipers, special forces and paramilitary border police units, which specialise in riot control.

Hamas had said the activities would be peaceful and the chief Israeli military spokesman, brigadier general Ronen Manelis, said Israel wanted to avoid violence.

The Israeli military said troops directed tank fire toward two suspects who approached the fence along the southern Gaza Strip and acted suspiciously. It said it is aware of reports of a killed Palestinian.

The sit-ins are seen as a new attempt by Hamas to break a crippling, decade old Gaza border blockade by Israel and Egypt that has made it increasingly difficult for the Islamic militant group to govern.

Other tactics over the years, including cross-border wars with Israel and attempts to reconcile with political rival Mahmoud Abbas, the West Bank-based Palestinian president, have failed to end Gazas isolation.

In the planned protest, Palestinians are setting up tent camps along the border, the first of a series of actions planned in Gaza in the coming weeks.

The activities are to culminate on 15 May, the 70th anniversary of Israels creation, with a march through the border fence.

Palestinians commemorate the date as the anniversary of their mass displacement and uprooting during the 1948 war in the Middle East over Israels creation. The vast majority of Gaza residents are descendants of Palestinians who fled or were driven from communities in what is now Israel.

Eighty-year-old Mansi Nassar walked towards the border with the aid of his cane ignoring calls to remain 700 metres (2,300 feet) from the barrier.

"I was born in Beit Darras inside Palestine and I will accept no less than returning to it," he said, referring to his former home village just south of the modern Israeli city of Ashdod. The village no longer exists.

The farmer killed on Friday was identified as 27-year-old Amr Samour. The Palestinian health ministry said he was killed in the south-eastern corner of Gaza.

Yasser Samour, a relative and fellow farmer, said Mr Samour was harvesting parsley before dawn, in hopes of selling it fresh in the market later in the day.

I was working on the next field, Mr Samour said. We heard shelling landing on the field where Amr works. We ran there and found him hit directly with a shell. We were more than a kilometre away from the border.

Another farmer was wounded in the leg by shrapnel, Mr Samour said.
Adea Shabani's boyfriend is suspected to her killed her Photo: Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff

A body found in a shallow grave in northern California has been identified as belonging to an aspiring model and actor who had been missing from Los Angeles for more than a month.

Adea Shabani, 25, was found in a remote area of wilderness more than 400 miles (645km) away from the Hollywood flat where she lived.

Nevada County sheriff's officials said the young woman was identified by her tattoos.

Ms Shabani suffered blunt force trauma to her head but an exact cause of death was still under investigation, according to a sheriff's statement.

Speaking at a news conference on Tuesday, Los Angeles Police Captain Billy Hayes said the model's boyfriend is suspected to have killed her.

Chris Spotz, 33, who was engaged to another woman, killed himself after a police chase last week.

Ms Shabani was last seen leaving her flat with Mr Spotz on 23 February.

Mr Spotz subsequently told detectives the couple had left Los Angeles that day for his father's house in northern California.

He said they then had an argument in the Santa Clarita area just outside LA, during which he let her out on the side of a motorway and never saw her again.

Mr Hayes said detectives found nothing that substantiated the account, which was given via a lawyer.

During the investigation into Ms Shabani's disappearance, Capt Hayes said Mr Spotz and his unnamed fiancee had driven from LA to her parents' home in Colorado.

However when detectives attempted to track him down there, Mr Spotz was gone.

Detectives issued a warrant for Mr Spotz's truck and on Thursday he was spotted, leading police on a chase east of LA.

Mr Spotz fatally shot himself in the head after the chase.

Mr Hayes said detectives suspect Ms Shabani, who was found in a shallow grave by a creek in the Spenceville Wildlife Area, had been dead for more than a month.

Ms Shabani was born in Macedonia and went to secondary school there before moving to LA to embark on an acting career.

She was credited with a small role in an independent film which was released last year.
Guests at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle will be caught up in a multi-million-pound secutiry operation. Photo: Niall Carson/PA

Members of the public travelling to Windsor for the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle will be subject to airport-style scanners and searches of their property in a multi-million-pound safety operation.

The security measures, likened to a "ring of steel" around Windsor Castle, near London, and the procession route for the wedding, will include heavy metal barriers to deter and prevent terrorist attacks by vehicles, and sweeps of cars.

Well-wishers who want to line the streets of the procession are being warned to expect a "screening and searching" regime, including the inspection of any sleeping bags that could conceal suspicious materials.

If too many people descend on Windsor, the town will be put on lockdown, with trains no longer stopping to drop passengers off at its stations and people turned away from overcrowded procession routes, which will be lined by members of the armed forces, with regiments selected for their links to Prince Harry.

More than 100,000 people are expected to arrive at Windsor for the May 19 wedding, flying from around the world to join the festivities.

Visitors will be warned to travel early, with long waits to leave as the day's celebrations die down. Thames Valley Police will be out in force, with extra armed and unarmed officers patrolling, search dogs, a mounted section, and the National Police Air Service present to combat the "severe" threat of terrorism.

Windsor will become a virtual fortress, with each route into the town subject to careful searches, with visitors walking through scanners, expected to show the contents of their bags, and discouraged from bringing tents.

Sleepover

Residents will notice more CCTV cameras, extra technology to recognise number plates and "hostile vehicle mitigation barriers" to protect pedestrians from terror attack by cars or heavy duty vehicles.

Police have so far received no specific intelligence about targeted attacks, but are aware of potential protests including plans for a "royal sleepover", where campaigners plan to sleep on the streets in support of local homeless people.

Prince Harry and Ms Markle will marry at St George's Chapel, with 600 guests invited to watch the ceremony and a further 2,640 members of the public allowed to stand inside the castle walls to watch their arrival and departure.
Chennai, Mar 30 (IBNS): Cognizant has assured its employees that the tax dispute between its Indian subsidiary and the Indian Income Tax department will not affect them, according to media reports.

Chief Financial Officer of Cognizant, Karen McLoughlin, wrote an email to its employees assuring them that the controversy will not impact the salaries, pay hikes and promotions, reported the Economic Times on Thursday.

According to media reports, the Income Tax department has frozen bank accounts of Cognizant Technology Solutions India P Ltd (CTS) in Chennai and Mumbai after the company failed to pay Rs 2,500 crore as dividend distribution tax (DDT) to the government.

Reports on Thursday said that the company's accounts were frozen a week back and it had approached the High Court against the tax department.

Cognizant, according to some reports,has said it had paid all applicable taxes due on the transaction and a court has instructed the tax department not to take further action pending further hearings.

Image: Cognizant/Facebook
UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

New York, Mar 30 (JEN): Climate change is still moving much faster than we are, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned on Thursday, calling for the political will, innovation and financing to cut global emissions by at least 25 per cent over the next two years.

Scientists are now worried that unless accelerated action is taken by 2020, the Paris goal may become unattainable, the UN chief told reporters at the world bodys New York Headquarters.

The Paris Agreement on climate change, adopted by world leaders in December 2015, aims to keep global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius and pursues efforts to limit the temperature increase even further, to 1.5 degrees.

Climate change is still moving much faster than we are, he warned, calling the phenomenon the greatest threat facing humankind. I am beginning to wonder how many more alarm bells must go off before the world rises to the challenge, Mr. Guterres said, noting that 2017 had been filled with climate chaos and 2018 has already brought more of the same.

Recent information from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the World Bank and the International Energy Agency shows the relentless pace of climate change.

For instance, the UN chief said, energy-related carbon dioxide emissions rose 1.4 per cent, to a historic high of 32.5 gigatonnes.

Moreover, weather-related disasters caused some $320 billion in economic damage, making 2017 the costliest year ever for such losses.

In social as well as economic terms, the 2017 Atlantic hurricane season was devastating, washing away decades of development in an instant.

In South Asia, major monsoon floods affected 41 million people.

In Africa, severe drought drove nearly 900,000 people from their homes.

Wildfires caused destruction across the world. Arctic sea ice cover in winter is at its lowest level, and the oceans are warmer and more acidic than at any time in recorded history.

This tsunami of data should create a storm of concern, Guterres said, noting that next year he will convene a climate summit in New York aimed at boosting global ambition to meet the level of the climate challenge.

The Stone Age did not end because the world ran out of stones. It ended because there were better alternatives. The same applies today to fossil fuels, he said, stressing the need for a further cut in greenhouse gas emissions of at least 25 per cent by 2020.

Responding to a question about the United States decision to pull out of the Paris Agreement, Mr. Guterres said he received information from his Special Envoy on climate change and former New York City Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, that there are expectations that the US  independently of the position of its Administration  might be able to meet the commitments made in Paris as a country due to the positive reactions of the American business community and local authorities.

All around the world, the role of governments is less and less relevant. The role of the economy, the role of the society is more and more relevant, he said.






Bengaluru, Mar 30 (IBNS): Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Amit Shah began his two-day visit to Karnataka on Friday ahead of the state election, which is scheduled to be held on Mar 12.

Shah will be busy in attending a number of programmes on the first day of the state visit.

Shah's schedule on Friday also includes visiting Mutt and Temple.

The Election Commission has announced the poll date on Tuesday. The counting of the votes will take place on Mar 15.

Karnataka is one of the last few states where the Congress has a strong hold.

The BJP, which had won several state election in recent times, is aiming to return to power in the southern state.

The state poll has turned out to be close fight between Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and BJP's Chief Ministerial candidate B.S. Yeddyurappa.
Srinagar, Mar 30 (IBNS): A Hizbul Mujahideen militant, who was involved in a shoot-out with the Indian Army in Shopian district, has surfaced in Srinagar's SKIMS Hospital in an injured condition, police said.

Asif Ashraf Malik, an active militant of outlawed Hizbul Mujahideen outfit, has been admitted with a bullet injury at SKIMS hospital here, a police spokesman said.

He said preliminary investigation suggests that he was injured at Ahgam in Shopian district last night when militants, travelling in car, opened fire on an Army patrol.

Malik, a resident of Krawoora in Shopian, has been active as a militant since October last year.

Militants last night opened fire on an Army patrol at Ahgam in Shopian, drawing retaliatory fire from security forces.

The car in which the militants were travelling at the time of the incident had veered off the road and hit a tree.

Security forces had launched a search operation in the area but the militants managed to escape and Malik managed to travel a distance of more than 50 kilometres to reach the SKIMS Hospital for treatment.

The spokesperson said police is investigating the matter.
Bengaluru, Mar 30 (IBNS): Editor of online portal Postcard, Mahesh Hegde, was arrested by the Karnataka police on Thursday on charges of spreading fake and communally sensitive news, media reports said.

Hegde, who is also the co-founder of Postcard News, has been arrested on the basis of his May 19 tweet where he said Jain monk Upadhyaya Mayank Sagar Ji Maharaj was hit by a drunk Muslim biker.

Hitting out at the ruling Congress, Hegde said in the tweet that no one is safe in Siddaramaiah's Karnataka.

The tweet was retweeted a number of times.

The police said the news was fake.

Hegde was arrested following a complaint filed by a Congress leader against the portal and its editor.

Hegde's arrest has created a fresh opportunity for the Congress and the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to attack each other politically.

Karnataka is heading towards the state poll, which is scheduled to be held on May 12.

Reacting to the arrest, BJP MP Pratap Simha said to NDTV, "The arrest was a deplorable move by the Siddaramaiah government."



Image: twitter.com/mvmeet
Srinagar, Mar 30 (IBNS): A Special Police Officer (SPO) was killed and his wife injured in a terrorist attack in Anantnag district in Jammu and Kashmir, according to media reports on Friday.

According to local reports, terrorists barged into the SPO Mushtaq Ahmad Sheikh's house at Katsoo in Bijbehara area of Anantnag on Thursday evening and opened fire on them.

The SPO died on the spot while his wife is said to be recuperating in a hospital, according to media reports.

Incidentally, last Saturday, at least two terrorists were killed during an encounter with security forces in Jammu and Kashmir's Anantnag district, according to official reports.

In the process, huge cache of weapons, etc, including AK- 47 rifles, grenades, etc were recovered from the encounter site.
New Delhi/Kolkata, Mar 30 (IBNS): Bharatiya Janata Party president, Amit Shah, on Friday announced that a four-member team will visit conflict-riddled Asansol in West Bengal to report on the prevailing situation, according to media reports.

Office of Amit Shah tweeted, "BJP National President Shri @AmitShah constitutes a four-member committee to visit the affected areas in Asansol (West Bengal) and submit a report."

The four members chosen are the party's vice president Om Mathur, Shahnawaz Hussain, Roopa Ganguly and BD Ram, according to a press release issued by the Office.

Clashes erupted between two groups on Sunday and Monday over a Ram Navami rally at Raniganj, the police said.

The clash left one police man and another person dead, according to media reports.

On Thursday, Asansol's BJP MP, Union Minister Babul Supriyo, alleged that he was prevented from visiting the area by the local police.
New Delhi, Mar 30 (IBNS): Dr. Constantino G.D.N. Chiwenga, the Vice President of the Republic of Zimbabwe, Saulos Klaus Chilima, the Vice President of the Republic of Malawi, and Edwardkiwanuka Ssekandi, the Vice President of Uganda, visited India to participate in the 13th edition of the CII-EXIM Bank Conclave held on Mar 25-27, officials said on Friday.

In addition, General Evariste Ndayishimiye, Secretary General of the CNDD-FDD Party of Burundi, also participated in the Conclave.

Honble Vice President of India hosted a banquet lunch for the visiting dignitaries on 26th March 2018.

He also had bilateral meetings with visiting Vice Presidents and discussed wide ranging issues.

The Vice President of Zimbabwe, who was also the special envoy of the President of Zimbabwe, called on Honble President of India on Mar 23.

The Vice Presidents of Zimbabwe, Malawi and Uganda were accompanied by a high-powered delegation which comprised of several Ministers, senior officials and businessmen who engaged with their Indian counterparts and Industry associations, read a statement issued by the MEA.

Over the last few year, there has been a significant intensification of our engagement in economic development and capacity building through development partnerships with various African countries.

Africa has been made a top priority of Indias foreign and economic policy. The visits of three Vice Presidents from Zimbabwe, Malawi and Uganda have further strengthened our close ties with the African continent.
Oli will visit India from Apr 6-8, officials said.

He will visit the nation at the invitation of Indian PM Narendra Modi.

"At the invitation of Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi, Rt. Honble K.P. Sharma Oli, Prime Minister of Nepal, accompanied by his spouse Mrs. Radhika Shakya, will be paying a State Visit to India from April 6-8, 2018. A high-level delegation will accompany Prime Minister of Nepal," read a MEA statement.

"During the visit, Prime Minister of Nepal will call on Rashtrapatiji and Vice President of India, and will hold talks with Prime Minister of India. EAM and other Ministers will call on the Prime Minister of Nepal. India and Nepal enjoy age-old, special ties of friendship and cooperation. The upcoming visit will provide an opportunity to the two sides to review wide-ranging cooperative partnership, and to progress it further for the benefit of the two peoples," it said.

The MEA said in a statement: "Besides official engagements in New Delhi, the Prime Minister of Nepal will be visiting G.B. Pant University of Agriculture and Technology in Pantnagar, Uttarakhand."




New Delhi, Mar 30 (IBNS): Vice President of India, M Venkaiah Naidu has said that empowering women will enable them lead a life of dignity, respect and make informed decisions.

He was addressing the gathering at the Silver Jubilee Celebrations of Mahila Dakshata Samiti, in Hyderabad on March 30, 2018.

The Governor of Goa, Mridula Sinha, the Deputy Chief Minister of Telangana, Shri Mohammad Mahmood Ali and other dignitaries were present on the occasion.

The Vice President said that there is enough evidence to show that women during the early Vedic period were seen as equal to men in all walks of life. He further said that our cultural moorings have gender equality as a core principle. We are proud inheritors of a culture and a world view in which women were not only treated equally but were revered, he added.

The Vice President said that Indias long, rich history is dotted with numerous achievements of extraordinary women. Quoting examples of great women like Prabhavati, the daughter of Chandra Gupta II, Razia Sultana, the only woman monarch to rule Delhi; Durgavati the Gond queen and Rajmata Jijabai, famous poetesses like Molla who wrote Ramayana in Telugu; Akka Mahadevi, Andal and Avvaiyar and others, he said that India has a long lineage of highly accomplished women.

The Vice President said that despite our rich heritage, there has been unfortunately a parallel trend of gender discrimination. This has resulted in low literacy, low education and consequently, low representation in the workforce and politics, he added.

The Vice President said that unequal access to education, gainful employment and growth opportunities are widening the gender gap and atrocities on women and domestic abuse are unfortunately tarnishing our image as a nation.

The Vice President said:

We can hardly wait and watch.

We cant allow these social evils to continue.

We need to think and act.'

We need to build coalitions against gender discrimination. Government and the civil society must be active collaborators to achieve tangible results.

The better half of humanity must get a better deal.

The bitter legacy of inequity must end

The Vice President said that empowering educationally, socially and politically is the fundamental requirement for the country to unleash the forces of growth and achieve rapid progress. Without the active participation of women, establishment of a new social order may not be successful one because women constitute half the population, he said recalling Mahatma Gandhi, Father of the Nation, he added.

The Vice President expressed anguish over the incidents of girls committing suicide and said they are not unable to withstand pressure of studies. He suggested all those working in the field of education to council both the girls and their parents.

Following is the text of Vice President's address:

"I am extremely pleased to attend the Silver Jubilee Celebrations of Mahila Dakshata Samithi, which is rendering invaluable services for the empowerment of women, particularly those belonging to the vulnerable sections through education.

Sisters and brothers,

We are proud inheritors of a culture and a world view in which women were not only treated equally but were revered.

As the sage Manu had said: Yatra Naaryastu Poojyante Ramante Tatra Devathaa. (The land where women are revered becomes a divine place where gods dwell)

Ours is a land of Aapastamba, the author of Dharma sutras forming a part of Yajur Veda, who declared that women are as learned as men and that many aspects of dharma not taught in Dharmasastras can be learned from women and people of all classes.

There is enough evidence to show that women during the early Vedic period were seen as equal to men in all walks of life.

For example, the philosophical debates of the 7th century BC, in which two outstanding women, Gargi andMaitreyi, actively participated, are ample testimonies of the status of women in ancient India. They were called brahmavadinis or learned exponents of the Vedas.

Our cultural moorings have gender equality as a core principle.

Adi Shankaracharya opens his beautiful hymn called Saundarya Lahari (The wave of beauty) with a clear statement on how Lord Shiva is totally powerless without his wife Shakthi. One complements the other.

Our long, rich history is dotted with numerous achievements of extraordinary women. To name a few, Prabhavati, the daughter of Chandra Gupta II, who performed administrative duties in her kingdom; Razia Sultana, the only woman monarch to rule Delhi; Durgavati the Gond queen and Rajmata Jijabai. We should recount the famous poetesses like Molla who wrote Ramayana in Telugu; Akka Mahadevi, a 12th century Kannada poetess as well as the Tamil poetesses, Andal and Avvaiyar.

While we have such a long lineage of highly accomplished women, there has been unfortunately a parallel trend of gender discrimination. This has resulted in low literacy, low education and consequently, low representation in the workforce and politics.

Gandhiji had lamented: Of all the evils for which man has made himself responsible, none is so degrading , so shocking or so brutal as his abuse of the better half of humanity; the female sex.

Dubbed by men as the weaker sex, women, in general, have been progressively marginalized over the last century. Gandhijis strong condemnation of this attitude comes to our mind as we reflect upon this injustice. He had said: To call woman the weaker sex is a libel. It is mans injustice to woman.

Organizations like Mahila Dakshata Samiti have been striving hard to undo this injustice by focusing on education and economic empowerment.

There are formidable challenges and social evils in our society today. Unequal access to education, gainful employment and growth opportunities are widening the gender gap. Atrocities on women and domestic abuse are unfortunately tarnishing our image as a nation.

We can hardly wait and watch.

We cant allow these social evils to continue.

We need to think and act.

We need to build coalitions against gender discrimination. Government and the civil society must be active collaborators to achieve tangible results.

The better half of humanity must get a better deal.

The bitter legacy of inequity must end.

I am happy to note that Mahila Dakshata Samithi embodies the selfless nature of women and is truly a shining example of how a group of dedicated people can bring about change in the lives of the needy and downtrodden sections.

Apart from imparting quality education, the NGO has set up a family counseling centre, short stay home for women in need of immediate help and is also providing health care, pre-marital counseling and legal aid.

With women constituting almost half of Indias population, their empowerment educationally, socially and politically is the fundamental requirement for the country to unleash the forces of growth and achieve rapid progress. Here I would like to recall what the father of the nation had said: Without the active participation of women, establishment of a new social order may not be successful one because women constitute half the population.

Unfortunately, the literacy rate among women is lagging behind men even 70 years after Independence. The literacy rate among women has to be improved drastically to enable them get gainful employment or take up skilled vocations. Needless to say that education forms the foundation for empowering women. As had been most aptly said educating a woman means educating an entire family.

In fact, the IMF Chief Christine Lagarde was recently quoted as saying that Indias economy could grow by 27 per cent by increasing womens participation in the workforce to the level of men.

According to India Skills reports-2018, the global gender gap report from World Economic Forum (WEF) suggests that India has slipped to 108th place i.e. 21 places down as compared to last year due to less women participation in economy and low wages.

The drop in women workforce is a matter of concern and this trend has to be reversed. While the government has initiated several pro-women measures to promote education and employment among women, a lot more needs to be done by other stakeholders, particularly the private sector.

A 2015 study by the McKinsey Global Institute said that India could increase GDP by up to 60%, or $2.9 trillion, by 2025 if women participated in the economy at par with men.

It is calculated that women could increase their income globally by up to 76 per cent if the employment participation gap and the wage gap between women and men were closed. This is calculated to have a global value of USD 17 trillion, according to UN Women.

I have always been underscoring the need to improve female literacy rate and ensure greater participation of women in the work force. At the same time, it should be ensured that women are not discriminated in the payment of wages.

Ending gender disparity, ensuring safety at work places, providing access to healthcare, imparting job skills and creating more job opportunities are all aimed at empowering women. Empowering women will enable them lead a life of dignity, respect and make informed decisionsbe it matters financial, social or even political.

On the advantages of educating women, a UN report based on data from 219 countries, said that for every one additional year of education for women in reproductive age, child mortality is reduced by a huge 9.50 per cent.

Dear Sisters and brothers,

In the modern times, certain aberrations have crept into our social life and we are witnessing barbaric incidents like rapes, female feticides and dowry killings. No civilized society can tolerate such inhuman acts and the most stringent punishments have to be meted out to criminals who perpetrate those crimes. In order to prevent discrimination and atrocities against women, concerted efforts are needed at all levels. Gender equality must begin at home and girls must not be made to feel inferior to boys or ill-treated. Families play a big role in shaping the attitude of children and boys must be made to treat girls with respect.

Of late, we are witnessing a disturbing trend of young girls committing suicide unable to withstand pressure of studies. While commending your organization for offering pre-marital counseling, I would like you to take up special counseling sessions for young girls. If necessary, your team of counselors must visit various educational institutes in phases to provide counseling to de-stress students. The parents of girls from poor families also need to be counseled on the need to send their wards to schools to ensure a better future for them.

Dear sisters and brothers, Indian women have demonstrated the possible heights they can reach when provided with opportunities. From astronaut Kalpana Chawla to Badminton star, P V Sindhu, Indian women have brought laurels to the country in different fields, be it politics, corporate sector, business, defence or sports.

Women have proven time and again that they are better than men at multi-tasking. In fact, many working women take care of the house-hold activities too and hardly get any recognition for their efforts.

True gender equity can be achieved when women are empowered in all fieldseducational, social, economic and political.

Over the years, I have been consistently arguing that women must get a fair share in all tiers of governance, from gram panchayat to Parliament.

I once again express my happiness that Mahila Dakshata Samithi is celebrating its Silver Jubilee marking a long innings of outstanding service.

This is a moment of celebration and of rededication as well because the task you have set out is still incomplete.

I do hope you will continue your tireless efforts for many more years to come. I compliment Dr. Saroj Bajaj and her associates on the wonderful work being done here and wish them all success in their future endeavors.

JAI HIND!"
Guwahati, Mar 30 (IBNS): While the people of Assam and several organizations continued their protest against the rape incidents and demanded to take stern action against rapist, yet another rape incident is reported from the state.

The incident took place in Assams Kokrajhar district.

According to the reports, a 13-year old adivasi minor girl was allegedly raped by a teacher.

Khetra Nath Rai, teacher of Simalutap High School in Kokrajhar district hailing from Dhubri district, allegedly raped the minor girl at his rented house in Kokrajhar town.

The family members of the victim girl lodged an FIR at Gossaigaon police station and a case (No -103/2018) under section 120 (B)/342/374/376 of IPC and under section 4/8 of POCSO act.

Police has started investigation and launched operation to nab the accused teacher, but he is still absconding.

Earlier, a minor girl was raped and murdered by three youths in central Assams Nagaon district, which triggered massive protests across the state.

Apart from the Nagaon incident, few more rape incidents were happened in Hailakandi, Barpeta, Jagiroad, Hojai, North Lakhimpur, Palashbari Juria, Tamulpur, Baksa area in past a week.

(Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath)
New Delhi, Mar 30 (IBNS): In a major breakthrough, India and Pakistan have mutually agreed to resolve matters related to diplomats' treatment.

The Indian Ministry of External Affairs in statement on Friday said:

India and Pakistan have mutually agreed to resolve matters related to the treatment of diplomats and diplomatic premises, in line with the 1992 "Code of Conduct for the treatment of diplomatic/consular personnel in India and Pakistan".  India in Pakistan (@IndiainPakistan) March 30, 2018

A similar statement was issued by Pakistan's Foreign Office.

The Code provides for "smooth and unhindered functioning" of the diplomats in both the countries.

The codes are also in conformity with the international laws.


UN Photo/Evan Schneider

New York, Mar 30 (JEN): Reiterating the need for warring parties in Yemen to resume dialogue, the Security Council has condemned the latest missile attacks by the Houthi rebels targeting several cities of Saudi Arabia, including its capital, Riyadh.

The denouncement against such launches, including the use of ballistic missiles, came in a Press Statement issued late Wednesday by the Council, which said that the 25 March attacks threatened civilian areas and resulted in at least one fatality.

The Statement said the 15-member body underlined that such attacks pose a serious national security threat to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as well as a wider threat to regional security.

Since the uprisings in Yemen broke out in early 2011, the UN has been engaged in helping Yemenis to find a peaceful solution. However, on 26 March 2015, a coalition of countries led by Saudi Arabia intervened militarily at the request of President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi to secure the return of the Government to Sanaa, which had been seized by Houthi militias and allied units of the armed forces.

Three years on, the fighting is raging and the ensuing humanitarian crisis has only deepened in a country that was already one of the regions poorest.

In the Statement, the Council reiterated the need for all parties to return to dialogue as the only means of delivering a negotiated political settlement and engage constructively with the Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Yemen, Martin Griffiths, with a view towards swiftly reaching a final and comprehensive agreement to end the conflict and address the ongoing humanitarian crisis.




UN Photo/Loey Felipe

New York, Mar 30 (JEN): After nearly six years as the United Nations political chief, Jeffrey Feltman on Thursday spoke to the press for the last time as the Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, spotlighting the importance of multilateralism and the support of UN Member countries for the Organizations vital work.

The list of complex challenges that Member States face today is enormous, said Mr. Feltman, noting that these challenges are addressed much more effectively through a multilateral system.

The support of the world bodys 193 Member States is essential, for the multilateral system, for the institution and for the Organization itself.

Feltman said he was concerned that some leaders were questioning whether a multilateral system was the right way to move forward.

Frankly, if a leader is not committed to rule of law in his or her own country, how committed can we expect that leader to be to the United Nations itself? he asked.

The outgoing political chief also underscored the importance of the Secretary-Generals reform agenda in making the UN more effective, more transparent and to show Member States that this Organization can evolve to address todays challenges.

Turning to Syria, which he called the most tragic example of the international communitys failure to address a peace and security, humanitarian, and human rights catastrophe, Mr. Feltman said he saw that crisis as more of a reason for us to recommit ourselves to pursue peace and justice, with even more determination and holding those responsible for crimes accountable.

In December, Feltmans visited the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea during a time of extremely high tension. While there, he highlighted the need to prevent miscalculations and open channels of communications to reduce risking an escalation.

I dont want to claim a bigger role for the United Nations than it actually had in the relative thaw since then, Feltman told the press. But I do think that the confidence and trust in the UN the parties have demonstrated, and all that represents, is further evidence of why we do need to keep the multilateral system strong, why we need the rules-based system.

Earlier in the day, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres paid tribute to Feltmans extraordinary dedication, an enormous intelligence and a total commitment to the UN, to its values, and to peace and security in the world.

The Department of Political Affairs monitors and assesses political developments globally to help detect and defuse crises before they happen. Its chief advises the Secretary-General on global peace and security issues, while overseeing field-based political missions carrying out peacemaking, preventive diplomacy and peace-building activities in Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia.

Feltmans successor, Rosemary DiCarlo, appointed yesterday by the Secretary-General, will be the first woman to hold the position.
Moscow, Mar 30 (IBNS): Russian and Chinese Foreign Ministers Sergey Lavrov and Wang Yi are going to meet on Apr 5, media reports said on Friday.

The meeting is going to take place in Moscow city of Russia.

"Special Envoy of the President of the Peoples Republic of China, State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi will be visiting Russia on April 4-5," the Russian Foreign Ministry was quoted as saying by TASS.

"Negotiations with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov are scheduled for April 5," the Ministry said.

Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov met with Ambassador Plenipotentiary and Extraordinary of the Peoples Republic of China to the Russian Federation Li Hui.

"They discussed current matters concerning bilateral dialogue, as well as various aspects to do with current international affairs," rad a statement issued by the Russian Foreign Ministry.

Image: Wikimedia Commons
Kabul, Mar 30 (IBNS): Taliban terrorists have arrested five passengers from Qala-i-Naw town in Afghanistan, media reports said on Friday.

Deputy Police Chief Col. Ghulam Sarwar Haidari told Afghanistan's Pajhwok Afghan News the Taliban stopped a passenger vehicle on its way from Herat to Badghis in Qala-i-Naws Laman area on Thursday evening and held five passengers.

The people are reportedly all civilians.

According to a report published in the Afghanistan news agency, they are currently in the Taliban captivity in Bandyakhak locality.

Security forces are attempting to rescue them.

Taliban has not commented on the issue so far.
Washington, Mar 30 (IBNS): US President Donald Trump has said his nation might withdraw from war-torn Syria 'soon'.

"We're knocking the hell out of ISIS. We'll be coming out of Syria like very soon. Let the other people take care of it now," CNN quoted the President as saying during an event in Ohio.

"We are going to have 100% of the caliphate, as they call it, sometimes referred to as land ... But we are going to be coming out of there real soon. We are going to get back to our country, where we belong, where we want to be," he said.

One US defense official directly familiar with the ISIS campaign told CNN it is unclear what the President meant by the comments.

Chief Pentagon spokesperson Dana White on the same said important works are left to guarantee lasting defeat of the ISIS in Syria.

Important work remains to guarantee the lasting defeat of these violent extremists, White was quoted as saying by Pentagon website.

Our commitment to win must outlast the so-called physical caliphate, and the warped ideas that guide the calculated cruelty of ISIS," she said.
It took mere ten seconds to demolish a decades-old high-rise building in China which once stood tall as an exhibition centre in the city of Chengdu.

In the end, all that was left of the 15-storey structure was smoke and rubble. Mobile phone footage posted on Twitter by People's Daily, China showed how the controlled demolition took place. A person from a neighbouring building recorded the demolition.

people

Also read: China Has Built The World's Longest Sea Bridge With Enough Steel For 60 Eiffel Towers

Local police sealed off the area near the building and evacuated residents before the explosion, reports Daily Mail. Workers involved in the demolition set off dynamites to bring the building down.

The 150-foot building was reduced to rubble and disappeared into oblivion behind a think cover of smoke and dust in just 10 seconds.

Watch as Chinese workers in the city of Chengdu demolish a high-rise building in the blink of an eye pic.twitter.com/4n8Tbsbile  People's Daily,China (@PDChina) March 29, 2018

After the demolition was over, workers sprinkled water in the surrounding area to help settle the dust. According to People's Daily, China, workers also used anti-smog cannons and a high-pressure water pump to bring down the smoke and dust levels caused by the explosion.

Also read: Alibaba & Ford Unveil A Car Vending Machine In China Where You Can Buy A Car Within 10 Minutes

According to reports, the building was destroyed to make way for a multi-purpose complex with a shopping mall, a theme park, a hotel, and offices.
After a long time in Hindi Cinema, we have seen an honest attempt by a big banner like Yash Raj films to give us a story that feels refreshingly warm for reasons more than one.

Rani Mukerjis Hichki is a film that revolves around the life of Naina Mathur, who suffers from a neurological condition called the Tourette Syndrome since childhood. But wait. She might be suffering from the disease but that in no way means that she is suffering in real life.

YRF Films

She is a winner in every sense of the word and more so because she brilliantly passes every test of time and proves out to be a winner.

Nainas constant hiccups and sounds are because of her speech defect that aggravates whenever she gets nervous but that in no way means that she is a failure in life.

Instead, she teaches all of us a thing or two on how to be a winner in every aspect of life.

YRF

After a prolonged struggle of 5 years and 18 unsuccessful attempts, she gets a chance to teach at her own school which is also one of Mumbais prestigious schools and what she does with that opportunity is what this story is all about. Even though the film is slightly predictable but there are a lot of takeaways from this film that are noteworthy. (P.S: Spoiler Alert!)

1. Disorders can make your body functionality weak but it has nothing to do with your dreams.

YRF

As Naina Mathur (Rani) says during one of her school interviews, Tourette is in my speech, not in my intellect". The message is loud and clear, physical disability can hamper normal functioning of your body but they cant affect your dreams or will to conquer them. Naina Mathurs life story teaches us just that.

2. Rejections are not the end of life. They prepare us to strive better and work towards a bigger goal in life, with more conviction

YouTube

After around 19 schools that turned Naina Mathur down, she found the job she always wanted. Even when she was going through rejections, she never compromised on her dream of becoming a teacher.

3. Sometimes it is during difficult times in our lives that we realize what our strengths are

YRF

Naina Mathur had to face a lot of turbulence during her teaching tenure but she didnt give up. Instead, her unique teaching methods became her strengths. No matter how difficult the phases of your life get, always remember that youre tougher than all these difficulties. Thank you, Naina.

4. There are no bad children, only bad teachers

YRF

Naina Mathurs class 9F was touted as "municipality garbage" by other teachers who refused to believe in the kids but thanks to Naina who taught everyone a lesson that was much needed. Kids are never bad and they can always be moulded into better people. This one is a lesson that parents in India need to learn to. Parents who blame their kids but never take ownership of their own parenting. Yes, that.

5. Kids are like wet clay, you can actually transform them into anything by showing them the right direction

YRF

Trust Hindi films to subtly give you messages that are relevant. With Hichki, one important point that we all get here is, that kids are not stubborn and its all about teaching them right values at the right time. With kids, its never too late. And with kids, you need to unlearn certain things before making them learn things. At least one film that has got parenting and schooling absolutely right.

6. Every family is dysfunctional in one way or the other and it's completely okay.

YRF

Naina shares a strained relationship with her father, who abandoned the family when she was a kid. She shares a bittersweet relationship with him throughout the film. Nainas father thought that her disorder means that she always needs help and Naina wanted to change just that. Instead of taking the easier route, Naina chose to follow her own journey and she did prove it to her father that some journeys are meant to be taken alone. Thanks to films like Kapoor & Sons and Hichki that we see dysfunctional but real families on the big-screen.

7. Sometimes you need to step into your parent's shoes to realize that they deserve forgiveness too.

YRF

Naina was stubborn about not giving her father a chance but by the end, she shares a warm hug with him and that proves that no matter how strained relationships get, our family is indeed the only constant in our lives.

8. It's never too late to start afresh in life

YRF

Naina, a part-time animator wants a teaching job desperately. She could have easily landed a banking job because of her father but for her, her dream of becoming a teacher mattered more than anything else. Naina, who was in mid 30s didnt pay heed to societal pressure and taught us that when it comes to your big dream, age is just a number and its never too late to start afresh with your dreams.

9. Never underestimate people on their inadequacies

YRF

Nainas section of students face extreme nastiness from others in the group but the whole team ends up passing in exam, proving that no matter from where you come, you can always end up achieving great things in life. They might be kids from the slum and their challenges were harder than others who were born with a silver spoon but they end up victorious and that gives us a message loud and clear: Never underestimate the power of hard work and will to achieve.

10. Sometimes underdogs are the biggest achievers in life

YRF

Naina Mathur's F section in school proved that it's never too late to begin and all you need is sincerity and hard work to reach your real goal in life. The kids were criticized for their rowdy behavior but the way Naina's constant efforts made them stand out, in the end, is what is extremely inspiring. One can learn a lot from underdogs and that's what this film is about.

11. Don't ever let nastiness of the world around you change the core of your own heart

YRF

Naina's life was not at all about a bed of roses and even with all the thorns on her way, she never let that negativity affect her in any which way. Naina's life is a testimony to the fact that even though life is a full package of struggles and rejections but that shouldn't affect your spirit to achieve big in life.

Starring Rani Mukerji and Neeraj Kabi in eminent roles, the film is lead by a brilliant ensemble cast that includes kids, Supriya Pilgaonkar, Sachin Pilgaonkar, Hussain Dalal and Shivkumar Subramanium. If you are yet to watch this heartwarming tale of Naina Mathur's small and big victories, maybe it's time for you to book your tickets!
If youve ever had to travel with a child you're probably no stranger to the pain associated with the troubles of having them onboard on a flight with you. The ongoing hassle of keeping them in place for multiple hours not only tests your patience but can also drive the person next to you up the wall as well!

Contrary to the growing opinion that we need more child-free zones, Air New Zealand hopes to make flying a bit more comfortable for parents as well their infants by creating seat that turns into a flat surface, even in economy class.

matadornetwork.com

Skycouch as they call it have been located in the forward economy cabin of all 777 and 787-9 of Air New Zealand aircrafts.

Skycouch is the name given for a row of economy seats that turns into a wide surface that resembles a futon, allowing passengers to lie during both domestic and international flights.

Skycouch is being marketed for families and couples who are looking for that extra bit of space for comfort or even as a play area for their kids. They even provide some lovely bedding and pillows.

Air New Zealand wants to make a big change for parents flying with babies: https://t.co/XkYP45SBoX @FlyAirNZ pic.twitter.com/vL5ZRNmR4x  Mirror Travel (@MirrorTravel) March 19, 2018

Air New Zealand has topped the list of the best airlines for children and infants in Australia; majorly for the Skycouch design and for good reason. Heres what the Economy Skycouch has to offer, according to their website:

The seats have an additional footrest that folds into a couch, which can be adjusted to 60 and 90 degrees, depending if you want your footrest up or down.

The arm rest also disappears into the back of the seat to create a comfortable lounge space.

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And no, you dont share the couch with a stranger. When you upgrade to an Economy Skycouch, you get the entire row of seats to yourself.

One of the key features is the infant harness belt that allows children to be safely strapped into a safety for the entirety for the flight.

The harnesses comes in three sizessmall, medium and largeand will allow for two children to lie down together.

bimnak.com

The airline also provides a free Skycouch Pods that provide protection for infants under a certain size.

Air New Zealands general manager, Anita Hawthorne, explains how these upgrades were a result of customer experience feedback, in a press release:

"The Skycouch has proven to be a real game changer in the Economy cabin. While we initially marketed it to couples, we quickly found the product suited parents with young families especially well. Parents can relax while their children are able to have their own space and flat area to play without interrupting other passengers. 

"Through this process, we've spoken to many customers who have travelled on the Skycouch and their feedback has helped to inform the updates and refinements were introducing this year."

Although, Skycouch wont be available to customers later this year, people are already taking to social media to express their excitement and anticipation.

Good on @FlyAirNZ my fave airline their #skycouch is brilliant on my long haul flights when economy #Airline's #genius add-on could transform the pain of #flying with kids - The Sun https://t.co/VIxL2JpinA  Fiona Fletcher (@FionaFletcher1) March 21, 2018

Time will tell if Skycouch can live up to the expectations of its eagerly awaiting customers.
Remember when the results of your board examinations came out, every distant relative called your parents to ask 'kitne percent aaye?'

If you're an Indian kid, it is safe to assume that you've been subjected to academic pressure at some point in life. After all, India does have an unhealthy obsession with marks. Marks are taken as a prophecy of how successful a child will be and the more marks you get, the more intelligent you're presumed to be. Honestly, I'd go as far as saying that the only way to make an Indian parent truly proud is to get as many marks as possible.

Pushy Indian parents often throw their kids into a deathly rat race the moment the child takes the first step into a school. The parents only look at the numbers as the end goal without really realising the kind of pressure that they put on their kids can actually break them mentally.

A man on Quora narrated his experience of having survived parental pressure during his academic years, albeit with considerable damage. The story is heartbreaking but at the same time scary enough to make you think hard about the education system in India:

"Spent 10 years in depression because of them and they don't have a clue. I am in my twenties.

I don't usually write answers on Quora, but I think I should for this one.

I am the first child out of two brothers. Always pampered, loved, and cared by everyone in the family.

I was quick at learning so they made me do rigorous routines and I was topping my class every year. Even I loved making my parents feel proud. I scored above ninety-five percent in tenth standard.

But during these years I was constantly under pressure and was denied things. I was told to shut up if they didn't like what I was saying. They certainly beat me black and blue quite a few times. My parents were strict. They didn't allow me to play quite often so I sucked at it and stopped. I used to draw but they thought it was useless and I stopped that too. I loved reading but they said novels are for adults not for kids, that's why I'm not a big fan of books but I do love comics. Basically I was denied everything that nurtures a child's childhood."

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"They've always been overprotective of us both. I wish they weren't because I started lying to them about the most basic things like where I was, who I was with or what I did. This established that there was a communication gap between us. They always caught me lying but never tried to understand why I lied. I got punished for lying every time but not even once I was asked why I lied or what was the need for me to lie to my own parents.

I moved away from home to study and get into a good engineering college. This was my dream by the time. Parents didn't force me but out of my comfort zone, it was a struggle for me. And I was adapting to it, slowly but steadily. But they wanted results like super fast and they started pressurizing me. I was constantly scolded whenever I spoke on the phone. It was a hectic schedule that started at six in the morning and lasted till nine in the night. I was going through a hard time adapting but I was doing it. They brought me back home thinking it would affect my performance in academics. But this made me feel like a loser, like someone has snatched a gold medal from an Olympian. My self esteem and confidence were at an all time low. I became depressed and they didn't even care. I got anger issues suppressing all theses things inside me. I started self-harming. By this point, my parents stopped me from meeting my friends. My friends were scared of my dad and they started avoiding me completely. I became a loner. I had a girlfriend and she was my only go-to person. My mom even found out about her and made a ruckus. Huge drama happened because I'm from an orthodox Indian middle class family. They always thought discipline will work whatever it was I was having issues with. I just simply wanted them to listen."

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"I did not do good in twelfth and didn't get a college even somewhat close to what I had desired. They blamed it on me as always, said how irresponsible I was and how greasy I've become in terms of academics.

During graduation my contact with parents was very less. They had realized by this point that my behavior was due to the strict treatment I was given by them. I had always kept everything to myself and suddenly they wanted me to share everything.

After graduation, I did tell them about my girlfriend and the response I received was not good. I spent a year trying to convince them but couldn't care less. Eventually I had to breakup with my girlfriend. This totally broke me because she was the only person I shared my thoughts with.

I totally isolated myself for six months and tried to kill myself twice during this time. I don't know how I got out of isolation but something clicked inside and I wanted to live, give life one more shot."

Unsplash

"My parents were already old by the time I was about to kill myself. I didn't want them to have that kind of pain. They love me but I cannot forget the fact that I've lived a good portion of my life in depression because of them, and the sad part is they didn't even know.

Thanks mom, thanks dad, because of you guys I have high functioning depression.

Luckily they didn't make the same mistake with my brother and he shares a normal relationship with them. And he's a doctor so I think I was the prototype before an actual product.

NOTE: please speak to your kids, don't shut them down, even he/she might be suffering from depression."

This story has a lesson for every parent who thinks that numbers define who their kid is.
In a shocking incident, teh candidates appearing for the Jammu and Kashmir Service Selection Recruitment Board (SSRB) exams were asked a question where Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK) was referred to as 'Azad Kashmir'.

Azad Kashmir is a term used by Pakistan to regard part of Kashmir under its occupation and for obvious reasons', India does not make use of the term.

Question number 86 in the paper read: Jammu and Kashmir has an international border with China in the north and east, and the Line of Control separates it from the Pakistan-controlled territories of Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan in:

a) north and north-east respectively

b) south and south-east respectively

c) east and north-east respectively

d) west and north-west respectively

Candidates in Jammu objected to the question and demanded exam to be cancelled. But SSRB annoucnced that exam will not be cancelled and question will be corrected.

afp

Simrandeep Singh, the Chairman of the SSRB, told India Today that there's a procedure of representation after the exam, and that if a question is incorrect, it will be corrected.

He also said that no-one from the board gets to see the question beforehand as the board members do not get in touch with people who prepare the question paper.
Despite government's multipronged strategy in Kashmir to keep youth away from militancy, at least 27 of them have joined different militant outfits in the first three months of this year, police officials said.

Locals joining militancy remains a major challenge for the government, even as it talks about involving Kashmiri youth in development activities so as to keep them away from militancy.

According to police records, on an average, one boy joined militant ranks every three days in 2017. The trend looks similar so far this year as well.

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Many more youth are missing from different villages. So, the number can increase, a senior police official told ET.

Police suspect that five boys who went missing from Srinagar, Pulwama and Anantnag districts on March 27, might have joined militant ranks.

Photographs of two youths  among them, a teenager from Srinagar, Fahad Mushtaq and Rouf Khanday a college student from Anantnag  surfaced on social media brandishing Kalashnikov rifles. The family of Mushtaq has appealed him to return. Meanwhile, Kashmir University has written to the Jammu and Kashmir Police about another student missing from its earth sciences department.

Union home secretary Rajiv Gauba, during a two-day visit to the state earlier this week, directed the J&K government, police, army and the CRPF to engage youth in different developmental activities and wean them away from militancy.

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During the meeting, officials told Gauba that inclination of local youth towards militancy was growing, officers in the know of the discussions said.

On March 24, Junaid Ahmad Sehrai, 30, son of recently appointed Tehreek-i-Hurriyat chairman Muhammad Ashraf Sehrai, joined Hizb-ul-Mujahideen. He was a management graduate and also worked for an e-commerce company.

J&K police chief SP Vaid has urged Sehrai to appeal his son to come back, but the Hurriyat leader said he cannot interfere with his sons decision. On the same day, Abid Bhat, son of a policeman from Tral in South Kashmir, joined Jaish-e-Muhammad. The photographs of both, brandishing weapons, went viral on social media.

According to police records, 124 locals joined militancy in 2017, compared with 88 the year before and 66 in 2015. Before that, 53 locals took to arms in 2014 and the number was just 16 in 2013.

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Some senior police officials dont consider the number of locals taking up militancy as too big. They are more concerned more about glamourizing of militants through social media.

As a psychological operation, entry of every local into militant ranks is being exploited to attract more youth, a senior police official, privy to many anti-militancy operations in South Kashmir, told ET. The government often shuts down Internet during crackdowns and encounters, and has a history of banning social media for some months as well.

The joining of locals holds major symbolic value for militancy, otherwise, at many instances, young local militants, police say, have barely put up a fight during encounters due to lack of proper training and ammunition. Besides, J&K police and the army have managed to reorganise and revitalise its informer network that was disturbed and damaged during the five-month-long protests in 2016, after the killing of Hizb-ul-Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani.

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In current militancy, individuals dont matter; what matters is ideology and how it is being played up, said another senior police official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. Barring a few names, how many militants are known to the larger population in the state? What concerns us is that a few educated people from Kashmir are taking up arms.

Militancy gathered steam and turned deadly in 2017, when Jaish-e-Muhammad took the centre stage and launched massive Fidayeen operations including the attack on the Sunjwaan army camp in Jammu and BSF and CRPF camps in Kashmir.

The police along with the army and CRPF have also intensified their offensive last year through Operation All Out. They killed 213 militants in a year. Various official reports put the number of active militants still in the state at 220-250.
When the distinctive yellow-green armoured train entered Chinese capital Beijing on Monday, the world was left amazed as Kim Jong Un, the North Korean ruler famous for keeping himself and the hermit kingdom hidden met his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.

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The armoured train isnt only bulletproof but also believed to have luxurious fittings and plentiful supplies of alcohol. According to reports it consists of 90 carriages with separate train head on both sides. Its said Kim Jong In, the father of Kim Jong Un was flight phobic and its his phobia that paved the way for the construction of this train.

reuters

The fascination for state of art mode of transportation is one thing seen common between autocratic rulers across the world and regardless the cultures and races, their love for luxurious and formidable machine on wheels is a common virtue.

Here are vehicles that were loved and cherished by five rulers across the world.

Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe, Vintage Rolls Royce

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The Zimbabwean ruler had to resign last year after ruling the country for over 25 years. In total, he ruled for 37 years. The ruler of the African country had the fascination for Vintage Rolls Royce. But apart from this British machine, he also would make police riding horse around the car wearing 100-year-old uniform.

Joseph Stalin, Soviet Union, ZIS 110

Stalin's leaders in ZIS 110, autogallery.org.ru/k/z/zis110_IgorGuzienko.jpg

Joseph Stalin was one of the most famous rulers, Soviet empire ever had. Stalins favourite machine was ZIS-110 and the ZIS-115, the armoured cars manufactured by soviet powerhouses including Stalin. The eight-ton car had special alarm lights, large tyres and armour capsule 7.5 cm thick windows. 32 cars were produced in a year in 1946-1947 and Stalin never used any of his ZIS-115 cars for more than two days.

Benito Mussolini, Italy, Alfa Romeo Manza

militarytrader.com

Mussolini, however, loved the fancy car like Astura, because he wanted to impressive parade cabriolets on the lines Of Germany. But his favourite car is said to be Alfa Romeo Manza, an Italian maker favoured by him. . In fact, Mussolini favoured Romeos throughout his 18-year reign so much so that they were produced in large numbers. In 1939 he had given one to his girlfriend.

Adolf Hitler, Germany, Mercedes Benz W31 G4

reuters

The list would be incomplete without Hitler. The vehicle he loved was W31 Type G4. The off-road auto was designed by Nazi regimes top persons and had the axle. The open seven seat vehicle was used for parades and inspections. Adolf Hitler and his staff used the W31 Type G4 while celebrating the victory in Austria and Czech Republic. Hitler also gifted one to Generalissimo Franco. In total, 30 W31s were made, ending in 1939.

Muammar Gaddafi, Libya, Fiat

ap

Not many know the Gaddafi too had a great love for cars. He said to have designed a car for himself called Libyan rocket with 230 horsepower engine with a nose and tail of a rocket. But he had many cars. Besides his Mercedes S Class stretch limo, a BMW armoured 7 series vehicle, he had a customised Fiat built for USD 260,000.. For instance, the Fiat badge was replaced with an outline of the continent of Africa, with Libya cut out in green. Rebels seized the Fiat and Gaddafi's other trappings of power after putting an end to Gaddafi's 42 years in control.
As Adolf Hitler rose to power, principled conservatives in Germany convinced themselves that he could be controlled.

Compromises, concessions, and countermeasures are necessary in America after the budget attacks on the poor, seniors, the disabled, chidren, and students.

As Adolf Hitler rose to power, principled conservatives in Germany convinced themselves that he could be controlled. (AP Photo) APHomepageAs Trump consolidates his power, the history of 1930s Germany repeats itselfBy Sasha AbramskyMarch 18, 2018 http://www.sacbee.com/article205750864.html In a 2005 essay, In Defense of History, published in the Guardian newspaper, the historian Eric Hobsbawm wrote that we should think of history as an indivisible web in which all human activities are interconnected. Comprehending historical forces, he wrote, gives us a capacity to help us understand the world.My grandfather was a leading historian, and Hobsbawm was one of many colleagues who came through my grandparents book-filled house in London. As an academic discipline, but also, more generally, a mode of thought, history has always fascinated me. It is the weave of human existence over time and across space, the framework of understanding that allows us to craft stories and myths, cautionary tales and morality plays that resonate down the ages.Ex-Chancellor Franz Von Papen believed that conservative elites could control Hitler. Instead, by 1934 Von Papens political career was over, as Hitler, in a whirlwind series of personnel changes, set his propaganda machine  that same machine that denounced the media as the lugenpresse, the lying press  to work against his erstwhile allies and, despite not having won a majority of the votes in the previous election, purged his government of the moderating voices of non-Nazis.Recently, to sate a historical itch, I have been reading about Germany in the 1930s, about what happened when a great and cultured country was handed over to a gang of sadists, misogynists, and racists, when security services were given carte blanche to use the methods of the iron fist, and when torturers were rewarded by promotion rather than prosecuted for their crimes.And I have been reading about what happened when the great mass of the citizenry either supported the transformation or sat back and did nothing, some mistaking their silence and disdain for effective opposition, others simply hoping against hope for normalcy to return.Ex-Chancellor Franz Von Papen, I have discovered from my readings, believed that conservative elites could control Hitler.In two months time we will have squeezed Hitler into a corner until he squeaks, he reputedly told a friend in early 1933, upon Hitlers appointment by a reluctant President von Hindenburg to the Chancellorship, and his own, short-lived accession to the Vice Chancellorship.Instead, by 1934 Von Papens political career was over, as Hitler, in a whirlwind series of personnel changes, set his propaganda machine  that same machine that denounced the media as the lugenpresse, the lying press  to work against his erstwhile allies and, despite not having won a majority of the votes in the previous election, purged his government of the moderating voices of non-Nazis.So, too, was the independent power of the Reichstag neutralized, as political opponents were imprisoned or otherwise hounded out of public life, and as Nazi legislators, serving as wingmen for their shameless boss, repeatedly voted to let Hitler override the constitutional constraints of the dying Weimar republic.Thus was parliamentary democracy finally interred in Germany, William Shirer, author of the classic book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, wrote of the raft of laws by which the Reichstag abetted in its own demise in the spring of 1933. Except for the arrests of the Communists and some of the Social Democratic deputies, it was all done quite legally.I have been reading about what follows when the institutions that are supposed to moderate extremist, impulsive, venal, demagogic leaders default in this role. And how easily, at that point, those institutions and the career civil servants and judges and politicians who populate them, are then swept aside, at best complicit in their own irrelevance, at worst full partners in the increasingly brazen agenda of the demagogue.One by one, Germanys most powerful institutions now began to surrender to Hitler, and to pass quietly, unprotestingly out of existence, Shirer continued.What happens when supposedly high-principled conservatives, such as von Papen, decide to serve in the administration of a sociopath, opportunistically convincing themselves that the devil-you-know is better than the alternatives?One by one, Germanys most powerful institutions now began to surrender to Hitler, and to pass quietly, unprotestingly out of existence.And what happens when they then further convince themselves and their cronies in big business that maybe that devil actually isnt so devilish, that, despite all his manifest crudeness and vulgarity, he does indeed have some special connection to destiny, a force of will that merits the personal loyalty oath of the Fuhrerprinzip?What happens when good citizens passively watch as hoodlums masquerading as politicians, and shouting Deutschland Uber Alles  Germany First  blow up international institutions, like the League of Nations, and treaties designed to secure the peace after the catastrophe of a world war?What happens when upright civic leaders stay silent as investments in diplomacy are replaced by renewed arms races and a fetishization of all-things-military?What happens when decent people do nothing as deportation forces are unleashed to rip apart families, and as religious and ethnic minorities are demonized and brutalized, their residency and employment rights challenged, their values publicly denigrated, by a leadership intent on providing lebensraum for a master race?What happens when a paranoid leader such as Hitler accuses the rest of the world, in numerous speeches, of having laughed at us in its trade and military dealings with Germany, and then promises them they shall laugh no more?General Erich Ludendorff, the man who, along with Hindenburg, ran Germanys military effort during World War I, knew the answer. In despair at President Hindenburg having presided over Hitlers ascent to the Chancellorship, he sent a telegram to the old man: You have handed over our Fatherland to one of the greatest demagogues of all time. I prophesy to you this evil man will plunge our Reich into the abyss and will inflict immeasurable woe on our nation. Future generations will curse you in your grave for this action.My favorite comment about history, however, was penned by Karl Marx, in his Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, his excoriating takedown of the mid-nineteenth century preening, philistine, narcissist French leader and would-be dictator. It is, almost certainly, the most quoted statement about history in history:History repeats itself, he noted, first as tragedy, second as farce.Sasha Abramsky is a Sacramento writer who teaches at UC Davis. His latest book is Jumping at Shadows: The Triumph of Fear and the End of the American Dream. He can be reached at sabramsky [at] sbcglobal.net
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The formation of FEIC is an exciting and important milestone in our international growth strategy as it establishes a key strategic platform for us to become a leading European warranty insurer, commented Sanjay Vara, executive vice president and chief underwriting officer for warranty and consumer products at Fortegra.

Part of Tiptree Inc., Fortegra and its subsidiaries offer warranty solutions, credit insurance, and specialty underwriting programmes. The US firm said FEICs Maltese presence will allow Fortegra to continue to build relationships in the global insurance community.

From adding new growth lines to increasing our international presence, were always looking for opportunities to build the brand  and were very excited for this opportunity to help European partners and consumers experience more, noted Fortegra president and chief executive Richard Kahlbaugh. We are thrilled to expand our business in Malta and have enjoyed working with the MFSA leadership as we formed the company.

Related stories:
A three-year-old lawsuit by a group of youths against the U.S. over climate change, which looks to now get a new trial date at some point this year, has the potential to open up lawsuits on a historic scale, according to some experts.

For a good handle on the magnitude of the potential litigation, think asbestos or other major environmental lability lawsuits, explained Daniel J. Struck, a policyholder attorney, who is a partner in the Chicago, Ill. office of Culhane Meadows PLLC.

Struck believes the case of Juliana v. United States, brought by 21 youths and supported by advocacy group Our Childrens Trust, should be one that the insurance community should definitely watching closely.

This has the potential to be a sort of a repetition of the kind of insurance experience that happened with toxic torts like asbestos, and some of the long-tail environmental liabilities that were the subjects of litigations back in the 80s and 90s, Struck said.

Numerous climate change lawsuits have been popping up since the youths filed their suit.

Worldwide, there are nearly 900 lawsuits on climate change in 25 countries, according to a U.N. study. Five of the worlds biggest energy producers were put on the spot by a federal judge last week about climate change science as part of a lawsuit filed by Democratic Party politicians accusing the companies of misleading the public for years about their role in global warming.

The initial complaint in Juliana was filed in the U.S. District Court District of Oregon Eugene Division in August 2015. It alleges that for more than 50 years, the U.S. has known that carbon dioxide pollution from burning fossil fuels was causing climate change, and that continuing to burn fossil fuels would destabilize the climate system on which present and future generations nation depend for their survival.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs boiled down what the youths are seeking to four main points: 1: A declaration that their rights have been infringed. 2: a consumption-based inventory conducted by the defendants regarding CO2 emissions. 3: the defendants will, for court approval, develop a climate recovery plan based on best available climate science. 4: the defendants, once the plan is approved by the court, will promptly implement the plan.

The trial was supposed to begin last month, however the U.S. government in June petitioned the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco seeking dismissal because the process of discovery would be burdensome and threaten the separation of powers.

The judges denied that petition, and now it looks like the next phase of the suit should begin soon, per a status conference on Monday between the judge and the parties.

The judge indicated that were going to get a trial date before the end 2018, said Philip L. Gregory with Gregory Law Group, one of the attorneys representing those who filed the suit.

U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken, presiding in a district court in Oregon, also set a schedule for disclosure of expert witnesses and reports, according to Gregory.

Beside the Ninth Circuit decision, the biggest victory handed to the plaintiffs  who seem to so far be in a great spot  came in a Nov. 10, 2016 ruling in which Aiken denied an earlier motion from the government to dismiss.

Aiken in her ruling wrote: A deep resistance to change runs through defendants and intervenors arguments for dismissal: they contend a decision recognizing plaintiffs standing to sue, deeming the controversy justiciable, and recognizing a federal public trust and a fundamental right to climate system capable of sustaining human life would be unprecedented, as though that alone requires its dismissal. This lawsuit may be groundbreaking, but that fact does not alter the legal standards governing the motions to dismiss. Indeed, the seriousness of plaintiffs allegations underscores how vitally important it is for this Court to apply those standards carefully and correctly.

Gregory believes the stage is now set for this case to be heard based primarily on science, and not whether the plaintiffs have standing  which he explained that they do, because climate change will impact them, as they will be living in a future where effects of global warming will be more pronounced  or other merits.

We believe this case will come down to the importance of expert testimony on the best available science, Gregory said.

He described their case and why he has a great deal of confidence in prevailing against the U.S. government.

Our case is based on expert testimony from the experts who are the top in their respective fields who will represent the best available science that these plaintiffs are being harmed and will suffer greater harm in the future as a result of the affirmative acts of the federal government, he said. The federal government has yet to come forward with any evidence that is based on the best available science to contradict any of those points. Until we see the federal governments evidence, we are confident that the court will make the appropriate findings.

Struck, while he thinks Gregory has very good reason for being confident, said the case is far from being a slam dunk.

I think were a long ways a way still from having jurisdictional issues in claims like Juliana, he said. Its cleared an important hurdle, but the plaintiffs are a long way from reaching home base yet.

Despite the distance the case has to go, when or if the suit prevails, the implications for other lawsuits and the entire insurance community are worth paying attention to now, he added.

The case has the ability within general liability policies to reach back to when contamination or the environmental discharges took place many years ago, if they are shown to contribute to global warming or to changes in climate. At that point, expect to see no shortage of private claimants arguing that policies were in effecting during a particular historic period, he said.

In short, a ski resort owner can sue the oil industry for a drop in the number of skiers and snowboarders due to consecutive poor snow seasons. Dont stop there. Consider possible suits from the likes of the commercial fishing industry, businesses with ocean-proximate real estate, agricultural concerns, and on and on.

Struck foresees a wide pool of potential defendants in those kind of claims, should plaintiffs in Juliana or other similar cases prevail.

Such suits could easily reach back to before accidental pollution exclusions of the 1970s, he said.

Were potentially talking about discharges taking place before the pollution exclusions were in place, he added.

Julianas broad, almost global market view, is part of a key reason a new landscape of climate change suits will be possible.

Its the potential for some pretty radical responsibility shifting here for whos responsible for these kind of developments, he said. The insurance companies with deep insurance pockets are a logical place to look.

Hugo Alvarez, a shareholder with Becker & Poliakoff, whose practice focuses on litigation and real estate, drew a parallel between the potential of Juliana and other climate suits and the civil rights movement, when during the 1940s and 50s, numerous court decisions initially paved the way for changes and the then lawmakers in Congress followed.

The judiciary is going play some role as it related to climate change here and its not unprecedented, Alvarez said.

He was speaking on the phone from the Miami Beach area, where government action has already been required to deal with high tides that coincide with phases of the moon.

Every 90 days or so you get a real special high high-tide, he said. When that happens here in Miami Beach, there is a certain part of the city that goes under water.

The government was forced to deal with that by spending a great deal of money to build a high tech pumping system.

Thats how the result of a successful suit like Juliana will play out in his mind: as sea levels rise, more and more people will take to the courts to look for relief from the effects of climate change.

The way everything is headed right now, and in this current landscape, such a turn of events wouldnt surprise me, he said.

Alvarez also wouldnt be surprised if the plaintiffs prevail in the lower courts, and for the matter to eventually reach the U.S. Supreme Court.

The trial court in that case has certainly written opinions that are very plaintiff friendly, he said.

Past columns:

Topics Lawsuits USA Climate Change Pollution
Technical indicators can help a trader profitably navigate through a period of range-bound trading, or a period in which a stock oscillates between an upper resistance level and a lower support level.

Before a trader can profit from range trading, they must recognize the fact that a genuine trend is lacking and that price is likely to continue moving back and forth within a sideways channel. A good indicator of the existence (or lack of) a trend is the average directional index (ADX). ADX readings above 25 are considered to indicate the existence of a solid trend. Readings lingering below 25 can indicate a trendless market that may remain range-bound for some period of time.

Once a trader has correctly identified a market as range-bound, the most likely profitable trading strategy will trade price movement from the identified top of the range to the bottom of the range. Helpful indicators for pinpointing the top and bottom of a range, while allowing for slight variations and changes in volatility, include Bollinger Bands, STARC bands and the commodity channel index (CCI). These indicators paint a clear picture of the existing trading range and can also, by expansion or by a change in slope from flat to angling up or down, indicate when the market begins to break out of a range.

Bullish or bearish reversal candlestick patterns occurring near the top or bottom of the trading range can provide additional possible trading signals for range trading. Finally, momentum indicators such as the moving average convergence divergence (MACD) can be watched for divergence from price occurring at the extremes of the range as signals that the market may be turning in the opposite direction.
Ahead of Organ Donor Awareness Week, Margaret Jennings talks with Vera Dwyer, the longest-surviving single lung transplant victim in the world.

Three decades ago she was given five years to live, but Sligo-based Vera Dwyer has defied the odds and now holds the title of the longest-surviving single lung transplant recipient in the world.

The great-grandmother, who celebrated her 77th birthday just last week, received her certificate from the Guinness Book of Records four years ago.

At the age of 47  then a mother of four children  she was told her time was limited, after she underwent a pioneering lung transplant operation in the Royal Brompton and Harefield Hospital in London, because she was suffering from a condition called fibrosis alveolitis  a progressive thickening of the walls of the air sacs of the lungs.

It seemed a cruel blow that fate had dealt, since she had never smoked and was fit, but she faced it with a day-by-day determination that has stood by her well.

Every day was a bonus to me. If I got five years I was thinking the youngest one will be such an age and the next one will be such an age... and thats the way I was looking at it.

As the years mounted and her children grew up, Vera got on with her life in the family farm at Carrowcrory, grateful every day to her organ donor who had made those extra decades possible.

Then nine years ago she was faced with kidney failure, a side-effect, she says, of the anti-rejection drug she had been taking for her original transplant.

I was on home dialysis for about 18 months and that was a big ordeal. Then I had to go to Sligo three times a week for dialysis and that was hard going. Eventually, I was offered the transplant  I was coming home from dialysis and I got the word in the taxi, she tells Feelgood.

Aware that she has been doubly blessed by organ donation, Vera says: Only for my two donors I would be long gone  I pray for them every single day and for their families... they were so good to donate their organs.

So what has kept her going? She has a strong religious faith and huge connection with her adult children and the extended family who all live within a five-minute drive of her home, which is especially precious since her rock, her husband Mike, died after 50 years of marriage some years back.

I asked God every day to let me see my children get reared and then it went from that to see them get married. And from that to see their children, so it keeps going on... Thats whats keeping me alive. I keep pushing the goalposts out with God... my bucket list keeps getting bigger, she says.

In her late 40s when given a death sentence, she would never have dreamt shed see her six grandchildren grow up, not to mention two great-grandchildren  two lovely little girleens, Leah 6, and Alyesha 2.

Shes committed to a healthy lifestyle too, including eating home-cooked food and walking daily, but is currently hindered as shes on crutches awaiting a hip operation.

So how does she feel about facing the operating theatre again?

Im a great believer in the Sacred Heart and any time I was having an anaesthetic all I would say is Sacred Heart of Jesus I place all my trust in thee, and I was gone to sleep.

Vera Dwyer, the longest surviving lung transplant recipient in the world.

"And then Id wake up and Id be so grateful. Its in his hands to guide the surgeons and doctors looking after me. And I say that prayer every day anyway. Its all in his hands.

One of the gifts she received three decades ago when her health failed was a fuller appreciation of her surroundings: I love nature. My goodness... I never saw it until I got sick. I hadnt time to look around. And then when you get sick you see all those beautiful things around you.

Im hoping that the hip will be done soon so I can be ready for the summer again to take off walking.

Her dog, Jessie, a shih tzu, is champing at the bit to get going too: Shes like a person  shed nearly understand every word I say to her. Shes about eight or nine now at this stage. She gets so excited when she sees me getting my runners on  she runs around in rings until I get outside the door.

For those sitting on the fence around donating organs, Vera says: Oh please, please sign up for it. It makes such a difference. I got 30 years out of my donors lung and then my kidney. It makes such a difference to people. Its a whole new life to give.

Organ Donor Awareness Week runs from tomorrow, March 31 to April 7. There are approximately 550 people in Ireland awaiting life-saving transplants. Thanks to the gift of organ donation, almost 3,500 transplanted people in Ireland are enjoying extended life. For further information visit www.ika.ie/card
Audrey is back to offer some helpful advice to readers.

Cmere, whats the story with World War Three. I see the Russkis do be livid because Simon Coveney told them one of their diplomats has to go home. Like, Im not trying to be funny, but most people I know would love to be expelled from Dublin. I was up there with the old doll two weeks ago, it do be fierce busy and someone needs to have a word with them about their accent. (Its ridiculous.) So, like, can you tell the Russian lad to cheer up and hell be better off, even if they send him to Siberia? Dowcha Donie, Blackpool, why dont we have embassies in Cork?

Great question. I agree with you 100%, which is bizarre really, given that you are from the northside. I asked my swotty nephew, Political Paul, if he thinks we are heading for conflict. He said the only thing that can stop it now is the quality of intelligence from our security services. I said you mean the guards. He said yes. I said where would be a good place to buy a bomb shelter?

Its my Joshs seventh birthday next weekend and Ive invited all my friends and relations to our place, so I can humiliate them with my new 73,000 kitchen. My only problem is the cake  Im terrified people wont realise I spent 650 on it. So, heres my question: Would it be considered common to put the price on the cake, rather than Happy Birthday Josh xx? Alicia, Monkstown, Id hate for people to think we were struggling, you know that kind of a way?

No. (People know were struggling, because My Conor only works in the Central Statistics Office.) Sorry now, but paying someone to bake your childs birthday cake is as common as a majorettes hen party in Garryvoe. Youre nobody in Posh Cork these days if you dont bake the cake from scratch. So, rather than throwing money at the problem, you will need a secret ingredient called motherly love. (Look it up.)

Hello old stock. Spot of bother with HR at work, it turns out youre no longer allowed to wink at a woman and call her a grand girl, when youre asking her to make you a cup of coffee. (No one told me.) The upshot is I have to make a presentation to the board, explaining the changes I am going to make in my dealings with the chicky babes. Unfortunately, the only presentation I ever encountered was the name of the place I went to school. People keep talking about this thing called Powerpoint  do you think my secretary will be able to help? (Shes a little treasure.) Reggie, Blackrock, Im sexy not sexist, thats my motto.

Never drive through Cappoquin with the windows open. (Thats mine.) I asked my friend Penny about this, shes an expert in HR. She said you really need to change jobs. I said surely there isnt an organisation out there that could tolerate his views on women. She said maybe try the Catholic Church. #Controversial.

Hey. Im living in a luxury yurt just outside Dunmanway, with my special man, Kai Karma (not his real name.) Anyway, the universe smiled on us last week and blessed us with a son, Crystal Zappa (not his real name.) We dont want to get him baptised, but my mother is deeply religious and her house in Kinsale is worth more than 2m. I hate talking about money, but I might need her help financially, given that the market doesnt seem to be ready for my gluten-free artisan cookies, made with fairy dreams. Do you think I should get Crystal Zappa baptised, for his own sake? Mermaid Skye (not my real name.)

Hi Gobnait. (I remember you from school  nice one on changing your name. ) I have a cousin, Blunt Brenda, shes a nun. (Imagine.) I said what does God think of non-believers who get their children baptised? She said, he thinks its hilarious. I said why. She said because nothing is funnier than a new mom dressing too sexy, downing two bottles of Prosecco and spraining her wrist in a bouncy castle. I said, what are you talking about? She said, an Irish christening.

Hola. I am working here in Cork for the past three months. All this week, the Irish boys are asking me if I am going to the pub this Friday, because I look a bit like a young Penelope Cruz. They say that everybody will be there. What is so special about the pub this Friday? Cristina, Barcelona and Popes Quay, at home I am considered plain, but here I am like nine of out 10.

I get the same reaction in Macroom. Its actually compulsory for every Irish person to head to the pub because its the first time it will be open on Good Friday since 1927. Although it mightnt seem like such a good Friday when Stinger from Clonmel tries to lick your ear at closing time. (Theres a Stinger in every pub.)
European values  civil rights, freedom of speech, information and assembly  are being violated by Spains central government Carles Puigdemont

THE determination of Spains government to get all of its Catalan dissidents back to Madrid to face trial, along with 20 others awaiting hearings and sentences, for the monstrous crime of being, well, dissidents, shows no signs of losing impetus.

Catalonias former president, Carles Puigdemont, is in a German prison while courts there decide how to respond to a European arrest warrant (EAW) extradition request from Spain. One of his comrades has been in the dock in Edinburgh.

A judge there has to assess an 18-page warrant accusing Clara Ponsati  briefly an education minister in Catalonias regional administration  of sedition, misusing public funds, and inciting violence against the security forces that attempted to close polling stations in an independence referendum judged to be illegal by Spains constitutional court.

It is likely that Ms Ponsati, who has been released on bail, will fare better in the short-term than Mr Puigdemont  and not because the governing nationalist party in Scotlands devolved parliament has an understandably fraternal feeling for the Catalan secessionists; Scottish courts  as here  are independent of government. What should work in her favour is that the statute books of Scotland and England and Wales recognise no such crime as sedition or rebellion, while one of the less-objectionable aspects of the by-no-measure flawless EAW system is that courts looking at extradition requests must decide whether or not the alleged criminal offence has an equivalent in the jurisdiction  in this case, Scotland  in which the accused was arrested.

The other charges against her would seem to be the work of an extant unit of the Spanish Inquisition. Puigdemont might have a tougher time; lawyers for Spains government will argue that Germanys criminal code describes an offence  high treason  that is akin to rebellion.

Two other fugitive Catalonian politicians can probably anticipate undisturbed exiles in Switzerland, where the countrys justice department government has got to the heart of the matter: It says the charges against them are, in all likelihood, political and, therefore, extradition requests would be turned down. Swiss law can be criticised for

protecting tax-dodgers and money-launderers, but it also forbids extradition, if authorities judge a case to be predominantly political, which all of these are.

What part of the word democracy  a revered gift from Greece  is Spains central government unable to understand? The same question might be asked of the European Commissions president, Jean-Claude Juncker. He congratulated Vladimir Putin for winning an election the Russian president couldnt lose, given that his only serious rival had been barred from standing, but has not yet found the time to talk to the Spanish government about Articles Two and Seven of the 2007 Lisbon Treaty on the European Union.

There is something in those paragraphs, isnt there, about the values, common to member states, on which the union was founded? Something about democracy?
Tony Wilkinson, who was among the Parkinsons sufferers to travel to Dublin for the protest, said having community-based nurse specialists made sense economically and would greatly benefit patients.

They have community-based nurse specialists in Germany, France and the UK, where I come from. I was diagnosed three-and-a-half years ago in the UK and, within two weeks, a nurse called to my home to meet myself and my wife.

These nurses, who are allowed to prescribe, visit up to five times a year and because they see the patient regularly, they can see minor changes in their condition and can adjust their treatment accordingly. It means patients dont have to endure long waiting times to see their consultant and it cuts down on hospital admissions, Tony said.

Tony, who now lives in Bandon, Co Cork, said the nurses currently available to people with Parkinsons are hospital-based and only available at the end of a phone. He said they had done the maths, and estimated that the health service could save 300,000 for every community-based nurse specialist recruited. He said Cork needed three nurse specialists, but had none.

Currently, 12,000 people in the country with Parkinsons have access to just four nurses  there are five posts, but one is vacant. The National Collaborating Centre for Chronic Conditions guidelines state there should be one Parkinsons nurse specialist for every 300 patients, putting Ireland way below the recommended number.

Parkinsons Association CEO Paula Gilmore also criticised the lack of direct Government funding for the association and the unavailability of deep brain stimulation (DBS), a treatment for the condition only available to patients who travel abroad.

Ms Gilmore said a nationwide nurse specialist service and direct funding would save the Government money in the long term as it would reduce the number of bed nights our members need to spend in hospital.

The Parkinsons Association, with its knowledge of peoples needs, could target funding and services where they are most needed, she said.

Parkinsons disease is a progressive neurological disorder. There is no cure.
The Irish Examiner yesterday revealed that the Prisons Watchdog reviewed CCTV footage which disproved records claiming that staff had checked on the 52-year-old married father four times an hour on January 2, 2017.

The Inspector of Prisons Helen Casey found six intervals wherein the prisoner was left unattended for more than 15 minutes on the night  the shortest of these being over half an hour.

The inmate, who had suffered psychotic episodes, was twice left unattended for more than an hour and a half on the night in question.

In her recommendations arising from the inmates death, Ms Casey warned prison staff that it is a serious matter to generate official documents that are misleading and/or inaccurate.

Incomplete and inaccurate record keeping regularly feature as a finding in reports from this office as does this recommendation, Ms Casey wrote.

A spokesperson for the Irish Prison Service confirmed that Ms Caseys findings led to disciplinary action at Cork Prison: I can confirm that prison management commenced and has completed disciplinary proceedings under the Prison (Disciplinary Code For Officers) Rules, 1996. The Irish Prison Service does not comment on the outcome of such disciplinary cases.

The Irish Prison Service said it accepts the recommendations from Ms Caseys report. In addition to the investigation by the Office of the Inspector of Prisons, all deaths in custody are also investigated by prison management. On foot of the investigations, into the death of prisoner A 2017, prison management have reviewed and restated the Standard Operating Procedures for Special Observations, it said.

The Prison Governor has ensured that the importance of accurate record keeping has been reiterated to prison staff. In this regard, all such journals are checked by the Chief Officer and the Governor daily. Prison management will continue to ensure that prison staff are fully aware of the need to comply with all Standard Operating Procedures including record keeping and the potential consequences of underperformance in this regard, the Prison Service said.

Ms Caseys report revealed the concerns of the dead mans family, who said they believe that the prison had contributed to the untimely death of the deceased.

They asked for an outline of the medication he was given in prison; queried whether the authorities thoroughly checked his physical and mental health before giving him this medicine; and asked what diagnosis he received while in the care of the prison.

[The family] stated that Prison Management told them that the deceased was suffering from physical illness; not mental illness; but were informed by the Gardai and GP that he had a mental illness, the report revealed.

Ms Caseys report did not state the medication the inmate was taking, but she said the inmate had daily contact with nursing staff, and regular reviews with the prison doctors and psychiatrist. The prison medical records indicate that the deceased had hypertension and suffered psychotic episodes and may have been suffering from a neurological disorder, the report found.
The diplomat was told to leave Moscow amid growing tensions between Russia and the EU over the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the UK.

The expulsion has been seen as an act of retaliation after the Irish government this week ordered a Russian diplomat based in the embassy in Dublin to leave.

Ireland was just one of 23 countries who received orders to send officials home yesterday.

Ambassadors were called to the Russian foreign ministry yesterday to be told that 59 diplomats were being expelled.

Diplomats from Germany, Italy, Poland, Finland, and the UK are among those who have all been ordered to leave. The Kremlin has also expelled 60 diplomats from the US.

A spokesman for Tanaiste and Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney said there was no justification for the expulsion of the Irish official.

Our staff do not engage in activities which are incompatible with their diplomatic status, he said. This decision to expel an Irish diplomat is regrettable.

The tit-for-tat series of expulsions follows the decision of the Government to order one Russian diplomat to leave this country in the wake of the Salisbury poisoning.

Expelling the official on Tuesday, Mr Coveney said Ireland had an obligation to act and to send out a clear signal that the attack on Mr Skripal and his daughter was unacceptable.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said the Government had taken the decision to expel one Russian diplomat based on intelligence and advice from Garda intelligence and Defence Forces intelligence.

When it comes to terrorism, assassinations, the use of chemical weapons and cyber-terrorism, we are not neutral one bit, said Mr Varadkar. We are joined with other neutral countries including Finland and Sweden, who have taken the same course of action as us, in expelling diplomats.

However, after the formal notification was issued, Russias ambassador to Ireland, Yury Filatov, said the action was uncalled for, senseless and regrettable.

He warned that Irelands unfriendly act would not go unanswered.

Britain has blamed Russia for the Salisbury poisoning which used a nerve agent. British prime minister Theresa May briefed her European counterparts on the attack during the last European Council meeting, after which a large number of countries decided to expel Russian diplomats.

The EU also recalled its ambassador from Moscow.
Denis Naughten, the minister for communications, climate action and environment, made the announcement at the Energy Action conference in Dublin yesterday.

Mr Naughten said he wanted to ensure that those who were unable to invest further in their homes were not left behind.

The warmer homes scheme is Irelands primary grant support scheme for households in energy poverty.

Free energy efficiency upgrades are provided to vulnerable householders so their homes are warmer and cheaper to heat.

Among people entitled to the upgrade would be those in receipt of the fuel allowance, family income supplement, or one-parent family payment.

Mr Naughten said he had allocated 24m to the warmer homes scheme this year.

Up to now, they had primarily focused on supporting shallower measures with the scheme.

It has been the sensible starting point, he said.

Last year, the scheme was expanded to provide deeper retrofit measures in homes in particularly poor condition. Mr Naughten said they must now take the extra step and reach for even greater energy and carbon savings, especially for homes that are harder to treat.

The minister said the scheme would now support all types of wall insulation, including external insulation, and replacement windows.

Not only will this see the scheme reach homes that could not previously receive works, but they can now be provided with a deeper upgrade.

This is what we have to do to place our residential housing stock on the right, low carbon trajectory for 2050. Every home counts.

Critically, by providing these deeper insulation measures under the warmer homes scheme, where heating systems need to be installed or old fossil fuel systems replaced, we will now create the opportunity to install clean renewable heating technologies.

Mr Naughten said it was further progress on the decision he made at the end of last year to move away from grant supports for fossil fuels to renewables.

We will do this where its the best technical solution for the house and where the householder is comfortable with that solution, said the minister.

An environmental expert who pioneered fuel poverty research in Ireland in Britain told the conference that tackling energy poverty was in everyones interest.

Tackling energy poverty makes for more comfortable, happier people, less physical and mental ill-health, better school attendance and fewer indebted households, said Dr Brenda Boardman from Oxford University.

Her bottom-up approach is based on a lifetime of research showing how cold homes are expensive, not alone for the occupants and health services but for society as well.

Dr Boardman said the cost of refurbishing a cold home could be recovered in seven years in reduced health costs alone and the focus should be on where energy poverty is concentrated before moving on to less severe areas.
However, Isabel Terry, 43, from Cork, who underwent her surgery in the UK, said that while the 11% increase in transplants last year is encouraging, 600 people are still on waiting lists here.

I read those waiting list figures every year, she said. I was one of them. But now Im a recipient. Now, Im one of the good statistics. Its mind-blowing, really. Im living proof that organ donation works.

Ahead of Organ Donor Awareness Week, next week, and as the Organ Tissue Bill, which provides for a soft opt-out clause, progresses towards becoming law, Isabel urged people to talk to their family about their organ-donation wishes.

The bill could take months, she said. So, while politicians do their thing, we can do our thing, by talking about organ-donation, by letting our next of kin know our wishes. Its very important to people like me.

Her comments come as the HSE published its Organ Donation and Transplant Ireland (ODTI) 2017 annual report. This shows that a record-breaking, 311 organ transplants, from 99 deceased organ donations, were carried out in Ireland last year, up 11% on the previous year. The report also shows there were:

36 lung transplants, one of the highest rates in Europe, and 16 heart transplants, at the Mater;

Kidney transplant from deceased donation increased to 141, with 51 living donor kidney transplants undertaken in Beaumont Hospital.

62 liver transplants, and five simultaneous pancreas and kidney transplants, were undertaken at St Vincents University Hospital.

ODTI director Jim Egan praised the extraordinary generosity and courage of all donors.

Every transplant performed is as a result of the generosity of a deceased donor family, at a time of great personal loss, or a living donor, who save and enhance the lives of others, said Prof Egan.

It is only because of the generosity of the Irish public that patients can receive the life-saving treatment of an organ transplant. Our message is simple; organ donation saves lives.

He said modernisation of organ donation and transplant services, particularly in relation to deceased cardiac donation, remains outstanding.

He said they are also on the cusp of signing a service-level agreement with the North, in relation to paired kidney exchange, which should mitigate the need for Irish patients to travel to the UK.

Isabel, who waited 14 years for her transplants, said she cherishes the simple things in life, like not having to rely on oxygen 24-hours a day, and being able to get dressed and climb stairs without gasping for breath.

She said: I was very hard on myself, in the first few weeks and months, but when I get frustrated with my progress, my family say look at how you did last week, compare it to that, and I can see progress. Im getting stronger every day.
Other requests include better Garda governance structures, more coherent oversight, and deeper engagement with minority groups.

The Commission on the Future of Policing is tasked with conducting a fundamental review of policing and drawing up a blueprint for a future system.

The expert group, established in May 2017, is due to report in September, around the same time that the next commissioner is expected to be appointed.

The commission has completed its public consultation phase and is now examining all its material and, during the summer months, will begin the process of drafting its report and considering its recommendations.

It held 11 public meetings  in Cork, Galway, Athlone, Limerick, Carrickmacross, Carrick-on-Shannon, Waterford, and Letterkenny, as well as several in Dublin.

It received 317 written submissions from organisations and individuals, including An Garda Siochana, policing bodies, political parties, human rights organisations, victims rights groups, community bodies and policing fora, joint policing committees, serving and retired gardai, Garda representative associations, and political representatives.

The commission said it had held hundreds of bilateral meetings with relevant organisations, including the Criminal Justice Steering Committee, Policing Authority, Garda Ombudsman, Garda Inspectorate, Defence Forces, Public Appointments Service, Department of Public Expenditure, senior Garda management and frontline members, Criminal Assets Bureau, academic experts, youth justice services, community groups in Limerick and Dublin, and the New Zealand police service.

In a statement, the commission said themes raised throughout, included:

Importance of strong visible community policing;

Need for coherence across all agencies involved in protecting communities;

Need for stronger organisational governance;

More coherent oversight framework;

Deepening meaningful engagement with minority groups;

Supporting victims of crime;

Importance of garda training.

The commission has been given broad terms of reference by the Government.

It has grouped these into five key areas: Culture and ethos; leadership and structures; recruitment and training; governance and oversight; and legislative framework.

The issues were reflected in the written submissions. Of the 317 submissions: 163 relate to the role of policing; 82 refer to recruitment, training and professional development; 48 are about leadership and structures, 34 relate to technology and digital innovation; and 27 refer to governance, oversight, and accountability.

The commission also attended a live anti-terror exercise, Operation Skipjack, conducted by Gardai and the Defence Forces at Shannon Airport on March 20.

Members of the commission were due to meet the Oireachtas justice committee and Taoiseach Leo Varadkar yesterday.

The commission is headed up by Kathleen OToole, the departing chief of police in Seattle.
News 2 Sagaing Women Arrested for Trying to Keep Police from Entering Village

Residents of Wat Hmae village in the Letpadaung copper mining region try to prevent police from entering their village on Thursday. / Ko Aung Nay Myo

MANDALAY  Two villagers in the Letpadaung copper mining region of Sagaing Divisions Salingyi Township were arrested after trying to prevent police from entering their village on Thursday.

The two women, residents of Wat Hmae village, were among a group of villagers who were angered by the large police presence during a previously agreed relocation of seven households from the village that had been declared to be in a mining zone.

According to the villagers, police began setting up security checkpoints outside the village on Wednesday, claiming it was necessary to protect villagers and assist those who wished to relocate to new villages.

We told them [the police] not to enter our village and that we would help the villagers move, but they forcibly entered the village with their trucks, so we confronted them, said Ko Ko Latt, a resident of Wat Hmae village.

The locals said they were angered when about 100 police entered the village via its main road.

The police acted as if they were preparing for battle. We do not want such actions, for we live in peace and have not created any problems as to who will move to a new village, he said.

What began as an exchange of words between villagers and police quickly escalated into a physical clash. Police eventually detained Ma Thwae Thwae Win and Ma San San Hla, who reportedly led the villagers in confronting the authorities.

The two women are currently under police detention while receiving medical treatment at Salingyi Township Hospital.

According to police, officers from Salingyi Township filed lawsuits against the two arrested women, Ma Phyu Phyu Winthe sister of Ma Thwae Thawe Winand seven other locals for injuring police and obstructing a police officer, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years imprisonment.

The police used force to defame us and said our aim was to stop the relocation. This is completely untrue, Ma Phyu Phu Win said. We just dont want the police to come into our villages. We want to tell President U Win Myint to take note of us and to ensure there is rule of law in our region.

Residents of Letpadaung region have been wary of allowing police or local authorities to approach their villages since copper mining began in 2013, as authorities and mining companies have tried to forcibly relocate villages that lie within designated mining zones.

Tensions first arose in the Letpadaung region in 2012, when locals protested the mining companys activities in the area, demanding compensation and the right to remain on their land.

About 7,800 acres of land in Salingyi Township were confiscated for the project, which has been dogged by protests over poor compensation and environmental safeguards.

The Letpadaung copper mining project, a joint venture between the Myanmar military-owned Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings Limited (UMEHL) and the Chinese firm Wanbao, was launched in 2010.
Burma A Brief Bio of Myanmars Newly Sworn-in President

Myanmar's tenth President U Win Myint after the inauguration on Friday. / Presidents Office / Facebook

With his inauguration on Friday, U Win Myint has become Myanmars tenth president.

The House speaker-turned-president is the second head of state elected by the Daw Aung San Suu Kyi-led National League for Democracy (NLD) government in two years time, following U Htin Kyaws sudden retirement from the post in the third week of March 2018.

Like the former president, the one-time lawyer is one of the State Counselors allies. A hardcore NLD member since the formation of the party in 1988, the 67-year-old had three electoral victories on the party ticketbeing elected for the seats in his hometown Irrawaddy Deltas Danubyu in the 1990 election, Irrawaddys Pathein Township in the 2012 by-election and Yangons Tamwe township in the 2015 election.

During his time in the Lower House, U Win Myint was known to be a strict taskmaster. He often warned lawmakers to do their homework before the parliamentary session and to keep their proposals and questions specific and to the point. The lawmakers were not alone in receiving his stern warnings. Union ministers were also among those faulted for poorly prepared answers in Parliament. Moreover, he has occasionally given military appointees in Parliament a hard time.

Like many other political activists and politicians, U Win Myint was arrested several times by the previous military regime.
Burma Family of Journalist Killed in Traffic Accident with Army Major Drops Charges

U Tin Lin, who was a senior reporter for The Voice Journal, at the launch of the Myanmar Youth Policy in Naypyitaw in January. / U Tin Lin / Facebook

NAYPYITAW  The family of a local journalist has dropped charges against an army officer who hit and killed the reporter in a traffic accident nearly two weeks ago.

U Tin Lin, a senior reporter at The Voice Journal, was killed instantly as he rode his motorcycle near the Naypyitaw Central Railway Station in Pobbathiri Township after being hit from behind by the car driven by Major Kaung Htoo Lwin on the night of March 17.

Police handed over the investigation into the fatal crash to the army, as the driver was an army major with the Health and Disease Control Unit in Zayarthiri Township.

U Tin Lin lived alone in Pobbathiri, away from his family in Yangon. He had worked as a reporter for more than 15 years.

In the 2010 general election, with the National Democratic Force, he unsuccessfully contested a Lower House seat representing Yangon Regions Kungyangon Township, where he was from.

U Tin Lins 85-year-old mother is in poor health and agreed to drop charges against Major Kaung Htoo Lwin after the army officers relatives came to apologize three times, said Daw San San Kyu, the younger sister of U Tin Lin.

The brother [of the major] came crying and begged my ailing mother. He told her that he and his brother would take care of her as if they were her sons and provide monthly [financial] assistance. My mother sympathized with him and decided to drop the charge out of motherly love, she said.

This type of crime allows the aggrieved party to drop the charge, Pobbathiri police Lieutenant Thaung Htike Oo told The Irrawaddy.

U Tin Lins mother and other family members signed an agreement dropping the charges on Wednesday in the presence of community elders and the village administrator.

It all depends on his mother. We can do nothing against her will, said Ko Aung Soe, The Voices executive editor.

Translated from Burmese by Thet Ko Ko.
Burma KNU Says Army Cancelled Meeting to Settle Standoff Because of Missing Delegate

KNLA soldiers parade to mark the 67th anniversary of Karen Martyrs Day in Karen State in August. / Nyein Nyein / The Irrawaddy

YANGON  The Myanmar Army, or Tatmadaw, cancelled a meeting it had scheduled with the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) because the commander of one of the ethnic armed groups brigades would not be attending, according to a member of the groups political wing.

The reason they gave us is that it was not suitable to have the meeting without the KNLA Brigade 5 commander. They said he has the most authority in the region, said Padoh Saw Thamain Tun, a central executive committee member of the Karen National Union (KNU).

As for us, our representatives went on the trip to have the meeting with them, he said.

The goal of the meeting, scheduled for Thursday and Friday in Kyauk Kyi Township, was to settle a territorial dispute that erupted earlier this month when the Tatmadaw moved into an area claimed by Brigade 5 to rebuild an old road.

Some 2,000 ethnic Karen have fled the fighting.

Padoh Saw Thamain Tun said the KNU asked the Joint Ceasefire Monitoring Committee (JMC) to mediate the meeting and that the KNU and KNLA had decided beforehand who to send. He said they decided not to send the Brigade 5 commander because he was not fluent in Burmese and chose to send a subordinate instead.

Saying they would not attend the meeting because the KNLA Brigade 5 commander would not be there is not a good reason. The KNU and KNLA decided who had to attend the meeting. In fact there would have been no problem without having him there, Padoh Saw Thamain Tun said.

The KNU has asked the Tatmadaw to withdraw its soldiers from the disputed area and help the displaced families move back. Karen community leaders have also written to State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi for help.
Burma New President Vows to Bring Democracy, Human Rights to Myanmar

President U Win Myint waves after being elected by Parliament on Wednesday. / Myo Min Soe / The Irrawaddy

YANGON  Myanmars new president vowed in his inauguration speech on Friday to implement democracy, human rights and other social changes that the public has long been waiting for.

By applying the lessons learned from the challenges and crises we have experienced in the past, our government will try its best, with full impartiality, to bring about democracy and the respect for human rights that our people long for, U Win Myint said.

Laying out a roadmap for the remaining three years of the National League for Democracy-led governments current term, the president vowed to crack down on corruption and the illegal drug trade, and to reform the countrys weak judicial system.

U Win Myint was inaugurated as the countrys 10th president on Friday morning at the Union Parliament along with two vice presidents. He was elected by a parliamentary vote on Wednesday.

In his inauguration speech to the Union Parliament on Friday, U Win Myint emphasized the need for all parties to be open to change if the countrys democratic transition is to succeed. He warned that close supervision would be imposed on departments reluctant to make changes, referring to the fact that some department officials loyal to the previous government had resisted implementing changes ordered by the NLD government.

The 67-year-old acknowledged that Myanmar today faces problems in every sector, while challenges mount both at home and abroad.

While its impossible to tackle them all, I will do my best to prioritize them, he said.

In a 7-minute-long speech delivered in front of State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, military chief Senior-General Min Aung Hlaing, Union cabinet members and lawmakers, the president said the government would tackle corruption; take steps to combat drug trafficking; provide compensation for illegally confiscated land; and uphold human rights. He also vowed to improve the lives of farmers, workers and students.

To make this happen, the three pillars of the country [legislative, judiciary and executive] need mutual understanding and respect, and to coordinate their activities for the interests of the people, he said.

He urged the public to take the social role of the media sector seriously, describing the media as the eyes and ears of the people.

U Win Myint assumes the presidency at a time when Myanmar faces both domestic and international challenges. At home, peace with ethnic armed groups continues to prove elusive, and the economy is in decline due to mismanagement. And while the country now has a democratically elected civilian government, the military retains a strong influence.

Internationally, the NLD government has come under unprecedented criticism for its handling of the Rohingya issue; more than 600,000 Muslims have fled Rakhine State for Bangladesh since August last year, alleging arbitrary killing, rape and torture at the hands of security forces. The UN has accused of the country of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya, though the government has repeatedly denied this. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has come under criticism for her silence on the issue.

Mindful of the situation, Myanmars 10th president said on Friday: We need to keep working to raise the dignity of our citizens as well as the image of the country in the international community.
Burma Rights Lawyer Amal Clooney to Represent Reuters Reporters Held in Myanmar

Amal Clooney attends a Security Council meeting at UN headquarters during the United Nations General Assembly in New York City on Sept. 21. / Reuters

YANGON  Prominent human rights lawyer Amal Clooney has joined the legal team representing two Reuters reporters jailed in Myanmar, who are accused of possessing secret government papers, her office said on Thursday.

A court in Yangon has been holding preliminary hearings since January to decide whether Wa Lone, 31, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 28, will be charged under the colonial-era Officials Secrets Act, which carries a maximum penalty of 14 years in prison.

The journalists had been working on a Reuters investigation into the killing of 10 Rohingya Muslim men in western Myanmars Rakhine State during an army crackdown that began in August, which has sent nearly 700,000 people fleeing to Bangladesh.

Lawyers for the two reporters on Wednesday asked the court to throw out the case, saying there was insufficient evidence to support charges against the pair.

Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo are being prosecuted simply because they reported the news. I have reviewed the case file and it is clear beyond doubt that the two journalists are innocent and should be released immediately, Amal Clooney was quoted as saying in a statement released by her office.

The outcome of this case will tell us a lot about Myanmars commitment to the rule of law and freedom of speech, said Clooney, who is married to actor George Clooney.

Zaw Htay, spokesman for Myanmars civilian government, declined to comment.

Government officials have previously denied the arrests represent an attack on press freedom, which rights advocates say is under growing threat in the Southeast Asian country.

Myanmars ambassador to the United Nations, Hau Do Suan, said last month that the Reuters journalists were not arrested for reporting a story, but were accused of illegally possessing confidential government documents.

Gail Gove, chief counsel of Reuters, said retaining Clooney would strengthen the companys international legal expertise and broaden efforts to secure the release of the reporters.

Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo have been in custody since their arrest on Dec. 12.

The pair have told relatives they were arrested almost immediately after being handed some rolled up papers at a restaurant in northern Yangon by two policemen they had not met before, having been invited to meet the officers for dinner.

The district court in northern Yangon will hear arguments from prosecutors and defense lawyers on the motion to dismiss the case on April 4.
News Lawyers Say Filing of Multiple Charges Against Arakanese Pair Is Unlawful

Dr. Aye Maung appears at Sittwe Township Court on March 28. / Min Aung Khine / The Irrawaddy

SITTWE  Defense lawyers for an Arakanese lawmaker and an author who were arrested in January in relation to remarks they made at a public talk told the Rakhine State High Court on Wednesday that the filing of multiple charges against their clients was unlawful.

Arakanese lawmaker Dr. Aye Maung and author Wai Han Aung were each charged with defamation, unlawful association and high treason for public remarks in which they expressed support for the ethnic armed group the Arakan Army. The speeches were made at an event in Rathedaung Township to mark the 233rd anniversary of the fall of the Rakhine Dynasty to the Bamar.

At their seventh appearance at the Sittwe District Court and Sittwe Township Court on Wednesday, defense lawyer U Aung Kyaw Sein asked the courts to drop the charges.

We have an existing law governing the defining of charges. According to that law, although by an act or an omission a person may have violated more than one law, he or she shall be charged under one law only. They have been charged under three laws. This is against the law, he said.

Defense lawyers also asked that the defendants be tried before only one court. The two were charged at both district and township level courts in Sittwe, which defense lawyers said is tiring for the accused and their families, and wastes their time.

It is a misuse of the judicial system, so we asked the court to try them in just one court, U Aung Kyaw Sein told The Irrawaddy.

Sittwe Township Court scheduled a hearing for April 4 to consider their proposal to hold the trial in only one court.

After the court hearing on Wednesday, Dr. Aye Maung told reporters that he welcomed the election of president U Win Myint, saying he trusted him because U Win Myint is himself a former political prisoner and has legal knowledge.

Im glad that U Win Myint has become president. I ask him to release all political prisoners. There are many people who were charged under the defamation and unlawful association acts like us. If he can release them all, we will be able to attend the Panglong Peace Conference, Dr. Aye Maung said.

It would be best if we can work for national reconciliation together peacefully, he added.
News Migrant Construction Workers Children in Thailand Exposed to Violence: UN

Construction laborers work at a building site in Bangkok, June 18, 2014. / Reuters

BANGKOK  Women migrant construction workers and their children in Thailand are exposed to violence and abuse in hazardous living conditions, the United Nations said on Thursday.

The report by the UN childrens agency (UNICEF) underscores the risks to laborers from some of the poorest countries in Asia.

Besides physical abuse and limited access to healthcare and education, the 60,000 or more migrant children living in construction site camps are particularly vulnerable to child labor, according to the report.

Nearly a third of the children surveyed said they had started working before turning 15, the legal minimum age. Almost 90 percent had suffered some form of physical violence.

These experiences of violence are severe barriers to the childrens physical, emotional and social development, in addition to being threats to their basic safety and well-being, said Thomas Davin, UNICEFs Thailand representative.

That is not a childhood for any child.

Thailand has more than 3 million migrant workers, according to the International Organization for Migration, with rights groups putting the figure higher.

Construction is the top employer of migrant workers, with women from Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos making up about 40 percent of the nearly 600,000 documented migrants in the sector, according to the International Labour Organization (ILO).

They are a rarity in an industry generally dominated by men. But they are paid less than men, get few maternity or childcare benefits, and are more exposed to safety risks, the ILO said.

Families live in refashioned containers or flimsy shacks of tin and plywood at the sites, with poor sanitation and limited access to potable water, according to the survey of 119 migrant parents and children in 21 sites in northern Thailand.

More than 40 percent of mothers said they had experienced some form of abuse or physical violence, it said.

I was shocked at the extent of the violence faced by women and children, said Nicola Crosta of Baan Dek Foundation, a non-profit which helps to provide education and healthcare to migrant workers at construction sites.

But many companies are stepping up to provide better facilities and services, which can help reduce the incidence, he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Since taking power in a 2014 coup, Thailands ruling junta has had varying degrees of success in regulating the foreign workforce, spurred partly by media reports that unregulated workers faced exploitation by employers.

Thai industries are under international scrutiny this week as a team of UN experts undertake their first visit to the country to examine human rights in a range of businesses.
Commentary Presidents Inauguration Raises Hopes, Reminds Us of Political Realities

State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi (left), President U Win Myint (center) and First Lady Daw Cho Cho (right) at the Presidential Residence in Naypyitaw after U Win Myints inauguration on Friday. / The Irrawaddy / Pool

Watching Myanmars new president taking the oath of office this morning, a great many citizens no doubt had a feeling of so far, so good, despite the political turbulence that has rocked the country over the past year. After more than half a century of military rule, we watched U Win Myint, an elected civilian, succeed another elected civilian as president.

After the decades-long ordeal of authoritarian government, the recent political instability has many people worried that the current democratic transition, which only dates back to 2011, could make a U-turn.

In this light, the current moment seems especially auspicious: President U Win Myint is still just the second elected civilian president in the 56 years since the military seized power in a coup in 1962.

And the 66-year-old president brings a certain amount of added value: His record as a seasoned political activist and politician under military rule stretches back to 1988; prior to that he worked as a barrister. He has been a lawmaker since he won a seat in the 2012 by-election, serving as Lower House speaker since 2016. More importantly, he has been a core member of the National League for Democracy since Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and her co-founders formed it in September 1988. The NLD is still the countrys most popular party, having scored an unbroken series of landslide victories in the countrys last four electionsthe general elections in 1990 and 2015, and by-elections in 2012 and 2017.

However, the inauguration ceremony also served as a reminder of the political realities of the country, which no one can ignore. In his oath, President U Win Myint swore to uphold and abide by the Constitution and its laws Like his predecessors, he swore an oath to abide by a Constitutiondrafted by the previous military regime in 2008that has come to be seen as undemocratic.

But minutes after taking the oath, the President delivered his inaugural address on the same stage, vowing to amend the Constitution as a first step toward building a democratic federal union.

How ironic! And how typical of Myanmars political situation!

Thats not all. Take a look at the scene: The President took his oath alongside two vice presidents, one of whom was U Myint Swe, a former general elected by the military appointees who comprise 25 percent of lawmakers. In short, he represents the countrys powerful military.

U Win Myint took the oath in front of the members of parliament, 25 percent of whom are military officials appointed by the commander-in-chief, Senior-General Min Aung Hlaing, who was present at the inauguration on Friday morning.

Sitting with distinguished guests and elected parliamentarians, the commander-in-chief, his deputies and the military appointees all looked on as the new president was sworn in.

This is the odd reality imposed by the Constitution, which also mandates the appointment of a vice president selected by the military appointees in Parliament and three key cabinet ministers appointed by the commander-in-chief.

Its a paradox, indeeda political game between the elected civilian government and the powerful military. In this political climate, the main political goals of the NLD-led government under the new president will not change much.

As with his predecessor, this political situation led the new president to underscore national reconciliationspecifically between the government and the militaryand the peace process in his inauguration speech.

But there is one important thing U Win Myint must understand. After two years of NLD rule, he must be pragmatic. The economy is more important to the daily lives of the population than politics. He seems to be aware of this.

Unlike former President U Htin Kyaw, whose inauguration took place two years to the day before that of U Win Myint, the new president cited improving the socio-economic conditions of the people, along with ensuring the rule of law, as his number one priorities, rather than national reconciliation, peace and amending the Constitution to build up a democratic federal union.

Over the two years since the NLD took office in March 2016, many people from all walks of life have consistently complained that the economy has deteriorated under the NLD and that their businesses are dying. This is largely due to the fact that the NLD-led government under Daw Aung San Suu Kyi as State Counsellor prioritized political matters such as the peace process over the economy.

But the president raised economic issues on his first day in office. Now the people of Myanmar will have to wait and see what he does in the coming weeks and months.

Beyond political matters, the president called for an attitude and mindset change on the part of the entire population in order to ensure the success of the democratic transition, which is still in its infancy. He said, Its vital for the public and civil servants to change their mindsets and fixed habits, referring to the outmoded attitudes and habits that defined the previous military and authoritarian regimes going back decades.

The president said he would supervise government departments that have been slow to implement reform. Those specific points have drawn cheers from many people in the country as people are still suffering under the old bureaucratic system and old-style civil servants.

He also vowed to reform the judicial system, fight corruption, take steps to combat the illegal drug trade and manage the countrys budget so as to eliminate waste. The president also pledged to uphold human rights.

U Win Myint is aware of how his countrys image has declined due to authorities human rights violations against Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine State, which forced over 600,000 Muslims to flee to Bangladesh last year. In his speech, he vowed to work hard to raise the dignity of Myanmar citizens and the image of the country on the international stage.

The new president faces challenges bigger than any the country has seen since the NLD took office in March 2016. It is not immediately clear how he will solve these gigantic problems and achieve the governments political and economic goals. But the president has to get to work right after making his speech. Otherwise, his three-year tenure wont be sufficient.

As a decisive and disciplined Lower House speaker, U Win Myint proved that he is not a wishy-washy person.

President U Win Myint seems to have rolled up his sleeves with the intention of getting to work on the goals he has set. The entire nation and the world will be watching closely to see if his actions match the promises he made this morning.
Guest Column Villagers Flee as Specter of War Returns to Northern Karen State

Villagers from Moo Joh Koh fled into the jungle during the night a day after hearing the news of fighting between Karen National Liberation Army Brigade 5 and Tatmadaw soldiers that started on 4th March. / Brennan O'Connor

It was dusk when we arrived in Taw Ku Mu Der. Basking in the golden light of the setting sun, the village located in a valley in Karen States mountainous Papun District (or Mutraw, as it is known in Karen) was majestic. Yet, devoid of human presence, only ominous silence remained. Gone were the carefree sounds of children playing, parents chatting on their porches, and farmers washing after a hard day in the fields. Only a handful of animals remained. A few chickens pecking for food under a hut, a goat wandering between houses and a lonely grey cat crouched on a veranda were the only remaining signs of life.

Ten days earlier, the people of Taw Ku Mu Der fled into the night. They were running from the Tatmadaw (Myanmar Army) after large numbers of troops were deployed in Lu Thaw Township without warning. Many fled with just the clothes on their backs and a small bundle of possessions.

Six battalions have been deployed into Lu Thaw Township, with orders to secure the area to expand a military road that has been abandoned since 2012. The military road will carve a swath through the forests and lands of local communities, to connect two Tatmadaw mountain bases.

The Tatmadaw have changed their tactics and have a very solid strategy to build a military operations road to make it easier to connect their bases, and transport military supplies, said Saw Robin Moo, the Karen National Union (KNU) secretary of Papun District.

The Tatmadaw violated the terms of the 2015 Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) by moving troops into this area and firing first, Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) Brigade 5 leaders said. Since the Tatmadaw crossed the ceasefire line in early March, armed clashes between their troops and the KNLA have intensified, with battles now occurring daily as Karen troops seek to defend their territory. The KNLAs political wing, the KNU, signed the NCA with the Tatmadaw, the Union government and seven other groups on Oct. 15, 2015.

The current fighting in Papun has displaced more than 2,000 people from 11 villages located in areas close to the military road. An additional 600 people from five villages have made preparations to flee as a result of the mounting instability. So far, these military operations have caused the largest civilian displacement in Karen State since September 2016, when more than 5,000 people were forced from their homes after the Tatmadaws Border Guard Force seized control of the Mae Tha Waw road.

Since the 2012 bilateral ceasefire between the Myanmar army and the KNU, people have been investing their trust in the ceasefire and hoping for lasting peace after decades of fighting. Yet the recent armed clashes and renewed conflict in Papun District has eroded this fragile trust.

On a mountainside, an hour from Taw Ku Mu Der, villagers were busy preparing their evening meal at a makeshift camp. Dogs and several kittens meandered around their feet anticipating food droppings. Four families camped together, while others set up their own small camps in the forest, locations determined by the direction they fled when the fighting began.

Since Taw Ku Mu Der was abandoned, villagers have been returning, periodically, to collect precious possessions. Large bags of rice have been stacked on the downward trail leading to the camp.

As night fell, the temperature became frigid and villagers huddled around a fire to keep warm, talking before retiring to bed.

We are waiting for the Myanmar army to leave the area, said 60-year-old Saw Bu Kwae from Boh Nar Der village, also displaced by fighting. His village is located just three minutes walk from the proposed military road.

We see a lot more troops coming into the area, so we just have to prepare for our food and we (keep) moving a little further (away from the soldiers), Bu Kwae explained. Weighing heavy on his mind is if he can get back to plough his fields before the planting season starts in early May.

The recent return to conflict has been a recurring concern that has marked much of Saw Bu Kwaes life. Many of his friends were tortured or killed by the Tatmadaw in the wake of its brutal Four Cuts Policy. During this time, Tatmadaw troops shot their water buffaloes, and, unable to plough their fields, they faced food insecurity, recounted Saw Bu Kwae

As villagers, we have no power to stop the fighting, he said.

I just want our KNU leaders to talk to the NLD (National League for Democracy) government to work out real peace, he said.
The European Union will cancel all .eu domains which have been registered by registrants in Britain after the country completes the Brexit process.

An official statement to this effect by the European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, came after the UK submitted the notification of its intention to withdraw from the EU on 29 March.

According to the latest statistics, there are a total of 300,878 .eu domains registered by British registrants.

The EC statement said: "In view of the considerable uncertainties, in particular concerning the content of a possible withdrawal agreement, the .eu Top Level Domain Registry, accredited .eu Registrars, .eu domain names registrants, applicants for .eu domains names and generally stakeholders are reminded of legal repercussions, which need to be considered when the United Kingdom becomes a third country.

"Subject to any transitional arrangement that may be contained in a possible withdrawal agreement, the EU regulatory framework for the .eu Top Level Domain will no longer apply to the United Kingdom as from the withdrawal date."

The statement added: "As of the withdrawal date, undertakings and organisations that are established in the United Kingdom but not in the EU and natural persons who reside in the United Kingdom will no longer be eligible to register .eu domain names or, if they are .eu registrants, to renew .eu domain names registered before the withdrawal date."
Inaugural Unity Gala Brings Campus Community Together

March 30, 2018

 Facebook Photo Gallery

Illinois Wesleyan students danced at the first-ever Unity Gala.

BLOOMINGTON, Ill.  The Black Faculty-Staff Association (BFSA), the Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI) and several RSOs invited the Illinois Wesleyan University community to dress up and dance the night away at the first-ever Unity Gala, hosted at the Hansen Student Center on Saturday, March 3.

A diverse group of students turned out for a night of dancing, food, and a live jazz band. Total attendance reached approximately 400 people, which far surpassed the 300 people that the event coordinators had hoped to draw. Indeed, unlike many other formal dances on campus which are specifically designated for members of certain organizations, the intent behind this event was to open it to as many students as possible. There was no attendance fee, nor was there a registration cap. Even students without formal wear could dress up, thanks to the generosity of IWU alums, faculty, staff and students who shared their extra suits, shirts, ties, dresses, shawls, gowns, shoes and accessories.

Creating this inclusive space to celebrate IWUs diverse community was the primary motivation to host the Unity Gala. BFSA chair Sharla Brown Ajayi and director of the ODI Greta Franklin led the initiative to make this unique, cross-cultural experience possible. The night also gave students a chance to interact with faculty, staff, and alums as people  as fellow Titans getting to be together and share in a glamorous, truly joyous evening, said Hannah Mesouani, Assistant Director at the Office of Diversity and Inclusion.

Approximately 400 people attended the f irst-ever Unity Gala.



This event also marked a chance for the BFSA to engage with the Illinois Wesleyan campus on a larger scale than ever before and to promote its endeavors to financially support black students at IWU. It has created a support system for students throughout their time on campus, as well as networking and mentorship resources that aim to set students up for success in their careers. Their overarching goal is to promote ethnic and cultural diversity across campus, and the Unity Gala seemed to make a powerful impact on some Illinois Wesleyan minority students. A senior of South Asian descent told Mesouani that she had "never felt more welcome or never felt as at home" as she did on the night of the Gala.

At the end of the night, according to Mesouani, the Unity Gala helped students get away from the stresses of the classroom or tensions of status in a fun-filled, memorable evening, one which the Black Faculty-Staff Association and the Office of Diversity and Inclusion plan to continue for years to come.

By Rachel McCarthy 21
Student Wins Mini-Grant to Support Bloom Community School

March 30, 2018

A $500 grant earned by Josie Blumberg 19 will allow Bloom Community School to purchase a 3-D printer.

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. Illinois Wesleyan University student Josie Blumberg 19 is the winner of a $500 mini-grant that will continue to support Bloom Community Schools efforts in providing students with an innovative education.

As a student in the course Grant Writing, Blumberg and each of her classmates completed a mini-grant application on behalf of a community partner. Thirteen students applied for the $500 grant funded by IWUs Action Research Center and presented to a panel of judges, who ultimately chose to fund Blumbergs proposal. The funds will allow Bloom Community School, an elementary school in Bloomington, to purchase a 3-D printer.

I was honestly ecstatic to hear that I had won, said Blumberg, an international studies major and economics minor. I want to work supporting nonprofits that work abroad and knew that having experience writing and winning a grant was going to be something that I wanted on my resume.

The 3-D printer supports Blooms education model and expansion into STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math) curriculum, an education that strengthens knowledge in all areas to allow the children to be well-rounded, according to Blumberg. She said the printer will encourage students to develop problem solving skills and think about innovative solutions to problems facing their communities.

3-D printing is important because it truly is revolutionizing education, Blumberg said. The students will receive an education that ensures that they not only have a strong understanding of the STEM field, but also of the arts.

Adjunct instructor of sociology Holly Ambuehl  who teaches the Grant Writing course  agreed. She said students at Bloom will benefit from their schools efforts to stay on the forefront of modern technology, and hopes that other local schools will be able to replicate similar opportunities.

I know all of our local schools would agree that experiential learning is a well-established, powerful teaching tool, and all share an interest in developing additional STEAM learning pathways, Ambuehl said.

Experiential, or hands-on, learning combined with the 3-D printer, allows Bloom Community School to be an innovator of best practices, according to Blumberg. This means that they are able to test and determine the best curriculums and methods of teaching that will help children to best succeed in the environment they are growing up in.

Not only will the grant continue to help children succeed, Ambuehl said one of the strongest and most appealing aspects of Blumbergs proposal was the sustainability plan, in which the school intends to sell products that students make with the printer on Etsy.com, which is an e-commerce website focused on handmade or vintage items and supplies. Ambuehl said the revenue generated from these sales will allow the school to purchase replacement parts or additional printers and provide a learning opportunity in small business enterprise.

All of the grant writing students work really hard and pour their hearts into writing proposals on behalf of our partner agencies, and I am proud of Josie and all of her fellow students, Ambuehl said.

Josie Blumberg 19

Blumbergs efforts to identify a need in the community and work alongside a local organization to propose a solution, show just how the grant writing course is anchored in the real world. The grants students write are not just academic exercises. They are writing real grants with real dollars at stake, Ambuehl said.

From working with real grants and real dollars, this course is one that teaches students skills that are valuable in many professions, according to Ambuehl. These skills range from inter-personal skills, to communication skills, to budgeting, planning and learning fundraising methods, as students develop an understanding of how local leaders decide to invest resources and solve problems.

My hope is that students look back on this course as one that prepared them well to begin their careers, and that their improved understanding of how the public, nonprofit, philanthropic and private sectors interact with and depend upon one another, helps develop their worldview, Ambuehl said.

Blumberg, who has multiple experiences abroad and has worked with nonprofits within the development departments, said the skills she acquired from this course are ones that she has already put to use. As the volunteer for a nonprofit that works in the U.S. and Ghana on youth empowerment, Blumberg serves as the head of communications and manages the organizations social media platforms. She said that this position constantly requires her tell the story of the organization, and communicate the organizations mission in a concise way, which are skills that she learned in the grant-writing course.

I hope to continue to use these skills in the future by working within the development and program departments of nonprofits that build the capacity of international nonprofits engaged in peacebuilding, Blumberg said.

The president of the German Club, and member of the International Honors Society, Blumberg is also a Peace Fellow on Campus. She studied abroad in Germany during her freshman year and is going to South Africa this May Term to study post-conflict reconstruction within the context of the contemporary politics of South Africa.

She hopes to work in the nonprofit sector before receiving a masters degree in monitoring and evaluation of programs, in order to work for an international organization, such as the United Nations Development Program, which has different programs that support nonprofits overseas.

By Vi Kakares 20
A desalination plant in Santa Barbara, California. Photo credit: IDE Technologies.

Water taps for the 4 million inhabitants of Cape Town, South Africa, could run dry as soon as July because of a sustained drought. Sao Paulo, Brazils largest city, has had water shortages so severe that armed convoys have had to accompany tanker trucks.

Those are not isolated cases. Droughts, pollution, and poor resource management have threatened water supplies in other cities as widespread as Cairo, Eqypt; Lima, Peru; and Mexico City, and in smaller cities and rural areas throughout much of the world.

Water projects to supply drinking water, hydroelectric power, and sewage treatment are major sources of shipments for engineering, procurement, and construction companies, and for forwarders and breakbulk carriers that deliver materials including pipes, turbines, and modules for water treatment plants.

Construction of new dams and reservoirs attracts attention because of their size, cost, complexity, and need for project shipments, often over long distances and difficult terrain. Heather Cooley, water program director at the Pacific Institute, said these projects are increasingly concentrated in developing countries that provide water along with reliable electrical power.

In many developed countries, such as the United States, dams and hydropower projects are no longer seen as the best way to generate water along with electricity. Theyve already dammed up all the best sites  even some pretty bad ones, Cooley said. The cost of developing more projects is incredibly expensive, and the benefits that you get are less than previous projects.

Big hydroelectric era wanes

Although the era of big hydroelectric power construction projects has waned in many regions, new projects continue in countries such as Brazil, Colombia, Ethiopia, and Laos.

In Brazil, the Bel Monte plant on the Amazon will be the worlds fourth-largest in hydroelectric capacity and will have a cost that industry analysts say could top $18 billion. In Colombia, the $5.5 billion Ituango plant is under construction on the Cauca River. China Gezhouba Group Corp. is building the Genale Dawa III plant in Ethiopia. Chinas Sinohydro is managing construction of the Don Sahong hydropower project in Laos.

China has been active in construction of water-related projects in developing nations in Africa and in countries such as Papua New Guinea, where Chinas PNG Hydro Development is building the Edevu Hydro project, which will provide an alternative water supply along with electricity.

The World Commission on Dams estimated that hydropower capacity increased 2.6 percent, to 1,246 gigawatts, in 2016, the most recent year for which statistics were available. More than one-third of the increase was in China, which added 11.7 gigawatts. Other countries hosting new deployments included Ecuador, Ethiopia, South Africa, Vietnam, Peru, and Switzerland.

In addition to construction of new plants, existing facilities undergo periodic upgrading and maintenance, which also generates project cargo shipments. Two years ago, hydroelectric transporters moved via the Port of Vancouver, Washington, on an 11,341-mile transit from Sweden to Dalles, Oregon. The International Hydropower Association forecasts that by 2050, half of the current hydropower equipment in Latin America and Asia will undergo extensive modernization and maintenance.

Dams and hydroelectric plants are not the only source of project cargo related to drinking water. Henry Moreno, a water supply and sanitation specialist at the Inter-American Development Bank, said many Latin American cities such as Sao Paulo and Lima are suffering serious water shortages, not just because of short supplies but because supplies are unfit to drink.

Moreno said the most common reaction is to build hydropower and wastewater plants that address short-term water shortages but fail to address pollution, leaky pipes, and decrepit infrastructure. He said cities such as Panama City, Sao Paulo, and Medellin are working to reduce pollution and improving existing infrastructure in addition to adding supply.

US: 50 percent of water infrastructure nearly obsolete

In the United States, more than half of US municipal water and wastewater infrastructure is nearing the end of its useful life. Over the next decade, municipal utilities are expected to make about $500 billion in capital improvements to address US deteriorating water and sewer systems.

Desalination is another source of water-related project shipments. Israel has invested $500 million in the Sorek Desalination Plant, the worlds largest seawater desalination plant. The plant, 10 miles south of Tel Aviv, supplies fresh water for 1.5 million people, nearly 20 percent of the countrys population.

Built for the Israeli government by IDE Technologies, Sorek uses reverse osmosis, a conventional desalination technology that uses a semi-permeable membrane to remove pollutants.

Since 1965, IDE has completed more than 400 water treatment plants, mainly desalination plants, in more than 40 countries worldwide, including Canada, Chile, Australia, and the United States. IDEs recent major plants include facilities at Carlsbad and Santa Barbara, California, and Tianjin, China.

Ziv Shor, vice president of projects at IDE, disagrees with critics who argue that desalination is too expensive to meet the fresh water needs of more than a handful of countries where rainfall is scarce and there are no reliably rushing rivers to harness via hydropower.

Not every IDE plant is focused on producing drinking water. Last year, IDE announced that it was partnering with Taiwans Formosa Petrochemical Corp. to build a desalination plant that will produce high-quality water for industrial applications.

Previous projects include supplying high-quality boiler feed water and potable water to Indian conglomerate Reliance for its oil refinery in the state of Gujarat.

Although desalination plants are costly and take years to build, they provide reliable water supply, Shor said. It is not just an issue of costs, but of water scarcity. If you have a drought, you dont have to worry about access to water, he said.

US-based Poseidon Water has built desalination plants in California and is developing them in Florida. Other players in the desalination market include Cadagua (Spain), Degremont Technologies (Canada), Doosan Heavy Industries (Korea), Hitachi Zosen (Japan), Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (Japan), Wabag (India), and Wetico (Saudi Arabia).

Wabag has engineered the largest desalination plant in Oman, and Doosan has engineered such global projects as the Yanbu Phase 3 plant in Saudi Arabia. Mitsubishi recently engineered a desalination plant at Rabigh, on Saudi Arabias Red Sea coast, scheduled for completion this year.

Weve seen over the decades that the cost of desalination is going down because of vast improvements in membrane technologies, such as very efficient energy-recovery devices and more efficient pumps, Shor said.

But to remain competitive, IDE also has been working to reduce transportation and logistics costs. Like its competitors, IDE contracts with overseas firms, often in China, to fabricate the pipes, pumps, and pressure vessels that are then shipped to the sites where final assembly of the desalination plant takes place.

Traditionally, IDE and other desalination companies have shipped these pieces of their plants as breakbulk cargo. More recently, IDE has been trying to fit as many modules as possible into containers, in order to further lower its costs and shorten its shipping schedules. Shor said it is more efficient to prefabricate modules and test them in advance of shipment than to wait until the various components are connected at the plant site.

We are going very far down the path of modularization, he said. Our competitors are doing similar things, but not to that extent. This is a transition that you see in the entire industry. Its a huge engineering effort; it is not easy, he said.

This makes shipping a very big issue in the desalination business. Ive told my workers that a seawater reverse osmosis project is basically a logistics project, he said. Now that desalination technologies have been proved, he said, logistics is the main challenge.

Contact Alan M. Field at alanfield0@gmail.com.
The "Holocaust Remembered" exhibit on display this month at The Village at Summerville. Sponsored by the Columbia Holocaust Education Commission, Columbia Jewish Federation and Katie and Irwin Kahn Jewish Community Center, the exhibit memorializes Holocaust victims and honors South Carolina's survivors and liberators.
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Via Otherwords.org

By Peter Certo | (Otherwords.org) |  

The president once distanced himself from the Bush legacy. Now hes brought back the architects of its darkest moments.

Political reporters have a saying: Theres always a tweet.

That is, for nearly every political moment or presidential decree, theres an uncannily on-point comment buried somewhere in the presidential Twitter feed. Often it features the president expressing a past view thats diametrically opposed to whatever hes doing now.

Heres an example from 2013: All former Bush administration officials should have zero standing on Syria, Donald J. Trump tweeted. Iraq was a waste of blood & treasure.

I agree.

According to Brown University and the Institute for Policy Studies, Americans spend $32 million every single hour on wars started in the Bush era. Thousands of U.S. troops are dead, while credible estimates put the number of dead in the Middle East at upwards of a million. Byproducts included a shocking torture scandal that eviscerated U.S. standing abroad.

Fast forward to 2018  year two of making America great again after all that  and what do we find?

Trump has tapped John Bolton, perhaps the most ferocious war hawk from the Bush years, to be his National Security Adviser. There hell enjoy top standing on Syria, along with Iran, Iraq, North Korea, and any other part of the planet he elects to immiserate.

John Bolton (Photo: Gage Skidmore / Flickr)

Trump most likely knows Bolton from Fox News, where the mustachioed chicken hawk appears regularly to drop rhetorical bombs in support of dropping literal bombs. Lately Bolton has been a loud advocate of pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal, scuttling talks with North Korea, and then bombing both countries.

In the George W. Bush administration, Bolton did a lot more than talk.

He twisted arms at the UN trying to oust arms control diplomats like Jose Bustani and Mohamed elBaradei, who (correctly) cast doubt on the administrations false claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Bolton also persuaded the White House to walk away from a deal that had frozen North Koreas nuclear program for eight years. It was, a New York Times editorial put it delicately, the sort of simplistic and wrongheaded position he takes on most policies.

Back in the White House, Bolton could reprise both roles.

Hell almost certainly lean on Trump to cancel the hard-won Iran deal, just as he bulldozed diplomatic impediments to the Iraq War. And hell arrive on the cusp of a historic possible meeting between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jung Un  bad news for anyone who hopes those talks lower tensions.

Boy, that formula really worked well the last time the United States tried it, didnt it? quipped Harvard international relations expert Steve Walt. No wonder a sophisticated foreign-policy expert like Trump wants to try it again.

Trump is also elevating torture enthusiast Mike Pompeo to lead the State Department. And hes picked Gina Haspel, who ran a CIA torture chamber in Thailand and then destroyed the evidence, to head the CIA.

Once upon a time, Trump seemed to issue a blanket ban on the Bush legacy. Now hes brought back the architects of its darkest moments.

Moments for which you and I shelled out $32 million in the time it took me to write this piece  while countless others cowered under bombs.

Ideally, Congress will reassert its powers over war and peace before more blood and treasure are shed. If not, the only check left on Trumps worst impulses will be his own old tweets.

Via Otherwords.org

Peter Certo is the editorial manager of the Institute for Policy Studies and the editor of OtherWords.org.



Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

With John Bolton, President Donald Trump Assembles A War Cabinet | Morning Joe | MSNBC
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By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) |  

Trump in the course of a speech on infrastructure in Ohio, yesterday, observed that the US was near to completely defeating the ISIL caliphate and that the US would be withdrawing from Syria very soon.

Here is what he said:

[Re: Iraq War] We spent  and I was against it from the beginning (they try and say, Well, maybe not) I was against it from the beginning And by the way were knocking the hell out of ISIS, well be coming out of Syria like very soon. Let the other people take care of it now. Very soon. Very soon. Were coming out. Were going to have a hundred percent of the caliphate, as they call itsometimes referred to as landtaking it all back, quickly, quickly, But were going to be coming out of there very soon. Going to get back to our country, where we belong, where we want to be.

Since, as Politico notes, Trumps foreign policy team on his cabinet Secretary of Defense James Mattis and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his new national security adviser, John Bolton all disagree that the US is coming out of Syria very soon, Trumps confident assertion raised eyebrows in Washington. (In fact, of course, ever since Trump was sworn in in January, 2017, eyebrows have been more or less permanently raised in Washington).

The US has admitted having 2,000 special operations forces embedded with leftist Kurdish YPG fighters in northern and eastern Syria, and deploying them along with allied Arab clans in the Syrian Democratic Forces against ISIL. The strategy was developed by the Obama administration and was continued by Trump and Mattis, and has been wildly successful, as Trump says. The ISIL stronghold of Raqqa has fallen, as have other towns held by the terrorist group, and only pockets of stragglers remain to be mopped up. In fact, some of the struggle in Eastern Syria is now over who will do the mopping up, especially in areas rich in oil or gas, and one recent major engagement pitted the US Air Force against some 200 Russian mercenaries working with the Damascus regime and seeking an oil-rich former ISIL territory.

The US has no obvious strategic interests in Syria (it has very little oil or other resources and its GDP before the war was in the region of Sri Lanka or the Dominican Republic).

The Pentagon, however, is notorious for mission creep. Now that ISIL is virtually destroyed as a territorial entity, Mr. Mattis has begun talking about the need to be vigilant lest it return, hence a long US troop presence is needed in his view. Before he was summarily twitter-fired, former secretary of state Rex Tillerson gave a speech in which he outlined several US goals in Syria, some of them self-contradictory. It was clear that he and Mattis wanted to use the US toehold in the Jazira of northeast Syria to somehow block Iran in Syria and to keep pressure on the Assad regime to open up to elections or ultimately even to step down.

These goals of the pragmatic hawks in the Trump administration differ entirely from those of the president himself, as his remarks yesterday made clear.

The objectives of the Mattis-Pompeo-Bolton troika, moreover, are both unrealistic and directly in contradiction to two regional players.

Russia needs Iran and its militia allies in its push to roll up the remaining rebel forces. Letting the US force Iran out of Syria or implement regime change in Syria is unacceptable to Russian president Vladimir Putin. 2000 US spec ops personnel cant hope to be effective in that regard, and it is not clear that the Syrian Kurds would want to take on that role, since they are much more afraid of Sunni extremists than of Iran and may need the latter against the former.

When Trump says let the other people take care of Syria, he presumably means Russia (he said this on the campaign trail many times).

You have to wonder if Trump is caving into Russia pressure on Syria. The Russians have been extremely vociferous in the past month, reacting against US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haleys threats that the US will bomb Damascus and warning of serious consequences.

Likewise, Turkey, a NATO ally, objects strenuously to the Mattis strategy of allying with Syrias leftist Kurds. Turkey invaded Afrin, a YPG-controlled Kurdish enclave in the west of north Syria, in part as a way of putting pressure on the Pentagon to withdraw and give up its plan to train and arm a 50,000 man border security force from among the YPG fighters a plan that Ankara sees as a mortal threat to Turkey. (Turkeys president Tayyip Erdogan is fighting a PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party) insurgency in eastern Turkey, seeing them as secessionists and terrorists, and makes no distinction between the PKK and the Syrian YPG).

Trump has admitted that he is vulnerable to Turkish pressure because of his properties in Istanbul.

As always in the age of Trump, we are left to wonder about the significance of the presidents remarks. Is he announcing a policy reversal and firing a shot across the bow of Mattis-Pompeo-Bolton that he may have been inveigled into hiring them by the Republican establishment but he wont put up with their dragging him into a major Iraq-style war? Is he once again caving to Russian pressure? Is the old Michael Flynn connection to Turkey still somehow operating through other channels?

Or is he just pleasing his infinitely gullible base, lying to them as he lies to them about his tawdry affairs?

Stay tuned.
A Mauritanian court has jailed three people for between 10 and 20 years for slavery, a crime that critics say has gone widely unpunished in the conservative West African country.

A judicial source said a special court in the northwest town of Nouadhibou this week handed down 20-year terms to a man named Saleck Ould Oumar, who died before the case concluded, and his son.

They were accused of reducing to slavery a family, two of whom were children.

It also gave a 10-year term to a woman named Ar-Rabiaa Mint Hammadi, accused of enslaving three sisters.

The defendant said she did not have any children and treated one of the sisters as her own offspring, satisfying all her needs, but not feeling the need to pay her a given salary for her work.

This argument was rejected by the public prosecutor, who said there are not two kinds slavery  gentle and harsh  slavery is a crime, the source said.

Officially, slavery was outlawed in Mauritania in 1981 but campaigners say it remains a bastion of the practice.

A hereditary system of servitude forces members of the slave caste to work without pay as cattle herders and domestic servants, despite the official ban.

In 2015, Mauritania adopted a new law declaring slavery a crime against humanity punishable by up to 20 years in jail, compared with a maximum of 10 years previously.

It also set up three specialised anti-slavery tribunals in Nouadhibou, the capital Noukachott and in the southeastern town of Nema.

Prosecutions, though, have been rare. The court in Nema pronounced five-year terms against two men in May 2016.

Campaigners praised the latest rulings, saying they held out hope for ending the logjam.

The trial went ahead smoothly, respecting the rules, and the law has been upheld, said a lawyer for the victims, El-Id Ould Mohameden, who added there is now hope for normalising the humanitarian situation in the country.

The head of an anti-slavery association SOS Esclavage, Boubacar Ould Messaoud, agreed.

Several similar cases have been pending for several years at the three courts, he told AFP, adding that he had received assurances from the authorities that these cases will be reactivated.

A report by Amnesty International, published on March 21 and citing estimates by specialised organisations, said as many as 43,000 people  one percent of the population  were still living in slavery in Mauritania in 2016.

Police, prosecutors and the judiciary failed to respond adequately to reported cases of exploitation, to identify victims or punish suspected perpetrators, it said, estimating that the courts had received 47 cases for investigation involving 53 suspects.
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March 30th is National Doctors Day, a day set aside to recognize physicians, their work, and their contributions to society and the community. Though we are used to thinking of the profession of physician as something many parents hope their children aspire to, the reality is that fewer and fewer students are choosing that path.

According to a March 2017 report by the Association of American Medical Colleges, the U.S. will face a shortage of between 40,800 and 104,900 physicians by 2030. Yet, at the same time, the total US population is expected to grow by 12 percent, and the number of adults aged 65 and older is expected to increase by 55 percent.

Even today, if barriers to health care access were removed and all Americans used health care resources at the same levels as insured patients, according to the report, we would need more than 96,000 additional doctors to cover the needs of country, and at least three-quarters of these in urban areas. Right now, almost 20 percent of Americans live in a community that has an insufficient number of primary care doctors.

But why is this? The cost of medical school has definitely been one determining factor. Nearly three-quarters of medical students graduate with debt, and the median debt for students graduating in 2016 was almost $190,000. Additionally, and I would argue more important, is the alarming statistic that more than half of the countrys physicians describe themselves as professionally burned out. We currently work in a setting where the over-computerization of practice and an increasing burden of bureaucratic tasks take hours away from interacting with patients.

With all of these realities, how do we restore the human-element that initially inspired many of us to seek a profession of caring for others in the first place? By beginning with the sense of purpose and encouragement that we can give to each other as physicians, I believe. The solution, as my own experience attests, is mentorship.

I am where I am today as a physician because of the guidance and support of a physician mentor when I was a medical student. I want to thank Dr. Erin Tracy of Massachusetts General Hospital, who recognized my potential and encouraged my involvement in health policy and organized medicine and truly inspired my interest in womens health.

In Dr. Tracy, I see a commensurate physician and woman who makes a difference to every person in her life. And she has a busy lifenot only as a practicing physician, but as a mother of three, an active contributor in her home community, and as a leader who is active in health policy and organized medicine. I remain impressed by her commitment to improving health care outcomes and access to care for marginalized women.

She taught me how to identify and set priorities, and she showed me that our role as a physician can extend beyond the clinic walls. I discovered that I did not have to choose between making a difference in the lives of individual patients and being their greater advocate within the physician and local community. It is possible to combine personalized care and attention with a role as a champion for improved health outcomes and more efficient health care systems.

She helped me to define what it means to have a fulfilling career and empowered me to achieve those aims. Today, I work closely with my patients, helping them to reach their individual goals, while working in my community and on a state-level to achieve policies that can result in access for all to full reproductive health care and justice in reproductive rights.

I am grateful that organizations like the American Medical Association Foundation are recognizing the difference that mentorship can make in an aspiring physicians career and have established a program, the Leadership Development Institute, which specifically matches medical students one-on-one with experienced mentors in their fields.

We cannot overlook that the current physician shortage is more than just a care issue  its an economic one as well. According to a recent economic impact report by the American Medical Association, physicians add an aggregate of $2.3 trillion to the nations economy and support the employment of nearly 12.6 million Americans. No matter how you look at it, we need doctors, and we need doctors who want to be doctors.

This National Doctors Day celebrate those, like Dr. Tracy, who are fostering and supporting the physician community and cultivating a new generation of physicians committed to caring for a patient community in need.

Heather Smith is an obstetrician-gynecologist and a member, board of directors, American Medical Association Foundation.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
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As the patient talked, I found myself nodding my head. In so many ways, she was just like me. Highly educated, a professional, a woman who had worked hard and long to get where she was. And then cancer took it all away, or at least thats the way she described it. She was diagnosed with metastatic cancer one year ago and finally had time to take a breath after the rigors of surgery, radiation, endocrine manipulation therapy, and chemotherapy. Nothing seems to have gone right for her; she was hospitalized with febrile neutropenia twice during the months of chemotherapy, she has osteoporosis and has had to stop the winter activities that she loves because of the dangers of falling on the ice. She is depressed and anxious and, for the first time in her adult life, completely unable to control what happens to her.

As we talked, I could see how difficult it was for her to keep from crying. Patients often cry in my office; I keep a box of deluxe tissues on the table and a small garbage receptacle nearby. Her husband sat in the other chair, seemingly unable to offer comfort to her. In the moments when she stopped talking and struggled to keep her composure, he sat silent, unwilling or unable to break the heavy silence in the room. She described how painful it has been to give up the career she loves and how difficult it is to fill the empty days. She doesnt have the concentration to read, and its been so long since she read for pleasure and not for work that novels and biographies just dont hold her interest. It feels like a cheap replacement for the work-related reading she used to do, always under pressure but she loved the intensity of it. Her social circle is small because she didnt nurture her friendships when she was so busy with work and travel. She always thought that she had time to reconnect with friends before she retired. But then the cancer happened, and she didnt have time to prepare; the cancer happened so quickly, and she had no time to think or to plan. It just happened to her and took so much away. The list of her losses flowed from her mouth, and her sorrow was palpable.

I didnt try to stop her or to speak words of comfort or encouragement. What is there to say in the face of someones suffering that isnt trite or unhelpful? Perhaps this was the reason for her husbands silencehe didnt have the words to say. A therapeutic technique I learned long ago is the value of silence in getting the patient and/or their partner to talk. Human beings are generally uncomfortable with silence, and if we, the professionals, can just keep quiet, the patient will speak first and break the silence. This is when people often speak their true feelings in an attempt to fill the gap in conversation. Health care providers have a tendency to talk a lot; we are trained to ask questions, to give information, to provide advice and guidance. Silence uses up time and makes us nervous, so we talk and talk and talk, often not allowing the patient or their family members to get a word in. And then we finish talking, and we ask the patient if they have any questions. In the moment, many patients dont know what to say, never mind being able to formulate a question. Yes, we encourage our patients to write down their questions ahead of any appointments, and some of us allow time for this. But clinics are busy, and the flow of patients seems to never ebb. So we have a myriad reasons to fill the silence.

But if we just stop and let the silence fill the room, we can learn so much from our patients. They can teach us about what we value by what they have lost. We can learn from them about how to accept change and uncertainty, even if they struggle with these. They can show how the plans we all make for our careers and our future can explode when cells run amuck. They can prepare us for the very worst day by allowing us to share their present. I have always loved words, and I make my living from using them with care in the clinical arena and with rigor in my writing and editing. But the most valuable lessons I have learned are when I have held my words and allowed the patient to speak. I dont have any way to fix her situation. My role is not to prescribe or cut or irradiate but just to listen, to allow the silence to take over the space until she fills it again. This may be an uncomfortable place for many to be but for me, silence truly is golden.

Anne Katz is a certified sexual counselor and a clinical nurse specialist at a large, regional cancer center in Canada who blogs at ASCO Connection, where this post originally appeared. She can be reached at her self-titled site, Dr. Anne Katz.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and Chinese President Xi Jinping shake hands at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Wednesday. / Yonhap



By Yang Sung-chul





Yang Sung-chul
Washington: China's ambitious Belt and Road initiative is an important initiative that can foster regional cooperation, but entails risks like debt sustainability as well, the International Monetary Fund said today.

"The Belt and Road initiative is a very important initiative that we think can foster regional cooperation, including in trade and investment and finance, and it could indeed make a very significant contribution in terms of infrastructure, connectivity to countries and, again, all of this supporting trade and growth," IMF Spokesperson Gery Rice told reporters at his fortnightly news conference.

On the other hand, he said, like other major initiatives of this type, it can entail risks, including issues of debt sustainability and spillovers to other countries, as well as risks for China, including credit risk. "So, the key is to balance, obviously, the potential benefits which we see, with the potential risks," Rice said in response to a question.

He said it depends on how the project would be implemented to ensure debt sustainability and participation of the private sector. "All of this will help minimise the risks, maximise the benefits. I think that's the objective that we want to see," Rice said.

The IMF, he said, sees large potential benefits from the initiative, but with potential risks as well. "I think there are areas where, in particular, that can guard against those risks. And I think these risks will be discussed at a conference in April," Rice said.

China's One Belt, One Road initiative is an ambitious development plan which calls for trillions of dollars to be invested in roads, railways, and ports to create land corridors across the vast reaches of Asia and sea lanes that link China to markets in Europe, and the Middle East.

The United Nations in 2017 had raised a red flag over economic, financial, social and environmental risks of China's Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) across a number of countries that are part of the mega connectivity project.

Relatively easy access to large foreign loans for infrastructure projects, even if most of them tend to be on a concessional basis, can lead to risks through a slight deterioration in trade balance, undermining macroeconomic and balance of payments stability in small economies with underdeveloped financial markets and less effective debt management, the UN study said regarding the nature of the Chinese loans.

An example of such a scenario is the development projects in Sri Lanka. Colombo has run into a huge debt trap by welcoming Chinese funded projects. Sri Lankan debt exceeds $60 billion, more than 10 percent of that is owed to the Chinese. To resolve its debt crisis, the Sri Lankan government agreed to convert its debt into equity and leased out its Hambantota Port for 99 years, effectively giving ownership to the Chinese for the next century.

IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde will travel to Beijing early next month to attend the joint IMF-PBC, the Peoples Bank of China conference on the Belt and Road Initiative.

She will also meet several Chinese officials. During her visit to China between April 9 and 12, Lagarde will attend the Boao forum and address the gathering during the opening ceremony on April 10. On April 11, she will deliver the Spring Meetings Curtain Raiser speech in Hong Kong.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Mar 30, 2018 11:38 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).
Here is a roundup of news this week from the world of legal technology and innovation.

A new era for Evolve Law. Three years ago, two legal industry entrepreneurs, Mary Juetten and Jules Miller, started the organization Evolve Law with the goal of promoting collaboration among innovative law firms and legal technology companies in order to speed adoption of new technology. Were trying to get people to listen, Miller told me at the time. The message is that the legal industry is changing.

While that mission has continued, Evolve Law itself has also been changing. Last year, Miller left Evolve Law. Then, in August, as I reported here, Evolve Law and Above the Law announced that they have formed a strategic partnership aimed at allowing Evolve Law to expand its visibility and offerings, particularly through what is now being called Evolve the Law.

Now, Juetten has announced that she is stepping down from active management of Evolve Law to continue building her own company, Traklight, and to focus on other mid-life projects, including access to justice. She will remain involved as a member of Evolve Laws advisory council.

Stepping in to take over is Deb Tesser, a lawyer and former law-practice consultant who most recently worked as vice president of strategic planning for the practice-management company Zola Media. Introducing herself in a post yesterday, she said that one of her primary objectives will be to make Evolve the Law the go-to source for lawyers, legal technologists, law schools, and everyone who is invested in the future of the profession.

I had the good fortune to work with Juetten on planning the Startup Alley programs at ABA Techshow the last two years. I wish her the best in the next stages of her career. I have also come to know Tesser over the years. and can say that Evolve the Law continues to be in capable hands. I look forward to seeing how it next evolves.

Movement in Vermont on tech competence. As I continue to track the states that have adopted the ethical duty of technology competence, I have learned that the Vermont Professional Responsibility Board yesterday voted to recommend that the Vermont Supreme Court adopt the language in Comment 8 to ABA Model Rule 1.1.

Michael Kennedy, bar counsel in Vermont and author of the excellent legal-ethics blog Ethical Grounds, tells me that the court is likely to take it up in April or May and then put it out for a 60-day comment period. So far, 31 states have adopted the rule.

Leadership change at LawPRO. One of the most-respected authorities on law practice management in Canada and the United States is Dan Pinnington, who for the last 17 years has made his home at LawPRO, the Lawyers Professional Indemnity Company owned by the Law Society of Ontario. Now, LawPRO has announced that Pinnington will become its president and chief executive officer effective April 2, succeeding Kathleen A. Waters, who is retiring after holding that position since 2008.

Among his many accomplishments, Pinnington has been editor-in-chief of Law Practice magazine, the publication of the ABAs Law Practice Management Section, and chair of ABA Techshow. He is also a fellow of the College of Law Practice Management. Congratulations to Dan.

Comprehensive bar passage data. The ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar has published a comprehensive set of data on bar passage outcomes for ABA-approved law schools. The data, in the form of a downloadable spreadsheet, shows school-by-school for 2015 graduates for passing the bar within two years of graduation. In the aggregate, the data shows, nearly nine of 10 graduates who took the bar exam passed it within two years. The sections website also provides other data about law graduates.

Worth reading: Ive been reporting here on efforts by Fastcase to expand its library of secondary legal materials. At the ABA Journal, Rich Acello takes a deeper look and talks to CEO Ed Walters: Inspired by Netflix, Fastcase is creating its own content.  David Fisher, founder and CEO of Integra Ledger and co-founder of the Global Legal Blockchain Consortium, offers an interesting essay on solving the collective action problem in law.  Carolyn Elefant looks at state bar association websites and finds that 28 fall short on security settings.
Mar 30, 2018, 12:22pm ET

GM Cruise CTO leaves, disagrees with CEO's 'engineering vision'

The controversial executive had been blamed for contributing to a \"toxic environment\" for female workers during his tenure at Uber.

The chief technology officer of General Motors' Cruise Automation division, AG Gangadhar, has resigned from his position.

The executive had served as an engineering executive at Uber before joining GM in September. He had almost reached the six-month mark in his latest role before leaving.

Bloomberg suggests Gangadhar may have been implicated in Uber's sexual harassment scandal. One female Uber engineer, Ana Media, blames him for contributing to a toxic work environment.

Dear @JudgeGroup, please stop sending recruiter emails to @UberEng employees trying to get us to work at @Cruise. None of us want to work under AG again. He created a hostile working environment for everyone, especially women.  Bryan Stitt (@WyseNynja) March 8, 2018

Gangadhar was hired to join Cruise seven months after Susan Fowler first brought attention to alleged sexual harassment at Uber and three months after co-founder Travis Kalanick stepped down. It would be surprising if GM-Cruise did not consider the scandal in its due diligence when hiring a new top executive that had previously served in a leadership role at Uber.

Cruise spokesman Ray Wert suggests the departure was a mutual decision and the company wishes him the best in all future endeavors. Gangadhar issued a statement claiming the decision was due to a disagreement with Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt.

"I left Cruise on good terms and only because Kyle and I had differing visions for the direction of the engineering team," he said.

Separate reports suggest Cruise is struggling to advance toward production viability, despite GM's bold claims that the company is just months away from its first commercial rollout. One insider claimed the vehicles are involved in many near misses and have trouble dealing with seemingly basic challenges such as narrow two-way residential streets.

The source casting doubt on GM's public statements estimates it could be a decade before Cruise cars are able to be deployed widely in major cities.
Mar 30, 2018, 9:27am ET

Report: EPA to announce lower mpg targets

EPA administrator Scott Pruitt has criticized the Obama-era targets as excessively strict and potentially damaging to auto sales.

The Environmental Protection Agency is reportedly preparing to announce new fuel-efficiency standards, lowering future targets from levels set before President Donald Trump arrived in the White House.

The Obama administration had worked with California to harmonize federal fuel-efficiency regulations with the state's more ambitious goals, raising the bar to 55 mpg by 2025.

The EPA is now expected to drop the Obama-era plan and replace it with a much lower goal, unnamed sources have told the Los Angeles Times.

EPA administrator Scott Pruitt has criticized the 55-mpg goal could have a negative impact on US automakers, as customer preferences currently trend toward SUVs.

California currently maintains a separate, more strict set of environmental regulations that go above and beyond the federal government's rules. Pruitt has also hinted at a potential legal showdown California, threatening to bar individual states from implementing their own fuel efficiency standards.
Tom Flanagan - Portarlington

The death took place on Thursday, March 29 of Tom Flanagan of Lea (Clonanny), Portarlington.

Peacefully at his residence surrounded by his loving family. Deeply regretted by his loving wife Margaret, son Declan, daughters Siobhan, Martina and Sarah, sons-in-law, daughter-in-law, grandchildren, brother, sisters relatives, neighbours and friends. 

Reposing at his residence from 12 noon on Good Friday with rosary at 8.30pm. Reposing on Saturday from 10am until 4.30pm. House private there after. Removal at 5.30pm to arrive at Saint John's Church, Killenard for 6pm prayers. Requiem Mass on Easter Sunday at 10.30am followed by Interment in adjoining cemetery.

Paul Byrne - Stradbally

The death took place on Wednesday, March 28 of Paul Byrne of 3 Church Avenue, Stradbally.

Died peacefully at home in the loving care of his wife Ann Marie and his children Selena and Karina and his extended family. Deeply regretted by his loving wife Ann Marie (nee Flynn formerly of Parnell Cresent, Portlaoise), his daughters Selena and Karina, brothers, sisters uncles, aunts, mother-in-law Kathleen, neighbours, relatives and friends.

Reposing in his home from 3pm on Saturday. Recital of The Rosary at 8pm on Saturday evening. Family time on Sunday morning please. Funeral arriving for 11.30am Mass on Sunday in The Church of the Sacred Heart, Stradbally. Burial after in Oakvale Cemetery.

Nancy Nicholls - Portarlington

The death took place on Tuesday, March 27 of Nancy Nicholls (nee Dunne) of St Michael's Park, Portarlington.

Peacefully surrounded by her loving family at the Regional Hospital Portlaoise. Loving wife of the late Johnny and dear mother of the late Ann. Sadly missed by her loving family, Lilly, Arthur, Mary and Breda, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, sons-in-law, extended family and friends.

Reposing at Maher's Chapel of Rest Portarlington on Tuesday from 6.30pm with Rosary at 8pm. Reposing on Wednesday from 5pm with Removal at 6.50pm arriving St Michael's Church, Portarlington for Funeral Mass at 7.30pm. Prayers on Holy Thursday at 11am. Burial afterwards to St Michael's Cemetery, Portarlington.

Annie Donaghey - Mountrath

The death took place in London on Monday, March 12 of Annie Donaghey (nee Holland) of Coolnacart, Mountrath.

Funeral will take place in London, England, on 13th April 2018.



Mary Edwards - Errill

The death took place on November 13 of Mary Edwards (nee Keane) of Homefield Park, Sutton, Surrey, England and formerly Castlefleming, Errill. Peacefully following a brief illness at the Royal Marsden Hospital, Sutton.

A memorial prayer service for Mary will be on Holy Saturday in the Church Of Our Lady, Queen Of The Universe, Errill at 12 noon followed by interment of ashes in Errill Cemetery.
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Met Eireann issued a Status Yellow Hail warning for all of Ireland on Thursday night ahead of the Easter Bank Holiday weekend.

The warning was for heavy showery rain overnight with some wintry and thundery falls. Hail, in particular, will lead to treacherous driving conditions.

The warning is valid from 10:00am on Firday morning.

Friday will be cold in the morning with remaining mist clearing and showers becoming fairly widespread, some will be very heavy and of hail with isolated thunderstorm especially in parts of the south later this afternoon.

There will be good dry spells too with some sunny spells. Highest temperatures will range of 6 to 9 degrees Celsius in moderate northeast winds, coolest in the east.

On Friday night, showers will become more isolated tonight and mostly in eastern areas. Turning cold and frosty with long clear spells and misty and fog. Lowest temperatures will range -1 to + 1 degrees Celsius, in light northerly breezes.

Mist, fog and frost is to clear on Saturday morning.

There will be a few scattered showers during the day, but they will be lighter compared to recent days and there will be a lot of dry bright weather generally but with more cloud than sunny spells.

Highest temperatures of 6 to 9 possibly 10 degrees Celsius in the southwest with brisk northeast winds for a time along Irish Sea coasts.

We are in for a very cold Saturday night with clear spells and light northerly breezes - overall dry but isolated showers may occur. Frost and possibly some ice setting in later with lowest temperatures of -3 to +1 degrees Celsius.

Easter Sunday will be frosty to begin, but overall dry with good spells of sunshine for much of the day.

However cloud and rain will feed into the southwest of Munster later in the afternoon and will gradually move up across the south of Munster and the south of Leinster later in the evening.

Moderate to fresh easterly breezes will make it feel cool throughout, with highest temperatures of 6 to 8 or 9 degrees Celsius (best values further west).

For Monday, current indications suggest that a nearby area of low pressure will throw up organised bands of heavy blustery rain, with threat of some wintry falls. The details remain uncertain at this stage.

Expensive coffee for Laois driver caught on camera throwing his cup away.

Golf Classic fundraiser to help the Ben and Jake Connolly house over the finish line.
A Kildare native and fourth year Law and Political Science student at Trinity College Dublin will join a class of 30 student participants representing Ireland as part of the Washington Ireland Program for Service and Leadership (WIP) this year.

Tom Cantillon from Eadestown said he is really looking forward to his trip.

Each year, WIP selects 30 talented students to join its network of leaders and influencers by completing a 12-month program of service and leadership development, which includes a summer in Washington DC or New York City.

I am absolutely delighted to be a part of the WIP Class of 2018, and am very much looking forward to getting to know the rest of the class and exploring my potential over the course of the program, said Tom.

Former WIP participant Taoiseach Leo Varadkar recently launched WIPs New York Program by speaking about his experience on WIP at the Irish Consulate in New York City:

It helped me develop my view of the wider worldand without it perhaps I wouldnt be standing here today.

WIP inspires and develops promising leaders through an exceptional program committed to building a future of peace and prosperity for Northern Ireland and Ireland. For over two decades WIP has brought together young leaders from a wide range of communities and backgrounds for an outstanding leadership and skills-development program.

If you would like to follow the progress of Tom and others this summer you can follow their blogs and view photos at www.wiprogram.org.
Sean Francis Grealy  Knightsbridge, Trim, Meath / Glencalry, Mayo / Rathcoffey

Peacefully at his residence, March 27 2018. Predeceased by his sister Aine. Sadly regretted by his daughters Muireann and Blinne, brothers Micheal and Seamus, sister Cait (Crilly), nephews and nieces, relatives, and many friends around the world. Reposing at Knightsbridge Nursing Home, Longwood Road, Trim, on Holy Thursday and Good Friday (March 30). Reposing at Heffernan's Funeral Home, High Street, Trim, on Easter Monday (April 2) from 10 am to 11am followed by removal to the Church of the Sacred Heart, Rathcoffey, arriving for Funeral Mass at 12 noon. Burial afterwards in Mainham Cemetery. Family flowers only. Donations if desired to the Apostleship of the Sea (Stella Maris) or the Ankylosing Spondylitis Association of Ireland.

Joseph Leigh  Donaghmede, Dublin / Moone

March 29 2018 peacefully at his home, Joseph, beloved husband of May. Very sadly missed by his loving wife, daughters Helen and Clare, son Brian, son-in-law Eddie, daughter-in-law Sharon, grandchildren Jaimie, Sam and Ross, great-granddaughter Bella Mae, brother, sister and extended family. Reposing on Monday (April 2) at Jennings Funeral Home, Oscar Traynor Road, Coolock from 3pm to 5pm. Removal on Tuesday (April 3) to Holy Trinity Church, Donaghmede arriving for 10am Funeral Mass followed by cremation in Dardistown Crematorium. Family flowers only. Donations, if desired, to St. Francis Hospice, Raheny.

Donie O'Brien  The Oaks, Newbridge

March 28 2018, (peacefully) at Tallaght Hospital after a brief illness. Dearly loved husband of Rosario, loving father of Ursula and Donal. Sadly missed by his loving wife and children, son-in-law Niall, daughter-in-law Linda, his beloved grandchildren Molly, Donal, Amy, Daithi, Ferdia, Senan (and baby Fiachra), sister, brothers, sisters-in-law, brother-in-law, nieces, nephews, relatives and friends. Reposing at Anderson and Leahys Funeral Home, Henry St., Newbridge on Monday, April 2, from 4pm with Removal at 5.30pm to arrive at St. Conleths Parish Church, Newbridge for 6pm. Requiem Mass at 11am on Tuesday morning, April 3rd followed by burial afterwards in St. Conleths Cemetery, Newbridge.

Patrick (Paddy) O'Sullivan  1226 Timolin, Ballitore, Athy

Reposing at his residence from 2pm on Sunday afternoon with rosary at 8pm. Removal by Rigneys Funeral Directors on Monday evening (April 2) at 6.15pm to arrive at the Church of the Most Holy Trinity, Moone for 7pm. Requiem Mass on Tuesday morning (April 3) at 11am followed by burial in the adjoining cemetery. Family flowers only please. Donations, if desired, to the Friends of Naas Hospital.
Parkinsons Association members from all over the country including Kildare protested outside Leinster House yesterday, Thursday March 29.

Chief Executive, Paula Gilmore, handed over a petition with eleven thousand signatures appealing for government funding for the Associations work to Minister of State, Helen McEntee TD.

The protest was also attended by Marian Harkin, MEP and EU Ambassador for People with Parkinsons as well as many TDs and Senators from across the political spectrum.

The Parkinsons charity said it gets absolutely no core funding from government despite the fact that it tries to help some twelve thousand people living with the degenerative neurological condition.

It has eighteen branches around the country and runs a free phone helpline which provides information and also offers a call-back service from a Parkinsons Nurse Specialist.

The protestors were also demanding a nationwide Parkinsons Nurse Specialist Service.

"The National Collaborating Centre for Chronic Conditions guidelines state there should be one Parkinsons Nurse Specialist for every 300 patients, putting Ireland way below the recommended number. At present there are only five specialist posts for the entire country and one of these is vacant. Another position is part-time and one is funded by the Parkinsons Association," it said.

Outside Dublin, the only two full-time Specialist Nurses are based in Limerick and Galway with none at all in Cork, the south east, Kilkenny, the rest of Leinster, the midlands or the border region.

Parkinsons is the second most common degenerative neurological condition after Alzheimers, yet the health services for people here are not as good as in many other EU countries. We could do so much more if we had some funding, said Chief Executive, Paula Gilmore.

We could expand the Nurse Service nationwide. We could put more structures in place, helping branches at local level, and we could increase the publications we provide.
Fianna Fail TD for Sligo-Leitrim Marc Mac Sharry has called on the Health Minister to waive hospital parking charges for patients with cancer and other long term or life-limiting conditions.

Deputy Mac Sharry raised the issue in the Dail this week.

A number of health representative organisations including the Irish Cancer Society have been calling on Minister Simon Harris to provide funding to the HSE to allow for free parking for cancer patients. I fully support this measure, but would also like to see it go further, and be extended to all patients who are living with long term or life limiting conditions, explained Deputy Mac Sharry.

People with serious health issues already have a range of costs associated with their healthcare. Doctors visits, medication, transport costs and possibly the cost of specialised equipment all adds up. Patients may have to make numerous hospital appointments in any given week and the fact that they have to fork out for parking charges is particularly cruel.

While some hospitals provide free parking for some patients, the majority do not. This in itself creates an unfairness that needs to be addressed. The HSE has been asked to review the current inconsistencies and to come up with uniform guidelines for hospitals. A timeline needs to be provided for this.

All of these people, or, in the case of children, their families, have paid tax over the years and have made their contribution to the HSE budget  which amounts to 14.5 billion this year. Minister Harris has consistently pointed to the fact that the budget increased by 608m this year. The estimated cost to cover parking charges for these patients is 13m  thats less than 2% of the increase this year.

In the grand scheme of things, 13m is not a huge amount of money; however it would make a huge difference for those who would benefit from it. It would be one less cost to worry about.

There is an opportunity for the Health Minister to make a little money go a long way and ease the burden on people who are living with serious conditions. I am urging him to conduct this review as a matter of urgency and to do the right thing and end parking fees for these patients.
THE decision by Bord na Mona to abandon its plans to build a smokeless fuel plant at Foynes in County Limerick has dealt a blow to job prospects in the area.

The 20m plant was expected to deliver up to 100 jobs during construction and as many as 59 permanent jobs when operational.

But last Friday, Bord na Mona announced it was not going ahead with its plans for a biomass and smokeless fuel plant at the same time it announced it was closing its yard in Foynes with the loss of six jobs.

However, there has been a stunning silence from government party and opposition party politicians on the issue.

In a press statement released to the Limerick Leader, a spokesman for Bord na Mona said their decision was part of a plan to close all its coal yards at 10 locations around the country, with the loss of 45 jobs. This decision, he explained, was being taken ahead of the total nationwide ban on bituminous coal due to come into force in 2019.

Meanwhile, the Shannon Foynes Port Company has expressed regret at the decision not to proceed with the smokeless fuel plant. We acknowledge that, in the context of an existing and established competitor already in place, it was taken on sound business grounds, a spokesman said. He confirmed that the company had not imported through Foynes for the past 18 months or so but stressed that the companys decision does not affect our ambitious growth targets for port activity, which are being met year on year.

We will, however, be having conversations with Bord na Mona about other potential options for the site in question, he said.

Bord na Monas decision was unexpected but has generated disappointment in Foynes and neighbouring communities. Site clearing work for the plant began last year after the last planning hurdles had been overcome. When complete, the facility was intended to provide up to 150,000 tonnes of smokeless fuel to the Irish market every year.

The company was hoping to cash in on an increase in demand for smokeless fuels as a result of the governments decision to introduce a nationwide Low Smoke Zone this autumn and to ban the use of bituminous coal entirely next year.

Last Friday, however, the company said that following a commercial review the company has decided not to enter the smokeless coal market and will not be proceeding with the Foynes plant. Instead, the company will focus on its solid fuels business i.e. peat briquettes and peat nuggets.

In 2013, CPL Fuels announced its plans to develop a smokeless fuel facility also in Foynes at a cost of 22m and with the potential to create up to 140 jobs. This was later revised down to 60 jobs and production has begun.
A NEW medical social work walk-in clinic has opened at University Maternity Hospital Limerick to provide a more responsive and accessible service to women and their families.

The walk-in clinic will initially run in parallel with the Monday morning Ante-Natal Clinic, open 9am to 1pm, and the service at UMHL will expand following the appointment of an extra social worker later this year.

Until now, women or their families seeking the support of medical social work within UL Hospitals Group have been referred by a healthcare professional.

Last year, there were 510 new referrals from UMHL to the medical social worker. There can be as many as 130 open cases relating to UMHL patients at any one time.

The new clinic coincides with the continuing development of the Perinatal Mental Health Service at UMHL but it is open to all women and their relatives.

Its about breaking down barriers and is open to all to call in, said Ciara Lawlor, medical social worker.

It is about making the service more accessible to them; so that women can see for themselves what supports are there for them if they want to share a concern, she said.

Dr Naro Imcha, consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist, said it brings a multidisciplinary team together at one location so that a care plan can be quickly developed with all their inputs.
AFTER confirmation that 4.1m was paid to the operator of the Limerick Tunnel last year, concerns have been expressed that the final cost to the tax-payer could be more than 200m.

Figures obtained by this newspaper under the Freedom of Information Act show DirectRoute (Limerick) Ltd received a total of 4,124,856 in payments under the traffic guarantee mechanism scheme from Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII) during 2017.

The figure, which relates to the period from July 1, 2016 to June 30, 2017 is more than 450,000 less than the 4,577,041 which was paid in 2016.

Around 4.8m was paid under the traffic guarantee mechanism in 2015 while more than 5m was paid in 2014. The monies paid last year equate to an average of just over 11,300 per day.

While the annual payments under the scheme continue to fall, suggesting an increase in the number of vehicles which are using the Limerick Tunnel, concern has been expressed by members of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) after it emerged the payments could total more than 200m before it returns to public ownership in 2041.

Michael Kennedy of Transport Infrastructure Ireland told members of the PAC that conservative predictions put the total bill in the region of 200m.

Mr Kennedy  TIIs public-private partnership and finance manager  said the project has cost 31.4m since 2010 and is widely expected to cost a further 170m over the next 23 years..

After Labour TD Alan Kelly suggested the level of payments under the scheme was just insane Mr Kennedy said a re-examination of the scheme had shown the payments were justified as the Limerick Tunnel has reduced traffic congestion in the city.

Questioned about the payments, Minister-of-State Patrick ODonovan said the opening of the tunnel has benefited Limerick.

I do know the Limerick Tunnel is an important piece of infrastructure Ironically there were people were at the time who suggested that Limerick didnt need a tunnel at all and that we needed a bridge and should close the port  where are they today?

Deputy Maurice Quinlivan has described the payments by TII as a shameful waste of taxpayers money.

The Limerick Tunnel is a great piece of infrastructure for the Mid-West, but regrettably it is not being used enough because of the tolls. The tolling of the tunnel has resulted in many opting to avoid it, as it is simply too expensive.
A MAN who caused more than 50,000 worth of damage after setting hay barn on fire in County Limerick has avoided a prison sentence.

Seamus McCarthy, aged 22, who has an address at Knocknasna, Abbeyfeale has pleaded guilty to a single charge of arson relating to an incident at Copeswood Dairy Farm, Shannon Grove Pallaskenry during the early hours of September 24, 2014.

The hay barn, which was located in the dairy yard at Pallaskenry Agricultural College, was completely destroyed in the blaze which was started at around 4am.

Garda Aidan Haddock said McCarthy, who has no previous convictions, made admissions in relation to the fire following his arrest sometime after the fire.

He said he told gardai he had been messing with a cigarette lighter and that he had panicked and returned to the dormitory when a bale of hay caught fire and took off.

The defendant, who was very drunk on the night, told gardai he had gotten an idea to burn the hay shed but that he didnt think it would blow up.

Judge Tom ODonnell was told there was insurance in place and the shed has since been rebuilt.

Erin OHagan BL, instructed by solicitor John Lynch, said there was no risk of people being injured as a result of her clients actions.

She said her client cooperated with gardai, made full admissions and identified himself on CCTV during garda interviews.

Ms OHagan said her client left the agricultural college a short time after the incident and that he hasn'ts returned to education since.

She said it was his first time away from home and that alcohol was a factor on the night.

There was no malicious aspect to it, it was a foolish decision, it was a stupid, stupid thing to do, she said describing what happened as a showing off experiment that got completely out of hand.

Imposing sentence Judge ODonnell accepted what happened was not sinister and that the fire was due to the defendants recklessness. He imposed a three and-a-half year prison sentence which he suspended it in its entirety.
1. Joe Duffy's Liveline will light up

Joe Duffy must be the only man in the country happier than the publicans now that the Good Friday ban has been lifted. Like pubs across the country, the Liveline will be open and business will undoubtedly be brisk... Isn't it shocking Joe....... The world is coming to an end Joe....

2. Someone will lose the run of themselves

The once forbidden drink in the pub on a Good Friday will be too much for one of your lightweight mates. He'll be home in bed before the Late Late.

3. Reminiscing about the pub ban

After a few lovely pints in the pub, you'll start to reminisce about the house parties once had when the pubs were closed for Good Friday. 'Wouldn't it be great to close them again just for one more year for the craic?'

4. We'll all be bankrupt... and we don't mean morally

The novelty of the pubs opening on Good Friday means we'll all head out early and take full advantage of the situation. But we'll be up the next morning strapped for cash after going mad on the pints, the shorts and the shots. It would be so much cheaper just to stick to the auld house party.

5. Off Licence owners will be in tears

Spare a thought for the off license owners this Good Friday. Every Holy Thursday they did enough business to pay for a cruise. Now they'll have to settle for a week in Tramore. However...

6. Publicans will be loving it

From a day where they used to do nothing (apart from the odd private lock in) publicans will now be rubbing their hands with glee in anticipation of a record-breaking day. If they open, we will come. But...

7. Bar staff will be raging

Good Friday was the one day of the year when all bar staff could be sure they could all go on the lash together. Now that team bonding day is gone forever.

8. It will be an anti-climax

After all the debate, the arguments, the moral outrage and the numerous pints, we'll all wake up on Easter Saturday and wonder what the hell it was all about becasue it will have just been another Friday night in the pub.
GARDAI are hunting for a gang believed to have robbed two shops in east Limerick on successive nights.

Gardai are investigating a burglary at Greene's Service Station in Cappamore at 2.30am on Sunday morning, March 25.

"Entry was gained through the front of the premises causing damage to a window and goods were stolen. No arrests have been made and investigations are ongoing," said a garda spokesperson. It is understood a quantity of cigarettes was stolen.

On the following night, criminals broke into the Centra in Caherconlish and made their getaway with a large sum of cash.

It occurred at 1.30am on Monday morning. Entry was gained from the front of the premises and a large sum of cash was stolen from the safe. No arrests have been made and investigations are ongoing," said a garda spokesperson.

One resident in Caherconlish, who contacted the Leader, said: "I saw there was a bit of commotion there on Monday morning. It is a shocking thing to happen. That shop is hugely important to the local community. I hope they catch them." Locals in both Caherconlish and Cappamore have been rallying around their local shops.

Owner of the Centra in Caherconlish, Brian OSullivan said they have received huge support in the aftermath of the crime.

They have been very vocally supporting us and letting us know how disappointed they are in what is after happening. I want to acknowledge the huge support from across Limerick and especially the people of Caherconlish. They have been great, said Mr OSullivan. He also paid tribute to his staff.

I want to thank them for working so professionally to get the shop back up and running on Monday morning and ready for trade. It is business as normal, said Mr OSullivan.

Gardai in Bruff and Cappamore are investigating the break into Greenes Service Station while guards in Caherconlish and Roxboro are looking into the burglary at the Centra.

Anybody who may have been in Cappamore or Caherconlish on the nights in question and saw suspicious activity are asked to contact gardai.
A MAN has appeared in court in connection with producing an imitation handgun at a 21st birthday party in County Limerick.

Alan Wallace, aged 33, of Brackile, Pallasgreen was charged with the offence under section 27b of the Firearms and Offensive Weapons act.

It is alleged to have occurred at Toomaline, Doon on February 26, 2017.

Detective Garda Christopher Cowan gave evidence of arresting and charging Mr Wallace.

He made no reply to the charge after caution, said Det Garda Cowan.

Mr Wallace was granted bail on his own bond of 300 subject to a number of conditions Det Cowan applied to Judge Marian OLeary for.

Mr Wallace is to reside at Brackile, Pallasgreen; sign on three times a week in Tipperary Town garda station; surrender his passport and not to apply for any new travel documents; not to commit any offences and be of good behaviour; keep his mobile phone charged and in credit, and not to have any contact with any witnesses in the case.

Kate Fanning, solicitor for Mr Wallace, made a legal aid application on behalf of her client.

Sergeant Michelle Leahy said DPPs directions have been received and they are for trial on indictment.

The case was adjourned for two months for service of the book of evidence in Kilmallock Court.
AN UNUSUAL speeding case involving the mystery driver of a pubs courtesy car and a delay in receiving the fine due to a postmans heart attack came before Kilmallock Court.

A Go Safe operator said a vehicle, registered to Matt Rea, of the Stroller Pub, Ballyneety, was driven at a speed of 132kms in a 100km zone on the N24 on July 14, 2017.

Mr Rea took the stand and said the car has open driving pub insurance so that anybody aged between 25 and 70 can drive it.

It is used to take people home. I wasnt driving. Customers and staff use the car. They drive people home on my behalf. It works for us. Were in a country area, said Mr Rea.

He told Judge Marian OLeary that the fine in the post was late in coming.

Our postman had a heart attack and we got a relief postman, said Mr Rea.

Sergeant Michelle Leahy put it to Mr Rea that it is his responsibility to know who is driving the car.

I dont keep a log. I have insurance. If we got the fine on time we could have figured it out. It is very important to get people home safely, said Mr Rea.

Sgt Leahy said: You need to know who is driving the car.

Mr Rea said he knew whoever was driving was covered by insurance.

If I could tell you who is driving the car I would. From now on I will keep a log, said Mr Rea.

Judge Marian OLeary said anybody might be entitled to drive the car but they arent entitled to speed.

The judge asked about customers driving the car.

Mr Rea said customers who had just come into the pub could drop somebody home.

Sgt Leahy said it his responsibility to know who is driving the vehicle so matters like this wont arise.

The most important thing is that people get home safe, said Mr Rea.

Judge OLeary said: Exactly. They were speeding. On this occasion I will strike it out but if you come before me again I wont be.
A HISTORIC day for Limerick pubs this Good Friday as licensed venues are permitted to serve alcohol for the first time in more than 90 years.

The Vintners Federation of Ireland (VFI) estimates that the lifting of the Good Friday ban on alcohol will generate more than 40m in sales for pubs throughout the country.

For many Limerick pubs this Good Friday, it's just business as usual.

I think well do a reasonable amount of food today but I dont think it will be as busy as a regular Friday, Ger Callanan, owner of the Glen Tavern on Lower Glentworth Street, said.

I think theres a lot of people gone away for the weekend and theres a lot of people who still observe Good Friday and thats their beliefs, you have to respect that.

I think there will be less alcohol consumed today than on any Good Friday in recent years because youve taken out the whole party aspect of it.

This whole thing of going to the off-license on Holy Thursday and buying up everything in sight and having a sesh the whole next day in houses is gone, and thats not necessarily a bad thing.

4 calls in the last 20 mins from individuals looking for pints. All oblivious to the law change. We are open today at 10:30am no need to call/text or even send a carrier pigeon. Simply walk in!!  Mothermacs (@mothermacspub) March 30, 2018

Where pubs will really see the difference is with tourists, according to Limerick Chamber chief executive Dr James Ring.

Overall I dont imagine were going to see some kind of mass exodus to the pubs, or mass movement to the bars tonight, I think it will just be business as usual.

But what we will see is that we have the match tomorrow, theres a lot of tourists in Limerick and it would have been a lost opportunity for the pubs who are trying to recover from the storms earlier this year.

It would have been a lost opportunity if the Good Friday laws were still in place.

Publican Fran ODonnell of Teds on OConnell Street agrees with Dr Ring.

Its an ongoing situation where weve had tourists coming to the country for years, and not understand why they couldnt get a drink on Good Friday.

They might have been here for the weekend or a week and all of a sudden in the middle of it, they cant get a drink. It's not the norm in most countries so they find it strange. It just levels it out.

All publicans were given the choice if they want to remain closed or open up.
Mar 30, 2018, 4 AM

The rarest stamp in Czech philately, the 1919 4-koruna light green Austrian Coat of Arms stamp on granite paper with inverted black overprint, has been described as the only example known. It realized a record-breaking $448,600 in the March 9-11 Burda Auction sale.

A fragment of a Czech parcel dispatch note franked with all three of the 1920 Vejprty forgeries was auctioned by Burda Auction.

Auction Roundup by Tim Hodge

Auctioned for the first time in 90 years, the unique 4-koruna Austria Coat of Arms on granite paper with inverted black POSTA CESKOSLOVENSKA 1919 overprint (Pofis catalog 50b, Pp II), often described as the rarest stamp in Czech philately, realized a record-breaking $448,600, including a 19 percent buyers premium, in the March 9-11 auction by Burda Auction of Prague.

The rare stamp had been held in the postal museum in Prague for decades until it was sold in the 1990s to the prominent Czech collector and exhibitor Ludvik Pytlicek.

Other spectacular material offered by Burda included a gutter marginal block of six of the Czechoslovakia 1933 1k Church at Nitra issue (Scott 193). The block is the largest known gutter multiple and one of only 20 known. It realized the equivalent of $94,900

Forgeries normally sell at small fractions of genuine stamps, but when a scarce postal forgery by a prominent forger appears used on piece, the reverse can be true.

Burda Auction sold two such items. A fragment of a parcel dispatch note franked with all three of the 1920 Vejprty forgeries garnered the equivalent of $16,100. And a registered letter bearing a pair of 1923 Teplice forgeries of the 1920 60-haleru blue Chainbeaker (Scott 73), in addition to genuine stamps, brought the equivalent of $15,528.

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Besides its selection of Czech issues, Burda Auction also offered worldwide lots. From Kenya and Uganda, an unused 50 brown and black King George V stamp (Scott 41D) found a new home for the equivalent of $57,513.
He may be the most famous man who ever lived, but surprisingly little is known about his life.

This Sunday (April 1), more than 2 billion Christians will celebrate Jesus Christ's resurrection from the dead. While there is no scientific way to know whether that supernatural event at the heart of Christianity happened, historians have established some facts about his life.

From his birth to his execution by the Romans, here are eight facts about the historical Jesus.

1. His birth  in a manger?

Most historians believe Jesus was a real man. To test the veracity of biblical claims, historians typically compare Christian accounts of Jesus' life with historical ones recorded by Romans and Jews, most notably the historians Flavius Josephus and Cornelius Tacitus.

And though a manger may or may not have figured prominently in the birth, scholars do agree that Jesus was born between 2 B.C. and 7 B.C. as part of the peasant class in a small village called Nazareth in Galilee. Historians also back the claim that Joseph, Jesus' father, was a carpenter, meaning Jesus would have gone into the family profession as well.

2. A mystical baptism

One of the pivotal moments in the New Testament is Jesus' baptism in the wilderness by a radical mystic named John the Baptist. Most historians believe this event occurred, and that Jesus experienced some sort of vision that led him to begin preaching. In the New Testament, Mark 1:10 (The New American Bible, Revised Edition) describes Jesus seeing "the heavens being torn open and the Spirit, like a dove, descending upon him." Jesus is then tempted by Satan in the wilderness for 40 days, the passage continues.

The Jewish historian Josephus mentions the mystical activities of John the Baptist, as well as his execution by King Herod. [History's 10 Most Overlooked Mysteries]

3. What did Jesus look like?

Those biblical writings mention very little, however, about what Jesus may have looked like except for perhaps the clothing that he and his disciples wore, Live Science reported previously. More recently, Joan Taylor, professor of Christian Origins and Second Temple Judaism at King's College London, did an extensive study of archaeological clues and texts related to the appearance of Jews in Egypt during Jesus' lifetime. Her research suggests Jesus may have stood at an average (for the time) 5 foot 5 inches (1.7 meters) tall, with a possibly short mop of black hair, olive-brown skin and brown eyes. All of this is based on what the average Jew in Egypt and Judea may have looked like. And Taylor said that specifics about some aspects of Jesus' face  such as whether he had scars and what his mouth and cheeks looked like  are anyone's guess, Live Science reported previously. She added that her bet is that Jesus was likely not "handsome," as some have described him.

4. Reformer

After his vision, Jesus began to preach that the Earth could be changed into a "Kingdom of God." Jesus' message of reform was deeply rooted in the Jewish tradition, and he likely never viewed himself as creating a new religion per se  just reforming the one he was born into, scholars say.

4. A wise teacher

Josephus not only mentions Jesus, in one passage, he also describes him as a wise man and a teacher. (The passage is controversial because many historians believe a Christian author later added in phrases such as "He was the messiah" to the text, leading a few scholars to doubt the authenticity of the passage as a whole.) Most historians agree, however, that Jesus was viewed as a teacher and healer in Galilee and Judea.

5. Timing of Jesus' crucifixion

Several sources mention Jesus' crucifixion at the hands of Pontius Pilate, the Roman prefect. Christian Gospels say the skies darkened for hours after the crucifixion, which historians viewed either as a miracle or a portent of dark times to come. Using astronomy, later historians have used this mention to pinpoint the death of Christ. Some tie the crucifixion to a one-minute 59-second total solar eclipse that occurred in 29 C.E., whereas others say a second total eclipse, blocking the sun for four minutes and six seconds, in 33 C.E. marked Jesus' death. (C.E. stands for Common Era or Christian Era, and is an alternative name for anno Domini, or A.D.)

Death by crucifixion was one of the goriest ends the Romans meted out, and it was typically reserved for slaves and those seen to be challenging Roman authority.

7. Where was Jesus buried?

As for where Jesus was buried, the faithful believe his body was interred after the crucifixion in what is now Jerusalem. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre there covers a shrine where Jesus' tomb is claimed to reside. According to legend, it was the mother of Emperor Constantine, Helena who discovered the tomb in A.D. 345. Nobody knows whether Jesus' remains are tucked away in that tomb; but when it was opened, for the first time in centuries, in 2016, scientists examined it to see when it last saw the light of day. They used a light-based method that revealed the quartz within the tomb's limestone had last been exposed to light in A.D. 345, supporting the idea that the shrine was built during Constantine the Great's reign. Those tests date the tomb to 1,700 years ago, or about 300 years after Jesus' death, Live Science previously reported.

8. Historical relics

The historical veracity of various physical relics, such as the crucifixion nails and crown of thorns Jesus wore on the cross, have decidedly less historical or scientific backing. Most scientific studies suggest that these relics originated long after Jesus died. But the most famous relic of Jesus, the shroud of Turin, may be on more solid footing: Whereas some parts of the shroud date to A.D. 1260, other analyses have suggested that the shroud is about as old as Jesus.Another more recent finding, a scrap of papyrus from the early Christian era referring to Jesus' wife was unveiled last year, to much skepticism. Since then, evidence has come out to suggest the so-called Gospel of Jesus' Wife is most likely a forgery.

Editor's Note: This article was first published in 2013 and updated in 2018 with new discoveries and advances in relevant research projects.

Original article on Live Science.
Okay, we get it, you're happy  no need to rub it in.

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

The new World Happiness Report again ranks Denmark among the top three happiest of 155 countries surveyed  a distinction that the country has earned for seven consecutive years.

The U.S., on the other hand, ranked 18th in this year's World Happiness Report, a four-spot drop from last year's report.

Denmark's place among the world's happiest countries is consistent with many other national surveys of happiness (or, as psychologists call it, "subjective well-being").

Scientists like to study and argue about how to measure things. But when it comes to happiness, a general consensus seems to have emerged.

Depending on the scope and purpose of the research, happiness is often measured using objective indicators (data on crime, income, civic engagement and health) and subjective methods, such as asking people how frequently they experience positive and negative emotions.

Why might Danes evaluate their lives more positively? As a psychologist and native of Denmark, I've looked into this question.

Yes, Danes have a stable government, low levels of public corruption, and access to high-quality education and health care. The country does have the the highest taxes in the world, but the vast majority of Danes happily pay: They believe higher taxes can create a better society.

Perhaps most importantly, however, they value a cultural construct called "hygge" (pronounced h).

The Oxford dictionary added the word in June 2017, and it refers to high-quality social interactions. Hygge can be used as a noun, adjective or verb (to hygge oneself), and events and places can also be hyggelige (hygge-like).

Hygge is sometimes translated as "cozy," but a better definition of hygge is "intentional intimacy," which can happen when you have safe, balanced and harmonious shared experiences. A cup of coffee with a friend in front of a fireplace might qualify, as could a summer picnic in the park.

A family might have a hygge evening that entails board games and treats, or friends might get together for a casual dinner with dimmed lighting, good food and easygoing fun. Spaces can also be described as hyggelige ("Your new house is so hyggeligt") and a common way of telling a host thank you after a dinner is to say that it was hyggeligt (meaning, we had a good time). Most Danish social events are expected to be hyggelige, so it would be a harsh critique to say that a party or dinner wasn't hyggelige.

Research on hygge has found that in Denmark, it's integral to people's sense of well-being. It acts as a buffer against stress, while also creating a space to build camaraderie. In a highly individualized country like Denmark, hygge can promote egalitarianism and strengthen trust.

It would be fair to say that hygge is fully integrated into the Danish cultural psyche and culture. But it has also become a bit of a global phenomenon  Amazon now sells more than 900 books on hygge, and Instagram has over 3 million posts with the hashtag #hygge. Google trends data show a big jump in searches for hygge beginning in October 2016.

Nor is Denmark the only country that has a word for a concept similar to hygge  the Norwegians have koselig, the Swedes mysig, the Dutch gezenlligheid and the Germans gemutlichkeit.

In the U.S.  which also places a high value on individualism  there's no real cultural equivalent of hygge. Income is generally associated with happiness; yet even though the country's GDP has been rising and its unemployment rates have been declining, levels of happiness in the U.S. have been steadily decreasing.

What's going on?

Income inequality continues to be an issue. But there's also been a marked decrease in interpersonal trust and trust toward institutions like the government as well as the media. In the end, more disposable income doesn't hold a candle to having someone to rely on in a time of need (something that 95 percent of Danes believe they have).

At its core, hygge is about building intimacy and trust with others.

Americans could probably use a little more of it in their lives.

Marie Helweg-Larsen, Professor of Psychology, Dickinson College

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates  and become part of the discussion  on Facebook, Twitter and Google +. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published on Live Science.
The remains of what is likely a juvenile <i>T. rex</i> were discovered in Montana's Hell Creek formation.

Paleontologists digging in Montana have hit the dinosaur jackpot. They've uncovered what appears to be an elementary-school-age Tyrannosaurus rex, they announced Thursday (March 29).

The researchers found the fearsome beast's remains in Montana's famous Hell Creek formation, a rocky expanse chock-full of dinosaur-age fossils. Despite the site's rich assemblage, the past 100 years have yielded fewer than five "decently complete juvenile T. rexes," said Kyle Atkins-Weltman, an assistant fossil preparator at the Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum at Kansas University, who is helping prepare the tyrannosaur.

Of all the juvenile T. rexes from Hell Creek, "this is probably the most preserved and most complete," Atkins-Weltman told Live Science. "This is a 1-in-100-million specimen." [Photos: Dinosaur's Battle Wounds Preserved in Tyrannosaur Skull]

Kris Super, an assistant student preparator also at the Natural History Museum, found the young T. rex's fossils in June 2016. But his team only had time to unearth the dinosaur's ilium (the upper part of the pelvic bone), so they weren't sure what species it was until they returned the following summer and dug up its recognizable teeth and skull.

This dinosaur, as well as other fossils recovered from the same spot at Hell Creek, will keep its discoverers busy for a while, David Burnham, a preparator of vertebrate paleontology at the Biodiversity Institute, told Live Science. The rock slabs they excavated also include a nearly complete turtle and pieces of fish and other dinosaurs. They even found the jaw of a placental mammal, Burnham said.

These prehistoric animals likely died in a "quick, cataclysmic event," Burnham said. "The storms were huge because the temperatures were warmer."

Young T. rex

T. rexes lived during the last 2 million years of the Cretaceous period, from about 67 million to 65 million years ago. The newfound dinosaur king lived about 67 million years ago and "would have been a pretty young animal, a young juvenile," Atkins-Weltman said. At about 17 feet (5.1 meters) long, it's larger than a previously studied specimen of a 3-year-old T. rex, but smaller than another known specimen that reached 11 years of age before dying.

Back at the lab, the researchers found the fossil of the possible juvenile T. rex glowed under a black light. (Image credit: David Burnham)

"We would suspect [it would have been] maybe 6 to 7 years old, possibly 8," Atkins-Weltman said.

Like any elementary-age child, T. rex grew fast. At its peak growth, it gained between 1 lb. and 3 lbs. (0.5 and 1.3 kilograms) a day.

"By the time they were 4 years old, they were the size of some of the largest land predators that are around today," Atkins-Weltman said. "It's literally hard to fathom an animal growing this fast because there's really nothing quite like it in the modern world."

Paleontologists are still excavating the dinosaur's bones from a rock slab, but so far they've found both of its upper jaw bones with all of the teeth intact (some of them 2 inches, or 5 centimeters, long), as well as pieces of the tyrannosaur's foot, hips, backbones and its roughly 25-inch-long (65 cm) skull.

The researchers cautioned that although it looks like a juvenile or sub-adult T. rex, more work is needed before they can say so for sure. [Photos: Newfound Dinosaur Had Tiny Arms, Just Like T. Rex]

Is it a Nanotyrannus?

Whenever a young T. rex is found, there are murmurs in the background about whether the bones belong to a Nanotyrannus. That's because sleek, baby T. rexes look so different from humongous adult T. rexes that some researchers thought they were a different species, said Thomas Carr, a vertebrate paleontologist and an associate professor of biology at Carthage College in Wisconsin, who is not involved in the new finding.

In the 1940s, a small tyrannosaur specimen was discovered and named Gorgosaurus lancensis. A later examination of the specimen, housed at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, found it was an entirely new genus, dubbed Nanotyrannus.

However, when Carr reviewed the controversial fossil for his master's thesis, published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology in 1999, he found that it had features seen in other juvenile tyrannosaurs. "And on top of that, it has unique features only seen in T. rex, like the wide forehead, the narrow snout and the eye sockets that face somewhat forward rather than to the side," Carr told Live Science, referring to that G. lancensis.

"So, the simplest explanation, the most parsimonious hypothesis, is that it's a sub-adult T. rex," Carr said. In other words, if Nanotyrannus exists, researchers haven't found one yet.

But, given that the world is filled with countless and strange dinosaur fossils, Burnham and his colleagues aren't ruling out anything.

"We're going to keep an open mind," Burnham said. "If it turns out to be Nanotyrannus, we're OK with that. If it turns out to be the best small T. rex in the world, we're happy with that as well."

Original article on Live Science.
Attention, coffee drinkers: A judge in California has ruled that coffee companies in the Golden State must label each cup of joe with a cancer warning label.

But what sparked this decision, and more importantly, does drinking coffee increase the risk of developing cancer?

In short, roasted coffee beans contain a known carcinogen, a chemical called acrylamide. But it's unclear whether acrylamide levels in coffee are high enough to pose a health risk to humans, Live Science previously reported. [10 Interesting Facts About Coffee]

Acrylamide occurs in overly cooked or roasted starchy foods, including coffee beans, french fries, potato chips, breakfast cereals and toast. It's also found in cigarette smoke. The carcinogenic chemical is concerning enough that last year, the United Kingdom's Food Standards Agency asked people to "Go for Gold" rather than a charred color when eating starchy foods that could be burned, Live Science reported.

This U.K. campaign was based on evidence showing that consuming acrylamide can cause mutations and damage in DNA, which can increase cancer risk, according to studies in rodents. However, these studies exposed the rodents to levels of acrylamide that were between 1,000 and 10,000 times higher than the levels people might be exposed to in foods, the American Cancer Society reported.

The results from these animal studies prompted the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a part of the World Health Organization, to label acrylamide as a "probable carcinogen" in 1994, Marji McCullough, strategic director of nutritional epidemiology at the American Cancer Society, told Live Science previously.

However, the IARC does not list coffee as a possible carcinogen.

Even so, the jury is still out on whether the levels of acrylamide in coffee can increase cancer risk in humans. While an increased cancer risk is shown in some studies, others don't find any at all, according to the National Cancer Institute (NCI). These disparate results may occur because it's challenging to quantify how much acrylamide people consume. Moreover, rodents and humans absorb and metabolize acrylamide at different rates, the NCI reported.

According to the new ruling, made by Superior Court Judge Elihu Berle, coffee companies with 10 or more employees must now put warning labels on coffee, cautioning customers that drinking coffee could pose a cancer risk, according to The Washington Post.

The case was based, in part, on the California Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986, which the plaintiffs said also applies to coffee. During the trial, the defendants were unable to show that coffee doesn't cause one or more cases of cancer for every 100,000 people, prompting the judge to say the risk hadn't been properly evaluated, according to The Washington Post.

Meanwhile, countless other studies show that drinking coffee may actually be beneficial. For example, drinking coffee is linked to a decreased risk of liver cancer, endometrial cancer, colon cancer and one type of skin cancer, Live Science previously reported. Downing the beverage is also linked to living a longer life.

Original article on Live Science.
Health officials in Illinois are warning people that synthetic marijuana can cause bleeding from the ears and eyes, according to news reports.

According to a March 27 statement from the Illinois Department of Public Health, six people experienced severe bleeding; all six had reported using synthetic pot.

Yesterday (March 29), the Chicago Tribune reported that the number had risen to 22, a figure that included cases dating back to March 7.

Synthetic marijuana, also called K2 or spice, isn't a substitute for marijuana, Live Science reported in 2016. Instead, the substances get this name because they're loosely related, chemically, to tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive ingredient in pot. These THC-like chemicals are then sprayed onto plant products and sold as synthetic marijuana. But the chemicals used can be different every time the K2 is made, and therefore, symptoms are unpredictable.

Even so, severe bleeding is not a known side effect of the drugs, Dr. Melissa Millewich, an emergency room physician at Advocate Good Samaritan Hospital in Illinois, told the Tribune. "This bleeding is not expected, at least in such a significant population so quickly," she said.

Millewich added that a change in the formula used in the drug could be behind the bleeding, but because health officials don't know the exact makeup of the products, exactly what's causing the bleeding is unclear.

It's possible that there's an anticoagulant, or blood thinner, in this batch of drugs and that it's causing the bleeding, Dr. Jerrold Leikin, director of toxicology at NorthShore University HealthSystem, told NBC Chicago.

Originally published on Live Science.
On March 23, a 38-year-old man driving a Tesla Model X rammed headfirst into an unshielded highway median while traveling south on U.S. Highway 101 near Mountain View, California. Two other vehicles subsequently rear-ended the SUV, which caught fire after the driver, who later died from his injuries, was pulled from the wreckage.

According to news reports, the car blaze shut the highway for 5 hours, firefighters required special suits for cleanup, and at one point had to call Tesla for help in containing the blaze. On Tuesday (March 27), the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) announced a field investigation into the incident.

See more

"Here we have an electric vehicle involved in a postcrash fire.  Did the batteries play a role in that? Did the batteries make it harder for the fire to be put out?" NTSB spokesman Chris O'Neil told The Washington Post.

These are all excellent questions that Tesla drivers might be itching to have answered.

But are Teslas more likely to catch fire than other cars? And when they do catch fire, why are they such a nightmare to put out?

The limited available data suggest that electric vehicles are not more prone to battery fires  but their lithium-ion batteries can fuel hotter fires that release toxic fumes and are harder to extinguish, experts say.[The Surprising Physics of 7 Everyday Things]

Greater energy density

The batteries that fuel a typical gasoline-powered car differ from those in an electric vehicle. The former are lead-acid-based, with lower energy densities  meaning they carry less energy in the same amount of space  than the compact,rechargeable lithium-ion, or Li-ion, batteries that power electric vehicles, including the Tesla Model X.

A normal 12-volt "small" gasoline-powered car battery provides roughly 0.5 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of energy. Since the fully electric battery in the Model X comes with 75- to 100-kWh batteries, this means roughly 150 to 200 normal car batteries would be needed to power the SUV.

Another difference between the battery you might jump in a gas-powered car and the one you'd find under a Model X hood is that, while lead-acid batteries can self-ignite with small fires, those can't leap into other parts of the battery to ignite them and cause a chain reaction. This can happen in lithium-ion batteries, however, said Peter Sunderland, a professor of fire protection engineering at the University of Maryland. Sometimes, when a Li-ion battery gets damaged, it shorts. The resulting spark might ignite the nearby lithium, and the lithium next to that, until the whole battery is ablaze.

The trick with designing an EV battery, in particular, is balancing the benefits of higher energy density  which enables the EVs to go farther on each charge  with the associated risks of battery sparking. "Higher energy density means a higher risk of external sparking,"Arunachalanadar Mada Kannan, a professor of engineering at Arizona State University, told Live Science.

More often in EVs, however, lithium-ion battery fires happen due to thermal runaway, or the spontaneous explosion of the battery thanks to a buildup of heat in the cells inside. In its recent blog post, Tesla noted that the battery packs in the company's electrical vehicles were designed with firewalls, so that a fire would spread slowly enough to give the driver time to exit the car.

Li-ion battery fires can be very intense, emitting large amounts of heat and smoke or gas, Bengt-Erik Mellander, a professor of subatomic and plasma physics at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, told Live Science in an email.

The recent high-profile Tesla fires have started after the battery was damagedin some way.

"The crash in Mountain View was very violent, chopping off the front end of the car and severely damaging the front end of the battery storage under the car (as far as I can see)," Mellander wrote. In the 2013 fire, the Model S's battery compartment was also damaged prior to the fire, when an errant metal object hit the undercarriage.

The return of an old debate

The recent Model X crash has brought back the debate on whether electric vehicles (EVs) are saferthan gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles when it comes to car fires. (Separately, investigators are asking whether the Tesla's semi-autonomous Autopilot mode contributed to the crash.)

This isn't the first time a Tesla has caught fire. In 2013, a Tesla Model S driving near Seattle experienced an unexpected fire in its car battery. Videos and images of the fiery inferno splashed across media outlets, and Tesla's stock took a tumble before company CEO Elon Musk swooped in to assuage consumer concerns. In his blog, Musk did some quick calculations to determine that "You are 5 times more likely to experience a fire in a conventional gasoline car than a Tesla!"

In fact, the limited statistics available suggest electric vehicles are not more prone to fires, Mellander noted.

In order to further minimize risks, however, "something needs to be done at the level of the manufacturing plant, where these batteries are being made," Sunderland said. "Better quality control, better research and development to make sure the battery materials are up to standards."

Nightmare cleanup

Though electric cars may not be more fire-prone, "the risks and the strategies to use in case of an accident and a subsequent fire are different to that of fires in conventional cars," Mellander said.

Sunderland agreed. While firefighters know how to handle gasoline fires, these personnel are not as well-trained in dealing with electrical emission hazards. "With a gasoline fire, they know if they get enough water on it, it'll go out," he said. "But with a deep-seated fire, it's hard to spray the water deep enough into the battery to stop the fire."

Slate reported that the firefighters who attempted to put out the 2013 Model S car fire in Seattle had trouble and "ended up using a circular saw to cut a hole that would allow them to pour water directly on the battery."

In a fiery Tesla crash into a barrier in Austria, the car kept reigniting, forcing firefighters to battle the flames for hours. The car had to be put into quarantine for 48 hours to remove the chances of reignition, Jalopnik reported.

What's more, lithium-ion fires can release high levels of "toxic gases" such as carbon monoxide, soot, hydrogen fluoride, and particulates of oxides of nickel; aluminum; lithium; copper; and cobalt, according to a Tesla Model X emergency response guide. As a result, firefighters need to wear a self-contained breathing apparatus and should use hoses that spray fog and special ventilation fans that push air out at a high velocity to protect bystanders downwind of the fire, according to the guide.

Firefighters need more training, but the reality is that fires in electric vehicles don't happen that often, Sunderland said.

However, if many more electric vehicles take to the roads in the future, these fires could become more common, and firefighters will need to know how to safely extinguish them.

Ultimately, accidents like this one shouldn't discourage consumers from investing in clean-energy vehicles, Sunderland said. "Fatalities are setbacks, but help us accept there is never zero risk with EVs," he said.

Original article on Live Science.
Tiangong-1 will meet a fiery end as it falls to Earth, likely on April Fool's Day.

This story was updated March 30 at 5:24 p.m. EDT.

It's time to grab the popcorn: The Chinese space station Tiangong-1 is plummeting back to Earth this weekend, and anyone with an internet connection can track the fiery demise live online.

Tiangong-1 is expected to re-enter Earth's atmosphere sometime between late Saturday (March 31) and late Sunday (April 1), the European Space Agency reported, according to Live Science.

The show will likely be spectacular, and people can track its re-entry by pulling data from two websites. [In Photos: A Look at China's Space Station That's Crashing to Earth]

Online enthusiasts already glimpsed a live feed of the space station from the comfort of their homes, thanks to the Virtual Telescope Project in Italy and the Tenagra Observatory in Arizona. The team posted the video here, and even captured this dazzling photo of Tiangong-1 on March 28.

Astronomers with the Virtual Telescope Project captured this view of Tiangong-1 on March 28, 2018, using the Tenagra III "Pearl" telescope at the Tenagra Observatories in Arizona. The image is a single, 2-second exposure captured at 8:35 a.m. EDT (1235 GMT). (Image credit: Gianluca Masi/ Virtual Telescope Project and Michael Schwartz/Tenagra Observatories)

Star gazers hoping to see the Chinese space station this weekend can check Aerospace Corp., a nonprofit research organization in California that advises on military, civil and commercial space operations. By clicking on the site's "Where is Tiangong-1 now?" dashboard, people can see a digital view of Tiangong-1, as well as it's time to re-entry.

In addition, people can go to n2yo.com, a site that provides live tracking of satellites. Its useful maps will also help people zero in on Tiangong-1's location. Just be ready to have the sites loaded when Tiangong-1 is expected to make its uncontrolled descent toward the planet at about 3:15 p.m. UTC (11:15 a.m. EDT) on Sunday, give or take 11 hours, according to Aerospace Corp.

Tiangong-1 blasted into outer space in September 2011 and is China's first space station. It measures about 34 feet (10 meters) long and weighs 18,740 lbs. (8,500 kilograms), Aerospace Corp. reported. After China sent one uncrewed and two crewed missions to Tiangong-1, the country's space agency announced in March 2016 that the spaceship had stopped sending data to Earth.

Tiangong-1 lacks a heat shield, so it will begin to burn up from the incredible friction it encounters as it re-enters the atmosphere. It will also rapidly decelerate and break apart as it tumbles into the thick atmosphere, Live Science previously reported.

However, a few bits may make it through the atmosphere and reach the ground or water. But don't be alarmed; only certain parts of Earth are at risk, and the risk of getting hit in these parts is about 1 in 292 trillion, or about 1 million times smaller than the odds of winning the Powerball jackpot, Aerospace Corp. said.

The yellow bands are the riskiest places to be, but even there the odds of getting hit by space station debris are extremely low. (Image credit: The Aerospace Corporation)

However, if you're lucky enough to come across some Tiangong-1 debris, here's some advice: Don't touch it. The space station parts could be covered in hazardous materials, such as noxious fuel, and they could have dangerously sharp edges, Robert Z. Pearlman, a space historian and editor of collectSPACE.com, previously told Live Science.

Moreover, it's not finders keepers. China owns the space station unless it says otherwise, no matter where the debris lands, Pearlman noted.

In other words, enjoy tracking Tiangong-1 crash into Earth this weekend, but don't expect to find anything. In the off-chance you do, steer clear of it.

Editor's Note: This article has been to clarify that the watch-live event has ended, but that people can still track Tiangong-1 online.

Original article on Live Science.
Actor and former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger underwent heart surgery this week and is now in stable condition, according to news reports.

Schwarzenegger, who is 70, was scheduled to have a procedure yesterday (March 29) at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles to replace his pulmonic valve, Daniel Ketchell, a spokesperson for the actor, told The Washington Post. The pulmonic valve (also known as the pulmonary valve) is the valve of the heart that helps regulates blood flow from the heart to the lungs, according to the American Heart Association.

The actor previously had a heart-valve surgery in 1997, to correct a valve defect he was born with.

"That 1997 replacement valve was never meant to be permanent, and has outlived its life expectancy," Ketchell said. For this most recent surgery, Schwarzenegger opted to undergo a "less-invasive catheter valve replacement," Ketchell said, possibly referring to a type of procedure in which doctors thread a thin catheter through a vein to the heart and use the catheter to deliver the new valve. [9 New Ways to Keep Your Heart Healthy]

However, during this less-invasive procedure, Schwarzenegger may have experienced a complication that required emergency open-heart surgery, according to TMZ.

Ketchell confirmed to The Washington Post that an open-heart surgery team was on hand during Schwarzenegger's procedure "in case the catheter procedure was unable to be performed," Ketchell said.

Ultimately, "Schwarzenegger's pulmonic valve was successfully replaced," Ketchell said. The actor is now recovering from the surgery.

Schwarzenegger previously said he was born with a bicuspid aortic valve, in which the aortic valve has only two flaps, instead of the typical three. The 1997 procedure was aimed at fixing this problem. Details of that procedure were not released, but it was reported at the time that Schwarzenegger had a valve transplant made from his own tissue, rather than a mechanical valve. If that's the case, Schwarzenegger may have undergone an operation known as the Ross procedure, in which the aortic valve is replaced with the patient's own pulmonary valve and the pulmonary valve is, in turn, replaced with a donor valve from a cadaver.

Original article on Live Science.
On a lovely spring afternoon, the As provided a glimpse of what might be this season given their powerful lineup, exciting young players and deep bullpen, scoring a walk-off win over the high-profile Angels to open their 50th anniversary season.

The teams starting pitching is the only major question mark, and in a 6-5 victory at the Coliseum on Thursday, the As overcame a big wobble by Kendall Graveman thanks to homers by Khris Davis and birthday boy Matt Olson  back-to-back shots; get ready for many of those  plus some speed and expedient hitting in the 11th inning.

It was a great team effort, center fielder Boog Powell said. We ended up tying the game, going into extra innings. ...We might as well win it, right?

Powell, on the roster to open the season while Dustin Fowler gets his bat going at Triple-A Nashville, knocked a triple to left with one out, aiming for three all the way.

As soon as I saw the ball was down, that was my only thought, said Powell, who was making his first Opening Day start and had his parents and grandparents in attendance.

After an intentional walk to Matt Joyce, Angels manager Mike Scioscia decided to go with a five-man infield against Marcus Semien, who lofted a single to the vast expanse of unoccupied territory in center.

You want to get (the ball) out there, but theres even more incentive to do that when theres no one out in center, Semien said. That means you can get a hit out of it and a for-sure run. I knew what they were trying to get me to do. I thought it was an interesting choice.

The As have won three of their past four openers.

ALSO: More festivities, all-time greats on tap for A's Friday night 'opener'

One, its tough dealing with Opening Day, you want to make a good impression and there are some nerves, manager Bob Melvin said. Two, to wait that long makes it more excruciating.

Graveman gave up five runs in five-plus innings, including three homers. A sinkerballer, Graveman typically is stingy when it comes to giving up homers  except against the Angels. Albert Pujols knocked his fourth career homer off Graveman to give the Angels a 5-4 lead in the sixth; Kole Calhoun hit his second and Zack Cozart his first. The Angels 12 career homers off Graveman are double that of the next team on the list, Houston.

They bailed me out today, Graveman said of his teammates.

Davis, who hit 85 homers over his first two seasons with the As, crushed a three-run shot off starter Garrett Richards in the fifth, and Olson followed with a drive to right to tie the game 4-4.

Olson turned 24 on Thursday and played in his first opener, becoming the As seventh Opening Day first baseman in the past seven years. Hes likely to be there for a good long stretch: In limited time last season, Olson knocked balls out of the park at an impressive pace, with 7.88 at-bats per home run  the fourth fewest in major-league history among hitters with 200 or more plate appearances.

Davis, who batted .127 during spring training, tied it again in the seventh with a one-out single that sent in Semien from third. Davis three Opening Day home runs (he hit two last year) are tied for the most in Oakland history, along with Dave Henderson and Terry Steinbach.

Like Olson, Chad Pinder was on the Opening Day roster for the first time and it was his birthday, too.

Its obviously a very cool day for us, being our first Opening Day, Olson said. Its like a great celebration out here.

OPENING DAY: Barbecue and high hopes as A's fans flock to Opening Day

Its a pretty awesome birthday present, said Pinder, who turned 26. It could not be better.

Matt Chapman, part of the As young core with Olson and Pinder, was not celebrating a birthday, but he made his first appearance in an opener and turned in the best play of the day. Moved to shortstop in a shift in the second inning, Chapman raced a long way for a foul ball by Luis Valbuena, reaching over the tarp next to the stands to make the catch.

He was running like 60-70 yards for that ball, Melvin said. Youre dealing with the sun, too.  I think a lot of third basemen dont even go after that ball. Does it surprise us? No. Is it impressive? Absolutely.

Oaklands bullpen was outstanding, working six scoreless innings. The key inning came from Chris Hatcher, who faced Mike Trout with two on and two outs in the 10th and struck out the two-time MVP with a high fastball.

MORE: No sellout for Opening Day at Coliseum

We did some quality work, Hatcher said of the As relievers. It worked out the way I think we hoped it would.

Trout went 0-for-6 in a game for the first time in his career.
Getty Images

A naked man allegedly smashing out streetlights and hitting himself in the face died after going into medical distress Wednesday during an arrest by Sonoma County sheriffs deputies, police said.

Multiple 911 calls around 9:50 p.m. reported a man, identified as 44-year-old Roderic Bernard Cameron, destroying streetlights at the Oaks Mobile Home Park on Ramon Street in the city of Sonoma, said Lt. John Cregan, a spokesman for the Santa Rosa Police Department.
Posted Friday, March 30, 2018 6:00 am

The Helping Hand quilters had another busy week in Rader. On Mondays, they have one group busy tacking quilts and another at the quilt frame. Last Wednesday, there was another small group over in one corner learning how to crochet. There were 16 at the business meeting where Mary Stillwell received a birthday gift from her Secret Pal. The group was pleased to hear a letter from Bonnie Shinsato. She is a longtime member of the group who has moved out of state. I was the door prize winner, so it is my job to remember to bring a door prize for the next meeting. Midge Llwellyn was the hostess for this month. She made a delicious pork with gravy dish and bread pudding. Betty Stokes will be the hostess for April.

The club bake sale will be April 21 at the Morgan Store. If you want a particular pie, cake or cookie, you must order in advance. Call the Morgan Store and leave your name and special request.

Sunday evening was Seers teen movie night at Immanuel. Kids watched the movie Gods Not Dead 2! They devoured hot dogs and ice cream floats afterward. Kids ages 7 through 12 are welcome to join any Seers night at Immanuel.

This week, Lloyd and Pauline Hendrix celebrated their 68th wedding anniversary. What a milestone! Congratulations to them.

Last week, Kelsey Burns, Mary Stillwell and Wanda Deckard celebrated birthdays. This week, Dee Twyman, Jayson OQuinn, Blake Medlock and Rodney Terry will have birthdays.

On Saturday, there was a gathering of family and friends for lunch at Morgan, including Phil, Sally and Larry Timmerman and two other family members, Marjorie Welch, Bertha Terry and Leona Medlock and Justin, Kelsey and Jenson Burns. Some are local and others came from the St. Louis area. You just never know who you will meet and greet when you stop at the Morgan Store.

Saturday morning, Peggy Rader, Kathryn McGovern and I went to Redeemer Lutheran Church in Springfield for a Zone Board meeting and then to lunch at Jimmys Egg. On Sunday afternoon, Jim took Leona Medlock and me to a special fabric sale at JoAnns Fabric on Glenstone. We were able to pick up some items for the Quilting Club at a much-reduced cost.

The Red Hat Chattering Chicks will meet at 11:30 a.m. April 5 at A Taste of Andys, 1225 Mill Creek Road, Lebanon.

Dont forget to vote on April 3.

This is Holy Week for Christians all over the world. At Immanuel, there will be a Communion service at 7 p.m. Maundy Thursday and Good Friday service will also be at 7 p.m. Guests are always welcome. At 7 a.m. Sunday, we will celebrate the risen Lord with a worship service followed by breakfast. Then, depending on the weather, there will be an Easter egg hunt!

It has been a very busy week and I hope you were blessed. This coming week, prepare your heart and mind for a time of rejoicing in word and song on Easter Sunday.

May you be blessed.
Former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is in stable condition Friday after undergoing heart surgery in Los Angeles, his spokesman Daniel Ketchell told The Washington Post.

Schwarzenegger's first words after waking from the procedure were "I'm back," according to Ketchell.

"So he is in good spirits," he added.

Schwarzenegger, 70, underwent a planned procedure Thursday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center to replace a pulmonic valve that was originally replaced in 1997 for a congenital heart defect, Ketchell said in a statement.

"That 1997 replacement valve was never meant to be permanent, and has outlived its life expectancy, so he chose to replace it yesterday through a less-invasive catheter valve replacement," Ketchell said.

He noted that an open-heart surgery team was on hand during the procedure, but downplayed its seriousness.

"They frequently are in these circumstances, in case the catheter procedure was unable to be performed," Ketchell said. "Governor Schwarzenegger's pulmonic valve was successfully replaced."

Schwarzenegger is recovering from surgery and remains in stable condition, he added.

"That's the most important part," he said.

Schwarzenegger's condition was first reported by TMZ, which said the actor and former bodybuilding champion had undergone a "somewhat experimental" catheter valve replacement.

According to the celebrity news site, doctors decided to perform "emergency" open-heart surgery after Schwarzenegger developed complications.

Best known in the 1980s and '90s as a former "Mr. Universe" and for his roles in action movies like "Terminator" and "Total Recall," Schwarzenegger, a native of Austria, transitioned from Hollywood star to politician when he successfully ran for California governor as a Republican. From 2003 to 2011, he served two terms as governor and was nicknamed "The Governator."

Since then, he has mixed acting and politics. He was the host of the "New Celebrity Apprentice," on NBC. And over the past year, Schwarzenegger has emerged as a vocal opponent of President Donald Trump, publicly criticizing Trump's decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord and lambasting the president's equivocation after violence at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, killed a counterprotester.

He also was the host of the "New Celebrity Apprentice" on NBC, an iteration of the reality show that formerly starred Trump. (Instead of "You're fired," Schwarzenegger's tagline was "You're terminated.")

Schwarzenegger's TV gig and outspoken criticism of Trump made him a target of the president's insults on Twitter and elsewhere. At the National Prayer Breakfast last year, Trump asked for attendees to pray for Schwarzenegger's ratings.

In a video, Schwarzenegger responded to Trump's jabs with a proposal.

"Hey Donald, I have a great idea. Why don't we switch jobs," Schwarzenegger said. "You take over TV, because you're such an expert in ratings and I take over your job and then people can finally sleep comfortably again."
Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine

By Alan Lightman

Pantheon. 226 pp. $24.95

---

Science writers generally fall into one of two categories: Some of us are textbook authors trying to convince ourselves that we are storytellers, while others are journalists who aren't real scientists but like to play them on TV. Alan Lightman, however, is different. He is the poet laureate of science writers. His best-known book, "Einstein's Dreams," a lyrical novel putting us inside Albert Einstein's mind as he makes his great discovery, established him as the Picasso, the Schoenberg, the Gehry of science writing. He didn't just do it better - which he did; as a wordsmith Lightman stands alone among science writers - he did something with the genre no one imagined could be done. He created narrative poetry from relativity theory that was nothing short of magical. So, when a new work by Lightman emerges, the excitement is legitimate.

"Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine" is what we can call a grand unified intellectual narrative. Lightman points out that most physicists have a motivating belief in a final theory, a grand unified theory, a theory of everything. There must be, they hold, a single, elegant, ultimate law of nature from which the rules that govern all observable phenomena can be derived. Similarly, science writers long for a grand unified intellectual narrative, a discussion of everything, a single coherent conversation that will unite the great insights of physics, philosophy, religion, biology, art, neurology and sociology. This is Lightman's.

But to give an account of everything, you have to know what constitutes everything. As a physicist, Lightman felt secure that our best current theories tell us. Sure, there are the worries about dark matter and dark energy, but scientific methodology, which exposed these problems in the first place, will ultimately supply us with the answers.

Then he took his boat out to his summer home on Pole Island, Maine. It was a beautiful night, and Lightman cut the engine and lay down on the deck. Floating silently in the night, looking up at the stars, he felt himself transported out of his body, floating up among the heavenly lights, feeling a deep sensation of connectedness - not only Lightman with the stars, but of all things. It was a spiritual experience.

This epiphany was real. It was undeniable. But Lightman is a materialist. He does not believe in a nonmaterial soul, much less a supernatural God. How can one square the reality of the spiritual experience with the belief that the material world is all there is to reality? Can one have transcendence in a universe that cannot be transcended? How can a scientist, who buys the assumptions on which the scientific worldview is based, make sense of the religious impulse?

This is the question of the book. There are three different approaches to the spiritual. Philosophers label them religious rationalism, fideism and phenomenology. Rationalism is the view that we can demonstrate the likely or certain existence of God. Fideism holds that proof of God's existence is irrelevant as religion requires faith, not reason. Phenomenology contends that religion is not a matter of believing at all but of feeling. Spirituality is a result of lived experience, not abstract propositions.

Lightman tries all of these on in turn, reaching for the writings of great minds from a wide range of times, places and traditions. We are treated to discussions of Aristotle, Einstein, Tagore, Shakespeare, Augustine and Galileo. From Buddhist monks to Lightman's rabbi to physicist and atheist Steven Weinberg, no perspective is eliminated from being a possible source of insight and wisdom. Each is examined to see if it is possible to believe in both our best scientific theories and some sense of the spiritual.

The book comprises 20 short vignettes, each dedicated to a big idea - stars, truth, centeredness, death - weaving together expected and unexpected sources. The sections are short but thoughtful, allowing the reader to savor a piece at a time or to make a meal of the whole.

The approach is synthetic, not analytic. Distinctions and incompatibilities between perspectives are shown, but judgments are never rendered. In treating all viewpoints with the utmost respect, the book does, at points, feel like "Chicken Soup for the Materialist's Non-Existent Soul," but those moments are few, in a work of great range, sensitivity and thoughtfulness.

Lightman's preference emerges for the phenomenological. "For me, as both a scientist and a humanist, the transcendent experience is the most powerful evidence we have for a spiritual world. By this I mean the immediate and vital personal experience of being connected to something larger than ourselves, to feeling some unseen order or truth in the world." Even this, he worries, may be a step too far as it requires that consciousness be considered itself a real thing in the world. Would that mean "I" would have to be more than the neurochemical interactions occurring in my brain? Can a materialist take that step?

"Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine" demonstrates Lightman's ability to make the most abstract notions accessible to all. No background is needed in physics, philosophy, religion or any other field to fully understand every step of the wide-ranging intellectual trek. No matter who you are, you will emerge ready to be more impressive at your next dinner party.

Of course, a path that overlooks so many vistas will sacrifice depth for the sake of breadth. If you have a significant background in any of the areas discussed, you will recognize the complexity that could come from a narrower but deeper exploration of the topic. But if you want a book about black holes, Buddhism or the brain, there are plenty of those out there. This is a grand unified intellectual narrative.

"Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine" reads like you are sitting on a lichen-covered bench on Pole Island alongside one of our best minds, exploring the geographic features of the entire intellectual landscape. No matter your views on science and the transcendent, this engaging read will be as pleasant as a summer afternoon spent on an island in Maine with good company.

---

Gimbel is a professor of philosophy at Gettysburg College and the author of "Einstein: His Space and Times" and "Einstein's Jewish Science: Physics at the Intersection of Politics and Religion."
A Walk Through Paris: A Radical Exploration

By Eric Hazan. Translated by David Fernbach

Verso. 208 pp. $22.95

---

Eric Hazan's "A Walk Through Paris" is about, simply, a walk through Paris. But Paris being Paris, a walk through its streets is anything but simple - or ordinary. Here Hazan, who has spent his entire life in the City of Light, offers a perspective - "a radical exploration" - that is both personal and historical, drawing on his experiences as a student, surgeon, social critic and publisher of leftist books.

Hazan sets out from Ivry, in the southeast of the city, to Saint-Denis in north. As he travels, memories rise "to the surface street by street, even very distant fragments of the past on the border of forgetfulness." His journey sparks questions: For example, he wonders, why choose one route over another? At other moments, personal preferences lead him on more convoluted detours. Traversing the Ile de la Cite, he avoids the principal routes, as one would pass by the prefecture de police, "a sorry perspective," and the other would proceed through the rue d'Arcole, lined with tourist shops full of "I Love Paris" T-shirts - a scene that's "hardly more attractive."

Still, what emerges from this book is a profound affection for the city, often expressed in endearingly idiosyncratic terms. On the rue Hautefeuille, where Charles Baudelaire was born, Hazan observes a hanging turret on the corner of a small cul-de-sac. Dating from the 16th century, this conical trunk is made of a knot-work series in decreasing diameter, "each ring bearing a different decoration - a masterpiece of masonry." Hazan lists several other locations in the city where these turrets can be found, referring to the architectural structures as "friends of mine"; sometimes, he writes, he even makes a detour just for a chance to greet them.

The first part of the walk traverses the Left Bank, including the Latin Quarter, embedded in the international imagination of Paris as a center of intellectual life, full of arthouse cinemas, independent book shops and, in May 1968, civil unrest. Hazan, whose previous books include "A People's History of the French Revolution," finds this neighborhood sadly transformed. He writes of no longer feeling at home here, after high rents drove the working class away and boutique shops replaced many of the independent bookstores of the 6th arrondissement.

Most Parisians agree, however, that the pulse and energy of the contemporary city lie north of the river on the Right Bank. It's twice as populous and contains, as Hazan notes, "pockets of popular resistance that are slow and difficult to suppress." Walking from Chatalet in the center to La Chapelle in the north, Hazan seems pleasantly surprised to find that many neighborhoods remain working-class and multicultural. In this regard, Paris has fortunately seen nothing like the scale of gentrification and rent increases inflicted on cities like London and New York in recent decades. Here Hazan is interested in spaces of contradiction in the city center, where an imposing architectural grandeur exists in tension with the everyday lives of the people - where, he explains, there is a contrast "between the nobility of the stone and the quite plebeian activities."

Hazan's perspective is refreshing: Though he is an uncompromising critic of the destructive effects of gentrification, he also rejects the illusory comforts of nostalgia. To those who romanticize and wish for the return of the Trente Glorieuses, a period of postwar economic boom in France, Hazan argues that in fact the Gaullist years were "actually ones of conformity and boredom on the one hand, and of war and police brutality on the other."

A similar perspective guides his analysis of gentrification. Hazan reminds us of the ways Paris has always been a battleground of class conflict; he offers wide-ranging historical examples of the gutting of formerly working-class neighborhoods and emphasizes popular insurrections throughout the city's history. For Hazan, it is no coincidence that many of the areas of the city most resistant to gentrification are also areas with a strong revolutionary tradition.

Similarly, in the final pages, Hazan considers the historical continuities of other forms of oppression and resistance, elucidating the points of convergence between anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. In tracing a continuity of resistance and its presence within the contradictions of the contemporary city, Hazan makes a compelling argument that "the people have not lost the battle of Paris."

The walk is neatly bookended by visits to bookshops, beginning at the Envie de lire in Ivry and finishing at the Folies d'Encre at Saint-Denis. Both stores have essential roles in the life of their neighborhoods, beyond consumption of books: as meeting places, and social centers of discussion and political debate. This book similarly brings the solitary act of reading and the social experience of urban life into constant dialogue. Passages from Balzac, Baudelaire and Andre Breton come to mind at different street corners, verbal illuminations reflecting the ambience of a particular locale. In these enlightened pages, Hazan deftly guides the reader through a Paris where history and literature animate the lived experience of the present.

---

Brennan is a writer and academic based in Paris.
What seems like ages ago, Houston native Jennifer Garner talked to Vanity Fair in 2016 about Ben Affleck's back tattoo of a multicolored phoenix--at the time, they had had recently separated.

"You know what we would say in my hometown about that? 'Bless his heart,' " Garner told Vanity Fair. "Am I the ashes in this scenario? . . . I refuse to be the ashes."

Affleck denied it's existence, and insisted it was a fake tattoo for a movie.

Well as it turns out, the phoenix is very real.

Ever since Garner and Affleck split, there have been countless images of Affleck looking incredibly sad and those images were perfectly memeable.

Remember the interview for Batman vs Superman, where Affleck stared out into nothingness while his co-star Henry Cavill spoke. Here it is in case you forgot.

My personal favorite, is one of Affleck smoking a cigarette with a look of total exhaustion on his face. But there are so many, it is really hard to choose the best one.

Recently, a series of photos surfaced, showing Affleck, and his very real tattoo, on a beach in Honolulu, for his Netflix action movie "Triple Frontier." The image of him staring out into the ocean, hands behind his back, stomach pooched out, phoenix fully phoenixing, is just too perfectly sad.

The New Yorker ran a piece called "The Great Sadness of Ben Affleck" and the actor finally broke his silence on the whole back tattoo situation.

Affleck's tweet, much like the "Sad Affleck" photos, seemed to be made solely for the creation of more memes.

Browse through the photo above for some of the best tweets about "Sad Affleck" and his response to The New Yorker.
Teen accused of making false report

CLIFTON PARK  A Cohoes teenager was charged with falsely reporting an incident and making a punishable false written statement nine months after she reported a sexual assault to the Saratoga County Sheriff's Office.

The Sheriff's Office says the 15-year-old girl (they declined to release her name) gave a sworn deposition last July that a sexual assault had occurred in the town of Clifton Park.

During an investigation into her complaint, the Sheriff's Office says it found portions of her statement to be "outright false," and other portions to be "somewhat truthful but embellished."

She faces misdemeanor charges and was referred to the Saratoga County Probation Department.

Brothers arrested after alleged dispute

GREENFIELD  A pair of Greenfield brothers were arrested following a domestic dispute involving a hammer and a knife, the Saratoga County Sheriff's Office said.

Authorities say that 54-year-old Christopher Fetter stabbed his brother, 53-year-old Brian Fetter, in the arm with a knife after Brian threatened Christopher with a hammer. Brian was treated at Saratoga Hospital for minor injuries and discharged.

The elder Fetter was charged with second-degree assault, a felony. The younger was charged with second-degree menacing, a misdemeanor.

Both were arraigned before Judge Timothy Brown in Milton Town Court and released on the promise to return to Greenfield Court at a later date.

Arson charge follows fire at empty house

BERNE  A town resident accused of burning his house down in an apparent attempt to demolish the abandoned structure on March 11 allegedly told officers he thought that as long as he reported the flames it was legal, the state Department of Environmental Conservation said Wednesday.

The man, who was not identified, has been ticketed for unlawful open burning, the DEC said. Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple said no additional charges would be filed.

The Berne Fire Department, which battled the fire, called Environmental Conservation Officer Kimberly Garnsey to investigate.

When Garnsey spoke to the homeowner, he told her "he thought he could burn his house down as long as he reported it," the DEC said. Garnsey replied "that this is not the case and that he needed to get an excavator on scene to knock the house down so it could be extinguished," the agency said.

 Staff reports
Posted Friday, March 30, 2018 9:45 am

Editors note: The Mail sent out questionnaires to candidates running for office in several contested races in the April 3 election. The following are responses from candidates for the Rogersville Board of Aldermen received by deadline.

Rogersville Board of Aldermen - Ward 1 (4-year term)

Mark Hensley

Present occupation: I have dedicated my career to Healthcare Information Technology. We live in a very unique time where almost everything revolves around computers in some way, shape or form. I have spent more than five years working in various roles for software companies. I currently work as a Business Intelligence Analyst for Cerner Corporation based out of Kansas City. I am currently assigned to work in the ITWorks division at CoxHealth in Springfield.

My primary role is to gather requirements for complex challenges the hospital is facing and turn them into software solutions. When you consider the financial hits the healthcare industry has taken over the past several years, its more important now than ever to improve processes and work flows in order to reduce expenses.

Family: My wife and I moved to Rogersville just over six years ago. We have grown to love this community and plan to eventually have kids and raise them in Rogersville. I moved to Rogersville so I could serve as a volunteer firefighter/EMT for the Logan-Rogersville Fire Protection District. Being involved and giving back to our community means a lot to me.

Previous elected positions, if any: I was appointed by Mayor (Jack) Cole last April to serve as Alderman for the city of Rogersville. I believe serving on the Board of Alderman allows me to do what is right and be the voice of our citizens as our community moves forward. The city of Rogersville is in a position to see substantial growth in the next few years. Its more important now than ever to have continuity and leadership within our city.

Education: I graduated from Ozarks Technical Community College with an Associates of Applied Science degree. I have now served the Logan-Rogersville Fire Protection District as a firefighter/EMT for more than six years. My full-time career is in the Healthcare Information Technology industry. During this time, I have obtained critical knowledge and experience that I will use to help the city of Rogersville as we move forward. As our city grows, we will be required to adapt to change. With this will bring on complex challenges with technology. Having someone on the Board of Alderman with this experience will be necessary to ensure success.

Other qualifications: Missouri Division of Fire Safety Fire Fighter I, Missouri Division of Fire Safety Fire Fighter II, Emergency Medical Technician, Missouri Division of Fire Safety Fire Instructor I, Missouri Division of Fire Safety Officer I, Missouri Division of Fire Safety Hazardous Materials Awareness, Missouri Division of Fire Safety Hazardous Materials Operations, CEVO 3, Swift Water/Flood Rescue Awareness, Voluntary Residential Plans Examiner, Ignitable Liquids & Class B Foam, Emergency Medical Responder and multiple FEMA certifications.

Top 3 issues facing your city (300 words or less):

1. Promote new business and attract citizens to Rogersville

Rogersville is in a very unique position to have substantial growth over the next few years. I have a vision for the city of Rogersville to continue to work with developers and business owners in order to help promote success.

One of the most important things that prospective businesses look at is the number of homes or roof tops we have within the city limits. I believe its important to continue working with developers on building new homes in the city. Under Mayor Coles leadership along with the current Board of Alderman, we are already seeing a huge increase of new homes being built and businesses coming to town.

2. Park enhancements

Our park is a great place to get together and bond as a community. There are multiple events held throughout the year that bring thousands of people together for one cause. As our community continues to grow, its important that we keep up with one of the most important assets we have as a city.

3. Implementation of a new and more modern way to pay our city utility bill

We have several methods to pay our utility bill, however we dont find any of them very convenient. Many of the options charge a service fee. Id like to implement a portal that allows our bills to be paid in a more convenient way while avoiding service fees. I have a vision to implement a user-friendly portal that allows you to enter a credit/debit card. It would be ideal for the system to allow reoccurring payments directly from your bank account and send frequent email reminders when the bill is due. With my experience in information technology, I feel I possess the skills necessary to accomplish this goal.

Citys strengths/weaknesses (300 words or less):

While we all want to see Rogersville grow and succeed, we also want to make sure that we approach it the right way. Rogersville is very special in the fact that we are a very close community. I have never seen a community like we have where our citizens care so much. Having served many years, Ive had the privilege to see our citizens step up to the plate and volunteer their time to keep this community as nice as it is.

In my opinion, Rogersville has one of the best police departments around. Overall, Rogersville has a very low crime rate. As we move forward, its very important we grow our police department as the community grows. Making sure our citizens are safe is my top priority. With that said, we need to make sure we pay our police officers what they deserve. The city has made great effort to pay what we can when you consider our budget. As our city grows, there will be more tax revenue coming in. I will see to it that our police officers get raises and are taken care of. They put their lives on the line for us each and every day. The least we can do is compensate them for their hard work and dedication to our city.

I would appreciate your support this April 3.



Steve Kronberger

Present occupation: Currently retired, after 30 years of employment with United Parcel Service as a package car driver. I have been retired for almost eight years and this frees up my time to devote to this position.

Family: I have been married to my lovely wife for 14 years and we have a dog named Gretchen. Having foster children and a foreign exchange student for a short time was enlightening and rewarding.

Previous elected positions, if any: The two elected positions I held while at UPS were Union Shop Steward and Safety co-chair. Both were elected positions and were very demanding, and rewarding.

Education: Graduated from high school in 1975.

Other qualifications: While in high school, I received hands on training in business management from a restaurant owner. I helped him open up several successful locations. During my employment at UPS as a Union Steward, I functioned as a mediator for fellow workers. These mediations involved labor and contract disputes. I was also co-chairman on the Safety Committee. Through astute money management I was able to retire at the earliest allowed time at UPS. This attention to sound fiscal management is one of my strengths, as well as being a team member.

Top 3 issues facing your city (300 words or less):

 The slow growth rate is due to lack of businesses locating in our city. Now we are trying to play catch up. Grants and funding are available to get the infrastructure in place, which should entice businesses to locate/relocate in Rogersville, hopefully making homebuilding more available and accessible, which will also help foster new businesses.

 Making available some funds so that our city has more activities and places to hold those activities, so that kids have a place to go and interact with other kids. Setting aside land for future parks would also be beneficial.

 Maintaining our financial stability, but at the same time investing in our future.

Citys strengths/weaknesses (300 words or less):

Rogersville is currently going through growing pains and slower than normal growth. This is partly due to the fact that before the current administration, the city was in the red. The slow growth of businesses has drastically impacted home building, which in turn promotes business growth. On a positive note, the city is doing very well financially and has an excellent rating. We also have a great community that gets involved and wants to see things happen.



Rogersville Board of Aldermen - Ward 1 (1-year term)

Marjorie (Jorie) Gelz

Present occupation: Stay-at-home pilot

Family: Joshua, hubby of 10 years, four kiddos

Education: Commercial Pilots License, Spartan College of Aeronautics; Aviation Sciences Degree, Lewis University

Other qualifications: Leabrooke Homeowners Association Board of Directors, 2014-present; district manager for a small business in Kansas City, 2009-2011

Top 3 issues facing your city (300 words or less):

The top three issues facing Rogersville are cyclic. The top issue is that we need more retail business for Rogersville residents to shop at and to become a more self-sustaining community. We need and are looking for more. But the City also needs these businesses in order to bring in the sales tax revenues for needed infrastructure improvements. More businesses means more revenues from diverse sales so the current businesses wont have to support the City on their own with a high tax rate, which is what is happening now. Its win-win for business owners and citizens alike.

The second issue, also referenced above, is that the local sales tax rate is too high. What this high tax rate does is makes it difficult for local businesses to be competitive in their pricing compared to other businesses selling like products from other local communities. It creates an environment where people are more likely to shop elsewhere due to price differences. Not only do business owners here in Rogersville suffer but the City also suffers by not bringing in these essential revenues from those sales which are needed for infrastructure improvements and paychecks for the Fire and Police Departments, which necessitates the high tax rate to cover these expenses to begin with.

The third issue is infrastructure. Because we have been such a small community with few businesses for a long time, there are much needed infrastructure improvements citywide. As we bring in more business, we need to be able to provide the infrastructure for those businesses, like water, sewer, street improvements, sidewalks, lighting, etc. We also need to be able to accommodate the growth of residential developments. We cant grow if we can provide the necessities to grow.

Citys strengths/weaknesses (300 words or less):

Rogersville has schools that set a very high bar. People move out to this community just so their kids can attend school here. Rogersville has wonderful business owners who support every aspect of our community. We have residents that take part in the community and are fun and fun-loving. What we lack is the structure to bring all of these together.

With plans to add more business and more residential rooftops, we need to tailor our community into a community that grows together structurally, functionally and personally. Not only does this improve safety and reduce crime, it improves quality of life and enjoyment in the community. With strategic planning, we can add parks, recreation, a community center, a public pool, businesses for parents to host birthday parties, cool hangouts spots for teens that are also safe, a diner adults can frequent and say hi to people they know, and a facility for elderly folks to do what they do best: have fun. Life is all about community and family, whether your family actually related to you or your family are friends you consider the best of the best. We can be a community and not just a place to live. We just need to plan for it and actively work towards it.

With your vote, we have the opportunity to make our community grow beautifully. Lets make that happen.



Rogersville Board of Aldermen - Ward 2 (4-year term)

Seth R. Evans

Present occupation: Transportation Specialist at Youngblood Auto Group

Family: A beautiful wife and daughter, and a son on the way.

Previous elected positions, if any: Appointed as a Shop Steward with the UFCW Local 2 at Frenchs Food Company for five years.

Education: Graduated from Ava High School in 2012.

Other qualifications: I attribute my leadership skills, in part, to my time in school:

- I represented the Ava School District in the Leadership Academy my senior year.

- Treasurer of FBLA

- President of Student Council

A significant portion of my leadership experience outside of school comes from being an active member of union leadership with the UFCW.

Top 3 issues facing your city (300 words or less):

- Lack of business expansion; we need diverse business options to choose from. Theyre needed to generate additional revenue needed to keep the city growing.

- Parks and Recreation; outdated facilities and the lack thereof. We need something to occupy our citys youth and keep them active in a decent/safe environment.

- Updated infrastructure, we need to take steps to improve roads and city properties to make the city more appealing to businesses and future residents alike.

Citys strengths/weaknesses (300 words or less):

Stunted growth, were in a unique position to grow and need to take full advantage of this opportunity.

We have to come together better as a city to promote positive changes without losing touch of our small town roots.



Crystal Fore

Present occupation: Family Services

Family: Spouse, two kids

Previous elected positions, if any: None

Education: Masters in Education

Top 3 issues facing your city (300 words or less):

The city would benefit greatly from:

- increase in revenue

- family/youth activities

- increase of business

Citys strengths/weaknesses (300 words or less):

Strengths:

- close knit community

- good schools

- room for growth

Weaknesses:

See previous answer.
The Laredo Police Department responded Thursday to the dismissal of criminal charges against Priscilla La Gordiloca Villarreal, saying they respect the courts ruling.

On Wednesday, 111th District Court Judge Monica Zapata Notzon ruled that the Texas law that was used to charge Villarreal with two counts of misuse of official information, a felony, was vague and unconstitutional since it denied her due process.

The Laredo Police Department respects the judges decision in the misuse of information case, as well as the decision to move forward with the arrest as approved by the Webb County District Attorneys Office, the LPD statement reads. The Laredo Police Departments responsibility to the protection of a persons rights with regards to privacy, as it relates to sensitive information, remains an important cause for our department.

READ ALSO: 'La Gordiloca' speaks out after charges dismissed

LPD arrested Villarreal in December after she published on Facebook the name of a suicide victim and the name of a person who died in a car crash. Police said in the arrest affidavit that Villarreal benefited by receiving more Facebook followers after she published the names online before police released them publicly.

LPD said she received the information she published from one of their officers.

Investigator Joe E. Baeza, LPD spokesman, said the investigation into the officer, Barbara J. Goodman, is still ongoing and that she remains on administrative reassignment.

After the ruling was handed down Wednesday, Webb County District Attorney Isidro Chilo Alaniz said LPD needed to implement better policies to control the dissemination of sensitive information.

READ ALSO: 'She is back:' Social media reacts to 'La Gordiloca' court ruling

I think what this case highlights is the fact that one of (LPDs) own employees was giving out information, he said. So, the responsibility falls on LPD if they dont want information being released, then they should put a better control on their own employees releasing that information.

During Wednesdays hearing, Villarreals attorney, Joey Tellez, said LPD brought charges against Villarreal because they dislike her.

They went after her because they didnt like what she was saying, he said. They (will not) indict her. Theyre just sitting on the case because they wanted to punish her because they could.
Judge Stephen Reinhardt, a liberal stalwart on the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco who wrote the ruling that ultimately legalized same-sex marriage in California, died Thursday. He was 87.

Court spokesman David Madden said Reinhardt died suddenly during a medical appointment in his hometown f Los Angeles.

We have lost a wonderful colleague and friend, said Sidney Thomas, chief judge of the Ninth Circuit, which oversees federal courts in California and eight other Western states. As a judge, he was deeply principled, fiercely passionate about the law and fearless in his decisions. He will be remembered as one of the giants of the federal bench.

He may also have been the nations most-reversed judge, writing most of his important decisions while the Supreme Court has had a conservative majority. Among his rulings that the high court overturned were decisions that would have struck down Washington states ban on doctors providing aid in dying and a federal law prohibiting a type of midterm abortion that opponents labeled partial-birth abortion.

If you are really faithful to the law, youre likely to get reversed because (the Supreme Court) has cut back on rights, Reinhardt said in an interview published in 2011.

But one of his most important rulings withstood appeals: a decision in February 2012 that struck down Proposition 8, the ban on same-sex marriage that California voters had approved in November 2008. Rather than declare a constitutional right for gays and lesbians to wed their chosen partners, Reinhardt crafted a narrower decision, based on past Supreme Court rulings that said a state could not withdraw rights in order to harm a politically unpopular group. Same-sex couples had briefly been allowed to marry in California, based on a state Supreme Court ruling that was repealed by Prop. 8.

The people may not employ the initiative power to single out a disfavored group for unequal treatment and strip them, without a legitimate justification, of a right as important as the right to marry, Reinhardt wrote for a 2-1 majority.

The high court reached the same conclusion in 2013 on even narrower grounds, declaring that after Gov. Jerry Brown and the state attorney generals office refused to defend Prop. 8, the measures private sponsors had no right to represent the public and appeal a federal judges ruling that declared the measure unconstitutional. Two years later, the court issued a broad ruling legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide.

Reinhardt also wrote a ruling that barred lawyers from removing prospective jurors because of their sexual orientation, a ban that already had applied to categories such as race and religion.

Hector Villagra, executive director of the ACLU Foundation of Southern California and a former clerk of Reinhardts, called the judge a great legal mind and writer.

He worked seven days a week, completely committed to doing justice, Villagra said.

Reinhardt grew up in Los Angeles and attended Pomona College and Yale Law School. After graduation, he served in the Air Force as an attorney, then practiced law privately, mostly at a firm that specialized in labor law. He also served on the U.S. Civil Rights Commission and was a member of the Democratic National Committee before President Jimmy Carter appointed him to the appeals court in 1980.

It was one of a series of Carter appointments that transformed the Ninth Circuit into perhaps the nations most liberal federal appeals court, with Reinhardt one of its leaders.

A prototype Reinhardt opinion was the March 2016 ruling that briefly struck down a federal law that barred unauthorized immigrants from challenging their deportation if they were habitual drunkards. Alcoholism, Reinhardt said, is an illness, not a moral defect.

Like any other medical condition, alcoholism is undeserving of punishment, he wrote for a 2-1 majority. We are well past the point where it is rational to link a persons medical disability with his character.

But the full appeals court granted a rehearing to the government, and a larger panel of the court upheld the law, which the Supreme Court recently declined to review.

Reinhardt is survived by his wife, Ramona Ripston, former executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. Backers of Prop. 8 tried to remove him from their case because of the ACLUs support of same-sex marriage, but Reinhardt refused, noting that Ripstons organization was not a party to the case and that spouses are individuals with their own independent views.

He is also survived by his adult children: Mark, a professor of political science at Williams College, Justin, a professional musician and Dana, a novelist.

The family suggests that donations in Reinhardt's honor may be made to the ACLU.
Florida police arrested a woman who they believe had a baby with her brother.

Pauline Martin admitted to being in a romantic sexual relationship with her brother for five years before giving birth to a baby together in November 2017, a police report by the Lake County Sheriff's Office detailed.
March 26 marked the start of an expansion to the Health Center of Southeast Texas facility located at 307 N. William Barnett Ave. in Cleveland.

At a ground-breaking ceremony held directly adjacent to the current clinic, HCSET Executive Director Steve Racciato, Dr. Jasmine Sulaiman and others involved with the clinic celebrated the clinic's expansion of an additional 17,000 square feet.

"What we are going to add is an acute care clinic," said Sulaiman. "It will be like a walk-in clinic."

The new building also will be used for administrative personnel. HCSET also plans to add another physician on staff in August.

HCSET has served the local citizens of Cleveland in its current facility for more than five years. Three years ago, the staff realized the facility was too small to meet the community's growing needs.

"We needed to expand the facility," said Racciato. "We've grown much faster than we ever thought we were going to. The demand is here. The area is growing."

According to Racciato, funding for the project comes from the federal government through grants. The contractor is Stonewell Constructors.

Once the new building is complete, HCSET's current building will be used for behavioral health, telepsychiatry and same-day appointments.

The expansion will allow HCSET to also serve a variety of needs such as health counseling, substance abuse counseling and ultrasounds.

Telepsychiatry involves giving psychiatric assessment and care through video-conferencing as it specifically applies to the field of psychiatry.

The project is also expected to help the Health Center of Southeast Texas handle case management by helping to store documents for its individual patients.

The expansion is expected to be finished by the end of 2018.

For more information on the Health Center of Southeast Texas and its facilities, visit www.hcset.com or call the facility in Cleveland at 281-592-2224.
Sacramento police officers shot Stephon Clark eight times, and six of the bullets struck him from behind, said a pathologist hired by Clarks family to conduct an autopsy on the African American man whose death while unarmed in his grandmothers backyard has ignited two weeks of protests.

Ben Crump, an attorney who represents the family, said at a news conference Friday that the findings of the independent autopsy by Dr. Bennet Omalu refutes police accounts that Clark was advancing on officers when they opened fire. A front-to-back leg wound, the pathologist found, was sustained only as Clark was falling.

We believe the truth is a crucial step into getting justice, Crump said. You will see the findings of (Omalus) autopsy contradict many of the narratives that the Sacramento police put forward.

Clark, 22, was standing in his grandmothers backyard the night of March 18 when two officers came upon him and fired their weapons a total of 20 times. Of the eight gunshot wounds Clark sustained, six of them hit him in the back, Omalu said.

The shooting unfolded after police responded to reports that a person was smashing car windows in South Sacramento shortly after 9 p.m., authorities said.

An infrared camera on a patrol helicopter spotted Clark hopping a fence into his grandparents backyard. Officers went down the driveway to the backyard, where Clark stood on the other side. The officers turned the corner, yelled that Clark had a gun and immediately opened fire.

In the moments before the shooting, police said, Clark was holding an object in his hand that officers believed was a gun. Only his cell phone was found at the scene.

The pathologist gave detailed accounts of the location of each gunshot wound. One bullet hit Clark in the back of the neck. Another, passing through his right arm, completely lacerated (it) and destroyed all the major vessels, Omalu said.

A third passed close to the spinal cord, while the fourth and fifth perforated his chest cavity and lungs, initiating major bleeding. A sixth fractured vertebrae and caused a focal spinal cord injury, and the seventh perforated his chest cavity and lungs.

Each one of these bullets independently possessed a fatal capacity, Omalu said, meaning that any of the seven shots would have killed Clark.

The eighth gunshot wound, an injury located in the front, came from a bullet that hit Clarks lower anterior thigh on the left side, Omalu said.

He estimated it took three to 10 minutes for Clark to die.

Omalu has performed more than 8,000 autopsies, more than 4,000 of which involved gunshot wounds, said Brian Panish, an attorney representing Clarks children.

Cases are decided on the facts, Panish said. What we are digging into are the facts and the evidence in this case. We want to get away from rhetoric and talk and get to the facts and get a full and complete determination of what happened and why it happened.

The shooting has prompted a series of protests in Californias capital, as activists that include members of Black Lives Matter Sacramento have shut down roadways and blocked people from entering Sacramento Kings games.

More protests were expected at Sacramento City Hall after the release of the independent autopsy Friday.

Omalu, a famed forensic pathologist who was portrayed by Will Smith in the film Concussion, released his findings a day after Clarks funeral, which drew hundreds of mourners to Bayside of South Sacramento Church and ended with protesters peacefully marching down city streets.

Clarks family members, friends and activists have called on Sacramento District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert to indict the officers involved in the shooting.

The state Justice Department joined the Sacramento police investigation into Clarks death this week and will review practices in the department, including when to engage in a foot pursuit and policies regarding muting body cameras, Attorney General Xavier Becerra announced.

Shortly after the shooting, the officers who killed Clark muted their microphones on body-camera footage released by the department, prompting the Sacramento branch of the NAACP to ask for the review of body camera policies.

Sacramento police issued a statement Friday noting that it would be inappropriate to comment until the county coroners office releases its report and the investigation into the shooting is complete.

We acknowledge the importance of this case to all in our community, and we are committed to a thorough and comprehensive investigation, police said.
Posted Friday, March 30, 2018 4:00 am

Voters will have two questions on the April 3 ballot regarding the Marshfield R-I School Districts bond issue and operating tax levy.

BOND ISSUE

The bond issue would allow Marshfield R-I to borrow $8 million for the purpose of constructing, renovating and improving school facilities. For the bond to pass, it would need a 4/7 majority for approval (57.1 percent). According to Marshfield R-I superintendent David Steward, the schools current debt service levy on property taxes is 60 cents per $100 assessed valuation. Based on the current debt, the school district does not have to raise that 60-cent rate, so residents will not see a difference in their tax bill from a debt service levy standpoint, other than when assessed valuation of their property changes.

With the $8 million bond, the school district would concentrate on roofing, heating and air conditioning systems and paving. As a school district, Marshfield has 300,000 square feet of roof that is due for replacement and it is beyond its end of life, according to Steward. The cost to replace that 300,000 square feet of roofing is $4.8 million.

The roofs that need to be replaced are everything at the high school except the latest addition, everything at Shook Elementary except for the latest addition  which are each like four to six classrooms  and the auxiliary gym, so it is a very small amount, said Steward. At the Marshfield Junior High School, we did the front section last summer, so everything else at the junior high needs to be done and the third-grade wing at Webster Elementary School.

Another project is the heating and air conditioning systems. Over the past three years, the school has replaced 40 heating and air conditioning units with new ones, but it still has 300 units in the district that are beyond manufacturers recommended end of life. The cost for replacement on the heating and air conditioning units is about $2.5 million. If the bond issue passes, the school will replace some of the air conditioning units this summer, Steward said.

Paving would also be covered under the bond issue, including the lower high school parking lot. According to Steward, the lower high school parking lot is going through crumbling and asphalt breaking apart because of water underneath it, due to an underground spring located there. All of the paving costs across the district are estimated to run in the amount of $650,000.

We need to have a paving company expert come back in and repair it, said Steward. The asphalt is not a permanent fix. Asphalt deteriorates over time, so this would be a fix that would last us the next 10 to 15 years. That would be our target.

TAX LEVY PROPOSAL

While the bond issue focuses on facility improvements, the operating tax levy addresses Marshfield R-Is school programs, students and faculty. The tax increase, if approved by voters, would allow Marshfield R-I School District to provide more career preparation opportunities for students in non-college-bound careers at Ozarks Technical Community College (OTC) and improve recruitment/retention of both classified and certified (non-administrative) employees.

1.) Career preparation

In 2011-12, the Marshfield School District cut the budget and stopped sending students to OTC for career and technical training. It cost the district about $60,000 to send 20 students to OTC during the 2011-12 year, according to Steward. To send 40-50 students to OTC, it would cost around $150,000 to $200,000 annually, he added.

Marshfield High School has been trying to provide some of the vocational training for students through PRO Start classes, build and trades classes, and business courses, said Steward. However, it is lacking in areas OTC offers, such as automotive technology, auto body repair and HVAC repair. There are needs in our community for folks to fill roles in those areas. We have kids who are interested in those and we need to be preparing them as a school district, so when they walk out of school their senior year and if they have that opportunity, they could walk into a well paying job, support their family and support the community as well.

If the tax levy passes, the school district will send students to OTC, starting fall 2019.

2.) Recruitment and retention of employees

Another challenge the operating tax levy would address is recruiting and retaining classified employees (cooks, custodians, paraprofessionals) and certified (non-administrative) employees, such as teachers, librarians and counselors. According to Steward, the number of applications for open positions at Marshfield R-I is declining, due to the fact that people can go to other areas and make significantly more per hour. In addition to that, non-administrative salaries for teachers at Marshfield R-I have began to fall behind.

If you look back historically at our begin teacher salary, I compared us to eight districts, including Bolivar, Buffalo, Logan-Rogersville, Ozark, Republic, Willard, Strafford and Fair Grove, said Steward. Ten years ago, there was only a $2,000 gap between second place and us and eighth-place on beginning teacher salary. Ten years later, we are last place out of that group of nine on beginning teacher salary and there is a $5,000 gap for those that are first, second and third. So it creates a problem for us in recruiting teachers, because they can make more money and not have to worry about the drive to most of those other locations.

Steward explained a few factors that play into why Marshfield is lagging behind other school districts in teacher salary competitiveness. One of those reasons is state funding increases are just enough for the school district to fund steps ($225,000) and insurance increases ($220,000). Another reason is Marshfield R-Is current minimum operating levy of $2.75, which generates about $1,870 per student locally, according to Steward. The biggest reason is the shortfall in transportation revenue. In the early '90s, the Missouri legislature passed a statute to reimburse districts 75 percent of their transportation costs on an annual basis. Steward explained to help balance the state budget, legislators and governors have made decisions in the past to cut the transportation fund. Those cuts have hit Marshfield hard as a school district because it spends so much on transportation. He added Marshfield R-I transports roughly 2,100 students from school to home every day.

Over the last 17 years, that cut is growing and the early 2000s, instead of getting 75 percent, it might of been 65, said Steward. That has ballooned now to where instead of getting 75 percent, we are getting 17 percent reimbursement per year. That creates a huge deficit, so over 17 years that deficit has been $10.25 million when you take that 17 years combined. That is $10.25 million the school district has spent from local dollars to get kids to and from school because we have to do that. We have to provide that quality service to students.

If approved, the operating tax levy will increase by 49 cents from $2.75 currently to $3.24 per $100 of assessed valuation. The 49-cent increase would cost each taxpayer approximately $93 per year, based on a $100,000 home. The amount of revenue it would generate to the district would be $965,000 per year, based on current assessed valuation. A simple majority is required for approval.
The carefully maintained secrecy around President Donald Trump's finances is under unprecedented assault a year into his presidency, with three different legal teams with different agendas trying to pry open the Trump Organization's books.

One one side is special counsel Robert Mueller, who has subpoenaed Trump Organization documents as part of his wide-ranging investigation into the 2016 campaign. On another is Stormy Daniels, the adult-film actress seeking internal correspondence as part of her effort to be freed from a nondisclosure agreement centering on an alleged affair with Trump.

And in the most direct assault, the District of Columbia and Maryland have sued Trump, alleging that he is improperly accepting gifts, or "emoluments," from foreign or state governments through his businesses, including his hotels. A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the case can proceed, opening the way for the plaintiffs to seek at least a portion of Trump's tax returns, which the president has refused to release.

"I think under pretty much any reading of the judge's order, we can get discovery of his personal financial information in that it relates to payments from foreign and domestic governments," Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh said. He and D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine also plan to seek other documents related to the president's D.C. hotel.

The inquiries are exposing the risks Trump took on when he made the decision to maintain ownership of the company that bears his name while serving in the White House - a departure from 40 years of presidential tradition and the advice of ethics officials.

Previous presidents have chosen to fully divest their assets. When Trump took office, he instead put his stake in his company into a trust managed by his sons, accessible to him at any time.

Now, what initially seemed like a plum arrangement for Trump - enjoying the fruits of his business while running the country - may come back to harm the Trump Organization if it is forced to reveal the kind of financial information and private correspondence that real estate firms closely guard.

During the campaign, Trump played on his reputation as a successful businessman, boasting of his real estate projects while refusing to disclose financial information that might have corroborated that image. He deflected calls to release his tax returns, a disclosure every president has made since the 1970s.

Since taking over the business, his grown sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, have at times remarked that one of the benefits of running a private company is the ability to avoid the scrutiny and pressure faced by publicly held firms.

"We're not a public company," Eric Trump told The Washington Post shortly after taking over, a fact he has reiterated since. "If we want to add 20 properties to our portfolio in one year we can do that; if we want to add zero to the portfolio in a given year, we can do that."

Company officials argue it would have been impractical to untangle and sell all of Trump's real estate holdings, and that doing so might have created additional conflicts of interest.

No private real estate developer wants its plans, financial information and partnerships thrust into open view, as they amount to proprietary information. But that is exactly what could be at stake for Trump.

Since last year, the company has received subpoenas as well as informal requests from investigators with Mueller's office seeking documents related to Trump's past business activities in Russia, according to several people familiar with document subpoenas and witness interviews.

The requests are broad, according to the sources, including information regarding the company's plans for a Trump-branded property in Moscow and communications with Felix Sater, Trump's partner on Trump SoHo in New York, which has since left the Trump chain.

Alan Futerfas, a New York attorney representing the Trump Organization, said that the subpoenas are "old news" and that the company's "assistance and cooperation with the various investigations remains the same today."

Whether Trump had an extramarital affair with Daniels a decade ago - something she alleges and he denies - her lawsuit is bringing scrutiny to the company as well.

Daniels received $130,000 from Trump's personal attorney, Michael Cohen, as part of an agreement to keep silent about her alleged relationship with Trump more than a decade ago. Cohen used his company email account in negotiations, and on Sunday's "60 Minutes" show, Daniels's lawyer, Michael Avenatti, said the agreement was mailed to Cohen at his Trump Organization address.

Avenatti argues that the Trump Organization has "unmistakable links" to the case. He has sought depositions of Trump and Cohen and made up to 10 requests for documents, though a judge deemed the requests premature.

Previously, Avenatti sent a document-preservation letter to the company, asking it to preserve any paperwork and other records regarding Daniels.

Other current or former Trump Organization employees, including attorney Jill Martin and former Trump bodyguard Keith Schiller, could come under scrutiny for their alleged roles in facilitating meetings with Daniels or covering them up.

In a statement provided to The Post by Cohen, the company has said it "has had no involvement in the matter."

The attorneys general's suit is potentially the most consequential, with this week's ruling setting the stage for the plaintiffs to possibly seek private documents related to the Trump International Hotel in Washington - a property Trump once used as a backdrop for a campaign event featuring hundreds of hotel staff.

One possible outcome of the case, Racine said, is that Trump could be forced to "divest from any financial interest he has in the hotel."

Some law professors following the case said that significant impediments remain for the plaintiffs. But they have likely cleared their biggest hurdle toward requiring the company to produce records related to the hotel as part of the legal process known as discovery. Some of the records may be made available to the public, some may not.

"We will be able to get broad discovery in regards to the Trump hotel's business and the sources of that business," Racine said.

The Justice Department, which is defending Trump in the case, maintains that the case should be dismissed and has not said whether it will appeal the judge's decision.

The company issued a statement saying that "the court has yet to rule on several additional arguments, which we believe should result in a complete dismissal."

People who have sued the Trump Organization in the past said it has been unusually fierce in fighting document requests. "We got, in five years of litigation, what should have been done in less than a year," said Daniel King. An attorney, he represented clients from a planned Trump development in Mexico who sued after the project failed and their deposits were lost.

In 2006, Trump sued reporter Tim O'Brien for defamation after O'Brien reported that Trump's net worth was far less than the billions he had claimed. As part of the litigation, O'Brien sought internal Trump documents - including the businessman's tax returns - in an effort to establish Trump's actual assets and income.

"The first time that they gave us the tax returns back, it looked like a crossword puzzle, because so much had been redacted," O'Brien said. In one case, he said, "the only line item that was showing was [Trump's wife] Melania's modeling income, which we had no interest in knowing about."

The case was ultimately dismissed, and O'Brien did not get the information he sought.

"Trump's problem from the beginning has been a willingness to mix business with governance, and not to make a sharp distinction between the two," said George Brown, a law professor at Boston College. "Well, it's conceivable that this lawsuit, if it proceeds down a certain path, will force him to rethink that."

- - -

The Post's Frances Stead Sellers, Tom Hamburger and Emma Brown contributed to this report.
Gloria Allred, the prominent women's rights attorney who represented former "Apprentice" contestant Summer Zervos in her high-profile defamation suit against President Donald Trump,is withdrawing from the case.

In a statement Friday, Zervos said it was her decision to end the legal relationship."I decided to part ways with Gloria Allred purely for personal reasons," she said, "having nothing to do with her work as my attorney."

Mariann Meier Wang, Allred's New York-based co-counsel, will continue to represent Zervos.

The shake-up is the latest twist in a saga that Zervos said began in 2007, when she alleges Trump groped her at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

Trump called Zervos and his other accusers "liars," and in January 2017 Zervos filed a defamation suit against him. She retained the services of Allred, who now represents other women with cases against Trump.

Allred issued a statement Thursday to the Associated Press saying her withdrawal has "nothing to do with the merits of her case against President Trump." She declined to comment further to The Washington Post, writing only in an email that she continues "to represent 3 other Trump accusers including Jessica Drake," a porn star who accused Trump of sexual misconduct.

Zervos was one of several women to come forward with allegations in the run-up to the 2016 election.

Trump has denied Zervos's account. "To be clear, I never met her at a hotel or greeted her inappropriately a decade ago," he said after she made her accusation.

The president's lawyers attempted to dismiss or stay the case, arguing among other things that a state court does not have jurisdiction over a sitting president. Wang made oral arguments on Zervos' behalf in a Manhattan courtroom in December. Last week, New York Supreme Court Judge Jennifer Schecter ruled that the case could proceed, writing "No one is above the law."

Zervos's accusations came to light in a news conference with Allred in October 2016 that surprised some people who knew Zervos well and said she had long been a fan of Trump.

"I feel like she considered him a mentor, possibly a friend," said Amanda Hesser, who worked at Zervos' family restaurant in Huntington Beach, California.
A Maryland man who collected cash payments from a foreign company to plot an ISIS attack in the United States and help the group develop weaponized drones was sentenced Friday to 20 years in prison.

Mohamed Elshinawy, 33, of Edgewood, pleaded guilty to supporting ISIS, terrorism financing and making false statements in connection with a terrorism matter, according to a statement from the U.S. attorney's office in Maryland.

Between February and December of 2015, Elshinawy conspired with others to support ISIS and provide the terrorist group with financial services, material support and other resources, the government said.

"In various other conversations, Elshinawy pledged his allegiance to ISIS, described himself as its soldier, committed to making violent jihad, and asked that others convey his message of loyalty to ISIS leadership," the statement from federal prosecutors said.

A company based in the United Kingdom also transmitted about $8,700 to Elshinawy to pay for a terrorist attack on U.S. soil, according to his plea agreement.

The owner of the company was a person from Bangladesh who went to Syria to help ISIS develop weaponized drone technology, according to Elshinawy's plea agreement. The company also sent money to Elshinawy to buy drone technology and parts to ship to ISIS members in Turkey and Syria, he admitted in his plea.

When FBI agents confronted him in July 2015, he told authorities that he was planning to use the money to defraud ISIS and concealed his involvement with the designated terrorist organization, prosecutors said.

Elshinawy, a U.S. national of Egyptian descent, had also tried to recruit his brother to join ISIS, his plea agreement stated. Elshinawy deleted his social media messages with the U.K. business owner and with his brother. He also told his brother to warn the business owner that he had been "revealed and uncovered."

An attorney for Elshinawy could not be immediately reached for comment.
Members of the Alaska House of Representatives recently passed a resolution asking the federal government not to crackdown or interfere in any way with states that have legalized marijuana of which, of course, Alaska is one. Voters there have approved cannabis for medical and recreational use. A total of 30 states have legalized medical marijuana, while eight have done so for recreational use.

The House passed the resolution unanimously. Gov. Berta Gardner also has voiced opposition to U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions recension of Obama-era policies that protected states with legal marijuana operations from federal government interference.

States that have legalized marijuana are embolden to defy the federal government by the Constitution's Tenth Amendment, which declares states have authority over any matter that the Constitution has not specified is a matter for the federal government. That amendment, the last of the Bill of Rights, is central to the debate over whether state's can make marijuana legal if federal law declares it illegal.

Public discourse on marijuana legalization at the federal level has only seriously considered the options of Congress making it legal or, conversely, empowering some sort of crackdown. But some are now arguing for a more streamlined approach: simply have the federal government get out of the issue entirely. Its a notion that has brought together people on both sides of the political fence.

Related: How the Drummer of Blues Traveler Created a Unique Experience for His Cannabis Customers

Tenth Amendment

A good place to start in understanding cannabis legalization is by reading the Constitution, which you can do right here. Its not all that long. The Tenth Amendment is simple but sweeping, stating: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

In the build up to the Civil War, southern states argued the federal government had no authority to tell them to end slavery. The same argument was used by southern states to defend segregation during the Civil Rights Era, but states rights factor into issues as diverse as same sex marriage and speed limits. A good example of the Tenth Amendment dividing powers between the states and federal government is the legal drinking age. The federal government, for public safety reasons, will withhold some federal highway funds from states that set their drinking age younger than 21 but Congress has never tried to pass a law setting the drinking age nationally at 21.

In short, not all power is centralized in the federal government. The Tenth Amendment has empowered states to launch marijuana programs even if it remains illegal at the federal level.

Related: Trouble In Arkansas: Judge Throws Out Medical Marijuana Licenses

Just let it go.

In The Atlantic earlier this year, writer Conor Friedersdorf argued that marijuana regulation should be left completely to the states. The federal government, he argued, should just let the issue go.

Cannabis has reversed the usual states rights debate. As noted by Friedersdorf, typically it is conservatives who argue for states rights. But with cannabis, it has been progressives who have argued the matter is rightfully for states to decide. They contend Congress should remove marijuana from Schedule 1 of the Controlled Substance Act and let states to regulate marijuana. Interestingly, that argument appeals to people on both sides of the political fence.

In the National Review, editor Charles C.W. Cooke wrote, If Colorado or Oregon want to legalize weed while Mississippi and Utah ban it, thats fine. In fact, that is how the country is supposed to work. The U.S., he wrote, is a collection of states and not a giant centralized democracy with fifty regional departments.

Whether this notion wins out remains to be seen. And whether Congress legalizes marijuana nationally, enforces current federal law or turns the matter over to the states, its becoming increasingly clear that at some point it will have to do something when it comes to legal pot.

Follow dispensaries.com on Instagram to stay up to date on the latest cannabis news.

Related:

Investing In Marijuana Businesses: Are Hedge Funds Coming To The Cannabis Industry?

The Debate Over Legal Marijuana Is Also a Debate About States' Rights

How the Drummer of Blues Traveler Created a Unique Experience for His Cannabis Customers



Copyright 2018 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved



This article originally appeared on entrepreneur.com


Posted Friday, March 30, 2018 5:30 am

From 1-3 p.m. this Saturday, March 31, at Marshfield United Methodist Church, an education and fundraising event will be hosted by Marshfield High School senior Josie Kerns for her Senior Project. The event will include a talk by Dr. Jodi Flynn.

This disease is very close to my family, said Kerns. My dad was diagnosed with it, and ever since that time, my familys life has been impacted. I knew right away what my Senior Project would be. I want to help raise money for the education and awareness of this disease.

There is no admission charge, but donations will be accepted, with all proceeds going to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.
An American service member was killed Thursday by an improvised explosive device in Syria, a U.S. military official confirmed, marking the second American killed in action there since the United States began backing local forces in a conflict President Donald Trump has vowed to leave.

The attack occurred during an operation against the Islamic State that also left a British service member dead, underscoring the risks the U.S.-led coalition faces across northern and central Syria as it transitions from fighting the militant group to stabilizing areas the group left behind.

The Pentagon declined to release the nationalities and identities of the two service members killed, pending notification to next of kin, but a U.S. military official confirmed that one was American. Britain's Ministry of Defense said one of its military personnel was killed in Syria in an operation against the Islamic State. Five others were injured.

The deaths occurred about two hours after Trump promised in a speech in Ohio to withdraw the roughly 2,000 U.S. troops in Syria "very soon" and "let the other people take care of it."

The president has been agitating for the removal of U.S. troops from Syria, saying it makes little sense for the United States to have so many forces in the country if it has all but won the war against the Islamic State.

A senior administration official said Trump has requested pullout plans and has had conversations with Chief of Staff John Kelly and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis about the matter, in which they have offered reassurances that the United States will not have to stay in the country forever.

The president's advisers have convinced him to stay for now to prevent the Islamic State from reemerging and to lay the groundwork for a potential peace agreement that would be beneficial to the United States, according to people familiar with the discussions, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive military discussions. Still, with the help of Russia and Iran, Syrian government forces have been gaining the upper hand in the broader civil war, reducing the likelihood of any such agreement.

Officials had not planned for Trump's announcement at the rally in Ohio, and it was not clear what prompted him to include the matter in a speech about infrastructure. One administration official described it as "premature" and said it could be a year or longer before such a move happens. Trump was briefed on the death of soldiers after the rally, an administration official said.

The discussions come as the U.S. military faces a crossroad in Syria. The Kurdish-dominated militia that U.S. forces have been supporting has rolled back nearly all of the territory once occupied by Islamic State, helping Washington achieve its primary mission on the ground. The militants are regrouping in a final pocket of eastern Syria.

Now the militia, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), is trying to prevent the Islamic State from reemerging on the territory as it contends with two more powerful enemies: Turkish troops who view the SDF as a terrorist group, and Syrian government forces backed by Russia and Iran and eyeing its territory for themselves.

The situation is in part the result of a trade-off the U.S. military made when the Obama administration intervened in Syria and Iraq to destroy the Islamic State through a campaign designed to put local proxy forces in the lead rather than American troops.

The strategy succeeded in limiting U.S. costs and military fatalities, key goals of the Obama administration. While more than 33 American service members were killed in action per month on average over the course of the Iraq War from 2003 to 2011, the intervention against the Islamic State has resulted in about one death every three months since it began in 2014. The costs of the operation also have paled in comparison to the years-long U.S. occupation in Iraq.

The strategy of empowering local forces, however, largely ignored tensions that would inevitably arise in the aftermath between those forces and their enemies, a problem the Trump administration has now inherited.

Thursday's attack appeared to have taken place in the northern city of Manbij, a former Islamic State stronghold that has become a critical flash point between Turkey and the Kurdish-dominated militia that the United States is backing in Syria. While mutually antagonistic, both are key allies of the United States and now at odds in northern Syria.

In an attempt to calm those tensions, U.S. forces conduct routine patrols in the area. The U.S. military has been holding talks in an attempt to broker an arrangement in the city agreeable to both sides.

- - -

Loveluck reported from Beirut. The Washington Post's Dan Lamothe in Kabul and Liz Sly in Beirut contributed to this report.
Midland County Sheriffs Office

A Midland man was sentenced to 90 years in prison on Thursday after a Midland County jury found him guilty of aggravated sexual assault of a child, indecency with a child by contact and indecency with a child by exposure.

Joe Angel Mendoza faced five total counts related to offenses that were alleged to have occurred in June 2016. The assaults, according to the Midland County District Attorneys Office, were committed against two females (who are not related to him) under the age of 14. The jury found Mendoza guilty after three hours of deliberation.

Judge Robin Malone Darr, of the 385th District Court, subsequently assessed his punishment at 60 years confinement, 20 years confinement and 10 years confinement in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. The sentenced are to run consecutively; therefore, Mendozas sentence is 90 years of confinement.
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Editor's Note: Austin police provided to the media an incorrect mugshot of Daniel Hernandez, which was previously included with this story. We have removed the incorrect mugshot and updated the story.

Federal authorities say a mechanic's shop in Austin was a front for a drug ring that distributed cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin to multiple states.

An investigation involving the DEA, FBI and Texas police agencies led to the arrest of 18 people accused of being involved in the suspected drug ring, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. The arrests were made on Wednesday.

BUSTED: Arrests during 2018 spring break on Bolivar Peninsula

The department said Luis Villagrana and Carlos Garcia-Duark were the leaders of the distribution cells out of Austin. They're accused of using the mechanic's shop to "unload, distribute, and ship drugs to sales and distribution points in Texas, Oklahoma, Georgia, Minnesota, Arkansas, Tennessee and Mississippi."

Authorities say they seized 148 pounds of crystal methamphetamine, approximately 65 gallons of liquid methamphetamine, 62 pounds of cocaine, 13 pounds of heroin and $400 in U.S. currency.

The suspects could face up to 40 years or life in prison, depending on their charges. Those charged in the sting include:

Luis Villagrana, 32, of Leander, Texas;

Furqan Sunka, 34, of Austin, Texas;

Lauro Toledo, 30, of Austin, Texas;

Blanca Davile-Puente, 35, of Mission, Texas;

Silvia Cerda-Gonzalez, 49, of Michoacan, Mexico;

Daniel Hernandez, 30, of Austin, Texas;

Anthony Taylor, 45, of Pflugerville, Texas;

Victor Vargas-Osorio, 25, of Austin, Texas;

Juan Vasquez, 69, of Brownsville, Texas;

Maria Del Pilar Barcenas, 47, of Brownsville, Texas;

Lauro Jaimes, 32, of Llano, Texas;

Rigoberto Vences Bautista, 39, of Austin, Texas;

Martin Benitez 38, of Austin, Texas;

Francisco Gonzalez, 30, of Mission, Texas;

Esperanza Gerardo, 40, of Mission, Texas;

Albert Villagrana, 19, of Leander, Texas;

Jesus Ocampo, 33, of Austin, Texas;

Mike Vertacnik, 30, of Austin, Texas;

Marques Taylor Nunley, 27, of Austin, Texas;

Rebecca Anay, 26, of Austin, Texas;

Claudia Lara-Escalante, 26, of Houston, Texas;

Leovigildo Martinez, 27, of Austin, Texas;

Carlos Garcia-Duarte, 40, of Dale, Texas;

Arturo Juarez-Osorio, 36, of Austin, Texas;

Eduardo Flores-Parra, 27, of Austin, Texas;

Rafael Garcia-Duarte, 27, of Dale, Texas;

Jose DeJesus Gonzalez , 27, of Austin, Texas;

Gerardo Arroyo, 29, of Pflugerville, Texas.

Charges for the suspects include conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute a controlled substance; money laundering; and counts involving methamphetamine, cocaine and heroin.

Will Axford is a digital reporter for Chron.com. Read more of his stories here and follow him on Twitter.
France is not planning military engagement in Northern Syria on the side of rebels and Kurdish forces labeled by Ankara as terrorists, a source from the French presidency told Turkish Daily Sabah.

The source who did not want to be named because not allowed to comment on the issue told the daily that Paris is not inclined to provide support to the Syrian Defense Forces (SDF) and PKK-linked Peoples Protection Units (YPG).

The SDF, following a meeting with the French leader groups at the Elysee Palace on Thursday, said that Paris pledged support to the rebel groups in Manbij, northern Syria where the Islamic state group (ISIS) fighters are reportedly still active.

President Emmanuel Macron, according to a statement from his office, offed to mediate between Ankara and the SDF.

Ankara lambasted its NATO allys alleged likely support to the Syrian Kurdish groups and rejected Frances proposed mediation role between the Turkish government and the Democratic Union Party (PYD).

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan described Frances move as a show of hostility against Turkey.

Those who host at the highest level the members of a terrorist organization, which has been freely carrying out its activities in their countries, should be aware that this is nothing but an expression of hostility against Turkey, Erdogan said this Friday (March 30) from his partys headquarters.

Erdogan, who condemned Emmanuel Macrons meeting with members of Syrian Kurdish groups, was quoted by local daily Hurriyet as saying that France no longer has the right to complain about the actions of any terror organization on its soil after meeting with the representatives of the PYD and its armed wing, the YPG.

Those who have been abetting terrorists and who have been hosting them in their palaces will sooner or later see the mistake they have made. They may face the problems that we ourselves have been experiencing at any time. We hope they will not dare to seek our help when France is filled with terrorists fleeing from Syria and Iraq after being encouraged by French policies, he added, according to Hurriyet.

Turkey needs no mediator  You can come together with terror organizations around the same table but Turkey deals with terror organizations just like it did in Afrin, he stressed.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu also voiced his governments concern over Macrons support to the SDF in a phone call with his French peer Jean Yves Le Drian.

Deputy Prime Minister and government spokesman Bekir Bozdag on his part said Macrons move, that he described as irrational, had set Paris on a collision course with Ankara.

Likewise, presidential spokesperson Ibrahim Kaln rejected Macrons offer to mediate between the Turkish government and the SDF, saying Turkeys stance on the PKK/PYD/YPG is clear; we reject frivolous approaches such as dialogue, contact or mediation with these terror groups.

Ankara sees the YPG as a terror group that it considers an offshoot of the outlawed Kurdish group PKK. The Turkish military has engaged an offensive in northern Syria in a bid to clear the area of the Kurdish fighters.
Hannah Foslien / Getty Images

Warriors guard Klay Thompson said he is probable to return Saturday in Sacramento from a fractured right thumb that has sidelined him eight games.

Thompson fractured his thumb during the second quarter of the Warriors March 11 loss to Minnesota, but continued to play, finishing with 21 points on 8-for-22 shooting and four turnovers in 40 minutes. He was initially ruled out for at least four games, though Kerr conceded at the time that Thompson was "probably looking at (missing) a couple weeks."
1 Turkey crash: A vehicle accident in the eastern province of Igdir killed 17 people, mostly migrants who had crossed into the country illegally, a senior official said Friday. The governor of Igdir province, Enver Unlu, said 36 people were also injured in the accident late Thursday. Unlu said a minivan packed with migrants hit a light pole and caught fire. Some of the victims died in the crash while others were killed when they were hurled into oncoming traffic and hit by another minivan that was also carrying migrants. The state-run Anadolu agency said the migrants were from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran.

2 Philippines crucifixions: Seven Filipino Roman Catholic devotees, including a woman, were nailed to wooden crosses in a Good Friday reenactment of Jesus Christs suffering that was watched by thousands of spectators. Three devotees wearing crowns of twigs were nailed to crosses by villagers dressed as Roman centurions on a hill in San Pedro Cutud village, and four others were nailed to crosses in San Fernando city north of Manila, tourism officer Ching Pangilinan said. The Lenten rituals are frowned upon by church leaders in the Philippines, Asias largest Roman Catholic nation, especially if the events are used to boost tourism and business.
1. Joe Duffy's Liveline will light up

Joe Duffy must be the only man in the country happier than the publicans now that the Good Friday ban has been lifted. Like pubs across the country, the Liveline will be open and business will undoubtedly be brisk... Isn't it shocking Joe....... The world is coming to an end Joe....

2. Someone will lose the run of themselves

The once forbidden drink in the pub on a Good Friday will be too much for one of your lightweight mates. He'll be home in bed before the Late Late.

3. Reminiscing about the pub ban

After a few lovely pints in the pub, you'll start to reminisce about the house parties once had when the pubs were closed for Good Friday. 'Wouldn't it be great to close them again just for one more year for the craic?'

4. We'll all be bankrupt... and we don't mean morally

The novelty of the pubs opening on Good Friday means we'll all head out early and take full advantage of the situation. But we'll be up the next morning strapped for cash after going mad on the pints, the shorts and the shots. It would be so much cheaper just to stick to the auld house party.

5. Off License owners will be in tears

Spare a thought for the off license owners this Good Friday. Every Holy Thursday they did enough business to pay for a cruise. Now they'll have to settle for a week in Tramore. However...

6. Publicans will be loving it

From a day where they used to do nothing (apart from the odd private lock in) publicans will now be rubbing their hands with glee in anticipation of a record-breaking day. If they open, we will come. But...

7. Bar staff will be raging

Good Friday was the one day of the year when all bar staff could be sure they could all go on the lash together. Now that team bonding day is gone forever.

8. It will be an anti-climax

After all the debate, the arguments, the moral outrage and the numerous pints, we'll all wake up on Easter Saturday and wonder what the hell it was all about because it will have just been another Friday night in the pub.

READ ALSO: 10 things that will now never happen again on Good Friday
The mayor of the Libyan capital Tripoli, largely controlled by the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA), has been abducted and taken to an unknown destination in a move that stresses insecurity in the capital of oil-rich country.

Abdulrauf Beitelmal was abducted early Thursday from his house, south of the Libyan capital by unidentified gunmen, reports say.

Beitelmals municipality is aligned with the GNA and its affiliated Presidency Council (PC) backed by the UN.

Gunmen from a militia reportedly raided his residence for unknown reasons and took him to a destination also unknown to local GNA authorities.

In protest move against the abduction, the municipality Thursday suspended its work and called on residents and the GNA to ensure Beitelmals release.

The Libyan capital is largely controlled by the PC and its ally militias but security in the city is still a challenge with the presence of other uncontrolled armed groups.

Tripoli has witnessed a recent scourge in abduction of political and military figures.

Beitelmals kidnapping follows those of PCs Military Prosecutor Masoud Rahouma and former head of the General Union of Chambers of Commerce Juma Al-Ustal. The whereabouts of the two are still unknown.
Local News, Crime

By Long Island News & PR Published: March 30 2018

All welcome to take part in RECRUITNY OPEN HOUSE WEEKEND April 28 & 29; FASNY calls on New Yorkers to volunteer in their communities.

New York, NY - March 30, 2018 - RecruitNY, a major initiative of the Firemens Association of the State of New York (FASNY), is rapidly approaching. On April 28-29, firehouses across the State will open their doors to the public in an effort to increase membership in the volunteer fire service. This will be the eighth straight year of this recruitment initiative, a cornerstone of FASNYs ongoing recruitment campaign.

During the April 28-29 weekend, members of the public will be able to get a taste of what it means to be a volunteer firefighter. Across New York State, volunteer firefighters will be conducting firehouse tours, demonstrating firefighting techniques, and more, all to generate interest and appreciation for what members of the fire service do on a regular basis. Anyone interested in the possibility of joining the fire service will have the opportunity to speak with active volunteers, who can discuss what being a member of the fire service entails.

It is a privilege and an honor to serve as a volunteer firefighter, said FASNY President Ken Pienkowski. Joining the fire service is an incredibly rewarding thing to do, and all across New York State, volunteers are eager to discuss this possibility with their neighbors, friends, and family. Serving as a volunteer firefighter means serving ones community, but it also means joining a very close, very special family. We are always heartened to see New Yorkers turn out to support their volunteer firefighters, and expect to see many faces, both familiar and new, during this years RecruitNY event.

The volunteer fire service has a long, proud heritage in New York, and is deeply integrated into the social fabric of the State. Volunteer fire departments not only answer emergency calls, but they often serve as the backbones of local communities, hosting popular events such as parades and pancake breakfasts, and providing common space for people to gather. The volunteer fire services economic impact is also substantial.

In addition, volunteer firefighters save New Yorkers money. In 2016, FASNY released an economic impact report, which concluded that the annual cost of a replacement, all-paid fire service would be $3.87 billion. Furthermore, property taxes in New York State would rise by an estimated average of 26.5%. These figures do not factor in the costs of acquiring the necessary facilities and equipment needed to accommodate a paid fire service. The volunteer fire service, and efforts like RecruitNY, make the State not only safer, but also more affordable.

Established in 2011, RecruitNY is a joint undertaking by the Firemens Association of the State of New York (FASNY), the New York State Association of Fire Chiefs (NYSAFC), Association of Fire Districts of New York State, Volunteer Fire Police Association of the State of New York, and County Fire Coordinators Association of the State of New York.

For area residents looking to find if your fire department is participating in RecruitNY, visit http://www.recruitny.org/participation-area/ or for more information, contact your local fire department via a non-emergency phone number or its website or visit www.recruitny.org.

For fire departments that would like to sign up for RecruitNY, simply log on to www.recruitny.org/signup and fill out the participation form. The program provides fire departments with access to recruitment resources, communication tools, posters, banners, and more. Visit http://recruitny.org/resources.php to help plan a RecruitNY event.

About FASNY
Long Island, NY - March 30, 2018 - Following the passage of the Education, Labor and Family Assistance budget bill (S.7506-B), Senator John Brooks praised the inclusion of language that require schools to adopt policies to prevent lunch shaming and establishes policies regarding unpaid meal charges.

Brooks introduced a similar bill (S6036) in May 2017 that would ban lunch shaming  policies and procedures that single out students as being in need of free school lunches or delinquent in paying for lunch.

Senator Brooks said, No child should be shamed because his family is unable to afford a school lunch and none of our children should ever face humiliation when their parents are late in paying for their school lunch. I applaud the Legislature for including my proposal in the budget and am proud that no student in New York will ever have to worry about going hungry at school.
by Karlene Lukovitz @KLmarketdaily, March 29, 2018

Looking to get closer to consumers and enable speedier response to trends in its far-flung markets, Mondelez International is moving away from its traditional, centralized marketing structure in favor of four regional consumer marketing officers reporting to a global CMO.

The company has named Martin Renaud, 50, to the global CMO role.

Renaud has nearly three decades of experience in marketing and general management positions in Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America and North America. Most recently, he served as president, Fresh Dairy for Europe at Danone. He was also the companys executive sponsor of brands and digital, responsible for leading organizational design, capabilities, media and marketing services and digital. He will be based in Mondelez's East Hanover, New Jersey office.

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Renaud replaces Mondelez Internationals previous CMO, Dana Anderson, who left in April 2017 to become CMO of strategic advisory and business development firm MediaLink.

Investing in a new regional CMO model will not only bring deep expertise to our marketing practice, but also increase connection and collaboration between our global CMO, our P&L leaders and the global team, stated Chief Growth Officer Tim Cofer. This new structure will change the trajectory of our marketing function, enabling the company to drive growth by moving at the speed of our consumer.

Renauds extensive commercial, strategy and digital experience will be "a tremendous asset as we reinvent our marketing in a rapidly changing global consumer landscape, Cofer added.

The choices for the newly established regional CMO roles:

* For Mondelez's North American region, Jason Levine has been promoted from vice president, marketing, North America Biscuits, having served in various marketing roles at Mondelez over nearly two decades in the U.S., Europe and emerging markets.

* For Europe, Debora Koyama is joining Mondelez from AB-InBev, where she was global marketing vice president for Stella Artois and Craft. Koyama has 25 years of experience in various marketing leadership roles, working for AB-InBev, L'Oreal, Kraft Foods and Diageo, leading teams in the U.S., Brazil, Latin America, Europe and at global level.



* For Latin America, Maria Mujica is being promoted from her most recent position as Mondelez's director of strategy and communications, Latin America. Mujica, who has been with the company for more than 20 years, pioneered its Fly Garage, an innovation incubator aimed at piloting "breakthrough connections" between brands and consumers to drive growth.



* For Asia, Middle East and Africa, Mondelez has hired Mie-Leng Wong. Wongs 20 years of marketing experience has included leadership roles at Unilever and Heineken, at both global and regional levels across Europe and Asia Pacific.

The significant marketing reorganization comes at a challenging time for Mondelez  and all food CPG makers  as they scramble to adapt and jumpstart growth against the headwinds of consumers shift away from packaged goods, toward fresh, clean food and beverages.

Krafts profitability improved last year as a result of ongoing organizational streamlining and cost reductions, but its organic sales growth slowed to 0.9%, from 1.3% in fiscal 2016, as a result of a 2.4% decline in net sales in North America (sales increased in all other regions).

Some analysts have posited that Mondelez will be vulnerable to a takeover bid  possibly by Kraft Heinz  unless it steps up its growth, perhaps by acquiring companies with product profiles embraced by todays consumers. (Its time for Mondelez to eat or be eaten, Bloomberg columnist Sarah Halzack asserted last month.)

When Dirk Van de Put replaced longtime CEO Irene Rosenfeld last November, it was widely observed that, given the North American sales challenges, he was likely to focus on international, and emerging markets in particular  the regions presenting promising growth opportunities for Power Brands like Oreo, BelVita biscuits, Cadbury, Milka and Trident.

"We're taking a fresh approach  challinging existing thinking and exploring new ideas and ways to win," Van de Put said at last months Consumer Analyst Group of New York (CAGNY) conference. More than ever, the consumer needs to be at the center of what we do. Today's consumers eat differently, shop differently and seek different experiences. Since consumers are changing fast, we have to be more nimble, innovative and forward-looking than ever before."
by Laurie Sullivan @lauriesullivan, March 30, 2018

The European Commission announced this week that United Kingdom-based companies and residents who own .eu country code top-level domain names (ccTLDs) must enter into a withdrawal agreement from those domain names after Britains departure from the European Union goes into effect and the UK becomes a third country.

Brexit, scheduled to take effect on March 30, 2019, will have a major impact on companies that run .eu ccTLDs. Approximately 317,000 .eu domains are registered in the UK -- about one-tenth of the registry's total, according to one report.

Subject to any transitional arrangement that may be contained in a possible withdrawal agreement, the EU regulatory framework for the .eu Top Level Domain will no longer apply to the United Kingdom as from the withdrawal date, according to the statement.

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The official statement from the EU Commission also suggests that existing .eu domains could be cancelled the moment Brexit goes into effect, with no right of appeal.

As of the withdrawal date, undertakings and organisations that are established in the United Kingdom but not in the EU and natural persons who reside in the United Kingdom will no longer be eligible to register .eu domain names or, if they are .eu registrants, to renew .eu domain names registered before the withdrawal date, according to the statement.

One reason for revoking the domain names can be found in the policy titled Digital Single Market. The document describes a marketing initiative to boost the viability of the European Union on the internet, increase users choice of domain names, and promote the development of electronic commerce.
by Sarah Mahoney @mahoney_sarah, March 30, 2018

With both Amazon and Walmart locked in ever-escalating efforts to win Americans over to the joys of online grocery shopping, its easy to forget how much further along the rest of the planet is.

A new report from Forrester Research estimates that online grocery spending around the world, worth about $150 billion last year, is set to double in the next five years, reaching $334 billion. With a compound annual growth rate, the report finds that even as the market enters the mature phase in South Korea, China, Australia and the UK, theres evidence that online food sales in laggards like the U.S. and Germany are almost ready to gain critical mass.

The stakes are enormous, writes Forrester analyst Satish Meena, with total global grocery spending accounting for $5.1 trillion last year, that was 35% of the total global retail spend of $14.5 trillion. But online grocery sales captured just 2.9% of total grocery spending in 2017, leaving huge untapped potential for retailers. On a per-capita basis, that translates to just $36 per capita out of a total global average retail spend of $454.

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As a result, retailers around the world are racing to become consumers default grocery store, investing billions in online touchpoints, technology, and logistics.

Based on the percentage of grocery spending online, Meena classes countries as maturing if global online retail penetration is at least 13% of total retail, with online grocery sales comprising more than 3% of total grocery sales. Home delivery is the most common method but click-and-collect services are also gaining.

He categorizes France, Japan, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Norway as growing, with online composing between 8% and 12% of total retail sales, and online purchase more than 3%. And in Japan, change is coming fast, thanks to the Amazon Fresh launch in 2017, and Walmarts partnership with Japans Rakuten, set to roll out later this year.

Besides the U.S. and Germany, he puts India, Brazil and Russia in the beginning stages, with online retail penetration below the global average of 13%, and online grocery sales less than 3% of total grocery sales.

We expect the U.S. and Germany to move into the growth stage in the coming years, due to the large number of online buyers and retailers aggressive investments in the online grocery channel, he writes. We also expect a boost in the U.S.s online grocery sales, thanks to its 30-plus cities with a population of over 2 million and high online retail penetration in other categories.

He also notes that low-profit margins in grocery sales are driving more experimentation, including combining online and offline options. Getting food purchased online into shoppers hands also looks different in many of these markets.

Besides home delivery, click-and-collect, curbside pickup and delivery lockers, stores around the world are experimenting with dark stores, which are small warehouses not open to the public; distributed warehouses; centralized warehouses; subscription models; express delivery with 60 to 90 minutes; and hyperlocal services that deliver groceries from a local store.
by Wendy Davis @wendyndavis, March 30, 2018

Facebook is asking an appellate court to uphold a recent settlement of a privacy lawsuit over allegations that it scanned users' private messages.

The settlement, which requires Facebook to add a 22-word sentence to its help site, "provides meaningful benefits," the company argues in papers filed this week with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The agreement, originally approved by U.S. District Court Judge Phyllis Hamilton in the Northern District of California, resolved a privacy lawsuit brought against the company in 2013 by Arkansas resident Matthew Campbell and Oregon resident Michael Hurley. They alleged that Facebook violated the federal wiretap law by by intercepting users' messages to each other and scanning them. The company reportedly did so in order to determine whether people were sending their friends links to outside sites.

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That suit was only one of numerous privacy cases filed against Facebook in recent years. Among other pending cases, the company currently is battling a suit alleging that it violated an Illinois biometrics law by creating a "faceprint" database, as well as lawsuits stemming from recent revelations that Cambridge Analytica harvested data from 50 million users.

The allegations about the message scans emerged in 2012, when security researcher Ashkan Soltani reported that Facebook counts in-message links as "likes." Facebook said at the time that no private information is exposed.

The social networking service has since changed that practice. The settlement notes that Facebook revised its prior practice, but the agreement doesn't prohibit the company from changing it again in the future.

The settlement requires Facebook to pay up to almost $4 million to the class-action attorneys who brought the case, and $5,000 each to the two Facebook users who served as plaintiffs, but no monetary awards to the company's other users. Instead, users who want to pursue claims for monetary damages may bring new lawsuits.

The deal also requires Facebook to add the following sentence to its help site: We use tools to identify and store links shared in messages, including a count of the number of times links are shared.

The Center for Class Action Fairness, founded by activist Ted Frank, recently asked 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to vacate the settlement, arguing that it is "worthless" to users.

The group argues that Facebook's users, as opposed to class counsel, are supposed to be the primary beneficiaries of a deal. "The settlement here gives preferential treatment to class counsel, allocating virtually the entire settlement benefit to the lawyers rather than the class," the organization contends.

The influential group Electronic Privacy Information Center is backing that request.

Facebook counters in its new papers that the deal was reasonable because the consumers' claims were "weak."

"Courts routinely approve as fair and reasonable settlements that offer even minimal benefits in exchange for the release of weak claims," the company argues.

The social networking site adds that it had "strong defenses" to the privacy claims. Among others, it was prepared to argue that consumers consented to the alleged interceptions. "The Data Policy explains that Facebook collects 'the contents and other information' that people provide when they use Facebook, including when they 'message or communicate with others,'" Facebook writes.
Eric Shooter, PhD, professor emeritus of neurobiology at the Stanford University School of Medicine and founding chair of that department, died March 21. He was 93.

Shooter was internationally acclaimed in the field for his work on the structure and mechanisms of neurotrophins, the proteins that keep nerve cells alive. He was the first to robustly characterize the neurotrophin known as nerve growth factor, which plays a key role in regenerating lost or damaged nerve cells. The discovery could someday make it possible to regrow nerves for those who have suffered spinal cord injuries, or to reverse the nerve degeneration that leads to conditions such as Alzheimers and Parkinsons diseases.

Eric Shooter was a leading light in the study of protein factors that support the growth and survival of nerve cells during embryonic and fetal development, and in disease, said Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne, PhD, who is also a neuroscientist. He was also a kind and supportive mentor to generations of young neuroscientists. He will be sorely missed.

The neuroscience community and Stanford Medicine have lost a major contributor with the passing of Eric Shooter, said Lloyd Minor, MD, dean of the Stanford School of Medicine. His groundbreaking research paved the way for the modern-day science of nerve growth factors and the remarkable role these proteins play in sustaining nerve cells.

Native of England

Shooter was born on April 18, 1924, in a small village north of Nottingham, England. After spending his childhood in the nearby town of Burton-on-Trent, where his family moved shortly after his birth, Shooter attended the University of Cambridge, where he studied chemistry, earning a bachelors degree in 1945, a masters degree in 1946 and a PhD in 1949.

He came to the United States that year with his wife, Elaine, for a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. We arrived in New York with $10 each in our pockets, the maximum amount the British government would allow its citizens to export at that time, Shooter said in a 2002 interview. You can do these things when youre 24.

At Madison, Shooter immersed himself in protein chemistry, imbibing techniques for separating large proteins. A year later, he returned to the United Kingdom to work in a British nonprofit and then to serve as a lecturer in biochemistry at University College London. There, Shooter made important discoveries about the biochemical genetics of hemoglobin.

In 1961, he was selected as a U.S. Public Health Service International Fellow with the Department of Biochemistry at Stanfords School of Medicine. He was appointed associate professor of genetics in 1963 and, in 1968, promoted to full professor of biochemistry and of genetics. Between 1972 and 1982, he chaired the schools doctoral program in neurosciences. In 1975, he became the founding chair of the Department of Neurobiology, a position he held through 1987.

The curator of my career

Those who worked with Shooter recalled that he was a gentle, avuncular figure who never failed to treat others with warmth and generosity.

Carla Shatz, PhD, professor of biology and of neurobiology and the director of Stanford Bio-X, was one of Shooters early recruits to the nascent neurobiology department. Eric hired me for my first faculty position in 1978, she said. As my mentor here, he taught me something important: to be gentle, to give back. His example was a reminder that you can be a great scientist and still support the careers of other young scientists. He was the curator of my career.

Shooter also recruited William Newsome, PhD, professor of neurobiology and director of the Stanford Neurosciences Institute, who first arrived at Stanford in 1988. The first time we met, he made an overwhelmingly positive impression, Newsome said. He was a fantastic, warm human being, as kind and considerate as a person could be.

Elaine Shooter was the departments financial administrator for many years, Newsome said. Together, Eric and Elaine really built the department, he said, adding that the pair connected on a personal level with faculty, students and postdoctoral scholars and their families.

In 1964, at the suggestion of Nobel laureate Joshua Lederberg, PhD, then professor and chair of genetics, Shooter turned his attention to a newly discovered protein called nerve growth factor. Three years of intensive work resulted in myriad discoveries about this important substance, including the complex in which its packaged, the sites where its most active and how it gets there, and the workings of its receptors on nerve cells.

He also discovered the gene in mice underlying a group of diseases called the demyelinating peripheral neuropathies, in which the protective myelin covering on nerves breaks down and the nerves are unable to function properly. The diseases are similar to human neurological diseases, and the discovery laid the groundwork for understanding how nerves repair themselves.

The discovery that a neurotrophin called brain-derived neurotrophic factor enhances myelin formation took place in Shooters laboratory the early 2000s. He retired in 2004. In all, his career spanned well over a half-century.

Shooter was a fellow of the Royal Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among other honors, he won the Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, and shared the 1995 Ralph W. Gerard Prize from the Society of Neuroscience with Swiss neuroscientist Hans Thoenen, PhD. The co-author of more than 100 journal articles, Shooter served as an editor of several journals, including the Journal of Neurochemistry, Neurobiology, Journal of Biological Chemistry, Journal of Neuroscience and Neuron.

A Tareytown, New York-based biotechnology company, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, which Shooter co-founded in 1988, has met with success in the commercialization of a number of drugs. In 2014, Shooter donated $4 million from his equity holdings in Regeneron to Stanford in order to establish the Shooter Family Professorship, now held by Thomas Clandinin, PhD, professor and chair of neurobiology.

He is survived by a daughter, Annette Devost, of San Carlos, California; and two granddaughters, Michelle and Stephanie.
Last year's Kala Chashma from the Sidharth Malhotra and Katrina Kaif starrer 'Baar Baar Dekho' became an instant rage for a variety of reasons. It was a hummable and foot-tapping party number, Katrina's abs looked the best they ever have, and then there were the dance steps. Flanked by a bevy of female white backup dancers, Katrina gyrated to the trademark steps that became a sort of a permanent presence in almost every wedding thereafter. It was impossible to not want to move to the song the moment the music came on. But, amid the fun and the galore, we missed noticing the one crucial element responsible for making 'Kala Chashma' what it was: its backup dancers.

 Eros International

In the big bad world of Bollywood, the tribe of backup dancers, who form the backbone of any music number, lead not just an invisible life, but also an exploited one. Unlike the star-kid backup dancers like Shahid Kapoor, these dancers lead an unglamorous and overworked life. It's more so when you're a white backup dancer trying to make it big in the alien world of Bollywood without any idea of Mumbai's culture, the language, or its people.

 UTV Motion Pictures

Twenty-five-year-old Jack* is one such male backup dancer braving odds, long working hours, and dismal exposure to make a living in Mumbai. But, life isn't as sweet as he had imagined it'd be. Even after struggling in Bollywood for seven years, I still end up living on a month paycheck basis sometimes, he tells me. Originally from England, Jack came on a backpacking trip to India almost 10 years ago, on a tourist visa. The plan was to backpack across the country for close to two months, with a last pit stop at Mumbai, the City Of Dreams. I did odd modelling jobs during college and saved up money to gift myself a graduation trip to India, he reveals.

It was in the last week of his trip that he stumbled upon the Hindi film industry and its myriad workings travelling to Goregaon's Film City as part of a Bollywood package tour. The tour included the usual spots: Mannat, Jalsa and the likes. The last stretch included a tour of Film City and the chance to witness a film shoot at Yash Raj Studios. As luck would have it, that shoot ended up being Farah Khan's 'Om Shanti Om', and the song they were shooting that day was the iconic 'Dard-E-Disco' that saw SRK, the country's biggest superstar sporting eight-pack abs.

 Eros International

For Jack, that was his first tryst with both Bollywood and a dance number. I had very little background on SRK at that point apart from the fact that he was referred as the King of Bollywood. What amused me more was the 20-odd male backup dancers flanking him. They were all white. After an hour of shoot, the director called for a break and that's when Jack bumped into a school senior doubling up as a backup dancer on set. I met Robyn* after almost 10 years and had no idea she was a backup dancer. Back then, we all thought she'd end up as an actor or some such, he tells me. It was a chat with Robyn that set the ball rolling for Jack's long-drawn but hardly rewarding career in Bollywood. That day, Robyn made it sound like such a dream. She told me how the industry was depending on only white backup dancers and money was therefore easy. I made up my mind the moment she told me how much she would make for these day shoots: Rs 50,000 for a few hours.

 BCCL

That 20-minute conversation changed Jack's life. He completed the rest of his trip and in a few months flew back to Mumbai, this time permanently. Looking back at it, I realise how little I thought about that decision. I was young, a decent dancer and had no idea what I wanted from life, so I figured why not? After he landed, Jack made the rounds of all the usual offices of various agents and put up with Robyn and her boyfriend Rob, a veteran back up dancer seen in Kal Ho Na Ho's Pretty Woman, in a plush Versova apartment.

The first few years were exactly as Jack expected it would be. He was getting ample work, featured in a slew of hit numbers; 'Chittiyan Kalaiyan', 'Bang Bang' to name a few, and there was no dearth of money. At that time, I was earning in lakhs every month and so overconfident of that being the case for a long long time, he laughingly remembers.

But it was only the calm before the storm.

 BCCL

In the last three years, while Bollywood's fascination with white backup dancers has still maintained a crazy frenzy, what however changed is their preference. Most Bollywood films were choreographing more and more songs with only female backup dancers in mind. They were of the opinion that relying more on female backup dancers would ensure that their song and film is much more profitable. The girls would add the ample sex appeal needed. And, that's how we started losing work.

It started slow, with fewer offers and less screen time. Take Kala Chashma for instance. There were around 30 female dancers and about half the number of male dancers. Not only did they dominate more screen time, but they were also paid more for the same work, he tells me. But, now the situation is even more dire. Even as work and pay dwindled, the hours expected from them continued increasing.

Dance isn't dance any longer; they needed to know a handful of stunts that would invariably lead to unforeseen accidents. But no coverage. Once, during a shoot abroad, Jack and another dancer sustained serious injuries while attempting a stunt and were forced to two months bed-rest. He claims he was more bummed about the fact that he wouldn't earn money for two months more than the fact that he was injured. Forget the fact that I'm losing out on work, but now even payments are being processed a month late. It's a grim situation, he rues.

 BCCL

On the work front, Jack has two more projects at the moment that require as much as 14-hours a day, and fetch him as much money as a fresher, even though he admits he doesn't even love dancing anymore. The lack of work in films has forced him to take up more maddening ad film work. The situation there is even more worse, he laughs.

As he gets ready to leave for an ad shoot, I prod him on whether he's contemplated leaving it all and moving back home.

I don't even have enough for this month's rent, forget having enough for a flight ticket, he replies before waving a goodbye.

*Names changed on request.
Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Terens Quick, met today with the Georgian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs competent for diaspora affairs, Zviad Gonadge, who was accompanied by the Chairman of the Parliamentary Diaspora Committee, Zviad Kvachantiradge.



During the meeting, which took place in a warm climate, the excellent level of bilateral relations was stressed. Mr. Quick presented the characteristics of the Greek diaspora worldwide and the trilateral schemes promoting cooperation among the diasporas of Greece, Cyprus and other countries.

Mr. Quick also announced to his interlocutors that he will be representing Greece at the celebrations to be held in Tbilisi this coming May, marking the centennial of the 1st Georgian Republic.
Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Terens Quick, today met with the President of the World Council of Epirotes Abroad, Chrysostomos Dimou. During the meeting, Mr. Quick was asked for a briefing on the major foreign policy issues, including Greek-Turkish relations, the negotiations with fYROM, and the Cyprus issue.

Mr. Quick responded that Greece is unquestionably a pillar of stability in a turbulent wider region, with a restless, unpredictable neighbour that expresses itself aggressively, not just vis-a-vis Greece, but also in its relations with Europe and the U.S. Moreover, we cannot ignore the so-called Muslim arc, which stretches from Ankara, runs through the underbelly of Bulgaria, Kosovo, Skopje and Albania, reaching Bosnia-Herzegovina. This is the reason for the painstaking diplomatic initiatives and efforts of the Greek government to resolve pending issues in the Balkans, such as the issue of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia or issues with Albania, which Minister of Foreign Affairs Nikos Kotzias is visiting today.

Mr. Dimou also raised issues concerning the new form that the World Council of Hellenes Abroad (SAE) will take, the issue of voting rights for Greeks abroad, and matters of equal taxation of diaspora Greeks and Greeks residing in Greece.

The Deputy Minister stressed that the SAE, in its next iteration, will provide for the self-organization and self-funding of diaspora organizations, and will be headquartered in Thessaloniki. In no case, from now on, will the government or the competent deputy minister or the parties behind them wag their fingers at the Greek community abroad or tell them what to do with regard to issues that arise where they live; issues that they have a better knowledge of, he underscored, adding that the SAE will have its constitutional role, advising each Greek government in the manner of a think tank. And because the name SAE has negative connotations, I am considering recommending that, in the new Constitution, it be named the World Council of Hellenism (PSE).

Regarding voting rights for Greeks abroad, Mr. Quick responded that the issue is already under consideration by the Ministry of Interior, and he promised to take up the tax issues with the competent Ministry.
No diplomatic or any other Greek source has ever claimed that the fYROM side expressed readiness for certain amendments to its Constitution.

The reference in question constitutes a deliberate provocation by any media that disseminated the fake news.


The United Nations has reset its action plan to address the root causes of the complex crisis in Africas Sahel, a region now home to one out of five people worldwide requiring humanitarian assistance, the UN deputy chief said earlier this week.

The Sahel is a priority for the Secretary-General and the entire United Nations system, Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed told a conference held in Nouakchott, Mauritania, to discuss strategies to tackle the Sahel crisis, which leaves 24 million people in need of humanitarian assistance this year.

A largely semi-arid region, the Sahel stretches from Senegal on Africas Atlantic coast, through parts of Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, Chad and Sudan to Eritrea on the Red Sea coast.

It is plagued by the increasing threat posed by terrorism and violent extremism and its spread in surrounding countries and regions, the UN said in a press release. This is compounded  or caused  by weak development progress in the Sahel and the impacts of climate change on food supplies, migration flows and conflict over land and resources.

The complexity and multi-dimensional nature of these challenges attest to the necessity to respond collectively to the Sahel crisis, and in a more coherent, comprehensive and integrated manner, Amina Mohammed explained.

These challenges promoted changes to the UN Integrated Strategy for the Sahel to better meet the needs of the 10 countries in the region.

The Deputy Secretary-General said five key priorities on addressing the root causes of the crisis are: inclusive and equitable growth; public good services, including access to basic service, governance and rule of law; climate and energy; gender equality and womens empowerment; and security, including preventing violent extremism, transnational crime and human trafficking.

She insisted that empowering youth is an overall priority.
BAD AXE -- The Huron County Board of Commissioners reappointed one planner and chose two new ones from among nine applicants who were interviewed Thursday.

Robert Oakes will return to the Huron County Planning Commission, while Julie Epperson and George Lauinger are new members.

Oakes, of Harbor Beach, will represent public health as a member of the medical field. Epperson will represent several segments of the population, including government and business. Lauinger, of Fairhaven Township, will represent natural resources, tourism and recreational interests.

The other candidates were: Bill Renn of Chandler Township, Bill McPhee of Hume Township, Mike Lorencz of Brookfield Township, Bill Goretski of Hume Township, Rita Parsch of Meade Township and Bob Tenbusch of Sherman Township.

Many of those candidates represented the agricultural industry, which already has significant representation on the planning commission.

The following is a summary of how Oakes, Epperson and Lauinger responded to some of the issues raised by the board of commissioners:

Background:

 Oakes is a retired medical doctor and served in the Air Force as a captain and flight surgeon. He is the founding member of the planning commission 52 years ago, but has not served on the planning commission that long. He promoted the creation of the Huron County Health Department in 1956.

 Lauinger has been a county resident since 1997, and is retired from the Michigan Department of Natural Resources (DNR), where he spent 44 years working, 20 of which were as park manager. He has been the supervisor of Sleeper State Park and worked at the DNR's Caseville Field Office, as well as at the Sanilac County Petroglyphs. He is a member of the Fairhaven Township Board of Review. He has a bachelor of science in business administration and a law degree, but chose to remain with the DNR rather than practice law.

 Epperson was appointed to fill a seat on the Sebewaing Village Council and plans to run for election to it in November. She also serves on the Sebewaing Planning Commission and the Sebewaing Downtown Development Authority. She is involved with the Sebewaing Rotary Club and Sebewaing Chamber of Commerce, and serves as co-chair of the Michigan Sugar Festival. She is also involved with Christ the King Lutheran School.

Each appointee shared their vision for Huron County:

 Oakes: "I like our way of life." He believes that there should be a vision statement in the Huron County Master Plan about "who we are and where we want to be." He takes pride in the fact that people in Huron County can leave their car and house doors unlocked. He is concerned about the use of opioids among youth.

 Lauinger: "Huron County has great potential." He likes that it's laid back and not overly developed, and wants to preserve the county's rural character. He thinks the county should "take the people's money that come up here and tell them to go home." He feels the planning commission should direct the master plan in a wise, measured fashion. He wants to find a way to encourage young people to come back or stay in the area.

Epperson: "To still exist and be a wonderful place to do business and farming." She said young people need a reason to come back after receiving their college education.

Although wind turbines did not dominate the interviews, the subject came up.

 Oakes thinks the county has enough wind turbines. He feels that planning commission members should not yell at wind developers, because it could be perceived as anti business. He said he was neither for nor against wind turbines.

 Lauinger questioned whether turbines could be tied in with tourism.

 Epperson did not address wind turbines.

Philosophy toward serving on the commission:

 Oakes described himself as a team player who follows the rule of law and facts.

 Lauinger described himself as a consensus builder who hates conflict. He strives for compromise.

 Epperson describes herself as level-headed and workable. She takes serving people seriously and likes to learn and do research. She feels that a woman's perspective and someone from the west side of the county would be a good addition to the planning commission.

Each appointee said they would be impartial without resorting to political bias.

None of the appointees have wind or solar energy contracts, and none identified a potential conflict of interest.

They were also asked how they would vote on a proposal that meets 100 percent of the ordinance requirements.

 Oakes: "Then we have no choice but to vote 'yes' because that's the rule of law."

 Lauinger said it depends on the proposal. If it's a wise idea, he would vote for it. If it's a dumb idea, he would vote against it.

 Epperson said she would support such a proposal.

All of the appointees had a general understanding of PA 116, the state's farmland preservation program, and said they would support a farmer's right to determine the development of his or her property.

The candidates were asked what they thought were essential elements in a residential dwelling and in a commercial or heavy industrial development.

 Oakes: Residential: A culture of helping each other; being relaxed in how we do things; a fun place to be. Industrial/commercial: Good water. "A 12-inch gas pipe through the county would be nice."

 Lauinger: Residential: Green spaces, zoning regulations and rules, keep stores and businesses away. Industrial/commercial: "Location, location, location." Adequate infrastructure, transportation routes, far from residential areas.

 Epperson: Residential: Parks, recreation, water, arts, culture, medical facilities, sense of community. Industrial/commercial: Location; something that doesn't cause damage to water/environment and that would keep farming pure.

Oakes also told the board that if appointed, he would not remain on the planning commission if Planner Robert McLean were elected chair.

Oakes, Lauinger and Epperson will be sworn in as planners at 7 p.m. Wednesday in Room 305 of the county building. Election of the board's chairman, vice chairman and secretary will also take place then.

The board of commissioners will conduct interviews next month to seek a fourth member of the planning commission to fill the term vacated by Charles Bumhoffer, who recently resigned. The open spot may be targeted to someone with background in educational administration or with school board membership. The deadline to apply for that position is 5 p.m. April 4.
Dan Thuemmel remembered for dedication to education,... Dan Thuemmel was one of the North Huron school board members who hired current superintendent...

Take an inside look at the register of deeds office In the Huron County Register of Deeds, theres a vault containing documents that go back as far...

Huron County's private schools optimistic about return to normal The optimism Huron Countys public schools are feeling about a return to normal this year extends...
CASS CITY  A special event in Cass City will give area businesses an opportunity to showcase themselves.

The Cass City Chamber of Commerce will host a Taste of the Thumb Food and Business Expo from 5 to 8 p.m. Thursday in the high school gym.

The event will have samples of food by local restaurants and caters. Dozens of vendors will pass out literature, brochures along with items to give away.

The event will also include an opportunity to learn about pet adoptions and a wide variety of community programs that are available.

And, Revive Ministries will have a mobile food pantry at the event. In order to qualify to pickup some food, participants will need to visit all of the exhibitor booths, and complete an evaluation form at the exit.

This is a great opportunity to visit vendors to find out what the Thumb of Michigan has to offer, and there is still time for vendors to sign up, according to chamber Administrator Judy Keller.

Keller can be contacted by calling 989-872-4618 or emailing ccc@casscitychamber.com.
EAST HAMPTON  The Board of Finance was to vote this past Wednesday on the 2018-19 budget, but members put off action on the proposed $46.3 million spending total until after they meet with the Board of Education.

The $31.17 million schools package was the focus of attention during two finance board meetings earlier this week.

A meeting between the two boards has been set for 7:30 Tuesday evening. The Board of Education will have a home-field advantage since the meeting is slated to be held in the T-Bell Room at the high school.

The five-member Republican majority on the finance board surprised both their Democratic colleagues and school officials and supporters Monday with a presentation on school salaries. It appeared to show instances in which certain teachers are being paid at salaries comparable to some of the most exclusive districts in the state.

The presentation was created with the assistance of Finance Board Chairman Michael J. Roses wife, an attorney.

Former chairman and current board member, Democrat Ted Turner, said he had only learned of the presentation 10 minutes before Mondays meeting began.

In a telephone conversation early Friday afternoon, Rose stressed he is not looking to make salary reductions in negotiated contracts. Instead, he intends to hold a two-phase meeting with his education colleagues.

During the first part  which will be open to the public  Rose said he hoped to explore potential savings in other areas than personnel. For instance, a board member might ask if there are ways in which solar power could be used to reduce electricity costs, or can we get a better deal on computers, Rose suggested.

The second phase of the meeting would be closed to the press and public alike. [The states Freedom of information Act] allows us to just sit and talk about collective bargaining issues, Rose said. What we want to do is, candidly, in a safe place, talk about what you see in the future that could reduce contractual pay increases.

Rose reiterated he is not seeking to reopen contracts and reduce already agreed-upon salaries. Rather, Were looking to bend the cost curve going forward.

If theres a 5 percent increase, is there a way that can be found to perhaps limit that to 4 percent, and save a little on salary, so that we can absorb another ECS reduction, he asked.

Rose was referring to Education Cost Sharing funds, which were sharply cut back during last years prolonged budget battle.

Too often, Rose said, residents have seen, If were not united, we cant make progress.

He hopes the outcome of Tuesdays meeting will show residents just the opposite: If we are united we can make progress.
What Is ISIS-K? Two Experts on the Group Behind the Kabul Airport Attack and its Rivalry with the Taliban

By 2018, the group had become one of the top four deadliest terrorist organizations in the world.
A U.S. service member was reportedly one of two killed Thursday in an improvised explosive device attack in Syria.

The incident, which left five more coalition members wounded, comes at the close of what is by far the deadliest month for U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria since the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria began in 2014.

Few details are available so far about the most recent attack, which happened around 9 p.m. local time, according to an announcement from Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve. The identities of the personnel killed by the IED have not been released, nor has the service branch of the U.S. service member been made known.

The tragedy brings the total for U.S. military deaths in support of the ISIS fight to eight for the month of March. To date, 59 U.S. troops have died supporting Operation Inherent Resolve, according to Defense Department data; 13 have been identified as killed in action, and 46 have died in non-combat incidents.

On March 15, seven airmen from three Air Force rescue units were killed in western Iraq when their HH-60 Pave Hawk crashed in what has been described as a non-combat incident. It was reportedly the first fatal helicopter crash in Iraq or Syria since the fight began, and underscores the risks deployed troops continue to face as Operation Inherent Resolve enters its fifth year.

The ISIS campaign, which has been fought with a limited number of U.S. troops in country supporting and advising local ground forces, has yielded relatively few American casualties compared with other recent wars. Until this month, the deadliest month for U.S. troops had been August 2017, with four service member deaths. Operation Inherent Resolve formally began in April 2014.

The fight, waged through airstrikes and assaults on population centers controlled by ISIS, has been costly in other ways, however.

According to an updated assessment released Wednesday by Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve, an estimated 855 local civilians have been killed by coalition strikes since the fight began, and 522 civilian casualty reports remain open and under investigation.

The estimate comes as officials say the presence of ISIS extremists, who have devastated towns and murdered thousands in their push to establish a caliphate, has been dramatically diminished.

In December, task force spokesman Army Col. Ryan Dillon told Military.com that only 1,000 ISIS fighters remained in Iraq and Syria, down from a previous estimate of 3,000.

Earlier that month, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared victory over ISIS in Iraq, saying all strongholds had been wiped out.

During a visit to Anbar province, Iraq, just before Christmas, Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Robert Neller told Marines deployed there that they had played a role in that historic accomplishment.

"You're part of history now, because you were in Iraq when ISIS was defeated, tactically," he said. " ... You have been catastrophically successful. The way this thing has turned in the last year is pretty epic. So, you should be proud of what you've done and what you've contributed to."

In a statement Wednesday, task force officials said ISIS holdings in both countries had nearly been eradicated.

"The Coalition and our partners have liberated over 98 percent of the area formerly controlled by Daesh, and have liberated 7.7 million Iraqis and Syrians once held under brutal Daesh rule," officials said. "However, much work still needs to be done to ensure the lasting defeat of the terrorist, criminal organization."

-- Hope Hodge Seck can be reached at hope.seck@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @HopeSeck.
Worker Dies in Georgias Chiatura Mine

45-year-old miner, Zaza Abramishvili died early on Monday in Chiatura Shukruti mine, west Georgia, while performing his duties.As reported by media, the ceiling of the mine collapsed and large rocks fell on the worker. There were so many ruins that the rescuers were working at the site for 8 hours to take the body out.The Trade Unions say the mine was operating without observing safety norms, adding several workers confirmed this.Tamaz Dolaberidze, chairman of the trade union of metallurgists, miners and chemists, says the mine ceiling was not strengthened by special wooden poles, alleging this might have caused the collapse of the mine ceiling.He stressed the mining company, Georgian Manganese, which carries out mining operation in seven mines and eight quarries, including Chiatura, should care more about the lives of its employees.Georgian Manganese released a statement, saying it was an accident and the safety norms were ensured in the mine.The organization claims that their mine is usually been twice a year.Georgian Manganese explains that the last time they applied LTD Techinspectguard, a state-led inspection body, which carried out the inspection and gave them the proper certificate on January 25.According to Nikoloz Chikovani, a special manager of Georgian Manganese LLC, it is too early to talk about the causes of the incident in Chiatura mine.As Chikovani told the media, the primary inspection of the accident site does not show the signs of crime or breach of norms.Specialists think that all the norms at the mine were protected. Nevertheless, we will wait for the investigation results and if anyone is found guilty, they will be punished in accordance with the law," said Chikovani.The Ministry of Internal Affairs has launched an investigation under Article 240 of the Criminal Code of Georgia, which pertains to the violation of safety rules.
Bronze Star recipient Dr. Chase Kohne is a veteran and Army Reserve major with a Civil Affairs Battalion based at Fort Carson. He owns a veterinary practice in Castle Rock and cares for horses, cows and other animals on farms throughout the Fourth Congressional District in Colorado, where he is running for Congress. The viewpoints expressed by Dr. Kohne do not necessarily reflect the opinions, viewpoints and official policies of Military.com.

Approval ratings for Congress are among the lowest ever recorded, but being a politician doesn't have to be dishonorable. As a U.S. Army veteran, my lifelong drive to serve people inspired me to run for Congress in this year's midterm election.

Fewer veterans are serving in Congress now than at any point since 1967, when nearly three-quarters of the House and Senate were members of our military, compared to less than 19 percent today.

A shortage of veterans in government means we're missing key opportunities: Our armed forces are the most well-trained, educated and effective in history. Veterans stand out as some of our best problem-solvers, and research shows that electing more veterans to Congress will give the House and Senate the credibility they need to better oversee and restrain the president's use of force.

Campaigning and governing take very different talents, and military training helps veterans excel at both. Successful candidates must strategize a winning plan, maximize time and resources, operate on a strict budget, communicate clearly, manage a hardworking staff, and develop trusting relationships with people from all walks of life.

Military training helps candidates think on their feet and cope with any hostile situation they may face. When I deployed to Afghanistan, my civil affairs missions often involved convincing Afghans to work with U.S. forces -- a challenge not unlike the task of convincing undecided voters in a tough district to support my platform.

Once elected, public officials must identify and address their constituents' needs. They must work with all kinds of people to solve problems. That's second nature for veterans, since our military is already one of the most diverse organizations in the world.

It doesn't matter what you look like, where you come from, what you believe, who you love, or how much money you make -- you're judged solely on your character and your ability to perform your mission. We strive to overcome prejudice because we know our lives depend on teamwork and cooperation.

Congress has the power to declare war -- or to prevent one -- and research shows that increasing the number of veterans in Congress will give the House and Senate the authority and the knowledge they need to oversee and limit the president's military operations.

A 2017 study in "Political Research Quarterly" examined U.S. House members' votes on military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan between 2003 and 2012 and found that members with military experience were more likely to vote to limit the number of troops deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan or to bring troops back home from those wars.

Crucially, veterans were also more likely to seek further congressional access to information about these conflicts before making their decisions.

In other words, regardless of their party leanings, having a military service record gives members of Congress the credibility and the desire to closely watch over and restrict our military operations.

The knowledge and experience veterans gain during their service makes all the difference. Veterans understand how our military works, and we know how operations are likely to play out in practice.

Veterans know exactly what it means to send young Americans into combat and, because defense accounts for a significant percentage of the federal budget, it's vital that the people who oversee our military spending understand exactly where waste and inefficiency lurk.

In the military, putting our differences aside to solve problems isn't just common sense, it's a matter of life and death.

I'm proud to be one of several veterans running for Congress in 2018. Our service makes an excellent proving ground for the challenges of campaigning and governing, and holding public office is a natural extension of our drive to serve the nation we love.

-- The opinions expressed in this op-ed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Military.com. If you would like to submit your own commentary, please send your article to opinions@military.com for consideration.
U.S. Army infantry and other ground combat soldiers may start receiving dual-tubed, binocular-style night vision goggles by this fall, according to service officials working to increase soldier lethality.

The Army announced in February that it has money in its fiscal 2019 budget to fund the effort to give soldiers greater depth perception than the current single-tubed Enhanced Night Vision Goggles and AN/PVS 14s.

The ENVG B is a "dual-tubed fusion so we can fight day and night, and we are now putting the capability to see, whether it is reticles, sights and everything else, into the dismounted soldier -- so think heads-up display version 1.0," Brig. Gen. Christopher Donahue, commandant of the Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia, and soldier lethality cross functional team leader, told an audience recently at the Association of the United States Army's Global Force Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama.

Soldier lethality is one of the Army's six modernization priorities, along with long-range precision fires; the next-generation combat vehicle; future vertical lift; a mobile and expeditionary network; and air and missile defense capabilities.

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Each priority has a dedicated cross-functional team, made up of program managers, requirements officials and experienced soldiers to help develop and field new technologies faster than ever before, Army officials say.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis recently established the Close Combat Lethality Task Force, "a parallel effort" that is supporting the Army's efforts to improve soldier lethality, said Gen. Stephen Townsend, commander of Army Training and Doctrine Command.

"U.S. close-combat soldiers and Marines, in our squads and platoons, do not overmatch our opponents," Townsend said. "Our adversaries have access to technology and weapons that have enabled them to close the gap between our forces -- night vision devices, weapons and munitions, and improved body armor are just a few examples of where they have closed the gap."

For now, the effort is focused on improving lethality in what the Army is calling the "close-combat 100,000," he said.

"There are approximately 100,000 dismounted soldiers -- infantry, cavalry, engineers, medics and the [forward observers] that accompany them, soldiers that close with and destroy the enemy in close combat," Townsend said. "They must have the capabilities that increase their lethality, mobility and survivability, and they've got to have room to counter emerging threats in the future."

Currently, most soldiers still use basic night-vision PVS-14, which takes ambient light from the stars and the moon.

The Army began fielding the first generation of the Enhanced Night Vision Goggle in 2009. The ENVG technology consists of a traditional infrared image intensifier similar to the PVS-14 and a thermal camera. The system fuses the IR with the thermal capability into one display.

So far, the Army has fielded about 20,000 of the slightly improved ENVG II. The ENVG III weighs about two pounds and features wireless capability. The service intends to field about 64,000 ENVG IIIs, Army officials said.

At the same time, the Army began rapidly developing the dual-tubed ENVG B late last year, Donahue said. The service brought together representatives from industry to sit down with program managers and soldiers to help develop a requirement and find a solution.

"ENVG B already has three of six soldier touchpoints -- industry is there, the right soldiers are there, specifically a bunch of squad leaders from 25th Infantry Division, 82nd Airborne Division for that one," Donahue said.

"They are getting immediate feedback of what should be on that prototype so when we do get that out to the force in October, that final version will have the right stuff on it," he said.

The soldier lethality CFT has also put a priority on replacing the M249 squad automatic weapon, followed by the M4 carbine with weapons more potent than the Army's 5.56mm Enhanced Performance Round, Donahue said.

-- Matthew Cox can be reached at matthew.cox@military.com.
The U.S. Air Force confirmed Thursday that it will field 130,000 of the Army's Modular Handgun System to replace its existing inventory of 9mm M9 pistols.

"We've started the procurement process and plan to buy approximately 130,000 weapons," Air Force spokeswoman Laura McAndrews told Military.com in an email.

"As a joint partner in this endeavor, we determined the [X]M18 MHS, the compact version, will best meet the Air Force mission needs, and selected it as the standard handgun for all Air Force users," she wrote.

The Army awarded Sig Sauer an MHS contract worth up to $580 million in January 2017. The 10-year MHS agreement calls for Sig Sauer to supply the service with full-size XM17 and compact XM18 versions of its 9mm pistol.

The Air Force's decision follows similar moves by the Navy and Marine Corps to select MHS.

The Navy plans to field 60,000 XM18s, and the Corps budgeted money in its proposed fiscal 2019 budget to purchase 35,000 MHS pistols. Marine Corps Systems Command officials declined to comment on the budget submission.

The Marine Corps may also be leaning more toward the smaller XM18 model, according to a "sources sought" solicitation posted on FedBizOpps.gov on Feb. 13.

"The Program Manager Individual Combat and Equipment, Marine Corps Systems Command, is seeking industry input that identifies potential sources for holster sleeve for the Modular Handgun System (P320 Sig Sauer handgun) Compact ([XM18]) version," the solicitation states.

Companies have a deadline of March 30 to submit concept proposals, the solicitation states.

The Air Force selected only the XM18 rather than both MHS models because "a single model handgun simplifies procurement, sustainment, and reduces support equipment cost while ensuring commonality with other services," McAndrews said.

The striker-fired MHS pistols can be outfitted with suppressors and accommodate standard and extended-capacity magazines. There is also an accessory rail for mounting accessories such as weapon lights.

The Coast Guard has also placed an order to purchase MHS, according to according to Tom Taylor, chief marketing officer for Sig Sauer.

Military.com has contacted the Coast Guard for comment but has not received a response yet.

This is not the first time the services have agreed to adopt a common pistol. The Army selected the M9 in 1985 to replace the .45 caliber 1911A1, and the M9 soon became the sidearm for entire U.S. military.

The Army intends to purchase 195,000 MHS pistols, mostly in the full-size XM17 version.

Sig Sauer beat out Glock Inc., FN America and Beretta, in the MHS competition, an effort the Army launched in late August 2015. It appears that Sig's victory may have formally ended Beretta's 30-year hold on the U.S. military's sidearm market.

-- Matthew Cox can be reached at matthew.cox@military.com.
Military members and veterans can get up to four free months of Apple Music through the Apple Music military discount -- but...
European Parliament Member: There is no De-Facto Tskhinvali Government

By Vladimer Napetvaridze

On 26 March, in her interview with "Kviris Palitra", member of European Parliament- Ana Gomes, who represents the group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, discussed a problem of Tskhinvali. As she noted, there are no de facto authorities in Tskhinvali, because everything is ruled by Russia.I often hear the term "De-facto government". There is no De facto government In Tskhinvali because there is occupant Russia. The fact that Tatunashvili's body was returned to the family after 26 days, was terrifying. I know that it is very hard, everyone in Georgia is very difficult to accept this fact, the government has done everything to bring the body of their own citizens back. This shows that Russia is becoming more and more aggressive. Don't lie to ourselves - beyond everything that's happening in Tskhinvali, stands Russia. I want to express my full support to the family of the deceased, and to people of Georgia. Soon security and defense committee of the European parliament will visit Georgia. I hope this will give the European Parliament an opportunity of better understanding the situation. We are concerned about Georgia and Russia's provocations are unacceptable. This is the time when every friend of Georgia should support the country.- Gomes stated.As a proof of Ana Gomes assumptions about Russian influence over Tskhinvali region, we can discuss the investment program of socio-economic development of Tskhinvali in 2015-2017, which assumed expenditures of more than 4.2 billion rubles (70 million USD). This money has been spent on the implementation of 36 projects in such areas as housing construction, communal services, culture, education, and transport infrastructure. It is noteworthy that this is not the first financial aid from Russia to Tskhinvali.In 2008, after the recognition of Georgia's breakaway territory's independence, Russia has spent billions of rubles on financing Tskhinvali. According to the leading geopolitical intelligence platform - "Stratfor.com", it is Russian policy to finance all the breakaway territories in the post-soviet region. It is important to mention, that these territories are largely dependent on Russia's financial aid for survival because they are all economically isolated and effectively run on black and gray economies. According to "Stratfor.com" various compiled estimates shows that Russia has annually been spending about $300 million on Abkhazia and at least $100 million on Tskhinvali and Transdniestria to finance their budgets and provide them with cheap fuel, etc.The question is how long Russia is going to finance all the breakaway or conflict territories in the post-soviet region. The authorities of Abkhazia and Tskhinvali admit that their budgets are still being formed to a large extent at the expense of funds from Russia. In particular, more than 90% of the budget of Tskhinvali region is formed by Russian subsidies.Based on the numbers, it is clear that without Russian financial assistance, there would no economy in Tskhinvali. Therefore, it is clear that behind the de-facto government of Tskhinvali region, stands Russian political interests.
The News in Brief

Prepared by Mariam Chanishvili







Rasmussen: Russia is not China, Eastern Partnership should feel EUs support



The former Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Anders Fogh Rasmussen says that the counties of the Eastern Partnership should receive further support and better signals for integration into the European Union, otherwise Russia will act and this will lead to negative consequences in the region.



Our duty is to make the dreams of Tbilisi, Kiev and Chisinau come true, Rasmussen told the Georgian media after a conference dedicated to the Eastern Partnership issues in Brussels on Monday.



If the EU fails to offer these countries a real path, we should not complain that our neighbors will not be able to endure pressure that may have alarming geopolitical consequences for Europe, Rasmussen stated.



The former top official of NATO says that the EU should send a signal to the Eastern Partnership countries about the light at the end of tunnel.



We should think about what we should offer to the Eastern Partnership countries after 2020. If we cannot convince these countries that their hard work will be appreciated, the EU should not be surprised that our Eastern European partners will take a step backwards, Rasmussen said.



The Eastern Partnership is the EU initiative with post-Soviet states of Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan. Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine, intended to provide an avenue for discussions of trade, economic strategy, travel agreements, and other issues between the EU and its Eastern European neighbours.







Georgian PM Says Kakheti Region Needs Separate Airport



The Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili has stated that Kakheti region, in the countrys east, well-known for winemaking, may have an airport.



I think we came to the stage, where Kakheti needs a separate airport, Kvirikashvili stated at the opening of a new hotel in Kakheti on Monday.



Kvirikashvili added that the government should also think about the restoration of the railway in the region, the step which would benefit the regions tourism potential.




business Air India divestment: Profitability criteria doesn't apply to domestic airlines, says Jayant Sinha The government has cleared the runway for Air India's divestment - the government has given its 'in-principle' nod to sell 76 percent stake in national carrier Air India. CNBC-TV18's Shereen Bhan caught up with MoS, Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha to discuss the nuances of the decision.
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While the government is gearing up to bring 5G to India as soon as it can and be at par with the world by 2020, it has asked telecom firms to vacate the spectrum they hold in the 3300-3400 Mhz band which will be used for 5G services, reports Economic Times.

All existing licensees of the spectrum in the 3300-3400 Mhz band are required to vacate the spectrum held by them within six months time from the date of issue of this notice, the telecom department said in the notice dated March 27.

They may like to migrate to other frequency bands presently being used to providing internet services and apply to the WPC (wireless planning and commission) accordingly, which may be considered subject to availability and as per existing procedure, the notice added.

Department of Telecom (DoT) has given six months time to companies like Bharti Airtel, Tata Communications, and corporations like Indian Oil and ONGC to vacate and migrate to other bands as the spectrum in the 3300-3400 Mhz band will be open for auctions and for the first time ever that 5G airwaves would be sold in India.

What is Trais role?

As many bands are under consideration for 5G services, the government has asked the telecom regulator to give its recommendations on the reserve price of airwaves in various bands including 3300-3400 Mhz and 3500-3600 Mhz.

Along with the reserve price, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) will also give its views on the rights to use spectrum, the quantum of spectrum that will be put up for auction within a band and overall, and other associated conditions.

Trai began the process of consultations on the next round of spectrum auctions early last year, however, it is yet to bring out recommendations.

What are the mobile operators saying?

The government may be all set to bring 5G to India, but mobile operators have a different opinion on this. They are not looking for an immediate sale of airwaves, including that of 5G airwaves. And this is due to the cash strapped state of the mobile operators. They want the auctions to be held in the next financial year starting April 2019.

What is DoTs word for those holding spectrum in the 3300-3400 MHz band?

In its notice, DoT has directed firms that no new assignments will be made in the 3300-3400 MHz band, and existing licenses will not be renewed further. But the wireless operating license holders including carriers, internet service providers and oil PSUs may use the airwaves in this band for internet services over WiMax, an industry insider said.

Bharti Airtel has surrendered its airwaves in this spectrum band and RCom has shut down services.
Injections of Low Molecular Weight Heparin (LMWH) have turned out to be an effective therapeutic treatment for COVID-19

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Biocon on Friday said it expects its partner Mylan to launch insulin glargine across various markets in Europe in the second half of 2018. The company didn't specify the Australian launch but said it will happen later this year.

Biocon and its partner Mylan on Thursday said they have received approval for insulin glargine in Europe and Australia. After Japan, Europe and Australia were two highly regulated markets that the company has approval to sell the long acting insulin - the biosimilar version of French drug maker Sanofi's Lantus.

Below is an edited excerpt from email interview with Siddharth Mittal, President - Finance of Biocon.

How significant is insulin glargine approval for Biocon in Europe and Australia?

The approval of Mylan and Biocons biosimilar Insulin Glargine, Semglee, by the European Commission is significant as it is the first biosimilar approval in EU from our joint portfolio. It comes close on the heels of Ogivri, our biosimilar Trastuzumab, being the first biosimilar from Mylan and Biocons joint portfolio to be approved in the US.

It is also a key validation of our development, regulatory and manufacturing capabilities of Biocon, which has emerged as a credible, global insulins player committed to address the growing healthcare challenges associated with diabetes.

The EC approval furthers our mission to provide a high quality, affordable insulin analog for people with diabetes globally. The global market opportunity for insulin glargine is over USD 6 billion.

When will your insulin glargine (Semglee) be launched in Europe?

Mylan expects to begin launching the product across various markets in Europe in the second half of 2018. The EC approval of Semglee applies to all 28 European Union (EU) member states and the European Economic Area (EEA) member states of Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.

Semglee is one of the three insulin analogs being co-developed by Mylan and Biocon for the global marketplace. Mylan has exclusive commercialization rights for insulin glargine in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the European Union and European Free Trade Association countries. Biocon has exclusive rights for Japan and a few emerging markets, and co-exclusive commercialization rights with Mylan in the rest of the world.

How do you expect the competitive landscape to pan out for glargine in Europe?

Diabetes is a growing pandemic and going ahead there will be an incremental demand for both basal and other forms of insulin as it is largely an underserved market. In Europe, the number of people with diabetes are expected to grow to 38 million by 2030.

Even though Biocon-Mylan will be the third player in the biosimilars Insulin Glargine market in Europe, we are also confident of being able to expand the diabetes market in a significant way.

Are there initial trends from the launch of competitors Insulin Glargine in EU that signals the level of acceptance of biosimilar insulin analogs in the market?

We cannot comment on a competitors market share or success but biosimilars have generally been well accepted in the EU thus far.

Are Biocon and Mylan the first to get Insulin Glargine approval in Australia, and when is the launch planned?

Eli Lillys Biosimilar Glargine became the first Biosimilar Glargine to be registered in Australia, but the product is as yet unavailable in the market. Semglee is the first biosimilar approval from Biocon and Mylans joint portfolio as well as the first biosimilars from India to approved in the country. Mylan plans to launch Semglee in Australia later this year.

How do you see the prospects of Semglee in Australia?

Mylan and Biocons Semglee will offer a high quality, more affordable biosimilar insulin glargine to the nearly 2 million people are currently living with diabetes in Australia. We hope to bring down the total annual cost burden of diabetes in Australia which is currently estimated at $14.6 billion.

What are your plans for taking Insulin Glargine to other markets across the globe?

Marketing applications for Semglee have been submitted in Canada and the US Several submissions are planned for key Emerging Markets.
Fulfilling ones dreams and ambitions take time, effort and perseverance. For millennials who've just entered the workforce, a whole wide world awaits, and it easy to get overwhelmed, disillusioned and lose track of goals and ambitions. Here's what famous entrepreneurs and influential people think will help in getting our goals. (Image: Pixabay)

Embrace failure: J.K. Rowling

The author grit her teeth through for a long time before becoming famous for her Harry Potter series. The Guardian reports that she broke off her marriage with an abusive husband, and was on state welfare - poor by British standards. She also got rejected loads of times before tasting success. She said that the entire process was a gift and a learning experience about herself and her relationships. (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

Work for a cause bigger than yourself, not just your passion: Steve Jobs

Jobs was known to be fiercely driven to perfection, seeing Apples product designs through till they are leagues above the rest. A Business Insider report mentioned a conversation between Steve Jobs and his biographer Walter Isaacson, where Jobs said that we are all under the ambit of history and that we have to give back to our community. This will positively reflect back on our lives in the long run. (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

Keep it simple: Bill Gates

Microsofts billionaire co-founder and philanthropist learnt this from his long-time friend Warren Buffett. The Oracle from Omaha boils down matters to the essentials. He invests in places that have a predictive model, places where returns can be expected in the long term. Gates even called it a special form of genius. (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

Dont work too hard: Arianna Huffington.

The President and the Editor-in-Chief of The Huffington Post said that working ourselves to a burnout is not the way to go. She called it a collective delusion in a LinkedIn post. She also said that unplugging, recharging, and renewing yourself," would have been some advice she would have given to her younger self. (Image: WIkimedia Commons)

Have an experimental attitude: Stewart Butterfield

The co-founder of Flickr and chief executive of Slack acknowledged in a New York Times article that the people in their early to mid-twenties are earnest and serious. He also notes that young people feel that they have accomplished a lot aside from understanding how things work. He thus encourages a more experimental attitude.

(Image: WIkimedia Commons)

Have Patience for learning, and be impatient to take risks: Cynthia Tidwell

Whats the worst that can happen? is what young people should think, the CEO of Royal Neighbors of America, an insurance company, told Business Insider that the worst that can happen to young people is that they are back to square one, and hence encourages people to take more risks. (Image: Cynthia Tidwell LinkedIn profile)

Don't listen to your parents: Brian Chesky

Airbnbs CEO told The New York Times in an interview that you have the most important relationships with the Parents but you shouldn't take career advice from them. He also encouraged the mindset that we must assume every career that we are going to undertake will be a massive failure. That way you'll not make decisions based success, money or career but you'll make decisions based on what you love doing. (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

Be nice to everyone: Rick Goings

CEO of Tupperware Brands told Business Insider that he checks up on all the relevant people in the office to see how they treat the people in the office. He firmly believes that how we treat others is how we treat the world. (Image: Rick Goings Facebook profile)

Do not regret, and keep moving on: Richard Branson

The founder and Chairman of the Virgin Group has kept his mothers advice close to his chest. Branson saw every failure as a learning curve, and moved on, instead of dwelling on them. He terms people spending a lot of time dwelling on failures as surprising. (Image: Wikimedia Commons)
Terming the markets move in 2017 as a unique one, experts at BNP Paribas India believe that it would be unreasonable to expect such conditions to last indefinitely. In fact, the corrective phase was not largely unexpected and there could be continued volatility ahead, Abhiram Eleswarapu, Head of Equities Research, BNP Paribas India told Moneycontrols Uttaresh Venkateshwaran in an interview.

Although given the selloff in the past couple of months, he sees an upside of about 13 percent by December, mainly on expectations of improved earnings visibility.

We continue to remain overweight India from a structural perspective. However, we have also been highlighting that valuations arent exactly cheap for the market as a whole (they werent at least before the recent correction), he added.

In terms of sectors, he is being selective in his approach for IT stocks, given the recent run up, while there is a bias towards growth stocks in areas such as financials and autos as well. An excerpt from that interview:

Compared to the stellar returns of 2017, the market in 2018 so far has reversed the trend. Is there more downside in FY19 or is consolidation around the corner? Also, will this not be a factor enough to hold the market or take it higher? And, any take on its current valuation?

2017 was a unique year in that we saw correlated returns across asset classes, which was indicative of abundant liquidity and low volatility. It would have been unreasonable to expect such conditions to last indefinitely.

However, it is worth noting that most major markets around the world are also marginally down so far this year, barring US tech or commodity-heavy indices in emerging markets.

The Sensex came within touching distance of our year-end target of 37,500 in January itself. Therefore a correction from those levels wasnt entirely unexpected. Of course, small and mid-cap stocks have corrected more than the large caps.

The Sensex trades at around 17x FY19 consensus P/E, which is higher than the long-term average of around 15-16x.

Given the sell off over the past couple of months, we see about a 13% upside by December, mainly on expectations of improved earnings visibility. But we would not be surprised to see continued volatility.

What are the factors leading to this fall in the market?

We continue to remain overweight India from a structural perspective. However, we have also been highlighting that valuations arent exactly cheap for the market as a whole (they werent at least before the recent correction), especially given that earnings estimates are still being downgraded. By contrast, peers elsewhere in Asia have seen positive earnings revisions.

Note consensus earnings estimates still call for a sharp earnings growth recovery in FY19 and FY20, ie, almost 20% on a year-over-year basis in both FY19 and FY20, which we think is being questioned.

In such a scenario, negative developments tend to get highlighted even more. At a global level, these include rising crude prices and fears of increased protectionism. On the domestic front, weve had uncertainty due to PSU bank frauds and concerns over poll outcomes in regional and national elections this year and the next. These have followed the imposition of the LTCG in the Union Budget, which several investors did not expect.

Political stability being one of the aspects for the Street to be worried, how will that play out for the rest of the calendar year and the entire financial year?

News flow around elections will continue through the year as several state elections are due, but investor decisions will remain much more dependent on fundamentals such as earnings growth and valuations.

But how does that (the risks) play on when it comes to earnings and economic growth trends that have been seen in several data points? Any sectors or stocks you would like to be invested in this scenario? How should an investor approach this market in FY19?

In general, economic growth around the world is solid, which is also visible in PMI data, etc. Most Asian currencies are largely stable. We see an ROE recovery across the region led by consumption and buoyant exports in FY19.

Within India, we have seen intense policy action over the past couple of years around RERA, the Bankruptcy Law, demonetisation, GST implementation and PSU bank recapitalisation. India has not participated in the global growth recovery from late 2016. But we expect an investment recovery especially related to government-related infrastructure projects, rural housing, etc in FY19.

Urban consumption seems healthy as is the situation with credit offtake, especially for private players. Our road trips are suggesting incrementally fewer stressed asset additions and continued traction in areas such as microfinance and housing. Add to this, auto sales and air traffic are quite good. Of course, this is somewhat offset by a still-delayed private capex, concerns over the fiscal situation, worsening health of PSU banks, etc.

But broadly, we think there are several quality stocks in the above areas to construct a portfolio. Our bias is towards growth stocks in areas such as financials, autos, and select stocks in other sectors.

Do you have a view on the IT and pharmaceutical space?

We like several companies in the Indian IT sector, but after the recent run-up, we are more selective on our stock picks now. A high base effect and weak legacy technology spending are obvious negatives for the sector. But we think revenue growth was worsened by cyclical issues over the past few years and earnings were further hurt by a stronger INR this year.

From a longer-term standpoint, there could be several positive trends for Indian IT. Tech is getting increasingly softwarised, new verticals are emerging that could drive outsourced spending, enterprise digital spending in taking off, and lastly, Indian companies continue to gain share led by digital offerings.
20:59 With this we conclude the coverage for the day. We will be back with live tracking of news and developments tomorrow.

20:35 Russia orders out 60 US diplomats over spy poisoning affair

Russia expelled 60 U.S. diplomats on Thursday and announced it would eject scores from other countries that have joined London and Washington in censuring Moscow

over the poisoning of a spy, reports Reuters

The U.S. ambassador was also ordered to shut the consulate in St Petersburg, in Russia's retaliation for the biggest expulsion of diplomats since the Cold War. The White House said Moscow's decision marked a further deterioration in the U.S.-Russia relationship.

20:28 Singapore watchdog says Uber-Grab deal may have infringed competition

Singapore's competition watchdog said it had reasonable grounds to suspect competition had been infringed by Uber Technologies Inc's deal to sell its operations in Southeast Asia to rival ride-hailing firm Grab, reports Reuters. In a rare move, the Competition Commission of Singapore (CCS) has begun an investigation into the deal and proposed interim measures that will require Uber and Grab to maintain their pre-transaction independent pricing, the watchdog said in a statement on Friday.

20:21 IFCI plans to dilute stake in NSE, CCIL

The country's oldest public sector financial institution IFCI proposes to further offload its stake in National Stock Exchange (NSE) as part of exercise to raise funds to fuel its operations, a top company official said. Besides NSE, IFCI is also planning to dilute stakes in Clearing Corporation of India (CCIL), reports PTI.

20:01 Govt disposes of 7 lakh tonne pulses from buffer stock

The Centre has disposed of around 7 lakh tonne of pulses so far from a buffer stock of 20.50 lakh tonne, according to a senior food ministry official.

The government, for the first time, in October 2015 decided to create a buffer stock of pulses through imports and later by domestic procurement to ensure better prices to farmers and to use the stock to augment local supply in times of price rise, reports PTI.

19:43 Relief for Bharti Airtel: UIDAI restores Airtel's authorisation for Aadhaar-based eKYC

The UIDAI has restored Bharti Airtel's authorisation to conduct Aadhaar-based verification of its mobile subscribers subject to riders, sources said. The Unique Identification Authority of India has not lifted the ongoing suspension on Airtel Payments Bank's eKYC licence, sources privy to the development told PTI.

19:37 Backed by Numetal, Odisha Slurry Pipeline offers to repay loans

Odisha Slurry Pipeline infrastructure Limited - the Essar Steel unit that is in the middle of a dispute over its ownership - has written to its lenders with an offer to repay all the loans.

If accepted by the lenders, the move will strengthen Numetals bid for Essar Steel. In early February, the VTB Capital-led company had bought OSPIL from SREI Infrastructure Fund. But the sale was disputed by the companys lenders, led by SBI, who claimed that SREI is not the rightful owner of the pipeline company.

19:30 Really concerned, world heading to a Cold War era: UN chief

UN chief has said that he is "really very concerned" to the world heading to a time reminiscent of the Cold war era in the wake of the tensions between US and Russia and called for putting precautions in place to guarantee effective communication and prevent escalation, reports PTI.

His comments came after, the Trump administration this week ordered the expulsion of 60 Russians from the US over the alleged poisoning of ex-double agent Sergei Skripal in the UK on March 4.

19:13 Supreme Court shocked at over 600% overcrowding in jails

Prisoners "cannot be kept in jail like animals", a shocked Supreme Court said after it was informed that many of the over 1,300 prisons across the country were overcrowded, even to the extent of more than 600 percent.

"What's the point in talking about prison reforms when we cannot keep them in jail. We should release them, if you cannot keep them properly," the top court said, lambasting state governments and union territories (UTs) for "complete lack of commitment" to fix this "extremely unfortunate" situation.

A bench of Justices M B Lokur and Deepak Gupta also warned the Directors General of Police (Prisons) of all states and UTs of contempt notice for non-compliance of its earlier orders with regard to submitting a plan of action to deal with issue of overcrowding prisons.

19:04 Sebi looking into ICICI Bank-Videocon matter

With ICICI Bank embroiled in a controversy over alleged conflict of interest involving its CEO Chanda Kochhar, market regulator Sebi has begun looking into the matter for any possible disclosure and corporate governance-related lapses, reports PTI. Besides, Videocon Industries and its promoters have come under the regulator's scanner as the matter relates to alleged "quid pro quo" involving loans to the company by a group of lenders, including ICICI Bank and some public sector banks.

18:58 CBSE leak: Police writes to Google, seeks details of ID used to send e-mail to board's chairperson

The Delhi Crime Branch has written to Google for details of the e-mail address from where the CBSE chairperson was sent a mail on the Class 10 mathematics paper being leaked, police officials said.

The board's chairperson Anita Karwal had received the e-mail a day before the mathematics exam, which was held on March 28, they said.

The Delhi Police has written to Google to share details of the ID from which the CBSE chairperson was sent the e-mail about the paper being leaked, the police officials said. Read full report here

18:49 US regulator approves SpaceX plan for broadband satellite services

The top US telecommunications regulator on Thursday gave formal approval to a plan by Elon Musk's SpaceX to build a global broadband network using satellites, reports Reuters.

"This is the first approval of a U.S.-licensed satellite constellation to provide broadband services using a new generation of low-Earth orbit satellite technologies," the Federal Communications Commission said in a statement.

The system proposed by privately held SpaceX, as Space Exploration Holdings is known, will use 4,425 satellites, the FCC said.

18:43 GAIL India to get 90 LNG cargos from the U.S. in 2018

India's state-owned GAIL (India) Ltd on Friday said it would be annually receiving about 90 cargoes of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Sabine Pass and Cove Point LNG terminals in the U.S. GAIL has long-term deals to annually buy 5.8 million tonnes U.S. LNG, reports Reuters.

18:39 IDBI Bank makes Rs 4,400 crore via non-core asset sale, sells BKC building to Sebi

In the midst of balance sheet troubles and handling frauds, government-owned IDBI Bank has garnered a total of Rs 4,400 crore through sale of non-core assets during the year, reports Beena Parmar. The bank has been selling non-core assets to shore up its capital and has concluded another deal by selling its building in the Mumbais suburban commercial location Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC) to the Securities Exchange Board of India for about Rs 1,000 crore.

18:35 China to import $8 trillion of goods in next 5 years: foreign minister

China will import $8 billion of goods and attract $600 billion of foreign investment in the next five years, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Friday. China's overseas investment will reach $750 billion in the next five years, the foreign ministry said in a statement on its website, citing Wang at a conference in Vietnam.

18:21 Class 12th re-exam on April 25th, Class 10th paper to be in July: Ed Sec

Education Secretary talking to mediapersons said that re-examination of Class 12th exam will be on 25th April. Reportedly, the class 12th paper of Economics was leaked. 10th class Maths paper which also leaked will happen in July, if required.

Regarding Class 10th re-examination, as the leak was restricted to Delhi and Haryana, if it at all a re-exam will happen, it will happen only in Delhi & Haryana and a decision will be taken on this in next 15 days. If at all a re-exam is done, it will be in July, he added. | ANI

18:08 Cox & Kings sells additional 3% stake in UK subsidiary

Tour and travel firm Cox & Kings today said it has sold additional 3 per cent stake in Prometheon Holdings UK to SSG Capital Management for Rs 110 crore after transaction expense and tax, reports PTI. The company had earlier this month sold 11.58 per cent stake in Prometheon Holdings UK to SSG Capital for Rs 450 crore, after transaction expense and tax.

17:55 Multi-level campaigns must for awareness on data, user security: Nasscom

There is a need for multi-level campaigns to build awareness around information sharing on social media at a time when breach of user data on a social networking platform has placed data privacy issues in public glare, says IT body Nasscom. Nasscom President R Chandrashekhar told PTI in an interview that a new generation of users and new economic strata that are entering the digital space for the first time have necessitated focused campaigns, which promote awareness around online behaviour and threats.

17:42 Realty sector on recovery path, HNIs pouring money: Report

The Indian real estate market is on a recovery path and is witnessing investments by High Networth Individuals (HNIs) with further improvement in the sector likely in 2020, said a report by IKON Marketing Consultants. The key sector, which has been sluggish in the last few years, will get a boost in 2020, while demand will grow in the luxury segment after 2020, it said.

17:28 BR Ambedkars grandson objects to UP govts decision of adding Ramji in his name

This is a wrong decision by BJP-RSS. They are doing this only for political gain. He is addressed as Babasaheb in Karnataka & Maharashtra & as Baba Bhimrao in the north: Prakash Ambedkar, BR Ambedkar's grandson on adding 'Ramji' to his name | ANI

17:23 Madhya Pradesh to raise retirement age for govt employees to 62 years

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan today announced raising the retirement age of state government employees to 62 years from the current 60 years, reports PTI. He made the announcement while speaking to reporters today. He, however, did not disclose details of this decision. There are about five lakh regular government employees in the state.

16:56 Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath inaugurates 'India's longest' elevated road

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath today inaugurated a 10.30-km-long elevated road, touted to be the longest of its kind in the country, connecting UP Gate and Rajnagar Extension in Ghaziabad, reports PTI. Built at a cost of Rs 1,147 crore, the six-lane elevated road is supported on 227 pillars.

16:52 Sisodia writes to Javadekar, asks for a brain-storming session of education ministers

Delhi Deputy CM Manish Sisodia writes to Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar on CBSE Class XII & X paper leaks, requests him to convene a day-long brain storming session of education minsters so that similar incidents do not happen in the future, reports ANI.

16:50 PNB objects to Nirav Modi-linked firms selling assets in US: Report

Punjab National Bank (PNB) has objected to the speedy sale of assets in US by companies linked to Nirav Modi, who is at the centre of the PNB fraud case, according to a report by Mint. PNB has argued that the truncated sale of assets proposed by Firestar Diamond and other firms will affect the recovery of creditors. The filing adds that "the lack of clarity on the connection between debtors and the Modi fraud could affect the bidding process".

16:47 Normalcy restored in parts of Asansol, prohibitory orders in force

Prohibitory orders remained in force and Internet services suspended here today even as life was limping back to normal in the southern parts of the town, official sources said to PTI. Shops and markets opened and vehicles started plying in the southern parts of Asansol, Sub-Divisional Officer (SDO) P Roychowdhury said, adding that tension still prevailed in the northern parts of the town.

16:30 Air China, China Eastern profits up despite fuel cost surge

Flag carrier Air China and Shanghai-based China Eastern Airlines both posted solid profit growth in 2017 as increasing travel demand by the country's growing middle class helped offset sharply higher fuel costs, reports PTI.

Air China earned 7.24 billion yuan (USD 1.15 billion) for the full year, up 6.3 per cent, while China Eastern took in 6.34 billion yuan, a gain of 4.1 per cent over 2016, the carriers said in statements to the Hong Kong stock exchange where they are listed.

16:19 Chandan Gupta who made the first complaint to Police over CBSE paper leak: On 27 March, at 10:40 pm, I made a call to PCR stating that I had received a question paper. The source of the exam paper leak should be traced. I was questioned by the police that day and they are doing further investigation now. | ANI

16:06 Determined to improve ease of doing business in the state: Kerala CM

Aiming to improve ease of doing business in Kerala, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has said the long-standing perception that the state was not very investor-friendly was "slowly changing" with a slew of measures being undertaken by the Left government, reports PTI.

15:35 Nepal Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli to visit India from 6 to 8 April, reports ANI.

15:27 Indian green building market to double by 2022: ANAROCK

India's green building market is estimated to double by 2022 at 10 billion sq ft, valuing around USD 35-50 billion, driven by increasing awareness level, environmental benefits and government support, according to property consultant ANAROCK.

15:09 Nirav Modi withdrew huge sum from a bank in Belgium days after CBI filed FIR in PNB fraud case: Report

Diamantiare Nirav Modi made a huge transaction from a government-owned bank in Antwerp, Belgium, just a week after the CBI filed the first FIR against him in the Punjab National Bank (PNB) fraud case, according to a report in Firstpost.

Quoting top officials in the investigative agencies, the report said the transaction took place despite all overseas centres of Indian banks being alerted on January 31, the day the FIR was lodged against Modi, his brother Neeshal Modi, wife Ami Modi and uncle Mehul Choksi. (PTI)

Read the full story.

14:50 CBSE Paper leaks: 10 more people questioned, police 'interacts' with board's controller of exams

The Delhi Crime Branch has questioned 10 more people and "interacted" with the CBSE controller of examinations in connection with the leak of the board's Class 10 mathematics and Class 12 economic papers, police said today.

The CBSE has also said that its chairperson had received an e-mail about the Class 10 mathematics paper being leaked a day before the exam, police officials said. (PTI)

14:32 E-way bill mandatory for inter-state movement of goods from Sunday

Businesses and transporters moving goods worth over Rs 50,000 from one state to another will have to carry an e-way bill from April 1.

Touted as an anti-evasion measure that would help boost tax collections by clamping down on trade that currently happens on cash basis, the e-way bill provision of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) was first introduced on February 1. (PTI)

14:28 Trump might hold up trade deal with South Korea for talks with North Korea

US President Donald Trump said that he may "hold" the recently agreed trade deal with South Korea in an effort to gain leverage over his scheduled meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

"I may hold it up till after a deal is made with North Korea," he said in his address on infrastructure in Ohio. (PTI)

13:46 Four BJP members to visit affected areas in Asansol.

BJP President Amit Shah has constituted a four-member committee to visit affected areas in Asansol and submit a report. OM Mathur, Shahnawaz Hussain, Roopa Ganguly & BD Mathur are members of the committee, reports ANI.

13:29 CBSE Paper leak: Section 144 imposed near Prakash Javadekar's residence

Section 144 has been imposed near Prakash Javadekar's residence on Kushak Road, Delhi, ANI reports.

13:09 I made a mistake, Karnataka won't, Amit Shah warns Congress

In a slip of tongue, I said that Ye ddyurappa govt is corrupt instead of Siddaramaiah's, and the entire Congress party started to rejoice. I want to tell Rahul Gandhi, that I might have made a mistake but the people of Karnataka will not: Amit Shah in Mysuru. (ANI)

12:41 Amit Shah meets Mysuru's royal family

BJP President Amit Shah met the royals of Mysuru at the Mysuru Palace. Ananth Kumar & BS Yeddyurappa were also present, reports ANI.

12:26 US to soon withdraw troops from Syria, says Trump

US President Donald Trump said the US troops would withdraw from Syria "very soon" as he lamented that America has wasted USD 7 trillion in wars in the Middle East.

At the same time, he said the US was using all its resources to defeat ISIS and drive them out of the captured territory. (PTI)

12:06 DMK holds special meeting on Cauvery issue

DMK's working president MK Stalin heads an executive committee meeting at the party headquarter on the Cauvery issue. Senior leaders of the party also present, reports ANI.

11:50 Amit Shah visits Suttur Math in Mysuru

BJP President Amit Shah visited Suttur Math in Mysuru and met Math head Shivarathri Deshikendra Mahaswamiji; Ananth Kumar & BS Yeddyurappa also present ANI reports.

11:38 US to request social media details from all visa applicants

The State Department wants all US visa applicants to submit their social media usernames, previous email addresses and phone numbers, vastly expanding the Trump administration's enhanced vetting of potential immigrants and visitors. (Bloomberg)

11:29 Russia to expel 60 US diplomats, close a US consulate: Sergei Lavrov

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow would expel 60 US diplomats and close its consulate in Saint Petersburg in a tit-for-tat expulsion over the poisoning of ex-double agent Sergei Skripal.

Lavrov said that the US ambassador had been informed of "retaliatory measures". (PTI)

11:22 Referee had warned about Smith, Warner in 2016: Report

A match referee had warned about disgraced Australian cricketers Steve Smith and David Warner "being involved in a ball-tampering incident" in the domestic Sheffield Shield in 2016, a media report said.

The report came after Smith and Warner were stripped of captaincy and vice-captaincy respectively and banned for a year from the sport after being caught up in a plot to alter the condition of the ball during the third Test against South Africa. (PTI)

11:16 CBSE paper leak: 6 class X students arrested

Jharkhand police has 6 class X students in relation to the CBSE paper leak, suspecting that the paper was leaked from Chapra, reports News18.

11:07 Reliance Capital arm sells 19.05 percent stake in Sula Vineyards for Rs 256 crore

Reliance Capital today said its wholly-owned subsidiary has sold 19.05 percent stake in wine producer Sula Vineyards Private Ltd for Rs 256 crore.

"Reliance Corporate Advisory Services Ltd has sold 30,06,833 equity shares held in an unlisted company namely Sula Vineyards Private Ltd (representing 19.05 percent of paid up equity share capital), for an aggregate consideration of Rs 256 crore," Reliance Capital said in a filing to the BSE. (PTI)

10:21 Unemployment major challenge for India but reforms would create jobs: IMF

The International Monetary Fund (IMF)has exuded confidence that the reforms being carried out in India in the last few years would end up creating new jobs in the country.

"Clearly India faces a challenge in terms of providing sufficient employment for a number of people looking for work and particularly young people. But yes, the measures and the reforms that India is undertaking will over medium term create jobs," IMF spokesperson, Gerry Rice said.

Noting that India has been one of the fastest growing large economies in recent times, he said this has led to improvement in reducing poverty and improvements in living standards. (PTI)

09:58 MoS External Affairs VK Singh to visit Iraq

Minister of State of External Affairs VK Singh will visit Iraq on 1 April to bring back mortal remains of 39 Indians, who were killed by ISIS in Mosul, reports ANI.

09:38 Facebook begins 'fact-checking' photos and videos

Facebook said it has begun "fact-checking" photos and videos to reduce the hoaxes and false news stories that have plagued the worlds largest social media network.

Manipulated photos and videos are another growing problem on social media.

The fact-checking began on Wednesday in France with assistance from the news organization AFP and will soon expand to more countries and partners. (Reuters)

09:32 Amit Shah to start two-day tour of Mysuru

As part of his 'Karunada Jagruti Yatre', Shah will start his two-day of tour of Mysuru, Chamarajanagara, Mandya and Ramanagara districts today, reports CNN-News18. The region is the home turf of Chief Minister Siddaramaiah. Out of the total 26 seats in the four districts, considered as the Vokkaliga heartland, the BJP did not win even a single seat during the 2013 Assembly elections.
By Saurabh Mukherjea

The endless search for the 'Superman':

Two hundred years ago the Scottish writer, Thomas Carlyle, popularized the theory that the history of the world is but the biography of great men", reflecting his belief that heroes shape history through their personal attributes and their ability to inspire others.

The Scotsman saw history as having turned on the decisions of great men and provided a detailed analysis of the influence of several such men (e.g. Muhammad, Shakespeare, Martin Luther, Rousseau, Napoleon).

So influential was Carlyles theory that most of us have grown up to believe that be it sport or the real world, without heroes we are lost.

The desperate need for a hero who will take us to the promised land, therefore, characterizes much of business, sport and political life in India.

But the great man theory of history is wrong.

A century ago, a pragmatic American physician-cum-philosopher, William James, was the first to point this out. He said that individuals (great or otherwise) shape their environment and, in turn, are shaped by it.

To say, therefore, that a great man defines his country (or the cause he represents) is to misread the world and misunderstand cause and effect.

Nowhere is the great man theory of history more glaringly wrong than in the context of the Indian economy. Over the past 50 years, Indias GDP growth has improved decisively every 10-15 years (see Exhibit 1).

One would be hard-pressed to say that over this half a century India has had economically enlightened leaders who have with their sagacity steered the country to increasingly high levels of GDP growth.

So, how  in the absence of heroes running the show  has India pulled this off?

India has a competitive political system. Hence, those who aspire to lead India have to provide an incrementally better deal to the voters.

So, for example, in the 1960s and 1970s when the country used to be racked by famine every 3-4 years, the politicians provided an incrementally better deal by planting Mexican dwarf wheat in Northern Indian and calling it the Green Revolution.

Agricultural productivity improved (between FY61-81 wheat productivity almost doubled from 851kg/hectare in FY61 to 1,630kg/hectare in FY81) and by the late 1970s, India was self-sufficient in food.

Similarly, in the last 20 years, as the Indian government has become wealthy enough to build infrastructure and as the voters have demanded better roads and electricity, Indian politicians have delivered on both fronts.

Between FY01-16, road total length in India increased 1.7x. Similarly, electricity generation increased by 2.4x during FY01-16.

In spite of the institutional nature of economic reform in India, the tendency is to attribute economic success to certain heroic individuals. So, in the popular discourse, PV Narsimha Rao/Manmohan Singh are held responsible for the 1991 reforms and Atal Bihari Vajpayee is held responsible for the Golden Quadrilateral (the fifth-longest highway project in the world, launched in 2001, completed in 2012).

Whilst there is nothing wrong in overemphasizing the role of Prime Ministers of years gone by, as soon as one starts doing that in a forward-looking context, one makes Indias economic growth prospects seem more fragile than they really are.

In specific, one starts believing that if this or that leader is not elected, an economic abyss awaits us. In reality, very little in Indias history suggests that economic development in India is so dependent on heroic leaders.

In fact, looking back at the post-1991 period, almost every economic policy of note  GST, road building, telecom liberalization, banking reform, the opening up of the power sector has been implemented by successive governments.

It is hard to identify a single important economic reform which was kicked off by Government X and then blocked by Government X+1. In the competitive context of Indian politics, a politician who blocks extant policies which deliver results does not stay in office for too long.

Investment implications:

Just as Indias GDP growth has stepped up decisively every 10-15 years over the past 50 years, there is every reason to believe that over the next decade growth steps up again.

In specific, there is every reason to believe that over the next decade we can register real GDP growth of 8 percent per annum and, assuming 4 percent CPI inflation (in line with the RBIs target), 12 percent nominal GDP growth per annum.

Given that we are a USD 2.4 trillion economy today, a decade hence our GDP will be around USD 8 trillion and our per capita income will be around USD 5000 (up from USD 1600 today). Indias superior growth over the next decade will be characterized by:

Policies: (1) Given that the Central Governments tax-to-GDP ratio is an anaemic 11.5 percent (compared to around 25 percent for South Eastern Asian economies), we expect Indian Governments to continue focusing on tax collection and, by implication, cracking down on the black economy. That, in turn, will continue driving the formalization of the economy; i.e. the transfer of economic activity from millions of small, tax evading businesses to larger, more efficiently run, tax-paying firms.

(2) The extra revenue that the Government collects will have to be spent on continuing to build infrastructure for the masses.

Aspirations:

What cable TV did for the middle classes in the 1990s, cheap smartphones are doing for the masses today; i.e. it is giving them a medium via which they can aspire to a better life.

Those aspirations, in turn, are leading them to demand better services and better infrastructure from the politicians. The Finance Ministers Union Budget speech (https://goo.gl/jzmgC7) on February 1 is a vivid demonstration of just how much pressure the polity feels to deliver on these aspirations.

Disclaimer: Saurabh Mukherjea is the CEO of Ambit Capital. His next book Coffee Can Investing: The Low-Risk Road to Stupendous Returns will be published in February. The views expressed are personal and not that of Moneycontrol.com.
Congress

West Bengal Congress president Adhir Chowdhury today said an anti-BJP front in the country "can succeed only under party president Rahul Gandhi's leadership".

He took a dig at Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's proposal of putting up a "one-to-one" fight against the BJP and said the Congress did not need any advice from her.

Chowdhury claimed that Banerjee was trying to project herself as a pan-India leader.

"She is advising the Congress on what to do and what not to. Who has appointed her as an adviser to the Congress? If you are serious about fighting the communal forces, you have to fight under the leadership of Rahul Gandhi," he said.

Banerjee, during her recent visit to New Delhi, had talked about a "one-to-one fight" between the BJP and the opposition parties in every state.

Chowdhury also blamed Banerjee and the Trinamool Congress (TMC) government in West Bengal for failing to control violence in the state during Ram Navami celebrations.

"The state government was unable to tackle the clashes as the TMC and the BJP are two sides of the same coin," he said.

The Congress did not need any suggestion from the TMC on how to deal with communal forces, Chowdhury added.

"We are not opposed to any particular individual, the party stands against the communal ideology of the BJP as a whole," he said.

In a bid to forge opposition unity, Banerjee had met UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi earlier this week and stressed the need for a united front against the BJP.

The TMC supremo had also met a host of opposition leaders from other parties, including Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar, during her two-day visit to the national capital to explore the possibilities of forming a "federal front" to take on the BJP in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
Diamantiare Nirav Modi made a huge transaction from a government-owned bank in Antwerp, Belgium, just a week after the CBI filed the first FIR against him in the Punjab National Bank (PNB) fraud case, according to a report in Firstpost.

Quoting top officials in the investigative agencies, the report said the transaction took place despite all overseas centres of Indian banks being alerted on January 31, the day the FIR was lodged against Modi, his brother Neeshal Modi, wife Ami Modi and uncle Mehul Choksi.

Several accounts were frozen days after Modi withdrew money. We have also received reliable information that Nirav Modi was in the US when the transaction took place," officials told Firstpost.

Officials Firstpost spoke to didn't reveal the name of the bank. After the PNB fraud, the investigative agencies had sought information on overseas centres of Indian banks that were doing business with the companies floated by Modi and his uncle Mehul Choksi.
Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan today announced raising the retirement age of state government employees to 62 years from the current 60 years.

He made the announcement while speaking to reporters today. He, however. did not disclose details of this decision. There are about five lakh regular government employees in the state.

The opposition Congress, accusing the government of "deceiving" the state's unemployed youth by increasing the retirement age, demanded that such youth be given a "berozgari bhatta" (unemployment allowance).

Replying to a question on the Supreme Court's order related to the promotion of state government employees. Chouhan said, "Several state government employees are not able to get promotion due to the apex court's order in a case related to 'reservation in promotion' pending with the SC. We will not allow any employee to retire without him getting his due promotion. This is why we have decided to increase the retirement age from 60 to 62 years."

The state government had made a provision for reservation for SC/ST employees in promotion, which was set aside by the Madhya Pradesh High Court.

The state's appeal against the order is pending in the SC with the latter ordering a status quo. This, officials said, has kept on hold promotions of state government employees.

Chouhan expressed hope that SC would take a decision on it within next two years.

Attacking the government, the opposition Congress said the decision was not going to help employees.

"This decision is not going to benefit employees. On the contrary, this would deprive younger officials and employees from getting a promotion. The CM should now announce an unemployment allowance of Rs 2,000 per month to jobless educated youth of the state," said Ajay Singh, Leader of Opposition in the Assembly.

He added that the state government should address the problems of contract employees, who are staging protests.

Meanwhile, the Berojgar Sena, an outfit of the educated unemployed, has opposed the government's decision and called it "cheating".

"Chouhan has deceived 1.5-crore educated unemployed youth of Madhya Pradesh by increasing the retirement age of state government employees. This decision will harm the BJP. We will tour the entire state to apprise the youth about this. We will also take legal recourse," said Akshay Hunka, the outfit's chief.
West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee addresses during Youth Trinamool Congress rally at Damurjala Stadium in Howrah district of West Bengal on Friday. PTI

Prohibitory orders remained in force and Internet services suspended here today even as life was limping back to normal in the southern parts of the town, official sources said.

Shops and markets opened and vehicles started plying in the southern parts of Asansol, Sub-Divisional Officer (SDO) P Roychowdhury said, adding that tension still prevailed in the northern parts of the town.

There was no fresh incident of violence, but the prohibitory orders were in force in Asansol, he said.

Internet services would remain suspended till April 4, the SDO added.

The police staged a route march in the town to instill a sense of security among the people, he said.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had held a high-level meeting at the secretariat in Kolkata yesterday, after returning from New Delhi, to review the situation in the Asansol-Raniganj area. The chief secretary, the home secretary, the director general of police (DGP) and the ADGP (law and order) were present at the meeting.

One person was killed and two police officers injured in the violence that had erupted in the area on Sunday and Monday.

The Imam of Noorani Masjid, Imdatullah Rashid, had yesterday said his younger son was killed in the violence and that his body was found on Wednesday night.

There was no confirmation from the police about the incident.

The Imam has appealed to the people to restore peace in the area.

Union minister Babul Supriyo had last night said two FIRs were lodged against him by the police, following which he also filed a complaint against the police.

Supriyo and state BJP Mahila Morcha president Locket Chatterjee were stopped by the police from entering the Asansol-Raniganj area.

A scuffle had ensued between BJP supporters and the police when the Union minister tried to enter Asansol, his Lok Sabha constituency.

State Parliamentary Affairs Minister Partha Chatterjee had accused the BJP of trying to destroy the peace and communal harmony in the state.

"When police is patrolling the area, why do they want to visit Raniganj? Are they not satisfied after unleashing violence for the last two days?" he had asked.
An Ohio teacher pleaded guilty to three counts of sexual battery on March 23, 2018, after having a child with a student she had adopted.

According to the Daily Mail, Laura Lynn Cross, 37, began grooming the then-student when he was in eighth grade and the affair escalated in 2014 when he became a freshman at Buchtel High School, where Cross taught English.

MORE SCANDAL: Texas teacher accused of having sexual relationship with 16-year-old student

Cross began inviting the then-16-year-old to play in her swimming pool at home and letting the student stay the night.

In 2015, Cross resigned her position at the high school and asked the student's mother for permission to become his legal guardian so she could "mentor" him, according to the New York Post.

The two moved in together with the court's approval and by December 2015, Cross had given birth to the student's child.

According to The Sun, the boy's mother had filed charges against Cross in June 2015 but nothing was done until she had the baby later that year.

"First of all, she's a schoolteacher. To get aroused by a child basically you have to be a sick individual," the student's father told the news site. "I was told by the school that she had a 'hold' on him and he was not cooperating, so basically they can't do nothing with it."

Cross was arrested in August 2017 and is now set to be sentenced in May.

Take a look through the gallery above to see other teachers who have been accused of having inappropriate relationships with students.
Minister of Foreign Affairs of Belarus V.Makei meets the Ambassador of Serbia

30-03-2018

On March 30, 2018 the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Belarus, Vladimir Makei, held a meeting with the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Serbia to the Republic of Belarus, Velko Kovacevic.

The sides discussed the results of the Belarusian-Serbian cooperation in 2017. The parties noted stable positive dynamics of bilateral political contacts and the active development of trade and economic cooperation between Belarus and Serbia. The sides reached agreements to continue work on joint projects in various fields, with an emphasis on increasing the practical impact of their implementation.

During the discussion of the situation around Kosovo, V.Makei confirmed the unchanged position of the Republic of Belarus regarding territorial integrity of the Republic of Serbia and stressed the readiness to continue supporting the Serbian side at various international venues.

   

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PITTSFIELD  Pittsfields new economic development director will take up her post on Monday, hoping to work closely with the city to find new project opportunities in the future, she said.

On March 20, Pittsfield City Council named Megan Newman, financial services assistant at Pike County Health Department, to replace retiring director Bill McCartney, who served in the position for 20 years.

She was a strong candidate, said Alderman Robert Wood, who was on the committee tasked with finding a new director. Shes well educated and I think shell make a good director  I think shell be well received and I think shes a good fit for the city of Pittsfield.

A Pittsfield native, Newman graduated in 2000 from Pittsfield High School before obtaining a Bachelor of Science degree in businesses administration and a masters degree in public administration from the University of Illinois. She worked with the Illinois Department of Public Health and served as an auditor with the Auditor General of Illinois before moving to Pikes health department.

Newman has always been interested in economic development, but positions rarely come open for smaller areas, she said. When her husband, Dustin Newman, sent her the information about the opening, she was eager to throw her hat in the ring, she said.

Im very excited that the mayor and the city council have given me this opportunity, she said. I think Pittsfield has a lot of good things going for us but maybe we need to increase our marketing. I think more of a presence on social media might be helpful in explaining what we have to offer.

She said she hopes to work closely with the mayor and the city council to identify new projects to tackle and hopes to get out in the community and connect businesses with the city.

Newman lives in Pittsfield with her husband and their two children, Conner, 6; and Cassidy, 2. Pittsfield is a place shes happy to call home, she said, and she hopes to do everything she can to bring economic opportunities to the area.

Its a small community and it definitely has that small-town feel, people recognize you when you walk down the street, Newman said. I definitely love that small-town feel, where you know your neighbor and they care about you. Ive lived in Champaign and in Springfield, and you just dont get that same connection  I really appreciate the opportunity to serve the city of Pittsfield.

Nick Draper can be reached at 217-245-6121, ext. 1223, or on Twitter @nick_Draper.
Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Belarus O.Kravchenko visits the State of Utah

30-03-2018

On March 29, 2018 the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Belarus, Oleg Kravchenko, visited the State of Utah.

During the visit, O.Kravchenko took part in the official ceremony of inauguration of the Honorary Consul of Belarus in Utah, Dennis Neuenschwander.

The representatives of the state Government, Legislative Assembly, major universities and companies, clergy, prominent public figures also took part in the event.

In his address to the participants, O.Kravchenko noted long-standing links between Belarus and Utah, expressed interest in a closer partnership with the State in the areas of mutual interest.

Specific issues of cooperation of Belarus and Utah in political and trade spheres were discussed during the meetings of the Deputy Foreign Minister with the member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Utah, Chris Stewart, leadership of both chambers of the States Legislative Assembly, of Utah International Trade Commission and Office of Economic Development.

O.Kravchenko addressed the group of professors and students of The University of Utah with a speech on Belarus and its role in the region. Steps to implement joint programs with the leading Belarusian universities were discussed.

At the meeting with the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Russell Nelson, prospects of joint work in promoting family values, educational and humanitarian cooperation were discussed.

   

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A plan to close the wage gap between men and women swept through the Legislature last year, but it met the veto of Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner.

Now, the measure is back  but with some competition.

Rep. Anna Moeller has introduced legislation mirroring last years bill that would forbid employers from asking for salary histories.

If you are using prior wage information to base future wages on, youre carrying that discrepancy throughout a womans lifespan, said Moeller, an Elgin Democrat. A woman has to work 10 years longer than a man to make the same wages over her career. This is one way to get at that pervasive wage gap.

Another Democrat, Sen. Jennifer Bertino-Tarrant of Shorewood, introduced a competing plan that would remove fines for violators if they can show theyre making progress toward closing the gap. Her plan has support from the business community, but Moeller said its a step back from even existing law.

Supporters for both measures agreed that women and men still arent equally paid, even though workplace discrimination based on gender has been illegal under federal law for a half-century.

The Illinois Equal Pay Act took effect in 2003. But a 2017 report from the National Partnership for Women and Families shows that women in Illinois are paid 79 percent of what men make. The gap only worsens for women of color: black women earn 63 percent, while Hispanic and Latina women earn 48 percent.

Barring demands for salary histories is based on the idea that a woman might not get the salary she deserves based on education or experience if it is tied to a past job in which she was unfairly underpaid. Massachusetts, Oregon, Delaware, California, Puerto Rico and a handful of cities have all approved a ban on the question.

The Illinois Equal Pay Act requires men and women to be paid the same for similar work. Violators must pay the disputed difference in back-pay plus interest and could face a fine of up to $2,500. Moeller said her proposal strengthens that law by boosting fines to be up to $10,000. Employers can ask for salary histories if it is a matter of public record or if the applicant is a current employee applying for another position within the company.

Bertino-Tarrant voted for Moellers wage equity plan in the Senate last year. This year, shes introduced a plan that she thinks can secure the Republican governors signature.

My goal is to solve the problem, said Bertino-Tarrant. We want to make sure people are being paid based on their ability. I think I provide a more bipartisan solution.

Her measure protects employers from lawsuits  or accompanying back-pay or fines  if they complete a self-evaluation plan of their pay practices and demonstrate they have made progress toward closing the pay gap. The state Department of Labor would determine progress.

The self-evaluation provision is included in the Massachusetts law, to which Rauner pointed in his veto message. It also represents the compromise sought last year on Moellers legislation by the Illinois Retail Merchants Association, according to president and CEO Rob Karr. The Moeller fines would be excessive, he said, noting that only a small fraction of companies has been found in violation of the equal-pay law.

Moeller said that idea moves the state backward, undermining current law.

If companies are not paying their female employees the same for equal work, they should be liable for that, she said.

.

The bills are HB4163 and SB3100

Online: www.ilga.gov/
Ambassador of Belarus O.Ivanov meets the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Tajikistan

30-03-2018

On March 30, 2018 the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Belarus to the Republic of Tajikistan, Oleg Ivanov, met with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Tajikistan, Sirodjidin Aslov.

During the meeting, the sides discussed current state and prospects for the development of the Belarusian-Tajik cooperation, the exchange of visits, the organization of the National Exhibition of Belarus in Tajikistan and the Second International Business Forum Belarus-Tajikistan-Afghanistan.

The prospects of bilateral cooperation within the framework of integration associations were also considered.

   

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Calaveras County Water District View Photos

San Andreas, CA  The Calaveras County Water District took a step towards increasing its water and sewer rates to ensure capital improvement projects can be carried out.

The plan also calls for implementing a drought surcharge to offset the loss of revenue when mandatory cutbacks are ordered by the state during a drought. You can find an earlier detailed story about the planned changes, spread out over the next five years, by clicking here.

Yesterday the CCWD board of directors voted to send written notifications of the proposed changes to the 13,000 water customers and 5,000 sewer customers. The notices are required under Proposition 218, which was passed in 1996 and ensures public agencies notify customers before charging new fees or rates. A public hearing and vote is scheduled for May 23 at the CCWD meeting that will begin at 1pm. The open to the public meeting will be at the districts headquarters at 120 Toma Court in San Andreas.
To commemorate World Autism Awareness Day and to contribute to the local conversation about caring for children with any disability, United Family affiliate Albertsons Market Street is partnering with local nonprofit SHARE (Sharing Hands A Respite Experience) to collect donations that will provide training, respite care and other resources to families who care for children with special needs.

The campaign will kick off at 10 a.m. Monday -- World Autism Awareness Day -- at the Odessa Market Street location at 4950 E. 42nd St with Odessa Mayor David R. Turner, Tom Jones, SHARE executive director, and John Jameson, the regional vice president of The United Family.
Sometimes God answers prayers.

Precinct 4 Commissioner Benny Cantwell opened Monday's Hale County Commissioners meeting with a prayer asking God Almighty for abundant moisture to help bring the region back from the brink of extreme drought. In fact, much of Monday's discussion centered around the need for, and mechanics surrounding the enactment of a countywide burn ban due to the growing intensity of drought with most of the area classified as being in either extreme or severe drought.

What a difference a day makes.

Just 24 hours after Monday's meeting adjourned, windshield wipers across the Texas Panhandle-South Plains were rapidly beating in unison as the heavens opened up with welcome moisture.

In Plainview, rainfall totals ranged from 0.32 of an inch at the Plainview Water Treatment Plant to 0.33 of an inch at the Mesonet site north of the airport, and 0.42 of an inch at the Herald.

Floydada measured 1.90 inches of rain through Wednesday morning.

Other area rainfall totals, according to the National Weather Service in Lubbock, include: Abernathy, 0.77; Aiken, 0.08; Caprock Canyons State Park, 0.76; Dimmitt, 0.10; Lubbock, 0.78; Muleshoe, 0.05; Olton, 0.05; Silverton, 0.15; Tahoka, 1.50; Tulia, 0.02; Turkey, 0.95; and Wolfforth, 1.56 inches.

Blayne Reed, Texas A&M AgriLife Extension IPM specialist for Hale, Swisher and Floyd counties, said Tuesday's moisture is good news for producers.

"There was a plume from Edmonson across through Kress that only saw a dibble of moisture, but just about everyone else got some good rainfall," Reed said.

"It was really good for the area wheat. Much of the dryland wheat was in pretty desperate shape. This moisture should perk it up rather quickly."

Those areas that received substantial rainfall amounts should see strong replentishment of deep moisture in advance of planting season.

"The timing is particularly helpful in connection with the progess that has been made with soil preparation," Reed notes. "The rain will help with the incorporation of residual herbicides."

Although some isolated thunderstorms were expected across the South Plains on Wednesday afternoon, the National Weather Service reports that a cold front is expected to plow through the area around daybreak Thursday, bringing strong northwesterly winds along with an absence of additional moisture.

While warm and windy conditions are expected across the area Friday and Saturday, a Canadian front will move into the region Saturday afternoon. That will set the stage for a rather chilly Easter morning, forecasters predict, with a morning low Sunday in Plainview of 38.

The return of a more zonal flow on Sunday and Monday, forecasters note, may allow for a bona fide warm front to spread slowly northward, complete with Gulf moisture and some precipitation early next week.

Even with Tuesday's rainfall, Plainview is well behind normal rainfall for the year. Through the first three months of the year, Plainview's normal rainfall is 2.38 inches. To date for 2018, rainfall totals 1.30, with the 2017 total-to-date standing at 2.30 inches.
During its regularly scheduled meeting Tuesday night, the Plainview City Council awarded a bid for roof work on 13 city buildings.

During the meeting, Tim Crosswhite, director of Public Works explained to the council that 67,558 square feet of roofing needed to be fixed. The Texas Municipal League awarded $125,000 to pay for the repairs. Armco Services was contracted to manage and collected bids to complete the roof project.

During his presentation to the council, Crosswhite recommended that the council accept the bid from Tecta America for $167,400 -- the lowest bid received. The difference between the amounts will be negotiated with the Texas Municipal League. The remaining balance would come from the city's Property Insurance Fund. The seven council members unanimously voted to award the bid.

The council also authorized the mayor to sign a ground lease agreement with AeroCare Medtrans, Hale County and the Cityof Plainview. The ground lease allows a temporary facility to be placed at the Plainview-Hale County Airport. The facility will house ground crews, air crews and mechanics for AeroCare Medtrans. A hangar is also being leased to hold a ground ambulance and helicopter.

Plainview City Manager Jeffrey Snyder told the council the recent renovations to the airport helped draw them in for the project. Currently, a permanent hangar is in the design stage to be revealed in the next few months.

The council also accepted the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report given by Cara Hilbrich of Eide Baily. During her presentation to the council, Hillbrich praised the staff at the city's finance department for their professionalism and willingness to help. The council accepted the report with a 7-0 vote.

The council also passed three ordinances. One ordinance changed the zoning for an acre of unplanted land in the vicinity of West Fourth Street and Quincy Street, while two other ordinances authorized the transfer of property from the City of Plainview to Hale County. This was the second reading for all three ordinances.

A resolution was also passed giving authorization to publish notice of a public hearing for the creation of a tax increment reinvestment zone. The meeting is scheduled for 7 p.m. April 24.
Charlie Lagarde was celebrating her ascent into adulthood.

On her 18th birthday earlier this month, the Canadian teenager bought a bottle of sparkling wine and a $4 scratch lottery ticket at a nearby convenience store in Quebec - and, just like that, her future was off to a very nice start.

Loto-Quebec officials said in a statement that after buying her first lottery ticket, Lagarde won the grand prize March 14 in the Gagnant a vie (Winner for life) game.

Her first major decision as an adult? The 18-year-old had to decide whether she wanted the $1 million lump sum (U.S. $773,800) or $1,000 per week (U.S. $773.80) for the rest of her life.

Lagarde waited a couple weeks to make up her mind, consulting a financial adviser and considering her options. Then she decided that, based on her age, she would accept the lifetime annuity, according to local news reports.

The teen said she intends to invest in her education as well as do some traveling - one of her passions.

"I want to study photography. One of my dreams would be to work for National Geographic," she said, according to the statement from lottery officials.

Lagarde bought the lottery ticket at a Couche-Tard convenience store, but she waited to scratch it until she got back to her home in Monteregie, not far from Montreal, according to the Canadian Press news agency.

Lottery officials said in the statement earlier this week that she immediately told her family that she had won, and "everyone was euphoric at this stoke of luck."

Prizes in Canadian dollars for the Gagnant a vie game range from $4 to the grand prize - the $1 million one-time payout or the $1,000 weekly lifetime annuity. Although the odds of winning something are about 1 in 2.5, the chances of taking home the top prize are only about 1 in 6 million, according to the lottery.

The Canadian Press reported that Lagarde, accompanied by family members and friends, made her way Monday to the Loto-Quebec headquarters in Montreal. There, she was presented with the customary giant check.

Patrice Lavoie, a spokesperson for the lottery corporation, called it a "great start in life" for a "kind, down-to-earth and well-advised young lady."

"She wants to pursue her education, study photography and dreams about working for National Geographic," he said in a statement Wednesday to The Washington Post. "She was a real breath of fresh air when she came to our office to claim her prize, with friends and family. All of us at Loto-Quebec are really happy for her."
Minister of Foreign Affairs of Belarus V.Makei meets the Ambassador of India

30-03-2018

On March 30, 2018 the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Belarus, Vladimir Makei, met with the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of India to the Republic of Belarus, Pankaj Saxena, on the occasion of the completion of his diplomatic mission.

V.Makei thanked P.Saxena for his significant personal contribution to the development and strengthening of the Belarusian-Indian relations in various fields and noted that significant bilateral events that laid a serious foundation for raising the cooperation between Belarus and India to a qualitatively new level were organized in Belarus during the Ambassadors tenure.

The parties expressed interest in further enhancement of the positive dynamics of interaction between the two countries.

   

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The coffee industry is mulling how to fight back against a California judges ruling that would require the beverage to be branded with cancer warning labels.

The National Coffee Association, whose members include Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts, said in a statement Thursday that it was currently considering all of its options, including potential appeals and further legal actions.

The ruling stems from a lawsuit filed in 2010 by the Council for Education and Research on Toxics, a nonprofit group based in Long Beach. The group charged that Starbucks and other companies  a group that eventually included 91 defendants  did not warn consumers that ingesting coffee would expose them to acrylamide, a chemical formed when coffee beans are roasted.

California keeps a list of chemicals it considers to cause cancer or reproductive harm, and acrylamide has been included since 1990. The states Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act, known as Proposition 65 after it was passed in 1986, requires businesses to provide warning labels when exposing consumers to any of the hundreds of chemicals listed.

Judge Elihu M. Berle, in Los Angeles County Superior Court, wrote in a proposed decision Wednesday that the companies failed to show that acrylamide does not pose a significant risk when produced during the coffee roasting process.

Since defendants failed to prove that coffee confers any human health benefits, defendants have failed to satisfy their burden of proving that sound considerations of public health support an alternate risk level for acrylamide in coffee, the judge wrote.

More than 3.4 billion pounds of coffee were consumed in the United States between October 2016 and September 2017, more than in the entirety of South America, according to the International Coffee Organization.

William Murray, the chief executive of the coffee association, wrote in an email on Friday that the presence of acrylamide in coffee is not in doubt but stressed that the levels are minuscule.

Coffee is much more than acrylamide  it literally contains hundreds of substances, and is one of the most heavily studied foods of all time, he said.

Putting warning labels on coffee would be simply confusing and misleading, he said, citing statements from the World Health Organization that the drink does not cause cancer and studies showing that coffee offers health benefits like longevity.

Coffee has been shown, over and over again, to be a healthy beverage, he said in a statement.

Starbucks and other defendants can file objections to the proposed decision within the next two weeks. You should expect that this matter will not be definitely settled in the courts for months to come, Murray wrote.

Businesses that violate Proposition 65 could face penalties of up to $2,500 per day for each violation, according to the California Attorney Generals office.

Some companies have already settled. In a court document filed in December, 7-Eleven agreed to post signs in its company and franchise stores and also pay $900,000 to cover civil penalties and the plaintiffs legal costs.

The National Cancer Institute notes that, among foods, coffee is a major source of acrylamide, along with potato chips, bread, breakfast cereals and canned black olives. But the government agency also mentions on its website that acrylamide levels in food vary widely and that people are exposed to substantially more acrylamide from tobacco smoke than from food.
SAN FRANCISCO  Two days after Donald J. Trump won the 2016 election, executives at Google consoled their employees in an all-staff meeting broadcast around the world.

There is a lot of fear within Google, said Sundar Pichai, the companys chief executive, according to a video of the meeting viewed by The New York Times. When asked by an employee if there was any silver lining to Mr. Trumps election, the Google co-founder Sergey Brin said, Boy, thats a really tough one right now. Ruth Porat, the finance chief, said Mr. Trumps victory felt like a ton of bricks dropped on my chest. Then she instructed members of the audience to hug the person next to them.

Sixteen months later, Googles parent company, Alphabet, has most likely saved billions of dollars in taxes on its overseas cash under a new tax law signed by Mr. Trump. Alphabet also stands to benefit from the Trump administrations looser regulations for self-driving cars and delivery drones, as well as from proposed changes to the trade pact with Mexico and Canada that would limit Googles liability for user content on its sites.

Once one of Mr. Trumps most vocal opponents, Silicon Valleys technology industry has increasingly found common ground with the White House. When Mr. Trump was elected, tech executives were largely up in arms over a leader who espoused policies on immigration and other issues that were antithetical to their companies values. Now, many of the industrys executives are growing more comfortable with the president and how his economic agenda furthers their business interests, even as many of their employees continue to disagree with Mr. Trump on social issues.

The relationship remains bumpy. Mr. Trump lashed out at Amazon on Twitter on Thursday, accusing the e-commerce giant of evading taxes. (Amazon said it had saved $789 million under the tax law Mr. Trump signed.) The president is also expected to sign legislation, passed by the Senate last week, that would strengthen policing of sex trafficking online  a bill that internet companies once opposed because they worried it would make them liable for content posted by their users.

Yet quietly, the tech industry has warmed to the White House, especially as companies including Alphabet, Apple and Intel have benefited from the Trump administrations policies.

Those include lowering corporate taxes, encouraging development of new wireless technology like 5G and, so far, ignoring calls to break up the tech giants. Mr. Trumps tougher stance on China may also help ward off industry rivals, with the president squashing a hostile bid to acquire the chip maker Qualcomm this month. And Mr. Trump let die an Obama-era rule that required many tech start-ups to give some workers more overtime pay.

Mr. Trump has been great for business and really, really good for tech, said Gary Shapiro, who leads the Consumer Technology Association, the largest American tech trade group, with more than 2,200 members including Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook.

Mr. Shapiro said that he had voted for Hillary Clinton, Mr. Trumps opponent, in 2016, but that he and many tech executives had come around on Mr. Trump. While they disagree with him on immigration and the environment, they have found areas where their interests align, like deregulation and investment in internet infrastructure.

This isnt Hitler or Mussolini here, Mr. Shapiro said. And even though the presidents new tariffs on steel and aluminum could hurt American businesses and consumers, disagreement in one area does not mean we cannot work together in others, Mr. Shapiro said. Everyone who is married knows that.

Mr. Trump himself has taken to naming tech companies he says are on his side.

After Apple took advantage of the new tax law in January to bring back most of the $252 billion cash hoard that it had parked overseas, the company said it would make a $350 billion contribution to the U.S. economy over the next five years. That prompted Mr. Trump to suggest he had made good on a campaign pledge to get Apple to bring jobs back to the United States.

You know, for $350 million, you could build a beautiful plant. But for $350 billion, theyre going to build a lot of plants, the president told members of Congress last month. Mr. Trump said he had called Timothy D. Cook, Apples chief executive, to personally thank him.

In fact, Apple has no plans to build a plant in the United States. The company is uneasy with Mr. Trumps invoking it to signify how his policies are working, according to a person close to Apple who was not authorized to speak publicly. Apple has not, however, publicly corrected the president.

Mr. Trump has also stayed quiet on the controversy engulfing Facebook over user privacy, while other politicians have called for more regulations after revelations that the British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica improperly harvested the information of 50 million Facebook users. Cambridge Analytica used that data to aid Mr. Trumps campaign.

Michael Kratsios, the White Houses deputy chief technology officer, said in an interview that while Mr. Trump and Silicon Valley had their differences, in places where we do see eye to eye, I think were achieving extraordinary success.

Dean Garfield, head of the Information Technology Industry Council, a 102-year-old advocacy group that represents the biggest tech firms, said his members walked a tightrope, supporting and opposing the president on different issues. Lately, he said, we have reached balance in the tightrope.

The equilibrium marks a turnabout from what had been a testy relationship between Mr. Trump and the tech sector. On the campaign trail in 2016, Mr. Trump was so critical of tech companies that Jeff Bezos, Amazons chief executive, once joked he might send Mr. Trump to space in a rocket.

Some tech executives have since disagreed with Mr. Trump on social issues. Mr. Cook emailed staff last June to say he had unsuccessfully lobbied the president to remain in the Paris climate accords. In November, Microsoft sued the administration to protect a law that blocks deportation of young undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers. More than 100 companies, including Google, Facebook and Uber, filed a brief supporting Californias lawsuit on that issue.

Even so, tech executives worked to build a relationship with the president, with some meeting him at Trump Tower before his inauguration and again at the White House in June. While in Washington for the second meeting, Mr. Cook and Satya Nadella, Microsofts chief executive, also dined with Jared Kushner, the presidents senior adviser and son-in-law, and Ivanka Trump at the couples Washington home, according to a person briefed on the meeting who wasnt authorized to speak publicly about it. This month, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin visited Apples headquarters.

Silicon Valley has found plenty to like about the Trump presidency. In September, tech giants including Facebook and Microsoft teamed up with the administration to pledge $500 million to computer science education. Amazon, Microsoft and Google are also eyeing the administration as a potential customer as Mr. Trump pushes to modernize the governments digital infrastructure.

But Silicon Valleys favorite thing about Mr. Trump is almost certainly his new tax code. Many tech companies lobbied for corporate tax reform for years before Mr. Trump signed the new tax bill.

Tech giants immediately reaped the benefits. Under the new rules, Apple saved $43.7 billion in taxes, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a nonpartisan tax research group. Apple then announced the $350 billion contribution to the American economy over five years.

Most of the tally was previously planned spending with American suppliers and a $38 billion tax payment on its overseas cash. But Apple also said it planned to hire 20,000 new workers, invest in new data centers and another domestic campus, and increase a fund for innovative American manufacturers to $5 billion from $1 billion. It also gave employees $2,500 bonuses.

The president was quick to tweet the news.

The shifting relationship between Silicon Valley and Mr. Trump appears to have upset some tech employees. A Facebook page called Angry Googler, with nearly 1,000 followers, has been dedicated to criticizing Google for any sign it was cooperating with the president.

Not happy about Google pulling a 180 and jumping into bed with Trump? Same here, said the About section of the page, which suggests it is run by a Google employee. This month, the page posted an article about Google helping the Defense Department analyze drone footage. Weve gone from organizing the worlds information to  optimizing weapons of war, the page said.

Messages to the account were not returned. Google declined to comment.

Some tech firms remain discomfited about appearing as the presidents allies. Last month, Rob Goldman, Facebooks vice president of advertising, played down Russias impact on the 2016 election after the Justice Department charged 13 Russians with trying to subvert its outcome, including by using Facebook. Mr. Trump retweeted Mr. Goldman approvingly.

Facebook was uncomfortable with that association with the president, said a person close to the company who was not authorized to speak publicly.

Two days later, Facebooks policy chief, Joel Kaplan, distanced the company from Mr. Goldmans comments.

The special counsel has issued its indictments, and nothing we found contradicts their conclusions, he said in a statement. Any suggestion otherwise is wrong.
We recently reported on a big increase in Southwest Airlines operations at Mineta San Jose International Airport this spring, with the addition of 80 flights a week by May, including new non-stops to eight cities. But thats only part of the route news at SJC in 2018.

In addition to the big Southwest bump, four more airlines have already announced plans to add new routes this year at the Silicon Valley airport.

Heres a summary of the next round of new (and expanding) flights coming to SJC in 2018:

-Low-cost Frontier Airlines, which started flying out of SJC lfrast fall with new service to Denver and Las Vegas, has targeted the airport for expansion this year. In April its due to add five more non-stop routes:

Cincinnati, three weekly flights (Tuesdays, Thursdays, Sundays), starts April 8

Austin, three weekly flights (Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays), starts April 8

San Antonio, two weekly flights (Mondays and Fridays), starts April 9

Atlanta, four weekly flights, (Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays), starts April 9

Tulsa, two weekly flights (Wednesdays and Saturdays), starts April 11.

Also of note, Frontiers combination of new routes also yields daily one-stop service to Washingtons Dulles International Airport with no change of planes required. Likewise, the four weekly Atlanta flights all continue to Trenton, NJ with no plane change required.

-Aeromexico, a joint venture partner of Delta, is due to launch the only non-stop service between San Jose and Mexico City. The Mexican carrier will offer daily flights on the route on a seasonal basis, operating from June 1 through August 31. Due to its partnership with Delta, SkyMiles members can earn and burn miles on these flights.

-Delta plans to introduce new transcontinental service on June 8 with a daily roundtrip between SJC and its transatlantic hub at New York JFK. Deltas non-stop 737 flight will operate as a westbound morning departure from JFK and then return to New York as a late evening red-eye departure from SJC  just like the existing JetBlue non-stop flight from San Jose to JFK. (Both Alaska Airlines and United offer daylight flights to Newark, departing SJC in the morning and arriving EWR in the late afternoon.)

-Alaska Airlines has announced it will add a new destination from San Jose sometime this fall: Paine Field in Everett, Washington, serving Seattles northern suburban area. Paine Field is currently used only by general aviation flights and the adjacent Boeing plant, but a passenger terminal is currently under construction there in preparation for commercial airline service. Alaska also is filling out its Hawaii service at SJC, expanding Kauai and Kona non-stops to daily offerings for the first time this spring and summer, along with its daily roundtrips to Kahului (Maui) and Honolulu. Hawaiian Airlines also is expanding its schedule by restoring daily non-stop service to both Honolulu and Kahului.

-After temporarily suspending its flight between San Jose and Frankfurt due to a pilot shortage, Lufthansa restarted year-round non-stop service on the route March 25. The flight operates five days a week and in the fall will welcome a reconfigured cabin with additional business class and premium economy seating on the Airbus A340-300.

Mineta San Jose International ranked number one among the 50 largest U.S. airports in airline capacity growth for the two-year period from 2016 through 2017, and that trend shows no sign of slowing down. The airports passenger traffic jumped by 15.6 percent last year to 12.5 million arriving and departing travelers  its fifth consecutive year of increases.

Disclosure: This post is sponsored by Mineta San Jose International Airport. We will periodically publish posts like this one from commercial partners about topics relevant to frequent travel.

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Chris McGinnis is the founder of TravelSkills.com. The author is solely responsible for the content above, and it is used here by permission. You can reach Chris at chris@travelskills.com or on Twitter @cjmcginnis.
A 38-year-old man was identified as the victim of a fatal shooting that occurred over the weekend in Newark, authorities said.

John Amos was shot and killed just before 11 p.m. Friday near the 7700 block of Wells Avenue, the Newark Police Department said Wednesday.
A new soon-to-open Broadway coffehouse is putting its focus on custom-roasted beans, cold-pressed juices and a healthier take on pastries.

Owner Kam Mehta told the Express-News on Friday that his first Berry to Bean location will be ready for business at 3900 Broadway, across the street from the Witte Museum, as soon as all of the permits and inspections are finalized by the city, sometime in April.
Note: This is a Just a Taste review, which the Express-News does soon after a restaurant or bar opens to give our first impressions.

Pizza. Paella. Pita. All the great starchy Ps of the Mediterranean can be found at Acu Bistro Bar, a new upscale restaurant that opened near The Dominion last week.

Located in the glass-clad corner unit of a shopping center, Acu grabs your attention the second you step out of the car with a heady waft of smoke lingering overhead. The dining room is bathed with warm hues as ample sunlight illuminates brick, wood and painted tile.

Acu delivers an above average performance for a place thats been serving customers for less than a week. A recent lunch visit found a staff of obvious service industry veterans smoothly navigating a half-full dining room with finesse. Food, particularly when it came out of a majestic centerpiece oven  the source of all that smoke  impressed for the most part.

On the menu: Acu leans heavily on the culinary traditions of Spain and Italy with dishes listed under menu headings like Antipasto, Sopa and Entrada, although a Levantine streak runs throughout.

A flavorful entry point to that can be found in the Quipe Crudo ($12), a variation on steak tartare. In this instance, tender raw beef is tossed with bulgur wheat, mint and parsley, then topped with a ring of peppery radish.

Prefer your starters sweet? The same pan-Mediterranean spirit appears in ripe dates stuffed with manchego cheese and wrapped in bacon ($11). Or look instead to the pizzas, one option topped with lamb, feta cheese, kalamata olives and pine nuts ($15). In all three cases, the flavor combinations are at once recognizable, but reconfigured enough to add a sprinkle of intrigue.

Yes, you have to pay for bread. But its hard to feel bad about that when its a terrific smoky, scratch-baked pita($6 per), with a perfect chew hidden under a crackling exterior and a choice of condiments including tapenade, romesco sauce, hummus and more.

Only one dish bears the restaurants name: Paella Acu. Its served in a scorching hot 10-or-so-inch pan layered deep with saffron-stained rice. Scallops, squid, shrimp and mussels are joined in the pan by Spanish chorizo, chunks of bone-in pork and chicken wings. Its a looker, for sure, and the seafood components are top notch, but at a steep $46 (the menu says it serves two to five people) I felt shortchanged by the meek, underseasoned flavor.

The Cacio e Pepe ($9) hails from Italy, although this preparation was on the sloppy side. Housemade pasta was terrific  when it didnt clump together in tough doughy bites. The dish was surprisingly sharp and salty from a generous dose of Parmigiano Reggiano, although the pepe (black pepper) was in short supply, resulting in an unbalanced cheese fest.

Another letdown came in the form of a trend thats become a near menu requisite: fried Brussels sprouts. This version promised leaves fried into crispy chips lashed with salt and white balsamic vinegar for $10. What arrived at the table was lukewarm-going-on-cool and overly saturated with oil.

What didnt disappoint, however, was the bars take on sangria ($13). Honoro Vera Monastrell is shaken to order with Titos Vodka and plenty of fresh fruit for one of the better paella companions Ive had in recent memory. Its one of eight drinks on a menu of signature cocktails composed mostly of slight variations on familiar staples.

In short, the staff is friendly, the kitchen is competent and the space is polished. There are no wrinkles in Acu that cant easily be ironed out as the crew gets a little more time.

Location: 21715 Interstate 10 W., 210-530-1190, acubistrobar.com, Facebook: @acubistrobar.

Hours: 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday.
Live roaches, multiple raw meats thawing in one bucket and bathroom toilet paper with fecal matter on it plagued San Antonio restaurants this week during random health inspections.

A total of 46 places made this week's list of dirtiest establishments in the San Antonio area, including two restaurants at the Pearl and several taquerias and Mexican restaurants.

To make the Express-News' list of dirtiest restaurants, an establishment must earn a score of 89 or below  or anything less than an "A"  during a random city health inspection.

Some of the most disgusting findings were at the 777 Food Mart located downtown across from Main Plaza, where a strong odor of urine lingered and a fecal matter-smeared tissue was found in the restroom. There, an inspector also observed gnats, dead roaches and rodent droppings in various places within the establishment.

SEE LAST WEEK'S VIOLATIONS: San Antonio restaurant inspections: March 23 2018

A fruit stand at Market Square was cited for having rotten, moldy fruit in the establishment and gnats and rodent droppings in the back storage room.

Just north of downtown at The Pearl, Green Vegetarian Cuisine landed in hot water after bugs were found in the powdered sugar bin and employees were seen switching tasks without changing gloves in between.

And at Lee's El Taco Garage, an employee was seen flipping tortillas with their bare hands, and live roaches were seen scurrying on clean dishes.

The San Antonio Express-News examines hundreds of restaurant inspections each week conducted by the San Antonio Food and Environmental Health Services division to bring you the eateries with scores of 89 or below.

Restaurants are graded on a 100-point system, where "100" is a perfect score, and demerits are based upon the number of violations found during a regular food establishment inspection. There are three categories of demerits and each are assigned a demerit score of 3, 2 or 1 points, according to the health division.

Scores and demerits listed are only representative of the state of the restaurant at the time of inspection and establishments are surveyed at random.

See the other restaurants that landed on this week's list of dirtiest restaurants in the slideshow above.

erobinson@mysa.com | Twitter: @eeelizzzabeth
The top priority project in New Caney ISD's 2018 bond proposal is a third comprehensive high school west of Hwy. 59 and south of Kingwood Medical Center.

Woodridge Middle School, which is also located near Kingwood, will receive a classroom addition.

Election day is May 5 for the $200 million bond, which will not affect the district's $1.67 tax rate.

The bond was deemed necessary by the district after a facility assessment conducted by Lockwood, Andrews & Newnam, Inc. (LAN) last year identified various district facility priorities.

"They looked at every facility we have and also looked at our demographic studies, and we could see that we have continued growth in the district," said Kenn Franklin, superintendent of NCISD. "And based on the need for more classroom space, we decided to form a Long Range Planning Committee, which we did in the fall."

As a fast-growth district, a main focus of projects chosen for the 2018 bond package is increasing schools' capacity for students.

New Caney ISD's student enrollment has grown 31 percent over the last five school years and between 2011 and 2016, the NCISD ranked first in the greater Houston area and fourth in the state for percentage enrollment growth, Franklin said.

The district currently serves a little over 15,000 students, however a 2016 Population and Survey Analysts (PASA) report shows that by 2025, enrollment may grow by about 7,000 to 10,000 students.

The Long Range Planning Committee  a group of community members, employees and parents  convened for eight sessions in order to compile a comprehensive list of prioritized projects. The list was presented to the school board in January. School board members used the list to choose projects that met as many high-priority needs as possible, while staying at or below $200 million, which was the maximum amount the bond could be at the $1.67 tax-rate cap.

Four educational facilities-related projects were chosen for the 2018 bond. They include a comprehensive high school 3, the replacement of Keefer Crossing Middle School, replacing Porter Elementary School and adding 360 seats via an addition to Woodridge Forest Middle School.

"The new high school is the number one project in this bond," Franklin said.

The high school would have a projected opening date of Aug. 2022. Eventually, the high school plans for a capacity of 2,250 students. However, the school would open with only 1,350 seats.

"The second phase would be to bump it up to 2,250, but we're going to grow it one grade at a time," Franklin said. "Ninth graders will start there the first year and that way kids never have to be on a high school campus before there go into the new high school."

Additionally, he said, the phase-in method benefits the district from a budgeting standpoint.

"It helps that you don't have to have a full staff the first day you open," Franklin said. "You can grow into it from a physical, from an economic, or financial side too."

Since the new high school would be located just south of Kingwood Medical Center and Lone Star College-Kingwood, Franklin said the district anticipates that school's Career and Technology Education program would focus heavily on Health Sciences.

"The vocational program there will tie into the Lone Star College program as well as the hospital community and the medical facilities there, so we're really excited about that," Franklin said.

The replacement of Keefer Crossing Middle School will add 450 seats, bringing the new building's capacity to 1,500 students, Deputy Superintendent Matt Calvert said. The current site for Keefer Crossing Middle School does not have enough room to construct another school while classes continue in the current building.

"We can confidently say Keefer won't be where its current location is," Calvert said. "It'll be somewhere else in that area  in that zone of the district."

The district owns some property in the zone they are looking at for the possible location of the new Keefer Middle School, explained Calvert.

The projected opening date for the new Keefer Middle School would be Aug. 2021.

The current Porter Elementary School site is large enough to construct a replacement elementary and continue holding classes at the current campus. However, Calvert said the district owns property in that zone as well.

Depending on various factors like student enrollment counts and construction costs, the new Porter Elementary School would be projected to open for either the 2023-24, or 2024-25 school years. New Caney ISD was also identified as a campus that could be replaced.

"It's basically just cheaper to build a new building than to put money into an old building and so that's how we identified those (facilities) we are going to replace in this bond," Calvert said.

The Woodridge Forest Middle School expansion of 360 seats would bring its enrollment capacity up to 1,500. It's projected completion date would be the same as the new Keefer Middle School  Aug. 2021.
Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Belarus A.Dapkiunas meets the Head of the Representative Office of the International Organization for Migration in Belarus

30-03-2018

On March 30, 2018 the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Belarus, Andrei Dapkiunas, met with the Head of the Office of the International Organization for Migration, the dean of the representatives of international organisations in Belarus, Zeynal Hajiyev.

During the meeting, the sides discussed current and future cooperation between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the IOM Office in Belarus in the field of migration and combating human trafficking, including in the framework of international technical assistance projects.

The Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs emphasised the need and importance of greater involvement of national manufacturers in the implementation of international technical assistance projects in Belarus.

   

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Pasadena police on Sunday identified the officer who last Thursday was involved in the fatal shooting of a suspect.

He was identified as Mark Adams, who previously was described by police as a 13-year veteran of the force. The officer has been placed on administrative leave while the department investigates the shooting of a man during a traffic stop.

Marco Antonio Saavedra, 44, was fatally shot after he "drew a weapon and pointed it at the officer," who pulled over Saavedra after he allegedly ran a stop sign on Southmore around 4 p.m., Pasadena Police spokesman Vance Mitchell said Friday.

Saavedra had a history of violence and once told his daughter he hoped "to do suicide by cop," according to court records.

The dashcam video, released late Thursday, shows Saavedra getting out of his white Nissan Altima on Spooner off Southmore.

Adams shouts, "Stay in the vehicle! Stay in the vehicle!" Saavedra shakes his head and pulls out a handgun, aiming it at the patrol car. Adams fired about eight shots.

READ ALSO: Almost 50 indicted on child sex charges so far in 2018



Saavedra walks away from the Altima and remains in view as he spins around, dangling the firearm in his hand. The officer fires again, hitting Saavedra, who falls on his back with his legs up.

In the body cam video, also released Thursday, Saavedra asks the officer, "What did I do? What did I do?" as he steps out of the Altima. Adams pulls out his gun and says, "Stay in the vehicle!" twice, and adds, "Show me your hands!"

Saavedra pulls out a gun and aims it at the officer, according to the footage. The officer then shoots about eight times and walks behind his patrol car. Saavedra is out of view at that time. The officer is then seen approaching Saavedra, who has fallen to the ground.

Mitchell said a witness told police Saavedra fired his gun at the officer, but police could not confirm that. The gun Saavedra used had been reported stolen, according to Mitchell.



Pasadena police officer Jessica Ramirez said the officer commanded the man to put his hands in the air, but he instead reached around his back, pulled a gun and "made a shooting stance," Ramirez said.

Adams, 40, is "obviously shaken up," Assistant Police Chief Josh Bruegger told reporters Thursday evening. "It appears justified to me," he said, but he noted that decision ultimately will be made by a grand jury.

Saavedra was convicted in 2012 for assaulting his wife and then was indicted for a December 2016 incident of causing bodily harm to a family member. He violated a protective order for his wife Sept. 15, 2017, and had a warrant out for that violation, according to police and court records.

READ ALSO: Pasadena officer shoots, kills man who 'made a shooting stance' while aiming gun at police

Saavedra pulled a gun and threatened to kill his wife and himself during the incident, court records show.



Their daughter, who witnessed the incident, told police that Saavedra said if officers came to the house, he wanted "to do suicide by cop."

A grand jury will determine if the shooting was justified.

The shooting marks the sixth time since 2008 that a person has been killed by a Pasadena police officer, the most recent of which came in August 2010, according to the Texas Justice Initiative's database of police killings.

Alyson Ward contributed to this report.

jose.gonzalez@chron.com, @jrgzztx

Jay R. Jordan is a breaking news reporter at Chron.com. Follow him on Twitter at @JayRJordan.
Authorities are searching for a Pearland teenager who was last seen Wednesday, March 28, the Brazoria County Sheriff's Office reports.

Kayla Arrington, 15, was last seen when she was dropped off by the school bus at the St. Andrews apartment complex in the 9900 block of FM 518 in Pearland. She was dropped off about 4:30 p.m., Lt. Varon Snelgrove said in a release.
WASHINGTON - The threat from Rep. Elizabeth Esty's chief of staff arrived in a voice mail.

"You better f-----g reply to me or I will f-----g kill you," Tony Baker said in the May 5, 2016, recording left for Anna Kain, a former Esty aide Baker had once dated.

Kain, who provided a copy of the recording to The Washington Post, alerted the police, filed a report for felony threats and obtained a 12-month restraining order against Baker.

According to emails obtained by The Post, Esty found out about the episode within a week. At that point, the Connecticut Democrat took matters into her own hands.

Rather than firing or suspending Baker, the congresswoman consulted her personal attorneys and advisers, she said. She also spoke to Kain on May 11, emails show; Kain said she provided detailed allegations that Baker had punched, berated and sexually harassed her in Esty's Capitol Hill office throughout 2014, while she worked as Esty's senior adviser.

Later, Esty enlisted a friend, former chief of staff Julie Sweet, to look into Baker's past behavior, emails show.

Baker did not leave for three months. By his last day on Aug. 12, according to documents Esty provided to The Post, he and Esty had co-written a positive recommendation letter he could use in a job search and signed a legal document preventing her from disparaging him or discussing why he left. Baker went on to work for Sandy Hook Promise, the gun-control group created after the 2012 shooting in Esty's district. He was dismissed from the group this week after The Post contacted him.

The controversy over Esty's handling of Baker's dismissal was first reported Thursday by the Connecticut Post.

In retrospect, Esty said she dealt with the situation poorly. She said she plans to reimburse the U.S. Treasury for what she described as the roughly $5,000 Baker received in severance. She also plans to improve how she runs her office, she said.

"What I did was not good enough and it didn't protect [my staff] enough," Esty said Monday in an interview at her home in Cheshire, Connecticut. " . . . I'm hopeful now with this conversation and this coming out that I'll be able to be much more direct and help other people in Congress understand the risks they are placing their staff at when they don't think they are."

Baker referred questions to a friend, Andrew Ricci. Ricci said Baker disputed that he struck Kain. He said Baker had a drinking problem in 2016 but since then has been sober and received treatment for anger issues and substance abuse.

While the rise of the #MeToo movement has triggered a national reckoning on sexual harassment and ended the careers of many prominent men, the issue continues to be especially thorny in Congress, where, critics say, rules written and enforced by lawmakers are designed to protect the institution rather than victims of abuse. Alleged abusers have avoided penalties and negative publicity through nondisclosure agreements, such as the one signed in Baker's case, and taxpayer-funded settlements that have been used to ensure accusers' silence.

Esty's case underscores how the harassment issue can be challenging even for lawmakers who, in their public positions, find common cause with #MeToo victims.

The congresswoman, a perennial target for Republicans, was among the Democrats who called on their colleague Rep. John Conyers Jr., Mich., to resign after he was accused last fall of serially harassing female staff members.

"For too long, the culture in Washington has accepted entirely unacceptable behavior," Esty said in a statement in November after anti-harassment training became mandatory for House offices. "That needs to change - period."

Esty provided The Washington Post with a copy of her agreement with Baker, which included multiple secrecy provisions, a draft recommendation letter and his severance terms. The document provides a rare look at a contract signed by a lawmaker and a departing senior staffer facing possible scandal,the result of a process that at no point sought a formal response from Kain.

In response to questions, Esty expressed remorse for her handling of Baker's situation. She said she was pressured by the Office of House Employment Counsel to sign an NDA, a process that she said delayed Baker's departure. She said she was working within a system that appeared designed to shield members who had misbehaved, not those trying to dismiss problematic aides.

"Clearly that's what it's all set up to do - to protect the member of Congress whose bad behavior caused the problem," Esty said.

"It felt wrong to me. . . . When I'm reading the documents and these drafts, it kept going through my mind, 'This is not right. This is not what happened.' "

Gloria Lett, lead counsel with OHEC, declined to comment, writing in an email that her office does not respond to media inquiries. She referred questions to the Committee on House Administration.

The committee said in a statement that OHEC "serves to provide advice to House employing offices on employment policies and practices" and that "ultimately, each member makes the final decision for how a case against the office is handled and an employee's employment status."

The statement said the committee "does not review any employment decisions" and "is not involved in the advice that OHEC provides."

According to both sides, Kain and Baker met in Esty's office following her 2012 election. They dated casually in 2013 before being promoted to senior adviser and chief of staff, respectively, in early 2014.

According to Kain's petition for a restraining order, Baker punched her in the back and "repeatedly screamed" at her in Esty's office while threatening to retaliate professionally if she reported his behavior. She did not tell Esty or the House Ethics Committee out of fear for her safety, her petition stated.

Kain told The Post that she was so anxious about imperiling her boss' chance of reelection that she removed her cellphone from the House's WiFi network so that she could privately look up how to report misconduct to the Ethics Committee.

"I was 24 and doing a job that I believed in for an institution I was proud to be a part of," Kain said Thursday in an interview. "But I was being severely abused and had nowhere to turn. Nobody talked about things like this. I was suffering and thought it was weakness."

On May 5, 2016, Baker called Kain approximately 50 times and said he would "find her" and "kill her," she alleged in the petition.

Ricci disputed that Baker punched Kain but did not challenge her other allegations. He said that Baker was too intoxicated at the time to remember leaving the message and that he offered to resign after Esty learned what had happened. The congresswoman said Baker never offered his resignation.

Baker was barred from working out of Esty's Capitol Hill office starting on July 24, 2016, according to the separation agreement, which required Esty to serve as a reference in his job search outside of Washington. A draft letter of recommendation from Esty that was attached to the agreement praised his "considerable skills."

Baker accompanied the congresswoman to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia from July 25 to 28 before sending a departing email to colleagues on Aug. 12.

A spokeswoman for Sandy Hook Promise declined to comment on Baker's departure this week.

Esty said she plans to advocate for greater accountability in how congressional offices are managed.

"I hope in the course of all of this we're pulling the curtain back in a way that will make the institution truly better than it is now," she said.

Kain urged the Senate to approve legislation to better protect its staffers, in line with recent changes to House policy.

"I just want people working on the Hill and going through this to know that it's real, it's a problem and nothing about it is okay," she said.
GAZA CITY - Tens of thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, spurred on by poverty and a growing sense of hopelessness, answered calls from their leaders Friday to march to the edges of their 140-square-mile territory and face off against the Israeli military.

The day soon turned to bloodshed as Israeli soldiers used live ammunition and tear gas to stop them breaking through the border fence, killing 15 people and injuring hundreds, the Palestinian health ministry in Gaza said.

The Hamas militant group, which controls the Gaza Strip, and other Palestinian factions had called for a peaceful "March of Return" for Land Day, which marks the Israel government's expropriation of Arab-owned land in 1976.

About 30,000 Palestinian demonstrators gathered at several points along the border fence with Israel, according to Israeli army estimates.

While many Palestinians gathered peacefully, picnicking and flying Palestinian flags, some approached the fence to threw stones at the soldiers they see as their jailers. The Israeli military accused others of hurling Molotov cocktails, burning tires and trying to "infiltrate" into Israeli territory and released video of such incidents.

Israel had warned that it would use live ammunition, dropping leaflets cautioning that anyone who came within 300 meters of the fence would be in danger. But some Gazans said they did not care if they died.

"I want to be shot," said 22-year-old Yahya Abu Assar. "I don't want this life."

Palestinian factions have called for protests every day until May 15, the anniversary of Israel's independence in 1948, known to Palestinians as the "Naqba" or catastrophe, and Israeli has warned the violence Friday might only be the beginning. The U.S. administration has chosen the anniversary for the opening its new embassy in Jerusalem, and that is expected to add further fuel to demonstrations.

"Every day I'll be here," said 18-year-old Noureddine as he left the demonstration, his white shirt soaked with blood. Armed with a slingshot, he declined to give his last name. He said he had been helping to carry out the wounded, including a friend shot in the stomach and another in the leg.

When asked why he risked his life, he said protesting is simply "normal."

Palestinians in the sealed-off Gaza Strip - 99 percent of whom are denied permission to leave - say life is becoming unlivable. Unemployment among the population of 2 million is estimated to be pushing 50 percent and even higher among Gaza's youth.

The United Nations has warned Gaza is on the brink of economic collapse and a complete breakdown in services. On Friday night, the U.N. Security Council held an emergency session on Gaza developments.

Israel has imposed tight restrictions on the movement of goods and people since Hamas took control of Gaza in 2007. The border with Egypt has also largely remained closed. There is only electricity for a few hours a day.

The decision by the Trump administration to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital came as another blow to Palestinians, along with the U.S. announcement that it would cut aid to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which provides services for Palestinian refugees.

Over the past year, attempts by the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah to apply pressure on Hamas to cede control have intensified the misery as salaries to employees in Gaza have been sliced. With Hamas under pressure and reconciliation efforts with the Palestinian Authority in tatters, analysts say Hamas is trying to shift the focus away from its inability to provide services to the people.

Israel blames Hamas for the growing crisis, saying it uses resources for tunnel construction and other military purposes instead of investing to improve the lives of civilians.

The demonstrations at times had a festive atmosphere, even as Israeli drones dropped tear gas canisters in an attempt to disperse people and ambulances screamed past with the injured.

"If they don't open the crossing, we will revolt," said Abu Ahmed, a 34-year-old Palestinian, standing next to an ice cream stall before running behind an earthen barrier to take cover from flying bullets.

The first death on Friday came in the early hours of the morning when a farmer was hit by a tank shell, the health ministry said. By the end of the day, 1,416 people were injured including 758 by gunshots. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas declared Saturday a day of mourning to honor the victims.

Human rights groups said that Israel's actions - firing on unarmed protesters - were illegal. A spokeswoman for the Israeli military said the live fire was "not random" and was aimed at those trying to break through the fence.

Maj. Gen. Eyal Zamir, in charge of Israel's southern command, said there were attempts by Palestinians to carry out "terror attacks" using the demonstrations as cover. "We urge citizens to stay away," he said. A military spokeswoman said she could not elaborate further on intended terror attacks.

On Friday evening, the Israeli military said there had been a "shooting attack" in northern Gaza, during which two militants fired at Israeli troops. The military said it responded with tank fire and airstrikes. The Gaza health ministry counted two men who died from tank shelling in northern Gaza among those killed.

Citing security reasons, Israel began its blockade of Gaza after Hamas seized control of the territory in 2007 following a bloody conflict when its rival Fatah refused to give up power after it lost elections. Israel had pulled its troops out of Gaza and dismantled its settlements there in 2005. Since then Israel and Hamas have fought three wars.

"We are here to say we want to return to our land," said Suheila Abu Rish, 65, who attended the demonstration. She said her family was displaced from Ashdod, now an Israeli city 30 miles north, in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

She said her five sons and three daughters are unable to find work in Gaza and that the family relies on aid from the UNWRA to survive. Roughly two-thirds of Gazans are registered as refugees with the agency.

At a morgue at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, the body of 35-year-old Jihad al-Fourina, who had been shot in the neck, was laid out for his family to collect. Relatives wept outside. Local media identified him as a member of Hamas' armed group, one of at least two people killed who the Israeli military said were affiliated with the group.

"This is the worst situation that Gaza has seen in 70 years," said Sufian Abu Zaida, a Fatah political official and former minister who was at the demonstrations. Speaking in the morning, he said, "It will be a surprise if we finish the day without tens of injured. They have nothing to lose." His prediction was far surpassed.

"They are losing hope in a peace process, and losing hope in life," Abu Zaida said.
As a Weston resident, I am one of many people who have seen the value of our homes decline precipitously in the last number of years. Yet the town assessment office refuses to acknowledge that our property taxes should also decline, regardless of the research done by professionals and Realtors who list homes in the area at greatly reduced prices. This situation makes it even harder to sell a home in Weston. It gives the town a bad reputation for fairness to home owners.

I think something should be done by homeowners together about the arbitrary and unfair treatment we are receiving. An article by the Westport News on this unfair treatment would also be welcome.

Laura Lustig

Weston

To the Editor:

On March 27, Andrew McDonald was rejected by Connecticut Senate Republicans to become the Chief Justice of the states highest court. His nomination failed 19 to 16 this year; in 2013, McDonald was confirmed by a vote of 30-3. Like other Republicans, Senator Tony Hwang voted No to move forward Justice McDonalds nomination, in political lockstep with his colleagues.

Obviously, something has changed since 2013. And the seismic shift in treatment of Justice McDonald should not be accepted as normal in Connecticut. Simply put, McDonald is an overqualified, dynamic candidate whose his public service has demonstrated his commitment to Connecticut. He presided over the extension of the repeal of capital punishment; he became our states first openly gay Supreme Court Justice - even as he was targeted by an anti-gay propaganda which labeled him as a deviant mole on a mission to undermine American society with LGBT issues. Today, his elevation to the Chief Justice post would have made Connecticut the first state to have a gay Chief Justice of a states highest court. In a time of fiscal instability in Connecticut and Trumpian rancor in Washington, residents deserved history-making bipartisanship that would have made future generations proud.

As in Washington, Republican-led dogma has infected our state leaders. Republicans suddenly viewed McDonald as an activist judge. Earlier this year, Republicans held him in a stunning 13-hour interrogation over past decisions. During that specticle, Representative Arthur ONeill said it was extremely unusual that Governor Malloy presided over Mr. McDonalds wedding. This week, Len Fasano said he just cant be captain of this team - statements all tinged with homophobic undertones.

I will acknowledge that a man with decades of public service will have opinions, perspectives, rulings, and votes with which I disagree. Democrats, Republicans, and Independents share this with all of our elected officials. we all have differences with our elected officials.

Yet, Justice McDonald was held to an unattainable standard. In a state that prides itself on tolerance and open-mindedness, our leaders failed to look at the man before them. Republicans have pestered this man, badgered him, and shown an unwillingness to look forward. As Governor Malloy said on Tuesday, No legislative leader, let alone a member of the Connecticut bar, has nitpicked, parsed, and deconstructed the decisions of a sitting judge more as Glen Fasano.

Until todays vote, Senator Hwang remained uncommitted - publically silent on the issue. Obviously, Mr. Hwang made him opinion known in his No vote this week. So, as I have asked privately to his office, and now ask publically, Why, Mr. Hwang? Lay out to your constituents - in specific terms - what made this man unqualified? We deserve an answer for the voters as we head to the polls in November.

Drew Coyne

Fairfield

To the Editor:

I am the owner of North Haven Auto Body, and I can speak firsthand on the impact that technology is having on my business. New safety features such as automatic braking and collision avoidance are being built into even the most basic of models, something that will undoubtedly lead to lower accident rates in the future, which will directly impact my two companies. And my only thought is Thank God.

Automobile accidents are fourth leading cause of death in the world. If these new technologies save a single injury or death, I say bring it on. I will gladly get ready for the future knowing that we will need to adapt to thrive and survive.

But not everyone in our state is ready to embrace change. For those of you who may not have been paying close attention, Tesla - the electric car manufacturer that has been leading the charge against climate change - is trying now for the fourth year to gain the ability to sell its vehicles and other products here in Connecticut.

For a state that has been bleeding jobs and a government that remains caught in a permanent fiscal crisis, you may be asking whats the problem here? Surely our elected leaders in the state Legislature wouldnt stand in the way of a company that wants to invest its own money and create jobs?

For the past three years, Tesla has pushed for legislation that would allow this innovative company to invest millions of dollars of their own money and create hundreds of jobs without a single dollar from taxpayers.

And for the past three years, our Legislature has done exactly nothing to get this bill over the finish line. We have the chance this year to finally get this right.

As we deal with the last throws of winter, lets send a message that Connecticut is still a place where innovation can thrive. Lets pass HB 5310 and bring Connecticut into the 21st century.

Robert McSherry

North Haven

To the Editor:

Members of the Banking Committee of Connecticuts General Assembly recently voted on party lines to move forward with Senate Bill 475. This bill would establish a task force to closely study and calculate the revenue loss Connecticut faces in light of the windfall that hedge funds, private equity firms, the states biggest corporations, and the richest families stand to gain from new federal tax law.

Ever since President Donald Trumps tax plan passed, hedge fund and private equity managers stand to make massive gains through new and old tax loopholes that make it difficult for Connecticut to capture income tax revenues.

New federal statutes through the federal tax law, such as the pass through loophole, allow hedge funds to further avoid paying taxes. And despite promises and populist appeals made to middle and working class families by President Trump to close the carried interest tax loophole, which enables finance industry titans to pay almost half the effective tax rate paid by our teachers and janitors, his plan did no such thing. Connecticut will continue to lose hundreds of millions of dollars in hedge fund income that it is not able to capture for the public good.

Thats money that should pay for education, crumbling infrastructure, and services cut that will most impact the neediest in our state.

According to The New York Times, economists and tax experts across the political spectrum warn that the proposed system would invite tax avoidance. The more the tax code distinguishes among types of earnings, personal characteristics or economic activities, the greater the incentive to label income artificially, restructure or switch categories in a hunt for lower rates.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the bills changes to business and individual taxation could lead to a new era of business reorganization and tax-code gamesmanship with unknown consequences for the economy and federal revenue collection.

Of course, this presents very serious implications for Connecticut, with its over-reliance on the finance sector, especially when the finance sector doesnt invest in our economy as it once did. Every dollar of earnings or borrowing used to be associated with a 40-cent increase in investment. Since the 1980s, though, less than 10 cents of each earned or borrowed dollar is invested. This means fewer jobs created and more money winding up as shareholders profits.

Connecticut is one of the wealthiest states, but consistently ranks in the top five for income inequality in the nation. Our tax policies over the past few years havent benefited the middle class  whose wages have been stagnant for three decades. That harms our economy by lowering consumers ability to spend money and keep small businesses operating.

If our federal government wont take meaningful steps to ensure that the finance sector pays its fair share, its up to states to regulate this industry. Neighboring states such as New York and New Jersey are taking steps to close the carried interest tax loophole, and Connecticut should as well.

In the meantime, the least we can do is pass legislation to assemble a task force that will calculate the coming loss to our state. I urge the Connecticut General Assembly to pass Senate Bill 475.

Carlos Moreno

State director of the Connecticut Working Families Organization
To the Editor:

The headline Handlers claims under scrutiny (news story, March 23) is the type of misguided headline that could destroy a candidate for governor who is well qualified and experienced, and has what it will take to get this state out of its financial mess.

Members of the public typically are bored or confused by public finance, other than the simple issue of whether taxes are going up. Gubernatorial candidate Mike Handler makes well-supported claims about how poorly Gov. Dan Malloy has managed public finance in Hartford as governor and in Stamford as mayor, and also makes well-supported claims about his own experience and actions that have contributed to the reasonably good financial condition of Stamfords government during the current Democratic and immediately prior Republican administrations.

If, as the article suggests, Handlers claims are true but are claimed by some to be exaggerated, it should be left for lame duck Gov. Malloy and the Democratic candidates running for governor to defend Malloys and the Democrats public finance record. After all, true means Handlers claims are true overall.

Its clear and virtually undisputed that Connecticuts finances are in terrible shape; and that most of the problem is attributable to the politicians. And, yes, the politicians belong to both major political parties. Those politicians primary expertise has been to use smoke and mirrors to create short-term financial fixes that result in long-term quagmires.

So please leave the debate over Gov. Malloys track record, including his smoke and mirrors, to be left to Malloy and the politicians running for governor.

Lester Freundlich

Stamford

To the Editor:

Over this past weekend, a New Canaan resident reported receiving an unsolicited telephone call in which the caller claims taxes are past due. This call appears to be computer generated, but other calls may be initiated by live callers.

These calls are scams and the caller is not legitimate.

Internal Revenue Service contact with taxpayers on a federal tax issue is likely to occur via United States mail.

Residents should:

Never give personal information (dates of birth, Social Security numbers, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, computer passwords, etc.) to unknown persons over the telephone or electronically.

Be suspicious of unsolicited telephone calls, voice messages and/or emails.

Do not call these unsolicited callers back.

Always check information that is provided by the caller to ensure it is accurate and legitimate.

Avoid conversations with unknown callers.

Never wire or send money in response to an unknown caller who makes an unexpected demand.

Contact our police department at 203-594-3500 for assistance.

New Canaan Police Chief Leon Krolikowski
Fighting back tears, Heather Pettus spoke about the abuse she suffered at the hands of a man she had trusted.

When something bad happens to you, you have three choices, Pettus said. You can let it define you, let it destroy you, or let it strengthen you. I choose to let it strengthen me.

Pettus, an Auburn resident who is the founder and leader of The Healing Soul, an online support group, spoke Thursday night at a Take Back the Night event at MacMurray College.

Take Back the Night is an international event and non-profit organization with the mission of ending sexual, relationship and domestic violence in all forms.

I speak at events like this in order to help women find their voice, to have their voices heard, and for them not to feel alone, Pettus said.

Pettus was one of about 10 speakers, most of whom were MacMurray College students, who told emotional stories about past relationships with boyfriends and family members.

I think its really important for students on the MacMurray College campus to have safe space to discuss violence of any kind, said Jodi Pupillo, co-organizer of MacMurrays Take Back the Night and clinical assistant professor of social work at MacMurray.

This event is really unique because it allows people to tell their story, she said. Stories are so powerful when they highlight a persons experience.

Among those who shared a personal story of abuse was Faythe Newberry of Clinton, a MacMurray junior in the colleges social work program who was the events student organizer.

The biggest idea we wanted to express with Take Back the Night is that all types of violence need to be discussed, Newberry said. I think being on a college campus and with how small our campus is, an event like this gives anyone the opportunity to speak out about their experiences, gain resources and realize they have a large support system.

Also speaking was Jo Turner, domestic violence advocate and community liaison with the Crisis Center Foundation, a not-for-profit organization that helps women and children flee from domestic violence.

Turner spoke about the services the Crisis Center Foundation provides and some of the experiences clients have had.

MacMurray College is recognizing National Sexual Assault Awareness Month in April with several campus events.

This is the second year in a row that MacMurray has done special events for Sexual Assault Awareness Month, said Danielle Doerfler, MacMurrays Title IX coordinator. What we are really trying to do is create exposure on sexual assault awareness across our campus and empower our students to feel that they can make a difference.

Greg Olson can be reached at 217-245-6121, ext. 1224, or on Twitter @JCNews_Greg.
@elizabethrkoh

Just weeks after state legislators passed a sweeping package of school safety and gun control changes following the Parkland shooting, a state representative who voted for the bill says he wants to remove its gun control provisions should he be re-elected.

In a town hall hosted by Florida Today Wednesday, Rep. Randy Fine, R-Palm Bay, said he plans to file bills to remove some of the gun control provisions from the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Safety Act  including a three-day waiting period, higher minimum age to buy firearms from a dealer and a ban on the sale and possession of bump stocks.

Fine said at the town hall that he supported the bills increased money for mental health services and school safety, as well as a guardian program that would allow staff in schools to be armed, given required training. But he said legislators did three things as part of this that wouldnt have stopped the Parkland shooting and I dont think accomplish much of anything, according to Florida Today. I dont think those things solve anything and, frankly to me, they were silly.

The move is a shift in tone for Fine, who had called some of the gun provisions minor, minor things before voting for the Parkland bill and called on his colleagues to not let perfect be the enemy of the good.

The gun control measures were among the most contentious parts of an already contentious bill, particularly in Florida, where state lawmakers have voted to increase access to guns and has some of the most firearm-friendly laws in the country.

Legislative leaders had narrowly navigated polarized factions to pass the Parkland package in both chambers and make it the first legislation signed by Gov. Rick Scott near the end of the session. Even so, SB 7026 passed by a slim 20-18 margin in the Senate and a 67-50 margin in the House, where 19 Republicans (the majority of whom are not term-limited and up for re-election) voted no. Ten Democrats, largely from Broward County, voted yes.

Fine had expressed concerns after the Parkland shooting about the proposed gun control measures, telling CNN in February that Im not a big fan of taking away folks Second Amendment rights. I think we need to look at the issues and see where we can play around the edges.

But shortly before the bill was passed by the House, Fine called on his Republican colleagues to put those gun control provisions in the context of the larger bill. State lawmakers had debated for nearly a week on the legislation, which also included a controversial school guardian program that would allow staff in schools to be armed in addition to the gun control proposals. The latter had drawn particular ire from the Houses more conservative lawmakers, some of whom eventually voted against the bill.

Fine, a Brevard County Republican, said some of those provisions  the waiting period for buying long firearms and raising the age limit on purchasing guns to 21  were minor and defended his decision to support the bill anyway. He minimized the impact of the higher age limit and compared the waiting period to the three days to order something from Amazon Prime, he added. What is the harm in waiting three days if you want to go and get a rifle?

The notion that these two minor, minor things  waiting 72 hours just like you do when you order something on the Internet and having to get a rifle from your father if you want to go hunting or your mother if you need to protect yourself  those two things would make perfect the enemy of the good, he added.

Almost immediately after Scott signed the bill, the National Rifle Association filed a federal lawsuit to block raising the age limit to buy guns as a violation of the Second Amendment.

This bill punishes law-abiding gun owners for the criminal acts of a deranged individual, said Chris Cox of the NRAs Institute for Legislative Action at the time. The gun control provisions in this law wrongly blame millions of Floridians who safely and responsibly exercise their right to self-defense.

On Wednesday, Fine said he disagreed the measures violate the constitutional right to bear arms but called the measures a bad idea.

Fines comments drew quick outcry from Parkland shooting survivors, including Jaclyn Corin, one of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas students who has led the #NeverAgain movement.

He voted for the bill when it went through the House, and is simply terrified of the backlash the NRA has given the State of Florida, she wrote Friday morning on Twitter, adding the hashtag #VoteHimOut.

Fine did not respond to requests for comment Friday. A freshman legislator who is running for re-election in his district, he told Florida Today that he expects a dozen Republicans who both voted against the bill and are running for re-election would support his efforts to pull back the gun control provisions.
Hamden Police Department / Submitted photo

HAMDEN  Police have arrested one of two men wanted for a burglary of a Hamden market on Feb. 3.

Around 4:30 a.m. on Feb. 3, Hamden Police responded to a burglary in progress at Country Food Market, 2215 State St. in Hamden. An investigation revealed that two men used a hammer to break the front glass door before stealing an undisclosed amount of money from the cash register. The two males fled, possibly in a white-colored Dodge Ram which was parked in front of the store, according to police.
MOSCOW - Russia will close the U.S. Consulate in St. Petersburg and kick out 60 American diplomats in response to Monday's coordinated expulsion of Russian diplomats from the United States and a number of other countries, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Thursday.

The move continues an ongoing escalation of tit for tat between Moscow and the West that began in early March with the alleged poisoning of a former Russian double agent on British soil with a Soviet-designed nerve agent. U.S. officials said Thursday that another round might be coming.

"We reserve the right to respond," State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said in Washington. "Russia should not be acting like a victim," she said, calling Moscow's move "regrettable" and "unwarranted."

U.S. Ambassador Jon Huntsman Jr. was summoned Thursday night to the Foreign Ministry, where Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov informed him of Russia's response.

According to a Foreign Ministry statement, 58 U.S. diplomats from the Moscow embassy and two from the consulate in Yekaterinburg have been declared persona non grata. The United States expelled 60 Russians on Monday. The other U.S. consulate in Russia, in Vladivostok, will not be affected.

U.S. officials have hinted at further moves, possibly against Russian assets abroad. Huntsman told the local RBC news outlet earlier Thursday that such a move was "possible."

According to a Foreign Ministry readout of Huntsman's meeting with Ryabkov, the U.S. ambassador was rebuked for the remark and warned that such a move would have the "gravest consequences for global stability."

In addition to the expulsion of Russian diplomats Monday, the United States closed Russia's consulate in Seattle - claiming it to be a hub of Russian intelligence activity and citing its proximity to a major U.S. nuclear submarine base.

On March 14, British Prime Minister Theresa May had ordered the expulsion of 23 Russian diplomats after Moscow rebuffed an earlier demand to explain how a Soviet-designed and Russian-produced nerve agent known as Novichok came to be used in Britain.

Last week, 10 of Britain's allies, including the United States, agreed to coordinated expulsions of Russian diplomats, believed to be intelligence officers, from their respective countries. The movement grew this week to include 27 countries. A tally by the Associated Press put the total number of expelled Russian diplomats at more than 150. The number of expulsions in other nations was mostly in the single digits.

"All [measures] regarding the number of people who will have to leave the Russian Federation . . . will also be mirrored with respect to other countries," Lavrov said. "This is the situation as of now."

Russia's move, in particular against the United States, "is a minor escalation," said Alexander Gabuev, an analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center and a former foreign policy correspondent for the Kommersant newspaper.

"Sixty diplomats is tit for tat, but shutting down the consulate in St. Petersburg is asymmetrical and escalatory - a mirror response would have been to shut down the Vladivostok consulate."

Another analyst, Vladimir Frolov, disagreed that Russia had escalated. "It was a matching response," Frolov said. "I was expecting them to close two U.S. consulates."

The Russian Foreign Ministry ran a poll on Twitter this week asking users to vote on which of the three consulates to respond against. St. Petersburg won the poll. Vladivostok is the headquarters of Russia's Pacific Fleet.

The St. Petersburg consulate has been given two days to pack up. All 60 of the U.S. diplomats subject to the expulsion order have one week to leave.

Russian officials from President Vladimir Putin on down have maintained that Moscow had nothing to do with the poisoning of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia Skripal in the British town of Salisbury on March 4.

Both Skripals remain hospitalized. British authorities said Thursday that Yulia Skripal was showing signs of recovery, while her father remained in serious but stable condition. A police officer who came in contact with the substance also was hospitalized but has recovered.

Speaking before Parliament on Monday, May said that about 130 British citizens came in contact with the substance. May also said that Russia has offered 21 different arguments concerning the use of the Novichok agent.

Those arguments included denials that Novichok ever existed as well as accusing other former Soviet satellites of producing it. The only thread linking these denials is that Moscow had nothing to do with it and that the accusations are little more than a provocation.

Frolov said that Moscow's strategy probably will focus on shouldering the blow from the current round of expulsions and pivoting its attention to organizing a summit with President Donald Trump.

"Putin is hoping to use his charm, just as he did with Bush in 2001," Frolov said, referring to President George W. Bush. "Putin needs to move quickly from here to there to score, but finds himself blocked by Theresa May."

But it may take a considerable amount of charm to overcome this week's moves.

"It is clear from the list provided to us," the State Department's Nauert said, referring to the expelled diplomats, "that the Russian Federation is not interested in dialogue on the issues that matter to our two countries."

Meanwhile, Russia has demanded that Britain hand over a sample of the substance used in the poisoning for analysis and demanded access to Yulia Skripal - a Russian citizen. Britain has not ceded to either demand.

The international Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has arrived in Salisbury to conduct its own analysis of the chemical used in the poisoning. It is expected to reveal its findings in two or three weeks.

The OPCW has said it will hand over its findings to Britain, the Tass news agency reported Thursday.

Lavrov said that Russia was calling for a special session of the OPCW's executive council April 4 to discuss the situation, establish a dialogue and "raise specific questions" about the Skripals' poisoning and the alleged use of Novichok.

If Western nations shy away from engaging in dialogue via the OPCW, Lavrov said, it would prove that the allegations against Moscow are nothing more than a "brazen provocation." He also said that the OPCW could confirm only the substance used, not Britain's assertions that Russia was behind it.

- - -

The Washington Post's Carol Morello in Washington contributed to this report.
While people debate the benefits and pitfalls of cryptocurrency, the blockchain technology that underlies these currencies is taking the main stage.

That's understandable, as blockchain is a must-have in and of itself for creating competitive advantage.

Related: 5 Ways Blockchain Technology Will Change the Way We Do Business

For some companies, blockchain-based security applications are enticing; others are simply excited about blockchain's potential for helping them create transparent marketplaces for their customers.

Whatever the motive, the immutable and transparent nature of the blockchain is what has so many people racing to incorporate it into their IT strategies. Joe Lubin, co-founder of Ethereum, interviewed by Newsweek explained why more and more companies are taking note: There wont ever be a single powerful entity that controls the system or controls gatekeeping into the system the way blockchain does, Lubin said.

As a decentralized platform for innovation, blockchain technology, over time, will revolutionize virtually every industry. First movers will have the distinct advantage of figuring out how blockchain can get their business to the next level. Theyll also figure out earlier than their competition does the challenges that come with any new IT integration.

Following are examples of industries that are already adopting blockchain solutions with a great degree of success.

Fund administration

The challenges associated with fund administration are extensive. Currently, most companies rely on outdated software or ungainly paper processes. Gary Markham, CEO of aXpire a blockchain-based solution for expenditure management, described the traditional challenges in this company white paper. Normally," he wrote, "businesses have to spend a lot of time sorting through paper, PDFs and spreadsheets to process documents by hand.

Related: 15 Crazy and Surprising Ways People Are Using Blockchain

"Smart contracts use software code to automate tasks, thereby shaving hours off a range of business processes.

One of the biggest challenges in fund administration is tracking and managing expenditures. Blockchain solutions could solve that issue completely by reducing data inaccuracies, improving interoperability of various enterprise applications and creating more transparent expenditure tracking.

Continued Markham: For fund managers, financial industry leaders or any regulated group, the ability to show a regulator a report of [expenditures] in real time, having spent far less time and money gathering that data relative to legacy solutions, is immensely powerful.

Information services

As the internet has become inseparable from everyday life and been transferred to our mobile phones whose access is at our fingertips, users have sought instant access to their favorite websites. According to this report by Shopify, page-load speed is one of the most important factors for consumers buying something online.

Even Google decided to incorporate website speed into its algorithm ranking factors as explained by TechCrunch. The worlds most popular search engine considers a page to be "slow" if it takes longer than 1.5 seconds to load!

Miao Zhicheng, a blockchain developer for NOIA Network, believes that blockchain will transform the global internet infrastructure as explained in that company's white paper.

The problems of latency, low internet availability and sluggish pace of digital-content progress due to high content delivery costs will soon be over," Zhicheng wrote. "NOIA Network is solving them by creating a widely dispersed and decentralized content delivery network. This network is formed by household computers and data centers around the globe."

Participants can share their idle bandwidth and storage resources in exchange for NOIA tokens," Zhicheng wrote, claiming that, "Every single transaction is automated and seamless only because of smart contracts enabled by blockchain technology.

Other technology experts, too, believe that blockchain will power us into Web 3.0, by offering the fast speed and decentralization they say should have been developed at the beginning of the internet age.

Real estate

Real estate is an incredibly complex industry with a lot of moving parts. The participation of buyers, sellers, agents and brokers, and the processes of title and escrow make real estate transactions slow and potentially risky.

Blockchain can reduce that risk and increase trust in a number of ways. With home purchases, most people rely on title companies to verify real estate transactions and ownership. There has been much debate about how blockchain could solve this problem, but a recent Newsweek report detailing the example of a home title being issued on the Ethereum blockchain showed a solution: Its only a matter of time, the article said, before government agencies start embracing blockchain as a valid alternative to existing title processes.

The technology can also be used to conduct transactions using various cryptocurrencies. Recent reports, including this Los Angeles Times article, have detailed how all types of homes being placed on the market for cryptocurrency rather than fiat currencies. This demonstrates a demand for the option to buy homes with digital assets over traditional ones.

Banking

At this point, banks that remain somewhat skeptical about the new technology are only slowly changing their tune regarding cryptocurrencies and blockchain. Barclays, J.P. MorganChase, Goldman Sachs and other big players are investigating potential applications.

In Europe, the banking industry is shifting from closed unilateral systems to a more decentralized "bank as a platform" approach. The process, Open Banking, is explained in this Medium article. Recent legislation has forced banks to allow third-parties access to client data via APIs.

Different banks, deposit and insurance accounts, crypto holdings and exchanges can now be reached using a single interface. From the consumer's perspective, this degree of access decentralizes banking services, in a secure and user-friendly manner.

While other platforms suggest direct blockchain usage, ORCA, a customizable open-banking platform connecting crypto and fiat services, reverses things, aggregating only third-party services, but storing no data. Its the first time in history when open banking allows [us] to combine traditional banking and cryptocurrency services,  Natan Avidan, CEO of the ORCA Alliance, told Medium.

Escrow

Blockchain can also make escrow a thing of the past, not just for real estate, but for all industries that work with any kind of escrow middle man.

New York City Department of Education attorney Tsui S. Ng recently explained the benefits to the American Bar Association. In securities trading," he said, "it currently takes several days to transfer assets, thereby increasing counterparty risk. Smart contracts that use blockchain technology could shorten settlement times and mitigate such risk.

By creating an automated, incorruptible and instantaneous contract, blockchain solutions will be able to eliminate costly intermediaries and the risks associated with drawn-out transactions.

Legal

Businesses are getting more comfortable with the idea of digitally secure contracts, to facilitate deals in real time. This means law firms will need to become intimately acquainted with the technology to advise clients on the best ways to structure various transactions on the blockchain.

Thats precisely why the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance has worked so hard to get law firms invested in the technology. To date, the alliance has added over 14 firms as members, according to this Coin Telegraph article, to help drive development and adoption of blockchain solutions for the legal industry.

As Aaron Wright, chair of the alliance's Legal Industry Working Group, told Coin Telegraph, Lawyers are poised to serve as the catalysts for blockchain technology, and the Legal Working Group will serve as a neutral space to explore blockchain-based legal technology, develop standards for 'smart' legal agreements, support emerging enterprise use cases, and tackle important policy issues raised by this new, impactful technology.

What business owners should know

Business owners in any of these industries need to start incorporating blockchain into their strategies so as not to fall behind. One of the best ways is to hire a firm that has blockchain built into every aspect of its service offering. Just make sure the company knows the technology through and through. Larger companies might consider hiring a chief blockchain officer or placing a blockchain director under the CTO.

They should ensure that blockchain development is an integral advantage for their businesses -- not just a cool-sounding tech phrase.

Related: 8 Benefits of Blockchain to Industries Beyond Cryptocurrency

Whatever strategy you deploy, you can be sure that tbeing a first mover on blockchain in your industry will give you an edge over your competition.

Related:

How Blockchain Technology Is Making Other Industries More Efficient

These 6 Industries Are Using Blockchain to Gain a Competitive Advantage

How Cashaa is Easing Global Transaction With a Click



Copyright 2018 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved



This article originally appeared on entrepreneur.com


"I have stated my concerns with Amazon long before the Election. Unlike others, they pay little or no taxes to state & local governments, use our Postal System as their Delivery Boy (causing tremendous loss to the U.S.), and are putting many thousands of retailers out of business!" - President Donald Trump, in a tweet, March 29, 2018

---

Trump is no fan of Amazon, and he often broadcasts this on Twitter.

It's well established that the online retail giant has grown at the expense of brick-and-mortar shops. But is Amazon paying little or no taxes to states and local governments? Is it causing the U.S. Postal Service to bleed money?

Two things before we dive in: The Washington Post has been owned since 2013 by Jeff Bezos, the chief executive of Amazon, as a personal investment via Nash Holdings LLC. And Trump's tweet came days after Axios reported that the president has discussed changing Amazon's tax treatment, arguing that the company gets too many breaks from taxpayers.

The Facts

Founded in 1994, Amazon did not begin to charge sales taxes to its customers until around 2011, in a few states. Now, the company charges sales taxes in the 45 states that have them and the District of Columbia. Some states require this by law; in other states, Amazon does it voluntarily. (One caveat here: Amazon charges state but not local sales taxes in some places, according to the left-leaning Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy.)

This applies only to what Amazon sells directly to online shoppers. Third-party vendors that use Amazon's website to sell their own merchandise account for roughly half of sales, but the company requires them to charge sales taxes only in Washington state, and beginning April 1, in Pennsylvania. In other states, Amazon doesn't require but offers to collect sales taxes for third-party vendors.

Asked about Trump's tweet, an administration official pointed to this tax-free setup for most third-party vendors using Amazon's website.

"Amazon doesn't collect sales taxes on goods sold by third-party affiliates, unless it is contracted to do so by those sellers," the official said. "In the case of product sales across state lines, sales taxes are collected only if that business has a significant presence, like a factory or warehouse, in that state."

It's important to note that none of this is part of Amazon's own tax burden. The company collects the sales tax and remits it to the state and local governments. But the dynamics here are important, because in places where it does not collect sales taxes, Amazon typically enjoys a competitive edge over traditional retail establishments, and local governments would not generate revenue from its sales.

Amazon itself paid $957 million in income taxes worldwide in 2017, according to a regulatory filing. It paid $412 million in 2016 and $273 million in 2015. Separate figures in the report show it was expecting to pay $100 million to $200 million in taxes at the U.S. state level in 2017.

Amazon's warehouses and other facilities require lots of jobs, which is a big reason why states and local governments have given the company generous tax breaks and other perks. A 2016 report found that Amazon got at least $613 million in subsidies from local governments for its package facilities from 2005 to 2014, plus another $147 million for its data centers.

On top of this, the company may get a historic tax-break package when it chooses a site for its second headquarters. Newark, New Jersey, for example, has offered $7 billion in state and local tax breaks as part of its bid. Chicago has offered at least $2 billion.

A representative for Amazon declined to comment except to say the company collects billions of dollars in sales taxes every year.

"Amazon for many years reinvested all its profits into expansion, with the result that it paid little or no taxes because taxes are calculated based on profits," said Joseph Bishop-Henchman, executive vice president of the Tax Foundation. "However, in the last few years, it has expanded its warehouse footprint and now pays considerable federal taxes as well as state income and property taxes."

Ironically, Trump's signature legislative achievement, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, lowered the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent and gave Amazon a $789 million windfall in 2017.

Because of several tax moves, Amazon ended up paying no federal taxes in 2017, according to an ITEP analysis.

"During the previous five years, Amazon reported U.S. profits of $8.2 billion and paid an effective federal income tax rate of just 11.4 percent," Matthew Gardner, an ITEP senior fellow, wrote. "This means the company was able to shelter more than two-thirds of its profits from tax during that five-year period."

The other prong to Trump's criticism concerns the U.S. Postal Service. Partly because of the large volume of packages it sends, Amazon gets discounted shipping rates from the post office. According to Josh Sandbulte, the co-president of a money-management firm that owns FedEx stock, this arrangement effectively subsidizes Amazon at a rate of $1.46 per box.

But Amazon says the relationship is mutually beneficial. In 2017, the company noted that the Postal Regulatory Commission "has consistently found that Amazon's contracts with the USPS are profitable," The Washington Post's Brian Fung reported.

The Postal Service saw a net loss of $2.7 billion in fiscal 2017, driven by factors such as declining flat-mail volume and pension and health benefit liabilities. But its line of business for shipping and packages has been a bright spot in recent years, with revenue increasing by $2.1 billion, to $19.5 billion, in fiscal 2017.

The Postal Service declined to comment on Trump's tweet.

To comply with federal law, the Postal Service in 2017 had to generate at least $1.6 billion in income from its "competitive nonpostal services," which includes Amazon package deliveries. Instead, it generated $6.8 billion, according to a 2017 compliance report.

Amazon uses the Postal Service for the last mile or so of a package's journey. The Postal Service in a recent regulatory filing described such arrangements with online retailers as a synergy.

"Our shipping and packages business has continued to show solid revenue and volume growth as a result of our successful efforts to compete in shipping services, including 'last-mile' e-commerce fulfillment markets and Sunday delivery," the filing says. "Volume also experienced end-to-end growth as consumers continued to utilize online shopping, which provided a surge in package volume with a record number of packages delivered during the calendar year 2016 and 2015 holiday seasons. To accommodate the surge in volume and to avoid service disruptions during the holiday season, we have increased Sunday delivery service for some of our customers in limited U.S. markets and are again adding employees for the holiday season." (Note how the Postal Service says it added Sunday delivery service in some cities to meet demand.)

The Postal Service could charge Amazon higher rates, but first, Trump would need more appointees on the Postal Regulatory Commission, which lacks a quorum. Three nominees are awaiting hearings in the Senate.

The Pinocchio Test

Amazon's tax strategies have rankled the president, but you would know this only from his tweets and comments because the tax bill he signed in 2017 gives the online retailer a $789 million windfall.

Trump says Amazon pays "little or no taxes" to state and local governments, but the facts say otherwise. The online retail giant clearly leverages many tools to keep the taxman at bay. That doesn't erase its state and local tax bills. These are larger than Trump allows.

The president says the United States loses money because Amazon relies on the Postal Service for the last leg of its package deliveries. The Postal Service reported a net loss in 2017, and it does offer Amazon cut rates. But that's not the whole story. In fact, e-commerce deliveries are one of the post office's few thriving lines of business.

Amazon is one of the biggest companies in the world, and its financials are fair game for critics, but Trump's distortions don't add up and are worthy of Three Pinocchios.

Three Pinocchios
An Alameda County mother who says an Oakland high school student raped her sixth-grade daughter and sexually abused the girl over several months under the noses of staff and administrators has sued the public charter school the children attended.

The suit accuses the Oakland Military Institute of negligence. The autonomous public school was founded in 2001 by Gov. Jerry Brown when he was mayor of Oakland and operates under a charter agreement with the Oakland Unified School District.

The lawsuit says school officials looked the other way for months last year as a 15-year-old boy sexually abused and eventually raped an 11-year-old girl. Both were students at the Oakland Military Institute on Lusk Street east of Emeryville.

There were rumors, graffiti on school walls, and gossip about them, says the lawsuit filed Tuesday in Alameda County Superior Court. Despite knowing about (the students), Oakland Military Institute took it upon itself not to inform (the alleged victims mother) of the sexual harassment, assault and battery of the girl.

The Chronicle does not name victims of sexual assault and is not naming her mother because doing so could identify her daughter. Nor is the paper identifying the accused student because he is a minor and no charges have been filed against him.

School officials did not respond to repeated requests for comment. John Sasaki, a spokesman for Oakland Unified, said charter schools handle such matters on their own unless there is evidence of a broader problem, like if we have multiple sexual harassment claims at the school. School districts have the power to revoke the charter of autonomous schools and shut them down in certain cases.

According to the lawsuit, four other female students had complained to Oakland police months earlier, in November and December 2016, that the accused boy had sexually harassed, assaulted and committed battery against them. Around this time, police asked the plaintiff if they could interview the child, according to the suit, which says she filed a complaint with the school and demanded that the boy be prevented from contact with her daughter.

The crisis erupted on June 1, the suit says, when school officials told the mother that her daughter, then 12, had gone missing with the high school student. Looking for clues, the mother searched her daughters laptop, the suit says.

She discovered that her daughter... had been sexually assaulted, forcibly raped and forcibly and emotionally coerced into sex and oral copulation for several months, says the suit. It says the acts occurred at the school, including in the parking lot, hallways and girls bathroom.

The mothers lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.

The lawsuit accuses the Oakland Military Institutes Superintendent Johanna Grell and its Middle School Principal Cesley Frost, among other staff members, of failing to protect the student from the older boy, and allowed him to drag her and young impressionable girls into restrooms and contact them physically or on the schools chat system.

The suit asks for unspecified damages, and for the school to pay past and future bills for mental health therapy.

The Oakland Military Institute is a favorite charity of Brown, its founder. In August, The Chronicle reported that casinos, telecom giants, oil companies and other groups  many seeking favor with the governor  contributed $1.6 million in 2017 at Browns behest to the Oakland Military Institute and the Oakland School for the Arts, both founded by Brown.

Among the donations received by the military school were $100,000 from the San Pablo Lytton Casino, and $25,000 from Prime Healthcare.

This article has been revised since it appeared in print editions.
Anyone planning to sell counterfeit Final Four merchandise in San Antonio may not be doing it for long.

The NCAA announced its staff members are working in coordination with San Antonio police and local private investigators to look for any unauthorized use of their trademark images, which are owned by IMG College Licensing.

RELATED: Free and cheap Final Four events to take advantage of this weekend in San Antonio

The organization is not just planning to crack down on counterfeit goods in event sites, but throughout the city and online as well.

The NCAA has a few tips to help customers determine whether they are legitimate.

Merchandise should have "officially licensed product" in hologram writing on the product or the tag. It would depict the universities in a "tasteful manner," and the tag would be intact.

Fans are also warned against buying secondhand tickets by the Better Business Bureau.

The best way to get guaranteed tickets is to purchase them through the NCAA ticket change, according to a news release from the organization.

If fans would like to buy the tickets from a different resale website, they're asked to research the seller on www.BBB.org or check to see if the seller is a member of the National Association of Ticket Brokers at www.VerifiedTicketSource.com. If ticket prices are too good to be true, they likely are, according to the news release.

"Our goal is to protect the brand integrity of the NCAA and our partner colleges and universities, as well as to protect fans from purchasing unlicensed counterfeit merchandise that often is of inferior quality," IMG College Licensing senior vice president Cory Moss said.

Fares Sabawi covers crime in San Antonio and Bexar County for mySA.com. Read more of his stories here. | fsabawi@mysa.com | Twitter: @FaresInSA
SUTHERLAND SPRINGS  Nearly five months after a gunman killed 26 and wounded 20 others at First Baptist Church Sutherland Springs, congregants on Friday applauded passage of a law that could prevent similar tragedies going forward by bolstering the federal background check system used in gun purchases.

Its something thats going to make us all feel a little bit safer, said Pastor Frank Pomeroy, a handgun holstered on his hip, referring to U.S. Sen. John Cornyns Fix NICS Act that was signed into law last week.

The laws aim is to close holes in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) administered by the FBI.

Cornyn met with Pomeroy and about 20 congregants at the church grounds Friday before presenting them with a U.S. flag that had flown over the nations Capitol on March 23 when President Donald Trump signed the bill into law.

Every time a mass shooting occurs in America, public calls are heard for elected leaders to Do something, Cornyn told a battery of media cameras outside the former worship hall that has been converted into a memorial to the shooting victims

I believe this law will save lives, Cornyn said. Its not just mere symbolism, and it really answers a prayer  that some good might come out of this tragedy.

Cornyn described it as a partial solution to the problem of keeping guns out of unauthorized hands. It tightened NICS-related reporting requirements by the military and federal agencies to prevent prohibited persons from obtaining guns.

Previously existing laws should have barred Devin P. Kelley from purchasing the weapons he used on the congregants Nov. 5 before turning one on himself while fleeing the crime scene, Cornyn said, noting firearm purchases are prohibited by convicted felons and perpetrators of domestic violence.

But Kelley was able to buy guns because he lied on the purchase application about his criminal history, his dishonorable discharge from the military and having been institutionalized for mental issues.

The seller did not learn about his history, despite running a background check, because the Air Force had failed to upload information on Kelly for inclusion in the NICS system.

This is a real problem, said Cornyn, noting the Air Force has provided data to the FBI about 4,000 other overlooked service members since the massacre at the small church in rural Wilson County.

If his Fix NICS law had been in place, Cornyn said, We like to think that this tragedy would have been averted.

However, more work remains to be done, he said, including passing a law that makes lying on gun purchase applications a criminal offense.

The Fix NICS law requires federal agencies and states to produce NICS implementation plans for uploading data about persons ineligible to purchase guns, and provides for incentives and penalties.

Joining in the praise of Cornyn for sponsoring the Fix NICS law were Wilson County Judge Richard Jackson, Sheriff Joe Tackitt Jr. and Freeman Martin, regional director for the Department of Public Safety.

I hope that we never ever have to hear about something like this happening again, and I think this legislation will help us a lot, said Tackitt, echoing Jacksons earlier remarks.

National police agencies support the law, Freeman said, who also praised locals in the still-healing community for their perseverance, unity and strength in the face of the tragedy.

Parishioner David Colbath, who was wounded multiple times by Kelley, said locals appreciate Cornyn, his legislation and the overall support shown for the congregation, including a pledge made this week by Myrick, Gurosky & Associates, an Alabama firm, to construct a new church using donations.

Theres a possibility it could save lives down the road, Colbath, 56, said of the Fix NICS law.

Asked about the sidearm he carried at the briefing, Pomeroy said hed had a concealed carry license since long before the attack on his church.

Its not because of that, but it may have made me a little more adamant, he said.
In 1994, John Bolton said that if the U.N. Secretariat building in New York lost 10 stories, it wouldnt make a bit of difference. The quote makes an appearance nearly every time Boltons critics compile a hit parade of his alleged infamies.

My question is: Why is the remark even controversial?

The U.N. is a never-ending scandal disguised as an everlasting hope. The hope is that dialogue can overcome distrust and collective security can be made to work in the interests of humanity. Reality says otherwise. Trust is established by deeds, not words. Collective security is a recipe for international paralysis or worse. Just ask the people of Aleppo.

As for the scandals  where to start? U.N. peacekeepers caused a cholera epidemic in Haiti that so far has taken 10,000 lives. Yet it took U.N. headquarters six years to acknowledge responsibility. An Associated Press investigation found nearly 2,000 allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation by peacekeepers and other personnel around the world over a 12-year period, including 300 allegations involving children. But only a fraction of the alleged perpetrators served jail time.

In Rwanda in 1994, U.N. peacekeepers all but abandoned the country at the outset of genocide that took at least 500,000 lives. In Bosnia in 1995, U.N. peacekeepers stepped aside in Srebrenica and allowed more than 7,000 men and boys to be killed and countless women raped. Its a similar story in Sri Lanka in 2009 and South Sudan in 2016.

And then there are comparatively lesser scandals. Like Oil for Food, the multibillion-dollar program intended to feed hungry Iraqi children and used by Saddam Hussein in a kickback scheme involving a rogues gallery of international enablers.

Confronted with the record of failure, U.N. defenders typically point to the bad behavior of individual states as the cause of U.N. failures or by insisting that the U.N.s core problem is a dearth of financial resources and legal authorities.

The arguments arent baseless. More permissive rules of engagement might have helped prevent some atrocities. Less obstructive behavior by Security Council members might have prevented others.

But contrary to the belief that the U.N. runs on a shoestring, the total expenditure for the U.N. system in 2016 was around $49 billion. Thats up 22 percent since 2010. And the abuse of the U.N. system by states such as Russia to protect clients like Bashar Assad is a feature of the system, not a bug.

So is the chronic mismanagement. Two years ago, Anthony Banbury, a former assistant U.N. secretary-general, wrote an op-ed for the New York Times explaining, If you locked a team of evil geniuses in a laboratory, they could not design a bureaucracy so maddeningly complex, requiring so much effort but in the end incapable of delivering the intended result.

But the truth of the U.N. is probably worse, since fixes to the system never seem to work.

The U.N. adopted what were supposed to be landmark reforms more than a decade ago. Yet the mismanagement, corruption, abuses and moral perversities remain. Iran sits on the executive board of the Commission on the Status of Women. The Syrian regime is represented on the U.N.s Special Committee on Decolonization, dedicated to respect for self-determination of all peoples.

It is, of course, possible to dismiss all this as trivial.If so, it attests to the truth of Boltons quip about the U.N. losing 10 floors. Fifteen might be better.

Except it isnt trivial. Imagine if the U.N. was going to the United States and raping children and bringing cholera, Mario Joseph, a Haitian lawyer seeking compensation for the U.N.s victims, told the Associated Press. Human rights arent just for rich white people.

In the meantime, well all have a collective freak-out over the next national security adviser. I agree with Bolton about some things and disagree about others. But on the U.N. hes been right all along. If his presence in the White House helps to scare the organization into real reform, so much the better.
Bexar County District Attorney Nico LaHood is fighting a misconduct complaint, and he would like taxpayers to cover his legal bills.

Barring more information, we see no reason for county commissioners to support this request.

The legal tab could cost from $10,000 to $15,000. A small sum in the countys vast budget, but funds that certainly could be spent on something far more worthwhile than defending LaHoods alleged misconduct.

And then theres the principle.

RELATED: Judge calls LaHood's behavior 'uncalled for' but keeps murder case alive

All of this stems from a complaint filed after LaHood allegedly threatened to shut down the law practices of Joe Gonzales and Christian Henricksen. That dispute has had wide-ranging consequences for the district attorney.

Gonzales recently routed LaHood in the Democratic primary, and a professional misconduct complaint was filed with the State Bar of Texas late last year by another local attorney.

The threat was allegedly made in District Judge Lori Valenzuelas chambers during a murder trial. LaHood has denied making the threat, but Valenzuela confirmed the threat under oath. Her account raises serious questions about LaHoods denial.

Senior District Judge W.C. Kirkendall of Seguin later admonished LaHood about his rant, saying it could be subject to sanction in a different setting.

But heres a problem: The public technically has no idea about the specific substance of the complaint.

As Express-News journalists Brian Chasnoff and Jasper Scherer have reported, state law prohibits the bar from public disclosure about these types of grievances unless they result in public sanctions or a trial.

However, nothing is preventing LaHood from disclosing the allegations made against him.

RELATED: Editorial: LaHood's last-minute attack ads in 2018 primary mark a desperate low for the DA

Simply, if LaHood wants public funds for his defense, then he should inform the public about the substance of the complaint.

The public deserves to know if the complaint is centered on this alleged threat or his denial of it, which seems likely.

This is crucial information. If these allegations are the substance of the complaint, the public needs to know that to judge what commissioners do on the matter. If the allegations are at the heart of the complaint, commissioners should not use taxpayer money to pick up LaHoods legal tab.

Yes, he is a public official who was seeking to secure a murder conviction. But an alleged threat to shut down someones business goes well beyond the publics expectations for the job of district attorney, and LaHoods denial of this threat is undercut by credible testimony.

Put another way, it would be one thing if LaHood were being sued over a matter of public policy. Its quite another to potentially face a misconduct complaint over personal behavior, even if this behavior occurred while he was on the clock.

These are not trivial occurrences that should be passed off as just LaHood being LaHood. The voters have a reasonable expectation that LaHood, their district attorney, not act recklessly in his official capacity.

READ MORE: Editorial: 3 items Nico LaHood should strengthen before leaving Bexar County DA post

Threatening a fellow lawyers practice and then denying  implausibly  that the incident occurred qualify as reckless behavior. If commissioners force taxpayers to pay for his legal defense, it will send the message that such behavior can legitimately be claimed as acceptable under color of authority.

Bexar County commissioners are taking some time to mull this issue and have asked for any precedent.

But there is little to mull.

LaHood is within his rights to make the request, just as Commissioners Court is within its rights to deny it.

It should if the threat and the denial are the substance of the complaint.
STAMFORD  A city man has been charged in the January accident that killed a woman crossing Elm Street.

George Christiansen, 29, of Stamford, was charged with second-degree manslaughter on Friday, nearly three months after the accident that killed Fairfield resident Lynette Wagner, who was walking to her job at Henkel on Jan. 2.

The charge indicates that Christiansen acted recklessly in causing the death of Wagner, 58, a mother of two.

Tim Wagner, her husband of 33 years, declined to comment about the charge when reached on Friday.

Sgt. Andrew Gallagher, commander of the Stamford Police Departments Collision Analysis and Reconstruction Squad, said Christiansen was making a right turn at a red light on Elm Street when he struck Wagner while she was in the crosswalk.

Christiansen surrendered himself with his attorney at the Stamford police station at noon Friday. He was released after posting a $25,000 court appearance bond.

Wagner, who was pulling a wheeled case, was walking to work after getting off the train at the downtown station when she was struck by Christiansens 2016 Dodge Ram van shortly after 7 a.m.

Christiansens attorney, Lindy Urso, says the charge was not warranted for what his client did.

"Im extremely disappointed, Urso said. Mr. Christiansen did everything right after this accident  not only did he stay on scene but he cradled and comforted the victim while awaiting medical help.

Urso said his client fully cooperated with police and continues to have nightmares about the accident.

Georges primary concern is and has been from day one the well-being of the victims family, Urso said. He knows his case will work itself out eventually  he is just hopeful that the heartfelt apology he wrote in the aftermath of this tragedy makes its way into their possession.

The investigation was handled by officers Christopher Friel, Jeffrey Booth and Thomas Drain.

Another woman was killed in Stamford since the Elm Street accident. Mary Bova, 80, died on March 12, a week after she was struck by a vehicle while walking in the Grade A supermarket parking lot on Newfield Avenue.
Two months before Zimbabwes much anticipated 2018 harmonised elections, an ambitious aspiring presidential candidate sees himself the countrys new leader.

Speaking to journalists while launching his political party named Ideal Zimbabwe, Tinashe Jonasi declared himself the new Zimbabwean President.

So the results for the elections, the winning party is Ideal Zimbabwe uncontested. Im announcing the results, the winning party for 2018 elections is Ideal Zimbabwe. The winning president is Tinashe Jonas.

So im declaring myself the new President of the Republic of Zimbabwe. Mnangagwa was President for those three months.

Im now the new President with another bloodless coup, he said.

He claimed the army is a hungry lot.

I dont use the army. They are hungry. They are starving. Im the first civilian President in Zimbabwe. Mugabe was civilian, he changed to be military using the army and the CIO. Those who dont believe in that lets take it on, said Jonas.

Jonas took a dig on Zimbabwes Vice President Retired Brigadier General Constantine Chiwengas skin.

You general Chiwenga you think you are a better Zimbabwean. You are busy bleaching your skin when people are suffering, he said.

Jonas has a death wish.

I am saying to you bring your firing squad and shoot me now, he said.

In his launch, Jonas had no sacred cows mocking Nelson Chamisa, ED Mnangagwa, ZEC Chair Prisca Chigumba, Christopher Mutsvangwa, Joyce Mujuru, G40, ZBC, Herald to mention but the few.

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- At his colloquium, in which he celebrated his 66th birthday, Bola Ahmed Tinubu has decried politicians who criticise the presidency through what he termed 'political letters'

- Tinubu urged Nigerians to be patient with the present APC-led administration

- He expressed his confidence in the capacity of President Muhammadu Buhari to positively redirect the course of progress of the nation

Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu during his 66th birthday celebration, marked by his colloquium on Thursday, March 29, has slammed detractors and critics of the Buhari-led administration.

Tinubu said that Nigerians should be patient with the president and cooperate with his government to effect the change it promised. He made this comment on Thursday, March 29, At the Expo Centre of the Eko Hotel and Suites in Lagos.

READ ALSO: Ex-president Obasanjo is responsible for all of Nigeria's problems  Falana

At the event, attended by President Muhammadu Buhari, the vice president, Yemi Osinbajo, governors, ministers, members of the National Assembly, and other dignitaries, the celebrant gave some incisive remarks on the state of the nation and the sincere intention of the presidency to move Nigeria forward.

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He condemned those who see nothing good in the leadership and criticise it through different means. He stated: "Be patient with us. There is a clear understanding here; there is a difference between us and them, night and day. I am happy the president has changed the course of the ship of this country. We are reinventing and redirecting Nigeria."

Meanwhile, Legit.ng reported that President Muhammadu Buhari, governors of Oyo, Abiola Ajimobi; Kano, Abdullahi Umar Ganduje; Sokoto, Aminu Tambuwal and the former secretary to the state, Babachir Lawal, among other prominent personalities had arrived for the 10th Bola Tinubu Colloquium. Legit.ng gathered that Tinubu used the colloquium to commemorate his 66th birthday.

EXCLUSIVE: Be patient with President Buhari, Femi Adesina tells Nigerians - On Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit
- The chief whip of Lagos Assembly, Rotimi Abiru, has revealed how Bola Tinubu saved Nigeria from collapse in 2015

- Tinubu had on Thrusday, March 29, celebrated his 66th birthday

- Abiru said the history about Nigeria's politics will be incomplete without mentioning Tinubu's input

The chief whip of Lagos state House of Assembly, Rotimi Abiru, has joined other Nigerians to felicitate with the former governor of Lagos and national leader of All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, on the occasion of his 66th birthday anniversary.

Legit.ng reports that the lawmaker, who represents Shomolu constituency 2 at the Lagos assembly, said that Nigeria would have collapsed in 2015 if Tinubu had not come to its rescue through his political sagacity and wisdom.

READ ALSO: Buhari felicitates with Christians on Easter celebration, warns against hate speech, corruption

He said that the history about Nigeria's politics will be incomplete without mentioning Tinubu's input, adding that the country was on the verge of collapse under the leadership of the former ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) before Tinubu midwifed the establishment of APC and emergence of President Buhari as its presidential candidate.

Abiru added that despite PDP's machinery and power of incumbency, the party suffered a colossal defeat in the southwest and in the north based on Tinubu's political influence.

He said: "Asiwaju Bola Tinubu's political influence knows no bound across Nigeria in particular and the African continent in general. The PDP's government would have continued to inflict pain on Nigerians through corruption and political shenanigan but Asiwaju Bola Tinubu put a stop to it in 2015.

"I join other well-wishers in congratulating Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, on his 66th birthday. Happy Birthday to a political generalissimo, Governor Emeritus, (Dr.), Senator, Asiwaju, Baba Oba, Aare Ago Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the Jagaban Borgu of the universe, a pacesetter, a political pathfinder, builder, moulder, a political shaper, a political barometer and juggernaut of our time, whose real, measurable and meritorious exploits have become a source of inspiration to many generations.

"The virtues of courage, determination, commitment, vision, focus and strong sense of purpose has characterised you and you indeed rank among the noblest, kindest, humblest and greatest men alive.

"It is my prayer that Almighty Allah will continue to sustain you as you continue to lead our party to greater success in the foreseeable future.

Abiru also felicitates with Nigerian Christians on occasion of this year's Easter celebration, adding that Nigerians should use the period to seek God's forgiveness and pray for the country's unity and progress.

"I want to felicitate with all Nigerians on the occasion of this year's Easter celebration. This is a period all of us should seek God's intervention in the affairs of this country because He is the Alpha and Omega of everything.

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"I thank Almighty God for granting us the opportunity to celebrate another Easter at a time of great promise and hope for our dear nation, despite the challenges we also have.

Meanwhile, Legit.ng had previously reported that President Muhammadu Buhari described the former governor of Lagos state and national leader of All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Tinubu as a political strategist and selfless leader.

Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu speaks about the local government election in Lagos - on Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit.ng
- A trafficker and two robbers have died after the Oba of Benin placed a curse on those carrying out illegal/criminal activities

- The trafficker passed away from a mysterious illness in Italy, after refusing to release girls who had refused to keep on prostituting because of the Obas curse

- The two robbers were discovered lifeless in their room by neighbors, after carrying out a robbery operation

The curse placed on human traffickers in Edo state by the Benin monarch, Oba Ewuare 11, has led to the death of three persons including a young man from the state who was based in Napoli, Italy, Vanguard reports.

The young man whose name has been withheld, was said to be a notorious human trafficker. The other two deceased persons were armed robbers who died in their sleep after returning from a robbery operation.

READ ALSO: 2019: Security agencies uncover plots to disrupt elections - Presidency

Legit.ng gathers that the several girls had been camped in an apartment in Italy by the human trafficker; and were engaged in prostitution, under his supervision.

The traffickers problems started after he refused to set the girls the girls free; insisting that they must keep paying him money. The girls had reportedly informed him that due to the Obas curse, they could not keep on engaging in prostitution.

After this, he reportedly suddenly began experiencing a mysterious headache, and was rushed to a hospital, where he subsequently gave up the ghost. Also said to be hospitalized following a mysterious illness, is one of the girls, a certain Queen, who reportedly doubted the efficacy of the Obas curse.

The death was confirmed by an Edo state-born activist and host of a reality talk show based in Germany, Prince Edwin Idahosa who stated that the deceased died as a result of the curse by the Oba of Benin.

He continued: I know the guy very well but unfortunately for him, after the curse, he still collected money from the girls which resulted in his death. His girl friend is also on admission now for the same problem.

A member of the Edo State Task Force Against Human Trafficking and Illegal Migration, Mr Solomon Okoduwa, warned that Obas curses are potent, as he disclosed that the committee had been informed about the death of the trafficker in Italy.

He stated: It is important for all Edo sons and daughters to heed to the call of the Oba. Obas orders are orders you dont joke with. For those who are still in the business, they should remember Obas curse.

So you can see that there is no where you can hide .Either you are caught by the law or by the gods of the land. Oba has freed all the girls. So we are trying to locate the family of the deceased here in Benin and also free the girls in captivity by alerting the Police over there.

The two suspected robbers, on their part, died in Useh, in Ogida barracks, Benin City, after they reportedly returned from a robbery operation. Their lifeless bodies were discovered by neighbors.

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Meanwhile, Legit.ng previously reported that pandemonium struck Iguomo community, Uhunmwonde local government area of Edo state, following the mysterious death of community members which they traced to the curse placed on some people by the forebears of Oba Ewuare 11, the Oba of Benin.

The inhabitants of the community besieged the palace of the Oba of Benin on Monday, March 19, tears, appealing for the revocation of the alleged curse placed on the community by the palace.

Nigerians speak on slavery in Libya - on Legit.ng TV:

Source: Legit
- Heavy rain downpour in Lagos on Thursday led to the death of two school boys in Alagbado

- Their bodies were found floating on the water and both boys were confirmed dead at the hospital

- Eywitnesses lamented over the sad incident and relatives of the boys were seen wailing at the hospital

Two male students of a private secondary school were picked up dead in the flood after a heavy rain in Alagbado area of Lagos on Thursday, March 29, witnesses confirmed.

According to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), the witnesses said the boys were found floating on water at Casso Bus Stop on Lagos/Abeokuta Expressway by shop owners and people waiting to board vehicles to their destinations.

READ ALSO: Oba of Benin's curse leads to death of trafficker, robbers

Legit.ng gathers that some commercial motorcycle riders carried them to a private hospital which confirmed them dead.

A witness said she and others were taking shelter from the rain in a nearby shop when they noticed the floating bodies on the water.

That was how we discovered the boys and quickly the okada (motorcycle riders) people rushed and lifted them on their shoulders but they were lifeless because their legs and hands were just dangling," the witness said.

One of the riders said the boys were students because they were in their school uniforms.

I wonder why they should go to school today which was declared work free and see how they have ended their lives just like that; its painful, the rider said.

A sympathiser who gave his name as Gbolahan said the deceased could have been friends,

They must be friends and attend the same school. I am sad and cannot talk now because they are dead and nothing can bring them back to life, he expressed.

A worker in the hospital who did not want her name mentioned, described the situation as painful. She said the boys were brought in dead.

Some persons, suspected to be the relatives of the boys, were seen wailing and rolling on the floor of the hospital.

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Legit.ng previously reported that on Wednesday, July 19, 2017, Nigerians woke up to a flooded Lagos, due to the heavy downpour that occurred in the early hours of the morning.

A lot of Nigerians in Lagos found it difficult to get to their place of work as the rain was too heavy for people to walk under. Also major roads were flooded as private and commercial vehicles managed to make their way in the flood.

A young lady who spoke anonymously disclosed that the flood almost swept her away.

Victims of Lekki flood rendered homeless, jobless speak to Legit.ng TV:

Source: Legit
The member, representing Lokoja/Kogi Federal constituency in the House of Representatives, Umar Baba Jibril, is dead.

Aged 58 years, Jibril, a three time member of the house, died in the early hours of Friday in Abuja, one of his political associates, Amuda Dan Sulaiman, confirmed to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).

He was until his death, the deputy majority leader of the house. He was also a former speaker of the Kogi state House of Assembly.

In a statement signed by the speaker of the House, Yakubu Dogara, Jibrin was described as an upright man, a leader per excellence, a patriotic, committed hardworking lawmaker and a worthy representative.

We regret to announce the passing away of our friend, brother, colleague and leader, Umar Buba Jibrin, Deputy Leader of the House of Representatives, whose sad demise occurred in the early hours of Friday, after a protracted illness," the statement read.

According to the statement, Jibrin will be buried on Friday in Lokoja after the Jumaat prayer.

READ ALSO: Do not allow APC to deceive you again - PDP replies Tinubu

The House extended its heart felt condolences to his immediate family, wives, children, relations, constituents and people of Kogi.

Jibril had sponsored a controversial bill is recommending the setting up of yet another government agency, to be known as the NGO Regulatory Commission that is meant to issue licences to all NGOs, which would require renewing such licences, every two years.

Despite much criticism against the NGO bill, he said that the house would still pass the bill, to forestall illegal activities of some of the organisations, assuring that churches, mosques and market women associations were not affected by the bill.

Meanwhile, Legit.ng earlier reported that the death of the lawmaker representing Bauchi South senatorial district, Senator Ali Wakili.

The lawmaker slumped at his Gwarimpa residence, Abuja on Saturday, March 17, and was rushed to Viewpoint Hospital, where he was certified dead. He died at the age of 58.

The death of Wakili who served as chairman of the Senate committee on poverty alleviation was confirmed by the special adviser to the Senate president on media and publicity, Yusuph Olaniyonu in a phone call.

The president of the Senate, Bukola Saraki, and the speaker of House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, expressed sadness over the death of Senator Wakili who was the chairman of the Senate committee on poverty alleviation.

In his series of tweets, Saraki said he was saddened to hear the news of the demise of Wakili.

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Dogara described as devastating and heart breaking, the news of the death of the senator.

Lagosians groan as President Buhari's visit grounds activities - on Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit
- Ex-governor of Cross River state, Donald Duke, said that Boko Haram insurgency has cost Nigeria more than the civil war

- He lamented that the insurgency has become a money-making venture for some people

- Duke alleged that there is a fundamental problem in the Nigerian military which is making it difficult to defeat the insurgency

A former governor of Cross River state, Donald Duke, on Thursday, March 29, said that what Nigeria has lost to the Boko Haram insurgency, in the last seven years of its menace, is far more than what the country lost during the civil war.

Speaking at a conference organised by the National Movement for Positive Change (NMPC) in Lagos, the former governor lamented that some Nigerians have turned Boko Haram insurgency to money-making venture to the detriment of the countrys peace and development, Vanguard reports.

He said: Boko Haram has gone longer than the civil war. Boko Haram has been on for about six to seven years now, whereas, the civil war was three years. In real terms, it has cost us more than the civil war, in terms of human and material resources.

READ ALSO: Security agencies on high alert, notify presidency as plots to disrupt 2019 elections are uncovered

The Boko Haram crisis is also economic and it is getting deeper now because they have realised that the best way to get more money is to capture a few girls, get about $10 million to release them and six months later kidnap another set and make more money.

There is a fundamental problem in our Armed Forces, their efforts cannot be doubted but there is a problem somewhere. I believe the men and women in the Armed Forces are far more intelligent and exposed to deal with this issue.

In his remarks, the president of NMPC, Niyi Aborisade, said that some people came to power with the promise of change but the irony is that they didnt inform Nigeria the kind of change they intended to deliver.

Aborisade said: The way this country is being run is not good for the citizens, so it is our duty to create awareness and an enabling environment so that people in this country will be aware of their rights and their power to bring positive change to this country.

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Legit.ng previously reported that Emmanuel Okotie-Eboh, founder of Progressive Alliance Movement (PAM), and son of Nigerias first finance minister, Chief Festus Okotie-Eboh, urged the military not to play politics with the relative calm peace in Nigeria.

Reacting to General Theophilus Danjuma's call for self-defence and allegations against the military, Okotie-Eboh noted that Danjuma is a serious-minded person.

Okotie-Eboh in a statement Monday, March 26, in Abuja, remarked: If the allegations of military playing politics with the insurgency in the country are true, they should quickly address it because we know what it can lead the country into."

Nigerian Air Force operations against Boko Haram - On Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit.ng
- In retaliation against US actions, Russia has expelled 60 US diplomats and shut down the US Consulate General in St. Petersburg

- The U.S. has stated that it regrets Russias actions, saying there was no justification whatsoever

- It is reviewing the details of the Russian action, and disclosed that it reserves the right to further any Russian retaliation

Russia has expelled 60 U.S. envoys and also ordered the closure of the U.S. Consulate General in St. Petersburg, within 48 hours, the U.S. Department of State has announced.

According to NAN, Russias actions were in retaliation to the expulsion of 60 Russian envoys from the U.S. during the week, and the closure of Russian Consulate General in Seattle.

READ ALSO: PDP will never return to power - Tinubu

Legit.ng notes that the U.S. had expelled the Russian envoys in solidarity with its most important ally, the UK, over Russias alleged use of a military-grade nerve agent to attempt to murder a British citizen, Yulia Scripal and his daughter in Salisbury.

Spokesperson for the department, Ms Heather Nauert, said she spoke with the U.S. ambassador to Russia, Jon Huntsman, and quoted him as explaining the Russias actions against the U.S.

Nauert said: This evening, Ambassador Jon Huntsman was convoked to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation.

The Russian Federation dubbed 60 of our staff persona non grata, and they now must depart within seven days.

They also ordered the closure of our consulate in St. Petersburg within 48 hours.

Its clear from the list provided to us that the Russian Federation is not interested in a dialogue on issues that matter to our two countries.

Nauert, however, said the U.S. regretted Russias actions, saying there was no justification whatsoever.

She declared: Russia is responsible for that horrific attack on the British citizen and his daughter. Once again, they have broken the Chemical Weapons Convention. It was a banned substance that they have used  Novichok.

I want to remind you that there is no justification for the Russian response. Our actions were motivated purely by the attack on the United Kingdom, the attack on a British citizen and his daughter.

Remember, this is a first time that a weapons-grade nerve agent, Novichok, has been used outside of war on allied soil.

We have not taken these steps lightly; weve taken these steps in concert with our allies across the world, she said.

According to her, 28 countries now joined the U.S. to back its allies in the decision to kick out 153 Russian spies from the various countries, with Georgia being the latest country that has joined.

We are now reviewing the Russian Governments note informing us of their response. It appears that Russia has chosen to take the regrettable, unwarranted action to respond to our entirely justified action that I just covered.

As I understand it, Russia plans to take the same unjustified actions against 28 other countries, countries that stood in solidarity with the UK. Russia is further isolating itself following the brazen chemical attack.

We are still reviewing the details of the Russian action, but let me say, again, that we reserve the right to further any Russian retaliation against the United States.

So we are reading this. We are reviewing it, and well respond accordingly, Nauert said.

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Meanwhile, Legit.ng previously reported that Russia said Saturday, March 17, that it would expel 23 British diplomats and close a British consulate following Londons provocative measures over the poisoning of a double agent that has triggered an escalating war of words.

And it also said it would halt the activities of the British Council in Russia in a tough series of retaliatory measures announced after summoning British ambassador Laurie Bristow.

The Russian response was announced on the eve of the recently-held presidential election which handed Vladimir Putin a fourth term in the Kremlin.

Which country would you leave Nigeria for? - on Legit.ng TV:

Source: Legit.ng
The efforts by the troops by the Nigerian Armys Operation Lafiya Dole to rid the north-eastern part of the country of terrorism and other similar crimes have yielded fruit again with the capture of one of the most wanted suspects.

A short statement by Brigadier General Texas Chukwu, the director Army public relations, confirmed the arrest of the suspect and three others whose photographs were also released.

Though the name of the Boko Haram member was not given, the statement read: One of the Boko Haram suspects in white shirt is No.5 on the Nigerian Army wanted list and three other suspected members of the group have been arrested by troops of Operation Lafiya Dole.

READ ALSO: 17 key points President Buhari made at Bola Tinubu's 66th birthday

The suspcted Boko Haram member and others arrested. Credit: Nigerian Army

The vehicle conveying the suspect and three members of the civilian vigilante (Civilian Joint Task Force), were intercepted by troops on Thursday 29th March 2018 at the Forward Operations Base along Kano - Azare road, in Bauchi state.

On interrogation, the Civilian Joint Task Force members claimed to have arrested the suspects in Lagos and he is taking them to Department of State Service (DSS) office in Maiduguri for further investigations.

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Efforts are being made to contact DSS office in Maiduguri for possible confirmation of the Civilian Joint Task Force claims.

Mainwhile, troops have intensify search on the major highway to deny and arrest any fleeing Boko Haram terrorists.

Legit.ng earlier reported that eleven soldiers killed on March 20, 2018, along Birnin Gwari - Funtua road while on operation Ayem Akpatuma, which was established to disarm armed militia and suspected killer herdsmen, were laid to rest amid tears.

The security organisation also released the names of the deceases and the photographs of the colourful burial ceremony in a short message honouring the late soldiers.

The Chief of Army Staff, Lt Gen Tukur Buratai, has vowed that those who killed 11 soldiers on March 20, in Birnin Gwari, Kaduna state, must account for their crime.

Buratai made the statement on Thursday, March 29, when the soldiers were being buried at the Commonwealth Cemetery in Kaduna.

TY Danjuma, Nigerian army and the herdsmen crisis | Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit.ng
- In reaction to herdsmen killings across the country, Pastor Tunde Bakare has said Nigerians can shut down this government

- He said the order by the inspector general of police, Ibrahim Idris, for vigilante groups to surrender their illeggal arms should also apply to herdsmen

- The man of God claimed that the Buhari-led government is comprised

Pastor Tunde Bakare of the Latter Rain Assembly, has said Nigerians have the power to shut down this government as a result of the herdsmen killings across various communities in different states.

According to him, Nigerians have done it before and can do it again, The Cable reports.

He said this while speaking on the sidelines of the real cost of subsidy, an event organised by Enough is Enough, a coalition of youth advocacy groups in partnership with Facility for Oil Sector Transformation (FOSTER).

Bakare also faulted the order by inspector general of police, Ibrahim Idris, for vigilante groups and weapon-bearing individuals to surrender illegal firearm. He said the order should apply to all, including herdsmen.

READ ALSO: Reps deputy majority leader Buba Jibril is dead

The pastor said: This is why I said this government is compromised completely. If you are making such a rule, let it be a statute of general application, let it apply to all.

Nigerians to wake up, shine their eyes and put their own destinies into their hands. They should fight for themselves. There are several ways to do it. Civil unrest is one of them, protest is another. We (Nigerians) can shut this government down. We have the numbers and we will show them that we have done it before and we will do it again.

On the issue of fuel subsidy, the cleric accused the President Muhammadu Buhari-led government of mismanaging it. He claimed this administration has refused to deregulate the downstream sector of the oil industry at the expense of Nigerians.

He said: Show me in the world, any civilised society or any nation that is developed where government does business.

Government job is to create enabling environment for business to thrive and flourish. Government job is to set policy. In Nigeria, the sleaze they get from it (subsidy) is why they are not letting go. There is only one word for either this government or any government, Buhari inclusive: let him that stole steal no more.

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Legit.ng reported earlier that Bakare who was a running mate to President Buhari in the 2011 presidential election, had criticised the federal government of Nigeria for what he called the insensitive way it is handling the herdsmen crisis in the nation.

In an interview on Politics Today, a programme on Channels TV, he said that the Muhammadu Buhari's administration should have clamped down on violent herders rather than asking the farmers to give part of their lands for cattle colonies.

Asked what he would do different about the herdsmen if he was in the government, Bakare said he would clamp down on them.

Lagosians groan as President Buhari's visit grounds activities - on Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit
- Some gunmen on Thursday, March 29, stormed a local community in Kaduna state

- The police confirmed that six people were killed in that attacks in Jemaa local government area of Kaduna state

- Also, four others were injured while police has assured that the perpetrators will be brought to book

Six people have been killed in a Thursday, March 29, attacks in Baking Kofi, Kaninkon Chiefdom in Jemaa local government area of Kaduna state.

Punch reports that there were two separate attacks launched by suspected herdsmen in the area.

The gunmen, number about 10 were said to have stormed the community on military camouflage and mobile police uniforms.

Speaking on the attack, a member of the local security committee, Auta Maurice said both attacks were carried out between 10 am and 11 am on Thursday.

READ ALSO: Saraki, Dogara, Oyegun absent at t Tinubus 10th colloquium

Maurice said three persons were killed in the bush where they had gone to cut wood for roofing while three others were killed at a mining site in the area.

He also added four others who were injured by the attackers have been taken to a hospital in Kafanchan.

The first attack occurred at about 10am when some members of our community went to the bush to cut wood for roofing their houses. All of a sudden, the herdsmen opened fire on them and three people were killed while others managed to escape.

The second attack happened at about 11 am at a local mining site. Three people were also killed there, while four others were injured.

READ ALSO: Marafa calls for state of emergency in Zamfara, wants governor removed over killings

We reported the case to the soldiers maintaining security in our community and we went to the bush with them, but the bandits had fled, Maurice said.

Meanwhile, confirming the attacks, the Kaduna command spokesperson, Aliyu Mukhtar, said four males and two females were killed.

Mukhtar, a assistant superintendent of police said: There was an attack at a mining site in the Bakin Kogi area in the early hours of today (Thursday) where six persons were killed by some gunmen; four males and two females.

A combined team of the police and the military are currently on a manhunt for the perpetrators.

We will not leave any stone unturned until the perpetrators are apprehended and brought to book," Muhtar noted.

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Legit.ng earlier reported that all governors of the northern states across Nigeria met in Kaduna to deliberate on the crisis between herdsmen and farmers in the region.

The chairman of the northern governor's forum, Kashim Shettima said the meeting would focus on the violence in the region.

He also said the meeting will address the position of the northern zone on the issue of restructuring of the country.

Nigerian herdsmen vs Nigerian farmers - on Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit Newspaper
- Governor Okorocha of Imo state reacts to Imo Archbishop's allegations

- He said the allegations of tyranny and highhandedness leveled against by the cleric are not true

- He accused the archbishop of plotting to install an 'APGA governor in 2019 and said that the move will fail

Imo state governor, Rochas Okorocha on Thursday, March 29, vowed that the Imo Catholic Archbishop of Owerri Diocese, Archbishop Anthony Obinna will fail in his alleged plot to install a governor on the platform of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) in the state in 2019.

Okorocha noted that since the cleric could not succeed in his attempt to make APGA win the governorship election in 2015, he will still loose in 2019 and subsequent attempts.

He also dismissed the Archbishops allegations against his administration as unfounded and malicious.

READ ALSO: There must be tight security across Nigeria this Easter - IGP Idris orders police formations

Archbishop Obinna, a critic of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Okorochas administration, had accused the governor of highhandedness and clampdown on political opponents.

The Nation reports that the cleric had also at different occasions preached his preference for APGA as against the governors political party, All Progressives Congress (APC).

However, Legit.ng gathered that the chief press secretary to the governor, Sam Onwuemeodo in a reaction to the Archbishops latest attack against the Imo governor, stated the clerics accusations are far from the truth.

The statement read: We have read the latest accusation by Archbishop Anthony Obinna of the Catholic Diocese of Owerri against Governor Okorocha, and we shall continue to show our respect for the archbishop, but, one fact remains sacrosanct, he cannot install a governor of APGA extraction in 2019, because he could not do that in 2015 when he first tried it.

The archbishop had hidden under his Easter message to continue his onslaught on the governor and his Rescue Mission Government, making it the tenth time in less than two months he had descended on the governor and the administration.

Of all the allegations the archbishop made against the governor, the most unfortunate was the one he said Governor Okorocha is the only voice which everyone has to listen to and obey, otherwise, arrests and imprisonments would follow. That was the height of blackmail.

And we humbly wish to challenge the archbishop to mention just one person the governor or government arrested for any reason, including criticising him or anybody, since he came on board as governor in 2011.

Where the archbishop fails to do this, we ask with every sense of politeness, that he corrects that false claim, and, if he deems it worth-doing, apologise to the governor.

The overwhelming love of Imo people for the governor means more to us than the weak voice of the opposition in the state made up of few politicians.

And the archbishop should know that most people have become fed up with his repeated unprovoked and unwarranted attacks on the governor and his government, using every platform and every event available to him.

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We do not think that the Archbishop should be doing that for the benefit of a particular Political Party or certain Politicians. Our happiness is that majority of the members of his Diocese do not share the same views with him.

Meanwhile, Legit.ng had previously reported that Governor Okorocha had allegedly concluded arrangements to arm twist Imo state lawmakers into endorsing his son-in-law.

The governor reportedly used some tactics to ensure that his son-in-law and chief of staff staff, Uche Nwosu, emerges as his successor.

Okorocha was allegedly furious that twenty lawmakers who had purportedly endorsed Nwosu for governor come 2019, turned round to deny the claim.

What is cooking in Imo state? on Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit Newspaper
- The Kogi state governor has described the late Umar Jibril as great leader

- Yahaya Bello said the death of the House of Representatives majority leader came as a deep shock to him

- According to the governor, the late Jibril will be remembered for his astuteness and purposeful leadership as well as his philanthropic life and service to humanity

The governor of Kogi state, Yahaya Bello, on Friday in Lokoja expressed deep shock over the demise of one of the states most astute politicians, Hon. Buba Umar Jibril.

Bello described the late Jibril as a man who lived in the hearts of his people, saying the vacuum he left in the state and the ruling party will be difficult to fill, according to a statement by Kingsley Fanwo, the director general of media and Publicity.

The late former Kogi State House of Assembly Speaker and a Principal Officer of the House of Representatives was a man of the people. His life is a book for anyone aspiring for greatness to read.

READ ALSO: Reps deputy majority leader Buba Jibril dies at 58

The late Jibril identified with his people and lived a life of serving the poor in his constituency.

He was a successful politician and a lesson in positivism; a man who chose to take his destiny in his hand on several occasions.

He will be remembered for his astuteness and purposeful leadership as well as his philanthropic life and service to humanity.

The New generation of Kogites and Nigerians at large will have a lot to learn from the life of the great patriot.

READ ALSO: IGP Ibrahim Idris issues special order to police across Nigeria

The governor assured the people of Kogi that the departed hero and indomitable grassroots commander would be immortalised to keep the memories of his great contributions to the development of Kogi and Nigeria as a whole.

Jibril, 58, who was a Deputy Majority Leader and an APC member representing Lokoja/Kogi Federal Constituency in the House of Representatives, died in the early hours of Friday in Abuja.

Legit.ng earlier reported that the deputy majority leader died on Friday, March 30, at the age of 58.

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Jubril died at a Turkish Hospital in Abuja, one of his politcal associates confirmed.

The lawmaker had sponsored a controversial bill is recommending the setting up of yet another government agency, to be known as the NGO Regulatory Commission that is meant to issue licences to all NGOs, which would require renewing such licences, every two years

Source: NAN

Lagosians groan as President Buhari's visit grounds activities - on Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit.ng
- The Buhari Media Support group described the ghost police scandal as a condemnable act

- The group urged the government to look into it and bring perpetrators to justice

The Buhari Media Support Group (BMSG) has described the discovery of N22.3 billion paid to ghost policemen monthly in Nigeria as a most condem-nable act which is therefore deserving of the greatest penalties in our laws.

Vanguard reports that the BMSG made this statement in a statement in Abuja on Thursday, March 29.

The group's Coordinator, Austin Braimoh, and Secretary Cassidy Madueke, demanded that those who either supported or benefited from the money be punished.

READ ALSO: EFCC re-arraigns two suspected fraudsters for cloning ex-customs boss aides phone

The group said: Nigeria needs honourable men and women in the Police and other public services, not heartless and self-serving parasites.

Legit.ng had earlier reported that the federal government said that it has discovered 78,315 ghost officers in the Nigeria Police Force.

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The Nigerian Tribune reports that the Ministry of Finance recently discovered that the payroll of the Nigeria police had been stuffed with over 70,000 fake personnel.

It was also gathered that the federal government has been able to save N68 billion on personnel cost in 2017.

Sources within the presidency said despite opposition from the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS), reports has shown that there were thousands of ghost officers within the force.

Top 4 modern corruption cases: Maina back in the limelight - on Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit
In a bid to seek further engagement with Muslim communities in Europe, the European Union (EU) held a roundtable discussion on Wednesday, March 28 with ten European imams and scholars.

The meeting was organised to further deepen the much needed conversation, bringing in new voices and perspectives.

Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) reports that the meeting was chaired by European Commission First Vice-President Frans Timmermans.

READ ALSO: You cannot install APGA governor - Okorocha dares Imo Archbishop

Legit.ng gathered from Commissions statement on Tuesday, March 27, that the Imams and scholars were selected from six EU member states - Belgium, Bulgaria, Germany, France, Italy and The Netherlands, representing various sects.

Prior to the meeting, Timmermans said: The Muslim community, in all its diversity, has an important role to play in Europe's future.

"Muslims will find a loyal friend in the European Commission that will support everyone's right to practice their faith and traditions in peace."

Timmermans was further quoted to have said in a press statement after the meeting: The Commission is strongly committed to promoting diversity in Europe. Islam is part of our history, Islam is part of our present and Islam will be part of our future.

The way we help our citizens - whatever their background may be - to embrace the diversity that is a reality in European societies is going to determine much of our collective future.

The EUs executive body holds high-level meetings with religious and non-confessional organisations, as part of the regular dialogue with churches, religions and philosophical organisations foreseen by the EUs Lisbon Treaty.

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In September 2017, Timmermans reportedly hosted a seminar with Muslim university students from across Europe, together with European Parliament Vice-President Mairead McGuinness.

Legit.ng previously reported that a foremost Nigerian Muslim group, The Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC), listed six demands that should be considered for restructuring by the All Progressives Congress (APC) restructuring committee.

The group in its demand signed by Professor Ishaq Akintola on Monday, October 9, noted that Muslims have not been treated as equal in the country and called for change.

The group tabled six demands to be considered for restructuring especially in making Friday a work-free day like Sunday.

Ex Bishop David Abioye's driver quits Living Faith Church, converts to Islam - on Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit
President Muhammadu Buhari who is on a two-day official visit to Lagos state has used the opportunity to meet with the developers of Lekki Deep Sea Port in Lagos.

The minister of transportation Rotimi Amaechi, the managing director of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) Hadiza Bala Usman and Governor Akinwumi Ambode of Lagos state were at the meeting.

Others were Xu Huajiang, GM China Harbour Engineering Company (CHEC); Nuan Nahata, CEO Lekki Port; Adesuwa Ladoja, relationship director Lekki Port; Lin Yichong, chairman CHEC; Mohan Vasurani, chairman Tolaram Group; Haresh Aswani, MD Africa Tolaram Group; Li Yi, VP CHEC; and Zhang Wenfeng, MD CHEC.

President Buhari received in audience Developers of Lekki Deep Sea Port in Lagos. Photo Credit: Femi Adesina Facebook

Legit.ng reported earlier that Osinbajo arrived in Lekki, Lagos Island, to flag off the Deep Sea Port project. The development was made public by the VPs senior special assistant on media and publicity, Laolu Akande, on Thursday, March 29.

READ ALSO: Islam is part of our history, present, future - European Union

At the flagged off ceremony, Buhari who was represented by his vice, Yemi Osinbajo, said the project would become one of the largest sea ports in the region, and serve as a hub for port operations in the whole of West Africa.

President Buhari, Amaechi and MD of NPA, Haj. Hadiza Bala Usman in a group photograph with the developers of Lekki Deep Sea Port in Lagos state. Photo Credit: Femi Adesina Facebook

He promised that the project would get the needed support of the federal government. According to him, the project, once completed, is designed to influence the generation of up to 170,000 direct and indirect jobs in the economy.

The Lekki Deep Seaport project in Lagos was inaugurated on Thursday. Photo Credit: Femi Adesina Facebook

Osinbajo said the federal government would embark on massive exportation of goods using the Lekki Deep Seaport when it becomes operational in 2021.

READ ALSO: Present list of our members who are looters - PDP challenges Osinbajo

The vice president explained that the development of the Lekki Deep Seaport was critical to the creation of special economic zones, which would serve as models for others across the country.

The federal government plans to embark on massive exportation of goods using the Lekki Deep Seaport. Photo Credit: Femi Adesina Facebook

The Deep Sea Port would help ease congestion at the Apapa port. The minister for transportation, Rotimi Amaechi and the managing director of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) Hadiza Bala Usman, are also present at the port for the flag-off ceremony.

Meanwhile, President Buhari unveiled the ultra-modern Ikeja Bus Terminal designed to redefine public transportation in line with the Bus Reform Initiative of the Lagos state government on Thursday.

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He also attended the 10th Bola Tinubu Colloquium. Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a former governor of Lagos and the national leader of the All Progressive Congress (APC) is also using the colloquium to commemorate his 66th birthday.

Lagosians groan as President Buhari's visit grounds activities on Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit.ng
- A group has called for the transmission of the Not Too Young To Run bill to the presidency

- The movement said it is worrisome that the purpose of the bill will be defeated with this delay in its assent

- According to the movement, Nigerian youth are ready and must be part of the 2019 elections not just as voters but as candidates

The Not Too Young To Run Movement on Friday, March 30, raised concerns over the delayed transmission of the Not Too Young To Run bill to the president for assent.

The movement said the delay in the transmission of the bill from the legislature to the executive portends danger for aspiring young people ready to leverage it in the forthcoming 2019 general elections.

In a statement signed by the convener of the Not Too Young To Run Movement, Samson Itodo, the movement said with just 300 days left to the polls, the delay in assent to the bill not only impacts the planning of the aspirants but also has an impact on the overall intendment of the amendment itself.

Itodo said the movement worry that the purpose of the bill will be defeated with this delay in assent.

READ ALSO: You cannot install APGA governor - Okorocha dares Imo Archbishop

"The movement is aware of the position of the law, which makes presidential assent a condition precedent for the passage of bills into law. In particular, section 58 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (as amended), which provides inter alia 'the power of the National Assembly to make laws shall be exercised by bills passed by both the Senate and the House of Representatives and, except as otherwise provided, assented to by the President'.

This provision of the law is backed by several case laws affirming the imperative of presidential assent for constitutional alteration.

The judgement of the court in Olisa Agbakoba v. Federal Government and others is instructive as the Federal High Court held that the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria must assent to any bill altering the provisions of the Constitution before such a bill takes effect. This position was affirmed by the Supreme Court in the case of Ogboru v. Uduaghan," Itodo noted.

He further said the urgency of the group's decision to implore the National Assembly to forward the bill cannot be over-emphasised.

He said the Nigerian youth are ready and must be part of the 2019 elections not just as voters but as candidates.

"It is pertinent to remind the 8th National Assembly that history is on their side having passed the bill in the first instance.

We therefore advise them not to allow any inter-agency tensions, procrastination or scheduling challenges distract them from carrying out their responsibilities to citizens especially young people, who constitute 70% of their constituents.

READ ALSO: Jailbreak in Kogi: This Dino is a wonderful somebody! by Buchi Obichie (Opinion)

We must also stress that African best practices encapsulated in the African Union and Economic Commission of West African States (ECOWAS) normative instruments dictate that all amendments to the constitution must be concluded at least 12 months before the elections.

The delay in the passage of all these constitutional amendments raises challenges to the integrity of the electoral process. We will continue to reiterate that elections are a process, and when amendment processes are arbitrary, our democracy is threatened," the movement said.

Legit.ng earlier said that thousands of youths took to the streets of Abuja to demand the assent of the Not Too Young To Run bill by the president.

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The youth who marched towards the presidential Villa in Abuja said the rally was organised to demand the participation of young people in Nigerias political process.

The bill which has been passed by the National Assembly has also received assent from 26 state house of assemblies, surpassing the required 24 states assemblies' constitutional requirement.

Like France, can Nigeria have a young president too? on Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit.ng
- Lai Mohammed confirms that he was one of those invested in by Bola Ahmed Tinubu

- Mohammed mentions Yemi Osinbajo, the vice president and some ministers as also benefitting from Tinubu

- He prays for the APC leader as he celebrates his 66th birthday

Nigerias information and culture minister, Lai Mohammed, on Thursday, March 29, revealed how he and others have benefitted from the national leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and former governor, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu.

Mohammed spoke at the 10th Bola Tinubu colloquium and his 66th birthday celebration held at the Eko Hotel, Lagos and attended by President Muhammadu Buhari and Yemi Osinbajo, the countrys vice president as well as governors.

Mohammed, according to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), described former Tinubu as an exceptionally visionary politician who has invested in many people.

READ ALSO: Reps deputy majority leader Buba Jibril is dead

Mohammed recalled how Tinubu made him chief of staff about 20 years back as Lagos governor.

Not being from Lagos state, many people found it strange for him to have made me his Chief of staff.

Today, I can say boldly that at least in the federal cabinet, we have those occupying positions who had served in his cabinet at one time or the other.

We have the vice president, myself, the minister of power works and housing, Raji Fashola and the minister of solid minerals Development, Kayode Fayemi.

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If you also look at governor in many states today whether it is Osun or elsewhere, they had worked with him in one capacity or the other, he said while wishing the celebrant a long life in the service of the nation and mankind.

Legit.ng earlier reported that Vice President Yemi Osinbajo also took time out to speak about the national leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, a former governor of Lagos who just celebrated his 66th birthday.

Osinbajo, who worked under Tinubu as the attorney-general of the state and justice commissioner, relieved how the former governor handled the affairs of Lagos using fact-based arguments on issues.

He described Tinubu as an unusual governor who handled an administration where there was so much arguments just as he allowed all shades of ideas.

Aliko Dangote invites IT billionaire Bill Gates to Nigeria | Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit
- The Nigerian Navy has scored another victory against crude oil pipeline vandals

- About 130,000 litres of illegally refined diesel, worth about N24 million, was recovered

- Seven suspects were arrested and handed over to the NSCDC, along with the recovered products

- The leader of the suspects disclosed that they brought the products from Rivers state to sell in Calabar

A large wooden boat with about 130,000 litres of suspected illegally refined Automative Gas Oil (AGO) commonly known as diesel has been seized by the Nigerian Navy Ship (NNS) Victory in Calabar, the Cross River state capital.

Seven suspected crude oil pipeline vandals were arrested along with the items, The Nation reports.

The commander of NNS Victory, Commodore Julius Nwagu, while handing over the suspects and the product to the Nigeria Security and Civil Defense Corps (NSCDC), said the suspects were intercepted along the Calabar channel.

He said the boat contained 520 drums (250 litres each) of suspected illegally refined diesel. He put the worth of the product at about N24 million.

READ ALSO: President Buhari meets with developers of Lekki Deep Sea Port in Lagos

Nwagu said: My men on patrol intercepted a wooden boat laden with 520 drums of suspected illegally refined AGO and when I was informed, I asked them to arrest the boat and bring the boat to my base. That was done and the following day we commenced offloading and I am here to hand over the drums to Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps.

Seven men were arrested with the products. We are handing over everything. The Chief of the Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Ibok-Ette Ibas, gave me directives and the directives were clear on issues of illegalities and I want to assure you that I will not blink until perpetrators of heinous sabotage to our national economy are brought to book.

On investigation, we found that that these products came from Rivers state and the final destination was Calabar before they ran into my security patrol boats.

Receiving the suspects and the product, the commander of the NSCDC in Cross River, Haliru Usman Alhassan, thanked the Navy for a good job, while also promising to prosecute the suspects.

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According to him, what would happen to the products would depend on what the court says.

During interrogation, the 30-year-old leader of the suspects identified as Christopher Okon, disclosed that it was his second time on such trip.

Okon, who hails from Mbo in Akwa Ibom state said they brought the products from Rivers state to sell in Calabar. He said the business belonged to one Tony.

In an earlier report by Legit.ng, the Nigerian Navy said it seized a large vessel, MT Breakthrough, for allegedly transporting 4,574 metric tons (5.790 million litres) of crude oil.

Captain Victor Choji, the executive officer of the Nigerian Navy Ship (NNS) Pathfinder, Port Harcourt, told newsmen on Friday, February 2, that the product was suspected to have been stolen from pipelines in Niger Delta.

He added that 11 sailors were arrested on board the vessel. According to him, the vessel had been on the navy watch list for suspicious activities over time before the seizure.

Soldier shares battleground experience, dedicates song to colleagues - on Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit Newspaper
President Muhammadu Buhari, on Friday, March 30, returned to Aso Rock, the seat of power in Abuja, the Federal Capital Territory, after an official two-day working visit to Lagos where he commissioned some projects.

The president also attended the 10th colloquium of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu who marked his 66th birthday in Lagos.

Before he left Lagos, President Buhari also took time to visit the much-talked about Eko Atlantic City, He toured the vast land and also commissioned it.

READ ALSO: Nigerian Army buries 11 soldiers killed in operation against gunmen

Legit.ng had earlier reported that President Muhammadu Buhari visited Lagos three years into his presidency and was received in what many people termed historic.

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The president used the opportunity of his visit to commission some projects implemented by the administration of Akinwunmi Ambode.

Should President Buhari seek reelection in 2019? (Nigerian Street Interview) - on Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit.ng
- The president has commended all foreign investors in Nigeria

- President Muhammadu Buhari said he appreciates that these investors have agreed to commit their investment into Nigeria, aimed at boosting the countrys economy

- He said these investments have helped in providing jobs for Nigeria's teeming youths

President Muhammadu Buhari on Friday, March 29, expressed appreciation to foreign and local investors that agreed to commit their investment into Nigeria, aimed at boosting the countrys economy.

Buhari, who unveiled a plaque to commemorate his visit to the Eko Atlantic City project, expressed his appreciation to investors after being shown round the project by Governor Akinwunmi Ambode of Lagos State.

He said that their investment had helped to provide employment for Nigerians, reducing the rate of unemployment in the country.

I am extremely grateful to those that agreed to invest so much in our country.

I have just gone round to see the Eko Atlantic City. I am extremely impressed with the potentiality of this project and the amount of jobs and its effect on the economy and what it is capable of bringing, Buhari said.

READ ALSO: Breaking: Buhari arrives Abuja after 2-day official trip to Lagos (video)

The president, while expressing his satisfaction with the ocean reclamation embarked upon by the state government and its partners, said that the investment had impacted on the countrys economy.

Earlier, Governor Akinwunmi Ambode said that the project was an example of what the private sector could do to the nations economy.

Ambode, who said the project was initiated by the Bola Tinubu administration, noted that it had actually saved the whole of Victoria Island from potential danger.

He said that the project, which would spread over 750 square kilometres, upon completion, would eventually be bigger than Victoria Island.

READ ALSO: You cannot install APGA governor - Okorocha dares Imo Archbishop

In an interview with newsmen, Tinubu, who accompanied the President on the tour, described the Eko Atlantic City project as a solution to a potentially dangerous liability.

According to Tinubu, the ocean surge at the Ahmadu Bello end could have wiped out the whole of Lagos Island.

He, however, advised the Federal Government to replicate the project on the nations coastline. Newsmen report that the inspection marked the end of Buharis two-day visit to the state.

Legit.ng earlier reported that the Lagos state government had declared Thursday, March 29, as a work free day.

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The deaclartion was made in order to enable President Muhammadu Buhari commission the Ikeja Bus Terminal and the Eko Atlantic City project.

President Buhari also attended the 10th colloquium which marked the 66th birthday of Asiwaju Bola Tinubu at Victoria Island.

The event was flagged off ahead of the construction of the Lekki Deep Sea Port Project in Epe.

Source: NAN

List President Buhari's achievements in two years on Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit.ng
- The president has reacted to the death of the brother of the minister of agriculture and rural development Audu Ogbeh

- President Muhammadu Buhari commiserated with the Ogbeh family, the Otukpa community of Benue and friends of the deceased

- He prayed that God would comfort the family of the departed, and grant his soul eternal rest

President Muhammadu Buhari has commiserated with the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh, over the death of his younger brother, Clement Ogbeh.

In a condolence message issued by his senior special assistant on media and publicity, Malam Garba Shehu, the president also condoled with the immediate family, the Otukpa community of Benue and friends of the deceased.

READ ALSO: Buhari hails foreign investors who believe in Nigeria

President Buhari prayed that God would comfort the family of the departed, and grant his soul eternal rest.

Late Clement Ogbeh worked at the Central Bank of Nigeria and is being buried today.

READ ALSO: You cannot install APGA governor - Okorocha dares Imo Archbishop

Legit.ng earlier reported that the Kogi state governor, Yahaya Bello had reacted to the death of the majority leader of the House of Representatives, Umar Jibril.

Jibril died on Friday, March 30, at a Turkish Hospital in Abuja, Nigeria's capital city.

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The governor describing the late lawmaker said he Jibril was a man who lived in the hearts of his people.

Bello also said that the vacuum left by Jibril in the state and the ruling party will be difficult to fill by anyone.

N1,500 for health of Nigerians - on Legit.ng TV

Source: NAN)

Source: Legit.ng
- British supermodel Naomi Campbell meets with President Buhari in Lagos state

- The model met the president while he toured the ongoing Eko Atlantic City project

- Nigerians have taken to social media to express their views on the supermodels visit and her meeting with the president

President Buhari had arrived in Lagos state on Thursday, March 29, for a 2-day visit to tour ongoing and finished projects. Upon his arrival the president had kicked off the inauguration of the Ikeja Bus Terminal.

The president who inspected the ongoing Eko Atlantic City construction project this Friday, March 30, had met with popular British supermodel, Naomi Campbell, who is reportedly in Nigeria for Arise Fashion Week.

Photos of the model shaking hands with the president at Eko Atlantic City were shared on social media. The model was also pictured with Governor Akinwunmi Ambode of Lagos state, national leader of All Progress Congress, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, and others.

READ ALSO: Naomi Campbell visits Nigeria, meets President Buhari

It was gathered that Naomi Campbell is in Lagos for the Arise Fashion Week which took off this Friday, March 30, at the Lagos Continental Hotel. The fashion programme is slated to end on Monday, April 2.

After photos of the model surfaced on social media, many Nigerians shared their views on the status of the model's visit.

As always Nigerians would be Nigerians, we always have a piece of mind to give and joke about. Many made jokes that the president who is always busy with his governmental work doesnt even know who Naomi Campbell is.

Others, made jokes that the model who recently arrived in Nigeria had met the president while, they as Nigerian citizens only see him on screen.

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Should President Buhari seek reelection in 2019? (Nigerian Street Interview) - on Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit
- PDP national chairman, Uche Secondus, has threatened to sue minister of information, Lai Mohammed

- Secondus demanded N1.5 billion and a public apology from the minister for including his name on the FG's looters list

- According to Secondus' lawyer, the minister has 48 hours to retract the statement or face legal action

The national chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Uche Secondus, has given the minister of information and culture, Lai Mohammed, 48 hours to retract his statement on treasury looters which included his name.

Secondus warned that its either the minister withdraws his statement within the given time or face legal action.

A statement signed by the spokesperson for the PDP chairman, Ike Abonyi, said through a letter by his lawyer Emeka Etiaba has called for a retraction of the minister's statement.

Abonyi said the PDP national chairman also demand a public apology and a payment of N1.5 billion as damages from Mohammed.

The letter with reference number: EESE&C/1/31/03/18 and dated March 31st 2018 was addressed to the Mohammed.

In the letter, Secondus' lawyer said said that the publication by the federal government through the minister has damaged the image of his client.

He also said that the chairman of the PDP has been "humiliated, castigated and vilified by many as a result of the falsehood published by the Minister"

Part of the letter reads: "We shall within 48 hours from today, proceed to a court of competent jurisdiction to ventilate our clients right under the law and shall further seek the protection of the court against you"

Secondus, had earlier threatened to drag the minister to court for including his name in the alleged list of looters released by the minister on Friday, March 30.

The minister had alleged that Secondus collected N200 million from the immediate past National Security Adviser (NSA), Col. Sambo Dasuki (retd), who is still being detained by the government.

READ ALSO: How I helped PDP rig elections, bribed INEC officials, security agents - Senator Mantu confesses

Legit.ng gathered that in a statement issued by his media adviser, Ike Abonyi, the PDP chairman said Mohammed should be ready to establish his allegations in court.

The statement read: The attention of the national chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Prince Uche Secondus, has been drawn to a press conference addressed by the minister of information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, on Friday claiming that the national chairman collected N200m from the purse of the National Security Adviser (NSA).

Prince Secondus is challenging Mohammed to be ready to establish his allegations in court immediately.

The PDP chairman said the agenda of the minister is to damage his reputation and distract him from serving his party but that he has failed woefully

For the purposes of some gullible public Prince Secondus never collected any money from the NSA under any guise, the statement added.

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Meanwhile, Legit.ng had previously reported that the federal government on Friday, March 30, and through Lai Mohammed, released a list of some of those who have been accused of looting the nations treasury under the administration of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

Aliko Dangote invites IT billionaire Bill Gates to Nigeria | - on Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit
Frog skin secretions offer the first ray of hope in a deadly fungal epidemic PopSci (David L)

Alarmed conservationists call for urgent action to fix Americas wildlife crisis: One-third of species are vulnerable to extinction, a crisis ravaging swaths of creatures, conservationists say in call to fund recovery plans Guardian

Video games may help ageing pooches stay mentally nimble PhysOrg

We Talked to the Flat Earther Who Took to the Sky in a DIY Rocket Vice. Failed Darwin Award candidate.

California will now require coffee to be sold with a cancer warning  heres what the science says Business Insider (David L)

How network theory predicts the value of Bitcoin MIT Technology Review

AI touch myself: Scientists create self-replicating neural network The Next Web (David L)

China?

Orwellian Debt Collection in China Credit Slips

Marcel Fratzscher on the dark side of the German economy  now with transcript!! FT Alphaville. A real eye-opener.

Brexit

Disaster road: The Brexit Irish border plan and why it wont work Politics.co.uk (AFXH). This is an absolutely devastating must read post if you have any interest in Brexit. Its been obvious from afar that the all the UK has in the way of Irish border solutions are magic sparkle ponies. But this kneecaps in gory detail the wooly-headed ideas the Government has been serving up. I would normally write it up but the beauty of this article is its granularity. Thus its better to read the original than any attempt to simplify it. Europe dumps 300,000 UK-owned .EU domains into the Brexit bin The Register (Chuck L)

Londons Struggling Property Market Only Has One Hotspot Left Bloomberg

How Slovakia Stood up to a Journalist Murder and Kicked out its PM Washington Post. Margarita:

How WAPO distorts reality: Although some of the article is correct, the young journalist was not investigating Ficos finances, but mis-use of Euro funds in eastern Slovakia. But WAPOs writers state that he was investigating PMs finances  implying the cause of the subsequent murder.

New Cold War

Syraqistan

MBS feted in the US despite war atrocities in Yemen Pepe Escobar, Asia Times None of This Months Craziest Nuclear Stories Involved North Korea ConsortiumNews (Chuck L) Saudi Prince Denies Kushner Is in his Pocket Washington Post. Margarita flags this part, emphasis hers: Asked about the Saudi-funded spread of Wahhabism, the austere faith that is dominant in the kingdom and that some have accused of being a source of global terrorism, Mohammed said that investments in mosques and madrassas overseas were rooted in the Cold War, when allies asked Saudi Arabia to use its resources to prevent inroads in Muslim countries by the Soviet Union. Successive Saudi governments lost track of the effort, he said, and now we have to get it all back. Funding now comes largely from Saudi-based foundations, he said, rather than from the government.

Big Brother is Watching You Watch

Imperial Collapse Watch

Trump Transition

The King Assassination Case and the Mueller Probe Consortiumnews. Chuck L:

Bob Natz should have done more homework before writing about this subject. The sentence, The HSCA report, therefore, stands as the single most authoritative interpretation of the case, and the closest thing we have to a definitive last word. is just laughable. In the late 1990s the King family won a wrongful death civil suit against Lloyd Jowers (a former Memphis cop and in 1968 a restaurant owner) and various unnamed federal, state and local government entities. It was a jury trial. The plaintiffs attorney was William Pepper who is a lawyer in the vein of the late William Kunstler, but less well known . That is, he takes on controversial, politically charged cases no one else will touch. Prior to James Earl Rays death in 1998 Pepper had been working for years to get him a new trial, and had compiled compelling evidence of government involvement in the assassination and setting Ray up as the patsy. After Ray died that case became moot, but somehow Pepper got connected to the King family and they agreed to bring the suit. Pepper wrote several books on the assassination, each of the latter including findings that had not emerged in the earlier ones. The latest, and perhaps final one is The Plot to Kill King: The Truth Behind the Assassination of Martin Luther King.

Walmart Is in Early-Stage Acquisition Talks With Humana Wall Street Journal

Gunz

Evidence of Violent Extremism of Little Interest When Killer Is White FAIR (UserFriendly)

Facebook Fracas

Ubers Killer Car

Uber avoids legal battle with family of autonomous vehicle victim Reuters (EM)

Tesla Recalls 123,000 Model S Cars Over Bolt Issue Wall Street Journal (Kevin w). 44% of the vehicles Tesla ever sold.

Wasn't going to tweet for awhile (newsletter time) but this warrants an exception. Classic two hours after the close before a three-day weekend news release. Unbelievable (almost)! https://t.co/xxq4L7Izbm  fred hickey (@htsfhickey) March 29, 2018

Tesla Asks for Model 3 Factory Volunteers to Prove Haters Wrong Bloomberg. I seem to have missed where Tesla offered the employees bonuses for doing what sure sounds like extra work.

Court Dismisses Exxons Effort to Block Climate Investigation New York Times (David L)

Too Many Experts Can Hurt Your Innovation Projects Harvard Business Review (David L). Looks like overgeneralizing from a skewed sample. While I hate resorting to stereotypes, the reputation of doctors, even among doctors, is that they are generally risk averse and not very good managers (this may be partly a function of the intense academic demands resulting in them being less able to participate in organizations where you can observe how people behave in groups and develop some skill in navigating them). The pattern I have observed with experts in innovation projects is that they are most often geeks of some sort and are not able to identify with typical users, be they individuals or staffers in particular corporate roles. They are temperamentally willing to fool around with things that are novel precisely because they think novelty is fun, and so they perceive the behavioral cost of learning new things and having to change behavior as not even a cost but a benefit. By contrast, most mere mortals want things that work and are reliable and dont want to change things unless there is a very compelling reason to do so.

Class Warfare

The problem of hyper-liberalism John Gray, Times Literary Supplement

Antidote du jour. Despite the over the top cuteness, I hope none of you are thinking of getting live Easter bunnies and chickies for kids. Bad bad idea. They are cat food futures.

Chocolate will do just fine. You can always take children to a petting or adult zoo if you think they need a bigger dose of animal viewing.

And a bonus antidote, from Richard Smith:

Nen miesen Tagesstart gehabt?

Das ist Fred.

Besser?  pic.twitter.com/nMDYJmaqK5  Lisa Helmus (@lisasbuecher) March 28, 2018

See yesterdays Links and Antidote du Jour here
Yves here. Bear in mind that the much ballyhooed danger of Trump having his finger on the nuclear button is overstated. As this article explains, while the system is set up to give the President the power to authorize a nuclear strike in response to an attack, he cant go willy nilly and set nukes a-flying just because it struck him as a good idea that day.

Having said that, Im not sure I buy the premise of this piece, since one of Trumps salient characteristics is to have no enduring principles. But the observations are worth throwing into the mix.

By David Lowry, a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Resource and Security Studies, Cambridge, Mass. Originally published at openDemocracy

I think nuclear weapons should be way down and reduced very substantially Donald Trump, interview, 16 January 2017.

The world was astonished by the news that President Trump is due to meet the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, to discuss nuclear disarmament and other security issues on the Korean peninsula.

But should the world have been so surprised ? On 15 December 2015 Donald Trump said The biggest problem we have is nuclear  nuclear proliferation and having some maniac, having some madman go out and get a nuclear weapon. Thats in my opinion that is the single biggest problem that our country faces right now.

Just before Christmas in 2016, he tweeted, as Presidentelect: The United States must greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as the world comes to its senses regarding nukes. The president-elects Twitter comments came the same day that Vladimir Putin said Russia needed to strengthen the military potential of strategic nuclear forces. Later Trump spokesman Jason Miller issued a statement to NBC News which did not add much clarity, referring to the threat of nuclear proliferation and the critical need to prevent it, particularly to and among terrorist organizations and unstable and rogue regimes, as The Washington Post reported on 23 December 2016.

His tweet seemed to signal a break with decades of presidential actions to reduce the nuclear arsenal.

As he cranked up his campaign for the United States Presidency, Donald Trump had uttered many things that left not just the US electorate but the wider world gasping in near disbelief. At the end of March 2016 he came up with one of his biggest shock statements, stressing to popular supermarket checkout PEOPLE magazine his caution at pushing the nuclear button should he be elected to the White House. That would be such a last resort  Nobody is going to mess with us. But I would be very, very slow on the draw.

The depth and gravity of the responsibility of the office seem to elude Trump so far, Mark Pfeifle, former deputy national security adviser to President George W. Bush told PEOPLE. No one knows if reading the [CIAs daily terror-threat briefing] would sober him. As the Huffington Post headlined the story: President Donald Trump Would Only Turn To Nuclear Annihilation As A Last Resort; I would be very, very slow on the draw.

Should the world breathe a sigh of collective relief that he is not trigger happy?

Unbounded Power

So what do we know about Trumps thinking on nuclear weapons? Trumps former Republican rival for the Presidency, Marco Rubio, said on the Presidential campaign trail that the US shouldnt hand over the nuclear codes of the United States to an erratic individual.

As with his predecessors, Trumps power over the life and death of entire nations is practically unbounded. Today, the nuclear deluge he could command would consist of thousands of weapons, each 10 or 20 times more deadly than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Nearly 2,000 US strategic nuclear weapons aimed primarily at Russia and China (at a ratio of roughly 2 to 1), with additional dozens aimed at each of several other nations  North Korea, Iran and Syria  were at President Trumps disposal from his first minutes in office.

For his part, on 23 November 2015 Trump opined: I would be somebody that would be amazingly calm under pressure.

For those looking for any proof of this, an article published in Slate, the US news web site,  Trumps Nuclear Experience: in 1987, he set out to solve the worlds biggest problem  provides a remarkable insight.

Written by senior Slate writer, Ron Rosenbaum, author of The Shakespeare Wars, Explaining Hitler and How the End Begins: The Road to a Nuclear World War III, the article resurrects an interview originally given to the author nearly three decades ago for the now defunct magazine, Manhattan Inc., and held in Trumps glitzy office, featuring a golden mirrored ceiling  in his eponymous New York HQ, Trump Tower.

Rosenbaum recalls:

Trump is not new to nuclear matters. He has been thinking about how hed handle nuclear weapons and nuclear proliferation for more than a quarter-century, at least since 1987, when he claimed to me that he was dealing at a very high level with people in the White House (that would have been the Reagan White House) on doomsday questions. It seemed like a joke, when I first heard of it back then. But at the very peak of the Cold War, when the US and the then Soviet Union had an estimated 25,000 nukes to target at each other, thousands of them on hair-trigger alert (no Trump jokes about hair trigger please), Donald Trump announced that he had the know-how to solve the worlds nuclear problems.

Rosenbaum explained the context of his interview, reminiscing that his gig was to take the loudest, glitziest luminaries of the loudest, glitziest era of Manhattan, the power brokers and power lunchers, out to lunch and turn on a tape recorder, to profile their self-importance. Not just the rich and famous of biz, but politicos like Ed Koch and Mario Cuomo.

Trump duly revealed that he had grander ambitions than being a very successful international business guru. Perhaps the grandest, Rosenbaum records, was saving the world. Before lunch he confided that he was talking to people in Washington, even the White House; he was on the verge of breaking through. Even then he wanted to be viewed as something more than a glam real estate speculator, someone of substance politically.

Even then, nearly three decades ago, Trump demonstrated Trumpian impatience with defense intellectuals, exemplified in his contempt for then-fashionable nuclear-deterrence theories like dense pack, a plan to group US nuclear silos so close together that attacking missiles would destroy each other by means of fratricide  crashing into each other over the desolate Great Plains.

Trump thought he saw how dense this plan was. He knew about the dangerous reality of a hair trigger nuclear posture. He said he had an uncle who was a nuclear scientist who made him aware of the all-too-easy proliferation of nuclear weapons. He had read Deadly Gambits, the sagacious history of the START nuclear reduction talks penned by nuclear negotiator, Strobe Talbott, a former Time magazine senior reporter, now President of the prestigious Brookings Institution think tank in Washington DC.

Trump wanted to begin a crusade to find a way to halt a national security policy based on nuclear mutually assured destruction (MAD), before a wild-card nuke deals death to millions.

Trump believed he had some real personal insight into the nuclear nexus, telling Rosembaum:

My uncle who just passed away was a great scientist. He was a professor at MIT. Dr. John Trump. In fact, together with Dr. Van de Graaff they did the Van de Graaff generator. He was the earliest pioneer in radiation therapy for cancer. He spent his whole life fighting cancer and he ended up dying of it. He told me something a few years ago, Trump recalled.  He told me, You dont realize how simple nuclear technology is becoming. Thats scary. He said it used to be that only a few brains in the world understood it and now you have a situation where thousands and thousands of brains can easily understand it, and its becoming easier, and someday itll be like making a bomb in the basement of your house. And thats a very frightening statement coming from a man whos totally versed in it.

Rosenbaum opined: if Trump gets his way with this, the way he does with other deals, its not inconceivable that history will look back on the Trump Plans acceptance as one of the few hopeful developments in the course of a miserable century.

Trump foresaw the situation when hair-trigger heads of state will have their hands on multiple nuclear triggers. And, Rosenbaum observed, it drove him crazy that nobody in the White House sensed the danger.

But Trump has now put himself in a position to do something about it himself with his unlikely atomic summit with the little Rocket Man.
Sugar-coated nanosheets selectively target pathogens (Nanowerk News) Researchers have developed a process for creating ultrathin, self-assembling sheets of synthetic materials that can function like designer flypaper in selectively binding with viruses, bacteria, and other pathogens.

In this way the new platform, developed by a team led by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energys Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), could potentially be used to inactivate or detect pathogens.

The team, which also included researchers from New York University, created the synthesized nanosheets at Berkeley Labs Molecular Foundry, a nanoscale science center, out of self-assembling, bio-inspired polymers known as peptoids. The study was published earlier this month in the journal ACS Nano ("Glycosylated Peptoid Nanosheets as a Multivalent Scaffold for Protein Recognition").

A molecular model of a peptoid nanosheet that shows loop structures in sugars (orange) that bind to the Shiga toxin (shown as a five-color bound structure at upper right). (Image: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)

The sheets were designed to present simple sugars in a patterned way along their surfaces, and these sugars, in turn, were demonstrated to selectively bind with several proteins, including one associated with the Shiga toxin, which causes dysentery. Because the outside of our cells are flat and covered with sugars, these 2-D nanosheets can effectively mimic cell surfaces.

Its not just a lock and key  its like Velcro, with a bunch of little loops that converge on the target protein together, said Ronald Zuckermann, a scientist at the Molecular Foundry who led the study. Now we can mimic a nanoscale feature that is ubiquitous in biology.

He noted that numerous pathogens, from the flu virus to cholera bacteria, bind to sugars on cell surfaces. So picking the right sugars to bind to the peptoid nanosheets, in the right distributions, can determine which pathogens will be drawn to them.

The chemistry were doing is very modular, Zuckermann added. We can click on different sugars, and present them on a well-defined, planar surface. We can control how far apart they are from each other. We can do this with pretty much any sugar.

The peptoid platform is also more rugged and stable compared to natural biomolecules, he said, so it can potentially be deployed into the field for tests of bioagents by military personnel and emergency responders, for example.

And peptoids  an analog to peptides in biology that are chains of amino acids  are cheap and easy-to-make polymers.

The chemical information that instructs the molecules to spontaneously assemble into the sugar-coated sheets is programmed into each molecule during its synthesis, Zuckermann said. This work demonstrates our ability to readily engineer sophisticated biomimetic nanostructures by direct control of the polymer sequence.

The sugar-coated nanosheets are made in a liquid solution. Zuckermann said if the nanosheets are used to protect someone from becoming exposed to a pathogen, he could envision the use of a nasal spray containing the pathogen-binding nanosheets.

The nanosheets could also potentially be used in environmental cleanups to neutralize specific toxins and pathogens, and the sheets could potentially be scaled to target viruses like Ebola and bacteria like E. coli, and other pathogens.

In the latest study, the researchers confirmed that the bindings with the targeted proteins were successful by embedding a fluorescent dye in the sheets and attaching another fluorescent dye on the target proteins. A color change indicated that a protein was bound to the nanosheet.
A superfast broadband, enabling Internet speeds of one gigabit per second using the existing electricity network, is to be rolled out in Clonmel.

SIRO is a joint venture infrastructure developed between the ESB and Vodafone, and which is investing 450 million in building the country's first fibre-to-the-building broadband network.

The system will be available to 500,000 premises in fifty regional towns, District Administrator Anthony Coleman told a meeting of Clonmel Borough District.

He said that SIRO aims to deliver the country's most powerful communications network and improve broadband for businesses and consumers.

As will as improved speeds, Mr. Coleman said the new broadband would also mean that businesses would be able to share extremely large files, and video conference colleagues on the other side of the world without interruption.

Its one hundred per cent fibre-to-the-building network was the only system capable of providing a future-proofed solution, providing for greater speeds into the future.

Mr. Coleman said that SIRO would meet the fibre costs associated with installing the fibre.

"SIRO fibre is not a retail product. It is unique in that it exclusively offers a wholesale open access network, meaning that it will be available to all telecoms operators in Ireland, allowing business customers to avail of a broader range of competitive services from a number of different telecoms operators", he said.

Mr. Coleman said that the use of fibre cables and materials meant they were lightweight and unobtrusive.

He said the access to the fibre-to-the-building network would make regional towns such as Clonmel even more attractive places in which to live and work.

"The availability of high-speed broadband helps attract new business and highly-skilled people, and encourages graduates to remain in or to return home".

SIRO had advised that they would welcome the opportunity to brief a meeting of Clonmel Borough District on their plans for the town, Mr. Coleman added.

The announcement was welcomed by the council members.

Cllr. Siobhan Ambrose said it was very good news that Clonmel had been chosen, and it sent out a very positive message from the town.

Hopefully it would lead to the creation of additional jobs.

Cllr. Ambrose was pleased that the network would also benefit Clonmel's hinterland.

People living in some areas near Clonmel had to come into the town to receive a proper Internet service.

Cllr. Marie Murphy wondered if SIRO would use the ducting that was already in place, or would the streets be torn up again.

Cllr. Pat English said the new system would be good for "schools, Joe Public and industry", and it would be a fantastic project.

Mr. Coleman said it was his understanding that SIRO would use most of the existing infrastructure that was already in place.

He was sure they would have further information when company representatives attended a meeting of the council.
(Natural News) In what has some lawmakers shaking their heads in disbelief, newly uncovered texts and documents reveal what appears to be a much deeper level of corruption within the Obama White House regarding the investigation into the Trump campaign than previously known.

As reported by Fox News, text messages between FBI lovers Peter Strzok, a former top counterterrorism agent, and lawyer Lisa Page suggest a possible coordination between high-ranking officials at the Obama White House, CIA, FBI, Justice Department and former Senate Democratic leadership in the early stages of the investigation.

Congressional investigators who spoke to the network say the evidence strongly implies that an unprecedented level of coordination and collusion between former President Obamas chief of staff, Denis McDonough, fired FBI Director James Comey, serial Trump administration critic and former CIA Director John Brennan, and now-retired Democratic Senate Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.

Here are the most important findings:

 On Aug. 2, 2016, Page texted Strzok this message  Make sure you can lawfully protect what you sign. Just thinking about congress, foia, etc. You probably know better than me. The acronym foia refers to Freedom of Information Act requests.

 On Aug. 3, a message from Strzok to Page noted that fired FBI Dep. Director Andrew McCabe was concerned about information control regarding the bureaus initial probe of the Trump campaign. A report from The New York Times said Brennan had been sent to Capitol Hill around the same time to brief members of Congress about possible Russian election interference.

 On Aug. 8, Strzok texted page: Internal joint cyber cd intel piece for D, scenesetter for McDonough brief, Trainor [head of FBI cyber division] directed all cyber info be pulled. Id let Bill and Jim hammer it out first, though it would be best for D to have it before the Wed WH session.

D refers to Director Comey, while the McDonough reference is plain, GOP investigators told Fox News.

We are not making conclusions. What we are saying is that the timeline is concerning enough to warrant the appointment of an independent investigator to look at whether or not the Obama White House was involved [in the Trump-Russia investigation], a Republican source told the network.

The investigators said that the FBI and CIA are supposed to be independent agencies in our system, adding that coordination between political actors at the White House and investigators would be inappropriate, and thus raises new questions about the level of involvement by Obama and his minions.

 On Aug. 25, Brennan went to brief Reid on Capitol Hill; it was not clear if FBI officials attended the same briefing, a source told the network. But two days later, Reid wrote a letter to Comey seeking an investigation of potential collusion between Team Trump 2016 and Moscow.

 On Aug. 29, The New York Times first reported details about Reids letter to Comey.

 On Aug. 30, Strzok sent a message to Page that said, Here we go, which included a link to the NYT story headlined, Harry Reid Cites Evidence of Russian Tampering in U.S. Vote and seeks FBI inquiry.

Strzok added: D [Director Comey] said at am brief that Reid called him and told him he would be sending a letter. (Related: Firing James Comey is a great first step now its time to INDICT him on corruption charges.)

Congressional investigators said they believe the letter was cover for the FBI and Justice Department, which had already launched a probe into Trump-Russia ties in mid-July, which they said was begun under questionable ethical and legal grounds.

Rep. Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said some members of Congress were shocked when they learned of these details.

I was talking to a few members of Congress today. And these are people who dont follow this closely. Theyre not on the House Intelligence Committee but they follow it just by the news and they were shocked, he said adding: As a matter of fact they used a few expletives.

One congressional investigator added: At some point, the amount of concerning information becomes enough for a special counsel to look into it.

LIBERTY will PREVAIL! from NaturalNews on Vimeo.

Stay up to date on this story and similar stories at Censored.news.

J.D. Heyes is also editor-in-chief of The National Sentinel.

Sources include:

FoxNews.com

TheNationalSentinel.com
(Natural News) Despite the fact that the tech media giants Facebook, YouTube and Google are engaging in some serious censorship of mostly conservative content, a federal judge in California remains unconvinced and as such has tossed a lawsuit seeking redress.

In October, Prager University  PragerU  announced it had filed suit against YouTube, which is owned by Google after the video platform placed more than 50 of the organizations videos in restricted mode. That meant they were unable to be accessed by accounts using parental controls so their kids would not be exposed to violent, sexually explicit, or other inappropriate content.

So, do PragerUs videos meet that threshold of content? Hardly. The organization produces five-minute videos featuring policy experts and others who discuss a range of topics from politics to religion and personal improvement. But the video perspectives  like those held by PragerU founder Dennis Prager  are conservative.

Now youre catching on.

As reported by Lifesite News, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh said in her ruling this week that YouTube could not be held liable for First Amendment speech violations because its a private company, not a government entity.

Google and YouTube do this not because they have identified video content that violates their guidelines or is otherwise inappropriate for younger viewers, Eric George, the attorney representing PragerU, said, but because PragerU is a conservative nonprofit organization that is associated with and espouses the views of leading conservative speakers and scholars.

PragerU officials say that YouTube notified them when it restricted access to certain videos that they arent appropriate for younger audiences (though now were letting high school kids dictate national gun policy).

However, the groups legal complaint states clearly that none of their videos  those that have been flagged and those that remain fully accessible  contain any profanity, nudity, or otherwise inappropriate mature content, and they fully comply with the letter of YouTubes Terms of Use and Community Guidelines.

None of that influenced Koh.

Defendants are private entities who created their own video-sharing social media website and make decisions about whether and how to regulate content that has been uploaded on that website, Koh ruled. Plaintiff has not shown that defendants have engaged in one of the very few public functions that were traditionally exclusively reserved to the state.

But in a statement, PragerU CEO Marissa Streit said all is not lost  yet.

Today, a Federal Court ruling was issued regarding our lawsuit brought against Google Inc. and its subsidiary YouTube, LLC. Already, some headlines in the media would have you believe we have lost our case outright, she said.

Quite the contrary, this is only the first step in the process and we join our legal team in its optimism for the future prospects of our lawsuit. We thank the Honorable Judge Koh for her thoughtful ruling, which allows PragerU, in essence, to continue our efforts, Streit continued.

Far from an unexpected setback, we look forward to arguing the merits of our case in both state and Federal Court, as well as the 9th Circuit, or even the Supreme Court if that is what it takes to ensure every Americans freedom of speech is protected online. We remain firmly convinced of the importance of our cause and as such, we look forward to our next day in court.

PragerU has also filed suit against Google, which seeks to break up the Webs largest information monopoly following a series of very credible reports documenting how the behemoth has been attempting to control the flow of information that you can (and cannot see) in your browser.

This is not just about PragerU being silenced. Its about another point of view thats being silenced by Google and YouTube, the group said, adding that Google controls Internet search with more than 75 percent of the market. Tomorrow it could be your point of view that is being silenced.

Read YouTubeCensorship.com for more coverage of YouTube censorship.

J.D. Heyes is a senior writer for NaturalNews.com and NewsTarget.com, as well as editor of The National Sentinel.

Sources include:

NewsTarget.com

LifeSiteNews.com
Asian American pioneers Elaine Chu and Marina Perez-Wong met at the Ruth Asawa School of the Arts in San Francisco when they were only 14. They were influenced by the famous sculptor, Ruth Asawa.

Her artwork later was amazing to see in the De Young Museum. It was the first time I saw a Bay Area Asian woman artist in a monumental space, Perez-Wong said.

Ruth Asawa's creations can be seen in museums around the world and are seen every day on the streets of San Francisco. She was known as the "Fountain Lady."

Asawa was profoundly inspired by the experience of collaborating with and being taught by internationally renowned working artists while attending Black Mountain College in North Carolina from 1946 to 1949. It was her experience as a young woman at Black Mountain that drove Asawa to be a fierce advocate for arts education and lead the charge to found a public high school for the arts in San Francisco. She wanted to inspire other young artists. After her death, the school was renamed the Ruth Asawa School of the Arts in her honor.

Elaine and Marina work to continue setting an the example of strong independent women in the art world. They've beautified and given color to many places in San Francisco (you can find all the locations in the interactive map above).

Together, they are passing along a strong Asian American influence in art.

Elaine Chu and Marina Perez-Wong met at the Ruth Asawa School of the Arts in San Francisco. They were inspired by the famous sculptor, Ruth Asawa. Check out their story and where you can find their murals around the city.
Police officers will continue to be at Palo Alto High School for the remainder of the day after a phone threat directed at the campus.

Officers determined the threat was likely a hoax and report no violence or injuries. Palo Alto High School was temporarily placed on lockdown while police responded and investigated the threat.

Officers from the Stanford Department of Public Safety, Mountain View Police Department and Menlo Park Police Department also assisted in the response.

No other information was immediately available.
South San Francisco police are looking for a few good dog walkers  or just walkers  to help them fight crime.

Anyone who goes out regularly walking their dogs, or anyone who likes to take daily walks in the community, is invited to participate in the police department's crime awareness program.

The Dog Walker Watch Program will involve observing and reporting suspicious activity while walking pets, police said on social media today. A training session will be held at the police department on May 23 at 6:30 p.m.

For more information, people can contact Corporal O'Connor at (650) 829-3931 or via email at matthew.o'connor@ssf.net.
A late night fast food run took a violent turn in San Jose early Wednesday morning as a man in a pickup truck opened fire on a carload women, hitting one of them, according to San Jose police.

The suspect was still on the loose Thursday night, police said.

It all started at a Jack in the Box on Monterey Road in San Jose. One of the victims, who didnt want to be identified, said she was driving her white Toyota when the man opened fire, hitting one of the women in the arm and leaving a bullet hole in her car.

"He got in the drive through, I got behind him, you know, no words were exchanged," she said. "Nothing, just ordering food."

She remembers the pickup driver peeling out as he left the restaurant. After she got her food and started driving home, she noticed the same truck again.

"Thats when he got on the side of me and started getting super close to my car," she said. That's when he fired at them, she said.

The woman called 911 and her dad, and they all met police at a Morgan Hill convenience store, she said.

"Her friend was crouched over, wasnt moving at the time I got there," said Donald Jimenez, father of the driver. "I thought she was dead."

The woman's friend had been shot in the arm and was taken to a local hospital, police said. She was treated and released and was at home recovering Thursday.

Jimenez said police told him detectives have images of the alleged gunman and his truck as he was in front of the young woman at the Jack in the Box drive through.
They died together when flames tore through an overcrowded police station jail in Venezuela.

Now many of them are buried beside each other, too.

Weeping relatives lowered caskets of many of the 68 people officials say were killed in one of the nation's worst jail fires into a freshly dug mass tomb on Friday.

Cemetery workers said they expected to bury about half of those killed in three-deep graves, each separated by a layer of hastily constructed cinderblock. Simple white crosses with their handwritten names, dates of birth and shared death date were put around the tomb.

"How am I going to forget seeing my husband burned?" asked Wilca Gonzalez, 36, whose loved one was the first to be placed into the ground Friday. "How can you forget that?"

The mass burial comes two days after the horrific blaze in the industrial city of Valencia where an estimated 200 people were being kept in cells meant for no more than three dozen. As they bury their dead, relatives of those killed are clamoring for answers from officials who have yet to release a full account of what happened, state how many were injured or release the names of those killed.

"The state is keeping far too silent," said Humberto Prado, director of the Venezuelan Prisons Observatory, an independent group that advocates for prisoner rights.

In a statement Friday, the Venezuelan government defended its commitment to human rights and instructed the chief prosecutor's office to investigate. Officials also lambasted the United Nation's human rights office for comments made Thursday urging Venezuela to address concerns like dangerously cramped cells and ensure the nation's jails and prisons meet international standards.

"It makes their biased position on Venezuela publicly clear," the statement read.

Rights advocates said the relative silence from officials was symptomatic of a larger unwillingness to address long-simmering concerns about the nation's jail system. According to the Venezuelan Prisons Observatory, at least 32,000 people are being placed in police station jails designed as temporary holding cells for 8,000. Inmates are often able to obtain drugs and weapons with the help of corrupt guards.

Now as Venezuela struggles with one of the most severe economic contractions in modern Latin American history those conditions are believed to have gotten even worse. Like much of the nation, activists say prisoners are going hungry and unable to get needed healthcare.

"With the country undergoing hyperinflation, and the population suffering from mass scarcities of basic goods and medicines, conditions inside Venezuela's penal system have descended to levels that can best be described as draconian," said Geoff Ramsey, a Venezuela researcher at the Washington Office on Latin America.

The incident is one of the worst mass casualty events at Venezuelan prisons and jails, but is not the first. A fire at a prison in the western state of Zulia killed more than 100 inmates in 1994. In 2013, 61 people died and over 100 were injured, mostly from bullet wounds, during a riot in Barquisimeto.

Absent an official narrative, relatives were left to cobble what little details they could on their loved ones' final moments from photographs passed along from cell phones and survivor accounts.

Jeyne Lugo, whose 27-year-old son Roner was killed, said he called her shortly before the fire and said police had shot a pregnant woman at the jail in the head. Inmates then set a mattress on fire to draw attention to the dying woman in an apparent bid to get her aid, she said. He told her that officers then began pouring gasoline, igniting the flames further and causing them to spread.

After the blaze Lugo received a photo showing her son's right leg alongside the body of a deceased pregnant woman, her face covered in blood. She recognized her son's leg because of the thick scar running up his calf, the remnant of a surgery he'd undergone after an accident years before.

While she said officials have told the families most died from asphyxiation, she doubts that account. According to her, a survivor claims her son survived the blaze but was shot.

She criticized what she called a hasty effort by officials to close the case.

"I've never seen anything that quick," she said.

Other accounts suggest the inmates may have set the fire in an attempt to escape.

Carlos Nieto, the director of A Window to Freedom, an organization that monitors prison conditions, said accounts from survivors and relatives indicate the incident began when inmates tried to hold two guards captive. Later they reportedly set some mattresses on fire in an attempt to force guards to open the cells.

He said the only survivors managed to escape because firefighters broke through a wall in the back of the cells and questioned authorities for not doing more to help them out.

Those inside the jail are believed to have been a mix of inmates awaiting trial or already sentenced for a variety of crimes, many relatively minor in nature.

The family of Gonzalez's husband, Erickson Zapata, 23, said he was wrongly jailed with several others suspected of robbing a cellphone. They said he should have been detained for no more than 10 days but instead had been in the jail for 10 months. He was kept in the largest part of the facility where 60 people were crammed inside, many sleeping on makeshift hammocks made from bedsheets.

Gonzalez said the last time her husband called her from inside the jail, he was pleading for help.

"I can't breathe," he cried. "I'm suffocating."

She identified his body by his crooked left ring finger and his uniquely large front teeth.

On Friday, his father, Jesus Zapata, 42, stood next to his son's casket holding his bible. With three other men, he helped lower the coffin into the ground.

His quiet sob turned into open crying as workers covered the coffin with planks, preparing the grave for the next inmate to be placed on top.

___

Associated Press writers Fabiola Sanchez in Caracas, Venezuela, and Christine Armario in Bogota, Colombia, contributed to this report.
A professor and author who once presented himself as a possible Trump administration ambassador to the European Union was detained and questioned by the FBI at Boston Logan airport and served a subpoena from Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is probing possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.

Ted Malloch said in an emailed statement to NBC News that he was flying from his home in the U.K. via Boston to Cleveland, Ohio to celebrate Easter when he was stopped Wednesday, an incident first reported by the Guardian.

NBC News has independently confirmed that Malloch was detained and questioned at the airport, but not the details of the encounter. However, the Special Counsel's Office would not comment on Malloch's statement or whether or not Malloch was questioned.

He said two FBI agents questioned him about his career, his affection for the Philadelphia Eagles, the Trump campaign, former campaign adviser Roger Stone and Wikileaks. They also produced a document allowing them to seize and search his cellphone.
Call it the luck of the Irish.

Three residents from across Illinois became millionaires after winning a massive lottery prize this month.



Carol Vymetal of Woodridge, Jerre Stowers of Divernon and Kevin McInerney of Naperville each won $1 million in the St. Patricks Day Millionaire Raffle, according to the Illinois Lottery.

In total, the raffle awarded 9,253 prizes, including 250 $1,000 prizes and 9,000 $100 prizes, the lottery said.

There were 400,000 tickets available, giving players a 1-in-43 chance of winning a prize, according to the lotterys website. A ticket cost $20.

If the Cubs can win the World Series, then I can win the St. Patricks Day Millionaire Raffle, McInerney told the Illinois Lottery, adding that he will use his prize for his childrens education. He bought his ticket at Solo Liquors, 1474 E. Chicago Ave., in Naperville.

Vymetal told the lottery she will use her winnings to support her family. She has played the Illinois Lottery since she won $1,500 in its first drawing in 1974. Her ticket was purchased at Leos Wines & Spirits, 3018 Hobson Road, in Woodridge.

What was even nicer [than selling the $1 million ticket] was that it was one of our regulars, and she needed it, Leos co-owner Tarik Zayed told NBC 5.

The biggest ticket Leos had sold prior to this in about 25 years of selling lottery tickets was a $25,000 winner. Zayed said he always expected to sell a $1 million ticket and that it was just a matter of time.

When he found out he won, Stowers called his daughter at 2:30 a.m. to tell her the news. He will use his prize to upgrade his home and will give the leftovers to his kids and grandkids, according to the lottery. He purchased his ticket at Circle K, 329 W. State Route 104, in Divernon.
What to Know Nikolas Cruz is the accused gunman of the Parkland school shooting tragedy.

He has been receiving "piles" of correspondence, according to his defense team.

Cruz faces 17 counts of premeditated murder charges and 17 counts of attempted murder charges.

A Chicago woman was among several people to send "fan mail" to the accused gunman in the deadly Parkland school shooting, according to reports.

The public defender's office confirmed the Broward County jail is receiving love letters and fan mail addressed to Nikolas Cruz, who is accused of fatally shooting 17 people at a Florida high school in one of the worst school shootings in American history.

The South Florida Sun Sentinel obtained copies of some of the correspondence, including greeting cards, letters and photographs, that's been sent to Cruz.

Among the reported "fan mail" were nine suggestive photos sent in by a Chicago woman.



Cruz's commissary account has also received hundreds of dollars in contributions, which can be used by inmates to buy food, drinks, hygiene products and other items, according to the report.



Teenage girls, women and older men are sending Cruz correspondence. Broward County public defender Howard Finkelstein confirmed to NBC6 that Cruz has received the letters.

Love letters to a mass shooter. In 40 years the public defender has never seen so much mail for an inmate. Nikolas Cruz has received letters, books and money from as far away as England @nbc6 pic.twitter.com/hRKp3JRf2k  Dan Krauth (@DanNBC6) March 29, 2018

"I reserve the right to care about you, Nikolas!" a woman from Texas wrote in a greeting card six days after the shooting. The card has an illustration of a rabbit holding binoculars as it looks out to the ocean with the caption; "Out of sight, but never out of mind."

In another letter, overcome with hearts and happy faces drawn by hand, a Texas teenager told Cruz that when she saw his face on television, "something attracted me to you."

Your eyes are beautiful and the freckles on your face make you so handsome," the letter reads, with the writer describing herself as a skinny, busty, white high school senior.

A man from New York sent Cruz a card with a cat in the front that included photos of himself behind the wheel of his 1992 Nissan convertible, while an 18-year-old also from New York told Cruz to "hang in there and keep your head up."

No one else is dealing w/your demons, meaning maybe defeating them could be the beginning of your meaning, friend. I know you could use a good friend right now," reads the letter, which features hearts colored in pink ink.

People are also joining Facebook and other online communities to discuss how to help the accused gunman. Hashtags are being spread by sympathizers showing support for Cruz.

Finkelstein's office is representing Cruz. Finkelstein told NBC6 he has never seen a defendant receive so many letters in his 40 years as a public defender.

Cruz has not yet seen the correspondence because he is on suicide watch, Finkelstein told the Sun Sentinel. Other than legal mail, Broward County jail workers open inmates' mail, per Broward County Sheriff's Office procedure.

We read a few religious ones to him that extended wishes for his soul and to come to God, Finkelstein told the newspaper, "but we have not and will not read him the fan letters or share the photos of scantily-clad teenage girls.

Finkelstein said he worries that boys and girls across the country are idolizing Cruz and "looking up to his fame and notoriety.

"The letters shake me up because they are written by regular, everyday teenage girls from across the nation, Finkelstein said. That scares me. It's perverted.
Chicago police are investigating after a rash of fake weed users arrived at northern Illinois emergency rooms suffering from "severe bleeding," authorities confirmed.

The Illinois Department of Public Health issued a warning Tuesday after six people complained of bleeding connected to synthetic cannabinoids over the past couple months. Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi confirmed Thursday the department was investigating. A minimart in the 1300 block of South Kedzie Avenue was cited and synthetic cannibis was seized from the shop, he said.

No arrests have been made but the investigation was ongoing.

Despite the perception that synthetic cannabinoids are safe and a legal alternative to marijuana, many are illegal and can cause severe illness, said IDPH Director Nirav D. Shah, M.D., J.D. The recent cases of severe bleeding are evidence of the harm synthetic cannabinoids can cause.

Synthetic cannabinoids are often known as fake weed, K2 and spice.

According to health officials, the imposter pot is not made up of just one drug but hundreds of different manufactured chemicals. The reports of bleeding among some users began on March 10, the health department said.

Jerrold Leikin, MD, director of toxicology at NorthShore University HealthSystem, said he has been monitoring the cases over the past week through the Illinois Poison Center. The center is the hub that coordinates the care for those impacted by the drug, he said.

"Whenever there is an illicit drug contamination it is always a very big issue," he said in a phone interview. "The concept of contamination is not new.

Leikin used the analogy of of fentynal used in heroin--a deadly mix that has impacted communities across the nation.

"That's what Prince died of," he said, referring to fentynal.

Leikin said officials had not yet identified what component of the synthetic weed is causing the bleeding. He said it appeared to be some kind of anticoagulant or blood thinner.

I guess thats why they call it illicit drugs, cause you dont know what youre getting, he said.

Other side effects from the synthetic cannibinoids include kidney failure, heart attack and death, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

In 2015, the CDC helped Mississippi investigate the largest reported outbreak of synthetic cannabinoid-related illnessesmore than 700 reports including 11 deaths.

Leikin said there were no deaths related to the drug in Illinois that he knew of.



If you have a serious reaction to a similar product, officials say you should call 911 or go the emergency room.
What to Know A 31-year-old ICE detainee with a record escaped custody Tuesday at JFK, hopped into a taxi and fled the airport, Port Authority says

He was captured in Chicago Friday after a three-day manhunt, sources say

ICE says he has prior criminal convictions for multiple weapons and firearms offenses

The violent fugitive who bolted from Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody at John F. Kennedy International Airport while getting deported to his native Senegal has been captured in Chicago, federal officials say.

The Department of Homeland Security confirms that the manhunt for 31-year-old Mohamadou Lamine Mbacke is over. He was arrested by Chicago-based members of ICE at a Starbucks near Chicago Union Station with assistance from federal partners, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

Angie Williams, a manager at the coffee shop said the man ordered a grande blonde roast and sat down near the restroom. A few seconds later, she said six plain-clothed officers walked in, along with a dozen more officers who posted outside. The man did not put up a fight, and was led off in handcuffs.

Earlier, ICE described him as dangerous and warned anyone who sees him should not approach him.



Mbacke, a 31-year-old with multiple prior violent convictions and nearly a dozen arrests in New York City over a four-year period, was only at JFK for a layover from Detroit en route to Senegal at the time of the brazen escape late Tuesday, sources and ICE officials have told News 4.

According to a criminal complaint, three ICE officers were waiting with Mbacke at JFK to board their connecting flight to Senegal when Mbacke asked for permission to sit about eight to 10 rows away from the officers. They granted him the request, and that's when he gave them the slip, according to the complaint.

Port Authority officials say a review of one of the airports cameras shows the detainee getting into the cab around 9 p.m Tuesday. He hasn't been seen since.

Mbacke has previous criminal convictions for multiple weapons and firearms offenses, according to an ICE spokesperson. He entered the country lawfully in 2005 before violating the terms of his status and was ordered deported in September 2015 by an immigration judge.



He was also arrested 10 times in New York City between 2006 and 2010, NYPD sources told News 4. All but one arrest is sealed; that one was marijuana-related. Those sources say he was also wanted for aggravated harassment in the city in 2016, though he wasn't arrested. His last known address is Harlem.
Authorities say a woman has died in a fall while climbing a bluff at Devil's Lake State Park.

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources says 22-year-old Savannah Buik, of Chicago, died Wednesday in a "rope climbing incident" on the east bluff.

DNR Lt. Mike Green said Thursday he could not say how far the woman fell or the circumstances surrounding the incident because it's still under investigation.

The Baraboo Fire Department assisted the DNR in responding to the emergency.
A violent fugitive who escaped ICE custody this week while waiting for a flight at JFK International Airport was arrested in Chicago Friday after nearly three days on the run.

Mohamadou Lamine Mbacke, 31, was taken into federal custody at a coffee shop near the downtown Chicago Amtrak station, ICE officials confirmed.

According to officials, Mbacke, an "unlawfully present national of Senegal," eluded authorities at the New York airport Tuesday, got into a taxi around 9 p.m. and disappeared.

Mbacke has previous criminal convictions for multiple weapons and firearms offenses, according to an ICE spokesperson. He entered the country lawfully in 2005 before violating the terms of his status and was ordered deported in September 2015 by an immigration judge.

He was also arrested 10 times in New York City between 2006 and 2010, NYPD sources told NBC New York. All but one arrest is sealed; that one was marijuana-related. Those sources say he was also wanted for aggravated harassment in the city in 2016, though he wasn't arrested. His last known address is Harlem.



Earlier, ICE described him as dangerous and warned anyone who sees him should not approach him.

Mbacke was only at JFK for a layover from Detroit en route to Senegal at the time of the brazen escape late Tuesday, sources and ICE officials said.

According to a criminal complaint, three ICE officers were waiting with Mbacke at JFK to board their connecting flight to Senegal when Mbacke asked for permission to sit about 8 to 10 rows away from the officers. They granted him the request, and that's when he gave them the slip, according to the complaint.
People who knew the 18-year-old Taiwanese exchange student charged in the U.S. with threatening to shoot up his school say he liked guns and flamethrowers and had dreams of a police career.



An Tso Sun, who has been jailed in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, was "a child who really cares about things,'' said Cheng Wei-ting, a tutor who home-schooled Sun in Taiwan's capital, Taipei.

"He was an extremely simple and kind student, yet he would often have unusual ideas," Cheng said.

Sun idealized the famed Taiwanese-American forensics scientist Lee Chang-yu and wanted eventually to study criminal psychology at an American university, his father's friend Tuo Zong-kang told reporters Thursday.

"He planned to study in the same fields as Lee, such as criminal psychology and forensics," Tuo said.

Sun's case comes as school shootings in the United States, including the deaths this month of 17 students and teachers in Parkland, Florida, have triggered some of the biggest youth protests in recent years and calls for stronger gun control measures.

Sun threatened to commit a shooting on May 1 at the Monsignor Bonner and Archbishop Prendergast High School he attended, according to police in Upper Darby.

They said he had live ammunition, a military-style ballistic vest, ammunition clip pouches and a high-powered crossbow in the home where he was staying in the town of Lansdowne, and had researched how to buy weapons.

Sun later said his threat was only a joke, but he has been charged with making terroristic threats.

Defense attorney Enrique Latoison said Wednesday his client "had no intention or plans" to commit a school shooting and many items found were what he wore to school for a Halloween costume contest. He said his client said he was "Just kidding."

Sun's latest Facebook post, from October, shows a person dressed in army fatigues, headphones and a brown ski mask carrying what could be an automatic firearm.

A February 2017 post that was also his Facebook background cover photo shows orange flames being fired beside a cement wall and stairwells leading into a ravine.

An earlier Facebook post  one of several flamethrower images on the site  is the image of a book titled "How to Make A Flamethrower: The Do It Yourself Manual." Sun made similar YouTube videos.

Sun once made a flamethrower as part of a school science fair, said Cheng, his former tutor. He thought "a day would come when zombies would appear," she added. He had also devised an escape route from his home, she said.

"What I recall most is that when these school shootings happened in America, he would tell me that if he had been on the scene he would definitely be the first to protect his classmates, so he needs to have a strong physique," said Cheng, who added that she once helped him research how to join a police SWAT team.

Sun's parents, actor and assistant film director Sun Peng and actress Di Ying, could not be reached for comment. But Di told Taiwanese broadcaster Sanlih E-Television that her son was a "military affairs fan" who was "making a joke" about his school in the U.S.

Tuo, his father's friend, told reporters he remembers Sun as "a very polite kid who had good grades, very disciplined and very kindhearted."

"He lives in a family full of warmth, and his parents are very kind to him," Tuo said. Regarding his arrest, he said, "I think it is a very, very big misunderstanding.''

Before moving to Pennsylvania, the teenager completed two years of high school at the private Kang Chiao International School in New Taipei City, publicity head Wu Hao-ming said.

Prior to that, he achieved average grades at the private Wego Elementary School in Taipei, where he was popular among peers and teachers and showed no interest in guns, academic director Liu Jen-hao said.

"So this matter (in the United States) we find rather surprising," Liu said.

Sun was taken to Delaware County Prison in lieu of $100,000 bail. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for April 11.
A Connecticut high school employee is accused of threatening to go on a killing spree and "execute every white man he gets his hands on," police said.

Bridgeport police said 63-year-old Carl Lemon, an in-school suspension counselor at Harding High School, was arrested Wednesday on charges of second-degree threat and breach of peace.

According to a police report, a teacher reported that Lemon said he "couldn't wait for the Panthers to give the OK and a revolution begins" because he would "execute every white man he gets his hands on."

Police said Lemon also stepped on an American flag and told students: "This is what I think about it."

During an investigation, the assistant principal found an unsigned note in her mailbox that read, "Mr. Lemon talks about shooting whites a lot."

It's unclear whether Lemon has an attorney.
Hospitals in Connecticut may offer financial assistance for people struggling to afford care.

Millions of adults either delayed medical care or went without it in 2016 due to the cost, according to the Kaiser Health Foundation.

Leslie Velez, a financial counselor at Connecticut Childrens Medical Center, said patients often assume they wont qualify for financial assistance and therefore dont ask about it, but explained that most families qualify for some type of aid.

The hospital first screens patients to see if they are eligible for Connecticut Medicaid, even if they have primary insurance, according to Velez.

Connecticut Childrens Medical Center offers assistance based on household income and family size.

For example, a family whose income is at or below 2.5 times the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) qualifies for 100 percent assistance, while a family with an income between 200 and 500 percent of the FPL qualifies for 45 percent assistance.

If you do not qualify for the financial assistance and you are a true self-pay, which means you dont have medical insurance, automatically we do a 40 percent write-off on your hospital bill, Velez said.

NBC Connecticut looked at financial assistance programs at other hospitals in Connecticut and found the 250 percent figure is standard.

Velez recommends having that conversation ahead of a patients first appointment.

"Call us right away. Don't wait because you're hesitant to see, do I qualify or not? Don't wait to think, Oh well, maybe I could afford it next month. Just contact us," Velez said.

Even if a patient doesnt qualify for financial assistance, the hospital can set up a payment plan, which will keep the account out of collections.

We actually recently had a family who couldn't afford the surgery out of pocket after the insurance paid, Velez said. Once we screened them for financial assistance they realized they qualify at 100 percent.

Financial assistance is also available through endowment funds and charitable foundations, but patients might need to meet specific criteria in order to be eligible.

Many communities offer payment assistance for medical expenses. Call 2-1-1 or click here for more information.

NBCUniversal Owned Television Stations, NBC Connecticuts parent company, is making a donation to R.I.P. Medical Debt that will forgive $1 million of Connecticuts medical debt. At least 674 people in Connecticut will receive yellow envelopes from R.I.P. Medical to inform the resident that some of their medical debt has been forgiven.

Since the selection process is random, residents cant sign up or apply for relief that will forgive a million dollars worth of medical debt in Connecticut. However, even if you dont receive a yellow envelope from R.I.P. Medical Debt, there are ways to avoid collections and get help with your medical debt.

If you want to help local families struggling with medical debt, you can join NBC Universal Owned Television Stations and make a donation to R.I.P. Medical Debt and help pay it forward to erase more medical debt. Just a few dollars can make a big difference in the lives of local families struggling with their medical bills.
Police found human remains in Bloomfield on Thursday after receiving reports that a body had been buried in a field, police said.

Investigators focused their search on a 287-acre wetland site at 182 Woodland Avenue Thursday and Connecticut State Police cadaver dogs were brought in to assist Bloomfield officers in finding the exact location of the remains.

The state police major crimes crime scene unit responded and the Connecticut Medical Examiner's Office will examine the remains to identify the person.

The investigation is ongoing.

Anyone with information is asked to call Bloomfield police at 860-242-5501.
Residents at the Spring Lake Village retirement community in Southington say the number of geese flocking to their area is a recurring nuisance. Now, residents are voting on a proposal from the Spring Lake Valley Association to euthanize the geese.

The geese have been here as long as Ive been living here, about six years, Joan Fisher said.

Fisher said she would like her retirement community to consider other options than killing the geese.

Im not comfortable being on TV, she said, but somebody has to advocate for these animals, they cant advocate for themselves.

The geese typically like to congregate by the lake.

Actually, you cant even walk out there anymore because of the geese droppings, Robert Bluis said, the whole place is completely covered; its like a useless area now.

During spring when the problem gets out of control, residents say the geese will wander closer to their homes.

That was awful cause they were here going in the garage, they were up on our back step, in the front door area, on the sidewalk, you couldnt even walk, Vivian Woodruff said.

Some residents said they reluctantly voted in favor of the plan to euthanize the geese.

As far as avenues, how they could do it different, I really dont know, Woodruff said.

I dont know about killing them. Im questionable about that part, Bluis said, but Id definitely like to see them go away.

Ultimately, the euthanization proposal would need approve from the states Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, but Fisher said she hopes it does not come to that.

Theres a lot of things we can do besides euthanize the geese, she said.

Spring Lake Village residents have until April 6 to cast their vote for or against the proposal.

NBC Connecticuts calls to the association president and vice president were not returned as of Friday afternoon.
A state trooper who died in the line of duty after a collision on Thursday in Tolland is being remembered in Connecticut.

"No matter what uniform you wear, when an officer goes down in the line of duty, it hurts all of us. It hurts like losing a family member," Hartford Police Chief David Rosado said.



Trooper First Class Kevin Miller served with the Connecticut State Police for 19 years and was assigned to Troop C in Tolland. He had previously served for Troop K in Colchester and Troop E in Montville.

On Friday, state troopers and members of the community came out to the police department to hold a memorial service for Miller.

The office of the chief medical examiner determined that Miller died of blunt-impact injury of the head, torso and extremities with fractures and visceral injuries.

Gov. Dannel Malloy said U.S. and state flags will be lowered at half-staff immediately to honor Miller.

"We are deeply saddened and heartbroken by the tragic loss of Trooper First Class Miller  a man who dedicated his life to serving the people of Connecticut," Malloy said in a statement. "State troopers and members of law enforcement put their lives on the line each and every day in order to selflessly protect the people of our state, and they deserve our utmost respect for the service they provide."

During the afternoon rush hour, an extraordinary procession carried Miller's body from Tolland to the chief medical examiners office in Farmington. The Hartford Fire Department put up a flag over the I-84 overpass in Hartford in honor of Miller, while other state police troopers saluted him.

"Theres no better way for us to come out and honor them for that service," Hartford Fire Assistant Chief Dan Reilly said.



Miller, of Coventry, was the 22nd state trooper or auxiliary trooper killed in the line of duty since 1922.

Another trooper, Danielle Miller, was killed in an off-duty accident in Wolcott in February. A state police spokeswoman says the two troopers were not related.

"We are grateful for his dedicated service to the Connecticut State Police and the residents of Connecticut, and our thoughts and prayers are with his family and friends during this difficult time," Connecticut State Police released in a statement.



Last month, Miller celebrated his 49th birthday. In August 1998, Miller reported to the Connecticut State Police academy and the following year he graduated as part of the 108th police class. Miller was expected to retire at the end of the summer.

A police vehicle was stationed outside Miller's home in Coventry on Grant Hill Road as loved ones and neighbors, like John Fields, mourned his tragic death.

"The last time I had seen him was yesterday I was driving down to Tolland Way and I beeped my horn and waved and thats the last time I seen him," Fields said. "Hes a real kind, gentle guy, soft-spoken. Great guy. Couldnt have asked for a better neighbor."



One classmate described Miller, a father of two, as a genuine, down-to-earth kind of person who was family oriented.

On behalf of my colleagues in the state legislature, Id like to extend our deepest condolences to the family of State Trooper Kevin Miller. We want to express our sympathy and let you know that our thoughts are with you, Sen. Larson said.


Demonstrators were met with counter-demonstrators for a second day outside the campus of the University of North Texas in Denton.

These people say they are Christians but they arent Christians," said one UNT student.

The group of street preachers spoke out against abortion, gay marriage and the Black Lives Matter movement. Students on campus said they respect their freedom of speech but do not agree with the "street preachers" message.

We decided to just react with the most lighthearted thing we could to show we are not the same people they are, we are people of love, said a UNT student.

Thursday afternoon, the university said in a statement that a small group of about seven or eight non-UNT students were on city streets holding signs with "various slogans and phrases meant to provoke emotional responses from passersby."

The student group outnumbered the demonstrators once again Friday.

In response, around 600 students gathered Thursday at the Library Mall to "expressing views of love and peace." Some carried signs and chanted "real Christians don't hate." Several dozen turned out Friday as well.

The university said the those involved on both sides remained peaceful Thursday, and appeared to be peaceful again Friday from Texas Sky Ranger's vantage point.

"Our university has a tradition of valuing the many viewpoints and experiences of our members, as well as their moral, ethical, and religious beliefs and practices. Our communitys greatest assets are the collective diversity of thought at this university, our willingness to respect and examine differing viewpoints, and our ability to engage in constructive dialogue in a civil manner," the university said in a statement Thursday.

The group of demonstrators originally refused to identify themselves, but according to the university's student newspaper, the North Texas Daily, the group has been identified as part of the National Street Preachers Conference which is currently taking place in Arlington.

The group's website called the event at UNT an "outreach" and according to The National Street Preachers Conference's website planned another event for Sundance Square in Fort Worth Friday night. They plan to be at the Grassy Knoll in Dallas on Saturday afternoon and will return to Sundance Square Saturday night.
Its the time of year when high school seniors are getting college acceptance letters.

The celebrations that happened in four area school districts this week were something good.



Texas Christian University went to high schools in Arlington, Dallas, DeSoto and Fort Worth ISDs to announce the names of this years TCU Community Scholars, the Class of 2022.



Principal Rodney White at the Young Men's Leadership Academy in Fort Worth sent us pictures showing the moments five of his students got the word TCU picked them for full ride scholarships.

White says the energy in our building was outstanding.



Our young men are now proud Frogs and are creating a legacy for years to come.

The five seniors selected as Community Scholars are members of YMLAs inaugural graduating class.



In all, 50 students from Dunbar, North Side, O.D. Wyatt, Polytechnic, South Hills, Trimble Tech high schools and YMLA in the Fort Worth ISD; Sam Houston High School in the Arlington ISD; Barack Obama Leadership Academy, Carter and Lincoln high schools in the Dallas ISD; and DeSoto High School in the DeSoto ISD were all chosen for the program.



TCU spokeswoman Holly Ellman says it was the largest class ever.



The Chancellors Council on Diversity established the Community Scholars Program in 2000 as a way to increase diversity on campus.

This academic preparation and scholarship program focuses on 13 local inner-city high schools with predominantly minority enrollments.



The immediate goal is to attract students to TCU who have demonstrated academic excellence and leadership skills, and to provide the funding and support they need to succeed.



The long-term goal is to encourage those students to pursue advanced degrees and help them grow into community and business leaders.

Students must be admitted to TCU in order to continue through all phases of the Community Scholar process, culminating in Community Scholar Interview Day.



In Fall 2000, 12 freshmen were enrolled in the first TCU Community Scholars Program.



With foundation and corporate support, that number grew to 42 freshmen for Fall 2017, and students in the program have a more than 90 percent four-year graduation success rate.


Police have arrested a gang member on the Texas 10 Most Wanted sex offender list during a traffic stop in Corpus Christi.



The Texas Department of Public Safety on Thursday announced the arrest of 28-year-old Eric Rene Ruiz.

Officials say Ruiz was wanted since October for failure to register as a sex offender.



Corpus Christi police arrested Ruiz on Tuesday when he was found to be a passenger in a vehicle during a traffic stop.



Records show Ruiz in 2007 was convicted of attempting to sexually assault a 44-year-old woman in Nueces County and was sentenced to five years in prison.

Authorities say he has a history of violating his sex offender registration requirements.



His criminal history also includes drug possession-related cases.
A Florida woman awoke to what she believed were the consequences of a bad dish of General Tso's chicken, but instead had an unexpected baby in her arms three hours later.

The Pensacola News Journal reports 29-year-old Crystal Gail Amerson thought food poisoning was responsible for the stomach pains that woke her up early Sunday, unaware that she was actually 37 weeks pregnant.

An ambulance arrived hours later, as the pain escalated. Her second son soon entered the world in the back of the ambulance en route to the hospital.

Amerson said she's never felt many pregnancy symptoms and didn't notice much weight gain. The newborn, Oliver James, was 19 inches and weighed 5.27 pounds.

Dr. Julie DeCesare, an obstetrician-gynecologist with Sacred Heart Hospital, said she's only seen three women not know they were pregnant until just hours before going into labor in her 20 years of practice. She noted it's very unusual for fetal movement to go unnoticed by a pregnant woman, especially one with more than one pregnancy under her belt.

"Usually by 20 weeks you can feel the baby kicking," DeCesare told the Journal. "You can feel the baby move about 12-14 weeks in, usually, with a second or third baby. With a first baby it often takes longer."



Although the Chinese food was absolved of blame, Amerson said she may never look at it the same way again.
James Kenneth Rambo has been indentified as the man who died after hitting the wall at the Sonoma Raceway in Northern California, according to Sonoma County Sheriff's Office.

The county Sheriff's Office says the car was doing 100 mph or more when it slammed into a wall Wednesday evening.

Rambo was a 75-year old Napa resident. His 1976 Ford Pinto was alone on the quarter-mile drag strip.

The accident occurred during Wednesday Night Drags, a community program held from March to November. The program opens the track to 300 vehicles a night that must pass a technical inspection.



Rambo's son, Jeff, said his father was traveling about 120 mph when something went wrong just after the finish line. Rambo's family said he was in good health and had no medical conditions. Jeff Rambo believes the accident had something to do with the car's brakes, though the car hadn't had any previous problems.

Other racers say there's always a greater risk the faster you go.

"More brakes, harder brakes can get crazy at high speeds," retired racer Richard Cushman said.

The Wednesday Night Drags event aims to provide what the facility calls a "safe, legal and controlled" racing environment. It will continue as scheduled, raceway officials said.

The raceway says it's the first on-track death in the program's 30-year history.
A 25-year-old man who once worked at Disneyland and volunteered with a children's theater in Southern California was sentenced Thursday to 125 years in prison for child sex crimes, the San Bernardino County District Attorney's Office said.

"In a detailed confession letter, the defendant mentioned the best way to gain access to kids was by befriending single mothers who he described as 'easy targets,'" Deputy District Attorney Melinda Spencer said, according to the news release.



David Goodman of Banning was convicted of four counts of lewd act upon a child, three counts of oral copulation or sexual penetration, one count of a forcible lewd act upon a child, one count of distributing or showing child pornography to a minor, and one count of possession of child pornography.

The victims were from 5 to 11 years old, authorities said.

The crimes took place in December of 2014. Goodman became friends with the mothers of the children.

Goodman was 21 years old at the time of his arrest. Deputies were called out to a Yucaipa residence in 2014 after he was accused of masturbating in front of 6 and 9-year-old children. Detectives then interviewed the 6 and 9-year-old boys, as well as a 5-year-old girl, according to a news release from the San Bernardino County Sheriff.

They accused Goodman of sexual abuse on at least two other occasions in the months prior to December 2014.

Goodman was employed at Disneyland at the time, and had been working there since October 2014, the sheriff's department said.

Authorities said multiple accusations against Goodman were found to be true.

During the trial, the District Attorney presented a "manual" Goodman had saved on his computer called "How to Practice Child Love."

During the trial, K9 Dozer from the Special Victims K9 Unit helped to comfort to the victims before and during testimony, the district attorney's office said.
Pieces of a freeway sign fell onto the southbound 5 Freeway in the Sylmar area Friday, causing a traffic backup.

Check a Live Traffic Map Here

The sign parts fell on the number 2 and 3 lanes, just south of the 14 Freeway before 3 p.m.

The sign parts were blocking traffic, according to the California Highway Patrol.

Traffic was to be diverted to the truck lanes until the damaged sign can be repaired.

Traffic appeared to be at a standstill as crews worked to take the remaining parts down at 3 p.m.

By 3:30 p.m., all lanes were back open, according to the CHP.
A trove of leaked photos and documents form a "paper trail of war crimes" by the Syrian government that give stronger evidence than what convicted the Nazis at Nuremberg, according to the human rights group processing them.

NBC News reported that the 140-person Commission for International Justice and Accountability has been documenting human rights abuses by Syrian officials since civil war broke out there in 2011. One source is roughly 50,000 photos shot by a forensic photographer known as "Caesar" at the start of the conflict that allegedly catalogue nearly 7,000 victims of torture at the hands of pro-regime forces.

Directives from the government were meticulously documented, even involving torture, "to make sure that everyone does what they're supposed to be doing," Deputy Director Chris Engels said.

While Assad has disputed the photos' veracity, Human Rights Watch, the FBI and the U.N. have verified them in part.
A Detroit-area man whose murder conviction was thrown out after he spent 45 years in prison was exonerated Wednesday and won't face a second trial.

Richard Phillips, 71, was upbeat, saying the criminal justice system "works  it just didn't work fast enough."

A judge granted a request to permanently drop the case against Phillips, whose conviction was erased last year. Wayne County prosecutor Kym Worthy said a new investigation by her office backed his claim that he had no role in a 1971 fatal shooting.

She said a key witness lied at his 1972 trial.

"There's nothing I can say to bring back 40 years of his life," Worthy said. "The system failed him. This is a true exoneration."

The case was reopened at the urging of the Innocence Clinic at University of Michigan law school after a co-defendant at the '72 trial told the state parole board that Phillips wasn't involved in the slaying of Gregory Harris.

Phillips had been free on bond since December. He likely will be eligible for more than $2 million under Michigan's wrongful conviction law.

No one in the U.S. has served more years in prison before being exonerated than Phillips, said David Moran, director of the Innocence Clinic.

"I've never carried bitterness around, so I'm not a bitter man," Phillips told reporters when asked about his decades in prison.

One of his goals: A reunion with two children who were ages 2 and 4 when he went to prison in 1972. Despite publicity about his case, Phillips said he hasn't heard from them and doesn't know their whereabouts.

"You have seen the worst and best of the criminal justice system," Judge Kevin Cox told Phillips.

Phillips has settled in a Detroit suburb and attends a church where he shares his story with others.

"His freedom truly belongs to him again," Moran said.
A roadside bomb in northern Syria killed two coalition personnel, an American and a Briton, and wounded five others in a rare attack since the U.S.-led coalition sent troops into the war-torn country, the U.S. and British militaries and a U.S. defense official said Friday.

The military did not say where the attack took place or give the nationalities of the other casualties but it came hours after a local Syrian official said that a roadside bomb exploded in the tense, mixed Arab-Kurdish town of Manbij that is not far from the border with Turkey.

Manbij is under threat of a Turkish military operation. Ankara says Syrian Kurdish militiamen it views as "terrorists" and an extension of Kurdish insurgents inside Turkey are in control of the town.

The U.S. military statement said the attack happened Thursday night and that the wounded were being evacuated for further medical treatment. The statement said details were being withheld pending further investigation.

A Department of Defense official in Washington said one of the two killed was an American service member and the other was of another nationality.

No other information about the deceased American was immediately available. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because details had not yet been publicly released.

A U.K. defense ministry spokesman said the British armed forces member was killed during an operation against the Islamic State group. The spokesman added that an improvised explosive device killed the service member who was embedded with U.S. forces on Thursday.

No details on the casualty's service branch, unit or gender were immediately provided.

The U.S. military member killed was the fourth American who has died in Syria since the U.S. began attacking Islamic State militants there in September 2014, according to the Pentagon's Defense Casualty Analysis System.

Of the three previous deaths, Air Force Staff Sgt. Austin Bieren was specifically labeled by the Pentagon as a non-combat death. Another, Navy Senior Chief Petty Officer Scott C. Dayton, was killed by an improved explosive device. The third, Army Spc. Etienne J. Murphy, died in a vehicle rollover.

Earlier on Friday, U.S. military spokesman Col. Ryan Dillon couldn't immediately say who was behind the attack.

"There is an investigation under way to identify who they could possibly be. We have our initial assessment and thoughts on that but we won't provide until the investigation is complete," he said.

Dillon declined to give the nationalities of the dead and wounded as well as the location of the attack until next of kin notification.

Dillon said the coalition has had fatalities in Syria before. "Perhaps by different means but there have been coalition deaths in Syria over the course of three years."

Mohammed Abu Adel, head of the Manbij Military Council, an Arab-Kurdish group in the town backed by the U.S., said the bomb went off hundreds of meters (yards) from a security headquarters that houses the council just before midnight on Thursday.

Earlier on Friday, Dillon said an incident involving coalition forces was reported in Manbij but said no more information was available.

The town has seen a number of small explosions, protests and an assassination attempt on a member of the Manbij military council in recent weeks. Local officials blame Turkey and other adversaries for seeking to sow chaos in the town that was controlled by Islamic State group militants until the summer of 2016.

The military council has since been in control and U.S. troops patrol the town and area with troops based nearby.

Meanwhile, near the capital Damascus, there were conflicting reports on whether a main rebel group will evacuate the largest and last rebel-held town in the area, known as eastern Ghouta.

Col. Gen. Sergei Rudskoi of the Russian military's General Staff said at a Friday briefing that the agreement envisages Army of Islam rebels and their families leaving the Syrian town of Douma, just outside of Damascus.

The announcement came after the Syrian government on Wednesday issued a three-day ultimatum to the Army of Islam group to leave Douma or face an all-out offensive.

Syrian state TV said an agreement is about to be reached for an Army of Islam evacuation but the group denied the reports.

Army of Islam military spokesman Hamza Bayraqdar told The Associated Press that the reports are false, adding that his group's stance is to reject displacement and demographic change in eastern Ghouta.

The Syrian government and the Russian military backing it have demanded that Army of Islam members leave the area for northern Syria, following other rebels who left eastern Ghouta.

The Syrian Arab Red Crescent said Friday one of its convoys entered three towns in eastern Ghouta bringing badly needed food supplies to residents after opposition fighters left the area.

SARC said it entered the towns of Saqba, Kafr Batna and Ein Tarma in eastern Ghouta with mobile water tank, mobile clinic and relief aid convoy of 16 trucks loaded with 8,500 bread bags, 5,000 food parcels, water bottles and nutrition items. It said the supplies were provided by International Committee of the Red Cross and the World Food Program.

Rudskoi said over 143,000 people, including 13,793 rebels and 23,544 members of their families have left eastern Ghouta. He also said some 40,000 residents have returned to their homes in eastern Ghouta as there has been no fighting over the last seven days.
A seventh-grade math teacher at a Florida middle school was arrested after authorities said he engaged in sex acts with one of his 13-year-old students in his classroom.

Jeffrey Anthony Tomasulo, 29, was arrested in Stuart Thursday on a sexual battery charge, according to a Martin County Sheriff's Office arrest report.

According to the report, a school resource officer was alerted to allegations of "suspicious behavior" regarding Tomasulo, who was alleged to have tickled several female students.

The students reported that they were tickled on their stomachs, thighs and armpits by Tomasulo, causing them to feel uncomfortable, the report said.

When the officer reviewed surveillance footage from outside Tomasulo's classroom, he saw that a 13-year-old student knocked on his door on March 20 during his planning period when no other students were in his class, the report said.

The girl's mother told authorities that her daughter admitted to engaging in a sex act with Tomasulo in his classroom, the report said.

The teen said Tomasulo had recently started to ask her "creepy" questions, like if she had lost her "V-card" yet, referring to her virginity, the report said. He also asked her about things she had done with her boyfriend, according to the report.

Tomasulo started asking the girl to stay late after class, the girl said, and she began engaging in sex acts with him in the classroom starting in January, the report said. She said that happened at least five times, according to the report.

When Tomasulo was questioned by investigators, he denied that any sexually activity had occurred and said they had been alone but only so he could tutor her in math, the report said.

Tomasulo agreed to take a polygraph test and admitted to watching pornography in his classroom alone, the report said. He then said the teen had been "sexually aggressive with him" and said he allowed her to perform a sexual act on him in the classroom, the report said.

Tomasulo remained behind bars Friday, jail records showed. Attorney information wasn't available.
An underwater drone armed with a nuclear warhead powerful enough to sweep away coastal facilities and aircraft carriers.

A hypersonic vehicle impossible to intercept as it flies in a cloud of plasma "like a meteorite."

President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that Russia has these new strategic weapons and many more, declaring: "No one has listened to us. You listen to us now."

Putin unveiled the stunning catalog of doomsday machines in his annual state-of-the-nation speech, saying that Russia had to build them to counter the potential threat posed by the U.S. missile defense system.

And in a touch of dark humor, he invited Russians to join a Defense Ministry contest to name some of the weapons.

It wasn't immediately possible to assess whether the weapons could do what Putin said or how ready they are for deployment, but they would represent a major technological breakthrough that could dramatically bolster Russia's military capability, boost its global position and trigger a new arms race.

The White House said Putin confirmed what the U.S. has already known: that Russia has been developing "destabilizing weapons systems for over a decade in direct violations of its treaty obligations."

Spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said President Donald Trump understands the threats and that America is "moving forward to modernize our nuclear arsenal and ensure our capabilities are unmatched."

Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White also said the Defense Department wasn't surprised, adding that the U.S. military is prepared to defend the nation.

White told Pentagon reporters that U.S. missile defense has never been about Russia.

Washington has consistently argued that missile defense systems in Europe aren't aimed at Moscow but designed instead to defend against threats from Iran, North Korea and rogue threats.

Putin has shrugged off those arguments and said Thursday that the U.S. plans to develop its missile defense system would "eventually devalue the Russian nuclear arsenal if we sit with our arms folded."

He said the U.S. has underestimated Russia's ability to mount a response, aiming for a "unilateral military advantage that could eventually allow it to dictate its terms in other areas."

The United States should now revise its Russia policy and engage in a serious dialogue on global security, he said.

"You will have to assess that new reality and become convinced that what I said today isn't a bluff," he said. "It's not a bluff, trust me."

He said the creation of the new weapons has made NATO's U.S.-led missile defense "useless," putting an end to what he described as years of Western efforts to sidetrack and weaken Russia.

"I want to tell all those who have fueled the arms race over the last 15 years, sought to win unilateral advantages over Russia, introduced unlawful restrictions and sanctions aimed to contain our country's development: All what you wanted to impede with your policies has now happened," he said. "You have failed to contain Russia."

Putin's dramatic announcement comes as he seeks another six-year term on March 18, an election he is expected to win easily.

His address was accompanied by videos and computer simulations of the new weapons, shown on giant screens at a conference hall near the Kremlin. The audience of senior officials and lawmakers broke into applause, giving him a standing ovation at one point.

"No one else in the world has anything like that," Putin said. "It may appear someday, but by that time, we will develop something new."

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said it was "unfortunate" to watch animation depicting "a nuclear attack on the United States" that accompanied Putin's speech, calling the video "cheesy" and adding that "we don't think it's responsible."

Putin said the nuclear-powered cruise missile, which was tested last fall, has a "practically unlimited" range, and its high speed and maneuverability allow it to pierce any missile defense.

The high-speed underwater drone also has an "intercontinental" range and is capable of slamming a nuclear warhead into both aircraft carriers and coastal facilities, he said. Its "very big" operational depth and a speed that is many times faster than any other vessel would make it immune to being intercepted by the enemy, he added.

Another new weapon, called Avangard, is an intercontinental hypersonic missile that would fly at 20 times the speed of sound and strike its targets "like a meteorite, like a fireball," he said.

The weapon is capable of performing sharp maneuvers on its way to targets, making it "absolutely invulnerable for any missile defense system," Putin added.

Robert Schmucker, a rocket scientist at the Technical University of Munich, voiced skepticism about Putin's statement, saying in an interview that building nuclear-powered cruise missiles in particular would be technically difficult and basically pointless.

"Why make something complicated when you can make it easy?" he said, adding that he also doubts that Russia has succeeded in building hypersonic missiles.

Tom Plant, director of proliferation and nuclear policy at the defense think-tank RUSI, also said he was not sure how much of the announcement to believe.

"The thing that sounds mad, the nuclear-propulsion thing, is potentially feasible," he said, adding: "I think it's insane."

Plant added that while "Russia already has a ton of systems that can threaten and overwhelm U.S. missile defenses," Putin's announcement reflects his country's concern that the U.S. missile shield could grow powerful enough to become a game-changer.

"The Russians have a genuine worry from their perspective about where U.S. missile defense might go," Plant said. "So it totally makes sense for them to try and find ways to defeat not what it is now, but what it may become."

Putin said that Russia also tested a new heavy intercontinental ballistic missile, called Sarmat, which can fly over both the North and the South poles to reach any target. He said it can carry more warheads than the world's heaviest ICBM, the Soviet-designed missile known in the West as Satan.

To complete the list, he mentioned a smaller hypersonic missile that is already operational and has a range of more than 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles) and a new laser weapon.

Putin emphasized that the new weapons were designed in full compliance to the U.S.-Russian arms control agreements, adding that Russian military experts and diplomats would be ready to discuss new weapons systems with their U.S. counterparts.

"We aren't threatening anyone, we aren't going to attack anyone, we aren't going to take anything from anyone," he said. "The growing Russian military power will guarantee global peace."
The Russian military on Thursday accused Syria's rebels of shelling a humanitarian corridor that Moscow set up with the Syrian government, offering residents of Damascus' besieged eastern suburbs a way out of the embattled enclave.

Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered a five-hour daily humanitarian pause to allow civilians to exit the region. The daily pauses began on Tuesday but so far, no humanitarian aid has gone in  and no civilians have left the area, known as eastern Ghouta.

The eastern suburbs  a cluster of several towns and villages on Damascus' eastern edge  have faced a deadly and brutal onslaught for weeks by Syrian government troops, backed by Russia.

Residents say they do not trust the truce and the U.N. and aid agencies have criticized the unilateral arrangement, saying it gave no guarantees of safety for residents wishing to leave.

The eastern Ghouta residents also fear their region would meet the same fate as the eastern, rebel-held half of the city of Aleppo, where a similar Russian-ordered pause in 2016 called on residents to evacuate the area and for gunmen to lay down their arms.

A full ground assault followed, finally bringing Aleppo under government control.

Russian Maj. Gen. Vladimir Zolotukhin told Russia news agencies that the militants who control the suburbs are shelling the route, manned by Syrian and Russian forces, and preventing evacuations.

State-run al-Ikhbariya TV reported that dozens of civilians had gathered on the edge of eastern Ghotua to leave, but were prevented by insurgents from reaching a crossing point into government-controlled areas.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said before the truce went into effect at 9 a.m. on Thursday, government shelling and airstrikes on eastern Ghouta killed three people. The opposition's Syrian Civil Defense, also known as White Helmets, confirmed the casualty figure.

State-run Syrian Arab News Agency, SANA, said Thursday that a civilian was wounded by a mortar shell fired by the insurgents in eastern Ghouta at the Bab al-Salam area in the old city of Damascus.

The Russia-ordered pause came after a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for a nationwide 30-day cease-fire failed to take hold. While the relentless bombing has somewhat subsided in eastern Ghouta, home to around 400,000 civilians, the Syrian government's push to squeeze the insurgents out of the region continued.

Elsewhere in Syria, a convoy of 28 trucks carrying aid entered the northern Kurdish enclave of Afrin, where Turkish troops have been on the offensive since June 20 against Syrian Kurdish fighters. The government-controlled Syrian Central Military Media said Turkish troops and Turkey-backed opposition fighters targeting the convoy near the village of Marimameen.

The Observatory said Turkish warplanes conducted airstrikes as the convoy was heading toward Afrin.

Ankara has said that Turkey would not suspend its military operations against the Syrian Kurdish fighters during the 30-day cease-fire demanded by the United Nations.

Turkish government spokesman Bekir Bozdag said Thursday that Turkish authorities read carefully the text of the U.N. Security Council resolution and claimed that it does not apply to the Afrin offensive since it excludes operations against terror groups.

Turkey considers the U.S-backed Syrian Kurdish People's Protection Units, or YPG, a "terrorist" organization connected to a Kurdish insurgency within its own borders. The YPG is a top U.S. ally in Syria in the fight against the Islamic State group.

Bozdag said the Turkish operations have not interrupted humanitarian aid and civilians have not been harmed in Afrin.

"An innocent civilian did not even get a nosebleed," he said.

Associated Press writer Zeynep Bilginsoy contributed to this report.
What to Know A school counselor allegedly threatened to execute white people and had a knife in his drawer at work

Police arrested the 63-year-old this week after school officials got tips from a teacher and an anonymous note

The anonymous note read, in part: "MR LEMON TALKS ABOUT SHOOTING WHITES ALOT! HE IS WAITING FOR PANTHERS TO TELL HIM TO EXECUTE"

A high school counselor in Connecticut was arrested for threatening to go on a killing spree to "execute every white man he gets his hands on," police in Bridgeport said.

Carl Lemon, a 63-year-old in-school suspension counselor at Warren Harding High School, was arrested Wednesday on charges of second-degree threat and breach of the peace.

A five-page police report says Lemon threatened to kill white people, stomped on an American flag and had a kitchen knife in his desk drawer at school.

Police said a teacher alerted officials after he heard Lemon say he couldnt wait for the Panthers to give the OK and a revolution begins, because he will execute every white man he gets his hands on. The teacher told officials Lemon had made similar statements in the past.

Police said the schools assistant principal also received an anonymous note in her school mailbox this week, reading (sic): MR LEMON TALKS ABOUT SHOOTING WHITES ALOT! HE IS WAITING FOR PANTHERS TO TELL HIM TO EXECUTE HE STEPS ON AMERICAN FLAG AND DISRESPECTS US CHECK HIS COMPUTER. HE WATCHES RADICAL STUFF DURING CLASS I AM SCARED HE WILL DO SOMETHING HE TOLD A TEACHER THAT HE DOES NOT LIKE THE PRINCIPALS AND HE WILL TAKE THEM OUT HE IS CRAZY.

The school was placed on lockdown for 10 minutes as Lemon was arrested Wednesday afternoon. Police say he was pacing around his desk and repeatedly opening and closing his desk drawer at the time. A kitchen knife in a plastic bag was later found inside the drawer, according to police.

Carmen Morales, a grandmother of a sophomore at the school, said she was disappointed by it all.

Students are like sponges, they practice and they see and they do what the teachers do. Theyre here to teach our children, not to mistreat them, Morales said.

NBC 4 is awaiting comment from the school.

Attempts to contact Lemon for comment have been unsuccessful, and it is unclear if he has an attorney.

Lemon was released on a $5,000 bond and is due back in court on April 11.


What to Know Allison Barron was surprised when her boyfriend of over two years, Levi Bliss, proposed to her, but both her dad had a joke up his sleeve

After Barron joyously said yes, Barrons dad, Jake, holding a white sign with black letters that read, SAY NO

Barron said it was all in good fun and that her dad actually helped Bliss plan the proposal

A proposal is a moment that will surely be remembered  even more so if you are trolled while it is taking place.

Allison Barron was completely surprised when her boyfriend of over two years, Levi Bliss, proposed to her, but both were taken aback by the joke Barrons dad had up his sleeve.

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The couple was going to take their dog for his daily walk March 24 in the desert in Winnemucca, Nevada, when Barron saw large letters on the ground saying, Marry Me?  a romantic proposal orchestrated by Bliss.

After Barron joyously said yes, the couple was greeted by loved ones who were hiding away capturing the moment. However, a family member in the crowd stood out from the rest.

On top of a hill stood Barrons dad, Jake, holding a white sign with black letters that read, Say No.

My dad had other ideas..  pic.twitter.com/SDUMFjyqiq  ABliss (@allison_barron) March 25, 2018

Dont worry, though. Barron said it was all in good fun.

Levi and I started laughing right away, she said, adding that Bliss asked her dad for his permission to marry her beforehand and even helped out preparing for the proposal. She said her dads prank was just a joke.

My dad was completely joking with the sign and really likes Levi, Barron said.

Its really just his personality.

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What to Know A Long Island judge has been accused of breaking into a home to steal women's underpants; he also admitted to having some on him

Robert Cicale, a Republican district court judge from Suffolk County, was cuffed after a woman in East Islip allegedly found him in her home

Cicale is charged with second-degree burglary; he pleaded not guilty to the charge but did admit to taking the panties, a complaint says

The Long Island judge allegedly busted breaking into a 23-year-old ex-intern and neighbor's home to steal her underwear admitted as much before his arraignment Friday, and confessed it wasn't the first time he's been in that house for "panties," according to a felony complaint.



Robert Cicale, a Republican district court judge from Suffolk County, told cops he was in the house on Donna Place in East Islip Thursday and left when he heard the young woman come home, the complaint says. The woman called her mother, who then called 911, and cops found Cicale a few blocks away.



"He was found to be in possession with soiled female undergarments that we believe were either proceeds of this burglary or a prior burglary," Suffolk County Acting Police Commissioner Stuart Cameron said after the arrest Thursday.



According to the complaint, Cicale admitted the "panties" he had on him when he was arrested were "from other times I went into the house."



Suffolk County District Attorney Tim Sini said the judge also indicated in his confession that "he has urges to steal women's underwear."



It's not clear if he targeted the 23-year-old's house for a specific reason or had been to others. It's also not clear how many times he was in her home.



Prosecutors said the woman identified him, and that he did write a letter of apology to her. Despite the admission, according to the complaint, Cicale pleaded not guilty Friday to second-degree burglary, a class C felony.

Cicale said nothing to reporters as he was led from a police precinct in the morning. His attorney said Cicale had a stellar reputation.



Bail was set at $25,000 cash or $50,000 bond. A court spokesman also said the judge has been "temporarily relieved of his judicial duties."
What to Know The butchered, beaten bodies of best friends Nisa Mickens and Kayla Cuevas, and the remains of Jose Pena-Hernandez, were found in September

Authorities had believed the slayings were connected to MS-13 gang activity, but no one had been charged with the killings until Thursday

Police have arrested more than 120 known MS-13 gang members on a variety of charges as part of a larger takedown over the last few months

Two dozen alleged MS-13 members were rounded up across New York amid an ongoing takedown of the notorious street gang, homeland security officials announced Thursday.

Those arrested -- which included a Brentwood High School student -- were cuffed in New York City, Long Island and the Hudson Valley, Thursday, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Since 2017, 274 members of the gang have been arrested in the takedown dubbed "Operation Matador."

In all, 475 people have been arrested in the operation, which has been targeting members of street gangs since May 2017. The vast majority of those arrests have come in Nassau and Suffolk counties.

It comes a week after more than a dozen other alleged MS-13 gangsters were indicted on charges including murder and other crimes in connection with the gruesome slayings of seven people including two teenage best friends Nisa Mickens and Kayla Cuevas.

A friend of Cuevas' family, Barbara Medina, said Thursday's arrests prove the Trump administration is committed to battling the transnational gang.

"We are very proud of what law enforcement is doing today," she said.

The gang, also called Mara Salvatrucha, is believed to have been founded as a neighborhood street gang in Los Angeles in the mid-1980s by immigrants fleeing a civil war in El Salvador. It grew after some members were deported, helping to turn that country into one of the most violent places in the world.

It is now a major international criminal enterprise with tens of thousands of members in several Central American countries and many U.S. states, including a heavy presence on Long Island, where its members have been blamed for at least 30 killings since 2010, in Queens and in parts of northern New Jersey.

President Donald Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions have both personally spoken on the gang, with Trump vowing to "destroy" the organization in 2017. He also invited Mickens and Cuevas' parents to his first State of the Union address in January.
What to Know Two teens have been arrested after a New Jersey man was beaten to death on the street by eight people in a seemingly random attack

Police said 2 other suspects are still being sought in the deadly attack on Sebastian Aguilar, 36

A person living in the small town said it's not the first time teens have attacked someone

Two teens have been arrested after a New Jersey man was beaten to death on the street by eight people in a seemingly random attack.

Police said the other suspects in the deadly attack on Sebastian Aguilar, 36, are still being sought after the vicious onslaught on 70th Street between Broadway and Hudson Avenue in Guttenberg on Wednesday night.

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The two who have been arrested, a 14-year-old and a 15-year-old, have been charged with aggravated assault and endangering an injured victim, but additional charges are expected to be filed against them.

A person living in the small town said it's not the first time teens have attacked someone.

Anyone with information on the two other suspects being sought is asked to contact authorities.

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A New York City councilman is calling for a ban on dogs in high-rise buildings a day after a grandmother lost part of her ear while trying to protect children from an attacking pit bull.

Councilman Andy King said at a news conference Thursday afternoon he was proposing a bill that would bar dogs from all high-rise buildings unless owners have medical needs requiring a dog in the attack's aftermath.

"We must do something to prevent this from happening to anyone and their family," he said.

He added, "don't get it wrong, I enjoy pets pets" but added "in some environments dogs are unpredictable."

"Dogs can terrorize a human being," King said. "A poodle could take a nice gash out of your leg. A Labrador can pounce on you and do some damage. It doesn't have to be a Rottweiler. It doesn't have to be a pit bull."

King announced the proposal while updating members of the media on the condition of a woman who was attacked by an unleashed pit bull in a playground outside the Eastchester Houses in the Bronx Wednesday afternoon.

Witnesses at the scene said the grandmother, 57, was attempting to shield a group of children from the dog; the animals owner was arrested after the attack.

The woman's grandson, Walter Woodson, said that the woman was back home on Thursday.

"She's angry that it happened, but she's grateful that it wasn't a child that was hurt," said Woodson.

King said the woman lost part of her ear in the attack and had a badly damaged hand.

He said he is also calling on the New York City Housing Authority, which manages the Eastchester Houses, to change its policies on dogs and enforce its current regulations.

"If you own an animal in NYCHA you have to be responsible," King said.

NYCHA, meanwhile, said it is "saddened to hear of this incident and will be looking into this immediately." The authority noted there were restrictions to the policy.
Just as the Islamic State looks to be on the brink of defeat, senior U.S. officials fear their efforts will be wasted amid a lack of guidance from the White House, NBC News reported.



America's alliance with northern Syria's Kurds is cracking as they question if they can rely on President Donald Trump, who recently replaced his secretary of state and national security adviser.

"We're on the two-yard line. We could literally fall into the end zone. We're that close to total victory, to whipping out the ISIS caliphate in Syria," one U.S. special forces commander told NBC News. "We're that close and now it's coming apart."

More than six senior officials who spoke to NBC News shared that commander's views, revealing frustration bordering on anger. The officials were granted anonymity because they weren't authorized to publicly discuss U.S. policy in Syria.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment. Trump said in a speech Thursday that the U.S. would be "coming out of Syria, like, very soon."
Pennsylvania's lieutenant governor is staying on the ballot after a judge rejected a claim that he falsely listed his mother's home as his residence on election records when he actually lives in a state-owned mansion at Fort Indiantown Gap.

A Commonwealth Court judge on Wednesday sided with Democratic Lt. Gov. Mike Stack, saying his actions show his intent to make his mother's Philadelphia home his residence.

The decision says that's where Stack's been voting, getting mail, paying taxes, storing some personal belongings and sometimes sleeping.

Stack sold his own home in the city in February 2016, about a year after taking office as lieutenant governor.

Stack's campaign calls the challenge a "spurious" attempt by one of his primary opponents to deceive voters.
After more than a decade of violence in Mexico, spring breakers are beginning to return to Baja California to vacation.

State officials in Baja say they are finally seeing an increase in tourists after years of security concerns due to drug violence.

Businesses at the beaches near Rosarito are expecting more than 20,000 people, many of them college students, to arrive this weekend alone.

"Before we came we were all kind of nervous because we heard all kinds of stories," said Samantha, a Nevada college student vacationing in Rosarito with friends. "But it's been very easy, very fun. We love it. We're having a blast!"

Officials say the spike in tourism is due to an increase in spending on advertising that focuses on safety.

Officials added they will be increasing security patrols in tourist areas with the help of both state and federal agencies this Spring Break weekend.

There's also been an increased tourism to San Diego this Spring Break.

"It's really hard to keep up with everything," said Rafael Martins, merchandise manager at Belmont Park. "It's been insane."

According to the San Diego Tourism Authority, San Diego County vistor spending was $711 million in February. By March 2017, vistor spending dramatically increased to $901 million. Then it jumped again to $933 million in April 2017. Spring Break usually happens in March or April.




Harry Jaffe, a longtime chronicler of the people and politics of Washington, D.C., writes a column for NBC Washington's First Read DMV blog.

Shoutout to Trayon White for making amends with Jewish leaders for his anti-Semitic rant earlier this month. But I fear the Ward 8 D.C. Council member owes a deeper apology for the damage hes done to students and science education.

Its one thing to spread decrepit conspiracy theories about Jews controlling climate, banks, cities and so forth. Perhaps the Council member missed the memo that Nazis used similar conspiracy theories in their attempts to wipe out European Jews in the Holocaust.

Speaking as a Jew, I have seen and heard worse. The killing of two elderly Jews in France -- the most recent an 85-year-old Holocaust survivor -- ranks as real anti- Semitism. Compared to that, Whites attempt to blame climate change on the Rothschild family was laughable.

But Whites attack on science is no joke.

Heres what he said in live video he published to his official Facebook page on March 16.

"Man, it just started snowing out of nowhere this morning, man. Yall better pay attention to this climate control, man, this climate manipulation, he said. And D.C. keep talking about, We a resilient city. And thats a model based off the Rothschilds controlling the climate to create natural disasters they can pay for to own the cities, man. Be careful.

Lets focus on a few things the Council member apparently believes: that it started snowing out of nowhere rather than because of a weather front meteorologists had been tracking; that climate control is actually climate manipulation, rather than the warming of the atmosphere due to the buildup of carbon from burning fossil fuel; and that humans, in this case the Rothschild family, are controlling the climate to create natural disasters so they can own the cities.

This is far from an attack on a particular race or religion. This is an attack on science.

Marion Barry must be rolling over in his grave. White holds himself out as Barrys disciple. The former four-term mayor served as Ward 8 Council member for many terms and cast himself as the champion of the downtrodden, as does White. Indeed, the rookie Council member has worked hard for his constituents in promoting jobs and job training.

But Barry came to D.C. as an accomplished scientist. After graduating from college, he earned a master's degree in chemistry and taught at the University of Kansas. He was studying for his doctorate at the University of Tennessee in 1964 when he joined the civil rights movement and never returned to his studies. In politics and governance, Barry benefited from a brilliant mind.

To the day he died, Barry knew the D.C. budget better than most of his Council colleagues.

For what its worth, Barry relied on Jewish friends like Max Berry, John Hechinger, David Abramson, Jeffrey Cohen and dozens of others to build his political network and rise from street activist to mayor. If anyone had suggested to Barry that powerful Jews could make it snow, he would have run that person out of the room.

Spouting off about climate conspiracies does not help Whites constituents in Ward 8. Its irrelevant, really, and unhelpful to improving their lives. What they need is a leader who believes in science education, who supports serious study of climate and who makes sure students in his neighborhoods go to school with trust in the information they learn.

Every day teenagers in Ward 8 decide whether to go to school -- or not. Recent reports show attendance in some high schools is about 50 percent. Graduation rates are horribly low. Why give students another reason to scoff at school, because their Council member says science is not relevant in understanding weather?

If students take Whites comments to heart, why study biology? Chemistry? Genetics? Or climatology?

Ironically, D.C. Department of Energy & Environment (DOEE) Director Tommy Wells in an interview this week that White is a champion of solar power programs in his ward and has been supportive of the governments efforts to clean up the Anacostia River. That could pass as science, unless White also believes powerful families are polluting the rivers.

I tried to get some clarity from White, but he did not respond to my emailed questions. I asked:

When it comes to climate control, what do you think causes climate change and global warming?

In questioning the University of the District of Columbia president, you referred to Rockefeller grants for resilient cities, of which D.C. is one. Do you support the grant, which pays for a chief resilience officer?

Wells said you support his efforts to promote solar energy in Ward 8. Is that true? If so, why?

Do you support teaching a science-based approach to climate change in Ward 8 schools? If so, do you intend to meet with principals, educators and students in support of science education?

Now that White has apologized to the Jewish community, perhaps he should ask forgiveness from the education community, especially students studying science in Ward 8 schools.

Forget visiting synagogues; go to a science fair at Anacostia or Ballou High School.
The teenage girl who was shot in the hallway of her Maryland high school was laid to rest Friday.

Jaelynn Rose Willey was remembered by family members, friends and people who went to pay their respects.

Willey's large family was joined at the service by Gov. Larry Hogan and the high schooler's classmates.

The 16-year-old was surrounded by her family when she died shortly after 11:30 p.m. March 22, hours after her parents announced their decision to remove her from life support.

Willey had been hospitalized since she was shot March 20 in the hallway of Great Mills High School in St. Mary's County. Police said gunman Austin Rollins, 17, and Willey had a previous relationship.

"My daughter was hurt by a boy who shot her in the head... and took everything from our lives," Willey's mother, Melissa Willey, said at a news conference last week.

Willey, a dedicated student, beach lover and member of the swim team, was the second of nine siblings. She was a role model to her brothers and sisters, her family said, and helped take care of them every day.

"Jaelynn is an amazing young lady whose peaceful presence and love of her fellow students and family is known throughout her Maryland-based school," her family said in a statement on a Youcaring Fundraiser page set up to help pay her medical bills.

"It is hard for us not to see her shining, smiling face right now, and to see her light up the room with her presence," the familys statement said. "Please keep Jaelynn and our family in your prayers."

Willey was shot about five minutes before the first period bell was set to ring. Another student, a 14-year-old boy, was shot in the leg. He was later released from the hospital.

Rollins fatally shot himself as a school resource officer shot him in the hand, police said.

The attack was the 12th school shooting that has ended in injury or death this year, according to Everytown For Gun Safety research.

Willey's death came one day before thousands of young people rallied in the streets of Washington, D.C., to demand stronger gun control laws. "March for Our Lives" was organized by the teen survivors of a deadly school shooting in Parkland, Florida.


Howard University students are continuing a more than 24-hour sit-in at an administration building to protest a recent financial aid scandal and say they don't plan on leaving until university officials consider their demands.

Alexis McKenney, a senior at the university and organizer with HU Resist, said during a news conference Friday evening that a group of students met with two members of the university's Board of Trustees.

"We wanted to initiate negotiations, but they made it very clear that many of the board of trustee members - despite the email going out saying that our demands were inaccurate and essentially unsubstantiated - that many of them have not even read our demands," McKenney said.

HU Resist's list of nine demands includes adequate housing, changes to sexual harassment policy, disarming campus police and a tuition freeze dated Sunday, days before Howard University President Wayne Frederick publicly announced a misappropriation of financial aid funds. Students are also calling for Frederick to resign.

Six Howard University employees were fired last year after an internal investigation found the financial aid office had misappropriated university-based grants to some university employees.

"We will continue to be here in the administration building until we get on a phone call with more board of trustee members this evening as well as an in person meeting tomorrow. Hopefully, which, negotiations will follow, but we are staying here," McKenney said Friday.

McKenney said the president has not reached out to the student organizers.

"He's been silent. He's not expressed any desire to meet with us at all. And I think that sends a big message as to how exactly he's responded to students."



Students began the sit-in Thursday afternoon and protested in shifts overnight, leaving to rest and wash before returning as the sit-in stretched into a second day. They blocked employees from entering the building Friday morning

The organizers of the sit-in at the building housing the president's office and the financial aid office put up signs over the building's doors detailing a list of demands. The signs also said the building is closed to anyone except students and cleaning staff.

Howard junior Viennetta Davis said a survey showed the overwhelming majority of students don't think the administration cares about them and that Frederick's leadership was lacking.

"This is a feeling that's been brewing for awhile," Davis said. "This isn't a spur of the moment thing."

Frederick responded in a statement to several of the demands, reiterating current policies and promising to review deficiencies. He invited students to provide feedback on a sexual harassment policy and promised to form a public safety advisory committee.

"Your concerns are valid. We are listening. We are committed to jointly making changes to move Howard Forward," the statement said.



According to a statement from Frederick, an outside auditor found several university employees received grants in addition to discounts on tuition that exceeded the total cost of tuition and kept the difference.

Some students said they felt betrayed. Employees took financial aid funds as students prepare to spend years paying off their loans.

Frederick said he was told in December 2016 that there may have been "some misappropriation of university-provided financial aid funds," and launched an internal investigation.

The auditor found that between 2007 and 2016, university grants were awarded to some university employees who also were receiving tuition remission. The grants and tuition remission equaled more than the total cost of attendance, which allowed the employees to receive "inappropriate refunds."

The grants came from institutional funds that help low-income students pay tuition. Frederick said the grants came from the university and were not federal or donor funds.

Tuition remission allows eligible employees or their dependents to receive discounted tuition at the university. Full-time employees eligible to receive tuition remission can take two classes per semester for free, according to the university's website. Tuition at Howard for the 2017-2018 school year was $12,061 per semester, not including room and board.

Frederick's statement came after an anonymous post on Medium.com claimed financial aid employees at the university stole nearly $1 million in funds. The post has since been removed.

Frederick did not comment on how much had been received by those individuals.

Frederick said the issue was reported to the Department of Education in July 2017, and six employees were fired two months later for "gross misconduct and neglect of duties."

Student protests stepped up after the revelations, but Chairman Stacey Mobley wrote on behalf of the university's Board of Trustees that they stand by Frederick's leadership.

"All of us recognize the critical role financial aid plays in the lives of our students and it was important to us to ensure the office was operating appropriately," the letter read. "While the review unfortunately uncovered alarming behavior, [Frederick] immediately took appropriate action and launched an internal investigation to get to the bottom of this."



Fifty years ago this month, another Howard class made history by taking over the administration building to protest a curriculum that lacked courses on African-American history, culture and pride.

The revelations follow a string of problems at the university. In March, Frederick drew criticism for his response to a student who begged him for help securing housing. He told her the "tone and tenor" of her email were inappropriate. In January, spring semester classes were delayed by more than a week because of campus-wide problems with the heating system. And last May, students filed a lawsuit saying the university failed to help students who were raped by fellow students and employees.

Read Frederick's full statement below:

Statement from Wayne A. I. Frederick, President of Howard University

In accordance with my commitment to continuous progress, in February 2015, I initiated a proactive review of the Howard University Office of Financial Aid to ensure the office was providing the best support to our campus community.

As part of this process, I was alerted in December 2016 that there may have been some misappropriation of University-provided financial aid funds. From the moment I was alerted that there may have been a misappropriation of funds, I have taken this situation extremely seriously. I immediately informed the Board of Trustees, and together we moved swiftly to begin an internal investigation. The University immediately engaged an outside auditor (RSM) to determine whether there had been any misappropriation of Howard University funds by staff in the Office of Financial Aid or elsewhere, and if so, the magnitude of that misappropriation. The auditors completed their investigation and reported the results to me in May 2017.

The investigation found that from 2007 to 2016, University grants were given to some University employees who also received tuition remission. The audit revealed that the combination of University grants and tuition remission exceeded the total cost of attendance. As a result, some individuals received inappropriate refunds. Note that University grants are institutional funds used to help support students with student charges. They are not federal funds or donor directed funds.

In July 2017, I self-reported this issue to the Department of Education and assured them we would provide regular updates on the investigation.

An investigation of individual employee actions was completed in September 2017 and as a result, six employees have been fired for gross misconduct and neglect of duties. We will refer this matter for criminal prosecution, as appropriate.

Third Coast Higher Education, another outside expert, was also brought in specifically to determine if any misappropriation of federal funds occurred. At this point, Third Coast found no misappropriation of federal funds related to this issue.

The financial integrity of Howard Universitys operations is paramount and strong measures have been taken following the RSM investigation to ensure this never happens again. As part of these reform efforts, significant new policies and procedures have been implemented to strengthen Howards internal controls with respect to the awarding of financial aid, including:

 Annual budgets for each category of financial aid are now loaded into the Universitys Banner student information system by the University Budget Office consistent with the Universitys overall Financial Aid Budget.

 Approval for all awards of University Grants are now reviewed and approved by the Budget Office prior to being awarded by the Financial Aid Office

 Approval for all donor-designated scholarship awards are now reviewed and approved by the Controllers Office prior to being awarded by the Financial Aid Office.

 Approval for all grant-funded financial aid are now reviewed and approved by the Universitys Grant Accounting Unit prior to being awarded by the Financial Aid Office.

 Access to the Banner financial aid module has now been limited to a small number of appropriate senior University individuals, with adequate third-party review and appropriate segregation of duties.

 An annual reconciliation of awarded financial aid to approved financial aid is now being conducted.

 Management has established proper reporting relationships and segregation of duties within the Financial Aid Office.

 Management is in the process of hiring for all remaining open positions in the Financial Aid Office and enhanced training on policies and procedures will be provided both to new hires and continuing employees.

 A new Associate Provost for Enrollment Management and a new Chief Compliance Officer have been hired by the University.

While this has been a very difficult and disappointing situation, I know our campus community deserves better and I am committed to ensuring that each of our campus offices operate with integrity and are the best that higher education has to offer.
Students are sitting in at the Howard University Administration Building a day after the revelation of an internal investigation that found the financial aid office misappropriated university-based grants to some university employees.

Six Howard University employees were fired last year, school President Wayne Frederick said Wednesday, but the students are just learning about it.

The organizers of the sit-in at the building housing the president's office and the financial aid office say they have a list of demands, including transparency.

Some students are calling for Frederick to resign.

Fifty years ago this month, another Howard class made history by taking over the administration building to protest a curriculum that lacked courses on African-American history, culture and pride.



According to a statement from Frederick, an outside auditor found several university employees received grants in addition to discounts on tuition that exceeded the total cost of tuition and kept the difference.

Some students said they felt betrayed. Employees took financial aid funds as students prepare to spend years paying off their loans.

Frederick said he was told in December 2016 that there may have been "some misappropriation of university-provided financial aid funds," and launched an internal investigation.

The auditor found that between 2007 and 2016, university grants were awarded to some university employees who also were receiving tuition remission. The grants and tuition remission equaled more than the total cost of attendance, which allowed the employees to receive "inappropriate refunds."

The grants came from institutional funds that help low-income students pay tuition. Frederick said the grants came from the university and were not federal or donor funds.

Tuition remission allows eligible employees or their dependents to receive discounted tuition at the university. Full-time employees eligible to receive tuition remission can take two classes per semester for free, according to the university's website. Tuition at Howard for the 2017-2018 school year was $12,061 per semester, not including room and board.

Frederick's statement came after an anonymous post on Medium.com claimed financial aid employees at the university stole nearly $1 million in funds.

Frederick did not comment on how much had been received by those individuals.

Frederick said the issue was reported to the Department of Education in July 2017, and six employees were fired two months later for "gross misconduct and neglect of duties."

The revelations follow a string of problems at the university. In March, Frederick drew criticism for his response to a student who begged him for help securing housing. He told her the "tone and tenor" of her email were inappropriate. In January, spring semester classes were delayed by more than a week because of campus-wide problems with the heating system. And last May, students filed a lawsuit saying the university failed to help students who were raped by fellow students and employees.

Read Frederick's full statement below:

Statement from Wayne A. I. Frederick, President of Howard University

In accordance with my commitment to continuous progress, in February 2015, I initiated a proactive review of the Howard University Office of Financial Aid to ensure the office was providing the best support to our campus community.

As part of this process, I was alerted in December 2016 that there may have been some misappropriation of University-provided financial aid funds. From the moment I was alerted that there may have been a misappropriation of funds, I have taken this situation extremely seriously. I immediately informed the Board of Trustees, and together we moved swiftly to begin an internal investigation. The University immediately engaged an outside auditor (RSM) to determine whether there had been any misappropriation of Howard University funds by staff in the Office of Financial Aid or elsewhere, and if so, the magnitude of that misappropriation. The auditors completed their investigation and reported the results to me in May 2017.

The investigation found that from 2007 to 2016, University grants were given to some University employees who also received tuition remission. The audit revealed that the combination of University grants and tuition remission exceeded the total cost of attendance. As a result, some individuals received inappropriate refunds. Note that University grants are institutional funds used to help support students with student charges. They are not federal funds or donor directed funds.

In July 2017, I self-reported this issue to the Department of Education and assured them we would provide regular updates on the investigation.

An investigation of individual employee actions was completed in September 2017 and as a result, six employees have been fired for gross misconduct and neglect of duties. We will refer this matter for criminal prosecution, as appropriate.

Third Coast Higher Education, another outside expert, was also brought in specifically to determine if any misappropriation of federal funds occurred. At this point, Third Coast found no misappropriation of federal funds related to this issue.

The financial integrity of Howard Universitys operations is paramount and strong measures have been taken following the RSM investigation to ensure this never happens again. As part of these reform efforts, significant new policies and procedures have been implemented to strengthen Howards internal controls with respect to the awarding of financial aid, including:

 Annual budgets for each category of financial aid are now loaded into the Universitys Banner student information system by the University Budget Office consistent with the Universitys overall Financial Aid Budget.

 Approval for all awards of University Grants are now reviewed and approved by the Budget Office prior to being awarded by the Financial Aid Office

 Approval for all donor-designated scholarship awards are now reviewed and approved by the Controllers Office prior to being awarded by the Financial Aid Office.

 Approval for all grant-funded financial aid are now reviewed and approved by the Universitys Grant Accounting Unit prior to being awarded by the Financial Aid Office.

 Access to the Banner financial aid module has now been limited to a small number of appropriate senior University individuals, with adequate third-party review and appropriate segregation of duties.

 An annual reconciliation of awarded financial aid to approved financial aid is now being conducted.

 Management has established proper reporting relationships and segregation of duties within the Financial Aid Office.

 Management is in the process of hiring for all remaining open positions in the Financial Aid Office and enhanced training on policies and procedures will be provided both to new hires and continuing employees.

 A new Associate Provost for Enrollment Management and a new Chief Compliance Officer have been hired by the University.

While this has been a very difficult and disappointing situation, I know our campus community deserves better and I am committed to ensuring that each of our campus offices operate with integrity and are the best that higher education has to offer.
An Alexandria, Virginia, man died Wednesday after a fight with his brother Sunday night, Alexandria police said.

Nelson Cruz, 28, was found unconscious Sunday in the 2200 block of North Beauregard Street after the fight, officials said.

Cruz died at the hospital Wednesday where he was under treatment for his injuries. The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner ruled Thursday the manner of death to be a homicide.

Cruzs brother, 23-year-old Brian Cruz-Segovia, was arrested Sunday and charged with malicious wounding.

The Alexandria Police Department is investigating the incident and additional charges may be pending, officials said.

This is the first homicide in Alexandria this year, according to police.
A deported veteran who launched a health clinic for other deported veterans in Tijuana, Mexico, has been granted citizenship in the United States.

Hector Barajas-Varela was deported 10 years ago. On Thursday, in uniform and surrounded by supporters and fellow deported veterans, Barajas-Varela received the news from the Department of Homeland Security.

Barajas-Varela was born in Zacatecas, Mexico, and arrived in the U.S. with his parents when he was 7. He grew up in the United States and enlisted in the Army in 1995.

He received numerous accolades and awards, including the Army Commendation Medal and Humanitarian Service Medal. He was honorably discharged in 2001.

Following his service in the army, Barajas-Varela said he had difficulty adjusting to civilian life. He said he became addicted to drugs, and in 2002, was sentenced to two years in prison and nearly a year in detention after he pleaded no contest to shooting at an occupied vehicle.

Once released, he was placed in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), who deported him to Nogales, Sonora.

In an interview with the Associated Press, Barajas-Varela said that he was unable to adjust to life in Mexico, a country he was unfamiliar with, and made his way back into the U.S. before being deported again in 2010.

Upon his second deportation, Barajas-Varela settled in Tijuana where he worked directly with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) in San Diego to launch a health clinic for other deported veterans.

Through the clinic, he helped dozens of veterans receive benefits, including psychological exams, employment counselors and help from lawyers.

He received a full pardon from Gov. Jerry Brown in December 2017 and has awaited citizenship since. He will take the naturalization oath on April 13 in San Diego.

"Finally, after years of fighting for the rights of deported veterans to return to the U.S., Hector will be able to return home as an American citizen," said Jennie Pasquarella, director of immigrants' rights for the ACLU of California and one of Barajas' attorneys.

Former California State Assemblyman and San Diegan Nathan Fletcher, also a veteran, has represented several deportees who have sought Barajas-Varelas return to the United States.

"All soldiers have the right to return home," he said in a statement to the ACLU.

A study published last year by the ACLU estimated that more than 230 U.S. Armed Forces war veterans have been deported. In 2016 there were more than 300,000 veterans living in the US who were not born in the country, a third of whom had not processed their citizenship.
Two children were rescued early Friday morning and eight were hospitalized after a fire broke out at an apartment building in West Lebanon, New Hampshire.

Firefighters were called to The Village at Crafts Hill Apartments on Pine Tree Lane just before 2 a.m. when the fire alarm went off.

When firefighters arrived, two children had been rescued by a resident from an adjacent building. Police, who had arrived minutes before, helped evacuate residents of other apartment units.

Authorities said heavy fire was coming from the kitchen area of one unit but was quickly extinguished. That apartment unit suffered heavy damage while the remaining units suffered smoke damage.

A total of eight people were taken to Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center to be treated for possible smoke inhalation.

The exact cause of the fire remains under investigation.
Three Massachusetts men are facing charges after police in Boston say they were recklessly driving dirt bikes in the city's Roxbury neighborhood Thursday.

Jason Martinez, 24, Giovanny Martinez, 23, Najja Joseph, 24, all of Roxbury, were taken into custody and charged with disorderly conduct, negligent operation of a motor vehicle, and operating after license suspended/revoked. All three men will also be issued citations.

Authorities said police had received several 911 calls that the men had been driving recklessly. After spotting them commiting several driving infractions, they were followed to a U-Haul facility in the area of Rusfield Street and Massachusetts Avenue at about 6:30 p.m. where police said they were unsuccessful at stopping the men.

Police said the men went inside the U-Haul facility with their dirt bikes where they were then apprehended by the officers.

Inside the building, police seized the three dirt bikes, a motor scooter, and a quad off-road vehicle  all of which authorities say were illegally stored inside.

It's unclear if the arrests or the vehicles seized are connected to a chaotic incident on Interstate 93 in Boston in late February when a Massachusetts state trooper discharged his weapon at a large group of suspects who had been "erratically and recklessly" driving off-road motorcycles and ATVs around the city.
A man has been arrested in connection with the murders of two people who were found dead inside a burned delivery truck in Bangor, Maine.

Twenty-five-year-old John De St. Croix of Bangor has been charged with two counts of murder in the deaths of Michael Bridges and Desiree York.

De St. Croix was arrested on Friday after being interviewed by Bangor police detectives. He's currently at the Penobscot County Jail awaiting arraignment. It's unclear if he has an attorney.

Investigators didn't immediately release any other details about the case or the arrest.

Crews responded to a fire involving an unmarked delivery truck on Washington Street on Wednesday evening.

When the fire was extinguished, firefighters discovered the bodies of Bridges, 43, and York, 36, both Bangor residents, inside.

De St. Croix could face more charges in connection with the ongoing investigation, according to authorities.
Police are investigating after a Jeep crashed into a house for sale in Plainville, Massachusetts Friday morning.

The crash occurred around 7:45 a.m. at 60 East Bacon St.

Police told WJAR-TV the female driver somehow hit a pole and a tree before crashing into the front of the house. The driver, whose identity has not been released, was taken to an area hospital. Her condition was not immediately available.

Elaine Swanson and her husband, the owners of the home, who live in a second house on the property, were not injured. They said the 100-year-old home, which is up for sale, had four scheduled viewings on Friday afternoon.

Swanson said despite the mess, she was grateful the driver was OK.

I'm just thankful that no one was living in there, she's OK. A house is a house. It can be fixed," Swanson said.

Authorities said a gas meter at the home was struck during the crash and caused a leak, which firefighters were working to contain.
One man is being called a hero after he rescued several children from an apartment fire in West Lebanon, New Hampshire.

Devin Issacs said that he received a knock on his apartment door around 1:50 a.m. Friday from his neighbor repeatedly yelling," My babies!"

Issacs said he was met with smoke as he approached the door. " Flames were coming all the way up the wall in the kitchen," he said.

It was at that moment that his instincts kicked in.

"I knew there was kids involved and I promised her that I would get them out," he said.

"I grabbed [the toddler] and pushed her out," Issacs said. "The upstairs neighbor grabbed her, put her in the stroller and then my girlfriend pushed her out."

After Issacs got the toddler to safety, he grabbed the infant with the help of a neighbor who propped the door open for him.

"I bear crawled in and then got the baby out," Issacs said.

The fire engulfed the kitchen, leaving the unit destroyed. "It's significant damage back to the studs, so quite a bit of work that needs to be done there before that unit's habitable again," said Andrew Winter, Executive Director of Twin Pines Housing.

Smoke from the fire spilled over into the other three units in the building, doing enough damage to leave all of the residents displaced.

Smoke alarms signaled the Lebanon Fire Department to the scene. Fire Chief Chris Christopoulos said that in total, there were about 20 fire fighters from their department, Hanover, Enfield, and a Hartford, Vermont station.

Eight residents were transported to Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, and have since been released.

"It's a great thing and I applaud [Issacs] for doing it, but on the other side of it, we want to caution people," said Christopoulos, who urged caution to any bystander running back into a burning building. He reminded the public that doing so can make someone a victim as well. However, Issacs said he would do it all over again.

"Houses can be replaced," Issacs said. "Lives can't."

Christopoulos said there has not been a cause determined for the fire yet, but officials do not believe it is suspicious.

The Red Cross is working with Twin Pines Housing to get the displaced residents shelter until they are able to return to their units.
An early morning fire at an apartment building in Norton, Massachusetts, has displaced at least two dozen people, according to the Sun Chronicle.

The fire broke out at the Norton Glen Apartments on Norton Glen Road just after 7 a.m. Friday and quickly reached 3-alarms.

The Sun Chronicle reported all the residents in the two and a half story structure safely escaped and no injuries were reported.

The paper reported that the fire destroyed two middle apartments of the six-unit building.

The American Red Cross was called in to assist the residents.

The exact cause of the blaze remains under investigation.
Hungerford stalwart's citation read by 'local girl' High Sheriff

CONGRATULATIONS to long-serving and hard-working trustee of the Town and Manor of Hungerford, Robert James, who has been presented with his British Empire Medal (BEM).

Mr James was awarded the honour in the New Years Honours list for services to the community of Hungerford and it was presented by the Lord Lieutenant of Berkshire, James Puxley, at Reading University last Thursday.

Mr James, who was watched by his proud family as he received his medal, said: I had a double honour as the High Sheriff of Berkshire, Sarah Scrope, read my citation  a local girl and a local lad.

Mrs Scrope spoke of the service Mr James had rendered to Hungerford via his tireless work for the Town and Manor, where he has spent 48 years as an elected trustee.

He was also its Constable from 1978 to 1980 and has since been honorary secretary of the charitys commons and land management committee.

Mrs Scrope said: Mr James is an inspirational leader... he has for many years been considered the go to person in the town, whether it being a small matter or talking to the media about the Hungerford tragedy, during which he, and a small group of others, raised 1.23m for the surviving victims.

She went on to list his many other achievements on behalf of the town and added that Mr James also founded the Hungerford Round Table in 1973.

She concluded by saying: Mr James is one of Hungerfords best ambassadors and is widely-respected in the community.

With no specific title or job description, he has made a lifetimes commitment to his community and made a positive difference to its smooth running.
A variety of Easter offerings will be held at places of worship and at other locations in the Greater New Milford area in the coming days:

The First Congregational Church at 36 Main St. in New Milford will offer a Good Friday ecumenical pray walk on the Village Green March 30 at noon, followed by a free egg dye and movie event from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. in fellowship hall (bring own hardboiled eggs), and a communion Easter service April 1 at 10 a.m.

New Milford Assembly of God at 47 Old Park Lane Road will hold a Good Friday service March 30 at 6 p.m., followed by a meal and fellowship, and an Easter service April 1 at 10:30 a.m. On Easter, attendees are invited to enjoy free coffee, tea and baked goods at the churchs cafe, attend the worship service and have children participate in the churchs kids ministry.

For more information, call 860-355-0812.

Trinity Lutheran Church at 107 Kent Road in New Milford will hold a Good Friday service of Tenebrae March 30 at 7 p.m. and Easter breakfast April 1 at 8:30 a.m., followed by a high Holy Eucharist at 10:30 a.m.

Sherman Congregational Church will hold a Good Friday service of Tenebrae March 30 at 7:30 p.m., and an Easter sunrise service with the Rev. Bernie Powell April 1 at 6:30 a.m. at Sherman town beach, followed by hot cocoa, coffee and muffins in the pavilion, and an Easter resurrection service at 10 a.m. at the church.

All events will be held at the 6 Church Road church, except the sunrise service.

Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church at 34 Green Hill Road in Washington will hold a Good Friday Passion of the Lord service March 30 at 3 p.m., a Holy Saturday Easter vigil Mass March 31 at 7 p.m. and an Easter Mass April 1 at 10:30 a.m.

Harrybrooke Park in New Milford will hold its annual Easter Egg Hunt March 31 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the park off Still River Drive.

Participants will collect 10 eggs and cash them in for a new book of their choice and have an opportunity to meet the Easter Bunny.

The New Milford Lions Club will sell chocolate bunnies while supplies last.

The cost is $5 for the egg hunt.

Salem Covenant Church in Washington will hold its Easter bake and flower sale March 31 from 8:30 to 11:30 a.m. at the 96 Baldwin Hill Road church.

Pies, cakes, Easter desserts, breads, jams, decorated eggs and flower arrangements will be sold, with 10 percent of the proceeds to benefit Loaves and Fishes.

The Bridgewater Grange will hold an Easter egg hunt will be offered March 31 at 10 a.m. at Bridgewater Recreation Area.

The Glenholme School at 81 Sabbaday Lane in Washington will play host to a spring hunt March 31 at 11 a.m.

Guests can participate in the egg and candy hunt, spend time with the Glenholme Hare, and participate in a variety of other activities.

Donations of a canned food items for local banks are welcome.

St. Patrick Church at 25 Church St. in Roxbury will hold Easter Mass April 1 at 8:30 a.m.

First Apostolic Gathering of New Milford, Inc. will hold an Easter service April 1 at 11 a.m. at 25 Church St.
The Roxbury Congregational Church at 24 Church St. will hold a pancake breakfast March 31 from 8 to 10 a.m.

The cost is $5 per person, with a family maximum of $25.
Steep Rock Association in Washington is seeking the publics help in monitoring bluebird boxes during nesting season.

A training session will be held March 30 from 4 to 5 p.m., prior to the field season, which runs from April 1 through Sept. 1, at SRAs office at 2 Green Hill Road.

Following the indoor session, a carpool will take place to the bluebird box trail at Macricostas Preserve in New Preston.

Registration is required by calling 860-868-9131.

Citizen science is a method where non-professionals contribute to scientific studies. It has proved to be an effective way of performing projects, some that may not be achievable otherwise, while engaging and educating the community.

NestWatch is one such nationwide effort that relies on this group of individuals.

Initiated by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, it is designed to track the status and trends in the reproductive biology of birds.

Documenting successes and failures of nesting birds not only provides insight to professional ornithologists, but also to SRA, which strives to best steward the land for a variety of wildlife including cavity-nesting birds like the bluebird.

People of all ages and experience levels are invited to participate in the second year of this project.

Citizen scientists will have a unique look into a breeding birds life by observing construction of a nest, counting eggs laid and hatched, watching the development of offspring, recording behavior of adults, and documenting invasions by other animals.

Being a part of NestWatch helps me to feel connected to the natural world in a time of tech overload, said volunteer Joan Templer. Going out to Macricostas Preserve and witnessing the bluebirds building their nests restores my faith that Mother Nature has a master plan, and we are all part of it.
The ATS Foundation is pleased to announce the new ATS Foundation/Fisher & Paykel Healthcare Research Award in Respiratory Support with Nasal High Flow (NHF) in Patients with COPD. The award will provide funding for two years in the amount of $100,000.

"As a member of the ATS Foundation executive committee and someone who has long had a research interest in noninvasive approaches to treating respiratory failure, I am thrilled that Fisher & Paykel has made this award available in partnership with the ATS Foundation," said Nicholas Hill, MD, chief of the Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine at Tufts Medical Center. "Not only does it strengthen the ATS program of research awards, but it also helps to assure that the award will be granted on the basis of scientific merit, thus increasing the likelihood that it will advance the field as well as a promising young investigator's career."

Justin Callahan, president, US Operations of Fisher & Paykel Healthcare said, "We are pleased to support the ATS Foundation with this research grant. Fisher & Paykel Healthcare strives to improve patient care and outcomes through inspired and world-leading healthcare solutions and we welcome this opportunity to provide support to furthering clinical research in COPD. We hope this research grant will make a real difference in advancing patient care."

The fellowship application process will open in April 2018. The one-year funding period is December 2018 through November 2019. Applications will be reviewed for their scientific merit, innovation, feasibility, and relevance to sarcoidosis.
Salk Institute scientists, together with researchers from Switzerland's University of Basel and University Hospital Basel, discovered a protein called LHPP that acts as a molecular switch to turn off the uncontrolled growth of cells in liver cancer. The tumor suppressor, which could be useful as a biomarker to help diagnose and monitor treatment for liver cancer, could also be relevant for other cancer types. The work appeared in print in the journal Nature on March 29, 2018, and adds to the growing body of knowledge about cellular processes that either promote or prevent cancer.

"I think we've discovered a new control mechanism for cell proteins that, when disrupted, could be a driver for cancer," says Tony Hunter, Salk's American Cancer Society Professor and an author on the new paper. "It's exciting because it offers the possibility of new therapeutics or new diagnostics for a cancer that's basically untreatable--liver cancer--and potentially others, as well."

Hunter is known for his 1979 discovery of a molecular signaling process called tyrosine phosphorylation. In this process, proteins called kinases attach the chemical phosphate--like a sticky note--to the amino acid tyrosine in target proteins. But, when dysfunctional, tyrosine phosphorylation can also turn on the uncontrolled cell growth that leads to cancer. Hunter's breakthrough opened the door to the development of a new class of anti-cancer pharmaceuticals called tyrosine kinase inhibitors, including the life-saving leukemia drug Gleevec.

Since then, Hunter's lab has continued to study the process of phosphorylation, not only in terms of adding phosphates (via kinases or "on switches") but also removing them (via proteins called phosphatases or "off switches"). In 2015, his team developed an antibody to identify and study phosphates bonded to another amino acid called histidine.

In the new work, the international team, led by Professor Michael Hall of the Biozentrum, University of Basel, examined these switches in a mouse model of the most common form of primary liver cancer--hepatocellular carcinoma. To compare tumor cells with normal cells, the team analyzed more than 4,000 proteins in healthy and diseased liver tissue. By the end, three proteins stood out: the histidine kinases NME1 and NME2 were elevated in tumor cells, and the suspected histidine phosphatase LHPP was deficient.

"It is striking that LHPP is present in healthy tissue and completely absent in tumor tissue," says Sravanth Hindupur, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Basel and the paper's first author. That gave the researchers a clue to explore histidine phosphorylation as a potential cancer target. Indeed, they found that the levels of protein phosphorylated in histidine were significantly higher in the tumor tissue than in normal liver tissue.

NME1 and NME2 are known histidine kinases and LHPP had been suspected to be a histidine phosphatase. With further experiments, the team verified that not only is LHPP a histidine phosphatase, but it is also a tumor suppressor--essentially an "off" switch for cancer. Reintroducing LHPP into the liver of the model mice destined to develop tumors prevented the formation of tumors.

When the researchers next examined samples from human liver tumors, they found a similar pattern: NME1 and 2 levels were high and LHPP was low compared to healthy liver tissue. Furthermore, the Cancer Genome Atlas database, a collection of RNA sequences obtained from different human cancers, showed that a significant fraction of human liver cancers have low levels of LHPP, and that both disease severity and life expectancy are correlated with LHPP levels.

"The parallels between tyrosine phosphorylation and histidine phosphorylation are what really got me interested in the project," adds Hunter. "Whether this can be used as a therapeutic avenue, I don't know. But the fact that it could be so disease-relevant motivates me."

Source: https://www.salk.edu/news-release/tumor-suppressor-protein-targets-liver-cancer/
AXT have recently completed the first Australian installation of a XtaLAB Synergy-S protein X-ray crystallography system from Rigaku Oxford Diffraction in Australia, the world leaders in crystallography. The system was installed at School of Molecular Sciences at the University of Western Australia with funding secured by a team of researchers led by Professor Alice Vrielink via the ARC LIEF funding scheme.

Rigaku Oxford Diffraction Synergy-S protein crystallography system installed at University of Western Australia.

The XtaLAB Synergy-S boasts the latest generation microfocus sealed tube X-ray sources, with high precision optics, all controlled by user-inspired software to form an industry-leading solution. By combining the Cu PhotonJet-S microfocus X-ray sources with the new high-speed kappa goniometer with telescopic two-theta arm, researchers have the ability to tailor their experiments from sample screening to complete in-house data collection and structure solution.

Their system also includes a HyPix-6000HE HPC (Hybrid Photon Counting) detector. With its direct X-ray photon counting design, tiny 100m pixel size and extremely low noise, researchers at UWA will be able to collect the higher quality data very quickly, allowing them to run more samples and further accelerate their research.

Prof. Vrielink is a leading light in the field of protein crystallography. When asked about the new installation, she replied:

we are carrying out world-class research and needed a system that offered us capabilities to carry out in-house diffraction data collection with speed as well as in plate crystal screening. The Synergy S system is providing us with all of these features allowing us to remain at the forefront of our crystallographic work on these protein targets.

Specific areas of interest to Prof. Vrielink and her team include, structure guided drug design aimed at designing new therapeutics in the areas of anticancer drugs as well as new antimicrobials to treat multidrug resistant bacterial infections.

Richard Trett, AXTs Managing Director, also commented:

In-house protein crystallography has advanced significantly meeting the needs of the next-generation protein-based therapeutics to treat a vast array of ailments suffered by humans. We are pleased and proud that we are helping to put cutting-edge solutions like the XtaLab Synergy-S into the hands of Australian researchers.

AXTs life science portfolio includes a complete range of Rigaku Oxford Diffraction diffractometers as well as many other products sourced from multinational and small, innovative suppliers from around the world.
A first-of-its-kind drug targeting a fused gene found in many types of cancer was effective in 93 percent of pediatric patients tested, researchers at UT Southwestern's Simmons Cancer Center announced.

Most cancer drugs are targeted to specific organs or locations in the body. Larotrectinib is the first cancer drug to receive FDA breakthrough therapy designation for patients with a specific fusion of two genes in the cancer cell, no matter what cancer type. The research appears in The Lancet Oncology.

"In some cancers, a part of the TRK gene has become attached to another gene, which is called a fusion. When this occurs, it leads to the TRK gene being turned on when it's not supposed to be and that causes the cells to grow uncontrollably. What's unique about the drug is it is very selective; it only blocks TRKreceptors," said lead author Dr. Ted Laetsch, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics and with the Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Larotrectinib, targets TRK fusions, which can occur in many types of cancer. While the TRK fusions occur in only a small percentage of common adult cancers, they occur frequently in some rare pediatric cancers, such as infantile fibrosarcoma, cellular congenital mesoblastic nephroma, and papillary thyroid cancer, said Dr. Laetsch, who leads the Experimental Therapeutics Program (ETP) in the Pauline Allen Gill Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders at Children's Health in Dallas.

"Every patient with a TRK fusion-positive solid tumor treated on this study had their tumor shrink. The nearly universal response rate seen with larotrectinib is unprecedented," Dr. Laetsch said.

Among them was 13-year-old Briana Ayala of El Paso, who aspires to a career in fashion design. In 2016, Briana was found to have a rare tumor in her abdomen wrapped around her aorta, the largest artery in the body.

Surgeons in her hometown said it would be too dangerous to operate, so her family brought Briana to Children's Health in Dallas, where UT Southwestern Professor of Surgery Dr. Stephen Megison had to remove portions of her aorta while removing most of the tumor.

But the cancer started to grow again and no further treatments were available.

Dr. Laetsch sent her tumor for genetic testing and found that Briana's cancer had the TRK fusion, meaning the new drug might help.

Briana enrolled in the phase 1 clinical trial of larotrectinib and began taking the drug twice a day. Within weeks her pain and the swelling in her abdomen diminished, and scans showed her tumors had shrunk significantly.

Nearly two years later, Briana is back in school and playing with her dog, Goofy, and the family's seven parakeets. She's also been able to pick up her sketch pad and her dreams of a New York City fashion career.

"These are the kind of amazing responses we've seen with larotrectinib," said Dr. Laetsch, "and this is why I'm so excited about it."

The results of the larotrectinib trial in adult patients  a 75 percent response rate  were published last month in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The TRK-fusion mutation can be present in many types of cancers, including lung, colon, thyroid, and breast cancer, as well as certain pediatric tumors. TRK, short for tropomyosin receptor kinase, is a gene that plays a key role in brain and nervous system development and has a limited role in nervous system functions such as regulating pain in later life.

Larotrectinib belongs to a class of molecules known as kinase inhibitors, which work by cutting back on the enzymatic activity of a key cellular reaction. The selectivity of the drug means it does not cause the severe side effects associated with many traditional cancer treatments, and none of the patients with TRK fusions had to quit the study because of a drug-induced side effect.

Equally important, the response was long-lasting for most patients. "For some of the targeted drugs in the past, many patients responded initially, but then resistance developed quickly. To date, the response to this drug seems to be durable in most patients," said Dr. Laetsch, who investigates the use of tumor molecular profiling to guide therapy in UT Southwestern's Pediatric Hematology and Oncology Division.

A next step in the research is a clinical trial involving a similar drug for those patients who developed resistance. Dr. Laetsch will be the national leader for that clinical trial in children.
Patients traveling to developing countries for plastic surgery procedures may experience severe complicationsrequiring extensive and costly treatment after they return to the United States, reports a study in the April issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, the official medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS).

The costs of treating complications due to medical tourism often fall on the patient's public health insurance coverage, according to the report by ASPS Member Surgeon Dennis Orgill, MD, PhD, and colleagues of Brigham and Women's Hospital-Harvard Medical School. Added to previous reports, their experience suggests that complications resulting from plastic surgery procedures performed in other countries poses "a substantial public health problem in the US."

Complications from Medical Tourism - Plastic Surgeons Share Their Experience

The researchers analyzed their department's experience in treating patients with complications related to plastic surgery in a developing country. From 2010 to 2017, the department treated a total of 78 such patients. Almost all were women; the average age was 53 years. The most common plastic surgery procedures were abdominoplasty ("tummy tuck") and breast augmentation.

The most common complications were pain, surgical site infections, and wound healing problems. Twelve patients required hospitalization. Others required long-term wound care or repeated visits to treat infections or wound-related issues.

Three patients still had surgical drains in place, which they were instructed to remove themselves when ready. Three patients had hernias following abdominoplasty. Four patients had received breast implants that they did not consent to, including one patient who was unaware that she had breast implants. Other patients had more typical complications, such as contracture (hardening) of the tissues around breast implants, implant rupture, scarring problems, and dissatisfaction with cosmetic results.

Fifty-nine percent of the patients traveled to the Dominican Republic to have their plastic surgery. That reflects the high Dominican population of Boston; most patients who traveled to the Dominican Republic reported their ethnicity as Dominican. The researchers write: "Many think of medical tourism as wealthy patients traveling to receive care at higher quality medical institutions abroad, whereas we see a group who return to their home countries to undergo elective plastic surgery procedures at a lower price."

On assessment of financial coverage, 62 percent of patients were insured under the Massachusetts Medicaid program and another 10 percent by Medicare. Dr. Orgill comments, "Cosmetic surgery done in developing countries can carry substantial risks of complications, causing a burden on patients, surgeons, and the US healthcare system."

The authors point out some limitations of their relatively small single-center study, including the fact that it included only patients who saw a doctor in the plastic surgery department.

"We hope that this study will bring attention to this emerging issue and encourage others to report any results related to medical tourism treatment and patterns," Dr. Orgill and coauthors conclude. "We hope that the global plastic surgery community will promote better solutions to these complex issues."
Beijing: China's finance ministry said on Friday it has introduced new tax breaks and exemptions for firms making semiconductors, seeking to limit dependence on foreign chips amid trade tensions with the United States over technology transfers.

The move comes as the United States is considering imposing tariffs on $50 billion worth of Chinese exports, citing discriminatory trade practices in high-tech sectors, including semiconductors.

Chipmakers will be exempt from corporate taxes for two to five years followed by partial deductions, the ministry said in a notice posted on its website on Friday. The exemptions cover a range of products, from very basic to cutting-edge chips. The new rules are effective from Jan 1, 2018.

China relies heavily on foreign semiconductors, which make up one of its largest import categories by value. It is seeking to overtake foreign rivals and become a top semiconductor producer by 2030, according to its own roadmap.

China's ambitions have riled overseas regulators, however, who have blocked several acquisition attempts by Chinese firms looking to speed up development through technology transfers.

U.S. President Donald Trump's administration is requesting China purchase more semiconductors from the United States as part of a plan to avoid proposed tariffs and a potential trade war, Reuters reported on Tuesday.

According to Friday's notice, companies producing high-end chips using 65-nanometre technology or smaller with an investment of over 15 billion yuan ($2.39 billion) will be exempt from corporate taxes for five years. Companies producing chips using 130-nanometre technology or smaller will be tax exempt for two years.
New Delhi: India on Friday received its first LNG cargo from the US under a long-term supply deal when a ship carrying super-cooled natural gas arrived at Dabhol in Maharashtra.

A charter ship, MV Meridian Spirit arrived at Dabhol after 25 days voyage from Louisiana, state-owned gas utility GAIL India Ltd said in a press statement. GAIL India has contracted 3.5 million tonnes per annum of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from US energy firm Cheniere Energy's Sabine Pass liquefaction facility in Louisiana. The first cargo from the project arrived at Dabhol, the city of India's biggest gas-fired power plant.

It has also contracted long-term volumes for another 2.3 million tonnes at Dominion Energy's Cove Point liquefaction plant. "GAIL is one of the early movers to contract US LNG and has 5.8 million tonnes per annum of US LNG in its portfolio. GAIL shall be receiving around 90 cargoes per annum from Sabine Pass and Cove Point LNG terminals," the statement said.

The LNG, he said, is indexed to US Henry Hub gas index as well as crude oil. "GAIL will have an optimum portfolio mix of LNG indexed to Henry Hub (HH) and crude oil and the customers will benefit from such a unique price blend," it said.

The arrival of 'Meridian Spirit' at Dabhol marks beginning of LNG supplies under the Henry Hub-indexed contracts, it said. The vessel arrived close on the heels of Dabhol power plant and the adjoining LNG receipt terminal being split into two separate companies. While state-owned electricity generator NTPC is the lead for the power block, GAIL is the majority owner of Konkan LNG Pvt Ltd, the firm which will run the 5 million tonnes a year LNG receipt facility.

Last October, India imported its first shipment of crude oil from the US. The US had stopped oil exports in 1975, but this ban was lifted by former US President Barack Obama in 2015. GAIL had signed a sale and purchase agreement (SPA) with the US LNG exporter Cheniere Energy in December 2011. The SPA went into effect March 1. Under terms of the agreement, Cheniere will sell and make available for delivery to GAIL about 3.5 million tonnes a year of LNG.

Cheniere's LNG is based on natural gas sourced from the US market, which provides access to abundant and low-cost gas resources. GAIL said India's trade with the USA, which stood at USD 126.1 billion in 2017, is expected to increase owing to large-scale imports of LNG and crude oil in coming years. "GAIL alone would be procuring approximately USD 2 billion worth of LNG per annum from USA from FY 2018-19," the statement said.

Cheniere Energy, Inc is the leading exporter of US LNG. It is currently operating and constructing its Sabine Pass LNG facility in Louisiana and is constructing a second liquefaction facility near Corpus Christi, Texas. When both projects are complete, it is expected to be a top-5 global supplier of LNG.

GAIL is India's biggest natural gas transportation and marketing company. It is expanding pipeline network by 4,000 km at an investment of over USD 3 billion to operate over 15,000 km by 2020. GAIL commands 75 percent market share in gas transmission and has a gas trading share of over 50 percent in India.
New Delhi: Kerala-based Kalyan Jewellers on Friday said the Dubai Police has filed a case against five persons of Indian origin for circulating alleged fake news about the brand and quality of jewellery sold.

The maligning posts were made viral across social media platforms and more evidently on WhatsApp groups. The posts further claimed that the UAE showrooms of Kalyan Jewellers were sealed and the owners arrested, it said in a statement.

"Investigations by the Dubai Police has confirmed one of the above manipulated and circulated false social media posts giving the impression that the gold jewellery sold by the brand is impure and fake. ...The investigation against the others are under process," the Kalyan Jewellers said.

The Dubai Police has initiated criminal proceedings for charges of cyber-crime and abuse using the internet/social media platform against five persons of Indian origin. The company said it had immediately refuted the false claims by posting a statement on their official social media handles.

Kalyan Jewellers Chairman and Managing Director T S Kalyanaraman said, "Such instances of fake propagated by a few irresponsible individuals, is an attempt to tarnish the image and reputation of brands. These acts have deep impact on the emotions of all those associated with the brand and the company."

The legal action follows a complaint filed by Kalyan Jewellers LLC before the Dubai Public Prosecution against spreading fake videos and false news on social media. Kalyan Jewellers has operations in the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait and Oman. It has 121 showrooms across India and West Asia.
New Delhi: Jet Airways, SpiceJet and Vistara have flagged serious concerns over the data on technical snags faced by airlines in 2017, which was provided by the government in Parliament.

They maintained that the data was leading to a "false illusion" about safety of the airlines. In a letter to Minister of State for Civil Aviation Jayant Sinha, the airlines have demanded an investigation by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) to the matter so that accurate information is provided to Parliament and public at large.

"It seems apparent that the number of technical snags being reported by various airlines is inaccurate. This discrepancy and misreporting of data is leading to false illusion of the relative safety of some airlines over others," the airlines said in their letter on March 28.

On March 13, Sinha, in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha had said that airlines reported more than 24,700 technical snags last year. Airline-wise break up was also furnished.

"As you are aware reporting of snags is mandatory in India and accurate reporting of such snags is in the interest of passengers and aviation safety. We request you to get this matter investigated by the DGCA so that accurate information may be made available to Parliament and the travelling public," the letter said.

According to the minister's reply, the technical snag faced by Jet Airways in 2017, which has a fleet of 110 aircraft, was 9,689 (88.08 snags per annum). IndiGo, the country's largest private carrier, which has a fleet size of 151, faced only 340 technical snags (2.25 snags per annum).

Similarly, SpiceJet, which has a fleet size of 57 aircraft, faced 4,903 snags (86.02 snags per annum). Vistara, with a fleet size of 17 aircraft, faced 1,225 snags (72.06 snags per annum).

IndiGo at present operates over 1,000 flights per day, SpiceJet 408 flights and Jet Airways 600 flights.
Over the last fortnight, communal riots have spread to eight out of 38 districts of Bihar. In other words, more than one-fifth of Bihar is burning in communal flames right now.

One person was killed and around 65 were injured in communal clashes in these eight districts. Several people have been arrested in connection with these riots and over a dozen of them are BJP workers, including two senior leaders - Mohan Patwa and Dinesh Kumar Jha. One of the primary suspects - Arijit Shashwat, son of Ashwini Kumar Choubey, the Minister of State (Mos) for Health and Family Welfare in the Modi Govt, is on the run.

The state Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has so far remained mum over the law and order situation which has been deteriorating rapidly. To give an idea about the pace at which law and order has deteriorated in the state, here is a timeline.

March 17, Bhagalpur

Clashes in the state started a week before Ram Navmi. The clashes started after an unauthorised procession, taken out by BJP, Bajran Dal and RSS activists, in Nathnagar area turned violent. Police claims that it was Arijit Shashwat who led the procession in Bhagalpur. Over 35 people including policemen were injured and several shops and vehicles were set afire in these riots. An arrest warrant has been issued by a court against Shashwat and eight others, but they are on the run.

March 24, Siwan

A clash between two communities took place following an alleged effort by some people to stop a Ram Navmi procession at Hassanpura. Both sides indulged in stone-pelting, three vehicles were burnt. Six people were arrested.

March 25, Aurangabad

Communal clashes erupted in Aurangabad following a stone-pelting incident during a Ram Navmi procession. Clashes continued for two days, leaving over 25 people injured and 50 shops gutted. Curfew was clamped in the town and internet services were withdrawn. Cops arrest 122 people.

March 27, Samastipur

Members of two communities clashed and a mosque was vandalised in Rosera. Some people forcibly hoist a saffron flag on top of a minaret of the mosque. These incidents take place a day after a slipper was allegedly thrown at a Ram Navami procession. Ten people, including a probationary IPS officer, were injured and three vehicles were set afire. Curfew was imposed. Three people were arrested.

March 27, Munger

Clash between two communities erupted after some people protested against a controversial song being played and inflammatory slogans being chanted during an immersion procession of Chaiti Durga. Stones were pelted and shots were fired by both sides at a thoroughfare. Violence spread to several parts of the town. Property and vehicles were set afire.

March 28, Silao (Nalanda)

Heavy stone-pelting took place after a dispute over the route of a Ram Navami procession, and police had to resort to mild use of force besides firing tear gas shells to quell the mobs. More than 20 people, including a policeman, were injured. Fourteen people were arrested.

March 28, Sheikhpura

Participants of a Ram Navami procession clashed with police after their demand to use a route other than the permitted one in Girhinda area of the district was rejected. Police resorted to lathicharge. An FIR was lodged. The troublemakers are being identified.

March 30, Nawada

An idol of Lord Hanuman was found vandalised in a temple in this district which led to riots. Several private vehicles, public transport vehicles, and shops were gutted in the communal violence on Friday. The district magistrate, Kaushal Kumar, told News18 that internet services have been suspended in the area and the police presence has been increased.
Gandhinagar: A 21-year-old Dalit youth was allegedly hacked to death by upper caste men on Thursday evening for riding a horse in Bhavnagar district of Gujarat.

There were reservations from upper caste youth to a Dalit, Pradip Rathod, riding a horse and they had even threatened his family.

Rathod was riding back on his horse to his home from the farm when the incident took place.

The Umrala police have arrested the three accused after the family refused to cremate Pradip until the arrests were made. The human rights activists help build the pressure on police.

In the complaint to the police, the family said that Natubha Darbar and his friends had threatened the family when they purchased a horse worth Rs 30,000 for Pradip.

Pradip had been asking his father to buy a horse for him for a long time.

When contacted, cops at the Umrala police station in Bhavnagar said that a case of murder has been registered against one Natubha Darbar, a resident of Timbi village, and two others.

Kalubhai Rathod, Pradips father, said that he purchased a horse for his son about four months ago. The father recalled that a week before the death, the family was threatened.

They said that a Dalit should not ride a horse as no Dalits in Timbi and surrounding villages own a horse, said Pradips father.

Timbi has a population of about 5000 people, a majority of whom are Darbars or Kshatriyas.

There are about 40 Dalit families who stay in the village, rights activists said.
New Delhi: In a remarkable show of restraint in the face of violence, Imam of a mosque in the communally tense Asansol has said that he would leave the town if there was any attempt to avenge the death of his son.

Sibtulla Rashidi, 16, was reported missing after communal clashes in Rail Par area of Asansol on Tuesday afternoon. His body was recovered late on Wednesday night and identified on Thursday. He is suspected to have been beaten to death.

Maulana Imdadul Rashidi on Thursday presided over a congregation where he appealed for peace.

I want peace. My boy has been taken away. I dont want any more families to lose their loved ones. I dont want any more houses to burn. I have already told the gathering that I will leave Asansol if there is any kind of retaliation. I told them that if you love me, you will not raise a finger, said Rashidi, Imam of Noorani Mosque in Chetladanga Nadi Par.

I have been an Imam for the last 30 years. It is important that I give the right message to the people  a message of peace. I need to get over my personal loss. People of Asansol are not like this. This is a conspiracy, he said.

Jitendra Tiwari, the Mayor of Asansol, was all praises for Imam for calming the angry youth and cooperating with the administration.

Taking a strong view of the situation, the administration has clamped Section 144 in the area and the Internet services continue to be suspended.

BJP president Amit Shah has constituted a four-member committee to visit affected areas in Asansol and submit a report.

The Asansol-Raniganj area has been tense since clashes broke out on Monday following the Ram Navami processions.

The Centre has sought a report from the West Bengal government on the violence.
Guwahati: Assam has seen a steady rise in the number of one-horned rhinos in Kaziranga national park with the total number standing at an impressive 2,413, which is an increase of 12 more from the last rhino census conducted in 2015.

The number stood at 366 in the late sixties, which is a far cry from the present number.

Kaziranga is home to about 70 percent of the one-horned rhino population in the world.

Enumerators involved in the rhino census suggest a repeat of the census next year after proper evaluation of the field conditions essential for counting. The rhino count was conducted in Kaziranga over two days on March 26-27.

The best of experts in wildlife research and census-taking got together after three years for the exercise.

Park authorities used more than 40 elephants and 17 SUVs to work out the total number of rhinos in the park.

A total area of 882 sqkm, including the Brahmaputra river zone which makes for the 6th Addition to Kaziranga, was divided into 74 compartments for the census count, of which 36 blocks were covered the first day.

Enumerators, who did the actual physical counting, were not completely satisfied with the sightings this time as tall and thick grasslands with high-moisture content affected visibility.

Kaushik Barua, wildlife conservationist from Assam who was also part of the census count, told News18 that grassland burning this season was not upto the desired level.

Due to untimely rains, the park authorities couldn't burn the grass in most areas. Almost 70 percent of the grassland remained intact. This obstructed line of sight for the enumerators and made it difficult for them to locate rhinos. We experienced it mainly in Agoratoli Range, said Barua.

Besides low visibility, the exact number of rhinos could not be worked out because of several other reasons.

In many areas heavy machinery was being engaged to construct highlands. This had disturbed the usual distribution of rhinos in that area. On the second day, the sun came out around 10.30-11.00 am. It was a while before the rhinos came out of cover to wallow. Enumerators who had visited water bodies in search of rhinos before the sun had come out are bound to have seen low numbers or no rhinos at all, remarked Barua.

The results and feedback by enumerators is fed to the technical committee constituted under the Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (PCCF), and all factors are examined once the compilation is over.

NK Vasu, the state principal chief conservator of forests (wildlife) told News 18 that on technical committee recommendation, the census-count will be repeated next year as all compartments could not be covered this time.

A good number of private elephants and their mahouts whose services were requisitioned for the census were not well acquainted with the dense grasslands in which they were operating. This made it difficult for the enumerators to cover the entire area of certain compartments, observed Kaushik Barua.

The rhino population in Assam saw a boom of 2,048 rhinos in 2009, an unimaginable increase of 193 rhinos in three years time. From 1,855 rhinos in 2006, the population had been briskly swelling up.

An exponential rise in rhino poaching was observed between 2001 and 2016, with poachers killing 239 rhinos. Three rhinos were killed by poachers in Kaziranga in the first three months of this year, while six were poached last year. A total of 342 rhinos have died between March 2015 and March 2018. Considering this, the current population figure in Kaziranga seems to hold good. There are 793 breeding females of the 2,413 rhinos in Kaziranga counted this year.

In 1905, Laokhowa in the south bank of Brahmaputra, Manas, and Kaziranga were declared as the rhino bearing areas in Assam. Over a period of more than 100 years, the population of rhinos in Kaziranga has grown phenomenally. Experts, however, are of the opinion that the park is way beyond the carrying capacity for rhinos.

An IUCN population module had recently stated that the rhino population in Kaziranga had reached its saturation, which would slow down the growth rate unless new areas are added or at least 50 rhinos are harvested every year.

A number of river islands with a lot of good grass have already been added to the park area. A large number of cattle had moved out of those areas leaving the place suitable for rhinos, said NK Vasu.

The Indian Rhino Vision 2020, an ambitious plan launched in 2005 to attain a wild population of at least 3,000 greater one-horned rhinos in Assam by the year 2020, has yielded good results.

International Rhino Foundation (IRF) has partnered with the Assam Forest Department, the Bodoland Territorial Council, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), and the US Fish and Wildlife Service to address the threats facing Indian rhinos.

The rhino translocation began in April 2008. So far, rhinos have been moved from Kaziranga National Park and Pabitora Wildlife Sanctuary to other protected areas where they can breed.
Bhopal: Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Friday sought to justify instances of public parade of criminals by the police, asserting "goondas" have no human rights and that the state government had zero tolerance for crimes against women.

He said that those who harass girls and women and make it difficult for them to step out of their homes cannot claim human rights.

"There are no human rights of goondas (anti-social elements)," Chouhan told reporters here. "The state government has zero tolerance for crimes against women."

On March 25, the police had arrested and publicly paraded four men for allegedly raping a collegian here and several women bystanders had also slapped the accused. The chief minister said that 92 percent of rape cases had involvement of relatives, family members or acquaintances.

Replying to a query on implementing a commissionerate system of policing for Bhopal and Indore, Chouhan said all steps would be taken to ensure public safety and security.

On the death of journalist Sandeep Sharma, who was run over by a truck at the Ater Road in Bhind on March 26, Chouhan said, "If required, we will enact a law to ensure the safety of journalists," he said.

The MP CM announced financial assistance of Rs 2 lakh to Sharma's family. Sharma had complained about a threat to his life after he conducted a sting operation against sand mafia.

Asked about the police allegedly dilly-dallying a case related to the suicide of a woman, whose kin had claimed she was married to the son of PWD Minister Rampal Singh, Chouhan said, "Law will take its own course."

He also announced the state government would set up an agency to promote the export of farm produce.

"Agricultural production has gone up in the state and the government is now making efforts to provide beneficial prices to farmers. We are planning to set up an agency to explore the export of agricultural produce."

He said there was no anti-incumbency against the government in the state and that recent defeats of the BJP in bypolls could not be taken as an indicator of it. "But we have taken the outcome of these polls seriously."

"Wherever I visit, I see the response of the people. They love me and appreciate the state government. There is no anti-incumbency," he claimed.

Earlier in the day, Chouhan participated in a police event on women's safety and security.
HCSL Recruitment 2018 application process is coming to an end next week on 5th April 2018 on its official website - cochinshipyard.com. The Hooghly Cochin Shipyard Limited (HCSL), a Joint Venture Company between Cochin Shipyard Limited and Hooghly Dock & Port Engineering Ltd aims to fill 2 vacancies for the posts of Chief Project Engineer (CPE) and Senior Project Engineer (SPE). Interested and eligible candidates must apply on or before the last date as per the instructions mentioned below:

How to apply for HCSL Recruitment 2018?

Step 1  Visit the official website - http://www.cochinshipyard.com

Step 2  Click on 'Careers' page

Step 3  Click on the notification that reads,  Vacancy Notification - Selection of Personnel On Contract Basis for Hooghly Cochin Shipyard Limited (HCSL), Kolkata

Step 4  Download the application form, fill it and send it along with a Demand Draft of Rs.200 through speed post or courier to The Chief General Manager (HR), Cochin Shipyard Limited, Perumanoor P O, Kochi  682015 latest by 5th April 2018.

Application Fee:

Unreserved Category Candidates  Rs 200

SC/ ST/ PWD Category Candidates - Nil

HCSL Recruitment 2018 - Vacancy Details:

Chief Project Engineer (CPE) (Civil) - 1

Senior Project Engineer (SPE) (Civil) - 1

Eligibility Criteria:

Chief Project Engineer (CPE) - The applicant must possess Degree in Civil Engineering from a recognized University or Institution.

Senior Project Engineer (SPE) - The applicant must possess Degree in Civil Engineering from a recognized University or 3 year Diploma in Civil Engineering from a State Board of Technical Education.

Applicants must go through the official advertisement to ascertain their eligibility as given below:

http://www.cochinshipyard.com/career/Vacancy%20NotificationSelection%20of%20Personnel%20On%20Contract%20Basis%20for%20Hooghly%20Cochin%20Shipyard.pdf

Age Limit:

The age of the CPE must not exceed 65 years and for SPE must not exceed 50 years.

Pay Scale:

The pay scale of CPE on Contract Civil for 1st Year will be Rs.1,55,000 and for 2nd year will be Rs.1,60,000.

The pay scale of SPE on Contract Civil for 1st Year will be Rs.1,10,000 and for 2nd year will be Rs.1,13,500.

CPE and SPE would be getting Compensation for Extra Hours of Work (per month) of Rs.4500.

Selection Process:

Candidates will be selected on the basis of Interview to be held at Cochin Shipyard Limited, Kochi.

Important Dates:

Last date to submit Application Form - 5th April 2018

Interview date for CPE - 18th April 2018

Interview date for SPE - 18th April and 19th April 2018

Time of Interview:

The scheduled time for the interview for both CPE and SPE is 9AM to 2PM.
New Delhi: In a fresh bout of violence in Bihar, clashes between two communities were reported from Nawada after a deitys idol was vandalised by some miscreants in Nawada on Friday.

It was a matter of an idol being vandalised by some miscreants, which led to the communities coming face-to-face; situation is now under control, said District Magistrate Kaushal Kumar.

According to reports, the resultant violence from the incident led to torching of shops in the area and vehicles being damaged. The Internet services have been suspended in the area and the police presence has been increased.

It must be said that Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has a big challenge on his hands as seven out of 38 districts in the state are in the grip of communal tension.

Situation was already tense after declaration of bypoll results as videos surfaced in Araria showing youths chanting anti-national slogans and beheading of a tea seller in Darbhanga.

Then just a day before Ram Navami, communal clashes were first reported from Bhagalpur.

Since then Aurangabad, Nalanda, Munger, Arrah and Samastipur have witnessed tense situations. However, Nitish Kumar himself has taken over the task of monitoring the situation and has deployed heavy forces in all the affected districts.

The situation has triggered a political slugfest with the opposition RJD-Congress combine blaming the spurt in such incidents on alleged dominance of the BJP, the junior partner in the Nitish Kumar government, on the state's bureaucratic machinery.

Nitish though has maintained that the law will take its own course.
Bengaluru: A day after Karnataka High Court rejected his sons bail plea, controversial Congress MLA N A Haris arrived at the house of a fellow MLA. Haris' visit was quite unexpected as he had never visited the leader after becoming the MLA in 2008.

A visibly shaken Haris sought the help of the leader to get partys re-nomination from his seat, Shanthinagara, for the third consecutive term.

According to a family member of the leader, Haris said, I really dont know what to do? No one is with me now. I need support. But no one in the party is willing to back him after the infamous pub brawl and jailing of Mohammad Nalapad.

It is no secret that Nalapad Ahmed Haris, one time feared and powerful MLA, is disliked by many in his own party. His son Mohammad Nalapads brutal attack on a reveller at a high end pub in Bengaluru and his subsequent jailing have come as a boon to his detractors in Congress.

A fellow Congress MLA from Bengaluru said, Haris is an arrogant man. He thinks too much of himself. We had warned him about his son. He did not care. He is now paying the price for that. He has dented the image of Congress and if he is given a ticket, it might work against all of us. Why should we lose our seats because of the father-son duo?

And he is echoing the sentiments of most Congress MLAs in Bengaluru. They fear that Haris can be their Achilles heel if he is fielded again.

A youth Congress leader, Haris, became MLA in 2008 from Shanthinagara -- a Muslim, Christian and Dalit dominated seat in eastern part of the city. He won a second consecutive term in 2013. Haris, who has cultivated contacts in New Delhi, never bothered to have a good relationship with his partymen in Bengaluru. This mistake may cost him his MLA post this time.

Chief Minister Siddaramaiah is reportedly angry with him for damaging the chances of Congress in the state capital and is not in a mood to field him again.

A senior official at the chief ministers office said, The CM is extremely unhappy with Haris. In fact, he is the one who ordered Bengaluru City Police Commissioner to book Mohammad Nalapad under attempt to murder sections and told the police to oppose his bail. If CM has his way, Haris will not get the ticket this time.

The business tycoon cum MLA, Haris, is now making the rounds of party leaders homes pleading leniency. But none of them are impressed by him.

Internationally acclaimed writer and historian Ramachandra Guha has already asked the Congress president Rahul Gandhi not to field Haris again from Shanthinagara. Guha is a long-time resident and voter in that constituency. He said that people did not want someone like Haris to represent them as MLA.

The civil society is also up in the arms against Haris whom they call a big nuisance. The BJP has launched a Save Bengaluru campaign against his sons alleged atrocities in the constituency.

Retired IAS officer Renuka Vishwanathan has taken a plunge into politics vowing to end the goondaraj of Haris and his followers. She is contesting on AAP ticket from Shanthinagara and has already started the campaign.

A retired IPS officer, BNS Reddy, has recently joined the BJP eyeing party ticket from Shanthinagara. Speaking to media, he said, Haris son is a big mafia don like Kothwal Ramachandra and Jairaj of 1970s and 80s Bengaluru. Mohammad Nalapads criminal activities had the blessings of Haris. He should be defeated this time if he gets Congress ticket.

State Congress president Dr G Parameshwara has said that names of all 123 sitting MLAs of Congress will be sent to the party high command seeking their re-nomination. He said, Party high command will decide. We will go by that.

Haris has declined to comment on the political developments saying that he has faith in party leadership and its sense of justice.

Haris, the son of a migrant buttermilk seller, has come a long way. Till last month everything was working in his favour. Now the same world is falling apart. And nobody is shedding tears for him.
Kolkata: Prohibitory orders remained in force and internet services suspended for the third day on Friday even as life was limping back to normal in Raniganj, the coal-belt extension of Bengals industrial town Asansol, which witnessed violent communal clashes during the last few days over Ram Navami processions on March 25.

On Friday evening, political leaders across the board, Imams, priests, police officers, and representatives of other religions attended a peace meeting at Niyamatpur in Burdwan district. The meeting ended with a pledge to maintain peace and harmony in the area. It was also decided that stern action would be taken against anyone found spreading communal rumors.

A peace prayer was also conducted for Maulana Imdadul Rashidis son, 16-year old Sibtulla Rashidi, who was found dead on Wednesday after he went missing following a clash in Asansols Rail Par area.

Setting an example of communal harmony, Rashidi appealed for peace and asked people not to indulge in violence in the name of religion. I lost my son and I dont want other parents to lose their loved ones, the Maulana of Noorani Mosque said.

After the prayer meet, those present raised slogans like Hindu-Muslim Bhai Bhai.Cholo Egiye Jai (Hindu-Muslims are brothers.lets bury the hatchet and move forward).

Trinamool Congress leader and Mayor-in-Council (Minority Development), Mir Hashim, said, I attended the peace meeting and it ended successfully. Whatever happened at Raniganj was unfortunate and we have decided to ignore instigating rumors in future. People across religions were present in the meeting and we all promised each other to live with peace and dignity.

Asked about the scheduled visit of the BJP central team, Hashim said, It is better they should not visit the area now. We feel that their visit could further flare up the situation. They should act sensibly.

A four-member team of BJPs parliamentary committee, comprising Om Mathur, Syed Shahnawaz Hussain, Roopa Ganguly and BD Ram, will visit Raniganj and submit a report to party president Amit Shah.

BJP leader Pintu Verma, who was also present at the meeting, blamed a section of anti-socials for the clashes. The partys district president Lakhsman Ghorai said, It was a peaceful procession on Ram Navami. But suddenly a section of Trinamool Congress leaders instigated the crowd which led to the clash. I welcome todays peace meeting and we will try our best to maintain peace.

Shops, markets, banks, ATMs and schools were reopened in the area. Senior police officers led route marches in trouble-torn areas and appealed to the civilians to maintain peace and not pay heed to rumors.

Anuj Sharma, Additional Director General of Police (Law and Order), said, The situation is peaceful and public life is returning to normal.

On Thursday, an FIR was registered against junior union minister and Asansol MP Babul Supriyo for violating Section 144 in the Asansol-Raniganj area when he tried to force his way into the region and allegedly manhandled a police officer after he was stopped.

Bengal Governor Keshari Nath Tripathi, too, had requested the administration for a visit to Burdwan to meet senior police officer Arindam Dutta Chowdhury, who was hospitalised with critical burn and splinter injuries during the clashes on Monday. However, the state government stalled his request citing security reasons.
Bhopal: Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Friday announced that retirement age for government servants in the state would be raised to 62 years from the existing 60 years.

No government servant would retire without getting promotion, and for this, the state government has decided to increase the retirement age to 62 years from existing 60 years, he said during an event in Bhopal.

According to estimates, around 5.50 lakh government staffers are expected to be benefit from the move.

Replying to a question on the Supreme Court's order related to the promotion of state government employees. Chouhan said, "Several state government employees are not able to get promotion due to the apex court's order in a case related to 'reservation in promotion' pending with the SC. We will not allow any employee to retire without him getting his due promotion. This is why we have decided to increase the retirement age from 60 to 62 years."

The state government had made a provision for reservation for SC/ST employees in promotion, which was set aside by the Madhya Pradesh High Court. The state's appeal against the order is pending in the SC with the latter ordering a status quo.

This, officials said, has kept on hold promotions of state government employees. Chouhan expressed hope that SC would take a decision on it within next two years.

Attacking the government, the opposition Congress said the decision was not going to help employees. "This decision is not going to benefit employees. On the contrary, this would deprive younger officials and employees from getting a promotion. The CM should now announce an unemployment allowance of Rs 2,000 per month to jobless educated youth of the state," said Ajay Singh, Leader of Opposition in the Assembly.

Replying to another question, CM Shivraj denied there was any incumbency despite 14 years of BJP rule in Madhya Pradesh. Wherever I go, people embrace me with warmth and affection and I dont see any anti-incumbency. On the proposed introduction of Commissionerate system of police in Bhopal and Indore, Chouhan affirmed that the government was pondering over it very seriously.
New Delhi: The body of a 21-year-old Delhi University student, who was allegedly kidnapped on March 22, was found in Dwarka, police said on Thursday.

Police have arrested the accused  Istiaq (25)  who confessed to killing the student on March 22 after a tiff and said he had cooked up the kidnapping story to mislead the victim's family and the police, they added.

The accused told the police that he got in touch with the victim through a dating site and had met thrice in 10 days. The victim, Ayush Nautiyal, was a student of Ram Lal Anand College in south campus.

On March 22, when they met, they had a fight which got aggravated and the accused attacked Nautiyal multiple times on the head with a hammer, the police said.

He had left home on March 22 at around 11 pm after informing his family that he would get late since there was a college fest. In the evening, when he did not return till late, his family members called him but his phone was switched off.

After some time, his family received a WhatsApp message from his phone in which the kidnappers demanded a ransom of Rs 50 lakh. The accused had also shared a photo in which Nautiyal was gagged and his head was bandaged. His clothes had blood stains on them, they added.

The accused threatened the family that if the ransom was not paid, he would kill Nautiyal.

Police said that the accused constantly kept changing his location and despite laying a trap for him, he could not be traced. The family had even arranged Rs 10 lakh for paying the ransom.

Last night, a body was found in Dwarka Sector 13 in a drain. Later, it was identified as that of Nautiyal.

During investigation, it was found that the deceased had gone to a restaurant in Dwarka Sector 14 with another man on March 22. On the basis of that clue, the police proceeded in their investigation.

On the basis of a photograph that the police had procured from a CCTV camera at the restaurant, it was found that the man accompanying him is a former student of a fashion institute. Details of students were sought from the institute and subsequently, he was nabbed from Uttam Nagar.

The accused, who works with various export houses to provide clothing samples, cooked up the kidnapping story to mislead the police and the family and also to get time to dispose of Nautiyal's body.

Joint Commissioner of Police, New Delhi, Ajay Chaudhary, said that the family was with them in every stage of the probe but it was unfortunate that the victim was killed.
Srinagar: Hurriyat Conference (G) chairman Syed Ali Geelani, who has been under house arrest for the last eight years, was allowed to walk free on Friday after the government ended his detention.

The octogenarian leader, Geelani, after offering congregational prayers at the Jamia Masjid Hyderpora on Friday for the first time after 2010, is expected to address the gathering post prayers.

The development comes a day after Jammu and Kashmir Director General of Police SP Vaid said that all three separatists leader  SAS Geelani, Mirwaiz Umer Farooq and Yasin Malik  were free to go anywhere they wish to. He, however, said the trio should not make anti-national speeches or create a law and order problem.

They have to take the responsibility of not creating any law and order situation. They have to also refrain from making anti-national speeches, Vaid had said.

Recently, all three separatists were allowed to meet at Geelanis residence where they discussed the current situation in the valley. Lately, the government has shown signs of easing curbs over the rebel leaders.

Many people in Kashmir believe that the Mehbooba Mufti-led government has softened her stand with regard to the release of separatist leaders and is willing to walk an extra mile to find peace in the valley.

The decision to lift curbs on the leaders comes at a time of serious political crisis as the state struggles to pacify the recent surge in anti-government feelings and the rise of local militancy. The move to allow separatists to walk freely can be seen as the government acknowledgement of the need to let Hurriyat leaders interact with people.

A Hurriyat leader said that New Delhi has somehow realized that the separatist leadership needs to interact with people and that the government has failed. New Delhi has understood that they are failing and only Hurriyat is the true representative of the people of Kashmir, he said.

Interestingly, the end of Geelanis house detention has come a week after Muhammad Ashraf Sehrai replaced Syed Ali Geelani as interim chairman of Tehreek-i-Hurriyat Jammu and Kashmir. Sehrais ascension ended the strain in the Hurriyat on who will lead the conglomerate after Geelani, whose deteriorating health has been a cause of concern.

The last couple of days have seen a lot of events unfold in the Hurriyat camp. Earlier this week, son of Mohammad Ashraf Sehrai joined the Hizbul Mujahideen militant group in Kashmir. A photo of Junaid Ashraf Khan, 28, brandishing an AK-47 rifle had gone viral on social media. This is the first time that the son of a senior separatist leader of the stature of Sehrai has joined militancy in Kashmir.

Earlier, Dineshwar Sharma, the Indian governments special representative for talks, had expressed his concern about the trend of local boys joining the ranks of guerrilla outfits.
New Delhi: NCERT published textbooks will carry QR codes from next year, which will provide web links to films or related reading content to help students understand subjects better, Union minister Prakash Javadekar has said.

Quick Response (QR) Code is a machine-readable code consisting of an array of black and white squares, which are essentially web links that can be read by smartphone cameras.

Javadekar also announced that students who take education loans will not have to pay the interest for the duration of the course plus one year. He said the government has made a provision of Rs 6,600 crore for bearing the interest component on the loans.

Nearly 10 lakh students would avail the benefits from 2017-18 to 2019-20, with the government bearing about Rs 2,200 crore per year towards interest costs on education loans, the minister said.

Under the scheme, the government will bear the interest cost on education loan up to Rs 7.50 lakh for students from families with less than Rs 4.5 lakh income, Javadekar said briefing reporters about Wednesdays Cabinet decisions.

From 2009 to 2014, the government has spent Rs 800 crore per year under the scheme, which increased to Rs 1,800 crore per year from 2014 to 2017, he said.

On the NCERT books, he said that from 2019, books will be energised, carrying QR codes, which would allow the students to access films and additional material to supplement the chapter.

The minister said that the government has also decided that three existing schemes on improving public educationSarva Shiksha Abhiyan, the Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan and the Teacher Education (TE)would be merged.

An estimated allocation of Rs 75,000 crore over the period has been approved which is a 20 per cent increase over the current allocations.

The minister said a committee has been formed to look into the issue of promoting digital board by replacing the blackboard to improve quality of education. He said the committee will give their report in a month's time.
New Delhi: Pakistan has asked India to allow its officials to undertake a tour for inspecting Indian projects in the Indus river basin, which New Delhi said will be arranged in line with the provisions of the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT), according to government sources.

Pakistan made the request during the two-day meeting of the Permanent Indus Commission (PIC) between the two countries here.

The last time a Pakistani team of officials visited the Indus river basin in India was in 2014.

The sources said both the countries stuck to their respective positions over India's two hydropower projects Pakal Dul and Lower Kalnai, both in Jammu and Kashmir, during the 114th PIC meet.

Pakistan has been raising objections over the designs of Pakal Dul (1000 MW) and Lower Kalnai (48 MW) projects -- located in the Chenab basin in Jammu and Kashmir -- contending that they violate the IWT, signed in 1960. On the other hand, India has been maintaining that the designs of the projects are very much in line with the provisions of the water sharing pact.

The sources maintained that the discussions took place in a cordial manner during the meeting, which took place in the backdrop of the continuing tension between the two countries.

India's Indus water commissioner P K Saxena, technical experts and a representative of the Ministry of External Affairs took part in meeting as part of the Indian delegation. Pakistan's six-member delegation was led by Syed Muhammad Mehar Ali Shah.

Pakistan has requested for a general tour of inspection of various projects on Indus basin rivers. And India will consider that and arrange it in line with the provisions of the IWT, a source said.

India had arranged a tour of the Pakistani officials to sites of Pakal Dul and Lower Kalnai projects after the neighbouring country requested so in 2014, the sources said.

So far, 118 such tours have been made by both sides. Out of which, 70 tours were arranged on the Indian side and the rest 48 in Pakistan.

The sources further said that while Pakistan's objections regarding the two hydro electric projects were discussed by the two sides during the meeting, the issues concerning another of Indian project, Ratle (850 MW) -- located in Jammu and Kashmir -- were not deliberated upon.

India, sources said, had offered the Pakistan delegation discussion on Ratle, whose design Islamabad has been objecting to. But the delegation did not accept the offer, saying the issue is already being discussed at higher level than the Commission, that is, at the secretary-level.

India is always open to discussions. As a responsible state, India always takes care of the apprehensions of the lower riparian state (here Pakistan), the source said.

The PIC is an established mechanism under the IWT, which mandates it to establish and maintain cooperative arrangements for the implementation of the water distribution pact and to promote cooperation between the two sides in the development of the Indus water systems.

The IWT covers the water distribution and sharing rights of six rivers -- Beas, Ravi, Sutlej, Indus, Chenab and Jhelum.

The treaty specifies that waters from the three western rivers -- Indus, Jhelum and Chenab -- are reserved for Pakistan, while waters from eastern rivers -- Ravi, Sutlej and Beas -- are for reserved for India.

The PIC had last met in March 2017 in Islamabad. The meeting of the PIC is held alternately in India and Pakistan at least once every year as mandated by the treaty.
New Delhi: The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) conducts 32 examinations all through the year for nearly 1.4 crore candidates ranging from school students to professional aspirants. With committees being formed for every kind of examination, the overburdened body has members being part of two or more groups.

Talking about the same to News18, Former NCERT Chairman Krishna Kumar said, It is unfortunate that CBSE has been saddled with so many entrance exams and tests when its main function is to conduct secondary education examinations. It really is under great pressure.

The problem has long been noted. In 1986, the New Education Policy mooted the idea of a National Evaluation Organisation. It has been 32 years since but the plan is yet to take off. The Human Resource Development then came up with a National Testing Agency (NTA), a proposal cleared by the cabinet in November 2017.

NTA IN 2019?

In 2017, the Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi approved the formation of the NTA as an autonomous and self-sustained premier testing organization to conduct entrance examinations for higher educational institutions. NTA would initially conduct those entrance examinations which are currently being conducted by the CBSE.

Gradually, entrance examinations will be conducted online at least twice a year, thereby giving adequate opportunity to candidates to bring out their best.

According to the sources in HRD ministry, NTA will have its first exam in 2019, it will start with JEE and NEET. Other examinations will be taken up gradually after NTA is fully geared up.

The agency is going to be chaired by an eminent educationist appointed by the Ministry of Human Resource Development, the CEO will be the Director-General and his appointment will be taken care of by the Government. There will also be a Board of Governors, comprising members from user institutions. The Director-General will be assisted by 9 verticals headed by academicians and experts.

There will be a one-time grant of Rs 25 crore from the government to start NTA operations in the first year. Thereafter, it will be financially self-sustainable.

Former NCERT Chairman Krishna Kumar, though, is sceptical that the plan will take shape in 2019. This idea of having another body to share the burden is quite old. They have been talking about it since 1986 but it has not taken shape.

At the time of announcement, the HRD Minister had tweeted, Cabinet approves creation of NTA, a single agency to conduct all entrance exams for higher education institutions. With experts on board, it will bring in high reliability, standardized assessing aptitude & conduct of tamper-proof exams. (sic)

Apart from its core duty of secondary exams, CBSE as of now conducts nine other exams such as CTET, UGC NET, JEE Mains, NEET, JNV admission with lakhs of students appearing in them. NTA will take off the burden of conducting entrance exams, tweeted the HRD minister.

BURDENED BUT HIGH STAKES

The CBSE caters to 1.4 crores, it is spread across 22 countries and holds educational, professional and recruitment exams. It is burdened but thats not an excuse for letting us off from what happened. We have managed so far, and will do in future with all fairness, said an official in CBSE.

CBSE is one of the 52 boards in the country along with other national boards like ISC, ICSE and NIOS.

The burden on CBSE comes with it having higher stakes. It is under the Indian government and holds value in national scenario where we have competitive exams like IIT, NEET. There are other international boards like IGSCE and IB  they are good in education as their curriculum is in-depth while CBSEs is reductive, said Ashok Ganguly, the former CBSE chairperson.

REFORMS IN EXAMINATION SYSTEM

Education experts believe that though CBSE is burdened, it is also very opaque, Because of opacity one cant peep into its functioning. The whole system is submerged in darkness, and they maintain it in the name of confidentiality, said Kumar. He lamented that none of the examination reforms were implemented.

The National Council for Education Research and Training has still on its page the paper called Examination Reforms  prepared by a national focus group that had among its members the chairpersons of several boards, including the CBSE.

These points were elaborated after the National Curriculum Framework, 2005, gave several basic recommendations for reforming the secondary-level exam system. Dr Cyrus Vakil was the head of the group, he was the director of studies at Mahindra United World College of India in Paud, Pune.

Taking this argument forward, Ganguly added, CBSE pioneered the idea of multiple question papers. There were variations in questions but no variation in difficulty levels. After the announcement of retests, I have a hunch they have disbanded the good old system of multiple papers. By having the multiple sets of papers, the incidents like paper leaks would have had only localised exams.

He added, Without much introspection and measuring the pros and cons they seem to have disbanded the good old system.

HOW AN INTERNATIONAL BOARD HOLDS EXAMS?

The International Baccalaureate board, with its headquarters in Geneva, has a unique system of conducting exams  they have 20 students in one room with just two invigilators. They have an on-screen exam for Class X and every student has an individual login. The paper opens only on the day of the examination on computers.

There are different time zones distributed across that Asia-Pacific Region, America, Middle East, Europe, etc. and students of that region cannot leave the examination hall till the exams of another region are over. This has its own set of challenges.
New Delhi: The BJP is struggling to change a "perception" that it is against minority Muslims and lower-caste people, key NDA ally Ram Vilas Paswan has said, which could cost it votes in 2019 general election.

Union minister and the chief of the Lok Jan Shakti Party chief Paswan said his party represents socially backward classes, predicted another term for Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

But he said the BJP would have to work towards changing its image as a group that caters mainly to upper-caste Hindus.

"Whatever the government is doing it is doing for everyone; even for the minority community it has done a lot," Paswan said in an interview in his bungalow, seated on a couch under a huge oil painting of himself.

"But despite everything, the perception is not changing among the minorities and the scheduled castes (socially backward classes) irrespective of the work being done."

India's 1.3 billion people are about 80 percent Hindu and 14 percent Muslim, according to the latest census data. Backward classes make up about three-quarters of the Hindu population.

Critics say the BJP's Hindu nationalist agenda has polarised the population.

There have been widespread reports of cow vigilantes attacking Muslims accusing them of eating beef and killing cows.

'WELL-MEANING'

A crackdown on slaughter houses, tanneries and leather factories, mostly run by Muslims, has also hit a large number of lower-caste Hindus who transport cattle and work in tanneries.

Paswan said the opposition could take advantage of the BJP's pro-upper class Hindu image and it needed to be countered aggressively.

The BJP said Paswan's comment was a "well-meaning observation from an ally" but that the party has "foiled repeated attempts of the opposition Congress to create an impression that the BJP is losing the perception battle".

"We need to be cognizant of the fact that opposition parties have been raising a bogey of non-issues, but so far they've failed," said BJP spokesman GVL Narasimha Rao.

When Modi won office in 2014, his party or its partners ruled only seven of India's 29 states. Today, it is in power in 21 of them and has replaced Congress as the party with strongest nationwide presence.

But in the recent Lok Sabha by-elections for Gorakhpur and Phulpur seats, the BJP suffered defeat and two regional parties have walked out of the NDA coalition.

Paswan, whose party enjoys considerable support from the Muslim community in his home state of Bihar, said ending ties with the BJP-led NDA was "unthinkable".

"This is essentially a government of the BJP, they have an absolute majority. Still, Modi has given space to allies like us," said Paswan, a 10-time member of Parliament who began his political career in 1969.

"Can't even think of leaving the NDA. No one has approached me and I am happy where I am."
Superstar Shah Rukh Khan today said he is enjoying working on his upcoming film Zero as the process is making him feel as if he is "growing up very fast into a child". The 52-year-old actor took to Twitter to thank the film's director Aanand L Rai and the team for the experience.

"I am loving and living making 'Zero' the film. Thanks @aanandlrai and the whole team for this. Only way to describe it is 'I am growing up very fast into a child... Very fast'," Shah Rukh tweeted.

I am loving & living making Zero the Film. Thx @aanandlrai & the whole team for this. Only way to describe it is  I am growing up very fast into a child...very fast Shah Rukh Khan (@iamsrk) March 29, 2018

The actor plays a vertically challenged man in the movie, which is slated to be released on December 20. Shah Rukh reunites with his Jab Tak Hai Jaan co-stars, Anushka Sharma and Katrina Kaif in the film.
Bengaluru: Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Friday took a dig at BJP president Amit Shah for calling him 'AHINDU' (anti-Hindu).

Shah had said at a press conference at Davangere two days ago that Siddaramaiah is not an 'AHINDA' leader (a Kannada acronym for minorities, backward classes and Dalits) but 'AHINDU' leader (anti-Hindu).

Siddaramaiah told reporters in Mysuru that Shah should first clarify his position whether he is "AHINDU or not."

"Amit Shah is a Jain. He needs to clarify first whether he is AHINDU. Jain is a separate religion. How can he talk about me like that," Siddaramaiah said.

He said Shah was scared of him due to which he was making all "baseless" allegations against him.

During his two-day visit to the poll-bound Karnataka, the BJP national president had attacked the Karnataka CM on a number of issues. He said that the move to accord religious minority tag to Lingayats and Veerashaiva Linagayats was an attempt to 'divide' the Hindus.

"In 2013 when your own (UPA) government was in power at the Centre, they had rejected it. Why was Siddaramaiah silent then. This is an attempt to divide the Hindus..," Shah had said.

BP chief said it was not a programme towards the welfare of the Veerashaiva and Lingayat community but a "conspiracy" to stop Yeddyurappa, considered a Lingayat strongman, from becoming the chief minister.
New Delhi: Day two of the protests against CBSEs decision to hold re-exams after two papers were leaked saw a movement fractured and hijacked by college student unions.

A set of demands presented to the HRD minister Prakash Javadekar by four members of Congress student wing NSUI and a school student did not go down well with the other protestors. Their suggestion that all students unwilling to appear for a retest be given an average best score particularly riled the students.

Why should I get the same average score as others? asked an irate Ravinder, a class XII student from RP Vidyalaya. Mark me according to how Ive performed. Whether Ive attempted questions worth 40 marks or 70 marks, he said. This isn't our demand. We heard it from others it when we got here, said his companion, Yogesh, from the same school.

Ravinder and Yogesh, along with a group of their classmates, had come to central Delhi from Azadpur Mandi for the protest, only to run into a contingent led by the National Students Union of India.

The other demands of NSUI, along with Hamza Abbas, a class XII student from St. Columbas School, included sacking of the CBSE chairperson. They also said that a retest date should only be set for those who want to write the exam today and the rest should be given an 'average best score.

I sort of organised the protest, said Abbas, and I went with the NSUI members because they were very nice. The minister, he said, thought the idea of the average score was a good one.

The CBSE had on Wednesday announced that it would re-conduct the Class XII economics exam and the Class X Maths exam after they were leaked. Around 28 lakh students are affected by the move and many have taken to streets all across the country in protest, asking why they should be punished for someone elses mistakes.

Ayush Kumar, a class XII student of Army Public School, who was also a part of the protests, said the demands placed before the HRD minister were not shared with them. We dont want this, he said.

Though NSUI said they came up with their list after meeting and conferring with students, none of the students News18 spoke to were a part of the decision. Some of the students pointed out that NSUI wouldn't even talk to them when they tried.

And why would we want the CBSE chair to be sacked, said Ayush. We don't care about the management of the body, only the functionality.

Where's the security for any of these papers, asked these students. Tomorrow, pointed out Ayush, the Joint Entrance Exam (for the IITs) could be leaked. How will the ministrys security systems work then? he asked.

Our demands are the same as yesterday, said Pankaj, from SRS Mission School, who protested all day at Jantar Mantar on Thursday and rallied his peers on WhatsApp to turn out on Friday. Either cancel the re-test or redo the entire board examination.

The other students too clamoured for the same.

If the student unions are here to help us that's good, added Pankaj, but because of them, most of the other students who were here at the protest, left.

For many school students this is the first time theyve had to turn out against perceived injustice. Khushi Sodhi, who came with three other girls from St. Anthony's, said her parents made her go to fight for what she thinks is right.
New Delhi: CBSE examination question papers, it seems, are available dime a dozen.

There are messages in our inbox, and calls from unknown numbers offering exam papers for Rs 3,000 or Rs 4,000, said Paras, one of the students protesting the CBSEs decision to reconduct Class X maths and Class XII economics papers at Jantar Mantar on Thursday.

I got a message on Wednesday offering the Class XII political science paper for Rs 2,000 or Rs 3,000, added his batchmate Pankaj, from SRS Mission School. What is the guarantee that the re-tests won't be leaked? he asked.

Political Science is one of the upcoming Class XII CBSE board exams. The 10th and 12th CBSE board exams are under scrutiny after reports of question paper leaks spread like wildfire.

An anonymous message calling for protests against CBSEs decision to hold the Class X maths and Class XII economics papers again, did the rounds on WhatsApp and Instagram on Wednesday night. As a result, about 50 students turned up at Jantar Mantar on Thursday morning. Sloganeering against CBSE, they all demanded that either the re-test of two papers be cancelled or the entire board exams be held again.

A parent, Priya Jain, showed this reporter photos of a handwritten copy of the Biology question paper that circulated among parents and children. It was out two days before the actual exam. We got the accounts paper while our children were inside the exam centre, she said.

With papers bouncing across Instagram and WhatsApp, students pointed out how easy leaks were thanks to social media. It will take a person sitting inside CBSE two minutes to leak them, said Pankaj.

These leakages made students and parents doubt CBSEs ability to hold water tight re-tests. Instead of only economics students suffering, they asked that all the papers be held again instead.

The protesting students couldn't stress enough how unfair the Board's decision is. What have we done? Why should we suffer because of a few? said Ojasvy Chandok, a Class X student from St. Thomas school, who circulated the protest call among her peers after she received it around 9pm, Wednesday. CBSE isn't taking our hard work into account.

Chandoks batchmate Adiba, said that she freaked out when she heard shed have to write her maths paper again. This isn't our fault, she said, why is CBSE experimenting with our batch? This was the first time in eight years that Class X students studying in CBSE affiliated schools had to appear for board exams.

Students in Class X are doubly hit as many had scheduled preparation for university entrance tests. JEE [the entrance for ITTs] is coming up, said Pankaj.  So are BBA entrance tests and CLAT. How will we study for those?

If all the exams are redone, then CBSE can ask universities to postpone their exams. Otherwise why will colleges care about two re-tests, said Priya Jain, whose two daughters just wrote their 10th and 12th papers.

Economics was easy, no doubt, said Paras and Pankaj, speaking over each other. But what if it's tough the next time?

The fear among parents and students is that the re-test will be purposefully tricky. Students, who say theyve slept either three to four hours a night for months now, or not slept at all the nights before exams, are losing more sleep over this.

My daughter wanted to sleep, and have ice cream after her maths paper. She hadn't had ice cream in months so that she wouldn't get a sore throat, said one parent who wanted to remain anonymous. She's pretty depressed.

Despite the enormity of the issue and the efforts of some students to organise, the protest had a faltering start. Adiba said that of her 40 classmates half were supposed to turn up. Only a handful did.

Some parents don't want kids protesting. They've formed an idea from JNU protests and are scared of clashes with the police. Many students, added Pankaj, were afraid no one would listen to their voices so they saw no point in turning up.

As one parent here said, this is their first brush with hitting the streets.
The best part about the Cannes Film Festival is its ability to keep us engaged not just during the 12-day event on the French Riviera, but also in the months leading to the actual event, held every May. Announcements that range from naming the presidents of the main competition jury, Camera dOr and A Certain Regard to the unveiling of the titles (this year on April 12) in Paris keep Cannes fans in a state of high adrenaline rush.

And the Festival is just out with the news of its plan to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Stanley Kubrick's magnificent 2001: A Space Odyssey. It will be a world premiere of, mind you, an un-restored 70 mm print, and the movie will be introduced by no less a director than Christopher Nolan  whose Dunkirk and Inception were seen recently in India and who is one of the few helmers still keen on using celluloid, not digital.

Nolan will champion the cause of movie preservation by hosting a discussion on Reframing The Future of Film in Mumbai on April 1.

Kubrick  renowned for works like Lolita, A Clockwork Orange and Eyes Wide Shut (with the then husband- wife duo, Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise)  will be celebrated on May 12 as part of the Cannes Classics. Kubrick's (who died in 1999 just after he had completed Eyes Wide Shut) daughter, Kathrina Kubrick, and his longtime producing partner and brother-in-law, Jan Harlan, will be at Cannes to cheer the space adventure.

Nolan, who will be at Cannes for the first ever time, will hold a masterclass on May 13 where he will talk about film preservation and his love for all things Kubrick.

Nolan said in a statement: One of my earliest memories of cinema is seeing Stanley Kubricks 2001: A Space Odyssey,' in 70mm, at the Leicester Square Theatre in London with my father. The opportunity to be involved in recreating that experience for a new generation, and of introducing our new unrestored 70mm print of Kubricks masterpiece in all its analogue glory at the Cannes Film Festival is an honour and a privilege.

The movie starred Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood as astronauts on a voyage to Jupiter with the computer HAL 9000, following the discovery of a mysterious black monolith, which had a profound effect on human evolution. Kubrick won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, in addition to clinching nominations for direction and original screenplay.

Many, many critics consider 2001: A Space Odyssey as Kubrick's masterpiece, not A Clockwork Orange, a dystopian crime thriller, or Eyes Wide Shut, a study of eroticism.

The Festival's 71st edition will run from May 8 to 19

(Gautaman Bhaskaran is an author, commentator and movie critic who has covered the Cannes Film Festival for 28 years, and may be emailed at gautamanb@hotmail.com)
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Reacting to CBSEs decision of re-examination of Class 12 economics and Class 10 mathematics papers, actor Rani Mukerji said the retests should not be a matter of concern for students if they are well prepared and the syllabus does not change.

In the wake of reports claiming paper leaks of the two papers, the Central Board of Secondary Education announced the retests on Wednesday.

When asked to comment about CBSEs decision, Rani told reporters, If the students are prepared for the exams and the syllabus doesnt change, it doesnt matter if the exams are held again. If students are just mugging up then itll be a problem. If theyre preparing from day 1 then it doesnt matter.

The 40-year-old actor was speaking at the success celebration of her recent release, Hichki, in which she plays a school teacher who has Tourettes Syndrome.

Of course, it changes their vacation plans a bit. That might take a beating I guess. But in terms of students, I am sure they all are very bright, she added.
Lok Sabha elections are still a year away, but political activities are furiously changing the temperature. Today, two questions are on everyones minds  will Modi be the Prime Minister again? Will the opposition unite to make the fight even?

Modi is definitely not as popular as he used to be despite his massive victories in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand and breaking new grounds and many myths in north eastern states.

The BJP right now is in power in 22 states and if credit should be given to one person, it is Modi and nobody else. Amit Shah is only a tool to execute his ideas and endeavour. There is no doubt that Amit Shah has turned the BJP into a big election machine; still, he is the executioner and not the originator of the ideas.

So at a time when Modi is downhill, economy does not show any sign of improvement, rural distress is increasing, joblessness has become a new monster, there are accusation of corruption in the Rafael deal, the alleged proximity with Nirav Modi has raised a few unanswered questions and allies seem to have tasted blood, the question is can the opposition exploit the situation to its advantage? It is in this context that Mamata Banerjees visit to Delhi and her meetings with the opposition leaders assumes significance.

Mamata Banerjee belongs to a state where the BJP is still a marginal player, but has ambitious plans. Slowly, Left and Congress have been relegated to the fringe. Mamata knows that the BJP will be her future enemy. Both the RSS and the BJP and all their affiliates are concentrating their energies with a long-term vision in West Bengal.

The communal clashes in the state are the by-product of the aggressive assertion of the BJP to challenge the dominance of the Trinamool Congress. The mobilisation on the religious lines will be a new experience for her. It would be in her interest if she could come out of the past, leave her acrimony with Left on the back burner and stitch a relationship to nip the challenge in the bud. But the Left also has its dilemma. It cant leave a state like this where it had ruled like a king for 35 years. Therefore, her first challenge would be to manage her state and present that as model for the rest.

Mamata has to play the role of Devi Lal. The strong man of Haryana had emerged as a pillar of strength in late 1980s. It was the time when Rajiv Gandhi had the most historic mandate, more than 400 seats in the Lok Sabha, the Opposition seemed to have vanished, the BJP had only two seats, and Andhras TDP led by NT Ramarao was the biggest party in the opposition benches in the Lok Sabha.

The Opposition was in shambles then. It needed a leader who could unite them. Devi Lal was the chief minister of Haryana and was old enough to patronise others. VP Singh was no doubt the star attraction, was the face and the crusader. But he had no links with the opposition leaders. All his life he had been in the Congress. He was a chief minister of Uttar Pradesh and later finance minister in the Rajiv Gandhi cabinet, before resigning over the Bofors scandal.

Initially, VP Singh was reluctant to join hands with the opposition. He had created his own platform called the Jan Morcha. He was in two minds on whether he should carve his own path or to go with the rest. His dilemma was how he can join the forces he had fought all his life. He was also worried if it would compromise his image as Mr Clean.

Senior leaders led by Devi Lal, Harkishen Singh Surjit, Jyoti Basu, NT Ramarao, Ram Krishna Hegre and LK Advani convinced him that without a joint opposition, the whole exercise would be futile. A man with a sharp mind, he understood the logic.

The Congress at the time was a colossus. It was not a party, but a system. The Congress could be defeated only when the opposition came together. The experiments of 1967 and 1977 were the two examples before the nation. Devi Lal played a great role in getting Left, Right and Centrist forces together. All the splintered groups of the Janata Party were requested to merge their identities and form the Janata Dal.

For those who could not join the Janata Dal, a National Front was created. The Left, led by the CPM, and the BJP decided to support the National Front from outside, without diluting their core ideologies. It was a unique experiment. The VP Singh government was supported by the two most ideologically antagonistic parties. The BJP and Left were the two crutches on which the National Front government of VP Singh was standing. Today, Mamata and other opposition leaders have to recreate the same magic.

Today, the world is less ideological despite the rise of the Right across the globe. Since the Second World War, the world was sharply divided into two ideological camps. India was no different. In 1980s, the Left in India was powerful, the BJP was weak. Still it was unthinkable to put the two together on the same pedestal. But politics was dictated by the practical realities on the ground. The need was to defeat the Congress, which was overwhelmed by corruption charges. Leaders then were smart, they could read peoples pulse. Will they do the same today is the question. The question also is whether Mamata can play that role.

In a de-ideologised world, Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav have shown the way. If they can come together to defeat the BJP in Gorakhpur and Phoolpur, then Mamata and the Left can also jointly declare their intent to fight communal forces.

K Chandrasekhar Rao and the Congress in Telangana, and TDP and YSR Congress in Andhra Pradesh can also develop an understanding to fight Narendra Modi. There is hardly any difference between the Congress and the NCP, and they can easily be together. The Shiv Sena and MNS can also be spoken to to understand the logic of Modis defeat. No wonder Mamata is meeting and talking to all of them, including Arvind Kejriwal.

Mamata has excellent relationship with Sonia Gandhi. She knows the Congress in and out and she is the right person to make her think that a nation-wide platform will ultimately help the Congress. If Modi is not defeated in 2019, the Congress will suffer the most. The Congress can talk to Naveen Patnaik and Mamata can be a mediator.

Like anti-Congress-ism of the 1980s, anti-BJP-ism can be the glue today. The TDP has already left the NDA, the Shiv Sena is acting like an opposition party, Om Prakash Rajbhar in UP is unhappy, Upendra Kushwaha is meeting Lalu Prasad Yadav, Ram Vilas Paswan is also squirming.

The need of the hour is to chalk out a plan and a common minimum programme without fighting for the face of the platform. Modi can be defeated, but opposition has to first believe this.

(The author is an Aam Aadmi Party leader. Views are personal)
Chennai: With the Centre failing to meet a Supreme Court deadline to set up the Cauvery Management Board, the Tamil Nadu government is all set to file a contempt plea against it.

According to a source, the petition will likely be filed on Saturday.

On February 16, delivering its judgment, the Supreme Court set a deadline of six weeks for the Centre to frame a scheme for the implementation of the final award of the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal (CWDT) given in February 2007.

The court, while dealing with appeals filed by Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala against the final award, had also stated that no extension shall be granted for framing of the scheme on any ground.

Deputy Chief Minister O Panneerselvam, in a tweet, said AIADMK will go on a hunger strike on April 2 on the issue. He wrote: AIADMK will hold a hunger strike on April 2 in all districts demanding the Centre to set up Cauvery Management Board."

Meawhile, DMK attacked both the BJP and the AIADMK over the non-constitution of Cauvery Management Board.

Stalin, DMK Working president, in a statement, alleged that the ruling government was working overtime for the BJP's victory in Karnataka to escape from corruption cases.

Post its executive council meet, DMK decided to stage a state-wide protest across Tamil Nadu. It will also convene an all-party meeting to discuss the future course of action. But it doesnt end there. The DMK is all set to show black flags when PM Modi visits Chennai on April 15.

"DMK wont file a contempt petition against the Centre as it is the state government's responsibility to take legal route. We will stage massive protests across Tamil Nadu after consulting other opposition parties. We will also show black flags to Prime Minister Narendra Modi when he visits Chennai on April 15 for failing to implement the verdict on Cauvery within the stipulated time. O Panneerselvam has been demanding all of us to wait. The state government held a high-level meeting yesterday but the outcome of the meet was not known. This is a corrupt government. If the AIADMK members resign, we will make our representatives resign as well. We have repeatedly sent letters to PMO on Cauvery but we haven't received a reply from them," said Stalin.

BJP, however, says the delay is not keeping in mind the Karnataka elections.

"Since Karnataka government is not accepting the Centre's proposal, there is a delay. This is the final judgment of the SC and there is no way that politics is involved in this issue. Any government would try to abide by the SC judgment. Hence, there is no politics," said Narayanan Tirupathi, BJP spokesperson.
Hyderabad: As the political deadlock continues over the issue of Special Category Status, the people of Andhra Pradesh have decided to take the lead in the fight against the Centre.

Various organisations fighting for the cause are uniting and preparing for protests in the coming days.

One such effort is the Joint Action Committee formed by students from seven university unions and other youth organisations. By April end, the JAC plans to expand its reach to all districts and go to the mandal level.

Every Telugu person was affected with the bifurcation. What has been the support from Centre is unclear. Everyone who wants to work is disturbed. The situation is that we all are ready to come out on streets and protest to demand what was promised to us, said Krishna, a student.

Chalasani Srinivas, head of the Vibhajana Hamila Sadhana Samithi, which is also a part of the JAC, said that the issue will become a massive peoples movement.

"Everyone is doing politics for selfish gains. If genuine demands of people are not addressed, then the struggle will turn into a massive movement. As a first step, all student and youth organisations have united under JAC. Next, we plan to rope in lawyers, employees and eventually everyone in the state. There is growing anger and disappointment," she said.

The JAC has also appealed to all the people in the state to wear black ribbons as a mark of protest against the unfulfilled promises on April 5.

With assembly elections in the state just one year away, political parties too are bringing in intellectuals, middle-class people, employees, youth, and are calling for a collective fight.

Telugu cinema industry has also extended support to Chandrababu Naidu and has decided to show their protest by wearing black badges. To express solidarity, all government officials have also decided to work an extra hour.
Bengaluru: Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah recently held an informal meeting with some of his ministers during which he sought Bidar district in-charge Ishwar Khandres views on fielding businessman Ashok Kheny, who has been accused of corruption, from the Bidar South Assembly seat.

Khandre, a powerful Lingayat leader, bluntly told Siddaramaiah that it would be difficult for the party to defend Khenys candidature as the controversial Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprises (NICE) chief is facing several charges of corruption worth crores.

An embarrassed Siddaramaiah reportedly told Khandre that they are left with no other choice but to go with Kheny, and Khandre reluctantly agreed.

Sitting Independent MLA Kheny joined the Congress in a surprise move just a month ago. Most leaders, including Siddaramaiah, were reportedly against taking him into the party as he is facing the ire of farmers around Bengaluru for allegedly grabbing tens of thousands of acres of valuable land in the name of the NICE project.

Siddaramaiah had even constituted a cabinet sub-committee headed by the states Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister TB Jayachandra to inquire into the scam. The Jayachandra Committee had indicted Kheny and recommended penal action against him.

According to insiders, Kheny joined the Congress using the Delhi route  a way of referring to the party high command in New Delhi.

Contacted by News18, Siddaramaiah said, He has joined the Congress, not the government. We have not given him a clean chit. If he is convicted by a court, we will definitely take action against him.

The entry of the controversial businessman has come as a huge embarrassment for state leaders ahead of the elections. But Kheny is not alone.

MLAs Anand Singh and Nagendra, one-time close friends of the infamous Bellary Reddy brothers, joined the Congress during party president Rahul Gandhis HyderabadKarnataka tour around two months ago. Both Singh and Nagendra have been accused of involvement in a multi-billion dollar mining scam and were sent to jail for some time.

A red-faced Congress had defended their inclusion, blaming local political compulsions for the same. Both are once again contesting the Assembly elections, this time on the hand symbol.

Karwar MLA Satish Sail, another mining scam accused, has also been promised a party ticket this time. In 2013, he had won as a Congress rebel and had spent a few months in jail. Interestingly, the Congress had come to power fighting the same rogue elements in 2013 Assembly elections.

The main opposition BJP, which has accused the Siddaramaiah government of corruption, too has some black sheep. The Bellary brothers, led by former minister Gali Janardhana Reddy, are back in action, claiming that they will not rest till they bring the BJP back to power. Since the Supreme Court has barred Janardhana Reddy from entering Bellary, he has set up a base on the Chitradurga-Bellary border to handle elections in his hometown.

His younger brother and former Bellary City MLA G Somashekhara Reddy is once again lobbying for a BJP ticket from the same seat. Both brothers were in jail in connection with the mining scam.

Even though the state BJP is maintaining that Janardhana Reddy is no longer with them, Bellary district BJP unit claims that he is still their leader. Janardhana Reddy also told the media that he is a servant of the saffron party.

Commenting on this, JD(S) supremo and former prime minister HD Deve Gowda said, They (Congress and BJP) loot together and eat together. What can we do?
Voters pose outside a polling booth in Karnataka.



People were seen standing in queues to cast their votes in the early hours itself, factoring in that the temperature may go up later in the day. Also, it has been raining in different parts of south interior Karnataka for the last couple of days during the evening hours.



Senior citizens were seen in good numbers standing in queues at various polling stations to cast their votes early.



State BJP chief and party's chief ministerial candidate B S Yeddyurappa, and Pradesh Congress Committee G Parameshwara were among the first to cast votes in Shikaripura in Shivamogga and Yaggere in Tumakuru respectively.



Former prime minister HD Deve Gowda along with wife Chennamma cast their votes at Paduvalahippe in Hassan district. Film actors Ramesh Arvind, Ravichandran, also scion of Mysuru royal family Yaduveer Krishnadatta Chamaraja Wadiyar were among the prominent personalities to cast their votes early today.



There are reports about delay in polling due to some technical issues with the electronic voting machines (EVMs) from different parts of the state.



Election for the Jayanagara seat in Bengaluru has been countermanded following the death of BJP candidate and sitting MLA BN Vijaykumar.



The Election Commission has also deferred the polls for Rajarajeswari Nagar constituency to May 28 after a massive row erupted over a large number of voter ID cards being found in an apartment.



Suspecting something fishy, both Congress and BJP have pointed accusing fingers at each other in the matter. "Today people of Karnataka are standing in queues to create history & show the nation the way to liberal, progressive, peaceful & compassionate politics & governance. I thank them for their support & wish them well," Chief Minister Siddaramaiah tweeted.



Over 2,600 candidates are in the fray-- more than 2400 men and and over 200 women. The total voters including service electors according to the 2018 final rolls are 5,06,90,538, of whom 2,56,75,579 male voters, 2,50,09,904 female and 5,055 transgender voters.



Officials said 58,008 polling stations have been set up across the state, of which 12002 have been designated as "critical", with over 3,50,000 polling personnel on duty. Police have made elaborate security arrangements for the smooth conduct of polls that will go on till 6 pm.



"82,157 people have been deployed for poll duty that includes DSPs, home guards and civil defence, and forest guards and watchers," Karnataka DGP Neelamani N Raju said. This also includes about 7,500 personnel from states like Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Maharashtra, Chattisgarh, Kerala and Goa, she said, adding, central forces have been deployed.



One among the interesting aspects of this election is that four candidates who have served as Chief Minister of Karnataka are in the fray-- Chief Minister Siddaramaiah (Chamundeshwari and Badami), B S Yeddyurappa (Shikaripura), H D Kumaraswamy (Chennapatna and Ramanagara) and Jagadish Shettar (Hubli-Dharwad Central.)
Lucknow: In a startling admission, Union Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment in the Narendra Modi government Ramdas Athawale has said that the Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party can bag around 25 to 30 seats in Uttar Pradesh in the 2019 Lok Sabha Elections.

Even if SP-BSP come together for 2019 Lok Sabha Polls, they will win around 25-30 seats only. But if Mayawati comes with NDA then we will win all the 80 Lok Sabha seats from Uttar Pradesh, said Athawale.

The minister was possibly impressed by the good showing by the SP-BSP alliance in the recently concluded UP bypolls in which they managed to win Gorakhpur and Phulpur, the constituencies of CM Adityanath and deputy CM Maurya.

Addressing a press conference at the VVIP Guest House in Lucknow, founder of Republican Party of India (A), Athawle said that Samajwadi Party is betraying Bahujan Samaj Party and if Mayawati is really interested in the development of the Dalits and Backwards then she should come along with NDA.

Even if there is a third front formation in 2019 Lok Sabha Polls, then too NDA will win and form government again. Mayawati has been Chief Minister of the state thrice with the support of BJP, while Samajwadi Party is betraying BSP. If Mayawati is really serious about Dalits and their development then she should come along with NDA, he said.

Athawale termed Mayawati's resignation from the Rajya Sabha as a mere "stunt". In July last year, Mayawati resigned from the Rajya Sabha hours after the Chair asked her to restrict her impromptu speech on anti-Dalit violence in Saharanpur of Uttar Pradesh.

Resignation from Rajya Sabha was a mere stunt by Mayawati. On the other hand, politics in the name of Dr BR Ambedkar is wrong, I am in favour of changing the name of Dr BR Ambedkar to Dr Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar and I want to thank CM Yogi Adityanath and Governor Ram Naik for this, said Athawale.

Ramdas Athawle also said that although there was a rise in violence against Dalits in the name of Gauraksha, but at the same time he also hailed the efforts made by CM Yogi to curb the violence against Dalits in the state.
Richfield: US President Donald Trump insisted Thursday that US forces would pull out of Syria "very soon" and lamented what he said was Washington's waste of $7 trillion in Middle East wars.

In a populist address to industrial workers in Ohio, Trump said US forces were close to securing all of the territories that the Islamic State jihadist group once claimed. "We'll be coming out of Syria, like, very soon. Let the other people take care of it now," he promised, to applause.

Trump did not say who the others were who might take care of Syria, but Russia and Iran have sizable forces in the country to support Bashar al-Assad's regime. "Very soon  very soon we're coming out. We're going to have 100 percent of the caliphate, as they call it  sometimes referred to as 'land'  taking it all back quickly, quickly," he said.

"But we're going to be coming out of there real soon. Going to get back to our country, where we belong, where we want to be."

The United States has more than 2,000 military personnel in eastern Syria, working with local militia groups to defeat the extremist Islamic State group while trying to keep out of Syria's broader civil war.

Trump's eagerness to quit the conflict flies in the face of a new US Syria strategy announced in January by then secretary of state Rex Tillerson  who has since been sacked. Tillerson argued that US forces must remain engaged in Syria to prevent IS and Al-Qaeda from returning and to deny Iran a chance "to further strengthen its position in Syria."

In a speech at Stanford University, he also warned that "a total withdrawal of American personnel at this time would restore Assad and continue his brutal treatment against his own people."

But Tillerson has gone after being dismissed in a tweet and Trump, who increasingly makes foreign policy announcements without seeking the advice of US generals or diplomats, wants out. "We spent $7 trillion in the Middle East. And you know what we have for it? Nothing," Trump declared, promising to focus future US spending on building jobs and infrastructure at home.
Gaza City: A Palestinian farmer was killed in Gaza by an Israeli strike early Friday, the health ministry in the enclave said, ahead of a day of major protests.

A spokesman for the ministry said one farmer was killed and another injured by Israeli artillery fire near Khan Yunis in southern Gaza.

The ministry identified the victim as 27-year-old Omar Samour. Local eyewitnesses said he was on his land near the border when the incident occurred.

There was no immediate confirmation from the Israeli army of the strike.

It comes just hours before the start of a major demonstration, which is set to kick off six weeks of protests leading up to the inauguration of the new US embassy in Jerusalem around May 14.

Dubbed "The Great March of Return," the protests, which include hundreds of people camping close to the sealed and heavily guarded Israeli-Gaza border, has the backing of Gaza's Islamist rulers Hamas.

The protests have raised concerns in Israel about potential border breaches, with the army adding hundreds of reinforcements, including more than 100 special forces snipers, along the border in recent days.

Hamas has fought three wars with Israel since 2008.
Moscow: Russia expelled 59 diplomats from 23 countries on Friday and said it reserved the right to take action against four other nations in a worsening standoff with the West over the poisoning of a former Russian spy and his daughter in Britain.

Russia said it was responding to what it called the baseless demands for scores of its own diplomats to leave a slew of mostly Western countries that have joined London and Washington in censuring Moscow over the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.

A day earlier, Moscow ordered the expulsion of 60 US diplomats and the closing of the US consulate in St Petersburg, Russia's second city, in retaliation for the biggest ejection of diplomats since the Cold War.

Preparations appeared to be under way on Friday to close the St Petersburg mission down, with a removals truck making repeated journeys to and from the consulate which took delivery of a large pizza order for its staff.

Russia summoned senior envoys on Friday from most of the other countries that have expelled Russian diplomats and told them it was expelling a commensurate number of theirs.

Russia has already retaliated in kind against Britain for ejecting 23 diplomats over the first known use of a military-grade nerve agent on European soil since World War Two. British ambassador Laurie Bristow was summoned again on Friday.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said Bristow had been told London had just one month to cut its diplomatic contingent in Russia to the same size as the Russian mission in Britain.

A spokeswoman for the British Foreign Office did not say how many British diplomats would be affected, but said Russia's response was regrettable and Moscow was in flagrant breach of international law over the killing of the former spy.

The poisoning, in southern England, has united much of the West in taking action against what it regards as the hostile policies of President Vladimir Putin. This includes the United States under President Donald Trump, who Putin had hoped would improve ties.

Russia rejects Britain's accusation it stood behind the attack and has cast the allegations as part of an elaborate Western plot to sabotage East-West relations and isolate Moscow.

The hospital where she is being treated said on Thursday that Yulia Skripal was getting better after spending three weeks in a critical condition due to the nerve toxin attack. Her father remains in a critical but stable condition.

The BBC, citing sources, reported on Friday that Yulia was "conscious and talking".

EXPULSIONS

During the course of Friday, the Russian Foreign Ministry summoned senior embassy officials from Australia, Albania, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, the Netherlands, Croatia, Ukraine, Denmark, Ireland, Spain, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Romania, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Canada and the Czech Republic.

All were seen arriving in their official cars at the Foreign Ministry's gothic building in Moscow.

"They (the diplomats) were handed protest notes and told that in response to the unwarranted demands of the relevant states on expelling Russian diplomats ... that the Russian side declares the corresponding number of staff working in those countries' embassies in the Russian Federation persona non grata," the ministry said in a statement.

Four other countries - Belgium, Hungary, Georgia and Montenegro - had only "at the last moment" announced that they too were expelling Russian diplomats over the Skripal affair, and Moscow reserved the right to take retaliatory action against them too, it said.

Emerging from the Foreign Ministry building, German ambassador Rudiger von Fritsch said Russia had questions to answer about the poisoning of Skripal, but Berlin remained open to dialogue with Moscow.

The US State Department said after Russia announced the expulsions on Thursday evening that it reserved the right to respond further, saying the list of diplomats designated for expulsion by Russia showed Moscow was not interested in diplomacy.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, in a conference call with reporters on Friday, disagreed with that assessment, saying that Putin still favoured mending ties with other countries, including with the United States.
Colombo: Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena Wednesday reduced the responsibilities of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe as a power struggle worsened within their uneasy coalition.

Sirisena took away the central bank, the policy-making National Operations Room and several other institutions from the control of Wickremesinghe, who had held them since coming to power in January 2015.

The changes were published in a government gazette notice issued Wednesday which transferred the responsibilities to Finance Minister Mangala Samaraweera.

There was no official explanation for why the Central Bank of Sri Lanka had been taken away from the prime minister's control. In 2015 a central bank governor appointed by Wickremesinghe, Arjuna Mahendran, was accused of insider trading.

Sirisena appointed a special inquiry which cleared Wickremesinghe of any wrongdoing. But Mahendran was held responsible for passing sensitive information to his bond-dealer son-in-law Arjun Aloysius to make $75 million in undue profits.

Sirisena joined hands with Wickremesinghe's United National Party (UNP) to oust strongman president Mahinda Rajapakse in January 2015 after a decade in power.

But since then their alliance has fractured, with Sirisena clashing with free-market champion Wickremesinghe over economic policy.

Relations worsened further after their coalition did badly in local government elections last month.

The president blamed the premier for their electoral setbacks.

Earlier this year, Sirisena publicly lambasted Wickremesinghe and his UNP, saying they had mismanaged the economy. Sirisena said the current government was also more corrupt than the former regime they toppled together.

A section within Sirisena's party supports a no-confidence move against Wickremesinghe slated for April 4. However, the UNP is the largest single party in the 225-member assembly and commands a comfortable majority with the help of allies.

The premier could be brought down only if Sirisena can unite his own fractured Sri Lanka Freedom Party and engineer defections from Wickremesinghe's UNP.

Tensions between the coalition partners have also escalated over Sirisena's attempts to extend his presidential term by one more year till 2021, a move that was rejected by the Supreme Court earlier this year.

The UNP has suggested that it may go it alone at the next general election in 2020. Presidential powers to sack the government and call early elections were removed through a constitutional amendment introduced in the early days of the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe coalition.
The Sandman ended 25 years ago - and is more relevant than ever

Looking back at Sandman and how much it mattered (and matters) to comics
NASA's next Hubble James Webb space telescope delays launch until 2020

Washington : NASA is now targeting May 2020 for the launch of its James Webb Space Telescope, the $8 billion dollar Hubble successor. The announcement on Tuesday made after an independent assessment of remaining tasks for the highly complex space observatory further pushes the launch target of the next-generation space telescope by about a year.

"Webb is the highest priority project for the agency's Science Mission Directorate, and the largest international space science project in US history," said acting NASA Administrator Robert Lightfoot.

"All the observatory's flight hardware is now complete, however, the issues brought to light with the spacecraft element are prompting us to take the necessary steps to refocus our efforts on the completion of this ambitious and complex observatory," Lightfoot said.

Testing the hardware on the observatory's telescope element and spacecraft element demonstrate that these systems individually meet their requirements.

However, recent findings from the project's Standing Review Board (SRB) indicate more time is needed to test and integrate these components together and then perform environmental testing at Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems in Redondo Beach, California, the project's observatory contractor.

NASA said it is also establishing an external Independent Review Board (IRB), chaired by Thomas Young, a highly respected NASA and industry veteran who is often called on to chair advisory committees and analyse organisational and technical issues.

NASA will consider the findings and recommendations of both the boards' findings for defining a more specific launch time frame.

The US space agency will then provide its assessment in a report to Congress this summer. Webb is an international project led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency.

NASA will work with its partner, ESA, on a new launch readiness date for the Ariane 5 vehicle that will launch Webb into space. ESA is providing the Ariane 5 as part of its scientific collaboration.

Once a new launch readiness date is determined, NASA said it will provide a cost estimate that may exceed the projected $8 billion development cost to complete the final phase of testing and prepare for launch.

Additional steps to address project challenges include increasing NASA engineering oversight, personnel changes, and new management reporting structures.

"Considering the investment NASA and our international partners have made, we want to proceed systematically through these last tests, with the additional time necessary, to be ready for a May 2020 launch," said Thomas Zurbuchen, Associate Administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate.
Dreamed of this day for 5 years: Malala Yousafzai in Pakistan

Lahore : Malala Yousafzai, who survived Taliban's assassination bid, came back to Pakistan after five years to the tragic attack, claiming to continue her battle for the education of women.

She returned to Pakistan with more courage and confidence, asking people to unite for the movement. Malala will be staying for four days and try to present the work done by her foundation to educate women.

Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi welcomed her and noted the tragic day of attack with an assurance that Pakistan has come a long way ahead to overcome terrorism.

Addressing the gathering, Malala went emotional and shared how much she missed Pakistan while she was away for her treatment and education.

I still cannot believe this is happening. I have dreamed of this day for five years. All the time I was in cars and planes around the world, I used to tell myself that I am back home in Pakistan. And it was never true, she said between sobs of happiness.

The attack happened and I had to leave home, everything was happening by itself. I could not control it, she added.

It is still not clear if she will be visiting her hometown during her current visit to Pakistan.
Tit for Tat! Russia to expel 60 United States diplomats

Moscow : Russia announced on Thursday the expulsion of 60 US diplomats and the closure of the American consulate in St. Petersburg in retaliation for Washington's decision to boot an equal number of Russian diplomats over the poisoning of double-agent Sergei Skripal.

"Based on the reciprocity principle, as a retaliatory measure, 58 employees of the US Embassy in Moscow and two staff members of the Consulate-General in Yekaterinburg have been declared personae non gratae for the activities incompatible with their diplomatic status," Russia's foreign ministry said.

The expelled diplomats have until April 5 to leave Russian soil, while personnel at the US Consulate-General in St. Petersburg must abandon the premises no later than Saturday, Efe reported.

"US Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman has been summoned to our ministry, where my deputy Sergei Ryabkov is briefing him on the tit-for-tat steps against the US," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Thursday at a press conference in Moscow.

Russia's action came three days after Washington ordered the expulsion of 60 Russian diplomats - including 12 working at the United Nations - and the closure of the Russian Consulate in Seattle.

The United States is among more than two-dozen countries that have ordered upwards of 150 Russian diplomats to leave as a gesture in support of the United Kingdom, which accuses Moscow of being behind the poisoning of Skripal and his daughter, Yulia.

On March 4, the Skripals were found unconscious on a park bench in Salisbury, England, where 66-year-old Sergei settled after being released from a Russian prison in a spy swap.

Both father and daughter remain hospitalized, but doctors said Thursday that Yulia, 33, is "improving rapidly and is no longer in a critical condition. Her condition is now stable."

The British government said the Skripals were poisoned using a nerve agent of "a type developed by Russia."

Moscow denies any responsibility for the poisoning and Lavrov on Thursday accused Washington and London of "encouraging a slanderous campaign against our country."

Russia plans to carry out proportionate expulsions of diplomats from every country that has ordered Russian diplomats to get out, Lavrov said.
Instead of taking years, a dream house can go up in months. Financing often comes easier than traditional construction, and buyers know exactly what to expect in their new homes.

Modular construction can be used for homes of a range of sizes and prices, and its popularity continues to grow around southwestern Connecticut.

Roughly 92,900 manufactured homes were produced at about 120 plants nationwide last year, according to estimates by the Manufactured Housing Institute of Arlington, Va. This was nearly 11,000 more units than in 2016 for a 14 percent increase.

MHI estimates that manufactured housing constituted 9 percent of newly constructed single-family homes in 2017, with about half of the units comprised of multisection modules.

In 2016, the state Department of Transportation estimated that 240 modular homes were shipped into or through Connecticut that year, largely from a dozen factories in Pennsylvania.

Business owners and builders say they expect to see plenty more to come from the market in southwestern Connecticut.

Rise in demand

David Dillman, a home consultant and designer with Westchester Modular Homes of Fairfield County, said demand for modular homes is up about 20 percent over the last few years. Much of that is related to fires and other disasters  the company is still working on several Hurricane Sandy replacements  although demand in general is steadily climbing.

The cost of building materials is rising, so modular is a way to help people rein in costs, he said.

Joe Enright, vice president of Westchester Modular Homes, based in Bethel, said the buying power behind his company allows it to control costs.

Were able to commit to pricing because we pre-buy, he said. The price is not going to change. Thats a real advantage for modular right now.

Paul Scalzo, president of Westchester Modular Homes, said banks are quick to finance modular homes because they go up faster than traditional construction.

Dillman said lower Fairfield County is a traditionally strong market for his company, which recently opened a Stamford office to go along with the head office in Bethel and another new office in Wellesley, Mass. While upscale colonials are the most popular style, the company has built homes from 800 up to 5,000 square feet, Scalzo said.

People are building homes that are more efficient, Enright said. They used to build all these McMansions, but now instead of cavernous, they want a cozier house now.

Buyer appeal

That kind of flexibility in design is one of the many draws to going the modular home route, according to Jim Hines, owner of Westport Modular Builders. The Westport-based business is a full-service modular home dealer and designer, and constructs homes for clients throughout Fairfield County.

Hines clients, like other modular home businesses, are looking to build a home for themselves from scratch and to their liking rather than choosing from houses already on the market. Along with customizing their design, the Westport resident said the process behind the build adds to the appeal.

The more educated people become on homes, the better it is, Hines said. These homes are built in a factory just like a car, so all the material is out of the weather; its all dry. Its constructed in an environment that is quality controlled that has professionals doing the same job every day. It has to be built strong enough to travel down the highway, so they are stronger-built homes.

While homes are being built in the factory, sites can be prepared simultaneously, making the building process quicker than in with traditional stick-built homes. Modular units can be completed within three to four months, Hines said.

Realtors are in

Marlene Fischer, of Shelton-based William Raveis, she has found the modular market to be interesting for homeowners looking to sell.

On the sales side, especially if they are at higher price points, people are nervous. Sometimes the sellers are nervous that the people who are buying will feel its not custom enough, but actually they do really well. They do really well on inspection, and a lot of times you would never know that it is a modular until you get to the inspection.

Fischer said she sold two properties in the past year that were modular homes that left clients satisfied.

In the right situation, Fischer described said a modular home buildout is a great opportunity for people to get their homes faster.

That has also captured the attention of some clients of Greenwich realtor Mark Pruner at Berkshire Hathaway N.E. Properties.

Pruner saw minimal downside to prebuilts aside from them being tough to modify once theyre locked together, but few people want to modify them.

If theres something that works for you, you can save a significant portion over stick-built, Pruner said.

This article has been updated to clarify the data used from the MHI.
NEW MILFORD  A black and white photo of some 20 women walking across the town green in the late 1890s hangs at the entrance of the New Milford Historical Society and Museum.

It is believed the photo documents the renaming of town hall as the Roger Sherman Town Hall  the first project undertaken by the Roger Sherman Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

On April 7, the chapter will kick off its 125th anniversary celebration with a tea at the museum, where guests can view that photo and other artifacts pertaining to the organizations history. The original membership applications line one wall, along with photos of the women.

Its pretty impressive that this organization is celebrating the 125th anniversary and still going strong, said Bonnie Butler, the chapters regent, or president. Its because of vibrant, hardworking women who keep it going.

The tea, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., will include speakers, and visitors can reserve a time to have a silhouette done for $30.

Other events planned are a gala, a concert, a Revolutionary War encampment and a program on Roger Sherman  the patriot who lived in New Milford and is the only Founding Father to sign the Articles of Association, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation and the U.S. Constitution.

Its going to be exciting, said Mary Schenzer, the chapters historian. We have a lot of fun things in the works.

The Roger Sherman chapter was established on May 8, 1893, making it the ninth chapter in Connecticut and the 174th nationwide. The national organization was founded in 1890.

Through the years, the women have worked to preserve history, support the military and promote education. They were recognized in 2014 as the Connecticut DAR Chapter of the Year for outstanding service and commitment.

The Roger Sherman chapter has done something to help the causes of all American wars since the Spanish-American War, Butler said.

In World War I, the chapter sent chickens to France, helped orphans and donated money. Theyve presented Quilts of Valor to veterans and brought the Wall that Heals, a replica of the Vietnam Memorial, to town in October 2016.

Butler and Schenzer said bringing the memorial to town was one of their most memorable initiatives. They recalled how moved some of the veterans were, and how some waited until nightfall so they could visit it privately.

After 50 years, it was still very emotional, Schenzer said.

The exhibit includes a section comparing the real-life DAR service with its portrayal in The Gilmore Girls, a television show about a single mother and her daughter living in small-town Connecticut in the early 2000s.

The show, though it has been off the air for a decade, still has a strong fan base, contributing to a themed festival held locally.

The Roger Sherman Chapter was invited to host a booth at the latest festival in Kent, where it had a slideshow and genealogist for women interested in joining local chapters.

More Information For more information about the DAR event (www.RogerShermanDAR.org), or to RSVP for the tea or a silhouette appointment, call Bonnie Butler at 860-354-5129. See More Collapse

Lisa Roush, the curator of the museum, said it was fitting the two organizations are working together for this exhibit, especially because they share founding members.

She said the museum has artifacts that belong to the women, but the chapter history is coming from current members.

Schenzer was always drawn to the DAR because of her grandmothers involvement and her own love of history.

She has eight storage boxes of the chapters history, including scrapbooks from the late 1800s and early 1900s documenting their efforts.

Guests will be able to look through these scrapbooks during the tea.

The person keeping the scrapbooks took pains to make them beautiful, she said, adding many of the pages have drawings.
Carol Kaliff / Hearst Connecticut Media

NEW MILFORD  Larry Marsicano, the former executive director of the Candlewood Lake Authority, was presented an award for Excellence in Environmental Stewardship by the Connecticut Outdoor and Environmental Education Association (COEEA) for his work on Candlewood.

The award, given to those who engage and motivate the public to protect the environment, celebrated Marsicanos research of the lake and his accomplishments in his 14 years with the authority.
France has released a 152 page report For a Meaningful Artificial Intelligence written by Cedric Villani. Villani is a famous French mathematician and member of parliament. He led a study on how to develop the countrys AI economy.

* economic strategy for developing Frances AI ecosystem

* mitigate AI induced disruption

* proposes big increases in government spending on AI research, funds for backing AI startups, and programs to study the technologys social impact. It also calls for vocational training to get more people into AI-related fields, as well as expanding university education programs to triple the number of graduates in AI fields by 2020.

Frances government has pledged to provide as much as 300 million euros ($370 million) a year for research and projects.

* Samsung said it would open a Paris AI center with 100 researchers

* Fujitsu said it would expand on its previously announced plan to invest $61 million in a Paris AI center over five years.

* London-based DeepMind said it would open a Paris lab with 15 researchers, with intentions to expand well beyond that. The Paris effort will be led by Remi Munos, one of DeepMinds principal research scientists, who will be tasked with establishing the companys presence in his native France

France sees China and the USA as the national AI heavyweights. The emerging AI powers are seen as the UK, Canada and Israel. Each are developing extremely different approaches.

The french task force recommends focusing on four key sectors:

* healthcare

 early detection of diseases

 the 4 Ps of healthcare (personalized, preventive, predictive and participatory healthcare)

 elimination of medical deserts

* environment

* transportmobility

* defense-security.

The report recommends reviewing Frances public procurement. The budget is estimated at close to 70 billion euros for the State, public authorities and local bodies each year and it is insufficiently oriented towards innovation. Public procurement needs to support European industries and at

breathing fresh momentum into innovative public spending.
Physicists at Imperial College London can now produce a continuous maser beam in room-temperature conditions. The set-up involves shining a laser light through a diamond, sapphire and copper apparatus to create the microwave emission.

The sensitivity of existing microwave amplifiers had been limited by background noise. The latest technique pushes the noise of these amplifiers down while also allowing them to operate at room temperature, says David Awschalom, a physicist at the University of Chicago in Illinois, who was not involved in the research. This work is very exciting.

Diamond Age of Masers

The research, published in Nature on 21 March, builds on a system made in 2012 by members of the same team. That device also worked at room temperature but it produced only maser pulses, which are less useful than a continuous beam. The team solved that problem by replacing a key component of the set-up called the gain medium. The first device used an organic molecule called pentacene, which degraded over time. In the new instrument, they inserted a tiny diamond created under particular conditions, which was more stable and produced non-stop radiation.

The latest maser is still just a proof of principle and will require improvements in its power and stability to match existing devices, says Ren-Bao Liu, a physicist at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. But it could benefit fields that currently use low-temperature amplifiers, by creating cheaper, more-convenient devices, he says. Moreover, its exploitation of a feature of the diamond that was used  small defects known as nitrogen-vacancy centres  means it might also find applications in quantum technologies that also take advantage of those imperfections

Nature  Continuous-wave room-temperature diamond maser

Abstract

The maserthe microwave progenitor of the optical laserhas been confined to relative obscurity owing to its reliance on cryogenic refrigeration and high-vacuum systems. Despite this, it has found application in deep-space communications and radio astronomy owing to its unparalleled performance as a low-noise amplifier and oscillator. The recent demonstration of a room-temperature solid-state maser that utilizes polarized electron populations within the triplet states of photo-excited pentacene molecules in a p-terphenyl host paves the way for a new class of maser. However, p-terphenyl has poor thermal and mechanical properties, and the decay rates of the triplet sublevel of pentacene mean that only pulsed maser operation has been observed in this system. Alternative materials are therefore required to achieve continuous emission: inorganic materials that contain spin defects, such as diamond and silicon carbide, have been proposed. Here we report a continuous-wave room-temperature maser oscillator using optically pumped nitrogenvacancy defect centres in diamond. This demonstration highlights the potential of room-temperature solid-state masers for use in a new generation of microwave devices that could find application in medicine, security, sensing and quantum technologies.
Contributed

NEW HAVEN  Richard Lloyd, as a founding member of Television, played a historic role in the New York rock scene of the 1970s.

Televisions 1977 debut album, Marquee Moon, was considered to be one of the strongest things to come out of the CBGBs rock scene  no small thing when you consider some of the other bands playing there at that time, including Blondie, the Ramones and Talking Heads.
NEW HAVEN  Albertus Magnus College announced Erik Clemons, the founding CEO and president of Connecticut Center for Arts and Technology and a member of the state Board of Education, would be its first commencement speaker in a decade.

Rosanne Zudekoff, director of communications for Albertus Magnus College, said a decision was made 10 years ago to shorten the program, but President Marc M. Camille made the decision to reinstate the speech this year.
GUILFORD  After a lengthy investigation, Guilford Police have arrested a man who allegedly burglarized a home on Long Hill Road and caused over $300,000 in damages while the family was on vacation, according to a police press release.

Daniel Taylor, 33, of Glastonbury, was arrested March 27 and charged with first-degree larceny, third-degree burglary, first-degree criminal mischief and second-degree criminal trover.

The report states Taylor and his girlfriend used social media to identify individuals going on vacation or extended stays away from their residences. They would conduct internet queries to identify the home address of individuals posting about their vacation and then conduct surveillance on the residence to ensure it was unoccupied, according to police.

When the homeowners returned they found the home burglarized, a car stolen and extensive damage rendering the house uninhabitable, according to police.

Guilford Police were assisted by Glastonbury Police, the Connecticut State Forensic Lab and the Westfield (Mass.) Police Department. Taylor is suspected of committing numerous other burglaries throughout Connecticut and Massachusetts.

The Guilford Police Department would like to encourage the public to be aware of this method used to identify potential burglary victims. Refrain from posting to social media about vacations or extended stays. If you feel the need to share, wait until you have returned home. Notify neighbors or someone you trust to check on your residence while you are away.

The Guilford Police Department offers the service of home checks to all Guilford residences if you are planning an extended stay away from home. Residents can sign up for the service by going to the Guilford Police Department and completing a house check form. Police will then check on the security of your residence periodically while youre away.
Lindsey Hodges is a general assignment reporter who joined the Aiken Standard and North Augusta Star in June 2017. She graduated from the University of South Carolina with a Bachelor of Arts in journalism.
Vous etes confrontes a une infestation par la puce, la punaise de lit ? Voici plusieurs actions qui sont a mettre en uvre pour faire []
March 27, 2018 Melanie Sander , (6626) 680-4053

TUPELO, MS  The Natchez Trace Parkway (Parkway), through the Youth Partnership Program, collaborated with the University of North Alabama (UNA) to create six internship opportunities. Students, under the guidance of Assistant Professor of Elementary Education Dr. Lorie Johnson, are working with the Parkway on digital media products that will highlight the rich natural and cultural history along the Alabama section of the Parkway.



When completed, the project will provide curriculum-based resources for both classroom and place-based instruction. The Parkway is a national treasure and the opportunity for our UNA students to collaborate and create innovative pathways for students to explore the Parkway has been an invaluable experience. The products they have created are amazing. We cant wait to share these educational resources with teachers around the nation, stated Dr. Johnson.



This project has exposed students to diverse experiences in their chosen career fields and encouraged them to rethink the history of their community. Working with the Natchez Trace Grant Project Team has allowed me to research the lush history of the Parkway, write lesson plans for elementary education teachers, design web pages, and write informative texts for the public, added Qadirah Monroe, who is an undergraduate in professional writing. Jesse Laster, who is an undergraduate in elementary education continued, I have learned so much about the Old Natchez Trace and the Parkway while working on this project. I have lived in the Shoals area my entire life. Prior to this opportunity, I did not know much about the history of the Old Natchez Trace other than its connection to the Trail of Tears. From a future educator's perspective, I truly believe these resources will be beneficial for me and any other teachers who strive to engage students in social studies and science.



The Parkway enjoys the opportunity to engage with area students through community partners like the UNA, stated Superintendent Mary Risser.



www.nps.gov



About the National Park Service. More than 20,000 National Park Service employees care for Americas 417 national parks and work with communities across the nation to help preserve local history and create close-to-home recreational opportunities. Learn more at www.nps.gov.


Roseburg, OR (97470)

Today

Mostly sunny skies. High 86F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

A few clouds from time to time. Low 52F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph.
NORRISTOWN, Pa.  A Pennsylvania judge said on Thursday that he would not step down from Bill Cosbys sexual assault retrial, rejecting defense arguments that his wifes support of sexual assault victims had created an appearance that he could be biased in the high-profile case.

Judge Steven T. ONeill of the Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas grew emotional and paused twice to compose himself as he read a statement defending his wife, Deborah V. ONeill, a therapist at a University of Pennsylvania center where she counsels students who have been sexually assaulted. He described her as an independent woman with her own views that have no relevance to his views as a judge or the retrial of the veteran entertainer.

Its difficult to have her accomplishments trivialized by a partisan motion, the judge said. My wifes personal beliefs and her professional activities are of no consequence. They do not influence me one iota.

He rejected a defense motion in which Mr. Cosbys lawyers had argued, among other things, that the judge should recuse himself because recent rulings he had made, such as his admitting additional female accusers to testify at the trial, were evidence he had been influenced by his wifes views.
A psychiatrist testified on Thursday that a nanny who fatally stabbed two small children in her care believed she was following a command from the Devil and was in the grip of psychosis so severe she could not understand her actions or recall them later.

She wasnt in her normal conscious state, where she could control her behavior, the psychiatrist, Dr. Karen Rosenbaum, told jurors on her second day of testimony. She was in a dissociative state and a psychotic state and wasnt aware of her actions.

Dr. Rosenbaum was the first of several expert witnesses expected to testify at the murder trial of the former nanny, Yoselyn Ortega, who has entered a plea of not responsible by reason of mental disease or defect.

Ms. Ortega, 55, is charged in State Supreme Court in Manhattan with two counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of Leo Krim, 2, and his sister Lucia, 6, on Oct. 25, 2012. If convicted, she faces life in prison. If found not responsible, she would be committed to a secure psychiatric facility.
If you had pulled somebody aside in the mid 1970s and asked him to predict how racially integrated America would be in 2018, he would probably have said: pretty integrated. American schools were integrating very quickly back then. The subject of racial integration was on everybodys tongue. Young people seemed to be growing up in a very different racial environment, and the rising tide of immigration was making America a more diverse place.

Unfortunately, the mid-70s were, by some measures, a kind of a high-water mark. School integration peaked then, and American schools have been resegregating since. Measured by Google Ngram, the phrase racial integration was used most frequently then; people have been using the phrase less and less ever since.

By the late 1990s, passion for the cause had been lost. As Tamar Jacoby wrote in her 1998 book Someone Elses House: If integration is still most Americans idea of the goal, few of us talk about it any more. The word has a quaint ring today  like gramophone or nylons. 

Now we seem to have entered a phase of trepidation, or even passive segregation. Race is on everybodys mind, but are there enough efforts to create intimate bonds across racial lines? Jacoby emphasizes that there are two kinds of integration, objective and subjective. The former is about putting people of different races in the same classroom, office and neighborhood. The latter is about emotional bonds of connection, combining a positive sense of pride in group with an overall sense that we are a we.
After the 2010 earthquake killed more than 200,000 people and displaced more than a million, the government of Haiti identified mining for gold and other metals as necessary to strengthen the economy.

To that end, the government and the World Bank worked to revise the countrys mining law to attract foreign investment. Their draft law, which was presented to Parliament last July and is awaiting consideration, did not include input from Haitian environmental and human rights organizations.

The lack of transparency surrounding the proposed new mining law raises significant concerns about whose interests would be represented under the revamped legal framework. Canadian and American companies have already been granted permits to explore for gold, copper and other metals in the northern hills of Haiti. Although the full extent of Haitis mineral resources is unknown, some estimate that there is $20 billion worth of precious metals in the soil. If passed, the law would pave the way for the countrys first commercial metal mine.

The experiences of poor but resource-rich countries around the world provide a stark reminder that translating natural resources into public wealth is a very risky business  one that often fails. Even in developed countries, industrial-scale mining has contaminated water, increased security threats, forced thousands of people from their homes, and damaged ecosystems for generations. In poor countries like Haiti, the record is even worse. Given the unique vulnerabilities it faces, mining could deal the countrys environment and economy a blow from which it would never recover.
The report also questioned the contention that defeat in Vietnam would cause governments around the world to doubt the willingness of the United States to live up to its international commitments. Since the Eisenhower years, leaders had justified their decisions to escalate American involvement in Vietnam in part on the supposition that its alliances could unravel  and Communist challenges to American interests could multiply  if other nations had reason to question Washingtons resolve when it confronted challenges.

In fact, the C.I.A. study asserted that damage to national credibility would be limited and temporary. The Soviets would continue to act with their usual caution and would pull back in the face of new indications of American strength, according to the report. It even speculated that willingness to accept defeat in Vietnam might improve the reputation of the United States with its NATO allies, who might view Washingtons willingness to cut its losses in a region of secondary importance as a sign of maturity rather than unreliability.

A secretarys notation on the document, which was declassified in 1993, indicates that Johnson read the study, but there is no record of his reaction. None of his aides could recall speaking with him about it. Its not difficult, though, to imagine why he would have ignored it.

Most obviously, he might have dismissed the document as irrelevant, since he remained convinced that the United States was on course to achieve its basic objectives in Vietnam. That, after all, would be the central theme of a major effort undertaken by the administration later in the year to re-energize the nations commitment to the war.

Political calculations may also have played a role. Just as in earlier years, Johnson feared that backing down in Vietnam would jeopardize his re-election in 1968 and the prospects of the Democratic Party more broadly. The party had already suffered setbacks in the 1966 congressional elections, and bigger disasters loomed if Republicans could paint their rivals as irresolute cold warriors. Closely related, perhaps, was Johnsons concern for his own reputation and legacy. A man of towering ambitions, he shuddered at the thought of becoming the first president to lose a war.

Or it may be that Johnson simply could not see past pervasive assumptions about the monumental stakes of the war. To be sure, he had occasionally questioned the importance of Vietnam during private conversations with aides and was well aware that many prominent Americans in and out of government had long doubted the need to fight there.
WASHINGTON  Hope Hicks, the White House communications director who worked behind the scenes to direct the president through multiple professional crises  and decided to resign after she found herself exhausted by them  has left the building.

Those left behind are wondering what happens now.

Thursday was the last day at the White House for Ms. Hicks, a 29-year-old from Connecticut, whose unlikely career trajectory from corporate public relations hand to White House communications director kept pace with President Trumps own unorthodox rise to the Oval Office. Over three and a half years, from the early trenches of the presidential campaign to desks within earshot of each other in the West Wing, Ms. Hicks had become Mr. Trumps most trusted aide  and, perhaps most important, his unofficial translator to the rest of the staff.

Her ability to anticipate what he wants and also execute cant be replicated, said Hogan Gidley, a White House spokesman. At least not immediately.

Ms. Hicks never gave a single on-camera interview during her time in the White House. Unlike her boss, attention from the news media was never something she sought.
WASHINGTON  Attorney General Jeff Sessions rejected on Thursday a request from Republican lawmakers to appoint a special counsel to investigate allegations by conservatives that Justice Department officials abused their authority in surveilling a former Trump campaign official.

In a letter to three congressional committee chairmen, Mr. Sessions said an existing Justice Department inquiry into issues raised earlier by the lawmakers included an examination of the surveillance matter, obviating the need for a special counsel. He identified John W. Huber, the United States attorney in Utah, as the prosecutor leading that investigation and stressed that he welcomed lawmakers scrutiny.

I take the concerns you raise seriously, Mr. Sessions wrote, adding, No institution is perfect.

Nonetheless, his decision not to appoint a special counsel, at least for now, is almost certain to disappoint Republicans. Even after the announcement a day earlier that the Justice Department inspector general is also examining the allegations, lawmakers reiterated their calls for a special counsel.
WASHINGTON  President Trumps dismissal of David J. Shulkin, the secretary of veterans affairs  and the nomination of a Navy doctor with no known policy views to take his place  has brought renewed focus to an increasingly contentious debate over whether to give veterans the option of using the benefits they earned through military service to see private doctors rather than going to government hospitals and clinics.

The issue, which has pitted almost every major veterans group against Concerned Veterans for America, an advocacy group funded by the billionaire conservative brothers Charles G. and David H. Koch, and its allies, has been at the center of months of intrigue at the sprawling Department of Veterans Affairs, which is charged with caring for the United States 20 million veterans.

But Mr. Shulkins departure and the abrupt elevation of Dr. Ronny L. Jackson, the White House physician, to the departments top job on Wednesday have raised new fears among Democrats and groups like the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Legion. They worry that the Trump administration will push for a major change in veterans health care that they have bitterly opposed.

The groups say the end result would be disastrous, effectively bleeding to death a network of 1,700 hospitals and clinics that has taken decades to build.
President Trump and his old friend David J. Pecker, whose company owns The National Enquirer, have long had a mutually beneficial relationship. Now that Mr. Trump is president, Mr. Pecker has showcased his access to him, including when he recently sought to do business with people in Saudi Arabia.

Here are five times that Mr. Pecker and his company, American Media Inc., protected, defended or championed Mr. Trump.

Killing a models story about an affair with Trump

Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model, recently filed a lawsuit against American Media, saying she wants to be free to speak about an affair she says she had with Mr. Trump over a decade ago. She said she signed a legal agreement with the company in 2016 that prevented her from talking about her alleged relationship with Mr. Trump.

In her lawsuit, Ms. McDougal alleged that Mr. Trumps lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, was secretly involved when Mr. Peckers company sought to silence her by buying the rights to her story in August 2016 for $150,000 but never publishing it. In the tabloid industry, that move is known as a catch and kill.
His brown eyes sunken and flat, Jahangir Baroch had spent another sleepless night in the metal container on the Greek island of Lesbos where he has lived for more than a year.

There was no electricity in the container last night, Mr. Baroch, 26, said desperately, at a center for refugees, away from the holding camp in Moria, where he is housed. It was like a fridge.

I want to go to Athens, said Mr. Baroch, who came from Baluchistan, an embattled province in Pakistan. If you dont want me, I want to go to another country.

Why am I here? he asked, somberly.

Others are asking the same question two years after the European Union struck a deal with Turkey aimed at cutting off the route across the Aegean Sea for asylum seekers, many propelled by wars in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Since then, thousands have remained stranded on Lesbos, unwilling to go back to the countries they left, unable to move forward, toward the opportunity they had hoped to find in Europe. Though the numbers are fewer, they keep coming.

The lucky ones, whose asylum applications are accepted, are eventually shipped to the Greek mainland. Those whose applications are rejected (they can apply twice) are sent back to Turkey as part of the deal with the European Union.

But neither country, it seems, has much motivation to accept them. The Greek authorities sift their cases slowly, for months at a time, as the asylum seekers live in limbo, trapped in conditions so deplorable Pope Francis likened them to a concentration camp.

The scale of the migration crisis that brought them to Lesbos can be measured in piles of discarded life vests that still blight the island. But increasingly it is tallied in despair.
Some biblical scholars have concluded from this that Bach acted like an astute textual critic, poring over Calovs volumes and painstakingly comparing them, line by line, with other Lutheran Bibles. But theres a simpler and more likely scenario, fully grounded in conservative 18th-century social and religious practices.

Picture the people of Bachs household on free evenings, gathered in their living room for the activity of reading aloud. The children take turns reciting from a family Bible for practice in reading and elocution, not to mention spiritual edification. The patriarch follows along in his magnificent Study Bible, in part to make sure theres no passage-skipping from the lectors, and in part to allow him to reach for his inkwell whenever he spots, compared with what hes just heard, an error in Calovs scriptural verses.

Tellingly, in something akin to what linguists call a mondegreen, Bach at several passages apparently misconstrued what the children  in this reconstruction of the scene  had said, and emended a scriptural verses legitimate Lutheran rendering to a similar-sounding but unattested wording. At Isaiah 16:8, Luthers text reads: its vine-branches are scattered, and over the sea. Bach caught sight of Calovs obvious typographical error Fesser, but he evidently misheard a lectors utterance of the correct wording, and thus emended Luthers intended Feser (vine-branches) to the biblically unattested Faer (wine-casks).

The Calov volumes also provide insight into Bachs professional and personal concerns, showing that he understood himself less as a modern artist than as a preacher who was following his religious vocation. An annotation in Latin that the Crocker Laboratory physicists have filed under definite Bach entries makes for especially poignant reading, as it takes note of manifold passages in the Bibles Solomonic literature speaking of how to find godly solace in a world that is hostile to people faithfully pursuing their divine callings. Sundry administrative records indicate that Bach often fell into trouble over philosophical differences with his employers about the place of music in worship and in education.

Only a handful of Bachs entries in Calov concern music, and these have received the most extensive  indeed, typically the only  attention from biographers. Leading writers have striven to explain these marginalia as progressive. In truth, all of them straightforwardly reflect conservative Lutheran thinking. What they share as well is a premodern interpretive approach called typology, whereby events and principles in the era of ancient Israel act as types or shadows for their correlated antitypes or substances in the era of Christianity. Typology was looked upon less as a scholarly path to intellectual understanding than as a doctrinal path to spiritual comfort.
Welcome to The Month in Live Jazz, a column highlighting five standout performances from the past month on stages across New York City.

MILES OKAZAKI Jazz Gallery, March 16

The guitarist Miles Okazaki paused midway through the late set at the Jazz Gallery to offer a note of gratitude. The material he was playing  all from Trickster, his standout 2017 album  had first taken shape at this space two years earlier. Throughout his performance, the music made it clear that the room continues to be a fertile ground for Mr. Okazaki and his partners.

He was joined by the rhythm section from Trickster  Anthony Tidd on bass and Sean Rickman on drums  as well as Matt Mitchell on piano. All four musicians have come through the tutelage of the alto saxophonist and rhythmic experimentalist Steve Coleman, and Mr. Okazakis tunes offer their own inquiries into and around Mr. Colemans strategies. Slippery cadences blend funk with ideas from around the globe; flashes of conspicuous historical memory meet a tenacious futurism.

Mr. Okazakis set featured five tunes from the album. He began many of them with halting, staccato phrases on the guitars bottom three strings, engaging Mr. Tidd in a bubbling repartee before the entire band was eventually pulled into the tangled flow. Mr. Okazaki rarely plays chords; his linear style has a fleetness reminiscent of Pat Martino and a rough, chunky picking style not unlike that of Grant Green. But over the unflexed, tumbling grooves of his rhythm section, such as in the set-closing Caduceus, his playing felt like something utterly contemporary, free from the expectations of what it means to play a guitar in a group setting  not just in jazz, but any kind.
Was interested in watching until I heard she supports Trump. Can you say boycott? COLIN

Used to love the old show & Roseanne Barr too. Things change. Now, not only do I dislike the woman, Ill never let my TV rest, even for a moment, on her show. I do hope it fails. The wrong side of history is no place to be. @MSANNIEREGARDS, VIA TWITTER

Admiration for Speaking Her Mind

If Roseanne is being truthful in this interview, I have new respect for her. She factually rejects the interviewers attempt to misrepresent Mr. Trumps position on a number of issues, and she is not afraid to do so. Good for her. PAUL, WHITE PLAINS, N.Y.

As for Roseanne the actual person, shes never been afraid to shock or say whatever she wants, so Im surprised that anyone is surprised and offended. I dont require that the actors in a show or all of its characters agree with me politically in order to enjoy it. E.G., NEW YORK

When did we become so weak that we cant even bear to hear an opinion that is different from our own? I hope that the show can help us remember that we didnt always hate the other side. LISSA ANN, VIA FACEBOOK

No Explanation for Her Political Position

Was really hoping to see someone I thought was smart and articulate explain how they can support Trump  without devolving into a tirade against the left  and she completely passed on it. It was an opportunity to explain your views to an audience that needs to hear it. And you passed. For me, that calls into question whether the views are genuine, or whether they are supported by anything other than hatred and bigotry. TK, VERMONT
Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous nights highlights that lets you sleep  and lets us get paid to watch comedy. If youre interested in hearing from The Times regularly about great TV, sign up for our Watching newsletter and get recommendations straight to your inbox.

Hes a Veteran, I Have Affairs. Its Perfect.

Trevor Noah is suspicious of President Trumps decision to nominate the White House physician, Dr. Ronny L. Jackson, to run the Department of Veterans Affairs. Noah pointed out that the move puts Jackson, who has limited managerial experience, in charge of a $186.5 billion department that delivers medical services to over nine million veterans.

Noah said it was another example of Trumps choosing an unqualified candidate based on their personal relationship.

He wants his personal pilot to run the F.A.A. For housing and urban development, he was like, Yo, Ben Carson, youre urban, you work. And now, for veterans affairs, Trump is like, Hes my doctor, hes a veteran, I have affairs. Its perfect.  TREVOR NOAH

James Corden took a similar angle of attack during his monologue on The Late Late Show.
On May 2, 1963, teenagers and children marched in Birmingham, Ala., against segregation. The police arrested many of them for parading without a permit and sent them to jail. Officers also turned fire hoses on the protesting children. It didnt deter them. The marches, known as the Birmingham Childrens Crusade, continued for days.

The children-led protests in 1963 were part of the Birmingham Campaign, a series of civil rights protests led by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The childrens protest helped turn the nations attention to Jim Crow laws and segregation in the South and served as a turning point of the movement.

A month later, President John F. Kennedy called for a bill that would later become the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Can you imagine? one of the protesters from 1963 told NPR last week, here we are in 2018, and were still reliving some of this stuff.

Claire Moses contributed reporting.

_____

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Coffee sellers are mulling how to fight a California judges ruling that would require the beverage to be branded with cancer warning labels.

The National Coffee Association, whose members include Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts, said in a statement on Thursday that it was currently considering all of its options, including potential appeals and further legal actions.

The ruling stems from a lawsuit filed in 2010 by the Council for Education and Research on Toxics, a nonprofit group based in Long Beach. The group charged that Starbucks and other companies  a group that eventually included 91 defendants  did not warn consumers that ingesting coffee would expose them to acrylamide, a chemical formed when coffee beans are roasted.

California keeps a list of chemicals it considers to cause cancer or reproductive harm, and acrylamide has been included since 1990. The states Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act, known as Proposition 65 after it was passed in 1986, requires businesses to provide warning labels when exposing consumers to any of the hundreds of chemicals listed.
Walmart, the giant retailer, is constantly looking for ways to expand its business. Humana, the health insurer, is watching the consolidation taking place in its industry and looking for a partner.

Now the two companies are exploring ways to strengthen their ties, people briefed on the matter said Friday, the latest sign of the disruptive pressure that is forcing new alliances in the health and retail industries.

Walmart is unlikely to end up taking over Humana, these people said, but the deal could result in a financial and operating partnership around prescription drug sales or insurance coverage.

While much of the focus in retail is geared toward millennials, Walmarts discussions with Humana involve another large and lucrative market  the health care needs of Americans over 65.
Haider Ackermann will leave Berluti, the LVMH-owned fashion label and footwear house, the company announced on Friday. Mr. Ackermann had been at the label since September 2016, a short tenure even in the current cyclone of the fashion industry, where designer entrances and exits are common and many contracts are for three-year terms.

His departure comes at a moment of upheaval in the mens wear industry and in particular at LVMH. Within the last three months, the company announced a new designer for its Dior Homme label (Kim Jones, formerly of Louis Vuitton, the LV in LVMH), a new designer for Vuitton (Virgil Abloh) and a new mens collection for Celine (by its incoming designer, Hedi Slimane, the original designer of Dior Homme). Kris Van Assche, who led Dior Homme for 11 years, is currently without a position.

While many designers working in mens wear today affect an ultracasual style inflected by the success of street wear, Mr. Ackermann is a romantic of a more swashbuckling type. He has an evocative back story  he is Colombian by birth, was adopted by a French cartographer and his wife, raised in Africa and the Netherlands and educated in Belgium  and a durable poetic stripe. (When he accepted the Berluti position, he told The New York Times: It just felt right. Like having a new lover.)
And then Stella McCartney announced she was buying her brand back from Kering, the luxury group that also owns Gucci, YSL and Balenciaga (another brand, by the way, that now has a high-fashion streetwear guy, Demna Gvasalia, as its head designer). They had previously had a joint venture, and now Stella will be 100% indie and self-owned  at least until she takes on another investor, which she may or may not do.

What does it all mean?

As for the first item, I would expect a lot of logo action to start. Then, the question will be whether the Abloh appointment really does herald the luxury streetwear age, a sector-disrupting event that may change how we think about clothes in a permanent way. (Unlike, say, when contemporary designers such as Alexander Wang hit Paris, which despite a lot of hype had very little permanent effect.) Or whether it reveals, as some have suggested, that Mr. Abloh is an emperor who talks a great game but actually has no clothes.

As for the second, there has been a lot of cheering about this being a triumph for the indie designer (an oft-seeming endangered species) versus the corporate megalith, coupled with rumors that Ms. McCartney will bring her show back to London from Paris. That isnt happening, however  at least not according to her spokesman. And while its possible Ms. McCartney may pick up the banner of the indie designer from such champions as Dries Van Noten and Rei Kawakubo  she has never shied away from activism  my guess is that this is more a practical decision about her business, and Kerings, than a major political message about the state of the industry.

But we shall see!

In the meantime, and speaking of luxury streetwear: Apparently in Sunday nights NBC production of Jesus Christ Superstar Live John Legend will play Jesus while wearing  really expensive Balmain jeans. (And no, thats not an April Fools Day joke.) Dont know about you, but that seems kind of off-character to me.

So if you want something else to think about, check out this story about the complications of creating a fashion week in Saudi Arabia, these tips on how to travel light and dress well (its possible!), and the surprising news about the troubles at H&M.
On Dec. 16, 2016, the day before their anniversary as a couple, Ms. Basile had been writing a paper all day and into the evening in their new apartment when Mr. Smith asked if she could take a break at midnight for Champagne. She was expecting a low-key anniversary toast, but Mr. Smith had a better idea.

It was midnight and he was getting the Champagne, and he said, Why dont we play the music ball? she said. Years earlier, Ms. Basile had given him a wooden sphere that, when wound with a key, plays a tune from The Magic Flute, a favorite opera. Ms. Basile grabbed the ball off a bookshelf. As she was about to wind it up, she found, around the key, an Art Deco ring from the 1930s that Mr. Smith had bought at Erie Basin, a Brooklyn shop Ms. Basile loves.

I was so surprised, she said. As The Magic Flute played, Mr. Smith proposed. She said yes instantly.

On March 10, Ms. Basile and Mr. Smith were married before 154 guests at the Brooklyn Winery, not far from where they fell in love. Ms. Basile, in a full-length fitted lace dress with a high neck from Shareen Bridal, walked down the aisle with her father. Mr. Smiths sister, Heather Hussar, who became a marriage officiant via the City of New York for the occasion, led a short ceremony punctuated by three poetry readings. (One, Dos Palabras, was read in Spanish and English.)

Just after the ceremony, Mr. Smith and Ms. Basile mingled with family and friends as the Respect Sextet, the band of his former roommates, played selections that included Hello Mary Lou and Campina, an Afro-Cuban jazz number with cha-cha leanings.

The newlyweds had been planning a first dance post-dinner to the soul hit Ive Been Loving You Too Long, played by a D.J., but the lure of Campina proved too enticing. Mr. Smith cut in to his wifes dance circle and the couple showed off what looked like well-practiced moves to cheers and wolf whistles.

Later, Ms. Armendariz pointed out that her granddaughter and Mr. Smith were clearly made for each other. Also that it pays to believe in serendipity, especially in New York apartment buildings. You never know when youre going to meet somebody and your life will change, she said.
WASHINGTON  The worlds largest known listeria outbreak has spread throughout South Africa for 15 months, killing 189 people. Health officials believe they have identified the source: bologna.

Since January last year, 982 confirmed cases of listeriosis had been recorded, the National Institute for Communicable Diseases in South Africa reported on Thursday. The infection, caused by food that has been contaminated with the bacterium Listeria monocytogenes, is often lethal.

A cluster of gastroenteritis cases among toddlers in a Johannesburg hospital this January led authorities to the sandwich meat in a day care centers refrigerator  and in turn, to a meat production facility in the northern city of Polokwane. There, officials said they detected traces of LST6, the listeria strain identified in 91 percent of the outbreaks cases.

The South African meat processor, Enterprise Foods, issued a recall of some of its processed products in early March. Food safety experts at the World Health Organization plan to review the companys exports to 15 countries across Africa, many of which lack reliable disease surveillance systems and diagnostic tools. Namibia recently reported one listeriosis case; its link to South Africas outbreak is uncertain.
The images of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivering his I Have a Dream speech before a spellbound crowd on the National Mall in August 1963 are etched into history  and the American consciousness  as the defining moment in the struggle for civil rights.

But that reading distorts the movements complex history, reinforcing the perception of Dr. King as an almost divine leader who was solely responsible for healing the nations troubled race relations. Historical images frame our understanding of history , and photographs defined Dr. King in the public imagination, for better or worse. His enemies manipulated photos or gave false captions to discredit him, from accusing him of communist ties to purporting that he encouraged violence during peaceful demonstrations.

African-American newspapers and magazines routinely reported on the details of his life and activism through pictures, years before mainstream publications. And those mass media outlets  though at first circumspect and, in Dr. Kings final years, increasingly critical as he turned his attention to poverty, war and racism outside the South  nevertheless produced a visual narrative that helped transform a regional movement into a national one.
Because the Christ story occurs at the sidelines of Ben Hur, the movies made from the Lew Wallace novel, about a Jerusalem prince turned slave and then turned Christian, are perhaps the most purely entertaining of such pictures. The 1925 silent-film version can be watched free, for now, on YouTube. But if you are a FilmStruck subscriber, its on that services TCM Selects as part of its new Tales Of Christ package. As is, of course, the award-winning 1959 version directed by William Wyler and starring Charlton Heston. The 2016 version directed by Timur Bekmambetov and starring Jack Huston can be viewed on demand from Amazon Prime and other platforms. My preference is the 1959 picture but all three have amazing chariot-race sequences.

Other pictures in the FilmStruck package include the 1961 remake of King of Kings, directed by Nicholas Ray, the creator of Rebel Without a Cause. While Ray was, in many respects, DeMilles antithesis, his King is not quite as idiosyncratic a vision as a curious cinephile might hope for. Still, any movie that casts Robert Ryan as John the Baptist has to be doing something right. Pier Paolo Pasolinis wonderful The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964) and Franco Zeffirellis 1977 mini-series, Jesus of Nazareth, round out the package

Then there are the more controversial items. Mel Gibsons The Passion of the Christ, from 2004, which depicts Christs persecution and crucifixion in grueling detail and veers into horror-movie territory once Judas reckons with his betrayal, is on demand. Though the movie was subjected to a good deal of critical disapprobation, it was wildly popular. Martin Scorseses The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), adapted from a novel by Nikos Kazantzakis, was condemned as blasphemous by many pundits (a good number of whom didnt bother to actually see it) and the target of protests and angry rallies. It is a sensitive, thoughtful, but hardly staid consideration of the dual nature of Christ and can be seen on the Criterion Channel of FilmStruck. (Mr. Scorseses most recent film, Silence, also about the Christian faith, was considerably less provocative  it even screened at the Vatican.)



Moving from sacred subject matter to profane comedy: Adam Sandler is not the only comedic Adam staking cinematic territory on Netflix. Theres also Adam Devine, the sketch comedian who is a co-creator of the Comedy Central series Workaholics, which started in 2011. Two pictures starring Mr. Devine recently had their premieres on Netflix. Having watched them, all I can say is his work can only go uphill from here.

I reviewed Game Over, Man! here last month, and the movie does not improve on reflection. I have been moved to wonder, though, if maybe, in addition to them, its me. Am I too old for the movies constant barrage of over-the-top gross-out humor? As someone who still roars with laughter at Redd Foxxs vintage standup routine titled You Gotta Wash Your Ass, I dont necessarily think so. I referred to the movies vulgarity as listless, and I think thats the problem: The jokes are lazy, obvious and have a casual contempt for their objects and subjects. Its stoner humor brought to the level of insensibility.
Mr. Rains HAL has become the default reference, not just for the voice, but also for the humanesque qualities of what a sentient machines personality should be. Just ask Amazons Alexa or Google Home  the cadence, the friendly formality, the pleasant intelligence and sense of calm control in their voices evoke Mr. Rains unforgettable performance. As we warily eye a future utterly transformed by A.I. incursions into all aspects of our lives, HAL has been lurking.

To Scott Brave, the co-author of Wired for Speech: How Voice Activates and Advances the Human-Computer Relationship, HAL 9000 is a mix between a butler and a psychoanalyst. He has a sense of deference and of detachment, Mr. Brave said, adding that he saw a ripple effect on, for example, the iPhones virtual assistant. When I listen to something like Siri I feel there is a lot in common.

Even when Kubrick was making the film, the director sensed HALs larger implications. He said in a 1969 interview with the author and critic Joseph Gelmis that one of the things he was trying to convey was the reality of a world populated  as ours soon will be  by machine entities that have as much, or more, intelligence as human beings. We wanted to stimulate people to think what it would be like to share a planet with such creatures.

So how was this particular creature created?

The 2001 historian David Larson said that Kubrick came up with the final HAL voice very late in the process. It was determined during 2001 planning that in the future the large majority of computer command and communication inputs would be via voice, rather than via typewriter.
The official finding was death by drowning. But some have speculated that she suffocated as the water rose in Kennedys car across several hours. What was that like to shoot?

Horrible. [Laughs grimly] It was very surreal. We actually shot in a car that was flipped upside down in an underwater tank, and it was being held up by wires. And they would submerge it a little bit more, then a little bit more, and the car filled up with water over time. They had one of the doors off so I could swim underneath and get to the bottom half of the car where the actual air pockets were. And I had this amazing stunt team of ex-Navy SEALs that were under there protecting me in case anything goes wrong. It was quite an ordeal. Yeah, it wasnt fun. At all.

And now youre shooting Ryan Murphys Pose, about the 1980s ball culture.

Its inspired by Paris Is Burning. Im excited to see all those women dancing [on the series], because if you go online or on Instagram and follow any of the houses, its so incredible. Their actual vogueing, posing  whatever you want to call it  its an art form.

The show is said to have the largest L.G.B.T. cast of any scripted series.

Its pretty mental how many characters we have, and it keeps growing with each episode. Its so fantastic when you open a script and see all the characters names, and most of them are trans.

Theyre not killing you off, are they?

No, God, I hope not!

I have to ask about House of Cards and working with Kevin Spacey.

I had a really amazing experience on that show for the 13 episodes I was on it.

Did you have any inkling as to the alleged sexual misconduct that led to his termination from the show?
New York Waterway, the operator of a commuter ferry service on the Hudson, bought the site last year for about $11.5 million with a plan to move its maintenance facility there from neighboring Weehawken. But Mr. Bhalla made it clear that the city wanted to turn the property into a park that would connect the string of public spaces along the waterfront.

One way for the ferry company to block Hoboken from taking the land was to sell it to a state agency and lease it back since the city would not be able to seize property from the state. But that plan fell apart in the final days of the Christie administration and appeared to have no support from Mr. Murphy.

Mr. Murphy then released a statement that said that giving away millions of dollars on the way out the door, when the current system isnt even adequately funded, is simply irresponsible. Mr. Murphy has called the transit agency a national disgrace and promised to increase its funding.

But on Thursday, a spokeswoman for Mr. Murphy said in a statement: The governors office continues to coordinate with all parties involved to determine an ultimate solution that both respects the voices of the local community and the needs of one of our most vital transportation partners. The governor is taking appropriate steps to make sure that commuters are not negatively impacted during efforts to find a long- term solution.

A spokesman for Mr. Bhalla said the mayor was trying to persuade Mr. Murphy not to approve the purchase. The mayor remains committed to a contiguous waterfront, said the spokesman, Santiago Melli-Huber.
The commissioner of New York Citys Department of Investigation, who recently tried to seize control of the agency that polices corruption in the school system, has taken another step in asserting his power, firing the new head of the schools investigation office less than two months into her tenure.

The office, known as the special commissioner of investigation for the New York City School District, investigates allegations of corruption, criminal activity, conflicts of interest and unethical conduct in the 1.1 million-student school system. Though it reports to the investigations department, the agency has largely operated independently since its inception in 1990.

But the investigations commissioner, Mark G. Peters, sought to change that last month, saying the schools office was under his authority. Mr. Peters has also subsumed three other offices into the Department of Investigation: the inspectors general for the New York Police Department, the School Construction Authority and the Health and Hospitals Corporation.

Mr. Peters last month appointed Anastasia Coleman, a former senior assistant district attorney in Brooklyn, to take over the schools investigation office from Special Commissioner Richard J. Condon, who retired late last year. She objected to Mr. Peterss efforts to restructure the office and eliminate its independence, and had told him and his senior staff that she believed his efforts violated the law, based on the municipal documents that created the office, according to memos, emails and other documents.
It was a sign that Rita Prats had recently eyed with intrigue while walking down Second Avenue in Manhattan: Plaza Prayers for Lent.

On the morning of Good Friday, she decided to follow its instructions, grabbing a pen and purple ribbon from the available box. This one is for my older brother, Alfredo, who died yesterday, she said, as she wrote. I just want to thank him for the wonderful things he did during his life, and just how much he enjoyed his life.

Ms. Prats, 52, of East Harlem, then tied her purple ribbon to one of the many handrails and short birch trees outside of the Church of the Epiphany, an age-old Roman Catholic church in Gramercy Park, joining thousands of others before her who, for the last four weeks, have turned the churchs outside plaza into a public display of deeply felt love and loss.

Many cities, like Paris and London, have something like this, but New York City doesnt. Youd get a summons if you did this anywhere, Ms. Prats said, nodding to the ribbons behind her. Its a public expression thats missing in this city, where we can say our hopes and feelings. People really need that.
Despite an aggressive push to decrease the number of children being suspended from school and to encourage less punitive discipline practices, suspensions in New York City public schools shot up 21 percent during the last six months of 2017, the Education Department said on Friday.

Mayor Bill de Blasio and Carmen Farina, the schools chancellor whose last day in office was Friday, had put pressure on schools to use what are called restorative practices, in which people in conflict discuss their issues and try to understand the root of their disagreement. Mr. de Blasio emphasized social justice themes in his first campaign for mayor, including what he described as overly harsh discipline practices in schools, and during the first school year of his tenure, suspensions fell 17 percent.

The trend has now swung in the other direction.

In a mandatory report to the City Council, the Education Department said that in September, the number of suspensions had actually decreased from the same month the year before, with 1,317 students getting suspended Then, in the next month, suspensions jumped to 4,396 and stayed at about that number for the remaining months of the calendar year, which was significantly higher than they had been the previous year. It was not clear what caused the jump.

At the end of September, a student at the Urban Assembly School for Wildlife Conservation in the Bronx stabbed two of his schoolmates, killing one of them. The principal was removed, and the school will be closed at the end of the school year. But Miranda Barbot, an Education Department spokeswoman, said that there were no changes made to the citys discipline policies after that episode.
But the ruling for the first time allows the New York Police Department to avoid even answering whether such files exist, said Christopher T. Dunn, a New York Civil Liberties Union lawyer who filed a brief in the case. Thats the ultimate act of secrecy, Mr. Dunn said.

The New York Police Department has a reputation for secrecy, often declining to promptly release the kind of documents  complaint reports, use-of-force investigations, officer narratives of arrests  that many other departments disseminate to the news media. In 2016, the New York Police Department stopped releasing basic information about officer discipline, though it recently indicated it would resume releasing some information, though without officers names.

The case before the court involved public-record requests filed in 2012 by two men to get records relating to any surveillance of them by the police. The men, who are both Muslim, filed the requests after a series of articles by The Associated Press described a secretive Police Department counterterrorism program that conducted extensive surveillance of Muslim organizations and mosques. One of the men, Talib Abdur-Rashid, is the imam of a Harlem mosque. The other man, Samir Hashmi, was a student at Rutgers University and active in its Muslim Student Association. After the Police Department refused to confirm or deny the existence of the records they were requesting, the men sued.

The police maintained that even disclosing the existence or nonexistence of any such records  let alone publicly releasing any that existed  would provide too much information. The knowledge that a person or group is the subject of a N.Y.P.D. counterterrorism investigation would allow that person or group to alter their behavior so as to avoid detection, the departments intelligence chief, Thomas Galati, wrote in an affidavit. Conversely, the knowledge that a person or group is not a subject of investigation would allow such persons to more freely engage in illegal activity.

In the courts majority opinion, Chief Judge Janet DiFiore, accepted that the police needed room to give a non-answer. The need for government confidentiality may be at its zenith when a law enforcement agency is undertaking a covert investigation of individuals or organizations, where the lives of the public, cooperators and undercover officers may hang precariously in the balance and the reputation, livelihood or liberty of the subject may be at stake, she wrote.
The man who killed 10 people in one of the largest mass shootings in New York City in decades was released from prison earlier this year. The killer, Christopher Thomas, shot eight children and two women in a home in Brooklyn in 1984, a crime that came to be known as the Palm Sunday Massacre.

Mr. Thomas was released in January from Shawangunk Correctional Facility in Wallkill, N.Y., after serving more than 32 years in prison.

There was only one survivor of the massacre: a crying toddler named Christina who was found on the floor, covered in blood. One of the first police officers to arrive, Joanne Jaffe, cared for the toddler that night and later helped raise her, a relationship The New York Times wrote about in 2014.
Bach was next. A dramatic crescendo played. Stop, he said. This is amazing. Can you turn this up? He swigged his beer. Can you imagine being on this boat? he said feverishly. Out in the middle of the ocean? Millions of miles from anything? Listening to this?

A few weeks later, he agreed to show me his violin, and we met at his apartment in Washington Heights, where he lives with his wife, Sula. The library was filled with books about sailing and Herman Melville novels.

The Chandlers raised their family in the neighborhood, and while music was around, his children grew up without having to practice an instrument for six hours a day. Mr. Chandlers adult son, Fred, said his fathers musical past was never discussed when he was a boy. Only thing I really remember is we had to play an instrument in grade school and I got the violin, he said. Right away, I got the sense he was uncomfortable with me playing it. He never tried to teach me. He went away while I was practicing. Except once in a blue moon, if he had been drinking, he might play a few minutes, and it was evident he was a real master.

Mr. Chandler went and fetched a bag of old newspaper clippings. My mother kept these, he said. Then he retrieved a dusty case. I havent opened this in 50 years, he said. Im scared to see whats inside.

Mr. Chandler opened the case and a musky odor emerged. Inside was a dark red violin. Blue cursive ink on its interior indicated it was built by a Parisian luthier named Joseph Bassot in 1802. He dragged on a cigar as he considered the instrument in his hands. Seeing this makes me think I made the right choice with my life, he said. I lived my life. Not the life of this violin. Then he started putting it away. I hate this thing, he said. I dont want to see it anymore.

He opened a beer and seemed happy to talk about anything other than music. But the violins quiet presence would not be denied. Eventually, he put down his beer and approached the case. Doubt I can even play this thing anymore, he grumbled, slowly tuning the instrument. Then he placed it to his chin and released his bow. A warm, glorious tone rose through the apartment. Then he bowed again, violently sliding his hand up the violins neck, and a graceful, thunderous sound filled the room. Then the note faded away.
Enrique Lopezs leg had gone numb again. Unable to stand, Enrique remained slouched on the couch while his children scrambled to pack his belongings and clean the hotel room as the checkout hour drew near.

Should we give Dad his passport now or at the airport? Jose Lopez, 55, asked his sister, Magaly Lopez.

No, hell lose it, Magaly, 56, said. And make sure there are no liquids! Did we pack Mamis medicine?

Their mother, Emma Lopez, gobbled rice and beans from a plastic container, her last meal at the all-suite motel in Queens.

Enrique, 81, and Emma, 75, werent just checking out of a hotel. The couple was about to embark on a daunting and, to their children, frightening journey  they were boarding a plane to Puerto Rico, five months after Hurricane Marias devastating fury had forced them to abandon their home.

On the floor, Omaira Lopez, the younger daughter, sat on her parents only suitcase as she struggled to zip it shut. Omaira, 44, was quieter than usual. She worried about her mothers ongoing struggle with Alzheimers and the severe stroke her father had suffered two weeks earlier.

Omaira and her three siblings, who live in New York, had been dreading this day, fearful of how their parents would fare alone on an island that is still reeling. But the couple had been anticipating their return since they fled the island in October.

As Enrique put it before leaving the hotel for the last time, Im in heaven here, but Im going back to paradise.
Long before the New York food emporiums Fairway, Citarella, Dean & Deluca, Graces Marketplace and Eataly, there was Balduccis.

It began a century ago as a rented pushcart in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, operated by Louis Balducci, an immigrant from southeastern Italy. But it began growing thanks to his son Andrew, who, on his return from World War II, persuaded his father to leave the pushcart behind and move across the East River to open a modest sidewalk greengrocery in Greenwich Village.

Soon Andy, as everyone called him, had even bigger ambitions for the business.

I always thought the store should be a little more sophisticated, he told The New York Times in 2000. So I put up a sign, Balducci Produce, not fruit and vegetable.

His father was skeptical about the fancy phraseology, but Andy Balduccis energy and diligence would transform an Italian immigrants humble mobile market into an epicurean mecca that would pioneer specialty-foods retailing in New York and dominate that business for decades.
Mel Gordon, an unorthodox and widely published drama scholar who taught a course in the history of bad acting and wrote books about the ghastly Grand Guignol theater of Paris and the deviant sexual world of Weimar Berlin, died on March 22 in Richmond, Calif. He was 71.

Sheila Gordon, his former wife, said the cause was complications of renal failure. His only immediate survivor was his brother Norman.

Professor Gordon, who taught at New York University and then the University of California, Berkeley, indulged a medley of singular enthusiasms.

He wrote a two-volume history of the Stanislavsky method of acting  and the libretto to a Yiddish opera. He collaborated on a study of Funnyman, a Jewish shtick-wielding comic book superhero who was conjured up in 1948 by the creators of Superman  and wrote a biography of Hitlers so-called Jewish clairvoyant. He wrote about commedia dellarte  and about Madonnas interest in kabbalah, the mystical Jewish tradition of interpreting the Bible.
Peter Munk, the Canadian who built the worlds largest gold-mining company, years after suffering one of his countrys most notable business failures, died on Wednesday in Toronto. He was 90.

Barrick Gold, the company he founded, announced the death but did not give a cause. Mr. Munk wore a pacemaker and had dealt with heart problems for several years.

An outsider in Canada  his preference for fedoras alone set him apart  and a former escapee from Nazi-occupied Hungary, Mr. Munk initially tried out several different lines of business, including stereo equipment and resorts in Fiji. Not all were successful, but he never appeared deterred by his failures.

Barrick itself started out as an oil company that endured three years of losses. Then Mr. Munk began acquiring gold mines in Canada and the United States. Most were small ventures. But in 1986 he bought Goldstrike, a mine in Nevada that was estimated to hold 600,000 ounces of gold. As it turned out, it held more than 21 million ounces, making it the richest deposit outside of South Africa at the time.
The progressive objection to Williamson lies in the demeaning ways hes written about poor people, black people, women, and trans people. He described an African-American boy in East St. Louis sticking out his elbows in the universal gesture of primate territorial challenge. Defiantly using male pronouns in a piece about the trans actress Laverne Cox, Williamson wrote, Regardless of the question of whether he has had his genitals amputated, Cox is not a woman, but an effigy of a woman. Feminism, he wrote, is a collection of appetites wriggling queasily together like a bag of snakes. He tweeted that women who have abortions should be hanged, later clarifying that while he has doubts about the death penalty, I believe that the law should treat abortion like any other homicide.

In some ways I appreciate Williamsons honesty in admitting where his anti-abortion agenda leads. More abortion opponents should be willing to acknowledge that treating abortion as murder necessarily means treating women as murderers. All the same, I understand why many people are furious that the storied Atlantic magazine would give a perch to a man who traffics in crude stereotypes, and who thinks that the nearly one-quarter of American women who have had abortions deserve to die. Too many men in power dont care, feminist Jessica Valenti wrote in despair. To them, our lives and freedom are just abstract concepts  things to be debated rather than understood as a given.

The backlash against Williamson, in turn, has occasioned self-pity among some members of the conservative intelligentsia, who feel victimized by a concerted campaign to write them out of mainstream public life. In National Review, Williamsons friend and former colleague David French demanded, Decide now, progressives, do you want any serious intellectual media space where conservative and progressive ideas clash?

Personally, I do. But which conservative ideas?

In Age of Fracture, an intellectual history of the late 20th century, the Princeton professor emeritus Daniel T. Rodgers described how the salience of ideas in American politics took on new breadth and intensity in the last quarter of the twentieth century. Novel forms of intellectual production and dissemination  more politically oriented think tanks, new journals of scholarly debate and opinion, more argumentatively structured media  now began to move ideas more aggressively into circulation. Ideology was obviously not the only thing that drove politics  money and group interests were, as ever, important. But to understand national politics, you had to understand certain conservative ideas.

Trump put an end to that. The field of ideas has gone from being the ground on which politics are fought to a side in politics, which is why its so difficult to find serious intellectual Trump defenders. Trump has resentments and interests, but not ideology; he governs more as a postmodern warlord than a traditional party leader. Few things signal the irrelevance of ideas to his presidency like the appointment of John Bolton as national security adviser. Boltons relentless advocacy of regime change contradicts the isolationism Trump touted during the campaign. Trump called the Iraq war a disaster; Bolton is one of few who continue to defend it. Yet Boltons appointment isnt discordant, because he and Trump are both belligerent bullies, and in this administration stylistic similarities matter more than policy details.

Inasmuch as there are ideas bound up with Trumpism, they are considered too disreputable for most mainstream publications. An opinion section that truly captured the currents of thought shaping our politics today might include Alex Jones, the conspiracy-mad Sandy Hook truther; the white nationalist Richard Spencer; and CliffsNotes fascist Steve Bannon.

Most supporters of liberal democracy, on the right as well as the left, realize that once we treat issues like religious freedom and the desirability of racial equality as matters for debate rather than as first principles, we are lost. But because theres now so little correlation between the political arena and the intellectual one, the question of which conservatives liberals ought to engage becomes subjective and arbitrary.

Williamson was hired at The Atlantic not just for being an energetic writer, but in the name of ideological diversity. If we are going to host debates, we have to host people who actually disagree with, and sometimes offend, the other side, wrote Atlantic editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg  no relation  in a memo to his staff. Kevin will help this cause.

But Williamson, perhaps to his credit, doesnt really represent a side. His ideas  with their combination of laissez-faire capitalism and harsh moralism  are fairly marginal. If theyre going to be defended, they should be defended on their own terms, not as representing an important tendency in our civic life. But on their own terms, they are very hard to defend.

Editors cant escape the fact that, even when they want to broaden the conversation, their choices make a statement about where the parameters of acceptable argument lie. Id have thought that supporting the execution or mass incarceration of women by the millions would put a writer, even one capable of enjoyably caustic prose, well outside those boundaries. Id like to hear a serious argument about why it doesnt. Somehow, Williamsons champions dont seem to want to have that debate.
But gratitude in its most remarkable manifestation is separate from circumstances. Those who show gratitude in the midst of hardship, as their world shatters around them, have the most to teach the rest of us.

Ive written before about my friend Steve Hayner, who was president of Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Ga., and a huge influence on my life. He was told he had terminal cancer on Easter weekend four years ago. (He died early in 2015.) Shortly after he learned the news, he said: There are never any guarantees in this life, and this is a chance to take Jesus words to heart: And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your life span? (Matthew 6:27). Well choose the way of trust and joy instead. And so he did.

Months later, in reflecting on how things had changed for him, knowing that death soon awaited, Steve wrote: Life is just plain different now. I like parts of my previous life better. But the choices have changed. Every day has always been an opportunity for attentiveness, gratitude and living into Gods call. Now he had much less of a desire to seize the day, he said, than to welcome it  with all its twists and turns, surprises and disappointments, moments of delight and discoveries of yet other areas to which I must pray my goodbyes and let the grieving roll. And so he did.

None of us is exempt from periods of pain, doubt and discouragement. Even the Apostle Paul confessed in his second letter to the Corinthians that there were times when he felt the pressures of life pushed him beyond the ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself.

Gratitude is hardly restricted to people of faith, just as people of faith are not exempt from ingratitude. This is another way that people dont fit into tidy boxes. Temperament, disposition and life circumstances all play a factor in determining how we face the world.

But for many of us of the Christian faith, there are certain events that are sources of continuing thankfulness. Good Friday and Easter Sunday are pre-eminent among them. They reassure us that while suffering is unavoidable, death is not final and hope is eternal, that there are things that lie beyond the joy and anguish of this life. There is gratitude in the conviction that the story doesnt end and that there are endless new chapters to be written, and that ultimately there is reconciliation and redemption to be found for my broken life and our broken world.
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Theres not enough deep but respectful disagreement in political debate today. The recent discussion between Jamie Weinstein and Ta-Nehisi Coates is a welcome exception.

Weinstein hosts a podcast for National Review Online. Coates, of course, is the best-selling author and Atlantic writer. In their 70-plus-minute conversation, they discuss racism, the idea of America and Coatess career.

Among the highlights:

 Weinstein argues that wealthy black celebrities and black police officers, among other examples, undercut the notion of systemic racism, and Coates has an effective response.

 Coates talks about how the #MeToo movement gave him empathy toward white people who feel guilty about racism.

 Coates explains why Barack Obamas paid speeches to Wall Street were a mistake.

 Coates (shortly after the one-hour mark) offers a wonderfully succinct description of why so many journalists like their jobs.

 An hour and 13 minutes in, Coates praises Kevin Williamson, then of National Review, as one of his favorite conservative writers  one with whom he often disagrees. After the podcast aired, Williamson was hired by The Atlantic, where Coates works, to some controversy. (In The Times, our colleague Michelle Goldberg makes the case against hiring Williamson.)
DOHA, Qatar  Global anxiety that the United States will take military action against Iran has increased now that President Trump has appointed John Bolton as his national security adviser. Mr. Bolton has long promoted regime change in Iran, argued for bombing Iran and a more assertive American policy against Iranian expansionism in the Middle East.

But the United States cannot effectively confront Tehran and its proxies until it appreciates Irans role in state building in Middle Eastern countries decimated by conflict.

Iran has increased its influence in the region since the eruption of the Syrian civil war and the rise of the Islamic State. Iran mobilized tens of thousands of Hezbollah fighters and other Shiite militias from Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan to fight alongside the forces of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad. These militias played a critical role in defeating the Syrian rebel groups. They also fought against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, at times in close proximity to American forces.

Iraqi Shiite militias, battle-hardened from fighting the United States, began fighting in Syria alongside Mr. Assads forces in 2012. Hezbollah captured the strategic Syrian town of Qusair from opposition fighters in 2013. Shiite militias, including Afghan fighters, were pivotal in capturing Aleppo in December 2016, which arguably secured the survival of the Assad regime.
The Supreme Court not only has limited integration through the courts but has also hamstrung school districts that want to integrate on their own. In 2007, the court struck down school districts voluntary use of race in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 on the grounds that it discriminated against whites.

Integration has also fallen out of favor because many of its practices fail to adequately consider the needs of black communities. For example, scores of black teachers were fired in the wake of Brown v. Board because some white administrators refused to allow black people to teach white students. This segregated teachers, and it cut off a pathway to a good career and the middle class.

In addition, poorly designed school-desegregation policies have scarred black students by focusing too narrowly on removing legal barriers to integration rather than creating inclusive school environments that value the abilities and dignity of all children. As a result, new discriminatory policies that cater to white parents, like tracking, as well as other policies that target black kids for punishment, have emerged in schools that are supposedly integrated.

And so, school segregation endures. We can see its impact in poor academic and life outcomes and in the overlooked harms to white students who miss the chance to learn from and among black and Latino children. Its also a major driver of inequity in metropolitan areas dominated by racial divides. Segregation often undermines property wealth in black and Latino communities because of the close relationship between the demand for housing and the perceived quality of local schools. This has the effect of limiting the pool of available tax revenue for funding local school districts.

Today, most people have come to assume that de facto segregation is just the way things are and that our society is destined to remain deeply divided by race and class  forever separate and unequal.
Forty-four percent of local governments report that they regularly face cyberattacks, on either an hourly or daily basis. More troubling is the high percentage of governments that do not know how often they are attacked (28 percent) or breached (41 percent). Further, a majority of local governments do not catalog or count attacks (54 percent).

This is not just an American problem. Last month, at a conference in Tel Aviv, Tamir Pardo, the former head of Mossad, Israels national intelligence agency, said that most local government leaders around the world do not fully understand how serious a threat cyberattacks are and have not imaginatively assessed the consequences of inaction. He described cyberthreats as soft nuclear weapons that one day may be used to start and finish a war without firing a shot.

So what should local governments do to improve their cybersecurity apparatus to help prevent or mitigate damage from future attacks like the one experienced in Atlanta, or from those contemplated by Mr. Pardo?

First, local leaders must create a culture of cybersecurity that imagines worst-case scenarios and explores a range of solutions to mitigate threats to the ecosystem of local government technology. This should involve prioritizing funding for cybersecurity, establishing stronger cybersecurity policies and training employees in cybersecurity protocols. Success will require collaboration with local elected officials, internet-technology and cybersecurity staff members, department managers and end users.

Cybersecurity is more than just the I.T. departments problem. It must now also be a top priority along the entire chain of elected and appointed officials in and around local governments. Preventing and mitigating the effects of future attacks will require intergovernmental cooperation, because localities work together across state lines and collaborate with the federal government on crucial tasks like running elections, managing transportation and sharing intelligence.
Eugene Ionescos 1959 absurdist play Rhinoceros begins in a sleepy, unnamed provincial village where nothing of note ever happens. But after the inexplicable appearance of a rhinoceros raging through its streets, the unassuming villagers begin to metamorphose, one by one, into the very same brutish and unthinking beast.

The mass conversion of humans to rhinoceroses functions as a metaphor for the contagious rise of European fascism throughout the interbellum decades. Specifically, the play borrows from Ionescos own youth in Romania. There, the late 1920s and 30s saw the emergence of the Iron Guard (also known as the Legion of the Archangel Michael), one of the most violent and virulently anti-Semitic organizations in that part of Europe. Among its members, known as Legionnaires, were not only alienated peasants, street thugs and working-class poor people but also prominent intellectuals who enthusiastically endorsed mystical jingoism and xenophobic rage.

After the war, many of those scholars, who included the philosopher Emil Cioran and the historian Mircea Eliade (with whom my great-grandfather briefly shared a prison cell), fled Communism for the West, where they built new lives in cities like Paris and Chicago. They lived comfortably, enjoying worldwide fame for their scholarly contributions, but were never forced to explain why they had embraced the cancerous ideals of the Iron Guard.

Similarly, Romania has never fully wrestled with this unsavory chapter of history; the more immediate woes of Communism, dictatorship and the uneasy transition into capitalism swiftly relegated that era into a dustbin of irrelevant antiquity. Other Eastern and Central European countries have likewise done little to reckon with their nations contribution to the Holocaust. Polands recently passed Holocaust law is an unfortunate milestone in what appears to be a process of re-rhinocerization in the region.
Perhaps thats what it comes down to: making a difference, in some small but important way. Sure, journalism can be a cheap shot when its self-congratulatory, or voyeuristic, smug or shallow. (Fake news is not journalism.) The journalist evokes suffering and moves on; the suffering tends to endure.

Theres a moment in the movie Gandhi, when the fictional New York Times correspondent, Vince Walker, having witnessed the brutal British assault on a nonviolent protest by Gandhi supporters at the Dharasana Salt Works, phones in his dispatch. Hes sweating, under pressure, close to tears, as he communicates the last graph: Whatever moral ascendancy the West held was lost here today. India is free for she has taken all that steel and cruelty can give, and she has neither cringed nor retreated.

Its all there: the head and the heart fused, lucidity and emotion, a nudge to history from a correspondent bearing witness. To be there at the cusp of change is a rare gift. Everything in journalism has changed except the essential.

When I was very young, Id go to the Kruger National Park in South Africa. It seemed nature was slow, with sudden bursts of acceleration. Nothing moved as the heat of the day rose. Then the air quickened. An eagle soared, elephants charged. Life then was a question of waiting and timing. It might idle for several years before packing several into a single one.

Journalism is like that, lulls and accelerations, adrenaline and troubled questioning. What do I recall? Finding two of those stolen Argentine children in Paraguay, being there at Pinochets downfall, chronicling the Bosnian war until at last NATO intervened, giving voice to brave Iranians in 2009: the moments when words seem vital.

This week, after a botched attempt at an execution last month, the State of Alabama and lawyers for Doyle Lee Hamm reached a private settlement that will spare his life. Id written a column called Death Penalty Madness in Alabama. Bernard Harcourt, Hamms lawyer, told me, Without your piece, I dont think wed be where we are today. It made all the difference.

A single life saved, that feels like enough for a lifetime, even if the novel is yet to come.
MEMPHIS  The 50th anniversary of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.s assassination on April 4 should have been an opportunity for the nation  and especially those who live in the city where he was killed  to reckon with the issue that he died fighting for: the right of workers to earn a living wage.

But for that reckoning to happen, we must acknowledge that the economic system and political structures that perpetuated poverty then are still in force now. And that the people who keep workers poor still too often get a pass.

In the last years of his life, with Jim Crow in retreat, Dr. King turned to what he labeled the three evils  poverty, militarism and racism  that kept black people in bondage. In 1968, he was planning the Poor Peoples Campaign when black ministers invited him to Memphis to show support for about 1,300 black sanitation workers who had gone on strike after years of low wages and poor working conditions.

Henry Loeb III, anti-union and pro-segregation, was the citys mayor. Born in 1920 in Memphis, he graduated from Phillips Academy and Brown, then served in the military during World War II before returning to Memphis to join his familys laundry business, which was founded in 1887.
Early the next morning, the police came in, opened the jail cells, gave us all our IDs and left in a hurry. I thought about what my girlfriends sister had said, so I ran toward to the main gate. As I got closer to the gate, I could see Air Force security and military police with tanks and guns trying to prevent people outside from coming to the base. It was like a war zone; they were shooting at each other. I dropped to the ground to avoid being shot, then crawled and crouched to get to the gate. The gunfire continued. People were running in all directions, panicked and scared. I couldnt find my girlfriend or her family.

Around 11 a.m., a radio announcement came over the loudspeakers. Saigon had fallen. Then things really got out of control. Soldiers ripped off their uniforms, grabbing whatever civilian clothes they could find. Intelligence personnel burned their documents. I saw overloaded helicopters hover and crash, with people coming out bloodied, badly injured. Smoke came from the runway. I didnt know what to do.

I ran toward the hangars and bumped into the pilot who was in the jail cell with me the previous night. We ran down to the end of the runway and jumped into an empty UH-1 Huey helicopter. As soon as we started the engine, about 20 guys jumped on. The weight was too much; we could barely hover at 10 feet. Fortunately there was another Huey parked nearby, and half of us jumped in and took off. Airborne, we flew out to the sea, like birds escaping a net. I would not set foot in Vietnam again for almost 20 years.

We landed on an island called Con Son, where the South Vietnamese government incarcerated political prisoners. There were some high-ranking Air Force officials there; they had arrived the night before from Saigon with their families. We refueled and made a plan. We sent two of the several Hueys on the island to look for an American aircraft carrier, which was stationed farther out in the South China Sea.

While we waited, we met the newly freed prisoners; in exchange for some money and jewelry, they fed us lunch with food they had grown on the island. They had no idea what had just happened in Saigon.

A few hours later, the Hueys returned  they had found the carrier. There were Chinooks on the island as well, and we all boarded them and flew east. I sat in the tail, with a headset, and listened in on the radio. Vietcong operatives had found our transmissions, and a female voice kept calling us, pleading with us to come back to Saigon, saying that our families were waiting for us, that our country would take us back with open arms and big rewards.

I could hear the pilots arguing in the cockpit. They had in fact left their families behind. Suddenly I felt the helicopter turn around.
The company he hired was Lendlease, best known for its construction work on high-profile projects like the National September 11 Memorial & Museum at the World Trade Center, the Sydney Opera House in Australia and the Petronas Twin Towers skyscrapers in Malaysia. Lendlease sold me on that theyd be able to translate that experience into high-end homes, Mr. Ghandour said.

Though representatives of Lendlease told him they hadnt yet built any comparable luxury homes, Mr. Ghandour said he was assured that his project would get special attention because it would be their first. They said, Well start a new line of business and this will be the showcase, the showpiece, he said.

Lendlease declined to comment on Mr. Ghandours characterization of its proposal or confirm whether the company had previously built any luxury homes of that scale. A spokeswoman said the company has built more than 400 residential projects, mostly in military master-planned sustainable communities for the Department of Defense.

Mr. Ghandour said he pleaded with Lendlease to get its subcontractors to fix various problems along the way. At one point, he said, Lendlease stopped responding, so he hired a high-profile construction lawyer, Robert Mann, to pursue a legal claim against Lendlease in 2016. He wants the company to pay for the necessary repairs he has made, plus other damage he still needs to fix. What I was hoping for them from the beginning was that theyd just do a good job, Mr. Ghandour said. And if they didnt do that, then theyd fix whatever wasnt done right.

Representatives from Lendlease said they were unable to comment on any of Mr. Ghandours claims because the case is now in binding arbitration. We disagree with Mr. Ghandours claims and regret that the matter has gone this far without resolution, the company said in a statement.
Whenever I mention that I have never had a boyfriend, I am always asked why, as if finding someone to connect with emotionally and physically should be so easy. Its not as if Ive had all these wonderful options and I just refuse to be tied down. The simple answer is that I have never met someone I wanted to be with who also wanted to be with me. In fact, Im the girl who likes the guy who likes someone else.

In high school, my crush was the popular guy that I never had a chance with, but we danced to Missy Elliotts Work It at the spring dance sophomore year, which as a non-popular late bloomer is clearly a teenage highlight Im still holding on to 15 years later. (To be fair, I was dancing behind him while the cheerleader he was actually hooking up with danced with him face to face.)

In college, I directed my attention toward my best guy friend from high school who transferred to my university after freshman year. Even though we hung out every other day, he somehow failed to mention that he was secretly dating my high school rival. By graduation, she had cut off contact with most of our friend group and he followed suit shortly after.

And in my 20s, I fell for my boss at my first job, a man who was quietly dating his bosss executive assistant. After almost a year together, he dumped the assistant and a month later married his on-again-off-again college girlfriend. So what Im saying is I have impeccable taste in men. With my track record, I seemed doomed to wander this earth alone, pining for someone elses boyfriend.

But in May of last year, I uncharacteristically found myself talking to someone on OkCupid who appeared to be single. He was a teacher at the same middle school he had attended, which I found adorable. We lived on opposite sides of Los Angeles, which made it a long-distance relationship. I saw him once a week.
The brouhaha follows a period of intense scrutiny for Facebook and questions over what its responsibilities are to its more than 2.2 billion users. The company has been grappling this month with revelations that a British political consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica, improperly harvested data from 50 million of the social networks users. Mr. Zuckerberg has since been on an apology tour over data privacy and is expected to testify before lawmakers in Washington.

Facebook did not respond to a request for comment over employees reaction to the leaked memo.

In the aftermath, some Facebook executives have taken to Twitter for a public charm offensive, sending pithy phrases and emoticons to reporters who cover the company. Adam Mosseri, Facebooks head of news feed, in recent days wrote unprompted to a BuzzFeed editor and to its chief executive reminiscing and telling a story about his mother. He also wrote to a reporter from the Verge tech site about the songs played at his wedding reception.

In some of his tweets, Mr. Mosseri also defended Facebook. When writers from Vox and BuzzFeed tweeted that they noticed that stories critical of Facebook were receiving surprisingly low levels of traffic on Facebook, Mr. Mosseri jumped in.

We 100% do not take any action on stories for being critical of us, he tweeted.
SAN FRANCISCO  Two days after Donald J. Trump won the 2016 election, executives at Google consoled their employees in an all-staff meeting broadcast around the world.

There is a lot of fear within Google, said Sundar Pichai, the companys chief executive, according to a video of the meeting viewed by The New York Times. When asked by an employee if there was any silver lining to Mr. Trumps election, the Google co-founder Sergey Brin said, Boy, thats a really tough one right now. Ruth Porat, the finance chief, said Mr. Trumps victory felt like a ton of bricks dropped on my chest. Then she instructed members of the audience to hug the person next to them.

Sixteen months later, Googles parent company, Alphabet, has most likely saved billions of dollars in taxes on its overseas cash under a new tax law signed by Mr. Trump. Alphabet also stands to benefit from the Trump administrations looser regulations for self-driving cars and delivery drones, as well as from proposed changes to the trade pact with Mexico and Canada that would limit Googles liability for user content on its sites.

Once one of Mr. Trumps most vocal opponents, Silicon Valleys technology industry has increasingly found common ground with the White House. When Mr. Trump was elected, tech executives were largely up in arms over a leader who espoused policies on immigration and other issues that were antithetical to their companies values. Now, many of the industrys executives are growing more comfortable with the president and how his economic agenda furthers their business interests, even as many of their employees continue to disagree with Mr. Trump on social issues.
How do we, in an overwhelming, arresting, and gorgeously beautiful way, illuminate all that the book is? Ms. Forbes said.

Back in 2015, as soon as Ms. Forbes finished the book, she knew she wanted to turn it into a stage production. The only thing in her way was Mr. Coates himself. My recollection is I didnt want to do it, he said in a phone interview. When Between the World and Me came out, a lot of people had ideas for things, and I was just really tired and kind of suspicious.

It was his longstanding friendship with Ms. Forbes that softened his stance and led him to award her the stage rights. They met in 1994, when Ms. Forbes was a freshman at Howard University and Mr. Coates was a sophomore; they helped organize a hip-hop and poetry cypher on campus that year and remained close ever since. Knowing Kam, theres nobody else I would have trusted to do it, Mr. Coates said.

But rather than providing input, Mr. Coates decided to remove himself from the process entirely and give Ms. Forbes full artistic control. When Ms. Forbes tried showing Mr. Coates some of the more aggressive edits, he declined to look at all. Kam has the freedom to pursue her truth. She dont need me breathing down her neck, he said, adding jokingly: Ill give you my review next week. Well see if this friendship is still a thing.
Television personality, producer, entrepreneur and former model Tyra Banks has a lengthy resume, but is probably best known these days for instructing aspiring models to smize (smile with their eyes) on Americas Next Top Model, a fashion reality TV series she created and hosts. Its currently in its 24th season. Her book Perfect Is Boring: 10 Things My Crazy, Fierce Mama Taught Me About Beauty, Booty, and Being a Boss will be published in April.

While Ms. Banks mostly travels for work, she describes herself as a master at tacking on pleasure, commonly adding on vacation days to weeks of intensive shooting abroad. Americas Next Top Model has taken contestants around the world, but her favorite was Morocco. What I love about Marrakesh is the people, and the earth, and the architecture are like the same color. Its just that beautiful terracotta color and it just all blends, its just beautiful. The whole town is like a makeup base foundation, she said.

She describes herself as obsessed with hotels, even going so far as to model her own bedroom after a room in the Four Seasons New York. I used to stay there when I was a Victorias Secret model, actually, and I studied that room. I dont think I took pictures back then, but I talked to the interior designer, and I made it as close to that Four Seasons as possible, including the bathtub that fills up in like 60 seconds.
The closed-door administrative hearings took place on Thursday. Chief Paul noted that while Officer Lake answered all of the questions put to him at his hearing, Officer Salamoni, on the advice of his lawyer, chose not to answer questions.

The chiefs announcement was expected to bring a modicum of relief to activists and Mr. Sterlings family members, who have grown increasingly frustrated after the state and federal decisions.

The decision also came amid tension and protests over another police shooting in Sacramento. Stephon Clark, a 22-year-old unarmed black man, was shot at more than 20 times by the police in his grandmothers backyard on March 18. A private autopsy commissioned by Mr. Clarks family and released Friday found that eight bullets had struck him and that his death took three to 10 minutes, raising questions about why he did not receive medical care more quickly.

Part of Mr. Sterlings fatal encounter with the Baton Rouge officers was captured in a widely seen cellphone video, in which the officers can be seen holding down Mr. Sterling. At one point, someone can be heard saying, Hes got a gun! Gun!

The two officers were responding to a call that a man who fit Mr. Sterlings description had been brandishing a gun.

One newly released video from the vantage of the convenience store shows Mr. Sterling standing by a folding table, where he appears to be doing business with two customers. Officer Lake approaches, and takes Mr. Sterling by the arm.

Footage from Mr. Salamonis video camera shows him approaching moments later.

The three men tussle as the officers try to bend Mr. Sterling over the hood of a car and as Officer Salamoni, using expletives, repeatedly threatens to shoot Mr. Sterling in the head. Officer Lake fires his Taser at Mr. Sterling, twice, and Officer Salamoni tackles him to the ground.
It will reach at least some classrooms in more than 16,500 public schools, or about 1 in 6 public schools nationwide, according to the charity.

Among them is Marina Del Rey Middle School in Los Angeles. Heather Vibbert, a special-education teacher there, had six requests fulfilled as a result of this weeks donation.

As a result, her students, many of them from low-income households, will benefit from new science DVDs, a Blu-ray player, art supplies and individual white boards, among other things. The highlight, though, will be a Google Expeditions Kit, which will enable them to take virtual field trips.

I can guide them through the ocean bottom or Mars or any kind of crazy place we can dream of, which Im very excited about, Ms. Vibbert said. That was kind of my big aspirational project that I never thought would get funded, but it never hurts to ask.

No one understands that better than Mr. Best, who in January reached out to the Ripple chief executive, Brad Garlinghouse, a longtime supporter of the charity, with an audacious proposal: What if the business fulfilled every request on the website?

Mr. Best hesitated to send the email at first, fearing that he might offend Mr. Garlinghouse, but pushed ahead, acknowledging upfront that he was making a wildly ambitious pitch.

I just hope you dont mind my swinging for the fences, he wrote.

It paid off. Soon, Ripple invited him to San Francisco to make the case in person and, within about a month of receiving the email, the company had agreed to make the donation.
We never anticipated having that sense of community on our doorstep. It was a hell of a good home, and we could afford it. Hopefully, our authorities can win our trust back again. Harvey took away from us our normal everyday life that you go through. Nobody anticipated it, so very few people really were prepared for it. Our community is right next to the reservoir. And they knew that, because they designed it. The nations fourth largest city, Houston, bracing for catastrophic flooding. The Army Corps of Engineers say in order to save homes downstream, it has to flood others upstream. That includes homes in Cinco Ranch and Bear Creek. 3,000 homes got water behind the Barker Reservoir. Harvey didnt flood them  the federal government flooded them. A lot of people think that they did that to save downtown, and I understand. But now we need help. We need help, too. What do we do next? How do we solve this thing without going dead broke? Much of our developed area on the east side of the county is protected by levees. The reservoir was backing up like a bathtub filling. We didnt know exactly how high it would rise. This storm, 38 inches of rain in about a three day period, is probably almost total for the year what we normally get. Had those flows gone around the ends of the dam, they would have caused a great deal of flooding. So we had to make a tough decision. We have opened the gates, and we are actually flooding homes downstream now. This area is designed to hold that water if necessary. Its unfortunate for you all, but thats how its designed. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Already has  already has mold growing. God. Almost no one around here has flood insurance. Its not supposed to be an area that floods. Everything I own was in that house. I lost my wife about a year ago. And so there was a lot of emotion, and a lot of memories that I have to not think about. As we were driving into the neighborhood, Lily kept saying, it feels so weird to be here. We were trying to kind of prepare her that its going to look a lot different. And its like its a huge stupid beach. Its usually like theres so much grass. All the kids running around. It just feels weird seeing it like this, because all this trash is never here. It was like so high and scary. Like, first the water was up to here. Then it started getting into the houses. See this like Post-it note thing? My mom told me it was like, make sure theres no dead bodies. He has been so obsessed with looking through flooding pictures. At least five times a day, he wants to look and see the house when it first flooded and the picture of Lilys school. So the grant is a max of $33,300, and you can only get that once youve been inspected. We have almost 800,000 registrations in the state of Texas alone. Right now its just a waiting process, because it does take while for them to get to you. So whats going to happen is, dont freak out, youre going to get a denial letter from FEMA, because you have a homeowners. But when you get your reward letter from your homeowners, telling how much theyre paying you, youre going bring a copy of that letter to me. And Im going to fax it to Washington, and then FEMA picks back up what the homeowners didnt pay. O.K. But then  O.K. O.K.? Now what do I do for wheels? For that? I dont know. I mean, youre it? I dont qualify? Its left up to your inspector. It aint left up to me. How about accommodations? My daughter is selling her house. Im out of  I have no place to go. Ill put that in your notes. Homes were substantially destroyed, and I think you really have to make a serious decisions as to whether you want to rebuild. If I lived behind that reservoir and my house had four or four and a half feet of water in it, I dont think I could rebuild. I wouldnt want to rebuild. Were paying the mortgage and the rent. We do get a low interest loan from FEMA, and so that helps a lot. We live with my daughter and her kids. We want my grandkids to grow up here. There were lots of sleepless nights  where was the money going to come from in order to rebuild our house? But we did receive a small grant from FEMA, and the church was able to cover three months worth of rent. I think we both just sat there and cried. It was so overwhelming. We were so fortunate. None of my other neighbors are in a similar situation. So the hurricane hit, right? Now, its react time. What are you going to do with your property? The longer you hesitate, the more damage thats going to accrue on your house. As horrible as its been, everybody has been pretty upbeat and happy. Hello, sir. Not everybody, but most people. Hey, how are you doing, sir? Im James. Im James Smith with Keller Williams Energy Corridor Realty. How are you? I was just wondering how everybody is doing? About in the same shape. Waiting on FEMA, most of us. And S.B.A. loans. Got you. Just in a holding pattern until we can repair our homes. If you give me a call, I can give you some information on the proper people that come in and get in contact with. All my advice is going to be at no cost to you. And if I ever can help you, just give me a call. Appreciate it. No problem. Ill let you get back to work, sir. So theres a lot of properties that actually went into foreclosure. A lot of those now the bank owns. Lets go. You be careful. Now, theyre going to be totally renovated with all the new items on it. Because theres too many people selling  thats going to create a buyers market. They can kind of set the price. Im 87. Im not going to spend the last years of my life building back a house that I aint going to go and live in. Im going to sell it. We just dont talk about what has gone and will never be back. Theres Dad. Look at my beautiful mother. See, all that furniture sitting out on the lawn was 62 years of accumulation, of memories. And, that hurts. For a while there, it looked like a ghost town in here. Id say, like a quarter of the community is back. All right. We still have a lot of little things that have to be done, but were home. It feels exciting to be back in the house, and a little bit overwhelming. Where are all the flooded pictures? You want to see all the flooded pictures? Yeah. Where are they? Remember when our house looked like that? Yeah. I want to see the X on it. Oh, I dont think I took a picture of the X. You know what? Maybe I did. Hold on, let me look. There it is. I love to move back in. We already moved back in, didnt we? So did we get to take that down? Yeah. Yeah, its not there anymore, is it? I cant describe how happy I am to be back in my own house. I do you have a sense of guilt that comes along with it. Theres a lot of people that havent even had their FEMA visits. For my own sanity, I got to stay positive and moving forward. Our community never should have been developed. Its hundreds and hundreds of houses. Now we are proof that we need better regulations.
One thing has become clear about the midterm elections, which will determine the political script for the rest of President Trumps term: Pennsylvania is where much of the action will be.

Democrats eager to take control of the House of Representatives see rich opportunities in Pennsylvania to pry seats from Republican hands. Swarms of candidates have filed to run in the states primary on May 15. And polling data published on Thursday showed strong advantages for the Democrats, in a swing state where Republicans have had the upper hand in recent years.

Two developments are converging to give Pennsylvania its outsize role: New congressional districts drawn by the State Supreme Court make the map more of an equal playing field; and a special-election upset by a Democrat in one of the reddest parts of the state signaled an incipient blue wave.

Democrats appear to be in position to flip at least three, and perhaps as many as six, of Pennsylvanias 18 House seats, according to strategists from both parties. That could represent a quarter of the 24-seat gain they need nationwide to take control of the House.
Kim Jong-un, North Koreas brash young leader, traveled with his wife and senior aides. They were shown being welcomed on a red carpet with a military band in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. According to the Chinese, he held long and productive meetings with Chinas president, Xi Jinping. He also attended a theatrical performance and toured the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The most important thing was that Kim said that he was open to a dialogue with the United States  even a summit with Donald Trump. Xi responded that he would return the favor and visit North Koreas capital, Pyongyang. Chinese officials also later called the White House and briefed them on the meeting. He was making his first trip abroad since taking power in 2011. It was his first time meeting another head of state. What made to visit all the more extraordinary was that it came after a period of great tensions with China and the rest of the world over North Koreas nuclear weapons program. Those tensions were not at all on display in the photos and videos that were released by the Chinese and North Korean state media on Wednesday. There was a flurry of speculation here at the beginning of the week when a train made its way into the Chinese capital. This is not an ordinary train, but an armored and specially outfitted one: 21 cars with tinted windows. It was like ones used by previous North Korean leaders who visited China. But neither the Chinese nor the North Koreans would confirm anything about it. It was only 36 hours later that we learned who was inside. It is not at all clear if this is a diplomatic breakthrough or not. But with meetings planned in the coming weeks with South Koreas president, possibly with Mr. Trump, it could be a period of intense diplomacy after months of threats and counter-threats.
One main reason for the pessimistic outlook is that the Senate, for various political and logistical reasons, has essentially given up on the time-honored method of considering individual spending bills on the floor after they have been hashed out in committee.

The threat of a slew of politically charged amendments, the need for 60 votes to move any spending legislation and the reluctance of the leadership to devote the necessary floor time to debate the bills have effectively ended public review of the 12 annual spending bills by the full Senate.

What that means is that most senators have no real opportunity to try to influence the individual spending measures and are instead presented with the take-it-or-leave-it choice they faced last week when they could either vote for a 2,232-page, $1.3 trillion spending measure with many provisions they supported  notably a big increase in Pentagon spending  or balk and be responsible for shutting down the government. Those options left many lawmakers dissatisfied, including some of those most closely involved in writing the legislation.

I would rather we brought these bills to the floor one at a time, said Senator Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri and a member of the spending panel, who lamented the packaging of the bills. It didnt used to be that way. It has been that way for about 10 years now. It needs to stop. Every member needs to have a right to be able to amend these bills, to bring them to the floor one or two at a time, have a real debate.

Congressional leaders say they dont like jamming the spending bills through en bloc, but there are real incentives for them to continue to do so because it concentrates considerable power in their hands.
WASHINGTON  The Trump administration said on Friday that it could immediately fund 100 miles of new and replacement border fencing, a first step in the presidents plans for building a wall on part of the United States nearly 2,000-mile border with Mexico.

The replacement fencing includes 28 miles in the San Diego region and a new 30-foot-high barrier in Calexico, Calif., that extends for two miles. In New Mexico, the Border Patrol will replace 20 miles of barriers that are intended to stop vehicles with new fencing to prevent people from crossing into the United States.

Ronald D. Vitiello, the acting deputy commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, described the construction as part of a new wall system because it would replace older, outdated barriers. Customs and Border Protection is the parent agency of the Border Patrol.

A mix of barriers  like chain-link fences, steel walling and beams  already stretches across more than 650 miles of the border. Ultimately, Mr. Vitiello said, the administration aims to cover 1,000 miles on the border with fencing or a wall.
Stephon Clark, the unarmed black man who was fatally shot last week by Sacramento police officers, was struck eight times, mostly in his back, according to an independent autopsy released Friday, raising significant questions about the police account that he was a threat to officers when he was hit.

The autopsy  commissioned by the family of Mr. Clark, 22, and conducted by Dr. Bennet Omalu, a private medical examiner  showed that he was shot three times in his lower back, twice near his right shoulder, once in his neck and once under an armpit. He was also shot in the leg. The neck wound was from the side, the doctor found, and he said that while the shot to the leg hit Mr. Clark in the front, it appeared to have been fired after he was already falling.

He was shot from the back, Dr. Omalu said Friday at a news conference. Standing next to diagrams of the findings, he said that seven of the shots could have had a fatal capacity. He described severe damage to Mr. Clarks body, including a shattered vertebrae, a collapsed lung and an arm broken into tiny bits.

He bled massively, said Dr. Omalu, who became nationally known for his fight with the National Football League over head injuries to its players.
NeVaa White, a friend, told Mic that Ms. Tyrae had been out since at least 2009, and had a close community of friends. She made family with her peers in the L.G.B.T. community of Baton Rouge, Ms. White said, adding that Ms. Tyrae didnt have an easy life, and that she was taken away in the very manner she feared.

Statistics on homicides of transgender people are difficult to compile and are not officially available because the federal government does not collect data based on gender identity. In addition, transgender homicide victims are often identified by the police using the names and genders they were assigned at birth, a practice known as misgendering.

Advocates emphasize that their tallies just include the victims they know about.

It is impossible to have a complete and accurate number, MJ Okma, an associate director at Glaad, said.

Transgender people frequently face economic hardships, discrimination in housing and hiring, and high rates of homelessness, Mr. Okma said, all factors that can contribute to systematic violence. That becomes the greater context, he said.

In 2016 in Louisiana, Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, issued an executive order that protected L.G.B.T. employees and contractors from discrimination, the first time that the state had explicitly recognized the equal rights of transgender people, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

But transgender people have continued to be targeted in the state. Three transgender women were murdered there in an eight-day period in February 2017.

Violence against trans people, mostly trans women of color and often resulting in death, continues to plague our communities, the group Louisiana Trans Advocates said at the time.

We must also recognize that the shameful content and tone of the national discourse on trans issues contribute to stigmatization and dehumanization that lower the barriers to this kind of violence, the organization said.
At story hour in Tacoma, we sit  strangers in a circle  and sing nursery rhymes to our babies. Since my family and I left Georgia, where my husband, Andrew, was stationed for five years with the Army, I have been eagerly anticipating moments like this: communion with like-minded parents, the kind of NPR-listening liberals Id spent my 20s around in Brooklyn before the Army uprooted me, transforming me into the proverbial stranger in a strange land. But now that Im here, desperately trying to follow along  Where is thumbkin, where is thumbkin?  I feel utterly out of place.

I came to the Wheelock library on a blind mom-date with a clinical psychologist and recent L.A. transplant I met in a Facebook group for Tacoma mothers. I look to her to share a knowing smile  oh boy  but she is serene, playing her role pitch-perfectly as she coos at her baby boy. This mom is shockingly together. She has parenting philosophies, and, whats more, she acts on them. She practices R.I.E. with her baby, a parenting method based on the concept of treating the baby with dignity and respect.

I dont distract him during diaper changes, she explained, but talk him through the process instead.

When I was pregnant, I thought Id have philosophies too. But the baby books have remained unread, my lonely days with Fiona so chaotic that my only philosophy, if I have one, is survival.
Facebook said its position had not changed since last year, when it said: We oppose any efforts to force travelers at the border to turn over their private account information, including passwords.

Along with the social media information, visa applicants will be asked for past passport numbers, phone numbers and email addresses; for records of international travel; whether they have been deported or removed, or violated immigration law, in the past; and whether relatives have been involved in terrorist activities.

Maintaining robust screening standards for visa applicants is a dynamic practice that must adapt to emerging threats, the State Department said in a statement. We already request limited contact information, travel history, family member information, and previous addresses from all visa applicants. Collecting this additional information from visa applicants will strengthen our process for vetting these applicants and confirming their identity.

Millions of people each year complete the online application for a nonimmigrant visa, known as the DS-160. It takes about 90 minutes to fill out, according to the department.

The San Bernardino, Calif., terrorist attack in 2015, which killed 14 people, focused attention on immigrants social-media use, after officials acknowledged that they had missed signs of online radicalization in an online-messaging platform used by the husband and wife who carried out the attack.

Last year, John F. Kelly, who was then the secretary of homeland security and is now Mr. Trumps chief of staff, told members of Congress that his department was considering asking visitors for passwords and access to online accounts.

We want to get on their social media, with passwords, Mr. Kelly told members of the House Homeland Security Committee. If they dont want to cooperate, then you dont come in.
BEIJING  Thirty years after Gao Chengyong embarked on a succession of 11 rape-murders of women in northwest China, a court sentenced him to death on Friday, following an investigation that involved sifting through 230,000 fingerprints.

The sentence by a court in Baiyin, a small city in Gansu Province, was not unexpected in China, which executes more prisoners than any other. But the verdict against Mr. Gao, 53, a farmer, itinerant worker and shopkeeper, was widely reported, and applauded, in China, where the killings drew intense attention.

The motives for the defendant Gao Chengyongs crimes were utterly despicable, the means were utterly vicious, the nature of the crimes utterly vile, the courts verdict stated, according to the China News Service, an official agency.

The court found that Mr. Gao had killed 11 women, whom he usually followed to their homes. He murdered all but one around Baiyin; another woman was killed in Baotou, a city in the north Chinese region of Inner Mongolia. In many cases, he molested the women and dismembered their bodies. Besides homicide, he also was found guilty of rape and of defiling corpses. He stood trial last July.
SEOUL, South Korea  South Korea settled disputes with the Trump administration over steel tariffs and the revision of a free-trade agreement this week. With those stumbling blocks cleared, it hoped the two governments could focus on the more pressing crisis of North Koreas nuclear weapons.

As it turned out, South Korea was celebrating too early.

On Thursday, President Trump said he might postpone finalizing the trade agreement with South Korea, which he had earlier described as a wonderful deal with a wonderful ally, until he secured a deal in denuclearizing North Korea.

You know why? he said. Because its a very strong card.

By tying a trade deal with South Korea to progress in denuclearizing North Korea, Mr. Trump is showing how little direct leverage Washington has over the isolated, nuclear-armed North just as South Korea and the United States prepare for talks with Kim Jong-un, the Norths leader.

Instead, analysts say, Mr. Trump has been left to exert leverage on South Korea, which is taking the lead in orchestrating the talks, and the Souths president, Moon Jae-in.
Some of those laws date to the 1980s and the federal privacy commissioner, among others, has been calling for a 21st century update. But while Canada lags behind Europe in this area, its still well ahead of the United States.

The political party exemption came about in part because of a parliamentary tradition of not giving bureaucrats or outside bodies control over a partys affairs. I called Michael Pal, an assistant law professor at the University of Ottawa who studies election laws and related issues like voter suppression, and asked if its time for a change.

Every other sector is covered by privacy laws but political parties, he said. They are all using data so I dont think there is a good argument about why they should be under privacy rules.

As for concerns about encroaching on Parliament, Professor Pal isnt buying that either. He noted that parties were already heavily regulated through Elections Canada and election fund-raising laws.

So whats a Facebook user to do now? My colleague Brian X. Chen, who writes about consumer technology, has offered some guidance on minimizing privacy risks on Facebook, although his overall take on the situation facing Facebook users is a little discouraging:
On Holy Thursday, Pope Francis washed the feet of prisoners at an all-male prison in Rome, Regina Coeli  including two Muslims, an Orthodox Christian and a Buddhist. Everyone always has the opportunity to change life and one cannot judge, Francis told the prisoners.

It was the fourth time in his five-year papacy that Francis has celebrated Mass in an Italian jail. But it took place alongside an eye-popping controversy, after the Rome newspaper La Repubblica quoted the pope as saying A hell does not exist.

Eugenio Scalfari, 93, one of the newspapers founders, said Francis had told him that bad souls are not punished, and that the souls of repentant sinners obtain Gods forgiveness and take their place among the ranks of those who contemplate him, but those who do not repent and cannot be forgiven disappear, according to one translation.

The reported remarks were seized upon by the popes conservative critics, and the Vatican scrambled to tamp down the brewing controversy, issuing a statement that said the conversation had been private and that the article should not be considered a faithful transcription of the Holy Fathers words.

Mr. Scalfari is known for not taking notes and for reconstructing lengthy conversations with prominent figures from memory. An outspoken atheist, he has been granted several interviews by Francis, many of them followed by Vatican objections.
LONDON  The Man Booker Prize is Britains most prestigious literary award. But for the past two years, American writers have dominated the competition  and authors from Britain and the Commonwealth countries are none too pleased.

The crescendo of frustration may have reached a peak. A group that counts the literary heavyweights Margaret Atwood, Ian McEwan and Zadie Smith among its members has fired a shot across the bow, demanding that the Man Booker Foundation reverse a 2014 decision making any novel written in English and published in Britain eligible for the prize.

Leading authors and critics from the group, the Rathbones Folio Academy, bashed the Bookers policy anew this week, arguing that changing the rules had taken away the distinctiveness of the prize, which was previously limited to writers from Britain, Ireland, Zimbabwe and the Commonwealth.

They also criticized the way in which the Man Booker, begun in 1969, had highlighted less well known and prominent literature.
Mr. Scalfari agreed.

They are perfectly right, said Mr. Scalfari in an interview on Friday night, as the pope prepared for a ceremonial leading of the stations of the cross on Good Friday. These are not interviews, these are meetings, I dont take notes. Its a chat.

While Mr. Scalfari said he remembered the pope saying hell did not exist, he allowed that I can also make mistakes. He said he had committed an error of omission by failing to fully explain the popes answer on the need for a stronger Europe. At my age, Mr. Scalfari said, he was more used to being interviewed than interviewing.

The editor of La Repubblica, Mario Calabresi, said the paper had not labeled Mr. Scalfaris piece as an interview. It was, Mr. Calabresi said, the fruit of a cultural exchange and dialogue out of the 19th century between a Jesuit believer and a man of the enlightenment fascinated by religion.

Sophisticated readers of Italian journalism understand how to read Mr. Scalfari, which is to say, with a grain of salt when it comes to papal quotations.

To many here, Mr. Scalfari personifies an impressionistic style of Italian journalism, prevalent in its coverage of the Vatican, politics and much else, in which the gist is more important than the verbatim, and the spirit greater than the letter.

And yet, despite the public relations headaches Mr. Scalfari has caused, Francis, 81, seems to like talking to him.

The pope, Mr. Scalfari said, has a need to talk with a nonbeliever who stimulates him. This months meeting was their fifth.
His wife, who now lives in Italy, did not respond to repeated attempts to reach her.

I cut off ties with everyone, as I didnt want them tracking me down, he said about family and friends in Romania. I knew it was hard for my daughter, but I felt it would be better for her.

After a 7.6-magnitude earthquake struck Turkey in August 1999, resulting in an estimated 17,000 deaths, those in Romania who knew Mr. Constantin wondered if he had been among the dead.

It wasnt until 2013, after not hearing from her husband for 14 years, that Mr. Constantins wife asked a court to declare him dead. With family and friends testifying that they had not heard from him since 1999, and the Turkish Interior Ministry saying they had no record of him for that period, the Romanian court concluded that he was most likely dead.

His death certificate was issued in May 2016, with the year of death listed as 2003, the same year his passport expired.

Mr. Constantin, who was living in Istanbul at the time, was oblivious to all of this. When the authorities detained him, he was told that his case was classified and that he would never be allowed to return to Turkey. It was only upon landing in the Romanian capital after 26 days in Turkish detention that he was told he was legally dead.

At the airport in Bucharest, I was surrounded by customs officials. They said, Youre dead, he recalled with disbelief. I thought they were joking. I was the only one who didnt know. The people who escorted me off the plane knew, everyone knew except me.

For the next six hours, he was questioned about his hometown  where the schools and factories were, details about his family, including dates of birth. Finally, he was released.
PRAGUE  A Russian man accused of hacking the systems of three American technology companies in 2012, possibly compromising the personal information of more than 100 million users, was extradited to the United States from the Czech Republic on Friday.

The man, Yevgeniy A. Nikulin, appeared in Federal District Court in San Francisco after arriving in the city around 6 a.m. He pleaded not guilty to the charges against him. Magistrate Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley scheduled his next court appearance for next week.

This is deeply troubling behavior once again emanating from Russia, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement. We will not tolerate criminal cyberattacks and will make it a priority to investigate and prosecute these crimes, regardless of the country where they originate.

Mr. Nikulin had been held in the Czech Republic since the authorities there arrested him in 2016. His case quickly turned into a battle between Washington and Moscow over whether he should be tried in the United States.
JERUSALEM  Tens of thousands of Palestinians gathered along Gazas border with Israel on Friday to vent their pent-up frustration in a protest that quickly turned violent, with Israeli forces killing 15 at the border fence.

As many as 30,000 arrived early in the day at tent encampments on Gazas side of the fence to stage what was billed as the start of a peaceful, six-week sit-in. They were protesting against Israels longstanding blockade of the territory and in support of their claims to return to homes in what is now Israel.

But as some began hurling stones, tossing Molotov cocktails and rolling burning tires at the fence, the Israelis responded with tear gas and gunfire. The Israelis said they also exchanged fire with two gunmen across the fence and fired at two others who tried to infiltrate into Israel.
On Thursday, President Trump suggested that the United States could pull its approximately 2,000 troops out of Syria very soon. The comments surprised Defense Department officials who have maintained that some kind of American presence in parts of Syria may be necessary to avoid recreating the conditions that led to the rise of the Islamic State  and also to avoid ceding influence in the country to Russia.

Very soon, were coming out, Mr. Trump said during a rally in Ohio. Were going to have 100 percent of the caliphate, as they call it  sometimes referred to as land  taking it all back quickly, quickly.

The suspension of funds for recovery efforts in Syria comes as the administration reassesses its role in the conflict there, a State Department official said on Friday. The freeze on funding was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

There will be meetings on this next week, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because a policy review was continuing. Obviously, we, State, hope that this decision is reversed.

A National Security Council official explained the White Houses position: In line with the presidents guidance, the Department of State continually re-evaluates appropriate assistance levels and how best they might be utilized, which they do on an ongoing basis.

Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson had committed the aid in February in Kuwait at a meeting of countries who have joined together to defeat the Islamic State.

Pentagon officials in the past few months have said repeatedly that a complete withdrawal of American troops could leave a void. On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said that while American forces were no longer in an offensive effort on the ground, they continued to play a role. We continue the operations in Syria, he said.
Well, they didnt win. Mr. Shafer recently received official word that seven years of payments that he was told would not count toward his loan forgiveness  he needed 10 years  would count after all. Moreover, the $1.3 trillion spending plan that Congress passed last week contains a $350 million forgiveness fix-it fund to help some others like him.

While both developments are overwhelmingly positive, very little about the public service loan forgiveness plan is straightforward. Were still months away from knowing the details of how the $350 million fund will work. And if you think youre repaying your debt correctly under the many terms of the program, theres a decent chance youre not.

The federal loan program allows people working full time for qualified employers (generally government workers and those who work for nonprofits) to apply for tax-free federal student loan forgiveness after 10 years of on-time payments. There are a couple of more catches, though: You have to be in the right kind of loan (a so-called direct loan from the government) and making the right kind of payment (generally an income-based or income-driven one of some sort). I explained this in more detail in a column last year (Panicked Borrowers, and the Education Departments Unsettling Silence), which contains many links to more resources and instructions.

About a week after my column on Mr. Shafer appeared, he heard from an Education Department staff member who offered to review his file in more detail. After several exchanges, he received official notice this month that he now has 97 months of credit toward the 120 months he would need for forgiveness. Thats 84 more than he had previously.

Around the same time, the loan problem was being taken up by others in Washington. Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, a proponent of loan forgiveness for public service workers going back to her days as a Harvard Law School professor, told me last week that she began asking around after reading about Mr. Shafer. The program had begun in 2007, so by last fall at least some people should have been close to having their debt wiped away.
10 income tax changes applicable from April 1

India

oi-Deepika

By Deepika

The Union Budget 2018 failed to do much for taxpayers as well as the salaried class. However, he proposed a number of income tax changes that will impact many taxpayers. From a new long-term capital gains tax on stocks and equity mutual funds to relief for senior citizens on interest income - the changes announced in Budget 2018 are many.

Here is the list of tax changes applicable from April 1 2018

Standard deduction

The government has proposed to provide a standard deduction of Rs 40,000 from salary income to employees. However, the current exemption in respect of transport allowance and reimbursement of medical expenses will be withdrawn. The net benefit will only be Rs 5,800.

Health and Education Cess

Government has proposed a new cess - Health and Education Cess - which will be levied at the rate of 4% of income tax. At present, a 3% cess, consisting of 2% cess for primary education and 1% cess for secondary and higher education, is levied on personal income tax and corporation tax.

Deduction in respect of interest earned by senior citizen

Budget has proposed to increase the tax exempt limit on interest income for senior citizens from Rs 10,000 to Rs 50,000. Interest income will include interest earned from fixed deposits (FD) and recurring deposits (RD).

Medical treatment of senior citizens for specified diseases

For senior and very senior citizens, the tax deduction for critical illness will be Rs 100,000 from April 1, as against the existing limit of Rs 60,000 for senior citizens and Rs 80,000 for very senior citizens.

Dividend Distribution Tax

Tax at the rate of 10 per cent will be levied on the dividends distributed in case of equity mutual funds. However, this dividend will remain tax-free in the hands of investors. This will impact investors who were relying on dividends from balanced funds as a source of regular income.

Interest Income

Budget has proposed to increase the tax exempt limit on interest income for senior citizens from Rs 10,000 to Rs 50,000. This means TDS will not be deducted on interest income of upto Rs50,000. Interest income will include interest earned from fixed deposits (FD) and recurring deposits (RD).

Long term capital gain

The biggest announcement in the Union Budget 2018-19 was the reintroduction of the long-term capital gains (LTCG) tax that would see investors paying 10% tax on the gains made by selling shares even after holding them for more than a year.

However, to offer a partial relief to investors, the government has proposed that all gains up to January 31 would be grandfathered. In other words, the gains would be computed based on the share price on January 31.

Corporate tax

With regard to corporate tax, the Budget has lowered the rate to 25 per cent for companies with the turnover of up to Rs 250 crore in 2016-17.

The changes will benefit the entire class of micro, small and medium enterprises which accounts for almost 99 per cent of companies filing their tax returns.

Extension of Pradhan Mantri Vaya Vandana Yojana

The government proposed to extend Pradhan Mantri Vaya Vandana Yojana up to March 2020. The Current investment limit will be increased to Rs 15 lakh from the existing limit of Rs 7.5 lakh per senior citizen. Pradhan Mantri Vaya Vandana Yojana is a pension scheme for senior citizens, which is offered by Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC).

National pension scheme for non-employee subscriber

For self-employed people, it has been proposed to exempt 40 per cent of the total amount payable from tax upon closure of National Pension System (NPS). This tax benefit will now bring self-employed individuals at par with the salaried class.

The Union Budget 2018-19 was the last full budget before the general elections next year, when a vote on account would be presented. The next full budget will be presented by the new government.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Friday, March 30, 2018, 17:08 [IST]
KGF 2 teaser release date out, Yash looks dashing and intense in new poster, check out here

50th anniversary of JH Patel's historic speech in Kannada in Lok Sabha

India

oi-Chennabasaveshwar

By Chennabasaveshwar

Today marks the 50th anniversary of former Karnataka chief minister JH Patel's historic Kannada speech in Lok Sabha. JH Patel is the first Kannadiga to table his debates in his mother tongue Kannada in the lower house of the parliament. Patel was elected to Lok Sabha from Shimoga constituency in 1967.

Though some members objected to it, the then Speaker of the Lok Sabha, Neelam Sanjiva Reddy allowed and encouraged Patel to go ahead with his speech.

The Indian parliament had been active for 17 years and Patel became the first member to speak in a regional Indian language. He did so in vindication of the eighth schedule of the Indian constitution in which all the great languages of India have been given place.

This prompted the Speaker of Lok Sabha, Sanjiva Reddy to decree in his famous ruling that henceforth any member of the Lok Sabha who is inclined to exercise his/her inherent right to speak in his/her mother tongue would do so without any hindrance.

This is how The Hindu reported the Lok Sabha proceedings of March 30th, 1967.

Stormy scenes in Lok Sabha

[March 30, New Delhi] Stormy scenes were witnessed in the Lok Sabha today during which a Samyukta Socialist Party (SSP) member from Mysore, Mr. J.H. Patel, insisted and got recognised his right to speak in Kannada without having to submit to the Speaker an advance translation of his speech in Hindi or English.

The Lok Sabha thus broke with past practice. The noisy proceedings also witnessed the naming and expulsion, although temporary, of a Congress member, Mrs. Tarakeshwari Sinha, and a walk out by many of her party colleagues.

The Prime Minister, Mrs. Indira Gandhi, who came into the House at the height of the storm, appealed to the members to discuss the issue without heat and emotion. She said she did not question Mr. Patel's right to speak in whatever language he wished. But there were certain "practical technical" difficulties regarding simultaneous translation in the various national languages. She would later discuss the matter with the party leaders.

OneIndia News
7th Pay Commission: Some good news at last, here is what it is

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

There has been some good news on 7th Pay Commission. With the financial year coming to an end, the Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) said that Railway employees can now avail Leave Travel Concession (LTC). The ministry cited the recommendations of the pay panel while making this announcement.

"The matter has been considered in this department in consultation with Ministry of Railways. It has been decided that Railway employees may be allowed to avail all-India LTC once in a block of four years," the ministry said.

"The 'All-India LTC' will be purely optional for Railway employees. As per existing LTC instructions, government servants and their spouses, working in Indian Railways, are not entitled to the facility of LTC as the facility of "Free Pass" is available to them. The 7th Pay Commission had recommended that they are included in the LTC fold.

The ministry also added that Railway employees would, however, continue to be governed by the Railway Servants (Pass) Rules and availing of the "All India LTC" under the CCS (LTC) Rules by them will be facilitated through a special order under the relevant provision of the said Pass Rules.

According to reports, the DoPT order states that railway employees will not be eligible for "Home Town LTC" and will have to surrender the Privilege Passes (concessional or free tickets) admissible to them in the calendar year in which they intend to avail the LTC facility.

The Railway employees would continue to be eligible for other kinds of passes such as the duty pass, school pass and special passes on medical grounds, as admissible under the pass rules, the order also stated.

If a Railways employee has already availed of a Privilege Pass, then LTC will not be allowed in that year. An Indian Railway employee on deputation to any other organisation, including railway PSUs will also continue to be eligible for the option LTC in lieu of the privilege pass entitlement.

OneIndia News
TN: Rs 34 lakh in cash and nine luxury cars seized from premises linked to ex-AIADMK minister KC Veeramani

AIADMK cadres to observe fast demanding Cauvery Management Board

India

oi-Chennabasaveshwar

By Chennabasaveshwar

A day after threatening to commit suicide, All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) cadres to observe fast across the state on April 2 to urge the central government to form a Cauvery Management Board. All party meeting to be convened to decide on next course of action on Cauvery Management Board formation, a protest will be planned after consulting all opposition parties.

"We condemn state and central govt for not implementing the Supreme Court order," stated the party.

AIADMK MP A. Navaneethakrishnan on Wednesday said all AIADMK MPs will commit suicide if the Centre fails to constitute a Cauvery Management Board by the March 29 deadline set by the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court has directed Karnataka to release 177.25 thousand million cubic feet (tmcft) of water to Tamil Nadu. This reduced Tamil Nadu's share of Cauvery water by 14.75tmcft from the 192tmcft allocated by a tribunal in 2007. It also directed the centre to frame a "scheme" within six weeks to implement the decision.

A day after the Cauvery verdict, Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah said his government would oppose constitution of the board, stating the Supreme Court verdict only mentions a "scheme" and not a board.

OneIndia News
Beyond Pakodanomics: In Karnataka, vote for jobs movement is a test for Congress, BJP, JD(S)

India

oi-Maitreyee

Bengaluru, March 30: Before Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked Indians to sell pakodas (fritters) to earn their livelihood early this year, the discourse on growing unemployment rate across the country did not gain momentum. The PM's statement during a television interview in January, where he suggested that selling pakodas on streets is also a job, touched a raw nerve of millions of people looking for employment opportunities.

This is what the PM said in his now infamous television interview: "If a person selling pakodas (snacks) earns Rs 200 at the end of the day, will it be considered employment or not?"

While a large number of experts and economists slammed Modi for his "insensitive" remark, a group of youngsters in Bengaluru, Karnataka hosted the nation's first "pakoda" protest where they sold fritters outside the BJP's office in the city on January 27.

Thereafter, similar protests were held in several parts of the country. The protest in Bengaluru was the brainchild of a forum called the Karnataka for Employment (KFE), which since last year has started a campaign called "vote for jobs" in the run-up to the Karnataka Assembly elections 2018. On Tuesday, the Election Commission announced the polling and counting dates for the state elections. The state will vote on May 12 and the counting will take place on May 15. The political parties will be contesting elections in 224 seats in Karnataka.

On August 19, 2017, the members of the forum met the representatives of the three main political parties--the Congress, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Janata Dal (Secular) (JD(S))--to tell them that if they want votes in the upcoming elections then they have to promise jobs in their respective manifestos.

While the Congress heard them well and agreed to include their demands in the manifesto, both the JD(S) and the BJP gave them a cold shoulder. However, later after repeated meetings, both the BJP and JD(S) too have agreed to consider their demands. On February 18, the forum released a booklet titled, Yuvajanara Pranaalike Karnataka 2018 (Youth manifesto of Karnataka 2018).

The booklet in detail looks into the job crisis issue in the state and the country and how it can be addressed. The booklet has been prepared by the likes of KP Suresh (noted agriculturalist and columnist), Mahesh (a well-known farmer) and Amit Basole (professor of Economics at the Azim Premji University, Bengaluru) and several team members of the KFE, among others.

Talking about the movement, which claims to have the support of youths, contractual workers and farmers from all the 224 Karnataka constituencies, Mutturaj, convener of the KFE, told OneIndia that "it is a political movement to pressurise the three main political parties of the state to promise jobs for unemployed and underemployed people".

"Our campaign will support only those parties which will promise jobs if elected to power," added Mutturaj (who only writes his first name). Mutturaj's colleague from the forum, Rajshekhar Akki, said that the campaign is very powerful as it has the support of jobless youths, farmers and contractual workers.

The forum has conducted conventions in all the 224 constituencies in the state. "We have a huge support among the contractual workers in the state. There are around 2 lakh contractual workers in 40 government departments in the state. We have the support of all of them, including their families and friends. That makes up at least 10 lakh votes. Thus political parties can't ignore us easily," stressed Akki.

Who is an employed person?

There are three main criteria to consider a person as employed: a) minimum wage to live a dignified life, b) job security and c) facilities like provident fund, employees' state insurance, maternity leave and sick leave, among others.

Jobs, reality and myth in Karnataka

According to the 2015-16 Economic Survey of Karnataka, the unemployment rate in Karnataka--urban and rural combined--stands at 1.7 per cent, which is less than half the national rate of 3.4 per cent. In Karnataka, there are around 1.4 crore unemployed and underemployed people. Underemployed people are those who are mostly working as contractual workers and have no job guarantee.

Karnataka has a population of around 6.68 crores. Out of it, 4.96 crore people are registered voters, as per the EC. "If all the unemployed and underemployed people vote then it would have a huge impact on the elections," said Mutturaj.

While the Siddaramaiah government takes great pride in providing 15 lakh jobs in the last five years, but it promised to give 50 lakh jobs in five years back in 2013. Figures say every year at least eight lakh people join the job market in Karnataka. Experts say the Congress government in the state is yet to furnish evidence to prove that it has actually provided 15 lakh jobs.

Jobs: How Modi, Siddaramaiah fare?

To understand the Karnataka's job scenario, which is better than the national statistics, we need to look into the Modi government's failed promises. In 2013, Modi promised one crore jobs every year for the country's youth if the BJP comes to power at the Centre. The big Modi promise left everyone disappointed as job scenario in the country is anything but "grim".

In fact, the rate of unemployment has increased from 3.8 per cent in 2011-12 to 5 per cent in 2015-16. According to an International Labour Organisation (ILO) report, unemployment in India will increase from 17.7 million in 2016 to 18 million in 2018.

Why contractual workers are victims of government apathy

Since the campaign closely works with contractual workers, it wants the government to regularise all of them. In 2012, the then BJP government agreed to regularise the jobs of 23,000 people in Karnataka. The forum wants the new government in Karnataka to regularise the jobs of at least 17,000 guest teachers and other contractual workers.

What Congress, BJP and JD(S) have to say about the campaign?

It was the Congress which immediately agreed to include all the demands of the KFE in its manifesto. Dinesh Gundu Rao, working president of the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC), said that the party stands for jobs for all. "We are ready to take the suggestions of one and all to generate employment opportunities for all," said Rao.

The JD(S) too has promised to include all the suggestions of the KFE in its manifesto. However, it was the BJP which was initially unwilling to listen to the issues raised by the forum. In fact, once during their visit to the BJP office in Bengaluru, members of the KFE were detained by the police. Now, senior BJP leader Suresh Kumar is in talks with the forum members and has agreed to focus on jobs in the party manifesto "It will be foolish to ignore the demands of the forum. A job is a real issue. Any government can make or break over jobs," said a senior BJP leader.

How to create one crore 50 lakh jobs in Karnataka

The members of KFE say that the movement is not just a critique of the government policies. "We are contributing to society as well. Last year, we developed an app called--My Job--which provides regular updates on job openings in both the government and private sectors. The app also takes up issues related to education, recruitment, job security, self-employment and overall career development. Moreover, our manifesto is a guide to create one crore 50 lakh jobs in the next five years in Karnataka," said Akki.

In the booklet, various measures have been suggested to address the job issue. Experts want both the state government and the Centre to focus on agriculture, health and education to create jobs and take the country to the path of growth. "If any government implements our suggestions, it can create one crore 50 lakh jobs in Karnataka in the next five years," said Akki.

The adage of the movement is "unemployment is a social, not a personal problem. Decent, secure employment is a right. Unemployment free Karnataka can be a model for unemployment free India."

The members of KFE said that they will continue with their movement even after the state elections. The next target of KFE is to create a pan-India movement to generate jobs before the big 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

Karnataka Assembly Election dates Date of notification April 17 Last date to file nominations April 24 Last date to withdraw nominations April 27 Date of polling May 12 Date of counting May 15

OneIndia News
Karnataka: Will Congress not allow Kumaraswamy to be CM for full 5-year term?

Is it chief minister Kumaraswamy or chief manager of Congress Ktaka ATM? BJP has an answer

All is well between Congress, JD(S)? Kumaraswamy meets Rahul as Karnataka waits for full cabinet

BJP leaders condemn Postcard news founder's arrest

India

oi-Chennabasaveshwar

By Chennabasaveshwar

Soon after the Bengaluru police arrested Mahesh Hegde, the founder of Postcard News, messages were circulated on BJP WhatsApp Groups appealing to trend #ReleaseMaheshHegde. Mahesh Hegde was arrested on charges of allegedly promoting communal disharmony in a bid to attempt in blemishing the ruling Congress government in Karnataka.

Postcard News owner Mahesh Hegde arrested by Bengaluru police

Alt News founder, Pratik Sinha, tweeted the screenshot of the appeal to create trend #ReleaseMaheshHegde on twitter.

Fervent appeals to trend #ReleaseMaheshHegde on BJP WhatsApp Groups in support of @postcard_news founder @mvmeet pic.twitter.com/l3mvBuajcK  Pratik Sinha (@free_thinker) March 29, 2018

Also, BJP leaders condemned the arrest and demanded his release. Minister of State for Skill Development Anantkumar Hegde took to Twitter, "Shame on the state government led by Siddaramaiah, which is behaving in dictatorial terms in arresting Mahesh Vikram Hegde. Ensure to follow the true democratic spirit in fighting us rather than doing a coward act. #ReleaseMaheshHegde,"(sic).

The former minister, CT Ravi, suspected that Mahesh Hegde was might have been arrested for raising funds Hindu schools run by RSS leader Kalladka Prabhakar Bhat. "Wondering if Nationalist @mvmeet is arrested because he ran a successful campaign to raise funds for the children of two Hindu schools run by @RSSorg Leader Sri @KalladkaBhat that were denied funds by Anti-Hindu Congress Government. #ISupportMaheshHegde #ReleaseMaheshHegde"

Wondering if Nationalist @mvmeet is arrested because he ran a successful campaign to raise funds for the children of two Hindu schools run by @RSSorg Leader Sri @KalladkaBhat that were denied funds by Anti-Hindu CONgress Government.#ISupportMaheshHegde #ReleaseMaheshHegde  C.T.Ravi (@CTRavi_BJP) March 29, 2018

BJP Yuva Morch leader, Tejasvi Surya, said, "Appeared and argued on behalf of Mahesh Hegde. Police sought 14 days custody. Judge rejected and gave one-day judicial custody. He will be produced b4 court on Saturday and hopefully will #ReleaseMaheshHegde." 3rd rate political vendetta of Siddaramaiah Govt. We'll fight till end!"

Appeared & argued on behalf of Mahesh Hegde. Police sought 14 days custody. Judge rejected & gave one day judicial custody. He will be produced b4 court on Saturday & hopefully will #ReleaseMaheshHegde.



3rd rate political vendetta of Siddaramaiah Govt.

We'll fight till end!  Tejasvi Surya (@tejasvi_surya) March 29, 2018

There are two cases against Hegde. One was registered at the Sanjayanagar police station last year, while the other was filed on March 21 with the Cyber Crime Police station. The allegation is that he had posted a fake news on the Twitter account of Postcard.news on March 18 while using a photo of a Jain Muni. He had said, "Very sad news. In Karnataka Jain Muni attacked by Muslim youth... No one is safe in Siddaramaiah's Karnataka".
BMC tells Bombay HC: Can't issue birth certificate without dad's name

India

pti-PTI

Mumbai, Mar 29: The city civic body has told the Bombay High Court that it has no powers to delete a birth or death-related entry from its records, while responding to a single mother's plea seeking a birth certificate for her child without the father's name.

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation's birth registration department filed an affidavit in the court, stating that it did not have the authority to issue a birth certificate in the present case, without the name of the child's biological father.

The BMC was responding to a previous direction of a bench of Justices A S Oka and R I Chagla, hearing the plea of a 31-year-old woman from Nallasopara town in neighbouring Palghar district. In her plea, the woman claimed that she was unmarried and that she gave birth to a girl through the test tube method in August 2016. She claimed that since the identity of the donor in her case was kept secret by the medical authorities, there was no way for her to have given the BMC the name of her child's biological father. However, the BMC's counsel, Suresh Pakale, produced in court the girl's birth certificate and the original records, including the hospital form giving information about the child.

As per the records, at the time of the child's birth, the petitioner had given her full name and claimed that she was married to a businessman. She had also given that man's name as the child's biological father in the hospital form, that was used as the basis for the child's birth record.

The woman has disputed the authenticity of the form, while the BMC has submitted that the document bears the woman's signature. Pakale also told HC that once an entry is made in the corporation's records, then its officials only have the power to amend it, if it is found to be "incorrect," or "if the same has been recorded fraudulently".

"Since neither is the case here and the petitioner herself gave us the information on her marital status and the name of the child's biological father, we cannot delete it from our records and the birth certificate," Pakale told HC. The petitioner approached the high court last year, after the civic body refused her request to leave the space for the father's name on the child's birth certificate blank.

She urged the court to direct the corporation to remove the name of the child's father from its records and to change her marital status to "unmarried". On March 14 this year, while hearing a similar case, the bench had directed the BMC to "mask" the name of the biological father of a child on her birth certificate. The child's mother, an unwed woman, had urged the court to permit her to leave the space for the father's name on the certificate blank.

PTI
Cauvery issue: AIADMK to observe fast on April 3 instead of April 2

India

oi-Vikas

By Vikas

All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) cadres, who had earlier said that they would observe fast over the Cauvery river issue on April 2, would now observe fast on April 3. AIADMK has been demanding the central government to form a Cauvery Management Board.

AIADMK MP A. Navaneethakrishnan on Wednesday said all AIADMK MPs will commit suicide if the Centre fails to constitute a Cauvery Management Board by the March 29 deadline set by the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court has directed Karnataka to release 177.25 thousand million cubic feet (tmcft) of water to Tamil Nadu. This reduced Tamil Nadu's share of Cauvery water by 14.75tmcft from the 192tmcft allocated by a tribunal in 2007. It also directed the centre to frame a "scheme" within six weeks to implement the decision.

A day after the Cauvery verdict, Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah said his government would oppose constitution of the board, stating the Supreme Court verdict only mentions a "scheme" and not a board.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Friday, March 30, 2018, 23:44 [IST]
CBSE paper leak: Modi ji, please tell exam warriors how to fight racketeers?

India

oi-Oneindia Staff

By Oneindia Staff

New Delhi, March 30: Days ahead of the board examinations, Prime Minister Narendra Modi made all attempts to reach out to the young students by doling out some very "pleasing" advice to the community. The PM wrote and released a book, with a "funny" title--Exam Warriors--a guidebook to fight stress and depression during the board exams.

The book also gave several tips to youngsters to help them prepare well for the crucial exams. It was not just the book; Modi also addressed an "over-hyped" and "much-televised" interaction with the students appearing for the board exams, again oddly titled--"Pariksha par Charcha (Discussion on exams)" (the PM's team did a lazy job by borrowing Chai Pe Charcha title to fit into a students' event).

Anyway, the problem here is not about how much money has been spent to host the event which is clearly to woo young voters (most of the class 12 students will be voting in the next Lok Sabha elections in 2019) or the title of such an unnecessary event, where the PM said what everyone knew, but why Modi who called himself a "friend" of the students is once again maintaining silence after the CBSE board exam papers got leaked recently.

The worst part is that the now infamous board, in spite of knowing beforehand that the papers were leaked did not care to postpone the exams. The exams were held as per the schedule and students wrote their papers. However, later the board woke up from its slumber and asked the students of class 10 and class 12 to rewrite their Mathematics and Economics papers respectively.

What do you call this? Cheating, backstabbing, playing with the lives of youngsters who are our future or simply callous attitude on the part of the authorities? Whatever it is, but the racketeers who got hold of the exam papers sold them and made money.

The leak of CBSE papers is another scam that has hit the students' community badly. Because of the paper leak, the career of around 20 lakh class 10 and class 12 students studying in schools across the country and abroad are at stake. Similarly, papers of the SSC exams were also leaked recently.

Like the CBSE students, the job aspirants who wrote the SSC exams were left in a lurch. All of them protested, shouted slogans on the streets of Delhi, but the government did not move an inch to address their grievances.

After the shameful episode of CBSE paper leak, it took board chairperson, Anita Karwal, almost two days to break her silence on Thursday. She told reporters that the board has taken a decision in favour of the students. She added that the dates of the re-examination of the class 12 Economics and class 10 Mathematics papers would be announced soon.

"We have taken decision in favour of the students. We are working for their good," she told reporters. However, she did not speak on why she did not scrap the class 10 Mathematics paper despite receiving a copy of the leaked paper a day before the exam.

Students and parents are mighty upset as the whole "exam scam" has shocked them to the core forcing them to question the sanctity of the exams. Will re-examination assure fair play? What is the guarantee that the papers won't be leaked in the future? Is it time to change the education system of the country? Why did the CBSE chairperson not resign yet? Why Human Resource Development minister Prakash Javadekar did not resign yet? Who will take moral responsibility for the fiasco?

Has Modi, the "friend", turned into a "foe" of students? These questions and many more are haunting the aggrieved students and parents, these days.

OneIndia News
No cause for panic, new media rules will benefit all: Javadekar

CBSE Paper Leak: Section 144 imposed near Prakash Javadekar's residence

India

oi-Chennabasaveshwar

By Chennabasaveshwar

Section 144 has been imposed near HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar's residence on Kushak Road in the wake of protests against CBSE paper leaks on Friday. Students went on protest rally streets outside Delhi's Udyog Bhawan. According to reports, Javadekar held a meeting with CBSE chairperson and other officers.

The government is looking at 3 aspects- to gauge the extent of the leak, from where it happened and to ensure that it doesn't impact ongoing exams.

NSUI president said, "Prakash Javadekar has assured that by Friday evening dates of the re-tests will be out. They will also declare a mechanism to make sure this doesn't happen again. We have also demanded the resignation of CBSE chief for fair inquiry."

A student protesting against the CBSE told, " Retest tells We have been forced to come out of our houses when we could have prepared for our upcoming entrance exams. This is all CBSE's fault, why should we suffer because of them."

OneIndia News
Delhi: DU student meets his murderer on dating app

India

oi-Madhuri

The murder mystery of a 21-year-old Delhi University student has been reportedly solved with the arrest of a 25-year-old man by the Delhi Police.

A body of DU student was found by the police in a drain in Dwarka's Sector 13. During the investigation, police identified that the body belonged to the DU student who was reportedly kidnapped for a ransom of Rs 50 lakh on March 22.

It is learnt that the victim had met accused, Ishrat, who works as a sampling manager for export houses, through a 'dating app.'

According to the police, before the murder, the victim had met thrice in 10 days. The accused later confessed to having murdered the DU student and then made the ransom call. Ishrat had called the victim's father over WhatsApp after which he demanded a ransom and tried to pass off the case as kidnapping to mislead investigators.

The victim was a student B Com at Ram Lal Anand College in South Campus. It is said that he met Ishrat on a dating app. Thereafter, both started meeting frequently.

The incident happened on March 22, when the victim had left home after informing his family that he would get late since there was a college fest. In the evening, when he did not return till late, his family members called him but his phone was switched off. The family members then approached the police and lodged a complaint.

After registering the kidnapping FIR, cops made several teams to trace the victim. However, the cops said that he was murdered the same day he went missing.

OneIndia News
Karnataka elections 2018: Why the BSP has a chance to win Kollegal?

India

oi-Chennabasaveshwar

By Chennabasaveshwar

Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has a negligible presence in Karnataka. We can liken it to BJP's presence in Kerala. The party polled 2.74 per cent of votes in 2008 and emerged as the fourth player but won no seats. However, poll alliance with the Janta Dal (Secular) has surprised many in the state. Bahujan cadres believe that the party will create history in the state with the victory of State President N Mahesh in Kollegal assembly constituency, Chamarajnagar district.

What makes the electoral battle in Kollegal assembly interesting?

Kollegal is reserved for Schedule Category (SC) candidates. The total number of voters Kollegal is 1, 93, 293. Male voters account for 1,00,659 and 98, 920 female voters. From 1957 to 2013, the Congress has won 10 times, the BJP only once in the 2009 bypoll. Interestingly, the electorate of Kollegal has never elected a candidate for the second term since 1989.

BSP's N. Mahesh was in second place in the last assembly elections. In 2013, S.Jayanna of Congress defeated N. Mahesh by over 10,000 votes. Jayanna polled 47,402 votes, ie 32.36 per cent of vote share and Mahesh secured 37209 votes, 25.40 per cent. N. Chamaraju of JD(S) was polled mere 4392 votes with 3.00 per cent.

This year, the alliance between former prime minister HD Deve Gowda's Janata Dal (Secular) and Mayawati's BSP may be a big boost for the BSP. But the alliance may not help Mahesh in Kollegal because the JD (S) has negligible Vokkaliga votes. Even if BSP's Mahesh gets 3 per cent Vokkaliga votes, he may not match the winning margin.

According to psephologist Mahadeva Prakash, N Mahesh is very strong in Kollegal. He has organised the party very well. He may win this time. Also, BJP has its advantage, if former MLA Nanjunda Swamy contests the elections. He will garner Dalit votes and may get Lingayat, backward classes votes which is crucial for the winning election.

"No doubt, Dalit votes will be split among BSP, BJP and Congress, Lingayat and backward classes votes will play a crucial role. Either BJP or BSP may spring a surprise in this elections, says Mahadeva Prakash."

A lot depends on how the powerful Lingayat community votes. Lingayat voters may not fully back Congress since the Congress recommended for separate religion status for Lingayat community.

Karnataka Assembly Election dates Date of notification April 17 Last date to file nominations April 24 Last date to withdraw nominations April 27 Date of polling May 12 Date of counting May 15

OneIndia News
The Yountville Chamber of Commerce announced its 2018 inaugural Business & Community Awards.

The 2018 winners will be celebrated at the Membership Jubilee & Awards Ceremony, at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, May 9 at the Lincoln Theater, located at 100 California Drive on the grounds of the Veterans Home in Yountville.

The Membership Jubilee & Awards Ceremony "recognizes chamber businesses and community members that represent the best of Napa Valley hospitality and leadership," said a news release.

Award winners were nominated by Yountville Chamber of Commerce members and chosen by the Yountville Chamber board of directors. The inaugural winners are:

Small Business of the Year: Yountville Sun

Large Business of the Year: Good Life Wine Collective, including Jessup Cellars and Handwritten Wines

Business Leader of the Year: Bob Hurley, owner, Hurleys Restaurant & Bar

Citizen of the Year: Jennifer Carvalho, parks & recreation supervisor, town of Yountville

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Karnataka elections: How the state votes and will the 10 year polling pattern change?

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

How people will vote in the Karnataka assembly elections would be interesting to see. In the past decade, the voting pattern in the state has more or less remained the same.

The BJP has always bagged a lion's share of the Lingayat votes while the Vokkaliga votes were divided between the Congress and JD(S). In the case of the upper caste votes, it has been in favour of the BJP while the lower social bloc votes have been bagged by the Congress. The Dalits, Muslims and Adivasis have lent their support to the Congress traditionally.

Before crunching the numbers, the pertinent question to be asked if this voting pattern that Karnataka has witnessed for a decade will continue or not. 2013, however, cannot be taken as a case study especially when it comes to the Lingayat votes since it was divided between the BJP and KJP owing to a Yeddyurappa walk out.

The 2008 voting pattern:

A study that was conducted by the Centre for Studies of Developing Societies (CSDS) suggests that the BJP had in 2008 bagged 51 per cent of the Lingayat votes under the leadership of B S Yeddyurappa. The Congress got 25 per cent while the JD(S) bagged 15 per cent of this vote share in 2008.

Karnataka elections: Will voter turnout be hit due to a weekend polling day?

When it came to the Vokkaliga votes, the JD(S) bagged 40 per cent while the Congress and BJP got 25 per cent and 18 per cent respectively. For the Congress, the Muslims have been the biggest supporters. The party bagged 65 per cent of the Muslim votes in 2008. This was followed by 50 and 44 per cent from the Dalit and Adivasi community respectively that polled in favour of the Congress. The BJP, on the other hand, bagged 20, 25 and 11 per cent of the Dalit, Adivasi and Muslim votes respectively.

Will voting pattern change in 2018?

There are two very important factors in 2018. Firstly the BJP is a united unit and this the party would hope will help rope in the Lingayat votes. Dr. Sandeep Shastri, leading psephologist says that in 2013, the BJP and KJP together polled 70 per cent of the Lingayat vote.

The BJP would be hoping to retain that or better its performance this year. The BJP has in some elections even polled 81 per cent of the votes. However this time there is a slight twist to the tale and the religious minority issue is what will help decide the outcome of which way the Lingayat votes would swing.

Dr. Shastri says that the entire objective of this exercise was to divide the Lingayat votes so that it affects the BJP. It is a political move to drive a wedge. The question that needs to be raised is whether this move is enough to divide the community. The leadership may be divided on the issue. But the question is whether it would translate down to the common man, he also says.

Who will win Karnataka assembly elections? Here is a blast from the past

It is a conservative community whose religious practises are closely intertwined with Hinduism. I am not sure if this move by the Congress in Karnataka will cut into the votes of the common man in the community. Dr Shastri also adds.

The Modi factor:

The Karnataka campaign will be seeing a lot more of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the coming days. He is scheduled to address at least 25 rallies over a span of 40 days in the run-up to the elections which will be held on May 12.

It is clear that Karnataka votes heavily on community lines. Will Modi be able to have an impact on the voter? Dr. Shastri says that when it comes to Modi it will not be about one community or caste. He cuts across all these factors.

However, the bigger factor here is that this is a big test of the Modi charisma. This is this his first big test in the south of Vindhyas, Dr Sandeep Shastri also says.

Karnataka Assembly Election dates Date of notification April 17 Last date to file nominations April 24 Last date to withdraw nominations April 27 Date of polling May 12 Date of counting May 15

OneIndia News
Karnataka elections: To get the crucial one per cent vote swing, Modi to address 25 rallies

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

With a few poll surveys suggesting that the Congress is ahead in Karnataka, the BJP has decided to have more of Narendra Modi in the campaign. He would address at least 25 rallies before the state goes to poll on May 12.

He would make at least 10 visits to the state and there would be days when he addresses more than 2 rallies in a day. The BJP feels that if someone can turn the campaign around for them, then it is Modi himself.

The BJP has decided to combine the rallies by Modi and the strategising of the elections by party president Amit Shah. The BJP's national president, Shah has made several visits to the state and has been micro-managing the elections.

Modi during his visits would cover every nook and corner of the state. The party says that his rallies have had huge responses even on Sundays. His rallies at Bengaluru and Mysuru have been big hits, the BJP also says.

During the Uttar Pradesh elections, Modi had addressed 24 rallies while his highest still remain in Bihar where it was 31.

Karnataka has dedicated vote banks and the voting pattern has been more or less the same. The BJP feels that it needs to cut into the Congress vote bank and only Modi is capable of doing so. On an individual note, Modi still remains extremely popular in Karnataka and the BJP would like to bank heavily on that. The BJP realises that a one or two per cent vote swing can decide the fate of the elections. Shah has been pushing the Karnataka BJP to toil at the booth level. The party feels that with more of Modi and Shah's booth level engineering, the BJP could bag that crucial one per cent swing which will help it form the government in Karnataka.

Karnataka Assembly Election dates Date of notification April 17 Last date to file nominations April 24 Last date to withdraw nominations April 27 Date of polling May 12 Date of counting May 15

OneIndia News
Karnataka: Will Congress not allow Kumaraswamy to be CM for full 5-year term?

Is it chief minister Kumaraswamy or chief manager of Congress Ktaka ATM? BJP has an answer

All is well between Congress, JD(S)? Kumaraswamy meets Rahul as Karnataka waits for full cabinet

'Made a mistake but voters will not', says Amit Shah on Yeddyurappa blooper

India

oi-Deepika

By Deepika

BJP chief Amit Shah on Friday began his two-day visit to Mysuru-Chamarajanagar-Mandya-Ramanagaram belt in Old Mysore region with a visit to Suttur Mutt. Later, he arrived at the Mysore Palace to meet the erstwhile royal family.

The BJP president is in the state as part of his party' efforts to win back the Lingayat vote bank ahead of the Karnataka Assembly elections.

"Took blessings of Sri Shivarathri Deshikendra Mahaswamiji of Sri Suttur Math in Mysuru. Swami ji has made significant efforts towards spreading the values of Indian culture & tradition worldwide, Shah tweeted.

"I also admire Matha's role in providing education to the poor in rural Karnataka," he wrote.

Suttur Mutt is a "power centre" given the influence it wields over the Lingayat/Veerashaiva community. It runs over 400 educational institutions, and the image of the present seer, Shivarathri Deshikendra Mahaswami, as a spiritual leader transcends the Lingayat community and extends beyond the region.

He met Yaduveer Krishnadatta Chamaraja Wadiyar, the head of the family, and his mother Pramoda Devi Wadiyar and wife Trishika Kumari Devi.

Shah tweeted that he had "a wonderful meeting with Maharaja Yaduveer, Rajamatha Pramoda and Maharani Trishika of the royal family of Mysuru".

Had a wonderful meeting with Maharaja Yaduveer Krishnadatta Chamaraja Wadiyar, Rajamatha Pramoda Devi Wadiyar and Maharani Trishika Kumari Devi of the Royal Family of Mysuru. pic.twitter.com/CdMsGaWxX8  Amit Shah (@AmitShah) March 30, 2018

It was nice to see Yuvraj Adyaveer Narasimha Wadiyar too! pic.twitter.com/nEhox0bAIN  Amit Shah (@AmitShah) March 30, 2018

Addressing the reporters he said" it would catch hold of murderers of his party activists even if they hide in the abyss. He said over 24 workers have been killed and the police have taken no action against the killers.

"They are roaming scot-free. They are being allowed to commit more murders. The Siddaramaiah government's end is nearing and when the BJP forms the government, we will track the culprits from the abyss," he said.

Referring to his recent slip of a tongue, Amit Shah said that he may have slipped up between Siddaramaiah and Yeddyurappa, but the people of Karnataka will not make that mistake.

"In a slip of tongue, I said that Yeddyurappa government is corrupt instead of Siddaramaiah's, and the entire Congress party started to rejoice I might have made a mistake," Shah said before delivering the denouement: "The people of Karnataka will not [make a mistake]."

Meanwhile, disturbance at BJP President Amit Shah's interaction with Dalit leaders at Rajendra Kalamandira in Mysur. Slogans were raised against Union Minister Ananth Kumar Hegde over his remarks on the constitution.

#WATCH Disturbance at BJP President Amit Shah's interaction with Dalit leaders at Rajendra Kalamandira in Mysuru after slogans were raised against Union Minister Ananth Kumar Hegde over his remarks on the constitution. #Karnataka pic.twitter.com/33BQsMz8z1  ANI (@ANI) March 30, 2018

However, Shah disowned himself from the controversial remarks and said that neither he nor the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has anything to do with Hegde's statements. Hegde had said: "The Constitution needs to be changed from time to time and we have come for that...those claiming to be secular and progressive do not have an identity of their parents and their blood. One will get self-respect through such identity."

As part of his "Karunada Jagruti Yatre", Shah will tour Mysuru, Chamarajanagara, Mandya and Ramanagara districts on March 30 and 31.

He will also visit the famous Nanjanagudu Srikanteshwara and the Melukote Cheluvanarayanaswamy temples.

He will also interact with organic farmers and women, take part in ST convention, visit Channapatna Craft Park and interact with silk growers and silk industry.

This is the fourth leg of Amit Shah's tour in the state. He has already covered parts of coastal and Malnad, north, and central regions of the state.

Out of the total 26 seats in the four districts, considered as the Vokkaliga heartland, BJP did not win even a single seat during the 2013 Assembly elections.

Moreover, the region is the home turf of Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, who hails from Mysuru.

Former Chief Minister and state JD(S) chief H D Kumaraswamy and senior minister D K Shivakumar enjoy considerable influence in the region.

Interestingly, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah too is camping in Mysuru till April 2 and will take part in the campaign activities there.

The Election Commission had announced a single-phase election on May 12 for the 224-member Karnataka Legislative Assembly.

Karnataka Assembly Election dates Date of notification April 17 Last date to file nominations April 24 Last date to withdraw nominations April 27 Date of polling May 12 Date of counting May 15

OneIndia News
A Look back at CMs who completed full 5-year term in history of Karnataka

Karnataka polls: In his last election, Siddaramaiah to contest from Chamundeshwari

India

oi-Oneindia Staff

By Oneindia Staff

Mysuru, March 30: On Thursday, during his Mysuru tour ahead of the state Assembly elections, Karnataka chief minister (CM) Siddaramaiah announced that he will be contesting polls from the Chamundeshwari constituency in the district. The incumbent Congress CM also said that the upcoming contest will be his last electoral battle. However, he did not reveal whether he will retire from politics after that.

Siddaramaiah contested the last Karnataka Assembly elections in 2013 from Varuna constituency, again in Mysuru district. He had won the election. Reports say this time his son Yatindra is likely to contest from the Varuna constituency.

While talking to reporters in Mysuru, Siddaramaiah said that the reason behind choosing to contest election from Chamundeshwari seat is that the people of the constituency were responsible for his political rebirth.

"This is my last election, I will fight from Chamundeshwari, because Chamundeshwari's people have been responsible for my political rebirth: Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah #KarnatakaElections2018," tweeted ANI.

This is my last election, I will fight from Chamundeshwari, because Chamundeshwari's people have been responsible for my political re-birth: Karnataka CM Siddaramaiah #KarnatakaElections2018 pic.twitter.com/eNCqObWTSZ  ANI (@ANI) March 29, 2018

On Tuesday, the Election Commission (EC) announced the polling and counting dates for the Karnataka Assembly elections. While polling will take place on May 12, the counting of votes will take place on May 15.

"I will contest from Chamundeshwari. I will win with the blessings of people from Chamundeshwari," the CM added. Earlier, Janata Dal (Secular) (JD(S)) state president HD Kumaraswamy predicted that Siddaramaiah will lose election if he contest from the Chamundeshwari constituency.

"If he (Siddaramaiah) contests from Chamundeshwari, write it down today itself, when election results are declared on May 15, wherever I'm, I will come down to Mysuru to discuss with you about his defeat," Kumaraswamy said.

"Does Kumaraswamy know how many times I have contested from Chamundeshwari constituency...seven times. I won five times. I have complete faith and belief in my voters...they won't listen to Kumaraswamy or anyone," Siddaramaiah said.

As a part of the election campaign, the CM is on a five-day tour of Mysuru district which will end on April 2.

OneIndia News
Modi will damage the nation: Amit Shahs 2nd gaffe in poll-bound Ktaka, courtesy translator

India

oi-Oneindia Staff

By Oneindia Staff

Bengaluru, March 30: That is why they insist, "In Karnataka, speak in Kannada." But unfortunately, a lot of the non-natives, who are staying in various parts of the state, don't know the local Kannada language. And this election season, Karnataka is welcoming a bevvy of leaders, especially Hindi-speaking politicians from North India, advising locals whom to vote and whom not.

In places like Bengaluru, it is fine for politicians to address people in either English or Hindi. However, in rural areas, unless leaders don't address political rallies in local language then the message hardly reaches the public. Thus a lot of politicians are being accompanied by translators during their political rallies in the state, these days.

The incumbent Congress has made it a point that most of the party president Rahul Gandhi's speeches are translated into Kannada. Taking a cue from the Congress, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) too has started translating the speeches of its leaders. However, on Thursday, the BJP's attempt to please the local people backfired as the party president Amit Shah's speech was wrongly translated by state BJP leader Prahlad Joshi in Challkere of Karnataka's Devanagari district.

"PM Narendra Modi will not do anything for Dalits, poor and the backward classes. He will damage the nation. Please vote for him," Joshi said while translating Shah's Hindi speech.

This is what Shah had actually said: "Siddaramaiah government could not develop Karnataka. You have faith in PM Modi and cast your vote for Yeddyurappa. We will transform Karnataka into the best state in the country."

On Tuesday too, Shah committed a "blunder", rather a slip of the tongue on his part, that left the opposition Congress and social media amused.

Shah called the previous government headed by his party's state unit president BS Yeddyurappa as the most corrupt in the history of Karnataka. Of course, it was a slip of the tongue which was immediately corrected by Yeddyurappa and one more BJP colleague of Shah sitting beside him at a press conference in Davangere.

Actually, Shah wanted to attack incumbent Congress chief minister Siddaramaiah but committed a faux pas. "The government headed by Mr Yeddyurappa was the most corrupt in the history of Karnataka," said Shah.

But again, the damage had been done which left the BJP embarrassed. The biggest casualty in the entire episode, which to a layman was also hilarious as Shah himself admitted the "truth", was none other than Yeddyurappa, the party's chief ministerial candidate in the state.

In order to clear their minds, probably, Shah and his team members need some rest as they have been relentlessly campaigning for the polls in the state. On Tuesday, the Election Commission (EC) announced the polling and counting dates for the Karnataka Assembly elections. While polling will take place on May 12, the counting of votes will take place on May 15.

OneIndia News
FM assures PMC Bank customers that she would speak with RBI Guv to enable withdrawal

Now fraud by Gitanjali Gems in Karnataka bank reported

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

The Karnataka Bank Ltd has informed the Reserve Bank of India that Gitanjali Gems owned by Mehul Choksi had committed an Rs 86.47 crore fraud in the fund based working capital.

In a regulatory filing on the BSE, the bank said, " We have reported a fraud to the RBI amounting to 86.47 crores in the fund based working capital facilities extended to Gitanjali Gems Ltd on account of non-realisation of export bills and diversion of funds.

"The working capital facilities were extended by the bank under consortium arrangement and provisions will be made as per the RBI guidelines," the bank's Company Secretary Prasanna Patil said in the filing.

The bank, however, clarified it does not have any Letter of Understanding exposure in Choksi's company.

OneIndia News
Postcard News owner Mahesh Hegde arrested by Bengaluru police

India

oi-Staff

By Oneindia Staff Writer

The Bengaluru police have arrested Mahesh Hegde, the owner of Postcard News. The police said that he had been arrested on charges of allegedly promoting communal disharmony in a bid to attempting to blemish the ruling Congress government in Karnataka.

There are two cases against Hegde. One was registered at the Sanjayanagar police station last year, while the other was filed on March 21 with the Cyber Crime Police station.

The allegation is that he had posted a fake news on the Twitter account of Postcard.news on March 18 while using a photo of a Jain Muni. He had said, "Very sad news. In Karnataka Jain Muni attacked by Muslim youth... No one is safe in Siddaramaiah's Karnataka".

Gaffar Baig, a resident of Whitefield, approached the Cyber Crime police and filed a complaint on March 21. The police registered the case under sections 153A (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, etc, and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony), 120B (criminal conspiracy), 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and section 66 (computer-related offences) of the Information Technology (IT) Act.

The case was registered against Hegde, Postcard News, Gaurav Pradhan and Deepak Shetty. The police said that the news was related to an accident at a village near Nanjangud on March 11 which was caused by a drunk rider in which the Jain Muni was injured.

OneIndia News
CBSE Class 10th Results 2021: Board likely to declare results soon; here's how to check your roll number

Raj Thackeray asks students to boycott CBSE re-examination

India

pti-PTI

Mumbai, Mar 30: Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray on Friday urged students and parents to boycott re-examination for the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) exam papers that got leaked.

The CBSE announced a re-test of the Class 10 mathematics and Class 12 economics papers, following reports that they were leaked.

"The government, by announcing the re-examination, is giving tension to students. This (the leak) was a mistake of the government and it should pay for the same, not the students," Raj told reporters in Mumbai.

"I request parents not to let students appear for the re-exam. If parents bend today, the next government will also indulge in the same thing," he said.

"Parents should send this message to the government that they will not succumb to re-exam tactics. I pray to parents with folded hands to show the government that it made the mistake," Thackeray said. "Some parents met me today. What has happened (re-exam decision) is very bad. It is not the fault of students," he said.

The class 10th Mathematics exam and class 12th Economics exams were held on March 28 and March 26, respectively. The CBSE had decided to conduct re-exams for the Class 10 mathematics paper and Class 12 economics paper after it had received information about paper leaks.

PTI
New roster notified in Supreme Court: Here is what the judges would handle

By being placed third on seniority list, here is what Justice Joseph has missed out

Going public was the only option says Justice Chelameswar on the famous presser by SCs top 4

Someone from Bangalore has beaten us in the race to the bottom: Justice Chelameswar

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

Someone from Bangalore has already beaten us in the race to the bottom, Justice J Chelameswar has said while questioning a probe initiated by the Chief Justice of the Karnataka High Court.

The Chief Justice of Karnataka (Justice Dinesh Maheshwari) is more than willing to do the Executive bidding behind our back, Justice Chelameswar also said in his six-page letter which was dashed off to the Chief Justice of India and all other judges of the Supreme Court.

He questioned the probe initiated by Karnataka High Court Chief Justice Dinesh Maheshwari against District and Sessions Judge Krishna Bhat at the insistence of Union Ministry of Law and Justice, despite his name being recommended for elevation twice by the Collegium.

Raising the issue of judicial independence, he said, "We, the judges of the Supreme Court of India, are being accused of ceding our independence and our institutional integrity to the Executive's incremental encroachment.

"The executive is always impatient and brooks no disobedience even of the judiciary if it can. Attempts were always made to treat the Chief Justices as the Departmental Heads in the Secretariat. So much for our 'independence and preeminence' as a distinct State organ".

Justice Chelameswar, who had held the unprecedented January 12 press conference along with three other senior judges questioning the allocation of cases by the CJI, referred to the "unhappy experience" where the Government sat tight over the files even after the Collegium recommended names for appointment in the higher judiciary.

"For some time, our unhappy experience has been that the government's accepting our recommendations is an exception and sitting on them is the norm.

'Inconvenient' but able judges or judges to be are being bypassed through this route," he claimed.

The apex court judge, who is demitting office on June 22, took serious note of the communication between the Karnataka High Court chief justice and the executive saying, "the role of High Court ceases with its recommendation".

He said that any correspondence, clarificatory or otherwise, has to be between the executive and the Supreme Court.

Referring to Bhat's case, he said, "To my mind, I could recollect no instance from the past, of the executive bypassing the Supreme Court, more particularly while its recommendations are pending, to look into the allegations already falsified and conclusively rejected by us.

"Asking the High Court to re-evaluate our recommendation in this matter has to be deemed improper and contumacious.

"He said the judiciary may not be "far-off" when the executive would directly communicate with the High Court about the pending cases and ask what orders are to be passed.

"Let us also not forget the bonhomie between the judiciary and the government in any State sounds the death knell to democracy.

We both are mutual watchdogs, so to say, no mutual admirers, much less constitutional cohorts", he said in the letter to the CJI.

Asking the CJI to take up the issue of executive interference in the judiciary by convening a full court on the judicial side, he said this was necessary in order to ensure that the institution (Supreme Court) remained relevant under the scheme of the Constitution.

He then referred to an instance from the past when the apex court had taken serious note of direct communication of the then Law Minister with the High Courts on the issue of judges' transfer which had finally led to the judgement in first judges case in 1981.

Later, the Collegium had assumed power with regard to judges' appointment in higher judiciary.

In 2016, then Chief Justice of India TS Thakur had asked the High Court chief justice S K Mukherjee to hold an inquiry against Bhat on certain allegations levelled by a subordinate woman judicial officer.

Bhat's name was later recommended after the probe had given him a clean chit.

OneIndia News
Delhi: Students protest outside Boards office, say, 'they are suffering due to CBSE's mistakes'

India

oi-Madhuri

Disappointed and agitated students were seen protesting outside the CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education) headquarters in Delhi on Friday after CBSE announced to retake Economics and Mathematics papers, of Class 12 and Class 10, following reports of the paper leak. The students claimed that they are suffering due to CBSE's mistake and that they should be held accountable for it.

Many students claimed that almost all the papers had been leaked a day before the examinations and demanded that if a re-examination is to be held, it should be done for all the subjects.

On Thursday, the Delhi unit of the All India Democratic Students' Organisation (AIDSO) also demanded a high-level probe into the CBSE question paper leak case, and said it showed the board's "utter negligence" in conducting the examinations fairly.

The news of re-exam has left the entire student community in a state of shock. Students said it was time for them to prepare for the entrance examination and this re-examination will hamper their preparations.

OneIndia News
The Catechism of the Catholic Church says, The teaching of the Church affirms the existence of hell and its eternity. Immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into hell, where they suffer the punishments of hell, eternal fire. The chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God, in whom alone man can possess the life and happiness for which he was created and for which he longs.

Meanwhile, the popes Holy Thursday included a visit to the Regina Coeli prison in which he told inmates that he plans to have eye surgery next year, according to an Associated Press report. He washed the feet of 12 inmates at the prison, then wiped them and kissed them as part of the Holy Week ritual that he started when he was archbishop of Buenos Aires, according to the Vatican.

At my age, for example, cataracts come, and you dont see [really] well. Next year I have to have an operation, he said during the visit, according to the AP. Pope Francis, 81, also told the inmates to conduct their own cataract surgery for the soul.

Pope Francis schedule for Easter weekend includes the Way of the Cross procession on Good Friday at the Colosseum in Rome, a Holy Saturday Easter vigil and Easter Sunday Mass at St. Peters Basilica. Meanwhile, the AP also reported that part of St. Peters Basilica was sealed off after plaster fell off Thursday near the Pieta statue by Michelangelo.
Swachh Bharat Abhiyan: In spite of all odds, Senapati becomes the 1st ODF district in Manipur

India

oi-Oneindia Staff

By Oneindia Staff

Imphal, March 30: The Narendra Modi government is aiming to make the entire country open defecation free (ODF) by October 2019 under the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (Clean India Mission) programme. It is an ambitious plan that needs a lot of investment, work and monitoring by various government agencies.

The northeastern state of Manipur till recently had the dubious distinction of not having a single district that is ODF. On Tuesday, the state managed to clear itself from the ignominious tag as Senapati was officially declared as the first ODF district in Manipur at a function.

Bihar and Goa are the two other states in the country where not a single district is ODF. In February, the government informed the Lok Sabha that till date 11 states and union territories (UTs) have been declared ODF under the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, the Centre's flagship programme.

The Swachh Bharat Abhiyan was launched by PM Modi in 2014. The 11 states/UTs that have been declared as ODF are Sikkim, Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Gujarat, Chandigarh, Daman and Diu, Arunachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Meghalaya.

"I am immensely pleased to declare Senapati as the first open defecation free district in the state", said a visibly happy-looking Losii Dikho, PHED minister of Manipur. He added that Senapati can be a role model for all other districts in the state. Out of the eight states in the northeastern region, only Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim are ODF states. Now, Manipur too is aiming to join the prestigious club of ODF states.

"Senapati district once had the highest number of bandhs and blockades in the State, but today it [Senapati district] has become very progressive and constructive changes are witnessed with the collective efforts of the people and the government", said the PHED minister.

A total of 27,755 low-cost latrines have been constructed at the cost of Rs 13,000 each under the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (Gramin) programme in Senapati district, stated reports.

"Along with building toilets, we are educating people as for why it is important to use them instead of defecating in the open. Some villagers understand the fact easily, but others take a while to use toilets. However, we are confident that soon entire Manipur will become ODF," said an official.

OneIndia News
Tamilnadu government likely to reopen school for the class 6 to 8 th?

TN CM will take a call on reopening the schools for classes 1 to 8th after consulting with medical experts

Police were in search of the murder and the beheaded of a young man in Dindugal

Tamil Nadu Govt will move Supreme Court on Cauvery issue

India

pti-PTI

Madurai/Chennai, March 30: The Tamil Nadu government will move the Supreme Court on the issue of constituting the Cauvery Management Board (CMB), Chief Minister K Palaniswami said on Friday.

Asked what kind of petition the state intended to file in the apex court, he told reporters in Madurai, "All that is still being discussed with legal experts." Palaniswami had yesterday chaired a meeting here with his senior cabinet colleagues, including Deputy Chief Minister O Paneerselvam, and officials, to discuss legal steps to be taken in this regard.

Thursday's meeting was held following the end of a six-week deadline given by the Supreme Court to the Centre to formulate a scheme on the Cauvery dispute.

Tamil Nadu's stand is that the Centre must constitute the CMB and Cauvery Water Regulatory Committee (CWRC) within six weeks from the day the apex court gave its verdict, which would be March 29. The Supreme Court had on February 16 pronounced its verdict on the vexed dispute between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.

Underlining his government's commitment towards setting up of CMB and the CWRC, Palaniswami pointed out that his party MPs had vociferously taken up the matter in Parliament leading to the proceedings being stalled for over two weeks. "They (MPs) have been doing so to reflect the aspirations of the people of the state and armers," he added.

Fisheries Minister D Jayakumar said in Chennai that the government has decided to approach the apex court on the matter.

"We are going to approach the Supreme Court... the government is holding discussions," he told reporters here.

Jayakumar said the government was committed to uphold the rights of the state and welfare of the farmers in the Cauvery issue. He, however, indicated the state might approach the apex court in a couple of days on this matter.

In its judgement on petitions by Karnataka and Tamil Nadu over the final order of the Cauvery water disputes tribunal apportioning the water among riparian states, the apex court had raised the 270 tmcft share of Karnataka by 14.75 tmcft and reduced Tamil Nadu's share.

The court had compensated Tamil Nadu by allowing extraction of 10 tmcft groundwater from the river basin.

Since the verdict, Tamil Nadu has been urging the Centre to set up the CMB and CWRC to ensure it received its due share of water from the inter-state river.

PTI
Third front: Why it would derail in Telangana, AP

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

The plans to set up the third front are no doubt intensifying, but the inclusion of the Congress could hamper the idea in the states of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. Mamata Banerjee has been leading the bandwagon and is trying to get like-minded parties including the Congress on board.

However, the Congress coming on board may not go down too well in the Telugu states. Both the TRS and TDP will not sail with the Congress as it would directly affect their chances Telangana and AP.

While the TDP has been anti-Congress since its inception in 1982, the TRS it may be recalled fought directly against the party in the 2014 elections. The TRS had realised that sailing with the Congress would affect its own vote bank.

Both Chandrababu Naidu and K Chandrasekhar Rao have opposed the inclusion of the Congress. Rao even made this point clear when he met with former Jharkhand chief minister, Hemant Soren to discuss the third front.

Rao has had several run-ins with the Congress in recent times. In 2014, he had assured the Congress of an alliance but went the other way in the last moment. Recently after the expulsion of two Congress MLAs and the suspension of all Congress MLAs and MLCs from the House, the two parties have been in a constant state of war.

OneIndia News
VK Singh to visit Iraq on April 1 to bring back the mortal remains of 39 Indians killed in Mosul

India

oi-Deepika

By Deepika

Minister of State for External Affairs VK Singh will visit Iraq on Sunday, April 1, to bring back the mortal remains of 39 Indians who were killed by the terrorist group ISIS in Mosul.

According to media reports, Singh will visit Iraq in a special IAF aircraft, which will directly land at Amritsar in Punjab on April 2 with the mortal remains, which were exhumed from a mass grave in Badosh.

"It may take up to 10 days to bring back the bodies of all 39 Indians killed in Iraq as there will be legal processes involved," VK Singh had said earlier.

He also stated that the government tried everything possible to verify the details relating to the Indians. On being asked if he felt there was any possibility of the Indians being alive, the minister said,"Life is full of hope. We knocked every door thinking some of them may have escaped. Maybe they have gone somewhere. Considering the war-like situation there, the possibility of their being alive was less."

On March 20, Sushma Swaraj informed the Parliament that the 39 Indians abducted by Islamic State in Mosul in Iraq were dead and their bodies have been recovered.

"There will be legal processes. We are waiting for information from there (Iraq). It may take 8-10 days (to bring back the bodies)," Singh said outside Parliament.

OneIndia News
Vijay Mallya has applied for another route to stay in the UK, says lawyer

Who is Pinky Lalwani? the woman Vijay Mallya set to marry for the third time

India

oi-Madhuri

Absconding Liquor baron Vijay Mallya is expected to tie the knot with his long-time girlfriend and former air hostess Pinky Lalwani.

Lalwani, who is much younger to Mallya, had met him when she was hired as a flight attendant for Kingfisher Airlines in 2011. Since then, they have reportedly been spotted together quite a few times and recently celebrated the third anniversary of their relationship, reported the Indian Express.

[Also read: Vijay Mallya set to marry former Kingfisher Airlines air-hostess Pinky Lalwani]

According to reports, the 38-year-old Pinky Lalwani currently resides at Vijay Mallya's bungalow, Ladywalk in Hertfordshire village of Tewin.

Lalwani is also known to be close to Mallya's mother and has been seen with her at various events. Even though she is much younger than Mallya, the couple is known to get along well and she has also stood by him through the troubled times.

She also attends court hearings with the liquor baron and was seen at the Westminster Magistrates Court in London, where Mallya's extradition case was being heard.

The businessman who went from being the 'King of Good Times' to 'wilful loan defaulter' is accused of syphoning Rs 9000 crore from 17 Indian banks.

This will be Mallya's third marriage, after his wedding with childhood sweetheart Rekha Mallya (who is still his wife legally). His first wife was Sameera Tyabjee. Vijay Mallya has three kids from his previous marriages, a son, Siddharth Mallya and two daughters, Leanna and Tanya.

OneIndia News
Mumbai fire: Death toll rises to nine in blaze at Covid hospital in Bhandup, 76 patients rescued

18 dead in fire at Pune sanitiser firm, search on for missing staff

20 killed in fire on bus of factory workers in Thailand

International

oi-Madhuri

Police says a fire on a bus carrying migrant workers to factories near Bangkok has killed 20 people, according to reports by AP.

The fire incident was reported to police around 1:30 a.m on Friday and occurred in Tak province in western Thailand along the border with Myanmar. Local media have reported the workers were from Myanmar.

Police said the bus was leaving Tak province to take workers to factories in industrial zones near Bangkok.

OneIndia News
Collapse of Kabul will go down as one of the greatest defeats in American history: Donald Trump

Donald Trumps call for US retreat from Syria leaves Pentagon, State Dept officials flummoxed

International

oi-Shubham

By Shubham

US President Donald Trump on Thursday, March 29, gave hint at the withdrawal of American troops from war-ravaged Syria "very soon", leave the Pentagon and State Department officials astonished.

Speaking on infrastructure spending in Ohio, Trump said the US was already "knocking the hell out of ISIS" and hence Washington was no contemplating an exit from the West Asian country. Trump said it was now the duty of "other people" to take care of the Syrian situation. He also lamented that the US has "wasted" $7trillion in wars in the volatile region.

In Syria, around 2,000 American troops have been working with the Syrian Democratic Forces to win back ground from the terror organisation to include Raqqa, once the proclaimed capital of the ISIS in Syria.

Besides, officials from the State Department and US International Agency for Development are also working on the ground to restore normalcy in various cities and towns of Syria in the wake of the ISIS's retreat. They have been helped by and are in turn helping international players on restoring infrastructure in the country which has seen constant war and violence for the last seven years and still is.

US Defence Secretary James Mattis and former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson have said in the past that the American troops would remain in Syria as part of the US's goal of preventing the terrorists from gaining prominence. But Trump's indication now has left many in the top two establishments of the administration confused.

According to an ABC News report, while the Pentagon referred questions about Trump's comment to the White House, the State Department said it was not unaware of the policy of withdrawing the US troops from Syria.

The White House Security Council did not comment despite a request, the report added.

According to observers, Trump also contradicted his own speech delivered in Fort Myer in Virginia last August while announcing Washington's new Afghanistan policy. He said on that occasion that the enemies of Washington shouldn't know about its plans.

In January, Mattis too reiterated the same in a letter to the Congress. He said the US doesn't have a timeline based approach to its presence in countries like Iraq or Syria.

Mattis spoke against a premature retreat from Syria, saying it would only see the extremist elements regather their strength and assert control over the local territories.

While the ISIS hasn't been defeated completely in Syria, its dictator Bashar al-Assad is continuing to fight a civil war against his countrymen with the support of Russia. An American retreat would only leave more opportunities them to flourish without any check, feel observers.

OneIndia News
Indians jabbed with Covidshield to be considered unvaccinated in UK; Tharoor, Ramesh criticise new rules

Indian-origin teenager found hanged in UK school grounds

International

pti-PTI

London, March 30: An Indian-origin teenager was found hanged in the grounds of a top UK grammar school after feeling excluded by her classmates for not including her in a WhatsApp group, an inquest into her death was told this week.

Elena Mondal, 14, was found unresponsive by her teachers in a wooded area at Hampstead's exclusive Henrietta Barnett School in north London last year. Psychiatrist Emily Hallgarten told Barnet Coroner's Court that she may have felt excluded by her friends after not being included in a WhatsApp group, the Sun reported.

The inquest heard how her parents, Shyamal and Moushumi Mondal, feared that their daughter was being bullied at the girls' school, which was ranked the top performing state-funded school in the UK in 2016 and 2017.

School officials told the inquest how Elena, who wanted to be a doctor, once fled a classroom in tears clutching a pair of scissors, before collapsing in a corridor and cutting her arms in a toilet.

A wellbeing manager at the school, Kelly Barry, said that Elena had been referred to the school counsellor after missing meals and complaining of depression  but had missed several appointments.

When asked if the school's "hothouse culture" could be putting pupils at risk of mental health issues, she said: "It is not unusual for teenage girls at different points to engage in experiments with food or self-harm."

Consultant psychiatrist Cathy Wainhouse added that Elena may not have intended to die  instead hoping that she would be found by friends before her "dramatic statement" went wrong.

The inquest has been adjourned until an expert psychiatrist can assess the care provided to the teenager before her death.

PTI
Collapse of Kabul will go down as one of the greatest defeats in American history: Donald Trump

Thousands of terrorists might have been airlifted out of Kabul: Trump slams Biden

Never in history has withdrawal from war been handled so badly: Trump

Majority of Americans think Trump will not win second term in 2020: Poll

International

oi-Shubham

By Shubham

A new CNN poll conducted by SSRS has found that a majority of Americans feel that President Donald Trump will lose his bid for a second term in 2020. This finding has a similarity with the situation that existed two years ahead of former president Barack Obama's quest for a re-election in 2012. Obama, however, won the election defeating Republican Mitt Romney.

The poll was conducted between March 22 and 25 among a random sample of 1,014 adults who were reached via phone.

As per the findings, 54 per cent of Americans thinks Trump will end up as a one-term president and interestingly, it was exactly the same percentage of Americans who had thought the same about Obama six years ago. In terms of support, Obama had four points more at 44 per cent than that of Trump now. Six per cent of the respondents said they had no opinion.

The divide is more when one sees the figures party-wise. Among the Republicans, 79 per cent expects Trump as the winner in 2020 while 87 per cent Democrats feel he would end up as the losing candidate two years later. A large number of Independents also see him losing the test. In 2010, however, only 69 per cent Democrats thought Obama would win the next presidential poll - 10 points less than what Trump's men think today.

Trump announced his bid to rerun for the presidential post in February, a month after taking over the reins of the White House on January 20, 2017. He filed his re-election paperwork on his very Inauguration Day.

Former Democratic president Bill Clinton had even a worse scenario in 1995, two years after taking over the responsibility as less than a quarter of Americans felt him win a second term.

But neither is there any alternative to Trump

However, even as the poll forecast Trump losing the election in 2020, no alternative to his candidature was in sight. When the people were asked to name if any other candidate could be nominated for the election, none gathered more than one per cent support.

The candidates include Vice President Mike Pence, Romney, House Speaker Paul Ryann, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, South Carolina's retiring Representative Trey Gowdy and popular television personality Oprah Winfrey who many are anticipating to be a surprise candidate in the next presidential poll.

Names of some anti-Trump figures like Ohio Governor John Kasich, outgoing Arizona Senator Jeff Flake and Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse have been doing the rounds as probable candidates who could throw a Republican challenge to Trump.

Among the Democrats, former vice president Joe Biden was the most popular among the party's potential voters. An overwhelming majority of 84 per cent of Democrats or Democrat-leaning independents were in favour of Biden to win the nomination for the Democratic party.

Bernie Sanders, the senator from Vermont who lost to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 race, got the support of 75 per cent while Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren got the backing of 68 per cent respondents.

Biden, 75, and Sanders, 76, did not rule out there running for the presidency in 2020 though Warren, 68, said she was not in the race.

The names of California Senator Kamala Harris, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker and New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand also got some support from the potential Democratic voters.

OneIndia News
Palestinians kick off 6-week protest at Israel border; 1 dead, many injured in violence

International

oi-Shubham

By Shubham

Several thousands of Palestinians in Gaza kicked off their six-week-long protest called the Great March of Return on Friday, March 30, after marching towards the Israel border. It was on this day in 1976 that the policemen of Israel shot dead six Palestinian citizens of Israel while they protested Tel Aviv's expropriation of huge Palestinian land.

March 30 has since been remembered as Palestine Land Day and is seen as an important date in Palestinian's political life. It is symbolic of Palestine's resistance to Israel's occupation.

On Friday, Palestinian officials said dozens of people on their side were injured in a gunfire near Jabaliya in northern Gaza strip and Rafah in the south. They had also reported before the protest about the death of a farmer in tank fire. The Israeli military, on the other hand, reported about "rioting" in as many as six places and defended the firing, saying it was aimed at the "main instigators".

The Palestinians have set up five camps near the Israel border for the six-week protest. The killing of the farmer drew a strong reaction from Hamas, the militant group that dominates the Gaza Strip, which accused the Israelis of intimidating the protesters and urging them not to join the protests.

The Israeli foreign ministry also let know its strong stand on the issue, saying the protest was a "deliberate attempt to provoke a confrontation with Israel" and held Hamas and other Palestinian organisations taking part in the protest for being solely responsible for the clashes.

The current protest is scheduled to conclude on May 15 or Nakba Day, a date which is again a memorable one for the Palestinians. It was on this day in 1948 that several thousand Palestinians were displaced over the creation of Israel.

OneIndia News
A former San Francisco County deputy was sentenced to one year in jail and three years of probation on Wednesday after pleading no contest last month to false imprisonment and indecent exposure in Napa County Superior Court.

The former deputy, Raymond Hilding Johnson, 42, was arrested at Billcos Billiards and Darts on Third Street in Napa last summer after allegedly trapping a woman in the bars restroom and exposing his genitals to her.

The woman told police that Johnson had followed her into the restroom, forced his way in behind her and, when she tried to leave, he closed the door and locked it, according to court documents. The 29-year-old then told Johnson that she wasnt interested in him, but he still didnt allow her to leave.

The woman said that Johnson proceeded to lift up his shirt, pull his pants down and expose himself, according to court documents. Johnson approached her and began to caress her shoulders with both of his hands, the woman said. Finally, she said, she was able to run out of the bathroom.
Spy poisoning fallout: Russia expels 4 German diplomats

International

oi-Vikas

By Vikas

A day after Moscow expelled 60 US diplomats and closed an American consulate, Russia on Friday expelled four German diplomats. Moscow's action is in retaliation to 100 Russian diplomats being expelled from 21 countries to protest poisoning an ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.

The father-daughter duo was exposed to a nerve agent, which according to the UK, was made in Russia and hence the Kremlin was accused of attempting an assassination on foreign soil. Russia rubbished the allegations saying neither the former Soviet Union earlier nor it today had any plans to develop such a dangerous substance.

The UK then expelled 23 Russian diplomats and threatened to take more measures against Russia. The latter then retaliated by expelling an equal number of British diplomats besides ordering closing down of the British consulate in St Petersburg and British Council's offices located in Russia.

[Russia to expel 60 US diplomats, close American consulate: reports]

Yesterday (March 29), Russia expelled 60 US diplomats and closed an American consulate, days after Washington did the same to Russian diplomats over Moscow's alleged role in poisoning an ex-spy.

On March 26, the Donald Trump administration gave marching orders to 60 Russian diplomats stationed in the US, including 12 members of Russia's Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York. The Russian consulate in Seattle was also closed.

OneIndia News

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Friday, March 30, 2018, 20:20 [IST]
Why has the Lankan MPs links to Kasargod come under the ambit of the Indian agencies

Fissures in Sri Lanka govt in open: President Sirisena clips PM Wickremasinghes wings

International

oi-Shubham

By Shubham

Adding glee to former Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa supporters' mood, the National Unity (NU) government of President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe witnessed uneasy power struggles within it.

It has been reported that President Sirisena clipped Wickremasinghe's wings by reducing some of the latter's responsibilities. The president took away the central bank, the National Operations Room and various other institutions from Wickremasinghe's control. The prime minister had them under him since the unity government took over the charges in January 2015.

The development came to the fore on Wednesday, March 28, when a government gazette notification announced the transfer of the responsibilities to the country's foreign minister Mangala Samaraweera.

Though there was no official reason as to why the changes took place, there is no denying the fact that the NU government is facing more and more internal challenges with each passing day that it is struggling to address. The president and the prime minister were found to be making efforts to overcome differences in their 'Good Governance' regime to carry on till the elections in 2020 but after the latest development, it would look all the more weakened and encourage Rajapaksa, the strong president whose loyalists recently bagged a considerable success in the local elections.

In 2015, a central bank governor appointed by Wickremasinghe was accused of indulging in corruption and Sirisena set up a special inquiry which cleared the PM. But the governor was held responsible for leaking sensitive information to his son-in-law who made undue profits worth millions.

Sirisena-Wickremasinghe coalition seeing multiple cracks

The Sirisena-Wickremasinghe partnership also saw cracks after the disappointing local polls as the president accused the prime minister of the debacle. Sirisena also had differences with Wickremasinghe's free-market economic thinking and accused it as even more corrupt than the Rajapaksa government of the past. Differences also rose over Sirisena's attempt to extend his presidential term by a year, a move which was blocked by the country's Supreme Court early this year.

Wickremasinghe's United National Party (UNP), however, holds a comfortable majority in the parliament as the single largest party and Sirisena can hope to make his Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) stronger by engineering a defection in the UNP.

A section of the SLFP wants a no-confidence move against Wickremasinghe on April 4 and that could create the divide between the parties even wider. The UNP also has given indications that it could go alone in the 2020 election while a number of leaders of the SLFP have asked Sirisena to join hands with Rajapaksa loyalist Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna though that seems improbable as Sirisena had broken away from Rajapaksa's ranks (he was a minister in Rajapaksa's government once) to contest against him and beat him in the 2015 election.

Sirisena, however, cannot dismiss the government and call an early election as that power was abolished through a constitutional amendment introduced just after the coalition government assumed charge.

OneIndia News
David Harberts isnt the kind of guy who gives up. Especially when it comes to his familys longtime business, Napas Bubbling Well Pet Memori
Dispelling the Monopoly: EU Raises No Objection to Swedish Regulation Proposal

Published March 30, 2018 by Lee R

After approval from the EU, the Swedish government is expected to pass its gaming bill promptly.

After years of monopolies and butting heads with the EU, it appears Sweden is nearing regulation.

Clearing the Path

The end of 2018 is the timetable set for the launch of a free iGaming market in Sweden. The newly indicated coalescence of the EU for all intents and purpose paves the way and assures no major unforeseen delays will disrupt the original assessment.

Closing the Window

The EUs acquiescence comes in the lack of objections offered by the European policy in the three-month window for refusals or reviews allocated to legislative proposals from EU states. The lack of objection as the three month window period ends relieves Sweden of concerns regarding the meeting of EU standards regarding the movement of goods and services.

Ball in Swedish Court

It is now up to the Swedish government to pass down its verdict on the EU-accepted iGaming draft. From there the bill goes to the Swedish Parliament for review and final approval, which Swedish officials said can take place as early as the end of the week.

Regulation Model Structure

Swedens regulation model calls for the division of the gaming market into three segmentsonline gambling and betting competition; gambling for public interest (covering lotteries or land-based bingo activities); and state-controlled segment governing land-based casinos and slot machines.

Regulation Model Details

The bill includes regulation requirements to track player activity to prevent gambling addiction, with standards for cutting off problem gamblers; bonus offers available only for first-time players; and a mandate for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to display warnings on all unlicensed sites.

Current Environment

As far as the current landscape Sweden does allow legalized gambling, some games available online to players 18 years or older, and four land-based casinos operating in the country and offering admission to players over 20, all named Casino Cosmopol under the ownership of state-run Svenska Spel, and offering standard casino games such as poker, slot machines, and blackjack. Svenska Spel dominates the gaming market through ownership of 50% of Swedens total gambling market.

Implications

The acceptance of the Swedish model by the policy-setting EU goes a long way towards removing the stigmatization of monopoly in Sweden, paving the way for an equitable model of iGaming in Scandinavias largest economy to complete a veritable 180 degree turn in relations between Sweden and the EU in a few short years.
Evacu-tags will be helpful for emergency responders who are trying to evacuate people, Robertson said.

The tags would signal to responders that the property has already been vacated. The tags could be placed on mailboxes, fences, gates, front doors, or anywhere easily seen so that responders can move on to the next house and not spend precious time checking an already vacated home.

Get neighborly

The Sheriffs office is going to begin a community watch program, Robertson said, that will encourage neighbors to get to know one another better. So that youll know if a person isnt mobile, or takes medication that makes it hard for them to wake up at night, or (have) key access. Or they know the neighbor isnt home that weekend and can put the tag out.

Weve gotten lazy as a community, Robertson said. But what we have to do is take care of one another. Its up to all of us to work together to protect one another.

Clearing brush

Campbell said fire departments have been hampered by environmental restrictions in their ability to clear underbrush, or fuel, in wildland areas.
If the areas where those alleged incidents supposedly occurred had been mapped earlier than they were, with tougher regulations applied to them, theres at least a possibility lives, homes, crops and businesses might have been spared.

But there was no danger map when those fires broke out. Nor was there one in the months leading up to them, when it might have done some good. Creation of the map was first ordered by the PUC shortly after the 2007 Witch fire destroyed at least 1,500 homes and killed 17 persons in San Diego County. Investigators placed the blame for that fire on arcing power lines of the San Diego Gas & Electric Co., which has failed so far in efforts to force consumers to pay more than $300 million in costs not covered by insurance.

But one newspaper reported last fall that utilities repeatedly asked to slow down mapping, saying some proposed regulations would add unnecessary costs to construction and maintenance projects in rural areas.

The problem with those objections, apparently heeded by the PUC as it extended the mapping deadline repeatedly, is that when strong winds blow, fires in rural areas can spread to more heavily populated places, as residents of Ventura, Montecito, Santa Rosa and Calistoga learned to their dismay in late 2017.
Workers who helped restore properties after the Tubbs fire in October are suing their employers for allegedly cheating them of regular and overtime pay and verbally abusing them.

The class action lawsuit filed March 23 in Sonoma County Superior Court names two out-of-state companies, Southern Response Services based in Satsuma, Alabama and Interstate Restoration LLC based in Ft. Worth, Texas.

Spokespersons for the companies said late this week they would not comment until they have received and reviewed the 31-page civil complaint filed by Villegas Carrera LLP of San Francisco.

Attorney Karen Carrera said more than 100 workers gathered at parking lots in Sonoma and Napa counties and were taken in vans to clean and restore fire-damaged properties.

The workers were cheated of half their pay and their employers made up the hours they had worked to avoid paying overtime, according to the suit.

There was no time clock, so the defendants entered whatever time they wanted for the workers, Carrera said.

The workers were paid with credit cards that cost $3 to use instead of a bank card, and some of the workers also lost their homes in the fire, according to the complaint.
When this country was founded, women had no rights. As late as 2010, then-Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said in an interview that women still dont. It wasnt until 1971 that the court ruled women were covered under the Fourteenth Amendment. A plethora of cases followed along two tracks: Fourteenth Amendment equal protection and due process and Fifth Amendment due process as applied to the federal government.

In the five cases under the Fifth Amendment due process clause from 1973 to 1979, all against federal government programs, the plaintiffs (males in three cases) prevailed in four. This track record continued in 2017s Sessions vs. Morales-Santana. The male plaintiff argued that equal protection was violated when his citizenship was denied based on his unmarried mother, who was not a citizen, rather than his father, who was but had left the U.S. five days before his 19th birthday, the requirement to settle citizenship for a man who had a child born out of the U.S. For an unwed woman who had a child born out of the U.S., the requirement was having lived in the U.S. one year at any time in her life.

From 1869 to 2000, 19 cases were brought regarding womens rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. Not until 1971 did the court hold that women are covered under the equal protection clause.
Wed like to lend our voice to the growing chorus of supporters for Measure C.

Napa wine grapegrowers and vintners have harvested so much more than grapes from the bounty of the land, now its time we returned the favor.

In an unprecedented time when a hostile federal government is attempting to roll back established protections for national monuments, repeal decades long safeguards for coastal waters, and undo 50 years of environmental progress, we must be more proactive than ever as good stewards of the land we call home.

Its a scientific fact that California has more biological diversity, including more endemic species, than any other state in the union.

And Napa County has particularly high levels of biological diversity compared to California. We are living in one of the great biodiversity hot spots in the nation.

The forests, meadows and woodlands in Napas mountains and hills harbor 1,700 plant species, 1,400 of which are native. Unfortunately an alarming 126 species are rare or threatened, particularly by loss of habitat due to vineyard conversions. Measure C will give needed protection for our own botanical Eden by preserving habitat, preserving our valley aquifers, keeping the air clean, storing carbon, and many other benefits.
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Building Movement Politics Means Fighting Democrats

(Image by BAR) Details DMCA





"In the absence of a renewed, grassroots street offensive against the armed occupation of Black communities, there will be no relief from the daily slaughter."

Cops "have the right to shoot us, they get away with it every day," said a despairing Dawnya Walker, one of 300 community residents that descended on Sacramento, California's city hall to protest the police killing of Stephon Clark in his grandmother's backyard . The numbers show that Walker is correct: U.S. police enjoy near-absolute impunity to gun down young Black males without any reasonable fear of punishment. Eight years of a Black, Democratic president in the Oval Office made not the slightest dent in that American reality, despite the re-emergence in 2014 of an incipient social justice movement under the heading of Black Lives Matter.

The youthful insurgency lost momentum -- waylaid by the inexorable pull of Democratic Party politics and corporate philanthropy -- long before Donald Trump entered the White House and installed a pure Dixiecrat as attorney general. Trumpian malevolence cast an orange chill across Black America. "It has been a long time since any victim was given as much attention as Stephon Clark," writes Margaret Kimberley, in the current of issue of BAR.

"We are enveloped in a toxic miasma of Russia-hate that, by sheer weight and repetition, has infested every aspect of American political thought."

There is "movement" afoot in the U.S., but it does not "arc towards justice." Ever since Trump's electoral victory, the collective national consciousness has been smothered in a maddening fog of manic, industrial-scale propaganda, spewed non-stop by corporate communications conglomerates working hand-in-glove with the most aggressive elements of the surveillance-intelligence "community" and the bi-partisan War Party. We are enveloped in a toxic miasma of Russia-hate that, by sheer weight and repetition, has infested every aspect of American political thought, distorting and subverting even the most progressive-minded "movements" struggling to find a way towards human dignity under late stage capitalism in a profoundly racist country. Voices for peace and social justice are asphyxiated in the pestilential plume -- unless they find their own air.

Damn right, there is a conspiracy -- possibly the loudest one in history! -- megaphoned by a billionaire-owned media screaming "War, War, War" day and night, fouling the public mind with pure reactionary malice. The duopoly contest has devolved into a dance of death between Donald Trump's raw white supremacist nationalism and Democratic Party corporate imperial warmongering.Only fools claim there is space for progressive maneuver in the interstices between such forces.

"The Democratic Party remains under the firm control of the Clinton/Obama forces that reinforced mass Black incarceration in the Nineties and militarized the police in this century."

What is needed is clarity among genuine leftists and serious Black liberationists in the face of rampaging reaction. There is no lesser evil in this house of fear and apocalyptic brinksmanship. The Democrats have colluded in a budget whose gargantuan military outlays will inevitably doom what's left of the U.S. social safety net -- that is, if the human race is not annihilated, beforehand. They have replaced and outshouted the John McCain's and Lindsay Graham's of the Republican Party in demonizing, not just Vladimir Putin, but every government and movement in the world that resists U.S. lawlessness and aggression.

The Democratic Party remains under the firm control of the Clinton/Obama forces thatreinforced mass Black incarceration in the Nineties and militarized the police at unprecedented levels in this century through the Pentagon's 1033 program. In the absence of a renewed, grassroots street offensive against the armed occupation of Black communities, there will be no relief from the daily slaughter and the accompanying political evisceration of Black America.

Yes, it is certain that Trump's very presence encourages the most swinish elements of the police. But it is also true that the Democrats -- including Black Democrats -- have controlled the city governments that maintain the police state in Black neighborhoods and relentlessly disperse our people through gentrification.

"What is needed is clarity among genuine leftists and serious Black liberationists in the face of rampaging reaction."

And now it is the Democrats that take the lead in purging the Internet of dissenting political views, under the guise of defending fragile American minds against foreign manipulation. Silicon Valley -- the big business sector most supportive of Clinton/Obama Democrats -- is thus given license to shape reality in ways that make corporate dictatorship appear both logical and inevitable. Trump's troglodytes could never finesse such a hijacking of fundamental democratic rights, but the Democrats are pulling it off with alarming speed.There's nothing "lesser" about this evil.

When the Democrats got their wish, that Trump win the Republican presidential nomination, they became the predominant party of the U.S. ruling class and the most aggressive defenders of empire. Into Hillary Clinton's campaign "Big Tent" slivered the dregs of the national security state, for whom peaceful coexistence among nations is anathema. Bernie Sanders cannot purge them from their central position in the party. The World Socialist Web Site reports that "an extraordinary number of former intelligence and military operatives from the CIA, Pentagon, National Security Council and State Department are seeking nomination as Democratic candidates for Congress in the 2018 midterm elections." By WSWS's count, if the Democrats capture a majority of seats in the House this November, "candidates drawn from the military-intelligence apparatus will comprise as many as half of the new Democratic members of Congress."

Such a party is incompatible with any domestic social justice agenda -- and a threat to the survival of the species. The Left's job is to disentangle our people from the political clutches of the ruling class and to build independent people's organizations. The Republicans are a white people's problem, but Black activists cannot confront the police, the oligarchs or the warmongers without fighting the Democrats.
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From Foreign Policy

America's representatives can, and should, end the country's participation in the horrific onslaught on Yemen.

On March 20, by a vote of 55-44, the U.S. Senate tabled a resolution that I introduced along with two of my colleagues, Republican Mike Lee of Utah and Democrat Chris Murphy of Connecticut, calling on the president to withdraw U.S. participation in the war in Yemen.

We offered this resolution for two reasons. First, the Saudi-led war in Yemen has led to one of the worst humanitarian crises in modern history. Second, the time is long overdue for Congress to reassert its constitutional authority in matters of war. Article I of the U.S. Constitution states clearly that the people's representatives in Congress, not a single person residing in the White House, shall have the power to declare war.

Though a majority of our Senate colleagues voted to table our resolution -- that is, they chose to avoid taking a vote on the issues it raised -- I am more convinced than ever of the need to go forward aggressively on this matter. We must never forget that the two most significant foreign-policy disasters in the modern history of the United States, the war in Iraq and the war in Vietnam, occurred when Congress sat back and allowed two administrations, one Republican and one Democrat, to lie to the American people as they led us into conflicts with horrific consequences. We must never allow that to happen again.

On March 20, 2003, the war in Iraq, which I strongly opposed, began and the bombs started falling on Baghdad. Today, it is widely acknowledged that the war in Iraq was a blunder of enormous magnitude, and that our entry into that war was based on a series of falsehoods. Despite what the Bush administration said, Iraq had no role in the 9/11 attacks, and it did not possess weapons of mass destruction that threatened the United States.

As we now know, that war created a cascade of instability around the region that we are dealing with today in Syria and elsewhere, and will be for many years to come. Indeed, had it not been for the Iraq War, the Islamic State would almost certainly not exist.

The war deepened hostilities between Sunni and Shiite communities in Iraq and elsewhere. It exacerbated a regional struggle for power between Saudi Arabia and Iran and their proxies in places like Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen, and it undermined American diplomatic efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

That war was created by a Republican administration. Now, let me tell you about a Democratic administration, and an earlier conflict that began on similarly false pretenses. In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson cited an attack on a U.S. ship in the Gulf of Tonkin as a pretext for escalating the U.S. intervention in Vietnam.

We now know from declassified recordings that Johnson himself doubted that the USS Maddox had come under fire on Aug. 4, 1964, but still used that alleged attack to push for the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, authorizing him to escalate United States military involvement in Vietnam.

Johnson's administration misled both Congress and the American people into that war, just as the Bush administration misled us into the war in Iraq. Repeatedly, disasters occur when presidents refuse to tell their people the truth, and when Congress abdicates its constitutional responsibility to get that truth.

The truth about Yemen is that, by providing intelligence and the aerial refueling of Saudi combat planes, U.S. forces are engaged in hostilities unauthorized by Congress. This war has resulted in a massive humanitarian crisis where some 10,000 civilians have been killed, 40,000 more have been wounded, and more than 3 million have been displaced. In November of last year, the United Nations emergency relief coordinator said that Yemen was on the brink of "the largest famine the world has seen for many decades." Fifteen million people lack access to clean water and sanitation because water treatment plants have been destroyed. More than 20 million people in Yemen, over two thirds of the population, need some kind of humanitarian support, with nearly 10 million in acute need of assistance. More than 1 million suspected cholera cases have been reported, representing potentially the worst cholera outbreak in world history.

The Yemen war has also undermined U.S. efforts to stop terrorism. In 2016, Reuters reported that the war "has helped al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP)" -- one of al Qaeda's most dangerous branches -- "to become stronger than at any time since it first emerged almost 20 years ago." A 2016 U.S. State Department report likewise found that the conflict had helped both al Qaeda and the Islamic State to "deepen their inroads across much of the country."

While Iran's support for insurgents in Yemen is a serious problem, the reality is that this war has helped Iran to expand its influence. As a Public Radio International story put it last year, "if Yemen's Houthis weren't Iranian proxies before, they could be soon." In other words, justifying this war in terms of "pushing back on Iran" could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In voting to table our resolution, the chair and ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee committed to hold hearings on this three-year-old military intervention. I hope that these hearings will happen soon, and that they will ask the necessary tough questions about the administration's justifications for this war. If not, I reserve the right to bring our resolution to the floor of the Senate for consideration again.

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From Smirking Chimp

Massachusetts -- On March 27, 13 defendants went into the West Roxbury District courthouse to answer charges related to their arrests protesting the West Roxbury Massachusetts Lateral Pipeline. They expected to have charges against them reduced to civil infractions -- the equivalent of a parking ticket. While finding no grounds to deny that motion from the prosecution, the judge chose to let each defendant testify briefly on the necessity of their actions.

The defendants collectively presented a powerful and comprehensive argument for why it was necessary to engage in civil disobedience to stop the imminent local and global harms of this fracked gas pipeline. Following their testimony, the judge acquitted ALL the defendants by reason of necessity.

While defendants in this case were still denied a jury trial and the possibility of presenting a full necessity defense, this was the first time that we know of that defendants were acquitted based on climate necessity. The defendants told the story of the campaign against the West Roxbury Lateral Pipeline and how their actions were justified by the threat of climate change.

Lawyers for the 13 activists suggested there may even have been a "cause and effect" -- that charges were reduced in order to avoid the trial for which the defendants, their legal team, eight expert witnesses, and many supporters had prepared.

Activists said they were disappointed that they would not get the chance to present their case to a jury of their peers, but not disheartened. "The attempt to take these cases to trial was a long shot," said Marla Marcum, co-founder of the Climate Disobedience Center and a spokesperson for the group. "As climate activists in 2018, we know that long shots and moral imagination are some of the most promising tools for culture-shifting transformation."

With the judge dismissing the charges, the campaign was a success even without the trial. As Nathan Phillips, a professor in the Earth and Environment Department at Boston University and one of the defendants, said, "We forced Spectra to admit to the judge that they did not have and do not have a safety plan for the West Roxbury Lateral pipeline and likely any projects going forward."

The result in this case is an important part of building power to fight the fossil fuel industry. Climate justice advocates told their story not just in court but from the way they created their protest, which included "Digging Mass Graves" to highlight the dangers of climate change.

"What we stood for is true, and that truth is in the process of coming to light, regardless of the fact that the system is unable to fully hear it right now," said Karenna Gore, daughter of former Vice President Al Gore and Director of the Center for Earth Ethics at Union Theological Seminary in New York.

Activists continued to tell their story after the protest. See this blog from Tim DeChristopher, and by Rev. Lara Hoke. The participants consistently made the point that they restated before the court -- there is an urgent necessity to stop building carbon infrastructure as climate change will kill millions of people and cause immense environmental damage.

This protest and refusal to accept a plea bargain built the movement's power and demonstrated the violence of carbon energy infrastructure projects.

The defendants were among roughly 200 protesters who had been arrested as part of a massive campaign against this pipeline, beginning in mid 2015. Initially concerned with local safety -- the risk of locating a high pressure facility in a densely-populated neighborhood and across the street from an active blasting quarry -- protesters gained support from Boston Mayor Walsh and the entire Boston City Council, Congressman Lynch, Senators Markey and Warren, State Representative Coppinger and State Senator Rush, as well as residents and officials from the Town of Dedham through which the pipeline also runs.

This is not just one protest but part of a national resistance movement for climate justice with activists taking action across the country to stop carbon energy infrastructure and extraction of oil and gas. We urge you to share this report so tens of thousands of people will see principled climate disobedience actions as one kind of necessary leadership in a time when our regulatory systems and our government are owned by the fossil fuel industry. We hope this action will inspire more people to take direct action, risk arrest, and pursue novel legal strategies.

The Climate Disobedience Center provides a guide for activists on how to use the tool of the necessity defense in climate cases. It defines climate necessity as: "The climate necessity defense is an argument made by a criminal defendant to justify action taken on behalf of the planet. It's offered by activists who have been arrested for protesting fossil fuel extraction and government inaction on climate policy." [Emphasis in original]

The necessity defense is a long-time defense used in civil disobedience cases where activists argue that their violation of the law should not result in conviction because they were acting out of necessity to prevent a greater harm. In climate cases, the argument is the impacts of climate change are so serious that breaking the law is necessary to avert them.

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As the Mueller probe continues, there's new evidence about the interaction between the Trump campaign, a sinister British political consulting firm -- Cambridge Analytica, and Facebook. They collaborated to steal the 2016 election. By the way, there's a Russia connection.

To understand the role of Facebook we recall the period after the 2016 candidate debates. The last debate occurred in Las Vegas, on October 19th; Hillary Clinton won that debate, as she had the previous two debates. At the time, most Americans thought Clinton would win the presidential election as polls showed ahead and it was widely believed that the Democrats had a superior "ground game;" that is, Dems were assumed to have a much more muscular ability to get-out-the-vote on November 8th.

The influential website, 538, believes that a single event cost Clinton the election: the October 28, 2016, letter that FBI Director James Comey wrote to Congress (https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-comey-letter-probably-cost-clinton-the-election/ ) reopening the investigation into the Clinton emails. It's probably more accurate to say that Clinton lost for multiple reasons. One was a massive shift towards Trump on election day; the Trump campaign managed to get out their vote.

Clinton won the popular vote by 2.8 million votes. Nonetheless, she lost the presidency because she lost the electoral college; specifically, she lost Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin by a combined total of 79,646 votes. That's where the influence of Cambridge Analytica and Facebook (and Russia) mattered. The Trump campaign developed their own electronic get-out-the-vote effort, targeted to swing states.

In the traditional people-powered get-out-the-vote effort, volunteers go door to door to first register voters and then, later, to encourage registered voters to vote for specific candidates. The volunteers are aided by current precinct lists that show the residences of interest -- for example, where Democrats live, who the residents are, and their recent voting behavior; that is, did they vote in the most recent election (the lists don't show how they voted in the latest election because that information is confidential). In more sophisticated voter outreach, basic information is amplified by relevant consumer data; for example does a specific voter belong to the Sierra Club or is there someone in the house that does not speak English.

The more sophisticated the voter data base, the more effective the get-out-the-vote effort is. In 2016 the Trump campaign, with the help of Cambridge Analytica and Facebook, developed a remarkable swing-state voter data base. They did not hand data base printouts to volunteers to guide their door-to-door interaction; instead the data base information drove electronic interaction using social media, such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter.

Unlike previous get-out-the-vote efforts, the Trump campaign strove to both get out Trump voters and inhibit possible Clinton voters.

Typically, in the last few days of the election cycle, the get-out-the-vote efforts focuses on "persuadable" voters. That is, no special effort is spent on reliable voters, those who have voted in the last few elections. The volunteers focus on intermittent Democratic voters and Independent voters who they believe might vote for their candidate. The volunteers repeatedly knock on doors with the intent of convincing persuadable voters to vote on election day.

In 2016, the Trump campaign bypassed the traditional door-to-door get-out-the-vote approach and, instead, contacted persuadable voters electronically. For a voter deemed likely to vote for Trump, the campaign sent them email, twitter, or Facebook messages. In addition they sent them news briefs -- primarily via Facebook -- that would likely convince the persuadable voter to vote for Trump.

The genius of the Trump-Cambridge Analytica-Facebook approach is that it, to a degree never seen before, personalized the messages to persuadable voters. They used the Facebook data to develop a voter profile and then sent voters messages based upon this profile. (This worked both to motivate voters to vote for Trump and to dissuade potential Clinton voters for voting for her.)

Writing in The New Yorker, Sue Halpern (https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/cambridge-analytica-facebook-and-the-revelations-of-open-secrets ) observed: "Cambridge Analytica contractors worked with Trump's digital team, headed by Brad Parscale and Jared Kushner. Alongside all of them were Facebook employees who were embedded with the Trump campaign to help them use Facebook's various tools most effectively--including the so-called "dark posts," used to dissuade African-Americans from showing up to vote."

The most informative investigative journalism is in The Guardian (click here ): "The blueprint for how Cambridge Analytica claimed to have won the White House for Donald Trump by using Google, Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube is revealed for the first time in an internal company document obtained by the Guardian... it details the techniques used by the Trump campaign to micro-target US voters with carefully tailored messages about the Republican nominee across digital channels. Intensive survey research, data modeling and performance-optimizing algorithms were used to target 10,000 different ads to different audiences in the months leading up to the election."

And the Russians were involved. Writing in Slate (https://slate.com/technology/2018/03/did-cambridge-analytica-leverage-russian-disinformation-for-trump.html ), Justin Hendrix reported "Cambridge Analytica also enlisted Russian-American academic Aleksandr Kogan to mine the private Facebook user data that is the subject of the ongoing scandal. While an associate professor at St. Petersburg State University in Russia, Kogan received grants from the Russian government to research 'stress, health and psychological wellbeing in social networks.'"

The Trump campaign, Cambridge Analytica, and Facebook collaborated to steal the 2016 election. With help from the Russians.
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(This is a reprint from NewsBred).



Sibal gets a lease from newspapers

(Image by Newsbred) Details DMCA



What's OpIndia.com? Apparently nobody since Hindustan Times completely banned the Kapil Sibal "land scam" story which has propelled the remarkable website on to the national consciousness.

Who is Smriti Irani? Again nobody since Hindustan Times, leave aside the investigative story, didn't even consider the presser of India's Human Resource Development minister worthy of coverage. Every other story, from a Karnataka chicken to dime-a-dozen weather reports, mocked at its readers in complete disdain today.

Indian Express, typically, covered the story inside its covers but with a completely outrageous slant. It manipulated the story not as an alleged "land scam" but as Sibal allegedly siding with a "money launderer." You see, scams--that too made-up-- exist only for a particular political party in a particularly hostile mainstream daily. (Mischievous that the newspaper is, it covered its tracks with the mention of "land" in its online story).

These are the newspapers who are awarded and feted on fake "Panama Papers"--a CIA operation which is distributed to select media outlets around the world who then acquire a halo, claiming to have worked themselves to ground in heroically unearthing this massive scam. I mean how fake could you really get!!!

These newspapers run "investigative report series" on environmental hazards in Goa; every sneeze of a Dalit; every sweat of a Muslim, every strand of hair on a Dravidian mirror but try making them cover a scam concerning Congress or Left! It's sunk on a sea floor without much ado. There are relaxed norms for columnists--such as Sibal, Yechury or Chidambaram--who are above reproach or probing questions. (And by the way why Surjit S. Bhalla has stopped appearing in Indian Express since becoming a member of Modi's Economic Advisory Council? Any idea, sirji).

But could heat on them would lessen any degree only because the English mainstream media plays the cover-up game? Unlikely. Such are the avenues and platforms--social media and TV channels--available to readers that truth is out despite wool being pulled over their eyes by presstitutes.

And it is these rogues who beat their breasts on the "freedom of press" having done their best to slaughter the cause of independent media. All its "star" go into a slumber when their masters are grilled by unassailable facts. The more they stretch to cover, the more torn its inners get in the process.

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Congress Switchboard: 202-224-3121

"The most effective ways to create a more inclusive, fair-for-all future will be from the bottom up. Rob Kall's book lays out how that would look with a hopeful, pragmatic vision that will change the way you see the world."



Dave Zirin, sports editor for The Nation, a columnist for The Progressive, and the author of eight books on the politics of sports, including What's My Name, Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States and A People's History of Spo
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A very powerful storm, rapidly building in intensity, is rushing toward the Trump White House and the Republican Party. This is not a storm that we typically see in various sections of this country. This is a political storm that has the potential to bring down the Trump administration and, with it, the GOP.

Such a massive storm erupted over the East Coast of America in 1991. It was created as a result of the confluence of three different weather-related meteorological events; warm air from a low-pressure system, cool and dry air generated by a high-pressure system, and tropical moisture from an approaching hurricane.

This political storm, that is gathering momentum and heading for the White House, has also been created by the confluence of three elements, specifically, three political-related elements in our government.

The first of these elements is Donald Trump himself. Witnessing his behavior day in and day out one gets the impression that he is on a path leading to an implosion; the only question is - when might it happen? Trump is not a politician, certainly not a leader, not a problem solver, and he has no ability to negotiate with others on important issues. In short, he lacks the key qualification and necessary experience that a U.S. president should possess. And, therefore, he is conducting what we might call a "Bull in a china shop presidency."

The second element is Robert Mueller, the Justice Dept. Special Prosecutor who is investigating Russia's interference in our election process and the possible involvement of Trump, his family or his advisers.

Mueller and his team are very methodical and relentless in analyzing the many factors involved with this Russian infringement. No doubt, they have gathered a great deal of evidence and are collecting more to build a powerful case. They have also indicted four Trump associates who have pled guilty to the charges. Mueller also indicted 13 Russians and 3 Russian companies.

Trump feels the increasing heat coming from the Mueller investigations. He has uttered the words, "No collusion" an untold number of times and these constant denials are an indication that he definitely has something to hide. A person who had nothing to hide would simply let Mueller do his thing, confident in knowing that he will find nothing of substance.

The third element is the Republican Party and its members that see his irrational behavior and just ignore it, giving him a free pass no matter how destructive his policies and actions may be. They have become no more than modern-day serfs and peasants who meekly bow to his dictates.

Republicans are, in effect, sticking their necks in a political noose when they align themselves so closely with this president whose popularity remains at record lows. More and more it is becoming evident that they are going to pay a terrible price for their submissiveness and dereliction of duty when they have to face the anger and fury of voters in the 2018 elections

Trump and the Republicans will bring a great deal of heavy political baggage to this election. Voters will remember their attempt to destroy Obamacare upon which millions of Americans depend. That, together with the way that they rammed massive tax cuts for the rich through Congress, while giving the American people the left over crumbs, will come back to haunt them.

Many Americans are coming to the realization that Trump and the Republicans may be in power but they do not know how to use that power to take positive and constructive actions to make things better for all Americans.

The country's infrastructure is begging for a massive repair and rebuilding program but Trump cares only about building his wall while Republicans sit on their hands doing nothing.

Mass shootings have gotten out of control and something drastic must be done and soon, to stop more of our children from being gunned down. The Las Vegas and Parkland, Florida mass murders should have triggered Congress to finally act and take measures to bring this situation under control.

Let's be perfectly blunt about this; neither Trump nor Republicans give a damn about these kids, these two political elements are no more than tools of the NRA and the gun industry and have the blood of these victims of mass shootings on their hands.

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Historian Gerald Horne says that to pass the New Deal legislation, FDR allowed discriminatory practices to appease the racist Dixiecrat section of the Democratic Party; the reforms of the 60's that responded to the upsurge of the civil rights movement helped Black Americans, but have been undone by Democratic and Repubican administraitons since - with host Paul Jay

[The entire series can be seen at The Real News Network]

Dr. Gerald Horne holds the John J. and Rebecca Moores Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston. His research has addressed issues of racism in a variety of relations involving labor, politics, civil rights, international relations and war. Dr. Horne has also written extensively about the film industry. His latest book is The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America. Dr. Horne received his Ph.D. in history from Columbia University and his J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley and his B.A. from Princeton University.

Paul Jay: We're continuing our series titled Undoing the New Deal. While most of the measures taken during the New Deal helped to mitigate the worst effects of the depression on workers and created a social safety net where there had been none before, not all Americans benefited equally. Most New Deal programs discriminated against African Americans. Whites were offered the first jobs and it allowed a separate and lower pay scale for Blacks. This is in a federal government jobs program. The Federal Housing Authority refused to guarantee mortgages for Blacks who tried to buy in white neighborhoods and the Civilian Conservation Corps maintained segregated camps. The Social Security Act excluded those job categories Blacks traditionally filled.

The situation in agriculture was even worse. Since 40% of all Black workers made their living as sharecroppers and tenant farmers, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration acreage reduction hit Blacks hard. In this program, farmers were actually paid not to produce food, which raised the prices for farmers but white landlords could make more money by leaving land untilled then by putting land back into production, which created even more Black unemployment.

In the 1960's New Deal-style programs were created that benefited Blacks more equally, but successive administrations both Democratic and Republican have been rolling back these programs since the 1980s. Bill Clinton's welfare reforms played a major role in undoing the New Deal and now the Republican Party is planning to put a few final nails in the coffin of what's left.

Now joining us to discuss African Americans in the New Deal is Gerald Horne. Gerald is the John J. and Rebecca Moores Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston. He is the author of many books, most recently The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and The Origins of the United States of America. Thanks for joining us again, Gerald.

GERALD HORNE: Thank you for inviting me.

PAUL JAY: Let's start with the New Deal itself. We know that Blacks simply did not benefit from the New Deal programs in the way white workers did. Why don't we start with that? What are some examples of that? Then we can kind of get into the why and the politics of it.

GERALD HORNE: You alluded to a number of the examples, that is to say, with regard to the Social Security program seeking to exclude categories of workers where Blacks tended to flock, such as agricultural labor in particular. I should also mention that with regard to housing programs, recent scholarship has suggested that New Deal housing programs did not erode Jim Crow neighborhoods. They helped to fortify Jim Crow neighborhoods.

However, before we go too far in that direction, I should also mention some of the positive benefits of the New Deal, particularly the so-called Wagner Act, the National Labor Relations Act, which was a kind of Magna Carta for the organizing of the industrial north and the industrial Midwest. This led to the formation of the United Auto Workers, United Steel Workers in particular and they tended to organize many Black workers within their ranks. Then, after those unions were organized, they were able to use the dues money of those workers to support anti-Jim Crow initiatives. In some ways, it's fair to say that the New Deal was a mixed bag for African Americans.

PAUL JAY: In those unionization struggles, many Blacks were in the leadership of those struggles. In some of the bitter fights founding the UAW and some of the industrial unions, Black workers were right up front leading the struggle.

GERALD HORNE: Not only with regard to the United Auto Workers and the United Steelworkers, but keep in mind that at that point there was a flourishing mostly black union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Workers, led by A. Philip Randolph, who started as a left-wing socialist and then migrated into a kind of right-wing social democrat. In between, that is to say in the 1930s, his union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Workers, was a very important force not only in terms of organizing Black workers on the railroads, which then before the era of air travel was the major route for transcontinental travel in this country, but also in more mundane terms, for example in terms of spreading anti-Jim Crow propaganda in the dankest precincts of Dixie. Oftentimes that propaganda was spread, by propaganda, I don't mean that in the pejorative sense, I just mean literature. That literature was spread through Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Worker porters who were traveling, say, from New Orleans to Houston, or from Houston to Dallas. This union drive is really one of the unsung heroes of the whole progressive movement in this country.

PAUL JAY: With much of the New Deal legislation, the jobs I mentioned, jobs went to white workers first. There was a lower, separate pay scale. We're talking jobs in the federal jobs program, where the federal government hired millions of people. There were other programs that discriminated against Blacks. There were some exceptions. Apparently Harold Ickes, who was in the cabinet, put a lot of money into Black schools in the south, but generally speaking, Roosevelt did not want to take on the Dixiecrats, the white racist members of the Democratic Party that controlled much of the legislatures in the south and also represented much of the representation in Congress. Apparently, there was even an anti-lynching law that Roosevelt didn't want to support. The politics of the period, and Roosevelt gets a lot of critique for this that he didn't take them on because they would have blocked his New Deal legislation was his fear. What do you make of the critique? I guess part of what I'm asking is, given the real politics of the day, did he have a choice or not?

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Life Arts 3/30/2018 at 12:55 AM EDT H2'ed 3/30/18

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The 2018 midterm elections will be a pivotal moment in American history. If we are successful we will be able to put an end to the disastrous Trump agenda, rebuild the declining middle class and create a Congress which stands for economic, political, racial and environmental justice.

In 2018 we have the potential to not only make great electoral gains at all levels of government, but to elect strong progressives who are prepared to take on the 1 percent and fight for an agenda that meets the needs of working families, and not just the Koch brothers and other wealthy campaign contributors.

But these victories are far from guaranteed. It is just not enough for the American people to have something to vote against, they must have something to vote for. Voters knew the myriad of problems with Donald Trump in 2016, and they still elected him. Today, despite all of his scandals and outrageous behavior, his approval ratings are close to the same levels as they were back then.

The truth is that, for a wide variety of reasons, millions of our fellow citizens have lost faith in government, hold political leaders in contempt and don't see any reason for voting. In the last midterm election, in 2014, the United States had the lowest voter turnout in 70 years -- just 37 percent.

Our job in 2018 is to change all of that. Yes, we must take on Trump's authoritarianism, xenophobia, racism, sexism, homophobia and religious bigotry -- but we must do more than that. We must rally the American people around an agenda that works for them, not the billionaire class. We must significantly increase voter turnout with strong, progressive candidates who are fighting for working families.

In my view, the 2018 elections present an historic opportunity to elect a new generation of candidates who will usher in an era of strong progressive change in this country. There are more candidates than ever before who support Medicare for all, free tuition at public colleges and universities, overturning Citizens United, a $15 minimum wage, common sense gun safety legislation, the transformation of our energy system away from fossil fuel and, in fact, our entire progressive agenda.

It's imperative that we support as many of these candidates as we possibly can. Because not only is that how we energize the working families of this country to come out and vote for Democrats, but it is how we can transform America.

You should know that I intend to be actively campaigning throughout this election season to energize the progressive community and support candidates who will stand by our agenda. And, by the way, that does not mean just "blue states." It means "red states" and "purple states" and states that Trump won by big margins. I look forward to seeing many of you at events from coast to coast. The bottom line is that the Democratic Party cannot continue to ignore half the states in the country. It must become a 50-state party.

But I cannot do it alone.

Please make a donation to support my work traveling the country and rallying people to support progressive causes and candidates who need our help. I would not ask if it were not so important. I cannot do it without your help.

As you well remember, it was not long ago that many of the ideas we've long talked about were considered "fringe" by many in the corporate media and in Congress. Well, that's changing.

Several years ago, I introduced legislation calling for a Medicare-for-all, single-payer system. It had no co-sponsors. Too radical. Now, with a majority of Americans supporting Medicare for all, we have 16 co-sponsors. A few years ago, the idea of a $15 an hour national minimum wage seemed unthinkable. Now, we have 30 co-sponsors on our legislation. We are also seeing good progress in making public colleges and universities tuition-free, lowering the outrageous level of student debt, making child care more affordable and decriminalizing the possession of marijuana.

We have come a very long way in a short amount of time, and all of those gains are a testament to people of all backgrounds and in all communities coming together and standing up to say ENOUGH is ENOUGH! We want a government that works for all of us, and not just a handful of billionaires.

That is the political revolution.

In 2018, we can advance our cause dramatically. But it will not be easy. The financial elite and those who profit mightily from the status quo will not go down without a fight. They have obscene amounts of wealth and have used that money to protect a dysfunctional system that allows them to make billions in profits while leaving far too many Americans behind.

But if we are willing to fight for it, the time is right for our movement to make dramatic gains this year. That is what I intend to do, but I cannot do it alone.

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We started our rainy afternoon in the Franscionis private wine cellar (Nick and Adams former playroom) enjoying the 2009 Pinot Noir Rosellas Vineyard from a 5.0L bottle and 2013 Soberanes Pinot from magnum as we listened attentively to the family discussing their history, farming/winemaking philosophy and vision for the future.

Moving inside the Franscioni home, we were greeted with a glass of Dom Ruinart Blanc de Blancs Champagne from magnum accompanied by delectable hors doeuvres prepared by Patricia Gomez of Royal Blues Hotel. Our next course was a delicious pheasant pizza from AJ Buchanio of Magee Homestead (a nine-room lodge on 7,500 acres in Wyoming) paired with a delightful duo of 2016 Chardonnays from both Soberanes and Rosellas Vineyards.

The Rosellas was an elegant display (Meursault-style) of pear and tropical fruits with hints of citrus while the Soberanes showed a bit more richness on the palate with a touch of spiced apple and power on the finish. A true sense of place expression as the two vineyards are planted to different clones and just two miles apart.
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From Philly

This time, it's going to be different.

They swear.

When Gina Haspel -- the current deputy director of the CIA, who once ran a secret "black site" prison in Thailand where a terrorism suspect was tortured with waterboarding, and was later involved in destroying torture evidence -- was picked this month by President Trump to head the spy agency, her allies said she'd learned her lesson. A friend of Haspel who worked in the Obama administration told the New York Times, "My experience from working with her is that she has learned from those mistakes and will be a thoughtful and conscientious leader of the CIA."

Allrighty, then. Ditto, apparently, for John Bolton, who spent those same dark years of the mid-to-late 2000s as a "diplomat" in the George W. Bush administration, a strange title for a foreign policy pundit who never seems to have met a war he didn't like, except for the one that he might have had to actually fight in, Vietnam. Just weeks after he called for a military first strike against North Korea -- a move that some experts say could lead to 1 million or more casualties in the ensuing fighting -- Bolton now insists that he's not that guy anymore.

Maybe. CNN reported in the days immediately after Trump picked the 2003 Iraq War cheerleader to become his new national security adviser that Bolton assured the 45th president "he wouldn't start any wars." (Later, there was pushback that Bolton, who wants to rip up the nuclear peace deal with Iran along with his more aggressive North Korea posture, made no such promise.) Either way, much of the inside-the-Beltway establishment seems convinced that the good people who made a few tiny mistakes back in those crazy post-9/11 times have now turned over a new leaf.

And why not believe them? I mean, were they and their friends in the Bush 43 administration lying when they told America and the world that Saddam Hussein was hiding a large cache of "weapons of mass destruction," or that the clock was ticking on an Iraqi nuclear program, or Saddam's government had ties to the al-Qaeda terrorists who attacked us in 2001 (even if 15 of the 19 attackers came from "friendly" Saudi Arabia)?

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From Alternet

They're befuddled. Justice Breyer even suggested all sides weigh in again, and another hearing be held.



The Supreme Court

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One of the most anti-democratic features of the political landscape does not appear destined to change before 2018's midterm elections, even though extreme gerrymanders this week returned to the Supreme Court for the second time this term.

On Wednesday, liberal and conservative justices visibly struggled with how to rein in partisan gerrymanders in a Maryland case. But because the 2018 election is underway -- and judges are hesitant to disrupt elections -- and the earliest ruling is months away, it appears congressional maps in the most gerrymandered states will remain for 2018's midterms.

The only exception appears to be Pennsylvania, whose state Supreme Court earlier this year threw out a Republican-authored map for its House districts for violating the state constitution. The court's expert created a new statewide map, giving Democrats chances to pick up several seats. (Top Republicans have called for impeaching the justices who ruled against them.)

But from a national perspective, Democrats seeking to regain a House majority will likely face the same anti-competitive districts that they have seen since 2012. Despite close statewide popular vote results, the GOP typically wins more seats.

"Because of maps designed to favor Republicans, Democrats would need to win by a nearly unprecedented nationwide margin in 2018 to gain control of the House of Representatives," the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School said in an analysis released before the Court's hearing. "To attain a bare majority, Democrats would likely have to win the national popular vote by nearly 11 points. Neither Democrats nor Republicans have won by such an overwhelming margin in decades. Even a strong blue wave would crash against a wall of gerrymandered maps."

Maryland's Democratic Gerrymander

This week's partisan gerrymandering case is from Maryland, where in 2011, top Democrats bragged about creating an additional House seat. The party drew district lines that deliberately included more Democrats and excluded Republicans. (That's a rare example of a Democratic gerrymander. In contrast, Republicans in 2011 targeted 16 states with 190 House seats for partisan gerrymanders, creating a House majority that has held ever since.)

The Maryland gerrymander was a clear abuse of power, the court's liberal justices said Wednesday. Elena Kagan said, "How much more evidence of political intent do we need?" Sonia Sotomayor said the state's Democratic leaders "were very upfront." Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted that the court has rejected race-based gerrymanders targeting blacks, so "if 'max-black' [districts] was no good, why should 'max-Democratic' be okay?"

But the problem, as the court's swing vote, conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy, alluded to, was figuring out the standard for determining when partisanship crosses a line and becomes an unconstitutional abuse. In another case also before the court, lawyers for the political losing side have argued that it's possible to measure how extreme gerrymanders waste votes. In Maryland, the issue was whether the voters' constitutional rights were harmed.

"Suppose the Maryland constitution had a provision that required that partisan advantage for one party be the predominant consideration in any districting. Lawful or not?" Kennedy asked Maryland's solicitor general Steven Sullivan, who replied that it would be illegal. Kennedy then asked, "How is this case any different?"

Maryland's constitution has no such gerrymandering clause. But Democrats who segregated its voters to gain an additional congressional seat acted like it did. That move, of course, prompted the state's Republicans to sue to get back that House seat.

The opposite partisan scenario, in which the GOP used redistricting in 2011 to create a supermajority House delegation and state legislature, was the focus of the court's other big gerrymandering case in Wisconsin, where the Democrats sued over the congressional map.

How to Measure Extreme Partisanship?

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From Common Dreams

John Bolton's career of pushing for bombing countries like Iran and North Korea, and his having played an active role in the Bush/Cheney regime's criminal war of aggression that destroyed Iraq, makes him a clear and present danger to our country and world peace. He is about to become Donald Trump's personal national security adviser with a staff of 400 right next to the White House. He must be stopped!

For Bolton, the Constitution, federal law, the Geneva Conventions, and other international laws are pieces of paper to be thrown away with unctuous contempt. This outlaw -- the shame of Yale Law School -- should have been cast away as a pariah if not prosecuted and imprisoned. A bully to his subordinates in the government and known as "kiss-ass" to his superiors, Bolton is aggressive, relentless, and consistently wrong, when not prevaricatory.

Under Secretary of State Colin Powell, during the imperial Bush/Cheney presidency, Bolton told the media that Fidel Castro was developing chemical and biological weapons. False. Secretary Powell, who believes Bolton is impetuous and dangerous, overrode his in-house liar and corrected the record. While in Cuba with a group, I heard Fidel Castro say he feared Bolton's words were a precursor to a U.S. attack until Bolton's remarks were dismissed by his superiors.

There is a remarkable liberal/conservative dislike and fright about Bolton having Trump's ear daily. Especially since Trump is susceptible to adopting the positions of the last person who reaches him. The added danger is that Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis has privately told people that he, like many who have experienced Bolton in government, cannot work with him. So does that mean that Trump will have to choose between the restraining hand of General Mattis and the recklessness of the draft-avoiding torture advocate John Bolton?

Will Republicans, who refused to confirm Bolton as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in 2005, assume some responsibility for opposing this sociopath? They could easily pass a joint resolution of Congress demanding withdrawal of the appointment by Trump.

There are many vigorous critics of Bolton's career and subsequent belligerent stances; Just last month Bolton wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal demanding the bombing of North Korea. His juvenile, lethal positions avoid considering the consequences, responses, backlash and danger to our country's own safety. He likes to bet on the world -- a Dr. Strangelove on steroids.

A lengthy New York Times editorial (March 23, 2018) declares, "Yes, John Bolton Really is that Dangerous." It begins: "there are few people more likely than Mr. Bolton to lead the country into war." Especially since Trump -- mired in domestic scandals, investigations, and personal lawsuits -- may wish to wag the dog and start wider, distracting, armed hostilities abroad.

The American Conservative magazine is stirring that segment of the political spectrum with Gareth Porter's article, "The Untold Story of John Bolton's Campaign for War with Iran." Trump didn't like General McMaster's (Trump's outgoing National Security Adviser) counsel that the U.S. remain in the Iran nuclear accord and not isolate itself from other major country signatories who say Iran is complying with its terms.

Then there is Bolton's bigotry against Arabs and Muslims and his alliance with Pamela Geller -- the notorious Islamophobe. The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) has elaborated on Bolton's outrageous falsehoods against Arabs and Muslims (the "other anti-semitism" in the words of James Zogby in 1994 at a conference in Israel).

How does such a deep hatred in the White House connect to Trump's repeated declaration that he allegedly seeks a peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians?

Republican constitutional law analyst, Bruce Fein, presents a strong case that the powerful position of national security adviser to the President must be confirmed by the Senate. In which case, Bolton would be gone.

Fein argues:

"The Appointments Clause of the Constitution militates against the National Security Adviser aberration. It makes Senate confirmation of 'officers of the United States' the rule. But Congress may by statute create exceptions for 'inferior officers.' But it has not done so for the Adviser -- even assuming the office qualifies as 'inferior.'"

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Christian fascists are a powerful, leading component of the fascist cohorts that make up the Trump/Pence regime. These biblical literalists are steeped in anti-scientific ignorance, hatred for LGBTQ people, and a determination to deny women any control over their own bodies and reproductive functions.

Bob Avakian has analyzed the rise of Christian fascism within the U.S. ruling class and in society as a whole, in works such as "The Truth about Right Wing Conspiracy... And Why Clinton and the Democrats Are No Answer."

These fascists are deadly serious about imposing a theocracy--a society in which the Bible taken literally and forcefully becomes the basis for the law, culture, and morality of all society. Donald Trump has appointed Christian fascists to leading influential positions in major institutions and organizations. They are rapidly shaping law and society as they move towards the theocracy they seek. They pose a mortal peril to all society.

Trump named Christian fundamentalist Robert Redfield to head the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The CDC is the leading national institute to promote public health and safety. Redfield was a U.S. Army medical officer when the AIDS epidemic ran rampant in the 1980s and early 1990s. Ignorance of the origins and forms of transmission of the disease was enormous. Redfield contributed to that ignorance, and designed barbaric forms of punishing people with AIDS. HIV-positive recruits were barred from the military. Mandatory testing, with no confidentiality, was initiated for all troops. Chaplains informed soldiers if they were HIV positive, while military police rifled through their possessions looking for "evidence of homosexuality." Soldiers who tested HIV positive were isolated in special barracks known as "the leper colony," and "treated as prisoners," as one report said. They stayed there until they were given dishonorable discharges, or developed full-blown AIDS. Redfield said, "The reason we have done what we have done, is that we think it's good medicine--and it's medicine that might work in the civilian sector, as well." Now this ignorant, bigoted, hateful quack is set to impose those fascist methods on all society as the top official responsible for the public health of the population.

Trump renewed his transgender ban for all branches of the U.S. military. He approved a policy recommendation that "transgender persons who require or have undergone gender transition are disqualified from military service." Trump's latest order circumvents a court order that overturned his previous transgender ban, by saying transgender people can remain in the military under "limited circumstances" at the behest of either the Defense Department or Homeland Security secretaries. The U.S. military is an organization of reactionary violence against the people of the world, and NO ONE should want to join it. But the fascist Trump/Pence regime is branding trans people as "unworthy," and less than human, and it is signaling to rabidly anti-gay people that it is now "open season" to persecute and assail trans and gay people. This ban is also a cornerstone of the Christian fascist remaking of society, and developing a virulently anti-gay military.

Mississippi's Christian fascist governor signed a law banning abortions after 15 weeks, the earliest abortion ban in the country. There are no exceptions for rape or incest. The law also punishes doctors--they must submit reports on abortions, and if they are determined to have "knowingly" violated the law, their medical licenses will be suspended or revoked. This is the latest Mississippi law that restricts to the point of eliminating access to abortion in the state, which has only one clinic. A legal challenge by the clinic has temporarily blocked the law from being implemented. But the governor, who has said his goal is to "end abortion" in the state, has vowed to fight until that is achieved.

The Christian fascists are very far along and increasingly well-positioned to achieve the triumph of their theocracy. The Trump/Pence regime poses a mortal threat to humanity and the planet itself. The need to drive it from power is urgent, and the time must be seized before it is too late.
As a part of those efforts, Zacherle is encouraging local farmers to grow hops and grains that can be used to make the beers. Hes even started testing out various local water sources, finding that they, too, have an impact on the beers flavor and texture. If that were not enough, the Mad Fritz team is malting their grains and have even used the local Bale Mill to grind them.

Making the beer is just one part of the broader ecosystem of what we are trying to do here, he said. I love the idea of small farmers figuring out that their land might not be perfectly suited for growing Cabernet grapes but might be exceptional for growing hops or barley. I also hope that we can encourage others to help harvest and process the ingredients  maybe someone has a thresher to harvest barley, for example. Or maybe someone else has some new technique for trellising hops.

And there are a few farmers taking him up on the challenge.

Ive been farming in Pope Valley since 1971 and have just recently started growing hops and barley for beer, Paul Wilms said. Years ago, this region was known for growing high-quality grains, and from what we are seeing it appears to also have near-perfect conditions for growing the types of hops we prefer  Chinook and Cascade, which are basically the cabernet and chardonnay of the hops world.
SmartBuyGlasses launches 'SmartDate' Glasses

SmartBuyGlasses.com reveals innovative technology to help find love in real-time

2018 is the year that man sent a roadster cruising into space, complete with (a tin) driver and safety belt. Its also the year we finally created the coveted real-time translation Babel-fish earbuds from the beloved Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Science fiction no longer signifies fantasy. It would seem that nothing is too big too or brave to achieve anymore. And here at SmartBuyGlasses, we would have to agree. We have a 2018 tech revolution of our own that is set to change the way you see the world.We are delighted to introduce the worlds very first pair of SmartDate Glasses. They are set to revolutionise the dating game. Tired of trawling through eHarmony requests? Getting thumb cramp from constantly swiping left? Well we have the answer to that!With our brand new pair of SmartDate Glasses, SmartBuyGlasses has once again seamlessly blended contemporary style with consumer demand. Want to look cute on your way to work today, and find a date for dinner tonight? No problem! Your SmartDate Glasses let you swipe left or right on people in real time.Thats right. The guy sitting opposite you on the tube? The pretty girl serving you your coffee? Throw on your SmartDate Glasses and you can let them know youre interested. Its an amazing innovation that is already sweeping China and the rest of Asia Pacific by storm.The way it works? Look through your SmartDate Glasses lens and (similar to the technology used in Google Glass) you will see their available social media networks and any information they have listed on them. (ie. their age, their relationship status, where they went to university). You can then contact them directly through their social media and let them know who you are, where you saw them through your SmartDate Glasses, and that youre oh-so-interested. In fact it is through the use of very similar technology to that of Google Glass, that SmartBuyGlasses is able to launch this new smart tech product.SmartBuyGlasses is part of the Motion Global group, who also own VisionDirect, among others. We are one of the worlds largest designer eyewear e-commerce companies, with operations across Asia Pacific, Europe and the Americas. We currently operate in over 30 countries & 15 languages worldwide, and our website offers over 80,000 products from a range of 180 different brands. Our mission statement is to provide high quality designer eyewear at affordable prices.Having been in the eyewear industry for over a decade we were inspired to create the SmartDate Glasses in response to peoples need to truly connect. In a time of increased digital connectivity, more people are finding it difficult to establish physical relationships. The stigma still attached to dating apps means that many miss out on the chance of love. We saw a way to help. As glasses are fast becoming permanent style accessories, we thought why not combine the two in order to facilitate a situation where glasses werent just your fashion accessory but also your tool to connect and find happiness? Welcome to the optical future. Weve been waiting for you.Since 2006, SmartBuyGlasses has been dedicated to offering our customers the worlds largest range of designer eyewear. With operations in over 30 countries, the optical group is committed to delivering on price and quality, and upholding the high standards of the worlds best known designer eyewear brands.We are invested in helping our customers express their individuality. We want you to find what you love.Via Giovanni Giolitti 4110123 Turin, Italy
Global Fingerprint Identification Module Market Analysis 2018 Business Outlook Up to 2025

Fingerprint Identification Module Market 2018

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Newly industry survey by 9Dimen Research Store " Fingerprint Identification Module Market " Provide Forecast Report published Up to 2018-2025. Fingerprint Identification Module market is projected to grow at a CAGR of X% from 2018 to 2025, and the Fingerprint Identification Module market size is estimated to grow from USD X Billion in 2018 to USD X Billion by 2025. Fingerprint Identification Module market report presents an detailed analysis of industry situations, Fingerprint Identification Module market Size, growth and demands, Fingerprint Identification Module market outlook, business strategies utilized, competitive analysis by Fingerprint Identification Module market major players profiles.Get Sample Report of Fingerprint Identification Module Market :In this report include top major players in the global Fingerprint Identification Module market are Next segment gives a clear Analysis of Fingerprint Identification Module market applications and product type and type Competitive study of the major Fingerprint Identification Module players will help all the market players in analyzing the latest trends and Fingerprint Identification Module business strategies. The deep research study of Fingerprint Identification Module market based on development opportunities, growth limiting factors and feasibility of investment will forecast the Fingerprint Identification Module market growth.The fundamental details related to Fingerprint Identification Module industry like the product definition, cost, variety of applications, Fingerprint Identification Module market demand and supply statistics are covered in this report. Finally, Fingerprint Identification Module market report gives you details about the market research findings and conclusion which helps you to develop profitable market strategies to gain competitive advantage.Browse Full report here :About Us9dimenresearchstore.com is a leading market intelligence team which making extensive reports that cover all the necessary details about the market assessments such as major technological improvement in the industry.Contact US:5001 Spring Valley Rd #400,Dallas,TX 75244, USAContact No. +1-214-661-1669Email: sales@9dimenresearchstore.com
Alumni Management Software 2018 Global Industry Key Players - Graduway , Hivebrite , Wild Apricot , ProClass , Raklet , AlumNet Market Analysis And Forecast To 2025

Global Alumni Management Software Market

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Global Alumni Management Software MarketThis report studies the global Alumni Management Software market, analyzes and researches the Alumni Management Software development status and forecast in United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia. This report focuses on the top players in global market, likeGraduwayHivebriteWild ApricotProClassRakletAlumNetInstinctive SystemsAlmabayCoherendz IndiaSaviance MobilitySAP Alumni ManagementSwitchboardRequest a Sample Report @Market segment by Regions/Countries, this report coversUnited StatesEUJapanChinaIndiaSoutheast AsiaMarket segment by Type, the product can be split intoWeb-BasedInstalledMarket segment by Application, Alumni Management Software can be split intoSchoolsCollegesUniversitiesCorporatesTable of Contents-Key Points CoveredGlobal Alumni Management Software Market Size, Status and Forecast 20251 Industry Overview of Alumni Management Software1.1 Alumni Management Software Market Overview1.1.1 Alumni Management Software Product Scope1.1.2 Market Status and Outlook1.2 Global Alumni Management Software Market Size and Analysis by Regions (2013-2018)1.2.1 United States1.2.2 EU1.2.3 Japan1.2.4 China1.2.5 India1.2.6 Southeast Asia1.3 Alumni Management Software Market by Type1.3.1 Web-Based1.3.2 Installed1.4 Alumni Management Software Market by End Users/Application1.4.1 Schools1.4.2 Colleges1.4.3 Universities1.4.4 Corporates2 Global Alumni Management Software Competition Analysis by Players2.1 Alumni Management Software Market Size (Value) by Players (2013-2018)2.2 Competitive Status and Trend2.2.1 Market Concentration Rate2.2.2 Product/Service Differences2.2.3 New Entrants2.2.4 The Technology Trends in Future3 Company (Top Players) Profiles3.1 Graduway3.1.1 Company Profile3.1.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.1.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.1.4 Alumni Management Software Revenue (Million USD) (2013-2018)3.1.5 Recent Developments3.2 Hivebrite3.2.1 Company Profile3.2.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.2.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.2.4 Alumni Management Software Revenue (Million USD) (2013-2018)3.2.5 Recent Developments3.3 Wild Apricot3.3.1 Company Profile3.3.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.3.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.3.4 Alumni Management Software Revenue (Million USD) (2013-2018)3.3.5 Recent Developments3.4 ProClass3.4.1 Company Profile3.4.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.4.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.4.4 Alumni Management Software Revenue (Million USD) (2013-2018)3.4.5 Recent Developments3.5 Raklet3.5.1 Company Profile3.5.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.5.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.5.4 Alumni Management Software Revenue (Million USD) (2013-2018)3.5.5 Recent Developments3.6 AlumNet3.6.1 Company Profile3.6.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.6.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.6.4 Alumni Management Software Revenue (Million USD) (2013-2018)3.6.5 Recent Developments3.7 Instinctive Systems3.7.1 Company Profile3.7.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.7.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.7.4 Alumni Management Software Revenue (Million USD) (2013-2018)3.7.5 Recent Developments3.8 Almabay3.8.1 Company Profile3.8.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.8.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.8.4 Alumni Management Software Revenue (Million USD) (2013-2018)3.8.5 Recent Developments3.9 Coherendz India3.9.1 Company Profile3.9.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.9.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.9.4 Alumni Management Software Revenue (Million USD) (2013-2018)3.9.5 Recent Developments3.10 Saviance Mobility3.10.1 Company Profile3.10.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.10.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.10.4 Alumni Management Software Revenue (Million USD) (2013-2018)3.10.5 Recent Developments3.11 SAP Alumni Management3.12 SwitchboardContinued..Complete Report Details @Wise Guy Reports Is Part Of The Wise Guy Consultants Pvt. Ltd. And Offers Premium Progressive Statistical Surveying, Market Research Reports, Analysis & Forecast Data For Industries And Governments Around The Globe. Wise Guy Reports Features An Exhaustive List Of Market Research Reports From Hundreds Of Publishers Worldwide. We Boast A Database Spanning Virtually Every Market Category And An Even More Comprehensive Collection Of Market Research Reports Under These Categories And Sub-Categories.Wise Guy Research Consultants Pvt LtdOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, HadapsarPune - 411028Maharashtra, India
Gene Editing Market expected to display Fast Growth Rate by 2025

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Global Gene Editing Market: SnapshotGene editing or genome editing is the targeted insertion or modification of cells in living organism or cells and the method has come to occupy a crucial part of biomedical researches, constantly transforming various disciplines of life sciences. Over the past few years, continuous advancements in gene-editing technologies have led to the advent of several versatile methods, which have enabled investigators to introduce a number of sequence-specific changes into the genomes of a variety of cell types. This has facilitated the discovery of promising human gene therapies proving useful for treating various diseases. The use of targeted nucleases or engineered nucleases in laboratories has provided researchers potential tools to economically and rapidly manipulate almost any genomic sequence for a broad range of cell types.Request Sample Copy of the Report @In recent years, gene editing techniques have been witnessed a paradigmatic shift with the advent of methods such as clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)-CRISPR-associated protein 9 (Cas9), zinc-finger nucleases (ZFNs), and transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs). Using these technologies, investigators have been successful in generating a wide spectrum of outcomes, which are likely to prove useful in diverse areas as synthetic biology, disease modeling, neurosciences, and drug discovery. For instance, targeted nuclease have enabled the insertion of targeted DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs). This has led to the activation of DNA repair pathways in various cells. In vivo applications of various gene editing tools, however, suffer from noticeable constraints. For instance, nuclease delivery or expression can be enabled only in diseased cells, thereby limiting potential of the market to an extent. Nevertheless, constant engineering advances are being made which will expectedly lay robust groundwork for expanding the current array of genome-modifying tools.Global Gene Editing Market: OverviewGene editing involves the insertion, deletion, or replacement of DNA at specific sites in the genome of a cell or an organism. It is usually achieved in a laboratory environment using molecular scissors.Request TOC of the Report @Regulations for the security of life, well-being of plants and animals, human health, and environmental compliance will influence market players for increased focus on import, export, and commercialization of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).The report is an all-important tool to comprehend the various factors and growth trends that will influence the growth of the gene editing market between 2017 and 2025. The market study is a collective of facts and factoids that are associated with the global gene editing market in a chronological order. The analysis of past data and current market trends enable research analysts to present a satisfactory conclusion regarding the markets future. Thus, the analysis presented in the report can be used to devise successful business strategies for the future. Using standard analytical tools such as Porters Five Forces and SWOT analysis, the report presents the indices of strength, weakness, opportunities, and threats of the global gene editing market until the end of the forecast period in 2025.Global Gene Editing Market: Drivers and RestraintsThe increasing expenditures on research and development, growth of the biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, and rising demand for synthetic genes are the major factors driving the global gene editing market.The increasing prevalence of infectious diseases, cancer, and other genetic disorders is steering the growth of the gene editing industry. Moreover, the increasing demand for personalized medicine and advancement of medical science is propelling the industrys demand.Read Comprehensive Overview of Report @However, strict government regulations to receive approval for mutation undertakings and lack of public awareness will challenge the growth of the gene editing market. Government regulations for assessing the medical benefits as well as the potential hazards of gene editing procedure will benefit the growth of this market.Global Gene Editing Market: Market SegmentationThe global gene editing market can be analyzed on the basis of technology, end user, application, and region. In terms of technology, the market can be segmented into CRISPR, ZFN, TALEN and others. On the basis of application, the global gene editing market can be divided into cell line engineering, plant genetic engineering, animal genetic engineering, and others. By end user, the market can be segmented into biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, contract research organizations, and academic and government institutes.Global Gene Editing Market: Regional OutlookThe global gene editing market can be divided into the regional segments of North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Rest of the World. The U.S. gene editing market is expected to display robust growth due to growth trend manifested by biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies and adoption of advanced technologies such as CRISPR for treating chronic hereditary diseases.In Europe, the U.K. is expected to contribute significantly to the growth of the gene editing market in this region. This is mainly due to the rising geriatric population and increasing incidence of chronic diseases. The Asia Pacific gene editing market is expected to display fast growth rate in the coming years. The rising geriatric population, modernization of healthcare practices, technological advancements, and government initiatives for controlling diseases are fuelling the growth of the Asia Pacific gene editing market.South Africa is expected to contribute significantly to the revenue of its regional market. The rising prevalence of sickle cell anemia, HIV, hemophilia and several forms of cancer will drive the industrys growth.Major Companies Mentioned in ReportThe report mentions and profiles some of the top companies in the global gene editing market, namely Agilent Technologies, AstraZeneca, Cellectis, Editas Medicine, Dharmacon, Qiagen, Sigma-Aldrich, Allele Biotech, Bio Rad, CRISPR Therapeutics, GE Healthcare, Lonza, Recombinetics, and Thermo Fisher Scientific.About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting services to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact:TMR Research,3739 Balboa St # 1097,San Francisco, CA 94121United StatesTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com
Hydraulic Cylinder Market expected to Augment the Growth by 2025

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Global Hydraulic Cylinder Market: SnapshotHydraulic cylinders play a crucial role in motion control in a wide range of industrial applications such as in aerospace, wind turbines, industrial robotics, and military. They are used in making mobile industrial concrete pumps which have varied applications in the construction industry. The unidirectional force generated in the hydraulic fluids drives the power in piston rods, which helps in lifting, pushing, and pulling of machinery and earthmoving equipment. Over the past few years, constant improvements have been made in the metals used in hydraulic pumps. This has led to equipment being more tear- and corrosion-resistant resulting in better performance and efficiency in harsh environments. Ergonomic and design innovations in various parts used in hydraulic pumps make them more flexible and standardized, allowing for easy replaceability of parts irrespective of vendors or suppliers in the market. The use of carbon fiber composite materials reduces the weight of hydraulic cylinders considerably, thereby enhancing their performance.The maintenance of frictional properties of rod seals and wipers used in hydraulic cylinders is critical for their higher service life and their efficiency in more demanding environments. Hence it is imperative that adequate coatings on piston rod seals are done to minimize tear and wear that may be caused by static and dynamic friction. In recent years, the impact of alternative coatings has been tested to be instrumental in enhancing the life-cycle of hydraulic equipment. Furthermore, the use of radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology used in hydraulic cylinders is a recent innovation underpinning the adoption of automation in Industry 4.0. RFID tags help in the identification and traceability of cylinders that need repair or replacement, even in difficult operating environments where the markings may be covered by hard-to-remove industrial dirt.Request Sample Copy of the Report @Global Hydraulic Cylinder Market: OverviewA hydraulic cylinder refers to a mechanical actuator that is utilized to provide unidirectional force through a unidirectional stroke. Powered by pressurized hydraulic fluid, hydraulic cylinders have extensive applications in construction, manufacturing, heavy industries, and agriculture.The research report presents a detailed assessment of market drivers, market challenges, growth trends that will impact the growth of the global hydraulic cylinder market during the forecast period. The report provides detailed insights into the vendor landscape of this market throwing light on the growth opportunities that leading players can leverage.Global Hydraulic Cylinder Market: Drivers and RestraintsThe top factor driving the global hydraulic cylinder market is rapid industrialization combined with economic growth in developing countries. The robust demand for modern agriculture equipment for improved productivity and conservation of energy is expected to augment the growth of the global hydraulic cylinders market. Furthermore, the evolution of food processing industries combined with the modernization of agricultural practices will fuel the demand for hydraulic cylinders in the coming years.Request TOC of the Report @Furthermore, the rising demand for material handling equipment for minimizing the risk of downtime will fuel the growth of the global hydraulic cylinder market in the near future. Material handling equipment such as electronic overhead traveling cranes and level luffing cranes are utilized across a large range of industries such as food and beverage, oil and gas, power, and retail.In developed countries such as the U.S., large-scale initiatives for the exploration of shale gas is expected to benefit the markets growth. In industrial units, factors such as the expansion of production capacity and capacity utilization will also augment the growth of the hydraulic cylinder market.Global Hydraulic Cylinder Market: Regional OutlookThe global hydraulic cylinder market can be divided into the regional segments of North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Rest of the World. China is expected to contribute significantly to the growth of the Asia Pacific hydraulic cylinder market. This is mainly due to huge investments announced by the Chinese government in the infrastructure sector. The modernization of agricultural practices combined with increasing investment in infrastructure will lead India to contribute significantly to the Asia Pacific hydraulic cylinder market during the forecast period.Read Comprehensive Overview of Report @In North America, the U.S. hydraulic cylinder market is expected to grow by leaps and bound. The increasing investment on defense and material handling and aerospace will further boost the industrys growth.Russia is anticipated to display significant gains in the hydraulic cylinder market. The increasing demand for modern agriculture and construction equipment will bolster the demand for hydraulic cylinders in the country. In Latin America, Brazil is expected to display significant demand for hydraulic cylinders. The increasing investment in transport infrastructure and government initiatives for the development of the transportation sector will boost the hydraulic cylinder market in this region.Major Companies Mentioned in ReportSome of the leading companies in the global hydraulic cylinder market are Wipro Infrastructure Engineering, Best Metal Products, Eaton Corporation PLC, Lignon Industries LLC, Hydrapac Italia, Chapel Hydraulic, Bailey International LLC, Enerpac Corp., Parker-Hannifin Corporation, Texas Inc., Hydrosila, Weber-Hydraulik Group, Bosch Rexroth AG, Aggresssive Inc., Hannon LLC, Perfection Prince Manufacturing Corporation, Burnside Autocyl (Tullow) Ltd, United Hydraulics, Caterpillar Inc., Hyco International Inc., Precision group Inc., Norrhydro OY, and Pacoma GmbH.Each of the companies is profiled for their business attributes of competitive position, technological developments, financial standing, and SWOTs.About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting services to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact:TMR Research,3739 Balboa St # 1097,San Francisco, CA 94121United StatesTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com
Japan Country Intelligence Market Key Players  Internet Inititaive Japan (IIJ), SKYPerfectTV, and WOWOW

Japan Country Intelligence

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Japan Country IntelligenceOverviewJapans telecom and pay-TV services market will grow from $121.5bn (13.53trn) in 2017 to $135.2bn (13.55trn) by 2022 at a CAGR of 2.2% (0.03% in local currency) over 2017-2022, driven by projected growth in mobile data, fixed broadband and pay-TV revenue.Mobile data revenue contributed the majority (33.0%) of the total revenue registered in 2017 with its share increasing to 43.2% by 2022, driven by rising smartphone penetration, high consumption of online video content led by operators' focus on increasing higher data-centric packages."Japan: Country Intelligence Report", a new Country Intelligence Report by GlobalData, provides an executive-level overview of the telecommunications market in Japan today, with detailed forecasts of key indicators up to 2022.Click here for sample report @Companies mentionedNTTKDDISoftBankInternet Inititaive Japan (IIJ)SKYPerfectTVWOWOWJapan Country Intelligence Major OutlookThe overall telecom and pay-TV services market revenue in Japan will grow at a CAGR of 2.2% (0.03% in local currency) during 2017-2022.- Mobile revenue will account for 56.7% of total telecom and pay-TV services revenue in 2022, driven by continued rise in adoption of LTE/LTE-A services and projected addition of 5G subscriptions from 2019.- NTT Docomo leads Japans mobile market in terms of mobile subscriptions for 2017, followed by KDDI and SoftBank Japan. All the operators compete on the basis of 4G/LTE network enhancements and 5G development.Japan Country Intelligence - Competitive AnalysisKey players are making innovative developments in Japan Country Intelligence. The same will help in improving the market performance. Heavy investments are made by major players in the R&D sectorScopeThe fixed broadband segment will reach $29.8bn (3.0trn) by 2022, led by steady rise in adoption of FTTH/B and cable Internet subscriptions and deployment of next-generation broadband technologies such as G.fast. Japans pay-TV revenue will grow at a CAGR of 3.2% (1.1% in local currency) driven by uptake of IPTV subscriptions and MNOs' investments in HD content technologies..ContinuedFor Detailed Reading Please visit @Wise Guy Reports understand how essential statistical surveying information is for your organization or association. Therefore, we have associated with the top publishers and research firms all specialized in specific domains, ensuring you will receive the most reliable and up to date research data available. We also provide COTS (Commercial off the Shelf) business sector reports as custom exploration agreeing your particular needs.WISEGUY RESEARCH CONSULTANTS PVT LTDOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersPune - 411028Maharashtra, India
Mobile BI Market Prophesied to Grow at a Faster Pace by 2025

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Global Mobile BI Market: OverviewThe global mobile BI market is envisaged to witness the addition of new products and features to keep consumers interested. For instance, the Redmond-based giant technology company, Microsoft recently announced the inclusion of new features such as Shared with me View in its all-platform Power BI mobile apps. Also accessible through web portals, Power BI mobile apps have been updated to facilitate users with a single place to share all dashboards. Key analysts predict a new level of advancement in the global mobile BI market owing to latest launches such as Yellowfin 7.3+. It allows the formulation of keen business insights for data and IT analysts through trustworthy and governed data and flexible creation of dynamic visualizations for developers.The augmenting need of mobile BI software solutions across a myriad of organizations is envisioned to propel the demand for consulting services and professional services. As a result, the services market could register a significant CAGR during the forecast period 20172025. Several industries have expressed the need to streamline their sales and resolve sales-related problems in real time. This is anticipated to set the tone for a reliable growth in the sales market for mobile BI. However, mobile BI is also implemented for other business functions such as human resource, finance, operations, marketing, and IT.Request Sample Copy of the Report @While small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) could up the growth in the global mobile BI market for receiving low-cost solutions, large enterprises are predicted to birth a staggering demand on the back of time-efficient and cost-effective features.Global Mobile BI Market: SnapshotMobile Business Intelligence or mobile BI is the ability that aids the mobile personnel to attain business insights via information analysis employing applications improved for mobile devices. Business intelligence or BI is basically referred to computed-based techniques employed in the spotting, extracting, and evaluating business information such as associated incomes and costs or sales revenue by departments or products. Though, the notion of mobile computing has been long prevalent, the concept of mobile BI has gained momentum in the last few years. This growth has been encouraged due to the significant change in the wire world with the advent of wireless technology with smartphones giving rise to a new era of mobile computer technology, prominently in the field of business intelligence.Organizations are developing their personal Information Technology (IT) monitoring tools in order to gain enhanced visibility into the new intricacies. The right solutions can help one detect patterns that will help predict issues early before they occur. Mobile BI permits big data from IT to be transformed into appropriate and actionable insights for a rapid resolution. It further enables the business organization to extract information from key operational data units such as log files, events, performance metrics, and trouble tickets to proactively dodge outages, attain faster mean time for repairing, and understand cost savings through better operational efficiency.Request TOC of the Report @The market intelligence publication delves into the possible growth opportunities for the global mobile BI market and the chronological growth of the market throughout the forecast period. It also uniquely provisions required data related to facers such as dynamics influencing the progress in all possible retrospective manner. Several ubiquitous and non-ubiquitous trends have also been mentioned in the study. An outlook of extensive nature keeping in mind the Porters five forces analysis has been provided to make the vendor landscape transparent to the reader. The report further reaches out to point out accomplishments related to R&D, acquisitions, mergers, and crucial partnerships and verifications. The companies in limelight have been analyzed on market shares, products, and key strategies.Global Mobile BI Market: Trends and ProspectsThe key drivers of the global mobile BI market are the growing trend of bring your own device (BYOD), rising platforms of mobile enterprise application, burgeoning popularity of Representational State Transfer Application Programming Interface (REST APIs), growth of in-memory computing, and robust advancement in the features of mobile device. The global mobile BI market is also progressing owing to the transformation from the generic BI techniques for the purpose of business data analysis to advanced methods and the upsurge in the flow of unstructured and structured data.Read Comprehensive Overview of Report @The mobile BI market can be classified on the basis of industry verticals, amongst the segments of insurance, financial services, and banking are likely to be the leading adopters of mobile BI due to the extensive rise in data volume and the growing demand for IT systems in banks and several other financial institutes.Global Mobile BI Market: Regional AnalysisThe market in North America is expected to emerge lucrative owing to the growing technological advancements and early adoption of business intelligence solutions. Due to the high opportunities for vendors in the industry verticals of the Asia Pacific region, mainly in Japan, China and India, the market is projected to witness strong growth.Global Mobile BI Market: Competitive LandscapeSome of the leading players in the market are Qlik Technologies, SAS Institute, Tableau Software, SAP SE, Microsoft Corporation, and IBM Corporation.About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting services to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact:TMR Research,3739 Balboa St # 1097,San Francisco, CA 94121United StatesTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com
Panama Country Intelligence Key Players - Digicel Panama, Cable Onda Panama, Wipet, and Sky Panama Market Analysis & Forecast 2017 to 2022

Panama Country Intelligence

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Panama Country IntelligenceOverview"Panama: Country Intelligence Report", a new Country Intelligence Report by GlobalData, provides an executive-level overview of the telecommunications market in Panama today, with detailed forecasts of key indicators up to 2022. Published annually, the report provides detailed analysis of the near-term opportunities, competitive dynamics and evolution of demand by service type and technology/platform across the fixed telephony, broadband, mobile and pay-TV segments, as well as a review of key regulatory trends.Panamas telecom and pay-TV services market will grow from $1.4bn in 2017 to $1.7bn by 2022 at a CAGR of 4.7% over 2017-2022, driven by projected growth in the mobile data, fixed broadband and pay-TV segments.Click here for sample report @Companies mentionedMovistar PanamaCable & Wireless PanamaClaro PanamaDigicel PanamaCable Onda PanamaWipetSky PanamaPanama Country Intelligence Major Outlook- Mobile data revenue contributed the majority (32%) of the total revenue registered in 2017 with its share increasing to 48% by 2022 led by growing smartphones and 4G subscriptions, and increasing adoption of higher-value bundled plans with larger data limits.- 4G mobile subscriptions will overtake 3G as the leading technology from 2021 led by ongoing expansions of 4G LTE networks by operators.- Panamas pay-TV market will increase at a CAGR of 4% driven by growth in cable TV subscriptions and supported by the regulators plan to switch off analog TV signals from October 2018.Panama Country Intelligence - Competitive AnalysisKey players are making innovative developments in Panama Country Intelligence. The same will help in improving the market performance. Heavy investments are made by major players in the R&D sectorScope- The report provides an easily digestible market assessment for decision-makers built around in-depth information gathered from local market players, which enables executives to quickly get up to speed with the current and emerging trends in Panamas telecommunications markets.- The broad perspective of the report coupled with comprehensive, actionable detail will help operators, equipment vendors and other telecom industry players succeed in the challenging telecommunications market in Panama..ContinuedFor Detailed Reading Please visit @Wise Guy Reports understand how essential statistical surveying information is for your organization or association. Therefore, we have associated with the top publishers and research firms all specialized in specific domains, ensuring you will receive the most reliable and up to date research data available. We also provide COTS (Commercial off the Shelf) business sector reports as custom exploration agreeing your particular needs.WISEGUY RESEARCH CONSULTANTS PVT LTDOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersPune - 411028Maharashtra, India
People Counting System Prominent Market throughout the Forecast to 2025

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Global People Counting System Market: SnapshotPeople counting systems are devices that are used to count the number of people traversing a certain entrance or passage. In retail stores, they are usually deployed to calculate conversion rate and marketing effectiveness and are used in staff planning. In crowded places such as shopping malls and concerts, other than their conventional job of calculating footfall, they are used for crowd management and monitoring of high-traffic areas. Their additional uses include fire management and energy usage optimization.Among the various end users, the demand for people counting systems is likely to remain high in retail stores and shopping malls throughout the forecast period. In an attempt to sustain the rising competition due to shifting demographics and the advent of new technologies, retailers are modifying their existing strategies. As a result, they are increasingly adopting people counting systems.Request Sample Copy of the Report @The spiraling demand for video-based people counting systems is positively impacting the growth of the overall market. The high accuracy and reliability offered by this technology during high volume traffic and high stability against changes in environmental conditions such as light, shadows, and heat are providing a boost to their demand. The demand for Wi-Fi tracking technology is also expected to increase over the forthcoming years. The technology helps in tracking the actual, potential, and repeating visitors and is efficient in terms of eliminating staff from total people count.The global people counting system market is estimated to witness the advent of new technologies, which will be in the favor of the market. The availability of 3D systems is anticipated to revolutionize the mechanism of people counting.Global People Counting System Market: OverviewThe global people counting system market is expected to gain a significant momentum in the coming years. People counting systems are gaining popularity owing to their high accuracy and reliability in monitoring and counting entrance and exit traffic separately, while excluding carts, children, and strollers. They are also capable of counting multiple individuals entering simultaneously. These systems are being increasingly deployed across retail stores, banks and financial institutes, healthcare and government institutes, hospitality, and transportation. Some of the common types of technologies used for counting people are thermal imaging, infrared beam, and video based.Request TOC of the Report @The report is a professional study on the global people counting system market, compiled by meticulously analyzing various critical parameters of the market. It provides a detailed overview of the factors impacting the growth of the market. It offers qualitative and quantitative insights into the competitive landscape of the market. Competitive profiling of the prominent players in the market along with their market shares, business strategies, cost and revenue structures, latest developments, and contact information forms a vital part of the report. It performs SWOT analysis to reveal potential growth trajectory of each prominent player in the global people counting system market.Global People Counting System Market: Drivers and RestraintsThe rising number of shopping malls, supermarkets, and retail stores is boosting the adoption of people counting technologies worldwide. Retailers need to monitor footfalls at their shops periodically to remain competitive. By knowing the traffic to sales ratio, retailers can accurately compare stores on the basis of sales volume. Moreover, the availability of easy set-up and low-cost solutions is escalating the growth of the market. The market is also witnessing a sharp rise in the demand for people counting solutions in the transport sector. The future of the market looks bright with technological advancements.Read Comprehensive Overview of Report @On the other hand, the robust growth of the e-commerce industry and the expanding online sales channel pose a considerable threat to the brick and mortar commerce, which in turn is adversely affecting the growth of the market.Global People Counting System Market: Region-wise OutlookThe key segments analyzed in the report on the basis of geography are North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, and Rest of the World. Asia Pacific will be a prominent market throughout the forecast period. The increasing number of supermarkets, retail stores, and shopping malls are attracting international players to invest in the region. In addition, conducive government initiatives are encouraging the presence of foreign retailers in India, which is also leading to the rising number of retail stores in Asia Pacific. Countries such as China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Malaysia, and Singapore will be the sites of high growth rate throughout the same span.Moreover, the presence of infrastructure such as train stations, airports, and bus stations along with a large number of upcoming projects are triggering the deployment of people counting systems. The expansion of the hospitality industry is also facilitating the growth of the region.Global People Counting System Market: Competitive LandscapeProduct innovation and technological advancements are of critical importance to key manufacturers in the global people counting system market to stay relevant in the market. They are focusing on portfolio diversification through partnerships and mergers in order to strengthen their position in the market. Some of the key players in the global people counting system market are Axis Communication AB, RetailNext Inc., InfraRed Integrated Systems Ltd., IEE S.A., Eurotech S.p.A., Countwise LLC, Xovis AG, Axiomatic Technology Limited, IRIS-GmbH, IEE S.A., Point Grey Research Inc., and ShopperTrak.About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting services to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact:TMR Research,3739 Balboa St # 1097,San Francisco, CA 94121United StatesTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com
Cryocooler Market - Industry Insights by Offering, Heat Exchanger and Temperature Range With Market Size, Demand and Growth by 2023

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The global cryocooler market is expected to reach $2,365.8 million by 2023, registering a CAGR of 7.3% during 2017 - 2023. Cryocooler refers to the mechanical device, used to generate cryogenic temperature and offers cooling to the environment and materials inside it. It follows the closed cycle thermodynamic mechanism and utilizes the flow of gas inside closed pipelines, absorbs the outer temperature and radiates it outside.Request for a free sample of this research report:The aerospace and defense industry is expected to contribute largest to the global cryocooler market. In this industry, cryocoolers are widely being used for military and space applications. Global cryocooler market is expected to register a significant growth, directed by the rising acceptance of several cryocoolers to offer cryogenic temperatures for IR sensors in missile guidance, satellite-based surveillance and night vision based systems.Stirling cryocoolers use linear electric drive, resulting in their long life, which is likely to increase their adoption in the global cryocooler market. Moreover, developing nations such as China, Malaysia, India and Thailand are registering notable growth in industries such as aerospace and defense, healthcare and semiconductor, due to which the demand for these cryocoolers is expected to surge in these nations during the forecast period.Explore report at:Stirling cryocoolers use linear electric drive, resulting in their long life, which is likely to increase their adoption in the global cryocooler market. Moreover, developing nations such as China, Malaysia, India and Thailand are registering notable growth in industries such as aerospace and defense, healthcare and semiconductor, due to which the demand for these cryocoolers is expected to surge in these nations during the forecast period.Rising demand for cryocoolers across the aerospace and defense industry has been boosting the global cryocoolers market. Cryocoolers are being used in this industry to cater the individual demands of military and space applications. The military applications contributed largest to the global cryocooler market; however, market for space applications is expected to register the highest growth during the forecast period. The global cryocooler market has immense growth opportunities with the increasing applications of cryocoolers in the space sector, which is likely to spearhead the global cryocooler market in near future.Make enquiry before buying the report:Some of the major players in the global cryocooler market include Sumitomo Heavy Industries, Northrop Grumman Corporation, Janis Research Company, RICOR Cryogenic & Vacuum Systems, Advanced Research Systems, DH Industries, Air Liquide, L-3 Communications Holdings, Lockheed Martin Corporation, Superconductor Technologies, Chart Industries, Brooks Automation, Sunpower and Cryomech.About P&S Market ResearchP&S Market Research is a global market research and consulting company. We provide market research reports, industry reports, business intelligence and research based consulting services across a range of industries.With the help of our professional corporate relations with various companies, our market research offers the most accurate market forecasting. Our analysts and consultants interact with leading companies of the concerned domain to substantiate every single data presented in our publication. Our research assists our client in identifying new and different windows of opportunity and frame informed and customized strategies for expansion in different regions.Contact:P&S Market Research347, 5th Ave. #1402New York City, NY - 10016Toll-free: +1-888-778-7886 (USA/Canada)Email: enquiry@psmarketresearch.comWeb:
JCB Spirits are available in Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Texas, Washington and Washington, D.C. For more information, visit www.jcbspirits.com.

Wines from India

Boisset has also collaborated with Kapil Sekhri, co-founder of Fratelli Wines, a premium Indian winery to launch JNOON, a collection of limited-edition wines that capture the expression of Indian terroir. The wines will launch in the U.S. and UK in the summer of 2018, including a Napa Valley release event in June, and are currently available in India.

JNOON is the first collaboration of its kind to create wines from Indian soil that cater to the global market. JNOON is Boisset and Sekhris artistic take on junoon  an Urdu word that means passion.

The 2,400 limited-edition bottles of each wine  sparkling, white and red  come from grapes from the Fratelli estate-owned vineyards in Akluj, a town in the Solapur district of Maharashtra located on the right bank of the Nira River.
Sensors Market expected to intensify the Competition by 2025

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Global Sensors Market: SnapshotThe global sensors market is prophesied to record a healthy CAGR during the forecast period 20172025 on account of the growing application of intelligent management and monitoring in the smart systems industry. Distributed sensor networks are heavily engaged for transmitting control instructions and valuable measurement information after interconnecting the devices in networked embedded systems. In todays era of smart technologies, vendors could take advantage of key applications such as assembling infrastructure systems, intelligent transportation, smart water networks, smart homes, and smart grids with the use of sensors.The global sensors market is envisioned to witness the advent of more efficient products with superior sensing quality. For instance, in late 2016, the HC1100 single-chip offering was launched in the global sensors market via a joint effort by HMicro and STMicroelectronics. HC1100 is considered to be applicable for disposable, clinical-grade biosensors and smart patches. Electrocardiogram, vital sign monitoring, and other wired wearable devices could be especially benefited with such biosensors and smart patches. As a result, the rising requirement of such devices is projected to propel the growth of the global sensors market throughout the forecast period.Request Sample Copy of the Report @The coveted application of sensors in smartphones for improving user interface experience is foreseen to rake in a telling demand in the global sensors market. More number of leading smartphone manufacturers are anticipated to demand sensors at a significant rate. Google claims to boast of the best-ever smartphone camera in history after it launched Pixel in 2016, featuring the Sony IMX378 sensor.Global Sensors Market: OverviewIn recent times, the increasing trend of automation is providing a thrust to the global sensors market. Sensors form the backbone of automated systems. The market has witnessed a tremendous transformational leap with the rapid advancements in the sensor technology. With advancements, there has been a considerable expansion in the scope of applications of sensors. They are used across numerous industrial verticals including automotive, consumer electronics, oil and gas, healthcare, utility, and manufacturing and for a myriad of parameters such as temperature, level, position, pressure, image, light, motion, and magnetic field.The report serves as a repository of analysis and data regarding several critical parameters of the global sensors market including value chain analysis, its dynamics, geographical segmentation, and competitive landscape. It takes into account the historical statistics and the current scenario to estimate the future trends of the market. It profiles prominent players in the market along with their business strategies, market shares, contact information, revenue generation, and latest developments. It performs SWOT analysis on key players to derive the growth trajectory each player will experience.Request TOC of the Report @Global Sensors Market: Drivers and RestraintsThe proliferation of consumer electronics is providing a fillip to the global sensors market. The manufacturing of consumer electronics demands a large number of sensors such as pressure sensors, motion sensors, and image sensors. In addition, the rising implementation of fingerprint sensors in smartphones and wearable devices is augmenting the market. Moreover, the emergence of wireless technology is working in favor of the growth of the market. Sensors play a critical part in the proper functioning of wireless platforms. Furthermore, the growing need for real-time analysis is triggering their demand. On the other hand, the declining prices of sensors are adversely affecting the overall revenue generation of the market. However, the booming trend of miniaturization is creating ample growth opportunities for the market.Global Sensors Market: Region-wise OutlookThe key regional markets covered in the report are Asia Pacific, Europe, North America, and Rest of the World. Asia Pacific will be a prominent market throughout the forecast period. The presence of a large number of manufacturing facilities and the flourishing growth of various end-user industries are providing a fillip to the growth of the region. The cheap cost of labor and less stringent government regulations are attracting several multinational companies to set up their manufacturing plants in the region. North America will also account for a large share in the market, thanks to the rapid advancements in the field of sensor technology in the region.Read Comprehensive Overview of Report @Global Sensors Market: Competitive LandscapeKey players in the global sensors market are paying high attention of technological advancements to stay relevant. They are pouring large funds into the research and development of novel and innovative sensors to differentiate their offerings and gain a competitive edge over their peers. Mergers and acquisitions are commonly adopted strategies by them to expand their business across different geographies.The immense potential of the market along with low entry barriers are attracting a large number of new players to invest in the market. The influx of new manufacturers is expected to intensify the competition in the market in the near future. Some of the prominent players in the global sensors market are Texas Instruments Inc., TE Connectivity Ltd., Infineon Technologies AG, Honeywell International Inc., Robert Bosch GmbH, ABB Ltd., Siemens AG, Emerson Electric Company, Omron Corporation, NXP Semiconductor N.V., and ARM Holdings Plc.About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting services to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact:TMR Research,3739 Balboa St # 1097,San Francisco, CA 94121United StatesTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com
Global Healthcare Information Systems Market Analysis 2018 Forecasts To 2022

Global Healthcare Information Systems Market Forecast,

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Global Healthcare Information Systems MarketDescription:-Wiseguyreports.Com Adds Global Healthcare Information Systems Market 2018: Global Analysis, Industry Size, Share, Trends, Application Analysis and Growth Opportunities Forecast to 2021 To Its Research DatabaseMarket InsightsThe Healthcare Information Systems market is estimated to witness a significant growth rate of 7.2% over the projected period 2016-2022. Growing investment by healthcare IT companies along with supportive government initiatives are the key driving forces attributing towards the growth of the global market. In recent years, a variety of initiatives have been undertaken to link the incentive payments to performance as well as quality reporting. Some of these initiatives include physician-quality reporting system (PQRS) and patient-centered medical home (PCMH). Apart from it, CMS Electronic Health Records incentive program has further attributed towards the adoption of certified healthcare information technology by the healthcare facility providers. Rising adoption of EHR system by the healthcare providers have attributed massively towards the growth of healthcare information systems market. According to American Hospital Association, around 84% of the non-federal acute care hospitals in the U.S. adopted a basic EHR system in 2015 and it is projected to surpass 98% by the end of 2017. The basic EHR adoption rate was increased by 11% in 2015 from the year 2014. Such facts witness the growing trend towards the adoption of information technology in the healthcare industry. This in turn, is expected to positively attribute towards the growth of the global healthcare information systems market.Increasing demand for integrated healthcare systems and rising healthcare costs is projected to further propel the demand for information systems in the healthcare sector. However, lack of experienced professionals coupled with high maintenance & service expenses are hampering the growth of the global market. Interoperability issues also acts as a roadblock in the adoption of healthcare information systems. Rising demand from emerging economies and the provision of IT-enabled healthcare solutions for the physicians/provision of web-based healthcare portals is expected to create growth opportunities for the healthcare information systems market. These provisions can help doctors to remain in contact with their patients via multiple means with the aim to monitor them efficiently and it can also add massive control for the patients in terms of communicating better information as well as to ensure a smoother treatment process.Lack of experienced professionals coupled with high maintenance & service expenses is hampering the growth of the global market. Healthcare information systems are quite complex in nature to be handled by medical personnel and thus needs an experts or a healthcare IT personnel. Along with it, lower expenditure in healthcare IT has directly led towards the lack of professionals within the healthcare information systems. Interoperability issues also acts as a roadblock in the growth of the healthcare information systems market. Rising demand from emerging economies and provisions of IT enabled healthcare solutions or services for physicians/provision of web-based healthcare portals are expected to create significant growth opportunities for the global market.Request a sample copy @Geographical InsightsIn geographical perspective, global healthcare information systems market can be segregated into Europe, Asia Pacific, North America and Rest of the World. In 2016, North America leads the global healthcare information systems market. The growth of the region is backed by the rising adoption of EHR and the supportive government policies/programs. In the U.S. hospital community, the adoption of EHRs is nearly complete. As per Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, around 96% of hospitals within the country have an EHR federally tested as well as certified for the governments incentive program in 2016. Supportive Government Acts like HITECH (The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health) Act, 2009 has also attributed significantly towards the increasing adoption of healthcare IT in the U.S. Presence of such forces that led towards the major market share of North America in global healthcare information systems market.Asia Pacific is projected to be the fastest growing region in the healthcare information systems market. Rising demand of healthcare information systems from the emerging countries such as India and China coupled with increase in geriatric population & rising prevalence of chronic diseases such as Alzheimer, diabetes within the regional countries are the key forces attributing towards the growth of the healthcare information systems market in Asia Pacific. In Asia Pacific, South Korea, Australia and Japan have been at the forefront of information technology adoption in the healthcare sector whereas India, Thailand and China are the emerging markets. Reform programmes like eHealth in Western Australia have also played a vital role in the growth of the healthcare information systems market in Asia Pacific. This major reforms are mainly designed to provide a modern as well as integrated platform of ICT (Information and Communications Technology) for public healthcare services within the state.The report includes detailed market overview, market determinants, company profiling, sector analysis, market segmentation, geographical analysis, patent analysis, strategic recommendations, key company analysis, gap analysis, key findings, market estimations, market insights, analyst insights and predictive analysis of the market.Competitive InsightsKey players of the Healthcare Information Systems market include Philips Healthcare, GE Healthcare, NextGen Healthcare Information System Inc., Cerner Corporation, McKesson Corporation, InterSystems Corporation and Allscripts Healthcare Solutions, Inc. Mergers & Acquisitions, geographical expansion and partnership & agreement are the key strategies adopted by the market players in order to strengthen their market share in the global healthcare systems market. On June 2016, McKesson Technology Solutions entered into partnership with Change Healthcare Holdings Inc. to form a new healthcare information technology company. This new organization is expected to bring together the complementary strengths of Change Healthcare and McKesson Technology Solutions to deliver a broad portfolio of solutions with the aim to lower healthcare costs and enhancing patient access & outcomes.Market Segmentation: Healthcare Information Systems Market by Componentso Hardwareo Softwareo Services Healthcare Information Systems Market by Delivery Modeo On-Premiseso Cloud-basedo Web-based Healthcare Information Systems Market by Applicationo Hospital Information Systemso Laboratory Information Systemso Pharmacy Information SystemsOMR report covers: Comprehensive research methodology of global healthcare information systems market In-depth analysis of macro and micro factors influencing the market guided by key recommendations. Analysis of regional regulations and other government policies impacting the global healthcare information systems market Insights about market determinants which are stimulating the global healthcare information systems market Detailed and extensive market segments with regional distribution of researched revenues Extensive profiles and recent developments of market playersTable of Content1.REPORT SUMMARY2.MARKET OVERVIEW AND INSIGHTS3.MARKET DETERMINANT4. MARKET SEGMENTATION5. COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE6.REGIONAL ANALYSIS7.COMPANY PROFILESBrowse full Report @About Us:Wise Guy Reports Is Part Of The Wise Guy Consultants Pvt. Ltd. And Offers Premium Progressive Statistical Surveying, Market Research Reports, Analysis & Forecast Data For Industries And Governments Around The Globe. Wise Guy Reports Features An Exhaustive List Of Market Research Reports From Hundreds Of Publishers Worldwide. We Boast A Database Spanning Virtually Every Market Category And An Even More Comprehensive Collection Of Market Research Reports Under These Categories And Sub-Categories.Contact Us:Wise Guy Research Consultants Pvt LtdSales@Wiseguyreports.ComPh: +1-646-845-9349 (Us)Ph: +44 208 133 9349 (Uk)Maharashtra, Pune  411028
Comprehensive Research on Home Infusion Therapy Market by Therapy, Application Analysis, Components, Market Outlook, Global Trend, Opportunities and Industry Forecast 2018-2022

Home Infusion Therapy Market

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Infusion therapy has turned into a prominent torment ease treatment strategy, particularly for sicknesses where oral medicine is slightest compelling. In instances of gastrointestinal sicknesses, diabetes and growth related torment infusion therapy is normal. Also, infusion therapy is similarly successful in regarding issue, for example, cystic fibrosis and perpetual lack of hydration. Home infusion therapy cuts on visit doctor's facility visits and enhances solution adherence. A portion of the ordinarily utilized infusion gadgets for organization of medicines incorporate needleless connectors, infusion pump, and intravenous set.The Home Infusion Therapy Market is expected to grow at a CAGR of +9% during the forecast period.Different medication treatments are performed at home including torment administration, parenteral sustenance, anti-toxins and IVIG treatment. What's more, insulin home mixture treatment is likewise performed; it is the most generally utilized home implantation treatment. Agony executioners and IVIG represent the real pieces of the overall industry after insulin. IVIG can be permitted to be regulated to a patient after the finding of congestive heart disappointment, neurological scatters and invulnerable issue. Home mixture treatment requires authoritative administrations, drug store administrations, persistent teaching and preparing, types of gear, mind coordination and supplies.Companies Profiled In This Report:Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation, Pfizer, Sanofi, Eli Lilly, Kunshan Rotam Reddy PharmaceuticalsDownload PDF Sample Copy Of This Report@:The research report records the present market and its growth potentials in the given period of forecast. An exhaustive and professional outlook of the Global Home Infusion Therapy Market research study report has been completed by industry professionals and presented in the most particular manner to present only the details that matter the most. The report puts explicit emphasis on the most dynamic information of the global market, gained with the assistance of industry-best analytical methods.This research report has been compiled using primary and secondary research methodologies to help the readers gain an accurate assessment of the global market. The publication discusses the rising demand for technological advancements due to booming infrastructure across the globe. The report also puts forth the changing perspective of the consumers that are anticipated to influence the trajectory of the overall market.Avail 30% Discount On This Premium Report@:Reason to Access Global Home Infusion Therapy Market Research Report:The report is an accumulation of first-hand information, qualitative and quantitative valuation by industry analysts, inputs from industry experts and industry participants across the value chain. The report provides in-depth analysis of parent market trends, macro-economic indicators and governing factors along with market attractiveness as per segments. The report also maps the qualitative impact of various market factors on Global Home Infusion Therapy Market segments and geographies.For More Enquiry Of This Report@:Table of Contents:Global Home Infusion Therapy Market Research Report 2017Chapter 1: Global Home Infusion Therapy Market OverviewChapter 2: Global Economic Impact on IndustryChapter 3: Global Market Competition by ManufacturersChapter 4: Global Production, Revenue (Value) by RegionChapter 5: Global Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by RegionsChapter 6: Global Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by TypeChapter 7: Global Market Analysis by ApplicationChapter 8: Manufacturing Cost AnalysisChapter 9: Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream BuyersChapter 10: Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/TradersChapter 11: Market Effect Factors AnalysisChapter 12: Global Home Infusion Therapy Market ForecastIf you have any special requirements, please let us know and we will offer you the report as you want.HealthCare Intelligence Markets supply market intelligence reports in the domain of personalized drugs & diagnostics after going through a rigorous research process. The healthcare and pharma industry is constantly evolving as trends are getting replaced at a rapid pace.Name: Shreyas TannaCompany: Healthcare Intelligence MarketsAddress: 601, Winterberry Purple, Koregaon Park, Pune, 411001Mail Id: sales@healthcareintelligencemarkets.comContact No: +91 7400242424
EPDM Global Market Top Key Players  The Dow Chemical Company , ExxonMobil , Lion Elastomers , LANXESS , MITSUI CHEMICALS and Forecast to 2021

EPDM Market

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Global EPDM MarketWiseGuyRerports.com Presents Global EPDM Market 2017-2021 New Document to its Studies Database. The Report Contain 83 Pages With Detailed Analysis.DescriptionEthylene propylene diene monomer (EPDM) is classified as a synthetic rubber as well as an elastomer, which is used in various applications including general and specialty purposes. It is made by forming blocks of ethylene and propylene, which act as a backbone for the long molecular chain of EPDM. The pendant diene is used in small amounts to chemically bind the chains during the vulcanized stem. EPDM rubber is resistant to many chemicals, UV, and ozone. This makes it suitable for outdoor use. The unique feature of EPDM is its stability in a wide range of temperatures. Due to this feature, the material can be stored and used in an environment where the temperature ranges between -20.2F and 350.6F. It has resistance to mild acids, alkalis, alcohols, detergents, ketones, silicone oil, and greases but it cannot be exposed to fuel. Thus, it is not recommended for applications in combination with petroleum oils and mineral.The analysts forecast the global EPDM market to grow at a CAGR of 7.36% during the period 2017-2021.Covered in this reportThe report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global EPDM market for 2017-2021. To calculate the market size, the report considers the revenue generated from the sales of EPDM.Get sample Report @The market is divided into the following segments based on geography: APAC Europe North America ROWThe Global EPDM Market 2017-2021, has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts. The report covers the market landscape and its growth prospects over the coming years. The report also includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market.Key vendors The Dow Chemical Company ExxonMobil Lion Elastomers LANXESS MITSUI CHEMICALSOther prominent vendors Covestro Carlisle Firestone Building Products Jilin Xingyun Chemical KUMHO PETROCHEMICAL PetroChina SK global chemicalMarket driver Growing demand for synthetic rubber For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket challenge Product limitations and lack of awareness For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket trend Increased production of bio-based EPDM For a full, detailed list, view our reportKey questions answered in this report What will the market size be in 2021 and what will the growth rate be? What are the key market trends? What is driving this market? What are the challenges to market growth? Who are the key vendors in this market space? What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the key vendors? What are the strengths and weaknesses of the key vendors?Complete Report Details @Table of Contents -Major Key PointsPART 01: Executive summaryPART 02: Scope of the reportPART 03: Research MethodologyPART 04: Introduction Market outlinePART 05: Market landscape Market overview Market size and forecast Five forces analysisPART 06: Market segmentation by application Overview: Global EPDM market by application Global EPDM market for automotive Global EPDM market for molded goods Global EPDM market for building and construction Global EPDM market for lubricant additives Global EPDM market for plastic modification Global EPDM market for other applicationsPART 07: Geographical segmentation Overview: Global EPDM market by geography EPDM market in APAC EPDM market in Europe EPDM market in North America EPDM market in ROWPART 08: Decision frameworkPART 09: Drivers and challenges Market drivers Market challengesPART 10: Market trends Increased production of bio-based EPDM High degree of forward integrationPART 11: Vendor landscape Competitive landscape Key market vendors Other prominent vendorsPART 12: Key vendor analysis ExxonMobil MITSUI CHEMICALS LANXESS Lion Elastomers The Dow Chemical Company..CONTINUEDAbout UsWise Guy Reports is part of the Wise Guy Consultants Pvt. Ltd. and offers premium progressive statistical surveying, Industry research reports, analysis & forecast data for industries and governments around the globe. Wise Guy Reports understand how essential statistical surveying information is for your organization or association. Therefore, we have associated with the top publishers and research firms all specialized in specific domains, ensuring you will receive the most reliable and up to date research data available.CONTACT US :NORAH TRENTPartner Relations & Marketing Managersales@wiseguyreports.comPh: +1-646-845-9349 (US)Ph: +44 208 133 9349 (UK)
Sheet Molding Compound and Bulk Molding Compound Market Dynamic Growth Rate by 2025

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Global Sheet Molding Compound and Bulk Molding Compound Market: SnapshotThe global market for sheet molding compound and bulk molding compound is expected to advance with the launch of superior quality, lightweight, and more durable bulk molding and sheet molding compounds. By virtue of their higher line throughputs and lower production costs, these compounds are increasingly preferred by several leading manufacturers. As an augmenting number of advanced automobiles and luxury brands are deploying sheet molding compound (SMC) components, the market for sheet molding compound and bulk molding compound promises significant growth opportunities.For instance, the Mercedes-AMG GT C Roadster features a light-weight boot-lid that is made from SMC. Similarly, the 2018 Lexus LC 500 deploys glass sheet molding compound to curb weight. The inner panels of the trunk and doors of the vehicle are made using CRFP sheet molding compound.Request Sample Copy of the Report @Several prominent market players have set their eyes on global presence, for which they have been expanding their capacities through new production facilities in new regions. For instance, in March 2017, Jushi Group Ltd. announced its plans to set up a production facility in Suez, Egypt by the second half of 2017. It has also been ramping up its product portfolio with the addition of SMC Class A and BMC chopped strands. Another leading firm, A. Schulman, Inc. announced in October 2016 its intention to expand its compounding capacity via the addition of a new sheet molding compound production site in Germany. Another new inventory facility, situated in Slovenia, will cater to the demands of its European customer base.Global Sheet Molding Compound and Bulk Molding Compound Market: OverviewSheet Molding Compound (SMC) is a ready-to-mold, glass fiber protected polymer matrix composite material that finds use in different modern applications. This is because it can be molded into complex shapes. Bulk Molding Compound (BMC), on the other hand, is an amalgamation of cut glass strands and resin that is supplied in bulks or logs. BMC is suitable for either compression or injection molding. Some of the end-use industries utilizing SMCs and BMCs are electrical, automotive, transportation, aerospace, construction, marine, and consumer industries.Request TOC of the Report @Raw materials used in manufacturing SMC and BMC are resins and fibers. Depending upon the type of fiber, the market can be segmented into glass fiber and carbon fiber. Currently, glass fiber is widely used in the global sheet molding compound and bulk molding compound market. Depending upon the resin type, the market can be segmented into polyester, vinyl ester, and others. The glass fiber is the dominating segment in the global sheet-molding compound and bulk-molding compound market.A report by TMR Research conveys essential information about the global market for sheet molding compound and bulk molding compound, which are also known as thermoset compounds. It furnishes a granular analysis of the various factors promoting or hindering the markets growth in the near future and also provides information on the important players in the market.Global Sheet Molding Compound and Bulk Molding Compound Market: Drivers and TrendsSheet molding compound and bulk molding compounds are lightweight yet strong. They are fire, corrosion, and stain resistant and exhibit excellent electrical insulation. As a result of so many unique perceived benefits, SMC and BMC are being preferred over traditional materials such as steel, iron, and aluminum. They are being increasingly utilized in the burgeoning automotive sector. Sheet molding compounds, for example, are used in bonnets, hoods, front ends, decklids, and spoilers in automobiles. Bulk molding compounds too are used in various automotive parts, namely valve covers, ignition parts, and headlight liners. In the years to come, the growing urbanization worldwide, leading to the swift sale of vehicles, especially fuel-efficient vehicles, will drive the market substantially.Read Comprehensive Overview of Report @Other factors benefitting the global sheet molding compound and bulk molding compound market are the increasing automation, integration of the complete value chain of the process industries, and rapid technological progress.Global Sheet Molding Compound and Bulk Molding Compound Market: Regional OutlookAt present, Asia Pacific holds a sway over the global sheet molding compound and bulk molding compound market on account of the robust demand for automobiles and rapid industrialization in the region. The same factors are slated to propel the market further in the near future. In fact, Asia Pacific, powered by China, is slated to outpace all other major geographic segments in terms of growth rate in the years ahead. Presence of a copious number of electrical and automobile manufacturers, which is a result of lesser raw material prices, has made China a key player in the Asia Pacific region. It is both a leading producer and consumer of SMC and BMC in the region.Europe trails Asia Pacific in the global sheet molding compound and bulk molding compound market. It is followed by North America, which is propelled by the U.S.  the main contributor to its growth.Companies Mentioned in ReportTo present an in-depth assessment of the competition prevailing in the global sheet molding compound and bulk molding compound market, the report profiles companies such as Menzolit GmbH, IDI Composite International, Showa Denko K.K., Citadel Plastics Holding Inc., Continental Structural Plastics Inc., Polynt S.P.A, Core Molding Technologies Inc., and Royal Tencate.About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting services to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact:TMR Research,3739 Balboa St # 1097,San Francisco, CA 94121United StatesTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com
Discover Market Study on Residential Construction Singapore Market - Pipeline Review, 2021

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Residential Construction Singapore MarketSummaryResidential construction market covers new construction, renovation and demolition of residential buildings such as houses, townhouses, cottages, condominiums, single-unit dwellings, sub-divisions and apartments. This market includes two categories: single-family housing and multi-family housing.The Singaporean residential construction category has observed some fluctuations in the review period with a value of SGDx.xx million (US$x.xx million) in 2016 and declined at a rate of xx.xx% over 2015. The market recorded a CAGR of x.xx% from 2012 through 2016.Click here for sample report @Scope of the ReportAn overview of the residential construction market in Singapore.Historic (2012 through 2016) and forecast (2017 through 2021) construction market output values are provided.A detailed breakdown of the data by construction activity (new construction, repair and maintenance, refurbishment and demolition) is provided at the market level while the values for the segments are provided by cost types (construction materials, construction equipment & construction services).This report covers all the segments of commercial construction market including Residential construction market covers new construction, renovation and demolition of residential buildings such as houses, townhouses, cottages, condominiums, single-unit dwellings, sub-divisions and apartments. This market includes two categories: single-family housing and multi-family housing.Table of Contents1 Introduction1.1 What is this Report About?1.2 Definitions1.3 CAGR Definition and Calculation2 Overall Residential Construction: Market Analysis2.1 Overall Residential Construction Output Value, 2012 - 20162.2 Overall Residential Construction Output Value Forecast, 2017 - 20212.3 Overall Residential Construction Output Value by Cost Type2.3.1 Overall Residential Construction Output Value by Cost Type, 2012 - 20162.3.2 Overall Residential Construction Output Value by Cost Type Forecast, 2017 - 20213 Residential Construction Output:Analysis by Category3.1 New Construction Output Value, 2012 - 20163.2 New Construction Output Value Forecast, 2017 - 20213.3 New Construction Output Value by Cost Type3.3.1 New Construction Output Value by Cost Type, 2012 - 20163.3.2 New Construction Output Value by Cost Type Forecast, 2017 - 20213.4 Repair & Maintenance Output Value, 2012 - 20163.5 Repair & Maintenance Output value Forecast, 2017 - 20213.6 Repair & Maintenance Output Value by Cost Type3.6.1 Repair & Maintenance Output Value by Cost Type, 2012 - 20163.6.2 Repair & Maintenance Output Value by Cost Type Forecast, 2017 - 20213.7 Refurbishment Construction Output Value, 2012 - 20163.8 Refurbishment Construction Output Value Forecast, 2017 - 2021.ContinuedFor Detailed Reading Please visit @Wise Guy Reports understand how essential statistical surveying information is for your organization or association. Therefore, we have associated with the top publishers and research firms all specialized in specific domains, ensuring you will receive the most reliable and up to date research data available. We also provide COTS (Commercial off the Shelf) business sector reports as custom exploration agreeing your particular needs.WISEGUY RESEARCH CONSULTANTS PVT LTDOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersPune - 411028Maharashtra, India
Hybrid Adhesive & Sealant Market Henkel AG & Co. KGaA (Germany), Soudal Inc. (Belgium), H.B.Fuller (U.S.), Bostik S.A. (France), Sika AG (Switzerland)

Adhesive & Sealant

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SummaryAs per our analysis, some of the important market factors and trends identified in the Global Hybrid Adhesive & Sealant Market include rising automotive production & sales, growing construction sector, and rapid industrialization. Growth in demand for air travel can be attributed to the increasing disposable income coupled with affordable fares offered by various airlines. Increase in air traffic leads to the rising demand for newer aircraft and associated service, which in turn, drive the demand for hybrid adhesive & sealant.Get sample copy atGlobal Hybrid Adhesive & Sealant Market: Top 10 Key PlayersSome of the prominent players operating in the Global Hybrid Adhesive & Sealant Market are Henkel AG & Co. KGaA (Germany), Soudal Inc. (Belgium), H.B.Fuller (U.S.), Bostik S.A. (France), 3M (U.S.), Sika AG (Switzerland), Wacker Chemie AG (Germany), TREMCO ILLBRUCK (Germany), Kisling AG (Switzerland), Illinois Tool Works Inc.(U.S.), and others.Intended AudienceHybrid Adhesive & Sealant manufacturersTraders and Distributors of Hybrid Adhesive & SealantProduction Process IndustriesPotential InvestorsRaw Material SuppliersNationalized LaboratorySynopsis of Hybrid Adhesive & Sealant MarketHybrid Adhesive and Sealants are modified adhesive & sealant which are produced by a combination of two different classes of polymeric resin to offer superior properties such as excellent flexibility & elongation, high thermal resistance, and peel strength.Geographical Analysis:The report covers brief analysis of geographical regions such as North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and the Middle East & Africa. Furthermore, rising investment in the construction activities of hospitals, hotels, colleges, and universities are expected to fuel the demand for Hybrid Adhesive & Sealant Market. Though the Hybrid Adhesive & Sealant Market is growing at a significant rate, the lack of awareness regarding the benefit of Hybrid Adhesive & Sealant among potential Adhesive & Sealant manufacturers of the developing countries hinder the growth of the market.Important factors & trends visit atMoreover, they provide adhesion to various types of substrates including plastics, woods, ceramics, and metals. Hybrid Adhesive & Sealants find numerous application scope such as building & construction, automotive, and general industry due to various properties such as high tear & abrasion resistance, strong dynamic stress absorption, good shock & vibration resistance, chemical & UV resistance.Segmentation:The Global Hybrid Adhesive & Sealant Market is classified on the basis of resin type, application, and region. Based on resin type, hybrid adhesive & sealant market is segmented into MS polymer, epoxy-polysulfide, epoxy-polyurethane, epoxy-cyanoacrylate, and others. Based on application, the market is segmented into building & construction, automotive & aerospace, marine, general industry, and others. Based on regions, the market is segmented into Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America, North America, and the Middle East & Africa.At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.Contact us:Market Research Future+1 646 845 9312Email: salesteam@marketresearchfuture.com
Market Insights: Global Retail Display Market to grow at a CAGR of 15.84% during 2017-2020

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The displays that are used in retail applications like POS systems, kiosks, ATMs, and digital signage are referred to as retail displays. They are of two types: touch-enabled and non-touch displays. A growing number of retailers are using interactive displays to grab the attention of customers. They have to ensure that their digital displays are technically perfect for attracting customers, given the increased use of high-performance electronic devices such as smartphones and tablets by consumers. For instance, responsive screens should react quickly to consumer gestures so that shoppers continue to use them and close the sale.The global retail display market to grow at a CAGR of 15.84% during the period 2017-2021. The report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global retail display market for 2017-2021. To calculate the market size, the report considers the revenue generated from the sales of displays for the retail sector worldwide.The market is divided into the following segments based on geography:- Americas- APAC- EMEAClick to get Sample PDF:Technavio's report, Global Thoracic Surgery Market 2017-2021, has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts. The report covers the market landscape and its growth prospects over the coming years. The report also includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market.Key vendors- 3M- Adflow Networks- AU Optronics- Cisco- HP- Innolux- LG Display- Panasonic- Samsung- SharpOther prominent vendors- Cambridge Display Technology- DuPont Display- Elo Touch Solution- E Ink Holdings- Innolux- Fujitsu- General Electric- Kent Displays- Mitsubishi Electric- NEC Display Solutions- Plastic Logic- Sony- Seiko Epson- TPK- Universal DisplayView Complete TOC with Tables and Figures at:Key questions answered in this report- What will the market size be in 2020 and what will the growth rate be?- What are the key market trends?- What is driving this market?- What are the challenges to market growth?- Who are the key vendors in this market space?- What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the key vendors?- What are the strengths and weaknesses of the key vendors?ResearchMoz is the worlds fastest growing collection of market research reports worldwide. Our database is composed of current market studies from over 100 featured publishers worldwide. Our market research databases integrate statistics with analysis from global, regional, country and company perspectives. ResearchMozs service portfolio also includes value-added services such as market research customization, competitive landscaping, and in-depth surveys, delivered by a team of experienced Research Coordinators.Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-621-2074Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Email: sales@researchmoz.usFollow us on LinkedIn at:
Overview of Global Polysaccharides and Oligosaccharides Market Size, Trends, Share and Growth Forecast till 2026

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FACT.MR has been actively involved in offering comprehensive research data concerning various topics which are associated to industrial reference and investor utility. This particular research report titled Polysaccharides and Oligosaccharides Market Forecast, Trend Analysis & Competition Tracking - Global Review 2017 to 2026 has been added to the wide online database of FACT.MR which discusses the present as well as future market scenario. Readers can access knowledge related to market volume, regional expanse as well as competitive landscape prevailing in the globalPolysaccharides and Oligosaccharides Market. In order to study development patterns, this smart assessment also focuses on market dynamics, which talks about drivers, restraints and opportunities estimated to influence the concerned market during the period until 2022.Request For Sample Report @Polysaccharides and oligosaccharides are essentially complex carbohydrates that include chain of monosaccharide molecules. In oligosaccharides, typically a three to ten monosaccharide molecule chain is observed. Polysaccharides include long monosaccharide chains in which the monosaccharide units are bound by glycosidic linkages. Oligosaccharides are used as prebiotics owing to their characteristic non-digestibility nature that proves beneficial to human health. They are found in onions, artichokes, bananas and garlic. On the other hand, polysaccharides are digestible as well as non-digestible. Starch is the only digestible polysaccharide. Non-starchy and starchy vegetables, unrefined grains, certain fruits and legumes are sources of non-digestible polysaccharides. Both these complex carbohydrates have a distinct as well as an overlapping functioning in the human body.According to Fact.MRs recent research report, the global market for polysaccharides and oligosaccharides is anticipated to expand at a value CAGR of 4.8% throughout the period of assessment, 2017-2026. By the end of the assessment year, 2026, above 7540 Bn tons of production of polysaccharides and oligosaccharides is estimated to be consumed across the globe.Asia Pacific Excluding Japan to Surpass Other Regions With Respect to Growth Rate and Market Share During the Forecast PeriodAsia Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) region is expected to be a highly lucrative region for the growth of polysaccharides and oligosaccharides market. The consumption of polysaccharides and oligosaccharides is expected to grow in this region owing to increased demand from the food sector in various applications. The polysaccharides and oligosaccharides market in APEJ is estimated to reach a valuation a little under US$ 9 Bn by the end of the year of assessment from a value of about US$ 5 Bn in 2017. The market in this region is projected to grow at the highest pace throughout the period of forecast to register a relatively high value CAGR.Europe followed by North America are also expected to largely contribute to the growth of the global polysaccharides and oligosaccharides market. Europe is expected to be the second largest with respect to market valuation. Also the consumption of polysaccharides and oligosaccharides in this region is expected to grow at a moderate pace in the coming years.Browse Full Report with TOC @Oligosaccharides to Gain High Steam With Respect to Consumption Across the GlobeIn the product type category, the oligosaccharides segment is expected to expand at a comparatively high value CAGR of 5.2% during the period of assessment. This can be attribute to the growing consumption of oligosaccharides across the globe in various applications. However, the polysaccharides segment is expected to lead the global market with a high market share and valuation. This segment is estimated to touch a value of over US$ 9 Bn by the end of the year of assessment.Demand for Polysaccharides and Oligosaccharides in Animal Feed to Reflect High Growth in the Coming YearsPolysaccharides and oligosaccharides are used in various applications such as in the production of beverages, infant milk formula, animal feed, bakery and confectionery, dairy products and snacks. The consumption of polysaccharides and oligosaccharides in animal feed is expected to increase at a robust rate in the coming years. The animal feed application segment is projected to grow at a relatively high value CAGR of 6.5% during the forecast period. However, the beverages application segment is estimated to be the largest with a high market share and value and is expected to dominate the global market throughout the period of forecast.Competition TrackingLeading producers of polysaccharides and oligosaccharides have been profiled in this research report, that include companies like Novozyme, Takasago, Chr Hansen, Senseint, Wild Flavors, Symrise, Glanbia Ingredients, IFF, Tate & Lyle, Firemenich, McComick, ABF, DSM, Givuandan and Dupont. Details of these key players such as company overview, key financials, key personnel, expansion plans and geographical spread, product portfolio, developments and innovations and key strategies is covered in this research study.Check Discount @About Fact.MRFact.MR is a fast-growing market research firm that offers the most comprehensive suite of syndicated and customized Food & Beverages Market research reports. We believe transformative intelligence can educate and inspire businesses to make smarter decisions. We know the limitations of the one-size-fits-all approach; that's why we publish multi-industry global, regional, and country-specific research reports.Contact UsFact.MR11140 Rockville PikeSuite 400Rockville, MD 20852United StatesEmail: sales@factmr.comWeb:
Function as a Service Market 2018 by Global Leaders: IBM, Google, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, SAP SE, Dynatrace LLC, Infosys, Rogue Wave Software, TIBCO Software, Fiorano Software & Affiliates

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Market Research Future published a research report on Function as a Service Market Research Report- Global Forecast 2023  Market Analysis, Scope, Stake, Progress, Trends and Forecast to 2023.Market ScenarioFunction as a service (FaaS) refers to cloud services that enable serverless app development and management. This basically means that FaaS users are able to conduct their programming (and other tasks) without the hassle of managing their own server(s). Strings of code are triggered by events on the user end, and basically outsourced to remote servers that are able to execute the intended functions.The function as a service platform provides organizations with auto-scalable architecture which adds resources to handle extra activity when the load is more and also reduces the resources when the load is reduced. The auto-scalar performs these activities automatically based on the scaling rules defined by the users. Therefore, the business agility and scalability provisioned by function as service platforms is driving the growth of function as a service market growth.Applications that are both resilient and scalable is an essential part of any application architecture. Using function as a service provides a flexible way of adding scalability and resilience to the architecture. It also helps in reducing costs as the resources are adjusted according to the requirement of an application. The function as a service architecture is auto-scalable, when traffic or load rises, Auto-scalar adds resources to handle the extra activity and removes resources when the traffic or load lowers to help in reducing the costs. It also eliminates the need to manage servers on cloud, and replaces them with pervasive use of functional computing resources. Therefore, the cost effectiveness of the function as a service architecture is driving the growth of function as a service market.Get Sample of Report @Serverless function as a service computing comes with vendor dependencies with a further loss of control over the internal teams. Relying more on your vendor partners for administrative functions, security and others rises the security concerns. The immaturity of supporting services can also raise concerns for some technology professionals. The complete dependencies on a third-party provider and no control of the applications arises the security concerns. There is an issue with the credentials and the user permissions in the function as a service platform. Moreover, the security concerns related to SQL injections and other viruses and attacks are prevalent in the function as a service platform. Therefore, the security concerns related to function as a service are restraining the global function as a service market.Key PlayersSome of the key players in the market are IBM (U.S.), Google Inc. (U.S.), Microsoft Corporation (U.S.), Amazon Web Services (U.S.), SAP SE (Germany), Dynatrace LLC (U.S.), Infosys Ltd. (India), Rogue Wave Software Inc. (U.S.), TIBCO Software Inc. (U.S.), Fiorano Software & Affiliates (U.S.), among others.SegmentationThe global function as a service market is segmented on the basis of user type, service type, application, deployment, vertical and region. On the basis of user type the segment is further classified into operator centric and developer centric. On the basis of service type the segment is further classified into automation and integration, microservice monitoring and management services, API management services, support and maintenance services and others. On the basis of application the segment is further classified into web based and mobile application, research and academic application. On the basis of cloud the segment is further divided into public cloud, private cloud and hybrid cloud. The function as a service covers wide area of verticals such as BFSI, manufacturing, healthcare, IT and telecommunication and many more.Key Findings By user type, developer centric is dominating the market and has generated 1.1906 million in 2016 and is expected to grow at 33% CAGR. By services, automation & integration service is dominating the market and has generated USD 538.9 million revenue in 2016 and is expected to grow with 36.5% CAGR. By vertical manufacturing and BFSI sector is leading the market and is projected to grow with 37% and 36.4% respectively.Regional AnalysisThe regional analysis of active electronic components market is being studied for region such as Asia pacific, North America, Europe and Rest of the World. North America is expected to hold the largest market share and dominate the function as a service market in 2016, due to the penetration of large enterprises situated in this region with strong technically sound employees providing continuous innovative technologies, high penetration into the growing industries of the market, and greater efficiency of cloud-based solution in the front office. These are some of the major driving factors contributing to the growth of function as a service in North America. Asia-Pacific is projected to grow at the fastest rate during the forecast period. Companies in APAC are continuously trying to improve market efficiency and further enhance customer satisfaction. This creates an opportunity for the FaaS solution and service providers.Get Complete Report @Intended Audience Electronic component manufacturers Research organizations Original equipment manufacturers System Integrators network equipment vendors chipset vendors software/application providers user equipment manufacturers network infrastructure integrators Government Organizations Research/Consultancy firmsAbout Us:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.Media Contact:Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com
China's first domestically built carrier, known as the Type 001A, is undergoing preparations for its first sea trial, while discussions about its name show that Chinese people hold high expectations of the carrier's ability to resolve the Taiwan question.

Source: Global Times - Editor: Huang Panyue

China's first domestically built carrier, known as the Type 001A, is undergoing preparations for its first sea trial, while discussions about its name show that Chinese people hold high expectations of the carrier's ability to resolve the Taiwan question.

China's first home-built aircraft carrier Type 001A at a shipyard in Dalian, Northeast China's Liaoning Province in January 2017. Picture via Sohu.com



According to the latest online photos from the Dalian Shipbuilding Industry Company (DSIC) construction site in Liaoning Province, where the carrier was launched and outfitted, the scaffolds on the carrier have been completely removed, and a phased array radar has been installed.

"All the equipment and devices on the carrier are in the joint debugging stage, and the main engine has been powered. In 2018, we will present a surprise to the Chinese people," DSIC Chairman Liu Zheng said, according to a report on cctv.com, the official website of China Central Television, on March 13.

Liu, who is also the general director of construction of the Type 001A and a member of the National People's Congress (NPC), made the comments to cctv.com when he was attending the Two Sessions.

"This all proves that the Type 001A is getting ready for its first sea trial, and the exact timing will depend on factors like the weather and sea conditions. April 23 is Navy Day, the founding day of the PLA Navy [April 23 1949], so this might also be taken into consideration," Li Jie, a Beijing-based naval expert, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

"After the sea trial, which normally takes about 6-12 months, it will be ready for delivery to the PLA Navy, so it's very likely we will see the carrier enlisted by the end of 2018," said Song Zhongping, a military expert and TV commentator.

Full speed

The Type 001A was launched in Dalian on April 26 2017, three days after Navy Day, and the outfitting work only took about one year.

The speed with which the Type 001A was built was the fastest in the history of aircraft carrier construction, as it only took two years from the laying of the foundation in the shipyard to its launch, and more importantly, everything from the ship's body to its devices is domestically built, Liu said.

"The quality of our construction is also world-class. For example, the world-class standard for the flatness of the flight deck is not more than 4 percent, and we made it lower than 3 percent," Liu noted.

All in the name

During the Two Sessions, Yuan Maorong, an NPC deputy from Taizhou city, East China's Zhejiang Province, suggested naming the carrier "Wei Wen", after a military general from the Three Kingdoms period (AD 184/220-280) who was the first man in history to arrive at Taiwan, according to cctv.com on March 13.

Yuan said naming the carrier Wei Wen would show the historical fact of Taiwan being an integral part of China, and push the development of Cross-Straits relations.

The discussion of how the ship should be named has also been spreading in social media. Many Chinese netizens suggested simply naming the carrier "Taiwan," while others suggested naming it "Shi Lang", an admiral who recaptured Taiwan for the Qing Dynasty.

"This displays the high expectations among the Chinese people over solving the Taiwan question, because they want the country to use the first domestically built aircraft carrier as a symbol to announce its determination and ability to achieve this aim, and also send a tough warning signal to the secessionists in Taiwan," Li noted.

However, the carrier is not targeting Taiwan, according to a military expert from a Beijing-based military academy who requested anonymity. He explained that if Beijing decided to use military measures to solve the Taiwan question, the PLA is fully capable of doing so without an aircraft carrier, and Type 001A was made for a greater purpose.

"The PLA Navy has regulations for naming large vessels like aircraft carriers, which generally use the names of provinces and municipalities," Song said.

"Liaoning is primarily a platform for training personnel and collecting data through testing, while Type 001A is China's first carrier made for combat missions, so its name could be more special. It's impossible to name it with a person's name, for only vessels used for scientific research can use a person's name in China," said the anonymous military expert.
Air Conditioning System Market Production, Trends, Price, Revenue, Share, Growth and Forecast Until 2026

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Fact.MR has been actively involved in offering comprehensive research data concerning various topics which are associated to industrial reference and investor utility. This particular research report titled Air Conditioning System Market Forecast, Trend Analysis & Competition Tracking - Global Review 2017 to 2026 has been added to the wide online database of Fact.MR which discusses the present as well as future market scenario. Readers can access knowledge related to market volume, regional expanse as well as competitive landscape prevailing in the global global air conditioning system market. In order to study development patterns, this smart assessment also focuses on market dynamics, which talks about drivers, restraints and opportunities estimated to influence the concerned market during the period until 2022.Request for Sample Report-According to Fact.MRs recently compiled report, the global air conditioning system market will record a CAGR of over 6% during the forecast period 2017 to 2026, in terms of value. Global sales of air conditioning systems are estimated to exceed 240,000 Mn units by 2026-end.Manufacturers Moving toward Greener & Cleaner Cooling DirectionEvolving government mandates dictate equipment manufacturers to shift their focus toward adoption effective alternatives to chemicals, which prevent adverse impacts on the environment. In the cooling arena, manufacturers are now replacing chemical refrigerants emitting GHG such as HFCs, HCFCs and CFCs, with less hazardous green agents that prevent depletion of ozone layer and impact on global warming. The non-synthetic & naturally occurring substances capable of being utilized as cooling agents in air conditioning systems include water, air, ammonia, CO2 and hydrocarbons such as cyclopentane, butane and propane. For OEMs manufacturing air conditioning systems, new challenges are brought by these government regulations in selecting best quality refrigerant and components for handling the specific refrigerants performance characteristics and technical challenges. This implies an imperative first step towards a greener and cleaner cooling direction.North America to Record Highest Sales of Air Conditioning Systems in terms of VolumeSales of air conditioning systems are slated to remain the largest in North America, in terms of volume, followed by Europe. Ongoing technological innovations, and changing standards of American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning, along with the presence of many regulatory policies have accelerated demand for eco-friendly, technologically advanced, and energy-efficient air conditioning systems in these regions.Demand for air conditioning system in Asia-Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) will remain more concentrated in its emerging countries such as India and China, mainly because of rising living standards and disposable incomes of population in these countries. Volume sales of air conditioning systems will witness the fastest expansion in APEJ through 2026.Past few years have represented proliferation in adoption of air conditioning systems in various commercial spaces such as clinics, hospitals, construction, and hotel & tourism, mainly driven by rapid population growth. Commercial applications of air conditioning systems will record the largest sales, in terms of volume. However, volume sales of air conditioning systems for residential applications are expected to reflect the fastest expansion through 2026.Browse Full Report with TOC-Table of Content:1. Global Economic Outlook2. Global Air Conditioning System Market - Executive Summary3. Global Air Conditioning System Market Overview3.1. Introduction3.1.1. Global Air Conditioning System Market Taxonomy3.1.2. Global Air Conditioning System Market Definition3.2. Global Air Conditioning System Market Size (US$ Mn) and Forecast, 2012-20263.2.1. Global Air Conditioning System Market Y-o-Y Growth3.3. Global Air Conditioning System Market Dynamics3.4. Supply Chain3.5. PESTLE Analysis3.6. Porter's Five Force Analysis3.7. Regulatory Framework3.8. Forecast Factors3.9. List of Distributors3.10. Key Participants Market Presence (Intensity Map) By Region4. Global Air Conditioning System Market Analysis and Forecast 2012-20264.1. Global Air Conditioning System Market Size and Forecast By Product Type, 2012-20264.1.1. Portable Air Conditioning Systems Market Size and Forecast, 2012-20264.1.1.1. Revenue (US$ Mn) Comparison, By Region4.1.1.2. Market Share Comparison, By Region4.1.1.3. Y-o-Y growth Comparison, By Region4.1.2. Window Air Conditioning Systems Market Size and Forecast, 2012-20264.1.2.1. Revenue (US$ Mn) Comparison, By Region4.1.2.2. Market Share Comparison, By Region4.1.2.3. Y-o-Y growth Comparison, By Region4.1.3. Split Air Conditioning Systems Market Size and Forecast, 2012-20264.1.3.1. Revenue (US$ Mn) Comparison, By Region4.1.3.2. Market Share Comparison, By Region4.1.3.3. Y-o-Y growth Comparison, By RegionContinued.Check Discount on This Report-About Fact.MRFact.MR is a fast-growing market research firm that offers the most comprehensive suite of syndicated and customized Industrial Goods market research reports. We believe transformative intelligence can educate and inspire businesses to make smarter decisions. We know the limitations of the one-size-fits-all approach; that's why we publish multi-industry global, regional, and country-specific research reports.Contact UsFact.MRSuite 988427 Upper Pembroke Street,Dublin 2, IrelandTelephone: +353-1-6111-593Email: sales@factmr.com/Web:
Revenue Cycle Management (RCM) Market - Current Scenario and Future Growth Analysis 2017 - 2025

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Global Revenue Cycle Management (RCM) Market: SnapshotRevenue cycle management is seeing rising uptake in healthcare centers in the US and in other countries across the world as well. It is leveraged to track the revenue from their patients by managing claims processing, payment and revenue generation. A medical billing software or practice management software is needed for it and the overall process includes determining everything from eligibility of patients, collecting their co-pay, coding and tracking claims, collecting payments, and following up on denied claims.Health systems and hospitals are increasingly banking upon revenue cycle management software solutions to reduce operational costs. They leverage it to bring down the number of denied insurance claims, speed up explanation of benefits, improve information quality, streamline denial management, and automate processes.Request Sample Copy of the Report @Optimizing revenue cycle has become increasingly necessary for in manual processes if one person in the chain makes any mistake in the form of coding error or incorrect entry of data pertaining to insurance information and patient demographics, among others, the overall chain is affected, thereby bringing down efficiency.Majorly fuelling adoption of revenue cycle management is the lessening number of reimbursements in the healthcare industry, government efforts to promote uptake of RCM solutions, revenue loss due to errors in billing, and process improvements in healthcare organizations.At present, the claim and denial management functionality under revenue cycle management is most sought after and going forward too will be popular on account of the dynamic reimbursement structure, in addition to the growing occurrence of claim denials.Overall, the revenue cycle management is of two types  integrated and standalone solutions. Competition in the market is stiff at present as players are pulling out all stops to utilize every opportunity in the nascent market.Request TOC of the Report @Global Revenue Cycle Management (RCM) Market: OverviewRevenue cycle management solutions can be very beneficial to business and healthcare organizations across the world. Revenue cycle management implies the refinement of a billing process. To do so, the revenue cycle management can make use of an organizations medical billing software. This can be very valuable in larger healthcare organizations, where they can be used to track patient care and statuses between a patient, their registration, and their appointment at the healthcare organization. An RCM can also manage a patients billing and final payment of balance.According to the Healthcare Financial Management Association, a standard revenue cycle comprises all admin related functions as well as clinical functions, each of which contribute to the gathering, storage, and use of management oriented data and service revenue. A revenue cycle may therefore include registration, preregistration, coding, claims submissions, charge capture, remittance processing, and third-party follow-up.Global Revenue Cycle Management (RCM) Market: Key TrendsOne of the key drivers currently augmenting the global revenue cycle management market is the growing demand by healthcare organizations for workflow optimization. The overall workload experienced by the average healthcare organization has been growing at a considerable rate over the past years, and is likely to continue rising over the coming years. Hospitals and other institutions are therefore looking towards revenue cycle management solutions providers for ways to streamline their processes and help maintain accurate medical and financial records.The global revenue cycle management market is also likely to continue being supplemented in growth rate through the introduction of regulatory reforms in regional healthcare industries, which will make the management of resources a more complex process. This is expected to create a heavy demand for revenue cycle management over the coming years.Read Comprehensive Overview of Report @Global Revenue Cycle Management (RCM) Market: Market PotentialMultiple providers of healthcare, especially from developed economies, are looking to strike a balance between the traditional management models as well as the newer, value-addition models. Their adoption rates of revenue cycle management for various purposes reflects on the overall need for the markets players over the foreseeable future. One such example is the contract recently formed between LabPharm Hospital Management Services from Atlanta and Change Healthcare. The latter will be handling a highly detailed structure of revenue cycle management services that will fall in line with a national hospital network as well as with independent labs in the U.S.The New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation has also become a part of the global revenue cycle management market by announcing its implementations of Epic revenue cycle management services for healthcare. The move was made to augment patient revenue earned by the health system by an added 5 percent. The NYCHHC is one of the largest public health systems in the U.S. and has taken up the Epic revenue cycle management services nearly one year after the EPIC EHR implementation projects.Global Revenue Cycle Management (RCM) Market: Regional OutlookThe highly advanced healthcare industry of North America has made it easier for players from the global revenue cycle management market to set up shop here, making this region the leader in the market over the recent past. The market is likely to continue being dominated by North America over the coming years for similar reasons as well as an incremental workload on national healthcare organizations. Physicians offices have shown the higher volume of implementation of revenue cycle management so far.Global Revenue Cycle Management (RCM) Market: Competitive AnalysisThe nature of competition between players from the global revenue cycle management market is expected to grow aggressive over the coming years. The scope of opportunities are very high currently and are expected to rise over the coming years, not just in developed economies, but emerging ones as well. The current leaders in the global revenue cycle management market include Cerner Corporation, Allscripts, The SSI Group, LLC, McKesson Corporation, NextGen Healthcare Information Solution LLC, Epic Systems Corporation, and CareCloud Corporation.About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting services to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact:TMR Research,3739 Balboa St # 1097,San Francisco, CA 94121United StatesTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com
Global Landfill Gas Market Forecast for Incremental CAGR Growth by 2026

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FACT.MR has been actively involved in offering comprehensive research data concerning various topics which are associated to industrial reference and investor utility. This particular research report titledLandfill Gas Market Forecast, Trend Analysis & Competition Tracking - Global Review 2017 to 2026 has been added to the wide online database of FACT.MR which discusses the present as well as future market scenario. Readers can access knowledge related to market volume, regional expanse as well as competitive landscape prevailing in the globalLandfill Gas Market. In order to study development patterns, this smart assessment also focuses on market dynamics, which talks about drivers, restraints and opportunities estimated to influence the concerned market during the period until 2022.Request For Sample Report @Exhaustive use of solar energy as an alternative power source has propelled the demand for modern day renewable energy resources such as landfill gas. Being a mixture of different gases, the predominantly high presence of simple hydrocarbons in landfill gases has propelled their end-use across multiple applications. Landfill gases are being produced in large scale to power homes dependent on natural gas as a key energy source. Moreover, relatively less complexities in production of landfill gas, as compared to natural gas, has dubbed them the ideal substitute. Governments are actively implementing initiatives and undertaking measures to employ natural anaerobic decomposition of organic waste in landfills. These landfills are being maintained by leaders in the chemicals and oil & gas industries. In addition, municipal corporations are partnering with landfill gas market players to increase the use of municipal waste in production of methane.Apropos Fact.MRs recent forecast report, the global landfill gas market is anticipated to expand at a value CAGR of 4.9% during the period of forecast, 2017-2026.North America Region to Largely Contribute to the Growth of the Global Landfill Gas MarketLandfill gas market in North America is estimated to grow at a significant pace during the period of forecast. According to this analytical research report, the landfill gas market in North America is estimated to touch a valuation of more than US$ 460 Mn by the end of the year of assessment from a value of about US$ 300 Mn in 2017. The North America landfill gas market is projected to grow at a moderate CAGR throughout the period of assessment.Browse Full Report with TOC @Asia Pacific Excluding Japan (APEJ) to Spearhead the Global Markets Growth in the Coming YearsThe landfill gas market in Asia Pacific excluding Japan region is expected to grow at a relatively high rate in the coming years. The increasing government directive towards reduction in carbon emissions along with emergence of integrated cogeneration technologies are expected to foster the growth of the landfill gas market in this region. China followed by India are major contributors of growth fuelling the rate of adoption of landfill gas in the APEJ region. Australia and Malaysia are also expected to contribute to the markets growth.Direct Use Application Segment to Gain High Market Share During the Period of AssessmentDirect use is typically used to substitute the nonrenewable sources, for instance, natural gas, oil and coal. The application of landfill gas as a renewable source of energy for direct use in dryers, boilers and other uses reduce emissions of methane thus protecting the environment. Owing to this fact, the direct use segment has gained high traction in the recent years. This segment is expected to lead the global market with a high market valuation and market share by the end of the year of assessment.Competition TrackingLeading producers of landfill gas have been profiled in this report, which include Shanghai Chengtou Holding Co., Ltd., Vectren Corporation, Granite Acquisition, Inc., Aria Energy Corp, Kohler Co., Inc., SUEZ SA Pennon Group Plc., Veolia Environment S.A, Covanta Holding Corporation, and Waste Management, Inc. These companies are pegged to remain active in expansion of the global landfill gas market through 2026. Municipal solid waste will be viewed lucrative for production of landfill gas. Nevertheless, ecological imprint of methane and other greenhouse gases present in landfill gas will continue to challenge market players in extending their production capabilities.Check Discount @About Fact.MRFact.MR is a fast-growing market research firm that offers the most comprehensive suite of syndicated and customized Industrial Goods Market research reports. We believe transformative intelligence can educate and inspire businesses to make smarter decisions. We know the limitations of the one-size-fits-all approach; that's why we publish multi-industry global, regional, and country-specific research reports.Contact UsFact.MR11140 Rockville PikeSuite 400Rockville, MD 20852United StatesEmail: sales@factmr.comWeb:
Automated Border Control Market is expected to grow with approximately CAGR of 16% through the forecast period 2017-2023.

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Market Synopsis:Global market for Automated Border Control is classified by type of solution, by component, by application and by geography.Market Research Future identifies HID Global (U.S.), Atos Corporation (France), Cognitec Systems (Germany), Cominfosec (Czech Republic), Cross Match Technologies Inc. (U.S.), Gemalto (the Netherlands), Gunnebo Group Corporation (Sweden), Accenture PLC (Ireland), Magnetic Autocontrol GmbH (Germany), and Modi Modular Digits GmbH (Germany) as the key players in the global automated border control market.Due to rise in security concern against terrorism and illegal works, many of the airports, seaports and borders are implementing automated border control gates and other technologies. These are controlled by a centrally located computer and is mainly operated at the time of immigration check in airports. The automated system may mostly include an automated passport scanner, a biometric facial recognition, and other technology that helps in automatic reading at control gates. The market is largely fuelled by rise in automation and IoT applications. Europe is one of the first regions to adopt automated border control to provide an efficient security check system at its airports.Request a Sample Report @Industry NewsFebruary 2018, Dubai International Airport Inaugurates New Generation Automated Border Control. The international airport of Dubai aims that the automated border control will carter the passengers and the airport authority in experiencing different level border control and enhanced immigration security process.February 2018, FXE becomes first general aviation airport with automated passport control kiosks. The airport has achieved a distinct milestone for implementation of automated passport control self-kiosks to strengthen border immigration protection and customs duty. FXE is the first general aviation airport to do so.February 2018, Biometric facial technology at airports: limits, but moving ahead, with President Trump's support. Many of the airports in the United States have implemented biometric facial recognition as a security procedure by orders of President Donald Trump. The higher concern on immigration and security is encouraging the airports to implement biometric facial technology.February 2018, DERMALOG showcasing border control solutions at European Police Congress. The company has successfully and intentionally created self-registration kiosks for border control at airports. The company has designed these security gates equipped with scanners and camera technologyAutomated Border Control Global Market - SegmentationSegmentation by Solution type: ABC E-gate, ABC KioskSegmentation by Component: Hardware, Software, ServiceSegmentation by Application: airport, land port, seaportSegmentation by region: North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, Middle East & Africa.Automated Border Control Global Market - Regional AnalysisThe geographical analysis of the Automated Border Control market is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and rest of the world. Out of these regions, Europe is largely dominating the automated border control market and will continue to lead the market for forecast period. This is majorly due the automation companies are based in Europe and possess strong technical base. On the other hand, North America claims the second spot in this market. However, there has been a high growth during the forecast period by Asia Pacific. This growth is majorly due to rise in security concerns, need for automation and improved traveller convenience are the drivers responsible for the growth.Browse Complete Report @About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.Contact:Market Research Future+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com
Overview of Spa Market in Europe 2016-2020 | Lanserhof, Ritz Carlton, Clarins, Fonteverde

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The spa market in Europe contributed about 40% of the global spa market by retail value in 2015. Countries in Western Europe experienced healthy growth despite unfavorable economic environment. Specialized urban spas and boutique hotels in the region offer differentiated services to customers at different pricing options. Rising investments in the hospitality and spa sector have significantly helped the growth of the market in this region.The spa market in Europe to grow at a CAGR of 8.60% during the period 2016-2020. The report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the spa market in Europe for 2016-2020. To calculate the market size, the report considers the revenue generated from the spa services.Click to get Sample PDF:Technavio's report, Spa Market in Europe 2016-2020, has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts. The report covers the market landscape and its growth prospects over the coming years. The report also includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market.Key vendors- Lanserhof- Ritz Carlton- Clarins- FonteverdeOther prominent vendors- VILA VITA VITAL SPA- Clinique La Prairie- Lefay Resort & Spa Lago di Garda- Chelsea Day Spa- Nirvana Spa- Four Seasons Spa- The Bulgari Spa- Thermae Bath Spa- Terme di SaturniaMarket driver- Innovative service offerings by spa players- For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket challenge- Low point of differentiation compared to salons- For a full, detailed list, view our reportView Complete TOC with Tables and Figures at:Key questions answered in this report- What will the market size be in 2020 and what will the growth rate be?- What are the key market trends?- What is driving this market?- What are the challenges to market growth?- Who are the key vendors in this market space?- What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the key vendors?- What are the strengths and weaknesses of the key vendors?ResearchMoz is the worlds fastest growing collection of market research reports worldwide. Our database is composed of current market studies from over 100 featured publishers worldwide. Our market research databases integrate statistics with analysis from global, regional, country and company perspectives. ResearchMozs service portfolio also includes value-added services such as market research customization, competitive landscaping, and in-depth surveys, delivered by a team of experienced Research Coordinators.Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-621-2074Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Email: sales@researchmoz.usFollow us on LinkedIn at:
Carnauba Wax Market Booming Trends, Strategy, Revenue Generation |Top 10 Key Players & Forecast to 2023

Carnauba Wax

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Carnauba Wax Market 2018 to 2023 focus on business Intelligence for revenue-generating processes, market research future illustrated some of the typical ways that is used to improve key revenue generation processes. Fundamentally, Carnauba Wax market analysis, new technology, scope, stake, progress, trends and opportunities are about using detailed and specific business information about client.Get Sample atIntended Audience Carnauba wax market manufacturers Traders and Distributors of Carnauba wax market Production process industries Potential investorsCarnauba Wax Market- Top 10 Global key Players & Their StrategySome of the prominent players operating in the global carnauba wax market are Strahl & Pitsch (U.S.), Poth Hille & Co Ltd (U.K), Koster Keunen, LLC (Netherland), Calwax (U.S.), Kahl GmbH & CO (Germany), KG, Frank B. Ross Co (U.S.), Akrochem Corporation (U.S), Foncepi comercial exportadora ltda (Brazil), Carnauba do Brasil (Brazil), Pontes industria de Cera ltda (Brazil), and Tropical Ceras do Brasil Ltda (Brazil) among others.Carnauba Wax Market  Overview / Study Objective / SynopsisCarnauba wax is known as palm wax, and Brazil wax. It is a class of wax that is obtained naturally from the palm Copernicia prunifera, which is a native plant form the Brazilian states of Piaui, Marnhoa, Ceara, Bahia, and Rio Grande do Norte. It is a hard and yellow-brown flake in its normal and pure state. Carnauba wax is considered to be the hardest form of natural wax.Carnauba Wax Market  Competitive AnalysisThe growing usage in end-use industries coupled with the growing inclination towards the use of natural products are the major factors driving the global carnauba wax market. Carnauba wax is used in the coating of pharmaceutical pills, as emulsifying agents in food and beverages, and also in the production of lip balm, lipsticks, and mascaras and other cosmetic and personal care products. The advantages such as durability and high melting point make it ideal for many applications such as cosmetics & personal care, pharmaceuticals, automobiles and others. Carnauba wax differs from normal wax in terms of its potential oil retaining capacity, glossy characteristics, and swells when exposed to water.For Technical and Professional Details Book Complete Carnauba Wax Market Report atCarnauba Wax Market  Regional AnalysisThe carnauba wax market is segmented across five regions: Europe, Latin America, Asia Pacific, North America and the Middle East & Africa. Among these, Asia Pacific holds a major share of the market and is expected to be the fastest growing market during the forecast years. The growing urbanization and industrial development in the developing nations are the major factors driving the growth of the carnauba wax market.Moreover, adoption rate in the food and beverage industry along with the growing demand for cosmetic & personal products is expected to have a positive impact in the growth of the market. Furthermore, with the increasing working population, the demand for on-the-go food products are augmenting in the region which in turn is adding to the market growth due to the extensive use of carnauba wax as food emulsifiers.At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our (CRR), (HCRR), (3R), (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services. MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.Contact Us:Market Research Future+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com
Statistical Analytics Market 2018 Top Key Players: SAP SE, SAS Institute, Oracle Corporation, International Business Machine by Forecast to 2023

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Market Highlights:The statistical analytics is gaining demand as organization seek to improve their business growth by shifting from on-premise to cloud based. The initial low cost, saving amount spent on infrastructure, automatic software upgrading and seamless integration is driving the market of cloud based statistical analytics market.On the basis of regional analysis the market is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Rest of the World. North America region is generating highest market share in the statistical analytics market owing to better network infrastructure, digitization and higher technology implementation. Digitization in North America is mainly due to the invention of advanced technology and economies benefitting from it. North America region is leading due to presence of major players from the region in the statistical analytics market. The implementation of statistical analytics solution by both small and medium enterprises is increasing rapidly, especially one into retail sector.Request a Sample Report @Major Key Players: SAP SE (Germany) SAS Institute (U.S.) Oracle Corporation (U.S.) International Business Machine (U.S.) Tibco Software Inc. (U.S.) Qlik Software (U.S.) Alteryx (U.S.) Statacorp (U.S.) Plug & Score (U.S.) Lumina Decision Systems (U.S.)Statistical Analytics Market Segmentation:The statistical analytics market has been segmented on the basis of components, deployment, vertical and organization size. The cloud based Statistical analytics solution provides search filters in terms of website traffic, most popular site and measure campaign performance. Cloud solution enable organization by providing drag and drop function and offers roll-based workflow. The study indicates that growing demand of digitally stored data and cloud computing is driving the on-premise deployment service.Market Research Analysis:The Statistical Analytics Market in North America region is growing due to high adoption of cloud solutions by enterprise and need to improve information governance in organizations. According to the study, the statistical analytics market will show rapid growth in Europe region. Asia-Pacific market is estimated to be one of the fastest growing market as it is continuously investing into research and development of statistical analytics market and growing e-commerce trends to attract more Statistical s is driving Statistical analytics market in the region. Increasing population, and growing IT landscape is boosting the market in the region.The region is witnessing high adoption of statistical analytics tools by enterprises. Developing countries such as India and China are adopting statistical analytics software at a large scale owing to increasing e-commerce industries, competitive advantage, growing retail sector is boosting the market in the region. By vertical segment, BFSI and retail sector is driving the statistical analytics market. The region is witnessing high growth in statistical analytics market due to growing technological advancement in cloud, analytics and mobile technologies.Intended Audience: Investors and consultants System Integrators Government Organizations Research/Consultancy firms Technology solution providers IT Solution ProvidersSegments:Statistical Analytics Market By Components:Solution Data Mining Predictive Analytics Visual Analytics Forecasting & Econometrics Statistical Analytics OthersService: Professional Service Support And Maintenance ServicesCustomer analytics Market by Deployment: Cloud On-PremiseBrowse Full Report Details @Table of Contents1 Market Introduction1.1 Introduction1.2 Scope of Study1.2.1 Research Objective1.2.2 Assumptions1.2.3 Limitations1.3 Market Structure2 Research Methodology2.1 Research Type2.2 Primary Research2.3 Secondary Research2.4 Forecast Model2.4.1 Market Data Collection, Analysis & Forecast2.4.2 Market Size EstimationContinuedList of TablesTable 1 Statistical Analytics Market, By SolutionTable 2 Statistical Analytics Market, By ServiceTable 3 Statistical Analytics Market, By DeploymentContinuedList of FiguresFigure 1 Research TypeFigure 2 Statistical Analytics Market: By Solution (%)Figure 3 Statistical Analytics Market: By Service (%)ContinuedAbout Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our statistical to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by Solutions, Application, Logistics and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.Contact:Market Research FutureOffice No. 524/528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, HadapsarPune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com
Energy and Utilities Construction Canada Market Market Expected To Grow At High Cagr during Forecast Period 2017  2021

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Energy and Utilities Construction Canada MarketSummaryEnergy and utilities construction market covers the development of energy and telecommunications related projects, oil and gas projects including both upstream and downstream exploration, and utility projects such as water and sewage infrastructure. This market includes five categories: electricity and power, oil & gas, telecommunications, sewage infrastructure and water infrastructure.Click here for sample report @Scope of the ReportAn overview of the energy and utilities construction market in Canada.Historic (2012 through 2016) and forecast (2017 through 2021) construction market output values are provided.A detailed breakdown of the data by construction activity (new construction, repair and maintenance, refurbishment and demolition) is provided at the market level while the values for the segments are provided by cost types (construction materials, construction equipment & construction services).This report covers all the segments of commercial construction market including Energy and utilities construction market covers the development of energy and telecommunications related projects, oil and gas projects including both upstream and downstream exploration, and utility projects such as water and sewage infrastructure. This market includes five categories: electricity and power, oil & gas, telecommunications, sewage infrastructure and water infrastructure..Table of Contents1 Introduction1.1 What is this Report About?1.2 Definitions1.3 CAGR Definition and Calculation2 Overall Energy and Utilities Construction Value: Market Analysis2.1 Overall Energy and Utilities Construction Output Value, 2012 - 20162.2 Overall Energy and Utilities Construction Output Value Forecast, 2017 - 20212.3 Overall Energy and Utilities Construction Output Value by Cost Type2.3.1 Overall Energy and Utilities Construction Output Value by Cost Type, 2012 - 20162.3.2 Overall Energy and Utilities Construction Output Value Forecast, by Cost Type, 2017 - 20213 Energy and Utilities Construction Output:Analysis by Category3.1 New Construction Output Value, 2012 - 20163.2 New Construction Output Value Forecast, 2017 - 20213.3 New Construction Output Value by Cost Type3.3.1 New Construction Output Value by Cost Type, 2012 - 20163.3.2 New Construction Output Value by Cost Type Forecast, 2017 - 20213.4 Repair & Maintenance Output Value, 2012 - 20163.5 Repair & Maintenance Output value Forecast, 2017 - 20213.6 Repair & Maintenance Output Value by Cost Type3.6.1 Repair & Maintenance Output Value by Cost Type, 2012 - 20163.6.2 Repair & Maintenance Output Forecast, by Cost Type, 2017 - 20213.7 Refurbishment Construction Output Value, 2012 - 20163.8 Refurbishment Construction Output Value Forecast, 2017 - 20213.9 Refurbishment Construction Output Value by Cost Type3.9.1 Refurbishment Construction Output Value by Cost Type, 2012 - 20163.9.2 Refurbishment Construction Output Forecast, by Cost type, 2017 - 2021.ContinuedFor Detailed Reading Please visit @About UsWise Guy Reports is part of the Wise Guy Consultants Pvt. Ltd. and offers premium progressive statistical surveying, market research reports, analysis & forecast data for industries and governments around the globe. Wise Guy Reports understand how essential statistical surveying information is for your organization or association. Therefore, we have associated with the top publishers and research firms all specialized in specific domains, ensuring you will receive the most reliable and up to date research data available.Contact Us:NORAH TRENTPartner Relations & Marketing Managersales@wiseguyreports.comPh: +1-646-845-9349 (US)Ph: +44 208 133 9349 (UK)Wise Guy Reports understand how essential statistical surveying information is for your organization or association. Therefore, we have associated with the top publishers and research firms all specialized in specific domains, ensuring you will receive the most reliable and up to date research data available. We also provide COTS (Commercial off the Shelf) business sector reports as custom exploration agreeing your particular needs.WISEGUY RESEARCH CONSULTANTS PVT LTDOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersPune - 411028Maharashtra, India
Chatbots Market 2018 Global Key Players: Facebook, WeChat, Artificial Solutions, Naunce Communications, Egain, Creative Virtual, CX Company, Speaktoit, Codebaby, DigitalGenius, Howdy

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Market Research Future published a research report on Chatbots Market Research Report- Global Forecast 2023  Market Analysis, Scope, Stake, Progress, Trends and Forecast to 2023.Market ScenarioChatbotss Are Conversational Characters That Interact With Humans Via Communication Gateways. They Are Accessed Through Internet And Rely On Artificial Intelligence To Complete Any Task Provided. The Global Chatbotss Market Is Driven By Artificial Intelligence Since Past Decade. One Of The Major Driving Factor In The Global Chatbotss Market Is The Increasing Use Of Online Messaging.Chatbotss Market Is Estimated To Exhibit A High Growth During The Forecast Period Owing To Increasing Use Of Social Networking Websites And Major Adoption Of Cloud - Based Technologies.The Chatbotss Market Is Segmented On The Basis Of Type, Deployment, Industry Verticals And Usage. By Usage Segmentation, The Banking, Financial Services, And Insurance (BFSI) Sector Accounted For The Maximum Market Share And Will Continue To Dominate The Market During The Forecast Period.However, Lack Of Awareness And Lack Of Expertise Are Two Factors To Restrain The Global Chatbotss Market In Future. This Is Caused Due To Early Adoption Of Technologies And High Deployment Costs Involved In The Chatbotss Market.By Segmentation Based On Deployment, On-Cloud Deployment Type Holds The Largest Chatbotss Market Share And Is Expected To Project Highest Growth Rate And Highest CAGR During The Forecast Period.The Global Chatbotss Market Is Expected To Grow At Approx. USD 6 Billion By 2023, At 37% Of CAGR Between 2017 And 2023.Get Sample of Report @Key playersThe Prominent Players In Chatbotss Market Are  Facebook, Inc. (U.S.), WeChat (China), Artificial Solutions (Sweden), IBM (U.S.), Naunce Communications Inc. (U.S.), Egain Corporation (U.S.), Creative Virtual Pvt. Ltd. (U.K.), NEXT IT Corp. (U.S.), CX Company (Netherlands), Speaktoit Inc. (U.S.), 24/7 Customer Inc. (U.S.), Codebaby (Idavatars), Inc. (U.S.), DigitalGenius (U.K.), Howdy (U.S.), Talla (U.S.), Semantic Machines (U.S.), Among Others.Segments:Chatbotss Market Can Be Segmented On The Basis Of Following:By Type: Software ServicesBy Deployment: Cloud On premiseBy Usage: Websites Mobile platform Social mediaBy Industry Verticals: BFSI Retail and e-commerce Government Travel and HospitalityRegional Analysis Of Chatbots Market:The Regional Analysis Of Chatbotss Market Is Being Studied For Regions Such As Asia Pacific, North America, Europe And Rest Of The World. It Has Been Observed That North America Is Estimated To Account For The Largest Share Of The Market, Whereas Asia-Pacific Is Projected To Grow At The Fastest Rate During The Forecast Period. The Major Growth In Chatbotss Market In North America Attributes To The Technical Advancements And Increasing Use Of Internet, Mobiles And Tablets In That Region.Get Complete Report @Intended Audience Technology investors Healthcare-related product manufacturers Integrated device manufacturers (IDMs) Original Manufacturers (OEMs) Smart grid integrators Surface mount component device distributors and providers Research/Consultancy firmsAbout Us:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.Media Contact:Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com
Emory student volunteers welcome the newest class on Move-In Day, helping them settle in to their new campus home. Emory Photo/Video

Emory University has received a record 27,982 applications to be part of the Class of 2022, a 16 percent jump from the previous year.

Beyond the growth in the number of students vying for spots in undergraduate programs, admission officers saw students with higher academic achievements and who also embody Emorys commitment to discovery, engagement and leadership both in the classroom and in the community.

We are moving beyond focusing on students who have the ability to do something wonderful to those who will, says John Latting, associate vice provost for enrollment and dean of admission. Emory is attractive not just for its liberal arts and research excellence but for students who are thinking of how to have a positive influence on the world.

Emory received applications from  and offered admission to  students in all 50 states. Admitted students represent 75 countries by citizenship, speaking more than 79 languages either as their first language or at home. About 29 percent of the admitted domestic students to Emory College are from underrepresented minority groups, including 36 students from Puerto Rico.

"The depth and diversity of this year's record-setting applicant pool showcases Emory's reputation as a home for students and faculty dedicated to both academic excellence and making transformative contributions to the world," says President Claire E. Sterk. "We look forward to welcoming these students to Emory's community of committed, engaged scholars and future leaders in a world that faces drastic changes."

Accomplished, engaged applicants

Emory University offers two starting points for prospective first-year students: They may apply to enter Emory College of Arts & Sciences on the Atlanta campus or to study for their first two years at Oxford College on Emorys original campus in Oxford, Georgia. After the sophomore year, all students choose to complete their undergraduate degree on the Atlanta campus through Emory College, Goizueta Business School or the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing.

As a leading research university with a deep commitment to the liberal arts and interdisciplinary scholarship, Emory University offers students the opportunity to discover and explore their academic passions in a culture of innovation and inclusion, says Dwight A. McBride, provost and executive vice president of academic affairs.

Emory College and Oxford College both saw increases in applications for the third year in a row. Emory College offered admission to 5,103 students, an 18.5 percent admission rate. Oxford College has admitted 4,144 students. About 58 percent of students applied to both campuses.

This years applicants recorded increases in both unweighted grade point averages as well as overall test scores. For instance, the median test score (based on SAT scores and ACT equivalents) for students admitted to Emory College was 1500, meaning half of them were above a score considered in the 99th percentile nationally. The median unweighted high school GPA of admitted students was 3.91.

The breadth of student experience was also evident in their application essays, Latting says.

We are very attentive to the different perspectives and experiences these students have had, he says. To have varied perspectives is important for the entire Emory community, and it also helps us understand how they will thrive at Emory and beyond.

The increase in both the number and the quality of applicants is thrilling for leaders at Emory College and Oxford College alike.

It is incredibly gratifying to see students of such high caliber apply to Emory University, and the potential that the admitted students represent for our community of scholars, says Emory College Dean Michael A. Elliott. Their collective accomplishments tell us something about the value that the world sees in our work as a liberal arts research university."

Said Oxford College Dean Douglas A. Hicks, Emory University offers numerous inviting pathways of learning for our students. The remarkable academic and personal accomplishments of our incoming class is matched only by the opportunities they will discover at Oxford and in Atlanta.

Wanting to make a difference

Latting attributes the record number of applicants in part to a broader trend of would-be college students seeking an education that will help them make a difference.

Emorys reputation for academic rigor and commitment to serving society make it a good choice for students who are especially diligent about using their education to benefit others, he says.

Emory also has made financial commitments to make the university a viable option for every student who is admitted, regardless of the ability to pay.

At its core, Emory has taken action such that no student, because of money, is not able to enroll, Latting says. We are committed to finding the most remarkable students out there. We really just sit back and marvel when we read these applications at how talented they are.

Regular decision notifications were released online March 22 through applicant portals. Admitted students have until May 1 to decide to enroll.
Cold Insulation Market Rapid Rise in Industrialization Plays Key Role in Market Development

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Cold Insulation Market Overview:This Cold Insulation market research is an intelligence report with meticulous efforts undertaken to study the right and valuable information. The data which has been looked upon is done considering both, the existing top players and the upcoming competitors. Business strategies of the key players and the new entering market industries are studied in detail. Well explained SWOT analysis, revenue share and contact information are shared in this report analysis. To provide detailed analysis of the market structure along with forecast for the next 5 years of the various segments and sub-segments of the Global Cold Insulation Market To provide insights about factors affecting the market growth To Analyze the Global Cold Insulation Market based on various factors- price analysis, supply chain analysis, porters five force analysis etc. To provide historical and forecast revenue of the market segments and sub-segments with respect to four main geographies and their countries- North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Rest of the World To provide country level analysis of the market with respect to the current market size and future prospective To provide country level analysis of the market for segments by type, and by application To provide strategic profiling of key players in the market, comprehensively analyzing their core competencies, and drawing a competitive landscape for the market To track and analyze competitive developments such as joint ventures, strategic alliances, mergers and acquisitions, new product developments, and research and developments in the Global Cold Insulation MarketSample Pages of this report@Market Synopsis of Cold Insulation Market:Market ScenarioCold insulation refers to low temperature application insulation methods used in industries such as oil & gas, chemicals, food & beverage, and refrigeration. It is applied over processing lines such as pipes, ducts, tanks, fittings, and valves to reduce operational costs and increase process efficiency. A huge amount of insulation material demand will be seen in future due to increasing applications for food storage, chemicals storage, LNG storage and some amount of cryogenic medical applications. The market for global Cold Insulation is projected to grow at a CAGR of about 7-8% during the forecast period.Key Findings: Rising energy prices, strict government laws for energy efficiency, rising environmental concerns about carbon dioxide emissions are the chief growing drivers for the insulation market A major restraint for this market is the health hazards caused due to improper material handling Asia-Pacific market is expected to experience the fast growth as compared to other regions within the cold insulation market.Key Players for Cold Insulation Market:The key players profiled and analyzed in this market research report are BASF SE, Bayer Material Science, The Dow Chemical Company, Evonik Industries, Dongsung Finetec Corporation, Fletcher Insulation Group, and Huntsman Corporation,. The pioneer companies in this business are already taking efforts to increase their global presence by taking strategic decisions like expansion in different countries, entering into joint ventures, finding distributors to strengthen the supply chain network globally.Browser Pages Copy@About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.Contact:Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com
Upcoming Forecast Report on Managed Pressure Drilling Services Market

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North America is witnessed to be the largest market of managed pressure drilling services with the immense support and contribution of the U.S. accounting for the highest share, which is backed by Canada with major development in the exploration and production activities in tight oil and tar sands. The exploration and production activities in Gulf of Mexico have given opportunities to the operators for using managed pressure drilling services across the globe. In Kaikias deep sea oil filed located in Gulf of Mexico, Royal Dutch Shell Company found 100 million barrels of oil equivalent.Request For Sample Copy of this Research Report :Africa is witnessed to be fastest growing region in the managed pressure drilling services market majorly due to the discoveries in the offshore basins in the economy, such as Mozambique, Angola, and Tanzania. Major players namely ENI SPA, British Petroleum, and Royal Dutch Shell are fueling the growth of managed pressure drilling services market in this region. In 2010, an estimated 85 trillion cubic feet of gas was discovered in the Rovuma basin in Mozambique.Middle East is projected to be the significant market in the managed pressure drilling services, owing to the development of the offshore region in the Red Sea by economies such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and UAE.Managed pressure drilling (MPD) refers to a drilling technique that uses enclosed and pressurized circulation system to provide precise wellbore control. Managed pressure drilling does not manipulate the window (fracture gradient and pore pressure), rather helps the operator to remain in that window. MPD is applicable in severe conditions, such as fluid loss, tight pore pressure, high-pressure, high-temperature drilling, differential sticking, unknown pore pressure, and various other conditions.The success of MPD is notified by the good extraction activities in the areas that are recognized as uneconomical for production. The decline in the production rate and increase in energy demand has giving tremendous speed to the managed pressure drilling services globally. Development in technology coupled with MPD techniques in horizontal drilling is expected to create new opportunities for the market players involved in this industry over the forecast period. However, a large amount of drilling fluid requirement with no surface return have restricted the growth of managed pressure drilling services market.Offshore segment is anticipated to have the fastest growth in the managed pressure drilling services market over the forecast period, owing to the preference of this technique in offshore basins rather than onshore. The growth of this segment is further backed by the rise in exploration and production activities in the deep and ultra-deep waters.The key players operating in the managed pressure drilling services market include Schlumberger Ltd., Halliburton, Baker Hughes, Weatherford International, Archer Well Services, National Oilwell Varco, and Aker Solutions.Request For Customization as per Your Need :About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr. ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email: sales@coherentmarketinsights.comVisit Our New Website:
Analysis of 1T-MONOS Market - Global Industry Insights, Trends, Outlook and Forecast till 2025

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Majority of the requirements for technology featuring memory expansion cards that are utilized in consumer electronic devices and storage medium for the embedded systems are fulfilled by flash memories. According to Coherent Market Insights analysis, this technology has witnessed over 40% year-on-year growth over the last few years. However, owing to certain technological limitations that include flash memorys finite life, incapability of the bit-by-bit data erasability and large power consumption, the utilization of the technology has been limited to particular environment conditions. However, utilization of 1T-MONOS (flash memory technology) in places where flash cannot be utilized, as proposed by the Renesas in February 2016, is expected to garner major traction over the forecast period.Ask for detailed Sample of this Research Report @Better reliability, performance and processing scalability is projected to provide strong growth prospects over the forecast periodOne transistor metal oxide nitride oxide silicon (1T-MONOS) can be used to cater variety of purposes, specifically in automotive segments in conjunction with the CMOS and BiCDMOS, to optimize its power consumption and enhance program/erase (P/E) endurance. It is featured with operations at junction temperatures of 175C with read/write endurance of over 100 million cycles. Moreover, as per Renesas results, 0.07mJ per 8 byte rewrite energy consumption was achieved on utilization of adaptable slope pulse control to weaken the electric fields and degrade memory cells. These features are anticipated to drive the global 1T-MONOS market over the coming years. Renesas Electronics Corporation introduced its 90 nm one-transistor MONOS in February 2016, is expected to lead the industry applications over the forecast period in the industry. Some of its key features include:Memory architecture development with FN tunneling for high reliability and P/E operationsLow powered weakening electric fields during P/E operations through adaptable slope pulse control (ASPC) technology. Current consumption recorded at 98 A i.e. 1 millionth of an ampere for rewriting memories. Architecture is anticipated to find significant addressable applications in environmental friendly automotive systemsIncreasing IoT applications and autonomous automotive will drive the industry growth through the forecast periodUtilization of connectivity and memory processing in almost every daily activity that includes agriculture, industry processes, and transportation among many other applications. This is expected to drive the incorporation of electronic processing and advanced computing technologies. Moreover, these application environment are featured with severe operating conditions that prohibit the usage of conventional flash memories. High durability featuring products are expected to find significant applications in conjunction with the growing IoT applications and drive the 1T MONOS market.Automotive industry has witnessed huge demands for electronic data processing over the past few years. Number of advanced systems such as adaptive cruise control, collision avoidance systems, electric/hybrid vehicles and emergency driving assistance among few others have necessitated the use of electronic control units (ECUs) and other components to mechanize the analog processes. This will present strong growth prospects over the next few years. Moreover, regulatory compulsions to adopt these systems in every vehicles across the globe to ensure passenger and driver safety, specifically in developed global counterparts that include Western Europe and U.S., will prioritize the adoption of these systems and drive the 1T-MONOS market.Renesas and TSMC have initiated their strategic activities to capitalize on the opportunities of the future market. Other electronic industry participants are expected to adopt to similar product developments to garner increased applications over the forecast period, which will present considerable industry growth prospects.Request for Customization As per your Need :About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr. ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email: sales@coherentmarketinsights.comVisit our news Website :
Population Aged Above 65 Years Forms The Bulk Of Home Healthcare Software Market

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Home healthcare services market is expected to grow at a robust rate between 2016 and 2024, with emergence of new entrants in market and improving macroeconomic conditions worldwide.Until recently, medical documentation involved cumbersome paper work. Technological advancements and introduction of advanced software has eased the way industry use to operate, making work process easier and more efficient. Healthcare industry has greatly benefitted from integration of IT systems. With technological advancements, home healthcare software such as telehealth solutions and clinical management systems are available in the market.Home healthcare enables healthcare services to be delivered at patients home  thereby alleviating healthcare costs.Population aged above 65 years forms the bulk of home healthcare software marketHome healthcare market is driven by various sociological, demographics, and macroeconomic factors, most notably the integration of information technology solutions in healthcare industry to meet challenges in patient data retrieval, payment and claim processing as well as storage and accessibility. This is further propelled by government initiatives to improve healthcare infrastructure.High prevalence of chronic disorders among geriatric population in turn fuels demand for nursing homes and assisted living care facilities for specialized attention. However, introduction of home healthcare software solutions is expected to bridge the gap between geriatric patient expectation and healthcare providers. The system offers solutions at patients home, thereby minimizing overall operational cost and high ROI for providers as well.Though the market is expected to grow at a rapid rate, weak financial support from government along with low adaptability in emerging economies are major challenges inhibiting growth of overall industry.Get The Holistic SAMPLE With Research Methodology:Home Healthcare Software Market Taxonomy:Coherent Market Insights (CMI) has segmented the home healthcare software market by:Product TypeTherapeutic ApplicationDevicesPlatformEnd UserBy product type, the home healthcare software market has been segmented into agency homecare software, hospice solutions, telehealth solutions, clinical management systems, and others.On the basis of therapeutic application, CMI has segmented the home healthcare software market into clinical and non-clinical solutions. Clinical segment is expected to grow at impressive rate over the forecast period.On the basis of devices, mobile devices are expected to gain traction over laptop and tablet in the home healthcare software market.Homecare agencies and hospice agencies are key end-use segments in the home healthcare software market.Alignment between payers and providers along with access to electronic health records has boosted overall North America home healthcare software market growthAmong regions, North America is expected to dominate the global home healthcare software market throughout the forecast period. However, the market in the region is expected to lose considerable market share to developing regions, namely Latin America and Asia. Growth of the market in the region is primarily driven by increasing demand in the U.S., accounting for over 85% of overall market. Technological advancements along with high healthcare spending across all verticals is expected to propel market growth. Moreover, health awareness level among the population in developed regions is high compared to other regions. However, the market in Canada is expected to witness sluggish growth over the forecast period.Europe is the second-largest market and is expected to create substantial opportunities for players. Over 65% of the revenue generated in the regional market is expected to be from Germany, UK and France. Markets in Russia and Poland are expected to grow at substantial rate.Asia-Pacific is a lucrative market for home healthcare software due to the easy availability of skilled manpower, cheap labor and highly developed information technology sectors in the countries particularly China and India. Moreover, India is one of the leading markets for IT software. Relaxation in FDI cap is expected to boost overall presence of MNCs in the region. Though the Asia Pacific market is vibrant, there are a lot more challenges present in the market that inhibit proper capitalization of the market opportunities. The market is highly volatile with wide variations in demographics and economic conditions. The market in China, once the power engine of Asia Pacific, is witnessing low growth, due to noticeable decline in healthcare expenditure in the region. On a positive note, India is witnessing rapid transformation across various healthcare verticals. Companies need to fully understand the demographic and macroeconomic situation to generate high ROI from the region. Markets in Latin America and MEA are expected to witness sluggish growth over the forecast period.Some of the major companies contributing to the global home healthcare software market are Agfa Healthcare, Mckesson Corporation, NextGen Healthcare Information System LLC, GE Healthcare, MEDITECH, Medical Information Technology, Inc. (Meditech), Cerner Corporation, Siemens Healthcare and Allscripts Healthcare Solutions, Inc.Home healthcare services market is expected to grow at a robust rate between 2016 and 2024, with emergence of new entrants in market and improving macroeconomic conditions worldwide.Until recently, medical documentation involved cumbersome paper work. Technological advancements and introduction of advanced software has eased the way industry use to operate, making work process easier and more efficient. Healthcare industry has greatly benefitted from integration of IT systems. With technological advancements, home healthcare software such as telehealth solutions and clinical management systems are available in the market.Home healthcare enables healthcare services to be delivered at patients home  thereby alleviating healthcare costs.Home healthcare market is driven by various sociological, demographics, and macroeconomic factors, most notably the integration of information technology solutions in healthcare industry to meet challenges in patient data retrieval, payment and claim processing as well as storage and accessibility. This is further propelled by government initiatives to improve healthcare infrastructure.High prevalence of chronic disorders among geriatric population in turn fuels demand for nursing homes and assisted living care facilities for specialized attention. However, introduction of home healthcare software solutions is expected to bridge the gap between geriatric patient expectation and healthcare providers. The system offers solutions at patients home, thereby minimizing overall operational cost and high ROI for providers as well.Though the market is expected to grow at a rapid rate, weak financial support from government along with low adaptability in emerging economies are major challenges inhibiting growth of overall industry.Get Table Of Content:About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr.ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email:sales@coherentmarketinsights.comVisit our news Website:
Photo Printing and Merchandise Market to Grow at a CAGR of 2.6% through 2026

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According to Future Market Insights,Advent of digital imaging technology can be identified as the point from where roll films were ordained to go out of business.The declining demand for cameras with film rolls is directly associated with growing adoption of digital cameras. Consumers grew more inclined towards digital cameras, thereby making photo printing and merchandise obsolete.Request For Sample @Furthermore, time consumed by dye sublimation photo printers added to this shift towards instantaneously-rendered digital images. Poor image quality and expensive costs of conventional inkjet printers further deterred consumers from photo printing & merchandise.Future Market Insights recent report predicts a very unavailing future for the global photo printing & merchandise market. Above factors have been compiled in the report to define the dynamics of global market for photo printing & merchandise. Based on these, the US$ 16.8 Bn market for photo printing & merchandise will see a decelerated revenue growth at 2.6% CAGR, bringing in just over US$ 21.7 Bn by the end of 2026. Future Market Insights projects that in the ten-year forecast period, photo printing & merchandise worth a little less than US$ 5 Bn will be sold across the globe. The report also highlights trends which will, in one way or another, boost the sluggish adoption of photo printing among digital age consumers.Firstly, manufacturers of photo printing merchandise are expected to maintain more focus on introducing kiosks for increasing marketing exposure. Companies like Fujifilm Group have already deployed their SmartPix photo kiosks across various commercial settings such as supermarkets, malls and camera shops, and have also augmented them with enhanced connectivity features. Instating NFC capabilities in photo printing kiosks can be also observed as another promising opportunity for manufacturers to generate interest among customers towards conventional photo printing.Although, almost half of global photo printing & merchandise revenues are likely to be coming from online sales. While instant kiosks account for less than 10% of the market value, online distribution of photo printing & merchandise will bringing more than US$ 12.2 Bn revenues through 2026. Meanwhile, distribution of photo printing & merchandise through retail channels will be scaling down rigorously, exhibiting a negative 1.6% CAGR during the forecast period.The report has analysed that in 2016, an estimated one-third of global photo printing & merchandise revenues emanated from sales of film printing. This indicates that a majority of consumers are preferring digital printing merchandise. Also, over the forecast period, the report projects an impressive growth in demand for mobile application-based photo printing. Desktop applications are expected to lose out to mobile applications as this mode of printing is projected to register a comparatively faster revenue growth at 4.9% CAGR.Request For TOC @The report also predicts fastest revenue growth in the Asia-Pacific excluding Japan region  3.9% CAGR. North America is also expected to dominate with nearly one-fourth stake in global revenues, although the region is likely to lose out its presence beyond 2020. Leading manufacturers of photo printing & merchandise, profiled in the report, include Sanpfish, Eastman Kodak Company, Cimpress NV, Bay Photo Inc., Digitalab, AdoramaPix LCC, Shutterfly, Inc., and Mpix.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature.FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Nanoscale Virus Trap Molecule Market - Industry Insights, Trends

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Advancement into scientific research has led to the emergence of new technologies that has the potential to improve drug delivery and effectiveness. With evolution, things are becoming miniature in size, be it electronic chips, medical devices, or pharmaceutical drug. However, miniaturization, also referred as nanotechnology, doesnt compromise on the product quality and effectiveness. Instead there is improved quality and features delivered via this technology.Nanotechnology has a real potential to revolutionize the medical treatment procedures, and tools making it more personalized, effective, safe and cheaper. Nanotechnology involves research of molecules that only 1/100th size of cancer cells but has the potential to improve the quality of life. Significant progress has already been made in nanomaterial in terms of developing targeted drug therapies. Some of the developments in nanotechnology include Quantum dots that can enhance biological imaging for medical diagnostics, antibody-nanoparticle complex for early diagnosis of atherosclerosis, use of nanoscale components in molecular imaging, and regeneration or spurring the growth of nerve cells.Get The Holistic SAMPLE With Research Methodology:The Virus trap NanoparticleOne of the recent progresses made in nanotechnology is the technique of combating viruses before they can infect the host cells. Researchers at Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Univ. of Massachusetts Medical School, and the Univ. of Santa Barbara have developed nanoparticles that act as viral traps inside the human body. These molecules are surfaced with numerous carbohydrate molecules that closely resemble those targeted by flu viruses. The flu viruses bind to these nanotraps instead of host cell and are eliminated from the body through mucus.The nanoscale viral trap molecule technology can also be applicable in diagnosing a viral disease. An innovative tunable device selectively traps viruses detecting them with 100 times better sensitivity than the current available techniques. Researchers at the Pennsylvania State University developed this tool that can trap virus and remove majority of the host contaminants.The Technology is Under ResearchThe nanoparticle molecule is composed of compounds found naturally in the human body. Hence, it is safe as an inhalant, intravenous treatment, or topical solution, and inexpensive to manufacture. Extensive benefits of this technology imply a very high commercial potential in the treatment of viral infections. Moreover, this technology has shown to be effective in mice. Further research in this may lead to use it against HIV virus, Herpes Simplex Virus (HSV), and Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV), as well as bacteria and toxins. With increasing resistance to anti-viral drugs, need for novel therapies are realized. This will further help boost the demand for nanoscale virus trap molecules in the treatment of viral diseases.However, there are more alternate therapies under research which can compete with the viral trap molecule business. Double-stranded RNA Activated Caspase Oligomerizer (DRACO) is a nanoparticle based drug under research which is designed to detect virally infected cells and eradicate only those cells from the body. Few in-vivo and in-vitro trials have proven this drug to be very effective against different viral strains. The researchers at Charles Stark Draper Laboratory believe that this drug will be ready for clinical trials in next three to eight years.ConclusionThe viral trap molecule is poised to make contributions far beyond the therapies and tools that have been explored so far. Adequate funding to this research will continue to drive the efforts in commercializing this technology.Get Table Of Content:About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr.ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email:sales@coherentmarketinsights.comVisit our news Website:
Intraoperative Neuromonitoring (IONM) Market - Competitive Environment & Forecast 2017 - 2025

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Global Intraoperative Neuromonitoring (IONM) Market: OverviewOn account of the increasing care toward patient safety, the demand for intraoperative neuromonitoring has continued to rise at a steady pace. The burden of healthcare costs on patients and their desire to avoid readmission have upped the adoption of intraoperative neuromonitoring around the world. Intraoperative neurophysiological monitoring (IONM) uses electrophysiological techniques such as electromyography (EMG), electroencephalography (EEG), and evoked potentials to effectively monitor the integrity of neural structures such as spinal cords, nerves, and certain parts of brain. IONM is mostly conducted to provide functional guidance to surgeons besides reducing risk to patients suffering from iatrogenic damage.Request Sample Copy of the Report @Global Intraoperative Neuromonitoring (IONM) Market: Key TrendsAs per findings of the World Health Organization (WHO), nearly 80% of disorders leading to disabling conditions are neurological. Intraoperative monitoring has thus become imperative in neurosurgery as it offers early warning with regards to sensory & motor functions during a surgery. It has therefore enabled surgeons yield better results by eliminating post-operative neurophysiological deficits. Safer surgery consequently results in reduced risk and intervention time. On account of these benefits the demand for intraoperative neuromonitoring has surged exponentially across the healthcare sector.This, coupled with, favorable reimbursement scenario especially in developed nations is augmenting market prospects for the future. Also the market players are focusing on strategic collaborations to expand their footprint and offer innovations. These calculated steps witnessed in the global intraoperative neuromonitoring market will act in favor of its growth in the coming years.Global Intraoperative Neuromonitoring (IONM) Market: Market PotentialRecently, SpecialtyCare renowned as a leading provider of surgical services, perfusion, and intraoperative neuromonitoring acquired Sentient, a prominent IONM provider in October 2016. With this transaction SpecialtyCare was able expand their leadership as one of the most comprehensive providers of patient-centered outsourced IONM services to hospitals, surgeons, health systems, and surgery centers.Request TOC of the Report @Following the acquisition, SpecialtyCare has increased the overall number of intraoperative neuromonitoring associates to support cases in the U.S., which is also its existing market, besides expanding coverage across the Atlantic States. Such mergers and acquisitions will have a positive impact on the market in letting it expand its distribution network across markets yet to be explored. Leading players in the global intraoperative neuromonitoring market are also looking to extend strategic collaboration with counterparts across emerging nations to expand their overall footprint.Global Intraoperative Neuromonitoring (IONM) Market: Regional OutlookRegionally, opportunities witnessed by the intraoperative neuromonitoring market in North America are highly lucrative. Besides this, considerable growth potential exists for the market in Europe as well. Considering improving reimbursement scenario across North America and Europe, these regions are expected to remain at the global markets fore also in the coming years. Besides this, a majority of developed countries have clearly defined procedure and codes for patients and insurance companies, which have made reimbursement processes easier and more convenient. Such well-defined guidelines has resulted in better outcome, thus benefiting hospitals and patients alike and accelerating the pace of gains for intraoperative neuromonitoring market in turn.A large number of neurological centers in the U.S. are recommending the use of intraoperative neuromonitoring in order to bridge the manpower gap and cater to the rising demand. Hospitals are encouraging physicians besides the doctorate-level IONM providers to get trained and certified from institutions such as the American Board of Nuclear Medicine. With the healthcare system making an effort to encourage the use of IONM, its demand is expected to surge further in the coming years. In addition, the market is expected to witness rising opportunities in Asia Pacific in the near future.Read Comprehensive Overview of Report @Global Intraoperative Neuromonitoring (IONM) Market: Competitive LandscapeSome of the most prominent enterprises operating in the global intraoperative neuromonitoring market are Biotronic NeuroNetwork, Natus Medical Incorporated, SpecialtyCare, NeuroMonitoring Technologies, LLC, Accurate Monitoring, Medtronic, Sentient Medical Systems, and NuVasive Inc.About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting services to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact:TMR Research,3739 Balboa St # 1097,San Francisco, CA 94121United StatesTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com
Non Invasive Diabetes Therapy-Market Regional Analysis,Market Dynamics

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The role of non-invasive therapy for diabetes market has been on a positive growth path in healthcare industry since 2014. Though the non-invasive therapy concept was brought way back in 1980, the market has not gained much attention leading to development of fewer such devices. DexCom's seven system and Medtronic's Guardian real-time glucose monitoring system are two such products developed and marketed worldwide. The influx of non-invasive therapy has reinforced the diabetes market in various ways ranging from economical cost incurred to patient treatment outcomes.Many leading players along with new entrants are venturing in the market to capitalize and generate high ROI. As a result, noninvasive therapy market is expected to witness double digit growth rate over the forecast period.The report covers market analysis across regions  North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, Middle East and Africa.Get The Holistic SAMPLE With Research Methodology:Market Dynamics:The World Health Organization projects diabetic population to reach 336 Mn by 2030 from 270 Mn in 2015. Increase in incidence rate of diabetic population will demand for non-invasive medication is expected to create favorable market opportunities for the players globally. Moreover, improving healthcare access along with focus on R&D could spur the overall non-invasive market size. Some companies are engaged in development of non-invasive system on photonic technology and occlusion spectroscopy technology.The market will be further driven by changing macroeconomics and consumer preference. Healthcare expenditure has increased in developing regions. Large consumer base along with changing lifestyle is expected to create substantially new market opportunities for early entrants.Regional Analysis:Among regions, North America is expected to dominate the market throughout the forecast period. Moreover, North America is expected to grow at a fastest rate owing to high spending on R&D and presence of leading companies in the region. Prevalence rate of diabetes is high compared to other regions.As per the initial study carried out by CA, North America and Europe are expected to account for over 65% of overall functional non-invasive diabetes therapy market. Healthcare providers are seeking this technology to manage the growing demand for diabetes. Growth in these regions is expected to be further driven by macroeconomic factors. The region as a whole spends over 5% of its GDP on research and GDP. Moreover, healthcare spending is highest in this region with North America accounting for 16.7% and Europe 10% of overall GDP in 2015.Asia Pacific is expected to be driven by China and India. According to International Diabetes Federation, over 490 million people in China are suffering from diabetes. Country is pushing toward healthcare reforms. Many companies are emerging in the region. As a result,Competition Landscape:Some key players engaged in the market are Bio Tex, Calisto Medical, DexCom, Bayer, ACON Laboratories, B. Braun Melsungen, etc.Get Table Of Content:About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr.ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email:sales@coherentmarketinsights.comVisit our news Website:
North America Is The Leading Market For Point-Of-Care Infectious Disease Diagnostics Products

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Advancements in molecular diagnostics coupled with miniaturization of devices to drive the point-of-care infectious disease diagnostics marketAdvancements in technological molecular diagnostics has boosted adoption of point-of-care solutions. The industry is also expected to grow with changing lifestyle. Currently, over 60% of population uses mobile phone. As a result, whole healthcare system has changed wherein portable devices has taken a key place.Furthermore, growing preference for personalized medicine would create lucrative opportunity for point-of-care testing market in the near future.Point-of-Care Infectious Disease Diagnostics Market Taxonomy:Coherent Market Insights has segmented the point-of-care infectious disease diagnostics products market byTherapeutic applicationEnd UsersOn the basis of type of diseases, the Global POC Infectious Disease Diagnostics market can be segmented as follows:HIV/AIDSTyphoidTuberculosisPneumoniaMalariaInfluenzaHepatitisCholeraOthersOn the basis of end user, the Global POC Infectious Disease Diagnostics market can be segmented as follows:HospitalsLaboratoriesClinicsHome-settingOthersNorth America is the leading market for point-of-care infectious disease diagnostics productsGet The Holistic SAMPLE With Research Methodology:On the basis of geography, the point-of-care infectious disease diagnostics market can be segmented into four major regions: North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, Middle East, and Africa. North America holds a leading position in the market, followed by Europe. The prime factors responsible for growth of POC infectious disease diagnostics market in these regions are rapidly increasing prevalence of infectious diseases and growing demand for rapid and accurate test results. According to the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, the number of visits to physician offices for infectious and parasitic diseases was recorded to be around 23.6 million in 2010. However, the market in Asia Pacific is expected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period, due to presence of a large population base. The factors which would accentuate growth of point-of-care infectious disease diagnostics industry in Asia Pacific are increased government funding towards development of point-of-care diagnostic kits and rapidly changing healthcare infrastructure in emerging countries such as China, India, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Also, reduction in number of hospital bed required, reduction in number of outpatient clinic visits, and lesser patient waiting times are few of the potential factors that would propel growth in adoption of point-of-care infectious disease diagnostics in Asia Pacific during the forecast period.Abbott Laboratories, Roche Diagnostics Ltd are driving market expansion through high R&D spending along with direct distribution channel in emerging economiesThe point-of-care infectious disease diagnostics market is driven by technological advancements and hence, various companies are continuously making efforts to develop novel products pertaining to infectious disease diagnostics. Some of the top companies operating in the POC infectious disease diagnostics market are Abbott Laboratories, Roche Diagnostics Ltd., Beckman Coulter, Inc., Bayer AG, Becton Dickinson and Company, Johnson and Johnson, Alere Inc., Nipro Diagnostics Inc., Nova Biomedical, Siemens AG, Trinity Biotech PLC, Danaher Corporation, and Spectral Diagnostics.Point-of-care infectious disease diagnostics market has grown manifold over the last 20 years, driving major profits across value chains. The industry witnessed slow growth during 20052010 before taking a major leap with adoption of mobile technology. Point-of-care testing or bed-side testing refers to tests that are performed near the site of patient care. These tests can potentially improve detection and management of infectious diseases by reducing time between tests and results. These testing aids in reduction of operating times, postoperative care time, and high-dependency, thereby ensuring optimal use of professional time. Urine test strips and imaging tests such as portable ultrasound and ECG tests are some examples of point-of-care testing. Point-of-care testing for infectious diseases includes rapid, reliable, and affordable tests for HIV infection, malaria, dengue fever, hepatitis, influenza, and pneumonia. Point-of-testing for infectious diseases exhibit a major opportunity for pharmacy services for expansion. Improvement in disease outcomes, simple and accurate tests, and rapid disease outcome and results are few of the advantages of point-of-care testing.The billion dollar point-of-care infectious disease diagnostic market is expected to grow at a substantial rate over the forecast period (20162024).Get Table Of Content:About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr.ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email:sales@coherentmarketinsights.comVisit our news Website:
Global Lipstick Market Size, Share, Development, Growth and Demand Forecast to 2023

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The increasing urbanization, improvement in lifestyle, and trend of picture posting on social media are the key factors, encouraging the use of cosmetic products. Lipstick is one of those lifestyle products, which is affordable for every individual belonging to every section of the society.Explore Full Report Description At:In the developed countries, especially in Eastern Europe, the demand for lipstick has been increasing at a swift pace. The increasing number of working women is one of the key factors responsible for the increased usage of cosmetic products. In order to encourage the consumers to purchase lipsticks in the developing countries, the key lipstick manufacturers, including L'Oreal Paris, are offering their products at low price.Based on type, the global lipstick market can be broadly segmented into matte, creme, shimmer, and long-wearing. Matte lipsticks are mostly dark in color, due to high pigment content in them. Creme lipsticks have more wax than matte lipsticks; therefore, they not only color, but also protect the lips.Download Free Report Sample At:Asia-Pacific accounted for the largest share within the global lipstick market in 2014. China and India are expected to provide significant growth opportunities to Asia-Pacific lipstick market, owing to fast growth rate of population and increasing disposable income of people in these countries.The major companies operating in the lipstick market are LOreal Paris, Procter & Gamble, Estee Lauder, Shiseido, and Avon. There are large numbers of other regional and country-specific lipstick manufacturers, owing to which the market is fragmented in nature.About P&S Market ResearchP&S Market Research is a global market research and consulting company. We provide market research reports, industry reports, business intelligence and research based consulting services across a range of industries.With the help of our professional corporate relations with various companies, our market research offers the most accurate market forecasting. Our analysts and consultants interact with leading companies of the concerned domain to substantiate every single data presented in our publication. Our research assists our client in identifying new and different windows of opportunity and frame informed and customized strategies for expansion in different regions.Contact:P&S Market Research347, 5th Ave. #1402New York City, NY  10016Toll-free: +1-888-778-7886 (USA/Canada)Email: enquiry@psmarketresearch.comWeb:
Student activist Venkayla Haynes will be the keynote for this years RespectCon, a national conference hosted by Emory focused on social justice and sexual assault prevention on college campuses.

Honoring the power of student activism to create change will be an underlying focus of RespectCon 2018: Understanding Sexual Violence Through A Social Justice Lens, an annual conference hosted by Emorys Respect Program.

Now in its sixth year, the national conference was created by Emory students to help foster conversations around the intersections of social justice with sexual assault prevention on college and university campuses.

RespectCon 2018 will be held April 6-7 at the Emory Conference Center and includes a pre-conference summit on April 6, from noon to 6 p.m., that offers events for both students and professionals who work with sexual violence programs on college campuses.

This years conference also kicks off campus activities for Sexual Assault Awareness Month, part of an international campaign to promote the prevention of sexual violence.

RespectCon is open to anyone involved in college and university sexual violence prevention and response work, including survivor advocates, preventionists, directors and coordinators of sexual-violence related programs, undergraduate and graduate students, and also those involved in community organizations who work closely with college campuses.

Registration runs through April 5; fees range from $20 to $130, with discounts available to students and the Emory community. Limited scholarships are available for those with financial need.

This year, we are offering a student track for both Pre-Con and RespectCon, because we feel that there are conversations relating to institutional politics, organizational dynamics and campus activism that need to be aired out in safe spaces, says Wanda Swan, director of Emorys Respect Program.

Simply put, everyone is a stakeholder in this work to end violence, and we seek a diverse group of attendees at RespectCon, she says.

In keeping with a theme of student activism, this years keynote speaker is Venkayla Haynes, a Spelman College student organizer and member of the Biden Foundation Advisory Council to End Violence Against Women.

Haynes also serves as a regional adviser for Its On Us, a national movement launched by the Obama administration to raise awareness and fight against sexual assault on college campuses for both men and women, and assists with development and communications at the political advocacy group Know Your IX.

Her passion to fight against sexual violence stems from being a survivor of sexual assault in college and sexual abuse as a child. Her activism initially took root at Spelman College by educating students of their Title IX rights, holding events on consent and helping colleges students host events at other institutions.

Among many awards and recognitions, her activism has led to invitations to the White House and to attend the United State of Women Summit as a nominated change-maker. Her ongoing work focuses on centering the experiences of marginalized groups who are impacted by sexual violence.

The conference will also feature a free screening of The Rape of Recy Taylor, a documentary that explores the life of Taylor, a 24-year-old black mother and sharecropper who in 1944 was raped by six white boys in Alabama.

At the time, few women in the Jim Crow South reported such abuses out of fear for their lives. However, Taylor identified her rapists, prompting the NAACP to send an investigator, Rosa Parks, who rallied for support and triggered an outcry for justice.

The film will be shown on Friday, April 6, at 6:30 p.m. in the Emory Amphitheater of the Emory Conference Center; it is free and open to the public. The presentation is made possible in partnership with the Respect Program, the Office of Spiritual and Religious Life, the Office for Racial and Cultural Engagement (RACE) and the Center for Women at Emory.

The Respect Program is the universitys central hub for interpersonal violence prevention and survivor support and resiliency. For more information about RespectCon, visit here.
Automated Breast Ultrasound Systems  The Future of Breast Screening

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Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed type of cancer and the second leading cause of death among women, as evident from stats revealed by the National Breast Cancer Foundation. Growing awareness of breast cancer has increased number of women undergoing breast screening and in turn would propel demand for automated breast ultrasound systems (ABUS) in hospitals and diagnostic centers. ABUS enables physicians to screen women, especially with denser breasts and provides superior image quality, thus providing them a competitive edge over handheld ultrasound systems (HHUS)The global automated breast ultrasound systems market was valued at US$ 236.5 million in 2015 and is expected to expand at a CAGR of 21.6% during the forecast period (2016  2024).Figure 1. Global ABUS Market Size and Forecast, Market Value (US$ Mn) and Y-o-Y Growth (%), 2014  2024Get The Holistic SAMPLE With Research Methodology:ABUS are primarily used for screening purpose in adjunct to mammographyABUS are approved by the U.S. FDA for screening in conjunction with mammography for dense breasts. Radiologists are inclined towards adoption of ABUS as they provide high quality 3D images. Surgeons are adopting this system for pre-operative evaluation of breast to accurately identify the tumor size and location. HHUS are mainly preferred for preoperative evaluation as compared to ABUS, due to high cost associated with ABUS and lack of skilled radiologists to operate the ABUS system during the crucial preoperative period.High prevalence of breast cancer and awareness campaigns driving demand for ABUS in developed countriesFactors attributable to the growth of ABUS in North America and European markets include increased patient awareness, high uptake of early breast screening, and availability of funds to install relatively expensive ABUS.According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 232,924 new cases of breast cancer were diagnosed in 2013. Moreover, the American Cancer Society estimates that until 2016 there are over 2.8 million breast cancer survivors in the U.S.According to the Cancer Research UK, the incidence rate of breast cancer in the U.K is expected to rise by 2% from 2014 to 2035Public Health England launched a campaign called Be Clear on Cancer (2015) to raise breast cancer awareness among women over 70 years. Moreover, research and development in the field is encouraged through the Breast Cancer Now Catalyst Programme (2016).High prevalence coupled with government awareness drives are driving demand for ABUS in the U.S. and U.K.Increasing awareness programs related to breast cancer driving demand in Asia-Pacific regionAsia-Pacific possess immense revenue potential for the growth of ABUS market. Demand for ABUS in Asia-Pacific in terms of volume is expected to increase at a CAGR of 24.4% during 2016  2024. Lack of awareness had deterred the uptake of early breast screening until various cognizance initiatives were undertaken by ABUS manufacturers and non-profit and regional cancer organizations. Some noteworthy initiatives include The Pink Initiative organization in India, Breast Cancer Initiative East Africa Inc. and Pink Ribbon Breakfast initiative by Cancer Australia. Moreover, denser breast tissues in the Chinese population is driving demand for ABUS in China at a rapid pace.Automated breast ultrasound systems manufacturers are following inorganic strategies to increase their footprintInorganic growth roadmap is the key strategy followed by market leaders. For instance, GE Healthcare acquired U-Systems, Inc. in 2014 to expand their breast care innovations portfolio. Philips partnered with SonoCine, Inc. in 2014 to provide ABUS imaging for its ultrasound systems. Hitachi Aloka Medical America, Inc. entered into a strategic alliance with iVu Imaging Corporation in 2014, gaining exclusive distribution rights for iVus SOFIA (ABUS) system in North America. This agreement helped iVu Imaging Corporation to get access to the expanded channel and also helped both the companies to leverage the technical expertise of the other which further improved the performance of SOFIA.Ask For Customisation:About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr.ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email:sales@coherentmarketinsights.comVisit our news Website:
Analysis of Industrial Routers Market Report, by Product Type and Geography - Global Industry Insights to 2025

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A router is an electronic device designed to receive, analyze, and send incoming packets to another network. Global industrial routers market have generated the revenue of US$ 861.7 million in 2017 up from US$ 793.3 billion in 2016. By 2025, the market is expected to generate a revenue of US$ 1,689.6 billion with a CAGR of 8.8% over the forecast period. Increasing adoption of robotics in various industrial operations is one of the major factors for growth of industrial routers market. Industrial robots embed remote access devices that are used by vendors for remote monitoring and maintenance. These devices are generally industrial routers, as it enables user to connect to a robot. According to World Robotics Organization, in 2014, around 1.46 million industrial robots were deployed for operations and these are projected to reach 2.59 million by 2019. Furthermore, various advantages offered by robots such as high efficiency, enhanced quality, increased productivity, and reduction of product waste have accelerated demand for robots in various industries such as automotive, electronics, chemicals, and food. For instance, in the U.S., around 31,404 units of industrial robots were shipped in 2016. Moreover, around 87,000, units in China, 38,586 units in Japan, 41,373 units in Republic of Korea, and 20,039 units of industrial robots were shipped in Germany in 2016.Ask for detailed Sample of this Research Report @Wired industrial routers segment held the dominant position in 2017.The wired industrial routers segment held the dominant position in the market in 2017 and is projected to retain its dominance throughout the forecast period. In 2017, wired industrial routers segment generated the revenue of US$ 688.7 million and is expected to reach US$ 1,339.5 million by 2025. Wired routers are gaining significant traction, owing to their application in various industries such as food and beverages, automotive, and electric and electronics, which is the major factor driving growth of the segment. Various advantages offer by wired industrial routers such as high speed of data transfer and enhanced security have increased demand for wired industrial routers in various industries, which in turn is boosting growth of the market.North America held the dominant position in industrial routers market in 2017On the basis of geography, the Industrial routers market is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, Middle East, and Africa. The North America region held the dominant position in the market in 2017 and is projected to retain its dominance throughout the forecast period. In 2017, the North America generated the revenue of US$ 273.9 million and is expected to reach US$ 535.7 million by 2025 with a CAGR of 8.7%. The U.S. and Canada are major economies driving the growth of Industrial routers market in this region. Increasing focus on connected road infrastructure is expected to present significant growth potential for industrial routers over the forecast period. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, around 42% of major urban highways are congested. Traffic fatalities increased by 7% from 2014 to 2015. Therefore, increasing demand for connected road infrastructure solutions, is in turn expected to aid in growth of the market in the region.Key Players - Global Industrial Routers Market.The major players operating in the global Industrial routers market include Juniper Networks, Inc., Netgear Inc., ZTE Corporation, Cisco Systems, Inc., Inseego Corporation, Dell Technologies, Inc., Micromax Technology, Ericsson, Inc., TP-Link Technologies Co., Ltd, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprises, Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., and Advantech Co., LtdRequest for Customization As per your Need :About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr. ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email: sales@coherentmarketinsights.comVisit our news Website :
Blood Processing Devices and Consumables  One Pint Saves Three Lives

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Increasing number of blood transfusion procedures making blood processing a necessityBlood transfusion is a process required to make up for the lost blood during a surgery or due to an injury or a disease. According to the American National Red Cross, a humanitarian organization, around 21 million blood components are transfused every year in the U.S. Blood transfusion is a frequent process in sickle cell patients. The sickle cell disease affects 90,000 to 100,000 people in the U.S., as per the American National Red Cross.Demand for blood processing devices and consumables is growing rapidly with establishment of new hospitals and blood banks, and increasing number of blood transfusion procedures. Asia Pacific is one of the most lucrative markets for blood processing devices and consumables. According to the Friends2support organization, a non-profit organization allowing patient access to blood donors, nearly 30 million blood components are transfused every year in India.Get The Holistic SAMPLE With Research Methodology:Lack of blood processing infrastructure in low-income countriesAccording to WHO, 16 countries across the globe are unable to screen the donated blood for one or more than one infections. WHO identified irregular supply of test kits is the factor attributed to this shortage. The Blood and Transfusion Safety program of WHO supports countries in developing national blood systems to ensure quality blood processing and transfusion practices.High capital investment and steep operational costs are the factors restraining emerging economies such as India, Brazil, China, and Indonesia to adopt the new blood processing technology.Development of national blood policy recommended by WHOAccording to the 2016 World Health Organization (WHO) statistics, around 112.5 million units of blood donations are collected every year globally. However, only a few get access to blood on time. Several patients in need of blood transfusion are deprived of blood for their treatment. The WHO therefore recommend having a national blood policy to have centralized control for blood collection, testing, storage, processing, and distribution. According to the WHO, in 2013, 73% of 167 countries worldwide had a national blood policy.Low blood donation rate impacts the demand for blood processing and consumables market negatively. Therefore, improved storage and processing facilities of the donated blood coupled with increase in access to blood and its components will generate demand for blood processing and consumables.Blood collected from donors can be stored and transfused in an unmodified state, referred to as whole blood transfusion. However, if processed, the collected blood can be of use to more than one patient. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) 2016 estimates, only 43% of the blood collected in low-income countries are separated into different components such as plasma, red cell concentrates, and platelet concentrates. The rate is much higher (96%) in high income countries such as Argentina, Canada, U.S., Germany, Singapore, U.K., and France. Lack of adequate test kits, blood processing devices and infrastructure are some of the factors responsible for low rate of blood processing in low-income countries.The global blood processing devices and consumables market was valued at US$ 27,845.1 million in 2015 and is expected to expand at a CAGR of 5.9% during the forecast period: 2016  2024.Ask For Customisation:About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr.ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email:sales@coherentmarketinsights.comVisit our news Website:
Global Open Source Services Market trends, research, Analysis and projections for 2018-2023 This market research report delves deep into the global Open Source Services market. It highlights the recent market scenario, growth in the past few years, and opportunities for manufacturers in the future. The research methods and tools used in the completion of this study are both primary and secondary research. The study further presents details on the investments initiated by several organizations, institutions, government, and non-government bodies.



The study presents an evaluation of the factors that are expected to inhibit or boost the progress of the global Open Source Services market. The global Open Source Services market has been examined thoroughly on the basis of key criteria such as end user, application, product, technology, and region. An analysis has been provided in the report of the key geographical segments and their share and position in the market. The estimated revenue and volume growth of the global Open Source Services market has also been offered in the report.



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Red Hat (US), Accenture (Ireland), Wipro (India), IBM (US), Infosys (India), Cisco Systems (US), Atos (France), HCL (India), HPE (US), and Oracle (US)



This Open Source Services market research is an intelligence report with meticulous efforts undertaken to study the right and valuable information. The data which has been looked upon is done considering both, the existing top players and the upcoming competitors. Business strategies of the key players and the new entering market industries are studied in detail. Well explained SWOT analysis, revenue share and contact information are shared in this report analysis.



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Data integration and capabilities are analyzed to support the findings and study the predicted geographical segmentations. Various key variables and regression models were considered to calculate the trajectory of Open Source Services market. Detailed analysis is explained and given importance to with best working models.



Geographically, the segmentation is done into several key regions like North America, Middle East & Africa, Asia Pacific, Europe and Latin America. The production, consumption, revenue, shares in mill UDS, growth rate of Open Source Services market during the forecast period of 2017 to 2025 is well explained.



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The report is presented in a clear and concise manner so that readers can understand the market structure and dynamics effectively. Recent trends and developments in the global Open Source Services market have been analyzed. Opportunities leading to the growth of the market have been analyzed and stated. The report focuses on the global Open Source Services market, and answers some of the most critical questions stakeholders are currently facing across the globe. Information about the size of the market (by the end of the forecast year), companies that are most likely to scale up their competitive abilities, leading segments, and challenges impeding the growth of the market are given.



Drivers and restraints impacting the growth of the market have also been analyzed. A segmentation of the global Open Source Services market has been done for the purpose of a detailed study. The profiling of the leading players is done in order to judge the current competitive scenario. The competitive landscape is assessed by taking into consideration many important factors such as business growth, recent developments, product pipeline, and others. The research report further makes use of graphical representations such as tables, info graphics, and charts to forecast figures and historical data of the global Open Source Services market.



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Patent Expiries To Drive Growth Of The Global Antidiabetic Biosimilars Market

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Antidiabetic biosimilars market overviewAntidiabetics help control blood glucose levels in diabetic patients. Various types of antidiabetics include biguanides, thiazolidinediones, DPP-IV inhibitors, -glucosidase Inhibitors, sulfonylureas, insulin, and GLP-1 receptor agonists such as exenatide. A biosimilar product is biological product that is approved on the basis that it is highly similar to a FDA approved biological product known as a reference product. Biosimilar manufacturers need to generate data from lab testing and clinical testing to demonstrate that the biosimilar developed provides the same therapeutic benefit to patients as the reference product.Get The Holistic SAMPLE With Research Methodology:Patent expiries to drive growth of the global antidiabetic biosimilars marketThe global antidiabetic biosimilars market is driven by increasing number of diabetes mellitus patients. According to World Health Organization (WHO) the number of people suffering from diabetes stood at 422 million in 2014. The global prevalence of diabetes among adults above 18 years increased to 8.5% in 2014 from 4.7% in 1980. Increasing incidence of lifestyle disorders such as obesity, increases the risk of diabetes and in turn drives growth of the antidiabetic biosimilars market. In June 2014, the European Medicines Agency authorized the first biosimilar of insulin Glargine, Abasaglar from Eli Lilly and Company and Boehringer Ingelhim International Gmbh, for treatment of diabetes mellitus. The biosimilar received U.S. FDA approval in 2016, which would fuel growth of the antidiabetic biosimilars market.Furthermore patent expiry of insulin aspart and insulin lispro is projected to propel growth of antidiabetic biosimilars market. Biosimilar insulin have potential to reduce diabetes treatment costs, increase accessibility of insulin treatment and expand the number of insulin brands.Constraints for growth of the antidiabetic biosimilars marketBiosimilars would have to face stringent regulatory requirements that would focus on their production before entering into major markets such as the U.S. While biosimilars have marked successful entry in the European markets, entry in the U.S. market is still a challenge due to stringent regulatory norms. Furthermore, biosimilars would need to gain favorable reimbursement to gain market traction.Increasing number of diabetes patients driving the antidiabetic biosimilars market globallyIncreasing incidence of diabetes, complexities in alternative diabetic therapies, and government incentives for introduction of low cost therapies are collectively creating a conducive environment for growth of the market. According to the International Diabetes Federation (IDF), there were around 59.8 million diabetic patients in Europe in 2015. The market for antidiabetic biosimilar is expected to be high in near future in Asia Pacific due to increase in research activities related to antidiabetic products and supportive government funding. North America region is projected to represent a lucrative market for antidiabetic biosimilar in the near future, as prevalence of diabetes is increasing in this region. According to the International Diabetes Federation, in 2015, over 29.1 million people in the U.S. suffered from diabetes.Get Table Of Content:About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr.ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email:sales@coherentmarketinsights.comVisit our news Website:
Analysis of Inspection Robotics Market - Global Industry Insights, Trends, Outlook and Forecast till 2025

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Robots have found extensive applications for automating several repetitive industrial tasks. In conjunction with the development in the robotic vision systems and sensing, requirements for better production quality in the industrial manufacturing procedures and focus towards eliminating human errors in these operations have in turn led to significant growth of the inspection robotics market. Some of the major applications of these systems include inspection of water pipelines, high voltage transmission lines, bridges, and dams.Superior quality output and high ROI fueling growth of the inspection robotics marketBetter production quality assessment in industry critical applications, specifically that including aerospace and oil & gas exploration form the basis of their applications. Introduction of human errors in these processes can threaten loss of million dollars or endanger multiple human lives. These applications for high accuracy are expected to garner consistent demands over the following few years. Moreover, high return on investment (ROI), owing to reduction in manual workforce expenses, 24-hour working capacities, less residual waste generation, and minimal human intervention requirement will provide considerable growth opportunities for the inspections robotics market.Ask for detailed Sample of this Research Report @Advancement in automated visual capability of these next generation systems will enhance the system applicabilityGeneric robots were attributed with operations in specific area at particular time owing to lack of appropriate vision systems. Incorporation of vision sensors, cameras, and software that can control the operation of these automated systems has led to significant increase in the application of these systems. For instance, SkySpecs offers autonomous wind turbine drone examination solutions that can operate independently and examine the various parameters of the turbines to determine its power efficiency. Moreover, such applications in food and beverage industry, high altitude or unfavorable working environment that endangers human lives can be easily met with the utilization of these systems. These factors are expected to drive the inspection robotics market growth.High initial capital and social unacceptance owing to significant loss of human jobs are expected to be major challenges to the industry growthOwing to its high initial one time capital, it is difficult for SMEs to adopt these solutions. Availability of low cost work force in some emerging economies that include China, India, and Indonesia, will also present considerable growth challenge. Moreover, requirement to meet regulatory compliances for the co-existence of the human and automated workforce such as Robot Ethics Charter in South Korea and RoboLaw project in the EU, is projected to hamper adoption of inspection robots.Remotely operated vehicles major growth drivers of the inspection robotics marketRemotely-operated vehicles are tethered by cables and can be controlled through central control unit. High utilization of these systems in surveillance and examination operations is expected to be the major growth driver for this market. However, autonomous solutions are increasingly gaining popularity, owing to their ease of utilization, and the segment is expected to witness highest growth rate over the forecast period. On the basis of application, oil & gas industry segment dominated the market, owing to its mission critical applications and requirement of accurate real time operation monitoring conducive to ensure optimal productivity.Asia Pacific is expected to dominate the industry through the forecast period, primarily owing to large production and sales in Japan, China, and South Korea. Other major regional markets include the U.S., Germany, and the U.K. The market is characterized by the presence of a relatively small number of original equipment manufacturers in comparison to other types of industrial robots. Most of the solution providers in the industry include system integrators and assemblers. Industry participants are expected to focus on innovation in order to gain strong industry foothold.Key players in the inspection robotics market include AETOs, GE Inspection Robotics, Honeybee Robotics, Inuktun Services, and Universal Robots.Request for Customization As per your Need :About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr. ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email: sales@coherentmarketinsights.comVisit our news Website :
Demand continues for ready-to-use Fructose Market by 2025

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Fructose is a form of sweetener which is mostly used in the food and beverage industry. The clearest form of fructose is extracted by processing sugar or corn and it is widely used in food and beverages. Fructose has been an integral part of the processed food industry for more than 15 years. In compared to other external sweeteners fructose is less harmful and has promotes no calorie hike. There are several types of fructose which are available in the market. One is the clear form fructose, popularly known as crystalline fructose and the other form is a mixture of fructose and glucose and sold as high fructose corn syrup. The purest form of the fructose is widely used in baked products as it enriches its texture, quality and adds an aroma into it.Request to View TOC @The demand of the fructose is steadily soaring in the global market. Fructose has been one of the safest sweeteners available in the market. It is approved by several food control organisations present across the world. Several food and beverage makers has been using it for decades and because it is completely safe to use and it has no side effects. Fructose adds no calorie which is why it is presently used in most of the low sugar content products.The new breed of health conscious global citizens are eager to experiment with new food items but they want to maintain the balance of the regular sugar content to keep diseases like diabetes at bay. As we know US is badly affected by diabetes. Prevalence of diabetes amongst the young adults has witnessed a steep rise in the last few years in US. As per the record the US is fighting a deadly war against diabetes. Several people are affected by this disease in the country. The diabetes affected consumers in US is the largest potential customers of low calorie, low sugar products.Scope of development of fructose market is maximum in this part of the world. Fructose is cheaper than sugar and it is available in abundance in liquid form which helps in its transportation. Raw material required to produce fructose such as corn are available widely in different parts of India, US and many other regions of the globe. Which is bolstering the growth of the fructose market. Changing food habits of the global denizens are impacting the growth of the global food and beverages industry. This is also creating a massive scope for the fructose market as it is extensively used in some of the modern food items that are available in the market. Energy drinks, cereals used for breakfast, yogurt, confectionaries, fruits packs nutrition bars, cookies, juice concentrates are available in the market do have fructose added in them.Though fructose is widely used in food and beverage industry but experts recommend for a limited use of the product. As uncontrolled use of the product might affect the health. Excess use of fructose hampers the liver function and it also spikes the uric acid levels in the body.The pool of raw material needed to produce fructose to expedite the expansion of the fructose market in US. Apart from this part of the globe the fructose market is also likely to showcase good growth in the new emerging markets spread across Asia-Pacific, MEA and Latin America regions. These markets will bloom in the forthcoming years as large consumer base which is eager to use new branded food and beverages. The rise of diabetes in this region is also pushing the population towards low sugar content food products and expanding the scope of growth of fructose market.Request Sample Report@Some of the many leading companies which are operating in the global fructose market are, Tate and Lyle, Archer Daniels Midland Company, KASYAP, Galam, NAVAREST etc.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
Global Carboxymethylcellulose Market: Cargill, Ferrero, Ezaki Glico, Nestle, Mars, Mondelez

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Qyresearchreports include new market research report Carboxymethylcellulose to its huge collection of research reports.The global Carboxymethylcellulose market has been assessed with an exclusive forecast study that traces its progress from the past through future years. The report offered herewith is an intelligent guideline for players looking to successfully counter market challenges and cement their growth in the industry. With objective information provided on market restraints, readers could prepare themselves beforehand and devise strategies to overcome challenges while setting a foot on lucrative growth. A study on trends and opportunities has been expected to encourage players to take bold steps in their journey toward attaining an impressive growth in the market.Readers have also been offered a comprehensive study on the segmentation of the global Carboxymethylcellulose market. Each segment of the market has been critically evaluated for any opportunities that could be prevailing in the near future. On the other hand, readers could become aware of segments that have been anticipated to exhibit a slower growth in the market. The study has been backed by accurate information and meticulously calculated statistical figures for readers to be rest assured about the authenticity of the report. A standout section of the study could be regional segmentation as it informs readers of how well the market is performing in different geographies of the world.Get Sample Report of the Research Study at:Global Carboxymethylcellulose market competition by top manufacturers, with production, price, revenue (value) and market share for each manufacturer; the top players includingDow ChemicalCP KelcoAshlandAkzo NobelDaicelUgur Seluloz Kimya ASDKSQuimica AmtexNippon Paper IndustriesLambertiLihongWealthyShenGuang...Table of ContentsGlobal Carboxymethylcellulose Market Research Report 20181 Carboxymethylcellulose Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Carboxymethylcellulose1.2 Carboxymethylcellulose Segment by Type (Product Category)1.2.1 Global Carboxymethylcellulose Production and CAGR (%) Comparison by Type (Product Category)(2013-2025)1.2.2 Global Carboxymethylcellulose Production Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20171.2.3 Purity (99.5 %+)1.2.4 Purity (90%-99.5%)1.2.5 Purity (50%-90%)1.3 Global Carboxymethylcellulose Segment by Application1.3.1 Carboxymethylcellulose Consumption (Sales) Comparison by Application (2013-2025)1.3.2 Oil & Gas Industry1.3.3 Food Industry1.3.4 Paper Industry1.3.5 Textile Industry1.3.6 Detergent Industry1.3.7 Cosmetics Industry1.3.8 OthersRead Complete Table of Content of the Report at:2 Global Carboxymethylcellulose Market Competition by Manufacturers2.1 Global Carboxymethylcellulose Capacity, Production and Share by Manufacturers (2013-2018)2.1.1 Global Carboxymethylcellulose Capacity and Share by Manufacturers (2013-2018)2.1.2 Global Carboxymethylcellulose Production and Share by Manufacturers (2013-2018)2.2 Global Carboxymethylcellulose Revenue and Share by Manufacturers (2013-2018)2.3 Global Carboxymethylcellulose Average Price by Manufacturers (2013-2018)2.4 Manufacturers Carboxymethylcellulose Manufacturing Base Distribution, Sales Area and Product Type2.5 Carboxymethylcellulose Market Competitive Situation and Trends2.5.1 Carboxymethylcellulose Market Concentration Rate2.5.2 Carboxymethylcellulose Market Share of Top 3 and Top 5 Manufacturers2.5.3 Mergers & Acquisitions, Expansion3 Global Carboxymethylcellulose Capacity, Production, Revenue (Value) by Region (2013-2018)3.1 Global Carboxymethylcellulose Capacity and Market Share by Region (2013-2018)3.2 Global Carboxymethylcellulose Production and Market Share by Region (2013-2018)3.3 Global Carboxymethylcellulose Revenue (Value) and Market Share by Region (2013-2018)3.4 Global Carboxymethylcellulose Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)3.5 North America Carboxymethylcellulose Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)3.6 Europe Carboxymethylcellulose Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)3.7 China Carboxymethylcellulose Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)3.8 Japan Carboxymethylcellulose Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)3.9 Southeast Asia Carboxymethylcellulose Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)3.10 India Carboxymethylcellulose Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)...About QYResearchReports.comQyresearchreports.com delivers the latest strategic market intelligence to build a successful business footprint in China. Our syndicated and customized research reports provide companies with vital background information of the market and in-depth analysis on the Chinese trade and investment framework, which directly affects their business operations. Reports from Qyresearchreports.com feature valuable recommendations on how to navigate in the extremely unpredictable yet highly attractive Chinese market.Contact US:Brooklyn, NY 11230United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-618-1030Web:Email: sales@qyresearchreports.com
Dermatology Devices  Regaining Grace without Leaving a Trace

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Most invasive surgical procedures often leave behind scars and vascular lesions. Aging results in loss of hair, wrinkles, and skin deterioration. The last decade has witnessed an increasing number of minimally invasive procedures and rising inclination of people to undergo cosmetic procedures in order to enhance aesthetic appeal. Pharmaceutical drugs intended for such treatment are associated with various side effects and are relatively expensive. Minimally invasive procedures have emerged as a preferred alternative to such drug therapies and also enjoy a competitive edge over conventional surgical procedures, as the former leave back minimal scars, if any. Getting a tattoo done is a rage across the globe and the trend transcends all boundaries of age, race, and gender. However, the recent decade has also witnessed a high prevalence of tattoo regret among the populace. As per results of a 2014 survey conducted by Ampp3dpart of Mirror.co.ukaround 1/3rd of people in the age group of 2535 years in the U.K. regretted getting a tattoo and wanted to get it removed. Laser tattoo removal has been considered the most effective option for tattoo removal as this technique removes tattoo without scarring or burns.The global dermatology devices market was valued at US$ 3,409.1 million in 2015 and is expected to witness a robust CAGR of 7.6% during the forecast period (2016  2024).Get The Holistic SAMPLE With Research Methodology:Evolving technology to be a threat for conventional treatment methods in the dermatology devices marketMinimally invasive treatment procedures are gaining attention in the medical community and patients worldwide. Therefore, devices such a microdermabrasion, pens for pigmented lesions, scars, and loose skin, and laser therapy are in high demand globally. These devices are replacing the usual surgeries performed to treat skin disorders, which leaves out unwanted scars post-surgery. Laser resurfacing, dermabrasion, and chemical peels are some of the safe and effective treatment options for acne scarring. Effectiveness of laser and light therapies in treating mild to moderate acne is still under research.PMD Beauty pioneered the at-home microdermabrasion device that allows users to perform microdermabrasion procedure at ease and convenient. The device has a large consumer base in the U.S., U.K. and Australia.Growing target population to serve as a potential opportunity for dermatology devices market playersAccording to the American Academy of dermatology, acne is the most common skin condition in the U.S. affecting nearly 50 million people annually. This is a sizeable addressable market for acne removal devices.According to the Astanza Laser LLC (2016), 45 million Americans have tattoos with a majority (40%) of them being in the age group of 26 years to 40 years.According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, among the 14.2 million minimally-invasive cosmetic procedures performed in 2015 in the U.S., botulinum toxin type A, soft tissue fillers, chemical peel, laser hair removal and microdermabrasion were the top five procedures.According to the survey by Dr. Sandy Tsao, MD, Massachusetts General Hospital Dermatology Laser and Cosmetic Center, one in seven people wished they had never got a tattoo engraved on their skin.According to the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ISAPS) 2015 global survey, U.S. had the highest number of non-surgical procedures performed (2.6 mn) followed by Brazil (1.1 mn). South Korea, India, Mexico, Germany, Colombia, France, and Italy are other leading countries with most aesthetic procedures being conducted in 2015. These statistics signify potential opportunities for companies in the global dermatology devices market.This is expected to benefit the dermatology devices market players such as Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc., Lumenis, Ltd., Cynosure Inc., Syneron Candela Ltd., Avita Medical Ltd., Alma Lasers, Ltd., Lutronics Corporation, Beijing Toplaser Technology Co. Ltd., Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Group Co. Ltd., and Cutera, Inc.Ask For Customisation:About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr.ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email:sales@coherentmarketinsights.comVisit our news Website:
Custom Shoes Market Expected to Be Biggest Emerging Market by 2025

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The famous French fashion designer Roger Vivier once said, To wear dreams on ones feet is to begin to give a reality to ones dreams. While this may seem like an exaggeration, some people truly begin to dream when asked about their shoes. Several enthusiasts among us may even own hundreds of shoes because they do not ever wish to repeat wearing a pair! While buying shoes from traditional retailers are still popular, a new and emerging trend is that of custom shoes. While there is a widespread perception that these products are pricey and cater only to the high-end clientele, this is a gross misconception. The worldwide reach of social media, and a common desire among customers everywhere to get customised, individual products has broadened the size and scale of the custom shoes market.Request to View TOC @The main drivers of the custom shoes market are the proliferation of e-commerce platforms, fast fashion fads, preference for custom designs, and the emergence of 3D printing from fiction to fact. Improved Internet infrastructure in the developing world, along with both global and domestic e-commerce players catering to the demand has broadened the market for custom shoes considerably. People can order the shoes which they want when they want from the comfort of their own homes. If they wish for something extra, they can even design shoes to their exact needs and requirements with the help of 3D printers. These custom shoes can then be printed in a matter of hours or days. There has been a noticeable trend towards customization in almost every industry in recent times and this holds true for the custom shoes market as well. While millennials are known to have a penchant for individuality, even baby boomers are looking at customised products like shoes. Designing a product as per ones specific requirement gives people a sense of being part of the process and that expression forms the core of their values or what they buy.The rise of social media should also give a fillip to the custom shoes market. The so-called selfie generation is all about sharing information online. Social media platforms help to aggregate individuals into small groups having the same interest. A simple hashtag in the right place can ensure a global audience for any product or service. It enables sole proprietors and entrepreneurs to challenge large, multi-national shoe making companies. Social media can be utilised to great effect to build interest, spread the word and generate buzz around a product. Writing about custom shoes on websites, guest posts, blogs or other portals is another way of boosting traffic to the site and increasing the size of the overall custom shoes market. Several custom shoe makers have a large fan following largely due to their active presence on various social media platforms and some of them even command waiting periods in excess of 5 months!Every coin has two sides and there are certainly some challenges faced by the custom shoes market. Some of the critical ones include name recognition, limited customization and production, and high prices. While social media and the Internet have allowed entrepreneurs with limited funds to reach potential clients across the world, there can be initial hesitation on the part of the latter if the company or seller is relatively unknown. They may be worried about inferior quality and might prefer a so-called tried-and-tested brand, especially for something as vital to daily comfort as shoes. While customization is definitely more possible in the custom shoes market than the regular market, it is akin to a form of mass customization.Companies are generally limited by a few items that are customizable and there will be a lot of variants around some core things which will remain unchanged. To expand on a global level, custom shoe makers will need to offer much more variety and choice. Due to a lack of economies of scale, some players in the custom shoes market may need to charge high prices to break even or make a profit. This makes it challenging for them to broaden the scope of their market to customers in the middle class with a lower disposable income.Request Sample Report@Custom Shoes Market PlayersSome of the companies involved in the custom shoes market are Alive Shoes, Shoes of Prey, Alfred & Sargents, Bionda Castana, Buchanan Bespoke, Buttero, Crockett & Jones and Edward Green.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
Global Caramel Chocolate Market: Know The Key Growth Drivers Developments and Innovations

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Qyresearchreports include new market research report Caramel Chocolate to its huge collection of research reports.The global Caramel Chocolate market has been assessed with an exclusive forecast study that traces its progress from the past through future years. The report offered herewith is an intelligent guideline for players looking to successfully counter market challenges and cement their growth in the industry. With objective information provided on market restraints, readers could prepare themselves beforehand and devise strategies to overcome challenges while setting a foot on lucrative growth. A study on trends and opportunities has been expected to encourage players to take bold steps in their journey toward attaining an impressive growth in the market.Readers have also been offered a comprehensive study on the segmentation of the global Caramel Chocolate market. Each segment of the market has been critically evaluated for any opportunities that could be prevailing in the near future. On the other hand, readers could become aware of segments that have been anticipated to exhibit a slower growth in the market. The study has been backed by accurate information and meticulously calculated statistical figures for readers to be rest assured about the authenticity of the report. A standout section of the study could be regional segmentation as it informs readers of how well the market is performing in different geographies of the world.Get Sample Report of the Research Study at:Global Caramel Chocolate market competition by top manufacturers, with production, price, revenue (value) and market share for each manufacturer; the top players includingBarry CallebautCargillFerreroEzaki GlicoNestleMarsMondelezBlommerBrooksideHershey'sValrhonaFoleys Candies LP...Table of ContentsGlobal Caramel Chocolate Market Research Report 20181 Caramel Chocolate Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Caramel Chocolate1.2 Caramel Chocolate Segment by Type (Product Category)1.2.1 Global Caramel Chocolate Production and CAGR (%) Comparison by Type (Product Category)(2013-2025)1.2.2 Global Caramel Chocolate Production Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20171.2.3 Dark Chocolate1.2.4 White Chocolate1.3 Global Caramel Chocolate Segment by Application1.3.1 Caramel Chocolate Consumption (Sales) Comparison by Application (2013-2025)1.3.2 Supermarkets and Hypermarkets1.3.3 Independent Retailers1.3.4 Specialist Retailers1.3.5 Online RetailersRead Complete Table of Content of the Report at:2 Global Caramel Chocolate Market Competition by Manufacturers2.1 Global Caramel Chocolate Capacity, Production and Share by Manufacturers (2013-2018)2.1.1 Global Caramel Chocolate Capacity and Share by Manufacturers (2013-2018)2.1.2 Global Caramel Chocolate Production and Share by Manufacturers (2013-2018)2.2 Global Caramel Chocolate Revenue and Share by Manufacturers (2013-2018)2.3 Global Caramel Chocolate Average Price by Manufacturers (2013-2018)2.4 Manufacturers Caramel Chocolate Manufacturing Base Distribution, Sales Area and Product Type2.5 Caramel Chocolate Market Competitive Situation and Trends2.5.1 Caramel Chocolate Market Concentration Rate2.5.2 Caramel Chocolate Market Share of Top 3 and Top 5 Manufacturers2.5.3 Mergers & Acquisitions, Expansion3 Global Caramel Chocolate Capacity, Production, Revenue (Value) by Region (2013-2018)3.1 Global Caramel Chocolate Capacity and Market Share by Region (2013-2018)3.2 Global Caramel Chocolate Production and Market Share by Region (2013-2018)3.3 Global Caramel Chocolate Revenue (Value) and Market Share by Region (2013-2018)3.4 Global Caramel Chocolate Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)4 Global Caramel Chocolate Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Region (2013-2018)4.1 Global Caramel Chocolate Consumption by Region (2013-2018)4.2 North America Caramel Chocolate Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2013-2018)4.3 Europe Caramel Chocolate Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2013-2018)4.4 China Caramel Chocolate Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2013-2018)...About QYResearchReports.comQyresearchreports.com delivers the latest strategic market intelligence to build a successful business footprint in China. Our syndicated and customized research reports provide companies with vital background information of the market and in-depth analysis on the Chinese trade and investment framework, which directly affects their business operations. Reports from Qyresearchreports.com feature valuable recommendations on how to navigate in the extremely unpredictable yet highly attractive Chinese market.Contact US:Brooklyn, NY 11230United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-618-1030Web:Email: sales@qyresearchreports.com
Major Acquisitions To Support The Growth In Synthetic Biology Market

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Synthetic biology is a combination of biology and biomedical engineering principles that favors designing and construction of novel biological parts & systems and also the reconstruction of preexisting designs according to specific application requirements. Synthetic biology is extensively used in the field of medical and pharmaceuticals to produce and manufacture improved biological drugs and systems to meet various challenges in the healthcare sector. Synthetic biology offers various opportunities in the field of healthcare such as recreating highly complex pathways, DNA sequences, and natural biological systems. In synthetic biology market, genetically modified organisms is the new approach for researchers. However, currently only one engineered gene has been developed, with increasing focus on creating clusters of genes. Also, due to the rising demand for vaccines in high income countries, synthetic biologists are more inclined towards research of various types of vaccines that can be used as prophylaxis. According to WHO, in in 2011, high income countries such as the U.S., Japan, and the U.K. contributed around 80% of global vaccine sales revenue, with these regions accounting for 20% volume share.Get The Holistic SAMPLE With Research Methodology:Synthetic biology market taxonomy:By Product TypeSynthetic DNASynthetic cellsSynthetic genesChassis organismsGenetically modified organismsOligonucleotide SynthesisBy ToolXeno-nucleic Acids (XNA)Cloning and Assembly kitsOligonucleotidesEnzymesBy TechnologyEnabling TechnologiesBioinformaticsSite-saturation MutagenesisMeasurement and ModelingMicrofluidicsCloning and SequencingGene SynthesisGenome EngineeringNanotechnologyEnabled TechnologiesPathway EngineeringNext-generation SequencingBy ApplicationEnvironmental ApplicationBioremediationWhole-cell BiosensorsIndustrial ApplicationBiofuels and Renewable EnergyIndustrial EnzymesBiomaterials and Green ChemicalsMedical ApplicationArtificial Tissue and Tissue RegenerationPharmaceuticalsDrug Discovery and TherapeuticsGovernment funding supporting synthetic biology market growth:Growing demand for synthetic biology products such as synthetic DNA, synthetic genes for treatment of diseases and for developing genetic modified products such as hybrid crop, genetically modified animals for enhancing the nutritional value of the food is also contributing towards the growth of the synthetic biology market. Also, various governments are investing in research and development of novel synthetic biology products. For instance, according to the report from U.S. Trends in Synthetic Biology Research at the Wilson Center, during the period of six years from 2008 to 2014, the U.S. invested around US$ 820 million in research for products in synthetic biology. Among different funding agencies, the defense department became a key funder of synthetic biology research dominating the funds by national science foundation. The above key fact also suggests that U.S. is expected to be a significant contributor in synthetic biology market.Regional analysis of synthetic biology market:Developed countries such as the U.S., Germany, U.K., France, and Japan have mature markets for synthetic biology mainly due to large funding and favorable government regulation regarding the approval of synthetic biology products. According to genetic engineering & biotechnology news in 2010, the government of three European countries namely the Netherlands, U.K., and Germany invested around US$ 160 million in a span of five years between 2005 and 2010. Regulations such as Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) in 1997, cover commercial uses of new microorganisms not regulated by other agencies: primary rules covering industrial biotechnology. European Commission and research agencies have also increased their funding for research in synthetic biology. In emerging economies in Asia-Pacific, Middle East, and Africa, governments are focusing on tackling major issues such as under-nutrition by encouraging adoption of GMO crops. For example, Indian government is had put efforts in the past regarding in terms of intervention programs to combat malnutrition such as Integrated child development services and mid-day meal program This creates a highly conducive environment for market growth.Major acquisitions to support the growth in synthetic biology marketThere are few recent acquisitions by the big brands in biotechnology that is expected to favor the market for synthetic biology. QIAGEN N.V acquired OmicSofta software solutions company that offers scientists and researchers tools to efficiently analyze and visualize the data in bioinformatics. This acquisition is further expected to favor the working efficiency of the company. Key players operating in the synthetic biology market include DuPont, Amyris, Inc., GenScript USA Inc., Integrated DNA Technologies, Intrexon Corporation, New England Biolabs, Inc., Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc., Synthetic Genomics, Inc., Royal DSM, and Novozymes.Get Table Of Content:About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr.ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email:sales@coherentmarketinsights.comVisit our news Website:
Global Demand for Tissue and Hygiene Products Market to Incur Considerable Upsurge During 2015-2025

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The personal care products market comprises hair care, skin care, toiletries, fragrances convenience products and others. Among all these segments toiletries and skin care comprises the major segments for the market, constituting with high market value with favorable perspective in the near future. Tissue and hygiene is the sub-segment of toiletries segment. Tissue and hygiene products help consumers to maintain healthy and hygienic lifestyle in day to day schedule. Tissue and hygiene products are further categorized as disposable razor or blades, sanitary pads, nappies, cleansers, sprays, cotton wool and others.Tissue and hygiene Market SegmentationTissue and hygiene market can be segmented on the basis of distribution channel which includes health and beauty stores, chemist/pharmacies/drugstores, supermarkets, convenient stores, e-retailing and others. Among all these distribution channel segments, sell out of tissue and hygiene products through supermarkets account for the highest market share in 2014 followed by convenience stores. Growing retail industry is fuelling the demand for sell out of tissue and hygiene products through supermarkets across the globe. Moreover, chemist/pharmacies/drugstores segment is also expected to show a potential growth in terms of sales of tissue and hygiene products during the forecast period. In addition, sell out through internet is expected to show a sustainable growth in the forecasted period. The growth of online purchasing is supported by the increasing penetration of internet and rising concern for convenience among the consumers across the globe.Request For Report Sample@The tissue and hygiene market can also be segmented on the basis of product type. The segmentation includes cotton wool/buds/, incontinence products, nappies/diapers, sanitary protection, wipes and others. Among all these segments sanitary protection and nappies/diapers are collectively expected to account for the highest growth in terms of revenue followed by wipes. Increasing concern of women for healthy and hygienic lifestyle is expected to support the growth of sanitary protection product market across the globe. Moreover, wipes are also expected to show a tremendous growth in the forecast period due to continuous and aggressive promotion of the product.On the basis of geography, North America contributes to the largest in terms of revenue in tissue and hygiene market followed by Europe. In North America United States is the major contributor in tissue and hygiene market followed by Canada. In Europe, countries such as Germany and France accounts for the largest market share followed by United Kingdom. Whereas, Asia pacific is concerned it is expected to register a double digit CAGR growth by 2020. In Asia pacific region China is expected to be the most dominant market for tissue and hygiene followed by Japan. Rising awareness through various corporate advertisements and government educational campaigns coupled with increasing concern of women to be hygienic in their day to day life has fueled the growth of tissue and hygiene market in China. Moreover, women in China prefer for premium feminine hygiene product categories, which is expected to bolster the growth of feminine hygiene products in terms of revenue. In addition, India is also expected to witness a robust growth in tissue and hygiene market. Increasing number of working women in urban areas, rising awareness among the consumer for healthy and hygienic lifestyle has supported the growth of tissue and hygiene market in India. Furthermore, government educating and awareness campaigns in rural areas and in schools is expected to support the growth of tissue and hygiene market particularly in India.Tissue and hygiene Market DriversRising disposable income coupled with increasing consumer expenditure for health care products is driving the growth of tissue and hygiene market across the globe. In addition, consumer awareness through aggressive corporate advertisement and various government campaign programs in rural and urban areas especially in school and colleges is also fueling the tissue and hygiene market growth of tissue and hygiene market in the forecast period. In addition continuous launching of new product variant is expected to fuel the growth of tissue and hygiene market in the near future.Visit For TOC@Tissue and hygiene Market: Key PlayersThe major international players operating in tissue and hygiene market includes Sterling Hygiene Tissue Procter & Gamble, Gulf Manufacturing EST, Kimberly-Clark Corporation, Johnson & Johnson Limited, Unilever and Hengan International Group Company Limited. among others.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACTFuture Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: http.futuremarketinsights.com
Valuable Foresights on How Food Coating Ingredients Market will Grow During 2015-2025

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Overview:Coating is a major stage in food processing controlling a products development, arrangement, texture and taste structures. The procedure includes placing the product particles in motion and instantaneously applying the coating ingredient in a particular pattern to expose one to another. Thus, coated food ingredients are delivering unique possibilities for development of product, quality and processing enhancement. Escalating food processing industry will certainly drive the Global Food Coating Ingredients market in the coming few years.Global Food Coating Ingredients: Market SegmentationThe Global Food Coating Ingredient market is segmented on the basis of type such as fats and oil, cocoa and chocolates, spices, flours, starches, syrups and sugar, salts, hydrocolloids, and others. The Global Food Coating Ingredients Market can also be divided by application areas which includes confectionaries, ready-to-eat cereals, dairy products, bakery products, nutritional bars and snacks, meat and poultry products, vegetables and fruits and others.Request For Report Sample@Global Food Coating Ingredients: Growth DriversInclining demand for health foods, rising intake of confectionaries along with ready to eat fried food and bakery products especially in developed countries are strengthening the growth of food coating ingredients market across the globe. Apart from this, the requirement for anti-microbial coating is also compelling the food coating industry to introduce various coating ingredients for products related to foods.Global Food Coating Ingredients: Regional OutlookThe Global Food Coating ingredients industry is studied for the major regions which include North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia-Pacific, Japan, Middle East and Africa. It has been observed that North America captured the highest market share in the Global Food Coating Ingredients Market in 2015, this is majorly due to increasing confectionary market of the zone. The Global Food Coating Ingredients market is at budding stage in Asia-Pacific region with significant prospects for confectionary and dairy industries. Thus in the near future, robust demand for bakery and chocolate products along with significant agriculture growth in India and China is anticipated to have a progressive impact on Global Food Coating Ingredients industry in the next few years. Recently, the Indian government declared the initiation of several food parks which will boost the food and beverage segment in the country. These developments are anticipated to ease investments in food processing market and would bolster the Global food coating ingredients market growth in the coming few years.Visit For TOC@Global Food Coating Ingredients: PlayersSome of the key vendors capturing the substantial market share in the Global Food Coating Ingredients Market include Cargill foods (U.S.), Archer Daniels Midland Company (U.S.), Dohler Group (Germany), Agrana Group (Austria), Tate & Lyle Plc. (U.K.) and PGP International Inc. (U.S.).ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACTFuture Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: http.futuremarketinsights.com
Analysis of Airport Automated Security Screening Market - Global Industry Insights, Trends, Outlook and Forecast till 2025

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Airport automated security screening market was pegged at around US$ 2 billion in 2016, and is expected to register growth at around 5% CAGR through the forecast period (20172025). Increasing requirement to provide mechanized assessment of passengers and luggage, with minimal human errors and reduce time, efforts and expenses in the process is among the primary factors that will fuel growth of the airport automated security screening market.Increasing concerns regarding terrorist activities and smuggling is anticipated to drive the technology demandsRequirement to prevent illegal goods trafficking, airplane hijacking and planting explosives in aircraft is the major factor that will drive the demands for these systems. Moreover, according to International Air Transport Association (IATA), the global demand for air travel is projected to register growths at over 3.7% CAGR, accounting for 7.2 billion passengers to travel in 2035. Increasing demands for air travel will in turn lead to increased demands for reducing queue times and efficient security platforms for good consumer experiences. Increasing requirement of automated screening processes to meet these increasing demands will provide considerable growth prospects for airport automated security screening market.Ask for detailed Sample of this Research Report @Requirement to enhance passenger safety and misuse of access through contractor and staff ID badges is expected to drive the demands for biometric technologyIn June 2016, U.S. Customs and Border Protection deployed biometric based facial recognition exit systems at Washington Dulles International Airport. Moreover, international demands for installation of biometric systems have registered significant surge over the past few years. Large potential of biometric technologies such as iris, retina, face, and fingerprint recognition, and advent of palm vein detection to scan the blood vein patterns through linking biometric information to identification will lead to considerable reduction in waiting times and human errors in the procedures. In conjunction with this, enhancement in safety protocols, cost efficiency and reliability of biometric systems will provide substantial growth prospects for the global airport automated security screening market during the forecast period.Passenger verification systems are projected to continue its dominance over the forecast period, followed by baggage and access control. Introduction of these biometric systems and compliance with other regulatory standards of the airports for individual verification is among the major factors driving demand for passenger screening. These include walk-through screening systems, liquid explosive detection systems, shoe metal detectors, and other human recognition systems.Asia Pacific accounted for the largest industry share in 2016, and is expected to continue its dominance over the forecast period. Growth can be largely attributed to the increasing infrastructure investments in the region that includes development of new as well as upgrade of the existing airport infrastructure. Some of these include Pudong International Airport Expansion (China), Selatar (Singapore), and Taiwan Taoyuan International (Taiwan).Developed economies in U.S. and Europe are expected to witnessed stable growth prospects, however will find substantial demands in upgradation and maintenance of the old systems over the forecast period. Moreover, high initial capital requirement for the infrastructure is still expected to hinder the financially weak economies.Key airport automated security screening market players include CEIA, Nuctech, SDI, Smiths Detection, Autoclear, American Science & Engineering, Analogic, Rapiscan Systems, Morpho Detection (Safran), L-3 communications security and detection systems, and Optosecurity. Quality, innovation, cost efficiency, aftermarket of the product offerings are the significant factors that will help the participants gain better sales and profit margins.Request for Customization As per your Need :About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr. ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email: sales@coherentmarketinsights.comVisit our news Website :
Flavored Milk Market to Actively Foray into Emerging Consumer Marketplaces During 2015-2025

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Overview:Flavored milk is a dairy drink produced with milk, sugar, colorings, and additional flavor and sweetener. It offers some vital nutrients such as calcium, potassium, protein, phosphorus, vitamins A, D and B12, niacin and riboflavin. The flavored milk is generally available in different flavors such as strawberry, chocolate and vanilla flavors in fat free and low fat ranges.The Global Flavored Milk industry is at nascent stage as the consumption is still low as compared to other drinks such as carbonated soft drinks. Upbeat consumer perceptions about the various health benefits of milk are creating prospects for flavored drinks consumption across the World. This will escalate the overall flavored milk market globally.Request For Report Sample@Global Flavored Milk Market Segmentation:Global Flavored Milk industry can be divided on the basis of types of ingredients such as calcium propionate, hydrocolloids, natural colors, natural flavors, food and beverage enzymes, food and beverage emulsifiers, food and beverage texturants, food phosphates, high intensity sweeteners, food and beverage preservatives, flavourant, food and beverage stabilizers and systems, food and beverage colorants, food and beverage sugar and its substitutes, and fruit concentrates. The industry can also be segmented on the basis of products such as high pressure processing and sodium reducing agents. Global Flavored Milk Market can also be segregated by types of packaging such as paper-based (cartons), plastic, glass, metal, and others.Global Flavored Milk Region-wise Outlook:Geographically, the Global Flavored Milk industry can be divided by major regions which include North America, Latin America, Western and Eastern Europe, Asia-Pacific region, Japan, Middle East and Africa. Presently, China captured the highest market share in the overall revenue of Global Flavored Milk market, followed by the U.S. and India holding second and third position respectively. In Asia, rising demand for flavored milk over the past few years were highly propelled by China, Indonesia, and India. In the next few years, the demand for flavored milk is anticipated to incline globally especially in Latin America and some regions of Asia.Global Flavored Milk Market Growth Drivers:Rising health consciousness and aspiration for nutritious and healthy food, changing lifestyle along with the change in consumers taste and preferences especially in developing countries are strengthening the growth of Global Flavored Milk industry. Besides this, consumers unscheduled eating habits due to busy working schedule are also fostering the demand for flavored milk in different parts of the world.Visit For TOC@Global Flavored Milk Market: Major Players:Some of the key players identified across the value chain in the Global Flavored Milk market includes Danone (France) and Kraft Foods Group (U.S.A.). These two companies have captured the major chunk in the Global Flavored Milk Industry. Besides this, there are other major players dominating in this industry such as Yili Industrial Group Company Limited (China), China Mengniu Dairy Company Limited, (Amul) Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation Limited (India), Mother Dairy Fruit and Vegetable Private Limited (India).ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACTFuture Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: http.futuremarketinsights.com
Poultry Feed Market to Reflect Steady Growth During 2015-2025

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Poultry feed market is a part of vast animal feed market and makes an important part of it as poultry is invariably consumed in most parts of the world. The concept of animal feed has been there in the market for several years especially in the developed markets. However, with the advent of globalization and rise in the standard of living of consumers, companies are expanding in the emerging markets of the world with improved products and wide range of options for each animal group. Poultry meat is the highest among others such as pork, beef and fish meat. Therefore, vast opportunity lies in the poultry feed segment.Poultry Feed Market: Drivers & RestraintsRising per capita income and widespread poultry diseases are the major driving factors of the poultry feed market globally. In addition, growth of domestic and international quick service restaurants in developing countries and demand for quality meat products by consumers has significantly contributed to the rising demand of poultry feed those regions. In 2014, Asia Pacific was the largest market in terms of poultry feed demand and revenue and would continue to dominate the market for several factors. The market growth is attributed to the higher standard of living among consumers coupled with shift towards away-from-home-eating. Manufacturers are closely working with the factory farmers to direct them towards higher yield of poultry thereby increasing their return on investment (ROI). For instance, Cargill Inc. were engaged closely with Malaysia based TD Poultry to deliver best poultry solution. As a result, TD Poultry could achieve remarkable results in broilers with 1.63 feed conversion rates. Also, 2.35 kg body weight was achieved in 35 days, down from previous 40 days.Request For Report Sample@Poultry Feed Market: SegmentationThe various type of poultry feed additives available in the market consists of antibiotics, vitamins, antioxidants, amino acids, feed enzymes and feed acidifiers. Feed acidifiers are the largest among all other poultry additive segment across the world. The regional segmentation includes North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America and Middle East & Africa. Asia Pacific is the largest market followed by North America. On the basis of type, the poultry feed market can be segmented as broilers, layers, turkey and others. The consumption of meat varies from region to region, for instance, in North America, broilers is the most preferred meat category and antibiotics falls under the largest category under the feed additives segment.Poultry Feed Market: Market OverviewPoultry feed is required to increase the feed conversion ratio by improving gut micro flora thereby enhancing animals health. It also maintains animal health by preventing diseases among them. The manufacturers are concentrating more on the developing markets to tap the under penetrated feed market in countries such as Vietnam, India, Indonesia, South Africa, Lebanon and Turkey. These markets offer greater opportunities to increase revenue and sales with higher per capita expenditure on quality food. Moreover, it is a proven fact that with rise in per capita income, people tend to consume more meat and meat products. Therefore the poultry feed market is expected to grow at a healthy CAGR through the forecast period (2015-2020).Poultry Feed Market: Recent DevelopmentPlayers such as Novus International, Inc. and Kemin group continue to deliver new products for poultry farmers. In November 2012, Novus International, Inc. launched AVIMATRIX- a feed solution for optimized broiler performance by acting over gut environment through targeted and controlled release of compounds in the broilers gut. There is an increasing demand of solution oriented customized products from the poultry farmers in the emerging markets. In May 2013, a South African firm AgriProtein Technologies bagged the Innovation Prize for Africa (IPA) for developing a commercial method to develop animal feed through maggots.Visit For TOC@Poultry Feed Market: Key PlayersKey global players of the poultry feed market include Alltech Inc., ADM (Archer Daniels Midland Company), ABF Plc (Associated British Food), BASF (Badishce Anilin und Soda Fabrik), Charoen Popkhand Foods, Cargill Inc., Evonik Industries AG, CHR.Hansen Holdings A/S, Novus International Inc, Nutreco NV, Royal DSM N.V., DLG Group and InVivo NSA.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACTFuture Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: http.futuremarketinsights.com
Analysis of Airborne Weapon Delivery Systems Market - Global Industry Insights, Trends, Outlook and Forecast till 2025

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Airborne weapon delivery systems market that have gained significant industry traction owing to investments in the procurement and development of the next generation aerial platforms that can leverage the countrys defense and attack capabilities. Some of the major countries with significant defense budgets investing in these platforms include China, the U.S., Russia, France, Germany, and the UK, in turn creating a highly conducive environment for growth of the airborne weapon delivery systems market.Growing territorial disputes among some countries and the increasing concerns for countermeasures against terrorist activities will drive the industry growthSome of the major territorial disputes in 2016 were among the countries that included Russia and Ukraine for Crimea; China and Japan for the uninhabited islands in the East China Sea; India and Pakistan for Jammu & Kashmir, Israel and Palestine for the Gaza Strip, Golan Heights, and West Bank. Several other regional disputes, majorly concentrated in the Asia Pacific and the Africa are expected to drive the demands for the attack and defense activities. These airborne weapon delivery systems enhance the mission success rates at relatively lower expenses and reduced risk of human lives. Moreover, increasing concerns to monitor the international borders and safeguard the population against the proliferating terrorist activities have led to increased focus on necessitating defense organizations to acquire high endurance attack platforms and deep strike capabilities.Ask for detailed Sample of this Research Report @Unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs) have gained significant industry traction owing to its relatively low costsDevelopment in the small explosives and missiles that can be used for attack through these unmanned aircraft and drones have become key focus of the defense agencies. Moreover, requirement to reduce the loss of man power and paradigm shift development of air to ground missile attack efficiency is expected to present considerable growth demands. Technology participants in the industry are increasingly emphasizing development of highly compact electro-optic and infrared imaging (EO/IR) systems that can be incorporated in these UAVs. This will enhance the functionality of these systems in surveillance capabilities and target detection. Moreover, miniaturization of the guidance technologies and increased global inclination towards the procurement of UAVs featured with these technologies will in turn drive airborne weapon delivery systems market growth.Rotary wing and UCAVs have witnessed significant surge over the past few years, are expected to witness highest growthMajor economies across the globe are increasingly emphasizing on minimizing the number of casualties in risky missions and are inclined towards conducting unmanned aerial attacks. This in turn has led to an increased deployment of rotary wing and UCAV. These are equipped with synthetic aperture radar (SAR) systems, laser designators, infrared cameras, and countermeasure systems that consistently transmit data to the control centers or users. Incorporation of these technologies enable command, control, and mission critical related data transmission from the mobile ground control systems.High initial investment and stringent regulatory landscape for the new industry entrants is expected to present considerable challenge for the new industry entrantsU.S. demands are expected to dominate the regional landscape owing to several factors that prominently include, high inclination towards these solutions, presence of significant industry participants and the large annual defense budgets. Moreover, according to press release in July 2017, U.S. is making significant efforts to develop countermeasures for such unmanned aerial vehicle invasions. Asia Pacific will continue to remain the second most attractive regional segments owing to presence of considerably high number of regional conflicts and the requirement to uphold the competition with neighboring animosity.Egypt, France, Germany, and the UK are expected to present substantial demands owing to initiation of number of anti-extremist operations. Additionally, these countries have made considerable efforts in procurement and development of several advanced aerial platforms to ensure efficient counter measures in the emergency situations and improve the combat readiness in such situations.Airborne weapon delivery systems market is fragmented in nature owing to the presence of number of major players competing for the industry shares. Key players include Boeing, BAE Systems, General Dynamics, Elbit Systems, CMC Electronics, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, and Saab.Request for Customization As per your Need :About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr. ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email: sales@coherentmarketinsights.comVisit our news Website :
Aviation Cyber Security Market - Global Industry Insights, Trends, Outlook, and Opportunity Analysis, 2017-2025

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The aviation industry plays a major role in the global economy GDP. In 2014, the aviation industry supports US $2.7 trillion i.e. 3.5% of the global total GDP. The increasing cyber-attack become one of the major issues which directly affect the business. For instance, According to Reuters, in June 2015 a polish aircraft was grounded due to Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack according to airline official. Similarly, according to central of internet security report, in the U.S 75 airports were impacted by advanced persistent threat attack in 2013. This increasing cyber attacks, increased the importance of cyber security solutions in aviation system which become the major factor for the growth of the aviation cyber security market, globally.Request For Sample Copy of this Research Report :The airline management application held the dominating position in 2016 and is projected to retain its dominance throughout the forecast period. Due to improvement in customer services, financial results and lift operational efficiency have provided the dominant position to airline management in aviation cyber security management market.North America holds the largest market share in the global aviation cyber security marketOn the basis of geography, the global aviation cyber security market is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, Africa, and Middle East. North America accounts for largest market share in the global aviation cyber security market and is projected to retain its dominance throughout the forecast period. The U.S and Canada are some of the major countries that fuels the market of aviation cyber security in North America region. The increasing demand for technically advance cyber security solutions and dominance of digitalization have provided the dominating position to the North America region. In addition, owing to highly presence of IT companies in the U.S. have fuels the market in this region.Key players in the Global Aviation Cyber Security MarketSome of the major players operating in the global aviation cyber security market are Rockwell Collins, Inc., Raytheon Company, Palo Alto Networks, Inc., Harris Corporation, General Electric Company, General Dynamics Corporation, Computer Sciences Corporation, BluVector Inc., BAE Systems, Inc., and Airbus Defence, and Space SA. The new product launch is one of the major strategy adopted by the market players for example: In June 2017, Rockwell Collins have officially announced that they have launched an ARINC PaxLink, a Passenger Service System for airlines.Request For Customization as per Your Need :About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr. ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email: sales@coherentmarketinsights.comVisit Our New Website:
Testing and Analysis Services Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2015 - 2023

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Testing and Analysis Services Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2015 - 2023" to its huge collection of research reports.This report on the testing and analysis services market studies the current as well as future prospects of the market. The stakeholders of this report include testing and analysis companies catering to Pharmaceutical, biomedical, petroleum, energy, food and beverages, mining, metal, and other heavy industry. In addition, the report also include extensive coverage of instruments for testing services which may help equipment firms to understand this market form consumer prospective.This report comprises an elaborate executive summary with a market snapshot providing overall information of various segments and sub-segments considered in the study scope. The section also provides with overall information and data analysis of the testing and analysis services market globally with respect to the leading market segments based on sample type, analysis type, industry, and geography. On the basis of sample types, the market has been further categorized into water, soil/sediment, clay mineral, metal alloy, biological sample, food, chemicals, corrosion, oil and gas, and minerals and ores. By analysis type the market has been classified into elemental, organic, isotopic, particle size, mineralogical, metallurgical, petroleum and petrochemical, biomedical and biopharmaceutical, and others. The industry covered in the report includes food/beverages, pharma/medical device, energy, minerals, chemicals and other commodities, environment and metal and alloy. The market revenue in terms of USD million for the period between 2013 and 2023 along with the compound annual growth rate (CAGR %) from 2015 to 2023 are provided for all segments under sample type, analysis type, and industry considering 2014 as the base year.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @On the basis of geography, the market has segmented into: North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Rest of the World (RoW). Market revenue in terms of USD million for the period between 2013 and 2023 along with the compound annual growth rate (CAGR %) from 2015 to 2023 are provided for all region classified under the geography, considering 2014 as the base year.Each of the segments has been analyzed in detail for market trends, recent developments, outlook, and opportunities. The market overview section of the report explores market dynamics such as drivers, restraints, and opportunities that currently have strong impact on the global elemental analysis services market and could influence the market in the future as well. Market attractiveness analysis has been provided in the market overview section in order to explain the intensity of competition between leading market players. Porters five forces analysis is also explained in this section to understand the market considering different parameters that have an impact on the sustainability of the companies operating in the market.The competitive scenario among different market players is evaluated through market share analysis in the competitive landscape section of the report. All these factors would help market players to take strategic decisions in order to strengthen their positions and expand their respective market shares globally. The report also profiles major players in the testing and analysis services market based on various attributes such as company overview, financial overview, business strategies, product portfolio, and recent developments.Major players operating in the testing and analysis service market include Bureau Veritas , SGS S.A., Intertek Group plc, ALS Global, Eurofins, Exova, TUV Rheinland, Acuren, Maxxam, Koninklijke Philips N.V., TUV SUD, Applus, and LECO Corporation. Many of these players continuously innovate by developing new testing methodologies with technological advances in order to maintain their positions in the global market.Table of Contents1. Introduction1.1. Report Description1.2. Market Segmentation1.3. Research Methodology2. Executive Summary2.1. Global Testing and Analysis Services Market Share, by Geography, 20142023 (US$ Mn)2.2. Global Testing and Analysis Services Market, by Analysis Type, 2014 (US$ Mn)2.3. Global Testing and Analysis Services: Market Snapshot3. Testing and Analysis Services Market Industry Analysis3.1. Introduction3.2. Future Trend and Development3.3. Market Dynamics3.3.1. Drivers3.3.1.1. Regulation and Standard3.3.1.2. Growing Trend of Outsourcing3.3.1.3. Manufacturing Migration and Short Product Life Cycle3.3.1.4. Global Trade3.3.2. Restraints3.3.2.1. High Capital Requirements3.3.2.2. Competition and Highly Competitive Pricing3.3.3. Opportunities3.3.3.1. Investment in Emerging Markets of Asia Pacific3.4. Porters Five Force Analysis3.5. Market Attractiveness Analysis Testing and Analysis Services Market, by Geography (2014) (%)3.6. Competitive Landscape  Testing and Analysis Services Market, by Key Players, 2014 (%)Get Complete TOC With Tables and Figures @4. Market Segmentation  By Sample Type4.1. Introduction4.2. Global Non/Elemental Analysis Services Market Revenue, 20132023 (US$ Mn)4.3. Global Water Non/Elemental Analysis Services Market Revenue, 20132023 (US$ Mn4.4. Global Soil/Sediment Non/Elemental Analysis Services Market Revenue, 20132023 (US$ Mn)4.5. Global Clay Minerals Non/Elemental Analysis Services Market Revenue, 20132023 (US$ Mn)4.6. Global Metal Alloy Non/Elemental Analysis Services Market Revenue, 20132023 (US$ Mn)4.7. Global Biological Sample Non/Elemental Analysis Services Market Revenue, 20132023 (US$ Mn)4.8. Global Food/Beverages Non/Elemental Analysis Services Market Revenue, 20132023 (US$ Mn)4.9. Global Chemicals Non/Elemental Analysis Services Market Revenue, 20132023 (US$ Mn)4.10. Global Corrosion Non/Elemental Analysis Services Market Revenue, 20132023 (US$ Mn)4.11. Global Oil and Fluid Non/Elemental Analysis Services Market Revenue, 20132023 (US$ Mn)4.12. Global Mineral and Ores Non/Elemental Analysis Services Market Revenue, 20132023 (US$ Mn)5. Market Segmentation  By Analysis Type5.1. Introduction5.2. Global Testing and Analysis Services Market Revenue, by Analysis Type 20132014 (US$ Mn)5.3. Global Testing and Services Market Revenue, Analysis Type 20132023 (US$ Mn)5.4. Global Elemental Analysis Services Market Revenue, Analysis Type 20132023 (US$ Mn)5.5. Global Non/Elemental Analysis Services Market Revenue by Analysis Type and Detection Type 2013 and 2023 (US$ Mn)Continue...About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.For More Information Kindly Contact:ResearchMozMr. Nachiket Ghumare,Tel: +1-518-621-2074USA-Canada Toll Free: 866-997-4948Email: sales@researchmoz.usFollow us on LinkedIn @Follow me on @
Komarraju nominated as SIU Carbondale interim provost

Meera Komarraju, dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, will become the universitys interim provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs pending approval of the universitys Board of Trustees.

SIU Chancellor Carlo Montemagno said Komarrajus appointment, which will be effective April 13 if approved, fills an important gap in the universitys leadership. The provosts responsibilities have been divided among other members of the provosts office since the retirement of previous interim provost Susan Ford in June 2017.

The universitys provost oversees the academic colleges, library affairs, the graduate school, off-campus programs, the honors program, information technology and the centers for international education and teaching excellence.

Dr. Komarraju is well-qualified to move the revitalization of our academic programs forward, Montemagno said. She is highly respected across campus as an administrator, teacher and researcher who has displayed a strong commitment to SIU throughout her career. She possesses the experience and skills needed to succeed as interim provost.

As dean of the College of Liberal Arts, Komarraju currently oversees the largest academic unit on campus. She came to SIU as a lecturer in 1986 and has served as director of the Department of Psychologys undergraduate program, chair of the department, and associate dean for student and curricular affairs in the College of Liberal Arts before her 2015 appointment as dean.

She is a professor of psychology and holds a doctoral degree in applied social psychology from the University of Cincinnati and doctoral and masters degree in industrial-organizational psychology from Osmania University in India. She also holds a masters degree in sociology from Osmania University and a bachelors degree in psychology, philosophy and English literature from Nizam College in India.

Komarraju is widely published in her field and is a fellow of the American Psychological Association. She is a past recipient of the universitys Outstanding Teacher of the Year Award.

If approved by the Board of Trustees, I would be deeply honored to serve SIU Carbondale and advance it in partnership with our students, staff, faculty, campus administrators, alumni and community members Komarraju said.

We have an extremely strong base with outstanding academic programs as well as talented faculty members and resourceful staff members who are devoted to our students, she added. We will continue to work towards raising our academic profile, recognizing that strong academic programs, high quality research and excellent teaching are at the heart of the university.
Analysis of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Market - Global Industry Insights, Trends, Outlook and Forecast till 2025

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Synthetic aperture radar market refers to the space and air-based SAR that functions on the principle of transmission and reception of the reflected signals that interact with the ground and aid in the imaging, tracking, detection and characterization. SAR finds significant applications over the conventional electro optical (EO) imaging systems, primarily owing to microwaves being able to penetrate through clouds and provide consistent 24 hour, all weather data efficiency.Increasing traction of UAVs and UCAVs is expected to present considerable market traction through the forecast periodIncreasing application of UAVs and their requirements for security and countermeasure operations has led to significant advancements in the electronic component integration that includes command, control, communications computers, intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance systems (C4IRS) to support military and defense operations. This in turn leads to increased utilization of these UAVs in surveillance and attack missions by the defense agencies and garner high traction to the synthetic aperture radar (SAR) market.Ask for detailed Sample of this Research Report @Incorporation of advanced control system software tools to seamlessly support planning, implementing, seamless communication, data processing and dissemination has led to increased applications. Moreover, substantial potential of utilization for these systems in commercial applications that include agriculture, energy, financial commodities and shipping industries would present significant opportunities for industry growth.Defense based applications are expected to garner highest revenue margins over the forecast periodThese find significant applications in aircrafts and satellites that prove instrumental in tracking missiles, rendering the images of the terrain and targets below the airborne vehicles. For instance, in July 2017, upgraded aircraft by the U.S. Air Force, the F-22 featured a SAR systems. According to Coherent Market Insights, global defense spending projected to increase at a CAGR of 3% over the forecast period is expected to present significant growth potential over the same period.Space-based SAR is expected to continue to dominate the industry revenue through 2025Space-based SAR segment employs operating frequencies or microwave illuminators that makes the sensor imaging unaffected by even in hostile weather conditions. Moreover, significant applications for research is expected to consistently fuel the overall industry demands.U.S. dominated the synthetic aperture radar market share in 2016, is expected to continue its dominance over the forecast periodCollaboration of the US Department of Defense (DoD) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has led to significant increase in R&D activities for space-based SAR satellites. Moreover, the country contributes to over 40% of the global defense spending. These factors are expected to fuel the regional demands for the business growth. Growing defense budgets and research operations in the Asia Pacific that specifically include China, South Korea, India, and Japan are expected to provide significant growth opportunities.Industry is characterized by the fragmented market presence of large players dominating the regional industry share. Requirement to strengthen their industry foothold, players are increasingly investing in product differentiation strategies and establishing partnerships with the large end users to garner increased usability in low cost operations. For instance, in June 2017, Pentagon announced its plans to capitalize on commercial opportunities through establishing ties with the firms in the U.S. Key participants in the synthetic aperture radar market include Airbus Defence and Space, Lockheed Martin, Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), Thales, Northrop Grumman, SSTL, MDA Information Systems, Raytheon and Sandia National Laboratories.Request for Customization As per your Need :About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr. ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email: sales@coherentmarketinsights.comVisit our news Website :
Global Topical Skin Adhesive Market Professional Survey Report 2018 - Aesculap, Exofin, Medline, Liquiband, Histoacryl,

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Global Topical Skin Adhesive Market Professional Survey Report 2018" to its huge collection of research reports.This report studies Topical Skin Adhesive in Global market, especially in North America, China, Europe, Southeast Asia, Japan and India, with production, revenue, consumption, import and export in these regions, from 2012 to 2016, and forecast to 2022.This report focuses on top manufacturers in global market, with production, price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer, coveringAesculapExofinMedlineLiquibandHistoacrylEthiconMedtronicDow CorningEastern VisionTo Get Sample Copy of Report visit @On the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoN-Butyl-2-CyanoacrylateIsobuty1-2-Cyanoacry-lateAlkyl-2-CyanoacrylateBy Application, the market can be split intoHospitalClinicOtherBy Regions, this report covers (we can add the regions/countries as you want)North AmericaChinaEuropeSoutheast AsiaJapanIndiaTable of ContentsGlobal Topical Skin Adhesive Market Professional Survey Report 20171 Industry Overview of Topical Skin Adhesive1.1 Definition and Specifications of Topical Skin Adhesive1.1.1 Definition of Topical Skin Adhesive1.1.2 Specifications of Topical Skin Adhesive1.2 Classification of Topical Skin Adhesive1.2.1 N-Butyl-2-Cyanoacrylate1.2.2 Isobuty1-2-Cyanoacry-late1.2.3 Alkyl-2-Cyanoacrylate1.3 Applications of Topical Skin Adhesive1.3.1 Hospital1.3.2 Clinic1.3.3 Other1.4 Market Segment by Regions1.4.1 North America1.4.2 China1.4.3 Europe1.4.4 Southeast Asia1.4.5 Japan1.4.6 India2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Topical Skin Adhesive2.1 Raw Material and Suppliers2.2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Topical Skin Adhesive2.3 Manufacturing Process Analysis of Topical Skin Adhesive2.4 Industry Chain Structure of Topical Skin Adhesive3 Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants Analysis of Topical Skin Adhesive3.1 Capacity and Commercial Production Date of Global Topical Skin Adhesive Major Manufacturers in 20163.2 Manufacturing Plants Distribution of Global Topical Skin Adhesive Major Manufacturers in 20163.3 R&D Status and Technology Source of Global Topical Skin Adhesive Major Manufacturers in 20163.4 Raw Materials Sources Analysis of Global Topical Skin Adhesive Major Manufacturers in 20164 Global Topical Skin Adhesive Overall Market Overview4.1 2012-2017E Overall Market Analysis4.2 Capacity Analysis4.2.1 2012-2017E Global Topical Skin Adhesive Capacity and Growth Rate Analysis4.2.2 2016 Topical Skin Adhesive Capacity Analysis (Company Segment)4.3 Sales Analysis4.3.1 2012-2017E Global Topical Skin Adhesive Sales and Growth Rate Analysis4.3.2 2016 Topical Skin Adhesive Sales Analysis (Company Segment)4.4 Sales Price Analysis4.4.1 2012-2017E Global Topical Skin Adhesive Sales Price4.4.2 2016 Topical Skin Adhesive Sales Price Analysis (Company Segment)Get Complete TOC With Tables and Figures @5 Topical Skin Adhesive Regional Market Analysis5.1 North America Topical Skin Adhesive Market Analysis5.1.1 North America Topical Skin Adhesive Market Overview5.1.2 North America 2012-2017E Topical Skin Adhesive Local Supply, Import, Export, Local Consumption Analysis5.1.3 North America 2012-2017E Topical Skin Adhesive Sales Price Analysis5.1.4 North America 2016 Topical Skin Adhesive Market Share Analysis5.2 China Topical Skin Adhesive Market Analysis5.2.1 China Topical Skin Adhesive Market Overview5.2.2 China 2012-2017E Topical Skin Adhesive Local Supply, Import, Export, Local Consumption Analysis5.2.3 China 2012-2017E Topical Skin Adhesive Sales Price Analysis5.2.4 China 2016 Topical Skin Adhesive Market Share Analysis5.3 Europe Topical Skin Adhesive Market Analysis5.3.1 Europe Topical Skin Adhesive Market Overview5.3.2 Europe 2012-2017E Topical Skin Adhesive Local Supply, Import, Export, Local Consumption Analysis5.3.3 Europe 2012-2017E Topical Skin Adhesive Sales Price Analysis5.3.4 Europe 2016 Topical Skin Adhesive Market Share AnalysisContinue...About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.For More Information Kindly Contact:ResearchMozMr. Nachiket Ghumare,Tel: +1-518-621-2074USA-Canada Toll Free: 866-997-4948Email: sales@researchmoz.usFollow us on LinkedIn @Follow me on @
United States Whipping Agents Market Report 2018

United States Whipping Agents Market Report 2018

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The United States Whipping Agents Market Report 2018 is a professional and in-depth study on the current state of the Whipping Agents industry.Firstly, the report provides a basic overview of the industry including definitions, classifications, applications and industry chain structure. The Whipping Agents Industry analysis is provided for the international market including development history, competitive landscape analysis, and major regions development status.Secondly, development policies and plans are discussed as well as manufacturing processes and cost structures. This report also states import/export, supply and consumption figures as well as cost, price, revenue and gross margin by regions (United States, EU, China and Japan), and other regions can be added.Then, the report focuses on global major leading industry players with information such as company profiles, product picture and specification, capacity, production, price, cost, revenue and contact information. Upstream raw materials, equipment and downstream consumers analysis is also carried out. Whats more, the Whipping Agents industry development trends and marketing channels are analyzed.Finally, the feasibility of new investment projects is assessed, and overall research conclusions are offered.In a word, the report provides major statistics on the state of the industry and is a valuable source of guidance and direction for companies and individuals interested in the market.Ask a complete report sample:In this report, the United States Whipping Agents market is valued at USD XX million in 2017 and is expected to reach USD XX million by the end of 2025, growing at a CAGR of XX% between 2017 and 2025.Geographically, this report splits the United States market into seven regions:The WestSouthwestThe Middle AtlanticNew EnglandThe SouthThe Midwestwith sales (volume), revenue (value), market share and growth rate of Whipping Agents in these regions, from 2013 to 2025 (forecast).United States Whipping Agents market competition by top manufacturers/players, with Whipping Agents sales volume, price, revenue (Million USD) and market share for each manufacturer/player; the top players includingWacker Chemie AGKevitMeggle FoodsBASFAvril Group(Oelon)Univar Inc.Lake FoodsAcatrisIngrizo NVIngredion IncOn the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoType IType IIOn the basis on the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, sales volume, market share and growth rate for each application, includingDessertsIce CreamsCakesConfectioneryOthersTable of contents:Chapter 1 - Whipping Agents OverviewChapter 2 - United States Whipping Agents Market Competition by Players/SuppliersChapter 3 - United States Whipping Agents Sales (Volume) and Revenue (Value) by Region (2013-2018)Chapter 4 - United States Whipping Agents Sales (Volume) and Revenue (Value) by Type (Product Category) (2013-2018)Chapter 5 - United States Whipping Agents Sales (Volume) by Application (2013-2018)Chapter 6 - United States Whipping Agents Players/Suppliers Profiles and Sales DataChapter 7 - Whipping Agents Manufacturing Cost AnalysisChapter 8 - Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream BuyersChapter 9 - Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/TradersChapter 10 - Market Effect Factors AnalysisChapter 11- United States Whipping Agents Market Size (Value and Volume) Forecast (2018-2025)Chapter 12 - Research Findings and ConclusionChapter 13 - AppendixContact Details:Company Name: QYResearch CO.,LIMITED | focus on Market Survey and ResearchTina| Sales ManagersTel: 0086-20-22093278(CN)Email: sales@qyresearcheurope.com or tinaning@qyresearch.comWeb:QYResearch, established in 2007, focuses on custom research, management consulting, IPO consulting, industry chain research, and data base &seminar services. The company owns large basic databases (such as National Bureau of Statistics Database, Customs Import and Export Database, Industry Association Database, etc.), expert resources (including industry experts who own more than 10 years experiences on marketing or R&D in industries of energy, automotive, chemicals, medical ICT consumer goods, etc.), professional survey team (the team members obtained more than 3 years market survey experience and more than 2 years deep expert interview experience), and excellent data analysis team (SPSS statistics and PPT graphics process team).Room 2901 VILI International Building No.167 Linhe West Road
Asia-Pacific Oil and Gas Pipeline Leak Detector Market Report 2017 - Honeywell International Inc. Schneider,

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Asia-Pacific Oil and Gas Pipeline Leak Detector Market Report 2017" to its huge collection of research reports.In this report, the Asia-Pacific Oil and Gas Pipeline Leak Detector market is valued at USD XX million in 2016 and is expected to reach USD XX million by the end of 2022, growing at a CAGR of XX% between 2016 and 2022.Geographically, this report split Asia-Pacific into several key Regions, with sales (K Units), revenue (Million USD), market share and growth rate of Oil and Gas Pipeline Leak Detector for these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast), includingChinaJapanSouth KoreaTaiwanIndiaSoutheast AsiaAustraliaTo Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Asia-Pacific Oil and Gas Pipeline Leak Detector market competition by top manufacturers/players, with Oil and Gas Pipeline Leak Detector sales volume, price, revenue (Million USD) and market share for each manufacturer/player; the top players includingSiemensHoneywell International Inc.SchneiderPentair Thermal ManagementPSI AGKROHNE Messtechnik GmbHATMOS InternationalPerma-Pipe Inc.FLIR Systems Inc.Pure Technologies Ltd.TTK-Liquid Leak Detection SystemsAREVA NPOn the basis of product, this report displays the sales volum, revenue, product price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoBy TechnologyMass-Volume BalanceAcoustic/UltrasonicFiber OpticsVapor SensingBy Equipment TypeFlowmetersAcoustic SensorsCable SensorsOn the basis on the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, sales volume, market share and growth rate for each application, includingOnshoreOffshoreTable of ContentsAsia-Pacific Oil and Gas Pipeline Leak Detector Market Report 20171 Oil and Gas Pipeline Leak Detector Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Oil and Gas Pipeline Leak Detector1.2 Classification of Oil and Gas Pipeline Leak Detector by Product Category1.2.1 Asia-Pacific Oil and Gas Pipeline Leak Detector Market Size (Sales) Comparison by Types (2012-2022)1.2.2 Asia-Pacific Oil and Gas Pipeline Leak Detector Market Size (Sales) Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20161.2.3 Mass-Volume Balance1.2.4 Acoustic/Ultrasonic1.2.5 Fiber Optics1.2.6 Vapor Sensing1.3 Asia-Pacific Oil and Gas Pipeline Leak Detector Market by Application/End Users1.3.1 Asia-Pacific Oil and Gas Pipeline Leak Detector Sales (Volume) and Market Share Comparison by Applications (2012-2022)1.3.2 Onshore1.3.3 Offshore1.4 Asia-Pacific Oil and Gas Pipeline Leak Detector Market by Region1.4.1 Asia-Pacific Oil and Gas Pipeline Leak Detector Market Size (Value) Comparison by Region (2012-2022)1.4.2 China Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.3 Japan Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.4 South Korea Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.5 Taiwan Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.6 India Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.7 Southeast Asia Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.8 Australia Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.5 Asia-Pacific Market Size (Value and Volume) of Oil and Gas Pipeline Leak Detector (2012-2022)1.5.1 Asia-Pacific Oil and Gas Pipeline Leak Detector Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2022)1.5.2 Asia-Pacific Oil and Gas Pipeline Leak Detector Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2022)2 Asia-Pacific Oil and Gas Pipeline Leak Detector Competition by Players/Suppliers, Region, Type and Application2.1 Asia-Pacific Oil and Gas Pipeline Leak Detector Market Competition by Players/Suppliers2.1.1 Asia-Pacific Oil and Gas Pipeline Leak Detector Sales Volume and Market Share of Key Players/Suppliers (2012-2017)2.1.2 Asia-Pacific Oil and Gas Pipeline Leak Detector Revenue and Share by Players/Suppliers (2012-2017)2.2 Asia-Pacific Oil and Gas Pipeline Leak Detector (Volume and Value) by Type2.2.1 Asia-Pacific Oil and Gas Pipeline Leak Detector Sales and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)2.2.2 Asia-Pacific Oil and Gas Pipeline Leak Detector Revenue and Market Share by Type (2012-2017)2.3 Asia-Pacific Oil and Gas Pipeline Leak Detector (Volume) by Application2.4 Asia-Pacific Oil and Gas Pipeline Leak Detector (Volume and Value) by Region2.4.1 Asia-Pacific Oil and Gas Pipeline Leak Detector Sales and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)2.4.2 Asia-Pacific Oil and Gas Pipeline Leak Detector Revenue and Market Share by Region (2012-2017)3 China Oil and Gas Pipeline Leak Detector (Volume, Value and Sales Price)3.1 China Oil and Gas Pipeline Leak Detector Sales and Value (2012-2017)3.1.1 China Oil and Gas Pipeline Leak Detector Sales Volume and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.1.2 China Oil and Gas Pipeline Leak Detector Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017)3.1.3 China Oil and Gas Pipeline Leak Detector Sales Price Trend (2012-2017)3.2 China Oil and Gas Pipeline Leak Detector Sales Volume and Market Share by Type3.3 China Oil and Gas Pipeline Leak Detector Sales Volume and Market Share by ApplicationGet Complete TOC With Tables and Figures @4 Japan Oil and Gas Pipeline Leak Detector (Volume, Value and Sales Price)4.1 Japan Oil and Gas Pipeline Leak Detector Sales and Value (2012-2017)4.1.1 Japan Oil and Gas Pipeline Leak Detector Sales Volume and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.1.2 Japan Oil and Gas Pipeline Leak Detector Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017)4.1.3 Japan Oil and Gas Pipeline Leak Detector Sales Price Trend (2012-2017)4.2 Japan Oil and Gas Pipeline Leak Detector Sales Volume and Market Share by Type4.3 Japan Oil and Gas Pipeline Leak Detector Sales Volume and Market Share by Application5 South Korea Oil and Gas Pipeline Leak Detector (Volume, Value and Sales Price)5.1 South Korea Oil and Gas Pipeline Leak Detector Sales and Value (2012-2017)5.1.1 South Korea Oil and Gas Pipeline Leak Detector Sales Volume and Growth Rate (2012-2017)5.1.2 South Korea Oil and Gas Pipeline Leak Detector Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2017)5.1.3 South Korea Oil and Gas Pipeline Leak Detector Sales Price Trend (2012-2017)5.2 South Korea Oil and Gas Pipeline Leak Detector Sales Volume and Market Share by Type5.3 South Korea Oil and Gas Pipeline Leak Detector Sales Volume and Market Share by ApplicationContinue...About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.For More Information Kindly Contact:ResearchMozMr. Nachiket Ghumare,Tel: +1-518-621-2074USA-Canada Toll Free: 866-997-4948Email: sales@researchmoz.usFollow us on LinkedIn @Follow me on @
Global Diabetes Therapy and Drug Delivery Market 2018 - Medtronic, Sanofi, Novo Nordisk, MannKind, Enteris BioPharma

Global Diabetes Therapy and Drug Delivery Market

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Apex Market Reports, recently published a detailed market research study focused on the Diabetes Therapy and Drug Delivery Market across the global, regional and country level. The report provides 360 analysis of Diabetes Therapy and Drug Delivery Market from view of manufacturers, regions, product types and end industries. The research report analyses and provides the historical data along with current performance of the global PP Pipe industry, and estimates the future trend of Diabetes Therapy and Drug Delivery on the basis of this detailed study. The study shares Diabetes Therapy and Drug Delivery performance both in terms of volume and revenue.The market research report explores the Diabetes Therapy and Drug Delivery Market across the globe along with major regions and countries. The research report provides a detailed study on each and every aspect of Diabetes Therapy and Drug Delivery Market. The research report studies the entire value chain from raw material to end user industries. The report also shares import/export statistics along with production and consumption for all major regions and countries. Moreover, the research study classifies the Diabetes Therapy and Drug Delivery Market based on major product types, application and end users industries of Diabetes Therapy and Drug Delivery. Besides, the report also covers geographical segmentation for Diabetes Therapy and Drug Delivery Market. The report further provides production, capacity, price per region, gross margin, production cost, for all major regions and countries listed in report.Get Free Sample Copy of Report Here:Top Manufacturers Analysis of This ReportAbbott LaboratoriesMedtronicSanofiNovo NordiskMannKindEnteris BioPharmaDexcomSenseonics HoldingMedtechJohnson & JohnsonSynertechZosano PharmaRelmada TherapeuticsEli LillyTransdermal SpecialtiesThe competitive landscape of the global market for Diabetes Therapy and Drug Delivery is determined by assessing the major industry participants, production capacity, production capacity utilization rate, Diabetes Therapy and Drug Delivery Markets production chain, pricing by each manufacturer and the revenue generated by each manufacturer in the Diabetes Therapy and Drug Delivery Market globally.Inquire Before Buying @The Global Diabetes Therapy and Drug Delivery Market 2018 is further analyzed on the basis of product pricing, Diabetes Therapy and Drug Delivery production volume, data pertaining to demand and Diabetes Therapy and Drug Delivery supply, and the revenue garnered by the product. The report provides upstream and downstream analysis covering major raw material used in manufacturing of Diabetes Therapy and Drug Delivery along with detailed manufacturing sources. The report also shares list of major raw material manufacturers along with their manufacturing locations. Detailed raw material price trend analysis along with manufacturing cost analysis is also incorporated into the report. Various methodical tools such as investment returns, feasibility, SWOT analysis and market attractiveness analysis has been implemented in the research study to present a comprehensive, detailed study of the industry for Diabetes Therapy and Drug Delivery across the world.About UsApex Market Reports offers elevating market research globally. We have collection of various syndicated reports of different categories. Apex Market Reports provides you to best services, weather youre searching for new trends in market or competitive scenario in emerging market.Customers can buys different reports across various categories such as Chemical and Material, Biotechnology, Healthcare, Food and beverages, Automobile and various sectors. Our Website offers safe and secure online ordering experience, convenient payment options.Contact UsFrank ValadezCorporate Sales Specialist155 North Wacker Drive, Suite 4250Chicago, IL 60606Phone: +17739042683Email id - sales@apexmarketreports.comWebsite -
Reasons Why the Breast Feeding Aid Market Will Witness A Decline During 2017 to 2025?

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Breastfeeding has boundless benefits. Breast milk has everything that baby needs, such as proteins, fats, minerals, iron, lactose and vitamin which is necessary for the babys growth. Breastfeeding keeps the baby away from all types of infections and allergies and creates an emotional bond between mother and baby.Request Sample Report@Breastfeeding might be a natural thing for many moms, but for some, it does not come naturally. They either have leaky breast or they experience pain whenever their babies latch on to the breast. These new-age mommies need little help and breastfeeding aids may help them during their feeding challenges. There are some must have breastfeeding aids such as breast milk pump, breast milk storage bag, nursing pillow, breast pads and ointment, breastfeeding cover, nursing bras, breastfeeding vitamins, silicon nipple shield, breast shells etc.Breast Feeding Aid Market: Advantages and disadvantagesFor many moms, breast feeding is deprivation from sleep. Sleep deprivation may lead to a decrease in their milk supply. In such situation, breast milk pump makes their lives easier. Through breastfeeding pumps women can extract some milk during the day which can be useful in feeding the baby at night with the help of a bottle. However, to store the milk which is extracted through breast milk pump is not possible without milk store bag. These are specially designed bags which ensure to keep the beneficial properties of the milk. To hold the baby in arms during the entire breastfeeding session can cause back pain. However, the nursing pillows not only support babies during a feed but also give comfort to moms which make easier the entire birth recovery period.Breast pads can absorb the milk from the leaky breast and keep the area dry, while nipple ointments reduce the pains and inflammation in nipples. Although the breastfeeding aids have many beneficial qualities, there are some disadvantages too which are associated with these aids. For instance, silicon nipple shield is recommended to many moms who have sore nipples, however, they can reduce the amount of milk that baby gets as baby do not get milk straight from the breast. The milk expression can also be decreased due to excessive use of breast milk pumps, while in the case of milk storage bag, they are not eco-friendly. They are not as strong as plastic or glass containers, so the chances of leaking are comparatively more in milk storage bags.Breast Feeding Aid Market: Drivers and restraintsThe rise in the population of working mother is one of the driving factors which is contributing to the growth of global breastfeeding aid market. Breast milk pumps are particularly popular among working moms, as they can ensure that their babies would get breast milk even when they are away from their babies at work for long hours. Increasing world population is also creating a positive impact on the breastfeeding aid market. Apart from this, technological advancement fast paced lifestyle, and favourable health care policies are creating robust development in global breastfeeding aid market. This market, however, has hindrances too and one of the major factors which are hampering the growth of global breastfeeding aid market is to launch a new device is a costly affair. The amount of investment in launching a new product is very high and even after investing this amount the approval process from FDA for these new products is tedious. Besides, there is a growing debate on the usage of breastfeeding aids which will act as a hindrance in the growth of global breastfeeding aids market.Breast Feeding Aid Market: RegionsNorth America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and rest of the world are some of the regions which are considered while covering this market. At present, North America is dominating the breastfeeding aid market with more than half of the market share followed by Europe. Due to rising population, favourable healthcare policies initiated by the government, and an increasing number of working mothers are some of the important factors in Asia-Pacific market which are fuelling the breastfeeding aid market.Request to View TOC @Breast Feeding Aid Market: Key playersPigeon, Tommee Tippee, Philips, Comotomo, Playtex, Nuby, Chicco, Medela and Summer Infant are some of the prominent players across the globe.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
Sales of Blood Sugar Lancets to Witness a Decline By the End of 2025

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Diabetes is a global scourge that is largely due to our modern day, fast-paced lifestyle. According to the International Diabetes Federation, 415 million adults were living with this disease in the year 2015, which is a sharp rise from 108 million in 1980. This corresponds to roughly 8.5% of the global population or one in eight adults. While it was largely seen in developed countries initially, the prevalence has unfortunately risen much faster in low and middle-income countries in recent times. While diabetics would fret over researching the correct insulin pumps or glucose meters, how many would consider devices in the blood sugar lancet market with the attention required? Most people use the device that comes along with their glucose meter, but these are also sold as a separate device.Request to View TOC @A blood sugar lancet is a small medical device used in capillary blood sampling. It looks similar to a scalpel but has a double-edged needle or blade. Blood sugar lancets are used to make minuscule punctures to obtain blood samples and are mostly disposable. The blood sugar lancet market is a part of the global diabetes market as they are commonly used to measure blood glucose levels. The depth of the skin to be penetrated can be adjusted for various levels of skin thickness. Some devices can even be used to measure the acid base status of an unborn foetus.Blood Sugar Lancets Market Drivers & RestraintsAs per the International Diabetes Federation, it is estimated that nearly 642 million people will suffer from diabetes by the year 2040. This amounts to nearly 1 in 10 adults. They are anticipated to be the biggest driver of the blood sugar lancet market in the coming decade. Diabetes is far more likely to occur in obese or senior citizens in any country. Western countries are already troubled by both these health predicaments. There is also an increasing number of both type 1 and type 2 cases of diabetes being reported in children and thus, governments will be under increasing pressure to tackle the issue head one. The blood sugar lancet market will allow people to monitor their glucose level, keep it under control and take the medication as and when required.The second driver of the blood sugar lancet market is the reimbursement options available, especially in developed countries. These devices are typically replaced every six to eight months which makes them expensive in the long run. Thus, patients prefer health insurance plans that cover most of the device expenditure. These plans also provide coverage for glucose test strips, glucose meters and diabetes testing supplies. In the U.S. alone, Medicare covers almost 80% of the cost of blood glucose monitoring devices like blood sugar lancets. The American Association of Diabetes Educators has also published a reimbursement procedure for primary caregivers, which categorically states that Medicare will reimburse medical service costs of diabetic patients.A key challenge in the blood sugar lancet market is a lack of patient awareness. The International Diabetes Federation estimates that almost one in two cases will remain undiagnosed. A person dies approximately every six seconds and 12% of global healthcare expenditure i.e. $673 billion is spent on treating diabetes. Diabetes can be a life-threatening disease if not properly treated. However, if it is, a patient can almost lead a completely normal life, with very few restrictions. Governments must educate their citizens about the disease and the self-monitoring of blood glucose with the help of devices like blood sugar lancets.Request Sample Report@Blood Sugar Lancets Market Key Market PlayersSome of the blood sugar lancets market key players are Abbott, Baye, LifeScan, and Roche. Between themselves, they account for a lions share of the entire blood glucose device market. (SMBG). Other companies include AgaMatrix, Dexcom, Nova Biomedical and Integrity Applications, DarioHealth International Biomedical, and Medisana.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
Global Nickel Alloy Welding Consumables Market Investigation and Growth Forecasted Until the End of 2025

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Market Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE) has been acting as an impressive data source when it comes to evaluating various industrial verticals. The research report titled Nickel Alloy Welding Consumables Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2017 - 2025 offers a clear insight about the Nickel Alloy Welding Consumables Market assessed over the global platform. This analysis proves beneficial for readers & new investors who are aiming to enter for Nickel Alloy Welding Consumables Market in the near future.To Request a Free Sample Report or View Summary of Report @global nickel alloy welding consumables market are moderately consolidated among a few well-established players. While one half of the overall demands for nickel alloy welding consumables are currently being served by prominent players such Colfax Corporation, Lincoln Electric Holdings Inc., Voestalpine Bohler Welding GmbH, ESAB, and Illinois Tool Works Inc., the other half of shares are distributed among various regional and domestic players. Essentially, the competition in the global nickel alloy welding consumables is very intense and the players are aspiring to strengthen their distribution network to gain larger shares. In addition to that, global players are indulged into marketing their product and spreading awareness on how they are better than the local products. However, regional and country-wide players are able to provide inexpensive products to local demands and are expected to survive the competition coming from major players.Global Nickel Alloy Welding Consumables Market to be worth US$5.6 bn by 2025The analysts of the report have projected the demand in the global nickel alloy welding consumables market to multiply at a formidable CAGR of 5.4% during the forecast period of 2017 to 2025. Revenue-wise, it has been estimated that the opportunities in the nickel alloy welding consumables market, across the world, will translate into US$5.6 bn by the end of 2025, considerably more than its evaluated valuation of US$3.5 bn in 2016. Based on product type, the market has been segmented into stick electrode and wires, with the latter providing for the most prominent chunk of demand. Based on alloy type, the market has been bifurcated into Monel and Inconel, whereas technology-wise, the market has been classified into shielded metal arc welding, gas metal arc welding, gas tungsten arc welding, flux cored arc welding, and submerged arc welding. Application-wise, the report explores the demand that can be expected out of end-use industries of oil and gas, power, construction, marine, and others, which includes transportation and manufacturing. Geographically, Asia Pacific has been highlighted as the most profitable region in the global nickel alloy welding consumables market, although Europe and North America also provide for healthy demands.Diverse End-use Industries to Sustain Strong Demand in the Near FutureThe market for nickel alloy welding consumables is primarily driven by the sustained demand coming from its diverse end-use industries. Nickel alloy welding consumables are used extensively because of their corrosion resistance, high temperature strength, and their special magnetic and thermal expansion properties. In applications where efficiency is required, such as oil & gas and aerospace, nickel wire works the best. Nickel alloy stick electrodes are used for out-of-position welding and can be used on thick metals. In addition to that, nickel based welding consumables find application in aircraft, gas turbines, steam turbines, power plants, medical applications, nuclear power systems, and the chemical and petrochemical industries, among others. Since nickel, and its most common partner for welding purposes  copper, are abundantly available in the Earths crust and hence, the market continues to counter the competition coming from substitutes.Global Nickel Alloy Welding Consumables Market: Competitive LandscapeThe report covers detailed competitive outlook that includes market share and profiles of key players operating in the global market. Key players profiled in the report includes Colfax Corporation, Lincoln Electric Holdings Inc., Illinois Tool Works Inc., and others. Company profiles include attributes such as company overview, number of employees, brand overview, key competitors, business overview, business strategies, recent/key developments, acquisitions, and financial overview (wherever applicable).The global nickel alloy welding consumables market has been segmented as follows:Nickel Alloy Welding Consumables Market  Product Type AnalysisStick ElectrodesWiresNickel Alloy Welding Consumables Market  Alloy Type AnalysisMonel AlloyInconel AlloyOthersNickel Alloy Welding Consumables Market  Technology Type AnalysisShielded Metal Arc WeldingGas Metal Arc WeldingGas Tungsten Arc WeldingFlux Cored Arc WeldingSubmerged Arc WeldingNickel Alloy Welding Consumables Market  Application Type AnalysisOil & GasPowerConstructionMarineOthersTo View Complete Report with Table of Content @About MRRSEMarket Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE) is an industry-leading database of Market Research Reports. MRRSE is driven by a stellar team of research experts and advisors trained to offer objective advice. Our sophisticated search algorithm returns results based on the report title, geographical region, publisher, or other keywords.MRRSE partners exclusively with leading global publishers to provide clients single-point access to top-of-the-line market research. MRRSEs repository is updated every day to keep its clients ahead of the next new trend in market research, be it competitive intelligence, product or service trends or strategic consulting.Contact UsState Tower90, State StreetSuite 700Albany, NY - 12207United States Telephone: +1-518-730-0559Email: sales@mrrse.comWebsite:Read More Industry News At:
Global Computer-Aided Design Market 2018 - Surface Modeling, Solid Modeling Technology

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Apex Market Reports, recently published a detailed market research study focused on the Computer-Aided Design Market across the global, regional and country level. The report provides 360 analysis of Computer-Aided Design Market from view of manufacturers, regions, product types and end industries. The research report analyses and provides the historical data along with current performance of the global PP Pipe industry, and estimates the future trend of Computer-Aided Design on the basis of this detailed study. The study shares Computer-Aided Design performance both in terms of volume and revenue.The market research report explores the Computer-Aided Design Market across the globe along with major regions and countries. The research report provides a detailed study on each and every aspect of Computer-Aided Design Market. The research report studies the entire value chain from raw material to end user industries. The report also shares import/export statistics along with production and consumption for all major regions and countries. Moreover, the research study classifies the Computer-Aided Design Market based on major product types, application and end users industries of Computer-Aided Design. Besides, the report also covers geographical segmentation for Computer-Aided Design Market. The report further provides production, capacity, price per region, gross margin, production cost, for all major regions and countries listed in report.Get Free Sample Copy of Report Here:Top Manufacturers Analysis of This ReportInteractive TechnologySolid Modeling TechnologyGraph Transformation TechniqueSurface ModelingOthersThe competitive landscape of the global market for Computer-Aided Design is determined by assessing the major industry participants, production capacity, production capacity utilization rate, Computer-Aided Design Markets production chain, pricing by each manufacturer and the revenue generated by each manufacturer in the Computer-Aided Design Market globally.Inquire Before Buying @The Global Computer-Aided Design Market 2018 is further analyzed on the basis of product pricing, Computer-Aided Design production volume, data pertaining to demand and Computer-Aided Design supply, and the revenue garnered by the product. The report provides upstream and downstream analysis covering major raw material used in manufacturing of Computer-Aided Design along with detailed manufacturing sources. The report also shares list of major raw material manufacturers along with their manufacturing locations. Detailed raw material price trend analysis along with manufacturing cost analysis is also incorporated into the report. Various methodical tools such as investment returns, feasibility, SWOT analysis and market attractiveness analysis has been implemented in the research study to present a comprehensive, detailed study of the industry for Computer-Aided Design across the world.About UsApex Market Reports offers elevating market research globally. We have collection of various syndicated reports of different categories. Apex Market Reports provides you to best services, weather youre searching for new trends in market or competitive scenario in emerging market.Customers can buys different reports across various categories such as Chemical and Material, Biotechnology, Healthcare, Food and beverages, Automobile and various sectors. Our Website offers safe and secure online ordering experience, convenient payment options.Contact UsFrank ValadezCorporate Sales Specialist155 North Wacker Drive, Suite 4250Chicago, IL 60606Phone: +17739042683Email id - sales@apexmarketreports.comWebsite -
LED Lighting Market, by Product Type, Services, End-use Industry, Application Type, and Geography - Insights, Size, Share, Opportunity Analysis, and Industry Forecast till 2025

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The global LED lighting market is projected to reach over US$ 120 billion by 2025, exhibiting a CAGR of 16.61% over the forecast period (2017-2025). The LED lighting market is mainly driven by advantageous features offered by LED lights over incandescent and fluorescent lamps such as increased energy efficiency, longer lifetime, enhanced physical strength, smaller size, design flexibility, and environmental friendliness. Rampant product invention coupled with advancements in technology is gaining customer attraction globally due to drastic transformation in semiconductor industry and evolution of light bulbs from incandescent bulbs, led to smart and intelligent energy efficient LED lighting systems. The intelligent lighting systems can be of two types, such as sensor incorporated and non-sensor incorporated. Sensor incorporated lighting systems are able to change the brightness of lights automatically by detecting people and daylight. However, non-sensor incorporated lighting systems are regarded as smart lighting systems as they can be operated through programming. Due to substantial improvement and modernization in wireless technologies such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Li-Fi, among others, most of the forthcoming intelligent lighting systems are expected to be wireless. Screen and display backlight market expansion is expected to augment demand for LED lights.Request For Sample Copy of this Research Report :Rampant innovation of smart lighting and smart city has increased the demand for LED street lights. Additionally, the global demand for green technologies is fueling growth of the LED light market. LED lighting systems use up to 50% less energy to generate an equivalent light intensity emitted by Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFL) and Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamps (CCFL). This reduced energy consumption directly converts into a reduction of over 700 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually. By observing the current market trend, LEDs are estimated to completely replace CFLs and CCFLs in the near future.LED Bulb segment holds the highest market shareAmong product type, the LED bulb segment is estimated to be the leading market for LED lighting, as bulbs form the major light source and key component of an LED lighting system.Installation Services segment holds a dominant positionAmong service type, the installation segment is expected to experience highest growth, due to high demand for energy-efficient light sources such as LED bulbs. The old generation lamps are being replaced and retrofitted with LED bulbs, as they offer longer working life and consume less energy.Commercial segment is expected to be the fastest growing segmentAmong end-use industry, the commercial segment is estimated to exhibit a higher growth rate during forecast period (2017  2025). Increasing infrastructural activities globally, contributes to the large market size and high growth rate of the segment.Outdoor LED Lighting System accounted major market shareAmong application, the outdoor segment accounted for 31.5% of market share in 2016. Increasing use of LED lighting for outdoor application such as roadways, traffic lights, tunnels, parking lots, garages is expected to offer substantial growth prospects to this segment in the near future.Residential applications for LED lighting include lighting for smart home, HDR 4K, and ultra-slim, curved, and high gamut display TVs.Asia Pacific accounted for the largest market shareAsia Pacific held the largest share of the LED lighting market in 2016, and the market in Europe is projected to emerge as the second largest market by 2025. The relatively high standard of living and high disposable income among the populace in Europe, increases their inclination towards investments in smart homes with innovative LED lighting systems. Thus, augmenting growth of the LED lighting market in the region. Asia Pacific is growing at high pace due to rampant infrastructural renovation in emerging economies such as China and India.Major players operating in the global LED light market include Philips Lighting Holding B.V., Osram Licht AG, GE Lighting, LG Innotek, Cree, Inc., Cooper Industries, Inc., Seoul Semiconductor, Samsung Electronics, and Lightning Optoelectronic.Request For Customization as per Your Need :About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr. ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email: sales@coherentmarketinsights.comVisit Our New Website:
China HMDS Market Research Report 2018

China HMDS Market Research Report 2018

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The China HMDS Market Research Report 2018 is a professional and in-depth study on the current state of the HMDS industry.Firstly, the report provides a basic overview of the industry including definitions, classifications, applications and industry chain structure. The HMDS Industry analysis is provided for the international market including development history, competitive landscape analysis, and major regions development status.Secondly, development policies and plans are discussed as well as manufacturing processes and cost structures. This report also states import/export, supply and consumption figures as well as cost, price, revenue and gross margin by regions (United States, EU, China and Japan), and other regions can be added.Then, the report focuses on global major leading industry players with information such as company profiles, product picture and specification, capacity, production, price, cost, revenue and contact information. Upstream raw materials, equipment and downstream consumers analysis is also carried out. Whats more, the HMDS industry development trends and marketing channels are analyzed.Finally, the feasibility of new investment projects is assessed, and overall research conclusions are offered.In a word, the report provides major statistics on the state of the industry and is a valuable source of guidance and direction for companies and individuals interested in the market.Browse a complete report sample:The global HMDS market is valued at XX million USD in 2017 and is expected to reach XX million USD by the end of 2025, growing at a CAGR of XX% between 2017 and 2025.China plays an important role in global market, with market size of xx million USD in 2017 and will be xx million USD in 2025, with a CAGR of xx%.This report studies the HMDS development status and future trend in China, focuses on top players in China, also splits HMDS by type and by applications, to fully and deeply research and reveal the market general situation and future forecast.The major players in China market includeXinyaqiang Silicon ChemistryChemcon Speciality ChemicalsEvonikWackerShin-Etsu ChemicalZhejiang Sorbo ChemicalDow CorningKMG ChemicalsHangzhou Guibao ChemicalQuzhou Juyou ChemicalGeographically, this report splits the China market into six regions,South ChinaEast ChinaSouthwest ChinaNortheast ChinaNorth ChinaCentral ChinaNorthwest ChinaOn the basis of product, this report displays the sales volume (MT), revenue (Million USD), product price (USD/MT), market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoCommon HMDSHigh Purity HMDSOn the basis of the end users/application, this report coversSemiconductorElectronicCoatingRubberTailing AgentTable of contents:Chapter One - HMDS OverviewChapter Two - China HMDS Market Competition by Players/ManufacturersChapter Three - China HMDS Sales and Revenue by Region (2012-2018)Chapter Four - China "&B1&" Sales and Revenue by Type/ Product Category (2012-2018)"Chapter Five - China "&B1&" Sales by Application (2012-2018)"Chapter Six - China HMDS Players/Suppliers Profiles and Sales DataChapter Seven - HMDS Manufacturing Cost AnalysisChapter Eight - Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream BuyersChapter Nine - Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/TradersChapter Ten - Market Effect Factors AnalysisChapter Eleven - China HMDS Market Size (Sales and Revenue) Forecast (2018-2022)Chapter Twelve - Research Findings and ConclusionChapter Thirteen - Methodology and Data SourceContact Details:Company Name: QYResearch CO.,LIMITED | focus on Market Survey and ResearchTina| Sales ManagersTel: 0086-20-22093278(CN)Email: sales@qyresearcheurope.com or tinaning@qyresearch.comWeb:QYResearch, established in 2007, focuses on custom research, management consulting, IPO consulting, industry chain research, and data base &seminar services. The company owns large basic databases (such as National Bureau of Statistics Database, Customs Import and Export Database, Industry Association Database, etc.), expert resources (including industry experts who own more than 10 years experiences on marketing or R&D in industries of energy, automotive, chemicals, medical ICT consumer goods, etc.), professional survey team (the team members obtained more than 3 years market survey experience and more than 2 years deep expert interview experience), and excellent data analysis team (SPSS statistics and PPT graphics process team).Room 2901 VILI International Building No.167 Linhe West Road
Future of Small Hydropower Market in Global Industry : Market Attractiveness, Competitive Landscape and Forecasts to 2023

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Albany, NY, 30th March : Recent research and the current scenario as well as future market potential of "Small Hydropower Market, by installed capacity - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth Trends, and Forecast 2015 - 2023" globally.This research study analyzes the small hydropower market in terms of installed capacity (GW). The market has been segmented on the basis of geography.Get PDF for more Professional and Technical insights @For the research, 2014 has been taken as the base year, while all forecasts have been given for the period from 2015 to 2023. Market data for all the segments has been provided at the regional as well as country-specific level from 2015 to 2023. The report provides a broad competitive analysis of companies engaged in the small hydropower business. The report also includes the key market dynamics such as drivers, restraints, and opportunities affecting the small hydropower market. These market dynamics were analyzed in detail and are illustrated in the report with the help of supporting graphs and tables. The report also provides a comprehensive industry analysis of small hydropower with the help of Porters Five Forces model. This analysis helps in understanding the five major forces that affect the market structure and profitability of the global small hydropower market. The forces analyzed are bargaining power of buyers, bargaining power of suppliers, threat of new entrants, threat of substitutes, and degree of competition.The high-level analysis in the report provides detailed insights into the small hydropower business globally. There are currently numerous drivers of the market. One of the most prominent drivers is the low generation cost compared to other off-grid renewable technologies. Market attractiveness analysis was carried out for the small hydropower market on the basis of installed capacity and untapped potential. Market attractiveness was estimated on the basis of common parameters that directly impact the market in different regions.View Complete TOC with tables & Figures @The small hydropower market was analyzed across five geographies: North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East and Africa, and South and Central America. Regional data has been provided for each sub-segment of the small hydropower market. Key players in the small hydropower market include Voith GmbH, ANDRITZ HYDRO GmbH, Alstom S.A., BC Hydro, and StatKraft AS. The report provides an overview of these companies, followed by their financial details, business strategies, and recent developments.Small Hydropower Market: By RegionNorth AmericaEuropeAsia PacificMiddle East and AfricaSouth and Central AmericaTable of ContentCHAPTER 1 PREFACE1.1 Report Description1.2 Research Scope1.3 Market Segmentation1.4 Research MethodologyCHAPTER 2 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY2.1 Global Small Hydropower Market: SnapshotBrowse Report @CHAPTER 3 GLOBAL SMALL HYDROPOWER OVERVIEW3.1 Introduction3.2 Value Chain Analysis3.3 Market Dynamics3.3.1 Growth Drivers3.3.2 Restraints3.3.3 Opportunities3.4 Porters Five Forces Analysis for the Small Hydropower3.5 Suppliers Power3.6 Buyers Power3.7 Threat from New Entrants3.8 Threat from Substitutes3.9 Degree of Competition3.10 Market Attractiveness Analysis of Small Hydropower, by Region (2014)3.10.1 North America3.10.2 Europe3.10.3 Asia Pacific3.10.4 South and Central America3.11 Company Market Share Analysis, 2014 (Value %)ResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.ResearchMozMr. Nachiket Ghumare,90 State Street, Albany NY, United States - 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074USA-Canada Toll Free: 866-997-4948Email: sales@researchmoz.usFollow us on LinkedIn @Follow me on :
Market Study of Internet of Things Market in Global Industry 2018 - Intel Corp, Amazon, Microsoft Corp And Cisco Systems Inc

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Albany, NY, 30th March : Recent research and the current scenario as well as future market potential of "Internet of Things Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2016 - 2024" globally.The Internet of Things refers to the interrelated devices that are able to transfer data over a network without requiring computer and human interaction devices.Get PDF for more Professional and Technical insights @Internet of Things is directly and indirectly associated with daily lifestyle products across the globe. Internet connectivity is one of the major requirements of different application as it is expected to grow at high rate in next forecast period. Furthermore, internet connectivity requires more monitoring through applications and human interactions. Moreover, Internet of Things offers an easier and comfortable controlling of different electronic devices from one place. Internet of Things is definite as an invisible and intelligent network of things that correspond directly or indirectly with each other which is fueling the enlargement during the forecast period.Global Internet of Things Market: DriversIoT is expected to transform how we work, live and other things. Smart object and their different applications such as smart cities, smart homes, and smart environment is dynamic the evolution of the universal market. Moreover, increasing demand of smart wearable electronic products in different application is boosting the market growth. The prospective for cyber physical systems to improve productivity in the production process and supply chain are growing the demand of industrial sector in Internet of Things market. Additionally, fast technological advancement is increasing the global IoT market growth. Wi-Fi connectivity is growing rapidly and due to various government initiatives supporting the widespread usage of WiFi and collaboration between various companies, market is experiencing a surge and is forecasted to grow considerably during the forecast period. Consequently, all drivers are set to contribute to the expansion of global market of Internet of Things in the upcoming years. Moreover, IoT finds in application such as urban planning and environmental planning, is could create immense opportunities for the IoT market.View Complete TOC with tables & Figures @Growing acceptance in the various industrial segments along with strong economic growth in growing economies are contributing to the prospective growth opportunities of the global Internet of Things market. Internet of Things is anticipated to increase acceptance through end-user applications like medical and manufacturing and this will lead to the increase in the growth of IoT market in the upcoming years. However, the major challenge that Internet of Things markets likely to face is the lack of standardization in IoT products and interoperability problems. The privacy and security problems with usage of cloud technology is likely to obstruct the anticipated growth of IoT market.Global Internet of Things Market: Scope of the StudyBased on application, the Internet of market is generally classified into media, manufacturing, medical and healthcare, consumer application, energy management and others. Geographically, Internet of Things market is classified into Europe, North America, Latin America and Asia Pacific.The key companies in the global Internet of Things market have been competitively profiled across the five broad geographic regions. This competitive landscape is inclusive of the various business strategies accepted by these key players and their recent developments in the field of Internet of Things. Furthermore, the report contains analysis of market attractiveness of different applications and provides an insight into various application areas of the Internet of Things. A detailed analysis of the various dynamics of the market of global Internet of Things market is provided in the report. Opportunities, restraints and market drivers are also covered in this report. Thus, the report of global Internet of Things offers a detailed report of the market and that includes the projection of the global IoT market revenue-wise (USD Million) from the period of 2016 to 2024.The global Internet of Things market is characterized by the presence of numerous major players in the market. The major players of the market compete their competition on the basis of factors such as price, performance, quality, support services and innovations of product. Major players in IoT market are Intel Corp. (U.S), Amazon (U.S), Microsoft Corp. (U.S), Cisco Systems Inc. (U.S), Google Inc. (U.S), AT&T (U.S) and Apple Inc. (U.S) among others.The global high resolution dispensing systems and equipment market has been segmented into:Internet of Things Market, by TechnologyZigbeeBluetooth Low EnergyNear Field CommunicationWi-FiRFIDInternet of Things Market, by ApplicationMediaManufacturingMedical and HealthcareConsumer ApplicationEnergy ManagementOthersBrowse Report @Internet of Things Market, by Geography: The market is broadly segmented on the basis of geography into:North AmericaEuropeAsia PacificMiddle East and AfricaLatin AmericaResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.ResearchMozMr. Nachiket Ghumare,90 State Street, Albany NY, United States - 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074USA-Canada Toll Free: 866-997-4948Email: sales@researchmoz.usFollow us on LinkedIn @Follow me on :
Global Quadrotor UAVs Market 2018 Competition by Key Manufacturers : Draganfly, Novadem, Yuneec, Asctec

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Qyresearchreports include new market research report "Global Quadrotor UAVs Market Research Report 2018" to its huge collection of research reports.In this report, the global Quadrotor UAVs market is valued at USD XX million in 2017 and is expected to reach USD XX million by the end of 2025, growing at a CAGR of XX% between 2017 and 2025.The global Quadrotor UAVs market dynamics is influenced and shaped by a variety of regional as well as global trends, an incisive analysis of which forms the core of this study. The analysis of the global Quadrotor UAVs market begins with elaborating on the market definition and scope, industry chain overview, and the key elements of business regulatory landscape. The research further offers insights into key adoption trends, emerging business models, and recent technological advances affecting the growth trajectory. The study on the global Quadrotor UAVs market then presents detailed assessment of the governmental regulations and recent paradigmatic changes in related industries expected to positively impact the course of the market. The analysis tracks key developments in the competitive landscape and highlights the introduction of new services and products. Innovative launches expected to create promising avenues in the global Quadrotor UAVs market are also covered in the report. The study also takes a closer look at share and size of top players.Fill the form to get free report sample on this market @Global Quadrotor UAVs market competition by top manufacturers, with production, price, revenue (value) and market share for each manufacturer; the top players includingDJI-Innovations Company LimitedDraganflyDreamQiiCyberflight LtdDroneTechnologyMicrodrones GmbhNovademUnmanned Integrated SystemsXamen TechnologiesYuneecActiondroneusaAeryon Labs Inc.AsctecMarket participants and business executives striving to gain evidence-based insights into lucrative and lackluster trends will find the study helpful. Opinion leaders and policy makers as well as new entrants and emerging players in the global Quadrotor UAVs market wanting to keep a tab on disruptive business models can glean through the report. The study also tracks administrative nuances affecting the governmental spending in emerging economies aimed at create new opportunities in the Quadrotor UAVs market. Prominent players exploring new streams in untapped markets can base their strategies on the research findings. The study on the global Quadrotor UAVs market employs tools such as SWOT analysis and Porters five forces analysis to ascertain the intensity of the competitive. Investments into research and development activities to sustain the spirit of innovation are also highlighted in the analysis. Furthermore, perusing the report will enable market participants to gain an insight into disruptive offerings.Table of Contents1 Quadrotor UAVs Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Quadrotor UAVs1.2 Quadrotor UAVs Segment by Type (Product Category)1.2.1 Global Quadrotor UAVs Production and CAGR (%) Comparison by Type (Product Category)(2013-2025)1.2.2 Global Quadrotor UAVs Production Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20171.3 Global Quadrotor UAVs Segment by Application1.4 Global Quadrotor UAVs Market by Region (2013-2025)1.5 Global Market Size (Value) of Quadrotor UAVs (2013-2025)1.5.1 Global Quadrotor UAVs Revenue Status and Outlook (2013-2025)1.5.2 Global Quadrotor UAVs Capacity, Production Status and Outlook (2013-2025)View TOC (table of content) of the Report:3 Global Quadrotor UAVs Capacity, Production, Revenue (Value) by Region (2013-2018)3.1 Global Quadrotor UAVs Capacity and Market Share by Region (2013-2018)3.2 Global Quadrotor UAVs Production and Market Share by Region (2013-2018)3.3 Global Quadrotor UAVs Revenue (Value) and Market Share by Region (2013-2018)3.4 Global Quadrotor UAVs Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)3.5 North America Quadrotor UAVs Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)3.6 Europe Quadrotor UAVs Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)3.7 China Quadrotor UAVs Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)3.8 Japan Quadrotor UAVs Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2013-2018)4 Global Quadrotor UAVs Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Region (2013-2018)4.1 Global Quadrotor UAVs Consumption by Region (2013-2018)4.2 North America Quadrotor UAVs Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2013-2018)4.3 Europe Quadrotor UAVs Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2013-2018)4.4 China Quadrotor UAVs Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2013-2018)4.5 Japan Quadrotor UAVs Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2013-2018)4.6 Southeast Asia Quadrotor UAVs Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2013-2018)4.7 India Quadrotor UAVs Production, Consumption, Export, Import (2013-2018)5 Global Quadrotor UAVs Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by Type5.1 Global Quadrotor UAVs Production and Market Share by Type (2013-2018)5.2 Global Quadrotor UAVs Revenue and Market Share by Type (2013-2018)5.3 Global Quadrotor UAVs Price by Type (2013-2018)5.4 Global Quadrotor UAVs Production Growth by Type (2013-2018)Click here to avail discount on this reports @List of Tables and FiguresFigure Picture of Quadrotor UAVsFigure Global Quadrotor UAVs Production (K Units) and CAGR (%) Comparison by Types (Product Category) (2013-2025)Figure Global Quadrotor UAVs Production Market Share by Types (Product Category) in 2017Figure Global Quadrotor UAVs Consumption (K Units) by Applications (2013-2025)Figure Global Quadrotor UAVs Consumption Market Share by Applications in 2017Figure Global Quadrotor UAVs Market Size (Million USD), Comparison (K Units) and CAGR (%) by Regions (2013-2025)Figure North America Quadrotor UAVs Revenue (Million USD) and Growth Rate (2013-2025)Figure Europe Quadrotor UAVs Revenue (Million USD) and Growth Rate (2013-2025)Figure China Quadrotor UAVs Revenue (Million USD) and Growth Rate (2013-2025)Figure Japan Quadrotor UAVs Revenue (Million USD) and Growth Rate (2013-2025)Figure Southeast Asia Quadrotor UAVs Revenue (Million USD) and Growth Rate (2013-2025)About Us:QYResearchReports.com delivers the latest strategic market intelligence to build a successful business footprint in China. Our syndicated and customized research reports provide companies with vital background information of the market and in-depth analysis on the Chinese trade and investment framework, which directly affects their business operations. Reports from QYResearchReports.com feature valuable recommendations on how to navigate in the extremely unpredictable yet highly attractive Chinese market.Contact Us:1820 AvenueM Suite #1047Brooklyn, NY 11230United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Email: sales@qyresearchreports.com
Cognitive systems Market to Witness Huge Growth by 2025

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The cognitive system is a suit of technologies, which extracts the insights form the structured and unstructured data by using machine learning and natural language processing technology. The increasing unstructured data, such as call center transcripts, documents, email messages, social media content, and social networking sites contents has become one of the major factors for the growth of the cognitive system market. For instance, approximately 300 million photos are uploaded on Facebook per day, 510 thousand comments are posted, and 293 thousand statuses are updated in every 60 seconds. Similarly, on YouTube near 27,000 videos are viewed in 60 seconds, nearly 430,000 tweets are posted on Twitter, and around 120 new users are registered on LinkedIn.Request For Sample Copy of this Research Report :The natural language processing plays a major role in cognitive system for insights. With the help of natural language processing, the cognitive system extracts the insights from the plain text. This helps company managers and supervisors to understand the customer demand and product description. Moreover, the increasing usage of artificial intelligence in various increasing verticals and constant advancement in data processing technology are some of the drivers fueling the growth of cognitive system market globally.The global cognitive system market was valued at US$ 8 billion in 2016. By the end of the year 2025, the market is projected to reach US$ 88.14 billion with a CAGR of 29.02% during the forecast period (20172025).The machine learning segment is projected to grow with largest CAGR over the forecast period.On the basis of technology, the market is diversified into machine learning, natural language processing, planning and scheduling. The natural language processing market held the dominant position in 2016 and is projected to retain its dominance throughout the forecast period. Natural language processing helps the cognitive system to extract the meaning full information from plain text. In addition, the machine learning segment is projected to grow with the largest CAGR over the forecast period. The cognitive system has the capability of continues learning, which helps to deliver the grater values. Hence, this helps to increase the capability of machine learning and improve their expertise by auto-learning.The Banking segment is projected to hold the dominating positionOn the basis of end users, the cognitive system market is diversified into banking, education, government, healthcare, insurance, manufacturing, security and investment, telecommunications, transportation and others. The banking segment is projected to hold the dominating position over the forecast period. High demand for customer services, advisory, and investment consulting have raised the demand for the cognitive system in the banking sector. In addition, the healthcare segment is projected to grow with largest CAGR throughout the forecast period.North America holds a dominant position in the global Cognitive systems marketAccording to Coherent Market Insights, North America held the dominant position in the global Cognitive systems market in 2016 and is projected to retain its dominance throughout the forecast period. In 2016, the North America cognitive system market generated a value of US$ 5.16 million. The U.S and Canada are the major countries driving the growth for Cognitive systems market in North America region. In addition, the Asia Pacific cognitive system market is projected to grow with the largest CAGR over the forecast period. The increasing adoption of digitalization in public, government, and industrial sector and advancement in IT infrastructure have increased the market of cognitive system in Asia Pacific region. India, china, and Japan are some of the major economies, which are driving the growth of cognitive market in Asia Pacific region.Request For Customization as per Your Need :About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr. ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email: sales@coherentmarketinsights.comVisit Our New Website:
FMI Releases New Report on the Remote Patient Monitoring Devices Market 2016-2026

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Remote patient monitoring devices supports in monitoring of patients physical condition. Patient does not need to visit the medical practitioner. Digital technology is used in remote patient monitoring devices to gather health and other forms of medical data to securely pass on to healthcare providers situated at different location for clinical review. The accuracy of remote patient monitoring devices allows reliable diagnosis, leading to a more specific and efficient treatment. Remote patient monitoring devices helps to reduce costs of hospital stays by continuing to monitor patient condition, irrespective of patient location and also it helps to reduce overcrowding at clinics and diagnostic centers. Remote patient monitoring devices systems are used for continuously monitoring important physiological parameters like, heart activity, body temperature, blood pressure, pulse rate and other clinical conditions. Remote patient monitoring devices is based on real time data sharing which helps physicians to take vital decisions to ensure better patient treatment. Physician and healthcare providers are extending the use ofremote patient monitoring devices to enhance the excellence of patient care and reduce expenses by prognosis.Remote patient monitoring devices market is fueled by great technological advancements. The increasing incidence and prevalence of chronic diseases like heart conditions and diabetes requires compulsory life-long monitoring will also contribute to remote patient monitoring devicesglobal market. Increase in geriatric population around the globe is leading to enhanced global market forremote patient monitoring devices. Awareness among the medical practitioners and improved private sector and government involvement in remote patient monitoring devices is supporting the global market for remote patient monitoring devices dwell in developing countries. Deficiency of trained and expert professionals are hampering the growth of remote patient monitoring devices.A sample of this report is available upon request @Increased technological improvement, rise in the incidence and prevalence of chronic diseases along with increase in aging population, enhanced demand for remote monitoring, private sector and government involvement in remote patient monitoring devices, the global market for remote patient monitoring devices market is expected to have a healthy growth rate in the forecast period (2016-2026).Depending on geographic regions, global remote patient monitoring devicesmarketis segmented into seven key regions: North America, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia Pacific Excluding Japan, Japan and Middle East & Africa.North America is the leading global remote patient monitoring devices market due to the high volumes of surgical procedures being performed. Also, the availability of established healthcare infrastructure, high influence of healthcare to economy are the reasons for the high demand in North America. Europe is also a lucrative market for remote patient monitoring devices due to rapid technological advancement in terms of healthcare sector. Asia Pacific market is expected to grow at a good rate as compared to NA and Europe as there is ample market opportunity in countries like India and China due the large population.Request For Table Of Content @Some of the key participating global remote patient monitoring devicesmarketare Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., AMD Global Telemedicine, Honeywell International Inc., Omron Healthcare, Smiths Medical, Medtronic, and others.The research report presents a comprehensive assessment of the market and contains thoughtful insights, facts, historical data, and statistically supported and industry-validated market data. It also contains projections using a suitable set of assumptions and methodologies. The research report provides analysis and information according to categories such as market segments, geographies, types, technology and applications.Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.Future Market InsightsValley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Analysis of Cordless Power Tools Market - Global Industry Insights, Trends, Outlook and Forecast till 2025

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Cordless power tools refers to the tools that is actuated by an additional mechanism and better as power source, rather than depending on the manual labor and conventional hand instruments to accomplish the required tasks. These conventional equipment used to sport fat Ni-Cd batteries that were difficult to handle for wielders, which over the years have witnessed significant technological and design improvements. Next generation equipment are extremely compact, sleek and are built with the aim to enhance the mobility of the instruments for any sorts of job.Ability of these ubiquitous equipment to reduce the manual labor and enhance productivity is expected to remain the primary growth driverCordless power tools market has witnessed significant traction over the last few years owing to its extensive portfolio that is broadly classified under drills, saws, sanders, grinders, nail guns, bare tools, carpentry tools, and other related accessories. These find significant applications in mending and developing household projects in conjunction with exhaustive list off applications in industries that include automotive, electronics, and industrial assembly among many others. Moreover, owing to decreasing charging times, increased voltage capacity and storage have in turn led to increased usability in the heavier work load applications. These factors reduce the manual effort, time consumption and costs associated with the tasks, which will propel the overall cordless power tools market growth over the forecast period.Ask for detailed Sample of this Research Report @Increasing demands for automotive production are expected to provide significant boost to the demand growthAccording to Organisation Internationale des Constructeurs dAutomobiles (OICA), international production of vehicles witnessed an increase of around 4.5% over the year, accounting for an increase of around 94 million units in 2016. Requirement of power tools to enable human workforce to support the production tasks along with the high-tech machinery is expected to drive the demands for power tools. Moreover, Substantial benefits of cordless equipment over the corded alternatives is expected to generate the demand for replacement of the conventional instruments. Chief global trends such as demand growth for electronic vehicles and do-it-yourself (DIY) are expected to augment major growth prospects to the industry.Lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries segment is expected to register highest growth over the forecast periodNickel Cadmium batteries are the conventional form of batteries that have acquired significant consumer base in the cordless power tools market. Moreover, low-cost availability and large scale adoption of equipment powered by these NiCad batteries are expected to witness significant demands. Li-ion batteries have witnessed significant growth momentum owing to significant featured benefits over the Ni-Cad batteries, such as low charging times, long power backups, and high charge density. However, owing to considerable difference in the overall equipment costs, and occasional requirement in household and few other application segments, NiCad is expected to witness consistent demand.Professional end use segment is expected to continue its dominance the cordless power tools market shareMajor requirements in the professional application segments such as construction, manufacturing, automotive and high affordability of the segment industry participants is expected to provide strong foothold to the business growth. The household segment is expected to gain major traction, owing to increasing of manual labor and lack of human resource for small household projects.Increased affordability and increasing activities for transformative automotive technologies such as V2V communication and connected automotive will drive the demands for cordless power tools in the region. Improving economic conditions in Asia Pacific, and large base of manufacturing activities in the countries such as China, India, Japan, Indonesia and South Korea, are expected to present potential growth landscape over the next few years.Industry is characterized by the consolidated presence of chief players in the region sharing major cordless power tools market share. These players include Emerson Electric Co., Makita, Robert Bosch, Stanley Black & Decker and Techtronic Industries. Other key players include Atlas Copco, Hilti, Husqvarna, Hitachi, and Snap-on.Request for Customization As per your Need :About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr. ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email: sales@coherentmarketinsights.comVisit our news Website :
Diffractive Optical Elements Market Worldwide Breath-Taking Revenue by Top Key Players Forecasts Till 2023

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Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the Diffractive Optical Elements in global market, especially in North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East and Africa. This report categorizes the market based on manufacturers, regions, types and applications.Market OverviewThis report studies the Diffractive Optical Elements market, Diffractive optical elements, DOEs, were designed for applications with lasers and high-power lasers. Used as multi-spot beam splitters, in beam shaping, and beam profile modification, such elements offer endless possibilities in different application fields. Diffractive optical element uses a thin micro structure pattern to alter the phase of the light propagated through it. When a laser beam is transmitted through a diffractive optical element (DOE), it can be transformed into an almost arbitrary light pattern in the observation planeThe Diffractive Optical Elements are used to split and shape laser beams in an energy efficient manner. A wide range of applications with nominal light loss can be implemented with the help of this diffractive optical elements. For instance, the example of diffractive optical elements can be found in medical laser treatment and various diagnostic instruments, in manufacturing facilities for laser material, printing technology such as lithography, in areas such as lighting, also in metrology and measuring systems. Diffractive optical elements are used for customized illumination to pattern light in work zones.Request a Sample Report @ https://www.futuregenicreports.com/Request-Sample/100731Top Industry Players:This report studies the global Diffractive Optical Elements market, analyzes and researches the Diffractive Optical Elements development status and forecast in United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia. This report focuses on the top players in global market, like: Jenoptik, Holo/Or Ltd., HORIBA, Newport Corporation, Zeiss, Shimadzu Corporation, Edmund Optics, Lightsmyth (Finisar), Optometrics (Dynasil), Kaiser Optical Systems, SUSS MicroTec AG., Photop Technologies, Wasatch Photonics, Headwall Photonics, Plymouth Grating Lab, Spectrogon AB, RPC Photonics, SILIOS Technologies, GratingWorksKey Benefits This report provides an extensive analysis of the current and emerging market trends and dynamics of the Diffractive Optical Elements market. The market trend analysis for all the countries is conducted by constructing estimations for key segments between 2018 and 2022 to identify the prevailing opportunities. The report assists to understand the strategies adopted by the leading companies in the industry. Extensive analysis is conducted by key player positioning and monitoring the top competitors within the regional market.Request Discount on this repots @Market Segment by Regions, regional analysis covers North America (United States, Canada and Mexico) Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy) Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia) South America (Brazil, Argentina, Colombia) Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa)Market Segment by Type, covers Beam Shaping / Top-Hat Beam Splitting Beam FociMarket Segment by Applications, can be divided into Laser Material Processing MedicalBrowse Report @About Future Genic ReportsFuture Generic Reports is a market research and consulting organization, offering premium collection of market research reports, custom research and consulting services to corporations, no-profit organizations and government institutions across the globe.The wide range of information is presented by a team of well-trained researchers of specific sectors through exhaustive research. We deliver premier market research services that cover all industry verticals, including chemicals and material, automotive, healthcare, electronics & semiconductor, food and beverage, pharmaceuticals and technology and media.We believe in building an eternal bond with our clients through offering them inclusive research study meeting their specific requirements. Our services are tailored specifically to our clients by proposing them the potential outcome, based on our in-depth analysis and insights for exploring the growth strategies through providing the best possible decision for quality production.Contact us:Future Generic Reports244 , Madison AvenueNew York City, NY - 10016United StatesToll Free +1- 844-445-2861Email: sales@futuregenicreports.com
Business Opportunities of VoIP Software Market in Global Industry 2018 - AVOXI, 3CX, Digium, Cisco And Phone.com

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Albany, NY, 30th March : Recent research and the current scenario as well as future market potential of "Global VoIP Software Market Research Report 2018" globally.In this report, the global VoIP Software market is valued at USD XX million in 2017 and is expected to reach USD XX million by the end of 2025, growing at a CAGR of XX% between 2017 and 2025.Get PDF for more Professional and Technical insights @Geographically, this report is segmented into several key Regions, with production, consumption, revenue (million USD), market share and growth rate of VoIP Software in these regions, from 2013 to 2025 (forecast), coveringNorth AmericaEuropeChinaJapanSoutheast AsiaIndiaGlobal VoIP Software market competition by top manufacturers, with production, price, revenue (value) and market share for each manufacturer; the top players includingAVOXI3CXDigiumCiscoPhone.comZoiPerCloudCallTalkrouteOnSIPLine2On the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoCloud-basedOn-premisesView Complete TOC with tables & Figures @On the basis of the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, consumption (sales), market share and growth rate for each application, includingSmall and Medium Enterprises (SMEs)Large EnterprisesTable of Contents1 VoIP Software Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of VoIP Software1.2 VoIP Software Segment by Type (Product Category)1.2.1 Global VoIP Software Production and CAGR (%) Comparison by Type (Product Category)(2013-2025)1.2.2 Global VoIP Software Production Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20171.2.3 Cloud-based1.2.4 On-premises1.3 Global VoIP Software Segment by Application1.3.1 VoIP Software Consumption (Sales) Comparison by Application (2013-2025)1.3.2 Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs)1.3.3 Large Enterprises1.4 Global VoIP Software Market by Region (2013-2025)1.4.1 Global VoIP Software Market Size (Value) and CAGR (%) Comparison by Region (2013-2025)1.4.2 North America Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.4.3 Europe Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.4.4 China Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.4.5 Japan Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.4.6 Southeast Asia Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.4.7 India Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.5 Global Market Size (Value) of VoIP Software (2013-2025)1.5.1 Global VoIP Software Revenue Status and Outlook (2013-2025)1.5.2 Global VoIP Software Capacity, Production Status and Outlook (2013-2025)Browse Report @2 Global VoIP Software Market Competition by Manufacturers2.1 Global VoIP Software Capacity, Production and Share by Manufacturers (2013-2018)2.1.1 Global VoIP Software Capacity and Share by Manufacturers (2013-2018)2.1.2 Global VoIP Software Production and Share by Manufacturers (2013-2018)2.2 Global VoIP Software Revenue and Share by Manufacturers (2013-2018)2.3 Global VoIP Software Average Price by Manufacturers (2013-2018)2.4 Manufacturers VoIP Software Manufacturing Base Distribution, Sales Area and Product Type2.5 VoIP Software Market Competitive Situation and Trends2.5.1 VoIP Software Market Concentration Rate2.5.2 VoIP Software Market Share of Top 3 and Top 5 Manufacturers2.5.3 Mergers & Acquisitions, ExpansionResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.ResearchMozMr. Nachiket Ghumare,90 State Street, Albany NY, United States - 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074USA-Canada Toll Free: 866-997-4948Email: sales@researchmoz.usFollow us on LinkedIn @Follow me on :
Micro-Hospitals Market, Forecast, and Steady by Future Market Insights 2017  2027

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Micro-hospitals are small scale In-patient facility that offers a variety of emergency medical services. They mostly focused on treating low-acuity patients and provides ambulatory and emergency services. Micro-hospitals can bridge the gap in care delivery and quality of healthcare in underdeveloped areas. Due to its economic nature, intimate delivery model, micro-hospitals are ideal in rural areas. Micro-hospitals differs from traditional hospitals in the range of operations done. It is also gaining importance to improve healthcare system by reducing cost and patient compliance. Micro-hospitals are typically composed of five components, namely a) Emergency Department, b) Imaging and Diagnostics, c) Surgery and Procedure Centers, d) Inpatient Nursing Unit and e) Medical Office. Micro-hospitals designed for both operationally and functionally to deliver the right care, at the right time. Micro-hospitals subjected to same rules and regulations imposed on large scale hospitals in the place they are built. Telehealth facilities are offered for integration of care continuity with micro-hospitals. Micro-hospitals providers are mainly concentrated on the single access point for multiple levels of care and specialty. The primary focus is on industry-leading clinical quality and patient satisfaction.Decreasing admission rates of large-scale hospitals and rising importance of micro-hospitals due to increasing patient compliance are expected to boost the growth of the micro-hospital market. The micro-hospital market is gaining traction globally due to the comparatively lower construction cost and higher reimbursement for services that large hospitals and ambulatory surgical centers. Rising health care demand due to the need for more intensive service offerings locally that cannot be provided by traditional hospitals. This unmet need for large scale hospitals acts as a driver in the burgeoning growth of the micro-hospital market. Growing technology along with increasing expectation of patients on healthcare system becomes a significant threat to large-scale hospitals and give the opportunity to micro-hospitals. All these factors are fueling the growth of the micro-hospital market. Micro-hospitals are shifting the healthcare landscape, as they become an integral component of health care system.Request For Report Sample:Global Micro-Hospitals Market has witnessed a burgeoning growth due to increasing adaptation due to increased ease f use. Increasing government support for healthcare development is encouraging private organizations to participate in funding and partnership. Micro-hospital cost is comparatively less than large-scale hospitals and more than urgent care units which act as a driver in the growth of the micro-hospital. Micro-hospital enables fast treatment for emergency cases and also offers primary care services which are competitive advantage over ambulatory surgical centers. The future of Micro-Hospitals Market anticipated with double CAGR during forecasting period.Global Micro-Hospitals Market segmented into following regions North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia-Pacific, Japan and the Middle East and Africa. North America is dominant in the Global Micro-Hospitals mainly due to the well-established health care system. In North America, USA is dominating because of increased of increased adoption of micro-hospitals. European region follows North America, growth fuelled by increased penetration of the micro-hospital market. Economic conditions in the APAC region are set to drive the Micro-Hospitals Market to new heights. APAC is fastest growing region due to increasing government support for healthcare system. Growth in the Middle East and African region is considerably less but still with significant growth.Request For Table Of Content @The key participants in the Micro-Hospitals Market are Emerus Hospitals, SCL Health, Saint Lukes Health System, etc. The service providers are mainly focusing on the collaboration and partnership to increase the adaptation of Micro-Hospitals.Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.Future Market InsightsValley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
DNA Polymerase Market to Projected to Touch a Valuation of US$ 389.4 Mn by 2027-End

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Future Market Insights presents a detailed forecast and in-depth insights on the global DNA polymerase market in a new report titled DNA Polymerase Market: Global Industry Analysis (2012  2016) and Opportunity Assessment (2017  2027). According to the report, the global DNA polymerase market is anticipated to record a compounded annual growth rate of 6.5% and reach a market value of US$ 389.4 Mn in 2027.Staggering increase in the use of DNA polymerases in point-of-care and molecular diagnostics kits is expected to continue to influence the adoption of DNA polymerases. Increasing use of DNA polymerases in epigenetics research, in addition to the increasing investments in life sciences R&D is also expected to boost revenue growth of the global market. However, high cost of reagents and availability of alternative techniques are expected to limit market growth over the forecast period.By product type, growth of the eukaryotic DNA polymerase segment will be positively impacted by the introduction of various innovative products such as high-fidelity DNA polymerase that show excellent results in whole blood and other samples containing crude lysates. These products have been used in direct PCR applications, with limited sample processing, which have been a constant requirement especially for high throughput applications. In addition, the use of PCR-based technologies in point-of-care tests, companion diagnostics and other applications have led to a major boost for the DNA polymerase market.Manufacturers of DNA polymerases are entering into distribution agreements to extend product reach and collaborations to ensure they gain market share and remain competitive in global markets. Eukaryotic DNA polymerase segment is expected to hold the highest share of the market, as well as display strong growth, expanding at a CAGR of 6.7% over the forecast period. Among end use segments, molecular diagnostics companies are expected to hold the largest share of the global DNA polymerase market at over 31% market share in terms of revenue in 2027. However, the academic and research institutes segment is anticipated to expand at a robust growth rate of 7.4% over the forecast period.Request Report Sample@FMIs report segments the global DNA polymerase market on the basis of region into North America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Latin America, Asia Pacific Excluding Japan, Japan, and the Middle East & Africa. This report assesses key trends driving each market segment and offers analysis and insights on the DNA polymerase market across specific regions. The market in North America is anticipated to dominate the global DNA polymerase market with maximum value share by end of 2027, accounting for over 56% in terms of revenue. In terms of value, the market in Latin America is expected to be the fastest growing, registering a CAGR of 7.8% over the forecast period. The market in Asia Pacific Excluding Japan is also expected to show a significant growth of 7.7% over the forecast period.Some of the key competitors covered in this report include Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc, Roche Diagnostics, Agilent Technologies, Qiagen NV, Takara Bio Company, Merck KGaA, Genscript, Illumina, New England Biolabs, and Promega Corporation. These vendors in the global DNA polymerase market are expanding their business by launching new and innovative products tailored for both research and in-vitro applications. Companies are also focussing on emerging markets in Asia Pacific to increase their geographical presence and tap into various end use segments that have the ability to invest in R&D for life sciences as well as develop innovative diagnostics tools.Request For Table Of Content @Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.Future Market InsightsValley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Analysis of Automotive Roller Tappets Market - Global Industry Insights, Trends, Outlook and Forecast till 2025

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Automotive roller tappets, also known as valve lifter or cam follower, is a small equipment interposed between valves or the valve lifting mechanism and the cam shaft lobe, depending the engine design requirements. It is essentially a cup that provides housing to valve stem and valve return spring, and imparts the linear motion projection to component. This critical application in every automotive is expected to be the primary factor that will continue to provide industry growth through the forecast period.Proliferating adoption of variable valve timing (VVT) or dual VVT will be among the prominent factors fueling market growthHigh performance automobiles and racing cars find substantial application of VVT technology. It enhances the performance through variating the valve timings and changing the duration of the valves when the engine is in operation. Incorporation of VVT and lift electronic control (VTEC), which is an advanced vehicle technology, allows integration of multiple camshafts through electronic or mechanical linking systems. This in turn also enhances the efficiency of the engines and performance through increasing the revolutions per minute (RPM). Owing to its critical applications in camshafts, increasing adoption of VTEC or VVT is expected to drive the automotive roller tappets market growth through the forecast period.Ask for detailed Sample of this Research Report @Incorporation of roller bearings in these automotive roller tappets is projected to be among the key trends that will provide industry tractionCamshafts with bearings are commonly coated with chrome plating, owing to which adoption of these roller bearings provides improved durability to the roller tappets or the needle rollers. Increasing adoption of sliding bearings in the place of conventional tappets to enhance the engine performance and efficiency is projected to provide increased market traction over the next few years.Mechanical products are expected to dominate the automotive roller tappets market share primarily owing to design simplicity and high consumer inclinationThe mechanical segment consists of the cylindrical rod incorporated with tappet at the one end. When placed in between the push rod and cam lobe, it establishes and maintains small gap amidst the two ends. It pushes the rod for opening or closing the valve, when cam lobe comes in contact. According to Coherent Market Insights, the mechanical product counterpart is expected to continue its dominance over the forecast period, owing to its design simplicity and good performance over the next few years.Asia Pacific will continue its industry share dominance over the forecast periodHigh demands for automotive production in major Asia Pacific economies that include prominent countries such as China, India, Japan, Indonesia, South Korea and Thailand are expected to provide substantial growth prospects over the next few years. Moreover, establishment of production facilities in these regions by the major automobile industry participants that include General Motors, Daimler, and Volkswagen are expected to provide strong growth prospects for automotive roller tappets market growth.Industry competition is characterized by versatile presence of local, regional and international players. Local players are increasingly focusing on differentiating their products through providing low cost alternatives, wherein are finding difficult to cope up with the quality and extensive portfolio of the key brands in the industry. Key automotive roller tappets market participants include MPCams, Lunati, Crower Cams & Equipment, OTICS USA, ISKY Cams, Rane Engine Valve, Wuxi Xizhou, Yuhuan Huiyu, SM Motorenteile, Jinan, Schaeffler, Johnson lifters, Morel Lifters, NSK, and Competition Cams.Request for Customization As per your Need :About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr. ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email: sales@coherentmarketinsights.comVisit our news Website :
Global Away from Home Tissue Products Market Forecast For Incremental CAGR Growth by 2022

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An extensive forecast study, titled Away from Home Tissue Products Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2017 - 2022 has been broadcasted to the online repository of Market Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE). This 170-page precise study encapsulates valuable details about the market current scenario as well as its future projections on a global and regional level. It further intensely aims to provide major insights into the markets growth throughout the above-mentioned forecast period in terms of volume and revenue (in US$ Mn). Moreover, the research also investigates market expansion in some of the prime regions such as North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, South America, and Middle East & Africa (MEA).Request Free Sample Report @There is a growing demand for various home tissue products for managing sanitation and hygiene across hotels and foodservices, healthcare institutions, businesses and commercial institutions, educational institutes, and public places. The growing significance of a better hygiene in hotels, restaurants, and catering sector and in workplaces has bolstered the demand for various away from home tissue products. The rising focus on adequate hygiene in the sector is boosting the adoption of HACCP paper towels. In several regions, the mounting concern of contagious diseases has led to the demand for various away from home tissue products to be used in public places and commercial facilities. The advent of away from home as well as recyclable tissue products at affordable prices is expected to boost the adoption across various end users in several regional markets. The advent of ergonomic dispenser designs and premium products made from 100% recyclable materials is a notable trend opening up exciting avenues for market players.The global away from home tissue products market stood at US$24,610.0 Mn in 2016 and is projected to reach a valuation of US$31,449.9 Mn by 2022 end. The market is estimated to rise at a CAGR of 4.2% during the forecast period of 20172022.Toweling Expected to be Most Lucrative Product SegmentThe major product types of away from home tissue products comprise napkins, toweling, toilet tissues, facial tissues, and sanitary products. Of these, the toweling segment holds the major share of 45.3% by 2022 end, amounting to US$14,252.2 Mn. The segment is anticipated to be worth US$11,626.0 Mn by 2017 end, representing a share of 45.3% of the product market. The segment is projected to clock a CAGR of 4.2% during the forecast period. The annual growth of the segment is pegged at US$525.2 Mn annually over 20172022, representing the leading absolute growth. The vastly rising demand for toweling as away-from-home tissue products among various end users, especially in the healthcare and food service industries, is attributed to the notable versatile applications of these products.Browse Full Report with TOC @North America Currently Leads but Asia Pacific excluding Japan to be at Forefront by 2022 endThe various regions for the market for away from home tissue products are North America, the Middle East and Africa (MEA), Latin America, Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ), Japan, and Europe. Of these, currently North America is the leading market in 2017, mainly attributed to the rapidly rising demand for environmental-friendly hygiene products. However, over the years, the APEJ market is projected to rise at higher CAGR and stay ahead of the pack by the end of the assessment period.The North America market is projected to rise from a valuation of US$7,372.7 Mn in 2017 to reach US$8,305.8 Mn in 2022. On the other hand, APEJ market stood at US$ 6,204.2 and is expected to lead the market with a worth of US$8,841.4 by 2022 end. The expected dominance of the market is likely to be attributed to a burgeoning demand for away from home tissue products for managing hygiene and catering in several developing and developed countries in the region.Meanwhile, the MEA away from home tissue products market is projected to rise at an impressive CAGR of 4.7% CAGR from 2017 to 2022 and and reach US$3,021.6 Mn by the end of the assessment period.Competitive AnalysisA number of leading players operating in the away from home tissue products market are focused on developing high-quality, eco-friendly sanitation products for various end-use applications, in a move to strengthen their positions in various regions. Key companies operating in the market include Kimberly-Clark Corporation, Georgia-Pacific LLC, Svenska Cellulosa Aktiebolaget, Cascades Inc., Procter & Gamble Co., Sofidel Group, Weifang Lancel Hygiene Products LTD, Asia Pulp and Paper, Kruger Inc., and MPI Papermills.Enquire about this Report @About Market Research Reports Search EngineMarket Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE) is an industry-leading database of Market Research Reports. MRRSE is driven by a stellar team of research experts and advisors trained to offer objective advice. Our sophisticated search algorithm returns results based on the report title, geographical region, publisher, or other keywords.MRRSE partners exclusively with leading global publishers to provide clients single-point access to top-of-the-line market research. MRRSEs repository is updated every day to keep its clients ahead of the next new trend in market research, be it competitive intelligence, product or service trends or strategic consulting.Contact UsState Tower90, State StreetSuite 700Albany, NY - 12207United States Telephone: +1-518-730-0559Email: sales@mrrse.comWebsite:Read More Industry News At:
Upcoming Forecast Report on Airborne Weapon Systems for Rotorcraft Market

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A rotorcraft is a heavy airborne machine that works by generating lift caused by its wings, which are called rotary wings or rotor blades. Several rotor blades are fixed and rotate around the pole to generate the lifting force to overcome the gravity pull and the weight by generating the required uplift pressure and providing direction through forcing down the oncoming air. The major advantage of a rotorcraft is that it can hover at a location. Gyroplanes are used for low speed surveillance operations and are relatively more cost-effective and easier to maintain than other types of aircraft.Request For Sample Copy of this Research Report :The major concern of rotorcraft is the generation of enough lift, against the bulky wings to overcome the air force. These aircraft also require a long runway for takeoff and landing. These pose as major restrains for growth of the market for airborne weapon systems for rotorcraft.Rotors of the aircraft are thin wings that spin around a shaft on the same spot and by that rotating force, it generates a huge downdraft of air lifting the helicopter upward. It helps to take off or land vertically and drift smoothly in any direction that is not available in a conventional plane.Military Rotorcraft:The military segment is expected to exhibit significant growth over the forecast period (2017  2025), due to constant demand for replacing old fleets to enhance the operations.Governments across the world are more likely to adopt multi-functional helicopters, including ground attack, air assault, cargo, surveillance, rescue operations, humanitarian aid, and troop transport due to the cut in defense budget. The Ministry of Defense, Government of India, intends to procure around 123 naval multi-role helicopters along with spare engines. Hence, the multi-mission and maritime helicopters segment is expected to account for the major market share of the global rotorcraft market over the forecast period.Civil Rotorcraft:Civil rotorcraft segment was valued at US$ 7.8 billion in 2016. Civil rotorcrafts offer vertical take-off and landing capabilities, which helps helicopters to function in remote areas.Civil rotorcrafts segment is expected to witness high growth due to increasing demand for travel, medical services, general service, and firefighting. Among the civil rotorcraft, light helicopter are expected to account major market share due to the continuing crisis in the oil and gas industry that may slower the use of large and heavy helicopters.Global Airborne Weapon Systems for Rotorcraft Market Outlook - Asia Pacific Holds Significant Market ShareAsia Pacific is expected to account for the largest market share of global rotorcraft market by 2025, due to new trends and technologies in the rotorcraft industry, cutting-edge solutions, and increasing Chinese defense expenditure, followed by North America and Europe.According to Coherent Market Insights analysis, North America and Europe are expected to account around 39% and 27% share of global market by 2025. New helicopter deliveries in Asia Pacific are also expected to increase during the same time to over 34%.Increasing aggressiveness of China regarding territorial clashes with its neighboring countries and strong economic growth are the primary factors driving growth of the rotorcraft market in Asia Pacific. Beijing revealed a homegrown battle chopper that is said to be the most powerful, with the ability to destroy the most powerful tank in the world.For instance, Black Hurricane is a single door, narrow body aircraft, and multiple rocket launcher, which could fire over a dozen rockets at the same time. This aircraft is the most advanced helicopter and expected to perform air-to-ground strikes, air-to-ground fire, and air-to-air combat in any weather condition. The military helicopter has many rocket launcher and can carry four missiles at the same time. Additionally, pilot seat is protected with bullet-proof shield, which could block bullets from a 12.7mm machine gun.China's well-documented anti-satellite weapons tests have gained traction globally. It has influenced the U.S Air Force to accelerate strategies for satellite protection, which includes improving sensor and cyber reinforcing command for the advancement in predictions for functionality in the event of an attack.Key Players in the Global Airborne Weapon Systems for Rotorcraft MarketMajor players operating in the global airborne weapon systems for rotorcraft market include The Boeing Company, Bell Helicopters, Sikorsky, Leonardo-Finmeccanica, Changhe Aircraft Industries, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), Airbus Defense and Space, Embraer, Lockheed Martin Corporation, Korean Aerospace Industries, Russian Helicopters, MD Helicopters, Turkish Aerospace Industries, Enstrom Helicopters, Rolls-Royce, and Helibras.Request For Customization as per Your Need :About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr. ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email: sales@coherentmarketinsights.comVisit Our New Website:
Bulgarian Cards and Payments Industry Offers Payments Landscape in Bulgaria by Opportunities & Risks to 2021

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An up-to-date research report has been disclosed by Market Research Hub highlighting the title "Payments Landscape in Bulgaria with Opportunities and Risks to 2021", report provides detailed analysis of market trends in Bulgarian cards and payments industry. It provides values and volumes for a number of key performance indicators in the industry, including credit transfers, cash, payment cards, and cheques during the review-period (2013-2017). The report also analyzes various payment card markets operating in the industry, and provides detailed information on the number of cards in circulation, transaction values and volumes during the review-period and over the forecast-period (2017-2021).Get a Free Sample Report @The report also offers information on the country's competitive landscape, including the market shares of issuers and schemes. The report brings together Market Research Hub research, modeling, and analysis expertise to allow banks and card issuers to identify segment dynamics and competitive advantages. The report also covers details of regulatory policy and recent changes in the regulatory structure.This report provides top-level market analysis, information and insights into the Bulgarian cards and payments industry, including -- Current and forecast values for each market in the Bulgarian cards and payments industry, including debit and credit cards.- Detailed insights into payment instruments including credit transfers, direct debit, cash, and payment cards. It also, includes an overview of the country's key alternative payment instruments.- E-commerce market analysis.- Analysis of various market drivers and regulations governing the Bulgarian cards and payments industry.- Detailed analysis of strategies adopted by banks and other institutions to market debit and credit cards.Scope:- The share of domestic scheme provider BORICA has been declining, with international scheme providers Mastercard and Visa taking charge of the debit card market. BORICAs share fell from 3.9% in 2013 to 1.3% 2017 in terms of number of cards in circulation. To regain its presence and to compete with international schemes, BORICA launched national card scheme Bcard in July 2017. As of November 2017, six banks and several non-banks have started issuing Bcard in the country.- American Express exited the Bulgarian market in 2017. In July 2017, Postbank (subsidiary of Eurobank Group) - which was the sole issuer of American Express cards - ceased both the issuance and maintenance of American Express pay-later cards in the country. The banks existing American Express cards were replaced with Mastercard-branded cards, which contributed to the growth of Mastercards pay-later card share in 2017.- Contactless payments are gaining traction in Bulgaria. All major banks now offer contactless cards in the country, while Visa and Mastercard have launched their respective contactless technologies, payWave and PayPass. According to Visa Europe, Bulgarian contactless payments via Visa cards rose by 612% over the 12-month period to April 2016. Almost 40,000 contactless terminals accept Visa contactless cards in the country. To capitalize on this trend, in March 2017 CIBANK collaborated with Mastercard to become the first bank in Bulgaria to introduce contactless ATMs.Reasons to buy:- Make strategic business decisions, using top-level historic and forecast market data, related to the Bulgarian cards and payments industry and each market within it.- Understand the key market trends and growth opportunities in the Bulgarian cards and payments industry.- Assess the competitive dynamics in the Bulgarian cards and payments industry.- Gain insights into marketing strategies used for various card types in Bulgaria.- Gain insights into key regulations governing the Bulgarian cards and payments industry.Browse full report with detailed TOC @Table of Content:Executive SummaryCard-based PaymentsE-commerce PaymentsAlternative PaymentsPayments Infrastructure & RegulationAppendix..continue (TOC + List of Tables and Figures)Make an enquiry for this report @About Market Research Hub:Market Research Hub (MRH) is a next-generation reseller of research reports and analysis. MRHs expansive collection of banking research reports has been carefully curated to help key personnel and decision makers across industry verticals to clearly visualize their operating environment and take strategic steps.MRH functions as an integrated platform for the following products and services: Objective and sound market forecasts, qualitative and quantitative analysis, incisive insight into defining industry trends, and market share estimates. Our reputation lies in delivering value and world-class capabilities to our clients and customers.Contact Us90 State Street,Albany, NY 12207,United StatesToll Free: 800-998-4852 (US-Canada)Email: press@marketresearchhub.comWebsite:Read Industry News at -
Cambodian Cards and Payments Industry Offers Payments Landscape in Cambodia by Opportunities & Risks to 2021

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An up-to-date research report has been disclosed by Market Research Hub highlighting the title "Payments Landscape in Cambodia with Opportunities and Risks to 2021", provides a detailed analysis of market trends in Cambodian cards and payments industry. It provides values and volumes for a number of key performance indicators in the industry, including credit transfers, cash, payment cards, and cheques during the review-period (2013-2017). The report also analyzes various payment card markets operating in the industry and provides detailed information on the number of cards in circulation, transaction values and volumes during the review-period and over the forecast-period (2017-2021).Get a Free Sample Report @The report also offers information on the country's competitive landscape, including the market shares of issuers and schemes. The report brings together Market Research Hub research, modeling, and analysis expertise to allow banks and card issuers to identify segment dynamics and competitive advantages. The report also covers details of regulatory policy and recent changes in the regulatory structure.This report provides top-level market analysis, information and insights into the Cambodian cards and payments industry, including -- Current and forecast values for each market in the Cambodian cards and payments industry, including debit and credit cards.- Detailed insights into payment instruments including cheques and payment cards. It also, includes an overview of the country's key alternative payment instruments.- Analysis of various market drivers and regulations governing the Cambodian cards and payments industry.- Detailed analysis of strategies adopted by banks and other institutions to market debit and credit cards.Scope:1- In October 2017, the NBC in partnership with ACLEDA Bank, Sathapana Bank, and microfinance company Prasac Soft launched the Cambodian Shared Switch (CSS), a shared system that enables consumers to perform interbank transactions using payment cards on member institutions ATMs and POSs . The CSS enables consumers to make a range of transactions such as payment of goods and services, cash withdrawals, interbank fund transfers, balance enquiries, and mini statements. The development of CSS is aimed at modernizing the countrys payment system, enhancing the efficiency of payment services, and offering additional transaction channels for consumers. In addition, with growing ATM and POS networks, consumers in rural areas will have greater access to banking services, which is in line with the governments financial inclusion policy.2- To enhance the existing payment infrastructure, the NBC launched its Fast and Secure Transfer (FAST) Payment system in July 2016. FAST Payment offers a quick, secure, and efficient method of conducting interbank transactions in local currency for commercial banks and micro deposit-taking institutions (MDIs). The service is supported by seven banks (ACLEDA Bank, Cambodian Public Bank, Canadia Bank, ABA, Bank for Investment and Development of Cambodia (BIDC), Phillip Bank, and Sathapana Bank) and six MDIs (AMK Microfinance, VisionFund, Prasac, Amret, Kredit, and Hatha Kaksekar).3- Alternative payments that offer security and convenience are gradually gaining prominence in Cambodia, with banks and payment solution providers launching new services. Pi Pay is a mobile app launched in Cambodia in 2017. The mobile app is owned by Cambodia-based Anco Group. Users can make in-store payments and P2P transfers, and pay utility bills. Users can top up their Pi Pay wallet at Pi Pay hubs or PayGo kiosks. To make in-store payments, users need to scan the merchants QR code. Similarly in June 2017 Visa announced the launch of its mobile payment solution mVisa QR, enabling card holders to make payments by scanning the merchants QR code. Earlier in July 2016, Maybank launched a mobile banking app for its customers in Cambodia, allowing them to conduct banking transactions, transfer funds, and make online purchases.Reasons to buy:- Make strategic business decisions, using top-level historic and forecast market data, related to the Cambodian cards and payments industry and each market within it.- Understand the key market trends and growth opportunities in the Cambodian cards and payments industry.- Assess the competitive dynamics in the Cambodian cards and payments industry.- Gain insights into marketing strategies used for various card types in Cambodia.- Gain insights into key regulations governing the Cambodian cards and payments industry.Browse full report with detailed TOC @Table of Content:Executive SummaryCard-based PaymentsE-commerce PaymentsAlternative PaymentsPayments Infrastructure & RegulationAppendix..continue (TOC + List of Tables and Figures)Make an enquiry for this report @About Market Research Hub:Market Research Hub (MRH) is a next-generation reseller of research reports and analysis. MRHs expansive collection of banking research reports has been carefully curated to help key personnel and decision makers across industry verticals to clearly visualize their operating environment and take strategic steps.MRH functions as an integrated platform for the following products and services: Objective and sound market forecasts, qualitative and quantitative analysis, incisive insight into defining industry trends, and market share estimates. Our reputation lies in delivering value and world-class capabilities to our clients and customers.Contact Us90 State Street,Albany, NY 12207,United StatesToll Free: 800-998-4852 (US-Canada)Email: press@marketresearchhub.comWebsite:Read Industry News at -
Baby Personal Care Anticipated to Rake over US$ 83 Bn in Revenues Towards the end of 2022

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An extensive forecast study, titled Baby personal care Market  Global Industry Analysis 2012-2016, and Forecast, 2017-2022, has been broadcasted to the online repository of Market Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE). This 278-page precise study encapsulates valuable details about the market current scenario as well as its future projections on a global and regional level. It further intensely aims to provide major insights into the markets growth throughout the above-mentioned forecast period in terms of volume and revenue (in US$ Mn). Moreover, the research also investigates market expansion in some of the prime regions such as North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, South America, and Middle East & Africa (MEA)Get Free Sample Report @Report OutlineThe report commences with an executive summary, which includes an abstract of key research findings. Highlights mentions in the executive summary particularly aim at revealing the expansion of baby personal care markets across multiple regions. To offer an overview of the global baby personal care market, the report provides a market introduction (developed from an analytical perspective) and a standard definition to the term  baby personal care. The report further offers a wide forecast purview by revealing market size estimations & analysis for baby personal care markets at global parameters.The report includes a section addressing the macroeconomics of baby personal care markets, wherein trends influencing the growth of baby personal care sales and production have been analyzed. This section also offers cost structure & pricing analysis, evaluation of prominent raw material sourcing strategies, supply chain breakdown, and an intensity map tracking the presence of key players in the overall market. The subsequent chapters offer segmented analysis on the global baby personal care market, which can be employed for recognizing all fragments involving the global sales of baby personal care products.Browse Full Report with TOC @The report concludes with a systematic profiling of leading market players, revealing their latest developments and current market standings. An elaborate competitive landscape on global baby personal care market, exhibited in this section, is directed to offer insights on industry leaders as well as market entrants.Market TaxonomyKey information on the analysis of global baby personal care market is based in the chapters comprising of segmental forecasts. The report has segmented the global market for baby personal care into  product-types, sales channels, price, and region. Sub-categories within these segments are showcased in the market taxonomy table below.Analysis and forecast offered in these sections has been gauged across wide-ranging metrics such as Y-o-Y growth rates, CAGRs, absolute dollar opportunities, and revenue share ratios. Cross-sectional data and country-wise analysis is also provided in the following chapters.ScopeMarket Research employs robust research methodology in development of its market studies. Our analysts conduct extensive research across primary and secondary sources, aggregating net revenues procured from authoritative databases and direct contacts. The scope of the report is to offer future prospects on global baby personal care market, which enables market participants in planning towards long-term business growth.Enquiry about this Report @About Market Research Reports Search EngineMarket Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE) is an industry-leading database of Market Research Reports. MRRSE is driven by a stellar team of research experts and advisors trained to offer objective advice. Our sophisticated search algorithm returns results based on the report title, geographical region, publisher, or other keywords.MRRSE partners exclusively with leading global publishers to provide clients single-point access to top-of-the-line market research. MRRSEs repository is updated every day to keep its clients ahead of the next new trend in market research, be it competitive intelligence, product or service trends or strategic consulting.Contact UsState Tower90, State StreetSuite 700Albany, NY - 12207United States Telephone: +1-518-730-0559Email: sales@mrrse.comWebsite:Read More Industry News At:
Global Wood-Pellets Market: Roadmap to Win and Drive Customer Value Forecast by 2023

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"Wood pellet is a solid fuel that is produced by crushing and densifying waste timber like sawdust, forestry residues, and industrial byproducts like old paper and forestry wastes. The length is 1-2 cm and the diameter is generally 6, 8, 10, or 12mm. It is possible to produce 25mm wood pellet at maximum. In Sweden, 6mm wood pellet is encouraged to use in house as it can realize the best condition of combustion. Wood pellet production doesn't need to add binder as lignin, an element of wood, plays a role of binder and helps to pelletize when it is melted by heat.Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the Wood-Pellets in global market, especially in North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East and Africa. This report categorizes the market based on manufacturers, regions, types and applications.Request Sample Report @Industry Top PlayersGerman Pellets, Enviva,Pinnacle, Vyborgskaya Cellulose, Rentech, Innogy (RWE), Graanul Invest Group, Green Circle Bio Energy, Zilkha Biomass Energy, Canfor, General Biofuels, BlueFire Renewables, Pacific BioEnergy, Protocol Energy, PFEIFER, Biomass Secure Power, Viridis Energy, Westervelt, New Biomass Holding, Energex, Lignetics, Equustock, Fram Renewable Fuels, Bear Mountain Forest Products, RusForest, Neova, Drax Biomass International, Enova Energy Group, Aoke Ruifeng, DEVOTION, Dalin Biological, Senon Renewable Energy, Xirui New Energy, Weige Bio-tech Energy, Jianghe Biomass Energy, Huinan HongriMarket SegmentsMarket Segment by Regions, regional analysis covers North America (United States, Canada and Mexico) Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy) Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia) South America (Brazil, Argentina, Colombia) Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa)Market Segment by Type, covers White Pellet Black PelletFor More Information @Market Segment by Applications, can be divided into Power Generation Industrial Furnace Civil Use OthersAbout UsFuture Generic Reports is a market research and consulting organization, offering premium collection of market research reports, custom research and consulting services to corporations, no-profit organizations and government institutions across the globe.The wide range of information is presented by a team of well-trained researchers of specific sectors through exhaustive research. We deliver premier market research services that cover all industry verticals, including chemicals and material, automotive, healthcare, electronics & semiconductor, food and beverage, pharmaceuticals and technology and media.We believe in building an eternal bond with our clients through offering them inclusive research study meeting their specific requirements. Our services are tailored specifically to our clients by proposing them the potential outcome, based on our in-depth analysis and insights for exploring the growth strategies through providing the best possible decision for quality production.Contact UsFuture Genic ReportsUSA Office244, Madison AvenueNew York City, NY - 10016United StatesToll Free +1- 844-445-2861Email: sales@futuregenicreports.com
Australian Wealth Market: Significant Opportunities for Wealth Managers & New Businesses in Upcoming Years

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An up-to-date research report has been disclosed by Market Research Hub highlighting the title Wealth in Australia: HNW Investors 2018 offers significant opportunities for wealth managers despite its high level of development. The local HNW segment is significantly older than their global peers, suggesting that intergenerational wealth transfer will offer a significant source of new business over the coming years. In particular, inheriting female spouses are often overlooked and should be given more attention. In the expat space, wealth managers will find those migrating under the Significant Investor Visa a lucrative target market. To appeal to this segment as well as the wider HNW market, providers have to up their game when it comes to the provision of tax advisory services, given that there continues to be a significant gap between supply and demand. One of the main challenges facing the Australian wealth market is the lack of new advisor talent. This is magnified thanks to investors strong preference for high-touch, time-consuming advisory mandates.Get a free sample report@This report analyzes the investing preferences and portfolio allocation of Australian HNW investors. The report is based on our proprietary Global Wealth Managers Survey. Specifically the report -- Profiles the average Australian HNW investor in terms of their demographics.- Looks at which wealth management mandates are preferred among Australian HNW investors and how demand will develop going forward.- Examines the allocation of Australian HNW investors portfolios into different asset classes and how this is expected to develop in the future.- Analyzes HNW investors propensity to invest offshore, their preferred booking centers and asset classes, and Australias standing as an offshore center.- Explores product and service demand among Australian HNW investors.Scope:- 46% of male HNW investors are older than 60 compared to 26% of female ones. Wealth managers should pay increased attention to women, as more will take over the reins of family wealth.- Only 12,824 HNW individuals in Australia are expats, but those migrating under the Significant Investor Visa are a lucrative segment thanks to their greater likelihood to migrate permanently.- Wealth managers that reach out to the expat segment with a one-stop service proposition will have an advantage over specialized boutiques.- A lack of time is driving uptake of advice, but investors are reluctant to relinquish control and advisory mandates remain the preferred type of asset management, accounting for 64% of assets.- In stark contrast to the global trend, Australian HNW investors are moving away from property and equities. They currently constitute a noteworthy 48% and 15% respectively, but diversifiers such as alternatives and bonds will attract an increasing share of HNW wealth.- Australian HNW individuals only hold 16% of their wealth abroad, but providers will not encounter any difficulties reaching out to investors in the wider region.- Only a third of providers targeting HNW investors offer tax advice, despite strong and rising demand.Reasons to buy:- Develop and enhance your client targeting strategies using our data on HNW profiles and sources of wealth.- Give your marketing strategies the edge required and capture new clients using insights from our data on HNW investors preferences for the various styles of asset management.- Tailor your investment product portfolio to match current and future demand for different asset classes among HNW individuals.- Develop your service proposition to match the product and service demand expressed by Australian HNW investors and react proactively to forecasted changes in demand.Browse full report with detailed table of content @Table of Content:EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 21.1. Already a mature wealth market, Australia still offers room for growth 21.2. Key findings 21.3. Critical success factors 22. OVERVIEW 82.1. Succeeding in Australias HNW market requires an understanding of evolving HNW demand patterns 82.2. Demographics: Professionals employed in the financial services industry represent a lucrative target market 92.3. Expats: Providers will have to work hard to make the expat opportunity work 102.4. Investment style preferences: Lack of time drives uptake of advice, making convenience an implicit part of a wealth service 112.5. Asset allocations: Bonds and alternatives will be on the rise 122.6. Offshore preferences: A good investment track record and a wide range of products can entice wealth home 132.7. HNW product and service demand: Wealth managers should lead with tax and pension planning 143. INHERITING SPOUSES MEAN BIG BUSINESS, BUT FEW PROVIDERS ARE SET UP TO CAPITALIZE 153.1. Intergenerational wealth transfer represents a significant opportunity in Australia 153.2. More needs to be done to reach out to the next generation of HNW investors 163.2.1. Citi Private Banks Next Gen program helps private banks build ties with inheritors early on 163.3. Only focusing on the next generation limits earning opportunities 184. TAX STRUCTURING SERVICES ARE KEY TO KEEPING EXPAT WEALTH IN THE COUNTRY 204.1. On first view the Australian HNW expat market is not a lucrative one 204.1.1. Australian HNW expats are transients rather than migrants 204.1.2. Job transfer is the number one reason for HNW investors moving to Australia 204.2. HNW expats migrating under the SIV are more attractive than those reaching Australian shores as part of a job transfer 214.2.1. However, competition for SIV migrants is heating up due to regulatory changes 224.2.2. Partnerships with third-party companies will enable wealth managers to reach out to expats at an early stage 234.3. The complex needs of expats make them an attractive target, but a wide service offering is a must to appeal to these clients 234.3.1. Providing tax advice can help bring expat offshore holdings to Australia 245. EFFECTIVE CORPORATE-LEVEL BRANDING MINIMIZES THE RISK OF LOSING CLIENTS WHEN ADVISORS MOVE ON 265.1. Time is precious but control is even more important, meaning Australian HNW investors strongly favor advisory mandates 26continueEnquire about this report @About Market Research Hub:Market Research Hub (MRH) is a next-generation reseller of research reports and analysis. MRHs expansive collection of banking industry reports has been carefully curated to help key personnel and decision makers across industry verticals to clearly visualize their operating environment and take strategic steps.MRH functions as an integrated platform for the following products and services: Objective and sound market forecasts, qualitative and quantitative analysis, incisive insight into defining industry trends, and market share estimates. Our reputation lies in delivering value and world-class capabilities to our clients and customers.Contact Us:90 State Street,Albany, NY 12207,United StatesToll Free: 800-998-4852 (US-Canada)Email: press@marketresearchhub.comWebsite:Read Industry News at-
Environmental Sensing and Monitoring Equipments Market In-Depth Analysis by QYResearchReports

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Qyresearchreports include new market research report Global Environmental Sensing and Monitoring Equipments Market Professional Survey Report 2018 to its huge collection of research reports.This report focuses on top manufacturers in global market, with production, price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer, coveringHoneywell InternationalSiemensTE ConnectivityCoastal Environmental SystemsDanaher CorporationGeneral ElectricEmerson ElectricTeledyne TechnologiesMerckDownload Free exclusive Sample of this report:Another area, where the report on the global market for Environmental Sensing and Monitoring Equipments touches upon elaborately is the competitive scenario. It profiles all the noteworthy players operating in the market by chronicling their products, winning strategies, and sales and revenues. It also banks upon analytical tools, such as SWOT Analysis and Porters Five Forces to understand where the opportunities lie and the pitfalls to be avoided.The report on the market for Environmental Sensing and Monitoring Equipments presents all the crucial information in digestible chunks by leveraging tables, charts, and graphs so that readers can easily understand the major trends. It also groups the information accurately in various relevant paragraphs. The overall idea is to enable keen players in the Environmental Sensing and Monitoring Equipments market take crucial business decisions easily.Table of ContentsGlobal Environmental Sensing and Monitoring Equipments Market Professional Survey Report 20181 Industry Overview of Environmental Sensing and Monitoring Equipments1.1 Definition and Specifications of Environmental Sensing and Monitoring Equipments1.1.1 Definition of Environmental Sensing and Monitoring Equipments1.1.2 Specifications of Environmental Sensing and Monitoring Equipments1.2 Classification of Environmental Sensing and Monitoring Equipments1.2.1 Temperature Sensing1.2.2 Moisture Detection1.2.3 Chemical Detection1.2.4 Biological Detection1.2.5 Particulate Detection1.2.6 Noise Measurement2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Environmental Sensing and Monitoring Equipments2.1 Raw Material and Suppliers2.2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Environmental Sensing and Monitoring Equipments2.3 Manufacturing Process Analysis of Environmental Sensing and Monitoring Equipments2.4 Industry Chain Structure of Environmental Sensing and Monitoring Equipments3 Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants Analysis of Environmental Sensing and Monitoring Equipments3.1 Capacity and Commercial Production Date of Global Environmental Sensing and Monitoring Equipments Major Manufacturers in 20163.2 Manufacturing Plants Distribution of Global Environmental Sensing and Monitoring Equipments Major Manufacturers in 20163.3 R&D Status and Technology Source of Global Environmental Sensing and Monitoring Equipments Major Manufacturers in 20163.4 Raw Materials Sources Analysis of Global Environmental Sensing and Monitoring Equipments Major Manufacturers in 20164 Global Environmental Sensing and Monitoring Equipments Overall Market Overview4.1 2012-2017E Overall Market Analysis4.2 Capacity Analysis4.2.1 2012-2017E Global Environmental Sensing and Monitoring Equipments Capacity and Growth Rate Analysis4.2.2 2016 Environmental Sensing and Monitoring Equipments Capacity Analysis (Company Segment)4.3 Sales Analysis4.3.1 2012-2017E Global Environmental Sensing and Monitoring Equipments Sales and Growth Rate Analysis4.3.2 2016 Environmental Sensing and Monitoring Equipments Sales Analysis (Company Segment)4.4 Sales Price Analysis4.4.1 2012-2017E Global Environmental Sensing and Monitoring Equipments Sales PriceRead Complete Table of Content @List of Tables and FiguresFigure Picture of Environmental Sensing and Monitoring EquipmentsTable Product Specifications of Environmental Sensing and Monitoring EquipmentsTable Classification of Environmental Sensing and Monitoring EquipmentsFigure Global Production Market Share of Environmental Sensing and Monitoring Equipments by Type in 2016Figure Temperature Sensing PictureTable Major Manufacturers of Temperature SensingFigure Moisture Detection PictureTable Major Manufacturers of Moisture DetectionFigure Chemical Detection PictureGet discount copy @QYResearchReports.com delivers the latest strategic market intelligence to build a successful business footprint in China. Our syndicated and customized research reports provide companies with vital background information of the market and in-depth analysis on the Chinese trade and investment framework, which directly affects their business operations. Reports from QYResearchReports.com feature valuable recommendations on how to navigate in the extremely unpredictable yet highly attractive Chinese market.1820 AvenueM Suite #1047Brooklyn, NY 11230United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Web:Email: sales@qyresearchreports.com
Replaceable Pollution Masks Market Healthcare Analysis 2018: QYResearchReports

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Qyresearchreports include new market research report Global Replaceable Pollution Masks Market Professional Survey Report 2018 to its huge collection of research reports.The international market for Replaceable Pollution Masks has been thoroughly studied with every detail in the publication with augmented emphasis on various important factors such as restraints, market opportunities, and growth drivers. Each of the elements that pertain to the shaping of the market dynamics that has been analyzed and studied in detail by the research analysts, so as to offer the best and most evaluative and exhaustive study to the report buyers. The snapshot or the executive summary that has been provided in the market intelligence study has been designed in such a way so as to give a quick overview of the market for receiving information on the go. This could help readers with hands-on data needed to make quick decisions anytime during their growth journey in the market.Download Free exclusive Sample of this report:The study of market segmentations that has been offered with the publication that explores some of the most significant categories of the world Replaceable Pollution Masks market is deemed significant for the growth of industry participants. All of the segments that have been studied elaborately in the said publication have been deeply evaluated with assistance from best of the research techniques. The analysts have dissected each of the segments and have shed light on vital factors that influence the growth of the various segments. Using this crucial information, market players could rightly shape their business plans in favor of the betterment of their growth in the international market. Segments that have been analyzed in the publication could be related to product, end use, application, and geography.A group of experienced analysts who have prepared the said report delves deep into the various factors that hinder or fuel the global market for Replaceable Pollution Masks. It also discovers and mentions the important trends that are emerging in the said market. Cashing in on all of these information that has been gathered so far, it has come up with the best course of action for all the stake holders of the market.Table of ContentsGlobal Replaceable Pollution Masks Market Professional Survey Report 20181 Industry Overview of Replaceable Pollution Masks1.1 Definition and Specifications of Replaceable Pollution Masks1.1.1 Definition of Replaceable Pollution Masks1.1.2 Specifications of Replaceable Pollution Masks1.2 Classification of Replaceable Pollution Masks1.2.1 N1001.2.2 N951.2.3 N901.3 Applications of Replaceable Pollution Masks1.3.1 Petrochemical1.3.2 Mine1.3.3 Metallurgical1.3.4 Spray Paint1.3.5 Other2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Replaceable Pollution Masks2.1 Raw Material and Suppliers2.2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Replaceable Pollution Masks2.3 Manufacturing Process Analysis of Replaceable Pollution Masks2.4 Industry Chain Structure of Replaceable Pollution Masks3 Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants Analysis of Replaceable Pollution Masks3.1 Capacity and Commercial Production Date of Global Replaceable Pollution Masks Major Manufacturers in 20173.2 Manufacturing Plants Distribution of Global Replaceable Pollution Masks Major Manufacturers in 20173.3 R&D Status and Technology Source of Global Replaceable Pollution Masks Major Manufacturers in 20173.4 Raw Materials Sources Analysis of Global Replaceable Pollution Masks Major Manufacturers in 20174 Global Replaceable Pollution Masks Overall Market Overview4.1 2013-2018E Overall Market Analysis4.2 Capacity Analysis4.2.1 2013-2018E Global Replaceable Pollution Masks Capacity and Growth Rate Analysis4.2.2 2017 Replaceable Pollution Masks Capacity Analysis (Company Segment)4.3 Sales Analysis4.3.1 2013-2018E Global Replaceable Pollution Masks Sales and Growth Rate Analysis4.3.2 2017 Replaceable Pollution Masks Sales Analysis (Company Segment)4.4 Sales Price Analysis4.4.1 2013-2018E Global Replaceable Pollution Masks Sales PriceRead Complete Table of Content @List of Tables and FiguresFigure Picture of Replaceable Pollution MasksTable Product Specifications of Replaceable Pollution MasksTable Classification of Replaceable Pollution MasksFigure Global Production Market Share of Replaceable Pollution Masks by Type in 2017Figure N100 PictureTable Major Manufacturers of N100Figure N95 PictureTable Major Manufacturers of N95Figure N90 PictureTable Major Manufacturers of N90Table Applications of Replaceable Pollution MasksTo Get Discount Of This Report Click here @QYResearchReports.com delivers the latest strategic market intelligence to build a successful business footprint in China. Our syndicated and customized research reports provide companies with vital background information of the market and in-depth analysis on the Chinese trade and investment framework, which directly affects their business operations. Reports from QYResearchReports.com feature valuable recommendations on how to navigate in the extremely unpredictable yet highly attractive Chinese market.1820 AvenueM Suite #1047Brooklyn, NY 11230United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Web:Email: sales@qyresearchreports.com
Liquefied Natural Gas Market Sees Promising Growth till 2022

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Liquefied natural gas is an odorless and colorless liquid, which is formed by cooling natural gas to -1620C. The liquefaction process shrinks the volume of gas by 600 times, making it easier to store and ship. When liquefied natural gas reaches to its destination, it is again converted into gas by regasification process and transported through vessels and pipes to end-use consumers. Liquefied natural gas is an emerging fuel due to its cleanest burning nature as compared to petrol, diesel, and other fuels. Key drivers such as increasing demand for clean source of energy by end-use industries, government initiatives to strengthen gas pipeline infrastructure, and significant growth in global natural gas liquefaction capacity are expected to fuel growth of the global liquefied natural gas market over the forecast period. According to International Gas Union report, the global nominal natural gas liquefaction capacity is increased to 336.7 million tons per year in 2017, which was accounted to 304.4 million tons per year in 2015.Request For Sample Copy of this Research Report :The liquefied natural gas market is highly fluctuating market due to larger dependency on oil prices. Mostly, spot price of liquefied natural gas in emerging markets is set via oil linkage. Moreover, changing trade and sales strategies across every region is propelling growth of the market. For instance, in Europe, wholesale gas is sold via long term contracts, whereas, in North America, gas prices are set at liquid trading hubs.Among application, power generation segment held highest revenue share in 2016 and projected to retain its dominance over the forecast period. This is mainly due to shifting preference towards cleaner source of energy for power generation. According to Mexicos National Energy Ministry (SENER), more than 60% of Mexicos electric capacity additions between 2016 and 2020 are projected to come from natural gas-fired power plants.Asia Pacific accounted for highest revenue share in the global liquefied natural gas market in 2016, and is expected to retain its dominance over the forecast period. This is mainly due to significant growth in natural gas liquefaction capacity in countries such as Australia, Malaysia, and Indonesia among others. According to International Gas Union report, in 2016, Australia and Malaysia exported around 44 million metric tons and 25 million metric tons of LNG respectively and accounted as a major player after Qatar in LNG export. The region is estimated as the fastest growing region, witnessing a CAGR of 13.0% over the forecast period.According to a study by Coherent Market Insights, the global liquefied natural gas market was valued at US$ 7.23 billion in 2016 and is expected to witness a CAGR of 12.8% in terms of revenue over the forecast period (2017  2025).Asia Pacific held highest revenue share of 38% in the global liquefied natural gas market, in 2016 and the region is projected to maintain its dominance over the forecast period. Middle East accounted for the second largest revenue share in global liquefied natural gas market in 2016 and is expected to maintain its position over the forecast period.Major Players in the Global Liquefied Natural Gas MarketThe major players operating in the global liquefied natural gas market include Royal Dutch Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Total SA, BP Plc, PetroChina, China Petroleum and Chemical Company, and Conoco Philips. Key players are strategically investing in the liquefied natural gas market to enhance their product portfolio through collaboration, joint ventures, and merger & acquisitions. For instance, in 2017, Qatar Petroleums Wave LNG Solutions and Shell Gas & Power Developments B.V. (Shell) signed a framework agreement to develop liquefied natural gas (LNG) marine fueling  or bunkering  infrastructure at strategic shipping locations across the globe.Request For Customization as per Your Need :About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr. ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email: sales@coherentmarketinsights.comVisit Our New Website:
China Medical Implanting Material Market Research Report 2018

China Medical Implanting Material Market Research Report 2018

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The China Medical Implanting Material Market Research Report 2018 is a professional and in-depth study on the current state of the Medical Implanting Material industry.Firstly, the report provides a basic overview of the industry including definitions, classifications, applications and industry chain structure. The Medical Implanting Material Industry analysis is provided for the international market including development history, competitive landscape analysis, and major regions development status.Secondly, development policies and plans are discussed as well as manufacturing processes and cost structures. This report also states import/export, supply and consumption figures as well as cost, price, revenue and gross margin by regions (United States, EU, China and Japan), and other regions can be added.Then, the report focuses on global major leading industry players with information such as company profiles, product picture and specification, capacity, production, price, cost, revenue and contact information. Upstream raw materials, equipment and downstream consumers analysis is also carried out. Whats more, the Medical Implanting Material industry development trends and marketing channels are analyzed.Finally, the feasibility of new investment projects is assessed, and overall research conclusions are offered.In a word, the report provides major statistics on the state of the industry and is a valuable source of guidance and direction for companies and individuals interested in the market.Browse a complete report sample:The global Medical Implanting Material market is valued at XX million USD in 2017 and is expected to reach XX million USD by the end of 2025, growing at a CAGR of XX% between 2017 and 2025.China plays an important role in global market, with market size of xx million USD in 2017 and will be xx million USD in 2025, with a CAGR of xx%.This report studies the Medical Implanting Material development status and future trend in China, focuses on top players in China, also splits Medical Implanting Material by type and by applications, to fully and deeply research and reveal the market general situation and future forecast.The major players in China market includeALCONAbbottBausch + LombHOYACARL ZeissOphtecRaynerLenstecJohnson & JohnsonC. R. BardWeigaoTerumo CorporationMedtronicBoston ScientificGeographically, this report splits the China market into six regions,South ChinaEast ChinaSouthwest ChinaNortheast ChinaNorth ChinaCentral ChinaNorthwest ChinaOn the basis of product, this report displays the sales volume (K Units), revenue (Million USD), product price (USD/Unit), market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoIntraocular LensVascular StentsBone NailsOthersOn the basis of the end users/application, this report coversPublic HospitalPrivate ClinicTable of contents:Chapter One - Medical Implanting Material OverviewChapter Two - China Medical Implanting Material Market Competition by Players/ManufacturersChapter Three - China Medical Implanting Material Sales and Revenue by Region (2012-2018)Chapter Four - China "&B1&" Sales and Revenue by Type/ Product Category (2012-2018)"Chapter Five - China "&B1&" Sales by Application (2012-2018)"Chapter Six - China Medical Implanting Material Players/Suppliers Profiles and Sales DataChapter Seven - Medical Implanting Material Manufacturing Cost AnalysisChapter Eight - Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream BuyersChapter Nine - Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/TradersChapter Ten - Market Effect Factors AnalysisChapter Eleven - China Medical Implanting Material Market Size (Sales and Revenue) Forecast (2018-2022)Chapter Twelve - Research Findings and ConclusionChapter Thirteen - Methodology and Data SourceContact Details:Company Name: QYResearch CO.,LIMITED | focus on Market Survey and ResearchTina| Sales ManagersTel: 0086-20-22093278(CN)Email: sales@qyresearcheurope.com or tinaning@qyresearch.comWeb:QYResearch, established in 2007, focuses on custom research, management consulting, IPO consulting, industry chain research, and data base &seminar services. The company owns large basic databases (such as National Bureau of Statistics Database, Customs Import and Export Database, Industry Association Database, etc.), expert resources (including industry experts who own more than 10 years experiences on marketing or R&D in industries of energy, automotive, chemicals, medical ICT consumer goods, etc.), professional survey team (the team members obtained more than 3 years market survey experience and more than 2 years deep expert interview experience), and excellent data analysis team (SPSS statistics and PPT graphics process team).Room 2901 VILI International Building No.167 Linhe West Road
Cloud Database Market (Database Application Builder, Data Scaling and Replication, Back-Up and Recovery, Database Encryption) Trends & Forecast 2023

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Research N Reports has pronounced the addition of a new market report to its vast depository, titled Global Cloud Database Market Professional Survey Report 2018. The report analyzes all the key aspects of the global market and presents a predictive analysis regarding its future scope of development through 2026, factoring in the factors that will drive and restrain its course of expansion and the key trends and regulations affecting several aspects of the market.Ask for Sample PDF of Cloud Database Market report at:The report presents an in-depth overview of the current state of the Global Cloud Database Market, with details regarding the working, design, types of products available in the market, processes involved in the manufacturing of the products, and the potential impact on growth prospects of the vast regulations levied on the import, export, and global sales of this heavily popular commodity.Some of the leading vendors: Google Inc., SAP AG, CSC (Computer Science Corporation), Microsoft Corporation, Century Link Inc., Amazon, Salesforce.Com, IBM and Rackspace Inc.The report studies the market for Cloud Database from a global perspective while also analyzing it for key regional markets, including North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and the Middle East & Africa. On these fronts, the market is analyzed on the basis of criteria such as market value, key segments, market volume, and distribution channels.The competitive landscape of the Global Cloud Database Market has also been described in high detail. The competitive landscape section of the report presents the major vendors operating in the global market. These vendors are analyzed based on attributes such as their product profile, product introductions, SWOT analysis, and contact information. Each of the key players in the market is revealed in terms of their basic company data, key competitors, and presence of manufacturing bases. These players are also described according to their offerings in product types and technologies, the production costs, revenue generated, and overall price of these solutions.Get full report with Discount @:The market research report on the world market for Cloud Database presents the size, status and forecast 2026 has a large compilation of market research studies that pertain to the tech industry, sub-sectors of the tech industry, and a wide number of different industries that the industry indirectly or directly affects. These elaborate reports come with an all-inclusive account of the analysis of trend and forecasts of the market together with correct figures, facts, and data pertaining to the market, statistics and many other significant data pertaining to the industry. Everything related to the said market is compiled in the said repository. The reports along with all its data could prove to be beneficial for the existing as well as brand new market players that are concerned with the industry and it would further assist in assessing the feasibility of more new investments in the said markets.Table of Content:Chapter 1 Cloud Database Market OverviewChapter 2 Global Economic Impact on IndustryChapter 3 Global Market Competition by ManufacturersChapter 4 Global Production, Revenue (Value) by RegionChapter 5 Global Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by RegionsChapter 6 Global Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by TypeChapter 7 Global Market Analysis by ApplicationChapter 8 Manufacturing Cost AnalysisChapter 9 Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream BuyersChapter 10 Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/TradersChapter 11 Market Effect Factors AnalysisAbout Research N Reports:Research N Reports is a new age market research firm where we focus on providing information that can be effectively applied. Today being a consumer driven market, companies require information to deal with the complex and dynamic world of choices. Where relying on a sound board firm for your decisions becomes crucial. Research N Reports specializes in industry analysis, market forecasts and as a result getting quality reports covering all verticals, whether be it gaining perspective on current market conditions or being ahead in the cut throat Global competition. Since we excel at business research to help businesses grow, we also offer consulting as an extended arm to our services which only helps us gain more insight into current trends and problems. Consequently we keep evolving as an all-rounder provider of viable information under one roof.Sunny Denis10916, Gold Point Dr, Houston, TX, Pin - 77064,(Sales Manager),+1-8886316977,sales@researchnreports.com ,
Global Frozen Food Processing Machinery Market 2018 - GEA Group AG, Buhler AG, Bucher Industries AG

Global Frozen Food Processing Machinery Market

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Apex Market Reports, recently published a detailed market research study focused on the Frozen Food Processing Machinery Market across the global, regional and country level. The report provides 360 analysis of Frozen Food Processing Machinery Market from view of manufacturers, regions, product types and end industries. The research report analyses and provides the historical data along with current performance of the global PP Pipe industry, and estimates the future trend of Frozen Food Processing Machinery on the basis of this detailed study. The study shares Frozen Food Processing Machinery performance both in terms of volume and revenue.The market research report explores the Frozen Food Processing Machinery Market across the globe along with major regions and countries. The research report provides a detailed study on each and every aspect of Frozen Food Processing Machinery Market. The research report studies the entire value chain from raw material to end user industries. The report also shares import/export statistics along with production and consumption for all major regions and countries. Moreover, the research study classifies the Frozen Food Processing Machinery Market based on major product types, application and end users industries of Frozen Food Processing Machinery. Besides, the report also covers geographical segmentation for Frozen Food Processing Machinery Market. The report further provides production, capacity, price per region, gross margin, production cost, for all major regions and countries listed in report.Get Free Sample Copy of Report Here:Top Manufacturers Analysis of This ReportGEA Group AGBuhler AGBucher Industries AGHaas Food Equipment GmbHHeatand Control IncorporatedHosokawa Micron CorporationKey Technology IncorporatedBAADER-JOHNSONBean(John)Technologies CorporationThe competitive landscape of the global market for Frozen Food Processing Machinery is determined by assessing the major industry participants, production capacity, production capacity utilization rate, Frozen Food Processing Machinery Markets production chain, pricing by each manufacturer and the revenue generated by each manufacturer in the Frozen Food Processing Machinery Market globally.Inquire Before Buying @The Global Frozen Food Processing Machinery Market 2018 is further analyzed on the basis of product pricing, Frozen Food Processing Machinery production volume, data pertaining to demand and Frozen Food Processing Machinery supply, and the revenue garnered by the product. The report provides upstream and downstream analysis covering major raw material used in manufacturing of Frozen Food Processing Machinery along with detailed manufacturing sources. The report also shares list of major raw material manufacturers along with their manufacturing locations. Detailed raw material price trend analysis along with manufacturing cost analysis is also incorporated into the report. Various methodical tools such as investment returns, feasibility, SWOT analysis and market attractiveness analysis has been implemented in the research study to present a comprehensive, detailed study of the industry for Frozen Food Processing Machinery across the world.About UsApex Market Reports offers elevating market research globally. We have collection of various syndicated reports of different categories. Apex Market Reports provides you to best services, weather youre searching for new trends in market or competitive scenario in emerging market.Customers can buys different reports across various categories such as Chemical and Material, Biotechnology, Healthcare, Food and beverages, Automobile and various sectors. Our Website offers safe and secure online ordering experience, convenient payment options.Contact UsFrank ValadezCorporate Sales Specialist155 North Wacker Drive, Suite 4250Chicago, IL 60606Phone: +17739042683Email id - sales@apexmarketreports.comWebsite -
Garnet Earrings Market By Company Coverage (Sales Revenue, Price, Gross Margin, Main Products)

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https://www.futuregenicreports.com/Reports/Garnet-Earrings-Market

The global Garnet Earrings market will reach xxx Million USD in 2017 and CAGR xx% 2011-2017. The report begins from overview of Industry Chain structure, and describes industry environment, then analyses market size and forecast of Garnet Earrings by product, region and application, in addition, this report introduces market competition situation among the vendors and company profile, besides, market price analysis and value chain features are covered in this report.Product Type Coverage (Market Size & Forecast, Major Company of Product Type etc.):Garnet & Diamond EarringsGarnet & Gold EarringsGarnet & Silver EarringsOthersRequest For Free Sample Of The Report @Company Coverage (Sales Revenue, Price, Gross Margin, Main Products etc.):TJCErnest JonesTwo Tone JewelryStauerGLAMIRAJamesVianaGlamourESQWest & Co. JewelersApplication Coverage (Market Size & Forecast, Different Demand Market by Region, Main Consumer Profile etc.):Daily use ceramicsArtistic ceramicsOthersObtain Report Details @Region Coverage (Regional Output, Demand & Forecast by Countries etc.):North AmericaEuropeAsia-PacificSouth AmericaMiddle East & Africa"About Future Genic ReportsFuture Generic Reports is a market research and consulting organization, offering premium collection of market research reports, custom research and consulting services to corporations, no-profit organizations and government institutions across the globe.The wide range of information is presented by a team of well-trained researchers of specific sectors through exhaustive research. We deliver premier market research services that cover all industry verticals, including chemicals and material, automotive, healthcare, electronics & semiconductor, food and beverage, pharmaceuticals and technology and media.We believe in building an eternal bond with our clients through offering them inclusive research study meeting their specific requirements. Our services are tailored specifically to our clients by proposing them the potential outcome, based on our in-depth analysis and insights for exploring the growth strategies through providing the best possible decision for quality production.Contact us-USA Office244 , Madison AvenueNew York City, NY - 10016United StatesUK Office109 ,Straford Street,LeedsWest Yorkshrie LS11 6JGUnited KingdomSend Us An EmailE-mail: sales@futuregenicreports.comCall UsToll Free: +1- 844-445-2861Phone: +1- 347-983-9688
Precise Study on Combined Heat and Power (CHP) Installation Market Covering Trends, Market Share and Forecast to 2024

MRRSE

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https://www.mrrse.com/combined-heat-and-power-market

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Market Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE) has been acting as an impressive data source when it comes to evaluating various industrial verticals. The research report titled Combined Heat and Power (CHP) Installation Market, by Type, by Application (Residential, Commercial, and Industrial), by Technology, and by Fuel - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth Trends, and Forecast till 2024 offers a clear insight about the Combined Heat and Power (CHP) Installation Market assessed over the global platform. This analysis proves beneficial for readers & new investors who are aiming to enter for Combined Heat and Power (CHP) Installation Market in the near future.To Request a Free Sample Report or View Summary of Report @The competition in the global market for combined heat and power installation is likely to intensify owing to the presence of numerous established players. These leading companies provide a range of different services and products pertaining to combined power and heat installation. A combined heat and power system mainly comprises components such as compressors, valves, engines, generators, filters, and turbines. Many vendors present in the market are this selling these components, delivering post-sales services, and equipment distribution. The company that held the leading share in the market is BDR Thermea Group in 2014 and might retain it till the end of the forecast period. The other prominent players in the market are Clarke Energy Ltd., ENER-G Holdings Plc, Wartsila Corporation, Edina Ltd., Siemens AG, and 2G Energy AG. The leading eight vendors account for 53% of the total share in the global combined heat and power installation market.The global market for combined heat and power installation market is anticipated to rise at a CAGR of 4.38% from 2014 to 2024. In 2014, the market was worth US$524.89 bn and is likely to touch a valuation of US$812.80 bn by the end of 2024.Small and Micro CHP to get Ahead of Large-scale CHP in GameBy type, large-scale CHPs hold a leading share of 85.69% in the global market for CHP installation closely trailed by small and micro-scale CHPs in 2014. In any case, they are relied upon to lose a noteworthy piece of their share of the overall industry to the latter sooner rather than later. The rising use of small-scale and micro-scale CHPs crosswise over commercial and residential sector will empower the section to report the speediest CAGR amid the estimate time frame. Be that as it may, the expanding CHP establishment in China and India will keep the demand for large scale CHPs high in the pending years.Region-wise, Europe surfaced as the leading region for the combined heat and power installation market in 2014 with a share of 67.96% in the same year. The abundance of natural gas in Russia has substantially contributed to the rising demand for CHP installation in the region. Other countries such as Netherlands, Italy, Belgium, Poland, and Germany. Many core companies are also considering to benefit from the opportunitiesRobust Current CHP Networks to Boost CHP InstallationsThe sales of CHP systems worldwide are riding on the solid existing CHP network. Moreover, the expanding knowledge with respect to the advantages of CHP frameworks will help their establishments crosswise over developing economies of Asia Pacific. Since the most recent couple of years, these nations have been displaying popularity for technologies that are energy efficient. Emerging nations along these lines offer appealing open doors for the merchants operating in the market.TMR figures the value chain of the worldwide CHP establishment market to remain exceedingly confounded amid the gauge time frame from 2014 to 2024. "The usage of stringent discharge control standards worldwide has compelled the adoption of forward integration among leading enterprises. Such policies could adversely affect the market's development direction," said a TMR researcher. "Joined with this, the high cost needed on introducing CHP sytems is likewise restraining the huge scale expansion of CHP installations," he included. All things considered, expanding degree in the commercial and residential sector is relied upon to help the prospects for the market in the years to come.The CHP market was segmented on the basis of type (large-scale and micro & small-scale), by application (residential, commercial, and industrial), by technology (combined cycle, combustion/gas turbine, steam turbine, reciprocating engine, others (microturbine, fuel cell, and waste heat recovery)), and by fuel (natural gas, coal, biomass, others (wood, waste heat, and oil)). A CHP system varies according to its type and application. The CHP installation market was analyzed across four geographies: North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Rest of World. Regional data has been provided for each sub-segment of the CHP installation market. Key players in the CHP installation market include 2G Energy AG, ABB Ltd., Aegis Energy Services, Inc., BDR Thermea Group B.V., Bosch Thermotechnik GmbH, Caterpillar Energy Solutions GmbH, Clarke Energy Ltd., Veolia Environnement S.A., Dantherm Power A/S, Edina Ltd., E.ON SE, ENER-G Holdings Plc, General Electric Company, Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems, Ltd., Siemens AG, Viessmann Werke GmbH & Co. KG, Wartsila Corporation, Yanmar Co., Ltd., FuelCell Energy, Inc., and Helen Ltd. The report provides an overview of these companies, followed by their financial details, business strategies, and recent developments.For More Info about This Report Visit @CHP Installation Market: By CHP TypeLarge-scale CHPMicro & Small-scale CHPCHP Installation Market: By CHP ApplicationResidentialCommercialIndustrialCHP Installation Market: By CHP TechnologyCombined CycleSteam TurbineCombustion/Gas TurbineReciprocation EngineOthers (Microturbine, Fuel Cell, and Waste Heat Recovery)CHP Installation Market: By FuelNatural GasCoalBiomassOthers (Wood, Waste Heat, and Oil)About Market Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE)Market Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE) is an industry-leading database of Market Research Reports. MRRSE is driven by a stellar team of research experts and advisors trained to offer objective advice. Our sophisticated search algorithm returns results based on the report title, geographical region, publisher, or other keywords.MRRSE partners exclusively with leading global publishers to provide clients single-point access to top-of-the-line market research. MRRSEs repository is updated every day to keep its clients ahead of the next new trend in market research, be it competitive intelligence, product or service trends or strategic consulting.Contact UsState Tower90, State StreetSuite 700Albany, NY - 12207United States Telephone: +1-518-730-0559Email: sales@mrrse.comWebsite:Read More Industry News At:
Oilfield Drill Bit Market Outlook and Future Growth

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Drill bits are essential tools that are utilized in the oil and gas industry to drill cylindrical boreholes for E&P activities in the production of crude and gas. Drill bits produce drill cuttings when used in for the formation of boreholes. The cuttings that are formed by the bit are usually removed from the wellbore and brought to the surface through circulation.Request For Sample Copy of this Research Report :The increasing dependence on crude oil and natural gas, especially in emerging economies has resulted in an increase in E&P activities globally. The type of drill bit to be used for drilling depends on the nature of the formation. The drill bit has a typical rotary motion and is situated at the tip of the drill string, underneath the drill pipe and collar. It is usually made up of 2 or 3 cones with materials having a higher degree of hardness, such as tungsten carbide, steel and natural or artificial diamonds and have sharp teeth that can easily penetrate into the required structure.The decrease in crude oil prices coupled with the increasing pollution due to these fossil fuels is a major restraint for the growth of the global oilfield drill bits market. The increasing regulations being adopted by nations in order to reduce their carbon footprint is expected to hamper the growth of the global oilfield drill bits market.North America dominated the drill bits market in 2016 and is expected to retain its dominance throughout the forecast period. North America accounted for 30% of the market share in terms of revenue in 2016. The increasing shale gas production is a major factor for this dominance. This is mainly due to the growing oil & gas industry, coupled with the high demand for petroleum. The U.S. holds the majority of shares in the wireline services market in North America, as it is the largest consumer of oil and gas. According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), during 2014, the US crude oil production recorded a tremendous increase by 1.2 million barrels per day (bbl/d) to 8.7 million bbl/d, and it was the largest volume increase since 1900. This rapidly growing oil & gas industry in the region, is majorly driving the growth of wireline services market. Furthermore, the recently discovered shale oilfields in the region is fuelling the adoption of well intervention and the evaluation of petro physical data acquired from oil wells, this in turn propelling the growth of wireline services market. As in 2016, US Geological Survey (USGS) discovered a large deposit of untapped reserves in the US, at the Wolfcamp formation, located in Texas with an estimated average of 16 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 20 billion bbls of oil.North America is expected to be the fastest growing region in the global oilfield drill bits market during the forecast period. The discovery of shale gas in the U.S. has resulted in unprecedented demand for drill bits, as the country looks to reduce its dependence on crude oil imports from the Middle East. Middle East accounted for 23.5% market share in terms of revenue in the global oilfield drill bits market. The presence of numerous countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Oman amongst others whose economy primarily depends on oil and gas production is expected to result in an increasing demand.Based on drill bit type, the oilfield drill bits market is segmented as roller cone bits and fixed cutter bits. Roller cone bits are further segmented as tungsten carbide insert bits and milled-tooth bits. Fixed cutter bits are further segmented as Polycrystalline diamond compact (PDC) drill bits, Impregnated bits and diamond bits.Major players in the global oilfield drill bits market include Baker Hughes Inc., Drill Master Inc, Ulterra Drilling Technologies, National Oilwell Varco Inc., Halliburton Inc., Schlumberger, Atlas Copco AB and Scientific Drilling International Inc., among others.Request For Customization as per Your Need :About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Mr. ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email: sales@coherentmarketinsights.comVisit Our New Website:
Cylindrical Lithium Ion Battery Market Analysis, Overview, Growth, Demand and Forecast Research Report To 2022

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The research report, titled Cylindrical Lithium Ion Battery Market is experiencing a transitional stage since past few years. The continual advancements in technologies and the growing augmentation in infrastructural and technological organizations have influenced the demand for the global market, munificently in a previous couple of years. The obvious rise in urbanization and the significant rise in the disposable income of individuals are expected to increase the demand for market in the coming years. The demand for Cylindrical Lithium Ion Battery in the market is increasing substantially due to the growing awareness among individuals regarding the latest technological advancements and innovations.Top Key Venders:Panasonic(Sanyo), Samsung SDI, LG Chem, Sony, Johnson Controls, Hitachi, Tianjin Lishen, Hefei Guoxuan, Shenzhen Auto-Energy, OptimumNano, DLG Electronics, Zhuoneng New Energy, CHAM BATTERY, Padre ElectronicRequest a sample copy of this research report @A Cylindrical cell is the most popular packaging style for primary and secondary batteries. The structure offers good mechanical stability and can withstand high internal pressure. Most Cylindrical Lithium Ion Battery includes a positive thermal coefficient switch. They are generally used in portable devices such as in laptops, medical devices, electrical vehicles, flashlight, power banks and others. They are best suited for applications demanding strong power, performance and longevity. These are the most cost-effective compared to other technology and hold a major market share.The analysis of the manufacturing cost structure of the Global Cylindrical Lithium Ion Battery Market has been performed in view of key aspects, for example, industry chain structure, manufacturing process, crude materials, and their providers. Technology is being looked after for both in the engineering procedure and in terms of product features. The market is dynamic in nature and this is rousing testing prerequisites and moreover, the advancement of superior hardware, advancing the development prospects of the market.Get Upto 30% discount on this research report @The report Global Cylindrical Lithium Ion Battery Market provides a framework for the technical data and manufacturing data. Additionally adding to the investigation, the study likewise details the limit, revenue, generation, and development of the major territorial markets. The study gives a top-to-bottom synopsis of the different sorts of displaying methods, expressing their cost of production and development prospects.The vendor landscape covered in this research study offers a comprehensive overview of the latest developments and investment pattern in the Global Cylindrical Lithium Ion Battery Market. Under investments, the report provides a brief overview of the major mergers and acquisitions in the big data security market. This market research report identifies key players in the market and provides a comprehensive analysis of their key company facts, business overview, segmentation, SWOT analysis, business strategies, and key information.Table of Content:Global Cylindrical Lithium Ion Battery Market Research Report 2018-2023Chapter 1 Cylindrical Lithium Ion Battery Market OverviewChapter 2 Global Economic ImpactChapter 3 Competition by ManufacturerChapter 4 Production, Revenue (Value) by Region (2018-2023)Chapter 5 Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Regions (2018-2023)Chapter 6 Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by TypeChapter 7 Analysis by ApplicationChapter 8 Manufacturing Cost AnalysisChapter 9 Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream BuyersChapter 10 Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/TradersChapter 11 Market Effect Factors AnalysisChapter 12 Market Forecast (2018-2023)Chapter 13 AppendixWe at, QYReports , a leading market research report publisher accommodate more than 4,000 celebrated clients worldwide putting them at advantage in todays competitive world with our understanding of research. Our list of customers include prestigious Chinese companies, multinational companies, SME's and private equity firms whom we have helped grow and sustain with our fact-based research. Our business study covers a market size of over 30 industries offering unfailing insights into analysis to reimagine your business. We specialize in forecasts needed for investing in a new project, to revolutionize your business, to become more customer centric and improve the quality of output.Jones John(Sales Manager)+91-9764607607sales@qyreports.com
Hearing Aids Market Analysis, Market Size, Regional Outlook, Competitive Strategies And Forecasts, 2018 To 2023, Focusing On Top Key Vendors Like A William Demant, Sonovav, GN Store Nord, Sivantos Group, Widex, Starkey

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A comprehensive analysis of the Global Hearing Aids Market is been done in this intelligence report. It includes the investigations done on the past progress, ongoing market scenarios, and future prospects. An accurate data of the products, strategies and market shares of leading companies in this particular market is mentioned. This report presents a 360-degree overview of the competitive scenario of the Global market. The report further projects the size and valuation of the global market in the coming forecast period. The report also presents a thorough qualitative and quantitative data affecting to the projected impact of these factors on markets future growth prospects.Top Key Vendors in Market: William Demant, Sonovav, GN Store Nord, Sivantos Group, Widex, StarkeyGet Sample Copy Of this Report @Hearing aids are sound-amplifying devices that are used to treat hearing impairment. It is an electronic device comprising various components such as microphone, amplifier circuitry, miniature loudspeaker (receiver) and batteries. It captures, amplifies and delivers sound into the ear canal.Hearing Aids Market projected to grow at CAGR of +7.02% from 2018 to 2023It explains a detailed outline of the Hearing Aids Market depending on the important parameters. End users, products, regions, and many other segments are studied and explained. A brief idea about the driving forces which help make the market more flourishing is discussed in order to help the client understand the future market position. Estimated revenue growth in terms of volume with respect to the market for the upcoming years has been mentioned in depth.The growing focus of several competitive players on consolidating their back-end supply chain management for faster shipping and at lower cost is a key factor favorably impacting the growth of the market. The robust growth of online retail in various industries, such as information and communication technologies, electrical and electronics, and apparel, in several developed nations has boosted the market. The rising adoption of advanced digital technologies has boosted online retail, thereby indirectly catalyzing the Hearing Aids Market.Know More about This Premium Report @Another key note to be declared here is the integration of market desirability index in the report particularizing growth, enactment, and opportunities in the Market. The report is determined by the enclosure of the competitive landscape among major players involved in the production of the market components. The subdivision contains a far-reaching company summarizing and dashboard presentation of major players.On the basis of geographical regions, the Global Hearing Aids Market is segmented broadly into Latin America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and Asia Pacific. The global market is still in its exploratory stage in most of the regions but it holds the promising potential to flourish steadily in coming years. The major companies investing in this market are situated in Canada, U.K., and the US, India, China and some more countries of Asia Pacific region. Consequently, Asia Pacific, North America, and Western Europe are estimated to hold more than half of the market shares, collectively in coming years.In the last sections of the report, the manufacturers responsible for increasing the sales in the Hearing Aids Market has been presented. These manufacturers have been analyzed in terms of their manufacturing base, basic information, and competitors. In addition, the technology and product type introduced by each of these manufacturers also form a key part of this section of the report.Table of Content:Global Hearing Aids Market Research Report 2018-2023Chapter 1 Hearing Aids Market OverviewChapter 2 Global Economic ImpactChapter 3 Competition by ManufacturerChapter 4 Production, Revenue (Value) by Region (2018-2023)Chapter 5 Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Regions (2018-2023)Chapter 6 Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by TypeChapter 7 Analysis by ApplicationChapter 8 Manufacturing Cost AnalysisChapter 9 Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream BuyersChapter 10 Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/TradersChapter 11 Market Effect Factors AnalysisChapter 12 Market Forecast (2018-2023)Chapter 13 AppendixHealthCare Intelligence Markets supply market intelligence reports in the domain of personalized drugs & diagnostics after going through a rigorous research process. The healthcare and pharma industry is constantly evolving as trends are getting replaced at a rapid pace.Shreyas TannaHealthcare Intelligence Markets601, Winterberry Purple, Koregaon Park, Pune, 411001sales@healthcareintelligencemarkets.com+91 7400242424
Weight Loss Drugs Market Analysis, Market Size, Regional Outlook, Competitive Strategies and Forecasts, 2018 To 2023, Focusing On Top Key Vendors: Roche, GSK group, Teva, Sandoz(Novartis), STADA-VN J.V.Co., Ltd

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The report is titled Global Weight Loss Drugs Market Research Report 2018 and hastens a boundless and centered investigate into this market. The market size is concluded through comprehensive study and examination through subordinate research. The numbers interpreted from subordinate research is converged into the research report after approval of the market data approximations through different conferences and analyses directed and gathered information from the industry and market authorities.Top Key Vendors: Roche, GSK group, Teva, Sandoz(Novartis), STADA-VN J.V.Co., Ltd, Hexal AGGet Sample Copy of this Report @The research report not only offers readers a broad overview of the international industry but also provides a granular assessment of the regional market in several countries and regions. Aspects such as the history of market development, the major development trends in the global Weight Loss Drugs Market, the development of products and technologies, the vendor landscape, and the promising countries and regions have been included in this report, in addition to a comparative analytical assessment of the various regional segments.The competitive landscape of the Global Weight Loss Drugs Market is discussed in the report, including the market share and new orders market share by company. The report profiles some of the leading players in the global market for the purpose of an in-depth study of the challenges faced by the industry as well as the growth opportunities in the market. The report also discusses the strategies implemented by the key companies to maintain their hold on the industry. The business overview and financial overview of each of the companies have been analyzed.Know more about this Premium Report@On the basis of geographical regions, the Global Weight Loss Drugs Market is segmented broadly into Latin America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and Asia Pacific. The global market is still in its exploratory stage in most of the regions but it holds the promising potential to flourish steadily in coming years. The major companies investing in this market are situated in Canada, U.K., and the US, India, China and some more countries of Asia Pacific region. Consequently, Asia Pacific, North America, and Western Europe are estimated to hold more than half of the market shares, collectively in coming years.The major growth drivers, challenges, and trends influencing the global Weight Loss Drugs Market are inspected at length. The report also presents a thorough qualitative and quantitative data affecting to the projected impact of these factors on markets future growth prospects. A number of analysis tools such as Porters five forces analysis and SWOT analysis have been employed to provide an accurate understanding of this market. Also, the report is compiled in a way for the readers and customers to understand better.In the last sections of the report, the manufacturers responsible for increasing the sales in the Weight Loss Drugs Market have been presented. These manufacturers have been analyzed in terms of their manufacturing base, basic information, and competitors. In addition, the technology and product type introduced by each of these manufacturers also form a key part of this section of the report.Table of Content:Global Weight Loss Drugs Market Research Report 2018-2023Chapter 1 Weight Loss Drugs Market OverviewChapter 2 Global Economic ImpactChapter 3 Competition by ManufacturerChapter 4 Production, Revenue (Value) by Region (2018-2023)Chapter 5 Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Regions (2018-2023)Chapter 6 Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by TypeChapter 7 Analysis by ApplicationChapter 8 Manufacturing Cost AnalysisChapter 9 Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream BuyersChapter 10 Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/TradersChapter 11 Market Effect Factors AnalysisChapter 12 Market Forecast (2018-2023)Chapter 13 AppendixHealthCare Intelligence Markets supply market intelligence reports in the domain of personalized drugs & diagnostics after going through a rigorous research process. The healthcare and pharma industry is constantly evolving as trends are getting replaced at a rapid pace.Shreyas TannaHealthcare Intelligence Markets601, Winterberry Purple, Koregaon Park, Pune, 411001sales@healthcareintelligencemarkets.com+91 7400242424
Gene Synthesis Market by Manufacturers, Countries, Type and Application, Forecast to 2023

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"Gene synthesis refers to chemically synthesizing a strand of DNA base-by-base. Unlike DNA replication that occurs in cells or by Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), gene synthesis does not require a template strand. Rather, gene synthesis involves the step-wise addition of nucleotides to a single-stranded molecule, which then serves as a template for creation of a complementary strand. Gene synthesis is the fundamental technology upon which the field of synthetic biology has been built.Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the Gene Synthesis in global market, especially in North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East and Africa. This report categorizes the market based on manufacturers, regions, types and applications.Market Segment by Manufacturers, this report coversGenescriptGeneArt (Thermofischer)IDTDNA 2.0 (ATUM)OriGeneBBIGenewizEurofins GenomicsGene OracleSBS GenetechBio BasicRequest For Free Sample Of The Report @Market Segment by Regions, regional analysis coversNorth America (United States, Canada and Mexico)Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy)Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia)South America (Brazil, Argentina, Colombia)Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa)Market Segment by Type, coversMarket Segment by Applications, can be divided intoCommercialAcademic ResearchThere are 15 Chapters to deeply display the global Gene Synthesis market.Chapter 1, to describe Gene Synthesis Introduction, product scope, market overview, market opportunities, market risk, market driving force;Chapter 2, to analyze the top manufacturers of Gene Synthesis, with sales, revenue, and price of Gene Synthesis, in 2016 and 2017;Chapter 3, to display the competitive situation among the top manufacturers, with sales, revenue and market share in 2016 and 2017;Chapter 4, to show the global market by regions, with sales, revenue and market share of Gene Synthesis, for each region, from 2013 to 2018;Obtain Report Details @Chapter 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, to analyze the key regions, with sales, revenue and market share by key countries in these regions;Chapter 10 and 11, to show the market by type and application, with sales market share and growth rate by type, application, from 2013 to 2018;Chapter 12, Gene Synthesis market forecast, by regions, type and application, with sales and revenue, from 2018 to 2023;Chapter 13, 14 and 15, to describe Gene Synthesis sales channel, distributors, traders, dealers, Research Findings and Conclusion, appendix and data source"About Future Genic ReportsFuture Generic Reports is a market research and consulting organization, offering premium collection of market research reports, custom research and consulting services to corporations, no-profit organizations and government institutions across the globe.The wide range of information is presented by a team of well-trained researchers of specific sectors through exhaustive research. We deliver premier market research services that cover all industry verticals, including chemicals and material, automotive, healthcare, electronics & semiconductor, food and beverage, pharmaceuticals and technology and media.We believe in building an eternal bond with our clients through offering them inclusive research study meeting their specific requirements. Our services are tailored specifically to our clients by proposing them the potential outcome, based on our in-depth analysis and insights for exploring the growth strategies through providing the best possible decision for quality production.Contact us-USA Office244 , Madison AvenueNew York City, NY - 10016United StatesUK Office109 ,Straford Street,LeedsWest Yorkshrie LS11 6JGUnited KingdomSend Us An EmailE-mail: sales@futuregenicreports.comCall UsToll Free: +1- 844-445-2861Phone: +1- 347-983-9688
Ebola Vaccine Market - Global Industry Insights, 2017-2025

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Increasing number of Ebola cases in affected regions and new vaccine development for this are expected to be factors driving growth of the marketIncreasing mortality rates due to Ebola is expected to be a major factor for growth of the market. According to World Health Organization, in January 2018, around 50% people infected with EVD, have died. African countries such as Siberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Democratic Republic of Congo, Senegal, and Mali, Nigeria were affected with EVD. In 201416, outbreak in West African countries such as Siberia, Leone, and Guinea, lead to deaths of around 11,300 individuals. Some cases were observed during 201416 outbreak in the U.S., Spain, Italy, the U.K. among people that travelled to affected African countries and people who came in contact with infected patients. In May 2017, WHO declared outbreak of EVD in Democratic Republic of Congo. There is still fear about potential outbreak of EVC in vulnerable regions of Western Africa which earlier faced EVD outbreak due to gaps in public health infrastructure.Various institutes and pharmaceutical companies are focusing on developing vaccines against EVD.Ask for detailed Sample of the Research Report:According to study published in the journal, The Lancet, in December 2016, rVSV-ZEBOV also known as V920 vaccine, which is jointly developed by Newlink Genetics and Merck and Company, was found to be effective in protection against EVD in phase three trial. rVSV-ZEBOV uses strain of Zaire Ebola virus. Merck is planning to file for final marketing approval of its EVD vaccine with the U.S. FDA in 2018. Moreover, it produced 3,00,000 vaccines, in case of fresh outbreak in vulnerable regions. Various key players are focusing on developing vaccines for EVD, in order to expand its market share. For instance, GlaxoSmithKline developed CAd3-ZEBOV vaccine, derived from chimpanzee adenovirus and was tested by National Institute of Allergic and Infectious Disease, which started its phase three trials in February 2016. Janssen Pharmaceuticals Ad26-ZEBOV is an experimental vaccine under development and currently in phase one. In 2014, Novavax Inc. developed Ebola vaccine by using its proprietary recombinant technology.Ebola Vaccine Market Taxonomy:On the basis of virus strain, the global Ebola vaccine market is segmented into:Recombinant vesicular stomatitis virus-Zaire Ebola virusChimpanzee Adeno virus type 3-Zaire Ebola virusAdeno virus serotype 26- Zaire Ebola VirusIn January 2018, GeoVax Labs Inc., published results tested in non-hamate primates for its experimental vaccine, GEO-EM01 against EVD. It is based on companys novel Modified Vaccinia Ankara Virus like Particle (VLP) platform, which produces non-infectious VLPs in body of vaccinated individual. These VLPS mimics the natural infection, which triggers the body to produce immune response with both antibodies and T cells.Ebola virus disease (EVD) causes viral hemorrhagic fever. It is a life threatening disease, which is spread to humans from animals. Direct contact with body fluids of infected person is one of largest causes of spread of this infection. Symptoms of Ebola disease include high fever, vomiting, sore throat, diarrhea, headache and muscular pain, and in few cases, internal or external bleeding. Although, there is no cure for Ebola virus disease, symptomatic treatment such as maintaining electrolyte balance, imagining required oxygen level, and treating infectious condition might help in improving patients health. Most of vaccines to prevent Ebola virus disease are under different developmental stage.Ask for customization:GAVI is an international organization (global Vaccine Alliance) paid US$ 5 million to Merck & Company in 2016 for procurement of the vaccine (V 920 vaccine). Key players in the global Ebola vaccine market are Merck and Company, Janssen Pharmaceutica NV, GlaxoSmithKline, and Novavax Inc.About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr. ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave, #3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email: sales@coherentmarketinsights.comVisit our news Website:
Insulin Delivery Devices Market to Surpass US$ 17.83 Billion by 2025

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Insulin is vital for people suffering from type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes. In the past, patients with diabetes had to inject insulin using large glass syringes and reusable needles, both of which needed sterilization by boiling after each use. Improvements and innovations has led to development of insulin delivery devices such as pens and insulin pumps. Furthermore, insulin analogs have become available that enable both continuous subcutaneous insulin infusion(CSII) using an insulin pump and insulin therapy using multiple daily injections (MDI) to more closely match physiologic insulin patterns. Type or dosage of insulin can be changed, to meet the individual needs of the patient. Insulin can be packaged in vials (bottles), cartridges or prefilled pens. The cartridges are used with pen injectors whereas the vials are used with syringes.The global insulin delivery devices market was valued at US$ 11,326.9 million in 2017 and is expected to witness a CAGR of 11.3% over the forecast period (20172025).To understand Research Methodology, please click:Increasing prevalence of diabetes is expected to drive growth of the insulin delivery devices market over the forecast periodIncreasing prevalence and incidence of diabetes is a major factor driving the insulin delivery devices market growth. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 2014, about 29.1 million people in the U.S. have diabetes with a healthcare burden of around US$ 245 Bn and with an estimated 4.69.2% of pregnant women affected by gestational diabetes. Moreover, the Australian government launched National Diabetes Strategy (201620), for an action to prevent diabetes and support the people living with diabetes. Thus, rise in government initiatives to support diabetic patients is expected to favor growth of the insulin delivery devices market.Development of systems and devices for improved drug delivery is expected to be factor for growth of the market. When compared with vial and syringe regimens, insulin pens offer a greater clinical efficacy, improved quality of life, and increased dosing accuracy, particularly at low doses. Thus, introduction of insulin pen devices has aided patients with diabetes mellitus in easier and more convenient treatment regimens. For instance, in January 2014, Novo Nordisk launched the NovoPen Echo in the U.S. market. This is the first and only pen device available in the U.S. with half-unit dosing and a memory function that can record the dose and time passed since the last injection.Advancements in technology in devices is a factor fueling growth of the insulin delivery devices marketIncreasing awareness and growing demand for insulin delivery devices for diabetes control are factors contributing towards the market growth. North America, followed by Europe are the largest markets for insulin delivery devices. Increasing prevalence of lifestyle associated diseases, implementation of awareness programs regarding diabetes, and higher adoption rate of advanced medical devices contributes towards the growth of the market in North America. For instance, in 2010, according to Journal of Diabetes Science and Technology, insulin pumps were more widely used on the American side of the Atlantic than on the European side. As a result, insulin pumps is expected to gain demand quickly during the second half of the forecast period. Furthermore, In 2016, the UAE Ministry of Health and Prevention in partnership with the Emirates Diabetes Society and Ministry with AstraZeneca Gulf, has launched Circle of Care, an education and support Programme aimed to improve the well-being of people in the UAE living with or at risk of developing type 2 diabetes thus expected to boost the growth over the forecast period.Ask for customization:Key players in the market are focusing on developing next generation devices to remain competitive, while seeking ways to enhance their design capabilities. For instance, in October 2017, Eli Lilly and Company announced its plans to invest US$ 72 million in an insulin manufacturing project at one of its Indianapolis facilities. The investment will be used to replace an existing insulin vial filling line and allow Lilly to meet growing demand for its insulins - including Humalog (insulin lispro) and Humulin (human insulin) - while upgrading to state-of-the-art technology and preparing for its insulin pipeline.About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr. ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave, #3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email: sales@coherentmarketinsights.comVisit our news Website:
Adoption of these systems by various hospitals is expected to propel the growth of the Image guided therapy systems market

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Image guided therapy systems provides doctors and technicians with access to patient database records and accordingly develop exact detailed surgical plan or the optimal path to the targeted area. In addition, ultrasound recording during surgery makes the image guided therapy safer and helps the surgeon to operate on the targeted area avoiding any critical injury to the nearby parts of the area. Various hospitals are focusing on installing image guided system to offer wide range of interventional procedures to patients. For instance, in November, 2017, UnityPoint Health, a network of hospitals, clinics and home care services in Iowa, Illinois, U.S. and Wisconsin installed Infinix-i-4-D CT (computed tomography) system, a product by Toshiba Medical which offers fast, safe and accurate interventional radiology (IR) and oncology procedures, such as tumor therapy, embolization, arterial interventions, dialysis and stent placement. These rising demand among the hospitals expected to fuel the growth of the image guided therapy system market.To get holistic SAMPLE of the report including table of contents, please click:Regionally, image guided therapy system market is segmented into North America, Europe, Latin America, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa. North America is estimated to account for the largest market share in 2017, owing to continuous funding by government to facilitate integration of image guided therapy technology among research centers. For instance, in 2015, Cancer Imaging Program (CIP) initiate Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) to support research in development of integrated imaging-based systems for delivery of drugs or biologics in cancer and other diseases, quantitative imaging assays of drug delivery, and early intervention.Various strategies adopting by market players will have a lucrative market growth on image guided therapy system marketDevelopment of these devices has created further demand for manufacturers in this image guided therapy system market to create tailored technologies and imaging modality that help improve patients outcomes, thus reducing the burden on healthcare system. Philips Healthcare is continuously capitalizing on image guided therapy as a core pillar of its growth strategy in imaging, operating high-profile partnerships, acquisitions, and product launches in this area. For instance, in February, 2017, Philips launched Azurion, its next generation image-guided therapy platform, capable of performing a wide range of routine, as well as minimally-invasive, catheter-based procedures in the interventional lab or hybrid operating room (OR). Furthermore, on January, 2018, Varian Medical System signed an agreement to acquire Sirtex Medical Ltd., an Australia-based global life sciences company focused on interventional oncology therapies so that Varian leverage its capabilities in combination with Sirtex's interventional oncology platform in treatment planning and delivery, image guidance and processing, oncology practice management software, and radiation safety.Key players in this image guided therapy system market includes General Electric Company, Toshiba Medical Systems, Siemens AG, Medtronic plc, Brain lab AG, Image Guided Therapy, and Ziehm Imaging, Koninklijke Philips N.V., Varian Medical System, Inc.Image Guided Therapy System Market Taxonomy:By Modality:Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)Ultrasound SystemsPositron Emission Tomography (PET)Intervention X-RayComputed Tomography (CT) ImagingOther ModalitiesBy Application:Interventional RadiologyCardiology and ElectrophysiologyNeurointerventionalOncologyOther applicationBy End User:HospitalsAmbulatory Surgical CentersOther end usersBuy this exclusive report published by CMI:Image guided therapy or image guided interventions help surgeons by navigating the devices inside the body of patients and provides a three dimensional image of the targeted area, making the surgery safer and less invasive. The constant flow of information enables surgeons to plan for surgery, make minute adjustments to treat across various therapeutic areas, including cardiac, vascular, endovascular, pain, trauma, urology, orthopedics, spine, and neurology. Image guided therapy devices also can be potentially used in the treatment of hypertension through renal denervation. All these therapeutic areas rely on powerful imaging modalities, including computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), fixed interventional X-ray, and mobile C-arms. Each modality has advantages and limitations and differs according to its mode of operation, level of complexity, and price point. As the fields of minimally-invasive interventions, interventional imaging, and image-guided surgery (IGS) continue to mature, the advancements in integration of image guided therapy system market with therapeutic modalities in real time is expected to lead to major growth over the forecast period.About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr. ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave, #3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email: sales@coherentmarketinsights.comVisit our news Website:
Increasing prevalence of injury and facture due to falls and road accidents are expected to augment growth of the orthobiologics market

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According to World Health Organization (WHO), 2017, fatal falls are the second-leading cause of accidental injury and factures worldwide. Every year around 646000 individuals die from falls, globally. Increasing incidence of fall is expected to increase the chances of fractures, which in turn, is expected to create a highly conductive environment for growth of the orthobiologics market over the forecast period.According to World Health Organization (WHO), in 2017, around 1.25 million deaths were recorded and 20 to 50 million people suffered from severe injuries and fractures. Increasing prevalence of factures due to road accidents is expected to boost growth of the orthobiologics market in the near future. According to National Institute of Health (NIH), in 2016, around 8.5%, accounting for around 617 million of the world population was aged 65 years and above. Growing geriatric population, which is highly susceptible to injuries and fractures due to fragile skeletal framework, is increasing the prevalence of orthopedic disorders, in turn, driving growth of the orthobiologics market. The major factor restraining market growth is the high cost associated withTo understand Research Methodology, please click:Orthobiologics are substances used to heal injuries such as fractures and injured muscles, ligaments, and tendons within a short period of time. Orthobiologics are made from substances that naturally occur in the body. Some examples of orthobiologics are bone grafts, autologous blood, autologous conditioned serum, platelet rich plasma, growth factors, and stem cells.Global Orthobiologics Market TaxonomyThe global orthobiologics market is segmented on the basis of product type, application, and end user.By Product TypeDemineralized Bone Matrix (DBM)AllograftBone Morphogenetic Protein (BMP)Viscosupplementation ProductsSynthetic Bone SubstitutesStem Cell TherapyBy ApplicationOsteoarthritis and Degenerative ArthritisSpinal FusionFracture RecoverySoft Tissue InjuriesMaxillofacial and Dental ApplicationsBy End UserHospitalsAmbulatory Care CentersDental ClinicsNorth America is expected to hold a dominant position due to rapid development of new innovative products by key players present in regionNorth America is expected to hold a dominant position in the orthobiologics market due to rampant research activities and rapid development of innovative products by key players present in the region. For instance, in 2015, NuVasive Inc.U.S.-based companylaunched its new innovative biologics technology, AttraX Putty, which is a synthetic bone graft, indicated in posterolateral spinal surgery as an autograft extender. Asia Pacific is expected to witness rapid growth, owing to growing geriatric population in the region. According to The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), 2016, the Asia Pacific region recorded around 60 percent of the geriatric population across the globe. The region recorded around 547 million people aged 65 years and above, which is projected to reach up to 1.3 billion by 2050.Ask for customization:Major players in the market are focusing on inorganic growth strategies such as mergers and acquisitions, to enhance their foothold in the global orthobiologics market. For instance, in May 2015, Bone Biologics Corp. collaborated with the University of California for the development of Nell-1, a bone growth stimulator orthobiological product.Key players operating in the orthobiologics market include Medtronic Plc, DePuy Synthes, Inc., Zimmer Biomet Holdings, Inc., Bone Biologics Corp, Harvest Technologies Corporation, Globus Medical, Inc., Smith & Nephew plc. NuVasive Inc., Stryker Corporation, and Genzyme.About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr. ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave, #3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email: sales@coherentmarketinsights.comVisit our news Website:
Global Aero Engineering Service Market Forecast to 2022: Technology, Global Forecast and Geography

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Global Aero Engineering Service Market Professional Survey Report.Aerospace engineering is the primary field of engineering concerned with the development of aircraft and spacecraft. It has two major and overlapping branches: aeronautical engineering and astronautical engineering. Avionics engineering is similar, but deals with the electronics side of aerospace engineering.This research report provides an in-depth analysis of the global Aero Engineering Service Market based on enterprise size, services, solution, end-use industry, and geography. The report also provides an analysis of the factors that drive and restrain the growth of the Aero Engineering Service market. It discusses the prevailing market trends, prospective growth opportunities, and major strategies increasing the popularity of the global market. It provides market estimates and forecasts for all the segments in terms of revenue.The report covers all the major trends and technologies playing a major role in the market growth over the forecast period. The competition in the global market for Aero Engineering Service will likely heat up in the next couple of years on the back of entry of a substantial number of solution providers. This statistical surveying report presents an all-inclusive assessment of the worldwide market for Aero Engineering Service, taking several market verticals, such as the production capacity, product pricing, the dynamics of demand and supply, sales volume, revenue, and the growth rate of this market into consideration.Download PDF Sample Copy:Company Profiled: The Key Players operating in the Aero Engineering Service market includes Aero Engineering & Manufacturing Co., Aero Engineering Services, Aero Engineering Support Group, PT JAS AERO-ENGINEERING SERVICES, Dar Corporation, International Aero Engineering, LLC, Affordable Engineering Services, Sabena Aerospace, STS Aviation Group, Atkins, Hyde Group, Creative Aero Engineering Solutions, Geometric, Spirit Aerosystems, Aeronautical Engineers, Inc., HCl Technologies, Aleut Aerospace Engineering (AAE), Advatech Pacific, Belcan Engineering Services, Aircraft Engineering & Installation Services Inc.The report provides competitive landscape of the Aero Engineering Service market, thereby listing out all the major players according to their geographic presence, market attractiveness and recent key developments. The competitive landscape section of the report gives an overview about the market share of several key players for the year 2017. Moreover, key takeaways section provided at the end of competitive landscape section would help the operating companies to make the best move in the market.These market estimates have been analyzed by taking into account the impact of different political, social, economic, technological, and legal factors along with the current market dynamics affecting the market growth. Factors including market position, offerings and R&D focus are attributed to company's capabilities. This section also identifies and includes various recent developments carried out by the leading players.For More Information:The regional analysis of the Global Market splits the global market into key regions that include both continents as well as specific countries that are currently shining in terms of either demand, volume or overall growth. Users of the report can focus on these regions if they are looking to expand their business borders.The stages of development of Aero Engineering Service market with respect to many geographic regions have also been presented thoroughly. This information which is provided helps the emerging players gain up-to-date information which can help them take perfect business decisions. In similar way, many other segments and sub segments are mentioned in this market helping in conveying impeccable data to the users.To Get Reasonable Discount:Table of ContentsGlobal Aero Engineering Service Market Research Report 2017Chapter 1 Aero Engineering Service Market OverviewChapter 2 Global Economic Impact on IndustryChapter 3 Global Market Competition by ManufacturersChapter 4 Global Production, Revenue (Value) by RegionChapter 5 Global Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by RegionsChapter 6 Global Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by TypeChapter 7 Global Market Analysis by ApplicationChapter 8 Manufacturing Cost AnalysisChapter 9 Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream BuyersChapter 10 Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/TradersChapter 11 Market Effect Factors AnalysisChapter 12 Global Market ForecastAbout Research N Reports:Research N Reports is a new age market research firm where we focus on providing information that can be effectively applied. Today being a consumer driven market, companies require information to deal with the complex and dynamic world of choices. Where relying on a sound board firm for your decisions becomes crucial. Research N Reports specializes in industry analysis, market forecasts and as a result getting quality reports covering all verticals, whether be it gaining perspective on current market conditions or being ahead in the cut throat Global competition. Since we excel at business research to help businesses grow, we also offer consulting as an extended arm to our services which only helps us gain more insight into current trends and problems. Consequently we keep evolving as an all-rounder provider of viable information under one roof.Contact:Sunny Denis(Sales Manager),(Research N Reports)10916, Gold Point Dr,Houston, TX, Pin - 77064,+1-8886316977,sales@researchnreports.com,
Global Aerospace Floor Panel Market Outlook, Research, Trends and Forecast to 2022

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Fact.MR has been actively involved in offering comprehensive research data concerning various topics which are associated to industrial reference and investor utility. This particular research report titled Aerospace Floor Panel Market Forecast, Trend Analysis & Competition Tracking: Global Review 2017 to 2022 has been added to the wide online database of Fact.MR which discusses the present as well as future market scenario. Readers can access knowledge related to market volume, regional expanse as well as competitive landscape prevailing in the global aerospace floor panel market. In order to study development patterns, this smart assessment also focuses on market dynamics, which talks about drivers, restraints and opportunities estimated to influence the concerned market during the period until 2017 to 2022.Request For Sample Report-Nomex and Aluminium Honeycomb Two Options in Aerospace Floor Panel MarketIt is estimated that the nomex honeycomb segment will grow at a steady CAGR during the forecast period. The revenue share of nomex honeycomb is anticipated to witness an increase during the forecast period. Nomexs gain is Aluminiums honeycombs loss as the latter will account for relatively lesser revenue share of the aerospace floor panel market. Aluminium honeycomb is not forecast to exceed nomex honeycomb during the period studied as the value of the former will only touch US$ 187 million by the end of 2022.OEM Segment Vital in the Aerospace Floor Panel MarketWith a steady CAGR during the forecast period, the OEM segment of the aerospace floor panel is projected to grow to surpass US$ 400 Mn in revenues by the end of the forecast period. With a significant revenue share, it is not surprising that all attention is on this critical segment of the aerospace floor panel market.Overall, the global aerospace floor panel market is anticipated to expand at a significant CAGR during the forecast period. The market will continue to be influenced by the parent aerospace industry, which in turn, is massively impacted by changed in government regulations.Wide and Narrow Body Aircraft Neck and Neck in Aerospace Floor Panel MarketNarrow-body aircrafts are poised to account for a significant revenue share of the aerospace floor panel market in terms of aircraft type in 2017. North America alone represents roughly 2/5th of the narrow-body aerospace floor panel market, making it imperative to target this dynamic region. However, it would not be wise to completely ignore wide-body aircraft as it continues to offer growth opportunities to manufacturers.Very Large Aircraft Segment to Grow, Looming Fuel Crisis NotwithstandingEven though the aircraft industry has not been immune to the trend of downsizing and cost-cutting, very large aircrafts have surprisingly shown marked growth. The very large aircraft segment is anticipated to grow significantly during the forecast period. While North America and Europe remain fairly steady, APEJ should account for a bigger portion of the very large aircraft aerospace floor panel market in the days to come.Browse Full Report With TOC-List of TablesChapter 1. Global Aerospace Floor Panel Market - Executive Summary. 22Chapter 2. Global Aerospace Floor Panel Market Overview. 242.1. Introduction. 242.1.1. Global Aerospace Floor Panel Market Taxonomy. 242.1.2. Global Aerospace Floor Panel Market Definition. 242.2. Global Aerospace Floor Panel Market Size (US$ Mn) and Forecast, 2012-2022. 252.2.1. Global Aerospace Floor Panel Market Y-o-Y Growth. 252.3. Global Aerospace Floor Panel Market: Macroeconomic Factors. 252.3.1. Economic Outlook. 252.3.2. International Policy. 262.3.3. Profitability of Enterprises. 262.3.4. Increasing Purchasing Power of Middle Class. 262.3.5. Complex Eco System. 262.3.6. Supply chain Issues. 272.3.7. End-user Sentiment. 272.4. Global Aerospace Floor Panel Market Impact Factors. 272.4.1. The Influence of China. 272.4.2. Innovations in Technology. 272.4.3. Dilemma on Shift to New Technologies. 282.4.4. Disruption in Traditional Business Models. 282.4.5. Rising Component Costs in Developing Countries. 282.4.6. Shrinking Product Development Time. 282.4.7. Fluctuating Input costs. 292.4.8. Adoption of New Mobility Solutions. 292.4.9. Focus on Granular Insights  City-wise Analysis will Replace Region-wise Analysis. 292.4.10. Rising Complexity Influencing Greater Emphasis on Platformimg. 292.4.11. Increasing R&D expenditure. 302.4.12. Trends. 302.4.12.1. Focus on Granular Insights  City-wise Analysis will Replace Region-wise Analysis. 302.4.12.2. Rising Complexity Influencing Greater Emphasis on Platforming. 302.5. Supply Chain. 312.6. Cost Structure. 312.7. Pricing Analysis. 312.8. Raw Material Sourcing Strategy and Analysis. 322.9. List of Distributors. 322.10. Key Participants Market Presence (Intensity Map) By Region. 322.11. Competitive Assessment and Technology Trends in Future. 32Chapter 3. Global Aerospace Floor Panel Market Analysis and Forecast By Aircraft Type. 333.1. Global Aerospace Floor Panel Market Size and Forecast By Aircraft Type, 2012-2022. 333.1.1. Narrow-Body Aircraft Aerospace Floor Panel Market Size and Forecast, 2012-2022. 333.1.1.1. Revenue (US$ Mn) Comparison, By Region. 333.1.1.2. Market Share Comparison, By Region. 343.1.1.3. Y-o-Y growth Comparison, By Region. 353.1.2. Wide-Body Aircraft Aerospace Floor Panel Market Size and Forecast, 2012-2022. 363.1.2.1. Revenue (US$ Mn) Comparison, By Region. 363.1.2.2. Market Share Comparison, By Region. 373.1.2.3. Y-o-Y growth Comparison, By Region. 383.1.3. Very Large Aircraft Aerospace Floor Panel Market Size and Forecast, 2012-2022. 393.1.3.1. Revenue (US$ Mn) Comparison, By Region. 393.1.3.2. Market Share Comparison, By Region. 403.1.3.3. Y-o-Y growth Comparison, By Region. 413.1.4. General Aviation Aerospace Floor Panel Market Size and Forecast, 2012-2022. 423.1.4.1. Revenue (US$ Mn) Comparison, By Region. 423.1.4.2. Market Share Comparison, By Region. 433.1.4.3. Y-o-Y growth Comparison, By Region. 44Continued@@@...Check For Discount On This Report-About Fact.MRFact.MR is a fast-growing market research firm that offers the most comprehensive suite of syndicated and customized market research reports. We believe transformative intelligence can educate and inspire businesses to make smarter decisions. We know the limitations of the one-size-fits-all approach; thats why we publish multi-industry global, regional, and country-specific research reports.Contact UsFact.MRSuite 988427 Upper Pembroke Street,Dublin 2, IrelandTelephone: +353-1-6111-593Email: sales@factmr.com/Web:
India Sanitaryware Market: Trends, Share, Size, Opportunities, Forecast, Outlook, 2022

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INDIA SANITARY-WARE MARKET GETS BOOST BECAUSE OF TOURISM AND HOSPITALITY INDUSTRYThe Indian tourism and hospitality industry has significant potential considering the rich cultural and historical heritage, variety in ecology, terrains and places of natural beauty spread across the country. The changing lifestyle of today's generation which is inclined more towards adventure, fun-loving activities and at the same time seeking spiritual peace has given an opportunity to cater to their needs that are poles apart. Indias changing demographics such as rising middle class and increasing disposable incomes have enhanced the growth of domestic and outbound tourism. The launch of several branding and marketing initiatives by the Government of India such as 'Incredible India' and 'Athiti Devo Bhava' has provided a focused impetus to this growth. The Indian government has also released a fresh category of visa - the medical visa or M visa, to encourage medical tourism in the country. The government has been making serious efforts to boost investments in tourism sector. According to Ministry of Tourism, foreign tourist arrivals (FTAs) in India increased 19.5 percent year-on-year to 630,000 in May 2017. FTAs on e-tourist visa increased 55.3 percent year-on-year to 68,000 in May 2017.According to recently published report of Bonafide Research India Sanitaryware Market Outlook, 2022, institutional demand will grow with a CAGR of more than 15% in the coming four years. Institutional or commercial sanitaryware market is directly linked with the demand of commercial building projects like hotel, motels, hospitals, education institutes, etc. in any particular country which is further connected to inflow or outflow of tourists or people in that country. India is expected to be ranked among the top five business travel market globally in the upcoming years owing to increase in the spending of business travels across the country. The international and domestic hotel chains are planning to increase their investments for expansion activities in India.Report Link:"India is a large market for travel and tourism. It offers a diverse portfolio of niche tourism products - cruises, adventure, medical, wellness, sports, MICE, eco-tourism, film, rural and religious tourism. India is also a popular destination of spiritual tourism for domestic and international tourists. Increasing demand in hospitality and tourism industry will invariably accelerate the real estate sector. This, in turn will increase the demand for building products including sanitaryware." said Dhwipal Shah, Director with Bonafide ResearchFor instance, AccorHotels, a French multinational hotel group, plans to expand its footprint in Guwahati and Kolkata by adding 550 more rooms to its portfolio of hotels in the successive years. Likewise, JW Marriott plans to have 175-200 hotels during the subsequent years. As a result of such expansion, there will be high demand for sanitaryware products in the country. Sanitaryware products, in commercial as well as residential sector, are seen as a medium to flaunt one's status and lifestyle. Consumers are emphasizing more on look and feel and hence products rich in artistic and aesthetic looks are getting trendy in bathroom spaces. Every year, big hotel chains have ample demand for premium and luxury sanitaryware products. The replacement demand has also been enhanced; as such institutions are spending heavily on renovation and remodelling activities.Geography: IndiaBase Year: 2017, Estimated Year: 2017, Forecast Year: 2022Pages: 125Figures: 46Tables: 14India Sanitaryware Market Outlook, 2022 discusses the following aspects of sanitaryware in India:The report gives an in-depth understanding of sanitaryware market in India:- Global Sanitaryware Market Outlook- Global Sanitaryware Market Size By Value & Forecast- Global Sanitaryware Market Size By Volume & Forecast- Global Sanitaryware Market Segmental Analysis: By Region, By Product Type, By Application- Global Sanitaryware Market Production- Global Sanitaryware Market Production By Region- Global Sanitaryware Market Production By Country- India Sanitaryware Market Outlook- India Sanitaryware Market Size By Value & Forecast- India Low End Sanitaryware Market Size By Value & Forecast- India Mass Sanitaryware Market Size By Value & Forecast- India Premium Sanitaryware Market Size By Value & Forecast- India Luxury/ Super-Premium Sanitaryware Market Size By Value & Forecast- India Sanitaryware Market Size By Volume & Forecast- India Sanitaryware Market Segmental Analysis: By Product Type, By Category, By Organized vs. Unorganized, By End User, By Region, By New vs. Replacement Demand- India Organized Sanitaryware Market Size By Value & Forecast- India Organized Sanitaryware Market Size By Volume & Forecast- India Organized Sanitaryware Market Segmental Analysis: By Company- India Unorganized Sanitaryware Market Size By Value & Forecast- India Unorganized Sanitaryware Market Size By Volume & Forecast- Pricing Analysis- The key vendors in this market space- Competitive Landscape & Strategic RecommendationsDownload Page:Major Indian companies operating in the sanitaryware market of India are Hindustan Sanitary Ware India Limited, Cera Sanitaryware Limited, Jaquar and Company Private Limited, Neycer India Limited and Somany Sanitary Ware Private Limited whereas major international companies operating in the sanitaryware market of India are Roca Bathroom Products Private Limited, Toto India Industries Private Limited, H. & R. Johnson (India) TBK Limited, Kohler India Corporation Private Limited and Duravit India Private Limited.This report can be useful to Industry consultants, manufacturers and other stakeholders to align their market-centric strategies. In addition to marketing & presentations, it will also increase competitive knowledge about the industry.Bonafide Research is one of the fastest growing market research and consulting company. Our report store have collection of 30,000 premium research reports for variety of industrial verticals. We are expert in syndicated research reports & custom research solutions across the domains. We have been closely working with fortune 500 clients by helping them in tracking the constantly changing market scenario. Bonafide has continuously made efforts to evolve and enhance the report quality with each passing day. Our client base consists of BCG, Ernst & Young, PwC, Inflexion, Nestle, Crompton Greaves, SRF, CPF, Aramax, Stainhoff, Welspun, Blaupunkt, Brookfield, Lindt, Storck, GCPL, ITC, Microtek, Anchor, Hero Eco, LG Chem, Sojitz Corp., Sumitomo, FMC Corp., Lutron and many more.Steven ThomasBonafide Research & Marketing Pvt. Ltd.Address: T-13/A, IndiaBulls Mega Mall, Jetalpur Road, VadodaraPhone: +91 265 6551309 / +91 7878231309Email: sales@bonafideresearch.comLinkedin:Twitter:Facebook:
Analysis of U.K. Mens Haircare Market Based on Consumer Preference and Key Players Activities

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Men's haircare is a growing segment of a mature beauty business. The growing demand for hair styling products due to the changing purchasing behavior and patterns of consumers is likely to boost this product segment, especially in mens. With a prime focus on UKs consumer habits and demand while choosing haircare brands, a new research study titled Mens Haircare-UK-March 2018 has been publicized to the wide repository of Market Research Hub (MRH). Analyst of the report has found the mens hair care market in U.K. is still continuing to grow in value.Click here for Free Sample Report@Research EnclosureThe report is a result of in-depth research study focuses on each of the key facets of mens haircare market in the UK to reveal the significance in terms of market growth. In the initial section presents an executive summary that compiles the key findings of research along with market size and forecast in terms of values, volumes, and growth rates until the end of 2022. Then follows a section that includes insights on the upcoming opportunities in the UK mens hair care category. For a clear understanding, detailed consumer analysis has been covered in the study which highlights usage of haircare products, reasons for low usage of haircare products, purchase of hair products with preference.To calculate the market size, the report considers UK retail value sales of mens haircare, at current and constant prices for period 2012-22. The market segmentation is also included in the study describes market according to various segments. The next part of the report talks about the key players active in the US marketplace for mens haircare. This section offers in-depth information about key company profiles, launch activity and innovation, advertising and marketing activity.Browse Full Report with TOC@Key Highlights from the ResearchHair care comprises of five types of products which includes shampoo, hair color, hair conditioner, hair styling products and hair oil. As per the key findings, the demand for hair treatments sees a significant rise, which is expected to support market growth. In 2017, men show increased use of specialized products such as hair and scalp treatments, suggesting further opportunities for NPD. It has been analyzed that dry shampoo opportunities amongst younger men.As per the consumer perspective, usage of haircare products sees a rise. For mens, supermarkets are the most favored destination. With the majority of men buying their own haircare products, engaging men in retail environments remains important, particularly as online retailers innovate in ways to attract this demographic.Some of the prime market drivers include mens hair trends in 2017, in which they have shown interest in subscription services, mens are also buying natural/organic products, most of the consumers are adopting informal appearances, the rise in professionals may drive need for speed, and try-before-you-buy is important for them.Enquire about this Report@About Market Research HubMarket Research Hub (MRH) is a next-generation reseller of research reports of different sector like haircare industry reports and analysis. MRHs expansive collection of industry reports has been carefully curated to help key personnel and decision makers across industry verticals to clearly visualize their operating environment and take strategic steps.MRH functions as an integrated platform for the following products and services: Objective and sound market forecasts, qualitative and quantitative analysis, incisive insight into defining industry trends, and market share estimates. Our reputation lies in delivering value and world-class capabilities to our clients.Contact Us90 State Street,Albany, NY 12207,United StatesToll Free: 800-998-4852 (US-Canada)Email: press@marketresearchhub.comWebsite:Read Industry News at -
India Frozen Prawns Market: Trends, Share, Size, Opportunities, Forecast, Outlook

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RISING MULTI-BRAND RETAIL STORES IN INDIA HAS WIDEN THE REACH AND AVAILABILITY OF FROZEN SEAFOOD PRODUCTSFrom last one decade, India is ranked at second position after China in total global aquaculture production. India's frozen shrimps have huge demand in the U.S market, contributing major share in total fisheries industry. The aquaculture sector of India witnessed a boom with the introduction of L.vannamei shrimps in 2004. Black tiger, L.vannamei and scampi are the three major types of shrimp produced in India. Other species like flower shrimps, white shrimps, sea tiger shrimps, bamboo shrimps, brown shrimps, marine shrimps etc are wild caught species. The growing business volume of frozen shrimps in India has encouraged many medium to large players like ITC Limited and others to set up seafood processing units and cold storage chains in the country.According to recently published report of Bonafide Research "India Frozen Prawns Market Outlook, 2020" seafood market is growing with a CAGR of close to 7% from the last three years, with major contribution from prawns. Demand for frozen prawns is gradually rising in the country due to middle class and double income families bending towards ready to eat and ready to cook frozen segment. The tastes and habits of the Indian consumers are changing; people are accepting frozen prawns due to its good quality and availability throughout the year. Export market of frozen prawns is already very huge and the players earn majority of their revenue from exporting their products to various countries. However, there is an enormous opportunity in the domestic market as well due to the fact that it is largely untapped. Domestic players are trying to convert consumers of fresh and unpackaged prawns to the frozen super safe prawns.Report Link:"Frozen seafood products are slated for deeper market penetration and entry of more players and products. The increase in demand for frozen seafood is being driven by the modern retail chains and big supermarkets, who are stocking more varieties of frozen products with quality offerings. Every modern grocer is increasing space in his refrigerated display units for frozen seafood. Growth in the modern retail chains, increased refrigeration space and growing awareness of frozen products are expected to drive the sales of frozen seafood in India." said Dhwipal Shah, Director with Bonafide ResearchThe domestic prawns market is highly unorganised; where retail markets are miniatures of wholesale markets, the variations being in terms of size (small, medium, large and jumbo), quality of shrimps, number of traders, facilities proximity to the consumers etc. Most retailers sell shrimps and fish by roadside without maintenance of quality or hygiene and without access to drinking water shelter and fish dressing platform. In recent years, a slow transformation of this unorganised market into an organised one is visible through the entry of private players and retailing giants. Organized frozen prawn players are more active on online retailing for selling of products and approaching their prospective clients. West Coast Fine Foods (Cambay tiger), Al Kabeer, Apex Frozen Food, Avanti Frozen Food, Forstar, Gadre Marine Export, IFB Agro, Innovative Foods and ITC Limited are the major players operating in the frozen prawns market of India. ITC recently launched its frozen prawns with the brand ITC Masterchef in four variants. The products pricing range lies between Rs. 180 to Rs. 400 for 200 gm.India Frozen Prawns Market Outlook, 2020 discusses the following aspects of frozen prawns in India:How it will help solving your strategic decision making process??The report gives an in-depth understanding of frozen prawns market in India:- Global Seafood Market Outlook- India Seafood Market Outlook- India Seafood Market Size By Value & Forecast- India Seafood Export Market Size By Value- India Seafood Export Market Size By Volume- India Seafood Export Market Share By Country By Volume- India Seafood Production By Volume- India Fresh Prawns Market Size By Value & Forecast- India Fresh Prawns Market Size By Volume & Forecast- India Frozen Prawns Market Size By Value & Forecast- India Frozen Prawns Market Size By Volume & Forecast- India Domestic Frozen Prawns Market Size By Value & Forecast- India Domestic Frozen Prawns Market Size By Volume & Forecast- India Domestic Frozen Prawns Market Segmental Analysis: By Company, By Region, By End User, By Size of Prawns, By Prawns Type, By Packaging Type- Product Price & Variant Analysis- Potential By States (High Demand vs. Low Demand)- List of Companies with their Focus Area- The key vendors in this market space- Competitive Landscape & Strategic RecommendationsDownload Page:Major companies operating in the frozen prawns market of India are Al Kabeer Exports Private Limited, Apex Frozen Food Limited, Avanti Frozen Food Private Limited, Britto Seafood Exports Private Limited, Forstar Frozen Food Private Limited, Gadre Marine Export Private Limited, IFB Agro Industries Limited, Innovative Foods Limited, ITC Limited and West Coast Fine Foods (India) Private Limited.This report can be useful to Industry consultants, manufacturers and other stakeholders to align their market-centric strategies. In addition to marketing & presentations, it will also increase competitive knowledge about the industry.Bonafide Research is one of the fastest growing market research and consulting company. Our report store have collection of 30,000 premium research reports for variety of industrial verticals. We are expert in syndicated research reports & custom research solutions across the domains. We have been closely working with fortune 500 clients by helping them in tracking the constantly changing market scenario. Bonafide has continuously made efforts to evolve and enhance the report quality with each passing day. Our client base consists of BCG, Ernst & Young, PwC, Inflexion, Nestle, Crompton Greaves, SRF, CPF, Aramax, Stainhoff, Welspun, Blaupunkt, Brookfield, Lindt, Storck, GCPL, ITC, Microtek, Anchor, Hero Eco, LG Chem, Sojitz Corp., Sumitomo, FMC Corp., Lutron and many more.Steven ThomasBonafide Research & Marketing Pvt. 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2G/3G Wireless Infrastructure : Strategy of Leading Vendors in 2018 market - Ericsson, Nokia(ALU+MOTO), Juniper, Cisco

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Press Release - 30 Mar 2018Global Research and Development News --. .Report Description-' ' This report studies 2G/3G Wireless Infrastructure in Global market, especially in North America, China, Europe, Southeast Asia, Japan and India, with production, revenue, consumption, import and export in these regions, from 2012 to 2016, and forecast to 2022. This report focuses on top manufacturers in global market, with production, price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer, coveringEricssonNokia(ALU+MOTO)JuniperCiscoCommScope. . Get Sample Report' 'HUBER + SUHNERCorningHuaweiZTE On the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoCommunication TowersTransmitting antennaReceiving antennaDecoder By Application, the market can be split intoMilitary UseCivil Use By Regions, this report covers (we can add the regions/countries as you want)North AmericaChinaEuropeSoutheast AsiaJapanIndia. . More Clear Details get Table of Contents' 'Global 2G/3G Wireless Infrastructure Market Professional Survey Report 20171 Industry Overview of 2G/3G Wireless Infrastructure1.1 Definition and Specifications of 2G/3G Wireless Infrastructure1.1.1 Definition of 2G/3G Wireless Infrastructure1.1.2 Specifications of 2G/3G Wireless Infrastructure1.2 Classification of 2G/3G Wireless Infrastructure1.2.1 Communication Towers1.2.2 Transmitting antenna1.2.3 Receiving antenna1.2.4 Decoder1.3 Applications of 2G/3G Wireless Infrastructure1.3.1 Military Use1.3.2 Civil Use1.3.3 Application 31.4 Market Segment by Regions1.4.1 North America1.4.2 China1.4.3 Europe1.4.4 Southeast Asia1.4.5 Japan1.4.6 India2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of 2G/3G Wireless Infrastructure2.1 Raw Material and Suppliers2.2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of 2G/3G Wireless Infrastructure2.3 Manufacturing Process Analysis of 2G/3G Wireless Infrastructure2.4 Industry Chain Structure of 2G/3G Wireless Infrastructure3 Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants Analysis of 2G/3G Wireless Infrastructure3.1 Capacity and Commercial Production Date of Global 2G/3G Wireless Infrastructure Major Manufacturers in 20163.2 Manufacturing Plants Distribution of Global 2G/3G Wireless Infrastructure Major Manufacturers in 20163.3 R&D Status and Technology Source of Global 2G/3G Wireless Infrastructure Major Manufacturers in 20163.4 Raw Materials Sources Analysis of Global 2G/3G Wireless Infrastructure Major Manufacturers in 20164 Global 2G/3G Wireless Infrastructure Overall Market Overview4.1 2012-2017E Overall Market Analysis4.2 Capacity Analysis4.2.1 2012-2017E Global 2G/3G Wireless Infrastructure Capacity and Growth Rate Analysis4.2.2 2016 2G/3G Wireless Infrastructure Capacity Analysis (Company Segment)4.3 Sales Analysis4.3.1 2012-2017E Global 2G/3G Wireless Infrastructure Sales and Growth Rate Analysis4.3.2 2016 2G/3G Wireless Infrastructure Sales Analysis (Company Segment)4.4 Sales Price Analysis4.4.1 2012-2017E Global 2G/3G Wireless Infrastructure Sales Price4.4.2 2016 2G/3G Wireless Infrastructure Sales Price Analysis (Company Segment)5 2G/3G Wireless Infrastructure Regional Market Analysis5.1 North America 2G/3G Wireless Infrastructure Market Analysis5.1.1 North America 2G/3G Wireless Infrastructure Market Overview5.1.2 North America 2012-2017E 2G/3G Wireless Infrastructure Local Supply, Import, Export, Local Consumption Analysis5.1.3 North America 2012-2017E 2G/3G Wireless Infrastructure Sales Price Analysis5.1.4 North America 2016 2G/3G Wireless Infrastructure Market Share Analysis5.2 China 2G/3G Wireless Infrastructure Market Analysis5.2.1 China 2G/3G Wireless Infrastructure Market Overview5.2.2 China 2012-2017E 2G/3G Wireless Infrastructure Local Supply, Import, Export, Local Consumption Analysis5.2.3 China 2012-2017E 2G/3G Wireless Infrastructure Sales Price Analysis5.2.4 China 2016 2G/3G Wireless Infrastructure Market Share Analysis5.3 Europe 2G/3G Wireless Infrastructure Market Analysis5.3.1 Europe 2G/3G Wireless Infrastructure Market Overview5.3.2 Europe 2012-2017E 2G/3G Wireless Infrastructure Local Supply, Import, Export, Local Consumption Analysis5.3.3 Europe 2012-2017E 2G/3G Wireless Infrastructure Sales Price Analysis5.3.4 Europe 2016 2G/3G Wireless Infrastructure Market Share Analysis5.4 Southeast Asia 2G/3G Wireless Infrastructure Market Analysis5.4.1 Southeast Asia 2G/3G Wireless Infrastructure Market Overview5.4.2 Southeast Asia 2012-2017E 2G/3G Wireless Infrastructure Local Supply, Import, Export, Local Consumption Analysis5.4.3 Southeast Asia 2012-2017E 2G/3G Wireless Infrastructure Sales Price Analysis5.4.4 Southeast Asia 2016 2G/3G Wireless Infrastructure Market Share Analysis5.5 Japan 2G/3G Wireless Infrastructure Market Analysis5.5.1 Japan 2G/3G Wireless Infrastructure Market Overview5.5.2 Japan 2012-2017E 2G/3G Wireless Infrastructure Local Supply, Import, Export, Local Consumption Analysis5.5.3 Japan 2012-2017E 2G/3G Wireless Infrastructure Sales Price Analysis5.5.4 Japan 2016 2G/3G Wireless Infrastructure Market Share Analysis5.6 India 2G/3G Wireless Infrastructure Market AnalysisResearchMoz is the worlds fastest growing collection of market research reports worldwide. 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Organic Personal Care Products Market Future and Demand 2025

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Organic Personal Care Product Market OutlookNorth America dominated the organic personal care products market in 2016, with the U.S. being the major contributor. Various regulatory bodies such as United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are responsible for restricting the use of harmful chemicals in cosmetic products. For instance, bithionol is restricted in cosmetic products under the regulation, methylene chloride, vinyl chloride, halogenated salicylanilides are some of the chemicals, are prohibited in various cosmetic products by FDA. The use of bithionol in cosmetics is associated with the risk of photocontact sensitization and halogenated salicylanilides have potential to cause skin disorders. The rising awareness regarding the adverse effects of chemicals used in these products is expected to confer a boost to the organic personal care products market in the region.Sample Copy of This Report@Asia Pacific is anticipated to witness the fastest growth in the organic personal care products market. The rising preference for organic products over chemical based products, substantial growth in the disposable income and the steadily growing personal care industry in the region, are some of the major drivers for market growth. According to the International Trade Administration (ITA), Japan stands as one of the largest market for personal care products in the world. In 2015, the cosmetic market in Japan was estimated at US$ 13,208 and in 2014, per person annual expenditure on personal care and cosmetics was US$ 174, according to ITA. Furthermore, owing to the increasing demand for organic products in the region, major players are launching organic grade of personal care products. For instance, Hindustan Unilever Ltd. had launched Indulekha Bringha Hairfall Shampoo, a shampoo with plant extracts, in 2017. Similarly, in the oral care segment, various herbal products such as Cibaca Vedshakti, Colgate Sensitive Clove, Colgate Active Salt Neem and Colgate Total Charcol Deep Clean are gaining traction in India and thereby supporting the growth of organic personal care products market.Phytosterols are found in fatty tissues of plants and they are associated with various skin and hair care benefits. Phytosterols, provide protection to skin against premature aging and helps improving dry skin conditions by reducing transepidermal water loss (TEWL) in addition phytosterols are also used in hair thinning and hair loss treatments as it helps increasing the androgen level which is responsible for hereditary hair loss. Owing to these benefits, phytosterols are gaining traction in cosmetic industry. For instance, soy phytosterols are extensively used as an active ingredient in creams and lipsticks. Increasing awareness regarding the benefits of these botanical ingredients in personal care products is propelling the market growth. Furthermore, growing disposable income, increasing personal care product spending, and rising consciousness regarding aging and personal appearance are some other factors contributing to growth of the personal care products market. Furthermore, governmental regulatory bodies such as Food and Drug Administration (FDA), is restricting the use of harmful chemicals in cosmetics under various regulations such as 21CFR700.15, 21CFR700.19 and 21CFR 700.11. The restricted use of chemicals in personal care products is supporting the use of organic ingredients in personal care products over synthetic chemicals, thereby aiding to market growth.Organic Personal Care Products Market TaxonomyBased on the product type, organic personal care product market is segmented into:Skin care, Oral care, Hair care, Color Cosmetics, Baby Care, Fragrances, Deodorants, Bath and Shower, Depilatories, OthersBased on distribution channel, organic personal care product market can be segmented into:HypermarketSupermarketSpecialty StoresOnline ChannelConvenience StoresOthersAmong product type, skin care segment dominated the organic personal care market in 2016 and is anticipated to maintain its supremacy throughout the forecast period. This is majorly due to increasing demand for anti-aging skin care products worldwide. Furthermore, owing to the rising cases of premature grey hair and hair fall, the hair care segment is expected to record the fastest growth during the forecast period.To Get Disount on this Report@Major players operating in the global organic personal care product market include Estee Lauder Inc., The Hain Celestial Group Inc., Yves Rocher S.A., Natura Brasil International B.V., Aveda Corporation, Bare Escentuals Inc., Amway Corporation, Burts Bees Inc., and Arbonne International LLC.About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact UsMr. ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200 Seattle,WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email: sales@coherentmarketinsights.com
Household Cleaners Market Size to Expand Significantly by the End of 2025

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Global Household Cleaners Market Outlook:North America accounted for 30% of the global household cleaners market followed by Europe in 2016. These products have been already adopted for very long time in these developed markets as a result of existing awareness and importance of cleaners. Similarly, high standard of sustainable living lifestyle also appertains to maturity of these markets. However, increasing regulation on use of chemical cleaners has led to minimal growth in both of the regions. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) revised its regulations by GHS (HazCom 2012), which will govern labelling of products. According to OSHA, products labelling must have brand name, hazard statement, precautionary statement, and pictogram. This is expected to lead to declining popularity of these cleaners among consumers, owing to increasing awareness regarding harmful chemicals used in them.Request Sample Copy of This Report@Enhanced sanitation standards in emerging countries of Asia Pacific is expected to lead to increasing demand for household cleaners. According to country statistics available in JMP database of 2010, there has been a proportional increase of 20% in people of East Asia, who have improved sanitation from 1998 to 2008. Therefore, Asia Pacific market is expected to exhibit high growth over the forecast period.According to Coherent Market Insights analysis, the market in China is expected to exhibit 5% CAGR over the forecast period (20172025).According to World Vision Data of 2010, emerging countries such as India, Vietnam, Pakistan, and Nepal are expected to witness growth, as over 2.6 million people lack proper sanitation, therefore demand for these is high in these countries.According to Coherent Market Insights, specialty household cleaners segment is expected to exhibit a CAGR of 6.9% in the U.S. Increasing demand for chemical-free solution and development of eco-friendly cleaners has boosted demand for specialty cleaners. For instance, Resolution, a U.S.-based company launched ResGel in 2017, which is a non-toxic cleaning solution and is free of volatile organic compounds.Key players in the market are focusing on increasing their product portfolios through acquisition strategy and to maintain their positions in the competitive market. For instance, SC Johnson, a U.S-based company that manufactures household cleaning products acquired Method and Ecover brands from People Against Dirty in September 2017.The objective of the company was to enhance its product portfolio.These cleaners are formulated with synthetic fiber materials, plastics, and an array of chemical ingredient ranging from solvents, petrochemicals to surfactants. According to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 62 chemicals found in these household cleaners are toxic and are unsafe to use. According to EPA, chemicals such as phthalates, perchloroethylene (PERC), triclosan, Quarternary ammonium compounds (QUATS), 2-Butoxyethanol, Ammonia, Chlorine, and Sodium hydroxide are commonly used in cleaners and are potential skin-irritant and can cause sore throat or asthma. Moreover, the artificial fragrances that are added in these cleaners can also cause headache, irritation in eyes, respiratory irritation, and others. As per data released by National Institute of Occupational Health, 2012, that one-third of these fragrances are deemed to be toxic. These are the major factors expected to hinder growth of the market. Owing to these above mentioned factors, consumers have started adopting natural home-made solutions made from baking soda, vinegar, citric acid, and essentials oils.Global Household Cleaners Market Taxonomy:By Product Type:All-Purpose Cleaning, Powders, Liquids, Scouring Pads, Non-Abrasive Cleaners, Specialty Cleaners, Kitchen, Bathroom, Glass and Metal Cleaners, Floor and Furniture Cleaner,OthersBy Distribution Channel:Supermarkets,Hypermarkets,Specialty Stores,Convenience Stores,Online Stores,OthersGlobal players in the household cleaners market include Godrej Consumer Products, S.C. Johnson & Son Inc., Henkel AG & Company KGaA, The Clorox Company Reckitt Benckiser Group plc, Kao Corporation, Bombril S.A, Colgate-Palmolive, McBride Church & Dwight Co. Inc. Unilever, Procter & Gamble, and Seventh Generation.About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr.ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702
E-cigarettes Market: key insight and market trends

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Global E-cigarette Market Outlook:North America region is leading global e-cigarettes market. Increasing educational campaigns coupled with ban on smoking in public places in the U.S. has resulted in an approximate 31% drop in the sale of conventional cigarettes since 2005. This has created a large scale opportunity for e-cigarettes manufacturers in the U.S. thereby resulting in the growth of the market in North America. According to the National Youth Tobacco Survey (NYTS), an estimated 27.1% of U.S. adolescents used of e-cigarettes in 2015. This has resulted in 41 states banning the sale of e-cigarettes to minors due to the increasing number of health complications associated with it. These factors could greatly hamper the growth of the e-cigarettes market in North America.Ask for detailed Sample of the Research Report @*The Sample consists of Table of Content, Research framework of the actual report & research methodology adopted for it.Europe is projected to be the fastest growing market for e-cigarettes, owing to the high prices and regulations that are imposed on cigarettes in the developed economies of the European region. For instance according to the Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), number of smokers using e-cigarettes regularly have increased from 2.7% in 2010 to 17.7% in 2014 in the U.K. and it is expected to witness a substantial increase during the forecast period on account of the health complications due to the combustion of tobacco in cigarettes. The smoke forms a sticky chemical slurry called tar, and the tar coats delicate parts of the lungs. However e-cigarettes dont produce tar, because they dont burn (or even contain) tobacco or other plant material. This is expected to drive growth of the market in the European region.Manufacturers are adopting strategies such as mergers and acquisitions in order to increase their share in the global e-cigarettes market. For instance Philip Morris International (PMI) merged with Altria in 2013 in order to market e-cigarettes. This resulted in PMI gaining the right to sell Altria's e-cigarettes outside the U.S.Increasing health awareness regarding the use of cigarettes, adoption of eco-friendly products, and the tax hike of regular cigarettes are the factors contributing to growth of the e-cigarettes market. In July 2013, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued a statement regarding the potential risks of using e-cigarettes, which include throat irritation and coughing. This is expected to hamper the growth of the global e-cigarettes market.Key players in Global E-Ciggaretes Market -Some of the key players operating in the global e-cigarette market include Japan Tobacco Inc., Reynolds American, Philip Morris International, Altria Group Inc. VMR products, and British American Tobacco.To get detailed table of content (ToC)@Global E-Cigarettes Market Taxonomy:Global E-cigarettes market is segmented into:By Product Type: Modular, Rechargeable, DisposableBy Distribution Channel: Hypermarkets, Supermarkets, Specialty stores, Online Stores, OthersAbout Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact UsMr. ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email: sales@coherentmarketinsights.com
Hair Care Products Market- Global Industry Insights till 2025

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Hair care products help nourish and protect hair, further enhancing its quality and texture. It provides treatment for split ends, dandruff, and weak and dehydrated hair among various other hair problems. Increasing hair problems among consumers is growth of the global hair care products market. Increasing number of manufacturers are launching new products to reduce hair problems. For instance, in January 2017, Unilever plc launched Dove DermaCare Scalp Anti-dandruff Shampoo. Furthermore, rampant advancements in technology is propelling growth of the global hair care products market. For instance, Henkel Corporation launched Schwarzkopf Professional SalonLab, a digital system for customizing and quantifying hair care experience, in January 2018.Ask for detailed Sample of the Research Report@Growing urbanization coupled with increasing beauty consciousness among men is increasing the demand for grooming products such as hair gels among the male population. This in turn is fuelling growth of the hair care products market. According to Coherent Market Insights, mens grooming products market was valued at US$ 54.7 billion in 2016 and is expected to exhibit a CAGR of 8.91% during the forecast period (2017  2025). Stringent government regulations on cosmetic products such as Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009, which provides guidelines for manufacturing, labelling and others of various cosmetic products including shampoo is restraining growth of the global hair care products market. JR Beauty Organic Permanent Powder Hair Color, contained sodium perborate, which could cause eye damage, respiratory irritation, and harm fertility. The hair color was thus, recalled from the market in European by the European Commissions Rapid Alert System, RAPEX.Among product type, the shampoo segment held a dominant position in the hair care products market in 2016 and is expected to retain its dominance over the forecast period. High availability of specialized products such as herbal shampoo, baby shampoo, anti-dandruff shampoo, gluten-free shampoo, and shampoo for color treated hair, in turn is fuelling growth of this segment. For instance, Keranique launched a shampoo for color treated hair, in November 2017 and Unilever plc launched Dove Baby shampoo in April 2017. Furthermore, dry shampoo is gaining significant traction due its advantages such as increased ease and convenience over liquid shampoo. This in turn, is fuelling growth of the shampoo segment.Among regions, Asia Pacific held a dominated position in the market for hair care products, and accounted for 35.48 billion in 2016. This is attributed to increasing sales for grooming products in countries such as China, South Korea, Japan, India, and Australia. According to International Trade Association (ITA), the domestic sales in China, in 2015 accounted for US$ 50 billion. Furthermore, the personal care and cosmetics segment in Australia is expected to grow by 4% during 2016 to 2018.The market in Europe is expected to witness substantial growth. According to German Cosmetic, Toiletry, Perfumery and Detergent Association, the beauty products sector in Germany was valued at US$ 16.74 billion in 2016 and grew by 1.6% from 2015. Hair care products formed a major share of US$ 3.7 billion in 2016 in the beauty products market in Germany. Furthermore, according to the U.S. International Trade Association, annual expenditure on hair products in France was US$ 1.498 million in 2015. Thus, increasing demand for beauty and personal care products in Germany and France is expected to drive growth of the hair care products market in Europe.Growing demand for personal care and cosmetic products is driving the hair care products market in North America. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, total retail trade sales of health and personal care products was US$ 299,263 million in 2014, which increased to US$ 315,257 million in 2015.Asia Pacific accounted for highest market share of 43.45% in 2016 and is expected to sustain its dominance throughout the forecast period. Major manufactures are launching new products in this region to meet the rising demand for hair care products. For instance, in June 2016, L'Oreal S.A. announced the launch of a range of new hair care products including shampoo, conditioner and oil in India with natural ingredients.Request For Customization@Manufacturers operating in the global hair care products market are adopting various strategies such as merger and acquisitions, collaborations, and new product launches to strengthen their foothold in the global market. For instance, in November 2017, Unilever plc announced its plans to acquired Sundial Brands LLC. In January 2018, LOreal S.A. introduced Elvive brand, a hair care line designed to help revive hair damage.Key players operating in the global hair care products market include Unilever plc, Procter Gamble Co., LOreal S.A., Avon Products Inc., Revlon Inc., Aveda Corporation, Amka Products (Pty) Ltd., Johnson & Johnson Pvt. Ltd., Combe Incorporated, and Henkel Corporation.About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact UsMr. ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email: sales@coherentmarketinsights.com
Insights of Herbal Beauty Products Market Trends and Outlook 2025

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Herbal Beauty Products Market  InsightsThe products, which possess the desirable physiological properties such as smoothing appearance, healing and conditioning properties are referred as herbal beauty products. Herbal beauty products are formulated using plant extracts, plant roots, and leaves and are free of chemicals. Demand for herbal beauty products is increasing due to its low or no side effects and this is expected to fuel growth of the herbal beauty products market. Furthermore, increasing expenditure on beauty and personal care products is also expected to boost growth of the market. According to United States of America, Department of Commerce, the per capita spending on cosmetics products in Japan was valued at US$ 223, US$ 171 in France, and US$ 139 in the U.S. in 2014.Request Sample Copy of This Report@Skin care segment is expected to account for the highest revenue share over the forecast period, due to increasing consumer preference towards maintaining esthetic appeal. Additionally, increasing skin related problems such as acne and eczema owing to use of synthetic beauty products propels growth of the market. According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), eczema and skin problems in U.S. was 7.2% in 2012 and was increased up to 11.6% in 2014.Asia Pacific is the dominant region in the global herbal beauty products market and was valued at US$ 32.56 Bn in 2016. Increasing awareness related to herbal beauty products and growing inclination of population towards maintaining aesthetic are expected to be factors driving growth of the beauty herbal beauty products market in this region. According to India Brand Equity Foundation (IBEF)a trust established by the Department of Commerce, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, India the herbal cosmetic industry is expected to grow at a CAGR of 12% in India during the forecast period. Government of India established a board, Indian System of Medicine and Homeopathy, to encourage production of herbal products in the country.Europe is expected to show a significant growth in global herbal beauty products market. The increasing trend of using natural and organic cosmetics for anti-aging, hair care, and others, in Europe is driving growth of the herbal beauty market in this region. According to the Centre for the Promotion of Imports, Europe accounted for nearly 35% of global organic cosmetics market in 2016. Also, stringent regulations by government bodies on cosmetic ingredients is also another factor fueling the market growth. For instance, according to European Union, cosmetic ingredients are regulated under The Cosmetic Regulation, 76/768/EEC, with an objective to provide safe cosmetic products for human use.The herbal beauty products market was valued at US$ 91.99 billion in 2016 and is expected to expand at a CAGR of 4.71% in terms of revenue, over the forecast period (2017  2025).North America market accounted for revenue share of 22.05% in the global herbal beauty products market in 2016. Government regulatory bodies in the region have implemented stringent regulation on restricting use of harmful chemicals in cosmetic products. For instance, United States, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) under regulation 21 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) 701.3, 21, CFR 721 and others are subjected to a strict approval of color additives in cosmetics.Request For Customization@Key market players are focusing on mergers & acquisitions and new product launches, to cater to growing demand of consumers for herbal beauty products. For instance, in August 2015, InnoVision Healthcare Ltd. launched a wide range of beauty care products such as neem and aloe vera face wash, to cater to increasing demand for herbal beauty products.Major Players in Global Herbal Beauty Products Market:Some of the key players operating in the global herbal beauty products market are Weleda AG, Bio Veda Action Research Co., Arbonne International, LLC, Vasa Global Cosmetics, Klienz Herbal Pvt. Ltd., The Himalaya Drug Company, Shahnaz Ayurveda Pvt. Ltd, Lotus Herbals Limited, and Hemas Holdings PLC.About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact UsMr. ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email: sales@coherentmarketinsights.com
Global Automotive Plastic Bumper Market Analysis, Leading Players & Future Forecast by 2022

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Fact.MR has been actively involved in offering comprehensive research data concerning various topics which are associated to industrial reference and investor utility. This particular research report titled Automotive Plastic Bumper Market Forecast, Trend Analysis & Competition Tracking: Global Review 2017 to 2022 has been added to the wide online database of Fact.MR which discusses the present as well as future market scenario. Readers can access knowledge related to market volume, regional expanse as well as competitive landscape prevailing in the global automotive plastic bumper market. In order to study development patterns, this smart assessment also focuses on market dynamics, which talks about drivers, restraints and opportunities estimated to influence the concerned market during the period until 2017 to 2022.Request For Sample Report-Rising Demand for Passenger Cars with Plastic BumpersIn the future, OEMs will continue to boost their capacity of manufacturing lightweight automotive plastic bumpers owing to their effective use in production of passenger cars. Compared to commercial vehicles, passenger cars will witness higher sales owing to their fuel mileage, compact designs and affordable prices. Demand for automotive plastic bumpers in production of passenger cars is expected to rise as lightweight plastic bumpers contribute towards boosting the fuel efficiency of vehicle. By the end of 2022, more than US$ 5.4 Bn worth of automotive plastic bumpers sold in the global market will be accounted by passenger cars. On the other hand, heavy commercial vehicles will procure nearly one-fourth of global automotive plastic bumpers market by the end of 2017.OEMs witnessing Higher Sales of Plastic Bumpers below US$ 300 PriceThe report highlights the presence of OEMs in global automotive plastic bumper distribution network. Through 2022, OEMs are projected to remain the largest distributors of automotive plastic bumpers, accounting for around two-third value share. Aftermarket sales of automotive plastic bumpers are also expected to gain traction owing to rising customization needs of vehicle owners.Automotive plastic bumpers priced below US$ 300 are expected to be prominent in the sales recorded by OEMs. The demand for low prices automotive plastic bumpers is likely to remain high on the grounds of rising efforts of automobile manufacturers towards cost-cutting. While luxury car manufacturers will opt for high-priced automotive plastic bumpers, a majority of the market will witness prominence of low-priced automotive plastic bumpers. Between 2017 and 2022, the low-priced automotive plastic bumpers segment is expected to witness a lucrative incremental opportunity of nearly US$ 1.5 Bn.Competition TrackingThe report has tracked formative developments in the competitive landscape of the global automotive plastic bumpers market. A shift of OEMs towards low-cost bumper production is evident, particularly on the account of rising demand for low-priced plastic bumpers for customization purposes. Companies such as Toray Industries, Inc., Samvardhana Motherson Automotive Systems Group B.V., Faurecia SA, Benteler International AG, Futaba Industrial Co. Ltd., Compagnie Plastic Omnium SA, Montaplast GmbH, Flex-N-Gate Corporation, and Warn Industries, Inc. are observed to be the key players in the global automotive plastic bumper market.Higher Preference to Polypropylene as Raw MaterialProcurement of raw plastic material is observed as a tedious task for OEMs, primarily due to presence of strict laws that compel manufacturers to minimalize the use of plastic in automobile production. However, metal bumpers are costlier and entail higher replacement than plastic bumpers. Among key materials used in production of automotive plastic bumpers, polypropylene is likely to top the list. Optimum rigidity, customization compliance, and relatively affordable procurement are polypropylene is expected to boost its preference among automotive OEMs. In 2017, more than US$ 3 Bn worth of polypropylene-based automotive plastic bumpers are anticipated to be sold across the globe.Browse Full Report With TOC-List of TablesChapter 1. Global Automotive Car Battery Charger Market - Executive Summary. 31Chapter 2. Global Automotive Plastic Bumper Market Overview. 332.1. Introduction. 332.1.1. Global Automotive Plastic Bumper Market Taxonomy. 332.1.2. Global Automotive Plastic Bumper Market Definition. 332.2. Global Automotive Plastic Bumper Market Size (US$ Mn) and Forecast, 2012-2022. 342.2.1. Global Automotive Plastic Bumper Market Y-o-Y Growth. 342.3. Global Automotive Plastic Bumper Market Dynamics. 342.3.1. Drivers. 342.3.2. Restraints. 342.3.3. Trends. 352.4. Supply Chain. 352.5. Cost Structure. 362.6. Key Participants Market Presence (Intensity Map) By Region. 36Chapter 3. Global Automotive Plastic Bumper Market Analysis and Forecast By Material Type. 373.1. Global Automotive Plastic Bumper Market Size and Forecast By Material Type, 2012-2022. 373.1.1. Polypropylene (PP) Automotive Plastic Bumper Market Size and Forecast, 2012-2022. 373.1.1.1. Revenue (US$ Mn) Comparison, By Region. 373.1.1.2. Market Share Comparison, By Region. 393.1.1.3. Y-o-Y growth Comparison, By Region. 403.1.2. Polycarbonate (PC) Automotive Plastic Bumper Market Size and Forecast, 2012-2022. 403.1.2.1. Revenue (US$ Mn) Comparison, By Region. 403.1.2.2. Market Share Comparison, By Region. 423.1.2.3. Y-o-Y growth Comparison, By Region. 433.1.3. PBT (Polybutylene Terephthalate) Automotive Plastic Bumper Market Size and Forecast, 2012-2022. 433.1.3.1. Revenue (US$ Mn) Comparison, By Region. 433.1.3.2. Market Share Comparison, By Region. 463.1.3.3. Y-o-Y growth Comparison, By Region. 463.1.4. Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) Automotive Plastic Bumper Market Size and Forecast, 2012-2022. 473.1.4.1. Revenue (US$ Mn) Comparison, By Region. 473.1.4.2. Market Share Comparison, By Region. 493.1.4.3. Y-o-Y growth Comparison, By Region. 49Continued@@@...Check For Discount On This Report-About Fact.MRFact.MR is a fast-growing market research firm that offers the most comprehensive suite of syndicated and customized market research reports. We believe transformative intelligence can educate and inspire businesses to make smarter decisions. We know the limitations of the one-size-fits-all approach; thats why we publish multi-industry global, regional, and country-specific research reports.Contact UsFact.MRSuite 988427 Upper Pembroke Street,Dublin 2, IrelandTelephone: +353-1-6111-593Email: sales@factmr.com/Web:
Europe Textile manufacturing industry market is growing at a fair pace and is estimated to have a huge demand during the forecast period 2018-2024.

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Summary of the report:Europe Textile manufacturing industry Market study by Envision Inteligence discusses in detail about diverse market dynamics influencing the market and covers the leading market players and competitive highlights and trends prevailing over the years.The report EuropeTextile manufacturing industry market is expected to reach USD XX Billion by the year 2024, at a CAGR of XX% during forecast period.Key parameters promoting the market growth include Steadier supply cost promotes the higher use of manmade fibers, whose prices are less volatile than those of cotton or wool. However, changing consumer behavior (e.g. fast fashion) forcing T&C to become more flexible is thereby hampering the market growth.The textile industry is generally concerned with the design, production, and distribution of yarn, cloth, and clothing. The raw material may be natural, or synthetic using products of the chemical industry. Among them, Cotton is the worlds most important natural fiber. In the year 2017, the global yield was approximately 43 million tons from 39 million hectares cultivated in more than 51 countries.Reasons To Buy This ReportThis report contains the in-depth analysis on the market and the estimations are done using volume and value data are further validated on three approaches including bottom-up, top-down and from top companies revenues to conclude the market estimations precisely and accurately considering all the parameters and market dynamics.Download Free Sample Brochure atKey pointers in the report include: Competitive landscape & market analysis is included in the report to understand the key companies position and Porter's Analysis & PESTLE analysis to perform to analyze the impact of drivers, restraints, challenges and constraints on the market during the next five years. Team of analysts have analyzed and listed out the key drivers, constraints, challenges and emerging opportunities in all the industry verticals which will specify the emerging scope for the market in end user industries. Industry value chain analysis is provided in the report to identify the key stakeholders and prominent players at each stage of the company along with the value addition at each stage of the value chain. Complete analysis including global and regional trends, technological developments, and new product innovations are included in the report specific to each and every segment of the market. A complete 360 degree analysis is provided in the report on key companies product portfolio, business portfolio, developmental strategies, and key developments from the companies in the historical period. Advanced customizations on countries, specific applications in end user industries, product based customizations will be provided based on the request. All the collected data is further validated and verified using surveys, interviews and interactions with industrial experts.Europe Textile manufacturing industry market Top Players A W Hainsworth and Sons Ltd David Fussenegger Textile Colore Bulgaria Ltd. Arville Textiles Peter JacksonRelated Reports:Middle East & Africa Manufacturing Predictive Analytics Market:Prefabricated Buildings Industry Market:Envision Inteligence is the Main Supplier of Market Analysis Reviews, Customized Consulting Companies, Information Analytics and Trade Evaluation. Our purpose is to offer the correct data required by the stakeholder on the proper level of time, in a format which assists an clever and knowledgeable resolution making course of!Sales Team,MIG-236, D.No. 39-33-75/3,Madhavadhara Vuda Layout,Visakhapatnam- 530007+1 408-963-0099Envision inteligenceSales@envisioninteligence.com
Global Power Generation Market by Technology In-depth Forecast Study Highlights Growth in CAGR% and Revenue (US$Mn) till 2022

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Market Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE) has been acting as an impressive data source when it comes to evaluating various industrial verticals. The research report titled Power Generation Market by Technology (Coal-fired, Natural Gas-fired, Oil-fired, Geothermal, Hydro, and Combined Cycle Power Generation) - Indonesia Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast to 2022 offers a clear insight about the Power Generation Market by Technology assessed over the global platform. This analysis proves beneficial for readers & new investors who are aiming to enter for Power Generation Market by Technology in the near future.To Request a Free Sample Report or View Summary of Report @The Indonesia power generation market is expected to reach US$63.6 bn by the end of 2022. This market was recorded at US$14.1 bn in 2013 and is projected to expand at an 18.70% CAGR within a forecast period from 2014 to 2022, as stated in a research report. The report, titled Power Generation Market - Indonesia Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2014 - 2022, provides a clear picture of this markets future in terms of opportunities for expansion and investment, as well as a map of drivers and restraints that can be negotiated with.According to the report, the Indonesia power generation market is expanding at a CAGR of 8.50% within the given forecast period, in terms of generation capacity. The power generation totaled 44.4 GW in 2013 and is expected to reach 90.1 GW by 2022.The report states that the primary driver of the Indonesia power generation market is the constantly increasing demand for power in the region. As per findings, the demand for electricity in Indonesia is expected to grow from 206.5 TWh in 2013 to a projected 2022 value of 442.5 TWh, exhibiting a CAGR of 9.10% in the given forecast period.The Indonesia power generation market has been segmented to improve user perspective. It is segmented on the basis of the technology used into combined cycle power generation, hydro power generation, geothermal power generation, oil-fired power generation, natural gas-fired power generation, and coal-fired power generation. Of these, the Indonesia power generation market was led by coal-fired power generation technology in 2013, when it was used to generate nearly 54% of the overall electricity in the region. The reports authors expect this segment to retain its leading position throughout the forecast period.The report also provides a detailed industry analysis of the power generation market in Indonesia with the help of Porters Five Forces Model. The Porters Five Forces analysis aids in understanding the five major forces that affect the industry structure and profitability of the global power generation technology market. The forces analyzed are the bargaining power of buyers, bargaining power of suppliers, threat from new entrants, threat from substitutes, and degree of competition. The Porters Five Forces analysis has been provided across the geographies studied in the report.The report features an in-depth analysis of trends observed in each of the power generation technology segments provided in the report. Various new technologies, which are influencing the market dynamics of each power generation technology, have been identified and highlighted. Emerging trends for each power generation technology have been addressed for Indonesia.The study also includes the value chain of the power generation market in Indonesia, which provides a glimpse of fuel procurement, contract awarding, power generation, as well as the interaction of suppliers and buyers with the end-users of the product. The market attractiveness has been primarily done considering the market size and market growth. Besides market size and growth, government support, regulatory policies, environment benefits, and availability of resources have also been considered to rank/benchmark major technologies for each region.For More Info about This Report Visit @Key participants in the power generation market in Indonesia include Alstom S.A., PT Arutmin Indonesia, Asia Resource Minerals plc, Chevron Indonesia, Hyundai Engineering Co. Ltd., Medco Power Indonesia, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd., PT Adaro Energy Tbk., PT Bumi Resources Tbk., PT Cirebon Electric Power, PT Geo Dipa Energi, PT Harum Energy Tbk., PT Indonesia Power, PT Jawa Power, PT Pertamina Geothermal Energy, PT PLN, PT Wartsila Indonesia, PT. Pembangkitan Jawa-Bali, Siemens AG, United Coal Indonesia. This report provides an overview of these companies, followed by their financial revenues, business strategies, technical performance analysis, operational standards, and awards and achievements.Indonesia Power Generation Market: Technology AnalysisCoal-fired Power GenerationNatural Gas-fired Power GenerationOil-fired Power GenerationGeothermal Power GenerationHydro Power GenerationCombined Cycle Power GenerationAbout Market Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE)Market Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE) is an industry-leading database of Market Research Reports. MRRSE is driven by a stellar team of research experts and advisors trained to offer objective advice. Our sophisticated search algorithm returns results based on the report title, geographical region, publisher, or other keywords.MRRSE partners exclusively with leading global publishers to provide clients single-point access to top-of-the-line market research. MRRSEs repository is updated every day to keep its clients ahead of the next new trend in market research, be it competitive intelligence, product or service trends or strategic consulting.Contact UsState Tower90, State StreetSuite 700Albany, NY - 12207United States Telephone: +1-518-730-0559Email: sales@mrrse.comWebsite:Read More Industry News At:
Grid Connected PV Systems Market 2016 Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2024

Grid Connected PV Systems Market

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Grid Connected PV Systems Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2016 - 2024" to its huge collection of research reports.A grid connected photovoltaic power system is a solar PV system connected to utility grid that generates electricity using solar power. A grid connected PV system comprises solar panels, a power conditioning unit, grid connection equipment, and one or many inverters. These systems can range from commercial rooftop systems and small residential units to large utility-scale solar power stations. Unlike standalone solar power equipment, grid connected systems seldom constitute any integrated battery solutions. During favorable conditions, a grid connected PV system supplies superfluous power to the utility, beyond what is required for consumption of the connected load.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @The global grid connected PV systems market is expected to exhibit considerable growth between 2014 and 2023. These systems render easy installation, high efficiency, and improved flexibility and reliability. Due to such intrinsic advantages that grid connected PV systems offer, their demand is poised to surge exponentially in the near future. PV systems integrated with various storage technologies, such as direct load control and battery energy, offer cost efficiency and higher reliability in terms of deriving energy from solar power. More than 40 countries worldwide are expected to install over 100 MW of new solar power photovoltaic capacity, signaling the true emergence of solar power into traditional energy generation ambit.The report studies the growth trajectory likely to be exhibited by the grid connected PV systems market during the forecast period. Factors influencing the demand and supply forces in the market are analyzed in detail. The impact of the prevailing government policies and competitive pressure on the market operations is also studied in detail. The report includes exhaustive information obtained from trusted industrial sources. Insights from industry experts are also referred to for the purpose of the study.Global Grid Connected PV Systems Market: Key Opportunities and ThreatsThe utilities scale sector accounted for the largest volume of installation in 2015, and is expected to remain the leading application segment over the forecast period. In the same years, both residential and commercial sectors are likely to exhibit significant increase in installations. The technological advancements introduced to promote power generation from renewable sources are expected to offer numerous economic and environmental benefits.Browse Detail Report @Grid connected PV systems are mainly installed in inverters to offer holistic power solutions. These systems are ideal to be installed in small solar energy systems deployed in the residential sector or for providing combined solutions to an industrial complex. Grid connected PV systems are user-friendly and ensure high performance at minimum expenditure.The rising interest for combining energy storage with utility scale solar PV systems to enable integration into a grid is the prime factor driving the global grid connected PV systems market. However, the entry of market players is restricted in areas with high penetration of renewable energy sources and island grids. This, in turn, challenges the grids steadiness.Global Grid Connected PV Systems Market: Region-wise OutlookEnterprises operating in the U.S. grid connected PV systems market are witnessing significantly rising demand. The U.S. is expected to account for the largest share in the global grid connected PV systems market by 2023. Additionally, the U.K. and Australia are also expected to deploy grid connected PV systems in their residential sectors on a large scale.Other nations such as Germany and Japan are also expected to encourage large-scale deployment of grid connected PV systems over the next few years.Global Grid Connected PV Systems Market: Vendor LandscapeTo present a comprehensive view on the prevailing competitive landscape, the report profiles companies such as Sunpower Corporation, KYOCERA Corporation, CODA Energy, Green Charge Networks, and others. Enterprises such as CODA Energy, Stem Inc., and Green Charge Networks offer their systems to consumers at no upfront cost, which is subsequently expected to amplify the demand from the market.The report offers a comprehensive evaluation of the market. It does so via in-depth qualitative insights, historical data, and verifiable projections about market size. The projections featured in the report have been derived using proven research methodologies and assumptions. By doing so, the research report serves as a repository of analysis and information for every facet of the market, including but not limited to: Regional markets, technology, types, and applications.The study is a source of reliable data on:- Market segments and sub-segments- Market trends and dynamics- Supply and demand- Market size- Current trends/opportunities/challenges- Competitive landscape- Technological breakthroughs- Value chain and stakeholder analysisThe regional analysis covers:- North America (U.S. and Canada)- Latin America (Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Chile, and others)- Western Europe (Germany, U.K., France, Spain, Italy, Nordic countries, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg)- Eastern Europe (Poland, Russia)- Asia Pacific (China, India, Japan, ASEAN, Australia and New Zealand)- Middle East and Africa (GCC, Southern Africa, North Africa)The report has been compiled through extensive primary research (through interviews, surveys, and observations of seasoned analysts) and secondary research (which entails reputable paid sources, trade journals, and industry body databases). The report also features a complete qualitative and quantitative assessment by analyzing data gathered from industry analysts and market participants across key points in the industrys value chain.Make an Enquiry of this report @A separate analysis of prevailing trends in the parent market, macro- and micro-economic indicators, and regulations and mandates is included under the purview of the study. By doing so, the report projects the attractiveness of each major segment over the forecast period.Highlights of the report:- A complete backdrop analysis, which includes an assessment of the parent market- Important changes in market dynamics- Market segmentation up to the second or third level- Historical, current, and projected size of the market from the standpoint of both value and volume- Reporting and evaluation of recent industry developments- Market shares and strategies of key players- Emerging niche segments and regional markets- An objective assessment of the trajectory of the market- Recommendations to companies for strengthening their foothold in the marketAbout ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.ResearchMozState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @
Overview Of Asia-Pacific Thin Film Solar Modules Market 2018 | First Solar, Solar Frontier, Sharp Thin Film, MiaSole, NexPower

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Asia-Pacific Thin Film Solar Modules Market Report 2018" to its huge collection of research reports.In this report, the Asia-Pacific Thin Film Solar Modules market is valued at USD XX million in 2017 and is expected to reach USD XX million by the end of 2025, growing at a CAGR of XX% between 2017 and 2025.Geographically, this report split Asia-Pacific into several key Regions, with sales (MW), revenue (Million USD), market share and growth rate of Thin Film Solar Modules for these regions, from 2013 to 2025 (forecast), includingChinaJapanSouth KoreaTaiwanIndiaSoutheast AsiaAustraliaTo Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Asia-Pacific Thin Film Solar Modules market competition by top manufacturers/players, with Thin Film Solar Modules sales volume, price, revenue (Million USD) and market share for each manufacturer/player; the top players includingFirst SolarSolar FrontierSharp Thin FilmMiaSoleNexPowerStionCalyxoKaneka SolartechBangkok SolarWurth SolarGlobal Solar EnergyHanergyENN Energy HoldingsTopray SolarOn the basis of product, this report displays the sales volum, revenue, product price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoCdTe Thin-filmCIS/CIGS Thin-filma-Si Thin-filmOn the basis on the end users/applications, this report focuses on the status and outlook for major applications/end users, sales volume, market share and growth rate for each application, includingCommercial ApplicationUtility ApplicationResidential ApplicationTable of ContentsAsia-Pacific Thin Film Solar Modules Market Report 20181 Thin Film Solar Modules Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Thin Film Solar Modules1.2 Classification of Thin Film Solar Modules by Product Category1.2.1 Asia-Pacific Thin Film Solar Modules Market Size (Sales) Comparison by Types (2013-2025)1.2.2 Asia-Pacific Thin Film Solar Modules Market Size (Sales) Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20171.2.3 CdTe Thin-film1.2.4 CIS/CIGS Thin-film1.2.5 a-Si Thin-film1.3 Asia-Pacific Thin Film Solar Modules Market by Application/End Users1.3.1 Asia-Pacific Thin Film Solar Modules Sales (Volume) and Market Share Comparison by Applications (2013-2025)1.3.2 Commercial Application1.3.3 Utility Application1.3.4 Residential Application1.4 Asia-Pacific Thin Film Solar Modules Market by Region1.4.1 Asia-Pacific Thin Film Solar Modules Market Size (Value) Comparison by Region (2013-2025)1.4.2 China Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.4.3 Japan Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.4.4 South Korea Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.4.5 Taiwan Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.4.6 India Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.4.7 Southeast Asia Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.4.8 Australia Status and Prospect (2013-2025)1.5 Asia-Pacific Market Size (Value and Volume) of Thin Film Solar Modules (2013-2025)1.5.1 Asia-Pacific Thin Film Solar Modules Sales and Growth Rate (2013-2025)1.5.2 Asia-Pacific Thin Film Solar Modules Revenue and Growth Rate (2013-2025)2 Asia-Pacific Thin Film Solar Modules Competition by Players/Suppliers, Region, Type and Application2.1 Asia-Pacific Thin Film Solar Modules Market Competition by Players/Suppliers2.1.1 Asia-Pacific Thin Film Solar Modules Sales Volume and Market Share of Key Players/Suppliers (2013-2018)2.1.2 Asia-Pacific Thin Film Solar Modules Revenue and Share by Players/Suppliers (2013-2018)2.2 Asia-Pacific Thin Film Solar Modules (Volume and Value) by Type2.2.1 Asia-Pacific Thin Film Solar Modules Sales and Market Share by Type (2013-2018)2.2.2 Asia-Pacific Thin Film Solar Modules Revenue and Market Share by Type (2013-2018)2.3 Asia-Pacific Thin Film Solar Modules (Volume) by Application2.4 Asia-Pacific Thin Film Solar Modules (Volume and Value) by Region2.4.1 Asia-Pacific Thin Film Solar Modules Sales and Market Share by Region (2013-2018)2.4.2 Asia-Pacific Thin Film Solar Modules Revenue and Market Share by Region (2013-2018)Get Complete TOC With Tables and Figures @3 China Thin Film Solar Modules (Volume, Value and Sales Price)3.1 China Thin Film Solar Modules Sales and Value (2013-2018)3.1.1 China Thin Film Solar Modules Sales Volume and Growth Rate (2013-2018)3.1.2 China Thin Film Solar Modules Revenue and Growth Rate (2013-2018)3.1.3 China Thin Film Solar Modules Sales Price Trend (2013-2018)3.2 China Thin Film Solar Modules Sales Volume and Market Share by Type3.3 China Thin Film Solar Modules Sales Volume and Market Share by Application4 Japan Thin Film Solar Modules (Volume, Value and Sales Price)4.1 Japan Thin Film Solar Modules Sales and Value (2013-2018)4.1.1 Japan Thin Film Solar Modules Sales Volume and Growth Rate (2013-2018)4.1.2 Japan Thin Film Solar Modules Revenue and Growth Rate (2013-2018)4.1.3 Japan Thin Film Solar Modules Sales Price Trend (2013-2018)4.2 Japan Thin Film Solar Modules Sales Volume and Market Share by Type4.3 Japan Thin Film Solar Modules Sales Volume and Market Share by Application5 South Korea Thin Film Solar Modules (Volume, Value and Sales Price)5.1 South Korea Thin Film Solar Modules Sales and Value (2013-2018)5.1.1 South Korea Thin Film Solar Modules Sales Volume and Growth Rate (2013-2018)5.1.2 South Korea Thin Film Solar Modules Revenue and Growth Rate (2013-2018)5.1.3 South Korea Thin Film Solar Modules Sales Price Trend (2013-2018)5.2 South Korea Thin Film Solar Modules Sales Volume and Market Share by Type5.3 South Korea Thin Film Solar Modules Sales Volume and Market Share by Application6 Taiwan Thin Film Solar Modules (Volume, Value and Sales Price)6.1 Taiwan Thin Film Solar Modules Sales and Value (2013-2018)6.1.1 Taiwan Thin Film Solar Modules Sales Volume and Growth Rate (2013-2018)6.1.2 Taiwan Thin Film Solar Modules Revenue and Growth Rate (2013-2018)6.1.3 Taiwan Thin Film Solar Modules Sales Price Trend (2013-2018)6.2 Taiwan Thin Film Solar Modules Sales Volume and Market Share by Type6.3 Taiwan Thin Film Solar Modules Sales Volume and Market Share by ApplicationContinue..About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.ResearchMozState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @
Global Software As A Service (SaaS) Market Valuation Is Expected To Rise At A CAGR Of 27.90% Between 2015 And 2022 And Increase To US$164.3 Bn

Software as a Service (SaaS) Market

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Software as a Service (SaaS) Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast, 2015 - 2022" to its huge collection of research reports.The Software as a Service (SaaS) Market report provides the analysis of the global SaaS market for the period 2013  2022, where in period from 2015 to 2022 is market forecast and 2014 is considered as the base year. The report precisely covers all the major trends and technologies playing a major role in the SaaS market growth in the next few years. It also highlights various drivers, restraints and opportunities expected to influence the market growth during the period of forecast. The study provides the holistic perspective on the SaaS market growth, throughout the above forecast period in terms of revenue (in US$ Bn), across different geographies, which includes Asia Pacific (APAC), Latin America (LATAM), North America, Europe, and Middle East & Africa (MEA).To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @The report provides in-depth analysis of the SaaS market which is the most matured cloud computing technology as against Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). SaaS adoption is rising tremendously as the enterprises are continuously looking forward to the third-parties for managing their software applications. SaaS is acting as one of the most prominent * as-a-service cloud segments which is enabling huge opportunities for the cloud service providers to help organizations expand or build their businesses. Furthermore, the report provides an overview of strategies and the winning imperatives of the key players in the Software as a Service (SaaS) market and analyzes their behavior in the prevailing market dynamics.The report segments the global Software as a Service (SaaS) market, on the basis of type of cloud deployment through which it is delivered to the user. These cloud deployments are - public cloud, private cloud, and hybrid cloud. Furthermore, the global Software as a Service (SaaS) market is segmented by various applications such as customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), human capital management (HCM), operations and manufacturing, supply chain management, and so on. Moreover, considering the potential user of these services, the market is further divided into various end-users across in terms of enterprise size. By various end-users, the global SaaS market is segmented into large enterprises, SMBEs/SMBs, and others, which includes BFSI, retail and public sectors. Thus, the report provides in-depth cross segment analysis for the SaaS market and classifies it into various levels, thereby providing valuable insights on macro as well as micro level.Get Complete TOC With Tables and Figures @The report also provides the competitive landscape for the SaaS market, thereby positioning all the major players according to their geographic presence, market attractiveness and recent key developments. Based on this, these companies have been positioned in different quadrants as market leaders, emerging players, promising players and niche players. The whole SaaS market estimates are the result of our in-depth secondary research, primary interviews and in-house expert panel reviews. These market estimates have been analyzed by taking into account the impact of different political, social, economic, technological, and legal factors along with the current market dynamics affecting the SaaS market growth.Salesforce.com, Inc., Workday, Inc., Automatic Data Processing, Inc., Amazon Web Services, Inc., Microsoft Corporation, Fujitsu Ltd., Oracle Corporation, IBM Corporation, Google, Inc., are a few major players operating within the global Software as a Service (SaaS) market, which have been profiled in this study. Details such as financials, business strategies, recent developments, and other such strategic information pertaining to these players has been duly provided as part of company profiling.Make an Enquiry of this report @Below is the list of acronyms used in the report:- CRM  Customer Relationship Management- ERP  Enterprise Resource Planning- HCM  Human Capital Management- ESB  Enterprise Service Bus- CAPEX  Capital Expenditure- OPEX  Operational Expenditure- PaaS  Platform as a Service- IaaS  Infrastructure as a Service- OEM  Original Equipment ManufacturersAbout ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.ResearchMozState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @
Demand In The Southeast Asia Food Emulsifier Market Will Increment At A CAGR Of 5.1% During The Forecast Period Of 2015 To 2021 Swell Up To A Valuation Of US$248.3 Mn

Food Emulsifier Market

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Food Emulsifier Market By Product Types (Stearoyl Lactylates, Sorbitan Esters, Lecithin, Mono, di-glycerides & derivatives ) By Application Types( Meat Products, Dairy Products, Bakery & Confectionery, Dairy Products, Convenience Foods)- Southeast Asia Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2015 - 2021" to its huge collection of research reports.The market size in terms of revenue of the Southeast Asia food emulsifier market is forecast during 2014 to 2021 at each sub-segment level. Southeast Asia food emulsifier is mainly used across meat products, dairy products, bakery & confectionery, dairy products, convenience foods and others. In terms of revenue, convenience foods held the largest market share in 2014 followed by bakery & confectionery products, dairy products, and meat products. The rising demand for convenience foods in countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia among others is increasing the demand for food emulsifier in Southeast Asia. The rise in the number of food borne diseases is driving the growth of the food emulsifiers market as emulsifiers are needed to maintain the overall quality of the product. The increasing usage of food emulsifiers in bakery products and ice creams is anticipated to boost the growth of the food emulsifiers market in Southeast Asia.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Increasing demand for convenience and packaged foods and preference for low fat foods are the key factors fueling the demand for food emulsifiers in Southeast Asia. The factor driving the development of the food emulsifier is usage of food emulsifiers in ice creams. Increasing health awareness among consumers in Southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam and Malaysia among others is expected to further improve the food emulsifier market in the region. Meanwhile, Thailand is an untapped market and is anticipated to offer significant growth opportunities for distributors and manufacturers during the forecast period of 2015  2021.Stringent government regulations across various countries such as Thailand and Singapore among others are restraining the expansion of the Southeast Asia food emulsifier market. Different organizations such as FDA among others have set safety standards to decide whether a preservative is safe for its intended use.Food emulsifiers are used in various foods and beverages as a food additive to reduce the fat content. Based on product types, the food emulsifier market in Southeast Asia is segmented into stearoyl lactylates, sorbitan esters, lecithin, mono, di-glycerides & derivatives and others. Based on the different types of emulsifiers, the mono, di-glycerides & derivatives segment commanded the largest market share in 2014, followed by the lecithin segment. Sorbitan ester is extensively used in low fat foods and it helps to maintain the food standards and quality Sorbitan esters are set to rise at a considerable growth rate as compared to other products segment.Get Complete TOC With Tables and Figures @In Southeast Asia, the usage of food emulsifiers is estimated to rise enormously during the forecast period, which in turn is anticipated to boost the expansion of the food emulsifiers market in the region. Food emulsifiers are used in various convenience food and processed products, including processed meat and fish, cakes and snacks to prevent bacterial spoilage. The increasing demand for such food products is anticipated to drive the growth of the food emulsifier market. Busy lifestyles are boosting the demand for convenience food products and, this in turn is driving the growth of the food emulsifier marketBased on geography, the Southeast Asia food emulsifier market is segmented into Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam and Rest of Southeast Asia. In 2014, Indonesia holds the biggest market share in the food emulsifier market trailed by Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand and would be same for the forecast period of 2015  2021. For instance, of late, the demand for emulsifier products has increased in the Southeast Asia region due to increase in demand from emerging countries such as Thailand and Vietnam among others. Vietnam has made rapid progress in the food emulsifiers market in the Southeast Asia region. Furthermore, Malaysia is anticipated to register healthy growth during the forecast period.The key participants in the food emulsifier market are Archer-Daniels-Midlands Company, DSM Nutritional Products AG, CP Kelco U.S., Cargill Inc, Ajinomoto Co., Associated British Foods Plc., BASF, Chr. Hansen Holding A/S, Sensient Technologies Corporation, and Givaudan SA among others.The Southeast Asia food emulsifier market has been segmented as:Southeast Asia Food Emulsifier Market: By Product Type- Stearoyl Lactylatess- Mono, Di-Glycerides & Derivatives- Sorbitan Esters- Lecithin- OthersSoutheast Asia Food Emulsifier Market: By Application Type- Dairy Products- Convenience Foods- Bakery & Confectionery- Meat Products- OthersMake an Enquiry of this report @Southeast Asia Food Emulsifier Market: By Countries- Southeast Asia- Thailand- Indonesia- Malaysia- Vietnam- Rest of Southeast AsiaAbout ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.ResearchMozState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @
Global Elastomers Market 2018 Leading Players : BASF, DuPont, Lanxess, Kuraray, Covestro, Teknor Apex

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Qyresearchreports include new market research report "Global Elastomers Market Professional Survey Report 2018" to its huge collection of research reports.This report studies Elastomers in Global market, especially in North America, China, Europe, Southeast Asia, Japan and India, with production, revenue, consumption, import and export in these regions, from 2013 to 2018, and forecast to 2025.The global market for Elastomers has been thoroughly studied with every detail in the market intelligence study with increased emphasis on various important factors such as restraints, market opportunities, and growth drivers. Each of the elements that pertain to the shaping of the market dynamics that has been analyzed and studied in detail by the research analysts, so as to offer the best and most evaluative and exhaustive study to the buyers of the report. The overview or the executive summary that has been provided in the market intelligence study has been designed in such a way so as to give a quick overview of the market for receiving information on the go. This could help readers with hands-on data needed to make quick decisions anytime during their growth journey in the market.Order a Free Copy of Sample Report @This report focuses on top manufacturers in global market, with production, price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer, coveringBASFThe DOW Chemical CompanyJSR CorporationDuPontLanxessZeon CorporationKurarayCovestroNizhnekamskneftekhim PJSCTeknor ApexThe study of market segmentations that has been offered with the publication that explores some of the most significant categories of the world Elastomers market is deemed significant for the growth of industry participants. All of the segments that have been studied elaborately in the said publication have been deeply evaluated with assistance from best of the research techniques. The analysts have dissected each of the segments and have shed light on vital factors that influence the growth of the various segments. Using this crucial information, market players could rightly shape their business plans in favor of the betterment of their growth in the global market. Segments that have been analyzed in the publication could be related to product, end use, application, and geography.A group of experienced analysts who have prepared the said report delves deep into the various factors that hinder or fuel the global market for Elastomers. It also discovers and mentions the important trends that are emerging in the said market. Cashing in on all of these market data and statistics that have been garnered so far, it has come up with the best course of action for all the stake holders of the market.Table of Contents1 Industry Overview of Elastomers1.1 Definition and Specifications of Elastomers1.1.1 Definition of Elastomers1.1.2 Specifications of Elastomers1.2 Classification of Elastomers1.2.1 SBR (Styrene Block Copolymers)1.2.2 IIR (Butyl Elastomer)1.2.3 NBR (Nitrile Elastomer)1.2.4 ACM (Acrylic Elastomer)1.2.5 EPM (Ethylene-Propylene Elastomer)1.3 Applications of Elastomers1.4 Market Segment by RegionsGet more information from Table of Content:2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Elastomers2.1 Raw Material and Suppliers2.2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Elastomers2.3 Manufacturing Process Analysis of Elastomers2.4 Industry Chain Structure of Elastomers3 Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants Analysis of Elastomers3.1 Capacity and Commercial Production Date of Global Elastomers Major Manufacturers in 20173.2 Manufacturing Plants Distribution of Global Elastomers Major Manufacturers in 20173.3 R&D Status and Technology Source of Global Elastomers Major Manufacturers in 20173.4 Raw Materials Sources Analysis of Global Elastomers Major Manufacturers in 20174 Global Elastomers Overall Market Overview4.1 2013-2018E Overall Market Analysis4.2 Capacity Analysis4.2.1 2013-2018E Global Elastomers Capacity and Growth Rate Analysis4.2.2 2017 Elastomers Capacity Analysis (Company Segment)4.3 Sales Analysis4.3.1 2013-2018E Global Elastomers Sales and Growth Rate Analysis4.3.2 2017 Elastomers Sales Analysis (Company Segment)4.4 Sales Price Analysis4.4.1 2013-2018E Global Elastomers Sales Price4.4.2 2017 Elastomers Sales Price Analysis (Company Segment)To Get Discount On This Report Click here @List of Tables and FiguresFigure Picture of ElastomersTable Product Specifications of ElastomersTable Classification of ElastomersFigure Global Production Market Share of Elastomers by Type in 2017Table Capacity and Commercial Production Date of Global Elastomers Major Manufacturers in 2017Table Manufacturing Plants Distribution of Global Elastomers Major Manufacturers in 2017Table R&D Status and Technology Source of Global Elastomers Major Manufacturers in 2017Table Raw Materials Sources Analysis of Global Elastomers Major Manufacturers in 2017Table Global Capacity, Sales , Price, Cost, Sales Revenue (M USD) and Gross Margin of Elastomers 2013-2018EFigure Global 2013-2018E Elastomers Market Size (Volume) and Growth RateFigure Global 2013-2018E Elastomers Market Size (Value) and Growth RateAbout Us:QYResearchReports.com delivers the latest strategic market intelligence to build a successful business footprint in China. Our syndicated and customized research reports provide companies with vital background information of the market and in-depth analysis on the Chinese trade and investment framework, which directly affects their business operations. Reports from QYResearchReports.com feature valuable recommendations on how to navigate in the extremely unpredictable yet highly attractive Chinese market.Contact Us:1820 AvenueM Suite #1047Brooklyn, NY 11230United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Email: sales@qyresearchreports.com
Winches Market Key Growth Factors and Forecast 2017 - 2025

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A winch is a power-driven equipment used to wind a rope or a cable. Winches are widely used for lifting and moving all kinds of loads in various applications, such as marine, industrial, renewables, automotive and civil engineering, among others. Winches range in design from hand-cranked spools to enormous hydraulic devices used for industrial loading applications. Simple winches consist of a basic structure such as a spool and an attached hand crank, whereas for bigger applications, winches form a major part of machinery used for moving and lifting loads.On the basis of material used, stainless steel winches are estimated to hold a dominant market share and theyre widely used in applications, such as boating. In industrial applications, stronger steel alloys are widely preferred for industrial winch drums & frames and in low weight operations, synthetics and aluminium are used.Request Report for TOC @Winches are categorized as manual, hydraulic, pneumatic and electric winches on the basis of working mechanism. As the global load lifting needs are evolving, there is a growing demand for more advanced systems offering high quality and better efficiency with ease of use. To meet these demands, manufacturers are constantly striving to develop new systems. Hydraulic winches were developed to meet the requirements of modern-day application needs in the winches market. Manual winches are preferred for low lifting weight applications, owing to simplicity and cost effectiveness. Electric winches are estimated to hold a dominant market share over the forecast period, attributing to the high demand from marine and oil & gas applications.Growth in end use applications, such as mining, construction, utility, freight, oceaneering and others is expected to be a key growth driver for the global winches market. In automotive applications, winches are used as front or rear mounts to tow heavy weight. Construction cranes use winches to lift & dangle loads and sailboats of all sizes use winches to facilitate the rapid winding and unwinding of the rigging line. The global winches market is estimated to be driven by technological advancements, such as remote control clutch system in advanced winches for better handling & transfer of loads, quick installation and availability of good quality winches with cost-effective prices.Restraints:The high cost of hydraulic systems might act as a growth restraint for this market over the forecast period.Global Winches Market: SegmentationOn the basis of type, the global winches market is segmented into: electric winches, hydraulic winches and manual winches.The global winches market can be segmented on the basis of capacity as: below 7500 lbs, 7500 lbs to 15000 lbs, 15001 lbs to 45000 lbs, 45001 lbs to 60000 lbs, 60001 lbs to 100000 lbs, and above 100000 lbs. Winches are evaluated by line pull weight and gear ratio.On the basis of application, the global winches market can be segmented into: mining, construction, utility, freight, oceaneering and others.Request to Sample Report @Global Winches Market: Regional OutlookNorth America and Western Europe collectively are estimated to account for a relatively large market share in the global winches market during the forecast period. The major demand for winches arises from end use industries, such as marine, industrial machinery and freight. The U.S. winches market is anticipated to grow at a stable pace, owing to it attaining the maturity stage in the product life cycle. On the other hand, the Canada winches market is estimated to register significant growth. In Europe, countries, such as the U.K., Germany, Russia, Poland and France are projected to drive the Europe winches market.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA  Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
Global Anti-money Laundering Software Market Forecast 2021 - Competition, Status, Emerging Trends, Growth Factors, Value Chain and Key Players

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Money laundering is a process by which criminals convert illegally obtained profit into seemingly legitimate funds. They hide the source of such profits and try to prove that they are from a legitimate source. Money laundering is a worldwide issue. The reason for criminals to launder their illegal funds is that they can later use this money in the markets without any hindrance and without the fear of it being tracked.This report gives an in-depth research about the overall state of Anti-money Laundering Software market and projects an overview of its growth market. It also gives the crucial elements of the market and across major global regions in detail. Number on primary and secondary research has been carried out in order to collect required data for completing this particular report. Sever industry based analytical techniques has been narrowed down for a better understanding of this market.Get Sample copy of this Report @:Companies Profiled in this report includes, ACI Worldwide, EastNets, FICO TONBELLER, Fiserv, NICE Actimize, RELX, FIS, BAE Systems, Experian, Oracle, SAS, Thomson Reuters, aml360, AML Partners, AML RightSource, Safe Banking SystemsThe report covers all the major trends and technologies playing a major role in the market growth over the forecast period. The competition in the global market for Anti-money Laundering Software will likely heat up in the next couple of years on the back of entry of a substantial number of solution providers. This statistical surveying report presents an all-inclusive assessment of the worldwide market for Anti-money Laundering Software, taking several market verticals, such as the production capacity, product pricing, the dynamics of demand and supply, sales volume, revenue, and the growth rate of this market into consideration.Get 20% Discount on this Report @:The report provides competitive landscape of the Anti-money Laundering Software market, thereby listing out all the major players according to their geographic presence, market attractiveness and recent key developments. The competitive landscape section of the report gives an overview about the market share of several key players for the forecast year. Moreover, key takeaways section provided at the end of competitive landscape section would help the operating companies to make the best move in the market.These market estimates have been analyzed by taking into account the impact of different political, social, economic, technological, and legal factors along with the current market dynamics affecting the market growth. Factors including market position, offerings and R&D focus are attributed to companys capabilities. This section also identifies and includes various recent developments carried out by the leading players.For More Inquiry @:Furthermore, the report profiles some of the most prominent enterprises in the global Anti-money Laundering Software market to provide valuable recommendations. The product portfolio of the companies profiled are studied in detail. Besides this, information is obtained from their financial reports and strategies they adopted over the last couple of years.The stages of development of Anti-money Laundering Software market with respect to many geographic regions have also been presented thoroughly. This information which is provided helps the emerging players gain up-to-date information which can help them take perfect business decisions. In similar way, many other segments and sub segments are mentioned in this market helping in conveying impeccable data to the users.Table of ContentsGlobal Anti-money Laundering Software Market Research ReportChapter 1 Anti-money Laundering Software Market OverviewChapter 2 Global Economic Impact on IndustryChapter 3 Global Market Competition by ManufacturersChapter 4 Global Production, Revenue (Value) by RegionChapter 5 Global Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by RegionsChapter 6 Global Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by TypeChapter 7 Global Market Analysis by ApplicationChapter 8 Manufacturing Cost AnalysisChapter 9 Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream BuyersChapter 10 Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/TradersChapter 11 Market Effect Factors AnalysisChapter 12 Global Anti-money Laundering Software Market ForecastAbout IT Intelligence Markets:We at IT Intelligence Markets conduct intensive market research and generate detailed reports about the products and services offered in the IT domain. Our team is devoted to providing custom reports that are taylor-made to suit the customers requirements. We make sure to keep our customers updated with the latest market dynamics as IT industry is undergoing sea change intrinsically & extrinsically by forces such as regulatory fluctuations, rapidly evolving consumer preferences, and newer technologies. Not only do our market research analysts scrutinize market requirements but also track competitors relentlesslyfor obtaining the most updated scenario of the market.Contact:Vijay TannaIt Intelligence MarketsSurvey No-9/4, Flat# 6, Panchshil Park, Ganpati Marg, Nigidi, Pune 411044sales@itintelligencemarkets.comContact No: +91 705-760-0700
Floor Tile Market Analysis, Market Size, Regional Outlook, Competitive Strategies and Forecasts, 2018 To 2023

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This statistical survey report on Global Floor Tile Market is a comprehensive study of industry, the latest contours, industry development, drivers and redemption. It provides market forecasts over the next few years. This includes a break-through of innovation, an analysis of Porter's five forces analysis, and an analysis of the gradual profile of an evenly-chosen industry competitor. The report also analyzes the trivial and full-fledged factors identified in the market as new and potential candidates, along with systematic and valuable value chain exploration.Get Sample Copy Of this Report @Various factors are responsible for the growth trajectory of the market, and the full length of the report is investigated. The report also lists the constraints that are threatening the global Floor Tile market. It also measures the bargaining power of suppliers and buyers, the threat of new entrants and product alternatives, and the extent of competition in the marketplace. The impact of the latest government guidelines is also analyzed in the report. Study the orbit of the Floor Tile market during the forecast period.Major Key suppliers of the market: VANDYCK, Pergo, EGGER, Lamett, HARO, Armstong, Balteno, Teke, ParkyThe initial section provides an industry overview of the Floor Tile market. This part of the study includes market specifications and definitions. In addition, the type of machine is described in detail. Market applications are discussed in the next study. The dynamics that affect the development of the global market, such as drivers, challenges, opportunities and trends, are detailed in this Survey Report.The competitive landscape of the global Floor Tile market is discussed in the report, including the player's market share. This report introduces leading companies in the global marketplace for in-depth research into market challenges and challenges. The report also considers approaches that major companies are implementing to maintain support for the industry. Business synopses and financial overview of each company were reviewed.Get Reasonable Discount on This Premium Report @The reports were collected using primary and secondary research methodologies. We gathered information from reliable sources such as market leaders, journals, publications, meetings, and interviews with white papers. The report analyzes historical data along with the market's current development to provide a map of the global Floor Tile market fair trajectory over the next few years.Based on geographical areas, the world Floor Tile markets are broadly divided into Latin America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa and Asia Pacific. The world market is still in exploration in most areas, but it has the promising potential to grow steadily over the next few years. The major players investing in this market are in Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, India, China and some Asia Pacific countries. As a result, Asia Pacific, North America and Western Europe are expected to account for more than half of the total market share over the next few years.At the end of the report, a manufacturer is announced who is responsible for increasing sales in the Floor Tile market. These manufacturers have been analyzed in terms of manufacturing base, basic information and competitors. In addition, the technology and product types introduced by each manufacturer are also an important part of this section of the report.Table of Content:Global Floor Tile Market Research Report 2018-2023Chapter 1 Floor Tile Market OverviewChapter 2 Global Economic ImpactChapter 3 Competition by ManufacturerChapter 4 Production, Revenue (Value) by RegionChapter 5 Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by RegionsChapter 6 Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by TypeChapter 7 Analysis by ApplicationChapter 8 Manufacturing Cost AnalysisChapter 9 Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream BuyersChapter 10 Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/TradersChapter 11 Market Effect Factors AnalysisChapter 12 Market ForecastChapter 13 AppendixAbout QYReports:We at, QYReports , a leading market research report publisher accommodate more than 4,000 celebrated clients worldwide putting them at advantage in todays competitive world with our understanding of research. Our list of customers include prestigious Chinese companies, multinational companies, SME's and private equity firms whom we have helped grow and sustain with our fact-based research. Our business study covers a market size of over 30 industries offering unfailing insights into analysis to reimagine your business. We specialize in forecasts needed for investing in a new project, to revolutionize your business, to become more customer centric and improve the quality of output.Contact:QYReportsJones John(Sales Manager)+91-9764607607sales@qyreports.com
Home Telemonitoring Systems Market Analysis, Market Size, Regional Outlook, Competitive Strategies and Forecasts, 2018 To 2023, Focusing on Top Key Vendors like Abbott, Cisco Systems, GE Healthcare, Qi Imaging

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Medical monitoring systems have long been an integral part of patient care services. They are used to observe the patient's symptoms, condition and other medical parameters. This is accomplished by measuring important patient parameters such as heart rate, blood pressure, blood glucose, and so on. Home Telemonitoring systems are medical devices used for remote diagnosis, inspection and monitoring by clinicians. The remote surveillance system allows physicians and doctors to monitor critical patient statistics at any given time. The rapid development of information and visualization technologies has provided new opportunities for the remote monitoring system market. Remote surveillance systems enable patients to provide appropriate medical care for effective notification before they become more of a problem.Get Sample Copy Of this Report @This statistical survey report on Global Home Telemonitoring Systems Market is a comprehensive study of industry, the latest contours, industry development, drivers and redemption. It provides market forecasts over the next few years. This includes a break-through of innovation, an analysis of Porter's five forces analysis, and an analysis of the gradual profile of an evenly-chosen industry competitor. The report also analyzes the trivial and full-fledged factors identified in the market as new and potential candidates, along with systematic and valuable value chain exploration.Major Key suppliers of the market: Abbott, Cisco Systems, GE Healthcare, Qi Imaging, DigiO2 International, Honeywell HomeMed, Philips Healthcare, Siemens Healthcare, Telehealth SolutionsThe initial section provides an industry overview of the Home Telemonitoring Systems market. This part of the study includes market specifications and definitions. In addition, the type of machine is described in detail. Market applications are discussed in the next study. The dynamics that affect the development of the global market, such as drivers, challenges, opportunities and trends, are detailed in this Survey Report.The competitive landscape of the global Home Telemonitoring Systems market is discussed in the report, including the player's market share. This report introduces leading companies in the global marketplace for in-depth research into market challenges and challenges. The report also considers approaches that major companies are implementing to maintain support for the industry. Business synopses and financial overview of each company were reviewed.Get Reasonable Discount on This Premium Report @The reports were collected using primary and secondary research methodologies. We gathered information from reliable sources such as market leaders, journals, publications, meetings, and interviews with white papers. The report analyzes historical data along with the market's current development to provide a map of the global Home Telemonitoring Systems market fair trajectory over the next few years.Based on geographical areas, the world Home Telemonitoring Systems markets are broadly divided into Latin America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa and Asia Pacific. The world market is still in exploration in most areas, but it has the promising potential to grow steadily over the next few years. The major players investing in this market are in Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, India, China and some Asia Pacific countries. As a result, Asia Pacific, North America and Western Europe are expected to account for more than half of the total market share over the next few years.At the end of the report, a manufacturer is announced who is responsible for increasing sales in the Home Telemonitoring Systems market. These manufacturers have been analyzed in terms of manufacturing base, basic information and competitors. In addition, the technology and product types introduced by each manufacturer are also an important part of this section of the report.Table of Content:Global Home Telemonitoring Systems Market Research Report 2018-2023Chapter 1 Home Telemonitoring Systems Market OverviewChapter 2 Global Economic ImpactChapter 3 Competition by ManufacturerChapter 4 Production, Revenue (Value) by RegionChapter 5 Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by RegionsChapter 6 Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by TypeChapter 7 Analysis by ApplicationChapter 8 Manufacturing Cost AnalysisChapter 9 Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream BuyersChapter 10 Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/TradersChapter 11 Market Effect Factors AnalysisChapter 12 Market ForecastChapter 13 AppendixAbout Research N Reports:Research N Reports is a new age market research firm where we focus on providing information that can be effectively applied. Today being a consumer driven market, companies require information to deal with the complex and dynamic world of choices. Where relying on a sound board firm for your decisions becomes crucial. Research N Reports specializes in industry analysis, market forecasts and as a result getting quality reports covering all verticals, whether be it gaining perspective on current market conditions or being ahead in the cut throat Global competition. Since we excel at business research to help businesses grow, we also offer consulting as an extended arm to our services which only helps us gain more insight into current trends and problems. Consequently we keep evolving as an all-rounder provider of viable information under one roof.Contact us:Mr. Sunny DenisContact No. +1-888-631-6977sales@researchnreports.com(ResearchnReports)
Creative 360 in Midland will host a Yes We Can! luncheon Friday, April 13, in honor of Bill and Nancy Barker, community and business leaders, philanthropists and volunteers. The program, set for 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m., includes a lunch catered by NADA. Cost is $30, and registration by Monday, April 9, can be made by calling 989-837-1885. Space is limited.

Bill Barker helped found the Michigan Economic Development Corp. and Nancy Baker helped found the Midland Center for the Arts. Together they raised their merged family of nine.
In many places around the world, this is indeed a very special week. For many Christians, it is the week that leads up to the celebration of Easter this Sunday. And in many places it also means that children have this week off so they can partake in all sorts of interesting activities. My Danish wife, Susanne, and I have witnessed beautiful traditions in many parts of the world and have actually incorporated some into our own traditions. Since the 40 day period between Ash Wednesday and Easter was historically a time of fasting and contemplation, the end of the Lenten season and celebration of the Resurrection meant a time of celebration. And that includes all sorts of foods!

In Saxony, a German federal state located next to the Czech Republic and Poland, the time leading up to Easter is full of beautiful customs. Even though the area has become secular over the years, the traditions are still dear to so many of the state's inhabitants. One of the most interesting local customs is the painting of Easter eggs. The Sorbs, a local Slavic ethnic group, produce lovely eggs that are decorated with many Christian symbols. They take quite a long time to make. My wife and I once saw the eggs being produced at the "Sorbisches Museum," or Sorbian Museum, which is about an hour from the German-Polish border. It was amazing to see local women carefully focusing on each egg, taking the necessary time to produce colorful eggs with very precise lines and symbols on each one.

Saxony is also home to numerous traditions connected to Easter. One is the Easter bonfire that is lit the Saturday before Easter. Of course, many of the local customs associated with Easter include food. Years ago, the period between Ash Wednesday and Easter was a time of fasting. So, when Easter came there was lots of food to break the fast and celebrate. I have to say that I have never been in a place where so many women (it is still the case in Saxony that women pride themselves on their heirloom recipes) bake so well. Each and every time there was something to celebrate, including Easter, there were seemingly endless number of cakes, breads and cookies that have been handed down from generation to generation. And they are all so good! One of my favorite recipes is one that belongs to Easter. Its is called "Osterbrot" or Easter bread and is similar to many recipes I have found for Easter bread from the Czech Republic and Austria. Although it is made with yeast, it is fairly simple to make and is a nice addition to the Easter table.

In Sweden, Easter customs can vary a bit from region to region but there are many that one can see throughout most of the country. One of the first thing that is bound to catch a visitor's eye is that trees are often decorated with colorful feathers and painted eggs. It is quite cute! And, although it might seem a bit unusual, many Easter cards in the Nordic nation have images of what is locally called "Easter witch." They are usually smiling and cute. And days before Easter, little girls dressed up as cute witches sporting colorful old clothes and kerchiefs, go around with kettles hoping for something sweet. As in Saxony, bonfires are lit across the country.

Of course, the celebration of Easter in Sweden means preparing special meals for family and close friends. Lunch, or "paaskbord," is usually a smorgasbord of different foods such as all types of pickled herring, smoked salmon and other types of cold, sliced fish and meats. One of the typical warm foods is "Jansons fristelse" or Janson's temptation, a traditional casserole consisting of potatoes, onions, anchovies, cream and butter. I must admit that is is one of those dishes that you either like or don't. But it is a traditional part of Easter lunch in Sweden for many. Dinner the same day is warm an often the main part of the meal is roast lamb and potatoes. Weeks before Easter, pastry shops sell large, hand-made chocolate eggs filled with even more chocolates. And, for me, Easter in Sweden wouldn't be Easter without "Paaskmust," a type of not so sweet soft drink that is popular at this time of the year.

During the time I lived in France, I noticed that traditions there vary from region to region. One of the ones that I always have found interesting is that one finds chocolate bells at this time of the year. According to Catholic tradition, church bells are not to ring between Good Friday and Easter. So, on Easter Sunday, children look for all sorts of colorful eggs and chocolate church bells. Easter Sunday is, for those who are religious, an important day to attend church. Afterward, family and sometimes close friends are invited to a special dinner that often consists of lamb and seasonal vegetables. Colorful eggs are also present as well as cakes. One year, I had a very simple, yet delicious "gateau aux noisettes" or hazelnut cake. It was served with strong coffee and was a perfect ending to a long, delicious meal!

As with every year, our family finds it fun to decorate eggs, put up homemade paper decorations and prepare special foods for Easter. It is fun for us to share these traditions with our children. We certainly have lots of ideas to inspire us so every year we tend to incorporate something Susanne and I have seen during a journey overseas into our family Easter celebration. May you have a very Happy Easter!

Greg Lopez is a Midlander who enjoys food and travel. He combines both in a monthly column for the Daily News.

Osterbrot - Easter bread

1 1/2 pounds unbleached all purpose flour

1 cup sugar

Pinch of salt

1 1/2 teaspoons clear vanilla

1 tablespoon grated peel of an organic lemon

4 teaspoons dried yeast

3/4 cup milk, room temperature

2 egg yolks

1 1/2 sticks melted butter, cooled

5 tablespoons raisins, plumped in a mixture of water and rum for about 2 hours

5 tablespoons almonds, finely chopped

1 egg, to brush to top of the bread

Oil spray for the baking plate

Place the flour and the sugar in a large mixing bowl. Stir in the pinch of salt. In a small jar with a tight fitting lid, place a few tablespoons of the milk, a 1/2 teaspoon sugar and the yeast. Put the lid on and vigorously shake to make sure that all the ingredients are well blended. Remove the lid and allow the mixture to rise until the liquid is double the amount you started with. Place the yeast mixture in the bowl with the flour and the sugar and add the vanilla, lemon peel, milk, egg yolks and room temperature, melted margarine. Carefully knead into a dough adding small amounts of flour if necessary. Knead for about 10 minutes and then place in lightly greased bowl, covered with a damp cloth and allow to rise about an hour or more until double in size. Punch the dough down. Dry the raisins on paper towel and add the raisins and almonds to the dough. Put the dough back in the large bowl, cover with a damp cloth and allow it to rise again until double in size. Remove from the bowl, shape into two round loaves, brush each loaf with some egg yolk and place the loaves on a large, lightly greased baking sheet. Bake in the middle of a pre-heated 350 degrees Fahrenheit oven about 45-55 minutes or until, when the bottom of the loaves sound hollow when you tap them with your hands. If the loaves brown too quickly, you can cover them with aluminum foil. Allow to cool completely before cutting the loaves. Note: You can replace the rum with a little rum extract or a few tablespoons of apple juice.

Janson's temptation (Sweden)

2 1/2 pounds potatoes, peeled

2 medium onions, peeled

1/2 pound anchovy filets (or less, depending on how much you like anchovies)

1 1/2 cup whipping cream

1/2 cup milk

3 tablespoons bread crumbs

3 tablespoons butter or margarine

Cut potatoes into fine, thin strips. Do the same with the onions and saute the onions in about half of the butter or margarine until the onions are transparent. With a little of the butter, lightly grease a casserole dish that can be used in the oven. Place layers of potatoes, sauteed onions and anchovies in the casserole dish ending with a layer of potatoes. Blend the cream and the milk and pour over the ingredients in the casserole dish. Sprinkle the bread crumbs over the top of the casserole and put the rest of the butter, in small pieces, on top. Bake in a preheated 440 degrees Fahrenheit oven for about 45 minutes or until the potatoes are completely cooked.

French hazelnut cake

1/4 pound lightly roasted hazelnuts, finely chopped

2 sticks plus 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature

1 1/4 cups sugar

4 eggs, separated

1 1/2 teaspoons clear vanilla

1 1/4 plus 2 tablespoons unbleached all purpose flour

2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

In a large mixing bowl, beat the butter until fluffy. Add the sugar and beat a few minutes longer until everything is well blended. Add each egg yolk, one at a time, and beat about a minute after adding each yolk. Add the vanilla and mix well. Blend the flour and baking powder in a small mixing bowl and then sift into the butter, sugar and egg yolk mixture. Using a spatula, slowly blend the flour into the mixture and carefully add the hazelnuts. Pour dough into a lightly greased tube pan and bake in a preheated 350 degrees Fahrenheit oven for about 50 to 60 minutes or until the cake tests done. Allow to cool completely before slicing.
Saginaw Valley State University will host a public talk by a leading scholar on the academic performance of boys and men of color. J. Luke Wood, the Dean's Distinguished Professor of Education in the College of Education at San Diego State University, will speak in SVSU's Curtiss Hall banquet rooms at 5 p.m. Tuesday.

Wood serves as the director of the joint Ph.D. program in education between San Diego State and Claremont Graduate University. He also serves as director of the Ed.D. program in community college leadership. In addition, Wood is co-director of the Community College Equity Assessment Lab, a national research and practice center.
To the editor:

The Republican Tax Cut and Jobs Act of 2017 will result in less money for programs like Medicare, which is the nations largest insurer. Your hospital and 53 others could close.

What can the U.S. Congress do? Rewrite the Tax Cut and Jobs Act. What can you do? Form a community hospital advisory group. Invite people in the community to join. Invite local business people to join. Meet with the hospital governing board. Meet with local government leaders. Vote for people who support community hospitals and community health services.

What can your community hospital do? Explore transition away from acute care to create chronic care centers. Partner with public health agencies to promote population health programs. Increase the use of technology like telemedicine. Request the Michigan state government representatives provide adequate funding for first responders. Demand the U.S. congressperson in your district to revise/rewrite the tax law. Begin exploring the creation of a community hospital levy/millage.

The facts in this editorial were presented to the Michigan Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters at Central Michigan University on March 9 by the authors. Disclosure: Zigmond Ziggy Kozicki has decided to seek the Michigan 4th Congressional seat as a Democrat to reverse the negative effects of this tax cut. This seat is currently held by John Moolenaar, a Republican.

Dr. ZIGMOND A. KOZICKI

Dr. STEPHANIE J. S. BAIYASI

Midland
Remember when cryptocurrency was all the rage? At one point during January, downloads of Coinbase exceeded that of Instagram. This coincided with a legit mania in South Korea so intense that they paid as much as 25% more for some cryptocurrencies than the rest of the world. Like any bubble, it popped, and were falling. Hard. Everything is down more than 50% from its all-time highs.

I do believe that this crash is a good thing. It's cleared the ecosystem of pretenders and the pending regulation across the globe is having a chilling effect on scammers too. Bitconnect revealing itself to be the ponzi scheme everyone in the know knew it to be is just the start. Ironically enough, the legitimization of an industry created to oppose the international financial system will be greatly legitimized by the intervention of world regulatory agencies. Treating cryptocurrencies like the securities they are is just the first step in the creation of this parallel financial system. However, there will be plenty of painful days, weeks and months along the way. Our current bloodbath will look like a pin prick compared to the fights of the future.

So if you're suffering from crypto-PTSD after logging into your Coinbase account, push all that stress out of your mind, as I come bearing gifts. First, the smart and large money is assembling, and the market will soon be flooded with a kind of liquidity it has never enjoyed.

CME futures average daily volume in the picture below. Each contract is equivalent to 5 BTC, so they're averaging about 12,500 BTC a day, or about $100m a day in volume. Still small, but I like the trend. pic.twitter.com/E0VWMcsoNX  Ari Paul (@AriDavidPaul) March 28, 2018

The future is bright, so lets kick back, and enjoy the absurdity brought forth by this new technology. The second gift, which is by far more important than simple profits, this pop group from Japan popped up in my Twitter feed as a promoted post, and I have now found my new favorite thing. This music video by the Cryptocurrency Girls is the most blatant piece of propaganda that I have ever seen in my entire life.

Seriously folks, this is some Kim Jong-Un ish, but with a heart of democratic and responsible nuance. Its incredible. This line about being scammed out of an ICO combined with a what I hope to be a shot at self-proclaimed bitcoin Jesus, James Altucher, absolutely slayed me:

Dont ever buy at a price like hell, its like a moth flying into the flame

How about that new ICO (they never contact me again)

Watch out for all the scams around (I saw a lot of ads)

Not to mention, the context lost in some of the translation is just glorious, as Pastes editor, Shane Ryan, pointed out when I shared it with him, saying the best part of this video is the random Spanish words they throw in. The first line of the chorus is a lesson for all of us with money in the market:

Calm down baby, Tranquilo! Accidents are inevitable

The mangled Google translate leads to greater hilarity later in the chorus, as Im not quite sure what sage knowledge the Cryptocurrency Girls are trying to dispense here:

Hot day forget myself Blockchain

Hot day forget myself go to the moon, I like that

Despite all thisand I mean this with complete sinceritythey still dispense better financial advice about the cryptocurrency world than CNBC does. Heres the beginning of the second chorus:

Calm down baby! Tranquilo! The market is not so simple

Fiat money is your shelter, it can be more valuable

Calm down baby! Tranquilo! Its not just a money game

Stay cool when its really hot, trust in the tech of your currency

All that said, Ive listened to this amazing song so many times today that it doesnt matter what theyre saying anymore. Im completely indoctrinated now. All hail Cryptocurrency Girls. Hot day forget myself go to the moon indeed.

Jacob Weindling is a staff writer for Paste politics. Follow him on Twitter at @Jakeweindling.
If you havent seen Channel 4s epic investigation into the shady practices of election consultants Cambridge Analytica, check out my recap here. The tl;dr is that Cambridge Analytica (henceforth known as CA because writing it out is annoying) paid users to take a personality test on a third-party app, then scrawled the participants Facebook friends profiles for a treasure trove of data. They obtained details on upwards of 50 million user accounts based entirely off what Facebook knows about youwhich is more than your co-workers or most of your friends do. And this is the central problem.

Sure, CA is a shady political actor, but theyre far from the first mongrels to use sex trafficking and corruption to entrap politicians or to influence elections with psychological warfare. Theyre just the digital version of the same existential political threat which has existed since the dawn of democracy. CA wouldnt exist if not for the data they subsist on (and the financial backing of the Mercer family), and Facebook is sitting on a literal gold mine that any rudimentary coder who understands their API can plug into.

All CA did was take the existing business model of, well, the Internet, and apply it to politics. Every one of us has a psychological profile that makes us susceptible to certain stimuli (like fear), and companies have paid billions of dollars to figure out what makes us tick so they can sell us stuff. This is as old as advertising itself. The difference here is that the product was Donald Trump, as opposed to say, Ford. CA did not build this system, theyre just playing in the sandbox that we curate every single day. Its time we took a hard look at what we really, truly, tangibly do on the internet.

I tried to start a tech company once. I looked at the incredible ability of Twitter to instantly deliver content and sought to cut out the noise by basically wrapping a social network around an RSS library. When I sold the business to our potential customers, I pitched it as a reproduction of Twitters best functions, but on a smaller and more private scale. When I sold it to potential investors, I spent at least two thirds of my time talking about one thing: selling your data.

What really drove my faith in the business was not just the problem that I believed I was fixing (finding and discussing good content with your friends/colleagues/internet friends without @pepefan69 tweeting Nazi frog memes at you), but the gold rush that I desperately wanted to get in on as a broke, unemployed guy in his early 20s. Because the entire business model of the Internet is essentially based on advertising, user data is King.

User data is effectively a global currency. It is far more valuable for me to know one days worth of your reading habits than to simply be paid $1 by you to use my service. Thats why Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etcare free. Tracking your every move is far more valuable to their business than their website is to you. Code allows us to build projects at grand scale with a fraction of the labor.

For example: Facebook has about 25,000 employees. Walmart has over two million. Yet Facebook has almost double the market cap of Walmart.

Given the eternal bounty that is user data, there is almost no better blind bet for a venture capitalist than a tech company that obtains user data. Even if the company goes out of business, the data is still usable. Plus, with how much of our lives we willingly spread across the Internet, its incredibly easy for algorithms to scrawl the web, combine it with data that company has on you, and compile a profile of each and every one of us.

Over the course of several fruitless chases for seed funding, only one part of my pitch gained any real traction with potential investors: that we could deliver hyper-targeted advertising because readers would essentially be telling us what they were most interested in by tracking the websites they were visiting. The user data model that I pitched (if people used us as their single point of liftoff into the content corners of the web) was basically Facebook on steroids when it came to user data. Unfortunately for us, we couldnt get the concept far enough off the ground to warrant the Series A that was vaguely promised at the end of some of these meetings.

In hindsight, failure may have been a good thing. Sure, ultimate success would have meant that Id be a millionaire (at least) by now. But watching the interview with Cambridge Analyticas whistleblower, Chris Wylie, made me really ponder whether I could face up to the reality of what targeted advertising really is if I were profiting immensely from it. Simply put, its the greatest innovation in the history of propaganda.

We live in a simultaneously hyper-interconnected and isolated time. Its not a weird thing to have more friends on the Internet than in real life anymore. The digital age has broken down borders in a way that no political or economic system ever has, and we still are just beginning to grasp the basic concept of a reality which no other humans have ever experienced. Targeted advertising is simply the logical conclusion of sharing so much of who we are online, combined with the basic business model of the Internet.

This new reality, combined with the inherent nature of capitalism, is a central part of the problem here. Capitalisms desire to pursue shareholders interests and not the public good has incentivized greed to a staggering degree given the resources and incentives at play. Libby Watson put it perfectly at Splinter last week:

Yes, sure, maybe you should have known that Facebook, or Google or Twitter or your ISP for that matter, was providing that free service in exchange for your data. It is true that there has been a tremendous failure of education about what it means to be online today, and what we give up when we go online; none of this was mentioned in my Information Technology classes in secondary school, which predated Facebook and YouTube and most of what we recognize as online today. But even if people do vaguely know that their data is being harvested online, they are never going to comb through every user agreement they sign, or read every privacy notice. That is exactly why broadband privacy rules would have been a good step, and why broadband companies fought them so hard. If youre interested in protecting consumers, its an obvious first step to make companies get affirmative, clear consent to sell your data, and to be specific about what theyre collecting and what they do with it. Because theyll never be transparent voluntarily. Whens the last time Facebook sent you a notification telling you what its collected or sold? Or Google, or Twitter, or your ISP?

Toss away the digital veneer of Facebook and look at it from a cold, hard realityeliminate the digital representation entirelyFacebook is nothing more than an army of servers. Sure, theres administrative staff to deal with the various ripples coming out of these oceans of information, but the same way that Fords product mainly consists of hunks of metal, Facebooks product is simply just software on a server. You may be pressing send when giving your information to your friends, but its first going into Facebooks hands before being distributed out to the masses. Your friend receiving your content is simply a consequence of the larger goal: squeezing every penny out of your humanity on digital bits.

Even third-party applications are not completely safe, as Ian Bogost, creator of the satirical Facebook game Cow Clicker, wrote in The Atlantic:

When a user loads an app, Facebooks servers pass those requests to a remote computer, where the individual or company that made the app hosts their services. The app sends its responses to Facebook, which formats and presents them to the user, as if they were inside of Facebook itself.

The authorization process happens once, the first time the app is accessed for a specific user. After that, every time the user loads the app, Facebook sends it a payload of basic user data to facilitate the apps operation (additional data can be requested separately when needed). For years, these transmissions were even conducted unencrypted, until Facebook required apps to communicate with its service over a secure connection.

We may look back on Trumps election as the watershed moment where we fully understood the negative consequences of the digital age. Past generations declared the Cold War and the 1990s as the end of history, and millennials were promised a world that would only improve with age. The technology surrounding us was supposedly proof.

The schism in the Democratic Party is partly generational. Millennials and the emerging we call BS generation are fed up with the denial which has taken root over the past few decades. Everything is not OK. The tech companies are not benevolent overlords supposedly here to help propel capitalism to even greater heights. Theyre small communities largely run by out of touch technocrats with spying capabilities similar to the NSA, but with infinitely less oversight.

It took Facebook forever to even respond to this not a data breach because Mark Zuckerberg has espoused a childish worldview of Facebooks supposedly rosy contributions to society. His deafening silence in the wake of Channel 4s report was reflective of a vocabulary completely unprepared for failure. Silicon Valley has the same unearned mythos in American culture that Wall Street gained in the 1980s, and we saw how that worked out.

The financial cataclysm of 2007 served as the comeuppance for Wall Streets crimes of greed over the past few decades, and the timing of the 2016 election to the rise of the Internet in the 1990s is poetic. Facebook had a massive influence in creating President Donald J. Trump. The internet is an immensely powerful tool that we are all only just beginning to understand, and my hope is that this Cambridge Analytica report may have broken the fever.

#DeleteFacebook is a discussion which has taken root in the wake of their failures to prevent Russian subversion of our election, and last week it reached a fever pitch with Channel 4s investigative bombshell into the actions of Cambridge Analytica on Facebook. The creator of WhatsApp said that its time to #DeleteFacebook, and this backlash prompted a series of panicked responses from Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg that reflected a couple of executives genuinely fearful of losing their dominant place in the infrastructure of the internet. Unlike a lot of supply versus demand battles, the ultimate power in this equation rests on the demand side.

Where else are you going to share photos and updates with your family?

 E-mail

 Texting

 Any messaging app

Where else are you going to find news updates?

 E-mail subscriptions/newsletters

 Texting

 Any messaging app

 Bookmarked websites

 Any news aggregation app

 Etc

Many of Facebooks basic functions can be replaced by apps and other, already familiar digital methods. This reality, combined with the horrible PR now enveloping Facebook, has knocked about $60 billion off its market cap in the past couple weeks. It sounds crazy to think that Facebook can effectively disappear, but it also sounded nuts to think that about Yahoo! in 2000. Times change. You can never truly quit Facebook, but you do have some control over how much they know about you.

Social networks are specifically designed to prey on the chemical rewards system inside our brains. Its hard to just stop posting and liking and commenting once you have become fully ingrained in all these online communities, but you can share less about yourself with your friends on social media, as there are plenty of other avenues to connect. Seriously consider what third-party apps you plug into these social networks and who you really trust your data with. Facebook talks a lot about trust, but the word rights hasnt appeared in any of their responses to this crisis. Its not enough for a company to earn our faith in it, they must protect our basic democratic rights, and Facebooks business model is specifically designed to eschew that in favor of commodifying each and every one of us.

The most valuable thing in Silicon Valley isnt the talent roaming its halls or the capital flooding its coffers, but the data that we supply them with. If not for the packets of humanity we constantly send their way, no advertisers would talk to them. Starving the beast is an actual option here, and we should all begin to consider various methods to accomplish that task. Think about it this way: If these tech companies are willing to provide us products for free, then that means we have a powerful hand to play, so lets play it.

Jacob Weindling is a staff writer for Paste politics. Follow him on Twitter at @Jakeweindling.
This week, former Justice of the Supreme Court John Paul Stevens, a conservative, wrote in an op-ed that Americans should demand the repeal of the Second Amendment. He continued, a constitutional amendment to get rid of the Second Amendment would be simple and would do more to weaken the NRAs ability to stymie legislative debate and block constructive gun control legislation than any other available option.

In 1991, Former Chief Justice Warren Burger, famously conservative, said that the Second Amendment has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime. Burger added that if he were to rewrite the Bill of Rights, There wouldnt be any such thing as the Second Amendment.

But note Burgers careful language: the Second Amendment has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud.

Thats not the same as saying the Second Amendment itself is a fraud. What Burger meant was that the amendment has been abused by the gun lobby and conservatives for political gain. Its now a weapon of fear, and was forged in the ironworks of good old fashioned American racism. The truth is that the Second Amendment is hopelessly out of date, or in the words of Justice Stevens, a constitutional provision that might once have had relevance but is now a relic of the 18th century.

The Second Amendment should be repealed, and at the very least rewritten. Its about updating the Constitution to enable gun control in the interest of lowering death rates, suicide rates, and stopping massacres. The Constitution was made to be legally broken. Its high time we stopped listening to the one-fifth of gun owners who belong to the NRA and argue in bad faith that this is a sacred and inviolable right. Its not.

Im not going to trot out a bunch of statistics about gun deaths, massacres, and suicides. We all know those arguments, and you can feel free to debate them elsewhere. Im not interested in that anymore. Hunt, fine. Keep a revolver locked up in your home for protection, fine. I wouldnt do it, and its dangerous as hell, but I understand. Semi-automatics, though? Ban them all, confiscate them, and burn them. Heres my defense of that opinion.

This article is now about the Second Amendment.

The United States is the only country in the world that gives its constituents a blanket right to own weapons. This isnt a reason in itself to enact any sort of policy, but its worth noting because the parallel consequences are undeniable: The U.S. is the only country with this kind of law, and the U.S. is the only country with these kinds of single-shooter massacres of targeted innocents.

Some countries have indeed emulated our Second Amendment for their constitutions: a total of twelve of them. And of those 12, today only two still have a constitutional provision sanctioning the right of the people to own weapons. Those countries are Mexico and Guatemala, and they have some of the highest murder rates in the world. Every other country has revoked their citizens constitutional right to bear arms.

And again, its silly to propose we should base our laws on the laws of other countries alone. But theres a proven correlation here: The United States is the only country whose constitution specifically sanctions the right to own basically any kind of weapon (yes: fully automatic guns and even hand grenades included), and its also the only country whose citizens routinely slaughter large groups of other citizens at random. Aside from extreme outliers such as the 2011 mass shooting in Norway and the 1996 Port Arthur massacre in Tanzania, no other developed country sees these massacres, and even taking all outliers into consideration, theyre scattered. Theres no other developed country with a pattern: Yes, there was a slaughter in Norway, but theres no slaughter culture there.

Similarly, a repeal of the Second Amendment and flat-out ban on semi-automatic weapons and high-capacity magazines wont stop massacres in the United States, but research says it will reduce these events dramatically, and more importantly will reduce their lethality.

The Second Amendment truly is a relic, no matter which side youre on. First, the Amendments actual language:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Here are a few reasons its obsolete.

1. We dont need a well-regulated militia to combat a national standing army in the event of some sort of armed government takeover, because there will be no armed government takeover. Worth noting: The people who claim they fear some sort of US military takeover are often some of the most vocal advocates for the US military. Theyre also not coincidentally many of the same people who own a ton of guns. Related:

2. If those Second Amendment people were truly interested in checking our standing army, theyd want to rewrite the Second Amendment, too. Except instead of limiting guns, theyd demand access to more firepower. After all, even though theres a little more than one gun for every American, three percent of Americans own half the countrys guns. Thats where our citizens firepower is, and that three percent would hypothetically be fighting tanks, airplanes, etc., with AR-15-style weapons. They also typically dont live in population centers. It would be one of the easiest victories in the history of the U.S. armed forces.

So if anything, we should all at least agree the Second Amendment is antiquated, even if we have opposing reasons. If you argue we need it in order to protect ourselves from our own government but you dont demand an update, youre making your argument in bad faith. Otherwise how can you protect us from our government? I for one wouldnt turn to you for protection.

3. The United States has a history of supporting gun control. In the 1800s, the states of Kentucky, Louisiana, Indiana, Tennessee, Virginia, Alabama, Ohio, Florida, Oklahoma, and Texas all banned concealed weapons. In 1893 the governor of Texas  yes, Texas  said that the mission of the concealed deadly weapon is murder. To check it is the duty of every self-respecting, law-abiding man. All of those states now allow concealed carry in some form. All but Florida allow open carry.

And in 1939 the Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision that Congress could ban sawed-off shotguns because they werent relevant to maintaining a well regulated militia. Id argue that given the firepower of our military, the most powerful in the world, none of our citizens weaponry is relevant to this part of the amendment anymore.

4. The NRA used to champion gun control. Five days after President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, Senator Thomas Dodd put forth a bill restricting the mail-order sales of shotguns and rifles. (Oswald bought his through the mail.) During those hearings, the executive vice president of the NRA said before Congress that We do not think that any sane American, who calls himself an American, can object to placing into this bill the instrument which killed the president of the United States. Today in most states you can buy mail-order guns over the internet with no meaningful restrictions.

Youd be forgiven for thinking that, with all the founding-father-fetishizing surrounding the gun debate, this has been an age-old debate. But for about two hundred years the Second Amendment had the least amount of U.S. case law of any amendment but the Third (your right to refuse to quarter soldiers in your home). Ill point out that the framers of the Constitution didnt do too many things haphazardly, and those two amendments werent put next to each other at random: The Second Amendment refers explicitly to a well-regulated militia.

Of course, the Supreme Court held in a 2008 case, D.C. vs. Heller, that the Second Amendment does indeed apply to the right of all citizens to bear arms. But the Court also held that the amendment, like the First Amendment, is subject to regulation and restrictions. (You cant libel someone, for instance, or scream fire! in a theater, etc.) Theyve left those decisions up to the states and possibly also to Congress, but more on that in a minute. The Court, however, hasnt touched a gun control case since, and there are a few possible reasons.

First, the Court might think its ruled definitively on this issue and doesnt want to wade back into it. Or as NPRs Nina Totenberg pointed out, the Justices on both sides might not be confident enough they have the votes anymore.

But given the fact that even conservative justices have advocated for the repeal of the Second Amendment, the reason for the Courts recent silence might be more nuanced. After all, its the job of the Court to rule on the constitutionality of laws. Theyre interpreters and arbiters, not writers. This circumscribes their power and brings us back to Burgers careful language: Regardless of how you interpret the Amendment, the language itself is problematic and out of date. It has not kept up with the times.

Thought experiment: Lets pretend the Constitution sanctioned slavery.

(It did.)

But did the Supreme Court rule that slavery was illegal? No: Congress rewrote the Constitution to abolish slavery. Its not the Courts business to repeal or rewrite the Bill of Rights. Its the business of Congress and the American people. And its a gutting shame that were not doing all we can to eliminate all access to the kinds of weapons that allow human beings to massacre dozens of other human beings before anyone can even identify the type of weapon theyre using to do it.

Im under no delusion that a repeal will happen any time soon, but Im tired of compromise on this issue. Progress happens slowly, and progress is maddeningly uneven, but in America it does happen. Even the worst cynics cant deny this. And this is all because nothing in the Constitution is sacred. The document is so flexible that one time, during Prohibition, we changed it and then changed it back. The people who founded our nation didnt chisel this stuff in stone. They wrote it on paper. Paper, they knew, disintegrates with time. And it burns like all of our semi-automatics should.

So with that in mind, Ill wrap this with the words of Thomas Jefferson, who helped craft the Second Amendment.

...laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made,new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.
Back in January we reported that Keith Villa, the man who created Blue Moon during a 32-year career with MillerCoors, was finally stepping down from his position with the beer giant. At the time, it wasnt clear exactly what the legendary beer industry figure had in mind for a post-Blue Moon career, but a new announcement shows that Villa will be headed in an unexpected direction: cannabis beer.

Three months after his departure from the company where he created the industrys #1 crafty beer brand, Villa has launched a new company called Ceria Beverages, which will focus on producing an entire line of non-alcoholic beers infused with cannabis. And we dont mean in a purely gimmicky way, eitherVillas beers are intended to be potent in terms of their THC content and sold in markets where recreational marijuana use has been legalized. In other words, these drinks are fully meant to get you high, just as smoking a joint would. Headquarters for the company will exist in the Denver suburb of Arvada, CO.

CERIA will be brewed just like an alcoholic craft beer to maintain its beer taste and aroma, but will then be de-alcoholized prior to the infusion of cannabis, Keith Villa said in a press release.

Other breweries have produced beers in the past that are manufactured with one part or another of plants in the cannabis family, whether theyre hempsuch as New Belgiums new Hemperoror cannabidiol (CBD), which has some of marijuanas chemical effects. Villa, however, says his company has the goal of being the first company to introduce a line of cannabis-infused non-alcoholic beverages that contain THC, a key psychoactive chemical from cannabis plants, according to Brewbound. That inclusion of THC might be considered the final frontier, in terms of cannabis beersthe step that changes it from a beer with pot flavors into a drink with pot properties.

CBD is not the component that most consumers look for, Villa said to Brewbound. It certainly has its merits But the THC is what gives people that buzz, which is similar to the alcohol buzz that people get from beer, spirits and wine. A lot of consumers of cannabis look for that buzz.

Its not just buzz that Villa wants to provide, either. Ebbu, the Colorado-based cannabinoid research firm that will be designing and supplying the companys cannabis extracts, claims it can tailor-make a variety of different extracts for different beers that will offer disparate sensations that range from chill to bliss to energy.

We can dial in exactly the sensations that people want, Villa said. If people want a CBD sensation where they feel sort of tired and chilled and relaxed, well be able to give them that. If they want a really great THC experienceits the end of the week and they want to relax responsibly with their friends and partywe can deliver that too.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, theres potentially some hypocrisy at play here. Villa, as it turns out, was outspoken against marijuana use in the past, and voted against legalization of recreational cannabis in Colorado in 2012, according to Brewbound. Following legalization, however, he changed his mind after doing some research. The cynical observer might say that he saw a market ripe to exploit then then decided to exploit it. But as Villa explains it:

I found that it isnt the evil drug that people such as [U.S. Attorney General] Jeff Sessions portray it to be, he said. I see some of his quotes where he honestly believe that it contributes to opioid addiction, and I read scientific articles stating the opposite. So its his opinion versus science, which is saying its actually not that dangerous.

Ceria Beverages aims to produce an entire line of different cannabis beers that come in a variety of strengths in terms of THC content, labeled as light, regular and full-bodied. These will vary from 1-15 milligrams of of THC per 12 oz bottle, and will be labeled with a visual system that labels whether the product is for beginners, intermediate users, experienced users and those seeking the ultimate experience, which seems like a somewhat irresponsible choice of words to us.

Which brings us to the issue that no one is really discussing when it comes to this new company: What kind of non-alcoholic beers are they going to try and fuse these cannabis flavors and chemicals to? Is pale ale/IPA the traditional choice for pairing with the dank/fruitier qualities of certain marijuana strains? Is it possible to brew a decent non-alcoholic stout or porter, and does it makes sense to do so with the addition of cannabis? How adventurous will they try to be on the beer side of the equation? Should we expect Villa to recreate his past with a cannabis-infused Blue Moon knockoff, or will he be cranking out artisanal, non-alcoholic versions of Belgian quads and saisons that just so happen to contain THC? This is the most fascinating and strange aspect of the product line, as far as were concerned.

Theres no concrete date as to when these products will begin to appear, but we can only assume that it will be a somewhat complicated process to get them to market as such a tightly regulated substance. It seems natural to assume that Ceria products will NOT be available in package stores, and will instead need to be purchased from certified dispensaries in Colorado.

Well try to bring more updates in the future about where this whole cannabis beer business is heading.
Rayder passing game helps Charlevoix hold off Glen Lake for homecoming victory

Roundup of football action from around the area for Friday.
Learn About the Cash Game Festival Bratislava on April 4-8

March 30, 2018 Jason Glatzer

The Cash Game Festival heads to the Slovakian capital of Bratislava for the first time at Banco Casino for five days and more than 120 hours of nonstop poker action on April 4-8.

The festival continues to grow in popularity, especially among recreational players, thanks to its fun atmosphere both on and away from the poker felt. This atmosphere should be even more electric thanks to another first, collaborating with another recognizable poker tour with the MPN Poker Tour Bratislava kicking off at the same venue on April 5.

This also marks the first time that Unibet will be one of the partners, joining existing partners Betsson, NordicBet and 32Red.

Martin "Franke" von Zweigbergk

Cash Game Festival Co-Founder Martin "Franke" von Zweigbergk is understandably excited about all of the new aspects about the Cash Game Festival Bratislava.

"The upcoming Cash Game Festival is a first in many ways," von Zweigbergk said. "It is our first time in Bratislava, Slovakia, our first time collaborating with an existing recognizable poker tour such as MPNPT, and our first time with our new partner in Unibet. I am very excited about all of this."

Despite the many new aspects the Cash Game Festival will bring to Bratislava, the core idea surrounding the festival will be the same as in the past. Twice a day, the Cash Game Festival will host two televised feature tables on 20-minute delays at 5:30 p.m. CEST and 8:30 p.m. CEST on the Cash Game Festival Twitch channel. Since PokerNews will once again be at the Cash Game Festival, the stream will also be embedded in our coverage.

Henry Kilbane and George Sandford

The British duo of Henry Kilbane and George Sandford, who served as guest hosts during the last Cash Game Festival in London, will be the main commentators for the first-time in Cash Game Festival history. Kilbane and Sandford both discovered the tour as players and will share strategy along with having some fun in the booth to create educational and entertaining streams not to be missed.

In addition to the feature table, there will be endless action on side tables available at any stake and any game you can think of including no-limit hold'em, pot-limit Omaha, open-face Chinese poker, Sviten Special, super dealer's choice and much more.

There are also many activities planned away from the felts for players who qualified through Cash Game Festival's partners and for those that wish to purchase the hospitality package. Unlike tournament festivals where players may be stuck at the tables, players at cash games can take breaks as they see fit and can attend as many or all of the activities their hearts desire.

Head to the Cash Game Festival website to learn more about the event and how to register for the televised feature and side tables.

How to Attend the Cash Game Festival Bratislava

The Cash Game Festival Bratislava kicks off on Wednesday, April 4. There is still plenty of time to attend the festival and see what all the fun and great poker action is all about.

If you wish to head to the festival from out of town, it is recommended that you fly to the nearby airport in Vienna and then take an inexpensive bus to the heart of Bratislava. there are still plenty of rooms available at the casino's hotel, the four-star Crowne Plaza for just 90 a night. This rate includes a twin room, free entrance to the spa, and breakfast.

Tallinn After Bratislava

Three weeks after Bratislava, the Cash Game Festival heads back to where it all began to the Estonian capital of Tallinn on April 25-29 for another five-days of nonstop poker action.

This will mark the seventh time the festival has visited Tallinn, including the first three festivals before it embarked internationally in the beginning of 2016.

You can register for this event, including a seat at the televised feature tables, at the Cash Game Festival website.

*Images courtesy of the Cash Game Festival.
Robert Bridge, an op-ed contributor for RT, in his March 28 article seemed to deny that Russia has used its energy supplies to pressure European countries during and after the end of the Cold War. Bridges op-ed suggested that the West may be tempted to use the fallout from the poisoning of ex-double agent Sergei Skripal to slander Russia and push it out of lucrative [gas] markets in Europe.

Bridge was referencing a statement by U.S. President Trump who said during his visit to Poland in 2017 that the U.S. was ready to help Europe reduce its energy dependence on Russia.

America stands ready to help Poland and other European nations diversify their energy supplies so that you can never be held hostage to a single supplier, Trump then said after talks with Polish President Andrzej Duda, adding, Whenever you need energy, just give us a call.

While experts question the ability of U.S. companies to help Europe substantially reduce its dependence on Russia for gas supplies in the medium and even long term, they agree that Bridges assertions represent speculation unsupported by either facts or logic.

As Bridge suggests, the Soviet Union and European states had a relatively stable energy relationship during the Cold War, but this has changed since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Russian Energy Pressure

According to Jae-Seung Lee and Daniel Connolly, who researched the issue of regional energy geopolitics in the period before and after the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union forced changes in transnational energy distribution patterns, resulting in ownership and other disputes.

It was this kind of conflict that spilled over and affected European customers in the Ukrainian crises of 2006 and 2009. It also explains Eastern European resistance to the Nord Stream pipeline, they write.

Russia and Ukraine were both locked in a series of gas disputes in 2006 and 2009 that resulted in gas supply cut-offs affecting numerous countries in Europe, raising concerns that Moscow was using its dominant position as a gas supplier to pressure Ukraine and other European countries.

Edward Chow, an energy and security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Polygraph.info that Russia has, in fact, used its position as a dominant gas supplier to selectively pressure Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia.

European capitals thus view U.S. companies efforts to expand their energy market share as a way to reduce their heavy dependence on gas supplies from Russia, which in 2017 accounted for 34 percent of Europes total gas consumption.

But questions remain regarding the ability of the U.S. companies to do so in any foreseeable feature. The EU, for instance, estimates that supplies from LNG providers in the U.S., Norway, the UAE, and Russia could together meet only 25% of the EU gas consumption needs by 2030.

A lack of political will compounds the problem. Pavel Molchanov, an energy analyst with Raymond James, says that politicians in Europe still pay lip service to diversifying gas supply away from Russia, but notes that the regions reliance on gas imports from any source is actually declining. Even then, according to the estimates in the Roadmap of the EU-Russia Energy Cooperation until 2050, Russia will remain one of Europes major natural gas suppliers.

Nord Stream 2

As part of the effort, Russia is building the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to deliver gas to the European market bypassing Ukraine, which has borne the brunt of its gas supply cut-offs.

As recently as March, Russias Gazprom withheld the supply of $125 million worth of gas amid a dispute with Kyiv, causing a 10% gas supply shortfall for Ukraine. Garzprom also decreased pipeline pressure for gas transiting via the country to the rest of Europe.

Experts say Moscow is interested in completing Nord Stream 2 to avoid gas disputes with Ukraine and position itself as a reliable supplier to the EU. But Russia may also be seeking to undermine the reliability and position of Ukraine, which has largely weaned itself off Russias gas supplies for its own consumption but serves as a transit state for the gas bound for Europe.

Such disputes can therefore hold Russian gas supplies to Europe hostage, though Russia has not, according to Molchanov, directly targeted the EU in politically motivated ways. In January 2009 -- and a few other instances  Russia has sought to punish Ukraine by curtailing gas supply to Ukraine, and an indirect consequence of that was reduced gas supply to the EU. The Kremlins target was Ukraine, but EU countries were affected as well, he says.

Russia Energy Weapon?

Lee and Connolly write that talking about Russias use of its energy weapon given the created energy dependencies can be misleading because it is a complicated and multifaceted phenomenon, as the dependencies restrict the maneuverability of parties involved when it comes to choosing more extreme measures.

Yet, this co-dependency has a twist, providing more wiggle room for Russia. Chow explains: Russia is more dependent on the European gas market than Europe as a whole is dependent on Russia as gas supplier. However, Russia acts as one unit whereas Europe does not.

The suggestion that Russia has not used its dominant gas supplier position as a pressure tool does not withstand scrutiny. And the op-ed speculation about a nexus between the Skripal case and the Wests alleged efforts to push Russia out of the European gas market is unsupported by facts.

The authors evidence supporting the reasoning is a European lobbyists suggestion of the U.S. getting tough on the Nord Stream 2 effort and the German foreign minsters suggestion that an largely unenforced U.S. sanctions law aggressively combines foreign policy and economic interests.

According to Chow, the Skripal case has absolutely nothing to do with US LNG."

The whole world suspects Russia in the Skripal case because it is the only one with the motivation and the means. It also fits a Russian pattern of behavior, he says.

John Herbst, former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine (2002-2006) and current director of the Atlantic Council's Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center, says the op-ed assertions are devoid of logic. "Problem number one with this is that Britain, which took the first steps against the Kremlin, is not a gas supplier. More important, if Western companies can supply gas more cheaply than Gazprom, they will win European contracts, he told Polygraph.info.

Herbst says the op-ed statements on the alleged Skripal nexus represent a diversion resting on incorrect ideas about the workings of the market. It suggests that greed  something people understand  pushed the British, the Americans and twenty-five other governments to accuse the Kremlin of a bogus chemical weapons assassination attempt in the UK, he said.

The statements, he explains, also divert attention from Novichok nerve agent allegedly used to poison Skripal as well as from the UK accusation of a chemical weapons assassination of Aleksandr Litvinenko by a Russian state operative, also on the UK soil, in 2006.

According to Geysha Gonzalez, the associate director of the Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center, Bridges reasoning involves a series of half-truths that ignore the instances of the Kremlins aggression.

From the state-sponsored doping program to the illegal annexation of Crimea, and most recently to the use of a nerve agent in a NATO country, the Kremlin has more than warranted the expulsion of its diplomats from several nations, including the U.S., she told Polygraph.info.
The 20th edition of Ultra Music Festival (UMF) has just wrapped up and has already announced its return to Bayfront Park on March 29, 30, and 31, 2019. This year, the annual event considered to be the mecca of dance music festivals in North America pulled in acts ranging from the likes of Oliver Heldens to Tiesto & even managed to close the show with the spectacular rebirth of the Swedish House Mafia. Drawing crowds by the hundreds of thousands from around the world, Ultra Music Festival continues to drive strong economic growth for South Florida.

The three-day electronic dance music festival, showcasing the world's biggest DJs and electronic dance music acts, has something for everyone ranging from main stream to up-and-coming artists. Many people travel to Miami and South Beach for the first time to attend this festival. Some turn it into an annual pilgrimage to recharge and network. Last year, the event pulled in more than 165,000 partygoers to attend the festival over the weekend which is a 266% increase from its total attendance of 45,000 in 2005.



According to Miami Community newspaper, last year UMF brought in $148 million dollars into the Miami Dade County area and this number is expected to topple over $200 million in 2018. Undoubtedly, the city of Miami hopes not like to lose this economic impact generated by UMF. With continual growth, good music, and positive vibes we can't wait until next year to head back to Bayfront Park and attend what we consider musical paradise. All in all, if you are looking to plan a trip next year, start planning and booking for your trip now!

Check out some highlights from Ultra Music Festival 2018 below:

Tiesto & Marshmellow set the crowd ablaze

Follow Ultra Music Festival on Twitter | Instagram | Facebook | Youtube


Charleston, SC (29403)

Today

Sunshine and a few afternoon clouds. High near 80F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

Mainly clear. Low near 60F. Winds light and variable.
The Coastal Community Foundation has set aside $3 million for "impact investing," or funding projects that will have both a social benefit and financial return.
COLUMBIA  Embattled 5th Circuit Solicitor Dan Johnson filed for re-election Friday, ending speculation he might not run again after his office came into question over reports he appeared to use thousands in public money for personal expenses.

Privately, some close to Johnson had said he might not run while state and federal law enforcement investigate those expenses.

Johnson, a Democrat, filed his paperwork less than an hour before Fridays noon deadline. He is seeking a third term as chief prosecutor for Richland and Kershaw counties.

Johnson will face a challenge from Columbia lawyer Byron Gipson in the Democratic primary. No Republicans filed in the heavily Democratic-leaning circuit.

Gipson joined the race after The Post and Courier detailed Johnsons thousands of dollars in charges on an office credit card over the last several years for out-of-state trips, club memberships and payments to Johnsons brother, among other expenses.

Johnson declined again to explain those expenses Friday. But when asked, he did not deny any of the reports that have grown for weeks.

"If weve missed some stuff, if the paperwork isnt right, then we need to get it right," Johnson told reporters. "Thats all I can say. So if its not right, were going to fix it. If it is right, Ill go out there and say it was right all along."

The State Law Enforcement Division launched a probe into Johnson's expenses in the wake of The Post and Courier's reporting. That probe widened when the FBI joined the case.

Johnson has hired two criminal defense attorneys, including a former federal prosecutor. His office will also pay for an outside audit of his expenses, he said.

"On the one hand you could criticize me for that, but I dont want to do something on the cheap," he said.

Johnson said he always planned to file for office in the final days before the deadline. He said he's running again because "were trying to help. Were trying to do everything we can do. People will decide whether they like or they dont like it."

The Post and Courier also reported that one of Johnson's assistants, Nicole Holland, used her office credit card to charge thousands in expenses for trips home to Kentucky and Tennessee, including one that coincided with a nephew's graduation.

Johnson said Friday he has revoked Holland's card privileges pending his audit.

He didn't address his own credit card expenses from the past several years, including $32,000 on gym memberships, $23,900 on out-of-state hotels and $7,700 in dues to a swank Columbia private club.

Johnson also paid his brother at least $3,000 to deejay office Christmas parties and covered his flights to Columbia from Phoenix, even though state ethics laws prohibit public employees from hiring their relatives.

When asked Friday if he broke the law by hiring his brother, Johnson gave a cryptic answer. "You can run it down. Well talk about all of that," he said.

Johnson also refused to explain his April 2017 trip to the Galapagos Islands, which he charged his office credit card $6,630 for flights and hotels.

Asked about the trip, Johnson again provided a vague answer. "I do know why  and I think actually some of the public knows why  let me get to the bottom of it. And when I get to the bottom of all the facts, Ill put it out there. I think thats a fair way to do it."

Johnson's opponent, Gipson, has the backing of a prominent Richland Democrat and one of Johnson's old supporters  House Minority Leader Todd Rutherford.

Gipson, who has known Johnson since they met at the University of South Carolina law school, said he's running because he wants to bring back the public trust to the solicitor's office.
A police body camera rolled as a volunteer lawman described why he shot a motorist in Florence.

"That (expletive) about ran me over," the state constable said.

The video captured an account in which Christopher Bachochin portrayed the motorist's car as a threat, though he and other officers stood to the side as the sedan jerked backward, then sped forward.

After the constable spoke, a supervisor approached the officer wearing the camera. The officer had witnessed the shooting but didn't fire his own gun.

"Don't forget," the supervisor said, "just tell them the truth."

"There's nothing to lie about," the officer responded. "I know what I did."

The motorist, Brandon Fludd, 28, is recovering after being hit by three of the eight bullets fired at him Saturday night. He had wounds to an arm and a knee. A bullet in his chest is still there.

What the officer and another certified policeman at the scene later wrote in a report was still not clear Thursday because Florence officials have refused to release the document. State investigators also said they wouldnt disclose Bachochins training history and certification records because the probe isn't done.

How officers document shootings has been a crucial aspect of recent scrutiny of police uses of force. Officers nationwide have been accused of lying in reports or to investigators. Three Chicago officers were charged with conspiracy in the 2014 killing of Laquan McDonald, and North Charleston patrolman Michael Slager was alleged to have misled investigators after the 2015 shooting of Walter Scott.

Fludd's attorney, Democratic state Rep. Justin Bamberg, lauded Florence officials for already releasing video footage of the shooting. But that amounts to only partial transparency, he said.

"There were reports written before the body camera was reviewed," he said. "We want to see what they wrote."

Open-records advocates said state law demands the documents' release.

"How would releasing historical information interfere with law enforcement action?" said Jay Bender, a longtime press attorney who has represented The Post and Courier. "(The constable) knows his history. The police know his history. Who's being kept in the dark here? The public."

Mayor Stephen Wukela said earlier this week the city's "policy of being exceedingly open" is a "way you build the trust of the community."

But the Florence Police Department denied The Post and Courier's request for the reports "due to an active investigation" by the agency and the State Law Enforcement Division. SLED's probe is examining whether the shooting was justified.

SLED said its agents have already interviewed Bachochin and others. The constable, who is sidelined during the probe, has declined to answer the newspaper's questions.

Constables go through training at technical schools and are certified by SLED. Many are unpaid. Some are retired after long police careers.

Bachochin served for five years as a police officer before becoming a pharmacist. He had been volunteering in Florence for about four years, officials have said.

Documentation of his history as a constable was added to SLED's investigative file after the shooting, and its release could "interfere with a prospective law enforcement proceeding," spokesman Thom Berry said, citing a portion of the S.C. Freedom of Information Act. Berry refused to say exactly how it might jeopardize the inquiry.

He acknowledged a public interest in the documents.

"But the case is a matter of interest to us, as well," he said. "We have an investigation that we must conduct."

Bachochin was tagging along with Florence patrolman Edward Sieban after 11 p.m., Saturday when they stopped Fludd's car. Sieban said in the video from his body camera that the car had crossed the center line.

The constable was the first to walk up to the car and shine a flashlight inside, but Sieban cut in front of him.

Fludd denied having any guns or drugs. But Sieban said he smelled marijuana.

Perturbed, Fludd threw his Cadillac into gear, backing into the patrol car behind him.

Bachochin backed away as he opened fire at the driver's side.

The car took off. On another street, Sieban and Bachochin would soon find it abandoned and bloodied.

"That scared the (expletive) out of me," Bachochin said. "He about run us ... over."

To another officer who showed up, Sieban repeated what Bachochin used as a reason for opening fire: "He said he came right at Chris."

Bachochin gave a more detailed account.

"He cut the wheel a bit, so the front end come out," he said. "I see that front end coming around. I was just like, 'Oh, (expletive)."

Bachochin soon took a seat in a cruiser. The supervisor at the scene asked another officer where the constable had gone.

"He's sitting in my car," the officer said.

"That's the best place for him," the supervisor said.
Syndicated and guest columns represent the personal views of the writers, not necessarily those of the editorial staff. The editorial department operates entirely independently of the news department and is not involved in newsroom operations.
Political Editor

Schuyler Kropf is The Post and Courier political editor. He has covered every major political race in South Carolina dating to 1988, including for U.S. Senate, governorship, the Statehouse and Republican and Democratic presidential primaries.
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PR-Inside.com: 2018-03-30 14:44:00

Lombok, INDONESIA, Mar 29, 2018 - (ACN Newswire) - Members of the International Tobacco Growers Association (ITGA) in Asia held a conference in Lombok, Indonesia to discuss the ever-increasing challenges facing tobacco agriculture and the tobacco industry.The Tobacco Growers emphasized their commitment to Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) in an effort to produce an agricultural commodity that meets legal market standards for the over 900 million consumers spread across the world and ensures that the agricultural activity provides a proper livelihood for millions of the world's farmers, farm workers and their families.During the conference, delegates from countries such as Azerbaijan, India, Indonesia and the Philippines, as well as representatives of other stakeholders, government officials and delegates from the United Nations, discussed several important issues related to tobacco agriculture and the industry.ITGA Chief Executive Officer Antonio Abrunhosa said the tobacco market has changed its direction. Therefore, this transition to the future must become the industry's main agenda."It will be difficult to implement this strategy if we refuse to become part of the programs initiated by UN agencies such as UNDP and FAO. Therefore, ITGA and its members are committed to demonstrating our commitment to becoming involved in these initiatives and we will do whatever we can to produce tangible evidence of our intentions." In the opening speech, the chairman of the Indonesian Tobacco Community Alliance (AMTI), Budidoyo, said that tobacco farmers have implemented agricultural practices in line with a number of objectives specified in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)."For example, the number one objective of the SDG is Eradicating poverty. It has been proven everywhere that tobacco is a very profitable commodity that supports the economic stability of the farmers and their families," conveyed Budidoyo. "The tobacco sector is also aware of the importance of fulfilling our social-economic responsibilities. Therefore, we take various measures each year to improve our agricultural techniques so they become more sustainable and environmentally-friendly." In addition to making declarations, the Indonesian tobacco farmers also continued to push for the Draft Tobacco Bill because it is the realization of efforts to protect tobacco farmers. The Draft Tobacco Bill regulates the management of tobacco, partnership programs between business owners and farmers, DBHCHT allocation, and health protection -management of advertisements, promotions, sponsorship, cigarette packs and Smoke-Free Areas (KTR).Farmers must also remain alert to Draft Tobacco Bill rules that could potentially threaten the Tobacco Product Industry (IHT), such as:- Restrictions on tobacco usage (80% domestic and 20% imported tobacco) and the implementation of quotas- Implementation of an import excise tariff for imported tobacco of 60-200 percent (on processed tobacco)- Restriction of foreign investment ownership (30 percent)The tobacco sector has been the target of much pressure that results in decreasing tobacco product demand and exacerbates the situation of the tobacco farmers.These challenges have never successfully discouraged us from cultivating tobacco, but have instead provided us with greater motivation to achieve better and more sustainable tobacco production.ABOUT THE AMTIThe Indonesian Tobacco Community Alliance (AMTI) was formed on 25 January, 2010 by a joint declaration by tobacco industry stakeholders as a way to organize the efforts of tobacco and clove farmers and cigarette workers, consumers, retailers, associations and manufacturers to preserve Indonesia's quality tobacco industry.The purpose of the alliance is to provide a forum for organizing the efforts of tobacco and clove farmers and cigarette workers, consumers, retailers, associations and manufacturers. In addition, it establishes a united front for preserving the quality of the Indonesian tobacco industry and principles for the nation, considering the Tobacco Industry as a prioritized national industry comparable to other industries, participating in formulating balanced and comprehensive concepts for tobacco regulations acceptable to legislators, and preserving the existence of the cigarette industry, especially kretek cigarettes as a national cultural heritage product, so that this industry may receive full rights in its own country, and become a global commodity.The AMTI also wants to maintain and develop the local tobacco industry and seeks to develop Virginia, Oriental and White Burley tobacco as raw materials for the cigarette industry and import substitutes, and strives to uphold transparency in accordance with the applicable legislation. http://amti.id ABOUT THE ITGAThe International Tobacco Growers Association (ITGA) is a non-profit organization representing the interests of millions of tobacco farmers around the world. The ITGA encourages the involvement of tobacco farmers in global discussions and supports farmers on the international scene, protecting their continued existence and their families. The ITGA Forum was held in Lombok, Indonesia on March 26-27. http://www.tobaccoleaf.org Topic: Press release summarySectors: Agritech, Local BusinessFrom the Asia Corporate News NetworkCopyright  2018 ACN Newswire. All rights reserved. A division of Asia Corporate News Network.
PR-Inside.com: 2018-03-30 07:19:15

Turned profit from a previously loss-making situation and reported an after tax profit of approximately HK$43.29 million; Average monthly revenue growth was about 34%HONG KONG, Mar 29, 2018 - (ACN Newswire) - China Oceanwide International Financial Limited ("Oceanwide Financial", or the "Group", Stock Code: 952.HK) is pleased to announce that for the period from 1 April 2017 to 31 December 2017 (the "Current Year"), the Group turned profit from a previously loss-making situation and reported an after tax profit of approximately HK$43.29 million (Year ended 31 March 2017: loss of HK$57.95 million). As this is the first annual report since our change of financial year end date from March to December, the comparative figures in the consolidated statement of comprehensive income show 12-month period from 1 April 2016 to 31 March 2017 (the "Last Year"), whereas the Current Year covers a 9-month period. The revenue of the Group has increased from HK$350 million in the Last Year to HK$352 million in the Current Year, which represents an average monthly revenue growth of 34%.FINANCIAL AND BUSINESS SUMMARYFrom 1 April 2017 to 31 December 2017- The revenue of the Group has increased from HK$350 million in the Last Year to HK$352 million in the Current Year, which represents an average monthly revenue growth of 34%.- The Group turned profit from a previously loss-making situation and reported an after tax profit of approximately HK$43.29 million (Year ended 31 March 2017: loss of HK$57.95 million).- In Current Year, the Group marked a new era after the acquisition by Oceanwide Holdings Co., Ltd, the change of company name and the subsequent HK$5.1 billion rights issue in August 2017.- The Group changed its financial year end from March to December and this financial year covers a period of only nine months.- In Current Year, the Group expanded its business rapidly by taking the following approaches: to increase our margin loan portfolio significantly, to utilise our capital to support our European public fund, to invest in self-managed private equity fund, to obtain stable income by investing in corporate bonds, to diversify our loan portfolio by tapping into structured finance loan, to utilise our capital to support our DCM business and to capture short-term equity market opportunities by investing in IPOs, etc.Brokerage businessTotal revenue of HK$174 million from brokerage business was recorded in the Current Year, as compared to HK$203 million in the Last Year, representing an average monthly revenue growth of around 14%.Commission on dealing in securities of HK$61 million was recorded in the Current Year as compared to HK$53 million in the Last Year. The increase is mainly due to a significant increase in our market share of secondary market trade in Hong Kong as well as increase in the daily market turnover of The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited. Commission on dealing in futures and options contracts of HK$98 million was recorded in the Current Year as compared to HK$136 million in the Last Year. The drop is mainly due to a decline in the number of transactions conducted by our clients.Interest Income businessTotal revenue of HK$93 million from interest income business was recorded in the Current Year, as compared to HK$55 million in the Last Year, representing an average monthly revenue growth of around 125%.Interest income of HK$57 million from loans to margin clients was recorded in the Current Year as compared to HK$49 million in the Last Year, mainly due to the increase in average loan balance. The Group had about HK$2.12 billion of margin loans outstanding (settlement date basis) as at 31 December 2017. Interest income of around HK$10 million from banks and other financial institutions was recorded in the Current Year as compared to HK$5 million in the Last Year. Such increase is mainly due to higher bank balance arising from the significant rights issue proceeds from August 2017. Interest income from other loans and receivables was HK$20 million in the Current Year as compared to HK$1 million in the Last Year. The increase arises mainly in our HK$500 million participation in the Huge Group syndicated loan in August 2017. The Group had about HK$1.23 billion (current: HK$772 million; non current: HK$458 million) loan receivables outstanding as at 31 December 2017. Interest income of HK$7 million from corporate bonds was recorded in the Current Year as compared to nil in the Last Year. The increase is mainly due to our strategic utilisation of capital in achieving stable income through purchase of corporate bonds, e.g. the acquisition of US$120 million corporate bond from a subsidiary of Oceanwide Holdings Co., Ltd in November 2017, which has been grouped under financial asset at fair value through profit or loss in the consolidated statement of financial position.Corporate Finance businessTotal revenue of HK$49 million from corporate finance business was recorded in the Current Year, as compared to HK$50 million in the Last Year, representing an average monthly growth of around 31%.Commission income (from placing, underwriting and sub-underwriting deals) was HK$3 million in the Current Year as compared to HK$28 million in the Last Year. Fee income (from sponsorship, financial advisory, compliance advisory engagements) was around HK$46 million in the Current Year as compared to HK$22 million in the Last Year. A total of 32 (Last Year: 39) mandates were signed, 14 (Last Year: 20) were placing, underwriting and sub-underwriting transactions, 3 (Last Year: 2) were IPO sponsorships, 13 (Last Year: 14) were financial advisory transactions and 2 (Last Year: 3) were other mandates.Asset Management businessTotal revenue of HK$20 million from asset management business was recorded in the Current Year, as compared to HK$16 million in the Last Year, representing an average monthly growth of around 67%.The increase is mainly arising from the increase of performance fee out of our delivery of good investment return on Oceanwide China Focus Segregated Portfolio (OCF) and discretionary accounts. Our asset management business now mainly includes managing OCF, a private fund registered in Cayman Islands, Oceanwide Greater China UCITS Fund (UCITS), a European public fund registered in Luxembourg, a private equity fund called Oceanwide Pioneer Limited Partnership and various discretionary accounts. Our assets under management was US$171 million as at 31 December 2017, which represents a rise of 60% from US$107 million as at 31 March 2017.Investment and other businessTotal revenue of HK$16 million from investment and other business was recorded in the Current Year, as compared to HK$26 million in the Last Year, representing an average monthly decline of around 18%. The decrease is mainly due to short-term stock market fluctuation in December 2017 which adversely affected our investment in seed funding in both OCF and UCITS. Financial media service fee income was around HK$9 million in the Current Year as compared to HK$14 million in the Last Year.To continue, please go to http://www.acnnewswire.com/press-release/english/42441/
PR-Inside.com: 2018-03-30 10:14:27

TOKYO, Mar 30, 2018 - (JCN Newswire) - Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, Inc. (TEPCO) announced today the launch of TRENDE Inc., an online renewable energy retailer selling electricity to residential customers in Japan.Customers will be able to sign up online or with their smartphones for the new service. TRENDE offers a simple and affordable flat rate plan to its customers. The company also offers a premium plan that provides further savings for customers who are heavy consumers of electricity.TRENDE also plans to offer solar power generation equipment and storage batteries on site at customer residences, in order to create a distributed energy platform.The new company will be led by 2 serial entrepreneurs, Jeffrey Char and Tadatoshi Senoo. Char successfully built and sold several technology companies in the United States and Japan. Senoo spent a decade at Tokyo Mitsubishi Bank before co-founding Japan's first and largest social lending enterprise with Char in 2006 and also co-founded Orb, a blockchain startup in 2014."The launch of TRENDE demonstrates TEPCO's commitment to innovative and environmentally responsible approaches to ensuring that residential customers have the energy they need for a sustainable future," said Mr. Char. "Our easy to use, engaging, and informative platform will help consumers make smart energy choices and save money, while also promoting the use of solar energy." Added Mr. Senoo, "We are pleased to be working with TEPCO to make residential solar power a reality." About TEPCOTokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, Inc. (TSE: 9501), headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is the largest utility in Japan serving millions of homes and businesses. Worldwide the company has more than 34 subsidiaries and 32 affiliates in 8 countries and employs approximately 42,060 people. Consolidated revenue for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2017, totaled 5.3 trillion Japanese yen. The company was established in 1951 and is listed on the First Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. For more information, please visit http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/corpinfo/index-e.html About TRENDETRENDE Inc. is an online renewable energy retailer selling electricity to residential customers in Japan via its Ashita Denki service website at https://ashita-denki.jp/ . The company is a subsidiary of Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, Inc. For more information, please visit http://trende.jp/
Russia has expelled 60 U.S. envoys and also ordered the closure of the U.S. Consulate General in St. Petersburg, within 48 hours, the U.S. Department of State has announced.

Russias actions were in retaliation to the expulsion of 60 Russian envoys from the U.S. during the week and the closure of Russian Consulate General in Seattle.

The U.S. had expelled the Russian envoys in solidarity with its most important ally, the UK, over Russias alleged use of a military-grade nerve agent to attempt to murder a British citizen, Yulia Scripal and his daughter in Salisbury.

The spokesperson for the Department, Heather Nauert, said she spoke with U.S. ambassador to Russia, Jon Huntsman, and quoted him as explaining the Russias actions against the U.S.

Ms Nauert said: This evening, Ambassador Jon Huntsman was convoked to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation.

The Russian Federation dubbed 60 of our staff persona non grata, and they now must depart within seven days.

They also ordered the closure of our consulate in St. Petersburg within 48 hours.

Its clear from the list provided to us that the Russian Federation is not interested in a dialogue on issues that matter to our two countries.

Ms Nauert, however, said the U.S. regretted Russias actions, saying there was no justification whatsoever.

She declared: Russia is responsible for that horrific attack on the British citizen and his daughter. Once again, they have broken the Chemical Weapons Convention. It was a banned substance that they have used  Novichok.

I want to remind you that there is no justification for the Russian response. Our actions were motivated purely by the attack on the United Kingdom, the attack on a British citizen and his daughter.

Remember, this is a first time that a weapons-grade nerve agent, Novichok, has been used outside of war on allied soil.

We have not taken these steps lightly; weve taken these steps in concert with our allies across the world, she said.

According to her, 28 countries now joined the U.S. to back its allies in the decision to kick out 153 Russian spies from the various countries, with Georgia being the latest country that has joined.

We are now reviewing the Russian Governments note informing us of their response. It appears that Russia has chosen to take the regrettable, unwarranted action to respond to our entirely justified action that I just covered.

As I understand it, Russia plans to take the same unjustified actions against 28 other countries, countries that stood in solidarity with the UK. Russia is further isolating itself following the brazen chemical attack.

We are still reviewing the details of the Russian action, but let me say, again, that we reserve the right to further any Russian retaliation against the United States.

So we are reading this. We are reviewing it, and well respond accordingly, Nauert said.(NAN )

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Nigerias Senate President Bukola Saraki and the ruling All Progressives Congress Chairman, John Odigie-Oyegun, were conspicuously absent at the 10th Bola Tinubu Colloquium held Thursday in Lagos.

Also absent at the event put in place to mark the 66th birthday of the APC national leader was Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara.

The event, which was attended by President Muhammadu Buhari, held in Victoria Island, Lagos.

Aside Mr Buhari, others at the event were Vice President Yemi Osinbajo; business magnates, Aliko Dangote and Jim Ovia; governors, senators, members of the house of representatives, chieftains of the APC, among other notable Nigerians.

Themed Investing in people, the event had participants discuss the potentials of the welfare programmes and human capital investments of the Nigerian government.

It was not immediately clear why Messrs Odigie-Oyegun, Saraki and Dogara were absent at the event.

Mr Odigie-Oyegun is engulfed in a crisis following the rejection of the elongation of tenure granted to the executives of the party by President Muhammadu Buhari earlier in the week.

Mr Tinubu had openly disagreed with the tenure elongation and had immediately lauded the presidents rejection of the arrangement.

Speaking on Thursday, Mr Tinubu urged Nigerians to reject the apology of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party and support the APC.

Mr Osinbajo used his speech to lampoon the former government of Goodluck Jonathan while the president in his speech eulogised Mr Tinubus attributes.
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A national leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Bola Tinubu, subtly mocked former President Olusegun Obasanjos recently published public statement addressed to President Muhammadu Buhari urging him not to throw his hat into the ring in 2019.

Speaking at the annual Bola Tinubu Colloquium held Thursday in Victoria Island, Lagos, Mr Tinubu talked about a bad belle letter written by a certain individual who had had opportunity to be in office before.

Mr Obasanjo recently released a long, strongly worded special press statement in which he asked President Muhammadu Buhari to resist the temptation to contest again in 2019.

It is however unclear if Mr Tinubu was referring to Mr. Obasanjo because a few weeks after the latter released his statement, former military dictator, Ibrahim Babangida, also issued a controversial statement imploring Mr Buhari to give young Nigerians opportunities to rule.

Mr Babangidas letter later ignited a series of controversies with the former military ruler reportedly issuing a disclaimer.His media aide, Kassim Afegbua, was also declared wanted by the Nigerian police.

On Thursday, Mr Tinubu said letters written by some persons were political.

He said, I want the economic minister to please give us a data, first quarter of year 2012 and for their 16 years.

I remember my grandmother used to send me to a letter writer in the post office of those days and near the magistrate court. So somebody is writing letters these days, a letter of politics, as if theyve never been there before. Bad belle letters.

But in his reaction at the time, Mr Tinubu said both Messrs Obasanjo and Babangida are retired politicians whose interventions should be ignored.

We should let our former presidents join retirees club and take pensions but they can participate in our politics if they are interested, the former Lagos State governor had said at the time.

It is a free world but this freedom is not served a la carte . They should allow us to move our country forward.

On Thursday, Mr Tinubu said he was not interested in the letters, adding that it was important for the government to focus on its developmental plans.

We want to focus. I dont want to address that one today. Ive gotten the most beautiful birthday present I needed, and I am happy, he said.
Mike Ogirima, a Professor of Orthopaedic and Trauma Surgery, is the President of the Nigerian Medical Association, NMA, and President of Nigerian Orthopaedic Association. In an exclusive interview with Ayodamola Owoseye and Nike Adebowale, he speaks on quackery, doctors exodus from Nigeria, medical tourism and other issues affecting the profession in Nigeria.

PT  We have been trying to get the statistics of doctors working in the country. That has been quite difficult. Who is responsible for keeping such records and how does the NMA know its members?

Ogirima: The practitioners in the country are registered with the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria, the body that is in charge of regulating the practice of medicine in Nigeria. In our own association, we are trying to complement their efforts by introducing doctor stamp, which will be mandatory on all medical documents that will be used by any physician in this country. With that, our doctors will take their stamps to be able to capture the statistics. Also we have an application, NMA App that will be available both on android and ios. As from April, every doctor is supposed to subscribe to that and statistics will be made available at the finger tip from NMA office.

PT- What would you like to achieve with the use of this stamp and how will it help in curbing quackery?

Ogirima It is an anti-quackery measure. We discovered that medical reports are written from so many people, who disguise themselves as doctors. A case in question is a report written by a would be NYSC Corp member to camps, saying that a woman will have a mans disease. Definitely, that cannot be from a medical doctor. But such a report, if a doctors stamp is on it, the stamp has the file number of that doctor, the name of that doctor, the institution and the year he graduated from medical school. So, it is there to checkmate a lot of quackery. And also, each medical institution, particularly private institutions should have a logo of such stamp by their sample so that you will know that yes, this is a qualified doctor. From 31st march, 2018, any doctor without the stamp will be treated as a quack. All doctors therefore have until the 31st of March to get their stamps because any letter emanating from a doctor without that stamp, is quackery.

PT- The law amending the National Health Act and prohibiting public servants from going abroad for medical tourism has passed its second reading. What is your opinion on this?

Ogirima As long as a public worker is not using the public money for expenses outside the country, he/she has the right to seek qualitative health care outside the country. For us to have such a blanket law, it is not fair to every Nigerian who has the reason to seek for medical tourism. That law, if passed should be backed up by our infrastructure working optimally. They should be able to compete with such facilities outside the country that our people are running to. The irony is that all the facilities people run to abroad are privately owned. You dont hear our patient going to general hospital Chicago or general hospital, London for treatment. The NMA is advocating that our private entrepreneurs should be encouraged to own and manage a government institution that has been badly managed. When good equipment are put under the private entrepreneur, then you can manage everything. So a public private partnership should be pursued. The government should first manage the infrastructure deficit on ground before passing a law preventing public workers from seeking medical attention abroad.

PT- With the government trying to reduce the pocket spending of Nigerians, dont you think bringing the public private partnership into the health care system will increase more pocket spending?

Ogirima Public Private Partnership (PPP) do not go in isolation. Let me draw our memory back to pre GSM era in our country. I bought my line for 20,000 in 2001 but today, the same line is offered free of charge. With PPP, there will be an initial stress but if it is wisely implemented, the cost of care will drastically reduce and there will be a lot of massive competition just like we have with GSM. That cost will also be buffered by government making Social Health insurance scheme, like the National Health Insurance Scheme, mandatory for all Nigerians.

With resident based study, only 10 per cent of a community will need health service at any point in time. So if everybody is pulling money in a central form that is going to be used for healthcare, only 10 per cent will access that money at any point in time. So we will still have a lot of funds to develop the infrastructure, build up more hospitals, and equip those hospitals to international standard. So health insurance scheme is the key. All these medical tourism outside the country, if you dont subscribe to NHS in Britain, you cant access their services.

Presently, health insurance is only 3 per cent coverage and it is only federal government staff. Few states are trying to come up with their own version but we want all the states to come up, federal government should also bring a template for non-formal sectors, the farmers in the village, the petty traders. This group of non-formal sector have a traditional system of contributing their produce without quarrel. Out of this you can say, one percent of what each person will take as contribution should be set aside for the health insurance scheme.

PT- Most tertiary health institutions in the country have become a shadow of themselves, most of them lack equipment and functional machines. How have doctors been able to work around this and how is it affecting specialization?

Ogirima We have about 42 tertiary health institutions in the country, Federal Medical Centres, Specialist Centres and Teaching Hospitals. Some of the first generation hospitals like UCH, LASUTH are pulling their weight. And then because of negligence over the years, we have some of them dilapidated. Poor funding- The average budgetary provision for healthcare in Nigeria is between 3 to 6 percent as against minimum of 15 percent as agreed in the 2001 Abuja summit. Even the hospitals that are functioning are only managing the little funds they have.

Government in its own wisdom went ahead to withdraw some utility services like laundry, water, light, security. So each hospital is forced to source for them. This is affecting the provision of health services, training and also affecting the general well-being of Nigerians. Some of these hospitals have little options available to treat the populace.

There was an attempt by the past administration, that is 1999 to 2007 to rehabilitate eight of them but after four years, all the facilities were grounded due to (lack) of maintenance of infrastructure. That maintenance culture is not there. Garki hospital in Abuja is 100 percent PPP, and if you look at Garki hospital today and compare it to about 10 years ago, you will know that a lot of significant improvement has been achieved. Though you may say their service is expensive compared to a general hospital but the people who have the money to patronize medical tourism have the money to patronize these services. On the long run, we are still hammering on developing the PPP arrangement to rescue the health system.

PT- What is the reason for wrong diagnosis in Nigeria and what can be done to change this?

Ogirima There are various regulatory bodies. The one for doctors is the MDCN, for the pharmacist is Pharmaceutical Council of Nigeria, the lab scientist and nurses also have theirs. A doctor is trained to listen, examine and subject that patient to specified test(s). In Nigeria, a lot of people want to take a short cut. When someone is having head ache, the first place they go to is the chemist, which means such a person has jumped the normal procedure, which is to first see a doctor.

The first thing the chemist should ask is where is your prescription from the doctor? The problem in this country is that, everyone wants to do everyones work. There should be inter professional collaboration in the health system. Misdiagnosis occurs because a lot of patients wants to short cut the referral system and they meet quacks in the field.

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If Nigerians learn how to follow the steps, by first consulting a doctor who will then refer you to a lab and back to the doctor for prescription. If you jump any of these steps, you will end up with misdiagnosis and the regulatory bodies are empowered to minimize misdiagnosis. Another reason for misdiagnosis is because people are rushing for the money. The value of our system has changed from following the ethics to pursuing money. I tell doctors that practising this profession entails a divine call. If you dont have the call to practice this (and it is) because of the monetary gain, that is where we have a lot of quacks.

PT- We have been having complaints about doctors carrying out operations on people, and just stitching them back, telling them they are treating them for an ailment. What is your association doing about that and how can this be curtailed?

Ogirima As a doctor, you are trained to make a diagnosis. There are certain diagnosis that cannot be made just by seeing or examining the patient or even testing the patient. There are very few surgeries to explore. You open the patient and once you see the diagnosis, a trained surgeon will know when to proceed. If you cant do anything to add value to the surgery, then take a piece of the tissue or organ you think its diseased and come out. Surgeons are trained to make appropriate decision. But the one you are talking of is, somebody, without making a good diagnosis, not prepared nor trained. That is quackery of the highest order.

That is professional misconduct and (the) regulatory body should discipline such an individual. Any member of our association caught doing more harm than good will be disciplined. A doctor must know his/her limit and stop there. Doctors that are not trained to carry out sophisticated surgeries are doing it, forgetting that every surgery carries its own risk. In Nigeria, every male staff is a doctor, even lab scientist, pharmacists are called doctor. And it is a country where great importance is attached to title so everyone wants to be called a doctor.

PT- Nigerians have experienced outbreaks of some diseases in recent times, leading to the death of some medical workers. What can you say they are not doing right, knowing full well that some of these diseases have been with us for years?

Ogirima The whole system is in shambles and that is what we are not doing well. We have the epidemiology of all the diseases, yet we cant prevent them. When last has government taken health education to schools, particularly on personal hygiene? When last did we have public officers going round, making sure our environment and dustbins are clean?

The ministry has an epidemiology unit that is supposed to know the statistic of disease and day in day out, we still have epidemics. So preventives measures are not there. When you come to the hospital, ideally if you enter the emergency room. The doctor has a gadget on, before you touch any patient you must be gloved, you must wear your gown, face mask but all this will add to the cost of services. The only place you can get this services now, is in private hospitals and few selected government hospitals.

I dont advice my colleagues to touch patient with their bare hands. Every patient should be treated as a source of epidemic, so the doctors must use their gloves. If protecting personal equipment are not there then whose responsibility is it to provide such thing? There is what we call certificate of standard in the national health act, who is enforcing that? Do we have monitoring team of the federal ministry of health going round to ensure that this things are available?

PT- There are recurrent cases of medical negligence in the country. How is NMA working to curtail this?

Ogirima Day in day out, we organise retreat to remind ourselves of the call as doctors. Attitude is one of our greatest problem in the health sector. The health practitioners are no more empathic, handle patients as your family. Negligence comes in when ethics are not being followed. The cases of negligence are serious and as an association, we dont encourage such act. The council has an investigating panel that investigate doctors and if such person is found guilty, he will be subjected to a tribunal in the council.

PT: Dr Bawa Garba was delisted from medical practice recently. In your own opinion, do you think she was rightly delisted? What does this imply to the practice?

Ogirima: If her chief was brought into the picture, this would not have happened to her. In the practice, if you are not clear about certain things, ask your senior. It is very unfortunate that it happened to her. The lesson there is always ask your superior whatever you do not understand.

PT: Bringing it home, where most consultants dont go to the hospital in a week because they have clinical days, do we say we have been giving too much to our residents, among others?

Ogirima: Before you appoint someone a consultant, he or she must have that cognitive and professional academic experience. The status of the consultant means that the consultant should have the power finale of the office. Most of our consultants in the public sector dont even have a good office. I am not trying to defend anybody but that is the truth. For you to accept the role of consultant, you have accepted that you are going to guide whoever is working with you, give them proper advice teach them and transfer your knowledge to them.

Of course, a consultant should have at least one senior registrar, two junior registrar, one or two house officers. The junior registrar after seeing a patient, should call him the senior registrar who is about to be a consultant. If the senior registrar cannot solve the problem, then you call your consultant. If you are on call as a consultant, you must be at alert, whether you are living within the hospital or outside the hospital. The perfect system is that system where there is constant communication between the consultant and the residents on ground. The manager of a health institution must make sure that, if a consultant is on call he should provide an environment where a consultant can be reached within the shortest possible time. As a surgeon, you are available 24 hours when you are on call.

By the ratio of doctors to Nigerias population, we are far far below. World Health Organization (WHO) says one doctor to every 600 people but in Nigeria, we have one doctor to 2,000 people, so the work load on the doctors in Nigeria is very high. So if a doctor or consultant sits in the clinic and consults from morning till evening, there should be another doctor taking over but we dont have this in the system. There is no reason why a consultant should be absent, except he or she is authorised by the institution to be absent.

PT: We have been trying to get factors responsible for the mass exodus of doctors and we got different reasons. How can we effectively keep our doctors in the country?

Ogirima: I have had one or two reasons to call state governments to employ a group of doctors. After two years of serving the country, doctors are jobless. In a country where we dont have enough doctors, we cant even employ the ones we trained. The government must increase the capacity of our health institutions, even if it means building more hospitals. There are several abandoned projects in the country but the health sector shouldnt fall under such category. Government should build more hospitals, employ more hands because doctors are dying due to fatigue. Firms from other countries are coming into Nigeria to recruit our doctors. If my country cant employ me for two years and I see someone that wants to employ me outside the country, I will go for it. Doctors are not asking to be the highest paid in the country despite the hard process of training. The World Health Statistics shows that doctors training is the hardest of all professions in the world. Doctors should be motivated because it is divine to study medicine.

If you pay a visit to those states that are encouraging their doctors to move, you will see the difference. Osun is in a bad state. In Kogi State, for the past 5 weeks, the government is not talking to the doctors on strike. Yet, we dont have enough but how are you retaining the ones you have? So, doctors are moving from one state to a greener pasture state. If Zamfara is encouraging doctors from Kogi then let it be. At least, they are still working in Nigeria better than the ones emigrating. I urge more states to motivate civil servants in their states. Abroad, the equipment is there, the motivation is there for doctors to work well.

PT: Over 400 foreign trained medical students recently failed the assessment test. What is the cause of this mass failure? And how can it be addressed?

Ogirima: Globally, if you train in a country that doesnt have reciprocal agreement with the other country, you cannot really move your service. I am trained in Nigeria and I want to go to England to practice, I must sit for an Exam which is equivalent to MDCN licensing exam. Until I pass the exam, I cant practice in that country and same goes with America, South African and even Ghana.

Every April and November, we have licensing exams conducted by external examiners selected from Nigeria medical schools, professors. They set the questions they give to their final year medical student in Nigeria and give them to the foreign trained medical students. The pass rate we are having in Nigeria is about 35 per cent, Ghana is 11 per cent and Kenya has 15 per cent, so Nigeria pass rate is till the highest.

Our investigation is that the country where these children went to train have two parallel system. They train for export and train for their country. Turkey and Ukraine are examples of such country. We found out that most of this children that are failing went to medical schools outside the country, not United States, not Philippines and they gave them some packaging and sent them back to their country. They were not well trained as to merit that certificate.

My advice for government is to organise one year pre sitting for licensing exams, for those deficiencies. Once they can do that, the pass rate may increase. If our children trained here are passing the exams and if they say they were exposed outside the country better than our Nigerian candidate, then they should be able to pass the exams.

The solution is allowing MDCN free hand to supervise this examination. I will advise that MDCN should stop posting students to any hospital. Let them find out where they can attach themselves before they sit for the licensing exams. The children trained in Nigeria excel everywhere in the world, so let them all stay here and get well trained.

PT: You said your tenure will be expiring by April, so how can you grade your tenure and what are your achievements so far?

Ogirima: My tenure that started 29th, April 2016 will be coming to an end by April. From that date, we have instilled discipline in the profession. We have harmonised so many challenges, we have tried to unite the different affiliates and we have extended that by uniting the different professionals in the health sector.

During my tenure, I have not declared any national strike. I believe in dialogue, diplomatic, proactive and bridging any dichotomy. I approach the necessary authority once I hear of any crisis coming up and plan on how to resolve it. We have brought in so many innovations and legacies. The doctors stamp is innovative and we have re-branded NMA.

We have re-branded the Nigeria physician, we go about with our white shirt and green tie. We have amended our constitution and we have expanded our NEC meeting to bring in officers who have ruled the organisation. They bring in their years of experience and we have had a lot of harmonious relationship with different authorities. And I hope when I leave in April, this legacy will be maintained. I want the incoming executives to move this association higher. I want this association to be more concerned with improving the outcome of our patient care.
The Presidency has advised Nigerians to be cautious of the less-than-honest apology offered by the opposition Peoples Democratic Partys national chairman, Uche Secondus.

Mr. Secondus had apologised on behalf of the PDP for all wrongs committed by the party while it ruled Nigeria for 16 years.

The position of the Presidency on Friday reaffirmed an earlier reaction by the Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed, who said the PDP should complement its apology by returning all the funds looted from public treasury under its watch.

The statement, signed by President Muhammadu Buharis spokesperson, Garba Shehu, said the point made by the Minister of Information, is apt and on cue, that there are heavy moral duties that go with apologies if the culprits want to be taken seriously.

The Presidency said PDP is desperate to recapture power because it no longer has unhindered access to national resources for private use and its apology should be seen in this context.

The government also said PDP had not even acknowledged the fact that it plundered the national economy.

Even desperate thieves apologize because they are caught and not because they are incapable of repeating the crime if they had another opportunity, the statement said.

We believe that the PDP should not only apologize for the imposition of candidates, and the culture of impunity, but must also come clean and acknowledge that they participated in large scale corruption and massive diversions of public funds to private pockets while poverty was ravaging the ordinary Nigerians, the Presidency said.

The government also challenged individual PDP leaders to publicly and voluntarily tell Nigerians how much they stole and then agree to cough up their illegal acquisitions of wealth if they want their apology to be taken seriously.

It said apology born out of desperation to recapture power without a desire to admit how much they stole and the reluctance to return the loot is morally hollow.

This goes beyond rebranding. Nigerians are not interested in brands. They want their money back, it said.

For such apology to gain acceptance, the offenders must first of all show remorse; then return that which was unlawfully taken or restore the damage caused the nation; and commit to never doing the wrong they did again.

The PDP has done none of these for them to be taken seriously by anyone, the statement said.

The government also condemned PDPs response to Mr. Mohammeds statement.

It said instead of addressing the issues raised by the Minister, the PDP veered off to accuse the Buhari administration of borrowing money, but failed, in that regard to admit that they borrowed to steal while Buhari administration is borrowing to set up long-delayed infrastructure.

They accused the President of unevenness, of inflaming ethnic and religious tensions, when it is on record that they gave this country its divisive president who chose the hallowed premises of places of worship to read important national statements.

President Buhari never fails in his duty as the Chief Security Officer of the nation. He acts fast whenever and wherever there are incidents by ordering law-enforcement agencies to do their job and fact-finding mission to give him actionable reports, the statement said.

It said PDPs uncaring attitude to these matters, including the kidnapping of 270 girls from Chibok was the hallmark of the long years of misrule.

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Another issue of moral and political significance, the statement said, is about the recent disclosure by U.S. investigators that the PDP government engaged in massive data theft that included the hacking of Candidate Muhammadu Buharis personal data before the last general elections.

It said PDPs continued silence on this reprehensible heist only goes to confirm their remorselessness even as more and more facts are emerging that the same unfair method was the modus operandi that they used to capture political power in previous elections.
The Federal Government of Nigeria has released some names of officials of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that it said looted the treasury while the party was in power.

The government was responding to a challenge by the spokesperson of the PDP, Kola Ologbondiyan, in response to Vice President Yemi Osinbajo who said the PDP administration carried out massive looting of the treasury in the 16 years it was in power.

Mr. Ologbondiyan in a statement on Thursday accused Mr. Osinbajo of not being bold enough to mention names of those he claimed stole public funds.

The Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed, picked up the challenge Friday while addressing journalists in Lagos. The text of the address was sent to PREMIUM TIMES by the information ministry.

Mr. Mohammed said he called the press conference because the PDP has challenged the government to name the looters under their watch.

He also said the PDP had claimed they did not loot the treasury.

Well, I am sure they know that the treasury was looted dry under their watch. Yet they decided to grandstand. This shows the hollowness of their apology to Nigerians, he said.

Mr. Mohammed then gave a list of top officials of the PDP that he said were looters.

He said the national chairman of the party, Uche Secondus, on February 19, 2015 received N200 million from the office of then National Security Adviser (NSA).

Then PDP Financial Secretary, on the 24th of October 2014, took N600 million only from the office of then NSA

Then National Publicity Secretary Olisah Metuh is on trial for collecting N1.4 billion from the office of then NSA, he said.

The minister also said a stalwart of the PDP, Raymond Dokpesi, the Chairman of DAAR Communications is also in trial for receiving N2.1 billion from the office of then NSA.

Former SSA to President Jonathan, Dudafa Waripamo-Owei, on trial over N830 million kept in accounts of four different companies.

Mr. Mohammed said a Federal High Court on Thursday ruled that a cousin of former President Goodluck Jonathan, Robert Azibaola, has a case to answer for collecting $40 million from the office of then NSA.

This list is just a tip of the iceberg, and the PDP is aware of this.

We did not make these cases up. Many of these cases are in court and the records are available, Mr. Mohammed said.

The minister also said some of the people he mentioned are seeking to plea bargain.

Mr. Secondus had within the week apologised to Nigerians on behalf of the PDP for what the party did wrong while it held office.

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The APC administration of President Muhammadu Buhari, however, called on Nigerians to reject the apology and ask the PDP to first return monies stolen under its watch.

We insist that Nigeria was looted blind under the watch of the PDP, and that the starting point in tendering an apology is for them to return the loot.

Its like a robber admitting to stealing your car and apologising, but then saying he will keep the car anyway. It doesnt work that way.

The PDP is a hypocrite. And that reminds me of what English writer William Hazlitt said: The only vice that cannot be forgiven is hypocrisy. The repentance of a hypocrite is itself hypocrisy. Mr. Mohammed said.

He also said the government will not stop talking about the alleged massive looting by the PDP.

He said the party brought Nigeria to its present situation.

We are now looking around for loans to build infrastructure, and they ask us not to talk about it. We will talk about it, the minister said.
The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has described the list of alleged looters published by the federal government as hollow and laughable.

PREMIUM TIMES published the list released by the information minister, Lai Mohammed, earlier on Friday. Mr. Mohammed mentioned the PDP chairman, Uche Secondus, and five others as having benefitted from corruption of the immediate past Goodluck Jonathan administration.

The PDP, however, dismissed the list in a statement issued by its National Publicity Secretary, Kola Ologbondiyan, on Friday in Abuja.

It described the list as an extension of federal governments media trial and challenged it to come up with names of its members against whom the government had secured convictions.

Mr Ologbondiyan stated that the list put forward by the federal government as purported looters amounts to a cheap blackmail, saying that none of those listed have been indicted or convicted by any court of competent jurisdiction or any panel of enquiry in the country.

The PDP said the list only revealed that the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the presidency have no proof of corruption against the PDP.

The party added that in its frenzy and desperation, the federal government even included names of individuals who were not standing trial or under investigation for any act of corruption, as well as people not even PDP members.

The APC Federal Government has manifested its frenzy by going after matters that are in court and in which none of the persons have been convicted.

The party said the APC government did so to divert attention from the heavy looting involving its members.

We are not in doubt that the individuals he has mentioned will take their legitimate stride and pursue appropriate action in the court.

However, attacks on individuals, who are members of our party, does not in anyway detract from the fact that the PDP, as a political platform, is not a party of corruption.

Mr Ologbondiyan added that it was unfortunate that the APC and its government under whose watch horrendous sleazes were happening on daily basis.

He noted that the APC led government which had failed to fulfill the littlest of its campaign promises, could spend a wholesome three years searching for flimsy allegations to discredit PDP and its members.

This is a government that is yet to account for $26 billion (N9 trillion) stolen through corrupt oil contracts in the NNPC, N1.1 trillion worth of crude diverted to service APC interests, N18 billion Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) intervention fund stolen by APC officials.

This include the former Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Babachir Lawal, the N10 billion National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) for which members of the Buhari cabal were indicted.

This includes the Mainagate, where the APC government recalled and reinstated an individual indicted for scam running into billions of naira.

This is in addition to cover provided for serving ministers indicted for corrupt enrichment, among whom is a prominent former APC governor from the South South, who was indicted by his state for stealing billions of naira to fund President Buharis campaign in 2015.

He emphasised that the PDP was on a rebound, saying allegations by the APC could not stop it from challenging the federal government to fulfill its campaign promises.

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Since, the APC has decided to draw this attack, we will no longer hold back but appropriately commence a serialisation of all looters hiding in APC and the Presidency, he said.

Earlier, the federal government through the information minister Lai Mohammed, had released a list of persons who allegedly looted Nigerias economy under PDP watch, describing the list as just a tip of the iceberg.

Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed [Photo: Daily Trust]

Among those listed at a news conference on Friday in Lagos by Mr Mohammed was the PDP Chairman, Uche Secondus, who was alleged to have, on February 19, 2015, received N200 million from the office of then NSA

Then PDP Financial Secretary on the 24th of October 2014, he took N600 million only from the office of then NSA.

Then National Publicity Secretary Olisah Metuh, who is on trial for collecting N1.4billion from the office of then NSA.

Dr Raymond Dokpesi, Chairman of DAAR Communications  On trial for taking N2.1 billion from the office of then NSA

 Former SSA to President Jonathan, Dudafa Waripamo-Owei  On trial over N830 million kept in accounts of four different companies

Former President Jonathans Cousin Robert Azibaol  on Thursday, a Federal High Court ruled that he has a case to answer for collecting $40 million from the office of then NSA, Mr Mohammed listed.

Mr Mohammed released the list after the ruling party was dared by the PDP to do so following corruption allegations made by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo against the Goodluck Jonathan administration.
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The Vatican has reacted to an Italian journalists report quoting Pope Francis as saying hell does not exist.

In a statement on Thursday, the Vatican said though the pontiff met with La Repubblica co-founder, Eugenio Scalfari, he did not grant an interview or make such statements.

In the statement, the Vatican called the article by Mr Scalfari the fruit of his reconstruction.

After death, the souls of people who repent are pardoned by God and join in his contemplation,

but those who do not repent, and therefore cannot be pardoned, disappear.

Hell does not exist  what exists is the disappearance of sinful souls, Mr Scalfari had quoted the pope as saying.

The journalist, a self-acclaimed atheist who has had previous meetings with the pope, has been accused of making up claims about the popes views in the past.

The National Catholic Reporter quotes the statement from the Vatican as stating that the pope and Mr Scalfari had a private meeting with an Easter greeting but not an interview. The agency noted that it was their fifth meeting.

No quotes of the aforementioned article should, therefore, be considered as a faithful transcription of the Holy Fathers words, the statement said.
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The Catholic Archbishop of Lagos, Adewale Martins, has described the two-day working visit of President Muhammadu Buhari to Lagos as ill-timed.

In a statement by the Bishops director of social communication on Thursday, Mr. Martins questioned the motive behind the presidents resolve to schedule the visit at the same time with the most important events of the year for Christians.

According to the statement, the resultant effect of the visit, which includes the closure of roads across Lagos as well as the ban of Okada riders has resulted in untold hardship for the large population of people in Lagos.

PREMIUM TIMES had reported how the restrictions imposed as a result of Mr. Buharis visit affected commuters and travellers on Thursday, forcing many to walk long distances.

Many flights were cancelled as passengers could not get to the Murtala Muhammed airport on time.

As Easter preparations draw to a close, Christians and especially Catholics are expected to embark on processions during the symbolic stations of the the cross, where Christians believe Jesus Christ was killed on the cross of calvary.

Christians are also expected to visit the church several times for the Good Friday activities.

The statement noted the right of the president to visit any part of the country in the discharge of his duty, but warned that such visits should be sensitive to the situation of people especially when it involves the fulfilment of the religious obligations which their faith requires of them.

The timing does not take into consideration Christians in government and security services who would be required to be at work to ensure a smooth, secure and safe visit of the President. It is really unfortunate that the timing of the visit would create such hardships for people and deprive some of their right to worship and take part in the most important feast of their faith, it said.

The statement expressed hope that future preparations of this sort would be made with due consideration of the religious activities of all Nigerians, and that security agencies will not make Good Friday activities tedious for Christians.

We hope that those who plan such visits that are likely to disrupt the normal flow of the life of people would be sensitive enough especially when they affect the right of people to practice their faith and worship as they choose, the statement said.
The Kaduna State government has vowed to go ahead with its request to the World Bank for a $350million loan, despite the decision on Thursday by the Senate that the Nigerian government should not guarantee the facility.

The Senate decided not to approve the loan request after a committee headed by Shehu Sani (APC-Kaduna) advised against it on the ground that the state is the second most indebted in the country.

Mr. Sani, who is the chairman, Senate Committee on Foreign and Domestic Loans, argued that the new loan if approved will erode economic viability of the State.

His position was supported by two other senators from the state, Suleiman Hunkuyi (Kaduna North) and Danjuma Laah (Kaduna South).

Reacting to the federal lawmakers decision, the state government said nothing can stop it from obtaining the loan for the development of the state.

The state Commissioner of Finance, Suleiman Abdu Kwari, at a news briefing in Kaduna on Friday said the excuse given on the floor of the Senate as to the size of the states loan was baseless.

Mr. Kwari said with the way the three senators from the state spoke against the loan, it was apparent they had put their personal frustrations above the right of the people of the state

He said the World Bank was convinced the state has met the conditions before given its approval for the loan.

Having checked our laws, our accounts and our performance, the World Bank was convinced that Kaduna State merits their support. Therefore, on 20th June 2017, the World Bank announced that it has decided to provide a budget support facility of $350m to Kaduna State.

Our Commissioners have appeared before the relevant committees of the Senate and the House of Representatives, and presented detailed explanations for the rationale and the purposes of the loan.

Our delegates were commended for the quality of their presentations. Nobody in those committees of the National Assembly can honestly claim not to be aware of the justification and the purpose of the loan.

In fact, the House of Representatives endorsed the loan. When our officials appeared before the Senate, no questions were asked, the commissioner stated.

The excuse given on the floor of the Senate as to the size of the loan is baseless. The creditor and the ratings agency have adjudged that Kaduna State can sustainably manage the credit which has a 10-year moratorium and a 40-year repayment period.

The State average monthly FAAC allocation for the preceding 12 months is N3.295bn, while our current monthly debt service is N467.12million.

Also, the monthly debt service forecast of the FGN Budget Support Facility of N14.169bn with a moratorium of 18 months and World Bank Loan of $350mn with a moratorium of 10 years are N191.767 mn and N98.843mn respectively.

If the State is to repay all loans today, the total debt service would be N757.735mn representing 23% of total deductions as a percentage of total allocations.

This is less than the threshold for sub-national borrowing, which is capped at 40%. In view of this, Kaduna State is within the sustainable debt level.

What the Senate displayed was elevating the ego of some of its members above the demands of public policy.

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As the three senators from Kaduna State spoke, it was apparent that they have put their personal frustrations above the right of the people of Kaduna State to decent investment in human capital development through good schools and hospitals, and better quality of life and accelerated economic growth through the provision of infrastructure.

Asked the next step the state government would take after the Senate rejected the loan, Mr. Kwari said: There is still hope of getting the loan from the World Bank. This was because there are processes to be concluded at the National Assembly over the loan, including voting for or against by each lawmaker before final rejection or acceptance of the loan.

No amount of blackmail, no amount of intimidation, no amount of misrepresentation, there is no going back for us as long as moving the State forward is concerned.

We know the processes of the World Bank we passed through, it was like passing through the eyes of the needle to get the approval for the loan. So World Bank processes are not like any other institutions.

If we can pass through World Bank processes to get to this stage, then there is still hope to get the loan for the development of the State.

The National Assembly which I know very well, committees will be set up to look at the loan issue, and at the end of the day, the decision will be subjected to voting either for or against. In this case, no Senator or House Reps member has more than one vote.

On the fear expressed by the senators that the loan if approved may be diverted, the commissioner said: There is no way you collect World Bank loan and divert it to another project because one of the conditions of the bank is that the loan must be used for the sole purpose it was collected.

I think the rate at which the state is moving in terms of development, some people will be made politically irrelevant because there is a new dawn in Kaduna where the traditional way of compromising development in the state is dead and buried.

The loan, if obtained, will be used to build community roads, primary schools, secondary schools, health centres, and the economy of such (benefitting) communities will improve as other social activities will take place there.
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Isaac Newton-Farris, one of the organisers of the leadership award received by President Muhammadu Buhari on Monday, says allegation of $3 million payment embarrassing.

Mr. Newton-Farris said this Friday evening in an interview with select journalists in Ikeja, Lagos.

The award generated controversies when the Martin Luther King Centre said the award did not emanate from it.

On Friday, an angry Mr. Newton-Farris described the allegations as insulting and embarrassing.

He said it is a dent on the image of the family, saying he collected no dime but said what he said based on conviction.

Its a lie Its fake news Everyone in Nigeria should be ashamed, he said.
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As politicians prepare for the 2019 general elections, David Ker, a professor and former Vice Chancellor, Benue State University, Makurdi, and nine others have indicated interest in the Benue governorship seat.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Mr. Ker, who is seeking to contest on the platform of the PDP, will slug it out with Terhemen Tarzoor, the partys flag bearer in 2015, that lost to Governor Samuel Ortom.

Other aspirants include Felix Atume, Gabriel Nyitse, David Iorhemba, Paul Orhii, John Tondu, Stephen Hwande, Richard Gbawuan and Tor Iorapuu, also a professor.

NAN reports that the aspirants met with the state working committee of the party on Friday in Makurdi, to formally intimate it of their interest.

At the meeting, the PDP chairman in the state, John Ngbede, assured the aspirants and other PDP members of a free, fair and credible party primaries ahead of the 2019 elections.

Mr. Ngbede said the meeting had created a forum for interaction between the party leadership and the aspirants, adding that it would foster unity and engender healthy contest for the partys ticket.

He promised to hold primary elections that would be accepted by all aspirants, and cautioned against desperate tactics.

The people of Benue are desirous of returning the PDP to power in 2019; we cannot afford to disappoint them, he said.

He restated the pledge by the partys national chairman, Uche Secondus, that PDP would correct past mistakes, and called on the voters to give the party another chance.

We have learnt a lot from our past. Impunity and imposition of candidates by party leaders will not be allowed, he said.

The chairman advised the aspirants and their supporters to avoid negative campaigns against one another, pointing out that they were one family determined to save Benue from collapse.

NAN reports that the 10 governorship aspirants pledged their loyalty to the party, and promised to accept the outcome of the partys primary election.

The aspirants, in separate remarks, however, stressed the need for a free, fair and transparent primary election so as to boost mutual confidence, ensure togetherness and engender co-operation.

(NAN)
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Representative Buba Jibril, (APC/Lokoja/Kogi) who died on Friday in Abuja, has been buried in Lokoja, the News Agency of Nigeria reports.

Mr Jibril, 58, a three-term member of the House of Representatives, was buried amidst tears from families, friends and colleagues that thronged Lokoja for the burial.

The burial was attended by the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara; Kogi Deputy Governor, Simon Achuba; Kogi House of Assembly Speaker, Matthew Kolawole; members of the house, among others.

Mr Dogara, who spoke with journalists after the burial, described Mr Jibril as a fine colleague and brilliant lawmaker.

He lamented the loss of many lawmakers at the same time, and prayed God to halt the tide.

I dont think it has happened before; not to my recollection. We have lost about three senators and five members of the House of Representatives in the past few weeks, he said.

Matthew Kolawole, the Speaker, Kogi House of Assembly, told journalists that the state government, the Kogi House of Assembly, and the entire Kogi would miss him a lot.

Dont forget that he was a former speaker of Kogi House of Assembly, we will miss him a lot.

I pray that God almighty will give all of us the heart to bear the irreparable lost.

What happened today is a big lesson to all of us who are still living.

No matter how rich you are, just remember that sometime, someday, you will drop dead, and when you do, you are going to give account of your life to God.

It is a debt we will all pay sometimes someday, Mr Kola
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About 95 students who reportedly registered to write the just concluded Joint Administration and Matriculation Board (JAMB) conducted exam in Ebonyi State, Friday protested alleged irregularities during the exam.

According to them, the irregularities include not being allowed to write the exams in some of the centres in the state and disappearance of their results from the JAMB website.

The students claimed that they were split into two sets at the Stella Maris Centre in Ohaukwu Local Government Area of Ebonyi State since the hall and available computers could not accommodate all of them. But after the first set, there was no time to conduct the exams for the second batch, they said.

The protesters also included other candidates who alleged what they described as mysterious disappearance of their results from the boards website after it had been reportedly released.

They carried placards with various inscriptions showing their displeasure.

One of the candidates, Okorie Felicia, noted that the JAMB officials told them to wait that their exams would be rescheduled since there was no space and computers to accommodate them.

We were supposed to have our exams on March 10, 2018 by 9.00 a.m. About 95 of us were asked to wait that we will write our exams before another segment by 1.00 p.m. We waited patiently but those accommodated in the 9.00 a.m. segment extended to the afternoon exams. Since then, the JAMB officials have not done anything to reschedule the exams for us.

Another candidate, Ugwu Peter, explained how his results disappeared.

My own case is I checked my result and I scored 274 and on going to print the result, no mark was found. I screenshot the result on my phone but it disappeared when I went back to print it out. Nobody has told us what happened since then and I am afraid as to what may have happened to the result.

Meanwhile, a coordinator at one of the centres in the state, who spoke on condition of anonymity, called on the examination board to revert to the paper exams rather than the present computerised format. He said lack of exam materials at various centres culminated in the inefficiencies in the conduct of the examinations.

However, when contacted, the Ebonyi State JAMB coordinator, Jame Iheme, said she was not aware of any protest.

Where did you say the candidates protested? I was not told but if you want to publish what happened, go ahead, she said in response to an enquiry from PREMIUM TIMES.
SCHAFFHAUSEN, Switzerland, March 30, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- On the eve of World Backup Day, Acronis predicts that 2018 will be the worst year for cyberattacks and data loss incidents due to the increased sophistication of attacks, growing number of ransomware families, and low awareness of ransomware among users.

According to a new data protection survey commissioned by Acronis, over 60 percent of respondents have never heard of ransomware, an expensive attack that is predicted to cost more than $11 billion in 2019, up from $5 billion last year. In 2017, the number of ransomware variants increased by 46 percent, making prevention and detection more challenging. Security experts expect the cyber threat to keep growing, with ransomware attacking a business every 14 seconds in the next two years, up from 40 seconds this year. That prediction does not include attacks on individuals, which are much more frequent.

Acronis warns that only a high-quality, secure backup solution that integrates proactive protection against ransomware can prevent data loss and protect devices.

"When it comes to a ransomware attack, prevention is the most effective defense," said Eric O'Neill, former FBI counter-terrorism and counterintelligence operative. "No business or person is safe. An effective data protection strategy, which includes regularly backing up data and training employees, can go a long way in keeping your data out of the hands of cybercriminals."

Without understanding what ransomware is and how to prevent an attack, the cost to people and businesses will only increase. Ransomware criminals have perfected their social engineering skills to trick users into downloading the malware, while continuing to take advantage of security flaws that make it difficult for traditional anti-virus software to detect an attack. In fact, the Ponemon Institute reports that 69 percent of organizations don't believe their anti-virus can stop the threats they're seeing.

In addition, because cybercriminals recognize how effective backup is at thwarting their attacks, many new strains of ransomware now target backup files and backup software. The Acronis survey revealed that 62 percent of the respondents didn't know that ransomware can encrypt files and backups. Even more staggering, 33 percent reported that they don't back up their data. Only secure backup solutions, such as Acronis Backup and Acronis True Image, which include an active, artificial intelligence-based defense against ransomware, are capable of detecting and blocking these sophisticated attacks.

"Ransomware attacks have made headlines over the past year. Yet despite the growing number of attacks, awareness of the problem and the importance of preventing the attacks seem to be slowing down," said John Zanni, president of Acronis. "Awareness needs to grow in order to help people realize the importance of securely backing up and protecting data. As part of our 15th anniversary, we're committed to educating people about protecting their data, no matter where it resides."

"Ransomware is a silent killer of all exposed information worldwide. The recent rounds of ransomware attacks proved that businesses and institutions across the globe underestimated this growing threat. The biggest concern is that those affected are willing to pay ransom rather than proactively protect their systems and devices. However, this growing threat forced companies, like Acronis, to develop innovative technologies and help companies and users all over the world fight ransomware attacks," said Robert Westervelt, Research Director, Security Products, IDC.

Earlier this month, Acronis completed a consumer survey regarding data protection, polling the general internet population in seven different countries, including the U.S., U.K., Australia, Germany, Spain, France and Japan. Additional results include:

Nearly 39 percent of the respondents have four or more devices in their household, meaning more end points and data to protect

Over 29 percent of the respondents experienced data loss

Preparing for cyberattacks with Acronis Active Protection

As a response to the growing ransomware epidemic, Acronis enhanced its backup solutions with innovative, AI-based anti-ransomware technology. Introduced in January 2017, Acronis Active Protection effectively defends both user files and their backups by identifying and blocking ransomware attacks in real-time. In the past 12 months, Acronis Active Protection stopped 200,000 attacks across 180,000 consumer devices.

Acronis also introduced Acronis Ransomware Protection, a free, light-weight version of its AI-based defense that can be used together with other data protection solutions, such as anti-virus and backup software from other vendors. Like the full version of Acronis Active Protection, this free solution monitors system processes in real-time to automatically detect and stop the attacks other solutions can't.

In the event of a ransomware attack, Acronis' technology blocks the malicious process and notifies the user. If any files were damaged in the attack, it facilitates the instant recovery of those affected files.

Advice for World Backup Day

Acronis offers four easy steps to protect data:

Always have a backup of your important data . Store your data locally and in the cloud to ensure a clean version will survive any data loss event.

. Store your data locally and in the cloud to ensure a clean version will survive any data loss event. Keep your operating system and software up to date . It will block cybercriminals from entering your system through any known security holes.

. It will block cybercriminals from entering your system through any known security holes. Be mindful of suspicious email, links, and attachments . The most effective infiltration method used by ransomware criminals is their ability to get users to open infected email attachments and to click on links to malicious websites.

. The most effective infiltration method used by ransomware criminals is their ability to get users to open infected email attachments and to click on links to malicious websites. Install anti-virus software on your computer and enable automatic signature updates. If you are on a PC, make sure your Windows Defender is enabled and is up-to-date.

Find out more about how you can protect your data at https://www.acronis.com/en-us/promo/world-backup-day/

Read more about the survey results here: https://www.acronis.com/en-us/blog/posts/world-backup-day-2018-survey-results

About Acronis

Acronis sets the standard for hybrid cloud IT data protection through its backup, active ransomware protection, disaster recovery, and secure file sync and share solutions. Powered by the Acronis AnyData Engine and set apart by its image technology, Acronis delivers easy, fast, complete and affordable data protection of all files, applications and operating systems across any environmentvirtual, physical, cloud, mobile and applications. Founded in 2003 in Singapore, with global headquarters in Switzerland, Acronis protects the data of more than 5 million consumers and 500,000 businesses in over 150 countries and 20 languages. With more than 100 patents, Acronis products are consistently named best product of the year and cover a range of features, including migration, cloning, and replication. Today, Acronis solutions are available worldwide through a global network of service providers, distributors, and cloud resellers. Learn more at acronis.com.

CONTACT: Katya Turtseva, [email protected]

SOURCE Acronis

Related Links

https://www.acronis.com


WASHINGTON, March 30, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Yesterday, ACTION for Trade sent a letter to Ambassador Robert Lighthizer urging him to include provisions that protect U.S. innovators' and creators' intellectual property in the NAFTA deal he's currently negotiating. This week, Lighthizer expressed optimism that an agreement in principle with Canada and Mexico could be reached soon.

ACTION for Trade

"As the United States, Mexico, and Canada push to conclude NAFTA negotiations, it's imperative that they strengthen the agreement's protections for intellectual property," said Brian Pomper, executive director of ACTION for Trade. "IP fuels our nation's economy; safeguarding it must be a top priority for the U.S. Trade Representative and his team."1

In its letter, ACTION argues that IP-intensive companies can only contribute to the U.S. economy if they're accorded "strong protection of their IP around the world, new market access opportunities, and fair international trading rules." The letter also highlights how market-based systems, copyright protection and enforcement, and fair patent regulation can spur innovation.

Innovative and creative industries were responsible for $1.2 trillion in economic activity in the United States in 2015.2 Americans recognize how important these industries are. Nearly three in four voters believe it's important to strengthen copyright and intellectual property protections in NAFTA.3

"ACTION for Trade applauds Ambassador Lighthizer for the work he's done to protect U.S. intellectual property," said Pomper. "We're hopeful that the Ambassador and his counterparts in Mexico and Canada will reach a final deal on NAFTA that enhances the IP landscape for all U.S. creators and innovators."

About ACTION for Trade

The American Creative, Technology, and Innovative Organizations Network is a coalition of trade associations and businesses dedicated to shaping U.S. trade policy. ACTION for Trade aims to make sure U.S. trade policy and trade agreements foster innovation and creativity and protect the intellectual property that drives U.S. trade competitiveness. ACTION for Trade also seeks to help shape global trade standards to advance American creativity and innovation, to grow IPR-enabled U.S. services trade surplus, and to open new markets for American creators and innovators.

For more information, visit www.ActionForTrade.org.

Contact:

Emily Troisi

(202) 471-4228 ext. 120

[email protected]

1 https://ustr.gov/sites/default/files/files/Press/Reports/2018/AR/2018%20Annual%20Report%20I.pdf, page 9

2 https://iipa.org/reports/copyright-industries-us-economy/

3 http://actionfortrade.org/trade-and-innovation-survey/

SOURCE ACTION for Trade

Related Links

http://actionfortrade.org


CHARLOTTE, N.C., March 30, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Agingo Corporation, a software company, will demonstrate the core functionality of a new blockchain platform at its headquarters in Charlotte, NC today. The NOOB (or "Not-Only-One-Blockchain") platform is a combination of multiple blockchains working together. The NOOB platform not only permits the exchange of value and other information, but it enables the assessment of trustworthiness among users while protecting user identity. The platform is highly scalable, is designed to address current limitations in blockchain technology, and is expected to go into full commercial operation in the fall of 2018.

Agingo NOOB Institute

Recognizing that the NOOB platform has a wide spectrum of uses, far beyond the focus of Agingo, the company also announced the creation of a non-profit NOOB Institute, which will control the continuing development and licensing of the technology.

Jacob Hall and Kyriakos Skiouris, founders of Agingo Corp, commenting on the first demonstration of their ground-breaking development said, "This is an exciting development for blockchain as a whole, it has been the holy grail to find a scalable blockchain, to be able to demonstrate this first scalable platform sets us apart from the crowd" [Kyriakos Skiouris]; and, "Agingo is committed to putting trustworthiness into the internet in every way possible, pioneering the NOOB Platform enables that future" [Jacob Hall].

Come celebrate with Agingo as it announces this milestone in development of the NOOB Platform. Join us for drinks, food, and fun with the Agingo team Friday, March 30th, at 615 South College Street / 9th floor. Space is limited please sign up at www.meetup.com/agingo

Cheers!

If you would like more information about the NOOB protocol, please contact Kyriakos Skiouris / Jacob Hall at 1-888-298-0777 or email [email protected]. Website: agingo.com

SOURCE Agingo Corp.
BOCA RATON, Fla., March 30, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- AmBase Corporation ("AmBase" or the "Company") (OTC: ABCP) announced today a net loss of $48,057,000 or $1.18 per share for the twelve months ended December 31, 2017.

The net loss for the twelve months period ended December 31, 2017, includes a $63,745,000 impairment of the Company's equity investment in the 111 West 57th Property partially offset by a tax benefit of $20,086,000 relating to AMT Credit carryforwards projected to be refundable in future tax years as provided for in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

For the twelve months ended December 31, 2016, the Company recorded a net loss of $3,219,000 or $0.08 per share.

Statements made in this press release may be forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Forward-looking statements are inherently subject to risks and uncertainties, many of which cannot be predicted or quantified. Forward-looking statements can be identified by such words as "estimates," "expects," "anticipates," "believes," "plans," "intends" and variations of such words and similar expressions. The Company cautions readers that a variety of factors could cause the Company's actual results to differ materially from the anticipated results or other expectations expressed in the Company's forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the Company's control, include, but are not limited to those set forth under the heading "Forward-Looking Statements" and "Risk Factors" in the Company's Annual Reports on Form 10-K, as may be supplemented or amended by the Company's Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, which are incorporated herein by reference. The Company assumes no obligation to update or supplement forward-looking statements that become untrue because of subsequent events, new information or otherwise.

The Company also announced that it has fixed the close of business on Wednesday, April 18, 2018, as the record date for the upcoming 2018 Annual Meeting of Stockholders of AmBase Corporation, which will be held at 9:00 AM Eastern Time on Thursday, June 7, 2018 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, 1800 East Putnam Avenue, Greenwich, Connecticut.

The information in this press release should be read in conjunction with the AmBase Corporation's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year-to-date period ended December 31, 2017, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. A more complete discussion of the Company's annual results and the Company's affairs is included in AmBase Corporation's Annual Report on 10-K for the annual period December 31, 2017, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

AmBase Corporation Summary Results (in thousands, except per share data)





























Twelve Months













2017 2016 Operating expenses



$ 4,306 $ 2,914 Operating loss





(4,306) (2,914) Interest expense





(67) - Other income





- 128 Impairment of equity investment in 111 West 57th Partners LLC (63,745) - Equity income (loss) - 111 West 57th Partners LLC (25) (575) Income (loss) before income taxes

(68,143) (3,361) Income tax expense (benefit)





(20,086) (142) Net income (loss)



$ (48,057) $ (3,219)

















Net income (loss) per common share - basic $ (1.18) $ (0.08)

















Weighted average common shares outstanding - basic 40,738 40,738





































SOURCE AmBase Corporation
ROHNERT PARK, Calif., March 30, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- A lot of attention is placed on whether low-income families can afford college, but what about middle-income families? Pell grants, tuition discounts and other need-based aid goes a long way to help low-income students attend college and get a shot at social mobility. However, middle-income students may benefit just as much from need-based aid that they currently are not eligible to receive. Ameritech Financial, a document preparation company that assists borrowers in applying for federal repayment plans, reminds borrowers that if their student debt burden is too high, they may benefit from income-driven repayment plans.

Middle-income families find themselves in a strange position when it comes to funding college: they make too much money to qualify for need-based aid but not enough to cover the full costs. Therefore, those students must rely on loans, both federal and private.

"College is expensive and even the middle class may have trouble paying for it," said Tom Knickerbocker, executive vice president of Ameritech Financial. "Those students may end up taking out loans to cover the full cost of college, which can put them in a worse situation than their low-income peers."

An important part of financial aid awards is the Expected Family Contribution (EFC), which is an amount the federal government thinks a family can contribute to the student's college expenses. The government awards need-based aid to families with low EFC amounts. Because middle-class families are more likely to own houses or have more money in their bank accounts, that EFC will be higher, often pushing them above the need-based threshold.

However, not all parents choose to help their children through college and, in fact, many financial experts advise parents to focus instead on their own retirement funds. That could result in students needing to take out additional loans to cover the EFC amount. To address such parental decisions, this article suggests that financial aid consider how much a family will actually help a student, rather than how much they are able to help.

Regardless of the why behind high debt balances, borrowers who are struggling to pay them back may have options. The Department of Education offers several repayment plans for borrowers who cannot afford the standard plan payments. In particular, many borrowers find income-driven repayment plans (IDRs) to be valuable in that they base payments on income and family size, which can reduce payments and ease the financial strain on households.

"It doesn't matter what income bracket they come from. If borrowers are having trouble paying down their debt because their income isn't high enough, they may need help understanding federal options," said Knickerbocker. "At Ameritech Financial, we help borrowers who may be struggling to make their federal student loan payments apply for IDRs and we also assist with annual recertification paperwork as long as they wish to stay in the program."

About Ameritech Financial

Ameritech Financial is a private company located in Rohnert Park, California. Ameritech Financial has already helped thousands of consumers with financial analysis and student loan document preparation to apply for federal student loan repayment programs offered through the Department of Education.

Ameritech Financial is a member of the Association for Student Loan Relief (AFSLR), and each representative on the phone has received the Certified Student Loan Professional certification through the International Association of Professional Debt Arbitrators (IAPDA).

Ameritech Financial prides itself on its exceptional customer service.

Contact

To learn more about Ameritech Financial, please contact:

Ameritech Financial

5789 State Farm Drive #265

Rohnert Park, CA 94928

1-800-792-8621

[email protected]

Related Links

Ameritech Financial home page

SOURCE Ameritech Financial
ROHNERT PARK, Calif., March 30, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Low-income students, especially first-generation students, have a lot of resources for funding a college education, but that doesn't mean the process is easy. Whereas middle- or upper-income students may have experience with the higher education process, low-income and first-generation students may stumble or make mistakes. Ameritech Financial, a document preparation company that helps borrowers with federal repayment plan applications, reminds borrowers who ended up with unmanageable student loan payments that they may find some relief in income-driven repayment plans.

"College promises big things for a low-income student's future," said Tom Knickerbocker, executive vice president of Ameritech Financial. "They can potentially earn more in their lifetimes and achieve the 'American Dream' of social mobility. Inexperienced families should therefore not let annoying paperwork or other factors get in the way of working toward an affordable college education."

There are several ways to reduce the costs of college, including choosing one with minimal living expenses and getting through the degree program as quickly as possible  additional terms to make up classes or explore majors will add to the cost. Many students find value in attending a community college first, which is usually a cheaper option, and then transferring to a four-year school.

However, perhaps the biggest way to reduce the cost is to be careful about how to fund it. There are a variety of need-based financial aid offerings for low-income and first-generation students, including grants, scholarships and work-study funds. But to access those funds, students must fill out the FAFSA, which can be a long process if they do not have the necessary information on-hand. However, low-income students should complete the FAFSA as soon as possible to avoid missing out on need-based aid.

Each school will offer their own financial aid packages and families should analyze those carefully. Some may look more expensive but offer more need-based aid than others. Before accepting any aid, they may choose to speak to a professional.

Even with experience behind them, borrowers may end up with more loans than they can manage. Because students take loans on a yearly basis, and tuition, living costs or other expenses can increase, it's difficult to predict how much debt will have accumulated by graduation. Borrowers who find themselves struggling with federal loans may consider federal income-driven repayment plans (IDRs), which base payments on income and family size rather than a set 10-year payoff term.

"First-generation and low-income students may be surprised by the amount of debt they leave college with, but they should know that it's not the end of the world," said Knickerbocker. "At Ameritech Financial, we help borrowers understand and apply for IDRs that we hope greatly improve their financial situations and allow them to strive for that social mobility they attended college to jumpstart."

About Ameritech Financial

Ameritech Financial is a private company located in Rohnert Park, California. Ameritech Financial has already helped thousands of consumers with financial analysis and student loan document preparation to apply for federal student loan repayment programs offered through the Department of Education.

Ameritech Financial is a member of the Association for Student Loan Relief (AFSLR), and each representative on the phone has received the Certified Student Loan Professional certification through the International Association of Professional Debt Arbitrators (IAPDA).

Ameritech Financial prides itself on its exceptional customer service.

Contact

To learn more about Ameritech Financial, please contact:

Ameritech Financial

5789 State Farm Drive #265

Rohnert Park, CA 94928

1-800-792-8621

[email protected]

Related Links

Ameritech Financial home page

SOURCE Ameritech Financial
GLENDALE, Calif., March 30, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Coming off the success of their trip to the Mumbai in February, Blockchain enabled Export Portal looks forward to showcasing what ExportPortal e-Commerce platform can do for international trade at The Vietnam Expo in Hanoi, April 11-14.

Ally Spinu, CEO of Export Portal, said "Machinery and automation are fast replacing farmlands across Vietnam and contributing to the nation's foreign trade and foreign affairs. Export Portal understands the innate desire to compete on the world stage and offer an alternative to rising manufacturing costs from other countries. We want the best of Vietnam to be a part of our success story."

While spending a week in Vietnam, Ms. Spinu and her team will be meeting with business leaders and government officials about where Export Portal's platform can be of service to spur more global trade. Her team's own experience in searching for promotional products manufactured around Hanoi proved difficult because there was absolutely no assurance that the product would have even come from Vietnam. What would any other company from anywhere else in the world do? We know the end of that storywhich is why we created ExportPortal.com.

Ms. Spinu continued, "The world's trade commerce is tired of deceptive internet marketing and ExportPortal.com doesn't want any country to miss any opportunity. Our private blockchain backbone in conjunction with our KYC process means that companies can establish their own course for as a company in good standing that buyers from around the world can believe in."

To meet us in Vietnam or to discuss international e-Commerce with our Business Development Lead, Email Export Portal at: [email protected] or via WhatsApp: 1+ (818)213-6181. Our team has a plan, but we still want to know where in the world we should go next to continue our 100+ Country World Tour in 2018!

About Export Portal & ExportPortal.com:

Blockchain enabled international B2B ecommerce (http://ec-b2b.com/)

Ecosystem that is fast looking for more than just investors (http://b2b-ec.com/).

120+ countries; 80+ major industries; Thousands already signed up.

Any industry; any sized company; any country: Free to join

SOURCE Export Portal

Related Links

http://www.ExportPortal.com


BANGKOK, March 30, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- MIT hosted its 21st annual Global Startup Workshop, co-sponsored by Penta Global Foundation, in Bangkok, Thailand from March 26-28, 2018. Keynote addresses were delivered by several distinguished speakers, including Dr. Pichet Durongkaveroj, Thai Minister of Digital Economy and Society; Dr. Dr. Kobsak Pootrakool, Minister Attached to the Prime Minister's Office of Thailand; and Dr. Richard Lester, Associate Provost at MIT.

The three-day event, hosted first at Central World Convention Center and later at Chulalongkorn University's Sasin School of Management, was packed with additional speakers, workshops hosted by entrepreneurs and MIT alumni, and distinguished panels. A panel on Developing an Innovative Ecosystem, exploring the dos and don'ts of entrepreneurship, kicked off the first day's proceedings. Leslie Millar-Nicholson, MIT's Director of Technology Licensing, and Tom Glock, MIT's Director of Business Relations, joined Dr. Pun-Arj Chairatana, Director of the National Innovation Agency for the Ministry of Science and Technology; Dipul Patel, Entrepreneur in Residence at the MIT Martin Trust Center; and a representative of the Thai Chamber of Commerce on the panel. Entrepreneurs looking for insights on how top universities counsel startups were treated to a vibrant conversation on how best to take an idea and turn it into an operational business, all while trying to avoid the traps that land so many startups in the dustbin.

The lead panel of the second day was on Fintech: Blockchain. Aung Kyaw Moe, CEO of 2C2P moderated a panel of industry experts that included David Ritter, CEO of Penta Global Foundation, a next generation blockchain platform out of Singapore; Jarung Kiatsupapong, Managing Director of Kasikorn Soft Co., Ltd., a provider of blockchain technology solutions to Thai banks; and Dr. Karndee Leopairote, CEO of ICORA, a specialist in Thai ICOs. The panelists started by explaining the difference between blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies, then discussed topics ranging from emerging regulations in Thailand and the U.S. to the power of distributed ledger technologies to disrupt industries. This was perhaps the best-attended panel of the three days, a testament to the excitement and interest in the Southeast Asian startup scene for blockchain. The crowd of 400-500 attendees had no trouble thinking of questions to ask the panelists before time ran out.

Towards the end of the second day, entrepreneurs were invited to participate in an elevator pitch competition. Approximately twenty brave entrepreneurs lined up and took the stage, one by one, to deliver a sixty-second elevator pitch about their startups to a panel of judges. They came from France, Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, the United States, and elsewhere, eager to test out their ideas on the MIT GSW stage. The stakes were high as there was a cash prize of $1,000 on the line, and the prestige of winning the 2018 MIT GSW elevator pitch competition.

But the highest cash prize was reserved for the business plan competition. Over the course of three hours, twelve teams of entrepreneurs with businesses in various stages of development took center stage at the Sasin School of Management, where they competed for the coveted $10,000 cash prize, and the chance to win an all-expenses-paid trip to MIT's campus in Boston to continue in the second round. After presenting powerpoints with descriptions of their business models and financial projections, candidates fielded questions from a panel of judges. Tough questions, to be sure. And the room was packed with some 200-300 students, faculty from Sasin and MIT, leaders of the GSW workshops, and the conference's sponsors.

This year's winner was an MIT student with a startup called Sanviato, focused on innovating an at at-home assessment for blood coagulation on mobile phones. The runner up was a Thai startup called Truck360, seeking to solve the problem of empty truck back-hauling, with huge market potential in the Thailand trucking industry.

More valued than the cash prizes for competitors was the chance to associate their startups with the vaulted name of world-class academic institutions such as MIT and Sasin. In addition to those academic communities, many large companies that sponsored this year's MIT GSW were also watching. Official sponsors this year included Bangkok Bank, K Bank, Ptt Group, Startup Thailand, ThaiBev, Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET), Penta Gobal Foundation, and more. At the sponsors dinner, David Ritter of Penta was asked to deliver the keynote speech. In the speech, Mr. Ritter posed the question, "Can blockchain solve real problems?" He answered by showing the audience several examples of blockchain projects Penta has already deployed, including Blockchain Rice, a food security project that uses blockchain technology to track rice from farm to purchase. Mr. Ritter connected the promise of blockchain technology with this year's MIT GSW theme, Dream Big. Dream Tech. As Mr. Ritter said, "We are dreaming big with blockchain!"

No doubt symptoms of global blockchain fever were present at the MIT Global Startup Workshop this year in Bangkok. From the Fintech panel to the keynote address of the sponsors dinner, to many startups in the elevator pitch and business plan competitions, it was impossible to avoid the hot topic of blockchain. The captivating appeal of this emerging technology was one of the conference's overlapping themes, which is no surprise as distributed ledger technologies have taken the worldwide startup scene by storm.

SOURCE PENTA GLOBAL FOUNDATION
WASHINGTON, March 30, 2018 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation's largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, today announced the filing of an amicus (friend of the court) brief on behalf of six individuals challenging the lawfulness of President Trump's "Muslim Ban 3.0."

CAIR's brief was filed with the U.S. Supreme Court in the Muslim ban case now set for oral argument on April 25.

SEE: Supreme Court Oral Arguments - #NoMuslimBanEver

https://www.facebook.com/events/442545896184308/

READ CAIR'S BRIEF: https://tinyurl.com/CAIRAmicusBrief

The brief -- filed in the wake of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit's decision in February declaring Trump's Muslim ban unconstitutional  states in part: "The injuries suffered by the [plaintiffs] are beyond the pale. If they are beyond the power of the courts to remedy, we fear for what is yet to come."

[NOTE: CAIR and the Brennan Center for Justice filed the lawsuit in October 2017. On appeal, that case, Zakzok v. Trump, was consolidated with two others and was jointly decided by the Fourth Circuit.]

SEE: 'The Words of the President' Doom Trump Travel Ban, Fourth Circuit Says



"Muslim Ban 3.0 is an illegal expression of anti-Muslim animosity that the Supreme Court must reject," said CAIR National Litigation Director Lena Masri.

"The Supreme Court has the opportunity to strike a blow against the Trump administration's ugly white supremacist agenda," said CAIR Senior Litigation Attorney Gadeir Abbas.

"We call on the Supreme Court to recognize that American Muslims are entitled to constitutional protections like every other religious group in the United States," said CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad.

In December of last year, CAIR applauded the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals' unanimous decision against the Trump administration's "Muslim Ban 3.0."

SEE: CAIR Welcomes Another Court Ruling Against Trump's 'Muslim Ban 3.0'

CAIR is America's largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization. Its mission is to enhance understanding of Islam, protect civil rights, promote justice, and empower American Muslims.

CONTACT: CAIR National Litigation Director Lena Masri, 248-390-9784, [email protected]; CAIR Senior Litigation Attorney Gadeir Abbas, 720-251-0425, [email protected]

SOURCE Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)

Related Links

http://www.cair.com


Upon arrival, guests received a warm welcome from the Tennessee Titans Cheerleaders and were greeted by the familiar sounds of live country music being performed on the hotel's lobby stage at True Music Room and Bar . Performances included a 60-minute set by country music star and the winner of The Voice , Cassadee Pope, and songs by local band Nashville Yacht Club. Guests also enjoyed the Nashville sound from the hotel's rooftop bar and outdoor patio.

Following a ribbon-cutting ceremony, guests celebrated with drinks from True Music Room and Bar and local fare from the soon-to-open NashHouse, Southern Spoon and Saloon, located on the street level of the Cambria Hotel Nashville. Hotel tours highlighted the tailored Music City-inspired design details incorporated throughout the property, including an art installation of western boots, a photo booth and reclaimed wood walls sourced locally.

Speakers at the event included Senior Vice President of Upscale Brands for Choice Janis Cannon, and President and CEO of Fillmore Capital Partners Ron Silva, who expressed their excitement about the Cambria brand's arrival in Nashville and robust growth across the United States.

"Celebrating the Cambria Hotel Nashville, located at the epicenter of the City and created for the design literate, experience-hungry traveler, is a fantastic way to highlight the brand's continued expansion into major markets across the country. Local authenticity is the essence of the Cambria Hotels brand and this property really delivers for the modern traveler through multiple touchpoints  design, decor, food and beverage and, of course, service," said Cannon. "We're happy to have once again teamed up with Fillmore Capital Partners and Fillmore Hospitality for this brand defining project."

Fillmore Hospitality is a management company that provides a full spectrum of development, investment and property management services to owners of hotels and resorts throughout North America. Choice Hotels previously worked with Fillmore Hospitality to bring the Cambria brand to multiple regions of the country, including the Cambria Hotel New Orleans Downtown Warehouse District, Cambria Hotel LAX, Cambria Hotel Chicago Magnificent Mile, and Cambria Hotel Southlake DFW North.

"Choice Hotels and Fillmore continue to work together to open great hotels, and we are thrilled to be opening the doors of another Cambria property together particularly in the growing city of Nashville," said Silva. "When researching hotel collaborations, we seek fresh and innovative projects. The Cambria Hotels brand continues to deliver for us, and Choice offers outstanding support to set these hotels up for success."

About Cambria Hotel Nashville

Located at 8th Avenue and McGavock, in the heart of Nashville's SoBro neighborhood, the newly constructed upscale Cambria Hotel Nashville features 255 rooms custom-designed for the modern business professional. The hotel features a sleek rooftop pool, barista bar, and a stunning 2,800 square foot music venueTrue Music Room and Baradjacent to the lobby. The design of the Cambria Hotel Nashville reflects and celebrates its Music City location, cleverly incorporating music- and Nashville-centric references into the hotel's furniture, artwork, and fixtures. This recently opened upscale hotel marks the Cambria brand's debut in the Nashville market and an ongoing collaboration with Fillmore Capital Partners, Fillmore Hospitality and Choice Hotels. For more information on Cambria Hotel Nashville, visit www.cambrianashville.com.

About Cambria Hotels

Cambria Hotels are designed for the modern traveler, offering guests a distinct experience with simple, guilt-free indulgences allowing them to treat themselves while on the road. Properties feature compelling design inspired by the location, spacious and comfortable rooms, flexible meeting space, and local freshly prepared food and craft beer. Cambria Hotels is rapidly expanding in major U.S. cities, with hotels open in Chicago, New York City, Pittsburgh, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles. There are more than 35 Cambria properties open across the United States, and over 100 hotels open or in the pipeline in the U.S. and Canada. To learn more, visit www.cambriahotelsandsuites.com.

About Choice Hotels

Choice Hotels International, Inc. (NYSE: CHH) is one of the world's largest hotel companies. With over 6,800 hotels franchised in more than 40 countries and territories, Choice Hotels International represents more than 500,000 rooms around the globe, and as of February 1, 2018, more than 1,000 hotels were in its development pipeline. Our company's Ascend Hotel Collection, Cambria Hotels, Comfort Inn, Comfort Suites, Sleep Inn, Quality, Clarion, MainStay Suites, Suburban Extended Stay Hotel, WoodSpring Suites, Econo Lodge, Rodeway Inn, and Vacation Rentals by Choice Hotels brands provide a spectrum of lodging choices to meet guests' needs. With more than 35 million members, our Choice Privileges rewards program enhances every trip a guest takes, with benefits ranging from every day rewards to exceptional experiences, starting right when they join. All hotels and vacation rentals are independently owned and operated. Visit us at www.choicehotels.com for more information.

About Fillmore Capital Partners

Fillmore Capital Partners, LLC ("FCP") is a private investment company that engages in the development of operating companies and strategies on behalf of institutional and select private-client investors. FCP focuses on healthcare, lodging and other operating company platforms, as well as opportunistic investments in a variety of real estate related asset classes. To learn more, visit www.fillmorecap.com.

About Fillmore Property Group

Fillmore Property Group, LTD ("FPG") is a multi-disciplinary Real Estate Firm with cross sector experience including hospitality, industrial, office, retail, restaurant, healthcare and multi-family. FPG oversees site assessment, planning, development, construction, and property management for clients. Visit www.fillmoreproperty.com for more information.

About Fillmore Hospitality

Fillmore Hospitality, LLC is a management company that provides a full spectrum of development, investment and property management services to owners of hotels and resorts throughout North America. The firm's principals and executives have worked together for more than 25 years to deliver consistently superior financial results for their clients. Visit www.fillmorehospitality.com for more information.

 2018 Choice Hotels International, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

SOURCE Choice Hotels International, Inc.
WASHINGTON, March 29, 2018 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- His Royal Highness Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman met with former United States Secretary of State, Secretary John Kerry yesterday in New York City. During the meeting, His Royal Highness had a friendly and candid exchange with the former Secretary of State, where the discussion included many topics, ranging from reforms and changes in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to regional developments. The meeting was also attended by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia's Ambassador to the United States of America, His Royal Highness Ambassador Prince Khalid bin Salman.

SOURCE Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia, Information Office
WASHINGTON, March 30, 2018 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- During His Royal Highness' visit to New York City, His Royal Highness Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman separately held meetings with James P. Gorman, CEO of Morgan Stanley Bank, and Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of J.P. Morgan Chase Bank. The meetings provided a chance to have an open exchange of ideas. They provided a look into the kind of services provided by each bank in the Kingdom and what is possible in terms of further opportunities for cooperation, as well as developing better strategic partnerships. These meetings reflect the Kingdom's dedication to reforming and transforming under the auspices of Vision 2030.

SOURCE Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia, Information Office
"We are excited that our first community solar array is in our home town of Callicoon, New York. And we are very gratified by all the local support as evidenced by the fact 82 percent of the power is subscribed by people in Sullivan County and 52 percent in the town itself," said Rich Winter, CEO at Delaware River Solar.

Ampion conducted an expansive customer acquisition campaign within the Callicoon community. "The benefits of CDG surprised most people," said Chris Mills, Customer Acquisition Lead at Ampion, "but once prospects understood CDG, we received more participation than this project could handle. We're excited to work with DRS on such an innovative model that benefits locals who previously couldn't take advantage of solar. We found there is tremendous popularity for this product, even in a rural area like upstate New York."

Ampion will manage the ongoing needs of the Callicoon project, performing back-office billing, monitoring, and customer service operations using its software platform. Additionally, Ampion has acquired customers for a second DRS project in Baldwin, New York.

About Delaware River Solar

DRS is a solar development company focused on building community solar projects in New York State. Their community solar farms bring green, renewable energy to residents and businesses while saving them money on their electric bills. With offices in New York City and Callicoon, DRS has full development, financing, construction, and project management capabilities.

About Ampion

Ampion performs Customer and Asset Management services for renewable energy developers, retailers, asset owners, utilities, CCAs, municipalities, property owners, and corporate users. Ampion's cloud-based platform supports customer acquisition, billing and payment, performance monitoring, contract management, and customer engagement services to enable portfolio and revenue optimization for all renewable energy projects. To learn more, visit ampion.io or email [email protected].

Contact: Michael Rudden, [email protected], 617-433-7913

SOURCE Ampion

Related Links

http://ampion.io


NEW YORK, March 30, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Easter is a time of festivities all around the globe. Different countries have different ways to celebrate the essence of this springtime festival of Easter. While many Americans are applying for tickets to attend the White House Egg Roll lottery, others are rejoicing at the special service in the churches or are participating in the Easter Parade dressed in the traditional outfits.

Children look adorable in their cute bunny costumes holding a basket of colored and decorated eggs. Easter Bonnets festooned with flowers are displayed on the windows of the shops during this time. Easter flowers like white Lilies and Passion flowers carry special symbolic meanings and are in demand during the festival.

Chocolate bunnies to decorative eggs are all part of the grand celebrations of Easter Sunday. Egg rolling and egg hunting are some of the famous activities in which people from all over the world partake in.

Millions of greeting cards are exchanged every year in Easter, making it one of the most celebrated event. 123Greetings.com offers a vast collection of cards, developed by our visualizers from across the world, to help express a range of emotions and inspiration. With more than five hundred forty-one thousand greetings sent globally last year, on 123Greetings.com, users from over two-hundred countries shared warm Easter wishes with their family and friends.

Arvind Kajaria, Founder of 123Greetings.com, says, "Easter is the celebration of prevailing goodness. At 123Greetings.com, we create fresh new online greetings keeping in mind the festive spirit and encourage our users to share ecards in their circle of friends and folks."

About 123Greetings:

123Greetings.com is the world's leading online destination for human expressions reaching 95 million visitors annually. Its offering of over 42,000 ecards across multiple languages covers a mix of 3,000 seasonal & everyday categories. Its presence is ubiquitous with its Mobile App, Mobile Website and Facebook App catering to users on mobile and social media respectively. Its Connect feature is a relationship management tool enabling users to actively manage their expressions to both personal and professional contacts. It also operates 123Greetings Studio, a unique platform for artists, to upload and monetize their own ecards.

For details, visit www.123greetings.com.

SOURCE 123Greetings.com

Related Links

http://www.123greetings.com


SAN FRANCISCO, March 30, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- 6D.ai, developer of APIs for engaging AR apps across all platforms, announced today its equity seed round led by General Catalyst with GC's managing director, Niko Bonatsos, joining its board of directors. Oxford Sciences Innovation Plc is also participating in the round as wel las top investors in augmented reality including: Greg Castle from Anorak Ventures, Ori Inbar from Super Ventures, Amit Mahajan from Presence Capital, Jacob Mullins from Shasta Ventures, Ryan Walsh from Floodgate, Don Stein from Candela Partners, Jeff Kraus from Google Ventures, Wayne Chang, Jeff Seibert, and Robert del Naja, among others.

The 6D.ai API generates a 3D mesh of the world where AR content assets are persistent, responsive to occlusion, and efficiently synced between multiple users to help developers create engaging, useful and exciting apps that truly interact with the physical world. For example, instead of an object limited to a table top indoors, characters can interact with the outside world by hiding behind a city building and popping out for someone or sitting at a bus stop and moving into the map when someone needs travel information. Since they can be seen by multiple phones at the same time, people could surround characters and catch them together as a group. With these new features, digital content starts to behave as if it is really part of the three dimensional real world.

"AR represents the ultimate display. It is the closest we can get to blurring the perceived distinction between digital and physical objects," said Matt Miesnieks, co-founder and CEO of 6D.ai. "The ability for AR to be the interface to all other new technical breakthroughs, to literally and metaphorically change how we see the world and each other, is profound. We deeply understand the problems preventing AR App engagement and are solving those hard problems on behalf of all AR developers. With the full commitment from General Catalyst and Niko, we are rapidly growing our team and continuing toward our mission to build the defining AR company."

"We're witnessing a breakthrough in both hardware and software AR technology where people will experience apps in ways that are not only exciting and fun, but also informative and useful," said Niko Bonatsos, managing director at General Catalyst. "Much like the wave of innovation in new applications that we saw when the first smartphones came out, 6D.ai is making the platform for developers to create the AR experiences they have been imagining."

Co-founded by Matt Miesnieks and Professor Victor Prisacariu, the company is the first software spin out of Oxford University's Active Vision Lab to launch in Silicon Valley. The company is growing its team of leaders in augmented reality, computer vision, and large scale infrastructure to create the AR Cloud including Jeff McConathy (ex VP Eng Trulia), Bruce Wooden (Founder SVVR & Altspace) and alumni from Tesla, Samsung and Facebook. As an Oxford spinout company, 6D.ai has the full support of the University and its research activities. This combination of world-recognized leaders in AR and access to ongoing world-renowned research, means 6D.ai, uniquely among AR startups, can solve the most difficult technical problems for developers and bring them to market at startup speed.

How it works:

The 6D.ai API uses a standard built-in smartphone camera to build a real-time, three-dimensional semantic, crowd sourced maps of the world, all in the background. No depth camera is needed to capture the world in 3D.

Using the 3D mesh generated by the 6D.ai API, developers build world-scale apps where assets are persistent, responsive to occlusion, and synced between multiple users more efficiently.

Spatial computing apps that were only possible to build on expensive Head Mounted Displays are now possible on ARCore and ARKit smartphones.

3D spatial data provides the foundation for 6D.ai AI neural-networks to help developers' applications understand the world in 3D.

The limited beta program kicks-off today for developers to begin creating multi-player, phone-based AR applications that interact with the real world. OEMs, Enterprises, gaming companies and artists can partner with 6D.ai to build AR projects that extend their ecosystems with new feature sets, across hardware platforms and into previously challenging markets for AR platform development.

6D.ai is hiring computer vision and core mobile engineers. Check out openings here.

Get started with the beta and stay in touch on updates, here.

About 6D.ai

Founded in 2017, 6D.ai is a seed-stage startup emerging from Oxford University's Active Vision Lab, building APIs to help developers augment reality in ways that users would find meaningful, useful and exciting. The 6D.ai SDK uses a standard built-in smartphone camera to build a cloud-based, crowdsourced three-dimensional semantic map of the world all in real-time, in the background. The Oxford Active Vision Lab has been working on augmented reality since 1995 bringing 23 years of research and creation to the AR industry, including inventing SLAM on mobile phones back in 2007. As an Oxford spinout company, 6D.ai has the full support of the University and its research activities. This combination means 6D.ai, uniquely among AR startups, can solve the most difficult technical problems for developers and bring them to market at startup speed. Led by Matt Miesnieks and Professor Victor Prisacariu with Niko Bonatsos as a board member, the company has seed stage investments from General Catalyst and angel investors. To learn more visit, 6D.ai.

Media Contact:

Meghan Hughes, HITStart Strategies

[email protected]

415-963-2552

SOURCE 6D.ai

Related Links

https://www.6d.ai


WILMINGTON, Del., March 30, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Even before the age of computers, each U.S. state documented the crimes committed in its territory in order to keep track of the residents and know who has a criminal past. Nowadays keeping criminal records has become much more advanced, and many of them are public records available to the public.

in order to make the search for criminal records faster and easier GoLookUp has launched a Conviction search directory for its users.

Two hands holding prison bars

Conviction Reverse Directory on GoLookUp

Searching for convictions in public records requires going to the offices where they are held, which most people do not have the time to do. GoLookUp's advanced background check allows users to save time and find public records within minutes.

In order to find a conviction of a certain person, GoLookUp users need to type in his or her first name, last name and state of residence into the search directory. Once they do that, the directory scans billions of public records to provide them with the most accurate conviction information on the person in question.

The information found on the directory includes mugshots, arrest records, contact information and much more about the person in question. The information can help GoLookUp users find out more about a certain person's history and discover if they have a violent criminal past, are registered sex offenders and all they need in order to decide what to do in regards to their relationship.

The conviction information on GoLookUp can also be found by the reverse phone lookup directory that lets users search for criminal records based on a person's phone number.

Searching for the criminal records of people can help others find out if they have a problematic past and protect themselves and their loved ones when necessary.

For further information:

[email protected]

GoLookup.com

1000 N West Street

Suite 1200

Wilmington, Delaware 19801

Toll Free: 1-877-890-2213

Related Links

GoLookUp

Conviction

Related Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5UQm1-Pvro

SOURCE GoLookUp

Related Links

https://golookup.com


SAN FRANCISCO, March 30, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Periscope Data, the world's first software platform built to address the complete analytics lifecycle, has been added to Google's catalog of pre-integrated SAML apps for single-sign-on (SSO).

SAML has become one of the most popular enterprise SSO standards, enabling users to access all of their enterprise cloud applications, including admin consoles, after signing in just one time. Google supports nearly 800 applications with pre-integrated SSO support in their third-party apps catalog, and Periscope Data is among the latest to join the list. Instead of adding Periscope Data as a custom app to their SSO list, administrators will be able to select Periscope Data directly to enable simple and secure access for their team members.

"Unlike most data analytics platforms, Periscope Data is able to get up and running to deliver insights in a matter of minutes, not days or weeks," said Harry Glaser, co-founder and CEO of Periscope Data. "We're focused on building a more efficient and secure workflow for data teams to complete their analyses, and we're proud to have Google's support in improving the Periscope Data experience."

Periscope Data also supports single-sign-on options for Okta, OneLogin and Microsoft Azure Active Directory. For more information, including instructions on setting up SSO for Periscope Data for your organization, visit Google's Help Center or Periscope Data's support center.

About Periscope Data

Periscope Data builds software that turns data teams into superheroes. Its Unified Data Platform is the industry's first to address the complete analytics lifecycle, allowing data teams to ingest, store, analyze, visualize and report on data all from one connected platform. This empowers them to collaborate and drive faster insight, while allowing businesses to foster a data-driven culture around a single source of truth. Periscope Data serves 1000+ customers globally, including Adobe, Crunchbase, EY, Flexport, New Relic, Supercell, Tinder and ZipRecruiter.

SOURCE Periscope Data

Related Links

http://www.periscopedata.com


ATLANTA, March 30, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The National Association of Chronic Disease Directors (NACDD) is launching its newest podcast series, "Health Yeah!," led by Dr. Jean O'Connor, out-going NACDD Board President, on innovative models for population health improvement and chronic disease prevention within each community.

"While hospitals, payers, and health care providers consider a more limited definition of 'population' by focusing on the panel of patients they serve, we tend to view outcomes on a more geographical or societal basis," Dr. O'Connor said. "However, our end goal of improved health is the same, and we are using many of the same techniques and approaches to improving population health to accomplish our objectives," she said.

Dr. O'Connor's "Health Yeah!" podcasts support the third annual NACDD President's Challenge, which is a call to action for public officials to focus on emerging issues in chronic disease prevention and control. In 2016, Mehul Dalal, MD, MSc, MHS, Chronic Disease Director of Connecticut, led the "Learn, Lead, and Thrive" podcasts, which challenged Members to improve management practices, and support professional growth development in state health departments. The first President's Challenge, initiated by Namvar Zohoori, MD, MPH, PhD, Director of the Center for Health Advancement at the Arkansas Department of Health, examined the importance of health equity.

"I believe that public health has championed this idea around social determinants of health which is integral to population health," said John W. Robitscher, NACDD CEO. "How do we make sure that every person has a safe place to live, clean food, and water? How do we make sure they have transportation to and from medical attention whenever they need it? It does take a village to take care of people. Dr. O'Connor's podcasts series is a detailed study on how the public health community as a whole can improve population health."

All eight episodes are approximately 30 minutes in length and will be released individually on NACDD's website, iTunes, and on SoundCloud starting March 30 to help kick off National Public Health Week (April 2-8, 2018).

Understanding Population Health Improvement: Dr. O'Connor speaks with Mary Ann Cooney , Chief of Health Systems Transformation with the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, on population health and what it means among public healthcare officials, and how population health can be understood.

Defining Population Health Improvement: Dr. O'Connor speaks with Dr. Vincent Lafronza , Chief Executive Officer of the National Network of Public Health Institutes, on social determinants, population health improvement, and what the definition of population health improvement really means.

Meeting the Needs of Employees through Worksite Wellness: Dr. O'Connor speaks with Carmen Daniel , Worksite Wellness Program Manager with the Georgia Department of Public Health, on the collaboration that occurs between the state health department and academia to provide support and encourage worksite wellness. The program focuses on aspectssuch as physical activity, nutrition, and stress managementthat support worksite wellness.

Opioid Use in Public Health: Dr. O'Connor speaks with John Auerbach , president and CEO of Trust for America's Health, on opioid use in the United States , and how it affects population health and public health. Auerbach also touches on topics such as importance of keeping people healthy and resilient, and how it has a positive effect on population health.

Improving Population Health through Partnership: Dr. O'Connor speaks with Laura Seeff , Director of the Office of Health Systems Collaboration in CDC's Office of the Associate Director for Policy, on how the department translates effective public health prevention and control practices into action by health systems.

Chronic Disease and Social Determinants in Public Health: Dr. O'Connor speaks with Dr. Soma Stout, a Vice President at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and is Executive Lead of 100 Million Healthier Lives, on how the public health industry should come together to examine the driving forces behind chronic disease, and how the landscape can be improved.

NACDD Projects that Support Population Health: Dr. O'Connor speaks with John W. Robitscher , NACDD's CEO, on how NACDD uses consultants to work on projects that support chronic disease prevention and control. Robitscher highlights some of the projects that provide support and education, and are currently funded by NACDD and CDC.

CDC Foundation and Population Health: Dr. O'Connor speaks with Dr. Judy Monroe , President and CEO of the CDC Foundation, on the importance of philanthropy and partnerships to support population health efforts, from emergency responses, like Zika, to chronic disease issues.

NACDD and Dr. O'Connor invite public health professionals to join the conversation on the efforts to raise awareness of activities in population health on Twitter at @NACDDinfo using the hashtag #pophealthworks.



National Association of Chronic Disease Directors

chronicdisease.org

The National Association of Chronic Disease Directors (NACDD) and its more than 6,500 members seek to improve the health of the public by strengthening leadership and expertise for chronic disease prevention and control in states, territories, and at the national level. Established in 1988, in partnership with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the NACDD is the only membership association of its kind serving and representing every state and U.S. territory's chronic disease division.

CONTACT: Paige Rohe, [email protected], 404-924-8295

SOURCE National Association of Chronic Disease Directors

Related Links

www.chronicdisease.org


WASHINGTON, March 30, 2018 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- His Royal Highness Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman met with the 42nd President of United States of America William 'Bill' Clinton on Wednesday March 28, 2018, in New York City. The meeting was attended by His Royal Highness Ambassador Prince Khalid bin Salman, the Ambassador of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to the United States of America. The meeting highlighted longstanding history between both countries and reflected the friendship that exists between Saudi Arabia and the United States. The discussion included an exchange on a range of topics, from the ongoing changes within the Kingdom, as manifested in Vision 2030, to regional developments.

SOURCE Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia, Information Office
The rising awareness of food safety has triggered a rush for organic products and perked up the business opportunity of agriculture technologies. Ms. Sabine Liu, General Manager of UBM Taiwan pointed out, "remunerative crops can barely survive from the extreme weather. The development of indoor farming systems, greenhouses and environmental control equipment is needed to help stabilise food supply and quality as well as allow the global agrarian market become more efficient and competitive."

Ms. Liu stressed, "Taiwan's industry has strong integration capabilities and can be the hub to develop agriculture extensive utilization of IoT and bio- technology. Hence, the 2nd edition of Asia Agri-Tech Expo will focus on data transmission and environmental control applications based on agricultural IoT technologies, pesticide residue testers and greenhouse systems. UBM Taiwan noticed the growing trends of household miniature plant factory and the declining prices of LED package product will increase buyers' purchase intension. LED lighting suppliers are therefore a target for recruitment by the show.

In addition, the subsidy programme on facility agriculture in Mainland China, Japan, Vietnam, and Taiwan has been far and away an opportunity for greenhouse planners, material vendors and hardware suppliers to take the pre-emptive action in the Asia-pacific market and expand business contacts. So far, greenhouse heating systems, radiators, ventilation equipment, and irrigation facilities are the key enquiries from buyers all around the world.

The Asia Agri-Tech Expo & Forum 2018 is concurrently held with Aquaculture and Livestock Taiwan Expo & Forum. The triple show is supported by the local authority, Council of Agriculture (COA), as well as UBM Malaysia, 25 international associations and 18 professional media. At present, more than 2,000 sqm of event space has been taken up. UBM Taiwan will recruit more suppliers to introduce pesticide residue testing service, indoor farming and climate-smart agriculture facilities, plant seeds and seedlings before June.

The online registration and buyer accommodation subsidy program are open now. For more exhibition information and details, please refer to the official website http://www.agritechtaiwan.com or contact Ms. Sophia Lu (TEL: +886-2-2738-3898; FAX: +886-2-2738-4886; Email: [email protected]).

About news release, please contact Ms. Joy Chou For exhibitor inquiry, please contact Ms. Sophia Lu For visitor inquiry, please contact Ms. Natasha Chiang UBM Asia Ltd., Taiwan Branch

TEL: +886-2-2738-3898 FAX: +886-2-2738-4886

Email: [email protected] Website: www.agritechtaiwan.com

SOURCE UBM Asia Ltd., Taiwan Branch
CEDAR KNOLLS, N.J., March 30, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- New Jersey Manufacturing Extension Program (NJMEP) welcomes eight new employees to further support the company's ongoing expansion and on-going support of the manufacturing industry. The new employees will lend their expertise to assist in key business aspects, such as sales, program management and more.

Joining the team are:

Constantina Meis joins NJMEP as the Transportation, Logistics, and Distribution Talent Network Program Manager. She came from the legislative office of NJ State Senator Bob Gordon, bringing a decade of local, state, and national political & community organizing; and field management experience. During her tenure, Constantina pursued several leadership initiatives and training programs, like the "Rising Stars"; giving women and/or people impacted by social, racial or economic disparities and people with disabilities the tools to become more engaged in community organizing and politics.

Mark Buonauro joins NJMEP as the Transportation, Logistics and Distribution Subject Matter and Sales Specialist. Mark came from Mesca Freight Services, where he was the National Sales Account Manager. During his career, Mark has focused on domestic and international supply chain sales.

Kate Malvetti joins NJMEP as the Food Program Subject Matter Expert. Kate previously was at Refresco, formerly known as Whitlock Packaging Corporation. Her experience in auditing, training, and program development and implementation will be beneficial for NJMEP in our mission to assist food manufacturers in a variety of topics.

Michael Marchetti joins NJMEP as the Advanced Manufacturing Talent Network Program Manager. Michael was previously with NJIT as Advanced Manufacturing Talent Network Manager, where he was also the Manager of New Jersey's Dream It. Do it. Program, which was designed to change the perception of the manufacturing industry and to inspire the next generation of workers to pursue manufacturing careers. Prior experience also included supporting the manufacturing components used in the Defense industry.

Frank Preta joins NJMEP as the Advanced Manufacturing Talent Network Assistant Program Manager. Frank previously was with BASF Chemical as Marketing and Intelligence Manager. He was responsible for competitive and customer intelligence reporting for the Human Nutrition, Food Safety, Personal/Home Care and Clean Energy Industry Business Units.

Bradley Jones joins NJMEP as Internal Support for the Open Enrollment programs, which focuses on small manufacturing companies offering affordable and quality continuing education for the adult workforce. NJMEP offers training in the fields of technology, personal development and business improvement. Bradley previously was with PSEG working in HR Recruiting, as well as the Illinois Department of Transportation responsible for Labor Compliance.

Raymond Martinelli joins NJMEP as the Transportation, Logistics and Distribution Talent Network Program Manager. Raymond previously was with a third party logistics company where he was the Senior Project Manager responsible for handling all logistics and supply chain functions for a medical device company.

Joseph Babajko joins NJMEP as an Account Manager. Joseph previously was the Owner of a consulting business specializing in business management, working with companies in various industries. He has turned his sales and management experience into a tool for the benefit of New Jersey's manufacturers.

"At NJMEP, we strive to hire the most passionate and well-equipped talent within the industry to ensure they bring positive change to our organization and can help us better tend to the needs of the manufacturing industry and our valued clients," said Robert Stramara, Chief Operation Officer of NJMEP. "NJMEP continues to focus on helping strengthen manufacturer's competitiveness by enhancing productivity, performance and profitability. The addition of new talent within our organization will help us expand our product lines, service our clients, and continue to be a leader and advocate in the industry," continues Stramara.

About NJMEP: NJMEP is a private, notfor-profit organization that improves the profitability and competitiveness of New Jersey's manufacturers. Backed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), NJMEP enables organizations to enhance their productivity and efficiencies, reduce costs, and improve employee performance. For more than 20 years, NJMEP has used its extensive network of connections and proven track record of success to help manufacturers adapt to the latest innovative technologies and best practices to realize more than $3.7 billion in value. Our services are categorized into the following three areas: Operational Excellence, Innovation and Growth Strategies, and Workforce Development. NJMEP also has a signature philanthropic program, Manufacturing Cares, which is designed to provide a platform for manufacturers to give back to the community by pooling efforts to increase our impact.

For more information about the NJ State-of-the-State Manufacturing Event and to sign-up please visit: https://www.njmep.org/state-state-manufacturing-2018/.

SOURCE New Jersey Manufacturing Extension Program

Related Links

https://www.njmep.org


ATLANTA, March 30, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Management consulting firm North Highland is hosting its annual "Day of Giving Back" event beginning this weekend. From March 31  April 27, 1,500 individuals across 23 offices, accompanied by families and friends, will volunteer with a variety of nonprofit organizations supporting economic empowerment.

"North Highland's philanthropic mission is to disrupt root causes of poverty for underserved communities. Through our annual Day of Giving Back, we bring our culture of caring to life by enriching our local communities and helping others reach their full potential," said Dan Reardon, CEO of North Highland. "By hosting events throughout April, we're able to maximize our partnerships with nonprofits to create a lasting impact in the communities in which we live and work."

Throughout the month, North Highlanders will partner with nonprofits in housing, food, employment and education. Friendly competition is encouraged across the Firm with offices competing on participation and engagement for $20,000 in funds to be donated across four different nonprofits, as selected by the top four winning offices.

Participating offices include: Atlanta; Austin, TX, Basking Ridge, NJ; Charlotte, NC; Chicago IL; Dallas TX; Denver, CO; Houston, TX; London; Minneapolis, MN; Nashville, TN; New York; Orlando, Fla.; Los Angeles, CA; Philadelphia, PA; Portland, Ore.; San Francisco; Seattle, WA; St. Louis, MO; Tallahassee, Fla.; and Washington, D.C.

Follow #DOGB2018 on Twitter to keep up with how North Highland's offices are teaming up with organizations to help their communities, and visit our Newsroom for photos and updates.

About North Highland

North Highland is a global management consulting firm known for helping clients solve their most complex challenges related to customer experience, performance improvement, technology and digital, and transformation. We add value and support our clients across the full spectrum of consulting, from strategy through delivery. We bring the big ideas, then we make them real.

North Highland is an employee-owned firm, headquartered in Atlanta, Ga., with more than 3,000 consultants worldwide and 60+ offices around the globe. The firm is a member of Cordence Worldwide (www.cordenceworldwide.com), a global management consulting alliance. For more information, visit northhighland.com and connect with us on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

Contact: Jaclyn Proctor, 404-975-6215

SOURCE North Highland

Related Links

http://www.northhighland.com


An alumnus of Hampton University, Colonel Stith served on the PenFed Board of Directors for 11 years and the PenFed Foundation Board of Directors for eight years, three of which he served as Vice Chairman. During his tenure at the PenFed Foundation, the Lee & Penny Anderson Defenders Lodge was built, and has since provided nearly 100,000 free bed nights for veterans receiving outpatient treatment at the United States Veterans Administration Polytrauma Center in Palo Alto, California, saving wounded warriors more than $22 million in hotel bills. During Colonel Stith's volunteer service on the Board, PenFed grew to serve more than 1.6 million members with assets of more than $23 billion.

"We are honored and humbled to present this donation for the Colonel Lonnie Lee Stith Scholarship Fund," said PenFed President and CEO James Schenck. "Colonel Stith had a tremendous impact on PenFed Credit Union, the PenFed Foundation, and on the lives of the students at Hampton University. As a member of the military, he bravely served our nation. This donation serves as a testament to his legacy and dedication to volunteerism and philanthropy."

In addition to this scholarship, PenFed supports Hampton University's 5-Year MBA Program through its internship program. In 2016 and 2017, PenFed hosted interns from Hampton University. These interns bring high-quality leadership and skill sets to PenFed's workforce each year.

On Sunday, April 1, Hampton University will celebrate its 150th anniversary and the 40th anniversary of Dr. William R. Harvey's presidency.

About PenFed Credit Union

Established in 1935 as the War Department Credit Union, Pentagon Federal Credit Union (PenFed) is America's second-largest federal credit union, serving over 1.6 million members worldwide with $23 billion in assets. Our long-standing mission has been to provide superior financial services in a cost-effective manner, while being responsive to members' needs. PenFed Credit Union offers market-leading mortgages, automobile loans, credit cards, student loans, checking, certificates, and a wide range of other financial services with members' interests always in mind. PenFed Credit Union serves a diverse population, and no military service is required to join. PenFed Credit Union offers many paths to membership, including numerous employee groups and association affiliations. PenFed Credit Union is federally insured by the NCUA and is an equal housing lender. To learn more about PenFed Credit Union, visit PenFed.org, like us on Facebook and follow us @PenFed on Twitter. Interested in working for PenFed? Check us out on LinkedIn. We are proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer.

SOURCE PenFed Credit Union

Related Links

http://www.PenFed.org


NEW YORK, March 30, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Below are experts from the ProfNet network who are available to discuss timely issues in your coverage area.

You can also submit a query to the hundreds of thousands of experts in our network  it's easy and free. Just fill out the query form to get started: http://prn.to/queryform

EXPERT ALERTS

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Needs an Overhaul

Autocratic Leadership

Facebook and the Psychological Effects of the Loss of Privacy

MEDIA JOBS

Breaking News and Viral Content Staff Writer  Newsweek (NY)

Reporter  Agenda (NY)

Senior Writer/Editor, Autos  Consumer Reports (CT)

OTHER NEWS & RESOURCES

Google Pledges Huge Investment With Journalism Industry

Don't Get Duped: How to Spot a Fake Photo This April Fools' Day and Beyond

Blog Profiles: Comedy Blogs

-------------------------------------------------------------------

EXPERT ALERTS:

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Needs an Overhaul

Sam Nabil

Licensed Professional Counselor

Sam Nabil Counseling Services

"Therapy has not evolved to meet our current human needs in the 21st century. How we do therapy is due for an overhaul. Cognitive behavioral therapy CBT is the No. 1 most recommended therapeutic approach. With all due respect, I think CBT is dead."

Based in Cincinnati, Nabil is an expert in human behavior/social phenomena; mental health/illness; dating, relationships, marriage, divorce; and anxiety, stress, depression, self-esteem and trauma. He is fluent in English and Arabic.

ProfNet Profile: http://www.profnetconnect.com/samnabil/

Website: http://www.samnabilcounseling.com

Expert Contact: [email protected]

Autocratic Leadership

Dr. Peter Harms

Assistant Professor of Management

The University of Alabama

Today's political and cultural climate means a renewed study of autocratic leadership is relevant, and a fresh perspective is needed to understand the reasons people choose autocratic leaders. The reasons many people choose to follow autocratic leaders vary across time, culture and circumstances, but past efforts to understand these reasons are often dismissive of those who do and frequently label such followers as prejudicial or uninformed. Societies need to understand autocratic leaders and their followers without resorting to methods that strip away assumptions of value to the characteristics of followers of autocratic leaders. Says Harms: "Rather than resorting to oversimplified explanations or pinning nasty labels on those who embrace individuals who promise them strong leadership, we need to understand them. Our research suggests that such impulses are a cry for help, and that many people are pushed towards this orientation in response to what they believe is a hopeless situation that they are incapable of solving on their own. It is all too human and there is nothing aberrant about it. Vilifying these individuals is unlikely to effect change and may reinforce feelings of oppression and alienation."

Harms received his doctorate in psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2008. He is currently an assistant professor of management at The University of Alabama. His research focuses on the assessment and development of personality, leadership and psychological well-being. He has published over 40 peer-reviewed articles and his work has been featured in popular media outlets such as CNN, Scientific American, Forbes and the BBC. Dr. Harms has been invited to speak to audiences around the world and was selected by the St. Gallen symposium as one of the "100 Knowledge Leaders of Tomorrow" in 2011. He is based in Tuscaloosa, Ala.

Bio: https://culverhouse.ua.edu/directory/profile/pdharms

Contact: Adam Jones, [email protected]

Facebook and the Psychological Effects of the Loss of Privacy

Dr. John Huber

Chairman

Mainstream Mental Health

As allegations appear to show Facebook is being reckless with its users' personal data, privacy is an issue many people are concerned about -- and when their conversations and emails are no longer secure, it can have some profound psychological effects. Dr. Huber is available to discuss the psychological effects of loss of privacy, including: "1) Increased stress and anxiety: The loss of privacy can substantially elevate a person's stress and anxiety levels as they feverously go through hundreds of emails to see if what they said was insensitive, offensive, sexist or even racist. The fear that their correspondence could one day be made public can also cause some individuals to shudder with fear. 2) Conformity: A loss of privacy can cause some individuals to become overly fearful of offending others. This fear can put pressure on the individual to conform to group culture, thoughts, and beliefs rather than develop their own thoughts and beliefs. 3) Effect on personal relationships: When people know they are being watched or monitored, they may not share their true feelings with each other; hence, the dynamics of interpersonal relationships can change. One example is that a person may choose not to pay a compliment to another for fear that the compliment will be taken out of context. Also, when people know they don't have privacy, they tend to be distrustful of each other, and trust is a fundamental component of any healthy relationship. 4) Diminished fun and laughter: Some of us have friends who send joking emails that we probably enjoy but that some would find inappropriate. Some of us enjoy telling or hearing jokes that others would not find funny. The loss of privacy can have a chilling effect on fun and laughter because people become perpetually afraid of offending other people, as well as being publicly shamed."

Based in Texas, Dr. Huber is the chairman for Mainstream Mental Health, a nonprofit organization that brings lasting and positive change to the lives of individuals that suffer from mental health issues. A mental health professional for more than 20 years, Dr. Huber is a clinical forensic psychologist and a practitioner with privileges at two long-term acute-care hospitals.

Website: www.mainstreammentalhealth.org

Recent TV appearance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qE5d3daJnAQ&t=3s

Contact: Ryan McCormick, [email protected]

****************

MEDIA JOBS:

Following are links to job listings for staff and freelance writers, editors and producers. You can view these and more job listings on our Job Board: https://prnmedia.prnewswire.com/community/jobs/

Breaking News and Viral Content Staff Writer  Newsweek (NY)

Reporter  Agenda (NY)

Senior Writer/Editor, Autos  Consumer Reports (CT)

*****************

OTHER NEWS & RESOURCES:

Following are links to other news and resources we think you might find useful. If you have an item you think other reporters would be interested in and would like us to include in a future alert, please drop us a line at [email protected]

GOOGLE PLEDGES HUGE INVESTMENT WITH JOURNALISM INDUSTRY. Google is taking aim at fake news with a multi-pronged program that ties together all the company's efforts to work with the journalism industry. The initiative is focused on three broad goals: strengthening quality journalism, supporting sustainable business models, and empowering newsrooms through technological innovation. The total commitment from Google is $300 million over the next three years on various journalism-related projects. Separately, Google's nonprofit organization, Google.org, announced a $10 million media literacy project to help U.S. teens learn how to identify false news: https://prn.to/2pQwCAa

over the next three years on various journalism-related projects. Separately, Google's nonprofit organization, Google.org, announced a media literacy project to help U.S. teens learn how to identify false news: https://prn.to/2pQwCAa DON'T GET DUPED: HOW TO SPOT A FAKE PHOTO THIS APRIL FOOLS' DAY AND BEYOND. April Fools' Day is riddled with hoaxes. Some are obvious; some are detectable only to a well-trained eye. As a journalist, getting duped can have serious consequences. Without due diligence, it can cost you readers, revenue, or even your job. With advanced technology and increased savvy by the everyday schemer, fake photos and misleading information are getting more difficult to discern. Here are a few tips to help you quickly debunk that bad photo: https://prn.to/2J5syE1

BLOG PROFILES: COMEDY BLOGS. Each week, PR Newswire's Audience Relations team selects an industry/subject and profiles a handful of sites that do a good job with promoting and contributing to the conversation. This week, they look at a few comedy blogs: https://prn.to/2uzHV4o

****************

PROFNET is an exclusive service of PR Newswire.

To contact ProfNet: [email protected] or 800-776-3638, ext. 1

SOURCE ProfNet

Related Links

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UPPER MARLBORO, Md., March 30, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Rick Jaklitsch is recognized by Continental Who's Who as a Pinnacle Professional Member in the field of Law in recognition of his role as an Attorney at The Jaklitsch Law Group. With over seventy five years of combined experience in the legal industry, the attorneys at The Jaklitsch Law Group are dedicated to offering their clients excellent, timely, quality legal advice. The group has, "developed a reputation for providing effective legal counsel to victims of car accidents and other personal injuries caused by negligence."

Amassing over thirty three years of experience in the field of law, Jaklitsch is experienced in all facets of law. Throughout his career, Jaklitsch has gained expertise in the areas of Motor Vehicle Accidents, Truck Accidents, Wrongful Death, Nursing Home Negligence, Medical Malpractice, Slip and Falls.

Throughout the course of his education and training, Jaklitsch attained his degree from the University of Maryland in College Park. In addition, Jaklitsch attended the University Of Maryland School Of Law, located in Baltimore, Maryland.

To further his professional development, Jaklitsch is an affiliate of several organizations including the American Trial Lawyers Association, Maryland Association for Justice, National Personal Injury Association, Maryland State Bar Association, the Anne Arundel Bar Association, Prince George's County Bar Association and the American Bar Association.

In recognition of his professional accolades, Jaklitsch was the recipient of Prince George's County Bar Association's esteemed President's Award for "outstanding contributions to the Bar and to the community," and was named a "Make-A-Wish Star" by the National Make-A-Wish Foundation. In addition, he was the recipient of the Terrapin Club Lifetime Giving Award; "Top 100 Trial Lawyers" by the American Trial Lawyers Association; "Nationally Ranked Top 10 Attorney Award" by National Academy of Personal Injury Attorneys; "Top Attorney" Award in Washington, D.C., and the "Top Attorney" Award in the State of Maryland by Super Lawyers Magazine. Additionally, Jaklitsch was listed in the Best Lawyers in America registry, has held the highest possible rating from Martindale-Hubbell and has been featured in the Bar Registry of Preeminent Lawyers in America (reserved for the top 1% of lawyers in the country) for 20 consecutive years. He has been featured in Who's Who in American Law for the past twenty three years.

For more information, please visit http://jaklitschlawgroup.com/

Contact: Katherine Green, 516-825-5634, [email protected]

SOURCE Continental Who's Who

Related Links

http://www.continentalwhoswho.com


Savoy's spring issue recognizes African-American men and women who have been "innovative trailblazers" in growing some of the country's "highest-performing companies throughout and beyond the U.S. market." In his years with Allison, Pittard has led the charge to broaden Allison's military product portfolio and customer base.

Prior to joining Allison, Pittard retired from the U.S. Army in the grade of Major General (2 Star) after 34 years of active duty, including multiple combat tours. His distinguished military career included serving as commander of Fort Bliss, Texas, and as director of operations for Army Training and Doctrine Command.

Pittard also received national acclaim for his efforts in suicide prevention in the Army. Today, he is a board member of the Matthew Silverman Memorial Foundation to prevent youth suicides. Pittard is also co-author of the upcoming book "Hunting the Caliphate: America's War on ISIS."

This is the second time in recent months that an executive associated with Allison has been recognized by Savoy. Last fall, Allison Transmission director William Harker, president and co-founder of Ashe Capital Management, was recognized as one of the nation's "2017 Most Influential Black Corporate Directors."

About Allison Transmission

Allison Transmission (NYSE: ALSN) is the world's largest manufacturer of fully automatic transmissions for medium- and heavy-duty commercial vehicles, and is a leader in electric hybrid-propulsion systems for city buses. Allison transmissions are used in a variety of applications including refuse, construction, fire, distribution, bus, motorhomes, defense and energy. Founded in 1915, the company is headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA and employs approximately 2,700 people worldwide. With a market presence in more than 80 countries, Allison has regional headquarters in the Netherlands, China and Brazil with manufacturing facilities in the U.S., Hungary and India. Allison also has approximately 1,400 independent distributor and dealer locations worldwide. For more information, visit allisontransmission.com.

SOURCE Allison Transmission Holdings Inc.

Related Links

http://www.allisontransmission.com


TORONTO, March 30, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- AI Incorporated, Canada's pioneering robotics and artificial intelligence research company has released a design for an autonomous refuse robot. A new application for mobile robotics, the new AI enhanced robotics system introduces a device that can autonomously travel to the curbside and wait for the pickup truck at pre-scheduled times. Scheduling takes place with an APP and status can be checked in real time. In case the robot needs help with navigation or gets stuck, the user can control it through the APP.

Suggest a name for this trash can prototype for a chance to win $1000 - SLAM, Deep Learning AI Incorporated

With this new application in mobile robotics, the company plans to use its Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) technology combined with deep learning to pioneer in a new generation of robots. The autonomous refuse receptacle robot is an application for the company's Versatile Self Localizing Autonomous Platforms (VSLAP). A new robot proprietary software called the Quantum Slam Operating System (Q-OS) helps companies mobilize any given machine. With this invention humans emptying trash cans will be a thing of the past. When it is time for pickup, the bins will simply leave their post to be emptied.

"Robots are the perfect solution for eliminating those tasks which humans do not wish to conduct," said Ali Afrouzi, CEO of AI Incorporated and bObsweep Inc. "With our cost-efficient Q-OS SLAM solution, it is now economically viable to automate trash cans that autonomously navigate to the curbside when the truck arrives!"

These robotic devices contain a comprehensive navigation system using a combination of SLAM, deep reinforcement learning, and computer vision. These devices will be able to map their environment, travel autonomously, communicate with other devices, and monitor their internal contents with an extensive array of sensors.

To read more about this robot, please visit the AI Incorporated website at www.aiincorporated.com.

About AI Incorporated

AI Incorporated is a tech company that specializes in autonomous robotic devices using a quantum-inspired method to solve the SLAM problem. AI Incorporated offers Q-OS which is a SLAM enabled Operating System for companies in need of smart mobile platforms. It also provides Versatile Self Localizing Autonomous Platform devices to facilitate autonomy in devices for companies that need it.

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Related Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMUcKwlpSAY

SOURCE AI Incorporated

Related Links

https://www.aiincorporated.com/


BEIJING, March 30, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- KPMG published "2017 Top 50 Chinese Leading Automotive Technological Companies" on March 28. SouChe, the leading platform of new retail and new finance in the Chinese automotive industry, stands out from more than 4,000 companies to enter the top 50.

This is the first time that KPMG releases its top 50 list for leading automotive technological companies in China. After 40 years' rapid development, China has become the largest automotive market in the world, with new energy automobiles and intelligently connected automobiles involved in national strategies. In the meantime, leading automotive technologies rise to reform the automotive industry and reshape the competitive landscape at an unprecedented rate.

In its assessment, KMPG evaluated 6 core dimensions, namely, technology and business model innovation, evaluation and capital market recognition, recognition by auto manufacturers, market recognition, financial health and team capability. As a leading platform of new retail and new finance in China, SouChe aims to empower the automotive industry from the very beginning.

After years of painstaking efforts, SouChe now serves over 60% of car dealerships through its SaaS product. This year, SouChe will further empower dealers from the perspectives of personnel management store operation and etc. to help car dealers to improve their overall service capabilities.

The remarkable achievement obtained by SouChe in empowering the automotive industry is also recognized in the capital market. By receiving strategic investment from Ant Financial and Alibaba and establishing strategic collaboration with them to promote new retail and new finance of automobiles, SouChe is devoted to building a seamless and extensive automobile new retail ecosystem, jointly with auto manufacturers and dealers.

Among the various services, SouChe launched the first automotive financing and leasing product "TanGeChe" in China in conjunction with Ant Financial, which has won a big success in the automotive financial industry. The project extends to more than 200 cities to reach 1,700 car dealers within one year, and collaborates with over 20 mainstream auto manufacturers to push innovation in the field of car finance.

The "Tmall Super Test Drive Auto Vendor" project jointly developed and operated by SouChe and Tmall Car has already landed in Shanghai, Nanjing and Guangzhou. "Super Test Drive" solves the pain point of test driving before purchasing a car, and directly promotes revolution in automotive consumption.

After years of painstaking efforts, SouChe is empowering the industry in the full spectrum of new car retail, used car circulation, car finance, car transportation, etc. Entering the "Top 50 Chinese Leading Automotive Technological Companies" is the recognition of achievement obtained by SouChe in empowering the industry, and is also an announcement of accelerated arrangement trend by SouChe. In the future, SouChe will continue to leverage its platform advantages, integrate various resources in depth, and promote the optimization and upgrading of the Chinese automotive industry.

SOURCE SouChe
With 50 Aireon payloads in orbit, system testing is underway by airlines

MCLEAN, Va., March 30, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Aireon announced today the fifth successful launch and deployment of its space-based Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) payloads, hosted by the Iridium NEXT satellite constellation. At 7:13:51 AM PDT (14:13:51 UTC), a flight-proven SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, bringing the total number of Aireon payloads in orbit to 50.

When the Aireon payloads from the fifth launch come online, the system will have nearly global coverage with 15-minute or better update intervals. This signifies optimal timing for airlines to begin testing the capabilities of space-based ADS-B. This will assist airlines with meeting the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) regulations that require aircraft be equipped with an aircraft tracking system for those flights not tracked by air traffic control by the end of 2018. With the Aireon service and access to the space-based ADS-B data, airlines can meet this directive set by regulators and safety organizations.

"We're over two-thirds of the way there," said Don Thoma, CEO, Aireon. "And as we get closer to a fully operational system, thorough testing and validation is now underway with our customers and partners." Thoma continued, "Aireon is working closely with not only ANSPs, but partners like FlightAware to ensure airlines have early access to this global data, ahead of regulations and requirements. Aireon will be able to help airlines meet these mandates, and upon completion of the constellation, update rates of a few seconds will be the service standard around the world."

FlightAware and Aireon have worked together to create GlobalBeacon, a first-of-its-kind product. GlobalBeacon combines FlightAware's data processing platform and web-interface with Aireon's space-based ADS-B data, for a cost-effective, easy to deploy solution to help meet the ICAO Global Aeronautical Distress Safety System (GADSS) standards.

"We are fusing Aireon data with FlightAware data to empower airlines and other aircraft operators with products that exceed GADSS recommendations for flight tracking," said Daniel Baker, founder and CEO, FlightAware. "With the satellites from today's successful launch, customers will be able to beta test coverage that meets the November 2018 requirement for aircraft tracking."

In addition to GlobalBeacon, FlightAware is delivering the data through services that are already commonly used by airlines and industry leading service providers such as SITAONAIR.

"Our partnership with FlightAware means that any airline using AIRCOM FlightTracker will have at its fingertips a dynamic tool providing an overview of the exact position, speed and altitude of its airborne fleet," said Dominique El Bez, Vice President, Product and Strategy, SITAONAIR. "Most critically, the coverage will now be 100% even over oceanic, remote and polar areas. By receiving once-per-minute positions from Aireon's network of space-based ADS-B receivers, airlines will exceed the ICAO GADSS upcoming 15-minute recommendation."

The Aireon system is hosted on the Iridium NEXT satellite constellation, which will consist of 66 low-earth orbit crosslinked satellites. A total of 81 Iridium NEXT satellites are being built, all of which will have the Aireon payload onboard. Currently, 75 satellites are planned to be deployed with nine serving as on-orbit spares and the remaining six as ground spares. The constellation is planned for completion in 2018.

For more information about Aireon LLC, visit www.aireon.com

For more information about Iridium NEXT, visit www.IridiumNEXT.com

For more information on FlightAware, visit www.flightaware.com

For more information on SITAONAIR, visit https://www.sitaonair.aero/

About Aireon LLC

Aireon is deploying a space-based air traffic surveillance system for Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) equipped aircraft throughout the entire globe. Aireon will harness next-generation aviation surveillance technologies that are currently ground-based and, for the first time ever, extend their reach globally to significantly improve efficiency, enhance safety, reduce emissions and provide cost savings benefits to all stakeholders. Real-time ADS-B surveillance will cover oceanic, polar and remote regions, as well as augment existing ground-based systems that are limited to terrestrial airspace. In partnership with leading Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs) from around the world, like NAV CANADA, the Irish Aviation Authority (IAA), ENAV and Naviair, as well as Iridium Communications, Aireon will have an operational, global, space-based air traffic surveillance system by 2018. For more information, please visit www.aireon.com

Press Contact

Jessie Hillenbrand

Aireon

+1 (703) 287-7452

[email protected]

SOURCE Aireon

Related Links

http://www.aireon.com


WASHINGTON, March 30, 2018 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The American Association of Kidney Patients (AAKP), the largest fully independent patient-led kidney advocacy organization in the United States, has named Mr. Edward V. Hickey III., U.S.M.C., as the Chair of the AAKP Veteran's Health Initiative (VHI).

The VHI, based within the AAKP Center for Patient Engagement and Advocacy, is designed to advance research, innovation and policies aimed at safeguarding the highest standards in coordinated kidney care and treatment for veterans managing kidney disease both inside and outside the VA system. Within the U.S. Congress, AAKP elevates kidney disease policy issues with individual Senators and Congressional leaders, key Senate and House oversight committees as well as the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

Mr. Hickey stated, "Veterans and their families face many unique challenges related to managing their healthcare and this is especially true for veterans who suffer from kidney and other complex, chronic diseases. I am committed to making certain my fellow veterans have their voice heard, retain access to the care they have earned and are legally entitled to at the VA and elsewhere and gain the benefit of new research and innovations in the realms of biologics, diagnostics and devices." Mr. Hickey has served as a caregiver to kidney patients and his family, with a long history of military service, has received care through the VA medical system.

AAKP President Paul T. Conway, a former dialysis patient and current transplant recipient stated, "AAKP is honored to have Mr. Hickey serve as the Chair of the Veteran's Health Initiative as well as on the Executive Committee of the AAKP Board of Directors. Veterans deserve full and ongoing access to high quality, coordinated kidney care from professional medical teams who understand their unique needs along with life-saving therapies including both in-center and home dialysis and transplantation. Mr. Hickey is committed to the ideal of service and his experience as a family caregiver, U.S. Marine and defender of veteran rights makes him an ideal advocate for veteran care." Conway is a former Chief of Staff of the U.S. Department of Labor and has served in Federal roles under several presidents.

Mr. Hickey is an attorney with O'Melveny & Myers, an international, 800 lawyer firm with 15 offices in the world's financial and political centers. He is a member of the Litigation Department and Director of the firm's eDiscovery staff attorneys, a role in which he leads all O'Melveny staff attorney operations firmwide. He served as an Infantry officer in the U.S.M.C. as a Lieutenant with postings in Quantico and Camp Pendleton. His distinguished public service career includes posts on Capitol Hill as an Administrative Assistant, as a Special Assistant at the United States Department of Commerce and, following the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, as the Senior Advisor for Homeland Security for the Director of the Office of Personnel Management under President George W. Bush. At OPM, Mr. Hickey also served as liaison to Veteran Service Organizations nationwide, including the Vietnam Veterans of America, AMVETS, the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Legion. Mr. Hickey coordinated extensively with elected leaders and staff in the U.S. House and Senate as well as the White House to represent veteran stakeholder interests in the preservation of veteran's legal rights during reforms to U.S. Civil Service laws. He is a recipient of a Silver Helmet Award from AMVETS.

In addition to his role at O'Melveny & Myers, Mr. Hickey is actively involved with community service efforts in California through the Inner City Law Center of Los Angeles, which services veterans and their families in the Los Angeles, California area. He is also active in the Armed Forces Committee and Veterans Legal Service Project of the Los Angeles County Bar Association, which works to identify and address opportunities to assist veterans, active military personnel, and reservists with their legal needs.

Veterans are actively involved on the AAKP national leadership team and thousands of veterans and their families, as well as medical professionals, are involved in the organization. AAKP is bipartisan in their relationships and non-partisan in their operations. AAKP rolled out the VHI at the 2017 Kidney Innovation Summit at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs in Washington, D.C. https://aakp.org/press-release/aakp-participates-kidney-innovation-summit-u-s-department-veterans-affairs/

For more information about AAKP and its programs, visit www.aakp.org or call 1-800-749-2257.

CONTACT:

Deborah Pelaez

Marketing Communications Manager

(800) 749-AAKP or [email protected]

SOURCE American Association of Kidney Patients

Related Links

http://www.aakp.org


WASHINGTON, March 30, 2018 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- While community colleges are no stranger to the national spotlight, recent attention has brought with it questions about the very definition of a community college. A uniquely American concept, community colleges were started as a way to train women to enter the workforce as teachers. You could say that early community colleges were the first vocational schools.

Today's community colleges are as diverse as the students they serve. More than 1,100 community colleges across the nation serve more than 12-million students annually. By design, community colleges are local and reflect the needs of the community in which they reside. Nearly every congressional district in the United States has a community college. The students that attend are the most diverse within the higher education sector and many are the first in their family to attend college. Community college students on average are older, are working, are attending school part-time, and are saving thousands of dollars in tuition and fees while increasing their lifetime earning potential and employability.

Traditional and cutting-edge, community colleges represent the best of American higher education. They are unapologetically accessible and provide a critical pathway for students to reach their educational goals. For many students, that means they complete their first two years of college without a mountain of debt, with a solid foundation taught by many of the same professors that teach students in the university setting, and with a guaranteed transfer to a university. For the community college, they do this with less money and far less alumni support than their university counterparts.

The beauty of the community college is its ability to evolve in support of its community. As the country and world evolved, so did the needs of its citizens. Many vocational programs that were traditionally taught in high schools some 40 years ago, are now taught at community colleges. These programs offer sophisticated, relevant, and accredited workforce education.

"Vocational schools" are now generally called career and technical education or workforce development programs and are structured to develop needed skills for the diverse, modern workforce. The necessity of the evolution of these programs was dictated by the advancement of technology. Classes that were offered in support of learning the skills to be an automotive technician in the 1980s would certainly be lacking in today's technologically advanced vehicles that are largely run by computers. The technology evolved. So did the education.

Like the thousands of general education programs offered at community colleges, these career and technical programs are a good investment for the community. Many of these programs are a partnership between industry and the community college and are designed to address the regional economic needs of employers and employees. These partnerships go beyond vocational training and instead are designed to create a pipeline that serves the community and its citizens with a viable job market.

The first choice for many students, community colleges have been the start of amazing things for millions of Americans. So, is a community college a vocational school? Yes. And many other things. To the nurses, firefighters, police officers, dental hygienists, chefs, fashion designers, business owners, transfer students, welders, plumbers, marine biologists, and the many millions of community college students served in the past century, we remain committed to evolving and supporting your success in achieving your educational goals  no matter what you call us.

Walter G. Bumphus, Ph.D.

President and CEO

As the voice of the nation's community colleges, the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC), delivers educational and economic opportunity for 12 million diverse students in search of the American Dream. Uniquely dedicated to access and success for all students, AACC's nearly 1,200 member colleges provide an on-ramp to degree attainment, skilled careers and family-supporting wages. Located in Washington, D.C., AACC advocates for these not-for-profit, public-serving institutions to ensure they have the resources and support they need to deliver on the mission of increasing economic mobility for all.

SOURCE American Association of Community Colleges

Related Links

http://www.aacc.nche.edu


MAMMOTH LAKES, Calif., March 30, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Whistling Rabbit Press and the Southern Mono Historical Society announced today the date of the inaugural Eastern Sierra Book Festival. It will be held in Mammoth Lakes, California on July 15, 2018.

The one-day Sunday event will honor writers, readers, and publishers who live in the Eastern Sierra, as well as those who write about that spectacular natural area. The event is sponsored by Whistling Rabbit Press and hosted by the Southern Mono Historical Society at the historic Hayden Cabin in Mammoth Lakes. The event is free and open to the public.

"The concept for the event grew out of a book launch party that I was planning for my book The Mammoth Letters: Running Away to a Mountain Town. It occurred to me that it would be a lot more fun to have a party with lots of writers and readers," said Jennifer K. Crittenden, owner of Whistling Rabbit Press. "I approached Robert Joki, the president of the Southern Mono Historical Society about the idea, and he was game."

"We are delighted to host the first Eastern Sierra Book Festival," said Robert Joki. "I anticipate a full day of fun celebrating writers, readers, and our glorious locale. The society hopes to grow this into an annual event."

The day-long activities will include talks by writers and publishers about their books and the publishing process. Authors will be present to sign their books, and books written in or about the Eastern Sierra will be available for sale. The detailed schedule will be available on the www.mammothletters.com website.

"We are planning an inclusive gathering under the society's big tent known as the Temple of Folly. It's a beautiful site, next to the burbling Mammoth Creek and in full view of the Sherwins and Mammoth Mountain," said Crittenden. "Also, I hope people who are interested in writing their own book will attend. We'll have some good information about resources available to those who might have a book in them, as well as those for current authors and readers."

Authors and speakers who are interested in participating should contact Crittenden at [email protected]. The event is also seeking sponsors to help spread the word about the festival.

About Whistling Rabbit Press: Whistling Rabbit Press is a boutique publishing house located in San Diego, California. Since its inception in 2012, it has published four titles: two business-related books, a creative nonfiction book about the Eastern Sierra, and one love story. Two titles have reached the Amazon bestseller list, and one won a National Indie Excellence Award in 2012. A new publication, an advice book for men about working with women, is planned for the summer of 2018.

Whistling Rabbit Press publishes its titles in paperback, Kindle, and ebook formats. It has produced one audiobook. It also publishes The Pergola, a digital semi-monthly magazine devoted to topics related to career, gender, communication, language, finance, and especially humor. Whistling Rabbit Press also maintains an online calendar devoted to all events in the Eastern Sierra. It can be found at www.mammothletters.com.

Whistling Rabbit Press plans to begin accepting submissions for potential publication later this year. It is particularly interested in nonfiction books about careers, professional development, leadership, gender, adventure, sports, and the natural world. The publisher recently won a scholarship from the Independent Book Publishing Association to attend its annual conference in Austin, Texas. More information can be found at www.whistlingrabbitpress.com.

About the Southern Mono Historical Society: The purposes of the Southern Mono Historical Society are the enhancement of public knowledge of the history of the southern Mono County region and the collection, interpretation and display of artifacts pertaining to such history and culture. The society welcomes the public to view its collection and resources through the Mammoth Museum at the Hayden Cabin.

Contact:

Jennifer K. Crittenden

858-205-9530

[email protected]

SOURCE Whistling Rabbit Press

Related Links

http://www.whistlingrabbitpress.com


In a speech on the closing day of the Public Library Association Conference last weekend, Columbia law professor and author Tim Wu told librarians that restoring net neutrality protections should be a top priority, and warned the tech industry that regulation is almost certainly coming as Americans learn more about how their data is being abused.

I think were at an important moment in our democracy, a moment where the very basics of the speech equation, of the information flow equation, have fundamentally transformed how we live and how this country is governed, Wu said. And what we need to do is to figure out who are the entities who need to bear more responsibility, who need a level of oversight, who need to be the trustees of our time. We have always understood that some entities, some businesses must operate in a public facing way, must operate with special duties, must by virtue of their essential [roles], their power, their ability to shape our very republic, that they must operate under public oversight. And I think that time is coming, and I think it is coming faster than any of us imagined.

In his talk, Wu voiced his concern with recent changes in our information ecosystem, from the repeal of net neutrality to the advent of social media, subjects he has written about in highly regarded books. In 2010, he published The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires, and in 2016, The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads. In a 2003 academic paper, Wu is credited with coining the term "net neutrality."

What has led us this watershed moment, where social media has transformed from a friendly way to see what your friend's children look like to a data-gathering operation capable of creating mayhem in our democracy? It all stems from advertising, Wu explained, and the sophisticated way advertisers target us in the digital age.

When you have a business model that is focused on maximizing time on site, that will lead you in dark directions. It means you want people to be addicted, Wu said. Facebook was forced by its business model to become a machine of mass surveillance, of time sucking, and mass manipulation.

Wu pointed to the newspapers of the 1830swhich first began viewing the audience as the productand which then began focusing on false stories, gore, and scandal to capture people's attention. The lesson being: when consumer attention is the product, it will almost always create a race to the bottom.

The original sin of Google and Facebook and other web publishers is they all chose advertising as their only business model," Wu said, "and tied themselves to this business of attention harvesting.

Net Neutrality: As Important as the First Amendment

Wu also implored librarians to remain engaged in the fight to restore net neutrality, which was repealed by the Trump administration's F.C.C. in December of 2017, over a large public outcry.

If we do one thing over the next few years, he said, it must be to restore net neutrality. It must be to restore our informational freedoms.

Wu reflected on how the time he spent at a now-defunct Silicon Valley startup in the early 2000s started him thinking about the principles he would later pull together as the theory of net neutrality. I started to see the desire of cable companies and other large companies to control information much more than the Internet wanted to be controlled, Wu recalled. That they wanted the ability to prioritize, and discriminate against some content, and above all, they wanted the ability to control things that might threaten their business models.

 If we do one thing over the next few years, it must be to restore net neutrality, it must be to restore our informational freedoms. 

Wu said that he had already been growing increasingly uneasy over the desire of the cable and phone industries to make the Internet function like cable televisionand then he was tasked with selling his then-employers products in China, where the government insisted on "something that could at some level be censored, controlled, or blocked, he said. That experience, he said, helped him form the basis of net neutralitythe fundamental idea that the user should decide what the Internet is and that the carrier shouldnt get in the way. The Internet, Wu said should be a medium in the true sense of the word."

For a decade preceding Trumps election, net neutrality was the norm, even before it was formally adopted by the F.C.C. under the Obama Administration. It was popular, and non-partisan, Wu notedand, he said, the Internet flourished.

I think giving people the opportunity, the possibility to come up with things and then share them worked, he said. During this era we had the birth of the blog, the birth of sharing home videos on places like YouTube, the birth of early social media, and also the birth of Wikipedia. Now, none of these things are perfect. Theres reason to suggest that Wikipedia has mistakes and some home videos are terrible, and many blogs were tedious and boring. But it was what the people were doing, and that was something very beautiful.

Of course, also during this same period, he noted, new companies emerged that threatened the status quolike Skype, which offered free phone calls, and NetFlix, which was the beginning of the challenge to the television model.

I dont think you have companies like Netflix without net neutrality, Wu said, adding that "the track record is so strong, its hard to believe that there would be any real opposition to net neutrality.

So, why then was it one of the first things the Trump administration sought to go after?

I think it comes back to the idea that the free flow of information can be very threatening to those who wish to consolidate their power, Wu told librarians. I think it comes down to the idea that the censorial instinct remains very strong.

He stressed that laws and policies like net neutrality, which are designed to ensure and guarantee a baseline for the free flow of information are as important, if not more important, than the First Amendment in the digital age.

Its not surprising that the Russian government doesnt respect net neutrality; that the Chinese government doesnt respect net neutrality; that the most oppressive regimes are all opponents of net neutrality, Wu said. There is a pattern, and it is sad that this country has joined those ranks.
At a Well-Attended PLA, Librarians Show They Understand the Challenges of the Digital Information Age

Despite a noreaster snarling travel on opening day, preliminary total attendance figures for the 2018 Public Library Association Conference, which closed last Saturday, stood at approximately 7,873, ALA officials announced this week. Thats down slightly from the roughly 8,000 that attended the 2016 show in Denver (and down by about 900 from last PLA conference in Philadelphia in 2012). But the numbers have to be good news for ALA, especially considering the weather pretty much foiled any last minute on-site registrations.

And ALA (and of course PLA) has to be especially pleased with its programming, which once again featured timely speakers both from the main stage, and throughout the professional program.

The show kicked off on a high note with Sally Yates, who praised librarians, and urged them to stay vigilant. You all are the keepers of the gateway to the truth, Yates said. An informed electorate is essential to our system of checks and balances and to holding our elected officials accountable. But an informed electorate requires access to information, and the tools necessary to be able to determine whats true, and what isnt.

For me, one of the highlights was hearing Lee Rainie, Director of Internet and Technology Research at Pew Research Center, talk about his research. We are in the thick of two, gigantic debates that were studying in this country, Rainie told librarians. Theres a crisis in truth, whats going on with correct and accurate information and how its used. And theres a crisis in trust, a substantial decline in large institutions that have the citizens trust.

He told librarians that his data suggested libraries remain one of the few institutions that merits public trust, and said their patrons depend on them to steer them towards truth. Facts matter, Rainie said. People want smart allies, and librarians are sort of at the top of everybodys list.

And in the closing Big Ideas session, author and net neutrality pioneer Tim Wu implored librarians to remain engaged in the fight for net neutrality. Wu stressed that laws and policies like net neutrality, which are designed to ensure and guarantee a baseline for the free flow of information, are as important, if not more important, than the First Amendment in the digital age.

Its not surprising that the Russian government doesnt respect net neutrality; that the Chinese government doesnt respect net neutrality; that the most oppressive regimes are all opponents of net neutrality, Wu said. There is a pattern, and it is sad that this country has joined those ranks.

No one would deny that ALA has some challenges. But when it comes to grasping on to the broader themes shaping our information world, ALA has also shown a consistent knack for timely programming. It may not always be a perfect as say Roberta Kaplan keynoting the 2105 ALA Annual Conference, in San Francisco, during Pride, the same weekend that the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage. But this years PLA again shows that the library community knows whats important, and recognizes the forces driving our information and cultural future.

Look for more great programming at the ALA Annual Conference in Juneand if the promise of a good program isnt enough to draw you in, this should: its in New Orleans.

Libraries Get a Boost in the 2018 Federal Budget, but it Comes with a Warning

As we were going to press last week, Congress passed the 2018 omnibus spending bill, which included significant federal funding increases for libraries.

Despite two straight years in which the Trump Administration proposed eliminating the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and with it virtually all federal funding for libraries, the 2018 budget includes a $9 million bump for the IMLS, including $5.7 million for the Library Services and Technology Act; and $27 million for the Innovative Approaches to Literacy program.

In addition, the ALAs Washington Office reports, the bill included a host of other positive line items, including an unexpected $700 million for Title IV education programs, which opens doors to new funding for school libraries. And, Congress also added a policy that will now make Congressional Research Services (CRS) reports available online to the public through the Library of Congress, something ALA has advocated for decades.

But the budget also came with a warning from President Trump, who told lawmakers never again after threatening to veto the bill on the morning he was to sign it.

To protect federal library funding, we need to keep reminding Congress that libraries bring leaders and experts together to solve difficult problems, that we deliver opportunities, from academic success to work-readiness, said ALA president Jim Neal, in a statement."

Oh, and dont forget that in November, theres this little thing called the midterm elections.

Thank You, Wikipedia, For Reminding Us What the Internet Can Do

Between all the Russian bots on Twitter and the campaign to #DeleteFacebook making the news these days, its all too easy to overlook the wonders of the web. Luckily, an article on two teenagers who devote their free time to keeping the Wikipedia entries on the NYC Public Transportation up to date serves as a glorious reminder.

Though theyve never met in real life, Ryan Ng, a 19-year-old freshman at Baruch College, and Shaul Picker, a 17-year-old high school student from Queens, are both part of the fanatical world of Wikipedia supercontributors, writes Stephen Harrison in the New York Times.

The article, which will appear in the Sunday Review this weekend, highlights the impressive contributions of the young men, both of who began contributing to the platform in middle school. (Mr. Ng, just to give you an idea, has created more than 17,000 pages for the site.)

Mr. Picker and Mr. Ng both describe their described their motivation to edit Wikipedia as a mix of personal enjoyment and a desire for public service.

The article illustrates the ways in which Wikipedia manages to be both educational and fun to use. Its almost like a video game, according to Mr. Ng, except the payoff is a public good. Though he later admits that his time on Wikipedia has taken away from his schoolwork.

Friday One-Liners

Nieman: Will news organizations face Facebook-fueled blowback for using third-party tracking on their own sites?

Conde Nast Traveler updates their list of the worlds most beautiful libraries

Inside Higher Ed reports that Congress may be starting to embrace Open Educational Resources

12 Literary Plagiarism Scandals as ranked by the editors of LitHub

Librarian/archivist Stacie Williams highlights the impact of Linda Brown, who died this week, on her life and education

A look at how the Brooklyn Public Library is broadening the definition of what it means to be literate via the New York Times.

This barbershop in Michigan gives kids a discount when they read a book aloud to their barber via NPR

Public libraries are taking part in the guerrilla gardening movement via Atlas Obscura

A book club for death row inmates via Longreads

Captain Underpants is a hit at the Library of Congress
Elle Nash. Dzanc (PGW, dist.), $16.95 trade paper (128p) ISBN 978-1-938604-43-0

Nashs brilliant and visceral debut novel follows a young womans increasingly complicated relationship with a young couple. The 19-year-old narrator, unnamed at first, has just finished high school and is working at a RadioShack in Colorado Springs. She has no plans for the future and lives with her largely absent mother, from whom she steals painkillers. One day at work, she meets Matt and Frankie, and the three bond over tattoos and metal music. From there, the relationship progresses quickly: Frankie names the narrator Lilith, and Matt and Lilith begin having sex while Frankie watches. Lilith simultaneously feels a sense of belonging and a sense of disembodiment: I started to be it, started to be Lilith, whoever she was. Something about me slipped away, a letting go.... I could only see him and Frankie, myself an object to bring them pleasure. Benign neglect, how peonies thrive. But the same recklessness that draws the three together eventually forges cracks in their shared relationship; Frankie is controlling, and Liliths forceful desire fuels the fire: I wanted to know what it would be like to carry a bad habit all the way through. Nash writes with psychological precision, capturing Liliths volatile shifts between directionless frustration, self-destructiveness, ambivalence, and vulnerable need. This is a complex, impressive exploration of obsession and desire that gives new meaning to the famous quote often attributed to Oscar Wilde: Everything is about sex, except sex, which is about power.
Published on:

29 March 2018



Sophie Harman Sophie Harman

Dr Harman was awarded the PSAs Joni Lovenduski Prize for outstanding professional achievement at the Associations annual conference on March 27.

Joni Lovenduski Prize

The inaugural Joni Lovenduski Prize is awarded for outstanding professional achievement by a mid-career scholar who has demonstrated excellence in their contribution to research, teaching, mentoring of students and junior colleagues, and professional service.

Dr Harman was nominated by Professor Kim Hutchings and Professor Adam Fagan, head of the School of Politics and International Relations. Dr Harman said she is delighted to receive the prize: It is lovely to have my academic work commended and to have the judging panel recognise the different aspects of my academic career.

Establishing a charity and producing a feature film can sometimes be seen as non-academic so to receive direct recognition from a prestigious organisation such as PSA means a lot and I hope encourages others to think about different forms of scholarship. Im chuffed to bits.

Judges from the PSA said: We are delighted to award the first Joni Lovenduski mid-career award to Sophie Harman. Although all the nominees were of a very high standard and it was hard to choose between them, we felt that the breadth of Sophie Harmans achievements  including the film she has recently produced, as well as the charity she has founded, in addition to her research and publications record, marked her out from the other nominees.

Research

Dr Harman is interested in global health politics, African agency, and the politics of conspicuously invisible women. Her teaching and research draws on her experience of fieldwork in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Sierra Leone, Zambia, and the global health and international political economy hubs of Geneva, Washington DC and New York.

Dr Harman recently completed her first feature film PILI as part of her AXA Insurance-funded project on The Everyday Risk of HIV/AIDS treatment and care. PILI is a unique project in that is a co-produced piece of research between film-makers and the women of the Pwani region of Tanzania. The story of PILI is based on the lives of the women you see in the film.

Dr Harman is a founding trustee of Trans Tanz, a charity that provides transportation to healthcare facilities for people living with HIV/AIDS in rural Tanzania.

More information
The superhero subgenre leads video-on-demand (VOD) habits among Brazilians, research fro mParrot Analytics has revealed.





During February 2018, the superhero subgenre was the third most demanded content in Latin America , driven by titles like Super Girl and Arrow, has pointed out the analysis firm.However, superheroes success was uneven across the region, with Brazil's demand for this kind of series being 83% higher than the Latin American average, and Mexico's being 41% above average.Leading the race for the ranking of most popular superhero titles within Brazil is The Flash, currently in its fourth season, followed by Supergil."While the crime-fighting Arrow spin-off tends to be a hit world-wide, it performs especially well in this market: Brazil generated the third highest demand for the series globally last month, edged out by Jamaica and the United States," pointed out Parrot Analytics. The Flash and DC Comics series Supergirl ranked 10 and 11 respectively when looking to the overall VOD ranking in Brazil."Looking at the past six months of demand data for superhero series illustrates Brazil's fandom for the subgenre isn't new. The country has been leading the charge, or a close runner-up, for several months now," added the report. "Moving into 2018, Brazil appears to be differentiating itself from the rest of the countries as the clear superhero super-fan."
Sony's Crackle OTT network has started filming its eight-episode comedy series, Rob Riggle's Ski Master Academy, in Malibu.





In this Crackle original, Rob Riggle, who is mostly known for his legendary ski master movies, has invested all of his money and reputation into an Academy celebrating America's 'truest art form': personal watercraft riding. Riggle, his legendary stunt man commandant Dirk Hamsteak (Billy Merritt) and their entire staff of instructors spend a semester defending their beloved Academy at all costs."I am so blessed to have found a group of people willing to kick as much lake ass as I am in the service of personal watercraft education," said Riggle, who also serves as writer and executive producer. "We may not be the Ski Masters America deserves, but we are the ones it needs right now. School's in, everybody."The show marks Riggle's second collaboration with Crackle . He can also be seen in the original movie Dead Rising: Watchtower, where he plays Frank West, Capcom's favourite zombie-killing photojournalist. The feature, based on the widely popular video game franchise, has sold several million copies to date and is currently streaming on the network. Riggle will next be seen in Open Road Films' Midnight Sun, which opened on 23 March with Bella Thorne and Patrick Schwarzenegger; and Universal's comedy, Night School with Kevin Hart and Tiffany Haddish, which is set to release 28 September.
From the makers of the international hit Locked Up, Lifeline is to reach the UK on Channel 4, following a successful premiere season in Spain.





The medical thriller and drama, based on the widely-debated topic of organ transplant memory, was originally produced by Atresmedia and Mediapro's Globomedia, which are also the creators of Locked Up (Vis a Vis). It stars three of Spain's most celebrated actors, Pablo Derqui, Leonor Watling and Ingrid Rubio have won over 21 international awards between them.Lifeline (Pulsaciones) premiered worldwide in Antena 3 during the first quarter of 2017 and was selected as The Wit named the series one of the most original formats of the year during MIPTV 2017. After that, an agreement was immediately reached with Channel 4 for its UK premiere.The 10-episodes series will launch on Channel 4 on 15 April, with the rest of the series going live on All 4 and Sky On Demand immediately after.In addition to sharing the same creators as Locke Up, Lifeline was also written by Emilio Aragon, who recently won Best Film award for Paper Birds at the Woodstock Film Festival, the Seattle International Film Festival and the Montreal Film Festival. The series has also been broadcast worldwide by Atreseries Internacional across the Americas, and it's part of Netflix's subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) catalogue for Latin America.
As Russia was announcing who it would kick out over the mass expulsion of Russian spies over a nerve agent attack in Britain, the U.K.'s National Security Adviser Mark Sedwill was in Washington Thursday, conferring with Americans on next steps to check Moscow's aggression.

It's mainly about a coherent approach by the Western alliance to a range of aggressive Russian behavior, of which the attack in Salisbury was just the latest, obviously a very acute example, Sedwill said told a small group of reporters.
The strong demonstration of Western solidarity with the United Kingdom in response to the March 4 poisoning of double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury, England, by a nerve agent known as Novichok, secretly developed in the Soviet Union, has apparently caught Moscow by surprise. Some 28 countries, together with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), announced they are expelling over 150 Russian diplomats allegedly connected to Moscows intelligence services. Four statesLuxemburg, Malta, Portugal and Slovakiahave recalled their ambassadors from Moscow for consultations, in solidarity with Britain, without expelling diplomats. Russian officials angrily denounced the mass expulsions. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has promised a strong response and accused Western governments of blindly yielding to a campaign of colossal pressure and blackmail coming from Washington (Interfax, March 28).

In the early stages of the Skripal crisis the dominant opinion in Moscow was different: the UK was seen as feeble and isolated by Brexit, with a weak government and prime minister. A disunited West was seen as incapable of acting together coherently (Interfax, March 14; see EDM, March 15). The unprecedented act of coordinated expulsions came as a nasty surprise. The biggest disappointment turned out to be President Donald Trump, who, on March 20, had phoned President Vladimir Putin, congratulating him on his reelection, and both leaders agreed to begin work on planning a future summit. This apparently friendly phone call was interpreted in Moscow as effectively undermining British attempts to mobilize a joint Western response to the Skripal poisoning case. Russian diplomats in Washington expressed optimism about the possibility of serious negotiation beginning about strategic security issues, as Putin proposed in his address to parliament on March 1, 2018 (Kommersant, March 28). When it turned out the U.S. was expelling more Russians than any other countrysome 60, including delegation members of Russias mission to the United Nationsand, furthermore, was closing a Russian consulate in Seattle, the disappointment turned into anger.

According to the pro-Kremlin news site Vzglad, Moscow may, in turn send home more U.S. diplomats, effectively crippling the United States embassy and making it almost impossible for Russian citizens to obtain visas to visit the U.S. Apparently, even more importantly, according to Vzglad, Putin may write off Trump as a person with whom it is impossible to make deals because he does not control his own administration. Trumps apparent good intentions and his often expressed desire to reach deals with Putin is recognized in Moscow; but his ability to deliver is increasingly in doubt (Vzglad, March 26).

The Russian state propaganda machine has been portraying the Western demonstration of unity in expulsions as halfhearted and incomplete. Austria has been praised for resisting British pressure and refusing to expel any Russian diplomats (Interfax, March 28). Germany has announced it will allow Russia to replace the four diplomats it is expelling, which is also interpreted as a positive development (Interfax, March 28). While the expulsions crisis was unfolding, the German authorities issued their final legal authorization, allowing Gazprom to begin building the Nord Stream Two natural gas export pipeline from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea, bypassing Ukrainea project Washington opposes. This development was lauded as business as usual despite all the diplomatic fuss. Gazprom is now awaiting final approval by Finland, Sweden and Denmark, and planning to begin laying the pipes underwater already this year (RIA Novosti, March 27).

Sergei Naryshkin, the director of Russias Foreign Intelligence Service (Sluzhba Vneshney RazvedkiSVR), known in Soviet times as the First Main Directorate (PGU) of the KGB, has denounced the mass expulsion of Russian diplomatsmany of whom are apparently connected to the SVRas a dirty and cynical provocation. According to Naryshkin, the expulsions are intended to promote Russophobia. Moscow will reply strongly and adequately, he added (Militarynews.ru, March 28). The foreign ministry, in an official statement, has implied the Brits themselves are responsible for the Skripal poisoning and are most likely involved in the 2006 death, in London, of Alexander Litvinenko from polonium-210 poisoning, further insinuating that the British government may also bear responsibility for other mysterious deaths of Russian emigres in the UK (Mid.ru, March 28).

Under mounting outside pressure, the Russian authorities are retreating into full siege mentality mode. The state propaganda machine is working at full capacity, portraying a nation under attack by numerous and unscrupulous enemies, led by the United States. This world outlook is not simply a propaganda ploy to be force-fed to the populaceit is today the official basis of Russias military and security threat assessment and planning. On March 24, 2018, speaking in Moscow at the annual security conference of the Academy of Military Science (a semi-official defense and security think tank), the chief of the General Staff and first deputy defense minister, Army General Valery Gerasimov (62), outlined Russias latest strategic defense outlook and vision of future war-making. According to Gerasimov, the U.S. is the main worldwide threat to international stability. The U.S. is attempting to continue to maintain at all costs, including military means, its global leadership, which is against the interests of different nations, including Russia, which does not accept [U.S.] dictate and supports a just world order. Because of Washington, international discord is swiftly escalating, according to Gerasimov, spreading from political, economic and information confrontations to engulf international sport and diplomacy, as well as scientific and cultural exchange, de facto becoming total. This total war is carried out at present via non-military means; but the U.S. and its allies threaten to use military force or sometimes actually use it against undesirable nations, implied Gerasimov (Militarynews.ru, March 24).

The expulsion of Russian diplomats, the Skripal case, the doping scandals that have beset Russian athletes after the 2014 Sochi Olympics, sanctions imposed on Russia because of Crimea and Ukraine, and allegations of Russian meddling in U.S. and other Western countries electionsalmost any crisis in todays world may be interpreted by Gerasimov and the Russian General Staff as one more additional front in the ongoing global total war. Standoffs with Iran, North Korea and other undesirable nations are apparently seen as episodes of the total world war between the forces of good allied to Russia and the evil U.S. and its minions. Hopes often expressed in the West that Russia may help with North Korea or Iran appear misplaced: The lines of total confrontation seem to have been set otherwise.

Dr. Pavel E. Felgenhauer is a Moscow-based defense analyst and columnist for Novaya Gazeta as well as a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at The Jamestown Foundation.

This article appeared originally at The Jamestown Foundation's Eurasia Daily Monitor.
The Moscow-backed authorities of separatist South Ossetia released, on March 23, Georgian citizens David Gerkeuli and Iosif Gundishvili (Imedinews March 23). The two men had been arrested by South Ossetian KGB agents (the special service of this breakaway republic still carries the old Soviet name) and Russian border guards (Kavkazsky Uzel, March 22).

Gerkeuli and Gundishvili were accused of violating the state border of South Ossetia. Relatives of the detainees told reporters that they were going to church when the agents seized them in an ambush. The arrested were released after the family paid a fine (Imedinews, March 23).

Georgia does not recognize the border with South Ossetia and considers this territory occupied by Russian troops. After the August 2008 war, Russia violated all norms of international law by establishing an illegal border that passes through a number of Georgian villages. In this region of the Caucasus, where people have lived and worked for millennia, there had never been any such boundaries to block the free movement of local residents. The dividing line, drawn and regularly redrawn by the occupation forces (see EDM, October 2, 2013; December 2, 2013; July 20, 2015), is so artificial, that hundreds of Georgian citizens become its victims each year. They are arrested and transferred to Tskhinvali prison, where they often endure various humiliations and even beatings or other torture (see below).

On March 24, 35-year-old Archil Tatunashvili was buried at the Mukhatgverdi military cemetery, near the Georgian capital of Tbilisi. He was a retired soldier: in 2008, Tatunashvili served in Iraq, where his brigade fought alongside the United States military (Oc-media.org 23 February). After the start of the Five Day War with Russia, the brigade returned to its homeland but did not have time to take part in the hostilities (Diplomaatia, August 2013). Soon thereafter, Archil Tatunashvili resigned and rejoined civilian life. With the permission of the separatist authorities of South Ossetia, he was engaged in a small business in the Akhalgori region, where he was born and raised.

KGB agents had arrested Tatunashvili on February 22, on the border, and transferred him to Tskhinvali prison. News reports revealed that he had died the following day, during an interrogation (Civil Georgia, March 20). After his body was handed back to Georgia on March 20, a month after his capture, experts confirmed he had been severely beaten and tortured while in custody. The final conclusions about the cause of death have yet to be published, but the young man was almost certainly killed because of the beating (Civil Georgia, March 21).

The Tatunashvili Affair appears to have been used by Moscow to put additional pressure on Georgia. The occupation authorities refused to transfer Tatunashvilis body to his family for weeks. And that refusal angered relatives and the populations of villages located near the border with South Ossetia. Indeed, in late February, hundreds of local people blocked the strategically important TbilisiPoti highway for several hours. Without the normal functioning of this road, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan all risk being cut off from Black Sea ports. At the same time, a group of activists blocked the TbilisiVladikavkaz road, the main overland route that connects (via Georgian territory) Armenia and Russia. The protesters demanded that the Georgian government do everything to return the body of the deceased to the family. Some demonstrators taking part in the blockade threatened not to let Russian tourists into the country.

The roads were unblocked only after Georgias Interior Minister Giorgi Mghebrishvili, on the instructions of the prime minister, met with the father of the deceased Archil Tatunashvili and promised that he would soon be given his sons body for burial (Sova.news, February 26).

Negotiations over Tatunashvili, with the involvement of the Red Cross, lasted for several days. But the South Ossetian occupying authorities refused to resolve the humanitarian issue. Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili made an emotional appeal to the Russian government and suggested starting a dialogue to break the deadlock in which Russian-Georgian relations ended up after the Five-Day War. In addition, he expressed Tbilisis readiness to start a direct dialogue with the Abkhazians and Ossetians (Georgia Today, March 12; see EDM, March 26).

It soon emerged that Georgia had agreed to sign a joint declaration with Russia in Geneva. The bilateral Geneva talks have been held since the August 2008 war with the participation of the United States, the European Union, the United Nations, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe OSCE. But now, Russia has apparently convinced Georgia to sign a peace declaration together with representatives of Abkhazia and South Ossetia (Kommersant, March 20).

David Avalishvili, a columnist with the independent information and analytical agency GHN, said that the signing of the declaration with Abkhazia and South Ossetia is a big victory for Moscow because Georgia will indirectly recognize the legitimacy of the occupying administrationseven though these administrations were created in the territories where the ethnic cleaning of the Georgian population took place (Authors interview, March 23).

For almost ten years, Avalishvili noted, the Georgian government has refused to sign such a declaration with separatist Abkhazia and South Ossetia, demanding that Russia first pledge not to use further force against Georgia. But now, Moscow achieved its desired goal as a result of a provocationthe arrest and murder of former Georgian army officer Archil Tatunashvili. It was easy [for Moscow] to predict the emotional reaction of Georgian society and the helplessness of the Georgian authorities when the West cannot really support Georgia because of the many problems [it has to deal with] from Ukraine to Salisbury, the expert asserted.

The Tatunashvili case represents a new Hybrid Warstyle method developed by Moscow, Avalishvili argued. This method allows Russia to influence the emotions of society and put the [Georgian] government in a desperate situation, forcing the countrys authorities to make concessions to Russia in order to prevent a civil confrontation, the blocking of [national] infrastructure, or other destabilizing actions [by the population]. At the same time, mass media and social networks are actively used [by Moscow], he explained (Authors interview, March 23).

Analysis of the dangerous situation around the occupied regions of Georgia lends credence to Avalishvilis theory. The strategy has already been shown to work with the Tatuanshvili case. Hence, the occupation forces can be expected to increase their use of abductions of Georgian citizens to again influence the emotions of Georgian society. And presented with additional ultimatums, the Georgian government will again be pressed to make new concessions to Moscow.

Giorgi Menabde is a journalist based in Georgia.

This article appeared originally at The Jamestown Foundation's Eurasia Daily Monitor.
Two months after the lethal ambush in Niger that killed four American troops in October, U.S. forces were involved in another skirmish in the central African nation with militants linked to the Islamic State. If this story sounds unfamiliar, thats because it was first reported last week, fully three months after the battle.

Pressed for an explanation of the delay at a Defense Department briefing Thursday, chief Pentagon spokesperson Dana White offered a stunning justification: U.S. troops are often in harms way, and there are tactical things that happen that we dont put out a press release about, she said. We also dont want to give a report card to our adversaries. They learn a great deal from information that we put out.

In other words: The military will decide whether Americans find out what the military is doing in their name.

White cast the secrecy as a matter of security, a characterization that is misleading at best: This is not a case of the public demanding notice before every troop movement in a known warzone. It is not analogous to announcing D-Day in advance. This is a secretive intervention in a nation where the military has no legal authority to act. It is a blatant disregard for the Constitutions assignment of war powers to Congress and the Pentagons accountability to civilian leaders and the citizenry. It is reckless executive war-making concealed from the public eye.

The extent to which the DoD has kept Congress in the dark about its extensive operations in Niger (and 49 of the other 53 nations on the continent of Africa) became evident in the aftermath of the October ambush. Congressional leaders like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) pleaded ignorance of the entire interventiona project that never should have begun without their explicit sanction. (Like the mission creep across the greater Mideast, interventions in Africa are shoved into the jurisdiction of the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force that preceded the invasion of Afghanistan, a move that strains its scope beyond all reason, as U.S. forces are fighting in nations unrelated to the 9/11 attacks to which the AUMF responded.)

Since then, Graham, Schumer, and their colleagues have done nothing to constrain the Pentagon in Niger or even to investigate its value to American defense. Graham has conceded the ISIS forces in Niger do not have the capability to attack the United States, and yet he has no apparent objection to putting U.S. troops in their line of fire indefinitely. U.S. action in Niger and surrounding countries has continued unabated as Congress is unwilling to demandand the Pentagon has made clear it is unwilling to supplythe most basic information about why Washington appointed the U.S. military the perpetual police officer of Africa.

And so White and her press briefing partner, Marine Lt. Gen. Kenneth McKenzie, assured their audience everything is well in hand. I completely disagree with you that we dont have a strategy, McKenzie told a reporter. I actually think we have a very good global strategy against violent extremist organizations and what you see happening in Niger is simply one of the manifestations of that. So I think we do have a plan; I think the plan is working. White offered slightly more than laud and platitude, noting there is a great deal of ungoverned space within Africa and the U.S. is helping those security forces increase their capabilities so that they can manage the security situations themselves.

It all sounds very reasonable until you remember that this is precisely what the U.S. has been doing in Afghanistan (to the tune of $45 billion annually) and Iraq for the better part of two decades. The hope, writes military historian Ret. Col. Andrew Bacevich, is that training, equipping, advising, and motivating [local troops] to assume responsibility for defending their country may someday allow American forces and their coalition partners to depart.

But the reality is a costly and dangerous stalemate. Solving other nations internal political, ethnic, and religious turmoil has proven well outside the U.S. militarys capabilities. From on high, Bacevich continues, assurances of progress; in the field, results that, year after year, come nowhere near whats promised; on the homefront, an astonishingly credulous public. The war in Afghanistan has long since settled into a melancholy and seemingly permanent rhythm, and the interventions in Africa show every sign of doing the same. There will always be ungoverned space around the globe, and it is neither possible nor desirable for the U.S. military, peerless though it is, to go everywhere all the time to address each point of chaos by force. Such grand schemes are incompatible with a prudent, sustainable defense, and fiscally absurd for a nation with $21 trillion in national debt.

The Pentagons bold assertion at a routine presser that it has no obligation to inform the public about its warslet alone to ask Congress for permission to fight them is a troubling sign that Washington has absorbed not a single lesson from the past 17 years of conflict. To accept an autonomous Pentagon ranging about the globe to address problems in distant lands regardless of their connection to U.S. security interests with secret and unfettered military intervention is to accept an endless, fruitless drain on American blood and treasure.

Bonnie Kristian is a fellow at Defense Priorities and weekend editor at The Week. Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, Politico, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, Relevant Magazine, The Hill, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
Last weekend, while media attention was focused on the March for Our Lives protests across America, a militarised police force blocked the road leading up to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab, one of the universitys most famous laboratories, for a special guest. The guest  the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman  visited both Harvard and MIT on his first official tour of the US. Saudi officials boasted about the visit, posting photos of Bin Salman with both Harvard provost Alan Garber and MIT president Rafael Reif on social media.
After failing in every American political forum since the Paris climate accord was reached two years ago, the climate change movement has once again retreated to the courts. Not surprisingly, these advocates selected Californias federal courts as the forum of choice, counting on their comparatively liberal dispositions to breathe new life into their agenda. Pursuant to this initiative, several California counties and cities have sued numerous defendants, including major oil and gas companies, for emitting and exacerbating emissions of greenhouse gases.

In doing so, the plaintiffs based their claims on the tort of public nuisance, the broadest and vaguest remedy available. Public nuisance has been condemned by legal scholars as notoriously contingent and unsummarizable and a wilderness of law. William Prosser, one of Americas most famous law professors, wrote that nuisance was an impenetrable jungle and a legal garbage can full of vagueness, uncertainty and confusion.

Richard Epstein, another noted legal authority, concluded that nuisance does not work on a moral or deductive principle. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun famously remarked that one searches in vain for anything resembling a principle in the law of nuisance, and even the California Supreme Court has rejected the remedy when it threatened to impose standardless liability.

Given this history, it is especially alarming that the climate change movement now seeks legal judgments in the absence of objective standards derived from the legislative or regulatory process. Even more incredibly, this persistent excursion has already been rejected by not only the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals  the reviewing court that will decide any appeal from these judgments  but also by the Supreme Court of the United States.

Controversies such as climate change concern policy choices and value determinations that are constitutionally reserved to the executive branch or Congress and are especially ill-suited for judges. The Supreme Court has held that courts are fundamentally unequipped to formulate national polices or develop standards for matters, such as climate change, that are not legal in nature. As Justice Felix Frankfurter cautioned, A court is likely to lose its way if it strays outside the modest bounds of its own special competency and adjudicates only the legal phases of a broad social problem into an opportunity for formulating judgments of social policy. Although such political questions cannot be resolved constitutionally by judges, the climate movement seeks that precise result in California.

Even more curiously, the movement seeks monetary judgments for the California cities and counties own pockets  judgments supposedly intended to pay for adaptation and abatement of the alleged worldwide nuisance. Such money, if awarded as damages, would comprise gigantic windfalls allocated by unelected federal judges and spent at each plaintiffs discretion. The judgments could never be implemented in a manner reasonably calculated to reverse global warming unless they were accompanied by a bureaucracy created, elected and funded to supervise the work internationally and ensure against waste and abuse. Since neither Congress, the California legislature, the county and city governments, nor any other elected bodies are willing to serve in these roles, the plundering of Americas energy enterprises is entirely unwarranted.

Under controlling Supreme Court authority, even when the political branches have not acted, common law courts are not necessarily free to fill the void. Irrespective of whether the executive or legislative branches have spoken, due respect for their constitutional responsibilities  combined with awareness of the judiciarys own limitations  should motivate judicial restraint. Although the ancients concluded that nature abhors a vacuum, there are circumstances in the law, as here, where uncharted voids should be eschewed. In the absence of guiding principles, errors are as likely to fill the jurisprudential void as wisdom.
WASHINGTON -- Donald Trump made the case in "The Art of the Deal" for "winging it" on big negotiations. "I never get too attached to one deal or one approach," he wrote. "I keep a lot of balls in the air, because most deals fall out, no matter how promising they seem at first."

Trump is now about to wing it on an epic, global stage in his planned face-to-face meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Nobody in Washington or abroad seems to know just what Trump wants to accomplish in the meeting -- an ambiguity that Trump apparently views as a beneficial source of leverage.

The problem is that if this particular "ball in the air" should fall, the result could be a military confrontation in Northeast Asia. I've been asking U.S. and Asian experts what the Trump-Kim summit might accomplish. There's a consensus that Trump has a big opportunity, but a very risky one, since the deal that's doable now may not be one that he can (or should) accept.

The most intriguing aspect of this diplomacy is that it's being shaped largely by the two Koreas. Kim has been a surprisingly nimble player, pivoting this year from his belligerent push for nuclear weapons toward dialogue and unilateral concessions. Kim's partner has been South Korea's President Moon Jae-in, operating through his top intelligence advisers. They've set the table carefully, even though nobody can predict yet what will be served at this meal.

The pace quickened with Thursday's announcement that Kim and Moon will meet on April 27 for what a South Korean statement called the "start of a great journey to denuclearize the Korean peninsula." The most interesting detail was that the meeting will take place on the "southern" side of the border zone at Panmunjom. The two previous Korea summits, in 2000 and 2007, took place in Pyongyang. Kim had apparently proposed Pyongyang again, and then another city close to the border, before agreeing to Panmunjom.

The meeting will set the stage for Trump's encounter, and allow some preliminary U.S.-North Korean contact. But the U.S., in effect, is subcontracting the preparatory work to its Asian friends. South Korean intelligence has taken the lead, keeping CIA Director Mike Pompeo in the loop.

China is acting as a diplomatic concierge. Worried that they might be excluded from the Kim-Trump feast, the Chinese invited the North Korean leader this week to Beijing. The visit helped "avoid the mentality that China is being marginalized," as the Beijing Global Times expressed it earlier this month. President Xi Jinping told Kim that China embraces "the goal of denuclearization of the peninsula."

But make no mistake: It's the two Koreas that are driving the action, forcing their superpower allies to respond. Kim took the first steps by offering to halt weapons tests, discuss denuclearization and drop objections to U.S.-South Korean military exercises. With the Pyeongchang Olympics as backdrop, Seoul brokered Kim's offer of direct talks. Trump astounded the world with a quick "yes." But this has mainly been a Korean production, thus far.

So what, exactly, can the super-hyped Trump-Kim meeting accomplish? There's a low-key version, that the two leaders will agree on framework for denuclearization and normalization of relations -- claiming it as a big "win," and then turning the details over to working groups of experts. China endorsed the step-by-step approach Kim suggested this week, what he called "phased, synchronized measures."

The problem is that for skeptics (starting with John Bolton, Trump's new national security adviser), such an interim agreement would seem eerily like the 1994 "Agreed Framework" and the 2005 structure for the Six-Party talks -- past "breakthroughs" that proved to be dead-ends. U.S. officials have been studying why these past negotiations failed to deliver. One answer is that they lacked a vision of the end state for the Korean peninsula, including the future role of U.S. troops.

Kurt Campbell, the Obama administration's leading Asia strategist, argues that Trump and Kim should see themselves as mountain climbers -- and establish a base camp from which they can eventually reach the peak of a "grand bargain." But this base camp needs to be high enough up the mountain, anchored with enough specific provisions, that the summit is in sight.

Trump's history is to "go big" and look for the flamboyant deal. Kim seems to have a similar flair for the dramatic, and he has already taken big, bold risks. Strangely, perhaps, the decisive achievement of the Trump-Kim summit may be personal chemistry between two leaders who, for all the insults they've exchanged, seem remarkably similar in temperament.

(c) 2018, Washington Post Writers Group
Donald Trump woke up on Friday, March 23, and realized that a deficit-ballooning $1.3 trillion "omnibus" spending bill was awaiting his signature. The law increases defense spending but otherwise completely fulfills the spending priorities of the Democratic minority. Some have even said that the omnibus was "Barack Obama's budget."

Suddenly distressed by the "crazy" bill (doubtless due to something he saw on television), the president snorted and pawed the ground. He threatened to veto the measure, panicking Washington for a few hours (most members of Congress had already left town for spring recess) until aides were able to summon Defense Secretary James Mattis to talk Trump off the ledge.

He signed it.

It fully funds Planned Parenthood. It increases outlays for Pell Grants and Head Start, and it boosts funding for the Department of Labor and the Department of Education not only above the requests Trump had made but above the levels in Obama's last budget. It fails to deregulate the private health insurance market or to reform federal permitting rules on construction projects. Not a single agency was eliminated, though Trump's original budget proposal had called for 18 to be scrapped. It makes no changes to entitlement programs. And oh, here's something interesting: It actually forbids construction of a border wall in the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge in the Rio Grande Valley -- the very place Trump supposedly wants to begin construction.

From a conservative perspective, there was almost nothing to like in this budget. Yet what did Trump single out as the reason he was miffed? Leaving "800,000 plus DACA recipients ... totally abandoned by the Democrats."

OK. Look, the premise of Trump's entire campaign was that he was a brilliant dealmaker and a real boss who knew how to get things done. But he hadn't a clue as to how to develop a budget and achieve his priorities through the legislative process.

The president posed as the wounded party in this charade. Somehow a "crazy" process had landed a grotesque bill on his desk. He vowed that he would never sign another one. But did he make a single speech about the budget? Did he hold White House events, capture the news cycle (he is good at that) on behalf of his legislative priorities, or parlay with Democrats to iron out compromises? Did he tweet about spending? Not exactly. Instead of carefully crafting a responsible budget that would begin to reduce deficits and debt, what was Trump doing? He was firing his secretary of state via tweet; feuding with his attorney general; holding campaign-style rallies; firing his lawyers; exchanging schoolyard taunts with Joe Biden that are beneath the dignity of the average 13-year-old; and congratulating Vladimir Putin on his "victory."

During the presidential campaign, Trump lambasted the Obama administration for the immense debt over which it presided, urging that the country needed "someone like (him)" to sort out the mess. The debt, Trump promised, would be eliminated "over a period of eight years."

As for the Republicans in Congress, a few voiced objections to the morbidly obese budget. "It just boggles my mind that we continue to spend at a level that's no different than the last three or four years of the Obama administration," marveled Rep. Mark Walker, R-N.C. But most Republicans had little difficulty quieting their consciences and voting for a bill that a Heritage Foundation analyst acknowledged "supercharges our growth in deficits and the debt."

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan used to bring charts explaining the risk of a debt crisis to his town hall meetings. During the 2012 campaign, he used the "debt clock" as a prop, noting that it was not a "scorecard" and warning that the "debt will weigh down our country like an anchor."

That Paul Ryan hasn't been seen in some time.

Mitch McConnell warned in 2011 that "spending and debt" was "the nation's biggest problem." That McConnell has also been AWOL. If anyone knows of their whereabouts, please contact the authorities.

But alas, we have no authorities. Republicans have used their control of both branches to enact a huge tax cut without spending reductions to offset it, to increase domestic discretionary spending to levels that delight Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, and to leave entitlements -- the great drivers of unsustainable debt -- untouched.

Both parties and the people who elected them are marching straight off a completely avoidable financial cliff.

COPYRIGHT 2018 CREATORS.COM
This week, retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens wrote an op-ed in The New York Times that advocated a position most liberal pundits and activists have been incrementally working toward for a long time: repealing the Second Amendment. And while many liberal columnists argued that Stevens had only given fodder to gun advocates -- because his position is unfeasible right now -- not one whose piece I read argued that Stevens was wrong on the merits. Not one claimed that American citizens do, in fact, have an inherent individual right to protect themselves with firearms.

Whether repeal of the Second Amendment is feasible or not, historical revisionism is meant to mangle its meaning into irrelevancy. Stevens claims that his conception of gun rights is "uniformly understood" yet offers no legal precedent to back up the contention. Stevens claims that the Second Amendment's explicit mention of the right of "the people" does not create an "individual right," despite the inconvenient fact that other times the term is mentioned, in the Fourth, Ninth and 10th Amendments, the amendments have been found to protect the individual rights of the people.

Now, I'm not a legal scholar, but the idea, as the former justice argues, that the founders wanted no limits on the ability of federal (or even state) government to take weapons from law-abiding citizens conflicts with the historical record. Never once in the founding debate did a lawmaker rise to argue that gun ownership should be limited. Most state constitutions already featured language to protect that right. A number of states demanded that the national constitution include such a provision.

The debate over the Second Amendment centered on a dispute over who should control the militia: the federal or state governments. Everyone understood that a militia consisted of free individuals who would almost always grab their own firearms -- the ones they used in their everyday existence -- to engage in concerted efforts to protect themselves, their community or their country (sometimes from their own government).

This might surprise some, but the Minute Men did not return their muskets after Lexington.

In the writings and speeches of the American founders, the threat of disarmament was always a casus belli, which makes sense for practical and ideological reasons. None of the natural rights codified in the Constitution -- none, not freedom of speech, press or religion, or the ability to vote or demand due process -- had a longer or deeper history in English common law and tradition than the right to defend oneself.

Guns were so prevalent, in fact, that some framers noted that a tyrant would never take the nation because the general public out-armed the state. Noah Webster reasoned: "The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword, because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any bands of regular troops ..." His only mistake was trusting that the whole body of the people would always uphold the Constitution.

Even during the 19th century, not a single case challenged the notion that the Second Amendment is anything but an individual right. Again, it was so self-evident that when it was brought, it was merely a way to juxtapose American liberty with tyranny elsewhere. In 1823, in a letter to John Adams, William H. Sumner noted that if the population of the United States were "like that of Europe, chiefly consisted of an unarmed peasantry," it would be conquerable. "Here," he went on, "every house is a castle, and every man a soldier." Adams, who had argued that self-defense was "the primary canon of the law of nature" when defending British soldiers after the Boston Massacre, concurred that an armed citizenry would not be susceptible to despotism.

When Jacob Howard, the Michigan senator who helped introduce the 14th Amendment to (attempt) to ensure that blacks in the South had protected Constitutional rights, he specifically noted "the right to bear arms" as a right to insure. The right to self-defense surely terrified the racists of the South more than the other.

The collective theory is modern invention. Even the photo of a musket and an AR-15 juxtaposed above Stevens' column to illustrate the antiquatedness of gun rights in the modern age misjudges history. Just as the First Amendment protects modern communication, and just as the Fourth Amendment applies to modern forms of search, the Second Amendment extends to guns that were not in existence at the time of the founding. Unlike contemporary liberal columnists who'd like to revise the Constitution, the founders were well aware that the fleeting emotions of the population could corrode rights.

If you think the Second Amendment is antiquated, that's fine. Repeal it. The history of the Second Amendment, though, doesn't change to comport with your contemporary positions.

COPYRIGHT 2018 CREATORS.COM
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A mass eviction and demolition campaign aimed at removing low-income migrants from the Chinese capital appears to be spreading across the country, activists and local residents told RFA.

In a recent report to the municipal People's Congress, acting Beijing mayor Chen Jinning said the authorities have cleared some 40 million square meters of "illegal constructions" from the city last year, and will continue forced evictions of thousands of migrant workers from out of town.

Chen cited "coordinated growth" in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban area, as well as the city's hosting of the 2022 Winter Olympics as the main motivation for the policy, which includes capping Beijing's resident population at 23 million by 2020.

But other cities have since launched similar demolition campaigns on buildings they deem "illegal," often with scant warning and zero paperwork, residents told RFA.

Authorities in Nantong city in the eastern province of Jiangsu moved in with mechanical diggers to bulldoze the home of Zhang Ruying on Rengang St., Chongchuan district, in the early hours of Friday, razing it and several neighboring buildings to the ground.

Video footage seen by RFA showed the demolition work overseen by the city's urban management, or chengguan, law enforcement arm.

"At 6 a.m. today, while I wasn't home, hundreds of people surrounded our homes and destroyed them," Zhang, who was informed by neighbors of the move, said.

"The chengguan and other unidentified people were here, as well as the Rengang St. neighborhood committee," said Zhang, who said she received no warning whatsoever that she was about to lose her home.

"There were no notices [of any kind], not even a verbal notification," she said, adding that police and government officials had said there was nothing they could do, as the decision had been taken by the neighborhood committee.

A second Nantong resident said demolitions had also taken place earlier this week in Wenfeng sub-district.

"The government confirmed that a so-called unlicensed building was demolished," the resident said. "There was a dispute [with local residents] and so the government used this despicable measure ... to put pressure on the other parties, who gave in."

Meanwhile, residents of Beijing say they are bracing for more forced demolitions in the capital.

Beijing resident He Kun said the clearances aren't being carried out within the framework of existing procedure, however.

"The only purpose of the new round of demolitions is to drive some of the population of Beijing out, and solve the problem of excess population density," He told RFA in a recent interview.

"But these issues aren't being resolved in accordance with the wishes of the people; it is for the ruling [Chinese Communist] party," he said. "It is totally unreasonable ... neither does it conform to normal laws and regulations."

"It is law enforcement by violence."

'Something to say'

The clearances are also spreading outwards from the capital into neighboring Hebei province.

Anti-corruption campaigner Ma Bo, who lives outside Beijing's Sixth Ring Road, fears she too will soon be the victim of a new round of clearance operations.

"We can't rule out the possibility of demolitions beyond the Sixth Ring Road, because there are single-story buildings and shanty-town areas here," Ma said. "If there is a new round of demolitions, then ordinary people will have something to say about that."

"They have this idea that are going to drive out the 'low-end population,' although they don't mention the term 'low-end population' any more; they are still working towards that goal."

As rural residents are increasingly drawn to cities in search of low-paid labor to replace income from land lost to development, China's migrant population has risen in recent years to more than 200 million, nearly one-fifth of the population.

The resident population of Beijing has swelled by 59 percent since the start of the century, with an increase of 56 percent reported by neighboring Tianjin and a 50 percent rise in Shanghai.

The majority of migrants hail from the central provinces of Henan, Anhui and Hunan, while their top destinations are the rich coastal provinces of Guangdong, Zhejiang and Jiangsu, according to a map published last year by the search engine and online encyclopedia Baidu.

Reported by Gao Feng for RFA's Mandarin Service, and by the Cantonese Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
By 2020, China will have completed its nationwide facial recognition and surveillance network, achieving near-total surveillance of urban residents, including in their homes via smart TVs and smartphones.



According to the official Legal Daily newspaper, the 13th Five Year Plan requires 100 percent surveillance and facial recognition coverage and total unification of its existing databases across the country.



Authorities in the southwestern province of Sichuan reported in December that they had completed the installation of more than 40,000 surveillance cameras across more than 14,000 villages as part of the "Sharp Eyes" nationwide surveillance network, the paper said.



Guangdong-based Bell New Vision Co. is developing the nationwide "Sharp Eyes" platform that can link up public surveillance cameras and those installed in smart devices in the home, to a nationwide network for viewing in real time by anyone who is given access.



"Sharp Eyes" comes from a ruling Chinese Communist Party slogan, "the people have sharp eyes," which traditionally relied on the eyes and ears of local neighborhood committees to keep tabs on what its people were up to.



Soon, police and other officials will be able to monitor people's activities in their own homes, wherever there is an internet-connected camera.



A Chinese internet user who asked to remain anonymous said the social media platform WeChat has also begun issuing warnings to anyone posting messages that the government deems undesirable.



"The internet and our smartphones have been under government surveillance for a long time already," the user said. "A friend of mine in Anhui is under surveillance, and he tried to buy a plane ticket to go overseas, but he couldn't leave the country."



"We can be placed under restriction or persecuted by them, or asked to 'drink tea,' [with state security police], or placed under surveillance, at any time," he said.



"Overall, it feels as if we're not free at all."



A worker installs a security camera pointed at a pedestrian walk way in Beijing, Dec. 11, 2017. Credit: AP Photo 'Social credit' system



The Sharp Eyes system will be implemented in tandem with a "social credit" system that makes simple actions like buying a train ticket subject to sufficient social credit.



Under a pilot social credit scheme, people who are considered to be "troublemakers" by the authorities, including those who have tried fare-dodging, smoked on public transport, caused trouble on commercial flights or "spread false information" online will now be prevented from buying train tickets, the government announced earlier this month.



Employers who fail to pay social insurance or people who have failed to pay fines will also be on the restricted list, which takes effect on May 1.



The administration of Presidents Xi Jinping is currently building a social credit system allowing government bodies to share information on its citizens trustworthiness and assign a "social credit score" to citizens.



In early 2017, the countrys Supreme Peoples Court said that 6.15 million Chinese citizens had been banned from taking flights for social misdeeds, Reuters reported.



Reported by Qiao Long for RFA's Mandarin Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
Authorities in the southern Chinese city of Zhuhai have formally arrested a prominent anti-censorship campaigner on subversion charges, after holding him for six months under residential surveillance, his lawyer said on Friday.

Zhen Jianghua was taken away from his home in Zhuhai, Guangdong province, on the night of Sept. 1 on suspicion of "incitement to subvert state power."

Initially held under criminal detention in the Zhuhai No. 1 Detention Center, Zhen was later taken to an unknown location by state security police, to be held under residential surveillance, where he has been for the past five months.

Zhen's defense attorney Ren Quanniu said he hasn't been allowed to meet with his client since he was hired by his family.

"Personally, I am extremely worried about Zhen Jianghua's safety, because he has been cut off from the outside world, so we don't know how things are going for him in detention," Ren told RFA.

"We don't know whether he is being subjected to torture or mistreatment; there are no guarantees that even his most basic human rights are protected," he said.

"His lawyers have been applying to be allowed to meet with him since Zhen Jianghua was detained and held under residential surveillance at a designated location, but we have never received permission," Ren said.

"The residential surveillance period ended yesterday, and now his formal arrest has been approved," he said.

The formal arrest paves the way for the case to move to trial. But fellow Guangdong rights activist Huang Yongxiang said he believes that Zhen has committed no crime.

"His arrest papers show that they have detained him on suspicion of incitement to subvert state power, which is utterly groundless," Huang said. "In other countries, they get to subvert their [governments] every three or four years, via an election."

"We believe that Zhen Jianghua is innocent," he said.

Ren was previously, denied permission with Zhen on the grounds that the case touches on matters of "national security."

Across the Great Firewall

Zhen, 32, who is also known by his online moniker GuestsZhen, is the executive editor of anti-censorship website Across the Great Firewall, www.atgfw.org, an overseas-registered site offering information about censorship, and circumvention tools for accessing the internet beyond Chinas borders.

He was detained when he went to bring money to detained activists after taking part in a memorial event marking the death of late Nobel peace laureate and political prisoner Liu Xiaobo last July.

According to the overseas rights group, Frontline Defenders, Zhen is also a technical consultant with Human Rights Campaign in China, an advising expert with Chinese Wikipedia, and a project officer of a HIV/AIDS prevention education project in Zhuhai, run by the Hong Kong AIDS Foundation.

He has previously been detained by state security police for traveling to Guangdong's rebel village of Wukan following a crackdown by armed police in September 2016, on suspicion of inciting protests there, the group said.

The ruling Chinese Communist Party has moved to curb the use of circumvention tools like virtual private networks (VPNs) since the beginning of 2017, deleting swathes of foreign content not previously approved by the government under a draconian new cybersecurity law.

In September, a Guangdong court handed a nine-month jail term to Deng Jiewei after he allegedly set up a website in October 2015 to sell software helping users to scale the complex system of blocks, filters, and human censorship known collectively as the Great Firewall.

Reported by Yang Fan for RFA's Mandarin Service, and by Wen Yuqing for the Cantonese Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
Myanmar has agreed to a United Nations refugee agency initiative for repatriating some of the nearly 700,000 Rohingya Muslim refugees who fled to Bangladesh during a military crackdown, a process that has raised concerns over the safety and treatment of those who return voluntarily, a Myanmar government official said Friday.

The United Nations Development Programme and U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) submitted a concept paper outlining plans for the repatriation of the refugees to the Myanmar government on March 9, said Myint Thu, permanent secretary of Myanmars Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The Myanmar government, the UNDP, and the UNHCR have been planning to sign a memorandum of understanding on the repatriation of refugees in Bangladesh, he told RFAs Myanmar Service. We will let them work together with us on the repatriation and resettlement process.

Though the terms of the memorandum are is still being hammered out, the two U.N. agencies will work with Myanmar according to the mandate laid out in the document, Myint Thu said.

We will sign the memorandum of understanding as soon as possible so that they [the UNDP and UNHCR] will have enough time to prepare whatever they have to do, he said.

There was no immediate comment from the UNHCR on the latest development.

U.N. refugee chief Filippo Grandi warned in February that conditions were not yet conducive for stateless Rohingya refugees to voluntarily return to Myanmar because the government had not yet addressed their denial of basic rights and lack of citizenship.

The UNHCR took the Myanmar government to task earlier this year for its continued restrictions on access for aid agencies, the media, and other independent observers in the northern part of Rakhine state where the crackdown occurred.

Myanmar continues to prevent a U.N.-mandated independent investigative mission from entering the country to look into reports of atrocities committed by Myanmar soldiers against the Rohingya during the crackdown which was in response to deadly attacks on police outposts by a Muslim militant group in August.

List of 500 Rohingya

Bangladesh sent a list of more than 8,000 refugees who want to return home to northern Rakhine, but so far Myanmar officials have agreed to accept about 500 who have been verified for repatriation. Those 500 have yet to be processed for return.

Refugees who wish to return must prove that they resided in northern Rakhine before Oct. 9, 2016, when security forces moved into the area following smaller-scale attacks by the same Muslim militant group.

We sent this list of 500 people back to Bangladesh, but havent heard from them about it yet, Myint Thu said. We are ready to receive these verified people when they send them to Myanmar.

Bangladesh soon will send a second list with up to 10,000 names of Rohingya requesting repatriation to Myanmar, Bangladeshi media reported.

On Jan. 16, Myanmar and Bangladesh signed an agreement stipulating that the repatriations should be completed within two years from the start date of the first returns.

Myanmar officials in Rakhine have built two refugee processing centers and a transit camp to handle the returning refugees.

But rights groups have accused them of bulldozing the remains of torched Rohingya communities and farmland in recent months to hide evidence of crimes committed against the Muslims who are considered illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and subjected to systematic discrimination.



Monsoon rains

United Nations officials say the crackdown on the Rohingya amounts to ethnic cleansing, if not genocide.

Those who escaped to Bangladesh live in squalid displacement camps in the southeastern district of Coxs Bazar where they are in danger of flooding by annual monsoon rains expected to peak in July and August. Others are stuck in a no-mans land between Myanmar and Bangladesh.

More than 150,000 residents of the sprawling Kutupalong refugee settlement  the worlds largest refugee camp  are at risk from flooding or landslides, according to a UNHCR report issued on Thursday.

The felling of trees to make room for more refugees and to use as fuel for cooking has increased the possibility of landslides.

The UNHCR said it and the NGO Caritas relocated the first 360 families deemed to be at greatest risk to higher ground in the western part of the camp.

The U.N.s International organization for Migration will relocate other families, UNHRC said.

On March 16, U.N. agencies and their NGO partners issued a joint response plan for the Rohingya humanitarian crisis  a U.S. $951 million appeal to help both the refugees and more than 330,000 vulnerable Bangladeshis in communities hosting them. The money will be used for food and water supplies, increased sanitation, the construction of thousands of classrooms, and preparations for the monsoonal rains.

The appeal came in addition to U.S. $434 million that the U.N. requested in October for emergency aid for what it has called the worlds fastest-growing refugee crisis. More than U.S. $320 million of that appeal has been collected.

Reported by Wai Mar Tun for RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Khet Mar. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
Myanmar's State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi (R) accompanies new President Win Myint (L) to take his oath of office at parliament in Naypyidaw, March 30, 2018.

Two years ago, both Myanmar and the international community hailed the coming to power of Aung San Suu Kyi  leader of the political opposition who endured 15 years of house arrest for challenging the military dictatorship, Nobel Peace Prize winner, and icon of democracy  in the Southeast Asia nation.

A widespread belief pervaded that once The Lady was at the helm, she would oversee the completion of Myanmars transition to democracy, end decades of civil war, speed up reform, and accelerate economic development.

So far, however, much of Aung San Suu Kyis game-changing agenda under her ruling National League for Democracy (NLD)  the first civilian government to lead Myanmar since independence in 1948  hasnt panned out as expected.

The government started out on a positive note when Aung San Suu Kyi, 72, secured the release of political prisoners and jailed students, but quickly took a turn for the worse several months later with the first of two crackdowns by security forces in western Myanmars Rakhine state.

Responding to deadly raids on border guard stations on Oct. 9, 2016, Myanmar security forces began clearance operations in the northern part of Rakhine state, searching Rohingya Muslim communities for the attackers who later said they were from the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, a Muslim militant group.

The second crackdown began after larger-scale attacks on police outposts in the region by the same group on Aug. 25. More than 6,700 Rohingya were killed during the first month of the campaign, according to Paris-based Doctors Without Borders, and more than 700,000 have been driven across the border to southeastern Bangladesh where they live in sprawling and squalid displacement camps.

Aung San Suu Kyis handling of the crisis  her lack of acknowledgment, denial of reports of brutalization by the army, and failure to stop the violence when presented with credible reports  has made her the focus of scorn among rights groups and the international community, which have called the campaign ethnic cleansing, if not genocide.

Three cities in the United Kingdom and one in Ireland stripped her of freedom awards, veteran U.S. diplomat Bill Richardson slammed her for a lack of moral leadership amid the crisis, three fellow Nobel peace laureates accused her and the military of committing genocide of the Rohingya, and the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington revoked a prestigious human rights award.

At the United Nation Human Rights Council in Geneva this year, Myanmar also joined the likes of China, Cuba, and Venezuela in passing a resolution that limits the ability to hold states accountable for abuses.

The Rohingya crisis has tarnished Aung San Suu Kyis first two years as de facto leader of the country and will likely define the 72-year-olds legacy in the years to come.

The icon of democracy for the world basically is destroyed, said David Steinberg, professor emeritus of Asian studies at Georgetown University and an expert on Myanmar, when asked about Aung San Suu Kyis first two years as Myanmar's leader.

Steinberg said it was a disgrace that Aung San Suu Kyi either didnt know what was going on in Rakhine state or pretended not to know when she addressed foreign diplomats in Naypyidaw last September about the crisis.

At the time, she told them that clearance operations had ended as of Sept. 5, and that the government was perplexed by the exodus of Rohingya to Bangladesh, while the majority of the 1.1 million Muslims in Rakhine state had not fled.

Internationally, the one issue facing the country now  the decisive defining issue  is the Rohingya, and thats going to get worse, said Steinberg, noting that annual monsoon rains will soon sweep in from the Bay of Bengal, dumping several hundreds of inches of rain on parts of Myanmar and southeastern Bangladesh where Rohingya refugees live, bringing more miserable conditions and the risk of disease.

She has to take a clear positive role that she has yet to take, he said. And I understand why shes caught between the military and the human rights aspects.

Plans to repatriate the refugees are moving slowly with Myanmar so far agreeing to take back only about 500 who could prove residency in Rakhine prior to the first crackdown that began after the Oct. 9, 2016, raids on border guard stations.

Rights groups and the U.N. have warned that the Rohingya, who are considered illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and are subjected to systematic discrimination in Myanmar, will face more of the same treatment once they return without guarantees for their safety and the granting of citizenship.

It is hard to see how the Rohingya crisis will be resolved or how the Myanmar government can end the international shunning it faces and again be accepted by Western governments without finding ways to accept the return of some refugees with guarantees that they will be allowed to return to their former villages and eventually be able to achieve residency status and citizenship, Murray Hiebert, senior associate of the Southeast Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, wrote in an email.

Aung San Suu Kyi (L) receives an official welcome during her visit to Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, March 19, 2018. Credit: AFP Power is everything

Some experts on Myanmar who have observed the countrys development and Aung San Suu Kyis performance say her propensity for tight government control has been a hindrance to the countrys development during the NLDs first two years.

Its difficult to see what shes done well, as both she and the NLD have kept policy maneuvers, policy thinking, and any communication about their governance essentially to themselves, leaving many of us to conjecture what they have done, said Erin Murphy, founder and principal of Washington-based Inle Advisory Group, an emerging market strategic advisory firm.

After the NLD came to power, Aung San Suu Kyi made sure that she would be personally involved in all critical issues facing the country. When she was barred from becoming president under a constitutional stipulation that no one with relatives who are foreign nationals can hold the nations highest office, she stepped into the newly created role of state counselor so that she could be above the president, though the position is not specified in Myanmars constitution.

She also took on the roles of minister of foreign affairs and the Presidents Office. She was also named minister of the governments education and electricity and energy portfolios, but quickly gave up those portfolios.

Aung San Suu Kyi also chairs Myanmars National Peace and Reconciliation Center, the Union Enterprise for Humanitarian Assistance, Resettlement and Development in Rakhine State (UEHRD), and the 21st-Century Panglong Conference, the reincarnation of peace negotiations with Myanmars ethnic groups that were started 60 years ago by her father, Myanmar independence hero General Aung San.

Because Aung San Suu Kyi is making all the key decisions, nothing is being allocated below her to other people, Steinberg said, which means a lot does not get done.

And that is part of the problem, he said. So what we see is a country that has limited and very good and important reforms not making progress on some and finally retrogressing on others.

Since she became de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi has focused on building up her own power base at the expense of former allies, supporters, and the liberal democratic agenda she once championed for the country, Michael Charney, a military historian specializing in South East Asia at the University of Londons School of Oriental and African Studies, wrote in an email.

She has successfully formed good relationships with the military and business tycoons within the country, but has not delivered on other promises, he said.

A few Myanmar lawmakers and political observers have expressed optimism about new President Win Myint, an Aung San Suu Kyi loyalist and former speaker of the lower house of parliament, believing that he will be a stronger president than ailing Htin Kyaw who stepped down on March 21 to take a rest.

NLD spokesman Myo Nyunt told RFA earlier this week that the party is planning leadership reform changes.

And in his first address to parliament on Friday, Win Myint pledged to focus on implementing rule of law, improving socioeconomic conditions, fostering national reconciliation and peace, bringing about constitutional reform to lay the foundation for building a democratic federal union, and protecting human rights.

But changes may come to naught if Aung San Suu Kyi doesnt loosen the reins on her control of the government and the NLD doesnt become more transparent about its policies, experts said.

Though a stern and diligent former speaker with a reputation for getting things done, Win Myint will not wield the same kind of power reserved for Aung San Suu Kyi, they said.

We have had changes in the presidential and chief minister positions, but we cant expect much from government as long as it wont change its policy, said Myanmar writer Kyaw Win. When the NLD government received the states power, International Crisis Group suggested that she [Aung San Suu Kyi] should transfer some positions to others because she was taking on too much.

But she is still taking many positions, and it is like a tight central control, he said. There will not be many effective political changes if this policy doesnt change even though the people have changed.

Aung San Suu Kyi sits for a group photo during talks with representatives of ethnic groups to mark the 70th anniversary of Myanmar Union Day in Panglong, southern Shan State, Feb. 12, 2017. Credit: AFP The struggle with the military

The 21st-Century Panglong Conference  Aung San Suu Kyis key peace initiative to try to end decades of civil wars between the Myanmar army and a handful of ethnic armed groups in the countrys border areas  has been the intended focal point of her administration, but it has floundered on account of the Rakhine crisis and ongoing hostilities between the national military and ethnic militias in Kachin and Shan states.

The initial talks were held in late August and early September 2016 with subsequent negotiations to be scheduled at six-month intervals. The delayed second round was held in May 2017, and the delayed third round is scheduled for this May.

Aung San Suu Kyi has not dealt with any of the critical issues; shes just brought hundreds of people together, said Steinberg about the first two rounds of talks. Its fine as a symbolic gesture, but they havent really dealt with the major issues.

Eight ethnic militias signed a nationwide cease-fire agreement with the government under former President Thein Sein in October 2015, but the current NLD government has managed to get only two more armies to sign the pact.

Aung San Suu Kyi must tread carefully in the government's power-sharing arrangement with Myanmar's armed forces, whose officers are automatically allocated a quarter of the seats in parliament and control the defense, home affairs, and border security ministries.

Before she became state counselor, Aung San Suu Kyi and NLD lawmakers failed to push through changes in the constitution, drafted by a military junta in 2008, to reduce the political power of the military and make her eligible for the presidency.

Shes been a very poor politician because the first function of a politician in her role given the circumstances in that country was to basically build up trust in the military, Steinberg said. But she has not done that. She has in fact done the reverse.

She has tried to outflank the military by first creating the position of state counselor which is not in the constitution, and then by basically confronting them on internal issues  [but] not on the Rohingya [issue] because she knows that she cant go that far, he said.

Meaningful political reforms and a genuine transition to democracy can only be achieved if the military is brought under civilian oversight through constitutional change, Charney said.

Currently, the military is in the strongest position it has ever been in, he said. They can act with impunity, and the civilian government takes all the blame for anything that goes wrong. There can be no fundamental transition unless the military is brought to heel.

Reversal of freedoms, economic disparity

Experts also point to the deterioration of the limited freedoms that had been granted under Thein Sein, saying that the NLD and Aung San Suu Kyi have failed to make progress on this front.

The human rights situation hasnt improved yet under NLD governments term as much as we expected, Robert San Aung, a human rights lawyer in Myanmar, told RFAs Myanmar Service.

We must amend the 2008 constitution, so the president can work with his full authority, he added.

Civil society groups, journalists, and others who have criticized the government and others in positions of authority have increasingly been subjected to harassment, arrests, and lawsuits in retaliation for their words or deeds.

[T]he government under her [Aung San Suu Kyis] leadership has reversed course on civil rights and freedoms, and the country has begun to retreat back into the authoritarian government of the junta and BSPP years, Charney said, referring to the Burma Socialist Programme Party formed by a military regime under General Ne Win that seized power in 1962.

And with growing economic disparity in the country, experts say that Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD must focus more on alleviating poverty and making life better for ordinary Myanmar citizens who expected her to improve their living conditions.

The NLD can do so much on economic policy and development, but the top-down decision making, decision-making paralysis, and/or lack of capacity is really undermining what could result in visible and tangible wins, Murphy said.

Business analyst Min Khin told RFA that despite the passage of two years, the government still doesnt show accountability and responsibility on the economy.

It should not only make economic policy, but also manage control to implement these policies, he said. At least the government can try to attain microeconomic stability in the country.

Others say that Aung San Suu Kyi should focus on mobilizing civil society organizations (CSOs) to effect change at the grassroots level.

I would urge her to do everything in her power to mobilize civil society organizations, said Matthew Mullen, an expert on Myanmar politics at the Institute of Human Rights and Peace Studies at Thailands Mahidol University, in an email.

Grassroots CSOs catalyzed change in Myanmar and remain the reason for hope during a troubled transition, he said.

Additional reporting by Kyaw Kyaw Aung and Tin Aung Khine for RFAs Myanmar Service.
Authorities in a Tibetan area of Chinas western Sichuan province have sentenced a Kirti monastery monk to five years in prison on charges related to a self-immolation protest against Chinese rule, according to sources in the region.



Lobsang Sangye, 36, was handed the jail term on March 28 in a closed trial conducted by the Peoples Court of Barkham, in Sichuans Ngaba (in Chinese, Aba) county, a source familiar with the situation told RFAs Tibetan Service, speaking on condition of anonymity.



A second source, who also declined to be named, told RFA that Sangyewho is originally from Chigdril (Jiuzhi) county, in Qinghai provinces Golog (Guoluo) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecturehad been charged with an offense related to a Tibetan self-immolation, and for engaging in political activities.



The monk had been subjected to a lengthy detention beginning in August 2012 but he was released afterwards, the source said, without providing details.



He was then rearrested in August 2017, and has been held incommunicado since, he added.



The source confirmed that Sangyes trial on Wednesday was held in secret.



If he is really guilty of a crime, then his family and relatives would have been told about it, but the Chinese authorities didnt inform them about either the trial or the sentence.



According to the source, local authorities have increased control and monitoring of internet traffic, and warned Tibetans from making contact with people outside of China, making open discussion about happenings in Tibet very difficult.



The public has remained tight-lipped, even on the case of monk Lobsang Sangyes arrest and sentencing, he added.



Fiery protests



Earlier this month, a Tibetan man named Tsekho Tukchak self-immolated in Ngaba county in an apparent protest against Chinese rule and policies in the far-western region of China.



Sources told RFA at the time that Tukchak likely self-immolated because he assumed the heavy security presence would have made it difficult to carry out his plan on March 10, referring to the 59th anniversary of the failed Tibetan uprising against Chinese occupation of the formerly self-governing region.



Security forces had spread throughout the region in the run-up to the anniversary of the incident, which saw thousands of Tibetans killed amid a crackdown by Chinese authorities and led to the 1959 flight into exile of the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people.



Tukchaks protest brought to 153 the number of self-immolations by Tibetans living in China since the wave of fiery protests began in 2009.



Most protesters who have set themselves on fire have called for Tibetan freedom and the return of the Dalai Lama from India, where he has lived since escaping Tibet in 1959.



Reported by Lhuboom and Kunsang Tenzin for RFAs Tibetan Service. Translated by Dorjee Damdul. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.
An Iranian man has been allowed to travel to the United States to donate bone marrow to his U.S. citizen brother with blood cancer, the family's lawyer says.

Kamiar Hashemi was granted a visa by the U.S. State Department, obtaining a rare waiver to President Donald Trump's travel ban, Mahsa Khanbabai said on March 29.

Hashemi had applied for a U.S. visa at the U.S. Consulate in Yerevan, Armenia, in February when he learned he was a rare 100 match for a transplant that could save his brother Maziar's life, Khahbabai said.

The consulate confirmed the visa had been granted during a telephone call on March 29, according to the lawyer.

Trump's travel ban bars most travelers to the United States from Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Chad, and North Korea.

The U.S. Supreme Court allowed it to go into effect on December 8, 2017, after months of legal battles.

The ban does allow for case-by-case waivers to be granted, but critics say the process is difficult with few clear guidelines on how to apply and why waivers are, or are not, granted.

"It's unfortunate that so much effort had to go into getting just one, clearly urgent, visa approved," Khanbabai said. "There are thousands of people are stuck, also with urgent cases, with no idea what is happening."

Based on reporting by Reuters and CNN
Kosovar Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj has dismissed the interior minister and the secret-service chief after the arrest and deportation to Turkey of six Turkish nationals a day earlier.

In an official statement, Haradinaj said the director of the Kosovo Intelligence Agency, Driton Gashi, and Interior Minister Flamur Sefaj were being relieved of their duties effective immediately.

Haradinaj said he was not informed about the operation to deport the six, who were arrested in Kosovo on March 29 over ties to schools linked to the Fethullah Gulen movement that Ankara blames for a failed 2016 coup.

"The entire operation -- revoking their residence permits, detention, emergency deportation, and the secret extradition to Turkey of the six Turkish citizens from Kosovo territory -- was conducted without my knowledge and without my permission," Haradinaj said in the statement.

Adding to the governments embarrassment, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in a speech during a meeting of his Justice and Development Party in Ankara on March 30 that the Turkish intelligence agency MIT had brought the six Turks back "in coordination with Kosovo intelligence."

Opposition lawmakers in parliament on March 30 called for snap elections, arguing the incident highlighted the fact that the prime minister does not have control over all government institutions.

Later, after a meeting of top government and party officials, the speaker of parliament from the ruling Democratic Party of Kosovo, Kadri Veseli, admitted "mistakes" had been made in arresting and deporting the six Turkish citizens.

"I want to assure all citizens of Kosovo, in the name of the ruling parties, that something like this will never happen again in Kosovo. It was a mistake; it was harmful for Kosovo's citizens and for the Republic of Kosovo," Veseli said.

Commentators says Kosovo has faced pressure from Turkey in past weeks to take action against schools allegedly linked to the Gulen movement.

Turkey said the six arrested on March 29 were allegedly responsible for recruiting into Gulens network and helping those in Turkey leave the country amid a security crackdown in which tens of thousands of people have either been fired or imprisoned for alleged ties to Gulen.

Turkey is a major supporter of impoverished Kosovo, which declared independence from Serbia in 2008, and Turkish firms run the tiny Balkan country's sole airport and electricity network, and are building two highways worth around $2 billion.

Ankara accuses Gulen, a Muslim cleric based in the United States, of masterminding the July 15, 2016, coup attempt, and has declared his movement a terrorist operation. Gulen denies any link with the abortive putsch.

With reporting from Reuters
A United Nations negotiator leading talks to end a decades-old dispute over Macedonias name says progress is being made between Greek and Macedonian officials but difficult issues remain.

UN envoy Matthew Nimetz, who helped put together a deal in 1995 that enabled the Balkan state to join the UN under the temporary designation "Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia," said on March 30 that talks to end the disagreement will continue in the coming months.

"There are still difficult questions that need to be addressed, but in my opinion and long experience, there is a very positive feeling," Nimetz said after a meeting in Vienna with the foreign ministers of both countries.

"Both ministers are focused on long-term relations, stability in the region, the importance of good relations between the two countries, and I hope that we will continue to work with this positive approach," he added.

Greece objects to the former Yugoslav republic's use of the name Macedonia, which Athens says could imply territorial claims over its own northern region of the same name.

Negotiations between the two neighbors have been inconclusive since 1991, when Macedonia gained independence from the former Yugoslavia.

The current round of talks kicked off in January with the aim of finding a solution by a NATO summit in July. An end to the dispute would pave Macedonia's way toward NATO and EU membership, both of which have been blocked by Athens.

"I can say that we made conditional progress, because as we go forward, we come to the tough questions," Macedonian Foreign Minister Nikola Dimitrov said.

"We worked on the logic of what is most important for the Republic of Macedonia and the Republic of Greece and whether in the compromise we are moving to cover the two things. However, it is not surprising that the more openly and the more specifically we are working towards a solution, so the difficulties are getting more and more visible," he added.

Last week, Greece's foreign minister, Nikos Kotzias, traveled to Macedonia for talks on settling the dispute. He made the trip on the first direct flight from Athens to Skopje in more than 10 years.

It was made possible after Macedonian authorities renamed Skopjes airport from Alexander the Great -- the famed ruler of the ancient Kingdom of Macedonia, who is also celebrated in Greece -- to Skopje International Airport in a goodwill gesture to Athens.

Kotzias told reporters after the discussions that the two sides had identified the main issues that still divide them and that he hoped "a big step" can be taken at the next meeting.

Both sides have said they would accommodate a compound name with a geographical qualifier such as "northern" or "upper" Macedonia, though details on how the change would occur still need to be ironed out.

With reporting by RFE/RL's Balkan Service
Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, has described actresses who say they were sexually harassed by Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein as "prostitutes," and suggested they should have spoken out earlier.

Speaking to students at a Moscow university on March 29, Peskov said that some of the actresses who spoke out against Weinstein became "Hollywood stars" and "did a lot that is not compatible with our notions of honor and dignity."

"They earned hundreds of millions of dollars and 10 years later, they say Weinstein is a bad man," said Peskov, who previously has not commented on the widely reported sexual-harassment claims.

"Maybe [Weinstein] is a scumbag, but none of them went to the police! No, they wanted to earn $10 million," Peskov said. "What do you call a woman who slept with a man for $10 million? Maybe I'm being crude, but she's called a prostitute."

More than 50 women have accused Weinstein of offenses ranging from sexual harassment to rape, including Ashley Judd and some other well-known Hollywood actresses.

Weinstein is alleged to have employed private investigators and legal threats to discredit and intimidate his accusers and stop them from going public with sexual-misconduct claims.

Peskov made his remarks in response to a question about accusations of sexual harassment made by journalists against a senior member of the Russian parliament.

Several reporters with Western or independent media have accused Leonid Slutsky, head of the Foreign Affairs Committee in parliament's lower house, of making lewd sexual comments and groping.

The parliamentary Ethics Commission ruled on March 21 that Slutsky had not committed any violations of "behavioral norms," prompting more than 20 media outlets to pull their journalists from covering the lower house.

Peskov has so far refused to comment on this in his official capacity, but he told students the women should have reported the offenses immediately.

If he groped you, if he harassed you, why did you remain silent? Why didnt you go to the police? Why did so much time pass, and then you went to the Ethics Commission?" Peskov asked.

The Kremlin spokesman noted that women in the United States and elsewhere have been speaking out increasingly about sexual harassment, sometimes years after an alleged offense occurred, and suggested that Slutsky's accusers were making "something of a fashion statement."

Were trying to keep up with the mayhem thats been happening in America, he said.

With reporting by AFP, Meduza, and The Guardian
Iranian President Hassan Rohani visited Turkmenistan on March 27-28 to meet with Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov.

It was the first time the two leaders of the neighboring countries had met since the two governments had a major falling out at the start of 2017 over Turkmen natural-gas supplies to Iran. Tehran and Ashgabat have been threatening each other with international arbitration ever since, so it seemed fair to believe that some sort of breakthrough in ties would come from Rohani's visit.

But there was nothing of the sort, at least according to reports.

In fact, judging from media reports, there seemed little reason for Rohani to go to Turkmenistan at all, which raises some questions about what might not have been reported.

Iran has had good ties with Turkmenistan since the latter became independent in late 1991. In fact, Turkmenistan's first president, Saparmurat Niyazov, visited Iran on October 9, 1991, more than two weeks before Turkmenistan formally declared independence.

Two railway lines connect the two countries, there are two gas pipelines running from fields in Turkmenistan to areas in northern Iran, and Turkmenistan exports electricity to Iran. As important, if not more important for Tehran, Turkmenistan's policy of "positive neutrality" has meant that the Turkmen government has never been part of international criticism or sanctions against Iran.

Relations bottomed out at the start of 2017, when Turkmenistan shut off gas supplies that Iran used to power northern areas of the country that were not connected to Iran's gas pipeline network. Turkmen authorities, faced with the worst economic crisis the country has seen since independence, decided to lean on Iran to pay off a decade-old gas debt that Tehran says is more than three times higher than it should be.

It appears the subject of Turkmen gas supplies was discussed. "Iran and Turkmenistan have vast energy resources, they are strong energy powers, so we have agreed to bring our partnership in the area to a higher level...decisions will be made in this area at future meetings," Rohani said.

So essentially, no deal yet to renew Turkmen gas supplies.

Rohani said the two countries agreed to continue discussions on gas-swap arrangements and use of Iranian pipelines to neighboring countries. Turkmenistan does have a gas-swap arrangement with Iran that involves Azerbaijan and another one has been discussed with Armenia.

Rohani did not specify which neighboring countries but it is unlikely it involved Turkey, with which Turkmenistan had asked Iran for such a deal in 2017. Turkey, and possibly markets further west once the Trans-Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP) is completed, would be far larger market than Armenia and Azerbaijan.

But in late October 2017 Iranian National Gas Company director Hamid Reza Araki said, "We are against the sale of a rival country's gas to Turkey via swap operations."

Little To Show For Trip

On the second day of his visit, Rohani went to Mary in western Turkmenistan, the location of the power plant that will provide new electricity exports to Iran.

Past that there was little to show for Rohani's trip. The two governments signed 13 agreements covering cooperation in the areas such as culture, art, science, education, and sport. Iran signed similar agreements with Azerbaijan after Rohani left Turkmenistan and traveled to Baku.

Berdymukhammedov said he and Rohani discussed the potential of the newer railway line, the North-South line, that links Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Iran and started operations in 2014. The North-South line does have the potential to boost trade between Iran and Turkmenistan, and brings goods from both countries to areas much further away.

But it's worth remembering that in May 1996, President Niyazov and then-Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani opened the Tejen-Sarakhs-Mashhad railway that Niyazov said then would become the "junction of the planet," carrying some 500,000 people and 2 million tons of freight annually. Today the line is almost forgotten.

Berdymukhammedov also said he and Rohani discussed increased maritime trade across the Caspian Sea now that the new seaport at Turkmenbashi City is nearly complete.

But reports did not mention the two leaders discussing the legal status of the Caspian Sea, an issue Russia believes will be resolved later this year after more than 20 years of negotiations, but also an issue on which Tehran and Ashgabat have had nearly opposite stances.

Rohani and Berdymukhammedov did agree their two countries would participate in unspecified joint projects in the Caspian Sea. When Rohani went to Baku, the Azerbaijani Energy Ministry and the Iranian Oil Ministry signed a memorandum of understanding on jointly developing blocks in the Caspian Sea but such cooperation would be a big jump in Turkmen-Iranian cooperation at the moment.

Waning Influence

None of this seems to merit a two-day visit by the Iranian leader, which raises questions about why Rohani went to Turkmenistan at all.

One possible reason is that Iran is rallying support as the U.S. administration and others implement harsher sanctions on Iran.

Another reason is that Turkmenistan has increasingly sought cooperation with Arab states. Admittedly, Turkmenistan is looking for money but Berdymukhammedov went to Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates in mid-March and in 2017 the Turkmen president went to Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Iran has been losing influence in Central Asia in recent years as Arab countries have increased their presence there. Nowhere has this been more visible than in Tajikistan, a country that shares linguistic and cultural affinities with Iran but where the government has lately criticized Tehran's policies, including accusing the Iranian government of organizing assassinations in Tajikistan during the 1992-97 Tajik civil war.

If Rohani's reason for going to Turkmenistan was to dissuade Ashgabat from courting better ties with Arab states, it seems that was in vain. Given Turkmenistan's current economic situation and need for funds for new gas-exporting projects, there is little chance Turkmen authorities would forsake money from any quarter and currently Berdymukhammedov at least, seems to feel Arab countries are Turkmenistan's best chance for new investment.

Turkmenistan missed an opportunity also. Under the previous gas agreement, Iran paid for the first $3 billion of Turkmen gas with food, services, and equipment. That deal might not have suited Turkmen authorities in the past but with reports of shortages in Turkmenistan of basic goods, including cooking oil and sugar, it would have made sense for Ashgabat to agree to renew gas supplies to northern Iran while talks continue about Iran's debt.

The views expressed in this blog post do not necessarily reflect the views of RFE/RL
Syrian and Russian forces have evacuated most remaining rebels from eastern Ghouta and the government now controls 90 percent of the embattled Damascus suburb, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said.

"As of now, the majority of the militants have been evacuated," Lavrov said at press conference in Moscow on March 29 after meeting with UN Syrian envoy Staffan de Mistura.

"Ninety percent of eastern Ghouta is under government forces' control" and "efforts to restore civilian life are under way," he said.

While the offensive since February to retake control of the sprawling Damascus suburb represents Russia's and Syria's biggest win since they regained control of Syria's largest city of Aleppo, it was also one of the bloodiest campaigns of the seven-year civil war.

The United Nations and human rights groups have said more than 1,600 civilians were killed and thousands more faced dire conditions of hunger, homelessness, and a dearth of medical care.

Western states sought to impose a cease-fire to try to reduce civilian casualties and enable the delivery of humanitarian aid, but a UN Security Council resolution passed on February 24 failed to take hold.

For Russia and Syria, the devastating bombardments denounced by most of the rest of the world produced results.

War monitors have confirmed in recent days that Syrian troops have recaptured more than 90 percent of eastern Ghouta, and through a series of pullout deals with remaining rebels mediated by Russia, are draining the last pockets of opposition in the area.

Moscow has secured two such evacuation deals already and has been pressing Jaish al-Islam, the rebel faction in control of the last enclave in the town of Douma, to leave as well.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said on March 29 that negotiations with Jaish al-Islam (Army of Islam) were continuing.

"There are working-group contacts. They contact us, they write letters, they talk on the phone, we meet," he was quoted as saying by Russia's RIA Novosti news agency.

Army of Islam spokesman Ammar al-Hassan said Syria and Russia were insisting that the group's fighters move north, but they had rejected such demands.

Syrian state television reported that the Syrian government had given the Army of Islam three days to leave or face an "all-out offensive" aimed at clearing the area.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said after the talks in Moscow with de Mistura that rebels attempted to put suicide attackers on buses evacuating residents from Ghouta. But after receiving a tip about the planned attacks, he said the Russian military disarmed the would-be attackers.

"It's easy to imagine what would happen if those suicide attackers blew themselves up on the buses carrying women and children," Shoigu said.

Shoigu said that Russia and Syria have evacuated a total of 130,000 civilians and 11,000 rebels from eastern Ghouta over the past two weeks. Most evacuees have been transported to the northwest province of Idlib, the last remaining rebel stronghold in Syria.

With reporting by AP, AFP, and Interfax
Russia has demanded an explanation from British authorities over their search of an Aeroflot plane at London's Heathrow Airport, saying British airlines could face similar actions if London does not clarify what happened.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said British customs authorities boarded and searched the plane after it arrived from Moscow and passengers disembarked on March 30, without providing any explanation of their reasons for the search.

Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called the incident a provocation, coming amid severe strains between the two countries.

The Russian Embassy in London said the "extraordinary" search was conducted by British Border Force and customs officials.

The embassy said it sent a diplomatic note demanding that Britain provide an explanation for the incident.

London's Metropolitan Police denied that they were involved in any search of an Aeroflot flight.

But British Security Minister Ben Wallace said in a March 31 statement that it was "routine for Border Force to search aircraft to protect the U.K. from organized crime and from those who attempt to bring harmful substances like drugs or firearms into the country."

The Russian Transportation Ministry, meanwhile, said in a March 31 statement that it would seek an official explanation from Britain and would deem the search illegal if it did not receive an answer.

The ministry said it would also reserve the right to conduct similar actions against British airlines if it does not receive a response.

Russia's latest accusation against Britain came on the same day Russia served expulsion notices to dozens of staff from Western embassies in a diplomatic tit-for-tat ignited by the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia.

The Skripals were found slumped on a bench in the southern English city of Salisbury on March 4. Britain says they were poisoned with a nerve agent and that Russia is responsible.

Moscow has denied it was behind the attack and has called on Britain to prove it did not itself poison Skripal, 66, and his 33-year-old daughter.

With reporting by The Mirror, BBC, Reuters, The Guardian, and TASS
A Russian hacker who allegedly stole data and is wanted by both Washington and Moscow has pleaded not guilty to the charges at a court in San Francisco after being extradited to the United States from the Czech Republic.

Yevgeny Nikulin is accused of hacking big Internet companies including LinkedIn and Dropbox in 2012 and 2013. In the United States, he faces up to 30 years in prison if convicted on charges that include computer intrusion and identity theft.

But his case became an international tug-of-war when Russia made a rival extradition request shortly after the United States put forward its request. In Russia, Nikulin is wanted for alleged involvement in an online theft of about $2,000 in 2009.

"In all, Nikulin is charged with three counts of computer intrusion; two counts of intentional transmission of information, code, or command causing damage to a protected computer; two counts of aggravated identity theft; one count of trafficking in unauthorized access devices; and one count of conspiracy," the indictment released by the Department of Justice said.

Nikulin's court hearing came hours after Czech Justice Minister Robert Pelikan made the decision to extradite him after the country's top court said it rejected a last-minute appeal from the Russian.

During a visit to the Czech Republic, U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan said on March 27 in Prague that "we have every reason to believe and expect that Mr. Nikulin will be extradited to America."

In an interview with RFE/RL in Prague on March 26, Ryan said that the "case for extraditing [Nikulin] to America versus Russia is extremely clear."

Ryan, who met with Prime Minister Andrej Babis and other Czech officials during his visit, told RFE/RL that he would raise the issue in those talks.

"He did violate our laws, he did hack these companies.... So the extradition claim is very legitimate," he said. "And I just expect that the Czech system will go through its process, and at the end of that process, I am hopeful and expecting that he'll be extradited."

The tug-of-war over Nikulin had led to some friction in the Czech government.

Babis has said Nikulin should be extradited to the United States. But Pelikan had said that President Milos Zeman -- known for his relatively pro-Kremlin views -- has advocated handing the suspected hacker over to Russia.

Nikulin's lawyer said his client claimed the FBI is trying to link him to the hacking of the Democratic Party's servers during the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign.

With reporting by Aktualne.cz, CTK, and Respekt.cz
Russia's special envoy to Afghanistan has dismissed claims by the Pentagon that Moscow has provided arms to the Taliban during its 16-year war against U.S. forces and the Afghan government.

Zamir Kabulov said at a news briefing in Moscow on March 29 that the Taliban had been able to buy all the weapons it needs illegally from the Afghan government and police, and Russia had also refused to give the militants money for arms purchases.

Kabulov said that Russia's contacts with the Taliban had been aimed at ensuring the safety of Russian citizens in Afghanistan and encouraging the Taliban to join peace talks.

"We established the contacts a few years ago when we became seriously worried about possible terror threats for the Russian mission and Russian citizens in Afghanistan," he said.

"It was important for us to clarify the Taliban's plans regarding our citizens, and we received assurances that they have no hostile intentions toward Russians."

Kabulov said some Taliban leaders favored peace negotiations with the Kabul government, but so far they are in the minority.

He said Pakistan and Iran must play a role in Afghan peace efforts and warned the United States against trying to sideline either.

"Pakistan and Iran, not Russia or the U.S., are the two key players in the Afghan settlement," he said. "We are trying to develop a dialogue with Pakistan and jointly search for solutions."

Kabulov said Russia initially supported the U.S. war in Afghanistan, which was launched months after the September 11, 2001, attacks and initially aimed at eliminating havens used by Al-Qaeda militants who planned those attacks.

"We expected the Americans to eradicate terrorism and drug-trafficking there," he said, but now, "It's difficult for us to support something that hasn't solved problems but only exacerbated them over the past 17 years."

Based on reporting by AP and Interfax
Police in the Serbian capital, Belgrade, have evacuated the country's parliament after a man threatened to blow himself up outside the legislative buildings.

Local media reported the man was armed with a bomb and gun, but he surrendered to security officials after an hour of negotiations on March 29.

The man was later taken to a hospital for psychiatric evaluation.

An unconfirmed report said the man is a former Serbian soldier who was trying to draw attention to a legal case that he's involved in.
Mexicos Chedraui buys US Fiesta Mart

The recent purchase of the Fiesta Mart supermarket chain in the United States by Chedraui will allow the Mexican company to double its presence in that country and compete with local retailers that serve the Hispanic consumer.

Chedraui reported that one of its subsidiaries reached an agreement to acquire 63 Fiesta Mart branches in Texas, strengthening its presence in the Mexican-American consumer market.

Currently, Chedraui operates 59 stores primarily in California and Arizona and, through the acquisition, will not only double its current footprint (in the US), the company will also enter a new state, Barclays said in a document.

At the end of December 2017, the company had 59 branches of its El Super format in California, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico, mainly, according to the companys financial information.

For its part, the broker Citibanamex said that Chedraui would compete with local brands that serve the Hispanic consumer, including Mi Tienda, of HEB, as well as Joe Vs and El Rancho.

The acquisition of Fiesta Mart balances Chedrauis business in the US between Texas and California, potentially increasing the operating flow (EBITDA) in that country to 27 percent (against the current 17 percent), although it would dilute the groups EBITDA margin by 60 points base, said the financial group.
Mexicos four presidential candidates begin campaigning

Mexico City, Mexico  Presidential candidates for Mexico have already begun their campaigns to fill the upcoming seat July 1.

As of March 30, the four presidential candidates will travel the country promoting their campaigns to become the next president of Mexico.

According to the National Electoral Institute (INE), there will be approximately 2,500 ballot boxes placed around the state of Quintana Roo for the July 1 vote.

For the next 90 days, presidential candidates Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, Ricardo Anaya, Jose Antonio Meade and Margarita Zavala will do their best to win the votes of the approximately 88 million registered Mexicans.

The campaigns can go on up to four days before election day.

The candidates include Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador for the coalition Juntos Haremos Histori, Ricardo Anaya of the Por Mexico al Frente alliance, Jose Antonio Meade for the coalition Todos por Mexico and Margarita Zavala, the only independent candidate.

As of 2017, Mexico census recorded a population of over 137.7 million people. This year, INE says that 88 million Mexicans have registered to vote in the upcoming presidential elections scheduled to take place July 1, 2018.
Second jaguar found dead, shot to death

Tulum, Q.R.  A male jaguar has been found shot to death in the municipality of Tulum.

On Thursday, members from the Sinai ranch in the municipality of Tulum found the lifeless animal. The Federal Attorney for Environmental Protection (PROFEPA) confirmed that the feline died after being shot eight times.

Profepa delegate for Quintana Roo, Javier Castro Jimenez, confirmed that the deceased jaguar was an adult male about 3 years old and in his reproductive stage. The body of the jaguar was taken to Akumal for an autopsy that confirmed he had been shot numerous times in his body, the fatal shot being in the head.

This is the second jaguar death in as many months. In February, a female jaguar was found deceased on the side of the road after being hit by a car and left. Castro Jimenez said that PROFEPA will report the case to the Attorney Generals Office (PGR) since it is a federal crime to shoot and kill an endangered species.

According to the Federal Criminal Code, a person found guilty of unlawfully damaging, trafficking, possessing, collecting, introducing or extracting an endangered species from the country can face a prison sentence of between one and nine years.

Earlier this month, the National Commission of Protected Natural Areas announced that Mexico plans to create a tri-national reserve with Belize and Guatemala to protect the jaguar.
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If youre unsure what these terms mean you should probably contact your host. If you still need help you can always visit the WordPress Support Forums.
The Jeep Compass, a veritable success in India, is soon to get a new range topping variant in the form of the Trailhawk. Order books have been opened and booking amount is INR 50,000 with official launch expected around June or July 2018.

The Jeep Compass Trailhawk will be produced at the FCA Ranjangaon facility near Pune from where it will be exported to markets such as Australia, UK and Japan. Exterior and interior features to be seen on the new Jeep Compass Trailhawk have been detailed and are as listed below:

Exterior Features  Jeep Compass Trailhawk, though similar to the regular Compass in exterior features gets some changes in the form of underbody skid plates, dual tone silver black color and red colored recovery tow hooks. It also sits on new alloy wheels and metallic grey accents are seen throughout its exterior makeup.

Interiors  The interiors of the Compass Trailhawk sport some changes with all weather floor mats, quality furnishing in black with red accents with the Trailhawk moniker embroidered onto seats. Gear console, door panels and dashboard also get a matching color scheme.

Diesel Engine with AT  Jeep Compass Trailhawk will get a new diesel automatic 2.0 liter Multijet, 4 cylinder diesel engine offering 168 bhp power and 350 Nm torque. This engine will get mated to a 9 speed automatic transmission transferring power to all four wheels. Despite being an off-roader, the Trailhawk gets no manual transmission. It will also get a 1.4 liter petrol engine as seen on the regular variants with international models receiving a 2.4 liter turbocharged petrol engine.

Onboard equipment  Much the same as seen on the regular Jeep Compass, the Trailhawk is also seen with dual zone automatic air conditioning, 7 UConnect infotainment system with Android Auto and Apple CarPlay and a host of safety features among which are 6 airbags.

Sunroof  Set to compete against the Tucson and Mahindra XUV500, the Trailhawk also receives a panoramic sunroof which is something buyers in India have been showing more preference for.

Added Ground Clearance  Ground clearance has been increased to 198mm as compared to the regular Compass which is at 178 mm. Approach and departure angles have also been increased with new bumpers and water wading depth increased to 480 mm which is 75 mm higher than the regular Jeep Compass.
[SAO PAULO] Only 40 per cent of the original extent of tropical dry forests remains intact in Latin America, according to a 13-year-monitoring project.

The rest have been irretrievably lost, mainly due to deforestation for pastureland, according to estimates by scientists from Tropi-Dry, a research network sponsored by Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI).

Using modelling techniques and remote sensing, they monitored changes in land use in the tropical dry forest areas of Brazil, Mexico and across Central America since 2005.

With the exception of Costa Rica, all the other tropical dry forests are quickly vanishing. Arturo Sanchez-Azofeifa, University of Alberta in Canada

Unlike rainforests, tropical dry forests exist in areas with long dry seasons. The two most extensive contiguous areas that remain intact are located in northeastern Brazil (Caatinga) and across southeastern Bolivia, Paraguay and northern Argentina. In most other areas, these forests are fragmented.

With the exception of Costa Rica, all the other tropical dry forests are quickly vanishing, says Arturo Sanchez-Azofeifa, a professor at the University of Alberta in Canada, and Tropi-Drys lead researcher, in an interview with SciDev.Net.

He adds that the studys results raise concerns over how these forests might respond to climate change  a concern that is even more pressing because they have received little attention from scientists over the last century.

For every 300 scientific papers on tropical rainforests published since the turn of the 20th century, just one was related to tropical dry forests, according to the research.

In the neotropical region of the American continent  which includes almost all of South America, Central America, Antilles, parts of the United States and Mexico  dry forests host at least 66 per cent of water reservoirs.

In addition to being an important source of firewood, medicinal plants and hunting animals, they provide important ecosystem services that regulate the water cycle and protect the soil from erosion.

Dry forests were [until recently] believed to be ecosystems with low biological diversity, biochemistry Antonio Salatino, from the University of Sao Paulos Bioscience Institute (IB-USP), tells SciDev.Net. Because of the harsh conditions in areas of dry and semi-arid climate, it was assumed these forests were incapable of sustaining a high diversity of animal and plant life, he explains.

Salatino has been researching Caatingas biodiversity for at least two decades, funded by FAPESP. He believes tropical dry forests have been overlooked because the long dry seasons mean that many plant species lose chlorophyll, making the landscape look grey and desolate.Taking their high biodiversity value into account, tropical dry forests should be given as high a priority for conservation as the Amazon rainforest, Sanchez-Azofeifa points out.

Conserving these forests would also benefit terrestrial vertebrate species, such as the reptiles. In a study recently published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, an international group of researchers mapped the distribution of over 10,000 species of terrestrial reptiles.

The mapping revealed unexpected patterns, and high biodiversity in areas not considered a priority for conservation  including Caatinga, which is the worlds largest dry forest and takes up nearly 10 per cent of Brazils land area.

"Most of the lizards are distributed across open or semi-arid areas, such as the Caatinga, and there are several endemic species in these regions, says ecologist Cristiano Nogueira, from the IB-USP, and one of the studys authors.



IAI and FAPESP are both SciDev.Nets donors

This article was produced by SciDev.Nets Latin American & Caribbean desk.
With the promise of inexpensive procedures luring patients to travel abroad for plastic surgery, medical tourism has become an expanding, multi-billion-dollar industry. But while the initial procedure may be cheap, it can place a significant burden on U.S. public health systems when patients return from abroad with complications. A new study by investigators at Brigham and Women's Hospital describes the magnitude of medical complications that can result from plastic surgery abroad. Their study is published in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. "Many think of medical tourism as wealthy patients traveling to receive care at high quality medical institutions abroad, but what we're reporting on here are repercussions that can result when patients return to their home countries to undergo elective plastic surgery procedures at a lower price," said senior author Dennis Orgill, MD, PhD, medical director of Brigham and Women's Hospital's Wound Care Center. "Patients need to be very cautious when they go outside of the U.S. for elective plastic surgery. The safety and regulatory systems that protect patients in the U.S. are often not in place in a patient's home country."

In a retrospective analysis, Kimberly Ross, MPH, Orgill and colleagues evaluated patients who had been treated at BWH over the last seven years for complications or complaints associated with plastic surgery performed in a developing country. Of the 78 patients evaluated, the most common complications were seen following abdominoplasty (35 patients) or breast augmentation (25 patients). The most common destination country for these surgeries was the Dominican Republic -- 75 percent of the patients in the study traveled there for elective procedures.

Complications included infections, pain and wound-healing issues. Fourteen patients presented with infections at their surgical sites, including infection from multi-drug resistant bacteria. Eight patients required the removal of damaged tissue or foreign objects from the wound site over a series of office visits.

The team also found that most patients relied on their medical insurance to cover the cost of follow-up care when they returned to the U.S. About 60 percent of the patients studied were on Massachusetts Medicaid. Four patients in the study admitted to returning to their original surgeon -- despite complications -- for a second surgical procedure abroad.

"We hope that this study will bring attention to this emerging issue and encourage others to report any results related to medical tourism treatment and patterns," the authors wrote.
Walleye, an iconic native fish species in Wisconsin, the upper Midwest and Canada, are in decline in northern Wisconsin lakes, according to a study published this week in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences.

The study does not pinpoint the exact causes for the decline, though it suggests it is likely a combination of factors, including climate change, habitat degradation and harvest rates that might at times outpace production levels if not monitored closely. Additional research is ongoing regarding what declining production means for future walleye harvests in this region.

'SOMETHING IS NOT RIGHT'

For the study, researchers analyzed production statistics collected between 1990 and 2012 for adult walleye populations in Wisconsin lakes. They found that annual walleye production across all lakes decreased by 27 percent during that time. It takes 1.5 times longer to produce the same amount of walleye biomass, or fish weight, now as it did in 1990.

Lakes experiencing declines are often stocked with walleye to make up for a loss in natural production. However, the data show that stocked lakes have seen larger declines in walleye production. Lakes with a mixture of both stocked and naturally reproducing walleye experienced declines of 47 percent, while lakes with only stocking and no natural reproduction declined by 63 percent.

"This is a clear warning sign that something is not right," said lead author Andrew Rypel, an ecologist at University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources during the time of the study. He is currently an associate professor and the Peter B. Moyle and California Trout Chair in Coldwater Fish Ecology at the University of California, Davis. "The results suggest that anglers, tribes and resource management agencies will all need to work together to craft new science-based management policies for moving forward."

ABOUT WALLEYE

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Rypel, who grew up in Wisconsin fishing walleye, notes that walleye are "kind of a big deal" in the area. As salmon are to the West, walleye are to this region. People travel to the state's Northwoods just to fish for walleye; a large Catholic population enjoys them for Friday fish fries; and Native American tribes spear walleye in the early spring in accordance with their cultural and religious traditions. The meat is prized for its flaky, mild and sweet flavor.

"People catch and release bass," Rypel said. "That's not the case with walleye. People love to eat walleye."

THREATS TO WALLEYE

Bass like warmer waters, and unlike walleye, their populations have increased over the study period. Walleye require cooler waters, and their decline has accompanied a rise in lake temperatures. This points to climate change as one factor in the loss of walleye that the authors say should continue to be examined.

Habitat alteration, residential development around walleye-bearing lakes and indirect food web interactions are likely additional factors.

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Another complication is that while most Wisconsin lakes are dominated by low-producing walleye populations, some of the highest-producing walleye lakes are used to estimate sustainable harvest for the region. Consequently, studies on those healthier walleye lakes may not adequately represent the overall walleye population.

ACTION IS UNDERWAY

State, tribal and community leaders have already taken several actions to help the struggling walleye. These include major stocking initiatives, new fishing regulations, programs to enhance habitat, bass removals and even moratoriums on walleye harvests.

"Most people interested in the outdoors, fishing and hunting are interested in leaving something for future generations, hopefully something better," Rypel said. "It's essential that we work collaboratively when we see trends that fisheries like these are in decline."
To borrow from a philosophical thought experiment: If a volcano erupts in a remote part of the world and no one hears it, does it still make a sound?

Indeed, it does. And not only does the sound occur, but it also can tell scientists about the timing and duration of the eruption itself.

As part of the United Nations' Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, an International Monitoring System was built to detect any nuclear explosion on Earth -- underground, underwater or in the atmosphere. Within that system is a network to detect atmospheric infrasound -- sound waves with frequencies below the lower limit of human audibility -- which scientists can also use to track volcanic eruptions in remote locations.

A new case study by an international team of scientists, led by UC Santa Barbara geophysicist Robin Matoza, examined data from the 2015 eruption of the Calbuco volcano in the Los Lagos Region of Chile. The researchers chose this event because they could compare long-range data with local readings, enabling study of the large volcanic explosion using infrasound sensors.

The team's analysis demonstrated that infrasound recorded at regional (15 to 250 kilometers) and long distances (greater than 250 km), such as on the International Monitoring System, delivered similar constraints on the timing and duration of the eruption, as did data from a local (less than 15 km) seismic network. Their results appear in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth.

"We want to be able to monitor regions in the world where many volcanoes do not have local monitoring stations like Calbuco does," said Matoza, an assistant professor in UCSB's Department of Earth Science. "In some places -- for example, the Aleutian Islands in Alaska -- it's challenging to maintain observation networks on the volcanoes themselves due to harsh weather and their remote locations. Consequently, many Aleutian volcanoes are not instrumented. We want to be able to detect, locate and characterize remote explosive volcanic activity because eruptions can release ash clouds into the atmosphere, which are hazardous to aircraft."

In remote locales, researchers usually rely on satellite-based technology to monitor volcanoes, but according to Matoza, without ground-based information, it's difficult to know exactly when the eruption happened and how long it lasted.

"What's nice about infrasound is that we are able to gather information farther from the source than with traditional ground-based monitoring methods," Matoza explained. "Typically, seismic signals from eruptions don't propagate more than a few hundred kilometers from the source. With Calbuco, for example, you can see the eruption very clearly on the local monitoring stations and out to about 250 kilometers on regional seismic networks, but with infrasound, the signal propagates in the atmosphere for more than 5,000 kilometers. What's more, infrasound delivers different information than seismic data alone."

The Chilean national seismic network includes a relatively sparse number of infrasound sensors co-located with 10 seismometers (seismo-acoustic stations), which enabled this study. Placing such infrasound sensors at more seismic stations in volcanically active regions would be valuable, Matoza noted. The fact that one of the Chilean seismo-acoustic stations was only 250 kilometers from the eruption highlights the significant potential of existing regional seismic networks for augmenting the International Monitoring System with more infrasound sensors for eruption detection and monitoring.

"One of the recommendations from this study is that more seismic networks should also have infrasound sensors," Matoza said. "It's one extra channel of data to record that provides very useful information for improving volcano monitoring."
Researchers at Case Western Reserve University are developing atomically thin "drumheads" able to receive and transmit signals across a radio frequency range far greater than what we can hear with the human ear.

But the drumhead is tens of trillions times (10 followed by 12 zeros) smaller in volume and 100,000 times thinner than the human eardrum.

The advances will likely contribute to making the next generation of ultralow-power communications and sensory devices smaller and with greater detection and tuning ranges.

"Sensing and communication are key to a connected world," said Philip Feng, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science and corresponding author on a paper about the work published March 30 in the journal Science Advances. "In recent decades, we have been connected with highly miniaturized devices and systems, and we have been pursuing ever-shrinking sizes for those devices."

The challenge with miniaturization: Also achieving a broader dynamic range of detection, for small signals, such as sound, vibration, and radio waves.

"In the end, we need transducers that can handle signals without losing or compromising information at both the 'signal ceiling' (the highest level of an undistorted signal) and the 'noise floor' (the lowest detectable level)," Feng said.

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While this work was not geared toward specific devices currently on the market, researchers said, it was focused on measurements, limits and scaling which would be important for essentially all transducers.

Those transducers may be developed over the next decade, but for now, Feng and his team have already demonstrated the capability of their key components-the atomic layer drumheads or resonators-at the smallest scale yet.

The work represents the highest reported dynamic range for vibrating transducers of their type. To date, that range had only been attained by much larger transducers operating at much lower frequencies-like the human eardrum, for example.

"What we've done here is to show that some ultimately miniaturized, atomically thin electromechanical drumhead resonators can offer remarkably broad dynamic range, up to ~110dB, at radio frequencies (RF) up to over 120MHz," Feng said. "These dynamic ranges at RF are comparable to the broad dynamic range of human hearing capability in the audio bands."

New dynamic standard

Feng said the key to all sensory systems-from naturally occurring sensory functions in animals to sophisticated devices in engineering-is that desired dynamic range.

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Dynamic range is the ratio between the signal ceiling over the noise floor and is usually measured in decibels (dB).

Human eardrums normally have dynamic range of about 60 to 100dB in the range of 10Hz to 10kHz, and our hearing quickly decreases outside this frequency range. Other animals, such as the common house cat or beluga whale (see illustration), can have comparable or even wider dynamic ranges in higher frequency bands.

The vibrating nanoscale drumheads developed by Feng and his team are made of atomic layers of semiconductor crystals (single-, bi-, tri-, and four-layer MoS 2 flakes, with thickness of 0.7, 1.4, 2.1, and 2.8 nanometers), with diameters only about 1 micron.

They construct them by exfoliating individual atomic layers from the bulk semiconductor crystal and using a combination of nanofabrication and micromanipulation techniques to suspend the atomic layers over micro-cavities pre-defined on a silicon wafer, and then making electrical contacts to the devices.

Further, these atomically thin RF resonators being tested at Case Western Reserve show excellent frequency "tunability," meaning their tones can be manipulated by stretching the drumhead membranes using electrostatic forces, similar to the sound tuning in much larger musical instruments in an orchestra, Feng said.

The study also reveals that these incredibly small drumheads only need picoWatt (pW, 10-12 Watt) up to nanoWatt (nW, 10-9 Watt) level of RF power to sustain their high frequency oscillations.

"Not only having surprisingly large dynamic range with such tiny volume and mass, they are also energy-efficient and very 'quiet' devices," Feng said, "We 'listen' to them very carefully and 'talk' to them very gently."

The paper's co-authors were: Jaesung Lee, a Case Western Reserve post-doctoral research associate; Max Zenghui Wang, a former research associate now at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC), Chengdu, China; Keliang He, a former graduate student in physics, now a senior engineer at Nvidia; Rui Yang, a former graduate student and now a post-doctoral scholar at Stanford University; and Jie Shan, a former physics professor at Case Western Reserve now at Cornell University.

The work has been financially supported by the National Academy of Engineering Grainger Foundation Frontiers of Engineering Award (Grant: FOE 2013-005) and the National Science Foundation CAREER Award (Grant: ECCS-1454570).
In the search for extraterrestrial life, scientists have turned over all sorts of rocks.

Mars, for example, has geological features that suggest it once had -- and still has -- subsurface liquid water, an almost sure prerequisite for life. Scientists have also eyed Saturn's moons Titan and Enceladus as well as Jupiter's moons Europa, Ganymede and Callisto as possible havens for life in the oceans under their icy crusts.

Now, however, scientists are dusting off an old idea that promises a new vista in the hunt for life beyond Earth: the clouds of Venus.

In a paper published online today (March 30, 2018) in the journal Astrobiology, an international team of researchers led by planetary scientist Sanjay Limaye of the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Space Science and Engineering Center lays out a case for the atmosphere of Venus as a possible niche for extraterrestrial microbial life.

"Venus has had plenty of time to evolve life on its own," explains Limaye, noting that some models suggest Venus once had a habitable climate with liquid water on its surface for as long as 2 billion years. "That's much longer than is believed to have occurred on Mars."

On Earth, terrestrial microorganisms -- mostly bacteria -- are capable of being swept into the atmosphere, where they have been found alive at altitudes as high as 41 kilometers (25 miles) by scientists using specially equipped balloons, according to study co-author David J. Smith of NASA's Ames Research Center.

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There is also a growing catalog of microbes known to inhabit incredibly harsh environments on our planet, including the hot springs of Yellowstone, deep ocean hydrothermal vents, the toxic sludge of polluted areas, and in acidic lakes worldwide.

"On Earth, we know that life can thrive in very acidic conditions, can feed on carbon dioxide, and produce sulfuric acid," says Rakesh Mogul, a professor of biological chemistry at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, and a co-author on the new paper. He notes that the cloudy, highly reflective and acidic atmosphere of Venus is composed mostly of carbon dioxide and water droplets containing sulfuric acid.

The habitability of Venus' clouds was first raised in 1967 by noted biophysicist Harold Morowitz and famed astronomer Carl Sagan. Decades later, the planetary scientists David Grinspoon, Mark Bullock and their colleagues expanded on the idea.

Supporting the notion that Venus' atmosphere could be a plausible niche for life, a series of space probes to the planet launched between 1962 and 1978 showed that the temperature and pressure conditions in the lower and middle portions of the Venusian atmosphere -- altitudes between 40 and 60 kilometers (25-27 miles) -- would not preclude microbial life. The surface conditions on the planet, however, are known to be inhospitable, with temperatures soaring above 450 degrees Celsius (860 degrees Fahrenheit).

Limaye, who conducts his research as a NASA participating scientist in the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Akatsuki mission to Venus, was eager to revisit the idea of exploring the planet's atmosphere after a chance meeting at a teachers' workshop with paper co-author Grzegorz S?owik of Poland's University of Zielona Gora. Slowik made him aware of bacteria on Earth with light-absorbing properties similar to those of unidentified particles that make up unexplained dark patches observed in the clouds of Venus. Spectroscopic observations, particularly in the ultraviolet, show that the dark patches are composed of concentrated sulfuric acid and other unknown light-absorbing particles.

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Those dark patches have been a mystery since they were first observed by ground-based telescopes nearly a century ago, says Limaye. They were studied in more detail by subsequent probes to the planet.

"Venus shows some episodic dark, sulfuric rich patches, with contrasts up to 30-40 percent in the ultraviolet, and muted in longer wavelengths. These patches persist for days, changing their shape and contrasts continuously and appear to be scale dependent," says Limaye.

The particles that make up the dark patches have almost the same dimensions as some bacteria on Earth, although the instruments that have sampled Venus' atmosphere to date are incapable of distinguishing between materials of an organic or inorganic nature.

The patches could be something akin to the algae blooms that occur routinely in the lakes and oceans of Earth, according to Limaye and Mogul -- only these would need to be sustained in the Venusian atmosphere.

Limaye, who has spent his career studying planetary atmospheres, was further inspired to revisit the idea of microbial life in the clouds of Venus by a visit to Tso Kar, a high-altitude salt lake in northern India where he observed the powdery residue of sulfur-fixing bacteria concentrated on decaying grass at the edge of the lake being wafted into the atmosphere.

Limaye notes, however, that a part of the equation that isn't known is when Venus' liquid water evaporated -- extensive lava flows in the last billion years likely have either destroyed or covered up the planet's earlier terrestrial history.

In the hunt for extraterrestrial life, planetary atmospheres other than Earth's remain largely unexplored.

One possibility for sampling the clouds of Venus, says Limaye, is on the drawing board: VAMP, or Venus Atmospheric Maneuverable Platform, a craft that flies like a plane but floats like a blimp and could stay aloft in the planet's cloud layer for up to a year gathering data and samples.

Such a platform could include instruments like Raman Lidar, meteorological and chemical sensors, and spectrometers, says Limaye. It could also carry a type of microscope capable of identifying living microorganisms.

"To really know, we need to go there and sample the clouds," says Mogul. "Venus could be an exciting new chapter in astrobiology exploration."

The Wisconsin scientist and his colleagues remain hopeful that such a chapter can be opened as there are ongoing discussions about possible NASA participation in Russia's Roscosmos Venera-D mission, now slated for the late 2020s. Current plans for Venera-D might include an orbiter, a lander and a NASA-contributed surface station and maneuverable aerial platform.

This research was supported by NASA grants NNX09AE85G and NNX16AC79G. The VAMP concept is under development by Northrop Grumman Corp.
If you go to Google Image search and search for any image, let's say flowers, and then go to the search tools and select the size option. Then you pick "exactly" and enter in a size and hit "Go." Nothing, absolutely, nothing will happen. There are a bunch of searchers complaining about this issue over the past week in the Google Web Search Help forums.

Google's Andy B. said today that he hopes this is resolved within a week. He wrote "the team has found and verified a fix for this issue, but unfortunately it won't be live for ~1 week due to the nature of how it needs to be rolled out. Understand this is not ideal, but we appreciate your patience in the meantime."

Personally, I don't think I ever used this feature, have you?

Forum discussion at Google Web Search Help.
Lorena Melgarejo was awakened by her cell phone at 5 a.m. one day last fall. The caller was asking for help: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers were at his front door, and he didnt know what to do.

You have the right to not open the door, said Melgarejo, head of community group Faith in Action Bay Area, who got the call as part of her work for a hotline monitoring ICE activity in San Mateo County.

The man didnt open the door, and the officers walked away  nothing came of it.

Dont open the door is a message advocates are spreading across Northern California through Know Your Rights training sessions, in which they explain to immigrants that they have constitutional protections  one of which is that ICE officers need a search warrant signed by a judge to enter a home without a residents permission.

Advocates want undocumented immigrants who fear increased arrests under the Trump administration to know that ICE deportation officers typically dont secure judicial warrants when conducting sweeps, such as the one in Northern California last month that ended with 232 people being detained, or when attempting to make day-to-day arrests.

The trainings are set in the backdrop of California and its leaders battling the White House over the level of cooperation the state will provide to aid federal immigration enforcement. Although such training sessions are not new, the number that advocates have given in California has skyrocketed since the election of President Trump, who campaigned on a more restrictive immigration policy.

Organizations in the Bay Area report a 70 percent increase in the trainings since the 2016 election.

Anecdotally, more people know they dont have to open the door when ICE lacks a proper warrant, said Luis Reyes Savalza, an attorney with Pangea Legal Services in San Francisco, who has led dozens of training sessions since Trump took office.

ICE officials say such efforts obstruct legitimate law enforcement activity.

Jessica Christian / The Chronicle

Organizations instructing aliens not to cooperate with ICE do so at the risk of undermining public safety and assisting convicted criminal aliens in evading law enforcement, said Sarah Rodriguez, an agency spokeswoman.

Although ICE may not like it, the law on the matter is clear: Legal resident or not, no one is required to open the door for law enforcement without a warrant signed by a judge, said Cesar Cuauhtemoc Garcia Hernandez, a University of Denver law professor.

Neither does anyone have to allow any law enforcement agent to enter their home, he said. This is true of United States citizens and migrants, just as it is true of local police officers or ICE agents.

Savalza said ICE officers rarely come to the door with search warrants, but often do have administrative immigration arrest warrants. Those warrants are signed by ICE officials  not by a judge  and do not require individuals to open their doors.

Advocates say that when immigrants open the doors to ICE officers, they risk the arrest not only of the person ICE is looking for, but of anyone else in the home as well. If officers are allowed into the home, any undocumented person inside is fair game for being taken into custody.

Its important that people exercise their rights, Savalza said.

In the training sessions for immigrants, advocates explain these constitutional concepts by acting them out. Last week, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Immigrant Defense Project began a series of animated videos online detailing the rights of immigrants in their homes and in public.

In one video, narrated by Greys Anatomy star Jesse Williams, a middle-aged woman named Esther is cooking eggs when she hears banging on the door.

It was 5:30 a.m. when ICE came to Esthers apartment, Williams says.

Esther looks out a peephole, and Williams notes that the ICE officers identified themselves as police looking for her husband. ICE has been known to use the tactic, which it is allowed to do.

Esthers gut told her she should cooperate, Williams says, but she remembered something shed heard on the radio. ICE had been making early morning sweeps using tricks like this to get people to open their doors. Esther remembered she had rights.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

In the video, Williams says, Do not be fooled, and do not open the door. Instead, he says, ask for a warrant signed by a judge.

If the officers lack such a warrant, Williams says, the resident can say, I do not consent for you to enter my home. I do not want to talk to you without a lawyer present. Please leave.

In the video, the officers do end up going away.

This is all scary, but remember, we have rights, Williams says.

Zachary Nightingale, an attorney at San Francisco immigration law firm Van Der Hout, Brigagliano and Nightingale, said any success that a targeted undocumented person has using this strategy is likely to be short-lived. He said ICE is efficient at tracking down those they want to find. Among other things, officers can simply wait until someone leaves home and make an arrest then.

Not opening the door is probably a temporary measure, Nightingale said. If ICE wants to find you, they will find you.

John Sandweg, who headed ICE under President Barack Obama in 2013, said that training sessions aside, communities are less likely to cooperate with immigration officers because of the Trump administrations shift in priorities for deportation and heightened rhetoric.

It creates a chilling effect in the communities, he said. It creates fear and a culture where people wont open the door.
The head of federal immigration enforcement in Northern California apologized for posting an image on social media that Muslim American groups say is offensive because it dehumanizes Muslim women.

David Jennings, head of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in San Francisco, shared the image  an online meme that spread around the world  on LinkedIn in an attempt at humor. The Chronicle noticed the post this week.

The image depicts three patio umbrellas that are intended to resemble three people in body-covering burqas along with the caption, I spent 30 minutes talking to them to learn more about their culture until the barman told me they were umbrellas.

In a caption attached to the post, Jennings wrote that he was trying to use lessons learned from my terrorism mentor  Guess I need more work. After The Chronicle asked ICE officials about the post, Jennings removed it from the job-oriented social networking site.

Jennings said in a statement that it was directed to a former co-worker and instructor in Arab culture and was meant to poke fun at myself and use me as an example to show that everyone can and should keep learning about people from different cultures, including people like me with extensive experience working with different cultures and traditions.

I am horrified that the post would be taken as anything other than a dig at myself, but upon further reflection, I understand how it could be interpreted otherwise and am truly sorry, he said. It was not my intention to offend anyone and I hope that the explanation of my intent assuages any hurt the post may have inadvertently caused.

Jennings, who as field office director oversees immigration enforcement in California from Bakersfield to the Oregon border, as well as in Hawaii and Guam, shared the image three months ago. The post was liked by another ICE official in a separate office.

Immigration experts and advocates said the post raises concerns about Jennings and the way he views Muslims. The discovery comes amid increased tension between California and the Trump administration over ICE enforcement and the states pro-immigrant sanctuary laws.

That he did not see the problem with his post until it was pointed out worries me about his ability to lead and carry out his duties, particularly as they relate to immigrants from Muslim-majority countries, said Zahra Billoo, head of the Council on American-Islamic Relations Bay Area. Unfortunately, this follows the trend that our president and his administration have set in their offensive and often dangerous language.

During his campaign, President Trump called for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States following terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino.

Jennings is currently on detail in Washington, D.C., agency officials said. He has been director in San Francisco since July 2016, overseeing the deportation officers assigned to the region and more than 300 employees in total, according to his LinkedIn page. Previously, Jennings directed the Los Angeles and Houston field offices.

Jennings has worked in immigration enforcement for more than 20 years except for a stretch from September 2001 to January 2005, when he was a senior special agent for the Joint Terrorism Task Force in Sacramento.

Dalia Mogahed, research director for the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, a think tank in Washington, D.C., that seeks to empower American Muslims, said that despite Jennings explanation that he was poking fun at himself, the post was unsettling.

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The ICE field director reproduced a link between terrorism and Muslims by tagging his terrorism mentor on a post featuring a picture of what at first glance looks like Muslim women in full burqas, she said.

The image, Mogahed said, reinforces the othering of Muslims as a strange, almost alien species, dehumanized to the point of being mistaken for inanimate objects. The meme, she said, plays on the stereotype of silent and subjugated Muslim women, where the non-response of the umbrellas was not an immediate tip-off that these werent human beings.

Last year in England, a politician from the conservative UK Independence Party was criticized and investigated by his party after sharing the image on Twitter, along with other posts about Muslims.

Pratheepan Gulasekaram, a professor and immigration expert at Santa Clara University School of Law, said Jennings senior position in ICE made the post more weighty.

Because he is a law enforcement officer with supervisory power, and that power is primarily exercised in enforcement actions against those racially and religiously different than him, his bigoted joke raises serious concerns about what motivates his enforcement decisions, Gulasekaram said.

He said the post raises broader concerns about leadership in ICE, and how the supervisors of the largest federal law enforcement branch might dehumanize and ridicule minority cultures, races and religions, even as they are charged with investigating and enforcing against portions of those communities.
San Francisco supervisor and mayoral candidate London Breed said shes still undecided about whom among her rivals shell pick as her second preference in the citys ranked-choice election June 5.

But it almost certainly wont be Mark Leno or Angela Alioto.

Speaking with The Chronicles editorial board Thursday, Breed was reluctant to back any of the other contenders in the mayors race.

Youre killing me, she said in response to a question about her second and third choices.

Jane has been nice, Breed said after a few moments of contemplation, referring to fellow supervisor and rival candidate Jane Kim. Jane is probably the only one thats been respectful.

When it comes to Leno and Alioto however, Breed said that if they werent so nasty to me in this race, they would have had my No. 2 and 3 vote.

Breed and Leno have clashed repeatedly over the two independent expenditure committees raising and spending money on behalf of Breeds campaign. Leno invited all of the candidates in the mayors race to sign his fair campaign pledge, rejecting the use of such outside money during the campaign.

Breed has refused to sign the pledge and accused Leno, a former supervisor, state assemblyman and state senator, of being hypocritical  considering hes benefited from similar political action committees in previous campaigns.

Alioto has also said Breeds independent expenditure committees create an uneven playing field in the mayors race. And shes accused Breed of flip-flopping on whether to arm the San Francisco Police Department with Tasers.

Now Playing: London Breed sits down with The Chronicle Opinion staff to discuss running for Mayor of San Francisco and other issues.

Ive watched (Leno and Alioto) over the years. Ive always had a tremendous amount of respect for them, Breed said. And Im really disappointed with their behavior over the course of this campaign.

One thing Breed and Alioto agree on: where the undecided voters are. Breed said she viewed the west side as containing the largest pocket of undecided voters. Alioto said the same when she met with The Chronicles editorial board earlier this week.

 Dominic Fracassa

Two get the nod: The San Francisco Democratic Party endorsed two progressives in the June 5 mayors race, picking Mark Leno as its first choice and Supervisor Jane Kim as its second.

The vote came during a meeting Wednesday night in which Supervisor London Breed, the leading moderate, took the unusual step of withdrawing her name from consideration after the committee members endorsed her opponents.

Mayor Mark Farrell resigned from the Democratic County Central Committee on Wednesday, and the committees chairman, former Supervisor David Campos, appointed District Two resident Megan Levitan to take his place. Farrell does not plan to endorse a candidate in the race.

Campos, a progressive, saw the committees endorsement as a vote for change.

He said Breed represents the status quo at City Hall because she has served two terms as president of the Board of Supervisors.

The partys vote will probably provide a boost for Leno, whose campaign appears to be flagging, according to a firefighters union poll released this month.

But the endorsement wont necessarily shape the results of the race. In 2011, the party picked John Avalos as its No. 1 and Dennis Herrera as its No. 2 candidate for mayor, over Ed Lee who ultimately won.

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The DCCC also endorsed Proposition C, the ballot measure that Kim is promoting to raise the gross receipts tax on commercial property and use the money to fund child care scholarships. It didnt support rival Proposition D, a similar tax measure by the moderate supervisors to fund affordable housing and homeless shelters.

The DCCC backed Rafael Mandelman as its top pick in the race to represent District Eight  the Castro, Noe Valley and Glen Park neighborhoods. Incumbent Supervisor Jeff Sheehy came in second.

 Rachel Swan

Lets have a party: San Francisco officials intend to make the city a contender to host the 2020 Democratic National Convention.

Mayor Mark Farrell sent a letter to Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez on Thursday pitching San Francisco as a world-class city that would provide the ideal setting for the partys convention.

The city, Farrell said, has begun reviewing the requirements for hosting the event, a key nominating convention for the Democratic Party.

In an email, Farrell made clear that San Franciscos hosting of the event would be a clear repudiation of what he called President Trumps hateful and divisive policies.

Hosting the 2020 Democratic National Convention will be opportunity for San Francisco and the State of California to demonstrate once again what it means to be true leaders for all, he said.

The last time the Democratic convention was held in San Francisco was 1984.

 Dominic Fracassa
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra has filed a lawsuit against Sutter Health, accusing Northern Californias largest health system of using its dominance in the market to unlawfully raise prices.

The state alleges that Sutter violated California antitrust laws by forcing health insurers to enter into agreements that gave Sutter the power to raise prices for hospital and health care services that far exceed the prices it would have been able to charge in an unconstrained, competitive market.

Its time to hold health care corporations accountable and bring down illegally inflated health care costs imposed on California families, said Becerra, who announced Friday that he filed the lawsuit in San Francisco Superior Court.

Sutter, which operates 24 hospitals and 35 outpatient centers in Northern California, is aware of the lawsuit but has not yet reviewed it and cannot comment on the specifics, said Sutter spokeswoman Karen Garner.

Becerra said the lawsuit  which seeks to halt the Sutter practices in question  is the culmination of a six-year investigation conducted by his office. The probe found that Sutter imposed all or nothing contracting with insurers, restricted insurance companies from offering consumers more low-cost health options, set very high out-of-network prices, and impeded price transparency by restricting the publication of provider rates that consumers could have used to make choices, Becerra said.

Much of the increased cost of health care in Northern California is attributable to Sutter and its anticompetitive contractual practices, which it has imposed as a result of its market power, the lawsuit says.

The charges are similar to those brought against Sutter in a separate lawsuit filed by thousands of employers that self-fund health care for their workers. That class-action suit accuses Sutter of overcharging employers by imposing similar anticompetitive practices, and seeks to recover $500 million in overcharges.

It is not the first time Sutter has drawn scrutiny from the state over its pricing practices. The health systems 1999 acquisition of Summit Medical Center, one of the largest hospital mergers in recent years, prompted then-Attorney General Bill Lockyer to attempt, unsuccessfully, to block the merger over antitrust concerns.

After the merger, prices at Summit rose 28 to 44 percent, according to a 2008 Federal Trade Commission report on the transaction.

University of Southern California health economist Glenn Melnick said that if the attorney generals lawsuit is successful, it could pressure large health systems in other states to change their contracting practices. Melnick has researched hospital consolidation and pricing extensively.

Whats exciting about this is if the plaintiffs prevail here ... that should have a chilling effect across the country, he said. Once again, California can impact national trends.

Health care has long been more expensive in Northern California than in other parts of the state  even after adjusting for the regions higher cost of living, according to analyses from health economists. Research suggests that increased consolidation in health care markets leads to these higher prices.

One study released this week by UC Berkeleys Petris Center on Health Care Markets and Consumer Welfare found that prices for medical procedures are 20 to 30 percent higher in Northern California than in Southern California, and insurance premiums for health plans bought on the individual market are 10 percent higher.

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In regions dominated by large medical groups, health insurers have less leverage to negotiate rates. Between 2004 and 2013 in California, prices grew 113 percent at hospitals that were part of the largest health systems  compared with 70 percent across all hospitals in the state, according to a 2016 study from Melnick.

Melnick said Sutter amassed significant market power by imposing all or nothing contracting with insurance companies, starting in 2000. The practice, which is used by many large health systems, means Sutter compels insurers to contract with all of Sutter hospitals collectively, and sets the prices for all the hospitals services, instead of allowing insurers to negotiate prices with each individual hospital. If an insurer does not wish to contract with all the systems hospitals, it cannot contract with any.

Im not a big fan of (health) systems that are able to do all or none contracting, Melnick said. It endows them with market power to raise their prices. The problem is once you get market power, theres a tendency to do things that protect and extend it.

The prices at hospital systems that use this contracting practice are $7,000 higher per patient than those that do not, he said.
After a tense, 1-year international tug-of-war among Washington, Moscow and Prague over his fate, a Russian man indicted on charges of hacking millions of LinkedIn and Dropbox users accounts appeared in a San Francisco courtroom Friday.

Yevgeniy Aleksandrovich Nikulin, 30, pleaded not guilty to nine counts related to computer-hacking charges in U.S. District Court after he was flown overnight from the Czech Republic and hauled before Magistrate Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley.

Nikulin faced charges that in 2012 he illegally accessed user names and passwords from business networking site LinkedIn, cloud storage firm Dropbox and Formspring, a now-defunct social network.

The gaunt Nikulin, who landed at San Francisco International Airport about 6 a.m. in the custody of FBI agents, has stood at the center of an international extradition battle since his arrest in the Czech Republic in October 2016.

But his case is still generating tensions between the U.S. and Russia. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement that Nikulins case is part of deeply troubling behavior once again emanating from Russia.

Nikulin has previously denied hes a hacker, and a defense attorney in the Czech Republic claimed his case is politically motivated.

The case started in June 2012 when LinkedIn reported hackers posted the passwords of 6.5 million members online. The Mountain View company advised members to change their passwords.

But in May 2016, LinkedIn reported more than 100 million of those emails and passwords involved in the 2012 breach had resurfaced online. In August 2016, Dropbox disclosed more than 60 million user passwords were taken in the 2012 breach.

Weve been actively monitoring the FBIs case to pursue those responsible for the 2012 breach of LinkedIn member data, the company said in a statement. We are glad to see this progress and appreciate the hard work of law enforcement to resolve this investigation.

Dropbox did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Formspring shut down in 2013.

A federal indictment unsealed in October 2016 charged Nikulin with taking the user name and password of a LinkedIn employee identified as N.B. to gain access to the companys computer system on March 3 and March 4, 2012.

The indictment also said a similar method was used to hack into Dropbox computers in June 2012, and into Formsprings system in July 2012. The indictment also said unnamed co-conspirators, who have not been arrested, used Google Gmail accounts to offer 5,000 euros to buy data obtained from Formspring.

Nikulin was also known online as Chinabig01, dex.007, valeriy.krutov3, and itBlackHat, the indictment said.

FBI officials declined to comment on other details of the case beyond the indictment.

Through an interpreter, Nikulin pleaded not guilty to three counts of computer intrusion, two counts of causing damage to a protected computer, two counts of aggravated identity theft, one count of conspiracy and one count of trafficking in unauthorized access devices.

The most serious charges, for damage to a protected computer and for trafficking, carry a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Nikulin, who wore a gray zippered hoodie, looked weary and said little during his brief appearance before Corley. But he asked for a medical examination for an undisclosed ailment. Corley ordered FBI agents to take him to the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center for evaluation and scheduled a detention hearing for Wednesday.

Nikulins arrest in the Czech Republic came two days before former President Barack Obama accused the Russian government of stealing Democratic National Committee emails. Russia then wanted to extradite Nikulin on a separate charge of Internet theft in 2009. Czech government officials argued among themselves about sending Nikulin to the U.S. or Russia.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, visiting Prague this week, said the U.S. has every reason to believe and expect that Mr. Nikulin will be extradited to America.

According to the Associated Press, Czech courts previously ruled both extradition requests meet the necessary legal conditions, leaving the decision to Justice Minister Robert Pelikan, who ruled minutes after the countrys Constitutional Court released a statement that it rejected a last-minute appeal from Nikulin as groundless.

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In a statement to Russias Tass news agency, the Russian Embassy in Prague called the step deeply disappointing.

However, U.S. officials wasted no time in whisking Nikulin to San Francisco.

The FBI will not allow international cyber criminals to operate with impunity, FBI Special Agent in Charge John F. Bennett said in a statement. Nikulin allegedly targeted three Bay Area companies through cyber-attacks, and will now face prosecution in the United States.

Sessions called computer hacking a direct threat to the security and privacy of Americans.

In this case, the defendant, a Russian national, is accused of breaking into the computer system of several important American companies using stolen identities, and potentially gaining access to the personal information of millions of Americans, Sessions said. This is deeply troubling behavior once again emanating from Russia. We will not tolerate criminal cyber-attacks and will make it a priority to investigate and prosecute these crimes, regardless of the country where they originate.

The big questions on the minds of prosecutors, intelligence officials and cybersecurity experts are just what Nikulin knows and who he might have worked with. The indictment mentions a co-conspirator, but no one else has been named or charged.

Another looming question is whether Nikulin worked with the Internet Research Agency, a troll farm in St. Petersburg tied to Russian intelligence. In February, Special Counsel Robert Mueller brought an indictment accusing 13 Russians, including several intelligence officials, and three companies of roles in sowing chaos and aiding Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. These Russians sought to spread distrust among voters and in the election results, and they were bankrolled, according to the Mueller indictment, by Yevgeniy Viktorovich Prigozhin, a businessman friend of Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

The Associated Press and McClatchy Newspapers contributed to this report.
A state appeals court overturned the grand-theft convictions of a former Alameda County anti-poverty-agency director and her husband Thursday but upheld the directors conviction for falsifying memos connected to the program.

In reversing the major convictions against Nanette Dillard, former head of the countys Associated Community Action Program, and Paul Daniels, grants manager for the program, the First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco said their program was regulated by a federal agency operating under rules that would be impeded by state criminal prosecutions.

Under the rules of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the only penalty for misrepresenting the status of federal grants is disqualification from the program, the court said. Dillard and Daniels were convicted of giving false information to the federal agency and misappropriating more than $300,000, not to enrich themselves but to shore up the finances of their floundering program.

Permitting state criminal prosecution based on grantees representations to HHS ... would undermine the goals of the federal program, Justice Mark Simons said in the 3-0 ruling. He said those goals were to establish projects that helped low-income people develop financial assets and save money for future needs.

The threat of state criminal prosecution could deter potential grantees from applying for federal funds, Simons said.

But he said there was no such barrier to Dillards separate felony conviction for falsifying two documents that she backdated before submitting them to the federal agency. One document involved Dillards expenses; the other helped her nephew and a friend qualify for job training and employment, and she submitted both documents shortly after she was suspended from the program in February 2011.

The backdating is evidence that Dillard intended (the documents) be used for a fraudulent or deceitful purpose, Simons said.

Her lawyer, Violet Grayson, nevertheless applauded the ruling.

The Court of Appeal placed a stamp of disapproval upon utilizing a federal program intended to aid the poor as a weapon in a local political dispute, Grayson said. After the 2014 trial, she said, she and Dillard met with officials of the federal agency overseeing the program, who listened to Dillards explanation and told Dillard she would remain eligible to apply for such grants in the future.

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Alameda County fired Dillard and Daniels in 2011 and shut down the program soon afterward. The program had gone through its allotted funding and owed the federal government $317,000. Prosecutors said Dillard and Daniels, who married in 2007, had misappropriated federal funds, steering them to the programs payroll account and other accounts where they did not belong, and then falsified their actions in reports to the federal government.

Dillard was acquitted of a separate charge of appropriating federal funds for her own use. She and Daniels were sentenced to probation and ordered to reimburse the government for its losses. Grayson, Dillards lawyer, said the courts reversal of the theft convictions should also overturn the reimbursement obligation.

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @BobEgelko

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When a friend dies suddenly, it can be difficult to figure out how to tell the story of his life. So Id like to tell you the story of how I met Tawei Lin, who died on March 18 in San Francisco at the age of 49.

It was the spring of 2005. I walked into Yamo Be There, a vegetarian Thai restaurant on 18th Street in the Mission. This was the Missions prelapsarian era, and Yamo Be There didnt look promising. It was wedged into a half of a storefront, across the street from an empty lot that had been recently razed by the city.

But it was 10 oclock in the evening. I was hungry, everything else in the neighborhood was closed, and I heard Grace Jones blasting from Yamo Be Theres interior. I walked in, hoping for a bowl of soup  unaware I was about to meet someone Id never forget.

I was greeted by a grinning Taiwanese man who sported a bald head, a tweed suit, heavily tattooed arms and stretched ears that hed adorned with spiral tapers. Tawei Lin.

Taken aback by his appearance, I asked him how his day was going. He laughed.

When I got to the restaurant, my garbage can was missing, he said. A few hours later, I found it in the alley, with a sleeping man inside.

The Mission in 2005. Running a restaurant in the neighborhood required a spirit of adventure back then  especially when one acted as proprietor, chef, host, waiter, DJ and dishwasher, as Lin was at Yamo Be There.

But Lin believed in adventure; his life had taught him how to improvise. That night he made me a warm, wondrous bowl of green curry. When I mentioned that I wasnt a vegetarian, he told me hed happily throw in some pork.

When my customers cant see me, I eat it all the time, he said. Its one of the safest meats on the market right now.

We were the only two people in the restaurant, so he told me to check out his album crates and choose the next song. I pulled out a Shuggie Otis album. This pleased him enough to ask me what I did.

I was writing my first book at the time, and as I ate, I told him about it. He listened, nodding. When I asked for the bill, he told me the meal would be free of charge.

Artists and writers need to eat, he said. I believe in feeding them.

Is it possible to tell the story of a life in a single anecdote?

Of course there was so much more to Tawei Lins life.

There was his story of immigration: In elementary school, he moved to the U.S. from Taipei with his mother and his sister. His mother bought a diner in Morgan Hill, and he grew up working in restaurants alongside his family members.

In many American stories, these years would be considered the ones of struggle and drudgery. Tawei always remembered them as the years when he got to experiment in the kitchen, to learn how to curse in English, and to figure out how to make any stranger laugh.

There was his story of supporting the arts: Never a rich man, he nonetheless helped dozens of San Franciscans with their art projects and their housing situations.

Often, he did this through food. Every time I saw him, he was donating food for someones rent party or art opening. Every time I saw him, he was feeding someone.

There was, above all, his story of a San Francisco that has nearly disappeared: his first bartending jobs at leather bars in the South of Market neighborhood; the thrift shops where he could, on a whim, decide to trade in his entire wardrobe of jeans and flannels for motorcycle caps and leggings; the management work he did for 1015 Folsom, now one of San Franciscos most important music clubs.

He ran brunch pop-ups at the original Docs Clock, offering pickle pairings and frog leg jook; he encouraged customers to try on his collections of Mardi Gras beads and costume jewelry while they ate their meals.

It was an inventive life, and it was never an easy one. Nightlife and restaurant work is hard on the body, hard on relationships, hard on the wallet and hard on the mind.

But Lin didnt know any way to be other than hospitable, especially to people and communities in San Francisco who had a hard time finding a place where they could be themselves. When he passed away from a stroke, he was planning to open a gallery space in the Mission  a place where he hoped the few artists whod hung on via rent control could gather.

The more I think about him, the more the single story of the night we met seems to encapsulate everything his friends and his family will miss about him. Theres the dark humor, the creativity, and  above all  the generosity.

Thanks for sharing this city with us, Tawei Lin.

Caille Millner is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: cmillner@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @caillemillner
WASHINGTON - The threat from Rep. Elizabeth Esty's chief of staff arrived in a voice mail.

"You better f-----g reply to me or I will f-----g kill you," Tony Baker said in the May 5, 2016, recording left for Anna Kain, a former Esty aide Baker had once dated.

Kain, who provided a copy of the recording to The Washington Post, alerted the police, filed a report for felony threats and obtained a 12-month restraining order against Baker.

According to emails obtained by The Post, Esty found out about the episode within a week. At that point, the Connecticut Democrat took matters into her own hands.

Rather than firing or suspending Baker, the congresswoman consulted her personal attorneys and advisers, she said. She also spoke to Kain on May 11, emails show; Kain said she provided detailed allegations that Baker had punched, berated and sexually harassed her in Esty's Capitol Hill office throughout 2014, while she worked as Esty's senior adviser.

Later, Esty enlisted a friend, former chief of staff Julie Sweet, to look into Baker's past behavior, emails show.

Baker did not leave for three months. By his last day on Aug. 12, according to documents Esty provided to The Post, he and Esty had co-written a positive recommendation letter he could use in a job search and signed a legal document preventing her from disparaging him or discussing why he left. Baker went on to work for Sandy Hook Promise, the gun-control group created after the 2012 shooting in Esty's district. He was dismissed from the group this week after The Post contacted him.

The controversy over Esty's handling of Baker's dismissal was first reported Thursday by the Connecticut Post.

In retrospect, Esty said she dealt with the situation poorly. She said she plans to reimburse the U.S. Treasury for what she described as the roughly $5,000 Baker received in severance. She also plans to improve how she runs her office, she said.

"What I did was not good enough and it didn't protect [my staff] enough," Esty said Monday in an interview at her home in Cheshire, Connecticut. " . . . I'm hopeful now with this conversation and this coming out that I'll be able to be much more direct and help other people in Congress understand the risks they are placing their staff at when they don't think they are."

Baker referred questions to a friend, Andrew Ricci. Ricci said Baker disputed that he struck Kain. He said Baker had a drinking problem in 2016 but since then has been sober and received treatment for anger issues and substance abuse.

While the rise of the #MeToo movement has triggered a national reckoning on sexual harassment and ended the careers of many prominent men, the issue continues to be especially thorny in Congress, where, critics say, rules written and enforced by lawmakers are designed to protect the institution rather than victims of abuse. Alleged abusers have avoided penalties and negative publicity through nondisclosure agreements, such as the one signed in Baker's case, and taxpayer-funded settlements that have been used to ensure accusers' silence.

Esty's case underscores how the harassment issue can be challenging even for lawmakers who, in their public positions, find common cause with #MeToo victims.

The congresswoman, a perennial target for Republicans, was among the Democrats who called on their colleague Rep. John Conyers Jr., Mich., to resign after he was accused last fall of serially harassing female staff members.

"For too long, the culture in Washington has accepted entirely unacceptable behavior," Esty said in a statement in November after anti-harassment training became mandatory for House offices. "That needs to change - period."

Esty provided The Washington Post with a copy of her agreement with Baker, which included multiple secrecy provisions, a draft recommendation letter and his severance terms. The document provides a rare look at a contract signed by a lawmaker and a departing senior staffer facing possible scandal,the result of a process that at no point sought a formal response from Kain.

In response to questions, Esty expressed remorse for her handling of Baker's situation. She said she was pressured by the Office of House Employment Counsel to sign an NDA, a process that she said delayed Baker's departure. She said she was working within a system that appeared designed to shield members who had misbehaved, not those trying to dismiss problematic aides.

"Clearly that's what it's all set up to do - to protect the member of Congress whose bad behavior caused the problem," Esty said.

"It felt wrong to me. . . . When I'm reading the documents and these drafts, it kept going through my mind, 'This is not right. This is not what happened.' "

Gloria Lett, lead counsel with OHEC, declined to comment, writing in an email that her office does not respond to media inquiries. She referred questions to the Committee on House Administration.

The committee said in a statement that OHEC "serves to provide advice to House employing offices on employment policies and practices" and that "ultimately, each member makes the final decision for how a case against the office is handled and an employee's employment status."

The statement said the committee "does not review any employment decisions" and "is not involved in the advice that OHEC provides."

According to both sides, Kain and Baker met in Esty's office following her 2012 election. They dated casually in 2013 before being promoted to senior adviser and chief of staff, respectively, in early 2014.

According to Kain's petition for a restraining order, Baker punched her in the back and "repeatedly screamed" at her in Esty's office while threatening to retaliate professionally if she reported his behavior. She did not tell Esty or the House Ethics Committee out of fear for her safety, her petition stated.

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Kain told The Post that she was so anxious about imperiling her boss' chance of reelection that she removed her cellphone from the House's WiFi network so that she could privately look up how to report misconduct to the Ethics Committee.

"I was 24 and doing a job that I believed in for an institution I was proud to be a part of," Kain said Thursday in an interview. "But I was being severely abused and had nowhere to turn. Nobody talked about things like this. I was suffering and thought it was weakness."

On May 5, 2016, Baker called Kain approximately 50 times and said he would "find her" and "kill her," she alleged in the petition.

Ricci disputed that Baker punched Kain but did not challenge her other allegations. He said that Baker was too intoxicated at the time to remember leaving the message and that he offered to resign after Esty learned what had happened. The congresswoman said Baker never offered his resignation.

Baker was barred from working out of Esty's Capitol Hill office starting on July 24, 2016, according to the separation agreement, which required Esty to serve as a reference in his job search outside of Washington. A draft letter of recommendation from Esty that was attached to the agreement praised his "considerable skills."

Baker accompanied the congresswoman to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia from July 25 to 28 before sending a departing email to colleagues on Aug. 12.

A spokeswoman for Sandy Hook Promise declined to comment on Baker's departure this week.

Esty said she plans to advocate for greater accountability in how congressional offices are managed.

"I hope in the course of all of this we're pulling the curtain back in a way that will make the institution truly better than it is now," she said.

Kain urged the Senate to approve legislation to better protect its staffers, in line with recent changes to House policy.

"I just want people working on the Hill and going through this to know that it's real, it's a problem and nothing about it is okay," she said.
San Francisco Brewing Co. is roughly one month away from opening the doors to its sprawling 12,000-square-foot project at Ghirardelli Square, a mammoth venture meant to revitalize an iconic tourist destination in need of new life.

The projects tap room and on-site brewery will open in the squares West Plaza sometime in late April, the team said, bringing with it a full-service restaurant, an outdoor patio with fire pits, and family-friendly games, among other things.

We just grabbed the bull by the horns with this, San Francisco Brewing Co. founder Josh Leavy said. We always have goals to grow and to expand. We just work hard to make them happen.

Notable about the project is the sheer scope: The restaurant will seat 120 diners inside and roughly 100 more can fit outside; the staff at the location will be anywhere between 30 people to upwards of 50 people depending on the tourist seasons; a 22-foot shuffleboard table will be there, along with ping pong tables and cornhole boards

A new entrance is being built for facility on Polk Street, Leavy said, which will accommodate folks coming from the neighborhood. It will also have a new, three-story Ghirardelli sign, he said.

Staying in-tune with the increased automation at restaurants and bars, Leavy said the new brewery will have an automated tap wall. Similar to Pour Taproom in Santa Cruz where customers can purchase a wristband and serve themselves, Leavy said his brewery will have cards that provide the same access.

Now Playing: Virtual tour of the soon-to-open Ghirardelli Square restaurant and beer garden from San Francisco Brewing Co. The video was created by BCV Architects. Video: San Francisco Chronicle

The new restaurant will have a kitchen built from scratch, and will feature a pizza oven. Leavy said the menu is still being ironed out but will have elevated pub fare.

The massive project falls in line with what appears to be an injection of new life at Ghirardelli Square. A dim sum place from the Koi Palace crew called Palette is in the works. It will be an expanded version of their Dragon Beaux restaurant which opened in the Richmond in 2015 and will fill the void left by Waxmans.

Joining them is Subpar, an outpost of the popular Alameda put-put spot taking shape as an 18-hole course at the square.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

Leavy also said hes looking to hire some of the former Rogue Ales Public House employees. The North Beach business shuttered following a fire on St. Patricks Day.

Were lucky to have the space we have, Leavy said. I think we can serve stepping stone for other local businesses that want to come here. And it gives people a place to come hang out, eat, drink and just call their own.

San Francisco Brewing Co.: Opening late-April at 3150 Polk St.; Ghirardelli Square
WASHINGTON - Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Thursday rebuffed - at least for now - a call from Republican leaders to appoint a second special counsel to look into the FBI's handling of its most high-profile probes and announced that he has asked the U.S. attorney in Utah to spearhead a broad review.

Sessions made the revelation in a letter to three key GOP leaders in the House and Senate who have called on him to appoint a second special counsel, noting that Justice Department regulations call for such appointments only in "extraordinary circumstances" and that he would need to conclude "the public interest would be served by removing a large degree of responsibility for the matter from the Department of Justice."

He asserted that the department previously has tackled high-profile and resource-intensive probes and revealed he had named U.S. Attorney John Huber to lead a review of the topics that the legislators had requested he explore. Those topics include aspects of the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and several matters related to Hillary Clinton and her family's foundation.

"I am confident that Mr. Huber's review will include a full, complete, and objective evaluation of these matters in a manner that is consistent with the law and the facts," Sessions wrote. "I receive regular updates from Mr. Huber and upon the conclusion of his review, will receive his recommendations as to whether any matters not currently under investigation require further resources, or whether any merit the appointment of a Special Counsel."

Sessions in November revealed to GOP legislators that he had directed senior federal prosecutors to look into matters they wanted probed, and he said in an interview with Fox News this month that the review was being led by a person outside Washington. Sessions, though, had not revealed the name of that person, and his public comments have done little to quiet the cries for a second special counsel.

Sessions' letter was addressed to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., and House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., - each of whom has called on him to appoint a second special counsel.

The lawmakers have raised numerous concerns - including the handling of the Clinton email investigation, alleged wrongdoing by the Clinton Foundation, the sale of a uranium company to Russia and what some conservatives view as inappropriate surveillance of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

Democrats view their concerns as unfounded and part of a possible ploy to distract from the work of special counsel Robert Mueller III, whom Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed to look into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election.

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz already has been probing aspects of the Clinton email case, and he announced Wednesday that he would review the surveillance of Page. Conservatives charge the surveillance was inappropriate and that to obtain the warrant that authorized it, the FBI used information from a former British intelligence officer who had been hired by an opposition research firm working for Clinton and the Democratic National Committee.

Democrats argue that the warrant was obtained legally and with the approval of judges, who were relying on information far beyond the material provided by Christopher Steele, the intelligence officer.

Lawmakers reiterated their calls for a second special counsel even after Horowitz's announcement, noting that the inspector general's authority is limited in some respects. They did the same after Sessions' Thursday announcement, although they said it was a welcome step.

"We are encouraged that Attorney General Sessions has designated U.S. Attorney John W. Huber to investigate the actions of the Department of Justice and FBI in 2016 and 2017. While we continue to believe the appointment of a second Special Counsel is necessary, this is a step in the right direction," Goodlatte and Gowdy said in a statement.

President Trump previously had been critical of Sessions for relying merely on the inspector general to look into his party's concerns, particularly with respect to Page.

"Why is A.G. Jeff Sessions asking the Inspector General to investigate potentially massive FISA abuse. Will take forever, has no prosecutorial power and already late with reports on Comey etc. Isn't the I.G. an Obama guy? Why not use Justice Department lawyers? DISGRACEFUL!" Trump wrote on Twitter last month, referring to former FBI director James Comey.

In his letter, Sessions seemed to defend the inspector general, noting that he had "broad discretion and significant investigative powers" and that he could develop cases that he could refer elsewhere for prosecution or make his findings public - which regular criminal prosecutors might not be able to do.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

Huber's appointment might allay some. Grassley, in a March 15 letter, wrote that if Sessions felt Justice Department regulations did not allow him to appoint a second special counsel, he should instead designate a "disinterested U.S. attorney."

Mueller, too, has been functioning much like a U.S. attorney's office, although he enjoys some special protections that Huber would not have. For example, the regulation that governs his appointment says he can be removed only by the attorney general for cause, and the attorney general must explain his removal to Congress.

Huber was first appointed as a U.S. attorney in Utah during the Obama administration, although Trump reappointed him last summer. Sessions wrote that he was working from outside Washington and in cooperation with Horowitz. Senator Orrin G. Hatch, R-Utah, said of Huber's appointment: "Attorney General Sessions has picked the right man for the job."

It is not unheard of for sitting U.S. attorneys to be asked to handle high-profile, Washington-centric investigations, although it has been done in different ways. Under Obama, then-Attorney General Eric Holder tapped two U.S. attorneys - including Rosenstein when he served in the role in Maryland - to lead high-profile leak investigations, and Comey, when he was deputy attorney general, appointed then-U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald as a special counsel to look into who revealed the identity of a covert CIA officer.

- - -

The Washington Post's Karoun Demirjian contributed to this report.
Californias ambitious clean car standards to reduce vehicle emissions have jump-started a clean transportation economic boom in our communities as well as helping clean our air. Unfortunately, President Trump could roll back these policies before the weekend is out. This would set up an unprecedented attempt to reverse Californias ability to set its own emissions standards via our states special authority under the federal Clean Air Act.

Eleven years ago, I testified before the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, urging approval of Californias plan to reduce tailpipe emissions. I cited the extraordinary danger climate change poses to California and how reducing vehicle emissions ameliorates that risk, but I could have just as easily cited how tailpipe emissions harm public health.

Fortunately, EPA approved the plan, and in the decade that followed, California became Americas clean transportation leader. Now, 13 states plus Washington, D.C., follow Californias clean car standards, covering 35 percent of the U.S. population and roughly one-third of Americas auto market.

Californias clean car policies have helped restore auto manufacturing and the good jobs that come with it. The Bay Area is now home to thousands of green jobs and cutting-edge companies such as electric bus manufacturer Proterra in Burlingame, Fremonts electric car manufacturer Tesla, and charging station manufacturer ChargePoint of Campbell. Statewide, around 300 clean transportation companies employ more than 20,000 Californians building electric vehicles, designing advanced engine technologies, and producing cleaner fuels.

Clean car standards are also helping California achieve its ambitious climate change goals, have contributed to a 10 percent overall emissions reduction since 2004, and have driven deployment of nearly half the nations electric vehicles onto our roads. Clean cars use less fuel, so Californias clean car standards give consumers the gift of lower gasoline bills, saving families and businesses billions of dollars at the gas pump  especially whenever gasoline prices spike as a result of the inevitable disruption in global oil supplies.

Unfortunately, the Trump administration is now threatening Californias clean car successes. In early 2017, Trump said he supported rolling back Californias clean car standards, and while EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt initially backed away from the fight, he recently said California shouldnt and cant dictate to the rest of the country what these (standards) are going to be.

The EPA has begun negotiating with the California Air Resources Board to find a plan suiting Trumps anti-regulation push, but Pruitt downplayed Californias initial offer to work together.

If these negotiations fail, then the EPA could attempt something thats never been attempted before: a unilateral revoking of Californias federal waiver. Mary Nichols, Californias top environmental regulator, predicted this would start a war with many states lining up with California. States would certainly sue to block the move, starting a protracted legal fight over clean air between Trump and California where no one wins, with everything to lose.

Trumps attack on clean cars could take a heavy toll on California. Even though our air is much cleaner than it used to be, transportation still contributes 37 percent of statewide emissions, and California added more than 2 million new vehicles annually from 2015 through 2017. Because we wont abandon cars anytime soon, the cars on our roads must be as clean as possible.

Beyond the increasingly obvious dangers posed by climate change like drought and wildfire, vehicles are the largest source of dirty air in California, which the American Lung Association says costs California $15 billion every year in asthma attacks, premature deaths, lost work days and hospital visits.

Throwing clean cars in reverse would cause wide-ranging damage and threaten Californias right to reduce smog in our cities, cut transportation costs, and tap the economic potential of clean car technologies.

When I stood in front of EPA in 2007, I testified as a citizen on behalf of our climate future. Now, Im also testifying as a parent on behalf of my young sons health and future.

California must be allowed to continue protecting its residents and leading the clean transportation economy.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Travis Allen delivered a number of predictable slams on Democratic lawmakers during his appearance in San Francisco this week. But two things the Orange County assemblyman said about hunger and homelessness were surprising for different reasons.

Allen said he believes that food insecurity is a myth.

The concept that anyone in this country has food insecurity  doesnt know where their next meal is coming from  is absolute absurdity, Allen said during his appearance at the University of San Francisco. If you can go down to Taco Bell or McDonalds and feed yourself for a dollar, there is no such thing as food insecurity. If you can go with $5 to any grocery store in California and eat the best produce in California ... its a myth being propagated by the left.

What the United States actually has is an obesity epidemic, Allen said. Thats the opposite of food insecurity.

After The Chronicle tweeted his comments, the Orange County Food Coalition responded via Twitter, noting that over 13 percent of the population in Allens district live below the poverty line and 68 percent of the K-12 students (in his district) receive free and reduced price meals. ... These people are experiencing food insecurity. As are 4.1 million people in California, the coalition tweeted.

As for homelessness, Allen proposed to clean up the streets by bringing back clean, secure state-run institutions and mandating that some people on the streets be sent to them.

If you are an indigent person in California, if you are no longer able to provide a roof over your head, a roof will be provided for you, Allen said. For those who simply need a roof over their head and a hand up to get back on their feet, that will be provided.

And how will the fiscal conservative pay for those services?

Existing budget, Allen said during an interview. California has more than enough money to take care of these things. Its just been spending it in the wrong places. It simply just has to be run like a business.

 Joe Garofoli

Come and get us: As a member of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Dublin, sees a lot of intel few others do. And hes very frustrated that the United States has done little to protect its election system from another attack by Russia, another foreign country or even a lone wolf.

By what we have done so far  which is almost nothing  we are inviting the Russians to attack us again, Swalwell said during a talk this week with The Chronicles editorial board.

We are telling them, We will do nothing. We will conduct no lessons learned campaign. We will give no attribution to who was responsible and will put no reforms in place to make the ballot box safer. By doing that, Im afraid we will invite another attack, Swalwell said.

And if Democrats win the House this year  and capture control of the Intelligence Committee  Swalwell said, We will be responsible for finally investigating what happened in 2016, but also investigating what will likely happen in 2018.

Speaking of the midterms, Swalwell believes Democrats can win all of the seven GOP-held California congressional districts where Hillary Clinton outpolled President Trump in 2016 that his party has targeted.

I think it can be higher than seven, Swalwell said, noting hes going to return soon to the district of GOP Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Elk Grove (Sacramento County). McClintocks district wasnt originally on the Democrat target list. People are awakened, and theyre going to hold representatives accountable.

So, Swalwell said, I guess Im taking the over on (seven).

 Joe Garofoli
Martin Luther King Jr. was about to leave his home in Atlanta for a quick trip to Memphis, where sanitation workers had gone on strike. Kings children were used to his short visits home between constant travels throughout the country to preach civil rights and nonviolence. This time, the kids crowded around their dad, urging him not to go. He told them it was just a quick trip.

On April 4, 50 years ago, King was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. King would have been remembered and honored even if hed lived to old age. But martyrdom and the passage of time have a way of refracting and re-emphasizing aspects of a life, even one lived in the constant spotlight of rallies, press appearances, marches, speeches and writings.

Now when we look back on Kings life, we probably think first of the I Have a Dream speech at the Lincoln Memorial. This was the MLK we best remember, a gifted orator who believed in both the promised land and the journey to get there.

But the last 18 months of Kings life were devastating, according to the recollections of the friends and colleagues interviewed in King in the Wilderness, a thought-provoking, richly detailed documentary by Peter Kunhardt airing Monday, April 2, two days before the anniversary of Kings death, on HBO.

Harry Belafonte, Joan Baez, Andrew Young, Jesse Jackson, John Lewis, Joseph Califano and others contribute fascinating accounts of what King went through toward the end of his life, the feeling that the country had turned against him, as Young recalls.

The moment of change in Kings life and in the country came when the Southern Christian Leadership Conference expanded its playing field to encompass the entire nation and, specifically, Chicago, where King, Young and others were forced to live in a slum apartment with no utilities. King believed that we have moved from a struggle for decency to a struggle for genuine equality, citing racism, militarism and poverty as the primary targets of the expanded civil rights movement.

The movement, says Young, ceased to be political for him. Instead, he saw it as spiritual in nature.

King had wanted to work with President Lyndon Johnson, whom he saw as the only hope for a follow-up to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. At the same time, he struggled because of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam. While his wife, Coretta Scott King, would show up at antiwar rallies, it wasnt until King gave a speech at New Yorks Riverside Church exactly one year before his death that he came out against the war and, by extension, the Johnson administration.

The speech didnt go over well with many of his own constituents, who couldnt understand Kings belief that the war was costing too many lives, too many resources, and was one of the factors keeping African Americans from bettering their lives.

He also faced opposition from young African Americans who had grown impatient with peaceful protests and protracted negotiations that seemed to make little actual progress. The film includes a very telling segment featuring both King and Stokely Carmichael of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, who are interviewed by a newsman walking with them at the head of a demonstration. King reiterates his belief in nonviolence. Carmichael takes issue with that position and voices support for action.

As revealing as Wilderness is about Kings final year, the film also reminds us of the obvious, that it has been 50 years since Kings death, and that should prompt us to ask: Where is the United States on race in 2018? We know the answers to that question. In some ways, minorities have made advances, but racism still exists, as evidenced by headlines we see every day about shootings in Florida, Missouri, Sacramento, demonstrations in Charlottesville and elsewhere.

Could King have been effective in altering our nations course on the issue of race had he lived? Sadly, the conclusion youd have to draw from Wilderness is that King was finding himself opposed by his own constituency, which of course made it difficult for him to forge effective political alliances.

After Kings death, riots and looting broke out across the country and calls for nonviolence were drowned out by the sounds of gunfire and water cannons.

As it turns out, the so-called Holy Week Uprisings were a sad harbinger of a future in which racism still thrives and destroys.

Theres a moment in the film when King is asked about I Have a Dream, and he responds with sad resignation:

The dream I had that day has in many points turned into a nightmare.

Sadly, it is a nightmare from which we have yet to awaken.

David Wiegand is an assistant managing editor and the TV critic of The San Francisco Chronicle. Follow him on Facebook. Email: dwiegand@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @WaitWhat_TV

King in the Wilderness: Documentary, 8 p.m. Monday, April 2, HBO
The BART Police Department promoted an officer who fatally shot a man in January near the West Oakland Station, selecting him for a mentoring role amid an investigation into whether the shooting followed state law and agency policy, records show.

But the promotion of Joseph Mateu to field training officer, announced Monday by BART Police Chief Carlos Rojas, was put on hold Wednesday after The Chronicle called the agency to ask about it, according to internal bulletins.

Wednesdays bulletin, marked as an addendum and correction to the earlier one, said the selection process for new field training officers has not yet been finalized.

Field training officers are responsible for instructing and evaluating rookie officers fresh out of the academy as they get their first experience in the field. Training officers must qualify for the position by taking a course and a test. If they pass, they receive a 5 percent pay increase, but do not go up in rank, BART officials said.

Mateu, a 13-year veteran of the force who was promoted to senior officer in 2010, is the subject of an investigation by Oakland police and the Alameda County district attorneys office into the Jan. 3 shooting of Sahleem Tindle during a violent altercation with another man across the street from the West Oakland BART station.

As of this week, Mateu had not been accused by authorities of any wrongdoing, and Rojas has said the officer displayed courage before shooting a man who appeared to be holding a handgun when he was shot in the back.

Tindles family members, who filed a legal claim against BART signaling their intent to sue, have called on Mateu to be fired and prosecuted for the killing, which they said was unjustified.

Efforts to reach Mateu and representatives of the BART officers union were unsuccessful.

On Monday, Rojas signed a department-wide bulletin announcing the promotion of Mateu and another officer. Six others remained in a pool of officers eligible for the promotion.

Officers Joseph Mateu and Michael Manzano have been selected as Field Training Officers, the bulletin stated. The effective date of their assignment will be contingent upon successful completion of the Basic Field Training Officer Course.

But after The Chronicle called to ask about the promotion Wednesday, BART spokeswoman Alicia Trost said she called the police chief, who made the call to send all eight officers to the field training officer course, including Mateu and Manzano.

He told me they were sending out a new memo and he was making a call to send all of them to the course, Trost said.

The revised memo had the original language lined out with a new message in red at the top. Rojas has not responded to phone calls from The Chronicle.

The new language read: *CORRECTION: The selection process for the listed Field Training Officer applicants has not yet been finalized. Officers Mateu, Mazano and the additional six listed officers must first attend the Basic Field Training Officer course. Candidates who successfully complete the course will then be considered for assignment to the collateral duty of Field Training Officer.

Trost said Mateu applied for the position in August, and that the shooting investigation does not affect his eligibility.

The investigation is ongoing, but hes now qualified and part of the pool, she said. Those eight were notified they can go to the field training officer course, which also requires a test. If you pass it, then the department will indicate which will become the new field training officers.

News of Mateus promotion, though it was put on hold, outraged Oakland attorney John Burris, who is representing Tindles family.

This is pretty stunning to me, Burris said. It certainly suggests prejudgment of the conduct of the police officer by the department. This only encourages distrust in the ability for the police to police themselves.

Mateu was placed on administrative leave for two weeks after the shooting, and returned to his patrol assignment Jan. 18, BART said.

According to footage from Mateus body-worn camera, he was in BARTs West Oakland Station just after 4:30 p.m. when he heard gunfire and ran through a parking lot to Seventh Street, where he found Tindle and another man grappling on the ground outside a barbershop.

Rojas said Tindle had already shot and wounded the other man, and appeared to be holding a gun. Mateu drew his gun and, as he came upon the men, shouted twice, Let me see your hands, before shooting Tindle three times in the back. Tindle died later at the hospital.

Police recovered a gun at the scene, though its unclear in the body-camera video whether Tindle had control of the weapon when he was shot.

Rojas called the incident a very challenging situation and commended the officer for running toward the sound of gunfire. This officer didnt create this, the chief said at a February news conference. He had to deal with what was created before he arrived.

Tindles family members have said that Mateu was not threatened by Tindle, the brother of professional boxer Karim Mayfield, and that Tindle did not have enough time to heed the officers orders.

They need to release him from his job and then they need to prosecute him, Tindles brother LaRon Mayfield said of Mateu. We are not going to let my brother just die in vain from senseless violence from the police.
Oaklands fire marshal resigned Friday after months of scrutiny on the overextended, often-troubled fire-prevention unit that he led.

Miguel Trujillo assumed the position in 2015 after working in the Oxnard Fire Department in Southern California. He leaves now for Gilroy, where he will be fire marshal for the city thats one-eighth the size of Oakland.

City officials said Friday they have started a search to find Trujillos replacement. In the meantime, Fire Chief Darin White will concurrently serve as fire marshal.

The scenario is a repeat from the days of Whites predecessor, Teresa Deloach Reed, who served as fire chief and fire marshal from 2013 to 2015.

I am excited to launch a recruitment effort that will enable me to accelerate and realize my stated goal of reorganizing the Fire Prevention Bureau to focus on strong leadership and oversight, strategic planning, division restructure, improved accountability, efficient processes, subject matter expertise and professional acumen  all of which are required to meet evolving fire prevention needs and public education and outreach requirements  for our unique Oakland community, White said in a statement.

The Fire Prevention Bureau faced questions after the Ghost Ship disaster killed 36 people in 2016 and revealed that no official inspection of the warehouse had ever been conducted.

In the eight years leading up to the inferno, no one held the permanent position of sworn assistant fire marshal, largely due to budget cuts.

Until recently, the bureau had been using inspection software described by its users as out-of-date, inconsistent and incomplete. The system, which was missing records for a number of city buildings, was blamed for some lapses in inspections required by state law.

At a preliminary hearing last year against Ghost Ship defendants Derick Almena and Max Harris  each charged with 36 counts of manslaughter  Trujillo appeared to contradict the testimony of an Oakland fire captain.

George Freelen had told a judge that during an informal 20-minute survey of the warehouse in 2014, he grew concerned about the high fire load of material stocked inside the artist collective. He said he sent a one-page report to the Fire Prevention Bureau to get clarity on what the building was supposed to be used for, but did not hear back or follow up.

Trujillo, however, said in court that the city had no records of any complaint about dangers at the warehouse prior to the fire.

The city said Friday it is seeking candidates for fire marshal who demonstrate responsiveness, persuasiveness and effective communications skills necessary to collaborate with a wide range of officials representing local, state and federal agencies; community groups; and many other public and private representatives.
Some 60 companies, including such leading brands as Subway, Sprint and the NFL, are joining forces to help each other follow you around online.

Adobe, a company better known for Photoshop and PDF files, says the Device Co-op initiative it is organizing will help companies offer more personalized experiences and make ads less annoying by filtering out products and services you have already bought or will never buy. Under the initiative, Adobe can tell youre the same person on a home PC, a work laptop, a phone and a tablet by analyzing past sign-ins with member companies.

The initiative comes amid heightened privacy sensitivities after reports that Facebook allowed a political consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica, to harvest data on millions of Facebook users to influence elections. Facebook also has been criticized for collecting call and text logs from phones running Googles Android system.

Adobes initiative underscores the role data plays in helping companies make money. Many of the initial uses are for better ad targeting.

The company timed last weeks announcement to a digital marketing conference it hosted in Las Vegas. Adobe executives said they believe their initiative offers strong privacy safeguards and arent worried about a backlash.

With this stuff coming out now around Cambridge Analytica and Facebook, the bar has to be so high in terms of privacy, Adobe executive Amit Ahuja said.

Adobe says no personal data is being exchanged among participating companies, which also include Allstate, Lenovo, Intel, Barnes & Noble, Subaru and the Food Network. Adobe says the program links about 300 million consumers across nearly 2 billion devices in the U.S. and Canada.

The program would let Sprint, for instance, know that Bob is already a customer when he visits from a new device. Bob wouldnt get a promotion to switch from another carrier, but might get instead a phone upgrade offer. Or if Mary has declared herself a Giants fan on the NFLs app, she might see ads with Giants banners when visiting NFL.com from a laptop for the first time.

All this might feel creepy, but such cross-device tracking is already commonly done by matching attributes such as devices that connect from the same Internet location, or IP address. Consumers typically have little control over it.

Adobe says it will give consumers a chance to opt out of such tracking. And its breaking industry practices in a few ways. Adobe says it will honor opt-out requests for all participating companies and for all devices at once. Its more typical for such setups to require people do so one by one. All companies in the initiative are listed on Adobes website, a break from some companies practice of referring only to unspecified partners.

Were doing everything we can not letting brands hide themselves, Ahuja said.

But in taking an opt-out approach, which is common in the industry, Adobe assumes that users consent. And it places the burden on consumers to learn about this initiative and to figure out how they can opt out of it.
Two days after Donald Trump won the 2016 election, executives at Google consoled their employees in an all-staff meeting broadcast around the world.

There is a lot of fear within Google, said CEO Sundar Pichai, according to a video of the meeting viewed by the New York Times. When asked by an employee if there was any silver lining to Trumps election, co-founder Sergey Brin said, Boy, thats a really tough one right now. Ruth Porat, the finance chief, said Trumps victory felt like a ton of bricks dropped on my chest. Then she instructed members of the audience to hug the person next to them.

Sixteen months later, Googles parent company, Alphabet, has most likely saved billions of dollars in taxes on its overseas cash under a new tax law signed by Trump. Alphabet also stands to benefit from the Trump administrations looser regulations for self-driving cars and delivery drones, as well as from proposed changes to the trade pact with Mexico and Canada that would limit Googles liability for user content on its sites.

Once one of Trumps most vocal opponents, Silicon Valleys technology industry has increasingly found common ground with the White House. When Trump was elected, tech executives were largely up in arms over a leader who espoused policies on immigration and other issues that were antithetical to their companies values. Now many of the industrys executives are growing more comfortable with the president and how his economic agenda furthers their business interests, even as many of their employees continue to disagree with Trump on social issues.

The relationship remains bumpy. Trump lashed out at Amazon on Twitter on Thursday, accusing the e-commerce giant of evading taxes. (Amazon said it had saved $789 million under the tax law Trump signed.) The president is also expected to sign legislation, passed by the Senate last week, that would strengthen policing of sex trafficking online  a bill that Internet companies once opposed because they worried it would make them liable for content posted by their users.

Yet quietly, the tech industry has warmed to the White House, especially as companies including Alphabet, Apple and Intel have benefited from the Trump administrations policies.

Those include lowering corporate taxes, encouraging development of wireless technology like 5G and, so far, ignoring calls to break up the tech giants. Trumps tougher stance on China may also help ward off industry rivals, with the president squashing a hostile bid to acquire chipmaker Qualcomm this month. And Trump let die an Obama-era rule that required many tech startups to give some workers more overtime pay.

Trump has been great for business and really, really good for tech, said Gary Shapiro, who leads the Consumer Technology Association, the largest U.S. tech trade group, with more than 2,200 members, including Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook.

Shapiro said that he had voted for Hillary Clinton, Trumps opponent, in 2016, but that he and many tech executives had come around on Trump. While they disagree with him on immigration and the environment, they have found areas where their interests align, like deregulation and investment in Internet infrastructure.

This isnt Hitler or Mussolini here, Shapiro said. And even though the presidents new tariffs on steel and aluminum could hurt U.S. businesses and consumers, disagreement in one area does not mean we cannot work together in others, Shapiro said. Everyone who is married knows that.

Trump himself has taken to naming tech companies he says are on his side.

After Apple took advantage of the new tax law in January to bring back most of the $252 billion cash hoard it had parked overseas, the company said it would make a $350 billion contribution to the U.S. economy over the next five years. That prompted Trump to suggest he had made good on a campaign pledge to get Apple to bring jobs back to the United States.

You know, for $350 million, you could build a beautiful plant. But for $350 billion, theyre going to build a lot of plants, the president told members of Congress last month. Trump said he had called Tim Cook, Apples chief executive, to personally thank him.

In fact, Apple has no plans to build a plant in the United States. The company is uneasy with Trumps invoking it to signify how his policies are working, according to a person close to Apple who was not authorized to speak publicly. Apple has not, however, publicly corrected the president.

Trump has also stayed quiet on the controversy engulfing Facebook over user privacy, while other politicians have called for more regulations after revelations that British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica improperly harvested the information of 50 million Facebook users. Cambridge Analytica used that data to aid Trumps campaign.

Michael Kratsios, the White Houses deputy chief technology officer, said in an interview that while Trump and Silicon Valley had their differences, in places where we do see eye to eye, I think were achieving extraordinary success.

Dean Garfield, head of the Information Technology Industry Council, a 102-year-old advocacy group that represents the biggest tech firms, said his members walked a tightrope, supporting and opposing the president on different issues. Lately, he said, we have reached balance in the tightrope.

The equilibrium marks a turnabout from what had been a testy relationship between Trump and the tech sector. On the campaign trail in 2016, Trump was so critical of tech companies that Jeff Bezos, Amazons chief executive, once joked he might send Trump to space in a rocket.

Some tech executives have since disagreed with Trump on social issues. Cook emailed staff in June to say he had unsuccessfully lobbied the president to remain in the Paris climate accords. In November, Microsoft sued the administration to protect a law that blocks deportation of young immigrants known as Dreamers. More than 100 companies, including Google, Facebook and Uber, filed a brief supporting Californias lawsuit on that issue.

Even so, tech executives worked to build a relationship with the president, with some meeting him at Trump Tower before his inauguration and again at the White House in June. While in Washington for the second meeting, Cook and Satya Nadella, Microsofts chief executive, also dined with Jared Kushner, the presidents senior adviser and son-in-law, and Ivanka Trump at the couples Washington home, according to a person briefed on the meeting who wasnt authorized to speak publicly about it. This month, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin visited Apples headquarters.

Silicon Valley has found plenty to like about the Trump presidency. In September, tech giants, including Facebook and Microsoft, teamed up with the administration to pledge $500 million to computer science education. Amazon, Microsoft and Google are also eyeing the administration as a potential customer as Trump pushes to modernize the governments digital infrastructure.

But the favorite thing about Trump is almost certainly his new tax code. Many tech companies lobbied for corporate tax reform for years before Trump signed the new tax bill.

Tech giants immediately reaped the benefits. Under the new rules, Apple saved $43.7 billion in taxes, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a nonpartisan tax research group. Apple then announced the $350 billion contribution to the American economy over five years.

Most of the tally was previously planned spending with U.S. suppliers and a $38 billion tax payment on its overseas cash. But Apple also said it planned to hire 20,000 new workers, invest in new data centers and another domestic campus, and increase a fund for innovative U.S. manufacturers to $5 billion from $1 billion. It also gave employees $2,500 bonuses.

The president was quick to tweet the news. He wrote: I promised that my policies would allow companies like Apple to bring massive amounts of money back to the United States. Great to see Apple follow through as a result of TAX CUTS. Huge win for American workers and the USA!

The shifting relationship appears to have upset some tech employees. A Facebook page called Angry Googler, with nearly 1,000 followers, has been dedicated to criticizing Google for any sign it was cooperating with the president.

Not happy about Google pulling a 180 and jumping into bed with Trump? Same here, said the About section of the page, which suggests it is run by a Google employee. This month, the page posted an article about Google helping the Defense Department analyze drone footage. Weve gone from organizing the worlds information to ... optimizing weapons of war, the page said.

Messages to the account were not returned. Google declined to comment.

Some firms remain discomfited about appearing as the presidents allies. Last month, Rob Goldman, Facebooks vice president of advertising, played down Russias impact on the 2016 election after the Justice Department charged 13 Russians with trying to subvert its outcome, including by using Facebook. Trump retweeted Goldman approvingly.

Facebook was uncomfortable with that association with the president, said a person close to the company who was not authorized to speak publicly.

Two days later, Facebooks policy chief, Joel Kaplan, distanced the company from Goldmans comments.

The special counsel has issued its indictments, and nothing we found contradicts their conclusions, he said in a statement. Any suggestion otherwise is wrong.
Walmart may be looking to dive deeper into the rapidly evolving health care market by acquiring insurer Humana, according to the Wall Street Journal. The newspaper said the retail giant is in early talks with Humana, a major provider of Medicare Advantage coverage for people age 65 and older. Walmart would not comment on what it called rumors and speculation. Humana did not immediately return calls from the Associated Press.

Suit may cost them a mint

An Illinois woman is claiming fraud over Junior Mints, saying there are too few of the chocolate-peppermint candies in their boxes. Paige Stemm is hoping for class-action status in her suit against Tootsie Roll Industries, which makes the candies. Consumers believe theyre getting more candy when they purchase a box of Junior Mints than theyre actually getting, said Christopher Moon, her attorney. Tootsie Roll executives were not available for comment.

Its no highway robbery,

court tells Lindsay Lohan

Actress Lindsay Lohans attempt to have the makers of Grand Theft Auto held liable for violating her privacy fizzled in New Yorks top court. The state Court of Appeals in Albany rejected Lohans request to reinstate her lawsuit against Take-Two Interactive Software, in which she claimed the video games creators used her likeness without permission. Images of a character named Lacey Jonas in Grand Theft Auto V arent recognizable as the Mean Girls actress, the court ruled.
A jury in a Contra Costa County coroners inquest found that a man holding a machete committed suicide when he was shot as he advanced on five Vallejo police officers, authorities said Friday.

The jurys 8-4 verdict determined that 45-year-old Jeffrey Barboa of Benicia was responsible for taking his own life on Aug. 2, 2017, when he led police on a high-speed chase and then forced officers to shoot him, according to the Contra Costa County Sheriffs Office.
Do you feel like you see French bulldogs literally everywhere in San Francisco? Frenchies at cafes? Frenchies by the Bay? Frenchies wearing hats? Frenchies on the beach? Frenchies on hikes? Frenchies in hoodies?

It's not just you. They're now officially the city's most popular dog breed, according to the American Kennel Club.

Click through the gallery above to see San Francisco's most popular dog breeds, according to the American Kennel Club

The AKC also broke their data down by neighborhood, and the French bulldog is king in four distinct areas in SF: SoMA, the Castro, Potrero Hill, and the Mission (thanks, gentrification!).

In Pacific Heights and NoPA, golden retrievers are the breed of choice, according to the AKC. No word on the most popular dog breed in the Marina, but let's be real: It's definitely Frenchies.

Last year, the Board of Supervisors mandated that pet stores in San Francisco only sell rescue dogs, but some people still choose to buy pets directly from breeders.

ALSO: San Francisco's most popular dog names

On the national level, French bulldogs jumped up to fourth place this year, behind Labrador retrievers, German shepherds and golden retrievers.

"The easygoing, playful, adaptable Frenchie not only jumped two spots to number four, it knocked the Beagle out of the top five for the first time since 1998," the AKC wrote in a press release. Watch out, beagles!

So, why are Frenchies so damn popular? Many listicles have taken a gander at this question over the years, although many of their explanations seem to describe things that are nice about dogs in general, with suggestions like "Touching Their Soft Coat is Like Therapy" and "They Will Always Bring the Laughs."

They're also quiet and don't require much exercise, making them well-suited to city living. Also, they are very popular on Instagram, and that's all that matters now. Woof!

Check out the slideshow above to see the top five local and national breeds in terms of popularity.

Filipa Ioannou is an SFGATE staff writer. Email her at fioannou@sfchronicle.com and follow her on Twitter
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In just a few weeks, almost every corner of San Francisco will have death at its heel. The topic both universally experienced  and stigmatized  will be up for discussion in a variety of forms around the city.

Reimagine is putting on the Bay Area's first so-called "death event series." More than 100 events, each hosted by an individual organizer, will be offered to the public beginning on April 16 up until April 22. The nonprofit expects 7,000 people who are still alive to attend.

The events will cover all the ways death alters our lives  from the pragmatic (working with physicians to get Advanced Directives straightened out) to the artistic (drinking from ceramic cups made using the ashes of 200 anonymous people) to the literary (the science around the use of psychedelics and death with Dr. Richard Miller).

There will be highly-mortal film screenings (including a talk with Lee Unkrich, director of "Coco"), comedy shows (Mortified: Let's Talk about Death, Baby), and psychodrama taken to the next level (Dead for a Day: Attend your own funeral to "altar" your life). Actress Francis McDormand will also be at the Castro Theater on April 19. for a "Theatrical Exploration of Death, Dying and Suffering."

Aside from the arts, the events will draw on the subjects of healthcare, design, and spirituality. Brad Wolfe, Executive Director and Founder of Reimagine, wanted the event series programming to be valuable for  and reflective of  as many people as possible.

The death-positive movement  which is broad enough to contain anything from Caitlin Doughty's Ask a Mortician YouTube series to amateur banjo sessions about the beautiful uncertainty of our mortality  has valiantly taken on the challenge of eliminating a major stigma. But in some cases, it has also been critiqued for being white-centered, and glamorizing a topic that has never, and will never, for many communities of color, feel whimsical.

That concern is exactly what Reimagine's founders kept in mind, in the pursuit of designing an event series that would be inclusive of people outside death talk's main demographic: middle-class white people who have the luxury of mortal musings. One such event will be hosted by Dr. Jessica Zitter, a Critical and Palliative Care Specialist at Oakland's Highland Hospital in conversation with Pastor Corey Kennard at Glide Memorial Church.

The talk will explore the wealth of research behind racial inequities in healthcare at the end of life, and discuss the divide between dying African-American patients and a healthcare system that falls short of providing the right kind of support.

Zitter wrote an insider's perspective on the problems with the way the dying are treated in our current medical culture in her 2016 book, "Extreme Measures: Finding a Better Path to the End of Life." The book has been lauded by the likes of BJ Miller, a UCSF doctor and triple amputee and Lucy Kalanithi, a Stanford doctor and the widow of a Stanford doctor whose memoir on dying from cancer was released posthumously.

Her conversation with Kennard will also touch on her anecdotal experience with an aspect of healthcare that's untaught in the medical world: finding a common language with patients who are dying that's beyond the withdrawn and overly sterile protocol.

In her practice, she said, she underestimated the role that things like prayer, miracles, and hope mean to her African-American patients, who, "come into a hospital in their darkest hours and are met with language and concepts that feel like in a way that they're robbing of their humanity, robbing of their opportunities for being whole."

It was only through the years she'd been working with Betty Clark, an African-American chaplain, that she began to notice the vital components of healthcare support for her patients of color that she'd overlooked.

"There are many, many areas I had wished to delegate to others that I felt were not part of my job that are absolutely part of my job." Zitter said."But I really have to say that it's really powerful to [pray with my patients]. It's not necessarily about God, but it's about connecting to them, and supporting them."

The second in her series of discussion with Kennard will take place at the Oakland Museum of California on April 17., and cover the intersections of faith and medicine at the end of life.

A full event schedule is available on Reimagine's website. Some highlights are in the slideshow above.

Read Annie Vainshtein's latest stories here. Send her news tips at avainshtein@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @annievain
1 Officer killed: A man wanted in the fatal shooting an off-duty police officer in a small Kentucky town was found and killed Friday by law enforcement officials in Tennessee. James Decoursey, 35, of Hopkinsville, Ky., was fatally shot after a brief encounter with law enforcement in Clarksville, Tenn., according to Kentucky State Police. The department said Decoursey fatally shot Hopkinsville officer Phillip Meacham, 38, on Thursday, then fled the area on foot. According to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, officers confronted Decoursey and he appears to have ignored repeated commands and the situation escalated, resulting in officers shooting him. No officers were injured.

2 Cop fired: A Louisiana police chief has fired the white officer who fatally shot a black man during a struggle outside a convenience store nearly two years ago, a killing that sparked widespread protests. Baton Rouge Police Chief Murphy Paul announced officer Blane Salamonis firing Friday, less than a week after Louisianas attorney general ruled out criminal charges in Alton Sterlings July 2016 shooting death. Attorney General Jeff Landry announced Tuesday that his office isnt charging Salamoni. Sterlings death inflamed racial tensions and led to protests where nearly 200 people were arrested.
Doctors and other health professionals in California can be disciplined or lose their licenses for criminal conduct such as possession of illegal drugs even if they complete a pretrial treatment program and have the case erased from their record, under a ruling that has now become final.

The state Supreme Court unanimously refused Wednesday to take up a physicians appeal of a ruling that said a licensing agency, such as the California Medical Board, can rely on arrest records as evidence that a license-holder committed professional misconduct, even if the underlying criminal case no longer exists.

That ruling, by a San Francisco appellate panel, is now a binding precedent for all trial courts in California. Besides doctors, it applies to other licensed medical professionals such as nurses and pharmacists.

The case involved a Southern California physician, Brandon Erdle, who was arrested in September 2013 on suspicion of possessing cocaine. His lawyer, Mitchell Green, said Erdle was actually arrested for an unrelated minor crime and was carrying bags with small amounts of the drug that he was about to drop into a medical disposal unit.

The case never went to trial, and the drug charge was dismissed in January 2016 after Erdle went through a treatment program known as pretrial diversion. In the meantime the Medical Board, citing his arrest report, accused Erdle of unprofessional conduct, then issued him a public reprimand in 2016.

He now practices medicine very successfully in another state, Green said.

In challenging the disciplinary action, Erdle relied on a state law that says a record of an arrest that leads a defendant to successful completion of a pretrial diversion program cannot be used to deny that defendant a license or employment.

But the First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco said that state law was superseded by another, more specific law that allows professional licensing agencies in California to use arrest records as a basis for discipline, even if the defendant later goes through pretrial diversion.

Legislators passed the second law in 1987 in response to an appellate ruling two years earlier that had barred professional discipline in such cases, Justice Timothy Reardon said in the 3-0 ruling, issued Jan. 9.

Reading the law that way makes sense given the public safety concerns that are specific to the particular (group) of licensees it covers, Reardon said.

Green, Erdles lawyer, said Thursday the ruling went against the goals of pretrial diversion.

California has a very strong policy in giving people who get caught up in minor drug offenses a second-chance opportunity to be treated like people who made a mistake and not criminals, he said.

The case is Medical Board of California vs. Superior Court, (Erdle), S247046.
The "happiest dog in Scotland" has finally found a home.

Buster, a Staffordshire bull terrier, earned the title when he had to have his tail amputated because he wagged it too hard and too often, according to the Scottish SPCA.

After two years in the organization's care near Edinburgh, the happy pup has been adopted.

Buster's new caregiver, Michelle Lennox, says he is adjusting well to his new environment and that he was "well-behaved from the start."

"He can be a bit wary of some dogs, but he has made some friends in the neighborhood  he's a bit of a ladies man!"

Lennox added that Buster loves showing off his tricks and looks forward to visits from the mail delivery woman.

Mike Flynn, chief superintendent of the shelter Buster was housed in, explained in a press release that Buster's personality isn't unusual for his breed.

"Staffies are one of our most popular dogs and it's clear to see why, they are friendly, loyal and affectionate dogs, they are real people dogs and thrive on human companionship."

Those who cared for him, like Diane Aitchison, are happy to see Buster find a new family. "After two years with us here at the centre, it's great that he has finally found his forever home where he has unlimited bum scratching and a big sofa to snuggle up on."

His new owner agrees. "People say he's lucky we found him but I think we're the lucky ones," said Lennox.

Read Alix Martichoux's latest stories and send her news tips at amartichoux@sfchronicle.com.
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP)  One of the founders of the Taliban and the chief enforcer of its harsh interpretation of Islamic law when they last ruled Afghanistan said the hard-line movement will once again carry out executions and amputations of hands, though perhaps not in public.
The Daily News publishes death notices and obituaries on a daily basis for Norfolkans, area residents and former residents.

Death notices, which include information about when and where a person died, funeral services, burial and visitation for the deceased and memorial information, are published free of charge.

If families of the deceased desire to have an obituary printed, there is a fee charged for doing so. Because of that, families of the deceased can decide what information they want included in the obituary, as well as if they desire to have a photograph published along with it. The Daily News reserves the right to edit.

Norfolk and area funeral homes have detailed information about placing an obituary in the Daily News. If individuals want to submit obituary information themselves, it can be emailed to funerals@norfolkdailynews.com or faxed to (402) 644-2080.

People needing additional information about death notices and obituaries can call the Daily News at 371-1020 or (877) 371-1020 and ask for the newsroom.
The news that "March for Our Lives" organizer David Hogg, a Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student, was rejected by four UC schools became a national story over the past couple of days. It grew into an even bigger story after TV pundit Laura Ingraham criticized Hogg for "whining" about his college rejections.

But, while Ingraham's mocking of a school shooting survivor was hard to ignore, what stood out for many people was that Hogg was denied admission to UCLA, UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara and UC Irvine even though he had a 4.2 GPA.

Has it really become that competitive to get into UC? Seeing a rejection like Hogg's is why many folks who went to college 20 or 30 years ago are quite confident they could never get into the UC system now. It's also why so many current high schoolers are extremely anxious about their chances of making the UC cut.

Some say it has always been hard to get into the UC system, but a look at the applicant numbers over the past 20 years shows how much more competitive it has become. In 1997, 56,851 students applied to be freshmen in the UC system and 44,740 (78.6 percent) were accepted. In 2017, 171,858 applied and 104,822 (61 percent) were accepted.

But at the schools David Hogg applied to, the percentage accepted has gotten far more daunting in the past 20 years. In 1997, UC Berkeley had 27,272 applicants and 8,565 (31.4 percent) got in. At UCLA, 29,299 applied and 10,648 (36.3 percent) were admitted.

By contrast, in 2017 UC Berkeley had 85,054 applicants and only 14,549 (17.1 percent) were accepted. And UCLA had 102,226 applicants and 16,456 (16 percent) were accepted. Hogg also applied to UC San Diego and UC Irvine, which have also seen significant changes in acceptance rates over the past 20 years.

At UC Berkeley, the "snapshot" of admitted 2017 applicants (the middle 25 to 75 percent) included a 4.15-4.30 GPA as well as low-end SAT scores of a combined 1280. While David Hogg's grades appear to make the cut, his SATs were actually a little below this bar at 1270.

There are many factors for such a huge jump in the UC applicant numbers over the past 20 years. The common app makes it easy for students to apply to several UCs at the same time. But there are also just many more students applying.

A very noticeable jump is the 13-fold increase in international students' applications, and their rate of acceptance has soared as well. In 1997, 2,019 international students applied to be freshmen at UC schools and 798 (39.5 percent) were accepted. In 2017, 27,193 applied and 18,067 (66.4 percent) were accepted.

In the above gallery, see the number of applicants and acceptances for all the UC campuses as they have changed in the past 20 years. While some schools have become extremely competitive, others, like UC Merced, UC Riverside and UC Santa Cruz, still accepted over 50 percent of applicants in 2017.
SAN FRANCISCO (BCN)

A vehicle struck a 3-year-old boy this afternoon as he was crossing the street in San Francisco's Potrero Hill neighborhood.

The collision occurred around 4:05 p.m. in the 1800 block of 25th Street, police said.

A blue Honda traveling east allegedly struck the boy in the roadway. He was taken to a hospital with injuries not considered life-threatening.

The driver remained at the scene and is cooperating with investigators. Drugs and alcohol are not considered to be factors in the collision at this time.

###
OAKLAND (BCN)

A BART police officer who fatally shot 28-year-old Sahleem Tindle outside the West Oakland BART station in January is still eligible for promotion despite the controversy over his actions, transit agency officials confirmed today.

Officer Joseph Mateu put his name in to be considered for a promotion to field training officer in August 2017, according to BART spokeswoman Alicia Trost.

Then around 4:30 p.m. Jan. 3, Mateu shot Tindle three times in the back in the 1400 block of Seventh Street - just outside his department's jurisdiction - while responding to the sound of gunfire near the station.

Police initially said that Tindle was in possession of a handgun, but the killing led to shock and outrage after Mateu's body-worn camera footage, which was leaked to the public, called that claim into question,.

The shooting remains under investigation by the Oakland Police Department and the Alameda County District Attorney, however, and BART Police Chief Carlos Rojas has asked the community to withhold judgment until those investigations have been completed and all the facts are known.

At recent meetings of BART's board of directors as well as at the Citizen's Police Review Board - a civilian oversight body, dozens of Tindle's friends and family, accompanied by activists from the Anti Police-Terror Project, have been calling for Mateu to be fired.

Despite their calls for action, Rojas sent out a memo this week identifying Mateu as one of the officers eligible to attend a training course required to become a field training officer, Trost said.

"The memo did not say anything about him being selected to be a field training officer," Trost said.

Before that can happen, he would also have to complete the training course, pass a test and get selected for promotion.

That idea has Tindle's family and others following the case angry.

John Burris, the attorney representing Tindle's family, called it surprising that Mateu would be considered for promotion to field training officer given that the investigation into his actions on Jan. 3 has not yet concluded.

"It's a stunning movement," Burris said. "This raises questions about whether you can even trust the department."

Cat Brooks, an organizer with the Anti Police-Terror Project, said she's not surprised as it fits into a broader pattern of promoting officers who've engaged in wrongdoing - as has happened with some of the Oakland Police Department officers allegedly connected to the sexual exploitation of a teenage sex crime victim who went by the name "Celeste Guap."

"The community has said he needs to be fired, so they're going in the wrong direction," Brooks said. "All they're going to do is ignite the ire of the community. It just goes to show you that law enforcement places no value on black bodies."

###
SAN FRANCISCO (BCN)

A former San Francisco sheriff's deputy has been charged in federal court with criminal contempt for allegedly signing a false declaration to support a bail bid by an associate of tong leader Raymond "Shrimp Boy" Chow.

The charge against Michael Kim, filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco by federal prosecutors Tuesday, concerns a bulletproof vest lent by Kim to racketeering defendant Andy Li in early 2014.

Chow, the leader of the Chee Kung Tong in Chinatown, and Li were among 29 people indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of racketeering conspiracy and organized crime activities in 2014.

Chow was convicted of multiple crimes including racketeering conspiracy and the murder of his predecessor and was sentenced in 2016 to life in prison. Li, described by prosecutors as a close associate and enforcer for Chow until the two had a falling-out in 2013, reached a plea deal and testified against Chow in his 2015 trial in U.S. District Court.

Kim's ballistic vest was found in Li's wife's car in a search of the couple's home on March 26, 2014, the same day that most of the defendants were arrested and an initial criminal complaint was unsealed.

The former deputy's declaration about how the vest got into Mimi Li's car was filed in court on August 6, 2014, in support of Andy Li's request to a magistrate to reconsider granting him bail. The request was eventually denied.

The charge filed against Kim says that declaration "contained material false statements and representations."

Li is identified in the charge against Kim only as "Defendant X," but he is specifically named in Kim's declaration and in prosecution and defense filings concerning Li's bail request. Both sides described Kim as a friend of Andy Li.

Kim said in the declaration that his wife went to Mimi Li's hair salon for an appointment on Feb. 2, 2014, and he stopped by the salon to drop off the vest because he did not want to leave it in his car while he ran errands.

He said he asked his wife to bring the vest home, but she forgot, and Mimi Li then put it in her own car, intending to return it to him.

Because of problems of "miscommunication and timing," the vest was not returned by March 26, the declaration said. Kim said he and Mimi Li "both got busy and the plans fell through."

In opposition to bail for Li, prosecutors said in 2014 that Kim's explanation "strains credulity."

U.S. Attorney's Office spokesman Abraham Simmons said a date for Kim's initial court appearance has not yet been set.

The criminal contempt was charged as a misdemeanor and the maximum penalty, if Kim is convicted, is one year in jail.

The Chow indictment also included separate political corruptions charges against former state Senator Leland Yee, D-San Francisco/San Mateo. Yee pleaded guilty to a racketeering conspiracy to accept bribes for promises of political favors, and was sentenced to five years in prison.

436-7264
A man found walking naked and yelling in the street died in police custody Wednesday in Sonoma following a struggle with deputies who were trying to restrain him.

The Sonoma County Sheriff's Office responded Wednesday at 9:50 p.m. to reports of someone smashing streetlights at the Sonoma Oaks Mobile Home Park on Ramon Street when they located Roderic Bernard Cameron, 44, walking down the street naked.

Cameron lived with his mother at the mobile home park.

Investigators with the Santa Rosa Police Department, who were brought in to lead an independent investigation of the incident, said Cameron appeared to be in an altered state, was screaming irrational statements, was striking himself in the face and chest with his hands and refused to comply with deputies' instructions.

Deputies used a Taser and restraints to detain Cameron, but he continued to kick and thrash uncontrollably, investigators said.

Cameron then began exhibiting signs of medical distress, and deputies rendered medical aid to him until paramedics arrived.

He was transported to the hospital, where he later died.

Following the incident, the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office invoked a Fatal Incident Protocol and requested the Santa Rosa Police Department lead an independent investigation into the events that led up to Cameron's death, investigators said.

There were several broken street lamps and a trail of blood leading up to the area where the incident occurred, police said.

Police have cleared the scene of a suspicious package in San Francisco's Richmond District this morning, after the report was found to have no merit, police said.

Police initially responded around 8:50 a.m. for a report of a suspicious package near Geary Boulevard and 23rd Avenue, according to police.

The report prompted the response of a bomb squad.

Police had asked pedestrians and drivers to avoid the area but the advisory has since been lifted.

Firefighters in San Mateo extinguished a three-alarm structure fire this morning that broke out at an apartment building Thursday night.

Firefighters responded at 10 p.m. to the 800 block of North Delaware Street to a report of a fire that broke out in a four-story, 36-unit apartment complex.

Firefighters were able to contain the blaze to the unit, and the fire was under control within about 45 minutes. There were no injuries reported.

Though the fire was contained to one unit, there is smoke and heat damage throughout the building. Firefighters said that 40 residents were displaced by the incident.

The cause of the fire has been determined to be accidental in nature.

An immigrant rights group has spoken out against the Contra Costa County Sheriff's Office's practice of publishing release dates and personal information of jail inmates on its website.

"We unequivocally condemn Sheriff Livingston's harmful practice of making public personal information of people in the jail's custody," the Contra Costa Immigrant Rights Alliance said in a statement Thursday. "Given the timing, this is simply a cruel attempt to undermine the California Values Act, or SB 54."

SB 54 establishes clear divisions between law enforcement and federal immigration authorities with the goal of ensuring local officers do not become part of deportation efforts under the current presidential administration.

Publishing release dates, at least theoretically, makes it possible for immigration officers to be on hand when individuals are released and detain them.

"This is the fear the community has," said Tony Bravo, a spokesman for the CCIRA.

It is also possible to find an inmate's race, date of birth, height and weight and other information on the site, which Bravo said could help immigration officers identify individuals to be detained.

In its statement, the CCIRA said, "Sheriff Livingston's skirting of SB 54 follows a long pattern of supporting the Trump administration's aggressive anti-immigrant agenda."

The organization added, "Here in Contra Costa, we know that immigrants are a vital part of our communities and families. We believe all people should be treated fairly, no matter what they look like or where they were born."

Multiple attempts to reach Contra Costa County sheriff's spokesman Jimmy Lee were unsuccessful.

Sheriff's deputies are looking for two walkaways that fled from a juvenile center in the La Honda area of unincorporated San Mateo County Thursday.

A 17-year-old and an 18-year-old fled the Log Cabin Correctional Facility at 500 Log Cabin Ranch Road in La Honda.

The sheriff's office was notified about the incident Thursday at 9:45 p.m.

Deputies searched the area for the two subjects, but they were not located.

The first subject is described as an 18-year-old Hispanic male, 5 feet 1 inch tall and weighing 130 pounds. The second subject is described as a 17-year-old Hispanic male, 5 feet tall and weighing 150 pounds.

Deputies are asking the public to call (650) 363-4911 or 911 if the subjects are spotted.

An immigration judge Thursday issued an order allowing a Mexican immigrant and San Jose resident facing deportation to remain in the United States, supporters said.

Immigration Judge Joseph Park issued a withholding of removal order for Fernando Carrillo Thursday afternoon, according to Sarah Lee, an organizer with the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity.

It is uncertain as to when Carrillo might be released. The government could file an appeal, which would prolong his release date, according to Lee. He is being held at the West County Detention Facility in Richmond, where he has been since October.

"This decision has great implications for Fernando," Lee said. "He does not have to live in fear in the United States any more."

A "withholding of removal" order is a special type of order issued by an immigration judge to a person who demonstrates a more than 50 percent change that they will be persecuted in their home country because of such things as race or religion.

Carrillo was on his way to drop his youngest daughter off at daycare one morning when U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement agents followed him from his home to the daycare and arrested him, his wife Lourdes Barraza has said.

Barraza said in an article which appeared on Medium a month after his detainment that Carrillo had noticed a couple of cars following him and pulled into a shopping center. He was immediately surrounded by ICE officers and was taken to San Francisco, and later that night, to Richmond.

Carrillo's wife and daughters were devastated because he had been deported once before in 2012. That time he was picked up on a Friday and transferred to Tijuana by Sunday, Barraza said.

Since Carrillo's arrest, an online petition has garnered nearly 4,000 signatures and more than 500 people have called to ask for his release, according to a representative from the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity.

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San Francisco police screened body camera footage Thursday evening of a shootout that killed a suspect and injured five other people, including an officer, in an Ingleside barbershop last week.

The body-worn camera footage was shown during a tense town hall meeting held at Balboa High School, where there was conflict even between members of the family of the man killed, identified as Jehad Eid, 21.

Police did not disclose Thursday who shot the four other people who were injured and it is unclear from the chaotic and graphic body camera video. One of the people shot suffered life-threatening injuries, but police said that all victims had been released from the hospital by Thursday evening.

Police Capt. Valerie Matthews, who heads the major crimes division of the department, said the shooting happened after police were called to the 200 block of Amazon Avenue at 4:28 p.m. on March 21. Family members had reported that Eid was threatening them, flashed a gun, and was trying to break into their garage. When police arrived, the family said he had gone to Amazon Barbershop nearby at 949 Geneva Ave., according to Matthews.

When police arrived there, Eid stood up and shot at the officers. Two officers returned fire. Eid shot nine rounds from a 40-caliber handgun. The two officers fired 26, hitting Eid 18 times, according to Matthews.

The videos were also released online. They include body-worn camera video from one of two officers who opened fire inside the barbershop as well as body-worn camera video from an officer standing outside and dash-cam video from a patrol vehicle outside.

In the first video, the officer enters the barbershop along with a plainclothes officer, where two people are seated on a long couch. Both officers then draw their guns and begin shooting at the back corner. The officers drop to the ground and move behind a barber chair.

The officer reloads his gun. There is no audio in the video until the shooting is over. When the audio turns on, one person can be heard yelling, "I got kids here! I got kids here!" The suspect in the corner is crumpled to the floor. The uniformed officer, who was shot in the leg, eventually crawls out of the shop onto the sidewalk.

The other officer was not wearing a body camera because she was in plain clothes, Matthews said.

The second video shows officers outside when the shooting happens. They are handcuffing an unidentified man and duck behind a car when they hear gunshots. The third video shows the same scene from a different angle.

One of the shop's barbers who spoke at the meeting identified himself as Chad and said he was the person being handcuffed in the video. He criticized the police response and said he was arrested because he was mistaken for the suspect.

Once the shooting broke out, he said police pushed him into the line of fire while they ducked for cover. Video shows him trying to kneel behind a car while still cuffed as officers take cover with their guns drawn.

"It should've been treated like a hostage situation," he said. "The guy was in there calm."

He said he knew Eid, and called him a "really good kid."

He "never meant nobody no danger," Chad said.

At least two other people who said they were wounded in the shooting were at the meeting, and Chad said that they were unable to work now because of their injuries. One said that he didn't know how he was shot, whether it was by Eid or by the police. Chad said that an officer's bullet nearly hit the head of a man in the shop.

Eid's family was split on what to think of the shootout. A representative of the family who did not identify himself read a statement apologizing to the police and saying that they regretted that the shooting may give ammunition to people seeking greater gun control.

The family said they are "in deep mourning for our beloved Jehad and regret there was nothing we could do to prevent this incident."

But another man who identified himself as Eid's uncle yelled back after the statement, saying that the person did not speak for the whole family. He later spoke himself, saying that he had no ill will toward the police but he was not satisfied with the information given and wanted more answers.

"He was a very sweet kid," the uncle said. "He did not have to die."

A BART police officer who fatally shot 28-year-old Sahleem Tindle outside the West Oakland BART station in January is still eligible for promotion despite the controversy over his actions, transit agency officials confirmed Thursday.

Officer Joseph Mateu put his name in to be considered for a promotion to field training officer in August 2017, according to BART spokeswoman Alicia Trost.

Then around 4:30 p.m. Jan. 3, Mateu shot Tindle three times in the back in the 1400 block of Seventh Street - just outside his department's jurisdiction - while responding to the sound of gunfire near the station.

Police initially said that Tindle was in possession of a handgun, but the killing led to shock and outrage after Mateu's body-worn camera footage, which was leaked to the public, called that claim into question.

The shooting remains under investigation by the Oakland Police Department and the Alameda County District Attorney, however, and BART Police Chief Carlos Rojas has asked the community to withhold judgment until those investigations have been completed and all the facts are known.

At recent meetings of BART's board of directors as well as at the Citizen's Police Review Board - a civilian oversight body, dozens of Tindle's friends and family, accompanied by activists from the Anti Police-Terror Project, have been calling for Mateu to be fired.

Despite their calls for action, Rojas sent out a memo this week identifying Mateu as one of the officers eligible to attend a training course required to become a field training officer, Trost said.

"The memo did not say anything about him being selected to be a field training officer," Trost said.

Before that can happen, he would also have to complete the training course, pass a test and get selected for promotion.

That idea has Tindle's family and others following the case angry.

John Burris, the attorney representing Tindle's family, called it surprising that Mateu would be considered for promotion to field training officer given that the investigation into his actions on Jan. 3 has not yet concluded.

"It's a stunning movement," Burris said. "This raises questions about whether you can even trust the department."

Cat Brooks, an organizer with the Anti Police-Terror Project, said she's not surprised as it fits into a broader pattern of promoting officers who've engaged in wrongdoing - as has happened with some of the Oakland Police Department officers allegedly connected to the sexual exploitation of a teenage sex crime victim who went by the name "Celeste Guap."

"The community has said he needs to be fired, so they're going in the wrong direction," Brooks said. "All they're going to do is ignite the ire of the community. It just goes to show you that law enforcement places no value on black bodies."

A former San Francisco sheriff's deputy has been charged in federal court with criminal contempt for allegedly signing a false declaration to support a bail bid by an associate of tong leader Raymond "Shrimp Boy" Chow.

The charge against Michael Kim, filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco by federal prosecutors Tuesday, concerns a bulletproof vest lent by Kim to racketeering defendant Andy Li in early 2014.

Chow, the leader of the Chee Kung Tong in Chinatown, and Li were among 29 people indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of racketeering conspiracy and organized crime activities in 2014.

Chow was convicted of multiple crimes including racketeering conspiracy and the murder of his predecessor and was sentenced in 2016 to life in prison. Li, described by prosecutors as a close associate and enforcer for Chow until the two had a falling-out in 2013, reached a plea deal and testified against Chow in his 2015 trial in U.S. District Court.

Kim's ballistic vest was found in Li's wife's car in a search of the couple's home on March 26, 2014, the same day that most of the defendants were arrested and an initial criminal complaint was unsealed.

The former deputy's declaration about how the vest got into Mimi Li's car was filed in court on August 6, 2014, in support of Andy Li's request to a magistrate to reconsider granting him bail. The request was eventually denied.

The charge filed against Kim says that declaration "contained material false statements and representations."

Li is identified in the charge against Kim only as "Defendant X," but he is specifically named in Kim's declaration and in prosecution and defense filings concerning Li's bail request. Both sides described Kim as a friend of Andy Li.

Kim said in the declaration that his wife went to Mimi Li's hair salon for an appointment on Feb. 2, 2014, and he stopped by the salon to drop off the vest because he did not want to leave it in his car while he ran errands.

He said he asked his wife to bring the vest home, but she forgot, and Mimi Li then put it in her own car, intending to return it to him.

Because of problems of "miscommunication and timing," the vest was not returned by March 26, the declaration said. Kim said he and Mimi Li "both got busy and the plans fell through."

In opposition to bail for Li, prosecutors said in 2014 that Kim's explanation "strains credulity."

U.S. Attorney's Office spokesman Abraham Simmons said a date for Kim's initial court appearance has not yet been set.

The criminal contempt was charged as a misdemeanor and the maximum penalty, if Kim is convicted, is one year in jail.

The Chow indictment also included separate political corruptions charges against former state Senator Leland Yee, D-San Francisco/San Mateo. Yee pleaded guilty to a racketeering conspiracy to accept bribes for promises of political favors, and was sentenced to five years in prison.

A 12-year-old student of a San Rafael middle school was taken to juvenile hall Thursday after allegedly making a threat Wednesday about a school shooting, a San Rafael police sergeant said.

Staff at James B. Davidson Middle School at 280 Woodland Ave. notified resource officer Michael Mathis Thursday that a sixth-grade student made threatening statements on a school bus Wednesday afternoon regarding a shooting at two schools, Sgt. Lisa Holton said.

Several witnesses to the threat reported it to their parents who then notified school officials, Holton said.

Mathis and school officials investigated the threat, identified and interviewed a 12-year-old boy and notified his parents.

The boy's parents cooperated with the investigation and consented to a search of their home. Police confirmed the family does not own weapons and the student has no access to them, Holton said.

The student was taken to Marin County Juvenile Hall and he was referred to the Marin County Probation Department for making criminal threats, Holton said.

Former Oakland Raider Aldon Smith failed to appear at his arraignment Thursday in San Francisco Superior Court, prompting a judge to issue a $50,000 warrant for his arrest that would only go into effect if Smith misses his upcoming court date next week.

Smith was set to be arraigned Thursday on three misdemeanor counts of violating a protective order, after he turned himself in on those allegations last Friday.

The restraining order had been placed by a judge on March 12, when Smith was arraigned for domestic violence, false imprisonment, vandalism and assault charges in connection with an alleged domestic violence incident on March 3 at an apartment in Nob Hill in which a woman was injured.

Smith's attorney Joshua Bentley Thursday told the judge that Smith said in a text message that he was parking his vehicle. Bentley also said that in his history of representing Smith, Smith has never missed a court date.

After issuing the warrant with a stay, the judge moved Smith's arraignment on the three counts of violating a protective order to April 5, when he's already scheduled for a pretrial hearing on the previous domestic violence charge, among others. Smith has pleaded not guilty to those charges.

"Domestic violence is something our office is very concerned about," Deputy Public Defender Alex Bastian said outside of court.

"That's why anytime we have an instance of domestic violence we're going to take it seriously, regardless of whether you're a celebrity, an athlete or a politician. All of us need to abide by the rules and we all need to be together on this against domestic violence," Bastian said.

Last week, investigators with the Police Department's Special Victims Unit learned that Smith allegedly violated the order and they obtained a warrant for his arrest, police said.

After turning himself in, Smith was released on $30,000 bail.

In the original March 3 case, police said that officers responded around 8:30 p.m. to the 600 block of Bush Street for a report of domestic violence allegedly involving Smith.

Once officers arrived, Smith had left the scene.

The victim suffered injuries not considered life-threatening. Smith turned himself in three days later, police said.

The Raiders released Smith from his contract with them on March 5.

He had previously played for the San Francisco 49ers starting in 2011 but was released by the team in August 2015 following an arrest for a DUI hit-and-run in Santa Clara.

Smith signed with the Raiders the next month, but was suspended for a year in November 2015 for violating the NFL's substance abuse policies.

An elderly woman has major burns after a medical oxygen cylinder exploded in her home just outside of Salinas Thursday morning, according to the Monterey County Regional Fire District.

Not long after 11 a.m., fire district personnel were dispatched to a medical emergency at a home on Enos Drive off River Road. The call was upgraded to a structure fire when firefighters found that an oxygen tank had exploded, fire officials said.

When personnel arrived, they found the woman, 89, had escaped her home, which was on fire. She was taken by ground ambulance to an air ambulance, which transported her to a local burn center, according to fire officials.

The woman was saved by her neighbor, who was the emergency contact who received a call from her medical alert service, fire personnel said. When the neighbor went to check on the woman, she was still inside and smoke was rising from the house.

The neighbor was not injured, authorities confirmed.

Fire officials could not enter the home immediately as another cylinder exploded and sent debris into the street. The officials found that several more tanks were inside and applied water from the outside, containing the fire in 90 minutes.

Firefighters successfully kept the fire from spreading, both to the detached garage on the property and to neighboring homes, fire officials said.

The interior of the home was completely destroyed.

The cause of the fire as well as whether the oxygen was ignited causing the fire or another fire ignited the oxygen is not yet known.

A man is in custody after the alleged torture of a stolen pit bull just outside of Soledad city limits, according to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals for Monterey County.

At 9:30 a.m. Tuesday, a Soledad police officer located a severely burned black and white American pit bull on Metz Road. The dog was transported to a nearby veterinary hospital where, because he suffered burns over 90 percent of his body, he was euthanized.

According to the SPCA for Monterey County, their investigation led to the arrest Thursday morning of Devonte Sirwet-Perea. He was arrested in Salinas and booked into county jail on suspicion of animal theft, animal cruelty, arson and possession of controlled substances.

"The pain and terror this poor dog endured must have been unimaginable," SPCA for Monterey County spokeswoman Beth Brookhouser said in a statement. "No living being should ever suffer like that."

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SAN JOSE (BCN)

An immigration judge Thursday issued an order allowing a Mexican immigrant and San Jose resident facing deportation to remain in the United States, supporters said.

Immigration Judge Joseph Park issued a withholding of removal order for Fernando Carrillo Thursday afternoon, according to Sarah Lee, an organizer with the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity.

It is uncertain as to when Carrillo might be released. The government could file an appeal, which would prolong his release date, according to Lee. He is being held at the West County Detention Facility in Richmond, where he has been since October.

"This decision has great implications for Fernando," Lee said. "He does not have to live in fear in the United States any more."

A "withholding of removal" order is a special type of order issued by an immigration judge to a person who demonstrates a more than 50 percent change that they will be persecuted in their home country because of such things as race or religion.

Carrillo was on his way to drop his youngest daughter off at daycare one morning when U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement agents followed him from his home to the daycare and arrested him, his wife Lourdes Barraza has said.

Barraza said in an article which appeared on Medium a month after his detainment that Carrillo had noticed a couple of cars following him and pulled into a shopping center. He was immediately surrounded by ICE officers and was taken to San Francisco, and later that night, to Richmond.

Carrillo's wife and daughters were devastated because he had been deported once before in 2012. That time he was picked up on a Friday and transferred to Tijuana by Sunday, Barraza said.

Since Carrillo's arrest, an online petition has garnered nearly 4,000 signatures and more than 500 people have called to ask for his release, according to a representative from the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity.

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SAN FRANCISCO (BCN)

A verbal confrontation at a park in San Francisco's Chinatown Thursday evening resulted in one man punching another, leaving the victim with life threatening injuries, police said.

At 6:47 p.m., police responded to a report of aggravated assault near Portsmouth Square located in the 700 block of Kearny Street.

Officers determined that a man, 58, was sitting at the park when a suspect walked up and got into a verbal confrontation with him. The suspect then punched the victim, causing him to fall to the ground and lose consciousness, police said.

The suspect, described as a 50-year-old man, fled the scene.

The victim was taken to a hospital, according to police.

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SAN FRANCISCO (BCN)

The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission on Thursday hosted a ribbon cutting ceremony and tour of a new sewer operations division site in the Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood.

The site, located at 1601 Griffith Ave., will be the central location for all SFPUC sewer operations and programs and will host more than 70 employees, according to SFPUC officials.

Sewer cleaning and inspection crews and the SFGreaseCycle program will be located at the site.

The 12,000-square-foot location was previously used for storing equipment and excess construction materials.

Construction at the site occurred during the last year.

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Incumbent President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has been re-elected for another four-year term in an election deserted by main opposition parties.

Official MENA news agency and other state media, namely Ahram and Akhbar el-Youm, have announced al-Sisi winner of the three-day presidential poll which ended Wednesday.

Al-Sisi is credited with 92 per cent of the votes while his sole challenger Moussa Mostafa Moussa only secured 721,000 votes out of the 23 million Egyptians who casted their ballots.

Al-Sisi won despite a low turnout put barely at over 47 per cent with 60 million registered. On the first two days of the polls, the turnout was put at about 21 percent. Despite extended voting hours and reports of attempts to entice people to cast their ballots with offers of food and money, and sometimes threats, the turnout remained low.

However, as it was predicted even before the ballot, al-Sisi won a second presidential term.

Main opposition candidates and potential challengers to the strong man bowed out before the beginning of the electoral process under threats, with a few, including former Chief of staff Sami Anan, having been arrested for breaching the military law.

The only challenger Moussa Mostafa Moussa, one of al-Sisis allies, filed his candidacy to remedy the situation as the elections were having no credibility with no opposition candidate in the race. Critics say it was a sham candidacy.

Al-Sisi had deposed the countrys first democratically elected President Mohamed Morsi, in 2013, in his capacity as defense minister.
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Does the famous right-wing demagogue George C. Wallace attract the allegiance of a half-million California voters a half-century later? Nah. Photo: Howard Sochurek/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty

One of the stranger moments in the 2016 Democratic primary battle between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders was when an awful lot of self-identified independents discovered they could not participate in the Democratic presidential primary because they had registered as members of the American Independent Party. An April 2016 Los Angeles Times report showing that a vast number of indies who should have been registering as No Party Preference voters were instead signing up for the AIP alerted some to their mistake in time to correct it, but many did not. And it certainly did not help the Sanders campaign, which was counting on indie votes.

Now the L.A. Times is back with another report on the AIP, and it seems the word still hasnt gotten around. AIP registrants now top a half-million voters, up from 2016.

Then as now, its clear most if not all of these people think they are registering as independents when they are actually joining a zombie political party founded just over a half-century ago as the political vehicle of right-wing anti-civil-rights demagogue George C. Wallace. It has clung to ballot status (except for a brief hiatus in the early 70s) ever since, more than likely because of the independent in its name. But that aside, its not like the AIP is flying under a false flag. Its manifesto features lines like this:

The American Independent Party is the party of ordered liberty in a nation under God. We believe in strict adherence to written law. We believe the Constitution is the contract America has with itself. Its willful distortion has led to the violation of our Tenth Amendment guaranteed right to limited government  which inevitably requires oppressive taxation. Its faithful application will lift that burden.

Freed from the lawless oppression of Progressive rule, we may then compassionately and justly use our energy and ingenuity to provide for ourselves and our families. We will then establish truly free and responsible enterprise and reassert the basic human right to property.

Not a lot there for Bernie Sanders supporters, or indeed, for anyone likely to vote in a Democratic primary between now and the end of time, and thats before you get to the absolute view of the Second Amendment and the immigrant-bashing.

In case you are wondering if this continuing phenomenon is freaking out candidates and parties this year, the answer is no. Thanks to Californias Top Two primary system, there are no longer party primaries at the state level from which registered voters of other parties can be barred. It matters only in presidential primaries, which still maintain their exclusivity (No Party Preference voters can vote in Democratic presidential candidates in California. Those registered with actual parties cant). So it will next really matter again in 2020. At that point, if theres a 20-candidate presidential field and Sanders or somebody else is counting on indies to get them across the line in California, theyd better start getting the word on about the AIP pretty soon.

As it happens, AIP isnt the only certified California political party that seems like a refugee from the 1960s. The Peace and Freedom Party, which calls itself Californias feminist socialist party, has also been around since the 1968 election, when it ran Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver for president. It only has 78,000 registrants at present. Maybe Peace and Freedom just arent as attractive these days as Independent.
A reported remark from the Pontiff appears to challenge the traditional Catholic view of Hell as a real place where the damned are tormented by eternal fire. Illustration: The Last Judgement, 1431, by Giovanni da Fiesole known as Fra Angelico. Museo Di San Marco, Florence

March 30, Good Friday, is for many Christians (particularly Roman Catholics) a day to dwell on the dark side of human existence. The culmination of the penitential season of Lent, Good Friday commemorates the crucifixion of Christ, and (as I once heard a Catholic priest put it) the triumph, however temporary, of absolute evil.

Its beyond ironic, then, that this Good Friday is marked by a murky debate over a claim that Pope Francis recently denied the existence of Hell in a discussion with an atheist friend. Its hard to imagine your average Pope having any atheist friends with whom he holds genial conversations. But Francis isnt your average Pope, and so the controversy continues to rage despite the Vaticans efforts to pour cold water on its hellish fires.

The alleged papal heresy was disseminated in his alleged atheist interlocutors Italian publication, as The Guardian explains:

During the meeting Scalfari asked the pope where bad souls go, to which he was quoted as responding: They are not punished. Those who repent obtain Gods forgiveness and take their place among the ranks of those who contemplate him, but those who do not repent and cannot be forgiven disappear. A hell doesnt exist, the disappearance of sinning souls exists.

As the story spread, the Vatican made haste to address it, but muddied the waters further with what is generally called a non-denial denial, as reported in the National Catholic Register:

A recent meeting between Pope Francis and Italian journalist Eugenio Scalfari, 93, was a private meeting for the occasion of Easter, however without giving him any interview, the March 29 [Vatican] communique stated.

What is reported by the author in todays article is the result of his reconstruction, in which the literal words pronounced by the Pope are not quoted. No quotation of the aforementioned article must therefore be considered as a faithful transcription of the words of the Holy Father.

Its certainly credible that a 93-year-old atheist might slur certain fine points of Francis theology  but youd expect a more definitive statement repudiating it, considering the Churchs own official definition of Hell (in its Catechism) is very real: Immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into hell, where they suffer the punishments of hell, eternal fire.

Now its true that many orthodox Christians over the centuries have intellectualized (or perhaps spiritualized) the concept of Hell to suggest its not a physical place where devils prod the damned with pitchforks and scorch their tormented bodies with white-hot pokers. Even the Catechism says the chief punishment of hell is separation from God, and emphasizes its fundamental nature as a choice. The great Christian apologist C.S. Lewis, in his fictional treatment of the subject in The Great Divorce, described Hell as the abode of pure egos that cannot tolerate the selflessness of Heaven, to which they are free to go at any time by bus. Similarly, Lewiss friend the novelist Charles Williams, in Descent Into Hell, described damnation as complete and willful self-isolation by people who have destroyed their capacity to love.

Maybe thats what Francis had in mind, though Scalfaris account suggests something significantly less traditional: Christian mortalism, the belief that souls bereft of salvation are either extinguished at death, or do not participate in the general Resurrection at the end of time. While there has been a persistent minority belief in mortalism  and a corresponding denial of natural immortality  among Christians throughout the ages, its definitely not orthodox.

The timing of this brouhaha  not just in the liturgical calendar, but for Americans, in an era of 24/7 preoccupation with the heathen in the White House  has obviously been noticed by the faithful:

LMAO. The Pope says there is no hell during Holy Week. Its not even the top story.  Michael Brendan Dougherty (@michaelbd) March 29, 2018

In any event, until Francis himself clears this all up, the furor over Hell will add to the impression  particularly among Catholic conservatives, who are perpetually nervous about this Pope after identifying with maximum papal authority during the reigns of his conservative predecessors  that no traditional doctrine is entirely safe in his hands. Whether or not he actually disbelieves in Hell as its usually understood, this Pope is pure hell for those who like their verities undisturbed.
The Raiders released punter Marquette King on Friday in perhaps the most unexpected move yet under their new coaching staff.

King, 29, had been with the Raiders for five seasons and was among the leagues best at the position. He was a second-team All-Pro in 2016 and last season ranked third in the NFL in net average (42.7 yards)and pinned opponents inside the 20-yard line on 40.6 percent of his punts.

The Raiders signed King to a five-year, $16.5 million contract extension in February 2016 and were due to pay him $3.05 million in 2018. By cutting him they will save $2.9 million against the salary cap, according to spotrac.com.

The Raiders have one punter on their roster in UC Davis product Colby Wadman, whom they signed earlier this month.

Wynn Silberman, Kings agent, said Kings salary was likely a primary factor in the move under new head coach Jon Gruden and special teams coach Rich Bisaccia.

I think were all a little surprised, Silberman said. Based on my conversations with (general manager) Reggie (McKenzie) and Oakland over there, were still trying to figure out exactly the reasons. That being said, I think its reasonable to consider there might be a change in philosophy on where you emphasize and invest in positions.

Obviously theres a new regime coming in. And we certainly are aware theres a great new special teams coach coming in and he has a real reputation for being a true traditionalist that coincides exactly with the philosophy coach Gruden has. Ill leave it at that.

Silberman said King had gone to the Raiders facility Friday to meet the new coaching staff. Some of the coaches were away, but McKenzie was there and gave King the news, Silberman said.

Signed as an undrafted free agent out of Fort Valley State in 2012, King became the Raiders primary punter in 2013 after the departure of Shane Lechler. Over the past five seasons, King averaged 46.8 yards per punt and pinned opponents inside the 20 on 156 of 426 attempts.

King became known for his exuberant celebrations  including pretending to ride a horse off the field  and his antics sometimes got him into trouble. In 2016, he was fined for picking up and dancing with a referees flag after drawing a roughing the kicker penalty. Last season, he was flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct and subsequently fined for throwing the football at a Broncos player after a failed fake punt.

Some wondered if King would have to tone down his personality under Gruden. Instead, he becomes the latest player involved in an overhaul of the Raiders special teams. The Raiders let longtime kicker Sebastian Janikowski (the franchises scoring leader) and long snapper Jon Condo leave in free agency and also traded Cordarrelle Patterson, their primary kick returner last season, to the Patriots. Kicker Giorgio Tavecchio is expected back, and the Raiders signed long snapper Andrew DePaola this month.

King, who was also Oaklands primary holder on field goals and extra points, is now an unrestricted free agent. Silberman expects King to generate plenty of interest.

He hasnt even hit his prime, Silberman said. Certainly, theres going to be a team out there this season that has a vicious weapon.

Other moves: The Raiders announced they have waived tight end Clive Walford and re-signed safety Reggie Nelson. Walford, a third-round draft pick in 2015, played 44 games for the Raiders, recording 70 catches for 768 yards. Nelson started every game at free safety for Oakland the past two seasons. He is expected to return in a backup role after the team signed safety Marcus Gilchrist.
MOSCOW  The scope of Russias retaliatory expulsions of Western diplomats grew clearer Friday as the Kremlin summoned 23 ambassadors to issue eviction orders, while diplomatic veterans questioned how the U.S. Embassy, with a greatly reduced staff, could perform basic tasks.

The ambassadors, mostly European, called to the Kremlin on Friday were told that their diplomatic staffs would be cut by the same number of people as had been lost by Russian embassies in their own capitals during a recently coordinated ouster of more than 150 Russian diplomats.

On Thursday, Russia said it would expel 60 U.S. diplomats.

The expulsions and counter-expulsions, following the crisis over the poisoning of a former Russian spy, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter in England were neither the first in recent times nor the most punishing. But the cumulative impact of the cutbacks for the United States in particular left many veteran diplomats wondering how its embassy could operate.

Much of the burden is expected to fall on Washingtons new ambassador to Moscow, Jon Huntsman, who took over an embassy already struggling to function after an order by the Kremlin last summer that it dispense with 755 employees in response to sweeping U.S. sanctions for Russias election meddling.

The United States will still have an ambassador in Moscow after this, as will Russia in Washington, so high-level contact on potentially calamitous matters of state should continue.

Intelligence officers working under official cover as diplomats were especially targeted. But with the reduction in numbers, the wheels of basic diplomacy, involving things like visas, consular services, cultural events and simply talking to people, are grinding ever more slowly and, in some cases, coming to a halt.

The embassy is struggling to do basic operations. This latest round will hurt. Morale, of course, is also very low, said Michael McFaul, who served as ambassador in Moscow in 2012-14.

Even before this weeks expulsions of U.S. diplomats, the wait for a U.S. visitors visa in Moscow was among the longest in the world. It now takes 250 days just to get an appointment with the visa section, compared with four in Beijing and 31 in New Delhi.

What we call diplomacy now is an extremely complex business  its culture, visas, consular services, transport, business and trade, said Stefano Stefanini, former Italian ambassador to NATO and a diplomat in Moscow and Washington. The traditional diplomacy, the capacity to talk politics with Moscow, wont be diminished by this tat-for-tat. But of course the workload for everyone will increase.

Kori Schake, a former Pentagon and White House official now at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, said continuing diplomacy in embassies really did matter. Most of the high policy stuff can be done in Washington, she said. But what does get done and is especially important in authoritarian societies like Russia is to have American diplomats out and about, supporting civil society and independent journalists and engaging personally, so that peoples experience with Americans is different from what their government tells them.
9th Street and Fifth Avenue in Park Slope. Photo: Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao/New York Magazine

A few days after the crash, I went down to the Park Slope corner where it had happened. There was  is  one of those makeshift altars, the kind that appear after every horrific event, in front of a bank. Bouquets, notes, teddy bears. On the corner, buried in flowers, there was a folding stroller. It had been painted matte white, like the ghost bikes that mark sites where cyclists have been killed. I heard nothing on 9th Street but quiet talk of the crash.

As I got to the intersection, there were five or six people standing around the shrine, discussing what had happened on March 5, what hadnt happened, what might be done. A lot of the signs made reference to Abigail and Joshua, the two children, ages 4 and 1, who had been killed there. As I stood there, a little girl, just about Abigails age, stepped up with her dad and set a few yellow flowers on the stroller. This was a neighborhood in mourning, one that saw the fragility of its own bodies reflected in the experience. It could have been me is a cliche, but it really could have been anyone.

On that Monday afternoon, Abigail Blumenstein and her mother, the actress Ruthie Ann Miles, had been crossing 9th Street with two friends, Lauren Lew and her 1-year-old son, Joshua. They had a WALK signal. A woman named Dorothy Bruns was waiting in her car across Fifth Avenue, and for whatever reason  the Daily News reported that she said shed had a seizure  she drove through the red light. She hit the two mothers, the two kids, and another man. In the worst nightmare imaginable, the car continued on for about 350 feet, dragging the stroller, eventually crossing the median lines and crunching into a parked car. The two children died at the scene. Miles, who was badly hurt, is now on the mend. She was seven months pregnant at the time, now about eight. Lew was also hurt, but less severely, as was the other man. The driver has not been charged, and a spokeswoman for the Brooklyn DAs office characterizes the case as under active investigation. The scene was so gruesome that a local parents group has arranged trauma counseling for witnesses.

Ive tried to describe that scene as straightforwardly as I can, but Im anything but an unbiased observer here. My wife is an executive at Transportation Alternatives, the pedestrian-and-bike advocacy group. When I speak with her colleagues, I hear about kids run over by buses, about bicyclists with their heads busted open. Maybe inevitably, given the nature of our how-was-your-day-at-work dinner chat, some version of that scene on 9th Street flashes through my head every morning as I walk my son to school. There are four crosswalks en route, and in each one, I try to walk on the traffic side of him, so that a fast-moving car would hit me first. Some days, in my minds ear, I hear the dull bang. Its louder than you think.

I know that sound firsthand. I wasnt with my son the day it happened to me. It was two years ago on a rainy morning near the Jersey City PATH station. A driver waiting to turn left at an intersection accelerated without looking, and I was in the crosswalk, right in front of him. My umbrella and I rolled up on his cars hood; he slammed on his brakes, which launched me. I flew about four feet and landed on my hip, hard. I was lucky to stay in front of his bumper instead of being pitched into the opposite lane of traffic, which likely would have killed me.

The scene was so gruesome that a local parents group has arranged trauma counseling for witnesses.

It is a natural reaction to analyze an accident, apportioning blame: Was someone jaywalking? Not looking? Texting? How was the visibility? The crash in Park Slope was cut-and-dried. Traffic was stopped. The people in the crosswalk had the light. Everyone steps into the street this way. Indeed, a 2011 study found that nearly half the pedestrians hit in New York were in crosswalks and had the right of way. Last year, 101 pedestrians were killed, or two per week.

I said an accident just now, and that term is, almost invisibly, part of the mental blame-apportioning that takes place. One of TransAlts initiatives has called for us to change the word we use to describe these bonebreaking events from accident to crash. Accidents happen; crashes have causes (the Associated Presss stylebook now agrees). It is a semantic choice, but its also a significant one. Most of these not-really-accidental events are preventable by steps more powerful than telling people to be careful.

Heres another semantic distinction that spills out into the real world. There are, roughly speaking, two kinds of city thoroughfares. There are roads, which are meant to move traffic at speed, more or less exclusively. The BQE is a road. But then there are streets, and streets serve not just drivers but also bicyclists on bikes, pedestrians on foot, cafe-sitters and jewelry-vendors and food-cart standees. They all own the street, or should, and their needs should be balanced. Our narrower side streets, say in Greenwich Village, were originally built for horses and carts, and many of them handle the mix pretty well.

Ninth Street, though, is a street that is treated like a road. It has all the pedestrian activity of a Village cowpath, but whats not obvious, till you stand there and stare at it for a while, is just how wide it is. Traffic roars through that width, partly because the grade that gives Park Slope its name causes drivers to speed downhill. It does have a pair of bike lanes, but theyre painted on, rather than set off by curbs or bollards, and faded.

Fifth and 9th is a corner where you feel the need to take care, but its not an obvious deathtrap. It is, says Councilmember Brad Lander, whose office is just a few steps away and who has actively worked on street safety, a messy intersection, a dangerous intersection. And theres a lot of them. It is depressingly average. The other day, I stood there and timed the light. A pedestrian gets 40 seconds to cross. It took me, a fast walker, 20 seconds. A parent with a kid will be slower. I doubt someone with a walker could make it.

Dangerous intersections are largely fixable, and 9th Street will now be fixed to some degree in that way that often happens after a tragedy. Indeed, Community Board 6s Eric McClure tells me, the street was redesigned somewhat about ten years ago, after a trio of pedestrian deaths, one nearby at Baltic, two down at Third. The bike lanes and the median strip ( painted, and now difficult to see) were added. Since then, another man has been hit and killed at this same intersection. The Department of Transportation is evaluating the street once more. Most likely the bike lanes will be built-in, cutting traffic to one lane in each direction plus the turn lane. That does not affect the thousand other streets that have similar problems and needs, but it is something.

One of those other streets is Lewis Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant, and there, about two months ago, an oil truck ran over a 13-year-old named Kevin Flores. It got less attention, perhaps because it happened in a neighborhood that is predominantly nonwhite. In Bed-Stuy, the truck driver was not licensed and he had multiple charges on his record. Lewis Avenue is less roadlike than 9th Street, but it too has no special design: traffic lanes, parking lanes.

But, you may be thinking, what does any of this have to do with a person who jumped through a red light? She wasnt speeding; she just stepped on the accelerator. Even that general class of driver error can be mitigated by smart design. Curb extensions and similar measures go under the name of traffic calming, and that field involves measures that sound minor but have major effects. Narrowing lanes makes drivers feel constrained, and they react instinctively by slowing down, as you would when walking on a balance beam. Bike lanes, used not only to provide for cyclists but also to intrude on car space, do the same. (By the way, if youre one of those people who consider fast-moving cyclists a menace, let me tell you: Ive been hit by one of those, too. The bike hurt. The car might have killed me.) Brightly colored crosswalks, say, of brick, convey a pedestrians right of way more vividly than a standard one does. These and many other measures constitute a well-understood psychological tool kit, available to the designer for not a lot of money, and they work. One study found that adding a raised median strip where crossers can pause  its colloquially known as a refuge island  cut the number of people being hit by more than half.

Which brings us to the driver. Dorothy Bruns had a record. Her car had recently blown through four red lights and been cited for four other violations for speeding. She had retained her drivers license, it would appear, long after she should have. How? Because those violations were written by speed cameras, and they record and ticket license plates and thus auto registrations. They do not ticket the drivers of those cars  because the camera cant recognize whos behind the wheel  and Dorothy Brunss license remained unblemished by them. Those cameras are useful, but they are inconsistently deployed. Having killed two people and hit three others, Dorothy Bruns did not receive a summons. Had her car not been wrecked, she might have been allowed to drive home.

A couple of weeks after the crash, we learned that she had reportedly hit another pedestrian in September and sped off. Paperwork that would have led to a deeper review had gone unfiled. Like Nikolas Cruz, the Parkland shooter, she was recognizably unfit to handle a dangerous machine, known and perhaps flagged by the authorities but not stopped, leading to violent, preventable death. And a lot of people seem to think of a drivers license in near-purist Second Amendment terms: as a right that can be revoked under only the most extreme circumstances.

We have, as a city and even as a country, begun to move toward smarter policies about all this. New Yorks former transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan and her current successor, Polly Trottenberg, understand what needs to be done and have poured a lot of concrete to make it so. Mayor de Blasios adoption of Vision Zero has cut the annual number of pedestrian deaths by 45 percent in less than five years. More than that, though, is a growing desire to exist without the triple problem of car culture: the headache, the expense, and the physical threat of being run over. Every study of younger adults shows that they seek a life that does not depend so heavily on driving. The most desirable neighborhoods in most cities and suburbs are the walkable ones, with less sprawl and good trains. Our city is particularly, beautifully suited to that life. The American dream of the open road is increasingly being revealed as a dead end. Streets, not roads, are where we want to  and ought to, and deserve to  live.

*This article appears in the April 2, 2018, issue of New York Magazine. Subscribe Now!
Hussein Malla / Associated Press

KOBANI, Syria  Two British militants believed to have belonged to an Islamic State group cell notorious for beheading hostages in Syria said Friday that their home countrys revoking of their citizenship denies them the possibility of a fair trial. One of them said the killings of captives was a mistake and could have been avoided.

The men were allegedly among four British jihadis who made up the Islamic State cell nicknamed The Beatles by surviving captives because of their English accents. The cell held more than 20 Western hostages in Syria and became known for its brutality, torturing its captives and beheading several American, British and Japanese journalists and aid workers and Syrian soldiers in 2014 and 2015.
BANGKOK  A fire on a double-decker bus carrying migrant workers killed 20 people Friday, a week after 18 people died in another bus accident that showed the continuing dangers of Thailands roads.

The fire was reported to police around 1:30 a.m. in Tak province in western Thailand along the border with Myanmar. The bus was heading to a factory in an industrial zone near Bangkok. Police and a survivor said the workers were from Myanmar.

Police Lt. Raewat Aiemtak said 27 people managed to escape the blazing vehicle, with one of them severely burned.

The cause of the fire wasnt immediately known, but Raewat said the driver reported that the fire started in the middle of the bus and spread quickly. People in the front managed to escape, but those in the back of the vehicle were trapped.

A survivor, Pa Pa Hlaing, said some passengers had smelled something burning, but went back to sleep because they assumed it was smoke from outside.

When we were asleep, some people from the back of the bus started shouting and screaming fire, fire and as we awoke, the smoke was already filling the bus, said the 19-year-old from Myanmar. We couldnt see anything or breathe. We just tried to get out of the bus as soon as possible.

Scared that the bus might explode, those who escaped ran as far from it as they could, she said. Police arrived 15 or 20 minutes later, she estimated, but firefighters took longer, and no one was able to do anything to help those still inside.

Pa Pa Hlaing said those who had lost their passports would be taken back to a Myanmar border town to get new documents, while those who still had them would go ahead to Bangkok as planned.

Pa Pa Hlaing, who said the passengers had been headed to work at a factory owned by Tomy (Thailand), a Japanese maker of plastic toys, were told that we would not need to work for a while and we could stay. They will pay us for our clothes and things we need there.

Most of the survivors had minor injuries but two were hospitalized, said Moe Aung Khine of the Myanmar Embassy in Bangkok. He said his office was trying to inform the families of the victims and make funeral arrangements, as well as negotiate for compensation for the victims.

Thailand has the second-highest rate of traffic fatalities in the world after Libya, according to World Health Organization statistics. The WHO estimates a rate of 36.2 per 100,000 population. By comparison , the rate in the United Kingdom, with a comparable population, is 2.9 per 100,000, and in the United States it is 10.6 per 100,000.
1 Asylum seekers: A federal judge in Seattle has opened the door for thousands of immigrants to apply for asylum, finding that the Department of Homeland Security has routinely failed to notify them of a deadline for filing their applications. U.S. District Judge Ricardo Martinez issued his ruling Thursday in a lawsuit brought by immigrant rights groups. The case concerns immigrants who fear persecution if returned to their home country. Theyre often released from custody pending deportation proceedings, but they typically arent directly informed that they only have a year to apply for asylum. Martinez ordered the department to begin providing notice about the one-year deadline, among other measures.

2 Church sanctuary: A Guatemalan immigrant who entered a New York City church to seek refuge from immigration authorities said Thursday she will fight to prevent being separated from her children. As she held her 15-month-old baby, Aura Hernandez spoke to reporters inside Fourth Universalist Society, a historic Upper West Side church, where she has been hiding from federal agents. Hernandez, a mother of two who used to clean homes, has lived illegally in the U.S. since 2005. Hernandez, 37, pledges to stay inside the church until her immigration status changes. She entered more than two weeks ago after spending two weeks inside another church, where she first sought refuge.
Hussein Malla / Associated Press

KOBANI, Syria  A roadside bomb in northern Syria killed two coalition personnel, an American and a Briton, and wounded five others in a rare attack since the U.S.-led coalition sent troops into the war-torn country, U.S. and British officials said Friday.

The military did not say where the attack took place or give the nationalities of the other casualties, but it came hours after a local Syrian official said a roadside bomb exploded in the tense, mixed Arab-Kurdish town of Manbij, near the border with Turkey.
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It is an invitation that looks too good to refuse.

Free airfares to Sydney, a free two-night hotel stay, dinner at Silvester's restaurant in the Marriott Hotel, plus drinks and free theatre tickets to Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra at the Sydney Opera House.

The University of Sydney has made the offer to academics in the hope of luring them to Sydney on April 6 as it prepares to apply for an Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence grant.

Overseas academics will be treated to entertainment at the Sydney Opera House. Credit:James Brickwood

The letter from the university's department of government and international relations provides an invitation to a planning workshop to be held at the Sydney Harbour Marriott on April 5 and 6.
When McDonald's revealed in August it would start curbing the use of medically crucial antibiotics in its global chicken supply chain - including in Australia - one major investor was keen to point to the timing of the news.

The move by the global fast food giant - which said it would also plan to phase out the use of antibiotics in other meats - came just a few months after its May annual meeting in the US, at which a shareholder proposal calling on the company to ban the use of such antibiotics in its supply chains garnered almost 30 per cent of the vote.

McDonald's opposed the shareholder motion, arguing it was "unnecessary and redundant" given the steps it was already taking. But one of the authors and co-filers of the shareholder proposal, the 89-year-old Dutch asset manager Robeco, maintains that the high level of support for the vote pushed the company to act.

And, amid the increasing use of shareholder proposals in Australia and around the world - calling on companies to address issues like climate change, plastics, methane emissions and human rights - Robeco, which has $161 billion ($260 billion) in global assets under management, says it's prepared to take the lead on potential resolutions targeting Australian companies.

"The idea of shareholder proposals was not a normal thing in Australia, but now it is catching up," says Carola van Lamoen, Robeco's Rotterdam-based head of active ownership, in Australia this month to meet with companies and Robeco's Australian clients.
Alison Webster is 34,000 feet above the Indian Ocean and speeding away from Australia's west coast when she reflects on the challenges she faces as the newly-minted chief executive of Qantas International.

This flight - Qantas' first non-stop service from Perth to London - marks the start of arguably one of the most exciting eras in the airline's history, as it works towards an ultra-long haul network connecting Australian cities with the furthest points of the globe.

Qantas International CEO Alison Webster, on the airline's inaugural Perth-London service.

But Webster, who moved into the job in November, is also taking the controls at a time when making money from flying overseas appears to be the toughest job in the Qantas group.

We still see a lot of capacity being targeted at the Australian market, and so for us, it's about making sure we put our capacity in the right markets," Webster explains.
Leading theatre producers have called for investment in a lyric theatre with capacity for between 1500 and 1700 patrons to bring long-running productions to Sydney from Broadway and the West End.

First-run musicals were heading south to Melbourne because of Sydney's lack of a mid-to-large size venue with rehearsal space and high technical capacity, according to producer John Frost.

Sydney needs a new lyric theatre, says theatre producer John Frost. Credit:Eddie Jim

''We need it desperately because the Opera House is covered, the Sydney Theatre Company's glorious centrepiece is down at The Rocks, they are looked after, and we only have two big houses which are the Capitol and Lyric Theatre with 2000 seats,'' Mr Frost said. ''To get a booking there for a producer you are waiting up to two or three years sometimes.''

The need for a new lyric theatre was first identified by the Cultural Infrastructure Strategy developed by Infrastructure NSW in 2016 and underlined by uncertainty around the reopening of the 1100-seat Theatre Royal. The theatre was to have opened mid this year after a period of renovation.
It was the the wrong way round to read it. But the second volume of Jimmy Barnes' autobiography, Working Class Man, released last October, was a Christmas present, so I skipped the first part, 2016's Working Class Boy.

Working Class Man, Jimmy Barnes.

What could be better for the summer holidays than colourful stories about the wild Cold Chisel years? I find myself drawn to rock biographies, with Bruce Springsteen's revealing Born To Run (2016) the best in recent years. You want to learn what happened behind the scenes, what drives them, how they've got to where they are and how they've survived. Maybe even get some lessons you can apply to your own life.

Right from the preface, it's clear there's a lot more to Barnes than just blasting out Cheap Wine, Flame Trees, Khe Sanh and all those other hits in pubs around the country. The first surprise is how much he remembers, given all the alcohol and drugs ingested along the way.

The most shocking is his realisation, waking up in an Auckland hotel with wife Jane after a gig just six years ago, that he'd tried to hang himself with his belt in despair while drunk overnight.
Kentucky teachers protest destructive reforms of their pension system being pushed by Republicans. Photo: Adam Beam/AP/REX/Shutterstock

Eight Kentucky school districts  including those in Louisville and Lexington  are closed today as teachers stay home to protest the GOP legislatures destructive reforms of their pension system. Oklahoma teachers are planning to strike on Monday despite winning a $6,100 pay raise. And Arizona teachers rallied at the state capital on Wednesday and are threatening to strike if their demands for major pay raises and restoration of education funding cuts are not met.

As this wave of unrest among teachers spreads nationally, its clear it has been inspired by the nine-day strike that won West Virginia teachers (and other state employees) a pay raise earlier this month. But theres something more fundamental going on than copycat protests. Were seeing a teacher-led backlash against years, and even decades, of Republican efforts at the state level to cut taxes and starve public investments. This is very clear in Oklahoma, where a quick pay raise the legislature passed this week is deemed by teachers to have missed the larger point:

While this is major progress, this investment alone will not undo a decade of neglect. There is still work to do to get this legislature to invest more in our classrooms. And that work will continue Monday, when educators descend on the capitol, Alicia Priest, president of the Oklahoma Education Association, said in a Facebook video Wednesday.

The pay-raise bill signed by Governor Mary Fallin yesterday brought in $447 million in new revenues from higher taxes on cigarettes and oil-production facilities. But the teachers are demanding $3.3 billion to restore millions of dollars in school funding that have been cut in the past decade, as Vox reports.

Similarly, in Arizona the teacher protests are not just about teacher pay, though they are among the lowest paid in the country. Their demands are much broader, as the Washington Post notes:

Teachers, who organized a grassroots campaign on social media, are demanding a 20 percent raise and restoration of school funding to 2008 levels, before the Great Recession struck, according to the Arizona Republic. They are also asking state lawmakers to stop cutting taxes until Arizonas per-student spending reaches the national average.

Asking Republican legislators to stop cutting taxes is a demand many of its objects would consider outrageous, even unnatural. But this collision is a reminder that GOP claims that tax cuts at the state as well as the federal level would pay for themselves by generating sustained economic growth have once again proved faulty, with public education being the primary victim of chronic budget shortfalls.

While Republican pols in Arizona and Oklahoma, like their counterparts in West Virginia, are backpedaling furiously and trying to prevent or resolve strikes, the conflict may go too deep for an easy resolution. In Arizona, for example, the Republican governor and legislature are engaged in a radical experiment in portable education funding giving parents unprecedented freedom to use public dollars for private schools (led, as it happens, by the GOP candidate in a congressional special election next month) that could pose an existential threat to public education in the state. In Kentucky, teacher grievances are mostly focused on the pursuit by Republican governor Matt Bevin and the GOP legislature of another big conservative cause: public pension reform, which in this case meant serious reductions in benefits and a complete revocation of teacher pension security. That the reform was whipped through the legislature suddenly after being attached to a sewer regulation bill did not improve its aroma.

Perhaps the current wave of teacher protests and strikes will subside as the school year ends. But more likely, it will spill over into the election season this fall, when 36 governorships and most of the national state legislatures are up for grabs.
Celia Imrie in The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. Credit:AF archive / Alamy Stock Photo Fairfax Media's film critic, Sandra Hall, describes Imrie as one "one of the great comic stalwarts of British film and television". "She's never been a lead like Helen Mirren but I think of her as a female equivalent of Billy Nighy  not quite as famous but with the same impish glint in the eye and potential for rocking the boat," Hall says. Celia Imrie, right, with Imelda Staunton and Timothy Spall in Finding Your Feet. And Imrie would probably not have experienced such career longevity if her childhood obsession with becoming a professional ballerina had been realised. Celia Diana Savile Imrie was born the fourth of five children (who all share the name of Shakespearian characters) in Guildford, Surrey, in 1952.

In her memoir The Happy Hoofer, Imrie describes her mother, Diana, as a "true-blue Burke's Peerage listed aristocrat" who was descended directly from royalty, including the Queen Mother, William the Conqueror and, probably even, Helen of Troy. Her father, David, a doctor born in Glasgow, was from a "poor, hardworking Scottish family". Judi Dench and Celia Imrie in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. I remember my mother saying that to be well read and well travelled makes you interesting. The pair met when David was working as a chauffeur, and they married despite a 20-year age gap and stern disapproval from Diana's family. Imrie and her siblings saw little of their parents, and were raised by a nanny who kept them on a strict schedule. From a young age, Imrie developed a passion for dance and she never doubted her future as a ballerina. When she was 11 she auditioned for the Royal Ballet School, and subsequently discovered a rejection letter buried in her mother's drawer that read: "Celia is very good and advanced for her age, but sadly she is going to be too big ever to become a dancer."

Celia Imrie turned to acting after her childhood dream to become a ballerina was crushed. Credit:Rachell Smith In a bid to make herself smaller, Imrie stopped eating, and, at 14, her helpless parents sent her to a hospital where she was placed under the care of the notorious and now discredited psychiatrist William Sargant. Sargant used electro convulsive shock therapy and insulin-induced comas to treat his patients, and in her memoir Imrie describes how he still frequents her nightmares. Two things, Imrie writes, helped her find a path to recovery: a nurse telling her she was stealing the bed of a "truly sick" child, and her dance teacher declaring she had come to say goodbye because she had been told that Imrie did not have long to live. Celia Imrie in Calendar Girls: "We're going to need considerably bigger buns." Imrie left school at 16 and studied to become a dance teacher, before deciding to enter the professional theatre world. It was playing a "Citizen of Transylvania" in a pantomime of Sleeping Beauty in 1975 that Imrie met Victoria Wood, who was in the audience with a mutual friend.

Wood would become a life-changing and lifelong friend for Imrie, casting her as Miss Babs in the sketch Acorn Antiques in her show Victoria Wood As Seen On TV. The sketch was a parody of a low-production soap opera, and Imrie jokes that she was probably cast because Wood genuinely believed she was a bad actress. Miss Babs attracted a cult following and the pair went on to work on several projects together including Dinnerladies and Pat and Margaret. Imrie says she had no idea that Wood was battling cancer, and was in America working when she learned of her death, aged 62, in 2016. "We had a wonderful time when we worked together and I was extremely proud to be in her gang. Really the work she has made goes on and a whole generation has adored her as we all did who worked with her. I am extremely grateful to her for the chances she gave me. I always will be," Imrie says. In 2017, Imrie lost another close friend  the father of her son, the British actor Benjamin Whitrow (best known for playing Mr Bennet in the BBC's acclaimed 1995 TV mini-series Pride and Prejudice), who died aged 80. Imrie determined at a young age never to marry, but she always wanted a child so asked Whitrow if he would be the father. In her memoir, she describes how she "laid out [her] terms" as they walked along the beach: she would not ask him for anything and she would be responsible for all choices about the child's life. Imrie gave birth to their son Angus Imrie, now 23 and a successful actor, in 1994 when she was 42. More recently, she confirmed that she had a romance with Whitrow.

"It is very sad when somebody you love is just not in the world anymore. I'm like a child, I find it terribly difficult and it was for Angus particularly because he was working on his film," she says. "But like when my mother died, strangely work does slightly help because you have a routine and you try to concentrate your mind on something else but it is hard, very hard." Routine might help soothe the soul, yet Imrie isn't one for settling into a groove. The Exotic Marigold Hotel and its sequel brought her fans and fame well beyond her traditional heartland in Britain. With the film as her calling card, Imrie finally headed to Hollywood  a lifelong ambition  a few years ago. It was, she says, "like starting again", with rounds of interviews and meetings with agents and managers. There were disappointments, she says, before she landed a role in the FX television series Better Things. "The thing about Hollywood is that I love it for its glamour but the truth of it is you kind of have to be working because the whole heartbeat of the city is all about filming television and working and so if you are working you're kind of in the gang, but if you're not it's a rather tricky place because it is sort of lonely," she says. "Anyway luckily I managed to land this job. It did take a huge gamble to go to America without a definite job."

Imrie has also managed to migrate her considerable film audience to her fiction, having now written three novels that share an interest in the lives of older women. Her characters, she says, are all roles she would like to play and discussions are under way to make film adaptations. Bloomsbury Publishing's editor-in-chief Alexandra Pringle says the biggest audience for Imrie's highly-readable novels are people over 50. "They are the principle characters in her novels and she writes so well about that time of life. But really the age range is much broader as they are for anyone with a sense of humour and also of course there's Celia's legion of admirers who are people of all ages," Pringle says. "Because of the huge popularity of Celia as an actress we weren't really surprised when her first novel went straight into the bestseller list. We also knew that everyone who enjoyed such films as Calendar Girls and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel would adore these novels. We were pretty sure that considerable audience would come to her fiction. And they did!" Her first two novels were set in the French Riveria, but after the Bastille Day attacks in Nice in 2016, Imrie decided to no longer use it as a setting. Imrie was walking along the the Promenade des Anglais when a lorry ploughed into the crowd, killing 86 people. She told the Guardian, "It was a miracle for me that I survived". Her latest novel is set on the Queen Mary 2 as it crosses the Atlantic. It is a trip that takes about six nights from Southampton to New York, and one that Imrie has made several times.
No one should have to experience Times Square at 7 o'clock on a wet winter morning, but here we are, at the Paramount screening room in New York, to watch the first 11 minutes of a movie. In a fortnight's time, A Quiet Place will be the opening night film at the South By Southwest festival, but today, all they can show us is the first scene.

Some of the assembled journalists have flown in from Europe or Los Angeles. They are bleary-eyed and pissed off, and director John Krasinski knows it. He strides down the aisle and addresses us, employing his considerable personal charm: "Keep your cellphones on. Nothing bad could happen if you tweet the first 11 minutes."

Emily Blunt and Millicent Simmonds in A Quiet Place. Credit:Photo Credit: Jonny Cournoyer

Lights down. A title informs us that it is Day 38. We are in an abandoned pharmacy, in a picturesque American town that has recently been visited by the apocalypse. This put me in mind of Dawn Of The Dead, but any other zombie-slash-pandemic movie in which nature is reasserting its claim through cracks in the tarmac will do.

The twist is that the aliens who have laid waste to human civilisation use sound to locate their victims, which explains why the parents, played by Krasinski and Emily Blunt, are communicating with their children in sign language. Their eldest daughter, played by Millie Simmonds, is deaf. Their youngest son is four, and as any parent knows, telling a four-year-old to be silent is like telling a tom cat not to pee in the corner.
When is a restaurant like an airline? When it starts charging customers to reserve the nice seats.

Mosman restaurant Ormeggio at The Spit is guaranteeing diners a window table with water views for an additional $20 per person, to be paid at the time of booking.

"We receive a lot of requests for window tables and the restaurant manager prioritises these based on a first-in-first-served basis," said Anna Pavoni, who co-owns the two-hatted Italian restaurant with her husband, chef Alessandro Pavoni.

"A lot of customers were saying 'we will only confirm if you can guarantee the window'. Now we are able to do it."

Luxury hotel restaurants will occasionally charge a fee to guarantee a window table on Valentine's Day, however, it is believed this is the first time there has been an optional window-seat surcharge for regular service in a Sydney restaurant.
It's part of my family story. It was the church of my childhood, the church I was baptised in as a baby. I had some experiences as a teenager in other churches, but the Anglican Church is my home, my spiritual home. Do you experience doubt? And is that an asset or a liability for a leader like you? Yes, I have experienced doubt. Not a doubt in Christ, but doubting that I'm walking a particular path correctly, doubting things are as they could, or should, be. Yes, there's quite a good bit of health in doubt. It's doubt which fires us to think further: to pray, to engage, to seek God's leading and calling. Doubt can be the beginning of the searching for God's future. You became the first female Anglican archbishop in the world in February, but there have been voices of resistance against your elevation in the church. The church wrestles with matters where fresh understandings come to light. That certainly happened about the place of women in the life of the church  and in leadership  over the last 60 years or more. There are some who believe women can't be leaders, because of the way they read the Bible in a couple of places that talk about the role of women. But Anglicans searched these with fresh eyes and investigation. The result is that there are more than 600 women in ordained leadership in the Anglican Church in this country alone.

SEX Unlike Catholic priests and nuns, Anglican officials don't take a vow of celibacy  and you're married. Is that a relief? Well, it's the Anglican way. It has been part of our choice since the Church of England came into being. Anglican clergy may marry. When it comes to sex, I always got the sense that the Old Testament was quite prescriptive and the New Testament didn't have as much to say. Prescriptive in what way?

Like certain passages in Leviticus, whereas Jesus didn't have too much to say about those relations. Or is my memory faulty? No, I think that's accurate: Jesus had very little to say  in fact, nothing to say  on some topics, and very little to say on others. Leviticus is a book in the Old Testament doing a very different thing from the gospels in the New Testament. The gospel stories about Jesus were written to tell the good news of his love. They show us how Jesus lived blessing, forgiveness, love, justice and mercy. People of faith frame it as a gift from God. If sex is a gift from God, what constitutes good sex? I'm a bit thrown by that question! [Laughs] Goodness me. What I might say is acts that are coercive, violent, abusive, disrespectful of another person's dignity  that's not where I think the sharing of intimacy is. In your understanding of God, does God have a sex?

God is referred to in the Bible as "he". Not in my understanding. For Christians, God is referred to as "father", the incarnate son in Jesus and a God who is the Holy Spirit. God is beyond gender. MONEY How exactly does an Anglican archbishop make money? It's not like a job in a traditional sense. We are provided with what is called a stipend: an income which frees us to do the work we do. Outside life's essentials  utilities, groceries, mortgage or rent  what do you like spending money on?

What are the big temptations? [Laughs] Shoes. What would you describe as money well spent? Money well spent is money that provides for the wellbeing of others. Money we can use to support organisations or projects. Money spent on food to prepare and cook for friends or family as we gather. Would you say you're rich? Oh Benjamin, I'm incredibly rich, in so many ways.
What's on

April 2: That Poetry Thing: Canberran (and Australian) poetry institution Geoff Page reads his poems and is interviewed live by poet Martin Dolan. $5 on the door, includes open mic. Smith's Alternative, 76 Alinga St, Civic, 7-9pm.

Portrait of author Clive Hamilton who has written a book on Chinese Communist Party influence. Credit:Rohan Thomson

April 4: At 6pm in the Molonglo Theatre, Level 2, JG Crawford Building 132, Lennox Crossing,ANU in a free ANU/Canberra Times Meet the Author event in association with the National Security College ANU, Clive Hamilton will be in conversation with Rory Medcalf on Hamilton's new book Silent Invasion. China's Influence in Australia. Bookings at anu.edu.au/events or 6125 4144.

April 8: Canberra naturalist Ian Fraser will be in conversation with Genevieve Jacobs about his new book Birds in Their Habitats at Muse at 3pm. $12 includes a drink. musecanberra.com.au.
Easter itself prefigures all this. Jesus overturning of the tables, early in the Easter story, is his banking royal commission. The prevailing system charged people just to enter the temple, and excluded women, gentiles, anyone with a disability, and slaves from intimate sacred experience. Jesus stage-managed upset was a blow for equality and diversity, designed for maximum symbolic impact on the patriarchy.

Yes, it has a resurrection climax, but its insurrection that gives Easter its theme and its pulse. Maybe thats why it is so wildly my season of choice. Always did love a good insurrection. Even the weather feels like a blessed purge after Sydney Februarys dread regime. Of course, as a Farrelly, I also treasure the story of the Easter Rising, that heroic but doomed 1916 attempt by James Connolly and the boys  plus 200 female paramilitaries  to regain Irish autonomy. I love how the very name, Easter Rising, suggests the irrepressible springing of sap, as much as armed rebellion. In the face of Irelands heartbreaking history, it suggests life as much as death.

Happy oestrus! Oh, if only they knew. If only the spruikers and sellers for whom Easter is like some roided-out Valentines Day knew that theyre actually wishing us a happy fertility cycle, and that the word comes from the Latin for frenzy and the Greek for gadfly, madness or irrational desire. Perhaps then theyd see. Easter isnt about buns and bunnies, business as usual. Easter is insurrection.

But Ive only recently understood just how thoroughly subversion drives the whole Easter plot. Subversion of the rational by the poetic, the masculine by the feminine, the powerful by the weak and death by life; its a morality play we could usefully restudy.

Scholars now doubt that the Hebrews were ever, collectively, Egypts slaves. So perhaps Exodus never happened. Perhaps Passover is unfounded in historical fact. Irrelevant. What matters is the Hebrews celebrated Exodus each year in Passover, and this made the footprint that became Easter. The sacrificial lamb became the murdered Jesus; Paschal became passion. Jerusalem, Judaisms cultural heart, was a walled city, often depicted as circular. It centred on two crossed axes, east-west and north-south.

By AD30 it was almost 70 years since Augustus had declared himself the son of God, but still the empire clung to temporal power as well. Each Passover, as proof of superiority, the Romans staged a triumphal procession that, thunderous with cavalry and foot-soldiers, entered the city from the west. That particular year, at the same instant, another procession entered from the east, the Mount of Olives. It was Jesus, on a small donkey, with his ragbag of peasants. The symbolism was exquisite. Jesus gentle approach made stark contrast with the violence of Romes forced penetration. But Jesus, for all his modesty, had claimed the east, the direction of light to come, while the sun would soon set on Roman rule.

This was performance art; less triumphal than parodic, almost satire. Today you might call it pass-agg; a provocation designed, precisely by forgoing force, to compel the harshest Roman retaliation. Theres also Judas sub-plot; the kiss of betrayal, the terrible regret, confession, rejection, suicide. Theres Pilates, forcing the crowd to force his hand, so that history would blame the Jews for killing their own prophet. And the crowds  baying for innocent blood then, as the sky darkens and the dead roam the streets, cowering at the consequences.

And theres the protagonist, Jesus, who invites disaster, laments his appalling fate but somehow sustains both his courage and his love, even for his torturers. The story quivers with power and abuse, twist and reversal. In the hands of an Arthur Miller or a Martin McDonagh it would shatter the world anew.
Eight people, including four children, have been rescued after their catamaran capsized in waters off the coast of Brisbane.

Police say the catamaran capsized three kilometres off Wellington Point at about 8.20am, sending all those on board into the water.

A lucky escape for four adults and four children rescued at Wellington Point. Credit:QPS

They were rescued by another recreational vessel, and had no major injuries, despite none wearing life jackets.

Queensland police urged those out on the water over the Easter weekend to wear safety jackets.
Queensland's chief justice wants the state government to appoint more judges to help ease the burden caused by an increasing number of cases going through the courts.

In the Supreme Court Annual Report released this week, Queensland Chief Justice Catherine Holmes said the extra workload was putting increasing strain on the existing pool of judges.

Queensland Chief Justice Catherine Holmes calls for more judges. Credit:Mark Cranitch

"It hardly needs to be said that the Court needs a significant addition to the number of judges," Justice Holmes wrote.

"There are personal costs in the form of stress and fatigue caused to judges and staff grappling with an insurmountable workload."
Yatala Pies is bringing back its Cyclone Debbie pie this Easter long weekend to honour its one-year anniversary of the 2017 floods.

Yatala Pies introduced the tropical pineapple pie for the month of April in 2017, which raised $6000 for the Flood Foundation.

The landmark Yatala Pies store surrounded by floodwater in 2017. Credit:Seven News Brisbane

March 31 marks one year since flood waters tore through south-east Queenslands beloved pie shop and general manager Susan Porter said Yatala Pies is stronger than ever.

Weve bounced back ... but we will be repairing for years to come, Ms Porter said.
When Patsy Huggins arrived at Doveton College she had no qualifications, no confidence and bad teeth.

She enrolled her daughter in the schools early learning centre and then signed up for an education for herself.

The school also put her in touch with a dentist who fitted her out with dentures.

I had a car accident when I was 19 and lost some of my teeth and that put my self-confidence way down here, she said, pointing to the ground.
President Donald Trump. Photo: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images

Just as September 4, A.D. 476, is the somewhat arbitrary date many historians choose as the end of the Roman Empire, March 28, 2018, could be picked as the moment of the final collapse of conservative opposition to Donald Trump. The symbolic equivalent of the last Roman emperor being deposed by Odoacer is a column by National Review editor Rich Lowry. Two years ago, Lowrys magazine famously published a special issue denouncing Trump. Now Lowry acknowledges Trump is, and is likely to remain, a conservative Republican in good standing, and that the coterie of his critics among writers and activists on the Rightloosely referred to as Never Trumpoften sound like they are in denial. It is the final surrender after a long decline.

Lowry argues that, contrary to the predictions by Never Trump conservatives that Trump would betray the movement in office, he has hewed tightly to doctrine as president. Trump has, indeed, deviated less from conservative orthodoxy than any president in postwar American history. George W. Bush nominated Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, increased federal oversight of education, and, like Trump, imposed tariffs on steel. Ronald Reagan was practically a liberal by modern standards, repeatedly breaking with the right to increase taxes, liberalize immigration, sign an arms control pact with the Soviets, and sign a progressive tax reform, among other things.

As Lowry notes, previous Republicans have always used some elements of nationalism and populism to sell their program. Its no longer credible for conservatives to pretend that hes just going away, or that hes a wild outlier in the contemporary GOP, he acknowledges.

While the case that Trump is a legitimate conservative is persuasive on its own terms, what is missing from Lowrys analysis is any reckoning with conservatism itself. National Reviews editorial in 2016 suggested that, if conservatives ever did accept Trump  at the time such an outcome was merely hypothetical  it would reveal some deep sickness in the movement. If Trump were to become the president, the Republican nominee, or even a failed candidate with strong conservative support, what would that say about conservatives? National Review lamented. The movement that ground down the Soviet Union and took the shine, at least temporarily, off socialism would have fallen in behind a huckster.

It is impossible to deny that Trump is a huckster  since his election, Trump has, if anything, accelerated his lifelong habit of grifting and constant lying. But it is also true, from the conservative standpoint, that Trump is their huckster. That editorials bracing conclusion  Donald Trump is a menace to American conservatism who would take the work of generations and trample it underfoot in behalf of a populism as heedless and crude as the Donald himself seemed only to contemplate the damage he might do to conservative doctrine, as opposed to the country as a whole. Both the original NR anti-Trump editorial and Lowrys most recent effort share an unstated premise that fealty to conservatism is the only standard by which conservatives should judge a president.

***

In 1980, The New Republic published a cover editorial endorsing John Anderson for president. The blown-up version of the cover hung on the wall opposite my door when I worked there for many years, so I remember it well. What liberals want from government includes what everybody else wantssecurity, prosperity, personal freedom, honest and efficient governance, the editorial began. But liberals also want morean active remaking of society along more equitable lines, and promotion of humane values in the world.

One of the ways in which this editorial was misguided was in its assumption that only liberals had ideological criteria for a president. It made sense, at the time. Since the New Deal, Republican presidents had largely stood pat or advanced progressive domestic goals too slowly, while Democratic presidents advanced them rapidly. Starting with Reagan, that changed, and the Republican Party began using its power to roll back social welfare, progressive taxation, and business regulation. From the standpoint of 1980, it made sense to imagine the opposite of an effective liberal president was mere stasis.

But the editorial also took for granted that everybody, right and left, demanded some ideologically neutral baseline standard of performance in their government. It rejected Carter not only for his failure to advance liberal ideological goals but for competence and honesty. Of course, the Carter scandals that seemed so concerning at the time would barely register in Trumps administration, where mass chaos is the norm and revelations of what used to be a career-ending scandal pop up daily.

In 2015 and 2016, when Republicans still had the chance to choose a different nominee, conservative critics leaned heavily on their belief that Trump had disturbing authoritarian tendencies. Putin supports Donald Trump. The two men are authoritarian kindred spirits, warned one column in National Review in March 2016. Trump assures voters that he will use authoritarian power for good, to help those who feel  with good reason  ignored by both parties, wrote Ben Domenech. But the American experiment in self-government was the work of a generation that risked all to defeat a tyrannical monarch and establish a government of laws, not men. A government of the people, by the people, and for the people is precisely what the Constitution offers, and what is most threatened by great men impatient to impose their will on the nation.

Nothing in Trumps presidency has quelled these fears. Trump has repeatedly expressed, in word and deed, his belief that federal law-enforcement power must be personally loyal to him. He threatens policy retribution against the owners of news media whose reporting displeases him. He is using state power to enrich himself and his cronies in a way that far surpasses the standard of what used to be considered discrete scandals, and instead resembles the kind of oligarchies found in Russia, China, and the Middle East  governments that have not coincidentally won favor in Trumps Washington.

A handful of anti-Trump conservative intellectuals have remained in a state of open revolt. But they no longer see themselves as the leaders of a Republican Party in exile, who will return to their positions of authority after the storm passes. They have grasped that their differences with Trump are also differences with conservatism. The base belongs to Trump so thoroughly that every Republican primary is a contest of which candidate more deeply loves, and is loved by, Trump.

And the conservatives who warned that Trumps authoritarian instincts made him unfit for the presidency of a great republic have mostly withdrawn the accusation, even as new confirming evidence appears every week. It is almost impossible to avoid the conclusion that authoritarianism simply meant to them the fear that Trump would abuse his power in the service of an agenda other than their own. Trump has dispelled every fear that he would fail to uphold the conservative agenda, while confirming every fear that he does not respect the Constitution. They have revealed that conservatism has no neutral or abstract standards of good government. What was clear only to critics of conservatism before the election is now clear to conservatives themselves: An authoritarian can be a Republican in good standing.
The ALP will stamp itself on the Victorias next local council elections in a way not seen for decades as it seeks to reclaim political territory lost to the Greens.

On Thursday night, Labors powerful administrative committee unanimously endorsed an historic re-entry into grassroots politics, including by formally endorsing and supporting candidates for local councils.

This would be the new default position for council elections, the committee decided.

Greens member for Northcote. Labor believes the loss of inner city seats to the Greens is partly a result of losing touch with local communities through council elections. Credit:Darrian Traynor

The dramatic strategic rethink, flagged by The Age in November, follows an internal review of the partys poor showing at the 2016 council elections, which saw an outpouring of frustration at the ALP's disconnection from local communities.
Youre asked if youre able to attend, and of course I said 'yes'. Before I knew it, I was running down Little Lonsdale Street in my pyjamas. There were people looking at me, but the good thing is Melbourne is quite multicultural and colourful, so you blend in. The job that roused Ms Przedworski from her couch ended up being downgraded just as she arrived on the scene. But at least one recent case involving the app has resulted in life-saving assistance. An off-duty paramedic was at home earlier this year when he received an alert on his phone. His neighbour had collapsed after having a cardiac arrest and was not breathing. The volunteer's actions have been credited with helping to save the neighbours life.

Authorities have emphasised that the app is not a replacement for emergency services. Instead, it is aimed at getting help to the scene in those crucial moments before the ambulance arrives. The information on the app comes from the triple-zero operator. In an emergency, minutes matter, said Ambulance Victorias GoodSAM project manager Mike Ray. Every minute that CPR and defibrillation are delayed, the chances of survival decreases by up to 10 per cent. And if someone has been defibrillated before emergency services get there, they have a 62 per cent increased chance of survival. The app is set to be officially rolled out later this year, when it will be expanded to other responders, such as doctors, nurses, firefighters, police, medical students and other trained first aiders. Ambulance Victoria chief executive Tony Walker said the closest available ambulance will be simultaneously sent to these patients. In some parts of the state, the fire brigade will also attend.

Ambulance Victoria chief executive Tony Walker. This app has been operating in London for more than a year and is being taken up by other ambulance services in the UK and internationally, Mr Walker said. In addition to connecting cardiac arrest patients with trusted responders, the app also connects people with a nearby defibrillator, which delivers an electrical shock to the heart if necessary. Ambulance Victoria is encouraging anyone who owns or oversees a defibrillator to ensure it is registered with them. We have 4000 defibrillators registered across the state, but we think thats about one in five of the ones that are out there, said Mr Ray.

Theres potentially up to 15,000 others that we just dont know about, and they are all over the place." Mr Ray said defibrillators could be used by anyone, as the machines could guide operators. So if you see someone who has collapsed, and is not breathing normally, or not breathing at all, we really encourage anyone to grab it off the wall and turn it on, he said. Despite her demanding day job, Ms Przedworski said it was an easy choice to become a GoodSAM responder. You cant place a value on life. Its intangible, she said.
A woman is in a critical condition after she was rescued from the surf by passers-by at Lorne Beach.

The 28-year-old from Keilor East was walking along the rocks near Stoney Creek when she was swept into the water just after 10am on Friday.

She was spotted by passers-by, who jumped into the water, pulled her from the surf and performed CPR on her.

Police, paramedics and surf lifesavers also worked to save her.

Ambulance Victoria spokeswoman Lana Wilson said the woman was being flown to the Royal Melbourne Hospital with critical injuries.
At first Michaelia Cash repeatedly denied in parliament that any of her staffers had been involved in leaking the information. She and the staffer in question briefed the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, about her office's complete innocence of any leaking. This was so that Turnbull himself could issue bland denials of any funny business during Question Time in the House of Representatives. Because it is unthinkable that Turnbull or Cash would lie, this suggests that the staffer was less than frank with his minister and his prime minister. Hours later, much to Senator Cash's embarrassment, a media organisation fingered the staffer as the source of the tip-off. Cash then insisted she had not been told, and had not known. Luckily for her the staffer immediately quit. This put him outside any necessity to answer questions about who told him, when, and how he had forgotten to tell his minister and the prime minister of what he had done. If Senator Cash, or anyone else, asked any "exit" questions, she has not shared with us what she found out, or why she was betrayed and left looking stupid. One presumes that the staffer did not let the right hand know what the left hand was doing for "plausible deniability." If so this involved noble self-sacrifice, though one would think that a prime minister with leadership qualifications would not be amused about being misled by omission during his briefing. Others might wonder about his incuriosity, before or after he became aware that he had been roped into the cover-up. But AFP inquiries do not seem to have extended to any information Turnbull (or perhaps his office for plausible deniability purposes) has subsequently gleaned.

Some of the clues liberally strewn around suggest that PR people associated with the Fair Work Ombudsman had some advance knowledge of the raids, and were eager to please the minister's office by giving it advance notice. But it is also a notorious fact that the AFP always give the office of its own minister, then the Minister for Justice, a "heads-up" whenever anything politically sensitive or likely to attract media attention is about to occur. Of course, those involved in this AFP "liaison" could never anticipate that any such information might be further shared around government, particularly among people able to (and likely to) exploit it for crude political purposes. And, likewise, the relationship between some media reporters and their AFP "snouts" is so good, and so much bound up in a reward-and-punishment ethos, that the AFP can give advance tip-offs to trusted journalists certain that they would never be dobbed in. A measure of this can be seen from the way that some media organisation reacted to the disclosure that Cash's office was involved in the leak by accusing the discloser of a breach of journalistic ethics. Some might recall that 10 months ago, the AFP made some other very high profile raids  this time on a number of people accused of a $160 million plus conspiracy to defraud the taxation office through the use of straw companies to skim taxes on payrolls. Among those charged was the son of a senior tax official, a person who found himself the subject of charges after he was said to have made internal inquiries about a possible investigation into his son. The AFP was relatively late into the investigation, though it took the lion's share of the credit and milked the publicity for all it was worth, including with handing out sophisticated flow-charts, and detailed explanations of the alleged frauds. A good deal of behind-the-scenes help in arranging assistance with photographs of suspects was also involved.

There was a big press conference, helpfully made available on downloadable tape for any media not able to be there, and lengthy press statements. The AFP media office was well prepared, having been given comprehensive briefing materials several weeks in advance, as well as having had extensive discussions with investigating detectives, and help in devising some of the flow charts given to the media. I always wish the AFP well in their battle against crime. With its current culture it needs all the help it can get. If the defendants are guilty, as a good detail of the AFP material plainly implied, I hope that they receive condign punishment. But I am old fashioned enough to believe that people are innocent until they are proven to be otherwise. I don't like trial by media, or attempts by police and prosecutors to "poison the well" by the distribution of plainly prejudicial material in triumphalist press statements. Perhaps the law about the sub judice rule has changed while I was asleep. But a good deal of the AFP-sourced material that went into the public domain after arrests were made and charges laid seemed to my not inexperienced eye to breach the rule. Badly. Cuteness with claims that the AFP gave the press conferences and issued the statements "before" the sub judice rule came into operation would not, in any ethical operation, cut the mustard; the beneficiaries were plainly going to be publishing after the accused people appeared in court. One can be sure, we hope, that the police did not hand out the information with a view to prejudicing trials, which will be, one assumes, some considerable time away yet anyway. I expect that all they wanted was to give themselves, and a few senior office bureaucrats keen on some personal publicity, a big pat on the back for a job well done.

There's a double standard by which police hide behind the sub judice rule when it suits them, so as to allow them to avoid embarrassing questions, ws the discriminant? Nothing to do with rights to a fair trial or the interests of justice, or even the seriousness of alleged crime. It's whether it makes the police, or its bosses, look good. And, as I pointed out at the time, there's a long history going back to the origins of the AFP with the Greek Social Security case, through the comprehensive mishandling of the Haneef cases and other initial PR triumphs, that "the more overblown, prejudicial and self-serving the initial AFP propaganda, and the more senior the officers present claiming personal credit, the more likely the affair will end, much later, in tears, damages and political embarrassment. But never demotions, apologies or accountability." With the tax raids, the cynic could not help noticing that the day after the raids, press conference, and court hearings that a number of media organs knew a good deal more than had been told them officially, or accountably, by the AFP. There were detailed profiles of players, accounts of love affairs gone wrong, descriptions of patterns of extravagant expenditure, and stories of former beauty queens being used as bait, and more. It invited questions about how journalists, even very good ones, were able to turn around stories, and garner so much extra information, so quickly after a press conference. Were some of them on the drip? I put in an FOI request looking for details of how the AFP media unit "managed" the affair. This week  10 months after the request, and delays caused by the AFP attempt to levy high charges, the intervention of the Information Commissioner's office and still further delays -- I received some very half-hearted disclosure, with anything "sensitive" blanketed behind heavy claims of being exempt from the FOI Act. And claims that any public interest in favour of disclosure were swamped by cogent public interest considerations against it. It might prejudice an investigation currently going on. The AFP "media strategy", in draft from three weeks before the raids, is apparently entirely exempt, even as it was, presumably, about a strategy to tell the public what was happening. We are suddenly told that much material (in the AFP media unit) is exempt because it might prejudice a fair trial. A cogent public interest consideration was that "if information concerning the documents was revealed it may compromise the AFP's operations and damage relationships with external stakeholders". Presumably, the "stakeholders" are tame journalists, or those in "trusted" relationships blissfully unaware of how much, and how cynically, they are being used.

More, disclosure of media unit material "might have a substantial adverse effect on the conduct of similar operations in future." We are not told whether these similar operations are on the media or alleged tax miscreants. And, "if such information was disclosed, it might prejudice security, law enforcement and public safety". What? Details of how the media was used to promote an AFP agenda? Golly. I did not realise that the integrity of AFP operations were on so delicate a thread. The FOI decision is now under appeal, which, given the further delays they will milk to the utmost, will no doubt suit the AFP just fine. No doubt just the same sorts of public interest considerations will forever prevent the AFP "sharing" details of its investigation into the leak to and from Senator Cash's office. Somehow one just knows that all of the AFP's problems of leadership, efficiency, effectiveness, independence of political considerations and integrity will disappear now that the organisation sits inside the Home Affairs portfolio of Peter Dutton, an ex-Queensland cop, and Mike Pezzullo, who, in a wonderful display of Easter leadership and redemption has shown he can find compassion in his heart for any sinner against the public interest.
The ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal has urged the territory government to review its planning laws, after Coles tried to quash an appeal against its Woolworths car park redevelopment on a technicality.

In a decision handed down late on Thursday, ACAT overturned ACTPLA's decision to approve the controversial mixed-use development in Dickson, finding it broke too many planning rules to go ahead.

Dickson and Downer residents joined an appeal against the Coles development funded by Woolworths landlord Charter Hall. Front. Jane Goffman and Ron Brent. Behind, Denis O'Brien, Jacqui Pinkava, Rosemary Urquhart, Paul Costagan, Robin d'Arcy, and John Carroll. Credit:Jamila Toderas

But it can be revealed Coles tried to narrow the scope of appeal by arguing ACAT didn't have the power to review discretionary aspects of the ACT Planning and Land Authority's decision, because of ambiguous wording in the legislation.

The wording related to the right of review for development applications in the merit track stream, one of three assessment tracks the ACT's planning system uses to approve developments.
Yet nerve agent attack on British soil was something else: a brazen contravention of chemical weapons conventions, the first offensive use of such weapons in Europe since World War II. It was a tipping point. And while experts predict Russian President Vladimir Putin will continue with such behaviour because it suits him politically to pick fights with the West, capitals such as Canberra, Washington and London are telling him that such barefaced affronts as the Novichok attack will not be tolerated. If the West is to sustain its position, the world can expect more confrontation. Strategic scholars regard Russia as a revanchist power - under Putin it wants to restore its lost greatness and expunge what it sees as the humiliation of its Cold War defeat. It lacks many of the fundamentals to do so. Its economy is weak and overly reliant on oil and gas. Its population is ageing. Corruption is rampant. Investigators wear protective suits at the scene of the nerve agent attack in England earlier this month. Credit:AP

To achieve its ambitions it therefore relies heavily on hard power: its considerable military might - including a massive nuclear arsenal - and its prowess, developed over many decades, at spying, manipulation, disruption and interference. With a president who spent 16 years at the KGB, with at least six members of its national security council as former KGB members and with a growing share of its federal budget going towards intelligence agencies, Russia is devoting more of its efforts to spying and interference than it has in decades. Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop meets with Russian ambassador to Australia Grigory Logvinov. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen In Australia, it is no secret that while China is the major preoccupation of the intelligence community when it comes to foreign interference, Russia has persisted and indeed grown as a concern. Turnbull said as much when he introduced his governments foreign interference legislation to the Parliament in December, accusing Russia of wreaking havoc across the democratic world.

ASIO head Duncan Lewis told a hearing of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security last week: When looking at events such as the reported assassination in the United Kingdom a week or two ago ... we should not consider ourselves immune from such extreme acts. While Australia is not a first-order priority for Moscow, it is significant because it is a Five Eyes member. Its intelligence efforts in Australia have grown, informed observers in Canberra say, partly because Moscow is doing more spying overall, but also because its interest in the Pacific region has grown. It has formed a defence and intelligence relationship with Fiji for instance, which is run partly out of Canberra. The government resolved to expel two Russian spies on the advice of Australian intelligence agencies. They were the two whose expulsion was deemed most effective, though it is likely there are other undeclared agents among the 14 remaining diplomatic staff. The view within the Australian government is that the worldwide effort will cause Russia pain and disruption: 150 spies sent home - some of whom could have been in place for years - is not small beans for a country like Russia.

Braced for retaliation: Australia is one of 27 nations to expel Russian diplomats. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen Australia is somewhat unusual among the 27 countries that have expelled diplomats, being the only one that is not either in Europe or a member of NATO and therefore doesnt have Russia as an immediate strategic preoccupation. Australia is joining partly because Britain is a close partner but more importantly because right now the perilous state of the international system of rules and norms is of paramount concern to Canberra. And on Friday, the Turnbull government was bracing for an imminent retaliation from Moscow. Canberra has 10 diplomats in Moscow, and it is possible that there are no spies among them. The Australian Secret Intelligence Service is not a huge organisation and it concentrates its finite resources heavily on Asia. As a recipient of US intelligence under the Five Eyes sharing network, there is little sense in ASIS doubling up with the Americans on a patch where it cant be competitive. Loading

So where will this tit-for-tat exchange leave us? Part of the challenge, experts say, is that Putin actually wants tensions with the West. Kyle Wilson, who served as a diplomat in Russia and an intelligence analyst with the Office of National Assessments and is now a visiting fellow at the Australian National University, said Moscow would not be particularly perturbed by the diplomatic expulsions. Theres an assumption [Putin] wants good relations [with the West]. He doesnt want good relations, he said. If he does want a rapprochement, it would only be on his terms, Wilson said. That means Russia would have to be treated as equal to the US and China, NATO would be abolished, US troops would leave Europe, and Russia should be free to dictate to the smaller countries to its west and south. Poisoned: Russian ex-spy Sergei Skripa, 66, and his daughter Yulia Skripal, 33. Credit:AP

Provocations such as the Skripal poisoning serve his interests - rallying his most important constituency in the Russian secret services and feeding his narrative to the Russian people that the West hates Russia, which is crucial to sustaining his power at home. Its a kind of drumbeat which has become louder and now has become a kind of cacophony: Our enemies, who hate us, are virtually massing at the gates'," says Wilson. Its the oldest card in the political pack. We are surrounded by enemies. This is a time when you need two things: stability and a strong leader'. He cited one respected Russia observer who said the coming years under Putin would be characterised by three things: it would be reactionary, obscurantist and isolationist. Illustration: Richard Giliberto Michael Shoebridge, a former senior Defence official who has recently joined the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said the expulsions by 27 countries were an important symbol to show Britain was not alone in deeming the use of a chemical weapon on British soil as an egregious breach of Russias own commitments to international conventions.

But he added: I dont think this will change Russias behaviour. To actually affect the Russian leaderships behaviour, its got to be a more sustained set of steps than that, he said. Shoebridge said Julie Bishop was right to highlight chemical weapons conventions - to which Russia is a signatory - in her meeting with the Russian Ambassador Grigory Logvinov on Wednesday afternoon. Loading As a member of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, Russia is subject to levers such as so-called challenge inspections that Britain and its friends could demand of Moscow.
His response was Jesuitical, according to veteran political journalist Michelle Grattan. There is a difference between telling someone he wont be out of pocket and telling someone that youre going to have to pay him money, Abbott told OBrien. Whats the difference? OBrien asked, quite reasonably. If you say to me, Kerry, you wont be out of pocket for this, arent I entitled to assume that means youre going to guarantee the funds for me? Abbott said that it was an entirely contingent matter and obfuscated further. The interview in its entirety is a master-class in evasion. Its transcript should be mandatory reading for journalism students.

But that is all in the past. This week Hanson compared herself to that other great political prisoner, Nelson Mandela, saying that after 28 years in prison, he forgave and he forgot. And I think thats what we need to do. When it comes to grandiosity, she is the Kanye West of politics, and thats among a strong field of contenders. Pauline Hanson after she was released from jail in 2003. Abbott, who these days struggles to find a platform outside his weekly fireside chats on radio 2GB, settled right in, praising Hanson for saying the unsayable that we needed to hear. Her willingness to let the past be the past is a sign of decency which is all too rare these days in our public life, Abbott said, once again proving his superior ability to troll his critics while maintaining an appearance of sincerity.

Abbott is now a Liberal Party renegade in search of a political constituency, and on constant look-out for ways to keep himself alive in the public mind as an alternative Liberal leader. This week The Australian Financial Review reported he is positioning himself for a second stint as Opposition leader, should the Turnbull government lose at the next election. Abbott tweeted that the story was joke journalism but did not deny its central assertion. So hes doing book launches. Hell, hes probably available for weddings and Bar Mitzvahs too. He got a few headlines out of it - a remark he made about that old adage that you are always better the second time around raised eyebrows, and probably hackles, as did a comment about politics being a game of snakes and ladders, and sometimes you land on a snake. It was a passive aggressive dig worthy of the finest mother-in-law.

As a nod to Hanson and One Nation, Abbott declared that he believed the Liberal Party should give preferences to One Nation, as an ally. In the small print he acknowledged that he has absolutely no say over preference deals, but even so, the comment was extraordinary given how badly preference swapping went for both the Liberals and One Nation in the West Australian state election in March last year. In the November 2017 Queensland state election, One Nation directed its preferences to go against all sitting members, which was a decisive blow against the Liberal National Partys hopes of winning government. As Abbott well knows, in the marginal seats under threat from One Nation, any idea of advantageous preference deals would be political suicide. Any seat-by-seat benefit to co-operating with One Nation would have to be weighed against the inevitable criticism the Coalition, and Malcolm Turnbull, would cop for getting into bed with the far right of Australian conservatism.

And why would the Coalition need to curry favour with One Nation when they are so acquiescent in the Senate? After a small show of independence, Hanson fell into line with the government over its company tax cuts, after securing 1000 apprenticeships for regional Queensland. Her voter base is unlikely to ever see much of a fillip from the policy (if implemented). Analysis of the postcodes in Queensland which had the highest One Nation vote shows they are some of Australias poorest, with average incomes well below the national. It would have to be the trickliest of trickle-downs for any wage increases or economic pickup resulting from the company tax cuts to reach her voters.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has urged all Australians to reach out to the less fortunate and spend time with loved ones over the Easter long weekend.

The Prime Minister said the festival of Easter was about "life and renewal".

"Jesus' example of love, sacrifice and service to others is one that inspires us all and it's a reminder that Easter is also a time to remember and reach out to those in need, the less fortunate, the homeless, the lonely and the sick," Mr Turnbull said in a video message posted on Facebook.

He paid tribute to police, fire and ambulance workers as well as nurses and doctors working over the long weekend.

With a number of states and territories still recovering from fires, cyclones and floods, he praised the efforts of emergency service workers and said natural disasters had "done their worst but brought out Australian character at its very best".
President Trump offers confusing remarks in Richfield, Ohio, on March 29, 2018. Photo: Ty Wright/Bloomberg via Getty Images

At an event in Ohio on Thursday to drum up enthusiasm for his infrastructure plan, President Donald Trump said U.S. forces would be leaving Syria very soon, causing listeners both within and outside the government to wonder what on earth he was talking about.

By the way, were knocking the hell out of ISIS, he said. Were coming out of Syria, like, very soon. Let the other people take care of it now. Very soon  very soon were coming out. We are going to have 100 percent of the caliphate, as they call it, sometimes referred to as land, taking it all back, quickly, quickly. But we are going to be coming out of there real soon.

He followed up that bold promise by repeating his beloved claim that the U.S. had already spent $7 trillion prosecuting its various wars in the Middle East, which is not even close to accurate, and adding that if we kept the oil, we wouldnt have ISIS  because surely plundering Iraqs most valuable resources would have engendered no ill will toward the U.S. and kept radical Islam at bay.

In a speech full of whoppers like these, theres a good chance Trump was blowing smoke when he said wed be leaving Syria soon, especially as this was just one of many bizarre non sequiturs with which he peppered his characteristically unfocused speech. After all, Trump is well-known to play fast and loose with facts when he gets into rally mode.

Nonetheless, what we have here is a statement from the president asserting some vague timeline for the withdrawal of the 2,000 U.S. soldiers currently on the ground in Syria helping allied Syrian factions recapture territory from Islamic State militants, along with the civilian officials from the State Department working on stabilization efforts in these areas.

The statement came as news to the departments of Defense and State. A defense official told CNN that Trumps statement contradicted military commanders assessment of the situation in Syria and their recommended course of action, while State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said she was not aware of any policy to withdraw U.S. forces.

A quick withdrawal from Syria is also at odds with what literally every relevant official has said on the matter in the recent past, including Secretary of Defense James Mattis, incoming national security adviser John Bolton, and both former secretary of State Rex Tillerson and his designated replacement, CIA Director Mike Pompeo. Within the past two months, both the State Department and the Pentagon have indicated that the administration envisions keeping U.S. soldiers on the ground in Syria and Iraq indefinitely and furthermore, sees no need to ask Congresss permission to do so.

Meanwhile, if Boltons fever dream of a full-on war with Iran comes true, Syria will doubtless be a theater in that war  as indeed it already has become for Iran and Israel.

The most likely scenario, therefore, is that Trump was making an idle boast and that he has since received calls from his advisers explaining to him that actually, no, were not leaving Syria soon and that it probably wasnt a great idea to say we were. (It is hardly churlish to note that in doing so, Trump was contradicting his own dictum of never discussing his military plans in advance and doing the very thing for which he repeatedly lambasted President Barack Obama.)

Still, Trump is the commander-in-chief and if he orders the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Syria, withdraw they shall. But if the president did indeed mean what he said, there are a couple of reasons why a speedy disengagement from Syria might not be in the best interests of the U.S., Syria, the Middle East, or the world.

Thus far in 2018, the U.S. role in Syria has become more complicated, not less, as the war itself has grown even bloodier and taken on new dimensions. Right now, Syrian government forces backed by Russia and Iran are close to driving the last rebel faction out of eastern Ghouta after a relentless campaign that has killed hundreds and displaced hundreds of thousands. Turkey, meanwhile, continues to press its campaign against Kurdish militias in the north, which has pitted a NATO ally against one of the U.S.s most reliable Syrian partners in the fight against ISIS.

On top of the obvious risk of giving ISIS an opportunity to regroup, an abrupt American disengagement from Syria in the near future would leave the country at the mercy of everyone else who is still fighting over it. When Trump says he wants to let the other people take care of it now, the other people he is talking about are Bashar al-Assad, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Vladimir Putin  thuggish dictators united in their lack of regard for the lives and best interests of the Syrian people.

Wars, Machiavelli wrote, begin when you will, but they do not end when you please. This is a lesson successive U.S. governments have learned (or rather, failed to learn) the hard way in the greater Middle East over nearly two decades. Much as Obama discovered that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were much harder to end than they had been to start, Trump may soon find that our involvement in Syria, regardless of its merits, is not easily reversed.

The president would also do well to heed his own criticism of Obamas withdrawal from Iraq: Just because a foreign entanglement was ill-advised to begin with, that doesnt mean it can be brought to an end at any time without making things even worse.
Apple chief executive Tim Cook took some swipes at a couple of fellow tech giants on Wednesday, appearing to accuse Facebook of selling its customers as products and taking aim at Amazon's bid to find a home for its new campus.

During a Chicago town hall event with MSNBC and the technology news website Recode, Cook was asked what he would do if he were in the shoes of Mark Zuckerberg right now. The Facebook CEO is sinking deeper into a public relations crisis over accusations that his company did not properly protect users' privacy.

"What would I do? I wouldn't be in that situation," Cook replied.
Last week, I checked in to a hotel in Tokyo and was asked whether I'd like the Financial Times or The Japan Times delivered to my room the next day. When I woke up, instead of frantically checking Twitter to see who had left Survivor: White House Edition overnight, and why morning TV hosts were debating the merits of another Stolen Generation, I got informed story by story, page by page. The news wasn't good, but the experience was soothing; time itself seemed to extend.

Illustration by Simon Letch.

A rash of recent news stories consider what it's like to unplug. In The New York Times, a former corporate executive moved to Ohio to erect what he calls a "blockade" against all political news, and, in a separate piece, the Times tech reporter concluded that reading the "dead tree" version of the newspaper for two months did wonders for his mental health. Slate wondered what Twitter would look like without all the stats on who liked what, and a Vice writer spent a week in the woods without a computer and came away "calmer than ever".

The digital giants know something's afoot: that we are increasingly unhappy with how technology makes us feel. Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg announced at the start of this year that he wanted to prioritise "meaningful social interactions" to ensure "time spent on Facebook is time well spent". Twitter is slowly attempting to make its platform less friendly to Nazis and misogynists. And YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki recently unveiled plans to counter "fake news" clips with reliable news content, whether users wanted it or not.

But you're ahead of the curve on all this. You're most likely reading this in hard copy, unencumbered by browser windows and notification alerts and pop-up ads for cars which take up the whole screen. These are all reasons why it's preferable, psychologically speaking, to read something on paper. But I think there's another reason people in their millions are turning away from the digital world. It's because the information available online is infinite. Print is finite.
Phnom Penh Cambodia's inter-country adoption system was rife with corruption and many children given up for adoption overseas were not orphans, a local NGO says.

In many cases, the Cambodian parents did not consent to giving their children up for adoption, the Cambodian rights group Licadho said on Friday in a new report titled Cambodia's Stolen Children.

An unamed orphan at Tonle Sap lake, near Siem Reap, Cambodia, in 2013. Credit:Shutterstock

Many children adopted overseas between the 1980s and 2009 were not orphans and their birth parents placed them in the orphanages due to poverty, thinking they would eventually return home, the report said.
Fort Lauderdale: The suspect in the Florida high school shooting that killed 17 people is getting letters of support in jail including fan mail and pictures of scantily-clad women in addition to hundreds of dollars in contributions to his commissary account.

Nikolas Cruz appearing in court for a status hearing in Fort Lauderdale on March 13. Credit:Sun-Sentinel/AP

Teenage girls, women and men are sending letters and photographs of themselves and Facebook groups have been started to discuss how to help Nikolas Cruz, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports.

Cruz is charged in the killings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, and is being held in the Broward County Jail. Prosecutors said they are seeking the death penalty.
Orlando: A Florida jury has cleared the widow of the Pulse nightclub gunman of all charges in the massacre that killed 49 people.

They found her not guilty of federal counts that she tried to mislead investigators and aided her husband Omar Mateen in the attack.

Noor Salman, 31, could have faced life in prison had she been convicted of federal charges of obstruction of justice and aiding Mateen in providing support to the Islamic State militant group.

Instead, the US District Court jury acquitted Salman after roughly 12 hours of deliberation since Wednesday.
A small bomb left outside a clothing shop on a street in Istanbul injured 14 people on Sunday, police and news reports said.

The bomb appeared to be a type of explosive that usually makes a loud noise but causes limited damage, police said. The official was speaking on condition of anonymity because of rules that bar civil servants from speaking to journalists without prior authorisation.

The state-run Anatolia news agency said 14 people were injured in the blast, which comes amid heightened tension in Turkey over attacks by separatist Kurdish rebels.

Last month, a suicide bomb attack in Ankara killed eight people and injured dozens of others. Turkish officials blamed the rebel Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, for the attack. The group denied involvement.

Militant leftists and radical Islamists are also active in the country.
Buenos Aires: When Dalal Abd de Massad went to the Darwin cemetery in the Falkland Islands this week it was the first time that she had hugged the gravestone with her son's name.

"I was finally able to cry at his grave," Abd said of her son, Daniel. "I talked to him, told him everything that happened in these years. "I hugged that white cross as if I was hugging him."

he relative of an Argentinian soldier visits the Darwin Military Cemetery on Falkland, or Malvinas Islands, after the tombs were finally named. Credit:AP

Abd and her husband, Osvaldo Said Massad, were part of a delegation of 250 people, mostly family members of fallen soldiers, who travelled to the disputed islands for a ceremony to mark the identification of 90 Argentinian service members who died in a 1982 war with Britain and had been buried as unknown soldiers.

For 36 years, the plaque on Daniel Massad's grave said "Argentinian soldier known only to God." Now, thanks to the work of forensic scientists, families have finally learnt where their loved ones are buried.
La Paz: Six people have been killed and dozens are injured after a street vendor's gas canister exploded near the route of the world renowned folkloric Carnival in the Bolivian city of Oruro.

Deputy Commander Freddy Betancurt says the blast took place on a street parallel to where participants were making the folkloric entrance to Oruro's Carnival, one of the most important in Bolivia. It created an expansive wave of at least 50 metres.

Betancurt said police believe Saturday's accident was caused by hot oil weakening the hose to the vendor's gas canister.
App-Domain  a new Domain is born

Posted by Publisher Telecommunication

Now there?s a more secure domain for apps. From games to news to education to business, the App-Domain is the perfect home to promote apps on the web. The .app domain is a great place to showcase a unique and trustworthy destination, so users know they?re getting the real thing. Whether providing a relevant download link, deep linking, sharing screenshots, release notes, or reviews, .app is the place to share your app with the world.

Apps make the mobile world go ?round, and now they have their own more secure home on the web: the App-Domain, the most relevant domain extension for mobile apps.

You can use your App-Domain to showcase a unique and trustworthy destination, as a relevant download link, for deep linking, or for sharing screenshots, release notes, and reviews. Get your App-Domain now to start sharing your app with the world.

Here are the start dates for each launch phase of the App-Domains:

March 29th: Sunrise

May 1st: Early Access Period

The \Early Access Period\ works like a \dutch auction\. Each day you pay less for the access to the registration environment. Please contact us by secura@domainregistry.de to get more information about the Early Access Period.

May 8th: General Availability

The Sunrise Period of App-Domains has started on March 29, 2018. During this period, only companies that have registered their trademark with the Trademark Clearinghouse will be able to register. It is still time to register the trademark with the Trademark Clearing House and subsequently register preferred App-Domains.

But even for those without brands, it is time to act. Many ICANN registrars, such as Secura GmbH, accept pre-orders for App-Domains. The principle of greyhound racing also applies at the level of registrars: \First comes, first serves\.

Key points about the TLD:

The App-Domain is an open TLD with a focus on improved security. The entire .app TLD has been added to the HSTS preload list, which means registrants will have to provision and set up SSL certificates in order for their content to be loaded in modern browsers

The App-Domain is a secure namespace, meaning that HTTPS is required for all .app websites. You can buy your App-Domain now, but in order for it to work properly in browsers you must first configure HTTPS serving.

The relationship between a better ranking in search engines and new top-level domains has already been proven in a study of Searchmetrics for .berlin domains. Websites with .berlin domains often rank better with regional searches in Google than sites with .de domains and .com domains. The result of the Search Metric study can be summarised as follows:

?In 42% of searches, .berlin domains rank better locally.?

Another study by Total Websites in Houston shows that the results of the Searchmetrics study are in principle applicable to all new top-level domains, including the new App-Domains. Total Websites notes that Google sees the domain extensions of new top-level domains as an important criterion for the evaluation of a domain and, therefore, concludes that:

?It\-\-s clear that the new top-level domains improve the ranking in search engines.?

Marc Mueller

http://www.domainregistry.de/app-domain.html (English)

http://www.domainregistry.de/app-domains.html (German)
Sibanye-Stillwater releases its Annual suite of reports, the Notice of AGM and No Change Report

Posted by Publisher Internet

Sibanye-Stillwater (Tickers JSE: SGL and NYSE: SBGL) is pleased to advise that the 2017 Integrated Annual Report, Annual Financial Report, Company Financial Statements, Summarised Report and Notice of Annual General Meeting and Mineral Resources and Mineral Reserves supplement as well as other relevant supplementary documentation, have been released on its website at https://www.sibanyestillwater.com/investors/financial-reporting/annual-reports/2017 .

The Summarised Report including the Notice of the AGM to shareholders will be posted today.

The Group?s auditor?s KPMG has audited the 2017 consolidated financial statements and its unqualified audit report is open for inspection at the Company?s offices. The information previously published in the preliminary results released on 22 February 2018 has not changed.

Notice of Annual General Meeting

The Annual General Meeting of the Company (AGM) for the year ended 31 December 2017 will be held at SA region Academy, Rietkloof 349, Glenharvie, 1786, South Africa, on 30 May 2018 at 09:00 (CAT). The AGM will conduct the business as stated in the notice of the meeting, a copy of which can be found on https://www.sibanyestillwater.com/investors/financial-reporting/annual-reports/2017.

In terms of section 59(1) (b) of the Companies Act, 71 of 2008, the record date for the purpose of determining which shareholders are entitled to participate in and vote at the AGM (being the date on which a shareholder must be registered in the Company?s securities register in order to participate in and vote at the AGM) is 28 May 2018. The last day to trade in order to be registered in the Company?s securities register is 23 May 2018.

FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS

This announcement includes ?forward-looking statements? within the meaning of the ?safe harbour? provisions of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements may be identified by the use of words such as ?target?, ?will?, ?forecast?, ?expect?, ?potential?, ?intend?, ?estimate?, ?anticipate?, ?can? and other similar expressions that predict or indicate future events or trends or that are not statements of historical matters. The forward-looking statements set out in this announcement involve a number of known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, many of which are difficult to predict and generally beyond the control of Sibanye-Stillwater, that could cause Sibanye-Stillwater?s actual results and outcomes to be materially different from historical results or from any future results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this announcement. Sibanye-Stillwater undertakes no obligation to update publicly or release any revisions to these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this announcement or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events, save as required by applicable law.

?
The man in the beige tie is White House personnel director Johnny DeStefano. Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

A core premise of Donald Trumps hit television show was that he is extremely good at making hiring decisions. This was also a core premise of his 2016 campaign: Whatever the real-estate mogul might lack in conventional qualifications for the presidency would be rendered irrelevant by his supreme talent for hiring the best and most serious people.

In his first 14 months on the job, the president hasnt quite fulfilled that campaign promise. Trump began his tenure with a covert agent of the Turkish government as his top national security adviser, a neurosurgeon turned snake-oil supplements salesman as his head of Housing and Urban Development, and a 36-year-old real-estate heir  with no experience in government or policymaking  as his point man for veterans health care, criminal justice reform, government innovation, the Israel-Palestine conflict, and the opioid epidemic. Trump has himself evinced disappointment in his own personnel decisions, burning through senior staff members at a faster clip than any president in modern memory.

Meanwhile, the administration has left a historic number of lower-level administrative positions unfilled. And an unusually high percentage of the junior staffers whom they did hire have proven unable to pass FBI background checks, and/or been hastily escorted from the White House by security.

The fundamental causes of the Trump administrations personnel woes have long been clear. Donald Trump is not an expert in business management, just a real-estate heir with a gift for media manipulation. He put Chris Christie in charge of staffing his administration when it still looked like that administration would never come to be  then abruptly fired Christie and threw out all of his work, shortly after winning the 2016 election. And Trump spent most of that campaign portraying virtually everyone with conventional qualifications for running a White House as members of a corrupt political Establishment that had betrayed the American people.

But on Friday, for the first time, we finally got some insight into the proximate cause of the White Houses personnel woes: The office in charge of staffing the White House is, itself, run by a historically small staff composed largely of 20-somethings with no relevant experience, a fondness for chugging Smirnoff Ice and vaping tobacco during office hours  and, in a few cases, forged resumes and criminal histories.

These revelations were brought to you by a hard-hitting, gut-busting investigative report on the state of Trumps Presidential Personnel Office (PPO) published by the Washington Post Friday. The expose is well worth reading in full, but heres a quick rundown of its key findings:

 Under Trump, the PPO has never had more than 30 employees, which is less than a third of the number it had under his predecessors.

 Most of those 30 are under 30 years old, and have no political or management experience beyond involvement in the Trump campaign.

 That said, these staffers are, at least, extremely cool:

Even as the demands to fill government mounted, the PPO offices on the first floor of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building became something of a social hub, where young staffers from throughout the administration stopped by to hang out on couches and smoke electronic cigarettes, known as vaping, current and former White House officials said.

PPO leaders hosted happy hours last year in their offices that included beer, wine and snacks for dozens of PPO employees and White House liaisons who work in federal agencies, White House officials confirmed. In January, they played a drinking game in the office called Icing to celebrate the deputy directors 30th birthday. Icing involves hiding a bottle of Smirnoff Ice, a flavored malt liquor, and demanding that the person who discovers it, in this case the deputy director, guzzle it.

 Some of the people in charge of vetting Trumps appointments lied on their resumes, and have histories of drunken, disorderly conduct (not that either of those things should render them unemployable for life, but still seems noteworthy).

One of the newcomers was a former Trump campaign worker named Caroline Wiles. Wiles, then 30, is the daughter of Susan Wiles, a prominent lobbyist and political operative in Florida.The younger Wiles has an unusual background for a senior White House official. On a resume she submitted to the state of Florida, she said she had completed course work at Flagler College in Florida. On her LinkedIn page, she simply lists Flagler under education. A Flagler spokesman said she never finished her degree  In 2005, she had her drivers license suspended for driving while intoxicated, police records show. In 2007, she was arrested for driving while intoxicated and arrested for passing a worthless check.

Another special assistant to the president is Max Miller, 29, a Marine reservist and former Trump campaign workerMiller said he attended Cleveland State University from 2007 to 2011. A Cleveland State spokesman confirmed that Miller, who previously attended other schools, graduated in 2013 In 2007, he was charged with assault, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest after punching another male in the back of the head and running away from police, police records showIn 2009, he was charged with underage drinking, a case that also was later dismissed under a first offenders program. The following year, he pleaded guilty to a disorderly conduct charge related to another altercation in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. That episode was related to a fight involving Miller shortly after leaving a hookah bar at about 2 a.m. one morning. During the fight, Miller punched through a glass door, cut his wrist and left a trail of blood as he wandered off, a police report said.

 Since the most senior and experienced member of the personnel office came onboard, four of her family members have been given jobs at federal agencies. She insists this is a coincidence.

Since [75-year-old Katja] Bullock joined the Trump transition, four of her family members received political appointments to federal agencies. Her son became deputy assistant administrator at the United States Agency for International Development. His wife is a White House liaison at the Office of Personnel Management.

One of their sons serves as a confidential assistant at the Social Security Administration, agency records show. And another son received an appointment in February as a staff assistant at the Millennium Challenge Corporation, a U.S. foreign aid agency that works to end global poverty, agency records show. According to voter registration records, all four live in the same Kensington home.

Anyhow, the upshot is: The people in charge of hiring the White House staff are an even bigger mess than the White House staff. One can only imagine what the person in charge of hiring the people in charge of hiring the White House staff must be like.
Zinc One Reports High-?Grade Zinc Results from 2018 Drill Program at its Bongara Mine Project, Peru

Posted by Publisher Internet

Zinc One Resources Inc. (TSX?V: Z; OTC Markets: ZZZOF; Frankfurt: RH33 ? ?Zinc One? or the ?Company? ?? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4D9jgUm6sGA&t=6s ) has received the first drill results from the previously announced drill program at its Bongara Zinc Mine project located in north?central Peru. The drill program commenced at the Mina Grande Sur and Bongarita zones where two portable drill rigs are currently operating. The results of this drill program continue to demonstrate the potential value of the project and will provide valuable information towards advancement of the project going forward.

Initial Drill Results Highlights:

Mina Grande Sur

? A total of 542.9 metres completed from 33 holes (11 platforms x 3 holes each) and results for 11 drill holes reported herein.

? Mineralization at Mina Grande Sur includes zinc oxides, carbonates and silicates.

? 1Significant intercepts include:

o MGS18001 ? 5.5 metres of 26.1% zinc, starting at 3.0 metres drill depth

o MGS18003 ? 4 metres of 32.5% zinc, starting at surface

o MGS18003 ? 15 metres of 21.5% zinc, starting at 15.0 metres drill depth

o MGS18004 ? 9.1 metres of 43.6% zinc, starting at surface

o MGS18006 ? 14.1 metres of 32.8% zinc, starting at surface

Bongarita

? A total of 587.2 metres completed from 36 holes (12 platforms x 3 three holes each) in an area approximately 100 metres x 150 metres and results from 13 drill holes are reported herein.

? Mineralization at Bongarita includes zinc silicates hosted exclusively by soils.

? 1Significant intercepts include:

o BO18005 ? 11.5 metres of 16.0% zinc, starting at surface

o BO18005 ? 5.7 metres of 29.2% zinc, starting at 5.8 metres drill depth

o BO18007 ? 7.0 metres of 25.3% zinc, starting at surface

Jim Walchuck, President and CEO of Zinc One commented, ?The results of the drill program at Bongara are very optimistic and further demonstrate the potential of this project going forward. The Mina Grande Sur drill holes confirm the high??grade nature of the Bongara project with many of these intercepts starting at or near surface. Additionally, this is the first time any drilling has been done at Bongarita and the results we have received thus far have been very encouraging.

The results from the program will also contribute to the upcoming resource estimate and PEA planned for 2018. Overall, we could not be more pleased with the drill progress and results to date.?

Geology and Discussion of Results

The zinc mineralization at Bongara is hosted by carbonate rocks and is classified as a Mississippi Valley??type deposit. The mineralization is stratabound and is basically a tabular body with irregular boundaries. Hydrozincite, smithsonite, hemimorphite, and a zinc??aluminum??iron silicate, erroneously referred to as baumite in a previous press release, are the primary zinc minerals that are hosted primarily by heavily??weathered fractured dolomites and dolomite breccias. At Bongarita specifically, mineralization is exclusively hosted by soils. Overall, the mineralization is focused along the axis of a doubly??plunging anticline as well as within the eastern flank of the anticline.

Significant results, including drill??hole orientation and total depths for Mina Grande Sur and Bongarita can be found below in Tables 1 and 2, respectively. Although, there was no zinc mineralization found within the carbonate rocks at Bongarita as there was elsewhere along the 1.4 kilometre long trend, much of the soil drilled provided significant high?? grade zinc results. Links to two figures pertaining to the drill program are included below. The first is a link to a plan map of Mina Grande Sur showing the current and proposed drill holes and the second is a plan map of Bongarita again showing completed and proposed drill holes. Both maps also include the recent channel and pit sampling locations previously reported.

Figure 1. Bongara Project ?? Mina Grande Sur

https://zincone.com/projects/bongara??project/drill??program/

Figure 2. Bongara Project ? Bongarita

https://zincone.com/projects/bongara-??project/drill-??program/

Sampling and Analytical Protocols

Zinc One follows a systematic and rigorous Quality Control/Quality Assurance program overseen by Dr. Bill Williams, COO and Director of Zinc One.

The sample from each core run is placed in a 60 centimetre long, plastic core box that has five columns. Core recovery, rock quality designation (?RQD?), and geologic features are logged and sample intervals, which are generally <2 metres, are chosen. Each core box is photographed and then sampled with a spatula (soil and heavily??weathered rock) or cut with a core saw, 50% of which is placed in a sample bag and stored on site in a secure location. The Company independently inserts certified control standards, blanks, and duplicates, all of which comprise approximately 30% of the sample batch, to monitor sample preparation and analytical quality. The samples are stored in a secure area until such time they are shipped to ALS laboratory in Lima (ISO 9001 Certified) for preparation and assay. At the laboratory, samples are dried, crushed, pulverized and then a four??acid digestion is applied. This is followed by the ICP??AES analytical technique for 33 elements, including lead. The same method is used to assay zinc for values up to 20%. If zinc exceeds 20%, it is then analyzed using a titration method. The laboratory also inserts blanks and standards as well as including duplicate analyses. Qualified Person The technical content of this news release has been reviewed, verified and approved by Dr. Bill Williams, COO and Director of Zinc One, a qualified person as defined by National Instrument 43??101. About Zinc One Resources Inc. Zinc One is focused on the exploration and development of prospective and advanced zinc projects in mining??friendly jurisdictions. The Company?s key assets are the Bongara Zinc Mine Project and the Charlotte Bongara Zinc Project in north?central Peru. The Bongara Zinc Mine Project was in production from 2007 to 2008, but was closed due to the global financial crisis and concurrent decrease in the zinc price. Past production included >20% zinc grades and recoveries over 90% from surface and near??surface zinc??oxide mineralization. High?grade, zinc??oxide mineralization is known to outcrop between the mined area and the Charlotte Bongara Project, which is nearly six kilometres to the NNW and where past drilling intercepted various near??surface zones with high??grade zinc. Zinc One is managed by a proven team of geologists and engineers who have previously constructed and operated successful mining operations.

Forward??Looking Statements

Information set forth in this news release contains forward?looking statements that are based on assumptions as of the date of this news release. These statements reflect management?s current estimates, beliefs, intentions and expectations. They are not guarantees of future performance. Zinc One cautions that all forward looking statements are inherently uncertain and that actual performance may be affected by many material factors, many of which are beyond their respective control. Such factors include, among other things: risks and uncertainties relating to Zinc One?s limited operating history, its proposed exploration and development activities on the Bongara Zinc Oxide Project and the need to comply with environmental and governmental regulations. Accordingly, actual and future events, conditions and results may differ materially from the estimates, beliefs, intentions and expectations expressed or implied in the forward??looking information. Except as required under applicable securities legislation, Zinc One does not undertake to publicly update or revise forward??looking information.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

1 Given that the strike and dip of the mineralization is not known, the intercepts do not necessarily represent true thicknesses; moreover, long intercepts, e.g., MGS18??003, most likely drilled subparallel to the dip of the tabular mineralized body.
Georgetown, SC (29440)

Today

Sunny to partly cloudy. High 79F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

Some clouds this evening will give way to mainly clear skies overnight. Low 56F. Winds light and variable.
Building Construction Teacher Terry Cox, second from left, stands with his students who participated in the Skills USA competition. From left are Nathan Owens, Odell Jenkins, Crayton Linen, Benjamin Mitchell, Cedric Ford (in front), Bradley Langley, Reed Dennis, Talique Dennison, Cornell Williams, Danny Phillips and Logan Owens.
Photo: Neil Godwin/T3 Magazine via Getty Images

In the last few months, Amazon bought two seemingly similar companies: In December, the retail giant bought Blink, a video doorbell system, and then in February acquired Ring, maker of the eponymous smart doorbell and a host of other security cameras, for $1 billion. In other recent and parallel news, Nest (which Google bought in 2014) debuted its own long-awaited video doorbell, the Nest Hello. That is set to be sold by most major retailers except for, obviously, Amazon.

Thats a flurry of smart-doorbell news. Consumers can buy these devices now, but that doesnt mean everyone knows exactly how they work or why they need them  especially at a time when connected security cameras and smart locks are fairly affordable measures to take toward a secure and so-called smart home. Do they make your home safer? Can they be easily hacked? Do Amazon Prime members have to buy a Ring? Or a Blink? Or both? I spoke with several smart-security and home-automation gurus, as well as representatives from Nest, about what to look for in a smart doorbell, and whether or not they really do make your home more secure.

First things first, what is a smart doorbell?

A smart doorbell is an internet-connected doorbell that relays a livestream video from a front porch to the homeowners phone app. Affixed to the outside of any door frame, most smart doorbells are activated either when a guest presses the button or when built-in motion sensors detect movement nearby. Basically, theyre designed to show you everything happening on your welcome mat  from packages and people arriving to any unwanted guests or potential home intruders  whether youre at home but away from the door or hundreds of miles away.

Why is there suddenly a smart-doorbell craze?

Ring, ne Doorbot, was the first video doorbell to enter the market and became fairly well-known for founder and CEO Jamie Siminoffs rejected pitch on Shark Tank back in 2013. (I just dont see the progression to becoming worth $90 million, said Mark Cuban.) Siminoff invented the device to be able to answer the door if he was too preoccupied to hear the doorbell, but also espoused the device as a hidden preventative measure for staving off porch pirates who steal unopened packages  a problem that seems to be increasing as more people shop on Amazon and online. In 2017, researchers at Ring concluded that nearly one in five U.S. homeowners has been a victim of package theft. Porch pirating especially sees a spike around the holidays  during the 2017 season, the New York Times reported on the nationwide problem, and said that while local law-enforcement officers were stepping up efforts, the problem could be remedied with video-connected doorbells.

What makes smart doorbells different from smart locks or basic security cameras?

They definitely have overlapping functions, in that each device creates a digital layer of security that is accessed through the users phone. But whereas a smart lock allows homeowners to lock or unlock their door from far away, or to grant remote access to someone like a babysitter or Airbnb guest, a doorbell does not actually open a door. And while a smart doorbell provides a video of activity happening on a doorstep, it doesnt behave like a smart security camera and keep an ever-watchful eye over, say, the living room.

Equipped with a video camera, intercom, and two-way talk options, most smart doorbells allow users to answer the door with what feels like a FaceTime call. More expensive smart doorbells let you do more. The Ring 2, for instance, offers night vision, while the Nest Hello has developed familiar face alerts that use facial-recognition technology.

Maxime Veron, director of Nests product marketing, says its all about the convenience when you decide to invest in a smart doorbell. The next time the UPS guy comes to the door, you wont get a slip on your door saying you werent there when you actually were.

But what about security  should I be worried about hackers?

The short answer is that the average homeowner should be fine as long as they keep internet-connected devices regularly updated to the latest (and therefore most secure) software versions.

The slightly longer answer, according to Paul Hibbert, a blogger with a popular YouTube channel dedicated to home-automation tutorials, is that smart video doorbells can be a bit of a double-edged sword. All footage is recorded to an off-site server, so theres no way that a burglar or hacker could remove or destroy the footage, he says. The disadvantage to this is that with more popular models, you have to pay a monthly subscription fee just to access the footage taken from your own home. But Hibbert says that the likelihood of someone hacking your home is slim to none, especially since video footage isnt stored directly on the camera. Even lesser-known brands bought abroad are becoming much more difficult to hack these days, as they strive to compete with their most expensive alternatives, Hibbert says. Only the cheapest cameras are at risk of serious attack.

Veron echoes that point: No matter what brand you choose, dont go for an unknown brand. Its very easy for companies to do cheap cameras by short-circuiting security.

Smart-doorbell features to consider

Installation hardware

It would be a cruel twist in logic if the device you buy to prevent theft then gets stolen, but it is a shiny $200 gadget thats being left on your door frame. Ring and Nest both require a special tool to remove it from the wall. This doesnt make it impossible to steal, but both Ring and Nest offer free replacements if the device is stolen.

Power and compatibility requirements

Regular old ding-dong doorbells need about 16 volts to operate. If youve got an older home with finicky wiring, however, there might not be enough juice to power a smart doorbell. If you dont already have a doorbell, you can either have a transformer installed with low-voltage wires or you can buy a battery-powered smart doorbell, like Blink, which runs on basic AA batteries. Just know that youll have to recharge the unit regularly or invest in a power source, like Rings solar-power charger.

Subscription services

A smart doorbell will still work without an app subscription, but paying for one gives you access to stored video footage and additional functions. Ring and Nest do not save footage or video clips without a subscription. August saves video for 24 hours, and SkyBell provides seven days of rolling cloud storage.

Video quality

If your primary purpose in installing a smart doorbell is to be able to see exactly whos at the door, you definitely want to pay attention to video resolution and camera perspective. For that, 1080p is considered the HD standard, but 720p should do the job.

Ring Video Doorbell 2 $249 The most obvious perk to the Ring is that as Amazons newest doorbell, it syncs easily with Alexa and the Echo. Its also too soon to tell, but you could guess that at some point, Prime members could also opt into access of their footage. Smart-home enthusiasts have had issues with the original Ring, so go for their second generation if you want simple installation for a reasonable price. $249 at Amazon Buy $249 at Amazon Buy

Blink $80 now 5% off $76 Because its battery-operated, and half the price of the Ring, this one is good for renters. Blink can also be used indoors as a regular security camera. $76 at Amazon Buy $76 at Amazon Buy

SkyBell HD $170 now 21% off $135 SkyBell launched a few years ago on Indiegogo, and has since become the favored gadget in the smart-doorbell space, outside of Ring and Nest. The SkyBell video camera has gotten great reviews from gadget experts for its high-fidelity motion detection, 1080p video resolution, and because it doesnt require a subscription for free cloud video storage. $135 at Amazon Buy $135 at Amazon Buy

August Doorbell Cam Pro $200 August began as a smart-lock company, with beautiful hardware designed by Yves Behar. It has since expanded to the doorbell camera, so if you really want to lean in to connected home stuff, August already has a good-looking ecosystem of gadgets on the market. $200 at Target Buy

Zmodo $100 If a Ring, Nest, or Skybell feels like too heft a commitment, the Zmodo goes for only $80 (which likely explains its also an Amazon top seller, along with the companys now in-house brands) and has earned plenty of praise from gadget reviewers for working just as well as the fancier models. $100 at Amazon Buy $100 at Amazon Buy

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The youngest exoplanet yet discovered is less than 1 million years old and orbits Coku Tau 4, a star 420 light-years away. Astronomers inferred the planets presence from an enormous hole in the dusty disk that girdles the star. The hole is 10 times the size of Earths orbit around the Sun and probably caused by the planet clearing a space in the dust as it orbits the star.

Exoplanets are planets beyond our own solar system. Thousands have been discovered in the past two decades, mostly with NASA's Kepler Space Telescope.

These worlds come in a huge variety of sizes and orbits. Some are gigantic planets hugging close to their parent stars; others are icy, some rocky. NASA and other agencies are looking for a special kind of planet: one that's the same size as Earth, orbiting a sun-like star in the habitable zone.

The habitable zone is the range of distances from a star where a planet's temperature allows liquid water oceans, critical for life on Earth. The earliest definition of the zone was based on simple thermal equilibrium, but current calculations of the habitable zone include many other factors, including the greenhouse effect of a planet's atmosphere. This makes the boundaries of a habitable zone "fuzzy."

Astronomers announced in August 2016 that they might have found such a planet orbiting Proxima Centauri. The newfound world, known as Proxima b, is about 1.3 times more massive than Earth, which suggests that the exoplanet is a rocky world, researchers said. The planet is also in the star's habitable zone, just 4.7 million miles (7.5 million kilometers) from its host star. It completes one orbit every 11.2 Earth-days. As a result, it's likely that the exoplanet is tidally locked, meaning it always shows the same face to its host star, just as the moon shows only one face (the near side) to Earth.

Most exoplanets have been discovered by the Kepler Space Telescope, an observatory that began work in 2009 and is expected to finish its mission in 2018, once it runs out of fuel. As of mid-March 2018, Kepler has discovered 2,342 confirmed exoplanets and revealed the existence of perhaps 2,245 others. The total number of planets discovered by all observatories is 3,706.

Early discoveries

While exoplanets were not confirmed until the 1990s, for years beforehand astronomers were convinced they were out there. That wasn't just wishful thinking, but because of how slowly our own sun and other stars like it spin, University of British Columbia astrophysicist Jaymie Matthews told Space.com. Matthews, the mission scientist of occasional exoplanet telescope observer MOST (Microvariability and Oscillations of STars), was involved in some of the early exoplanet discoveries.

Astronomers had an origin story for our solar system. Simply put, a spinning cloud of gas and dust (called the protosolar nebula) collapsed under its own gravity and formed the sun and planets. As the cloud collapsed, conservation of angular momentum meant the soon-to-be-sun should have spun faster and faster. But, while the sun contains 99.8 percent of the solar system's mass, the planets have 96 percent of the angular momentum. Astronomers asked themselves why the sun rotates so slowly.

The young sun would have had a very strong magnetic field, whose lines of force reached out into the disk of swirling gas from which the planets would form. These field lines connected with the charged particles in the gas, and acted like anchors, slowing down the spin of the forming sun and spinning up the gas that would eventually turn into the planets. Most stars like the sun rotate slowly, so astronomers inferred that the same "magnetic braking" occurred for them, meaning that planet formation must have occurred for them. The implication: Planets must be common around sun-like stars.

For this reason and others, astronomers at first restricted their search for exoplanets to stars similar to the sun, but the first two discoveries were around a pulsar (rapidly spinning corpse of a star that died as a supernova) called PSR 1257+12, in 1992. The first confirmed discovery of a world orbiting a sun-like star, in 1995, was 51 Pegasi b  a Jupiter-mass planet 20 times closer to its sun than we are to ours. That was a surprise. But another oddity popped up seven years earlier that hinted at the wealth of exoplanets to come.

A Canadian team discovered a Jupiter-size planet around Gamma Cephei in 1988, but because its orbit was much smaller than Jupiter's, the scientists did not claim a definitive planet detection. "We weren't expecting planets like that. It was different enough from a planet in our own solar system that they were cautious," Matthews said.

Most of the first exoplanet discoveries were huge Jupiter-size (or larger) gas giants orbiting close to their parent stars. That's because astronomers were relying on the radial velocity technique, which measures how much a star "wobbles" when a planet or planets orbit it. These large planets close in produce a correspondingly big effect on their parent star, causing an easier-to-detect wobble.

Before the era of exoplanet discoveries, instruments could only measure stellar motions down to a kilometer per second, too imprecise to detect a wobble due to a planet. Now, some instruments can measure velocities as low as a centimeter per second, according to Matthews. "Partly due to better instrumentation, but also because astronomers are now more experienced in teasing subtle signals out of the data."

Kepler, TESS and other observatories

Kepler launched in 2009 on a prime mission to observe a region in the Cygnus constellation. Kepler performed that mission for four years  double its initial mission lifetime  until most of its reaction wheels (pointing devices) failed. NASA then put Kepler on a new mission called K2, in which Kepler uses the pressure of the solar wind to maintain position in space. The observatory periodically switches its field of view to avoid the sun's glare. Kepler's pace of planetary discovery slowed after switching to K2, but it is still found hundreds of exoplanets using the new method. Its latest data release, in February 2018, contained 95 new planets.

Alien Worlds Infographic 20"x60" Poster. Buy Here (Image credit: Space.com Store)

Kepler has revealed a cornucopia of different types of planets. Besides gas giants and terrestrial planets, it has helped define a whole new class known as "super-Earths": planets that are between the size of Earth and Neptune. Some of these are in the habitable zones of their stars, but astrobiologists are going back to the drawing board to consider how life might develop on such worlds. Kepler's observations showed that super-Earths are abundant in our universe. (Oddly, our solar system doesn't appear to contain a planet of that size, although some believe a large planet nicknamed "Planet Nine" may be lurking in the outer reaches of the solar system.)

Kepler's primary method of searching for planets is the "transit" method. Kepler monitors a star's light. If the light dims at regular and predictable intervals, that suggests a planet is passing across the face of the star. In 2014, Kepler astronomers (including Matthews' former student Jason Rowe) unveiled a new "verification by multiplicity" method that increased the rate at which astronomers promote candidate planets to confirmed planets. The technique is based on orbital stability  many transits of a star occurring with short periods can only be due to planets in small orbits, since multiply eclipsing stars that might mimic would gravitationally eject each other from the system in just a few million years.

As Kepler wraps up its mission, a new observatory called the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is expected to launch in spring 2018. TESS will orbit the Earth every 13.7 days and will perform an all-sky survey over two years. It will survey the Southern Hemisphere in its first year, and the Northern Hemisphere (which includes the original Kepler field) in its second. The observatory is expected to reveal many more exoplanets, including at least 50 that are around the size of Earth.

Other prominent planet-hunting observatories (past and present) include:

The HARPS spectograph on the European Southern Observatory's La Silla 3.6-meter telescope in Chile, whose first light was in 2003. The instrument is designed to look at the wobbles that a planet induces in a star's rotation. HARPS has found well over 100 exoplanets itself, and is regularly used to confirm observations from Kepler and other observatories.

The Canadian Microvariability and Oscillations of STars (MOST) telescope, which started observations in 2003. MOST is designed to observe a star's astroseismology, or starquakes. But it also has participated in exoplanet discoveries, such as finding the exoplanet 55 Cancri e.

The French Space Agency's CoRoT (COnvection ROtation and planetary Transits), which operated between 2006 and 2012. It found a few dozen confirmed planets, including COROT-7b  the first exoplanet that had a predominantly rock or metal composition.

The NASA/European Space Agency Hubble and NASA Spitzer space telescopes, which periodically observe planets in visible or infrared wavelengths, respectively. (More information about a planet's atmosphere is available in infrared.)

The European CHaracterising ExOPlanets Satellite (CHEOPS), which is expected to be ready for launch in 2018. The mission is designed to calculate the diameters of planets accurately, particularly those planets that fall between super-Earth and Neptune masses.

The NASA James Webb Space Telescope, which is expected to launch in 2020. It is specialized to observe in infrared wavelengths. The powerful observatory is expected to reveal more about the habitability of certain exoplanets' atmospheres.

The European Space Agency's PLAnetary Transits and Oscillations of stars (PLATO) telescope, which is expected to launch in 2024. It is designed to learn how planets form and which conditions, if any, could be favorable for life.

The ESA ARIEL (Atmospheric Remote-sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey) mission, which will launch in mid-2028. It is expected to observe 1,000 exoplanets and also do a survey of the chemical compositions of their atmospheres.

A diagram showing the relative sizes of the new alien planets discovered by Kepler, compared to Earth and Jupiter. (Image credit: NASA/Tim Pyle)

Notable exoplanets

With thousands to choose from, it's hard to narrow down a few. Small solid planets in the habitable zone are automatically standouts, but Matthews singled out five other exoplanets that have expanded our perspective on how planets form and evolve:
One of the Vanguard satellites being checked out at Cape Canaveral, Florida in 1958.

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Sixty years ago, a grapefruit-sized aluminium sphere with six antennas and some tiny solar cells was launched into Earth orbit. The Vanguard 1 satellite is still up there and is the oldest human-made object in space. It's our first piece of space archaeology.

Other early satellites  such as Sputnik 1, the first satellite to leave Earth in 1957, and Explorer 1, the first US satellite  have long since re-entered the atmosphere and burnt up.

Vanguard 1's legacy, as we enter the seventh decade of space travel, is a new generation of small satellites changing the way we interact with space.

Read more: Curious Kids: How do satellites get back to Earth?

Making the first road map for space

By the early 1950s, the second world war's rocket technology had developed to the point where the first satellite launch was imminent.

A commemorative poster of Vanguard 1 by artist Heidi Neilson, 2012.

The global scientific community had been working towards a massive cooperative effort to study the Earth, called the International Geophysical Year (IGY), to take place in 1957-58. What could be better than measuring the Earth from the outside?

Everything we knew about the space environment we had learned from inside the envelope of the atmosphere. The first satellite could change everything.

The IGY committee decided to add a satellite launch to the program, and the "space race" suddenly became real.

Six nations were predicted to have the capability to launch a satellite. They were the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, France, Japan and Australia.

This was before NASA existed. The United Nations space treaties had not yet been written. The IGY was effectively building the first road map for using space.

Read more: Trash or treasure? A lot of space debris is junk, but some is precious heritage

Waging peace in the Cold War

Vanguard 1 was intended to make the US the first nation in space  hence its name, meaning "leading the way." The term also refers to the advance troops of a military attack.

Space exploration was not just about science. It was also about winning hearts and minds. These first satellites were ideological weapons to demonstrate the technological superiority of capitalism  or communism.

The problem was that the IGY was a civilian scientific program, but the rocket programs were military.

Project Vanguard was run by the US Naval Research Laboratory. Public perception was important, and they tried to give the satellite a civilian spin to present the US's intentions in space as peaceful.

This meant the launch rocket should not be a missile, but a scientific rocket, made for research purposes. Such "sounding rockets" were, however, part of the military programs too  their purpose was to gather information about the little-known upper atmosphere for weapons development.

Read more: As the world embraces space, the 50 year old Outer Space Treaty needs adaptation

Keep watching the skies!

The astronomer Fred Whipple, from the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, had an idea for the IGY satellite program that would help Project Vanguard present the right image and contribute to the scientific outcomes.

It was all well and good to launch a satellite, but you also had to know where it was in space so that you could collect its data. In the 1950s, the technology to do this was still in its infancy.

And in the words of science fiction author Douglas Adams, space is big. Really big. When something the size of a grapefruit is launched, you can predict where it should end up, but you don't know if it's there until you've seen it. Someone has to look for it.

This was the purpose of Whipple's Project Moonwatch. Volunteers  nowadays we would call them citizen scientists  across the globe watched for the satellite using binoculars and telescopes supplied by the Smithsonian. But their first satellite sighting was not Vanguard 1. The Soviet satellite Sputnik 1 became the first human artefact in orbit on October 4, 1957.

1965: Project Moonwatch volunteers in Pretoria, South Africa, one of more than 100 teams worldwide. Each telescope covered a small, overlapping portion of the sky. Smithsonian Institution Archives. (Image credit: Wikimedia)

Vanguard 1's descendants

Six months later, on March 17, 1958, the little polished sphere was lofted up to a minimum height of around 600km above the Earth, and there it has stayed, long after its batteries died. Technically, Vanguard 1 is space junk; but it doesn't pose a great collision risk to other satellites. It has survived so long simply because its orbit is higher than the other early satellites.

The historians Constance Green and Milton Lomask say that Vangaurd 1 is the "the progenitor of all American space exploration today." It wasn't just the satellite, it was the support systems too, such as the tracking network hosted by multiple nations.

The Minitrack interferometer was one of the earliest antennas designed to track satellites. The Minitrack installed at Woomera in the 1950s was later moved to the Orroral Valley NASA Tracking Station near Canberra, where you can still see the antenna pylons. Authors image. (Image credit: Alice Gorman)

It was Soviet leader Nikita Krushschev who called Vanguard 1 the "grapefruit satellite," and he didn't mean it as a compliment. But funnily enough, after satellites weighing thousands of kilograms and the size of double-decker buses, the current trend is back to small satellites.

Rather than fruit, these satellites are likened to loaves of bread or washing machines. They're cheap to build, with off-the-shelf components, and cheap to launch. They're not meant to stay in orbit for centuries. They'll do their job for a few months or years, and then self-immolate in the atmosphere.

Read more: Australia's back in the satellite business with a new launch

There has been a long tradition of amateur satellites, but now space is more accessible than ever before. Students and space start-ups can get into orbit at a fraction of the cost it used to take. It's revitalising the space economy and allowing a greater number of people to participate.

For example, QB50 is an international collaboration to launch 50 cubesats to explore the lower thermosphere. So far, 36 have been launched, including three from Australia last year.

Elon Musk's SpaceX company is planning to launch a network of more than 7,500 small satellites over the next few years, to deliver broadband internet. (There are major concerns about how they will contribute to the space junk problem, however).

When Vanguard 1 was launched, its only companions were Explorer 1 and Sputnik 2. Soon it may have thousands of descendants swarming around it.

The little satellite meant to represent the peaceful uses of outer space is a physical reminder of the competition to imprint space with meaning in the early years of the Space Age. Now, 60 years on, it seems we are on the cusp of a new age in space.

Alice Gorman is a panellist for two events at 2018 World Science Festival Brisbane  Space Junk: Cleaning Up After Ourselves (22 March) and Space Invaders: To Infinity and Beyond (24 March).

Alice Gorman, Senior Lecturer in archaeology and space studies, Flinders University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Follow all of the Expert Voices issues and debates  and become part of the discussion  on Facebook, Twitter and Google +. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This version of the article was originally published on Space.com.
A giant screen at the Jiuquan space center shows the Tiangong-1 space lab from a camera in the Shenzhou-9 spacecraft before the automatic docking on July 18, 2012. The Chinese space lab is expected to re-enter our atmosphere between March 30 and April 2, 2018.

China's first space station, the bus-size Tiangong-1, is falling uncontrollably toward Earth, with a fiery plunge through our atmosphere expected sometime between March 30 and April 2. And the dive will, in fact, be a blazing one: Scientists expect that as the station burns up, it will generate huge fireballs visible from the ground.

Tiangong-1, which has attracted worldwide attention these past few weeks ahead of its demise, launched in 2011 and hosted two space crews before contact was lost with the craft in 2016. Since then, Tiangong-1 has been falling closer to Earth without control from Chinese space officials.

"Fireballs are almost certain," Harvard University astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell told Live Science in an email. McDowell is a frequent media commentator on Tiangong-1's descent, and he also works on NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. [In Photos: A Look at China's Space Station That's Crashing to Earth]

"What happens is that there are some dense sections of the lab connected together by a rather thin structure," McDowell said, explaining the source of the fireballs. "The thin structure melts first, turning the lab into a bunch  a few to a few dozen, depending  of independent pieces which melt and burn more slowly  fireballs."

Tiangong-1 is roughly 9.4 tons (8.5 metric tons), which is almost the same size as the Ukrainian Zenit rocket stage that re-entered our atmosphere over the Peru/Brazil border in January, McDowell said. So, that re-entry could offer some insight into what to expect from the Chinese space lab. Some parts from the Zenit rocket stage did land near Peruvian villages, SpaceFlight101.com reported. Villagers there reported "spherical" objects  likely the rocket's spherical tanks, which can survive re-entry, the website reported. [Chinese Space Station's Crash to Earth: Everything You Need to Know]

In addition to human-made objects, many tons of meteors hit Earth every year, mostly in the form of dust. Occasionally, larger rocky meteors break up in the atmosphere and hit the planet. The resulting meteorites are highly prized by collectors. In January, a small meteor broke up over Michigan, and collectors found pieces of the object on the ice within a day of its fall.

In a more spectacular example, a 56-foot-across (17 meters) meteor broke up over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013 with such force that it shattered windows and caused injuries to residents below.

"Compared to a meteorite, the lab is coming in slower and at a much shallower angle," McDowell said. "The debris will be spread over hundreds of kilometers along the line of travel. You'll see the fireball when it is between 50 km and 20 km [31 miles and 12 miles] up, and any debris that doesn't melt all the way may hit a long way downrange."

Some observers have compared Tiangong-1's descent to the spectacular crash of NASA's 100-ton (91 metric tons) Skylab space station in 1979, which scattered debris in rural Australia. But McDowell said only a small portion of Tiangong-1 will survive and make it to Earth's surface. Because the space station weighs about 18,740 lbs. (8,500 kilograms), McDowell estimates that about 220 to 440 lbs. (100 to 200 kg) will survive the descent.

Originally published on Live Science.
Two separate flights reported seeing the same 'UFO' in the Arizona desert in February.

Two airline pilots spotted a mysterious, reflective object hovering some 40,000 feet (12,000 meters) over southern Arizona last month, and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is stumped.

According to radio transmissions between the befuddled pilots and air traffic controllers (which you can listen to in full, thanks to an FAA recording recently released to the Phoenix New Times), the sighting occurred around 3:30 p.m. local time on Feb. 24, somewhere over the Sonoran Desert near Phoenix.

"Was anybody above us that passed us like 30 seconds ago?" the first pilot asked while flying a Learjet west toward California. [7 Things Most Often Mistaken for UFOs]

"Negative," an air traffic controller at the FAA's Albuquerque Air Traffic Center in New Mexico answered.

"OK," the pilot responded. "Something did."

The object, whatever it was, was flying high  at least a few thousand feet above the jet, which was cruising at an altitude of around 37,000 feet (11,000 m), the New Times reported. A few minutes later, the FAA asked another nearby flight  an American Airlines Airbus traveling in the same direction  to keep an eye out for anything "passing over" it in the desert.

The confused pilot agreed. And sure enough, within a few minutes, the Airbus crew saw the same mystery object fly over their plane.

"Yeah, something just passed over us," the Airbus pilot reported. "I couldn't make it out, whether it was a balloon or what  but it had a big reflection on it and it was several thousand feet above us, going the opposite direction."

Several weeks later, authorities are still stumped as to the object's origin. Beyond these two pilot reports, the FAA couldn't verify that any other aircraft were around. It likely wasn't a "Google balloon," the FAA reported, nor a weather balloon or a military craft.

"We have a close working relationship with a number of other agencies and safely handle military aircraft and civilian aircraft of all types in that area every day, including high-altitude weather balloons," an FAA representative told the New Times.

In other words, whatever the UFO was, the FAA should have known about it. But it didn't.

This report comes just a few months after a former Pentagon official revealed that the government has been quietly running an official UFO detection program since 2007. An investigation into the program by The New York Times turned up striking footage taken by two Navy fighter pilots, who appear to encounter a mysterious glowing object midair.

Reports like these may be more common than you imagine. According to the National UFO Reporting Center  an online database of alleged UFO sightings in America  there have been nearly 650 UFO sightings reported so far in 2018. However, the website advises, "Many of the new reports have been submitted by individuals who elect to remain anonymous we encourage visitors to our website to be discriminating in what they accept as accurate and reliable."

Originally published on Live Science.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying 10 new Iridium Next communications satellites will launch into orbit on Friday, March 30, 2018, from Space Launch Complex-4E at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

SpaceX will launch a new batch of Iridium communications satellites on a used Falcon 9 rocket this morning (March 30) and you can watch the liftoff live.

The Falcon 9 rocket will launch 10 Iridium Next satellites into orbit from SpaceX's Space Launch Complex-4E pad at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Liftoff is set for 10:13 a.m. EDT (7:13 a.m. PDT/1413 GMT)  just after sunrise on the West Coast. You can watch the launch live here, courtesy of SpaceX, or directly from SpaceX's website here, beginning about 15 minutes before liftoff.

Today's mission, called Iridium-5, will be the fifth of eight SpaceX flights for Iridium Communications to loft a constellation of 75 Iridium Next satellites by mid-2018. When complete, the constellation will consist of 66 operational satellites and nine spares in orbit. SpaceX launched the first four missions (totaling 40 satellites) in 2017.

SpaceX initially aimed to launch the Iridium-5 mission Thursday (March 29), but a technical glitch with one of the satellites forced a delay. After eyeing a potential slip to the weekend, the glitch was resolved Tuesday.

"Falcon 9 and payload are healthythe teams at Vandenberg are now targeting Friday, March 30 at 7:13 a.m. PDT for the launch of Iridium-5," SpaceX representatives wrote on Twitter Wednesday.

For Iridium-5, SpaceX is using the same Falcon 9 first-stage booster that launched 10 Iridium Next satellites in October 2017 on the Iridium-3 mission. Iridium Communications became SpaceX's first customer to fly satellites on the same rocket last December, when the Iridium-4 mission launched on a booster that also flew the Iridium-2 mission earlier that year.

However, SpaceX will not attempt to land the Iridium-5 booster on its West Coast drone ship Just Read the Instructions used for offshore rocket landings.

Today's launch is the first of two missions in four days for the Hawthorne, California-based SpaceX. Another used Falcon 9 rocket will launch an uncrewed Dragon cargo ship (which has also flown previously) to deliver NASA cargo to the International Space Station.

That cargo mission is scheduled to launch from SpaceX's pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, with Dragon arriving at the space station on Wednesday (April 4).

Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or follow him @tariqjmalik. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
Update for 6 p.m. EDT: Tiangong-1 is now forecast to re-enter Earth's atmosphere on April 1 at 12:15 p.m. EDT (1615 GMT), give or take 9 hours, according to the Aerospace Corp.

Original story: A doomed Chinese space station will fall to Earth later than expected due to changes in the sun's predicted activity, the European Space Agency's (ESA's) Space Debris Office in Germany predicted.

An updated ESA forecast issued today (March 30) said the 8.5-metric-ton (9.4 tons) space lab will fall to Earth later in the day on April 1. That's because the sun's activity is weaker than expected, ESA explained.

Tiangong-1's orbit takes the station very close to Earth's atmosphere right now. When the sun is more active, charged particles from the solar wind hit Earth's atmosphere, ESA officials said. These particles make Earth's gases balloon farther into space, increasing the gas density at higher altitudes. These gases, in turn, affect the drag Tiangong-1 experiences as it circles the Earth. [In Photos: China's Tiangong-1 Space Station]

The stronger the drag, the faster Tiangong-1 will fall. However, because the sun's activity is weaker than predicted, the atmosphere didn't balloon as much. Tiangong-1 will therefore experience less drag and descend more slowly than expected, ESA said.

China's first space station Tiangong-1, shown here in an artist's illustration, is expected to fall to Earth around April 1, 2018. But it may fall later than some forecasts predict, experts say. (Image credit: China Manned Space Engineering Office)

"A high-speed stream of particles from the sun, which was expected to reach Earth and influence our planet's geomagnetic field, did, in fact, not have any effect, and calmer space weather around Earth and its atmosphere is now expected in the coming days," ESA officials said in the forecast.

"This means that the density of the upper atmosphere, through which Tiangong-1 is moving, did not increase as predicted (which would have dragged the spacecraft down sooner), and hence the ESA Space Debris Office has adjusted the predicted decay rate."

ESA emphasized that the re-entry window is still variable and uncertain. When the school-bus-size space station does fall, it will descend somewhere between 43 degrees north and 43 degrees south latitudes, underneath its current orbital inclination. This path includes many populated parts of the world, including the United States.

This map by the European Space Agency shows the area in which China's Tiangong-1 space station could fall (shown in green) around April 1, 2018. (Image credit: European Space Agency)

The station's unpredictable fall has attracted attention around the world, along with worries that space debris might crash into structures or people below. Under a United Nations treaty, liability would likely rest with China. That said, the chances of someone getting hit are infinitesimally small; you have a far better chance of winning the Powerball jackpot.

Harvard University astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell told Space.com's sister site Live Science that he predicts only 220 to 440 lbs. (100 to 200 kilograms) of debris from Tiangong-1 will make it to the planet's surface. Still, the space station will put on a spectacular show as it falls, he said.

"Fireballs are almost certain," said McDowell, a frequent commenter on Tiangong-1's descent who also works on NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. "What happens is that there are some dense sections of the lab connected together by a rather thin structure," McDowell added, explaining how the fireballs are generated. "The thin structure melts first, turning the lab into a bunch  a few to a few dozen, depending  of independent pieces which melt and burn more slowly  fireballs."

There are many past examples of satellites or space stations falling uncontrollably to Earth and generating space debris. Perhaps the most famous one is Skylab, a former NASA space station that dropped large pieces in rural Australia in 1979 as it fell. Skylab, however, was a much larger structure. Its mass came in at about 100 tons (90.7 metric tons), or about 10 times more massive than Tiangong-1.

Tiangong-1 was the first Chinese space station. After its launch in 2011, two crews of taikonauts (Chinese astronauts) visited the station, in 2012 and 2013. China remained in communication with Tiangong-1 until 2016. Since then, the station has been dropping slowly toward Earth for an inevitable, deadly (to the spacecraft) encounter with the atmosphere. China also has an active successor space station in orbit, called Tiangong-2, that launched in 2016.

Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.




The Devil Complex was written by Matt Owens and was directed by Nina Lopez-Corrado. There was a lot to admire in this episode, but I was disappointed in the ending. I trust the writing team enough to let this run out though. The fake out with Fitz (Iain De Caestecker) was amazing, and once again De Caestecker delivers an Emmy-worthy performance. Please powers that be  submit this episode for consideration!!!! Lets take a closer look at the episodeThe previously on gives us the clues we needed to unravel the mystery, but for myself, I so didnt want Fitz to be Leopold that I was more than happy to let Leopold simply be a manifestation of the rift. But we see Fitz tell Hunter that that darkness is a part of him. Whether what the darkness in him leads him to do  restore Daisys (Chloe Bennet) powers  is ultimately good or bad is yet to be determined. The episode proper begins with a manifestation  Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge) spaceman  that also sets us up to expect more manifestations.We get a very sweet scene with Fitz and Simmons. Hes exhausted  another clue that he may not be able to keep so tight a control on himself  and he wants hobnobs (theyre biscuits  cookies  look them up!). Simmons offers to go and look in the stores, but Fitz wants real British junkfood! Simmons reminisces about the care packages from home that helped them get through cramming for exams at the academy. She is artfully surrounded by empty chip bags! Fitz reminisces about problems that could be solved  hes struggling to find a way to compress the gravitonium to fit in the device to shut the rift. And he wonders why it had to be a fear dimension  why not dreams or wishes?Simmons then changes the topic and asks Fitz what hes wish for  an extra day between Saturday and Sunday. Simmons would wish to speak any language  or a honeymoon! Aw! Simmons goes on to speculate on what shed like with more than one wish  flying or a pony or a flying pony (excellent choice!)  before she comes face-to-face with the Spaceman who grabs her by the throat. He throws her into Fitz, but Simmons gets up and shoots him in the face to smoke him out.Mack (Henry Simmons) is helping Yo-Yo (Natalia Cordova-Buckley) with her physical therapy. Shes pushing herself harder than Mack wants her to  and I loved her using the robot arm to flip him off! The arm is just a prototype  Mack and Fitz have built it together using their very limited resources. Yo-Yo doesnt want bells and whistles  she just wants to be able to punch things! She points out that her eyes still work  she could watch for anomalies. She clearly just wants to be useful, and Mack clearly wants her to rest  and to be able to keep her safe.Its heartbreaking as Mack reaches out to comfort her and they both realize that she cant reach back. This is clearly going south  Mack is denying who Yo-Yo is by trying too hard to keep her safe  thats just not who she is. Im betting on these two, however. Mack will come to realize that Yo-Yo needs to be able to be a protector  not be protected. Its who she is.Fitz and Simmons brainstorm with Daisy and Deke (Jeff Ward). Deke is utterly distracted in looking at Simmons who he knows is his grandmother! Daisy checks to make sure that Simmons is ok, and she tells Daisy that the Spaceman wasnt even her greatest fear  once again faking us out to believe that Leopold IS her greatest fear. And we know hes also Fitzs greatest fear already. Daisy agrees to check the database for more information on the gravitonium and Fitz and Simmons go to head back to the lab  Fitz determined to work all night. And then Deke adorably cant help himself. He cautions them to be careful, earning him a serious wth-look from Daisy! Fitz is weirded out, but Simmons just says thank you and smiles.Daisy thinks that Hale (Catherine Dent) has slipped up when she gets a hit on a tracking signal. She sends it to the team who pick Hale up with the zephyr. Hale appears to be nervously reporting to a superior about a shortened timetable before they nab her.When Deke goes to tell Fitz that theyve got Hale, Fitz appears to be working on one of the LMD robots instead of the gravitonium. Hes wearing the same welding suit. Deke tries to give him a hand, and Leopold knocks him out! I loved the sinister music that accompanied the reveal of Leopold in a suit. And of course, that was another fake out  there is no Leopold running around in a suit with that nasty haircut.Coulson sits down to ask some questions of Hale. He wants to know why shes declared war on his people. She tells him that she has orders to bring his terrorist group to justice. Shes just doing her job. She does apologize for cutting off Yo-Yos arms. Hale tells Coulson she gets why people follow him  Coulson tells her its loyalty  she also tells him that shes trying to prevent their extinction.Fitz bursts in on Daisy, pushing her away from the computer  Rude!  and says he was looking for the physical records from Dr Hall. (No he wasnt!!!!) Daisy hasnt found any of them online either. Daisy recognizes that Fitz is coming apart  she asks him if hes slept and tells him that theyre all there to help and do their part. She tells him not to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders  but he is and thats all contributing to him literally coming apart. Well, almost literally. Daisy is lured away to abandoned floors by two cameras going out, leaving Fitz in the command center.As Fitz struggles to gather his exhausted thoughts, Leopold appears  and De Caestecker just knocks it out of the park again in this scene. Fitz is terrified and we see a complete regression to after he came out of his coma  he presses his head and bites his thumb. Leopold coldly tells him that hes there to do what Fitz is unwilling to do.Leopold maintains that he is very real  and is clearly not happy about Fitz destroying his world. However, the writers are toying with us again  here by telling us the truth! Fitz and Leopold do know that he is actually very real. Hes simply a part of Fitz. Fitz tries to deny that Leopold is any part of him. Leopold, who has already insisted hes the only Doctor there, comments on them calling him Fitz in this reality. Theres clearly some latent resentment on Fitzs part that hes not getting the respect he deserves. Im not criticizing Fitz for this  its a nagging little bit of all of us, isnt it? Its really just a clever manifestation of that Devil (from the title!!!!) that sits on all of our shoulders.Leopold tells Fitz that he cant escape him or stop him  just as we hear a shot. The plans are already in motion. Fitz runs away even as Leopold tells him they arent finished.Intercut with the scene between Fitz and Leopold, Mack and Simmons are trying to move a furious Yo-Yo to safety on another floor. She tries pointing out that shes an agent not a child, but gets nowhere. Theyre interrupted by an LMD robot  who shoots Mack and is clearly NOT a fear projection.Back on the quinjet, Hale and Coulson continue to spar. Hale insists that shes trying to save humanity. Coulson wants to know why she needs the gravitonium. Hale wont tell him  she doesnt trust him yet. She tells him that she doesnt lose sleep at night for making the difficult calls  and this resonates perfectly with the Fitz/Leopold storyline! Is Hale the Devil on Coulsons shoulder? Hale is also willing to let people die. She asks Coulson to come with her so that she can show him what theyre really up against. Coulson says no thank you.Hale points out that shes always been in the drivers seat. She knew they were hacking her phone. Piper (Briana Venskus) comes to May (Ming-Na Wen) to tell her that they couldnt get the driver out of the car  I loved that May knew immediately that it was Creel (Brian Patrick Wade). First question  wouldnt the Quinjet have let them know immediately how much that car weighed? Wouldnt it have scanned for explosives? Creel tells them that they should listen to Hale because she can be persuasive  and shows them the explosives tied around him. He almost sounds like thats how shes persuaded him to do it. But final question  how does his turning into metal and back not affect the explosives?Coulson, May, and Piper greet their new guest with guns drawn. I loved May considering throwing Piper out of the plane! Their new guest is none other than Ivanov (Zach McGowan)! And of course, this is yet another fake outFitz rushes into the med bay to find a shot  but very real  robot. Macks been shot in the leg, but its not too serious. They all wonder how the robot got back together. Fitz reveals that the Doctor from the framework is there and it must have been him. Simmons looks afraid  and thoughtful. Henstridge is also wonderful in this episode, and I think she knew immediately that Leopold also wasnt a fear projection.Coulson calls Ivanov on being a cockroach  and a hypocrite. Ivanov throws Coulsons own words back at him  and Coulson just smiles. I loved the little nod to current events as May wants to know how hes not just another Russian infiltrating their democracy. Ivanov insists that he has a plan to save the planet, and Coulson assumes that Hale is working for Ivanov.Simmons points out that Leopold is Fitzs greatest fear and only he can determine what Leopold is up to. She tells Fitz, He IS you. Henstridge is really brilliant here. On first watch, I thought her demeanor was off, but on second watch, its simply clear that she knows she is once again working with Fitzs broken mind. She has to tread carefully to get the information out of him.De Ceastecker is fighting back tears for most of this scene as Fitz tries to confront the darkest part of himself. Finally, he says that Leopold said he had to do what Fitz was unable to do  to finish what was started. They determine that Leopold is after the Inhumans  who he experimented on in the framework. Its why he sent the terminator after Yo-Yo and why hes likely after Daisy now. Its also only this part of Fitz that can remove Daisys inhibitor  and its only because of the experiments that he did in the Framework that hes able to do it! I love how tightly written this show is! Even when its a horrible outcome still great writing.Fitz says that hell go find Daisy, and Simmons lets him go. Weve already seen that Simmons has become more hardened than Fitz. Does she know what this means? Is she letting Fitz go because she thinks that he will remove the inhibitor? Has she determined that its necessary to seal the rift too? I suspect that she does and that this is going to cause a rift between her and Fitz and between her and Daisy.Coulson and May tell Creel that Daisy didnt shoot Talbot  it was an LMD made by Ivanov. Hale shoots back that Ivanov was made by Leopold Fitz  and its telling that she uses both his names. She points out that Ivanov is made up of S.H.I.E.L.D. tech. Hale points out that Coulson has no proof for his side of the story. Hale offers again for Coulson to come with her so that she can explain.May is furious when Coulson agrees to go with Hale in exchange for letting the rest of his people go. She pulls him away to have a frank discussion. Coulson insists that its a good way to get clarity  and drops the Hydra bomb  and I dont think any of us were happy to see that old chestnut come up yet again. May points out that they know its a trap, and Coulson tries to make light of it  but Mays having none of it. She accuses Coulson of turning his back on them  but he points out theres no other way out. She accuses him of being suicidal, but lets him go.Daisy wakes up strapped to an operating table, with Leopold leaning over her, telling her thats not how to address a Hydra superior. Bennet is also phenomenal in this scene as she struggles to understand whats going on. She wants to know where the real Fitz is. She is also positive that Leopold is an anomaly and once again, Leopold tells her the truth  he IS Fitz. Daisy is sure that this is simply payback for the Framework.Leopold maintains that his work deepened his knowledge of how Inhuman powers work  and it helps people. Is this a necessary step for Fitz so that he can access the knowledge he gained in the Framework to help all of them going forward? Daisy really freaks out when Leopold tells her that hes going to restore her power.Ivanov insists on taking Coulsons hand to scan it for weapons and wants him to put on a hood. Creel encourages him to comply, and Coulson appeals to Creel  he knows him. Coulson tells him that Hale is lying. Coulson asks why Ivanovs robots dont have faces  he knows the answer though. When Ivanov lost Aida, he also lost the ability to make convincing LMDs  and Coulson knows that Ivanov isnt the one in charge  thats why Hale isnt an LMD. Hes right of course.Daisy begs Leopold not to restore her powers. But Leopold thinks that the rift could be what destroys the world  Daisys powers could be the thing that saves the world! Fitz appears to rush in to stop Leopold. Daisy says Fitz  and its another great fake out. Shes simply responding to Leopold suddenly talking to himselfYo-Yo once again tries to stop Mack from spending so much time protecting her. Shes convinced that she doesnt die  theyve seen her in the Lighthouse in the future. But Mack points out that if they change time  break the loop  Yo-You could die in that new reality. Yo-Yo seems to be okay with that scenario. Simmons comes in and echoes Yo-Yos request that Mack get off his injured leg. She asks if Fitz or Daisy have checked in. When they say no, she looks concerned and goes out again. I think that she thought perhaps sending Fitz after Daisy would stop whatever was going to happen  but clearly didnt. Or maybe shes having second thoughts of going through with it? Or maybe the penny is just dropping here? Im impressed that its really hard to tell! Its great acting  assuming the actors themselves know!Fitz tries to stop Leopold and accuses him of sending the robot to attack the others. Leopold maintains that he only set the robot to keep the others at bay  it must have been provoked if it attacked. It makes sense that Leopold would be able to program robots that Ivanov made based on Fitzs specifications, right?Leopold insists that the only way to use the gravitonium is with Daisys powers and that Fitz knows it. De Caestecker is simply outstanding in this scene as the part that is Fitz becomes less focused and more emotional and the part that is Leopold becomes more emotionless and commanding. And this is where we finally get tipped off as to whats really happening  all of this is happening in Fitzs head  Daisy asks who hes talking to! Simmons rushes in and its just Fitz standing there.Simmons tries to get Fitz to put the scalpel down. Fitz insists that its not him. Fitz insists that Leopold was right there  but the glove and the scalpel are on and in his hand. Simmons tells him that it wasnt an anomaly  it was him keeping everyone busy. And Fitz realizes that it was his plan. Simmons tells him that they can work it all out  he just needs to let Daisy go.A robot bursts in with Deke and pulls a gun on Simmons. Shes devastated that Fitz would pull a gun on her  and her tears would seem to indicate that she didnt know what was happening  but Im not convinced that at least a small part of her did. Fitz says that he wouldnt pull a gun on her  but the Doctor would to insure that he went through with it. Fitz is sure that it will work.Fitz declares that there are always risks  the science is sound. Simmons points out that potentially paralyzing Daisy or destroying the world are two massive risks. Daisy tries one last time to convince Fitz that he doesnt want to do it. He agrees that he doesnt want to do it, but he has to  and he does. Daisy tells him that shell never forgive him. And Fitz tells her that he doesnt think shell be the only one. And Simmons face seems to confirm it.Fitz guides Daisy through the process of getting the gravitonium into the sphere while Simmons and Deke watch. He then kneels and puts his hands behind his head as the device finally closes the rift.Simmons comes to Fitz in his holding cell. She wants to know how long hes been seeing Leopold. He tells her that his mind has been through a lot. Hes heard him since the framework, but only recently started seeing him. Simmons is sure that its his injury acting up  he used to see her. Fitz maintains that she was his conscience  the Angel on his shoulder. Simmons maintains that he had a psychic split  that dark persona isnt him, but Fitz is sure it is.Fitz is concerned about Daisy and Mack. Simmons insists that he needs to talk to them. Theyll forgive him if he just explains  but Fitz doesnt think he deserves forgiveness. And Simmons worries that Fitz doesnt think he deserves her either. Fitz confesses he still thinks it was the right thing to do. And Simmons does agree with him here! She tells him that if they are going to change the timeline, they have to do things differently and make harder choices. But Fitz worries about what that makes them.The scene ends with a beautiful shot of the two on either side of the glass. We see Fitz and his reflection with Simmons  his two halves. He doesnt know where they go from here. Hes playing with his wedding ring throughout the scene and it looks almost like they are going to mirror last episodes touching of hands, but Fitz turns away and turns his back on Simmons and she walks away. Before everyone freaks out, I dont think the two will be separated for long  and the next scene proves it!Deke comes to a distraught Simmons. Simmons apologizes for snapping at Deke  hes a victim too. Simmons feels like Fitz is losing himself and shes losing him too. Deke assures her that she hasnt lost him. She knows him better than he knows himself  and then Deke goes on to prove that he knows both of them! And its perfect that he knows about the sandwich!!!!And that suddenly gets Simmons attention. We can forgive her for struggling with such a mind-bending concept  but shes sitting there with her grandson! He tells her that his mother told him all about her parents. And he knows that Simmons can help Fitz and theyll be alright. Ward definitely gets a nod here for a great performance, proving he can be more than just comic relief. The scene ends with Deke confirming that hes their grandson and Simmons being ill  I call morning sickness!!!! Dekes also sitting there with his mother!The final scene also seems to be a bunch of slight of hand. Hale suddenly appears somewhere  is this a function of the device she was playing with in the car before she was taken? Is she a hologram somewhere out in space? It would seem to be lightbright Kree characters/letters behind her. She is clearly reporting to her superiors. They arent pleased that she is empty handed. She is trying to get a seat at the table of some confederacy. She promises that shed die before she failed. Qovas (Peter Mensah) is behind her and hands her some odium to drink in case it comes down to failure. If hes handing her something tangible, she cant be a hologram.The question remains as to whether Qovas is a Kree  he doesnt appear to be blue, however. His final words are Hail Hydra  and with that I think we all slumped in disappointment. Which is really a disservice to the franchise because if you follow the Marvel universe, you know that Hydra is almost always the villain in some iteration. Im all for letting the writers take us somewhere worthwhile with this and giving them some time to play it out. Overall this was a terrific episode, delivering some amazing work from De Caestecker in particular, but also Henstridge, Bennet, and Ward. What did you think of the episode? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!Deke: Please be careful. Just because we keep putting ourselves in increasingly perilous situations which is worrisome and I just dont want anything to happen to you  your brains! Because theyre so smart, we need those to survive.Deke: I was just super moved by their nuptials. Ive become very invested in them as a couple. I just want them to last for a long long time.Couslon: Saving humanity. Thats usually my line.Another trap. You should just toss me out of the plane.We should at least consider it.Ivanov: Hows that for a cool origin story, bro?May: We know this is a trap. Coulson: And its really a good one too!May: Its suicidal, which is now a recurring theme for you!Coulson: Stop airing our dirty laundry in front of the bad guys right now.Coulson: This is only the second worst party invitation Ive ever received.Coulson: Hale must have your balls in a vise. Hale: Actually, its his head in a jar.She always spoke about her Dad with so much love and admiration. Said that he was the best man that she ever knew. So I know, that you can help Fitz. And I know that you two are going to be okay because the steps that you take dont need to be big.They just need to take you in the right direction.




Thanks to Boby for the heads up.





Does the name Marcia Clark mean anything to you? For those who watched the excellent American Crime Story: The People Vs OJ Simpson, she was the lead prosecutor in the OJ Simpson case, played by Sarah Paulson. She resigned from the District Attorneys office after the debacle and left trial practice behind. She became a special correspondent for news show providing coverage of high-profile trials and she wrote several novels based on her experience, as well as pilot scripts that were never produced. Shes one of the executive producer of The Fix and her story is obviously a big inspiration for the show. ABC insists on the fact that the drama is fictional. Still, its starting point draws a lot of parallels to what was called at the time the trial of the century and Maya Travis is also finding herself in the eye of a media storm like Clark did. The ambition is to examine the case from all sides of the law, going home with the characters and exploring how it is affecting their personal lives. And I have to admit the writers really captured something here. Unfortunately for them, they will be compared a lot to Ryan Murphys brilliant piece and they cant compete. It doesnt mean they shouldnt try!
As the company pushes forward with a number of sustainability initiatives, Nestle Waters North America announced this month new environmental honors for several of its facilities in California and Canada.

One of the largest beverage producers in the country, Stamford-based Nestle Waters has faced scrutiny of its environmental impact in recent years from neighbors of its factories and conservation advocates. Company officials respond that new certifications from the third-party Alliance for Water Stewardship show it is meeting its commitment to responsible water management.

As water stewards, we have a deep interest in ensuring the sustainability of those resources, Nelson Switzer, Nestle Waters chief sustainability officer, said in an interview this week. Often, the neighboring communities rely on those resources, and we invest a considerable amount of capital so we can have factories in these locations. We need to ensure the sustainability of the supply to move forward with our business.

Nestle Waters announced last week its Los Angeles and Cabazon, Calif., factories had been certified to the standard of the AWS, which comprises an alliance of businesses, nonprofits, public-sector agencies and academic institutes.

The AWS criteria study groundwater basins where facilities are located, taking into account factors such as water quality, the availability of existing water sources and the health of nearby water-related areas, such as marshes In addition, AWS auditors interview neighbors and others in the community.

These recent certifications in California further prove that it is possible for sustainable freshwater use to be socially, environmentally and economically responsible, Matt Howard, AWS director for North America, said in a statement.

All five Nestle Waters California facilities have been AWS-certified. The Cabazon site earned a gold certification  the first factory in North America to do so.

As part of the AWS certification process, auditing of Nestle Waters California facilities showed combined savings of more than 54 million gallons of water between 2016 and 2017, according to Nestle Waters data.

The company chose California as its first area for certification because of the ongoing water challenges in a state that has grappled with severe drought in recent years.

Nestle Waters also announced this month the certification of its bottling facility in Hope, British Columbia  the first facility in Canada to gain AWS accreditation.

In total, eight Nestle Waters facilities worldwide  also including two in Pakistan  have reached the AWS standard. Two more plants in North America are expected to be certified by the end of this year, and the company wants to certify 20 of its properties by 2020.

Nestle Waters officials declined to say how much the company has spent to secure the AWS certifications, but they said they have seen a significant return on their investment.

But Nestle Waters has faced criticism in some quarters for its water consumption. In northern Michigan, the company has filed an application to increase its pumping capacity, and the proposal has sparked tens of thousands of public comments, with many environmentalists concerned about its potential impact.

Company officials have responded that damaging the ecosystem in Michigan and around its other facilities would hurt their business.

It would make no sense whatsoever for us to invest $75 million in a factory and then to just exhaust the raw material and supply, Switzer said.
The state minister for Higher Education, Dr John C Muyingo, has implored more females to enroll for technical and vocational education programmes as the surest way for social economic transformation of the countrys economy.

Muyingo said while he was impressed with the ever-growing number of females in vocational education institutions, there is stillroom to increase on their intake.

State minister for Higher Education Dr John C Muyingo sign a dummy of the newly launched UBTEB skills magazine

I note the increase in female students with a lot of appreciation but I am saying that we are not yet where we want to be. I urge parents and employers to guarantee equal opportunities to females in the technical and vocation field, Muyingo said.

The minister made the remarks today while releasing the November/December end of programme examination results conducted by the Uganda Business and Technical Examinations Board (UBTEB) at its secretariat in Ntinda.

UBTEB statistics indicate that there is an 18 per cent increase in the number of female candidates from 6,191 in 2016 to 7,318 in 2017 compared to that of males which is by 16 per cent.

Muyingo said with this trend, government is committed to ensure that the ideals of the skilling Uganda strategy are fulfilled in addition to being guaranteed of quality and skilled workforce.

While presenting the results, Ubteb executive secretary Onesmus Oyesigye also noted that females are continuing to bridge the gap in male dominated courses although the gender parity margin remains wide.

Generally, male candidates performed better than females in most programmes but the number of registered female candidates were more across the programmes, Oyesigye said.

I am optimistic that our girls will close up the gap as long as they have the right attitude towards their studies.

At least 30,180 candidates registered for the 11th series of final year examinations from November 10 to December 15, 2017 in 429 accredited examination centres across the country. Of the 30,180 candidates, 22,862 were female and 7,318 male.

Candidates sat for their examinations in three programmes; business diploma and certificate, technical national certificates and technical advanced craft programmes. Out of the 30,180 registered candidates, only 22,398 sat for these examinations with 16,674 (74%) successfully completing their programmes while 5,724 (26%) have one or more subjects to improve upon their competencies before completing their various programmes.

Overall, Oyesigye said the performance has remained very good with over 75 per cent of the candidates completing their studies in record time.

PERFORMANCE BY PROGRAMME

On the Technical Advanced Craft Certificate programme, 4,575 candidates sat for the examinations and 3,823 (84%) successfully passed while 752 (16%) need to improve upon their competencies.

Here, male candidates outperformed females in all programmes with exception of certificate in radio, television and electronics and certificate in tailoring and garment cutting where females edged them. Under the technical national certificate which registered its first cohort of candidates under the revised post O-level technical education curriculum, 14,631 candidates sat for the exams.

Of these, 10,517 passed and will be joining the world of work or directly enrolling for relevant nation diploma programmes without first pursuing the previously mandatory one year advanced certificate programmes.

In Business diploma programmes, of the 196 who sat 143 passed with females constituting 81 and males 62. The business in certificate programme registered the highest number of candidates at 2,997.

Some 2,194 candidates successfully completed while 803 have more subjects to improve upon their competencies. Oyesigye said the board did not register any leakage of examination papers, attributing it to high levels of professionalism and integrity by the UBTEB secretariat staff and examiners.

Muyingo commended the board saying that: For an appropriate workforce, Uganda needs professionals that are abreast with integrity, dynamism and commitment to quality and excellent work.

He added that the ministry will not tolerate any form of malpractice and committed to stamp out such vices at all examination levels. Meanwhile, UBTEB chairperson Prof Venansius Baryamureeba said that since January 2018, 11 universities and other tertiary institutions have so far been accredited for national assessment at certificate and diploma levels.

All institutions offering post O-level programmes that allow vertical progression and have not sought accreditation from Ubteb have up to June 30, 2018 to do so [as directed by the ministry of education last year], Baryamureeba said, urging heads of institutions to as well present their candidates for national assessment by UBTEB.

Education ministrys permanent secretary Alex Kakooza ordered that all post O-level programmes shall take a minimum teaching duration of two years  instead of one year or less  effective 2018/19 academic year.

nangonzi@observer.ug
Most 10-to-12-year olds aren't thinking about starting a business. But in my case, I felt that I had no choice in the matter. Getting permanently blocked from Facebook by my parents -- due to their concern about inappropriate content -- lit a roaring fire inside me.

Related: 7 Steps to Helping Your Child Become a Successful Kidpreneur

That blaze was born not out of frustration, but opportunity. My stubborn preteen mind couldn't comprehend that I wasn't allowed to participate in the growing trend of social media just because I was "too young." And since my tough but fair parents had taught me to think my way around obstacles, I solved my Facebook predicament by creating an alternative social media network "by kids for kids," where members could chat, make friends, watch original content and play games in a safe, online environment.

Since then, every day has provided a new lesson:

Think about your brand before you build it.

Grom Social started as a family project with my brothers and sister around the kitchen table. I knew I had to identify clear differentiators between Grom and the other social media platforms out there, like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. With this in mind, I'd suggest to any budding entrepreneur to build a company that represents something that's more than just a product -- and is something you believe in.

To build your brand, build something that you draw inspiration from, and that -- as Simon Sinek says in this TED talk, you believe will inspire others. For example, during this time, my sister Caroline was being bullied in school, so I immediately recognized the importance of online safety and social responsibility.

The same lesson applies to content. Popular social media platforms are crowded with memes, gifs and constant bickering. If you're serious about building a social media network, or really any platform driven by content, put an emphasis on community; don't make the mistake of thinking that any engagement is good engagement. It's not, and social media entrepreneurs learn this the hard way when users stop returning to their platform.

Related: 11 Successful Kid Entrepreneurs Keeping Their Eyes on the Prize

Know your target audience, too. Grom's users are between 5 and 16. So, it would have been wrong for me to think we could be safe with limited monitoring. Instead, addressing that issue up-front was critical, and a step any social media network innovator must grasp.

By committing to your audience's needs, as this Social Media Today article outlines, you build a platform its members (and those around them) can trust. This transfer of trust is critical and leads to network referrals and general word-of-mouth buzz that results in additional opportunities, many of which come to you from offline.

Expand your vision.

As you can imagine, deciding to build a social network for kids was a big task. I was only 12, and while my family and I were convinced we had a winning brand formula, there were very real challenges that I needed support for. Because I was so young, it never occurred to me that we would fail. Innocence is bliss!

The first key step to expansion starts with finding investors who believe in your project. Technology funding is usually a challenge for those building a social network, and unless you've got deep pockets, you're going to need investors. Bring in good people who don't just believe in the market opportunity but believe in you and the company's purpose.

Our Grom team spoke with many investors who had dollar signs in their eyes, but also a certain few who believed that young people need and deserve a healthy social media experience; they believed that Grom could be that stepping stone. Any entrepreneur will struggle if he or she is surrounded by the wrong people.

To grow your community, think outside the box. It's tempting to pour money into advertising and convince yourself that user-registrations are the ultimate metric. Instead, focus on scalability and credibility. When Grom launched, teachers were just beginning to build out lesson plans that included social media as part of the regular curriculum.

Now our site is in over 3,000 schools! This widespread adoption and overall endorsement from a group that so heavily influenced our target audience was critical for growth. Guess what? Your credible, referral driving source is out there, too. Go find it!

Stay true to yourself.

In 2017, my family and I took the company public. Trust me, it was a controversial decision. Yes, we could have taken serious money from high-profile investors, but we knew that this was a product for the public, and we wanted complete alignment between our investors and users.

The truth is, many people are drawn to the site because of our vision and because they see it as a very necessary solution. The need for internet safety education that kids can relate to is undeniable, and that focus resonates in the public markets, resulting in what was once my little idea growing into a $100 million market cap company!

These challenges are ones that all entrepreneurs face at one point or another. Do you maintain the status quo, or do you see the window of opportunity and just go through it? I suggest the latter, but be sure to first trust yourself and those around you. Understand that as something grows, you have to give a little piece of it away almost every day.

The decisions that have brought our site to where it is today have not been easy. Building the brand, adding new products to enhance our portfolio and working with my parents on something that significantly impacts many people's lives has been a personal education in resilience and perseverance.

Related: This 10-Year-Old Kidpreneur Swam on TV's 'Shark Tank'

The challenges I have faced could have stopped me from proceeding but instead made me more determined than ever. The biggest lesson I have learned is to surround yourself with good people who are trustworthy and committed and share the vision of your brand and your goals.

Related:

How I Built a $100 Million Company by the Time I Was 17 Years Old

8 Social Media Influencers Under 10 Who Put Grownups to Shame

Mom Is the Secret to Success for These Kidpreneurs (and Dad Helps)



Copyright 2018 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved



This article originally appeared on entrepreneur.com


A new interactive map has shown the devastating effect a nuclear bomb blast could have on London.

The tool highlights the extent of the fireball, radiation, shockwave, and heat produced by different nuclear weapons, and how they could impact any given area.

People can enter their postcode and learn about powerful nuclear blasts by bombs from the 15 KT Little Boy dropped on Hiroshima to the USSRs 50,000 KT Tsar Bomba.

The website from Outrider Foundation allows users to enter any location to find out the effects of a blast, including the number of possible fatalities and injuries.

In London, more than 4 million people would be killed in a nuclear explosion, it revealed.

The map breaks down the effects of the blast into fireball, radiation, shockwave, and heat / Outrider Foundation

The tool asks users to choose between four different bombs: the 15KT Little Boy, North Koreas 150 KT Hwasong-14, the USs 300KT W-87, and the 50,000 KT Tsar Bomba, the largest USSR bomb ever detonated.

It also allows people to choose whether the blast takes place at surface or air level.

At surface level bunkers below ground level would be affected and radiation fallout is greater, while an explosion in the air would affect a larger geographic area.

If a Tsar Bomba were dropped on central London, the results would be catastrophic.

Intense heat from a blast would radiate from the capital across the south-east / Outrider Foundation

According to the tool, the fireball would span 43.75 square miles and the radiation would spread 30.98 square miles, to Holloway, Brixton and Kensington.

More than 4.6 million people would die in the blast, while around 3 million would be injured, with the affected area stretching as fair as Luton and Royal Tunbridge Wells.

The tool estimates the blast would send shockwaves 345.05 square miles around the capital, with 3200 square miles of the south-east hit by intense heat from the explosion.

Within this radius wood, clothing paper and plastics would catch fire, the site claims.

The tool is based on Alex Wellerstein's NUKEMAP, an historian of nuclear weapons and an Assistant Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the Stevens Institute of Technology, the team said.

Data on blast size calculations and associated casualties is provided by Mr Wellerstein's application.

In a statement, Outrider Foundation said: "Please note that these casualties numbers are not definitive, but meant to be evocative of the effects."
The Archbishop of Kampala Archdiocese Dr Cyprian Kizito Lwanga has downplayed reports that he is plotting to overthrow President Yoweri Museveni.



Dr Lwanga's comments were in reference to a phone call he reportedly received from an anonymous person indicating that the state had received information linking him to a plot to overthrow the government. The caller reportedly told him that government had recruited informants within the church set up, who had given information to the president on the alleged plot.

Kampala diocese Archbishop Cyprian Kizito Lwanga (R) talks to Church of Uganda Archbishop Stanley Ntagali. Photo: @nbstv

Lwanga said a lot of misleading information is being passed to the president by politicians, businessmen, civil servants, police officers, Internal Security Organization and the Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence (CMI) among others.



Lwanga was speaking to a congregation at Old Kampala playground where hundreds converged for holy mass, after taking part in the ecumenical public way of the cross, an annual procession held in the simulation of the journey of Jesus to the place of his crucifixion.



"A few days ago I get a telephone call and on the the telephone you can see the number of the person but it had 'private', so I didnt know [who was calling]. This person had an accent from western Uganda and this is what he told me. That 'there are many lies being told to the president'. Two, that 'even members of these organisations have recruited your priests, your sisters, your brothers, even catechists and even seminarians.' And I said, 'what?'



Lwanga said the anonymous caller warned him to be careful, saying he might be the next Janan Luwum, the former Archbishop of Church of Uganda, who was killed by government operatives on February 16, 1977.

"Even this man [anonymous caller] told me last week that be careful my grace, you might be the next [Jana] Luwum. I said my goodness, if God wants me to die that way, I will. But if I am going to die for wrong accusations, that is criminal. You know for murdering people there are two things; you can shoot a person over what they call character assassination. So some members of ESO, ISO, CMI etcetera, they are character assassinating people and that is not good. But fortunately, those of you who are believers, there is still in a period of lent which are concluding tomorrowI kindly call upon you to repent and stop telling lies." Lwanga pleaded.



Lwanga, who expressed shock at claims that he wants to overthrow government appealed to the informants to stop telling the president lies.

"I call upon all of you, stop telling lies. Stop misleading our president. Mr president we love you very much and that is why we have been electing you. These people are your enemies. Theyre going to make you fail because your mind is poisoned and you act on such information."



The Archbishop, who described the misleading information as unfortunate and terrible, told Museveni that he was recruiting wrong people as informants. Lwanga said some of the informants were dismissed from the Church and now shine as saints before the president. Lwanga, who also doubles as the chairperson of Uganda Joint Christian Council (UJCC), told the recruited clergy that they cannot serve in the church and security.

"Call us your excellency, even individually and tell us face to face hat is on the ground. Also be kind enough to tell us those recruited in ISO, ESO, CMI from our side and well also tell you what concerns them so that you know who and why what theyre saying. But we forgive them, if youre here present, please repent and remember why you became religious, why you became a leader in the church. Jesus said you cant serve two masters at ago. The best thing is to resign."



Today's joint prayers were held under the theme "courage, the Lord is our strength and guide". They were attended by the Archbishop Church of Uganda Stanley Ntagali, Bishop Hannington Mutebi of Kampala Diocese and Father Emmanuel Ssekyewa of the Orthodox Church among others.
D rue Heinz, the widow of the former head of the H J Heinz Company, has died in Scotland at the age of 103, her family said.

Mrs Heinz, a philanthropist and supporter of the literary and visual arts, died peacefully at Lasswade, Midlothian, on Friday.

The announcement was made by her family in a posting on The Heinz Endowments website.

Born in England in 1915, during the First World War, Mrs Heinz went on to become widely respected in the US and Britain for her generous support of the arts and she took a particular interest in Anglo-American literature, the statement said.

In the UK, she was a trustee of the Royal Academy of Arts and a founding council member of the Rothermere American Institute at Oxford.

According to the statement, she created various endowments at St John's College, Oxford, the London Library and the University of Pittsburgh.

She founded the Hawthornden Literary Retreat in 1983 and co-founded Ecco Press in 1971, which published Antaeus magazine and republished many out-of-print books of outstanding literary merit.

She also served as publisher of The Paris Review from 1993 until her retirement in 2008.

In 1995, Mrs Heinz was named an Honorary Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. Seven years later, she was elected as an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Mrs Heinz was also an active board member of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the MacDowell Colony, the Pierpont Morgan Library, the American Academy in Rome and served on the International Council of the Museum of Modern Art.

She was the widow of H.J. Heinz II, of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who served as CEO of the family company founded by his grandfather.

Former UK arts minister Lord Gowrie said in the statement: "At the age of 100 and over, she still attended talks and readings at the summer Edinburgh (International) Book Festival and ferried authors to and from Hawthornden for her annual lobster supper in style.

"Modest, even frugal, in her own tastes, she was the most generous hostess imaginable.

"She was the tireless and demanding chief executive of her own giving and a funny, unforgettable, erudite woman."
T he Prince of Wales has released an Easter message of support for persecuted Christians around the world.

Charles told how he was "deeply moved" by the "truly remarkable courage" and "selfless capacity for forgiveness" of those he met who have suffered because of their religion.

The prince, who will one day become head of the Church of England, said: "My heart goes out to all who this day, whatever their beliefs, are being persecuted on religious grounds."

He said of persecuted Christians during Easter: "I want to assure them that they are not forgotten and that they are in our prayers."

The prince said: "Over the years, I have met many who have had to flee for their faith and for their life - or have somehow endured the terrifying consequences of remaining in their country - and I have been so deeply moved, and humbled, by their truly remarkable courage and by their selfless capacity for forgiveness, despite all that they have suffered.

"I have also heard that in the darkness there are small shafts of light, signs of resurrection and of hope that, slowly but surely, Christians who have had to flee from their homelands are beginning to return and to rebuild their shattered homes."

Charles: The Prince of Wales delivered his Easter message today / AP

The prince went on to say of Judaism, Christianity and Islam: "All three Abrahamic faiths have known and continue to know the bitterness of persecution when religion has fallen into the barbaric grip of those who distort and misrepresent faith."

Clarence House said the prince's message, released on Good Friday, was inspired by his recent meetings with Christian Church leaders from the Middle East including the Coptic Pope.

Through the charity Aid To The Church In Need, he met Chaldean Archbishop Bashar Warda of Erbil, who has been overseeing the care of more than 100,000 Christians driven out of their homes on Iraq's Nineveh Plains, and Melkite Archbishop John Darwish of Zahle and Furzol, Lebanon, who is helping Syrian Christian refuges.

Aid To The Church In Need said that more than 3,200 Christian houses on the Nineveh Plains in Iraq have been restored out of some 12,000, and more than 37,000 Christians had returned home.

The prince's message also forms part of his ongoing dialogue with Church leaders in the UK, Clarence House said.

In recent years, Charles has met many Syrian and Iraqi Christians who have been forced to flee their homes following the rise of Islamic State, and heard the stories of Britons whose relatives in the two nations have been persecuted.

Aid To The Church In Need's report into human rights' violations against Christians around the world, has highlighted the genocide of Christians in the Middle East, and warns that the resulting exodus could threaten the continuing survival of the region's ancient churches.
F ans have told how they were moved to tears watching Victoria Derbyshire conquer her fears to strip off in The Real Full Monty two years after having a mastectomy.

"I cried watching the fear in your face and how you conquered it," wrote one woman as viewers flooded Twitter with praise of the BBC broadcaster, who cried as she recalled her battle with breast cancer as part of the ITV show.

"Well done to you. You lovely ladies had me sobbing my heart out," said another woman, adding: "You are such a lovely lady. From one [breast cancer] survivor to another well done."

The show followed Ms Derbyshire, 49, as she wavered about whether she would go through with the striptease to raise awareness of breast cancer.

After meeting topless female dancers at the Moulin Rouge in Paris, she said she no longer wanted to take part in the topless performance, questioning whether it was the right way to raise awareness.

Triumph: The women stripped to raise awareness of breast cancer / Rex Features

Breaking down in tears she added: "This is so out of my comfort zone. God this is day one, what the heck. I haven't cried for ages about having cancer, or my body or whatever."

But she overcame her doubts to take part in the show's finale in which eight female celebrities bared all to a live audience, to the delight of fans who hailed her bravery.

Celebrities added their praises, with Batman actor Colin McFarlane writing: "Your courage tonight has moved me to tears. You are beautiful inside and out and an inspiration.

When Ms Derbyshire replied to say thank you, he responded: "Thank YOU. Eight years ago we took on two children who lost their mother to cancer and last year my son was diagnosed with it at only 26, but thankfully is doing great.

Victoria Derbyshire admitted the show brought back difficult emotions / ITV

"We all know someone. Your bravery is infectious. Your family must be SO proud of their beautiful wife and mother."

In a topless photo shoot on the programme, Ms Derbyshire had posed with Belgian buns covering her breasts, with one higher than the other.

When the photographer told her they were uneven, she replied: "That is the point. One is real and one isn't."

Victoria Derbyshire breaks down in tears as she strips for The Real Full Monty

During the show Emmerdale actress Sally Dexter had her first ever mammogram, saying she had previously ignored letters offering her the screening.

The soap star admitted she had been scared of both the process and the results but later shared that the results had come back as normal.

The women talked about their experiences as breast cancer survivors / ITV

During a visit to a recording studio to join the cast of The Real Full Monty in a recording of This Is Me from the film The Greatest Showman, Coleen Nolan's sister Bernie spoke about her own cancer diagnosis.
A member of the UK Armed Forces has been killed in a bomb blast while on an anti-Islamic State operation in Syria, the Ministry of Defence said.

An MoD spokesman said Brit was working with the US military fighting Isis when they were caught by an explosion on Thursday.

He gave no information about their service branch, unit or gender.

He said: "It is with regret that we must confirm that a member of the UK Armed Forces was killed by an improvised explosive device in Syria yesterday.

"The individual was embedded with US forces on a counter-Daesh operation when the incident occurred.

"The family has been notified and our thoughts are with them at this difficult time."

Earlier, US officials said an American service member was one of two people killed by an improvised bomb in northern Syria overnight, the first coalition service members to die in an attack there this year.

The US military and a US defence official said the rare attack wounded five others, the Associated Press reports.

Officials did not give the location of the attack but it came hours after one was reported by a Syrian official in Manbij, an Arab-Kurdish town close to the border with Turkey.

Manbij is under threat of a Turkish military operation.

The US military statement said that the wounded were being evacuated for further medical treatment.
P resident Donald Trump has said the US will withdraw from Syria "very soon".

Mr Trump revealed at a rally in Ohio on Thursday he wants an early exit of US troops while boasting that his administration is winning the fight against Isis.

"We're knocking the hell out of Isis. We'll be coming out Syria, like, very soon," the president said. "Let the other people take care of it now."

He added: "We're going to get back to our country, where we belong, where we want to be."

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert told reporters shortly after the remarks that the department was unaware of any plans to pull troops out of Syria.

But senior administration officials said on Friday the president is telling advisers he is looking to make the exit, Reuters reported.

Mr Trump is spending Easter weekend at his Palm Beach, Florida, estate.

The administration officials told Reuters the president's comments in Ohio echoed internal talks with advisers.

However, one official said Mr Trump's national security advisers have told him US forces should stay in small numbers for at least a couple of years to make sure gains made against the militants are held.

Authorities at the State and Defense Departments and the CIA said they were surprised by the president's Syria remarks, which one senior intelligence official said appeared to be completely off the cuff.
T wo British Isis fighters dubbed the Beatles linked to string of brutal killings have attacked the Government after being stripped of their UK citizenship.

In an astonishing interview from their cell in Syria, Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh described the execution of hostages as "regrettable".

The pair who spoke to the Associated Press were detained by Kurdish militia in January.

Their capture sparked a row over whether they should be returned to the UK for trial or tried where their alleged crimes were committed.

Alexanda Amon Kotey, left, and El Shafee Elsheikh speak from cell in Syria / AP

Elsheikh told AP the "illegal" revocation of the pair's citizenship exposes them to "rendition and torture".

A Kurdish security officer, centre, walks Alexanda Amon Kotey, left, and El Shafee Elsheikh to their seats / AP

He added: "Being taken to any foreign land and treated in anyway and having nobody to vouch for you.

"When you have these two guys who don't even have any citizenship... if we just disappear one day, where is my mum going to go and say where is my son."

He added they could also have "no fair trial, when I am 'the Beatle' in the media".

El Shafee Elsheikh was allegedly among four British jihadis who made up a brutal Islamic State cell dubbed "The Beatles" / AP

Along with Mohammed Emwazi - the killer nicknamed Jihadi John - and Aine Davis, Kotey and Elsheikh - a former child refugee - are thought to have been part of a group named after the '60s band because of their English accents.

The four Londoners were linked to a string of hostage murders in Iraq and Syria during the bloody Islamist uprising and gained global notoriety.

Emwazi, who was killed in a US airstrike in 2015, appeared in a number of videos in which captives including British aid workers David Haines and Alan Henning were beheaded.

Alexanda Amon Kotey is being held in Syria / AP

Davis was convicted of being a member of a terrorist organisation and jailed for seven-and-a-half years at a court in Silivri, Turkey, in May 2017

Kotey told the Associated Press that many people in IS would have opposed the executions "on the grounds that there is probably more benefit in them being political prisoners."

He told the agency: "As for my position, I didn't see any benefit. It was something that was regrettable."

Last month Home Secretary Amber Rudd has left the door open to putting the British men on trial in a UK court.

The Home Secretary said she was "absolutely convinced and absolutely committed" to the idea of them "facing justice".

Her comments came after Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson said the pair should not return to the UK, because they had "turned their back on British ideas, British values".

His comments threatened to spark a diplomatic row with the United States, which wants countries to take responsibility for their citizens arrested in the fight against IS.

It was understood the pair had been stripped of their British citizenship, although officials at the Home Office refused to comment on individual cases at the time.
R ussia has ordered tit-for-tat expulsions of 59 diplomats from 23 other countries in a worsening standoff with the west over the poisoning of a former Russian spy and his daughter in Salisbury.

The state has also ordered Britain to reduce its diplomatic staff in Russia to the same level as the Russian mission in the UK.

Moscow has denied allegations that it is behind the nerve agent attack on Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.

However, more than 150 Russian diplomats have been expelled from more than 20 countries in a show of solidarity with the UK over the attack.

Tit-for-tat reaction: The US consulate in St Petersburg is being closed / AFP/Getty Images

The countrys Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned on Thursday other countries could expect a similar response to diplomat expulsions.

British diplomats left Moscow a week ago, and now Britain has been given 30 days to reduce the number stationed in Russia.

It is unclear how many British diplomats will be affected.

A spokeswoman for the British Foreign Office said Russia's response was regrettable and Moscow was in flagrant breach of international law over the killing of the former spy, according to Reuters.

Mr Skripal and his daughter have been in hospital since they were found collapsed on March 4.

The ex-spy remains in a critical but stable condition, while Ms Skripal is reportedly improving rapidly.

Russia has already retaliated in kind against Britain for ejecting 23 diplomats in the wake of the attack.

On Friday the Russian Foreign Ministry summoned senior embassy officials from Australia, Albania, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, the Netherlands, Croatia, Ukraine, Denmark, Ireland, Spain, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Romania, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Canada and the Czech Republic.

They were told to send home the corresponding number of staff from Russia their countries had expelled.

Four other countries - Belgium, Hungary, Georgia and Montenegro - had only "at the last moment" announced that they too were expelling Russian diplomats over the Skripal affair, and Moscow reserved the right to take retaliatory action against them too, the ministry said.

Following the expulsions of US diplomats on Thursday, the US State Department said it reserved the right to respond further, adding the list of diplomats designated for expulsion by Russia showed Moscow was not interested in diplomacy.
A t least 20 people have died after a double-decker bus erupted in flames in Thailand.

The bus, which was carrying migrant workers from Myanmar, was heading to a factory in an industrial zone near Bangkok when the fire broke out.

The blaze was reported to police around 1.30am on Friday (7.30pm GMT Thursday) in Tak province in western Thailand.

Police Lieutenant Raewat Aiemtak said 27 people managed to escape the fire, with one of them severely burned. But those at the back of the bus were trapped and could not get off.

Firefighters tackle the bus fire in Tak province / REUTERS

The cause of the fire was not immediately known, but Mr Raewat said the driver reported the fire started in the middle of the bus and spread quickly.

The tragedy comes a week after another fatal accident showed the continuing dangers of Thailand's roads.

On March 21, a chartered tour bus lost control on a downhill curve in Thailand's northeast and slid off the road, killing 18 people and injuring 33.

A day later, a bus on a school trip in the central province of Ayutthaya skidded in the rain and flipped, injuring 39 people.
From Greg Swank, 12-4-2 You are about to read a list of 45 goals that found their way down the halls of our great Capitol back in 1963. As...
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The European Union's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is not an accounting act, but a concept subordinated to human existence, Agriculture Minister Petre Daea told a debate on Friday organised by the European Institute of Romania on the future of the Common Agricultural Policy in the context of the new multiannual financial framework.

"This is an extremely important topic that originates in the very human existence, because the Agricultural Policy is not an accounting act. It is a concept that is subordinated to human existence, or at least that is how it should be thought, built and applied. That is why ever since my first day in office at the Ministry of Agriculture I have considered it necessary for us to deal with this area and to place it in a concept conceived by knowledge and the possibility of implementation, taking into account the decisions made at the level of the European Union. Romania has a second historical chance. The first came with the 2014-2020 decision; now, as a full-fledged state, it builds together with the other states the post 2020 period," said Daea.

He noted that as far as the post-2020 Common Agricultural Policy goes, Romania is interested in direct payments being kept at the same level and, in terms of subsidiarity, does not support co-financing.Attending the event, Minister-delegate for European Affairs Victor Negrescu stressed that Romania will hold the presidency of the institution representing the interests of the member states, namely of the Council of the European Union.Against this background, the Common Agricultural Policy is the main topic of interest for the Ministry of Agriculture in the first half of 2019, which implies a complex process of preparation."During the presidency, the Ministry of Agriculture will coordinate 29 working groups, manage 58 chairs and deputy chairs, plus a large number of file coordinators and experts, and it has proposed that a significant number of meetings, including a meeting of the agriculture council, the informal council meeting, be organised in Romania to discuss the Common Agricultural Policy and to express our point of view. We are talking about seven important meetings during the six months that we try to present what our vision means," Negrescu said.About the next multiannual financial framework, Negrescu said that on April 18 the Bulgarian Presidency of the European Council will unveil a series of preparatory documents, the council's point of view, and on May 2 the European Commission will launch a legislative proposal and the start of official negotiations. "Romania is currently ready to react to both documents," added Negrescu.

AGERPRES .

The European Union's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP)
British Ambassador to Bucharest, Paul Brummell, who is currently paying his first visit to Resita, on Friday told a press conference that the United Kingdom, although it exits the European Union, it will still be an European country, which will continue to make investments and will maintain its commercial ties with the states in the community block.

"I have visited two very different plant in Resita, the Machine Building Plant, a historical company established in the 18th century, now operating mostly in the hydro-electric sector, and another plant, Autoliv, very modern, which produces airbags for cars. The most interesting aspect for me was to find out that both facilities have connections with the UK. UCMR sales aggregates to an UK-based company and Autoliv receives materials from another similar company in the UK. For me, this means a lot. I know that we exit the EU, but we do not exit Europe," stated the Ambassador.

The diplomat also underscored that the United Kingdom wishes to continue to make investments and maintain its commercial ties with the countries in the European Union.On Friday, the British Ambassador also visited the Eftimie Murgu University in Resita, which he said left a good impression on him, for it was strongly connected with the industry in the city.Mayor Ioan Popa said that one of the advantages that Resita offers is that workforce fluctuation here only reaches 5 %, in the context of a national average of 20-25%."One thing that we should keep in mind is that there will be requests for relocations of production units or for opening new branches in Eastern Europe, Romania included, and Resita too, where the workforce fluctuation accounts for 4.6% annually. The workforce fluctuation represents a major problem for an employer, for it means a huge effort on the employer's part to qualify its workers, since most of them are hired without qualification and they are being trained at the plant," specified Popa.Although this was the British Ambassador's first visit to Resita, on which occasion he also visited the Baile Herculane spa, it was not his first visit to the Caras-Severin County, as he was here two years ago, alongside the representatives of the WWF, who developed the bison relocation project in Armenis.

AGERPRES .
The Foreign Affairs Ministry (MAE) confirms that a Romanian diplomat accredited in Russia was declared "persona non grata," after our country adopted a similar measure in solidarity with the UK following the Salisbury attack.

"The MAE reiterates its position to condemn any action threatening the collective security and the international law," a release of the Ministry sent to AGERPRES informs.

On Friday, Russia's Foreign Affairs Ministry convened the ambassadors and other diplomatic representatives of the countries that expelled Russian diplomats following the Segei Skripal case - the former Russian spy who had been poisoned on 4 March in the UK, an action which London attributed to Moscow-, a diplomatic representative of Romania was also among those convened, DPA and Sputniknews agencies informed.The MAE notified on Monday the Embassy of the Russian Federation in Bucharest that one of its diplomats will be declared "persona non grata," being forced to leave Romania's soil.
Prime Minister Viorica Dancila on Friday attended a meeting in Bucharest of the European Union heads of diplomatic missions (HoMs) where she expressed her confidence that the results of 2018 will be similar with those of 2017 as a result of government action to efficiently manage and modernise the economy.

The meeting was organised by the Bulgarian Embassy in Romania in the context of the Bulgarian Presidency of the EU Council.

"The meeting provided the prime minister an opportunity to exchange views on the domestic situation of Romania, as well as to discuss the priorities of the Romanian Government in connection with the European agenda. Dancila showed that in 2017 Romania reported the highest economic growth among the member states of the European Union, where industry, agriculture and modern services, such as IT and research and innovation, played an important role. In this context, the prime minister expressed confidence that the results of 2018 will be similar to those of 2017 as a result of government action to effectively manage and modernise the economy," according to a press statement released by the Romanian Government.At the same time, regarding the priorities of the Romanian Government for 2018, Dancila mentioned "the fulfillment of our responsibilities as an EU member state (preparing the Romanian presidency of the Council of the European Union, setting a precise timetable and the necessary steps for joining the euro zone); modernisation of the Romanian economy; prioritisation of major projects in the field of culture and protection of national heritage."Dancila presented to the ambassadors of the EU member states accredited in Bucharest the investment coordinates of the national budget for 2018, underlining an increase in public spending on investment, adding more funds for the state aid schemes and the provision of funds for projects conducted on European funds."The legislative and institutional actions that the Government intends to initiate were another topic addressed during the talks. A new law on public procurement, a law on investment under public-private partnerships and the re-design of public procurement monitoring and management mechanisms and procedures were the initiatives unveiled for which the prime minister requested the collaboration of the ambassadors of the EU HoMs."Dancila also reaffirmed the Romanian Government's support for a series of measures aimed at increasing the role and contribution of women in economic and social life.Discussed among the topics on the European agenda were the future of Europe, internal security in the EU / Schengen Area and the Multi-annual Financial Framework.

AGERPRES.
The Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI) on Friday released on its website the protocol of cooperation with the Prosecution Office attached to the High Court of Cassation and Justice regarding the institutions' fulfilling their tasks regarding national security.

The document sealed on February 4, 2009 was signed by then First Deputy Prosecutor General Tiberiu Nitu and Florian Coldea, back then First Deputy SRI Director, and was approved by the heads of the two agencies - Laura Codruta Kovesi and George Maior, respectively.

The protocol linking the two agencies was concluded on the basis of the Constitution, of the Criminal Procedure Code, laws, emergency ordinances and government resolutions, as well as decisions of the Supreme Council for National Defence (CSAT), the freshly declassified document shows.The protocol provides for the establishment of joint operational teams taking action according to action plans for the parties to exercise their specific competencies, with a view to documenting the facts set forth at Article 2, stipulating that: "The parties shall cooperate according to their competence and responsibilities provided by law, in their activity of capitalizing on intelligence regarding the prevention and combat of crimes against national security, acts of terrorism, crimes amounting to threats to national security and other serious crimes, according to the law."The document also states that "the SRI experts shall provide specialist technical assistance to the prosecutors who conduct criminal investigations" and that SRI shall provide specialist technical assistance to the prosecutors in the cases provided for at Article 2, where evidence handling requires specific knowledge or technical equipment, or in the cases where persons whose identity is protected are being wiretapped.Article 3 lists the goals of the cooperation: "providing intelligence that is relevant and useful for the fulfillment of the specific responsibilities of the parties, as well as ensuring the protection thereof; the speedy carrying out of the steps provided for by the law for SRI's requesting and obtaining the warrant authorizing intelligence gathering activities; ensuring the fulfillment of the responsibilities falling on the Prosecution Office for the enforcement of the authorization documents issued according to the provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code; correlating activities for the identification, collecting, exploitation, preservation and analytical processing of intelligence related to the crimes referred to at Article 2."Article 3 also refers to:* The setting up of joint operational teams acting on the basis of action plans whereby the parties each exercise their specific competencies with a view to documenting the facts provided for at Art. 2;* SRI's providing free of charge assistance for the protection of classified information held and used by the Prosecution Office, to prevent the leak of such data and intelligence, with the collection, transport and countrywide distribution of official correspondence;* The development and implementation by the parties, in complementary areas, of joint strategies, actions and programs;* The provision by Service experts, as per law, of expert technical assistance to the prosecutors who conduct criminal investigations, with a view to enforcing the provisions of Art. 91 (1) - 91 (5) and Art. 98 of the Criminal Procedure Code;* The provision by the Service, under the terms of the law and of the present Protocol, of specialist technical assistance to prosecutors in the cases provided for at Art. 2, where the handling of evidence requires specific knowledge or technical equipment, or in cases where persons with a protected identity are being wiretapped;* The setting in place of computerised mechanisms to ensure the operative transmission, in special situations, of the data and information necessary for the fulfillment of each party's responsibilities;* The participation in joint training, specialization and skills upgrading programs.

AGERPRES .
The mass expulsion this week of some 130 Russian diplomats by Britain, the United States and other NATO allies is but the latest step in a long campaign to criminalize Russia. Like past ruses to demonize Russia, this latest effort will also fail. Because they are based on lies and deception.

However, it is absolutely reprehensible that these anti-Russian states are ramping up international tensions by trampling all over legal and diplomatic norms with wild, unsubstantiated accusations against Moscow.

On the back of British claims that Russia was somehow involved in a murder plot against a former Russian spy living in England, and his daughter, a whole host of NATO and European Union member states have compounded diplomatic sanctions against Moscow.

This is way more dangerous than the old Cold War. Because the erosion of legal and diplomatic norms by the US-led NATO powers are making repercussions unpredictable and unrestrained.

The whole affair is bizarre beyond words; yet, largely at the behest of the British government, international relations with Russia have been plunged into dire condition. Russia is being condemned without any evidence or due process. This is a dangerous anti-Russia witch-hunt conducted on a global scale.

This week, the British government published a six-page briefing on the March 4 incident in Salisbury, where Sergei Skripal (66) and his 33-year-old daughter Yulia were apparently exposed to a nerve poison. The briefing issued by London was the basis for some 25 other states joining in the campaign to expel Russian diplomats from their territories, and to echo British accusations that Moscow is guilty of an assassination attempt.

Any objective reading of Britains so-called intelligence briefing could only elicit a response of contempt and derision. It is but a superficial sketch, containing errors and based on the usual tenuous innuendo and assertion that the British government has been proffering since the March 4 incident. There is no verifiable proof to support the very grave allegations Britain is making against Russia. Yet this risible briefing is the supposed basis for an international campaign to criminalize Russia.

One assertion in the briefing is that British scientists at top-secret chemical warfare laboratories at Porton Down  eight miles from Salisbury  positively identified military-grade Novichok. The latter chemical is reputedly a potent nerve toxin. Another British government assertion is that Novichok is a group of nerve agents developed only [sic] by Russia. That last assertion is patently false. Any number of states could synthesize the organophosphate compound whose chemical formula has been publicly known for years.

If the British scientists positively identified Novichok, as is claimed, then they must have had a standard sample of the chemical in their possession in order to conduct an analysis. If so, that then contradicts the assertion that Russia is the only source of such a chemical  a claim which Moscow, in any case, categorically denies.

There are many other flaws in the British briefing which render the document a joke on legal standards.

Preposterously, this travesty is being used to mount an international campaign to condemn Russia with far-reaching repercussions for global peace.

Lets deal with some facts, instead of being railroaded by official British assertions and claims for which they do not permit independent verification.

The fact is that a Russian citizen, Yulia Skripal, is detained in England, supposedly in a hospital, along with her British naturalized father. The Skripal family relatives in Russia have reportedly not been given any information by the British authorities on Yulias exact condition.

Nearly four weeks after the alleged incident on March 4, the Russian authorities have still not been given consular access to one of its citizens who is being de facto detained on British soil. That is a gross violation of the Vienna Convention governing consular rights.

More sinisterly, it is the British authorities who should be held responsible for any ill-fate of Yulia and her father.

The campaign to convict Russia over an alleged assassination plot relies entirely on the say-so of British authorities who neither present evidence nor permit independent verification of their claims. That is an outrageous arrogance and abuse of legal norms by the British state.

Compounding the mockery of due process, the British governments briefing this week launched into a tangential litany of other alleged Russian malign activity. Russia was accused of assassinating Alexander Litvinenko in 2006  another former spy apparently poisoned on British territory. That case is far from proven, relying again solely on official British claims.

Other outlandish, indeed slanderous, British accusations included Russia shooting down a Malaysian airliner over Ukraine in 2014; interfering in the US elections; cyberattacks on Germany, Denmark, Estonia and Britain; occupation of Crimea in February [sic] 2014; and invasion of Georgia in 2008.

All these claims have been rigorously denied or disproven by Russia. It is staggering that the British government in a supposed intelligence briefing could cite these hackneyed claims as somehow lending substantiation to the bizarre poisoning incident related to the Skripals.

It is truly astounding, not to say perplexing, that international law and diplomatic norms are being so brutalized on the basis of brazen lies and incompetence.

The British authorities claim that one of their measured and proportionate responses to their insane accusations against Russia is the dismantling of the network of Russian intelligence operatives in the UK. That is tantamount to a self-license for more British transgressions.

British Prime Minister Theresa May also this week in a phone call with US President Donald Trump reportedly discussed drawing up more sanctions on Russia to eject spy networks from their respective countries.

So, Russian diplomats are being re-defined as spies. Again, this is self-license for more provocations, and, worse, the erosion of diplomatic channels for possible correction.

What this amounts to is a new, unfettered phase in American, British and NATO efforts to criminalize Russia. Criminalization run amok. Is there any limit to the insanity? No, disturbingly, this is a subjective tailspin with no limit  until a head-on crash.

The list of malign activity cited above in the British briefing are all past examples of NATO information warfare  or more bluntly, propaganda lies and falsehoods.

Those efforts have failed in their objective to subjugate and cow Russia into submission towards US and NATO dominance. Russias military intervention in Syria to nullify NATOs dirty covert war for regime change against the Assad government is perhaps the clearest demonstration of Russias effective defiance.

Out of frustrated failure to defeat Russia through demonization, the information warfare has been wantonly stepped up in attempts to criminalize Moscow and President Vladimir Putin.

Britain and its allies assert there can be no other plausible explanation for the poisoning of the Skripals other than Russian culpability. Wrong. A far more plausible explanation is that Britain and its allies are engaged in a scurrilous, illegal campaign to criminalize Russia.

Britain likes to claim a noble heritage of democratic politics, philosophy and law. Arguably, the British are entitled to that claim.

There again, the British also have a more dubious heritage of piracy and state-sponsored skulduggery. This latter tradition seems more on display in the new and much more dangerous Cold War against Russia.
Richard GALUSTIAN

The British government has never been more unpopular amongst the British people. Its being crushed by problems entirely of its own making and undone by its own neglect and incompetence over a disastrously handled Brexit, crippling austerity measures, a general public still reeling from the horror of the Grenfell fire, and an ever-failing National Health Service, which, given that it is the fourth largest employer in Europe, is a deeply worrying and resonant issue.

In light of this, the response by British diplomat Mr. Stuart Gill OBE in his OpED to the Sunday Times of Malta, where he asserts that, Today, only Russia combines a record of state-sponsored assassinations with an avowed motive for targeting Sergei Skripal  and a history of producing Novochok agents, reads like another desperate repetition of the falsehoods and insults towards Russia issued by Theresa Mays lame duck Government. (Note that the inventor of Novochok moved to the US over twenty years ago.)

Mr. Gills remark is just one of numerous outrageous and childish insults currently bandied around. Outbursts from UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and the inexperienced Minister of Defence, Gavin Williamson  such as Russia should, Shut up and go away or Putin is like Hitler and Russia probably did it  have been unprofessional, to say the very least, not to mention an offence to Russians of today and their relatives who died in the tens of millions fighting Hitler and the Nazis in WWII.

But word on British streets suggests something different afoot, with many members of the public stating that they have serious reservations about the veracity of their governments statements. Not just the public, but professionals and academics from all over the world have been clear that they think its nonsense.

Dave Collum, Professor of Organic Chemistry at Cornell University has been very outspoken on social media in response to the ill-founded assertions that "only" Russia could have manufactured Novochok. He reiterated on Twitter on 27th March:

I will say it again: Anybody who tells you this nerve agent must have come from Russia is a liar  a complete and utter liar. They are simple compounds.They are inherently simple, albeit dangerous molecules to make. Nothing I know tracks it to Russia. Certainly not claims that it somehow requires unique military technology. It is simple organic chemistry.

The British police as well as the military scientists engaged in the manufacture of chemical and biological weapons at Porton Down, both state the investigation will take weeks, maybe months, before a formal conclusion can be drawn.

Aside from the knowledge that the nerve agent was "of a type manufactured by Russia," which is vague at best, lets review some of the inconsistencies.

Scores of doctors, paramedics, firemen and policeman were at the four scenes  the park bench, where the Skripal father and daughter were found, the restaurant where they had recently eaten, the car that Mr. Skripals daughter had driven, and at their home  yet only one other, a policeman, DS Bailey, was said to have ingested this military grade deadly poison. He made a full recovery after only a few weeks.

We know the hospital in Salisbury stated categorically that no one, other than the three people in question, in close proximity to this alleged poison was treated for any symptoms, yet we were told that Novochok is ten times deadlier than any poison ever produced. So how is it that this military grade poison, designed to kill, not merely incapacitate, and supposedly exposed over a wide area, didnt kill anybody, including the people it was intended for?

In consideration of the above, it seems the British Governments rush to judgement within hours of the event was unwarranted.

The rush by many countries, including America, to expel Russian diplomats is a relatively mild reaction caused by the maximum weight the UK can muster, but I predict this will end with their reinstatement in the near future.

Sir Tony Brenton, an experienced British diplomat who was the UKs Ambassador in Moscow in the aftermath of the Alexander Litvinenko poisoning, gave a restrained but emphatic and reasonable response. He said, Obviously we have to react robustly and firmly to deal with the Skripal outrage, but at some point we are going to have to get back to doing business with Russia. He added that while he supported the actions taken by the Government, he warned that ministers' language had been "unnecessarily virulent." This virulence was echoed in Stuart Gills Malta OpEd.

Despite the heavyweight diplomatic manoeuvring against Russia, Sir Tony importantly observed, It seems to me that Gavin Williamson and Boris Johnson are dangerously close to burning those bridges.

What also might surprise many people worldwide is the opinion of ordinary Russians and their actual reaction to these accusations from Britain. Even the astonishing American appointment of extreme neocon John Bolton by Trump.

Russias position was best explained by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in a question and answer session with the media in Hanoi on Friday, March 23rd 2018, where he said:

The British are running around the world, demanding that their partners follow their lead. No facts have been produced, which leads us to think that it is a real provocation. The recent appointment of Mr. John Bolton to the position of US National Security Advisor is also an interesting one, and he is certainly a tough diplomat and politician. But he is clearly a professional who will pursue the policies outlined by President Trump. Despite everything, Trumps policy, which he reiterated the other day in his conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin, is to return relations with Russia to normal and start cooperating in order to resolve issues of common concern to both countries.

During Trumps congratulatory call to Putin on his successful presidential re-election, the two men agreed to meet. This fact has not been publicized by mainstream media.

Someone should inform the incompetent and rather isolated Conservative British Government that they are clearly out of step when it comes to the state of US relations with Russia, as I believe a looming rapprochement between the Trump and Putin Administrations may be in the works.

ronpaulinstitute.org
Kim Jong-un's visit reveals much about the tactics that will be used in the negotiations between the Korean leader and the American president; it also consolidates a historical relationship between Pyongyang and Beijing

The recent meeting in Beijing between the two supreme leaders of DPRK and China has captured global attention. The summit remained secret throughout its duration, revealed by the Chinese leader only when the visit had ended and the Korean leader was on his way back home. Rumours of the encounter continued to be denied by the Chinese foreign minister right up to Tuesday. The denials had a lot to do with the fact that a positive outcome for the meeting, this being the first one, could not be guaranteed. The final statements, the relaxed atmosphere, the many images displaying mutual smiles and acknowledgement reveal that the two leaders of the Chinese and Korean Communist parties are on the same page. Despite wishful thinking from the US, which interpreted the lack of meetings in previous years as a change in Chinese attitudes towards North Korea, the meeting highlighted positive impressions by Xi Jinping about the developments on the peninsula as well as confirmed the strategic thinking of Kim Jong-un.

Kim Jong-Un's strategy deserves particular attention. The ability to deter aggression from the United States and South Korea existed well before Pyongyangs development of a nuclear deterrent, thanks to the enormous number of artillery guns it has directed towards Seoul. A possible conflict would have caused millions of deaths, destroyed the American forces on the peninsula (the American bases would have been the first to be eliminated, really only being there to serve as a tripwire), and upset the alliance with Seoul, which would have borne an unacceptable toll. Kim Jong-un and his father had already secured a powerful enough deterrent to ward off aggression against their country. The strategy behind developing nuclear weapons becomes more clear following the just-concluded meeting with Xi Jinping.

Kim Jong-un's willingness to meet Donald Trump in bilateral talks, and the possibility that Pyongyang will give up its nuclear arsenal, stand out. The meeting with Xi Jinping in all likelihood focused on the demands to be made to Trump: the removal of the North American presence in the south of the country is something on which China and DPRK are in strong agreement. The desired outcome for Beijing and Pyongyang (but also for Moscow) would see Washington remove its forces from South Korea in exchange for opening up North Koreas sites to international inspections. China and Russia would be happy to see the US threat to their nuclear deterrence removed (even if, with the latest hypersonic weapons revealed by Putin, the problem does not seem to arise). This would also bring great advantages to Seoul, which could embark on a rapprochement with the North, starting with a possible reunification of the peninsula; and under the economic and energetic aegis of Russia and China, the peninsula could be included in the One Belt One Road (OBOR), as well as as benefitting from Moscows gas.

Of course this scenario clashes with the recent appointments of Mike Pompeo and John Bolton to the top of the American administration, confirmed by the threat of dissolving the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) reached with Iran, undoing a deal reached through the efforts of multiple countries. The consequences would be significant, with the United State coming across as an unreliable state in international relations.

This aspect for Pyongyang, Beijing, Moscow and even Seoul counts up to a certain point. The extraordinary diplomatic message that Kim Jong-un and Xi Jinping have sent to allies and adversaries alike is that to allow for peace and the possibility of reunification for the Korean peninsula, Kim is apparently willing to renounce his nuclear weapons, his most important deterrent. But interestingly, North Korea has always been able to rely on its formidable conventional deterrent to guarantee its security anyway. For the survival of Kim and his circle, thousands upon thousands of artillery pieces aimed at Seoul are enough to keep any potential aggressor at bay. Another obvious consideration is that any use by Kim of his nuclear weapons against the United States or its allies would result in the total annihilation of the DPRK. So the question remains: if North Korea has always guaranteed its survival through its conventional deterrence, why has it developed a nuclear deterrent as well on top of this? The most logical answer is so as to bring the United States to the negotiating table.

Pyongyangs stroke of diplomatic and strategic genius lies in getting the United States to abandon the Korean peninsula in exchange for North Korea renouncing its nuclear arsenal. This hypothesis puts Kim Jong-un on the positive side of the negotiations, coming across as a reasonable and serious negotiating partner willing to find a way to guarantee peace on the whole peninsula. If Kim Jong-un is willing to give up what apparently, until yesterday, seemed impossible in the interests of reaching an agreement to ensure the survival of the two Koreas, then Pyongyang is presenting itself as Seouls guarantor of peace. The message Moon Jae-in could receive from the negotiations is that an "enemy" like North Korea is willing to give up its most significant weapon, while the Americans march in with the likes of Bolton and Pompeo, ready to slam their fists on the negotiating table by refusing to make any concessions.

While Kim Jong-un has every intention of placing any blame for a failure of negotiations on the American side, and seems to have all the reasons ready in place to do so, the meeting between Kim Jong-un and Xi Jinping seems aimed at laying the groundwork to break the alliance between Seoul and Washington. We can already imagine the scene, with Pyongyang ready to renounce its nuclear weapons, Seoul ready to enter into dialogue about the reunification of the country, China and Russia happy with the denuclearization of the North, and above all, the elimination of the prospects of a terrible war on the peninsula. In this climate, Washington would be left completely isolated in refusing to entertain any prospect of abandoning the peninsula. Thanks to its less-than-perfect relations with its European allies, and its intention to annul the Iranian JCPOA, Washington would leave itself looking like it is neither able to keep its promises nor willing to pursue any credible diplomatic path.

The reality is that an overall agreement between North Korea and the United States is practically impossible for one fundamental reason: the United States uses the excuse of having to protect South Korea to maintain a permanent presence on the peninsula for the purposes of containing China and Russia, both through missile defense and by maintaining a military presence near their borders. For this reason, while Moscow and Beijing have multiple reasons for seeking an agreement between Pyongyang and Washington, both are aware that the US has no intentions of abandoning its presence in South Korea. The meeting between Kim Jong-un and Trump is a well-designed trap prepared by Moscow, Beijing and Pyongyang, maybe over many months or even years. The most realistic objectives are to further isolate Washington in the region, to bring Beijing and Seoul closer together, and to drive a wedge between Seoul and Washington. Moscow would use the failure of these negotiations to earn more leverage with its European partners, all eager to see a solution to the Korean crisis. Furthermore, Moscow could increase its opportunity to enter the energy market in South Korea as a result of Seoul diversifying its energy sources. Beijing has every intention of avoiding a war on the peninsula, which would be disastrous in many respects, not only humanitarian but also in the possibility of Washington camping on Chinas border as a result of destroying the DPRK.

South Koreas Moon Jae-in looks on anxiously, ready to reach an agreement with the North. The mastery of Sino-Korean diplomacy has created a win-win situation for Pyongyang, with Washingtons eventual failure in the negotiations having negative reverberations with her allies in region. This is probably the reason why many in the US administration greeted Trumps decision to accept talks with Kim negatively.

Accepting to engage in talks signals a preparedness to negotiate. But as we can anticipate, the unwillingness of the Americans to accede to North Korean demands to abandon the peninsula doom the talks. At the same time, Pyongyangs offer to give up its nuclear weapons will leave Washington bearing responsibility for the failure of the talks if there is no commensurable response. For this reason, Trump has ingeniously decided to bring in two warmongers like Pompeo and Bolton, intending to scare Kim into a negotiating position more favorable to Washington, a strategy he intends to also pursue in relation to Iran.

The truth is that American diplomacy has no room for maneuver with Korea; and since war is unthinkable, it is not even a real threat. This leaves Trump with a lot of bluster and a bunch of snarling hawks in tow, but with Pyongyang and Beijing left holding the aces, as will become clear in the coming weeks when all the cards are laid on the negotiating table.
Russian military experts, and those of European neighbors, agree that the American and NATO military superiority over Russia is greater than it was during the Cold War. That explains why many Russians support Russia threatening to use its nuclear weapons (especially the hundreds of ICBMs) and special operations (irregular warfare and lots of subterfuge and deception) to achieve anything against foreign enemies. While this has proved to be useful in explaining how the current Russian government will somehow do the impossible and rebuild the ancient Russian empire. It has not worked in practice. Despite that the current Russian leadership has kept trying.

In 2014 Russian leaders began using a new term, New Russia to describe what they were doing in Ukraine and, without saying so, planned to do elsewhere. The objective was to restore the old Russian Empire. That was built by the czars over several centuries, taken over by the communists in the 1920s and then lost by the communists in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed. This caused half the Soviet population to leave for newly formed nations. Current Russian leaders, especially Vladimir Putin, are quite explicit in describing this loss of empire as the greatest tragedy of the 20th century. Many Russians agree, although most of the people in the 14 new nations created from the wreckage of that empire do not. Nor do most Russian neighbors.

Officially Russia denies all this ill will but the restoration of the centuries old Russian Empire remains a popular goal among Russians, whether the state controlled media puts a spotlight on that or not. Ukraine was always a key component of that empire and Russians wants it back. To do that the cost, in political, financial and military terms would be high. While rebuilding the empire is popular inside Russia it has terrified and united the rest of Europe and led to a growing militarization effort. Russias economy cannot match the rest of Europe and as Europe revives its military power Russia will be at a disadvantage there as well. While Russia has nukes so does France and Britain. Then there is the United States.

Russia has one major, and very embarrassing problem in the former parts of the Soviet Union that were not mainly Slavs. This means Central Asia where the locals (mainly Turkic and other non-Slavs) always resented Russian domination. The ethnic Russian minority soon left and now the number of locals who can speak Russian is rapidly shrinking. Since the early 1990s, these unwilling provinces of the Russian empire have lost between a third and half of their Russian speakers. In the West (the Baltic States) the favorite second language is now English while in the east it is Chinese (mainly) and English. During the Soviet years the majority of the locals could speak or at least understand some Russian. The speed with which that disappeared was amazing, and demoralizing for Russians.

Russia still has a lot of non-Slav minorities and these minorities have higher birth-rates than the ethnic Russians. For centuries Russia (rebranded as the Soviet Union in the early 1920s) was considered a threat to its neighbors in part because of its larger population. But since the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991 the remaining Russian population has been in decline. Twenty years after the Soviet Union collapsed, the Russian population implosion was getting worse. Currently Russia has the 11th largest economy in the world but without more investments (local or foreign) and fewer sanctions the economy will shrink (like the workforce, because couples are not having enough children). Poverty rates fell from 29 percent of the population in 2000 to just under 12 percent in 2012. That was four years after Russia got into rebuilding the empire and now the poverty rate is about 14 percent and rising. A major reason for the change was the collapse of world oil prices in 2013 but that spotlights another economic problem; expanding non-oil and gas industries so Russia is not so vulnerable to fluctuations in the price of oil and gas. That diversification requires a lot of foreign investment and access to foreign technology. The growing sanctions throttle access to those key items.

Follow The Money

The government insists that the growing international sanction imposed because of Russian aggression and dirty deeds (like poisoning Russian officials who defected and found sanctuary in Britain) is manageable. But many of the economic experts on the government payroll disagree and as long as they disagree only with their bosses (the handful of officials who make the final decisions) they keep their jobs. Details of these disagreements eventually leak out and disclose the obvious problem with the government (especially before the recent presidential election) promising more stuff than the current economy can provide. More taxes is difficult because it creates unpopular increases in the cost of living at a time when more people have less to spend. Another contentious issue is popular demand that the government go after the many businesses that evade taxes, often on a massive scale. This is possible because there are so many corrupt officials and a tolerance for the use of gangster-style violence to intimidate officials into going along with criminal scams. The government prefers short term fixes that create long term problems. Most of the Russians this policy hurts have not been born yet so this approach tends to be favored by rulers who are willing to sacrifice the future to preserve the current power. For Russia this policy could lead to Russia falling apart rather than rebuilding the old empire. The core problems for Russia are the widespread corruption which limits the formation of new businesses as well as discouraging investments in current or new businesses (by both foreign and Russian investors). In addition Russia is becoming more dependent on oil and gas exports. These commodities are suffering from falling prices and increased foreign competition (especially from the resurgent, thanks to fracking, United States). Unlike Western politicians, who have less corruption and vigorous growing economies, Russia lacks the potential for turning its current dilemma around. As more Russians become aware of that they will, as they did in the late 1980s, seek other solutions.

Syrian Aftermath

In northeastern Syria American and SDF forces expand and improve their fortifications in Deir Zor province, specifically the new U.S. base at the al Omar oilfield. The Russia and the Assads want this but the Americans are backing Kurdish efforts to hold on to al Omar and the valuable oil it can produce. For a while in March Assad, Russian and Iranian forces were gathering five kilometers from the new American base. This was the same areas where the February 7th battle took place. By the end of March this force had pulled back and apparently dispersed. The February advance by Russian and Syrian forces was quickly repulsed by American firepower and for a while it was unclear what Russia would do. The February Russian force had no air support or anti-aircraft weapons and no backup plan other than for the survivors to retreat as quickly as possible. The Russians were hoping to push American troops out of al Omar, which is east of the Euphrates. The Americans refused to pull out and the Russian force suffered heavy losses (over 300 dead) most of them Russian military contractors.

The American did not publicize this but the Russians did because it was a great embarrassment. The Russian government continues to play down the casualties and the obvious defeat but it was big news back in Russia where in late February there were more ads for experienced combat veterans to work as contractors in Syria. Internet chatter in Russia is mostly about getting revenge against the Americans rather than questioning government policy in Syria. There was criticism inside Russia about the war effort in Syria but the government has always discouraged it and stressed that so few Russian military personnel (about fifty so far) had been killed in Syria. It was an open secret that the losses were much higher if you counted the Russian military contractors. Now that fiction is shredded even though the Russian government does not seem to have a plan to deal with the public anger and the reality that open war between Russian military personnel (as in air support) would be extremely risky because the Americans have far more air power in the area as well as more ground forces in addition to powerful allies like Israel. Eventually the Russian led force pulled back.

The February battle led to more veterans of the contractor forces speaking out and making public details that were long known to many in Syria as well as foreign intel agencies. It now appears that over 400 contractors have died since 2015, most of them in the recent battle. The Russian contractors are not often used as assault troops but as trusted and capable security forces for Russian bases and key locations controlled by the Assads as well as senior Assad government officials. The contractor units often have some Russian soldiers attached, to deal with calling in artillery or air strikes and maintaining communications with the Russian military headquarters in Syria. In light of all this the February battle appears to have been based on someone assuming that the American and SDF forces based around the nearby oil field would fall back with the approach of the largely Russian contractor force. This was a major mistake and it is still unclear who on the Russian side allowed it to happen.

Meanwhile the Americans are building smaller bases in the nearby Koniko and al Jafreh oilfields. These three oil fields produced over 300,000 barrels a day before the civil war began in 2011 and was a major source of foreign currency for buying foreign goods. Syrian oil is known as light crude and can be burned for heating or cooking as it comes out of the ground. These oilfields were operated (before 2011) by Alawites (the minority the Assads belong to). The Assads want the oil fields back. So do the Russians, who have the contract (from the Assads) to rehabilitate the oil fields and operate them. That translates to over $30 billion and a large chunk of that goes back to Russia. After seven years of fighting the oil fields only produce about 20,000 barrels a day and control of these oil fields puts the Syrian Kurds in a strong bargaining position.

Russia also wants to get Turkey out of NATO, keep the Iranians from starting a war with Israel and make the Americans look bad. At the same time Russia needs to do this on the cheap and make Russia look good, especially to Russians back home. That is proving difficult as most Russians were not enthusiastic about the Syrian operation in the first place and popular support has been declining. Israel sees Russia as being of limited use because of the Russian strategy. Moreover Russia is not as militarily powerful as it pretends to be. Privately the Russians agree with Israel on that and appreciate any help the Israelis can provide in this area.

All this can get confusing. For example Israel has persuaded Russia to do what it can to prevent Iran from assembling, arming and positioning a large force of non-Iranian forces to attack Israel. Russia has limited ability to block Iranian efforts but does what it can. Iran is building bases to support a large force of Lebanese (Hezbollah), Syrians (whichever Shia Syrians it can recruit) and lots of foreign Shia mercenaries (mainly Afghans, Iraqis other non-Iranian Shia) in parts of Syria where Russia does not have much military power on the ground and Russian air power cannot occupy ground or otherwise interfere with what Iran is doing. Russia does not want Iran starting a war with Israel but as a practical matter Iran is pretty irrational when it comes to Israel and cannot be stopped by Russian, Turkish or American threats. Russia has publicly criticized Iran for regularly calling for the destruction of Israel. Russia has also sided with Turkey in disagreements with Iran over strategy and tactics in Syria. Russia still considers Iran an ally, but a flawed one that really should work on their bad habits. Currently Turley, Russia and Iran all say they are working out their differences and continuing to cooperate in Syria.

North Korea

Russia is less boastful of what it is doing with North Korea. The ship-to-ship transfers at sea near North Korea are a form of North Korean smuggling that can be crippled and the United States, Japan and South Korea are cooperating to do just that. U.S. intelligence is monitoring over 200 ships, most of them North Korean, for these high seas smuggling operations and the operators of the foreign delivery ships is being tracked down. Most appear to be controlled by Chinese or Russian firms. These at-sea transfers are a major source of smuggled goods and are the most vulnerable illegal channel the North Koreans have. North Korea insists it is coping with the increased sanctions but all the non-government reports coming out of North Korea indicate otherwise. Because of that the April and May talks involving North Korean, South Korean and American leaders are expected to feature North Korea trying to obtain whatever it needs to stay in business. That will not only involve some imaginative deal making but also the ability to survive implementation. In the past North Korea has always cheated, sooner or later. The Americans and South Koreans know this and are under a lot of pressure to not be deceived again and even China is playing hardball. Only Russia still stands ready to assist and will provide as much help as North Korea can afford to pay for.

Ukraine

An Easter Ceasefire began today in eastern Ukraine (Donbas). It didnt last long with at least two incidents of rebels/Russians firing on Ukrainian troops. There were no casualties and no return fire.

Ukrainians and NATO observers believe Russia is now using the Donbas war as an opportunity to test new weapons and tactics rather than a serious effort to take Donbas. Russia would still like to get Donbas but that is less likely because the West (especially the Americans) are getting more involved. Worse, not only has the Russian Army learned many useful lessons in Donbas, so has the Ukrainian military. The Ukrainians were more in need of military reform than the Russians and have become a much more formidable force. Worse, Ukraine is now closer to the West, and joining NATO, than they were in 2014 when Russia decided to attack to prevent that sort of thing.

March 29, 2018: Ukraine reports that Russia employed a blinking laser to blind Ukrainian troops and border guards. One border guard was recently a victim of this device, which is banned by international agreement. The injured border guard suffered retinal damage.

March 28, 2018: The U.S. expelled 60 Russian diplomats and closed the Seattle consulate because of the Russian use of nerve gas to assassinate a Russian living in Britain. Other NATO countries also expelled Russian diplomats and the total is now over 140 including the 23 Britain initially expelled. This is about four percent of Russian diplomatic personnel worldwide. Russia is believed to have built up a large force of legal (posing as diplomats with diplomatic immunity) and illegal (they can be arrested and prosecuted) intelligence operatives in the West since the late 1990s. With this large number of expulsions there will be increased efforts to find and arrest the illegals. Russia has ordered 150 foreign diplomats expelled and this accounts for about two percent of the diplomats the nations involved have overseas. Russia also closed the American consulate in St Petersburg. The real damage to Russia is the rest of the world uniting in condemning them for this assassination and linking that misbehavior to Russian aggression against Ukraine and support for the Assads in Syria. Russian airstrikes in Syria carry out the Assad policy of attacking pro-rebel civilians in an effort to drive the civilians out of the country. In the UN Russia still has its veto but a growing majority of UN members see Russia as an outlaw state. China, as a close Russian ally, is seen in the same light because of its aggressive claims on the South China Sea and parts of India.

March 26, 2018: In northeastern Syria (Deir Ezzor province) the American commander for Syria spoke with his Russian counterpart and that led to the withdrawal of Russian, Syrian and Iranian forces that had gathered near the new American base that had been attacked unsuccessfully on February 7tth. Further south, outside Damascus, Russia reports that their aerial bombing effort against a rebel controlled (for over five years) area east of the city was largely back under government control. Russia was criticized for its ruthless bombing of residential areas but the Russians agreed with the Assad strategy of going after pro-rebel civilians to weaken the resolve of the rebels there to keep fighting. It worked again in Ghouta, where many of the civilians and most of the surviving rebels have agreed to leave for northwest Syria where Idlib province, on the Turkish border. Idlib is the last major stronghold for rebels. About ten percent of the Ghouta suburb is still held by rebels who refuse to leave but are still negotiating.

March 24, 2018: In the south (Dagestan) police surrounded an ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) member in a house. The Islamic terrorist refused to surrender. After a gun battle the ISIL man was killed and was found to own a sniper rifle, lots of ammo and grenades.

The U.S. and about twenty European countries are going to join Britain and expel Russian diplomats in retaliation for the recent use of Russian chemical weapons to poison Russians living in Britain.

March 21, 2018: Ukraine cancelled its 2011 economic cooperation agreement with Russia. This agreement was set to expire in 2020 but since Russia invaded in 2014 and seized Crimea and sought to grab a large chunk of eastern Ukraine (Donbas, where fighting continues) the 2011 agreement has gradually fallen apart. The cancellation of the deal makes that official and terminates any remaining economic links.

March 20, 2018: In the south (Chechnya) an ISIL gunman attacked a police station in Grozny (the provincial capital) and was killed but not before he wounded one policeman.

March 18, 2018: The presidential elections were held. Some 67 percent of eligible voters cast a ballot and Vladimir Putin received 77 percent of those votes. The state controlled media supported Putin and worked with the police and courts to make sure candidates who could take a lot of votes from Putin were barred from running. There was also some vote rigging.

March 16, 2018: Britain will demand more financial disclosure from the growing number of wealthy Russians who establish second homes in Britain and often spend a lot of time and money there. Many of these Russians got rich via corrupt practices and are believed to cooperate with Russian intelligence and assassination efforts in Britain.

March 8, 2018: In the south (Ukraine) a Ukrainian soldier was killed by Russian shelling. This comes after a new ceasefire went into effect on the 5th. Since the war in Donbas began in April 2014 2,379 Ukrainian soldiers (including todays) have died in the Donbas. Thats almost four years of fighting.

March 5, 2018: Russians with guns are everywhere. In northeast Sudan (River Nile state) a series of clashes in a gold-producing area left one miner dead and five others injured. The most serious incident involved local Sudanese miners and a Russian mining company. The Sudanese claimed they owned the area and the security guards employed by the Russians disagreed. Russia is not as involved in Africa as China but are constantly seeking opportunities.

March 4, 2018: In Britain, Sergei Skripal, a former Soviet intelligence officer, who worked for Britain as a double agent, was found unconscious, with his adult daughter, on a park bench near a pub they had visited. The two were hospitalized and survived what was apparently an assassination attempt using a form of nerve gas developed in Russia and, as far as anyone knows, not possessed by anyone but Russia. Three of the police officers who responded to the call about the unconscious people on the park bench also fell ill, one of them seriously. Britain expelled 23 Russian diplomats suspected of being intelligence agents and Russia responded by expelling 23 British diplomats. More nations said they would expel Russian diplomates. This assassination effort was nothing new for Russia. Skripal was still working for British intelligence when he was arrested in Russia at the end of 2004 and prosecuted for espionage. He was sent to prison in 2006 but got out in 2010 when Russia agreed to use him as one of the three imprisoned spies to get back several Russian illegals who were caught in the United States. Russia was reluctant to part with Skripal, who had apparently done enormous damage to Russian overseas spying efforts. But they wanted their imprisoned agents in the U.S. back. This was not the first time Russia had gone after people like Skripal in Britain. This sort of thing has happened elsewhere in Europe before and after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

March 3, 2018: Responding to Israeli requests Russia blocked Iranian efforts to set up a naval support facility at the Syrian port of Tartus. This is where Russia has already built a facility (and has a long-term lease) to handle the needs of its warships operating off the coast and in the Mediterranean. Tartus is also where Russian military cargo for Russian and Syrian forces is unloaded.

March 2, 2018: The government confirmed that the two Su-57 stealth fighters sent to Syria in early February had conducted two days of testing the i r sensors and countermeasures over Syria and returned to Russia by the end of February.

February 27, 2018: Russia blocked a UN effort to renew arms sanctions on Yemen. Russia also blocks UN efforts to criticize Iran of supplying weapons to the Shia rebels in Yemen as well as any effort by anyone to criticize Iran. Russia and China have become increasingly unpopular at the UN for this frequent use of vetoes to block peacekeeping efforts.
Nine heavily armed pirates have attacked various vessels in Ghanaian waters around the Tema anchorage, and kidnapped five sailors, whom they are suspected to have taken to Nigerian waters.



Presenting a narrative to the media at the Tema Harbour on Wednesday, 28th March, 2018, Flag Officer Commanding (FOC), Eastern Naval Command (ENC), Commodore J.O Kontoh said that the series of attacks on at least three vessels, started at the dawn of 26th March and continued into 28th.



About 0330 hours on that Monday, a speedboat powered by two outboard motors (175 and 75), loaded with nine persons suspected to be Nigerians, approached a vessel in the Tema anchorage area and under heavy arms commanded the crew on the vessel to weigh anchor.



They then headed eastward after taking charge of the vessel, towards the Togo waters, seaward, but the crew, upon realising the intention of the new captain, informed them of insufficient fuel to make the journey.



This caused the armed bandits to hijack another vessel  a tanker  and took two hostages from the first vessel and carried them along unto the newly accosted vessel.



The hoodlums asked the crew of the new vessel to head towards Bayielsa, in Nigeria, but unfortunate for them, the tanker also did not have sufficient fuel for the expedition.



The miscreants then took three more hostages from the tanker as they hijacked the two Ghanaian fishing vessels (MV MARINE 711 and 707) belonging to MARINE WORLD FISHERIES LTD in Tema.



The Ghanaian vessels were fishing at Ada, in the Greater Accra Region and locked up all the forty-five (45) crew members on board the vessel into a cabin, save the Second Officer Daniel Mensah, whom they dialogued with for their way of escape  for per Daniel, they seemed to have a bad idea of their compass.



The pirates then headed eastward towards the Togolese and Beninois waters and during the cover of the night, sneaked away in their speedboats towards Nigeria, with the five hostages (three Koreans, one Ghanaian and one Greek), leaving the Ghanaian vessel to be taken back by the Ghana Navy.



Ghana Navy troops on duty who brought back the hijacked vessels

Speaking about the safety of Ghanaian waters and why the pirates were successful in operating thereat, Commodore Kontoh said that slip-offs may happen but what the security actors do afterwards, is what matters.



He urged all vessels within the anchorage to always keep in touch with port security to help bring them relief in times of distresses.



He also indicated that aircraft assistance was made available to help rescue the the Ghanaian vessels.



Speaking about their ordeal under the hands of the bandits, Officer Daniel Mensah said the pirates caught them by surprise with their speed and also for the fact that they were not on the move, but were fishing.



He said their only recourse was to call the Ghana Navy, but they had to abandon the enterprise midway, since the bandits seemed to gain rapidly on them and were listening in to the distress call and queried them as to why they tried contacting the Navy.



A number of the Ghanaian crew were assaulted by the talisman-wearing bandits, who bore such heavy armor, thus cowing their hostages into proper submission.



Daniel Mensah said that it was on the Beninois waters that an aircraft, which he suspects, must have intercepted their attempted distress call, slowed their voyage as it came encircling their vessel, prompting the pirates to put off the speed.



The aircraft gave instructions to Daniel and called for help for the vessel which was later taken back to Ghana by the Ghana Navy duty ship.



Daniel attested to the fact that their vessels are not equipped with security measures and that on sea, they act as their own security. Investigations continue.









Source: today









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Featured Video
TICKERS: CNS, , GYA; GYNAF; 1ZT, JCO; JROOF, NUAG; NUPMF, UGE; UGEIF

Source: Clive Maund for Streetwise Reports (3/30/18)

Technical analyst Clive Maund talks about some stocks he will be looking at in coming days.



This a "heads up" on a number of stocks that we will be looking at in coming days, as time permits. In addition to these we will also be looking at a range of gold and especially silver stocks, for reasons set out in USING COTs TO TIME THE 1st BIG PM SECTOR UPWAVE.

Contagious Gaming Inc. CNS.V, KSMRF on OTC, C$0.125, $0.10

This stock got as high as C$6.40 back in 2014 and is now a paltry C$0.125. Do not be fooled by the name. The attraction of this company is that it produces a refined cannabinoid substance that is clear and palatable, unlike the competition, which produce it as a kind of offensive sludge. Apparently there are a lot of contenders after this product and perhaps the company itself, although fundamentally nothing more is known about it. Chart looks very bullish, with a preliminary breakout in January followed by a reaction back to support. Thinly traded and speculative, therefore only suited to experienced traders. Avoid on OTC as volume non-existent.

Distinct Infrastructure Group Inc.DUG.V, DSTFF on OTC, C$1.33, $1.03

This is a solid company with bright prospects. It supplies 5G internet infrastructure, which will be necessary for driverless vehicles, that use a huge amount of computing power, presumably useful for preventing them mounting the kerb and mowing down cyclists and pedestrians etc. The demand for this companies' services is expanding rapidly. Regarded as a relatively sound investment at a good entry point after the long reaction from early last year. Avoid on OTC as volume non-existent.

Guyana Goldstrike Inc. GYA.V, GYNAF on OTC, C$0.23, $0.166

After a cyclical reaction back from November, this advance stage gold explorer is believed to be at a good point to buy for a new uptrend on the back of a sector advance.

Jericho Oil Corp. JCO.V, JROOF, C$0.96, $0.74

Jericho reacted back more than expected  if we had expected it we would of course have taken profits and stood back, like we did after the earlier rally. The reaction has brought it back to support and with volume having died down, it should soon turn up again. So we stay long and it is a buy again here.

New Pacific Metals Corp. NUAG.V, NUPMF, C$1.66, $1.28

Whilst the sector has reacted back, New Pacific has continued to plod higher, which is thought to be because drilling results are expected soon, and there is a chance they will be very good. So we stay long and it is also rated a buy here with a fairly close stop, in case the results fall short. Volumes light on OTC.

UGE International Ltd. UGE.V, UGEIF, C$0.255, $0.193

Just as you should not drive a car by staring intently into the rear view mirror, you should not get fixated on last year's results when considering whether to buy this stock. It made a pretty heavy loss last year, but its performance in the latest quarter is vastly improved and it has a full order book. Believed to be at the 2nd low of a large Double Bottom pattern with the low of late 2016, after a long and stubborn downtrend from April of last year, which is seen to advantage on a 3-year chart. Yesterday's "bull hammer" on the chart on good volume may signal the final low. Regarded as a strong buy here.

Clive Maund has been president of www.clivemaund.com, a successful resource sector website, since its inception in 2003. He has 30 years' experience in technical analysis and has worked for banks, commodity brokers and stockbrokers in the City of London. He holds a Diploma in Technical Analysis from the UK Society of Technical Analysts.

Want to read more Energy Report articles like this? Sign up for our free e-newsletter, and you'll learn when new articles have been published. To see a list of recent articles and interviews with industry analysts and commentators, visit our Streetwise Interviews page.

Disclosure:

1) Clive Maund: I, or members of my immediate household or family, own shares of the following companies mentioned in this article: None. I personally am, or members of my immediate household or family are, paid by the following companies mentioned in this article: None. My company has a financial relationship with the following companies mentioned in this article: None. CliveMaund.com disclosures below. I determined which companies would be included in this article based on my research and understanding of the sector.

2) The following companies mentioned in this article are billboard sponsors of Streetwise Reports: Guyana Goldstrike and Jericho Oil. Click here for important disclosures about sponsor fees. As of the date of this article/interview, an affiliate of Streetwise Reports has a consulting relationship with Distinct Infrastructure, Jericho Oil, New Pacific Metals and UGE International.

3) Statements and opinions expressed are the opinions of the author and not of Streetwise Reports or its officers. The author is wholly responsible for the validity of the statements. The author was not paid by Streetwise Reports for this article. Streetwise Reports was not paid by the author to publish or syndicate this article. The information provided above is for informational purposes only and is not a recommendation to buy or sell any security.

4) This article does not constitute investment advice. Each reader is encouraged to consult with his or her individual financial professional and any action a reader takes as a result of information presented here is his or her own responsibility. By opening this page, each reader accepts and agrees to Streetwise Reports' terms of use and full legal disclaimer. This article is not a solicitation for investment. Streetwise Reports does not render general or specific investment advice and the information on Streetwise Reports should not be considered a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Streetwise Reports does not endorse or recommend the business, products, services or securities of any company mentioned on Streetwise Reports.

5) From time to time, Streetwise Reports LLC and its directors, officers, employees or members of their families, as well as persons interviewed for articles and interviews on the site, may have a long or short position in securities mentioned. Directors, officers, employees or members of their immediate families are prohibited from making purchases and/or sales of those securities in the open market or otherwise from the time of the interview or the decision to write an article, until one week after the publication of the interview or article. As of the date of this article, officers and/or employees of Streetwise Reports LLC (including members of their household) own securities of Contagious Gaming, Distinct Infrastructure, Jericho Oil, New Pacific Metals, Guyana Goldstrike and UGE International, companies mentioned in this article.

CliveMaund.com Disclosure:

The above represents the opinion and analysis of Mr Maund, based on data available to him, at the time of writing. Mr. Maund's opinions are his own, and are not a recommendation or an offer to buy or sell securities. Mr. Maund is an independent analyst who receives no compensation of any kind from any groups, individuals or corporations mentioned in his reports. As trading and investing in any financial markets may involve serious risk of loss, Mr. Maund recommends that you consult with a qualified investment advisor, one licensed by appropriate regulatory agencies in your legal jurisdiction and do your own due diligence and research when making any kind of a transaction with financial ramifications. Although a qualified and experienced stockmarket analyst, Clive Maund is not a Registered Securities Advisor. Therefore Mr. Maund's opinions on the market and stocks can only be construed as a solicitation to buy and sell securities when they are subject to the prior approval and endorsement of a Registered Securities Advisor operating in accordance with the appropriate regulations in your area of jurisdiction.
The petition against Imran states that the PTI chief used derogatory language against former chief justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Chaudhry.

A three-member bench headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan Justice Mian Saqib Nisar will hear the petition on April 4. The chief justice has recently been disposing of several old contempt petitions which have been gathering dust in the apex court.

Another petition, filed against the appointment of Justice Qazi Faez Isa, has also been fixed for hearing on April 4. The petitioner had challenged Justice Isas appointment as the chief justice of Balochistan High Court.

However, the registrars office had overruled the objections and returned the petition. But a three-member bench will take up the petition to see whether it is maintainable or not.
NSA warmly received the guest and said that France was a great country with positive outlook.

The envoy applauded Pakistans efforts against terrorism and acknowledged civil and military sacrifices offered by the nation in this regard. He expressed desire to have long-term cooperation with Pakistan in this war against terror.

He also highlighted the importance of collective efforts against terrorism and said that France was willing to strengthen defence and intelligence cooperation in a comprehensive framework.Both sides recognized that the threat of terrorism and particularly Daesh was not yet over and efforts were required to effectively curb this menace in the region.

NSAs opinion was sought on Pak-India relations and on Afghan peace prospects. NSA reiterated that Pakistan was willing to have friendly ties with all neighbouring countries.India, by refusing dialogues, has defeated the spirit of bilateralism. And this will not lead us anywhere. Irrespective of prevailing impasse, both the countries can not escape dialogue and resolution of their disputes, he said.

All mature nations sought to resolve their issues by way of dialogue and Pakistan would always insisted upon it while maintaining its National dignity and honour, he added.
The university friends of a Government College University female student Abida who was killed after being raped in Faisalabad on Friday staged protest over the gruesome incident while the social media was also abuzz with trends of Justice for Abida.

According to details, the body of a girl who had gone missing earlier this week was found in a canal on Wednesday.

According to a doctor at the hospital where autopsy was conducted, she was subjected to rape and violence before being strangled to death. The victim was a student of English literature at the Government College University, Faisalabad.The students of the university staged protest over the incident despite the security at the varsity rooting out the protest camp. The students expressed their anger over the incident and said that if such incidents continue to occur then how could they focus on their education.

They demanded of the authorities to trace the culprits involved in it and said that they would not sit quietly unless those behind it are not nabbed.The social media also reacted with anger over the gruesome incident with the GC University Student and Justice for Abida became the top trend in Pakistan on Twitter after people raise the issue on the micro-blogging website.

Suspects Arrested

They demanded of the government and the concerned authorities to not only arrest the culprits behind this heinous crime but also ensure security for the women.

Meanwhile, the police had arrested three persons over suspicions of their involvement in the case and all of them lives in the neighborhood of the murdered female student.

They are shifted to undisclosed location for further investigation.

Father Statement

The girls father, told the media on Thursday that his daughter had left the university after attending her classes, but did not return home.

I and my relatives got worried and launched a search for her, but to no avail. I then approached Gulberg police for registration of a case, but the SHO not only refused to entertain my application but also used objectionable language.I then sought assistance from City Police Officer Athar Ismail. But the CPO neither bothered to take action against the SHO nor ensured registration of a case, Ali said, overcome with emotion while recalling his helplessness.

The girls father quoted eyewitnesses as saying they had seen some people bundling her into a car near the university.

SHO Suspended, Inquiry Ordered

The CPO has suspended the Gulberg SHO over the delay in registration of the case. A departmental probe into the incident has also been initiated against him. Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif has sought a report on the matter. The CPO has formed two teams to trace and arrest the culprits.
At least six suspected terrorists and an alleged suicide bomber were arrested on Friday when the Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) (CTD) and the Intelligence Bureau (IB) foiled a major terrorist plot during a joint operation in Lahore.

According to Express News, the accused were identified as Islam-ul-Haq, Jahangir Shah, Imran, Waqar and Aleem whereas Luqman was the suspected bomber.

CTD officials claimed the alleged terrorists were involved in attacks on Bedian and Ferozpur roads and were plotting attacks from a seminary they took refuge in.

The arrested terrorists had also allegedly planned to attack the Pakistan Super League (PSL) matches but were not successful.

They were shifted to an undisclosed location for interrogation shortly after their arrest.
Click the image above to watch the video

Today we are expecting cloud and the chance of a morning shower, clearing to fine in the afternoon. Also light winds.

Its a one-clothing-layer day today with a high of 24 and an overnight low of 16 degrees. Humidity is 95 per cent.

Low tide is at 12.50pm and high tide at 7pm. Theres a sea swell of about .5m, with a sea temperature of 21 degrees. Sunset tonight is at 7.10pm.

If youre going fishing today the best fish bite time is between 11am and 1pm.

In NZ history on this day in 1940 was the funeral procession for Prime Minister Savage. New Zealands first Labour prime minister, Michael Joseph Savage, died in office on March 27 1940. His body lay in state at Parliament for two days before his funeral cortege, which was more than 1.6 km long, set off for the railway station at 9am on March 30.

In 2004 historian Michael King, aged 58, and his wife Maria Jungowska died in a car accident in South Waikato. Kings Penguin history of New Zealand became the most popular book of the year, and was the Readers Choice at the 2004 Montana New Zealand Book Awards.

In world history on this day in 1858 Hyman L. Lipman of Philadelphia patented the pencil with an eraser attached on one end. In 1981 President Ronald Reagan was shot and wounded in Washington, D.C. In 1987 Vincent Van Goghs Sunflowers was bought for $39.85 million.

Today is the birthday of Sir John Hawkins.Born in 1719, he was the author of the first history of music. Its also the birthday of English novelist Anna Sewell, who was born in 1820 and wrote Black Beauty. And its the birthday of Vincent Van Gogh, the Dutch impressionist artist who was born in 1853.

Our quote for today is from NZ historian Michael King who said "I see the great continuities in New Zealand history as being decency and common sense and up until now when weve confronted these things weve been able to talk them through, and Im sure we will with this issue as well."

To get involved in some of the many activities happening around the Bay, please check out our Whats on page.

Have a great day!
The first kiwifruit is being picked in New Zealand with orchards cleared to be harvested from the top of the North Island to the top of the South Island.

More than 2,500 growers will be harvesting some 13,500 hectares of kiwifruit.

2018 is forecasted to be a good harvest with SunGold (Gold) and Hayward (Green) volumes for this season expected to be more than last year.

New Zealand Kiwifruit Growers Inc. CEO Nikki Johnson says it is an exciting time of year.

Kiwifruit is New Zealands largest horticultural export and this season is projected to be no different. New Zealand growers can be proud to say they produce a world-leading fruit superior in quality and taste which will be marketed to over 50 countries.

New Zealand Kiwifruit Growers Inc. Chairman Doug Brown says sales are expected to grow.

The forecasted increase in volume this year will help to fulfill the industrys aim of sales growth. With a strong future where sales are expected to double by 2025 and some of the highest returns in the primary sector, the New Zealand kiwifruit industry has an exciting future ahead of it.

I would also like to take this opportunity to wish all growers a happy and safe harvest.

The kiwifruit industry profits the regions where it is grown, for example, bringing around $1.8 billion (indirect impact) to the Bay of Plenty annually.

A recent University of Waikato report has predicted that the kiwifruit industry will triple GDP contribution to over $6 billion to the economy by 2030.

NZKGI CEO Nikki Johnson and chairman Doug Brown
Douglas V. Gibbs is a proud member of the American Authors Association

Douglas V. Gibbs is a proud member of the Military Writers Society of America.
Bay of Plenty

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To quote Mr. Chen, " Actually, the plan that we have this year is to have five (stores in the Philippines.) [...] We are planning to have three in Manila (or in Luzon) and another two, [...] maybe in Cebu and in the south, Davao. Probably, one in each city. So this year, we are looking at five (in total) but again, depending on our status (and) if everything goes well, we might (even) look for more ."





So why is Xiaomi finally opening all these brick and mortar outlets across the Philippines instead of just selling their products online?





"The online platform (or) e-commerce gives us fast distribution to everyone in the country (even without having to spend) a long time building our infrastructure. In terms of coverage, online is perfect and that's why we had it in the beginning. But then, later on, we realized that coverage is not enough. We need to let people touch and feel (our items). This is something that we (can't do just by selling online). In the end, many consumers still prefer to touch and try the product before they (make a decision to purchase it) ," says Mr. Chen.





In another exclusive interview that I had with him after the opening of the Mi Store in SM MegaMall last March 17, 2018, he added, " (The launch of these outlets) signifies and re-confirms Xiaomi's re-entrance in the Philippines . [...] The opening of the Mi Shop brings confidence [...] that Xiaomi is here for good. We are here to provide more valuable products with great prices to everyone here in the country ."

One is located at the 4th level of Trinoma Ayala Mall in Quezon City - just beside the cinema area - while the other is on the same floor of SM MegaMall Building B in Mandaluyong City.Both stores attract hundreds of Pinoy consumers every day largely because of the very competitive prices of practically all products that Xiaomi currently offers -- from Android smartphones to gadget bags, ultra-thin laptops to running shoes.Together, these two authorized reseller outlets are the most accessible experience, commercial, and after-sales hubs for Mi Fans in Manila and nearby provinces.Well, if you're one of them, you'd be glad to know that Xiaomi Philippines is planning to open a total of five stores across the country in 2018 and two of which will be in Visayas and Mindanao, respectively.I learned this through my exclusive interview with, Xiaomi's Regional Director for South East Asia, last March 13, 2018, which you can view here:
A huge ransomware attack hit the city of Atlanta last week and officials are scrambling to get their systems back up and running. This has meant that many city employees have been operating with pen and paper after being told to turn off their computers. The mayor of Atlanta, Keisha Lance Bottoms, issued a statement today giving an update on the city's recovery process from the SamSam ransomware attack.

It is expected that some computers will operate as usual and employees will return to normal use. It is also expected that some computers may be affected or affected in some way and employees will continue using manual or alternative processes. This is part of the Citys ongoing assessment as part of the restoration and recovery process.

The city is working around the clock with industry representatives, security firms, and government agencies to help restore their systems. At this time, it appears that no customer or employee data was compromised although Atlanta is urging residents and employees to monitor their personal information. They will be offering city employees additional protection resources if needed.

The attackers have demanded the city pays 6 bitcoin as a decryption ransom or else all of their computers will be wiped. That payment window elapsed Wednesday.

A local news station shared the ransom note which resulted in lots of spam being sent to the hackers. It's not clear if the city made any payment, especially since the hackers took down the payment portal because they were receiving too much spam.

An audit of Atlanta's computer security systems showed they were vulnerable to such an attack but had no formal process for managing the risk. Despite being warned months ago, Atlanta did not take proper steps to protect themselves. As a result, the municipal court can't hear cases, residents can't pay online bills, and police officers can't write reports or book inmates electronically. Thankfully though, no critical systems like EMS or utilities were affected.
Facebook is learning that no matter how bad things are, they can always get worse. The latest PR disaster to hit the company has come in the form of a leaked internal memo, in which VP Andrew Boz Bosworth suggests that the platforms growth should come at any cost, even if it means someone killing themselves as a result of bullying or people being killed in terror attacks organized on the site.

In the 2016 memo, which is aptly titled the ugly and was published on Buzzfeed, Bosworth writes, anything that allows us to connect more people more often is *de facto* good.

...Maybe someone finds love. Maybe it even saves the life of someone on the brink of suicide. So we connect more people That can be bad if they make it negative. Maybe it costs a life by exposing someone to bullies. Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools. And still we connect people. The ugly truth is that we believe in connecting people so deeply that anything that allows us to connect more people more often is *de facto* good. It is perhaps the only area where the metrics do tell the true story as far as we are concerned. That isn't something we are doing for ourselves. Or for our stock price (ha!). It is literally just what we do. We connect people. Period.

Buzzfeed notes that the memo was posted the day after a Chicago man was shot and killed while using Facebook Live.

The memo is particularly damning as it comes in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal that saw the personal data of 50 million people used by the electioneering firm without their consent.

Bosworth argues that all growth methods are justified. All the questionable contact importing practices. All the subtle language that helps people stay searchable by friends. All of the work we do to bring more communication in. The work we will likely have to do in China some day. All of it, he wrote.

Bosworth has issued a response to the memo on Twitter, insisting that he didnt agree with it when he wrote it. The VP says it was meant to surface issues that deserved more discussion while encouraging debate within the company. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has also denied that Facebook puts growth above all else.

My statement on the recent Buzzfeed story containing a post I wrote in 2016 pic.twitter.com/lmzDMcrjv5  Boz (@boztank) March 29, 2018

"We've never believed the ends justify the means. We recognize that connecting people isn't enough by itself. We also need to work to bring people closer together. We changed our whole mission and company focus to reflect this last year, Zuckerberg told Buzzfeed, in a statement.

Despite the controversies it has been through in the past, such as the Russian election interference and its apparent lack of action against terrorist propaganda, the public image of Facebook has never been so tarnished. As it faces FTC investigations, call for Zuckerberg to testify before Congress and the UKs parliament, a #deletefacebook campaign that is gathering traction, companies pulling ads, lawsuits, and the loss of big-name profiles, this memo couldnt have come at a worse time.
iPhone smuggling is big business in China if recent reports are anything to go by. According to Reuters, China-based smugglers have been taking advantage of drones to cleverly transport refurbished iPhones across the border from Hong Kong to Shenzhen.

These criminals, numbering 26 in total, typically waited until night fell to attach small bags filled with roughly 10 iPhones each to their drones. Once the bags were attached, the smugglers sent their drones across the border.

Since the smugglers could reportedly transfer "as many as 15,000" phones across the border in a single night, it will likely come as no surprise to learn the criminals managed to smuggle roughly 500 million yuan ($79.8 million) worth of the devices before being caught.

Unfortunately for the smugglers in question, their nighttime escapades have finally come to an end. Shenzhen city customs officials recently tracked the criminals down and arrested them. How exactly customs agents found the group of smugglers has not been made clear.

Regardless of the specifics, there's no denying using drones to smuggle high-end mobile devices is an unconventional idea. "Its the first case found in China that drones were being used in cross-border smuggling crimes," Chinese state-owned newspaper the Legal Daily reported.
The Venezuelan negotiating team also includes diplomat Alex Saab, who remains detained in Cape Verde pending his extradition to the United States. | Read More
I asked him if he had any plans in the event Arrium did close, if hed thought about what hed do next. On reflection it was an insensitive thing to ask  like a little kid blithely poking their finger into a fresh cut. His face hardened and he looked away for a long moment. When he answered me it was in a voice as flat and dry as the scrubby earth that stretched away to the horizon: "What would I do? Theres nothing else here." Whyalla is one of many places around Australia where local jobs rely heavily on a single industry  or sometimes even a single firm. Victorias Latrobe Valley, the Hunter region of NSW and regional centres across Queensland like Gladstone and Townsville also come quickly to mind. Our lack of focus on lessening this reliance when we know their industries are in transition or decline is just one of several important ways policymakers and governments have let blue-collar workers down in recent decades. It has become something like conventional wisdom that blue-collar jobs are disappearing as a consequence of two things: global free trade and technological change. The story goes that because were an open economy, its hard for our local companies to compete with cheap labour and cheaper imports from offshore. And because we have more machines these days, we simply need fewer workers. But theres surprisingly little hard data on how this is playing out in our own backyard.

Brett Noonan, Alcoa employee and union delegate, at the Point Henry smelter in Geelong, April 2014. Credit:Pat Scala What Australian research there is doesnt contradict the idea that globalisation and technological change are eating into our blue-collar jobs base. But it does suggest the impact of these factors is less open-and-shut than foreigners and robots walking off with all the work. Lets look first at what we do know about the role of offshore competition and technology in all this. One of the best-known studies on the impact of trade, by economics professor David Autor and colleagues, established a clear relationship between the amount of competition US manufacturing industries faced from foreign imports, and employment outcomes for workers in those industries. Manufacturing workers in heavily trade-exposed industries had lower earnings than those in less-exposed ones, faced greater risk of unemployment and switched jobs more often. Similar studies, including by David Vanzetti and Ralf Peters for the International Labour Office, have found that increased trade liberalisation leads to a reduction in agricultural employment in developed economies but an increase in developing ones.

Here at home, research by Razib Tuhin from the Office of the Chief Economist has found the same relationship between how much international competition a manufacturing industry is exposed to and the extent of job losses within it. But there was an important qualification: it matters how much firms in that industry are exporting, as well as how much competition they face from foreign imports. Tuhins analysis shows that the worst manufacturing job losses have been in industries such as footwear, clothing and textiles, where relatively few Australian firms export at any scale but local products face very heavy competition from overseas imports. The industries where jobs have held up best are those that face relatively limited international competition  food and drinks manufacturing, for example  and those where a significant proportion of production is exported, like minerals and metals. A giant kettle pours molten aluminium into moulds at Alcoa's Point Henry plant in 2008. Credit:Bloomberg Importantly, Tuhin and plenty of others have also found that the positive impact of exports on employment is greater than the negative impact from imports. Foreign import competition may wipe out the local-only firm, but the exporting firm can keep growing and, importantly, expanding its workforce as it finds new markets. While Australia has traditionally had diverse manufacturing and agricultural sectors spanning most of the goods and products you can imagine, beyond bulk commodities this has tended to skew towards serving local markets. The most recent ABS survey of Australian businesses found just 7 per cent were exporting overseas, a figure that has gone backwards since the GFC.

So the fact that Australia is open to the world is not, in itself, a problem. What matters is the imbalance between the amount we import and the extent to which the majority of our own firms are connected to international markets. As is well known, one factor that has made it particularly hard for local firms to seek those markets in the past decade has been the high Australian dollar. Between 2003 and the start of 2008, our dollar averaged 75 US cents  a figure local firms believe makes their products competitive. But as the mining boom took off, so did our exchange rate. With a higher dollar making it harder to attract customers overseas or maintain the profit margins theyd had in the past, many Australian firms simply shut up shop. There were 20,300 fewer companies operating in our five male-dominated industries at the end of 201516 than in 200809, as the disappearance of agriculture and manufacturing firms was not even close to cancelled out by the smaller growth in construction, mining and utilities. Donald Trump holds a signed proclamation on adjusting imports of aluminium into the United States in the Roosevelt Room of the White House earlier this month. Credit:Bloomberg All of this goes to demonstrate that the impact of international trade competition on blue-collar jobs isnt as straightforward as the Trumps and Hansons of this world would have us believe. Its the shortfall of firms that are exporting, coupled with currency impacts from the mining boom, which have really hit hard over the past decade. We need to draw this distinction because if we dont, theres a risk that cutting back or shutting down trade altogether becomes the answer, which would end up harming blue-collar workers even more than the status quo.

Turning to technology, theres no doubt that the rapid leap forward in things machines can do is displacing some Australian workers, from robot welding in the car industry to the automatic checkouts at Woolies. But theres a growing body of research pointing out that its actually how routine a job is that determines how exposed its workers are to replacement. In Australia, researchers Michael Coelli and Jeff Borland looked at hundreds of different jobs over several decades, and found that the most routine jobs have had the weakest growth while the least routine jobs have seen the strongest growth. Jobs in healthcare, teaching and aged care that involve providing personalised services which are responsive to the needs of others arent just growing because of our communitys changing demographics. They are also hard to fill with machines, given their variable and unpredictable nature. Darryn Lyons, then mayor of Geelong, at the Alcoa aluminium plant after its closure was announced in February 2014. Credit:Jason South Taken together, trade and technology clearly matter a lot in driving the disappearance of blue-collar jobs. People in suits tend to like these explanations because there isnt really anyone to blame. The tariff walls that had kept foreign imports at bay came down more than 20 years ago, and no one seriously believes we can halt or reverse the march of technology.

But theres a lot more to this story: some of the challenges now facing blue-collar workers are a direct consequence of things governments have done, and failed to do. Lets start with training. Weve been letting the vocational education and training sector run down for at least two decades now, first because of the Howard governments indifference and later as a result of the RuddGillard governments push to see more students heading to university. Through a series of well-intentioned and deeply misguided policies delivered from 2008 on, federal and state governments have wrecked VET in a way that may take a generation to recover from. The losers from this are the young men who need a trade and the older men who urgently need retraining to remain in work. When VET FEE-HELP was first introduced, students had to be participating in Diploma or Advanced Diploma study that provided a pathway to university to be eligible for a loan. But then as part of changes introduced between 2009 and 2012, the Commonwealth agreed to make VET FEE-HELP loans available for all courses  from plumbing to Pilates instructing  as long as the states and territories opened their VET systems to competition from private providers. As private providers flooded into the market, the quality of training and student completion rates plummeted. There were reports of hairdressing courses that left graduates unable to do basic cuts or colouring, while in 2014, the 10 largest private providers received $900 million in loans but had an average completion rate of less than 5 per cent.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull visits the Whyalla Arrium steelworks, March 2016. Credit:Kara Johnson By the time the Turnbull government finally shut the scheme down in 2016, it had wrecked the standing of vocational training among employers, drained hundreds of millions from the well-established public system, put tens of thousands of low-and middle-income Australians deeply in debt and cost the federal government billions. Identifying those who most need help with skilling and retraining before they face unemployment requires us to do something else weve generally neglected in recent times: think ahead for communities that are facing the transition or decline of their local industries. When Alcoa announced the closure of its Point Henry aluminium smelter and rolling mill in February 2014, around 800 local workers lost their jobs at little notice. When the smelters pot line went cold five months later, only about 50 of the workers had found new jobs; many were still struggling to find good work a year later. Things should never have played out that way, because the risk of Alcoas closure had been well known years in advance. In 2012 the Gillard government gave the firm a $40 million bailout as it struggled to stay afloat with the Australian dollar sitting higher than the US dollar. That is when serious thinking about a future without Alcoa should have kicked in.

Adrian Curry, who worked at Hazelwood power station for over 40 years, on the day of the closure announcement in November 2016. Credit:Eddie Jim The more recent closure of Hazelwoods coal-fired power station in Victorias Latrobe Valley unfolded in much the same way. Despite it being almost uniformly acknowledged that Hazelwoods remaining life could be measured in years, not decades, there was no transition plan in place for the Latrobe Valley when owners Engie finally announced its closure in November 2016. Perhaps the only decent example of planning for the foreseen loss of blue-collar jobs is the way governments and firms teamed up to prepare for the end of Australian car production in 2017. Workers at Holden, Ford and Toyota received support and retraining assistance while still in their jobs, and the governments of South Australia and Victoria encouraged and incentivised new firms to open up in the affected parts of their states to provide replacement jobs. This came about only because the car companies announced their closure plans years in advance.

The last factor affecting blue-collar workers that is within our influence is job creation. Australias policy environment has been incredibly volatile for more than a decade now; this is often dated to the election of the Rudd government but arguably goes further back, to John Howards control of the Senate from 2005. Our policy ADHD means we dont really know which government interventions work best to strengthen existing industries and encourage new ones, because were forever changing tack. The lack of certainty about what the rules governing Australias energy sector will look like three, five or 10 years from now means companies have so far been slow to switch their investment to renewables or develop significant new facilities. While globally the number of "green energy" jobs grew by over 70 per cent between 2012 and 2016, Australias renewables workforce actually shrank by 40 per cent. This matters a great deal because renewable energy represents one of the natural growth sectors to help replace jobs being lost in places like the Latrobe Valley and the Hunter. Try mapping the different manufacturing assistance programs introduced and withdrawn between 2007 and 2017; I lost count at 19. We end up throwing billions at industry assistance, but without any idea if it really helps where it counts: reducing job losses. Governments need to stick with some policies for longer than one term of parliament. There are many other excellent reasons for our national politics to have a Bex and a good lie down, but almost none are as important as the positive influence this could have on the creation and maintenance of blue-collar jobs.
Trump "has been great for business and really, really good for tech," said Gary Shapiro, who leads the Consumer Technology Association, the largest US tech trade group, with more than 2,200 members, including Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook. Shapiro said that he had voted for Hillary Clinton, Trump's opponent, in 2016, but that he and many tech executives had come around on Trump. While they disagree with him on immigration and the environment, they have found areas where their interests align, like deregulation and investment in internet infrastructure. "This isn't Hitler or Mussolini here," Shapiro said. And even though the president's new tariffs on steel and aluminum could hurt US businesses and consumers, "disagreement in one area does not mean we cannot work together in others," Shapiro said. "Everyone who is married knows that." Trump himself has taken to naming tech companies he says are on his side. After Apple took advantage of the new tax law in January to bring back most of the $US252 billion cash hoard it had parked overseas, the company said it would make a $US350 billion "contribution to the US economy" over the next five years. That prompted Trump to suggest he had made good on a campaign pledge to get Apple to bring jobs back to the United States.

Trump says Apple is 'on his side', but the company remains silent. Credit:James Alcock "You know, for $US350 million, you could build a beautiful plant. But for $US350 billion, they're going to build a lot of plants," the president told members of Congress last month. Trump said he had called Tim Cook, Apple's chief executive, to personally thank him. In fact, Apple has no plans to build a plant in the United States. The company is uneasy with Trump's invoking it to signify how his policies are working, according to a person close to Apple who was not authorised to speak publicly. Apple has not, however, publicly corrected the president. Facebook silence Trump has also stayed quiet on the controversy engulfing Facebook over user privacy, while other politicians have called for more regulations after revelations that the British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica improperly harvested the information of 50 million Facebook users. Cambridge Analytica used that data to aid Trump's campaign.

Michael Kratsios, the White House's deputy chief technology officer, said in an interview that while Trump and Silicon Valley had their differences, "in places where we do see eye to eye, I think we're achieving extraordinary success." Loading Some tech executives have since disagreed with Trump on social issues. Cook emailed staff last June to say he had unsuccessfully lobbied the president to remain in the Paris climate accords. In November, Microsoft sued the administration to protect a law that blocks deportation of young immigrants known as Dreamers. More than 100 companies, including Google, Facebook and Uber, filed a brief supporting California's lawsuit on that issue. Even so, tech executives worked to build a relationship with the president, with some meeting him at Trump Tower before his inauguration and again at the White House in June. While in Washington for the second meeting, Cook and Satya Nadella, Microsoft's chief executive, also dined with Jared Kushner, the president's senior adviser and son-in-law, and Ivanka Trump at the couple's Washington home, according to a person briefed on the meeting who wasn't authorised to speak publicly about it. This month, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin visited Apple's headquarters.

Money talks Silicon Valley has found plenty to like about the Trump presidency. In September, tech giants including Facebook and Microsoft teamed up with the administration to pledge $US500 million to computer science education. Amazon, Microsoft and Google are also eyeing the administration as a potential customer as Trump pushes to modernise the government's digital infrastructure. But Silicon Valley's favorite thing about Trump is almost certainly his new tax code. Many tech companies lobbied for corporate tax reform for years before Trump signed the new tax bill. Tech giants immediately reaped the benefits. Under the new rules, Apple saved $US43.7 billion in taxes, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a nonpartisan tax research group. Apple then announced the $US350 billion "contribution" to the American economy over five years. Most of the tally was previously planned spending with US suppliers and a $US38 billion tax payment on its overseas cash. But Apple also said it planned to hire 20,000 new workers, invest in new data centers and another domestic campus, and increase a fund for innovative US manufacturers to $US5 billion from $US1 billion. It also gave employees $US2,500 bonuses.

The president was quick to tweet the news. He wrote: "I promised that my policies would allow companies like Apple to bring massive amounts of money back to the United States. Great to see Apple follow through as a result of TAX CUTS. Huge win for American workers and the USA!" Industry outrage The shifting relationship between Silicon Valley and Trump appears to have upset some tech employees. A Facebook page called "Angry Googler," with nearly 1,000 followers, has been dedicated to criticising Google for any sign it was cooperating with the president. Loading "Not happy about Google pulling a 180 and jumping into bed with Trump? Same here," said the "About" section of the page, which suggests it is run by a Google employee. This month, the page posted an article about Google helping the Defense Department analyze drone footage. "We've gone from organising the world's information to ... optimising weapons of war," the page said.

Messages to the account were not returned. Google declined to comment. Some tech firms remain discomfited about appearing as the president's allies. Last month, Rob Goldman, Facebook's vice president of advertising, played down Russia's impact on the 2016 election after the Justice Department charged 13 Russians with trying to subvert its outcome, including by using Facebook. Trump retweeted Goldman approvingly. Facebook was uncomfortable with that association with the president, said a person close to the company who was not authorised to speak publicly. Two days later, Facebook's policy chief, Joel Kaplan, distanced the company from Goldman's comments. "The special counsel has issued its indictments, and nothing we found contradicts their conclusions," he said in a statement. "Any suggestion otherwise is wrong."
One of Australias largest landlords Vicinity Centres will be forced to pay a local council a one-off multi-million dollar fee after failing to account for public open space charges when it sold off the development rights above one of its malls.

The levy will put a large dent in the profit Vicinity earned on the development deal and has left egg on the face of company executives, raising questions about the property giants handling of similar future opportunities.

The Glen is valued on Vicinitys books at $260.7 million but is undergoing a $490 million redevelopment, adding significantly to its underlying worth.

It is unclear exactly how much Vicinity now owes the council. On the unimproved value, the usual basis for determining it, the fee would be around $7 million. Calculated on a site value of $260 million it would cost around $13 million.

In April last year, Vicinity sold Jeff Xu's Golden Age Group the air rights to a 500-unit three-tower project above The Glen, a premium 59,000-square-metre mall in Melbournes eastern suburbs it co-owns with the Perron Group.
THE MASTER (144 minutes) MA

Paul Thomas Anderson's 2012 riff on the early days of Scientology focuses on the strange bond between a blustering prophet (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and a dangerously unstable World War II veteran (Joaquin Phoenix). Anderson is an intensely dramatic filmmaker: every scene portrays some kind of power struggle, every aspect of his style is designed to keep us on edge. 70-millimetre print. Astor, Sun Apr 1, 7pm.

Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One.

MOONRISE KINGDOM (94 minutes) PG

Whimsy king Wes Anderson flashes back to the 1960s with this dreamy romance set on an island off New England, where two young lovers are hunted down by a pack of well-meaning authority figures played by the likes of Edward Norton, Bruce Willis and Tilda Swinton. Like all Anderson's work it's droll, obsessive, and not without its touching moments. Digitally projected. Astor, Sat Mar 31, 7.30pm. Double feature with Lady Bird.
"They were there for the love," Ms McKay said.

BIG4 Tathra Beach Holiday Park co-owner Kerry McKay said the "beautiful" team from Sydney Youth Connect had "made friends for life" after travelling to the Bega Valley District Shire to lend a hand.

A display of compassion from western Sydney organisation Sydney Youth Connect was celebrated on social media this week after the group was publicly thanked for providing a free barbecue for residents of the tiny coastal town.

In the aftermath of a bushfire that razed 65 homes, Tathra residents have been touched by acts of generosity, kindness and love shown by people and community groups from throughout Australia.

"The generosity and the kindness that's been bestowed on Tathra is out of this world - well, it's not out of this world because I know human nature is a beautiful thing and it's lovely to see it actually flourish."

One Tathra resident who lost his home - and asked to be known only as John - said the men were "gracious, kind and understanding". His daughter said an encounter with the men had left him with "a very different opinion and a bigger belly".

"Them along with so many others from the community lessened the blow I had been dealt and in so many ways helped me move forward," John said.

"I look forward to them returning one day in the near future and enjoying a barbecue with myself and my family and theirs.

"What you have done for Tathra, although [it] seems so little will not ever be forgotten by us all."
Thousands of seafood lovers descended on the Sydney Fish Market on Good Friday, with 50,000 expected in total over the Easter long weekend. They will buy about 650 tonnes of seafood.

A fishmonger holds up a blue eyed cod at the Sydney Fish Market on Friday. Credit:AAP

The market opened at 5am on Friday, but the day started hours earlier for staff such as Con Doukas who owns Musumeci Seafoods.

He was up at 2am to prepare for what he suggested could be the busiest Good Friday he's seen in his seven years at the seafood hub.

"We usually find that every year is getting better and better ... people are eating more fish, so it's good," he said.
This dirty cash to clean asset operation wasn't possible without bankers prepared to write up loans while forgoing due diligence  a scenario the banking royal commission has separately suggested was widespread in sections of the CBA's broker-driven home loan business. Arico had relied on friendly bankers at the CBA, ANZ and Westpac to write 14 loans  two of them after his arrest on extortion charges. Asset confiscation detectives traced 12 properties comprising a portfolio worth at least $15 million. Another $11 million worth of bricks and mortar had already been sold off and the funds have either never been accounted for, or were transferred to an Italian bank account in the name of a family member. Safety Beach property owned by Rocco Arico. Credit:Fairfax Media Five properties are currently frozen as potential proceeds of crime. Among Arico's portfolio was a luxury home in Sandringham, an apartment in high-rise Eureka Tower, a bathing box on Safety Beach, a townhouse project and several residential development sites. His family home in Moonee Ponds was funded by the methamphetamine trade, and so luxurious that police dubbed it the "Ice Castle".

Peter, whose real name can't be used for legal reasons, provided Arico a mortgage for his Moonee Ponds palace just a day after Arico was arrested on charges of extortion in 2015. The loan was in the name of an Arico relative, who at the time was not working and was suffering from a serious illness. Arico's property wealth was amassed between 2008, when he was released from prison having served sentences for attempted murder and kidnapping, and 2015. The beach box. Credit:Fairfax Media The loans were secured with the help of remarkably compliant and possibly corrupt bank staff. The Commonwealth Bank was favoured, and this week, after Fairfax Media began making queries, both CBA staffers Hasan and Peter were suspended. But Westpac and ANZ lenders also sought Arico's custom.

Extortion, trafficking, violence Rocco Arico, 39, was the gangster from central casting. Suspected of arranging the prison murder of gangland boss Carl Williams and having ties to the Calabrian mafia, known as Ndrangheta, Arico was sentenced last year to 14 more years prison for extortion, drug trafficking, violence and weapons offences. Purana Taskforce detectives bring Victoria's most senior suspected organised crime boss Rocco Arico into custody on March 5, 2015. Credit:Pat Scala Prior to that, he could help his friends get access to a banking system not only vulnerable to exploitation, but with at least a small number of staff that encouraged it. The recorded conversation suggests Arico had forged close ties to bank insiders. If youre fair dinkum about getting a loan, you come to my banker and Ill get you the loan, Arico said to a fellow drug trafficker, who was being pressured to take out a loan in his wifes name to pay off a drug debt he owed Arico.

Of course Im going to come [with you] to the bank, Arico explained . Otherwise hes [the CBA staffer] not going to do nothing for you. Loading When this conversation was recorded, Arico had already emerged as a major player in Melbournes drug trade, topping a law enforcement list of the most influential crime figures. Aricos ability to tap into personal mortgage finance sits at the extreme end of a banking business model that has been subject to intense royal commission scrutiny since hearings began this month. Among the things being examined is a culture that values outcomes over ethics, and which allegedly allowed, in a separate case, the CBA to facilitate wide scale money laundering via its cash deposit ATM facilities.

The royal commission has heard evidence that the banks sought to aggressively expand their loan books and often used mortgage brokers for the rougher end of the market. They were given incentives by banks to sign up borrowers less able able to repay loans than those who dealt directly with the bank, ultimately exposing consumers and the banks to risk. Aricos interactions with the CBA were with a small number of full-time staff rather than mortgage brokers, but it was underpinned by the same cavalier attitude to oversight. How it worked Sources have told Fairfax Media that Arico's operation involved him getting a loan to buy a property, sometimes based on false documentation or in the absence of evidence that he had a legitimate means of repayment. The loans were in the name of Arico himself, or family members, whose main source of income appeared to be a cafe in Lygon Street's Little Italy precinct in Carlton. Arico's wife Franki, his mother Antonia and father Antonio. Credit:Jason South

Then the drug trafficker would renovate, refurbish or develop the property, pouring in sometimes millions of dirty dollars to buy top-line fixtures and European appliances, paying tradesmen in cash, making it hard for authorities to track his spending. One beachside property was equipped with a $75,000 sculptural glass elevator. Renovation complete, and house value raised, Arico would sell the house, pay out the loan and keep the increase in value  on its face, perfectly clean money. Aricos CBA dealings, while unknown to the royal commission until contacted by Fairfax Media, nevertheless underscore a key focus of the Turnbull government commissioned inquiry: the inability of banks to confront and air their dirty laundry. In NSW, policing agencies are examining how notorious crime syndicates, including Australia's most infamous underworld family, have been able to access home loan after home loan, despite their infamy and absence of legitimate income. In a case recently scrutinised by police, a criminal syndicate bought outright a now defunct NSW-based franchise of the Bank of Queensland to facilitate money laundering.

Of the four bankers Arico is suspected of cultivating to write him and his associates home loans, one was pushed out of the bank when the CBAs internal investigators uncovered fraudulent deals with Arico as far back as 2011. But evidence suggests Arico quickly replaced him with others, including the two bankers suspended this week. The bank waited until 2016 (after Arico was charged) to brief investigators from the police anti-gang taskforce, Purana, but has, since then, provided limited assistance. A Victoria police spokesman declined to comment. CBA would also not say if the issue had been disclosed to the Kenneth Hayne led royal commission, which has been agitating that the banks to disclose suspected wrongdoing despite resistance from CBA.

The CBA declined to comment specifically on the Arico matter, citing privacy reasons. We strive to cooperate with all law enforcement agencies regarding concerns about customers or staff and are committed to assisting with all enquiries or investigations, a spokesman said. Of the bank's suspension this week of Hasan and Peter, the spokesman said that: ''new evidence has been brought to our attention and we have now launched an internal investigation. Two employees have been stood down from their current duties while the investigation is underway. We continue to cooperate with Victorian Police. Arico was also adept at securing loans from other banks. Westpac underwrote two properties bought by the Arico family in 2012, one of which has since been sold while the other is the subject of a freezing order.

Westpac does not have a banking relationship with this customer or his business, a spokeswoman for the bank said. The ANZ wrote three mortgages for Aricos family, including refinancing the CBA loan on the ice castle nearly a year after Aricos arrest on extortion and drug trafficking charges and in the wake of a blaze in publicity about his position as an underworld crime boss. The home is now frozen as the suspected proceeds of crime. Neither Westpac nor ANZ was willing to comment on whether it had contacted law enforcement authorities about potential impropriety by Arico or its staff. While we are unable to comment on individual customers, we take our regulatory obligations seriously as well as any requests we receive from relevant authorities, an ANZ spokesman said. Aricos solicitor, Anthony Condello, did not respond to a request for comment on behalf of his client. The royal commission, meanwhile, is turning its focus to financial planning and wealth management when it resumes hearings in mid-April.
Loading Cardinal Pell would step out, stony-faced, always dressed in the same beige jacket over a simple black shirt, trousers and clerical collar. Cameras were shoved in his face as police formed a ring around him, the cardinal always ignoring the clamour. The waiting crowds dwindled over the weeks. On the final day of the hearing on Thursday, there were just a handful of supporters clutching placards with pasted on pictures of Jesus and the Virgin Mary. In the court room, Cardinal Pell spoke rarely, and only then to utter a few quiet words to his lawyers. His chair would always be pushed out slightly from the bar table and angled so it faced the witness stand.

Behind him, the chairs were filled with journalists and survivors of clerical sexual abuse, including high-profile victims advocate Chrissie Foster, whose two daughters were abused by a Catholic priest as children. Cardinal Pell would sit next to Mr Richter, head bowed as he scrawled into a notepad, only occasionally lifting his gaze when witness testimony seemed to pique his interest. But he stared intently at award-winning ABC journalist Louise Milligan as she endured an intense cross-examination from Mr Richter about whether she wrote her book, The Rise and Fall of George Pell, in a way that suggested alleged victims were to be believed. Did you suggest that they were to be believed? Mr Richter asked furiously. I thought they were believable, she responded.

During the fiery exchange the journalist was forced to deny a barrage of accusations including that she distorted the truth and poisoned the publics mind against Cardinal Pell. I completely and utterly reject that, Ms Milligan said. Of course you would, Mr Richter responded. In another heated day of evidence, Magistrate Belinda Wallington asked Mr Richter to stop shouting at her before she denied his request that she disqualify herself from hearing the case after he accused her of bias towards the prosecution. Bernard Barrett, a researcher with sex-abuse victims support group Broken Rites, also felt Mr Richters wrath.

In that exchange, Mr Richter suggested that Broken Rites make up accusations against the Catholic Church, and that Dr Barrett provided the cardinals name to one accuser during their 2015 correspondence. Mr Richter suggested to the researcher it would be a feather in the cap if Mr Barrett could go to police with the name Pell. You wanted to big-note yourself, the lawyer said. Dr Barrett rejected the suggestions, although he often refused to answer questions directly.

Disgrace, Mr Richter muttered at one point on that mid-March afternoon, and asked Ms Wallington to discipline the witness. The defence later accused Victoria Polices Sano Taskforce of running a get Pell operation.

The investigation into Cardinal Pell, known as Operation Tethering, began in March 2013 before any crime had been reported. Operation Tethering, that wasnt a get Pell operation was it? Mr Richter asked. Detective Superintendent Paul Sheridan who oversaw the operation argued it was an intel probe to see whether there were unreported serious crimes. Under an hours-long cross-examination, Mr Sheridan angled his body and eyes away from Mr Richter, staring directly at the magistrate as he answered each question. When the hearing began on March 5, several complainants gave evidence over 5 days before a closed court as required by Victorian law in sex offences.

Like Cardinal Pells charges, their evidence remains confidential, but over the weeks details of the allegations emerged. Among the offences, he is accused of sexually assaulting two choir members at Melbournes St Patricks Cathedral in the late 1990s when he was Archbishop of Melbourne. Hes also accused of committing sexual offences at a Ballarat pool and inside a cinema during a screening of Close Encounters of the Third Kind in the late 1970s. A cinema manager said he did not remember ever seeing Pell at the theatre. Choir members and pool attendees also said they had never seen anything untoward. The outcome of the hearing  to decide whether the cardinal would face trial  will mark a historic moment for the Vatican as it grapples with a global epidemic of sexual abuse, which has resulted in convictions against hundreds of clerics around the word, including Australia.
The controversial bill to reorganise Victoria's fire services has been voted down after the state opposition reneged on parliamentary pairing arrangements at the eleventh hour.

Liberal MPs Craig Ondarchie and Bernie Finn were provided a pairing for religious reasons  meaning two Labor MPs had abstained from the vote  but walked back into the Legislative Council on Good Friday morning to vote against the changes, stirring fury in Labor ranks.

"Am so proud of my upper house colleagues and the MPs who stood up for our CFA today and defeated the Andrews Govt plan to smash it up," Opposition Leader Matthew Guy tweeted.

"The Liberal Nationals will always stand up for volunteers against this bully of a Premier."

Labor were less pleased, with MP Jaclyn Symes expressing her frustration.
London: Yulia Skripal, who was found poisoned on a park bench in a small English city this month along with her father, former Russian spy Sergei Skripal, is showing improvement and is no longer in critical condition, the hospital that is treating her said.

Yulia Skripal was poisoned along with her father. Credit:Facebook/Yulia Skripal

British authorities have blamed Russia for the poisoning, which they say was carried out with a deadly nerve agent developed by Soviet scientists and known as a Novichok.

"I'm pleased to be able to report an improvement in the condition of Yulia Skripal," Dr Christine Blanshard, medical director for Salisbury District Hospital, said in a statement. "She has responded well to treatment but continues to receive expert clinical care 24 hours a day."

Her father remained in critical but stable condition, the hospital said in a statement. Sergeant Nick Bailey, an emergency medical worker who was also exposed to the nerve agent, was released from the hospital a week ago; there was no further word on his condition.
The Ste Anne Library needs an additional $8,000 in municipal operating grants to avert cuts or closure, says board president Michelle Larocque.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 30/3/2018 (1274 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Ste Anne Library needs an additional $8,000 in municipal operating grants to avert cuts or closure, says board president Michelle Larocque.

While Larocque said the board ultimately doesnt care where the funds come from, she pointed out that the RM of Ste Annes support lags behind its portion of household memberships.

The RMs typical annual contribution of $10,000 amounts to 14 percent of the librarys 2018 operating budget, though RM households hold 42 percent of the librarys total memberships, Larocque said.

By contrast, the Town of Ste Anne has contributed $28,000 over each of the past three years.

Chief administrative officer Marc Darker said town council had tentatively earmarked $22,000 this year, but tabled a decision after a presentation from the library last week.

While membership is free for town and RM residents, Larocque said a user fee for RM members may be required if the additional funds dont materialize.

"In my opinion, it makes sense that if the split is 50-50 for usage, that the cost should be 50-50," she said.

The shortfall comes at a time when library usage is trending upward from an average of 130 patrons per month in 2016 to 525 patrons last month, Larocque said.

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Rising fixed costs and a few variable costs exert further pressure.

"The books in French are extremely expensive," Larocque said.

Slicing $8,000 from the budget would eliminate 80 percent of the annual book budget, or force the lone librarian to close for four months per year.

Larocque said she is optimistic last weeks town council meeting, and this week's RM council meeting, will encourage the two councils to communicate directly about funding in the future.

She also urged library patrons in both municipalities to talk to their councillors about the issue.

"I think theres a lot of eyes on this situation," she said.
Smirnoff Ice. Photo: Smirnoff

Just like when an old friend unexpectedly texts you to ask about a shirt you borrowed/stole years ago and havent seen since, the staff of New York was unexpectedly reminded on Friday of something we thought wed forgotten: icing, the drinking game in which you get surprised by a Smirnoff Ice and then have to chug the whole thing on bended knee.

Earlier that day, the Washington Post reported that the White House office in charge of recruiting and vetting political appointees  the Presidential Personnel Office  iced a staffer on his 30th birthday in January. And upon hearing the news, staffers from across New York verticals, including those of us at the Cut, were suddenly flooded with our own Bros Icing Brosrelated memories of yore, from college party icings and birthday cake icings, to icings of the more romantic variety.

Here, a roundup of truly blessed memories from New York staffers:

An example of icing. Photo: Bros Icing Bros

A couple of years after icing was a thing, I was really into icing my then-boyfriend. I thought it was hilarious at the time but, in retrospect, its still pretty hilarious. Gabriella Paiella, senior writer, the Cut

I cant really remember why but there was this year in college where I was obsessed with icing this one kid in my friend group. Like, I iced him any chance I got (and never got iced back  to this day I have never been iced). On his birthday, a friend and I made him a cake, cut a hole in the center, and hid a Smirnoff in it. Aude White, communications manager

My friends once tried to be cool and ice each other in college, but if I remember correctly we only bought a six-pack of ices  so, it ended quickly. Jackson McHenry, associate editor, Vulture

I was a bridesmaid for a very close friend from college. It was out in Long Island. It was a huge party, probably close to 300 people, ten-piece band, chocolate fountain, the works. The best man was a really nice guy who had recently been through some serious medical trauma and had been in the hospital for weeks. The groom had been a big support system for him, visiting the hospital a lot, helping in any way he could. So the best man gives this really heartfelt toast at the wedding, saying hell never be able to repay the groom for all he did, but hed like to give him a small gift. He hands the groom a small gift bag. The groom pulls out a Smirnoff. The crowd went wild. Tara Abell, news editor, Vulture

My friend is obsessed with icing people, and we thought it would end after college but it didnt end. I kid you not, it felt like every other day his Snapchat story was him or one of his friends taking a knee. Also, fun fact, ices are gluten-free! So one time I was sent to a bodega to get more alcohol at a party and was instructed to find a gluten-free option. All they had was Smirnoff Ice. It was surprisingly a pretty big hit. Madison Mills, video producer, New York

I never was involved in any icings myself (I have good taste, which is why I drink Bud Light Lime), but one of my hometown friends, Justin, was an, uh, Prolific Icer with his roommates and friends. One of the funniest was when Justin gave his younger brother, Dylan, a college graduation present that Dylan knew was just a gift-wrapped Smirnoff Ice; he then gave him his real present, which was another gift-wrapped Smirnoff Ice. But the very best was when his roommate hid one in their toilets tank, unhooked the chain, and left it for Justin to fix  and, yes, he drank the Ice. Chris Crowley, staff writer, Grub Street

My freshman year of college I iced a friend of mine on her birthday. We were hanging out in the campus coffee shop/lounge and I think I hid it in her backpack or something very original like that. As she was kneeling and chugging, I snapped a picture which I, because it was 2010, promptly posted on Facebook and tagged her in. Turns out, her parents had, prior to seeing that post, believed their daughter was the lone college student who genuinely meant it when she said she wasnt drinking until she turned 21. Were still friends and I still feel so awkward around her parents.  Madison Malone Kircher, associate editor, Select All

My ex-boyfriends bff in California once called me for his address so he could ice him through the mail. Mary Jane Weedman, assistant editor, New York

Do not ice people with 24-ounce Smirnoff Ices. My friends and I started doing this in the summer in Texas and we had to stop because of two indoor-puking scenarios. Thank you! Matt Stieb, fact-checker, New York

When I was 18 I went to Europe for two weeks with a bunch of high-school friends. There were a couple teachers to keep us in line or whatever. But it was like the pinnacle of icing being a thing. I, vaguely, remember our last night in Paris. I was among the few left with any money (things were still mostly cash, it was like 2007) and we bought ALL the Smirnoff Ice from the little store around the corner. And these were the bigger ones, not the six-pack bottles. And sat on the back patio of this tiny hole in the wall, like a Hilton Hotel in Paris, icing each other. It was bad. Hillary McDaniels, product manager, Vulture
Whats up, Katy?

Is Katy Perry okay, you guys? Recently, shes been fighting with nuns, stealing first kisses from American Idol contestants, and during an appearance on the Japanese morning show Sukkiri on Thursday, the pop star seemed to suffer an existential crisis while desperately shoving chicken nuggets in her mouth.

After explaining why she loves Japan so much (when she was 4 or 5, her mom forgot her in an elevator and five Japanese girls found her and gave her Coca-Cola gummy bears), and performing her song Act My Age, the shows hosts wheeled out a tray with a variety of flavored chicken nuggets for Perry, from the Japanese convenience store Lawsons.

I prepared that because [we] heard you are addicted to some foods in Japan, the host explains, as Perrys jaw drops.

For reasons that remain unclear to all of us (including Perry, it seems), she leaps on the nuggets, shoving as many in her mouth as she can at once. What follows is the face journey of a woman who has tasted in the nuggets that life is, indeed, nasty, brutish, and short.

Nugget 2. How can you see into my eyes like open doors?

Nugget 6. Wake me up inside (I cant wake up).

Nugget 7. Wake me up inside. (Save me!)

Nugget defeat. Call my name and save me from the dark.

Watch the clip below, or enjoy her full appearance here.
Photo: Craig Warga/Bloomberg via Getty Images

New York state lawmakers have passed a bill that will explicitly ban cops from having sex with people in their custody, BuzzFeed News reports.

Previously, New York was one of 35 states in which police officers could claim that the other party consented when faced with claims of sexual assault. Per Senate Bill S7708, this will no longer be possible, as it establishes that anyone in police custody is incapable of consent.

This bill was inspired by the case of a teenager who goes by the pseudonym of Anna Chambers. Chambers, 18, claims that in September 2017, two NYPD detectives took her into custody for possession and then proceeded to rape her. The detectives  Edward Martins and Richard Hall  have pleaded not guilty and repeatedly claimed that the acts were consensual. Evidence collected in a rape kit contains both their DNA. Her lawyer also alleges that several cops intimidated Chambers and her mother in an attempt to stop them from pressing charges.

Chambers told BuzzFeed News, hopefully this is a start that will help public awareness and begin changing that police culture of sexual misconduct.
Stacy Bailey. Photo: Stacy Baily

An elementary-school teacher in Texas has been suspended* since September after she allegedly discussed her sexual orientation with her students, the Dallas Morning News reports.

School district officials claim that they received parental complaints about Stacy Bailey, 31, who teachers art at Charlotte Anderson Elementary in Mansfield. In a statement, they claim that she insists that it is her right and that it is age appropriate for her to have ongoing discussions with elementary-aged students about her own sexual orientation, the sexual orientation of artists, and their relationships with other gay artists.

However, Baileys attorney, Giana Ortiz, says that her client simply spoke with the students about her family which, for Stacy, included her wife. Ortiz also says that Baileys suspension came after just one parental complaint.

BuzzFeed reports that both students and parents have expressed their support of Bailey  who was also named the schools teacher of the year for the past two years.

*The original version of this article incorrectly stated that Bailey was suspended without pay. She has been suspended with pay.
US President Donald Trump (C) is shown border wall prototypes in San Diego, California on March 13, 2018. (MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images)

380 Sheriffs Urge Congress to Act on Trumps Border Wall

Hundreds of sheriffs from across the United States signed a letter supporting President Donald Trumps plan to build a wall on the Mexico border and urging all lawmakers in Congress to take action against sanctuary policies.

The National Sheriffs Association sent the letter signed by 380 sheriffs from 40 states to all members of Congress on Monday, March 26.

Were calling on Congress to take action now, on the security issues at the border and against sanctuary policies in our states, cities, and towns, Sheriff Thomas Hodgson from Bristol County, Massachusetts, said in a statement.

These sanctuary policies directly undermine and limit cooperation and collaboration between local, state and federal law enforcement, making it harder for Americas sheriffs to protect our citizens and legal residents, he added.

In the letter, the sheriffs point out that they have been warning lawmakers for years about the detrimental increase in transnational drug trafficking, gang violence, sex trafficking, murder, and other escalating incidents of crime by illegal aliens entering our country.

On the campaign trail, Trump promised to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. But Congress has obstructed the presidents efforts to deliver on his promise, most recently by declining to fund the walls construction in the recent $1.3 trillion spending bill.

Trumps Justice Department has ramped up pressure on sanctuary locales, especially California, which passed statewide laws effectively sheltering illegal aliens. Attorney General Jeff Sessions sued California over these measures, arguing that they are unconstitutional.

Congress inaction undermines sheriffs ability to protect our citizens, National Sheriffs Association Executive and CEO Jonathan Thompson said in a statement. Sheriffs across this country have signed this letter because Congress cannot continue to weaken our efforts to make our communities as safe as possible.

Earlier this week, 18 state attorneys general filed a court brief in support of Sessions lawsuit. The attorneys argued that the influx of illegal aliens from the California sanctuary can hurt neighboring states. They also pointed out that the Supreme Court has already ruled against an analogous local measure in Arizona.

Ive spent my career fighting to uphold the rule of law while Californias sanctuary cities policy thumbs its nose at the rule of law, South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson said in a news release. States cannot be allowed to ignore federal laws they dont like, especially when doing so puts public safety at risk.

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A photo shows a Monoprix logo at a location of the supermarket in Dunkirk on Mar. 27, 2018. / AFP PHOTO / Philippe Huguen (Photo credit should read PHILIPPE HUGUEN/AFP/Getty Images)

Amazon Targets French Grocery Market With Monoprix Deal

PARISE-commerce giant Amazon has made further inroads into food retail in France as Casinos upmarket Monoprix chain became the first local retailer to agree to sell groceries via Amazon.

Future cooperation could extend beyond France. A source familiar with the talks said on March 27 that Amazon and Casino were negotiating a deal in Brazil either partnering or selling Casinos local appliance and electronics chain Via Varejo.

Casino said the process of selling Via Varejo was continuing in Brazil with no new element to report and there was no partnership.

The French move, which is set to shake up the competitive local food retail market, lifted Casino shares as much as 9.7 percent in morning trade amid speculation that it could lead to a bigger deal later on.

Amazons purchase of the bricks-and-mortar retailer Whole Foods Market Inc for $13.7 billion last year, and a deal for Amazon Prime to sell products from the British supermarket chain Morrisons, raised expectations that it would bid for a retailer or form a partnership in France.

Casino and Amazon said late on March 26 that groceries sourced from Monoprix would be available in the Amazon Prime Now app and website through a dedicated virtual store.

The deal is limited to the lucrative Paris market and its suburbs, though Monoprix CEO Regis Schultz told a conference call that an extension to other parts of France could not be ruled out.

Asked if the partnership paved the way to other deals with Amazon, Schultz said: We do not discuss the future.

Monoprix is one of Frances best-known store chains, with a network of nearly 800 upmarket stores in more than 250 cities. It has a strong focus on quality and fresh products in the mould of Whole Foods, and is a key contributor to Casino group profit.

We consider the Monoprix product selection as exceptional, Amazon France CEO Frederic Duval said during the call.

Financial terms were not disclosed, but Schultz said a model where Monoprix does the picking of the order in store and Amazon takes care of delivery was a profitable one for Monoprix.

Complements Ocado Deal

Casino already has a delivery partnership with UK online retailer Ocado, signed last year.

The two deals were complementary as the Ocado technology will allow Monoprix to address the needs of its traditional clients with a bigger basket and seeking next-day delivery. Clients of Amazon Prime, set up in Paris in 2016, are looking for fewer items and want express delivery.

Since the purchase of Whole Foods Market, expectations that Amazon could focus next on Europe have spurred French retailers to try to improve their own online offerings.

Carrefour announced in January that it would invest 2.8 billion euros in digital commerce over the next five years, six times its current investment.

Leclerc, Frances biggest food retailer by market share, privately held operator Systeme U and Casino have all been linked in recent months with Amazon, which has steadily been building its presence in France.

Leclerc launched its own home delivery service in Paris on March 26.

Since the deal with Ocado will not start working until 2019, Casino needs to protect Monoprix from Leclerc, which has started home delivery in Paris, wrote Kepler Cheuvreux analysts.
Arnold Schwarzenegger Gets Emergency Open-Heart Surgery, says Report

Arnold Schwarzenegger underwent emergency heart surgery this week, according to reports.

The actor and former governor of California had open-heart surgery, TMZ reported, quoting sources connected to Arnold.

Arnold Schwarzenegger has reportedly undergone emergency heart surgery https://t.co/IC73kUyR5k  Entertainment Weekly (@EW) March 30, 2018

The 70-year-old Schwarzenegger went to Cedars-Sinai Thursday for a catheter valve replacement. Were told the surgery is somewhat experimental and he developed complications, the site reported. Doctors were prepared in case the catheter valve replacement failed  and quickly decided Arnold needed emergency open-heart surgery, which were told lasted several hours.

Schwarzenegger went under the knife to replace his aortic valve in 1997. Ive never felt sick or had any symptoms at all, but I knew Id have to take care of this condition sooner or later, he said in a statement, reported the Los Angeles Times at the time. I said to the doctors, Lets do it now, while Im young and healthy. They agreed this was the way to go.

In 2012, on 60 Minutes, the Terminator actor said that his doctor told him that he was crazy to keep the 1997 operation a secret from his wife.

He said, Your wife is pregnant, what do you mean you are not going to tell her?' he said, E! News reported. I told him, Here is the plan, I am going to have the heart surgery, you do it quietly, no one knows about it, we do it at six in the morning. Four days later I am out of here and I go to Mexico and I will tell Maria I am down here, a little busy and I am on vacation, when I come back Ill be tanned and no one will know.'

We learned Arnold Schwarzenegger had just gone emergency open heart surgery! But our close sources tell us that Arnold is recovering and is doing great. Calling all fans, please give @Schwarzenegger many reps of love! pic.twitter.com/r4Ar8XF6te  The Arnold Fans (@TheArnoldFans) March 30, 2018

Arnold Schwarzenegger reportedly undergoes emergency heart surgery https://t.co/zvBR9rs96P pic.twitter.com/WN0reCU4Vk  FOX Business (@FoxBusiness) March 30, 2018

TMZ reported that his condition is currently stable.

Other details about the procedure were not revealed.

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A researcher plants a semiconductor onto an interface board during research to design and develop a semiconductor product, in Beijing, China, on February 29, 2016. (Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters)

China Cuts Tax Rates for Domestic Chipmakers Amid Trade Tensions With US

China relies heavily on foreign chip imports

BEIJINGChinas finance ministry said on March 30 it has introduced tax breaks for chipmakers in the country. The regime is seeking to reduce dependence on foreign semiconductors amid trade tensions with the United States over technology transfers.

The move comes as the United States is considering imposing tariffs on $50 billion worth of Chinese exports, citing discriminatory trade practices in high-tech sectors, including semiconductors.

Chipmakers in China will be exempt from corporate taxes for two to five years followed by partial deductions, the ministry said in a notice posted on its website.

The exemptions cover a range of products, from very basic to cutting-edge chips, for use in computers, smartphones, and other electronic devices.

China relies heavily on foreign semiconductors, which make up one of its largest import categories by value. It is seeking to overtake foreign rivals and become a top semiconductor producer by 2030, according to its own roadmap.

Chinas ambitions have riled overseas regulators, however, who have blocked several acquisition attempts by Chinese firms looking to speed up development through technology transfers. In the United States, for example, several Chinese deals to acquire American chipmakers and other tech firms were halted over national security concerns that the Chinese would be able to eventually procure American intellectual property. The U.S. Trade Representative recently issued a reportthe results of which prompted the proposed tariffs on Chinese goodsdetailing how the Chinese regime directs and assists Chinese firms to acquire sensitive technologies.

U.S. President Donald Trumps administration is requesting China purchase more semiconductors from the United States as part of a plan to avoid proposed tariffs and a potential trade war, Reuters reported earlier this week.

According to the Chinese ministrys recent notice, companies producing high-end chips using 65 nanometer technology or smaller with an investment of over 15 billion yuan ($2.39 billion) will be exempt from corporate taxes for five years. Companies producing chips using 130 nanometer technology or smaller will be tax exempt for two years.

The new rules will mostly benefit Chinas larger, older chipmakers which can promise higher investment and large-scale production.

China had 171 chip fabrication plants as of the end of 2016, accounting for roughly 14 percent of total global capacity, according to PwC, but produces less sophisticated chips than its foreign competitors.

Video: How Industrial warfare has occurred between USA and China

The country has allocated extensive national funding to boost domestic production. Last year leading chipmaker Tsinghua Unigroupa subsidiary of a state-owned firmsigned deals with China Development Bank and Chinas national integrated circuit fund for financing of up to 150 billion yuan ($23.9 billion).

From Reuters. Epoch Times staff member Annie Wu contributed to this report.
Convicted Felon Fatally Shot by Homeowner During Tennessee Home Invasion

A convicted felon was shot by the owner of a house he tried to rob, according to police in Tennessee.

Terry Adams Jr., 27, was shot and killed after allegedly breaking into the home of Brent Bishop, 43, reported the Nashville Police Department.

Bishop was outside his house on Wednesday night when he witnessed two strangers enter the house through a rear door and hit his wife in the face.

Bishop rushed to the house and entered the kitchen, where he was hit on the head by one of the robbers. He was then ordered to open his gun safe and hand over three long guns and a pistol.

Bishops wife fled to a neighbors house while this was occurring. Soon, the robbers left.

Bishop went to another room in the house and retrieved a pistol, then went outside looking for his wife.

Bishop encountered the robbers and fired on them, killing Adams.

The second robber dropped the guns and fled. He has not been caught as of yet.

Bishop is now in the hospital with a skull fracture from being hit with a blunt object by the robbers.

The Bishop residence was previously burglarized on Feb. 8 when a flat screen television was taken. Adams is a suspect in that robbery, according to the police.

Adams has multiple convictions including auto burglary, felony theft, and aggravated assault. He also pleaded guilty in July to felony meth possession for resale and unlawful gun possession by a convicted felon.

He was allowed to plead guilty last November to two misdemeanors in General Sessions Court and was placed on probation. At the time of Wednesday nights home invasion, Adams was wanted on two probation violation warrants issued on March 20th, the Nashville Police Department stated.

The alleged robber fatally wounded by a resident in Wed. night's home invasion case on Richard Lee Circle in Hermitage is identified as convicted felon Terry Adams, Jr., 27, of Ashland City, TN. pic.twitter.com/UVy0uGKTdw  Metro Nashville PD (@MNPDNashville) March 29, 2018

The police are still investigating the case and searching for the second robber.

A neighbor told WFSB that he was surprised the crime happened.

Your life is kind of flashing before your eyes a little bit, he said. Theres a lot of kids in this neighborhood, a lot of older people too. Its usually a quiet neighborhood.

Theres a lot of good people around here, he added. This is not something you expect at 8:30 at night on a Wednesday.

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Downfall of Chinas Insurance and Energy Giants Shows New Direction of Anti-Corruption Campaign

The owners of the Waldorf Astoria hotel and a condo in the Trump World Tower in New York are in deep trouble.

Former chairman of Chinas Anbang Insurance Group Co., Wu Xiaohui, has been accused of swindling 65.2 billion yuan ($10.4 billion), during a high-profile trial on March 28. Anbang owns the Waldorf-Astoria.

Meanwhile, one of Chinas biggest energy conglomerates, CEFC China Energy, is scurrying to sell its acquired properties around the world now that its former chairman, Ye Jianming, has become the subject of an investigation by Chinese authorities. Yes company had more than 20 billion yuan ($3.2 billion) in real estate, including a unit in Trump World Tower, several floors of the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, and its headquarters in a ritzy Shanghai neighborhood, Bloomberg News reported.

The downfall of these two companies illustrates the way private firms with aggressive overseas acquisitions, murky finances, and politically inconvenient connections have come under scrutiny as the Chinese regime seeks to crack down on corruption.

During Wus one-day trial at the Shanghai No. 1 Intermediate Peoples Court, prosecutors said he had concealed his control over Anbang and had faked financial statements to cheat Chinas insurance regulator for approvals to sell insurance products to the public.

He also broke rules by telling his company to sell investment-purpose insurance products that exceeded the approved amount, the court said.

Wu raised objections during the proceedings and claimed he did not understand the law and did not know that his behavior constituted a crime. He also believed he had not violated regulatory restrictions, according to court statements.

Political Trouble

Sources close to the central authorities revealed to The Epoch Times in June 2017when Wu was arrestedthat he had ties to the family of Zeng Qinghong, the former Chinese vice premier and right-hand man to former Party leader Jiang Zemin. Jiang and his associates belong to an opposition faction at odds with current leader Xi Jinping and his allies.

The source said Wu had helped the Zeng family and other members of the Jiang faction to launder money overseas.

Wu had well-established connections to princelings, or descendants of high-level Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials. In the 1990s, Wu met and dated the woman who would later become his third wife, Deng Zhuoran, a granddaughter of Deng Xiaoping, the CCP leader who oversaw Chinas program of economic modernization.

His business prospects soared after that. Deng and princeling Chen Xiaolu, son of the military commander Chen Yi, first established an investment company in 2000. In 2004, Deng and Wu got married. That year, Dengs company became a sponsor shareholder of Anbang.

Zhang Lifan, a Beijing-based historian, told Hong Kong media that Wus court trial has sent a warning to the princeling generation, who in the last two decades have come to control vast wealth.

Meanwhile, China current affairs commentator Chen Jieren said the crackdown on Anbang is evidence that Beijing wants to reduce financial risk in the economy. In recent months, the Chinese regime has targeted several firms, including Anbang, involved in large overseas acquisitions, as a means of curbing capital outflow.

Hong Kong media HK01 suggested that the Anbang case means the Chinese regimes anti-corruption campaign will now go after princelings.

Ambitious Energy Firm

The other beleaguered businessman, CEFCs former chairman Ye Jianmingwho stepped down earlier last monthhad formed connections to the Chinese military. Hong Kong media, such as the newspaper Apple Daily, had long speculated that his close ties with some military officials meant he was a money launderer for them.

CEFC is also rumored to be the oil company in question in a U.S. Justice Department court case alleging that a Hong Kong businessman who operated a CEFC-affiliated think tank had bribed high-level officials in Chad and Uganda to secure business advantages for an unnamed energy firm.

The conglomerate was massive; in 2016, CEFC struck a deal to buy 14.16 percent stakes in Russian oil company, Rosneft, for $9.1 billion. CEFC had become the third-biggest stockholder in Russian oil, behind the Russian government and BP Russian Investments Ltd.

In 2017, the company made it to Fortune magazines global Fortune 500 list at number 222.

The deal has since been halted by Chinese authorities, even though CEFC had already begun paying for the stake, sources told Reuters.

CEFCs lack of transparency over its ownership and financing also came under scrutiny, some details of which were unveiled in an expose published in Chinese business magazine Caixin.

Soft-Red Conglomerates

Chinese economist He Qinglian describes these super-sized private firms with connections to Chinese communist officials as soft-red conglomeratesred being the signature color of the Party. She said they have especially gained prominence during the era of Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintaos rule.

Many of those conglomerates have begun shifting their assets abroad for fear of Xi targeting them under his sweeping anti-corruption campaign, according to He.

She added, Behind the survival of these soft-red conglomerates is the intense battle between Xi Jinping and the bigwigs during the era of Jiang and Hu.

Reuters contributed to this report.
Food Co-ops and Capitalism

They don't maximize profit, but they foster competition and innovation

Take a stroll through your local food co-op and youre likely to find plenty of folks who dont react so well to the concept of free market capitalism.

You might get a couple of lectures on social justice and an earful on the industrialization of global food production and the havoc it wreaks on society. But political tribalism aside, co-ops can be great practitioners of free-market capitalism and integral parts of thriving free market economies.

At their heart, food co-ops and similar organizations are groups of people who demand some niche product or service that larger businesses in an area dont find profitable to provide. By pooling their money, time, or other resources, these people can make that product or service available to the community in a cost-effective way. They may not be maximizing profits, but theyre certainly spending their resources in the way that most benefits them individually, in what economist Murray Rothbard calls maximizing psychic revenue.

Im reminded of Friends of Bob, a cooperative in my hometown of Lafayette, Indiana, with which my parents got very involved. It brings musicians to town, works with local venues to put on concerts, sells tickets, and has core members that pay dues and are involved in curating the list of musicians. Basically, there werent any venues in town that booked the musicians some people liked, and those people pooled their resources and made it happenliberty at its finest.

In the case of food co-ops, the niche product in question, especially several decades ago, when many started, was organic food. It wasnt on large grocery stores radar, so people formed organizations to buy, market, and sell food that met certain standards.

Competition and Innovation

Thats when things got interesting. In no small part thanks to these food co-ops, many more people learned about organic food (or food meeting other standards governing how or where it is grown or produced) and demand skyrocketed. Mainstream supermarkets began stocking much more organic food, and powerhouses like Whole Foods Market were born.

The trend continues, and its presenting a challenge to some old and venerable food co-ops. Though many continue to thrive, others have gone out of business, as theyre simply no longer the go-to source in their communities for organic food. Im far from an expert on what specifically makes food organic, locally produced, humanely raised, or up to a number of other standards. And its certainly possible that some for-profit businesses do not apply the same organic standards as non-profit food co-ops. But so long as the customers are educated, theyll decide whether some co-ops remain viable.

In order to compete with the big competition they helped to create, some co-ops are upping their customer-service game or provide in-house cafes or other amenities. But I wonder if their best bet really is trying to become more like their new competition. Instead, maybe there are other food niches out there that arent yet on larger stores radars.

We often talk about the profit motive as an essential driver in our economy, and it is, but profit isnt always defined as revenues minus costs. Its about individuals having the freedom and resources to maximize their well-being.

Sometimes that means cooperating with others to bring certain products or services to an area. And sometimes that educates still others about these items, and the items reach the wider economy, benefiting everyone.

So next time youre at a local food co-op, thank the cashier for being a vital part of our market-driven economy. Just dont expect a pleasant response.

Max Gulker is a senior research fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research. Gulker holds a doctorate in economics from Stanford University and a bachelors in economics from the University of Michigan.
The Georgia House of Representatives passes House Resolution 944 to oppose forced organ harvesting in China, on March 19, 2018. (Courtesy of Minghui.org)

Georgia House Resolution Opposing Organ Harvesting in China Passes Unanimously

Chinas systematic and state-sanctioned organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience has been condemned by the Georgia state government.

Georgias lower House of Representatives unanimously passed House Resolution 944 on March 19, to express concerns over forced organ harvesting in China.

In 1999, the former leader of the Communist Party, Jiang Zemin, began a nationwide persecution of the Falun Gong spiritual practice, a meditation discipline based on the moral principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. Between 70 and 100 million Chinese practiced the discipline in the late 1990s, according to official and Falun Gong estimates.

By 2000, the number of organ transplants in China began to explode. Transplant centers were established, new surgeons were trained, and Chinese hospitals began advertising waiting times for vital organs of only a few weeks. Heart transplant recipients were told the exact time their new organ would be readyimpossible if not timed around an execution, independent researchers concluded.

The resolution refers to mass killings of Uyghurs, Tibetans, select Christians, and practitioners of Falun Gong in order to obtain organs for transplants. Citing new investigative reports, the resolution says that Chinas official figure of 10,000 transplants each year has been understated by an order of magnitude.

According to one of these new reports, Bloody Harvest/The Slaughter: An Update, most of those killed for their organs are Falun Gong practitioners.

The resolution was sponsored by 19 representatives including Dewayne Hill (R), Bill McGowan (D), Wendell Willard (R), and Brooks Coleman (R). It passed with 156 favorable votes and zero objections.

The resolution notes that in July, 1999, the Chinese Communist Party launched an intensive, nation-wide persecution of the popular, spiritual practice of Falun Gong extralegally detaining hundreds of thousands of practitioners in Chinese reeducation-through-labor camps, detention centers, and prisons where torture, abuse, and implausible medical exams and blood tests are routine.

It called on the Chinese regime to end immediately the practice of forced organ harvesting from all prisoners, especially Falun Gong practitioners and other minority groups. It also stated no country should allow its people to travel to China for transplants before the entire industry is transparent and fully investigated.

Other states have passed similar resolutions in recent years.

Last month, the Arizona state House of Representatives passed a resolution opposing organ harvesting in China.

On June 13, 2016, the federal House of Representatives passed House Resolution 343 (H.Res.343) unanimously. The resolution expressed concerns over Chinas organ harvesting from non-consenting prisoners of conscience.

That same day, the U.S. House of Representatives also passed H.R.3694, the Strategy To Oppose Predatory Organ Trafficking Act, which calls on the Department of State to address and prevent organ trafficking.

In May 2016, the Minnesota State Senate passed Resolution SF 2090 opposing organ harvesting unanimously.

And back in 2006, when evidence of Chinas state-sanctioned organ harvesting was just coalescing, the Illinois State House of Representatives passed a resolution to condemn the Chinese regime.

In April that year, both the Colorado State Senate and House of Representatives passed a joint resolution 06-027just ahead of former Chinese Communist Party leader Hu Jintaos visit to the United Statesthat condemned the Chinese regimes organ harvesting.
NEW YORK, NY - MARCH 05: Google's New York office is shown in lower Manhattan on March 5, 2018 in New York City. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Google Defeats Lawsuit Claiming YouTube Censors Conservatives

Google has won the dismissal of a lawsuit in California accusing YouTube of censoring conservative content.

In a decision late March 26, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh said a nonprofit run by conservative radio talk show host Dennis Prager failed to show that YouTube infringed its free speech rights by placing age restrictions on its content.

The plaintiff, Prager University, said YouTubes animus toward its political identity and viewpoint led it to curb access to videos on such topics as abortion, gun rights, Islam, and terrorism, despite its stated promise of neutrality.

But the judge said Google and YouTube, both units of Mountain View, California-based Alphabet Inc, did not qualify as state actors subject to the First Amendment by creating a public forum for speech.

Defendants are private entities who created their own video-sharing social media website and make decisions about whether and how to regulate content that has been uploaded on that website, Koh wrote.

Plaintiff has not shown that defendants have engaged in one of the very few public functions that were traditionally exclusively reserved to the state, she added.

The San Jose, California-based judge also dismissed a claim that YouTube engaged in false advertising by implying that Pragers videos were inappropriate, and dismissed various law claims. Koh gave Prager a chance to amend its lawsuit.

A lawyer for Prager did not immediately respond on March 27 to requests for comment.

Google did not immediately respond to a similar request.

In court papers, Google acknowledged that deciding which videos to restrict may involve difficult, subjective judgment calls.

But it maintained that it should not be held liable for trying to keep YouTube safe and enjoyable for all users.

Google drew attention last August when it fired an engineer, James Damore, who had written an internal memo saying that biological differences led to fewer women in various technology jobs.

Damore sued Google in January, saying it was biased against white men with conservative views.

The case is Prager University v Google LLC et al, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. 17-06064.
H-E-B Recalls 2.5 Million Light Bulbs Due to Laceration, Fire Hazard

H-E-B announced that its recalling some 2.5 million GTC halogen light bulbs because the bulbs can shatter when inside a lamp or fixture.

The firm stated that bulbs, which were made in China, potentially pose laceration or fire hazards to consumers.

Consumers should immediately stop using the recalled halogen light bulbs and return them to HEB for a full refund, the companys website says.

The recall involves GTC halogen light bulbs, and they were sold in packages of two or four bulbs.

The bulb packages were sold in 25 watt, 40 watt, 60 watt, 75 watt, or 100 watt bulb varieties in either clear or soft white colors. The bulbs measure approximately 4.5 inches in length and 2.375 inches in diameter, the site says. The tops of the bulbs read GTC and include the wattage and lumens values. The bulbs are packaged in blue and red cardboard boxes that read: GTC NATURAL LIGHT across the top, along with the wattage and color of the bulb, it adds.

The firm said that the UPC codes are printed on the product packaging. A full list of the codes can be accessed here.

H-E-B said that it got 14 reports of the bulbs shatter while inside a fixture or lamp, causing one consumer to cut his hand.

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Republican Governor Matt Bevin of Kentucky speaks during the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland, on Feb. 23, 2017. (Joshua Roberts/Reuters)

Kentucky House Passes Bill Restricting Abortions

The Kentucky House of Representatives passed legislation on March 27 to ban a common abortion procedure from the 11th week of pregnancy, in what would be one of the strictest abortion limits in the United States.

The bill, which was approved by the state Senate last week, will now go for approval to Gov. Matt Bevin, a Republican who has described himself as 100 percent pro-life.

Officials at Bevins office could not immediately be reached for comment.

The House voted 7513 in favor of the measure. It previously passed a similar version of the measure but had to approve changes the Senate made. Both bodies are controlled by Republicans.

The procedure covered by the legislation, known as dilation and evacuation, accounts for 16 percent of all abortions performed in Kentucky. It is primarily used for pregnancies in the second trimester. The new law makes an exception for medical emergencies.

Last week, Mississippis governor signed into law the most restrictive abortion measure in the United States, banning all abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy.

However, a U.S. federal judge temporarily blocked the Mississippi law from taking effect, while the judge considers whether to stop the law from taking effect until the outcome of a full legal challenge.

Since last year, when Republicans took control of the Kentucky House for the first time since 1921, the states legislature has passed several measures to restrict access to abortion, including banning all abortions after the 20th week of pregnancy.

Critics have said the latest bill will almost certainly face a legal challenge. Last year, a similar measure passed by Texas lawmakers was struck down by a federal judge.

Similar bans in other states including Alabama, Arkansas, Kansas, and Oklahoma have also been struck down by courts.
Man Takes Incredible Photos of Shark Gulping Down Food Tornado

This is the incredible moment a whale shark gulped down a never-before-photographed swirling tornado of plankton.

Warren Baverstock, 49, hung a single light off the back of a boat to attract the phytoplankton the sharks love to eatand then waited patiently in the dark ocean.

He was delighted when an 11.5-foot juvenile whale shark rose from the depths to gobble up the plumes of gathering food and dived down to capture it silhouetted by the light.

I was in the water in the pitch black and felt really vulnerable and quite scared, he said. When you drop down into the water you can see the shaft of light from the boat, but thats it.

But he was astonished to then witness the microscopic plankton display shoaling behavior and spiral into a 13-foot tornado of fish food, off the coast of Africa.

Baverstock, from Okehampton, Devon, in southwestern England, captured an incredible photo of the whale shark rising from below the swirling plume, with its jaws parted, feasting on the plankton.

The aquarium director said he has never seen or heard of this behavior and speculates it is microscopic plankton being hunted by larger plankton.

I was expecting to attract the plankton but had never seen that kind of behavior, said Baverstock. It is possible that because of the presence of even microscopic predators, that was causing the smaller plankton to tornado, as a shoaling affect.

Baverstock, director of Aquarium Operations at the Burj Al Arab Hotel in Dubai, took the photos during his fifth trip to study whale sharks in Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa.

Warren traveled to the Gulf of Tadjoura with a group of researchers to study the spot where hundreds of whale sharks gather to feed between September and January.

Hoping for a dream shot of the animal feasting, he moored a boat 328 feet from the shore in the middle of the night and suspended an LED light from the gangplank.

The light attracted phytoplanktonthe primary producers of the open oceanswhich are attracted to the light, and in turn draw in bigger predators, which eat them.

On the third night a whale shark approached, but when Warren got into the water with his camera, it moved away.

He jumped in and waited for more than an hour, hoping it would return.

After 1 hour and 15 minutes the beast returned, this time totally distracted by the swirling tornado tower of plankton, which it swooped up to eat, for 10 to 15 minutes.

To have the whale shark, with the cloud was amazing, but then to see and then capture it with this spiraling tornado of plankton was just incredible, said Baverstock.

He took the photos by freediving down, and shooting from under the whale, having to dive deep in order to get the whale, plankton, and light in the same shot.



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Saudi Arabia's Minister of Energy, Industry and Mineral Resources, Khalid Al-Falih (R) speaks during a press conference with his Russian counterpart Alexander Novak at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in the capital Riyadh on Feb. 14, 2018. (FAYEZ NURELDINE/AFP/Getty Images)

OPEC, Russia Consider 10-20 Year Oil Alliance, Says Saudi Crown Prince

NEW YORKSaudi Arabia and Russia are working on a historic long-term pact that could extend controls over world crude supplies by major exporters for many years to come.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told Reuters that Riyadh and Moscow were considering a longer deal to extend a short-term alliance on oil curbs that began in January 2017 after a crash in crude prices.

We are working to shift from a year-to-year agreement to a 10-20 year agreement, the crown prince told Reuters in an interview in New York late on March 26.

We have agreement on the big picture, but not yet on the detail.

Russia, never a member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, has worked alongside the 14-member cartel during previous oil gluts, but a 10-20 year deal between the two would be unprecedented.

Top OPEC producer Saudi Arabia recruited Russia and other non-OPEC countries to help drain a glut when oil prices collapsed from over $100 a barrel in 2014 to below $30 in 2016.

Crude has since recovered to $70 but fast-rising output from U.S. shale producers has capped prices.

This is all about whether the arrangement is a short-term expedient to deal with this particular crisis in the oil market, or whether it reflects a realignment in world oil, said oil historian Daniel Yergin, vice-chairman at consultancy IHS Markit.

OPEC countries want to find a way to institutionalize this relationship rather than to have it be a one-shot deal.

Alliance Despite Syria Differences

News of the potential oil alliance comes at a time when Riyadh and Moscow have worked to cement an economic relationship despite being at odds over the conflict in Syria, where they back opposing sides.

Riyadh supports rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assads army, while Russian and Iranian forces have backed Assadmeaning that Russia effectively sides with Iran, Riyadhs regional arch-foe.

Last October, Saudi King Salman became the first sitting Saudi monarch ever to visit Russia. He led a delegation to Moscow that agreed joint investment deals worth several billion dollars, providing much-needed investment for a Russian economy battered by low oil prices and Western sanctions.

Despite their differences in the Middle East, Russia and Saudi Arabia have been drawn together by a common interest in propping up flagging world oil prices, and by the fact that Moscow, since its military intervention in Syria, has clout in the Middle East that other countries in the region cannot ignore.

Aramco IPO Late 2018, Early 2019

The crown prince predicted that world oil demand would not peak until 2040, despite advances in renewable energy technologies and the electric vehicle.

In an attempt to end Saudi Arabias reliance on oil, he is leading a push to diversify the Saudi economy away from oil and gas by 2030.

Riyadh plans to raise funds through the flotation of a 5 percent stake in state Saudi oil company Aramco. Time is running out for an initial public offering this year but the crown prince said the IPO could still take place at the end of 2018 or in early 2019, depending on financial market conditions.

Saudi Oil Minister Khalid al-Falih said last week that documentation was ready but that a venue for the IPO had not yet been decided. The New York stock exchange is still in the running for the IPO, alongside London and Hong Kong, but Falih said there was a risk of a frivolous legal action if Aramco were listed in the United States.
The state flag of the U.S. flies outside the building of the country's consulate-general in St. Petersburg, Russia March 29, 2018. (Anton Vaganov/REUTERS)

Russia Expels 60 US Diplomats in Tit-for-Tat Measure Over UK Poisoning Attack

MOSCOWRussia expelled 60 U.S. diplomats on Thursday, March 29, in a tit-for-tat measure in response to Americas earlier expulsion of the same number of Russian intelligence officers over the poisoning of a former Russian spy in the United Kingdom.

Russias foreign ministry said it had declared persona non grata 58 diplomats in Moscow and two general consulate officials in Yekaterinburg. The Americans have to leave the country by April 5.

Moments before the ministry announcement, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia would respond in kind to the mass expulsion of diplomats by Western governments which include, apart from the United States and Britain, most member states of NATO and the European Union.

The measures would be reciprocal  They include expulsion of the equivalent number of diplomats and they include our decision to withdraw our agreement to allow the United States general consulate to operate in St. Petersburg, Lavrov said.

Britain has blamed Russia for the attack on 66-year-old former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter on March 4. London says the attack was caused by a Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok left on the door of Skripals home in Salisbury.

Russia has denied involvement in the attack on the Skripals and says it suspects the British secret services are trying to frame Russia to stoke anti-Russian hysteria.

Skripal is a former Russian military intelligence operative who betrayed Russian agents to Britain and was then exchanged in a spy swap deal. He remains in critical condition from the attack.

Skripals 33-year-old daughter was also in a critical condition, though the English hospital where she was being treated said on Thursday that her condition had improved.

The expulsions of Russian intelligence officers by the United States on Monday were coordinated with more than a dozen European allies. A host of other countries joined in after the United States announcement. In total, 27 countries expelled 150 Russian intelligence officers, according to a tally by The New York Times.

Russia predicated cooperation with investigators on receiving a sample of the nerve agent from the UK. British authorities denied the request. Chemical warfare experts and U.S. authorities agree that Russia has no right to the sample.

The United States and its allies described the Russians expelled as intelligence officers engaged in aggressive intelligence gathering.

The Russian government uses its diplomatic establishments as intelligence platforms from which they collect information to conduct destabilizing activities in the U.S. and around the world, a senior American administration official said on a background call with reporters.

They hide behind a veneer of diplomatic immunity while actively engaging in intelligence operations that undermine the country in which they are hosted and the democracies they seek to minimize.

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The 787 Aft Body manufacturing area is pictured at Boeing South Carolina in North Charleston, South Carolina, United States March 25, 2018. REUTERS/Randall Hill

Saudi Arabia to Sign Memorandum With Boeing to Support Fleet

NEW YORKSaudi Arabia will sign a non-binding agreement with Boeing for the U.S. plane maker to provide support and training to the kingdoms fleet, the chairman of the state-owned military industrial company said on March 27.

With Saudi Arabia intending to localize 50 percent of its military industry by 2030, it is in discussions with U.S. companies to scale up their operations in the kingdom.

To that end, Ahmed Al Khateeb of Saudi Arabian Military Industries (SAMI) said it will sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU)a document which outweighs a letter of intent but does commit either side to the agreementwith Boeing in Seattle.

Hopefully we will be announcing other MoUs with other big American companies, Khateeb told Reuters on the sidelines of the 2018 Saudi-U.S. CEO Forum in New York.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is leading a whistle-stop visit to the United States.

At the forum, Saudi Arabias U.S. embassy said the kingdom had signed 36 memorandums of understanding, totaling more than $20 billion in new business partnerships.

The memorandums of understanding included a partnership between Alphabet Incs Google and oil giant Saudi Aramco for national cloud services, and a cooperation agreement between Aramco and Raytheon for national cyber security services.

Aramco has been the victim of a high-profile cyber attack in the past, with former U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta describing the 2012 so-called Shamoon attack as perhaps the most destructive cyber attack on a private business.

In addition to cultivating Western ties for investments in Saudi Arabia, the trip is an opportunity for the crown prince to try to reassure investors who were unnerved by the severity and secrecy of an anti-corruption crackdown last November.

CEOs in attendance at the forum included Morgan Stanleys James Gorman, Ajay Banga from Mastercard, and PepsiCos Indra Nooyi, according to an attendee list.
Texas Police Officer Kills Armed Suspect During Shootout

A police officer in Texas who was confronted by an armed man engaged in a shootout with the suspect and ultimately killed him.

The situation unfolded in Pasadena on Thursday, March 29.

The man allegedly ran a stop sign before being pulled over.

The suspect then pulled out a weapon and opened fire on an officer, the Pasadena Police Department told KHOU.

A shootout took place and the suspect was ultimately shot by the officer and died from his wound.

NEW VIDEO: We're getting a look from dash and body cameras of a traffic stop that led to a Pasadena police officer returning fire at a driver | Watch the video here: https://t.co/cqKphCDOqK pic.twitter.com/9zEwMgFPu5  ABC13 Houston (@abc13houston) March 30, 2018

Josh Bruegger, the citys assistant police chief, told reporters that the officer fired off six rounds while it was unclear whether the suspect fired any, reported The Houston Chronicle. However, in the body camera footage, it appears the suspect did fire at least once.

The footage from the officer shows the scene and was released by the department later on Thursday.

Once the suspect vehicle and police vehicle came to a stop, the suspect opened the door, was very animated with his hands before he stood up, placed his right hand behind his back, Bruegger said, reported CW 39. The officer gave him verbal commands, at which time, the suspect drew a weapon, pointed at the officer.

WATCH: Suspect killed in shootout with Pasadena officer https://t.co/VKGK1kyHkH pic.twitter.com/7oSA8g38Uf  KHOU 11 News Houston (@KHOU) March 30, 2018

It appears justified to me, Bruegger told reporters. When the suspect points a weapon at the officer, the officer has no choice but to defend himself.

Warning: Video includes graphic footage

The identity of the man hasnt been released as of yet.

The officer, who was not hurt, has also not been identified.

Bruegger said that the officer is obviously shaken up. The department has placed the officer on at least three days of administrative leave, which is standard department policy.

Bruegger described the officer as a veteran of the force who has served for 13 years and is currently 40 years old.

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Trump Proclaims April National Child Abuse Prevention Month

President Donald Trump proclaimed April as National Child Abuse Prevention Month, the White House announced on March 28.

The proclamation states that 1 in 4 people experience some form of abuse or neglect in childhood.

Too often, childhood is marred with pain, violence, neglect, and abuse, which can have lifelong psychological, emotional, and physical consequences, Trump said in a statement.

At no fault of their own, some children are subjected to the most depraved forms of child abuse and neglect, without reprieve and, sometimes, without any knowledge that they are being maltreated.

Two of the worst child sex abuse scandals have been exposed since Trump took office. In the United Kingdom, an investigation revealed a merciless ring of pedophiles who abused up to 1,000 children as young as 11 over the course of four decades. In Norway, authorities arrested 51 men from a massive pedophile ring that abused children of all ages, including infants.

In the United States, one of the biggest child abuse scandals turned into one of the most well-documented government-involved coverups in the late 1980s and early 90s. Investigators probing the collapse of the Franklin Credit Union in Nebraska uncovered a vast network, including some of most powerful men in the United States, engaged in the systematic sexual abuse of children, including satanic ritual rape, as well as the murder of infants and the use of minors for drug trafficking.

Nebraska state Sen. John DeCamp documented the ensuing coverup in his book The Franklin Coverup: Child Abuse, Satanism, and Murder in Nebraska. A documentary team from the United Kingdom also spent several months interviewing victims and witnesses. The resulting 1994 documentary, Conspiracy of Silence, was scheduled to air on the Discovery Channel but was pulled the day before the premiere. The film is now available online.

In the official proclamation on March 28, Trump asked Americans to be watchful for signs of child abuse, including untreated medical problems, sudden changes in the behavior of the child, or a state of constant watchfulness in the child, as though he or she is always preparing for something bad to happen.

We should not allow pride or discomfort to prevent us from helping a child who is truly suffering, Trump said. We must be a nation committed to taking action in the face of adversity and uncertainty, particularly when done to enhance the safety or security of children.

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Umar Ahmed Haque is seen in an undated booking photograph handed out by the Metropolitan Police in London, Britain Mar. 2, 2018. (Metropolitan Police handout via REUTERS)

UK Teacher Jailed for Trying to Recruit Army of children for Attacks

LONDONA British supporter of Islamic State who tried to recruit over 100 children into an army of jihadists to carry out a wave of attacks across London was jailed for a minimum of 25 years, the BBC reported on March 26.

Umar Haque, 25, showed the children beheading videos and other violent militant propaganda, forced them to re-enact deadly attacks on the British capital and made them role-play attacking police officers.

His plan was to create an army of children to assist with multiple terrorist attacks throughout London, said Dean Haydon, head of the Metropolitan Polices Counter Terrorism Command. He tried and he did, we believe, radicalize vulnerable children from the ages of 11 to 14.

Despite having no qualifications and being employed as an administrator, police say Haque used the guise of teaching Islamic studies to groom 110 children into becoming militants at the Lantern of Knowledge, a small private Islamic school, and at a madrassa connected to the Ripple Road Mosque in east London.

His intention was to use them to attack London targets such as Big Ben, soldiers from the Queens Guards, a large shopping center, banks, and media stations, prosecutors said at his trial.

Believed to have been self-radicalized online, Haque was inspired by an attack in March last year when Khalid Masood ploughed a rented car into pedestrians on Londons Westminster Bridge, killing four, before stabbing to death a police officer in the grounds of parliament.

Haque was found guilty at Londons Old Bailey Court earlier this month of several offenses including preparing terrorist acts, having previously pleaded guilty to four charges.
We Have to Stop Blaming the PoliceGrieving Mother Delivers Powerful Message About Responsibility

A grieving mother used the occasion of her sons death while fleeing police to send a stern warning to other young adults who think it is cool to live their lives as criminals.

Terica Charles lost her 24-year-old son Charles Baker in the early hours of March 26 when he drove a stolen motorcycle off the side of the International Speedway Boulevard Bridge outside Daytona, Florida, the Daytona Beach News-Journal reported.

But really, Charles had been losing her son day by day starting when he turned 11.

My son has been in and out of programs and getting in trouble for so long that he has not had a birthday at home since he was 11 years old, Charles said in a tearful 20-minute Facebook video, which has since gone viral.

WARNING: The video below contains profanity

Anybody who knows me knows that I have been there for my son, I have done everything I could for my son, told my son that the way he was going wasnt gonna, you know, get him anywhere but jail or hell, Charles stated. I have preached to Rodney over and over and over again, I have begged with him, pleaded with him, to just get himself together because I didnt want to see this day come.

When that day did come, Charles decided not to keep her grief within, but to let the wisdom she had gained through years of suffering come out, to help the parents and children in situations similar to her own.

Her message to the children was simple, I am sending this message out here hoping that one of yall that are in his age group, younger, olderwill see how short life really is. Maybe youll see that you could be here today and gone tomorrow.

To the parents, her message was crystal clear, We as parents gotta stop supporting our kids when we know our children are doing wrong.

Bad Choices and Harsh Penalties

Baker, 24, was speeding down the road on a stolen motorcycle when police tried to pull him over.

Baker, knowing he would be headed back to jail, decided to flee. While crossing the bridge over the Halifax River, he lost control, crashed through the railing, and smashed himself on the rocks below.

Charles went to the scene, wailing in anguish at the sight of the wreckage strewn across the rocks. Plainly her sons death hurt her deeply.

But Charles wasnt about to blame the police. She knew that the blame rested fully on her son.

My son was determined to do what he wanted to do, she stated firmly.

She let the pain of losing her son motivate her to reach out to both the unruly children who might one day end up like Rodney and the parents who sometimes let their children run wild.

To the children, she said, I need all yall young men and women out there that thinks its cool to put police on these high-speed chases, Stop thinking about yourself for just a minute. 

Yall need to be thinking about the fact that there are innocent bystanders out here that could get hurt in the pursuit of You trying to get away from the police because you dont want to go to jail, because you dont want to face the action, or face the consequences of your actions. If you werent breaking the law the police wouldnt be following you in the first place.

We Have to Stop Blaming the Police When our Children Are Doing Wrong

Charles adamantly refused to blame the police officers involved, for any aspect of her sons death.

My son died in an accident where he was fleeing police because he did not have a drivers license and he was on a stolen motorcycle, she said forcefully.

We as parents gotta stop supporting our kids when we know our children are doing wrong, she said in her Facebook post.

Charles mentioned the parents who go to the police station after their teenage child was arrested and protest, My child is a minor and yall questioned my child illegally, and an adult should have been there. That child should never have been doing something to get arrested in the first place, Charles said.

We have to stop blaming the police when our children are doing wrong. A huge part of the problem is that we got so many parents out here that are making these kids feel like we got their back in every situation. 

Yeah, I got my childs back in any situation that happens with them, but I know when theyre wrong that there are consequences that they have to face.

Charles ended her Facebook post with a prayer and a plea:

I am sharing this message because I am hoping that it will make a difference to somebody, somebody will say, You know what, I dont want to end up like Rodney. I dont want my mother crying like Terica Charles was on Facebook.

Terica Charles has set up a GoFundMe Page to help raise funds for her sons funeral.

From NTD.tv

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Woman Sentenced to Five Years in Prison for Illegally Voting in 2016 Presidential Election

A Texas woman was sentenced to five years in prison on Wednesday, March 28, for illegally voting.

Crystal Mason, 43, illegally voted in the 2016 presidential election, a district judge in Tarrant County ruled.

Mason was on supervised release for a 2011 conviction for tax fraud when she voted, and in Texas, convicted felons cant vote until theyve completed their sentence, reported the Dallas Morning News.

Texas felon who 'didn't even want to go vote' gets prison time for voting illegally https://t.co/DIcXJqNQEe  Dallas Morning News (@dallasnews) March 29, 2018

After being convicted of voting illegally, Mason chose to have a judge sentence her as opposed to a jury trial.

Tarrant County prosecutor Matt Smid said that in cases such as Masons, the state must prove that a defendant was aware she or he wasnt allowed to vote and voted anyway. She was given an affidavit by a judge that stated a voter must have completed a full sentence to vote if convicted of a felony.

The affidavit was a stop sign in front of her face, Smid said.

According to a 2016 report from the Sentencing Project, a criminal justice reform group, more than 6 million felons in the U.S. & nearly 500,000 in TX were ineligible to vote in 2016. This woman was sentenced to 5 yrs prison for being a felon while voting. https://t.co/RvtamO3AzH pic.twitter.com/HwfGcZfbi4  Star-Telegram (@startelegram) March 29, 2018

An initial investigation was launched after a worker at the polls reported problems with Masons ballot.

J. Warren St. John, Masons defense attorney, told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that an appeal has already been filed.

I find it amazing that the government feels she made this up, St. John told the court. She was never told that she couldnt vote, and she voted in good faith. Why would she risk going back to prison for something that is not going to change her life?

Texas woman sentenced to five years prison for illegally voting in the 2016 election https://t.co/dDCY6LahO4 pic.twitter.com/qEN5oGSg7r  The Hill (@thehill) March 30, 2018

Mason agreed to pay $4.2 million in restitution after pleading guilty to tax fraud in 2011. She said that inflated tax returns filed through a tax preparation business that she and her ex-husband owned and operated.

Mason admitted in court this week that she didnt read the affidavit carefully but blamed others, including election workers and her supervision officers, saying theyd never told her she couldnt vote.

I didnt even want to go vote, she claimed.

From NTD.tv

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NORWALK Trinity Financial, the Boston-based redeveloper of Washington Village, is rethinking its proposed name for the housing complex once finished.

We conducted a collaborative selection process for the new name; and although the chosen name was not intended to be a reference or an acknowledgement of any specific person, we have recently been informed that there is a negative historic connotation with it, Trinity Financial said in a statement Thursday. Now that we are aware of the issue, we will work with the residents and other stakeholders to come up with another name that conveys the positive transformation that is happening at Washington Village.

Residents and others attending an unrelated city master plan meeting at the South Norwalk Library on Tuesday evening expressed surprise upon learning that the Washington Village development team had chosen Skyler Landing as the future name for the rebuilt complex.

Theyre changing the name  and I dont know where they got it from, said Larissa Brown, principal with Stantec, the firm hired by the city to help update the master plan. This is going to be mixed-income housing opening pretty soon.

Worked with residents

Operated by the Norwalk Housing Authority, Washington Village is Connecticuts oldest public-housing complex. Its long-planned rebuilding is well underway with completion expected this spring of 80 apartments in two new buildings at 13 and 20 Day St.

The larger project, funded in part by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Developments Choice Neighborhoods Program, calls for razing Washington Village and its 136 apartments and building 273 new apartments in five new buildings. The new complex will be a mixture of workforce, public-housing and market-rate apartments. Residents in good standing may return. Theyve been given vouchers for interim housing during the construction period, according to the NHA.

NHA Deputy Director Candace Mayer said Wednesday that the authority worked with residents regarding the renaming. Trinity Financial, which owns and is rebuilding the Washington Village property, is leading the re-branding effort. She said the company engaged Silver Creative Group, a branding firm located on nearby Water Street, to lead the effort.

We started the process by talking with the residents at Washington Village, and there was one family that wanted to keep the current name, and everyone else wanted a new name, said Mayer, who referred to Trinity for an explanation of how Skyler Landing was chosen.

Trinity Financial referred an inquiry from Hearst Connecticut Media to media relations firm inkhouse, which earlier Thursday said Skyler Landing was adapted from the word Schuyler, meaning scholar, learned one and shelter.

The new name pays homage to the City of Norwalks maritime history, as well as to Washington Villages longstanding commitment to creating a sense of community and home for residents, inkhouse said. This new name is being introduced to reflect the exciting revitalization of the Washington Village community and the way it will create an authentic, thoughtful and connected residential experience for individuals and families.

Inkhouse provided a link to a splash page created to market the development to prospective residents. The website, which can be found at https://skylerlanding.com/, begins with Home Starts Here and continues with Thoughtfully Modern One & Two Bedroom Apartment Homes. In the Heart of South Norwalk. Coming this Spring.

Phase one of the larger Washington Village transformation plan is largely complete. If all goes according to plan, the smaller building at 13 Day St. will open in May, and the larger building at 20 Day St., over the summer, according to inkhouse.

Mixed reviews

Many Washington Village residents have vacated the existing buildings to the south in advance of the NHA and Trinity Financial beginning phase two.

Of the remaining residents, several confirmed Wednesday that they were engaged in the renaming effort and gave mixed reviews of Skyler Landing.

Deborah Winters, who has lived at Washington Village for about eight years and plans to return once its rebuilt, said most residents favored the name. She did not.

I dont like the name. I think its stupid, Winters said. I understand youre rebuilding, but my whole thing is Washington Village is Washington Village.

She struggled when asked how the development team arrived at Skyler Landing.

His name is Nate Skyler? Winters said. And he has something to do with  I forgot, history lesson here.

Catherine Pauley, who has lived at Washington Village for about three years and also plans to return, doesnt favor the name Skyler Landing.

I would like for it to stay Washington Village, Pauley said. Theres no reason to change the name.

Maria Maldonado, who has lived at Washington Village for almost 43 years, expressed support for the name.

It is better, Maldonado said. Something new.
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville plays a pivotal role in strengthening the regional economy. Likewise, the Edwardsville/Glen Carbon Chamber of Commerce, as a member-driven organization, stands as the voice of business by supporting its members success and championing community prosperity.

On this weeks episode of Segue, the Universitys premier radio show on WSIE 88.7 FM The Sound, SIUE Chancellor Randy Pembrook, PhD, has a conversation with Desiree Bennyhoff, president and chief executive officer of the Ed/Glen Chamber, about her position and how the organization serves the community.

This episode of Segue will air at 9 a.m. on Sunday, April 1.

An SIUE alum, Bennyhoff earned a bachelors in liberal arts and a masters in speech communication (now applied communication studies). As president and CEO, she oversees the strategic direction of the 500-member organization. She is credentialed by the Institute for Organization Management, a premier nonprofit development program of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, and is also an Accredited Chamber Executive through the Illinois Association of Chamber of Commerce Executives. She presents frequently at conferences, and as a guest speaker and panelist in several SIUE classes. In her spare time, she volunteers as a mentor in the Illinois Regional Office of Education #41s Give 30 program and the Illinois Metro East Small Business Development Center.

Pembrook starts their conversation by asking Bennyhoff what drew her to civic work.

It was completely by accident, Bennyhoff explains. I used to work for a local media establishment, and they had classified ads. I wasnt looking for a change, but a co-worker suggested that I take a look at an ad for a communications director position with the chamber.

I thought it sounded interesting, so I sent in my resume and other materials. The moment I walked into the interview, I knew it was a perfect fit. Nine years later, here I am.

Bennyhoff joined the organization in 2009 as its communications director. By early fall 2012, she was promoted to the position of interim director. In January 2013, she became the Ed/Glen Chambers president and CEO.

For our listeners who might not know, what exactly does a chamber of commerce do and what does an average day look like for you? Pembrook asks.

Each chamber of commerce is unique, Bennyhoff says. Our chamber is known as the voice of local businesses, which leads to a lot of advocacy work. We have networking opportunities for businesses and leaders to gain relationships. There are also a number of marketing and promotional opportunities, as well as professional development and educational offerings.

My primary role consists of government affairs and advocacy, so I spend a lot of time behind-the-scenes, while our membership director, Katie Haas, is more front and center, dealing one-on-one with our members, running our education programs, and coordinating our ribbon cuttings and Business After Five events. Our administrative assistant, Kathy Hentz, keeps our office going on a day-to-day basis and assists with visitor questions.

The Ed/Glen Chamber is also led by a board of directors, which consists of several business leaders from around the region. Sam Guarino, partner at Bella Milano Restaurants, serves as the boards chairman.

Recently, the organization has adopted a new tagline, Business Builds: Economies. Leaders. Communities.

Our old motto used to be Its everyones business. It sounded a bit nosy, or had a gossipy undercurrent, Bennyhoff says. When we started to look at the new mantra, we wanted something that encompassed our mission.

If we dont have jobs for people, we dont have the opportunity to build a community, and that goes for the entire region. SIUE plays into that role, as well. We feel the new mantra conveys the story we are trying to tell.

Businesses also play the huge role of building our communitys leaders, Pembrook continues. The individuals who start these companies have the opportunity to come forward and engage with their community in ways that might be outside their comfort zone. We try our best at SIUE to encourage our students to get involved in their community and help shape a better world. It sounds like youre really plugging into that!

The Ed/Glen Chamber not only encourages business leaders to get involved in community activities and philanthropy, but also works directly with connecting them back to the University to provide opportunities to students.

We get a lot of questions about internships from local businesses, Bennyhoff says. We direct them to the Career Development Center on campus, which helps them sign up and gather student information to find a good fit for their business.

There are thousands of students right here that need experience, so when they graduate, they will have already set foot in a business and might not require a lot of soft-skills training. In many cases, if a student performs well during an internship, there may be a job waiting for them at that organization come graduation, which is ideal.

Bennyhoff encourages business owners from throughout the region, who are interested in joining the Ed/Glen Chamber, to visit EdGlenChamber.com or call 618-656-7600 for more information.

By Madelaine Gerard, SIUE Marketing & Communications
EDWARDSVILLE  The city of Edwardsville has seen a decrease in its unemployment rate.

With nearly $300 million in new construction projects in the area, the citys unemployment rate now stands at 3.2 percent as of January of 2018, according to the Illinois Department of Employment Security.

Economic and Community Development Director Walt Williams said with numerous construction projects in the works, he expects continued growth in the Edwardsville area.

Naturally, I expect to see continued growth in our employment as well as our investment. I see growth in regards to the professional positions as well as retail positions, Williams said.

Some of the biggest construction projects currently in the works include World Wide Technologys twin buildings in the Gateway Commerce Center, each spanning a million square feet. WWT will invest more than $100 million in the new facilities over a 10-year lease and will bring in 500 new jobs to the area over the next few years.

Williams said WWTs investment wasnt initially anticipated, but the city is enthusiastic about the new development.

We were in conversation with (WWT) for the last three or four years and we knew that they had challenges at their current location, Williams said. We worked with them and were happy that they ultimately decided to stay and expand in Edwardsville.

Other projects in the works include the $30 million Cleveland-based Richland Residentials nine-story building that will be located on New Poag Road, Gori Properties LLCs five-story office headquarters at the site of the old public safety facility on North Main Street, Fireside Financials $28 million six-story building to be located on Route 157, and many others.

Williams said with several local businesses investing in the area, its always likely outside investors will follow.

Something the mayor has always said is whenever you get local investors to invest locally, it makes it easier for outside (investors) to invest, Williams said. Local investors are stepping up to the plate  Mr. Randy Gori, Fireside Financial, they are local here, they are investing in our community as well as Contegra (Construction), the Edwardsville company. Now were seeing outside (investors) such as World Wide Technology, such as the new hotel Marriott Towneplace (Suites). These are all outside (investors) who are investing in our community, which is great.

Edwardsvilles unemployment rate as of January in 2017 was 4.4 percent.

Williams said he anticipates that the unemployment rate may come down even further as new businesses arise.

Last January of 2017 was 4.4 percent and throughout the year it declined to what we are at now. So were pretty happy with that and thats on top of a lot of our companies, especially in the warehouse district, wrapped up their hiring in October, November, December and January. So were pretty excited about that, Williams said. More than likely, it will come down even further.

Other construction projects breaking ground this year include 22,000 square feet of retail space on Plum Street, 8,000 square feet of retail space at 1501 Weber Drive, including Kyoto Steakhouse of Japan and 5,000 square feet of office space at 201 South Main Street. Also, the Edwardsville Target and the Montclaire Shopping Center are each undergoing $2 million renovations and reconstructions.

To learn more about the citys ongoing projects, visit the citys website at www.cityofedwardsville.com.
EDWARDSVILLE  Representatives from the local, district and state VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars) visited Liberty Middle School recently to present Liberty Middle School Teacher Rachel Harris with the VFW State of Illinois Smart/Maher VFW National Citizenship Education Middle School Teacher of the Year Award. Harris is a social studies teacher at Liberty Middle School and has taught eighth grade social studies for 15 years.

This annual award contest recognizes three exceptional teachers  one each in grades K-5, 6-8 and 9 -12  at both the state and national levels for their outstanding commitment to teaching Americanism and patriotism to their students.

Each year, a classroom elementary, junior high and high school teacher whose curriculum focuses on citizenship education topics  for at least half of the school day in a classroom environment  can be nominated for the Smart/Maher VFW National Citizenship Education Teacher Award. The national winners receive a $1,000 award for professional development expenses, a $1,000 award for his/her school, two award plaques: one for the teacher, the other for his/her school, and an all-expenses-paid trip to attend a VFW conference to receive their award.

Harris was nominated by Liberty Middle School Principal Beth Crumbacher and was chosen as the middle school level (6-8) winner at the state level.

Larry Miller, Commander of the local VFW Post 1229, in addition to Lt. Chris Retzer, VFW District 12 Commander and Jeffrey Hastings, VFW State Commander, visited Liberty Middle School on March 20 to congratulate Harris and present her with the state plaque and the $100 cash state award.

Although Harris was not chosen for the national award, Miller was ecstatic that Edwardsville had another state winner.

We at VFW Post 1299 are proud of another Edwardsville teacher being selected for the VFW State of Illinois award, he said. You may recall that Matt Maddox (Columbus Elementary) was selected as both the state and national award winner in 2013.

Miller spoke briefly at the award presentation before introducing Retzer.

We do more than just work with veterans. We also are involved in the community, he said. And one of the things we are proud to be involved with is the youth programs such as Voice of Democracy and Patriot Pen.

Miller explained that these programs take place in the fall, and he encouraged the middle school teachers to participate in Patriot Pen next year, which is specifically for sixth through eighth grade students.

He then explained that the VFW Smart/Maher VFW Citizenship Education Award was named after two past national commanders of Veterans of Foreign Wars who had established the national citizenship teacher award. This year, Ms. Crumbacher submitted Rachel Harris as the nominee for the school, he explained. As post commander, I funneled that up to our district commander. That went up to the state, and Rachel won the state.

Retzer explained his role in the VFW organization. I have the 20 posts over six counties, and we had three submissions for teacher of the year, Retzer noted. I got Rachels packet out, and was really impressed. It was one of the best applications that I have ever seen. Congratulations to you Rachel on a great job.

Jeff Hastings explained that he was in charge of 302 VFW posts in the state of Illinois. That consists of 17 districts and calculates to 33,000 vehicle miles since July 1. We do a lot of things for veterans, Hastings pointed out.

Hastings then presented Harris with the state plaque and Crumbacher with a plaque for the school.
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THE WOMAN BELIEVED to be one of Ireland's oldest pub landladies will be pulling pints on Good Friday for the first time today.

The law, passed in 1924, made it illegal to "sell or expose for sale any intoxicating liquor" on Good Friday, St. Patrick's Day, or Christmas Day.

The Vintners Federation of Ireland says the pub sector has lost out on 40 million euro because of the restriction. Pictured at the Glenmalure Lodge, Wicklow were VFI Chief Executive Padraig Cribben with Anne Dowling and her son Michael (centre) from Glenmalure Lodge, Co Wicklow.

The Vintners' Federation of Ireland (VFI) welcomed lifting the ban as it puts the choice to drink back in the consumers' hands.

It says removing the ban was about "introducing choice, both for the customer and the publican". It is estimated Good Friday will generate over 40m in sales for pubs throughout the country.

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VFI chief executive Padraig Cribben, says: "The Good Friday ban is from a different era and is rightfully consigned to history".

The Exchequer is expected to rake in around 7 million in Value-Added Tax and Excise Duty, according to the VFI.

"The Good Friday ban was introduced a lifetime ago in 1927 and we took the view that such a piece of archaic and discriminatory legislation needed to be removed".

Under the new rules, pubs in Ireland will welcome revellers from 10.30 am until closing time at 12.30 am.

Will you be heading to the pub today?
STRATFORD-UPON-AVON, England-When the wheels of my Air Canada jet touched down on the runway at Londons Heathrow Airport two weeks ago, it marked the first time I had ever been in England.

Which made what happened at that precise moment really surprising.

I didnt stand up and start singing, but I did start hearing in my head the strains of that immortal British patriotic song, Rule, Britannia, as if it was being played by a military band. I mean, where did that come from?

Its possible it was in reaction to something that had happened on the plane, which was taking me to England so I could test drive the Range Rover Plug-in Hybrid (PHEV) and the Range Rover Sport SVR (which I will tell you more about another time).

The flight from Toronto would take a little more than seven hours. To fill some of the time, I watched a movie, The Shape of Water, which was recently named Best Picture at the Academy Awards. If I had paid admission to see this thing, I would have demanded my money back. If anyone ever asks me to define the expression, a waste of time, I will answer, The Shape of Water. It was so bad, I couldnt stop watching because I was fascinated to see just how awful it could really get. It did not disappoint. All I can say (other than noting it is two hours of my life I will never get back), is that if this is the best that Hollywood has to offer, I am going into the movie business tomorrow and will soon be rich.

I think, then, that Rule, Britannia came to mind to confirm that there are still people in the world who have history and tradition and know what they are doing, such as  and this is just one example of many I could cite  the design and manufacture of sensational automobiles, such as these Range Rovers.

Our drive in the PHEV, which was both on-road and off, started on the grounds of Blenheim Palace, gifted to John Churchill, the first Duke of Marlborough, by Queen Anne after he defeated the French in an epic battle in Germany in 1704.

(An aside: Churchill scribbled the news of his glorious victory on the back of a menu taken from a bistro. When the Queen received his note months later, she said, Build that man a castle, or words to that effect. Construction took 28 years, which is not surprising for someone from Toronto. The correspondence is still on display there, along with other artifacts from the period.)

I opted to drive the off-road portion of the test while my co-driver, former Wheels editor Mark Richardson, would do the on-road because he was born in the U.K., and driving on the left-side of the road is in his DNA. This worked out well.

In the media briefing beforehand, we had been told that this was not a new Range Rover but rather a better one; that many small changes had been made while taking what they called the first steps in the marques electrification journey.

This means the vehicles 2.0-litre gasoline engine is connected to an 85kW electric motor, which is built into the eight-speed automatic transmission that is beside a 7kW on-board charger. The plug-in is at the front of the car; the lithium-ion battery is at the rear, mounted underneath the trunk.

It can take two hours and 45 minutes to fully charge this car if you have a 220v outlet. It takes more than twice that if you have a 110. Fully charged, the car will go 50 kilometres before the gasoline engine kicks in. It doesnt have to be this black and white: a computer program can mix and match the power source with the conditions.

Now, as Ive always considered Range Rover to be just about perfect, I was hard-pressed to find improvements. For instance, I was trying to drive the PHEV up a hill that was all mud. Halfway there, I had to stop because a couple of Mallard ducks decided to walk in front of the car. Once theyd been shooed away, I eased onto the throttle ever so slightly and the four-wheel drive kicked in and we were soon at the top, almost without effort.

This is because the vehicle I was driving was equipped with technology that distributes torque evenly to all four wheels, making it easier to go up hill and down, even with summer tires. Driving modes helped, as well. Grass/gravel/snow, Mud/ruts (the one I was in while going up that hill), Sand, Rock crawl and Eco settings are all available  as are Comfort and Dynamic modes.

Then, of course, a bridge across a stream was out of commission. But I was driving a Range Rover, so, no worries: through the stream we went. (I dont recall seeing a Water mode, though ...)

When my co-driver took over for the run on the open road, I had time to look around the inside, and this is where many of the small improvements wed been told about became evident. The front and back seats are bigger, more comfortable, and have a massage function. There is an improved infotainment system and 17 connection points for smartphones and the like.

I particularly got a kick out of the sunroof, which automatically opens when you get into the car. If you want it closed, just wave your hand in front of the rear-view mirror and, voila, it closes. Want it open again? Wave at the mirror and watch it happen. When everybody gets out of the car, it closes on its own. Its magic.

The now-usual driver aids  rearview camera, emergency braking, lane-departure warning and so on  are standard, but Range Rover has some intriguing add-ons that you might fancy, such as 360-degree parking aid and blind-spot assist.

Starting at $113,000, this Range Rover is close to being a Taj Mahal on wheels  on or off the road.

nmcdonald@thestar.ca
Theres trouble in toyland, and it started long before Toys R Us went bust.

Sales at the worlds three biggest toymakers  Lego A/S, Hasbro Inc. and Mattel Inc.  slumped during the crucial 2017 holiday season, and the outlook for 2018 isnt much better. Kids are tiring of movie-linked playthings, such as Legos Batman and Hasbros Star Wars lineups, that used to be reliable money-makers. Venerable brands such as Mattels Barbie and American Girl are showing their age.

Many shoppers are trading down to collectible figurines such as L.O.L. Surprise dolls and Hatchimals stuffed animals that can retail for less than $10. And the big toymakers dont have much skin in the fast-growing mobile-games sector, which already commands 20 per cent of the $187 billion global toys and games market, according to Euromonitor.

What went wrong and how can the Big Three bounce back? The companies focus mainly on saturated North American and European markets, when they should be stepping up efforts in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, where theres more growth opportunity, according to industry watchers. And the giants need to do a better job of pitching their wares via YouTube, Instagram and other social media, which smaller rivals are using to gain market share.

These problems are all self-inflicted, says Lutz Muller, president of Klosters Trading Corp., an independent toys consultancy based in Vermont. Kids are wedded to their smartphones, wedded to social media, and the savvy marketers are using this to promote their products.

Lego on March 6 announced its first revenue decrease in 13 years, after dismissing some 8 per cent of its workforce in 2017. Hasbro, which ranks just behind closely held Lego in worldwide sales, suffered a 2 per cent fourth-quarter drop, although full-year sales grew 3.8 per cent. Mattel has plunged from global No. 1 to No. 3 after four straight years of revenue decline, including a 12 per cent slump in the last quarter of 2017. Mattels chief brands officer stepped down in February, as the company said its top two executives would assume more control over its biggest properties.

All that  and then on March 15, Toys R Us announced it would shutter all its U.S. and U.K. stores. The closings could dent Mattels 2018 sales by as much as 10 per cent, and Hasbros up to 5 per cent, Bloomberg Intelligence estimates.

Other big-box retailers could take up some of the slack; indeed, Walmart is already the No. 1 U.S. toy retailer. But because non-specialty retailers allocate less shelf space to toys, they put out whats less risky, focusing on a limited selection of proven hot sellers, says Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Mariam Sherzad.

That could jeopardize secondary brands and product innovation. Hasbro, for example, has more than 60 brands, from Baby Alive dolls to Battleship war games. Mattel was planning to launch new products as part of its turnaround effort. They may have to hold back on that now, Sherzad says. While toymakers are building their own e-commerce sites, online sales account for less than 16 per cent of the global toys and games market, according to Euromonitor.

The shift toward cheap toys is yet another worry. Sales growth in the $10-and-under category is outpacing the overall toy market, with social media-fuelled crazes such as a line of miniature collectibles based on Hatchimals, tiny stuffed animals that hatch from plastic eggs. Theyre made by Spin Master Corp., a Canadian company whose revenue growth has dwarfed that of Hasbro and Mattel in recent years.

Social media is central to Spin Masters marketing strategy. The company built anticipation for Hatchimals before the products launch in late 2016 with YouTube videos, and other online posts that showed the plastic eggs without disclosing what was inside.

The big toymakers need to become more adept at spotting trends and leveraging social media, says Frederique Tutt, global toys industry analyst at NPD Group. They need to think about new growth generators.

Mobile gaming is often blamed for toymakers woes, but the evidence is scant. Kids aged 8 and under now spend an average of nearly 49 minutes a day in front of a smartphone or tablet, up from 5 minutes in 2011, according to a 2017 study by Common Sense Media, a non-profit advocacy group.

But the study found that increased time spent on mobile devices was offset by an equal decline in TV viewing, so kids available time to play with traditional toys hasnt changed.

Some toymakers still have reasons to celebrate. While Mattel and Lego have lost market share in the U.S., Hasbros share has grown to nearly 16 per cent from 13 per cent over the past four years, according to Klosters data. Though sales of its Star Wars toys have been tepid, Hasbro struck gold this year on the hit movie Black Panther. Citing robust demand, the company says its ramping up production of action figures, claws and other items linked to the movies superhero star.

Hasbro Chief Executive Officer Brian Goldner expects movie-linked toys will continue to drive sales growth. The company has a strong slate of products tied to new Star Wars and Avengers movies this year, he said in an interview. That lineup will help Hasbro deal with the short-term challenges that the Toys R Us liquidation presents, he said. In 2019 and beyond, well return to the kind of growth weve seen in the past.

Hasbro is also transforming iconic brands such as Monopoly and My Little Pony into mobile games. The company took a controlling stake in Colorado-based mobile-games maker Backflip Studios in 2013 and increased its holding to 100 per cent last year. Gaming now accounts for 16 per cent of Hasbro revenues.

Lego is stepping up investment to pair its traditional plastic-brick toys with digital technology. An example is the Lego Boost, a mobile app launched last year for kids age 7 and up that lets them use coding to build customized robots. We see this as a way of keeping children interested for a longer time, Lego CEO Niels B. Christiansen said in an interview with Bloomberg News.

Mattel has teamed up with NetEase Inc., Chinas second-largest videogames publisher, to develop mobile games and create digital content linked to Barbie, Fisher-Price and other brands.

Investors, though, dont seem convinced that the industry is on track for growth. Mattel shares are down nearly 50 per cent over the past year; Hasbros are down about 15 per cent. In a sign of the markets skepticism about Mattels prospects, investors value Mattel at only $4.5 billion, about the same as Spin Master, even though the U.S. companys sales are three times greater.

One way the companies might seek to cut costs and boost sales: a bid by Hasbro to acquire Mattel. The companies discussed a deal, the Wall Street Journal reported in November, and Reuters said Mattel ultimately rebuffed its suitor.

For all the interest in digital technology and collectibles, more-traditional toys will remain an important part of the market, says Matt Hudak, a toys and games analyst at Euromonitor.

You have millennial parents, having a late-in-life child, he said. They may be more interested in educational toys  or just want to share Star Wars with their kids.

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When locals in Belfast, Northern Ireland, want to go shopping, they head to the lively city centre, a compact pedestrian-friendly area with modern buildings and stately structures from mostly the Victorian and Edwardian eras. Although there are international retail chains such as Zara and H&M, the neighbourhoods gems are the independently owned establishments. Visitors can discover these shops selling goods from the United Kingdom, as well as Irish brands, as they stroll along the wide lanes and often charming side streets.

Lauren May

The owner of this tiny more-than-two-decade-old jewelry store, Sean Harden, named it after his niece and sources his pieces  which are made mostly of semi-precious materials  from United Kingdom designers. He favours an esthetic thats simple yet chic, such as a trio of sterling silver bangles and a rose-gold-plated ring with a swirl pattern. And for men, there are cufflinks, rings, bracelets and necklaces. Prices from 10 (about $14 U.S.). laurenmayonline.com

Liberty Blue

This quarter-century-old womens clothing store carries pieces from United Kingdom designers, including vintage-inspired pants, skirts and T-shirts  and the large and diverse selection of dresses is impressive. Casual sundresses, flirty party dresses and full-length gowns are part of the mix, and theres new stock for sale every week. All of the pieces are more classic than trendy and are likely to become wardrobe staples. Prices from 45. libertybluebelfast.co.uk

Sawers Belfast Limited

Open since 1897, this sprawling deli calls itself as an Aladdins cave of culinary delights, and the description is more than fitting. Shoppers will be bombarded by epicurean treasures from around the world, including smoked meats, teas and coffees, spreads, oils, cakes and more. Be sure to check out the products under the delis own label, especially the chutneys and jams  the sweet chili jam, made with habanero peppers, is a bestseller. Prices from 2. sawersbelfast.com

Studio Souk

Belfast has a flourishing community of artists, and this 280-square-metre store spread over three levels is a place to appreciate and buy the creations of about 80 local artists, a mix of both established and up-and-coming names. Finds include candles, photography prints, cards, woodwork, ceramics and T-shirts; the store also has studio spaces where resident artists work, and shoppers are welcome to visit. Prices from 1. studiosouk.com

Space Craft

This airy space. opened in 2007, displays crafts and sells them, too. The handmade items are the work of local designers and artists, who are part of the non-profit Craft & Design Collective, which supports the arts in Northern Ireland. Among the goods for sale are handwoven textiles, colourful pottery, hand-dyed shawls, silk scarves, blown glass vases and sterling silver jewelry for both men and women. Prices from 2. craftanddesigncollective.com
Andrew picks up his beer and leans back against the red banquette seating at Le Romarin, a tiny bistro-bar in the heart of Lyon, France. Over the next 48 hours, were planning to eat our way across this famously gastronomic city, but something is worrying him. Im looking forward to the wine, he says. Im looking forward to the cheese. Im just not sure about the innards.

Most people would see his point. Not me. I love offal.

Many of the top meals Ive eaten have revolved around these unglamorous cuts, from haggis in Scotland to pigs organ soup in Singapore.

Ive eaten roasted pigs trotters in Paris, tripe sandwiches in Florence and steak-and-kidney pudding all over England. The best of all was in Buenos Aires, at a restaurant called La Cabrera, where I gobbled fat little blood puddings, tender grilled sweetbreads and kidneys cooked with garlic and parsley.

If anywhere can beat that, though, its Lyon. Frances second city is known for the dizzying variety of offal dishes served in its bouchons, its atmospheric answers to the Parisian bistros. So when I discovered that Andrew, his wife, Charlie, and their two kids were off to Lyon to learn French at the start of this year, I cajoled him into letting me visit.

I arrive on a cold Monday afternoon in mid-February. My first stop is at one of the citys finest bouchons, Daniel et Denise on Rue de Crequi, but Im not eating. Ive arranged to meet Joseph Viola, the 52-year-old owner and head chef. Resplendent in his whites  which bear the tricolour collar of a Meilleur Ouvrier de France, an award that recognizes Frances best craftspeople  he is the president of Les Bouchons Lyonnais, an organization set up in 2012 to protect these historic eating places.

What makes a typical bouchon?

Many things! A relaxed ambience, quality regional ingredients, simple Lyonnaise cuisine, and down-to-Earth decor, Viola says. There are about 70 bouchons in Lyon, he adds, but only 24 are accredited by Les Bouchons Lyonnais. Many of the most famous bouchon dishes are made with offal (les abats in French).

Here at Daniel et Denise we have tete de veau [veals head], foie de veau [calfs liver], rognons [kidneys], gras double [tripe], but its not all offal, he says. The quenelles de brochet [a mousse-cake made with pike] is probably the most famous Lyonnaise dish.

The key thing is that [bouchon] food is made with a certain delicacy and with real professionalism. Its wonderful food served without fuss.

Its a cuisine, he says, handed down from Les Meres Lyonnaises, a group of female chefs who, from the mid-18th century onward, built the citys culinary reputation.

As it turns out, Andrew has the perfect pedigree to tackle this gutsy grub: His great-great grandfather was a tripe dresser in Huddersfield in West Yorkshire, England, he tells me as we step out of a blustery snowstorm into Le Romarin. Tripe dressing is the dirty job of making tripe fit for human consumption; perhaps some of that intestinal fortitude has been passed down?

The first test comes at Cafe des Federations, Lyons most famous bouchon, that evening. From the rustic, wood-panelled exterior to the sausages hanging above the bar (a sign warns patrons not to touch them), this is a place calculated to leave Francophiles purring.

Its a set menu, with five courses. First comes oeuf en meurette  poached eggs in a rich, red-wine sauce  and then a selection of charcuterie, wild boar terrine, lentil salad and salade lyonnaise, with its fat hunks of smoked bacon.

Next I have tablier de sapeur  fried, breaded tripe  while Andrew chooses black pudding with steamed apples. The tablier de sapeur (sappers apron) is not unlike a Wiener schnitzel, and like a schnitzel it makes up in texture what it lacks in flavour. A side dish of tartar sauce adds much-needed piquancy. The black pudding is rich, soft and unctuous: I chose best, my companion says, rather childishly, but I cant argue.

A huge platter of seven cheeses features the local classic St. Marcellin, plus cervelle de canut, or silk-workers brain: In Lyon, even the cheese is named after body parts. Theres nothing challenging, though, about eating this mixture of fromage blanc, herbs, olive oil and vinegar. Afterward, we waddle back to the apartment.

The next morning, we take his two small children to Lyons famous Roman theatre on Fourviere, the hill above the old town.

Its a crisp, sunny winters day, and there are icy puddles among the ancient stones. Andrews 2-year-old son takes great pleasure in trying to crack the crust on each of them while I fret about him slipping.

After taking in the view of the city at the nearby Basilica of Notre-Dame de Fourviere, we split up  French wont learn itself  and I hurry toward my next meal, at Brasserie Georges.

Its lunchtime on a Tuesday, but the place is virtually full when I arrive. Its not hard to figure out why: Brasserie Georges is pure theatre. This is a huge room decorated in art deco stylings, with large, angular smoked-glass chandeliers, ceiling frescoes and a legend along one wall that reads Bonne Biere et Bonne Chere depuis 1836: Good beer and good food since 1836. The restaurant buzzes with happy chatter.

Im enjoying my starter  a rich, roughly textured chicken liver terrine  when the lights go down and Happy Birthday comes on over the sound system. A waiter presents a young girl with a cake  with a sparkler on top. Everyone claps.

On the way out, I pass a table of five male friends, faces aglow as a huge baked Alaska flambe is divided and served by a waiter at the end of the table. Brasserie Georges seems to specialize in this kind of everyday magic.

Im off to Croix-Rousse, a district which was the heart of the silk trade in the 19th century. Im aiming to find a traboule, a semisecret passageway through the houses once used by neighbourhood silk workers for speed and shelter, and subsequently by the French resistance during the Second World World War. There are dozens, many of them open to the public.

It doesnt take long. At Place Colbert, I spy a doorway with a blue picture of a stone lion and an arrow to its right. Beyond is a large two-level square, the Cour des Voraces, with a six-storey staircase as its facade. I walk down its last flight into a cobbled lane, where I turn right and head through a series of passageways and courtyards, following the blue lion signs down the hill, until I reach Rue des Capucins, close to the city centre.

Next, I hurry across the Rhone river toward Les Halles de Lyon Paul Bocuse, the glass-fronted central food market. Inside, my eye is caught by Boucherie Trolliet, where pied de veau cuit (cooked calfs foot) can be bought for about $5 (U.S.), and a young butcher jabs, scrapes and cuts at a leg of lamb, trimming it into shape.

That evening, Charlie joins us for dinner at the superbly named La Tete de Lard (meaning fathead or pig head). She forgoes the offal, but I have a tangy, tomato-rich tripe soup followed by lambs brains, which are crispy on the outside, having been cooked in butter, but meltingly soft inside. Meanwhile, Andrew is very pleased with his choice of andouillette en croute (tripe sausage in pastry) with mustard sauce. Its very good, he says, his voice betraying only a little surprise.

I need another good walk the next morning, so I leave the flat early and head down to Place Jean Mace, a nearby square where the twice-weekly open-air market is in full swing. Amid several fruit and vegetable stalls selling local produce (all proudly marked RHONE on the label) are stalls selling meat, fish and cheese, including Chez Jean-Pierre, the market home of an offal and horse butcher.

Our final meal is at Daniel et Denise, at 12 p.m. on the dot. Its a temple to classic Lyonnaise gastronomy. By the entrance, theres that definitive proof of a French restaurants quality: a picture of the proprietor with Jacques Chirac, former French president and noted gourmand.

When I met him on Monday, I asked Viola what his favourites on the menu were. He mentioned the pate en croute au foie gras de canard et ris de veau (ducks liver and lambs sweetbread pate in pastry) and rognon de veau roti (roast veals kidneys).

I follow his advice. The pate is rich, earthy and beautifully seasoned; its Michelin-star cooking, really, but presented without affectation. Served in a rich jus, the kidneys, rose-red and soft in the middle, are just as good. Andrew has a salad of lambs sweetbreads and then calfs liver, also pink in the middle: both meet with enthusiastic approval.

As we finish up, I have just one concern: What is the future for this food in a world increasingly attached to sandwiches and salads eaten in front of a screen?

There is still a beautiful page to be written in the story of bouchons, Viola insists. We must be on alert. Its up to us to preserve and innovate.

Well, Ive done my bit  and Ive found a city that surpasses Buenos Aires when it comes to offal. And Andrew? Put it this way: I think hell be an expert in innards long before he masters French.

IF YOU GO

Where to stay:

Villa Florentine, villaflorentine.com/en: Situated on the Fourviere hill above the old town, this five-star former convent boasts swimming pool, sauna and a well-regarded restaurant, Les Terrasses de Lyon. Doubles from about $240 (U.S.).

Grand Hotel Des Terreaux, hotel-lyon-grandhoteldesterreaux.fr/en: A converted 19th-century townhouse in the centre of the city, this hotel has 53 clean, modern rooms and an indoor pool. Doubles from about $107 a night.

Where to eat:

Cafe des Federations, restaurant-cafedesfederations-lyon.com: The five-course dinner costs $36 per person; a less lavish lunch of three courses costs about $25. Pots of wine  the traditional Lyonnaise serving vessel  cost about $13. Closed Sunday evenings.

Brasserie Georges, brasseriegeorges.com/en: Worth visiting for the interior alone, Brasserie Georges has an excellent set menu (starter, main, cheese and dessert) at about $34. The beer is brewed on-site, the Pils (about $4.15), is bitter and refreshing.

La Tete de Lard, bouchonlatetedelard.fr/?lang=en: True to its name, this homely bouchon offers an offal-heavy menu: three courses cost about $32 at dinner, $25 at lunch. Closed Sunday and Monday.

Daniel et Denise, danieletdenise.fr/en: One of three of the same name in the city (this is the original), this is bouchon cooking at its very best; the lunch menu is one of the citys great bargains at about $26. Closed Saturday and Sunday.

What to do:

Lugdunum Museum and Roman Theatre, museegalloromain.grandlyon.com: The theatre and the next-door odeon are free to visit and open year-round from 7 a.m. (closing at 9 p.m. in the summer, 7 p.m. in the winter). Dont miss the museum, which is filled with historical remnants of Roman Lyon. Admission costs about $8.60 for adults and about $5.50 for children.

Musee des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, mba-lyon.fr: This 17th-century building in the heart of Lyon boasts a collection that includes everything from ancient art to modern sculpture. Closed on Tuesday. Adult tickets cost about $10.

Information: en.lyon-france.com

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Hotel Californian, the hotelcalifornian.com

Rates: From $360 U.S.

The Basics:

Opened in September, the 121-room Hotel Californian is a gateway to a revived Santa Barbara waterfront. Its also a do-over: one of its three buildings sits on the site of the original Hotel Californian, which was destroyed, two weeks after opening, by a 1925 earthquake. The property changed hands and fell into disrepair in the 1990s. In 2011, a new owner acquired the hotel, kept the four-story facade, which offers sweeping views of Santa Barbara and the Pacific Ocean, and reimagined everything else. A Moroccan design scheme by Hollywood interior decorator Martin Lawrence Bullard differentiates Hotel Californian from the hacienda-style resorts that dot the Southern California coast. The propertys lawn and plaza provide prime venues for sunbathing and people watching, and the city is returning to normal after wildfires and mudslides wreaked havoc on the region.

The Location:

The hotels three buildings cluster around the corner of State and Mason streets. Walk one block west and youll reach the beach, Fishermans Wharf and a jogging and biking path that hugs the shore. Two blocks north of the hotel is the Funk Zone, Santa Barbaras burgeoning arts district with galleries, restaurants and more than 20 wine-tasting rooms. The Santa Barbara Amtrak station is a seven-minute walk from the hotel and offers direct service to and from Los Angeles (generally a 2 1/2-hour ride).

The Room:

Most rooms at the Hotel Californian come with one king bed; my mother and I, visiting mid-week in November, were able to reserve one of the few double queen rooms with a view. It wasnt the best  those go to the suites that face the beach  but our spacious third-floor room had a veranda with armchairs from which to watch ducks on a greenish creek. The interior was lavishly decorated with oil-rubbed bronze lamps and patterned tile  the hotel imported more than 1 million pieces from Morocco  but some accents, like the brass snakes above the bed, verged on garish. USB ports by the beds offered an easy way to charge devices; other in-room gadgetry proved more difficult. The Nespresso coffee machine was maddeningly difficult to master, even though I use a similar model at home, and ejected every other espresso capsule without dispensing anything.

The Bathroom:

Laser-cut panels framed the shower, furthering the Moroccan theme, and while the shower stall was large enough, given the considerable floor space, the lack of a bathtub was curious. The double sinks and marble countertops left plenty of space for our toiletries. The best part of the bathroom: the plush, microfibre bathrobes by Italian manufacturer La Bottega.

Amenities:

Only one of the hotels buildings has a lobby staffed 24/7 (ours was unmanned after dark; key cards unlocked the door to the street). Every room has a flat-screen television, and the hotel provides complimentary Wi-Fi, bottles of water and Nespresso capsules. A small gym on the ground floor of the Californian building has up-to-date machines and can be accessed anytime with a key card, and a pool, firepit and pool loungers line the fourth floor rooftop. There are also lounge areas in the ground floor, Turkish-themed spa. Rendered in Moroccan blue, it offers an array of treatments.

Dining:

Executive chef Alexander La Motte, who previously worked at Thomas Kellers Napa Valley landmark, the French Laundry and his New York mainstay, Per Se, elevates beach-adjacent dining throughout the property. The airy, market-style cafe Goat Tree offers inspired breakfast entrees such as shakshuka, a Middle Eastern dish of baked eggs. For dinner, a finer dining restaurant, Blackbird, serves artfully plated riffs on Mediterranean fare, like figs with zaatar and burrata. The hotels room service menu offers a more standard assortment of burgers, salads and sandwiches.

The Bottom Line:

A trendy upgrade of the standard California coastal resort, the property straddles the line between downtown hot spot and beachside getaway. With a wide variety of amenities and things to eat, time here is best spent outside the room.
MONTREALDorota Wasil has had two homes for much of the past year. She and her family have never felt so vulnerable.

Their primary residence since the spring of 2017 has been a hotel in the western suburbs of Montreal where she, her husband and two children sleep.

But days are spent feeding logs into the fireplace of their actual home, a two-level residence on Rue des Macons in the Pierrefonds neighbourhood that was hard hit last May when water from the swollen Ottawa and St. Lawrence rivers swallowed up hundreds of waterfront properties.

Read More:

Montreal declares state of emergency as flooding continues

400 soldiers helping with Quebec floods as rain continues

Government flood damage compensation likely to increase, Quebec Premier Couillard says

There is no heat in the house. Kitchen supplies are gathered on a plank of wood that sits on an upturned box. There is a stove and refrigerator, but no cupboards. Wasil has contested an provincial assessment that put financial compensation for her damages at $23,000.

The most affordable contractor she could find says it will cost $80,000 to rebuild.

We have two places, but we feel like we have nowhere to live, she said, standing amid the construction material and boxes and exposed wires that decorate the main floor of the house. I feel like were homeless  Its not a normal life.

Not normal, but distressingly common.

Almost a year after the devastating floods, there are still about 80 families across the province living in hotels, said Jacques Drewitz, a co-ordinator with the Red Cross, which houses and feeds those who cannot return home.

The flooding has been attributed to a dangerous combination of a heavy snowfall last winter, including a late-March dump of up to 60 centimetres, followed by a rapid springtime rise in temperatures and heavy rains through April and early May.

This was a very big incident for Quebec, Drewitz said. In terms of the social impact, it was huge. With the forest fires in western Canada there were no more houses remaining. They were finished. There was no choice but to rebuild. Here, it is a question of whether they have lost enough to lose everything or will they be partly reimbursed because they didnt lose enough.

Public Security Minister Martin Coiteux recently told the Quebec legislature that the province had so far paid out $148 million to those who suffered damage in the floods.

But the Quebec government has ordered that houses located in floodzones where damages are evaluated valued at more than 50 per cent of the propertys total value must be demolished.

In Rigaud, a rural municipality on the south shore of the Ottawa River, near the Quebec-Ontario border, that edict has caused a particular dilemma, said Pier-Luc Cauchon, who helps lead a group of homeowners whose properties were damaged in the floods.

In Rigaud, the value of the houses is low and its easy to bust it, he said of the 50-per-cent threshold. But they dont want to demolish.

Cauchon, who has a background in construction and project management, isnt put off by the forms and permits and regulations that can sometimes complicate the rebuilding process for overwhelmed novices. He said he spends about 40 hours each week travelling to waterfront communities reviewing damage claims and government assessments and advising homeowners how to proceed.

At the same time he is overseeing reconstruction of his own house and his fathers house on Ile-Mercier, an island community in western Montreal where homes were damaged by the rising Riviere-des-Prairies.

I handle the hot files, Cauchon said. When I went to Rigaud, it was like I was a magnet. Everyone came out into the street saying, I need help, I need help. 

Tauseef Bhatti was among the homeowners seeking help at a recent public meeting with city officials in the Pierrefonds neighbourhood.

He and his family are still living in two hotel rooms and waiting for the necessary assessments to be completed before officials decide if he can have a permit to rebuild his home or if it must be demolished. Meanwhile, he said his neighbour who lives across the road, directly on the water, suffered greater damage but has already been cleared to rebuild.

We are real people and suffering. Were going through mental torture and nightmare, my family and kids, he said. How long should this really take? What is reasonable time frame that we should allow to suffer?

Councillor Alex Norris, president of the citys Public Security Commission, said he sympathized with Bhattis plight.

You have to understand, too, that this is an unprecedented event. We want to make sure that we get it right before you rebuild. You dont want to rebuild under circumstances that will invite a recurrence of what youve already gone through.

Its hard to reconcile the reason of officialdom and the emotions that remain raw and exposed. Drewitz, of the Red Cross, said he met an older woman whose home had flooded. She told him that during a recent rainstorm, her husbands hands started trembling uncontrollably, which she attributed to the trauma suffered last spring.

This weeks provincial budget announced $226 million for water management in Quebec, which includes $81 million for monitoring and preparing for annual flooding incidents and $7-million for a team of researchers studying the impact of climate change in flooding events.

But on Rue des Macons there is spotty progress a year after the flood. One house a few doors down from Dorota Wasil has already been demolished, leaving behind just the wooden address plaque nailed to a tree.

Another has two massive shipping containers in the driveway that hold furniture and belongings until renovations are completed. The majority of homes on the street have red and white construction permits in the window.

There are no for sale signs  at least not yet.

Were on a blacklist to sell our house, said Wasil, who is now hoping for a revised damage assessment that will allow her to complete the reconstruction of her home.

I think we are in a situation where well have to live here another few years until people forget that there was a flood here.
A Toronto man is the latest multiple murderer in Canada to be sentenced to life with consecutive periods of parole ineligibility, for brutally executing two innocent and unarmed men in a span of eight months in 2012.

The just and proportionate sentence means Mauro Granados-Arana, 28, will not be eligible to apply for full parole for 41 years, when he is 63 years old, Ontario Superior Court Justice Ken Campbell said Thursday.

As a just and caring society that values each and every individual member, we must resolutely condemn and denounce the actions of violent offenders who commit multiple murders, Campbell said reading his decision in court.

It is important that potential offenders realize there is no longer any sentencing discount for the commission of multiple murders.

He added that, in the circumstances of these cases, concurrent parole ineligibility periods would fail to provide the necessary components of denunciation and deterrence.

The judge listed 11 Canadian cases where trial judges have imposed consecutive periods of parole ineligibility for killers of more than one person, including the recent sentencing of Dellen Millard and Mark Smich for 50 years each for murdering Tim Bosma and Laura Babcock.

Granados-Arana was convicted of second-degree murder for the January 2012 murder of Jamahl Franklin, 20, whom he shot in the back as he tried to run away. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with no ability to apply for parole for 16 years.

Eight months later, Granados-Arana subjected George Fawell, 24, to a prolonged and brutal beating before stabbing him to death. His body was left beside train tracks behind Jimmie Simpson Park in Leslieville.

Granados-Arana was convicted of first-degree murder and received an automatic sentence of life imprisonment without parole eligibility for 25 years.

The only issue for the judge to decide was whether he should make the parole eligibility period consecutive.

Campbell had earlier rejected the accuseds attempt to challenge the constitutional validity of the Criminal Code section giving judges the discretion to impose periods of consecutive parole ineligibility. The legislation was introduced by parliament in 2011.

In his ruling, the judge said these two, entirely separate, unrelated murders are precisely the kind of factual circumstances that warrant additional punishment.

The imposition of concurrent terms of parole inegilibilty in these circumstances would have the effect of wholly devaluing the life of Jamahl Franklin, Campbell said.

As they left the courtroom, Fawells friends and family said they were relieved by the judges decision.

Its definitely a just sentence, otherwise he gets one (murder) for free, said the victims aunt, Deanne Parlee. I hope I can sleep now.

Homicide Det.-Sgt Gary Giroux, the lead investigator, said this is exactly what the (Criminal Code) section was made for. His crimes were the epitome of true cowardice.
Jennie Olafson vividly remembers descending into Los Angeles as a child, seated in the planes cockpit next to her pilot father.

Olafson caught her fathers love of flying and became a pilot herself, following in her fathers footsteps and working for Air Canada. But in Olafsons seven years at the company, the father-daughter duo hadnt had the chance to fly together professionally.

Last week, they made it happen. Olafson and her father James Sullivan navigated a round-trip Air Canada flight from Vancouver to Taipei, Taiwan on a Boeing 787 Dreamliner.

To fly together on a professional level was just one of those things that we absolutely had to do before my dad retires, Olafson told the Star.

And aside from the family ties in the pilots seats  which Sullivan called a very special experience  the overseas flight was entirely normal.

Thats the way we like it, Sullivan said.

Olafson is based out of Vancouver, and Sullivan out of Toronto. We dont get to see each other that often, so it was a great way to have a good visit, Olafson said.

It was just something Id always worked towards as a little kid, to actually fly with my dad. I never thought it was going to be possible.

Sullivan called the flight a special occasion.

It was the first time I got to see her as (part of) a crew, part of the team getting the flight to where its going, and I was quite impressed with her work ethic and how she did, he said.

Sullivan has been a pilot for 45 years. Two of his children are pilots for Air Canada today. When they were growing up, Sullivan said he looked for little indications that they shared his passion.

It became very obvious to me, very early on, that they both had a love for flying, Sullivan said.

While it was the pairs first time flying a commercial jet together professionally, it wasnt their first time together in the cockpit. Before 9/11, family members were sometimes permitted to sit in the cockpits third seat, dubbed the jumpseat, for trips.

Going into L.A., I remember looking out  because its parallel runways  looking out my window and seeing another airplane flying in on an approach at the same time as us, Olafson recalled. And I thought that was really, really neat.

In the early 2000s, when Olafson was doing her training, her father once joined her for a circuit around the airport. That time, Olafson was the pilot in command, and Sullivan came along for the ride.

Sullivan arranged an introductory flight for Olafson during her last year of high school, and that was really when I decided thats exactly what I wanted to do, she said.

I couldnt not do it after that.

While Sullivan took the military route to becoming a pilot, Olafson attended the Western Universitys aviation program. A year as an instructor was followed by four years as a pilot in northern Ontario, basically in the bush.

Olafsons husband, also a pilot, comes from a long line of aviation professionals too.

My kids are screwed, Olafson said with a laugh. My kids are very obsessed with air planes already, and theyre only one and three.

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An immigration case that involves a Vaughan man deported to Italy in 2010 after he was deemed inadmissible to Canada on the grounds of serious criminality and organized criminality is causing a dispute between the federal Liberal government and members of the partys old guard.

At the centre of the fight is Carlo Figliomeni, 50, who was convicted of weapons possession in Italy in 1989 and of having ties to the Mafia a few years later. He was subsequently exonerated of the Mafia association charge by an Italian court.

In late 2016, after an assessment of the case, then immigration minister John McCallum issued instructions to the visa office in Rome to grant Figliomeni an authorization to return to Canada and a temporary resident permit to reunite with his Canadian wife and two children in Vaughan.

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However, two months after Ahmed Hussen took over the Immigration Department in 2017 when McCallum was appointed the ambassador to China, the offer was rescinded. The familys MP Francesco Sorbara, a Liberal, along with two former Liberal MPs, John Nunziata and Jim Karygiannis, are lobbying the Trudeau government to let Figliomeni back into the country.

Sorbara, who represents Vaughan-Woodbridge, has been assisting the family and wrote to Hussen in support of Figliomenis reunification with his family.

I fully believe that the familys and most predominantly, the childrens well-being should be of paramount concern and as such reunification should be completed promptly, wrote Sorbara, who declined to be interviewed.

Mr. Figliomeni lived in Canada for nearly 20 years and during this entire period was neither a suspect nor charged with any criminal activities in Canada. In this 20-year period, Mr. Figliomeni never had any interactions with police services or the courts. According to former employers, neighbours and community members, his entire time in Canada was spent as a model citizen.

According to the records from the admissibility proceedings, Figliomeni arrived Canada in January 1988 as a permanent resident. During a visit to his mother in Calabria the following year, he was arrested and convicted of illegal weapons possession. He served a two-year, two-month house arrest sentence and was fined one million lire  roughly $850 then  before he returned to Canada in 1991.

In 1993, upon his arrival in Italy on another trip, he had his passport seized and was later charged with association with the Mafias Siderno clan, according to the admissibility records. The records also say that in 1997 an Italian court found Figliomeni was fully absolved of the fact and the deed of any and all connection with organized crime. He presented the immigration tribunal with a copy of a cheque from the Italian Treasury in the amount of 140,000 lire  about $115 then  that he claimed was compensation for four years of wrongful detention.

During the admissibility hearing in Canada in 2010, the tribunal found that Figliomeni was a low-ranking member of an international organized crime group, even after hearing that the Italian conviction of Mafia association had been overturned.

Tribunal adjudicator Mary Heyes accepted the testimony of Det.-Const. Alan Cooke of York Regional Police, who testified that Figliomenis group was involved in a bloody feud alongside members of the Commisso crime family against members of the Costa crime family in the late 1980s and early 1990s in southern Italy and Canada.

Cooke testified that the crime groups leadership includes cousins of Figliomeni and that one of his relatives, Riccardo Rumbo, was convicted of fatally shooting newly-arrived Italian immigrant Giovanni Costa outside his Thornhill home in 1991.

Detective Cooke testified that the Figliomeni crime group has been involved in such criminal activities as money laundering, drug trafficking, importing and exporting drugs as well as stock fraud, Heyes wrote in her March 31, 2010 decision.

Heyes acknowledged that Figliomeni does not have a criminal record in Canada. She also noted that the Italian Court of Appeal found he and his cousin, Tito Figliomeni, guilty of illegal possession of weapons, including military-grade assault rifles and stolen shotguns.

I do not find counsels suggestion that these guns would be used simply for hunting to be plausible, Heyes wrote. The guns were found concealed in a hayloft and included stolen shotguns and shotguns that had been defaced or altered by having their registration numbers erased.

Heyes wrote that she considered the testimony of Cooke more credible than that of Figliomeni, who told the hearing: I was at the wrong place at the wrong time.

They said that they found weapons, and I have never seen those weapons, Figliomeni testified before his deportation, according to the tribunal ruling. But they put those arms on to me, this is the story, and maybe at that period there was things happening in the country, in that land, and they couldnt arrest anybody. Then they took us  they took me, and they made in such a way that we had the charge because somebody has to pay for it.

He accused Italian police of planting, falsifying and misrepresenting evidence.

They also made the fingerprints, he told the immigration hearing.

Did you ever ask how that rocket launcher got in to your fathers house? an immigration officer asked him.

I dont recollect, no, Figliomeni said.

He described a gun that police called a rocket launcher as simply a signal pistol or flare gun, which is used in Italy to celebrate events such as New Years Eve.

He testified that any contact that he may have had with alleged crime family members at social events in Canada does not mean that he is a member of an organized crime group.

Heyes noted that Cooke wrote in his notes after a meeting with Figliomeni in 2005: Says he was a member of the Figliomeni Crime Group/Siderno Crime Group but he was very young at the time. When youre told to hide weapons or something else you do it. If youre in the family, youre in the group (Crime Group).

In an interview, Figliomenis wife Marisa Ferrigno said her husband was always up front with Canadian border officials about those charges when he was asked why he had been away from Canada for such a lengthy time. He returned to Canada in 1999 and applied for Canadian citizenship in 2003, when immigration officials took a close look at his criminal records in Italy. In 2008, Canada Border Services Agency initiated the admissibility proceedings against him.

Both Karygiannis and Nunziata are critical of the Liberal governments flip-flop regarding Figliomeni.

Even hypothetically, he is guilty, he has served his time and its up to this minister to step forward and say yes. McCallum signed this off before he left. When this minister took over, things just hit the wall, said Karygiannis, who left federal politics in 2014 and is now a Toronto city councillor.

Nunziata agrees.

I have to be harsh on the (current) immigration minister. On Valentines Day, he made an announcement about the spousal sponsorship program. He said spousal reunification was the human thing to do. He said he wanted to make sure families are not unnecessarily kept apart, said Nunziata, who served three terms as a Liberal MP until 1997 in the York South-Weston riding that Hussen holds now. He became an independent MP after he was kicked out of the party for voting against a Liberal budget.

Give me a break. Hussen is totally familiar with this case, but for some inexplicable reason when he became the minister, he rescinded the decision made by a true Liberal, McCallum.

Immigration Department spokesperson Shannon Ker confirmed McCallums signed instructions authorizing Figliomenis temporary resident permit had been rescinded after further review and further consultations by Hussen. A new application will be decided by an officer in due course.

The Government of Canada continues to take appropriate steps to protect the public safety and security of Canadians and to uphold the integrity of Canadas immigration system, said Ker in an email.

The temporary resident permit is always issued at the discretion of the delegated authority and may be cancelled at any time.

Ferrigno, an elementary school teacher, said she and her two kids moved back to Italy to be with Figliomeni after his 2010 deportation, but the three of them had to return to Canada because she was unable to find a job and her children had trouble adjusting.

She said the legal battle to keep her husband in Canada and the travels to Italy to visit him have exhausted the familys financial resources, forcing them to sell their house and move in with her family.

Its been a nightmare. Ive lost my husband. My family has been destroyed. Theres no more peace and sanity. Everything has been taken away, said Ferrigno, 42.

The family has also written to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for help, but his office said it could not intervene because the immigration and refugee system is independent and free of political interference.
A Toronto police officer accused of assaulting a young Black man is now charged with professional misconduct in connection with the 2015 incident, an altercation officers neglected to report to Ontarios police watchdog until after the injured man lodged a complaint nearly a year later.

Const. Joseph Dropuljic faces one count of discreditable conduct under Ontarios Police Service Act, stemming from a November 2015 altercation in North York that injured Kimani Wilson, then 23.

The officer made his first appearance before the Toronto police tribunal via video Thursday morning, seven months after the Special Investigations Unit (SIU), the provinces civilian police watchdog, charged Dropuljic with assaulting Wilson.

Neither of the charges against Dropuljic has been proven in court or at the police tribunal.

According to a summary of professional misconduct allegations, detailed in a document called a notice of hearing, released Thursday, Dropuljic and fellow officers were called to investigate the sound of gunshots on Grace Field Dr., but did not find anything.

Soon after, Dropuljic arrived at North Yorks Queens Dr., about 1.5 kilometres away from the location of the gunshots call, and engaged Wilson, according to the document. He arrested him for possession of a dangerous weapon, then, after conducting an investigation, released him with no charges, the tribunal documents say.

In September 2016, Wilson lodged a complaint with Ontarios police complaint body, the Office of the Independent Police Review Director (OIPRD).

He claimed that he was subjected to police brutality and sustained injuries from his investigation and arrest, according to the tribunal document.

It was only then  after the complaint was filed 10 months following the incident  that the Toronto police notified the SIU of Wilsons injuries sustained during police encounter.

The watchdog then launched an investigation, resulting in the charge against Dropuljic in August 2017.

Ontarios Police Act establishes a police service must notify the SIU immediately of any injury that would reasonably be considered serious and that was the result of a police interaction  including when someone is admitted to hospital.

At a news conference last year, Wilson told reporters that he was getting into a taxi, on his way to visit a friend, when Toronto officers dragged him out of the vehicle, kneed him in the back and beat him. He also alleged that he was illegally searched and groped. He claimed he lost consciousness at one point, then his mother called an ambulance and he was taken to hospital.

When asked last year about the officers conduct, and why the SIU was not immediately contacted about Wilsons injuries, Toronto police chief Mark Saunders said he could not comment because the case was before the courts.

Dropuljics criminal charge was the second within a few weeks in August 2017 where it was revealed that Toronto police failed to contact the SIU regarding an interaction where a civilian incurred serious injuries.

Shortly before, the SIU laid assault charges against Toronto police Const. Michael Theriault and his brother, Christian Theriault, in the beating of Dafonte Miller, 19, in December 2016 in Whitby. Theriault had been off-duty at the time.

Durham Regional Police had been called to the scene and charged only Miller, who was seriously injured, but those charges were later withdrawn by the Crown. The SIU was not notified of Millers injuries, either by Durham police or Toronto police; the watchdog was only contacted six months later, by Millers lawyer.

The Theriaults case is still before the courts, and Waterloo Regional Police is currently conducting a review of Toronto police handling of the case.

Dropuljic is due back in court later this month.

With files from Star archives

Wendy Gillis can be reached at wgillis@thestar.ca
Two young Toronto men have been charged with first-degree murder for allegedly gunning down 26-year-old Nnamdi Ogba in Etobicoke two weeks ago, but a third suspect  the getaway driver  remains at large.

The 26-year-old electrical engineer was walking back to his car after visiting friends near Scarlett Rd. and Scarlettwood Crt. on the evening of March 16. He was then approached from behind by two men in hoodies, who both drew guns and opened fire.

Ogba was shot several times in the back. He was pronounced dead at the scene by first responders.

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Innocent lives lost in the crossfire

An intense two-week investigation into Ogbas death led to the arrest of both suspects on Thursday, as officers searched five locations in Torontos northern and western regions.

All deaths are unacceptable, but this one in particular inspired these officers to work incredibly hard, Det. Jason Shankaran told reporters at a press conference Thursday afternoon.

Both Ogbas family and Toronto police officers said he was a man who had absolutely no connections whatsoever to criminal activity. At the press conference, Shankaran thanked Ogbas family in particular for coming forward with information he said led to the arrests of both suspects.

Their passion in their time of grief helped us move this investigation forward, he said.

Both suspects fled in a dark SUV with a third suspect, the getaway driver.

Investigators have said Ogbas death was a random act of retaliation against the Scarlettwood Ct. neighbourhood for an unspecified reason. Police didnt provide any further details on the motive behind the killing when asked on Thursday.

We do not believe Nnamdi knew his attackers, nor do we believe that his attackers had any interaction with Nnamdi prior to ambushing him from behind. He was merely visiting friends who live within the complex, Shankaran told reporters last week.

Trevaughan Miller, 19, and Abdullahi Mohamed, 22, both of Toronto, have each been charged with one count of first-degree murder. Both appeared at Finch Ave W. courthouse on Thursday afternoon.

While investigators continue to hunt for the getaway driver in the case, they also expressed concerns that the death of Ogba would inspire a retaliatory attack in turn.

Were always concerned about that, said Superintendent Ron Taverner at the press conference. This back-and-forth turf war, if you want to call it, will continue. Its our job to interrupt that, to prevent these kinds of things from happening.

Following the press conference, family and friends of Ogba said anyone with information on his death should let police know.

Say it! Speak to the police, said Sylva Okzie, Ogbas stepfather, to reporters. Come forth.

Ogbas death marked the 12th homicide in Toronto of 2018.

With files from Alexandra Jones.
Students and parents at a downtown Toronto high school claim school administrators neglected allegations of sexualized behaviour by a teacher who has been the subject of several complaints over the last five years.

Sean Gacich, a humanities teacher at Harbord Collegiate Institute, is currently on home assignment pending a school board investigation into his conduct.

This comes after a group of 28 parents banded together to confront the board and Harbords administration about their failure to take immediate action after allegations surfaced and, they claim, a petition was signed by over 100 students and sent to the vice-principal about Gacichs conduct.

As parents, we feel sick sending our children to school knowing that they and their peers have to endure being taught by this individual, the parent group wrote in a joint letter to Toronto District School Board and school officials in late January.

The letter referred to a series of complaints about what appears to be very inappropriate sexualized behaviour.

Gacich declined to comment on his case when reached by the Star, citing advice from his union.

We have received a number of concerns and allegations from Harbord CI parents, board spokesperson Ryan Bird confirmed to the Star, adding that an investigator had been assigned to look into the allegations.

As you can appreciate, were not able to provide specific details, Bird said in an email. In general though, the Board investigation is looking into a number of allegations, including new information that has been brought forward with regards to previously-made allegations.

Student safety is our highest priority. If allegations are found to have occurred, teachers face disciplinary action up to and including dismissal.

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In their letter to education officials, the 28 parents claim that while discussing a book in class this year, Gacich asked students if their parents showered together, how the students felt about that, and whether the students had ever showered with someone else. The letter also cites allegations including that he was repeatedly seen leering or staring at female students breasts and buttocks and dropping objects and asking students to pick them up in front of him.

In their letter, parents said some students, have modified their choice of clothing on days they have a class with this teacher, and that they try their best to avoid being alone with him.

While many of us are prepared to work with Harbord and the TDSB to figure out how these issues can be dealt with better in the future, none of that provides any excuse for Harbord and the TDSBs failure to take immediate action to safeguard the health and safety of its students, the parents wrote.

According to the letter, Gacich also allegedly touched a number of female students between, or on, the legs with a frozen treat called a freezie while they were on an overnight trip last fall. The current administration was made aware of the situation at the time after student complaints, said a Harbord teacher who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to possible legal repercussions. She said after the freezie incident, all of the teachers were forbidden from sitting with the students for meals.

Student concerns at Harbord  a red-brick high school near Bloor and Bathurst Sts.  began five years ago, when Gacich assigned his French-language civics class a project to make presentations about non-traditional careers by dressing up as the various roles. Dominatrix and exotic dancer were included as optional choices on the assignment, a copy of which was provided to the Star, and also included careers like dog-walker and private investigator.

School and board officials were made aware of the assignment at the time, according to the Jan. 26 letter by parents. The board told the Star that it investigated every complaint and allegation brought forward, but students and another Harbord teacher who spoke to the Star said the administration didnt take any visible action.

The teacher who spoke on condition of anonymity said she first learned of students concerns with Gacich over that assignment in the 2012-13 school year. Students reported the situation to administrators under former principal Rodrigo Fuentes, the teacher said.

It just wasnt appropriate, I think, for him to be teaching us about that, said Ruby Watts, a student in Gacichs class at the time who is now in university. Watts had created a Facebook message group with around 10 to 15 students to collect reactions from her peers on the assignment, she said.

But the chat got out of hand, she said.

Days later, Watts said she was called into the office for a meeting with administrators. I was ready to talk about it, she told the Star. But the meeting wasnt about her concerns with the assignment, she explained.

It was all about how they were concerned for his safety, and felt like they might need to get the police involved, she said, adding that the administration was seeking reassurance that the students werent planning to cause any harm to Gacich.

It just felt to me like the purpose of that meeting should have been more of a concern of what a teacher was assigning to their students, she said. I think its just a huge problem with administration, but also just our general society with this sort of issue  its kind of pushed under.

Noa Benishai, who went to Harbord from 2010 to 2014, was also in the class where Gacich assigned the project.

When youre that young, you dont even have the language to talk about it, said Benishai, who confided in another teacher about what happened at the time. At this point, Im way more confident in my ability to decipher what boundaries should be in place between a person of authority and a young student.

Now a university student, Benishai said she feels emboldened by emerging discussions worldwide about sexual harassment in professional fields, but would not have felt comfortable talking about the incident to administrators during her high school years. The 21-year-old said she is disappointed in administrations handling of the allegations.

Last year, according to the parents letter, the vice-principal received a petition signed by over 100 students, claiming Gacich did not respect the personal space of his students.

Under the Ontario College of Teachers Act, if a teachers duties are restricted for reasons of professional misconduct, the matter must be reported to the college. But sending a teacher home during an investigation doesnt qualify as a restriction of duties, college spokesperson Gabrielle Barkany explained to the Star over email.

An employers duty to report is not triggered upon receipt of an allegation, she wrote in discussion of the case at Harbord. Rather, the duty to report is only triggered by the imposition of a restriction of duties against the member following the employers investigation, or if the member resigns.

The College only discloses cases against teachers when they reach the discipline committee. They receive approximately 1,000 expressions of concern, calls and queries about members and the Colleges role per year, according to their March 2018 Professionally Speaking publication.

And not all incidents warranting discipline reach the Ontario College of Teachers and become public. The college handles cases that are reported to them, whether by the school board, other teachers or by a member of the public. Incidents handled by a school board alone are kept sealed in human resource files.
Lawmakers in Malaysia may soon vote to approve a fake news law that human rights groups and experts say would significantly curtail freedom of expression and democracy in the country. It would subject both journalists and ordinary internet users to up to six years in prison for disseminating content that the state deems misleading.

This is going to have a major impact on citizens and freedom of expression. It essentially allows the state to define what is true and what is false. That is a very frightening prospect, said Syahredzan Johan, a civil liberties lawyer in Kuala Lumpur, who has closely followed the restriction of democratic space in Malaysia in recent years.

The legislation uses the English-language phrase commonly employed by President Donald Trump. Its odd, because the term fake news was popularized by the U.S. president and is not a legal designation by any stretch of the imagination, but we have now made it into a legal concept, Johan said.

The bill defines fake news as any news, information, data or report that is wholly or partially false. This also applies to images and audio, including content created by anyone, anywhere in the world, that affects Malaysia. Under the proposed law, the government could prosecute someone even without offering any evidence that the alleged falsehood caused harm. Also, Malaysian law allows police to make warrantless arrests in certain circumstances.

On Thursday, Prime Minister Najib Razaks government made small changes to the legislation, including reducing the maximum jail penalty from the originally proposed 10 years to six. But the modifications did not substantively address the harsh criticism levelled by international organizations.

The vague and broad definition of fake news, combined with severe punishments and arbitrary arrest powers for police, shows that this is nothing but a blatant attempt to shield the government from peaceful criticism, James Gomez, director of Southeast Asia and the Pacific at Amnesty International, said in a statement. The Bill combines the worst of the cheap propaganda coming from the West and the repressive laws and policies in the East. With both Singapore and the Philippines considering their own fake news legislation, we call on all countries in the region to refrain from following this dangerous trend.

On Thursday, Human Rights Watch also issued a statement.

Representatives of Najib, who is facing reelection this year, did not respond to requests for comment.

Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy with an elected Parliament. Islam is enshrined in the constitution as the official religion of the Malay people, who make up about 60 per cent of the population and are subject to some penalties based on interpretations of sharia law. The countrys sizable ethnic Chinese and Tamil-speaking minorities are treated differently under the law, but the fake news measure would apply to everyone equally, including citizens of all other countries and Malaysians abroad.

The lower house of Parliament, which is controlled by a majority aligned with Najib, is expected to vote on the measure in the next few days. The legislation would then head to the Senate, a mostly unelected body, and, eventually, King Muhammad V for approval. The law could be in place within weeks, experts say, meaning it could be used during the upcoming campaign.

Since taking power in 2009, Najibs government has been dogged by scandal, the most infamous involving large-scale malfeasance at the 1MDB state investment fund. He was re-elected to a second term in 2013 with fewer votes than his opponent, and the poll was marked by accusations of gerrymandering and protests. Since then, the government has restricted criticism, especially online, in several ways, said Bridget Welsh, a professor of political science and Malaysia specialist at John Cabot University in Italy.

The government paid cyber soldiers, or trolls, to go online and shape the discourse, and they have cracked down on artists and cartoonists using humour to criticize the government, Welsh said. Theres been a further clampdown in the run-up to this very contentious election, and the fake-news law is part of the governments arsenal to keep itself in power.
For decades, little has gotten in the way of albatrosses nesting and nurturing their young on Midway Atoll, turning it into the most important and successful breeding ground for black-footed and Laysan albatrosses.

But in recent years, the majestic seabirds have fallen victim to gruesome attacks carried out by an unlikely foe: the common house mouse.

Bloodied birds  with open wounds on their heads, necks and backs  were first observed by scientists and volunteers in 2015 on Sand Island, where a majority of Midways albatross population nests, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The grisly injuries sparked concern over what could suddenly be threatening the worlds largest albatross colony, located about 1,200 miles northwest of Honolulu.

Initially it was thought that migratory raptors such as owls or hawks were responsible for the attacks, but the type of wounds sustained by the albatrosses did not match, Beth Flint, a wildlife biologist with the Fish and Wildlife Service, said in a video shot by the service.

With officials unable to pinpoint the source of the attacks, Flint said, cameras were set up. The footage showed a horrifying scene: mice climbing on the backs of nesting birds and eating them alive.

The non-native invasive house mice were first introduced to the island more than 75 years ago, but they had previously coexisted peacefully with the birds, Matt Brown, superintendent for the Fish and Wildlife Service in Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, said in a statement.

This was something we had never expected to occur, Brown said.

In just a few years, the attacks have spread beyond isolated incidents, killing at least a thousand adult albatrosses and chicks, while injuring countless others and forcing them to abandon their nests, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service.

While a reason behind the sudden attacks has yet to be confirmed, the leading hypothesis is straight out of a horror movie.

Around the time injuries were first reported, the atoll was suffering from a drought, Brad Keitt, director of the oceans and islands program with the American Bird Conservancy, told The Washington Post.

The mice were looking for sources of liquid, moisture, so actually drinking blood, Keitt said.

He added that it is possible the attacks spread because mice learned from one another, discovering a new way to survive. Mice are omnivores, meaning they will eat any source of food they can find.

But how is it possible that large seabirds  standing almost three feet tall with a wingspan of more than six feet  are falling prey to a rodent?

Nesting albatrosses are particularly vulnerable to attacks because of an intense biological instinct to guard their young, Keitt said.

The risk that they know is to their egg or chick that theyre sitting on, he said. They want to stay there and protect it. Thats their ecological evolutionary response. Its not to run away.

Having nested on the island for so long without facing threats from predators, the birds evolved without any fear or defence mechanisms, the Fish and Wildlife Service said in the statement.

The mice have also exploited a weakness in the albatrosses defence, attacking from behind where the birds powerful beak cannot reach them, Keitt said. He added that if a mouse were to walk up to the front of an albatross, it would not stand a chance.

But a mouse that learns to quickly run up the back and hang out right there, the bird cant do anything about it, he said.

Unfortunately, the attacks by mice are not an unusual occurrence elsewhere, Keitt said, noting that albatrosses on other islands have exhibited similar injuries.

However, attacks at Midway are particularly concerning given how many albatrosses choose the atoll as a nesting spot, the Fish and Wildlife Service said. Nearly 40 per cent of all black-footed albatrosses and 70 per cent of all Laysan albatrosses in the world rely on the islands as a haven to rest and raise their young protected from threats such as fisheries and marine debris.

The Fish and Wildlife Service said the attacks pose a serious long-term threat to the atolls population.

Albatrosses have a very slow reproductive cycle, Keitt said. A male and female have only one egg every one to two years, and both parents invest incredible amounts of time and energy into raising the chick.

Mice, on the other hand, can potentially reproduce and have several hundred offspring and grandchildren in the period of a year, he said.

In an effort to protect the albatross population, the Fish and Wildlife Service recently announced a plan to eradicate the mice using a combination of rodenticide and trapping.

The proposed strategy is to spread baited pellets containing a rodenticide from helicopters across Sand Island on Midway, the plan states. In some areas, such as where people are, other methods will be used, such as distributing the bait by hand or mechanical traps.

Rodenticide can harm other species of vertebrates aside from mice, including land birds, but the Fish and Wildlife Service said the poisoned pellets will be strategically released at the end of a dry season when mice are looking for food and the fewest number of bird species are on the island.

A draft of the projects environmental assessment is available for public comment until April 20.

In the meantime, Keitt said temporary control measures have been deployed, including applications of rodenticide in areas where injured birds have been reported.

But, he said, a long-term plan is crucial to the overall survival of the colony.

Our expectation is that in future years even with control, the impact would grow, he said. We really cant maintain control at a scale across the island thats safe or effective as the threat grows, as more mice begin to do this.
LONDONHistory was not supposed to turn out this way.

In the aftermath of the Second World War, the victorious Western countries forged institutions  NATO, the European Union, and the World Trade Organization  that aimed to keep the peace through collective military might and shared prosperity. They promoted democratic ideals and international trade while investing in the notion that coalitions were the antidote to destructive nationalism.

But now the model that has dominated geopolitical affairs for more than 70 years appears increasingly fragile. Its tenets are being challenged by a surge of nationalism and its institutions under assault from some of the very powers that constructed them  not least, the U.S. under President Donald Trump.

In place of shared approaches to societal problems  from trade disputes, to security, to climate change  national interests have captured primacy. The language of multilateral co-operation has been drowned out by angry appeals to tribal solidarity, tendencies that are heightened by economic anxieties.

What weve seen is a kind of backlash to liberal democracy, said Amandine Crespy, a political scientist at Free University Brussels (ULB) in Belgium. Masses of people feel they have not been properly represented in liberal democracy.

Even as nationalists take aim at globalists, the eventual shape of international relations remains an open question. In a sign that investors are optimistic that talks can yet avert a trade war between the U.S. and China, markets soared on Monday. And the U.S., Canada and European nations expelled Russian diplomats in solidarity with Britain over the poisoning of a Russian defector in London, enhancing hopes that old alliances will endure.

Still, public anger at traditional centres of power remains fierce in many lands, with Trumps election the most potent manifestation. He has claimed a mandate to attack the global establishment and its sacred institutions in the name of reasserting American primacy. He has injected uncertainty into the U.S. commitment to NATO while dismissing the World Trade Organization as a disaster.

Within a White House roiled by tumult, recent weeks have demonstrated that the nationalists have seized the upper hand from their few globalist peers. Gary Cohn, the Goldman Sachs alumnus who advised Trump on economic policy, has departed. Peter Navarro, the stridently anti-China trade adviser, has gained influence. Since then, Trump has antagonized core allies with tariffs on steel and aluminum while raising the spectre of a trade war with China.

But the U.S. is far from the only power tearing at the foundations of the postwar order.

Britain is abandoning the European Union, turning its back on the project whose very existence is an expression of faith that integration discourages hostilities. Italy just elevated two populist political parties that nurse historical animosities against the bloc.

Poland and Hungary, once viewed as triumphs of democracy flowering in post-Soviet soil, have shackled the media, cracked down on public gatherings, and attacked the independence of their court systems.

This re-emergence of authoritarian impulses has undercut a central thrust of European policy since the end of the Cold War. Expanding NATO and the EU by bringing in Eastern European nations was supposed to have prompted the newcomers to adopt the liberal democratic values of their fellow members. Things went differently.

China has used its economic power  enhanced by its entry to the WTO in 2001  to reinforce the authority of a state still controlled by the Communist Party. This, too, has dashed hopes that Chinas integration into the global economy would lead to its democratization.

And Russia, which joined the trading organization in 2012, has since intensified a foreign policy that is centred on confrontation.

For anyone still inclined to believe that liberal democracy is the inevitable outgrowth of human progress  an outcome hastened by the postwar institutions  these events have provided a sobering rejoinder.

What we are returning to is great power politics, said Derek Shearer, a former U.S. ambassador to Finland during the Clinton administration and the director of the McKinnon Center for Global Affairs at Occidental College in Los Angeles.

The causes of this turn vary from country to country, but a common element is public distrust of institutions amid a sense that the masses have been abandoned.

In the United States and Britain, working people have suffered joblessness and declining living standards while political leaders have prescribed policies that have enriched the elite  more trade deals, fewer strictures on bankers. These countries economies have been bolstered by trade, but not enough of the gains have filtered down to working people.

Even as China has violated trade rules, subsidizing state-owned companies and stealing innovations from foreign investors, commerce across the Pacific has lifted the American economy. But U.S. leaders have failed to deliver job training and other programs that might have cushioned the blow for communities hurt by imports.

Many people in Europe and the United States have not benefited very much from overall economic growth over the past few decades, and they are naturally skeptical of the policies and leaders in place, said Douglas W. Elmendorf, dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. But the solution is not to throw out the liberal order. It is to complement it with government policies that allow people to share in the benefits.

In Europe, Trumps willingness to flout trade rules has combined with his denunciation of the Paris climate accord and his equivocal support for NATO to force questions about Americas reliability.

The U.S. was always seen as a stabilizing force within the post-World War II order, said Crespy of the Free University Brussels. From a European perspective, the shock comes from the fact that the U.S. is now seen as a destabilizing force, like Russia, and ironically making China look more moderate.

The institutions created after the Second World War have never lacked for critics  or instances of failing to live up to lofty rhetoric.

The International Monetary Fund has long provoked criticism that it caters to the investor class while imposing austerity on ordinary people in crisis-hit countries. Trade deals have been crafted to advance the interests of politically connected special interests. Labour groups have accused the EU of harbouring an unhealthy obsession for avoiding budget deficits at the expense of jobs. Democratic convictions have not stopped the West from supporting authoritarian regimes in pursuit of their own strategic goals.

But if the justice of the liberal order has been contentious, now its basic endurance appears in question.

In the early 1990s, shortly after the Berlin Wall came down and the West claimed victory in the Cold War, Francis Fukuyama, a Stanford University political scientist, famously suggested that the global arrangement of power had reached its conclusion.

What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history, Fukuyama wrote in a book that took that provocative phrase as its title. That is, the end point of mankinds ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.

Thinkers across the ideological spectrum excoriated Fukuyama for penning historys premature obituary. Some accused him of evangelizing for American power. Others would say he was blind to the threat of radical Islamist terrorism, the resurgence of Russia, and the ascendance of China.

Last year, with Trump assuming office, Britain leaving Europe, and nationalists on the march, Fukuyama suggested a new obituary might be required  for the liberal world order.

More than a year into the Trump era, Fukuyama has only grown more alarmed.

What youre seeing now is really insidious, because its coming from within democracies, he said in an interview. Its not just the U.S., but Hungary, Turkey, Poland and Russia, where you have a democratically elected leader who is trying to dismantle the liberal parts of liberal democracy. We are seeing a new type of threat that I dont really think weve seen in my lifetime.

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NEW DELHIIndias government has sent a notice to Facebook asking whether the personal data of Indian voters and users has been compromised by U.K.-based Cambridge Analytica or any other downstream entity.

A similar notice was dispatched to Cambridge Analytica last week following media reports that it had misused data to profile Indians and influence their elections. The government set a Saturday deadline for Cambridge Analytica and April 7 for Facebook to respond to its inquiry.

Facebook is facing unprecedented scrutiny following reports that the data mining firm used ill-gotten data from tens of millions of its users to try to influence elections.

Indias Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology said in a statement late Wednesday that Facebook has its largest footprint in India in terms of its user base and sought to know what proactive measures it is taking to ensure the safety, security and privacy of such large user data and to prevent its misuse by any third party.

The governing Bharatiya Janata Party and the main opposition Congress Party have accused each other of utilizing the services of the British company, but denied any link with it. Cambridge Analyticas allegedly unauthorized harvesting of Facebook data and a series of leaks linked to Indias biometric database has refocused public attention on digital privacy in the country.

Digital law experts say Indian regulations offered particularly weak safeguards against data breach.

The Indian governments notice to Facebook sought to know whether Facebook or its related or downstream agencies utilizing Facebooks data have previously been engaged by any entities to manipulate the Indian electoral process.

If any such downstream entity misused data from Facebook, what is the protection available to the data subject? it asked.

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Censorship is a lot harder in China than it used to be due to social media. But that didnt stop the Chinese government from trying to keep secret the historic visit to Beijing by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Officials did it in part by scrubbing from the countrys internet Chinese characters for Kim Jong Un, North Korea and Kims popular nicknames among Chinese, such as Fatty Fatty, Business Insider reported.

But Chinese users know how to skirt bans. They just came up with new nicknames, according to Reuters.

Read more:

How China and North Korea depicted the meeting between Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un

North Korea, China portray strong ties after Kim Jong Uns secret trip to Beijing

Some, such as the fatty on the train and the obese patient, were a play on the banned words. Others were more tactful, referring to the leader as the visitor from the northeast and the sibling next door, Reuters reported.

News related to North Korea on WeChat, a popular Chinese messaging and social media app, was also censored, according to Reuters. No articles about the visit appeared on prominent public accounts that cover China-North Korea news.

They have been deleting North Korea-related articles for the past few days. Its been very hard for us to post on our public account, a Chinese person who edits an online account about North Korea told Reuters.

Reuters also reported that state media outlets were banned from covering news about North Korea.

After the visit concluded this week, search results for Kims name and North Korea reappeared on the Chinese internet. Chinese and North Korean state media also confirmed Wednesday that the leader and his wife, Ri Sol Ju, had been in the country for an unofficial visit at the invitation of the Chinese President Xi Jinping, the Washington Posts Emily Rauhala reported.

The censorship was an attempt to quell speculation about the visit and keep curious Chinese netizens in the dark, according to Business Insider.

A current list of top 10 blocked terms on Weibo, a microblogging site, included multiple terms related to the North Korean leader, according to freeweibo.com, a website that tracks censorship.

Other popular Chinese nicknames for Kim such as Fatty the third and Fatty Kim the third also occupied spots on the list.

This is not the first time the Chinese government has attempted scrub Kims nicknames.

Back in 2016, China temporarily banned terms like Kim the Fat, Kim Fat III and Kim Fatty III, Business Insider reported.

It appears the ban was a result of North Korean officials asking China to stamp out the abuse, according to the BBC.

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MINGORA, Pakistan  A Pakistani womens activist said Friday that Malala Yousafzai, who has returned to Pakistans capital Islamabad for the first time since a Taliban militant shot her in 2012, was hoping to visit her Swat Valley hometown but that the trip depended on security clearances from the government.

Security was visibly beefed up in Mingora, the Nobel Peace Prize winners hometown, but authorities wouldnt confirm whether she would be arriving there. Yousafzai is expected to return to London on Monday.

Activist Adnan Tabassum, also from Swat, met with Yousafzai on Thursday in Islamabad. She said Yousafzai told her that she wanted to travel to Swat to see her former school friends and relatives.

Read more:

Back home in Pakistan, Malala Yousafzai says shell continue to fight for girls education

According to Tabassum, 20-year-old Yousafzai asked authorities to allow her to go to Shangla village in Swat, where a school has been built by her Malala Fund.

Malala is not afraid of going to Swat, where the terrorists opened fire on her in 2012 and wounded her. It is her wish to again see her hometown, her school and her home, where she spent years of her life, she told The Associated Press.

In October 2012, Yousafzai was shot in the head by a Taliban assassin who had jumped inside her school van and yelled, Who is Malala? She had been targeted for speaking out on education in her home of Mingora in the Swat Valley. Only 14 when she was shot, Yousafzai has since delighted in telling the Taliban that instead of silencing her, they have amplified her voice. She has also written a book, spoken at the United Nations and met with refugees.

Yousafzai praised the Pakistan army in an interview on the independent Geo news channel Friday for providing her timely medical treatment, saying her surgery was done by an army surgeon at the right time and she later received post-trauma treatment in Britain. She said she planned to again return to Pakistan in the future.

Schoolgirls in Yousafzais hometown said they were keen to see her.

I admire Malala because she strived to promote girls education, said Amna Khan, 12, as she entered one of the schools in Mingora.

On Thursday, Yousafzai met with Pakistans Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi at his office, where she also attended a gathering and made an emotional speech in which she said it was one of the happiest days of her life to be in Pakistan.

Yousafzai won praise from across Pakistan on her return home, but some critics on social media have tried to undermine her efforts to promote girls education, though these efforts have been snubbed by Information Minister Maryam Aurangzeb and Yousafzais admirers.

Since her attack and recovery, Yousafzai has led the Malala Fund, which she said has invested $6 million (U.S.) in schools and to provide books and uniforms for schoolchildren. She became the youngest person to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014.

Yousafzai landed in Pakistan just before dawn Thursday, flanked by heavy security. Secrecy surrounded her arrival as well as details of her visit. The security was extraordinary as the Taliban had warned in the past that they would again target her again if she came back to Pakistan.

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BEIRUTTwo coalition troops were killed Thursday in Syria and five others wounded when an improvised explosive device detonated, the U.S.-led coalition announced Friday. The attack was considered a harbinger of increased tensions in areas where the U.S. is present.

A coalition statement Friday said the attack occurred at 9 p.m. GMT, but did not reveal the location of the explosion nor the nationalities of those who were killed or wounded.

Later, a Pentagon official said one of those killed was a U.S. serviceman.

The U.K.s ministry of defence also confirmed in a statement that one of its soldiers embedded with U.S. forces on a counter-Daesh operation was killed. Daesh is the Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

Three activists in the Arab-Kurdish town of Manbij, where U.S. troops are stationed, 80 kilometres northeast of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, reported hearing a large explosion late Thursday night.

In its aftermath, residents said ambulances and security vehicles gathered in the area while the sounds of aircraft could be heard flying overhead.

The attack in Manbij came hours after President Donald Trump said the U.S. would be coming out of Syria very soon, contradicting recent Pentagon statements referring to a long-term U.S. presence in the country.

We are knocking the hell out of ISIS. Well be coming out of Syria, like, very soon, said Trump in a speech in Ohio on Thursday, using an acronym for Islamic State.

We are going to have 100 per cent of the caliphate, as they call it, sometimes referred to as land ... But we are going to be coming out of there real soon. We are going to get back to our country, where we belong, where we want to be.

He added that the U.S. had spent $7 trillion in the Middle East.

And you know what we have for it? Nothing.

Munir Hajji, an activist in Manbij, said in a conversation on Facebook Messenger on Friday that the explosion was caused by a mine attached to a pickup truck in the towns centre. The truck was parked near the headquarters of the Northern Sun Battalion, a militia that is part of the Syrian Democratic Forces, a grouping of Arab and Kurdish militias that has become the United States main ground force in its battle against Islamic State.

But Turkey classifies the SDFs militiamen as terrorists linked to restive Kurdish separatist groups at home, against which it has fought a decades-long insurgency war.

Infuriated by Washingtons support for Syrias Kurds, Ankara launched a wide-scale campaign in January, dubbed Operation Olive Branch, to rout the SDF from near the Syrian-Turkish border. The militiamen had hoped the area could become a Kurdish state on Syrian soil.

Earlier this month, Turkish special forces working alongside Syrian rebel groups captured Afrin, a Kurdish-majority enclave near Aleppo city. They now have Manbij in their sights, said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a March 21 speech, even if it meant attacking U.S. troops working alongside the Kurds there.

(U.S. troops) reportedly wont get out of Manbij, Erdogan said, according to Turkish state news operator Anadolu. You have no right to be there in the first place. Why are you coming here from 11,000 kilometres? Are these your lands?

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WASHINGTONUntil his speech on Thursday afternoon, U.S. President Donald Trump had not made any public remarks all week.

He had a lot to say. And most of it was false, strange, outlandish or confusing.

The speech, to Ohio workers, was supposed to be about infrastructure, but we know by now that Trumps supposed infrastructure events are almost never actually about infrastructure. As usual, he meandered freely  to make dramatic statements about the Middle East and the Koreas, to disparage Hillary Clinton, to declare his ignorance of what a community college is, and, eventually, to express excitement about the ratings of the sitcom Roseanne.

Heres what happened:

2:09 p.m.  Trump begins with a reference to his election victory: What a group. Remember, you cant win unless you win the state of Ohio, right?

2:13 p.m.  Trump says of Democrats: They want people to come in from the border, and they want, I guess, want, I cant imagine they want, but certainly drugs are flowing across borders. We need walls.

2:14 p.m.  Trump falsely claims that a California project to replace a section of existing border wall  a project proposed in 2009 and entirely separate from his own proposed new wall  is indeed his own wall project. And then he brags about how this wall is a high-quality wall because of his own talents as a builder.

We started building our wall. Im so proud of it. We started. We started. We have $1.6 billion. And weve already started. You saw the pictures yesterday, and I said what a thing of beauty. And on September 28 we go further. And were gettin that sucker built. And you think thats easy? People said, Oh, has he given up on the wall? Nah, I never give up. I never  And you saw those beautiful pictures, and the wall looks good. Its properly designed. Thats what I do is I build. I was always very good at building. It was always my best thing.

2:16 p.m.  Trump says the U.S. has been treated better on trade by its enemies than its allies: Frankly our friends did more damage to us than our enemies. Because we didnt deal with our enemies, we dealt with our friends, and we dealt incompetently.

2:16 p.m.  That was a Hillary Clinton special, I hate to say it, Trump says of the existing free trade agreement with South Korea, which was negotiated by the George W. Bush administration and then revised by the Obama administration.

2:18 p.m.  One day after his administration boasted of the successful completion of a revised trade agreement with South Korea, Trump says, I may hold it up til after a deal is made with North Korea.

Does everybody understand that? You know why, right? You know why? Because its a very strong card, and I want to make sure everyone is treated fairly and were moving along very nicely with North Korea. Well see what happens.

2:19 p.m.  Trump says the media  the fake news  would have accused him of exaggerating if he had claimed three million jobs would be created between Election Day and today. In fact, slightly more jobs were created over the previous 16-month period, under Obama.

Read more:

Donald Trump has said 1377 false things as U.S. president

Trumps trade chief says NAFTA deal is close. Trudeaus says not so fast

Trumps lawyer floated idea of pardons to Flynn and Manafort, a possible attempt to sway their co-operation with Russia probe

2:21 p.m.  Trump makes his midterm election pitch, telling voters that they cannot afford to jeopardize the strong economy by voting for Democrats. You know the expression from, I guess it was, Bill Clinton: its the economy, stupid? Well, it is the economy.

2:24 p.m.  Trump falsely claims, We got rid of the bump stocks. The bump stocks now are under very strict control. His administrations proposed ban on the firearm device has not been finalized; it will be accepting public comments on the proposal until June 27. Then he falsely claims, Nobody reported it. It doesnt get reported.

2:25 p.m.  Trump says, Ive been in construction and building all my life. I love it. I love the smell of a construction site, right? Theres just something about it.

2:28 p.m.  Trump brings up Clinton again in boasting of his decision to approve the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Alberta: Hillary wasnt gonna approve it. Nobody was. It was a dead project. I got in, almost, like, right at the beginning, I approved that.

2:29 p.m.  Trump falsely says nobody protested his approval of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines: Nobody. I approved it, the pickets, they picked up their stuff and they left and it was the end of it. In fact, the North Dakota protesters were ordered to leave by the governor. About 20 were arrested for refusing to do so.

2:32 p.m.  Trump returns to his prepared text for a moment, saying nearly 40 per cent of our bridges were built before, think of this, before the first moon landing. He then laments that another country is currently building 29 bridges. He says he will not name this country because it is friendly to me.

2:33 p.m.  Trump complains that TransCanada Corp. was not sufficiently grateful for his decision to approve Keystone XL: And I just say to myself, can you imagine the boss of whatever the hell company it is, who never actually called me to say thank you, but thats OK. Well remember. So this guys sitting behind his beautiful chair in a certain place, I know exactly where, nice place, big company, and the consultants march into his office to tell him what a great job they did. They were dead. They had no chance, they failed. I got it approved.

In fact, TransCanada chief executive Russ Girling thanked Trump twice, in person, in the Oval Office, with cameras rolling.

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2:34  Trump complains that the U.S. spends money building up foreign countries while allowing its own infrastructure to fall into disrepair. He specifically complains about U.S. support for South Korea.

Look at Korea. We have a border at Korea. We have a wall of soldiers. We dont get paid very much for this, do we? We have, you look at that, nobody comes through. But our own border, we dont take care of it. Think of it. We spend billions of dollars in other countries maintaining their borders and we cant maintain our borders in our own country. Is there something a little bit wrong with that? Think of it. We spend billions and billions of dollars. Look: North and South Korea. Thirty-two thousand soldiers. The finest equipment. Barbed wire all over the place. We protect that whole thing, nobody comes through. But our country, we dont do it. Things are changing, folks.

2:34 p.m.  Trump falsely claims that he was opposed to the Iraq War from the beginning. He haltingly supported the war when radio host Howard Stern asked him in 2002, saying, Yeah, I guess so. I wish the first time it was done correctly.

2:35 p.m.  Trump appears to ad-lib a major foreign policy declaration that is at odds with his administrations stated policy  claiming, with no details, that he will withdraw the U.S. military from Syria very soon.

And by the way were knockin the hell out of ISIS. Well be coming out of Syria like very soon. Let the other people take care of it now. Very soon. Very soon. Were coming out. Were going to have 100 per cent of the caliphate, as they call it, sometimes referred to as land, weve taken it all back quickly, quickly. But were gonna be coming out of there real soon, were gonna get back to our country, where we belong, where we wanna be.

2:36 p.m.  Trump falsely claims, for the ninth time in office, that the U.S. has spent $7 trillion on Middle East wars. (One Brown University estimate put the current total at $4.3 trillion, and the total including estimated future costs at $5.6 trillion.) Trump then says, Nobody ever heard of the word trillion until 10 years ago.

2:38 p.m.  Trump advocates a war crime, saying the U.S. should have seized Iraqi oil for itself: And you know what we have for it (the war)? Nothing. Remember I used to say keep the oil? ... We never kept the oil. If we kept the oil we wouldve been OK. If we kept the oil we wouldnt have ISIS  They kept the oil, we didnt keep the oil. Stupid! Stupid!

2:39 p.m.  Trump expresses confusion about all of the judicial vacancies that greeted him upon entering office: I dont know why Obama left that. It was like a big beautiful present to all of us. Why the hell did he leave it? Maybe he got complacent .What happened? How did he do that? What happened was Senate Republicans refused to approve Obamas judicial nominees.

2:39 p.m.  Trump explains what judges are: We were left judges! Theyre the ones that judge all your disputes! They judge on whats fair on the environment and whats not fair!

2:41 p.m.  Trump complains of an international program in which wealthy countries help developing countries cover the cost of transitioning to cleaner energy. As far as Im concerned, were developing. Pay us some money. Right? Pay us. Were developing.

2:43 p.m.  Trump says of the Department of Veterans Affairs before his presidency: They had sadists that treated our vets horribly. Horribly. Worse than a movie.

2:45 p.m.  Trump says he does not know what a community college is. He says community colleges should be called vocational schools, though those are entirely different.

When I was growing up we had what was called vocational schools. They werent called community colleges. Cause I dont know what that means, a community college. To me, it means a 2-year college. I dont know what it means. But I know what vocational. And I tell people, call it vocational from now on. Its a great word. Its a great word. Call it vocational, and technical, perhaps. But use vocational, because thats what its all about. People know what that means. We dont know what a community college means.

2:46 p.m.  Trump gives a rare shout-out to his daughter Tiffany, standing behind her better-known sister Ivanka.

2:49 p.m.  Trump complains about an unnamed road in an unnamed state, which he says has been made too curvy. Not good if youre not feeling so good behind the wheel.

2:51 p.m.  Trump says, America built the Empire State Building in one year. Think of it, one year. Its actually like nine months, can you believe that? It was 13 months.

2:54 p.m.  Trump says Americas infrastructure is like, in many cases, a Third World country.

2:56 p.m.  Trump suggests he deserves some credit for the SpaceX rocket launch and landing in February. He also suggests he doesnt think the government should fund such rocket programs  and, incongruously, takes credit for reviving the governments space agency, NASA.

We must recapture the excitement of creation, the spirit of innovation, and the spark of invention. Were starting. You saw the rocket the other day, you see whats going on with cars, you see whats going on with so much, NASA, space agency, all of a sudden its back, you notice? It was dormant for many, many years. Now its back. And were trying to have the private sector invest the money. Why the hell should we do it, right? Let them invest. If they want to send rocket ships up, theyre rich, let em do it.

2:58 p.m.  Trump tells workers: Youre restoring pride in this country again. Our country had very little pride. Look back. See what was happening. Our country had very little pride.

2:59 p.m.  Trump is building up to his big conclusion. But he gets distracted by a thought in his head  about the revival of the sitcom Roseanne, starring Roseanne Barr as a Trump supporter.

Even look at Roseanne! I called her yesterday! Look at her ratings! Look at her ratings! I got a call from Mark Burnett, he did The Apprentice, hes a great guy. He said, Donald, I called just to say hello and to tell you, did you see Roseannes ratings? I said, Mark, how big were they? They were unbelievable! Over 18 million people! And it was about us! They havent figured it out! The fake news hasnt quite figured it out yet! They have not figured it out! So that was great. And they havent figured it out. But they will. And when they do, theyll become much less fake. May take a while, but its happening.

3:00 p.m.  Trump hastily pivots to his conclusion.

But youre the ones who are truly making America great again. Were going to work together, were going to work with the state of Ohio, were going to work with everybody, and were going to bring our country to a level of success and prominence and pride like it has never, ever seen before. Thank you, and God bless America.

Read more: Minute by minute at Donald Trumps wild, rambling CPAC speech

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Pharmacare has become a much-debated topic in Canada. In Ontario, the New Democratic Party has promised it as part of their spring election platform, while the Liberals have committed to scrapping the deductible and co-pay for seniors (seniors already receive free medications). All this amid Eric Hoskins leaving as Ontarios health minister to chair an advisory council on a national pharmacare program  have I lost you yet?

Access to and coverage for prescription drugs is rightly top-of-mind. In some cases, people are kept alive by their medication and in others, their quality of life is greatly improved. In Canada  a country that prides itself on universal health care  12 per cent of Canadians lack the financial means to pay for their prescriptions. This is not acceptable.

We have a patchwork of drug plans that cover different groups of people depending on where they live, but some people are not covered at all. Ensuring that Canadians have access to prescription drugs should be a top priority. To be perfectly clear, I am in favour of prescription drug coverage for all. However, blowing up the existing system to fill the gap is not the right answer.

I challenge policymakers to explain how we would pay for this, and how they can ensure we wont end up with a new patchwork of plans. What are we receiving, what are we getting rid of, how much will it cost, and how will it be achieved?

Let me take a step back. More than 85 per cent of Canadians have drug coverage, either through the government, employer, union or individual coverage. There are opportunities to improve efficiencies in these plans. For instance, private sector plans  employers, unions, and individual plans  should use evidence to encourage people to make smart drug choices  drugs that work just as well and cost less, or drugs that work better. There are very expensive specialty drugs, some costing more than $1 million per person each year. Coverage for these medications should be based on evidence and reviewed by experts, on a case-by-case basis.

One single, nationally mandated pharmacare program would mean dissolving every existing provincially funded and employer-funded plan. It would likely mean one single, much smaller formulary (list of drugs), and would create opportunities for potential savings through bulk-buying. It would likely also create a large national bureaucracy and require a massive IT system to enroll and manage all Canadians and adjudicate their drug benefits. And as some suggest, it could threaten valuable pharmaceutical investment in this country. Why throw out the baby with the bathwater? Instead, why not keep what works and improve what doesnt.

Furthermore, people likely dont realize that a national pharmacare plan may cover less than their existing plan. For example, most public-sector unions receive 100-per-cent coverage of all prescription drugs on the market. To afford a plan that covers everyone, the people who have the best coverage would have to lose some coverage to make room for those who have none at all.

In that scenario, I envision a new patchwork of coverage as employers and unions try to negotiate supplemental drug plans to provide better coverage for their employees/plan members  in other words, more patchwork.

The real dilemma is that some people have nothing at all. Lets focus on finding an innovative way to provide coverage to those who cant afford their medications. Keep what works; refine what doesnt.

The discussion around universal drug coverage is a good one, but lets be smart and provide coverage for those who need it.

Helen Stevenson is a former Assistant Deputy Minister of Health who oversaw Ontario $4-billion drug program and the founder of Reformulary Group.
The Vriend case is about bigotry. That was the headline on an editorial I wrote for the Edmonton Journal 20 years ago. Do the people of Alberta accept bigotry and discrimination institutionalized in their laws?

Reject Roy Moore and all that he stands for, urged a front-page editorial in Alabamas three largest papers and its statewide website three months ago.

Alberta, Alabama. The places are as much the same as the first two and the last letters of their names, and as different as the middle four. They are especially different because of the changes that decision of April 2, 1998, brought to Alberta, and Canada.

I wrote that Journal editorial to rally Albertans against anti-gay bigotry so entrenched in the Alberta government of the late Ralph Klein that he and others in it reacted to the Supreme Court judgment with talk not of accepting it, but subverting it. Putting fences around it, the premier said.

My brilliant wife, Michelle Holmes, and her team wrote the Alabama editorial last fall because the Republican candidate for a U.S. Senate election was an even bigger bigot. (In 2017 Moore lost his job as Alabama chief justice for defying the U.S. Supreme Court on equal marriage.) I might have shaped an idea or two as she and I discussed the issues over our kitchen table. The Vriend case and my years in Alberta informed my views.

I was editor-in-chief of the Journal from 1992 to 2000, managing editor for three years before that. In 2013 I moved to Alabama from Toronto, in the pursuit of happiness, as they say in America. A lot happened in between, but thats another story.

Many thoughts of Alberta rushed back when I read the Journals fine coverage of the mid-March Pride Week events marking 20 years after the historic Vriend decision. The case started in 1991. The Supreme Court decided it unanimously in 1998.

Throughout, the Journal covered both sides, such as one can when human rights are involved. When we editorialized, we were firmly on what the Supreme Court saw as the right side. Im proud that the Journal, and that editorial, played a role in convincing the government that after an eight-year fight it should accept what was right. Have any awful things happened as a result, though many were forecast?

The antipathy the government had then for the Journal cant be overstated. The U.S. presidents fight with large media outlets echoes it, though Twitter and other digital media werent around then (oh, imagine, had Ralph Klein had Twitter) Moore, too, loathed Alabama and national media and declared them ungodly.

My strongest recollection of Klein in this respect is from a Canadian Press members meeting in Calgary. Klein spoke there, defending his governments position to fight the case at every level. Rather than simply assert that gays shouldnt be protected by Albertas rights act, the premier that day said that it wasnt necessary because the Charter of Rights protected them.

Opponents of Vriend often asserted this fallacy. In the question sessions, I challenged the premier on it. The Charter applies only to legislatures and governments, I said  a citizen cant rely on the Charter to sue an employer or a landlord. Thats why Delwin Vriends case was against the government and its rights law, not his employer.

Klein mocked me, smirking that it was absurd for the editor of the great Edmonton Journal to say such a thing. But thats precisely what the Charter says, I replied. (And it does, right there in Section 32.) Klein scoffed at me again. The Charter applies to everbody!

I was flabbergasted. Did he really believe this, or was he just papering over his governments actions? Have you ever even read it? I asked. At that he waved me off and ended the session. I was confronted by Rod Love, Kleins chief aide, red-faced, on the edge of control. I wondered if he was going to assault me. Shameful! he hissed. Just shameful. What? I asked. Shameful treatment of the premier.

Lighten up, Rod, I said. Its politics.

Once, at a party gathering in Edmonton, after thanking a great many people from the bottom of my heart, Klein also thanked the Journal from the heart of my bottom. Some of our more thin-skinned staff were aghast. I took it as a compliment. Its not medias role to be friends with any government. As I said to staffers, If he starts complimenting us, then we can fret. (I said once to Klein, its not our fault that we cant show that wed scrutinize an NDP government just as much. Well, now look)

The next day I proposed a short editorial saying we appreciated being thanked from the heart of his bottom, but we still were not going to kiss it. Then-publisher Linda Hughes, a stalwart in support of our Vriend position, defender of the Journal against attacks from the government and its supporters, was also a terrific advisor and, at times, a needed brake on my enthusiasms. That little editorial never ran, but the idea kept me chuckling for a while.

Back to Vriend. Im proud to say that we knew what was right, did what was right, and supported what was right. The man himself, and those who supported his case throughout, deserve the credit. We knew what was right, but none of us knew then the wide-ranging effects the case would have. It led to so much more that is right for gay people, not just human rights protection, but pension status, marriage rights and more. Not just in Alberta, but throughout Canada. And the case reverberates internationally. All this because a gay man in Alberta was fired from his job after four years, when a bigoted funder of the private college for which he worked objected to his mere presence there, and he wouldnt accept that. Time marches on.

Im proud to have supported the Charter of Rights since its inception, and to have been involved in some of the key cases advancing the meaning of its protections for freedom of expression. (When I became Deputy Publisher/Editor of the Times Colonist in Victoria, an early editorial discussion led a long-timer there to tell me, We dont support the Charter at this paper. Well, I said, We just changed our minds.)

As that Vriend editorial, said: There is a simplistic appeal to the notion that courts should not tell legislators what they can or cant do. But should a legislature be allowed, for example, to make a law declaring Jews ineligible for government employment? Or people of colour ineligible for admission to most public schools? The answer is obvious, but only a court interpreting the Charter could stop it. (And anyone who argues, Oh but such extremes wouldnt happen here, needs to study Canadian and world history. And current events.)

We still hear people say they support the Charter but not activist judges who make law in rulings on it. But judges are doing exactly as the Charter obliges them to do. Section 24 says: Anyone whose rights or freedoms, as guaranteed by this Charter, have been infringed or denied may apply to a court of competent jurisdiction to obtain such remedy as the court considers appropriate and just in the circumstances (emphasis added). Judges didnt ask for that responsibility. Parliament and the provinces gave them the job. Those legislators could have, to borrow a phrase, put fences around the courts role. They could have. But they did not.

Critics of the Vriend decision who wish to couch their opposition in law rather than bigotry also say but the quality rights clause only names nine protected areas and sexual orientation isnt one of them. Which is true. Except the clause also says everyone has the right to equal benefit of and protection of the law without discrimination, and then cites those nine areas in particular. And in particular does not mean only.

That the Charter outlaws discrimination based on something inherent to ones very being, particularly something common to a large class of people -- something such as sexual orientation  well, that seems reasonable. (And reasonable is an important word in our Charter, since it is all subject to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society. And guess who is tasked with determining whether a limit is reasonable? Yes. Judges.

Its apparent, too, that those who enacted the Charter knew that its rights clause would be particularly challenging to governments  they stipulated that that clause took effect three years after the rest of the Charter. The intent was to give governments time to clean up areas of their laws that wouldnt meet the test of the Charter. That they instead spent that time trying to figure out how to subvert the Charter left the courts more work to do.

Its particularly interesting to reflect on the 1998 Vriend decision from my home in Alabama. Americas Supreme Court upheld equal marriage only on June 26, 2015. State governments and bigots such as Roy Moore (then the states chief justice) fought it just as the Klein government fought Vriend. In his Senate campaign last fall, Moore set out his anti-gay bigotry in the most repugnant terms imaginable. These issues are universal. And progress marches everywhere, even with setbacks along the way.

My full-time career is over. I can look back at many things in it of which Im proud. The Vriend editorial, which helped me win a National Newspaper Award, and our work on the story year after year, are high points. We made a difference. A good journalist strives for that.

My Alberta years were among the best years of my life. Edmonton is a fine place to live, a great place to work. All three kids were born there. I arrived for the second season after Gretzky was traded, but I was there for the 1990 Cup win (I wrote the page one headline STANLEYS HOME!). I hoisted that trophy over my head when it was at the Journal that summer, I still have an Oilers jones. (Which hurtsagain.)

And when I shake my head at America and Alabama politics and social views in 2018, I remember Alberta 20 years ago. And I remember going to a nieces wedding to her wife in 2009, and really experiencing the love and beauty of equality. That great family moment came straight from the Vriend decision.

Time marches on.

Murdoch Davis was was editor-in-chief of the Edmonton Journal during the eight-year Vriend case and is a former executive editor of the Star.

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Federal Conservatives were outraged this week when Finance Minister Bill Morneau threw an N-word in their direction.

Neanderthals was the word in question and it came after Morneau was being accused of failing to walk the governments talk on gender equality.

I actually find your line of questioning to be offensive, Morneau told the Conservatives deputy leader, Lisa Raitt. We will drag along the Neanderthals who dont agree with that and that will be our continuing approach.

Within a day, Conservatives were demanding apologies and churning up outrage across social media. Morneau, their favourite target of 2017, was back in their sights as a mansplainer to women politicians.

Weve come a long way from four years ago, when Justin Trudeau was using a much different N-word to describe Conservatives.

It was in February 2014, at the first big Liberal convention after Trudeau took over the leadership of his then third-place party.

People in Ottawa talk about the Conservative base as if it is some angry mob to be feared, Trudeau told his troops. Theyre wrong. As all of you know, the 5.8 million Canadians who voted Conservative arent your enemies. Theyre your neighbours.

No one would accuse the Liberals and Conservatives of neighbourly relations these days, unless were talking about fences and feuding families.

But that four-year-old idea of Liberals and Conservatives as neighbours has been on my mind over the past few weeks, as weve seen Trudeaus opinion ratings on a downward slide and Conservatives on an upswing.

If Trudeau is wearing thin on some people, as the pollsters keep telling us, what exactly is the problem? Conservatives are saying that Canadians are simply coming to their senses and recognizing the politician they always said he was  shallow and unready for office. But if it takes five years for Conservative attack ads to work, the party might want to think about switching advertising firms.

My theory (admittedly based on anecdotes) is that some voters may be getting tired of hearing how good the Liberals say they are  all those boasts about how feminist they are, their brave resistance to racism, about how good and decent they are. Its a government pitched 24-7 on earnest.

Just as constant anger can be exhausting, so can perpetual virtue. Most people, Id suggest, would remember Stephen Harpers years in power as angry ones  a government permanently aggrieved about something or other. Neighbours? Maybe, but often more of the get off my lawn variety.

Is it any better, though, to be a neighbour who always seems to be talking about how great he or she is?

So sure, Conservatives in power might have resembled Clint Eastwoods character in Gran Torino, but Trudeaus Liberals in power might also want to watch that they dont turn into Ned Flanders in The Simpsons.

For those unfamiliar with that long-running show, Flanders is the annoyingly cheerful, virtuous guy who lives next door, a constant reminder of how imperfect the Simpsons are. Sorry is one of Flanderss favourite board games. In one Simpsons episode, Flanders even runs into his Canadian counterpart in a Winnipeg parking lot and proclaims that he loves the cut of his gibberish.

Back in 2014, it was a good idea for Trudeau and the Liberals to start thinking of Conservatives as neighbours  as people with whom they would have to find common ground. They might want to keep that in mind again as the next election looms ever closer.

Being a good neighbour definitely means turning down the anger and keeping to a minimum all that yelling on the front porch. But it also means avoiding moral superiority, seeing rivals as Neanderthals or worse N-words. (Nazis get thrown around on social media from time to time.)

Ned Flanders isnt anyones idea of a perfect neighbour either.

sdelacourt@bell.net

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Here are the best- and worst-performing tech stocks in the S&P 500 for the quarter.

Following the data privacy scandals that have dragged down Facebook Inc. (FB) - Get Facebook, Inc. Class A Report stock over the past two weeks, the social media giant was one of the worst-performing tech stocks this quarter among the companies in the S&P 500 Information Technology sector.

Facebook shares, which rose more than 50% last year, fell 9.4% in the first quarter, closing at $159.83 on Thursday. The company has been under fire since reports revealed that data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica improperly obtained and used the data of as many as 50 million users in 2014.

To make matters worse, the news has led to private lawsuits, government investigations and calls for increased regulation.

Facebook's FANG peer Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL) - Get Alphabet Inc. Class A Report saw declines this quarter as well, falling 1.5%. Wedbush analyst Michael Pacher previously told TheStreet that Facebook's woes are impacting any company that has an advertising model, which would include Alphabet's Google.
Bitcoin spent most of Wednesday close to flat but burrowed below the $8,000 mark. As the No. 1 cryptocurrency dipped as low as about $7,740, the market cap for all digital assets fell beneath the $300 billion mark again. Here are the stories you can't miss in cryptocurrencies for Wednesday, March 28.

Fed Leader's Warning

Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank President Raphael Bostic told an audience in Atlanta at the Hope Global Forums annual meeting that the best policy for cryptocurrencies is a simple one: "Don't do it," Bostic said. "They are speculative markets. They are not currency. If you have money you really need, do not put it in these markets," he told the forum. Bostic is not the only Fed leader who has been outspoken in his criticism of the cryptocurrency space. In January, Chicago Fed President Charles Evans said bitcoin "is not money-like at the moment," and that investors are "swimming with all the sharks in the world because of all the anonymity."

Crypto Job Interest Fell

According to a report from job search engine Indeed.com, cryptocurrency-related searches on the platform became less frequent as the price of bitcoin fell, Quartz reported. The report found that interest in crypto-related jobs climbed steadily from June 2017 through December 2017, reaching a peak of 39 searches per million for the term "bitcoin" and 46 per million for "cryptocurrency" in mid-December around when bitcoin traded near $20,000. But since then the frequency of crypto-related searches on Indeed.com has fallen by 76% for the term "bitcoin" and 41% for "cryptocurrency." Indeed said, "Over the last year, interest in cryptocurrency jobs on Indeed has risen strongly. However, in recent months the prices of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have been volatile and (in some cases) declining. Job seeker interest on Indeed for bitcoin and cryptocurrency jobs has fallen, too."

But Swiss Interest on the Rise

The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) said in an annual report for 2017 released this week that fintech enquiries regarding blockchain, cryptocurrency and initial coin offerings increased significantly last year in the country. Out of 453 fintech enquiries to FINMA last year, 60% of them were focused on the space. That was a tripling compared to the same sort of enquiries in 2016, FINMA said. "Especially in the second half of the year, there was a sharp increase in enquiries about raising capital via ICOs," the regulatory body noted.

AMD Updates GPUs for Crypto

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) - Get Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Report announced that it has updated one of its graphics processing unit (GPU) drivers in order to handle cryptocurrency mining better. AMD's Radeon Software Adrenalin Edition 18.3.4 was published Monday, March 26, with fixes aimed at making the software more amenable to crypto mining. "Some blockchain workloads may experience lower performance than expected when compared to previous Radeon Software releases," AMD said of the previous versions of the software. It's important to note, though, that this fix was released on an "as-is" basis, AMD said. Not all future fixes will feature the mining-friendly update.

Keep up with latest crypto news from TheStreet here:
Bitcoin prices have fallen more than 45% so far this year, helping hack more than half a trillion dollars of value from the global cryptocurrency markets as regulators target digital coin offerings for tighter oversight.

Bitcoin prices extended declines Thursday amid renewed concerns over government regulation of digital coins that has lopped more than $550 billion in value from the global crytpocurrency markets so far this year.

Japan's Nikkei Business Daily reported Thursday that two start-up digital currency exchanges withdrew their applications to Japan's Financial Services Agency after being ordered to improve their security features following a well-publicised theft of $500 million in cryptocurrencies earlier this year at Coincheck. The news followed Twitter Inc.'s (TWTR) - Get Twitter, Inc. Report decision to join Action Alerts Plus holdings Google (GOOGL) - Get Alphabet Inc. Class A Report and Facebook (FB) - Get Facebook, Inc. Class A Report in banning cryptocurrency ads as global regulators seek a coordinated crackdown on the lightly-supervised market that some authorities have said is rife with fraud.

Bitcoins were marked at $7,498.70 each on the bitstamp exchange in Luxembourg, which feeds prices into the CME Group futures contract, extending their week-to-date decline to 16% and their quarterly slump to 47.8%. Collectively, global crytpocurrencies have lost more than $553 million in total value since the start of the year, according to Coinmarketcap.com data, led by a near 75% plunge in Ripple and a 45% slide for Etherum.

Earlier this month, the Bank for International Settlements, which acts as a quasi watchdog for global central banks, warned that "any step towards a possible launch of a (central bank digital currency) should be subject to careful and thorough consideration". That followed a warning from Bank of England Governor Mark Carney that cryptocurrencies were "failing" and urged a global crackdown on the market in order to align them with the broader financial system.

The Wall Street Journal has also reported that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission issued subpoenas linked to its probe into so-called initial coin offerings, a process in which companies raise money through the sale of new digital coins, which some studies suggest hit $5.6 billion last year and at least $1.6 billion over the past two months.

"I think our Main Street investors look at these virtual currency platforms and assume they are regulated in the same way that a stock is regulated and, as I said, it's far from that and I think we should address that," SEC chairman Jay Clayton told lawmakers on the Senate Banking Committee on Feb. 6. "Those who engage in semantic gymnastics or elaborate re-structuring exercises in an effort to avoid having a coin be a security are squarely in the crosshairs of our enforcement provision."
ALTON  Concerns about a potentially harmful opioid-containing herb for sale in the Alton area prompted aldermen to suspend rules Wednesday night to pass an ordinance banning the so-called, kratom.

There have been no deaths in the United States, but kids are getting sick on it, said Alton Deputy Chief Terry Buhs, of the Alton Police Department, after the meeting. We havent had first-hand dealings with it but some kids sick calls at school have been from this. We were able to narrow it down.

The ordinance, which bans possession, distribution or delivery of products containing any of its 7-Hydroxymitragynine, mitragynine and epicatechin ingredients, says minors have been able to purchase kratom in Alton. Mitragynine is a psychoactive, mind-altering opioid.

Kratom is derived from leaves from a tropical tree grown in southeast Asia. It has two psychoactive chemicals that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has classified as Schedule 1 drugs. The city ordinance says the ingredients have the potential to create several psychological or physical dependence and that Wisconsin, Vermont, Indiana, Tennessee and Arkansas have bills declaring Kratom illegal, and ask the DEA to classify it as a poison that humans should not consume.

Kratom is not illegal nationwide and available for purchase online, besides local shops.

The Alton Police support the City Councils decision to ban kratom and will begin enforcement of this ordinance immediately, according to an APD press release on Thursday.

Kratom is new to our area, and sold in some stores locally, but the drug is not new, the release says. The FDA (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) has been researching this substance for several years following claims that the drug could help with opioid addiction, but no evidence to support those claims has been located. In fact, the FDA advised the drug has similar effects to narcotics like opioids and carries similar risks of abuse, addiction and in some cases, death.

The Alton ordinance says the substance, which Buhs said people may mix with synthetic ingredients, has sedative effects with several cases of psychosis including hallucinations, delusion and confusion.

The mind-altering kratom is sold in tablet, capsule, extract, powder, gum and in leaf forms. Buhs said users snort, smoke or swallow the substance, if in pill form. Some people chew the leaves or brew it into a tea.

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse website (https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/kratom), people have used kratom as an herbal alternative to medical treatment in attempts to control withdrawal symptoms and cravings caused by addiction to other opioids or to other addictive substances, such as alcohol with no scientific evidence it is effective or safe to use.

Two compounds in kratom leaves, mitragynine and 7-Hydroxymitragynine, interact with opioid receptors in the brain, producing sedation, pleasure and decreased pain, especially when users consume large amounts of the plant, the website says. However, there can be uncomfortable and sometimes dangerous side effects. Mitragynine may also interact with other receptor systems in the brain to produce stimulant effects. When kratom is taken in small amounts, users report increased energy, sociability and alertness instead of sedation.

The website says kratom may cause dependence or addiction, and while there are no reported instances of fatalities, the substance may be laced with deadly compounds. Side effects can include sensitivity to sunburn, nausea, sweating, loss of appetite and psychotic symptoms. Withdrawal symptoms can range from muscle aches, insomnia, irritability, hostility, aggression, emotional changes, runny nose and jerky movements.

According to an FDA notice: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is warning consumers not to use Mitragyna speciosa, commonly known as kratom, a plant which grows naturally in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea. FDA is concerned that kratom, which affects the same opioid brain receptors as morphine, appears to have properties that expose users to the risks of addiction, abuse, and dependence.

There are no FDA-approved uses for kratom, and the agency has received concerning reports about the safety of kratom. FDA is actively evaluating all available scientific information on this issue and continues to warn consumers not to use any products labeled as containing the botanical substance kratom or its psychoactive compounds, mitragynine and 7-hydroxymitragynine. FDA encourages more research to better understand kratoms safety profile, including the use of kratom combined with other drugs.

Reach Linda N. Weller at 618-208-6450 or on Twitter @Linda_Weller
Nathan Woodside | For the Telegraph

WOOD RIVER  Volunteers from Midwest Members Credit Union spent their time on Saturday at Crisis Food Center in Alton to provide as many as 300 needy local families with a ham and canned goods for their Easter holiday.

This was a great opportunity to get involved in one of the communities that we serve, Midwest Members President Greg Lyons said. The experience was not one that will soon be forgotten. It was great to see the smiles from the families receiving the hams and know we made a difference to them today.
Aiming to improve the ease of doing business in Kerala, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has said the long-standing perception that the state was not very investor-friendly was slowly changing with a slew of measures being undertaken by the Left government.

Vijayan, 74, who completes two years in office on May 25, said the Kerala government is making efforts to eliminate the unnecessary delay in granting approvals for various investment proposals.

Seeking to rebrand "God's own Country" as a preferred investment destination, the CPI(M) strongman said the top priority was to create an enabling ecosystem to provide timely clearances in an effective and transparent manner and ensure that it is maintained.

He said even though the state lacked sufficient land for attracting investments and setting up infrastructure, the government is trying to provide an appropriate working environment for various companies in the state.

"As part of Ease of Doing Business, we are rectifying certain complaints that came up. We want to create an investment-friendly environment in the state. We are trying to eliminate the unnecessary delay in getting approvals," he said in an exclusive interview.

"If a decision has not been taken on an application within the time frame allotted for it, the application will be considered as approved," he said.

Vijayan said his government had held discussions with major companies such as Nissan, Intel and Tech Mahindra for investments in the state, days after the first-ever Global Digital Summit in Kerala, #FUTURE conclave, that was held in Kochi.

Nissan, a Japanese automotive major, is mulling setting up a digital hub in Kerala.

Acknowledging that there was always a perception of Kerala not being 'business-friendly', which made investors wary of making huge investments in the state, Vijayan said this was "slowly changing."

"We have only Kerala to market. Other states have enough land that they even provide it free of cost but we don't have that much area. But we are trying to provide a good working atmosphere and all kinds of assistance from the government. This is what we are planning and we have held discussions with major companies like Nissan, Intel and many more.

"There is no more a sense of hopelessness in the state," he said.

Kerala, in the recent months, has been trying to woo investors by showcasing its single window clearance mechanism, educated human power and impressive human development indices.

According to the statement on RBI's regional office available on the website of the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, Kerala and Lakshadweep received about Rs 1,100 crore FDI equity during the nine-month period from April 2017.

Vijayan expressed confidence that the proactive steps taken to improve the business environment in Kerala will improve its rating in ease of doing business vis-a-vis top-ranked states in the country.

Kerala is aiming to achieve a quantum jump in 'Ease of Doing Business' rankings from 21 to be among the top 10 by next year.

According to state officials, as part of reforms, an Investment Promotion and Facilitation Cell has been constituted on behalf of the Kerala State Single Window Board and it will be responsible for the smoother interaction with applicants and issuing speedy approvals.

The Single Window Board will have the power to issue composite clearances that will be binding on all departments and agencies.

To allay the fears of investors, the chief minister also said that the notorious 'gawking wage' or nokkukooli, as it is known colloquially, will end from May 1.

"All trade unions in the state have come out openly against nokkukooli. We have decided to end this practice from May 1. Some miscreants may still create trouble, but we plan to deal with them with a strong hand. Police have been directed to take strict action against it," he said.

Nokkukooli is a euphemism for extortion by organised labour unions in Kerala, under which wages are paid to trade union activists for allowing common householders/investors/builders to unload belongings/materials using machines or their own labour.

On land issues coming in the way of investments, Vijayan said acquisition was necessary in the state to fulfil the greater public good, adding that the government understands the concern that some people have when they lose the little bit of land they own.

"We are short of land as you know. We understand the concern that some people have when they lose the little bit of land they own. However, it is necessary that we undertake such acquisitions to fulfil certain public needs.

"We are ready to provide adequate compensation and rehabilitation, considering the plight of those who have to give up their land. People have been cooperative in this regard. People understand that we are not troubling them but we are doing it as we are out of options," he said.

Referring to the recent Global Digital Summit held in Kochi, the chief minister said his government was doing its best to develop the information technology(IT) sector in the state.

"The IT industry organised such an event. Based on their suggestions, we have arranged a special wing at the CM's office, which can stay in touch with various companies. It has been a huge success. Many prominent personalities participated and we expect a change," Vijayan said.

-PTI
Iranian filmmaker Majid Majidi's maiden India-set project Beyond The Clouds, featuring Bollywood actor Shahid Kapoor's younger brother Ishaan Khatter and Malavika Mohanan, will release in 34 areas, including Pakistan.

Zee Studios International is taking the film to the foreign shores.

The film will see a 34 territory release including a wide release in Iran as well as over 70 screens in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) regions including Dubai, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, and Qatar, read a statement.

Apart from the GCC region, the film will also open in the US, Canada, UK, Netherlands, Belgium, Maldives, Luxembourg, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, East West and South Africa, Malaysia, Indonesia and Pakistan.

Beyond The Clouds narrates a heart-warming tale of a brother and sister, and how they find happiness in separation and turbulent times. The film celebrates the triumph and adoration of life against a Mumbai backdrop.

Produced by Zee Studios and Namah Pictures, the film will open in UAE and GCC regions on April 19. In North America, UK and Singapore, the film will release on April 20.

The release date for Australia, New Zealand and Fiji is yet to be confirmed.

Vibha Chopra, Head - Zee Studios International (Film Marketing, Distribution and Acquisition), said: "The popularity of Indian cinema, Hindi as well as other regional films, is rising at rapid pace. Majid Majidi's films are those that are awaited by Indians as well as non-diaspora audience worldwide.

"And that is why the different approach to the film. The film has been marketed keeping in mind both these type of movie-goers. Content is what is key, around the globe. We have tapped 34 territories in the first phase of release for the film and are looking to go wider in phase two."

In the phase two, the film will open in Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Taiwan, Japan, Korea and Russia.

With music by A.R. Rahman, cinematography by Anil Mehta and Hindi dialogues by Vishal Bhardwaj, it will open in India on April 20.


Donald Glover is miffed with the cancellation of Deadpool animated series and the actor vented out his anger by posting a 15-page fake script for the show.

In the script posted on his official Twitter account, the Atlanta star took potshots at Marvel for backing out of the project and dwelled upon the reason for it.

As per the script, titled 'Finale', Deadpool wakes up in a Jeep in Kenya as he takes a mission involving Sudan, the last male northern white rhino that died recently.

You know, I'm not mad about this whole 'cancelled' thing. I actually think it's a good time to have a violent, gun-loving white man ranting on TV? Other than the President, Deadpool tells Sudan in the script.

However, Glover has deleted all the controversial tweets and the spoof script from his official Twitter account.

Earlier this week, it was announced that FX Productions, Glover and brother Stephen would no longer be partnering with Marvel on the series. A statement from FX had cited creative differences as the reason. Its statement said the Glovers had agreed to part ways with the network and with Marvel television.

The script also has jokes about the Bitcoin roller coaster and Facebook's privacy flaws. It also reveals actor Sanaa Lathan as the person who allegedly bit pop star Beyonce's face.

Do you think they cancelled the show cause of racism? Deadpool wonders.

Yeah, but all the writers were black. And the references were pretty black too. I heard they went over the lunch budget ordering Jamaican food at least once a week.

In another scene, Deadpool says, It just feels like everyone wants something different, but no one want to do anything different to get it. Doesn't Marvel have enough feel-good minority shows everyone supports but doesn't watch? I mean I think our show woulda been funny. I just wanted a place to be honest And I guess that place is Freeform.

The animated series originally received a 10-episode straight-to-series order in May and was set to launch this year on FX's comedy network FXX.
If anything happens to me, please tell my story. This was...
The Congress expelled senior Congress MLA Malikayya Venkayya Guttedar after he announced his decision to quit the ruling party in the state and join BJP ahead of the May 12 assembly polls in Karnataka.

Guttedar, a six-time MLA from Afzalpur and a former minister, was unhappy with the party and its state leadership for some time over Chief Minister Siddaramaiah not considering him for ministership.

Later in the day, the state Congress expelled Guttedar from the party for six years, citing his anti-party stand as the reason.

Afzalpur MLA and Karnataka Housing Board Chairman Malikayya Guttedar has been expelled from the party for six years, for his anti-party stands, said Karnataka Congress quoting its President G. Parameshwara in a statement.

Guttedar, who met state BJP Chief B.S. Yeddyurappa on Thursday, said he spoke to the chief minister on the phone before taking the decision.

There was confusion, which party I will join. I have decided to join the BJP under the leadership of Yeddyurappa, quitting Congress, Guttedar told reporters here.

He said he would join the BJP in the presence of party national president Amit Shah during his visit to Mysuru on March 30 and 31.

Guttedar said many of his supporters would also join the BJP.

He said he was joining the BJP unconditionally to strengthen Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party's chief ministerial candidate Yeddyurappa's leadership.
Pradip Rathod, a 21-year-old Dalit youth, who was hacked to death allegedly by upper caste men for riding a horse, was laid to rest late on Friday evening. According to reports, the police arrested all three accused named in the FIR. The incident occurred in Bhavnagar district.

Rathod was murdered on Thursday evening, a short distance away from his farm. The horse too was discovered dead. He belonged to Timbi village of Umrala. The deceased man's father Kalubhai had pointed fingers at the accused for threatening Rathod. He had gone horse riding and told his father that they would have dinner together. When he did not return, a search operation was carried out.

Martin Mackwan of the Navsarjan Trust told THE WEEK that discrimination against Dalits was rampant in Gujarat. According to him, there were several instances that have gone unreported. Mackwan said that were likely to chalk out a future course of action to prevent such cases.

Last month, Mahendra Chauhan, a mid-day meal scheme manager in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home town Vadnagar, committed suicide, alleging torture by teachers.

This year also witnessed Bhanubhai Vankar, a Dalit rights activist, immolating self for the alleged failure of the administration in regularising a piece of land in favour of a Dalit family. He later succumbed to burns.
A family of three and another man from Kerala's Kasargode, who had joined terror group IS in Afghanistan, are reported to have been killed in a bomb attack, police said on Friday.

A police intelligence officer told IANS in Kasargode that they have heard the news, but there is no official confirmation from the National Investigation Agency (NIA).

"What we have come to know is that the dead include Shihaz, his wife and their child, besides another man. We are awaiting more details," said the official who did not wish to be identified.

With this, the total number of Keralites, killed after joining IS in Afghanistan, has gone up to eight after the NIA last year confirmed the death of four.

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, in 2016, said 21 people, including children, were missing17 persons from Kasargode and four from Palakkad.
Union Minister of State for Home Hansraj Ahir on Friday blamed the West Bengal and Bihar governments for recent communal violence in the two states on Ram Navami, noting that it was the responsibility of the respective state governments to maintain law and order.

"It is the state government's duty to maintain law and order; people expect security from the government. The chief minister should be impartial and safeguard all the people; what happened was unbearable and not fair on the government's part. You cannot play your politics everywhere," Ahir said.

Recently, tension gripped Bihar and West Bengal after communal violence erupted in several parts of the states during Ram Navami processions.

In Bihar's Bhagalpur, a procession without prior permission led to communal clashes, while in West Bengal, the violence was triggered after sword-wielding activists defied the state government's ban on armed rallies on Ram Navami.
Union minister and chief of NDA ally RPI (A) Ramdas Athawale on Friday said the SP-BSP tie-up in Uttar Pradesh might cost the BJP and its partners 25 to 30 Lok Sabha seats in next year's general elections, but asserted that "no one can challenge Prime Minister Narendra Modi."

Uttar Pradesh has 80 Lok Sabha seats, of which the BJP and its allies had won 73 in the 2014 Parliamentary elections. The Congress had won Amethi and Rae Bareli, while the Samajwadi Party (SP) bagged five seats. After the recent bypolls, SP's tally in the Lok Sabha went up to seven.

"The SP-BSP may damage the BJP and its allies by winning some 25-30 (Lok Sabha) seats. But, the BJP will get more than 50 seats. However, this will not prevent the BJP-led NDA from returning to power at the Centre after the 2019 Lok Sabha polls," he told a press conference in Lucknow.

In the same breath, the Republican Party of India (A) leader said, "No one can challenge Prime Minister Narendra Modineither Congress president Rahul Gandhi, nor SP chief Akhilesh Yadav, nor BSP supremo Mayawati."

The SP wrested the prestigious Gorakhpur and Phulpur Lok Sabha seats from the BJP in the recent byelections after reaching an understanding with the BSP.

A consolidation of OBC, dalit and Muslim votes powered the Samajwadi Party candidates to victory in Gorakhpur, a seat represented by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath for five successive terms, and Phulpur, from where his deputy, Keshav Prasad Maurya, was elected in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

Amid Mayawati's ongoing efforts to cobble together non-BJP parties for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the RPI (A) president asked the BSP supremo to join the NDA if her concern for dalits was genuine.

Seeking to drive a wedge into the new-found bonhomie between the SP and the BSP, Athawale claimed that the BSP candidate lost the Rajya Sabha election in Uttar Pradesh as the Akhilesh Yadav-led party had 'betrayed' Mayawati's nominee by not backing him in return for her support during the Lok Sabha bypolls.

Atrocities were still being committed on dalits, but the BJP-led government at the Centre was not responsible for these incidents, the minister of state for social justice and empowerment said, adding there was need to give more teeth to the law to protect the dalits.

Athawale welcomed the Uttar Pradesh chief minister's announcement of exploring the possibility of reservation to the most backwards communities and Mahadalits (most deprived) and that a committee in this regard will be set up to look into the issue, which will submit a report soon.

The announcement made by the chief minister on the floor of the state Assembly was being viewed as an attempt to counter the changed caste equations, which have emerged following the new-found SP-BSP closeness and its debilitating effect for the BJP in 2019 Lok Sabha election.

The Union minister also hailed the decision of the Yogi Adityanath government to introduce B.R. Ambedkar's middle name "Ramji" in all references to him in official correspondence and records, and said there should be no politics over such issues.

The government order did not go down well with the opposition ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, with the BSP and the SP seeing vote-bank politics behind it.

Hours after the decision, Mayawati had said, "The state government's move to change the name of Ambedkar is a drama aimed at getting cheap popularity... The BJP and its government has been taking the name of Babasaheb these days for the selfish motive of gaining the votes of dalits and indulging in all kind of dramas."

The government's decision also drew flak from the SP and the Congress.

As the matter got embroiled in a political hullabaloo, UP cabinet minister Swami Prasad Maurya had said there was no politics in the government decision and no motive should be attached to the order.

Another senior state minister and spokesperson of the Uttar Pradesh government, Sidharth Nath Singh, said the BJP has only seen to it that the name of Babasaheb is written correctly.

Athawale, who is from Maharashtra, said in his state, the father's name is mentioned in the middle of the son's name.

In December last year, a campaign to write Ambedkar's name 'correctly' was initiated by Uttar Pradesh Governor Ram Naik, citing the manner in which Ambedkar signed on the pages of the Constitution.

The spelling of Ambedkar in English will remain unchanged, but in Hindi it will be spelt as 'Aambedkar'.

The governor had written to the prime minister, the chief minister and also to Babasahib Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar Mahasabha, expressing concerns over the prevalent "incorrect spelling" of Ambedkar.
As the Centre has failed to set up a Cauvery Management Board (CMB) within the time frame of six weeks as directed by the Supreme Court, which ended on Thursday, Tamil Nadu Fisheries Minister D. Jayakumar on Friday stated that the state government will re-approach the Supreme Court.

"We are discussing our next course of action and are sure about approaching the Supreme Court again, as the Centre failed to implement the CMB as per Supreme Court's orders," said Jayakumar.

Meanwhile, Deputy Chief Minister O. Panneerselvam tweeted on Friday that the AIADMK will organise a hunger strike in all districts to demand constitution of the CMB.

AIADMK will hold a hunger fast on April 2 in all the districts, demanding the centre to set up the #CauveryManagementBoard. #CauveryIssue  O Panneerselvam (@OfficeOfOPS) March 30, 2018

The Supreme Court on February 16, had ordered the Central government to set up the CMB and the Cauvery Water Regulatory Committee within six weeks. However, the Centre has not formed the CMB as yet.

The Supreme Court had also increased Karnataka's share of Cauvery water, thus reducing Tamil Nadu's share to 177.25 thousand million cubic feet.
NASA is all set to send the first-ever mission dedicated to exploring the deep interior of Mars, the US space agency said today.

Scheduled to launch on May 5, InSighta stationary landerwill also be the first NASA mission since the Apollo moon landings to place a seismometer, a device that measures quakes, on the soil of another planet.

In some ways, InSight is like a scientific time machine that will bring back information about the earliest stages of Mars' formation 4.5 billion years ago, said Bruce Banerdt, principal investigator for InSight.

It will help us learn how rocky bodies form, including Earth, its moon, and even planets in other solar systems, said Banerdt.

InSight or the Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport mission, carries a suite of sensitive instruments to gather data.

Unlike a rover mission, these instruments require a stationary lander from which they can carefully be placed on and below the martian surface, NASA said.

Mars is the exoplanet next doora nearby example of how gas, dust and heat combine and arrange themselves into a planet.

Looking deep into Mars will let scientists understand how different its crust, mantle and core are from Earth, the US space agency said.

NASA is not the only agency excited about the mission. Several European partners contributed instruments or instrument components to the InSight mission.

France's Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales led a multinational team that built an ultra-sensitive seismometer for detecting marsquakes.

The German Aerospace Center (DLR) developed a thermal probe that can bury itself up to five metres underground and measure heat flowing from inside the planet.

InSight is a truly international space mission, said Tom Hoffman, project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

Our partners have delivered incredibly capable instruments that will make it possible to gather unique science after we land, Hoffman said.

InSight currently is at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California undergoing final preparation before launch, NASA said.

This week, it completed what is known as a spin test: the entire spacecraft is rotated at high speeds to confirm its centre of gravity.

That is critical for its entry, descent and landing on Mars in November, Hoffman said.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday Moscow would expel 60 US diplomats and close its consulate in Saint Petersburg in a tit-for-tat expulsion over the poisoning of ex-double agent Sergei Skripal.

Lavrov said the US ambassador had been informed of "retaliatory measures", saying that "they include the expulsion of the equivalent number of diplomats and our decision to withdraw permission for the functioning of the US consulate general in Saint Petersburg".

Washington earlier ordered the expulsion of 60 diplomats and shut down the Russian consulate general in Seattle.

Lavrov added that Russia would also issue tit-for-tat responses to the other countries that have expelled diplomats in a mass show of support for Britain which has blamed Moscow for the poisoning of Skripal and his daughter Yulia with a nerve agent in the city of Salisbury.

"As for the other countries it's also all symmetrical measures as to the number of people who will be leaving Russia from diplomatic missions, and that's all so far," Lavrov said.

He added that Russia was reacting to "absolutely unacceptable actions that are taken against us under very harsh pressure from the United States and Britain under the pretext of the so-called Skripal case." He accused London of "forcing everyone to follow an anti-Russian course."

He said Britain had informed Moscow of the state of health of Yulia Skripal on Thursday and that Russia had asked again for access to her as a citizen.

Lavrov vowed at the briefing in Moscow that "we want to establish the truth" over the poisoning and accused Britain of "making mockery of international law."

He said that Russia had asked for a meeting with the executive council of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons on Tuesday to ask questions to "establish the truth."

"We are counting on our Western partners not evading an honest conversation," Lavrov said.
Prior to the release of Baaghi 2, director Ahmed Khan said that audience today finds franchises better than standalone films. Maybe that is why he retained some of the key markers of the prequel, Baaghi (2016)a loose story, cliche-ridden romance and a lead pair who cant act (though Tiger Shroff tries hard).

To give credit where it is due, most of the stunts are phenomenal. Some, like the one where Shroff is seen jumping into a helicopter from the top of a cliff, are highly dangerous. The wirework involved in some other scenes (mostly when Shroffs kicks send bad guys flying) are very complex and executed well. Apart from the stunts, the best thing about Baaghi 2 is perhaps the promotional song Get Ready to Fight Again. The problem is that it is not in the film.

The movie begins with an attack on Neha, played by Disha Patani. It seems like a run-of-the-mill carjacking till you are told it was kidnapher daughter was in the car. With all the regular options failing her, Neha turns to her ex-boyfriend Captain Ranveer Pratap Singh aka Ronnie; the man had become a special forces commando in the four years since she unceremoniously dumped him. He goes to her aid, because, as we are irritatingly reminded on multiple occasions, he had once promised to always be there for her.

Shroffs big intro is pretty lame. It establishes his nationalism, as he ties a Kashmiri militant to the front of his jeep as a human shield to foil stone-pelters. Very original! Ronnies commanding officer, played by Grandmaster Shifuji Shaurya Bharadwaj (if you dont know him yet, he is definitely worth a Google search) saves him from the human rights brigade and Ronnie sets off to help the damsel in distress.

During his journey, we are shown the lead pairs college romance. Shroff and Patani are rumoured to be together. But there was no sign of the chemistry between them that was a massive selling point for the film. The love story is juvenile, cringeworthy and almost unbearable. As the film moves along, better actors like Deepak Dobriyal, Manoj Bajpayee and Randeep Hooda are introduced, helping keep the audience from losing interest.

The big twist in the plot happens just before the interval, and is presented well. Though, if you have seen the original Telugu movie on which the film is basedKshanam (2016)or its Tamil remake Sathya (2017), it would be difficult to judge the scenes merit as you already know the big revelation. In the second half, the film changes gears as Ronnie goes on a rampage and there is no more mushy romance (thank god for that).

The big action sequence at the end is a tribute to Rambo, but does not do enough to get you interested in watching Shroff as the Indian version of the iconic American tough guy. Hardcore Rambo fans would find it difficult to adjust to Shroffs more technique-based fighting style, compared to Sylvester Stallones feral rage. The action is sometimes too stylised. At one point in the middle of the carnage, Shroff moves like a ballerina on Prozac.

The performances range from bad to mediocre. Bajpayee and Dobriyal are okay. Prateik Babbar is decent. Hoodas supporting role is interesting at first, but his wit and presence fade quickly. His brief one-on-one fight with Shroff is a joke. Shifuji Shaurya Bharadwaj, one of Indias foremost martial artists, is wasted. He was better utilised in Baaghi as Guruswamy. Patani looks pretty, but completely fails to inject any life into her role. She was much better in her short role in M.S. Dhoni (2016). Shroff is improving, compared to his previous work, and the new look suits him. But his tremendous martial arts capability needs to be backed by good acting. He still has miles to go in that regard.

The music is fine. The rehashed songs, Mundiyaan to Bachke and Ek Do Teen are colourful. While the former is passable thanks to Shroffs fluid moves and Patanis stunning looks, the latter pales in comparison to Madhuri Dixits iconic number. Though Jacqueline Fernandez has tried hard and done a fair job in her own way, the choreography is below par. Director Ahmed Khan has slightly improved the Baaghi franchise, but needs to do much more in Baaghi 3.

Movie: Baaghi 2

Director: Ahmed Khan



Cast: Tiger Shroff, Disha Patani



Rating: 2.5/5
England have to do nothing different than what they want Australia to do: Paine
William Lyon Homes (NYSE:WLH) announced its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, November, 6th. The construction company reported $0.37 earnings per share for the quarter, beating analysts' consensus estimates of $0.30 by $0.07. The construction company had revenue of $466.90 million for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $487.15 million. William Lyon Homes had a net margin of 3.04% and a trailing twelve-month return on equity of 6.98%. The business's quarterly revenue was down 12.7% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same period in the previous year, the company earned $0.68 earnings per share.

View William Lyon Homes' earnings history.
Watervliet

The Watervliet Arsenal will play a critical role as the Army pursues long-range missile-firing cannons and other futuristic weapons to counter increasingly aggressive Russian and Chinese militaries, the Secretary of the Army said during a visit Friday.

Mark Esper, the Secretary of the Army, toured the arsenal along with the senior military leaders from the Army Materiel Command, which oversees the sprawling cannon-making facility.

Esper's visit  which included a talk with U.S. Rep. Paul Tonko  came just a week after President Donald Trump signed off on the biggest defense spending package in more than a decade  $1.4 trillion over two years.

The Watervliet Arsenal, founded in 1813, also is undergoing a $42 million expansion and looking to hire hundreds of additional civilian workers as it tackles a backlog of orders that will force it to double its production over the next four years.

Esper said the Army will lean heavily on the arsenal to help to build the new weapons systems the Army is requesting so it can fight "high-intensity" battles anywhere in the world at any time.

"I had a fantastic visit today, experiencing the unique capabilities of this installation and having a chance to see a really dedicated and skilled workforce doing what they do best, which is build long-range cannons, tubes and other pieces of equipment that are so critical for the U.S. Army and our nation's defense," Esper said during a press conference following his tour. "I'm very impressed today with what I saw."

Esper's visit to the arsenal is the second visit in recent months by a high-ranking Army official. The Arsenal hosted four-star Army General Gus Perna in mid-December. Perna, the commanding general of Materiel Command out of Redstone Arsenal, Ala., accompanied Esper on Friday as well.

The visits are encouraging to the civilian workforce of 560 at the arsenal, which in previous years had seen the Defense Department cut back on work sent to the factory, the Army's only cannon manufacturing facility.

"The term most used today was artisans, artisans at this facility that in some cases through the generations of families have committed their talent and skill to this wonderful facility," said Tonko, whose 20th Congressional District includes Watervliet. "It's unique in its mission statement, and there's opportunities for expansion, and so that's always an encouraging bit of news."

One of Esper's biggest initiatives is creating what will be known as the Futures Command, a new four-star general-led command that will help drive modernization of the Army and its weapons and how it designs and buys them. The arsenal, which is also home to the Army's Benet Labs, has been designing and testing several new types of cannon tubes, including a long-range gun cannon, in anticipation of weapons of the future.

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If such weapons are adopted by the Army, they would mean a historic amount of new work for the arsenal and would require it to hire even more machinists and engineers.

Under Esper, a West Point graduate who served with the 101st Airborne Division during the first Gulf War, the Army has been looking to modernize its long-range guns and add a next-generation combat vehicle. The arsenal has been working on developing new technologies in both areas.

"Watervliet plays a critical role because we will be looking to the arsenal to provide the tubes, the cannons if you will, to improve the readiness of the current fleet and help us envision the future and get to where we need to be in terms of long-range precision fires," Esper said.

In the Army, long-range precision fires are surface-to-surface missile systems that can fire at targets hundreds of miles away.

Esper said the Army has been watching both Russia and China vastly improve their military capabilities in recent years, in some cases outpacing what the United States has.

"I'm very concerned," the Army secretary said. "They've made investments over the past five, ten, fifteen years both in regard to technology and the professionalism of their militaries and they've made some aggressive moves in their respective regions. So I'm very concerned.

"That's why the National Defense Strategy (the military's classified strategic guide) outlines them as strategic competitors," Esper added, "and that's why we're trying to make sure we're well prepared for the future in case we don't develop peacefully along those same lines."
New York

In Andrea Bright's home, Kleenex tissues, Charmin toilet paper and Glad trash bags have all been replaced by one brand: Prince & Spring.

Never heard of it? It's the 3-year-old house brand from Boxed.com, one among many new lines from online retailers vying to be the next private-label juggernaut.

Online retailers are creating their own brands for the same reason brick-and-mortar stores have long done so: They make a bigger profit, and the items help attract and keep customers. Jet.com launched Uniquely J last fall. Amazon now has Wickedly Prime, AmazonBasics and several other brands. And one new website, Brandless.com, has gone even further. Adamant that it's not a private label, it nonetheless sells only its own goods such as toothpaste, tampons and trail mix.

For shoppers, who may see the new brands atop their search results, the online-only store labels can offer cost savings on basics, organic items they can't find in nearby stores, or a change from products they see everywhere.

Bright, an academic counselor from Mattoon, Ill., started buying Prince & Spring products about two years ago. They cost less, she says, and she finds them to be "very good quality."

Since online retailers don't have store shelves, they find other ways to get their labels in front of customers. Sites design packaging that pop on screens (Jet, for example, hired a tattoo artist for Uniquely J coffee labels). Some use organic ingredients or recycled materials to stand apart, while others ship boxes of free samples to hook shoppers.

In a box from Jet last December, Rachel Simpson got freebies: two Uniquely J sauces, including a Sriracha one.

"That was a pleasant surprise," says Simpson, a data entry clerk who lives in Jonesboro, Ark. She frequently buys another brand of Sriracha from Jet, as well as other condiments.

Jet analyzes customer data to decide what free samples to send and also what products to make. Sriracha is a hot seller, but it didn't have an organic version, so it created one for Uniquely J.

Jet says it started to work on Uniquely J before the site was bought by Walmart Inc. in 2016. But while you can find Walmart's private-label brands on Jet, you won't find Uniquely J in Walmart stores.

"We evaluate that all the time," says Dan Hooker, who's in charge of the online retailer's private brands. "But right now, it's an exclusive Jet.com offering."

Amazon blurs the line. When it bought Whole Foods last year, it added the grocer's 365 store brand to its site immediately. Wickedly Prime soups showed up at its new Seattle convenience store, and AmazonBasics smartphone chargers are at its physical bookstores.

Store brands typically start out selling frequently bought products, such as toilet paper and napkins, and grow from there. Prince & Spring did that, and now plans to add laundry detergent, almond butter and bottled water.

To make store brands, retailers find manufacturers who can produce the items they want, says Woochoel Shin, a marketing professor at the University of Florida's Warrington College of Business. But sometimes it's the big brands that also make the private-label goods  something many don't want to advertise.

"If consumers knew that, who would buy the national brand product?" says Shin, who has studied store brands.

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Kimberly-Clark, the maker of Kleenex tissues and Huggies diapers, says the private-label goods it makes account for less than 5 percent of its sales, but it won't say which retailers it works with. Asked on a conference call in January about increasing competition from Amazon's Mama Bear diapers, Kimberly-Clark CEO Thomas Falk answered a different question: "We haven't confirmed that we are making Mama Bear; we really don't talk about any private-label relationships."

Amazon says it can't say who makes its diapers, and Kimberly-Clark did not respond to a request for comment.

No matter who's making them, the new online entries increase the pressure on big brands, which have already been dealing with the growth of private-label brands in stores.

How much of an effect are the new online brands having? Amazon, Boxed, and Jet wouldn't give sales figures. But brick-and-mortar retailers show that store labels can be very lucrative.

The owner of Albertsons, Safeway and other supermarkets says its O Organics label recently surpassed $1 billion in annual sales, its fourth brand to do so. And wholesale club Costco says Kirkland-branded nuts, milk and other goods made up about a quarter of its $129 billion in annual sales.

Online-only brands are taking inspiration from well-known store brands in other ways. Boxed, often described as the online version of Costco since both sell bulk-sized items, looked to Costco when it needed to come up with a name for its house brand, says Jeff Gamsey, Boxed's vice president of private brands. The company considered Prince & Greene, the cross streets of Boxed's old New York office and a nod to Kirkland, named for the Washington city where Costco was once based. But someone realized that Prince & Greene had the same initials as Procter & Gamble  the maker of Charmin and Bounty, and the very company the brand would be competing with. Greene was replaced with nearby Spring Street.

As for Brandless, don't take the name too literally. "We're a new kind of brand," says co-founder and CEO Tina Sharkey, who says she doesn't consider it a private label because the site doesn't sell any other brands.

Its biggest selling point: Everything on the site costs $3. Sharkey says Brandless makes money on every item by working with manufacturers directly. "Nothing costs us more than $3 to make," she says.
Pohnpei State, Micronesia 

I'm panicked and soaked as smiling locals fish me out of the bay on the island of Pohnpei in Micronesia. "Trip of a lifetime," I sarcastically thought as we made our way back to land with an upside-down kayak, our cameras and cellphone ruined.

How did I end up drenched, emotionally drained and out a few thousand dollars in electronics in this remote island nation, one might ask? More importantly, here's why it was totally worth it.

MAJURO

My husband and I traveled to Micronesia on United's Island Hopper route from Honolulu to Guam. First stop, 4  hours from Hawaii: Majuro (MAH-zhu-row), a coral atoll in the Republic of the Marshall Islands.

We shopped for groceries for a stay on a nearby private island but ended up mostly with items like pasta and cereal; fresh produce was scarce and overpriced. After a 30-minute boat ride to Eneko Island, we spent a few days completely alone, kayaking and chasing colorful fish through turquoise water. Evenings offered breathtaking sunsets, stargazing and cooking our carby meals.

Highlights of Majuro included the tiny Alele Museum featuring Marshallese folk art, history and stick charts used for nautical navigation. Handicraft stores downtown sell traditional, intricately woven baskets and bags. Hotel Robert Reimers offers a solid restaurant and accommodations starting at $45. Pricier lagoon-front cabins are a worthy splurge.

For a pampered vacation, the private Bikendrik Island offers two charming bungalows stocked with cognac and Grand Marnier, three-course meals and occasional visits from the lagoon pet, Oscar the octopus. Rates start at $570.

POHNPEI

A short flight west (with a quick stop in Kwajalein Atoll, a U.S. military base where you cannot deplane) took us to Pohnpei (PAWN-PAY), a lush, mountainous island and one of four states making up the Federated States of Micronesia.

Pohnpei's capital, Kolonia, has souvenir shops, remnants of a historic Spanish wall and a helpful tourism office. Don't leave without a colorful floral skirt, an island fashion staple. Arnold's Restaurant offers tasty American fare and Grace's Special Bakery on Nantuelek street serves sweet treats.

An hour's drive took us to Pohnpei's crown jewel: the ancient city of Nan Madol. Picture 13th century ruins rivaling the splendor and lore of Cambodia's Angkor Wat or Peru's Machu Picchu, minus the crowds. As with most of this trip, we were the only tourists.

Kepirohi Waterfall is a gorgeous cascading pyramid near Nan Madol. A hard-to-spot sign on Circle Island road marks a turn-off where you pay a $3 entrance fee.

The waterfront Mangrove Bay Hotel has scenic views and a restaurant serving exclusively sushi and chicken wings. The onsite Pohnpei Surf Club can arrange water excursions and guided Nan Madol tours.

To reach some of the 100-plus man-made islets, you can pay local families a few dollars per person to cross their land. But we opted to navigate Nan Madol's shallow channels by kayak. After winding through dense mangroves for about 30 minutes, the dark, twisty jungle opened into vast, clear-blue ocean. Massive shadows darted around our wobbling vessel  stingrays from a nearby sanctuary.

At this point, I noticed the kayak inching lower into the sea. But we were by then an hour from the marine institute that runs the small boat rental business. We had no choice but to carry on.

On shore we found walls of stacked basalt columns, an engineering feat still shrouded in mystery. We traipsed through megalithic ruins by foot for a few hours before starting our doomed return to civilization. The hull of our punctured kayak was slowly flooding.

My panic grew exponentially after a number of near tips. My husband paddled gently as I clutched the phone, drone and fancy camera purchased days earlier.

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The water was calm and we're both fine swimmers. But I was upset: This was not the plan.

With the dock in sight, the boat's sway became unmanageable. In the blink of an eye, we were underwater.

CHUUK

If Pohnpei was an exercise in rolling with the punches, Chuuk State (CHOOK) was a master class in relinquishing control.

Another hour on the Island Hopper gets you to this large atoll known for world-class wreck diving. The U.S. sank more than 50 Japanese ships here during WWII and most remain preserved in its shallow lagoon.

None of our stops offered much tourist infrastructure, but Chuuk was the most challenging. The handful of tour companies claimed to be fully booked (if they responded at all). The hotel had lost our reservation. We couldn't get answers to questions like "can we take this tour?" or "do you have a hotel shuttle?" Infrequent taxis stopped running at 5 p.m.

I quickly realized you have to show up in person and keep asking till you get what you need. When we finally reached the Blue Lagoon Resort dive shop, the previously unavailable wreck trips were miraculously available and, it turned out, well worth our efforts.

Chuuk's underwater world is simply incredible. We swam through massive schools of tropical fish to find a sunken Momi-class destroyer and coral-encrusted cargo ship. There's plenty for non-divers to see too, like a downed Mitsubishi Zero plane and a 1937 coastal freighter lying 8 feet down. We spent an afternoon on the private Jeep Island with unbelievable coral reef snorkeling and shark spotting.

The airport-adjacent L5 Hotel offers the newest accommodations. But Blue Lagoon and Truk Stop Hotel are best bets for arranging wreck tours.

As we boarded the plane for our final stop in Guam, sunburnt and still reeling from our adventures, my boat-flipping hysteria was a distant memory.

It was a small price to pay for an unplugged, truly unpredictable journey and a much-needed lesson in letting go.
ALBANY  Senate GOP Majority Leader John Flanagan and Sen. Andrew Lanza earlier on Friday emerged from Gov. Andrew Cuomo's office and quickly headed toward the senate elevator where members of his conference were waiting up on the third floor of the Capitol.

As has been the case for at least the last 20 hours or so, Flanagan said "one element" is holding up completion of the $168 billion-plus budget.

That would be Brooklyn Democratic Sen. Simcha Felders demand for an exemption or a moratorium on increased academic oversight of ultra Orthodox Yeshivas, or religious schools of which there are many in Brooklyn.

That demand has hit a brick wall in the Democratic-led Assembly, which has close ties to teachers unions and other facets of the public school lobby, whose members are typically wary of private schools.

Thus the deadlock heading toward the April 1 deadline.

Initially, lawmakers wanted to finish the budget by Thursday evening, which would free them up for Good Friday today and the start of Passover which is tonight.

But that didnt happen and a few minutes before Flanagan and Lanza left Cuomos office, Assembly Democratic Majority Speaker Carl Heastie, raised the prospect of a government shutdown after April 1. He said they werent looking at budget extenders which would allow a pause until next week.

Without such legislated extenders, the budget technically stops and bills stop getting paid after Sunday night.

Theres clearly a level of brinkmanship all around here, which is layered atop the restless rank-and-file members desire to get out of here for a scheduled two-week break.

Felder, an Orthodox Jew, faces some deadlines of his own since Passover starts at sundown Friday, meaning he should within a few hours at most be on his way back to Brooklyn to make that deadline.

One insider predicted the Senate may blink, that is, relent on Felders demands. But that would have to happen in the next few hours, given the Passover deadline.

Why can Felder hold up the works?

Hes a Democrat but he caucuses and votes with the Republicans. Because the state senate is so closely divided, he provides the potentially tie-breaking 32nd vote in the 63-seat chamber.

Regardless of Felders pivotal power, the threats of a shutdown which Assembly Democrats would try to blame on Senate Republicans, havent gone unanswered.

Senate Republican Majority Leader John De Francisco countered, saying Assembly Democrats were holding out for creation of a special pay-raise commission that could conceivably lead to a substantial raise for lawmakers later this year, presumably after Election Day.

A similar commission was essentially scuttled by Cuomo in late 2016 but lots of Assembly Democrats who live New York City, where living costs are high, have been complaining about their $79,500 base pay which hasnt risen since 1999.

Senate Republicans, many of whom are in competitive districts, are wary of any budget that would include a pay commission. That would allow opponents to say they voted in favor of raising their pay, even if such a vote came as part of an overall budget approval process.

But lots of Assembly Democrats in New York City arent really in competitive districts  the city is overwhelmingly Democratic and voter turnout in some districts is low so they feel insulated over public pressure against raises for elected officials.

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The Yeshiva issue has been rumbling along for a few years now, and its focused largely in Brooklyn although there are some Orthodox enclaves and Yeshivas upstate too, in Rockland County.

Recently, Young Advocates for Fair Education, or TAFFED, has been pushing for more oversight.

YAFFED President Naftuli Moser, who lives in Rockland, and is a Yeshiva graduate opposes Felders request.

He notes that State Education Department guidelines regarding what needs to be taught in religious schools date to the 1920s. But those havent been energetically enforced, he said, and has largely been relegated to local school districts.

But its gotten more attention as Rockland Countys East Ramapo school district has been in the news over the past few years regarding bitter disputes surrounding the school board, which has a majority of Orthodox members, whose kids attend the numerous Yeshivas in the community, and other residents who rely on the public schools including longtime residents of Haitian descent.

Amid that background and concerns and a lawsuit regarding the New York City Yeshivas, the state Education Department is looking to update the guidance they offer on curriculum.

A lot of the dispute is said to center on the math and science as well as English requirements.

Part of the problem is actually a time management question  centering on how many hours Yiddish-speaking Yeshiva students spend on, say English grammar, or algebra compared to Torah, or Bible study.

rkarlin@timesunion.com 518 454 5758 @RickKarlinTU
LATHAM  A Coxsackie resident and former commander of the 109th Airlift Wing in Scotia has been promoted to the one-star rank of brigadier general.

Brig. Gen. Shawn Clouthier will now serve as the Assistant Adjutant General for the New York Air National Guard, working at the agency's Latham headquarters.

Clouthier, a husband and father, joined the military in 1982 and has spent his entire career with the 109th Airlift Wing.

He started out as a navigator on the LC-130  a ski-equipped transport plane that's able to land on ice in Antarctica and sandy deserts in the Middle East  while working as an accounts payable supervisor for the state Senate.

When Clouthier became a full-time member of the Air National Guard in 1996, he ran the 109th wing's maintenance squadron, maintenance group and then operations group before eventually commanding the entire wing for five years, according to the New York Air National Guard.

"I've spent about 35 years in the 109th and that's where these stars really come from, the wing, and all the leaders, officers and (noncommissioned officers) I've served with," Clouthier said at his March 21 promotion ceremony. "They're the ones who helped me along the way."

"I promise I will earn the honor in these stars," he said.

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As Assistant Adjutant General, Clouthier will oversee readiness for missions overseas as well in New York communities struck by disasters or crises. He will manage more than 5,800 people assigned to five flying units and four geographically separated units across the state.

"We're called upon constantly to help the citizens of our state. It's one of the things that the Guard is all about," Clouthier said.
ROTTERDAM  A former Rotterdam resident who moved to Niagara Falls without registering as a sex offender with local police was arrested Friday.

Kevin M. Gabriel, 61, formerly of 2521 First Ave., was charged with three felonies: failing to register a change of address, failing to provide an annual photograph, and failing to verify residency with police every 90 days.
Washington

White House chief of staff John Kelly has lost some of his clout following recent missteps and wasn't at President Donald Trump's side for recent decisions on staffing and policy moves, according to several senior aides.

Kelly wasn't with the president when Trump abruptly decided to oust H.R. McMaster as national security adviser and replace him with John Bolton. Just two people were in the room: Trump and Bolton.

Kelly is rarely on the line any more when Trump calls foreign leaders. Last week, when Trump spoke with President Vladimir Putin, Kelly wasn't on the call.

The chief of staff's absence at those key moments highlights his struggles in managing the White House for a president who has a penchant for unpredictability and often follows his own lead when making decisions. Kelly has seen his influence slip since a staffing controversy in February marred his credibility and damaged his image as an internal disciplinarian.

Even so, Trump has shown no recent signs that he wants to fire Kelly and has gone out of his way to praise his chief of staff.

The chief of staff was in the loop on Trump's decision to replace Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin with Rear Adm. Ronny Jackson, the president's physician, an aide said. Kelly delivered the news to Shulkin in a phone call Wednesday, the aide said.

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The picture of Kelly's role emerges from interviews with seven White House aides and five former staffers and outside confidants. All requested anonymity. The White House communications staff declined to comment.

Lately, Kelly is less aware of what's on Trump's mind and what he's planning to do next, according to several aides, with one describing the men as sometimes on different wavelengths. Trump doesn't seek his input on staffing or policy decisions as much as he used to, and Kelly is no longer as successful in blocking access to former aides.

Kelly favors communications aide Mercedes Schlapp to be the new communications director to replace Hope Hicks, whose last day was Thursday. Trump prefers policy aide Kellyanne Conway for the role, aides said.

Still, Kelly has broad authority and is trying to rein in mass upheaval within the staff ranks. But aides say they've seen signs Kelly's grip has slipped. Many White House aides retain confidence in Kelly, according to senior officials. Although he has lost some credibility with the staff, there is no sense of urgency to see him replaced.
A judge in Suffolk County faces charges after he stole a neighbor's underwear and bolted from her home, police said.

The New York Daily News said District Judge Robert Cicale, 49, was captured two blocks from the home and still "had the illegal briefs on him."
ALBANY  State budget negotiations stretched past midnight and the Legislature is scheduled to reconvene early Friday morning to complete the $168 billion spending plan.

Fights over a new fee on opioid sales, school safety issues, education requirements for yeshivas and the amount of taxes that should be extracted from a major health insurance sale remained some of the sticking points late Thursday in efforts to finalize a $168 billion 2018-19 state budget.

While GOP Senate Deputy Majority Leader John De Francisco on Thursday afternoon predicted the budget could be completed early Friday, it looked increasingly like lawmakers would be working through Good Friday and maybe longer putting final touches on the spending plan.

Nobody knows until everything is done, De Francisco said Thursday afternoon.

Seven hours later, though, there were still no agreements and there was even some subdued talk of offering a budget extension measure that could allow lawmakers to leave for Easter and the start of Passover and return the following week.

Assembly Democratic majority members were scheduled to go into conference just prior to 10 p.m. and they had requested a "message of necessity from Gov. Andrew Cuomo that would let them vote on at least two noncontroversial budget bills without the customary three-day aging period that is supposed to provide time for actually reading the bills members will vote for.

The battle over yeshivas appeared to be caught in political tug of war between the GOP-controlled Senate and Democratic-led Assembly.

Brooklyn Democratic Sen. Simcha Felder was holding out for an exemption or moratorium from from upcoming state guidelines that will ensure subjects like math and science are taught in Yeshivas in a way that is substantially equivalent to the public schools.

While Felder is a Democrat, he caucuses with Republicans and consequently has the needed 32nd, or swing vote, in the 63-seat senate.

He said to have some allies on this issue, especially lawmakers in the Catskills as well as Rockland and Orange counties with substantial Orthodox enclaves where residents tend to vote in unified blocs.

The proposal to exempt those schools, though, was sharply opposed by most Assembly Democrats, who have close ties to teachers unions and related education groups.

Assembly opposition may have been a reason that a pay raise commission was floated as a potential trade for a yeshiva deal.

Many Assembly members remain upset over a 2016 commission that failed to push through what would have been lawmakers first raise since 1999 in their $79,500 base salaries. That raise faltered when Gov. Andrew Cuomos appointees to the commission failed to act. The prospect of another attempt at raising their pay may have been seen as a way to get Assembly members to relent on the yeshiva issue.

Even if it passes, though, exempting yeshivas from educational guidelines could spark a legal challenge, noted Michael Rebell, a Columbia University professor and lawyer who has pursued school funding-equity cases.

Prior Court of Appeals rulings maintain that all schools in the state need to prepare youngsters to be effective citizens with the ability to vote and serve on a jury.

Im concerned about the civic education side, Rebell said of the potential exemptions.

Also in play was the extent to which the state should tax the pending sale of the Fidelis health insurance firm to the St. Louis-based Centene Corp. for $3.75 billion.

Fidelis, which is operated by the Catholic church, is a major Medicaid provider, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo says the state should get a significant share of the proceeds, possibly collecting unspent excess reserve funds that insurers hold for unexpected expenses. New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan, though, says they want to use the sale proceeds to set up a fund to help the poor.

An opioid fee was still alive late Thursday as well.

Described as an assessment or surcharge, this would be collected from manufacturers and wholesalers, allowing the Senate Republicans to maintain that they havent approved any new taxes in the budget.

But critics of the plan note that the cost, estimated at $100 million annually, would inevitably be passed along to consumers.

There were also questions about whether the money would supplement existing anti-addiction programs or start new efforts to fight the opioid abuse epidemic sweeping New York and other states.

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School safety improvements and tougher gun control measures were in discussion: Assembly Democrats want to make it harder for domestic abusers to buy guns while Senate Republicans have pushed for more police and mental health services in the schools.

There had been some progress.

Two out of 10 main budget bills  Public Protection and General Government and Education, Labor and Family Assistance  were printed on Wednesday, while the noncontroversial Debt Services bill was passed by both houses last week.

Many of the controversial initiatives in the PPGG and ELFA bills were removed, either to be considered after the budget, or to be used as a negotiating chip during the last-minute deal-making.

Some omitted portions, like the precise amount of state aid to public schools will be revived in the final spending bill.

Others, like the Child Victims Act, voting reform, bail reform and the DREAM Act, had been dropped in the interest of passing an on-time budget.

A major priority this year is finding a way to plug New York States $4 billion budget gap and devising a state work-around for the federal tax code, passed in December, which cap the state and local tax deduction that many well-off New Yorkers claim.

Legislative leaders say they are close to agreement on the tax plan, which could include shifting income tax burden to a payroll tax (to be deducted by employers), and enabling tax-deductible charitable donations to healthcare and school funds.

That measure would also allow school districts to set up charitable foundations. Taxpayers could donate to these foundations and claim a deduction, which would presumably offset the amount of property tax revenue a school district would need to raise.

De Francisco said he thought that was a bad idea and would not likely solve the problem created by the new limits on deductibility.

Its an administrative nightmare, he said of the payroll/income tax swap.

rkarlin@timesunion.com 518 454 5758 @RickKarlinTU
Moscow

Russia announced the expulsion of more than 150 diplomats, including 60 Americans, on Thursday and said it was closing a U.S. consulate in retaliation for the wave of Western expulsions of Russian diplomats over the poisoning of an ex-spy and his daughter in Britain, a tit-for-tat response that intensified the Kremlin's rupture with the United States and Europe.

The Russian move came as a hospital treating Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, said the woman was improving rapidly and was now in stable condition, though her father remained in critical condition.

The Skripals were found unconscious and critically ill in Salisbury, England, on March 4. British authorities blamed Russia for poisoning them with a military-grade nerve agent, accusations Russia has denied.

Two dozen countries, including the U.S., many EU nations and NATO, have ordered more than 150 Russian diplomats out this week in a show of solidarity with Britain.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at news conference Thursday that Moscow will expel the same number of diplomats from each of those countries in retaliation.

U.S. Ambassador Jon Huntsman was summoned to the Foreign Ministry while Lavrov was speaking, where he was handed notice that Russia is responding quid pro quo to the U.S. decision to order 60 Russian diplomats out.

In a statement, Huntsman said there was "no justification" for the move and that it shows Moscow isn't interested in dialogue with the United States about important matters.

"Russia should not be acting like a victim," U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said.

Lavrov also said Moscow will retaliate for the U.S. decision to shut the Russian consulate in Seattle by closing the U.S. consulate in St. Petersburg.

The Foreign Ministry said the U.S. diplomats, including 58 from the embassy in Moscow and two from the consulate in Yekaterinburg, must leave Russia by April 5. It added that the U.S. must leave the consulate in St. Petersburg no later than Saturday.

The ministry warned that if the U.S. takes further "hostile actions" against Russian missions, Russia will respond in kind.

Lavrov emphasized that the expulsions followed "brutal pressure" from the U.S. and Britain, which forced their allies to "follow the anti-Russian course."

Lavrov said Moscow called a meeting Monday of the secretariat of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to discuss the case.

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Meanwhile, Salisbury NHS Trust, which oversees the hospital where the Skripals are being treated, said Thursday that 33-year-old Yulia is "improving rapidly and is no longer in a critical condition. Her condition is now stable."

"She has responded well to treatment but continues to receive expert clinical care 24 hours a day," said Dr. Christine Blanshard, medical director at Salisbury District Hospital.

Sergei Skripal, 66, remains in critical condition, the hospital said.

Lavrov said Russia would seek consular access to Yulia Skripal now that she is conscious.

Sergei Skripal, a former Russian military intelligence officer, was imprisoned after he sold secrets to British intelligence. He was released in a 2010 spy swap and moved to Britain.

Britain says he and his daughter, who was visiting from Russia, were poisoned with a nerve agent developed in Soviet times and that it must have come from Russia.

Police say they were likely exposed to the poison on the door of Sergei Skripal's Salisbury home.
Guilderland

Local author Peter Golden's latest novel, Nothing is Forgotten, is a made-for-cinema historical fiction thriller that is part spy movie and part trans-Atlantic love story.

But it's also a story about how the world was reshaped in the wake of the defeat of Nazi Germany during World War II and how the worst atrocities of the war - including millions murdered in cold blood as part of the Final Solution - still shape our world today.

The book's protagonist, Michael Daniels, is living out his own version of the American dream as a popular late-night radio disc jockey in post-war South Orange, N.J. when his grandmother is murdered and his world comes crashing down. Suddenly, he is thrust into a shadowy world of American spies, Soviet defectors and Nazi-hunters.

The book is set for an April 10 release by Atria Books, and Golden, a Guilderland resident, will be doing a reading and book signing Monday April 9 at 6 p.m. at the Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza. This is Golden's third novel.

Surreptitiously pushed along and chased by a shadowy world of intelligence agents and underworld figures that involves the KGB, CIA and the East German Stasi, Daniels makes his way to Germany and then Russia as he embarks on a furious journey to find his grandmother's killer.

Helped by a Russian woman named Yuli, Daniels ends up unraveling a dark family secret.

Without giving too much away, the story line becomes an allegory for the many millions of lives lost at the hands of the Nazi rampage through eastern Europe - and the attempts of historians to preserve the truth about what really happened after the war was over.

Golden, a former journalist who made his mark on the business interviewing former presidents like Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan and and world figures such as Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, has a deep understanding of the forces that drive the story in Nothing is Forgotten.

He also knows about it from family experience. Golden, who like his lead character grew up in South Orange, N.J., also has an eastern European Jewish background. In a lengthy interview at his home, Golden said he was compelled to write the book to help people remember.

"My family, on both sides, there were people who disappeared in the Holocaust. I didn't know who these people were. I never met them. And people didn't talk about them," Golden said. "People would come from eastern Europe. And maybe it was too painful for them. They never ever mentioned the people they left behind. Now, most of them are dead, or a lot of people are dead."

One of the scenes in the book is when Daniels visits a the former Nazi concentration camp in Dachau outside of Munich. It was the first camp built by the Nazis, and Golden visited both Dachau and Munich for his research for the book, his first visit ever to the country, a trip he never really wanted to take.

"When you're at Dachau, you can't really believe this is real, that anyone would do this. The real thing that haunts people about the Holocaust is not just the murder, but it's how the murder was done. The fact that they took this thing that western civilization was so proud of  industrial manufacturing  and applied it to murder is hard for people to accept," Golden said. "You can see it how they did it with the undressing rooms and the morgues and the crematorium and gas chambers. You can just see some engineer figuring this all out and how much it would cost, how they dispose of the bodies."

Despite the horror, Golden says it was in the interest of the United States and its allies following the war not to punish Germany and its citizens too much since they were needed to help the U.S. in the subsequent Cold War against the Russians, who like the Jewish people had lost countless millions at the hands of the Nazis. And with Germany literally divided in half by the two sides, alliances were all over the place.

Golden's book touches on the German and American attitude toward the trial of Nazi war criminals, including Adolf Eichmann after he was arrested in South America in 1960.

"The part that appealed to me was how the CIA and the KGB clashed over this, and the American response. The Russians were more than happy to try these people, see these people tried in East Germany. But West Germany was very ambivalent about having it done," Golden said. "And there were a lot of Americans who supported them not trying them, who felt we shouldn't pick on them. We should stop bashing them because we're going to need them to fight the Russians in World War III, and the stronger they were, the better off we were, and we had to stop sapping their national will through all these accusations."

Golden says that justice is more about the future than the past in many ways, which is why there was outrage in Israel.

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"The trial was not about Eichmann," Golden said. "The trial was about the survivors."

And it isn't just the Jewish people who believe the world has forgotten their loss. The Russians also have deep-seeded anger over what the Nazis did during the war, which the Russians called the Great Patriotic War. A whole generation of Russian men died.

Golden says the sacrifices of the Great Patriotic War - and his west seemingly ignoring what happened to them - still drives Russia can help people understand why Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin has allegedly been trying to manipulate the U.S. elections.

"Khrushchev accepted 20 million dead Russians. I've seen historians talk about 28 million Russians. Even if you go with between 28 and 20, you've got 24 million dead. Sixty million people died in World War II, in what is the greatest catastrophe in human history. Forty percent of them were Soviet citizens," Golden said. "The staggering weight of what happened to them, this was sort of wiped from our consciousness what happened to the Soviet Union."

Golden says that Russia believes that without it fighting off the three million Nazi soldiers that Hitler sent into the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Nazis could have easily defeated the Allies when they landed at Normandy three years later. He said that sacrifice has never been fully appreciated by the United States.

"It's a horrible story. And it's behind a lot of what's going on today. We talk about our greatest generation, 400,000 people died. It's an enormous sacrifice Americans made," Golden said. "They're looking at 24 million. That's 60 times what we lost. And to say nothing of what happened to the country. The Nazis burned almost every school and hospital. They pulled up the cemeteries and used the tombstones for roads."

Plus, Golden says that the expansion of NATO by the U.S. and its allies has also angered Putin, especially after former president George W.H. Bush promised Gorbachev that NATO would not expand into Russia's sphere of influence. The fear of another invasion like the Nazi invasion is what stokes those fears today.

"So it's understandable why Putin would go at our democracy because it's our most cherished thing. But their most cherished thing is their borders," Golden said. "There are 13 countries from eastern Europe currently part of NATO, and we keep talking of making Ukraine part of NATO? And we wonder why Putin goes into the Ukraine? The Ukraine fought for the Nazis, so I imagine Putin isn't already kindly disposed to them to start with.

"They're very angry about it. It's their most cherished thing  that they're safe and sound inside their borders. So it's not surprising that he struck back like this."
Albany

The major holdup to completion of the 2018-19 budget centered on one senator who was focused on one specific and narrow issue. And while lawmakers ultimately resolved the issue, broader questions about the education youngsters are getting in Yeshivas and other religious schools wont likely be resolved anytime soon.

Brooklyn Sen. Simcha Felder is a pivotal lawmaker. A Democrat who caucuses with Republicans in the closely contested Senate, hes viewed as a sometimes-needed 32nd vote to pass legislation in the 63-seat chamber. As a result, he was able to hold up budget talks with his insistence on a moratorium on updated regulations regarding Yeshivas, or Orthodox elementary and secondary schools, which in recent years have proliferated in Brooklyn as well as Rockland County.

Questions about Yeshiva education have come to the forefront in recent years, especially with the rise of a new group, Young Advocates for Fair Education, or YAFFED.

Led by Naftuli Moster, a Yeshiva graduate who lives Rockland, the group has criticized these schools for teaching biblical studies to the exclusion of basic subjects such as English, math and science.

Longstanding state education regulations and guidelines, dating to the 1920s, say that private religious schools, whether they are Yeshivas or fundamentalist Christian academies, have to provide an education that is substantially equivalent to that given in public schools.

Historically, policing the requirement has been left to local school boards and superintendents.

Knowing that, Moster and others have for several years been pushing the New York City Department of Education to examine whether these schools meet the requirement.

But critics like Moster say New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has dragged his feet on this for fear of angering the citys Orthodox constituency, which makes up a solid voting bloc, and whose members have supported the mayor.

Against that backdrop the state Education Department, led by Commissioner MaryEllen Elia has for more than a year been working to update the guidelines on what religious schools should do in order to offer a substantially equivalent education.

This is still a work in progress, state Education Department spokeswoman Emily DeSantis said in a prepared statement.

A lot of the dispute is said to center on the math and science as well as English requirements in Yeshiva schools.

Laura Dawn Barbieri, special counsel for the Advocates for Justice public interest law firm, said shes spoken to some Yeshiva graduates who couldnt explain what a continent was.

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Many, she said, get regular schooling up to the age of 13, after which they devote the rest of their classroom time to studying the Torah, the five books of the Hebrew bible, often known as the Old Testament.

You would stop learning history mathematics and geography, she said.

Barbieri in 2015 represented seven Rockland County parents who sued state, the East Ramapo school district and four yeshivas, contending they didnt offer enough secular coursework.

The suit was later dropped, since the plaintiffs didnt want to go public for fear or being ostracized, Barbieri said.

There are other legal issues surrounding religious schools.

Past Court of Appeals rulings, for instance, have held that all schools, public and private, are supposed to provide graduates the ability to vote and serve on a jury, which judges said were civic duties.

Failure to do so could prompt litigation, said Michael Rebell, a Columbia University professor and lawyer who has sued the state over adequate school funding.

Part of the problem comes down to a time management question  centering on how many hours Yiddish-speaking Yeshiva students spend on, say English grammar, or algebra compared to Torah study during the course of the day.

rkarlin@timesunion.com 518 454 5758 @RickKarlinTU
If there's anything consumers have learned in recent years, it's that everything  even devices or institutions we believe to be secure  can be hacked. With the explosion of Internet of Things (IoT) devices in millions of households across America, there are many more opportunities for our personal information to be collected, shared and stolen without our knowledge.

According to a report from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, there are more than 50 million Amazon Echo devices installed in the U.S. Alexa is the most ubiquitous digital assistant, but many users don't know what happens to their data when they ask Alexa to read them a recipe or check their bank balance.

Amazon has repeatedly denied that Alexa-enabled devices are recording at all times, but the devices are always listening for the wake word ("Alexa" is one of several options) and will record and store what is said once Alexa is activated. Recordings capture a fraction of a second before the wake word is spoken, and end when the user request has been processed.

Smart assistants' hearing is still far from perfect, and Alexa's recent spate of random laughter is a good example of voice commands gone awry. Users reported that their Alexa-enabled devices laughed unprompted, which Amazon attributed to phrases that sounded similar to "Alexa, laugh" even when users didn't say the wake word.

Does Alexa record private conversations?

There are words that sound similar enough to "Alexa" that it's possible the device will pick up fragments of private conversations that are not intended to be a command, said Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum, a nonprofit, public interest research group.

"The problem comes when people are not aware that recordings are stored until you delete them," she says. "People should think about what they are asking their voice assistants and know that they can delete that information."

According to an Amazon spokeswoman, Alexa recordings are stored securely on the Amazon Web Services cloud, and the company does not release customer information without a "valid and binding legal demand properly served on us."

In fact, Amazon reportedly refused to comply with a warrant for data from an Echo that police in Bentonville, Arkansas, believed to be evidence in a murder case.

Dixon notes that Amazon's privacy policy is "pretty transparent" and easily accessible on both desktop and mobile, but what will likely surprise users most is how much of their own voices they'll hear if they listen to what their Alexa-enabled devices have recorded and stored.

"I really don't think these devices are listening and sending that data off to third parties all the time, but from reviewing my own recordings, there was lot more than I anticipated in there," Dixon said.

If you're concerned about the privacy and security of your personal information, there are a few steps you can take to secure your Alexa-enabled device.

Protect your home network

Your smart-home devices are only as secure as the network they connect to. Start by changing the default name and password for your wireless network  don't include identifying information in either  and enable the Wi-Fi Protected Access II (WPA2) protocol on your router.

If possible, create one Wi-Fi network for your smart-home devices and another for devices you use to bank, shop or browse, and set up a firewall to restrict what  and who  can connect. Regularly check for and install firmware updates on all of your gadgets, including Alexa devices.

Change the Alexa wake word

The first step Dixon recommends users take on their Alexa-enabled devices is to change the word that activates recording.

For now, you can use "Amazon," "Computer" or "Echo" instead. Choose the word that you're least likely to use in everyday conversation, so Alexa will record only if you speak directly to it.

It's important to remember that Alexa-enabled devices may be able to pick up strangers' voices through closed windows and doors, Dixon adds. You can also turn off the device's microphone to stop it from listening entirely.

Strengthen your Amazon password

Anyone with access to your Amazon account can listen to, share or delete your Alexa voice-recording history on the Manage Your Content and Devices dashboard. This includes family members who order items under the same username, but your information might also be vulnerable to hackers who obtain your Amazon password.

The commands you give Alexa  arming your security system, requesting directions and commute times, or calling friends  can provide malicious actors with valuable information about your daily routine, which can put your personal safety, and that of your home and family, at risk. Just as you would with any other login, follow good password hygiene recommendations.

Delete old Alexa recordings, especially those with sensitive information

While asking Alexa to set a timer or play cat noises is fairly innocuous, saved recordings that include sensitive health, legal or financial information are less so.

Dixon says most users don't think about the consequences of having their conversations or requests stored indefinitely where others can access them. Recordings may resurface in divorce or child- custody cases, for example.

"If you have any kind of questions or any kind of misgivings about having recordings around, just delete them," Dixon said. "The idea is just like clearing the web history in a web browser."

To listen to and delete stored recordings, open Settings > History in the Alexa app, or use the dashboard at Amazon.com. Recordings will remain on the Amazon cloud forever until you remove them.

Here's how to delete recent Alexa recordings, automatically delete older recordings or delete all Alexa recordings.

Deleting all old recordings can degrade Alexa's performance slightly because the device uses your history to improve responses over time, and it will have to relearn patterns if information is lost.

If you don't want to mass-delete all recordings about local weather or music requests, you can selectively remove more sensitive material. You can also make sure that your Alexa device isn't being used to test new features, which Amazon employees or contractors are more likely to listen to.

Read third-party Alexa skill privacy policies

Third-party Alexa skills, of which there are tens of thousands, may also collect users' personal information. Amazon requires developers of these skills to provide links to their privacy policies on the skill detail pages, but consumers are responsible for digging through each to understand how data is collected, used and stored.

"Everyone is very worried about having any kind of a data breach or leak on these home devices," Dixon says. "No company right now wants to have a privacy issue  caution is the byword going forward."
Africa and India are increasingly becoming more prominent partners in each others trade with significant growth in the market shares of their respective imports and exports. The advent of globalization and increased trade integration has strengthened trade between the two partners. There is recognition on both sides of the importance of the other as a market and as a long-term trade partner, especially with regard to global value chains.

Trade and investment between India and Africa is hampered by structural and institutional problems ranging from bureaucratic hurdles to limited infrastructure. In multiple reports, various bottlenecks that Indian investors face in Africa and vice versa have been identified. Those obstacles, however, have not stood in the way of efforts to keep up the momentum for strengthened India-Africa trade and investment partnerships. India has become one of the largest investors on the African continent, as a result of the countrys efforts to make trade and investment an integral part of diplomatic policies that guide relations between the two partners.

Data indicate that there is a concentration of exports from both sides to the other in particular sectors. Whereas exports from India to Africa are dominated by manufactured goods and to a lesser extent by refined petroleum products, African exports to India are essentially primary products.

Precisely, the latter are largely concentrated in fuels (particularly crude oil), which also had been the case throughout the period 1995-2015, with the trend becoming more pronounced after 2005 and even more so following the economic and financial crisis of 2008. The share of exports of fuels from Africa of total exports to India averaged 45 per cent annually for the period 1995-2005 and jumped to an average of 77 per cent for the period 2006-2015 on the back of a strong increase in crude oil prices and the dramatic growth in fuel demand in India.

India has introduced the Duty Free Tariff Preference Scheme, a comprehensive scheme for African least developed countries, which, as shown in this report is underutilized. This is not to say that it has not had a positive impact, but there are hurdles that are preventing the countries specified under the scheme to take full advantage of it. Notably, non-tariff barriers, such as technical standards, constitute important constraints. As such, there is an identified need to increase capacities in those countries so they can meet international standards and therefore access these markets more successfully.

In the present report, the effects of mega-regional trade agreements, particularly the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP)  a proposed free trade agreement involving India  on Africa-India trade relations, are examined. There is a legitimate concern about market loss and trade diversion. RCEP, is expected to erode preferences and increase competition for African countries in the Indian market, which in turn, could undermine the benefits for them stemming from the Duty Free Tariff Preference Scheme.

Meanwhile, our analysis clearly demonstrates that the establishment of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) would be critical to mitigate the negative effects expected to be brought about by RCEP on African economies. Moreover, AfCFTA would provide a strong basis for the industrialization and structural transformation efforts in Africa as it would boost intra-African trade and the continents industrial content. The establishment of AfCFTA also offers important opportunities for Indian firms and investors, as it would provide a potentially larger, unified, simplified and more robust African market to tap into.

As a matter of fact, only after the establishment of AfCFTA would Africa and India be in a position to effectively enter into an economic integration partnership implying market access reciprocity. It is explicitly illustrated in the report that deepening integration between Africa and India would generate significant benefits for both partners. Such gains could even help to rebalance the composition of traded products by presenting opportunities to exploit value chains and enhance the structural transformation.

Also, in the report, disablers and enablers to Indias trade and investment with Africa are further elaborated. Notably, it has been found that Indian forays into the African market have been aided and abetted by the countrys private sector. While the presence of Indian industries in Africa is not new, some issues have persisted over time. Lack of information is recognized as one of the chief issues followed by lack of basic infrastructure. To overcome those bottlenecks, a few large-scale enablers of AfricaIndia trade have been identified. African regional integration and the Asia Africa Growth Corridor are the non-traditional enablers noted in addition to the Export-Import Bank of India lines of credit and development assistance extended by the country.

Some of the serious issues that Indian industries face in Africa have been identified based on an internal survey conducted by CII of more than 200 Indian companies. Some of the companies have identified poor regional market integration in Africa as a problem. In particular, poor integration has made it difficult to move products across borders. Based on this, India would likely be supportive of any integration efforts on the African continent, as they would result in various advantages, especially with regards to trade facilitation and the development and upgrading of value chains. Integration would facilitate movement of goods no matter what stage of production the industries are at. In the long run, this would also result in greater value addition within Africa and lower transaction costs as moving products across borders would become cheaper.

The non-traditional enablers are particularly significant because they have political backing at the highest level on both sides. The Asia-Africa Growth Corridor is noteworthy as India and Africa are not the only players involved in the initiative, Japan is also a partner country. In addition, the initiative is open ended in that other interested countries can also participate in it. Under this initiative, there is greater focus on domestic accountability and ownership of projects. Furthermore, the risks are spread across at least three government entities and any other business players involved, making investment in Africa more attractive. It should be noted that as the initiative is supported by the Governments of Japan and India, the adverse effects associated with political risk are alleviated, which have been identified by Indian companies as a hindrance to trading in Africa. Under the Asia-Africa Growth Corridor, risk is spread out and therefore shared, thus the burden of loss on any single entity is reduced. The initiative also fits the bill of development for mutual benefit, the line adopted by the Government of India for all its development cooperation projects.

On the Indian side, suggestions have also been made regarding how the Export-Import Bank of India lines of credit can be better used. The availability of lines of credit is viewed as an important tool for development finance. A study completed by the Observer Research Foundation provides an explanation on how the lines of credits are demand-led loans. This implies that the country to which the loan is being extended identifies the project or industry that will receive this transfer. The projects are meant to enhance the developmental process in the host country. They are intended to draw on the experience of India while increasing the countrys presence in Africa as a partner in development. Accordingly, more efficient use of the lines of credit is in the best interests of all stakeholders involved. This implies that there is urgent need to ensure that information on the lines of credit is correctly disseminated, as a better understanding of how to apply for and use them would ensure that productivity losses are kept at a minimum.

Another point of discussion in the report is on how to make development aid from India more focused and therefore more feasible and relevant. This, as noted in the report, needs to be done by setting up stronger bilateral ties rather than trying to address the issue at the multilateral level. Many experts have identified areas of cooperation for India and Africa, ranging from infrastructure to energy security. In that regard, a lot of ground has been covered but a lot more can be done. Some experts have noted the potential of civil society in efforts to encourage more policy dialogue. The scope for diversification is linked to the possibility of increasing the role that small and medium-sized enterprises play. This would include readdressing the framework for private investment on both the Indian and the African side.

The report also contains three case studies on the following topics: the potential for cooperation in agriculture in Zambia; the need for reform in the telecom sector in Africa, discussing the case of Airtel; and the importance of building basic infrastructure as seen through the experience of Kirloskar in Africa.

Based on the case studies, some general and specific conclusions have been reached. Foremost is the recognition that addressing the basic infrastructural lacuna is necessary in order to realize the true potential of Africa-India trade. African countries have limited productive capacity and suffer from a significant infrastructure deficit, which limits exploitation of their trade preferences. One approach to help overcome this would be for African countries to develop and apply strategies aimed at identifying and resolving binding constraints on exports by offering targeted policy options in selected sectors.

Generally speaking, there is no doubt that there is much more potential in Africa-India trade than what is currently realized. To overcome the hurdles identified, a concentrated response is needed from governments and regulators. Knowledge asymmetry has been created because of inefficient dissemination of information. This has resulted in unnecessary hindrances to trade and investment between India and Africa, which stems from the incomplete understanding that the two sides have about each others markets. There is also the matter of harmonizing standards and easing regulations to lower transaction costs of doing business with Africa. Greater levels of government involvement on both sides are also necessary to reduce risks.

All in all, more collaboration between governments and industry is necessary to enable Africa-India trade to be further galvanized and offer a viable model for enhanced South-South cooperation looking forward.

This report has been prepared by the African Trade Policy Centre (ATPC) of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). It was written by Simon Mevel, Economic Affairs Officer, ECA and Jhanvi Tripathi, Associate Researcher, International Trade Policy, CII.
South Africas trade balance swings to surplus in February

South Africas trade balance shifted to R0.43 billion surplus in February of 2018, compared to a downwardly revised R27.1 billion deficit in the prior month, and above market consensus of a R3.0 billion deficit. It was the smallest trade surplus since November of 2015.

Imports declined 16.5 percent month-over-month to R90.2 billion in February of 2018, mainly due to lower purchases of machinery and electronics (-25 percent); mineral products (-16 percent); vehicles and transport equipment (-17 percent); chemical products (-12 percent); base metals (-24 percent) and original equipment components (-13 percent). The most important import partners were: China (18.6 percent of total imports), Germany (10.8 percent), the US (5.5 percent), Saudi Arabia (5.3 percent) and Nigeria (4.9 percent).

Exports rose 12.0 percent month-over-month to R90.6 billion, mostly due to higher sales of vehicles and transport equipment (117 percent); precious metals and stones (14 percent); machinery and electronics (25 percent) and prepared foodstuff (18 percent). Main export partners were: China (9.3 percent of total exports); Germany (7.7 percent); the US (6.4 percent); Japan (4.8 percent) and Botswana (4.6 percent).

Excluding trade with neighboring Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland, the country posted a trade deficit of R6.6 billion in February.

The South African Revenue Service (SARS) today released trade statistics for February 2018 recording a trade balance surplus of R0.43 billion. These statistics include trade data with Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland (BLNS).

The year-to-date (01 January to 28 February 2018) trade balance deficit of R26.69 billion is a deterioration on the deficit for the comparable period in 2017 of R7.59 billion. Exports year-to-date grew by 3.1% whilst imports for the same period showed an increase of 14.0%.

In line with international statistical best practice, the Trade Statistics published by the SARS are subject to revisions as new information becomes available on an ongoing basis. The January 2013 to January 2018 export figures have been adjusted by R16.67 billion resulting in the revision of the trade balance for the affected years as shown in the table below.

The R16.67 billion adjustment is as a result of revisions to the gold exports by the South African Reserve Bank (SARB), which supplies the gold export data to SARS. These gold revisions have been published by the SARB in the March 2018 Quarterly Bulletin.

Cumulative Trade Balance after SARB adjustments

Calendar Year Exports (Rbn) Imports (Rbn) Trade Balance (Rbn) SARB Adjustment (Rm) Adjusted Exports (Rbn) Adjusted Imports (Rbn) Adjusted Trade Balance (Rbn) 2013 929 998 -69.19 1 275 930 998 -67.92 2014 1 001 1 083 -82.70 9 287 1 010 1 083 -73.41 2015 1 036 1 088 -52.20 -8 142 1 028 1 088 -60.34 2016 1 100 1 099 1.03 16 177 1 116 1 099 17.20 2017 1 187 1 107 79.86 -2 299 1 185 1 107 77.56 2018 171 198 -27.06 371 171 198 -26.69 Total 5 424 5 574 -150 16 670 5 440 5 574 -134

Including trade data with Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland (BLNS)

The R0.43 billion trade balance surplus for February 2018 is attributable to exports of R90.59 billion and imports of R90.16 billion. Exports increased from January 2018 to February 2018 by R9.74 billion (12.0%) and imports decreased from January 2018 to February 2018 by R17.82 billion (16.5%).

Exports for the year-to-date (01 January to 28 February) grew by 3.1% from R166.28 billion in 2017 to R171.45 billion in 2018. Imports for the year-to-date of R198.14 billion are 14.0% more than the imports recorded in January to February 2017 of R173.88 billion, leaving a cumulative trade balance deficit of R26.69 billion for 2018.

On a year-on-year basis, the R0.43 billion trade balance surplus for February 2018 is a deterioration from the surplus recorded in February 2017 of R4.12 billion. Exports of R90.59 billion are 4.6% more than the exports recorded in February 2017 of R86.58 billion. Imports of R90.16 billion are 9.3% more than the imports recorded in February 2017 of R82.46 billion.

January 2018s trade balance deficit was revised downwards by R0.54 billion from the previous months preliminary deficit of R27.66 billion to a revised deficit of R27.12 billion as a result of ongoing Vouchers of Correction (VOCs).

Trade highlights by category

The main month-on-month export movements: R million Section: Including BLNS: Vehicles & Transport Equipment +R6 716 +117% Precious Metals & Stones +R1 844 +14% Machinery & Electronics +R1 493 +25% Prepared Foodstuff +R 589 +18% Base Metals -R1 122 - 9% Total +R9 520 98% Total Movement +R9 739 100%

The main month-on-month import movements: R million Section: Including BLNS: Machinery & Electronics -R6 053 - 25% Mineral Products -R3 209 -16% Vehicles & Transport Equipment -R1 438 -17% Chemical Products -R1 359 -12% Base Metals -R1 339 -24% Original Equipment Components -R1 004 -13% Total -R14 402 81% Total Movement -R17 815 100%

Trade highlights by world zone

The world zone results from January 2018 (revised) to February 2018 are given below.

Africa:

Exports: R25 178 million  this is an increase of R3 108 million from January 2018.

Imports: R10 104 million  this is a decrease of R2 693 million from January 2018.

Trade Balance surplus: R15 074 million  this is an improvement of R5 800 million in comparison to the R9 274 million surplus recorded in January 2018.

America:

Exports: R7 168 million  this is an increase of R 49 million from January 2018.

Imports: R7 696 million  this is a decrease of R 1 605 million from January 2018.

Trade Balance deficit: R 528 million  this is an improvement of R1 655 million in comparison to the R2 183 million deficit recorded in January 2018.

Asia:

Exports: R27 511 million  this is an increase of R 960 million from January 2018.

Imports: R41 814 million  this is a decrease of R9 482 million from January 2018.

Trade Balance deficit: R14 303 million  this is an improvement of R10 442 million in comparison to the R24 745 million deficit recorded in January 2018.

Europe:

Exports: R21 847 million  this is an increase of R4 807 million from January 2018.

Imports: R28 798 million  this is a decrease of R3 864 million from January 2018.

Trade Balance deficit: R6 951 million  this is an improvement of R8 671 million in comparison to the R15 622 million deficit recorded in January 2018.

Oceania:

Exports: R1 256 million  this is an increase of R 624 million from January 2018.

Imports: R1 363 million  this is a decrease of R 330 million from January 2018.

Trade Balance deficit: R 107 million  this is an improvement of R 955 million in comparison to the R1 062 million deficit recorded in January 2018.

Excluding trade data with Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland (BLNS)

The trade data excluding BLNS for February 2018 recorded a trade balance deficit of R6.69 billion. This is a result of exports of R80.09 billion and imports of R86.78 billion.

Exports increased from January 2018 to February 2018 by R8.31 billion (11.6%) and imports decreased from January 2018 to February 2018 by R18.29 billion (17.4%).

The cumulative deficit for 2018 is R39.98 billion compared to R20.45 billion deficit in 2017.

Trade highlights by category

The main month-on-month export movements: R million Section: Excluding BLNS: Vehicles & Transport Equipment +R6 514 +134% Precious Metals & Stones +R1 380 + 10% Machinery & Electronics +R1 318 + 28% Prepared Foodstuff +R 581 + 27% Mineral Products -R 474 - 2% Base Metals -R1 345 - 12% Total +R7 974 96% Total Movement +R8 309 100%

The main month-on-month import movements: R million Section: Excluding BLNS: Machinery & Electronics -R6 153 - 25% Mineral Products -R3 220 - 16% Chemical Products -R1 490 - 14% Vehicles & Transport Equipment -R1 437 - 17% Base Metals -R1 381 - 25% Original Equipment Components -R1 004 - 13% Total -R14 685 80% Total Movement -R18 292 100%

Trade highlights by world zone

The world zone results for Africa excluding BLNS from January 2018 (Revised) to February 2018 are given below.

Africa:

Exports: R14 676 million  this is an increase of R1 678 million from January 2018.

Imports: R6 721 million  this is a decrease of R3 169 million from January 2018.

Trade Balance surplus: R7 955 million  this is an improvement of R4 848 million in comparison to the R3 107 million surplus recorded in January 2018.

Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland (Only)

Trade statistics with the BLNS for February 2018 recorded a trade balance surplus of R7.12 billion. This is a result of exports of R10.50 billion and imports of R3.38 billion.

Exports increased from January 2018 to February 2018 by R1.43 billion (15.8%) and imports increased from January 2018 to February 2018 by R0.48 billion (16.4%).

The cumulative surplus for 2018 is R13.29 billion compared to R12.86 billion in 2017.

Trade Highlights by Category

The main month-on-month export movements: R million Section: BLNS: Precious Metals & Stones +R 464 +1118% Base Metals +R 222 + 41% Vehicles & Transport Equipment +R 202 + 23% Machinery & Electronics +R 175 + 13% Textiles +R 131 + 35% Total +R1 194 84% Total Movement +R1 429 100%
As our country celebrates 45 years as a republic, let us highlight the two avian species which represent our twin-island nation. Our two national birds, the Scarlet Ibis and the Cocrico, stand proudly on our countrys coat of arms. Today, let us learn more about these two feathered national symbols.
AS he wrapped up a post-Cabinet news conference in Port of Spain on Thursday, the Prime Minister said the country was in a better place than it was this time last year. He was speaking after having rolled out a new regime of arrangements towards further re-opening of the society.
"We would like to spend 3 days in Switzerland which includes the Golden pass train & the Interlaken & BO area." Starting in Zurich, that obviously means Zurich - Lucerne then Golden Pass Lucerne - Interlaken - Montreux (if you are going that far), then you'd have to backtrack to Interlaken to visit Grindelwald, Kleine Scheidegg for Jungfraujoch, Wengen, Lauterbrunnen and Murren, and leave for Italy from Interlaken (Ost) or Spiez (as you'd have to change there anyway).

You'd then be heading for Milan (you can't get over/through the Alps closer to Venice unless coming from Austria) and then probably Venice (6h41 from Interlaken, changing at Spiez and Milano Centrale), then backtrack to Milan for Florence (side-trip to Pisa), and Rome, and I would fly to Paris from Rome.

If by any chance you want to continue to Paris from Italy by train, you could invert that order, i.e. head from Milan to Florence, Pisa and Rome, then across to Venice (3h45), and after your visit there, take the overnight train from Paris (dep. 20:17, arr. Paris-Lyon 09:55 - read up on this first, it's not a luxurious train). There's no night train from Rome although of course you could connect at Milan (at 23:13) with the one coming from Venice.

Otherwise, whether coming from Rome/Florence or Venice, the fastest route (7 hrs) from Milan to Paris is by Frecciarossa to Turin Porta Susa and then TGV to Paris; or you can go via Lausanne (7h40) or Zurich (8 1/2 hrs; from Florence, for instance, this would be 10 1/2 hrs, and from Rome, up to 12 hrs),

Edited: 3 years ago
We are arriving late Sept at JFK and would like to know the best option to get to Time Square.

I have been before a few years ago and taxi was quite expensive , not sure whether to book airport shuttle /bus or get a taxi again. Are the Taxis big enough for 4 people with luggage and what price would we expect to pay now as all the other forums are some years old
I would recommend Arenal as one area. In fact, you might consider an Arenal--Tortuguero--Carribean Coast (Cahuita area) loop.

In Arenal, you can volunteer at Proyecto Asis. It is an animal rescue center and you feed the animals if you volunteer. You can go on a day trip to Cano Negro. It is a longer drive and then a boat ride. You will see a ton of wildlife. You can go to Mistico Hanging Bridges. They actually rent electric scooters there, so she could still do it even if she couldn't walk. You can visit EcoCentro Danaus as a place that is small but has wildlife to see. You can go up to Castillo and visit the Butterfly Conservatory. And, of course, you can visit Hot Springs at one of the hotels.

Tortuguero is mostly a boat experience. You have to take a boat ride to get there. Then, when you are there, the most popular way to visit the national park is by boat. This area has tons and tons of wildlife. So, being able to experience that by boat would be perfect.

I actually haven't been to the Caribbean coast, but it seems like a popular destination after Tortuguero. This would provide you with beach time, mostly. It is also an area with a ton of wildlife and there is a national park there. I do not know how the park is for people with limited mobility.

Instead of Tortuguero and the Caribbean Coast, you could head to Manuel Antonio after Arenal. Stop in Tarcoles and take a crocodile boat tour. Manuel Antonio is hilly, but you can ride the bus or drive a car everywhere. As PP mentioned, the national park itself is flat. You can also go on a mangrove boat tour and a catamaran tour while you are there. An ATV tour somewhere in your trip may also be a possibility if just walking is the difficulty.
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So i've been following Yoshino's official website and it seems that lower level will be on full bloom on April 2nd, second level on the 4th and third level on the 6th.

If I visit on the 6th will I be able to still witness the lower level full bloom? Will it be too early of the third level?

Which is the most impressing of them all?

Also,

Looking at the official site's "Under thousan" report, it says that the situation is "5 minutes to bloom". what does this mean?

Thank you!
I've now wiped away my tears over the early blooms playing havoc with my (long ago) booked 5 - 16 April Japan itinerary (clearly there's far more to see/experience in Japan than capricious petals, yes?) Of course I still hope to catch some late bloomers in Tokyo or north in Nagano or even the Kyoto Mint, but...

I do have 2 days (15 & 16 April) to play with at the end of my itinerary, and I'm now thinking perhaps a good use for one or both of them would be to head to Kawaguchiko. Indeed, to be on the safe side, I just (amazingly) managed to grab a stray dorm bed right on the Lake for the 15th for a mere $25 (and can cancel w/o penalty up til 7 April). I've also checked out the bus schedules and happily, looks like it's just 2 hr/1800Y. o.w. from Tokyo to Kawaguchiko) so...

As I'm mainly only interested in catching a good/quick glimpse of sakura (with or without Fujisan - I know full well that clear skies are a crap-shoot all over the globe), the question is...

Should I do an overnight at Kawaguchiko or... will just a day trip do? (the latter leaving me the 16th - my last day - to... I'm now somewhat keen on hopefully catching the wisteria at either Kameido Tenjinja Shrine or the Ashikaga Flower Park.

In short:

1. Day trip or O/N on the 15th at Kawaguchiko?

2. Kameido Tenjinja Shrine or Ashikago for wisteria?
Hi,

Furano is famous for flowers but Biei is for beautiful hilly curving skyline. If you are into cycling you'll love it! So many local accommodation run cycling tours to attract travelers.

You can actually bring what you need for one night only to Biei/Furano and leave the rest in the coin locker at Sapporo. This is what I did last time there and all the time somewhere else in Japan. Normally 3 sizes are available for different sizes of suitcase/backpack and you can store things up to 3 days, 200~500 yen per day. Coin lockers are all over Japan, every Railway station and information centre you'll see them, most of time, information centre keep your luggage for you for free or at very affordable cost.
I would break the trip up, especially since you have more than a week. And it sounds like your used to moving to different areas when travelling.

We recently stayed in Playa Samara for only 4 days/3 nights and we didn't take our car anywhere because we spent our entire time on the beach and in the town. Great town & beach! If we had more time there we definitely would have explored the other area beaches. Lots of beauty in the area! CR has so much to see I feel you should move to a different area.

Samara was great because we could easily walk to everything - food, drinks, grocery, ATM and a lovely beach!

The only other beach area I'm familiar with is Playa Junquillal (the one in Guanacaste). It was also a great area and we loved our time there :) There's so many areas of CR to choose from... I need to return soon!
Restaurants change all the time Egansmind and the Plaza has never in my looong life living in then work travelling to NYC been a great place to go to eat really, drink & meet up OK... the places mentioned above are "iconic". For a newer spot that looks classic my colleagues are all into Augustine at the Beekman, a Keith McNally very theatrical restaurant in a gorgeous hotel I am just waiting to charge to a client Pete Wells of the NYT reviewed lunch and dinner, his reviews are atmospheric I think one of our TA regulars - WEQueen has eaten there.

Actually I would consider iconic another earlier Keith McNally joint the Odeon You dont say what type or style of young woman she is but for certain a 21 yr olds idea of iconic is likely different from yours and mine. For the younger set Chez ma Tante in Greenpoint would be pretty cool, brunch wkends & that would be fun to walk around there, explore a newly re-arrived neighborhood.

Here are recos from some of the blogs for brunch/breakfast, Saturday hours will be for brunch some beginning 11:30 to noon, Friday and weekdays are not typical brunch days so breakfast is what you need.

Heres Yelp on the best elegant and fancy places these days for brunch:

https://www.yelp.com/search?find_desc=upscale+brunch&find_loc=New+York%2C+NY

https://www.yelp.com/search?find_desc=fancy+brunch&find_loc=New+York%2C+NY

ABCKitchen & ABCV, Cookshop, Balthazar pop up all over.

and searching fancy breakfasts:

NYC to Los Angeles comparisons never work well.
Editor's Note: Today's Tuko blogger is the embattled National Resistance Movement (NRM) general, Miguna Miguna, who gives a detailed account of what allegedly happened to him on the night of Wednesday, March 28, 2018, at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) upon his return from a seven-week deportation and how he was re-deported to Dubai.

I am at the passenger waiting area at the Dubai International Airport. I have gone through basic tests which have confirmed that I was forcefully placed aboard EK722 Emirates Airline flight from Nairobi to Dubai that arrived this morning.

About 50 heavily armed thugs led by the uniformed Somali policeman, who had commanded them on Monday, violently broke into the toilet I had been detained incommunicado in at the Jomo Kenyatta Airport, didn't identify themselves, wrestled me to the ground, held onto and sat on me as a group of four different thugs injected substances to both my soles, arms, hands, both sides of my ribs and basically all over my body until I passed out.

Send 'NEWS' to 40227 to receive all the important breaking news as it happens

READ ALSO: Moses Kuria apigwa picha akiwa ndani ya ndege na Miguna Miguna, Dubai

Miguna Miguna was allegedly dragged,drugged before he was deported to Dubai on the night of Wednesday, March 28. Photo: TUKO.

READ ALSO: Raila Odinga attends sentencing of CS Matiang'i, IG Boinnet

Today, at around 5:25 am, after the Emirates had landed and passengers were disembarking, I regained consciousness and asked a person seated next to me who also appeared like a flying squad officer, where are we? He told me that we were in Dubai.

Three burley men dressed in Air Emirates yellow reflector jackets approached me and rudely demanded that I disembark from the plane. The most obnoxious one introduced himself as Njihia. He claimed that a bunch of loose papers he held in his hands were my documents.

I explained to him that I wouldn't go anywhere with him; that he didn't have my valid Kenyan passport and that he is a criminal who had not only abducted but also drugged and forcefully removed me from Kenya against my will and in violation of numerous court orders.

READ ALSO: Matiang'i, Boinnet now face possible jail terms as Miguna saga boils over

Embattled Miguna Miguna addressing journalist at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) upon his dramatic return from deportation. Photo:Capital FM.

I told the Air Emirates crew that flying an unconscious and drugged man like me from Kenya to Dubai without any documents was a criminal act.

Despite their desperate attempts to force me to the police station and/immigration department at Dubai, I refused and demanded to see a medical doctor.

After much wrangling, I was granted access to a doctor who conducted basic medical tests and confirmed my story. Additional toxicology tests would require exiting the airport, which I can only do with my valid Kenyan passport - a document the despots illegality confiscated and destroyed in violation of Justice Kimarus order.

READ ALSO: I was drugged - Miguna speaks after being deported

Miguna Miguna takes a selfie photo at his hospital bed in Dubai. Photo: Miguna Miguna/Facebook.

Source: Facebook

I have severe pain on the left side of my chest, my left wrist, my right elbow and my feet. I believe that the despots must have injected me with noxious substances.

Anyway, I have made it crystal clear to the United Arab Emirates immigration authorities that I cannot and will not fly anywhere with them except to Kenya.

I have refused to leave the international section of the airport.

I will and must return to Kenya as a Kenyan citizen by birth as various courts have ordered.

READ ALSO: Images of Miguna in Dubai without his signature cap after second deportation

Embattled NRM general Miguna Miguna in a Dubai hospital where he was deported to on the night of Wednesday, March 28. Photo:Edwin Ochieng/TUKO.

The Honourable Justice Odunga issued an order on March 28 that convicted Matiangi, Kihalangwa and Boinett, among others, of criminal contempt and ordered that they appear before that court for sentencing today at 10:00am. Justice Odunga also ordered that I be released unconditionally and to attend court today at 10:00am.

I had planned to give a victim impact statement during Matiangis, Kihalangwas and Boinetts sentencing by Justice Odunga. I hope that I will be given a chance to do so soonest.

I am innocent man. My only crimes are that I swore Raila Odinga in as The Peoples President on January 30, 2018; I head the National Revolutionary Movement (NRM) in order to bring electoral justice, end bad governance and accountability in governance and we are determined to remove the despots from their illegitimate positions of power!

READ ALSO: Miguna admitted to a Dubai hospital after mistreatment by Kenyan authorities

As I return to Kenya either today or tomorrow, I strongly encourage all patriotic Kenyans to remain firm, focused and fearless in the face of an outlaw, authoritarian and illegitimate regime of Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto.

Do you have a hot story or scandal you would like us to publish, please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690 and Telegram: Tuko news.

Miguna Miguna's return: Chaos at Jomo Kenyatta Int. Airport (JKIA) - On Tuko TV

Source: Tuko Breaking News Latest
- ODM strongly condemned the latest move by the government to deport Miguna despite court orders

- The party termed the move to sedate and deport Miguna for a second time as an assault to constitution

- Edwin Sifuna called on Kenyans to arrest Matian'gi, Kihalangwa and Boinnet for disobeying court orders

The Orange Democratic Movement has called on Kenyans to aid in arresting Interior Cabinet Secretary (CS) Fred Matiang'i, Inspector General of Police Joseph Boinnet and former Director of Immigration Gordon Kihalangwa.

The ODM Secretary General Edwin Sifuna on Thursday, March 29, released a statement which thoroughly condemned the three government officials for openly defying court orders.

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ODM Secretary General Edwin Sifuna called on Kenyans to aid in arresting Matiangi and company. Photo: ODM/Facebook

READ ALSO: Migunas blow-by-blow account on how he ended up in Dubai against his wish

In the statement seen by TUKO.co.ke, ODM expressed its solidarity with embattled National Resistance Movement (NRM) general Miguna Miguna while urging Kenyans to aid in the arrest of the government officials who were fined by the High Court for defying orders.

All Kenyans of goodwill must come out to defend the Judiciary, the rule of law and court orders. To this end, ODM calls on Kenyans of goodwill, members of the bar, civil society and the church to come out at an appointed date next week to effect the court orders by arresting the convicted criminals, Fred Matiangi, George Kinoti, Gordon Kihalangwa and Joseph Boinnet and bring these fugitives before the law, part of the damning statement read.

Miguna was reportedly drugged before being bundled onto a Dubai-bound plane. Photo: Allan/Twitter

READ ALSO: Moses Kuria introduces never seen wife and kids on flight which flew Miguna to Dubai

Earlier reports by TUKO.co.ke revealed Miguna had been deported to Dubai on Wednesday, March 28, in direct contradiction of a court order earlier in the day.

High Court Judge George Odunga ruled that he would sentence the trio at 10 am on Thursday whether they appear in court or not as the showdown between the government and opposition politician Miguna got ugly.

Justice George Odunga ruled that he would sentence the trio on Thursday. Photo: Ayub/Twitter

As it was largely expected, Matiangi and the other accused officials did not make their way to court, and they were subsequently fined KSh 200,000.

READ ALSO: Miguna admitted to a Dubai hospital after mistreatment by Kenyan authorities

Miguna's legal team, led by Senior Counsel James Orengo, and other parties interested in the petition pleaded with the court to take action against the public officers who openly disobeyed court orders to send a strong message that the courts must be respected.

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Miguna Miguna's return: Chaos at Jomo Kenyatta Int. Airport (JKIA) | Tuko TV - Kenya News:

Source: Tuko
- Justice Odunga fined three government officials KSh 200,000 for contempt of court in Miguna's case

- The fines will be deducted from their April 2018 salaries and remitted to the court

- Ngunyi believes the punishment was far less severe and makes it easy for government to treat Miguna same way

- Many had thought the Judge would pass a harsh sentence like a jail term to Matiang'i and other state officer

Vocal political analyst Mutahi Ngunyi has taken a surprising stance on the recent sentencing of Interior Cabinet Secretary (CS), Fred Matiang'i, Inspector General of Police Joseph Boinnet and former Director of Immigration Gordon Kihalangwa.

Ngunyi, on Thursday, March 29, commended the High Court for only issuing a fine of KSh 200,000 to each of the three government officials for disregarding orders in the Miguna Miguna case.

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READ ALSO: Mke na watoto wa Moses Kuria waonekana kwenye ndege iliyomsafirisha Miguna Dubai

Justice Odunga has given government chance to deport Miguna again- Mutahi Ngunyi. Photo: Mutahi Ngunyi/Twitter

READ ALSO: Miguna admitted to a Dubai hospital after mistreatment by Kenyan authorities

According to the analyst, Justice George Odunga had resorted to judicial elegance through his lenient sentence.

This, he said, had diffused tension between the executive and the judiciary.

Justice Odunga fined Interior CS Fred Matiangi and his counterparts KSh 200,000 for contempt of court. Photo: Nation

READ ALSO: Migunas blow-by-blow account on how he ended up in Dubai against his wish

"Justice Odunga has shown judicial elegance. He could have sentenced Matiang'i and co. to death or jail. He did what was achievable. He diffused the tension between Harambee House (Office of the President) and the courts. This means Miguna can be deported a fourth and fifth time," he tweeted.

His remarks came even as Kenyans expressed outrage at the High Court for failing to severely punish the three government officials for skipping court despite being summoned.

As TUKO.co.ke reported earlier, Justice Odunga had on Wednesday been very firm in summoning the officials to court for failing to comply to court orders and release fiery politician Miguna.

Miguna's lawyers had successfully managed to secure his release from the JKIA on Tuesday, but the combative politician was still deported. Photo: Nation

READ ALSO: Inside cell where Miguna Miguna was held for over three days

While ruling on the case brought before him by Miguna's lawyers, Judge Odunga directed the respondents to appear in court at 2.30 pm on Wednesday without failure, but they still failed to show up.

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Fred Matiang'i, Joseph Boinnet and Gordon Kihalagwa slapped with Ksh.200,000 fine:

Source: Kenyan Breaking News
- Migunas combative conduct has come under sharp focus hours after being deported again

- The KNCHR chair said the self-declared NRM general pushed around some immigration officials at JKIA

- Migunas combative approach no doubt makes it tough for anyone to deal with him

- He was deported for the second time to Dubai on Wednesday, March 28

- The High Court slapped several government officials with KSh 200k fine for ignoring orders in Migunas case

Miguna Miguna was overly aggressive at the airport, hence authorities had to respond in the same manner, the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) has now revealed.

KNCHR Chair Kagwiria Mbogori on Thursday, March 29 shared some unknown details on the fiasco at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport which eventually led to Miguna being deported to Dubai.

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READ ALSO: Mke na watoto wa Moses Kuria waonekana kwenye ndege iliyomsafirisha Miguna Dubai

KNCHR Chair Kagwiria Mbogori on Thursday, March 29 revealed that Miguna was also aggressive at the airport. Photo: Nation

READ ALSO: Moses Kuria introduces never seen wife and kids on flight which flew Miguna to Dubai

According to Mbogori, Miguna was not entirely the victim as initially thought as he was allegedly involved in several scuffles with officials.

The KNCHR chair further alleged that the combative lawyer, adamantly declined to use his Canadian documents which would have given him access to the country as a tourist.

Miguna was dramatically deported to Dubai on Thursday, March 28. Photo: Njogu/twitter

Earlier reports had suggested that the self-declared NRM general's passport was sneaked out of JKIA by one of his supporters in a desperate attempt to stop entry-clearance officials from forcibly taking it.

The combative Miguna refussed to cooperate with immigration officials at the JKIA. Photo: Miguna/Twitter

READ ALSO: Raila Odinga attends sentencing of CS Matiang'i, IG Boinnet

Mbogori further alleged that Miguna turned aggressive when Immigration officials piled the pressure on him to follow required procedure.

He adamantly refused to use the papers he had travelled with. He was also a bit too boisterous at the immigration desk and as you have heard he did push around some immigration officers and forced his way onto the luggage area, against immigration regulations, she explained.

A number of videos have emerged since Monday, March 26 when Miguna jetted back to the country after a month since his first deportation.

Part of the footage captured a sensational moment where Miguna came up against a handful of immigration officials who were intent on deporting him to Dubai on Tuesday.

Miguna was too arrogant at JKIA - Kenya National Commission on Human Rights chair. Photo: twitter.com/NTV

READ ALSO: Inside cell where Miguna Miguna was held for over three days

Despite the unsuccessful first attempt, he was eventually bundled onto a plane on Thursday, after allegedly being sedated.

His defiant nature once again came to light in Dubai after another video emerged showing Miguna declining to comply with an officials instructions on grounds that he needed medical attention.

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Fred Matiang'i, Joseph Boinnet and Gordon Kihalagwa slapped with Ksh.200,000 fine:

Source: Tuko
- Abdikadir Mohamed said defying court orders was unfortunate

- He took issues with Raphael Tuju for saying no one can arrest Joseph Boinnet

- Court had found Boinnet and other state officials guilty of contempt of court

- The respondents refused to free Miguna Miguna or present him in court

Former President Uhuru Kenyatta's legal advisor Abdikadir Mohamed has criticised the Jubilee government for blatant disregard of court orders.

In a Twitter post seen by TUKO.co.ke on Friday, March 30, Mohamed who is also ex-Mandera Central MP appeared to have been angered by a statement made on live TV by Jubilee Party Secretary General Raphael Tuju who said no judge can order for arrest of Inspector General of Police Joseph Boinnet.

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READ ALSO: Mke na watoto wa Moses Kuria waonekana kwenye ndege iliyomsafirisha Miguna Dubai

Former MP for Mandera Central, Abdikadir Mohamed, has criticized the government for blatant disregard of court orders. Photo: TUKO.

READ ALSO: Court slaps Matiang'i, Boinnet with KSh 200,000 fine for defying orders related to Miguna case

Mohamed said disrespect of courts by senior government officials was detrimental to the Judiciary and other institutions.

"Just watched Tuju state on KTN News that the Judge in the Miguna case discovered he could "not arrest the IG"... a most unfortunate statement !! This saga and its litany of arrogant characters are doing untold damage to our institutions," Mohamed said.

READ ALSO: Court orders immediate release of Miguna Miguna

Tuju was commenting on a case before court in which High Court judge, George Odunga, was expected to sentence Interior CS Fred Matiang'i, Boinnet and former Director of Immigration Gordon Kihalangwa after the three senior state officials were found to be in contempt of court.

The respondents had failed to free lawyer Miguna Miguna and also refused to present him in court in open disregard of lawful court orders.

Matiang'i, Boinnet and Kihalangwa also failed to appear in court despite several orders directing them to personally appear in court over the Miguna detention saga.

READ ALSO: Judge orders CS Matiang'i to personally appear before him over Miguna detention

High Court Judge George Odunga on March 29. 2018, sentenced Interior CS Matiangi, IG Joseph Boinnet after they failed to appear in court. Photo: TUKO

Miguna's lawyers and other parties interested in the petition pleaded with the court to take action against the public officers who openly disobeyed court orders to send a strong message that the courts must be respected.

The lawyers also asked the court to have the state officials in contempt of court jailed for three years to serve as a warning that court orders must be complied with.

READ ALSO: I receive court orders everyday, if you pay attention to them you can't even work - Matiang'i

Odunga, however, argued he could not order for the arrest of Matiang'i, Boinnet and Kihalangwa because such a directive was most likely not going to be implemented owing to the positions that the said individuals hold in government.

The judge instead fined the said respondents KSh 200,000 each and directed that the amount be deducted from their salaries.

Fred Matiang'i, Joseph Boinnet, Gordon Kihalagwa slapped with Ksh.200,000 fine - On Tuko TV

Source: Tuko
- Miguna was re-deported on Wednesday night

- He claimed over 50 officers had wrestled him to the ground and injected him with an unknown substance

- Human rights lobby said over 100 officers were deployed to eject Miguna from the country

- KNCHR said the government violated Migunas rights by disobeying court orders

The government deployed over 100 police officers to make sure National Resistance Movement (NRM) general Miguna Miguna was re-deported, TUKO.co.ke can authoritatively report.

In a tough statement released by Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) in Nairobi on Thursday, March 29, it was revealed that over 100 officers had been tasked with kicking Miguna out of the country.

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READ ALSO: Mke na watoto wa Moses Kuria waonekana kwenye ndege iliyomsafirisha Miguna Dubai

In an earlier report by TUKO.co.ke, Miguna had claimed that over 50 officers in plain clothes broke into his toilet cell, wrestled him to the floor while others injected him with a substance which left him unconscious for many hours.

KNCHR Chair Kagwiria Mbogori on Thursday, March 29 revealed that Miguna was also aggressive at the airport. Photo: Nation

READ ALSO: I'll be back in Nairobi soon - Miguna Miguna

Miguna said he woke to find they had arrived in Dubai and that he was in great pain following the ordeal.

His claims were echoed by KNHCR which said it had information over 100 police officers had been instructed to ensure Miguna does not set foot on Kenyan soil.

On Friday, March 30, Miguna said he was still marooned in Dubai and was planning to get a ticket back to Kenya.

READ ALSO: I receive court orders everyday, if you pay attention to them you can't even work - Matiang'i

Some of the GSU officers deployed to JKIA to block Miguna Miguna from entering the country. Photo: The Star

He said that his body was badly swollen and was yet to get proper medication.

I am in great pain, stress and inconvenience. My left hand is still badly swollen. I believe that Jubilee thugs had inserted an IV in it to keep me unconscious for the entire duration of the flight between Nairobi and Dubai.

My left side is extremely painful. Im yet to get toxicology tests done on the chemicals the state thugs violently and illegally injected me with on Tuesday evening, he said in a statement seen by TUKO.co.ke.

READ ALSO: NTV's Larry Madowo bows out of Nation Media Group days after his boss' exit

Miguna was forced to board a flight to Dubai by Kenyan authorities who insisted he was not wanted in the country.

According to the Immigration department, Miguna renounced his citizenship and has never bothered to renew it making him a non-Kenyan.

Do you have a hot story or scandal you would like us to publish, please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690 and Telegram: Tuko news.

Fred Matiang'i, Joseph Boinnet and Gordon Kihalagwa slapped with Ksh.200,000 fine - on TUKO TV

Source: Tuko.co.ke
- The road safety body urged road users to plan ahead so as to avoid last minute rush

- Easter festivities experience heavy traffic on major highways

- Statistics indicate most road accidents increase during such festivities

Motorists and other road users were on Friday urged to plan ahead during the Easter season so as to avoid last minute rush that could lead to road crashes.

The National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) on Friday, March 30, called upon drivers to be very careful and be cognizant of other road users.

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In a statement seen by TUKO.co.ke, the transport regulator noted Easter festivities experience heavy traffic on major highways as Kenyans travel upcountry.

"The authority hereby urges motorists to be extra vigilant, patient and cognizant of other road users. Motorists are requested to plan ahead to avoid last minute rush," the statement read in part.

READ ALSO: Mke na watoto wa Moses Kuria waonekana kwenye ndege iliyomsafirisha Miguna Dubai

The transport regulator noted Easter festivities experienced heavy traffic on major highways as Kenyans travel upcountry.

READ ALSO: NTSA to vet all driving schools within 14 days

Additionally, the Christian festivity weekend comes at a time most parts of the country are experiencing heavy rains which present potentially dangerous road conditions.

Available statistics indicate most road accidents increase during such festivities especially at blackspots.

At least 392 lives were lost on roads during Christmas and Easter holidays in 2017.

On Tuesday, December 12, over 35 people died at at Sachangwan blackspot involving multiple vehicles along Nakuru- Eldoret highway.

READ ALSO: At least 32 people feared dead following grisly road accident at Sachangwan blackspot

Motorists and other road users are urged to plan ahead during the Easter season to avoid last minute rush that could lead to road crashes. Photo: NTSA/Facebook.

The accident reportedly occurred when a lorry being chased by the NTSA officers for failing to stop when flagged down lost control and hit a bus, resulting in a multiple accident.

The officers later denied the accusations.

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Kenyans accuse NTSA of incompetence and corruption and want it disbanded - on TUKO TV

Source: Kenya Breaking News Today
- Kenyans went bananas when Uhuru announced Mozambican citizens visiting Kenya will no longer require visas

- The deal was signed during Uhuru's official visit to Mozambique

- Kenya will open a consulate in Maputo in bid to have a full mission next financial year

- Kenyans questioned why foreigners would be allowed not to use visas while Miguna Miguna was languishing in deportation

Kenya has scrapped visa requirement for Mozambican nationals who wish to visit the country, Presidenbt Uhuru Kenyatta announced while on a State visit in Maputo.

The announcement came hot on the heels of Miguna Miguna's dramatic deportation after he was denied entry into the country as separately reported by TUKO.co.ke.

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READ ALSO: Mke na watoto wa Moses Kuria waonekana kwenye ndege iliyomsafirisha Miguna Dubai

Miguna was born in Nyando in the former Nyanza province but is also a Canadian citizen as he holds dual citizenship.

Uhuru Kenyatta shares a word with his Mozambican counterpart during a function in Maputo. Photo: PSCU

READ ALSO: Former State House man blasts government for belittling Judiciary

I urge our Mozambican brothers and sisters to take advantage of this opportunity to invest in Kenya and trade with their Kenyan brothers and sisters, Uhuru said in a statement seen by TUKO.co.ke.

However, Kenyans took to social media to lash out at Uhuru for declaring foreigners can get into the country without visas yet Miguna who is a Kenyan by birth, would not be allowed.

According to Uhuru, Mozambicans are free to travel to Kenya and do business without a visa.

READ ALSO: Miguna was too arrogant at JKIA - Kenya National Commission on Human Rights chair

Kenyans wondered why the government deported Miguna who is languishing in Dubai.

They were shocked that foreigners were valued more than them, basing on Miguna's ordeal.

Miguna was forcibly ejected from Kenya after he was drugged with an unknown substance that knocked him off for the entire flight from Nairobi to Dubai.

High Court Judge George Odunga convicted and fined Inspector General of Police Joseph Boinnet, Interior Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang'i and Immigration boss Gordon Kihalangwa KSh 200,000 for disobeying court orders in the Miguna saga.

READ ALSO: NASA MPs from Western meet William Ruto, commit to work with government

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Fred Matiang'i, Joseph Boinnet and Gordon Kihalagwa slapped with Ksh.200,000 fine - on TUKO TV

Source: Tuko
- The impostor introduced himself as a lawyer and even made application on the suspects behalf

- The court came to know about the suspect's deceit after inquiring from the Law Society of Kenya

- Beatrice Muthoni Nderitu was arrested for detaining and beating her house help for four years

A Nairobi woman indicted for torturing her house help has courted more controversy after it emerged she used a fake lawyer in court.

TUKO.co.ke had earlier established Beatrice Muthoni Nderitu was arrested for holding captive and cruelly mistreating her house help for years in her Paradise Kasirini home, Runda, Nairobi.

Muthoni was detained overnight at Muthaiga police station and presented to court on Thursday, March 29, to determine whether she could be freed on bond.

READ ALSO: I receive court orders everyday, if you pay attention to them you can't even work - Matiang'i

Beatrice Muthoni was accused of using a fake lawyer to represent her in court. Photo: Eric Wainaina

It was then that Kiambu Senior Principal Magistrate Stella Atambo was informed Daniel Muli Masika, who represented the defendant, was unqualified.

Muli reportedly introduced himself to court as a lawyer and went as far as making applications on the suspects behalf.

The court came to know about Mulis deception after inquiring from the Law Society of Kenya.

READ ALSO: Hottest DJ Pierra Makena unveils new hairstyle and she looks cute AF

Mercy Mwake revealed how her boss detained, mistreated and enslaved her for years without pay.

The Society denied having him in their register.

The impostor will soon be held accountable, said Atambo.

The accused was granted bond and the case set for hearing on Wednesday, May 23, amid claims the accused, through her husband, was already interfering with witnesses.

READ ALSO: Bahati's baby momma blasts singer for missing in action in daughter's life

As formerly reported by TUKO.co.ke, Muthoni was arrested after her former house help Mercy Mwake revealed how she detained and subjected her to beatings for four years.

Mwake disclosed how she was overworked for years without pay.

She exhibited scratch marks and other injuries inflicted on her by her cruel boss during fits of rage.

Do you have a hot story or scandal you would like us to publish, please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690 and Telegram: Tuko news.

Fred Matiang'i, Joseph Boinnet and Gordon Kihalagwa slapped with Ksh.200,000 fine - on TUKO TV

Source: Tuko
- Philip Ndolo was commandant of the Kenya Airport Police Unit (KAPU)

- He was in-charge when Miguna was held in a toilet and journalists attacked at JKIA

- Ndolo was accused of mishandling the security operations at the airport

- He will be replaced by Nyamira County police commander Titus Karuri Ndungu

A Kenya Airport Police Unit (KAPU) commandant has been relieved of his duties following the Miguna Miguna drama that stole headlines all week.

TUKO.co.ke has learnt that Phillip Ndolo was summoned to police headquarters on Tuesday, March 27, over claims that his squad mishandled Migunas situation after he jetted back to the country on Monday.

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READ ALSO: Uhuru azungumzia utendakazi wa mahakama huku kesi ya Miguna ikiendelea

One of the Airport Police Unit commandant has been demoted following the JKIA drama over the past week. Photo: Njoka/Twitter

READ ALSO: Miguna was too arrogant at JKIA - Kenya National Commission on Human Rights chair

Further reports indicate that Ndolo handed over command to Nyamira County police commander Titus Karuri Ndungu.

Ndolos position reportedly came under scrutiny after an outrage from the public on how authorities were handling the situation at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport since Miguna's infamous arrival on Monday, March 26.

READ ALSO: I'll be back in Nairobi soon - Miguna Miguna

Aside from Miguna, there were several other parties including journalists and lawyers who were also reportedly harassed by authorities.

READ ALSO: I receive court orders everyday, if you pay attention to them you can't even work - Matiang'i

A number of media crew sustained serious injuries while Migunas lawyers were on several occasions chased away as they attempted to serve immigration officials with court orders.

Police boss demoted and recalled after Miguna airport drama. Photo: Gedi/Instagram

READ ALSO: Miguna started his own troubles by disobeying immigration officials - Luo elders

In the hours leading to his deportation to Dubai, Migunas lawyers had rushed to the airport to issue a notice on the latest court order but they were reportedly greeted by tens of GSU officers who chased them away.

Miguna would then proceed to be deported after allegedly being sedated.

A number of journalists and lawyers were roughed up by GSU officials at the airport. Photo: Miguna/Facebook

Following the fiasco that has rocked the airport over the past few days, the outgoing commandant stands accused of allowing the situation to be handled by GSU officers who resorted to harsher means to contain the situation.

Immigration had initially attempted to justify authoritiess actions by revealing that Miguna had also exhibited aggression, but police are still being faulted for confining the NRM general in a toilet in one of the airport termini.

Do you have a hot story or scandal you would like us to publish, please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690 and Telegram: Tuko news.

Fred Matiang'i, Joseph Boinnet and Gordon Kihalagwa slapped with Ksh.200,000 fine:

Source: Tuko
- Joel Mwangi was found unresponsive by strangers in the morning

- Good Samaritans explained he was diabetic and had to be rushed to hospital

- Kenyans then turned to social media in pursuit for the man's family

Kenyans outdid themselves yet again on Friday, March 30 thanks to their fervent efforts to help a person in need.

Two unnamed ladies found a man very ill and unresponsive in a black Toyota Prado forcing them to rush him to hospital.

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READ ALSO:Runda woman who detained house help for 4 years in more trouble after being represented by fake lawyer

Joel was found unresponsive in a black Toyota Prado. Photo: Ndungu Nyoro/Facbook

According to reports by netizens, the only things found in the man's car were a school leaving certificate and his ID.

TUKO.co.ke understands the man, Joel Mwangi, was diabetic but had no phone on him making it difficult to contact his family.

He was then rushed to different hospitals which refused to admit him without any next of kin as is policy in many healthcare organisations.

READ ALSO:Kenyans urged to be careful on roads during Easter festivities to avoid accidents

A screengrab of Ndungu Nyoro's Facebook post

Luckily, Kiambu District Hospital agreed to admit him with doctors insisting his health was fast deteriorating.

READ ALSO:17 extremely crazy things Kenyans do and say when drunk

The good Samaritans felt stuck as they couldn't make any medical decisions for the victim.

Luckily, after the post was shared widely on different social media platforms, people who knew Joel contacted his family and assured Kenyans his kin had taken up the issue.

READ ALSO:Meet Kenya's moral police Ezekiel Mutua's gloriously pretty wife

The surest way of success is ensuring there's power in masses. This is just one of the most touching proofs.

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Source: Tuko
- The Kenyans are among 100 foreigners deported from the US for flaunting immigration rules

- A private charter plane carrying the Kenyans landed at JKIA on Friday

- Five Kenyans were deported from the US for engaging in crime and living in the country illegally in 2017

At least twenty Kenyans are the latest casualties of deportation from US over immigration issues.

TUKO.co.ke established US government deported more than 100 people, the rest being of Somali and Sudanese origin.

According to a statement by police and immigration officials, a private plane carrying the 114 individuals landed at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) on Friday morning, March 30.

READ ALSO: Uhuru azungumzia utendakazi wa mahakama huku kesi ya Miguna ikiendelea

A section of JKIA. Twenty Kenyans were among 100 immigrants who were deported from US. Photo Kass TV/ Facebook

READ ALSO: Applying for US visa? You will now be required to hand over your Facebook username

The deportees arrived aboard an Omni International Airlines, a private airline, which landed at JKIA shortly after 10 am and were received by police and immigration officials.

Kenyans were allowed to proceed to their homes, 60 Somalis remained in the plane before it took off to Mogadishu while the 24 South Sudanese nationals left in a Juba-bound airline.

The deportations didn't come as a surprise as they are part of ongoing operations in the USA targeting illegal immigrants.

READ ALSO: Kiambu Governor Waititu forced to flee from angry crowd after closing bars

This is the latest batch of immigrants to be deported from the US in two years under President Donald Trump.

Trump's administration has deported several Kenyans since taking power in November 2016 and being sworn into office on January 20, 2017.

As formerly reported by TUKO.co.ke five Kenyans who have been living in the country illegally or have been involved in different crimes were deported late last year.

READ ALSO: Conte declares Morata fit for Chelsea's next game against Tottenham

Earlier on, two Kenyans were deported from the US alongside 95 Somalis on Wednesday, January 25, 2017.

Trump's immigration policies have seen many immigrants deported from the US sparking protests from affected countries and on the US soil.

Do you have a hot story or scandal you would like us to publish, please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690 and Telegram:

Tuko news Fred Matiang'i, Joseph Boinnet and Gordon Kihalagwa slapped with Ksh.200,000 fine:

Source: Tuko
- A section of Kenyans expressed their dissatisfaction with Raila over Miguna's case

- However, they chose to rant minutes after he wished them a happy Easter holiday

- Instead of responding in kind, many told him off over his famous handshake with Uhuru

Kenyans on Friday, March 30, likened NASA leader Raila Odinga to Biblical Judas Iscariot for betraying NRM General Miguna Miguna.

This was after the opposition chief sent an Easter message wishing every Kenyan a fabulous festive season.

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READ ALSO: Uhuru azungumzia utendakazi wa mahakama huku kesi ya Miguna ikiendelea

Majority were unhappy with Raila's continued silence even as the government continues to harass Miguna who was arrested and re-deported to Dubai.

READ ALSO: Inside cell where Miguna Miguna was held for over three days

"Your silence on this does not reflect positively on you as the alternative leadership choice for Kenya. But then, maybe you no longer are," one Facebook user commented.

READ ALSO: If Raila is not sworn in on January 30 he should be ready for the consequences - Miguna Miguna

Majority were unhappy with Raila's continued silence even as the government continues to harass Miguna. Photo: ODM Party/Twitter.

READ ALSO: We will remove you from office - Miguna Miguna tells Uhuru

In unison, they would only accept his wishes if Miguna was brought back.

READ ALSO: Kenyans' angry reactions to government's continuos disobedience of courts

Complaints that some comments were being deleted also emerged.

Miguna's woes started on Tuesday, January 30, after he administered a controversial oath of office to Raila Odinga as the People's President.

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Miguna Miguna's return: Chaos at Jomo Kenyatta Int. Airport (JKIA) | Tuko TV

Source: Tuko
- Jackson ole Sapit said Miguna should have been allowed to appear in court

- The archbishop said defying court orders also set a bad example to Kenyans

- He added the drama that unfolded at JKIA portrayed Kenya in bad light

- Miguna was denied entry into the country when he returned from deportation

- The NRM leader refused to surrender his travel documents and was re-deported

Anglican Church of Kenya (ACK) leaders have told off the government over the re-deportation of lawyer Miguna Miguna and his continued detention.

Addressing a congregation at All Saints Cathedral Church in Nairobi on Friday, March 30, ACK leader, Archbishop Jackson ole Sapit, said the government should have released Miguna and let him appear in court as was directed.

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READ ALSO: Uhuru azungumzia utendakazi wa mahakama huku kesi ya Miguna ikiendelea

Anglican Church of Kenya (ACK) leader, Archbishop Jackson ole Sapit, took issues with the manner in which the government dealt with lawyer Miguna Miguna. Photo: Ebru TV Kenya.

Source: Facebook

READ ALSO: Miguna Miguna deported again

Sapit argued the courts were capable of handling Miguna's case. He criticised Interior CS, Fred Matiang'i for blocking the National Resistance Movement (NRM) leader from accessing justice.

The archbishop's sentiments were echoed by other clerics, among them Timothy Kiplagat of Eldoret Catholic Church, who also added disregard of court orders by senior state officials was setting a bad example for other Kenyans.

READ ALSO: I was drugged - Miguna speaks after being deported

The men of God rubbished claims by the Immigration officials that Miguna was not a Kenyan citizen. They cited Miguna's participation in Nairobi County gubernatorial elections in 2017 as an indication he was a citizen of Kenya.

The clerics also took issues with the drama that unfolded at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) between March 26 and March 28 saying it portrayed Kenya in bad light to the rest of the world.

READ ALSO: How Kenyans reacted to Miguna's re-deportation

National Resistance Movement (NRM) leader Miguna Miguna was allegedly dragged,drugged before he was deported to Dubai on the night of Wednesday, March 28. Photo: TUKO.

Miguna returned to Kenya on March 26 but was denied entry into the country and re-deported after he declined to surrender his Canadian passport and refused to fill citizenship application forms.

Though the besieged political activist had been granted freedom by courts, the government continued to detain him, insisting he was not a Kenyan.

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Fred Matiang'i, Joseph Boinnet, Gordon Kihalagwa slapped with Ksh.200,000 fine - On Tuko TV

Source: Tuko.co.ke
- Nazlin claimed the opposition leader scuttled his political support base

- She claimed the ODM leader was a beneficiary of KSh 40 billion Eurobond

- The former presidential candidate said Raila has lost his official position

A former presidential candidate has sensationally claimed NASA leader Raila Odinga is a Jubilee government employee and not the opposition chief.

Nazlin Umar said Raila lost his official political position after accepting to work with President Uhuru Kenyatta.

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READ ALSO: Uhuru azungumzia utendakazi wa mahakama huku kesi ya Miguna ikiendelea

In a terse post seen by TUKO.co.ke, the 2007 candidate also lashed out at the former premier for scuttling his opposition support base.

"Raila Odinga is no longer opposition leader, let alone opposition. He scuttled his opposition support base homeless, " she posted.

Nazlin Umar said since Raila lost his official political position after accepting to work with President Uhuru Kenyatta. Photo: Nazlin Umar/Facebook.

READ ALSO: Nazlin Umar opens up about her romantic relationship with Jubilee's Aden Duale

She further claimed the ODM leader was a beneficiary of KSh 40 billion reportedly stolen from the second Eurobond.

Nazlin was reacting to the politician's intention to sue Facebook Facebook and Cambridge Analytica (CA) over their involvement in 2017 presidential election.

He had accused CA of taking advantage of the dynamic internet connection in Kenya,to manipulate data.

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Fred Matiang'i, Joseph Boinnet and Gordon Kihalagwa slapped with Ksh.200,000 fine - on TUKO TV

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- Police launched search for an Akorino pastor who owns a vast bhang plantation

- Youth in Naivasha have been said to fall into the cracks thanks to the addictive drug

- Authorities nabbed the cleric's pants after public outcry

- The bhang confiscated was said to be worth millions

An Akorino pastor went into hiding on Friday, March 30, after police raided his extensive bhang plantation.

The pastor based in Naivasha, Nakuru county was reported to have escaped using a boat after word hit the street he was finally up for arrest.

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READ ALSO:NTV's Larry Madowo bows out of Nation Media Group days after his boss' exit

The pastor went into hiding after he got wind of the raid. Photo: Riftnews.co.ke

TUKO.co.ke understands his illegal plantation was valued at millions of shillings.

According to reports by K24, youth in the area had fallen victim to the addictive drug that later deteriorated their quality of life.

Bhang worth millions was seized in the raid. Photo: Riftnews.co.ke

Police were able to confiscate most if not all the illicit plants during a raid on the pastor's well maintained farm.

READ ALSO:South Africa's female athlete Caster Semenya and wife light up the internet with graduation photos

This came after a public outcry by the area residents concerning cases of youth in the area partaking in the drug.

Youth in the area had fallen victim to drug addiction. Photo: Riftnews.co.ke

County Deputy Commissioner, Richard Guoka who led the sting operation, stated efforts to capture the suspect were still underway.

READ ALSO:17 jaw-dropping photos of ex-TV girl, Doreen Gatwiri, who was clobbered by MP husband

"This war against drug dealers is still on and we will deal with all of them accordingly," he said.

The pastor's whereabouts are still unknown.

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Source: Tuko.co.ke
The severe blow the tourism sector took, the agricultural sector, and surviving the covid19 pandemic, were just some of the areas THA Chief Secretary Ancil Dennis focused on, on delivering his Republic day message, to the people of Tobago.
Canada supports Ukraine's sovereignty, but it will not provide lethal weapons for free.

This is stated in a response by the Canadian government to a report by the Standing Committee on National Defense, which was made available to Ukrinform.

"The Government of Canada is committed to supporting Ukraine in its efforts to maintain its sovereignty, security, and stability, but is not actively considering the provision of lethal assistance to Ukraine in the form of military-to-military donations of lethal weapons," the response reads.

At the same time, the document states that the "Government of Canada remains in contact with the Government of Ukraine on its requests for military equipment."

As reported, in the December 2017 report by Canada's Standing Committee on National Defense entitled "Canada's Support to Ukraine in Crisis and Armed Conflict," MPs urged the government to provide Ukraine with lethal weapons.

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Two Ukrainian soldiers were wounded, and another one was injured as a result of massive shelling of militants in eastern Ukraine.

Ukrainian Defense Ministry's Spokesman for ATO Dmytro Hutsuliak said this at a briefing, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"Unfortunately, due to massive enemy shelling, two Ukrainian servicemen were wounded. One soldier was injured. The servicemen were promptly delivered to medical institutions, they received the necessary medical assistance," Hutsuliak said.

The official representative noted that Russian-backed militants had launched 57 attacks on positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the anti-terrorist operation (ATO) area in Donbas over the past day.

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The Government of Ukraine must terminate the control of Russian oligarchs over the vast part of Ukrainian grid in the interests of national security.

Anders Aslund, a resident senior fellow in the Eurasia Center at the Atlantic Council and a leading specialist on economic policy in Russia, Ukraine, and East Europe, writes this in his article on the situation in Ukraines energy market.

Ukraine has a national security problem in its grid. It is unfathomable that eleven of Ukraines 24 regional electric distributors are to a large extent owned by a Russian group led by the Russian nationalist Aleksandr Babakov, who is sanctioned by all relevant countries for his role in Russias occupation and annexation of Crimea as vice speaker of the Russian State Duma, the American expert writes.

Babkov also figures in the Panama Papers, Aslund notes.

The Ukrainian government should seize his assets as a matter of national security. Here we worry about Russian cyberattacks on the Ukrainian grid, when a large part of it is owned, controlled, and operated by the enemy, Aslund highlights.

As noted, according to US and European sanctions, Babakovs properties should be subject to asset freezing.

The expert also points out that another major owner, Konstantin Grigorishin, by contrast, was a Russian citizen but he has received Ukrainian citizenship.

Aslund reminds that a draft law on electricity markets was adopted by the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine in June 2017, and although it entered into force immediately, a majority of its provisions have not been implemented.

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On Friday, March 30, lifecell and Vodafone mobile operators have launched 4G technology in Ukraine.

In particular, lifecell informs on Facebook about the launch of a new communication standard: "We were the first to launch 4.5 G (LTE Advanced Pro) in the largest number of regional centers of Ukraine." According to the company, to connect to the new standard, one needs only a SIM card and a smartphone that support 4G / LTE.

Vodafone informs on its Facebook page about the launch of 4G in Kyiv, Lviv and Kharkiv. The company promises to launch 4G in other cities on March 30: "Congratulations to Kyiv, Lviv, Kharkiv, Dnipro and Odesa on having 4G! This fever will spread to other cities of Ukraine already today!"

President Petro Poroshenko has already congratulated Ukrainians on the launch of 4G technology.

"Today, mobile operators launch 4G in more than twenty cities of Ukraine. I congratulate Ukrainians on the introduction of 4G!" President wrote on Twitter.

As reported, three Ukrainian mobile operators received the first 4G licenses at the end of January.

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The State Aviation Service of Ukraine has agreed on increase in the frequency of flights on the main routes to the Federal Republic of Germany and the Republic of Hungary.

"The State Aviation Service of Ukraine has agreed to increase the frequency of flights on the main routes to the Federal Republic of Germany. Now the maximum total number of flights on Kyiv-Berlin, Kyiv-Frankfurt, Kyiv-Munich routes reaches 52 flights a week," the press service of the State Aviation Service of Ukraine reports.

The frequency on regional routes remains unchanged: 7 flights per week for each side.

In addition, the agreements were reached with the Republic of Hungary to increase the frequency of passenger and cargo flights on Kyiv-Budapest route from 9 to 14 flights a week.

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It is necessary to provide UAH 10 billion in the state budget for the next year for repair and construction of new runways.

Ukrainian Infrastructure Minister Volodymyr Omelian said this at the field meeting in Ivano-Frankivsk "Development of transport infrastructure of Carpathian region of Ukraine as a key condition for its social and economic growth", an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"It would be good to provide UAH 10 billion in the budget of Ukraine for the next year for repair and construction of new runways. If we have this money, we will be able to build five quality airports every year, creating new infrastructure, new quality service for Ukrainians," Omelian said.

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The Government of Canada does not currently consider the possibility of lifting visa requirements for Ukrainian citizens.

This is stated in the government's response to the report of the standing committee on defence of the federal parliament, the text of which is available to Ukrinform.

"The Government of Canada is determined to welcome all the visitors in the country and facilitate their travel, but does not actively revise the visa requirements for Ukraine," the document states.

As noted, the Canadian government closely follows the situation in Ukraine, but consider that the country does not yet meet the visa-free requirements that Canada puts forward.

"These criteria include social and economic conditions, migration trends, observance of human rights, identification documents and passport regime, as well as the ability to control borders and security situation," the document explains.

As stressed, Canada has a visa regime with the majority of world countries.

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Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Olena Zerkul believes that the "big treaty" on friendship with Russia should not be extended after the expiration of its validity in April next year, however, there is no need for its immediate denunciation.

She wrote this on Facebook.

"My position, as in 2014, is that under the current conditions of systemic violation by the Russian Federation of virtually all essential provisions of this treaty, Ukraine cannot agree to extend its effect for the next ten years. The treaty should lose its validity from April 1, 2019," Zerkal said.

She noted that Russian aggression and its consequences had created another reality, which requires new approaches to the settlement of relations with Russia. But, as she noted, this is a matter for the future, since only after the elimination of violations by the Russian Federation will it be possible to return to the conversation about contractual relations between the two countries. "There are no conditions for such talks now," she said.

At the same time, according to Zerkal, there was no need to terminate this agreement in 2014, as its provisions were used in diplomatic and international legal work aimed at reinstating Ukraine's rights violated by Russia. But today the potential of the use of this treaty has been exhausted, and most legal disputes that have arisen between Ukraine and Russia are pending in international courts, she said.

"In a situation when the Russian Federation only pervades the violation of international law by organizing the election of its increasingly less legitimate president in the occupied Crimea, through disrespect for the foundations of law on the part of Russia's sovereign Gazprom, there is no sense in talking about the 'big treaty,'" she said.

The treaty on friendship, cooperation and partnership between Russia and Ukraine, called "the big treaty," was signed by the presidents of the two countries on May 31, 1997. The countries formally recognized each other's borders and consolidated the principles of strategic partnership and respect for territorial integrity. After the annexation of Crimea and the beginning of the conflict in Donbas there were repeated calls in Ukraine to terminate this treaty due to Russia's violation of the territorial integrity of Ukraine.

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The mission of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has sent nine trucks with humanitarian cargo to Donbas, the Ukrainian State Border Guard Service has reported.

"Nine trucks from the mission of the International Committee of the Red Cross came through the Novotroitske checkpoint and departed for the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine. Transport vehicles carried sand, construction materials, hygiene kits and medical products with a total weight of 118 tons for residents of Donetsk region," reads the report. op
The physical and psychological experience of Ukrainian Paralympic athletes is very important for the injured veterans of the anti-terrorist operation as it can return them desire to live and fight.

President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko said this at the meeting with the Ukrainian Paralympic team on Friday, March 30, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"Paralympic medals are wings that raise us up. These are our common victories for Ukrainian soldiers, for ATO veterans who look at you and their desire to live is revived... More than 13,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been wounded in this terrible war. They need medical care, attention of society, but most importantly, they need psychological help, and each of you plays an extremely important role for Ukraine," the Head of State said.

Each of 22 medals of Ukrainian Paralympic athletes is a pride for the whole of Ukraine, the President stressed.

"It is also an opportunity to draw the world's attention to our struggle for the future, the European and Euro-Atlantic prospects of Ukraine, for reforms, as well as our sovereignty and territorial integrity," the President emphasized.

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The government of Canada remains in contact with the government of Ukraine on its requests for military equipment.

Canada is not considering the possibility of providing Ukrainian troops with lethal weapons for free.

Read alsoReport: Trump didn't want to anger Putin after Ukraine weapons sale  media

"The Government of Canada is committed to supporting Ukraine in its efforts to maintain its sovereignty, security, and stability, but is not actively considering the provision of lethal assistance to Ukraine in the form of military-to-military donations of lethal weapons," according to the response of the government of Canada to the report of the Standing Committee on National Defence, titled "Canada's Support to Ukraine in Crisis and Armed Conflict."

It is also reported the government of Canada remains in contact with the government of Ukraine on its requests for military equipment.

As UNIAN reported earlier, in December 2017, the government of Canada determined that Ukraine was an appropriate destination for its inclusion on the Automatic Firearms Country Control List (AFCCL), including further to the signature of a Defence Cooperation Arrangement and consultation with the Minister of National Defence.
Visa lifts are undertaken when it is assessed that the benefits to Canadians and Canadian interests outweigh risks.

The government of Canada has no plans to review Ukraine's visa requirement at this time, as Ukraine does not meet Canada's criteria for a visa exemption.

"The Government of Canada is committed to welcoming all genuine visitors and facilitating travel, but is not actively considering a review of Ukraine's visa requirement at this time," according to the response of the government of Canada to the report of the Standing Committee on National Defence, titled "Canada's Support to Ukraine in Crisis and Armed Conflict."

A visa requirement is the norm for citizens from most countries, it said.

Read alsoCanada not to arm Ukraine for free  report

It is also reported "the visa requirement is Canada's most effective tool in both detecting and deterring irregular migration to Canada."

"Decisions to lift or impose visa requirements are made on a case-by-case basis and premised on a rigorous whole-of-government analysis of a country against the comprehensive criteria outlined in Canada's Visa Policy Framework," the report says.

"These criteria include a country's socio-economic conditions, migration trends, human rights record, identity document and passport regime, border management capabilities and security situation. Visa lifts are undertaken when it is assessed that the benefits to Canadians and Canadian interests outweigh risks," the government of Canada said.

It is reported Canada does not make visa policy decisions based on reciprocity, nor provides visa exemptions to specific classes of visitors, such as holders of diplomatic passports or business travelers.

At the same time, the government of Canada continues to carefully monitor conditions in Ukraine.
Turkey's parliament speaker said that Ukraine is Turkeys friend and strategic partner

Cooperation between Turkey and Ukraine is vital for security in both Europe and the Middle East, Ukraines Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said during his Turkey visit on Friday.

"Without cooperation between Turkey and Ukraine, security in Europe and the Middle East cannot be ensured," Klimkin said at a meeting with Turkish Parliament Speaker Ismail Kahraman, according to Anadolu news agency.

The foreign minister said that Turkey and Ukraine have always thought of each others security, and thanked Ankara for its stance against Russias illegal annexation of Crimea.

Ukraine has been wracked by conflict in its eastern regions since March 2014, following Russias annexation of Crimea after an illegal independence vote.

Read alsoKlimkin, Stoltenberg discuss further steps in Ukraine-NATO interactionWarring parties signed a cease-fire in February 2015, but the fighting continued, claiming more than 10,000 lives, according to the UN.

The UN General Assembly voted to proclaim the Russian annexation illegal. Along with many UN countries, the U.S., the EU and Turkey also do not recognize Crimea as Russian territory.

Kahraman said that Ukraine is Turkeys friend and strategic partner.

"We have historical ties with each other," he said.
The Qualification and Disciplinary Commission of Public Prosecutors has received disciplinary complaints with the signatures of the prosecutor general and the NABU chief.

Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko has submitted a motion to the Qualification and Disciplinary Commission of Public Prosecutors to sack Chief of the Specialized Anti-corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO) Nazar Kholodnytsky.

Read alsoUkraine's chief anti-corruption prosecutor on resignation rumors: "They wish!"

"In the framework of criminal proceedings, which are investigated by a joint group of the Prosecutor General's Office and the National Anti-corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) on the facts obtained during the investigation, which are declassified as required, the Qualification and Disciplinary Commission of Public Prosecutors has received disciplinary complaints with the signatures of the prosecutor general and the NABU chief on disciplinary offenses committed by Kholodnytsky," Lutsenko wrote on Facebook on Friday, March 30.

"In my motion, I ask the commission to consider the dismissal of Nazar Kholodnytsky as Deputy Prosecutor General, SAPO's head," he said.

As UNIAN reported earlier, Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko confirmed investigative actions against SAPO Chief Kholodnytsky.
Secret records made in Kholodnytsky's office also suggest pressure has been inflicted on certain officials to "force them into taking certain decisions."

Director of the National Anti-corruption Bureau of Ukraine Artem Sytnyk said that once the initial reports were confirmed about the head of the Specialized Anti-corruption Prosecutor's Office Nazar Kholodnytsky obstructing investigation of a number of criminal cases, a probe has been launched against him.

NABU operatives periodically received information on strange actions by the SAPO head and a number of his subordinates, Sytnyk said in an interview with ZN.ua.

"The line he had chosen has long had a negative impact on the effectiveness of our investigative efforts and further judicial prospects of a number of cases. We periodically received information about some strange and inexplicable actions by the SAPO head and individual prosecutors. The more actively we investigated, the more alarming signals were received. Detectives speculated that the probes were hindered deliberately," Sytnyk said.

He noted that for a long time NABU had no evidence exposing Kholodnytsky, but in one of the cases they managed to obtain "specific information that confirmed our worst suspicions."

"In the case of embezzlement in the Odesa City Hall we got the information and saw that it would be unacceptable to leave things as they were," Sytnyk said.

Read alsoLutsenko asks Prosecutors Qualification Commission to sack top anti-graft prosecutorCalling out a number of other cases affected, Sytnyk said: "It's hard to imagine what we would've heard had the bug been planted four months ago, not just four weeks."

Sytnyk noted that the records secretly made in Kholodnytsky's office prove the SAPO chief "has been tipping off suspects about the upcoming searches." He added that pressure had apparently been inflicted on certain officials to force them into taking certain decisions.

"At some point, our colleagues from the General Prosecutor's Office suggested that we join efforts to obtain evidence. We agreed, realizing that in this case such cooperation is necessary and justified. If we turned a blind eye to the facts we'd been aware of, we would become complicit," he added.

As UNIAN reported earlier, in March, the media reported that Kholodnytsky was mulling resignation after the Easter holidays. MP Yehor Sobolev said that Kholodnitsky would be "pushed" to make such decision, calling such media reports a form of pressure on the SAPO head.

Read alsoOffice of Ukraine's top anti-graft prosecutor bugged  mediaLater came the reports that Kholodnytsky had found a bug at his office, claiming he did not knew who had planted it.

On March 30, Prosecutor General of Ukraine Yuriy Lutsenko appealed to the Prosecutors Qualification Commission of Prosecutors to consider removing Nazar Kholodnytsky from his post over disciplinary misconduct.
The Foreign Minister stressed that Ukraine retains capacity to protect Ukrainians staying in the Russian Federation.

Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Pavlo Klimkin called nonsense Russia's latest decision to expel Ukrainian diplomats in a "mirror act" after Ukraine kicked out Russian diplomats in an international response to a poisoning of ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia on British soil.

"Symmetrical response of Russia with the expulsion of Ukrainian diplomats is a nonsense. We did not try to poison anyone in Salisbury. Russia did it and got the response of the entire civilized world," Klimkin wrote on Twitter.

As UNIAN reported earlier, today, on March 30, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced the expulsion of a number of diplomats from 23 countries, including Ukraine, after these countries followed UK's suit and kicked out Russian diplomats who had allegedly been doing spy work behind a diplomatic front.

The joint international effort against Russia came as a response to the poisoning of former Russian intelligence agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Britain.
Covenant of Mayors  Demonstration Projects (CoM-DeP) are part of the EU4Energy initiative.

Representatives of Ukrainian towns that are part of the EU-supported Covenant of Mayors Demonstration Projects program and members of the Association of Energy Efficient Towns of Ukraine have visited Poland on a study tour.

Read alsoUkraine, the Netherlands launch cooperation in renewable energy

They visited four Polish towns who have implemented energy efficient measures, including the thermal insulation of public buildings, and switched to renewable energy. They also learned about the towns' experiences of implementing environmentally friendly public transportation systems, as well as attracting funds for energy efficient projects for municipalities. The study visit was organized as part of the "Polish-Norwegian aid for improving energy efficiency in Ukraine" project, EU Neighbours reports.

Covenant of Mayors  Demonstration Projects (CoM-DeP) are part of the EU4Energy initiative. EU4Energy covers all EU support to improve energy supply, security and connectivity, as well as to promote energy efficiency and the use of renewables in the Eastern Partner countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine). It does this by financing projects and programs that help to reform energy markets and to reduce national energy dependence and consumption. Over the long term, this makes energy supply more reliable, transparent and affordable, thus reducing energy poverty and energy bills for both citizens and the private sector.
The comprehensive, sustainable and unlimited ceasefire was agreed from March 30, 2018.

Russia's hybrid military forces mounted 57 attacks on Ukrainian army positions in Donbas in the past 24 hours, with three Ukrainian soldiers reported as wounded in action (WIA).

"In the Donetsk sector, the militants used 82mm mortars, grenade launchers, heavy machine guns and cannons of infantry fighting vehicles against the Ukrainian fortified positions near the village of Pavlopil. The Ukrainian troops deployed in the village of Shyrokyne came under fire from 82mm mortars, while grenade launchers of various types and small arms were used by the occupiers near the town of Avdiyivka, and the villages of Vodiane, Hnutove, Pisky, Opytne, Novotroyitske, Lebedynske and Pyshchevyk," the press center of the headquarters of Ukraine's military operations reported on Facebook on Friday morning.

Read alsoUkraine army ready for Easter ceasefire

"The defenders of the town of Maryinka, and the villages of Talakivka, Kamianka and Verkhniotoretske were attacked with the use of heavy machine guns, while the Ukrainian troops in the villages of Hnutove, Talakivka and Pyshchevyk came under fire from cannons of infantry fighting vehicles. In addition, the Russian occupation forces fired small arms at our positions near Butivka coal mine, and the villages of Shyrokyne and Pavlopil An anti-tank guided missile was launched near the village of Novotroyitske," the report says.

In the Luhansk sector, the enemy opened fire from grenade launchers and small arms to attack the Ukrainian fortified positions near the village of Artemove, while heavy machine guns were used near the village of Luhanske.

As UNIAN reported earlier, the Trilateral Contact Group for the settlement of the situation in Donbas on March 26 agreed on a comprehensive, sustainable and unlimited ceasefire from March 30, 2018.

The Armed Forces of Ukraine confirmed they were ready to establish and observe the ceasefire along the entire contact line in Donbas during the Easter holidays, starting from March 30, 2018 at 00:01 Kyiv time.
No Ukrainian soldiers were injured in enemy shelling.

The Russian occupation forces have already twice violated the so-called "Easter ceasefire" in Donbas, which came into force at 00:01 Kyiv time on March 30, 2018.

Read alsoUkraine reports 57 attacks in Donbas, 3 WIA's in last day before Easter ceasefire

"Since the beginning of the day, the occupiers have twice violated the ceasefire, which came into force at midnight today. In the Donetsk sector, the enemy fired small arms at our positions near the town of Avdiyivka and the village of Opytne," spokesman for the headquarters of Ukraine's military operations Oleh Sushynskiy told 112 Ukraine TV channel on March 30, 2018.

There were no casualties during that period, he added.

As UNIAN reported earlier, the Trilateral Contact Group for the settlement of the situation in Donbas on March 26 agreed on a comprehensive, sustainable and unlimited ceasefire from March 30, 2018.
Russia denies it has sent its soldiers to fight alongside the separatists, despite what Kyiv and NATO say is clear evidence that it has done so.

A Moscow court has sentenced a Russian man in absentia after convicting him of fighting against Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Roman Zheleznov, who is currently in Ukraine, was found guilty of mercenary activity and sentenced to four years in prison in absentia at a hearing on March 29, RFE/RL wrote.

Prosecutors said that Zheleznov had joined the pro-Kyiv Azov Battalion, which has fought against the separatists in the 4-year-old war in Ukraine's Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

Read also"Easter ceasefire" in Donbas fails on its first day with attacks on Ukrainian positions

More than 10,300 people have been killed in the conflict since April 2014.

Russia denies it has sent its soldiers to fight alongside the separatists, despite what Kyiv and NATO say is clear evidence that it has done so.

There are no known cases in which Russia has pressed mercenary-activity charges against anyone for joining the separatists, but it has prosecuted citizens accused of fighting on Kyiv's side.

In June 2017, a court in the city of Samara sentenced a local man, Artyom Shirobokov, to five years in prison in absentia after convicting him of joining the Azov Battalion.
Rex Tillerson, Trump's outgoing secretary of state, led the effort to convince Trump to approve the new arms for Ukraine, officials said.

U.S. President Donald Trump reportedly told his top national security aides to not publicly tout a new U.S. lethal defensive weapons sale to Ukraine, for fear of angering Russian President Vladimir Putin.

It took "months" for those aides to convince the president to sign off on the sale to Ukraine's military, which is fighting Russian-backed separatists, The Daily Beast reported with reference to NBC News.

Read alsoU.S. State Department makes determination approving Javelin missile sale to Ukraine

"He doesn't want us to bring it up," a White House official told NBC News. "It is not something he wants to talk about."

According to NBC News, Rex Tillerson, Trump's outgoing secretary of state, led the effort to convince Trump to approve the new arms for Ukraine, officials said. The plan, which Russia opposed, included the sale of U.S.-made Javelin anti-tank missiles that Kiev has for years requested from Washington. President Barack Obama had repeatedly refused to approve Ukraine's request out of concern it would escalate U.S. tensions with Russia.

As the policy sat on his desk awaiting his signature, the president expressed concern that it would escalate tensions with Russia and lead to a broader conflict, officials said. They said he also saw Ukraine as a problem for Europe and questioned why he should have to do something about it. And he insisted Ukraine purchase the arms from the U.S., not receive them for free, officials said, before signing off on the policy in December.

"Tillerson just wore him down," a White House official said.

The network also reported that Trump told the Russian president during a phone call last week: "If you want to have an arms race we can do that, but I'll win."
Nauert recalled 28 countries had joined the United States in the decision to expel 153 Russian diplomats.

Spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State Heather Nauert has said there is no justification for the Russian response in expelling diplomats from the country.

Read alsoRussia closing down U.S. consulate in St Petersburg, expels 60 diplomats

"I want to remind you that there is no justification for the Russian response. Our actions were motivated purely by the attack on the United Kingdom, the attack on a British citizen and his daughter. Remember, this is a first time that a weapons-grade nerve agent, Novichok, has been used outside of war on allied soil. We have not taken these steps lightly; we've taken these steps in concert with our allies across the world," Nauert said at a briefing in Washington, D.C., on March 29, 2018.

Nauert recalled 28 nations had joined the United States in the decision to expel 153 Russian diplomats from different countries.

"As I understand it, Russia plans to take the same unjustified actions against 28 other countries, countries that stood in solidarity with the UK. Russia is further isolating itself following the brazen chemical attack. We are still reviewing the details of the Russian action, but let me say, again, that we reserve the right further to any Russian retaliation against the United States," she said.
Britains Metropolitan Police denied they had conducted any search of an Airbus.

Russia's Foreign Ministry says British authorities have boarded and searched a plane belonging to Aeroflot at Londons Heathrow Airport as tensions between the two countries rise.

Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said no reason for the alleged search of an Aeroflot Airbus A321 passenger liner on March 30 was given and that it was a "provocation," according to RFE/RL.

Britains Metropolitan Police denied they had conducted any search of an Airbus at Heathrow.

"We are aware of a story circulating on social media. Please be advised that Metropolitan Police are not conducting a search of an Airbus inbound from Moscow at Heathrow," the police said in a tweet.

Read alsoBritain shares "unprecedented" Skripal intelligence with alliesThe reports come the same day Russia served expulsion notices to dozens of staff from Western embassies in a diplomatic tit-for-tat ignited by the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia.

The Skripals were found slumped on a bench in the southern English city of Salisbury on March 4.

Moscow has denied it was behind the attack and has called on Britain to prove it did not itself poison Skripal, 66, and his 33-year-old daughter.

Read alsoSuitcase spy poisoning plot: nerve agent 'was planted in luggage of Sergei Skripal's daughter'  mediaBoth Skripals have been hospitalized since the attack in critical condition, but British health officials said on March 29 that Yulia Skripal was "improving rapidly" and was no longer in critical condition.
PIIA-Iran Iran, Pakistan likely to emerge strong economic partners: Ex-FM of Iran Head of Strategic Council of Foreign Relations and former Iranian Foreign Minister Dr. Kamal Kharrazi on Friday said the people of Iran and of Pakistan have deep-rooted religious and cultural bonds.

KARACHI, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 30th Mar, 2018 ) :PIIA-Iran Iran, Pakistan likely to emerge strong economic partners: Ex-FM of Iran Head of Strategic Council of Foreign Relations and former Iranian Foreign Minister Dr.

Kamal Kharrazi on Friday said the people of Iran and of Pakistan have deep-rooted religious and cultural bonds. With the improvement in diplomatic and political ties they will come closer and bilateral trade and economic cooperation will increase in the benefit of both the sides.

He was speaking at a roundtable discussion on bilateral, regional and international issues with members of the Pakistan Institute of International Affairs (PIIA) here. Besides a delegation of Iranian scholars and the Iranian Consul General in Karachi, it was participated by senior media persons, writers and intellectual.

He noted that there were ups and downs in the relations at the government level, but through on-going dialogue on different issues including trade and investment, these two neighbourly Muslim nations would come closer to each other and would emerge as strong supporters on many fronts.

'Free Trade Agreement (FTA) is under negotiations, if successful, there will come big change,' he remarked adding that Iranians and Pakistanis had great respect and love for each other. These two nations could not be separated.

There was a big economic potential on the both sides. Bilateral trade and economic cooperation could grow a lot, he said. To a question, he said that the bilateral trade volume was low for certain reasons.

Absence of banking channel between the two countries was one of the main hindrances. Pakistani banks were hesitant to start their operations in Iran due to foreign political pressure, he maintained.

Referring to the Iran-Pakistan Gas Pipeline project, he said that Iran had laid the pipeline up to few kilometers back to its border with Pakistan at the cost of billions of Dollars. Iran is waiting for Pakistan's action.

He recalled that Iran and Pakistan had been extending support and assistance to each other in difficult times. Dr. Kamal said that he had visited Pakistan's main cities forty years ago (in December 1978) to share the message of Iran's revolutionary leader Imam Khumeni.

Iran's former minister for foreign affairs strongly rejected that his country had made interventions in other countries and said Iran worked only for Muslims unity and quoted Imam Khumeni's fatwa, ' Any one who tries to divide Muslims into Shia and Sunni is kafir.' He cited example of Iran's support to Palestinians who are Sunnis and to Syria where majority of the population was Muslims.

Iran also supported Iraqi government against Daish. However, he made it clear that Iran would not hesitate to support any country who opposed Israel. The main focus of his country's foreign policy was to oppose and resist Israil, the United States and European Union's interventions, he said.

He said despite economic pressure due to the USA sanctions, the people of Iran were bold enough to defend their national independence and sovereignty. 'Iranian people know, how to save their identity and national interests,' he said adding that Iran was ready to have an alternatve option.

Although Iran had remained under sanctions for almost forty years, yet her economy was sound, rather progressing. Iran was doing well in science and technology and many other sectors, he said. '$ 105 billion goods, we produce every year,' he informed.

To a narration that Iran was getting very close to India who had also increased its role in expansion of Chabahar sea-port, Dr. Kamal Kharrazi said that Iran had as good relations with India as with Pakistan and other countries especially in the region.

'We had invited Pakistan, China and other counties to invest in Chabahar. It was open venue for foreign investment. There was Western corridor and that Gwader could be interlinked to Chahbahar port as complementary to each other,' he said.

Iran had always been supporting Kashmir struggle. Iran had never complained that Pakistan had good relations with the USA and Saudi Arabia, he said. When his attention was drawn to Afghanistan situation, he said that peaceful Afghanistan was very important for the entire region including Iran and Pakistan; even for Central Asian states.

Earlier, PIIA's Chairperson Dr. Masooma Hassan briefed the guest about the institute history and research on different issues of national and international importance.
Grantees of Karandaaz Pakistan FinTech Disrupt Challenge showcased innovative technology-based solutions for financial sector at an event held here Friday.

KARACHI, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 30th Mar, 2018 ) :Grantees of Karandaaz Pakistan FinTech Disrupt Challenge showcased innovative technology-based solutions for financial sector at an event held here Friday.

The Karandaaz Pakistan has been successfully running its annual FinTech Disrupt Challenge since 2016 and provided grants to some of the most innovative ideas for development, implementation, and scaling up of financial technology solutions, said organizers.

With funding from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Primary thrust of the challenge is to work with technology driven start-ups to introduce enhancements and innovations in financial products and services such as payments, credit, savings, and insurance; infrastructure; and process support.

Each cycle of the annual challenge was said to be launched with a call to action, inviting applicants to submit their product for evaluation, short-listed teams presenting to a panel of judges, and the best ideas winning a grants of up to USD 100,000.

The successful grantees of the previous rounds shared their models, progress, and lessons learned at the event. Industry practitioners, bankers, entrepreneurs, media personnel and others participated in the event and witnessed the emerging innovators present their products and solutions.

The participating FinTechs included leading Names such as Ricult Pakistan, PaySys, PublishEx, CreditFix, Agri-Gate, Invoice Wakalah, and UniKrew Solutions.

The event provided an opportunity to the FinTechs to explore avenues for possible partnerships with financial institutions, telcos and private sector investors.

The current round of the FinTech Disrupt Challenge is focusing on innovative solutions to address the bottleneck lack of interoperability and use cases in Pakistan's financial space. "Innovation in digital and financial technology is creating endless possibilities for accelerating financial inclusion in Pakistan," said Ali Sarfraz, CEO Karandaaz Pakistan on the occasion.

He reminded that innovation and technology when combined, can bring essential yet affordable financial services within the reach of people, including those from the underserved segment of the country.

Ali Sarfaraz also congratulated the grantees for being able to make their mark through brilliant imagination and hard work. "Karandaaz Pakistan will ensure that this initiative continues to transform Pakistan's financial landscape," he said.

Karandaaz Pakistan, is promoting financial inclusion for individuals by employing technology enabled digital solutions and access to finance for micro, small and medium sized businesses through a commercially directed investment platform.

The company has financial and institutional support from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the United Kingdom Department for International Development (DFID).
(@FahadShabbir)

A citrus research centre has been established at College of Agriculture, the University of Sargodha, in collaboration with South China Agricultural University, China.

SARGODHA, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 30th Mar, 2018 ) ::A citrus research centre has been established at College of Agriculture, the University of Sargodha, in collaboration with South China Agricultural University, China.

The centre was inaugurated by Dr Ishtiaq Ahmed, the Vice Chancellor University of Sargodha (UoS), and Xiaoyang CHEN, the President South China Agricultural University, while dean of Agriculture Dr Muhammad Afzal, Principal Agriculture College Dr Muhammad Abu Bakar and other faculty members were also present.

Xiaoyang CHEN was heading a delegation comprising Xiongwu SU, Director Human Resource Department SCAU, Yongliang ZHANG, Director, Academic Affairs Office SCAU, Xinxiang PENG, Executive Vice Dean, Graduate school, SCAU and Chuxiong ZHUANG, Director Development & Planning Department SCAU.

A laboratory would also be established under the Citrus Research Centre where research activities would be conducted to explore ways for reducing spread of diseases caused by citrus. On this occasion, the Chinese delegation visited various departments of the agriculture college and appreciated the research activities of the college in the field of agriculture.

Xiaoyang CHEN assured full support of Chinese scientists and said the SCAU would extend its full cooperation to the UoS for better research.
Dr Salman Bin Naeem, Assistant Professor, Department of Library and Information Science has presented a research paper on "Proposed healthcare information outreach programme in primary and secondary healthcare of Punjab, Pakistan" co-authored by Prof. Dr Rubina Bhatti in the "International Conference on Information Management and Processing" held in Imperial College, London.

BAHAWALPUR, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 30th Mar, 2018 ) :Dr Salman Bin Naeem, Assistant Professor, Department of library and Information Science has presented a research paper on "Proposed healthcare information outreach programme in Primary and secondary healthcare of Punjab, Pakistan" co-authored by Prof.

Dr Rubina Bhatti in the "International Conference on Information Management and Processing" held in Imperial College, London. According to the spokesman of the university Shahzad Ahmad, it is worth mentioning that Prof.

Dr Rubina Bhatti and Dr Salman Bin Naeem were included as Members of Technical Committee in the International Conference on Information Management and Processing.

This conference brought together researchers, academicians, information professionals, computer scientist, ICT experts, knowledge managers and other professionals around the world to share their knowledge and experience in the field of information management and processing.

Punjab Higher education Commission awarded a travel grant to Dr Salman Bin Naeem to attend and present the research paper.
Over the course of this year, Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) and World Bank Pakistan will be partnering on the Pakistan@100 Initiative, a World Bank-led analytical study on Pakistans long term development vision and path as it turns 100 in 2047

Lahore, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 30th Mar, 2018 ) Over the course of this year, Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) and World Bank Pakistan will be partnering on the Pakistan@100 Initiative, a World Bank-led analytical study on Pakistans long term development vision and path as it turns 100 in 2047.

This week, LUMS and World Bank Pakistan held the Pakistan@100 Conference to discuss challenges and solutions across a variety of areas. At the conference, experts from think tanks, government, universities, the private sector, and the World Bank gathered at LUMS to debate on topics such as environmental sustainability, inclusion, human development, and trade and connectivity.

Pro Chancellor LUMS, Syed Babar Ali, Vice Chancellor LUMS, Prof. Dr. S. Sohail H. Naqvi and World Bank Country Director for Pakistan, Illango Patchamuthu, who were present at the occasion to begin the conference spent the two days engaging with speakers and students alike.

While commenting on the occasion Dr. Naqvi said, Pakistan is a country that we care for deeply. Each day we think about what we can do for this great country and Pakistan@ 100 is an attempt to remove ourselves from the constraints of space and time and to think further, to think longer, to think thirty years down the road, to 2047.

All the nations that have developed in the world have thought deeply and this is our attempt to think deeply, to think of the core issues of poverty, malnutrition, illiteracy and governance and all the other problems that are being faced by our country.

Additionally, we need to think how can we go ahead and join the ranks of developed countries in the world by 2047. In the next 30 years we can actually transform Pakistan and this is the first step. In the coming summer, LUMS will be hosting four pre-doctoral fellows who will be conducting research relevant to the Pakistan@100 Initiative.

These pre-doctoral fellows are young scholars with demonstrated interest and expertise in Pakistans growth and development. In the fall of this year, LUMS will then host several more policy debates with the support of World Bank Pakistan.
Nearly 610,000 Chinese students attended schools and colleges overseas in 2017, an increase of 11.7 percent, said the Ministry of Education Friday, Xinhua reported.

BEIJING, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 30th Mar, 2018 ) ::Nearly 610,000 Chinese students attended schools and colleges overseas in 2017, an increase of 11.7 percent, said the Ministry of education Friday, Xinhua reported.

China remains the world's largest supplier of international students, the ministry said in a press release. A majority of the students went to European and North American countries. Countries included in the Belt and Road Initiative (B&R) became new destinations, with student numbers rising by 15.7 percent to 66,000 in 2017, the statement said.

At the same time, about 480,000 graduates returned to China, up 11.

2 percent, including nearly 230,000 with master's degrees or higher. Since 1978, about 5.2 million Chinese have studied abroad and among those who graduated about 83.7 percent returned to China.

Meanwhile, a total of 490,000 foreigners from 204 countries and regions studied in China in 2017, the largest amount in Asia. Students from the Republic of Korea, Thailand and Pakistan were the most numerous, while the United States ranked fourth.

Students from B&R countries accounted for 64.9 percent of the total. About 59,000 international students in China were supported by Chinese government scholarships.
(@rukhshanmir)

Secretary Primary & Secondary Health (P&SH) Punjab Ali Jan Khan has said that Chief Minister Punjab has approved the service structure of Lady Health Supervisors (LHSs) and Lady Health Workers (LHWs).

LAHORE, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 30th Mar, 2018 ) :Secretary Primary & Secondary Health (P&SH) Punjab Ali Jan Khan has said that Chief Minister Punjab has approved the service structure of Lady Health Supervisors (LHSs) and Lady Health Workers (LHWs).

He said that Punjab is the first province, which approved SNE for 50,000 LHWs. He said that protesters create problems for citizens which is really condemnable. He said the department has the right to take disciplinary action against those who will not join their duties.

He expressed these views while addressing a press conference at 90 Shahra-e-Quaid e Azam, here on Friday. Director General Health Services Dr. Munir Ahmed, Project Director IRMNCH Dr. Mukhtar Hussain Syed, Project Director HISDU Rashid Arshad and Deputy Secretary Dr.

Yadullah were also Present there. The secretary heath also provided copy of notification of service structure to journalists. According to the notification, 50% of the Lady Health Supervisors (LHSs) have been promoted to grade 10 from 7, 35% promoted to grade 12 and 15% to grade 14.

Similarly, 55% of the Lady Health Workers (LHWs) will remain to grade 5 while 40% promoted to grade 7 and 5% to grade 9. Ali Jan Khan told that the qualification of LHSs is B.A and LHWs is middle.

On this Occasion, Secretary PSHD said that just during the last 8 months key achievements have been made for the welfare of the LHWs.

Ali Jan Khan said that nearly 50,000 LHWs & LHSs were regularized in 2017 and their salaries have been issued from District Accounts Offices without any interruption.

Moreover, Service Rules were approved in October 2017 and these were published in the gazette notification in November 2017. The Secretary P&SH further said that salaries of LHSs & LHWs have been paid up to March 2018.

Notification of five thousand rupees monthly allowance for LHSs has also been issued. While responding the media person Ali Jan Khan said that Punjab government has released rupees 1.2 billion as first instalment for clearance of arrears, adding that keeping in view the difficulties of the workers Punjab government provided these funds from the provincial budget.

These funds will reach their accounts within April 2018, he added. The Secretary Health further said that summary for the Service Structure of LHSs & LHWs was initiated in January 2018. It will not be out of place to mention that this is amongst most quick service structure for the posts sanctioned in August 2017.

He further elaborated that the service structure and release of fund was carried out in a routine process. He said that government did not take this decision due to any pressure. The Secretary said that the department is somewhat disappointed by the behavior of some of LHSs and LHWs during the negotiations here.
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Balochistan Secretary Health Saleh Muhammad Nasir Friday said that teachers, scholars and civil society members should play their role in promotion of awareness regarding HIV/AIDS.

QUETTA, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 30th Mar, 2018 ) :Balochistan Secretary Health Saleh Muhammad Nasir Friday said that teachers, scholars and civil society members should play their role in promotion of awareness regarding HIV/AIDS.

He was addressing an awareness seminar on HIV/AIDS, organized by Balochistan AIDS Control Programme (BACP) and attended by officers, professors, scholars, doctors and others, a press issued here said.

He said the awareness was important so that the people affected with AIDS could come forward for treatment of the deadly disease. He said the BACP was making best efforts for checking HIV/AIDS from the province.

He apprised the participants of the seminar that the number of registered AIDS patients had increased from 6 to 929 in Balchistan during last two years.

Provincial Manager AIDS Control Programme, Dr.

Noor Qazi said the number of AIDS patients was 3,000 out of which only 929 had been registered in the province. He regretted that majority of the people of province were ill informed about HIV/AIDS.

Dr. Noor said that free of charge HIV/AIDS diagnostic centers had been set up in 28 districts of the province as part of Balochistan government's efforts to eliminate the fatal diseases from the province. Dr, Usmani, Dr, Mumtaz Magsi, Amanullah Kakar, Deputy Director education Syed Nasir Shah also spoke on the occasion and lauded the efforts of Balochsitan AIDS Control Programme.
UNITED NATIONS, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 31st Mar, 2018 ) :Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has welcomed the successful conclusion of the mandate of the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL), after nearly 15 years of supporting the West African nation in the transition to peace and democracy, a process in which Pakistani troops and civilian personnel played a crucial role.

The mission was deployed in 2003 to monitor a ceasefire agreement in Liberia following the conclusion of a brutal civil war. At its peak it consisted of up to 15,000 United Nations military personnel from and 1,115 police officers, along with a civilian component, from at least 10 troop contributing countries.

Over the years, Pakistan, as UNMIL's backbone, provided infantry battalions, a signal company, engineering companies, military observers, police officers as well as the Level-II hospital . From 2005 to 2013, Pakistan contributed more than 2,000 peacekeepers to UNMIL per annum, with a high of 3,400 in 2007 and 2008.

The bulk of the Pakistani troops returned home in 2015. The medical unit was wound up last week. In a statement from a UN spokesman, the Secretary-General also commended the government's ongoing efforts to keep Liberia on the path the peace and sustainable development.

The UN chief appreciated the contributions of all partners in the Liberian peace process over the years, particularly the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), whose green helmets laid the foundation for UN peacekeepers in Liberia ahead of UNMIL's establishment in 2003.

Guterres also expressed appreciation for the excellent leadership of his Special Representative for Liberia, Farid Zarif, and thanked all previous leaders of the Mission, and paid tribute to all uniformed and civilian personnel who served with UNMIL.

"The Secretary-General expresses his profound respect to the memory of the 202 peacekeepers who lost their lives in the service of peace during the nearly 15 years the Mission was deployed in Liberia," said the statement, adding that the UN chief also expressed his gratitude to all troop- and police-contributing countries.

Even though the peacekeeping operation has wound down, the UN family still present in Liberia will remain committed to supporting the government-led reform process "with a view to ensuring that the hard-won peace can be sustained and the country and its people will continue to progress and thrive," the statement concluded.

Liberia, the first independent country in Africa, enjoyed nearly a century and a half of stability before falling into chaos, enduring two devastating civil wars between 1989 and 2003. More than a quarter of a million Liberians were killed and nearly a third of the population was uprooted. APP/ift
France's GPD could fall by 20 percent in the second quarter of 2020, after already declining by 5.8 percent in the first quarter, making the year's economic recession the sharpest since 1948 despite the gradual resumption of the country's economic activity amid the easing of its lockdown restrictions, national statistics agency INSEE announced Wednesday

Charles Michel, the president of the European Council, praised the European Commission's proposals regarding the EU budget and creation of EU an recovery fund as an "important step in the decision making process," noting that they will be addressed during the next EU summit in June

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Price Control Magistrate Riaz Hussian Anjum Friday imposed a fine of Rs 23,000 on 12 shopkeepers over profiteering.

FAISALABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 30th Mar, 2018 ) :Price Control Magistrate Riaz Hussian Anjum Friday imposed a fine of Rs 23,000 on 12 shopkeepers over profiteering. A spokesman for the local administration said the price control magistrate along with his team visited various parts of Ghulam Muhammad Abad and checked prices of fruits, vegetables, milk, bread, chicken and other food items.

The team found 12 shopkeepers involved in overcharging from consumers and imposed Rs23,000 fine on them.
(@rukhshanmir)

More than 2500 policemen will be deployed across Rawalpindi district to ensure foolproof security on Easter to be celebrated on Saturday.

RAWALPINDI, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 30th Mar, 2018 ) :More than 2500 policemen will be deployed across Rawalpindi district to ensure foolproof security on Easter to be celebrated on Saturday.

According to a police spokesman, foolproof security arrangements would be made for the Easter while the policemen, Elite Force, Dolphin Force, Special Branch personnel and ladies police would be deployed.

The Easter will be celebrated at main churches of the district while all the adjoining areas of the churches will be barricaded by installing barbed wires and placing barriers.

People visiting the churches will be frisked thoroughly and will have a single entry point available to enter, he added.

The City Police Officer Israr Ahmed Khan Abbasi said that the protection of lives and belongings of the minorities was the first and foremost priority of the police. Superintendents of Police and Deputy Superintendents of Police would monitor the security and police patrolling in their respective areas. No one would be allowed to park vehicles near Churches, he added.
The 3rd round of Pakistan-Turkey bilateral consultations on UN-related matters was held on Thursday in Ankara.

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 29th Mar, 2018 ) :The 3rd round of Pakistan-Turkey bilateral consultations on UN-related matters was held on Thursday in Ankara. Pakistan's delegation was led by Special Secretary (UN&EC/SCO), Tasnim Aslam, while the Turkish side was led by Deputy Undersecretary for Political Affairs, Ambassador Kaan Esener , said a press release received here from Ankara.

Pakistan's Ambassador to Turkey Muhammad Syrus Sajjad Qazi also attended the talks. The two sides exchanged views on a wide range of issues including inter alia UN Security Council reform process and reform of the UN system, human rights, humanitarian and refugee issues, counter-terrorism, combating religious discrimination, matters related to transnational organized crime, migration related issues, ECOSOC, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); as well as issues pertaining to regional and international peace and security.

The two sides expressed complete satisfaction at the existing close cooperation between Pakistan and Turkey at the multi-lateral forums, as well as unanimity of views on issues of regional and international importance.

They also agreed to expand the scope of the bilateral consultations between the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of the two countries to new areas. Special Secretary (UN&EC/SCO) Tasnim Aslam also called on the Undersecretary of the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Umit Yalcin during the visit and exchanged views on issues of bilateral and regional importance.

The next round of talks will now be held in Islamabad.
(@rukhshanmir)

Senator of Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N), Lt General (Retd), Abdul Qayyum on Thursday urged Pakistan Tehrik e Insaf (PTI), to avoid portraying negative politics on national matters.

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 29th Mar, 2018 ) :Senator of Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N), Lt General (Retd), Abdul Qayyum on Thursday urged Pakistan Tehrik e Insaf (PTI), to avoid portraying negative politics on national matters.

Talking to a news channel, he asked the political parties to work under their domain for strengthening democracy in the country.

Democracy, independent judiciary and media were effectively functioning in Pakistan, he said.

We should promote positive politics and avoid talking on non-issues as Pakistan was facing many challenges, he said. To a question he said in Pakistan, civil and military relations are very good and they were on the same page on national important matters.

Pakistan was moving towards progress despite many challenges, he said. To another question he said chief executive or prime minister had held meeting with chief justice of Pakistan in the past.
(@FahadShabbir)

Azerbaijan has called upon the international community to force Armenia to ensure the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan and to restore the violated rights of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs ) besides bringing those who have committed genocide to justice.

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 30th Mar, 2018 ) :Azerbaijan has called upon the international community to force Armenia to ensure the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan and to restore the violated rights of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs ) besides bringing those who have committed genocide to justice.

According to a press statement of Azerbaijan embassy here Friday, the international community should legally and politically assess the severe crimes against humanity at the international level as genocide acts, and impose necessary sanctions on Armenia.

"In order to achieve justice, pay tribute to the memory of martyrs who were killed during those tragedies, as well as to ensure the functionality of the norms and principles of the international law, the government of Azerbaijan urges all states and international organizations to recognize the massacres of the Azerbaijanis on March 31 to April 2, 1918 as a genocide." Azerbaijan is commemorating the 100th anniversary of the genocide committed by Armenians against Azerbaijanis in 1918.

"It is to mention that in order to create a mythical state of "Great Armenia" over Azerbaijani lands, as well as over the territories of Turkey and Georgia, the Armenian chauvinists and their supporters have been carrying out the policy of ethnic cleansing, genocide and deportation against the Azerbaijanis, spanning last two centuries.

"As a starting point for this policy, from the beginning of 19th century on, thousands of Armenian families were moved from Iran and Turkey onto historical territories of Azerbaijan such as Karabakh, Nakhchivan, Zengezur, also Iravan and other provinces.

"In pursuance of their illegal goal of ethnic cleansing of Azerbaijanis, Armenians committed the mass killings of Azerbaijanis in March, 1918. Armenian troops murdered more than 30 000 innocent Azerbaijanis in a series of bloody massacres on March 31, subsequently on April 1-2, 1918, in Baku, Shamakhi, Guba, Kurdamir, Salyan, Karabakh, Zangezur, Nakhchivan, Irevan, Shirvan, Lankaran and other provinces of Azerbaijan.

In the course of this genocide, historic buildings, worship places were subjected to shelling; the minarets of Juma and Tazapir mosques were severely damaged. "All of these innocent Azerbaijanis were massacred only because of their nationality and religion.

Precious historical monuments, mosques, also schools and hospitals were destroyed by the armed Armenian nationalists. "In spite of many years passed, that bloody genocide was not forgotten. Though Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (ADR) government had established the Emergency Investigation Commission in 1919 to investigate the grave crimes committed by the Armenians, after the collapse of ADR, this process was stopped.

"After Azerbaijan regained its independence in 1991, the truth hidden for many years was gradually revealed. 80 years after the genocide, on March 26, 1998, by the Decree of President Heydar Aliyev, "On the Genocide of the Azerbaijani people", political assessment of those tragic events was carried out; declared as "the Day of Genocide of the Azerbaijanis", 31 March is commemorated in Azerbaijan every year at the state level, the statement said.

According to the Decree signed by Ilham Aliyev, the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan, on "The 100th Anniversary of the 1918 Genocide of the Azerbaijanis", relevant Plan of Actions was approved and is being implemented.

The ongoing hostile actions after this genocide by Armenians against Azerbaijanis has proved that the Armenian chauvinists did not give up their hatred. In continuation of ethnic cleansing and aggression policy, Armenia occupied Nagorno-Karabakh, as well as seven surrounding regions, making one million of the Azerbaijanis refugees and IDPs.

On February 26, 1992, Armenian terrorists perpetrated unprecedented genocide in Khojaly city, butchering all the people without differentiating. UN Security Council Resolutions 822, 853, 874, 884 adopted in 1993, the UNGA Resolution titled "The Situation in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan" on March 14, 2008, Resolution 1416 in 2005 and Recommendation 1690 by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, European Parliament & 39;s Resolution on Nagorno- Karabakh on October 23, 2013 re-affirmed once again Nagorno-Karabakh and adjacent seven districts as the integral part of Azerbaijan.

However, ignoring the decisions adopted by the respected international organizations, the Armenian side creates obstacles to the peace in the region, always demonstrating un-constructive position."
Two days long China cultural festival organized by China Study Center, CIIT in collaboration with the Chinese Embassy concluded on Thursday at the premises of COMSATS Institute of Information Technology here.

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 29th Mar, 2018 ) :Two days long China cultural festival organized by China Study Center, CIIT in collaboration with the Chinese Embassy concluded on Thursday at the premises of COMSATS Institute of Information Technology here.

Speaking to the closing ceremony at CIIT, Ambassador of People's Republic of China Yao Jing said the there is no better example of everlasting Pak-China friendship than the one belt-one Road initiative of which the CPEC is a flagship project.

However, he said that people to people contact between the two countries are equally significant for the endorsement of this friendship. Ambassador said that studying in a foreign country is dream of every student and best way to learn and grow.

He announced Scholarships for Pakistani students in Chinese Universities and reiterated that best Pakistani Universities may recommend their students to Chinese Embassy till April 30, 2018 for admission in best Chinese Universities.

He also appreciated the festivities arranged by students of COMSATS Institute of Information Technology. Ambassador Yao Jing attended the ceremony along with other dignitaries from diplomatic community of Islamabad.

After the Ceremony the Ambassador was given the round of campus where students had installed different colorful stalls depicting the Culture of all provinces of Pakistan with Cultural cuisines and hand crafts.

He was amused by the students' performances of CSC society where they performed Tai Chi, Kung Fu and fan dance. He was also presented with Sindhi Ajrak as souvenir at the Sindh Stall. Two days festivities had kicked off on 28th March with the visit of Chinese Cultural Counselor Mr.

You Yi, along other dignitaries from Chinese Embassy to CIIT Islamabad. First day of Chinese cultural day was highlighted by Arts Exhibition titled "BaharAyi" which was inaugurated by Chinese cultural Counselor Mr.

You Yi. Different renowned Pakistani artists displayed their visual art forms comprising of miniature, prints, calligraphy, sculptures, special paper cutting arts, drawings, paintings and Beautiful crafts representing all provinces of Pakistan were displayed in the exhibition at COMSATS Art Gallery.

Chinese kites flying festival, Pak-China music and song fusion, Pak China costumes pageantry, Chinese and Pakistani families interaction, Chinese and Pakistani students' Interaction, oath taking by office bearers of CIIT Chinese Universities Alumni were some of the highlights of the two days long cultural event.
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Engro Foods Limited, second largest Dairy Company in Pakistan, has collaborated with JS Bank under the banner of Prime Minister Youth Business Loan (PMYBL) programme to empower the dairy farmers by extending them maximum financing facilities.

KARACHI, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 29th Mar, 2018 ) :Engro Foods Limited, second largest Dairy Company in Pakistan, has collaborated with JS Bank under the banner of Prime Minister Youth business Loan (PMYBL) programme to empower the dairy farmers by extending them maximum financing facilities.

This was an initiative to build sustainable livelihoods for the dairy farmers through monetary support and knowledge transfers, said an Engro press release here on Wednesday. Engro Foods dairy farmers will have the opportunity to upgrade their farms, procure machinery or livestock, with financing through JS Bank.

This is another step by Engro Foods in its journey for socio-economic empowerment of the dairy farmers in Pakistan. Engro dairy farmers participating in this program will be able to access up to Rs two million in ready funds for up to 8 years, at a minimum mark-up rate of just 6 percent per annum, it said.

Speaking on the occasion, Managing Director, Engro Foods Limited, Ali Ahmed Khan said Engro Foods remained committed to empower the dairy farmers at grass-roots level. PMYBL Scheme is a great effort to increase sustainability of the dairy farmers who have zero access to financing solutions.

"Through this partnership with JS Bank, we look forward to increase the livelihoods and build the capacity of dairy farmers," he added. Engro Foods felt responsibility and remained committed to strengthen the dairy industry in Pakistan, he pledged.

From JS Bank, Kamran Jafar, the Group Head - Corporate and Retail Banking Group, said this agreement would serve as a development catalyst and increase financial inclusion nationwide. Through the Prime Minister Youth Business Loan (PMYBL) program, JS Bank was providing easy and accessible avenues for financial independence and growth to deserving farmers.

Through this alliance, Engro Foods Limited and JS Bank would provide an ecosystem of mutually supporting values and growth to farmers. This supportive structure would help enhance milk production at a national level through fiscal support by JS Bank while best industry practices and industry-related information was provided to key stakeholders by Engro Foods.
The Lahore High Court (LHC) on Friday ordered for recording confessional statements of prosecution witnesses in alleged Mudassar fake encounter case.

LAHORE, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 30th Mar, 2018 ) :The Lahore High Court (LHC) on Friday ordered for recording confessional statements of prosecution witnesses in alleged Mudassar fake encounter case.

Justice Muhammad Anwaar ul Haq passed the orders while allowing a petition filed by the Punjab Prosecution Department challenging decision of a judicial magistrate in the matter. The prosecution assailing judicial magistrate's decision of not recording the statements of the prosecution witnesses under section 164 of Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) had submitted that if the statements were not recorded then the accused police officials might escape punishment.

The court was requested to set aside order of the judicial magistrate and issue directions for recording statements of the witnesses. The court was further apprised that the apex court had also given directions to decide the petition for recording statement of witnesses while hearing a suo motu notice over alleged extrajudicial killing of Mudassar in Kasur.

It is pertinent to mention here that during the hearing of suo motu, the apex court was also apprised that the police had registered an FIR against the deceased (Mudassar) and his brother over the alleged encounter.

A senior police officer further briefed the court that the prosecution witnesses in the case admitted that they were not present on the occasion. The police tried to get their statement recorded under Section 164 of the CrPC but the magistrate concerned rejected the request, he added.

The alleged fake encounter case was referred in January this year to the Punjab investigation branch after it transpired that a youngman Mudassar was allegedly killed in a staged encounter in Iman Fatima rape case in Kasur.

The police decided to re-investigate the murder of Mudassar in police encounter in the light of Zainab's case in which the DNA test confirmed that prime suspect Imran was killer of the girl in Kasur.

A worker by profession, 21-year-old Mudassar was taken into custody by the Kasur police the same day (Feb 25, 2017) the five-year-old girl was raped and killed. Meanwhile, the court also issued notices to two former SHOs- Riaz Abbas and Younus Naveed- involved in alleged fake encounter of Mudassar, for April 6 on a petition seeking their bail cancellation.

The prosecution had requested the court to set aside bail granted to the accused by a sessions court in Kasur.
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Five persons including two women were killed in separate incidents in and around Faisalabad during past 24 hours.

FAISALABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 30th Mar, 2018 ) -:Five persons including two women were killed in separate incidents in and around Faisalabad during past 24 hours. A police spokesman said here on Friday that unidentified assailants killed an old woman Ghulam Fatima, resident of chak 210 Lakhoana, by slitting her throat at the doorstep of her house.The killers escaped from the scene.

In another incident, 60-year-old Zaitoon Bibi, resident of Madina chowk Ghulam Muhammad Abad,slipped from rooftop of her house and died on the spot. Also,a girl child Fida Rizwan (3),resident of chak 269-GB, Nazeer Sultan (15), resident of chak 228-RB,and Waryam (35) resident of Jhang, were killed after receiving serious injuries in different road accidents.

The police started investigation.
The Indus River System Authority (IRSA) on Friday released 45,500 cusecs water from various rim stations with inflow of 45,100 cusecs.

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 30th Mar, 2018 ) :The Indus River System Authority (IRSA) on Friday released 45,500 cusecs water from various rim stations with inflow of 45,100 cusecs. According to the data released by IRSA, water level in the Indus River at Tarbela Dam was 1,386 feet, which was 6 feet higher than its dead level of 1,380 feet.

Water inflow in the dam was recorded as 17,200 cusecs and outflow as 16,400 cusecs.

The water level in the Jhelum River at Mangla Dam was 1,050 feet, which was 10 feet higher than its dead level of 1,040 feet whereas the inflow and outflow of water was recorded as 13,300 cusecs and 14,500 cusecs respectively.

The release of water at Kalabagh, Taunsa and Sukkur was recorded as 29,600, 19,400 and 4,300 cusecs respectively. Similarly from the Kabul River, 7,200 cusecs of water was released at Nowshera and 2,000 cusecs from the Chenab River at Marala
(@ChaudhryMAli88)

JUI F-Mayor JUI-F delegation calls on Mayor of Karachi A delegation of Jamiat Ulema e Islam-Fazl's (JUI-F) elected representatives led by its Naib Emir of Sindh Qari Usman called on Mayor of Karachi Wasim Akhtar at his office here on Friday.

KARACHI, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 30th Mar, 2018 ) :JUI F-Mayor JUI-F delegation calls on Mayor of Karachi A delegation of Jamiat Ulema e Islam-Fazl's (JUI-F) elected representatives led by its Naib Emir of Sindh Qari Usman called on Mayor of Karachi Wasim Akhtar at his office here on Friday.

The delegation apprised the Mayor of the issues regarding municipal facilities in the Constituencies of JUI-F and called for immediate solution to problems in some union councils of district west, said a statement.

Those who attended this meeting include Aslam Shah Afridi parliamentary leader in the city council chairmen of various city council committees and UC Chairman belonging to JUI-F including Akbar Shah, Haider Shah, Muhammad Saleem and others.

During the meeting they informed the Mayor about the condition of their areas especially Manghopir road and Hub River road. The mayor assured them of all possible support and issued directives to officers for immediate attention and execution of development works.

Waseem Akhter said the elected local government representatives are carrying out the progress and development work in the city and performing their role in this regard.
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Inspector General, National Highways and Motorway Police Dr Syed Kaleem Imam said that National Highways and Motorway Police had always maintained the standard of road safety in Pakistan which is also acknowledged worldwide.

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 30th Mar, 2018 ) :Inspector General, National Highways and Motorway Police Dr Syed Kaleem Imam said that National Highways and Motorway Police had always maintained the standard of road safety in Pakistan which is also acknowledged worldwide.

He said that Motorway Police was committed to create the supremacy and enforcement of law on motorways. Officers of motorway police visits bus/truck stations, offices, factories, institutions to create awareness on road/traffic discipline and road safety, he added.

He was speaking at a closing ceremony of a five-day Road Safety Training on Road Crash Investigations at Road Safety Training Institute under supervision of Drivers Licensing Authority, National Highways & Motorway Police, Islamabad held from March 26-30.

Dr Omer Masood Qureshi, PhD Automotive Crashworthiness and design (Italy), Automotive Crashworthiness and design Crashworthiness Research conducted the said training. Officers from all Zones of NH&MP participated in the course.

The participants of the course were of the opinion that such Capacity Building trainings may be conducted periodically to enhance the knowledge and skills of officers. Such training are extremely beneficial for improvement in enforcement as well as reduction in accident.

On the occasion Dr Omer Masood Qureshi lauded the performance of National Highways & Motorway Police for implementing equal application of law and changing the behavior of youngsters. He further said that Motorway Police had been successful in transforming the culture of safety among masses.
Th first unit of strategically important 969 MW Neelum Jhelum Hydropower Project, located in Azad Jammu and Kashmir, will start supplying 470 MW to the national grid on April 13.

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 30th Mar, 2018 ) :Th first unit of strategically important 969 MW Neelum Jhelum Hydropower Project, located in Azad Jammu and Kashmir, will start supplying 470 MW to the national grid on April 13.

Official sources told APP here that the Prime Minister is likely to inaugurate the first unit of 969 MW Neelum Jhelum Hydropower Project. They said that water filling in head race tunnel had already been commenced, followed by wet commissioning test in order to start generation.

The head race tunnel is a component of 52 kilometer long water way system of the project that has been constructed underground in the high mountain areas to divert water from the water reservoir to the power house of the project.

The first unit would be followed by second, third and fourth units at one month interval respectively, they said. The Project will provide about five billion low-cost hydel electricity to the National Grid every year. Annual benefits of the project have been estimated at Rs50 billion.
(@ChaudhryMAli88)

The first unit of strategically important 969 MW Neelum Jhelum Hydropower Project, located in Azad Jammu and Kashmir, will start supplying 470 MW to the national grid on April 13.

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 30th Mar, 2018 ) :The first unit of strategically important 969 MW Neelum Jhelum Hydropower Project, located in Azad Jammu and Kashmir, will start supplying 470 MW to the national grid on April 13.

Official sources told APP here that the Prime Minister was likely to inaugurate the first unit of 969 MW Neelum Jhelum Hydropower Project. The long-awaited hydropower Project is at last about to see light of the day because all works  critical in nature  have already been completed.

These works included construction of dam, de-sander, water way system including head and tail race tunnels, underground power house, transformers hall, switchyard and transmission line to evacuate electricity generated by the project.

Besides installing electro-mechanical equipments, most of their tests have also been successfully conducted. The first unit will start electricity generation on April 13, followed by the second, third and fourth units at one month interval respectively.

The sources said that water filling in head race tunnel had already been commenced, followed by wet commissioning test in order to start generation. The head race tunnel is a component of 52 kilometer long water way system of the project that has been constructed underground in the high mountain areas to divert water from the water reservoir to the power house of the project.

The Project will provide about five billion low-cost hydel electricity to the National Grid every year. Annual benefits of the project have been estimated at Rs 50 billion. Neelum Jhelum Hydropower Project is an engineering marvel with 90% of the project being underground in the high mountain areas.

Neelum Jhelum Hydropower Project consists of three main components i.e. a dam, water-way system comprising 52-km long tunnels and an underground power house. The project has four units with installed capacity of 969-MW.

Following electricity generation from Golen Gol Hydropower Project in January and Tarbela 4th Extension Hydropower Project in February this year, the third hydropower project of WAPDA i.e. Neelum Jhelum is also going to start electricity generation in next month.

For optimal utilization of water and hydropower resources in the country, WAPDA has been implementing a two-pronged strategy for the purpose. Under the strategy, not only the under-construction projects are being completed in the shortest possible time but new projects are also being initiated in both water and hydropower sectors.
(@rukhshanmir)

Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) senator Lt Gen (R) Abdul Qayyum Friday said contribution of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf to the country was zero as its politics was all about leveling allegations.

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 30th Mar, 2018 ) :Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) senator Lt Gen (R) Abdul Qayyum Friday said contribution of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf to the country was zero as its politics was all about leveling allegations.

Talking to a private news channel, he said meeting between heads of state institutions was imperative to remove confusions. Prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi being chief executive of the country, can hold meeting with organs of the state to smoothly run affairs.

He said meetings between prime minister and chief justice of Pakistan had also been held in the past as well.

The senator said all opposition parties were admitting that there were reports of horse trading during the recently held senate elections and that was the stance given by the Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi.

He said the PML-N had ensured transparency during senate elections and was not involved in horse trading. To a question, he said Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi was running the affairs of the country with responsibility and commitment. He said PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif was facing cases against him however nothing was proved against him so far.
Punjab Emergency Service, Rescue 1122 Rawalpindi on Friday launched its moto-ambulance service which was started in first week of March on trial basis.

RAWALPINDI, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 30th Mar, 2018 ) :`Punjab Emergency Service, Rescue 1122 Rawalpindi on Friday launched its moto-ambulance service which was started in first week of March on trial basis.

Member Provincial Assembly (MPA) Raja Hanif Advocate was chief guest at the inaugural ceremony while Director General, Punjab Emergency Service, Rescue-1122 Dr. Rizwan Naseer took oath from the newly inducted rescuers.

Founding DG PES, Dr. Rizwan Naseer addressing the participants informed that the moto-ambulance service has been started in eight divisions of the Punjab. He further informed that PES since its inception has rescued over 5.5 million victims of emergencies in 36 districts of the province.

The PES is the leading emergency humanitarian service of the country, working in 36 districts of the province and providing technical assistance to other provinces. The service has rescued millions of victims of emergencies through its Emergency Ambulance, Rescue and Fire services and Community Emergency Response Teams while maintaining its average response time of seven minutes.

Raja Hanif Advocate addressing the participants said, the Punjab government is making all out efforts to facilitate the citizens and a number of projects were initiated to upgrade rural and urban areas of the province.

The government launched several projects including roads, education and health in Rawalpindi. District Emergency Officer (DEO) Rawalpindi Dr.

Abdul Rehman on the occasion said, 100 motorbikes have been provided to Rescue Rawalpindi for the service.

He said, the service would give a quick response to the victims of emergencies from several key points. He said, the motorbike ambulance service is initiative of the Chief Minister Punjab Muhammad Shahbaz Sharif and the service was introduced while considering the congested and narrow streets of the city where usually the ambulances can't go easily.

The moto-ambulances would reach narrow streets in the congested areas of the city here to provide patients with first response, he added. The respondents will have first-aid kits and will have medical knowledge.

Medical technicians have been inducted for the motorbike ambulance service for Rawalpindi. He said, the ambulances service would play a pivotal role to meet emergency situations in populated areas.

He said the technicians who have been hired for motorbike ambulances services imparted training on modern lines in Turkey and the service is another feather in the cap of medical emergency services.

These motorcycle ambulances are equipped with foldable stretcher, trauma kits, burn kits, automatic external defibrillators, portable oxygen, pulse odometer and glucose meter. For patients in critical conditions, these emergency medical technicians on motorcycle ambulances will carry the patient out on a stretcher to the point accessible for ambulances, he said.
(@ChaudhryMAli88)

The SSP Hyderabad Peer Muhammad Shah has banned consumption of mainpuri and gutka by policemen.

HYDERABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 30th Mar, 2018 ) :The SSP Hyderabad Peer Muhammad Shah has banned consumption of mainpuri and gutka by policemen. The police spokesman Mazharul Haq Shani informed here Friday that a notification was issued on Thursday and its copy had also been put on notice boards in all the police stations.

"If anyone is found in such dirty practice will be dealt with departmentally," reads the notification. The directives also apply to the traffic police and the police headquarters, the spokesman told.

Separately, SSP Shah suspended 3 policemen including Sub Inspector Siddiq Lakho, Assistant Sub Inspector Razzak and constable Sher Muhammad for their alleged connivance in illegal sale of mainpuri.

The spokesman informed that on SSP's directives the SP City Zahida Parveen raided a place in the limits of Hatri police station and arrested a man involved in the illegal business. He told that the arrested suspect revealed during the investigation that he ran the illegal business in collusion with the 3 policeman.
Veteran journalist Irshad Bhatti has revealed that Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi made two requests to Chief Justice of Pakistan Mian Saqib Nisar during the two-hour long meeting held between the heads of two state institutions on Tuesday

Lahore (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 30th Mar, 2018 ) Veteran journalist Irshad Bhatti has revealed that Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi made two requests to Chief Justice of Pakistan Mian Saqib Nisar during the two-hour long meeting held between the heads of two state institutions on Tuesday.

The meeting has become a center of attention for the media and there are several debates as to what was the agenda of the meeting. The debate has gone to the extent that the chief justice himself and the executive had to give an explanation.

Commenting on the meeting, Bhatti said that like the Supreme Court has issued a version on the meeting, the Prime Minister House should also issue one.

The journalist said that respect and dignity is not ascribed, rather it is achieved.

If a man does not consider himself the prime minister, who else will? Bhatti said, and added, PM Abbasi has been an appellant since day one and till now, he is only making supplications. I think one of the reasons behind the meeting was the ongoing cases against Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN) leaders Talal Chaudhry and Daniyal Aziz.

The second reason would be the trial against the Sharif family, the journalist said.
A delegation of US Consulate Karachi visited Thar Coal Block-II at Islamkot district Tharparkar. According to an announcement here on Friday, the delegation was informed that Thar Coal Block II projects have achieved 75 percent completion and first electron will be produced by the end of this year.

HYDERABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 30th Mar, 2018 ) :A delegation of US Consulate Karachi visited Thar Coal Block-II at Islamkot district Tharparkar. According to an announcement here on Friday, the delegation was informed that Thar Coal Block II projects have achieved 75 percent completion and first electron will be produced by the end of this year.

The delegation led by Mark Pituch, Energy Specialist, David Bargueno, Political officer and Fahad Zaidi of the US Consulate Karachi had a detailed visit of Thar Block II. The delegation visited the mining work underway by Sindh Engro Coal Mining Company (SECMC) and 660 MWs power plant by Engro Powergen Thar Limited (EPTL) and also witnessed community development projects of the Thar Foundation.

The delegation also met the women dump truck drivers where they appreciated the Thari women's resilience and commitment to stand up to challenges posed by the socio-economic conditions of their area.

Prior to visit to the field, the General Manager SECMC Naseer Memon briefed the delegation on the overall mining, power, and community work in which he said that 75 percent of the work had been completed and community development schemes have been initiated in the health, education, safe drinking water, and livelihood sectors to benefit the people of the area.

He said that due to the Thar Block II project there have been a positive change in the lives of the local communities and hundreds of livelihood opportunities have sprung in the area. Speaking on the scheme of Gorano Reservoir, he informed the delegates that the water is being stored in the reservoir since last year which would continue till the construction of the power plant.

He said that they have conducted successful pilot projects of biosaline agriculture and, more recently, fish farming on the saline water. The US representatives appreciated the efforts of the Thar Foundation in uplifting the lives of the local communities and took special interest in the Biosaline agriculture owing to its importance in the Thar's backdrop, which has been introduced so far as water-scarce region.

They also planted Neem tree saplings in the Ansari Green Park as contribution to the company's Green Thar campaign. They also visited New Senhri Dars Resettlement Village as well an under-construction Thar Foundation school being built for 1000 children.

Asim Saeed of EPTL and Muhammad Idrees, Ubaid Alvi, Dr Ashok Bakhtani, and Syed Kashif Raza of SECMC accompanied the delegates during the visit.
(@FahadShabbir)

The US-Pakistan Centre for Advanced Studies in Water (USPCAS-W) Mehran University of Engineering and Technology Jamshoro and Oxfam Pakistan Friday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on a strategical alliance to undertake research and other activities on water related themes.

HYDERABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 30th Mar, 2018 ) :The US-Pakistan Centre for Advanced Studies in Water (USPCAS-W) Mehran University of Engineering and Technology Jamshoro and Oxfam Pakistan Friday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on a strategical alliance to undertake research and other activities on water related themes.

According to spokesman, Qazilbash, Country Director Oxfam and Prof. D. Bakhshal Lashari, Project Director USPCAS-W MUET singed the MoU. The three-year MoU agreement aims at to plan and undertakes research activities covering different aspects of water resources management, water governance, policy and laws, advocacy on water-related issues, water and climate change, the inclusion of women and marginalized groups in the decision making process related to water projects.

The Strengthening Participatory Organization (SPO) and Association for Water, Applied education and Renewable Energy (AWARE) are the partner organizations of Oxfam which will coordinate the USPCAS-W team for organizing a joint event related to the water.

The agreement further reflects the sincere and genuine intentions to collaborate in developing and implementing joint advocacy and research activities leading to sustainable development and management of water resources in Pakistan.
It has puzzled scientists for over 100 years but now they appear to have cracked it: what, exactly, is it that causes that wince-inducing sound when you pop your knuckles? Love it or loathe it, knuckle-cracking is very common.

Paris, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 29th Mar, 2018 ) :It has puzzled scientists for over 100 years but now they appear to have cracked it: what, exactly, is it that causes that wince-inducing sound when you pop your knuckles? love it or loathe it, knuckle-cracking is very common.

Earlier studies have established that not all joints can be cracked, and that -- for that those that can -- the act can't be repeated for another 20 minutes. But the source of the sound remained a mystery.

And "popping", it turns out, is exactly what it is, researchers said on Thursday after finding that the distinctive cracking sound was caused by the collapse of microscopic bubbles of joint fluid in the hand.

Using a mathematical model alongside a geometrical representation of the joint, experts from Paris' Ecole Polytechnique and Stanford University in the United States simulated the events leading up to the crack.

"The sound that is generated when one cracks his or her knuckles is due to the partial collapse of a cavitation bubble that's in the fluid in the joint," explained Abdul Barakat, a professor at the Ecole Polytechnique.

"It could be multiple bubbles, but we showed that the collapse of a single bubble is sufficient to give you the signature sound you get," he told AFP by phone. Although experts had initially linked the sound to the collapse of knuckle bubbles back in 1971, their findings were thrown into question after further studies showed there were still bubbles left in the fluid after the knuckles had been cracked.

But the mathematical model appears to resolve this apparent contradiction by showing the sound can be produced by partial collapse, the researchers said. Earlier studies using ultrasound had reached a similar conclusion linking the sound to changes in pressure in the joint fluid.

A 2015 paper suggesting it was actually the formation of a bubble rather than its collapse which caused the distinctive crack. "We wanted to look at it mathematically because all the previous work was based on observation or imaging, so we tried to build a mathematical model that described the physical phenomena that governed this," Barakat said.

"We showed that the collapse gave you the right signature sound." Although it may not settle the debate once and for all, the research is sure to trigger a spontaneous bout of knuckle-popping. "After publishing this paper, my daughter tried it out and now she cracks her knuckles," said Barakat, himself a knuckle-cracker.

So far, knuckle-cracking has not been shown to be beneficial or harmful. Contrary to popular belief, medics say it does not cause arthritis.
Belarus is interested in developing closer cooperation with the US State of Utah, Belarus' Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Oleg Kravchenko said during his visit to the USA, BelTA learned from the press service of the Belarusian Ministry of Foreign Affairs

MINSK, 30 March (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 30th Mar, 2018 ) ::Belarus is interested in developing closer cooperation with the US State of Utah, Belarus' Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Oleg Kravchenko said during his visit to the USA, BelTA learned from the press service of the Belarusian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

During the visit, Oleg Kravchenko took part in the official inauguration ceremony for Honorary Consul of Belarus in Utah Dennis Neuenschwander. Oleg Kravchenko noted long-standing links between Belarus and Utah and expressed interest in a closer partnership with the State in the areas of mutual interest.

The event was attended by the representatives of the Utah Government and Legislative Assembly, major universities and companies, clergy, and prominent public figures. During the visit to the US State of Utah, the Belarusian deputy minister of foreign affairs met with member of the U.S.

House of Representatives from Utah Chris Stewart, representatives of both the chambers of the Utah Legislative Assembly, the Utah International Relations and Trade Commission and Office of Economic Development to discuss cooperation in the political and economic sectors.

Oleg Kravchenko also addressed the group of professors and students at The University of Utah with a speech on Belarus and its role in the region. Steps to implement joint programs with the leading Belarusian universities were discussed.

At the meeting with President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints Russell Nelson, prospects of joint work in promoting family values, educational and humanitarian cooperation were discussed.

On March 27 Oleg Kravchenko met with Wess Mitchell, the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, to discuss the Belarusian-US cooperation and ways for further improvement of bilateral relations.

Oleg Kravchenko met with Michael Kozak, the Senior Official of the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor of the State Department, to discuss human rights issues. The deputy minister also held a meeting with a group of experts from the RAND Corporation.

He laid out Belarus main foreign political approaches and vision of the regional situation, answered the questions of American analysts.
(@rukhshanmir)

All-weather partnership and the defence and military cooperation between China and Pakistan would help maintain regional and international peace and security, Ren Guoqiang, spokesperson of the Chinese ministry of national defence said on Thursday.

BEIJING, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 29th Mar, 2018 ) :All-weather partnership and the defence and military cooperation between China and Pakistan would help maintain regional and international peace and security, Ren Guoqiang, spokesperson of the Chinese ministry of national defence said on Thursday.

"China and Pakistan share an all-weather partnership. We have maintained a very high level of defence and military exchange and cooperation," he said while responding to a question put up by APP Correspondent during his monthly briefing held here.

The spokesperson expressed the confidence that China-Pakistan military exchange and cooperation will help facilitate state to state cooperation between the two countries. "At the same time, I am very confident that our military exchange and cooperation will help to facilitate our state to state relationship.

" Ren Guoqiang said this exchange and cooperation will also maintain regional and international peace and stability.

Regarding military exchanges and joint exercises between the two countries in future, he said both the countries have been discussing it. It may be mentioned that China and Pakistan air forces has conducted a joint training exercise "Shaheen VI" in China in September last year.

Pakistan Air Force dispatched JF-17 Thunder fighter jets and early warning aircraft to participate in the exercise. Chinese J-11 fighters, JH-7 fighter-bombers, KJ-200 AWACS aircraft and ground forces including surface-to-air missile and radar troops took part in that exercise.

Pakistan's Naval Ship PNS SAIF also visited a port in Shanghai and participated in a joint naval exercise with the ChineseNavy in December last year.
The Chinese embassy and Chinese community in Laos pledged their support on Friday to work with the Lao government to combat illegal wildlife trade in Laos.

VIENTIANE, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 30th Mar, 2018 ) ::The Chinese embassy and Chinese community in Laos pledged their support on Friday to work with the Lao government to combat illegal wildlife trade in Laos.

A meeting, hosted by the Department of Forest Inspection (DOFI) under the Lao Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF), was to enhance the local Chinese community's understanding and observance of the law and regulations on wildlife protection and against illegal wildlife trade.

It was also to build cooperation among the law enforcement authorities in Laos, the Chinese embassy and the Chinese community, to take action against illegal wildlife trade, said a press release of the meeting.

"We all play an active role in combating illegal wildlife trade. Illegal wildlife trade is a serious concern and will be penalized accordingly under Lao laws and regulations," said Lao Deputy DOFI Director General Thongphanh Rattanalungsy.

Li Nengbin from the Chinese embassy in Laos said:" The Chinese government highly values the efforts to protect wildlife, and commits itself to effectively combating wildlife trafficking." Towards the end of the meeting, representatives from the Chinese community, which includes the China General Chamber of Commerce, Guangdong, Fujian, Zhejiang, Sichuan and Hunan Chambers of Commerce in Laos as well as the China Southern Airlines, expressed their support to the commitment and efforts by both the Lao and Chinese governments in stopping illegal wildlife trade.

They vowed to work and cooperate with Lao and Chinese authorities in preventing and reporting these illegal activities, and refraining from participating and engaging in activities that contribute to illegal wildlife trade.
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Croatia's tourism ministry and National Tourist Board whose acronym in Croatian is HTZ assess that the number of guests visiting the country for this Easter weekend will be approximately the same as during Easter holidays in 2017 when 120,000 visitors were registered. "We believe that this Easter tourist turnover will be at least approximately the same as last Easter's turnover, however, one should have in mind that Easter was two weeks later then," Minister Gari Cappelli has said.

ZAGREB, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 30th Mar, 2018 ) ::Croatia's tourism ministry and National Tourist board whose acronym in Croatian is HTZ assess that the number of guests visiting the country for this Easter weekend will be approximately the same as during Easter holidays in 2017 when 120,000 visitors were registered.

"We believe that this Easter tourist turnover will be at least approximately the same as last Easter's turnover, however, one should have in mind that Easter was two weeks later then," Minister Gari Cappelli has said.

Furthermore, weather forecast can also impact the final results, except for four- and five-star hotels that already have full booking for the forthcoming Easter holidays, the minister says.

The HTZ director Kristjan Stanicic recalls that during last Easter holidays, there were 120,000 visitors who made over 400,000 overnight stays.

"Easter is informally regarded as the start of the tourist season in Croatia, and in that sense we expect the Eastern weekend to have a positive impact on tourist trends," Stanicic says. The statistics about travel and tourism industry year-to-date show also 10% increase in both arrivals and overnight stays.
Gambian police have arrested a top official in the state intelligence agency over the murder of political activist Solo Sandeng in April 2016, a spokesman said Monday.

Banjul, Gambia, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 27th Mar, 2018 ) :Gambian police have arrested a top official in the state intelligence agency over the murder of political activist Solo Sandeng in April 2016, a spokesman said Monday.

Sandeng's death in custody sparked a political movement that eventually ousted former leader Yahya Jammeh, who ruled the tiny West African nation with an iron fist for 22 years. More than a dozen former agents of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) face charges or are already on trial for the United Democratic Party organiser's murder after his arrest at an opposition protest.

Police spokesman Superintendent David Kujabie said James Mendy, NIA head of security, was "in police custody and is being investigated in connection with the murder of Solo Sandeng".

A security source told AFP on condition of anonymity that Mendy was "one of the senior staff of the agency implicated in the murder".

Gambian prosecutors last week charged eight former spies with conspiracy to murder Sandeng while nine more, including its former chief Yankuba Badjie, are already on trial. Two other former agents agreed last week to become prosecution witnesses.

Jammeh seized power in a bloodless coup in 1994, and was accused of rampant corruption and human rights abuses. Sandeng's killing encouraged a weak and split political opposition to unite behind a single flagbearer, Adama Barrow, who went on to beat Jammeh in a December 2016 election.
The mayor of Libya's capital Tripoli has been arrested and is under interrogation, the prosecution said Thursday, hours after the city council reported he had been kidnapped.

Tripoli, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 30th Mar, 2018 ) :The mayor of Libya's capital Tripoli has been arrested and is under interrogation, the prosecution said Thursday, hours after the city council reported he had been kidnapped.

Armed men stormed Abdulraouf Hassan Beitelmal's house on Wednesday night and took him "by force of arms", the city council said in a statement. But Seddik al-Sour, a senior prosecution official, said Beitelmal was "subject to legal procedures" and was being questioned by investigators.

He could be released "at any time", Sour said. He did not give further details on the investigation, but a source in the security services told AFP the mayor had been detained over suspected corruption.

A member of the city council told AFP that the mayor had not received a court summons. The city council had announced that Beitelmal's office was suspending all its activities in protest at his "kidnapping".

It later issued a statement slamming "an attempt to confuse the truth about the kidnapping and deceive public opinion", and said two of his children had been "assaulted" as he was being detained.

Initial news of Beitelmal's kidnapping had prompted condemnation from foreign diplomats. The United Nations mission in Libya warned of a "surge in kidnapping & abduction cases in the city". The oil-rich North African country has been wracked by chaos since a 2011 uprising that toppled and killed long-time dictator Moamer Kadhafi.

Two authorities -- the Tripoli-based unity government and a rival administration in the east -- are vying for control of Libya. But security has improved in Tripoli since last summer, when militias allied with the unity government drove their rivals from the capital after deadly clashes. Kidnappings, however, remain frequent.
Tripoli, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 30th Mar, 2018 ) :The mayor of Libya's capital Tripoli has been arrested and is under interrogation, the prosecution said Thursday, hours after the city council reported he had been kidnapped.

Armed men stormed Abdulraouf Hassan Beitelmal's house on Wednesday night and took him "by force of arms", the city council said in a statement. But Seddik al-Sour, a senior prosecution official, said Beitelmal was "subject to legal procedures" and was being questioned by investigators.

He could be released "at any time", Sour said. He did not give further details on the investigation, but a source in the security services told AFP the mayor had been detained over suspected corruption.

A member of the city council told AFP that the mayor had not received a court summons. The city council had announced that Beitelmal's office was suspending all its activities in protest at his "kidnapping".

It later issued a statement slamming "an attempt to confuse the truth about the kidnapping and deceive public opinion", and said two of his children had been "assaulted" as he was being detained.

Initial news of Beitelmal's kidnapping had prompted condemnation from foreign diplomats. The United Nations mission in Libya warned of a "surge in kidnapping & abduction cases in the city". The oil-rich North African country has been wracked by chaos since a 2011 uprising that toppled and killed long-time dictator Moamer Kadhafi.

Two authorities -- the Tripoli-based unity government and a rival administration in the east -- are vying for control of Libya. But security has improved in Tripoli since last summer, when militias allied with the unity government drove their rivals from the capital after deadly clashes. Kidnappings, however, remain frequent.
The name chosen by the small European country of Macedonia at its independence 27 years ago has ever since been rejected by Greece, provoking an impassioned dispute.

Paris, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 30th Mar, 2018 ) :The name chosen by the small European country of Macedonia at its independence 27 years ago has ever since been rejected by Greece, provoking an impassioned dispute.

For Greece the name is part of its own cultural heritage, a source of pride as that of an ancient province that was the core of Alexander the Great's empire more than 2,000 years ago. The bitter row has stalled the efforts of the new nation to take its place in the European Union and other international institutions.

As the Greek and Macedonian foreign ministers meet in Vienna on Friday amid a new push for a solution, here is some background. - Rejected from the start - Macedonia proclaims its independence from Yugoslavia in 1991 but its international recognition is immediately blocked by Greece because of the name.

Besides claiming it as part of its heritage, Greece also has a province bordering the new country that has the same name and fears Skopje may be harbouring territorial ambitions. In 1992 more than a million Greeks join a rally in the northern city of Thessaloniki, once the most important city in ancient Macedonia, to proclaim "Macedonia is Greek".

- A country called FYROM - It is only with the adoption of a provisional name -- the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) -- that the country is finally admitted into the United Nations in 1993.

Most other nations, including Russia and the United States, later recognise its constitutional title, the Republic of Macedonia. - Greece clamps down - In 1994 Greece pushes its point by imposing an economic embargo on Macedonia, including preventing it from using the port at Thessaloniki, its main trading post.

Greece also demands Macedonia drops from its flag the rayed sun of Vergina, which it claims is an ancient Greek symbol, as well as certain articles from its constitution.

- A thaw - In September 1995 the neighbours sign in New York an accord opening the way for a normalisation of their trade and political ties, but leave hanging the name dispute.

The following month they open liaison offices in their respective capitals and a new Macedonian flag -- with the controversial sun replaced -- is raised for the first time at the United Nations.

- Greek vetoes - Macedonia becomes a candidate for membership of the European Union in 2005 but Greece blocks the start of negotiations, which must be agreed unanimously. In 2008 Macedonia presents itself as a candidate for membership of the NATO military alliance, under the provisional name, but is again met with a Greek veto.

Relations sink with the erection in Skopje in 2011 of a huge statue of Alexander the Great. Athens sees this as an attempt to appropriate one of its greatest military heroes. - 'A solution is feasible' - Soon after his election in June 2017, Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev promises a new push to settle the dispute and relaunch the drive for EU and NATO membership.

There is optimism after mediation talks at the UN headquarters in January. But tens of thousands of people demonstrate in Thessaloniki later that month to insist "Macedonia is Greek and this is not negotiable".

Zaev announces his country will drop Alexander the Great's name from that of its main international airport and a key highway. Early February he says Macedonia will also include a geographic designation in a future name. Suggestions that circulate include Upper Macedonia, Northern Macedonia, Vardar Macedonia and Macedonia-Skopje.
Prime Minister Lee Nak-yon met with Turkmenistan's Deputy Prime Minister Rashid Meredov on Friday and discussed ways to strengthen economic and other relations between the two countries, Lee's office said.

SEOUL, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 30th Mar, 2018 ) :Prime Minister Lee Nak-yon met with Turkmenistan's Deputy Prime Minister Rashid Meredov on Friday and discussed ways to strengthen economic and other relations between the two countries, Lee's office said.

Lee and Meredov agreed that South Korea and Turkmenistan are good economic partners to each other because their economies are mutually supplementary, with South Korea rich in technology and economic development experiences, and Turkmenistan rich in energy and resources.

Meredov said South Korean companies operating in the central Asian nation are contributing to the country's economic development. He also expressed hope to expand cooperation between the two countries beyond the energy and resources sector to other areas.

Lee said he hopes to see more South Korean firms have a presence in Turkmenistan so that they can contribute to the country's economic development, job creation and business-to-business cooperation between the two countries.

Lee briefed Meredov on the situation on the Korean Peninsula and asked for Turkmenistan's support, saying the dialogue atmosphere created between South and North Korea on the occasion of the PyeongChang Winter Olympics has led to agreements on summits between the two Koreas and between the North and US.

Meredov said the world is closely watching the Korean Peninsula situation and that he hopes to see good results.
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Prime Minister Lee Nak-yon met with Turkmenistan's Deputy Prime Minister Rashid Meredov on Friday and discussed ways to strengthen economic and other relations between the two countries, Lee's office said.

SEOUL, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 30th Mar, 2018 ) :Prime Minister Lee Nak-yon met with Turkmenistan's Deputy Prime Minister Rashid Meredov on Friday and discussed ways to strengthen economic and other relations between the two countries, Lee's office said.

Lee and Meredov agreed that South Korea and Turkmenistan are good economic partners to each other because their economies are mutually supplementary, with South Korea rich in technology and economic development experiences, and Turkmenistan rich in energy and resources.

Meredov said South Korean companies operating in the central Asian nation are contributing to the country's economic development. He also expressed hope to expand cooperation between the two countries beyond the energy and resources sector to other areas.

Lee said he hopes to see more South Korean firms have a presence in Turkmenistan so that they can contribute to the country's economic development, job creation and business-to-business cooperation between the two countries.

Lee briefed Meredov on the situation on the Korean Peninsula and asked for Turkmenistan's support, saying the dialogue atmosphere created between South and North Korea on the occasion of the PyeongChang Winter Olympics has led to agreements on summits between the two Koreas and between the North and US.

Meredov said the world is closely watching the Korean Peninsula situation and that he hopes to see good results.
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Russia on Friday informed the Dutch ambassador of the expulsion of two diplomats in a tit-for-tat measure over the poisoning of a former Russian double agent in Britain, TASS state news agency reported.

Moscow, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 30th Mar, 2018 ) :Russia on Friday informed the Dutch ambassador of the expulsion of two diplomats in a tit-for-tat measure over the poisoning of a former Russian double agent in Britain, TASS state news agency reported.

Dutch Ambassador Renee Jones-Bos told TASS state news agency: "Two of my colleagues are leaving Moscow. But we (the embassy) are staying here."
Cooperation between Turkey and Ukraine is vital for security in both Europe and the Middle East, said Ukraine's foreign minister on Friday.

ANKARA, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 30th Mar, 2018 ) :Cooperation between Turkey and Ukraine is vital for security in both Europe and the middle East, said Ukraine's foreign minister on Friday.

"Without cooperation between Turkey and Ukraine, security in Europe and the Middle East cannot be ensured," said Pavlo Klimkin at a meeting with Turkish Parliament Speaker Ismail Kahraman. Klimkin said that Turkey and Ukraine have always thought of each other's security.

Ukraine has been wracked by conflict in its eastern regions since March 2014, following Russia's annexation of Crimea after an illegal independence vote.

Warring parties signed a cease-fire in February 2015, but the fighting continued, claiming more than 10,000 lives, according to the UN.

The UN General Assembly voted to proclaim the Russian annexation illegal. Along with many UN countries, the U.S., the EU and Turkey also do not recognize Crimea as Russian territory. Kahraman said that Ukraine is Turkey's friend and strategic partner. "We have historical ties with each other," he said.
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Caracas, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 31st Mar, 2018 ) :Venezuela on Friday rejected the possibility of a "judicial settlement" being brokered at the International Court of Justice over its border dispute with Guyana.

"Resorting to a judicial settlement to settle the dispute is unacceptable, sterile and inapplicable," Venezuela's foreign ministry warned in a statement after Guyana formally asked the ICJ to resolve the conflict.

Guyana raised the request before the ICJ on Thursday, after UN chief Antonio Guterres referred the more than century-old border dispute to the court in January.

Venezuela has been pressing a historic claim to Guyana's Essequibo region, which encompasses two thirds of the former British colony, since US oil giant Exxon Mobil discovered oil in disputed waters off its coast in 2015.

The government of Nicolas Maduro said in the statement that it does not recognize the ICJ's jurisdiction "as mandatory." Venezuela instead proposed to rekindle diplomatic ties with Guyana "that will allow a practical and satisfactory solution of the territorial dispute to be reached."


In celebration of Cinco de Mayo, Panchos Mexican Restaurant, located in Downtown Summerlin, will host an all-day fiesta featuring mariachis, traditional Mexican food and tequila shot specials on Saturday, May 5 (Pictured: Panchos Patron Barrel Select Reposado Shots).

A mariachi band will spice up the festivities with traditional Mexican music for partygoers from noon until 5 p.m. Available throughout the restaurant, guests can enjoy Panchos Patron Barrel Select Reposado shots, priced at $6.95 each. The fiesta will continue throughout the night with live music in the cantina by Siana King, beginning at 7 p.m.

Guests can enjoy Panchos signature menu items including Enchiladas Suizas, corn tortillas filled and rolled with chicken, then covered with Salsa Verde Especial, topped with sliced avocados and sour cream and served with Mexican-style rice and beans, priced at $15.95 for lunch and $19.95 for dinner; Carne Asada a la Ab, thin, charbroiled flat-iron steak served with a cheese enchilada, guacamole, sour cream, pico de gallo and Mexican-style rice and beans, served on a hot skillet, priced at $20.95 for lunch and $25.95 for dinner; and Wahoo Fish Tacos, made with two flour tortillas filled with grilled Wahoo fish, shredded cabbage, pico de gallo and chipotle sour cream, served with Mexican-style rice and beans, sour cream and guacamole, priced at $16.95 for lunch and $18.95 for dinner.


With amazing artistic ability, a creative eye for all things Disney and the precision and steady hands of a surgeon, paper sculpture artist Karin Arruda brings her impressive talents of paper sculpture art to the Magical Memories Featuring Disney Fine Art Gallery inside The Forum Shops at Caesars Palace for free public events including a first-ever paper sculpture class from Friday, April 6  Sunday, April 8.

Video: Paper Sculpture by Karin Arruda

httpvh://youtu.be/JHST3_bkNa0

April 6  April 8 | Karin Arruda | Schedule of Free Events Friday, April 6

1 p.m.  3 p.m. Live Paper Sculpting Art Demonstration

4 p.m.  6 p.m. Live Paper Sculpting Art Demonstration Saturday, April 7

Noon  2 p.m. Live Paper Sculpting Art Demonstration

3 p.m.  4 p.m. Free Paper Sculpting Class (All skill levels)

5 p.m.  7 p.m. Live Paper Sculpting Art Demonstration Sunday, April 8

Noon  3 p.m. Live Paper Sculpting Art Demonstration

Karin Arruda was born in Brasilia, the capital of Brazil and became interested in art at an early age. Despite her passion for art, Karins career began in the field of veterinary medicine. During her time in college Karins deep personal connection to her artwork continued, and in 2002 she left her veterinary career to dedicate herself exclusively to her passion for art with paper.

After traveling across Brazil teaching her paper sculpting technique to over 3000 students, Karin launched online classes in English and Portuguese through her website to teach her technique. Her works have also been used to illustrate childrens books and magazine covers. Since 2012, Karin donated works to be auctioned for the pediatric ward of the National Cancer Institute, in Rio de Janeiro. A perpetual student of artistic knowledge, Karin continues to learn and always utilizes new materials and techniques to enrich her work and evolve as an artist.

Disneys characters have always been a passion in my life, says Karin. The high standards of quality that Disney puts into everything has taught me to always strive to do my best and never stop seeking perfection. She considers the opportunity to create Disney artwork as the crowning achievement on her personal journey as an artist.

Bringing the beloved stories and characters to life for families and fans of all ages through innovative art products and experiences, Magical Memories featuring Disney Fine Art is the premier dealer of a diverse portfolio of limited edition giclees, serigraphs, mixed media prints and original paintings inspired by the rich artistic heritage of Disney. The leading gallery also features a wide selection of new and vintage animation-related collectibles and publications spanning the portfolio of all Disney animation studios.
While meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un may have revealed a glimpse of his vision of denuclearization that experts say could conflict with Washingtons expectation of a denuclearized North.

Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported that Kim confirmed his openness to discuss denuclearization during a secretive four-day excursion that began on Sunday with a train trip from Pyongyang to Beijing to meet with Xi.

It is our consistent stand to be committed to denuclearization on the peninsula, said Kim on his first foray outside North Korea since inheriting power from his father in 2011.

As reported by Xinhua, Kims commitment echoed the message that South Korea envoys conveyed to U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington on March 8, days after meeting with Kim in Pyongyang.

U.S. President Donald Trump, who has agreed to meet with Kim, welcomed this weeks meeting between Kim and Xi in a tweet saying, Look forward to our meeting.

What is denuclearization?

But despite Kims commitment to denuclearization, many experts are concerned that his vision of denuclearization could complicate the U.S. effort to denuclearize the North.

According to Xinhua, Kim also said the nuclear issue could be resolved through progressive and synchronous measures by his regime and the U.S.

Robert Manning, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, said Kims statement contains a lot of loaded rhetoric to unpack. Manning said Kims statement indicates that he mostly likely will demand the U.S. remove its hostile policy or what he perceives as a threat posed to the Kim regime by reducing sanctions, ending U.S.-South Korean military exercises and removing U.S. troops as well as the nuclear umbrella over South Korea and Japan.

Kim expects the U.S. to take synchronous measures in providing these concessions as the North agrees to take action-for-action steps, Manning said.

Evans Revere, a former State Department official who has negotiated with North Korea extensively, said these demands are consistent with North Koreas definition of denuclearization.

What the North Koreans have done in conveying this to the Chinese is an effort to buy some time by giving a vague reference to some future denuclearization that they are actually not committed to, Revere said.

Ken Gause, an expert on North Korea and its leadership and a director at research and analysis group CNA said, [His statement] shows that Kim is looking for a phased process that is conditional on U.S. and [South Korea] providing incentives that meet the requirement of creating an atmosphere of peace and stability.

Christopher Hill, who negotiated with the North as the head of the U.S. delegation under the George W. Bush administration, believes North Korea needs to demonstrate that it will agree to a verification protocol on denuclearization for diplomatic efforts to advance.

The issue will come down to whether they are prepared to be serious about this, Hill said. By serious, they need to adhere to some international standards of verification.

Gary Samore, a former White House coordinator for arms control and weapons of mass destruction under the Obama administration, said, If Trump really believes that he is going to go to this meeting and achieve nuclear disarmament overnight through some process of intimidation and promises, then I think hes going to leave the meeting very disappointed.

Inter-Korea summit set

Seoul and Pyongyang held a high-level inter-Korean talks Thursday at the village of Panmunjom on their border and agreed to have the summit between the leaders of the two Koreas on April 27 at the Peace House on the southern side of the Panmunjom.

The prospects for nuclear summits with North Korea opened up when South Korean envoys traveled to Pyongyang at Kims invitation. South Korean envoys then traveled to Washington to deliver Kims invitation to a U.S.-North Korea summit that Trump has agreed to have by May. There is no official confirmation of the summit from North Korea.

Youngnam Kim contributed to this report, which originated on VOA Korean.
At least three companies said Thursday they were pulling advertisements from a Fox News show hosted by conservative pundit Laura Ingraham, heeding a call from a teenage survivor of the Florida school massacre whom Ingraham mocked on Twitter.

Parkland student David Hogg, 17, tweeted a list of a dozen companies that advertise on The Ingraham Angle and urged his supporters to demand that they cancel their ads.

Hogg is a survivor of the Feb. 14 mass shooting that killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in the Parkland suburb of Fort Lauderdale. Since then, he and other classmates have become the faces of a new youth-led movement calling for tighter restrictions on firearms.

Hogg took aim at Ingraham's advertisers after she taunted him Wednesday on Twitter, accusing him of whining about being rejected by four colleges to which he had applied.

On Thursday, Ingraham tweeted an apology "in the spirit of Holy Week," saying she was sorry for any hurt or upset she had caused Hogg or any of the "brave victims" of Parkland.

"For the record, I believe my show was the first to feature David ... immediately after that horrific shooting and even noted how 'poised' he was given the tragedy," Ingraham tweeted, adding that Hogg was welcome back for another interview.

But her apology did not stop at least three companies from parting ways with her show. U.S. celebrity chef Rachael Ray's pet food line Nutrish, travel website TripAdvisor and online home furnishings seller Wayfair Inc all said they were canceling their advertisements.

Wayfair

Wayfair said it supports open dialogue and debate, but "the decision of an adult to personally criticize a high school student who has lost his classmates in an unspeakable tragedy is not consistent with our values," it said in a statement.

Nutrish

Replying to Hogg's boycott call, Nutrish tweeted: "We are in the process of removing our ads from Laura Ingraham's program."

A representative for the pet food line did not immediately respond to a request for further comment.

TripAdvisor

CNBC cited a TripAdvisor spokesman as saying the company does not condone "inappropriate comments" made by Ingraham that in its view "cross the line of decency."

TripAdvisor representatives did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Ingraham's show runs on Fox News, part of Rupert Murdoch's Twenty-First Century Fox Inc.
The head of Vietnam's Communist Party advocated for the importance of market-oriented economic reforms on a two-day visit to old ally Cuba, which is struggling to liberalize its poorly Soviet-style command economy.

Vietnam and Cuba are among the last Communist-run countries in the world but Hanoi set about opening up its centralized economy in the 1980s, two decades before Havana started to do so in earnest under President Raul Castro.

Castro leaves office on April 19 after two consecutive five-year mandates without having been able to unleash in Cuba the same kind of rapid economic growth as that experienced by Vietnam. He remains head of the Cuban Communist Party (PCC) until 2021.

"The market economy of its own cannot destroy socialism," Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong said in a lecture at Havana University.

"But to build socialism with success, it is necessary to develop a market economy in an adequate and correct way."

Hanoi had managed to lift around 30 million Vietnamese out of poverty over 20 years, Trong said.

The PCC this week admitted a slowdown in its market reforms it attributed to the complexity of the process, low engagement of the bureaucracy and mistakes in oversight.

The number of self-employed workers in the Caribbean island nation of 11.2 million residents has more than tripled to around 580,000 workers since the start of the reforms.

But the government last year froze the issuance of licenses for certain activities amid fears of rising inequality and a loss of state control. It has also backtracked on some reforms in recent years, particularly in the agricultural sector.

Trong said it was clear Cuba, like Vietnam, wanted to avoid shock therapy.

"With the clear vision of the PCC ... [Cuba] will surely reach great achievements and successfully reach a prosperous and sustainable socialism," Trong said.

Cubans complain their economy suffers two types of blockades, the internal one, namely stifling state controls, and the external one: the U.S. trade embargo.

Vietnam also suffered U.S. sanctions, but Washington lifted them more than two decades ago. Analysts say it is unlikely it will do the same for Cuba any time soon.

U.S. President Donald Trump has shifted back to hostile Cold War rhetoric and partially rolled back the detente forged with Havana by his predecessor Barack Obama.
A Facebook Inc. executive said in an internal memo in 2016 that the social media company needed to pursue adding users above all else, BuzzFeed

News reported Thursday, prompting disavowals from the executive and Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg.

The memo from Andrew Bosworth, a Facebook vice president, had not been previously reported as Facebook faces inquiries over how it handles personal information and the tactics the social media company has used to grow to 2.1 billion users.

Zuckerberg stood by Bosworth, who goes by the nickname "Boz," while distancing himself from the memo's contents.

Bosworth confirmed the memo's authenticity but in a statement he disavowed its message, saying its goal had been to encourage debate.

Facebook users, advertisers and investors have been in an uproar for months over a series of scandals, most recently privacy practices that allowed political consultancy Cambridge Analytica to obtain personal information on 50 million Facebook members. Zuckerberg is expected to testify at a hearing with U.S. lawmakers as soon as April.

'Provocative' statements

"Boz is a talented leader who says many provocative things. This was one that most people at Facebook including myself disagreed with strongly. We've never believed the ends justify the means," Zuckerberg said in a statement.

Bosworth wrote in the June 2016 memo that some "questionable" practices were all right if the result was connecting people.

"That's why all the work we do in growth is justified. All the questionable contact importing practices. All the subtle language that helps people stay searchable by friends," he wrote in the memo, which BuzzFeed published on its website.

He also urged fellow employees not to let potential negatives slow them down.

"Maybe it costs a life by exposing someone to bullies. Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools. And still we connect people," he wrote.

Bosworth said Thursday that he did not agree with the post today "and I didn't agree with it even when I wrote it.

"Having a debate around hard topics like these is a critical part of our process and to do that effectively we have to be able to consider even bad ideas, if only to eliminate them," Bosworth's statement said.
At least 12 Palestinians were killed and hundreds of others injured Friday by Israeli security forces along the Israel-Gaza border, the Palestinian Health Ministry said.



The Israeli military said its troops used "riot dispersal means" to quell one of the largest Palestinian demonstrations and outbursts of violence along the border in recent years.

Violence erupted as thousands of Palestinians approached the border. The Israeli military said its troops responded to "main instigators" who were throwing stones and rolling burning tires.



The ministry said Israeli forces fired live bullets, rubber-coated steel pellets and tear gas, killing at least 12 Palestinians and injuring at least 550 others.

It was the deadliest day in Gaza, a self-governing Palestinian territory, since last fall.



Palestinians have constructed protest tent camps along the entire length of the Gaza Strip in five locations that are expected to remain in place for six weeks. Entire families  men, women, and children  were expected to participate in the tent camp demonstrations.



The weeks-long demonstrations, to end on May 15, are designed to commemorate the Nakba or "catastrophe" when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians had to flee their land or were expelled during the war in 1948 that led to the creation of Israel.



Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman warned the Gaza demonstrators in an Arabic post on Twitter: "The leadership of Hamas is playing with your lives. Anyone who comes close to the fence today puts himself at risk. I suggest to you to continue your lives and not participate in a provocation."

Israel has deployed more than 100 snipers along the Gaza Strip.



The demonstrations are expected to end at the same time Washington plans to open an embassy in Jerusalem, a move that has infuriated Palestinians who have claimed the eastern section of the city as the capital of their future state.



On Thursday, Danny Danon, Israel's ambassador to the U.N., said the demonstrations are an "organized planned provocation" and asserted "Israel's right to defend its sovereignty and protect its citizens."
Sampad Yadav, who sells electrical goods in a shop in the business hub of Gurugram on the outskirts of New Delhi, says Chinese goods such as LED lamps are popular with customers. When people make a price comparison, and want to move towards the cheapest goods, those are usually Chinese products.



As in many other countries, Chinese products such as lamps, electronics, smartphones and engineering goods from the manufacturing giant have flooded Indian markets.



However India has long fretted that areas in which it is strong such as generic drugs and Information Technology services, which make up some of its main exports to Western markets, remain shut out of China. That has made it difficult to bridge a ballooning trade deficit of about $50 billion between the two countries.



But there is optimism this could change following a meeting this week between the commerce ministers of the two countries in New Delhi.



The Chinese side have agreed to work on the issue, prepare a road map to bring the trade to balanced level over a period of time, Indian Commerce Minister Suresh Prabhu said after discussions with his Chinese counterpart, Zhong Shan.



Trade experts hope the growing tensions on trade issues between the United States and China will prompt Beijing to open up its markets more to Indian exports. I think China is definitely under pressure now, looking into the kind of initiation which has happened against China, says Ajay Sahai, who heads the Federation of Indian Exports Organization.



The meeting between the Indian and Chinese commerce ministers this week came amid efforts to deescalate tensions between the Asian neighbors following a period of rocky ties and a tense 70-day face-off between their troops in the Himalayas last year.

Despite a long-lingering boundary dispute and an often-fraught diplomatic relationship, trade ties between the Asian giants have gained significant momentum and China is now Indias largest trading partner. Bilateral trade in 2017 topped $80 billion rising by more than 20 percent over the previous yea.



But worryingly for New Delhi, the trade deficit remains high despite a marginal growth in Indian exports  they add up to about $16 billion versus Chinese imports into India of about $68 billion.



Market access a key issue

India exports mainly raw materials like iron ore, copper and cotton yarn to China. In whatever value added exports where we are competitive, unfortunately the market is not open for us, says Sahai.



However China has promised to give greater market access to Indian goods, particularly pharmaceuticals and agricultural goods such as rice, as well as service exports, according to the Indian commerce minister. They have decided to work in a way that will address security issues from their side as well as introduce Indian companies to those who can buy these products in China, says Prabhu.



New Delhi, which is trying to ramp up domestic manufacturing, is also urging China to manufacture more goods exported to India within the country.

Whether the promised actions translate into concrete outcomes remains to be seen. But exporters are hopeful. Sahai points out that China has invited Indian traders to what is being billed as the countrys first importers fair to be held in Shanghai later this year  it is being showcased as a measure to further open up Chinas market.



The positive tenor of talks between the two countries comes days after U.S. President Donald Trump announced plans to impose tariffs on Chinese imports valued at $60 billion.



New Delhi could also face U.S. ire on trade issues  although its exports to the United States are comparatively small, it has a high trade deficit in its favor and Washington has often complained of protectionist barriers in India. In February, Trump called out India for imposing higher duties on Harley-Davidson motorcycles than the U.S. does on Indian motorbikes.



Amid growing fears that global trade faces uncertain times, analysts have called on countries like India to focus on increasing trade within the region.



India and China also said they will strengthen cooperation in the World Trade Organization and other multilateral and regional frameworks to maintain their common interests.
Islamic State claimed responsibility on Friday for a suicide car bombing this week in the eastern Libyan town of Ajdabiya, the militant group's news agency Amaq said on Friday.

The explosion struck a checkpoint on Thursday at the eastern exit of Ajdabiya, a town south of Benghazi, a military source said. It is close to the oil export ports of Brega and Zueitina.

Amaq said 14 troops of General Khalifa Haftar had been killed of wounded. His forces allied to a parallel government based in the east control Ajdabiya and much of eastern Libya. According to medics, six people were killed and nine

wounded.

Islamic State, which lost in 2016 its stronghold Sirte in central Libya, had in October claimed an attack about 60 km (37 miles) south of Ajdabiya during which two soldiers were killed.

The group has retreated since the fall of Sirte to camps in the desert in southern Libya from where it has launched suicide bombings and attacks in coastal towns.
Easter, also known as Resurrection Sunday, commemorates Jesus' resurrection, three days after his crucifixion. It's preceded by Lent, 40 days of fasting, prayer and repentance. While Easter is a solemn holiday for Christians, it's also a time for families to get together around the festival holiday table, one that has been influenced by the many cultures that make up American society. VOA's Mariama Diallo visited an Italian market owned by Suzy and Bill Menard and filed this report.
Pilgrims from around the world packed into the narrow cobblestone alleyways of the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalems Old City to take part in the traditional Good Friday procession. Singing hymns and reading passages from the Bible, they retraced the footsteps of Jesus to the 14 Stations of the Cross.

Oh, its an honor to be in this land like this. Its been great. It helps with my belief, it helps with my faith, it helps with everything," said Gary Osterberg who traveled here from Canada.

In the Holy Land, religion and politics are never far apart. The Easter holidays come six weeks before the United States plans to move its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

I think that the Americans moving the embassy to Jerusalem is the right thing to do. I think its the proper thing to do. And I wish that Canada would follow suit and do the same thing also: move the Canadian Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem," Osterberg told VOA.

Palestinians are furious over the embassy move and U.S. President Donald Trumps decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Imad, a shopkeeper in the Arab bazaar, said Jerusalem is the future capital of a Palestinian state.

I do not expect anything from Donald Trump, so I expect bad things," he said. "This is, you know, part of what they are doing against Palestinians: another step, another thing, which will hurt Palestinians.

Jewish pilgrims also flocked to Jerusalem to celebrate the start of the week-long biblical holiday of Passover. Rabbis here say the U.S. embassy move reinforces the Passover theme of Jerusalem rebuilt.
From sweeping to fetching water, washing children to cooking, Sitan Coulibaly's day as a maid in Bamako begins at 6 a.m. and ends well after dusk.

The 17-year-old is used to hard work  but as a farmer, growing millet on her parents' farm in Babougou, in central Mali.

"I haven't been home in over five months," she said, lowering her head as she spoke. "I left before the harvesting season even ended, because there was nothing to harvest."

Longer droughts and other unpredictable weather are destroying an ever-larger share of crops across this country in Africa's Sahel region.

That is leading more families to send their daughters to earn money in cities during the lean season, often as maids, while sons leave for seasonal jobs as street vendors or gold miners.

Around the world, migration is growing among families hit by shifting weather patterns, disasters, conflict and other pressures.

In some of the world's poorest places, bad times mean children, as well as adults, may need to leave home to find work, sometimes leading to separation from their families, risks of abuse and disruption to their education.

In Bamako, the majority of migrant girls work as housekeepers from December to June before returning to the farm.

But a particularly poor harvest season last year meant many left home as early as September, farm families say.

Last year, rainfall "was worse than before," said Baba Sogore, a rice farmer from Segou.

"The government even asked us to stop growing rice off season, because the river is too dry to water fields," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Agnes Dembele, the head of APAFE Muso Danbe, a Malian charity that seeks to improve migrant girls' working conditions, said that farm girls heading to cities in search of housekeeping jobs "is nothing new."

"But due to worsening weather we're seeing more girls coming to big cities like Bamako from all over the country," she added, estimating the number of migrant girls at tens of thousands.

Poor working conditions

While housekeeping jobs allow Malian girls to send cash to their families, they often trap them in abusive working conditions, said Dembele.

"Employers know the girls are desperate, so some take advantage of that to steal from, abuse or even rape them," she explained.

Oumou Samake, who works as a maid in Badalabougou, a posh neighborhood in the Malian capital, said her boss regularly berates and insults her, and deducts money from her wages when he isn't happy with her work.

"At least he hasn't hit me yet," she sighed, surrounded by a group of fellow maids meeting on the street at the end of their work day. "If I move to another family it will be the same, or even worse."

Her family's precarious situation doesn't leave her with much of a choice, added Samake.

"I worry about my parents and seven brothers and sisters. I don't know whether they eat, as they haven't harvested anything," the 16-year-old explained.

"That's why I send them 10,000 CFA francs [about $20] each month, to buy a bit of rice and millet."

Most girls like Coulibaly and Samake go back to their villages and are married by the age of 16, said Dembele, with some of their wages as maids going toward their dowry.

A Save the Children index from 2017 ranks Mali one of the three most-affected countries in the world  out of 172 nations assessed  in terms of children at risk from child marriage, teenage pregnancy, an early end to education and other threats.

Protecting girls

A lack of contacts in urban areas or a formal recruitment process makes migrant girls more vulnerable to exploitation, according to Dembele. Samake said she arrived in Bamako not knowing anyone, and went looking for jobs by knocking on doors.

"My boss said he would pay me 10,000 CFA francs as that's what other girls get," she explained.

To help girls negotiate a better salary and curb abusive practices, APAFE Muso Danbe acts as an intermediary to find them an employer from its database of 300 families. It also draws up a job contract.

"With a contract, the girls' wages range from 10,000 to 50,000 CFA francs per month ($20-$100), instead of just 10,000 normally," said Dembele, adding that the NGO gives them free cooking and cleaning training to make them more employable.

Both parties also sign a code of conduct, she added.

"The maids commit to reporting any broken items and not wasting food, while their employer renounces any physical or psychological violence," Dembele explained.

The charity also alerts local authorities to cases of abuse or violence, and helps the victims bring their cases to court.

Thomas Martin Diarra, who also works at the nongovernmental organization, said it recently dealt with the case of a maid whose employer's son knocked her head against a wall "simply because he didn't like her."

"We referred her case to the police," he explained. "It is ongoing, but the girl has received treatment for her injuries."

One of the team's priorities is also to ensure the girls get an education, Dembele said. "We try to sign up those who have a basic level of education to further studies."

"Ideally, they wouldn't have to work as maids as well, but we at least make sure they don't have to pay for their training or education."
Two slave-owners in Mauritania face 10 and 20 years in prison after a court handed down the country's harshest anti-slavery ruling yet, activists said Friday.

The West African country criminalized slavery in 2007 and this was the third-ever prosecution. In past cases, slave-owners were sentenced to two to five years.

"This is a big victory," Jakub Sobik of Anti-Slavery International told Reuters. "The sentences are quite high and in line with the law, which is by no means a given."

Mauritania has one of the highest rates of slavery in the world, with 1 in 100 people living as slaves, according to the 2016 Global Slavery Index. Activists say that anti-slavery laws are rarely enforced.

The two cases were brought by former slaves in the city of Nouadhibou.

In one case, the verdict pronounced Wednesday was the result of a seven-year fight, said Salimata Lam of Mauritanian group SOS Esclaves, which assisted the victims.

A man who was sentenced to 20 years cannot be found, but a woman sentenced to 10 years was taken to prison, she said.

Slavery is a historical practice in Mauritania, which became the last country worldwide to legally abolish it in 1981.

Black descendants of certain ethnic groups are often born into slavery and spend their lives working as domestic servants or cattle herders for lighter-skinned Mauritanians.

Earlier this year, the African Union urged Mauritania to issue harsher sentences for the crime.

"I think the trend is irreversible. You can't close your eyes to this situation," said Lam.

But there is still a long way to go, she added. Anti-Slavery International has helped file at least 40 cases from former slaves that are lingering in courts, Sobik said.

Mauritania has jailed more anti-slavery activists than slave-owners, and the repression of organizations fighting to end slavery is growing, rights groups said this month.
Eight in 10 Congolese have an unfavorable opinion of President Joseph Kabila  but nearly seven in 10 don't think the December vote to replace him will be fair, according to a national poll published on Friday.

The survey, conducted last month by the Congo Research Group at New York University and Congolese polling firm BERCI, gives a rare glimpse into the national mood as Congolese wait to see if Kabila finally steps down after 17 years in power.

Elections in Democratic Republic of Congo are scheduled for Dec. 23, two years after Kabila's mandate officially expired.

But Kabila, who succeeded his assassinated father in 2001, has refused to publicly commit to stepping down.

Uncertainty about his intentions and the prospect of the vote being delayed again have bred mistrust among Congo's 80 million people. Security forces have killed dozens of people during street protests against the president's extended rule.

The political crisis has also contributed to rising militia violence in eastern Congo's borderlands with Rwanda and Uganda, where millions died from hunger, disease and conflict in wars around the turn of the century.

The Congo Research Group is directed by Jason Stearns, a former U.N. investigator in the country. Over 1,000 Congolese citizens in all 26 provinces were questioned.

When asked if they had a "good opinion, bad opinion or no opinion at all" of their president, 80 percent said they had a bad opinion and 20 percent said they had a good opinion. In an indication of Kabila's polarizing effect, zero percent had no opinion.

Congolese are eager for change, according to the poll.

Ninety-five percent of those surveyed said they planned to vote in December, and 64 percent said they were optimistic about the country's future in the next five years.

Exiled opposition leader Moise Katumbi would lead the presidential vote with 24 percent, trailed by another opposition leader, Felix Tshisekedi, with 13 percent.

Katumbi's support has fallen from 38 percent in a previous poll by CRG and BERCI a year ago. The pollsters said that could be due to his two-year absence from the country after being accused of hiring foreign mercenaries.

Still, most in the vast nation that spans much of Central Africa are skeptical about the electoral process. Sixty-nine percent said they do not trust the electoral commission to conduct "free, fair and transparent elections," up from 54 percent last year.

The commission plans to use 100,000 electronic voting machines in December, a move that opposition leaders and international donors said could increase the risk of fraud.
Zimbabwean Pastor Evan Mawarire was a vocal critic of former President Robert Mugabe. Now he has decided to run in local government elections this year and possibly land the job of mayor of Zimbabwe's biggest city.



From pulpit to politics. Pastor Evan Mawarire is wading into the electoral fray in Zimbabwe.



He and other independent candidates have joined forces to run for local government posts in the coming elections. They call their coalition the People's Own Voice.



Mawarire has his eye on the mayor's spot in Harare should he win local government elections.



"Up to today, we still deliver dangerous and very dirty water to the residents of Harare," he said. "We have potholes, our road network is completely dysfunctional, completely dilapidated and needs to be revived again. We have issues that have to do with refuse collection, we still don't collect refuse for our people and that attracts all sorts of diseases. Those are things that my generation feels urgently [need attention]."

Mawarire rose to prominence in 2016 as the activist behind the #ThisFlag movement that organized protests against rights abuses by the government and former President Mugabe's handling of the ailing economy.



He was jailed several times. He was later acquitted on some charges of subversion, while others are still pending in court.



The polls expected this July and August will be the country's first without Mugabe, who resigned under military pressure last year.



Analysts say Mawarire's entry into politics could spell trouble for the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change. The MDC has struggled with internal divisions following the recent death of founder Morgan Tsvangirai.



Word is that the MDC has already reached out Mawarire for talks, though VOA could not confirm that information.

Sekai Holland, a former senior member of the MDC, welcomed Mawarire to politics. She did not indicate where her allegiances now lie.

"The effort that pastor Mawarire is launching with his colleagues, is very significant," he said. "It's middle-class African kids whose absence from politics has caused many problems. Their coming in strengthens the processes of development, and it is important that they themselves understand that they are part of the fabric, and not an independent formation. So they should dialogue with everybody."



Last year, Kenya saw a surge in the number of independent candidates in its nationwide elections. Among them was the activist Boniface Mwangi who ran for parliament. He was in Harare for the launch of Mawarire's movement.

"It is important because independent candidates do not carry any baggage, but they have a voice because they want to reclaim their country," she said. "So it is very commendable that people have come together. The other thing is that when they're independent, they do not support any side, especially presidential elections, which means they are able to get both votes from Chamisa and 'Crocodile' voters."

He is referring to the two expected frontrunners in the coming presidential race.



Current President Emmerson Mnangagwa, or the "Crocodile" as he is known, will carry the mantle of the ruling ZANU-PF party.The MDC is expected to put forward its acting leader, Nelson Chamisa.
New York City will offer free cybersecurity tools to the public as part of a new effort to improve online safety, officials said Thursday, a week after Atlanta was hit with a ransomware attack that knocked some municipal systems offline.

The program, dubbed NYC Secure, will launch a free smartphone protection app to warn users when suspicious activity is detected on their devices, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio announced at a news conference.

"New Yorkers aren't safe online. We can't wait around for other levels of government to do something about it or the private sector," de Blasio said.

The program will cost the city about $5 million per year, he said.

"It's our job in government to make sure that people are safe online. It's a new reality," de Blasio said.

City agencies will also beef up security protection on public Wi-Fi networks by the end of the year to protect residents, workers and visitors.

Those networks will be secured with a tool, dubbed Quad9, that is available to anybody in New York City and beyond at https://quad9.net.

Quad9 routes a user's web traffic through servers that identify and block malicious sites and email.

Atlanta cyberattack

NYC Secure was unveiled as Atlanta officials worked alongside federal law enforcement and technicians from private security firms to investigate the cause of the attack that encrypted data on computers.

Atlanta City Council President Felicia Moore said she was waiting to hear more about how the hackers breached city networks, the scope of the attack and when city services would be fully operational.

"Everybody in the public wants to know. I want to know, too," Moore said at a news conference. "But I do think that we need to give them an opportunity to get the information."

Atlanta on Thursday reactivated a website that allows residents to make requests for trash pickup, report traffic signal outages and ask for other public works-related services.

Municipal court services remained offline Thursday and City Hall employees told Reuters their work computers were still unusable a week after the hack was detected.
Upon learning that New York taxicab veteran Nicanor Ochisor had hanged himself in his garage, Nigerian-native driver Emanuel Agbai was hardly at a loss for words.



Im even surprised that there are no more drivers committing suicide or going on some sort of rampage at this time, Agbai told VOA. This business has been so destroyed.



Ochisor, a Romanian immigrant who worked in the industry for nearly 30 years, ended his life on March 16, the fourth professional taxi driver to do so in New York City in as many months.

WATCH: NY's Immigrant Taxi Drivers Despair as Taxi Industry Slumps





Like Agbai, Ochisor owned a medallion, a license required for all of New Yorks yellow taxi cabs. A prized possession worth over $1 Million in 2014, its price has dropped to roughly one-fifth that amount today, coinciding with the rise of app-based services like Uber and Lyft.

Drivers who borrowed to purchase medallions now face an out-sized debt.



We are sick and tired of burying our brothers, said an impassioned Bhairavi Desai, executive director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance at a demonstration in lower Manhattan.



Owner-drivers are going through foreclosures and bankruptcies. Green cab drivers have been entirely abandoned. Livery [limo] drivers are trying to scrape by, and even Uber and Lyft drivers are barely making ends meet, Desai said.

The number of yellow cabs in New York City is capped at over 13,000. But for-hire cars like Uber, which face no such limits and offer flexible pricing, have burgeoned since their debut in 2012  to more than 60,000 to date.

As a result, medallion owner-drivers often find themselves deep in debt, unable to sell or lease their vehicles.



Long shifts, little recompense



The deepening crisis hits home for tens of thousands of immigrants, who make up more than 90 percent of the citys fleet of professional drivers. Taxicab and for-hire workers alike are reeling from their losses and find themselves working much longer hours to make up for fewer pickups.



Im not going out to restaurants or spending my money on trips on weekends, Im working seven days a week, said Mahmoud, an Uber driver from Palestine who didnt want to provide his last name.



Like his colleagues in the taxicab industry, whom he calls his teachers, Mahmoud works 14-16 hour shifts to provide for his wife and 1-year-old son. He takes his child to daycare in the morning and only returns once he is fast asleep.

Nahinder Behl, a yellow cab lessee from New Delhi, India, finds himself in a similar predicament.



I didnt have enough money to pay this months rent, Behl said. After lease and gas, you dont make nothing for yourself. So you have to work like 15-16 hours what you would make before in 10 hours.



A level playing field



Set against a backdrop of four purple coffins  representing each of the professional drivers who have committed suicide since December  drivers and members of New Yorks taxicab union flooded the steps of New Yorks City Hall to demand legislation requiring a cap on app-based for-hire vehicles.



Among the legislative proposals under review is a 2018 bill sponsored by council member Stephen Levin that would limit the number of new for-hire vehicles issued in the city. In 2015, similar cap legislation was considered, but ultimately not passed.

In the meantime, cab drivers see no other option than to raise their voices.



Why is this injustice? They want to drive all these cab drivers into the coffin? asked a distraught Nicolae Hent, a Romanian immigrant who called the late Ochisor his best friend and colleague of 30 years.



He couldnt take it. Ill take it, he told the City Hall crowd. Ill die fighting.
Most people prescribed antibiotics for sinus infections are on treatment courses of 10 days or longer even though infectious-disease doctors recommend five to seven days for uncomplicated cases, a U.S. study suggests.

Researchers examined data from a sample representing an estimated 3.7 million adults treated for sinusitis and prescribed antibiotics in 2016. Overall, 70 percent of antibiotics prescribed were for 10 days or longer, the study found.

"Anytime antibiotics are used, they can cause side effects and lead to antibiotic resistance," said senior study author Dr. Katherine Fleming-Dutra, deputy director of the Office of Antibiotic Stewardship at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

"This is why it is so important to only use antibiotics when they are needed and to use the right antibiotic for the minimum effective duration," Fleming-Dutra said by email.

Common side effects of antibiotics can include rash, dizziness, nausea, diarrhea and yeast infections, she said. More serious side effects may include life-threatening allergic reactions and Clostridium difficile infection, which causes diarrhea that can lead to severe colon damage and death.

Antibiotic resistance occurs when bacteria develop the ability to defeat the drugs designed to kill them and can make infections harder to treat.

Relatively new guidelines

When antibiotics are prescribed for sinus infections, only five to seven days of therapy are needed for uncomplicated cases, when patients start to recover within a few days of starting treatment and if they don't have signs that the infection has spread beyond the sinuses, according to the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA).

These guidelines are relatively new, however, and it's possible some of the longer courses of antibiotics prescribed in the study occurred because not all doctors have absorbed the new practice recommendations, Fleming-Dutra said. Prior to 2012, the IDSA recommended 10 to 14 days of antibiotics for sinus infections in adults.

In the study, no penicillin or tetracycline prescriptions were for five-day courses and only 5 percent of prescriptions were for seven-day courses of penicillins, tetracyclines or fluoroquinolones.

When researchers excluded azithromycin, an antibiotic that's not recommended for sinus infections, they found that 91 percent of all antibiotic courses prescribed for sinus infections were for 10 days or longer.

The study didn't examine whether or how the duration of antibiotics prescriptions affected treatment of sinus infections or the potential for side effects.

Researchers also focused only on acute sinus infections, and by excluding some cases where the type of infection was unclear, they may have left out some acute cases, the study team noted in AMA Internal Medicine.

It's also possible that in some cases, doctors prescribed antibiotics for 10 days or longer and instructed patients to stop after five to seven days unless they were still experiencing symptoms, said Dr. Sharon Meropol, a researcher at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio, who wasn't involved in the study.

Medicine switch

One pitfall in this approach is that when patients improve slowly, it's possible they're infected with organisms that are resistant to the antibiotic prescribed, and that they would recover faster if they switched to a different antibiotic

instead of continuing the current one longer, Meropol said by email.

"Older .. acute bacterial sinusitis guidelines were written with the belief that if antibiotics were taken for shorter durations of time, that the bacteria would not be completely eradicated and that would risk persistent, recurrent

and antibiotic-resistant infections," Meropol said.

"But the recommendations have changed on this because subsequent studies have shown the opposite is true  that in fact if the patient is responding to treatment, five to seven days is safe and is usually enough," Meropol added. "A longer treatment is not usually needed."
Filipino Roman Catholic devotees, including a woman, were nailed to wooden crosses in a gory Good Friday re-enactment of Jesus Christs sufferings that was watched by thousands of spectators but frowned upon by church leaders.

At least three of eight devotees wearing crowns of twigs were crucified by midafternoon by villagers north of Manila who were dressed as Roman centurions.

The spectacle in San Pedro Cutud village reflects a unique brand of Catholicism that merges church traditions with folk superstitions. Many of the mostly impoverished penitents undergo the ritual to atone for sins, pray for the sick or a better life, or give thanks for what they believe were God-given miracles.

Church discourages ritual

The Lenten rituals are frowned upon by church leaders in the Philippines, Asias largest Roman Catholic nation, especially if the event is used to boost tourism and business. The re-enactments of the crucifixion, however, have persisted and became an awaited tourist attraction in the largely unknown village in Pampanga province, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of the capital.

While the crucifixions have become a summer tradition to locals, they still leave many foreign tourists bewildered.

Its terrible, Luke Henkel from Florida said. You wanna stop it.

Mayor Edwin Santiago of San Fernando, the city where San Pedro Cutud lies, said more than 400 police officers were deployed and first-aid stations set up to look after the huge crowds.

We provide assistance because we cant stop the influx of tourists, Pangilinan said. We dont promote it as a festival but its rather a show of respect to a local tradition.

Tourists and commerce

Villagers used the crowd-drawing events to peddle food, water, fans, umbrellas and souvenirs and rent out parking slots and toilets. A leading cellphone company provided tents for shade with its name embossed on them.

Archbishop Socrates Villegas said its best for Catholics to mark Lent in prayers and acts of love and charity.

Instead of spilling your blood on the streets, why not walk into a Red Cross office and donate blood? Choose to share life. Share your blood, Villegas said in remarks posted in a Catholic church website.

Before the crucifixions, dozens of male penitents walked several kilometers through village streets, beating their bare backs with sharp bamboo sticks and pieces of wood. Some of them had their backs cut to keep them bloody.
The father-in-law of Pippa Middleton, whose sister Kate is married to Britain's Prince William, has been placed under formal investigation over suspected rape of a minor, a court source told Reuters on Friday.

David Matthews, who is the father of Pippa Middleton's husband, James Matthews, was arrested Tuesday by the Juvenile Protection Brigade (BPM) and formally put under investigation for suspected rape of a minor under his authority, said the source, confirming a report on Europe 1 radio.

Paris prosecutors arrested Matthews during a visit to France, and later released him and placed him under judicial control, the source said. The source did not say when he was released. French police can hold suspects 24 or 48 hours in such cases.

The source said the alleged rape took place in 1998 or 1999. Europe 1 reported that a complaint was filed in 2017.

Reuters could not immediately reach Matthews nor any spokespeople or lawyers for him.

Being placed under judicial control means that prosecutors have attached certain conditions to his release or imposed certain limits on whom he can meet or where he can go. The source did not say what conditions had been attached in Matthews' case.

Pippa Middleton came to national attention in Britain as the maid of honor at her sister's royal wedding to William in 2011. Her own lavish wedding to James Matthews last May was one of the most widely reported social events of the year, attended by William and his brother Harry, grandsons of Queen Elizabeth.
The Czech Republic has extradited to the United States a Russian citizen accused of hacking the LinkedIn website and stealing 117 million passwords.

Yevgeniy Nikulin arrived in the United States early Friday, according to U.S. officials, and is expected soon to appear before a judge in San Francisco.

The agreement to send him to the United States came even as Russia also requested his extradition, highlighting the chilly diplomatic situation between Washington and Moscow.

Russia accuses Nikulin of an alleged theft from an online money transfer company in 2009. It requested Nikulin's extradition shortly after his arrest and the U.S. extradition request.

'Easy decision'

Robert Pelikan, Czech Minister of Justice, told CNN that it was an easy decision to send Nikulin to America instead of Russia because the American charges were more serious. He said he made the decision a long time ago but waited to announce it until all the legal proceedings were finished.

Czech Radio 7 reported that the justice minister waited until the Czech Republics top court rejected a last-minute appeal from Russia.

The case has been contentious in the Czech Republic, where President Milos Zeman is considered to be an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Ryan visits Prague

U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan visited Prague earlier this week and met with Prime Minister Andrej Babis. A spokesperson for the prime minister said the two discussed Nikulins extradition.

According to indictment documents, Nikulin was arrested in the Czech Republic after U.S. officials issued an international arrest warrant. He is charged with computer intrusion, aggravated identity theft and other offenses.

The indictment says Nikulin broke into the computers of the social network LinkedIn in March 2012 by stealing the username and password of an employee.
Russia ordered Britain Saturday to cut more than 50 people from its diplomatic and technical staff in Russia.

The latest demand from Russia is in addition to the retaliatory move both countries took earlier this month when they each ordered 23 of the other's diplomats expelled.

On Friday, the Kremlin gave marching orders to 59 diplomats from 23 Western countries in retaliation for the collective Western expulsion of Russian diplomats.

Britains diplomatic staff appears to have been targeted with the largest cut, with the British ambassador being told he has a month to reduce his staff to the exact same number as the Russian diplomatic corps in Britain.

Missile launch



Meanwhile, Russia conducted two test-firings of its newly-developed intercontinental ballistic missile Friday, the country's Defense Ministry said in a tweet, linking to a video of a Sarmat being launched. The latest ICBM is set to replace Russias current Soviet-era missile Voevoda.

After his meetings, German Ambassador Rudiger von Fritsch said Russia had failed to answer questions about the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal, but added that Berlin remained open to dialogue with Moscow.

The ministry also handed a note of protest to Britains envoy, Laurie Bristow, over what the Russians termed Londons provocative actions and its claims that the Kremlin approved the poisoning in Britain of Skripal and his 33-year-old daughter Yulia.

The tit-for-tat measure by Moscow was expected and come days after 29 Western countries expelled 145 Russian diplomats, most suspected by there host countries of being undeclared spies. NATO also expelled ten diplomats.

Britain and Russia already had expelled 23 of each other's diplomats earlier this month  the demand for a further reduction in Britains diplomatic contingent is an addition. But it was not immediately clear if the instruction would translate into a large cut in British staff numbers.

A spokeswoman for the British Foreign Office said Moscow was in flagrant breach of international law over the attempted killing of the former spy.

No justification



The United States on Thursday declared there is no justification for Russias retaliatory expulsion of American diplomats. The White House has said the like-for-like expulsions by Moscow marks a further deterioration of the relationship between the U.S. and Russia.

The expulsion of undeclared Russian intelligence officers by the United States and more than two dozen partner nations and NATO allies earlier this week was an appropriate response to the Russian attack on the soil of the United Kingdom. Russias response was not unanticipated, and the United States will deal with it," the statement reads.

The Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, Heather Nauert, also criticized Moscows actions, announced earlier in the day by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.



Russia should not be acting like a victim, the State Department spokeswoman added, remarking that the only real victims are those poisoned and inconvenienced by the March 4 release of a nerve agent in the British city of Salisbury.

Lavrov announced the expulsion of 60 U.S. diplomats in response to Washington ordering the departure of the same number of Russian envoys.



Russia also is closing the U.S. consulate in the city of Saint Petersburg, ordering it to cease operations in two days.



It's clear from the list provided to us that the Russian Federation is not interested in a dialogue on issues that matter to our two countries, Nauert told reporters at Thursdays State Department briefing. We reserve the right to respond.

The United States is better off with fewer Russian spies, Nauert told reporters at Thursdays State Department briefing.



All of the Americans declared persona non grata  58 diplomats in Moscow and two officials of the consulate in Yekaterinburg  are to leave Russia by April 5.





Former spy poisoning



Moscow denies responsibility for the nerve-agent attack. Russian officials have offered a variety of explanations for what may have happened in Salisbury. Among them they have alleged that the attack was carried out by British intelligence services in order to discredit Russia. Britain dismisses that allegation.



Expressing concern about deteriorating relations between the two nuclear powers, the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is calling for Washington and Moscow to discuss their differences.



"During the Cold War there were mechanisms of communication and control to avoid the escalation of incidents, to make sure that things would not get out of control when tensions would rise. Those mechanisms have been dismantled," Guterres told reporters. I do believe that mechanisms of this sort are necessary again.

U.S. Ambassador to Russia, Jon Huntsman  who was summoned to the foreign ministry on Thursday  told VOA that it is our desire, of course is to maintain dialogue on the issues that matter the most. Issues like strategic stability and arms control, which are not just a U.S.-Russia set of issues, but indeed impact the stability and the well-being of the entire globe.

Just hours before being summoned to the foreign ministry, Huntsman told VOA that one of his biggest regrets through all the challenges he has faced in his job was seeing the U.S. diplomatic cut by 727 last year on the orders of the Kremlin. That, he said, had severely impacted the embassys cultural outreach programs as well as the processing of visas. He worried visa processing would be even more deeply impacted, if Russia went ahead with further expulsions.

He said: Any Russian citizen who has been to the United States comes back transformed forever; and any American who comes here returns transformed, that is just the way it is. That is most powerful long-tern investment that can be made.

Britain thanks US

British Prime Minister Theresa May, in a phone call this week with U.S. President Donald Trump, praised Washingtons "very strong response" in the wake of the poisoning.



The White House said, "Both leaders agreed on the importance of dismantling Russias spy networks in the United Kingdom and the United States to curtail Russian clandestine activities and prevent future chemical weapons attacks on either countrys soil."



VOA's Jamie Dettmer contributed to this report from Moscow.
Russia has conducted another test of its new liquid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile Sarmat, the Defense Ministrys newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda announced Friday.

The newspaper said the latest test at the Plesetsk cosmodrome confirmed the systems parameters in the stage of prelaunch preparations and the initial flight of the missile.

In addition, the Russian Strategic Missile Forces assessed the correctness of the design and the technical solutions employed in the creation of the ICBM complex, the newspaper said.

The Russian Ministry of Defense reported Thursday about other just-completed firing exercises taking place on the Baltic Sea.

Latvias Defense Ministry said also Thursday it was concerned by a sudden announcement from Russia that it will test-fire missiles in the Baltic Sea between Latvia and Sweden from 06:00 to 18:00, April 4 and 6.

The ministry summoned the Russian Federations military attache and expressed dissatisfaction with the situation, noting that, despite the fact that international agreements do not prevent Russia from conducting such training in this territory, its actions are challenging and more likely to be considered as a demonstration of power.

The ministry requested detailed information from Russia on planned activities in the exclusive economic zone of Latvia, as well as on how security during the missile firing will be ensured.

Meanwhile, the White House announced that U.S. President Donald Trump will host the leaders of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania for a Baltic Summit at the White House on April 3.

Trump and the three heads of state will celebrate the 100th anniversary of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuanias independence.

Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania mark the centennial of their 1918 independence declarations, despite their 47 years under Soviet rule, from 1944 to 1991.
A court in Senegal sentenced opposition leader Khalifa Sall on Friday to five years in prison for embezzlement and falsifying documents.

Sall was arrested a year ago on suspicion of embezzling 1.8 billion CFA francs ($3.40 million). Prior to his arrest, he was seen as a potential rival to President Macky Sall in elections expected next year.
Hundreds of thousands of South Sudanese remained without mobile phone service Friday, as network operator Vivacell continued a standoff with the government over a licensing dispute.

The government cut the network's signal to its roughly 900,000 subscribers just after midnight Tuesday, alleging that Vivacell owed tens of millions of dollars in licensing fees.

The government's information minister, Michael Makuei, told VOA earlier this week that Vivacell previously had been exempted from taxes and licensing fees. "We want them to pay a sum of up to $66 million for their license, and up to now they are dragging their feet," he said.

The licensing fee dispute underscores the mounting financial pressures facing the government in a country ravaged by civil war since late 2013.

Ruling party holds Vivacell stake

Pagan Amum  the former secretary general of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), the country's ruling party  said Vivacell already pays for a valid license it has held for years. "There is no way Vivacell can be required to pay for another license," he told VOA's "South Sudan in Focus" radio program on Thursday.

Amum said that, as secretary general, he had helped negotiate the original deal with Lebanon's Fattouch Investment Group  Vivacell's majority owner  giving the SPLM party a minority share in the telecom firm.

Vivacell has operated in South Sudan since 2008 under a license issued to the SPLM, Amum said. He added that, since 2012, the ruling SPLM has received $100,000 a month from Vivacell for licensing fees.

Vivacell officials went to Makuei's office earlier this week in an attempt to negotiate, but he refused a meeting, the firm's managing director, Jesus Antonio Ortiz Olivo, told Reuters on Wednesday.

Makuei, in media interviews this week, has expressed a desire "to reorganize the telecommunications sector."

Low cellphone penetration rate

Mobile phone subscription rates have been falling in South Sudan, and telecom-sector operators "are placing themselves in survival mode and are hoping for a political settlement and a return to some degree of social stability," the telecommunications research site BuddeComm reported in February.

BuddeCom said South Sudan has one of Africa's lowest rates of cellphone penetration, at 21 percent, noting that recovery could bring "potentially many years of strong growth" to the sector.

South Sudan's regulatory Communications Authority estimates the country's entire telecom market  also served by South Africa's MTN and Kuwait's Zain  has fewer than 3 million subscribers, according to Reuters.

Complications for customers, clients

On Wednesday in the capital city, Juba, long lines formed at mobile phone stores where people waited to buy new subscriber identification module (SIM) cards from Vivacell competitors.

Vivacell subscriber Ever Fanusto said the sudden shutdown cut her off from friends and relatives, including those living overseas.

"I used to call my elder brother who is in America and now we have been disconnected with him," Fanusto said. She added that it would be a challenge to retrieve her contacts' information and load it onto a new SIM card.

In a notice published Wednesday, Vivacell informed its subscribers that the company was working with national authorities to resolve the matter and that it hoped to resume business soon in South Sudan. Otherwise, the company said it would set up "a clear mechanism" for reimbursing dealers, retailers and agents for their SIM card stocks.
The State Department responded swiftly to an announcement by the Kremlin that Russia will retaliate for the expulsions of Russian diplomats from the U.S., Britain and other countries. Moscow announced Thursday it is expelling 60 U.S. diplomats and closing the U.S. consulate in St. Petersburg. State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert told reporters that is not justified and the U.S. reserves the right to respond. VOA's Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine has more from the State Department.
The Trump administration is expected to announce that it will roll back automobile gas mileage and pollution standards that were a pillar in the Obama administration's plans to combat climate change.

It's not clear whether the announcement will include a specific number, but current regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency require the fleet of new vehicles to get 36 miles per gallon in real-world driving by 2025. That's about 10 mpg over the existing standard.

Environmental groups, who predict increased greenhouse gas emissions and more gasoline consumption if the standards are relaxed, say the announcement could come Tuesday at a Virginia car dealership. EPA spokeswoman Liz Bowman said in an email Friday that the standards are still being reviewed.

Legal showdown

Any change is likely to set up a lengthy legal showdown with California, which currently has the power to set its own pollution and gas mileage standards and doesn't want them to change. About a dozen other states follow California's rules, and together they account for more than one-third of the vehicles sold in the US. Currently the federal and California standards are the same.

Automakers have lobbied to revisit the requirements, saying they'll have trouble reaching them because people are buying bigger vehicles due to low gas prices. They say the standards will cost the industry billions of dollars and raise vehicle prices due to the cost of developing technology needed to raise mileage.

When the standards were first proposed, the government predicted that two-thirds of new vehicles sold would be cars, with the rest trucks and SUVs, said Gloria Bergquist, spokeswoman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers. Now the reverse is true, she said.

Still, environmental groups say the standards save money at the pump, and the technology is available for the industry to comply.

Health risk

They also say burning more gasoline will put people's health at risk.

"The American public overwhelmingly supports strong vehicle standards because they cut the cost of driving, reduce air pollution, and combat climate change," said Luke Tonachel, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's Clean Vehicles and Fuels Project.

The EPA and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration are involved in setting the standards, which would cover the years 2022 through 2025.

Some conservative groups are pressing EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt to revoke a waiver that allows California to set its own rules. They say California shouldn't be allowed to set policy for the rest of the nation. Pruitt has publicly questioned the veracity of evidence complied by climate scientists, including those in his own agency, that global warming is overwhelmingly caused by man-made carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels.

If the waiver is revoked, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra says the state will resist. "What we're doing to protect California's environment isn't just good for our communities  it's good for the country," he said in a statement. "We're not looking to pick a fight with the Trump administration, but when they threaten our values, we're ready."

Huge dilemma

Getting rid of the waiver or having two gas mileage and pollution requirements presents a huge dilemma for automakers: while they would like to avoid fines for failing to meet the standards, they also want the expense of building two versions of cars and trucks, one for the California-led states and another for the rest of the country.

Mark Reuss, a General Motors' product development chief, said in a recent interview that he would rather have a single nationwide standard, even if it stays the same. He called two standards "just waste," because they would require different vehicle equipment and costly additional engineering. "I want one good one," he said. "I could focus all my engineers on one."

Automakers agreed to the standards in 2012, but lobbied for and received a midterm review in 2018 to account for changes in market conditions. In the waning days of the Obama presidency, the EPA did the review and proclaimed that the standards have enough flexibility and the technology is available to meet them.

Changes would be years away

Janet McCabe, who was acting assistant EPA administrator under Obama when the review was done, said Friday it will take a couple years for the EPA to propose new rules, gather public comment and finalize any changes. Any rollback would likely bring legal challenges, forcing Pruitt's EPA to defend the science behind the changes.

"This would all take a long time," said McCabe, now a senior fellow at the Environmental Law and Policy Center.

In the meantime, automakers have to proceed with plans for new cars and trucks under the current gas mileage requirements because it takes years to develop vehicles.
Pariss offer to mediate between Ankara and the YPG Syrian Kurdish militia has provoked outrage from the Turkish government.

Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag said the move amounted to supporting terrorism, and could make France a target of Turkey. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan described Pariss move, as a show of hostility against Turkey.

French President Emmanuel Macron made the mediation offer after meeting a delegation of the Syrian Defense Force (SDF), which included prominent members of the YPG militia and its political wing, PYD. Ankara accuses the YPG of being affiliated to the PKK which is waging an insurgency inside Turkey. Friday the PKK was blamed for an attack on Turkish security forces that killed at least 5.

We do not need a mediator. Since when has Turkey been sitting at a table with terrorist organizations? Where did you get this from? You can sit at the table with terrorist organizations. But Turkey fights against terrorist organizations in places like Afrin [in Syria], said Erdogan Friday at a meeting of his supporters.



France no longer has the right to complain about the actions of any terror organization on its soil after meeting with the representatives of the PYD and its armed wing, the People Protection Units (YPG)," Erdogan added.

In a statement, the French presidency said along with mediation, it was prepared to support the creation of a stabilization region to facilitate the SDF fight against Islamic State. The statement paid tribute to the sacrifices and the determining role" of the SDF in fighting against the jihadist group. Ankara accuses the SDF of being a front for the YPG Kurdish militia.



Symbolic victory for YPG

Ankaras fury appears to be exacerbated by claims by those attending the Paris meeting that France was ready to deploy forces to northern Syria as part of efforts to protect Kurdish forces. Paris has not confirmed those claims. France, like the United States, has provided arms to the SDF, including members of the YPG, as well as deploying special forces in the fight against Islamic State, much to Ankaras anger.

But analysts suggest even if claims of a French military deployment prove unfounded, the symbolism of President Macron for the first time hosting members of the YPG at the Elysse Palace, is a significant victory for the militia.

Well, it legitimizes people that Turkey calls terrorists, points out political columnist Semih Idiz, of the al-Monitor website. And we may expect these same people now to appear in other European countries, Germany, Austria and other places. This has potential to add new higher-level tensions between Turkish European relations.

Ankaras strong pushback against Paris could also be a sign that Europe could be considering taking a more assertive stance towards Turkey.

If you look at the way the European Union has closed ranks against Russia, we could end up with a similar situation with Turkey. A block could be developing against Turkey centered on not so much the YPG but the Kurdish issue, warns columnist Idiz.

European leaders, including Macron are facing growing domestic disapproval of what critics claim is the abandoning of Kurdish fighters, who had successfully fought Islamic State.

Ankara pushing ahead

Erdogan Friday announced preparations were underway for a new offensive in Syria against the Kurdish militia, promising to sweep across northern Syria to the Iraqi border. The next declared target of Turkish-led forces is the Syrian town of Manbij, where U.S. forces are deployed with the YPG.

Analysts suggests Erdogan will likely be emboldened by U.S. President Donald Trumps announcement Thursday he would pull U.S. forces from Syria. The U.S. State Department, however, said there was no change in Syrian policy, while the Pentagon reaffirmed support for the SDF in its fight against the Islamic State.

But Ankaras strong pushback against Paris is indicative of what observers claim is Erdogans belief that none of its Western allies are ready to confront it over its Syrian intervention.

This is what President Erdogans brinkmanship is based on, having had his way in Afrin, he is feeling rather bullish about this and he is going to press on, warns columnist Idiz.

We are heading for some confrontation, especially over Manbij. But it is true there seems to be very little that Europe and the West generally can do. Erdogan is set to continue on his path because he believes he can get what he wants.
The roads of Turkeys largest city, Istanbul, are the scene of an increasingly bitter confrontation between taxi drivers and drivers of the new ride-hailing service Uber. Numerous videos shot by terrified Uber passengers are circulating on the internet that show taxi drivers attacking Uber vehicles.

Ubers are easily spotted as they invariably are black or white mini vans. We experience personally verbal attacks, as well as increasing violence like kicking and attacking our cars, as well as blocking our way, explained 22-year-old Mehmet, who only wanted to give his first name. Yesterday, in Ortakoy district [of Istanbul] three taxis cut my way and didnt let me pass," he said.

Some other colleagues experienced harsher attacks. There are cases of armed attacks, including guns or clubs. It happens usually at night, added Mehmet.

Local media have reported Uber drivers being called out to remote locations, where they have been attacked by unknown assailants. Accusation of violence are denied by the taxi industry.

Operating costs

Operating a taxi is a major investment in Turkey, with taxi plates costing nearly $385,000. For drivers it often involves investing life savings or borrowing. Although most of Istanbuls 18,000 plates are bought by wealthy investors who rent out the plates, drivers pay around $2000 a month to rent a taxi. With the high cost of gasoline in Europe, many drivers complain life was already hard, even before the emergence of Uber.

Even though we say we are against violence, they [Uber] are provoking us to use force, vented Mehmet Aktas a taxi driver of 17 years. We are working until 3 or 4 in the morning to make so little money. Why do I have to share the little that I make with an Uber driver. Our income has fallen 30-35 percent [because of Uber] and our expenses have increased. Every day is worse than the day before. Our country is in a dire economic situation, said Aktas.

But the attacks on Ubers have seen many people rally to their support. Comments on social media appear to be overwhelmingly in favor of Uber, with #idontusetaxis and #donttouchuber becoming trending hashtags in Turkey.



If I go to the airport or take a longer journey, I take Uber, because its more spacious, its more reliable, they are on time, said 26-year-old designer Mehmet. Even though sometimes its more expensive, I prefer Uber.

It's also safe, you are in a system you call Uber from that system so it's safe, claimed Nilufer, a student.

Popular option

Unlike in many other countries, Uber in Turkey is usually a little more expensive than taxis. But the usually modern minivans, which offer generous space, are proving increasingly popular in Istanbul in contrast with often cramped and old taxis.

Ubers system of paying an agreed fee by credit card in advance is especially popular among many Istanbul users. Many people in Istanbul have stories of being overcharged by taxi drivers. There is a recent story that made headline news and remains the talk of the city involving a Saudi tourist who wanted to go to the airport and was taken on an hours-long tour of the city. It cost him several hundred dollars and he missed his flight.

But taxi drivers counter they are facing unfair competition. Earlier this month, the Chamber of Istanbul Taxi Businesses filed a court case accusing Uber of running an unlicensed taxi service. The Chamber represents 50,000 drivers with 18,000 licensed cabs. Hundreds of drivers turned up at Istanbuls main courthouse in support of the case. Drivers chanted Uber thieves and we will crush Uber.

Addressing the drivers and the media, Eyup Aksu, head of the Chamber of Istanbul Taxi Businesses, said the display of anger is a warning.

"We dont want to do a protest like the protest of the taxi drivers in Europe, who burnt and destroyed areas. But if our parliament doesnt carry out the necessary regulation, and if the judiciary gives a contrary decision to what we are demanding, then the patience of the taxi drivers will run out, and they will do anything for their bread and for their work, said Aksu.

Observers point out the taxi drivers do have a powerful patron in Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The drivers are traditionally among his most loyal supporters, and the president has always prided himself on being their advocate.

Taxi drivers have always supported the president, he must now support us, said taxi driver Ahmet Kaptan.


Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants staged an attack near a military base in southeast Turkeys Siirt province, killing six Turkish security force members and wounding seven, security sources said Friday.

They said the attack occurred in the area of a military base in the Eruh district of Siirt and that those killed were from a village guard militia that supports the Turkish military. The sources initially said five soldiers were killed.

It was not clear when the attack occurred. State-run Anadolu news agency said four soldiers and three village guards were also wounded in the attack, which occurred in an area where road construction work was being carried out.

The PKK is designated a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and the European Union. Conflict in mainly Kurdish southeast Turkey generally escalates as spring arrives in the mountainous region.

More than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict between the Turkish state and the PKK, which launched a separatist insurgency in 1984. The conflict intensified after a cease-fire collapsed in 2015.

Earlier this month, Turkey captured the northern Syrian town of Afrin after a two-month offensive against the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, which Ankara views as an extension of the PKK.
A committee of British lawmakers published written evidence on Thursday provided by a whistleblower who says information about 50 million Facebook users ended up in the hands of political consultancy Cambridge Analytica.

Cambridge Analytica said the documents did not support whistleblower Christopher Wylie's testimony to the committee this week.

Wylie, who formerly worked for Cambridge Analytica (CA), alleges the data was used to help to build profiles on American voters and raise support for Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Wylie also alleges that CA was linked to Canadian firm AggregateIQ (AIQ), which he says was involved in the development of the software used to target voters. AggregateIQ, he says, received payment from a pro-Brexit campaign group before the 2016 referendum when Britain voted to quit the European Union.

This was co-ordinated with the lead Vote Leave group in a breach of British electoral funding rules, Wylie alleged. Vote Leave denies any wrongdoing.

Wylie appeared before the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee of the British parliament on Tuesday. The committee said Wylie provided it with documents including a services agreement between AIQ and SCL Elections, an affiliate of Cambridge Analytica, dated September 2014.

Reuters was unable to independently verify the authenticity of the documents made public by the committee.

None of these documents support the false allegations made in Tuesdays hearing, Cambridge Analytica said in a statement, adding that Wylie had left the company in July 2014 and would have no direct knowledge of its work or practices since then.

It is wrong to suggest that Cambridge Analyticas earlier relationship with Aggregate IQ implies that we were involved with their work for Vote Leave. Cambridge Analytica did no work in any capacity in the 2016 EU referendum.

AIQ did not respond to a Reuters request for comment after Tuesdays committee hearing, but in an earlier statement said it had never entered into a contract with Cambridge Analytica and had never been part of the firm.

The parliamentary committees chairman has said it was astonishing that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg decided not to answer lawmakers questions, given the claims that Wylie had made about how data was used.
The United States is on track to meet the targets of the Paris climate agreement despite President Donald Trump's plan to withdraw from the accord, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Thursday.

Guterres said emissions-cutting plans put in motion by American businesses, regional governments and cities meant that the goals set by the former U.S. administration, which signed the deal in 2016 were within reach.

"We have seen in the cities, and we have seen in many states, a very strong commitment to the Paris agreement, to the extent that some indicators are moving even better than in the recent past," Guterres told reporters at UN headquarters in New York.

"There are expectations that, independently of the position of the administration, the U.S. might be able to meet the commitments made in Paris as a country."

Greenhouse gas emissions

Under the deal, the administration of former president Barack Obama pledged to cut domestic greenhouse gas emissions 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.

Nearly 200 countries and parties have signed the landmark agreement after intense negotiations in Paris, where all nations made voluntary carbon-cutting pledges running to 2030.

The agreement is aimed at limiting global warming to within two degrees Celsius, but Guterres warned that more action was needed by 2020 to reach that goal.

Withdrawal notice due in 2019

Trump faced condemnation when he announced in June 2017 that the United States was pulling out, painting the accord as a "bad deal" for the U.S. economy.

Under the agreement, the United States can formally give notice that it plans to withdraw in 2019, three years after the accord came into force, and the withdrawal would become effective in 2020.

Describing climate change as "the most systemic threat to humankind," Guterres said recent data on extreme weather events showed that "2017 was filled with climate chaos."

"2018 has already brought more of the same," he said. "Food security, health, stability itself all hang in the balance."

Guterres is planning to host a major summit next year to take stock of progress in implementing the climate deal, but it remains unlikely that Trump would attend.

Plan to loosen emissions, fuel standards

Though Guterres said the U.S. is on track to meet Paris climate agreement targets, the Trump administration still has the ability to change current regulations.

The New York Times reported Thursday, citing an Environmental Protection Agency spokeswoman, that the White House was expected to push a plan to loosen standards on emissions and vehicle fuel economy standards, undercutting the previous administration's bid to fight climate change.

Such a move would represent a win for automakers, potentially paving the way to lower the bar for standards globally.
The U.N. Security Council on Friday blacklisted 27 ships, 21 companies and a businessman for helping North Korea circumvent sanctions, keeping the pressure on Pyongyang despite its recent diplomatic opening to talks, a diplomat said.

Acting on a request from the United States, a council committee approved the largest-ever package of sanctions designations on North Korea, the council diplomat said on condition of anonymity.

The move is part of a global crackdown on the smuggling of North Korean commodities in violation of U.N. sanctions resolutions, which were adopted in response to Pyongyang's nuclear and ballistic missile tests.

Thirteen North Korean oil tankers and cargo vessels were banned from ports worldwide, along with 12 other ships for helping Pyongyang smuggle banned commodities or supplying oil and fuel shipments, according to a U.N. document obtained by AFP.

Two other North Korean vessels were hit with a global assets freeze but were not banned from port entry.

Twenty-one shipping and trading firms were hit by an assets freeze. Three of them are based in Hong Kong, including Huaxin Shipping, which delivered shipments of North Korean coal to Vietnam in October.

12 North Korean firms hit

Twelve North Korean firms were blacklisted for running ships involved in illegal transfers of oil and fuel, according to the document.

Two other companies  Shanghai Dongfeng Shipping and Weihai World Shipping Freight, also based in China  were blacklisted for carrying North Korean coal on their vessels.

The remaining firms are in based Singapore, Samoa, the Marshall Islands and Panama.

A businessman identified as Tsang Yung Yuan was hit by a global travel ban and assets freeze for organizing illegal shipments of North Korean coal with a North Korean broker in Russia.

The sanctions were approved as the United States moves to open talks with North Korea on its nuclear drive, with a possible summit meeting between President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un to be held by the end of May.

Despite the diplomatic opening, the United States have made clear they will keep the pressure on Pyongyang to shift course by pressing on with sanctions.

Sanctions flouted

Last year, the Security Council adopted a series of resolutions to ban North Korean exports of commodities in a bid to cut off revenue to the nation's military programs.

The measures severely restrict deliveries of oil and refined petroleum products to North Korea, but sanctions monitors have reported that Pyongyang has used vessels to dodge those restrictions.

North Korea earned $200 million last year from exports of coal, iron, steel and other banned commodities, according to a recent report.

Only eight North Korean vessels had so far been banned from ports for sanctions-busting, so the inclusion of 13 other ships Friday was expected to significantly cripple North Korea's maritime network.

The United States had initially asked the United Nations to ban 33 ships and 27 firms over smuggling, but China put a hold on that request to review the list.

Earlier this month, the White House said Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping agreed in a phone conversation to keep up the sanctions pressure on North Korea until Pyongyang takes concrete steps toward denuclearization.
A federal judge in Seattle opened the door Thursday for thousands of immigrants to apply for asylum, finding that the Department of Homeland Security has routinely failed to notify them of a deadline for filing their applications.

U.S. District Judge Ricardo S. Martinez issued the ruling in a class-action lawsuit brought by immigrant rights groups on behalf of those who fear persecution if returned to their home country.

In many cases, those asylum seekers are released from custody after officials have interviewed them and determined their fears to be credible. They're told that they'll need to appear in immigration court, but they typically aren't personally told that they only have a year to apply for asylum, the lawsuit argued.

Backlog of cases

Due to a backlog in immigration cases, the asylum seekers are often not given a hearing within a year, and thus, by the time they show up in court and learn about the deadline, it's already passed, Martinez found.

"This means many asylum seekers who were previously going to have a door slammed in their face are now able to say, 'No, a federal court has said that I am timely filing my application and you need to accept it'" said Matt Adams, legal director of the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project and an attorney for the plaintiffs.

Jonathan Withington, a spokesman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, part of Homeland Security, said the agency does not comment on pending litigation.

The judge ordered the department to begin providing notice about the one-year deadline within 90 days any time an immigrant seeking asylum is released from custody pending deportation proceedings. He also said the department must give those who missed the deadline another year to file their applications.

Another catch-22

Further, Martinez told the department it must fix another catch-22 in its system: that while asylum-seekers must file their asylum applications within a year, the government refuses to accept the applications unless the applicant has been given a formal notice to appear in immigration court.

Often those notices aren't issued within a year, so even if asylum seekers know about the one-year deadline, there's virtually no way for them to meet it, Martinez said.

He ordered the government to come up with a uniform system for accepting asylum applications.

"Defendants have left class members without an adequate mechanism to timely file their asylum applications, thereby denying them the opportunity to exercise their statutory right to apply for asylum," Martinez wrote.

Notifications aren't good enough

Government lawyers argued that they do publish materials that inform asylum-seekers of the deadline  including the "Information Guide for Prospective Asylum Applicants," available in 11 languages, and in "Know Your Rights" videos that many detention centers play for detainees.

Further, federal law does not require that officials directly notify asylum seekers of the deadline upon their release from custody, the government argued.

But Martinez said that given the trauma and stress endured by many asylum seekers, combined with a typical lack of legal counsel and knowledge about U.S. immigration law, the general notifications about the deadline aren't good enough.

Comments from Orrin Hatch

Martinez also found that personal notification to asylum seekers was needed to carry out the intent of Congress.

He noted comments from Republican Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, also cited by the plaintiffs, about the one-year deadline in 1996: "I am committed to ensuring that those with legitimate claims of asylum are not returned to persecution, particularly for technical deficiencies. If the time limit is not implemented fairly, or cannot be implemented fairly, I will be prepared to revisit this issue in a later Congress."

Among the asylum-seekers who sued was Lidia Margarita Lopez Orellana, who arrived in Eagle Pass, Texas, from Guatemala in 2014 with her two youngest children in tow. She said that despite checking in with immigration authorities regularly as required, she didn't learn about the deadline until December 2015, when she met with a lawyer.
Two members of the U.S.-led coalition in Syria, one American and the other British, were killed in a roadside bomb blast Thursday night, according to U.S. officials. Five others were wounded.

Two U.S. officials speaking anonymously to Reuters said the attack occurred near the city of Manbij in northern Syria.

An earlier statement from the U.S. military did not indicate where the attack occurred, nor did it disclose the names and nationalities of the victims, saying only that they were coalition members.

U.S. military spokesman Colonel Ryan Dillion did not immediately say who was responsible for the attack, but added, "We have our initial assessment and thoughts on that but we won't provide [it] until the investigation is complete."

Britain's Defense Ministry confirmed the second fatality came from within its ranks. A defense spokesman said that the British service member was embedded with U.S. forces at the time of the attack and that the coalition forces were carrying out an operation against the Islamic State group.

The attack near Manbij, a former Islamic State stronghold where U.S. forces are stationed, occurred one day after U.S. President Donald Trump said he would withdraw U.S. forces in the near future.

"We're coming out of Syria, like, very soon. Let the other people take care of it now. Very soon  very soon we're coming out," Trump said in a speech in the Midwestern U.S. state of Ohio, without offering details.

However, a U.S. defense official said the U.S. mission in Syria remains unchanged, and added that U.S. troops are there to defeat IS.

The U.S. has more than 2,000 military personnel in Syria, 60 of whom have been killed since the campaign to destroy IS began in 2014.

There were conflicting reports, meanwhile, about whether the main rebel group in eastern Ghouta near Damascus had agreed with Russia to leave the town of Douma, the largest and last remaining rebel-held town in the area.

"Our position is still clear and firm and it is rejecting forced displacement and demographic change in what remains of eastern Ghouta," said Hamza Birqdar, a spokesman for the Jaish al-Islam rebel group, which controls Douma.

Col. Gen. Sergei Rudskoi of the Russian military's General Staff said earlier it had reached agreement with the rebels in Douma to leave.

Syrian government forces have surrounded Douma, where tens of thousands of civilians live. Thousands of people have been fleeing violence in the eastern Ghouta area to the northwestern Syrian city of Idlib.

The Syrian government's recent military offensive in the area has claimed more than 1,600 civilian lives, according to the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights.

The recapture of Douma would represent a major victory for President Bashar al-Assad, as it would eliminate the last major rebel stronghold in the Damascus area since the war began seven years ago.
As part of the global coalition against Islamic State, the United States this week increased its special operations troops in the flashpoint town of Manbij in northern Syria.

In an email Thursday to VOA, Col. Thomas F. Veale, a U.S. military spokesperson and public affairs director for the coalition, said the recent deployment is a protection measure to ensure the safety of coalition troops in the area.

Coalition forces are establishing a joint coordination mechanism for operations there, through the coalition's official relationship with the Manbij Military Council, Veale said.

Manbij, in northern Syria, has recently become another major point of disagreement between the U.S. and its NATO ally, Turkey, over the presence of the Kurdish militant group People's Protection Units, also known as the YPG.

Turkey says the YPG is a terrorist organization, alleging the group is linked to Kurdish separatists inside Turkey, known as the PKK, which was designated a terror organization by both the U.S. and the EU. But the U.S. denies the connections between the PKK and the YPG and considers the YPG to be a key ally in the ongoing campaign against the Islamic State terror group in the region.



Turkeys National Security Council, chaired by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in a statement on Wednesday, threatened that Ankara will take action if the YPG fighters do not withdraw immediately from the region.

In the meeting, it is stated that the terrorists in Manbij should be removed from the area, otherwise Turkey will not hesitate to take initiative by itself as it did in other regions, the statement read.

The Turkish military and its allied rebels this month captured the Kurdish town of Afrin in northwest Syria from the YPG in an operation code named Operation Olive Branch, that started on January 20.

The U.S. has said it is deeply concerned that the operation has displaced thousands of civilians and diverted attention from the more important task of eliminating Islamic State.

Officials of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) say a Turkish-led attack on Manbij could encourage thousands of fighters, especially those recruited from the town, to leave battlefields against Islamic State remnants in eastern Syria and move to the west to push back against the Turkish army and its allied rebels military offensive.

Najim Muhammad, the deputy commander of the Manbij Military Council, said the U.S.-led coalition has assured them it will protect the town.

We are cooperating with the global coalition towards the security and safety of Manbij, Muhammad told VOA. Our coordination is very strong.

Muhammad said he was concerned that the Free Syrian Army rebels are emboldened by the Turkish support and are amassing forces in northwest Manbij.

WATCH: More US Special Forces Deployed to Manbij

The Turkish pro-government Yeni Safak newspaper Tuesday reported that a force of 12,000 militants from the Free Syrian Army are waiting for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to initiate the operation.

Col. Veale of the U.S. military refused to disclose the number of U.S. special operations troops recently deployed to the area, but said the level of force protection is commensurate to the threat.

A VOA reporter in northern Syria who visited the site said the U.S. troops are stationed mostly across the Sajur river area in northwest Manbij, bordering near the Turkey-backed Syrian fighters.

The U.S. troops in Manbij came under direct attack by Turkish-backed rebels in August 2017. The Pentagon then said the U.S. troops returned fire but there were no casualties on either side.
A wider Sino-U.S. trade dispute would help export-reliant Vietnam compete against Chinese companies but put the country at risk of any global fallout, analysts say.

The numerous exporters in Vietnam that ship manufactured goods to the United States would save money compared with Chinese peers if not subject to American tariffs, said Dustin Daugherty, senior associate with business consultancy Dezan Shira & Associates in Ho Chi Minh City.

The U.S. government said this month it would develop a list of tariffs on up to $60 billion in Chinese imports. China has threatened to impose its own in response.

Lets say (the United States) went the more traditional route, tensions kept escalating and more tariffs are slapped on Chinese products, Daugherty said. In that case Vietnams export sector definitely benefits. Were already seeing the U.S. being very warm to Vietnam and U.S. businesses keen on doing business with Vietnam.

But Chinese firms hit by tariffs might flood Vietnam with raw materials for local manufacturing, while overall world market volatility caused by a Sino-U.S. trade dispute could hamper the countrys trade, said Carl Thayer, emeritus professor at the University of New South Wales in Australia.

A tariff-free Vietnam scenario

Vietnamese exporters would save money compared to their Chinese peers if the U.S. government placed tariffs on Chinese firms alone without touching their cross-border supply chains, Daugherty said.

The government of U.S. President Donald Trump calls China unfair in its trade practices, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative says on its website. China enjoys a $375 billion trade surplus with the United States.

Vietnam counts the United States as its top single-country export destination and it shipped $46.484 billion worth of goods to that market last year.

Vietnamese officials have carved out an investment environment since the 1980s that hinges on low costs for manufacturers. American-invested factories such as a Ford Motor plant and an Intel chip factory are among those active in Vietnam today.

Foreign investment contributed to exports worth $155.24 billion in 2017, financial services firm SSI Research in Hanoi says. Vietnams economy grew about 7 percent in the first quarter this year, it says.

Attractive investment

Vietnam would be a more attractive investment compared with China under higher U.S. tariffs, analysts say.

Some new investors might be formerly China-based firms hoping to flee the tariffs, said Song Seng Wun, an economist in the private banking unit of CIMB in Singapore.

China itself might offer Vietnam, along with other countries, preferential trade policies or infrastructure help to shore up trade ties, some believe. Stronger trade relations outside the United States would help China offset any tariff damage, Daugherty said.

This week Chinas commerce minister pledged to relax trade rules affecting India.

Specter of a broader trade war

U.S. import tariffs that hit Chinas extensive cross-border supply chain would hurt Vietnam as a place that finishes Chinese goods for final export, Thayer said. Its unclear whether Washington would tax Chinese firms alone or their wider supply networks.

Chinese firms already co-invest with Vietnamese partners, Song said, and supply chains for goods such as consumer electronics can net multiple countries, not just China.

More co-investment might follow if Vietnam can offer shelter from tariffs. But Sino-Vietnamese political tension over a maritime dispute risks giving Vietnamese firms a bad name at home if they work too extensively with Chinese partners.

I would say there will be all kinds of repercussions and implications just because of the very integrated supply chain in the world these days, Song said. Take an Apple phone as an example. Parts from here and there are assembled in China.

Steel, aluminum tariffs

U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs that took effect last week cover much of the world including China and Vietnam. Vietnam exported 380,000 tons of steel, worth $303 million, to the United States in 2017, domestic news website VnExpress International says.

Chinese firms hit by the range of tariffs being mulled now in Washington might boost sales to Vietnam, Thayer said. Chinese sellers of raw materials for Vietnamese exports could dump goods into Vietnam to keep up their own balance sheets as U.S. tariffs hurt them, he added.

Chinese sellers often have an economy of scale that lets them sell for less in Vietnam than local vendors do. Vietnam counts China as its top trading partner.

An escalation of Sino-U.S. trade tensions could also chill global markets or trade as a whole, some analysts fear. That fallout could slow global growth, he said.

Disruption to trade shouldnt affect Vietnam overall, but its the way the entire globe is reacting to this that I think could affect Vietnam, he said. Vietnam is overall heavily committed to global integration with a number of partners, so disruption along that way would have an effect.
Basilica is partially sealed-off but remains open to visitors.

The Vatican has sealed off part of St Peters Basilica after chunks of stucco fell from the ceiling during visiting time on the afternoon of 29 March.Nobody was injured in the incident which occurred at the beginning of the side nave, near the chapel housing Michelangelo's Pieta, to the right of the main entrance.Vatican spokesman Greg Burke said work is being carried out to secure the site and the basilica remains open to the public.The incident took place in the middle of Holy Week as the Vatican prepares for a series of papal ceremonies culminating in the Easter Sunday celebrations in St Peters Square.
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Then in August 2017, Musk said, We remain, we believe, on track to achieve a 5,000-unit week by the end of this year. He added that what people should absolutely have zero concern about is that Tesla will achieve a 10,000-unit production week by the end of next year. By October, Musk said that ramping up was manufacturing hell and that the companys current forecast is for 5,000 Model 3s vehicles a week by the end of June. Investors are waiting to see the actual results.
At least once a week Im called sir, and several times a month Im chased out of the womens bathroom, she tweeted. Do you know what I do when this happens? I use empathy, and I take the opportunity to open someones mind about what it means to be an LGBTQ person. If we want to change the world, then it is our job to help people learn  not to try to shame them for a mistake.
One of the main reasons for the albums success (and the fact that the 48-year-old show is still around) is the way Lloyd Webber and Rice  both from Christian backgrounds  approached the Jesus story. Instead of framing his divinity or his ministry, they focus instead on the sociopolitical factors working on him and his followers. The result is a Jesus who is a radical revolutionary fighting against the establishment  a very resonant idea in 1970.
A decade after I opened my doors to Food, Inc., I still have to fight for a simple public-health study on air quality because it might conclude that the poultry industry could improve. I hoped my sacrifice to be featured in the film would result in legislators understanding what their constituents faced at the hands of the poultry industry and motivate them to protect us.
Also spurring the BID is a $10 million commitment from the city to develop what is tentatively known as the cap park, which will cover the down ramp on the 1500 block of Connecticut Avenue and route express traffic underneath the circle. The BID pledges to oversee the maintenance and management of the park, which is slated for completion by 2020.
The panel interviewed him informally anyway, asking him how he would drive change in such a large organization but not about his views on policy. One person who sits on the panel, and who spoke on the condition of anonymity because its proceedings are confidential, said they didnt think Jackson had the requisite skills to transition from overseeing a team of about 20 doctors, nurses and physician assistants in the White House medical office to overseeing the health administration.
In a statement, McCabes attorney said it was fully appropriate for the bureaus deputy director to authorize media interaction and asserted that Comey knew about it. The attorney, Michael R. Bromwich, said emails between the two men clearly show that Mr. McCabe advised Director Comey that he was working with colleagues at the FBI to correct inaccuracies before the stories were published, and that they remained in contact through the weekend while the interactions with the reporter continued.
Baker did not leave for three months. By his last day on Aug. 12, according to documents Esty provided to The Post, he and Esty had co-written a positive recommendation letter he could use in a job search and signed a legal document preventing her from disparaging him or discussing why he left. Baker went on to work for Sandy Hook Promise, the gun-control group created after the 2012 shooting in Estys district. He was dismissed from the group this week after The Post contacted him.
In terms of racial and economic equality, New York is so far behind when we should be leading, Nixon said in an interview on the subway as she left Brooklyn. I feel like people in the press know these things, but what are they going to do? They cant write editorials 24 hours a day about the dirty secret of how unprogressive New York has become under Andrew Cuomo.
The money appropriated by Congress will go to fund projects in California, Texas and New Mexico. In addition to two miles of replacement barrier in Calexico, it will pay for 14 miles of replacement wall near San Diego, with 14 miles of secondary fencing; 20 miles of new wall near Santa Teresa, N.M., with construction expected to begin in early April; and four miles of new fencing in El Paso. In Texass Rio Grande Valley, it will fund 25 miles of levee wall and eight miles of new border wall.
Prosecutors argued that Salman had confessed to the crime, writing during an FBI interview: I am sorry for what happened. I wish Id go back and tell his family and the police what he was going to do. They said she also sent her husband a text message on the eve of the attack seeming to tell him that he should mislead his mother about where he was and, afterward, lied about his gun ownership and his radical tendencies.
Board of Regents appoint Dr. Norm Tarbox as interim president of Weber State University, effective May 1

March 30, 2018

ST GEORGE  The State Board of Regents named Dr. Norm Tarbox as interim president of Weber State University, to take effect May 1, 2018. Dr. Tarbox will return to his current role as Vice President for Administrative Services at Weber State after the Board of Regents completes the presidential search and a new president is in place.

Dr. Charles A. Wight, current president of Weber State, announced Jan. 18, 2018, that he planned to step down as president effective May 1, 2018. It is anticipated that a new president will be in place by the end of 2018.

Dan Campbell, Chair of the Board of Regents, said, Dr. Tarbox is the longest-serving vice president at Weber State University and has experienced several administrative changes during his time at the institution. He is well-prepared to serve Weber State in this role, and the Board is confident he will successfully shepherd Weber State through this transition. We appreciate his dedication to the long-term success of the institution.

Dr. Tarbox has served as Vice President for Administrative Services at Weber State since May 2002. He previously served in the Utah System of Higher Education as Associate Commissioner for Finance and Facilities from 2000 to 2002 and Assistant Commissioner from 1996 to 2000. Dr. Tarbox earned an Ed.D. in Educational Leadership and Policy at the University of Utah, an MBA and BA in Communications from Brigham Young University, and an AA from Snow College.

For more information about the Weber State presidential search, visit weber.edu/presidentialsearch.

THE UTAH SYSTEM OF HIGHER EDUCATION (USHE) is governed by the Board of Regents and is comprised of Utahs eight public colleges and universities. The CEO of USHE is the Commissioner of Higher Education. For more information, visit higheredutah.org.
STAMFORD  With three months left in the public school year, the district has already exceeded its overtime budget for custodians due to staff vacancies, a high number of absences and a lack of part-time workers, according to newly obtained public documents.

In a Feb. 8 memo to Superintendent Earl Kim from finance director Hugh Murphy, the district requested a transfer from the custodial wages account to the custodial overtime account. The memo, which was part of a packet distributed at a Fiscal and Operations Committee meeting held a week later, said the regular wages account was $508,000 under budget and the overtime account was $625,000, leaving a $117,000 deficit.

The Board of Education voted to approve the transfer, but there was some skepticism.

We spent a great deal of time on negotiations on the last contract, board member Jackie Heftman said at the meeting. We now find ourselves in a situation where were spending overtime because we cant fill those positions. So what is the solution?

Rich Lyons, director of facilities for the company hired to manage the school districts buildings, said there was need for further discussion to find a solution. But said his company, ABM, was interviewing custodians.

I do believe theres a solution out there, Lyons said, suggesting the district may use a hybrid of more full-time employees and part-timers. We have had long-term vacancies this year (unlike) before due to real illness and injury.

According to the districts monthly financial statement from December, $1.36 million had been spent on overtime pay for custodians by the end of 2017. The budgeted allotment for the school year was $1.45 million.

Now, more than a month after that meeting, there are still seven vacancies for custodians in the district, Kim said in a phone interview last week.

This has been the case since at least January, when Kim wrote a memo to Murphy with the December year-to-date numbers and projections. The memo said there were 40 to 50 part-timers filling in, but the overtime costs was nearly $200,000 a month.

At the Feb. 13 meeting, Lyons added there have also been 12 to 16 full-timers out since July with vacancies for four to six permanent hires. Kim said about 40 percent of the open slots are due to vacancies while the rest are for long-term absences.

The memo said ABM, the company hired last March to take over maintenance of public school buildings, is looking to resolve the issues with staffing and coverage as quickly as possible. Kim said the staff vacancies were due to issues like worker injury and retirement.

Its a much longer process than if we were a private company, Kim said, adding workers must be tested, screened and interviewed before being hired. So these positions continue to be unfilled for a long period of time and the way to staff the positions, so the buildings got cleaned, was to have other custodians work overtime.

Part-timers

Lyons said ABM and its subcontractor, Milello Maintenance, are responsible for hiring part-time workers.

Milello Maintenance has previously been criticized by district custodians for hiring part-timers with high absentee rates, no background checks and without the appropriate skills to handle the job.

Rich Freedman, chairman of the Board of Finance, said he brought this issue up with the Board of Education when discussing next years budget. He said the board told them they hadnt been able to hire the number of part-time custodians their contract allots, forcing them to pay overtime to staffers instead.

They need to do a better job filling their part-time slots, Freedman said. ABM needs to do a better job filling the part-time slots. If they do that, then they wont need to spend as much on overtime.

Kim also said last week the number of temporary employees who work part-time is high because the district pays them little more than minimum wage, leading to low retention rates. The rates theyre paid are absorbed as part of their ABM contract.

At the fiscal and operations committee meeting, Heftman raised issue with this as well.

There has to be some incentive from the contractor to make sure part-timers are hired at a wage that makes it competitive, Heftman said. I realize it might cost us a little bit more money, but its not going to cost us what a full-timer does.

Despite Lyons saying at the public meeting that the high vacancies were unusual, Brendan Cremins, regional director for ABM, said the number of vacancies is at or below industry standards.

In partnership with the school system and city government, we are actively working to ensure the quality of services are maintained as they attempt to fill these positions, Cremins wrote in an email.

When asked how ABM was maintaining quality considering the number of openings, Cremins wrote: We are focused on ensuring quality through our industry-leading processes and by working closely with the school system. In some cases, if it makes sense, we will outsource as is a common business practice in the industry.

Lyons and Chris Velez, custodial manager for ABM in the district, deferred to Cremins and ABM when asked to comment on the situation, saying their contracts required them to go through the corporation to speak to the media.

Contract formerly held by Barbarotta

Prior to hiring ABM last year, the districts facilities were run by AFB Construction Management, which held a contract with the citys schools for nearly two decades. The CEO of the firm, Al Barbarotta, was under local and FBI investigation over whether he used his companys position to extort money from another city contractor.

AFB was also accused of not having a consistent presence at the school.

The Board of Education receives quarterly reports from the management firm, though assistant secretary Nicola Tarzia said hed like to see more from the new firm.

We do monthly meetings for facilities and operations updates, but Rich Lyons has been the go-to guy on most of these updates as far as ABM, Tarzia said. Id like to see a better presence of them and their management team. Its hard for me to tell if theyre actually in building or in town hall.

Lyons, a former Board of Education member from 2010 to 2014, previously served as project director in Stamford for AFB before being hired as the director of facilities for ABM.

ABM has a 27-month contract with the district through June 30, 2019 with an optional one-year extension. The company is being paid $553,000 for its work this school year.

Were pleased its a short-term contract by design, Kim said. So if things arent working out, we can go out to bid again. So theres strong incentive for them to fulfill.
Eighteen students have been honored with the distinction of graduating with high honors from the Staples High School class of 2018.

Academic grade-point averages, calculated at the end of the first semester of the senior year, are the determinant as to whether a student is graduated with formal honors. A student will be designated with High Honors if his or her GPA falls in the top 4 percent of the graduating class.

The following students are the class of 2018 high honors honorees: Jacob Didner, Marshall Heiser, Neal Soni, Nicholas Attkiss, Max Popken, Juliana Beal, Lauren Thomson, Jackson Delgado, Gary Perelberg, Carlie Darefsky, Katherine Flug, Sudhanshu Mathur, Paige Anderson, Seohyun Hong, Juliana Hopper, Jessica Xu, Sarah Acselrod and Isabelle Grosgogeat.

Two Westport natives have earned parts in college theater productions.

Recently, Caroline Didelot was part of the cast and crew from Baldwin Wallace University who, under the direction of James Beaudry, breathed new life into Cole Porters classic musical masterpiece Anything Goes. Mayhem and mischief ensue with star-crossed lovers, mistaken identities and good old-fashioned Broadway fun.

Didelot, a graduate of Staples High School majoring in music theatre, played the part of Virtue in the production.

Anything Goes was a co-production between the Baldwin Wallace University Department of Theatre and Dance and the universitys acclaimed music theatre program. Headed by Victoria Bussert, the program has produced dozens of Broadway stars and performing arts professionals.

McDaniel College student Anna Rozier performs in a new translation of The Bakkhai, Euripidess classical Greek tragedy about the struggle to the death between freedom and restraint, the rational and the irrational, man and God.

Performances are April 18-21 at the school in Westminster, Md.

This new translation of The Bakkhai is by award-winning classics scholar, poet and writer Anne Carson. The McDaniel production is directed by theater arts chair Elizabeth van den Berg with McDaniel theater arts professor Ira Domser as the set designer.

The Greens Farms Volunteer Fire Company will hold its 67th Annual Easter Egg Hunt on Saturday on the grounds of Long Lots School on Hyde Lane at 2 p.m.

Children will hunt for the eggs in age groups through age 10.

Children who find specially marked eggs will receive Easter baskets.

The Easter bunny will be there to meet and greet the children.

Winnie Marion, of Westport, was named to the fall honor roll at Bard Academy at Simons Rock. To earn a spot on the honor roll, students must achieve a GPA of 3.7 or higher.

The Westport Veterans Council announced the theme for the 2018 Memorial Day float contest will be Honoring the Veterans of World War I, as this year marks the 100th anniversary of the end of that war. The VFW is named for Joseph J. Clinton and the American Legion is named for August Matthias, both of whom were WWI veterans.

There will be certificates awarded in the following categories: best development of theme, best youth organizational float, most creative, best community organization, most colorful, and the best overall float.

On Memorial Day (Monday, May 28), the parade will begin on Riverside Avenue at 9 a.m. Memorial services will be on Veterans Green immediately following the parade.

A Westport foundation will be honored at the 9th Annual Housatonic Community College Foundation Gala on April 21 in the Lafayette Atrium in Bridgeport.

The Allison Family Foundation will be honored for its philanthropy and will receive the Friend of The College Award.

Also, Robert D. Scinto will receive the Community Service Award, the Distinguished Alumni Award will go to Judge Eddie Rodriguez Jr. and the Young Alumni Award will be presented to Dr. Yusuff Abdu.

Tickets, beginning at $150, are on sale for the gala, which will feature a lively new format with a spirited cocktail party, music, dancing, food tastings, inspiring speakers and exciting student performances.

The evening will provide important funds for student scholarships and will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the college. Additional event proceeds will provide funds for student advising and academic programs of the college.

Corporate sponsors include Bigelow Tea, Peoples United Bank, Premier Graphics, Brewport, and media sponsor, Hearst Media.

For more information and to purchase tickets, visit

housatonic.edu/gala or call 203-332-5156.

The Westport Weston Chamber of Commerce is hosting a new event for the town and its residents: the Great Westport Pizza Contest.

The contest, to take place throughout the month of March, will have 14 pizza-making restaurants compete in seven different categories to be crowned Best Pizza Maker in Westport. Judging will be done by town residents by voting online for each category. By voting, each participant is entered into a drawing to win a free pizza from one of the seven winning restaurants.

The 14 restaurants competing are: Angelinas, Cuatro Hermanos, Joes, Jordans III, Julians Brick Oven, Julians Kitchen, Planet Pizza, Rizzutos, Romanacci Express, Tarry Lodge, Tuscanos, Tuttis, Via Sforza and Westport Pizza.

The seven categories are: Best Slice, Best Personal Pizza, Best Meat Pizza, Best Gluten Free Pizza, Best Veggie Pizza, Best Plain Pizza and Best Delivered Pizza. East restaurant is entered in four.

Residents will have until March 31 to visit all the venues, enjoy the offerings, then go to the Chambers Pizza Contest web page to vote. Participants are urged to use the hashtag #greatwestportpizza in posts.

Sponsoring the event is Westport law firm Berchem Moses PC.

For information and to access the voting pages, visit westportwestonchamber.com/pizza.

Do you drive on the Merritt Parkway late at night or early in the morning between Fairfield and Westport? Then be prepared for some delays because of a $56.7 million project that wont be finished until August 2019.

The project will focus on a five-mile stretch of the parkway between the Congress Street bridge in Fairfield to the Newtown Turnpike overpass in Westport.

The project will include new pavement in both the northbound lanes and work on 11 structures related to the historic bridges, built nearly 80 years ago.

Theres also upgrades planned for guiderails, drainage and restoration of the historic bridges. With all this work, lane closures are needed.

Northbound lane closures are planned from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. from Saturday to Wednesday and from 9 p.m. to 8 a.m. on Thursday and Friday.
A former staff member for Rep. Elizabeth Esty said she was punched, screamed at and threatened with death by the congresswomans then-chief of staff, who after being fired in 2016, went to work for Sandy Hook Promise on Estys recommendation.

After 'Me Too,' women want justice; lawyers have bad news for...

Esty admits to paying the former chief of staff, Tony Baker, a $5,000 severance  money she said she has personally repaid to the U.S. Treasury  and giving a favorable recommendation to Sandy Hook Promise for a job from which he was apparently fired.

The Connecticut Democrat said she accepts blame for her delayed action on reports of Bakers misconduct, and the firing protocol recommended by the House counsels office is inadequate.

But in a series of interviews, Esty insisted she did not know the young female staffer  Anna Kain, who has since gone public with her allegations  had been in a relationship of any kind with Baker, let alone an abusive one.

In anticipation of possible criticism by the former staffer, Esty said she feels she was mistaken in several actions she took, including what she described as the limited recommendation for a job he subsequently took as Sandy Hook Promises Ohio state director.

Bakers last day at Sandy Hook Promise was Monday, said Andrew Ricci, a friend and spokesman for Baker. He could not

confirm the reason for Bakers exit, but it was likely connected to the trickling out of Bakers record of alleged abusive behavior while serving in Estys office.

Ricci said Baker, in agreeing to a protective order obtained by the staffer, did not admit guilt, and he denied punching the woman.

Efforts to contact Kain through an intermediary did not yield an interview.

Esty faults herself for not immediately suspending him upon hearing of a May 2016 incident in which Baker allegedly threatened Kain in calls and text messages witnessed by friends and associates at a Capitol Hill bar.

While accepting blame for the job recommendation, Esty explained it as an outgrowth of the House counsels recommendation to reach a nondisclosure agreement with Baker and ease his transition into the world outside Capitol Hill.

I was conflicted at (that) time, but less so now, Esty said. He had made efforts to get counseling and treatment. I believe in second chances for people.

Accusations of violence

Esty fired Baker on July 20, 2016, after an investigation she commissioned showed a pattern of abusive behavior culminating with the May 5 alcohol-infused reunion of former and current staff members. It was Cinco de Mayo, which is marketed by bars as a drinking date on par with St. Patricks Day.

It is not clear what, if any, interaction Baker had with the female staffer at the bar. But according to an affidavit for a protective order subsequently filed by the former staffer, Baker, now 36, called her cellphone about 50 times and left messages saying he would track her down and kill her. Esty said she never heard any of those messages.

The affidavit, which became the basis for a temporary protection order and a yearlong civil protection order, stated Baker had punched her in the back at Estys Washington office, screamed at her and told her if she reported him to House ethics officials, he would prevent her from getting another job.

Throughout the Winter of 2014, respondent (Baker) repeatedly screamed at petitioner (the former staffer) in the workplace, making the woman feel intimidated and caused petitioner to feel she could not report respondents actions without putting her safety at risk, the affidavit stated.

The former staffer filed a police report for felony threats, but the U.S. Capitol Police said they could not immediately locate it.

Ricci said since Baker left Sandy Hook Promise, Ive talked to him a lot over the last couple days, and hell be OK.

He added Baker is living in Columbus, Ohio.

Hes spent a lot of time over the past two years becoming a stronger person, Ricci said. I know hes been living a sober life, and I can tell you anger management was really helpful.

The former staffer, now 29 and still living in Washington, left Estys office in March of 2015.

Her relationship with the chief of staff appears to have been consensual at first. The reason for the shouting and abusive treatment is unclear, but the sources said she did try to break off the relationship.

Coming forward

The sources, who spoke on condition they not be identified, said Kain initially wanted to keep the abusive treatment quiet. But in the wake of the #metoo movement and the crescendo of prominent men  including President Donald Trump  in the crosshairs over allegations of sexual abuse and harassment, she decided she no longer feared public exposure. Hearst Connecticut Media learned of her accusations and obtained documentation she filed in court.

The sudden advent of the #metoo era brought forth a tectonic shift in procedural norms in sex-abuse cases, Esty said, and she got caught up in the ensuing tilt.

That someone like Esty should come under scrutiny for her handling of a case of sexual abuse is unusual.

Esty, 58, in her third term as representative of the 5th Congressional District that encompasses Danbury and the northwest part of the state, is a supporter of issues focused on women, including pay equity and paid family leave.

In addition, she boasts an office wall of bills she has navigated through Congress to enactment  a list that includes promoting womens entrepreneurship, getting women and girls interested in aerospace careers and breaking up the sex-trafficker transportation pipeline.

A veteran of the Cheshire Town Council and the Connecticut General Assembly, Esty is well versed in the politics of policymaking and appearances. As a Yale Law School graduate and former D.C. law firm practitioner, she is skilled on questions of legal rights and procedure.

In the interviews, Esty insisted she followed the recommendations and procedures set forth by the House counsels office for terminating an employee  and she had little choice in the matter.

But in doing so, she said, she came to understand the rules were aimed at protecting House members and the institution, even if it was designed to cover it up, sweep it under the rug, as she put it.

In past cases, the rules have been used to keep sexual misconduct, typically by male lawmakers, under wraps. Reports on misconduct by veteran Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., and former Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., led to the highlighting of a Congressional slush fund used to pay staff victims.

Amid the #metoo disclosures, the House last month approved legislation to overhaul the way Congress handles sexual misconduct allegations. But the bill has languished in the Senate, with no sign of passage in sight.

Without a legislative kick in the pants, Congress remains a series of independent fiefdoms, in which you are the lord or lady within your own office, Esty said. Theres no HR department, no standard employee handbook. Each member decides vacations, maternity leave  it makes no sense.

Esty said she confronted Baker upon learning of the misconduct after the 2016 reunion party. She said she required him to seek immediate help for alcohol abuse and anger management while she commissioned inquiries into the relationship in both her Washington and Connecticut district offices.

Esty received the D.C. report back in July, in which a former staff director, Julie Sweet, substantiated the accusations against Baker. Esty said she immediately discharged Baker. Under supervision, she said, he collected his personal belongings, surrendered access to sensitive documents, and returned the key he possessed to her Washington apartment.

Limited recommendation

She told Baker she would not recommend him for a job in Washington and suggested he go back to Ohio, where he had grown up. Esty said she did not try to find him a job with Sandy Hook Promise. But when the organization inquired about him, she said, she supplied what she termed a limited recommendation dictated by the NDA.

The delay in firing Baker and the job recommendation reportedly has left current and former staffers scratching their heads in dismay over a lawmaker seemingly in sync with #metoo could have made so many missteps, the sources said.

Part of her explanation for not realizing what has going on in her own D.C. office was that she generally spends only three or four days a week in D.C. when Congress is in session, and she is back in her district and at home in Cheshire for weeks at a time when Congress is not.

Whatever the case, the sources describe a climate of fear in which staffers were loath to complain about Bakers cavalier, manipulative manner because they perceived him as being close and indispensable to Esty. Complaints to Esty would only result in career-ending backlash from Baker, sources said.

Esty herself said in retrospect she realized Baker was very good at managing up to me, while hiding abusive treatment of subordinates. If someone is adept at that and youre getting accomplishments and no one is telling you otherwise, you dont see it.

Baker began work in November 2016 as Ohio coordinator for Sandy Hook Promise, co-founded by family members of those who died at the Dec. 14, 2012, mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Sandy Hook Promise sponsors education and training for schools, teachers, students and community organizations to identify potentially dangerous youth and get them help before shootings occur.

In an email response, Nicole Hockley, who lost her son, Dylan, in the Newtown shooting, said Baker was not employed by Sandy Hook Promise.

For her part, Esty has barred dating relationships among staffers, and has implored all of them to immediately inform her when anything is amiss.

I certainly regret that people didnt come to me sooner, she said. It continues to trouble me that they felt they couldnt. We need to change that. I am changing that.

In retrospect, she characterized the episode as a cautionary tale.

If theres one thing I regret, its that it happened at all, she said.

Editors note: The article has been updated to include the alleged victims name.




Guwahati : Concern over recent spurt of crimes against women in Assam, the state government on Thursday (March 29) has launched 181-Sakhi toll free women helpline service to help the women affected by violence.





Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal has officially launched 181-Sakhi toll free women helpline in a programme held at the Conference Hall of Chief Ministers office at Janata Bhawan in Guwahati.





It is to be mentioned that, over 10 rape incidents were happened in Assam in past a week.





On Thursday, a 6-year-old minor girl was raped by a youth at Khetri area in Kamrup (Metro) district.





Earlier, a minor girl was raped and murdered by three youths in central Assams Nagaon district, which triggered massive protests across the state.





Apart from the Nagaon incident, few more rape incidents were happened in Hailakandi, Barpeta, Jagiroad, Hojai, North Lakhimpur, Palashbari Juria, Tamulpur, Baksa area in past a week.





Several organisations have demanded the state government to take stern action against the rapist and to provide security to women, children.





181-Sakhi toll free women helpline is a scheme of universalization of women helpline and is launched under the Ministry of Women and Child Development,

Government of India.





This service intends to provide 24 hours immediate and emergency response to women affected by violence. The service is presently being launched for one shift and will be open from 9:00 AM to 5:30 PM and will be made available 24x7 shortly.





The service is integrated with Women Police Stations, State Commission for Women, Family Counselling Centres, NGOs, Legal Service Centres, Shelter Homes, Medical & Legal Experts. The helpline will assist women in terms of social welfare schemes, shelter, counselling, medical examination, filing FIR, legal aid, recording of audio and visual depositions and emergency response and rescue.





Speaking on the occasion, Sonowal expressed serious concern over recent spurt of crimes against women in the state and said that the state government is taking series of measures to stop such crimes and stringent action would be taken against the perpetrators of such crimes.





The Assam CM informed that police stations throughout the state have been alerted to keep close watch over such incidents.





SPs of all the districts have been asked to ensure swift and correct filing of charge-sheet in all crimes against women so that justice can be given to the victims. Our Government has also written to the Gauhati High Court to set up Fast track Court to deal with crimes against women on a day to day basis, Sonowal said adding that a women cell at DGP office to oversee speedy proceeding of all cases against women to be opened.





Underscoring the importance of joint initiative by the government and public to tackle crimes against women, Sonowal further said that DCs and SPs are directed to conduct intensive awareness campaigns so that people are made aware to prevent heinous crimes taking place against women in all corners of the state.





The Assam CM urged the women to make best use of the 181-Sakhi toll free women helpline. He also directed the government stakeholders to ensure immediate response to the calls of women in distress.





Assam DGP Mukesh Sahay said that, this system will help the women affected by violence. The state government is concerned over raising incidents of crimes against women and we will also take initiative to discuss various civil society organizations as not to happen such type of incident.





Chairperson of Assam State Women Commission Chikimiki Talukdar, Chairperson of Assam State Social Welfare Board Krishna Das Barman, DGP Mukesh Sahay, Additional Chief Secretary Alok Kumar, Principal Secretary Social Welfare Jishnu Baruah, Principal Secretary Home LS Changsan, Director of Social Welfare SS Meenakshi Sundaram were also present among others in the programme.




The Manitoba government has issued mine exploration permits in Nopiming Provincial Park to two Vancouver companies looking to cash in on the surging global demand for lithium.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 29/3/2018 (1275 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Manitoba government has issued mine exploration permits in Nopiming Provincial Park to two Vancouver companies looking to cash in on the surging global demand for lithium.

Quantum Minerals and Equitorial Exploration received drill permits this month to support exploratory work in and around a 1950s mining site that existed before the park was formed in 1976.

A local representative for a national environmental group said he discovered "extensive" forest destruction caused by the exploratory work near Cat Lake, 200 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg, while ice fishing in the park recently.

Eric Reder, wilderness and water campaigner with the Wilderness Committee, said that area of the park is recovering from forest fires and is protected for recovering moose populations.

"Theres a reason a park exists, and its not for mining," he said Thursday. "A park is for nature, for animals, for our solace. It is not for destructive industry and corporate profiteering."

"A park is for nature, for animals, for our solace. It is not for destructive industry and corporate profiteering"  Eric Reder, wilderness and water campaigner for the Wilderness Committee

Reder said the new mineral exploration permits were quietly approved and have yet to be recorded on the provinces website. The government mineral resource map online states this region is for mine claim-staking only, and no mineral exploration licences are listed, he said.

He said work is being carried out around the clock in this "sensitive area" of Nopiming. "Its outrageous theyre permitting this in a provincial park and that this government is being so secretive about it."

The two publicly traded companies have separately issued several news releases about their lithium mine exploration work in southeast Manitoba without mentioning that it was being carried out in a provincial park.

An official with Quantum Minerals hung up on a Free Press reporter when asked about the subject Thursday.

The Cat Lake project features prominently on Quantums website.

The company says since early 2015, lithium prices have more than tripled, shooting to $22,000 per tonne from $7,000. It forecasts the "electric car revolution" will spark increased demand in the coming years for the element used in rechargeable batteries.

Jack Bal, chief executive officer of Equitorial Exploration, said theres "a huge demand" for lithium.

Both Equitorial and Quantum are awaiting the results from test drilling to determine if mining would be profitable in the park.

In an interview on Thursday, Bal emphasized ore extraction would likely not occur for some time.

"Were a long way away from a mine," he said. "Its early exploration. The results that weve got to date... makes us very happy."

Bal said if it proves a mine would make economic sense in the park, "the surface disturbance would be minimal."

"Its not an open pit; its an underground mine," he said.

The Lithium Corp. of Canada sank a shaft at the Irgon Mine within what are now park boundaries in 1956, and did substantial development work in 1957, when work was suspended awaiting more favourable markets for lithium oxides. The project never reached the production stage. A concrete slab seals the shaft opening, according to a local historical marker.

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There are 29 mining claims assigned to seven companies in the Cat Lake area of Nopiming park, the Sustainable Development Department said in a statement late Thursday.

"Nopiming Provincial Park has a long history of mineral exploration and extraction going back to the 1950s. Other parks, such as Grass River Provincial Park (north of The Pas) also allows mining," the statement said.

"Cat Lake is located in the resource-management land-use category, the main purpose of which is to permit commercial resource development or extraction," the statement said. "Mining in provincial parks is primarily permitted in this land use category.

"While recreational development and access land-use categories may allow for mining activities, it would only be permitted if it does not compromise the recreation or access values of the land use category. The site is also located outside the moose closure area and (land) clearing was scheduled outside the breeding bird season."

The department said there was an "extensive" approval process carried out before the two companies test drilling applications were approved.

larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca
The war of words between the Pallister government and the Manitoba Metis Federation continued Thursday, as a Progressive Conservative cabinet minister responded to comments made the previous day by federation president David Chartrand.

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This article was published 29/3/2018 (1275 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The war of words between the Pallister government and the Manitoba Metis Federation continued Thursday, as a Progressive Conservative cabinet minister responded to comments made the previous day by federation president David Chartrand.

Infrastructure Minister Ron Schuler denied an accusation that the federation has not been consulted about the planned construction of outlet channels for Lake Manitoba and Lake St. Martin.

"That is wrong," Schuler said. "My department has been conducting consultations with the Metis and First Nations for years now."

Schuler provided correspondence to back up his claim. He said a November 2017 agreement between the department and the MMF provides funding to the organization to participate.

Chartrand suggested Wednesday he might take legal action to ensure Metis land rights are respected and they are compensated in the planned $540-million Lake Manitoba-Lake St. Martin flood project. He announced the MMF would take the province to court after the Pallister government scrapped a $67.5-million compensation deal the federation had reached with Manitoba Hydro.

Chartrand said Thursday he was expressing concern consultations about the effect of lake channel construction would not be extensive. He said the view of fishers and people living in communities located near the lakes must be taken into account.

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"I can assure you that the duty to consult has not been met, and that we have not had a chance to dialogue with our people and discuss the clear effects that will take place" as a result of the planned outlet channel construction, Chartrand said.

Schuler said Thursday that while he wasnt going to "prejudge the legal process," he wanted to set the record straight regarding statements that had been made about the nixed $67.5-million deal  which the PCs claim was no more than a proposal when it was forwarded to them for review.

"First of all, this payment is not normal practice, as they claim," Schuler said. "Its not compensation for land rights. It is money to ensure that they will not oppose the (proposed Manitoba-Minnesota Transmission) Project, and that is clearly stated in black and white in the agreement."

According to a summary of the agreements major points, the deal would have covered a period of up to 50 years, including a $37.5-million lump sum payment into a "legacy fund" for the benefit of the Metis. It would have also included yearly payments of $1.5 million for 20 years.

The payments were to "finally address and satisfy all concerns of the Metis" with respect to several current transmission projects, as well as future projects undertaken within a set time period. The Manitoba-Minnesota Transmission Project was only one of several listed in the agreement.

larry.kusch@freepress.mb.ca
At 83, Shireen Khudida survived a harrowing escape from Islamic State terrorists, a desolate refugee camp in Turkey and being uprooted to another continent, culture and climate. When the matriarch of a large Yazidi family arrived at the Winnipeg airport with her son and his wife and five children Thursday, she couldnt have been happier.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 30/3/2018 (1274 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

At 83, Shireen Khudida survived a harrowing escape from Islamic State terrorists, a desolate refugee camp in Turkey and being uprooted to another continent, culture and climate. When the matriarch of a large Yazidi family arrived at the Winnipeg airport with her son and his wife and five children Thursday, she couldnt have been happier.

More than 100 members of the Yazidi community  including two of Khudidas daughters and their families, who arrived in Manitoba as refugees more than a year ago  were there to greet her.

"Im exhausted, but happy," the Kurdish-speaking woman said through an interpreter before getting kisses from what appeared to be a never-ending stream of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Her daughter, Khokhe Murad, said she wasnt sure if she would see her mother again, given Khudidas age and all that she has been through.

"Its the best feeling," said Murad, who arrived in Winnipeg 13 months ago with her family after they were sponsored privately by Operation Ezra (a coalition of faith groups led by Winnipegs Jewish community that has sponsored and now welcomed 10 Yazidi families, totalling 55 people).

Murads sister, who found refuge with her family in Nebraska, made the trip to Winnipeg to welcome their mother.

"Shell do fine," said Murad, who will be close to her mom when she settles into the home Operation Ezra rented for her and her sons family (five children, ranging in age from 12 to 24) across the back lane.

They were among the 40,000 Yazidi chased up Mount Sinjar in 2014 by IS in northern Iraq. Many members of the Kurdish religious minority did not survive.

"They were some of the lucky ones because they managed to escape," said Nafiya Naso, a Yazidi refugee and settlement worker with Winnipegs Jewish Child and Family Services. The plight of the persecuted ethnic minority captured the worlds attention and inspired Operation Ezra.

The arrival of the 10th Yazidi family on the day before Passover  the Jewish holiday that celebrates freedom and liberation from slavery in ancient Egypt  was a fact not lost on many at the airport to welcome them.

"Its kind of a wonderful convergence," said Belle Jarniewski of the Manitoba Multifaith Council, who is also director of the Freeman Family Foundation Holocaust Education Centre at the Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada.

"Here are the people whove languished in a refugee camp after suffering this genocide who have finally come to freedom in a free country," Jarniewski said at Richardson International Airport. "Its joyful for us."

"For the Jewish community, this time of Passover is an interesting analogy," said Operation Ezra spokesman Michel Aziza. "The reason many of us got involved is because of the similarities to the experiences of Jewish people around the Second World War.

"There is an element of being able to rescue people from an area of conflict and providing them with a safe haven," said Aziza. "There is an element of celebrating freedom."

The first Yazidi family privately sponsored by the Winnipeg group arrived in July 2016. Thursdays arrival of Khudidas family was the 10th and final group Operation Ezra had applied to bring to Canada  but it wont be the last, its spokesman said.

"Its because of our ability to continue raising funds and also the interest of many people in the community and volunteers who want to do more" that the group hopes to soon sponsor some 20 more people, Aziza said.

"Many of the families are gainfully employed," he said. "They can help us now."

And they want to help, said Naso, who arrived in Manitoba as a refugee in 1999 when she was a child.

"The families are very happy, grateful and ready to pay it forward," Naso said.

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The ninth Operation Ezra family arrived in Canada three weeks ago and some of the family members will be starting full-time jobs in the next few days, Naso said. "We have 15 individuals working full-time and part-time jobs, everyone is attending school or an (English as an additional language) program and everyone is attending our EAL class every Thursday evening."

She said families with vehicles are helping the more recent arrivals  and some government-assisted Yazidi refugees  with grocery shopping, translating and other day-to-day activities.

Having Naso, who speaks Kurdish and is focused on helping the Yazidi families integrate, is a big part of their resettlement success, Aziza said.

Operation Ezra volunteers and the Salvation Army have been helping the families get set up, too, with clothing and furniture, he said.

"Weve made a conscious effort to locate all the families in the same area (near Grant Park Shopping Centre). We dont have families all over the city."

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca
Flotek Industries, Inc. is a technology-driven, specialty chemistry and data company that serves customers across industrial, commercial and consumer markets. It operates through the following segments: Chemistry Technologies and Data Analytics. The Chemistry Technologies segment develops, manufactures, packages, distributes delivers, and markets sanitizers and disinfectants for commercial, governmental and personal consumer use and also includes specialty chemistries and logistics which enable customers to improve efficiencies in the drilling and completion of well. The Data Analytics segment includes the design, development, production, sale and support of equipment and services that create and provide valuable information about the composition of energy customer's hydrocarbon fluids. The firm also empowers the energy industry to maximize the value of hydrocarbon streams and improve return on invested capital through real-time data platforms and chemistry technologies. It serves downstream, midstream and upstream customers, both domestic and international. The company was founded on May 17, 1985 and is headquartered in Houston, TX.

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Guwahati : The troops of Assam Rifles had apprehended four militants belonging to banned NSCN (K) in Nagalands Mon district on Wednesday, officials said on Thursday.





Based on intelligence input, the Tizit battalion under the aegis of HQ IGAR (North) conducted an operation along with police representative about movement of NSCN (K) militants in general area Aboi.





The troops established a mobile check post at road Aboi Chenmoho junction wherein during the search of a suspected Maruti Omni van registered No AS-223847 security forces apprehended four NSCN(K) militants and recovered illegal arms and ammunition.





The nabbed militants were identified as Self Styled Sgt Wangnao Takhe, SS Corporal, Hongshai Konyak and Achae Konyak.





Security personnel had recovered one Italy made 7.65 mm pistol, one point 22 pistol, seven live rounds 7.65mm, five live rounds point 22, Rs 4,52,940 cash, Mobile phones, four bottles MC Dowell Rum, three Kani Strips (Opium), one Wpn issue slip of dated March 4, 2018 of Hauky at Camp in the name of SS Sgt Wangnao Takhe and one extortion note in possession from them.





Later, the apprehendees along with the recovered items were handed over to Aboi police station for further investigation.




Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA engages in the traditional banking businesses of retail banking, asset management, private banking, and wholesale banking. It operates through the following segments: Spain, the United States, Mexico, Turkey, South America, and Rest of Eurasia. The Spain segment includes mainly the banking and insurance business that the group carries out in Spain. The United States segment consists of the financial business activity of BBVA USA in the country and the activity of the branch of BBVA SA in New York. The Mexico segment refers to banking and insurance businesses in this country as well as the activity of its branch in Houston. The Turkey segment reports the activity of Garanti BBVA group that is mainly carried out in this country and, to a lesser extent, in Romania and the Netherlands. The South America segment comprises of operations in n Argentina, Colombia, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. The Rest of Eurasia segment includes the banking business activity carried out by the group in Europe and Asia, excluding Spain. The company was founded in 1857 and is headquartered in Madrid, Spain.

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Heidelberger Druckmaschinen Aktiengesellschaft, together with its subsidiaries, manufactures, sells, and deals in printing press and other print media industry products in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia/Pacific, Eastern Europe, North America, and South America. It operates through Heidelberg Digital Technology, Heidelberg Lifecycle Solutions, and Heidelberg Financial Services segments. The company offers printing machines, including digital, offset, narrow web, screen, and inline-flexo printing, as well as remarketed equipment; and finishing equipment comprising cutting, die-cutting and embossing, folding, inspection, folding carton gluing, and hot foil stamping. It also provides technical services, such as installation and relocation, maintenance and cleaning, remote support, repair, and overhauling services, as well as service parts; and performance services consisting of performance evaluation, color management, training, upgrades and retrofits, monitoring, output optimization, print shop optimization, and investment planning. In addition, the company offers financial services; and consumables, such as CtP printing and analog plates, films, platemaking chemicals, proofing materials, toners, glues, staple cartridges, hole punching supplies, inks, coatings and varnishes, blankets, rollers, chemicals, pressroom supplies, cutting knives, banderoles, dispersion glues, binding glues, stitching wires and sealing threads, and folding carton gluing supplies. Further, it provides software solutions; and consulting and other services in the field of mechanical, engineering, electronics, and electrical engineering, and the metal industry. The company was formerly known as Schnellpressenfabrik AG Heidelberg and changed its name to Heidelberger Druckmaschinen Aktiengesellschaft in 1967. Heidelberger Druckmaschinen Aktiengesellschaft was founded in 1850 and is based in Heidelberg, Germany.

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The following companies are subsidiares of Stanley Black & Decker: 3xLOGIC Dalian Technology Company Limited, 3xLogic Florida LLC, 3xLogic Holdings Inc., 3xLogic Inc., 3xLogic Indiana LLC, 3xLogic Systems Inc., A & E SECURITY NV, ADT France, ARGOS-SIGNALSON SECURITY SA, ASIA FASTENING (US) INC., AeroScout (US) LLC, AeroScout Industrial, AeroScout LLC, AeroScout Ltd, AeroScout Ltd., Aeroscout (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., Alkhaja Pimex LLC, Allan Brothers, Anzi Masterfix Tool Limited Liability Company, Asia Fastening (Cayman) S.a r.l., Asia Fastening (US), Automatic Doors Systems, Automatic Entrances of Colorado, Avdel Deutschland GmbH, Avdel France SAS, Avdel Holding Limited, Avdel Holdings (Hong Kong) Limited, Avdel Italia S.r.l., Avdel Spain S.L., Avdel UK Limited, Aven Tools Limited, B&D Holdings, B&D Holdings Inc., B.B.W. BAYRISCHE BOHRERWERKE GmbH, B.B.W. 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Ltd., Black & Decker Holdings B.V., Black & Decker Holdings GmbH, Black & Decker Holdings de Venezuela C.A., Black & Decker Hong Kong Limited, Black & Decker Inc., Black & Decker India Inc, Black & Decker International, Black & Decker International Finance (UK) Limited, Black & Decker International Finance 1 Limited, Black & Decker International Finance 1 Unlimited Company, Black & Decker International Finance 3 Designated Activity Company, Black & Decker International Finance 3 Limited, Black & Decker International Finance Holdings (UK) Limited, Black & Decker International Holdings B.V. & CO. KG, Black & Decker International Holdings S.a r.l., Black & Decker International finance 3, Black & Decker Investment Company, Black & Decker Investments (Australia) Limited, Black & Decker Investments LLC, Black & Decker Limited BVBA, Black & Decker Luxembourg Finance S.C.A., Black & Decker Luxembourg S.A.R.L., Black & Decker Macao Commercial Offshore Limited, Black & Decker Manufacturing Distribution & Global Purchasing Holdings LP, Black & Decker Mexfin LLC, Black & Decker No. 4 Pty. Ltd., Black & Decker Puerto Rico Inc., Black & Decker S.A. de c.v., Black & Decker SSC CO, Black & Decker Shelbyville, Black & Decker TransAsia S.a r.l., Black & Decker de Colombia S.A.S., Black & Decker de Panama LLC, Black & Decker de Panama S. de R.L., Black & Decker de Reynosa, Black & Decker de Venezuela C.A., Black & Decker del Ecuador S.A., Black & Decker del Peru S.A., Black & Decker do Brasil Ltda., Black and Decker de Costa Rica Limitada, Blick Plc, Bost Garnache Industries SAS, Bostitch-Holding, Bostitch-Holding L.L.C., Bulldog Barrels LLC, CAMACC Systems Inc., CLP2 GP, CLP2 GP LLC, CONNEXCENTER SA, CPE Acquisition Co., CRC-EVANS INTERNATIONAL HOLDINGS INC., CRC-EVANS WELDING SERVICES INC., CRC-Evans B.V., CRC-Evans Canada LTD., CRC-Evans International, CRC-Evans International Holdings, CRC-Evans International Inc., CRC-Evans Offshore Limited, CRC-Evans PIH Servios De Tubulao do Brasil Ltda, CRC-Evans PIH Servicos De Tubulacao Do Brasil Ltda, CRC-Evans Pipeline International, CRC-Evans Pipeline International Inc., CRC-Evans Pipeline International Sdn.Bhd., CRC-Evans Welding Services, CWS Industries (Mfg.) Corp., Chesapeake Falls Holdings Company, Chesapeake Falls Holdings Company Unlimited Company, Chesapeake Investments Company S.A.R.L., Chicago Steel Tape, Chiro (Cayman) Holdings Ltd., Chiro Tools Holdings B.V., Christie Intruder Alarms Limited, Clarke Security Services Incorporated, Connex Group SA, Consolidated Aerospace Manufacturing, Contact East, Contract Fire Systems Ltd, Cooperheat of Africa (Pty) Ltd, Craftman, DEWALT INDUSTRIAL TOOLS S.A. DE C.V., DISTRIBUIDORA PORTER CABLE LIMITADA, DIYZ, DIYZ LLC, De-Tect Unit Inspection (Pty) Ltd, DeWalt Industrial Tools S.p.A., Devilbiss Air Power Company, Dewalt Industrial Power Tool Company LTD., Dewalt Industrial Tools, Doncasters US Holdings Inc., Dubuis et Cie SAS, ELU B.V., ELU Power Tools LTD, EMHART TEKNOLOGIES LLC, ETAC ALARME SERVICE SECURITY SA, ETAC ALARME SERVICES SECURITY SA, ETAC GENT NV, ETAC GENT SA, Eastern Vault & Security, Emglo Products, Emhart Fastening & Assembly SNC, Emhart GmbH, Emhart Guangzhou (Hong Kong) Limited, Emhart Harttung A/S, Emhart Harttung Inc., Emhart International Holdings Limited, Emhart International Limited, Emhart Panama S. de R.L., Emhart Panama S.A., Emhart Teknologies, Emhart Teknologies (Thailand) LTD., Emhart Teknologies B.V., Facom, Facom Belgie BVBA, Facom Holding SAS, Facom SAS, Facom UK Limited, Fastener Jamher Taiwan Inc., First National AlarmCap LP/Premiere Societe en Commandite Nationale, First National AlarmCap LP/Premiere Societe en Commandite Nationale Alarmcap, First National AlarmCap. Trust, Frisco Bay Industries, GDX Technologies, GMT China, GRUPO BLACK & DECKER MEXICO S. DE R.L. DE C.V., GUANGZHOU EMHART FASTENING SYSTEM CO. LTD., Gamrie Designated Activity Company, Gamrie Limited, Global Fastening (Luxembourg) S.a r.l., Global Project (Services) Limited, Grupo Black & Decker MEXICO, Guangzhou Emhart Fastening System Co, Generale de Protection, HSM Electronic Protection Systems, Hangtech Limited, Hardware City Associates Limited Partnership, Hefei INTACA Science & Technology Development Co, Hefei INTACA Science & Technology Development Co. Ltd., Herramientas Stanley S.A. de c.v., Horst Sprenger GmbH Recycling-tools, I.D.L. Techni-Edge LLC, INFASTECH CAMCAR MALAYSIA SDN BHD, INFASTECH DECORAH LLC, ISR Solutions, IguanaFix, Infastech (Australia) PTY Limited, Infastech (China) Limited, Infastech (Korea) Limited, Infastech (Labuan) Limited, Infastech (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Infastech (Mauritius) Limited, Infastech (Shenzhen) Limited, Infastech (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., Infastech Company Limited, Infastech Decorah, Infastech Fastening Systems (Wuxi) Limited, Infastech Holdings (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Infastech Intellectual Properties Pte. Ltd., Infastech Receivables Company Pte. Ltd., Infastech S.a r.l, Infastech S.a r.l., Infastech Thai Company Limited, Infastech/Tri-Star Limited, Infastehc (Singapore) Pte. Ltd, InfoLogix, InfoLogix Systems Corporation, Infologix - DDMS, Infologix - DDMS Inc., Infologix Inc., Innerspace Products, Interfast B.V., International Equipment Solutions LLC, Irwin Industrial Tool Company, Irwin Industrial Tool Ferramentas do Brasil Ltda., Irwin Tools Canada ULC, JAFFORD LLC, JMD SECURITE SA, JRB Attachments LLC, Jafford, JennCo1, JennCo1 Inc., Jewel Attachments LLC, Jiangsu Guoqiang Tools Co., Jiangsu Guoqiang Tools Co. Ltd., Jiangsu Tongfeng Hardware Co, Joint Prosperity Investment Private Limited, Jointech Corporation LTD., Kodiak Mfg. Inc., Lenox India Private Limited, Lista International Corporation, M. HART DO BRASIL LTDA., M.HART do Brasil Ltda., MASTERFIX POLAND LTD. SP.Z O.O., Mac Tools Canada Inc., Maquinas y Herramientas Black & Decker de Chile S.A., Masterfix Poland Sp. z o.o., Meta Vision Systems Limited, Microalloying International, Microalloying International Inc., Microtec Enterprises, Microtec Enterprises Inc., Monarch Mirror Door Co., Mont-Hard (Canada) Inc., NEWFREY LLC, NSW Fabristeel Netherlands B.V., National Manufacturing, Nelson Bolzenschwei-Technik GmbH & Co. KG, Nelson Bolzenschwei-Technik GmbH Verwaltungs GmbH, Nelson Fastener Systems, Nelson Fastener Systems de Mexico SA de CV, Nelson Saldatura Perni S.r.l., Nelson Soudage de Goujons SAS, Nelson Stud Welding (Tianjin) Company Ltd., Nelson Stud Welding Canada Inc., Nelson Stud Welding Inc., Nelson Stud Welding India Private Limited, Nelson Stud Welding International LLC, Newell Brands - Tools Business, Newell Rubbermaid Products (Shenzhen) Co. Ltd., Newfrey, Nippon Pop Rivets & Fasteners LTD., Niscavah Investments Ltd, Niscayah Asia Limited, Niscayah Asia Ltd, Niscayah Group AB, Niscayah Holdings Limited, Niscayah Investments Limited, Niscayah Teknik AB, Novia SWK SAS, OSI Security Devices, Oceaneering Heat Treatment Services (Pty) Ltd, Onglin International Limited, PIH (Thailand) Company Limited, PIH Holdings Limited, PIH Services Limited, PIH Services ME LLC, PIH Services ME Ltd., PIH U.S., PIH U.S. Inc., PIPELINE EQUIPMENT AND SERVICES SARL, PORTER-CABLE ARGENTINA LLC, POWERS FASTENERS INC.(Panama), PT Stanley Black & Decker, Pacom Group AB, Pacom Systems (North America) Inc, Pacom Systems (North America) Inc., Pacom Systems Espana, Pacom Systems Espana S.L., Pacom Systems Pty Limited, Paladin Brands Group Inc., Paladin Brands Holdings Inc., Paladin Brands International Holdings Inc., Pengo Corporation, Pinnacle Electronic Systems, Piole Parolai Equipement SAS, Pipeline Induction Heat Limited, Porter-Cable Argentina, Powers Fasteners Australasia Limited, Powers Fasteners Australasia Pty Limited, Powers Fasteners Australia Limited, Powers Fasteners Inc., Powers Rawl Pty. Ltd., Powers Shanghai Trading Ltd, Powers Shanghai Trading Ltd., Precision Hardware, Pro One Finance SAS, QINGDAO SUNGUN POWER TOOL CO, RIGHTCO II, RIGHTCO II LLC, Rawl Australasia Pty. Ltd., Rawlplug Unit Trust, Refal Industria e Comercio de Rebites e Rebitadeiras Ltda., SBD Cayman LLC, SBD European Investment, SBD European Investment Unlimited Company, SBD European Security Holdings S.a r.l., SBD European Security International Unlimited Company, SBD European Security Investment Unlimited Company, SBD HOLDINGS CAYMAN LP, SBD Holding AB, SBD Holdings Cayman, SBD Infastech 1 Unlimited Company, SBD Infastech 2 Unlimited Company, SBD Insurance, SBD Insurance Inc., SBD LinQ Inc., SBD MDGP Partnership Holdings LLC, SBD MDGP Partnership Holdings S.a r.l., SBD MDGP Partnership Holdings S.a r.l., SBD Manufacturing Distribution & Global Purchasing Holdings L.P., SBD Niscayah S.a r.l., SBD Panama Investments LLC, SBD Panama LLC, SBD Property Holdings, SBD Property Holdings LLC, SBD Scala Inc., SBD UK Canada Holdings Inc., SETEC Vertriebsgesellschaft fr Brand- und Einbruchmeldesysteme mbH, SETEC Vertriebsgesellschaft fur Brand- und Einbruchmeldesysteme mbH, SPIRALOCK DO BRASIL LTDA., SPIRALOCK GLOBAL VENTURES LIMITED, STANLEY BLACK & DECKER HUNGARY KORALTOLT FELELOSSEGU TARSASAG, STANLEY BLACK & DECKER IBERICA S.L., STANLEY BLACK & DECKER MOROCCO SARL, STANLEY ENGINEERED FASTENING EASTERN EUROPE SP.Z O.O., SWK (U.K.) Holding Limited, SWK (UK) Limited, SWK Utensilerie S.r.l., Sargent & Greenleaf, Sargent & Greenleaf Inc., Sargent & Greenleaf S.A., Scan Modul, Security Group, SecurityCo Solutions, SecurityCo Solutions Inc., Shanghai Eastern Iron Hardware Co, Shanghai Emhart Fastening System Co. Ltd., Shanghai Emhart Fastening Systems Co, Sidchrome Tool, Sielox Security Systems, Societe Miniere et Commerciale SAS, Sonitrol, Southern Monitoring Services Limited, Speciality Bar Products Company, Spiegelberg Manaufacturing Inc., Spiralock, Spiralock Corporation, Spiralock do Brasil, Stanley Access Technologies LLC, Stanley Atlantic Inc, Stanley Atlantic Inc., Stanley Black & Decker (Barbados) SRL, Stanley Black & Decker (Hellas) EPE, Stanley Black & Decker Asian Holdings B.V., Stanley Black & Decker Australia Pty Ltd, Stanley Black & Decker Australia Pty Ltd., Stanley Black & Decker Austria GmbH, Stanley Black & Decker Belgium BVBA, Stanley Black & Decker CCA S. de R.L., Stanley Black & Decker Canada Corporation, Stanley Black & Decker Cayman Holdings Inc., Stanley Black & Decker Chile L.L.C., Stanley Black & Decker Colombia Services S.A.S., Stanley Black & Decker Czech Republic s.r.o., Stanley Black & Decker Deutschland GmbH, Stanley Black & Decker Finance 1 LLC, Stanley Black & Decker Finance 2 LLC, Stanley Black & Decker Finance Limited, Stanley Black & Decker Finance Unlimited Company, Stanley Black & Decker Finland Oy, Stanley Black & Decker France SAS, Stanley Black & Decker France Services SAS, Stanley Black & Decker Hardware Holdings B.V., Stanley Black & Decker Holding GmbH, Stanley Black & Decker Holdings Australia Pty Ltd, Stanley Black & Decker Holdings S.a r.l., Stanley Black & Decker Hungary Korlatolt Felelossegu Tarsasag, Stanley Black & Decker Iberica, Stanley Black & Decker Inc., Stanley Black & Decker India Limited, Stanley Black & Decker India Private Limited, Stanley Black & Decker International Finance 1 Limited, Stanley Black & Decker International Finance 2 Limited, Stanley Black & Decker International Finance 2 Unlimited Company, Stanley Black & Decker International Finance 3 Limited, Stanley Black & Decker International Finance 3 Unlimited Company, Stanley Black & Decker International Finance 4 Limited, Stanley Black & Decker International Finance 4 Unlimited Company, Stanley Black & Decker International Finance 5 Unlimited Company, Stanley Black & Decker International Finance L.P., Stanley Black & Decker Ireland, Stanley Black & Decker Ireland Unlimited Company, Stanley Black & Decker Italia S.r.l., Stanley Black & Decker Italy Production S.r.l., Stanley Black & Decker Latin American Holding BVBA, Stanley Black & Decker Latin American Investment, Stanley Black & Decker Latin American Investment Unlimited Company, Stanley Black & Decker Limited, Stanley Black & Decker Limited Liability Company, Stanley Black & Decker Logistics BVBA, Stanley Black & Decker MEA FZE, Stanley Black & Decker Manufacturing SAS, Stanley Black & Decker Middle East Trading FZE, Stanley Black & Decker NZ Limited, Stanley Black & Decker Netherlands B.V., Stanley Black & Decker Norway AS, Stanley Black & Decker Partnership Japan, Stanley Black & Decker Partnership Japan Holdings S.a r.l., Stanley Black & Decker Polska Sp. z o.o., Stanley Black & Decker Precision Manufacturing (Shenzhen) Co, Stanley Black & Decker Precision Manufacturing (Shenzhen) Co. Ltd., Stanley Black & Decker Romania SRL, Stanley Black & Decker Sales GmbH, Stanley Black & Decker Slovakia s.r.o., Stanley Black & Decker Sweden AB, Stanley Black & Decker Turkey Alet Uretim Sanayi ve Ticaret Limited Sirketi, Stanley Black & Decker Turkey Alet retim Sanayi ve Ticaret Limited, Stanley Black & Decker UK Group Limited, Stanley Black & Decker UK Holdings Limited, Stanley Black & Decker UK Limited, Stanley CLP2, Stanley CLP3, Stanley Canada Holdings L.L.C., Stanley Chiro International Ltd, Stanley Convergent Security Solutions, Stanley Convergent Security Solutions Inc., Stanley Engineered Fastening Benelux B.V., Stanley Engineered Fastening France SAS, Stanley Engineered Fastening India Private Limited, Stanley Engineered Fastening Industrial Deutschland GmbH, Stanley Engineered Fastening Italy S.r.l., Stanley Engineered Fastening Spain S.L.U., Stanley Europe BVBA, Stanley European Holdings, Stanley European Holdings B.V., Stanley European Holdings II B.V., Stanley European Holdings L.L.C., Stanley Fastening Systems, Stanley Fastening Systems Investment (Taiwan) Co., Stanley Fastening Systems L.P., Stanley Fastening Systems Poland Sp. z o.o., Stanley Feinwerktechnik GmbH, Stanley Finance Hungary Group Financing Limited Liability Company, Stanley GMT Hardware Co, Stanley Grundstuecksverwaltungs GmbH, Stanley Healthcare Solutions France Sarl, Stanley Housing Fund, Stanley Housing Fund Inc., Stanley Industrial & Automotive, Stanley Industrial & Automotive LLC, Stanley Inspection, Stanley Inspection Canada Ltd., Stanley Inspection L.L.C., Stanley Inspection South Africa (Pty) Limited, Stanley Inspection US, Stanley Inspection US L.L.C., Stanley International Holdings, Stanley International Holdings Inc., Stanley Israel Investments B.V., Stanley Logistics, Stanley Logistics L.L.C., Stanley Pipeline Inspection, Stanley Pipeline Inspection L.L.C., Stanley Safety Corporation LLC, Stanley Security AS, Stanley Security Alarmcentrale B.V., Stanley Security B.V., Stanley Security Belgium BVBA, Stanley Security Denmark ApS, Stanley Security Deutschland Administration GmbH, Stanley Security Deutschland GmbH, Stanley Security Deutschland Holding GmbH, Stanley Security Europe BVBA, Stanley Security France SAS, Stanley Security Holding AS, Stanley Security Holdings AS, Stanley Security Limited, Stanley Security Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Stanley Security Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., Stanley Security Nederland B.V., Stanley Security Oy, Stanley Security Portugal Unipessoal Lda, Stanley Security Singapore Pte. Ltd., Stanley Security Solutions, Stanley Security Solutions (NI) Limited, Stanley Security Solutions - Europe Limited, Stanley Security Solutions Australia Pty Ltd, Stanley Security Solutions Inc., Stanley Security Solutions India Private Limited, Stanley Security Solutions Limited, Stanley Security Solutions Taiwan Ltd., Stanley Security Solutions-Europe Limited, Stanley Security Sverige AB, Stanley Security Switzerland Sarl, Stanley Technical Services Ltd., Stanley Tools SAS, Stanley U.K. Holding Ltd., Stanley UK Acquisition Company Limited, Stanley UK Services Limited, Stanley Unit Inspection (Pty) Limited, Stanley Works (Europe) GmbH, Stanley Works (India) Private Limited, Stanley Works (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Stanley Works (Wendeng) Tools Co, Stanley Works (Wendeng) Tools Co. Ltd., Stanley Works Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., Stanley Works China Investments Limited, Stanley Works Holdings B.V., Stanley Works Limited, Stanley-Bostitch S.A. de c.v., Stanley-Bostitch Servicios S. de R.L. de C.V., Stanley-Bostitch Servicios s. de r.l . de c.v., Stichting Beheer Intellectuele Eigendomsrechten Blick Benelux B.V., SureHand Inc. f.k.a. SBD Aura Inc., Sweepster Attachments LLC, TOG Holdings Inc., TOG Manufacturing Company Inc., TSI Monitoring LLC, TSI Sales & Installation LLC, The Black & Decker Corporation, The Farmington River Power Company, The Ferry Cap & Set Screw Company, The Stanley Works (Langfang) Fastening Systems Co, The Stanley Works (Langfang) Fastening Systems Co. Ltd., The Stanley Works (Shanghai) Co, The Stanley Works (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., The Stanley Works (Shanghai) Management Co, The Stanley Works (Shanghai) Management Co. Ltd., The Stanley Works (Zhejiang) Industrial Tools Co, The Stanley Works (Zhejiang) Industrial Tools Co. Ltd., The Stanley Works (Zhongshan) Tool Co, The Stanley Works (Zhongshan) Tool Co. Ltd., The Stanley Works Israel Ltd., The Stanley Works Limited, The Stanley Works Pty. Ltd., Tong Lung Metal Industry, Totaal Beveiligingen B.V., Tucker Fasteners Limited, Tucker GmbH, Tucker S.R.O., Unit Inspection (International) (Pty) Ltd, Unit Inspection Property (Pty) Ltd, Universal Inspection Systems Limited, VAG SECURITY SYSTEMS SPRL, View Technologies, View Technologies LLC, Visiocom International Pte Ltd, Waterloo Holdings Inc., Waterloo Industries Inc., Wintech Corporation Limited, XMARK Corporation, Yong Ru Plastics Industry (Suzhou) Co, Yong Ru Plastics Industry (Suzhou) Co. Ltd, Zag USA, Zag USA Inc., and tanley Black & Decker Finland Oy.
The following companies are subsidiares of Dover: ALMATEC Maschinenbau GmbH, Accelerated Production Systems, Advansor A/S, Advansor Dover International (Poland) sp. z o.o, Alfred Fueling Systems Holdco Ltd., Alfred Fueling Systems Inc., Alfred Fueling Systems Intermediate Holdco Ltd., All-Flo Pump Company Limited business, Anman LLC, Anthony Equity Holdings Inc., Anthony Holdings Inc., Anthony Inc., Anthony International Foreign Sales Corp., Anthony International Holding Company, Anthony Mexico Holdings LLC, Anthony North Holdco Inc., Anthony Specialty Glass LLC, Anthony TemperBent GP LLC, Automatik Grundstucksverwaltung GmbH & Co. KG, Automatik Plastics Machinery (Taiwan) Ltd., Automatik Plastics Machinery Sdn. Bhd., BSC Filters Limited, Background2 Limited, Belanger Inc., Belvac Middle East FZE, Belvac Production Machinery Inc., BlitzRotary GmbH, Butler Engineering and Marketing S.P.A., CEP Liquidation LLC, CP Formation LLC, CPC, CPC Europe Inc., CPI Products Inc., Caldera, Caldera Inc., Canada Organization & Development LLC, Chief Automotive Technologies (Shanghai) Trading Company Ltd., Chippewa Square Captive Insurance Company, Colder Products Company GmbH, Colder Products Company LTD, Cook Compression BV, Cook Compression LLC, Cook Compression Limited, Cook-MFS Inc., DD1 Inc., DDI Properties Inc., DE-STA-CO Benelux B.V., DE-STA-CO FRANCE, DE-STA-CO Shanghai Co. Ltd., DFH Corporation, DSR BZ Holdings LLC, De Sta Co (Asia) Company Limited, De-Sta-Co Cylinders Inc., DeStaCo Europe GmbH, Delaware Capital Formation Inc., Delaware Capital Holdings Inc., Destaco Ema Industria e Comercio Ltda., Dover (China) Investment Co. Ltd. , Dover (Schweiz) Holding GmbH, Dover (Shanghai) Industrial Co. Ltd., Dover (Shenzhen) Industrial Equipment Manufacturing Co. Ltd., Dover (Suzhou) Industrial Equipment Manufacturing Co. Ltd., Dover Asia Trading Private Ltd., Dover Australia Holdings Pty Limited, Dover Business Services EMEA Limited, Dover Business Services LLC, Dover Business Services Philippines Corporation, Dover CLP Formation Limited Partnership, Dover CR spol s r.o., Dover Canada Finance LP, Dover Canada Holdings ULC, Dover Canada Operations ULC, Dover Corporation Regional Headquarters, Dover DEI Services Inc., Dover Denmark Holdings ApS, Dover EMEA FZCO, Dover Energy, Dover Energy UK Ltd, Dover Engineered Systems Inc., Dover Engineered Systems UK Ltd, Dover Europe Inc., Dover Europe Sarl, Dover Fluids Inc., Dover Fluids UK Ltd, Dover France Holdings S.A.S., Dover France Participations SAS, Dover France Technologies, Dover Fueling Solutions UK Limited, Dover Germany GmbH, Dover Global Holdings LLC, Dover Global Trading Pte. Ltd., Dover Holdings de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Dover India Pvt. Ltd., Dover Intercompany Services UK Limited, Dover International B.V., Dover International Operations Inc., Dover International Ventures Inc., Dover International Ventures Tunisia S.a.r.l., Dover International ithalat ihracat ve Pazarlama Limited Sirketi, Dover Italy Holdings S.r.l., Dover Luxembourg Finance Sarl, Dover Luxembourg Participations Sarl, Dover Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Dover Luxembourg Services Sarl, Dover Operations South Africa (Pty) Ltd, Dover Overseas Ventures Inc., Dover Refrigeration & Food Equipment Inc., Dover Refrigeration & Food Equipment UK Ltd, Dover Resources International de Mexico S. de R.L. C.V., Dover Solutions Colombia SAS, Dover Southeast Asia (Thailand) Ltd., Dover Spain Holdings S.L., Dover UK Pensions Limited, Dover WSCR Holding LLC, Dover WSCR LLC, Dover do Brasil Ltda., Dow-Key Microwave Corporation, Dressor Wayne Data Technology (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Dressor Wayne Fuel Equipment (Shanghai) Co. Ltd, EOA Systems Inc., Ebs-Ray Holdings Pty Ltd, Ebs-Ray Industries Pty. Ltd., Ebs-Ray Pumps Pty. Ltd., Em-tec GmbH, Ettlinger Kunststoffmaschinen GmbH, Ettlinger Management Inc., Ettlinger North America LP, Ettlinger Vertrieb und Service GmbH & Co. KG, Ettlinger Verwaltungs-GmbH, Fairbanks Environmental Limited, Ferguson CO. S.A., Fibrelite Composites Limited, Fibresec Holdings Limited, Fibresec Limited, Finder, Finder Oriental (Beijing) Trading Co. Ltd, Finder Pompe S.R.L., Finder United Saudi Arabia Company, GAL LLC, GIIER LLC, Gala Industries Asia Limited, Gala Industries Incorporated, Gala Kunststoff-und Kautschukmaschinen GmbH, Guangdong Tokheim LIYUAN Oil Industry Technology Limited Company, Highland Park Insurance Company, Hill PHOENIX Inc., Hill PHOENIX WIC LLC, Hill Phoenix Costa Rica Sociedad De Responsabilidad Limitada, Hill Phoenix El Salvador Limitada de Capital Variable, Hill Phoenix Guatemala Sociedad Anonima, Hill Phoenix Honduras Sociedad Anonima, Hill Phoenix Nicaragua Sociedad Anonima, Hill Phoenix de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Hiltap Fittings Ltd., Hydro Systems, Hydro Systems Europe Ltd., Hydronova Australia-NZ Pty Ltd, Industrial Motion Control LLC, Inpro/Seal LLC, International Trade and Equipment B.V., JK Group SPA, JK Group USA Inc., K&L Microwave DR Inc., K&L Microwave Inc., K. S. Boca Inc., KPS (Beijing) Petroleum Equipment Trading Co Ltd., KPS Asia Sdn. Bhd., KPS Fueling Solutions Sdn. Bhd., KPS Hong Kong Holding Limited, KPS UK Limited, KS Formation Inc., KS Liquidation Inc., KSLP Liquidation L.P., Kiian Digital (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Knappco LLC, Lianyngang Jump Petroleum and Chemical Machinery Co. Ltd., Liquip, Liquip International Pty Limited, MARKEM FZ SA, MARKEM Holdings Inc., MARKEM International Inc., MARKEM S.A. de C.V., MARKEM Tag Inc., MARKEM UK Holdings 1 Unlimited, MARKEM UK Holdings 2 Limited, MIP Holdings Inc., MS Printing Solutions S.R.L., Maag Automatik GmbH, Maag Automatik Inc., Maag Automatik Plastics Machinery (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Maag Automatik Srl, Maag Pump Systems (US) Inc., Maag Pump Systems AG, Maag Pump Systems SAS, Marathon Equipment Company (Delaware), Markem Imaje Center of Competencies Spain S.L.U., Markem-Imaje, Markem-Imaje (China) Co. Limited, Markem-Imaje A/S, Markem-Imaje AB, Markem-Imaje AG, Markem-Imaje AS, Markem-Imaje Application Innovation Center Sarl, Markem-Imaje B.V., Markem-Imaje CSAT GmbH, Markem-Imaje Co. Ltd., Markem-Imaje GmbH, Markem-Imaje Holding, Markem-Imaje Identificacao de Produtos Ltda., Markem-Imaje Inc., Markem-Imaje India Private Limited, Markem-Imaje Industries, Markem-Imaje Industries Limited, Markem-Imaje KK, Markem-Imaje LLC, Markem-Imaje Limited, Markem-Imaje Ltd., Markem-Imaje N.V., Markem-Imaje Oy, Markem-Imaje Pty Ltd, Markem-Imaje S.A., Markem-Imaje S.A. de C.V., Markem-Imaje S.r.l. a socio unico, Markem-Imaje SAS, Markem-Imaje Sdn Bhd, Markem-Imaje Software Development Centre Pvt. Ltd., Markem-Imaje Spain S.A.U, Markem-Imaje Unipessoal Lda (Portugal), Markpoint Holding AB, Midland Manufacturing LLC, Mouvex, Neptune Chemical Pump Company, Northern Lights (Nevada) Inc., Northern Lights Funding LP, Northern Lights Investments LLC, Nova Controls Inc., OK International (UK) Ltd., OK International Holdings Inc., OK International Inc., OPW Engineered Systems Inc., OPW Fluid Transfer Group Europe B.V., OPW Fluids Group Inc., OPW France, OPW Fuel Management Systems Inc., OPW Fueling Components (SuZhou) Co. Ltd., OPW Fueling Components LLC, OPW Iberia Sociedad Limitada, OPW Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., OPW Slovakia s.r.o., OPW Sweden AB, Officine Meccaniche Sirio S.R.L., PDQ Manufacturing Inc., PISCES by OPW Inc., PSG (Shanghai) Co. Ltd, PSG (Tianjin) Co. Ltd., PSG Worldwide Inc., Petro Vend Sp. z o.o., Pike Machine Products Inc., Piston OPW Inc., Pole/Zero Acquisition Inc., Precision Brasil Equipamentos E Servicos Para Postos De Combustiveis Ltda., Precision Service - Servicos De Manutencao E Instalacao De Postos De Abastecimento De Combustivel Ltda., Pump Management Services Co. LLC, RAV Equipment U.S.A. Inc., RAV Equipos Espana S.L., RAV France, Rav Equipment UK Limited, Ravaglioli Deutschland GmbH, Ravaglioli S.P.A., Reduction Engineering GmbH, Revod Corporation, Revod Finance Ireland Limited, Revod Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Revod SAS, Revod Sweden AB, Robohand Inc., Rosario Handel B.V., Rotary Lift Consolidated (Haimen) Co. Ltd, SE Liquidation LLC, SWEP A.G., SWEP Germany GmbH, SWEP Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., SWEP North America Inc., SWEP Slovakia s.r.o., SWEP Technology (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., Scheer Pelletizing Systems & Machinery (Shanghai) Co. Ltd, Scheer Taiwan Machinery Co. Ltd., Seabiscuit Motorsports Inc., Simmons Sirvey Corporation, So. Cal. Soft-Pak Incorporated, Solaris Laser S.A., Space S.R.L., Start Italiana Petrol Cihazlari Sanayi Ticaret Anonim Sirketi, Start Italiana S.R.L., Swep Energy Oy, Swep International A.B., Swep Japan K.K., Sys-Tech Solutions Inc., TQC Quantium Quality S.A. de C.V., TTSI III Inc., TWG Canada Consolidated Inc., TXHI LLC, Tartan Textile Services Inc., The Curotto-Can LLC, The Heil Co., Tokheim Belgium, Tokheim China Company Limited, Tokheim GmbH, Tokheim Group, Tokheim Guardian Venture Sdn. Bhd, Tokheim Hengshan Technologies (Guangzhou) Co. Ltd., Tokheim Holding, Tokheim Holding B.V., Tokheim India Private Limited, Tokheim Netherlands B.V., Tokheim Sofitam Applications, Trans - Logistic Group S.R.L., Tulsa Winch Inc., Unified Brands Inc., Val TemperBent Glass L.P., Vectron Frequency Devices (Shanghai) Co. Ltd, Vehicle Service Group LLC, Vos Food Store Equipment Ltd., Warn Automotive LLC, Waukesha Bearings, Waukesha Bearings Limited, Waukesha Bearings Russia LLC, Wayne Fuel Management UK Ltd., Wayne Fueling Systems (Rus) Limited Liability Company, Wayne Fueling Systems Australia Pty Ltd, Wayne Fueling Systems Canada ULC, Wayne Fueling Systems Deutschland GmbH, Wayne Fueling Systems Italia S.R.L., Wayne Fueling Systems LLC, Wayne Fueling Systems Ltd., Wayne Fueling Systems Pte. Ltd., Wayne Fueling Systems Sweden AB, Wayne Fueling Systems UK Holdco Ltd., Wayne Industria e Comercio Ltda., Wei Li Pump Shanghai Co. LTD., WellMark, and Wilden Pump and Engineering LLC.




Guwahati : The 5th Indo- Kyrgyzstan Joint Training Exercise KHANJAR V culminated on Thursday (March 29) after a Joint Tactical Validation Exercise and a Closing Ceremony held at Counter Insurgency Jungle Warfare School, Vairengte in Mizoram.





Two week of joint training that commenced on March 16 included understanding tactics of platoon level, developing inter operability and sharing of best practices controlled by a Joint Command Post.





Col A S Bains, SM of the Indian Army and Col Radjapov Ruslan Kyrgyzstan Army witnessed a Joint Tactical Validation Exercise conducted at training area of Counter Insurgency Jungle Warfare Schoo School, Vairengte wef March 26 to 28 followed by the Closing Ceremony.





The exercise involved insertion of troops by slithering from helicopters and destroying a terrorist hide out.





It demonstrated the commitment of both armies in working closely with each other to address the growing issue of global terrorism in all its forms.





Col Bolokbaev Kanatbek of Kyrgyzstan Army also addressed both the contingents.





The exercise was a success and has taught valuable lessons to the troops of both the countries.





The camaraderie developed between the contingents during the course of exercise will assist in enhancing confidence between the two armies which may be called upon to grapple with Anti- Terrorism Operations.





The conduct of these Bilateral Military Exercises is also an important step to uphold the values of Peace, Prosperity and Trust in the region.




ConocoPhillips engages in the exploration, production, transportation and marketing of crude oil, bitumen, natural gas, natural gas liquids, and liquefied natural gas on a worldwide basis. It operates through the following geographical segments: Alaska; Lower 48; Canada; Europe, Middle East and North Africa; Asia Pacific; and Other International. The Alaska segment primarily explores for produces, transports and markets crude oil, natural gas and natural gas liquids. The Lower 48 segment consists of operations in the U.S. and the Gulf of Mexico. The Canada segment is comprised of oil sands development in the Athabasca Region of northeastern Alberta and a liquids-rich unconventional play in western Canada. The Europe, Middle East and North Africa segment consists of operations and exploration activities in Norway, the United Kingdom and Libya. The Asia Pacific segment has explorations and product operations in China, Indonesia, Malaysia and Australia. The Other International segment handles exploration activities in Columbia and Argentina. The company was founded in 1875 and is headquartered in Houston, TX.

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The following companies are subsidiares of CVS Health: @Credentials Inc., ACS ACQCO CORP., ADMINCO Inc., AE Fourteen Incorporated, AHP Holdings Inc., AMC - Tennessee LLC, APS Acquisition LLC, ASCO HealthCare LLC, ASI Wings LLC, AUSHC Holdings Inc., Accendo Insurance Company, Accordant Health Services L.L.C., Active Health Management Inc., Administrative Enterprises Inc., AdvancePCS SpecialtyRx LLC, AdvanceRx.com L.L.C., Advanced Care Scripts Inc., Aetna, Aetna (Beijing) Enterprise Management Services Co. Ltd., Aetna (Shanghai) Enterprise Services Co. Ltd., Aetna ACO Holdings Inc., Aetna Asset Advisors LLC, Aetna Behavioral Health LLC, Aetna Better Health Inc., Aetna Better Health Inc., Aetna Better Health of California Inc., Aetna Better Health of Florida Inc., Aetna Better Health of Kansas Inc., Aetna Better Health of Michigan Inc., Aetna Better Health of Missouri LLC, Aetna Better Health of Nevada Inc., Aetna Better Health of North Carolina Inc., Aetna Better Health of Oklahoma Inc., Aetna Better Health of Texas Inc., Aetna Better Health of Washington Inc., Aetna Capital Management LLC, Aetna Card Solutions LLC, Aetna Corporate Services LLC, Aetna Dental Inc., Aetna Dental of California Inc., Aetna Financial Holdings LLC, Aetna Florida Inc., Aetna Global Benefits (Asia Pacific) Limited, Aetna Global Benefits (Bahamas) Limited, Aetna Global Benefits (Bermuda) Limited, Aetna Global Benefits (Europe) Limited, Aetna Global Benefits (Middle East) LLC, Aetna Global Benefits (Singapore) PTE. LTD., Aetna Global Benefits (UK) Limited, Aetna Global Benefits Limited (DIFC UAE), Aetna Global Holdings Limited, Aetna Health Holdings LLC, Aetna Health Inc., Aetna Health Insurance (Thailand) Public Company Limited, Aetna Health Insurance Company, Aetna Health Insurance Company of Europe DAC, Aetna Health Management LLC, Aetna Health and Life Insurance Company, Aetna Health of California Inc., Aetna Health of Iowa Inc., Aetna Health of Michigan Inc., Aetna Health of Ohio Inc., Aetna Health of Utah Inc., Aetna HealthAssurance Pennsylvania Inc., Aetna Holdco (UK) Limited, Aetna Holdings (Thailand) Limited, Aetna Inc., Aetna Insurance (Hong Kong) Limite, Aetna Insurance (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., Aetna Insurance Company Limited, Aetna Integrated Informatics Inc., Aetna International Inc., Aetna Ireland Inc., Aetna Korea Ltd., Aetna Life & Casualty (Bermuda) Ltd., Aetna Life Assignment Company, Aetna Life Insurance Company, Aetna Medicaid Administrators LLC, Aetna Multi-Strategy 1099 Fund LLC, Aetna Network Services LLC, Aetna Partners Diversified Fund LLC, Aetna Pharmacy Management Services LLC, Aetna Resources LLC, Aetna Risk Assurance Company of Connecticut Inc., Aetna Rx Home Delivery LLC, Aetna Services (Thailand) Limited, Aetna Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Aetna Student Health Agency Inc., Aetna Ventures LLC, Aetna Workers Comp Access LLC, Alabama CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Alaska CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Allina Health and Aetna Insurance Company, Allina Health and Aetna Insurance Holding Company LLC, American Continental Insurance Company, American Drug Stores Delaware L.L.C., American Health Holding Inc., Arbor Drugs, Arizona CVS Stores L.L.C., Arkansas CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Badger Acquisition LLC, Badger Acquisition of Kentucky LLC, Badger Acquisition of Minnesota LLC, Badger Acquisition of Ohio LLC, Banner Health and Aetna Health Insurance Company, Banner Health and Aetna Health Insurance Holding Company LLC, Banner Health and Aetna Health Plan Inc., Beauty Holdings L.L.C., Best Care LTC Acquisition Company LLC, Busse CVS L.L.C., CCI Foreign S.a R.L. (R.C.S. Luxembourg), CCRx Holdings LLC, CCRx of North Carolina LLC, CHP Acquisition LLC, CP Acquisition LLC, CVS 2948 Henderson L.L.C., CVS 3268 Gilbert L.L.C., CVS 3745 Peoria L.L.C., CVS AL Distribution L.L.C., CVS AOC Corporation, CVS AOC Services L.L.C., CVS Albany L.L.C., CVS Bellmore Avenue L.L.C., CVS Care Concierge LLC, CVS Caremark Advanced Technology Pharmacy L.L.C., CVS Caremark Indemnity Ltd., CVS Caremark Part D Services L.L.C., CVS Caremark TN SUTA LLC, CVS Foreign Inc., CVS Gilbert 3272 L.L.C., CVS Health Solutions LLC, CVS Indiana L.L.C., CVS International L.L.C., CVS Kidney Care Advanced Technologies LLC, CVS Kidney Care Health Services LLC, CVS Kidney Care Home Dialysis LLC, CVS Kidney Care LLC, CVS Manchester NH L.L.C., CVS Media Exchange LLC, CVS Michigan L.L.C., CVS Orlando FL Distribution L.L.C., CVS PA Distribution L.L.C., CVS PR Center Inc., CVS Pharmacy Inc., CVS RS Arizona L.L.C., CVS Rx Services Inc., CVS SC Distribution L.L.C., CVS State Capital L.L.C., CVS TN Distribution L.L.C., CVS Transportation L.L.C., CVS Vero FL Distribution L.L.C., Campos Medical Pharmacy LLC, Canal Place LLC, Care Pharmaceutical Services LP, CareCenter Pharmacy L.L.C., Carefree Insurance Services Inc., Caremark Arizona Mail Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Arizona Specialty Pharmacy L.L.C., Caremark California Specialty Pharmacy L.L.C., Caremark Florida Mail Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Florida Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Hawaii Mail Pharmacy L.L.C., Caremark Hawaii Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark IPA L.L.C., Caremark Illinois Mail Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Illinois Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Irving Resource Center LLC, Caremark Kansas Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark L.L.C., Caremark Logistics LLC, Caremark Louisiana Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Maryland Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Massachusetts Specialty Pharmacy L.L.C., Caremark Michigan Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Minnesota Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark New Jersey Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark North Carolina Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Ohio Specialty Pharmacy L.L.C., Caremark Pennsylvania Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark PhC L.L.C., Caremark Puerto Rico L.L.C., Caremark Puerto Rico Specialty Pharmacy L.L.C., Caremark Redlands Pharmacy L.L.C., Caremark Repack LLC, Caremark Rx L.L.C., Caremark Tennessee Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Texas Mail Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Texas Specialty Pharmacy LLC, Caremark Ulysses Holding Corp., Caremark Washington Specialty Pharmacy LLC, CaremarkPCS Alabama Mail Pharmacy LLC, CaremarkPCS Health L.L.C., CaremarkPCS L.L.C., Central Rx Services LLC, Claims Administration Corp., Cofinity Inc., Compscript LLC, Connecticut CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Continental Life Insurance Company of Brentwood Tennessee, Continuing Care Rx LLC, Coram Alternate Site Services Inc., Coram Clinical Trials Inc., Coram Healthcare Corporation of Alabama, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Florida, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Greater D.C., Coram Healthcare Corporation of Greater New York, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Indiana, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Massachusetts, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Mississippi, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Nevada, Coram Healthcare Corporation of North Texas, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Northern California, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Southern California, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Southern Florida, Coram Healthcare Corporation of Utah, Coram LLC, Coram Rx LLC, Coram Specialty Infusion, Coram Specialty Infusion Services L.L.C., Coventry Consumer Advantage Inc., Coventry Health Care National Accounts Inc., Coventry Health Care National Network Inc., Coventry Health Care Workers Compensation Inc., Coventry Health Care of Illinois Inc., Coventry Health Care of Kansas Inc., Coventry Health Care of Missouri Inc., Coventry Health Care of Nebraska Inc., Coventry Health Care of Virginia Inc., Coventry Health Care of West Virginia Inc., Coventry Health Plan of Florida Inc., Coventry Health and Life Insurance Company, Coventry HealthCare Management Corporation, Coventry Prescription Management Services Inc., Coventry Rehabilitation Services Inc., Coventry Transplant Network Inc., D & R Pharmaceutical Services LLC, D.A.W. LLC, Delaware CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Delaware Physicians Care Incorporated, Digital eHealth LLC, District of Columbia CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., E.T.B. INC., Echo Merger Sub Inc., Eckerd Corporation of Florida Inc., Employee Assistance Services LLC, Enloe Drugs LLC, Enterprise Patient Safety Organization LLC, EntrustRX, Evergreen Pharmaceutical LLC, Evergreen Pharmaceutical of California Inc., Express Pharmacy Services of PA L.L.C., FOCUS HealthCare Management Inc., First Health Group Corp., First Health Life & Health Insurance Company, First Script Network Services Inc., Florida Health Plan Administrators LLC, Garfield Beach CVS L.L.C., Generation Health L.L.C., Geneva Woods Health Services LLC, Geneva Woods LTC Pharmacy LLC, Geneva Woods Management LLC, Geneva Woods Pharmacy Alaska LLC, Geneva Woods Pharmacy LLC, Geneva Woods Pharmacy Washington LLC, Geneva Woods Pharmacy Wyoming LLC, Geneva Woods Retail Pharmacy LLC, Georgia CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., German Dobson CVS L.L.C., Goodhealth Worldwide (Asia) Limited, Goodhealth Worldwide (Global) Limited, Goodyear CVS L.L.C., Grand St. Paul CVS L.L.C., Grandview Pharmacy LLC, Group Dental Service Inc., Group Dental Service of Maryland Inc., Health Care Management Co. Ltd., Health Data & Management Solutions Inc., Health Re Inc., Health and Human Resource Center Inc., HealthAssuance Pennsylvania Inc., Healthagen LLC, Highland Park CVS L.L.C., Holiday CVS L.L.C., Home Care Pharmacy LLC, Home Pharmacy Services LLC, Hook-SupeRx L.L.C., Horizon Behavioral Services LLC, Idaho CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., IlliniCare Health, Indian Health Organisation Private Limited, Innovation Health Holdings LLC, Innovation Health Insurance Company, Innovation Health Plan Inc., Interlock Pharmacy Systems LLC, Iowa CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., JHC Acquisition LLC, Kansas CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Kentucky CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., LCPS Acquisition LLC, Langsam Health Services LLC, Lo-Med Prescription Services LLC, Lobos Acquisition LLC, Longs Drug Stores, Longs Drug Stores California L.L.C., Louisiana CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., MHHP Acquisition Company LLC, MHNet Life and Health Insurance Company, MHNet Specialty Services LLC, MHNet of Florida Inc., Managed Care Coordinators Inc., Managed Healthcare LLC, Martin Health Services LLC, Maryland CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Med World Acquisition Corp., Medical Arts Health Care LLC, Medical Examinations of New York P.C., Melville Realty Company Inc., MemberHealth LLC, Mental Health Associates Inc., Mental Health Network of New York IPA Inc., Meritain Health Inc., Merwin Long Term Care LLC, MetraComp Inc., Minor Health Enterprise Co Ltd., MinuteClinic, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Alabama L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Arizona LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Florida LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Georgia LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Hawaii L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Illinois LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Kentucky L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Louisiana L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Maine L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Maryland LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Massachusetts LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Nebraska L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of New Hampshire L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of New Mexico L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Ohio LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Oklahoma LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Oregon LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Pennsylvania LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Rhode Island LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of South Carolina L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Texas LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Utah L.L.C., MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Virginia LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Washington LLC, MinuteClinic Diagnostic of Wisconsin L.L.C., MinuteClinic L.L.C., MinuteClinic Online Diagnostic Services LLC, MinuteClinic Physician Practice of Texas, MinuteClinic Telehealth Services LLC, Mississippi CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Missouri CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Montana CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., NCS Healthcare LLC, NCS Healthcare of Illinois LLC, NCS Healthcare of Iowa LLC, NCS Healthcare of Kansas LLC, NCS Healthcare of Kentucky Inc. (Oh, NCS Healthcare of Montana LLC, NCS Healthcare of New Mexico LLC, NCS Healthcare of Ohio LLC, NCS Healthcare of South Carolina LLC, NCS Healthcare of Tennessee LLC, NCS Healthcare of Wisconsin LLC, NIV Acquisition LLC, Navarro Discount Pharmacy, Nebraska CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., NeighborCare Holdings Inc., NeighborCare Inc., NeighborCare Pharmacy Services Inc., NeighborCare Services Corporation, NeighborCare of Indiana LLC, NeighborCare of Virginia LLC, New Jersey CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Niagara Re Inc., North Carolina CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., North Shore Pharmacy Services LLC, NovoLogix LLC, OCR Services LLC, Ocean Acquisition Sub L.L.C., Ohio CVS Stores L.L.C., Oklahoma CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Omnicare, Omnicare Holding Company, Omnicare Inc., Omnicare Indiana Partnership Holding Company LLC, Omnicare Pharmacies of Pennsylvania East LLC, Omnicare Pharmacies of Pennsylvania West LLC, Omnicare Pharmacies of the Great Plains Holding LLC, Omnicare Pharmacy and Supply Services LLC, Omnicare Pharmacy of Tennessee LLC, Omnicare Pharmacy of the Midwest LLC, Omnicare Property Management LLC, Omnicare of Nebraska LLC, Omnicare of Nevada LLC, Omnicare of New York LLC, Oregon CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., PE Holdings LLC, PHPSNE Parent Corporation, PP Acquisition Company LLC, PRN Pharmaceutical Services LP, PT Aetna Management Consulting, Pamplona Saude e Beleza LTDA, Part D Holding Company L.L.C., PayFlex Holdings Inc., PayFlex Systems USA Inc., Pennsylvania CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Performax Inc., Pharmacy Associates of Glenn Falls LLC, Pharmacy Consultants LLC, Phoenix Data Solutions LLC, Precision Benefit Services Inc., Prime Net Inc., ProCare Pharmacy Direct L.L.C., ProCare Pharmacy L.L.C., Prodigy Health Group Inc., Professional Risk Management Inc., Pt. Aetna Global Benefits Indonesia, Puerto Rico CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Red Oak Sourcing LLC, Resources for Living LLC, Rhode Island CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Roeschens Healthcare LLC, RxAmerica, Schaller Anderson Medical Administrators Incorporated, Scrip World LLC, Sheffield Avenue CVS L.L.C., Shore Pharmaceutical Providers LLC, Silverscript Insurance Company, Soma Intimates, South Carolina CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., South Wabash CVS L.L.C., Specialized Pharmacy Services LLC, Spinnaker Bidco Limited, Spinnaker Topco Limited, Stadtlander Drug Company, Stadtlander Pharmacy, Sterling Healthcare Services LLC, Superior Care Pharmacy LLC, Sutter Health and Aetna Administrative Services LLC, Sutter Health and Aetna Insurance Company, Sutter Health and Aetna Insurance Holding Company LLC, T2 Medical Inc., TCPI Acquisition LLC, TargetPharmacy, Tennessee CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Texas Health + Aetna Health Insurance Company, Texas Health + Aetna Health Insurance Holding Company LLC, Texas Health + Aetna Health Plan Inc., The Vasquez Group Inc., Thomas Phoenix CVS L.L.C., Three Forks Apothecary LLC, U.S Healthcare Holdings LLC, U.S. Healthcare Properties Inc., UAC Holding Inc., UC Acquisition LLC, UNI-Care Health Services of Maine LLC, Universal American - Medicare Part D Business, Utah CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., VAPS Acquisition Company LLC, Value Health Care Services LLC, Vermont CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Virginia CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Virtual Home Healthcare L.L.C., Warm Springs Road CVS L.L.C., Washington CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Washington Lamb CVS L.L.C., Weber Medical Systems LLC, Wellpartner LLC, West Virginia CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Westhaven Services Co LLC, Williamson Drug Company LLC, Wisconsin CVS Pharmacy L.L.C., Woodward Detroit CVS L.L.C., Work and Family Benefits Inc., ZS Acquisition Company LLC, Zinc Health Services LLC, Zinc Health Ventures LLC, bSwift LLC, and iTriage LLC.
DowDuPont Inc., through its subsidiaries, engages in agriculture, materials science, and specialty products businesses in the United States, Canada, the Asia Pacific, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. The company's Agriculture segment produces, and sells hybrid corn seed and soybean seed varieties; sunflowers, wheat, alfalfa, canola, cotton, rice, and sorghum; silage inoculants; and crop protection products that include weed control, disease control, and insect control. Its Performance Materials & Coatings segment manufactures and sells architectural paints and coatings, and industrial coatings; performance monomers and silicones; standalone silicones; and home and personal care solutions. The company's Industrial Intermediates & Infrastructure segment offers ethylene oxides, propylene oxide derivatives, cellulose ethers, redispersible latex powders, and acrylic emulsions; sustainable solutions; and chlorine and caustic soda. Its Packaging & Specialty Plastics segment provides ethylene, and propylene and aromatic products; and polyolefin elastomers and ethylene propylene diene monomer rubbers. The company's Electronics & Imaging segment offers materials and systems for mobile devices, television monitors, personal computers, and electronics. Its Nutrition & Biosciences segment provides specialty ingredients, as well as cellulosic- and alginates-based pharma excipients; and enzymes, biomaterials, biocides, and antimicrobial solutions and process technologies. The company's Transportation & Advanced Polymers segment offers engineering resins, adhesives, lubricants, and parts for transportation, electronics, healthcare, industrial, and consumer end-markets. Its Safety & Construction segment provides engineered products and integrated systems for construction, worker safety, energy, oil and gas, transportation, medical device, and water purification and separation industries. The company was founded in 1897 and is headquartered in Midland, Michigan.

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Guwahati : The Vigilance and Anti-Corruption (V&AC) of Assam police on Wednesday night had arrested a Sub Inspector of Bokuliaghat police station in Karbi Anglong district for allegedly taken bribe from a person.





According to the reports, Sub Inspector Bhageswar Kalita had allegedly taken Rs 3000 from a person to dismiss a motocycle accident case took place on March 10.





The Bokuliaghat police had registered a case and seized the motorcycle after the incident.





But, Bhageswar had demanded bribe of Rs 3000 from the owner of the motorcycle and said that he will dismiss the case.





While the motorcycle owner informed the V&AC, a team of the investigating agency had launched an operation and caught the police officer red handed when he allegedly taken bribe.





On Thursday, arrested police officer was appeared before a local court in Guwahati and the court sent him to police custody.





Meanwhile, the V&AC had recovered huge amount of cash and several incriminating documents including LIC policy, bank passbook from the residence of the police officer.




The Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc. is an insurance and financial services company. The company provides life insurance, group and employee benefits, automobile and homeowners insurance and business insurance, as well as investment products, annuities, mutual funds, and college savings plans. It operates through the following segments: Commercial Lines, Personal Lines, Property & Casualty Other Operations, Group Benefits and Hartford Funds. The Commercial Lines segment provides workers compensation, property, automobile, liability and umbrella coverage under several different products, primarily throughout the U.S., within its standard commercial lines, which consists of The Hartford's small commercial and middle market lines of business. The Personal Lines segment includes automobile, homeowners and home-based business coverage to individuals across the U.S. The Property & Casualty Other Operations segment includes certain property and casualty operations, currently managed by the company, that have discontinued writing new business and substantially all of the company's asbestos and environmental exposures. The Group Benefits segment offers group life, accident and disabi

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Weatherford International plc, an oilfield service company, provides equipment and services for the drilling, evaluation, completion, production, and intervention of oil and natural gas wells worldwide. The company operates in two segments, Western Hemisphere and Eastern Hemisphere. It offers artificial lift systems, including reciprocating rod, progressing cavity pumping, gas, hydraulic, plunger, and hybrid lift systems, as well as related automation and control systems; pressure pumping and reservoir stimulation services, such as acidizing, fracturing and fluid systems, cementing, and coiled-tubing intervention; and drill stem test tools, and surface well testing and multiphase flow measurement services. The company also provides safety, downhole reservoir monitoring, flow control, and multistage fracturing systems, as well as sand-control technologies, and production and isolation packers; liner hangers to suspend a casing string in high-temperature and high-pressure wells; cementing products, including plugs, float and stage equipment, and torque-and-drag reduction technology for zonal isolation; and pre-job planning and installation services. In addition, it offers directional drilling services, and logging and measurement services while drilling; services related to rotary-steerable systems, high-temperature and high-pressure sensors, drilling reamers, and circulation subs; managed pressure drilling, conventional mud-logging, drilling instrumentation, gas analysis, wellsite consultancy, and open hole and cased-hole logging services; reservoir solutions and software products; and intervention and remediation services. Further, the company provides equipment and drilling tools; tubular handling, management, and connection services; equipment rental services; and onshore contract drilling and related services through a fleet of land drilling and workover rigs. Weatherford International plc was incorporated in 1972 and is headquartered in Baar, Switzerland.

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The following companies are subsidiares of Jones Lang LaSalle: 225 Fitness Inc., 360 Commercial Partners, ACREST, AGL, AMAS Limited, AVM Partners, Advanced Technologies Group Inc., Alaska UK (GP) Ltd, Alkas Consulting, Aoyama Holding Limited, Australian Valuation Solutions, Avenue9, BRG, BRG International LLC, BRG Resource Group ULC, BRG WORKPLACE MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS (EUROPE) LIMITED, BRG Workplace Management Solutions (India) Private Limited, BRG Workplace Management Solutions (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., Beijing Dazheng Zhongheng Enterprise Consulting Co. Ltd., Beijing Guotai Zhongheng Enterprise Consulting Co. Ltd., Beijing Jones Lang LaSalle Property Management Services Co. Ltd., Big Red Rooster Flow LLC, Bill Goold Realty, Bradford McCormack & Associates, Brune Consulting Management GmbH, Building Services Network Inc., Business Products Group Inc., Business Resource Holdings Inc., CIG III Technoparc Nominee II Inc./Fiduciaire CIG III Technoparc II Inc., CMM Projekt & Office Solutions GmbH, COBERTURA - SOCIEDADE DE MEDIACAO IMOBILIARIA S.A., CTH, Capital Realty LLC, Carolyn House (General Partner) Limited, Charter Oaks Financial Services Inc., Churston Heard Ltd, Claygate Residential (General Partner) LLP , Claygate Residential (Nominee) Limited, CoR Advisors, Cobertura, Colliers Baltimore, ComRef LIM Co-Invest LLC, Corporate Concierge Services Inc., Corporate Concierge Services of Hawaii Inc., Corporate Realty Advisors, Corrigo, Corrigo Incorporated, Credo Real Estate (Singapore), Creston Residential (General Partner) LLP, Creston Residential (Nominee) Limited, DST International Property Services, Dalian Jones Lang LaSalle Services Limited, ECD Energy and Environment Canada, ECD Energy and Environment Canada Ltd., EID (General Partner) LLP, ELPF Lafayette Manager Inc., Eleven Eleven Construction Corporation, Environmental Governance Ltd, Europe Fund III Alberta GP Inc., Europe Fund III GP LLC, FACILITY ASSOCIATES RECRUITMENT LIMITED, FIVE D PROPERTY MANAGEMENT (NSW) PTY LTD, FIVE D PROPERTY MANAGEMENT (NT) PTY LTD, FIVE D PROPERTY MANAGEMENT (QLD) PTY LTD, FIVE D PROPERTY MANAGEMENT (SA) PTY LTD, FIVE D PROPERTY MANAGEMENT (TAS) PTY LTD, FIVE D PROPERTY MANAGEMENT (VIC) PTY LTD, FIVE D PROPERTY MANAGEMENT (WA) PTY LTD, Five D Holdings Pty Limited, Five D Holdings Pty Ltd, Five D Property Management (ACT) Pty Ltd, Fox RPM Corp., GFN Property Investments L.L.C., Guangzhou Jones Lang LaSalle Property Services Company Limited, Guardian Property Asset Management, Guardian Property Asset Management Limited, H Park Germany LP GmbH, H Park Germany Verwaltungs-GmbH, HALL AND KAY FIRE HOLDINGS LIMITED, HFF, HFF Holdings Limited, HFF InvestCo LLC, HFF Partnership Holdings LLC, HFF Real Estate Limited, HFF Securities L.P., HFF Securities Limited, HG2 Limited, HUB PROFESSIONAL SERVICES LIMITED, Halcyon Real Estate, Hall & Kay Fire Services Ltd, Harry K Moore, Hentschel & Company LLC, Hercules Property Manager (Jersey) Limited, Holliday Fenoglio Fowler L.P., Holliday GP LLC, Hunter Facilities Management (HFM), Huntley Mullaney Spargo & Sullivan Inc., Huntley Mullaney Spargo & Sullivan LLC, IFM Services Finland OY, INTEGRAL UK HOLDINGS LIMITED, Inmobiliaria Jones Lang LaSalle Limitada, Integra Realty Resources, Integra Realty Resources - Dallas, Integral, Integral Facility Services Limited, Integral UK, Integrated General Administration Services K.K., J P Sturge Limited, J.L.W. Nominees Limited, J.L.W. Second Nominees Limited, JLL 2002, JLL 2003 Limited, JLL CAMBRIDGE LTD, JLL CMG LLC, JLL Capital Markets AB, JLL Chile Asesorias Inmobiliarias Limitada, JLL Corporate Solutions - Servicos De Conservacao e Manutencao de Imoveis Ltda, JLL Corporate Solutions AB, JLL Corporate Solutions Holdings Inc., JLL Corretagen e Trasacoes Imobiliarias Ltda., JLL Expertises SARLAU, JLL Infrastructure Advisory Pty Ltd, JLL Ingenierie, JLL Investment Scottish Limited Partnership II, JLL Kapitalmarkand Holding AB, JLL Kapitalmarknad AB, JLL Ltd, JLL Macau Limited, JLL Mall Management K.K., JLL Marketplace LLC, JLL Morii Valuation & Appraisal K.K., JLL Mortgage Services Pty Limited, JLL Nevada Inc., JLL Properties LLC, JLL Public Sector Valuations Pty Ltd, JLL Puerto Rico Realty & Co. S. en C., JLL Real Estate Capital Pte. Ltd., JLL Scottish II G.P. L.L.C., JLL Singapore Capital Pte. Ltd., JLL Transaction Services AB, JLL Treasury Support AB, JLL Valuation & Advisory Services LLC, JLL/BWXT Naval Facility Experts LLC, JLLBRR LLC, JLLINT Inc., Jones Lang LaSalle & Compania Limitada, Jones Lang LaSalle (ACT) Pty Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle (B) Sdn Bhd, Jones Lang LaSalle (Barbados) Ltd., Jones Lang LaSalle (Beijing) Consultants Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle (China) Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle (Fiji) Pte Ltd, Jones Lang LaSalle (Geneva) SA, Jones Lang LaSalle (Luxembourg) Secs, Jones Lang LaSalle (NSW) Pty Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle (PNG) Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle (Philippines) Inc., Jones Lang LaSalle (Portugal) - Sociedade de Mediacao Imobiliaria S.A., Jones Lang LaSalle (Puerto Rico) Inc., Jones Lang LaSalle (QLD) Pty Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle (S E) Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle (SA) Pty Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle (Shenzhen) Commercial Consultancy Company Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle (VIC) Pty Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle (WA) Pty Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle (pty) ltd, Jones Lang LaSalle - Central Texas LLC, Jones Lang LaSalle - Front Range LLLP, Jones Lang LaSalle - Northeast Inc., Jones Lang LaSalle - Texas Inc., Jones Lang LaSalle -Sociedade de Avaliacoes Imobiliarias Unipessoal Lda, Jones Lang LaSalle 1. Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH, Jones Lang LaSalle AG, Jones Lang LaSalle Acquisition Corp., Jones Lang LaSalle Administration B.V., Jones Lang LaSalle Advisory Services Pty Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle Americas (Illinois) L.P., Jones Lang LaSalle Americas Inc., Jones Lang LaSalle Arizona LLC, Jones Lang LaSalle Asia Holdings Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle Asset Management GmbH, Jones Lang LaSalle Australia Pty Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle BV, Jones Lang LaSalle Bangladesh Private Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle Beihai Holdings L.L.C., Jones Lang LaSalle Belgium Holdings LLC, Jones Lang LaSalle Billion Management Services Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle Brokerage Inc., Jones Lang LaSalle Building Operations Private Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle Bulgaria EOOD, Jones Lang LaSalle Capital Investments Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle Charities, Jones Lang LaSalle Co-Investment Inc., Jones Lang LaSalle Co. Ltd., Jones Lang LaSalle Constructions K.K., Jones Lang LaSalle Corporate Appraisal and Advisory Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle Corporate Finance Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle Corporate Property (VIC) Pty Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle Corporate Property Services Pty Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle Dorchester Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle Ecuador S.A. JLL ECUADOR, Jones Lang LaSalle Electronic Sarl, Jones Lang LaSalle Espana S.A., Jones Lang LaSalle Europe Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle European Holdings Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle European Services Limited, Jones Lang LaSalle Expertises SAS, Jones Lang LaSalle Facility Services S.L., Jones Lang LaSalle Finance BV, Jones Lang LaSalle Finance Europe, Jones Lang LaSalle Finance Luxembourg Sarl, Jones Lang LaSalle Finland Oy, Jones Lang LaSalle French Co-Investments Inc., Jones Lang LaSalle Gayrimenkul Hizmetleri Ticaret Anonim Sirketi, Jones Lang LaSalle German Holdings B.V. & Co. 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(Croatia), Jones Lang LaSalle d.o.o. (Serbia), Jones Lang LaSalle de Venezuela S.R.L., Jones Lang LaSalle of New York LLC, Jones Lang LaSalle of Pennsylvania Inc, Jones Lang LaSalle s.r.o, Jones Lang LaSalle s.r.o., Jones Lang LaSalle sprl, Jones Lang LaSalle spoka z ograniczona odpowiedzialnoscia, Jones Lang Wootton Ltd, Jones Lang Wootton Property Management Services Ltd, KHK Group Limited, Kensington CA LLC, Keystone Partners, King & Co Limited, King Sturge, King Sturge Holdings Limited, King Sturge Management SPRL, LAOF V (General Partner) LLP, LASALLE INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT BV, LAVA (General Partner) LLP, LIC II (General Partner) Limited, LIC Lafayette Manager Inc., LIM Advisory Services S.a r.l., LIM Asia Co-Investments Pte. 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Procon Indah, Pacific Real Estate Partners, Peloton Commercial Real Estate, Primary Capital Advisors, Prime Property Consultants Limited, Procofin, Propell National Valuers Pty Ltd., PropertyLinx Pty Ltd, Quadrant Realty Finance, Rogers Chapman UK Ltd, SBR Continental Europe GP LLC, Sage Capital, Salt River Investors GP LLC, Sandalwood Mall Management Private Limited, Shelter Bay Retail Group, Sovereign Asian Properties Inc., Spaulding and Slye Federal Services LLC, Stessa Inc., Strategic Advisory Group, TETRIS ARQUITECTURA SL - SUCURSAL EM PORTUGAL, TETRIS Arquitectura S.L, Tansei Mall Management Co. Ltd., TeTriSolutions LLC, Tenzing AB, Tetris Amenagement SARL, Tetris Design & Build BV, Tetris Design & Build Romania SRL, Tetris Design & Build Sarl, Tetris Design & Build sprl, Tetris Design and Build (Pty) Ltd, Tetris Design and Build S.R.L (Italy), Tetris Design and Build Sarl, Tetris Poland spoka z ograniczona odpowiedzialnoscia, Tetris Projects GmbH, Tetris Projects Ltd, Tetris SAS, Tetris Tasarm ve Insaat Hizmetleri A.S, The Apartment Group, The Horizon Management Services Limited, The Spargo Corporation, The Standard Group LLC, The Staubach Company, Travis Commercial Real Estate Services, Triangle General Partner Limited, Trinity Funds Management, Trussard Property Consultants, Tetris Design & Build Servicos de Arquitetura Ltda., Tetris Design & Build s.r.o., Utrillo Ltd, ValuD Consulting, Veronique Nocquet, W A Ellis LLP, Washington Partners, Whitetail GP LLC, Wilson Retail Group, Wonderment BV, YY Property Solutions, bluu City Limited, bluu Projects Limited, bluu Regions Limited, bluu Solutions Limited, and bluuco limited.




Guwahati : Concern over recent spurt of crimes against women, the Gauhati High Court on Thursday directed to set up fast track courts in each district in the state.





The High Court had issued this direction after Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal had sent a letter to the Chief Justice of Gauhati High Court urging to take appropriate measures to deal with crimes against women on day by day basis.





Assam witnessed several incidents of crimes against women and children in recent period.





Recently, a minor girl was gang raped and murdered by three youths in central Assams Nagaon district, which triggered massive protests across the state.





On Wednesday night, a 6-year-old minor girl was raped by a youth at Khetri area, outskirts of Guwahati.





Later, police had arrested the culprit.





Over 17,000 rape cases have been registered in the state in past a decade.




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KB Financial Group, Inc. engages in providing financial services through its subsidiaries. It operates through the following segments: Corporate Banking, Retail Banking, Other Banking Services, Credit Card, Life Insurance, Investment and Securities business. The Corporate Banking business segment provides services such as loans, overdrafts, deposits, credit facilities and other foreign currency activities. The Retail Banking business segment offers services such as private customer current accounts, savings, deposits, consumer loans and mortgage loans. The Other Banking business segment provides services relating to banking business besides corporate banking and retail banking services. The Credit Card business segment offers services such as domestic as well as overseas credit and debit card operations. The Investment and Securities business segment provides services such as investment banking and brokerage. The Life Insurance business segment provides products such as life insurance and wealth management. The company was founded on September 29, 2008 and is headquartered in Seoul, South Korea.

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The following companies are subsidiares of PPG Industries: AIPCF V Texstars Blocker Inc., AkzoNobel, Alermac Inversiones S.A. de C.V., Alpha Coating Technologies LLC, Alpha Coatings Inc., Broad Range Development Limited, Brown Brothers Distribution Limited, CG Holdings Manufacturing Co., Centro de Investigacion en Polimeros S.A. de C.V., Chemfil Canada Limited, Chorlton Trade Paints Limited, Comercial Mexicana de Pinturas S.A. de C.V., Comex, Comex Industrial Coatings S.A. de C.V., Consorcio Comex S.A. de C.V., Cristacol S.A., Cuming Microwave Corporation, Deutek SA, Dexmet Corporation, Dexmet Holding Corporation, Distribuidora Kroma S.A. de C.V., EPIC Insurance Co. Ltd., Eberle Design Inc., Empresa Aga S.A. de C.V., Ennis Canadian Holding Company, Ennis Flint Soluciones Seguras Para Trafico, Ennis Highway Traffic Technology (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Ennis Manufacturing Sdn Bhd, Ennis Paint Australia Holding Pty Ltd, Ennis Paint Boya Sanayi ve Ticaret A.S., Ennis Paint Canada ULC, Ennis Paint Germany GmbH, Ennis Paint Netherlands Holdings LLC, Ennis Paint U.K. Holding Company Limited, Ennis Prismo Italio S.r.l., Ennis Traffic Safety Solutions Pty Ltd, Ennis  Flint Mexico, Ennis  Flint New Zealand, Ennis  Flint New Zealand Holding Pty Ltd, Ennis-Flint, Ennis-Flint Africa (Pty) Ltd, Ennis-Flint Inc., Foshan Bairun Chemicals Co. Ltd., Fpu Industrial S.A. de C.V., Grupo Comex S.A. de C.V., Hemmelrath Automotive Coatings (Jilin) Co. Ltd., Hodij Coatings B.V., Homax Products, Industria Chimica Reggiana I.C.R. SPA, Johnstones Paints Limited, Kalon Investment Company Limited, Kalon South Africa Proprietary Limited, Manchester Thermoplastics LLC, Masterwork Paint, MetoKote Canada Limited, MetoKote Corporation, MetoKote Mexico Holding Inc., MetoKote UK Limited, MetoKote de Mexico S. de RL de CV, PPG AC - France SA, PPG ALESCO Automotive Finishes Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., PPG AP Resinas S.A. de C.V., PPG Aerospace Materials (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., PPG Architectural Coatings (Puerto Rico) Inc., PPG Architectural Coatings Canada Inc., PPG Architectural Coatings Ireland Limited, PPG Architectural Coatings Italy S.r.l., PPG Architectural Coatings UK Limited, PPG Architectural Finishes Inc., PPG Asian Paints Private Ltd., PPG COATINGS SINGAPORE PTE. LTD., PPG Canada Inc., PPG Cieszyn S.A., PPG Coatings (Hong Kong) Co. Limited, PPG Coatings (Kunshan) Co. Ltd., PPG Coatings (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., PPG Coatings (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., PPG Coatings (Thailand) Co. Ltd., PPG Coatings (Tianjin) Co. Ltd., PPG Coatings (Wuhu) Company Ltd., PPG Coatings (Zhangjiagang) Co. Ltd., PPG Coatings B.V., PPG Coatings Belgium BV, PPG Coatings Danmark A/S, PPG Coatings Deutschland GmbH, PPG Coatings Europe B.V., PPG Coatings Manufacturing SARL, PPG Coatings Nederland BV, PPG Coatings S.A., PPG Coatings South Africa (Pty) Ltd., PPG DYRUP S.A., PPG Deco Czech a.s., PPG Deco Polska sp. z.o.o., PPG Deco Slovakia s.r.o., PPG Deutschland Business Support GmbH, PPG Deutschland Sales & Services GmbH, PPG Distribution S.A.S., PPG Europe B.V., PPG Finance B.V., PPG France Business Support S.A.S., PPG France Manufacturing S.A.S., PPG Guadeloupe SAS, PPG Hellas S.A., PPG Hemmelrath Coatings Inc., PPG Hemmelrath Lackfabrik GmbH, PPG Holdco SAS, PPG Holdings (U.K.) Limited, PPG Holdings Argentina USA LLC, PPG Holdings Latin America USA LLC, PPG Iberica S.A., PPG Iberica Sales & Services S.L., PPG Industrial Coatings B.V., PPG Industrial do Brasil - Tintas E. Vernizes - Ltda., PPG Industries (Korea) Ltd., PPG Industries (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., PPG Industries (UK) Ltd, PPG Industries Argentina S.R.L., PPG Industries Australia PTY Limited A.C.N. 055 500 939, PPG Industries Colombia Ltda., PPG Industries Czech Republic s.r.o., PPG Industries Delfzijl B.V., PPG Industries Europe Sarl, PPG Industries France S.A.S., PPG Industries International Inc., PPG Industries Italia S.r.l., PPG Industries Kimya a Sanayi VE Ticaret AS, PPG Industries LLC, PPG Industries Lipetsk LLC, PPG Industries Middle East FZE, PPG Industries Netherlands B.V., PPG Industries New Zealand Limited, PPG Industries Ohio Inc., PPG Industries Poland Sp. Z.o.o., PPG Industries Securities LLC, PPG Industries de Mexico S.A. de C.V., PPG Italia Business Support S.r.l., PPG Italia Sales & Services S.r.l., PPG Japan Ltd., PPG Kansai Automotive Finishes Canada LP, PPG Kansai Automotive Finishes U.K. LLP, PPG Kansai Automotive Finishes U.S. LLC, PPG Luxembourg Finance S.aR.L., PPG Luxembourg Holdings S.aR.L., PPG Management (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., PPG Mexico S.A. de C.V., PPG Packaging Coatings (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., PPG Paints Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., PPG Performance Coatings (Hong Kong) Limited, PPG Powder Coatings (Shanghai) Limited, PPG Romania S.A., PPG SSC Co. Ltd., PPG Switzerland GmbH, PPG Trilak Kft., PPG Vietnam Co. Ltd., PRC-DeSoto Australia Pty Ltd., PRC-DeSoto International Inc., PT. PPG Coatings Indonesia, Painter's Supply, Paintzen, Peintures de Paris SAS, Plasticos Envolventes S.A. de C.V., Polymeric Systems Inc., Prismo Road Markings Limited, ProCoatings B.V., ProCoatings BV, Protec Pty Ltd. A.C.N. 007 857 392, Reno A&E LLC, Revocoat France SAS, Revocoat Holding SAS, Revocoat Iberica SLU, Revocoat S.A.S, Road Infrastructure Investment Holdings Inc., SEM Products Inc., Sealants Europe SAS, Sierracin Corporation, Sierracin/Sylmar Corporation, Sigma Marine & Protective Coatings Holding B.V., SigmaKalon (BC) UK Limited, SigmaKalon Group, SigmaKalon Middle East B.V., Sikar (Shanghai) Trading Co. Ltd., Spraylat International Ltd, Texstars LLC, The Crown Group Co., The Crown Group Inc, The Homax Group, Tikkurila Group, Traffic Safety Intermediate LLC, Traffic Safety Parent LLC, United International Business NV, Vanex Inc., Vernisol S.p.A., Versaflex, Viasa S.A. de C.V., Whitford, Whitford B.V., Whitford Corporation, Whitford Jiangmen Ltd., Whitford Ltd. (HK), Whitford Ltd. (UK), Whitford Pte. Ltd., Whitford S.r.l., Whitford Worldwide Company LLC, Worwag Coatings, and Zaganite Industries Pty Ltd.




By Vladimir Soldatkin and Christian Lowe





MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia expelled 60 U.S. diplomats on Thursday and announced it would eject scores from other countries that have joined London and Washington in censuring Moscow over the poisoning of a spy.





The U.S. ambassador was also ordered to shut the consulate in St Petersburg, in Russia's retaliation for the biggest expulsion of diplomats since the Cold War.





The White House said Moscow's decision marked a further deterioration in the U.S.-Russia relationship.





"Russia's response was not unanticipated and the United States will deal with it," the White House said in a statement without elaborating.





The expulsions precisely mirrored steps taken by Western governments against Russian diplomats and appeared to show Russia was not seeking to escalate the standoff over the nerve agent poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury, England, on March 4.





The State Department, however, indicated earlier that the United States could retaliate for Russia's "regrettable, unwarranted action," raising the possibility that the crisis could intensify.





"We reserve the right to respond further. We're reviewing our options," said State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert, who charged that the attack on the Skripals violated an international chemical weapons ban. She declined to discuss what additional measures the Trump administration could take.





Britain has blamed Russia for the poisoning, and has been backed up by dozens of Western countries which have ordered Russian diplomats to leave. The United States charges that the 60 Russians that it targeted are intelligence officers operating under diplomatic cover.





"The United States, in concert with many countries, made the decision to kick out Russian spies," said Nauert. "We don't see this as a diplomatic tit-for-tat."





Moscow denies involvement in the attack on the Skripals.





Russian President Vladimir Putin, facing a stuttering economy and an unusual show of Western unity that included even states traditionally friendly towards Moscow, appeared to have stuck to the diplomatic playbook with the symmetrical response.





Ambassador Jon Hunstman was summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry, a gothic skyscraper built under Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, and told that 60 diplomats from U.S. missions had a week to leave Russia, as Washington had expelled 60 Russians.





At a meeting with Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, Huntsman was also told that the U.S. consulate in St Petersburg would be closed -- a like-for-like retaliation for the U.S. closure of Russia's consulate in the U.S. city of Seattle.





"As for the other countries, everything will also be symmetrical in terms of the number of people from their diplomatic missions who will be leaving Russia, and for now that's pretty much it," said Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.





That approach will mean that, among other countries affected, France, Germany and Poland would each have four of their diplomats in Moscow sent home, Ukraine would forfeit 13 diplomats, and Denmark, Albania and Spain would each have two of their embassy staff expelled.





Russia has already retaliated in kind after Britain initially expelled 23 diplomats.





DAUGHTER BETTER





Skripal, 66, a double agent who was swapped in a spy exchange deal in 2010 and went to live in England, and his daughter Yulia Skripal, 33, were found unconscious on a public bench in a shopping centre in Salisbury on March 4.





Former Russian military intelligence officer Skripal remains in a critical condition but his daughter is getting better, the hospital where they are being treated said on Thursday.





British authorities say a Soviet-era nerve toxin called Novichok was used in an attempt to murder the pair.





British Prime Minister Theresa May said that Russia was culpable for the attack and urged allies to join in condemning Moscow for the first known offensive use of a chemical weapon on European soil since World War Two.





Russia says Britain has failed to produce any persuasive evidence of Russia's guilt. Officials in Moscow accused London and Washington of pressuring other nations to sign up to an international campaign of "Russophobia" which, they said, could drag the world into a new Cold War.





Announcing the expulsions of Western diplomats on Thursday, Lavrov said the Skripal poisoning was being exploited by an "Anglo-Saxon axis forcing everyone to follow an anti-Russian path."





British counter-terrorism police said they believed the military-grade nerve agent that poisoned the Skripals had been left on the front door of Sergei Skripal's home, on a quiet street in Salisbury, southern England.





"Specialists have identified the highest concentration of the nerve agent, to date, as being on the front door of the address," Scotland Yard said in a statement.





Police said they had placed a cordon around a childrens play area near the Skripals' house as a precaution.





Christine Blanshard, Medical Director for Salisbury District Hospital, where the two victims are being treated, said in a statement that Yulia Skripal's condition had improved after three week in a critical condition.




Saga plc provides general insurance, package and cruise holidays, and personal finance products and services in the United Kingdom. The company operates in three segments: Insurance, Travel, and Other Businesses and Central Costs. It offers car, home, health, travel, landlord, boat, motorhome, caravan, pet, and personal accident, breakdown cover, building, content, renter, holiday, and holiday home insurance. The company also operates and delivers package tours and cruise holiday products; and provides equity release and care funding advice, savings accounts, credit cards, and wealth management services, as well as shares ISA and share dealing services. In addition, it offers mailing house services; retirement benefit schemes; and publishes Saga Magazine, as well as repairs automotive vehicles. The company was formerly known as Saga Limited and changed its name to Saga plc in May 2014. Saga plc was founded in 1950 and is headquartered in Folkestone, the United Kingdom.

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The following companies are subsidiares of The Sherwin-Williams: Acquire Sourcing LLC, CTS National Corporation, Comex North America Inc., Compania Sherwin-Williams S.A. de C.V., Contract Transportation Systems Co., Deep Pride Limited, Dongguan Lilly Paint Industries Ltd, Duron, EPS (Shanghai) Trading Co. Ltd., EPS B.V., EPS Polidrox Industria e Comercio de Resinas Ltda, Geocel Holdings, Geocel Limited, Guangdong Valspar Paints Manufacturing Co Ltd., Guangdong Yuegang Dadi Paints Company Limited, Guardsman Australia Pty Limited, Guardsman Industries Limited, Inver East Med S.A., Inver France SAS, Inver GmbH, Inver Industrial Coating SRL, Inver Polska Spoka Z O.O, Inver Spa, Invercolor Bologna Srl, Invercolor Ltd, Invercolor Roma Srl, Invercolor Torino Srl, Invercolor Toscana Srl, Isocoat Tintas e Vernizes Ltda, Isva Vernici Srl, Jiangsu Pulanna Coating Co. Ltd., Leighs Paints, M.A. Bruder & Sons, Omega Specialty Products & Services LLC, Oy Sherwin-Williams Finland Ab, PT Sherwin-Williams Indonesia, PT Valspar Indonesia, Paint Sundry Brands, Pinturas Condor S.A., Pinturas Industriales S.A., Plasti-Kote Co. Inc., Plasti-kote Limited, Productos Quimicos y Pinturas S.A. de C.V., Quest Automotive Products UK Limited, Quetzal Pinturas S.A. de C.V., Resin Surfaces Limited, Ronseal (Ireland) Limited, SWIMC LLC, SWIPCO  Sherwin Williams do Brasil Propriedade, Sayerlack, Sherwin Williams Colombia S.A.S., Sherwin-Williams (Australia) Pty. Ltd., Sherwin-Williams (Belize) Limited, Sherwin-Williams (Caribbean) N.V., Sherwin-Williams (Ireland) Limited, Sherwin-Williams (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., Sherwin-Williams (Nantong) Company Limited, Sherwin-Williams (S) Pte. Ltd., Sherwin-Williams (Shanghai) Limited, Sherwin-Williams (South China) Co. Ltd., Sherwin-Williams (Thailand) Co. Ltd., Sherwin-Williams (Vietnam) Limited, Sherwin-Williams (West Indies) Limited, Sherwin-Williams Argentina I.y C.S.A., Sherwin-Williams Aruba VBA, Sherwin-Williams Automotive Mexico S.de R.L.de C.V., Sherwin-Williams Balkan S.R.L., Sherwin-Williams Bel, Sherwin-Williams Benelux NV, Sherwin-Williams Canada Inc., Sherwin-Williams Cayman Islands Limited, Sherwin-Williams Chile S.A., Sherwin-Williams Coatings India Private Limited, Sherwin-Williams Coatings S.a r.l., Sherwin-Williams Czech Republic spol. s r.o, Sherwin-Williams Denmark A/S, Sherwin-Williams Deutschland GmbH, Sherwin-Williams Diversified Brands (Australia) Pty Ltd, Sherwin-Williams Diversified Brands Limited, Sherwin-Williams France Finishes SAS, Sherwin-Williams Italy S.r.l., Sherwin-Williams Luxembourg Investment Management Company S.a r.l., Sherwin-Williams Norway AS, Sherwin-Williams Paints Limited Liability Company, Sherwin-Williams Peru S.R.L., Sherwin-Williams Pinturas de Venezuela S.A., Sherwin-Williams Poland Sp. z o.o, Sherwin-Williams Protective & Marine Coatings, Sherwin-Williams Realty Holdings Inc., Sherwin-Williams Services (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., Sherwin-Williams Spain Coatings S.L., Sherwin-Williams Sweden AB, Sherwin-Williams Uruguay S.A., Sherwin-Williams do Brasil Industria e Comercio Ltda., Spanyc Paints Joint Stock Company, Syntema I Vaggeryd AB, TOB Becker Acroma Ukraine, Taiwan Valspar Co. Ltd., The Sherwin-Williams Acceptance Corporation, The Sherwin-Williams Headquarters Company, The Sherwin-Williams Manufacturing Company, The Sherwin-Williams US Licensing Company, The Valspar (Asia) Corporation Limited, The Valspar (Australia) Corporation Pty. Ltd., The Valspar (Finland) Corporation Oy, The Valspar (France) Corporation S.A.S., The Valspar (France) Research Corporation SAS, The Valspar (Germany) GmbH, The Valspar (Malaysia) Corporation Sdn Bhd, The Valspar (Nantes) Corporation S.A.S., The Valspar (Singapore) Corporation Pte. Ltd, The Valspar (South Africa) Corporation (Pty) Ltd, The Valspar (Spain) Corporation S.R.L., The Valspar (Switzerland) Corporation AG, The Valspar (Thailand) Corporation Ltd., The Valspar (UK) Corporation Limited, The Valspar (Vietnam) Corporation Ltd., The Valspar Corporation, The Valspar Corporation Limitada, UAB Sherwin-Williams Baltic, Valspar (India) Coatings Corporation Private Limited, Valspar (Shanghai) Management Co. Ltd., Valspar (Uruguay) Corporation S.A., Valspar (WPC) Pty Ltd, Valspar Aries Coatings S. de R.L. de C.V., Valspar Automotive (UK) Corporation Limited, Valspar Automotive Australia Pty Limited, Valspar B.V., Valspar Coatings (Guangdong) Co. Ltd., Valspar Coatings (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Valspar Coatings (Tianjin) Co. Ltd, Valspar D.o.o Beograd, Valspar Inc., Valspar Industries (Ireland) Ltd., Valspar Industries (Italy) S.r.l., Valspar Industries GmbH, Valspar LLC, Valspar Mexicana S.A. de C.V., Valspar Paint (Australia) Pty Ltd, Valspar Paint (NZ) Limited, Valspar Powder Coatings Limited, Valspar Rock Company Limited, Valspar Specialty Paints LLC, Vantaco Oy, and ZAO Sherwin-Williams.
Yext, Inc. is an emerging growth company engages in software development. It offers a cloud-based digital knowledge platform, which allows businesses manage their digital knowledge in the cloud such as financial information, resources and performance of these resources on a consolidated basis and sync it to other application such as Apple Maps, Bing, Cortana, Facebook, Google, Google Maps, Instagram, Siri and Yelp. It offers the Yext Knowledge Engine package on subscription basis, which has an access to Listings, Pages, Reviews and other features. The Listing feature provides customers with control over their digital presence, including their location and other related attributes published on the used third-party applications. The Pages feature allows customers to establish landing pages on their own websites and to manage digital content on those sites, including calls to action. The Reviews presence enables customers to encourage and facilitate reviews from end consumers. The company was founded by Howard Lerman, Brent Metz, and Brian Distelburger in 2006 and is headquartered in New York, NY.

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